Subvisual Haze

Torol Sadeas was the George Costanza of honorable actions. By asking his first inclination on any issue, and then doing the exact opposite, our heroes were able to instantly discern the most honorable course in any circumstance. In a world that was rarely black and white, Torol gave others moral clarity. Right and wrong are that much more difficult to discern without Torol around to always give us the clear wrong answer.

Dalinar even teases at it: in his Stormfather vision of Aharietiam he thinks Jezrien looks strangely familiar...

My first thought was Harkaylain was the name of the Bondsmith of that era who was linked to the Sibling. I'm probably linking a few too many unrelated topics but I have the feeling that the Sibling was related not just to Urithiru as is heavily implied, but could also be linked to fabrial magic in general (including Oathgates, Shardplate, and the strange fabrials found in flashbacks). edit: oh, regarding etymology. Aimian? The tempo of the name reminds me of Akinah for some reason.

I think Syl was a special case though. I think the natural process would have been: Kaladin swears conflicting oaths and their bond as a result gradually weakens, Syl returns to her "stupid" windspren state, Kaladin loses his powers. I think the critical moment that "killed" Syl was when Kaladin was falling to his doom on the Shattered Plains. Their bond was weakened, but Syl "cheated" and let Kaladin gasp in one last breath of Stormlight. Their bond had been weakened to the point where to do this, Syl took a metaphorical bullet for Kal

So, funny thing about the Rockspren (just guessing on the name there). While we haven't seen a True Spren form of one manifesting in the physical realm, we did have this physical description of the stone ardent soulcaster during Gavilar's funeral (immediately before he transformed Gavilar's corpse into stone): This physical description is a stark match for the cognitive form of the stoneward spren. We knew that the physical bodies of soulcasters become strange and more elemental with prolonged use (their eyes become gemlike in WOR, and the Soulcaster in the interlude trying to explore Amia seems to be becoming smoke), but is there something more happening here? Does prolonged use of a single essence of a soulcaster transform a human into a True Spren?

Anything's possible. I think we can infer from the Starfall and Feverstone Keep visions that Windrunners and Stonewards tended to work together on assignments. They may have even had a unified command structure as a result?

Harkaylain is name first mentioned in Dalinar's Starfall Vision during The Way of Kings. After Dalinar finishes fighting the midnight essences, he briefly talks with the female Knight Radiant (likely a Stoneward based on the amber color of her shardplate) about midnight essences and desolations. The radiant's last comment before she runs off to continue fighting is Many (including the Coppermind Wiki article on Harkaylain) made the assumption that Harkaylain was the name of the male Windrunner in the Starfall vision. In Oathbringer we now know that this isn't the case, because the name Harkaylain is mentioned again, this time at the start of the vision when Dalinar (placed into the role of the female KR), tries to pry information about shardplate from the Windrunner. It seems unlikely that the Windrunner would refer to himself in the third person, so we are left with a bit of a mystery regarding who Harkaylain is/was. Being referred to by name twice in two different books might be important. He sounds like some sort of Radiant Leader/Authority, and the two characteristics he is given are quite interesting: he is rarely wrong, and he is some sort of authority or expert on the functioning of shardplate. Could he be the singular leader of the Radiants at the time of this vision? Perhaps a Bondsmith? Or a very knowledgeable Elsecaller? Or maybe just a programming glitch left in the visions by Honor, where any questions that the actors in the vision can't answer will be referred to a mysterious Harkaylain?

Dalinar finding out what Evi thought about him from Renarin. Ash discovering that Taln was happy that he was abandoned to suffer for 4500 years. Not sure what it says about me personally that the scenes I found the most emotionally crushing were the 2 involving characters receiving forgiveness when they felt they deserved hatred. Maybe I've just always loved the parable of the Prodigal Son.

See what many people don't "like" about Jasnah, I just regard as signs that she's a well written character with actual flaws. I love Jasnah because she isn't particularly "nice" on the surface. Not every hero can be a ball of empathy and joy to others like Adolin, some try to do the right thing but still come off as unpleasant to others (Vasher is a great example of this). Jasnah strikes me as someone embittered by her experiences with the world, but still willing to fight to do what is right (although with harsher and more realistic methods than others we've seen). Also, despite her outward confidence, I think it is important to realize that Jasnah isn't entirely happy with herself. When Ivory "compliments" her as being like a spren, unchanging and logical, you can read between the lines that the assessment really stings her. Ultimately I think Jasnah keeps an extremely tight reign on her outward expression of emotions out of fear they will get away from her control (due to vague traumatic childhood insanity phase that I'm sure will be elaborated on later), which makes her appear extremely cold and uncaring to others. It's not that she doesn't have emotions, they're just subtle to detect and she's not particularly great at interacting with others. I actually really liked her early reunion scene with Shallan because they're so terrible at interacting with each other. Shallan has loud outward expressions of her emotions alternating with withdrawing/sulking when she's upset about something, while Jasnah is very subtle and guarded, and as a result neither can communicate well with the other.

I agree that the chapter implied there was an island located at the origin, but I think that island might be inhabited by Aimians. Or perhaps a mix of Aimians as well as Natans since it is implied that Natans are human-Amian hybrids (blue-ish skin). I always thought it was weird that Aimia is on the opposite side of the continent as Natan. An island halfway between the two, that both were evacuated to during the mysterious Scouring of Aimia might make sense though. Now that we understand the nature of Fused (functionally immortal ghosts that possess willing physical hosts), I wonder if the Aimians are a type of Fused.

Yeah, it's the difference between Astrally projecting your mind into Shadesmar (with you body still behind in the Physical Realm) versus bringing your body over too. Shifting your physical body back and forth is the especially stormlight intensive process.

Also on a meta-narrative level, extreme emotion/passion makes more sense as a fundamental component of God (Adonalasium), than just pure hatred.

I'm uncertain. We know that Odium/Rayse are required to adhere to their pacts and deals due to an inherent property of the shards of Adonalsium, but this does not mean that they can't lie or deceive. So we do need to take anything he says with a big grain of salt. The original intent of his shard being "Passion" does make sense though. A shard of base emotion could be incredibly destructive if not balanced with human logic. Rage, gluttony, lust etc. Passion/emotion becomes even more dangerous in the way that Rayse/Odium seems to have applied it in a very consequence-free manner. Indulge in all your crazy emotions/passions now, but don't take accountability for them or dwell on them in the future. Surrender your pain and uncomfortable emotions to the void. This, as well as the particular focus on the emotions of hatred, could likely be attributed to how Rayse interprets and applies the intent of the Passion shard.

As of now we still know virtually nothing about the Dustbringers. They're stereotyped by others as a bunch of crazy destruction-lovers and unfortunately Malata+Spark seem to fit that stereotype. The two ruby (Dustbringer gem) records from the Urithiru gem archive in the epigraphs seem to suggest something completely different though. and

Brandon also had an amusing quote about Bavadin, the vessel of Autonomy. So Bavadin likes messing with mortals. I think Trellism originally was an anti-Autonomy darkside of Taldain religion, but modern Trellism is just Bavadin ironically co-opting the name of the old religion for her/his own purposes.

This just brings up even further questions! Since Brandon specified metabolism into glucose, does that mean Lift would get minimal Stormlight from a low-carb ketogenic diet???

In which case Book 4 would be very well received and Oathbringer would still be a less complete novel... Nobody is disputing that the Stormlight Archive on the whole is an amazing series, but the purpose of the thread is to compare how the individual books compare against one another as individual books. The first two books are better in my opinion because they function as independent, self-enclosed narratives. There are still hooks to keep you interested in future developments, but I never really felt like plots or arcs were incomplete at the end of the first two books. If Oathbringer requires space in a future book to retroactively make it feel complete, it calls into question why those future book scenes weren't in Oathbringer itself. If anything, Oathbringer's struggles just drive home how remarkable Words of Radiance was. That was a middle book in a series that still managed to feel self-contained and satisfactorily resolved. That's incredibly difficult to accomplish, so if anything I appreciate WOR all the more after finishing Oathbringer.

If the bottom left corner contains the Radiant Oath, I wonder why the first glyph (javani - for "life") looks like a creepy skull.

Odium is a "human god" in the sense that Rayse was himself once a human. Odium is a human god in the same way that Honor and Cultivation are/were also human gods. Odium by intent avoids being tied down to any location or group, so claiming humanity brought Odium is a little unfair. Pre-Oathpact Odium went wherever he pleased and left destruction in his wake.

I'm not sure I understand your logic here. If Book 4 later resolves all the dangling plot threads and incomplete character arcs from Oathbringer, wouldn't that just make Book 4 a great book while Oathbringer continues to feel like a stunted individual novel?

I imagine "The beyond", the true afterlife (not just ghosts and shadows), and the existence of an omnipotent God are areas where Brandon will remain intentionally vague. Nightblood might destroy something's "soul", but "soul" is being used in Cosmere in a different sense than most religious people would use the term. Ultimately it depends on your own presumptions regarding the existence of God.

Oh cool, so sort of like how Renarin "knows" that Urithiru is one giant fabrial.

I'm still confused why the Words of Radiance epigraph about Truthwatchers stated: Never writing down or speaking of what they did made sense if you assumed Truthwatchers were able to slightly glimpse the future (but then didn't share or write down their visions for fear of disrupting what they saw). I don't really understand why they would be so secretive otherwise.

Hoid exists entirely to give this forum and people like us something to endlessly speculate about. At the same time it's actually kind of pointless to do so because Brandon will be incredibly careful to never reveal actual critical information about him, because then the function of Hoid in the story would be ruined.

It's easily the weakest of the series so far for me. Too many minor flaws with pacing, POV multiplication, major characters feeling pushed to the sideline, a rushed conclusion and multiple emotional reaction events being almost entirely ignored. It's also simultaneously the best fiction book I've read this year. [Insert Hoid's monologue about the dangers of high expectations here]