Non-Death Rattle Foreshadowing

[The Stick]

Brandon has confirmed that there is a second major type of foreshadowing he is giving us that does not involves Death Rattles. Any guesses?

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

I do still believe in that, but they're more vague. In Stormlight 1, there's a set of things called Death Rattles, which are...the best, for Wheel of Time fans, the best mimic you have for them is probably Min's visions. They are little hints of what's to come. And those are embedded for things that happen all the way through the ten books. And, you know, I've done...done things like that.

Matt Hatch

There's going to be some of us going back and reading Way of Kings and going like "Oh, you know, in Book 9-there it is!"

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, right, yeah. You should be able to do that. There are other things that I don't want to highlight people's attention on, but there's another big one in the Stormlight Archive that I've been doing all through the books that people don't realize is foreshadowing for the back five books. But it is! So, that'll be very fun. I can tell you what that is after the stream. It's something that I can do in my work that's very hard for other people to do in their works.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/494/#e15588

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26 by The Stick
Removed spoilers

[alder24]

1 hour ago, The Stick said:

Brandon has confirmed that there is a second major type of foreshadowing he is giving us that does not involves Death Rattles. Any guesses?

Hoid stories? I think there are a lot of things that might refer to ancient Roshar/Ashyn or the future. The Origin has some islands for one. Diagram is another big one. Renarin's visions. Ten Fools kind of. Epigraphs in general.

And this is a very wrong place for that post. That's a huge SP 4 spoiler. This should go into the SP forum section, not here. At very least put that whole WoB into a spoiler box, with information above that's SP 4 spoilers. Or you can cut the WoB to start with the part "There are questions there. Okay, so you still believe in that kind of like-" with the information above the full WoB is SP4 spoiler.

[Duxredux]

Some of Shallan's sketches provide supernatural insight, though likely only when she adds in details she isn't paying attention to. Not sure how far that foreshadowing goes or if it mostly shows current events of people she has some sort of Connection to. Oh, cool, the Coppermind already pulled the details I was looking for.

Quote

...shortly after the sinking of the Wind's Pleasure, Shallan sketches Shalash destroying a statue of herself, despite having no knowledge of Shalash's actions post-Aharietiam; at the same time, she also does a sketch that shows Yalb and a few other crew members helping each other out of the water near a rocky shoreline. Shallan dismisses this sketch as simply the product of a worried mind, however,^[10] and, when depressed by her role in the death of Grund, thinks of Yalb as dead.^[11]

After the sinking of the Wind's Pleasure, Yalb survived along with two other sailors.

Another thought is the specific shapes that emotion spren take in the PR, particularly the mutable ones. They are harvesting emotions and perhaps thoughts or memories from the person they are drawn to. That might be giving clues to the innermost thoughts of viewpoints we don't have yet, so a type of foreshadowing though not one that necessary draws on future sight per se (though maybe it does). Angerspren for humans appear as pools of blood, whereas for the Listeners they appeared as bolts of lightning (future stormforms?). At any rate, each spren form was deliberately chosen for every single instance they show up, particularly the ones that have multiple appearances. Brandon even has been tracking which regions different spren are rarer or more common, like logicspren being rare among the Alethi but common in Azir, probably foreshadowing Shadesmar geography.

Both of these have been around from the very beginning and may not be quite so obvious on first read through. Brandon says people haven't realized that his hidden clues are foreshadowing yet, though that doesn't discount alder24's list. I definitely missed some of those my first few readings.

[alder24]

3 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Some of Shallan's sketches provide supernatural insight, though likely only when she adds in details she isn't paying attention to. Not sure how far that foreshadowing goes or if it mostly shows current events of people she has some sort of Connection to. Oh, cool, the Coppermind already pulled the details I was looking for.

I've never noticed that. Yes, I knew about the connection stuff and Syl etc, but I've never paid enough attention to realize she painted Ash and Yalb as they were at that moment because of Connection. That's crazy and that's what I love about Brandon's book - you can read them many times and still pick up new things in every reread.

[drunkenbotanist]

This has come up before and i remember people speculating that it was the artwork, which he had more than usual influence on. Like the faces at the beginning of each chapter

[The Stick]

I don't know because Sanderson specified it was something unique to his work that only he could do.

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, The Stick said:

I don't know because Sanderson specified it was something unique to his work that only he could do.

Well, not "only he can do."

Spoiler

It's something that I can do in my work that's very hard for other people to do in their works.

Sanderson wordsmiths like a champ (so his specific phrasing usually matters). He does have much more influence on the art direction than most authors. It could also be something enabled by the huge internal-only Wiki his team maintains; something enabled by the shared universe nature of the Cosmere; something derived by his outlines (since he's outlined all 10 books, at least in a framework/rudimentary way), something in the Rosharan Scripts (since they developed Thaylen, Women's Script and Glyph structure). Other author's could fully develop their world's scripts to use in interior artwork; and that certainly would not be easy.

[+Child of Hodor]

The Voidbinding chart that was in the back of WoR will be much more relevant in the back 5. 

People could Voidbind long ago, probably on Ashyn. No one in the modern day knows what it is, not even Khriss. 

I think Odium get folded into the surgebinding Magic system making it modern Voidbinding. 
 

Only other thing I can think of is the character specific chapter icons have a hidden meaning. 

Edited June 6 by Child of Hodor

[alder24]

43 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

People could Voidbind long ago, probably on Ashyn. No one I’m the modern day knows what it is, not even Khriss. 

Voidbinding wasn't "fully explored in the past":

Spoiler

TheFoxQR (paraphrased)

Is there temporal symmetry in between the Surge-binding and void-binding charts, from the front and back covers of The Way of Kings? As in, Surgebinding is a re-emerging system of the past, vs Voidbinding being a newly emerging system that will fully exist in the future?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You can assume that Voidbinding has not been fully explored, but that parts of it have been looked into in the past. So I wouldn't say that temporal symmetry fully holds.

General Reddit 2019 (Aug. 3, 2019)

Which means there were Voidbinders in the past, but they barely scratch the surface of it.

[Firesong]

I am very curious on what exactly it is. A lot of the foreshadowing is obvious (as in, obvious how he can fit it in, not that it is obvious foreshadowing), but the way he says "very hard for others to do" makes me very curious of what exactly he means. 

[ftl]

On 5/30/2023 at 11:22 PM, Treamayne said:

Well, not "only he can do."

  Hide contents

It's something that I can do in my work that's very hard for other people to do in their works.

Sanderson wordsmiths like a champ (so his specific phrasing usually matters). He does have much more influence on the art direction than most authors. It could also be something enabled by the huge internal-only Wiki his team maintains; something enabled by the shared universe nature of the Cosmere; something derived by his outlines (since he's outlined all 10 books, at least in a framework/rudimentary way), something in the Rosharan Scripts (since they developed Thaylen, Women's Script and Glyph structure). Other author's could fully develop their world's scripts to use in interior artwork; and that certainly would not be easy.

I like the theory that he's talking about the art. That is in fact something he can do in his books that is very hard for other authors to do, because generally authors don't get to direct artists like that.

I think if it was just the internal wiki and the outlining, well, any author who wants to can set up a worldbuilding wiki or document, or outline far into the future of their series if they want, I don't think Brandon would consider that something that he can do that others can't. (He is quite good at it, but he doesn't seem like he's the type of person to consider a writing strength of his "something that would be very hard for other people to do".)

And the art that we have... well, we've got art of the Heralds - and he's said the back 5 books will focus on the Heralds, maybe there's foreshadowing in that art. And of course the voidbinding chart - it's got an obvious similarity to the surgebinding chart, and it seems like it will be important later, so I think that's an exellent candidate for "subtle foreshadowing that other authors can't do."