YatNP and TSM as Primers for SA5 and Bondsmith Shenanigans? Possible Fused Future?

[Duxredux]

Basically the title, YatNP and TSM have Connection as a major plot element and focus, and we see the ways Connection can be utilized and some of the dangers it presents. Some of these notes are probably pretty obvious, but I'm going to list them off anyway and aggregate them into this thread.

In YatNP we have a spirit serving as an astral projection cord between a human and basically a super-invested Cognitive Shadow. Notably after Design listens to Yumi's explanation of the hijo, she confirms that she is more or less in a similar category as the spirits (buuut, this is Design we're talking about, I'm reserving 10-20% skepticism that she really understood what Yumi was talking about). We also learn that when a highly Invested being with a strong Spiritual Aspect inhabits the body of another person they will warp the body to fit their own self-perception, the more strongly Invested, the greater the change - Fused anyone? Importantly, we learn that it is absolutely possible for two people to share a single body without the Identity of the weaker getting destroyed or subsumed by the stronger, but presumably there needs to be a barrier or gap between them. Unbounded and unregulated Connection is dangerous, and it left Painter outside of his body and vulnerable to anything that could feed on emotion or Investiture. Direct contact, even briefly, had Yumi and Painter strongly experiencing the other's emotional state - it wouldn't have surprised me if Yumi would have absorbed Painter if they had tried anything more intimate like hugging or if Yumi had somehow deliberately used Investiture while still Connected to Painter (RIP Aux, thank you for serving as a warning). And there's my segue into TSM.

In TSM, we learn several things about Connection. Using tech available to future Scadrians, they were able to modify existing Investiture sources to allow the Cinder King to gain control over the Charred via Connection. We learn that it's possible to drain and give people Investiture through special forms of Connection, even completely consuming them as the Cinder King does. Apparently this contact can be a very intimate sharing of Investiture (Yumi and Painter touching each other while sharing a body?), but can also be done forcibly. There are natural barriers that are formed between different peoples, but being adopted into a group like Nomad can remove those barriers on transference of Investiture - allowing him to both gain, give, and be stolen from.

A question that I'm not sure I had ever really considered was the fate of the Fused in the war of SA. What is their end state? Extermination by severing their bond with Odium? Conquest of Roshar then letting themselves pass into the Beyond (if Odium lets them)? Their life as of now requires them to destroy the mind of the host Singer, and that's not a great end state. A cool one that came to mind if they were ever freed from Odium's claim to their souls was if they could form a 3-part bond with Radiant Singers, the Singer, spren, and Fused in a similar format to Painter, hijo, and Yumi. Not saying that there's a tidy happy ending in store for the Stormlight Archive, but this seems like a possible solution for disarmament for the Rosharan Human-Singer war, particularly if some Fused don't want to lay down and die.

We also have the Oathpact, Heralds, BAM, Deadeyes, and a whole lot of broken and frayed Connections in SA. Anyone else think we got a crash course in Connection so we can better grasp the resolutions to some of these Connections (hopefully, we get some in SA5, and not just a big old RAFO, wait until SA 6-10)? Anyone have any theories on Connections they'd like to add in the context of what we've recently learned and the big wrap up of the first half of Stormlight?

[Cocoa]

I've honestly wondered if it's not possible for Fused to form one half of a Nahel bond rather than their current possession shtick. We know that mortals are able to bond with Type One Invested entities (Radiant spren, Seons, maybe Skaze), and now with Yumi we've seen a human and a cognitive shadow form something halfway between a possession and a Nahel bond, using a hijo as an intermediary. So I think it's possible Fused could do something similar with singers (or who knows, maybe even humans), but Odium's Intent probably acts as a hurdle. At the very least, you'd need something other than Oaths to use as a foundation for the bond. Strong emotional resonance, maybe? Like... actually, like what seemed to happen between Adolin and Maya, come to think of it.

(Complete tangent, but RoW feels like it's setting up a Sanderlanche on a Cosmere-wide scale. Just off the top of my head we had; hybrid lights, anti-investiture, a Regal Radiant (and normal singer radiants, though that seems less out there), rebel Fused, BAM weirdness, unchained Bondsmithery, whatever Maya and Adolin are now, and whatever other thing was going on with those chasmfeinds at the end. It's like Roshar has so many invested artsthat it's hit critical mass and just started spitting out infinite offshoots, and it makes my head hurt.)