Kogiopsis

This comment is just fascinating to me, because all of the reasons you listed as making Kaladin less sympathetic are things I find make him more so. I guess part of that is that I actually deal with depression myself, so seeing a fictional character struggle and backslide and eventually succeed through supreme effort really resonates with me. I'd honestly feel kind of betrayed had Kaladin not still had all of those flaws in WoR - we've got too many fictional stories about how one success magically does away with depression and fixes everything. (And as one of my friends said about his WoK arc, it's boring and grinding and repetitive because that's what life is like when you're depressed - the same applies to Kaladin going through a similar process in WoR. Dealing with depression is kind of just... a thing you keep doing in perpetuity.) As far as his prejudice re: lighteyes, I can't help but see a lot of parallels to racism in the modern world in that? It's perfectly reasonable for someone who's been on the bad end of societal inequality for years not to trust those who've gained from the system, especially when (like Kaladin) they have numerous traumatic experiences as a result of that societal imbalance being used against them. Kaladin's categorical hatred of lighteyes is misplaced in some cases (see: his dismissal of Dalinar after the duel) but we only know that because we, as readers, have perspective that he doesn't - and even the lighteyes whose POVs we've seen still mess up as a direct result of the societal privilege with which they were raised. (See: Dalinar mistrusting Kaladin about Amaram; Adolin casually insisting that stratification is natural and not exploitative.) Honestly, if I were in Kaladin's place and had been hurt by lighteyes over and over, I would be suspicious of them all too. Note that I'm not saying that Kaladin doesn't have flaws - I think a lot of his arc in WoR was about exposing his flaws and exploring their consequences. But I think that flaws, especially those with dramatic consequences, make a character more relatable. I'm certainly not perfect, and I'd be bored to tears reading about protagonists who are! (I also respectfully disagree that his redemption scene changes nothing; that's a scene highlighting character growth and pushing him forward into a new arc, and while it doesn't negate his previous mistakes, that growth should be taken into account when discussing him as a character. It's reductive to pretend that either state - Kaladin at his most flawed or Kaladin at his best - is absolute; what makes him compelling is the way, like a real person, he moves between the two.)

The descriptions in WoR do suggest that it's enormous, though - I mean, they're housing multiple entire armies inside by the end. And technically speaking, Urithiru is a city, so it can't really be compared to buildings in the first place. 'Absolutely massive' sounds about right to me.

Spending time with - yes, to some extent; some of Jasnah's comments early in WoR suggest to me that she may see herself as one of the non-combat Radiants, whereas Kaladin is clearly combat-oriented, so while their paths will certainly cross I'm not sure they will actually interact significantly. As far as investigating him, it's possible that given the press of their situation she won't have time to do so, or won't prioritize it given that he's already put his life on the line for her family a handful of times already and has at the very least Dalinar to vouch for him. Jasnah has a great deal more scholarly work to do, and we've already seen that she's strained by the magnitude of the tasks ahead of her. Whether or not Kaladin is a security risk will probably be low on her list of things to assess. (Honestly, if she develops an investigative interest in Kaladin at all it's likely to be through Shallan, actually, especially since she may well arrive at Urithiru before he returns.) As far as mutual respect goes - I'll agree on that, exogenous to all shipping considerations; I expect to see that between all of the new Radiants eventually, though possibly grudgingly. (I personally hold to the idea that we'll see ideological conflict in battle strategy/tactics and prioritization between different Orders, especially conflict between Windrunners seeking protection of civilians and others advocating strategic sacrifice for longer-term gain.) I'd also argue that the 'offensive and asinine' comment came prior to the beginning of Kal's downslide, so it is actually a reasonable representation of his attitude at 'baseline', so to speak, at least when interacting with lighteyes. We only really see him being more cheerful and positive with Bridge Four or Syl - debatably with Shallan in the chasm scenes, but that's a bit of a stretch given it's a crisis situation. He may not be at his lowest point by the end of the book, but I very much doubt he's lost that 'acerbic' quality entirely, or even mostly.

I'm not so sure about Jasnah's perspective there - recall the amount of effort Shallan had to put in to gain her consideration, let alone her respect. I suppose it's less a matter of age and more a matter of intellectual standing, but Jasnah does seem to pick and choose the people she respects very carefully, and I doubt she'd be anything but put off by Kaladin's attitude ("I’m offensive and asinine on my own time too" is not the kind of thing likely to win her heart.)

Hmm. You should write that essay! More ship manifestos are always fun, and this fandom is sadly lacking in them. (I think there are only two extant at the moment, which is really a crying shame.) ...is it derailing the thread too far to ask how you'd address the age gap? It is still related to Kaladin shipping, after all...

...alright. For the sake of peace and serenity I will say nothing more with regards to Vandalhearts' post, except for: wow, way to miss the point. On a different note - Aether, I'm afraid you're out of luck when it comes to Kalasnah fic. The Tumblr fandom seems to be the fic-producing side, as a rule, and the Tumblr fandom... seems to vastly prefer acearo or queer-romantic Jasnah. (I don't think I've ever seen anyone with a het-allo headcanon for her.) I can't recall running into more than maaaaaybe two Kalasnah shippers there, and I don't know that either of them write, so if you want fic you'll have to do it yourself. If you do, I would be interested to read it - I've found most explanations of Kalasnah center around him 'curing her of her dislike of men', which is kind of a gross starting point for a lot of real-world contextual reasons, and I'm curious to see what could be done with the pairing.

Oooh, I like this topic! I will say that for starters, Feather covered a lot of the things I think are inherently valuable about fanfic - character exploration, audience response, etc etc. There are a couple of other things I think are worth adding - 1. I think it was Naomi Novik who mentioned this in what, IIRC, was a pre-NaNo pep talk email, but fic allows writers to pick and choose what aspects of their writing they want to focus on. If what you want to do is explore a setting, you don't necessarily have to worry about creating characters; if what you want to do is practice writing coherent plots, your stage is already set and populated. Most often in my experience, fanfic challenges the writer's ability to keep characters internally consistent, and dedicated writers will put a lot of effort into keeping their portrayals in line with the text. That's a skill that's critical to original writing, and which it can be difficult to focus on when you're juggling the other requirements involved in telling your own story. For many people it's best to hone it first practicing on fic, and then move on to apply the skills thus learned. (this also applies to things like editing your own work, receiving critique from others, and keeping to a consistent writing schedule, especially for multi-chapter works.) 2. Fanfiction is so very, very often more than just fanfic. On an individual level, it's often incredibly important to individual people - a lot of the fic writers I follow have talked about getting messages from people telling them that their work made a difference, and I've gotten a couple of those myself. (I also write a lot of short fic for friends who are having bad days, and it does a lot to cheer them up.) On a larger level, fanfic is inherently a transformative work, and because of that you get things like Paris Burning which creates an entire collaborative universe for itself, or Fifty Years in the Virtuous City which both shines a spotlight on an older story and re-imagines the concept in a distinctly modern way. 3. A great deal of fanfic involves people writing about people like them in stories they love that don't represent them. It can be hard, for instance, for a lot of people to read/watch LOTR and note the distinctly tiny number of female characters in the cast and/or the overwhelming homogenous whiteness of the protagonists; it can leave the audience feeling like they don't exist in a world where this kind of epic story takes place. Fanwork, then, can fill that void - either by expanding the roles of existing characters, changing their traits somewhat, or adding in additional characters. It gives fans who are often marginalized in their daily lives and in media a chance to see themselves in settings/roles from which they were previously left absent. I mean, I'm not going to argue that fanfic as a concept is without flaws - I do think that Pulled To Publish novels-nee-fic are a problem on several levels - but I think its good vastly outweighs the bad. As for questions of quality, well, teenagers have to get their bad writing out somewhere and if it's a community where they might be able to find good critical feedback and encouragement, all the better. Besides, that's what fic rec systems are for. (Homestuck fandom has an entire blog for recs, as no doubt do others; it makes sorting through the chaff that much easier.) As for authors being against it - that's their prerogative, I suppose, though realistically speaking there's nothing they can do to stop people actually writing fic. (They can, in some cases, stop them from distributing it - evidence Anne McCaffrey actually getting some Pern RP boards shut down back in the day. But the stuff that's handwritten in someone's notebook ain't going anywhere.) I personally think hard-and-fast 'NO FIC' rules are a bit, well... selfish, I guess; I don't care for the way they chastise readers for exploring ideas, especially when it's basically an expanded thought exercise and does no harm.

Thanks for the welcome! And yeah, I'm all for harmony in general, but I do think blurring the lines between the two can exacerbate conflicts, as people approach the discussion with different baseline assumptions about what's being discussed. That, and one of the two occasionally ends up being denigrated, which is never fun for anyone. (For the record, as this is a thread about ships, I suppose I should state my own stance so - while I'd prefer Kalarin, Kadolin, or almost any other pairing, I expect to see Shalladin as endgame canon. There's too much of Brandon's particular type of setup going on for me to reasonably hope for anything else.)

Ohhh man, this topic is... this topic is a trip. So much so, in fact, that I admit I made this account primarily to comment on it. Vandalhearts, as a queer person, I'd like to clear some things up. (I almost typed 'queer things up' - that's true too, but neither here nor there at the moment.) What Leinton was getting at with his comment about not finding everyone of a gender you're attracted to attractive was that while you're correct to say we've seen no evidence of Kaladin being bisexual (or pansexual, etc) we also have no conclusive evidence that he's heterosexual. You say we have "textual evidence that Kaladin isn't into guys", but that's patently false, as what we have is some evidence that he's into women, but nothing that states that he has never, in his life, found another guy attractive. What's more, that's also a fundamental misunderstanding of how sexuality works. I can speak both from personal experience and conversations with a lot of other queer people that most of us thought we were straight for much of our lives, and very often people don't realize or come to terms with questions of sexuality until early adulthood, if then. (I'm sure it would take me less than a minute of searching Dear Abby archives to find stories of people who realized their sexuality and came out after they'd started a heterosexual family - I know I've seen more than a handful of letters about that subject.) Moreover, sexuality is more of a spectrum; it's entirely possible to generally not be attracted to people of a given gender but encounter some exceptions. The Kinsey Scale, while generally considered oversimplified by most people in the queer community, is a good introduction to that concept. Also, when Iredomi commented that Kaladin wouldn't need to be sexually attracted to someone to be in a relationship with them - unless I miss my guess, he meant that as a distinguishing factor between sexual romantic relationships and non-sexual romantic relationships, not between romantic relationships and friendships. Sexual attraction is by no means a prerequisite for two people to be romantically involved! One last thing - I'd appreciate it if in future you didn't refer to non-het people as 'alternative sexualities', as it comes off dismissive and heteronormative. I think it's worth mentioning that I think there may be a disconnect going on here with regards to what people think the thread is for, which is to say: some commenters appear to believe it's intended to discuss shipping, and some appear to believe it's about theorizing based on the text who Kaladin will end up with. These are fundamentally two different things. As Leinton said, shipping is about what fans want or find interesting - character dynamics they'd like to see explored, potential they see between characters. It very often is related to fanfic (or fanart, etc), in that it tends to be what fuels it; it's rare to find a popular ship that doesn't have some sort of fanwork for it. There is more to it, however, lest you dismiss it out of hand (this is not the place to dispute opinions on fanfic, but I will say that it has a great deal of intrinsic value from a cultural perspective and should be respected even if you don't personally enjoy it) shipping also tends to involve vast amounts of character analysis, more so than most fannish pursuits that I've seen. (Given the title and first post of the thread, I suspect OP may have meant it to be more about theorizing based on evidence; I'm not sure what site protocol is when a thread swings off topic in a fractional but significant way. Perhaps the discussion should be moved elsewhere, given that?)