Where Every Scroll is a New Adventure
I actually don't know why don't more people ship kaladin × Jasnah. It's so similar to kaladin × lashwi.
1. They are both experts of their fields
2. They respect each other (grudgingly for style points)
3. They are both feared / respected
4. They think opposite to always be bickering
which Is perfect
5. They HAVE to work together to achieve
success. They can't do it alone.
6. If they get together shallan will write smut fic
of them.
7. Both are about individual Freedom.
8. They are both shallan's type
All the elements of a perfect ship is there!!!
[Minor spoilers for Stormlight]
Can the ships you like and/or write fanfiction for and/or read fanfiction for reveal something about you? Let’s say the answer is yes–what might your preferred Kaladin ship(s) say about you?
1. Kaladin x Shallan
That scene in the chasms really got to you. You want to see two broken people raise each other up, preferably with a good helping of snark. Either that, or your love language is boot-stealing.
2. Kaladin x Adolin
You like a good rivals-to-lovers relationship, and you have a slight humiliation kink–it’s why you find yourself reading “bridgeboy” as romantic.
3. Kaladin x Adolin x Shallan
Unlike Brandon Sanderson, you are no coward.
4. Kaladin x Moash
You enjoy suffering.
Or perhaps you just wish Sanderson hadn’t dropped the whole “the Alethi social system needs to burn” angle and still had Kaladin fighting against the system alongside Moash.
Which is to say–you enjoy suffering.
5. Kaladin x Lezian
You also enjoy suffering. The suffering of the characters, that is.
6. Kaladin x Lyn
Your ship was canon, but oh how briefly. I have to assume you write/read fix-it fanfic.
7. Kaladin x Lewshi
You love a good, respectful, enemies to lovers slowburn. You say things like, “It’s about the yearning.”
8. Kaladin x Renarin
I think you are probably a sweet person who wants only the best for your ships. You may have done a lot of research into epilepsy and how a fantasy doctor would talk about it.
10. Kaladin x Elhokar
I assume you are the type of person who says things like, “I want to put this man into a mason jar and shake him vigorously.”
11. Kaladin x Szeth
You probably have high hopes for the Shinover field trip.
12. Kaladin x Rlain
You’d like to see these men explore their emotions…and presumably each other’s bodies.
13. Kaladin x Jasnah
You said “ace rights” and meant it with your whole chest.
14. Kaladin x Dalinar
You wish that a big strong man would look you in the eye and say in his deep, manly voice, “Your job is bad for your mental health. Quit right now. That is not a suggestion.”
15. Kaladin x Sleep
You just want to wrap Kaladin in a warm blanket until he feels better.
That is to say, you love crack ships.
Shallan-murders-feature requested by @nerd-in-distress
[Major spoilers for Stormlight Archives!]
I’ve already ranked Kaladin’s dramatic entrances & the awesomeness of Vin’s kills. Next up we’re looking at the many deaths that Shallan has enacted, directly or indirectly. Since Shallan’s murders tend to be Trauma Personified, I’m going to rank them by how disturbing I found them.
#10: Bluth
We’ll start with the one that I find the least disturbing–in part because I think it’s the least attributable to Shallan herself. Technically, Bluth is inspired by the “Ideal Self” that Shallan draws of him, a drawing which motivates Bluth to join the fight against the bandits and die. So it is true that if not for Shallan, Bluth would not have been in that situation and likely would not have risked himself. But it is framed as a redemption, and I don’t find it particularly disturbing.
#9: Her own alters
In particular, I am thinking about the Battle of Thaylen City, during which Shallan keeps an entire Thrill-infected army busy by constantly creating illusions for them to kill. Every time one of these illusions die, Shallan feels it, as though she is sending out parts of herself to be murdered, over and over again. I’m not going to lie–this scene has made me cry, and I do personally feel a sense of creeping horror imagining Shallan simply sending herself out to be murdered hundreds and hundreds of times. But I suppose these deaths aren’t exactly real, so I can’t rank this too highly on the disturbing scale.
#8: The Coachman and his Parshmen
Shallan has a bit of a rocky start when it comes to being Veil and infiltrating the Ghostbloods. During one such incursion, she hires a coachman to bring her to a meeting and then makes him drive away without her to trick the Ghostbloods. Later, she finds him and the Parshmen murdered and his coach burned. Here again, it’s not like Shallan murdered them with her own hand…but she does cause their deaths, insofar as they wouldn’t have been in danger if not for her. But this is really the fault of the Ghostbloods, so I rank it as less disturbing in terms of what Shallan herself does.
#7: Her Mom’s “Friend”
I have honestly always been unclear about whether Shallan or Shallan’s father actually kills this guy, but the wiki says it was Shallan, so I’ll go with that. This is our first real person who is killed directly by Shallan’s hand–and honestly, I find it to be the least disturbing of actual-people-murdered-by-Shallan. I mean, the guy was a Skybreaker trying to suppress the return of the Radiants by murdering a kid, so I really feel like Shallan was acting in self-defense here. I mean, it is disturbing for Shallan, though, so that counts for something.
#6: Tyn
Speaking of murders in self-defense…Shallan does directly murder Tyn, but this one is once again purely self-defense. Tyn was trying to kill Shallan at the time, and Shallan summons her Shardblade in a desperate act of self-defense. There is still a level of horror, though. Tyn was sort of Shallan’s friend, and Shallan’s Shardblade is Trauma Personified at this point in the story–I believe this is the first time we ever actually see it. I don’t remember if it’s confirmed whether the Blade is Testament or Pattern, but there’s an extra layer of horror if it’s Testament, aka the spren that Shallan killed and is now using to kill someone else.
#5: Ialai
Now, here’s a murder not in self-defense at all. Radiant just straight up murders Ialai and hides this fact from Shallan. This is after Shallan, Radiant, and Veil vote on it and decide not to murder her…but then Radiant does it anyway in order to protect Shallan from having to do it–and from having to know about it. Unfortunately, this doesn’t so much protect Shallan as it does cause her intense mental and emotional distress, as now Shallan thinks there is a spy among her friends. This is partly why Formless becomes such a big threat in this book. So while I didn’t feel particularly upset that Ialai died, this murder did end up being disturbing in its implications–especially the idea that one of Shallan’s alters could do such a thing without Shallan (being willing to?) know.
#4: Her mom
Shallan’s mom was trying to kill her at the time, and baby Shallan summoned a Shardblade and killed her. Shallan then became convinced that the sword was her mother’s soul, which was locked in a safe behind a picture in that very room. For a very long time afterwards, Shallan would believe that safe was glowing with her dead mother’s soul. That’s all pretty disturbing–from attempted daughter-murder to actual mother-murder to just heaps of trauma. It was still self-defense, but that doesn’t help much with how disturbing it all was.
#3: Testament
The Stormlight Archive books are FILLED with mentions of the Recreance, that day when the Radiants betrayed their oaths and killed their spren. Of course, we eventually find out that the decision to break the oaths was mutual, and that the Radiants and their spren agreed to take this action (for reasons that are still not clear…). But there is one spren-killing that occurred long after the Recreance and that was not, so far as we know, a mutual decision: Shallan’s murder of her first spren, Testament. This is the spren whose blade killed Shallan’s mother, an act that so traumatized Shallan that she broke her oath, turned her spren into a deadeye, and then repressed all off the memories. Later Shallan meets Testament in Shadesmar for just an extra layer of trauma–her murder victim is still walking around. Maybe this will get less disturbing if a way of saving deadeyes is discovered, but for now, I find this one very disturbing.
#2: Grund
Grund is the street kid from Kholinar that Shallan tries to help by giving him food, only to later discover that Grund is being forced to do this by the gangs, who then murder Grund in front of her while he uses his dying words to declare how much he hates her. Even though this is not a death caused directly by Shallan’s hands, I find it to be one of the more disturbing deaths attributable to Shallan–because it’s a kid, because he dies of head trauma which I find disturbing, and because he uses his dying words to blame her, which is a pretty big helping of trauma to add to Shallan’s already large pile.
#1: Lin Davar
Listen, Lin Davar is the worst, and I am a fan of him being dead. Nevertheless, I find this to be far and away the most disturbing of Shallan’s murders because of how it happens. First, Shallan uses the blackbane her brother gave her to poison her father. But it doesn’t work. Her father wakes up, and Shallan has to murder him a second time, this time by literally strangling him to death with the necklace he gave her while singing the lullaby he sang to her after she murdered her mother. And strangling is not fast–she has to persist and sing until he is finally, finally dead.
So congratulations (?) to Lin Davar for being Shallan’s most disturbing murder victim!