aemetha

To be absolutely clear, the surges predate both the Heralds and the Knights Radiant. It is true that the surges were not in use by the people of Roshar at the time the Heralds were created, but the surges themselves existed, and are the natural manifestation of magic in the Greater Rosharan system. It's entirely plausible that surgebinding was used to destroy Ashyn. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/145-when-worlds-collide-2014/#e2718 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100-rbooks-ama-2015/#e3569

You're right. I don't feel at all bad about that!

I don't think Rayse would call him "Ascended". He'd be more likely to call him "Appetiser".

It is my belief that the unmade are corrupted spren, or possibly an amalgam of corrupted spren. This is how I think it works: Spren are made when the intent of a shard interacts with a compatible idea with sufficient cognitive presence, and an identity is established for the entity. This is them being made. Odium is the void. He takes from the spren their ability to feel the idea involved in their making. Interpret that how you like, he takes the idea from them, or he adds the void to them, same result. This drives the spren insane and it seeks compulsively to regain what it lost. This is a recurring theme in the unmade, Negaoul massively spreads battle lust, Moelach the same with death whispers, Ashertman the same with hedonism. This is how they are unmade. On the subject of Sja-Anat, I believe it is a corrupted cryptic or similar kind of spren. It is obsessed with intrigue. By its very nature it is untrustworthy as a result.

Shallan sneaks out so Veil can investigate. Her decent into fractured personality really begins to take hold.

Subject is discussed at length here. Probably better to keep the same discussion in one place.

Ishar wasn't a bondsmith. Ishar was a herald, which is an entirely different thing. Ishar is the herald who is patron of the bondsmiths, not a member of them. The Knights Radiant were a result of spren attempting to copy what Honor had done with the Heralds. Ishar could not have been bonded to the sibling because only one herald joined the order they inspired, and that was Nale.

"Come in Odium, or is it Passion? Which do you prefer? Pull up a seat. Lopen, get him some stew please." Kaladin said. "Is good question. He is powerful god, but he is not god of our gods, he is bad god, so maybe devil? Is hard to know what we call this thing. Perhaps a name is for the best?" said Rock. "Rayse, call me Rayse" said the shard as Lopen plonked a bowl of stew down in front of him. "Thank you, Lopen is it?" "Your majesty" replied Lopen. "Oh come now, no need to be so formal, you don't have to call me your majesty." said Rayse. "Oh no, you got it all wrong gancho. You're supposed to call me you're majesty. I was a king." proclaimed Lopen. "Err..." began Rayse "You know I'm a god, right?" "Yeah, but there isn't a word for talking to gods. There's a word for talking to kings, so you gotta call me your majesty" said Lopen. Rayse crinckled his brow at that logic, but chose not to comment, instead lifting a spoonful of stew to his mouth, and immediately regretted it. Spices! a lot of spices! "By the... By me! That's hot!" "HAH!" exclaimed Rock "Airsick god devil thing! You not worry, you get used to it!" One of the other members of the bridge approached Rayse. Stiff backed, dark skinned and clean shaven. His uniform was neatly pressed and he seemed rather more formal than the other members of this group. "Excuse me sir" said Sigzil "I was wondering if we could perhaps go over some paperwork before we begin negotiations. One cannot understate the importance of establishing a firm initial position before negotiations." Wonderful. Azish. Rayse hated the Azish. "I suppose if it's really necessary." The next four hours passed as slowly as the entirety of his existence up until that point. Finally the tedium ended though. "Captain Kaladin, Can we discuss the surrender of the windrunners now?" A confused look passed over the windrunners face "Surrender of the windrunners? We invited you here to negotiate your surrender to us." Rayse was irritated now "Why would I ever surrender to you?" "Well," began Kaladin "We acknowledge that you are the flame of eternal hatred, but no flame can burn us, we eat Rock's stew every day! We acknowledge that you are passion, but no passionate emotion could ever be as baffling as a few minutes in conversation with the Lopen. Finally, we acknowledge that you are the void, but no void could ever be as tedious as Sigzil's storming lists. There really isn't anything left that you can do to us, that we haven't already done to ourselves." Something odd happened next. For the first time since his ascension, Rayse found himself weeping in despair.

Yes, they are collated in the Arcanum.

The problem with the theory is that the beyond is not the spiritual realm. They are different things. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/31-arcanum-unbounded-release-party/#e1729 The spiritweb of a dead person takes a while to break down in the spiritual realm, just like the corpse takes a while to break down in the physical realm. The soul departs for the beyond though, where even the eyes of shards are blind.

I'm actually very resistant to an ascension. I don't want every conflict involving a shard to be reliant on the ascension of a human. I don't view it as a positive outcome for that character if they ascend, it's really quite depressing to know their freedom will eventually be subverted by obsession with a single focus. I'm not happy for Harmony, I think he is less than he was. He could actually achieve things before. It's not really a story of hope if the best you can hope for is a subversion of the hero's basic personality. Anyway, Hoid confounds Odium without ascension, and so does Lift. The shards aren't gods. Infinite power, but with a finite mind. They can't command all the power they theoretically hold.

I think Kaladin was better for the role. You're making the mistake of thinking Kaladin's job was to kill Amaram, it wasn't. Kaladin's job was to stop Amaram and anyone else from killing Dalinar. If the role was to kill Amaram, Szeth would have been better for the task because he has a better weapon for the job and mindset for the task. Dalinar probably would have died though. Szeth is an assassin, or now, a lawman. He has a laser focus. He doesn't set out to kill a lot of people, but he kills anything that gets between him and his target - anyone that gets in his way. Kaladin is a bodyguard. He has a wide focus. He doesn't set out to kill a lot of people, but he gets in peoples way and has to defend himself and his charge.

Jordan had a really bad habit of saying "Nearly there kids!". He also got bogged down massively by the complexity of the threads in the middle, and eventually started saying that not all the plot threads would be addressed. Sanderson appears to be a much better outliner than what Jordan was, and in my opinion wrapped up WoT much more concisely than Jordan could have done. I don't really see him going over because the basic structure of the books compartmentalises the various focuses of the books more succinctly than WoT, in which you couldn't ever say that x book belonged to x character. Also, Perrin isn't in the Stormlight Archive, so if you're using that as a point of reference you could remove at least half the pointless words Jordan wrote from the expectations for the length of Stormlight Archive.

How about this for a Taravangian scene. I'm thinking the Jah Keved interlude specifically. Starts out with a very sorrowful feel, before getting quite Machiavellian and ending with a triumph, kind of like the scene does.

She asked for something like not to change. The Old magic had no idea what to make of that (which makes sense since not changing is the antithesis of being cultivated) so just made stuff up basically. At least that's the impression I get from this WoB. It's probably very tenuously linked to not changing or ageing at best. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/4-calamity-seattle-signing/#e359

I'm not sure this is a good example. Star Trek is science fiction, while The Stormlight Archive is real life .

Well, I don't believe physicality is the most important part of a relationship. Emotional support and compassion for the person. They already have that in my opinion. I think the desire for a ship is based on an assumption that he is missing something. I reject the suggestion he is missing the most important parts of a relationship. Besides, he's pals with an Elsecaller, he can just ask her to pop them over to Shadesmar for a romantic outing if it's that important to people. I just personally don't think it is.

I kind of take a longer view. Stormlight Archive is a series, but it's one series in a greater story of the cosmere. It isn't like we won't have cosmere stories in the intervening time. I am reassured by how much he planned for the complexity of a large series. Martin and Jordan got horribly bogged down by the complexity of the stories, and by compartmentalising it the way he has Sanderson seems like he is managing to avoid much of that.

Music is so important for setting the scene in movies and TV shows. The imperial march for the Sith Empire in star wars for example. What would you have for the soundtrack? I know this is previously used in TV, but it is just soooo Nale for me. This would really get me in the mood when he came on scene. I can see him chasing a radiant pitilessly when I hear it. Shalash finds Taln, and he thanks her for what the heralds did.

So you agree he could play Lift then?

Yes, I don't discount the possibility, you're right that that is how red herrings work. I'm personally a little wary of finding red herrings in everything though. Like I said though, I don't discount it. If I had I wouldn't have said "I think" at the beginning of the sentence , though to be fair the only thing I'm really absolute about is that there are no absolutes, just strong or weak evidence for things.

Oh, no. Please no. Please, please, please no. I'm from New Zealand and it's my patriotic duty to support him, but I can't. His acting skills make me cringe. He completely ruined Alanon for me. I like John Malkovich for Dalinar. He's a little old, but his acting skills could make me believe he's a 10 year old girl. Hmm. Maybe he should be Lift instead? In either case, he'd need some make up for the skin tone.

It shouldn't be. Freud argued that the Oedipus complex was a part of development that must be resolved or would result in "problems" such as homosexuality... Needless to say, it was a rather flawed theory to begin with. Now, there is some evidence that bits of his theory are correct, but it's more of a correlation than causation thing. For example, children tend to pick up personality traits from parents by both nature and nurture. So children resemble their parents. Romantic attachments are most predictable along lines of similarity. So if the children take the traits from their parents, and then look for people with similar traits to themselves, it is inevitable that their romantic interests will be in many respects similar to their parents. That doesn't necessarily mean they picked their romantic attachments because of a similarity to a parent.

Well, a dead shardblade still cuts the soul too. It's because spren can't ever actually die, they can lose the majority of their sentience though, and just remain stuck doing what they were doing when they died.