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Thank You to @Subvisual Haze for getting a screenshot of the text!! Of course not least thanks @Jofwu who posted this on reddit.

So an artist on Reddit was doing Cosmere A-Z and asked Brandon if there was any character whose name started with 'x'. Source

https://amp.reddit.com/r/Cosmere/comments/gub34s/cultivation_is_a_genius_a_theory_on_the_origin_of/ (since there are so many Cultivation and Nightblood fans here) Taln fans! : https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/gzcttn/theory_taln_was_an_inside_job_oathbringer/ https://amp.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/7i03pf/oathbringer_theory_about_taln/ Note: Obviously do not upvote me for these, they are not my theories, I just saw them on Reddit, and since I and many others do not have an account over there I thought I would crosspost these here as they're intriguing theories and worth discussing. If you have a reddit account go give the OPs: u/yogeshchellappa, u/phantine, u/Johnson62 upvotes!

Hey sharders, I have been thinking about this interaction that happened on reddit and wanted to get your thoughts on it The last time we saw rlain IIRC he was going to try to explain to kaladin what being him felt like and then scene ends. What do you think has happened between then and the end of the book? Do you think Rlain could turn? Do you think maybe he has been busying himself with something else, like maybe the survivors of Neurok? Whats your thoughts?

Over in this thread, it was mentioned that we have this WoB from an inscription: "Preservation was the first shard to be held by someone outside the original 16." Assuming this refers to the events in Mistborn era 1, do we think it is possible that any of the Shard holders initially picked up one Shard but then traded with one of the other Vessels for another? If so, any speculation on who might have traded and why?

EDIT: Okay, kids. I'm super pumped to see you all using this database and finding good stuff. But please don't tag me whenever you post something from it. Instead, link to the Excel sheet itself, or to this post with instructions on how to filter. Or just link straight to the reddit comment in question. It's my 1000th post, so I figured I'd do something special. Like many of us, I've been concerned with notable info from Reddit that is difficult to find. So I decided to go on the hunt and pull together as much as I can. The following link is to an Excel sheet (you don't need Excel, it will work completely in the browser) with 749 WoBs, some of which were quite hard to find. https://1drv.ms/x/s!AplGxH8o0rfpnV1bJxqsi4NxrKMC I know there are some mistakes in my data; I have a couple WoBs without dates, a few where I mistyped dates and have a WoB from the future, apparently. If you see any of them, feel free to point them out to me in this thread. Also, I only concerned myself with cosmere-relevant stuff, no Reckoners, no WoT, no general writing advice, none of Brandon's terrible jokes. Many of the quotes from the AMAs will already be in Theoryland, but I haven't done a cross-reference to check on the exact extent. Brandon has a habit of returning to an old AMA to keep on answering stuff after people have stopped watching to catalogue it, so the 2015 AMA especially has a lot of stuff that didn't make it to Theoryland. The earlier ones, maybe not so much. I don't have any tags in here. I am working on tagging them in my own database, but that doesn't carry over well to a simple Excel sheet. So, the best way to find something is using a keyword search. If you click the arrow on the right of the first column header, you can use text filters to search for particular words or phrases. Oh, and I did break up any comment that had multiple questions, which should make it easier to skim through stuff when you've run a search. You can also look by specific thread. If you go to the right, you will see many columns for events: 5 AMAs, 6 Oathbringer updates, one Secret History update, and a single column to capture anything that isn't in one of the threads Brandon started. To select all from a particular event, click on the arrow, select "Filter..." and unselect Blanks. (If there's an "x" in that column, it means it was from that event.) This is useful for two reasons: first of all, I think the best way to become familiar with WoBs is to look through an event report, rather than look by subject. And second, this should make it easy to add to Theoryland. (Heyo, @WeiryWriter and @Ted aka WinespringBrother.) It's a little scrappy, but it's functional. Hopefully this will all make it into Theoryland, in which case it doesn't need to look nice here. And anyone else can feel free to download a copy or take this data to use in your own WoB catalogue. But, for now, it's not too complicated to search through here. That being said, I waited way too long to start doing this, and I am missing a good chunk of stuff. Theoryland did a good job cataloguing Brandon's WoBs up through 2013. Due to how Reddit lets you view past comments, I can only look back to April 2016 for anything that isn't a topic Brandon himself started. So, there are just over two years of Brandon's random comments on other peoples' threads that we're missing. I hope he was doing most of his WoB-dropping in the 2015 AMA and in his various Oathbringer updates. But, if you have anything that I am missing from that time period (looking at you, @Kurkistan), please send me links, so I can include them. So, there you have it. Happy 1000th post to me, and good hunting to all of you.

Hey, look at that - the Stabby award winners (and finalists) for last year got announced. Here are some relevant entries: I've read (and loved) 3/5 of the best novel finalists, and the other two have been on my to-read list. I've been hearing about this Pierce Brown guy, whose Morning Star won the award in this category, maybe I should read him... Arcanum Unbounded was, unfortunately, not even a finalist in the Best Anthology category. Sad days. Isaac Stewart's Cosmere constellation map, however, was a finalist for Best Artwork. Happy days! Most importantly, this site - yes, this site, the 17th Shard, was a Best Fantasy Site finalist! Crazy days! Go take a look at 'em, maybe you pick something up - whether it's a new book to read, or new wallpaper to use for your desktop (real talk, this is pretty sexy).

Brandon recently responded to criticism that he was adding too many new works in this year's State of the Sanderson, by showing us his original plan for the cosmere that contains most of these works! Also includes a new statement on Dark One; it hasn't always been cosmere, but now we've got an up-to-date WoB saying it still is. (For now, at least.) EDIT: Upon further reflection, I think this also narrows down our 10 core Shardworlds. [and Shard count] Dragonsteel: Yolen [?] Mistborn: Scadrial [2] Stormlight: Roshar [2] Stormlight: Braize [1] Elantris: Sel [2] Warbreaker: Nalthis [1] White Sand: Taldain [1] Threnody novel: Threnody [0] Aether of Night: ??? (Vax seems more and more likely) [1+] Silence Divine: Ashyn [0] This would revise some traditional lines of thought that have defined Threnody as a minor Shardworld. I don't think Brandon has been intentionally lying to us about its status; I think we've conflated 'core Shardworld' and 'major Shardworld.' The first is an out-of-universe term to describe the 10 worlds the books are set on. The second is which worlds have Shards Invested in them and actual magic systems. All core Shardworlds have significant Shardic influence, but they don't all necessarily have a Shard. Ashyn seems to be another core Shardworld that isn't a major Shardworld (no magic system, but diseases interact with Realmatics because it has significant Shardic influence). It's still possible it actually has a Shard, and I've misplaced either Cultivation or Honor on Roshar, but I view those as less likely. This would require a new term for the Drominad system; they have no magic and no book, so they are minor and... auxiliary? Dictionary.com hasn't been terribly helpful, and insists 'core' isn't an adjective. But I'll call First of the Sun an auxiliary minor Shardworld, Threnody a core minor Shardworld, and Scadrial a core major Shardworld. If Dark One has a Shard, then it would be an auxiliary major Shardworld; not part of the core story, but still having a full Shard. This has further ramifications on our Shard count. Since Aether has a magic system, it must have at least one Shard on its planet. If I run the math (adding in Ambition and the other worldless Shard), that means there are 5 Shards to go between Aether's world, post-Shattering Yolen, and any potential auxiliary major Shardworlds. (If Ashyn is major, it wouldn't change the overall math; we know there are 3 Shards total in the Rosharan system.)

Brandon answered a question regarding population sizes and densities of various cities around the Cosmere on Reddit earlier. In the answer, he references a city called Silverlight. I've don't recall this name in any of his books. I did a quick check through Coppermind, Theoryland, and the text of all the ebooks I have; I found no reference to something called Silverlight. Has anyone heard of this place before? I asked for clarification on Reddit, but until we get an answer, let's start madly theorizing! Original comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/51u8qu/oathbringer_spoilers_stormlight_three_update_4/d8zbvvs So what/where could Silverlight be? Personally, I think it would be a cool name for the worldhopper gathering place that we've heard about, which would tie into how he hasn't estimated its population precisely. What do you think it is?

Well, the Stabby Award winners have been announced, and Brandon won three! Shadows of Self won Best Novel of 2015, Perfect State won Best Short Fiction of 2015, and Writing Excuses won Best Related Work of 2015! That's awesome! Link

Here is a quote from the pretty recent AMA on reddit. "Boy, I do get this one a lot. I'm wary of saying anything until Calamity is out, not because Regalia's weakness is specifically relevant, but because I've found that even the most innocent of things I say can sometimes lead to spoilers. The nature of the weaknesses is a big part of the three book arc of the Reckoners, so I don't want to hurt anything. That said, as I mentioned, Regalia's weakness is not actually relevant. I've just been avoiding the question for reasons stated above. Regalia's weakness was being proven wrong. If you could figure out something she'd done incorrectly, and prove it to her so she couldn't avoid the truth, she'd briefly lose local control of her powers. But I didn't want that book to be about figuring out/using her weakness, in order to distinguish it from books one and three, which use that as the major plot. So I avoided bringing up the idea, or really even using it in the story at all." Pretty interesting, eh? My theory is that Regalia(Edit: who was a judge) would not want to sentence an innocent or pardon a guilty person, and thus she was extremely scared of being wrong. But I think that isn't all. Sourcefield wasn't just scared or Kool-Aid, they almost died because of it. Perhaps Regalia helped free a serial killer?

So Brandon's been answering some questions on reddit (with more to come in the form of a video, apparently), and has said this: Source: We know that he uses Feruchemy to be around at "important events", but this suggests that he's a full Feruchemist, rather than just a Ferring. Of course, Hoid could be using another magic system to heal himself, but this is still rather strong evidence for Feruchemical gold.

Hello all. Since my previous thread, while not getting many objections, was universally hailed as the single most dense and unreadable thing ever, and a bit of new information has come to light, I've decided to try a bit of a simplification/reboot. I'll leave off all my crazy talk about the minutia of Forging (see the original thread for that) and just talk about the bare bones of the matter with some clearly marked digressions at the end to analyse how it applies to Spren, Returned, and Forging, as well as glossing over some other possible uses for a "Form" theory of Realmatics. Evidence: We've got various quotes pointing us in this direction: Brandon's comment on "poopspren" opens up the possibility of a bit more Cognitive-Spiritual fuzziness than I've been talking about up until now, but I would hazard that the Cognitive versions of Forms are akin to "working copies" that serve as an intermediary between "ideal" Spiritual Forms and the amalgamation of Cognitive perceptions: the Cognitive version can get messy and be reactive, with the initial version based on and tied to the pure Spiritual Form and the end results (after being gnawed on by a few thousand people's brains) percolating up to the Spiritual--and so providing a mechanism for both changing existing Forms and creating new ones. This is somewhat similar, at least in terms of metaphor, to Sazed's two sets of Copperminds. EDIT 2: Actually, looking at another part of Nepene's question, this is almost certainly how it works. Not sure how I overlooked that before. Basic Theory: Stop me if I get too convoluted. Okay. As you can see in the quotes above, Spren as we know them (visible, interacting Spren, not pseudo-Cognitive aspects) are based on "cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time". As I asked Brandon, this is the same type of thing that lets a window being remade out of new stained glass or a block of gold being adulterated with lead judge the plausibility of its Forgery. It is also the same thing that makes Returned of one era (including Vasher, actually) fat and those of another era athletic (also including Vasher, reinforcing that he accesses an external "Returned" Form rather than just changing his own perceptions). These "Forms," then, are quasi-independent Spiritual entities that come into being as a result of the massed Cognitive perceptions of large numbers of sapient (as in perceiving, not necessarily self-aware) beings. So "Fire," "Wind," "Pain," and "Window" all have Forms because they are abstractions from the specific to the general. I take these truths to be self-evident, given the information we have. Expansion: I hereby spare you an expansion. Look at the original thread if you want to torture yourself, or I'll gladly expand on and/or defend the theory if anyone has questions to ask below. Applications: Forging: As I lay out in far more detail in the other thread I linked to, the "plausibility" of Forgeries seems to depend, to a large extent, on manifold Spiritual connections to appropriate Forms. So whether or not a block of gold would be adulterated with lead, or a set of manacles made out of soap, is dependent on quasi-independent manifestations of social norms. Nepene's question also gave us the fact that more "local" views can also have an affect on a Forgery: thousands of people going "AH! The Emperor is a homunculus!!!!" is just as effective as a Form in this regard, and should work in the same way. Returned and Divine Healing: Looking at Nepene's and my own question, it's clear that the beauty standards of Returned are dependent on some highly external sense of human physical ideals. These standards seems to be externally imposed as well, looking to Nepene's question. Also, as I mentioned when discussing Vasher above, these ideals seem to be actively as well as externally imposed on those who are in "Returned" form, as opposed to being simply internalized at one point and then not updated, though I suppose Vasher could conceivably have intentionally "updated" his Returned appearance. As I mentioned here, I would posit that the healing done by the sacrifice of a Returned's Divine Breath is so much better than normal magical Healing--healing Susebron to have a tongue and the ability to speak, instead of the normal "you heal back to the form of yourself" you see with Forging and Feruchemy--because it accesses some Form of human health, external to the healed and thus not restricted by their Cognitive aspect. Spren: Though I do have an entire thread on the matter, I would like to reiterate that Spren seem to be the purist manifestation of these Forms that we have yet seen. Whether windspren are drawn to the wind or are the wind, their forms seem to be entirely dependent upon both incidental Cognitive perceptions (see: locked flamespren in the interlude) and broader, more universal Forms. General Effects of Forms: It's dawned upon me (oh no) that Forms seem to serve a similar function to the Cognitive Realm. Not Realmatically (though they kind of do that too), but in terms of Brandon being able to write books and magic systems that don't break down under their own weight. Just as the Cognitive stops the world from exploding whenever someone tries to leave a Cadmium bubble and allows Healing without Miles being a mass of tumors, so Forms restrict and guide magic along "common sense" routes on a more meta-scale. The spoiled are just a few thoughts I've had, and are tangential to the theory as a whole. They're probably worth spinning theories off of, if anyone likes my Form theory and wants to expand on it a bit. Wow, that's more than I wanted to have to force you to read. Sorry (again). I would like to stress that a fair amount of this is conjecture; highly educated (*pats own back*) and plausible conjecture, but conjecture nonetheless. I've tried to note--with quotes, links, or "as we all knows"--wherever what I say is canon. EDIT: Nvm, turns out I'm right in a lot of ways. That's nice.

Swing on by reddit to check out our giveaway contest in celebration of the completion of Words of Radiance! http://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/1toggc/in_celebration_of_words_of_radiance_being/

Maybe you guys remember a while back when Brandon posted a bit of Amaram dialogue in Morse code on reddit? Well, he's done a similar thing again, here! Pretty sweet, no? Unless I'm mistaken, we haven't seen much of present-day Shallan from WoR, yet.

Brandon is answering some questions on reddit, with a video to come, it seems. Of particular note to me is that Hoid has been regrowing his fingers and the second set of 5 SA books will be more akin to a sequel than the "break, then continue on" that I've been assuming.

So the AMA seems to be winding down, and I know I don't like sifting through a thousand replies to find Cosmere-related stuff, so I've been bookmarking anything even vaguely Cosmere-related up until about 18:00 UTC on the 18th, and here are the results. Please grab quotes and links that you want to spin or substantiate theories off of and link directly to reddit in other threads, rather than to this mondo-thread of death. This is really just meant to be a resource. I imagine this will all be thrown on the Theoryland database fairly soon, but I'm impatient and I also imagine this might help those guys when they get to it. EDIT: Added 3 more on April 28. Please note that these divisions are relatively arbitrary, so look carefully if you're desperate for new information.

An April Fool over on Reddit has gotten a comment from Brandon, which divulges (I believe) new WoB on the nature of Spren, which confirms some theories (and probably trashes others). http://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/1bflq6/dreamworks_has_acquired_the_film_rights_for_the/