Morsk

This isn't a "large scale question", but it's a topic that generated 100 posts and almost melted the forum into a ball of slag and fire... Weight has nothing to do with allomantic Push/pull strength. Basically, is there something genuinely magical about weighing more, and "I weigh more so I push harder," is literally how it works? Or is it just the physics of mass and inertia, and the characters are all unreliable narrators because they don't understand that?

Shard of Non-Intervention. It creates cities of splinters in Shadesmar and gives them awesome powers, and doesn't let humans participate.

How about Spook when he was a Tin savant? Shai is way more clever than him, but he was really good at sneaking.

I don't think he heard voices until the spike. Maybe the earlier kind of "insane" was him being a sociopath? Ruin tells him he was never really insane, but Ruin has really weird values.

I just remembered this. It's at the start of Chapter 58. So she could be the source of these monsters, and the other Unmade would have their own. The only other we've seen named is Yelig-nar who might be associated with a dark version of Wind, since he's called Blightwind.

When it said Deathless all look like pampered teenagers, I somehow thought of this from The Onion: Insecure, Frustrated Bully With Something To Prove Considering Career In Law Enforcement

Something about their deaths really bothers some people, enough that Brandon increased mention of the afterlife as a consolation. It might be the romance aspect, and that they were married.

It would be clever of Odium to make people blame each other for all his monsters and Desolations, which is why it worries me. It's not out of character or a bad strategy for Odium to follow. I'd just hate reading it. For example, send more Midnight Essence whenever someone talks about the future. Now everyone has to follow an obnoxious rule and gossip about which of their neighbors broke it. Odium would love this.

I hope I'm wrong because I absolutely hate this. But I got the idea that Midnight Essence was summoned by someone having "bad thoughts", or being a little mean or just nonconformist, and that somehow this lets Odium's monsters into the world or gives them form. So the KRs would be a morality police that save people from themselves, in addition to fighting monsters. "This is what happens when you wear fashionable clothing / listen to pop music / don't kiss your mother goodnight / etc. People DIE!" So say an overworked mother snaps, and tells one of her children that parenthood ruined her life. Midnight Essence come and eat half the village! Or a kid trades his lunch for candy. People die! And so on, for every petty cruelty or laziness humans do. The 10 most archetypical ways people are horrible would be the 10 deaths. I really hate this idea but I can't think of anything that fits better yet. Hopefully in WoR...

The "light" could just be Stormlight then, a visible side-effect like when Szeth lashed the stone block so many times that it glowed. Also the up-side of Jasnah not having Light is that Shallan can have it now. Imagine a Lightweaver with her memory ability. I also want her smoke-zapping to be a mixed power of Transformation + something else, because it makes Soulcasting too good if it can work at range without having special limitations to go along with it.

Are you sure the "four fundamental forces" wasn't just an inspiration or early idea that evolved into something better? It seems unbalanced. Electromagnetism does almost everything we relate to human life and perception, while the strong and weak powers are very niche. A lot of stretching could claim that the weak force is Transformation, because it turns particles into different kinds of particles. Or maybe the strong and weak forces together got called Transformation because they turn atoms into different kinds of atoms. Or if not that, something else requiring a lot of stretching to fit the concept.

The Shardbearer turns

Maybe grand soulcasters are just a coverup for people who have lots of soulcasters, but don't want anyone knowing they have so many. There's less pressure to share if people think you only have one.

I remember you, but I only lurked back on TWG. So many posts in the last day! Between all the topics you revived and the Infinity Blade story, I have a week's worth of Sanderson content now.

Unless he likes the mystery as-is and doesn't want to make a decision on it. It's not that different from technobabble and hand-waving. Sometimes the author doesn't know the answer either, but still has to describe it in sufficient detail for the story.

I just think of Harmony as a yin-yang symbol. It's not divided clearly down the middle, but there's definitely division into two opposites, and also a little mixing. Sometimes it's viewed as two separate things, sometimes as one thing. There's no easy way to break it in half. There's more to it than balance, but what the "more" is is difficult to understand, and even more difficult describe -- a religious mystery. Sazed understands it because he holds it, but can anyone else?

Something I didn't hear anyone say yet is you don't have to reread from cover to cover. I start by rereading a favorite part, and if it keeps my interest I'll skip around and read other parts until I've read most of the book. If I stop enjoying it, I read something else. I think I heard Maria the Wheel of Time continuity expert does the same thing, never doing a full reread. I never reread Kaladin's childhood flashbacks. They're depressing, and Or maybe it's because I don't like Kaladin without Syl. Anyway a reread can be a very different experience. My most reread book is the Chronicles of Amber. (It's 10 books in an omnibus, but they're not long books.) I mostly just like the author's writing style, and the focus on character. Also it's sufficiently varied over the 10 books that I can open anywhere at random, and it feels new and different compared to other parts. edit: Oh here's an idea, especially as more and more Stormlight books come out. I might try rereading just the Interludes sometime.

This is actually the second theory that Hoid is a Time Lord. Once someone took my theory that Hoid soul-forged himself into Midius, and interpreted it as "Dr. Whoid" reincarnating between an 11th and 12th form, or something. (I don't watch Dr. Who; sorry if I'm botching terminology.) There must be more secrets here, if we dig deeper.

It's not a single moment, but I remember being overwhelmed at how much backstory Mistborn-3 revealed about Preservation and Ruin creating the planet, and the Lord Ruler working against Ruin the whole time. It's a huge change from the scope of the first two books. It's also a huge amount of revelation about the setting. From Wheel of Time, I was used to stories holding things back forever. Then I realized the planet was so broken that only a god could fix it, which meant that a god would; I was a bit disappointed once I realized that. But then Sazed ascended with both Shards, which I wasn't expecting at all, which made up for it!

Nice, it links to 17th Shard off the main page! It's at the bottom of that content bar on the right. Has it always done that, or is it new?

I like this distinction. It does mean that "kill Ruin through mutual annihilation" is within the scope of Preservation's power, while "kill a human directly" isn't though. That makes sense to me because Ruin's relationship to Preservation is special, but some people might find it too contradictory. What I get stuck on is why Leras is fine with stabbing Elend, but wasn't able to bring himself to kill Ruin. This has to be a case where it's the intent holding him back, not the nature of the power itself. Yet we see him willing to kill in order to protect Ruin's prison. Maybe it's just a matter of degree. Killing two Shards and changing the entire nature of the planet was too much change for a being who likes stasis? But killing one person, especially to maintain the status quo, was something he could talk himself into.

That link to "hardback" is to a shopping cart which is empty to me. edit: I'm not entering btw. I love the book and it's great that you're running this, but I'm trying really hard to cut back on owning physical copies of books!

There must be something about intents and limitations we don't understand, because Rashek was unable to use Preservation's power to destroy, even holding it only for moments. http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#27 Also Sazed, on ascending, remarks that he can create by using the two powers together, but that it takes some care in keeping them apart. Not that he can create because holding two powers protects his mind from being warped to something more narrow. It doesn't make sense to me, especially in light of the worldbuilding requirement that any Shard can power any magic system. That suggests they can do almost anything. Perhaps that's the exception though, and part of why Shards would ever choose Champions or work through mortals, or power magic systems instead of doing everything themselves. It lets them do more things.

The cosmic, non-relative version of Honor may end up being morally irrelevant. After all, in the last vision Honor tells Dalinar that he misses the people fighting against the Desolations, with everyone united in purpose. Those were near-genocidal wars wiping out most of the humans on the planet, and presumably most of the Parshendi too. He misses them. I'm really anti-honor though, ever since I read Wikipedia's page contrasting honor to justice. I see Roshar as hopeless, unless it can merge some of its Shards into new forms. Odium can at least be part of justice, in how we view criminals and other abusers, but honor is a sloppy alternative to justice that only gets in the way. If no one can fix it, this planet is doomed to an eternity of war culture and brutality.

You can have a consistent timeline if Relativity is false. Since Worldhoppers can get around between planets without causing time paradoxes, we know Relativity isn't the ultimate theory here. I think Shadesmar counts as a preferred reference frame, and can be used to provide a sense of absolute time between solar systems. Perhaps there's no way in the Physical realm to provide a consistent timeline between solar systems, but the Cognative realm provides a way. Or if it's not that, then something else. The setting has FTL after all.