“They called themselves the Alethi, but we knew them as the Tagarut. The breakers, it means. Those who leave only death.”

I expected this to be about the void bringers when Nomad starts his story. It’s actually so refreshing to see non-Alethi Rosharan POVs

Dalinar Kholin. Big Ol’ WIP of my favorite bondsmith. I’d argue that his character arc and development is on par with Prince Zuko, one of the most well written characters I’ve read.

All I could think of when this dude was on screen is that he is striving to be an Alethi windrunner.

After First Contact, Vulcan experienced a decades long fashion trend of covering their hands with cloth around Humans.

Gang I would be so unwell if I experienced The Thrill and it made it so easy for me to kill a bunch of guys and later found out it was also the thing that precipitated my dad killing my mom

I'm rereading Elantris and thinking about similarities between Sarene and Adolin:

Considered embarrassingly old to still be unmarried (mid-twenties); Adolin was forced to import a potential bride and Sarene was forced to export herself as a bride, both times to someone they hadn't laid eyes on yet.

OH ALSO both of their failures in courtship sound ludicrous. No man in Teod wants to marry the princess because she's tall and outspoken? Seriously? No woman in Alethkar can stand Adolin, cousin to the king? Really? As the Americans say, come on.

Forced to spend time in a bloodthirsty court that they hate, with people who hate them

Love swords and duelling

Trained diplomats

Blond(e)

I love that step one in Dalinar's grand plan to Unite Them is essentially My Son Can Beat Up You Son.

Which is probably a standard Alethi bragging right--you hear your kid beat up another kid, you go straight to that kid's house so you can rub it in their dad's face.

I think one of the reasons that kaladin can deal with actively killing as a soldier but not with accidentally (passively) letting someone die as a surgeon is the sense of failure (plus of course the obvious protection aspect and the whole me-vs-them mentality he only really starts to question when Shin joins bridge four, and he starts interacting fairly regularly with a light-eyes he can genuinely respect). dalinar himself said that he "love(s) taking responsibility for things", which is especially clear in the way he still can't quite blame amaram for tien's demise (because he feels like this is his failure, too).

like we can see in the first book that the deaths of the people he swore to protect weigh on him not only because of the dying people per se, but also (and I would argue: especially) because of his FAILURE to keep them alive. he always makes this connection to himself, thinks of their demise in relation to HIS own person and HIS role and HIS failure (cue the whole "stormfather cursed me specifically" thing). like, besides tien and the bridgemen (who we know because they are active current characters), can we truly say much of anything about the people he failed to protect in the past? the only thing we really know is how HE feels about it and how it messed HIM up. but the people themselves??

kaladin just has insane main character syndrome, and everything happening to him (first dark-eyed to have the rank of a light-eyed, one of the only surgebinders, guy able to survive multiple fights with actual shardbearers, etc etc) do the opposite of helping him dissuade the notion. I feel like I lost the plot of my own post. Kal is honorable and a good guy and everything but he is also pretty self-centered? which I actually find really cool because many times people who do objectively good actions are still kind of demonized if they don't do it for the "right" reasons (aka purely 1000% selflessness), but Kal explicitly starts helping the bridgemen not because he actually cares about them but because he needs a reason to not commit suicide. and when he loses bridgemen (especially in the beginning where he barely knows them) he always immediately thinks back to the other people he FAILED to save. he isn't devastated because that person in particular died, he is upset because he is very bad at dealing with his own failures and also terrified that the wretch will use this to lure him back onto the ledge. i mean, he loathes failure so much he was resigned to never see his parents again (who he clearly loves a lot and who he knows would welcome him back with open arms; it's his own shame that he can't confront)

he helps people primarily to try to make up for the failures of the past, an attempt to dissuade the guilt and shame eating him alive 24/7 (which of course never works because guilt is a very unreasonable emotion and as long as he doesn't change his mindset and confronts his own beliefs about himself and the world it will never go away.)

"do the fire sprin create the flames or are they attracted by them?" of course syl was compelled to follow kaladin around. dude keeps actively (even if semi-unconsciously) putting himself into the same role and situation over and over again in the hopes that if he can only succeed one time it will somehow redeem him for his past failures. literally every single thing Kal does and thinks and believes is rooted in the fact that he blames himself for tien's demise. he needs to somehow redeem himself in order to be able to live with himself but at the same time he can never be redeemed because letting tien die is an unforgivable crime and yet he needs to make it up somehow because the wretch is always in the back of his mind and he's actually terrified of it but he is equally scared of actually somehow managing to get over this sense of guilt and failure because wouldn't forgiving himself mean he thinks tien is less important than his own stupid (and, in his mind, deserved) feelings?

that guy is so not over his brother's death it actually isn't funny anymore 💀 please get that dude some fucking therapy 😭😭

a little-known clause in the alethi codes of war permits bending uniform regulations IF you have a nice enough butt

Woke: Humans are the invaders/conquerors of Roshar

Bespoke: Humans were welcomed to Roshar as refugees, but then displaced the indigenous populations

Broke: technically…the white people are the only non-Colonist/imperialist humans on Roshar

Hot take of the day is that I think sanderson not letting adolin murdering sadeas have any real consequences killed like 95% of interesting debate on the morality of it

The Sunlit Man ch. 16:

everyone seems so convinced dalinar is going to be homophobic to renarin. maybe im just a delusional dalinar stan but in row 54 when dalinar is talking to renarin about him being an enlightened truthwatcher and he says, and i quote, "whatever you are son, it's a blessing. you may be a different kind of radiant, but you're radiant all the same. you shouldn't feel the need to hide this" that sure sounds like a parent who has figured out that their child is queer and is not going to press them on it but is trying to get across that they Accept Their Son's Differences. like im not saying dalinar is a champion for gay rights or anything and im certainly not saying that he's free of the biases of heterosexual society just because sadeas sucked him off or whatever, but what i AM saying is that he's a moderate liberal dad who is a little bit confused about how to be a good ally but who is trying. and maybe that trying doesn't hit at all for renarin. maybe dalinar being like "and that's okay" a little too affirmatively when renarin comes out to him is not going to actually help renarin feel supported in the gendered hellscape that is vorin society. but i certainly don't think that he's going to be angry or, like, disowning renarin or talking about what a disappointment he is. this man learned how to read for chrissakes. and when renarin learned how to read dalinar wasn't like oh son this is so shameful he was like well this is odd and unexpected! but i have a lot more important shit going on lmao. i think renarin coming out to dalinar would be like that.

I wasn’t supposed to post abt this until i wrote it on ao3 but im writing this fanfic based solely on that offhand comment Shallan made about Kaladin in Oathbringer where she goes “you walk like a sailor you’d make a good sailor” you can guess where this is going.

In this fic, Kaladin is a sailor!!!!! Not like in a pirate or even a merchant way (kinda like in a pirate way but more like a One Peice pirate more than anything)

I have written NONE of this but im very close to and i don’t think i can contain my excitement

Would love to know more about the cultural things Evi imparted to Adolin and Renarin. We always get Dalinar being like “soft and friendly and sensitive” and like okay awesome. But what stuff do they DO that Evi taught them?? Like little things habits, rituals, etc. Also, Before Dalinar gets his memories back, was he ever like deeply confused that Renarin or Adolin is just burning really potent incense??? Did they have any of their mothers accent as kids?

Rereading The Lost Metal and just noticed that Kaise has to speak to her seon in some selish language. But Shallan can talk to Ala in Alethi so did Mraise just sit this ball down and teach it Alethi???