Greywatch

I think we fundamentally disagree on the truths and what they mean, and it's really late, so I'm going to leave this here. Needless to say, being scared of the truth that she is scared is a tautology and I would find that to be so meaningless, it would ruin the Ideal system.

This is a miscomprehension. In English, native speakers use "they" to be vague and non-specific, meaning it is clear that Brandon is firmly not telling us anything. They can also mean singular. It is a gender neutral way of saying "someone".

Yes, and that has already happened. Shallan is terrified that she is a monster and that everyone who really gets to know her will see this. She was scared of letting Adolin in for this reason, but facing her fear, she did it anyway. Adolin accepted her, Shallan conquered this fear, and now Adolin is a safe place for her, hence, no more need for fear with him. I agree, there were steps, and they were followed.

Facing her fears does not mean needing to be scared of them all the time, that'd be so cruel. People can't work through anything when they're living in terror. Moving past the fear is a great sign that she's truly conquering that Truth.

Why should she have to be terrified all the time? She's so scared all the time, she shouldn't have to continue to feel terrified all the time to progress as a Knight, that'd be terrible.

You know, I've never had surf and turf... I should try and find a place where I am.

Personally speaking, Dalinar is my favourite character. Adolin and Kaladin have been close before, but Dalinar always wins, after Oathbringer. I identify with him a lot. OB is when I knew I loved him. It was a fantastic feeling at the end for me, very powerful experiencing Dalinar's arc throughout the three books so far. Brandon has a plot for him to follow up through SA4 and 5. I didn't even notice word count because his scenes were so powerful and interesting to me. I truly believe he's going to have an extremely satisfying arc in the future. There's no way Brandon would bring up what he did and not follow it up. Word count is not important to me, because he did what he did with Dalinar's story in OB. It was a very good use of words and scene count. He doesn't need to be the main character to be valuable - and no one is the main character. Kaladin isn't and Shallan isn't. The back five books are going to mix things up, and the focus characters for the first five could all still be around, or none of them. Brandon has been clear about that, and based on what Brandon has actually said, verifiably, that it's possible Kaladin and/or Shallan could die, too. It's one thing to believe that Dalinar is going to die. But it just seems like you are purely ignoring what Brandon has really said to create a version of his words that he never did say.

@LerasiumMistborn Eshonai is still getting her story told in SA4, even though she's dead.

@LerasiumMistborn You did post twice in a row, and I did merge them both together. In the future, if your post is the last one in the thread but you still have more to say, please edit your post and add on to it instead of posting again in a separate comment. Also, it does sound like you are stating facts. The problem is, even though you feel very sure, it's going directly against what Brandon has said. We can all feel however we want, but we don't get to say that it is going to happen. We don't know. Please make it more clear when it is your opinion and provide back-up for your claims. If there is no back-up, nobody can trust that it is real, so we have to assume it is not true. It is okay to think that Dalinar is going to die. It's less okay to make claims that it's for sure going to happen with no evidence. Edit: I'm excited to see you making public the WoB you were talking about earlier!

Shallan's problem with her truths is that she isn't ready to actually face them. She's prone to dissociation and related when someone reminds her of the trauma she experienced. She needed to admit the truth, but the truths that she was using for her Ideals were things that she had suppressed. Bringing those up out of her traumatized repression meant that she had to deal with it when she wasn't dealing with it before. Though it seems that she's falling apart, it's actually an improvement on her full-on repressing it. The initial impact of her remembering is the split personas from the intense self-hatred, but she would always have to work through this to progress. So tl;dr, she's remembering the truth but hasn't internalized it yet; hence, she's still catching up on where her powers should actually be, but she is progressing.

That's definitely much different than how I read it! And definitely quite different from what I found disappointing about OB, so I have nothing that will contribute to this thread on that topic. Anyway, I'm trying to think of more besides the existence of the love triangle and the lack of Szeth and Jasnah scenes, but I think other than that, I'm pretty okay... Szeth and Jasnah scenes can always be had in later books, it's just I don't have them here now.

Mm, relatable, I was disappointed the love triangle happened at all. What I wish for SA4 and beyond is a different topic, so I'll leave the rest of it quite alone, I just hope Brandon's intention becomes more clear in hindsight.

Well, I mean, that was perfectly in line with the goal of the thread. Right now, it doesn't necessarily matter what's going to happen, just what's happened. @galendo Of everything in your post, I 100% agree about Shallan. I went from really liking her in WoK, and by the time we got to OB... I'm going to be honest, if I wasn't reading it on my phone, I probably would've thrown the book at times.

To be honest, there felt like a lot of very important scenes that didn't get done. I know Brandon said he couldn't land the first reunion of Jasnah and Navani, but that felt important to me. Jasnah and Kaladin meeting for the first time, or really, Jasnah interacting with any of her family more. But at least we did get her and Renarin at the end. The lack of reaction around Szeth feels the most egregious to me, and very serious in my opinion. I imagine there were a lot of cuts/things Brandon just couldn't fit in OB, so altogether it paints the picture of Brandon only doing the essentials.

I'd like to clarify a few things. We hid a lot of posts discussing a WoB about Dalinar dying - there was some supposition that it was confirmed. It isn't confirmed, but either way, we would've hidden the posts. Sometimes Brandon does share things privately with some fans, and sometimes he shares things one-on-one that can be made public. There are these sorts of WoBs that are put on Arcanum. If Brandon wants something to remain private, he asks the person in question not to share it. These types of WoB are not put on Arcanum. Regardless of which kind of WoB this is, Brandon is very cautious about how much he shares about future books, and especially the back five books, of which we know almost nothing. Nobody knows which characters are going to survive, and even if we feel sure, it is inappropriate to authoritatively state what is going to happen across the series.

Ohhhhh, gosh, I have so many. I tried looking for some Syl banter because she has some of my favourite dialogue in the books, but I'm still searching for something I can point to as, aha!, you know.

A very big part of the reason that I hate the trope is that trauma, especially sexual assault, is used as a replacement for complex character writing for women. I've been turned off of so many stories because the only explanation of a woman's character or backstory is "Oh, she was assaulted. That's why she is the way she is." It comes off as a thoughtless throwaway instead of exploring a female character's story. I personally don't find it complex or interesting at all; I'm pretty sick of seeing it when the stories are not equipped to handle the specific kind of trauma recovery that is sexual abuse, and that's most of them. This is not a knock against Brandon - in fact it was a total relief to get the idea that nothing happened to Jasnah for her to be this way. I know plenty of women who are like her and there is no traumatic reason as to why they aren't interested in men or relationships. It is not inherently more complex or realistic to require a traumatic event to have a woman be this way. Sexual trauma is just not the same thing as other trauma and I'm leery when I see anyone attempt it, even a writer like Brandon whom I trust.

Hey all, I'd just like to remind everyone that full book spoilers are only allowed for Stormlight in the Stormlight section. Please take care to note spoilers for other series and put them in a spoiler box (the eye symbol in the text editor). There are certainly people who haven't read all of Brandon's books here.

I strongly hope that is not the case. One of the reasons I like Jasnah so much is that she appears to be firmly atheist and uninterested in men/marriage without an apparent trauma. It's just so common to have the trope that the way to make a strong woman is to traumatize her, so I'm very much invested in Brandon not writing it like that.

I want to see where Rlain went! What has he been up to...

Anyway, I do have a lot of words in me about why I like Adolin and I was thinking about writing a long post about him in one of the various topics, but here's a short version for now. I've loved him since WoK, and his relationship with Dalinar has always been one of the most engaging things about his character. (The bit where at the very end of WoK and Sadeas has just betrayed them and Adolin has to say, "I told you!" and Dalinar just yells back, "Okay, I KNOW!" never fails to make me laugh.) He's just a warm, friendly guy who really likes people and people like him back. He's easygoing, he can and does win people over just by being That Nice. His and Kaladin's relationship going from "ehhh I don't like or trust that guy" in WoK to the way they thought about each other so admiringly in OB has been one of the most satisfying developments in the books for me, and I'm so excited to see where that goes next (I ship it!). He loves his family a lot, and they are clearly his most important relationships, and that's started to expand to cover new Kholin and Kholin-adjacent people - Shallan and Kaladin and hopefully soon some Bridge Four folks. He has a lot of heart and willingness to reach out to people, and it's such a great trait of his. Him and Jasnah seem very similar as they both evidently care greatly about the safety of their family and are willing to go to lengths to protect them. And him and Maya is very, very sweet. Not a lot to say now except that I'm very excited for their developing relationship.

Ha, being honest, in the lead-up to OB, I 101% thought this was gonna happen. I'm still not totally certain it's not gonna happen, haha.

No worries! I'm just glad it was helpful

@Sedside I'm not sure where I ought to post a guide, because merging double posts seems to be my main job these days ;P but essentially, click "edit" on the previous post you've just made and it will reopen the same text editor. The plus sign is the multi quote button and that's how you can quote multiple people in the same post. If you are editing in a new response or you want to quote multiple things from the same person, then in the editor, there is this button " which will create a quote box, which you can then paste text into. (It even has a "remove formatting" button once you paste things in so it matches the forum formatting without having to do anything wonky.) It's one manual step more than the quote buttons but still very easy to use. The " button saves my life, haha

Just as a for-your-information, the broad term of shipping can include canon and non-canon relationships. Here's a fun article on the origins of the term: Article~ (Warning for possible cursing.) Everyone definitely has individual ideas about what counts as shipping, but the understanding in the broadest terms across all fandoms is just that it's a relationship you care about and are relatively enthusiastic about. Most people would consider Shalladin and Shadolin to be ships. Also Dalinar/Navani, Kaladin/Adolin, Kaladin/Renarin, Jasnah/Kaladin, Shallan/Renarin (all things I've seen art and fanfic and enthusiastic discussions about), as well as getting into silly "crackships" like Jasnah/Lopen. They all count, and it doesn't either legitimize or de-legitimize anything.