Pagerunner

It's not about practical issues related to gathering votes - it's whether or not the states are individual political entities. Does Pennsylvania have the same priorities as Kansas, or Washington State? It would be more representative of social issues, but I'm not sure that it would be the best indicator of economic opinions. Cities, which is where the vote is very lopsided towards Democratic candidates, have the mayors who can guide legislation pertinent to their cities' economic states (like minimum-wage policies). Rural areas are more affected by governors, which might be why the governorships are overwhelmingly Republican. The economic priorities of the nation need to be aggregated from the states', and the current system lets larger states have more of a say without dominating the smaller states. For me personally, national economic issues (how much my taxes or insurance premiums rise) are an order of magnitude smaller than the increase in my property taxes this year, which is a locally driven issue. There's a case to be made that certain regional economic issues, the loss of manufacturing jobs, are the defining issue for Trump's supporters, and social issues (even traditional Republic ones, like abortion and gay marriage) have taken a back seat for both sides, including the so-named "Reagan Democrats" in the Rust Belt. Our government does have a role in many arenas, including social, economic, and international causes. Which one is the government's most important responsibility is obviously a much larger question, but the Electoral College is more tuned to balancing an economic coalition of states, rather than an arbiter of social values.

In engineering, when we want to determine why an undesired event occurred and ensure it doesn't happen again, we use a methodology called Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to approach the situation to make sure we understand exactly why it happens so we don't wind up with a misdiagnosis. In this specific case, if the Electoral College had functioned differently (by not existing), Hillary Clinton would have won. This is a fact. But, as talking heads everywhere are gnashing their teeth and updating their resumes, the root cause appears to be more of a messaging issue. Trump's methodology fired up turnout from his base at levels the pollsters didn't anticipate, while Obama's turnout methods didn't work as well for Hillary and her base as they did when the Democratic party utilized those techniques in previous elections. The case for the Electoral College is right there in the name of our country - it's plural, the "United States." Individuals don't elect the President, states elect the President. Some states this year felt extremely strongly that Hillary should be president; many more were not as confident, but chose Trump. Two-thirds of the group kinda want to eat at Burger King, but the other third adamantly support going to McDonalds. (Please feel free to judge these hypothetical entities based on their culinary choices. Gary Johnson can be that new sushi place that we're never going to try.) The system is designed to balance geographical diversity, causing a candidate to get buy-in from all over the country, rather than just pile-driving a few select, populous areas. In this case, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for Hillary. But campaigning would look much different if we didn't have this system in place, and the disenfranchised voters who flocked to Trump (whether or not that's the right decision for them) would most likely have still existed, possibly in even greater numbers. It reminds me of when sports fans complain about bad officiating after their team loses. The response from the other team's fans (and even from more levelheaded members of their own crowd), invariably, comes back as: "If you want to guarantee a win, you have to play well enough that a few bad calls here and there won't tank the whole game." Hillary came up lacking all over the eastern seaboard and midwest, and lost 7 (seven!) important swing states to Trump; don't blame it on the refs!

More of the same sentiment, from President Obama. Emphasis mine.

I think @Krandacth was referring to how spren will be an opposite yet complementary personality. I haven't seen any WoB's on that; it's just a theory of yours, right?

Probably the best thing I've read today, from Nate Silver: This campaign didn't change the people of this country. The people who voted in Donald Trump, they've already been here. You've already lived with them, worked with them, been friends with them. They're not orcs hiding in the mountains, waiting for a time when they can come down and conquer. America hasn't changed overnight, and politics isn't a war of good-guys-vs-bad-guys. A 'bad' election does not signal the end of a country. The first election I voted in, 2008, I voted R (I think I did, at least... they tried to combine me and my twin brother and only let one of us vote), but the Democrats swept the Presidency, House, and Senate. There was serious doom-and-gloom from the right-leaning pundits. Eight years later, there have been some major Democratic victories (Obamacare, gay marriage), but it's not the super-socialist wasteland that was some peoples' worst fears. Same for Trump; there will be some results, most likely in economics and international affairs, that many on the left won't like, but it's not the end of America, the end of democracy. It's not heralding the rise of racism and sexism as acceptable and encouraged behavior. The country is robust. We survived eight years of pie-in-the-sky commie Barack Obama. We survived eight years of frat-boy know-nothing George W. Bush. We survived eight years of the lying sex-maniac Bill Clinton. We survived twelve years of economic-illiterate Ronald Reagan and his elitist out-of-touch successor, George Bush Sr. We'll be able to handle the egotistical idiot racist that is Donald Trump. (For those to whom it isn't abundantly obvious, I'm facetiously referring to each candidate by the worst views the opposition had of them.)

Here you go.

They're deep secrets, so don't feel bad about missing them. Brandon has been very generous with answering questions at signings and over the internet, so people have been able to slowly piece together information. A lot of Brandon's comments on the subject of Heralds have been compiled here, and there are many more categories with other topics that he's spoken on. It's a real treasure-trove of information, and I've wasted way too much time reading through it. A big kickoff for the Herald search was one of Brandon's comments that there are more Heralds in Way of Kings than we would expect. So, people started turning over rocks, and found Shallash as a possible candidate, which Brandon later confirmed. After the release of Words of Radiance, we could identify Nale (IIRC, he was name-dropped at the end), and there are many more unconfirmed theories as to what background characters might be more than they appear. They started out as theories, and were confirmed by WoB (Word of Brandon) later.

The arrangement of the circles actually matches up with the KR orders, not the Surges.

I can't answer all your questions; Brandon has RAFOd whether Honorblades are splinters and what happens to the Heralds when they leave and return. But One of the Heralds did go back and retrieve their Honorblade; this was mostly likely Nale. Also, Brandon said the Shin have 'historically held' the Honorblades, so they most likely picked them up after the Heralds abandoned them (or maybe the Heralds abandoned them in Shinovar in the first place). Brandon has said that the Heralds will play a major role in the second half of the story, with two of them (Taln and Ash) getting flashback books. So, I expect a lot of your questions, and the specifics behind them, will go unanswered until that point. Unfortunately.

I don't think it's been anywhere in-universe. It looks like an out-of-universe stylization of the Surgebinding Chart, with swords behind the lines. It might be a Knights Radiant symbol, since they use Shardblades. I haven't heard anything special behind the five swords; just that there are five cross-diagram connecting lines.

Welcome to the Shard! It's a great question, but I'm worried that you might have opened it up a little too wide when you added "In any way." Brandon will stretch questions like that, and he's admitted it, especially the kind when someone asks "Is there any connection between X and Y." So, it's hard to draw conclusions on what specifically it could mean for Bavadin to have been involved. It could be anything from "Hoid was trying to stop Odium, but he was busy with Autonomy regarding a completely separate issue, so Hoid couldn't stop him and Odium shattered the other two Shards," down to "Autonomy and Odium tag-teamed the Selish Shards."

Here's Brandon's latest comments on the question. As for Shallan, he has not actively written her as bisexual, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on Pattern's gender from that.

Can you please confirm? Warbreaker and Alloy were originally set around the same time, several hundred years before Way of Kings, but Alloy moved out past Way of Kings because of a timeline conflict. I haven't heard the 20 years number before. (Sources: [1] [2] [3])

No, that sounds about right, although I'm not convinced it's reverse compounding. There was a ton of magical ability stored in the Bands, and Wax could tap it at a greater than 1x pull rate (the strength of ten grinches, plus two), so that's how he could get so strong. It's similar to how Vin and the Inquisitors could pierce copperclouds; they had multiple peoples' worth of Bronze abilities, so they were stronger in those metals than they had any right to be. It's worth noting that the power doesn't come from the metal itself - metal is a key that unlocks power to come directly from Preservation. So, yes, stronger people can get more out of the same amount of metal, but it's not like their bodies are better Allomatic juicers (yech). Burning metal is like turning a handle, but the Allomancer's strength is the size of the door. I'm not sure that's a hack, in the same way compounding is a hack. That's a way to strengthen Allomancy using Feruchemy; compounding is combining part of Allomancy (the source of power, coming from Preservation) with part of Feruchemy (the manifestations of power, normally drawn from power you've stored from your own self). I'd expect reverse compounding would follow that same pattern, letting you somehow take Feruchemical stores and manifest them as Allomantic power. It might accomplish a similar effect, letting you power Allomancy with far more than you usually can, but it would be a different mechanism than either Feruchemical Nicrosil or traditional Hemalurgy. But a good thought!

I know this is a sensitive subject, and I'm not terribly well-versed in either the cosmere implications or the real-life terminology (I didn't come up with this theory, and I'll try and track down later where I first saw it), but I'll try and tactfully give this a crack. Alcoholism can cause permanent physiological effects to an individual, such that people will call themselves "recovering alcoholics" 20 years after they've taken their last drink, because if they start drinking again they will be right back to where they were when they quit. Dalinar's cracks in his spirit could have been opened and widened up until Gavilar's death. Even though he has stopped drinking, the cracks are still there, just under no pressure to widen. That's where the Stormfather can latch on to. I think they diagnosed Shallan with PTSD. Not sure how the timeline worked out; it's been a while since I've read WoR, and Shallan hasn't ever been my favorite character to begin with, but I think they said it started from abuse, not from the death of her mother, since she already had a bond by then. We haven't gotten the in-depth looks at Ym or Lift that we have for the other Radiants we've seen. I don't recall any proposals about them or their diagnoses, but the cracks in the spirit web aren't the singular defining trait of the characters. I agree that the Divine Attributes are what attract a spren, but I'm suggesting that cracks in the Spiritweb come from the conditions they are experiencing, which allows the bond to form. Kaladin isn't primarily defined by his depression, he's defined by being a leader and a protector. Same way for other Radiants or potential Radiants - whatever is causing the cracks, it doesn't need to be at the forefront of their personalities, it just needs to give a spren somewhere to latch on to. Ashyn, another world in the system, has physical illnesses granting powers. The sicker you are, the stronger the powers. Similar concept - the more broken an individual is, the more cracks there are in the spiritweb, and the stronger the spren bond can be to the individual. Those with more severe issues, like Kaladin and Renarin, can become stronger Radiants. He's spoken elsewhere about the traditional views of normal/abnormal, and how he's trying to present a spectrum of characters when it comes to neurotypes, without necessarily explicitly defining the characters in the text as "So-and-so has XYZ." This would be a behind-the-scenes integration. Mental illness is a theme of the Stormlight Archive. Brandon's original proposal for the Oathshards says the series centers on ten angelic beings, each driven insane in a different way. I think it fits thematically for the main characters to be experiencing various forms of neuroatypical conditions. Specifically for Renarin and Kaladin, I've heard a lot of love from the fans for their portrayals, so I think Brandon can do this in a way that isn't insulting or demeaning to those in real life. It's a nuanced subject, one I personally don't have experience with, and something that Brandon has done a lot of research on, so I hope I was able to do this view justice. Again, I'll try and track down where I originally saw it - I'm sure it was phrased much more eloquently there. EDIT: Here's the original theory. It proposes that Shallan struggles with dissociation, Lift has ADHD, and that YM was another example of addiction. The thread gets derailed pretty quick about Adolin, but there's some interesting conversation in there.

Have you read Sixth of the Dusk yet? Just in case you haven't, I'll put it in spoilers.

So, the explanation I've heard for 'brokenness' in terms of Radiants is more along the lines of mental illness; Kaladin has depression, Renarin is on the autism spectrum, Dalinar is an alcoholic, things like that. I haven't paid a ton of attention to that facet, so I won't try and diagnose the remaining Radiants right here, but I think that's more of the mechanism, not just bad experiences that they've managed to overcome.

I'm not disagreeing with anything you say; there are a lot of possibilities, given the vague info we have on Odium's abilities and motivations and the state of the cosmere in general. I, personally, don't think that Odium is the one attacking Scadrial. But, I don't think it's because he wouldn't pick Harmony for his next target; I lean more towards the metatextual approach, that Stormlight is supposed to be more self-contained while Mistborn and Dragonsteel will deal with the larger cosmere. But in the conversation in this thread (which, granted, has been all over the place), there was a suggestion that OP's suggestion (Trell is Odium) wouldn't make sense for Odium to go right for Harmony after he got free from Roshar, which I do not think is a valid argument. I didn't see anyone else answering this, so, hey, better late than never. A careful textual analysis of the story shows that the specifics are actually a little vaguer than you say. Hell is referred to as a continent, yes, but Homeland is never confirmed as being on the same planet. They have ships (think of Lastport, the major settlement), but the specifics of how they escaped Homeland and reached Hell aren't ever gone into. Brandon has said the world was modeled on the American Pilgrims, which is why the natural assumption is that they're just crossing an ocean, but he has never said that they crossed the ocean by ship. The few concrete references in the text do not eliminate the possibility of the Forescouts actually being worldhoppers, not merely sailors.

Well, that is two YA books, one graphic novel adaptation, and a book with only two new novellas. So, the actual word count isn't that much. Compare that to the one-year period in late 2009 to early 2010; Brandon published a Wheel of Time novel and the Way of Kings. Even with the work that Robert Jordan had done, I find that to be a much more impressive feat.

The man does a lot of interviews and answers a lot of questions; I'm sure he can't remember which ones he's RAFOd before and which ones he's answered. This happened with Cultivation a few years back; he gave an early answer that she was alive, and then gave a lot of RAFOs after that. Same with her name, actually - there's one interview right after WoK was published, where someone asks about Cultivation, and Brandon asked them where they got that name from. He had forgotten he had put it in the book! So, I'd just chalk it up to him being human.

Odium isn't picking up any additional Shards. Harmony is a relatively young Vessel; the longer Odium waits, the stronger he gets. Either fight the twins now, or fight them next year after they spend a summer working on their uncle's farm. (The analogy breaks down at some point, but if Odium is behind the events of SoS and BoM, then he can't wait around; he needs to face down Harmony sooner or later. He can't just avoid him.)

Maybe this is only news to me, I just noticed that crandonsanderson.com has an extensive FAQ section. A lot of questions are lifted straight from the Theoryland database, but I figured I'd check and see if I could find any new stuff, and, hey, what do you know? Confirmation of SSFH's place in the timeline. It's after Warbreaker.

The [Arcanum Unbounded Spoilers] tag that has been appended to topics makes the title too long; I can't see what the topic is about on the forum homepage. [Arcanum Spoilers] or [AU Spoilers] might be a better tag. Agree on the policy, though. Exactly what I was thinking.

Ooh, now I see what you're asking. That's actually a great question. Based on way we've seen individuals observe the Physical Realm from Shadesmar, it shouldn't be possible to ascertain astronomical information (like the star's habitable zone). How did Khriss acquire that knowledge? Let me speculate. Maybe other astronomical bodies do exist in Shadesmar, but as objects, not as subastrals. (For example, there might be three spheres in Roshar's subastral that match the three moons). To get complicated information out of them, Khriss might have a technique or device that can let her interface better than what we've seen so far. It's also possible that there's non-sentient life on these planets. Human life in the cosmere at large isn't natural; three planets in the same system with human civilization? And dozens of other human-inhabited planets? Maybe whatever is seeding humans on these planets also placed non-human, non-sentient life, tailored to the specific planets' circumstances? That could produce subastrals, even though there wouldn't be any intelligence?

You can observe the Physical Realm from Shadesmar, even if you can't travel there or influence it. We see Shallan do that to a small extent in Words of Radiance. Secret History Spoilers: So, they can watch, they can learn, they can observe, but they can't cross over and directly ask any questions without a Shardpool. No trade, no worldhopping, just the equivalent of a really precise telescope.