Starla

I don’t think this is much of an issue anymore. He has made a lot of progress in Oathbringer. He became friends with a lighteyed prince, had a crush on a lighteyed girl, and grieved the loss of a squad of lighteyed guards when they died. And he is a part-time lighteyes himself and doesn’t flinch when someone calls him Brightlord. I do agree he probably wouldn’t want to be King of Alethkar, considering he was freaked out about having land with 6 or 7 small villages. So is this better or worse than "you remind me of my brother?" As for the topic at hand, we’re still 3 books out of 10 so there is plenty of time to introduce new side characters. Assuming there is a one year gap between books 3 and 4, both sides will likely use that time to build up their ranks. This means lots of new radiants could be introduced in the next book. I could see Kaladin with another radiant that he can work with, one that is more battle-oriented than scholar-oriented, so they can go out and help people. Ideally this person would not be a damsel in distress that needs protecting, so she can defend herself and he wouldn’t be constantly worried about her safety. Looking at the existing characters… I’m not feeling most of them. Jasnah would be the closest, but she does fine on her own without a partner, which is one of things I love about her. Ash is an interesting thought I hadn’t considered that before. Talk about a big age difference, though. Rysn, Lyn, Mae Aladar, Azure, Tarah, I'm not seeing any of those for various reasons. Laral... she seemed pretty strong in the Hearthstone chapter in OB, so it's not a terrible idea. She may even be a radiant candidate with all she's ben through. I may be open to her, but right now I like the new character idea better.

@RShara You nearly have me convinced about the tattoo. Though to complicate matters, I wonder if Shallan got a Ghostbloods tattoo (a real one, not an illusion), would it stick if she only associates her Veil persona with the Ghostbloods? I'm thinking it wouldn't. So many identity issues with our dear radiants...

I still feel like a new tattoo would heal no matter how the person sees themselves, if that person were holding stormlight while they were getting the tattoo, or perhaps during the first couple weeks. A tattoo is an injury. It breaks the skin and there is often blood, skin irritation, scabs, etc. I suppose it is possible for the person to hold a very clear vision of the new tattoo in their mind until the wound heals, but that would take a lot of focus and concentration for an extended period. You're basically telling your body "please don't heal this injury, I want to keep it." Once the tattoo has healed, then I believe the surgebinder could keep it if they identify it as part of themselves. Aside from Kaladin, all of Bridge Four's tattoos had fully healed by the time they could use stormlight, so we'll never know if theirs would have healed when they first got it.

Even though I’m not a Syladin shipper, I don’t have any moral or ethical problem with it. I’ve read and watched enough fantasy and scifi over the years that I don’t have any issues with inter-species relationships of various sorts in a fantasy book, be it species from the same planet or different planets, realms, dimensions, universes, planes of existence, etc. My only question is whether all parties have free will to make their own choices. If they do, I don’t much care where they come from or what their anatomy looks like. I also don’t have a problem with beings who are connected at a soul level loving each other, in fact, I would expect them to share a deep love and understanding of one another that is unavailable to totally “separate” individuals. There are various ways to love another being, it may or may not be romantic and/or sexual. This doesn’t mean the relationship can’t be as deeply loving and intimate as a same-species love relationship. The boundaries and definitions of loving another are flexible. Genders, species, level of physicality, numbers of parties involved, depth of connection, everybody can love. I’d say a human and spren with a nahel bond can love each other across all three realms. There is more to the physical realm than just sex. There is talking to each other, enjoying the company of the other person, feeling empathy when the other is sad or happy or afraid, general friendship and companionship. Just because they are in a bond that would be terribly painful to break, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t love each other in whatever way they want to while they are together. They were both individual entities before the bond and both chose to initiate it, so no one is being forced or coerced to do anything. All that said, I’d personally rather Kaladin be in a romantic relationship with a person he can actually touch, but that’s just my personal preference for what I'd like to read in this particular story. However, if all he needs is emotional support and companionship, then maybe Syl is enough to satisfy that.

@Subvisual Haze Do you feel like the brands didn't show through the old man illusion because that was depicting someone else entirely? The old man would not have the brands so the illusion sticks, whereas Kaladin as himself would have the brands so the forehead-only illusion doesn't stick. Interesting question about the tattoo. I bet it would be difficult for any surgebinder to get a tattoo, since it is an injury and stormlight would heal it. I bet Kaladin would be able to keep the tattoo if he went through a no-stormlight phase while it heals.

@Dreamstorm I listened to the audio clips, and I still have a different gut reaction to the end of the book than what Brandon is saying ("Yes, she's much more in control, but still has a way to go."). My initial response was that she handed her control to Adolin (and if she had chosen Kaladin I would have felt the same). I don't feel this this is satisfying for Shallan as a character, and isn't fair to Adolin. I realize this is totally an emotional response on my part and may have no basis in truth and reality, but for some reason I haven't been able to shake it. @GameOfGroans There has been some discussion of Shallan being influenced by an outside entity. I didn't pick up on it in my previous read-through, but I can see it being a possibility. Dalinar was intentionally influenced by Nergaoul for decades, so it happens. I'm currently in Part 3 of a re-read, so I'll pay close attention with Shallan's interactions with Sja-Anat to see if I pick up something I missed. It would certainly ease my mind about Shallan giving away her power so quickly.

I thought it was interesting that the full illusion when they entered Kholinar (ugly old man) stayed intact, but the partial illusion covering the scars did not. I assumed it was related to his view of himself, but if that's the case, why didn't the scars appear on the old man disguise?

@GameOfGroans I can empathize with you...I recently went through the same thing with my mother. Sometimes Shallan’s coping mechanisms of repressing painful memories and blackouts triggers some deep feelings of sadness in me, and I have considered whether this is related to what my mother went through. I was deeply disturbed by Shallan’s storyline and resolution in Oathbringer. Shallan has the ability to transcend her problems and become a fully self-aware person with all aspects of her past and present intact in an integrated whole. I was so rooting for her to move in that direction, but the way the book ended, I felt that she was sinking deeper into fragmentation and loss of self, rather becoming more empowered and whole as a person. I still don’t fully understand why this makes me so sad, sometimes I have strong feelings without the words to articulate why I feel that way. Obviously some people are satisfied with where she ended and feel she is getting better, including the author himself. I hope I’ll eventually I'll see some growth in Shallan. Luckily the wonderful folks in this thread had helped me see that her storyline has the potential to continue on in interesting ways, and she is not necessarily doomed to the fate of happy princess wife who derives her strength and sense of self from a partner.

He might have had the right to the salute when he was a loyal member of Bridge Four and living the ideals it represents, but I think he gave up that right when he nearly killed his commanding officer / close friend to get revenge. Kaladin would have died from that shardplate-fueled punch to the gut had Syl not returned in that moment. Regardless of what Moash thinks of Elhokar, is it worth killing a close friend to get to him? How is that any better than what Elhokar did? In my opinion, betraying a friend who has saved your life is unforgivable. I have a feeling Moash would have tried to kill Kaladin in Kholinar if he had gotten in the way, and would have justified it by saying that Kaladin was defending a murderer. Also, I think the big difference between Moash and Kaladin is that Kaladin takes responsibility for everything and Moash takes responsibility for nothing. Kaladin is self-sacrificing, Moash is self-centered. Kaladin tries to empathize with others, Moash feels like a victim with the world out to get him. No matter what similar life experiences they have had, these differences is so large that they are nearly opposite characters. They've both had bad chull happen, but one has taken responsibility and become a Knight Radiant while the other has blamed everyone else for his problems and is therefore ripe for Odium-picking. I expect an epic showdown between them in the next couple books, and cannot wait to see it. Despite my HUGE dislike of Moash's actions, I love reading him as a villainous character.

I took the salute as an intentional F U on Moash's part. I don't believe he meant it as a sign of respect. There was a scene in part two, Chapter 54, where Moash met with Leshwi and she asked what angers him. Here is the quote: I think this scene is a turning point where Moash officially chooses to side with the Singers/Fused and turn away from Bridge Four/Kaladin. He doesn't think "Elhokar is a murderer." He thinks thinks "Kaladin had been protecting a murderer." I think he used this a way to justify abandoning any loyalty that might still remain to Kaladin, and choosing vengeance instead. I also don't think Kaladin and Moash are similar people. They may have had similar backgrounds, but they respond and react to situations in completely different ways. Two people can be brought up in the exact same environment, and one can treat others with respect and compassion, while the other is self-centered and harmful. It is who they are are as a person, not their experiences, that connect them. Even though Kaladin has been hurt by ligheyes and hated them for it, he never tried to kill them for vengeance. I would say Rock, Sigzil, Rlain, Drehy, and the rest of Bridge Four are much more like Kaladin than Moash, even though their backgrounds and experiences are widely different. That's why they are his squires and Moash is not.

Thanks @Stairdweller. I'm on iOS and don't have that setting. I have options for single or multipart downloads, but not seamless play. Oh well, I suppose I'll live.

Sorry I wasn't clear... I meant he looks too caucasian on the WOR cover. He should look more Alethi with darker skin. This is why I don't consider the cover canon. Perhaps some people do, but that's not how I picture him in my head.

Okay you're my favorite person today. If you feel like sharing any of your drawings, I would love to see them. I love architectural drawings like Shallan loves shalebark and chasmfiends. I don't really consider the WOR Kaladin to be canon. Brandon has said that he didn't want to challenge Michael Whelan's drawing even though Kaladin looks more caucasian on the cover than the typical Alethi (Hawaiian/Asian mix). I do think he nailed the rockbuds though.

@mariapapadia Your WOB about Shallan's innate flaring passion reminds me of this wonderful passage from OB Chapter 30: I loved this when I read it, and was looking forward to seeing this Shallan emerge throughout the book. I don't think we ever got any more of it, but the WOB you posted gives me hope that we'll see her again at some point in the future. @PhineasGage I am highly impressed by your detailed thesis and ability to throw up a website in a day. Aren't you in med school too? Wow. I haven't read the whole thing, but I skipped down and read the Carriage Ride chapter, which is one of my favorite chapters in WOR. Though I'm not necessarily a Shalladin shipper, I always thought the scene where Hoid encourages Kaladin to flirt with Shallan was somehow significant. As you mentioned, he seems to always show up at important moments and has an ulterior motive for everything he says and does. This was one of the things in WOR that made me go hmmm. I also noticed that both Kaladin and Shallan went looking for him when they were at their low points (Kal in WOR, Shallan in OB). He wasn't around for either, but it shows that they both respect him and have some sort of connection with him. I also meant to comment on the Urithiru drawing someone mentioned a few pages back. That is my absolute favorite drawing the book! Being an architecture junkie I am fascinated by Urithiru, and seeing my man Kal in the drawing made me more excited than I care to admit. I think this is our first canon drawing of him. Even if it's only from behind, I'll take what I can get.

I'm not convinced Skar and Drehy have bonded spren. Kaladin notes when he meets them that Drehy has cuts on his face and Skar looks like he hadn't slept in weeks, which means they haven't healed with stormlight. Also, they have practiced lashings as squires, so they could have flown back to the oathgate if they were full radiants. It's possible they had no stormlight for the duration of their multi-week trip from Kholinar to the coast where Kal found them, but the merchant they were with had a functioning spanreed which requires an infused ruby. I think they are still squires and needed his presence to use stormlight. Also, he mentioned having all his squires speak the first ideal back in Part 2, so it makes sense that they may have spoken the second ideal without bonding their own spren, or follow the same ideals their radiant.

How ironic would it be if Kaladin defends Roshone against Moash after all those years of hating him and blaming him for Tien's death? Another Elhokar situation, but more personal. I'd like to see that. What I don't want to see is Lirin or any other inhabitants of Hearthstone being caught in the crossfire. That would be too sad to take. I was just about to say this. I don't see him turning to Odium if one of Odium's agents kills someone he cares about. It would only make him be even more determined to oppose Odium. I think Kaladin's arc is moving away from killing altogether.

I've always suspected that Shallan attracted Pattern because she had an overactive imagination as a child. I could see cryptics being attracted to imaginative children who are not firmly rooted in reality and try to manifest their imagination through some creative talent, like drawing or sculpting or pretending/acting. There are also theories that Tien was a proto-lightweaver, and he also fits the archetype of the dreamy creative child with his love of patterns in stone and horse carvings. @Foxx I don't believe Pattern was actually locked in the safe box. He probably disappeared as soon as the box was closed and went back to a dismissed state. Shallan assumed the sword was still in the box because she blocked out the fact that she had summoned him, and never tried to do it again (until WOR). I think the light she saw around the box was her imagination.

I agree. We saw how she reverted to a previous mindset when Jasnah showed up. How will she respond to her brothers being around? The last time she saw them she has just killed their father. It will be interesting to see how she handles this in the midst of the rest of her instability. It's will be two worlds colliding. I also look forward to seeing how they integrate into Urithiru. I like Wikim, I hope he does well.

I checked my audible app and can't find this. Can you point me in a direction?

I read this discussion in the other thread. It's good to know the beta readers discussed these topics as avidly than we do, but it doesn't help me understand Shallan's arc in this book. If you read the Reddit AMA, many of the beta readers there seemed satisfied with the resolution of Shallan choosing Adolin for stability (I think a lot of those were non-sharders). They acknowledge that she has a ways to go, but that it was a good step for her to solidify her personalities. This is where I get confused, because my initial gut instinct when I finished the book was to be disturbed at where Shallan ended. I made a post in the thread you quoted from, about how I think Shallan is an emotionally stunted 17 year old who grew up socially isolated, and has had no time to mature. The idea of her marrying a 23 year old man to find stability is a strange direction for her character. We know she is strong. We have seen glimpses of what she is capable of, but she is has a lot of growing up to do. Now she is the wife of a Highprince, probably expected to produce an heir, and she is a Knight Radiant responsible for the fate of the world. I don't see how she can realistically be ready for these responsibilities in her current condition. This is a good point, but it seems like the direction of the narrative changed somewhere between WOR and OB, or at least temporarily sidetracked. It went from hinting/foreshadowing in WOR that there could be a viable relationship between Shallan and Kaladin (the braided rose concept that was discussed earlier in the thread), to Kaladin is not a viable alternative, but simply the object of lust of one Shallan's personas in OB. Yes, Veil existed in WOR, but the Veil persona never interacted with Kaladin that I am aware of, she certainly wasn't in the chasm. So what changed between WOR and OB? I'm not sure, really. Many in this thread have made good arguments that the larger story has yet to be told, and the ending of OB is just a blip on the radar. I'm not yet convinced of that, based on the WOBs we've seen and how a large majority of readers view the text so far, with Adolin and Shallan's marriage being a good step for her. Thanks for this statement. I'm going to try to interpret everything we've read so far as intentional. I have the upmost respect for Brandon as a writer and I think a part of my feeling of discomfort comes from the fact my initial reaction to Shallan's arc seems to have diverged so widely from his intent. However, we have only seen three books of a ten books series, so the story is far from over. This is why I normally wait until a series is complete to read, I really suck as loose endings and waiting years to find out what happens.

A while back in this thread I commented that I felt like the “triangle” was used as a device to highlight Shallan’s identity issues. This has bugged me because it basically makes Kaladin a tool which is discarded in the end when Shallan decides that the personality who likes him has bad taste in men. I don't like Kaladin being used as a tool in Shallan's plot arc, but I suppose he was the most convenient option, being of similar age and proximity to Shallan, and nice to look at. So along comes this comment from Brandon in last week's Reddit Beta Reader AMA (link): There was also a WOB that Shallan is getting better at the end of Oathbringer, though she still has a ways to go. This seems to confirm the idea that Shallan has validated, or committed to, a specific persona by choosing the man that particular persona prefers. And now that she has made a choice, she has set her feet on the road to recovery. This bothers me, as I have rambled on about in countless posts. Am I misinterpreting? I am hoping that if I ponder this question long enough, it will become clear at some point. Also, that one year gap between Books 3 and 4 is killing me. The first three books took place over seven months. Argh, so much will have changed.

Do we know if Moash's eyes remained light after giving up his shardblade? I can't recall if it's mentioned in the text.

I’ve been up and down with Shallan, and still don’t have all my feelings about her sorted out. A few of the comments in this thread have touched on some things that have been bothering me, so I’ll make an attempt to articulate my thoughts. First, a few things we know about Shallan: She is 17 years old (I checked the timeline and she is still 17 at the end of Oathbringer.) 13 months ago, she killed her father. 7 months ago she arrived in Kharbranth to steal Jasnah’s soulcaster. 7 months ago she met her first romantic interest. He turned out to be an assassin who nearly killed her. When she was 11 years old, she killed her mother in self defense after her mother tried to kill her. Since that time she has had no mother figure in her life. Her father was angry and abusive, and though he never physically abused Shallan, he would harm other people as a means to control her. She grew up isolated on her family's estate, with her brothers being the only kids close to her age. She had no friends her age to develop social skills. The only times she ever left the estate were yearly trips to Middle Fest. Prior to leaving home, the only knowledge she had of the outside world came from books. Shallan is so young, and will all the problems and trauma she has endured, and the isolation and lack of socialization she experienced as a child, her emotional growth was probably stunted. I would guess that parts of her mind stopped developing on the day she killed her mother, so in some ways she is still that 11 year old girl, the girl she sometimes sees lying on the bed crying, unable to face her life. She has not yet dealt with all of that and had nearly zero emotional support from family, friends, or health professionals during her formative years. I know a lot has happened to her since she arrived in Kharbranth, but that was only seven months ago. Everything has happened so fast, she has had no time to reflect on any of it, to grow, or to heal. As of the end of Oathbringer, she is still having blackouts and is still using her personas as a way of dissociating from memories and problems she faces in day to day life. To make matters worse, she frequently uses one of her personas to get drunk with her mercenaries (and now her husband), as another way to make her problems go away. Add to all this, she is a Knight Radiant, expected to take on a monumental role in saving the world. And now she’s marrying a 23 year old Highprince, and probably expected to produce an heir in the near future. All of this for a child with stunted emotional development who has never properly grown up and who has no idea who she is. In many Young Adult novels, kids always save the world and are way better and cooler at everything than the adults. But Stormlight Archive is not Young Adult, it is Adult, which tends to portray people of all ages more realistically. I’m struggling to find Shallan realistic at this point. I know all of the radiants are broken, but Shallan's particular character arc disturbs me in ways I don’t fully understand. And not the good kind of disturbed. Perhaps I am overthinking it and it’s not as bad as it seems, but at this point I have a hard time thinking about her without feeling like something is wrong there. Maybe we are supposed to feel this way… she doesn’t know who she is and neither do we. Regardless, it is disconcerting to not know how to feel about a character, nor have no idea where she might go from here.

@JonW8 I took the raids as the Fused trying to disrupt supply caravans to the shattered plains. There are a lot of people in Urithiru who need food, clothing, furniture, etc., and in the early parts of OB, the Narak oathgate was the only way to bring supplies into the city. Attacking the caravans would cut off supplies and cause chaos. I think we'll see more of Thude and co. in the future, but I don't think they were behind the attacks. At least I hope not.... there were a lot of dead Parshendi bodies in the caravan that Bridge Four investigated. It seems Rock is not the only excellent archer in his family.

Also, his oracle orb might be from Sel. Captain Ico points out that it is "Foreign Technology" and others have noted that it is (Mistborn Secret History): It's interesting that it possibly shows future seeing coming from another shard, even though the people on Roshar associate all future seeing with Odium.