Thoughts on Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (Spoilers)

[Myst He/Him]

17 minutes ago, Returned said:

The way this is phrased makes me wonder: did they learn anything? The Yumi-style Yoki-hijo were as controlled and mechanized as their society could manage, and everything about their upbringing and training was meant to strip away their individuality. They did nothing but their work, not even maintain themselves by eating, dressing, or bathing. The maximum standard of living in their society was limited largely by how quickly they could move from settlement to settlement and how reliably they could attract spirits.

Not long after the Yoki-hijo started moving away from that lifestyle (with the implication that people would have to get by with fewer spirit-bound goods), the scholars came along with their machine and promised a more productive and efficient method of getting good-enough goods. If I remember correctly, there was some kind of minor hiccup when it was activated but the survivors eventually experienced a much, much higher standard of living than anyone before.

Now they have the hion lines for as long as they can impress spirits with television, and as long as they can impress enough they'll have functionally unlimited energy. Since they were making the shows anyways it might as well be free energy, too. But if they start losing the spirits' interest, will people accept their standard of living dropping? Will their television shows focus on artistry, getting the viewers they can, or are they headed for a future of formulaic, template-driven, mechanically produced Love Island clones? I think that the implication is the former, since Virtuosity's influence reigns there, but might their people not be attracted to another machine that maximizes what they can have? Maybe we'll see the planet again, in the future, dominated by the Father Machine, Jr.

I’d like to think that, at some point, the spirits would start to have a taste in art.

Which by itself is an interesting concept. Think records about each spirit and their likes and dislikes, and so you have to make something tailored to each spirit, but it can’t just be the same thing, because they’ll get bored. It’s not interesting. But you can also get away with a piece of art they dislike, if you do it well.

And so suddenly the people who are celebrated, are the people who can satisfy a spirit with a work of art they don’t normally like, simply because it’s done well enough. Or something like that.

Id like to think that the spirits will get more like Spren and more individualistic, and that should change things and keep everything from becoming generic mass produced slop that, through virtue of the memory of a piece long past, qualifies as art.

edit: also, “minor hiccup”?

Edited Saturday at 04:34 AM by Myst

[Frustration]

8 hours ago, Myst said:

 

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From the way Brandon answered the question(bringing up how it was before the radiants were formalized) seems to me to suggest that he’s saying that Yumi’s more powerful than the heralds before they broke their oaths.

as for TLR, in my knowledge savantism doesn’t make you any more or less invested, it just alters your spiritweb. It’s not like Spook gained investiture when he was a tin savant.

Also, the part about the herald’s borrowing Honor’s power to come back seems a little weird to me. Their entire power comes from Honor. It’s because of Him their oath had consequences, so if you use that to get around them not being invested, then I feel like you’re essentially saying that they’re not invested at all because it’s all Honor’s power.

And even if it is just Honor’s power, Vin held the well’s power, which isn’t her power, its Preservations, and we consider her to be highly invested during that point. I don’t see why the heralds are different.

 

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Spoiler

It's not that the power originated with Honor, but that it comes from him. As I understood WaT, especially Nale's discussions about the human fused, Honor detested the idea, and made new bodies for the Heralds out of his own power, which they could access via their bond, but which nonetheless did not come from them directly.

And Savantism is just investiture changing your spiritweb.

 

8 hours ago, Myst said:

To me that would’ve felt like they hadn’t learned anything. To use another machine just sounds like they didn’t learn anything from what just happened with the shroud and everything. But to use a person that would just go back to being a Yoki-hijo, and that also goes back on the entire book. It had to be something other than stacking rocks

There was nothing wrong with the yoki-hijo and that's what I would have preferred. If Brandon didn't want them to go back to that he should have set up an alternative earlier in the book rather than just making up dramas out of nowhere.

5 hours ago, Myst said:

I’d like to think that, at some point, the spirits would start to have a taste in art.

Which by itself is an interesting concept. Think records about each spirit and their likes and dislikes, and so you have to make something tailored to each spirit, but it can’t just be the same thing, because they’ll get bored. It’s not interesting. But you can also get away with a piece of art they dislike, if you do it well.

And so suddenly the people who are celebrated, are the people who can satisfy a spirit with a work of art they don’t normally like, simply because it’s done well enough. Or something like that.

Id like to think that the spirits will get more like Spren and more individualistic, and that should change things and keep everything from becoming generic mass produced slop that, through virtue of the memory of a piece long past, qualifies as art.

By that logic they should have been able to resist the Father Machine

[NameIess]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

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It's not that the power originated with Honor, but that it comes from him. As I understood WaT, especially Nale's discussions about the human fused, Honor detested the idea, and made new bodies for the Heralds out of his own power, which they could access via their bond, but which nonetheless did not come from them directly.

And Savantism is just investiture changing your spiritweb.

 

There was nothing wrong with the yoki-hijo and that's what I would have preferred. If Brandon didn't want them to go back to that he should have set up an alternative earlier in the book rather than just making up dramas out of nowhere.

By that logic they should have been able to resist the Father Machine

It is set up early in the book that there are multiple artistic methods that can summon the spirits. First Yumi chapter, I believe.

And Yumi did use external investiture to create her body: some of the shroud lingered around Painter as he painted.

[Myst He/Him]

21 hours ago, Frustration said:

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It's not that the power originated with Honor, but that it comes from him. As I understood WaT, especially Nale's discussions about the human fused, Honor detested the idea, and made new bodies for the Heralds out of his own power, which they could access via their bond, but which nonetheless did not come from them directly.

And Savantism is just investiture changing your spiritweb.

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Spoiler

Again, by that logic, Radiants aren’t invested because they draw their power from the spren(Honor), and their oaths(Honor)

Yeah, but it doesn’t add investiture. It changes your spiritweb, but it doesn’t make you more invested. A Tineye savant is still a Tineye 

 

21 hours ago, Frustration said:

There was nothing wrong with the yoki-hijo and that's what I would have preferred. If Brandon didn't want them to go back to that he should have set up an alternative earlier in the book rather than just making up dramas out of nowhere.

The entire book was about Yumi bending the rules of the Yoki-Hijo and learning to live for herself. If they went back to using Yoki-Hijo that means nothing changed. It means that the message is basically that it’s alright because it’s no longer Yumi doing it. That doesn’t seem in line with the book.

Yes, the dramas seem a little forced, but the only other art we’ve seen in the book was that and the nightmare painters. So it was that or introduce something on the spot, which would’ve been more jarring. 
 

21 hours ago, Frustration said:

By that logic they should have been able to resist the Father Machine

Eventually yeah, I think they could. But they need time for that. It was an eventually thing. I don’t expect for that to happen for another couple eons(? That’s the right term for a thousand years right?)

[Treamayne]

4 hours ago, Myst said:

(? That’s the right term for a thousand years right?)

Millennium/Millennia = Thousand Years/Plural

Eon (see below) is a geologic timescale:

Spoiler

Hope that helps

[Frustration]

5 hours ago, Myst said:

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Again, by that logic, Radiants aren’t invested because they draw their power from the spren(Honor), and their oaths(Honor)

Yeah, but it doesn’t add investiture. It changes your spiritweb, but it doesn’t make you more invested. A Tineye savant is still a Tineye 

 

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That's not at all comparable to what I'm saying.

The equivalent would be stormlight. The Stormlight comes from the Highstorm, and while it might suffuse a radiant temporarily, that power is not natively theirs, and once it's used up they aren't any more invested than they were before. Likewise when the Heralds need new bodies an infusion of power comes from Honor to create them, however their souls are not naturally so invested as to allow them to create new bodies without an extra infusion of investiture.

 

And yes I would fully expect Savants to be more invested. In fact I think that makes more sense for why Yumi became more invested over time rather than assuming she was consuming the shroud.

 

5 hours ago, Myst said:

The entire book was about Yumi bending the rules of the Yoki-Hijo and learning to live for herself. If they went back to using Yoki-Hijo that means nothing changed. It means that the message is basically that it’s alright because it’s no longer Yumi doing it. That doesn’t seem in line with the book.

The reform movement had removed those rules almost 400 years before Yumi was born. She was probably the last Yoki-hijo to follow them. And even if there were others those rules were cultural, and would not have appeared again.

5 hours ago, Myst said:

Yes, the dramas seem a little forced, but the only other art we’ve seen in the book was that and the nightmare painters. So it was that or introduce something on the spot, which would’ve been more jarring. 

Just introduce something else earlier in the book.

21 hours ago, NameIess said:

It is set up early in the book that there are multiple artistic methods that can summon the spirits. First Yumi chapter, I believe.

And Yumi did use external investiture to create her body: some of the shroud lingered around Painter as he painted.

I haven't read the book in almost three years so I had to dig a little bit

Quote

There are other ways, but stacks of stones have proven among the most attractive to the spirits." -Yumi chpt. 17

If stones are among the most effective and already machines are less effective than people, then TV dramas should be far less efficient, as it's two stages removed from people.

And yes while a little smoke and darkness remained, I took that to be Yumi, not anything else.

[Returned he/him]

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

The reform movement had removed those rules almost 400 years before Yumi was born. She was probably the last Yoki-hijo to follow them. And even if there were others those rules were cultural, and would not have appeared again.

I agree with this, but rethinking this book (for which I really appreciate this thread!) I'm curious to see how other people feel about this: the liberalization of the yoki-hijo, the artists by whose efforts then-modern life was possible, is thematically mirrored by the low-wage, low-respect profession of painting in Nikaro's time. Yoki-hijo managed the spirits and technology, and once the Father Machine obviated that but produced the shroud then painters managed the shroud. Up until the book's climax, Nikaro exemplified the ultimate extreme of this trend-- he didn't even bother to bring any artistry to his work, simply painting the same bamboo over and over again. Mechanically, if you will.

The yoki-hijo were highly respected and, supposedly, inimitable, which was expressed by their removal from society and highly formalized rituals of veneration. Allowing them to be people rather than just holders of their station breaks most of that formalized respect down, making them less mystical more ordinary. People were certainly open enough to the machine-produced results, suggesting they weren't all that attached to the cultural role of the yoki-hijo. Painters are minimally respected, poorly compensated and far from revered. Had the Father Machine never been activated, I can imagine yoki-hijo becoming a similarly rote job when the pomp and ceremony are removed. Considered this way, the cultural attitude towards art and artists' functional roles is a pretty straight line. This is offset, I think, by art as something to experience, like the televised dramas.

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Just introduce something else earlier in the book.

In fairness I think that this was hinted at by people's (especially Yumi's) captivation with the drama programs. I still don't think it was developed well enough to completely and costlessly fix the central tensions of the book, but there was something there to establish it in advance.

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

If stones are among the most effective and already machines are less effective than people, then TV dramas should be far less efficient, as it's two stages removed from people.

I think that the difference is in scale and craftsmanship/form, whatever the specific causes are. With only sixteen yoki-hijo at a time and the laborious process of stacking stones there is a serious limit to how many spirits can be bound into material goods and so the efficiency of attracting the spirits was impossible to ignore. The stacking machines can make far more with far less human effort, and the results are lower quality but good enough to be useful, but that output requires efficiency because the stacks are poor. The dramas can be produced by vastly more than what just sixteen people could make and be shown to spirits all over the world at the same time, so the efficiency loss isn't that severe of a problem-- it's made up for by volume and on a scale vastly outstripping the stacking machines. Plus, the hion are very versatile and hion quality doesn't seem to be an issue, so the dramas don't even have to be that good. Just appealing enough to enough spirits that they'll take a shift as a hion line for a while.

[Nitpicking]

On 6/19/2026 at 12:01 AM, Frustration said:

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I think Rashek is perhaps the most similar case we have to Yumi. He's immensely powerful, and had his soul expanded greatly both by natural infusion of investiture and by time. Likewise both of their lifespans are artificially extended by an outside force, either Atium or the Father Machine. After losing those mechanisms they both die. Rashek was far more invested than Yumi was, and likewise had the ability to persist. However he didn't have the ability to make himself a new body from scratch, just having that investiture isn't enough. Even the human fused that Ishar makes require other human bodies to return. Simply having Identity and investiture isn't enough to survive on when the latent Connections that made the survival possible are severed.

[snip]

I also disliked that Dramas worked to bind the spirits. The whole point of the Yoki-hijo was that art wasn't enough you had to be a special person as well. [snip]

Cosmere spoiler answer:

Spoiler

Rashek could have remained. He explicitly refused to become a Cognitive entity and leaves for the Beyond. Kelsier complains about how he should have stayed to help (as Kelsier himself did). It's presumably Brandon trying to make happy murderer Kelsier seem like the hero of the story.

The whole "Yoki-Hijo are special" thing is and always was a lie (or arguably just a misconception). They become special by what they do, but anyone could call spirits if they became good enough artists. Painter does it!