Ripheus23

If there was a rationally discernible way for a new Herald and his proto-Stormmother spren companion to restart a highstorm system, I'm sure Jasnah could discern it in advance. With five books of events that would lead up to the confrontation, I'm sure they could find a motive for it on that preceding basis. Maybe Dalinar's strategy doesn't pay off so well. Maybe Jasnah makes a way for future Rosharan interstellar shenanigans. I'm not predicting the confrontation on direct reasons but because if the back half is symmetrical with the front half, then it would make sense in Jasnah's book to have a reprise of her scene arguing about theism and atheism in Kharbranth, only this time in Spiritual Kharbranth (and which is a reprise of Jasnah's failed argument with Taravangian besides). I mean, trying to get Retribution to mutate into Redemption could be like Jasnah herself trying to redeem herself. If she can argue the Shard into a new Intent, this would be a deed that would make amends for her own wrongdoing (supposing that Redemption would do good where Retribution is willing to do evil, even if it doesn't at the time view its wrongdoing as evil).

I'm assuming Kal and Syl will restore the highstorm as of/around the same time. But I don't see that there'd be no reason for her to argue with Taravangian again, it would be a reprise of her failed argument in W&T. That's a good enough reason for me...

In a flickering of the words between the worlds of the ages, he held both books, hand by hand, and with the knowledge of all their pages. [One was The Way of Kings. The other was A Theory of Justice.] What Dalinar had done to open his gate-to-on-high, here was done in a way more sly... Not winged spheres of glory to his side, not even a flickering in the stasis of his light. But yet another book, deeply of old, from God's providence had been given, and said at one time: So more like the lumen naturale of a geometer much later, a quizzical man who played a meditator In a dialogue with himself, as a thought that truly existed: As eternal as everything, besides some Creator: That's what "glowed" around some man. Glowed from his abstract crown down through the gauntlets of his hands. He found a path, a fellow spirit to tell. "Tell what?" you ask? Why, one right through Hell And Heaven too, and any other such place Said to dwell in its own place beyond space. Not the one imagined from the legends of old, no. These were visions from the will, not lone immortal souls. Not a plan, more a hunger, a fell ring of fire Made of a demon-god, a mountainous writhing pyre, "Apollyon" by one name, "Apophis" the Egyptians once said; "the Typhon" Greek stories shuddered, "the Jade Emperor's foe" the Chinese bled. At its heart burned an abyss of a city. One ever aflame, undead and unremitting. But even in that darksome glistening There were others, maybe many others, closely listening. Wherefrom had come the man of the truest book? The one about justice on Earth, which the whole world shook? Why had he written his fair tome, His lyrical prose like a philosopher's gloaming? From the foundations of eternity, to the simplest act of faith: He saw through shadows of sin to a pure heart ablaze. What had he inspired in the years since Apollyon's last great stride? What had he offered his readers to write? So from however afar, he walked below that sun. A labyrinth of knowing he'd never yet won. Now in the ring of the other legends too, The man in the other's future curfew Smiled the True Name of the Truth of All Truths, The majesty of reason, the key to one proof. [And to quote from elsewhere once more: ... and allowing that a fuller such quote is an exercise left to the reader...] For beyond all other promises was shining forth this: the vow of the ages, A path through darkest risk. There was a pattern to any history, and he knew but a few of these. But that would have to do for now, for anyone's surcease. He saw a thousand shadows of wars, The blood of a thousand lost horses And mountains and oceans and forests of trees. An altar unknown, a sacrificed grave, A place where a dark debt had been mightily paid, And just in time, too, or else the infinite rain Of an infinite Storm the whole world would waylay. [Concluding note: the solution to this problem was given to me in a dream (Ramanujan). Cf. ZFC set theory + "there exists an abominable cardinal".]

@Immortal Platypus I would say that, given what we know of the Wind, there should be an expectation that Adonalsium was good-hearted and that if Jasnah counts as monstrous for the stated reasons, then Tanner counts as monstrous too (for not just helping murder a probably good-hearted being but for betraying BAM, etc.). But then I guess I've lost track (if I ever was on it) of the point of arguing that we can reasonably apply the description "monstrous" to Jasnah. Are we trying to convince people who like the character that they should dislike her? But some people like a character on the metanarrative level while disliking them on the narrative level. And as even a lapsed Christian, I don't have the heart to hate on Jasnah for her monstrosities when I view even Kaladin as monstrous betimes. For me, the saying I lean on is from Miyazaki's graphic novels: If you divide the whole world into friends and enemies, you end up destroying everything. Hoping that Jasnah is punished if she doesn't otherwise make amends (if she hasn't already!) would be playing into Retribution's mindset, something I'm not willing to do even on the metanarrative level (I think the will to punishment is second only to the will to destruction as a wicked motive).

Isn't there some info out there about how Adonalsium didn't fight back when being ripped apart? And Cultivation doesn't say, "Ado was threatening to kill us specifically," or, "Ado was threatening to kill everyone," but, "We didn't want to be strict monotheists," or something along that line. So, cool motive, still murder.

I thought you were saying, "Cool motive, still murder," though

The sense behind calling someone, anyone, a monster would have to be finely parsed for this to be more than polemical. Using a vague definition, I could similarly classify Taravangian as a monster, not because his abstract motives were seemingly as reprehensible as Jasnah's but because regardless of his motives, his actions are so horrible that they put to shame whatever ideology he cooked up to justify them. I could view Szeth as a monster for agreeing to become a merciless mass murderer for the sake of obeying a ridiculous protocol involving people having a random rock in their possession. I could look at Tanavast as a monster for his role in murdering Adonalsium and imprisoning Ba-Ado-Mishram. I could view Kaladin as at least suspicious because he went along with the terrible evil of killing the listener soldiers who were protecting their homeland, and on the base (cowardly) motive of "just wanting to stay alive." (If only more soldiers in the real world would disobey orders when commanded to help with an invasion of another nation!) If Sanderson has not intended to write entities like Ruin and Retribution as "gods of evil" in a naive fantasy-trope sense, I wonder that he would intend to write e.g. Jasnah as a "monster"? Or would it be more as one flawed person amid a myriad of flawed persons? He's a non-aggressive Christian (to some extent), so I don't know that he would tend to separate people into "these are good enough" and "these are bad enough" categories generally. But, to be fair, if one is committed to a worked-out theory of morality allowing for such categorizations, and if the specifics single out e.g. Jasnah more than Taravangian (or both, but relative to somewhat different applied rubrics; or whatever else along these lines), it might be reasonable to describe Jasnah using the word "monster."

If Adolin were gay then it would stand to sideways narrative reason that Renarin would be straight and up with Shallan, so Adolin would have to be with Rlain. If we're going off fan shipping protocols, Kaladin is a/the go-to option, but we need the singer-human relationship factor to arise at some point, so I still don't see that this direction would be the most narrative-effective one to go down.

On this list of WoBs returned for ["Aona" "Skai"] I didn't find one that specified their relationship. Also, my own memory was that I read somewhere that they were mother/daughter, so my memory is askew... Also the trivia sections for Aona and Skai are not revealing on this count. So at this point I'm just making a guess based on thematic intuition.

Oooh, what if Aona and Skai are mother and daughter and that would have Spiritual relevance to having Jasnah working directly with Navani in a process here? Sanderson could have them experimenting on some piece of the Dor, not the full Shards at all (if he has some restriction on bringing more other Shards into the Archive proper), so like a positive mirror of the tragic Raboniel situation (on both its levels).

AKA The Horses and Their Two Riders? Anyway... A major background condition is that ultimate/cosmic evil can't manifest as a fully unified evil god-monster. So there are the ur-abomination and the ur-destroyer, at odds, the latter hunting the other across the universe. Volume One (or book one or whatever) would be about how the abomination is hiding in a specific star system. It would divide itself into two pieces and manipulate two people into "holding on to" those pieces over volume/book/w/e one. But by the end, the Ancreatus (some would call it) would find the Malessium(?) and would start performing the cosmic Ritual of Discreation to try to destroy what it self-lyingly believes to be the one true greatest evil, its lone eternal prey. The Malessium would then open a transplanar gate to escape, dragging two large sections of the star system with it, into the Dark Anfract, a cosmic maze where the threshold of Hell itself shifts from corridor's end to corridor's end as the other aspects of the maze, along with the Ancreatus itself, hound the abomination down its infernal way. (Sidebar: there are roughly two planes, the transcendent and the immanent ones so-called. The Anfract in fact occupies otherwise disconnected sectors of both planes.) ---- I would guesstimate that the story could be sufficiently resolved in only two (long) books/volumes although first-half details and second-half outcomes elude me so far. Four major POVS seem like they might be enough but I think a decent smattering (10 or so?) of interlude POVs might be enough to "flesh out" the sociological world-building in-text. Addendum: ran the above by two LLMs, and maybe I'm a sore writer but they don't seem to "get it." Their suggestions aren't awful but I think that they don't have a deep enough "feeling" for where I would want to go with the above. Secondary addendum: a different, but similar in many ways, series idea I had would have had two large entries first and last, two smaller entries wedged between those. So say 1250 pgs. roughly per entries one and four, just 250 pgs. roughly per entries two and three. Then 3K pages overall, small enough font + margins-mostly-used up. Maybe that would be enough space for it. I mean, I would like to have some world-building-for-its-own-sake underneath the thematics.

Are you from Kansas? I mean if there's a huge narrative implied in the background it would be ironic and cool at once that another epic saga has direct or indirect Kansan themes (Oz, Dean/Sam Winchester, Superman).

I wonder what Jasnah will think of Adonalsium when/if she ever becomes more familiar with its history. Her atheism might survive in a philosophical sense as "no God Beyond as far as she's concerned" but "maybe a God Within" will become her go-to sentiment in this regard.

I don't think Jasnah accepting that in the cosmere, her atheism is seriously flawed, would be "burning down her character." She needs to grow, she even knows that she has this need after what happened with Thaylenah. We'd also be talking about a scene near the end of the entire latter half of the planned Archive. I also don't see that it would have to be a "hug it out" moment. In The Neverending Story 2, Bastian wishes that Xayide had a heart. Does she gain a heart and apologize and so on and everyone dances off to Care-a-lot? No, she sheds a single tear and it kills her and her whole army of Nothingness-monsters. But I myself wouldn't find it unpalatable if Retribution did Redeem himself. When I was a Christian, I was a universalist even about demons, even about Satan. As a non-Christian, I see no one as so evil, not even world-torturing monsters, that they might not make amends if given the appropriate chances. (Nor did I imply that this would be easy for Taravangian, here, at any rate: by saying that he might have to absorb a fragment of Devotion to reach this state, I also said that he would have to go through the trouble of either absorbing part of Dominion along with Devotion, in the Dor, or somehow separating a Devotion-fragment from the Dor while perhaps desiring instead to absorb only a Dominion-fragment.) EDIT: I mean, if you want Retribution to go out with a bang, consider this possibility: Navani and Jasnah, the arch-believer and the arch-unbeliever, mother and daughter, confront Taravangian and somehow maneuver him into absorbing part of Devotion. But unlike how Warlight resulted from Voidlight and Stormlight, when Gracelight (or whatever we'd call it) fuses with Voidlight/Warlight, it has explosive consequences that shred a huge chunk of Retribution's substance, killing him or weakening him for a coup de grace(!). Would that be a nifty outcome?

Assuming locale and/or metanarrative symmetry lands Jasnah in a final showdown-debate in Spiritual Kharbranth, with Retribution, at the end of the second half of the Archive, should she abandon her atheism and confess that a di-Shard is sufficiently close to being a "true deity" and so, rather than try to convince Taravangian that he's not truly divine, she should argue that he ought to change his Intent from Retribution to Redemption? Or would that be too difficult without, say, trying to force him to pick up a major fragment of Aona's Shard? (I think that it would be interesting if Retribution sought to absorb major fragments of all the other Shards whose Vessels were killed by Rayse, or at least he'd go after the more "evil-coded" Shard-fragments, but he'd arguably have a quite delicate time trying to disentangle Aona's factor from Skai's in the Dor.)