Jofwu

For example... "Honor" says "people must be honorable, by being bound to their oaths." "Unity" says "people must be united, by being bound to each other." Meanwhile the Shard's true nature is "the part of Adonalsium that liked order, kept promises, valued reliability, etc." (just one concept)

My mostly baseless theory: Odium is bound to a battle of champions by his deal with Dalinar, right? The only person I can think of who would properly fill that role is Moash. (possible that he builds someone else up for it in book 4, but I doubt it) And this means Kaladin definitely ends up as champion for the good guys. Kaladin will win in a particularly dramatic moment, probably involving his 5th oath. I don't know how things get to this point, but Dalinar will put together the pieces of Honor and fully Ascend to become Honor 2.0 or Unity or whatever. I'm not sure what the threat would be that demands such an action. Maybe the good guys do something to break their deal with Odium, which released the bond with Dalinar, so Dalinar has to rise up and hold him back. Shallan will probably be doing something with the Unmade? Not sure what other epic task is left for her to do. Ghostbloods will probably be involved. I think the humans and singers will have something of a truce. Both may be divided with large groups of each serving Odium? I don't think Odium will "win" at the end of book 5. Either he will be forced back at the end of 5 or he will escape from Roshar, but in either case in an ominous "we know he'll be back stronger than ever" sort of way.

I didn't have too much trouble with the art itself. The details being mentioned here didn't catch my eye for the most part, and several of them I still don't have a problem with after they're pointed out. For me the main problem is that the art sometimes interferes with my sense of what's going on. Things like that one with Khriss being in a different position every other frame. That one's minor, but it is the sort of thing I noticed. Another example that comes to mind is the scene where Baon reveals who he is to Khriss. Jon Acron and Cynder walk in on them and act super weird about it. They didn't seem to overhear anything, and while they may be suspicious of Baon they've never acted like that around him before? I was just totally lost as to why they acted so awkwardly.

I also like the idea of "Spiritual Surges" but I'm skeptical of it until we see more evidence. Not to say there is NONE... Kaladin seems to have a nearly supernatural ability to draw people together and unite them. It's strikingly reminiscent of his Surges in my opinion. And I've always been particularly struck by the way Pattern referred to Shallans ability to Transform people when she recruited Vathah, Gaz, and co., paired by the way her drawings of "what people could be" seem to have spiritual effects on people. (Bluth, Elhokar, arguably Jasnah) Not to forget her bizarre drawings of Shalash and the Wind's Pleasure crew. The problem is that these cases aren't outright Surgebinding as we saw with Dalinar's very explicit use of Spiritual Adhesion. I'm definitely wondering if it's something that varies between Orders, with Bondsmiths and Truthwatchers (at the center of the diagram) having a unique spiritual aspect and emphasis while the Orders to the side are much less so. Those in between the center and edges are perhaps in the middle of that spectrum then, which explains what we see with Kaladin and Shallan well enough for me. Not outright Spiritual Surges, but still a more spiritual expression of their powers than we will see from those all the way on the outside. Someone above mentioned that the diagram doesn't necessarily have meaning, but I'd argue it's the other way around. The nature of the Orders would have inspired their positions on the diagram.

This is something that confused me, as someone who hasn't read the prose. They didn't explicitly say that the encounter was on Darkside, but (1) I don't know what guarded Dayside border they'd be referring to and (2) no border guard on Dayside would have guns (which they seem to think was the case). This is probably worth mentioning in the WS2 typos thread @TruthlessofNalthis.

This perfectly captures how I frequently feel in these graphic novels. LOTS of scenes could be described like this. I don't hate them like you do, but there's certainly a lot to critique. Makes me wonder if the folks at Dragonsteel and/or Dynamite feel the same way and that's why a new artist showed up out of nowhere. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on the chapter 6 artwork.

As Calderis says, this is a matter for debate. Some will argue that the expression naturally grows to encompass the full nature of the Shard (after some time, perhaps). Others will argue that this doesn't happen at all, and that every Shard may look different (permanently so) from one vessel to the next. I tend to think Ruin look like case 1. Everything he does and everything Brandon has said about him suggests to me that what we see of Ruin very closely fits the nature of the Shard, which is sort of an embodiment of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But Honor and Odium are both making me wonder if their expressions are a subset of their Shards' full natures.

For those of you who think there's not a nahel bond involved, do you have any specific ideas of how she might be coming back alive? Or if you think she's not, what do you suppose is happening to her?

That's not what Dreamstorm was criticizing though? She even agreed with your interpretation, if I'm not mistaken.You made an argument that Brandon pointed out 10 heartbeats the first two times to make the reader pay attention. That's subtext. It's entirely possible that there's an alternate reason for that than the one you're assuming. And that's to say nothing about the interpretation of what the difference between 10 and 7 means for the relationship between Adolin and Maya. And not to get off topic, but I think we should be a bit careful in generalizing shipping conversations. As this fantastic topic digs into, I think some of them can be just as "serious" as magic theorizing. And even theorizing leaves room for interpretation. If not then there would be little to talk about.

The most irritating thing to me (off the top of my head), for whatever reason, was from the first assassination attempt on Kenton. There's a dramatic panel where he gets hit with an arrow. Clearly pierces him right in the chest, with blood immediately visible... And then the arrow/wound are completely absent from the rest of the artwork. After the battle there's no mention or sign that he was wounded at all. My best guess is that the arrow was supposed to just graze him. Enough to draw some blood and make him yelp, but not enough to slow him down or be worth mentioning afterwards. But the artist just did his thing and ignored the inconsistency.

I'm hesitant to speculate too wildly, as until now I've been assuming the intent fits pretty tightly into the nature. I'm still working out how I feel about how much room for interpretation there is. That said, I can definitely see how a Shard whose nature is something along the lines of "Order" could be Honor in one case and Discipline in another. Discipline totally fits for me. Cruelty definitely sounds too far out there in my opinion, though maybe those with a more flexible view of Shardic natures think that's possible. Personally, it feels like the focus there goes too far beyond the concept of Order. You could certainly have a very cruel Order Shard. I'm just doubting such a Shard's intent could properly be referred to as Cruelty. Now that I've typed this, I'm not sure you were going down the "Shard of Order" path though. And that said, maybe there is some nature which could contain the ideas of both Honor and Cruelty. If we're saying the Shard's nature is Honor, then I still wouldn't see how Cruelty can fit well inside of that. Edit for more: Two more changes I'm thinking about after some Discord talk. It's come to my attention that pretty much everyone thinks my use of "nature" and "intent" are confusing. Most prefer to say those are synonyms and then use some other word for the middle box. I'm going to scrap "intent" in favor of (probably) "expression" or "the vessel's expression". The word Brandon seems to have used here is "filter". I'm going to avoid using "intent" and "filter" however because those terms carry some baggage into the conversation that I want to avoid. I think that "nature" and "expression" are descriptive and plain enough that they'll serve well in this regard. I'm also thinking about scrapping the "vessel's will" box. The main thing that expresses is specific thoughts or actions of the vessel over time. I think these will tend to fall within a particular region, and intended the box to bound that region. But this feels lot less static to me than "nature" and "expression". So instead perhaps we can use specific points in space to represent specific thoughts/actions of the vessel, rather than capture those as a third box.

It's backwards from your opinion. He's arguing that Honor is an imperfect word which doesn't represent the fundamental nature of the Shard. That if someone else picked it up, we might actually use a different name to describe them because Honor no longer fits very well.

Note: Moved to Oathbringer forum.

Some random thoughts after discussions on Discord... I think I like @WireSegal's use of the phrase "vessel's will" rather than the "vessel's expression". I'd also like to point out that I think the vessel can exert their will in such a way that is outside the bounds of the intent or the nature of the Shard... But only in small and/or temporary ways. And the ability to do this decreases over time. This is how we have situations like Vin being able to do very un-Preservation-like things immediately after seizing the power. This is also, perhaps, what early WoBs on the matter were about. Brandon wasn't (maybe?) saying that vessels have no ability to express the Shard different ways. He was simply saying a vessel's "will" can't push outside of the intent/nature for long or in big ways (at least in the long run). That fits perfectly with what we understand. I don't particularly like the term "intent" for the middle box, but it's the best I can think of still. I think I really like @Calderis's idea that the intent is shaped by the vessel's... subconscious (?) understanding of the Shard. This is a good explanation in my opinion of why that boundary exists. We can suppose that Tanavast picked up the "Shard of Order" and deep down understood it to mean "Honor". His interpretation is incomplete, but that's his perception of it. (and then the level below that is his own personal will, which in some cases may or may not perfectly perfectly align with that concept--it could push against the bounds of that perception or it could be a subset of it. Probably some of both.) This intent is of course constrained by the bounds of the Shard's nature. That's just going to be a natural result of the fact that the intent is defined after the vessel picks up the Shard and has some sense of what it truly is. Per WoBs by @Extesian, Brandon seems to often use the word "filter" a lot, but I think maybe the usage here is a little vague. It's unclear how much of the filter is the intent and how much of it is the will. (using the terms in this thread) Based on WoB, I think it's likely that OVER TIME the vessel's will is molded to match with the intent. I'm less convinced however that the intent grows to fill out the full nature of the Shard. Thus I personally tend to think that we ultimately end up with case 3. That's just my opinion though. Extesian also made a good point which is that you are also welcome to toss some of these boxes out entirely. That would create additional cases perhaps that I haven't shown. Or maybe some of my definitions simply need tweaking. This stems from the idea that Shards perhaps don't have a clear and unchangeable nature. That is to say, the vessel can't interpret the intent to mean ANYTHING at all, but they could (under this concept) interpret it quite freely. I don't agree, but it's a different take on all of this to be considered. That would be case 1, if I understand you right. Yeah, I don't love my words either. Maybe some of the comments above help. Anyways, I'm hesitant to use "intent" this way because all along we've used "intent" when referring to things like "Odium" or "Honor". And part of what I think this framework tries to do is give a vocabulary for saying, "What if the true nature of the Shard is something BIGGER and different "intents" can be drawn from that nature?" So perhaps the 'Shard of Order' can be assigned the intent of Honor, but perhaps it could also be assigned the intent of Unity. Just an example. Don't want to get bogged down with the theorizing here. That's the reason I've preferred to use "nature" to define the ultimate sense of the Shard's true meaning. And then I've used "intent" to (more or less) mean what you call the "View".

Oh yeah, maybe should have been more clear there. I still absolutely don't think we have a Unity Shard now. It's more the theory that Dalinar WILL put together a Unity Shard down the road that interests me.

That's been my opinion in the past, though I am at least left in a place where I'm curious if it's not the case. Either way, I think it's valuable to divide them for the sake of conversation. Your argument would simply be that these two are always aligned. That cases 3 and 4 do not (cannot) exist. Concerning the examples, I do think you write off the "Unity" comment a bit too easily. I felt the same way after first reading. But to address your argument by comparing it to Kelsier, Dalinar is very different in two significant ways: (1) his comment was made amidst handling a significant amount of Honor's power and (2) Odium confirmed that he Ascended. So these are two very different cases. Doesn't mean there's necessarily something deeper to "Unity", but I think it's at least got to make us wonder. Or at least it demands solid evidence against it. You're describing case 2. I guess I should have been more clear about this though. I don't mean to get hung up about the relative sizes of the boxes. The distinction is simply one of whether there is space in between (case 2) or not (case 1). Sounds like you think that's where all of them sit. That said, we can certainly have more specific conversations about the extent to which this or that vessel has wiggle room (i.e. how the red box fits inside the others). Edit: Oh, and I'd also say that I think I'm saying the same thing about Sazed. I don't mean to imply that the shifting is always a matter of "choice". I'd say that Sazed being able to control himself or not is all wrapped up in this idea.

Note: Going to start this from scratch. See the bottom for original post hidden in spoiler tag. Since the release of Oathbringer there's been a lot of talk about the nature of Shards, and with good reason. First we have Odium's suggestions that he represents the larger concept of "Passion". Then at the end of the book we see Dalinar temporarily Ascend by pulling together pieces of Honor and making the mysterious statement "I am Unity". Meanwhile, Harmony's continued emphasis that his powers are "in conflict", paired with other hints, has led many to think that he could (and indeed may one day) go by the name of Discord. Throughout all of these discussions has been interwoven new concepts of what these Shards mean, the usage of the word "intent" in these contexts, and the degree to which all of these can change over time. The result is a jumble of confusion. So I've been playing around with a few of these concepts, trying to piece them together in a useful way. I'm not trying to redefine any existing terms, and I want to avoid the baggage that those words may carry. But I'm not really trying to create new terminology either. So I will be using fresh words, but I'll try to keep them as descriptive and plain as possible. Concepts I want to identify three distinct concepts: The Shard's nature: The fundamental aspect(s) of Adonalsium's own personality/nature that composes the Shard. Though we might try our best, this cannot be captured by a single word. Most of us tend to think that a Shard's nature is unchanging/unchangeable, though some may disagree with this point. You could in a way combine one Shard (or pieces of it) with another Shard (or pieces of one). You could perhaps rip pieces off of a Shard in a permanent way. These of course would probably give you something different, but that would be different than directly changing the very nature of the Shard. Some may argue otherwise. Many people will connect this with the concept of "intent", but I'm avoiding the use of that term because it may pull in some history that I don't necessarily want to assume. The vessel's expression of the Shard: How the Shard's nature is expressed by a particular vessel. Many believe it is possible for a single Shard to be expressed in different ways, depending on the vessel who holds it (or perhaps other factors.) What determines this is a matter for debate. Is it a function of the vessel's subconscious perception of the Shard's nature? Can the vessel freely choose, within some bounds? The vessel's thoughts and actions: What the vessel thinks and does. We could maybe separate this in two... but what we do with it is the same for each, so I'm going to keep things simple. This is about pinpointing how a particular thought or action fits into the concepts of the Shard's nature and its expression. Does a particular action fit in line with the Shard's nature? Does some thought or desire reach outside of the expression? Some would argue that actions and thoughts outside of the bounds of the nature and/or expression are impossible. Or perhaps that they are possible, but only in limited and/or temporary ways. The length of time a vessel has held the Shard may also come into play here. Visualization With those concepts in place, let's talk about how they fit together. Warning: you may feel that some cases are impossible. That's fine. I'm not theorizing all of these are possible. Just trying to put together a framework that allows for different logical viewpoints to be expressed. First let's focus on the nature and the expression. Note that these images are highly abstract. Hopefully that's intuitive, given that we're representing incredibly complex ideas with boxes in 2D space. Don't get hung up on the exact sizes, locations, and things like that. We have 4 different general (theoretical) cases: The full nature of the Shard is being expressed. Some people may think this is the only logical case, especially after the vessel has had time to be warped by the Shard. Example: If you think that Ruin under the stewardship of Ati portrayed all aspects of the Shard's nature, you would say that it looked like case 1. Some subset of the Shard's nature is being expressed. There's an implication here that some other vessel might display some other subset of the Shard's nature. You may think that this happens because the expression cannot extend outside the boundary of the Shard's nature. Example: If you think that Odium is more accurately a Shard which represents all emotion (perhaps Rayse is simply giving it a more hateful bent), then you would argue it is a case 2 situation. The full nature of the Shard is being expressed, in addition to some aspects outside of the nature. Here there is perhaps a notion that the Shard's nature is more of a "core concept" that the vessel can build on, rather than a boundary that the vessel's expression is contained by. Example: If you think that Honor portrayed some ideals which are outside the bounds of your perception of what the Shard really means, you would say he demonstrates case 3. Some subset of the shard's nature is being expressed, in addition to some aspects outside of the nature. This is basically just a mashup of cases 2 and 3, but I thought it was distinct enough to include. I reference specific cases in these examples for simplicity, but the reality is far from clean (unless you think case 1 is the only valid possibility). And nothing is likely to be black and white. I've shown a very idealized "case 2" above. A more accurate (though still highly simplified abstraction) depiction would be the image below. I DON'T intend for people to take this and then run through a list of Shards and categorize them into these three cases. The goal is simply to recognize different ways that the Shard's nature can (arguably) be expressed. Now let's talk about how the third concept, the thoughts and actions of the vessel, fit into these ideas. I've taken those general cases and marked a few distinct locations on each of them. I'm supposing that every thought the vessel has or action that the vessel takes will fall into one of these regions. There are 4 possibilities, all demonstrated in case 4: (a) The thought/action is within both the Shard's nature and expression. (b) The thought/action is outside both the Shard's nature and expression. (c) The thought/action is within the Shard's nature but outside the expression. (d) The thought/action is outside the Shard's nature but within the expression. This is where we talk about things like Vin killing Ati while holding the Shard of Preservation. Was she out at some point (b)? Or perhaps point (d)? Is such an action totally within the Shard's nature--just not within the the expression of it that Leras gave us? These are the kinds of questions we can ask. There are a lot of interesting things wrapped up in here. We can talk about the level of free will which vessels have for example. Is it difficult for a vessel to take some action outside of its Shard's nature? Is it even possible? How about the expression? If Rayse holds something more accurately called "the Shard of emotion" and I assume his expression of it is "Odium"... Is it difficult for him to do something loving? That is, something outside the expression but inside the nature? How much of this is self imposed, relating to the vessel's own personality and how much is it a matter of the Shard changing him? We can also talk about the role of time. Are brief actions outside some boundary less difficult than prolonged actions? How long before the vessel is warped toward's the Shard's nature? Was Ati instantly constrained into being more Ruinous, or how long did it take before he was unable to fight that nature completely? Examples Let's talk about some examples of how this helps us think through different situations. Again, I'm not trying to directly theorize with this. I'm speaking towards how we would use this to help ourselves think through and explain a theory. Example 1: Odium and Passion As one possibility we have case 1, where the Shard's nature is accurately described as "Odium". We observe an intent which fits this and Rayse is fully molded by it. His claims to be something else (Passion) are mistakes or lies by him. Another possibility is that we have case 1 where the Shard's nature is indeed Passion. For it to be case 1, it would mean that we simply haven't seen the Shard at work enough (in my opinion) to fully see how the Shard and the vessel fit this definition. It does... we just maybe haven't observed it. We've seen a lot of actions which are perhaps in one corner of the box (the Odium corner), but he's totally capable (and probably does) take actions that fit other "passions". A similar situation would be described by cases 3 or 4, where Passion (or something else) is the true nature, but for whatever reason the Shard is acting only with the intent of Odium in the cosmere. This could be a function of Rayse's control over his power, or there could be other factors at play. Example 2: Honor and Unity Let's theorize that Dalinar will somehow assemble a Shard by the name of Unity. I see two fundamentally different ways for this to happen... Let me suppose that Tanavast-Honor looked something like case 2 with actions tending to fall within his own expression. Visually, let's say the blue expression area fits in the left 2/3 of the nature box. Later we have Dalinar come along and pick up the Splintered pieces of the Shard once called Honor. He puts them back together, but by his own will, personality, values, or whatever his expression fits more to the right 3/4 of Shard's nature box. So for the most part we have heavy overlap between Tanavast's Honor and Dalinar's Unity. But the slight difference in which aspects of the Shard's nature are being expressed lead us to ascribe two different names. Dalinar is expressing something with more emphasis on unity aspects of the Shard than Tanavast did, and perhaps putting less value on the notion of "doing things because he said he would." Another similar idea would be that either Tanavast's Honor was a case 1 situation while Dalinar's Unity is a case 2 situation. (or vice versa) So Tanavast expressed the Shard more fully, but Dalinar leaves part of that out and thus looks a little different. (or vice versa) The second, fundamentally different, way that Honor could become Unity is if we actually play around with the Shard's very nature. Something more difficult and rare. This is where we have the theories that Unity will be created by merging some combination of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium. You could also take a more complicated approach here and suppose that Honor will be combined with pieces of other Shards. Or go the other direction and suppose that Dalinar will leave out pieces that once made up Honor when he puts it back together, leaving something that looks more like Unity in nature. Or maybe it's some of both things here. And a different approach would involve the idea of the nature itself somehow changing and shifting. Either by Dalinar's will or by some other cause, the Shard that we called Honor has been "pushed" or "pulled" into something more like Unity. Example 3: Harmony and Discord I would think that this looks mostly like the first concept with Honor and Unity. The combined Shard (made up of what was once Ruin and Preservation) has some overarching nature. Harmony is in a case 2 situation shifted towards one aspect of this nature, but it's possible to fill up some other portion of that nature instead. The really interesting question here is wrapped up in how that change (if possible) could happen. It would seem to me that the vessel is actively working to maintain the expression of Harmony (if that's the best name for it). Is it possible for him to maintain this indefinitely or will he inevitably be pulled into an expression which better fits the Shard's full nature? What would that be? In his efforts to be Harmony, has he been bottling up Discord (or whatever you want to call the currently unexpressed portion of his nature) which must find its way out? I also see one of the biggest problems with this whole framework here: what do you do when combining two Shards or expressions which are contradictory? How does that mesh? (obviously not easily, but it's hard to really demonstrate that visually with this) So... Thoughts? Again, I'm not outright theorizing anything directly here of course, but I think maybe this is a useful way of considering the interactions between vessels and the powers they hold. Original post, for the record:

Adolin as a Willshaper based on that one WoR epigraph was a theory I came up with on my own and held to pretty strongly. But I think Oathbringer left me feeling that spren have a LOT of leeway for who they can bond. I mean, it's not like there are RULES that they have to bond someone they mesh really well with, right? It seems to me that certain people attract certain nahel spren, but there's nothing to say they can't make exceptions. Venli is the biggest example of this. I have to totally disagree with you @Calderis. We know SO little about the Willshapers of course, but that one epigraph we have describes Eshonai (in my opinion) FAR better than it describes Venli. I tend to think Venli is not an ideal candidate for Timbre... But they're bonding anyways, for one reason or another. I still don't see Adolin as an "ideal" Edgedancer (based on my assumptions of what that order looked like), but it works well enough for me to say it makes sense. And even if it didn't work at all for me, I suppose Maya could bond with him anyways if she wanted. I tend to think Adolin will be an Edgedancer (whether he fits or not) because of the WoB Calderis mentioned a while back. I think Maya is being revived, and the only basis we KNOW of for that happening is a nahel bond. So it just feels like it all works well enough. That said, WoB isn't gospel. I absolutely think there's potential for Maya to be restored in some other way we don't know about which doesn't require a (normal) nahel bond.

I think this is a misunderstanding of her complaint, and is precisely what she finds frustrating. Maxal and Calderis (I think?) were making an argument that we don't know Edgedancer principles/reputation well enough to say Adolin isn't one. But you can't make that argument and then turn around and say there's evidence he is one. Or at least, if you do that then you have to acknowledge your evidence is just as weak as the evidence pointing the other way. Edit: To be clear, I don't think anybody here is pretending that their take on Adolin becoming an Edgedancer/Radiant is "right". We have a pile of text to work with, and different people think it points different ways. It's okay to have a particular opinion and tell someone else you think they're wrong. If you think someone's argument is faulty, it's okay to point that out. Just remember you're talking to another person and be respectful.

I've argued pretty strongly (pre-OB) that Adolin didn't fit my idea of an Edgedancer. Yeah, our understanding of the Orders is limited and there's clearly some wiggle room. My opinion has shifted I think, but I can certainly respect those who don't feel Adolin fits their take on Edgedancers. For someone who feels that way, it's enough to make you wonder if maybe there are alternate explanations of what's happening to Maya.

Hey Cosme, could you post a picture of the question/answer?

Someone posted a play through on Reddit. Has (amusing) commentary though Vissy, sorry.

@Felonious Tub That bothered me too

One thing's for sure... the cashiers are all slowspren.

Well, I don't think this change is required for that explanation. White Sand is the earliest story chronologically. Skip ahead to what would generally be considered "current" in the cosmere (Stormlight/Mistborn Era 2) and you're giving Taldain another couple thousand years (probably) of advancement. Maybe I'm crazy... Should have taken some pictures as evidence. But I definitely got the sense from Volume 2 that there's some basic electronics. Their use doesn't appear to be very widespread for whatever reason, but you see them in the background here and there. Probably mostly in wealthier settings. I'd also emphasize that none of this seems to startle or confuse the Darksiders, and they still seem to consider themselves more advanced. So it would seem that the technology of both "sides" has been bumped up. Hard to say how much though.