Blightsong

I think that the ghost bloods cosmeric knowledge instantly makes them on par in terms of dangerousness with the other groups. They almost definitely know more than every other group in terms of Realmatics and what is actually going on then any of the other groups.

I dont think you would have to be evil exactly, or do evil things all the time, you would just have to be a hateful SOB which is how i would describe Szeth. At one point he thinks about how he hates literally everyone. If anyone in the series could pull off bonding a voidspren it would be Szeth.

This was probably to show that despite that we empathize with them (mostly because we see their thoughts and the reasons behind their actions), they can be just as unpersonable and rude as everyone else. I think that scene did a good job to humanize them.

Yea, I don't think we should assume that it's a Voidbinding chart. We have nothing even close to confirmation. I am also of the camp that it is Cultivation, my guess has been that the chart is a western version of the regular double eye we've seen.

Yea, do we know if that is actually a Voidbinding chart?

Using gemhearts to form a symbiosis with spren on Roshar far predates Honor or Cultivation, or humans for that matter, arriving on Roshar. I agree that gratshells might assist with the desolations, but the gemhearts were not originally given to them by the shards present on Roshar now. If anyone it was Adonalsium.

Brandon has actually said that Ruin is most compatable with Cultivation... I do kind of agree that cultivation could have been an opposite to preservation.

We know that the only reason preservation was able to bind Ruin as he did is because their intents are such perfect opposites. Preservation's prison wasn't really so much a prison, as a mechanism by which he used his power to perfectly counter almost everything Ruin was capable of (this isn't theory, we have a WoB somewhere but I can't find it right now). So while Honor probably did do something to bind Odium, I don't think it is related to what preservation did to bind Ruin.

Agreed, I'm just spitballing.

If the focus is sunlight (which is debatable), then maybe dayside has visible spectrum light and dark side has UV light.

In response to @Spoolofwhool, I think i see what you are saying, thanks for clearing that up. I do just want to mention that the powers that come from a magic system are dependent on the Shardworld, and how one gets those powers is based on the shards intent, that's kind of how the intent and Shardworld thing mixes, and we have confirmation of this.

I guess improven wrong. Something else to note in my favor is that when Jasnah gets trapped in the Cognitive realm her spren notes that the closest "junction" is "Honor's Perpendicularity" if she want to escape. I would suggest that junctiona are these places where one can transition, while a perpendicularity is a shardpool.

A defining feature of investiture is that it gives those connections between the realms, that's why Shardpools do what they do in the first place. That's why heavily invested physical objects can effect the other realms.

I would say that Scadrial is only second to Roshar. More magic systems and users than almost any other planet, huge collections of gaseous investiture that spans across an entire continent at least (Brandon has actually compared the mists to Highstorms). The only other planet that might be similarly invested is Sel, but we don't really know enough about Sel as a whole to call it.

It is unlikely that the transportation surge is needed to enter the Cognitive Realm. There are hints that the other orders may be able to do it as well, Kaladin briefly sees the black sun present in Shademar while wind running through the chasms.

It also heavily implies that the only Perpendicularitues on Scadrial are Shardpools. I find it extremely unlikely that a Shardworld as heavily invested as Scadrial is would only have two Perpendicularities if it were possible for more. There is simply much more evidence pointing towards Perpendicularities being only tied to Shards. If you guys have information on the contrary then feel free to link it, but ive never seen anything that has said otherwise.

I guess I just don't see what Shallan has accomplished as all that miraculous in the context of the story. Like I said, it's a matter of opinion. I've seen people say similar things about Kaladin's story arc. I hope you check out Sanderson's other works, if you haven't heard of the Cosmere get ready for one hell of a ride.

I like love triangles and romance in my fiction, and Brandon is setting it up well so I'm exited to see where it goes. I am also in the Kalladin camp, I think that he and Shallan have the pontential to understand each other on a deeper level than Adolin and Shallan could. But this is my opinion, I know a lot of people are against the love triangle, or want to see Adolin and Shallan together (looking at you, @maxal). There have been many discussions on this as you said, and it's always been pretty controversial.

I agree that WoT has terribly written female characters, but I don't see how Brandon overdid his female characters, they just seem like the other ones to me. Do you dislike Brandon's characters because of this trend you saw in the being written as "infatuated"? I would say that the Male characters were much more immature in how they saw relationships then the female characters, specifically Adolin (this is kind of important to his character). This doesn't bug me, but if I had to say, this is much more present in the male characters of you series if this factors into how much you like various characters.

The massive collection is what caused the spiking, I don't think I ever implied differently. This is an effect of investiture as a whole, and Hemallurgy does this by keying into Ruin's investiture. This is also (I theorize) how a physical object (steel) can be made to damage other realms (I.e. Nightblood).

I see your points and disagree with many of them, but I realize that much of this is 100% opinion. My biggest issues are Sebariel. I think you are stereotyping pretty hard when you say he "is supposed to be prideful if not arrogant". If there is one thing that we learned from his characterization and introduction it's that he is not prideful or arrogant. That is why Shallan tries this on him in the first place, because she knows this from Jasnah's notes. As for his mistress, I think you misunderstand her and Sabariels relationship. She and him are obviously deeply in love and have the relationship of a married couple. She is obviously not just some other mistress, I mean she followed him out into a war zone during a Highstorm to have tea. They are obviously two of a kind and she obviously knows this. If she were seriously worried about her position then why would she be so rude and dismissive of him? Shallan was not dismissive of Jasnah's death as you mention. She was properly respectful when informing Dalinar and Navani, but you problem seems to be that she then went on to flirt with Adolin (in a separate conversation). I think it's rediculous of you to expect her to brood for months on end about someone she had only known for months, (I also find it rediculous that you think it is shallow of her to have stolen the fake Fabrial for "those reasons" when those reasons were litteraly to save her family from death and enslavement. I would probably kill to stop that from happening, much less steal.) and to not carry out what she had come to that party to do because of this. It didn't seem unrealistic to me at all, it would have actually been jarring if she had just brooded after coming to the party, it would be unnatural to have that character focus on Jasnah when that wasn't the focus of that scene really. Kalladin wrongly likes Shallan. Kalladin only likes Shallan because he sees in her the kind of emptiness he feels. This does not come down to personability or how nice you think she is, it comes down to Kalladin feeling a kind ship with her because of shared experience. He also doesn't compare her to Tien because of her personality, but because of how she makes him feel better (due to the kinship of their shared experience, and her ability to be sunny despite the horrors she has seen). Shallan in annoying. Agreed. But her annoyingness makes sense because it directly relates to her insanity. She remarks that she often makes jokes in the face of what she has been through because "it's what keeps her insane", or in other words it helps her distract herself from her problems (she does this to the point of litteraly blocking memories). It's a part of her character, but I understand not liking her as much as other characters because of this. Its its just seems to me that you are very biased against Shallan. Especially after flat out saying that you don't like female PoVs ( can you elaborate, this actually sounded kind of offensive) it just seems to me that you don't like her because of her character, not because anything is actually wrong with her scenes.

Here is my source for this (I was actually a part of this conversation), this WoB being one of is not the only mention of the actual mechanics of a Perpendicularity. The SH quote he mentions here is this:

Perpendicularities are massive pools of a shard's investiture that presumably occur naturally. We first started asking about them before we knew what they were called, and eventually learned that the well of Ascension and the pool from Elantris were both what we deemed "Shardpools". It's wasn't until SA that we learned that they are called "Perpendicularities". We learned via WoB that massive amount of investiture (I.e. Perpendicularities) can "spike" from one realm to another, and that a person who knows how can use this to go from one realm to another (and that then walking from one planet to another once you are in the cognitive realm is the most common method of world hopping). Besides that I'm not sure we know much more about them.

17th shard won't let me edit, so I'm double posting, forgive me. While what I am saying still has a lot of theory to it, and I don't expect you to immediately agree with what I am saying, I only ask that you take in what I am saying and weight it against the knowledge we currently have (especially the WoB that I linked).

What I'm saying is that while I agree that those focuses you are talking about, Aons, metals, are a part of the Shardworld, they are not directly tied to the magic system of that planet or its use. Theoretically, an Allomancer could still use their power never even having seen a metal. It is just that worlds way of giving investiture to those who could use it, not specifically any one magic system (although there are probably ties to that planets way of accessing the magic system and the magic system itself, there kind of needs to be for the magic system to work). So what I'm saying about metals, Aons, and gemstones is that because they are not directly needed as far as we know in any of the magic systems, and because there are hacks to get around using them in those magic systems, they are not directly tied to the manifestations of investiture themselves. Spren, on the other hand, are specifically needed within the manifestations of investiture. There is no hack for a surgebinder to use surgebinding without their Spren, they are directly tied to the magic and it's use. This is why I believe that they are not exactly comparable to the above focuses. I would also like to point out that while Spren are a part of Roshars magic systems, they are not specific to that planet. Brandon has confirmed two different types of similar bonds, one being Seons to their masters and the other being Elantrians to Arelon. Metals, gemstones, and Aons cannot key into other sources of investiture than those present on their respective planets (there is a distinction here, we know tha metals can access preservation investiture while on other planets, because physical location does not matter in the spiritual realm, but they are still accessing preservationists power, not another offworld power).