jamesbondsmith

It's fairly obvious Todd thinks of himself the way MCU Thanos does (i.e. doing terrible things for the greater good). I've been wondering if he ends up like Endgame Thanos.

Tbf, I'm pretty sure some other Radiants got hacked to pieces at the end. Bloody axes and all.

Shallan killing her spren needed more of a response from the spren who were saying 'humans killed squillions of spren so storm them'. I still don't know why Cryptics are lining up to bond her, either. Honor+Odium=/= War. The Rhythm name seems to be due to the fact it was discovered by opposite sides of a war working together. Dalinar should not ascend to the Shard of War (everyone remembers the last time he was consumed by the idea of war controlled by passion/hate, right?). Lirin was (mostly) right, in that Kaladin's actions very much could have led to mass retributions. Kaladin worries about it, and it's a miracle it didn't go worse. Moash could still have been redeemed after killing Roshone. Out of 'unpopular opinion mode', he squandered that pretty much as soon as he tried to make Kaladin commit suicide. Navani bullied the Sibling into the bond, and I'm not sure I like the idea (not sure how unpopular this is. I've seen some people say this, but it's overshadowed by the 'journey before destination you bastard' fans).

Well, long distance might be an option, and this is a world with oathgates and Windrunner Airlines. Is the Nightwatcher actually bound in one place, though? That might solve the mobility issue. I feel like narratively, if you set up the possibility of three bondsmiths there should be three of them.

I'm sorry, but I don't follow your logic. You seem to be claiming that the reasons I gave for why war is not inherently honourable as the reasons why they are. Dalinar, generally considered the embodiment of honour, takes issue with the first two and Kaladin, who is literally bonded to an honorspren, objects to all three. If you want to claim that cultural subjectivity means that any interpretation is fine (with enough mental gymnastics I suppose you can justify anything) then how can you justify that when arguably the two people who most embody the concept of honour are against the way their culture wages war? How do the Knights Radiant, a group who swear to protect, look after the forgotten, free the unjustly imprisoned etc. represent the idea that sacrificing lives for your own amusement and convenience is in any way honourable? If you're referring to the fact that Radiants can interpret their oaths how they want, then it still requires a personification of those concepts to agree with it.

Dalinar is able to use his abilities when the Stormfather is a literal continent away, so I feel like proximity isn't really an issue for Bondsmiths (unless that is a unique case because his spren is so mobile, or due to the power boost from Honor). Perhaps the Nightwatcher Bondsmith can use touch to infuse Lifelight much like Dalinar can. Does the prohibition that lead to Singers being denied Radiance for so long apply to other sentient creatures? That might discount a Sleepless. I haven't read Dawnshard so I can't comment on the characters there. I'm starting to think that alignment with the 'intent' of the respective Godspren's Shard doesn't mean a whole bunch when determining a Bondsmith. I still struggle to figure out what is inherently honourable about uniting people. Unity isn't a bad thing, but IMO it doesn't inherently mean 'follow through on your promises' or 'doing what you believe is right' as per dictionary definitions. I feel like the part of Dalinar's Third Ideal that isn't part of the baseline oath (I will take responsibility for what I have done) is the most inherently honourable thing he's sworn to so far. Navani's general air of 'we'll deal with the imprisonment and bisection of spren later' doesn't gel too well with the child of Honor either. We haven't heard any more than the generic First Ideal from Navani, so we don't know what she is swearing to and therefore can't make much of a pattern. It is worth noting that both our current Bondsmiths essentially bullied or coerced their spren into accepting the bond. Perhaps this is part of the process, to show you have the strength of will to be an equal partner of such a powerful entity, but it still implies that possessing certain characteristics is secondary when it comes to Bondsmiths. It might be that we just have to find someone sufficiently strong willed to force the Nightwatcher into accepting the bond, in which case I might think of Queen Fen or the Mink. If we go for double bonds, Jasnah is also strong willed and is attempting to reform society. Kaladin is also trying to heal people's mental traumas/cultivate a healthier mental state for his patients.

Don't the ardents (and by extension Vorinism at large) worship the 'Almighty', as opposed to a being called 'Honor'? Also, I thought it was fairly heavily implied that the Alethi warmongering culture is built out of an initial duty of protection that has been warped by the literal embodiment of bloodlust over millennia into something where war and combat are venerated above all other pursuits and resolving issues peacefully is rank cowardice. I see no reason why they would adhere to any kind of just war doctrine. Also, it is extremely problematic that people are saying that Honor+Odium=War as if it is something inherently honourable. The text itself says that it is not, whether it's the weak/lower classes used as meatshields, or lives being traded to afford the lifestyle of the upper classes or the fact that many of the singers have been forced or manipulated into battle and simply want to live in peace.

I disliked Shallan before coming into ROW, and I'm not sure how much that changed. In the first three books I thought she was a classist B who lies to anyone and everyone and never got any repercussions for it. I'm still seething over the fact that she victim-blames the bridgemen in Oathbringer, despite the fact that three of them are protecting her right then and Adolin (who is generally the 'supportive partner/friend who looks after the unfortunate') tells Kaladin to 'drop it' (i.e. don't confront her about her prejudice). In ROW the classism is toned down, but it's worth noting that she has basically a single scene where she is with her 'social inferiors' (i.e. darkeyes, and uses a personality originally meant to mingle with darkeyes to do so) and the rest of the book she's with people of her own 'level' in the heirarchy (high level lighteyes or Radiants). Sure, she hangs out with darkeyed Radiants, but from what I could tell the Vorin class system wasn't torn down so much as Radiants just skipped the queue in the dahns/nahns. Then the major revelation of her arc (spoilered for anyone who stumbles onto this without having read everything) In general, I don't like her but I can understand how her life has caused her to do the things that I don't like. She's clearly got issues with handling trauma, so it makes some sense that she would black it out. She started out as a minor noble whose family is on the brink of financial ruin, so I can understand why she would hold onto her classist beliefs that would give her some level of power over others in a world where women and the poor aren't respected. Doesn't mean I have to forgive her for it, though.

I'm pretty sure the majority of Oathbringer (our one, not the one Dalinar wrote) was about people hating Dalinar for the general warfare that includes the Rift massacre, if not for the Rift on it's own. Almost all the monarchs have their moments of 'dude, you did some bad things'. The mink in RoW was largely just grateful the city-burning warlord was pointed away from him. Alethi culture is frankly pretty nasty anyway, so it isn't much of a surprise they don't hate Dalinar. As for those close to him, they've seen his changes from who he used to be. There does seem to be a vibe of 'let's deal with this when we aren't fighting extinction'.

IT are the Investiture Technicians, of course.

Due to watching Lord of the Rings at a formative age, I imagine most dialogue in constructed fantasy worlds with some kind of British or European accent. Although let's be honest, any adaptation will just throw all this out and give them generic American accents, which I'm not sure I'll be a fan of. Sometimes if I imagine an actor as a particular character they speak in the actor's accent. For example, I imagine Dalinar as Ken Watanabe, so he has a Japanese accent when I read his dialogue. I agree with the reasoning that Scadrians would have French-sounding accents, but I'm pretty sure (Bands of Mourning spoilers)

Those books definitely get better after the first one. Spoilers coming, but if it's a reread that doesn't matter. @aneonfoxtribute I'm waiting to see your reactions to the latest books. I... definitely have thoughts about them. I'm reading a non-fiction book called The Silk Roads: A New HIstory of the World as research for a novel, and I'm re-reading the Medoran Chronicles, which is YA but I enjoyed it. Also, the author is Australian and I'm considering submitting a novel to the same publishing house (if I ever finish the darn thing).

One theory (I don't remember where I saw it, maybe I made it up) is that Navani's oaths will deal with spren and humans and mitigating the damage that they do to one another. If we go by the theory that Navani's 2nd and 3rd oaths will be something like 'I will unite spren and humans' and 'if my fabrial discoveries cause harm I will fix the problem and make sure it doesn't happen again' then her 'squires' would be an inverse of the geneticists of Jurassic Park. They'd actually think about if they should pursue certain ideas before wondering if they could.

Before I discovered the clarification about which oaths were the real ones, I thought the third Bondsmith Oath we discovered in Oathbringer was about admitting what he had done, and I felt that he could fulfil the 'pious and guiding' principles by creating and ruling a Vorin theocracy through ludicrous amounts of bloodshed, and as long as he admitted what he'd done to do so he'd be golden as far as the Ideals were concerned. In another thread I compared it to Thanos feeling totally justified in killing half the universe, and not shying away from the fact he had done it. Still on Oathbringer information, Dalinar sums up the Kholin Conquest as 'you have stuff, I want it, therefore I'm going to stab you until you give it to me'. I see no reason to believe this isn't an accurate assumption. Immediately after finishing ROW, I thought Gavilar wanted to Ascend to Odium, or at very least gain the power of a Shard (whether he knew it was powered by the divine force of hatred is tbd). Basically, I don't see much reason to try to justify Gavilar's actions in ROW as being under the influence of an Unmade when everything we've seen suggests he is just naturally power hungry (especially considering the Parshendi treaty has an 'if you look at us funny we can conquer you' clause).

Full book spoilers (Some of these seem pretty obvious, but I made them myself and I don't remember seeing them in this thread)

Pretty sure the Heralds get their abilities from the Honorblades. The 'unchained' part means they don't have a spren that they have to run things past, and can therefore do things unilaterally without being called out on the implications or have to abide by oaths. Considering that Ishar can literally go 'I'm the Radiant now', that's a pretty OP ability for someone with no checks on the power. Considering he's the patron of the 'pious' order of Radiants, it makes sense that an insane version of him would set himself up as a god-priest. As for why Tukar specifically, I'm not too sure, except perhaps trying to become that kind of religious leader in a Vorin society which already had the church try to take over might not go so well.

I keep thinking of this (paraphrased) Zoidberg quote. "Things are rough right now, but you've still got Adolin Kholin." *points aggressively around the room. "You all still have Adolin Kholin!"

For all we know, some groups of singers were obliterated. There's a difference between killing everyone of a particular culture and killing everyone of that species. After all, the humans did take over pretty much the entire Rosharan landmass. I think people are right that Radiants would put a stop to attempted genocide, at very least due to the Windrunners and their stupidly large numbers (as of Oathbringer the entirety of Bridge Four are squires to a single Radiant in Kaladin, and the ROW numbers have around five squires for each Windrunner who has bonded a Spren). As for post-BAM, Jasnah outright states that a slave species was more useful than a dead one.

I tested the solo play option, and you might be right. The art definitely refers to major story events, but I'm not sure how much of the spoilerriffic nature is because I know exactly what events the art is depicting.

This is for anyone who has played the Stormlight Archive board game. As the title says, does the game spoil the books? I think I have 3 or 4 friends who have read the books, and even then I'm not sure if they're totally up to date (fwiw I've read everything bar Dawnshard). From what the box says, it deals with the battle against Odium, which only really comes into its own with Oathbringer, but it also seems like it's about making an entirely new story within the world. I don't know if the Ideals make an appearance in the game, but for the most part they seem to be spoilers due to who says them and when rather than the contents themselves (Windrunners and Bondsmiths notwithstanding). I used to hang out with a group who played board games heaps but didn't read fantasy, and my DnD group are branching out into general board games but as far as I know only the DM has read the books (side note: my College of Swords Bard character is considering multiclassing into Hexblade Warlock, and I'd love a Nightblood expy for my patron). So I'm wondering how well I could introduce Stormlight/Cosmere noobs to the game.

@Jasqueen The original list that inspired this including things like 'must not drink three quarts of red food colouring then scream during my urine test' and 'not allowed to let sock puppets take command of my post', so it's not meant to be serious at all. Which gives me an idea: 56) Sending my Awakened uniform in my place does not as doing my shift on guard duty. Even if each individual garment would technically increase the numbers of 'guardsmen'.

I don't mind the fact that there were so many, but I was a little miffed that the stories of so many Radiants bonding their spren just got glossed over.

'I will accept that some need to be protected, and that some need to be protected from.' Although tbh that seems like a lower level ideal, if Kaladin's 'kill all baddies/but who really are the baddies' transition is anything to go by.

I thought it was fairly obvious that it was called the Rhythm of War because the two scholars who came up with it were on opposite sides of a war. As other people pointed out, you only have to look at Way of Kings to see that War is not inherently honourable and frankly I think it's really problematic to pretend that it is. I mean, people are going around saying Dalinar will ascend to become the Shard of War and I'm just thinking 'you do remember what happened the last time he was consumed by the idea of war, right?'

I've put an idea I had into the ROW general thoughts forum, as I think the spoiler period is still going.