Cosmere, Wheel of Time, whatever other sci-fi, fantasy, or other nerdy topic strikes my fancy
101 posts
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Being a non-binary vorin must suck because you’re only allowed to eat bland food.
If Gavilar Had Survived a Little Longer
Gavilar: Tell Thaidakar he's too late!
Szeth: I don't know who that is
Gavilar: Restares? Sadeas?
Szeth: My masters are...
Gavilar: Don't tell me, I want to guess. Was it Nale?
Szeth: You mean Nin? No.
Gavilar: Taln is mad that I want to take his place?
Szeth: Stop guessing Heralds
Gavilar: I've got it! The stormfather! I knew he was lying!
Szeth: You're insane.
Gavilar: Elhokar or Dalinar making a play for the throne?
Szeth: No
Gavilar: Navani's really mad that I yelled at her?
Szeth: Is there anyone in your family you don't suspect of killing you? It wasn't them.
Gavilar: I don't suspect Jasnah. Was it Taravingian? He seems to be up to more than he lets on.
Szeth: Don't be silly, I would never work for him.
Gavilar: Is the king of Jah Keved so scared of our alliance with the Parshendi that he’d have me killed?
Szeth: How do you have so many enemies but still have more than you think? My masters are the Parshendi.
Gavilar: That doesn't make any sense!?
Szeth: RAFO
Gavilar: ...Take this sphere and tell my brother he must find the most important words a man can say.
Szeth: Dying requests are sacred in my culture, I will do as you ask.
Gavilar: Wait! As my dying request can you instead kill everyone else I guessed except my family members?
Szeth: ...Okay not that sacred.
Why do good morning, good afternoon, and good evening mean hello while good night means bye?
Sixth of the Dusk gets roped into a game show where they play Name That Bird and he’s going up against a Rosharan who thinks every bird is a chicken (but always gets shown chickens), meanwhile Sixth’s getting birds like the roseate spoonbill.
I think Gavilar should have read the entirety of Way of Kings aloud and attained radiance in the middle of a random paragraph <3
I don't get why everyone thinks if we're picking children for the contest of champions they would choose Gavinor; he could definitely beat Oroden in a fight but I think Lift could beat either of them.
There's an interesting parallel between Kaladin vs Szeth and Lift vs Nale: Both of them, in a climactic moment, swear the third ideal and summon their blade right before fighting either Szeth or Nale as the everstorm approaches. Szeth and Nale both make a very similar comment like "You mean to fight me? You are new to this" right before Szeth gets beaten by Kaladin and Nale fails to kill Lift. Anyway from this we can conclude that if the fight had continued and Nale hadn't realized he was wrong and stopped fighting, Lift was about to kill him.
Took these from my shit posting TikTok, maybe they'll be better appreciated here
more stormlight archive characters as text memes!
part one x
Im not autistic about cars or makes or models but I AM autistic about crumple points and field of vision and blindspots and conflict points. do you understand. urban design, anti car dependency/anti car centric infrastructure, and so cars themselves are part of that interest. because car design is urban design. cybertrucks SUCK as cars and also dont function well in infrastructure thats designed to care about people. there are good cars and vehicles that are designed good and fit well with good urban design
Cultivation takes what you have and gives you what you need. The Nightwatcher tries this, but she’s new and not a god, so she’s a bit bad at this. Like taking perceptive orientation and giving the man linen(?).
This is why She had to intervene when Dalinar arrived. The Nightwatcher doesn’t have the nuance of understanding Cultivation does and would’ve done a simple transactional exchange.
Cultivation, however, understands that what Dalinar had was pain, and what he needed was the space to get over himself long enough to get his footing.
But then she gave it back. At a time when he was ready to process it and needed it to grow.
Odium can’t do that. He doesn’t let you process the pain. He takes what you have and gives you what you want—pleasure to fill the emptiness the pain left.
Odium—Hate, is addictive, because it can never be a source of growth. Only anger and destruction.
True Passion requires the desire to see someone do better. To see yourself do better.
“If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”
Sazed: *picks up Marsh* but sir, this is my Emotional Support Inquisitor™️
Some advice to worldbuilders: don't commit to exact numbers unless you've really really thought about them. Don't say "there are 12 wizard schools in the world", if you want to just center 12 in the plot, say something like "these are the 12 most prestigious schools" or "these are the 12 schools in the (magic equivalent for ivy league)". That way, your gaps can be filled in by the readers and if you ever find yourself wanting something for a future plot, you can just add a different one without retconning.
Szeth’s Oathstone was a Hordeling?!
Sleepless spotted?
ETA: Or maybe Tien’s cool rock that changes colors when wet?
One great mystery in the Cosmere still bugs me, and has seemingly no hope at a resolution is...
How is Lightsong so good at Tarachin??? (the returned's ball game) Despite not knowing the rules, picking spheres at random, and throwing them wherever he feels like, Lightsong wins every time. Not just occasionally, but every single time.
There is of course the theory that he suggests: that the game is stupid. But this doesn't hold much water. You can make a game where it feels like there's a lot of decisions, but it's mostly luck, that's certainly possible. But to be able to win every time? That seems to require a game where thinking actively harms you, and I can't see any way that makes sense, nor have I seen any example of such a game.
Perhaps he played it in his past life? It's certainly possible - he was an accountant, working for presumably wealthy clients, so maybe he played the game with them, as it's described as a game for the wealthy. Or maybe he played it as a hobby; he and Llarimar also had expensive hobbies like going on a boat for fun, so they could have played Tarachin. His abilities in mathematics could have also helped him be good at a game like this, where the scoring is incredibly complex.
Maybe it's his future-sight (Fortune) as a returned. He picks the ball that feels right, while the others use their minds, so maybe he's allowing himself to be influenced by it unlike the rest of them.
I've heard one theory that luck is his power as a returned. This theory points out that other returned have special abilities in things like wisdom or exceptional beauty. Maybe Lightsong gets luck? Maybe things work out well when he takes risks- he is the god of bravery after all.
Or maybe none of the above. Maybe a shard is just intervening.
Anyway, I hope we can get an answer from Brandon, or at the very least, have a Tarachin tournament at the next convention so we can verify for ourselves which one makes the most sense.
but yeah overall chs 7-9 my main takeaway was 1) cool lightweaver power up it's nice to see kaladin level maneuvering with other radiant orders. specifically shallan. 'be drehy' was crazy 2) the mental picture of the horse girl chucking swords from his chest at attackers as they passed was. well im not gonna think about that just yet 3) am i like actually crazy or has the writing style shifted. why does this read like the ssps you know it's not like stormlight had a very formal style before but these chapters have an almost modern edge to them. am i crazy.
if roshar has zipper technology why aren't they using it for cargo pants. where are the cargo pants brandon
You’d think that by now, the fused would learn to be scared when a Knight Radiant starts yelling character development at them
So Kaladin tells Dalinar that he won't get back in time and Dalinar says "its ok, I can send a spanreed, Szeth can write". What would he have done if Szeth couldn't write?
Would Kaladin just have had to carry some random scribe with him for the entire book?
Would he send Lyn with him? That would be awkward, both because of their history, and because Lyn was initially annoyed at getting hired as a scribe instead of a team member, so now she gets promoted to... sky scribe?
please read this oh my god
I see a lot of discussion arguing about whether Moash or other characters are redeemable, or complaining about the ways that characters like Amaram became less ambiguous and more evil, and I think this misses the themes of the series.
A big theme of the series is that a good person is one who is simply trying to do better - improving themselves and trying to be better each day than they were the last day. A lot of the series seems to support this reading: the progression of oaths, Kaladin's decision at the Honor Chasm, Dalinar's "Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing". Dalinar's "You will not have my pain!" speech basically spells this out, with him discussing the need to accept his past actions so that he can do better.
Throughout the story, characters like Kaladin, who attempt to improve themselves are the heroes. Even characters who've done horrifying things, like Dalinar and Szeth, are redeemable if they choose redemption. According to the morality of the Stormlight Archive, these are the heroes. Even Elhokar becomes a hero once he begins to try to improve himself, though this journey is cut short.
But this has a converse. Characters like Sadeas and Amaram, who are repeatedly given chances to do the right thing, but always choose the wrong thing. This, more than anything else, is what makes them the villains in the morality of the Stormlight Archives. These choices stack up worse and worse, and so, eventually, you end up the way they did, where there is nothing morally grey or defensible about either of them. That's why, by the end, Amaram is a monster bonding an Unmade and Sadeas is a mustache twirling villain. The morality of the Stormlight Archive will not allow them to stick around like the people we met early on.
Moash, right now, is headed down that path. He has had plenty of chances to choose to be less evil, but whenever given the option, seems to choose the worst option.
This does not mean he is irredeemable. No character in Stormlight is irredeemable, but they have to choose redemption. Whether or not he is redeemable does not depend on his past, or his motivations, merely whether he chooses redemption or not.