agrabes

I do like your idea (that the Delvers only attack due to sensing negative emotions) but I'm not sure it has any supporting evidence. Especially with the slugs. The only thing we know about the slugs and their ability to jump is that when they do it in the Superiority ships, they scream so that every cytonic can hear it. They don't do it when they are just jumping around on their own. They do scream when Spensa probes out to them cytonically, but they also scream when she doesn't probe to them. My guess is that the Superiority does something bad to the slugs to make them jump - hence the screams. I get the sense that the reason the slugs are safe while humans are not is that the delvers start to hone in on someone or something that jumps too often. You see the one start to take particular notice of Spensa more and more the more often she jumps. So one possibility may be that the slugs are cycled out quickly. They only do one or two jumps before they are replaced. That doesn't totally make sense because MBot has only one slug. It also is contradicted by the fact that the slugs jump all the time on their own. I do think that the delvers do react to some extent to negative emotion. Or, it may be that when they see a more complex consciousness they see it as sort of a leader of the insects and prioritize it to be eliminated while they ignore the simple slugs. Who knows, it's a good thought though. And it might turn out to be right, or at least partially right.

I think the Heralds are definitely very powerful, but I also think they have to have the ability to be killed in a reasonable way otherwise it wouldn't have been possible for more than one of them to be killed in most desolations. I do think that you are right that Odium has way more powerful abilities/resources that he has not yet used, but even then if the Heralds had infinite healing power to the point that they could come back even if their entire physical body has been reduced to atoms it seems impossible for them to be killed. So I think that means we have to be missing some piece of how their power works. We know they were killed regularly. So something must be missing, there must be some weakness. I think it has to be one of three things: 1) The power of the two surges granted by the Honorblades are magnified greatly by being fueled directly by Honor, but not the healing property of stormlight. This would make sense and seems plausible because (I believe) we know that Radiants' healing abilities are granted by stormlight and we also know that being directly fueled by Honor, the Heralds did not need stormlight. We do not know for sure whether or not being directly fueled by Honor would grant healing abilities. I don't believe that healing abilities were granted in the Mistborn examples that people are talking about, only magnification of the existing powers held by the person who was fueled by the Shard. If that's true, then other than the Heralds who have healing abilities from their surges, the others do not have extraordinary healing powers. This means that if you can pin them down, wear them out, or overwhelm them somehow and get to them then you could kill them. However, this would not explain how it would be possible to kill a Herald with a healing surge. 2) The Fused, Unmade, or Odium himself have the ability to attack or disrupt the "spiritual template" referenced the WoB above. This would stop the healing abilities of the Herald. How they do this I don't know - but if all the Heralds really do have the extreme healing abilities it seems like this would be the only way to kill them. Get enough overwhelming power working against them that it severely damages their physical body while simultaneously attacking their "spiritual template". 3) In the first Desolation, when they were all mentally strong, the Heralds really couldn't be killed by any means. After the desolation, they went to Braize and eventually one of them broke under torture, losing mental resolve. After being broken thoroughly enough, the Heralds stopped having this "spiritual template" or just simply the force of will to continue on after suffering severe damage and the ones that had been broken allowed themselves to die. This seems impossible though, because we know Taln died at least once prior to being broken. What it comes down to is we have to reconcile two known facts that seem to be contradictory. I think the most obvious one to target is our knowledge about the Heralds' abilities. We don't know a lot about it yet, so we could easily be misinterpreting something about them. Just my thoughts.

Right, we know she would have been capable of doing it. Just not sure if she actually did it. There are cytonics in the Superiority that would be capable of FTL travel, but they aren't actually used for that purpose. But if she did say that she "was" the ship's engine then that seems pretty concrete.

Spensa's great grandmother worked in the engine room, but wasn't necessarily the means of FTL travel. In the Weights and Measures it seemed that they had a cytonic crew member who activated the slugs somehow. That could have been Spensa's great grandmother. Ha- my theories were also wrong so I guess we're in good company? I like the idea that the taynix might be related to the delvers in some way. I'm not sure if they are the larva form of Delvers, but don't really have much to back it up one way or another. They are bugs/slugs, so maybe they are the original pests that the Delvers get annoyed with, bringing their attention to the "dimension" or plane of existence that everyone in the story lives on and assuming that all cytonic activity sources are just pests that bother them? Regarding the DDF - I think the reason you see it get better is just complete organizational change. That can be very powerful in a military. Two armies with equal numbers and equipment do not perform equally. If one is demoralized, has poor leadership, poor training, less will to fight, institutional pride, etc then it will do much worse even if it has superior numbers and equipment. Ironsides seemed to have this desperate feeling to her - she was so scared that she just needed ships in the air no matter the quality. She threw raw cadets into harm's way. She was the one who created the expectations that the best pilots would actually be removed from fighting as a reward for their skill. Everything she did was focused on surviving just one more day. She created a culture that was defeatist. Compare that to Cobb - he instilled professionalism, skill, pride, value in the individual pilots. He planned for the future, he wanted to build up a strong military. He is just a better leader and he got more out of his troops. He did have some equipment advantages too, but his biggest advantage was the cultural and leadership advantage.

With all the restrictions on MBot's programming, I almost got the sense that they were afraid the Delvers (or some other enemy) could take AI's over. Things like - don't fly by yourself, don't engage your weapons by yourself, don't lie, don't reproduce. It makes me think of how in BattleStar Galactica, they build all their electronics in special ways to prevent them from being hacked by the Cylons. With the way MBot has acted, he really seems like he is no threat in the traditional "robots take over the world" sense. MBot uses cytonic computing which makes it seem like he would be opening himself up to bad signals coming in through cytonics. Maybe a powerful cytonic person could take him over if they knew what they were doing? Then again, maybe I'm just overthinking this and it's just the traditional AI fears. We still don't know a lot about the human wars and their causes. There being three wars makes me think of the three Punic wars (Rome/Carthage) in ancient history and wonder if there's a parallel. Here's my theory/speculation: 1st Human War: Humans start by trying to just operate in parallel to the Superiority, making allies with various alien species who are not "primary intelligence" but this leads to conflict. Eventually, the Superiority contrives a way to say the humans are dangerous and need to be destroyed. Maybe the humans accidentally summon a Delver? There is a long fight where neither side is really gaining much. Eventually, the humans and Superiority decide to make peace with mostly even terms. The humans feel resentment because they saw themselves are trying to help the oppressed species of the galaxy, but were painted as villains in the eyes of most of the galaxy. 2nd Human War: The humans resent the fact that the Superiority has painted them as villains, when they see the Superiority as the true villains. This time, they start the war with the intent of taking over the spot as the "leaders" of the galaxy to allow freedom of expression, etc. They lose a lot of their allies over this, who never wanted to start a war. They have some huge victories early on due to superior technology and skill at war, but over time due to sheer numbers they lose. They are nearly defeated and in desperation they decide to try to weaponize the Delvers, destroying Detritus. They surrender. This time there are extremely harsh penalties - humans are no longer allowed to have any kind of military. They have to pay reparations, they aren't allowed to travel FTL other than through Superiority transport. 3rd Human War: Humans are thriving because they dedicate all their resources to peaceful purposes. In secret, they've got some spy programs going on (MBot and others) to stay abreast of galaxywide events. This time, they try the diplomatic approach to change the way things are. Maybe ships like MBot are primarily used to spread human propaganda. They show the example of how successful and good the "overly aggressive" humans are, even though they don't lock up people with different views. The Superiority leadership decides they can't allow this challenge to their authority. They make fake charges that the humans are being dangerous again. The humans deny it, try to lobby against it through official channels, but to no avail. They are wiped out and sent to the "preserves" to keep the existing Superiority structure in power. The humans are only kept alive at all because after the fact, many of the Superiority leaders feel guilty about what they have done.

It's available for free on Sanderson's website. It's a short story set in the same universe, prequel to both Skyward and Starsight. It might be worth a read to help get a little context of the history. -Also, sorry for some spoilers for it, I assumed anyone on the Starsight spoiler board would have read all published books set in that universe. In the future, I'll label any DE spoilers. https://www.brandonsanderson.com/defending-elysium/

I would say that theory has a pretty low chance of being right. If you're halfway in (I'm not quite there yet), you know there is at least one other planet that allied with the humans - the planet of the person Spensa is impersonating. Also, if you tie in Defending Elysium and what we learned from there it doesn't seem like the humans are on the path of simple conquest. I think that conquest and empire could be part of their motivation, but everything coming from the current powers in the galaxy is heavy with propaganda. Were the humans fighting to wipe out life in the galaxy or were they just presenting an alternate form of government that was intolerable to the powers that be. I'm maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through the book and it seems like the aliens from DE are still in charge of things. Still talking about "Primary Intelligence", locking up people who don't agree with the prevailing opinions of "peace", etc. My guess is that humans started these wars to interconnect the galaxy and free the social dissidents who were locked up by the alien overlords. But, that's the moral question set up by DE - is it right to lock up people who have differing views in the name of peace? Anyway to twinsuns7 - I'm a little behind you in reading but getting a similar vibe. I'm also getting the sense that the delvers may not be what we think they are. Could they be descendants of the political partisans we saw in DE? Maybe other escaped discontents?

I agree that people seem to be overestimating the Heralds. There are a few things we are missing/forgetting in this picture: 1) We really don't know the Heralds' true power level. We don't know (for example) that the power provided by the Honor Blades when they were tied directly to Honor would actually grant the healing capabilities of Stormlight or in the same way. It seems like the Heralds were very powerful in their strengths, but because each one only has a certain set of two powers (plus a possible healing ability), they likely had weaknesses. 2) We also may be over inflating their abilities based on the historical perceptions we see from the people of Roshar. It seems like a large part of the role of the Heralds was to come back and teach the humans how to live at basic levels. The way Taln talks about the past, it seems like society was so destroyed that they lost civilization and humans were living like cave men or early tribal societies. So it seems likely that only a few of the Heralds were actually powerful at fighting. The rest were probably still held up like gods by the people, but only because the people were so limited in the later desolations that they didn't understand the heralds weren't actually that far above them. 3) I think people are interpreting the wrong thing from that scene with Renarin and the Thunderclast. People are interpreting it like it means that a Radiant or Herald can survive being flattened so long as they have enough stormlight. I didn't read that as Renarin getting smashed into a pancake, then reforming himself and slicing out. It was more like he got out his shardblade and sliced just at the right moment to keep all the weight from coming down on him. It seemed to be pretty much instantaneous, the foot comes down then the shardblade pokes out. You see this kind of action scene in books and movies all the time. I think the Heralds can be killed in generally normal ways. It just takes the right moment. Catch them when they aren't looking, destroy their body so badly and so long that there's nothing left to heal. If the body of a Herald were completely smashed flat, or dissolved to atoms, or burned to ash, or decapitated, etc how does the healing even happen? Doesn't there have to be something to build from?

Jasnah does not strike me as a mathematician - someone interested in the pure advancement of means and methods of calculations and equations. Mathematicians like the Bourbaki say themselves that their driving principles are to come up with more pure and streamlined versions of existing mathematical theorems and/or to develop new theories. Their work is definitely very valuable to society, but the more advanced it gets the further it strays from practicality. You have to sift out the practical uses from the theory. Jasnah strikes me as a very practical person. She seems more like an engineer or a scientific researcher than a mathematician. She doesn't seem interested in developing theories for theories sake, she is interested in solving a particular problem that she has identified. Contrast that with the description of the Bourbaki you provided. They are not interested in solving a practical problem - they are simply interested in advancing the purity and rigor of mathematics as practiced by French mathematicians.

Yeah, it's really a matter of personal taste. I guess I personally see his entire character and over the top antics as part of his humor - annoying to me. All the things you're saying that could be positive definitely would be with most other characters. It's just because of the fact that his entire character is one big (and to me) unfunny joke, that anything he does is tainted by it. The idea of getting a group of handicapped people together who try to overcome their disabilities is great and uplifting, but I just have this feeling that with Lopen it would be played for laughs. With his arm, I totally agree it could be plausible that he (or someone else) could grow it back. But, the way it's played with his character is like "Ha ha ha! The great Lopen has always had two arms! You fools just couldn't see them both. Ha ha ha!" So rather than being uplifting, it comes off as a bad joke. If a more normal character had his arc, then I would be all on board. It feels like to me that the few scenes we do see of Lopen where he has the chance to go into a more serious mode, he doesn't. The arm scene is a good example - he could take a minute and really think about what it means and contemplate it internally in a serious way. But he doesn't. He just reacts in a goofy way. I could appreciate the character a lot more if you could get a sense that he acted in a goofy way because that's what he thought he needed to do, but underneath it all he is still a real person. I just don't get that sense. But it all comes down to is personal taste. I don't think there's anything wrong with Lopen, I just dislike his character.

If we did see Lopen running around with a band of one-armed soldiers as his potential squires, that would be yet another bad joke. There may be depth to Lopen, but so far the more depth we see the more corny jokes we see. His entire character concept seems to be a gag - the idea that he has dozens of cousins with random jokey jobs, the idea that someohow he never saw himself as having only one arm because he's just too stubborn and dumb to internalize the difference, etc. If it works for you, hey that's cool. I'm not going to say remove him from the story, but the humor does not work for me. I will add that I'm a little bit of a grinch when it comes to Bridge 4 though - even if we did one day find that Lopen is actually a very cool character that hides his insecurities with bad humor or something like that, I probably won't like it. I didn't like the Teft arc in OB, even though I actually like Teft as a character. It just seemed unnecessary. Rock is the only one from Bridge 4 that I would be interested in learning more about for his own sake. Though if there was an arc where Lopen learns to stop being a walking talking bad joke, that might actually be interesting and even funny. Maybe he becomes a lightweaver and his truth is that he is not funny, that he's making up all this crap in an attempt to be funny, and he needs to knock it off and become a normal human lol. Now that would be a side story I could appreciate.

For me personally the reason I'm on the fence for characters like Lift and Wayne and dislike characters like Lopen is that their humor just doesn't hit for me. I think based on various podcasts and other events, Sanderson has said that this is the style of humor that he likes. This and the puns. For me, it's a little too on the nose. I think he's even mentioned that he understands most people do not share his sense of humor and he intentionally tries to limit it in his books. With Lift and Wayne, they do have this annoying sense of humor but they also have other character traits that balance it out. Also, every now and again their jokes are at least a little funny. With Lopen, it feels like the more we've gotten to know him the worse he gets with the overly corny humor. It's like the more you peel back the layers the more of it that comes out. So, I guess to sum it up I think it's not that they bring some levity or comedic relief, it's that their style of comedy doesn't work for us.

I think you're being a little hard on Shallan. I can't say she doesn't do the things you say she does, because she does. But, I believe most of the things she's doing in the way she talks and interacts with other people are sort of a screen to keep from showing her true self and to do what she feels is necessary to appear powerful and in charge. I do think the one that really sticks to her is immature. She is immature and believes that she needs to put on a certain face to be accepted in society. You can see that there are times she has her walls up and times she doesn't. We should remember she is only 17 in Rosharan years (something like 19-20 in Earth years?) during the series, so I think as she gets more life experience she will grow up. A lot of the reason she could be called classist is because she is highly motivated to protect and improve her family's position. I wouldn't necessarily call that classist (or at least not a classist motivation), but it definitely can come off that way. She seems mean spirited at times because she likes to engage in verbal battles. I don't see anything wrong with that, especially considering that she can take it as good as she gives it (see her conversations with Kaladin where he responds back in kind). Not everyone is going to like that kind of humor or personality, but I appreciate it. I don't like her puns (ugghh, why does Sanderson love puns?? his greatest weakness haha), but her biting humor I like. It doesn't come across as mean spirited to me, it's all a game of who can cleverly walk the closest to the line without going over. You also notice she only plays it with Kaladin because she knows he's an equal player. She doesn't do it with Adolin (or others) because he doesn't have the kind of personality to appreciate it. I do agree she's probably not ready for a relationship, or at least not a marriage. Regarding the Syl/Kaladin ship, I can respect the people who favor it but it feels wrong to me. I think it was discussed earlier in this thread, or elsewhere, but it feels almost incestuous for there to be a relationship between Syl and Kaladin. Their bond and relationship feels very familial. Like, early on Kaladin is sort of the father who teaches Syl about the world and helps her understand what humans are like and why people do the things they do. Then, it's more like a big brother little sister relationship. It's moving more and more toward a relationship of equals, but still has that family aspect. For me, any kind of romance between the two of them would be a violation of that familial closeness.

Right, sorry I should have clarified. He does say the line about Tien out loud to Syl. But just before that he thinks in his mind that he is not upset at all that Shallan and Adolin have gotten together. His first reaction is to say something like how he found he couldn't be bitter about it, as in he thought he should be upset but realized that he wasn't. I dunno, this last several posts of this thread has been cathartic for me on this topic I think. I'm starting to come around to the point where I could accept that Sanderson's intent was to show that Kaladin did some thinking and realized he really didn't love Shallan. Nothing leading up to that one scene showed that he was thinking like that, but I could accept that was the intent and if it was the intent it's an acceptable end to the triangle. For it to work for me, there would have needed to be at least one additional Kaladin/Syl talk scene about this, but I also don't see where or how that could have been added realistically in OB. Maybe Sanderson will throw us (me, selfishly lol) a bone in SA4 with a short scene where Syl says to Kaladin, "Hey are you really sure you never loved her??" and he actually thinks it through and expresses real feelings of how he came to that conclusion.

Well, to me the issue was that he thought that, not that he said it. If he said it, I totally get that he's gotta put a good face on things and let it drop. Plus, let's face it there wasn't enough of anything between him and Shallan to give him a right to make a big deal over it with her. He just failed to win her over and that's it. The issue is that he didn't say it, it was his internal thoughts and feelings. So, it's not that he's sort of a little upset but dealing with it in a good way, it's that he was never upset at all. I'm cool with the fact that Adolin and Shallan ended up together, but what really bugs me the most is the way it's sort of retconned that Kaladin never liked her to begin with. I personally felt there was a lot of depth to his feelings, so to me it felt like a big disconnect from what had been built up. But that's me, the unrequited love stories are the ones that resonate with me the most. In the end though I think you're right - Sanderson didn't want to write the kind of story it would have to be if the triangle really played out in a more satisfying way, probably for a lot of reasons. It's not really that kind of story and there's not room in it to dedicate the page time that would be needed to make it feel right so he probably decided to cut it off.

Yeah, I was around here in the early days after OB was released. I sort of took a hiatus for a year or so in between releases, but over the last few months I've posted occasionally. There were definitely a lot of people unsatisfied with the conclusion, but it seemed like most people were mostly upset based on shipping interests not necessarily about the actual structure of how it ended. At least, that was what I took from it back then. I've wondered too if the triangle arc didn't get cut or drastically reduced due to bloat or other editing reasons in OB. Like I said in another thread, I wonder if he had to make late changes to the structure of OB that made some of the later parts of the book feel a little less cohesive or something like that. I know he has said that he had originally planned for book 3 to be Szeth's book and I think you can see a lot of things in the set up that would have made more sense if we spent more time with Szeth. So if he had gone a long way with the book as Szeth's book and then had to redo it as Dalinar's book it would make a ton of sense if certain things had to get cut or drastically changed to make room for Dalinar's story to work. Back in the first few months after OB's release, there were a lot of posts with theories like yours that turned into huge shipping wars. I've intentionally stayed away from talking about it to this point because I don't really want to restart a shipping war. People have discussed who is really the right guy or best guy for Shallan to death and there's no real definitive answer other than who she ends up with at the end of OB. I'll just say that I have two thoughts on this: 1) I agree it seems like there is something fishy going on with the interactions between Shallan and Kaladin. There have been hints from Sanderson that he may be setting up for something like the Dalinar/Navani/Gavilar triangle, not necessarily with the Kaladin/Shallan/Adolin triangle but he has hinted there will be a parallel to it in the future. This has led people to speculate that Adolin will die or Shallan and Adolin's marriage will fail. You can probably go back and find the thread with dozens of pages discussing this from back then and there are a lot of people who posted WoBs to support the idea. 1b) Personally, I think the most likely resolution to this is that later on Shallan will realize she actually did have stronger feelings for Kaladin than Adolin or equal feelings for both, but it's too late to do anything about it and she decides not to act on them. I say this based on Sanderson's typical writing style and themes, but it's a total guess. 2) That said, if you read the section at the end of Oathbringer where the resolution occurs, Kaladin thinks to himself in his mind that he is not at all upset that Shallan and Adolin have finalized that they will definitely get married. He thinks that he isn't bitter or sad in any way, that his feeling is "agreement." I don't see how you can interpret this as anything other than a Deus Ex Machina from Brandon Sanderson saying it's over. This was my biggest issue with the resolution of the triangle. I think the door is pretty firmly closed from Kaladin's side. 2b) You can also look at some of the sections from OB where Kaladin thinks about Shallan and you can find hints that it is being implied the reason he feels better around her is not romantic attraction but actually her lightweaver magic. This is something Karger pointed out earlier in the thread that I didn't realize before. Lightweavers apparently have an effect that makes people around them feel happier - Tien is known to have been on the path to becoming a Lightweaver and hence the comparison to Shallan. I'm not sure if I totally agree that all of his feelings toward Shallan were always just side effects of Lightweaver magic, but I think it's pretty clear that at least some of them are supposed to be attributed to it. Also, if you look at Syl's advice to Kaladin, if you interpret it from this lens then she is not acting as matchmaker she is actually telling Kaladin he needs to go see a therapist. If this turns out the be the case, it takes Sanderson's (imo) best written romance arc (Kaladin's feelings for Shallan in WoR and OB) and turns into a non-romantic arc.

I think that's a fair interpretation - they do seem to get along well in early OB, better than the rest of the book. I could see how someone could get that feeling, especially relative to her interactions in the rest of the book. The main reason I'm asking this is because earlier in the thread a lot of people said they felt there was a good and satisfying build up of a relationship between Shallan and Adolin leading to their decision to get married. I personally think that Sanderson intended for there to be one, but failed at it due to his weakness in writing romance. At least to me, Shallan's decisions at the end of OB felt sudden and not supported by her earlier interactions with Adolin. I seemed to be the odd one out with that impression and sort of came to the conclusion that it must just be something in their story arc that didn't click with me. But, I'm always interested in trying to figure out how other people see things. The resolution of the whole love triangle thing really pissed me off when I read OB, not necessarily because of the results but because of how it happened. So every now and again I come to these boards and try to talk w/ other people to figure out if I'm the only one dissatisfied with it or if I'm just looking at it a weird way. I feel like it's been enough time now that people can discuss it without it turning into a shipping war. Anyway, thanks for putting out your opinion on this.

It's nice to find someone who has a very similar view on Shallan and her arc as of Oathbringer. Sometimes I feel like the only one on this board who believed that she was really peaking in early OB and then regresses significantly in the rest of the book. I'm glad there are at least two of us! Regarding Kaladin/Shallan compatibility that's an interesting way to look at it. I had never really thought of it from that angle, but it makes a ton of sense. Their scene together in OB where he says he wishes he could do what she does was an interesting one to me. I don't think I go as far as you do in believing she's totally irresponsible as a core aspect of her personality. I thought that scene showed that she knows she shouldn't be pushing things off the way she does, but she can't figure out a way to get a grip on things. I think she went quiet after that because part of her was expecting Kaladin to tell her she has to face up to her problems. She knows him as the guy who is really strong, resolute, and never looks away from a challenge even if it breaks him and I think that is what she really admired about him. I think part of her expected him to sort of become an anchor for her and tell her he could help her face the truth and she was really upset that he didn't. They didn't talk about it after that, but it's one of those common romance tropes that if they had talked about why she got upset they would have easily worked out all their differences. If she had explained how she's creating personas to deal with her problems for her and feels like she's losing control of herself and if he had explained how he can barely keep himself together with all the mental burdens he's bearing and wishes he could figure out how to set down some of them, that's the basis of a friendship or relationship of mutual support. But it didn't happen and that's OK. So I guess to sum it up, I didn't see that scene as a sign that they are incompatible, I just saw it as two people who want the same thing but got into a misunderstanding that made everything worse. But, I could easily see it from your perspective too. Out of curiosity, what is it that makes you believe Shallan cares a lot about Adolin (or at least more that we're saying now)? I know this was discussed up thread, so no need to rehash it if it's already been discussed ad nauseum. There are definitely some things we may just disagree about, but I don't remember anything that suggests that Shallan has deep feelings for Adolin as an individual beyond those final few scenes of OB leading up to the wedding. That's not to say it's not there, it could easily be that is there (or is intended by Sanderson to be there) and I'm just not picking up on it.

Agreed, Kaladin learned by experience that Shallan doesn't need anyone to take care of her. It seems like to me so far in the series Shallan has not expressed much of any real deep feelings for anyone. Like you said, her bigger interests seemed to be political betterment. It feels like she has the strongest feelings about Jasnah (not romantically, imo) of anyone. I do think that in future books, we are going to find out just how messed up her mental state was in OB. We can only see so much of it from the inside and there are hints that she's been suppressing a lot of things. We know she suppressed her memories of her childhood, but I think we are getting hints that she is suppressing more recent events. Something I think you were getting at too is that she might be just completely trying to shut out genuine emotional development and thoughts about what she actually wants for herself in a personal context. Like you said, she never really considers Kaladin seriously as a romantic option probably because she is suppressing that in her mind as something she sees as unworthy of the person she is supposed to be. Not that she would get together with him if she wasn't (she might or might not), but she's completely blocked the possibility out of her mind. She also never really thinks about whether she actually wants to be with Adolin until the last handful of scenes in OB, or what position she really wants to hold in the leadership of the Radiants and the Alethi government. She kind of thinks about this when Jasnah shows up - she had sort of been coming into her own in WoR and early OB but when Jasnah shows up she feels like she is being put back into a subordinate positions and she sort of shuts down. She just tries to focus in on her work and latches on to learning how to be a spy as an escape. It's like she created the personas to do what she thought she was supposed to do at a moment in time and she takes comfort when taking on those personas because she doesn't really have to think about what she should really be doing with her life. I think sometime in SA4 or SA5 she is going to have to face up to all the things she's been suppressing. Not necessarily in a shipping way, but I think as far as her actual role in society and taking ownership/agency over her own actions.

I think in addition to that - he still views himself in some respects as a slave - a lowly person in society who is not deserving of praise. I'm not sure if swearing the fourth ideal will make the brands go away, but it's definitely going to have to be some event where he can let go of his past and accept his new place in society. I think that it's going to have to be something like reuniting with his family for the long term or finding (or starting his own) new family where he feels like he really belongs in society and has worth again like he did before he was made a slave. I think forgiving himself is part of it, but not the only component of him losing his brands. I wonder if he will ever lose them. His time as a slave (and the cause of his slavery) has left a huge mental/emotional scar on Kaladin. It feels to me like the slavery and everything leading up to his time in the bridge crews has left a deeper mark on him than Tien's death. It felt like in his WoK flashbacks that he had found a way to deal with that grief. I think it might be that he can't get rid of the brands and they stay as an outward sign of all the pain and loss he has experienced and that no matter what else changes that is always going to be the core of his personality. It seems to fit with the character and his depression issues too. Some days or even some months or years he may forget about it but it's still there.

I think this is a good point to bring out, and as far as I can tell it's a new idea no one has mentioned before. It's a reasonable idea of why a Shallan/Kaladin relationship might not work. From my perspective, I think that while Kaladin does get overprotective toward a lot of people he does it selectively. He gets overprotective of people that he feels aren't capable of protecting themselves. He's wrong about this a good chunk of the time and it gets him in trouble, but he seems to be slowly learning. That said, ever since he got to know Shallan better in WoR I don't think he's taken that protective approach toward her. It seems to me that after their time trapped in the chasms together and seeing her capabilities, he realized that Shallan can take care of herself.

I generally agree with everything you said, and it would be fun to see a Kaladin/Tarah meet up in Urithiru. I do personally like the Laral idea because it (imo) has a lot of potential for character growth for Kaladin. The scene in OB is used as a way to point out to Kaladin that she's not now and never was a damsel in distress, even though he thought she was. I don't think Kaladin really understood that from their interaction in OB, he seemed more confused than anything. I agree she isn't particularly interested in him at the moment (or at least didn't express interest) and I don't know that Kaladin is particularly interested in her. I just think if they are put together in the right circumstances a woman like Laral could teach Kaladin a lot. I could imagine a lot of fun scenes like that where he thinks he needs to do something for her or help her out and she's just like "Dude, already done!" From her end, I think Kaladin could help her by demonstrating he is also competent, that she doesn't have to do everything herself. I could really see her becoming a larger player over the next few books. She's pretty much singlehandedly kept her town together in the face of Roshone's failures. People like Jasnah/Navani/Dalinar, etc will take notice of good leadership like that and promote her. She also seems like she is ambitious, since it's kind of implied she married Roshone to take his power as the leader of the town. Then again, she might just stay in the background. *shrug*

I wanted to let this drop completely and let this thread die of natural causes, but since others have written on this I'll just add that it's not my intent to shut you down or tell you you are being overly argumentative. I personally felt you were telling us that we could not (or should not) speculate about how the Kaladin/Jasnah ship could happen in a way that would feel natural in context of the story and I didn't appreciate that. I wanted to point out to you in good faith, with the assumption that you had good intentions, that it felt like you were trying to shut down discussion on that topic. I didn't intend to derail the thread over it and I also don't intend to tell you you're a bad person or anything like that. I really hate that we've even gone down this weird sidebar discussion. I personally felt you were discussing a different topic than we were and were not realizing it. I wasn't trying to call you out, I just wanted to get us all on the same page so we were discussing the same things in the same context. It seems like I did a bad job of conveying what I wanted to say to you in the right way and it ended up with this rabbit hole and I will take the blame for that. So, all that said let's move on and talk about new things. Regarding the Kaladin/Azure ship - based on their personalities and interactions in OB I sort of like the idea, but I'm hesitant about it for a few reasons. The first issue to me is the apparent age gap. I don't have an exact source on this, but isn't there 100+ years in age gap between Kaladin and Azure? I got the sense that her life was extended significantly because of her magic and also the process of worldhopping and that the events of the Stormlight Archive take place longer than a normal human's life span after Warbreaker. I may be totally off on this. Another point is that I don't think Azure intends to stick around on Roshar, I got the sense in OB that she was planning to leave the planet.

No one says that in words in a discussion. You said several times that things you extrapolated from my posts would never happen. That is equivalent to saying that someone else needs to see things your way. And that's ok - it's perfectly fine to disagree with me and argue why I should see things the way you do, that's what makes it fun to come on these boards. The problem here is you're arguing about one thing and I'm trying to talk about something else. This thing has gotten way off the rails. So let's just leave it there.

Yeah, I think we're mostly debating about nothing here. We're in agreement about the Kaladin/Jasnah ship. The way you have worded your replies makes it feel like you are telling me I need to stop believing that Kaladin and Jasnah would get together, but I don't believe that they will get together. That may not be your intent, but it comes off that way. I'm just engaging in a thought experiment to figure out why people do ship them and how it might happen because I don't see it. That was what my first post on this topic was about - talking with someone who was a Kaladin/Jasnah shipper and trying to understand their viewpoint. Then, a lot of other people took the conversation in a totally different direction. My follow up responses have been to try to clarify what I said originally. So, I guess if you're interested in debating what I said, I wanted to make sure you have it in the right frame of reference. I'm fine with debating about whether the scenario I presented is or is not plausible - assuming Sanderson has decided Kaladin and Jasnah will be together starting in SA4, what is the most logical way for that to happen. I'm not making any arguments about whether I think Kaladin/Jasnah should get together, or what I think of Jasnah as a character, nor am I advocating for Gavinor to play a major role in SA4, etc. To sum it up in terms of what seems to be your way of thinking: I don't believe there is a need for Kaladin and Jasnah to get together. I don't believe they have been shown to be attracted to each other. I don't believe that anything we have seen in the books up to this point suggests there is a reason they were to get involved. I disagree with your assertion that there's no possible way a relationship between Kaladin and Jasnah could provide any significant benefit to the other, but I don't think they will get together and don't particularly want them to get together, so that point is mostly irrelevant to me. I enjoyed speculating about how it might happen if they did get together, but this discussion has gone way off the rails and isn't fun anymore.