Kyn

I think your idea of the Unmade requiring sacrifice holds up even if Sja-anat always did something similar to how she enlightens spren now. Yes, it’s likely she treated/affected them more harshly in the past, considering what she did was termed corruption by those who encountered the changed creatures. But creatures giving up their identity is a tremendous sacrifice, trading what they were for what Sja-anat can make them. Especially if they give up memories and/or come out not knowing what their new roles, abilities, or identities are. It seems as if all the Unmade require/manipulate a sort of selfish self-abnegation on the part of targets, making them give up or lose themselves in exchange for what the Unmade has to offer/inflict. A sacrifice indeed.

Everything @AquaRegia said gets more to the actual narrative reasons for the way Shallan’s treated in the book than anything I’ve thought to say. People in the book behave similarly to the way real people behave, with the same justifications – or as close to them as the author can fabricate. That’s pretty much where my last point came from, that mental health issues in powerful people aren’t treated the same way as those in other people. Leaders known to be insane and high in Dark Triad traits (Nero), not merely those with mental health concerns, regularly get into and remain in positions of power. A hobo on the streets who hears voices is treated entirely differently from a charismatic cult leader who does the same. And this highlights how similar that real-life disparity is to the one we see portrayed in the book. Remember, Shallan’s peer group is men and women with a lot of power. She’s light-eyed, a Shardblade wielder, and a Radiant. When we look at how other people in power were treated when they were seen as having mental health problems, Shallan is being treated exactly like her peers. When Gavilar was thought to be getting problematically unpredictable and influence by something untoward, he remained king with no checks on his power. When Taravangian was thought to have a stroke or some kind of mental break, he, too remained in power with his advisors. The God King was widely believed to be insane, but he still ruled a nation. Any Shardbearer who was seen as dangerous was left free, such as Amaram. Taln was locked away when he was seen as a madman who was a nobody, and left free when he was seen as a madman who was a Herald. The way characters treated Shallan and other powerful people with mental health issues is utterly consistent. Expecting her to be treated the way the common-folk were treated when they had similar struggles makes no sense. Yes, how people see/treat mental health issues narratively within the books has been established – but it’s been established dichotomously for powerful people versus peasants. Additionally, a person with a Shardblade simply isn’t locked away. People went along with Shallan’s mental health presentations to exactly the degree they went along with any other powerful person’s, and that is a predictable function of power both in the real world and, as demonstrated repeatedly in the books, on Roshar.

Nope, I’m applying real-world concepts of how mental health works to the way mental health in-world works, not to the way people in-world treat those with mental health issues. It’s like assuming that a chair in-world is like a chair in our world except where explicitly told otherwise. At no point did I ever even mention the way we treat people with various mental health conditions in our world. Nor did I refer to anything about the actions or decision-making of the people around Shallan, only to the actual issues likely plaguing various people in the book who seem to have mental health struggles. So I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m talking about the people reacting to the various mental health issues when I clearly am not. So let me actually address the way people see/treat mental health issues in-world, so you can stop arguing against a strawman. This is not monolothic. We see the one-size-fits-all reaction of the ardents, but are explicitly told that most people with even severe mental health issues do not end up in their care. Only those turned in by family trying to help, and only when functionality is impaired enough to make this seem necessary. The ardents’ bludgeon approach to “treatment” is why Shallan does not go to them. Her ability to function means that the people around her aware of her plurality are unlikely to gainsay her wishes because they are people who care about her; and besides, she still appears to be doing her job effectively. Because she is a Radiant with unknown powers, other people seeing evidence of her plurality seem to accept it as part of her power set, not assume it is a mental illness, making them unlikely to try to turn her in to the ardents even if they didn’t revere (or at least need the) Radiants too much to do so. In the real world, people in positions of power regularly get away with being actually dangerously crazy, it’s only “normal” and expendable people who tend to get locked away.

Completely agree on wanting more time dedicated to the mental state, but I suspect it would have been overkill for a lot of readers. Partly because of exactly where I felt differently than you did, that it seemed to me like these chapters did an excellent job of sucking us down into Kaladin’s clinically-depressed fugue state. Thanks, I hadn’t figured out what about these chapters felt so true to life for long-running depression to me, but I suspect it’s exactly what you said: that it felt more like watching somebody else feel things instead of feeling it myself. That’s what it feels like, to me, to be in the almost-apathetic state where inability to sleep effectively, horror from impotence in the face of friends being hurt, and the crushing weight of everything, all compounded over months leaves you distanced from yourself. Like you’re left kind of watching your life numbly instead of doing and wanting and feeling things. It’s nicely accentuated by the moments of incomprehensible pain from his nightmares, the constant self-doubt and -castigation, and the erasure of self in order to function to perform his duty when needed. I can see where it might feel more like these scenes were telling about depression than showing us Kaladin’s experience with depression, but that felt real to me.

@the winter system I got you. You were kind enough to illuminate details about plurality we just can’t get from books, so if I can clarify some neurological stuff, I’ll gladly try. Forgive me if it’s not as helpful as you have been. The Dark Triad isn’t about mental health conditions, it’s about choices to behave in selfish and destructive ways interpersonally. And since human beings are social creatures, that basically means choosing to behave in selfish and destructive ways, period. Granted, some people will be much more naturally inclined toward this, and have to work harder not to. And admittedly, certain neurological conditions or organic damage (such as that too severely affecting the prefrontal cortex) actually do reduce a person's capacity for culpability and even for making choices, despite leaving them unfortunately more likely to do harm; but this isn’t what either you or I are talking about. My classes always differentiated NPD from narcissism the way it’s defined in the Dark Triad of personality traits. Some people with NPD would certainly fall on that three-pronged scale of callous-manipulative interpersonal relations with no desire to be decent to or consider other human beings, but so would some of everybody else. Certain “types” of NPD would make a person ironically less likely to than most of us. Psychology Today has an overview of the Dark Triad here, and Mentalhelp.net has a layman’s differentiation here that I’m quoting: The Dark Triad doesn’t encompass diagnosed mental health conditions. It is personality traits, not indelible character or other “inherent traits” – although some people will naturally tend to fall farther along any arm(s) of the Triad. It is three distinct, but often overlapping, sets of exploitative, selfish, and frequently sadistic (although sadism is often considered a fourth trait in a Dark Tetrad) ways of interacting with the world and other people. Anyone will have some of these traits, but it gets dangerous when somebody is far along multiple of these axes, because the intersection of them tends to mean consciously choosing to exploitatively disregard or harm other human beings. It is, after all, a combination of: narcissism (extreme focus on self-aggrandizement); Machiavellianism (manipulation and exploitation to get what is wanted without concern for harm done); and psychopathy (lack of empathy). Being extreme in the Dark Triad traits basically means wanting to make oneself look better and achieve selfish goals at any cost but with no consideration for other human beings. Of course having a mental health condition, even being clinically diagnosed with NPD or psychopathy (which isn’t a diagnosis any more than narcissism is, so let’s go with antisocial personality disorder, ASPD), doesn’t inherently make someone dangerous. One of the people who’s really advanced studies in the neurological underpinnings, and clinical presentation in criminal populations, of psychopathy is a psychopath, neurologically. James Fallon just happens to have been very lucky, having a good family growing up so nothing violent was triggered, and to have chosen to consider others. This makes him still unnervingly cold according to family members, but it also makes him someone who has done a lot of good and been a supportive family member, or what he calls a pro-social psychopath. The three axes of the Dark Triad are each about people’s tendencies, not their diagnoses, but the intensity of the combination of those three axes is scarily reliably correlated with how much harm a person’s choices and actions will do. What NPD, ASPD, and certain biological states or innate characteristics definitely do is make a person have to put in extra effort to meet standards of empathetic interpersonal interactions that may be taken for granted by those blessed with different genes, neurological development, or life situations. But what adding Machiavellianism to the mix does is to make a person not care how much harm they do, which prevents them from that needed effort. So, the Dark Triad formulation is neither claiming people with a specific mental health condition are dangerous, nor suggesting that people who possess cautionary levels of these Dark Triad characteristics do so based on inherent traits/mental conditions. It’s pointing out that the combination of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism is dangerous by dint of the callousness-reinforcing nature of these traits.

Would you feel like expanding on that? We’ve had several perspectives on this book wallowing too much in the actual experience of depression, but I get the impression from you saying Kal was toned down that you think it didn’t go far enough in its depiction. Or that you don’t see circumstances meriting Kal’s reaction. And I’m sure I’m misinterpreting, either way.

Thank you so much for the explaining about recognized and unrecognized plurality. No amount of reading can teach much as listening to real people, and I appreciate that you went out of your way to give us more information even though it can be draining to have to correct those of us who just don’t get it. @the winter system excellently explains the real-world reasons this interpretation is mistaken. Many mental health conditions present differently before being acknowledged/diagnosed. And just because we might not have previously been explicitly told that Veil was a coping mechanism or that Shallan had more going on than repressed memories doesn’t mean it wasn’t already happening, and already being shown happening (if not as fleshed out at first) in-text. You seem to be suggesting that it’s weird people are working around Shallan’s issues, yet you don’t acknowledge that far greater mental and political gymnastics were required for dealing with numerous other characters – such as to enable Dalinar to work with Sadeas. Who actually proved to be dangerous. Please explain what it is about Shallan’s particular mental health issues that makes her dangerous in her position. And how this sets her apart as an especial danger compared to people who are “merely” power-hungry, or calculating, or any number of other “normal” traits. It’s problematic in the extreme to suggest Nale or Ishar’s entirely different and unrelated mental health issues possibly making them too dangerous for their power means Shallan’s disparate mental health issues are likewise dangerous. Besides which, it’s even more problematic to assume that it’s their apparent insanities that made them dangerous. It’s like looking at everybody who isn’t within the reader’s definition, or acceptable radius of, normal as crazy, and conflating that with them being dangerous. In reality, a lot of other characteristics – such as the Dark Triad of Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism – are highly predictive of a person being dangerous and unfit for power. Flashier mental health diagnoses like Shallan’s are not. In fact, it’s the progression of Nale (following the Law justifies any means) and Ishar (I am a god) along the Dark Triad axes that makes them, and their insanities, dangerous. It’s explicitly only the Heralds who succumbed to the Dark Triad personality flaws who abused power to hurt untold numbers of people, even though none of the Heralds are sane.

I wish I knew! I see signs that it might, but it’s entirely possible the difference has to do entirely with whom we’ve seen it interact with. Ways/reasons Nightblood might have a different influence on Roshar: Of course, what I see as the most likely possibility is that Nightblood has the exact same effect on Roshar as it does in Warbreaker, although perhaps only when fully drawn. And definitely only when hungry. The evidence I’m seeing to support Nightblood still having its mental influence is its effect on Szeth in Oathbringer ch. 118: That sounds like a classic Nightblood come-hither whammy nauseating somebody who doesn’t find its siren call of killing alluring. We could have just missed this effect on others because our perspective characters weren’t looking for it, and we’re not as much in the POV characters’ heads in this series. And also because Szeth rarely draws Nightblood for enough time to see much of its influence. When he kept it out for a long time in saving Lift, she wouldn’t have been affected by it or likely to (have had time, what with the enemies mostly dying) to notice its effect in the red-eyed. Who were kind of possessed already, which could interfere anyway. There should have been time to see an effect in the Fused who fought/eluded Szeth for awhile even before Nightblood was sated, however. I agree. I don’t trust Nightblood’s thoughts on who is evil or what needs to be slain (it basically assumes that if it killed something, that thing must have been evil). But I have trust in the evil-detecting allure Nightblood has. At least, in the likelihood that those who are tempted have some specific type of (bloodlusting) weakness/flaw, and those who are not can resist Nightblood’s destructive desires. Which isn’t at all the same thing as believing one group is evil and the other, not. But I’m not sure we need their interaction to think Moash would be claimed by Nightblood. The man was driven by the sole emotion of vengeance, giving all others over to Odium. That seems pretty clearcut as just what Nightblood’s allure would call to, and drive to a killing spree. The likelihood of Moash being judged as evil by Nightblood only goes up if denying responsibility and refusing to turn from doing harm is part of the definition for evil. Although that guess on my part was based on the Derethil story the OP was looking at, even if it’s wrong, I doubt a Moash/Nightblood interaction would clear Moash. Him choosing to give up all responsibility to a dead emperor rather than face any culpability or hint of being wrong in what he had done doesn’t make it sound like he has much grounds for resisting Nightblood’s call – since he has neither a strong will nor any degree of revulsion for killing/destruction.

Too soon. But we genuinely have no idea yet what memories Wit’s lost, other than those of his first meeting with Todium.

Why (and how) are certain abilities, such as Surges, considered more True to a particular Shard? Why are some either unable to be used by certain Shards, or avoided by them? What textual support is there for and against the views presented in-world that these are closer to a Shard’s Intent? Sorry, I inadvertently hijacked a really interesting thread over at The Fused before being Fused and am bringing the discussion here to stop distracting from that one, but permit further discussion if anybody else is interested. The discussion that ended up derailing started here. In it, I was arguing that the way Adhesion and Progression still worked when the Radiants were knocked out at Urithiru could likely be attributed to these being what is called in-world “True Surges” of Honor and Cultivation. These abilities were so close to these Shards’ Intents, or alien to Odium’s Intent, that Odium couldn’t suppress them. Presumably, Honor’s Adhesion was even farther from Odium’s Intent, and couldn’t be mimicked in Odium’s Fused, either. Other thoughts? My next reply in that conversation, to this post, would have been along the lines of:

Nice WoB, thanks. But…what you say here is not the same thing the WoB quote stated. Mostly, I’m confused as to what you’re arguing against. Are you conflating the general “interactions a Shard can fuel” with what most people seemed to be actually talking about, specific “abilities a Shard can instill in its followers or inhibit in opponents”? Since we’ve literally seen, in RoW, that there are limitations upon these abilities, the only thing to argue about is why these limitations exist. There are plenty of different possible interpretations for why Odium does not grant or suppress Adhesion. Maybe, even though the evidence supports it, the in-universe interpretation that a certain ability (Surge) is too close to Honor for Odium to mimic or counteract is wrong. Maybe the assumption that it’s Shards’ Intent that limits them from achieving certain effects like this is wrong. I’d love to see other interpretations. I assumed Division was heavily related to Cultivation, since she’s about change and pruning/culling is a part of that, which would mean this was not sufficiently purely of Odium’s Intent to be denied to Knights Radiant. Of course, all known Radiant Surges are born of Honor and Cultivation, so I’m not sure why you would expect either Shard to deny access to a part of something they made together? If the two of them both created this system together, then even if they included Surges that were True Surges for either of their Shards, they wouldn’t – couldn’t, working together like that – have created Surges that were contrary to either of them.

Do you mean Odium ought to be able to mimic/counteract all Shardic abilities if he can mimic/counteract any? Why would we assume that? Wouldn’t we expect Odium to only be able to mess with abilities that fell within his purview, and only be unable to mess with abilities that were too far from his nature/Intent? Whether it’s one of the Surges or another Shardmetal’s granted abilities, there’s no reason simply belonging to another Shard should make an ability off-limits to Odium. But there’s every reason, with beings of power chained by Intent, for an ability being too limited to another Shard’s Intent to put it out of Odium’s reach. An ability being contrary to Odium’s own Intent – being a pure ability of another Shard – should make it in at least some small respect off-limits to him. Windrunners were seen as most likely to resist the suppression of Radiants because they were closest to Honor, presumably because/why they bore the pure-Honor Surge of Adhesion. It seems likely Honor’s tendency toward connection/binding is particularly contrary to Odium, making the Windrunners more likely to resist being knocked out than those closest to Cultivation. Even so, despite Lift only being awake because she ran on Lifelight or had a deeper cognitive connection/presence, it was only her Progression that still worked. Being close to Honor in particular might have made Windrunners more resistant to being taken out of commission by the oppressive voidlight, but only their Adhesion worked. It’s likely these two abilities were out of reach of suppression because they’re “purer” in that they’re closer to their relevant Shards and farther from Odium’s Intent. But something about Honor itself was viewed as even farther from Odium’s grasp, making Honor’s purest Surge off-limits for emulation as well as for suppression.

No, I said that. I thought atium and other God Metals were a pretty clear example of this. Even the mere existence of most Allomancy is supposed to be based purely on Preservation. If atium instead draws on purely Ruin’s power with no Preservation in it, then isn’t it an ability granted only by that Shard? Then you get into healing abilities coming from connections with Cultivation, and I thought it was pretty clear that certain abilities come purely from certain Shards. That’s not to say other Shards might not have abilities that have similar effects – Preservation confers its own brand of healing – but this doesn’t change that these abilities seem to be unique to their Shards. They are certainly unique within their own systems.

Thank you! And for the rest of that WoB.

…Are you serious? This is a hill you want to die on? First, people are irrational. They do stupid and evil things all the time even when there is a 0% chance of it working the way they want it to. Presumptions of rational decision-making being a human default have been disproven by history and by science. Take a look at Game Theory to see why political and personal assumptions of rational behavior fail. More specifically, considering genocide a viable option is judging slaughtering innocent people as an acceptable cost of some goal. That requires failing some basic tenets of cost-benefit analyses, because these are required to take human consequences into account in order to have any validity outside of mental exercises. Even if morality doesn’t factor into it for some people, what sounds like it will be effective in theory will always work differently in practice because people are unpredictable. Second, people are not engaging in attempted genocide for practical reasons. Mostly, they are hateful and they want to destroy something they cannot control. They are usually trying to remove an obstacle or create a certain environment, yes. But even when the stated and desired goal is to wipe out a race, successfully doing so does not achieve their actual “practical” goals any more than failing to do so means they will not achieve those tacit power-related goals. So they are using a sledgehammer for a situation when a scalpel would be more effective. Third, historically, genocide has never been as effective as other methods. Short-term apparent success has always fallen apart. Even in ancient Assyria, where wiping out a city cowed the rest for generations, that backfired in the end as everyone rose up against them explicitly because of this viciousness. When Ancient Rome integrated defeated peoples, it eradicated their (cultures and) resistance far more effectively than when it committed genocide (see Celts and Christians). Even when wiped-out peoples’ religions and allies did not come back to bite, the mere fact of having attempted/committed genocide caused problems. Unless the Rosharans believed the Singers were the only ones with loyalty to and an ability it be influenced by Odium – and Dalinar’s visions as well as what happened to Amaram suggest this is unlikely – it could at best be only a stopgap “victory” to wipe out an entire peoples. Odium would find new vessels, and rather easily after humans went so far to his side. That – destroying their own humanity by wiping out innocent people because of their mere potential – would not be any kind of victory. tl;dr Genocide would, in fact, be the ultimate self-defeat, as the humans would be selling themselves to Odium, to hatred and destruction. Odium wouldn’t even need the Singers after that. He’d already have Roshar.

Ah, thank you. I wasn’t looking at the actual bonding ecosystem, so I guess I mistakenly thought of the Nahel Bond as only the specific instance of the Radiant Bond with the way Syl spoke of it in I-1 of RoW: Obviously if it were something the Bondsmith discovered, it predated Radiants. But…where can I find the Singer or Rhyshadium spren bonds classified as Nahel Bonds? Yeah, that sounds complicated. I got nothing, but I’m sure somebody here’s been working on this. This wouldn’t be the first instance of certain abilities being limited to a particular Shard. I think you’re probably right about why this one is only Honor’s, too. If it’s an ability tied to Honor’s nature, how could Odium grant it? It seems pretty unlikely the Fused inherited powers by dying with True Spren bonds if they didn’t have those powers at first. Still, it could be possible the spren they held when they died determined what abilities they developed when Odium empowered them.

Both, minus the emotionally dead part? I mean, if “everybody else” is unreasonably emotionally attaching to characters, then whoever isn’t would be unusual. “Neutral” doesn’t mean emotionally dead, though. A lot of intense people limit their emotional attachment targets so they don’t burn out on caring too much. Besides, each person connects differently, and if written words don’t do it for everybody, that has to be even more true with characters we’re not expected to invest in as heavily. Personally, I get really caught up in fictional characters, and many other things, so disparate perspectives are vital in approaching any semblance of objectivity. Oh, I agree with all of this. For me, though, that makes it worse. Human minds rely heavily on heuristics, mental shortcuts that can enable us to act and react without having time to make an informed, or even rational, decision. We act first, and only have time to justify later. In this situation, Lirin was relying on what he already held as a belief, and what he felt. The pain he inflicted was instinctively calculated from these, then doubled down on when he had time to think about it. You’re right, Lirin didn’t know Kaladin the way we did. Lirin’s hardwired mental shortcuts for the person in front of him included the sensitive boy he had known for so long, and a patient he obviously recognized as suffering from battle fatigue. To say what he did to someone he viewed through either of those lenses meant Lirin’s subconscious, at least, wanted to inflict severe pain on the child who betrayed him by going off to kill or the soldier who betrayed him by killing in Lirin’s sanctuary. …Which means Lirin’s dogma of not killing was more important to him than either his son or his patient.

That would actually make a ton of sense. Except the Fused only get one. So maybe that’s related to the differences between a gemheart bonding and a Nahel Bond. Extrapolating from the OP’s idea of Ancient Singers Bonding High Spren in their gemhearts, the Spren may well have decided to go with humans because of the increased freedom and capability Leuthie points out and the increased power they could invest to humans.

Oooo, actual argument. I’m in. Also, a bit of a Devil’s Advocate, sorry. And even more sorry for the length, but this is fun. For me. I’m not sure those are the main two arguments – it seems like most of the hate stems from how Lirin was as a father. It’s not that I hate Lirin, it’s that I hate what he does to his son. He gave Kaladin a lot of useful moral and practical positions, but could be a terrible father despite (and sometimes because of) this. However, your points suggest there’s more to his unpalatability. 2. Lirin is terrible because he advised Kaladin to act like a “good slave”. No, Lirin is selfish and shortsighted because he thought being a good slave could not only be enough for his son, but also for his people. Being a good slave doesn’t ensure any kind of life, not even mere survival…but it often ensures you’ll continue to be a slave if you do survive. Even if you are given freedom. If you’re considering a more feudal system instead of slavery, I don’t think that helps Lirin’s position any. But back to Lirin. He wasn’t just taking the path of least resistance, he was also demeaning the one person trying to do something to resist. But an individual who pushes others down, undercutting their efforts to seek more, is not merely exhaustedly buckling to the system – they are exerting excess energy in repressing their fellows who might be trying to fight the system. Lirin is propagating the oppression. Sure, supporting the extant system even against one’s own (group, and often personal) interest is by far the more common, and therefore potentially “relatable and honest”, human reaction. But heroes are the people who stand against oppression. They are the people who don’t sacrifice one group for the convenience of the others or the stability of the existing system. And Lirin shouldn’t have expected a son who never could get over losing a patient to be able to give up on his home and his friends. 1. Lirin is terrible because he harshly condemns the act of Kaladin killing the Regal No, Lirin is a hypocrite for violating his oaths against doing harm by knowingly calling someone suffering from battle fatigue a murderer, a monster, and someone who was looking for an excuse to kill. Lirin commits violence on a less bloody, but more intrinsically damaging level. When most of what a character has going for them is their pacifism, them violating it in this manner is particularly galling. It just isn’t surprising when readers who gravitate toward the Windrunners’ oaths of protection don’t feel all warm and fuzzy toward a man who uses his surgeons’ knowledge to targetedly inflict this level of pain on someone he should most be trying to protect – someone who is both a patient and his own son. Anyway, (relatively…or at least slightly less un-) objectively, Lirin went too far for numerous reasons by attacking Kaladin like this. Lirin’s insistence on healing:good, killing:bad, has at least intensified the dissonance between what Kaladin views as good and what he sees himself as. By accusing Kaladin the way he did, Lirin struck a nerve, aggravating – by targeting with the precision of a surgeon who knows the symptoms he’s seeing and the vulnerabilities of his patient – Kaladin’s preexisting self-perceptions of being a killer who deserves to die. That might not make Lirin a terrible person, but it certainly makes him a person who has done some despicable things to his son. It’s probably more “relatable and honest” to hate him for something as human as that.

…I think you might need to supply some context/detail if you’re looking for someone to engage with this.

I don’t think it’s just playing a role, either. Kaladin takes a lot of personal responsibility, both for things he did and for things he failed to do. It feels like he’s not so much playing a part as fulfilling a purpose. If somebody needs (or could be helped by) him, then meeting their needs overrides meeting his own. He might prefer to recharge by retreating within himself, but he has to be there for others. So if a leader is what’s needed, that’s what he’ll be; whatever it costs. Despite that, Kaladin absolutely comes across as an introvert, with an internal focus and a lot of (over)thinking (which bleeds into depression-related rumination). An extravert comes back from training soldiers and goes to the fire to spend more time with them in this changed role, because that energizes. Kaladin typically chooses to stand or sit off by himself to watch. He tends to seem drained from a day spent working with the others, though refreshed from seeing the good his work and their bonds do them. That could be just exhaustion mitigated by relaxation, of course. But Kaladin gets energy from flying or walking alone (with Syl), and avoids group social interactions that are not about camaraderie or duty (do we ever see him just hang out if someone [Adolin] isn’t forcing him?). And this last caveat – the way he thrives in group bonding situations (Bridge 4 eating soup together) or on-mission despite preferring to go be alone (how many times did he go for a walk instead of joining a group, or avoid going out with the guys?) – seems like it’s based on his personality/nature. For an introvert who is compelled to help people, interactions serving others aren’t draining in the same way other interactions are. Fueling others is worth draining themself. It’s realistic for an introvert who feels responsibility (especially for others) heavily to seek out and excel in (while nevertheless being enervated by) a leadership position if their need to help others is stronger than their need to protect their own identity…or if their identity is tied up in protecting/helping. But for this type, the leadership position will always be (treated as) a service position: lead to protect, teach to enable, draw attention to keep others from being targeted. Kaladin seems to do all of those.

This. I think it comes from a combination of certain personalities with particular childhood demands. Most of the few people I’ve met who are much like Adolin went overboard in the protective/supportive big brother/sister role when their parents were neglectful or abusive. Another had a good family, but basically centered their own purpose on being there for a sibling with a disability. For that last one, their personality meant they felt most fulfilled helping others, so they were (mostly, though definitely not always, happy to be) in the background in ways Adolin wasn’t. There are definitely people better than Adolin in the real world, and who like to support other people. Rare, but that isn’t the same thing as impossible and superhuman. Adolin might look like a parody to those not lucky enough to know people like that, but a lot of real people are too unrealistic to earn suspension of disbelief in fiction.

Completely agree with your second point being troubling. I can only guess the Cyptics chose a child for something like the reason Syl chose Kaladin out of millions, that Shallan was just that good of a fit. Still, what child has ever made it to adulthood without the kind of outburst that resulted in Shallan Deadeye-ing Testament? Spoiler tags are just because of length. It’s usually very early trauma that results in dissociative identities, so it’s almost certain young Shallan experienced far worse than what we’ve seen. Even if she didn’t, her reaction to it was severe enough to leave her with a broken identity, so surely enough to leave her with a broken soul. Potential answers for your third question stem from that. If she was so broken already, Shallan likely did have some terrible truths. Ones that would definitely be weighty to a little child, since they can feel everything very intensely. Shallan’s achievement just doesn’t detract from the other Radiants’ accomplishments the way it would if so young a child had sworn to either protect those who couldn’t protect themselves or protect those they hated.

Additionally, Kelsier just wasn’t the a good fit for Preservation. Preservation had said that Kelsier had very little Connection to him, and a lot to Ruin. Kelsier kept trying to use Preservation’s powers in ways that were against its nature, keeping these attempts from being effective. In contrast, Vin used Preservation’s power deftly both because of her Connection and because of her nature and the way she tried to use that power for protection rather than destruction. Taravangian, on the other hand, was an excellent fit for Odium. He was having one of his high-emotion, low-intelligence days, making him ripe for passion. He was raging about having just been slain, filling him with hatred. Even if we can’t be sure of Taravangian’s status in regards to the three realms, or how long dead he was, we can be sure he was a better fit for his Shard in that moment than Kelsier could ever have been for Preservation.

Huh, I must be pretty slow. I had assumed it was only the personality change he was trying to hide – the fact that he wanted to know who Hoid would pick as champion, when Rayse wouldn’t have cared. I thought the rewording was an attempt to sound more like Rayse after resetting the scene in order to keep Hoid from wondering who he was (which means knowing the Vessel has changed). However, it makes more sense that this is also an attempt to remove any hint of something Hoid could use.