Daishi5

On 1/12/2018 at 1:01 PM, Calderis said:

How have the linguistics been broken? We've seen Lyn's name in a male variant in Shallan father Lin, and Veden and Alethi are so close as to be considered dialects of each other. Yes, Kaladin sounded "like a lighteyes" name to a bunch of rural villagers, but we've seen two syllable names in the upper lighteyes before, how is May worse than that? We also know that the Alethi upper dahns are more likely to marry foreigners than anyone else so we can't even be sure that May's name is Alethi. 

If a name doesn't fit he does change it. For example, Moash is named after his editor Moshe. It's similar, but changed to fit the linguistic structure he has. 

Brandon's not going to break his stories for fan service. If this stuff hadn't blown up and gotten all of this attention it wouldn't be an issue. 

Edit: and to add to the Moash example, that's a perfect highlight of how a character being named after someone in real life has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what that character is going to do in the story. It's just a name drop, that will normally never be noticed. 

I disagree, as his editor Moshe has probably killed several of Brandon's darlings, the parallels should be obvious.

So if we have 3, and the Sibling is the spren of the stone, that would give us 3 godspren as the spren of the skies, the spren of the plants, and the spren of the earth.

Don't forget, when Adolin was stabbed, Maya attacked the fused.

Wow, I finally got something kind of right:

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Another theory I had on the discord about the Parshmen is that they don't have enough spren available to transform into forms of power, it took weeks for Eshonai to get ready for the major transformation in WoR.  I think we are seeing Parshmen transform based on whats mostly available in the region.  Alethkar is famously warlike, and we hear about what Kaladin thinks are warform Parshendi.  Azir is famous for having a giant bureaucracy and we see parshendi that can negotiate, Thaylen has Parshendi capable of stealing their boats and sailing away.  

Or at least Dalinar is just as wrong as I am, in which case he is doomed.

Just now, KidWayne said:

@Michael Portz I did that to show the inconsistency about the storms at the beginning of the story when compared to the end. I figured that it couldn't hurt to have the source material in a thread devoted to it, especially when that source material can be presented in 735 words. It's also why I put the source material in quotes that can be collapsed.

I'm a details guy. I never could summarize anything to save my life...

 

 

 

I think the "time before the storms" must have been in a place that either has no storms (another planet), or a place that is completely safe from storms, (shinovar.)  I think it is more likely another planet.  

I could go with one of the 10 deaths (or is it 9?) and this one is revenge?  If there are 10 deaths, could they be 10 corrupted mirrors of the Heralds and revenge is a corruption of justice?

Edit:  Not just revenge, but the "eye for an eye" revenge seems like it would be an Odium style of corruption of an ideal.

The wall story seems important, but many parts of it do seem to be modeled after the walls of Elantris.  A giant wall with stairs on the side to keep the "bad people in."  The "bad" people have white hair.  

However, the rest of it is different and I think those differences and the similarities are important.  

The similarities hint that the people who told the story knew about Elantris. 

The differences are harder to figure out what they mean.  In Elantris, the people inside the city knew they were being kept in.  Why do the people in Shallan's story not realize the wall keeps them in?  I like this idea that the story foretells that the humans are the bad guys.  I have felt that the Parshendi acted far to nobly in the Way of Kings for them to be the "bad guys."  (The twist that they are bad guys against their will does throw a wrench in it.)

What does the stealing of stormlight mean?  Did they steal actual investure or the ability to use it?

Also, Ryshadium choose their riders, but we know that Dalinar was not chosen until after he changed his ways.  He brutally abused his horse in this chapter while his opponent sent his Ryshadium away rather than risk it in combat with Dalinar.

5 minutes ago, dantlee said:

Are we absolutely sure Adolin didn't intentionally cockblock his rival by dropping that knowledge bomb on Shallan?  

Adolin is just REALLY bad at intrigue.  Which is going to be a big problem for him, with even Amaram agreeing to be tried for murder by Dalinar, Adolin will have to be punished when he lets his secret out.

The story about the girl and the wall feels like it tells us something important about the past. 

I think maybe when the first humans came, and the girl is the first person to bond with a spren.  "Stealing" the ability to bond from the listeners.  We know they feel betrayed by the spren.

I also just keep feeling that the Humans are really not good people, especially when compared with the listeners.  The blackthorn chapter is a great example.

Dalinar saw red again while fighting and just slaughtering the enemy.  Voidbringers are supposed to have red eyes.  I really think parshendi are not the only ones who can become voidbringers.  

I think our voidspren is something like a vengeance or revenge spren. 

• It wonders if Kaladin is willing to fight for them.  I see it as looking at him like a tool for its plans. 
• It is willing to follow plans and work towards a long-term payoff.  
• It has hints of meanness in insults but mostly controls them.

It basically feels like a spren of the long-term suppressed hate.  The Parshmen have good reasons to want vengeance and that seems like the spren type that would be closest to Odium and the Parshmen at the same time.

Just now, Agent34 said:

Potential stonespren and Shin appearance seems like too much of a coincidence considering how sacred stone is to the Shin.

Stone is also somewhat sacred to the Listeners.  Parshmen don't do much on their own, but when their people die they take the body out and leave it on the stone.  The Parshendi leave their bodies where they fall on the shattered plains, which is always stone I think, and they very strongly object to them being moved.    

1 minute ago, Ryder said:

The last line was a little confusing to me, what is the fresh, dangerous perspective?

Dalinar is considering going back to his warmongering ways and making everyone work together by force of arms.  Basically, unite them through war.

Will Kaladin get back in time to warn Dalinar that the Parshmen became people rather than voidbringers, or will Dalinar commit some horrible atrocity because he believes in the greater good?  Come back next week to still not find out.

We need to remember that you can ask the nightwatcher for things, but she gives you boons and curses that she wants to, you don't necessarily get what you want.

If the nightwatcher is cultivation, or even strongly related to cultivation, then a lot of Dalinar's changes from who he was to who he is today may be due to her influence. Dalinar used to be pretty bloodthirtsty and a might-makes-right kind of guy.  What ever they are, the curse and boon probably helped separate him from his past belief in power as the source of legitimacy and helped him become a bondsmith.  

So here is a theory.  He went to the nightwatcher for help with Renarin.

His boon:  the nightwatcher directed a spren to bond with and guide Renarin.

His curse: the nightwatcher blocked whatever memories would get in the way of him becoming a Bondsmith.

It is important to note that in this theory, Cultivation is not necessarily being nice or kind to Dalinar by making guiding him to be a bondsmith, she is "growing" him into what she needs.

12 hours ago, Calderis said:

Or 4) (and I like this one better than the stormlight one, because Stormlight healing him seems... Ridiculous) his memory loss had some condition attached to it which he's met and is coming back naturally, independent of anything to do with him being a Radiant. 

Or 5) Urithiru is located just north of the Valley. He's in close enough proximity to the Nightwatcher that she has, for some reason, decided to remove her gifts. 

We have no evidence for anything yet so these are just as plausible as the others. 

6) something to do with his being bonded in marriage by the Stormfather has affected him.  

Their oaths don't seem like they would have affected it, but I think swearing oaths in front of him, while partially in the cognitive realm (or whatever was happening in that scene) is a big event involving powerful investure.  It also happened between his last failure to hear Evi's name and the scene where he heard it, so it fits in the timeline.

7 minutes ago, kiapet said:

I think a fact missing here is that the Parshmen were always people. Just because they were of low intelligence does not mean they should have been treated like livestock, with families broken up for breeding purposes, ect. We have definitive proof that the way the Parshmen were treated was severely emotionally scarring, and they had no way to fight back as they were mentally and spiritually crippled. Kaladin got yelled at this very sequence of chapters for assuming that the only reason the Parshmen were deserving of basic human rights is they had back their ability to communicate and act like "normal" human beings. 

And let's not act like their enslavement was some sort of benevolent attempt to keep them from dying; for the vast majority of Alethi culture, it was for economic profit, pure and simple. It's understandable that the Alethi didn't know how the Parshmen were feeling, but that does not erase the fact that the enslavement of the Parshmen was wrong, as the enslavement of an entire race of people will always be wrong. I feel like saying slavery is wrong should not be a controversial statement.

I don't know if there could have been a "good" way for the humans to treat the Parshmen.  The Parshmen were people, but they lacked not only the ability to make complex decisions on their own, they also lacked any real ability to communicate what feelings and desires they had.  In the WoK they go over how they are basically mute. From what we know, it seems the modern humans treat Parshmen as cattle, but valuable cattle. 

It is hard to come up with a good analogy so I will slaughter it anyway.  The Parshmen are like someone who has been drugged against their will, normally if you ran into someone who is on a bad trip, or just drank way too much, being a good person involves making sure they are ok ,keeping them safe, and getting them medical treatment until they recover.  The big problem with the Parshmen is that they never recovered. If the people who did this could have helped them recover and they didn't that is evil.  However, modern people don't even realize or have any way to know that the Parshmen have been "drugged".  The moral imperative for protecting a drugged person comes from understanding that someone has interfered with their ability to make decisions (usually to take advantage of that state.)  Modern people on Roshar have no way to know that the Parshmen are not themselves and that someone has done this to them, therefore they lack the information they needed to make a good decision.*

*Caveat: It is possible that the humans of Roshar have seen plenty of evidence that the Parshmen have feelings and they all just ignored it and it was never brought up in a way the reader knows about.  If the humans have just been ignoring the signs, then it strays more into the evil acts camp because they ignored the signs of what they were doing.

Dalinar's character has some influences from Mongolian history, and Ghengis-Khan is famous for recruiting one of his enemies because the enemy hit him in the neck with an arrow and admitted it to it when they asked the person to come forward.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebe

I don't think there is foreshadowing in the recruitment of Teleb, it is more a call-back to a famous moment in history.

4 hours ago, Calderis said:

She can't use stormlight to dull pain. It just heals. She chose not to heal the knife wound. That means she felt it. Veil is just... Kind of nasty. She thinks about her hand throbbing towards the end of that scene. If she'd drawn in Stormlight, the hand would have healed. There's no "just enough to not hurt" 

That isn't completely true, when Dalinar inhales stormlight the first time on screen in WoR, it heals his wounds partially because he only inhaled a small amount.  He goes on to heal completely by inhaling more stormlight towards the end of the scene.

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His arm felt fine now, and the cut on his side barely ached anymore.

Kindle edition pg. 1073

 

2 hours ago, Stark said:

I agree completely.  Seeing how close things get to the fire, or sometimes how deep into the fire, before they can be pulled back from the brink is part of the appeal.  Sometimes watching things slip over the edge mid series helps build to a better end.  Very rarely do I read something with the expectation that everything will go wrong, and things end worse than they began by series end.  And I feel Brandon is more the author to have things end well overall, if dramatically changed.

 

However, I don't think that Odium is the Cosmere's ultimate bad guy.  Roshar's maybe.  And he definitely is a Cosmere wide menace.  But he was named, and brought to be the face of the Rosharan conflict far too soon to be the ultimate villain.  It would begin to feel a bit tired if he were the villain for everything after this point.  So I think Odium, such as he is, will cease to be a villain after Stormlight is concluded.  We have the hints being dropped of the master manipulator Bavadin, Trell (maybe also Bavadin) and the possibility of something worse still beyond Odium in later books.  But Odium was unmasked far too early in the Cosmere as a whole to be the Cosmere's Dark one, and he is far too straightforwardly destructive for me to see him as the ultimate villain.

 

We do know that the shard, Odium, survives this conflict, but that it may change hands.  But I also have trouble seeing him as the Thanos, Darkseid, Galactos, Necros, or any other universe level villain you care to compare him to for the Cosmere.

 

Also, woohoo! Post number 300!

I don't know, he is literally a god of hate, driven to hate and create hatred among people.  Seems kind of ultimate villiany level there.

6 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

I am not all that great when it comes to the workings of investiture, so I am unable to debate the first part of your post more than I already have. 

When it comes to Dalinars character problems, his curse and boon has been a source of much discussion, his wifes identity has been kept secret for two books, and we can clearly see that his visit to the Nightwatcher haunts him. I would say it is a pretty big issue.

In addition Brandon has been giving us lots of PoVs for Dalinar yet he never even thinks about what his boon and curse are.  It's a pretty transparent trick, so he pretty much needs a big payoff to justify it.

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He’d lit it with four diamond broams, placed at the corners of the altar-like stone slab. This small room had no strata or paintings on the walls, so the Stormlight lit only him and that alien Blade.

1

So, it seems that not all of Urithiru has the weird strata.  Strangely the lack of strata makes it even weirder.

29 minutes ago, DSC01 said:

I've noticed that there is some interest in Dalinar's returning memory (perhaps that's something of an understatement ). I think that how it happened is explained in the very next chapter, when Syl says:

And that, on a much smaller scale, is exactly what happened to Dalinar. The Nightwatcher ripped off a tiny piece of his soul, broke his Connection to Evi and her memory. The precise mechanism of the healing may remain a mystery (for example, did it happen because he was holding Stormlight when Navani said the name this time, and the Investiture flowed into the wound as it was thus revealed?), but I think we have a general answer to the "how" of it in the restoration of the parshmen.

As to the fear that Odium is somehow involved, I think it significant that Syl only says, "Power has filled the holes"--power, not Odium's power. In other words, Investiture. And Investiture is Investiture. If Odium's Investiture can Heal something, then so can Stormlight, even if it needs to take another path to do it. 

The problem with this theory is that Dalinar was out in the Everstorm the first time and it passed by before his marriage.  When he talked to Navani after those two cases, he still heard shshshsh.  I can think of two things that happened after he heard shshsh the last time and when he heard Evi.  He got married by the Stormfather, and he put on the painrial watch.  

I am betting on the Stormfather's marriage bond being the likely cause, but the painrial is a possibility.  

Just now, Toaster Retribution said:

You guys are losing me here. Who got stabbed (other than Sadeas)?

Shallan went looking in that area because she heard of the stabbing, then she found out that the murder people were talking about was a strangling which had a duplicate.