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Kalarin took a while to grow on me, but that's just because the pure hot blackrom that was Kadolin blinded me to its cuteness. Then they interacted in WoR and both ships are perfect.

I was thinking about allomantic savants and how I have always felt that they are addicted to their metals and I realized that, who would be more addicted to metals than a compounder? I imagine that it wouldn't take too long for a tolerance to be built, and I'm pretty sure I remember Wax or Wayne talking about how dangerous it would have been for Miles to stop compounding, which makes it sound like he would have suffered withdrawal. Withdrawals are essentially the opposite effect of the drug (alcholics become insomniacs, heroin users experience severe pain, etc etc), so what do you guys think the withdrawal effects of different metals would be? I feel like the Physical metals would all result in various physical inabilities, like muscles not working properly kind of thing, and gold would result in severe pain and a completely wrecked immune system.

I haven't seen a lot of Renarin love? I've seen a lot of "I love Adolin/Renarin moments" love, but I always felt that Renarin misses a lot of the fandom's love. Which is sad because Renarin is great y'all should love him, and as Feather said you all should spend this thread talking about his awesome instead of her awesome. I'd just like to mention that twice he has gone into battle without armor on. He's incredibly brave, selfless and more than a little reckless and it's really cute.

Yes, but the difference is there is something physical going on with Kaladin. Dissociation has no physical causes (at least, that we can detect). Depression does. But yes, genetics only code for possibilities, not behaviors. Is good point.

Well my information actually comes from the DSM-5: It's not about being "abnormal" (we try to avoid using the words "normal" and "abnormal" actually). No matter how typical your brain is, no one is normal. A psychological disorder is when there are severe detriments because of what is happening in your brain. Also, coffee isn't better because it's more socially accepted. Coffee is better because it doesn't directly harm you or your ability to function, no matter how addicting it is. Nicotine and alcohol are both socially accepted, but they are the two most commonly abused drugs in the world because they are extremely detrimental to your health.

If there are any Wicked fans on here, I really love thinking about Kadolin when listening to "What is this Feeling".

You can only diagnose something as being a disorder if it negatively effects a person's life. That's why coffee drinking isn't considered drug abuse: if anything, drinking coffee positively effects a person's life. So coldness of clarity? That allows her to get stuff done. Thus, not bad.

Ooooh I like the idea of Kaladin never ending up with someone...

Yes. Yes. Absolutely yessssssss.

Oh, for the record, what Shallan does is called dissociating. It's a class of disorders with no physical symptoms, no biological or component, just be brain protecting itself by removing you from the situation you are in. People who dissociate have trouble linking themselves to what they dissociated from. They'll often describe it as looking through a window, or someone else controlling their body. Unlike other disorders, it appears to be possible to entirely recover from dissociative disorders. I doubt stormlight or Regrowth could do it, but I bet Pattern can. Cognitive-behavioral therapy works wonders on it, and I'll bet you Cryptics can be really good at those kinds of things.

Let me stop you right there. Your intentions don't matter. When you say things, and they hurt people, it does not matter if you intended to hurt someone. What matters is that people were hurt.

The four prevalent theories for this are: Different mechanisms cause ASD between the genders Females are less vulnerable due to innately protective mechanisms Everyone is equally at risk to ASD but females have other things that allow them to better compensate Autism is an extreme of the male brain These theories are not mutually exclusive to each other so it could be that they all are accurate.

There is a part of our brain that is used to determine facial expressions and facial recognition. The only thing we can see physically different in an autistic brain is that this section of the brain is underdeveloped. This is actually a very well studied part of the brain, because it can also happen as a result of injury. Face blindness came onto the radar of scientists when someone prominent got it from an injury to this part of the brain (I forget the details). Essentially, when this part of the brain is damaged or underdeveloped, you cannot innately comprehend facial expressions. A baby will recognize their parents within the first six months of life. In fact, one of the earliest "tells" of autism is a child not enjoying peek-a-boo. Allistic people, who have this section of the brain, will subconsciously learn at very young ages what different facial expressions mean. An autistic person must go out of their way to learn what different expressions mean, and when they're learning they'll often seem to be emotionless or uncaring about it because instead of just innately understanding "oh this person is angry", they'll be reading expressions and body tells consciously and manually interpreting them and being like "hmm this person is likely angry". I understand that with a lot of practice it does become second nature, but the difference is allistic people start doing it at 6 months of age. Autistic people don't. Though some autistic people do start doing it and then lose it? Sometimes ASD comes later in life, more like 32 months in. Also, fun fact, autism is 4-5 times more common in men than women, and men tend to have more symptoms as adults than women do. We're not quite sure why that is, as most developmental disorders are either pretty even among genders or have to do with the sex chromosomes. Autism is neither. Weird, huh?

I'm just going to go over the basics of autism spectrum disorder. These are the bare basics, mind. Not all the nitty gritty details. One of the most fascinating things about neurotypes is that genetics and biology don't code for behaviors, they code for circumstances. That's why in all mental disorders, there are a wide range of possible symptoms. Anyway, there are two overarching evaluations to be on the spectrum. The first is impairment in social skills and communication. This can take place in many ways. One common one is refusal to make eye contact. Another is delayed speech (this one is interesting, as while they don't speak until a later age than an allistic kid would, when they start speaking it is in full sentences). They tend to be limited in understand verbal and nonverbal cues (especially facial expressions). An autistic child tends to not want to play with other children. They're less likely to start conversations. In extreme cases, they may have face blindness, which is essentially the inability to recognize people by faces. The second evaluation is restrictive interests and repetitive behaviors. The repetitive behaviors are simply a more extreme form of stimulating behaviors that are healthy not only in all humans, but most if not all mammals and birds. Essentially, when we get stressed, we tend to put our bodies into motion. Flipping things, pacing, rocking, flapping arms, and anything else like that. Autistic people tend to do these behaviors more often than an allistic person would. The limited interests are really interesting. Autistic children will find a toy, let's say in this case a truck. They will play with just one wheel on that truck. That's good enough for them and they're happy doing it! As the person ages, it will generally be more about subject material though. My girlfriend, who is autistic, specializes in birds. She knows a lot of random things about most animals, but she focuses almost all of her attention on birds. The restricted interests can change. My girlfriend knows more about mammals and dinosaurs than other animals because in her past, her interests turned to them. The extreme of this is the oh so well known (and oh so very rare) savant. Now as Kogi said, these behaviors change as an autistic person ages. The impairment in social communication tends to decrease. Why? Just because they don't have an innate ability to comprehend social context doesn't mean they can't learn. It takes time and practice, but every conversation is a chance to practice. They also do tend to just enjoy social contact more as they age. They're not antisocial or anything. The stimming behaviors tend to diminish as well, and sometimes will disappear almost entirely (not for Renarin though). Autistic adults are very capable people, and often times you won't even notice that they have a different neurotype. The only way I figured it out with my girlfriend was when I asked why she always avoided eye contact. None of her other symptoms were anything I'd have even noticed until she said "oh I have asperger's". The final thing to remember about ASD is the purpose behind its name. Autism Spectrum Disorder. Focus on the word "spectrum". The reason they use that word is because among all those symptoms I just discussed, each can be seen as being on a scale. Sometimes, people will have all the symptoms, but they're all mild. Another might not have the repetitive behaviors at all, but has an extremely limited interest in just one topic, while being just barely below average in social interaction. Another may have extreme variants of all the symptoms. It's a huge, huge, huuuuge spectrum. I hope this clears some things up?

Insupportable whiny crazy thing? Renarin has been reduced to a thing? I mean like yeah, he wasn't supporting her like he could have been, but that's insultingly harsh. Renarin, within a moments notice, likely went from "oh no am I crazy?" to "I'VE BEEN CURSED WITH THE ULTIMATE EVIL OF MY RELIGION" and you're reducing him to a "thing"?! You really are not understanding of these issues. It's good that you understand that, but could you please make an effort to do so? Renarin is autistic. Kaladin is depressed. Shallan dissociates. These are important people within the context of this world. This does mean that sometimes, they will mess up in ways that might seem ridiculous (like Kaladin wanting to kill Elhokar, for example). They actually really make sense, though. Renarin was actually panicking at that point. Not panic attack panicking I don't think? But still at a point in which he was going through a hell of a lot more than we can comprehend. He spends this entire book seeing things, hearing things, and seeing the future. So he pretends they're not there. Then he finds out that all three are real suddenly, and one of those things is among the worst offenses of the religion he was raised in. More than anything though, he is not a thing. He is a person. Please, please do not treat him as anything less. Also, to Xian, sorry that you don't seem to understand this, but sexuality is not sex life. I have never posted about that on here, nor will I ever as it is not the appropriate place for it. Thank you Feather and Abaldioth for your responses to that.

I have a few things I want to say about this. First of all, just because you're attracted to a group of people doesn't mean you find everyone in that group attractive. I am polysexual; aka, I am attracted to multiple genders, but not all of them. However, the number of individuals that I am attracted to is less than 1% of those that I meet within those respective genders. Second, one thing you're missing is the soul of shipping. Shipping is about what we, the fans, want. It doesn't effect the author, nor does it truly take the author's opinion into account. We take stuff from the story (there is massive amounts of evidence of chemistry between Adolin and Kaladin, for example, and that chemistry can be taken in any direction) and put our own desires into it. Most ships, by nature, will sink. The third thing I have to say is if we are using textual evidence, then there's plenty of stuff against Shallan/Kaladin. Kaladin is definitely attracted to Shallan, but Shallan is actually more scared than attracted to Kaladin. It's not healthy to date someone you're scared of. This could, of course, change, and as a multishipper I reserve the right to switch if it looks healthy, but right now we just have a Kaladin that sort of is into Shallan.

As usual, Kadolin is my ship. There is more chemistry there than any other pairing (except possibly Shasnah but we've only seen one side of that). Also guys, please stop ignoring the possibility of bisexuality in characters. This isn't even because I think Brandon will or won't do something, but when you ignore that and just say "Kaladin isn't gay" you also are ignoring those of us who are neither straight or gay.

Honestly it makes sense that Kaladin would have SAD in the context of the books. Most of the characters are neuroatypical in some way. Kaladin has depression, Shallan dissociates, Dalinar has impulse-control issues, Renarin has ASD, etc. Adolin so far appears to be the only neurotypical character. In fact, the spren seem attracted to their reactions to these neurotypes. Syl even says that the Radiants of old were broken before they became Radiants. I personally feel that the broken people become the surgebinders, rather than surgebinding magically causes mental illness. Note that I'm not saying the mental illness itself is what calls the spren but the individual's negative reaction to it. This is especially true for Shallan, as there is no evidence that there is a physical component to dissociation. Also I really don't think you could cure depression the way you're stating? Stormlight has so far been seeing fixing things that are directly detrimental to a person. The physical component of depression (imbalance of serotonin and GABA in the brain) is actually a lot more common than depression disorders. It's not something that's "broken" it's just something that makes a person more likely to succumb to waves of depression. Under typical circumstances you wouldn't even notice it, so how would the Stormlight know to heal it?

SSRIs do not fix depression. SSRIs are tools that allow you to hold depression back, and also do not work across the board. We cannot "fix" depression or else the rates of depression would be significantly decreased. Also we don't see other people reacting the way Kaladin does during the Weeping. It is certainly SAD that he is experiencing. In fact, it still would be under your description, just using Stormlight in place of sunlight.

Christmas comes but once a year!

I've been recently getting into a symphonic metal band called Therion. It's filled with happiness. And with mythology.

Star Wars: The Old Republic beta weekend. Also, finally found a group to do D&D with. I'm pretty much filled with ALL of the happiness right now.

Inheritance cycle and Shannara both do not re-read as well as the read originally for me.

I would like to announce that some people need to not guilt trip me into liking their works of art.

I very much enjoyed this. Just thought you'd want to know.