Robot

4 minutes ago, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

I don’t see anything weird about it. He got feedback from fans and beta readers who went “I see some of myself in this aspect of the character” and decided to explore that aspect of her. Authors can make characters a specific sexuality for reasons other than appealing to a certain demographic. Maybe it’s needed for thematic, or plot reasons. Maybe it just feels right. Maybe he just wants to. 
 

Brandon listened to feedback from fans and beta readers and used it to inform how he wrote the character going forward. What more do you want?

I'm firmly in the camp that listening too much to fans is a terrible idea and that stories tend to suffer for it. In this particular case it was something small that doesn't matter in the larger stormlight picture, but him saying he considered changing something out of respect for fan theories isn't what I want to hear from an author.

He was a fan before an author though, so I think he has a decent grasp of when to listen and when to keep his ideas.

4 hours ago, Debarra said:

Jasnah isn't gay though according to this. She's Asexual which is different from being gay. She's still queer though.

I was referring to the part where Brandon said he tried to make her gay this book out of respect for the fans who argued she was gay. I was going to quote but my phone is working up.

2 hours ago, Honorless said:

It does fit with her character. 

Trying to make Jasnah gay out of respect to the fans who wanted her to be gay feels weird to me.

Isn't Venli roughly the same age as Kaladin? I believe she's the older of the two sisters

Coming from OB I was very convinced Kal and Veli were going to be an item, since it always seemed fitting to me for Kal to get together with a singer and Venli was the most prominent one. When RoW chapters came out I'm sure we all noticed him and Leshwi having a very close relationship though, which made a lot of us pair them together.

I wanted to make this thread to hear everyone's opinion on Kaladin and Leshwi/Venli being together and what everyone hopes will come out of this. I should also mention tomorrow is the chapter where Venli meets Leshwi, so things might clear up more then.

All I want to say is that everyone in this thread is a storming genius and I'm proud of you all.

On 4/9/2020 at 7:14 PM, Bliev said:

After my 5th re-read just completed (eek), I actually see it as a pretty consistent narrative of her character: Overwhelming panic over her family led her to Jasnah. But to overcome her PTSD she had to lie and pretend from the moment she began. She dissociates from her past and the fake personas that don't remember anything become more attractive all the while. Then Jasnah is "murdered" (from her eye) and she has to continue (while secretly she's actually loving this because she's far from home and can pretend in any way she wants and also hates herself so if she dies she dies, in her mind). She meets Adolin--she actually likes him and inadvertently acts like "herself" for even a moment, even while she's continuing to pretend. Then chasms, facing her past, and growth. But still she won't *really* face it because lying is so much easier, so she persists--just pushing the forboding down deeper, even as Pattern hums in concerns. Then OB--and the lying is So. Much. Easier. than the truth, particularly with stormlight! She can be anyone! No one cares for Shallan anyways, right? Her parents hated her. Her brothers probably don't even miss her. Adolin won't love the "real" shallan. She should really just eff it all up by going for Kaladin anyways. That's what she deserves, right? Just to screw it up and have everyone hate her. But Adolin is so NICE and cute and--she finds herself being authentic, surprisingly, and growth again--she decides to stop dissociating for awhile. Maybe three personalities is enough to function. She stops lying so much. At least for the most part. Now RoW we see the Ghostbloods lie creeping up on her...which she's totally dissociated from the whole time! She just hides it and pushes it off and "I'll tell him sometime". This is classic Shallan. Avoiding confrontation, by magical means or otherwise, until it bites her in the chull. Now we just have to see if not confronting her own PTSD will mean that she actually does self destruct, or if she can overcome it--magically and otherwise. I find it utterly captivating. 

 

But then again, she's been my fav from day 1, and I'm totally an Adolin Superfan, so that's maybe not surprising? :-)

Doing my poor boi Kal a disrespect here T_T

8 minutes ago, Harbour said:

I kinda want him to not be redeemed but going down in better way than Amaram. I dont want Moash to die just in simple combat, pierced by arrow, throwing angry tantrums.

I want his death to be ironic and symbolic, reflecting the path he chose.

While i like well written redemption arcs, i admit, that im tired of redeemed villains. In our age i feel there is not enough well written motivated villains who, well, stay villain till the very end. Sometimes redemption simply doesnt fit the villain's arc and set off traits.

Moash right now still can be redeemed for sure. But i kinda want him to dive farther into villainy and become Kaladin's nemesis, and end up dying alone.

To be fair we got some small crumps of Amaram feeling guilty deep down.

I think that Brandon is making him take more and more steps downward and I can definitely see him going even deeper. I wouldn't mind him getting a redemption arc at all, maybe in the back 5, but I don't think that's where his story is going. I see him as a parallel to Kaladin way too much.

Yeah, she wasn't the one who sent his brother to his death or enslaved him, why should she care about it?

Laral didn't give a single crap about Tien dying or Kal having slave marks when Kal got to see her again in OB. Instead she whined about her floor. Hard pass for me.

I'm honestly a bit scared that he changed his original vision of Shallan to better or more accurately portray DID.

Tell Thaidakar he's too late...

On 29/8/2020 at 8:05 AM, Gderu said:

I actually really disagree. I think that he offers a very refreshing viewpoint, one which I mostly agree with. War is evil, and the world would be better off if no one engaged in it.

Of course, that's idealistic. We need war to defend ourselves and our rights, but that does not mean that we should just accept war as a necessity of life. It is important to always remember that war is bad, to remember that we should be working against it. With Jasnah's extremist opinions about the war, that the only solution is to defeat the singers before they can destroy human society, the humans are in dire need of a voice encouraging peace. I think Lirin can be that voice.

Lirin understands some people need to fight, he just doesn't want Kaladin to be one of them.

Just wait until we meet Balat with little Evi

5 hours ago, Karger said:

They don't.

 

All that wob says is that the unmade aren't Odium heralds but are spren instead, while what I'm saying is that the unmade and their effect are a parallel to the heralds and their quirks.

Here I go. Some might be semi accepted and others might be wild.

- Renarin and maybe other Alethi have gemhearts, which is where Glys resides. 

- Voidbinding is based around giving and taking emotions.

- Rock wasnt a cousin but a brother of his nuatoma. He might have even been the one who was supposed to fight Sadeas.

- Cultivation isnt going to be an ally.

- Shallan's mother wasnt involved with the skybreakers, not sure on Helaran. It's pretty weird that Mraize says Nale went personally for surgebinders just before saying her mom and her associate wanted to do it in person. Balat has all the makings of a voidbinder, influenced by either Chemoarish or Dai-Gonarthis. If aimia has some Dai-Gonarthis then Chemoarish.

- Cusicesh is either Ba Ado Mishram or very related.

- The heralds destroyed Narak.

- When Odium says we killed you he means the fused.

- Lirin and Teft are as good as dead. Maybe Teft has a chance if the envisagers are somehow important.

- Hoid isnt going to be on the radiant side this book.

- The unmade parallel the heralds. 

"True" Shallan is our Shallan, she isn't any less true for what happened to her, what we see is different aspects of Shallan Davar. I agree that her family probably was either messed up from the beginning or has some other kind of secrets, the ghostblood letter on them had a couple of weird things in it, like saying Nale went personally for surgebinders just after saying her mom went with an agent for her. Her thoughts on helping her dad imply life was relatively normal though, I guess we'll see.

7 hours ago, The Traveller said:

Personally I do not think that it is very likely that Shallan will turn out to be odium’s champion. Because the whole deal with odium as we have seen is to take away their pain and suffering and make them his. But I do not see Shallan falling for this because she has found her own way of dealing with the pain. She has fractured her self into multiple personalities in order to be able to function despite all the pain and suffering. This goes quite opposite from how dalinar was totally non functioning in those years. Shallan was too for many years but then she found a way to come out of it on her own and I think it was possible for her by creating an alter ego maskshallan who basically is a devout Vorin girl who is witty scholar and solves problems. And as she stepped out into the real world her challenges grew, she created more alter egos to deal with such challenges as well. However sustainable a model “the three” are or not, but I do not see her giving up to odium as an option she will choose. 

To be completely fair out of the main characters Shallan is the one who most hides her pain and doesn't acknowledge it, at least for now, which seems to be how Odium ropes people into working for him. 

4 hours ago, Ailvara said:

I think what I've written - that Shallan will reintegrate but remain very fragile and always be at risk of spiraling down again given another distress - is about in line with what you're saying. The difference is that you believe that such state of fragile reintegration would be too subtle for readers to realize. Either I believe in Brandon's ability more (with the help from his DID-suffering betas) or care less about what inattentive readers think. I also understand you care more personally about how it'll land and so would like him to choose the "safer" path in that regard.

I think it's also crucial that Shallan didn't start her journey split as she is now. I find it hard to imagine she'd end up the series in a worse place than she started. Given the analogy to Kaladin and how he'll always suffer from his depression - he had it even before Tien's death and all that followed. I think he'll achieve more or less that state of mind by the end but with progress in the related areas, e.g. resilience to losing those he feels responsible about. So similarly Shallan, her benchmark isn't end of OB from which she needs to make a progress - her benchmark is WoK so she should end up similarly stable mentally (as we know today and not as we'd know when only starting WoK) but with all the added self-awareness.

Edit: One more think that came to my mind is, even though Brandon will tweak the details, he wouldn't change some major things as a result of this "shift of direction". For example, whatever he's got planned as Lightweaver's 5th Ideal, I don't think he'd change it. And given "I am law" we can expect not another precise truth about Shallan's past but something very vague, encompassing, summing up all previous Ideals. "I am me" or "I am Shallan, and Veil, and Radiant, and that frenzied child who killed her mother" something of the sorts. She's already aware of being each of these separately now so what's left is for her to become aware of being them all as one.

WoK Shallan was hiding a lot of things from herself, I wouldn't want her to go back to that. I want Shallan to completely accept her own past and move on from there, hopefully reining in her personalities and keeping everything in check.

7 hours ago, agrabes said:

 

I'm sure there are more but here's an example of foreshadowing off the top of my head. When Szeth first enters Kholinar he feels a beating heart and comments more than once on the revelry going on.

I wonder what kind things someone like Hoid would be able to do with Lerasium as a first generation mistborn. Could he rewrite out his inability to hurt people? Maybe he can use it, together with other shard metals to get their powers too? Maybe what Lerasium does by default is change your DNA to that of a preservation aligned allomancers, but could potentially be used to change your sDNA any way you wanted.

I believe that they have to be willing to transform for the everstorm to do anything to them.

I assume that's what thunderclasts are for, since even Kalak says he's been killed by them

Kaladin has consistently thought of the listeners as very honorable since WoK

The Heavenly ones show the same honor in the battlefield as the parshendi did in WoK. The fused also put themselves at a disadvantage in 1v1 fights, since Radiants in general have insane burst power but less staying power than the fused, while also having a sharblade and later plate.

Do we know if Lerasium does anything for someone who's already a mistborn?