LewsTherinTelescope

Yeah it's rather interesting. I'm also very curious what happened with their bond to Melishi, because he had Bondsmith powers at the time of the capture, but then they got shut down, and there's this line: Did they cut off their bond because of the capture? Were they even conscious enough to do so? Did they actually end their bond early or were they essentially deadeyed these past couple thousand years, as Raboniel seems to indicate?

I definitely feel like his perception is the main relevant bit here. For example, we know (from JordanCon) that Hoid can eat meat as long as he believes it's lab-grown or magically-made, whether that's truly the case or not. And we know Radiant Ideals can bend pretty far based on the Knight and spren, though because of how spren are there's a limit. I think he's got quite a bit of wiggle room and the only other entity relevant is likely to be the Shard of Odium, which I don't see having much of an opinion on this.

I feel like assuming the god of hatred and don't-think-about-it and its Vessel that is known for taking an extreme utilitarian philosophy follow age of consent laws in modern Earth countries for every deal they make isn't really a particularly strong argument

Tbf if they work out Soulcasting antimatter they're probably gonna destroy the entire planet the very first time they do it, when they expect the explosions to be as mild as anti-Light and they are not

I feel like there's not really evidence for that. Connection is a force more than a proper "thing" (that's not the right phrasing but not sure how exactly to put it). That's like saying anti-matter implies anti-gravity or an anti-strong force or something.

Alright, here's transcriptions for some of the more Cosmere-relevant WoBs from The Sanderson Collector's video of the Q&A, since the audio's not on Arcanum yet:

Oh hey, a fun little quote I forgot about because it's right before the final Eshonai chapter and that kind of took my focus for that section: Yeaaaap, he's definitely choosing differently next book.

Ooooh, good catch. Could very well be. (Side note, looks like it's "kalkis", not "kelkis".)

Based on this WoB, I'd guess they're all some of both Shards, including honorspren.

Brandon seems to consider it the same.

Eh... I think Brandon probably meant Vessel there, because he's talked about Splinters still being part of the Shard before. For example: And in general, I think what he said makes much more sense if you replace "Shard" with "Vessel", since he talks about how avatars are "a god roleplaying" in a way. (And conflating Shard and Vessel is certainly something he does sometimes, since at the start he actually did just use the one term to refer to both instead of having a separate word, and Brandon tends to get a bit stuck in old terminology sometimes.)

We don't know how the specifics carry over, but Khriss has this to say (which her agent learned from the Stonewards): So it seems like this is a general Stoneshaping thing, most likely.

Interesting, could be Worth noting that these two things don't seem to be related, as far as we know. Kaladin hears Stormfather for one of his Ideals (but not the other three, though he hears Dalinar for one), and Lopen hears SF for at least two (we don't know if his First had a voice or not), and both use Stormlight, yes, but Venli hears a femalen voice (presumably Cultivation or Nightwatcher?) and uses Stormlight and Voidlight, and Lift hears no voice but uses Lifelight. I don't believe any other Radiant PoV has heard any voice (besides their spren in a few circumstances), but they all still use Stormlight. I don't see how this is evidence towards the tone change specifically? (Personally, what it makes me think of is that Mishram herself was in some way relevant to the bonds, but I have no idea in what way.) But yeah, it's an interesting parallel for sure, I agree. Shouldn't the spren already be Connected to Honor, considering that all of them are part of the Shard? Tbh I've just assumed it to mean they have innate Investiture from Honor the way Nalthians have it from Endowment and Scadrians have it from Ruin and Preservation, but it could totally be something more and I'm just making incorrect assumptions. I feel like Navani would've reacted to the anti-tone of Odium if this were the case, personally. Iirc, Melishi was starting to become capable of some of what we see Dalinar do (though presumably not all of it), which is attributed to Honor going mad and not being there enough to enforce the rules he'd placed before.

Considering the Surges come linked together in a neat little circle, I feel it'd be weird if there were 6 others completely unconnected to the rest. (It's confirmed the pairings are the way they naturally go.)

More specifically, the Sibling attributes it to the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram, saying it wounded them. (Her imprisonment also resulted in deadeyes forming when Ideals are broken where that never would happen prior, which is weird and I have no idea what the heck the cause of that would be.)

Brilliant! [WoT spoilers follow]

We do know that there's a lot more now than there were before: And of course, the Stormfather is a pretty large Splinter, though not on the level of the Shards. Imo, this is the reason for the Stormfather and Nightwatcher. The Shards come into the system, and they take these crucial pieces of the world, and make them part of themselves, injecting themselves into everything, gaining Connection to things all over the planet, distributing their Investiture everywhere, etc. (More specifically, I think they were once avatars and actually genuinely part of the Shards' and Vessels' souls, not just Splinters that have a kind of weird relationship with the Shard, and that Splintering the Stormfather off is what finally allowed him to become sapient instead of "just a wind".) (Why this might work with the Stormfather is obvious, he's the highstorm, but what exactly the Nightwatcher is is open to debate still. Imo, she might be the continent or something like that, Navani swears by "Father of Storms and Mother of the World", someone curses with "Stormfather above and Nightwatcher below", the Eila Stele mentions "their betrayal extended to our gods: to spren, wind, and stone", it's mentioned by Dalinar when speaking to Odium that some associate Cultivation with the spren of Roshar itself, etc. Whether it's that specific thing or not, I think she's SOMETHING important, because Brandon has emphasized repeatedly that they are parallel entities, and even at one point after Words of Radiance saying he has to RAFO whether she predates the Shattering or not because the answer would spoil reveals about the Stormfather's nature in Oathbringer.) As for Ba-Ado-Mishram: I think that she was also part of this, and was similarly an important spren, and that's why her capture took the tones away from the Sibling and in general had such wide-reaching effects, because it partially broke this process, and is why the Shards needed to be properly alive to fix it (the Sibling says Honor would have been able to help, but was dying, and by now can hear Cultivation's tone but not Honor's, so I think Cultivation's put some sort of workaround in place somehow. wonder if this is why Odium was able to properly kill and Splinter Honor, because Culti was focused elsewhere already and couldn't retaliate while he was weak... but there's probably some holes in that, literally just thought of it while writing this). I also think her corruption is how Odium became a tone associated with the planet (the Sibling denying it was one doesn't work as a counterargument for me, because the Sibling STILL denies that it is one, so that could simply be them refusing to accept it rather than it not being the case). Do we know that Honor's tone is shifted from how it was before? I don't recall any mention of that. Navani discovers that when you merge two Investitures, you have to shift the tones to harmonize. I don't recall any mention of them naturally doing so, but admittedly I may have just missed it so I'd appreciate a reference (if you have the time to track it down, of course, these books are huge).

We do know that other versions of the combination are possible, however.

In a way, yes. But they clearly do not share all properties when in the various forms, considering Brandon refers to "conversions", and things like godmetals exist without being matter. So I think referring to the energy that comes out as "Intentless Investiture" is not really the best way to describe it. Ruin is not just irreversibility. It's change and decay and acceptance of the fact nothing lasts forever.

I don't see why it would, we've been told that reaction converts the Lights to energy.

I agree with most of your point, but definitely disagree with this part. Even in the vacuum, it was likely not actually Intentless. There's also this: Even before the Shattering, Investiture had "associations" it went with. and So I don't really think Intentless Investiture is a thing.

Which is a reasonable argument. OTOH, both Odium and Devotion have these aspects of a powerful emotional drive to something (while Passion isn't quite the right word for Odium, it does have strong aspects of it), so might they be compatible in a manner similar to how Cultivation is the most compatible with Ruin? After all, the Shard of Decay's opposite isn't Growth, it's Stasis (using alternate names to get the idea across more clearly). So maybe Odium's opposite would be an emotionless thing of order. Or maybe it's a looser weaker happy emotion as opposed to Odium's all-consuming passionate rage. Or maybe Odium and Devotion are indeed opposites, or maybe Odium just doesn't have an opposite in the same way, since we know not all of the Shards do. I think there's room to argue all of these.

We've been told they're accurate.

I doubt it, personally. One because what exactly the opposite of certain Intents is feels like it'd be hard to define. What's the opposite of Honor? Is it breaking oaths? Is it not making oaths? Is it chaos and a lack of rules? What about Odium? Is it order and stability? Is it Devotion's love and servitude? Is it apathy? Is it strong emotion on behalf of others instead of yourself? There's a lot of ways you could go with them and I think that's something Brandon would want to leave open to debate to an extent. Two because, at least as I understand it, by the nature of how it works, the Rhythm would be the same (just with the tone shifted in time or something along those lines? I don't fully understand this stuff) and the Rhythms carry inherent meanings. And it feels odd to me for the same orderly beat of Honor to also indicate the exact opposite, or for the same "ever-building majesty" of Cultivation to also represent tearing things down and destroying them (or maybe the opposite would be able to be argued to be more stasis than destruction, once more we run into the issue of defining what an "opposite" means here). And if as proposed, some of the Shards are anti-Investiture, would mean that half of the Shards out there simply do not have their own Rhythms at all, only phase-shifted Rhythms from other Shards? A WoB that's relevant here:

Sibling actually directly attributes their wounding to Ba-Ado-Mishram's capture: