sonoskay

WoR is my personal favorite. It has a nice ballance of scope  and character development.

I have issues with oath bringer.

 It has some heavy gut punches  and some neat revelations, but I feel like parts get bogged down. It's a bit of a trudge about half way through. And is probably  my least favorite.

 Way of kings  and  rhythm  are about equal to me but for very different reasons.

 I really like rhythms  main antagonist in paticular.

Wind and truth is hard for me to fit.

 It didn't  do almost any of the things I wanted.  But I can't fault the book for not catering to my tastes exactly.   It ended on a bummer note. But sanderson does that a lot. 

Props for really really making me hate taravangian. I was a real fence sitter on his character for a long time i had a lot of hope for him, was disappointed  he utterly  failed to be the main he pretended he was. And then did a good job  about showing me why I was  wrong to like him in the first place.

 It's honestly a really good arch for a hate-able villian.

I assumed it was valor on my first reading.

I'm super late to this conversation  but I wanted to sit on this for a while.

 Other than the fact that valor has remained  in apperent isolation, and  no one knows what where they are or what they are doing. It makes  enough sense to me that this might be the first  obvious  move they might make, either to claim dalinar as theirs or to let him move on.  In either case it feels like it can be naratively explained.

Also I want to say there is a line hoid drops valor name at the end of wind and truth. But  I can't remember  the exact context.

Adalinars action at the end are the definition  of valorous. Though  I do know that means little if the shard has no presence or tie to the system(from my understanding)

 Though upon reading theories, I suppose cultivation  makes the most logical  sense, but considering how she  abandoned  ship, I assumed it was a move to completely cut her losses.  Cultivation  tried her best and produced an outcome extremely  unlikely to the point that to make safer bets, she decided  forgo this one.

I also like the idea of mercy somehow intervening. But that seems extremely  unlikely. I don't know how how you could narratively support this.

I guess I'm happy to see  the community doesn't have a strong consensus about this at the moment. 

 I got trurh watcher by a decent lead, followed by wind runner.

Truthwatcher-78

Windrunner-67

Skybreaker-64

Edgedancer-58

Elsecaller-57

  Interesting considering   2 and 3 are fighting  focused  orders and i am NOT  much of a fighter.

 I suspect there is an element of choice too in  becoming  radiant.

 For example,  i imagine  kaladin would make a decent edge dancer, if his priorities  were *slightly* different.

Or sigzil, might make a good truth watcher.

  Id bet the temperment of people within the orders  can vary greatly. As long as the   priorities  and values they  choose match.

Light weavers might be my favorite.

 The idea of self examination  is somthing i tend to feel is woefully underrated. It takes a lot of work to identidy what is true about yourself and what is a self delusion.

 And  if stonewards are as amazing as taln seems to be, then  i cant help but admire the order  as a whole greatly.

 However, I think if i were to be raidiant. The wiki tells us truthwatchers were interested  in deeper secrets and were greatly concerned  with the abuse of information  and power.

Also the concept of truth, fact, and perception  have always interested me.

Maybe I am misguided, but i didnt interpret  a contest  of champions as a literal contest  between two people. I saw it as an agreement  between  odium and  the current representative  of honor  that the coming war would not be directly joined by them.

 In this dalinar has already sworn  he would no longer  be  a leader of troops.   And kaladin, being the first windrunner who embodies leadership, would likely be the "champion".

 And the reason odium fled in the confrontation  was  because  dalinar   refused  to be his champion and had to  go and find one bonded by the oath he gave dalinar.

 So i guess my awnser is kaladin,

53 minutes ago, Winds Alight said:

Granted, but every website you find is infested with malware.

I wish I could cook better.

You are the the best cook. However, every dish you cook is considered   a piece  of art.  You can  never bring yourself to eat it, and get mildly  offended when others eat it. After all, who could eat such beauty.

I want to be  better in scocial  situations.

18 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

You were right. 

 

Oh.

 Sweet.  I should find the location  of these Q&A.

 I need to know what else i am right about XD

4 hours ago, goody153 said:

This is why i loved the conclusion of Elhokar's character arc. It simply the theme of his life.

I suppose it is.

But its a scary thought that this is merely the justification. On a personal  and philosophical  note, its one of the things that keeps me up at night.

2 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

First of all, a disclaimer:  I loved Harry Potter for a long time.  I think I read the series 11 times before I was so familiar with the story that it got a bit boring.  And even though I’m no longer a fanatic about the books, I definitely agree that they were fantastically written and the series as a whole is a masterpiece.  

However, the fact that Rowling might have intentionally made the first few books simple and portrayed characters in a black and white way doesn’t excuse its simplicity.  It would be more understandable if the series was targeting younger audiences, which I can see in the first 3 books.  But based on the length and narrative complexity of the latter four books, she transitioned to targeting an older audience, yet the same mistakes remained.  Especially in the last 2 novels, I think Rowling succeeded in making readers feel like the universe and the characters were more nuanced.  But she was never able to fully cover up the stereotyping she established in the first few books.  So there ends up being this dissonance between the maturity of the readers and the maturity of the universe.  And that’s what bothers me.

   Its the nature of writing i think.

 Some authors use a method  known as discovery  writing.

 Meaning they  have plot points they want to hit,  but may not know how they get their or even how the story ends.until they sit down and write that part of the book.

 Your criticisms are valid,  however i believe  that  it is a symptom of  her starting by writing childrens books,   becoming  wildly popular, then having to change to a more mature theme  to keep up the momentum.

 I would bet   the redemption  archs she wrote were never originally  planned . But  she clearly established   all this black and white morality  stuff. And couldnt  figure out a way to cleanly  transition to  a more complex  method of story telling.

 Draco and snape were vindictive  asses up to that point. You couldnt suddenly  make them different  or you would ruin what you already  established.

   Maybe this will make me look mean, but i dont think  rowling  is that good of a writer.

 She is a very good world builder however.

 Anyway i suppose this is way off topic. So ill let it  drop hah.

15 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

Sorry, but I need to go on a rant about Rowling.  Prepare thyselves!

This was one of my main problems with Harry Potter.  The way Rowling portrayed the houses, some of them seem to readers to be inherently better than others (cough cough Gryffindor).  For example, it’s hard for people to think of Hufflepuff as a house of exceptional people.  Sure, there are exceptions like Cedric Diggory, but the way the characters in the books thought about the house led to the perception that people were put in Hufflepuff because they weren’t good enough to be in the other houses.  After all, where did the idea that Neville should have been sorted into Hufflepuff come from? And this perception is despite the fact that there is a list of exceptional attributes for Hufflepuff, like Agent34 mentioned.

And don’t get me started on Slytherins.  My god, Rowling, could you have portrayed them in a more one dimensional light?  Sure, we have a few “good” Slytherins (spoilers ahead).  We Have Slughorn, Regulus Black, Draco Malfoy, and Snape.  But even though the last 3 got redemption arcs, they still did some messed up stuff, especially Black and Snape considering how long they were Death Eaters for.  So they’re still pretty bad people.  Literally almost every Death Eater was a Slytherin, and (spoilers again) when Voldemort offered the ultimatum to hand Harry over in the final battle of book 7, almost all of house Slytherin was ready to do it, but every other house was against it.  The valued attributes of Slytherin are ambition, cunning, leadership, and resourcefulness, which to me don’t scream “Evil!”  Sure, you could say people who value these attributes tend to lean towards “the ends justify the means” and that they are willing value their own well-being over that of others.  But these do not equate to pure evil, which is pretty much what Rowling portrayed them as!  These are the attributes of good businessmen!  (Ok, lets not get into the argument that businessmen are evil ).  Besides, just because somebody values these attributes, doesn’t mean they dont also value kindness, or loyalty, or bravery.  It’s not mutually exclusive!  

It just annoys me that Rowling presented such one-sided views of the houses in her books, and a lot of people are still stuck with biased views of the houses as a result.  She could have shown us more nuanced houses.  There could have been a bunch of Slytherins who spoke against Voldemort, there could have been Death Eaters from Gryfindor or Hufflepuff.  But no.  Instead we get a story that, in spite of attempts to show otherwise, still generally emphasizes the philosophy that people can be described and placed into little boxes.

 

I think its pretty  easy  to  know why rowling did this.

The first   3 books are straight up directed at children  around the age of 10.

    They are fairly simple plots whith fairly straightforward  characters.

 And i dont think she anticipated  the rabid fan base  she would eventually  stumble  upon.

She made a beautiful  world. But if we are going to seriously  look at her books. They were intentionally  simplistic.

But i do agree with sandersons opinion of all of his characters in harry potter houses.

11 hours ago, Invocation said:

The only bad joke in Stormlight is Moash.

What about  kaladin's love life

Elhokar  in oathbringer  is the character i relate to most.  This scene made me very sad  too.

And i figure there are a couple ways to look at it.

He ultimately  succeeded.  He became the man he was supposed to but the world is a curel place and is  simply unjust.

He ultimately  failed. His best wasnt enough,    and he was never fit to be anything more.

 You can attempt  to detach  yourself from the moment and   and consiser that elhokar  finished his character arc and  sanderson wanted  some delicious  tragedy  in this book. 

  I really  dont think  he lives. But there is somthing  to consider. We dont know what spren he was bonding with. And we dont know all the powers each  knight order  has.  So  its possible  he survived, or will return in some way.

But i think i have a theory about what spren he  almost bonded with.  And i think the cryptic  hoid found in the city  may be related  to elhokar.

In a conversation  with dalinar in WoR, his ultimate  goal seems to be protecting the cosmere.  I dont jave the exact quote, and honestly i am not fimiliar with hoid other than what he does in mistborn and  stormlight archive.

But it seems to me he is simply an agent or embodiment of chaos and change. This is distinct  from ruin  as a force or odium.

Chaos cannot play if everything is consumed  or destroyed.

We know that odium came from another place in the cosmere. and a god that can move from  place to place like thay, wanting to consume is obviously  a big threat to the rest of the cosmere.

 To paraphrase  what hoid says, he tells dalinar  their goals are similar, but not the same, and he is willing to let roshar  burn if he has to.

  As an agent of chaos it would be against his nature to take a direct hand in things, especially  in matters of order.

So in the end, he pushes  and nudges where he needs to.  Using chaos theory to achive what he wants. This   supports and is supported by the talk he gives shallan about changing the world.

Of course i could be wayyyyy off. But these are my thoughts.

It could be a thing maybe, in the sense  that its mended at the very end in a "all of roshar is mended and  and shaped"

But otherwise, simply as a bond smith, i dont think so. Its been too long. Everyone who knows of the shattered plains  sees it as a shattered plain.

In the lore of  the book the plains themselves probably  dont feel shattered. It just is what it is. In this sense  there isnt anything to mend.

Granted, but the glass is now deeply sentimental  to you. You will cherish  it always.

The boon i ask is to have a bigger positive impact on the world than a negative one.

Im most fond of the idea of kal just not having much of a love life.

In an end of the world scenario, i simply feel there is too much to do. Especially  for someone like kal who is hell bent on protecting everyone he can in a completely  irrational  sense.

A love interest  in these circumstances  would be a burden. And one i dont think kal could deal with.

If he does find  a love interest, i think it would probably  be at the end of the series.

However the death of his love interest  would be an interesting  way to tempt kal into being odiums champion.

 On a side note, as others have signed off on. Syl and kal is  a disturbing  pairing.

Personally  I kind of find the idea  of a deeply intimate  relationship  between a man and a woman *has* to be romantic or sexualized, to be offensive.

And this is ignoring  the idea that spren dont seem to have much of a concept of romance or sexualization 

On 11/17/2018 at 3:30 AM, NoiseSpren said:

We know that the day when mr. T. wrote Diagram was his most perfect day. Because of that, he was very close to his perfect self. And that's s. realm stuff.

So I think that he literally saw future in some kind of way. Saw future without access to Fortune. Remarkable.

Ideas?

I disagree. He didnt see the future. He was given near unlimited  capacity  for information. If you know enough about a person you can start making guesses about a person.  And possibly  to the extent of knowing what they will do before they themselves know.

 This is, in a sense, "predicting the future." But is a way of doing it that is deviod of anything super natural. 

This i feel is a very very different  distinction.  One thing they continue to mention is how the diagram is getting less accurate  over time. And that is becuase    even if you have near perfect information, you cannot guess and calculate  for changes in people especially  after tramatic events. Or after bonding a spren. Which seems to change spren, but also inspires derp change in their humans.

The diagram has mentioned there are big anomalies. Such as the  dust bringer mr t chooses to ally himself with.

 To me, this is a very very different  way of "predicting the future".

Literally  seeing the future  even if its imperfect , is not  the same as calculating  the most likely outcomes based on information  such as past actions and cultural  pressures.

Edit.

Actually  i think even brandon sanderson wants to imply this with the prediction  of highstorms from the storm wardens.

This is  narratively  distinctly different 

In a discussion   brandon did with wowcrendor, he mentions he has small reservations about  there not being that many "twists" in this paticular  series.

And is more concerned with painting a wonderful epic with an interesting world.

Moash being odiims champion is obvious, i figure thats probably  where it will go.

However, i do not think thats where the story will climax, i would bet money that it goes a level deeper.

As for shalan or kaladin being tested, i am sure they will. But i do not think they will turn to odium. 

42 minutes ago, NoiseSpren said:

Mostly used on building personalities of survivors (or Survivor).

There was one character in particular that died  rather pointlessly in book 2. I got the impression  that he wasnt sure what to do with him. Add him to the death toll,  it will give the illusion  of loss.

It was a very effective way of   making  tragedy.   Its somthing a writer would definitely  do. But I want very much  for more to come of it. Particularly  since brandon Sanderson isnt a writer that particularly  indulges  in utter nihilism  that scene kind of imprints in my mind.

Incase it needs a bit of clarification,   the idea  that your best wasnt good enough/was too late  feels pretty nihilistic  to me. Of course i could be projecting  my own mindset into it.

Elhokar  is a character I  can relate to deeply.  And as I read through  , I am getting deeply saddened  by his earnestness and  humility.    He is a man who tries so hard to succeed  and each time it is snatched away. Even in the end during the siege  he gets  so So close to the man he wants to be. And considering I dont think he will pull a jasnah   and manage to come back .

 Do you think he will have a real legacy in this story? Or is his fate purely to be  a tragedy, ultimately  leading to someone  who is his better to lead the kingdom better than he could?

I'm surprised you had to wiki it first instead of noticing Hoid immediately.

Warbreaker first, then one character quirk and one scene in Words of Radiance suddenly makes so much sense.

Hoid in the mistborn books played a small part. Plus Ive only read   each one once. i tend to miss stuff like that.

Warbreaker first? Okay Thanks.

So, after 3 years of following Brandon sanderson, I have read all the mistborn books, (they were my introduction to him) and reading the Bricks that were tWoK and WoR (no shade , I love those books, but they are LOONG)

Where would you recommend i go from here when it comes to brandons books?  I mean ill be Honest I was a little upset when I read on a Stormlight archive wiki that mistborn and stormlight archive were in the same Universe. And became annoyed when i learned  that 3 other series were tied in some how as well. Now i feel Somewhat obligated to try to read the others.  Especially if i might miss something in the storm light archive Epic.  A series I Fell in love enough with to re-read the damnation books 3 times. And when a important character in   these books has appeared in Nearly all the Cosmere  books...

So. Where do i go from here, I don't have the budget,,, or the time. to try to get them all. So what series should I focus on First?

There are theories that that is the beginnings of shardplate. That lesser spren are attacted to radiants and form the plate. Since they are lesser, no screaming, but since they are spren, have limited transformation abilities. 

That Is an interesting theory.  But Im not so sure. From descriptions in the books  They make shard plate seem like a... primitive Fabrial  but one that has been lost.  after all They do have those half-shard Shields.  Which can block shard plate even if they dont  give you super human Abilities.

Bah, I like raisins.  Does that make me evil?

Pattern can hide in plain sight very much like a lie.

 This would be My thought.

A a good lie is always based on truth.