Pagerunner

Source. Much has been theorized about this possible connection, but I think it is just a false positive. It makes sense to me that Shards in conflict would give rise to religions with brother-gods who are jealous of one another. EDIT: Oh, and welcome to the Shard, by the way! Always nice to have another theorizer in the mix!

Nice job beating me to this! I tried this before preview chapters, and I obviously had less luck. I had been looking for ley lines; maybe you could try marking the Oathgates on the WoR map? It has some lines going out from the compass that are almost certainly not significant, but which I wanted to check. One other thing. One of the Interludes mentions the "isle of Akinah," so I think the city and its Oathgate isn't on the main Aimian island, but one of the smaller ones. If that helps at all.

Can you clarify where you believe the Divine Attributes originate? Are they inherent aspects of Honor (and/or maybe Cultivation)? Or are the Heralds themselves the actual origin of the attributes, and that they are only associated with the Honor because his Heralds displayed them?

All three of those seem like great questions, although the third might be straying into RAFO-territory. And don't worry about the fandom as a whole. (What a bunch of nerds!) If you ask something you're interested in, you're a lot more likely to get Brandon in an actual dialogue, where he'll start offering up information beyond the scope of the original question.

What topics do you find the most interesting? What are your favorite questions and answers that you've seen him answer? Like, cultural worldbuilding versus character development? Mistborn versus Stormlight? Plot vs magic? Writing advice vs in-universe questions? Any specific theories you hold to, that you'd like some help figuring out a way to ask about? I could always dig up a couple of questions from my personal list, or you could head over to the Ultimate List; but maybe we can find a question that you'd be more invested in (no pun intended).

I won't comment too much, other than leave two points: 1. He has caught a lot of flack for an essay about Dumbledore and homosexuality. 2. Despite Brandon being a devout Mormon, some readers have been surprised that he wasn't an atheist, due to Jasnah being a very genuine atheist character. Brandon writes people who aren't like himself. Stormlight in particular, has some very racist people, if you stop and think about it. Even if MeLaan and Marasi are 'militant feminists' of sorts (which I think is what you're perceiving), that does not necessarily mean it is the view that Brandon personally espouses.

Just commenting it in the thread should do fine. I may have made a decision not to include this one; I don't recall. I was pulling out things that would be relevant for theorizing, less about real-world stuff.

Gold Feruchemists heal their body to match their spiritual ideal. I think it is indeed the spiritual ideal of himself that Adolin is seeing as his Physical body is brought into alignment with it.

I don't think that quote has anything to do with Adolin becoming a Radiant. That is a glimpse into how Regrowth, and healing in general, is accomplished through magic. There is a 'Spiritual Ideal' of each person, who they are and who they believe themselves to be. Healing resets what has happened to them to that default, to whatever the Spiritual Ideal looks like at that time. So, Adolin's hand is broken, but his true Spiritual self doesn't have a broken hand, so the Physical changes to match the Spiritual. This is in contrast with Kaladin, who cannot heal his brands. He has taken those scars as a part of his personhood, as a part of his Spiritual self, so when he heals with Stormlight, they don't disappear. Same for Dalinar and his old scars; Stormlight won't heal them, because he is accustomed to them as part of him.

That's odd. Someone on Reddit was having a similar issue. You should get the latest newsletter when you sign up. Looks like you signed up right. Give it some time, and maybe it will come through. If it doesn't, maybe we'll need to try and get a hold of Brandon's assistant, Adam. He's on Twitter, so we can yell at him there.

@Hafrigado, how far from Houston are you, and in which direction?

They're publicizing signings for this weekend on their website, so it looks like they're already back in business.

You can make your own custom feed, which includes only the forums you want to see. It's quite simple to do, that way you can make sure you aren't getting OB spoilers you don't want to see. (I believe you can share feeds as well; I built one here that doesn't have OB spoilers, but I also exclude all the non-cosmere discussion.)

Hopefully not anymore.

Wow! This is all very cool to know, and answers a lot that I had been wondering about (like why Yenev wasn't spelled with a J). I'd been trying to approach the women's script like the Greek alphabet, where when it's mapped to an English keyboard there are some correlations that don't make sense phonetically (like Y and Ψ). But it looks like Alethi basically shares our alphabet, it just has a bit of a different history. A couple of follow-ups, if you don't mind: Does this look right for IPA sounds for modern Alethi consonants? There are several articulations that don't have their own Alethi letters (KH for /x/, KK for /q/, LH for /ɮ/, presumably NG for /ŋ/ even though I haven't found it in any Alethi words yet). And then, there are ones like /w/, which I believe is represented by a vowel. Do the Alethi have a typical way to write /ð/ or /ʒ/, for example? Or any additional sounds that are by and large unfamiliar to English speakers? I'm trying to map historical pronunciation to IPA, as well; does this look right for L and H? I'm trying to teach myself how double-articulated consonants work, but I'm not having much luck, since velar and alveolar seem to be a pretty rare combination. Or is the velarization more of a secondary articulation? Could you share IPA for the historical k/g/y/ch/j family? Eshonai thinks of Alethi as a guttural language. But it looks like, aside from the KH, Alethi isn't any more guttural than modern English. And neither is what we've seen of the Parshendi language - they've got quite a few instances of velar consonants (Narak, Klade, Gangnah). Is that KH all that makes Eshonai think that way? Or do the Parshendi actually articulate some of those consonants closer to the front of the mouth?

The Ars Arcanum is the final section in many of Brandon's books that explains the magic system. In Words of Radiance, it mentions Yolish lightweaving. Not to be confused with Arcanum Unbounded, the collection of cosmere short fiction.

No firm plans to write and publish it. According to Brandon's latest writing schedule, there is a window in spring 2018 where he plans to write a novella, which could be it, but it could be any number of planned stories, cosmere or non-cosmere. After that, he plans on going full Stormlight until Book 5 is done, with one novella between them. So, maybe a 25% chance of getting it in the next five years or so. So don't hold your breath. There might be an ancient thread on disease magic, and I think there was some discussion in the thread linked above. But since there's so little we know about it, there hasn't been too much dedicated discussion. I'd say feel free to start a thread, if you have something specific to ask or suggest.

Dataspren. Coppercloud. Shadesmar.

I spoke about a similar concept in the reaction thread, but took a slightly different tack. I agree that Shallan's inability to draw it is relates to how the area behaves in Shadesmar. Last time her drawings got screwy, she was adding in figures from Shadesmar, so I think the Cognitive Realm does affect her drawings. I don't take the surrealism as a byproduct, though, but as something intentional. I think, just like Urithiru is a fortress in the PR, it also needs to be defensible in the CR. When we learned how Shallan drew impossible architecture, my mind jumped to the movie Inception, and how they could manufacture 'optical illusions' and impossible architecture as defenses in the dream world. If Urithiru is like that in the CR, with architecture we can perceive bit that makes no physical sense, it could keep it from incursions by Voidspren. I haven't thought of a mechanism for how to accomplish such distortion yet. Maybe it does involve separating aspects of an object. Maybe it's caused by a fabrials. Maybe it was set up by an ancient spren or a Shard. There could be lots of possibilities.

If you look closely at the colors on the Silver Kingdoms map, you can see the isles all across the north of Roshar (now known as the Reshi Isles) match Rishir's color. Kurth is on an island, so it looks like it is Rishir's old Oathgates, even though it is claimed by the modern Riran nation.

Yeah, looks like a mistake, but not necessarily a big one. 'Queen regent' is historically when a child king can't rule, so his mom does. Aesudan is the queen, and she is ruling in Elhokar's stead while he's at war, so there's not really a better term that shows her responsibilities are above what they would be if Elhokar was in Kholinar. No, it's Aesudan. From the chapter:

Nothing too groundbreaking from a theorizing perspective. It was nice to see that Kaladin realized he was backsliding and stopped (although I would have still preferred he had never done it in the first place). And Adolin investigating his own crime is a fun sequence of events, although for the brief moment where we as the readers may have thought he carried out both murders sent all kinds of possibilities through my heads. But this one will be interesting. Four genders for spren, from before humans were there, is definitely an allusion to the Listeners. But I thought that spren couldn't achieve a high enough level of sentience with just the Listeners? Or is that referring to only in the Physical Realm? Shallan's inability to draw Urithiru makes me wonder what is going on in the surrounding CR. Is it fortified against spren incursion, using impossible arrangements like the movie Inception? Or maybe it's a side effect of the Oathgates? Speaking of Oathgates, our general consensus was only wrong in two areas. We were wrong about the Makabaki Oathgate; I thought for sure it would be in Sesemelax Dar, while it wound up in Azimir. And the Rishir Oathgate is a lot farther west than I thought it would be; it's not in northern Alethkar, it's in easter Rira. My suspicions for the Sela Tales and Iri ones were confirmed, although it really was pretty much a tossup for the former. All we have yet to learn is where the Shin Oathgate is.

Very interesting to see how the Surges and Essences have changed. The old Double Eye diagram makes some things clear that I hadn't quite scene, with respect to the Essences as Elements. Maybe it's just because I've played around with expanded Elemental magic systems before, but I think it's interesting the four 'traditional' elements hold the four corners, the ones adjacent to them are related the closest cardinal (Metal is a form of Stone, etc), and in the middle are two elements that are alive. It's a bit of a shame how Fire and Crystal have switched spots, and Water has been switched out for Blood. (I like things simple like that). And, obviously, Wood and Flesh have been transposed, as well. The Surges have changed drastically. Awakening! Time! Stasis! (Wait, that seems like time.) Energy! (That's a little broad, and seems like more of an element anyways.) I think I like how the concept of Surges have been refined, so they're more connected to specific forces, whether real or imagined. Unfortunately for the glyph translation effort, I don't think we can use those names to decipher the glyphs. Unless Taln and Shin are also Alethi words. (And the Windrunner pendant is referred to as the Jes glyph, so I don't think that fits with one of the Surges being Jez either.)

Legion 3 is his first break novella, which he'll be working on this September.

I hope Brandon is itching to get some more cosmere out by the time he's writing this novel (since we'll certainly be desperate for new stories), and decides to work on a cosmere story. Something meaty would be nice. Silverlight will be Secret History all over again. Threnody has been a bit of a mystery, and it was part of the original outline, so that would be neat to hopefully get some info about Ambition. And Silence Divine has been floating around for a while, as well. Any of those three, and I'd be happy. Another First of the Sun story, that wouldn't be bad; Sixth of the Dusk is my favorite short piece of Brandon's, a real classic of a sci-fi story. Just as long as we don't get Lopen the First: King of Alethkar. Is there any reason this isn't an actual poll?