Elegy

I found this thread from 2017. There's a few interesting observations in there:

He never Invested in Sel though, since he avoided that until Cultivation and Honor forced him to. Not saying it's unlikely that they were servants Odium brought along as he attacked. It was actually the other way around:

That sounds plausible. I want that soaring "DESTROY EVIL". Although I imagine that last part more like the Shard Odium (and perhaps some Unmade) being bound to some device/gemstones under Urithiru or something like that, and they will spend a lot of the years between 5 and 6 figuring out how to deal with that dangerous bunch permanently.

Hoid mentions having spent quite some time being digested in the epilogue of WOR, and Brandon also confirmed that Lift mentions him at the beginning of Edgedancer. So yes, it's him.

Why not? Only one of them (Nale) actually joined his Order, and the Heralds mostly don't have much to do with the virtues they or their Orders represent anymore anyway. Needless to say, Ash has been bringing a lot of dust lately.

As I said before, we don't know how Odium's technique of Splintering Shards works. He seems to have an advantage one on one. He also might be able to isolate the Shards and attack them one by one. Keep in mind that he didn't seem to be afraid of the team of Devotion and Dominion. Harmony, on the other hand - he can't just pull him apart, he has to deal with double the Investiture. That might be a lot harder than taking on several Shards that he can still trick and take on individually. Furthermore, there aren't necessarily six Shards remaining ... Presumably, some of those we don't know have been Splintered as well, as implied here. But my main point is, we don't know how Odium does things, and we can't really judge his approach since we don't know what he works with.

I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed the Shadesmar chapters on my re-read. I think the tension on my first read, after all the climaxes at the end of Part 3, made the calm, character-driven sequences in Part 4 kinda painful. I just wanted to know where it all went, and wasn't in the mood for the kinda meandering nature of that arc. This time around, I particularly enjoyed the Celebrant chapter, with all the little things happening at the same time at different places of the same small city. I also really enjoyed the atmosphere of those chapters, now that I was more relaxed as I went into it. The Kholinar arc, on the other hand ... I love that one, it's amazing. The atmosphere is dense, the setting full of mysteries and dangers. Also, Azure, Hoid, three Unmade at the same place. Part 3 of Oathbringer is easily one of my favorites of the whole Archive yet. I definitely don't see any flaws with Shallan's chapters in there. They're some of the best in the book, in my opinion. Kaladin, on the other hand - I can see why one would think that his arc in that particular part pales in comparison to Shallan's. She is out to find the oathgate, infiltrating the cult, which is pretty exciting. It's completely clear what she wants to achieve and why it's important, you know that it's going to be dangerous and you can see how her powers are the perfect fit for a job like that. Kaladin, on the other hand - well, he hangs around with Azure, just checking up what's up with her. And while he's at it, he might as well join the wall guard and fight some Fused. I still enjoyed his chapters a lot (might have something to do with Kaladin being my favorite character), but if there's one problem with Part 3, it's definitely his arc being kinda aimless. Shallan in Part 3 is amazing, just brilliant.

Navani has a tough job. As soon as she's in the spotlight, it's all about negotiating, or messing around with fabrials - the stuff that can be a chore to get through but will be important later on. But as soon as stuff starts going down, she's just sitting around somewhere not doing much. It's like she only gets slow scenes. That makes it hard to find her chapters rewarding. But it's not that bad. What I mentioned above about Adolin has been bugging me mostly because Adolin is always where the action is, yet still is an oddly stagnant, relatively boring character. Navani is just side character enough for that big flaw to not stick out too much. And I actually really like her personality. She had one of my favorite WOK scenes. Although, that said, I'll never get behind how she was able to fall in love with Dalinar back when he was nothing short of barbarian and insufferable. Regarding Sadeas, I actually think he's pretty well-written. Not one of the big ones, obviously, but some of his scenes, especially his talks with the Kholins at the time of the coalition in WOK, are really well-done.

Regarding that terrible Trump comparison, never compare politics and art. It's two very different things. Which is also why that should be left out of this, but I feel like it calls for pointing out that that's not a good argument. Regarding Adolin, I have some issues with his arc. The story constantly seems to push him away from responsibility. He was going to become highprince in Way of Kings, didn't happen. He was going to become king in Oathbringer, didn't happen. He was going to take responsibility for the murder of Sadeas - didn't happen (yet). Damnation, he didn't even choose his wife on his own. Jasnah had to do that for him. I'm not saying I dislike him as a character. He's great at making other characters shine, and the arcs of Kaladin, Shallan and Dalinar owe him a great deal. But his own arc has been kinda empty. That said, I could totally imagine all this being set-up for when he finally can't get away anymore and has to take responsibility. I trust Brandon as a story-teller, so I hope it will all make sense looking at it afterwards.

NOPE. Read this:

It definitely seems like a completely mad undertaking. But then again, we know he previously took on two Shards at a time in one way or another. Truth is, he wouldn't do unless he felt he had an advantage: And we just don't know what advantage that would be. Although we have a vague hint: So it's a bit too early to say that it's completely senseless, but it definitely seems ... audacious, to say the least.

I would agree that there's some correlation. Story-telling conventions have it that female characters usually fall into a limited set of categories (the damsel, the femme fatale, the action girl ...), so unusual female characters tend to stick out more. It's more unusual and therefore evokes stronger reactions. Like how Lift is generally regarded as a controversial character, while Wayne is every bit as grating, silly, unpolite etc. and is not considered as such. Now mind that I'm not in any way saying that this is necessarily a reaction to be condemned as sexist or such. That's by no means my point. It's just a reaction to story-telling conventions and how they are dealt with/averted. Conventions that were shaped by a sexist industry/society, may I say, but that's another thing. But yeah, I too feel like unusual female characters seem to have more of a tough time in general. It seems like people are more critical of them, but if so, 20 more years of writers like Brandon might hopefully change that.

Relevant WOB:

In that case, honestly, you can skip it. Mind that White Sand was a story he wrote when he was still developing the basic ideas of the Cosmere, and at that time he didn't want the connections to be too present (that's why Elantris doesn't have a lot of them as well). There have been some changes to the story, but none of those make it any more Cosmere-centric. He sends download links to the original prose version in his website's newsletter subscription validation mail, so if you're still interested but don't want to spend money on it, you can still read that one. As I said, a few things have been changed, but it's largely still the same.

Brandon would! (And I would, too!)

An answer from the man himself:

None of them have moons on the map, so if there's any, the Silverlight universities don't know of them, which is unlikely.

I believe that's The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. (His work was a huge inspiration for the Cosmere as a whole, so Brandon is probably aware of that story as well!)

It has to do with White Sand and Autonomy:

It's a planet size blur that Nalthis seems to pass through anually. That doesn't seem like a Shard or spren to me. It has to have something to do with something that happened on Nalthis, I think. If there is no life, there is no cognitive manifestation because it's not thought about, i.e. it doesn't exist is Shadesmar. So it's likely that the anomaly was created as Nalthis was on that point of its path around the sun, since there has actually been thought (and therefore Shadesmar) at that place. And somehow, it stayed there while the planet went on. A planet's Shadesmar spins along with the physical planet yet remains stagnant in relation to the other planets' Shadesmars which move along with their respective planets. It hurts my brain.

The sketches of the Tears of Edgli that Isaac showed some months ago also looked like that, so I imagine it alludes to those as well (can't find them right now).

I just went completely insane for a minute. Thank you so much. This is amazing.

Ah, thanks! That's weird. It might eventually require some explaining regarding the things I mentioned though, because it doesn't make perfect sense to me ...

If the oaths are striktly according to the spren's nature, then we have three different sets of oaths for Bondsmiths, since the godspren are all drastically different. The Nightwatcher's natural oaths would be completely different to the Stormfather's ones. Also, isn't the Stormfather just a giant Honorspren (hence why Syl is his "child" etc), so shouldn't their natural oaths be all the same? And why would an honorspren's natural oath be specified to protection, of all things? Shouldn't their oaths be "I will bind things together", since Honor is about binding things? Accordingly, the ones they meet in Shadesmar seem to care about those things more than about proctecting. Same goes for cultivationspren. Their oaths should be about learning (like what I imagine the Truthwatcher oaths to be) instead of caring and listening, if they're essentially Cultivation, because then their natural oaths should be more directly tied to growth. I don't know, I'm not quite convinced by the "all oaths are natural to the spren" theory.

Finally found the time to read Vol. 3 and can now participate on this discussion. Here's a few things worth mentioning. Darkside doesn't have its own magic system. It has magical flora. Second, the Sand Lord is Autonomy. This WOB makes it sound like it isn't even an avatar of Bavadin, but Bavadin herself, but I see that it's up to interpretation: Also: He actually doesn't, if you go by the prose version. He's said to isolate the Darkside nations form each other, making trading hard and travel nearly impossible. That's the main reason why they want to put him down. It sounds an awful lot like how Bavadin meddles with everything. For her, manipulating something to be autonomous is still Autonomy. EDIT: Let me add one more, took me a while to find it. Brandon has implied that Autonomy's personas are present in White Sand: And he's using plural, so I don't think he's only refering to the Sand Lord.