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He does not explicitly call him "the Survivor". However, he does mostly-unambiguously identify him in a scene which could certainly have an implied eye-roll. So, I think you mostly remember the general information conveyed in the scene and its tone, the only thing you've mis-remembered is the wording used, he didn't use the title Survivor.

Yep, here's the more recent WoB: So it sounds like Brandon is pretty certain right now that the Kandra on Roshar is NOT an agent of Harmony. He doesn't remember why or if he previously said it was. It's been eight years since that earlier WoB. He could have changed his mind in those nine years, or it could have been that the questioner back in Salt Lake City Comic-con 2014 misunderstood the answer he got (or Brandon misunderstood the question he was being asked.)

It seems to me the sweet spot is that there should be competition and pressure to improve (such as a long-term foreign threat), but not active war. An actual ongoing war is too destructive - can't study if your laboratories get bombed, if your scientists are drafted and given rifles. A short-term threat is also not the right kind of pressure - it incentivises cannibalizing your future production for the short term. But long-term competition - "Some Other Guys" that will get ahead of "Us" if "We" don't invest in research... that's just the ticket.

I've seen a really fun theory about how the Intent required is inherently contradictory and would cause making Lerasium to be nearly impossible. Basically, the idea was that whether you get some extra Lerasium or Atium out of splitting Harmonium depends on your Intent when you do it. If you're trying to do something destructive, you get Atium (Ruin's investiture), if you're trying to preserve something, you get Lerasium. ...the problem is, the actual ACTION you have to take - causing a Trellium-Harmonium explosion - is inherently destructive. If you're intending to make an explosion, you get Atium. You only get Lerasium if you're Intending to Preserve the Harmonium - which is what Wax was doing when he made that secondary explosion! He was trying to gather the Harmonium at the back of the safebox. If that's when he actually caused the secondary trellium/harmonium explosion and created Lerasium, that weird intent would be a reason you could basically never reproduce it deliberately. If you know what you're doing and deliberately cause an explosion, you get Atium.

Brandon switches main antagonists pretty often. You could say the same about Mistborn - after Book 1 (The Final Empire), what's he gonna write about when the main antagonist (Lord Ruler) died immediately, instead of lasting the whole trilogy? ...or, after book 3, when Ruin is killed - what's Brandon gonna write about for 2-3 more eras of Mistborn, now that the main antagonist is dead? In Stormlight, well, the guy who might have been the main antagonist (Rayse) was killed at the end of book 4. What's Brandon going to write about? ...the new, bigger, stronger antagonist (Taravangian). No reason the same couldn't happen in Stormlight 5. Main antagonist (Taravangian/Odium) gets shanked, new main antagonist takes center stage and takes over for him in the back 5 books.

Ooh, now THAT'S a good idea. Ghostbloods behind everything to do with the bands - Kelsier probably has a reason to want them, and doesn't mind that he's just kicking off a global cold war over the tension.

I think that should - and does - depend on the context. It's up to the characters whether they want to explain or not. Vasher clearly did not. He doesn't care to introduce Kaladin to awakening, he just wants to test whether Kaladin still has the heart of a fighter. So he just... does things. No explanation. Moonlight, on the other hand, was giving Marasi operational control over a mission. Marasi wanted to know the magical assets she had to work with, so moonlight explained them. She did not explain everything about how they worked, just what was relevant to the mission. And I expect that it to be the same in the future. Sometimes you will get character bringing in a foreign magic system and explaining what it is they can and can't do. Sometimes you'll get a character just... doing things. It'll depend on what that character's relationship is to the PoV character and their goals. It also works from a writer perspective. Sanderson's written out how he thinks of hard magic systems in a few essays on his website. https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/. He believes it is important for a reader to understand the magic system when this magic system is going to be used to resolve problems by/for the main characters. So yes, in TLM, if Marasi's going to have Moonlight use soulstamps to get her out of trouble, then the reader needs to understand what those are. On the other hand, if the magic is used to get a main character into trouble, or if it's tangential to the plot, it's fine to leave it unexplained.

Possible!

Shallan hasn't joined them yet! The Rosharan Ghostbloods repeatedly try to get Shallan to join them by saying those things - Ghostbloods not hurting each other, sharing secrets - are benefits of membership, which Shallan is rejecting.

I'm not so sure of that. The way things are going, I think *all* Shards are going to be a negative force in the Cosmere when left alone for a while. A mortal mind that's been overpowered by a single divine Intent is going to be dangerous regardless of what that Intent is. People and societies are complicated, and a god that's driven to maximize just one single quality is going to make life worse for the world no matter what that single quality is. Yes, sometimes it might be helpful to have one Shard fight off another Shard whose danger is more immediate, but that's a stopgap measure or an alliance of convenience, even the "ally" Shard is going to become a problem sooner or later.

Those things were true during RoW, but Mraize and others were actively working to find ways around them. Maybe they succeeded.

6. Wax and Wayne took spikes from the the two Set hemalurgists they killed (not-Wax and not-Wayne) and spiked themselves. 9. Yes, timeline-wise this is after he bonded Design, and I didn't catcn any signs of her.

Seems likely that it's something to do with the war on Roshar. There IS a planet-wide war that just finished (?) there (or might be still ongoing), and the horneaters are at a spot that will become increasingly strategically valuable as the Rosharans become more cosmere-aware (a perpendicularity) so it seems very plausible that it becomes a site of conflict. So I think the "safe" guess is "the destruction of their homeland due to a big battle centered around access to the perpendicularity". I wouldn't be surprised if the real answer is a lot more interesting than that though.

I think those advantages are less than they seem. First, the bands - if it is true that they've been drained, then they're not really much value in a fight, then they're just sixteen intertwined metal strips. We don't know who drained them and why, but if they really are drained they're only an artifact and not a weapon. Technological superiority - I think the only thing the southerners really have that the northerners don't is the airships. Northerners have more advanced metallurgy, electricity, they've got warships and artillery. And with the work the Set has been doing on rockets - well, they couldn't make a rocket big enough to deliver a bomb to elendel, but if their rockets are big enough to deliver a small explosive up into the sky, well, then they can make effective enough anti-air defenses to neutralize airships. Once the Basin builds a few anti-air installations, the technological situation is at a stalemate - southern airships can't easily invade well-defended Northern artillery and AA fortifications, but nor can northerners get an army to the south because without airships of their own they can't make or defend supply lines. So I think the technological situation is actually very well set up for a cold war, which would be a fine setup for a future book.

Steris is the best!

Well, I think part of the point is that Allriandre HAS been telling him exactly what she wants from him. For years. Every single time he "visits". Wayne didn't need to go talk to her again to get her say, he already heard what she wanted, he just need to finally rusting listen.

Definitely possible! If I'm right, then unfortunately in this book we won't find out the men-of-red-and-gold plotline. W&W4 will deal with Telsin, and then Era 3 will deal with Autonomy and the men of red and gold. [Edit] (spoiler: reviewing my prediction)

Ooh, and after this chapter we know why there was a "Dual threat" of the return of ash, or of the men of red and gold. Telsin wants to conquer the place, apparently by returning the ash and destruction. But if she fails, THEN autonomy sends the "men of red and gold", whatever that is.

The answer that seems consistent with both published books and past WoBs is that the Kandra on Roshar was not there on a "long-term, official mission". Could be a Kandra there on their own accord, or could be a Kandra there for a short-term mission (where, for immortal Kandra, a few decades might count as "short"). I think it's also totally possible that Brandon changed his mind about the Kandra on Roshar. WoBs aren't real canon, the books always take precedence, and Brandon could have decided that it works better for him if the first Kandra on Roshar is sent between books 5 and 6, during MB2, rather than before. Could be good to ask. I wouldn't even call it a retcon since things not in the books should be considered not-yet-canonized.

I thought she was with the ghostbloods? (Stormlight 5 Prologue discussion)

Sweet! Sounds like I had a good guess and it fits! Where's that image from? I can 't find it online.

I think option 3 was actually what Kaladin was up to for most of book 3 and 4. He couldn't swear the fourth, and for a large part of that time was thinking "Yeah, never gonna do that, that one is beyond me". So we've had that for a while! IMO the most likely one is option 1. At the end of the day, it's "predictable" because it's the natural way for his arc to conclude, because it's a good story. At some point, yes, it IS predictable that Brandon is gonna write a satisfying story, and that's not really a bad thing! It's not like we want Sanderson to just randomly throw in things for shock value. Good twists are foreshadowed and make sense in retrospect, they're not just "LOL you thought one thing was gonna happen and I did something else just to keep you guessing!!!"

Hah! I could see that. If you combined Cytonic with the three novellas, you'd basically have a massive multi-POV epic... it would be basically in the style of Stormlight! OK, so still not as massive as that, but I could see how that would work.

I believe it's against Rayse and Bavadin. The way of kings chapter 23 epigraph, which is part of a letter from Hoid, says

I think he wants to bring someone who died back from the beyond, based on the conversation between him and Frost in The Traveler https://wob.coppermind.net/events/332/#e9518 .