Stormlight - Blog Posts

KALADIN!!!!

helen “trans people are perpetuating gender steriotypes” joyce is now upset that the scientific american is writing about how women were hunters too back in the day, not just mothers and caretakers. feminist win!

All of these.

Cosmere books as bad news headlines

• "Young woman of questionable parentage kills god after eating copious amounts of metal"

• "Apple voice assistant marries mute rainbow god after sister defeats army of undead alongside hobo and talking sword"

• "City of zombies saved by angry man in armor and friendly chef's niece"

• "Depressed people snort lightning, use it to fight lobsters the size of battleships." (idea credit to @Elisabeth_Wheatley on YouTube)

• "Cowboy makes deal with the new god"

• "Girl and mouse boyfriend undo curse on cabin boy"

• "Man cheats death by stabbing his own eye, forms intergalactic gang"

• "Young woman stacks rocks to destroy computer"

• "Dehydrated young man unites senators against himself"

• "Man with PTSD breaks All the Rules, upsets mentor while running from sunrise"

• "Man(??) avoids eternal punishment from several sources while roasting everyone in existence"

It's the coolness factor. Stories should be realistic but they also have to be cool. Also mind get used to it once it realizes that it can just heal.

i'm so mad at the way physical traumas are treated in stormlight. Like yes even when you get heal by stormlight being hacked at the spine to the point of paralysis over and over again or having an arrow impaled through your face would absolutely be a traumatic experience, but this got treated like it's just a cool fighting sequence and our heroes are just that badass. Like??? Why is neither the characters nor the narrative talk or even mention it??? The books want to realistically portray mental illness and then completely failed to also realize that being radiant also means you're experiencing even more traumas?? A lot of this just feels like mindless action scene and glorification of violence tbh

More scenes for stormlight archives future books.

A mysterious cloaked figure is walking through the tower.

A war meeting is going on. Wit is his usual asshole self. He then suddenly perks up and starts to pour two drinks.

Pattern starts to buzz nervously.

Everyone pauses as the shadow of the figure stretches into the room.

Everyone is quiet. Dalinar stretches to his full height as the stormfather rumbles ominously.

The figure speaks. "We need to talk bondsmith. Things have changed"

"Who are you?" Dalinar asks. "Thadikar. Leader of the ghostbloods"

Immediately shallan and jasnah become alert. Summoning their shardplate and attacks but thadakar either dodges or simply can't be hurt.

He calls for his subjects and suddenly one soldier comes forward and its mariaze. Then hoid gives thadakar the drink and takes a sip of his.

Kelsier tells them that they must work together and everyone is doubtful.

Explains his deal with gavilar and tells them what a monster he was.

Until he pulls out devices that has the conversations of that night recorded.

They are about to listen to one when Navani stops them and tells them that maybe they should just hear him out.

You know he would.

okay yeah yeah villain but the diagram is so cool you guys

Wall I made for this (featuring: Russian, Spanish, toki pona, DNA code, women's script, a few alphabets, some geometry and arithmetic, and a language that I invented, among other things. I had fun with this)

kal doodle

Concept: Jasnah Kholin with pants

I made more of that One Piece/Stormlight crossover people seemed to like!! Potential spoilers (for Egghead specifically) are under the cut!

Anyways lmk what y'all think! Also if y'all have more suggestions about OP characters and what order they'd be in lmk loll (no promises when I'll draw em, it's more when I feel like it!)

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone has a refreshing and fulfilling 2025!

Starting off the year with Kaladin Stormblessed- I'm only in the middle of Day 5 for Wind and Truth, but I'm enjoying it immensely!

Have a great start to the new year y'all!!

What if the Strawhats had a Knights Radiant order?? I tried assigning one to each order the best I could lol- what order would you assign them to?

Also bonus pics of some spren are included- I couldn't decide which version of the Sunny to do, so I did both!

Thank you so much @meeyahmaya for the brainstorming and ideas too!

Every morning I play my LinkedIn games, feeling like Taravangian trying to see if I'm smart or stupid today

This lady is Alethi and you can’t tell me otherwise

By Jan Lehner for Russh Magazine

Shallan’s Murders: Ranked by Level of Disturbing

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!