Elegy

The names of Tanavast and Rayse haven't appeared on Roshar though, so by that standard, I kinda doubt there's a Cremilla in the cosmere. But it's an interesting idea! Yes, but he has since confirmed that it's not her: I personally like to think that Reya's Tear is Ashyn (since it's bright and Ashyn is close to Roshar) and Reya was a queen/an important person that lead the people to Roshar.

Don't do it Brandon, they will find a way to ruin it. Anyway, I'm only half joking, but on a more serious note, I'm very skeptical. You'd think that someone who writes good books would also write good screenplays, but that's not necessarily the way it works. They're very different mediums and I'm not convinced that Brandon's way of writing translates well from one to the other. After all, adapting one of his fantasy epics to a Graphic Novel didn't work well either. I'm certainly not the one to question his work division decisions, but I'd rather have him work on something else.

It's mostly a formatting thing of the Elantris novel (similar to how there's going to be 10 Stormlight books etc) that originally made me think this. From the Coppermind Elantris trivia section: Then, as you mentioned, the three continents/three empires, but also the Aons usually having three phonemes, which also makes all those important words work in a similar way, like Dor, Aon, Sel itself. Then a few reasons that are admittedly rather esoteric,, like the Dor acting as the "third" thing that was a result of Devotion and Dominion mixing, rather than what happened to Preservation and Ruin, which are still not fully combined. I'm sure I overlooked an important one, but I can't seem to remember . . . Anyway, "very dominant", as I phrased it, is admittedly a stretch, but it's present, especially considering that Brandon went such great lengths to make the whole book 3-based.

So, in the last weeks, two interesting informations surfaced regarding the Reckoners multiverse, and since I haven't seen people talk about them, I thought I might just share them. It’s been confirmed from the get-go that Apocalypse Guard would take place in the Reckoners multiverse. Now, it has been uncertain for some time whether or not Apocalypse Guard would actually ever be released, since Brandon had a bunch of problems with it. Even after getting Dan Wells on board, he still wasn’t sure about it. So the story that was meant to expand on the multiverse was almost scrapped. Also, Snapshot, which was originally intended as taking place in one Core Possibility (the only one besides the Reckoners series up to that point), was pulled out of the continuity for film rights reasons. So the multiverse as a project seemed to have come to a halt, and I always thought that him writing Skyward as a new big YA project was meant to make up for that. Then this WOB surfaced: So, albeit momentarily uncertain and non-canon, there is a connection between Skyward and Reckoners, which would be elaborated on in Apocalypse Guard? That would make Skyward part of the multiverse. Then there was also the reading with Dan Wells in February, with Brandon stressing that they will get Apocalypse Guard released eventually. Dan Wells’ went on to read the beginning of the first chapter (which has now been reworked). And, behold, this chapter features another hint on something else a few paragraphs in, which I will leave to you to hear for yourselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfd5zIA0SYU&t=1940s In case you missed the connection/don't know what I'm talking about: So: Brandon seems to be confident about Apocalypse Guard eventually being released, and if he manages to keep these things in there during the process, the multiverse will be very alive and breathing at last - much moreso than I would have thought! Actually, this seems to be heading towards insane "Canon Wielding" with it. Who knows which other works he will combine? Peter once suggested that Alcatraz would also be a contender for a Core Possibility. This raises some questions: With Apocalypse Guard apparently connecting a whole bunch of Brandon’s non-Cosmere works, will the forums adopt to that in any way? Will there be a “Multiverse” section along with the already existing “Cosmere” section, and then a third, "Other Works" section instead of the current "Non-Cosmere Works" section? I kinda fear the multiverse will give this forum’s (and, in some ways, the Coppermind's) structure a hard time in the future.

Isaac mentioned in one of the Livestreams that he chose the five petals for the Nalthis symbol deliberately because the number 5 is of significance. Brandon sat there just going on signing and didn't show much of a reaction. It's not certain, but lets say it's highly likely. Regarding Autonomy, the number 1 isn't only not confirmed, I think it's the most unlikely number of all, since "oneness" is the furthest from the diversity which seems to be Autonomy's theme. 8 is much more present in White Sand, but I like the thought that it's actually 2 (and multiples), based on the two sides of Taldain, the general theme of division going on with Autonomy in the cosmere (into avatars and such), stuff like that. It's just a guess though. Sel has a very dominant theme based around the number 3. It should also be added that it's not clear whether the number is a result of the Shard's influence, the planet or a combination of both: The number 10 is commonly associated with Honor in the fandom, but there's really no reason why all the worlds in the system would adapt Honor's number instead of Cultivation's. I think 10 is just the number of the system (bar Braize) beinh influenced by these two Shards, not of one Shard or the other.

As long as you read each individual series in the right order, everything is good! One of the defining things about the Cosmere at the moment is all the stories standing well on their own. There are some things that reappear throughout the whole thing, but they are subtle for the most part, and even if they aren't, you don't have to know where they are from to understand what's happening, and they don't spoil important plot points/reveals. I don't think there's a reading order that wouldn't have you go back and think "oh, so that's where that came from" at one point or another. So you could say, there is no wrong order, and there is, in a way, no right order either, because things will go unnoticed no matter what, it's more of a question which ones. So, as things stand now, every series can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story!

But the chart is more than that - after all, it comes to conclusions. It doesn't just list "Freedom" for Windrunners and "Law" for Skybreakers, it takes the next step and adds them together as "Society". So yes, it is more complex than aesthetic/feel/gestalt, because due to these conclusions, it presents itself as a theory that tries to sort the Order into a system. And those are conclusions that you couldn't make based on fanart, association, aesthetic, etc. And maybe it's true and it's not meant as that, but due to those conclusions, the chart sure does a good job at making it hard to believe that it isn't. So I feel it's just common-sense to try to understand the reasoning behind these conclusions and criticizing them if they seem to lack reasoning. And I don't think all these particular conclusions in the chart hold up well because of the things I have mentioned above. But I don't want to seem like I dislike the chart or anything - as I said, I support looking into the Double Eye more and I think it's a good step in that regard.

Yeah, but Division is officially the Surge of Decay, and Progression is officially the Surge of Regrowth. So that's rather nit-picky, in my opinion. Well, my main problem is that I don't fully understand what you're going for with the second colored circle from outside, because the terms in there don't follow a system, they seem kinda abitrary. It doesn't seem convincing to me that the Windrunners are Freedom in the same way that Skybreakers are Law and Edgedancers are Growth (because one is an association, one is a Divine Attribute and one is an ability), but they'd have to be those things in the same way to make the bigger schemes (like Society, Individual etc) seem logical. What I'm trying to say is, in order to make that larger system make sense, the components that create that system should follow the same rules. Because Decay and Creativity are not really comparable in what they mean for the respective Order. That would be Bravery and Creativity, or Decay and Light/Illumination. I think to represent the feel of an Order best, it would make more sense to have two circles, one for the first Atttibute and one for the first Surge they learn (which is always the one next to them anti-clockwise) - so one concept and one ability per Order. Does that make sense?

Neat concept! That said, I don't think it works out that well honestly, mostly because you picked the things that fit the system and just left out the ones that didn't. Although I can see that Truthwatchers and Bondsmiths might have some special position, but for the former, that's speculative. Most of the time you go with the respective Order's first Divine Attribute (law for Skybreakers, creativity for Lightweavers, logic instead of wisdom for Elsecallers being questionable since they're different concepts, but they're related, so fair enough). Then in two cases you just use one of the two Surges (Decay for the Dustbringers and Re-/Growth for the Edgedancers), which I feel doesn't really do the trick because both Surges are used by one other Order (Decay by Skybreakers and Growth by Truthwatchers), so they are not specific to these and don't work that well to define/categorize them. Then, Freedom for Windrunners, I understand that people who "run the wind" seem free, but so do the Skybreakers, and the ideals of the Windrunners are concerned with other things than freedom. So I what I mean is you're comparing very different aspects (partly ideals, partly Surges) of the Orders while putting these aspects in the same system, so that system is inconsistent. That said, I do think that the Eye certainly holds a lot of potential, and I'm sure there are things to unpack there. I think this is a step in the right direction.

I've slowly overcome the most recent phase of excessively listening to The Cure and finally feel animated to delve into other things again. Now listening to The Future Sound of London, and the Metroid Prime vibes are strong with the Lifeforms album. Nice! Didn't expect that name to be mentioned on here. He's awesome.

It was after she visited the Nightwatcher. Wyndle was assigned to her because she of her having been changed by Cultivation, as Wyndle said at the beginnig of the Lift interlude:

The first divine attribute is wisdom, and to me it seems like Honor isn't necessarily very interested in wisdom (just in being honorable), while things like the thriving for knowledge seem to be Cultivation's thing. That's also because the one Elsecaller we know, Jasnah, has very many personality traits that I would see as more typical for Cultivation - after all, she's a scholar -, while she is very far from a traditionalist (in contrast to Dalinar for example), which would be more of a typical Honor trait. Of course, one person isn't much to go by and it doesn't have to overlap, but then again, personality traits obviously influence whether a spren takes interest in a person, so it's definitely worth something. That said, the questioner in the WOB I quoted above had the same opinion as you. There doesn't seem to be a consensus. But it fits better than the others in my opinion. Would you take the Willshapers as a fifth Cultivation Order instead?

In my opinion, the primary Divine Attributes make more sense as a reflection of what the respective Order represents. There seems to be a pattern like this: first attribute/what a person has to be to attract a respective radiantspren --> second attribute/what a person has to become along the way to the fifth ideal. Shallan for example has been extraordinarily "creative" from the get-go (the Lightweaver's first attribute), but she - despite being among the furthest along her Radiant path - is still very far from being "honest" (the second attribute). Given that only few Radiants seem to ever reach the fifth ideal, most of the Knights would presumably never be able to properly represent the second attribute - only the very best among them, as shows with the Skybreakers (all of them are "lawful" in one way or another, but only Nale is "confident"). So to me, the second attribute seems like an ideal of what the people that are naturally geared towards the first attribute would have to strive for in order to maintain a balance. Again, the Lightweavers are a good example for this: Being creative is the thing that enables them to eventually use the Surge of Illumination, but with such an ability, it's easy to lose sight of reality (which is happening to Shallan), so that's why there are the truths - you could say, to direct them to a path that allows them to grow. I would phrase it like this: The first attribute is their nature, and the second attribute is their duty. So when it comes down to choosing which of them better represents, well, the "nature" of an Order, rather than what they are eventually shaped to do, it's going to be the first one. That's how it makes sense to me, at least.

Yeah, I agree (although i don't remember that Mistborn character having a comparanle reaction), but it's still a tad weird that such an imprint would say something like "I forgive you". That and the Geranid interlude make it seem like something unusual might be happening. That said, I don't really believe that Elhokar is hanging out in the Spiritial Realm, just that an argument could be made that there is something irregular going on there - which the original post seems to assume, but noone seemed to understand where they were coming from. (That said, I just noticed that the original post also mentions Damnation, which is Braize and not the afterlife and only the Heralds and the Fused go there when they die, and even those don't anymore.)

The Radiants are of Cultivation as well as Honor, so I like to think of them as 5 Honor Orders (the upper 5) and 5 Cultivation Orders (the lower 5). I even like to think of each Order representing a fifth of the respective Shard, but that's admittedly a rabbit hole.

I also think this is the most logical explanation, but Szeth already heard the screaming in his Words of Radiance interlude, before he died and was reborn. Dalinar also started hearing the voices immediately after the mass murder, long before his Bondsmith times. They only went away after his interaction with Cultivation, and came back as soon as the memories returned. We haven't seen something like this happening outside of Roshar, but then again, no other viewpoint character in the Cosmere has ever been responsible for as many deaths as these two. I'm kinda divided on what I think it is.

I think what the original post is assuming is the afterlife on Roshar working differently from the rest of the cosmere. There are slight hints for this in the existence of the screaming voices that Szeth and Dalinar hear: After all, there seems to be a very short interaction of Evi with Dalinar just after the "You cannot have my pain" scene in Oathbringer, which is very baffling, considering that there has never been an interaction between people in the Beyond and people in the physical realm ever, and Brandon has made very clear that even the existence of the Beyond will never be confirmed. So that's weird. It's also weird that in the Geranid interlude in Way of Kings, they talk about the Spiritual Realm as if it was the Tranquiline Halls, so the place they go when they die. That said: On a side-note, we know of at least one person who has gone to the Beyond despite dying while being on Roshar: So, there seems to be something weird to be going on on Roshar, but if that's the case it has to be pretty complicated. There has to be a reason why Evi seems to not have left for the Beyond entirely after dying but Eshonai did, and I don't think we know enough to be able to guess how that could work. But it is weird.

There's so many, I can't even hope to gather them all. But the TenSoon twist is probably the most ingenious "Whodunit" twist I've ever read. I spent the whole book thinking Brandon wouldn't be able to surprise me since the group of suspects was so small, so I thought he either had to go for an obvious choice or cheat his way out, but damnation. What a boss. Then the finale of Hero of Ages has two of my favorites. The obvious one is the reveal who the Hero of Ages actually is, which is brilliant not primarily because it's unexpected, but because it utilizes something that has been present since book 1 (the ancient Scadrian religions) in such a meaningful and beautiful way. I also love how it works as kind of a thematical summary of the Cosmere series yet. It's all about different perspectives - that seems to be the most all-encompassing theme in these books. And having someone reforge a whole world based on all the different perspectives on what that world once was, from different people who valued different things, is just a beautiful, beautiful thing. The other one is the atium misting thing, which completely blew my mind. I think it's one of the best examples of a well-done fantasy twist. There's just no way you could do something like that outside of fantasy. I think that's both the challenge and the opportunity of the genre: You can establish whole new sets of rules, which is a blessing, but you also have to make them plausible and make them work without them seeming convinient, because then that's lazy and cheating. This is just an amazing example of how to do it right, because of how amazing the build-up is: You know of mistings, you know of atium, you know of snapping, and the Deepness being dangerous has also been established long before. But you never connect all these things up until that moment, and from one page to the other you have basically an army of the most powerful mistings possible, that's just - man, I loved how that played out. The big Shadows of Self twist also deserves a mention. I predicted it in the middle of the book and still urgently wanted it to happen (which, in my opinion, is a sign that this twist is the right decision for its story). Then it happened and I was still surprised by how strong it felt. It's another proof that predicting a twist doesn't have to ruin it. Now, these are all Mistborn, and I'll go ahead and say that Mistborn has probably had more brain-twisting reveals than Stormlight yet, while Stormlight has better character development, and there's more surprising decisions rather than surprising revelations in there, if that makes sense. That said, the identity of Odium's champion was something that really got to me just because of how devastating it felt at that particular moment.

Yep, it's Wyndle. To remove any sort of doubt:

There are 9 secret societies on Roshar (which fits 9 being symbolical of dubious and dangerous things in SA): And we know most of them: So we have to do the counting. There's the Diagram, the Ghostbloods, the Sons of Honor, the Skybreakers. We have also seen activity from the Ire and the 17th Shard, so I guess they count since they are "currently working" there. We don't know for sure what became of the Envisagers (the cult that Teft's parents were part of), and maybe Shinovar has one that keeps the honorblades. As mentioned before, Nale is in charge of the Skybreakers, so that is one herald. Taravangian is the Diagram's boss. We don't know who's the head of the Sons of Honor, but since it was their goal to bring the heralds back, it would be very weird if it was one of those. The Cosmere-aware organizations (Ghostbloods, Ire, 17th Shard) can be ruled out for reasions explained above. That leaves 3 more. I wouldn't be surprised if there was one more among them.

I loved Twilight Princess when it came out, but it has aged rather badly in places and it's also hard to deny that it's rough around the edges. It has left its impact on me though, there's a fair share of nostalgia involved in it for me, and the Twilight World sequences (especially the sound effects and music) have largely shaped how I imagine Shadesmar's vibe in the Cosmere. The Wind Waker has aged much better though, it's still just stunning and just a well-rounded game all around. I respect Breath of the Wild immensely, but I never really got into it, mostly because I loathe the shrines. They never feel like anything, and I never really feel like I accomplished much when I finished one. I hope they don't do that again. My personal "underdog favorite" is Minish Cap. It's short, but the mechanics are great and it's probably the most gorgeous GBA game I played. I love the look. Much better than the "trying to look 3 dimensional" look of the DS entries. The Link's Awakening remake deserves a shout-out at this place because of how absolutely beautiful the designs are. (Although the dungeons are admittedly very weak. It has a lovely setting though!) So yeah, I'll round it off here to keep the comment on the short side. It's probably my favorite game series along with Metroid and Smash Bros!

It does not necessarily have to happen, since future sight in the cosmere is a very unreliable thing. It's only something that the Sleepless see as a future possibility that's likely enough for them to phrase ìt as "will" instead of "could". Still, they don't know for sure, they just can't. The text alludes to Szeth, Kaladin, Shallan and Dalinar before, so it has to be "one of" those. Szeth would have been a possibility, but his arc has moved him away from destroying things. As for Kaladin and Shallan, I don't see a lot possibilities of how one of them would destroy "them", regardless of who exactly is meant with that. However, we've already seen Dalinar on the verge of destroying a lot of things (most probably including the Sleepless). For all we know, there was only a fraction of a chance that Dalinar wouldn't become Odium's champion. So it's plausible that this is what they saw - the very same thing that Renarin saw.

Shadows for Silence is before Stormlight but after Warbreaker: That means it's during the ~200 years before Stormlight, the Evil started a hundred years before the events of the story. So it probably occured some time between Mistborn Era 1 and Warbreaker. @OT: I had a similar idea once and it seems very plausible to me. The only thing that makes it a tad unlikely is meta reasons: The explanation of an essential world-building element of Threnody would be closely related to a world-building element of a whole different world of a whole different story (especially since I suspect that we will see more of the Ire in the Elantris sequels). It doesn't seem that much like how the Cosmere worked in the past. But apart from that, I like the thought that the Ire scenes in Secret History are kind of a foreshadowing to the origins of the Evil. If Brandon worked differently, I would probably call it one of the more likely theories about it.

And the title is now officially Rhythm of War!

He has played Zelda games - he mentions that the first one was one of the first he ever played here. (He also talks about his gaming experience in general in there.) It has certainly influenced him to some degree, although I don't know if he played Link's Awakening.