u/Graphica-Danger

The multiple personalities have been... a lot, I won't lie. But I'm coming around to it as it lets Shallan do more things. I'm curious if there's any WoB on if Shallan's crossbow bolt injury to the head when she was in Kholinar was any sort of trigger for this. The multiple personas were rising to the surface before then, but I've thought back and realized they only started becoming more pronounced after that point.

Stormlight does heal, but that bolt was stuck in her head for a while because the head healed around it. Even if the brain was physically healed, was there some kind of rearrangement in her gray matter that sparked the DID? Or is it unrelated?

For the first hour I kept thinking it was the spirit of Bear’s dead cat come back to possess Nikki’s body. But then she fed him Sandy and… yeah.

I think she was a nekomata. The movie has a lot of cat imagery and in the sleep talking scene Nikki refers to her like she’s a completely separate entity, not an imposed persona. Nekomata are feline Japanese yokai who can puppet corpses and leave a trail of destruction in her wait. Nikki moves around like a puppet throughout the movie. Of course, she’s not physically dead, but I think it’s where the idea came from. She was desperate to stay with Bear both to fulfill the wish contract Bear made and to stay in the human realm, not the underworld/nothingness she came from. It would also explain how she acts. Deeply malevolent and amoral to an alien degree, struggling to understand human social norms and cues.

Then again, there’s no real way of knowing unless Barker says something and the identity of who she/it was doesn’t really matter. There’s an argument to be made she just acted according to her inhuman nature. I consider Bear and to a lesser extent Ian the real villains of the movie, and it’s more about the damage that small, mounting self-justifications and entitlement towards women combined can do.

There's always been a fatherly aspect to Dalinar's treatment of Kaladin, especially ever since he saved Adolin and Renarin in book 2. I got a little past the part where Kaladin has been relieved from duty and has a panic attack in his room and man, it's evident why Dalinar deliberated so hard on when he would have to take Kal off the front lines. He's a mess, but if he went on business as usual something awful he couldn't take back like when Elhokar was assassinated would go down.

War has become Kaladin's addiction, which is a fascinating contrast to the events of the last book where Dalinar's addiction to war came from a place of sadistic pleasure he had to confront with the Thrill. That adds even more depth to Dalinar's decision. It's also not a coincidence that Lirin's been brought over to Urithuru now. The father figure representing his desire to save and the father figure who understands conflict is necessary to save are both active in his life now at the same time. Two types of people: those who save lives, and those who kill. Is the third group real?

I've got 90% of the book to go but this feels like a choice he's long had to reckon with. Kal took a bit of a backseat in book 3 which I'd say was the right call, but I'm hoping to see his journey pick up more steam here. Especially now that we're past the first act of the overall story. Excited!

I'm unsure how much of this was intentional and how much was down to managing resources (though I think most of it was intentional), but there's something eerily empty about the original Mass Effect. There's an inherent unfriendliness to the galaxy in this game. A meanness that's rarely played as exotic or truly surmountable. You visit ruins and worlds weathered by time in the cosmos, populated by who knows how many species using whichever relays in whichever systems across a billion years of harvesting. Even the Citadel counts, despite all the trees and greenery the place feels so sterile.

And what did all these species do with these discoveries? Simply extend a capitalist system in a broader context, and with other species, in a crisscrossing web of suffering, war, slavery, famine across millennia. Feros is straight up just rubble with rebar and collapsed skyways that's also an illegal test site, but you've got colonists willing to live there because it's all they've got. Wherever you go, whoever you meet, there's this strange stillness to every location whether it's a mission hub or a random planet. You accomplish so much during this game, but the galaxy outside of the story just feels... unbothered by you.

It's been filled with species before from other worlds who have made many of the same decisions in prior cycles. With or without the Reapers, the passage of time across millions and billions of years and the desire for personal enrichment at the expense of others ensures a continual passage of bodies parsing through the wreckage to gain where others will lose. Because space isn't there for you to take it, you are there to fill that space. You are temporary.

I don't ascribe to this "UGHHHHH MASS EFFECT 2 AND 3 KILLED MY GRANDMA OKAY" phase the fandom goes through now and again (which I find a somewhat juvenile overcorrection from when 1 used to get bashed in the old days) but I do find the tone of Mass Effect 1 the most intriguing. This kind of tone for the new game would be cool, as Mass Effect's themes of friendship and loyalty shine brightest when you have people stick together in a universe that doesn't care about them.

I’d gotten the sense from Navani that she was tight lipped on what she really thought of Gavilar and the prologue proved me entirely correct. What a horrible man.

The sheer audacity to describe a son he practically abandoned and a brother who won him his kingdom as mediocre while he sits in meetings with conspirators neglecting his subjects, drooling over being a Herald and calling Navani a gold digging whore while she does his job for him. And he was going to force Amaram, well established to be a selfish bastard himself, on Jasnah. Szeth and Eshonai did everybody a favor by getting rid of him.

The other thing is, even if he had somehow gotten what he wanted, Gavilar showed he was far too petty and selfish to have dealt with being a Herald. I guess he planned to somehow avoid torture on Braize, but he just didn’t have the fortitude for the job. Odium would’ve corrupted him long before that anyway.

I’ve mulled over the end of Oathbringer for a couple days. Dalinar and his journey in particular. His road to atonement was a long one, but a big question the book poses is if he was actually any better than the likes of Sadeas or Amaram. He wasn’t… but I think there’s a key difference between him and the others: he always wanted to be better, deep down. Evi, after decades and in her sacrifice, managed to bring that out.

Dalinar always possessed a broader range of emotions than most other highborn men. That’s the real reason the Thrill and Odium were so drawn to him: his passion. It’s why Navani loves him so much. That passion turned to cruelty for decades, true, but I’ve wondered if Evi could’ve ever changed Sadeas, Amaram, or even Gavilar. I think Amaram might’ve been swayed the most, but ultimately he never had Dalinar’s self-awareness. Dalinar always accepted he was awful with his memory intact aside from the shock of the Rift incident; Amaram would always lie to himself about being honorable. Sadeas was scum who took the Rift arson even further and Gavilar wanted to be a surgebinding, possibly immortal conqueror instead of a good king. Which makes him setting his butcher brother Dalinar down that path instead especially ironic.

It was a combination of Evi’s altruism and Dalinar’s suppressed empathy that made him become an actual hero. I remember my first post in this sub was about how reading helps a person understand others and themselves, and that Alethi men seemed handicapped in this regard. Literacy is a varied thing, but the problem in Vorin society is it’s a cultural norm that’s held everybody back systemically. I found it beautiful the book ended with the most terrifying man on Roshar eschewing norms and learning the “feminine” art of reading and writing so he could continue to grow into a kinder man, and become great because he turned his violent passion into gentle compassion. Giving up the sword and the thrill of hurting others to now preventing harm.

I’ve thought also, with all the spiritual stuff Dalinar can do now too with Nohadon and Evi, that the journey is never actually over. Even if the destination is death, there’s always that next step beyond into the afterlife. An existence we can’t know until we get there. Or a journey after any of your initial destinations before then. So you just keep taking the next step again and again, and improve yourself to bring as much good into the world as possible.

And that’s why, as of now, he’s my favorite Cosmere character. Maybe he deserves even more punishment, and his crimes can’t be excused either way, but you can’t just toss away all the good he’s doing and how much he’s helped everybody he can, either. He really is a kind and thoughtful person now, fulfilling his true potential. I’ve got some regrets and mistakes of my own, but that inspires me to just keep doing what I can while accepting the responsibility of my errors.

The battle of Thaylenah is the exact type of grand setpiece I read epic fantasy for. Part Helm’s Deep, part Endgame, even part Enies Lobby I’d say.

Kaladin finally confronting Amaram one on one. Shallan leveling up her Lightweaving to distract Sadeas’ men. Dalinar confronting the Thrill and accepting responsibility for his crimes. Jasnah soulcasting everything like an expert sorceress. Szeth and Lift joining the fray, with no time to think or consider what an assassin and child are doing on a battlefield, just fight to survive and spare the city. And man it wasn’t over quickly, it was a hefty climax chapter for the book.

I know this is only the halfway point of arc 1 but I feel these first three books form an excellent trilogy all to themselves. Some answers are given that makes it feel like the True Desolation’s opening act is now finished, while setting up bigger mysteries for the books ahead.

The most important step a man can take? The next one. Always the next one.