#like yeah. stormlight archive.

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

getting one fucking package in the mail has reignited my stormlight archive brainrot. take notes kids this is what brandon sanderson books do to a man

[bluntandsaucy]

has kaladin considered medical school in lieu of having a panic attack

[nevertheless-moving]

continution of stormlight au 14, where kaladin keeps it together just a little longer:

Adolin: Storms! So both you and bridgeboy have been radiants—

Kaladin: surgebinders.

Adolin: surgebinders, this whole time? Unbelievable! Anyone else here secretly a surgebinder?

Renarin:

Shallan: I— your cousin. Jasnah. She didn't have a soulcaster. She was one.

Kaladin: Wait. I thought you said she died.

Shallan: Radiants can be killed! She had a sword through her chest!

Kaladin: I mean...I haven't tested that out specifically. But I've been shot a lot. And I was basically flayed alive. Teft nursed me back to life with a few diamond chips.

Adolin: Hah! The assassin did get you with a shardblade, didn't he? And you healed from it!

Navani: I knew it. She's impossible to kill.

Shallan: I— but I sank the boat. Oh stormfather...

Kaladin: I can also survive without breathing a while. 20 minutes easily. haven't timed my limits.

Adolin:

Shallan:

Shallan: I — wait, did you say you were flayed alive? What? Why?

Kaladin: It's — it's how the whole stormblessed title happened. Got strung up in a highstorm.

Adolin: Huh. At this point I was wondering if you got the title talking to the stormfather himself, ha!

Kaladin:

Adolin: ....Bridgeboy?

Kaladin: It. I mean during highstorms sometimes...

Adolin: I swear if you say you thought it was a hallucination I'm throwing you as far as I can. And I'm wearing plate right now.

Kaladin: It— it can't have been real.

Adolin: I'll do it bridgeboy. I know you can take it.

Kaladin: Fine. Anyway. That's how I got the stormblessed name. Sadeas ordered me outside, left upside down in a highstorm. Not fun, but I lived.

Shallan: So... she really could be alive...

Adolin: My captain of the guard, my bethrothed, and my cousin! Ha! Renarin, you'd tell me if you were a radiant — I mean a surgebinder, right?

Renarin:

Adolin: Renarin?

Renarin:

Adolin: Renarin...I...but why wouldn't you tell me?

Renarin (crying): I thought I was going mad. I was seeing things, I could hear screaming from my shardblade...

Kaladin: I hear that too!

Shallan: There's...something wrong with most shardblades.

Renarin: I thought it was...

Adolin (gripping Renarin's shoulder): Brother.

Adolin: I don't think hallucinations are real.

[taravangians-storming-balls]

a moash trait I don't really hear people talk about is how much the guy will just. ask questions.

he's confused on why kaladin picked him to be a subsquad leader when he had been most vocally resistant to kaladin? he stops and asks him immediately. rock's story doesn't make sense to him? he interrupts to ask about it. fused are acting weird? he just walks up and asks to see a supervisor. dude will always stop to ask questions if something is confusing to him

[zs-starwars]

WaT Spoilers:

Okay but is anyone else occasionally thinking of how scared poor little Gav must have been for years? Like one moment Gram has him and then she doesn't. ;-;

Like yeah Todium probably did some level of "trustworthy grampa" shit at some point if he actually meant for a "winning" Gavinor be king and wanted him to trust him but... like? In the beginning? Did he think they would come back for him? </3

[ahhfear]

absolutely obsessed with the shift of reading way of kings AFTER reading oathbringer, and completely understanding where everyone who interacts with Dalinar is coming from.

[phoenixtherobot]

I know next to nothing about Hoid except that he's got a lot going on for him but this is the vibes I get from him

[sesamenom]

browsing stormlight art on tumblr and ran into a post about how different dalinars life would have been with a somewhat healthier childhood and i think someone tagged it 'kaladin adopts young dalinar au' or something

anyways i propose a Make Everybody Worse au. teenage dalinar and gavilar get dropped directly into formenos and unofficially adopted by feanor a few years before the flight of the noldor. they both participate in the First Kinslaying/Oath/Losgar and then feanor dies. maedhros adopts them and then thangorodrim happens. maglor adopts them for a few years until mae gets rescued. they participate in the first few decades of the wars of beleriand, after which they get dropped back into the middle of alethkar.

on the noldorin side of things, m&m assume the random children they sort-of adopted (300some years before Secondborn were awakened) got killed somewhere in the battle. the kidnap fam situation now has the additional context of m&m having known even more pairs of children who died because of the Oath - one pair killed in the Second Kinslaying, one pair who presumably died in battle because they swore the Oath

on the alethi side of things, dalinar & gavilar are now Oathbound kinslayers who just lost five-to-ten parental figures and all their friends, and spent most of their lives being actively encouraged in war and military strategy. they also skipped the entirety of the navani-related conflict and are probably somewhat closer because of that. violence ensues.

[redeemed-wren]

Reading Wit's conversation with 'Nomad' in Sunlit man and I'm sitting here like what did you do Hoid. What happened on Roshar. What are the 'events in Alethkar.'

Hoid I love you but if you are the cause of any hurt for my Bridge Four and adjacent guys I will be MAD

[sweatersexual]

y'all . . . I am maybe becoming a trans woman Kaladin truther

[stew4]

Me when I think about mistspren for too long. Specifically Enlightened ones.

[ternaryflower53]

on investiture and trauma

so @thephilosophersapprentice made this post about Snapping, and reading it reminded me of my half-baked theory about how being Invested represents different manifestations of trauma - or at least, it's one way that we can explore how trauma manifests

(note: i am not a 17s theorist, this is more about themes in Brandon's stories than Realmatic Theory or whatever)

Anyway. Snapping is a very typical way of thinking about trauma, particularly a singular traumatic event. Like @thephilosophersapprentice says, "Something has left you broken in a way fundamental enough to let the other in, and it becomes normal." I think it's interesting to consider how most of the time, Snapping gives you a single power, something that manifests as a singular expression of a singular event. (Which is not exactly how trauma works, but...)

Meanwhile, becoming a Radiant also requires cracks in your spiritweb - but it seems like becoming a Radiant is much more about smaller traumas that build up over time. Things like Shallan's abusive childhood, Kaladin's time as a soldier and slave - these are things that are ongoing traumas that affect your entire being, the way you view the world. And Radiant orders are about the way you view the world (see: swearing Oaths), which feels very intentional.

Breaths/Awakening kind of fucks with my thoughts a little, but there's still something there... specifically, how losing a Breath (your innate Investiture) makes someone depressed, more susceptible to disease, etc - these are also manifestations of trauma. But then having a lot of Breaths makes you hyperaware of things (perfect pitch, perfect color) - these are framed as good things, but you could consider them to be similar to hypervigilance. And I have friends with perfect pitch who tell me it can be upsetting and overstimulating.

There's a lot more magic systems, I know, and I don't have thoughts on all of them. Some of them might not fit this lens of analysis. But Brandon focuses on these particular magic systems, and Stormlight especially is very much about trauma and recovery, and, well. I think you could dig into a lot more with the relationship between magic & trauma if you wanted to.

[koravelliumavast]

Love when Dalinar lets himself get stabbed in the gut by a longsword to prove a point let that Kholin stupidity shine.

[nevertheless-moving]

thinking about how fucking impossible it would be to pine secretly after someone on roshar. Like even if we assume that passionspren are only summoned by the most intense love and/or horniness - that's almost worse isn't it? Because you wouldn't be able to laugh it off like 'haha just a passing thought. Whoops again? Hahaha oh I suppose I have a little crush'

Anyway Kaladin doing one of his canonical epic hero glowing stunts with his canonical destroyed/soaked clothing (what. the man is constantly avoiding shardblades and arrows by a hairsbreath and flying around In Highstorms. The only reason he would even have pants at the end of WOR after the everstorm/highstorm fight is because we're following comic book rules- there's no way this man isn't going through clothes faster than James T Kirk - even if he's not his uniform shirt is WHITE and -)

ANYWAY kaladin having one of his Protaganist Moments and like. There is less than than zero time between the 'Oh. Oh.' Moment and Eventual Feelings Reveal because blorbo B is very visibly displaying a personified manifestation of intense romantic adoration.

[shiroselia]

Ah. There comes the autism headcanons. That's how you Know I like this book.

[moghedien]

Listening to Words of Radiance and they said something offended Shallan’s “artistic sense” but I heard “autistic sense” and just didn’t question it for like a full minute