Fanghur Rahl

Thankfully, I’m pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of them are poes. At least the ones you see ‘debating’ the subject online. That said, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that people will have figured out the shape of Roshar; it actually doesn’t require any kind of advanced technology to do so. If nothing else, scholars like Jasnah would know. Plus, considering that Roshar is supposedly only about 70% the size of Earth (or at least only 70% as massive), Windrunners and Skybreakers probably could see the planet’s curvature by lashing themselves high enough.

Hmm, well I can say one thing, you would have been just as clear if you said that you hated football because the baskets are too high for you to reach second base and score a goal-in-one with. I assume you’re trying to impersonate a Cryptic here? lol.

The leader of the Ardents; always highly satisfying to see a zealot get slapped with a healthy dose of reality.

I believe the technical term for the kind of thing fabrials are is "magitech".

‘Fanghur Rahl’ is a combination of the flying, dragon-like creatures from Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle (Fanghur) and the family name of the main hero of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series (Richard Rahl), two of my all-time favourite fantasy series. And yes, it’s pretty much my go-to user name for anything on the Internet.

Jasnah as Aptitude (assuming that's one of the five remaining unknown Shards), Adolin as Devotion (if only for ironic reasons), Dilaf as Odium, Sadeas as Dominion, Kelsier as Ambition, Dalinar as Honour, and Shallan as Endowment owing to her tendency to always think of others over herself.

The problem with this is that actors who fit that requirement are pretty scarce. The reason that I think that Manu Bennett would be great in the role of Dalinar is that while he may technically be Caucasian, his skin is dark enough that he doesn’t really look it, and also because in terms of his appearance, he pretty much matches Dalinar to a tee, in everything from skin tone, hair colour, facial hair, build, etc. Not to mention the fact that he thrives in similar roles in other series like Allanon in Shanara Chronicles. Bautista may have the right skin tone, but pretty much every other thing about him, especially his build, could not be more off. Dalinar is explicitly stated as being in great shape but hardly what one would call a professional weight lifter; Bautista is like 350 lbs, half of which is pure muscle. That’s why I had a major “WTF?!?!?!?!” reaction when I heard that Sanderson sees him as Dalinar.

Well, in that story, there’s no literal sense in which God actually died; it was all just a convoluted show. But that’s a can of worms best left sealed, at least on this forum.

I think a pretty good alternative to ‘Ingenuity’ that more or less embodies the same or at least similar attributes would be ‘Aptitude’.

Honestly, I can’t picture that in anyway whatsoever. My reaction when I first heard that was literally “WTF?!?!?!”

Honestly, I don't really think that's a good motive. It's basically equivalent to the way that Greg Bear in the Halo Forerunner novels handwaved away the absurdity of the Forerunners being able to somehow exterminate the infinitely more powerful Precursors by saying that "They were powerful but naive, and merely revelled in awe at the brutality of their creations as they were being exterminated" (paraphrased). I think the parallel with Adonalsium here is pretty striking to be honest, since you basically have a transcendent, nigh-omnipotent power being effectively destroyed by what were presumably its creations. It just seems like a really lame way of explaining how, essentially, monkeys rose up and eradicated modern humanity with sticks and stones. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but I think there must be more to it than that.

Maybe something vaguely reminiscent of pandeism?

If this has already been done and pinned, please feel free to move this discussion to its appropriate place. I've now read the whole Stormlight Archive series currently published, and I can't help but think how amazing it could potentially be if made into either a film or better yet a high-budget series. Who does everyone think would be good to play the various characters? In my opinion, Manu Bennett would be hands down the best actor to play Dalinar. And I think Matt Smith would make a pretty good Wit/Hoid, and Aidan Gillen as Sadeas, but I'm not sure about the rest. I kind of think the guy who played Ander in the Shannara Chronicles would make a decent Adolin, and I generally picture Kaladin as being a younger Craig Horner.

I don't know if it's a metal or not, but I do suspect that Adonalsium in and of itself is NOT a God or even a being, anymore than its Shards are. I don't know exactly what the correct word would be for the Shards sans a holder, but regardless, I think that the unShattered Adonalsium would have likely needed a Holder as well. The question would just be: who or what was the original Holder of Adonalsium, whatever it was?

Perhaps. I guess we don’t really have enough details to know for sure one way or another.

Maybe, although the Preservation implies that Ruin had been the way he was pretty much from day one. Otherwise, Fuzz wouldn’t have even needed his elaborate plan to keep Ruin locked up for a couple millennia. Or at least, he’d have had a few billion years to work out a more permanent solution to the ‘problem’ before the star went nova and Ruin came out to destroy. That’s the only real problem I have with the “Ati started good but was corrupted into Ruin” scenario; it doesn’t seem consistent with what we know about the Scadrial System’s history.

Although I admit, @Calderis has a really interesting take on how it might have happened. I don't personally think it's sufficient, but it's certainly something to think about.

I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic here or not, but just to clarify, what I said was that if Ati had interpreted Ruin the way he probably should have given his supposedly kind nature (which as I said earlier probably would have resulted, along with Sazed, in basically a carbon copy of Death from Supernatural), then the resulting Ruin would have made for a pretty lousy villain, since he wouldn't be a villain at all. I don't think Ruin was a bad villain. I just think his backstory was very badly thought out by the author; if Ati was stipulated to have been a terrible person like Rayse, then the sadistic, omnicidal maniac Ruin would have made sense. But unfortunately, Sanderson had to choose between having a villainous Ruin with a completely unrealistic backstory and not having a villainous Ruin at all, since there really isn't any way to have both, at least not without changing the intent of the Shard to something like 'Wanton Destruction' or the like, but that would pretty much make it an evil Shard by definition.

Well he’s basically reifying various abstract concepts into little-g gods, so it’s not surprising it gets a little, shall we say, ‘abstract’. lol.

To be clear though, when I refer to ‘Shards’ (as in ‘one of the evil Shards’, for example), unless I specifically state otherwise, I’m most likely referring to the Holder + the actual piece of Adonalsium’s power. Not merely the piece itself.

Ah, in that case thank you for correcting me. I had been under the impression that AonDor was of Devotion while Dahkor was of Dominion (who became known as Jaddeth). In my defence, it is a pretty easy mistake to make considering that AonDor certainly seems more about devotion while Dahkor seems more about dominion. Maybe while both systems contain a mixture of both, AonDor is predominantly or skewed toward Devotion while Dahkor is predominantly or skewed toward Dominion? True, but I still say that Ruin could have plausibly been an order of magnitude less 'malevolent' than it actually turned out to be whilst still remaining true to the intent of its Shard. Admittedly, it wouldn't have made much of a villain then, but still.

I have to disagree with you here. By any meaningful definition of the term, Odium is certainly evil insofar as what people generally mean by that term, as was Ruin, and if its magic system is anything to judge by, probably Dominion as well. The fact that they can't help but be the way they are is not relevant, because ultimately the same holds true for literally every person alive; no one chooses to have been born with the brain of a psychopath for example. So we can certainly meaningfully attach the 'evil' label to Shards like Odium and Ruin who routinely and thoughtlessly inflict vast suffering without sufficient justification by the standards of those they oppress. Or if they aren't 'evil', then no one is either as the term is effectively rendered meaningless. Fair enough, I actually hadn't considered that part. Though I still think it would be a bit extreme for the Autonomy shard to deal with the breach in the manner typically ascribed to her. But again, that's just my personal opinion. I could very well be mistaken. Maybe, although by that definition Odium and Ruin could also probably be thought of as 'Chaos' as well. Odium certainly causes enough of that. This is actually something I think is either false, or if it is true then in my opinion it qualifies as a pretty significant internal inconsistency on Sanderson's part because of the way that Ruin turned out. If it really is true that the holder of a Shard interprets the expression of the Shard according to their own ideals, and assuming that Hoid was correct that before the Ascension Ati was a kind, generous and moral man, then I can't see any realistic way that he would have interpreted what is by his own words the Shard of 'endings' the way he did. When I think of how someone like Ati would have interpreted that Shard, I ultimately arrive at something similar to Death from Supernatural. Ruin from the Mistborn trilogy is what I would have expected someone like Rayse to have become if he acquired Ruin. So it seems to me that either the 'Ruin' Shard is actually more like 'Wanton Destruction', or else the ability of a Shardholder to interpret the expression of their Shard is extremely limited at best. I agree with most of what you said here, though I think if the concept of the Shards as being effectively nigh-omnipotent embodiments of certain abstract concepts is to have any actual applicability at all, there has to be at least SOME limitations on the degree in which the Shards can 'stray' from their attributes. You may be right that Autonomy is sufficiently nebulous to allow for such meddling, but you have to admit that if nothing else it is certainly an interesting topic of debate. Other Shards like Honour are much less nebulous.

The problem with suggesting that it’s Autonomy in my opinion is that nothing about her Shard’s nature would seem to suggest that she would be one of the evil Shards; if anything it would seem to suggest that she would be the equivalent of a freedom fighter or something like that (or at worst, the Ayn Rand of the Shards). I don’t really see how a Shard whose nature is to value and embody freedom and individuality could justify attacking planets; it just doesn’t seem consistent with its nature at all. Personally, I suspect that Sanderson is probably setting Autonomy up as a red herring and the true threat is from some other as-yet unknown Shard, perhaps Envy or Chaos. But that’s just my personal opinion.

Totally.