Fractalfire

This next one is about stuff Brandon has publicly stated about SA6, so if you don't want to know that, don't open:

Why exactly did you feel you needed 19 question marks to ask that?

Speaking of which, now that Odium bit the bullet and picked up two shards, what's to stop him from trying to pick up previously shattered ones too? He seems very Ambitious and has Dominion over Roshar and he is Devoted in a twisted way. Plus, Odium shattered those Shards, so perhaps Taravangian knows how to undo that and claim them. So he isn't necessarily limited to two shards as Dalinar believes. Now that he can leave he can work on grabbing others -- perhaps up to five total.

Joking aside, I think it is surprisingly plausible. We were just shown that Honor (the Shard) is a "child" who can potentially change slightly. Maybe the shard of Odium is no different? I don't really see them reforming Adonalsium at the end of this series. Since Odium will drive any new vessel to do the same thing eventually, some other solution is necessary. In a book where mental health is increasingly becoming the central theme, it sounds completely plausible it will figure into the solution. At any rate, I am fully convinced there will be long and detailed group therapy sessions with the Heralds and other main characters throughout books 6-10.

And now, another episode of Bad Therapy, starring Therapydin, Herald of Therapy. Therapydin: “Rule number one, Shard of Odium. You’re not a thing. You are a person. Ok, well, you sort of are a thing, but not just a thing. Rule number two, you get to choose. And there’s a third rule Shard of Odium. You deserve to be happy.” Odium: "Well, I do like spreading warfare and strife and despising people." *plunges all inhabitants of planet into eternal torment* Therapydin: "Wait, no, not like that!"

Ironically, assuming you could establish a legislature that people cared about and listened to, opening up the government to elections is an extremely effective way to give highprinces power again. Remember, when the party system first formed in the English parliament after the English civil war, who were the two parties? That's right, the Whigs (who wanted constitutional monarchy) but also the Tories (the party of monarchists), born directly of the roundheads and the cavalier factions during the civil war. Similarly in France, various pro-monarchy factions in the legislature have attempted to reinstall monarchies (and were successful with, e.g. Napoleon III, who won the popular vote). It's a mistake to think all of the electorate will be uniformly pro-democracy in a previously monarchical system. Many will miss old stability or have stronger ties to their noble than they do to the rest of the nation, or dislike other policies of the pro-democratic leadership (witness the popular revolt of the Vendée peasants against the French Revolution and for the monarchy, driven in part by horror at the Parisian governments suppression of the Catholic Church and persecution of non-juring priests.) Currently, Alethkar is effectively in a military dictatorship (whatever it may call itself on paper). With elections, though, the high princes now have the chance to influence people... they have connections, money, loyal subjects, political causes and grievances they can exploit and so forth, all crucial for getting votes of a mostly illiterate and ill-informed, easily manipulated, frightened populace.

Having just read a history of the Tudors, Stuarts, and English Civil war, this is a foolish idea. You cannot just top down replace a government based on monarchical rule -- you are missing all of the institutions, the traditions of self-governance, and the expectations of continuity that make that possible. Realistically, what would happen is that this would immediately cause confusion, anarchy, and poor governance and the kingdom would dissolve into warring factions as the common people aligned with this or that leader and the elites try to grab the largest chunk of the pie. The suggestion that people would not rebel because of increased anarchy due to the desolation is just laughable -- that makes rebellion more likely, not less. Did the Russian revolution happening at the end stages of WWI make it more stable!? You already have armies with generals and troops on the field, many of whom will disagree and try to crush you, and people are desperate for good leadership. This is the worst possible time to cause political chaos. In fact, it is doubly worse since the people instituting it (Renarin, Jasnah) are seen as weak leaders or opposed to the religion of the people (incidentally, the same exact problems Louis XVI and James the II of England had). People forget that in the U.S. there was already effectively democratic governance (and had been for quite some time) before the revolution (Governors and state legislators). People knew who was in charge. Countries that did not have these traditions (France, England during the Stuarts, Russia) quickly dissolved into anarchy and military rule, which ultimately resulted in military dictatorships followed often by the return of the old monarchy. If she and Renarin (or Brandon) knew anything about the history of revolutions, Jasnah probably should have tried to install some sort of parliament first made up of the ruling elites and wealthy commoners, while maintaining power at the top to keep things in order. Then slowly let her ministers and officials take an increasing role while relegating herself to increasingly ceremonial roles. (Easy to do for a female monarch, as they will already expect her not to do much. In fact, this is pretty much how Queen Anne guided the transition to constitutional monarchy in England, although the early wars, parliament, and social conditions had already set the stage for her.) I'm sure, of course, that this will all work out hunky-dory, kind of like those old communist sci fi utopias where somehow everyone is okay with being assigned their job by government Bureaucrats, but that just goes to show that this is fiction. You can have people fly or be immortal or smash through walls, and you can also have monarchies seamlessly transition into representative democracies that have never previously existed at the mere word of the distrusted female atheist philosopher-queen and the weak, disliked prince. (Ask some of the real life brilliant philosopher kings and queens how well their enlightened rationalist reforms worked out for them sometime... As Holy Roman Emperor Joseph the II would reply ""Here lies a ruler who, despite his best intentions, was unsuccessful in all of his endeavors." )

My complaint is that the therapy-speak is a) fundamentally atrocious writing, b) immersion breaking (both because it is cliche gunk and because it feels anachronistic), c) wrecks Kaladin's characterization, and d) ruins many otherwise good scenes by destroying the dramatic tension. I've heard some people argue that it is bad intentionally because Kaladin is new to therapy. Honestly, based on the writing so far, I'm not actually convinced Brandon can write a good therapy scene. (He seems to default to cliches, and tellingly he can't even take his own efforts seriously! He is constantly poking fun at the attempts.) That said, even if Brandon was intentionally trying to write this poorly -- why do that? One of the first rules of writing is that making a "good story" comes first! If writing Kaladin as bad at therapy results in this great of a decline in the dialogue, it was a poor decision, regardless of how "realistic" it may be. I think this is fundamentally the problem. (Though I would dispute that what we saw in books 1-4 was "therapy" as opposed to "character development." ) With apologies to the therapist in the chat, I think therapy -- as an explicit practice by a therapist -- does not fit well in a high fantasy book. Even were I particularly interested in mental health (which I'm not), it would be very hard to fit therapy in a good fantasy story. As an analogy, I am interested in economics. However, it would be really annoying if Aragorn suddenly decided "I am going to be Middle Earth's first economist" -- then proceeded to reinvent a very modern view of economics, which was simultaneously extremely shallow with poorly informed cliches that sound like they were ripped from TikTok. Trying to do "therapy" while tramping around the countryside on a quest is just bad plotting (not to mention boring).

Good god, it somehow gets worse!? I'm only halfway through this brick -- I stopped about three weeks ago when the Kaladin therapy speak got so ridiculously bad ("I deserve peace. I deserve to be happy." What's next, Live Laugh Love as the fifth oath?) that it was either stop for a while or throw the book across the room and risk mortal injury to poor bystanders. So here I am on the forum snooping to avoid reading about more spren genitals, or worse another conversation with the Sword of Death by Cringe. The humor plus the therapy talk has reminded me of a quote from Andrew Lang about terrible victorian fairy stories: At this point, I'm honestly not sure if I want to finish this or not. I'm told the second part picks up, but this does not seem promising.

This calls for Cinnamon rolls. And coffee Lots and lots of coffee. My poor students will never get their HW graded at this rate...

Correct. I got an email about it, then it downloaded to my kindle a few minutes ago.

Yay! Just got it. So if you have an Amazon Kindle order, it probably just was sent to you.

Forgot about that; thanks!

Could you please provide quotes or Wob for the shardplate statement? Any sources you've seen that I haven't would be nice to know about. I checked to see whether we had any confirmation that shardplate could be summoned before posting and found nothing solid in either coppermind or arcanum. The best I saw was that ancient shardbearers could instantaneously retract their visors, but that isn't proof that the armor can be summoned. The fact that dead shardblades can be summoned, but not (as far as we know) plate, seems to imply that there may have been differences. I see you are correct about the spren being unable to form two discontinuous objects. I should have double-checked before posting.

Hmm... An interesting idea. I'm inclined to think the radiant spren could form into either a bow or an arrow, but thus far, we've seen no solid evidence that they can form into two, discontinuous shapes. Also, since they only seem able to form metallic objects, I don't know whether the bow would be able to actually be drawn. However, we know that the spren can form relatively small objects (i.e. shardforks) which could hypothetically be shot. I see nothing that would stop radiants from simply shooting a Shard Arrow at an enemy, then resummoning and reshooting it after the damage is done. Given this possibility, there seems to be little need for forming a shard-bow rather than using a normal bow. The main advantage of shard-weapons (their ability to cut through anything) would be underutilized in a Shardbow. (On the other hand, such a bow would not wear out, but this would only be a minor concern.) If you were also able to make arrows using lesser spren, then I suppose you would gain a slight advantage in being able to fire more arrows without having to wait for your Radiant spren to return (though you would have to able to reload and shoot awfully fast for that to make a difference). However, given that plate appears to not be summonable like shardblades, I'm inclined to think this would be a very bad idea. Sure, you could send armor piercing projectiles at your enemies, but those uninjured could then pick up and use those weapons. I think this would be poor strategy, since you would be handing them some of the only weapons that could pierce your own armor. In addition, if such arrows existed, they would be very powerful weapons, capable of potentially harming shard-bearers. They would also likely be difficult to destroy. Wouldn't we expect at least some to persist to the modern day? Personally, I speculate that shardplate is forged or made in some way, possibly out of lesser spren, and that this ability is granted by the fourth oath (for most orders). Thus, I'm inclined to agree with your speculation that such arrows could be made. I'm just not sure if the Radiants would want to use them. Slight Tangent: Out of curiosity, does anyone think that the following Words of Radiance epigraph could be referring to making shardplate? Some have suggested that this "making" is referring to "making judgments that separate the innocent from the guilty;" however, I'm disinclined to think "their rivals" (particularly Windrunners and Dustbringers) would agree that their judgments were good. In addition, the following Word of Brandon says they do not have such an ability.