Nitpicking

For once, I wasn't nitpicking. I'm wondering why you would be more comfortable with a genderless or ambiguously gendered person being with a male partner than female. This wasn't just in Dawnshard. Why do you think Rushu was interrogating the Sibling about being neither male nor female in WaT?

I was using the present tense, meaning the time of WaT, when the Night Brigade doesn't exist yet, centuries before Yumi and Sunlit Man. It is not impossible to visit non-Shard-resident worlds at this time, but it's difficult.

Just curious: did you pick up on the hints in WaT that Rushu is agender?

We know how it comes out. The Evil is still there. The Night Brigade is its grim self, prowling space and devastating worlds.

10 Surges?

There is currently no Stormlight? He could try with Warlight, I suppose.

Considering the name similarity to Raboniel, I would expect that El was once one of the Fannahn-im (those of Alteration), whatever he is now. There are also some personality similarities, IMO.

We see Odium not able to predict Dalinar's actions because Renarin's Futuresight exists. Brandon is clearly homaging Dune and its sequels, where ... OK, spoiler for Frank and his kid's series: She empowered the Old Magic. [referring to a world without a Shard] There are apparently many inhabited planets in the Cosmere that have no Shards in residence. Humans from major Shardworlds have a really hard time visiting them, because they have no Perpendicularity.

Folks, have you considered that there are 16 Shards (or were, before some were Splintered and some were merged)? Presumably their numbers just come from literally assigning each a value from 1-16. Preservation got 16, Honor got 10, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean. Where (in Brandon's writing) do we see the Dor becoming self-aware?

Imagine if they had used Stormlight to store their memories, and then Retribution reabsorbed all Stormlight everywhere.

No, he's a Cognitive Shadow, like Vasher or a Shade. As a former biology teacher posting here as "nitpicking" I must point out that everyone posting here is a sapient ape (assuming we're all H. sapiens). Our species falls into the great apes. We are closer relatives of chimps and bonobos than those species are to orangutans.

It feels weird to me, like @AquaRegia says, that this needs to be explained. I'm old, but I don't get annoyed when young people exist in stories.

Hey, can the Singers change forms now? There are no highstorms.

I don't know how many interviews with Brandon you've seen/read, but he's always said that he intended the Cosmere books to become part of a more unified narrative over time. You are, of course, not obligated to like it. I think the Cosmere project is already over-ambitious, honestly, but that's what Brandon is doing. I think he consciously decided to have an incredibly broad scope and see if he could pull it off. (That last sentence is pure speculation.)

To be fair, Jasnah has spent lots of time debating non-Alethi scholars (sometimes via spanreed).

Folks do realize Braize is named after Rayse, right? Same as Mraize? And by "realize", I of course mean, that's my idea.

I talked to Moshe at a con once. Very smart, very eloquent, very friendly.

Did you notice Taravangian copying her idea for Thaylenah?

It's just a regular Sja-Anat "enlightened" spren. Why would it be anything else? She's said openly to Shallan that she's willing to work with both sides if it will let her protect her children.

Crack Theory of the Day: the Blackthorn spren is an avatar of Autonomy.

Now that you mention it, it's interesting that Ishar knew exactly how Nightblood works.

Fair. I realized as I was writing the previous message that I skimmed the entire miniboss thing because read as obvious filler to me.

So Adolin's (and the other Unoathed's) Plate glows orange-red. Corrupted Investiture? If not, whose Investiture has the color orange-red?

Did Brandon read a lot of Tim Powers books before writing this? Szeth's arm Kaladin's fingers Adolin's leg The spren of Mraize and Iyatl are missing body parts I'm sure there are more: which did I miss?