StrikerEZ

You're also terrible at making plans.

That might be a bit hard. We don't know several of the Vessels.

I'm kind of tired right now, so I'm sorry if this reads as very aggressive and/or mean. I can kind of agree with a lot of what you said here. I would like to point out though that Kaladin has been described as not super attractive, but not really ugly either. I can't remember if Vin was physically attractive, but I'm not sure why physical qualities like that affect how you feel about a character. The main thing, however, I have to disagree on is Kaladin's mental problems. In no way, shape, or form is that "generic pubescent mental/emotional struggles." First of all, the poor guy has gone through tons of crap. He saw so many storming people die, including his own brother. That will mess you up, plus he's got depression. He isn't just some mopey teenager (and by the present day he's already an adult), he has actual tendencies of someone who is depressed. Just because he doesn't have very many extrnal struggles (which isn't really true, considering he had bridge four, Elhokar assassination plot, and plenty of stuff in OB) does not make him perfect. He constantly struggles with his internal conflicts, which tend to personally be my favorite types of conflicts.

Yeah, I can definitely see that perspective. And I know that Brandon doesn't even pronounce things the "right way," which really makes me mad. I just want there to be one right way to pronounce a hy does there need to be all of this confusion? Kelsier is the hardest one to remember for me because I thought the French way to pronounce it was Kel-see-air since I didn't know that French left off the last consonant like that. I have been getting better at pronouncing it the right way though.

I think he was saying he's mostly interested in two separate things, not that Hoid was around during the first Desolation. He was alive back then, but we don't know if he was on Roshar at the time.

I mean, this is an interesting theory, but the doctrines of Trelagism are completely different from those of Trellism, the modern version of the religion. Plus, if there was a Shard in the sun all along, I think that Ruin and Preservation would've noticed and done something about it, even despite their ongoing conflict.

This so much. I see so many people all the time use that quote from Shallan (not even from Jasnah herself, mind you; what does Shallan know of why Jasnah dresses nice?) to argue against Jasnah being asexual. Just because she cares about her appearance does not mean she can't be asexual. I know many heterosexual people who don't give a damnation about their appearance and I know many asexual people who care a lot about their appearance. Plus, Jasnah herself has told Shallan all about power and how it's all based on appearance and acting like you are confident when you really aren't. This is basically Jasnah's biggest character point-she puts on an outward mask that doesn't necessarily reflect how she feels/thinks in order to get people to think a certain way about her. Even if she doesn't really care about how she looks, she knows that other people care and expect a royal to look pretty and be caught up with the fashion trends, so she does these things. Plus, I think it's really shallow to assume that she avoids relationships because she was either raped, sexually abused, or just turned off from the idea of relationships by how much of a douchebag Amaram was. Depending on when this possible event happened (we don't even know if it did), I'd be very surprised if Jasnah hasn't at least come to accept what happened to her and move on. If it did happen, she would never forget it obviously, but many rape/sexual abuse victims can and do go on to have healthy relationships later on in their lives.

@FeatherWriter Renarin is my biggest beef. This isn't a Cosmere beef, but a Reckoners beef. I despise the end of Calamity. Like, David was able to go up to Calamity and just go like “yo, humans ain't all evil” and Calamity just had an existential crisis and fled? No. That doesn't make any sense. And David getting powers. Ughhhh. It could've been done so much better, but it was just kinda there at the end. It undermines how well he was able to take down Epics as just a normal dude. Don't even get me started on all the alternate reality crap. Calamity is Brandon’s worst book, in my opinion. It's so storming terrible. Like, it started off pretty okay and then just went downhill from there. @Chaos pretty much summed up my feelings on Zane perfectly. Zane and the middle of the book just made WoA so storming boring and slow to read. The end saved it, but that's only because Brandon is amazing at ending books. I actually don't have very many beefs that weren't mentioned in the podcast. Also, I definitely agree with @WeiryWriter when it comes to Aonic pronunciations. Actually, this has reminded me of a beef, but it's less with the books themselves and more with the fandom in general. There are CORRECT and INCORRECT ways to pronounce things. Personally, I think it's not okay to mispronounce a name because you think the pronunciation is stupid. It'd be like if I refuse to pronounce Eric (is that how you spell it, Chaos?) as “air-ick” and pronounced it as “eh-rick.” I know I'm exaggerating, but this just really annoys me. Don't get me wrong, I think Aonic pronunciation is stupid too, but I think lots of things people do are stupid, but I can still respect their decisions and pronounce things the way they're supposed to be.

Man, that sucks.

I mean, yes and no. It's never been explicitly confirmed (I just went through all WoBs with Nightwatcher mentioned to confirm this), but there are several instances where Brandon explicitly states that the Nightwatcher is to Cultivation as the Stormfather is to Honor. Personally, I think it makes perfect sense, in the context of those WoBs (which you can see by looking up Nightwatcher on Arcanum), that Nightwatcher predates the Shattering and was Cultivation's daughter-thing, just like the Stormfather is. Yeah, I considered that point, but I didn't it's quite as likely and is just far more complex than is necessary. Like, we know there is a disease magic system that does stuff similar to the surges of Roshar on Ashyn (if you've read the Silence Divine readings, there appears to be people using gravitation and transformation). We know that the surges were used to destroy Ashyn. The only thing we're missing is the confirmation that the disease magic existed at the same time as the Cataclysm. I should've addressed this in the OP, though, I will admit. I hadn't considered that the gods that commanded them to accept the humans could've been true spren. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I could honestly see it going either way. Or it could be both. I would've mentioned stuff like this, but we have no idea exactly when either of these events happened, so it's hard to place them on the timeline.

I'm not sure if I've already mentioned it, but I started Fires of Heaven, book 5 of The Wheel of Time, a few days ago. I'm just about halfway through right now and I'm really enjoying it so far.

So, ah, first event I'll make a comment about: I've been waiting so long for Rand and Aviendha to hook up, I'm so excited it finally happened!

Disclaimer: This post is gonna focus less on the specific times that these events took place, but rather on the order of events and how this affects things. I'll also be making some assumptions in the sequence of events, so feel free to disagree on the order. Pre-Shattering: There isn't much known about Roshar during this timeframe. We do know, however, that the majority of the Rosharan ecosystem, including the Singers (then known as the Dawnsingers), the Highstorm, and the spren, existed prior to the Shattering. In addition, the Rosharan system was designed by Adonalsium. Post-Shattering: At some point after the Shattering, Honor and Cultivation, who were lovers, broke the pact that the original Vessels made to stay apart and settled on Roshar. They both adopted parts of the already established ecosystem, such as the highstorm/Stormfather for Honor and the Nightwatcher for Cultivation, and also created the true spren at some point. Cataclysm of Ashyn and Migration to Roshar: Unless there is a WoB that says otherwise, we don't know whether there were humans on Ashyn pre-Shattering or if they arrived/were created later. Either way, there was a magic system on Ashyn that was similar in nature to surgebinding that was gained through being the carrier of a disease. At some point, the Ashynites used these powers (supposedly with the help of the Dawnshards, whatever those are, according to the Stormfather and Honor) to destroy their planet. Some of the survivors remained on the planet, but could not live on the surface since it was (mostly) lava, so they went into upside down floating cities. The majority of the surviving population, however, fled to Roshar through either the Cognitive Realm or a teleportation mechanic similar to the Oathgates (Brandon is undecided on this issue right now). The Eila Stele, written by the Dawnsingers, claims that the humans came to Roshar and were given land they could live on by Honor and Cultivation (which is now Shinovar) and that the Dawnsingers were commanded by H&C to help the humans. It also claims that the humans brought Odium with them, but it is unclear if Odium was the Ashynites' god before coming or if Odium just happened to come to Roshar at the same time as them. It is also unclear if Odium had a part in the events that led to the humans migrating to Roshar. The First Desolation: After living on Roshar for an unknown period of time, some of the humans decided they were tired of living only in the land they were given and began to conquer more of Roshar (as humans tend to do). The exact order of this is unclear, but during this invasion of Roshar, the Singers switched to Odium's side and the humans to H&C's side. Once they switched to Odium's side, some of the Singers were given power by Odium, making them Cognitive Shadows known as the Fused. They could not be permanently killed and returned to keep fighting after they died (according to the Stormfather, they did not have the surges yet, I think, but they probably had the passive benefits of voidlight). The Fused were a problem for the humans' side until the Heralds and Honor made the Oathpact, sealing the Fused on Braize. The Desolations: What Honor didn't realize when he created the Oathpact was that humans are not bound to follow oaths like Shards are. According to the Stormfather, when the Heralds went to Braize, they hid, fought, and eventually were found and tortured. One of them eventually broke, starting the first "true" Desolation. By bending the Oathpact, the power that held the Fused to Braize no longer did so, so they were able to return to Roshar and fight the humans. Once a Desolation was over, the Heralds would voluntarily return to Braize and start the process all over again. For the first several Desolations, the Heralds were able to last hundreds of years at a time, but near the end Desolations came less than a decade apart, and the Last Desolation came only a year after the previous one. At some point during the Desolations, ten types of true spren figured out how to mimic the Honorblades through the nahel bond. These first surgebinders were very unstructured and were far more dangerous with their powers, so Ishar used his bondsmith powers (somehow) to create the five Ideals/Oaths (I can never remember what they're called) and establish the ten orders of the Knights Radiant. At some point prior to the Last Desolation, a group of Singers were ordered to attack what is now the Shattered Plains and Natanatan. However, these Singers, known as the Last Legion, decided to abandon their gods, the Fused, and take on dullform to escape Odium's influence. These Singers, now known as the Listeners, lost all their knowledge of how to change forms, though they did create the Songs in order to help rediscover them eventually. The Last Desolation/Aharietiam: Despite the odds, all of the Heralds except one were able to survive this Desolation. They couldn't take the torture any longer, so they abandoned the Oathpact and left Taln, the only one who died, the only one that wasn't a general, king, or scholar, the one that shouldn't have been a Herald in the first place, on Braize to suffer the torture alone. They told the humans that they had won, that they'd defeated the enemy, though that was not true. Some of the Unmade, such as Nergaoul or Moelach, survived and persisted on Roshar and became seen as normal parts of the world (the Thrill and Death Rattles). The other Unmade were presumed to either have been captured, returned to Braize, or killed in the Last Desolation (though I find this last option the least likely). The False Desolation and the Recreance: About 2,000 years prior to the start of the series, Ba-Ado-Mishram Connected with the Singers, granting them voidlight and Forms of Power. These Singers, excluding the Listeners, began to fight the Radiants across the world. Some of the Radiants, including Melishi, who was probably the bondsmith at the time, formed a strike team in order to capture BAM and take the powers away from the Singers. Some of the Radiants warned of unforeseen consequences, though the strike team went ahead with its mission anyway. By imprisoning BAM in a perfect gem, the Radiants ripped out some of the Connection and Identity from all of the Singers Connected to BAM, effectively giving them a lobotomy and reducing them to something worse than dullform. This event, including the fact that Honor was going mad and raving about how the Radiants destroyed their previous home and would do so again with Roshar (along with maybe an example of this possible destruction through the Shattered Plains), shook many of the Radiants to their core. Since they believed that they would do more harm than good, they abandoned their Oaths and broke their bonds with their spren, killing them. They left their Shards across the world, which started mass frenzies of people claiming them for power. Because of the Recreance, in most religions, and in Vorinism especially, the Radiants were seen as evil and of the enemy. At some point after the scramble for power had settled down, men mostly claimed the Shards for themselves. Through a popular book that established the feminine arts as being one-handed, women claimed literacy and scholarly pursuits and left war, fighting, and the Shards to the men. The Rise and Fall of the Heirocracy: The Vorin church attempted, and succeeded, to take control over the politics of most of Eastern Roshar, though they were unable to take over all of Roshar. They established their power through claiming to see visions from the Almighty and to have special powers that no one else did. In addition they destroyed or altered records of anything relating to the Knights Radiants, the greatest failure of Vorinism. Many ancient accounts and records have been lost due to this. Eventually, the Sunmaker united the ten princedoms of Alethkar, and possibly some allies, for the first time since the fall of Alethela in order to defeat the Heirocracy, which he was successful in doing. After the fall of the Heirocracy, the ardents were reduced from priests that control everything in the religion to being little more than property and advisers in helping people understand and love the Almighty. The Sunmaker: Sadees, also known as the Sunmaker, decided after defeating the evil empire that wanted to take over the world (the Heirocracy) that he wanted to take over the world. He managed to conquer all the way to Azir in Western Roshar, where he committed mass genocide against the Azish since they did not respect eye color. However, he died shortly after due to an illness and his empire fell apart since he had not chosen an heir and none of his sons could keep the empire together. This led to the split up of Alethkar into the ten princedoms again, until Gavilar, Dalinar, and Sadeas reunited them. After that, the rest of the timeline is basically just the events that take place in the books. There are some events that happen directly prior to WoK that are a little unclear, such as when exactly Gavilar started having the visions or when Taravangian and Lift went to the Nightwathcer, so I’m not gonna go into those.

@Quantus The main problem with modern day fabrials on Roshar is that it's less caveman courtship and more man domesticating/taming the horse. They're taking an "animal" and forcing it to do some task for them. With true spren, I'm sure that they can willingly bond to fabrials (which is how I think ancient fabrials work). I can't see lesser spren ever being able to make fabrials akin to the ancient ones because they are simply not cognizant enough to make that decision.

@SzethIsBadAsHell @whattheHoid Could you guys edit our OB spoilers please?

Since this thread has reappeared, I'll nominate @Parttimedragon

I survived the Catacendre! Yay!

Oh, good. I love it when books do that to me. Is it like the thing in OB, near the middle? If you don't know what I'm talking about, PM me.

That's book 5 right? It's pretty good so far. I'm about halfway through right now.

Like has been mentioned several times before, the most useful for practical situations in the real world would definitely have to be feruchemy. But the one I'd really want to have would either be Edgedancer or Willshaper powers. Either of these surge combinations seems sooooo cool.

@Elandera Honestly, it's all up to you. If you brand it as "magical creatures on earth," people are gonna expect the basics: elves, werewolves, vampires, dragons, dwarves, etc. That doesn't mean you have to do it that way though. You can easily use whatever creatures you want. If you want to use the traditional ones, I'd suggest putting your own spin on them so they don't feel corny or cliche.

The thing is, there's also a WoB that says, before OB, we hadn't seen voidbinding yet. We had definitely seen Singers change forms before OB, so there's no way that that is voidbinding. Even the stormform or whatever it was called are not voidbinding because they were in WoR. As for the Fused, they're just hacking that same natural phenomenon (bonding spren) to inhabit the bodies of the Singers. What the Fused do feels just way too much like surgebinding for me to consider it voidbinding.

I honestly don't pay attention to the publishing companies enough, so I can't really say which one is my favorite. All I really know about when it comes to those companies is that Tor publishes Brandon and Dan Wells.

WoK is a pretty good favorite book! Kaladin is also a pretty good choice for favorite character. One of my favorites is definitely Venli. I can agree with Amaram. My least favorite non-villain character is probably Zane (does he count as a non-villain?). Yeah, aren't we all a little broken? Mistborn are pretty cool. But so are all of the Radiant orders. Which order would you be?

The Oathpact was designed specifically to trap the Fused, so it had to have come after the Fused. I don't think the Dawnshards were made by Cultivation. They were used to destroy Ashyn (somehow), so it's unlikely they'd were created to thwart Odium in some way. They could've been made by Cultivation if she and Honor had had some influence on the Rosharan system as a whole when they went to Roshar, but I doubt it.