LewsTherinTelescope

Tbh I genuinely cannot think of one thing (in TFE specifically, not talking about other books) besides what happened with Bilg (which is a HUGE asterisk on that statement because yikes that was messed up) that felt much worse than light grey to me, but it's been a while since I read it. Wdym? Such as? Agreed, I think his actions are generally laudable but they're certainly pretty utilitarian still. Sure, but in this case the cause was overthrowing an oppressive empire that had been slaving, genociding, and murdering for a thousand years straight and was ruled by an immortal despot. Definitely. Kelsier did hold the power of a Shard, so he may know a better way to do it, and due to that particular circumstance I'm willing to hold off on judgement until we actually know how it went down, but it's not a great sign and generally practice of it is pretty crap. (If he discovered how to make medallions prior to it, it's also possible the person was fully healed with Feruchemy, but there are multiple large ifs in that statement.) Depends on how you view it. Personally, if there's a Beyond and "true soul", I doubt it can be affected by anything in the Three Realms, but that's something we'll never know an answer to. Agreed. The Bilg thing is the one major thing where I think Kelsier was genuinely doing something terrible, even if he has justifications in his head. That's fair. To me the scene reads less as being fine with the decision and more as knowing he needed to act quickly and drastically to stop Ruin's escape even if he dislikes the option, but it's certainly not a nice thing to do to someone by any means.

Something interesting here is that Iyatil and Mraize convinced him to accept it by explaining that letting the coalition keep the Oathgates would help Dalinar against Odium: So while he certainly can be rather egotistical and think he knows best sometimes, he is willing to set aside his own goals in the face of something greater anyway, he's not focused only on his personal desires. Another thing probably relevant to the convo: As well as So while the Ghostbloods are often.... not the greatest... it seems like Kell himself is probably better than the Rosharan branch would make it appear, though of course presumably still flawed in many ways. Thing is, while Kell's a great broad picture guy and figurehead, and awesome at running a small tight-knit group, running an interplanetary crime organization kind of needs more structure than his usual "just pick someone you know and have faith in them and give them as much room as they need" strategy (which, to be clear, does not absolve him of all blame, but "is responsible because he didn't vet well and didn't keep an eye on things like he REALLY should have" is very different morally from "is responsible because he approves of these types of actions and thinks it is good to be that way", imo).

Seems to be based heavily around Intent and perception, so I'd guess an accident is something that the magic would let happen.

I just had assumed that obviously the sword was made or found during the Nightblood novel and that it almost certainly played a role in their schism and in Vasher leaving. But I guess not...

This seems pretty likely to me, with what Brandon has said.

Interestingly, in the current plans it seems like the sword was made post-Nightblood novel and Vasher didn't know about it until recently. Which... huh. Nooot what I would have guessed in a million years.

This quote from Secret History feels relevant: This "something new ... something perfect" thing is super reminiscent of the way Change (and Transformation, which is always described in very similar terms to the Dawnshard) are talked about. I can't really see Ruin not being Change. In general I think this is something that narrows down Change a lot more from the full list of Shards that could fall under the umbrella – imo the way it's been portrayed is that it's not just the vague concept of things changing, it's the idea of becoming new, something better (with "better" of course being highly up for interpretation, as we see with Ruin's "something perfect" speech). (This is also why I can't see Pres fitting it: Preservation is diametrically opposed to the idea of remaking things so fundamentally. It doesn't want things to become new things, it wants things to remain themselves and last.) With the Push/Pull topic, if such a thing exists (I don't have a strong opinion either way) I don't think that Ruin and Preservation would be it. Like, it's not "iron pulls metals closer, steel keeps them the same distance away" or "zinc flares emotions up, brass keeps them from changing", which is to me what a Ruin and Preservation pair would be. Steel and iron both move metals, just opposite directions, and zinc and brass both change emotions, just pulling the slider to different sides. It makes more sense to me if it's, say, Ruin and Cultivation for example. Dominion and Autonomy, I'm more ambivalent on. It feels like it falls in the same bucket to me as Preservation and Ruin, but also doesn't feel quite as off to me for a reason I can't explain. Something about them both potentially having this theme of sovereignty and control over yourself makes me kinda like it, but I still am not sure I love it. As for Devotion, there's a pretty... interesting... quote in Elantris about the pool: I don't think it's a coincidence that this is so close to the way Odium portrays itself. I don't know if they're a pair, or if there's a full quadrant with this kind of thing going on or what (I could see Mercy and perhaps Valor fitting such a theme as well), but it's... curious.

Not in as many words, but here's what the Feruchemical table poster says about it:

According to the Word of Peter, Preservation caused the atium to all manifest as the alloy. Do we know this? I don't believe we've ever seen any try it, and the only source for malatium Mistings existing as a thing is that one WoB where the questioner just assumes it's true.

If they're testing people taken by the mists, odds are that they're from Elend's army, since he was forcing them to go out in them, while most other people were staying indoors to avoid them, so most people who actively got Snapped would be from there. And the "atium" Mistings from Elend's army almost all died, so the odds of a person selected for testing being an electrum Misting is quite low, and being known as an "atium" Misting before the test discovered they could burn electrum is even lower. Sure but you don't need to test everyone to work out that there don't seem to be any Mistborn of a significant numbered ratio. Great, now they know they're an electrum Misting, doesn't tell them that they could also have burnt atium.

Why would they test with electrum specifically, instead of the more mundane ones? And while they'd do some testing, I don't think they'd actually check too many mist-Snapped people for Mistbornness, since they know mist-Snapping isn't natural and seems to be producing a specific ratio of each type of Misting, and thus that it's unlikely any were Mistborn. Yeah but only those at the army would've known they were atium Mistings, right? While they could try and find anyone who was sick for the right period of time, I don't know that they would have gone to the effort, since there wasn't any atium left for any of them to use if they wanted to.

Why would they expect that the "atium Mistings" could burn any other metal? No other Misting type could. And even if they did, they'd probably try gold rather than electrum anyway, since they viewed them both as base metals and electrum and malatium as alloys. We also don't know when they discovered atium and malatium weren't actually part of the sixteen, considering Sazed told them there were two metals undiscovered (yes, yes, WoB is he meant two base metals, but I don't think that's the most intuitive reading and probably not what those in-world would've gone with at first). All that has to happen is they don't find cadmium and bendalloy until after the few remaining atium Mistings (almost all died against the koloss during the battle) are dead or not caring enough to test things out. The vast majority of the world's population died, so for all they know, maybe they were just among those. Heck, could even guess from their knowledge that maybe that's what those who died during Snapping were. I'm sure people would eventually question a lot of things about atium for the same reason people in the fandom did, but they don't exactly have any on hand to test with, and again almost all the Seers died so there's few of them to run tests on either.

Not necessarily, Elend doesn't even consider the possibility that electrum Mistings might exist until after Yomen revealed that he was an atium Misting, and doesn't seem to consider the idea of any of the Mistfallen being atium Mistings until he has Demoux try a bead. Might be that he didn't think to give the order to try any of the other eight metals besides the "basic" eight until that point, and since most didn't know about atium Mistings they probably wouldn't think to check beyond those eight either until he told them about it. Worth noting that the Allomantic poster mentions atium alloys produce "various expanded mental and temporal effects", so probably not gonna be as simple as just flipping internal/external for most. (In fact, atium and malatium don't actually do anything to anyone else as far as we know anyway, they still seem to solely affect you yourself, the same way bronze and tin let you sense external things but are still only affecting the Allomancer themselves, so imo they'd very likely still be considered internal – atium was considered the couterpart to gold, after all, and there are observable differences between the bronzepulses of internal metals and external.)

Yeahh I just have given up on pronunciation Ah, nice catch! That seems likely. Yeah that's fair. Then again, Cultivation seems to be a well-known figure going off Shallan's "Mother Cultivation can be hateful" bit and Navani and Lift both using "Father of Storms and Mother of the World" in idioms, and we still heard her name only three times prior to Oathbringer and have very little understanding of her mythological role... So Brandon's totally willing to hide info on cultural associations with things even though it's common knowledge all our characters know because it would spoil reveals, lmao. Definitely a valid point, and this is definitely the weakest link in the theory. I was thinking of it less as a taboo and more just them going "Honor's Moon" to "Almighty (or other name)'s Moon" because they actively associate(d) it with the god at the time, but that's also a possibility. Agreed, especially since Odium would know full well that some of the Unmade are crafty and desire power. Now, if an Unmade were to appear to someone and give them an order, they'd probably obey no matter what lol. But I'd guess they ordinarily weren't officially in direct command of too much, if for no other reason than Rayse being wary of trusting them.

Iirc, Brandon's indicated in his current plans the biggest major character is intended to be Jasnah (who is book 10), but he's not setting it in stone until he actually writes the books so that could change.

I hate it but I hate it less than most of the other options so I guess I'll reluctantly toss a vote in this pile lmao

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Considering Redin was trying to investigate him for killing (or so they thought) Shallan's mom when she was allegedly cheating, it seems like that is indeed illegal. I don't think we know the specifics about their stance on divorce, though.

They might not want to. From the sound of it, BAM was growing pretty bold (Ulim frames the False Desolation as a decision made by the Unmade themselves, not Odium, and mentions how she was making herself into "a little god"), and Odium might not necessarily trust her not to betray him to try to gain herself more power (especially with his suspicions about Sja-anat).

I think it's not unlikely that Cultivation led Syl to Kal, actually: Which sounds similar to the voice that Venli heard.

Only about 10-15% of the Windunners (there were around 2000 bonded honorspren, while there were 300 Stonewards + Windrunners combined in the vision), though we don't know what Ideal the others were at.

Tbh I highly doubt Brandon actually has an answer to that one yet lol

yessss dewit darn lack of emoji support

It's worth noting that shades don't just form every time someone dies as far as we know, they seem to form specifically from people being killed by existing shades. So it may not be that there's a Realmatic difference as much as there just not being any to spread it in the Homeland, and the "rites" involving something in a way that produces a stronger Shadow.

I don't see why it would, neither the anti-Voidlight tone nor the anti-Voidlight spheres had any effect on any of the humans in the slightest and in fact it was only noticeable that it was different by looking very very closely and seeing the distortion (my guess is that that effect comes from very small amounts leaking and annihilating with ambient Investiture in the environment and giving off slight amounts of heat, since Odium has become Invested in Roshar enough to be one of its "pure tones"). Heck, anti-Voidlight could be channeled through raysium pretty much exactly the same with no ill effect, as well, despite raysium being Odium's Investiture too.