Data security and you - Wit

[Ixthos he/him]

I'm really bugged by the ending, with Wit's memories being altered. So I am hoping he foresaw this sort of problem and storied backups of his memory elsewhere, including his knowledge of those backups existence to keep Odium from altering them further, and then will discover them, absorb them, and realise what was altered and what wasn't.

Of course I'm also hoping that only those brief memories were altered, but we now have a problem:

• Odium could alter his memories again - he knows he can do it and is free to do it, and if Wit didn't plan for this - and I'm hoping he did plan for it - then Wit could be edited repeatability. And that bugs me
• Unless this is addressed later in the series we can never trust anything Wit says again, even if Wit thinks it is true.
• Odium said he couldn't harm Wit, but how much of that applies to Wit's goal and relationships.

This really bugs me, especially because we know Hoid is going to show up in later stories. I know it is frightening in the series, that someone who was so unflappable and so in control suddenly lost it, but this makes me wonder if he is now permanently broken, unreliable.

Of course, unless this is supposed to be a point in later stories, that Hoid has had his mind altered and doesn't realise it. But I don't think so. I really hope this was something Wit planned for, and deliberately hid from himself to keep Odium from discovering it later on, something he will find and then remember his plans and know more about Odium's plans, but ...

 

Of course, the real question in all this is if Odium could read those memories as well as write new ones - or just remove old ones. Mistborn spoilers:

Spoiler

Ruin can edit copperminds and talk to people with holes in them, Preservation can read minds but not talk to them unless new to the power and then only to people deeply connected to the vessel. Preservation closes cracks and so can't speak, Ruin opens cracks and so can. But can Odium read memories as well as take or destroy them?

 

[+robardin he/him]

I suspect Odium's ability to fiddle with memories externally contained in Investiture (Breaths) would be limited to removal; changing memories feels like something of another Shardic intent, such as Ruin or Cultivation. Especially since the memories he'd have altered or removed were Connected to himself (what he had just said/done with him).

[Ixthos he/him]

2 minutes ago, robardin said:

I suspect Odium's ability to fiddle with memories externally contained in Investiture (Breaths) would be limited to removal; changing memories feels like something of another Shardic intent, such as Ruin or Cultivation. Especially since the memories he'd have altered or removed were Connected to himself (what he had just said/done with him).

I really hope you are right! :-)

[Jaconis]

My initial reaction was very similar and thus annoyed/scared me. Rereading the entire scene makes me feel like Wit expected this, or at least something like this. 

His little show literally right before his interaction with Odium is about fooling people by making them focus on one thing while you do another. What was the point of all that if not to foreshadow that this was a plan by Wit to fool Odium. 

[+Child of Hodor]

Lol at the title.

I don’t think he foresaw it. I think he thought the contract protected him and the Breaths inside him, it didn’t. 

He met with Odium 1,000 years and apparently Odium didn’t think to try it then. Hoid typically hides from Shards. I don’t think anyone did this to him before. 

2 minutes ago, robardin said:

I suspect Odium's ability to fiddle with memories externally contained in Investiture (Breaths) would be limited to removal; changing memories feels like something of another Shardic intent, such as Ruin or Cultivation. Especially since the memories he'd have altered or removed were Connected to himself (what he had just said/done with him).

It seems like he changed a memory though. The way Hoid remembers Design and the altered Windspren interact is different from what we saw at the beginning of the epilogue. Maybe he’s just disorientated from having other memories destroyed.

Scadrial is a special case because Ruin and Preservation created the planet together so each can do certain things the other can’t. It didn’t have to do with their intent. 

[+robardin he/him]

3 minutes ago, Jaconis said:

My initial reaction was very similar and thus annoyed/scared me. Rereading the entire scene makes me feel like Wit expected this, or at least something like this. 

His little show literally right before his interaction with Odium is about fooling people by making them focus on one thing while you do another. What was the point of all that if not to foreshadow that this was a plan by Wit to fool Odium. 

I really do not think his shock and surprise that Odium was no longer Rayse was feigned. "Who are you?"

He had thought simply to taunt and to tweak Rayse. He did not expect a new Odium. How could he have foreseen that?

[+Child of Hodor]

5 minutes ago, Jaconis said:

My initial reaction was very similar and thus annoyed/scared me. Rereading the entire scene makes me feel like Wit expected this, or at least something like this. 

His little show literally right before his interaction with Odium is about fooling people by making them focus on one thing while you do another. What was the point of all that if not to foreshadow that this was a plan by Wit to fool Odium. 

But we were in his head for this and he was genuinely surprised and frightened. It’s possible he left certain memories in his breath and kept other in his mind intentionally, but wasn’t expecting a new Odium.

Still if he is planning for Rayse why would Wit think Rayse would want his memories? Rayse was alive pre-Shattering and has been a Shard for a long time and is full himself. Why would he care what Hoid thinks or has been up to? The memories are only of great benefit  to Taravangian who is a new shard and was not very Cosmere aware prior to that.

What tips Hoid off is Taravangian wanting to know what Wit thinks. Rayse would never do that. 

If Hoid is expecting Rayse he is very lucky. If Rayse bothered to look at his stored memories he’d probably delete them all out of spite. Taravangian just wanted to preserve his secret. 

[Jaconis]

True, we are in his head, and he is genuinely scared. I’m mostly looking for reasons to not be terrified at what just happened. 

I have no idea how he could have known it, but I don’t have any idea how he could have known a lot of things that happened, especially in these epilogues. Each one he has known things that he shouldn’t. Also, Hoid doesn’t do anything without a reason. I’m not sure what his bit about misdirection was about if the scene wasn’t a big misdirection. I don’t know that we know enough to ascribe motivations to any of the players as to why they would or would not have done these things.

All that said, I don’t know that I believe it was misdirection as much as I want it to be. I shudder to think at what might cause Hoid to, for the first time a long, long time, feely “true terror”. 

[Ixthos he/him]

@Child of Hodor Again, I'm hoping that Wit made a backup of his memories and put his memory of having made the backup in that backup as well, so when he met with Odium, and was shocked to realise it wasn't Rayse and that his memories were in danger, that was genuine for him in the moment, but also a reaction he had planned to have and deliberately forgotten about, something that, when he encounters his backup he is reminded of and then can compare what was done to him with his true memories. I haven't ever seen this particular anima - and I won't name it so as to prevent spoilers for it - but in it, from what I've gathered I think the main protagonist / villain had a similar plan to what I'm suggesting in the sense of deliberately hiding memories from himself - including the fact he hid them - so that he could be another person for a while and then remember who he actually is.

@Jaconis I agree with you, I'm also reaching for a reason this wasn't actually Wit being outmanoeuvred, or if he was outmanoeuvred that the change done was just in the moment, and not something that touched him more deeply than just a minute or two. I like @robardin's take, that Odium can't change memories like Ruin - as Ruin "ruins" data and so can change it, while Odium is driven more to destroy, though admittedly it looks like Odium destroying something also covers "unmaking" them and so changing them ... but either way, I'm hoping it becomes clearer later if Wit has been changed, or just tricked in the short term and remains the same person with the same long term memories and personality as before. He clearly thinks he should still have perfect pitch, still thinks he should have enough or felt that he had enough so it might be that it wasn't so much the Breaths were destroyed as it was them being "damaged", still there but now with corrupted sectors, to use a hard drive analogy.

[Holy Kayak he/him]

On 20/11/2020 at 8:48 PM, Jaconis said:

My initial reaction was very similar and thus annoyed/scared me. Rereading the entire scene makes me feel like Wit expected this, or at least something like this. 

His little show literally right before his interaction with Odium is about fooling people by making them focus on one thing while you do another. What was the point of all that if not to foreshadow that this was a plan by Wit to fool Odium. 

Agreed, honestly it freaked me out for a second, if he has lost a vast amount of memories, or worse, if Odium now has access to what he stole it could give him a vast amount of cosmere knowledge.

Then I reread and started to think it was planned all along, hence the explanation of the trick, and I am wondering if he could've possibly seeded some misinformation amongst the memories (if Odium actually has access to them now).

I just finished the book 20 minutes ago and either way I am worried about the implications, it's going to feel like an eternity to book 5!!

[Saodar he/him]

On 11/20/2020 at 3:48 PM, Jaconis said:

My initial reaction was very similar and thus annoyed/scared me. Rereading the entire scene makes me feel like Wit expected this, or at least something like this. 

His little show literally right before his interaction with Odium is about fooling people by making them focus on one thing while you do another. What was the point of all that if not to foreshadow that this was a plan by Wit to fool Odium. 

I had this thought too; after all, I think it's significant that Mr. Sanderson ends the section emphasizing that it "had gone exactly as he had imagined," and saying it twice in total.

But I also think it's significant that it's going as he imagined, not as he planned. I think this distinction might be vitally important: he could have imagined all kinds of terrible things, and knowing Wit he probably planned for them. But not necessarily.

Yeah, this is really really terrifying to me. The Cosmere implications of a lot of this book are staggering.

[Holy Kayak he/him]

Something else crossed my mind last night in bed. Could just be clutching at straws due to the fact I am worried about wit possibly losing his memories.

It seems T/Odium destroyed something on his personage that sounds like a metal mind but of the Nalthis variety using breaths etc.

After Wits speech to Jasnah earlier in the book when talking about the card game, Wit says he never bets everything he has. It got me thinking whether or not he could have other memories stored? Then it occured to me, Kaladin got Wits flute back a little earlier.

So, could it be that the flute finds its way back to Wit and thus restoring his memories, even partially? And are there any other mementos Wit has given out that we know of?