Greywatch

I don't think I agree. The minorspren involved seem too important to the process, and it strains credulity that Kaladin and Dalinar attracting windspren and gloryspren in such volumes is irrelevant, plus the WoBs on the significance of the lesser spren to Plate... It's just too much to get over until we see it in canon. All that we can tell is that the nahel bond doesn't involve them, or at least doesn't involve them in the same way we see with the higher spren. The relation between the Radiant spren and their lesser cousins being attracted to Radiants who are approaching their next oath seems really important! Even if Plate isn't literally made up of the relevant lesser spren, they must be somehow part of the process.

Do you mean the part where Kaladin and Syl would be a heterosexual couple or the part where he's written canon gay characters like Drehy and Ranette into his books?

@Ookla, the Incalculable I guess it's true that we've never seen it happen except with voidspren... Okay. I buy it. I still would really like to see a non-Odium kind minor spren interact with a human this way in the canon text, but until then...

The ability to look past our gut feelings/instinct to engage with an argument in good faith notwithstanding... there are ways to disagree with other people that are less prone to escalation. Calling someone ignorant and demanding that others engage in debates the way that you like is more conducive to causing fights than actually moving the discussion ahead in a productive way. With this topic especially, tensions are already a little higher than in other threads, and it would be helpful if we all were more conscious of our tones rather than less. The standard of debate only lowers when we get heated and start sniping at each other.

I really dig this - I also was dead sure there was no way for humans to connect to minor spren in such a way. In your example of angerspren, following this up, I'm not sure that an angerspren would actually have an effect on the human's anger; that voidspren were a special case having a special ability to affect humans in a way that most minor spren cannot. It might be a special thing that might be specific only to voidspren. I don't really have quotes from OB to back this up... I don't know, thoughts?

I decided to take the quiz to see if it backed up my thoughts, and it actually gave me Bondsmith?? ... I need to mull that over.

There's a lot to dig into in the books for these two, a lot of meaningful growth and interaction between them, and there's a lot of relevance they have to each other. It's just sort of funny and sad... a ship's canon-ness or lack thereof doesn't contribute to its legitimacy in most fandom corners of the internet; I actually find it a shame folks feel it's necessary to base all their arguments around whether it'll happen or not. But I guess that's a total paradigm shift from other species of theorizing Sanderson fans end up doing - it's just that (a) digging into the text to try and prove that a ship might become canon and (b) shipping are two totally different animals. I just know that I'd really love to hear your thoughts, and I'm sure there are at least a few others who would have fun with that discussion, too!

Heyyy, if you ever wanted to write up that kadolin essay, I'd sure love to read it!

There's also: 4. Adolin, if only.

I think... it's a huge problem to judge morality by relativity/scope. Amaram operated on a smaller scale, but comparing his injustices to Dalinar's "larger" ones only makes it seem as though it's less of a big deal that Amaram murdered his own men for no reason other than they were witnesses - and then didn't feel an ounce of guilt about it afterwards. Sadeas, forget the word guilt, he practically seems proud of the fact that he gets to kill and waste darkeyes lives with the casualness he does. Dalinar has no one to make penance to except the dead, which makes his form of restitution difficult. The heads of state of those he affected seemed able to make some peace with him. Dalinar's path of restitution, it seems, is taking him along a journey where he stands for all people and can use the power he built up by doing evil, towards something righteous instead. Amaram and Sadeas had multiple opportunities to make restitution. They refused. They refused to try and make any restitution with the survivors of their crimes, they refused to accept they did anything wrong in the first place. They deliberately rejected any and all options they had to make things right. Dalinar and Szeth do admit that they did some incredibly evil things, facing down without flinching that they are responsible. So that's one thing. Not only admitting it, but they felt sincere grief and anguish over what they had done; I don't think feeling bad absolves anyone of anything, but it does make me feel better about them as a person, and I think this leads into direct action to fix things. So that's two things. Three - attempts at restitution. For both Dalinar and Szeth, I'm not sure there is any real restitution: we know of very few surviving family/friends of their victims. (Ironically, Dalinar is one of the people Szeth might have to make things right with, as Dalinar is a living family member of one of Szeth's.) Both Dalinar and Szeth have decided to live in a different way from the way they did before, intentionally choosing to not do the wrong thing again and living by a better code. I think Szeth juuust started this by siding with Dalinar and co. at Thaylen. I think he has so much farther to go (he still has his viewpoint book coming up!), but I do think he's started. In the way that I accept redemption arcs, Dalinar and Szeth are doing it all right; whereas in my take Amaram and Sadeas are 0 for 3 and if I never hear how they weren't that bad ever again, it'll still be too soon.

Ah, this. Part of this stems from my own frustrations with her, but it's not out of lack of desire to like her. I feel like any main female character is going to be subject to more unfair scrutiny and vitriol than any male main character, but that she also has a mental illness... I think she will get there, though, I really do. As I said in the syladin thread, lots of fun to be had in the non-canon spaces! Ships really don't depend on how canon they are, this is a very 17S specific idea that ships are dead if they aren't canon. Kadolin is a very popular ship in other cosmere spaces on the internet, and not a word about how it's not going to happen. We know it's not going to happen - doesn't mean it's not a fantastic ship! My own fervent otp pairing.

That is the truth. But then there's fun in the not-canon spaces, too! Oh, shoot, you're right, you're right...! It's funny because as soon as I read that, I remembered having an opinion on Adolin's opinion - it was funny because nobody had really commented on Syl's... like, relative attractiveness before? I mean, Kaladin is always observing her and her presentation (and honestly, his opinion of it is so great/funny to read), but it was a little different to get the outsider's view by someone who'd never seen her before - and I guess it turns out she's pretty! (If you do find that Rock quote, I'd be interested! But I think I gotta crash now.)

Could the OB quotes mean that the perception of humanity shapes the possibility for the genders? So it might not necessarily be that Syl is female because people see her as female, but people see spren as like them, so most (human-borne) spren are born within the same gender spectrum as humans are. She was referred to as Daughter within the cognitive realm, so it seems like Syl was female before she entered the physical realm. Do you recall where she was called pretty? I actually don't recall, heh.

I think a Willshaper might be close - wish we knew more about them - but part of me wonders if I might not be a Releaser... These two based on their descriptions in WoR I thought might be close, but we still have a lot to find out about them!

I don't disagree, actually! It's just not what's on the table here. That's... really interesting, I had never thought of it like that, even being open to the ship. I had kind of always assumed Syl's outward appearance in the physical realm was all in Syl's control just as a reflection of how sapient/conscious she becomes. Gosh, now I think I'm gonna look and see if there's a WoB on this... Edit: OKAY! https://wob.coppermind.net/events/60-firefight-san-francisco-signing/#e6834 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/2-jordancon-2016/#e233 This is about what I could find specifically on Syl's appearance. Both of these are pre-OB, so... I'm going to go on a little limb here and say that her ease in passing for a young human woman in the cognitive realm means that it's her og, automatically-drawn-to form.

I see what you're saying, but I feel like that's splitting hairs when that's not the first thing anyone ever thinks of when they hear the word. Even in those discussions, people would avoid using the word bestiality, because the first thing that comes to mind when it's used is "non-sapient animal", and I don't think it applies to Syl. I think most people here would agree it doesn't apply to Syl. It just sort of feels like using the worst possible applicable word to shame the op/people who like the ship.

There's nothing wrong with discussing a ship, and any comparison to bestiality or incest when Kaladin and Syl are both thinking beings not related to each other is a bit uncalled for.

This part I have to disagree with. Shallan is both more mature for her age and struggling because she's been through trauma and has had to be the pillar of emotional support for her siblings - many younger people who've gone through trauma seem older than they are.

Dreamstorm, I can't convey enough how much I agree with you. I was just saying earlier in PMs that in OB, all we've seen is that one source of an external consequence for Adolin is now gone, but there are still internal consequences to come. Dalinar knows, and though this might change what Dalinar thinks about him, he doesn't seem that angry or upset either. I'm not discounting what Ialai might do! (I honestly expect more and real external consequences from her party, especially now that she has very little power from the Sadeas forces and might turn more to the Ghostbloods!) But I also think that now that Adolin is worrying less about what his father thinks, he might now have more time to really let it sink in and reflect. Just because it ended sort of lightly at the end of OB doesn't mean it's over, and I'm with you - I think there's more to come for Adolin's internal consequences. Personally, I strongly disagree with the conclusion that because Adolin was angry and hated Sadeas means that murdering Sadeas was somehow less moral than what we've seen other characters do. We've seen lots of... different ways of being moral, to put it gingerly. Personally, though I like Szeth and find him very compelling as of OB, I think what he did was way less moral than Adolin killing Sadeas. Szeth knew it was wrong and evil, he felt bad, but he still kept doing it. To me, this is a much less defensible position than Adolin acting in anger, thinking about it, and though his emotions were in the wrong place at the time, coming to the conclusion that he doesn't regret it. For my part, I'm just so relieved that Sadeas is dead. Adolin snapped in anger, but he still prevented a great deal of pain and trouble for his family, and was proud to have defended his father. That I can get behind.

Colour actually has little to do with it. There are darkeyes who have green eyes or blue eyes, it's just that nobody can tell unless the light hits their eyes at the right angle. So colour would matter much less than the lightness of the colour - is it a dark hazel or light hazel? Dark blue or light blue? Etc.

I'm kinda expecting more from Szeth and Lift now; they did a lot in the battle at Thaylen.

Both things are true. Caucasian folks - or, you know, just white people, do lack the epicanthal fold, and thus, look "bigger". But looking the most like a white person doesn't mean that the Shin would look white to us - just moreso than any other race on Roshar. Here's the relevant WoB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/190-rfantasy-ama-2013/#e4079

There's no indication that he believes he thinks not doing a good job is because it will harm his family's reputation. You read that in the text, but it's not there. And that is not the textual reason they "let" Jasnah be queen. Jasnah was - presumably! - asked to be queen because Adolin refused. If it was because "she obviously will do a better job than him" then they never would've let Adolin have the opportunity in the first place, they'd have made plans for it to be Jasnah right from the start. And this is totally an aside, but it may be the case that Jasnah will step down when Gav comes of age, but there is no "Regent" in my copy of Oathbringer when Jasnah is introduce as the ruling monarch of Alethkar.

They're not Asian in the sense that they're from Asia - and certainly no one in his books is from Earth and is going to have an ethnicity that we point to and go, "Aha! You look exactly like [insert nationality/ethnicity here]!" It's never going to be a 1:1 correlation. That said, everyone on Roshar except for the Shin do have epicanthal folds and the Alethi have that and are brown - I imagine that's where Brandon is drawing the Arab/Asian connection. (And I mean, not for nothing, but India is considered Asia too by a large majority of the world.)

@Dreamstorm I gotchu. I think editing them in should work, but I guess I'd need to try it myself to figure out the steps. Edit: Also I merged the posts before I read them in full, so after that I've gotta say I really like that. I don't think that's the full picture of Adolin, but that's the kind of analysis I love. I think I wanna write at least a partial response/chip in to it; I'm working on a post for that Adolin topic, I may fold it in. Very very neat.