#the more i reread this quote and the actual words of the Oath
Note
this may be weird, but do you really think that jordelia will end up together? as much as everyone wants them to, looking at the familly tree and the errors with mixing up first marriages and that story (i'm forgetting the name) where the name layla comes from having an unhappy ending is making me think something will go wrong. also, with the theory of matthew getting his marks stripped, what if he just loses his name and ended up taking cordelia's? i'm doing a reread and noticing new things
Hey Anon, thanks so much for the ask, I love getting them 🥰❤️
I 100% think Jordelia will end up together. I think if she were going to go in another direction she wouldn’t have spent the majority of Chain of Iron focusing on their relationship. Now that James has realised his love for her there’s no doubt in my mind, he won’t love anyone else and we know he doesn’t die so I think they will. There’s so many moments they share that lead me to believe this, but here’s a quote from Tessa about James in Gotsm “My James knew the power of a love story as well as well as I do”. I think this eludes to Jordelia’s overall story- while there were obstacles to their relationship, they got past them and ended up together. There’s another quote like that from Fever, a short story from Cordelia’s perspective “She did not realize it would be a long, long time before she ceased to feel the lack of him inside her heart”. Suggesting that at some stage she is always with him, so again, I think that Grace, Belial/Tatiana and Matthew are just the obstacles they face in their journey.
I know where you’re coming from in terms of the family tree, it’s confusing and something that Cassie repeatedly says she regrets doing. But, I think the ‘twist’ in their marriage is just how they got married... In saying that, I’m not sure if they will stay ‘properly’ married, it might be interesting if Cordelia has to divorce James or never get her second rune to get her out of her oath with Lilith so she would technically no longer be ‘Cordelia Herondale’. It might be interesting if they were together romantically so they had to lead the Clave to believe they were still truly married, which could be why Jem changed the family tree? (it would be kind of fun to turn the reason they got married on its head, like they got fake married because of her reputation and society’s view of unmarried women but then they break this societal expectation by not being ‘properly’ married but still remaining together...). I’m not too worried about the family tree aspect, I know there will be a twist to how they end up together, and I have plenty more theories, but I have no doubt that will end up together.
The Layla and Majnun story is interesting I haven’t read it in full but I would like to. As far as I know Majnun gets lost in the wilderness and Layla dies of heartbreak.. I think Cassie references this because it parallels James being ‘lost’ in his own mind, he’s being controlled and has lost his own willpower and as a result Cordelia is left heartbroken. But, that doesn’t mean it has to end like the actual story. The entire series itself is loosely inspired by the Great Expectations where James and Grace would be Pip and Estella respectively and their story is already very different from the Great Expectations. This was also something that worried people when Tid was coming out, it’s loosely based on The Tale of Two Cities and Will Herondale is constantly described to be Sydney Carton, who dies/sacrifices himself and doesn’t end up with Lucie (who would be Tessa in this case) but this is obviously very different from the Tid ending. Cassie loves a happy ending, so I wouldn’t worry about that.
Oh Matthew, he’s definitely a character to be worried about, there’s a lot of scary foreshadowing with him 💔. They could get married, it’s possible I guess, I think it’s unlikely because I think it would only happen to get Cordelia out of her oath so not an actual ‘love’ match (which I doubt Cordelia would want to go through again). I really don’t think that Matthew and Cordelia are going to end up together... it’s just not being set up that way at all in my eyes, I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel like Matthew isn’t actually in love with Cordelia, he just knows that he can never be with her and so is using her to punish himself. It’s been acknowledged he seeks a ‘hopeless love’ so what makes this situation different from the one he had with Lucie? Cordelia only sees Matthew as a friend and he knows she’s in love with James. Cordelia actually mentions the word ‘friend’ atleast three times when he tells her how he feels, in fact when he tells her he loves her this is her thought process: “Cordelia was speechless. She did not want to hurt him; she had been hurt enough and had no desire to pass it on to someone else. Especially as dear a friend as Matthew”. This could change but it would be a really weird plot twist that I wouldn’t feel is earned, Cordelia has never expressed romantic interest in Matthew past calling him handsome or noticing his arms 😅? Again, I think this is explained away with this Chog quote “He was very handsome, Cordelia thought; she didn’t know why she didn’t respond to him as she did to James. But then, she didn’t respond to anyone as she did to James”. Bearing in mind that only a week will have passed from the end of Choi to the beginning of Chot, there’s really not room for her to have realistically developed romantic feelings for Matthew, in my opinion.
#ask answered#jordelia#herondaisy#chain of iron#the last hours#chain of thorns#james herondale#cordelia carstairs#matthew fairchild#tlh#chain of gold
46 notes
·
View notes
Text
RotT reactions part 2!
costis, what are you doing here, shouldn't you be in roa? shouldn't you be with kamet? costis, where's kamet? what happened to him? tell me!
"who really owns anything?" eugenides, you utter meme.
if tattoos a custom in eddis, does. .....does helen have tattoos? oh my word, please tell me helen has tattoos, she would look so cool.
so, so, so, horrible invasion, giant army, logistics of war. it's very terrible and interesting, but where kamet? where my boy? is he okay? costis just LEFT him behind, bc he had to get word back to attolia, I don't blame him, I love him. but is kamet okay????????????????????
rip to all the cottage fic people probably wrote about the two having a chill time in roa. (idk, I haven't checked.) megan said we can't have nice things.
"find yourselves another king" uhhhhhhh, gen?
gen said no more king, now only Thief and Hot Consort To The Sexy Queen.
awww, sophos gave him a book of poetry for his birthday. I love sophos.
"attolia says she leaves with you" *spends several long minutes clutching at my chest repeatedly as I am Overwhelmed*
you know the quote in koa about a careful dance of shafow and unsubstance but under it all, a real marriage of two people? that's literally this. the queen is surely calculated her possible responses to gen, amd this is either a Pointed Message to gen or to the barons, and I'm still not sure what gen is up to actually, but also. she loves him, guys. they're in love. "she leaves with you". they're in love.
"I asked her to leave with me on our wedding night" of course he did.
"except me, I can do anything I want" :'D
they're too soft. I cannot.
go, costis! save your boy!
..........is this where I formally apologize for rolling my eyes back in 2016 when people shipped teleus/relius? I genuinely did not see this coming.
megan said okay, we've been on our best behavior, it's been 25 years, she will sprinkle in a little canon queerness. and then upended a flour sack of it on us.
"he had to bend to keep his lips on hers until she reached the ground" they're too cute, this is illegal.
oh, now THAT'S some soap opera level nonsense. how awkward was it for gen and helen knowing his father was a spurned lover of her mother
sometimes soldiers. I am eating this stuff up.
they get no apology. h*ck the pents. maybe they should have chosen an ambassador that didn't force himself upon women.
"where sounis's father positively beamed with approval at his son, eddis's minister of war glowered. the high king, slumped in his seat, catching his father's glare, slumped even further." it be like that.
ten to one. oof, oof, oof.
okay, the solution is, one of gen's sisters should beat up cleon and therespides.
gen. you were the one paying him. I don't know why I'm ever surprised by the tangled schemes you wrap yourself up in.
every scene that the four monarchs are together, just having a good time and loving each other and sounding so much like the young people they are, every time, it makes me happy.
the fandom tried to figure out at what age boys left the dorms in Eddis, didn't we? I think we settled on 12 or 13. gen killed someone before he was 13. hachi machi.
he called him "my brother sounis". awww.
"without cheating" is that what we're calling godly visits now
eugenides will give me a heart attack, I swear.
they call it return of the thief bc this is the most like himself gen has acted since the crenellations in KoA.
(fitting that this is the book with a neuroduvergent pov, bc I have never happy stimmed more in my life than during the chase scene.)
when he starts windmilling, now I am afraid. oh please, megan, don't let him be hurt.
thank the gods.
helen wearing an eddisian uniform. heck yeah! gnc helen rights continue!
"it was the last lighthearted moment for a long time" :(
they're leaving the city, and I'm suddenly remember the comment from back in book of pheris 1 about an attack by a tomb. am afraid.
it's loving the magus o' clock. he treats pheris so well.
irenides baby......2!!!!
"I don't understand" you and me both, sophos.
"I think they have to show their worst selves sometimes in order to be sure that even at their worst they are loved" I need a minute.
I love tactics and logistics, but I wish I could picture this my head. the map doesn't actually help me figure out where the forces are in perspective.
megan really wasn't exaggerating when she said eugenides's first reaction to seeing an elephant is "I want to steal one."
"he muscled up his other arm and said he would destroy the Medes single-handed" these books are giving me a stroke. megan, that pun was beautiful.
"I have found Kamet!" I'm going to be sick. he had better be okay. he was supposed to be free of nahuseresh.
nasty man had better be lying. my kamet had better be okay.
oh, costis. okay, okay, alright.
why is cleon's death so sombering. I think it's bc I just reread "Thief!", and met him as a teenager in that. I think it's bc it says he's one of three cousins that died that day, and gen already lost so many cousins during the war in QoA. I loved the country of eddis when I was first reading these books and forever after that, bc it's so full. there's a very communal child-rearing system and gen has these packs of cousins, even if most of them spent their childhood bullying him, I loved the idea of having so much family around you. he's running out of family.
oh. I went back to reading from writing that, and. stenides. oh.
I said I wanted gen's siblings, but not like this.
well, here's some cairns. presumably the tombs pheris's foreshadowed earlier. here we go, something bad is going to happen.
Something Bad Happened.
oh, no, Hilarion. D:
*tiffany haddish voice* NOMENUS??? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS. I PUT YOU ON MY BINGO.
the man at the cairn. the god on the battlefield that megan referenced? but eugenides called him a dead man. so not a god. so, did he recognize him as someone he knew to be dead?
"my cousins know not to trust my tears" once again, gen's hail mary is the fact he's a little snipe.
he says he needs a heavier rain, and the gods deliver.
f in chat for nomenus. he was a snake, but still.
"and by my oath to my god, now and for my life, Thief of Eddis." YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, Philo. :(
rip to Legarus and his Awesome Beauty.
they want to kill gen in The Thief? eddis's council wanted to kill him? I'm reeling from all the backstory this book is revealing.
not quite how I had the apotheosis pictured, and yet. *sufjan steven's ascension plays in the background*
"I say it three times, Fordad. It will be so. It will be so. It will be so." holy heck.
someone get in here and analyze that for biblical symbolism.
HE CALLED DOWN LIGHTNING. HOLY
narration only calls him eugenides in that scene with the lightning. significant.
"feeling the tremor in it, he opened his arms to catch the king as he fell." he has fallen and been caught by his god and fallen and been caught by his dad.
I think we'll call the interregnum an interlude into the underworld, if not a journey into.
oh, gods, relius.
for a former spymaster, he sure trusted too easily.
he could have had his farm in the gede valley, but he stayed to help irene and gen. oh, relius, relius.
sejanus has a saving grace afterall.
dite and sejanus protecting each other, and pretending to hate each other so that sejanus at least can be on good terms with their father, that all clicks into place when you know about their older brother who they probably loved just as much.
crying crying crying over Sejanus and Pheris.
the minster of war. D:
at least nahuseresh is dead.
gen lay down to sleep by his father's corpse.
the patrimony divided in three. a triangle.
sophos/helen baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love that gen, knowing his cousin and also being a little sneak who notices everything, figured out helen was pregnant before sophos even did.
f for sejanus. he wasn't as bad as he seemed, and not nearly as bad as he almost was.
oh, xenophon died, too. he of the wooden cannons and receiver of the infamous "I love stupid plans" line.
why is everyone dead. :(
"they're at the pickets, both of them" oh, thank you, jesus. TWO PEOPLE WHO AREN'T DEAD. MY BOYS.
she dreams of Eddis empty. there's no words for the relief I feel.
twinssss!!
and yet they don't tell us the name!!!!! what was the MoW's name??? what is their son's name??? megan!!!!!!
gen holding his daughter for the first time and offering to pitch her off a roof. I don't even have words.
hector. hector. hector hector hector.
rooftop dance!!!!!!!!!!!
HE'S OKAY. RELIUS IS OKAY.
(you couldn't give us one costis and kamet dance? no, it's fine.)
peace. peace. peace.
crying.
27 notes
·
View notes
Text
More from my reread and...
- this is such an excellent Jaime chapter! George is actually so good at writing disability, including acquired disability (Jaime and Bran) and this shines through in this chapter.
- Jaime reminding Brienne of all the things he did with that hand! Jaime taking getting hard looking at Brienne as a sign he’s been away from Cersei too long 😝 the “maimed man and bitter” quote... I love it
- yeahhh Brienne Jaime’s reasons for oath breaking were just as good as Robert’s. Though I think they’ve both got Robert wrong actually, his rebellion wasn’t about love, or “pride, a cunt and a pretty face,” it was about him being absolutely sick of Targaryen tyranny and wanting to bring an end to it
- and then jaime gets into the story of why he killed aerys... I love this so much. Even though we got a little insight into it before, him actually telling someone... and only doing that when he’s feverish and ill... it’s great
- honestly thank fuck Jaime stopped the message getting to the pyromancers. And Jaime calling death by sword merciful just like Joff? Perfect
- Jaime seeing his sword hand as both his glory and his shame? Perfect
- and the way he talks about Ned... “he only had to look at me to judge me guilty... by what right does the wolf judge the lion”... it’s great, and Ned probably is too quick to judge sometimes
- Jaime. My name is Jaime. He just wants to be referred to by his name and it makes me so emotional? Think what always being called kingslayer and oathbreaker and monster is going to do to you. Honestly so much of Jaime’s arc is about identity rather than redemption
- oh my god Jaime finding the energy to be a little bitch and throw shade on the food even right after he’s fainted...
- and then the brilliant dinner with Roose! And Jaime being offended by edmure’s 1000 dragon ransom I love it
- oh no the plan to send poor jeyne north is being formed :(
- Jaime standing up for Lannister honour! And in this case it’s Tyrion’s honour in particular. And the line “your goat cut off my hand. If you think some prunes will make me overlook that you’re bloody well mistaken.”... *chef’s kiss*
- lol Jaime he’s already made friends with the Lannisters!
- Jaime being so used to but also despising getting the blame for everything... wow. And “I will trust to your word, ser.” There’s something I don’t often hear. ... this shit makes me sad
- he remembered how happy his brother had been with his little crofter’s daughter... for a fortnight. Oh my god I can’t this is too much
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
so all of liss’ quotes have been assembled and they are lovely. they do not teach us much we did not already know, more fleshed out a few concepts here and there. so im just going to ramble about them here:
in particularly there are two interesting lines in that she DOES acknowledge at least as/he as some kind of reincarnation of her sister or claims she is a pretender. ("You know I can not abide that, pretender." "You failed in your last life, and you'll fail in this one.") it is possible she is calling her a reincarnation in more the spiritual successor sense or even in a taunting manner to emulate the words of her followers. or maybe she does believe they are reincarnations and then perhaps she is referring to as.he as a pretender queen of the freljord. all in all i think it warrants more thought into and rereading of her lore with such thoughts in mind. given her response line for tryn and some other champions like sej, it actually seems her main issue with the avarosans and the winter’s claw is that they put their own ideals first. "I didn't think your little leader had the heart for aggression." and "A shame you value pride over power." for tryn and sej respectively show that she wants strength and the will to fight to come first. and she sees the avarosa as becoming weak and the winter’s claw as caring more for their pride even when it hampers their strength.
another thing which seems to make her dislike as/he and sej are that people are calling them reincarnations of people she actually very much loves. she has constructed a religion around them that even the frostguard themselves carry statues of the other sisters around their necks and prays to them. heck THREE of her death lines are calling out to either one or both of them -- that’s over half where she actually speaks -- and the rest are about the watchers probably escaping and she dies knowing she failed to stop them and the world is doomed now. but i think she dislikes that they get likened to her sisters because they are lesser than her sisters, do not hold the same level of power and of ambition and of drive. it is these things which remind her of her sisters but they are pale imitations that people are calling her sisters. "But is your ambition worth dying for?" "You have never had to endure real pain, Seju.ani."
moving on from the war mothers, ani.via actually gets a bit through here. we are told in lore the last time she died it was to burry the balestriders in the true ice of her corpse and that she has hatched again only recently. now we have been somewhat recently been given information on the balestriders in that they were twisted by the powers of the watchers into the service of the three and in the end they served liss and then just the watchers when she in turn turned on them. now from various quotes and the cards and the lore we know ani.via and the balestriders have reawoken at roughly the same time and we also know the true ice holding the watchers is melting. we also know that there isn’t enough true ice in the iceborn to sacrifice and synthesis to make a new barrier. so if you are catching my drift the line liss says "Only by my hand." and "Then I shall put you to sleep again." in regards to ani.via claiming she has awakened, might suggest she intends to use ani.via’s corpse to reinforce the ice barrier as she created/is made of true ice to begin with. it is THAT or she wants to try and re-control the balestriders and doesn’t want ani.via to stop her. or both, she is a women of many back up plans.
and that flows on nicely to some interesting lines with LB. essentially they’re exceedingly powerful, manipulative women who are actually playing all the cards for their factions behind the scenes. i honestly love them both for that. nothing more really other than that it seems liss can somewhat recognise LB for who she really is and they acknowledge each others sides. also interestingly she has some amount of respect for prince jarv of demacia which is not something i expected to ever see but it seems she recognises his self sacrificing nature though does not appreciate that the only stories of her in demacia are those about the ice witch and not in her mind fully factual.
and lastly, the draklorn are super devoted to liss. like we already knew this, we knew that they could not take blood oaths to others forth they already have an oath to her which means they can’t be the freljords version of married as they are already bound to her. which i admittedly used as a joke that riot was saying liss had an army of husbands and wives. cause really that's actually what most war mothers kinda have but given they apparently now say stuff like "All will fear and love our Dark Lady." i think riot is trying to agree with me. not that i mind, not one bit. this image doesn’t really help either. but back to more serious topics, their devotion is deeply ingrained and fanatical and they have no qualms with committing terrible acts or being horrifically cruel cause they see it the evil means to a good end. they are extensions of liss, perfectly loyal. and liss loves it when they call her "The Lady of Ice and Darkness." ( "I do so love when my people call me that." )
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Oathbringer thoughts
I was hoping to be able to liveblog Oathbringer, but it turns out I was too optimistic by half. Well, by about 5/28 anyway, given that I have two and a half WoT books left. I thought about just waiting to read Oathbringer (if there’s anything liveblogging WoT has taught me it’s patience) but I’m going to the Sanderson signing tomorrow so I was running out of time. Anyway, here are some thoughts upon finishing, for the 2 or 3 of you who are interested. I was reading probably a little too fast, so probably missed everything and will at some point need to reread, but here you go.
LOTS OF SPOILERS BELOW. ALL THE SPOILERS. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.
In no particular order (but there are 10: a nicely Vorin number to go with my coincidentally Vorin username)
1. Talenel. Taln. Talenelat’Elin. Stonesinew, Herald of War, Bearer of all Agonies.
That guy.
Taln was a Problem for me literally from the moment he was introduced in the Prelude (offscreen! He didn’t even show up on-page! Why am I like this?!) with the line “Taln had a tendency to choose seemingly hopeless fights and win them. He also had a tendency to die in the process”. A doomed last stand in the form of a character. Why would you do this to me.
So I’m sure you can guess that Chapter 38 (‘Broken People’ what a chapter title) thoroughly broke me. I mean, it wasn’t even anything we didn’t already know, really. But... “The nine realised that one of them had never broken.” And “The Bearer of Agonies. The one abandoned in Damnation. Left to withstand the tortures alone.” And the fact that it took four and a half millennia for him to break.
I’ve long had a fascination with the idea of ‘everyone has a breaking point’ (when I was 11 I tried to write a novel based entirely on the concept of someone who does not - or cannot - break; the ‘cannot’ turned out to be a rather interesting thing to explore, but the story overall was terrible because, amongst other reasons, I was 11) and with the idea of breaking characters, and what it would take to break certain characters, and what the result would be.
As I mentioned, I also have a thing for doomed last stands, so basically Talenel was created to be my breaking point, it would seem. (“Herald Talenelat during several of his many, many last stands...” just @ me next time)
And then. And then
“Four thousand years?”
She held his hand tighter. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
[...]
“Four thousand years?” Taln asked again. “Ash...”
“We couldn’t continue--I...we thought...”
“Ash.” He took her hand again. “What a wonderful thing.”
Wonderful? “We left you, Taln.”
“What a gift you gave them! Time to recover, for once, between Desolations. Time to progress. They never had a chance before. But this time...yes, maybe they do.”
And then...lucidity abandons him, because he is broken, and it’s been four thousand years. But in that one moment, in the moment when he is briefly himself, it’s as if he isn’t broken at all. The fact that this still exists within him, even if the rest of the time he’s found a refuge in madness or forgetting or in the recitation he gives over and over, the advice he needs to give to humanity, the duty he has to them. It’s like name, rank, serial number. It’s very probably the thing he held on to throughout those four and a half thousand years, the thing he could not allow himself to let go of or forget, even as he broke. And the thought that the one point he fixed on, the thing he held fast to even as he broke, was his duty to humankind, is...a lot.
2. Speaking of Taln, let’s talk a little bit about Kaladin
There are plenty of things I could say about Kaladin, but I mostly just want to throw a few quotes out there For Your Interest. Because...I don’t know if there’s anything to this but here.
Quotes about Taln:
“The one who wasn’t meant to have joined them in the first place, the one who was not a king, scholar, or general”
Um.
“One of them had never broken.”
Quotes about or by Kaladin Stormblessed (surgeon’s son, neither king nor scholar nor general):
“That granite will, that warrior’s poise.”
(As an aside, how do granite and obsidian exist on a planet with no tectonics? How???)
“Ten spears go to battle” [Kaladin] whispered, “and nine shatter. Did that war forge the one that remained? No, Amaram. All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.”
One unbroken, of ten.
Eight months. Eight months as a slave, eight months of slop and beatings. It might as well have been an eternity. --from Way of Kings
An eternity of torture? Also Taln’s Scar is high in the sky during Kaladin’s time as a slave. Maybe meaningless.
Why were they going through all of this? What was the point? Why were they running so much? They had to protect their bridge, the precious weight, the cargo. They had to hold up the sky and run, they had to... --Kaladin’s thoughts, WoK
Take that just a little out of immediate context and that last part especially sure sounds like someone tasked with endless agony for the sake of the world
Yet the sheer glory of what he did seemed at odds with the desolation he caused --Kaladin’s thoughts, WoK
Somewhat less relevant to the thing I’m sort of vaguely postulating but still an interesting choice of words, and the Desolations happen when the Heralds break and return, so.
“His body dead, but not his will” --Hoid, WoR, telling the ‘Fleet’ story
Taln dies a lot. It’s sort of his thing. But his will takes four millennia to break.
“Then I hope I end up in Damnation.” --Kaladin, WoR
I’m just saying.
Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s leftover from one of the things I got hilariously wrong when first reading WoK - obviously Kaladin was gaining the powers of a Radiant but I really, really wanted him to somehow be Taln. (Amusingly, I read Way of Kings before I started Wheel of Time, otherwise it would be easy to see where this notion came from). Maybe it’s Maybelline. Regardless, it’s an interesting set of possible parallels.
3. Wow, he just up and told us what caused the Recreance in book three.
And it felt like the perfect time for it. It’s the sort of thing you’d normally expect an author to sit on for more or less the entire series. I was tentatively prepared to wait for at least the first five books before getting this much stated outright on-page.
I’m so glad Sanderson gave it to us now, instead. For one thing, it felt oddly refreshing to have such a big question answered so early. Playing the long game with reveals can work, obviously, but it’s fun to mix things up a bit. It also plays into some of what I ended up talking about in the ‘Dalinar’ section of this list regarding plot twists and the execution thereof. The Recreance is a good example, because it was revealed in full at the point in the story when it could have the impact it needed to have. In-story, it was both the probable and logical time for the secret to come out - it would have started to strain suspension of disbelief if that many characters had some knowledge of it, and none of them ever put it together on-page either in their own thoughts or for the other characters. For the reader, it brings everything together at a point when it’s all very relevant, and at a point when there’s enough information to figure it out if you’re careful and lucky, but not so much that it loses all surprise value whatsoever (For the record, I was close about a lot of it, but there were some pieces I missed and/or put in the wrong place. It did, however, satisfy the one thing I was really hoping it would).
Narratively and thematically, it makes sense alongside the other questions that are being asked or otherwise addressed - the issue of colonisation and ownership and agency, the question of war and protection and the justifications for either or both, the contrast of unity and division, and of course the question of oaths and honour and betrayal.
Answering this question now also makes the whole story suddenly feel so much bigger, because when something set up to be this much of a central question is almost just handed to you, it serves to put it into perspective. It makes the rest of the story, and next set of questions we’re starting to ask, and the questions we don’t even yet know to ask, seem so much larger, and the story so much vaster.
4. OH THANK THE LISTENING GODS THE LOVE TRIANGLE SPUTTERED AND DIED BEFORE IT COULD EAT EVERYTHING
I breathed an actual literal sigh of relief. I hate love triangles so much, mostly because I usually struggle to maintain ‘bored indifference’ rather than outright irritation at romance subplots in general, so love triangles are almost always intolerable because not only do they double the romance but they turn it into a point of conflict and miscommunication and angst and I cannot fucking stand it. If I had a dragon for every unnecessary love triangle I’ve had to read, I’d have been able to take over the world a long time ago. Or have the world’s most epic bonfire.
Anyway. Through WoR (and I guess WoK but to a lesser extent) I was torn between trusting Sanderson to avoid or subvert that particular cliche and...not trusting him to do that. There are a lot of things I do trust him with as a storyteller (especially one who has clearly evolved in his writing, storytelling, and awareness) but I wasn’t sure if I could trust him on this. He earned quite a bit of trust from me for how he ended up writing this, actually.
The exact moment I breathed that sigh of relief? It was the conversation Shallan and Kaladin had about her particular coping mechanism. Specifically:
“No. No, Shallan! I wish I could do the same. [...] How nice would it be, if I could simply shove it all away? Storms.” [...]
“This way, I’ll never face it,” Shallan said.
“It’s better than being unable to function.”
“That’s what I tell myself.”
Because this was the moment when it became exceedingly, abundantly, absolutely clear that Sanderson was doing this on purpose. I had hoped he was, because this was something that felt off about Kaladin and Shallan during their chasms conversation in WoR as well (the ‘she smiled anyway’ thing), but then there was the possibility that it was...accidental. Now, though, I have significantly more faith in Sanderson, because this is a really...I can’t think of the word but I’m glad he did this the way he did.
And I am SO INCREDIBLY GLAD THE LOVE TRIANGLE DIED. And the way in which it died. And the fact that everyone involved respected its death. And that it didn’t stop the characters involved from communicating with and trusting one another. And also that said death included the line “Shallan. he can literally fly.”
(Adolin Kholin is not straight. Just tossing that out there).
(Shallan consistently using the word ‘passion’ when thinking about or describing Kaladin is interesting, though, in light of certain other reveals. Not sure if there’s actually anything to that, but it’s just a thing that stood out).
5. Dalinar
So the identity of Odium’s Champion was one of the things I saw coming as soon as the champion idea was mentioned in this book. (It was brought up in previous books and this was one of my theories but I definitely wasn’t certain, and I was also Distracted by what I wanted to have happen, which is not something that would ever actually happen. I’ll write the fic at some point).
Anyway, it was predictable...but that didn’t matter, because it was beautifully executed. “You cannot have my pain” is a cool line out of context, but in context it was magnificent.
I like the way Sanderson does plot twists, because unlike with some authors, it doesn’t feel as if his sole intent is to be able to say ‘ha ha, tricked you, aren’t I so clever’. His goal, it seems, is to tell a satisfying story. Rather than withholding all of the information relevant to the ‘twist’ to make it actually impossible to guess (which doesn’t make you a master of the plot twist so much as it makes you an asshole), he includes the necessary and sufficient foreshadowing to allow the ‘twist’ to make sense and not feel like it came out of nowhere.
This means, of course, that some readers are going to guess it in advance. That’s just how it works. If you put the information out there, some people are going to put it together correctly and completely. Some people are going to put some of it together, and have a sense of where things are heading. Some people are going to be absolutely sure of where it’s heading...and then be completely wrong. Some people are going to have absolutely no clue. The truly impressive plot twist, I find, is the one that can satisfy people in all of those categories. YMMV of course, but having been in each of these positions at least once while reading Sanderson’s books, I feel like he manages this impressively well. It’s fun if it’s at least a little bit of a surprise, but even when it’s not, it’s satisfying because it’s written as part of the story - as a point of emotional or narrative impact, or a turning point for the characters - well enough that it still has the desired effect. Mostly because ‘gotcha’ isn’t the (only) desired effect.
I digress somewhat.
So before we move on, I’d also like to point out that Dalinar Kholin and Lews Therin Telamon clearly need to form a support group for men who murdered their wives in a fit of madness and fucked with the psyche, memory, and identity of their future selves.
6. “The apocalypse is coming; we don’t have time for bullshit gender roles”
Adolin being absolutely here for Shallan-with-Shardblade. Kaladin going ‘yeah okay’ to women joining the Windrunners. Dalinar learning to read. Jasnah as queen because honestly was there ever actually another choice?
This is another one that’s just so refreshing to see, especially because it’s clearly something that’s being deliberately examined and played with, but is also integrated into the story. It doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb the author didn’t know what to do with, but it also plays a very real role in the story. It’s not just there so the author can point to the one sword-wielding woman in a cast of thousands of dudes and say ‘but I gave you a Strong Female Character’.
This ties into something I really appreciate about Sanderson, which is his demonstrated ability and willingness to learn and grow when it comes to issues of representation - not just in terms of including it, but in how he includes it.
7. Venli
I don’t have a lot to say about her except that I was genuinely surprised by this one. So well done on that, Sanderson.
Also, given his propensity for writing brothers in love with the same woman, I’m almost surprised we didn’t get some sort of reveal about Venli and Eshonai loving the same person.
8. Cosmere convergence
There was a lot more than I expected at this point in the...series? Continuity? Mass of interconnected stories that have evolved into a semi-eldritch being? I enjoyed it and had no problems with this, but I’d be curious to know what someone who’s only read Stormlight thought - does it still work? Do they just play as intriguing and mysterious characters alongside all the other intriguing and mysterious characters, or has it reached a tipping point where you actually need to have read some of the other books?
Also Cosmere-related...Hoid. He’s sure getting more and more screen time, isn’t he? I’m Interested. I have Thoughts. I need to think about them more but I definitely have some Thoughts on who and what he is. Regardless, any character who can say “if I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen” is going to Interest me. Not to mention the sheer number of times he tells various characters not to trust him. And then there’s “you turned your back on divinity.” Which is...um. Yeah I’m fine this is fine.
9. Odium
Has to be number 9, because of reasons. Odium was great. Nice subversion of imagery there, and to great effect.
10. Ideals and Oaths
I mostly find it amusing how a book called Oathbringer is the first to plainly exhibit failed Ideals. Elhokar. Kaladin. (My best guess at the Windrunners’ Fourth Ideal would be something along the lines of “I will protect those I can, and forgive myself for those I cannot” but I’ll have to reread and see if that holds up). The broken Oathpact (there’s a part of me that really wants the gem-encrusted probably-a-fabrial-of-some-sort pillar to be the Oathpact; its manifestation or sealing or what-have-you. Not sure that holds up though). It’s a fun little irony.
#definitely need to reread#thoroughly enjoyed it though#I had been feeling a little unsure#because his most recent book(s) in other series#felt a little underwhelming#but this definitely made up for it#oathbringer#oathbringer spoilers#stormlight archive#stormlight archive spoilers#cosmere
38 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Will to Battle thoughts, not quite in order:
Mitsubishi is the only Hive that hasn't classified this book. Very interesting.
I love unreliable narrators, so it's fun to get a less-censored look at Mycroft's mental state. I wonder how this will change the first two books next time I reread them.
Filibusters are a pretty useful device for exposition, especially when what you want to exposit about is legal codes.
I'd assumed the First Law would be explicitly about not evangelizing. Having that instead be a long-established corollary of a "don't risk excesssive death and suffering" law rings true, and is a good reminder that now that we know the text of these Laws, we still don't know all that much about what they mean in practice.
I don't buy "Let a hot athlete murder people" and "Let a mysterious god remake the earth" becoming the new Overton-Window-approved points on the political spectrum that easily, but I have to admit they make for some interesting options.
I didn't feel like the awe people constantly had for Achilles was really earned. He just doesn't do very much in this book, aside from things like training Servicers that aren't visible to the general public. I'm not convinced by his jeeps.
Felix Faust remains my favorite Hive leader. He always seems to be having fun. And he takes time to show people pictures of sharks eating bananas, when he knows it's what they need.
I still want to know a lot more about Gordian, and what being in it was like before it became Brillist.
J.E.D.D.'s refusal to take the Adult Competency Exam might be due to some quirk of wording making it an unacceptable oath for him, or maybe he just plain doesn't consider himself to be a competent adult.
Nice touch hiding trans girl Carlyle Foster's Blacklaw status from the dramatis personae. I feel bad for her but I'm glad she got a nice dress.
Of course J.E.D.D. Mason would get a suit made out of fancy Griffincloth, which can display anything, and set it to always be pure black.
I get that Minor status doesn't really match what we think of minors being, but still, isn't being able to make them Familiares pretty creepy?
The dialogue where Kohaku Mardi berates Mycroft for not helping at the Censor's office is good. Mycroft talking to people who aren't there is good in general. The way he's been talking with the reader all along counts.
MASON's offer of amnesty to the Sanctum violators (a skilled executioner if they surrender, instead of killing them personally; the name of the one who returns the Oath to live on as a curse, instead of being entirely removed from human records) is exactly the kind of magnificent generosity I like to see from them. Also, "Never since humanity learned to bake clay into brick and raised the walls of Uruk..."
There was a dialogue where it took me a bit to figure out whether the Voltaire speaking was Voltaire Seldon or the historical one. I'm pretty sure that was intentional.
I don't believe Prospero's claim that no Humanists were unlikely to make substantial achievements.
I cried at Mycroft's apparent death at the end. 9A's sense of loss was very moving, especially because [it reminded me of Jack's death.] (Diane's draft left this sentence incomplete, but the intended end was obvious. -Ed.)
Speaking of 9A, I'm surprised by how much of the narrator voice so far has been theirs. It makes sense. Given how busy Mycroft's been during the period that he's been writing, the editor contributions must have been extremely substantial. Before, I'd only thought of 9A as someone who went in and added tentative Latin translations after the book was done.
I wonder what the standards are like for Anonymous succession. It seems like it would have to require a well justified identification, so that you aren't turning it over to whoever's first to send you a random guess. Probably any slightly plausible celebrity gets a stream of messages from guessers anyway. (And anyone who's actually plausible would hold out for thorough reasoning, neither confirming nor denying beyond that.)
I was not expecting characters to quote Korn lyrics.
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hillary Clinton’s Zombie Impeachment Memo That Could Help Fell Trump
New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/hillary-clintons-zombie-impeachment-memo-that-could-help-fell-trump/
Hillary Clinton’s Zombie Impeachment Memo That Could Help Fell Trump
A document Hillary Clinton helped write nearly a half century ago has returned from the dead to threaten the man she couldn’t vanquish in 2016.
The bizarre, only-in-D.C. twist centers on a congressional report penned by a bipartisan team of young attorneys that included Hillary before she was a Clinton and written in the throes of Watergate. Then, unlike now, not a single lawmaker had been alive the last time Congress impeached a president. They had little understanding of how to try and remove Richard Nixon from the White House. So they tapped Clinton and a team of ambitious staffers to dive into the history of impeachment, stretching back to the 14th century in England: How has impeachment been used? What were the justifications? Can we apply it to Nixon?
Story Continued Below
The resulting document became a centerpiece of the congressional push to drive the Republican president from office. But then Nixon resigned. The memo was buried.
That was just the report’s first life.
In an ironic twist, the document was resurrected in the late 1990s. Republicans gleefully used it to bolster their unsuccessful bid to oust Clinton’s now-husband, President Bill Clinton. Then it faded from public conscience — again.
Until now, that is. The45-year-old report has become a handbook House Democratic lawmakers and aides say they are using to help determine whether they have the goods to mount a full-scale impeachment effort against President Donald Trump, the same man who three years ago upended Hillary Clinton’s bid for a return trip to the White House.
Essentially, Clinton, albeit indirectly, might get one last shot at accomplishing what she couldn’t in 2016 — defeating Donald Trump.
“I can only say that the impeachment Gods have a great sense of humor,” Alan Baron, an expert on the topic who has staffed four congressional impeachments against federal judges, said of the recurring role Hillary Clinton keeps playing in this story.
It started in early 1974.
The walls were closing in on a beleaguered Richard Nixon. His aides were going down one by one. He had tried — and failed — to halt the investigations into his behavior by cleaning house during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre.”
On Capitol Hill, Hillary Rodham, a 26-year-old law school graduate, was hired by the House Judiciary Committee to work on a bipartisan staff effort to help determine whether to impeach Nixon. She joined a team of aspiring lawyers that also included Bill Weld, who would go on to his own illustrious career as a top Justice Department prosecutor, Massachusetts governor and most recently as a longshot 2020 GOP primary challenger against Trump.
Over a couple of months just before the climactic end of the Watergate scandal, the team dug deep into constitutional and legal arcana scouring documents that dated to the country’s founding, as well as century-old newspaper clippings in the Library of Congress.
The resulting title of the report, “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” may elicit yawns. But what they produced became a seminal 64-page roadmap with appendices that looks into what counts as an impeachable offense.
At the time, lawmakers needed the guidance. They had not had to think seriously about these issues for more than 100 years, when Congress rebelled against President Andrew Johnson over his handling of reconstruction after the Civil War.
The staffers’ research broke ground by making an accessible argument that a president doesn’t have to commit a straight-up crime for Congress to consider the historic step of impeachment.
“The framers did not write a fixed standard. Instead they adopted from English history a standard sufficiently general and flexible to meet future circumstances and events, the nature and character of which they could not foresee,” the House staffers, including the future first lady, wrote about the ill-defined constitutional working of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Their exhaustive report also included a whirlwind history lesson about how America’s founders had been well-versed in impeachment when they included the language in several clauses of the Constitution —the British Parliament had used the impeachment process as a check on royalty for more than 400 years, dating to the 14th century.
And the process hadn’t just been used to remove alleged criminals from office. In the United States, 83 articles of impeachment had been voted out of the House up to that point against a dozen federal judges, one senator andAndrew Johnson, and fewer than a third actually involved specific criminal acts.Far more common, they wrote, was that the House was dealing with allegations that someone had violated their duties, oath of office or seriously undermined public confidence in their ability to perform their official functions.
“Because impeachment of a President is a grave step for the nation, it is to be predicated only upon conduct seriously incompatible with either the constitutional form and principles of our government or the proper performance of constitutional duties of the presidential office,” the House staffers concluded.
While the document Hillary Rodham and her colleagues produced got marked as a staff report, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee still used it to justify their historic votes against Nixon. In fact, two of the three articles of impeachment adopted by the powerful panel — dealing with the Republican president’s abuse of power and contempt of Congress — didn’t cover areas that fall neatly into the category of federal crimes. A final staff report submitted to the House just days after Nixon made history as the first president to resign from office quoted from the staff’s earlier analysis.
More than two decades later, though, Clinton may have wished she had never helped write the document.
It was 1997, eight months before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke into the news. President Bill Clinton was facing Republican outrage over everything from allegations of campaign finance irregularities to Whitewater, the probe into the Clinton’s Arkansas real estate investments. To legitimize their anger, some Republicans turned to a document that likely hadn’t been discussed for a generation — the 1974 impeachment report Hillary Clinton had worked on.
Georgia GOP Rep. Bob Barr resurfaced the report in a sarcasm-laced op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that opened with the line “Dear Mrs. Clinton.”
The conservative congressman went on to thank the first lady for giving lawmakers a “road map” to consider her husband’s impeachment with a report that “appears objective, fair, well researched and consistent with other materials reflecting and commenting on impeachment.”
“And it is every bit as relevant today as it was 23 years ago,” he added.
In time, both parties would cite from the Judiciary Committee’s 1974 staff report as they fought over whether the conduct associated with President Clinton’s sexual relationship with Lewinsky merited impeachment.
Calling the Watergate document “historic,” then-Virginia GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte argued in the fall of 1998 that Clinton’s offenses, like those of Nixon, had extended beyond questions of obstruction of justice to whether the president betrayed the public trust. Then-Rep. Charles Canady, a Florida Republican chairing a House subcommittee on the Constitution, referred repeatedly to the Watergate panel’s work during the House debate and later in Clinton’s Senate trial, which ultimately concluded with his acquittal.
Democrats, meanwhile, had a different read on the group’s findings.
California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who had worked for a member of the Judiciary Committee during Watergate, shared copies of the more than 20-year old report with colleagues from both parties and posted a link to it online — she had an offer from law school students to type it out so it could be searchable by word but internal ethics rules prevented that move. Her primary argument was that Clinton’s lies about his relationship with Lewinsky, while immoral, didn’t match the historical precedents outlined as qualifying for impeachment in the 1974 staff analysis.
“The interesting thing is they cited it for purposes it didn’t support. I wonder whether they read it or whether they had index cards prepared by their staff,” Lofgren said in a recent interview when asked about the Republicans who were using the report to justify removing Clinton from office.
Ted Kalo, a former top Democratic aide on the Judiciary panel, said there was widespread bipartisan agreement that the Watergate staff report mattered — even amid the differing interpretations.
“Great books have been written and eloquent testimony was given in the 1998 hearing on the topic, but even in 1998, the 1974 staff report was considered to be state of the art,” he said.
“It’s the most concise, easily understood document on the history of the impeachment clause and the intent of the framers, including the issue of what constitutes an impeachable offense that I’ve come across. And it faithfully and logically describes what was intended to be the appropriate scope of the House’s impeachment power,” he added.
Now it’s 2019. President Donald Trump is an unindicted criminal co-conspirator who has fended off myriad congressional probes and watched his aides go to prison over an investigation into the Trump campaign. Most Democrats — not to mention their fervent progressive base — are clamoring for impeachment. And yet again, the 1974 impeachment report is getting a rereading on Capitol Hill.
Just as the Watergate staff suggested, the current House Democrat-led impeachment inquiry has grown beyond the criminal allegations that special counsel Robert Mueller investigated — conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and obstruction of justice — into to a wider list of grievances, covering everything from campaign finance violations, to self-dealing, abuse of power and undermining the judiciary and media.
Senior members have dusted the document off for their newer colleagues. Lofgren, for one, asked her staff to post a fresh link to the Watergate document back in mid-May 2017, not long after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and Mueller’s appointment.
“I just thought, as people were throwing suggestions around, it’s a very tightly crafted and I think excellent piece of scholarship and it’d be helpful to have that be available to the public,” Lofgren said.
Others have pointed back to the 1974 document as reason for Democrats to move faster.
Michael Conway, a former Judiciary Committee staffer in 1974 and longtime friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, cited the report in an op-ed for NBC published in March that took issue with House Democratic leadership’s reluctance to embrace impeachment proceedings against Trump.
He slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a “cramped formulation” that impeachment can only proceed if investigative developments emerge that are “overwhelming, compelling and bipartisan.” That didn’t square with what the 1974 researchers showed, he wrote.
“The myths about impeachment they skewered then remain relevant to Democrats considering any exercise of that power today,” Conway said.
Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor who has written books on impeachment and testified before Congress on the topic, said the Watergate committee report “has easily withstood the test of time” into 2019.
“It still is as good as any other document yet prepared on the origins and scope of the federal impeachment process. It is appropriately authoritative. And so it is as relevant to President Trump as it has been to every other president since Nixon,” he said.
While Gerhardt said Republicans who embraced the report during Bill Clinton’s impeachment should for consistency sake be open to what it tells them now in Trump’s case, he said he also recognized there are new political limitations. For starters, Democrats and Republican aides wrote the Watergate report together.
“It seems impossible that a joint staff would be conceivable on a hugely important matter,” he said in an email. “It shows how far we have come (down) since 1974.”
Read More
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
chairmont
The Chairmont
nukaposting
CHR 10, INT 2
sunnymovers
Untitled
winterberryholly
winterberryholly
gabriela-valentina-blanco
Gabi.Blanco