YMMV / The Stormlight Archive

YMMV tropes for the entire Stormlight Archive.

• YMMV tropes for The Way of Kings are here.
• YMMV tropes for Words of Radiance are here.
• YMMV tropes for Oathbringer are here.
• YMMV tropes for Rhythm of War are here.

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• Awesome Music: This book series got an officially licensed soundtrack album composed by The Black Piper music group titled "Kaladin". This album manages to convey many of Kaladin's moments in the first two books, particularly "Bridge Four Shield" when Kaladin manages to use his Windrunner abilities to draw the arrows to his shield.
• Complete Monster: Rayse, Odium's Vessel, is a stern, tyrannical man who made it his mission to hunt down and sunder the other Shards. Heedless of who gets in his way, Rayse is willing to burn entire worlds to shatter the rest, having murdered those seen as "The Almighty" in the process while sowing his dark influence on worlds to create war and bloodshed until he can conquer or raze it to nothing. On the world where the series is set, Rayse's influence is responsible for the mental lobotomies and enslavement of the Parshendi race, the massive wars and the corruption of many others with his own Fused being little more than slaves he will send to eternal damnation for failure. Arriving himself, Rayse intends to slaughter everything in the world until all that is left are him and his own twisted armies, a process he will repeat through the cosmos.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lopen, a bridgeman of lesser importance, is incredibly popular for his cheery attitude and for providing Plucky Comic Relief, along with his vast amount of family members. Almost every time Lopen appears, he's brought another one of his cousins with him. He even gets to play a major role in Dawnshard.
  • Adolin, the one of Dalinar's sons who does not become a Radiant, has instead become one of fandom's favourites, thanks largely to his personality and the fact that even with his privileged upbringing, he's still an underdog compared to all the blossoming Radiants. It helps he's a premier Badass Normal, too.
  • Lift, after having appeared in just a single interlude chapter, became one of people's favourites thanks to her impish personality and actions throughout her chapter. She went on to star in her own novella and also to play a larger role later in the series.
  • The stick, due to its memorable lines, strong sense of self, and being a massive Mood Whiplash. It even got a “deleted scene” told from its perspective.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Mr. T for Taravangian.
  • Song of Secrets for the fourth book prior to its official title being revealed.
  • Yugi Moto for the possible son of Adolin and Shallan, thanks to a Word of God that he'd inherit all of their hair colours.
  • Todium for Taravangian after he kills Rayse and becomes the new Vessel for the Odium Shard.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • It's hard to fully feel sorry for Szeth when he's murdering people in the name of his religion, but it's horrible to see just how disturbed the so-called peaceful philosophy of the Shin actually is, and how it can warp people's minds and actions.
  • Taravangian is a ruthless Chess Master who murders and betrays his way to absolute power for what he considers the greater good, being perfectly willing to start bloody wars and throw entire nations into anarchy if that's what advances his plans. And to make it even worse, it's revealed in Oathbringer that he's not even doing it to defeat Odium. He's doing it to make himself as credible a threat to Odium as possible, so that when he surrenders to him he'll be able to get favourable terms. It's not even utopia that justifies the means for Taravangian, it's just a slightly better sort of dystopia! At the same time, he's a frail old man who knows he's not long for this world, one who's constantly straining against the limitations of his Disability Superpower to do what he thinks needs to be done, and who spends half the time afflicted with crippling guilt at the horrible things he can remember doing but can't remember why he did. It's hard to decide whether you want to punch him or give him a hug.
  • Elhokar is a mix between a Pointy-Haired Boss and a Spoiled Brat and causes endless harm and trouble through his petulance and incompetence. The kicker, as revealed towards the end of Words of Radiance? He's aware of it. He's trying to be a good king, but no matter what he does, it turns out to be the wrong thing. He tries to trust his advisors, it turns out that they're misleading him. He tries to ignore his advisors and go with his gut, it turns out his gut is wrong. He tries to be firm, innocents suffer. He tries to be lenient, the guilty run amuck. Meanwhile, he sees people like Dalinar and Kaladin inexplicably managing to make it work, even though he can't figure out what they're doing differently than him. He's still an awful king and an unpleasant person, but man, being born heir to the throne turned out to be Blessed with Suck for him in a big way.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Kaladin is shipped with almost every member of the cast, with the biggest ships being Kaladin/Shallan, Kaladin/Jasnah, Kaladin/Syl, Kaladin/Adolin, Kaladin/Shallan/Adolin, Kaladin/Tarah, Kaladin/Leshwi, and Kaladin/happiness.
• Love to Hate:
  • Torol Sadeas is a blatantly evil scumbag who is quite well regarded as a villain in the fandom, thanks to being a well executed Starter Villain. He manages to be a loathsome Smug Snake, while also getting notably humanized, giving him nuance and making him quite compelling, plus being both a legitimate threat and a Big Bad Wannabe who isn't all that important in the larger scope of the story. Not to mention being a very good demonstration of everything wrong with Alethi society.
  • Moash is widely hated by the fandom for his actions in the series, to the point of there being subreddit dedicated to hating him, aptly titled "r/fuckmoash." At the same time, he is also regarded as one of the best villains Sanderson has ever made due being legitimately dangerous, as well as having an engaging character arc. His arc is particularly notable, for both humanizing him while also making him easier to root against, as you see the process of him making all the wrong decisions and become something truly repugnant.
• Memetic Badass: Taln (Talenel'Elin) has developed into one in the fandom, due to him enduring 4500 years of torture. It's a common theory that Taln didn't actually get captured or tortured, but instead spent multiple millennia just fighting the Fused on Braize, essentially being the Stormlight version of Doomguy. Later on, it's even revealed that he did not break, and that Odium was forced to find another way to begin the Desolation, and these comparisons skyrocketed.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king. ^ExplanationThis sentence turned memetic because of both its strangeness and distinctiveness, as well as being the first line of the series. Plus it pairs well with virtually any image of someone wearing all white, and for a while, it was a meme on Tumblr to replace "white" with something bizarre or silly.
  • Fuck Moash. ^ExplanationThe uniting cry of much of the fandom after what he did in Oathbringer and Rhythm of War.
  • I, Adolin Kholin, have shat myself in my Shardplate. Three times, all on purpose. ^ExplanationShallan and Adolin's conversation about how one poops while in Shardplate has become a running joke among both the people who found it genuinely funny, and those who thought it was gross.
  • "I am a stick." "But you could be fire." ^ExplanationThe stick that Shallan attempts to Soulcast into flames to start a fire in Words of Radiance has quickly become memetic through its sheer absurdity and the determined, dogged insistence that it is, in fact, a stick.
    • You're Evi, but you could be fire ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Evi's horrific fate of burning alive took on a tinge of Black Comedy when people started connecting it with the Stick meme.
  • NO MATING! ^ExplanationAfter Shallan makes Pattern her chaperone for her date with Adolin in Oathbringer, he interrupts a heartfelt moment between the two of them by loudly screaming "no mating". It has become the fandom's default reaction to anything even remotely romantic or racy.
  • NSFV / Not Safe For Vorin ^ExplanationA play on NSFW used jokingly for images that would be offensive to the Vorin people, most notably women with visible left hands. There's even a joke website, Safehandhub, dedicated to the meme and filled with images of women's left hands.
  • Die Hard ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Many people have drawn similarities between Kaladin's plotline in Rhythm of War and the movie.
  • Spaceship Urithiru ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Oathbringer revealed that humans came to Roshar from a different planet by unknown means. Soon, an idea that Urithiru was a spaceship that has settled down onto the planet's surface appeared and gained massive popularity. It has since been debunked by Word of God, which doesn't stop people from bringing it up every once in a while as a poster boy for absurd theories.
  • Parshallan ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Some people found Shallan having so many secrets packed into the first eleven years of her life absurd, so when the end of Rhythm of War revealed there's still more, they began concocting increasingly wild theories. This reached its peak with the idea that "Shallan" is actually a illusion-using Fused who replaced her when she was a little girl. Inevitably some began to take it seriously.
  • "These words are accepted."^ExplanationSpoken by the Stormfather and later Dalinar to accept a Radiant's oath. It's become of a saying of approval within the fandom, particularly in response to "Fuck Moash".
  • Singer Furries^{Explanation (spoilers)}Rhythm of War revealed that in ancient times, singers would disdainfully call human sympathizers among their ranks essai, meaning "hairy". The similarity to the word "furries" was not missed.
• Signature Scene:
  • Pretty much the entirety of the first chapter of Way of Kings - which includes the iconic introduction of Szeth and the magic system of the world, and a bombastic combat scene that establishes the powers of Shardblades and Shardplates, and finally Gavilar's cryptic last words.
  • Any scene where a character swears an Oath.
  • Kaladin at the Honorchasm.
  • Kaladin jumping into the arena to help Adolin in Words of Radiance, with the badass line "Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do."
  • Dalinar standing up to Odium in Oathbringer, also with the badass line "You cannot have my pain".
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Lighter than others, but in Oathbringer, the character Lyn makes her debut, a would-be Windrunner squire that Syl mistakes as being a bridgeman, whom Kaladin allows into the Windrunners and who eventually does become a fully-fledged Windrunner. Several members of the trans community saw her as a trans symbol, being a woman with traditionally masculine interests, and some even interpreted her as a transgender man pre-transition. However, when Rhythm of War was released, this interpretation seems to have died down significantly, as after bonding with a Windspren, Lyn did not transition and remained female, as opposed to the Reshi King Ral-na in Dawnshard who identified as male and later fully transitioned on bonding with an ashspren.
• The Woobie: Several characters have this at times, particularly Kaladin and Dalinar and especially Shallan once you learn more about her backstory.
  • This is actually a sort of soft requirement to become Radiant, with the idea being that only someone whose soul has been "cracked" by trauma can form a bond with a Spren, which forms through those cracks and makes both the Radiant and their spren stronger. However, it's implied as the series goes on that this is an incomplete at best understanding both in-universe and out, as demonstrated in Dawnshard, when Huio swears the Third Ideal of the Windrunners, something that nearly tore Kaladin apart, by affirming that "protecting everyone" includes his annoying and sometimes hurtful cousin Lopen.

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