Elegy

Rayse is definitely gone forever. There is no cognitive shadow left when Nightblood kills someone. And if that's not enough for you, Brandon killed him off because he wasn't a threat anymore. So he's well aware that readers won't see Rayse as dangerous if he comes back:

Not sure if this directly disproves anything, but we have confirmation that Shallan's red hair is because of her Horneater heritage: If Shallan's mother is the one who she inherited the hair color from, her mother got Horneater heritage, which means that she can't be Chana, since she's from Ashyn.

I believe you all mean Shounen when you say anime? If so, then I mostly agree. But anime is all of the animation made in the nation with the most animation in the world, I believe it's physically impossible to actively dislike all of those tens of thousands of pieces of media that entails I recommend Ghibli and some Seinen stuff like Monster. There's good stuff far beyond the clichées there.

I believe this is what you're looking for: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/the-ten-orders-of-knights-radiant/#truthwatcher

There's a lot of ambiguity regarding what Trell is and was due to WOBs like this: So it's possible that Trell started out as an Autonomy thing, was then hijacked by Whimsy and then regained by Autonomy or Odium. That might be the case, even with the WOBs quoted in this thread making it pretty much clear that Whimsy is not Trell right now. (All that said, I personally feel like Brandon has mainly written that to artificially obscure how obviously it's Autonomy at this rate )

I could argue with you over this, but that would miss the point - because this was originally a discussion about whether or not a spren life is of value; there was a list of reasons why that would be the case, there was one reason why it wouldn't, and that one was based on an immensely uncertain premise (that being the difference between human and spren "Beyond soul"). That tangent about the universe doesn't do anything for or agalnst your original argument, because no matter its result, the statement that "spren lack a soul" (as a differentiator from humans) remains baseless either way. So that's why I don't find arguing on about this particular thing helpful at all, in this case. I think we should instead focus on more possible reasons why spren lives would be of no value, because the one reason mentioned didn't really work in my opinion

For those who wonder where the two POVs information comes from, it's here. He says that it's sort of half-half. But we also have confirmation that Cytonic will focus on Spensa's journey. Which means that the other POV character would have to be one that also helps continue Spensa's story specifically. (And especially since FM, Alanik and Jorgen are confirmed novella POVs, those almost certainly won't have significant Cytonic POV sections anyway.) That leaves mostly Starsight characters, like Cuna and Brade. The most probable one is M-Bot since he left right with her, but for that to work, him and Spensa would have to be separated or something like that, so they both go different paths and see different things, so that making both have POVs makes sense.

First off, with this, you only answer to one of two complaints I had, the "maybe humans have no soul" one. You ignore the "maybe spren have a soul" one. Second, feelings of living beings are facts. Negative feelings have to be prevented if possible, because it feels bad to have them. I don't see why we need anything outside of that for humans to have good reason to place value on those lives and feelings, necessarily.

That's not a good point because we don't even know if it's true. First off, who says that spren don't go to the Beyond? We know nothing about the Beyond and never will, so we also don't know what makes a Beyond soul. Which means that there's nothing that indicates that sentience alone isn't enough for a being to have a Beyond soul. Spren might as well have one. And on the other hand, since, as I said, we don't know anything about the Beyond, it might just be nothingness anyway; humans might just vanish when they die. If there is no Beyond, neither is there a Beyond soul. Which means, not only don't we know if spren dont have a Beyond soul, we also do not know if humans do have one. Both premises of the statement are actually assumptions about things we don't know (and will never know). Therefore, this is no basis to make statements about the value of lives.

We have confirmation on the main characters of all three novellas on the weekly update!

Note that these are all things that aren't crucial for the stories themselves yet, it's background stuff that Brandon doesn't see as important enough to include in the books yet. We know these things in advance via Words of Brandon, but however much discourse on this site suggests, these things are not standard Sanderson reader knowledge (yet). So don't worry about it. (And even thaz WOB information has a lot of holes.) If the Trell theories are correct, maybe the next Mistborn book will delve into some of this and make it general knowledge. On a side-note, keep in mind that Brandon originally wrote White Sand before figuring out most of the Cosmere stuff (same with Elantris), so there's a reason why its Cosmere-centric aspects are that far in the background.

The Traveller is not really canon, but its first paragraph indicates white trees on Yolen, so I guess the branch wouldn't need to be anything else. Given that Yolen seems to be hard to reach, having a normal Yolish branch on display is probably already flexing

That's a rude oversimplification. First off, Wax himself does not like the nobles, like, at all. He liked being in the Roughs, away from the Elendel Basin. A huge part of his character in Alloy of Law is based on his comtempt for society and politics there. You make it sound like Wax thinks the Basin as good and righteous, when that is explicitly not the case, at all. And there is change in the society over the course in the story, partly because of Wax' actions. Claude Aradel is the first non-noble leader in Northern Scadrial since over 1300 years, and that happens at the end of Shadows of Self. Things are changing, and the story makes sure that the reader understands that these changes are good and necessary. So I think it's unfair to make it seem like Wax fights for the status quo and we should cheer for that. It's evidently not the case. I have a lot of problems with Era 2, and that's not one of them.

Well, if this is an Elsecaller oath, then what would the Truthwatcher oaths sound like? After all, their motto in the Knights Radiance Quiz is literally "I will seek truth". Good job anyway! Putting together list of guess oaths like this is always quite the venture.

I think this is a good observation, but I am very skeptical for a lot of reasons. One of them being that Moash has fallen so deep in Rhythm of War, it's literally impossible to redeem him over a few days (which will apparently be book five's story's duration). Another one being his aforementioned refusal to deal with it. He explicitly states that he is not sorry for killing Teft, he just isn't, even outside Odium's influence. That's not a foundation for a redemption arc, in any way. But other reasons (that I haven't seen cited as often) why I think a thorough, complete redemption arc is basically impossible to pull off tastefully are this: 1) Elhokar was in the middle of a sort of a redemption arc himself, from egoistic and incompetent king to someone who actually tried to do better. And then the possiblity of him completing that arc was destroyed as Moash murdered him. If Moash got the very thing that he violently took from Elhokar, that would feel very cynical, very inappropriate, and ill-advised, I guess. 2) This regards Moash's other murder of a main character, and it's a quote from Chapter 104, Teft's very last words: "You can kill me, but you can't have what I have. You can never have it. Because I die knowing I'm loved." (Italics are transcribed from the book) And it would be strange if Moash got that very thing, when Teft's big moment, his big last stand to Moash consisted of telling him that he wouldn't have it. I think it's hard to pull off a Moash redemption arc without making these two (very emotional) moments feel awkward and wrong. It might be possible in some way, but hell, I believe that's more work than a single pre-time skip Stormlight book can offer a non-major character.

There's that (absolutely genius, in my opinion) comic writer Don Rosa who worked for Disney (Scrooge McDuck was his main focus) for decades and then retired some time ago due to several reasons, one of them being the way Disney treats artists. Which is why this made me think of him. He has written a bit about it >here<, and the way they've been treating comic artists for ages now is even more ridiculous than the aforementioned Star Wars thing. I haven't looked deep enough into this case to have a strong opinion on it in particular, so I'll leave it at that for the most part. But I do find it very important that people - especially people with a large audience like Johansson - point out things like this. A bit more awareness for the topic might open the way for changes in the system, one can hope.

I don't think it's ambiguous. First off, the meaning of what she says doesn't change depending on whether she means the arrival of the Shards to the planets or the Shattering, since humans on both Scadrial and Roshar do not predate any of the two. Now to the three points: 1. She refers to Scadrial when she uses the term "place" - and Scadrial is a planet, so it wouldn't make much sense for her to mean anything else other than planets when referring to further "places" in this context. 2. Well, she doesn't talk about who was created by whom, she's only making a statement about whether or not humans there predated the arrival of the Shards. Which is the case for both Scadrial and Roshar, so yes, she would conflate it and she would be right about it. 3. Yes, that's what it implied, and that's not improbable at all. Yolen was the first planet to have humans, but that doesn't mean all humans originated from there (in fact we know that at least some of them don't). There is no need for an exodus from Yolen to other world - in fact, we don't know if anything like that ever happened. - Furthermore, the best proof of all this being the case is this very statement of Khriss that you seem to be mainly questioning on the basis of its implications being huge. So I don't think there's two ways about it. That said, I would agree that the phrasing is unnecessarily vague, which is kind of a theme of those Arcanum Unbounded essays - Brandon wanted to give information while not giving too much away, all the while still writing from the perspective of someone who knows much more than the reader, and that balancing act leads to stuff like that, and I'm the first to admit that it can be frustrating.

Thing is, some of these WOBs predate that Peter comment while some of them were after it. So if Peter got Brandon to remember Hoid's appearance in the story, he forgot it again. Or he changed his mind in the meantime and decided that it wasn't Hoid after all, despite initially writing him into it. Anyway, at this point, it seems more likely that Peter was the one who was mistaking, since we have only one confirmation of his position, while Brandon had the chance to correct himself if he was wrong, but didn't. You're right though, it is very confusing.

Not in the near future. Brandon planned a sequel for it and wrote a single chapter, which lead to him noticing that a continuation of the story would contain major spoilers for future Cosmere works. So he still plans to write it some day, but wants to have other things out of the way first. It will take a while. There is, however, a reading of the aforementioned first chapter of Sixth of the Dusk 2 at the Rhythm of War release event. Be aware though that there's some distant future Cosmere stuff going on in there - in case you don't want to know anything about that era yet. (Also, be aware that stuff about this reading has to be spoiler-tagged even on the Rhythm of War boards). It's also first draft, so there's some minor continuity errors with the original story.

Well, to be clear, they weren't created by Honor and Cultivation, but that's not what Khriss is saying - in the Scadrial essay, she writes that life on those two worlds doesn't "predate" the Shards. ("It is one of only two places in the cosmere where humankind does not predate the arrival of Shards.") And since humans arrived on Roshar when Honor and Cultivation were already there, they don't. I should have expressed that more clearly

We know what the second world is: Roshar. Which means that every other world that Khriss is aware of seems to have had human life before the Shattering, including Nalthis. Which, in turn, leads me to believe that what he meant was the inherent Investiture that every Nalthian has from birth, granted by Endowment, but because Endowment gave it to them, not because she created them.

Her way to stability is basically her arc in the front five, so I don't see that as a problem for the time between the pentalogies, which would be the time when she's a mother. My bigger worry is that it would probably be cheesy if book 5 ends with it. Like, she just overcame all of her huge psychological problems, poof pregnant. It would feel very convenient, I imagine. But I guess that's a matter of how it's communicated. This is the perfect scenario in my opinion: No mention of it in the story, the book ends without further notice, and then the ketek at the end is annotated as being dedicated to the birth of Shallan's and Adolin's son/daughter/twins - end of the front five.

Two WOBs: The flower is almost certainly a Tear of Edgli from Nalthis, the silver knife is probably from Threnody. Not sure about the rest.

Most of those that you mentioned aren't really gut decisions as I personally would define them. In the case of Thaidakar and TOdium, both options had been floating around in his head for a long time and he had a lot of time to consider them. So they were well thought-out, albeit he hadn't completely decided yet if he wanted to go with them until pretty late in the game. Not gut decisions as far as I see it, although I could see why you would disagree.They were good calls though, no doubt. Also, agreed with the Kaladin vs. Szeth thing, it bothers me soo much. What I mean are things like Alloy of Law having a cliffhanger as a planned one-book story, which certainly played a part in it becoming a four book series that he took 10+ more years to finish. Or some of the things that he did under immense time constraints, like the title Cytonic (like, imagine a Mistborn book with the title Allomantic, ugh). While I think Brandon excells at making good decisions when he really sits down and thinks them through, I have noticed that things that he makes up on the fly don't really vibe with me a lot of the time.

Would be weird if it didn't happen ... Elhokar is dead, Renarin is homosexual, Jasnah it's safe to say sure doesn't have any interest in having children. Gavinor is the heir to the throne of Alethkar, but Dalinar is not king of Alethkar, but king of Urithiru. So he basically still needs an heir. As said before, I'm sure Adolin and Shallan are probably well aware of that, and there's nothing that suggests that they are fundamentally opposed to it. So, I would expect mother Shallan in the back five. Maybe the child was conceived in Lasting Integrity. Which would be ... interesting foreshadowing for, say, someone who will eventually spend a lot of time in Shadesmar. (I hope they have a daughter and call her Evi.)