Elena

On a less dark take for the Parshendi/human interbreeding thing, does it mean that Horneaters and/or Herdazians could potentially achieve Stormform, or something like it?

I’m a new fan of the Way of Kings and I’ve been enjoying the story thus far however I have been finding some problematic  elements in the book that have been making me feel uncomfortable. As a young Indian woman who has had to deal with colourism all her life I had hoped to escape those feelings of inferiority when I picked up this book. The fact that the general populace of dark-eyed people feel the need to join the war and risk death so as to have a shot at becoming light eyes is a mockery of the struggle people of colour face in the real world where the only option is to assimilate or risk being cast out.

 

I have enjoyed certain aspects of the book I also feel it'd be disingenuous to continue reading. Whilst I realise that ultimately this is just a fantasy book, I believe that such views are poisonous to society. 

Hi Dalia! Thank you so much for writing this. It was extremely enlightening. You should know I am absolutely one of those people who thinks narrative doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that the 'it's fantasy' line doesn't excuse authors for writing things we would define 'problematic'. I'm very much against the spreading of harmful ideas under the 'it's fiction!' cover. However, this is absolutely not the case.

 

Do correct me if I'm wrong, but from this post I gathered it's not so much the racist elements in the book that bother you (okay, fantasy classism, but we all know what it's a metaphor for) but rather the way the society is structured is such a way that the major achievement for darkeyes is to *become* lighteyes, thus fully embracing the discriminating divide, and so on. You're right, is completely disturbing. It's also an excellent metaphor for some really ugly RL issues AND, most importantly, later on it is handled really, really well. Yes, I might be biased, being a fan et all, but I found the way the issue is discussed later on extremely thoughtful, because every hint of 'fiction as social commentary' really gets me going and here it's very well done.

 

There is a quote in the series later on, if you keep going, where one character says, "I don’t want my life to change because I’ve become a lighteyes. I want the lives of people like me, like I am now, to change." That's a) A pretty good summary of the way this issues is dealt with in the books, at least so far. It might even get better later on. Something that really hits home c) Really good advice, just substitute 'lighteyes' for whatever RL issue you're dealing with at the time. (BTW, there's no quantifying how much I love that entire scene, which is probably quite possibly my favourite out of a series that's already pretty spectacular to begin with. My harcover just opens at that page by now.)

 

Anyway, I thank you again for writing this post. It's good to have discussions like these every once in a while. I hope you keep reading - let me know!

Words of Radiance, definitely. I love seeing all the characters we've come to know actually interact (...though obviously not realizing anything until the very end, as per every trope of the genre... thank you Kaladin.)

Also, y'know, size definitely matters when it comes to books. I'm firmly into team 'the longer the better'.

I can't believe such a creature would have bonded a Rhysadium... If anything, we'll find out he bonded Gallant at the same time as Adolin bonded Sureblood.

 

This is now my favourite headcanon.

Did Gavilar ever bond a Rhysadium, I wonder?

Whoah, this was such a great chapter. I'm so glad we got to read it, and also incredibly curious about what comes after it. Why did Brandon stop here, if the actual chapter is longer? It could be nothing, but I'm also wondering if it means that some other mordern-Roshar characters will show up later on.

 

Also, on a side note, I really don't get why people in-universe compare Adolin to young Dalinar after reading this. Their attitudes are so completely different.

Just throwing this out here: what about Szeth killing Mr. T. with Nightblood now that he's no longer truthless? It's been foreshadowed a couple times now, both in Szeth's last WoK chapter and in Taravangian's WoR POV. Considering just how mad Szeth was at Dalinar for 'not dying quickly', he's bound to be furious at Mr. T. for everything he was ordered to do.

I also imagine that the ten orders probably between them have specific enough requirements that many of the people who could swear the First ideal couldn't become Knights. Some of these might be the auxilary surgebinders mentioned in the in-universe Words of Radiance, but I imagine there's others who could agree with the First Ideal but for reasons relating to their personality or personal history, can't fit in with any of the orders or their requirements for auxiliaries.

 

You know, I wonder if this wasn't like the 'Calling' in Vorin doctrine? I mean, already in contemprary Roshar you have a religion telling people to pick one thing they want to do and dedicate your life to it, and it's not much of a stretch that people maybe did the same when the Radiants were around - try to hone the one skill that would get them in the Order they wanted to join. It's not that hard for people to train yourself to approach the world in a certain way/ cultivate certain abilities. If it was common knowledge what traits it took to become a Radiant, I can see people trying to mold their way of thinking to fit the Order they wanted to join.

I don't get why people keep thinking that the heralds are darkeyes. Baxil's Mistress is described as having pale purple almost white eyes, definitely not dark, and she is the only "supposed" Herald I think the forums are in general agreement on.

I prefer to think that their eyes could be both dark or light. Taln's are brown, but it could be because he's not currently bonded to his Blade, because it's not actually Taln, or because rules are different for Heralds as opppsite to regular surgebinders. We don't know, no use making up a rule on such a small pool of characters - and it's not even proved they are actual Heralds.

As for Liss, IMO her eyes must be light or Jasnah would have remarked on the oddity.

So that we don't overrun the other thread, here will be the official thread for the church of the stick. I am a stick, you are a stick, we are all a stick.

The stick for all, all for the stick?

Kaladin is totally going to get a bottle of the stuff. Denial being a B., and all that...

"I will protect even those I hate"

Hating lighteyes on principle is no better than the other way around. Hopefully Kaladin will grow out of that.

For somebody who hates lighteyes, Kaladin sure is doing a whole lot of saving them...

And let's not forget that he'll be having self-image problems now, too. 

no debate, I was just kidding

Sadly, Worldhoppers seem to be doing important things at the moment, and likely don't have the time to slow down and hang around with people who aren't in the loop. 

 

You mean, like Vasher is busy telling Renarin to thrown himself off a building?

There was an awesome post on the Vasher = Zahel thread about the possibility that maybe Jenet, she of the awesome stone throw an the no-nonsense attitude, is none other than the equally awesome Vivenna from Warbreaker, since the simple thought of her being dead is unacceptable and Jenet is pretty much the only female character with screentime who isn't either 1) definitively not a world-hopper or 2) dead.

 

I thought it was a cute theory. Now, after writing this.... JUST IMAGINE how potentially great a Vivenna/Kaladin pairing could be.

if this was all that there was to it I might agree... but there was more to my post than just supposed personalities, something like timelines and in-text hints that make the possibility that Liss was using Szeth blade all but impossibile. Lets just agree to disagree.

snip

Okay, maybe I used the wrong word. 'Character', then. Tyn was a mouse - the kind of person who lives and thrives at the edges of society, never bold enough to actually expose herself. Just see how she handled the Jasnah situation - and that wasn't a fake persona, not where no one could see her. it was all her.

Liss seems to me all the opposite. She doesn't hide, doesn't scam or play tricks - she goes straight to the target and kills him off. 

 

These are two completely different ways to handle a situation, two completely different people. There's also the fact that 1) as I said, Liss surely has been in business for a while, longer than she had Szeth so it couldn't be his blade she was using, and she couldn't be a con artist. She was so sure of herself even *after* giving Szeth away. And 2) Tyn goes out rather easily against Shallan. Of course, she has a Blade, but as Adolin teaches us, a Blade is not much of an edge in close quarters. Had Tyn been a (former) trained assassin, Shallan wouldn't have had a chance. 

 

There's no way in hell these two are the same person, unless something completely drastic and traumatic and life-altering happened to Liss, something that made her into a completely different person, turned a confident assassin into an easily-scared hustler. The likeliness of this actually having happened, since it's the Stormlight Archive and not The Bold And the Beautiful, is low. I'll stick with my Occam's Razor and go with the simplest explanation. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and Tyn doesn't have to be an incognito hit-woman. She was plenty cool just being herself.

I posted about his in the topic regarding Jasnahs survival. I am of the opinion that Liss doesn't really have a Blade and was just using Szeth to do assassinations for her. Until she, like everyone else that used him, becaome disgusted/freaked out, and sold him.

This connected to my theory that Liss and Tyn are actually one and the same.

Jasnah talks to Liss like one would to an old acquaintance - and Szeth seems to be a fairly recent aquisition (he says himself that usually never stays with the same master for more than a few months). Liss has clearly been in business (where by business I mean: killing people gourging their eyes out) for far longer than that.

 

Also, she's IMO not the same person as Tyn - Liss's attitude is fairly different. She seems to be more self-assured and secure in her position in the world, while Tyn was a hustler, pure and simple - never took risks to endager her survival, never kept the same identity or did the same job for too long.

Yeah, but on the other hand it's hardly dishonorable to not want to die by accidentally falling into a chasm, no?

Agreed. I think the big nono was forcing the bond, not defending himself - had kaladin done the same thing *before* agreeing to help Moash, Syl and the Stormfather wouldn't have had problems with it.

I'm pretty sure that he did use stormlight, and it was what 'killed' Syl - since he forced their bond even while she had forbidden him access to his power, even if subconsciously. He basically panicked and desperately tried to use some stormlight - and it was the last straw that broke the bond.

My two cents.

snip

I love Occam's Razor, I love this, and I love you.

Nuff said.

There is one missing that we don't know about. Most of us assumed that one of the heralds went back and got their's

New crack theory: Liss is an Herald.

Apologies if this has been discussed already. That said:

 

Liss was the most skilled assassin Jasnah knew. [...] For one thing, nobody knew that the Weeper was a woman.

So, Liss is not only 'the most skilled assassin' Jasnah knows (which is already saying a lot, as she is well acquainted with many assassins) but also her gender is a closely-guarded secret, which means that not only has she never been captured, but that she has not even come close. No one has ever seen her during a hit, there are no former partners-in-crime who might expose her. (*)

This tells us that the Weeper most likely works alone, and always does an upstanding job.

Now, this might be a prof of enhanced abilities - agility, reflexes, stealth - but it's nothing particularly out of the ordinary, by itself.

 

But let's consider this.

 

It was said the Weeper gouged the eyes out to proclaim indifference to whether her victims were lighteyed or dark. The truth was that the action hid a second secret—Liss didn’t want anyone to know that the way she killed left corpses with burned-out sockets.

 

 

So, Liss did somehow get her hands on a Shardblade. We do know that the Blades are closely guarded and their history tracked through the owners. (**) And yet Liss has one. Where did she get it? Did she kill a Shardbearer for it? It seems unlikely, as women are physically less strong than men, especially in armor. She could have taken it from one of her first kills (or honeytrapped a guy, why not?) but a missing Blade would raise notice, especially if a few months later random bodies start showing up with their eyes gouged out. 

Unless she doesn't really have a Blade, but rather a bonded spren/ Honorblade

 

We have already seen Lift using her surgebinding abilities for personal, not completely lawful, reasons.. why couldn't Liss be the same?

 

(Of course, I have no idea whatsoever about a) the hypotetical order how she could conciliate the Ideal with her being an assassin and c) the kind of surges she might have access to, but if anyone wants to add a guess, by all means go ahead.)

 

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(*) I'll also hazard a guess that she was born darkeyed, before getting her hands on the Blade, because if she were somehow tied to a noble family... well, a brigthlady unmarried with no apparent social ties and sources of weath would raise rumors; which would reach Jasnah somehow. Yet she has no idea where Liss is from. 

 

(**) I know that there are less Blades than Plates around and I do have a pet theory that someone, most likely the Shins, has been hoarding them, but a secret stash of Blades somewhere seems like a unnecessarily complicated explanation, not to mention itself based on a theory which is nowhere close to being proven,

Why, Renarin's glasses obviously. They are single-handedly responsible for the insane amount of fan the guy gets, make him look smart and nerdy, and their sudden disappearance is obvious signal that something is changing about Renaring - since simple moodiness is something you tend to ignore, when you're used to Kaladin.

snip.

It's Renarin. 

I'm usually not big on correcting spelling, but the guy has an huge fanbase around here (I'll never really understand why ) and if you don't learn how to write his name properly the angry fans are going to eat you alive.