Odium & Wit: Which is the storyteller, which is the audience? [Discuss]

[DuffMcGruff]

I agree, Hoid was being too meta for me to believe Toad was getting the better of him.

 

[fakelogic]

1 hour ago, DuffMcGruff said:

I agree, Hoid was being too meta for me to believe Toad was getting the better of him.

 

But he’s very often meta—it’s makes more storytelling sense to pull the rug out from under Hoid’s invincibility rather than depict more of the same, at least in this limited interaction. Not saying he doesn’t have counters or ultimately win in the long run, but pretty sure Hoid is being implied to have fallibilities, which ultimately makes finding out how he’s so special even more interesting, imho.

[DuffMcGruff]

4 minutes ago, fakelogic said:

But he’s very often meta—it’s makes more storytelling sense to pull the rug out from under Hoid’s invincibility rather than depict more of the same, at least in this limited interaction. Not saying he doesn’t have counters or ultimately win in the long run, but pretty sure Hoid is being implied to have fallibilities, which ultimately makes finding out how he’s so special even more interesting, imho.

I agree, and I think he is fallible in so much as he couldn't account for Taravangian  ascending, but his misdirection speech is pretty heavy handed. Plus he essentially put himself in the position for Toad to find him in the first place. I do agree that not everything went according to plan though.

[fakelogic]

 

19 minutes ago, DuffMcGruff said:

I agree, and I think he is fallible in so much as he couldn't account for Taravangian  ascending, but his misdirection speech is pretty heavy handed. Plus he essentially put himself in the position for Toad to find him in the first place. I do agree that not everything went according to plan though.

Yeah I think you’re right that there’s likely some extra reason why Hoid planned to meet the original Odium other than boasting about the new contract, but this passage prior to Odium attacking stood out to me: 

Spoiler

That had gone exactly as he’d imagined. Except that last part. He slowed, turning the words over in his mind.

Was Rayse growing more thoughtful? Wit didn’t need to worry, did he? After all this, Odium would be safely imprisoned, no matter what happened. There was no way out.…

Unless …

Wit’s breath caught, but then he forced himself to keep whistling and walking.

I can’t see any reason why we’d get Hoid’s inner thoughts expressing doubt/worry and the “unless” (can’t wait to find out what the loophole is) if the whole memory loss thing was part of his plan. It’s unlikely that Odium can read his mind and only knew the jig was up via how Hoid reacted to his champion question. 

Edited November 28, 2020 by fakelogic

[ftl]

I used to be on the fence, but now I'm more in the "Hoid planned this" camp.

So, to me, the key to making my decision was figuring out - what was Hoid trying to get out of this interaction? I can't believe that careful meticulous manipulator Hoid just walked into a meeting with Rayse with no objective, just to gloat and poke the bear for the heck of it. So regardless of whether he "won" or "lost" the encounter, he should have had something he was trying to achieve.

But if we take the second-try conversation at face value, then Hoid, when he says that the meeting went exactly as he had imagined, would have remembered accomplishing nothing. He walked in to a meeting with Rayse, gloated a bit and traded some insults, and walked away. What would have been the point? How would this fit in to any sort of plan? Can you imagine Hoid gaming this out beforehand - "yep, now that I'm 100% safe due to a contract, I'm going to reveal myself to my ancient enemy. Gonna insult him, then walk away. Not gonna think too deeply about whether he can mess with me in other ways, such as messing with my spren or my Breaths." So why would he even do this? Why show up there? I've been thinking about it, and everything I can come up with feels really shallow and dumb, can't think of anything that Hoid would accomplish from a straightforward meeting like this that would have justified the risk of revealing himself to a god.

On the other hand, if I treat the whole thing as a way of slipping Odium false information via fake Breath-memories, then I CAN come up with a narrative that makes the meeting make sense. Suppose Hoid is trying to slip false information to the new Odium, while Odium is still inexperienced with his powers and is building up his knowledge of the Cosmere. But how to do this? He can't just go up to Toadium and give information. He can't slip fake information to Odium's forces using normal spycraft, because Odium would see mundane ways of lying. But since he can store memories in Breaths... well, that gives an opening. Make memories that are, in some way, fake. Integrate them with the real memories, store them externally. Go into the meeting with Odium, let Odium think he's "won" by finding those memories, reading them, and messing with them. It's risky. Doing this requires Hoid to leave himself at least somewhat vulnerable, so that Odium legitimately thinks he's reading true memories and has Hoid in his power. But this way of looking at it - at least Hoid revealing himself to Odium has a point. An objective which he's trying to achieve, with some (pretty high!) risk. Instead of just being a situation of all risk and no objective.

Though, looking at it this way... we and Hoid still don't know whether he actually achieved his goals. We don't know what memories Odium read, whether he believed them, and whether that matches up to Hoid's original plan. So we still don't know who "Won" or "Lost" this encounter. But at least the whole encounter had a point, from Hoid's point of view.

[fakelogic]

Yeah doubtful the meeting was just to gloat for ego sake, but we know Hoid’s main weapon is usually his words/storytelling/knowledge. Just spitballing here, but perhaps he set that meeting up knowing riling up Odium’s vessel would be helpful to his goals and/or maybe he needed to make sure the new protections were in place (which could explain the “exactly as he’d imagined” ie wasn’t instantly destroyed on the spot or something).

I still think we are filling in too many blanks in Hoid’s favor simply because we’re used to him being in complete control. There’s those inner thought passages I quoted above even before he’s attacked that can’t be explained. If Hoid had planned for Odium (regardless of the vessel) to steal his memories, it’s strange for him to think that after walking out of the room. And I’d like to believe Brandon isn’t writing misleading things just to make Hoid be even more impressive than he’s already portrayed as.

Edited November 29, 2020 by fakelogic

[Solant he/him]

I've been going over this in my head, and I don't know if it's been mentioned, but if he had created and stored false memories via light weaving/breaths/unkeyed metal mind coins, and those memories were missing after the conversion with T, then he would still know that the conversation went as expected even if be didn't remember it if that was his plan in exposing his self to begin with, right?

[DuffMcGruff]

I keep flip flopping every time I reread this epilogue. I think this chapter alone merits its own shardcast. (hint hint)

[mawaschwa]

19 hours ago, ftl said:

So, to me, the key to making my decision was figuring out - what was Hoid trying to get out of this interaction?

Yeah, this is a great question. I agree with you that, at a surface level, it's not really apparent what Hoid accomplished/was trying to accomplish. The Breaths that were available for Odium to exploit are suspect--why expose himself to his enemy with this obvious vulnerability? I like the theory that he might have planted false memories there, but I'm not sure to what end.

Where I stand at the moment:

1. Hoid didn't know about the Rayse/Taravangian switch. When he realized something had changed about the Vessel, he felt true terror. This terror comes from the unknown element that is a new Vessel holding Odium. Hoid knew Rayse the person, and clearly thought he could outplay him. Now that advantage is gone.
2. Hoid knew his Breaths would be a potential vulnerability and either had accepted they might be tampered with or planned for them to be used in some way by Odium. I just can't accept a character as Cosmere-aware as Hoid willingly confronting Odium without considering all potential vulnerabilities first. Whether or not he expected Odium to tamper with them the way he did, or if his plan for them actually worked out—I don't think we can ascertain the truth of the matter here quite yet.
3. Hoid must have had some motivation for confronting Odium other than taunting him. Something else was intended to happen during that conversation beyond the words—and after the second take at the convo, Hoid thinks that whatever was supposed to happen did in fact happen. But we can't be sure it actually did, without knowing what Hoid intended and what Odium actually did to the Breaths (destroy them? alter them? it's not entirely clear).

Regarding theories that the coins were some kind of unkeyed metalmind--not sure there's really much evidence in the text to support this. It's possible, but my gut feeling is they were just coins.

Given that I believe Hoid didn't know about Taravangian and his true terror, I think logically that means that whatever Hoid's plan was for this encounter did not happen quite the way he wanted to. I think this true terror at Odium having changed indeed shows us that Hoid isn't all-knowing: to many previous reply's points, it's our first evidence that Hoid isn't infallible. I accept this.

But I think there's enough implication in the surrounding text, and the fact that (I believe) Hoid knew/wanted his Breaths to be tampered with, that Hoid got something out of this exchange. Perhaps Toadium intentionally gave Hoid the impression he got what he was expecting to get—in which case, Hoid was truly played like a fiddle. But narratively this feels unsatisfying to me. I'd rather read about a Hoid who knew he'd been outsmarted somehow, and have to deal with that—rather than a Hoid who thinks he won and is complacent.