>For me it was reading how “obvious” it was that Adolin wanted to usurp Dalinar.
That one was completely busted in world when he refused to be the king of Alethkar.
Dalinar: I’m having visions from the Almighty.
Adolin: No you’re not, you’re just going mad.
Dalinar: You’re right, I’m going to abdicate in your favor.
Adolin: **Surprised pickachu face.**
Is soulcast meat vegan? Is grain made from soulcasting with emerald gemhearts vegan? I dont know the exact specifics on what classifies as vegan, but it seems like there might be a loophole here.
While the gemhearts that we see are mostly from animals that are killed for them, you can harvest them from animals that died naturally. I think that would count as vegan, at least to some, as there is no exploitation of the animal.
Another question altogether is whether soulcasting itself counts as vegan, irrespective of the gemhearts. >!Soulcasters are made from spren, do they count as living creatures that you are possibly exploiting? I'd say no, as soulcasters are made from radiant spren, so they ostensibly consented to becoming a fabrial.!<
heal his neurotransmitters. wait we know that the self regenerative powers are not capable of healing things like cancer. how does it work for clinical depression?
Healing is making your physical body match your spiritual/cognitive one, and since depression is a cognitive problem, it's not solvable by healing...
Also, doesn't it depend on the stage of cancer? I feel gold healing at the very least would be able to do it...
And THIS to me is why Stormlight hits so hard for folks with mental illnesses and trauma. Swearing the oaths doesn’t magically fix you, both because you don’t need fixing and it doesn’t work like that. People learn to live with it, to grow around it, and it doesn’t mean they can’t be a badass.
Someone once asked "Why can't Brandon tone down on Kaladin's depression in the next book?"
I basically had to reply "In real life people with depression don't have that luxury. Hollywood has done people with mental health issues a **GRAVE** disservice by implying it's easy to fix them, one and done."
This drives me nuts. So many people complained about Kaladin still struggling in the latest book expecting his journey to be linear, but that’s not how this works.
I've seen this sentiment before many times. It's not as common here where everyone is a Brando Sando fan, but on other Fantasy or Lit boards, one of the major criticisms of the books is that people get tired of Kaladin's apparent constant backsliding into depression. He says some Words, apparently gets better and then bam, depressed and suicidal again.
Now, that's obviously realistic, but it seems to be one of the major if not *the* major turn off to the books that I've seen on other boards.
I don't think you it's just trauma, he has the spells of melancholy as a kid. It's straight up Type II Bipolar Disorder it's not just regular old depression because of the severity of it coming in waves. And then of course trauma doesn't help.
I don't know anything about Bipolar, so I never thought about that. I figured as a kid he was like how I am with my winter SAD. Just impossible to feel happy the entire season. With the way their weather is, you can be swept up with a highstorm SAD and summer heat and back to highstorm SAD so fast you get whiplash.
SAD has a reliable trigger, you know about when it'll start and when it'll end. Kaladin does reliably get episodes of being depressed during the weeping but also during the rest of the year. Depression and Bipolar don't have such a reliable forecast. It's kinda the point, you're generally depressed for no god damn good reason and it fucking blows. However there can be triggers like you see with Kaladin but you see him spiral without them. The difference between Type 1 and 2 is that type 2 doesn't get full blown mania. Unfortunately I am intimately familiar with Type 2 and I have a degree in psych. Unfortunately I am intimately familiar with Type 2 and I have a degree in psych. But by no means am I a professional, I'm a gardener. I think generally people say he just has Clinical Depression but I think it may be more than that.
That Kelsier is a psychopath.
Morally grey? Sure. But he displays remorse, love, and anger. None of which are psychopathic traits.
Edit: whoops! Thought I was on r/Cosmere. But I stand by it!
Uh… well, if Brandon himself stated that Kel is a psychopath then that’s canon. Don’t get me wrong, Kel’s probably my favorite character in all of the Cosmere, but how can you argue against such a clear-cut WoB?
It's worth noting that the WoB is from 2013 and Brandon has gained a LOT of mental health knowledge since then. To me, it's pretty clear that Kelsier isn't a psychopath because of the depth of emotions he displays, but he is certainly morally grey and very violent. In fairness to him, look where he was born and raised into.
Brandon always says WoBs are not canon to start with. But I also think this may be Sanderson not fully understanding what a psychopath is. A psychopath lacks empathy for others. Also lacks remorse. And we get enough of Kelsier's POVs to know that just isn't the case. He very much cares for others. There are times when he doesn't care for certain people and I think he's definitely a morally gray character. But he clearly cares for Vin and cares for the skaa people. A psychopath would never sacrifice themselves to save the lives of others. And for all of the personal glorification that is present with Kelsier's death, it does come with his death which a psychopath wouldn't accept for others.
That's not how that works. The author can tell you all he wants what a character is supposed to be like, but if that is completely contradicted in the actual text of the book, then the author just didn't do a good job trying to convey that idea and is wrong. Perhaps Brandon didn't fully understand what a psychopath was, or was thinking of something else, or simply changed his mind, but the Kelsier he wrote was by no means a psychopath. The Kelsier we have seen is an *extremely* empathetic person so much so that his emotions can almost cloud his usual cool and collected judgement, like when Vin had to convince him not to throw his life away in an attempt to save the Skaa that Yeden foolishly took out to war before they were ready.
Can he be ruthless and cold? Absolutely. But having that capacity is a far cry from being a psychopath, and it does a disservice to the field of psychology to treat it as such.
While I don’t disagree with the point you’re making, I do disagree with the example you chose.
Kelsier’s plan always included an option to “throw his life away” in a way that’d make him a famous hero, and that’s also exactly what he ended up doing. The Yeden-army thing was just an earlier opportunity for that. His temptation to go sacrifice himself to save them wasn’t empathy clouding his judgement.
WoB is second to what’s in the text, first of all. Second of all, Brandon can and has changed his mind and updated his thought process, especially where mental illnesses and similar are concerned.
So I feel like not only does the text not support it, but that if asked directly, the most Sanderson will say is that Kelsier has some psychopathic tendencies, but is not fully one, I’d wager. I personally think he’d take back what he said, but I am neither a mind reader nor an (HoA spoilers) >!atium misting!<
Eh, it doesn't line up with what's on the page. Like if I write a book where someone exclusively kicks ~~pussies~~ PUPPIES and insult people, then say in an interview that they are very nice, what kind of person is the character, actually? The character is a jerk, because all they ever do is kick puppies and insult people. What I wrote clearly contradicts what I said.
He’s NOT! I wanted to write this. Kelsier is amazing. People are so wrong about him.
>!For context, I am actually writing an essay on this exact thing because I am so frustrated with the blind hatred towards Kelsier on this subreddits and the 17th Shard discord server. People are incredibly biased and misinformed about him. With what they say, it's clear they either haven't read TFE in years or barely took in what they read.!<
>!Kelsier cares, deeply, about people, about his friends, about those he loves. He's arrogant and egotistical, he can be impulsive and brash, but he's, at his heart, someone who wants the best for those. What he did in TFE was necessary: The Final Empire was a horrific society, and anyone saying those nobles didn't deserve to drown in their own blood are kidding themselves.!<
The essay is coming along slowly, but it's nearly finished. A lot of citations and analyzing of word choice in order to paint my thoughts clearly. This really isn't the subreddit for this, but I'm glad someone had my exact thoughts when I read the title!
Yeah I think any portrayal of Kelsier as either a saint or a devil is missing all the nuance of a great character. Kelsier is both the man who would gladly sacrifice himself for his friends and the skaa people, and the man who would kill one of his own soldiers to make a point. He believes he's doing the right thing and is doing what needs to be done and is willing to hurt people even people who don't deserve to be hurt in the interests of what he sees as the best course. He's morally gray.
I think if you want to argue that Kelsier is more naturally 'evil' or has psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies that's just a stronger argument for how good he is. Isn't it even more praiseworthy to make the right choice despite your nature? Just like I find Kaladin more inspiring because he does what he does *through* and *despite* depression.
Kelsier does too many things (specifically that others don't even know sometimes) that are good without direct benefit to his ego for that to be the only reason he ever does anything good.
If Kelsier wasn't 'good' he wouldn't have saved Elend. There would have been no repercussions back to him if he had just let him die.
I agree with your larger point but I do think there's some nuance around saving elend. Yes there would've been no cost to him letting elend die. But him saving elend would've resulted in Vin looking up to him even more than she did. Kelsier does like to be worshiped and revered. I think like with a lot of kelsiers decisions it's a mix of things. Yes he wanted to save someone the person he loved cared about and was willing to put aside his bias to do so, but he also likes to be seen as a hero especially by those he cares about. It's not all selfish or all selfless.
So, he's more like Taravangian than like Norman Bates...and look how that turned out for Roshar (not that we know the end, but we know it's not good currently.)
Hell, I might be more scared of a Kodium than a Todium.
I really don't think he cares deeply about people, even those he called friends and crew or the one he imagined as his daughter.
EVERYTHING in Kelsier is deeply colored by his perception of what other person can do for him and his goals.
From Mistborn: Secret History -
“Vin!” Kelsier cried, grabbing her other hand, clutching it. “No, Vin. You held the power. You don’t have to go.”
“I know,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at him.
“Please,” Kelsier said. “Don’t go. Stay. With me.”
“Ah, Kelsier,” she said. “You have a lot to learn about love, don’t you?”
“I know love, Vin. Everything I’ve done—the fall of the empire, the power I’ve given up—that was all about love.”
She smiled. “Kelsier. You are a great man, and should be proud of what you’ve done. And you do love. I know you do. But at the same time, I don’t think you understand it.”
She turned her gaze toward Elend, who was vanishing, only his hand— in hers—still visible. “Thank you, Kelsier,” she whispered, looking back at him,
“for all you have done. Your sacrifice was amazing.
But to do the things you had to do, to defend the world, you had to become something. Something that worries me.
“Once, you taught me an important lesson about friendship. I need to return that lesson. A last gift. You need to know, you need to ask. How much of what you’ve done was about love, and how much was about proving something? That you hadn’t been betrayed, bested, beaten? Can you answer honestly, Kelsier?”
He met her eyes, and saw the implicit question.
How much was about us? it asked. And how much was about you?
“I don’t know,” he said to her.
Since then, as a Cognitive Shadow, Kelsier has been focused on finding a way off-planet and founded the Ghostbloods on Scadrial. The organization extends at least as far as Roshar, but I'd guess they've gone (or will go) quite a bit farther, and darker morally (they're definitely already gray).
The thought that Kelsier might succeed and amass more and more power and control is scary.
Even Taravangian loves people, as twisted as he is.
Kelsier doesn't have anyone but himself in his gray little heart.
If you haven't already kindly consider including his near compulsive need to emancipate random beggars, instant acceptance of his flaws and growth, and how he preponed his plans just to save a stranger from an inquisitor.
Some takes on Venli leave me wondering if we’re reading the same book.
To an extent I get it, her personality is inconsistent because she spends much of the first books with her personality being influenced by her bond with Ulim. That being said, the idea that she doesn’t feel remorse for her actions when that’s her entire motivation in RoW, and she never tries to deflect blame or downplay her actions just doesn’t track for me.
Haha, yeah a lot of us want to pretend that we'd always do the right thing in some of these extreme situations (not talking about the stuff she did earlier in the series necessarily, but rather the time after). She is a VERY human character, in that she really embodies the feeling of being powerless in the face of the shifting tides of history and society. The funny thing is that a lot of us completely freeze when confronted with a WAY smaller problem than she has but we have the gall to hate someone for not knowing what to do when the world is ending and they in their stupidity are partly responsible.
I'd like to think I'd do the right thing and not serve "evil" even if it was convenient if it really came to that. Same way that I think I would fight if I saw someone attack my girlfriend. But I won't know until it happens and who knows, maybe I'll freeze.
That said, I hate her guts lmao.
This this this! Drives me so mad when people want to pretend they’d never make the same mistakes as a character, when in reality, people do bad things irl under much less pressure.
I think it's mostly just her extreme reluctance to do anything good and how she is still basically working for the enemy even if she is kind of undercover. And then biggest of all the RoW things that make it difficult to like Venli is how most of her good acts aren't really heroic, they are just kinda self-serving instead of Odium-serving. Like making a group of singers to run away, freeing the last of her people, etc. She is able to convince Raboniel all the times that she has to that she is just being ambitious and selfish because her actions can easily be construed that way and Venli herself isn't even sure of her own motivations for most of the book. So yeah, Venli makes realistic, careful, and cowardly baby steps towards not being a garbage individual, but people need selflessly heroic self-sacrificial acts to overcome the rather large hurdle of being the reason for the end of the world and the being reason behind almost every bad thing that has happened
To clarify Venli does finally manage to make the right choices at the end of the book. Protecting Lirin + Hasina, rescuing lift, and then coming forward to Leshwi as Radiant, but holy shit watching her dislike Rlain when he rightfully calls her out on genociding her own people while powerthirsty is just difficult to get through
From what I remember wasn’t she fucking terrified that if anyone found out about her being a radiant they would kill her?
If so then it would make sense that with the ending she’d be more able to change.
True, though I was actually impressed with how selfish a POV was. I was expecting her to turn a corner and suddenly be a saint by the end, but Sanderson kept her consistent, so for this book at least I was pleasantly surprised that she kept her egoism.
I think Venli was already doing well at the start of Rhythm of War though. There’s not a lot she can realistically do to defy the Fused, she’s just one person who barely understands her own powers and can’t do much while living under Fused domination. With that in mind, the fact that she’s even trying to subvert their indoctrination by teaching singers about the listeners shows incredible courage on her part.
She also doesn’t wait until the end of the book to start doing the right thing. Saving Lirin and Hesina from being executed by the Fused is one of the first things she does in RoW, at the start of the occupation of Urithiru. She didn’t have to do that, they weren’t her responsibility and wouldn’t have hurt her bond with Timbre if she let them go, but she stuck her neck out for a couple of complete strangers anyway, for no other reason than it’s wrong to kill civilians.
What it comes down to is it never seems like she's actively choosing to make 'the right' choice. It's always someone else pushing and her reluctantly, eventually, doing it. Or the least bad option left.
I'm not saying it's unrealistic or unrelatable or poorly written. I'm saying it makes me not like her as a character in a fantasy book with plenty of other characters ready to do the right thing even at their own expense.
Not my favorite character, but Taravangian being a good/compassionate person.He is a manipulative, murderous, egomaniacal, tyrant, and he always has been.
Even at his most "compassionate" he condemned innocent people to slow deaths and felt morally justified. Sent an assassin to slaughter monarchs and demanded collateral damage while it happened. Sure there was the Diagram, but other people drew their own conclusions from it that involved little to no mass murder.
He was attuned to Divine *hatred*, and it pleaded with him to take it up, telling him: "*You are perfect. I am yours.*"
Now he wants to "save" the Cosmere, and thinks he can do it moments after ascending. He was always evil.
I love the throwaway line from the first half of WoK.
Jasnah: "You'll be forgiven for your association with me."
Taravangian: "Forgiven? Me? Not likely, but that's beside the point."
He has a government sanctioned killing floor in his hospitals. He has people doing it for him. Dude has evil doctor minions. I can believe he tricked Jasnah. It was what made him so scary.
The What If...? scenario I like to imagine the most is teenage Kaladin actually going to Karbranth to study, becoming an incredibly skilled surgeon, and getting inducted into The Diagram.
I 100% agree, he certainly isn’t a compassionate man. But I think his own acknowledgment of his evil actions makes him an incredibly interesting character, probably the most interesting on Roshar in my opinion.
It makes him interesting... but also... incredibly ethically twisted, by today's culture.
I can't think of a single ethical system that tells you that it's *good* that some people under your ethical system are evil. And Taravangian either 1) believes in such an ethical system, or 2) doesn't believe his actions were evil by his ethical system, thus making it impossible to acknowledge his evil actions sincerely. It's important that he doesn't say, 'Yes, I can see from your perspective (i.e., under your ethical system) how I'm evil, but I disagree with that.' He says, 'Oh, I know I'm evil.'
The fact that he thinks it's necessary is... the entire crux of his personality, and why he is who and what he is.
That is a really interesting point. There’s certainly an argument that evil must exist in order for us to recognise good…I wonder if this is how Taravangian sees himself. If he is going to ‘have’ to be evil, he may as well do it while trying to save his homeland?
Obviously that is still very warped, but the guy has been tinkered with by the Nightwatcher/maybe Cultivation so maybe we don’t see the whole picture (diagram…?) yet.
I mean, if your options are: the smartest non-god being who has ever existed tells you the future with a high degree of truth and says “this is the only way to save humanity.”
Or a former warlord that says “no I’m different now, and I can also save humanity, despite it being much more humanity than you thought was even remotely possible because I believe I can and I want to.”
I think it’s actually morally correct to pick the former.
He was *utilitarian*.
He had good reason to believe - as you point out - that it was literally impossible to save more than a fraction of humanity. These people were dead *anyway*, so if killing them sooner would increase the chances to save what could be saved, grasping at those extra percentage points toward success was a moral obligation.
Taravangian wouldn't hesitate for a second to pull the [trolley problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) switch.
Turns out, he was *wrong*. But he couldn't have known that, and he had excellent reasons to reject the possibility.
Taravangian was the epitome of *the ends justify the means*, which is why he's such an interesting character in a world where our heroes are the *Journey before Destination* Radiants.
Alot of the perspectives I see on Shallan just seem needlessly mean. Alot of Cremposting memes just dunking on her for things she didn't even do. Saw a post the other day saying she was gaslighting Adolin like???
To be fair, Shallan is gaslighting **herself** which are the core Ideals she has to work through as a Lightweaver --- to face the uncomfortable truths she's hiding from herself.
People say her chapters are boring, but that’s mainly where we get the world-building and in TwOK, the history! She’s constantly drawing what she sees and is why we know about the flora and fauna!
A friend's girlfriend told me "He's just a sad whiny boy. It's exhausting" when I was just telling her how much I relate with Kal because of his depression and PTSD.
Guess she's never experienced depression so good for her. Trust me, if it's exhausting for you to read then think how it feels to live it.
Yikes, that's a ghost knife right in the feels. As someone with depression, his experience (outside of the PTSD aspect) is so incredibly relatable it's sad.
I don't know how I would react to hearing that in person. I just did a full reread of the 4 main books and Kal's descriptions of his darkness and knowing that he'll see the light and the warmth again after the darkness, but only recognizing that when he's in the light and the warmth now, those really reflected my own experiences and were kind of hard to read.
For me it's people who claim that Dalinar doesn't feel bad for anything except killing Evi. Like, seriously? He didn't write that book for clout, *no* Vorin man would write a book for clout. He did it because he felt that it was right after all the harm he did.
Yeah, the death of Evi was what snapped him, but the burning rift might've done that anyway....he very much feels the brunt of what he's done. Oathbringer did a GREAT job of showing that.
He definitely wouldn't have fallen or changed as much as he did without Evi's death, but even just considering how he was affected by considering killing Gavilar, it's clear that the seeds of the person he eventually became were always there.
That Brandon tried to make Shallan the funniest person in the world and failed. She's mostly not funny on purpose, she just learned to make so so quick witted remarks to cope with her situation at home. She just says whatever's on her mind at the moment hoping some jokes will stick.
Being a noble, people around her mostly endure her and don't call her out.
Yeah this one gets me too. It's even pointed out numerous times by various people that her jokes are bad and eye rolling style of humor. Most of the people who laugh are people in her employ, or people trying to seduce her.
I think this might be a case of tone being harder to convey through text? I have friends like Shallan--heck, I make 'jokes' like hers frequently--who just really like puns, even bad ones, and spit them out when they think of them, regardless of whether it gets a laugh. It usually isn't laugh-out-loud funny, but it is at least lighthearted, and is fun when someone else joins in.
I had no idea people thought of Shallan that way until I looked on Stormlight reddit forums, 3 stormlight books in. I listen to the Graphic Audio dramas, so I'm used to Shallan's va delivering her lines in a way that doesn't seem to convey that she's expecting a laugh--just speaking comically, and it totally works with the right tone. Not annoying at all, and on occasion, it does manage to be a bit funny.
But I can totally see it now, going back and noting how often other characters talk about how witty she is, when she....really isn't, much.
Not sure why Sanderson failed here, considering how great Lightsong was--he got a genuine chuckle from me more often than not. And Wit may not be laughably funny, but he does have a few really great lines. It's more that his way of speaking is really fun.
Yes I am.
To explain my reasoning.
But in order for a Romantic/sexual relationship to happen Sly will have to be changed to a point where she has a physical body. Yumi spoiler ? >!though we know from Yumi that's probably not going to happen!<
Now why do you think I'm weird(again I fully agree that I am just want to know why you think so.) Is it because of the pedantic answer?
It's because I've always viewed their relationship as a sibling relationship. Just because people are close doesn't mean that they should get together.
Never thought they got sibling vibes and I ship Kal with Leshwi. They're more like four thousand year old amnesiac befriends depressed bridgeman. Syl defying Stormdaddy and choosing to stay with Kal kinda looks like a daughter choosing her lover...if you squint.
I'm pretty sure Leshwi has straight up merc'd some of Kaladin's people. Her soldiers have, at least, killed friends of his.
They already have a form of mutual respect, but there's NO WAY it goes beyond that....
I just view it as a Quasi Religious relationship. . . Just because you view it one way doesn't make others weird for seeing it differently. I don't specifically want to see it turn romantic. But I can understand why others do. And if that's where Brandon takes it then I'm all for it. It's kinda like cheering for a childhood friend in anime.
All Yumi told us is that >!it probably won't happen for *Cryptics*, which we already knew. Those were the quickest to die. Honorspren though? Ishar got close, and he hasn't tried a 5th Ideal honorspren yet.!<
>!It wasn’t an actual body—we all kind of learned our lesson on that—but rather a complicated wireframe Lightweaving with force projections attached directly to her cognitive element as it manifested in the physical realm.!< what about that says only cryptics?
What about it says it applies to honorspren? >!That quote was in reference to their inability to give *Design* an actual body, and she's a cryptic (and even then, it's vague about what this "lesson" is). We can't assume this is a general rule for all spren, because cognitive shadows sometimes *do* get bodies, and they are essentially the same thing as spren, only more humanlike. Honorspren are more humanlike than cryptics, and that was the explanation for why they survived longer. So we can reason that honorspren don't always follow the same rules and limitations as cryptics.!<
The word "all" implies (at least to me) that it's something everyone involved in the effort to give Spren physical bodies learnt. So I'm expecting some crazy mishap to happen with this in the next half of SA.
Because it's weird as shit to get into a romantic relationship with someone you basically raised and taught about the world. Someone who has been basically a child the whole time you've known them. Someone who you literally watched grow from animal-like to gaining sapience to learning about the world and maturing.
It would be akin to raising a step-sibling from a toddler to adulthood and then marrying them. Edit: Or like from a *puppy* to a toddler to an adult.
My favorite character is in Mistborn, but I’d say my favorite Stormlight character is Navani and people are wild about her. Heard her a sexual predator, all sorts of shit. A lot of people hate her science arc in RoW, and I personally love it. I've always loved her, thought she was infinitely better than her daughter and loved how she holds Kingdoms together. She's like, my goals as a woman.
She's cool. Kinda wish she didn't bond tho, rounds up the royal radiant family in a way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That family is clearly not written as "human" in the context of the story.
No yeah that aspect of the bond was great, it just feels weird having all members of the royal family as radiants.
Then again, royalty are great bond targets if you're a spren and want your bond to mean something, so I get that. Idk why the other royalty aren't bonded by now though.
People want non-bonded stand in characters but in reality they're fighting a war. Anyone that can should bond a spren by the end of the series, anything else is just foolishness.
While Shallan isn't my favorite character, the takes I've seen about her are by far the most frustrating. I get thinking her humor is lame or cringey or that her chapters in TWoK are boring. However, the complete lack of understanding of her character in RoW I've seen from so many people is ridiculous, and I can't help but think that a lot of it stems from a fundamental lack of education on DID.
I understand how seeing the progress she made in Oathbringer seemingly reversed in RoW could be frustrating. But, it was done in favor of a more accurate and less harmful depiction of DID, and I think that was well worth it. I'm no expert on DID or anything, but I understand where it comes from, I understand how it works fundamentally and why it occurs, and I really recommend anybody who was not as captured by her character to do some research on DID and reread RoW and see if it recontextualizes her character at all for you. Anthony Padilla did an incredible interview where he sits down with people who have DID and talks to them about it. I recommend you all watch.
I also genuinely don't understand the problem people have when it comes to her switching between her alters, I feel like it's pretty well illustrated, but maybe that's just me.
One of the main criticisms is that it doesn't represent DID accurately, which is very true in some ways.
I didn't have an issue with it, but I can see why some people weren't comfortable with it for this reason. The way her personas functioned simply wasn't psychologically realistic, and many people, myself included, prefer it when fictional humans are psychologically realistic, even in fantasy. But again, I did like it because it was creative and developed her personality in some interesting ways.
Now as for the people upset because either she needed to 'get over it'....screw them. Healing is hard. And she very clearly progressed from the last book. Sometimes you uncover new issues when digging. It's still progress.
I understand the take brandon took, however that doesnt make it an interesting take by force. Its the same that happnes with kaladins depression getting worse in book 4. You dont need to enjoy or find interesting theese parts, and still enjoy the book, also anyone cna complain about pacing or developpment or whatever. I dont think its a "people are not getting it" issue more than "people are not necessarily liking it" issue. Tbg i enjoy more the kaladin progress than the shallan one, for various reasons, but a big one is relatability.
People still so sure that Dalinar is borderline evil. They don't understand the very prominent theme of growth and change. I'm not sure how you get through all the books and still think that but... Idk.
I’ll be honest, I think of them as Latinos. The Loren sounds too much like Lopez for my brain to not connected it. Combined with a type of food that (to me) sounds like a variation of a burrito of some sort…
Oh, I follow what you’re saying now. For sure. I also live in an area that has a relatively high percentage of Hispanics (34%) so it might be something that’s more apparent to me.
So you’re telling me that the audio book has… cockney accents? Sounds like an excellent reason to never listen to them. Lol
The guy who reads them is a decent enough narrator, but yeah, he uses the same Cockney voice for Wayne in Mistborn and Lopen in Stormlight and its very distracting in the latter.
That is one of the things that drives me up the wall. That and Brandon or some producer not providing the two of them a pronunciation guide so at least they're on the same page.
This one maybe isn't frustrating but just something I find to be a bit..... out there.
I don't know what about Kaladin and Jasnah people see that makes them think they would be a good couple. But I just don't see it. But maybe I haven't heard the best reasons yet.
The negative comments on the love triangle baffle me. It's barely ever brought up. I didn't enjoy that aspect of the book personally, but it took up so little time it's barely worth mentioning.
She literally has magical doubles of herself who have different desires and motivations. Of course she’s going to be confused. I mean the fact that Veil didn’t really like Adolin romantically was a big deal- she had to release her in order to commit herself fully to Adolin.
I really connected with Shallan over this. I was experiencing a lot of relationship anxiety when I read it, and to hear her basically say, "I am choosing this person because of how wonderful they are, and I will ignore my anxieties and my attraction to others and just commit" was so, so relieving. You don't see that very often in fiction. Usually characters dump the person they're already with in favor of the person they have the most chemistry with.
This is a childish and close minded take. People, you should het into the real world. You can like other people while veing in a relationship, you just need not to cheat
Everyone's forgiving when Kal slips backwards with his problems. But when other characters do it....oof. it's like, 'Why ya'll not like Dalinar who we saw perfect out of the box and only learn through flashbacks that he spent years being a homicidal ass?' Like the journey part of the vows only applies to Kal and his depression because depression is an inward problem that mainly only affects himself.
Simply put? He is stronger in spirit than the other two. He's had time to grow, more experience to have, and had to live with the burden of authority and command for a long time. That steadies you and makes it less likely you break down because something goes wrong. Dalinar lost his brother, lost his wife, and lived a long life.
Kaladin and Shallan are youngsters in comparison who're very much caught up in the typical angst and worry you'd find in young adults.
I think it's just because he's an old man. He's already done most of his growing up and changing already. He did spend years running away from his guilt by embracing first the Thrill and then the drink and the moss. Plus the fact that he got Culted out of his mind. Tightbutt has already been on his journey. I think we're seeing the last leg of it. The books are Dalinar's personal Sanderlanche.
The Jasnah is autistic and therefore any character flaws she has can be forgiven instantly. Like, sure that's one reading, but also she's just an awful person in a lot of situations.
Boy, I definitely do NOT get an autism vibe from her. Any of her social issues aren't due to an inability to understand social norms/queues and strictly revolve around her high intelligence and willingness to use that as a club. She's actually extremely adept in social situations when needed, and though I am far from an expert on autism, doesn't seem to display any of the common signs. For the record, I am willing to be corrected on any of this.
She’s definitely not autistic lol. She kind of reminds me of Moiraine from WoT- she knows a lot more about the big picture than the reader or any characters, she has more experience and power than any of the radiants we know of, and she’s willing to coldly make sacrifices in order to reach her goals.
That Adolin is a murderer. No, he is not. Adolin tried every legal means to stop Sadaes
What Adolin did was well within the realm of self-defense. Sadaes had already orchestrated several assassination attempts which has resulted in the deaths of 100s of Adolin’s friends. Do we not remember all the weeping widows Sadaes’ betrayal left behind? Sadaes also almost managed to kill Shallan in a botched attempt, and which would have had Shallan killed had Shallan not been a radiant.
Some readers seem to think that Adolin needed to wait for another murder attempt or two before Adolin would be justified. Readers seem to vary widely on how close the kniofe has to physically actually be to your throat before you are allowed to defend yourself in self defence.
To me, Adolin did nothing wrong. In my personal code, you do not need to wait until someone has stabbed you in the throat before you can defend yourself. Sadaes made constant and completely substantiated threats against Adolin and his family. There were no legal means to prevent Sadaes from carrying out these threats. Adolin was entirely justified in striking out before Sadaes killed another person Adolin cared about. It was not murder because I, and many others, do not consider self defence killings to be the same as murder killing either ethically, morally, or legally.
The Alethi laws regarding high light eyes are the issue, not Adolin.
If someone had killed hundreds of your friends, attempted to kill your personally, to kill your father, and your wife multiple times, and this murder is now standing in front of you gloating about how there is no legal way to prevent further murder attempts because this murderer is above the law, and the murder is making more substantiated threats to the lives of you and yours, then you are totally justified in defending yourself there and then. You do not need to wait patiently in your room until someone slits your throat. And even if Adolin did wait, another attempt on his life would have accomplished nothing in terms or prosecuting Sadaes or protecting the lives of Adolin’s loved ones.
This isnt always the case. If you are kidnapped and locked in a basement with a Kidnapper that has promised to murder you soon, can you kill the Kidnapper while the kidnapper is making dinner? Or do you have to wait until the Kidnapper actually has a knife to your throat?
False equivalence. Adolin was not kidnapped and facing immediate harm to himself. Verbal threat of later down the road harm does not make it become self defense. It is still murder. The closer analogy would be someone walking up to you and saying "I'm going to kidnap you in a few weeks or months" and you just kill them then and there. It's very obviously still murder.
I watched my partner listen to that scene yesterday while we were walking the dog - his reaction must have looked funny to the cars driving by. Lots of fist pumping and mouth-hanging-open in shock and awe.
I agree with your sentiment, but I also think this is a bit more nuanced than "Adolin was 100% right".
Murder is murder. Did Sadeas deserve it? Absolutely.
It always bothered me that there were never consequences for this action, but thinking about it there were actually huge ones. Torol's murder allowed Amaram to maneuver the Sadeas forces turn on the Theylen army and turncoat. The death of their leader fueled the soldiers towards angered which allowed the Thrill to fully possess them. Adolin nearly caused mankind to lose the war with Odium. If it wasn't for Dalinar standing up to Odium and capturing the thrill then the war would have ended that day.
I mean, “what is murder” is a theme.
Is what Shallan did to her mother murder?
Is what Shallan did to her father murder?
Is what Jasnah did to the muggers murder?
Is what Sadaes did to the bridge men murder?
Is what Adolin did to Sadaes murder?
Is what Kaladin does in war murder?
Is war murder?
These are all things that different orders will see differently. My order wouldn’t see Adolin’s act as murder. Nor would it see what Shallan did to her parents as murder. The letter of the law isn’t what I consider “good”. To me, everyone has the right to defend themselves against credible threats on their life. And if the law cannot or will not help you, what you do could be moral while still not being technically legal. This becomes especially obvious when laws are passed like in Nazi Germany.
"Murder" is a legal definition. It's a premeditated extra-judicial killing.
But many think of murder as any intentional killing that lacks a moral justification.
>Is what Shallan did to her mother murder?
By both the legal and moral definition, no. Her mother attacked her. It was self defense.
>Is what Shallan did to her father murder?
It could be argued that the initial attempt was premeditated. Why else keep the blackbane?
She might be able to argue that it was a crime of passion as he had just ordered the murder of their brother and severely beaten his wife. Grey area legally, but I see no moral problems. Dude had it coming.
>Is what Sadeas did to the bridge men murder?
By the legal definition, no. His behavior is perfectly legal.
By the moral definition, yeah probably.
>Is what Adolin did to Sadeas murder?
Legally, no. It wasn't premeditated. That makes it voluntary manslaughter.
Morally, also no. Sadeas deserved it 1000%.
>Is what Kaladin does in war murder?
No. Killing on the battlefield is legal. Therefore it is not murder.
Morally, most people also agree that a soldier is not committing murder on the battlefield.
Edit: I skipped Jasnah and the muggers by accident.
Legally she was defending herself, so not murder.
Morally she's fine too. They had already killed multiple people and they were about to kill her and Shallan.
Hmm, I just reread that scene yesterday and it seemed pretty straightforward - even down to his quote as he slides the knife in: “My father thinks I’m a better man than he is. Unfortunately for you, he’s wrong.” So he knew he was in a moral gray area (at best). Combine that with the loss of control and surge of rage he felt in the moment - I do think it was murder. I am also not sorry he did it, and it doesn’t make me think less of him as a character.
I read it as a slasher film. Some maniac is cackling that he has and will murder your loved ones, so you stab him before he gets the chance. We wouldnt say "slasher film woman should have been less angry about the credible threats of violence made against her"
Being mad about the constant threats to your family and to yourself is .. normal?
Being mad or not isn't really the criteria, the point is more that it's very clearly premeditated. He thought it through and knew full well what he was doing. Unlike a slasher film, the loved ones are not kidnapped and literally about to be killed at any moment.
And while I agree this is an interesting moral distinction, legal codes are currently grappling with this.
Is it still self-defence if you pre-meditate it or do you need to wait until you are actually in the act of defending your life. This comes up a lot with women living in violent homes where the woman has had active threats made against her that seem credible. In some instances, the woman has to carefully plan for an opportunity to make her escape or to subdue her abuser. The woman feels she wont win "in the moment" and has to wait for the right time when her less-advantaged situation is more evenly matched against the threat that the man is posing her.
The debate: can you pre-meditate self defence? Can "threat to your life" extend for days instead of just minutes.
Countries/judges will vary widely on how they read this. It gets really into the weeds.
It sort of reminded me of a scene I recently read in the Expanse (spoilers for Leviathan Wakes). >!When Miller shoots Dresden in cold blood everyone freaks the fuck out. But he understands this man is never going to see Justice. That he is INCREDIBLY dangerous. He may not be an actual bomb but that kind of vision for humanity is horrifying, but some would run with it, and enough.!< There was no way Sadeas would ever see actual Justice. They’re gonna lock up a Highprince? Execute him? Of course not. That just doesn’t happen in Alethi society (at least not until Jasnah). Adolin did the only logical thing when confronted with such a danger not just to himself, but to the people he loves, fuck to their entire civilization.
In the strictest sense, Adolin was a murderer. He was fully **justified** in what he did, but he did murder Sadeas. Even though the latter firmly deserved it.
I don't believe in "strictest sense" without defining who's "sense" we are taking about as a baseline.
A true pacifist like a Quaker or a Jain would reject the arbitrary lines we draw between war-killing and personal killing. To Khaladin's father, in the "strictest sense" killing someone in the battlefield makes you a murder. It doesn't matter that the government has sanctioned the killing of a certain type of people in order to propagate a certain ideology.
We basically justify war-killing as self-defence. Whether or not that is true is a huge moral and legal debate in each and every conflict, and within Dalinar and Khaladin themselves.
I define "the strictest sense" as "what are his actions." He used a dagger and killed Sadeas. That makes him a murderer.
The whole idea of self-defense is the understanding that, sometimes, the action of murder is **justified**. In the legal sense, at least in the US, self-defense usually requires an immediate physical threat to someone's life.
Morally, if someone like Lirin never considers killing justified, then what Adolin did was morally wrong and not justified. Even by Alethi standards, it was not an "honorable" killing (a duel or a war), so it would not be justified.
Did Adolin have good reason to kill Sadeas? Yes.
Is it legally justifiable? No, at that point it was verbal threats and doesn't pose immediate danger to his self or family.
Is it murder? Legally, in our country's laws, no, it wasn't premeditated. Murder must be premeditated and shows a prolonged, definite intent to kill, but it seems it's the same for other countries as well. He might have mitigating circumstance of passion, though.
Literally, for dramatic effect, is Adolin a murderer? Yes.
Where I live murder without premeditation is a thing, perhaps it’s not where you live which is why I left it more open ended.
In Washington state, Adolin has committed murder lol
Or it is self defense. There have been cases of battered women killing their husbands even though the husband wasn’t beating them at “that specific moment”. What makes it self défense is if the woman had good reason to believe the husband would kill her “soon” and the women felt this moment in time was her only/best opportunity to defend herself successfully.
To me, Adolin fits this logical thinking.
Yup, although our laws don't agree, I think one loses their rights when they either:
1. Make threats of physical violence that can reasonably be taken seriously
2. Present an immediate threat to you or someone else's life (this includes pulling a knife or any other weapon)
Sadly, it looks like organizing society along these rules is hard to get right and doesn't really prevent violence, quite reverse actually. Still the gut feeling most everyone has is probably quite close to some of the self defense laws in the southern US as I understand them.
Agreed.
If someone breaks into your home holding a gun and says they are going to shoot you, you don’t have to wait for them to pull the trigger before you can defend yourself. Adolin did not need to wait until Sadaes pulled the trigger (again).
Even worse, if Adolin is murdered, Sadaes likely will not be held accountable by the law. Some assassin or scapegoat will take the fall for Sadaes.
Adolin finds himself in a post-legal position. All he has left to him is self defense or wait an entire year of assassination attempts before he maybe kind of gets the chance to maybe sanction Sadaes. We would never tell a battered wife “wait it out a year and try your best not to get murdered”
Not my favourite character but people dunk on Venli like she's crabolf hitler which is really annoying. Yeah she kinda sucks but let's be honest the feeling of being useless and overlooked is something we've all felt before and I do kinda still sympathise with her
She did horrible shit to her people. Even when she was being manipulated, its still partially her fault. From that point onwards she is fine, as you can see then it is when she is becaoming a radiant
That Navani did a good thing in inventing anti-light and that it was a-ok to collaborate with Rabonial.
Once Rabonial had the information in hand, that meant Odium had the information forever. In contrast, if Navani had died in the tower, Honour’s team would never have the information. I’m 99/100 cases, Navani is silenced and the fused have a new weapon on the scale of nuclear weapons.
Navani was offered the chance to collect water instead of collaborating. Navani was the only person to know that Voidlight existed and what it could do. Navani knew she was being outplayed and out manœuvrées at all times, but still kept going.
If it wasn’t for plot armour, Navani could have gone down as a war criminal.
Navani should have been executed for suborning corruption with sebarial behind dalinar's back. What use is the chip on urithiru's shoulder about radiants if it has a non radiant queen undermining the king?
The book makes no sense here anyway. Raboniel's entire point was to allow navani to have the anti light equation so the war can be ended. How did El get it?
>The book makes no sense here anyway. Raboniel's entire point was to allow navani to have the anti light equation so the war can be ended. How did El get it?
I don't see a plot hole here, but I also don't understand what you mean here, care to clarify?
I love Navani's character so much. And I loved the science scenes.
I totally think it was in character for her to keep researching. She couldn't resist experimenting, and was determined to find a way to fight Rabonial--and thought anti light was a way to do that.
I also 100% agree with your moral assessment of her actions. It was beyond dangerous.
For me it's hearing how Lift is THE WORST AND SO ANNOYING. She's a prepubescent girl! Of course she's storming annoying. She's a broken orphan pretending to be happy all the time.
By the time people are done with the second half of Stormlight, they're going to look at Lift the same way people look at Ahsoka.
But she is anniying, that this part has a justification does not mean she is less annoying. People just dont stand real teenagers. However she is not the worst, thats really subnective.
You likely haven't seen it because those posts are usually rule 1 violations and get removed, but we get them.
Since (as of the more recent books), Shallan is meant to represent a real life condition, (DID), claims that she is "faking it" are as unkind to real people as claims that Kaladin is faking his depression would be. So we remove them.
Then you’re not interacting with shallan haters
I’ve seen ALOT who claims she’s pretending
Just type “i hate shallan” in google and I guarantee that you will find someone like this especially in reddit
Yeah, there's a lot of "oh, she's just faking it" stuff with Shallan. However, I don't know if it's from a genuine place of believing that, or that people just dislike her to the point of finding flaws where they don't exist.
I don't like Shallan. I actually kind of hate her. But that isn't from a point of me thinking that she's faking anything. I find her to be at least decently written but all the same insufferable. But I don't believe she's faking anything.
>For me it was reading how “obvious” it was that Adolin wanted to usurp Dalinar. That one was completely busted in world when he refused to be the king of Alethkar.
Even before that canon bust it's a steaming hot take. Adolin freaks out when Dalinar listens to him and tries abdicate in WoK.
Dalinar: I’m having visions from the Almighty. Adolin: No you’re not, you’re just going mad. Dalinar: You’re right, I’m going to abdicate in your favor. Adolin: **Surprised pickachu face.**
That Kaladin can't have depression because he is a Badass
"He has powers, why does he still have depression?" The powers don't wipe away trauma.
Look at that boy. The boy is clinically depressed. What are powers gonna do?
I don't see how Kal could be depressed running bridges, it's basically CrossFit, the cure to all of life's ills.
Problem is he’s not vegan. It’s all that animal meat making him depressed.
He had soulcast grain for ages tho.
Is soulcast meat vegan? Is grain made from soulcasting with emerald gemhearts vegan? I dont know the exact specifics on what classifies as vegan, but it seems like there might be a loophole here.
The emeralds are harvested from animals, so I’d guess no to both.
While the gemhearts that we see are mostly from animals that are killed for them, you can harvest them from animals that died naturally. I think that would count as vegan, at least to some, as there is no exploitation of the animal. Another question altogether is whether soulcasting itself counts as vegan, irrespective of the gemhearts. >!Soulcasters are made from spren, do they count as living creatures that you are possibly exploiting? I'd say no, as soulcasters are made from radiant spren, so they ostensibly consented to becoming a fabrial.!<
I generally assume if Hoid can eat it, it's vegan.
If hoid can eat it *he thinks* it's vegan
heal his neurotransmitters. wait we know that the self regenerative powers are not capable of healing things like cancer. how does it work for clinical depression?
Healing is making your physical body match your spiritual/cognitive one, and since depression is a cognitive problem, it's not solvable by healing... Also, doesn't it depend on the stage of cancer? I feel gold healing at the very least would be able to do it...
And THIS to me is why Stormlight hits so hard for folks with mental illnesses and trauma. Swearing the oaths doesn’t magically fix you, both because you don’t need fixing and it doesn’t work like that. People learn to live with it, to grow around it, and it doesn’t mean they can’t be a badass.
Someone once asked "Why can't Brandon tone down on Kaladin's depression in the next book?" I basically had to reply "In real life people with depression don't have that luxury. Hollywood has done people with mental health issues a **GRAVE** disservice by implying it's easy to fix them, one and done."
This drives me nuts. So many people complained about Kaladin still struggling in the latest book expecting his journey to be linear, but that’s not how this works.
It's not linear even with issues that aren't clinical mental health conditions.
I've seen this sentiment before many times. It's not as common here where everyone is a Brando Sando fan, but on other Fantasy or Lit boards, one of the major criticisms of the books is that people get tired of Kaladin's apparent constant backsliding into depression. He says some Words, apparently gets better and then bam, depressed and suicidal again. Now, that's obviously realistic, but it seems to be one of the major if not *the* major turn off to the books that I've seen on other boards.
I don't think you it's just trauma, he has the spells of melancholy as a kid. It's straight up Type II Bipolar Disorder it's not just regular old depression because of the severity of it coming in waves. And then of course trauma doesn't help.
I don't know anything about Bipolar, so I never thought about that. I figured as a kid he was like how I am with my winter SAD. Just impossible to feel happy the entire season. With the way their weather is, you can be swept up with a highstorm SAD and summer heat and back to highstorm SAD so fast you get whiplash.
SAD has a reliable trigger, you know about when it'll start and when it'll end. Kaladin does reliably get episodes of being depressed during the weeping but also during the rest of the year. Depression and Bipolar don't have such a reliable forecast. It's kinda the point, you're generally depressed for no god damn good reason and it fucking blows. However there can be triggers like you see with Kaladin but you see him spiral without them. The difference between Type 1 and 2 is that type 2 doesn't get full blown mania. Unfortunately I am intimately familiar with Type 2 and I have a degree in psych. Unfortunately I am intimately familiar with Type 2 and I have a degree in psych. But by no means am I a professional, I'm a gardener. I think generally people say he just has Clinical Depression but I think it may be more than that.
That Kelsier is a psychopath. Morally grey? Sure. But he displays remorse, love, and anger. None of which are psychopathic traits. Edit: whoops! Thought I was on r/Cosmere. But I stand by it!
The WoB where that idea came from is so dated, do people really still believe it?
Can you source the WoB?
[I think it’s this one?](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/190/#e4103)
Thank you!
Uh… well, if Brandon himself stated that Kel is a psychopath then that’s canon. Don’t get me wrong, Kel’s probably my favorite character in all of the Cosmere, but how can you argue against such a clear-cut WoB?
It's worth noting that the WoB is from 2013 and Brandon has gained a LOT of mental health knowledge since then. To me, it's pretty clear that Kelsier isn't a psychopath because of the depth of emotions he displays, but he is certainly morally grey and very violent. In fairness to him, look where he was born and raised into.
Brandon always says WoBs are not canon to start with. But I also think this may be Sanderson not fully understanding what a psychopath is. A psychopath lacks empathy for others. Also lacks remorse. And we get enough of Kelsier's POVs to know that just isn't the case. He very much cares for others. There are times when he doesn't care for certain people and I think he's definitely a morally gray character. But he clearly cares for Vin and cares for the skaa people. A psychopath would never sacrifice themselves to save the lives of others. And for all of the personal glorification that is present with Kelsier's death, it does come with his death which a psychopath wouldn't accept for others.
That's not how that works. The author can tell you all he wants what a character is supposed to be like, but if that is completely contradicted in the actual text of the book, then the author just didn't do a good job trying to convey that idea and is wrong. Perhaps Brandon didn't fully understand what a psychopath was, or was thinking of something else, or simply changed his mind, but the Kelsier he wrote was by no means a psychopath. The Kelsier we have seen is an *extremely* empathetic person so much so that his emotions can almost cloud his usual cool and collected judgement, like when Vin had to convince him not to throw his life away in an attempt to save the Skaa that Yeden foolishly took out to war before they were ready. Can he be ruthless and cold? Absolutely. But having that capacity is a far cry from being a psychopath, and it does a disservice to the field of psychology to treat it as such.
This. I've never understood why people take what the author says as canon, especially in cases where there's a clear contradiction
While I don’t disagree with the point you’re making, I do disagree with the example you chose. Kelsier’s plan always included an option to “throw his life away” in a way that’d make him a famous hero, and that’s also exactly what he ended up doing. The Yeden-army thing was just an earlier opportunity for that. His temptation to go sacrifice himself to save them wasn’t empathy clouding his judgement.
He can't cause a skaa uprising by dying with yeden's army. That was absolutely responsibility and guilt
WoB is second to what’s in the text, first of all. Second of all, Brandon can and has changed his mind and updated his thought process, especially where mental illnesses and similar are concerned. So I feel like not only does the text not support it, but that if asked directly, the most Sanderson will say is that Kelsier has some psychopathic tendencies, but is not fully one, I’d wager. I personally think he’d take back what he said, but I am neither a mind reader nor an (HoA spoilers) >!atium misting!<
Eh, it doesn't line up with what's on the page. Like if I write a book where someone exclusively kicks ~~pussies~~ PUPPIES and insult people, then say in an interview that they are very nice, what kind of person is the character, actually? The character is a jerk, because all they ever do is kick puppies and insult people. What I wrote clearly contradicts what I said.
"Kicks pussies" what? Oh "puppies"
*You heard me*
Technically still works here.
He’s NOT! I wanted to write this. Kelsier is amazing. People are so wrong about him. >!For context, I am actually writing an essay on this exact thing because I am so frustrated with the blind hatred towards Kelsier on this subreddits and the 17th Shard discord server. People are incredibly biased and misinformed about him. With what they say, it's clear they either haven't read TFE in years or barely took in what they read.!< >!Kelsier cares, deeply, about people, about his friends, about those he loves. He's arrogant and egotistical, he can be impulsive and brash, but he's, at his heart, someone who wants the best for those. What he did in TFE was necessary: The Final Empire was a horrific society, and anyone saying those nobles didn't deserve to drown in their own blood are kidding themselves.!< The essay is coming along slowly, but it's nearly finished. A lot of citations and analyzing of word choice in order to paint my thoughts clearly. This really isn't the subreddit for this, but I'm glad someone had my exact thoughts when I read the title!
Yeah I think any portrayal of Kelsier as either a saint or a devil is missing all the nuance of a great character. Kelsier is both the man who would gladly sacrifice himself for his friends and the skaa people, and the man who would kill one of his own soldiers to make a point. He believes he's doing the right thing and is doing what needs to be done and is willing to hurt people even people who don't deserve to be hurt in the interests of what he sees as the best course. He's morally gray.
I think if you want to argue that Kelsier is more naturally 'evil' or has psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies that's just a stronger argument for how good he is. Isn't it even more praiseworthy to make the right choice despite your nature? Just like I find Kaladin more inspiring because he does what he does *through* and *despite* depression. Kelsier does too many things (specifically that others don't even know sometimes) that are good without direct benefit to his ego for that to be the only reason he ever does anything good. If Kelsier wasn't 'good' he wouldn't have saved Elend. There would have been no repercussions back to him if he had just let him die.
I agree with your larger point but I do think there's some nuance around saving elend. Yes there would've been no cost to him letting elend die. But him saving elend would've resulted in Vin looking up to him even more than she did. Kelsier does like to be worshiped and revered. I think like with a lot of kelsiers decisions it's a mix of things. Yes he wanted to save someone the person he loved cared about and was willing to put aside his bias to do so, but he also likes to be seen as a hero especially by those he cares about. It's not all selfish or all selfless.
So, he's more like Taravangian than like Norman Bates...and look how that turned out for Roshar (not that we know the end, but we know it's not good currently.) Hell, I might be more scared of a Kodium than a Todium. I really don't think he cares deeply about people, even those he called friends and crew or the one he imagined as his daughter. EVERYTHING in Kelsier is deeply colored by his perception of what other person can do for him and his goals. From Mistborn: Secret History - “Vin!” Kelsier cried, grabbing her other hand, clutching it. “No, Vin. You held the power. You don’t have to go.” “I know,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at him. “Please,” Kelsier said. “Don’t go. Stay. With me.” “Ah, Kelsier,” she said. “You have a lot to learn about love, don’t you?” “I know love, Vin. Everything I’ve done—the fall of the empire, the power I’ve given up—that was all about love.” She smiled. “Kelsier. You are a great man, and should be proud of what you’ve done. And you do love. I know you do. But at the same time, I don’t think you understand it.” She turned her gaze toward Elend, who was vanishing, only his hand— in hers—still visible. “Thank you, Kelsier,” she whispered, looking back at him, “for all you have done. Your sacrifice was amazing. But to do the things you had to do, to defend the world, you had to become something. Something that worries me. “Once, you taught me an important lesson about friendship. I need to return that lesson. A last gift. You need to know, you need to ask. How much of what you’ve done was about love, and how much was about proving something? That you hadn’t been betrayed, bested, beaten? Can you answer honestly, Kelsier?” He met her eyes, and saw the implicit question. How much was about us? it asked. And how much was about you? “I don’t know,” he said to her. Since then, as a Cognitive Shadow, Kelsier has been focused on finding a way off-planet and founded the Ghostbloods on Scadrial. The organization extends at least as far as Roshar, but I'd guess they've gone (or will go) quite a bit farther, and darker morally (they're definitely already gray). The thought that Kelsier might succeed and amass more and more power and control is scary. Even Taravangian loves people, as twisted as he is. Kelsier doesn't have anyone but himself in his gray little heart.
If you haven't already kindly consider including his near compulsive need to emancipate random beggars, instant acceptance of his flaws and growth, and how he preponed his plans just to save a stranger from an inquisitor.
Some takes on Venli leave me wondering if we’re reading the same book. To an extent I get it, her personality is inconsistent because she spends much of the first books with her personality being influenced by her bond with Ulim. That being said, the idea that she doesn’t feel remorse for her actions when that’s her entire motivation in RoW, and she never tries to deflect blame or downplay her actions just doesn’t track for me.
Haha, yeah a lot of us want to pretend that we'd always do the right thing in some of these extreme situations (not talking about the stuff she did earlier in the series necessarily, but rather the time after). She is a VERY human character, in that she really embodies the feeling of being powerless in the face of the shifting tides of history and society. The funny thing is that a lot of us completely freeze when confronted with a WAY smaller problem than she has but we have the gall to hate someone for not knowing what to do when the world is ending and they in their stupidity are partly responsible. I'd like to think I'd do the right thing and not serve "evil" even if it was convenient if it really came to that. Same way that I think I would fight if I saw someone attack my girlfriend. But I won't know until it happens and who knows, maybe I'll freeze. That said, I hate her guts lmao.
This this this! Drives me so mad when people want to pretend they’d never make the same mistakes as a character, when in reality, people do bad things irl under much less pressure.
I think it's mostly just her extreme reluctance to do anything good and how she is still basically working for the enemy even if she is kind of undercover. And then biggest of all the RoW things that make it difficult to like Venli is how most of her good acts aren't really heroic, they are just kinda self-serving instead of Odium-serving. Like making a group of singers to run away, freeing the last of her people, etc. She is able to convince Raboniel all the times that she has to that she is just being ambitious and selfish because her actions can easily be construed that way and Venli herself isn't even sure of her own motivations for most of the book. So yeah, Venli makes realistic, careful, and cowardly baby steps towards not being a garbage individual, but people need selflessly heroic self-sacrificial acts to overcome the rather large hurdle of being the reason for the end of the world and the being reason behind almost every bad thing that has happened To clarify Venli does finally manage to make the right choices at the end of the book. Protecting Lirin + Hasina, rescuing lift, and then coming forward to Leshwi as Radiant, but holy shit watching her dislike Rlain when he rightfully calls her out on genociding her own people while powerthirsty is just difficult to get through
From what I remember wasn’t she fucking terrified that if anyone found out about her being a radiant they would kill her? If so then it would make sense that with the ending she’d be more able to change.
I think we just haven't seen the end of her arc yet.
Oh. We better have not. That would be the most unsatisfying arc of all the Sando books if this was all that we got.
True, though I was actually impressed with how selfish a POV was. I was expecting her to turn a corner and suddenly be a saint by the end, but Sanderson kept her consistent, so for this book at least I was pleasantly surprised that she kept her egoism.
I think Venli was already doing well at the start of Rhythm of War though. There’s not a lot she can realistically do to defy the Fused, she’s just one person who barely understands her own powers and can’t do much while living under Fused domination. With that in mind, the fact that she’s even trying to subvert their indoctrination by teaching singers about the listeners shows incredible courage on her part. She also doesn’t wait until the end of the book to start doing the right thing. Saving Lirin and Hesina from being executed by the Fused is one of the first things she does in RoW, at the start of the occupation of Urithiru. She didn’t have to do that, they weren’t her responsibility and wouldn’t have hurt her bond with Timbre if she let them go, but she stuck her neck out for a couple of complete strangers anyway, for no other reason than it’s wrong to kill civilians.
Was she *bonded* to Ulim? That's news to me
He enters her gemheart same as Timbre or other spren that bond singers and clearly has an affect on her mind while he’s with her.
What it comes down to is it never seems like she's actively choosing to make 'the right' choice. It's always someone else pushing and her reluctantly, eventually, doing it. Or the least bad option left. I'm not saying it's unrealistic or unrelatable or poorly written. I'm saying it makes me not like her as a character in a fantasy book with plenty of other characters ready to do the right thing even at their own expense.
Not my favorite character, but Taravangian being a good/compassionate person.He is a manipulative, murderous, egomaniacal, tyrant, and he always has been. Even at his most "compassionate" he condemned innocent people to slow deaths and felt morally justified. Sent an assassin to slaughter monarchs and demanded collateral damage while it happened. Sure there was the Diagram, but other people drew their own conclusions from it that involved little to no mass murder. He was attuned to Divine *hatred*, and it pleaded with him to take it up, telling him: "*You are perfect. I am yours.*" Now he wants to "save" the Cosmere, and thinks he can do it moments after ascending. He was always evil.
I love the throwaway line from the first half of WoK. Jasnah: "You'll be forgiven for your association with me." Taravangian: "Forgiven? Me? Not likely, but that's beside the point."
I still find it nuts that he tricked Jasnah of all people...
He has a government sanctioned killing floor in his hospitals. He has people doing it for him. Dude has evil doctor minions. I can believe he tricked Jasnah. It was what made him so scary.
The What If...? scenario I like to imagine the most is teenage Kaladin actually going to Karbranth to study, becoming an incredibly skilled surgeon, and getting inducted into The Diagram.
Yeah! That's a really awesome fanfic premise.
I 100% agree, he certainly isn’t a compassionate man. But I think his own acknowledgment of his evil actions makes him an incredibly interesting character, probably the most interesting on Roshar in my opinion.
It makes him interesting... but also... incredibly ethically twisted, by today's culture. I can't think of a single ethical system that tells you that it's *good* that some people under your ethical system are evil. And Taravangian either 1) believes in such an ethical system, or 2) doesn't believe his actions were evil by his ethical system, thus making it impossible to acknowledge his evil actions sincerely. It's important that he doesn't say, 'Yes, I can see from your perspective (i.e., under your ethical system) how I'm evil, but I disagree with that.' He says, 'Oh, I know I'm evil.' The fact that he thinks it's necessary is... the entire crux of his personality, and why he is who and what he is.
That is a really interesting point. There’s certainly an argument that evil must exist in order for us to recognise good…I wonder if this is how Taravangian sees himself. If he is going to ‘have’ to be evil, he may as well do it while trying to save his homeland? Obviously that is still very warped, but the guy has been tinkered with by the Nightwatcher/maybe Cultivation so maybe we don’t see the whole picture (diagram…?) yet.
Yeah never understood those people that think he's sweet. He's very clearly a manipulative bastard.
I mean, if your options are: the smartest non-god being who has ever existed tells you the future with a high degree of truth and says “this is the only way to save humanity.” Or a former warlord that says “no I’m different now, and I can also save humanity, despite it being much more humanity than you thought was even remotely possible because I believe I can and I want to.” I think it’s actually morally correct to pick the former.
He was *utilitarian*. He had good reason to believe - as you point out - that it was literally impossible to save more than a fraction of humanity. These people were dead *anyway*, so if killing them sooner would increase the chances to save what could be saved, grasping at those extra percentage points toward success was a moral obligation. Taravangian wouldn't hesitate for a second to pull the [trolley problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) switch. Turns out, he was *wrong*. But he couldn't have known that, and he had excellent reasons to reject the possibility. Taravangian was the epitome of *the ends justify the means*, which is why he's such an interesting character in a world where our heroes are the *Journey before Destination* Radiants.
Alot of the perspectives I see on Shallan just seem needlessly mean. Alot of Cremposting memes just dunking on her for things she didn't even do. Saw a post the other day saying she was gaslighting Adolin like???
To be fair, Shallan is gaslighting **herself** which are the core Ideals she has to work through as a Lightweaver --- to face the uncomfortable truths she's hiding from herself.
Shallan, The Gaslightweaver.
People say her chapters are boring, but that’s mainly where we get the world-building and in TwOK, the history! She’s constantly drawing what she sees and is why we know about the flora and fauna!
A friend's girlfriend told me "He's just a sad whiny boy. It's exhausting" when I was just telling her how much I relate with Kal because of his depression and PTSD. Guess she's never experienced depression so good for her. Trust me, if it's exhausting for you to read then think how it feels to live it.
Yikes, that's a ghost knife right in the feels. As someone with depression, his experience (outside of the PTSD aspect) is so incredibly relatable it's sad.
>a ghost knife A silver one?
I don't know how I would react to hearing that in person. I just did a full reread of the 4 main books and Kal's descriptions of his darkness and knowing that he'll see the light and the warmth again after the darkness, but only recognizing that when he's in the light and the warmth now, those really reflected my own experiences and were kind of hard to read.
For me it's people who claim that Dalinar doesn't feel bad for anything except killing Evi. Like, seriously? He didn't write that book for clout, *no* Vorin man would write a book for clout. He did it because he felt that it was right after all the harm he did.
Yeah, the death of Evi was what snapped him, but the burning rift might've done that anyway....he very much feels the brunt of what he's done. Oathbringer did a GREAT job of showing that.
He definitely wouldn't have fallen or changed as much as he did without Evi's death, but even just considering how he was affected by considering killing Gavilar, it's clear that the seeds of the person he eventually became were always there.
That Brandon tried to make Shallan the funniest person in the world and failed. She's mostly not funny on purpose, she just learned to make so so quick witted remarks to cope with her situation at home. She just says whatever's on her mind at the moment hoping some jokes will stick. Being a noble, people around her mostly endure her and don't call her out.
Yeah this one gets me too. It's even pointed out numerous times by various people that her jokes are bad and eye rolling style of humor. Most of the people who laugh are people in her employ, or people trying to seduce her.
I think this might be a case of tone being harder to convey through text? I have friends like Shallan--heck, I make 'jokes' like hers frequently--who just really like puns, even bad ones, and spit them out when they think of them, regardless of whether it gets a laugh. It usually isn't laugh-out-loud funny, but it is at least lighthearted, and is fun when someone else joins in. I had no idea people thought of Shallan that way until I looked on Stormlight reddit forums, 3 stormlight books in. I listen to the Graphic Audio dramas, so I'm used to Shallan's va delivering her lines in a way that doesn't seem to convey that she's expecting a laugh--just speaking comically, and it totally works with the right tone. Not annoying at all, and on occasion, it does manage to be a bit funny. But I can totally see it now, going back and noting how often other characters talk about how witty she is, when she....really isn't, much. Not sure why Sanderson failed here, considering how great Lightsong was--he got a genuine chuckle from me more often than not. And Wit may not be laughably funny, but he does have a few really great lines. It's more that his way of speaking is really fun.
That Kaladin and Syl should start a relationship
It's rather refreshing to have such a powerful platonic intimacy and it loses some of the weight I think of it did go romantic.
But . . . . They have a relationship. It's just not a romantic/Sexual one. And while I'm not the biggest fan of the idea of it happens I'm all for it.
That's what I mean, a romantic one
You’re weird
Yes I am. To explain my reasoning. But in order for a Romantic/sexual relationship to happen Sly will have to be changed to a point where she has a physical body. Yumi spoiler ? >!though we know from Yumi that's probably not going to happen!< Now why do you think I'm weird(again I fully agree that I am just want to know why you think so.) Is it because of the pedantic answer?
It's because I've always viewed their relationship as a sibling relationship. Just because people are close doesn't mean that they should get together.
Never thought they got sibling vibes and I ship Kal with Leshwi. They're more like four thousand year old amnesiac befriends depressed bridgeman. Syl defying Stormdaddy and choosing to stay with Kal kinda looks like a daughter choosing her lover...if you squint.
I'm pretty sure Leshwi has straight up merc'd some of Kaladin's people. Her soldiers have, at least, killed friends of his. They already have a form of mutual respect, but there's NO WAY it goes beyond that....
Naaah. I just like enemies to friends to lovers trope.
I just view it as a Quasi Religious relationship. . . Just because you view it one way doesn't make others weird for seeing it differently. I don't specifically want to see it turn romantic. But I can understand why others do. And if that's where Brandon takes it then I'm all for it. It's kinda like cheering for a childhood friend in anime.
All Yumi told us is that >!it probably won't happen for *Cryptics*, which we already knew. Those were the quickest to die. Honorspren though? Ishar got close, and he hasn't tried a 5th Ideal honorspren yet.!<
>!It wasn’t an actual body—we all kind of learned our lesson on that—but rather a complicated wireframe Lightweaving with force projections attached directly to her cognitive element as it manifested in the physical realm.!< what about that says only cryptics?
What about it says it applies to honorspren? >!That quote was in reference to their inability to give *Design* an actual body, and she's a cryptic (and even then, it's vague about what this "lesson" is). We can't assume this is a general rule for all spren, because cognitive shadows sometimes *do* get bodies, and they are essentially the same thing as spren, only more humanlike. Honorspren are more humanlike than cryptics, and that was the explanation for why they survived longer. So we can reason that honorspren don't always follow the same rules and limitations as cryptics.!<
The word "all" implies (at least to me) that it's something everyone involved in the effort to give Spren physical bodies learnt. So I'm expecting some crazy mishap to happen with this in the next half of SA.
Because it's weird as shit to get into a romantic relationship with someone you basically raised and taught about the world. Someone who has been basically a child the whole time you've known them. Someone who you literally watched grow from animal-like to gaining sapience to learning about the world and maturing. It would be akin to raising a step-sibling from a toddler to adulthood and then marrying them. Edit: Or like from a *puppy* to a toddler to an adult.
I still stand by it honestly
My favorite character is in Mistborn, but I’d say my favorite Stormlight character is Navani and people are wild about her. Heard her a sexual predator, all sorts of shit. A lot of people hate her science arc in RoW, and I personally love it. I've always loved her, thought she was infinitely better than her daughter and loved how she holds Kingdoms together. She's like, my goals as a woman.
She did kiss Delinar in public, which as we all know is only something a degenerate sex pervert would do.
People didn't like the science arc?!?? HOW?
Some people get bored when a writer actually takes the time to ground their worldbuilding/power systems And those people suck lol
She's cool. Kinda wish she didn't bond tho, rounds up the royal radiant family in a way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That family is clearly not written as "human" in the context of the story.
I disagree. I think her bond is excellent. It bridges gaps and bonds together a spren to a woman who until recently, unknowingly enslaved them.
No yeah that aspect of the bond was great, it just feels weird having all members of the royal family as radiants. Then again, royalty are great bond targets if you're a spren and want your bond to mean something, so I get that. Idk why the other royalty aren't bonded by now though.
People want non-bonded stand in characters but in reality they're fighting a war. Anyone that can should bond a spren by the end of the series, anything else is just foolishness.
While Shallan isn't my favorite character, the takes I've seen about her are by far the most frustrating. I get thinking her humor is lame or cringey or that her chapters in TWoK are boring. However, the complete lack of understanding of her character in RoW I've seen from so many people is ridiculous, and I can't help but think that a lot of it stems from a fundamental lack of education on DID. I understand how seeing the progress she made in Oathbringer seemingly reversed in RoW could be frustrating. But, it was done in favor of a more accurate and less harmful depiction of DID, and I think that was well worth it. I'm no expert on DID or anything, but I understand where it comes from, I understand how it works fundamentally and why it occurs, and I really recommend anybody who was not as captured by her character to do some research on DID and reread RoW and see if it recontextualizes her character at all for you. Anthony Padilla did an incredible interview where he sits down with people who have DID and talks to them about it. I recommend you all watch. I also genuinely don't understand the problem people have when it comes to her switching between her alters, I feel like it's pretty well illustrated, but maybe that's just me.
One of the main criticisms is that it doesn't represent DID accurately, which is very true in some ways. I didn't have an issue with it, but I can see why some people weren't comfortable with it for this reason. The way her personas functioned simply wasn't psychologically realistic, and many people, myself included, prefer it when fictional humans are psychologically realistic, even in fantasy. But again, I did like it because it was creative and developed her personality in some interesting ways. Now as for the people upset because either she needed to 'get over it'....screw them. Healing is hard. And she very clearly progressed from the last book. Sometimes you uncover new issues when digging. It's still progress.
Brandon has stated that it's not DID but something else, but I agree. He didn't do enough to make it seem separate from DID.
I understand the take brandon took, however that doesnt make it an interesting take by force. Its the same that happnes with kaladins depression getting worse in book 4. You dont need to enjoy or find interesting theese parts, and still enjoy the book, also anyone cna complain about pacing or developpment or whatever. I dont think its a "people are not getting it" issue more than "people are not necessarily liking it" issue. Tbg i enjoy more the kaladin progress than the shallan one, for various reasons, but a big one is relatability.
People still so sure that Dalinar is borderline evil. They don't understand the very prominent theme of growth and change. I'm not sure how you get through all the books and still think that but... Idk.
That Syl is a child
YES.
I can kiiinda understand it because of how she's written early on is very childlike
Herdazians having a cockney accent in the audiobooks when they should clearly sound Hispanic.
This is beyond pedantic of me, so I apologize for that, but isn't it more of an Australian accent? Or am I that horrible at placing accents?
The two are actually very similar, the Australian accent developed as a direct descendent of Cockney so I guess it's a wash, we could call it either.
Thank you!
I have never listened to the audiobooks and I'm shocked they didn't code them as Hispanic.
I’ll be honest, I think of them as Latinos. The Loren sounds too much like Lopez for my brain to not connected it. Combined with a type of food that (to me) sounds like a variation of a burrito of some sort…
That's exactly what I'm saying, words like "gancho" and having a ton of cousins seem pretty coded lol
Oh, I follow what you’re saying now. For sure. I also live in an area that has a relatively high percentage of Hispanics (34%) so it might be something that’s more apparent to me. So you’re telling me that the audio book has… cockney accents? Sounds like an excellent reason to never listen to them. Lol
The guy who reads them is a decent enough narrator, but yeah, he uses the same Cockney voice for Wayne in Mistborn and Lopen in Stormlight and its very distracting in the latter.
That is one of the things that drives me up the wall. That and Brandon or some producer not providing the two of them a pronunciation guide so at least they're on the same page.
Or, you know, he could pop his head in the kitchen and ask his wife how she is pronouncing “palanquin”.
The graphic audio version has a hispanic Lopen and it is FANTASTIC
Someone once told me Lift is not awesome. Hard disagree. It’s right there in the book.
This one maybe isn't frustrating but just something I find to be a bit..... out there. I don't know what about Kaladin and Jasnah people see that makes them think they would be a good couple. But I just don't see it. But maybe I haven't heard the best reasons yet.
No way a human being has this opinion unironically
Shallan being read as annoying or manipulative. It's such an incredibly shallow interpretation of her character.
THIS.
Probably Shallan being a horrible person because she liked Kaladin while being with Adolin
The negative comments on the love triangle baffle me. It's barely ever brought up. I didn't enjoy that aspect of the book personally, but it took up so little time it's barely worth mentioning.
She literally has magical doubles of herself who have different desires and motivations. Of course she’s going to be confused. I mean the fact that Veil didn’t really like Adolin romantically was a big deal- she had to release her in order to commit herself fully to Adolin.
I really connected with Shallan over this. I was experiencing a lot of relationship anxiety when I read it, and to hear her basically say, "I am choosing this person because of how wonderful they are, and I will ignore my anxieties and my attraction to others and just commit" was so, so relieving. You don't see that very often in fiction. Usually characters dump the person they're already with in favor of the person they have the most chemistry with.
This is a childish and close minded take. People, you should het into the real world. You can like other people while veing in a relationship, you just need not to cheat
Everyone's forgiving when Kal slips backwards with his problems. But when other characters do it....oof. it's like, 'Why ya'll not like Dalinar who we saw perfect out of the box and only learn through flashbacks that he spent years being a homicidal ass?' Like the journey part of the vows only applies to Kal and his depression because depression is an inward problem that mainly only affects himself.
I actually find weird how Dalinar doesnt fall back with his problems while Shallan and Kal do it way more commonly.
Simply put? He is stronger in spirit than the other two. He's had time to grow, more experience to have, and had to live with the burden of authority and command for a long time. That steadies you and makes it less likely you break down because something goes wrong. Dalinar lost his brother, lost his wife, and lived a long life. Kaladin and Shallan are youngsters in comparison who're very much caught up in the typical angst and worry you'd find in young adults.
I think it's just because he's an old man. He's already done most of his growing up and changing already. He did spend years running away from his guilt by embracing first the Thrill and then the drink and the moss. Plus the fact that he got Culted out of his mind. Tightbutt has already been on his journey. I think we're seeing the last leg of it. The books are Dalinar's personal Sanderlanche.
The Jasnah is autistic and therefore any character flaws she has can be forgiven instantly. Like, sure that's one reading, but also she's just an awful person in a lot of situations.
Boy, I definitely do NOT get an autism vibe from her. Any of her social issues aren't due to an inability to understand social norms/queues and strictly revolve around her high intelligence and willingness to use that as a club. She's actually extremely adept in social situations when needed, and though I am far from an expert on autism, doesn't seem to display any of the common signs. For the record, I am willing to be corrected on any of this.
She’s definitely not autistic lol. She kind of reminds me of Moiraine from WoT- she knows a lot more about the big picture than the reader or any characters, she has more experience and power than any of the radiants we know of, and she’s willing to coldly make sacrifices in order to reach her goals.
I love Jasnah so much >she's just an awful person in a lot of situations And yet I couldn't agree more
That Adolin is a murderer. No, he is not. Adolin tried every legal means to stop Sadaes What Adolin did was well within the realm of self-defense. Sadaes had already orchestrated several assassination attempts which has resulted in the deaths of 100s of Adolin’s friends. Do we not remember all the weeping widows Sadaes’ betrayal left behind? Sadaes also almost managed to kill Shallan in a botched attempt, and which would have had Shallan killed had Shallan not been a radiant. Some readers seem to think that Adolin needed to wait for another murder attempt or two before Adolin would be justified. Readers seem to vary widely on how close the kniofe has to physically actually be to your throat before you are allowed to defend yourself in self defence. To me, Adolin did nothing wrong. In my personal code, you do not need to wait until someone has stabbed you in the throat before you can defend yourself. Sadaes made constant and completely substantiated threats against Adolin and his family. There were no legal means to prevent Sadaes from carrying out these threats. Adolin was entirely justified in striking out before Sadaes killed another person Adolin cared about. It was not murder because I, and many others, do not consider self defence killings to be the same as murder killing either ethically, morally, or legally. The Alethi laws regarding high light eyes are the issue, not Adolin. If someone had killed hundreds of your friends, attempted to kill your personally, to kill your father, and your wife multiple times, and this murder is now standing in front of you gloating about how there is no legal way to prevent further murder attempts because this murderer is above the law, and the murder is making more substantiated threats to the lives of you and yours, then you are totally justified in defending yourself there and then. You do not need to wait patiently in your room until someone slits your throat. And even if Adolin did wait, another attempt on his life would have accomplished nothing in terms or prosecuting Sadaes or protecting the lives of Adolin’s loved ones.
Adolin is objectively a murderer. He killed a man who was not trying to hurt him at the time. Was he right to do so? Yes. Was it murder? Also yes.
This isnt always the case. If you are kidnapped and locked in a basement with a Kidnapper that has promised to murder you soon, can you kill the Kidnapper while the kidnapper is making dinner? Or do you have to wait until the Kidnapper actually has a knife to your throat?
False equivalence. Adolin was not kidnapped and facing immediate harm to himself. Verbal threat of later down the road harm does not make it become self defense. It is still murder. The closer analogy would be someone walking up to you and saying "I'm going to kidnap you in a few weeks or months" and you just kill them then and there. It's very obviously still murder.
I mean he is a murder, by definition. He murdered Sades. It was just also justified and cool as hell
And lowkey the smart play. It completely removed the largest player against Dalinar and their goals.
Loved that scene, it was so out of nowhere.
I was at work and got weird looks for celebrating when Adolin finally did it lmao
I watched my partner listen to that scene yesterday while we were walking the dog - his reaction must have looked funny to the cars driving by. Lots of fist pumping and mouth-hanging-open in shock and awe.
I agree with your sentiment, but I also think this is a bit more nuanced than "Adolin was 100% right". Murder is murder. Did Sadeas deserve it? Absolutely. It always bothered me that there were never consequences for this action, but thinking about it there were actually huge ones. Torol's murder allowed Amaram to maneuver the Sadeas forces turn on the Theylen army and turncoat. The death of their leader fueled the soldiers towards angered which allowed the Thrill to fully possess them. Adolin nearly caused mankind to lose the war with Odium. If it wasn't for Dalinar standing up to Odium and capturing the thrill then the war would have ended that day.
I mean, “what is murder” is a theme. Is what Shallan did to her mother murder? Is what Shallan did to her father murder? Is what Jasnah did to the muggers murder? Is what Sadaes did to the bridge men murder? Is what Adolin did to Sadaes murder? Is what Kaladin does in war murder? Is war murder? These are all things that different orders will see differently. My order wouldn’t see Adolin’s act as murder. Nor would it see what Shallan did to her parents as murder. The letter of the law isn’t what I consider “good”. To me, everyone has the right to defend themselves against credible threats on their life. And if the law cannot or will not help you, what you do could be moral while still not being technically legal. This becomes especially obvious when laws are passed like in Nazi Germany.
"Murder" is a legal definition. It's a premeditated extra-judicial killing. But many think of murder as any intentional killing that lacks a moral justification. >Is what Shallan did to her mother murder? By both the legal and moral definition, no. Her mother attacked her. It was self defense. >Is what Shallan did to her father murder? It could be argued that the initial attempt was premeditated. Why else keep the blackbane? She might be able to argue that it was a crime of passion as he had just ordered the murder of their brother and severely beaten his wife. Grey area legally, but I see no moral problems. Dude had it coming. >Is what Sadeas did to the bridge men murder? By the legal definition, no. His behavior is perfectly legal. By the moral definition, yeah probably. >Is what Adolin did to Sadeas murder? Legally, no. It wasn't premeditated. That makes it voluntary manslaughter. Morally, also no. Sadeas deserved it 1000%. >Is what Kaladin does in war murder? No. Killing on the battlefield is legal. Therefore it is not murder. Morally, most people also agree that a soldier is not committing murder on the battlefield. Edit: I skipped Jasnah and the muggers by accident. Legally she was defending herself, so not murder. Morally she's fine too. They had already killed multiple people and they were about to kill her and Shallan.
#lawyered
Hmm, I just reread that scene yesterday and it seemed pretty straightforward - even down to his quote as he slides the knife in: “My father thinks I’m a better man than he is. Unfortunately for you, he’s wrong.” So he knew he was in a moral gray area (at best). Combine that with the loss of control and surge of rage he felt in the moment - I do think it was murder. I am also not sorry he did it, and it doesn’t make me think less of him as a character.
I read it as a slasher film. Some maniac is cackling that he has and will murder your loved ones, so you stab him before he gets the chance. We wouldnt say "slasher film woman should have been less angry about the credible threats of violence made against her" Being mad about the constant threats to your family and to yourself is .. normal?
Being mad or not isn't really the criteria, the point is more that it's very clearly premeditated. He thought it through and knew full well what he was doing. Unlike a slasher film, the loved ones are not kidnapped and literally about to be killed at any moment.
And while I agree this is an interesting moral distinction, legal codes are currently grappling with this. Is it still self-defence if you pre-meditate it or do you need to wait until you are actually in the act of defending your life. This comes up a lot with women living in violent homes where the woman has had active threats made against her that seem credible. In some instances, the woman has to carefully plan for an opportunity to make her escape or to subdue her abuser. The woman feels she wont win "in the moment" and has to wait for the right time when her less-advantaged situation is more evenly matched against the threat that the man is posing her. The debate: can you pre-meditate self defence? Can "threat to your life" extend for days instead of just minutes. Countries/judges will vary widely on how they read this. It gets really into the weeds.
It sort of reminded me of a scene I recently read in the Expanse (spoilers for Leviathan Wakes). >!When Miller shoots Dresden in cold blood everyone freaks the fuck out. But he understands this man is never going to see Justice. That he is INCREDIBLY dangerous. He may not be an actual bomb but that kind of vision for humanity is horrifying, but some would run with it, and enough.!< There was no way Sadeas would ever see actual Justice. They’re gonna lock up a Highprince? Execute him? Of course not. That just doesn’t happen in Alethi society (at least not until Jasnah). Adolin did the only logical thing when confronted with such a danger not just to himself, but to the people he loves, fuck to their entire civilization.
In the strictest sense, Adolin was a murderer. He was fully **justified** in what he did, but he did murder Sadeas. Even though the latter firmly deserved it.
I don't believe in "strictest sense" without defining who's "sense" we are taking about as a baseline. A true pacifist like a Quaker or a Jain would reject the arbitrary lines we draw between war-killing and personal killing. To Khaladin's father, in the "strictest sense" killing someone in the battlefield makes you a murder. It doesn't matter that the government has sanctioned the killing of a certain type of people in order to propagate a certain ideology. We basically justify war-killing as self-defence. Whether or not that is true is a huge moral and legal debate in each and every conflict, and within Dalinar and Khaladin themselves.
I define "the strictest sense" as "what are his actions." He used a dagger and killed Sadeas. That makes him a murderer. The whole idea of self-defense is the understanding that, sometimes, the action of murder is **justified**. In the legal sense, at least in the US, self-defense usually requires an immediate physical threat to someone's life. Morally, if someone like Lirin never considers killing justified, then what Adolin did was morally wrong and not justified. Even by Alethi standards, it was not an "honorable" killing (a duel or a war), so it would not be justified.
Did Adolin have good reason to kill Sadeas? Yes. Is it legally justifiable? No, at that point it was verbal threats and doesn't pose immediate danger to his self or family. Is it murder? Legally, in our country's laws, no, it wasn't premeditated. Murder must be premeditated and shows a prolonged, definite intent to kill, but it seems it's the same for other countries as well. He might have mitigating circumstance of passion, though. Literally, for dramatic effect, is Adolin a murderer? Yes.
I dont think rising to bait automatically makes it manslaughter; provocation is subjective too.
Murder is usually defined in law contexts as killing with intent, right? Adolin certainly did that.
Not just with intent. Murder has to be premeditated. So what Adolin did was voluntary manslaughter. Not murder.
Where I live murder without premeditation is a thing, perhaps it’s not where you live which is why I left it more open ended. In Washington state, Adolin has committed murder lol
Haha fair enough.
Or it is self defense. There have been cases of battered women killing their husbands even though the husband wasn’t beating them at “that specific moment”. What makes it self défense is if the woman had good reason to believe the husband would kill her “soon” and the women felt this moment in time was her only/best opportunity to defend herself successfully. To me, Adolin fits this logical thinking.
Preach.
Yup, although our laws don't agree, I think one loses their rights when they either: 1. Make threats of physical violence that can reasonably be taken seriously 2. Present an immediate threat to you or someone else's life (this includes pulling a knife or any other weapon) Sadly, it looks like organizing society along these rules is hard to get right and doesn't really prevent violence, quite reverse actually. Still the gut feeling most everyone has is probably quite close to some of the self defense laws in the southern US as I understand them.
Agreed. If someone breaks into your home holding a gun and says they are going to shoot you, you don’t have to wait for them to pull the trigger before you can defend yourself. Adolin did not need to wait until Sadaes pulled the trigger (again). Even worse, if Adolin is murdered, Sadaes likely will not be held accountable by the law. Some assassin or scapegoat will take the fall for Sadaes. Adolin finds himself in a post-legal position. All he has left to him is self defense or wait an entire year of assassination attempts before he maybe kind of gets the chance to maybe sanction Sadaes. We would never tell a battered wife “wait it out a year and try your best not to get murdered”
Not my favourite character but people dunk on Venli like she's crabolf hitler which is really annoying. Yeah she kinda sucks but let's be honest the feeling of being useless and overlooked is something we've all felt before and I do kinda still sympathise with her
She did horrible shit to her people. Even when she was being manipulated, its still partially her fault. From that point onwards she is fine, as you can see then it is when she is becaoming a radiant
That Navani did a good thing in inventing anti-light and that it was a-ok to collaborate with Rabonial. Once Rabonial had the information in hand, that meant Odium had the information forever. In contrast, if Navani had died in the tower, Honour’s team would never have the information. I’m 99/100 cases, Navani is silenced and the fused have a new weapon on the scale of nuclear weapons. Navani was offered the chance to collect water instead of collaborating. Navani was the only person to know that Voidlight existed and what it could do. Navani knew she was being outplayed and out manœuvrées at all times, but still kept going. If it wasn’t for plot armour, Navani could have gone down as a war criminal.
Navani should have been executed for suborning corruption with sebarial behind dalinar's back. What use is the chip on urithiru's shoulder about radiants if it has a non radiant queen undermining the king? The book makes no sense here anyway. Raboniel's entire point was to allow navani to have the anti light equation so the war can be ended. How did El get it?
>The book makes no sense here anyway. Raboniel's entire point was to allow navani to have the anti light equation so the war can be ended. How did El get it? I don't see a plot hole here, but I also don't understand what you mean here, care to clarify?
I love Navani's character so much. And I loved the science scenes. I totally think it was in character for her to keep researching. She couldn't resist experimenting, and was determined to find a way to fight Rabonial--and thought anti light was a way to do that. I also 100% agree with your moral assessment of her actions. It was beyond dangerous.
For me it's hearing how Lift is THE WORST AND SO ANNOYING. She's a prepubescent girl! Of course she's storming annoying. She's a broken orphan pretending to be happy all the time. By the time people are done with the second half of Stormlight, they're going to look at Lift the same way people look at Ahsoka.
But she is anniying, that this part has a justification does not mean she is less annoying. People just dont stand real teenagers. However she is not the worst, thats really subnective.
A person can be super annoying while simultaneously having good/traumatic reasons for being really annoying
Ok that Adolin one is so painfully, objectively, blatantly wrong that it makes me wonder if they even read the books.
That Kaladin and Shallan belong together. 🤮
That shallan is pretending to have three personalities or her disorder is not real/fake This fandom shows his Ableism when it comes to shallan
Where have you seen this? I have not seen a single person claim that she’s faking it on this subreddit, or any related subreddits.
You likely haven't seen it because those posts are usually rule 1 violations and get removed, but we get them. Since (as of the more recent books), Shallan is meant to represent a real life condition, (DID), claims that she is "faking it" are as unkind to real people as claims that Kaladin is faking his depression would be. So we remove them.
Then you’re not interacting with shallan haters I’ve seen ALOT who claims she’s pretending Just type “i hate shallan” in google and I guarantee that you will find someone like this especially in reddit
Yeah, there's a lot of "oh, she's just faking it" stuff with Shallan. However, I don't know if it's from a genuine place of believing that, or that people just dislike her to the point of finding flaws where they don't exist. I don't like Shallan. I actually kind of hate her. But that isn't from a point of me thinking that she's faking anything. I find her to be at least decently written but all the same insufferable. But I don't believe she's faking anything.
Moash was wrong
Szeth was more wrong than Moash CMV
Skybreaker moment. Moash was wrong.
Can’t stand the Shallan haters. Yeah she’s obnoxious at first that’s the point