Mulk

even if it's not CSR, as a long time depression sufferer sometimes your mind just locks up and you just can't. You even self sabotage at times. It sucks. You get told (as people have said about Kaladin) all manner of things about how disappointed others are in you, why can't you just do this, you've betrayed us, etc etc etc. And you agree with it. And you hate yourself. But you can't move forward... sigh. I hate depression.

I took my oldest son with me to get a buffalo burger. You get your choice of cheese and toppings, so I asked him what kind of cheese he wanted. (sidebar - he's autistic and doesn't always like to speak for himself or place his own order) He said he wanted cheddar, cause it's cheddar that way. I grinned like I was the one who made the pun. Yep, this is my son. He's know for them at his high school. It's hilarious and awesome.

I didn't cry, though that's more a reflection of my current emotional state than it is of the book or the scenes. That said, Teft being found and carried back touched me deeply.

Schrodinger's Butt?

I've said this elsewhere, but basically to say he is passion you have to discount the word of Frost, Hoid, Honor, Syl...all of whom are probably more honest and reliable. It comes down to do you trust a guy who is trying to wipe out people or do you trust those opposed to him.

Stormfather said something to the effect that when the KR found out the truth, Honor was raving instead of supporting, told them they would destroy the world. Based on that I think Honor was already dying, just not there yet. The Recreance probably didn't help, but I don't think a lack of it would have stopped him dying.

He held enough of Honor for Odium to say he Ascended. And humans, no matter how powerful, can't unite the three realms and flood the area with Stormlight.

I don't have a problem with anything you said. Hell, I agree with all of it. There's just a world of difference between what the Stormfather is and what almost any other spren is right now. He is partly Honor, infused with the shard's essence in a way, with a divine directive he cannot ignore to find someone suitable to give the visions to, to bond to a Bondsmith. Apparently the Stormfather wanted someone powerful, with authority and might and influence as his choice. Well, the most powerful from a pure might standpoint are in Alethkar, and the greatest of those are of the Kholin household currently. And even he freaks out when Dalinar is holding a blade after the bond is formalized. If the Stormfather, with divine essence and directive, will not allow his Bondsmith to hold a dead spren blade, how much more so those who are not so directly tied and bound as he is? A part of me wonders if the Stormfather picked them because historically, the Alethi were (at least according to one of the visions) the ones who maintained the arts of war so that humans are ready for the next Desolation. I don't know. Maybe we'll find out. But if I'm right, then the people he wanted were all shardbearers and thus he had to just grit his teeth and go for it.

You kinda have combine the fact that the KR find out they were the bad guys to start with the fact that the Stormfather reveals Honor was raving and saying they would destroy the world. In that light, the Recreance was a direct attempt to not destroy the world. It's something they shouldn't have done in retrospect but when your deity is a raving lunatic...well, I don't know what I would have done.

speaking as a longtime depression sufferer, don't listen to those voices - the ones telling you how bad it is, how bad you are, always asking what's wrong with you. They lie. They filter everything that happens through the worst possible filter and pour it back on you mixed tenfold. I don't know you well enough to offer much in the way of positive reinforcement. I just want you to know people care. The people here care. You're not weak for asking. I think it's fair to say that we're around if you need us. I'm an expert in self-hatred and loathing, have been for probably 30 years. It's never easy to deal with but some days are a lot harder than others. Hang in there, don't let the bad days win, okay?

I really think you have it backwards. You assume all who are broken will form a bond, and apparently form a bond immediately. I don't think that's the case. Especially right now when so many spren have been unwilling to make the leap to the physical realm to bond humans until very recently, given what happened in the Recreance. We have Syl's word that she's the only honorspren doing the bond thing in WoR. I think it took the success of that bond to encourage others to cross over. We also have Teft. That man has been broken most of his life, apparently. He reported his parents and they died. He's been on fireweed for years. He's quite a bit older than Kaladin, so he has apparently been broken for a long time. He only just recently, apparently, attracted a spren. Renarin doesn't seem to have bonded his spren until very recently, though his brokenness may be life long. Dalinar definitely didn't bond the Stormfather until very recently, though his brokenness stems at least to his visit to the Valley some years ago. So I don't think you can say Adolin must already have a spren if he is broken. In any case, given Syl's reaction to anyone who carries a shardblade, you can make the inference that at least part of the reason Adolin doesn't have a spren is because he bears a dead shardblade. They're generally going to shy away from him and it's possible that this is so much the case that the only way he was ever going to become Radiant is by reviving the spren of his dead blade, unless he divested himself of the blade first.

Malata only appears in Oathbringer and this WoB predates that release (2015 I think?), so I'd lean towards he knew of Malata but knew we hadn't seen her yet.

I've noted that criticism of Adolin as well. I posted earlier in this thread my thoughts about it Basically, it is my belief the criticism comes from an illogical assumption drawn from incomplete data. They assume he's not broken because he doesn't act broken. But we can't know that, as we don't see near enough of him to know how he handled his youth in anything other than the snippets of him with Dalinar; and a boy with a father of strong will and/or personality will very often put up a front for that father because he wants to be as strong as him. Any brokenness would have been hidden from Dalinar as best as Adolin could manage, and only let out before his mother or brother when he couldn't take it anymore. The more I think on it, the more I think Adolin was already broken in the past enough for a bond. The eventual reveal of how Evi died will likely cause some real problems, but he's busted enough to bond a spren as it is. Loved the rest of your post.

true - I had the order wrong. I still think she knew who he was.

She knows who he is - she saw him in the company of her...ah..employee, who had owned him prior to selling him to the Parshendi.

WoT is one of those series that strikes me as having been easier to read and digest as it came out than it is now. It's fourteen books, thousands of named characters, probably hundreds of viewpoint characters, interwoven prophecy and ta'veren shaping and all that crushed together in a muddle that is pretty hard to keep straight if you're just going one book to the next. Some of the characters are annoying as hell. Some others are fantastic and don't get on screen as much. There are times you want to take the main characters by the neck and shake until some semblance of wisdom and intelligence falls into place because they can be alarmingly hard headed and stupid at times. But holy crap is it a ride to remember. I say that as one who liked the story and read it to the bitter end. I've read every book in the series at least a half dozen times, and all of those prior to book 12 more than 10 times. It's worth the effort, imo, because it is a whole, it more or less fits together, and there are things that happen late that have been set up since the first few books. It's honestly kinda miraculous it fit together as well as it did. My personal opinion is that somewhere along the road, around book 7 or so, Jordan lost his way on how to get from where he was to where he intended to be - he said all along he knew how it was going to end. So if you can put up with the weaknesses above and the complexity of the thing, it's well worth the time. If not, or if frustrating characters annoy you too much...then just pass it up and move on to other stuff.

I assumed this was because no Ryshadium would have chosen him until after Cultivation did her thing and he started really growing as a person.

Or there is the possibility that she asked some direct questions of the spren in Shadesmar about such things. We don't know what she knows at this point. And perhaps you're right about the whole softening terms, I just think she's operating on the assumption that what is in Urithiru is pretty trustworthy, moreso than any other sources she would have been able to access in the world due to its immunity to interference from the Vorin church.

If the depictions in Urithiru predate Aharietam (as I find to be likely) they almost have to be accurate. Because they'd have seen the Heralds afterwards and corrected them. Therefore, the only real question is whether or not they came before or not. I find it far more likely they are from before, personally but I understand why others might disagree with that

I guess my take on her is different - she also knows how to prune and excise to make things grow better. I guess I think she'd be more likely to prune or excise Odium from her system for longterm growth.

My guesses are Uli Da was Ambition and that Obrodai is a world we've not yet seen, but that's just completely off the top of my head.

I don't see how you can possibly take Odium's/Rayse's word for it. Everyone who knows what his Shard is calls him Odium. in WoR, the second Letter says: He bears the weight of God's own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context. He is hatred and that which inspires hatred. Anything else is false advertising on his part to make his desire to hate and destroy easier. In any case, combining Hatred with Honor would be one of the worst possible combinations. You'd need Cultivation alongside it to have any hope of preserving a shred of goodness in the resulting Shard. Dalinar is currently a mixture of all three, though his strongest connection is to Honor. Without Cultivation, he'd be Odium's champion. With Cultivation, he became the closest thing currently in an existence to what Honor was, at least in his beginning. With respect to Calderis' contention, I don't see how Cultivation could possibly want to take up Odium. I don't see how Cultivation could possibly lend itself to Hatred or vice versa. They aren't antithetical in the same way Ruin and Preservation are, so they don't represent two sides of the same coin. If Preservation hadn't come up with a Hail Mary to get someone who wasn't either of them to take up both and end the conflict, it wouldn't have ended that way. The most likely scenario I see when it comes to Shard combo is Cultivation relinquishing hers to Dalinar once he reaches a satisfactory point, or else Odium finds a way to take her out and Dalinar is at hand to take her Shard up before Odium breaks it. To be clear, I don't find that likely. I just find it more likely than an evil supershard with Cultivation's holder controlling.

The more likely explanation for Adolin's brokenness lies in his past - that it has something to do with being raised by Dalinar and losing his mother; it's far enough past that he's dealt with it and recovered enough to lead a normal life but that doesn't mean he wasn't broken. Or perhaps being broken enough to get a Nahel bond is in the near future, when he finds out his dad is responsible for his mom's death. Either way works. Not all broken people suffer visibly. Nor do they all suffer as you'd expect. I know an older woman who was racked by cancer, unable to walk anymore and in pain day by day. Was she broken enough for this? Probably. Yet she never showed that she suffered. She greeted people as a friend, refused to discuss her pain and health, wanting instead to hear how you are, what's up with you, because her days were repetitive and loaded with pain. She was that way up to the very end, always an utter joy to be around. Just because you aren't angsty and emo doesn't mean you're not broken. Some just learn to deal with it with more gracefully than others. I think she broke, but once she broke, she picked up the pieces and moved on from it - she was broken, but it did not define her.

Honor dies after the Recreance - he says in his last vision to Dalinar that the rest of the visions (which includes the Recreance) are those he has seen.

Amaram was an idiot, but it was understandable that he didn't know how to fully access and use all of his power. And I highly doubt that Yelig-Nar was in control. Amaram has a strong enough sense of self that he's likely at least made the fight for control a toss up. And that itself may be why he wasn't more effective - he was having to spend so much energy keeping control of himself that he couldn't fully engage the power Yelig-Nar offered. Or was afraid enough of losing control of himself he never really dove into deeper waters. There's also this nagging feeling I have that he never really took Kaladin as seriously as he should have. I'm in the camp thinking Moash is probably going to wind up being that guy. Or at least come very close to it. I don't know if he'd be able to kill Kaladin yet, though. That may be his only way back from where he is now.