DiePie

Interesting point I want to bring up: Does Gavinor technically kill Dalinar? I feel like there's a couple of different ways to justify it, but regardless, dealing with the trauma of your grandfather who (your entire life) you were raised to hate, dieing to save your life after you try to kill him is exactly the sort of character development I want out of the back half. I can see Retribution claiming so, in order to manipulate Gavinor to do what he wishes as king of Alethkar. I like the idea of an independent Radiant city-state on Roshar. But I wonder how isolated it will be. Taravangian is a well-studied man, and I expect he will promote trade among his new lands. Will he try to embargo them, entice then with a legal free-trade zone into joining his empire (like a country joining the European Union)? Will he promote trade with Azir in the hopes that he can strengthen ties to the point that they desire to join willingly (a strategy I believe China has pursued with Taiwan)? Will he try to maximize profits from tariffs between the two empires? The same goes for Azir. Radiants may be able to simply walk across this Pax Taravana (I'm still workshopping the name), settle in it, and take oaths there as a means of gaining soft power over Urithiru. I can't decide which route is more likely (thought thinking about it, the scene where Urithiru is forced to accept Thaylen patent law seems to imply further integration. Otherwise that aspect of it is wasted). I personally think that getting to/from Shadesmar will be solved long before the start of the back half. The main problem is that the means of getting to/from the cognitive realm relies on Spren and consuming stormlight (as both spren and stormlight are "of Honor"). Well, we already have both light and spren that are of Retribution. My theory before this book (I think I cemented it reading that sample chapter to isles of the emberdark with the Radiant) was that most spren would be enlightened as Odium integrates into Roshar, and now I see how that as even more likely. Thankfully for Shallan, I believe the Azir oathgate spren are already corrupted. Another solution to that problem is the ability to re-key investiture. So long as they have a source (can they get towerlight into a gem without the bondsmith? If not, that's going to be an interesting dynamic, as Urithiru voters now have to either pray and leave out spheres, or smuggle in/trade for bright spheres with either the rest of Roshar or an off-world faction like the Ghostbloods), they can turn it into investiture they need. I think there will be a solution, but not a good one. interesting dynamics regardless.

Other way around I think. Honor and Odium appear to be mixing much better than Ruin and Preservation did, I don't think the goal is to split a moral Honor away from Retribution, but to shape Retribution to be more moral. Dalinar's gamble is that he traumatized Honor's power enough that the new shard will still be fundamentally shaped by it. On a side note, I'm putting a chip on the "Dalinar kills a child in order to win the contest of champions" square of my bingo card. Technically false, but I'm still taking it.

My thoughts essentially boil down to this: "Sanderson, you sly dog, you!" - Brandon Sanderson

Very cruel of Sanderson to put the (now) only perpendicularity in the system halfway across the planet

Back when Brandon Sanderson was still shopping around for big-budget Hollywood adaptations of the Cosmere, I was one of the people who thought that the Emperor's Soul would be a good place to start. Probably because I heard that it had been picked up, and then forgot that it had been picked up, but still had the excitement from those times. Anyways, more recently there was a Mistborn movie in the works instead, because Hollywood goes big or goes home (if I'm remembering my WoBs right), and when Brandon announced that that was shot down, I got to thinking: How difficult would it be to crowdfund a movie? He raised over 50 million for 4 books and some goodie boxes (not that I'm deriding those those things, the average Sanderson fan [including me] is probably more likely to buy that than help crowdfund a movie), and 50 mil is probably enough for a movie of the scope of The Emperor's Soul. I know it's not, but let me dream. Anyways, I got inspired to write out how I would adapt Emperor's Soul. I wrote like 3000 words going line-by-line through the first few chapters, never got around to making sure it saved properly (thanks OneDrive), and lost it all when my computer restarted. I had some fun ideas, like a scene that plays out while the credits roll on the left side of the screen. It's Frava's office, a chair in the foreground, then her desk (facing the camera), and behind it the painting that Shai stole initially. Shai opens a door on the left, cuts the painting, makes a crude mark on the now-exposed wall behind the painting, and leaves through a window on the right as you hear muffled voices through the door. Frava then walks in, arguing about Shai's escape/the new emperor being more difficult to manipulate. Hoid walks in behind her, and Frava is so focused on arguing with him that she doesn't notice the painting until after she sits down at her desk, her sitting form dominated by the destroyed painting behind her. Hoid then does something (I have a few ideas on that point) to alert Frava to the painting, where she then turns around, sees that it's destroyed, and yells in frustration. I'm sure Brandon either has a curse, or would love to create one, that the rulers of the Rose empire use. But as much as I love that scene, that's not the reason I'm writing this post. The biggest problem with adapting the emperor's soul is that Shai sees through the political plots immediately, and her attempts to stay one step ahead of them is what gives tension to the book. In order for the audience to understand Frava's machinations, I decided to make Hoid a character trying to help Shai escape (mainly by being someone to bounce ideas off). He would pop into her room disguised as a Grand, then leave through the window as Frava entered, prompting Shai to look at the window more closely afterwards, where the scene would end with a close-up of the broken stained-glass in the window frame. Or he would whisper to her through the floorboards by her bed (or just using a soul-stamp of his own so they can sit on the top of a shelf in that room), helping foreshadow to the watcher Shai's trap, using the weakened bed falling into the storage-room underneath. To introduce Hoid, I included the cut (but technically still canonical) scene where he meets Shai in the prison, but had her correct him on the number of rocks used in the prison cell (I think it's more realistic that she would know, and it also helps build her up as being extremely competent in her field of study). Hoid has changed over the course of the cosmere from being more... eldritch to whimsical. He still has that all-knowing, "I will do whatever it takes", edge to him, but it's better hidden by a man whom time has only made stranger. In that chapter his character traits are conveyed in this scene by him giving Shai all the information she uses to bluff her way out of the next scene, the way he lords over her in her prison cell, and a "your lifetime is nothing to me" look. I didn't like the first two elements, since (and I think it's more the way they were written than anything else) they make Shai seem kind of helpless compared to him. So now it rests on the look to convey that this being is the next best thing to a god (ignoring Aethers), but I feel that you'd need a really good actor/director to convince the audience of that with a short look. So I finally get to the point of my post: I had an idea to help get the idea across. When Hoid is looking at Shai, the camera starts pointed directly at Hoid's face. It zooms in to one of his eyes, and when only his pupil is in frame, a bright dot (reflected from a flame, perhaps) resolves into a star. This star explodes into a supernova, and the camera races out until the supernova is in the background, and a planet (Yolen, with all the correct geography), orbiting the star moves in front of the camera, before being backlit by the supernova and thrown into darkness. The camera continues to back up, but when the supernova takes the entire frame (besides the planet), it then resolves into Hoid's iris, the backlit planet his pupil, the glint gone. I think this accomplishes a few things: First of all, it conveys to the watcher that Hoid is powerful by associating him with that sort of power. Second, it is an allusion to his backstory with the shattering. Third of all: It matches previous descriptions of Yolish Lightweaving, tricks of perception to turn otherwise mundane shapes into artistic pieces. Fourth: It should be pretty easy to do on a budget. I think that the Emperor's Soul is the best-written book released under the name Brandon Sanderson, and I didn't like his idea of expanding it to include more locations/characters. As is, I think the Emperor's Soul has a lot of potential to become a very unique movie, with characters that are already written to be sympathetic/disdainful where the story needs them to be. I think expanding the story any more than necessary to translate thoughtful reactions to the big screen to be like starting off a Wheel of Time adaptation with anything but the camera following the path of the wind as it blew over the land. Also if you read all that, thank you. I didn't mean for it to be so long but there's so much to say.

I'm a big supporter of the idea that there's going to be time warping during the duel between Dalinar and Odium's champion, as all relevant parties bring all the power they have to bear to make sure that the duel goes according to plan. Something similar happens during the climax of Wheel of Time, to solve the exact same problem that duels generally take much shorter times than pitched battles (or therapy). Though I doubt that would allow Taravangian to wage a cosmere-wide war in the meantime, combined with another time-wasting measure (like the child champion or making both champions immortal) could be something to work with. As much as I would love for a Dalinar serving under Taravangian as a fused, it doesn't really fit.

Slightly different, but I like the idea of Braize containing the ruins of old cities, perhaps failed colonies of Ashyn refugees who tried to find a new home on Braize, but ended up failing. It would provide a neat mystery as a background for future exploration, help characterize both the refugees and the current residents, and add to the eerie atmosphere that Braize has.

Personally I love the theory that Sazed is a secret mastermind, and everything is going to some grand plan of his that extends through MB era 4 (or something absurd like that). I can't remember the exact rankings (if someone wants to link a previous thread on those, that would be great), but iirc preservation/ruin have some of the best future sight out of all the shards, and now Sazed (who is a well-balanced person managing a roughly balanced intent, so there would be less bias in his readings than those of the other shards) holds both of them. But the story of him being bound by by the conflicting nature of the power he holds is plausible. So personally, I think the reason Sazed is playing it so close is because he realizes that eventually, he won't be able to act to help them... and so he's got to set Scadrial up to thrive in that environment.

tbf, they already know who is/isn't an allomancer because of the mistsickness, they'd only need enough of each metal to try them out on an average of 16 people (less, since a lot of the mistings of more common metals were already tested). I think if they knew how to acquire the required metals it wouldn't be difficult.

Nale said that the afterimage is specific to Szeth and was only because he was healed so close to when his soul would move into the beyond, Tbf, Nale says a lot of things that aren't true and this seems to be the sort of thing that Ishar (the last sane Herald) would've told him.

It could be that the spike gave Paalm a connection to the shard, and with a connection the shard can get into her head and influence her thoughts that way (like how Kelsier talks to spook in secret history)

I would just like to point out that Kelsier's body being a mistwraith would be a good reason why he would only have access to steelpushing (as opposed to also having other allomantic powers via hemalurgy). He makes reference of it being an option midway through the book, despite us knowing that his his powers are limited via WoB. We know that he has a spike through the eye which serves to staple his soul back onto his body. So why not others? Well we know that he doesn't trust Sazed, as he is worried about a potential Discord; though even if he wasn't worried about Sazed growing a neckbeard and not showering (that's a joke, btw) he would probably be too paranoid to give himself up to Sazed's potential control. So getting back to my original point: Humans can have 3 spikes and on the 4th one Sazed would have potential control, but Kandra can only have 1. Since Mistrwraiths are just Kandra without spikes I'd assume that the same would apply to Kelsier if he was a cognitive shadow spiked to a Mistwraith.

small correction: They do not have nuclear weapons. They know less about radiation than we did during the equivalent time period (beyond a bright-line spectrum), or anything about alpha/beta decay (1899), not that we'd hear much about it if they were discovering it around this time. The first thing someone thought of when they realized you can split uranium was how to make a bomb and that would probably make papers (especially since the Elendel government is too weak to take steps like the Manhattan project and keep this under wraps). We can probably assume that there'll be a bomb test somewhere in the roughs within the next 5-10 years, but as of now they do not have nuclear weapons. They do have a rough equivalent in Ettmetal/Trellium bombs, but I would like to point out the difference between the equivalent and actually having atomic theory. What they do have, however, are rocket/jet engines, which were first implemented in the mid 40s (irl). Scadrial, generally, seems to be lagging behind our world in physics, at least compared to it's other advancements. But back to the prompt: That puts us to around the late 1920s (with cars becoming dominant within Elendel), which gives us 60 irl years until the 80s, which could easily be shortened to 50 with faster tech advancement. So, yeah, era 2 cast probably won't survive. Something that I think could happen, however, would be old-women Marasi making an appearance. She's quite a bit younger than Wax, and combine that with being a pulser (slows down time), she could definitely live a few years longer than she should. 50 years in the future she could also definitely be either in the tail end of her service as governor, or retired from the position (Elendel doesn't have term limits, right?). Also, side note, do we have an age for Marasi? The wiki doesn't say, and while I can assume that she went to college at around the same time as most people do irl, there's no reason she couldn't have started at 30, per say.

My 2 cents is that the fact that Trellium reacts (is that the right word?) with Ettmetal means that they're highly opposed. Which leads me to believe that Autonomy tried (or is trying, we don't really know the specifics) to create Trell as a counter to Harmony. The fact that Lerasium and Atium are byproducts signals to me that it's going for the weak point, and that the easiest way to defeat Harmony would be to split the shard back into Preservation and Ruin, which you could read quite a bit into.

Something interesting about that is that Bilming reminded me more of the Soviet Union than the United States. New construction was centrally planned (and designed), and the set functions similarly to the party in a one-party state: As a paramilitary organization with complete control over the government. Perhaps at some point the leaders of the revolution had good intentions with increasing people's individuality, but The Lost Metal, all they care about is power. When Bilming was described as Brutalist, all I could think of were the commie-blocks of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact countries (though they don't fit the description). I know that Brutalism was also popular in the united states (and other western countries) during the early cold-war, but still. If there's any reason to think that something was lost in translation between Autonomy and the set (and that they don't really understand autonomy's ideals), I would use that difference between that and the ideals of the more United States-aligned Autonomy.

Probably relevant: At some point it was changed so that any God-metal can be burned by anyone (allomancer or no)

The epilogue actually says the opposite: (page 484 in the hardcover) Considering that he has a (steel, though now that I think about it, idk if that's been explicitly stated) spike in the same place that gives the ability to steelpush, and also gives him the ability to see the same way an inquisitor spiked in the same place sees, I think it's safe to say Kelsier's also gives the ability to steelpush. I would also like to see exactly what Brandon said because if he said Mistborn then he's def not, but "being an allomancer" might not include gaining access through hemalurgy. I couldn't find it in the Arcanum so if I'm just flat-out wrong about that then please tell me.

First of all, doesn't he have a steel spike? Perhaps that's giving him the ability to steelpush as well as tacking his soul onto the rest of him. Idk why he wouldn't have the rest of his powers, but he could be trying to avoid having too many spikes as a precaution in case Sazed flips from Harmony to Discord. Or perhaps there's something going on with his cognitive shadow only being able to use one spike, which is the one that's holding him to his body. Second of all, he could just be lying to Sazed. Sazed all but lies to him in this scene, and you can tell that Kelsier doesn't trust Sazed.

I sort of assumed from that that the battle wouldn't be a literal duel, but instead a fight for the, "hearts of men". Where Dalinar and Rayse (now Taravangian) try to convince each other and also each other's forces to switch sides. After all, both options of the deal lock Odium to Roshar, but allow the Fused and Radiants to do as they please. I think that under this format, Dalinar would be the best choice because of his ability to summon visions. <spoilers for WoT> If you want loopholes: the contract doesn't have provisions for what to do during the contest of champions, meaning that if Taravodium can find some way of prolonging it (perhaps indefinitely) he might gain more agency. There's also the fact that Cultivation things that Taravodium may be on her side -- perhaps allowing him to act directly against Dalinar (who would stand no chance against the full might of a shard). So he just elects himself as champion and wins.

My own crackpot theory when I was reading the early chapters was that Investiture was a 5th force-carrying particle, and God-metals are just atoms that interact with those particles in a special way (with the idea that the various shards effected the world through control of those particles). But VanDell's speech about matter/energy/investiture equivalence put's that one on ice.

I found that it helps to understand that Kal's depression is supposed to be a little annoying. Brandon is trying to write a realistic portrayal of depression, and that means it's not going to just... go away because he says a few words or makes a decision. Mental health is not pretty, and is usually a "two steps forward, one step back" progression (or vice versa, though SA isn't a tragedy). Doesn't stop me from skipping Shallan chapters though, so I get where you're coming from.

What I find most interesting is that Odium has said that Moash is something he's "never created before", which I always took to interpret as Odium never taking all of someone's emotions away before Moash. The other lines in the chapter seem to indicate that he hasn't done something similar to anyone else, or at least, that they haven't responded to it in a similar way. So, yeah I think it's extremely likely that the Death Rattle is talking about Moash, but considering we haven't seen Dia-Gonarthis around him this seems like a book 5 or back half plot point.

Personally I think that the contest of champions is going to be more similar to the final battle from the Wheel of Time (spoilers):

Perhaps somewhere you could look would be for Spren whose names align with Odium's rhythms, rather than those "of Roshar". Since the distinction is made multiple times that being Connected to Odium allows Singers to hear new Rhythms, it might be that pre-Odium there were less emotion spren and that after his arrival those spren cropped up; similarly to how one would gain access to new Rhythms.