Ansalem

As much as I would love to see something like this, I'm honestly not sure it could work very well. Too much of the story happens inside the character's minds. For example, Szeth can be a pretty sympathetic character in the book. But if you were just watching him from the outside he looks like nothing more than a psychopath. He hardly ever speaks. It would be difficult to portray his descent into madness without changing his character quite a bit. How do you portray the screaming in his head without it being awkward? Eshonai is another good example. The entire Listener race, for that matter. The amount of exposition you'd need to explain all the things the characters just happen to know would get pretty awkward. How do you explain the meaningful difference between the Rhythms? Most of it is felt by the character. We know the significance of the entire population singing to Awe only because Eshonai knows what the song means. If we just witnessed the characters singing it how do we know what it means? Does someone name the song out loud? All of the PoV characters would have this problem to some extent. Dalinar never ever speaks about his memory loss. Does the audience hear Shshshsh when Dalinar does? And what about the spren? Does someone name each and every one out loud? If you've read the books you'd probably recognize them but what about someone who's just watching the show? It could get really confusing really easily. Exposition would need to be handled very carefully not to ruin the whole experience. I'm not sure it's really possible to do on-screen. I hope to be proven wrong, though.

There's always audiobooks.

Actually, that's a quote from WoK (not sure if Assassin's Creed said the same thing, though).

Well, that was an incomplete analogy on my part. I should have said that it's like a person being able to choose when the volcano erupts. The volcano just does one thing. The person using it might be evil, but the volcano isn't. In the same way, you could say that Rayse is evil but Odium is just a force of nature. Although, given enough time anyone holding Odium would eventually act in almost an identical way to Rayse regardless, so honestly I don't think you could say Rayse is evil either. He may have started out that way but in the end he will eventually not be an individual anymore. He can't actually choose not to erupt anymore, even if he wanted to. So it's still not a very good analogy. Shards actively eliminate their holder's free will and the Shards themselves have no free will. The fact that they can think doesn't make them responsible for their actions. Ah, here's a better analogy. Say you had 2 volcanoes and they both erupt on exactly the same day every year. One of them can think and the other can't. Is one evil and the other not? From the outside they're identical.

Just for the sake of clarity, The Lord Ruler and Vin were Slivers not Splinters. Slivers are humans who have held a Shard briefly and then released it. Splinters are pieces of a Shard's power. Humans can't be a Splinter, although they can hold one a la the Returned. You might say the Knights Radiant are people holding a Splinter by bonding with a spren, but I think it's unclear whether the spren are technically Splinters in the sense that it could be a matter of degree. The Honorblades are probably Splinters.

What's interesting about Demoux is the fact that he's not dead from old age. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Stormlight Archive and Alloy of Law take place at around the same time, making Demoux a few hundred years old. The other worldhoppers we know about have ways to live indefinitely. This leads me to believe Demoux may somehow be at least an atium compounder, but then how does he have enough atium for that to matter? Does anyone know why Demoux is still alive?

I would say Odium (or any Shard) can't be evil because they are essentially just forces of nature. Odium can think but what he can't do is choose to act outside his Intent. It's been made clear that Rayse wouldn't want to do that anyway, but that's beside the point. Ati was a good person who acted in line with Ruin's Intent. The Shards are the actors but the Shards do not think or act on their own, as far as I know. The person holding the Shard is just a conduit for that particular force of nature to act on the world, but it's still the force and not the mind that is doing the acting and it just sort of does what it does. There's apparently some leeway, but not much and less over time. Odium is evil in the same way a volcano is evil. A volcano that can decide when to erupt but can't do anything other than erupt.

Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be something that happened to her directly. From the two Radiants whose breaking we actually know well, their main problems stem from being unable to prevent tragedy befalling the people they care about. Granted, 2 data points does not make a trend, but it's worth considering. Maybe she witnessed some horrible things happening to other people that she was powerless to stop at the time. It doesn't need to be sexual in nature for her to especially despise that type of thug from the philosophy lesson. People jump to rape because of the way she says "men like those" after mentioning that they may have been intending to rape her and Shallan, but that's not the primary crime those types are committing. Mostly they're robbing and murdering people. They may or may not have tried to rape them, but they certainly were going to kill and rob them. Could be she's lost some friends to people like them. If that's what it is, though, I'm not sure it's enough to constitute a "broken" person. It could be a number of things. She's probably extremely lonely, for example. It would really help if we knew at least one of the Elsecaller oaths. I'm with you, though. I don't see her disinterest in men and marriage as any indication she has been abused. Some people are just genuinely not interested. I don't think her breaking is related to her sexuality. I honestly don't know. Jasnah seems like a pretty complex character. It's hard for me to even guess what broke her.

Agreed. It might heal his epilepsy, though.

Jasnah doesn't seem like the type of person who would be broken up by losing her faith. She uses reason and evidence to come to conclusions and accepts the conclusions whatever they may be. Someone like this doesn't consider their worldview to be a part of their identity, so when they change their worldview it isn't likely to hurt. If they feel anything at all it's joy at having freed themselves from a lie. It's possible she might have experienced extreme ostricism due to announcing her beliefs as she did, but the way she describes it in the prologue announcing her atheism was mostly a calculated political maneuver, so I don't really think she's been too shaken up by the results there either. Her family obviously still loves and respects her, which is where most atheists will experience pain from coming out. It isn't even obvious that she ever had faith in Vorinism in the first place, for that matter. No, if Jasnah becoming an atheist is what "broke" her then she's a terribly unrealistic character, in my opinion. That would move her from one of my favorite characters to one of my least favorite instantly. I know BS is not an atheist himself, but so far I think he's done Jasnah quite a bit of justice. I don't think he would write atheism as a breaking experience for someone who sees the world the way she does. Her breaking has to be something else.

Autism is basically just a type of brain. Epilepsy is a type of malfunction of the brain. Let me put it another way: If you were to heal someone's epilepsy, they would still be the same person. If you were to "heal" someone's autism, they would be a different person. Whether stormlight can heal epilepsy is another question, though. Honestly I think it will come down to which one benefits the storytelling the most whether it can or not.

Well, assuming Shallash is Baxil's mistress.

Huh? Szeth definitely died. Nin resurrected him.

Cryptics and liespren are the same thing, by the way. Cryptic is their name for themselves. Also highspren is an actual type of spren, presumably the type that Skybreakers bond with. (Syl says she doesn't care about the law as she's not highspren, I forget the exact wording). Probably better to call them major and minor spren for your theory to avoid confusion.

The other one I was trying to think of is clairvoyance, but that also works.

Prescience, precognition, soothsaying, uhh... I know there's at least one more.

Well, he isn't a Shard of Adonalsium according to WoB. So if he is a Shard then it's from something other than Adonalsium. He might be a failed attempt to reproduce Adonalsium artificially but that's wild speculation on my part with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. I like that idea, but I don't actually think it's right. When I'm being honest I think Hoid is some kind of Investiture construct. Sort of like a much much more sophisticated Nightblood, perhaps. If so he was created by magic pre-dating the Shattering, so probably a magic from Adonalsium itself.

Not to mention Renarin apparently thought something was wrong with him, possibly that he was going insane.

Hands down my favorite scene so far is: "Oh storms, yes! Everyone, give the Lopen your spheres! I've got glowing that needs to be done." I would be lying if I said I was looking forward to anything more than the Lopen's glowing. Mostly because I actually guessed what he was doing when Kaladin first noticed him staring at his fist, one of the few things I actually did notice the first read through, and that scene was just really validating for me because Lopen is too awesome. If anyone deserves some glowing it's him.

Yeah I like both theories. They both could fit. On the one hand the condensed stormlight theory would be a more obvious progression and therefore easy to explain to readers without needing to go into a lot of extra detail for just that one aspect. On the other hand the spren theory would offer a good opportunity for deeper world building and exploration into the nature of spren. Though I suspect that will be covered anyway in Jasnah and Shallan's chapters in future books as they explore Shadesmar. I would be pretty happy with either one but I think condensed stormlight is more likely. I'll be happy to be proven wrong though.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Shardplate is made of highly condensed stormlight. We already know that the more oaths are spoken the more efficiently a Radiant is able to use stormlight. I believe that once they reach the last oath they will have reached an efficiency high enough that they lose no stormlight at all passively and they can form it around themselves into a physical barrier. That's why it doesn't scream, as it isn't a dead spren, and that's why it feeds off stormlight and reforms when it does. The reason for the disappearing helmets in Dalinar's vision is because the Radiant is sucking the plate back in as stormlight the way Shallan reclaims her illusions' stormlight. The reason I think it didn't just disappear at the Recreance is because severing the bond removed their ability to reclaim the plate as stormlight and so it sort of stuck in that form. The major and minor spren theory is interesting but I think this one makes more sense given what we know.

The Honorblades likely are Splinters of Honor, but they existed before he was destroyed. He gave them to the Heralds and in the visions he tells Dalinar that most of the visions are things he had seen directly. He also says the Radiants came about by the spren attempting to reproduce what had been done with the Honorblades. Since Dalinar saw Radiants in most of the visions it can be inferred that Honor was still alive long after the Heralds held the Honorblades. In fact, he was still alive after the Oathpact was broken as he witnessed the Recreance, which came after the Heralds had already abandoned the Honorblades. Splinters are generally created by the Shard itself. I think it's unclear at this point whether Splinters are created when a Shard is shattered but it seems possible. The Honorblades themselves definitely wouldn't be enough to reforge Honor. It would probably be impossible to reforge it by any means, but even if it could be done the Honorblades are a very tiny fraction of the entire Shard.

I'm going through my 4th read right now and I'm still picking up new things.

It could be that he's aware of the abilities of the Radiants. Before he knew there were any Radiants around he was fooled, but after Shallan revealed herself as a Radiant he could have made the connection by realizing that lightweaving could explain her stealth. How he knows she's also a soulcaster is the interesting question to me. Does he know that Lightweavers were known to have remarkable memory? The way I see it: 1) Veil can enter and leave places without being seen while people are actively looking for her and she sneaks behind Iyatil while Iyatil thinks she's looking at her already. 2) There is a Radiant with unknown abilities. 3) Someone with Lightweaving can change their appearance at will and appear where they are not. 4) Veil is a Radiant and one of her abilities is Lightweaving. 5) Veil can draw a scene from memory with exactness. 6) The Order of Lightweavers had remarkable memories. 7) Lightweavers second ability is Soulcasting. So if he knows the abilities of each of the Orders of Radiant, given what he knows about Veil he can determine that Veil is Shallan and she is a Lightweaver. Although, I think the evidence is a little shaky for him to be as confident as he was. There's probably more to it than just that. Like the fact that she's a Davar and her family has been involved in the various secret societies. And she was Jasnah's ward and he knows she killed Tyn, the one hired for the assassination. Shallan's artistic skill is well known even if her exact memory isn't. It's possible he knows more than just those things, as well. For example he's possibly a worldhopper so he might be familiar with Shadesmar and therefore possibly the Cryptics. A large number of people saw Pattern. That's a bit of a leap though. It's also possible that he just noticed Pattern following Veil and then heard about him or saw him himself during the events at the Oathgate. If that's the case then the connections are a lot easier to make. That by itself doesn't explain how he knows she can soulcast, though.

Undoubtedly he sent someone to collect it. Surely he didn't just leave it there for anyone to pick up. He broke the bond because the Stormfather told him to, though.