AonEne

Last appeared next to Tion with no fanfare and calmly asked him, “Could you please relay to Sagitta that I am here? I’m not able to appear to her senses as I am yours.” As it had been in Sagitta’s dream, the exact details of its appearance couldn’t be focused on, but its words could be clearly heard despite any noise Tion was making. @Archer

Yes, I’ve never said it’s anything other than a personal philosophy and a form of logical thinking. It’s one way of looking at things, as is yours. I don’t blame them for defending themselves. I also don’t blame Elhokar for making mistakes in his kingship. I personally think it’s a really roundabout way of looking at things to say that him having the highprinces compete for gemhearts (which was not all they did, and not all his decision) led to the dehumanization of Bridge Four. Sadeas didn’t really care about the gemhearts in the long run; he certainly didn’t disregard them, and he did go after them, but his overarching goals weren’t “get more money”. The bridge crews had already been enslaved and were being treated badly. If Sadeas didn’t have a need for bridge crews, he’d’ve found some other potentially dangerous thing to do with them. Blame is a complicated thing to discuss. In the end, I think intentions matter, and I try to keep it as simple as possible. I could say Taln is at fault for the Desolation because he broke. For many reasons, I don’t. To be blunt, you’re making a bit of a leap there. We have no evidence that that’s what he was saying, nor that he felt any ill will toward Kaladin - in fact, we have a bunch of evidence that suggests otherwise. As always you’re welcome to headcanon what you like, but from the way Moash does the salute to his thinking before and afterward, I don’t believe it’s reasonable to assume that’s what he is attempting to convey to Kaladin. I’m confused about this point, if he didn’t care how it was received then why would he be doing it? And on the writing side of things, it would seem somewhat strange of Brandon to give Kaladin that moment, then have Moash try to induce it in him while he’s clearly breaking down on the ground.

I’m going to respectfully but strongly disagree with the idea that not commenting on an issue like this makes Brandon a bad person. For background, I also echo the experience of not knowing this was going on until a couple days after it had started, and up until this post, I haven’t had a chance to speak on the matter myself, though I have been reading about the topic and am in full support of those who are peacefully protesting (especially the ones doing it in safe ways or ways less likely to spread the virus). While it is fantastic for people to speak up right now and help out in every way possible, and silence can mean a lack of agreement with the BLM movement (which, for the record, I just don’t think fits with Brandon as a person. He’s so nice and in favor of equality that it would shock me if he was against it), it does not have to mean that. In the same way we shouldn’t shame people for needing to take a break from the news or from actively writing about what is happening, we also shouldn’t shame them for staying out of it entirely. It’s hard for some people to face the violence, the injustice, the pain, and while I believe that is no excuse for perpetuating it, it is a reason for abstaining. Maybe Brandon is worried he doesn’t have enough information. Maybe he doesn’t want his words to be misconstrued. Whatever the reason, I don’t think we should guilt people for not being on the front lines. Brandon also has a family, his wife and three children. As much as he has a responsibility to support human rights, he has a responsibility to take care of them and make sure his family isn’t attacked. Would they be if he started speaking out on social media? We can’t know, but I understand if he doesn’t want to take that risk. And as has been mentioned before in this thread, we don’t know if he intends to say anything yet. It’s very possible that he might if he was asked in a livestream. Or again, he might choose to stay out of the entire thing. Not wanting to do everything you can and put yourself out there doesn’t ever make you evil. It doesn’t make you a hero either. But it doesn’t make you evil. Thanks to the mods for making sure this thread stays relatively calm, you guys are doing great in these stressful times.

Wow, I can see why they’d be monitoring that one. That’s the type of thread that can go from zero to sixty in a heartbeat (and it looks like it already has). I’m glad we have good mods who keep an eye on threads like that.

Yaaay! Did you like it?

Welcome to the Shard! I have to say, when I first saw your name, I thought of that middle-grade book by Neal Shusterman

Does it? How? I do think he was fueled by his love for his family at first as well. His grandparents raised him, and he clearly loved them. But that got twisted over time - revenge does that; it’s not good - and now he’s acting on emotion.

The same capacity as any other person. There is no reason why they wouldn’t attract followers. Heck, I’ve known @SingingMosaic for all of what, a month or two? But I’d follow them places. I am literally currently following them on the forums. Leadership has very little to do with sight, if anything at all. Certain positions can theoretically have to do with sight, but leadership in general could be just about anything, and there’s nothing stopping a blind person from having the personality and skills that would make them a good leader. Why? Why are they any less likely to be attractive to a spren? Why would a spren care at all? Those were all intended to be examples from the books that were Radiant-specific; I’m sorry if I miscommunicated. city is broken from the Everstorm. Radiant helps rebuild it Like Dalinar did in Thaylen City. Sight is not required for that, but Surges are. a diplomat is needed to talk with another country. Radiant goes and does so You could potentially get anyone who’s good with languages, but a Bondsmith can magically Connect with people to learn them with much less effort, and can do it for any language. There’s also Transportation. Again, no need for sight. someone needs to talk about their problems. Radiant sits and listens While you don’t (and shouldn’t) have to be a Radiant to do this, Radiants do have a position in society that could really help people, and the personality for it. It’s not all about the magic powers; the influence and the person’s attributes are vastly helpful too. an investigation is being held about a murder. Radiant assists in looking into it Why do you think this idea isn’t serious? Do you think that anyone who is blind is also incapable of hearing, or gathering information, or talking to people, or thinking logically and putting stuff together? I’d be willing to bet they’d pick up tons of stuff we wouldn’t, because we’re focused on what’s in front of our eyes, and they’re getting info in other ways. Why would a spren choose to bond someone with depression? Or PTSD? Or some form of dissociative disorder, whatever Shallan has? Or someone who had an alcohol addiction in the past and could slip at any time? Or who has one arm? Or who is a young teenager who can’t read? Or who is on the autism spectrum and needs glasses? Because those. Things. Don’t. Matter. What matters is the type of person you are. That’s how these people are helping. They’re all doing it in different ways, and someone who couldn’t see would be no different. Also, as talked about in the original post, I’m pretty sure most of the Surges would be easily usable by anyone. They all take practice, and a blind person might often use them differently, but who’s to say that difference is bad rather than good? Why does Kaladin need Surges? He was a fine fighter before he had them. Why not give the powers to a person without the deep grief he has for Tien, the flashbacks, the slavery brands? Surely a slave is in no position to help save the world. Why not give them instead to Sadeas, who can do much more from his status as a highprince? For the same reason, why would you give a simple soldier a Shardblade? Amaram has training with them, so he would be able to do more good. Right? I’m sure you can see how messed up most of that thinking is. Spren give powers based on who they think will make the best member of their order. Syl would never have bonded Sadeas. Of course I do. Some have greater disadvantages, some don’t. It all depends on what other advantages and disadvantages they and everyone else around them have. I’m sure there are plenty who can do way more than I can in life. You don’t know that, and can’t unless Brandon confirms it. While different life experiences can drastically change people, it’s not a rule. Jasnah is very stubborn, intelligent, logical, not great with people, and loves history. There’s no reason why any of that would necessarily change if she’d grown up blind, and because she would most likely still have those core personality traits, Ivory would still bond her.

There are a ton of curses, including many variants of ‘storms’ and ones with religious basis. Just like here on Earth. Besides, we’ve only seen three books so far. For not having traveled much of the world in depth, we’ve learned many curses already. You’ve never met anyone who insists some aren’t vulgar before? The level of vulgarity can differ in different cultures and contexts, insults especially. Context almost always matters in language. There’s a filter, most would be turned into cosmere curses.

I completely agree with everything you’re saying here. You might enjoy reading the Gay Male Protagonist thread here on the forums, it goes into this topic more I’d also like to make some recommendations: Dreadnought by April Daniels, and the sequel Sovereign. The main character is also trans and accidentally magically transitions. They’re pretty good, especially the sequel, which dismissed some of my worries from the first book and included a nonbinary character. Not Brandon-quality fantasy, but enjoyable. There’re also a bunch of coming-out type realistic fiction stories with trans and nonbinary protagonists. Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin is really good imo, with a gender fluid protag.

Yes. Good. Read them.

What thread was it?

Texts

I will agree with that. It’s in part, I think, because people love the protagonist and hate someone who kills a secondary (arguably tertiary) character. Emotions play a huge part in how people read things, which isn’t necessarily bad! It just is. However, I’ve gotta disagree that Elhokar ultimately killed some of the men in Bridge Four. To me, that blame lies with Sadeas and with the listeners who shot them. If you start going too far backward down the path of blame, any stopping point becomes arbitrary. Why blame Elhokar when he’s doing it because his father was killed by Szeth? Or instead of it being Szeth’s fault, we call out the listeners again, for ordering him to do it? Or the Stone Shamanate for making him Truthless and forcing him to keep his word, or whoever in that society taught him that his honor was the most important thing in that scenario. Or Eshonai, who prompted the Council to stop Gavilar, or Gavilar himself for prompting her. We can go on, and on, and on, and at some point you really just need to focus on the individuals who were closest to the crime. Sadeas sent Bridge Four out onto the Shattered Plains to die. The Parshendi killed them. They chose to obey Sadeas and his officers and carry the bridge into battle. I’m not saying it was a good choice, I don’t even know if they could have lived or escaped any other way, but we can’t take their agency away from them in this - the bridgemen had the ability to decide whether or not to run the bridge, and they all did it. They definitely get way less blame than other individuals, and I’d personally put the most on Sadeas, but in the end it doesn’t matter. I don’t think you can really pin this on Elhokar. Also, Moash was definitely not trying to convey any of that with his salute, I don’t think? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Besides, Kaladin had already realized who it was that he was fighting and was already breaking down over that and related matters before Moash even showed up.

Never mind, I’m getting into this discussion after all and I’m doing it late! This has already been touched on, but human minds are fallible. Even ignoring the possibility of outside influence pretending to be that deep-down something, I’m sure there have been many people who have done things most people would consider to be evil that they considered to be completely right. There are also mental disorders. My brain is constantly sending me this is wrong on the most primal level signals...but I’m not evil if I ignore it and don’t backtrack to press my hand up against a wall that I barely brushed. I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to say here, care to explain?

Like how some people use our curses so much? Also, how is it silly? It makes perfect sense in-world; you have these giant storms that come along constantly, the whole world is shaped around them, it makes so much sense that people would start using them as a curse. Even looking at the word itself, it has that sharp, hard T sound so you’ve got something to spit out in anger. It’s a good piece of worldbuilding.

Your whole argument here is really funny to me, in a “not that funny and I’m surprised I’m seeing this” way. Correct me if I’m wrong, your point seems to be that blind people would not be able to help in the way that Radiants do, that they would be somehow useless and unable to find a job. I’m not sure why in the world you think that, considering that there are plenty of blind people here on Earth doing a crem ton of good, but okay. Let’s run through just a few non-battle examples from the canon that blind Radiants could help with: person is dying. Radiant runs over and uses Progression city is broken from the Everstorm. Radiant helps rebuild it a diplomat is needed to talk with another country. Radiant goes and does so someone needs to talk about their problems. Radiant sits and listens an investigation is being held about a murder. Radiant assists in looking into it Five off the top of my head, and if I really thought about it it wouldn’t be hard to come up with a million more. Blind people not having that sense should be taken into account, but going “ah yes no blind person can be a Radiant because they can’t fight” is simply absurd. Spren would recognize that, and if they think this person fits their order, they’re not going to ignore a perfectly good candidate just because they’re blind. I just typed that as blond, lol. Yes, blond people, that’s totally what we’re discussing here.

But they were irrelevant.

Not half of that measurement, but literally half of an elephant.

Someone’s almost certainly going to mention Jasnah, so building onto this, rep in this day and age should be explicit - nothing that homophobes can roll their eyes at and go “Shallan’s just admiring her, she doesn’t have a crush on her. What, a woman can’t think another woman is pretty anymore?” Because quite honestly, that seems like the most likely option to me too, that she’s simply admiring her. At best, it’s Shallan having a minor crush and thinking Jasnah is hot. In the end she married Adolin. Which, if she was bi, would not invalidate her! I don’t want anyone to mistake me as saying bi people can’t marry the opposite gender and still be bi because some people do think that and that’s a problem. But yeah, Shallan does not count as representation. I’m positive that if Brandon had intended her to be, he would have confirmed it by now. But in all those posts about how he wanted to write more queer characters in the future, he didn’t bring her up. (Which doesn’t mean you can’t headcanon her as whatever you like. You can headcanon anyone. But headcanons will never be rep.)

Welcome to the Shard!

Yes, ising the being of a dragon on the month of high standing for having. (I attempted to invent a new phrase (‘high standing’) meaning pride. It’s a dragon holding the ace flag for Pride Month.)

Ene insists that she only swore fealty to Jasnah, not the whole family.