Ansalem

2 hours ago, Aleksiel said:

Yet in the Diagram we find:

I thought Vargo did something to help create a truthless, but the timeline doesn't match. So he just used looked for a Truthless instead of making one as this would suggest. 

Probably just created the Diagram before he found out about Szeth. No reason to make a Truthless if there conveniently already is one. Besides, it says "can we make to use a Truthless", not "can we make a Truthless".

44 minutes ago, kari-no-sugata said:

I can't remember if we ever got confirmation about Shallan's progression since the start of tWoK but I don't believe that the truths she spoke during tWoK countered towards her progression since she did not speak them to Pattern (I think of them as a temporary bond to a different Cryptic). I believe Shallan could have summoned her Shardblade at any time, which she wouldn't have been able to do if she hadn't progressed enough already. In other words, we don't know what Shallan's real 1st and 2nd Truth were (though it's also possible that Lightweavers do not have a fixed number of Truths)

Shallan had her Shardblade since the beginning of WoK. Or at least she thought she did. She never actually summoned it until WoR, but she considered it to be available before she said any truths on screen.

1 minute ago, Watchcry said:

And to be honest, I'm pretty sure none of them can reveal their oaths to anybody, even to those of their own order if they are at a higher level. 

I don't see why not. Just saying them wouldn't do anything.

I don't really see how the murder story has taken a back seat. It was almost the entire point of Shallan's chapter. It's just not going the way anyone expected. We may not be getting much from Adolin about the murders, but the arc is definitely moving forward. Adolin just hasn't had a lot of screen time at all, really. And Dalinar has bigger things on his mind right now, he assigned people to it now he's letting them handle it.

Shallan, however, seems pretty damnation focused on it.

Just now, StormingTexan said:

Hmm so what we are all trying to figure out here is if the preview chapters are our boon or curse...

It's obviously both. I don't think there's anything that says the boon and curse can't be the same thing.

7 minutes ago, Seloun said:

I actually suggested Unmade couple of weeks ago on this thread but I'm pretty surprised by the turn this has taken. While there's definitely seems to be a supernatural aspect, I think there are other possibilities besides Unmade influence; the copycats are oddly reminiscent of how spren tend to copy phenomena,

The Unmade are often speculated to be spren.

16 minutes ago, Todesengel said:

Edit:

Just noticed @Herald's WoB quote about Honor's perpendicularity moving... Dang. Well, pretty sure that ruins that theory.

Yeah, that's how it always goes. I come up with a theory, someone immediately posts a WoB that says "nope".

Kinda starting to hate WoB's. They take all my speculation fun away. I'm pretty sure he's targeting me specifically at this point. 

Well, there was that one time he said "yes" to my question, but you know.

23 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

Good point, but is there anything like the well of ascension on roshar? 

Is there?

Undoubtedly. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain all Shards have a Shardpool on a world they're Invested in. It's speculated that the Horneater oceans might be Shardpools. Hoid steps out of one, presumably that's how he got to Roshar in the first place.

Speaking of Shardpools, Urithiru is said to have been built at the place closest to Honor. I'm suddenly wondering if that means Urithiru was built on top of Honor's Shardpool?

2 minutes ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

Technically Hate cannot exist without living beings to hate each other, . So yielding to Odium might create a society of hate, lack of trust, lack of law etc but I do not believe it would completely wipe out humanity. Odium isn't Ruin.

True, but the Shards' intents are open to interpretation to a certain extent. Hatred can manifest in many different ways. Sometimes it makes you want to hurt things, sometimes it makes you want to destroy them, sometimes it makes you want to simply be better than them, etc. It could easily be that he does want to wipe out humanity and maintain only the Listeners, but I can also see certain interpretations of hatred that would make you want to increase the number of people alive so you can increase the overall amount of hatred or suffering of those you hate. But the Desolations would seem to go against that notion, Odium clearly wants to destroy at least some large percentage of humanity.

In any event, I don't really see any end state that could be considered positive. I think the real question has less to do with Odium and more to do with Taravangian's idea of what preserving humanity means. Is simply having living humans enough? If so, does that mean it's acceptable if they all exist in unending suffering? I don't think he's evil, so I don't really think that would be enough for him, but I could of course be wrong.

2 minutes ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

For all we know T wants to unite the world to then unilaterally yield to Odium. 

I'm not saying I believe this, but we really have no idea on the Diagram's endgame.

I thought he made it pretty clear to Szeth. His goal is to preserve humanity after the Desolation. I suppose he might think yielding to Odium could achieve that, but I don't really see it.

46 minutes ago, DiamondMind said:

My problem with that the writing just does not sound like Dalinar, plus he probably hadn't had the ideas in the book since his youth.

Well, if Dalinar is the author he's probably not actually writing it himself. When women scribe books for their husbands, they kind of... fancy it up. Navani has already been shown to do this with a book she scribed for Gavilar in WoK. She made him sound more scholarly than he really was. If she's scribing Oathbringer for Dalinar, then there's a good chance she's doing the same thing for him.

17 minutes ago, Kered said:

I think we're going to see war between the kingdoms before we see war with a voidbringer army. The reluctance from the other rulers to join Dalinar and the dealings with the voidbringers has a Mr T feel to it though. Would be a great way to undercut Dalinar and show the world that Mr. T can run the world. The more I think about it, with all the theories out their, I can see Odium manipulating Mr.T into making sure the Kingdoms of the world stay separate, and limit Dalinar's power. It's a common goal both Odium and Mr.T share.

If you mean keeping the kingdoms separate as the goal Odium and Taravangian share, no they don't. Taravangian's goal is to unite the world, and more specifically his goal is to become king of everything.

If you mean limiting Dalinar's power, then maybe. I don't think it's very clear what Taravangian has planned for Dalinar yet. The way the Diagram was worded still leaves it open to interpretation whether he thinks Dalinar is currently a threat to him or a potential ally.

But either way, his goal is to unite the world and prepare mankind for the next Desolation.

1 minute ago, Sliverofnone said:

It wouldn't break her truths, but she spoke the first oath, 'life before death.' I was just speculating on the possibility of her committing murder as Veil. So there is a WoB that Adolin killing Sadeas would not be excluding him from the KR, but do we know what Pattern would be ok with?

Shallan murdered her father in cold blood after she already bonded Pattern. It's easy to argue she was justified but at the same time she was very calm and it was pre-meditated, not a crime of passion or defense. She had been planning it for a while, she was just looking for an excuse at that point. I don't think it's clear the first ideal is even a binding oath and it's certainly open to interpretation.

Maybe Pattern wouldn't be okay if Shallan just started murdering random people for no reason, but he definitely allows for just about any other kind as far as I can tell.

2 minutes ago, Kalinovsky said:

Harmony, maybe? It has been mentioned in a WOB that Odium fears Harmony.

As far as we know, that's only because Harmony is the most powerful (known) being in the Cosmere and Odium's goal is to be the most powerful being. Harmony is the only double Shard we know of (I think). He fears Harmony because he knows he'll have to go against him at some point to achieve his goal. If it weren't for that there would be nothing to fear since Harmony's nature makes it very difficult for him to act, unless Odium doesn't understand the nature of Harmony I suppose.

2 minutes ago, The Invested Beard said:

" It is not a lesson I claim to be able to teach. Experience herself is the great teacher, and you must seek her directly."

Referring to experience with a female pronoun is an interesting choice as well. Would this be more likely from a female author or a male?

Could simply be cultural. Many cultures or languages refer to things or ideas with specific genders. We do it a little bit in English, for that matter. "Necessity is the mother of invention" for example. Why not father? Because.

Scholarship in Vorin cultures is so often considered a feminine art, it's not surprising if they would refer to a generic teacher as female. Especially if their audience is expected to be female who would have been mostly taught by other women. If they used a metaphor about experience being a general or something I would expect them to refer to it as male.

17 minutes ago, What's a Seawolf? said:

Rock and Lift in the same poll is not fair

I voted both, on the assumption they will meet and fly off with Hoid for the greatest spinoff series ever.

Wait, I could vote more than once? Well, crap.

I'm looking forward to Jasnah showing back up the most, though. I'll be really disappointed if she's gone for most of the book again. 

19 hours ago, kraefzke said:

Wow! I never even thought of that. You make a really good point for Szeth. However, what about all the "women reading this"-business? Do the Shin share the Vorin opinion towards literate men?

Szeth himself can write. The words left at Gavilar's corpse that Dalinar thinks Gavilar wrote, Szeth wrote them. So I would say probably not.

Szeth seems unlikely to me.

Before Honor was shattered, the Stormfather existed. Sometime after the shattering, the Stormfather merged somehow with Tanavast's cognitive shadow. So from one view the first two are both dead and there is a third entity made of them both. It isn't Tanavast and it isn't the original Stormfather. It's both and neither.

So it depends on how you choose to look at it. Personally I would say that Tanavast is dead, but I also wouldn't disagree if someone said he wasn't. You're getting into a probably unsolveable philosophical question about the nature of the self, identity in general, and the nature of consciousness. It's a pretty deep rabbit hole.

In short, "in a sense" Tanavast is not dead, but what does "in a sense" really mean here? And does it even matter? The Stormfather himself speaks of Tanavast as though he is a separate entity and he doesn't act as Honor likely would act in his place.

Are you still you when your personality has changed that much?

12 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

1. What is up with the Shin and their dislike of fabrials?

I'm guessing it has something to do with how they consider stone to be holy or sacred. If I remember correctly in the Prologue to WoK, Szeth wondered how the Alethi could use something sacred as mere illumination (talking about the gemstones filled with stormlight along the walls).

1 hour ago, Manukos said:

 i wouldnt say that honor is "running things" 
but he does reign  , i mean he is the only accepted god in vorinism , and he is called the allmighty still

 

Except the primary Vorin nations we know about are about as far from honorable as can be. In Alethkar especially, corruption and debauchery reign. They don't worship Honor, they worship war, wealth, and power at any cost.

The Resonance of Windrunners is not just that they have squires. They aren't the only Order that has squires. They just have a lot more of them and their squires are likely stronger than the others as well in some way. It may not be super exciting, but I would consider it pretty powerful. Kaladin has, what, 20+ squires already and there's no telling what the limit is. But for the sake of argument, let's call the limit 30 squires. And some Orders don't have any squires or only one or two. Whether you think Adhesion is strong or not, you're comparing one Surgebinder to a whole squad of them. I don't really care how strong one Dustbringer is, they're going to lose against 30 Windrunners.

Another way to think about it is one spren makes one Surgebinder vs one spren makes an entire squad of them. It could easily turn out to be the strongest Resonance, especially if the limit is much higher than we've seen so far.

edit: And like Calderis said, it could be that Windrunner squires can actually surgebind compared to other Orders' squires only being able to get the basic benefits of stormlight. We just don't know yet.

Just now, kadengt said:

So the fact that Shallan's gemstone had a faint glow afterwards when it was dead before is probably just a typo then?

Oh, I missed that part. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Maybe Jasnah put her remaining stormlight back into it, which may or may not be a thing they can do.

My understanding is that for normal soulcasting you would need a particular gemstone to perform a particular soulcasting, but for Shallan and Jasnah they only need stormlight. Jasnah asks for a garnet just to cover up the fact that she can soulcast without a fabrial, but she actually uses stormlight from a different stone.

Considering everyone there thinks Jasnah is dead, I doubt Brandon would just make an off-hand comment about her being there. There would be at least a good chunk of a chapter dedicated to her return, surely.

I wasn't crazy about Tyn but I did like Shallan during that part. I didn't hate her, but I got a bit of a "future enemy" vibe from her pretty fast so I was mostly thinking about her as an obstacle more than a character if that makes sense. I was a little surprised how quickly that was resolved, though.

But just generally speaking, whether I like a character or not has little to do with how I think about them as a person. Some of my favorite characters are absolutely vile. I tend to judge more based on how they fit their role in the story. I thought Tyn was decent. A bit forgettable but not terrible.

I agree completely with your assessment of her personality, though. She was dripping with hubris.