#i cant imagine her and kaladin like…that

[adonil]

what is going on in the cosmere fandom is syladin becoming canon what is this panic that i see

[sorchasolas]

ADDING SOMETHING!!!! (Also assume for this Kaladin is post OB/Most of RoW power- almost at 4th ideal but not quite there)

(Warning: yap central)

It also,,,, depends on where they are fighting

Closed space, like small rooms and corridors? Kaladin is absolutely cooked. Bro only knows how to wield larger weapons with proficiency (I remember him mentioning he could throw knives but fuck i cant verify that so) so hes just. Served up on a platter.

In more open spaces, it depends even more. If they were hosting this in Luthadel, with taller buildings and all that metal on the buildings and Vin knows the landscape? Even with infinite stormlight, i dont know if Kaladin could win. Probably not! Vin likes utilizing the shadows and her environment for battle, and a place where theres both (assuming this is night because gosh that opens another can of worms) Kal’s probably a bit cooked!

If they hosted this in Rosher? Lets say, at Urithiru’s Oathgate platform? Honestly i would say Kaladin could mid difficulty. Lets not forget this fucker can FLY like full on fly. Roshar is so Stone Vin wouldnt have much to pull on etc etc and the open space gives Kaladin the chance to use his favorite little (big) spear.

So, lets say, for sake of argument, they are in a room the size of a football field, with the ceiling extending up,,, 50 feet. Plenty of room, dimly lit, and all the walls are a pullable metal. That’s where they fight. Vin has daggers and a Koloss sword (because i feel bad she only has daggers, though i fear that Koloss sword will Not Last Long) and Kaladin has Syl.

This would be, as I’d imagine it, an even toss up of who wins. Remember they dont know eachother, the specific mechanics of their powers, their inner thoughts and personal demons etc etc. Vin coild very easily reach up to him with the room being metal, but she doesnt have nearly as much control over her version of flying as he does (its been a hot minute since ive read mistborn, im definitely getting shit wrong ok) and Kaladin’s also Fucking Excellent at flying, so if she tried air combat she’d get cooked i think. Kaladin would probably be willing to give up flying upwards If Vin suggested it because he would feel bad (he doesnt like putting normal soldiers against Fused, he wouldnt wanna fight someone who doesnt fly while flying) (assuming this isnt like a they have a vendetta and are out for blood scenario) but i dont think Vin Would ask because Why Would She.

And, not to be biased, but i still think this battle would go Kaladin’s way. Vin?? Doesn’t have much real battle training. Bringing this up again because its VERY important. The only people she’s fought are people that had the exact same powers as her (she understands them and knows their limitations etc) were completely untrained (Koloss) or didn’t even really have noteworthy powers. Every other time shes fought someone outside of those criteria (which is not alot i fear) she got Packed Up really quickly. And let me add this.

Vin did not live in a time of war!! That is important. There was war after the Lord Ruler died, but 90% of the people who were adults during mistborn were not trained to the extent a full on soldier would be! Those other Mistborn? Trained for espionage and in the realm of battle only see it when facing other Mistborn, which, if i recall, they dont?? Kill eachother (i dont remember) all those guards she killed? Trained as guards, and also almost always taken by surprise. Trying to keep this short and failing but all in all, none of the people Vin fought have been trained for battle the way Kaladin has- and Alethi are like The Guys of War. Hes trained in (if i recall, this is just all the stuff hes like,,,, shown proficiency in in reference to his time in the army) hand to hand combat, grappling/wrestling, one on one battles, formations, general battle strategy, etc. And Vin has minimal training from like various thugs and Kelsier, who focused less on her battle knowledge and more on her role as Valette and her allomancy .

She is a great warrior in her world, where no one was really raised to be warriors, and where she had the Strongest Powers Around (even in terms of Mistborns)

Kaladin is known as a great warrior in his world, where many people are trained to kill and many of the Windrunners have reached his same ideal, and yet he’s still distinctive from them.

Basically, it’s really hard to take characters, even from the same universe, out of their context and try to pit them together. It creates a million and one “what ifs” that make no clear totally correct. They have different powers, power mechanisms, skill sets, world building, etc. i think realistically they would never fight and Kaladin would immediately adopt her as a little sister (Vin is 5’?? Kaladin is like?? 6’10 in earth measurements?? Holy shit??) and would never hurt her, but thats Just Me.

Kaladin vs. Vin who wins?

Yes this ask is months old

Yes im just seeing it

Yes im going to anwser

TL;DR: it depends on the situation, how much metal vs stormlight they have. But like, 80% chance Kaladin wins.

Longer explanation:

Again, it does depend. Stormlight is an all encompassing fuel, where all of his powers are fueled by one thing. Vin has all those other metals she has to take for different things

Obviously in no stormlight no metals hand-to-hand, or even spear vs dagger, Kaladin wins. I dont think i need to explain this.

If they both had infinite stormlight and infinite metal, with Vin having access to ALL metals, including god metals, i still do think Kaladin would win. Despite Atrium existing, even though could see what he was about to do, he can heal any attack she makes— and i dont think she would have the knowledge to strike him in the spine specifically. I think at some point she would be trapped in a blow she cannot deflect and it would go downhill from there, seeing as she cannot heal wounds.

Limited stormlight, limited metals with lets say 2~ minutes worth of Atrium, Vin wins. He’d spend all his stormlight healing the wounds Vin gives him with her Pewter(?) strength and daggers that he wouldnt have the ability to kill her fast enough for her Atrium to wear out

[radiantmists]

rhythm of war part two thoughts

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  (spoilers through the second interludes under the cut, and at the very bottom some comments based on what i have to assume is a major spoiler for the entire book, or close to it, though i'm warning again beforehand.)

well, last things first: taravangian's working against odium! i'm super excited about this, and very happy about the support for the concept that Taravangian's compassion isn't his curse, it's just the division of his intelligence and compassion that's sthe problem.

so we've been able to talk to the sibling, who is mostly trying to help despite genuinely feeling that what navani is doing is wrong. except now they're locked away, and navani is under the direct scrutiny of rabaniel and messing around with her is going to be risky. that being said, we're on our way to some very interesting revelations about how investiture works on roshar:

the stormfather is purely of honor. the sibling is a mix of honor and cultivation. the nightwatcher is purely cultivation

the sibling should not be able to function on pure stormlight, because it's purely of honor.

lift may not run on stormlight at all-- we already knew she can't pull it from spheres.

adhesion, which is somehow a fake surge and purely of honor, is not totally cancelled by whatever rabaniel did to the sibling. from lift's interlude, neither is regrowth when she uses it, which if i had to pick is the surge i would choose to be purely of cultivation.

as far as we can tell, people can still draw in stormlight with no issue, they just cant use it to power surges.

windrunners, who bond honorspren, are less affected by the fabrial: this applies especially to kaladin and syl, and we know syl is different from other honorspren, older. my money is that she's in some way more fully of honor than the others. lift, who's been hugely modified by cultivation directly, is also immune. the edgedancers as a whole are not immune and apparently are reacting as badly as anyone else.

...syl notes in the last set of interludes that she's different from other honorspren, mentally. is this a byproduct of whatever she did to sneak out of shadesmar, or of her being older? interesting.

To me, this all implies that whatever rabaniel did interferes with how cultivation and honor interact. lift, who seemingly only uses cultivation's investiture, can power the surge that seems most directly associated with cultivation; kaladin, probably closest to honor, can do the surge that seems to be entirely honor. the regular edgedancers aren't immune at all because they run on stormlight; the windrunners are somewhat but not fully immune because they're almost fully of honor, but cultivation likely had some hand in the way honorspren were made after the shattering.

Regrowth really is a very odd surge, compared to the others, which seem to deal with much more fundamental physical forces.

the fused do have access to regrowth while powered by voidlight, though. interesting.

speaking of: did navani's weird sphere contain some kind of... cultivationlight? or maybe it's some kind of combination, and that's why the sphere exploded right around the time of rabiniel's experiments (or the sibling was drawing on it somehow?)

on a more immediate level, the current tower resistance is as follows: navani, under constant monitoring but she has the best chance to figure out how to fix this shit. kaladin, who's a mess, being hunted by the pursuer, and who's about to start getting suicide-baiting nightmares from odium, but he does know how to fight! lift, who's amazing and knows how to sneak around the tower but is being hunted by someone who i assume has to be mraize. and rlain, masquerading as a singer (im so worried about him i hope he's okay).

if this somehow ends with kaladin killing mraize to protect lift before he can give shallan answers, i'm going to fucking SCREAM.

speaking of frustrating things: lirin turn on ur location i just wanna talk. Kaladin was actually rebuilding himself until this whole invasion thing, and i don't understand how lirin can look at a man who's that committed to doing good, sees exactly what it is that drives him to kill, and then calls him a monster.

I loved Kaladin's efforts to deal with mental health care! He's in the unique position ofhaving way more political power than any medical professional, darkeyes, or mentally ill person could ever have hoped to have, and I really want to see him come back to this once the world is burning down a bit less again, especially because it genuinely seemed to be helping him.

navani's plots have sorta been subsumed into this whole plotline, but i enjoyed what we got-- the little episode with the other scholars taking bets on whether she'd use tomor's fabrial was adorable, and i also liked how clear it is that they look to her to make things work.

moving on, uh... shadesmar stuff.

adolin's making some progress at waking maya! she doesn't talk but she shows a clearly unusual ability to learn and make independent decisions. i love it.

...also the thing with notum's horse implies that ryshadium are sentient enough to imagine spren. that's fun, and also terrifying.

adolin offering to stand trial for the crimes of humanity is fascinating, but all i'm thinking about is the episode of avatar where he agrees to stand trial for kyoshi, except in this case we already know that humanity did actually do the thing he's in trouble for. it would be unjust to punish adolin for it, but... i worry.

especially because there are, apparently, new deadeyes. this isn't extraordinarily surprising as syl was two skips away from death (though, im curious, does it work differently if the spren's never been a blade prior to dying? or are there just deadeyes wandering around who aren't tied to blades?) but it is very alarming.

and then there's the other thing: pattern is lying to shallan. i frankly don't think it's as simple as him being a spy for the ghostbloods; we saw even here that he's a terrible liar, and to have concealed this he'd have to have been pretty impressive.

on the other hand there was clearly some shit going on between shallan, her family, and the ghostbloods when she first got pattern. he's admitted that he has more exposure to humans than most spren. it doesn't look great, honestly.

i also appreciate that brandon is acknowledging how fucking weird shallan's timeline is. hopefully we get some answers about this.

adolin and shallan's relationship continues to be adorable; the sequence with the starspren is lovely and i totally get why it's brandon's favorite chapter in this part. between this and part one, he clearly enjoyed how the shadolin came out in this book and i agree. the fact that his romances continue after the marriage, with issues beyond just jealousy, is one of my favorite things about sanderson books.

venli's whole set of pov's this part was about walking up to urithiru. i really do want to like her, but she spends a ton of time just following more dynamic characters around and observing in these first two parts, and if not for the juicy secrets rabaniel's been dropping, it would make me just want to get back to other characters. hopefully that'll change in the next few parts.

i was going to make a comment about how we havent even had flashbacks yet, but i just glanced at the POVs for the next part, so I guess those are coming. I do wonder if these eshonai flashbacks will be info venli knows, or what.

she did kill someone for the first time, and attuned the rhythm of the lost for the dead man. the whole incident disturbs her, and i appreciated that as the rest of our viewpoint characters are extremely accustomed to death. i'm interested in seeing how this affects her going forward.

the epigraphs are so exciting! sazed is writing to hoid again, but this time he's gotten his bearings and spoken to some new shards... ones we haven't heard from before! also he asks hoid to say hi when he's on scadrial, which, fair enough tbh. i dont remember whether hoid shows up much in mistborn era 2 but for some reason i have the feeling he is not going to oblige this request.

the epigraph where sazed mentions he wants someone who can both preserve and kill immediately made me think of kaladin. (i think this is what he ends up trying to do with wax, but shhhh) he and sazed would agree on a lot of things philosophically, i think. (omg au where kaladin ends up working for sazed?? i have no idea how this would work the idea just fascinates me.

...where are the heralds? did dalinar take them with him, or are they in the tower? if the latter, are they also passed out? probably not, since they're not radiants, right? although whatever they are is very investiture-dependent so who knows. vasher's probably alright.

why is odium afraid of nightblood? is he worried it could eat him?

lots of POVs for the next part, but no shadesmar crew, so i guess we'll find out whether adolin gets executed by honorspren later. i do wonder why so many pov's from the battlefront; i guess something more is going to happen along those lines than i'd really expected. crossed fingers for some actual insight into renarin, finally.

in light of said spoiler: holy god i hope that division (between taravangian's intelligence and compassion) doesn't continue, though I have the horrible feeling that it will. This puts sazed's discussion of the intent of a shard combined with the cleverness of its vessel into a terrifying light: a godlike being who is at his smartest when he's a complete sociopath is like, the worst case scenario,  not even taking into account that the odium shard is uniquely suited to make people act on impulses. this is so bad.

but i can't know the full extent of that until i read the context, so let's move on!