AsherCrane

Sylphrena/Kaladin ship.

RPG spoilers:

Honestly, same. I was hoping the oaths would go up on Coppermind, but some are still missing.

I can't quote exactly, but according to the coppermind and my own recollection, Honor claimed that Devotion was the shard of Divine love and compassion.

For me personally, I can't quite put myself on Mattel's scale because I do have strong convictions about gay relationships, but I'm also not overly vocal about it (unless asked, like this particular thread did). I understand that most people believe strongly enough in whatever conviction that trying to argue or debate them is an exercise in futility. Having said that, I do get why Renarin and Rlain were in the book. Gay people exist, and it's fair to say a fictional world would not be as human without them. I won't say I need them to be main characters, but I'm also not biased toward that, so of course I would. I knew there would be gay romance in the book, so as with anything else I don't want to read too much of, it was a matter of thresholds to me. With little enough, I'd still have bought it. With some more, I still finished it. (I didn't buy it, but Renarin and Rlain were very much not the only reason for that by a long road.) And if there was enough to make me uncomfortable enough, I'd have put it down and been done with the series. It didn't reach that, so I intend to continue the series.

Not sure if we have onscreen, but Glys took the form of a blade offscreen to operate the Oathgates.

This one in particular I also found really cool. I'm happy they didn't end up as just big, one-note creatures.

Fanstic question. Some of the ones I recall really liking were definitely Kaladin, Nale, and the Wandersail for 1, and 2. I really liked the scene where Szeth finds tthe sheep toy and breaks down, with Kaladin realizing Szeth is closer to Tien than himself. I know this last one will be controversial, but I honestly loved Kaladin standing up in the midst of feeling Ishar's darkness. Don't get me wrong, the writing was not fantastic to me there, but the soul of that scene felt like a dramatic and proper climax to his arc.

On the other hand, Ruin explicitly was willing to preserve some things to create greater destruction. Terrifying to think that Mercy without Devotion (Which Honor described as Divine love and compassion), could be one massive savior complex that creates problems specifically to save people from it.

Technically untrue on 2 accounts. 1. Inaction can certainly lead to punishment. One could argue that it does so less often perhaps, but not enought to say not trying is the surest way to avoid it. 2. Mercy is the deliberate forgiveness of punishments, not just a lack of suffering. Without punishment or suffering, there would not be more mercy, mercy would not exist. Going with Ambition would the surest way of finding people who need Mercy to save them from their ambitious screw-ups.

True. I suppose my argument was more against Oltux saying Gavinor deserved death as though the guy specifically chose to betray humankind out of malice toward humanity itself, rather than making an argument against whether or not Dalinar had moral stance to kill him. Edit: Actually, to add onto this... it was pointedly one person, not even humanity who did this. And unless he had children before he died (which is possible, idr), Melishi's line might not have even lived past that.

Ignorance? All it would take is Taravangian convincing Gavinor that his way is more noble and helps the most people (a fact Taravangian himself believes, so it's not even a lie), and showing him only the things that would reinforce the idea that Dalinar was actually worse for *everyone* than Taravangian would be. With the right spin, (easy enough with complete control of Gavinor's whole situation), Gavinor could easily end up with the belief that this is better for all of mankind. Do you believe Gavinor needs to die for only seeing half the picture, framed in such a way that he has no idea half the picture is even missing?

Technically, a child was raised to think he father was a monster, and that he'd gain Alethkar if he killed Dalinar. Raised from a very young age to think that way, and only shown what would reinforce it. As far as he knew, he was saving Althekar from Dalinar.

As well as the fact that as far as I recall, all spren we have seen have been repeated or constant events. I could see there being a shatterspren, representing the concept of shattering, but not one for a single event like the shattering.

This is The Stormlight-only WaT board. This should be in the cosmere one, no? If returned are being discussed and such, I mean.

My reaction to WaT. First of all, I liked this book. Didn’t love it. Thought it could be improved, but I liked it. I’m going to break down general points, then specific plotlines. I’ll try not to be too long-winded. As far as general points go, I think Brandon tried to do too much between wrapping up several 1-5 character arcs and setting up new ones for 6-10. While I liked the base of pretty much everyone’s arcs, I feel like, by and large, nobody except maybe Adolin got enough room to breathe. The fast PoV switching made the story harder to follow, and whether or not it succeeded in giving the feeling that this was a fast-paced book, I feel like I want to separate it into 6 different plotlines and listen individually to get the full impact of any given storyline. As others have said, the modern language also drew me out of the story, and a lot of the humor really did not land with me. Specifically the Chull head joke, Kaladin being “racist” over 12124’s name, and the “I’m his therapist” one. A lot of it may be down to taste, but it felt worse in this book than others. Longer reactions spoilered to cut down space. Kaladin Szeth Szeth (Backstory) Side tangent on the Spiritual Realm Dalinar (and Navani) Shallan Renarin/Rlain Adolin Sigzil Primarily felt like it was meant to speedrun him into TSM position. Went way too fast. Aside from that, it also seemed to exist to make Moash do literally anything in this book. Honestly my least favorite in the book. Needed way more space. Venli Just kinda… there? I loved the chasmfiends part of it, and liked the trick to gain the listeners the shattered plains, but otherwise seemed to exist because Venli was important in other books. Jasnah No complaints. Flawless. As someone who didn’t overly like her or her philosophy since her lesson in TWoK, it was very satisfying. Other thoughts: Taln had more of a presence! I want more of him. Ever since I went through TWoK Prime, he’s been one of my favorite characters in the Cosmere, and I hope the canon one is similar (Based on the visions, seems possible.) I do not know why the Battah, Moash, or El chapters were there. These characters barely existed, and whatever repercussions they had feel like they could have easily been introduced in the second half of the series. Ultimately, I ended the book feeling like it should have been 2 books. One for the Spiritual Realm and Shinovar groups, and one for the battlefields. It would have given everyone the space they needed to breathe in their plotlines.

Worth remembering here, Kaladin doesn't know how to, and has not yet even attempted to, use any herald powers at the end of WaT. Also, though he can use it, he's not 100% competant with plate either. It straight up hindered him in the fight against Nale. Not saying this means Wax would certainly win, just something for people to factor in.

I think that what appears to be the case is really subjective here. When a friend of mine brought up Syl and Kaladin looking really romantic, I was honestly blindsided, because at no point was this what I read into their scenes. I was seeing two incredibly close people, sure, but nothing beyond that. To say that any honest examination must lead to the same conclusion you reached seems a bit presumptuous. As far as the main top of the thread goes, I've never personally been a fan of it. It's hard to argue moral grounds on an issue that currently exist only hypothetically, and I'd hope that if other sapient species did exist, the universe would be creative enough not to make them sideways humans, but it's never really been my thing. Elves and dwarves may be one thing, since they are just humans with slight ear and lifespan tweaks. Singers have carapace, skin patterened in inhuman ways, and the ability to completely change their physical form every highstorm. It's a step too far for me.

We do need to bear in mind, however, Kaladin does not know how to use those powers at the end of his book. During his fight with Nale, it was noted that he's not practiced or skilled with his shardplate, either, while Nomad has full experience with it.

Yeah, the reason I understood for not be able to summon the Stormfather was that, as the spren of the storm, it would cancel the storm for the time or something. I think all the stormfather said was that it would have "consequences," but that was my idea of it.

Have we seen proof the fused with progression can heal in the same way Radiants can? We haven't seen evidence any mistspren have been willing to bond listeners, there are currently no advanced enough radiants in Azir to perform it. On top of that, the only place we know that gets reliable stormlight is the shattered plains, and we have no evidence mistspren will bond listeners. It may be possible, but it seems very unlikely that it will happen before has adapted enough to make progression unusable on it.

We know for a fact that most Skybreakers and Dustbringers were on Odium's side during the war, so I had an interesting thought. Since the Spren are protected, could Retribution end up using the Skybreakers and Dustbringers in his new empire? Have the Skybreakers be his advanced policing force, and Dustbringers use their surges to his benefit? We know he can selectively send stormlight to the Listeners, so he could easily do so to the Radiants under him.

That's a good point, and I look forward to that bearing out. I will say, the book right before a 6 year break and the end of the second half seems a strange place to put it though, since we're not going to get a lot of development on it for a while.

I would argue that the text seems to be presenting them as positive, at least in books 1-4, because the characters were presented as having grown as a result of them. The characters, at least, seemed to see the oaths as positive, since no one I can recall resented swearing an oath. More than that, the more dramatic moments of swearing an oath were all presented to look like cathartic climaxes for the characters. When Kaladin swore to protect even those he hated to protect Elhokar for example, the book did not really present any regret or idea that it was poorly done, but portrayed it as a dramatic acceptance of a healthy thing.