King's Twit

Yeah, that stuff has always confused me too. Maybe it's something you consciously intend to do just before you go to sleep, like "okay, I'm gonna store half my wakefulness, so I'll sleep for an extra X hours"

I think this is the WoB that @taveren is referring too, if anyone is interested. The only time that they met when Kelsier was alive, that we know of, was when Hoid was pretending to be a beggar informant to give Kelsier information. I don't remember any animosity at all in that scene, so I think this might have something to do with an interaction, either direct or indirect, that Hoid has had with Kelsier's cognitive shadow (aka Rust ). Edit: added full context

Pretty sure in the annotations Brandon discusses that the Kandra do have a sense of their own genders, but that it is less rigid and defined than that of humans, since they are shapeshifters. I couldn't find it with a cursory check of a few TenSoon chapters, but in the annotations Brandon does always describe the different Kandra with male and female pronouns (TenSoon is always "he", MeLaan is always "she").

So, I don't know if this has been brought up before, but between the times that Vivenna finds Parlin dead and when she is rescued by Vasher, her hair never changes color. Vivenna writes this off to shock or her mental fuzziness from being sick, but I think that may not be true. For the few hours between when she finds Parlin and when she is robbed for her clothing, she is likely in shock, or at least in a constant state of terror with no other strong emotions to distract, which is why her hair stays white. After her clothing is taken, she realizes that she needs to hide the Breaths that she holds, so she places all of them into the shawl, becoming a drab. Following this is a period of two weeks of living on the street following by one week of unconsciousness, and during all of this time, her hair does not change color once. Not for lack of trying either, I think, because she has to keep her hair in a constant state of extreme filth to darken it from being so distinctively white. However, minutes after she gets her breaths back, and because she is only slightly embarrassed by Vasher, her hair changes color for the first time. I think this shows that you need at least one Breath to control the Royal Locks. The only counter to this idea is that Vivenna does become angry when the man who steals her clothing tries to take her shift too, yet her hair does not turn red, but since that was within hours of finding Parlin dead and being betrayed by Denth, I am fairly confident in writing that incident up to shock or the anger never eclipsing the fear she still felt.

Often used to do good, but much more often for bad. (or alternatively, I'd feel better if terrorists didn't have them) A conscience is like my keys.

Getting close to one can be exciting, but also very dangerous. A compliment from a stranger is like a warm toilet seat.

I realized that I couldn't either and had been worrying as well, but now I think it's probably just something with the site.

You'll have to rip my "Rust is Trell" theory from my cold, dead hands before I'll give up on it , but I am willing to accept that another Shard might be aiding him (or her, or it).

Kaladin is one of the few characters I feel confident will make it to the last book. He seems to have a greater destiny and also its a central idea in his plot line that everyone he tries to protect or feels responsible for dies around him. He's just too affected by the deaths of those around him to be allowed to die before he loses nearly everyone. Also I think Hoid is very adverse to killing. He's willing to have his actions cause deaths (if I have to watch this world crumble and burn...), but something in his past, probably the death of the original Hoid, makes it nearly impossible for him to take someone's life directly.

But I assume that there are many more good people dying in tragic ways that do not Return. Endowment's motives are just really difficult to read, but I guess that comes with being a god.

Yeah, ignore that bit, I was just spitballing. But the God Kings being like normal Returned does not mean that they Returned through normal means.

There's an annotation, or maybe a WoB, that says that the Ruin influences Vin to create that uneasy feeling because of how much help the information he could have given her would have been in the fight against Ruin. Edit: I haven't been able to find it, and at this point I'm pretty sure this is just a theory I read somewhere that became a WoB in my head. In my search, I found this, though, which is pretty interesting.

The Shattering created such different Intents because it was (probably) the shattering of some type of consciousness, and each Shard got a fragment of Adonalsium's personality, or at least a piece of what may have been a multifaceted Intent, a "be God" Intent. Since the Intents of the Shards are often single-minded ideas (To preserve, to ruin), the Intents of anything that Splintered from those Shards could not be much different from that of the Shard itself.

So, reading through the Hoid the storyteller section of Warbreaker, he talks about Peacegiver (Vasher) creating the God King dynasty by personally Returning the first God King. The first God King "gained his Breath and life from Peacegiver himself." This could be something fabricated to legitimize the rule of the God Kings by tying them more closely to Peacegiver, but it could be true. If Vasher had known how to cause someone to Return, either after they died or while they are still alive, he may have created the first God King and then given him the massive store of Breath. If Vasher did create the God King, then that could be a possible explanation for why the God King can have children while the other Returned can not. But Vo had a child so who knows. Relevant bit from the annotations about Hoid's story: I would consider Peacegiver creating the first God King to be a "large bit," as they focus on it for a large portion of Hoid's story, but the "large bit" could instead be that Peacegiver established the dynasty, with the detail that he Returned the first God King himself being inaccurate.

Hoid appears to drink metal flakes in a Shallan flashback, which many have taken as evidence that he has allomancy and that it can be used off of Scadrial. I think there are also a few WoB about it being possible. There's a WoB that it is very difficult for someone not born on Nalthis to Return. It is also nearly impossible for someone without a Breath to Return, but anyone with money can just buy one of those, or I guess take one by forcing the bearer to give it to you.

It's been a while since my last bio class, but doesn't a trait being 'dominant' mean that you can not be a carrier of it? I think only recessive genes can be carried without manifesting because they are suppressed by the other, dominant allele. But that all aside, I don't know if we can attribute the traits of biological DNA to sDNA, they could work very differently, also I'm pretty sure Feruchemists often do not have Feruchemist children, I think they only occasionally have a Feruchemist child.

I don't remember the exact context, but could she have meant that free will is an illusion right now because of how much overt action Harmony is taking in the world? That would be pretty Autonomy-esque. I don't know. Personally, I think it was Odium or maybe Rust (or both).

"Opposites attract" is not a hard and fast rule, and I don't think its even the norm. People often do fall in love with someone extremely different from themselves, but, I think, love usually forms much more quickly and lastingly when the two people involved share something in common, whether that be an interest or a facet of their personality. I could see stopping crime to be a common interest for Marasi and Wayne, but I can't think of anything Steris and Wayne have in common. Plus, they already don't really like each other, which can be difficult to overcome.

We know that the Divine Breath are splinters of Endowment, and since splinters have to be created intentionally, we know that she likely specifically creates the Divine Breath to Return someone. As far as I know, though, we know nothing about how she chooses, or even if she chooses, the specific individuals who Return, so I don't think we can call the process 'arbitrary'. The existence of Arsteel/Yesteel and Denth/Shashara as sibling Returned, if they are biologically related, is very strong evidence that the process of choosing whether or not someone will Return is not arbitrary at all.

I had wondered at that. Maybe there is some way to bind a Divine Breath (if 'bind' would be the correct term here) without dying first.

I would think that, if their sDNA was similar enough for them to access each other's metalminds, then they would have the same abilities granted in their spirit web. But since we don't really know much at all about the Spiritual Realm, you may be right that the inverted abilities is possible. Now we're getting into the Nature vs Nurture of Returning. In-world, the common belief is that you Return for something related to your life, whether that be the way in which you died, some incomplete task, or something about you that Endowment sees as making you worthy of Returning. They could be wrong, they're wrong about so much else, and there could be something like Returning potential written into the sDNA, I guess we'll have to wait for Nightblood's release to find anything more out.

I apologize for the lack of some specific details in this post, I don't have my kindle with me at the moment So, I'm sure this has been brought up before, but what are the odds of there being two sets of Returned siblings in the Five Scholars? Returning is, at least in modern times, ridiculously rare. T'Telir is a metropolis, I don't know if we're ever given numbers on its population, and yet there are only 25 (I think) Returned gods, despite the fact that none of them had died in the last four or five years. That's not even including the rest of Hallendren, which for the most part likely follow the Iridescent Tones and would send anyone who Returned to T'Telir. The idea that two sets of two siblings would Return seems impossible, and then you factor in that they were all likely extremely intelligent, since they were the Five Scholars and discovered much of what is now known about Awakening and Biochromatics. We know that you don't just become intelligent when you Return, because there was the slow god that Lightsong played complex ball throwing game with. It could possibly fall under the "your idea of what a Returned should be" like having large muscles or being beautiful, but that seems mostly limited to things in the physical realm, unless Returned could just increase their brain size to affect their intelligence, and so increase their presence the cognitive realm, but I doubt that would work in this universe. I think that there are a few possible explanations to how this statistical impossibility could have occurred: It was Endowment's doing. She deliberately chose to Return siblings, possibly because they died in a certain similar way or possibly because she anticipated the Five Scholars forming. They were born Returned from another Returned. We know that it is possible, because the God King can reproduce. We don't know the mechanics of that, but I don't think it is a function of being the God King, since he was seemingly only a normal Returned with a large store of Breath. It could possibly just be believing that you can have a child, since all of the members of the Court of the Gods are taught that they are infertile. The Five Scholars, and possibly others, knew how to make themselves Return, possibly by dying under certain planned circumstances. They weren't biological related, but they did consider each other their siblings. This could be a relic of something cultural at the time of their Return. Maybe if you Returned around the same time as someone else, or in a similar way, they were considered your family. Spending your early formative time after you Return with someone could cause some form of familial love to develop. Or possibly something that I haven't thought of. Thoughts? Edit: I don't think I had ever realized, until now, just how often I use the words "possible" and "possibly" when I write things.

What if VenDell's like Boromir or Saruman? He thinks he (or another kandra) can use the power granted by the spikes against their creator to give Harmony an edge against whatever it is they're fighting. (Sorry if I got some LoTR facts wrong, it's been a while since I've read them)

That's what I read it as at first too, but metalborn is also a term used in-universe to refer to a Feruchemist or Allomancer (or both). It's just not a term I remember ever being used to refer to Kandra, and VenDell's reaction makes it seem significant to me.

Okay, so VenDell reacted way too strongly to only the suggestion of going with Wax, which makes me think that it either is a trap, or VenDell was actually reacting to being called a "metalborn". When I first saw Wax call VenDell a metalborn, I thought that it may just be the generic term on Scadrial for a magic user, since all of the magic is related to metal, and kandra have metal spikes. Now I'm pretty sure that it was Wax testing a theory, that VenDell has been using the spikes they got from Paalm, which proved to be correct. That was probably at least one of the main reasons this scene happened from Wayne's point of view, so we wouldn't see how Wax reacted in his mind to VenDell being so surprised. So now Wax knows, or at least suspects, that VenDell has been experimenting with the Metallic Arts through Paalm's spikes. EDIT: This might have been why VenDell turned white; he could have been afraid that Wax had been able to see VenDell's spikes through his skin. Or Kandra are like the Royal Locks and their color can change as a reaction to their emotions.