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It's also been made clear, from Words of Brandon, that Kaladin's title of "Son of Tanavast" (used by the Stormfather) is not without significance. There is definitely more going on here.

I find it very likely that the Lord of Scars is going to start getting very involved on Roshar. Remember that the question here is not just the primary antagonist of the first five volumes, but of the Stormlight Archive as a whole. Brandon has told us that he intends to write Mistborn Era 3 during the gap between the two halves. I don't think that's without significance. Mistborn is going to hit modernity, and with it, modern science and technology. We're already seeing commodification of Allomancy and Feruchemy on Scadrial. We're seeing overt attempts on Roshar by the Ghostbloods to engineer means to sever Connection and transport Investiture across the Cosmere. I highly suspect that, at some point in the next few books, we are going to see Kelsier unleashed from Scadrial. And if there's one thing that Kelsier hates, it is power. A planet with multiple warring deities vying for power is like a giant flashing target for Kelsier. Nobilities to pull down, corruption to cleanse, and powers in turmoil... I think the war between the singers and the humans will reach its conclusion in Book 5. I suspect that Books 6 through 10 will feature a Scadrian invasion.

Brandon Sanderson does indeed pull a lot from his own religious background for his material. As someone of the same faith, it's sometimes really apparent. A man claims to have visions from God, puts out a book, and leads a new religious movement? Admittedly that's pretty similar to many religions when they start. I wonder if Dalinar will institute a priesthood or hierarchy, or if others will institute one without his say... I wonder what his reaction would be to people making him into a religious leader without him asking them to. I don't think it's fair to call the Knights Radiant a religious order, so I wouldn't say that he's already building a religion deliberately.

As someone who was diagnosed with gluten-free needs this year, let me just affirm: I really miss pizza. And pasta. And bread. Wow, bread--the delicate crunch of a buttered garlicky baguette... The rippling folds of a perfect cinnamon roll. Cold cereals of most varieties. Kitkats and Twix. Whoppers. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Heck, cookies. Pastries. Cakes. You get it, the list goes on and on. Poor Hoid indeed.

Is it possible that the Command that made Nightblood is, itself, a Dawnshard Command? Intent and a Command. Sound familiar?

I was really glad to see that her receiving/becoming the Dawnshard of Change did not magically heal her legs. Instead, Brandon maintains the emotional weight of her physical struggle instead of turning it into escapism. It really fits the rest of the book's narrative about people not valuing her for who she is, but instead focusing only on her disability... Brandon was respectful of her disability and didn't turn her into a vehicle for a magical healing narrative, which would've been an easy route to take. I don't think that healing stories are impossible to pull off, but I think Brandon's focus on getting readers to recognize the real difficulties of the disabled--and giving Rysn hope for freedom within her disability--is a better plot by far.

I suspect, after reading this, that the Third Ideal is less about hatred, per se, and more about not letting yourself get in the way of protecting others--or perhaps, rather, to not let your personal desires stop you from protecting others. As such, selflessness is the key principle of the Third Ideal. I think. "I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right." - Kaladin had to let go of his hatred of others and not allow it to determine his willingness to protect others, even those who arguably didn't deserve his protection, like Elhokar. "I will protect even those I hate, even if the one I hate most is myself." - Teft had to let go of his self-hatred, which was spiraling him downwards into self-pity, self-rejection, and self-torment. He had to be able to look outwards and focus on protecting those who need protection, notwithstanding his own failings. "I will protect those who hurt me." - Huio had to look past the way in which his cousin aggravates him. We get a small sense of how annoyed he gets by Lopen in this story. Can you imagine having to live with Lopen? For your whole life? There's probably a lot of hurt there that Lopen didn't necessarily mean, but it sounds like it was enough to be an obstacle for Huio to overcome to reject his emotional wounds in order to protect. "I will protect others from myself." - Again, it's the self that's getting in the way. Lopen wants to protect but his own personality, the one he's chosen, is getting between him and that ideal. In each of these, the primary element is not hatred, or some interpretation of hatred, but an interpretation of the character's focus on the self, and the need to set aside that self-centeredness in order to fulfill the Ideal. That Kaladin and Teft's interpretations of it deal with hatred is not endemic to the Third Ideal itself, but are instead manifestations of their strongly hateful character arcs at that point in time. The point is to give up the self.

I am not certain that Vasher/Zahel's theory of Cognitive Shadows is entirely correct... In Mistborn, Secret History, we see "There's always another secret..."

Don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but this is linking to last week's discussion

Right, it's also easily attributable to the 'Rule of Cool,' which is also viable. Sanderson's penchant for having connections in places make me a little paranoid on that front, haha. Thanks for the input.

I finished rereading Warbreaker last week, and it struck me this evening: named Shardblades have very Returned-style names. Maybe it's just a coincidence--maybe you can't read too much into it; after all, Brandon has confirmed that there has been hundreds if not thousands of years of cultural trade between Roshar and Nalthis; this could just be cultural happenstance in the same way that shash is a shared linguistic trait between the two worlds. But here are some names of the Returned: Lightsong, Blushweaver, Allmother, Peacegiver, Strifelover, and of course, Warbreaker. Here are some names of (named) Shardblades: Firestorm, Sunraiser, Oathbringer. I don't count Mayalaran because that's her spren name, in the same way that Sylphrena is the name of Kaladin's spren; not sure what to make of spren names. But really--where do Shardblade names come from? They seem to have a similar naming tradition as the Returned: two-part words, often involving a verb. Sunraiser and Oathbringer both fit that bill. Is there a connection? Or is it happenstance?

Good call on the Re-Shephir. I wonder if the Midnight Mother fled because 1) she knew she could be captured by someone like Shallan, or 2) when she and Shallan connected, Re-Shephir saw the truth of Shallan that Shallan is hiding from herself... and was terrified? Or even both? What is Shallan still hiding?

Good clarification. By "Prime" I meant original, but I get your point. Veil certainly seems to have taken over as the prime personality. (I have to wonder how Adolin feels about that development--or if he's even aware...) I suspect that the unspoken truth Shallan is hiding is going to complicate these issues quite a bit. Shallan seemed terrified of the prospect of confronting that truth. What could be so much hairier than admitting to killing your own parents?

In Chapter 2, we see Shallan have a tussle with her other selves. The thing is, her other selves don't think of Shallan as, well, Shallan. Or Shallan Prime, or anything like that. The Shallan from the first couple of books--the artist, the quiet girl of House Davar, Jasnah's ward, Adolin's betrothed--is treated by them as just another personality, as insubstantial as Veil or Radiant. Just another face to wear. So that gets me thinking: is it possible that the Shallan we know is just another face to wear? As evidenced by Chapter 2, there are deeper truths that Shallan still hasn't admitted to herself. There's something dangerous lurking there, deep beneath the surface. Is it possible that there really is another Shallan--a Shallan Prime, as it were, the original Shallan--a fourth personality who developed artistic Shallan as a defense mechanism? How do we know that we don't have a Typhoid Mary on our hands here?

My understanding of the balance of power between the Fused and the Radiants is that, even without access to Surges, the Fused would come back again, and again, and again. Kill your enemy a dozen times--if he just keeps coming back in a different body, how do you defeat that? Any Radiant dying is irreplaceable except through the slow development of a new Nahel bond. Any Fused dying just means that it gets sent back to Braize, only to be reborn once more. I recall the Stormfather explaining to Dalinar that this was the reason for the Oathpact and the creation of the Heralds--to try to balance the scales and even the odds. To give Radiants a recurring, reincarnating team of superpowered Radiants to match the might of the Fused.

Shallan is crazy. Like I mean, her multiple personalities seemed to imply in the last book. (I haven't reread that one in full yet? Bear with me.) But now, listening to Veil think of Shallan as a third person, it becomes much clearer: she isn't just assuming a different personality; she isn't just crafting a persona, or putting on a mask, or compartmentalizing herself in a useful way: Shallan is crazy. Also, when Veil mentions acknowledging the 'full truth,' and Shallan represses it, my thought: There's more???

Not to dogpile, but I think that to certain worldviews, Lirin is a coward, in much the same way that Szeth is a murderer, Dalinar is a tyrant, Kaladin is dangerous (shash brand), etc. Worldviews impact the way that people are seen. Lirin operates from a very strong moral code--one against death and violence. His entire bent is to save lives, not take them or lose them in death and battle. He doesn't care who his overlords are; he only cares about doing his job. To people who believe that war is the solution, Lirin is a coward. Lirin would not protest the Nazi regime; he would be an Oskar Schindler, trying to save lives without directly defying the system that is taking them. Lirin would not advocate for a war to save his people, because the singers are also his people--people are his people. As a surgeon, he just wants the killing to cease. To some, that is cowardice; to others, it is the highest moral courage. I don't think Brandon is going to force a particular interpretation on people.

As a note on character: Gavilar's attacks on Navani's interests feel much more poignant when you consider her self-doubts earlier in the series: Ouch, Navani. No! Don't let Gavilar's accusations get you down! I love how Brandon shows such care for the development of even his side characters.

It reads to me like Gavilar's personality has changed rather drastically in a short time beforehand... Here are a few selections: This, to me, reads like there is more going on here than just faded love. I mean sure, maybe Gavilar is just a mean man who has let power go to his head. But what with his likely visit to Braize, his meddling with Voidlight and Voidspren, and his megalomaniacal ambitions, I suspect that much like Eshonai in Words of Radiance, Gavilar here might be possessed by some sort of force from Odium. He certainly matches Eshonai's mannerisms after she went stormform. (Minus the demonic red eyes, of course.)

I'm coming off a high of the Taravangian-esque diagramming happening in the "Hidden Things in the Map of Roshar" thread. So on that note, let's look at some cool things. I looked at one of the endsheets for Way of Kings, and I found this funny little glyph (rotated): I realize that there's speculation that this endsheet relates to Cultivation and has little to do with Honor and Surgebindings, but the two diagrams align so beautifully--lines and everything--that I figure that it has to be more than that. Also, the same lady hinted at being Cultivation is also found in the Shadesmar map, and as Shadesmar definitely has to do with more than Cultivation, I don't think I'm necessarily off the mark. If you overlay the colorful diagram with the Knights Radiant diagram--especially as highlighted and labeled by an earlier user--you'll notice that this corresponding Surge is that of Cohesion, which is shared by the Stonewards and Willshapers. You'll also notice, on the glyph that I highlighted, that it has a passing resemblance to Roshar's geographic makeup. I don't know exactly what the Stonewards and Willshapers did, but they were together capable of Cohesion, Tension, and Transportation. Dalinar's visions have ordered him to "unite them," and we ended Words of Radiance with the idea that he needed to unite the Knights Radiant--their different orders. I believe that the different orders, working together, were capable of doing much more than flying through the sky, healing mortal wounds, or just generally being "awesome." I believe that they might have had a role in the creation of Roshar itself--or that the powers they eventually wielded may have been utilized in its creation. Of course, someone might come along and say "that glyph doesn't mean anything like that." Still a cool thought.

Some spoilers here (do I need to mention this?) Wait. Brandon called Nightblood HE? Not IT? Which means that Nightblood carries an actual identity. I guess this could have been derived from his chatty personality, but given what we've seen of the formation of Shardblades/Honorblades, is there a chance that Nightblood is a male cognitive form that, after being locked into his current form, has retained sentience? I'd guess that he's some form of splinter of Endowment, only to a larger degree than a Shardblade--which, as we've seen, consists of just one spren; it's the power of a thousand Breaths (Nightblood) vs a single spren (Shardblades). What is the Nightblood "spren," so to speak?

That's sort of the message I got. During the Words of Radiance Q&A, Brandon explained Isaak's influence on map creation, and he said that it depends. Scadrial's maps were apparently mostly Isaak's invention, but for Roshar, he explained, there were some very specific dimensions and elements that had to be included. I figured that meant that the correlation between the Roshar/Shadesmar inversion was no accident, which led me to believe that other Shardworlds had the same thing going for them... You get the picture.

I'm confused about the alignment of the map. The black and white map offers a compass point looking normal--due north. This is odd because the climate apparent in the colored physical map does not align with the north/south alignment indicated by the compass. The Frostlands are at the bottom-right corner. Isn't it strange that the lands directly west of the Frostlands--but on the same assumed latitude--are brown, instead of whitish gray? That they are more temperate, in spite of their same approximate distance from the assumed south pole? But if we ignore the compass point and twist the map clockwise just slightly, something interesting happens. The Frostlands are appropriately at the bottom of the map, reflecting an accurate climate for their location. The kingdoms of Azir, Tukar, Marat, and others are pretty arid, fitting for an equatorial location. The kingdom of Shinovar is in a temperate zone somewhere beyond the equator, and the grayish-blue of Aimia and Iri are above that, indicating a return to a colder climate. Maybe the Rosharan mapmakers have presupposed their coordinates incorrectly. Or maybe I've gone loony. Either way, does that give us something worth thinking about? Are we assuming too much? Remember what Brandon pulled on Scadrial...

I was paraphrasing when I said "in the right direction"--I don't remember the exact response, but it was something along those lines. I wouldn't take this technicality that deep.

I asked Brandon a question or two about Shadesmar and Elantris. Ben McSweeney and Isaac Stewart were also present. Me: So, I don't actually own a hardcover copy of The Way of Kings, but I did notice when looking at one that there's a map of Shadesmar... And that the map shows that Shadesmar geography is precisely aligned with Roshar's geography... So I'm just going to assume that other planets we've visited so far also have realms of Shadesmar that are aligned geographically. Brandon: That's very clever of you! (smiles) Very clever... Me: So I guess my follow-up question is: is Elantris a Dawncity? Brandon: Hmm. I could see where your reasoning could come to that conclusion, but no. No, that's not it. But your earlier extrapolations are in the right direction. Ben, Isaac: Yeah, you're in the right direction.