LewsTherinTelescope

It also does not at all prove that, if an afterlife/true soul does exist, spren aren't part of it.

Heh, yeah, I know about it and still miss it at first half the time when I try and find it to report something, lol. It's subtle.

Spoiler period just ended yesterday, actually, so perfect timing

(Replying to the parts kind of out of order because it's easier to organize my thoughts on some parts than others.) Well it depends, I guess. We know the Dawnshards were used in the Shattering, so I've viewed their as leading to what the 16 groupings were. But that's not a given, just my view on how they relate to these things. The thing is that like, it's clearly not fully out of nothing. Investiture can neither be created nor destroyed, and we know that giving humans the Investiture in their soul cost Preservation, weakening him against Ruin. You could argue philosophically the person's "self" or "being" is being made new, but the actual direct aspects to me definitely sound like they are from something, in my opinion. Well, I think that's why there are four. None on their own are enough. Change on its own just results in an ever-changing thing that doesn't last, while some other Commands might lead to a still universe that nothing exists in a formed state in (this may not be a direct Command itself, but rather an effect of one that by necessity requires some stillness pushing back on Change to allow itself to work, but I'm not terribly certain). So you need all four to interact with each other and build a greater whole. Fair enough lol

Is it really "from nothing"? I mean, these things are still made of Investiture and all that. (I don't dislike the Command Be, though, just think that focusing it specifically on Creation isn't something I agree with, and feel it should be more focused on, well, Being. So I like Autonomy, Preservation, etc there, if it does indeed exist.) I agree it is a useful Intent to counterbalance the change, but personally, I don't feel it'd fit under the Dawnshard of that name. Like, the Dawnshards are Commands, so to me, it wouldn't make much sense for the Command to Change to produce Preservation, but instead for a Command that works alongside it to produce it. (But this is a debate that comes up very often, so I'm not gonna harp on it much more than this, there are a lot of people who agree with you.) So I guess it's less we view the Shards differently, and more we view how the Dawnshards interact with the Shards differently, then.

Though the interesting thing in there is that the Shard is potentially on their side against the mastrells, depending on the exact nature of the Sand Lord and their goals...

Personally, I feel this overlaps a bit much with Change as well, but I can see why a lot of others disagree, I guess. I do feel Endowment doesn't quite fit in that category, if we do take it to exist, though, because the others are about things, well, being, while Endowment is more Change-y almost. Brings me to my next point: I agree that Pres makes for a nice balance with Ruin and Cultivation, but I don't really feel Pres belongs under Change. If you Command something to Change and become better, why would that result in something with the Intent of stasis? I think swapping Endowment to be under Change and Preservation to be under Be makes a bit more sense, but perhaps you're just viewing the Shards differently from how I do. Otherwise, those make sense, though I definitely don't agree with putting Wisdom and Prudence as two separate Shards (but I get your reasoning with "probably not the case but better than a blank spot").

Lol understandable! Lot of stuff in these books

Other way around actually, Kalak is the original name, Kelek is the modern Alethi way of saying it.

My guess is the effects can vary from "not much", to "Drab", to "slaveform singer", depending on the depth of the bond. I thought that was just the initial wave of stormspren, and everything else was via the Everstorm? (Unless you mean gemhearts.) I don't think so, but I'm not super sure. I'll need to reread that at some point. I believe these were non-sapient Enlightened spren, since she was essentially sacrificing them to draw Odium's attention to the area, but not sure if it's specified.

Yes, specifically this (shorter but also long) bit: It's.... unclear, to me, exactly how much this involves the Vessel shifting focus, etc, because presumably she's still "on" Taldain while doing this, but at the same time, also isn't, because Vessels are weird. Oh I'm not denying it does happen, just noting that, with the context of other things like the name Trell and the knowledge other Shards have been involved, it's potentially suspicious. Agreed that on its own it doesn't mean a lot, just combined with other "coincidences" + Trell's name. Hm, is Vun Makak associated with the sun? Skimming, I don't see a mention of that, but I might be missing it. Probably got locked out like Khriss seems to have been, lol.

I'm trying to remember, I think there was a discussion about it early on in Lux with regards to Mitosis, but I can't actually remember and looking through an audiobook is a pain... so maybe this one really is just a weird hole and I'm just remembering when David did the same in Firefight. I feel like this makes sense, Languish was hidden away similarly to Conflux, so people in-world still wouldn't really know. I'm trying to remember, when do they actually meet Languish? I thought it was still pretty decently towards the end, but my sense of this stuff is all weird with audio. Huh, didn't even catch that. Yeah, that's weird. Only thing I can think of is maybe Prof explained it to this cell specifically so that they can develop things, but it's secret elsewhere? I have no idea. To be honest the main "hole" I noticed when reading was Lifeforce's "demon" being contradictory to how Megan describes the darkness... but it turns out that's actually important and I just needed to believe in the authors more lol.

^ It didn't force her into becoming one. It forced her into confronting her imposter syndrome and overcoming the effects of her past emotional abuse, and feeling more free to explore what she was already wanting to explore but feeling restricted from. Edit: oh yeah, meant to reply to this as well: He also says this: The argument pushed him into the most extreme version of his beliefs because he's not really a talented orator, but he's aware there is nuance, he's just not really great at arguing in-depth.

Oh yeah, I don't think they actually like, moved their Shards in. I think this runs into the weirdness mentioned in the Patji WoB, with how exactly a Shard "moves" in the first place. The main things are: They originate from a place where the day-night cycle is extremely odd, which is supposedly due to latitude but also happens to apply to Taldain in general The sun as a god, when Bav seems to potentially be Invested in Taldain's sun (interestingly, however, they view the sun as the bad god) The name Trell, which is the name of a craftsman in White Sand, as well as being part of the Diem ranks mastrell and lesstrell

There's actually some rather interesting things on this.... The most important one is this: and a rather curious one is this: (For context, in the original version of Well of Ascension, there were 3-4 other mist spirits besides Preservation that drove Marsh off when he was about to kill Sazed, and this WoB seems to be a confirmation one was Endowment, of all Shards. Now, this is very much non-canon, and Edgli seems to have a strong no-interference policy in canon, but it shows Brandon's been thinking about other Shards being involved since very early on, and it's odd how the original Trelagism lines up with Taldain, and there's a Scadrian religion connected to Nalthis as well...)

I mean, that's assuming he means that re-using a spike inherently weakens it significantly, as opposed to it just being difficult to do efficiently (you have to always keep a bunch of vials of blood on-hand to make sure the spikes don't decay when you remove them, or else you have to lug the corpse around until the next time you find a victim, and then you do need to expose it to be able to move it over from one person to another in the first place, and over time this adds up). If not for the last sentence in the WoB, I might agree, but to me it does read as implication that the last sentence is the cause.

If the way keeping it in blood works is by tricking it into thinking it's in a body and behaving accordingly, wouldn't that likely apply either way?

Sure, but some amount of antimatter would be far worse than an equal mass of plutonium, right? Soulcasting wouldn't be limited to just a gram, I assume, so it'd be preeeeeetty dangerous. (If I'm misunderstanding any of how this works, please correct me, of course.)

The thing mentioned that your response was to was about Investiture annihilation, though. (Well, one person mentioned antimatter bombs, but did so in the context of Investiture annihilation, which to me carried the implication they were saying anti-Investiture was analogous to antimatter for this, which doesn't seem to be the case.) (Also, it's unconfirmed if Soulcasting can get you antimatter or not, I could see Brandon putting some wibbly wobbly rule in place about it to prevent most Lightweavers/Elsecallers/people with Soulcasters from just utterly destroying planets. But yeah, if they can, then that's way more effective than pretty much anything else you could do with that Light, if pure utter devastation is what you're after.)

Anti-Investiture seems to not be as easy/efficient, though, considering a gemful only destroys the contents of a room, and when it's not as pressurized it doesn't even explode at all and just burns some stuff. (Well, either it's less efficient or Investiture is far less energy-dense, but either way the end result is it's far weaker.) Not a physicist, but from the numbers I can find, this is significantly off (though antimatter is still absurdly explosive, just not as much as what you said). From what I can find, 1 gram (0.5 matter + 0.5 antimatter) would be around 1.4x the energy of the Hiroshima bomb (though someone here pointed out that that increase in energy does not translate to a 40% increase in damage, I think it was something like 13% wider radius? but again, I'm not a person who knows this math myself). Which is pretty dang crazy, but is far less than 0.2g = larger than both combined.

As I understand it, they're kind of always playing in the background and singers can just tap into them, but I'm not super sure on the details or where an explanation is, so could be wrong.

Only since Dalinar arrived/swore his First Ideal/not clear exactly when but it's to do with a Bondsmith being back. RoW 40:

They're just called "Bondsmith spren" apparently, yeah.

Though also worth noting that they are heavily tied to the individual, like Lightweavers and Skybreakers.

Not necessarily, I still believe it's pretty possible the Bands were just made by Kel and a team of Ferrings. But that's somewhat pedantic, either way he's presumably got access to the powerset, inherent or not. Don't see how that disproves the idea that the Mistborn serial killer we know exactly nothing about in the slightest could be him, though. (Now, as mentioned, we know exactly nothing about this killer, so I'm not claiming it is him, either. My point is that we cannot use it to firmly claim that Mistborn will be returning in any broader capacity, as it could be anything from a genuine new Mistborn to Kelsier to someone who managed to recreate the Bands to a Hemalurgic abomination who has worked out how to shield themselves from Sazed's direct control/managed to throw Sazed into a poor enough state that he can't intervene without screwing up his balance.)