TheCruelSadist

In my headcanon, Kingkiller takes place on a tiny nowhere rock in the corner of the Cosmere, and Elodin is Hoid's retirement [reread the scenes of his 'teaching methods' and see it to be true].

Note that she does these drawings shortly after burning a prayer to Shalash, for more evidence there's something Spiritual going on

You made me convince myself you're right "Called our burden" reminds me of a line from season 2 of Fargo where a character refers to duty by saying "we call it our burden, but really it's our privilege." That season is heavily built around the philosophy of Albert Camus, and when you know the philosophy behind both, it's hard not to see parallels between the show and Stormlight: both are making a strong argument that, yes, life is absurdity - Bad Things happen and there's nothing you can do but keep moving forward - but if pain is unavoidable then every act of good, no matter how small, is an improvement. As this is clearly a "Radiant opinion" on Roshar, it's safe to assume that the Fused would disagree: they see it as a burden, that they *have to* fight to protect their culture. I wonder if El even cares about the songs - he seems to, calling them "a knowledge," but he also looks forward to leading humans Odium's War, so he's not just wearily fighting to end the war on Roshar [Chorus: WHAT DID RAYSE TELL HIM?!?]. If he's not doing this for the preservation of Singer culture, then the songs are nothing but a burden keeping the entrenched Fused from focusing on the humans' value as soldiers. Once I managed to scrape together that bit of insight, I realized something: to play Devil's Advocate (and try to convince myself), what if it's *supposed* to work either way? I wouldn't put it past Brandon to realize that the "dying storms" and "the silence" could both be seen as the thematic axis, then craft Fused ketek structure so it works differently with the Death Rattle ketek than the Alethi style. All that said, I think that El learns the Alethi style while studying their culture, and the death rattle ketek is the future result of an artist putting two styles together. You inspired another section of my eventual "Philosophy of Stormlight" uber-post, though, so thank you very much.

A human being named Trell was seen in White Sand. I believe there's a WoB implying that there's a Trell who becomes an avatar, but the Trell we see on Taldain is just named after the famous one. Don't quote me on that, though.

When I heard that, I had the thought that Moash is the man who feels like he's drowning in pain, wondering how he can live with Odium no longer taking it from him

Keep in mind, Adolin has shown traits relating to nearly, if not literally, every order. He's a protector of the weak, he respects the law (at least in Kholinar, but it's not a knock against him to not be associated with Odium's Order), he's a master duelist, and he clearly cares about the common people. I'm not remembering an instance of him showing interest in philosophical truth, but he's definitely searching for the truth of who he is, and IMO "trying to always maximize his potential" describes him to a T. Finally, the dude sat in prison until Kal was freed, he's a reliable squad leader on the battlefield, and he has a mind for politics. This is all off the top of my head, though I did have to look up the philosophical impetus for the Elsecallers.

He said "The Diagram" would serve Odium, then divested himself of the group. Looks legit to me. Also, didn't Mistborn establish that the Vessel is essentially in complete control of the power at first, then slowly begins to be bent to the Shard's Intent as they keep holding it? So I believe Vargo is very much in control of the Shard right now, even if it creeps up on him a couple times a day. It would be neat if Brandon brought this deal around, like Vargodium wants to trash Kharbranth because the library says something vital about the Dawnsingers, but he can't.

This is why I like Jenet for Kal, she's basically a nicer Silence

"He felt something from Phendorana. A harmony between them. Teft was forgiven. He was forgiven and he was close." The result: he pseudo-summons Phendorana as a spear shaft to defend himself. I can't help but wonder if the implication is that his 4th Ideal was basically "I'll forgive myself for not being able to protect someone," and in the moment he was close enough that he could summon her. Anyone think the same thing I do, or do you think I'm absolutely bonkers?

I reeeeaaaallly like this. "You're worth more than what you can give to other people."

Ehh, I think it's weighted in the middle. Look at it: -dying storms- literally stands out in the line Doesn't mean he couldn't practice with the Alethi style in the future, though. Edit: forgot to mention, Vyre's link to the ketek is interesting. The horrifying things is that the ketek refers to silence all around, which would imply that They Who Quiet are quite successful in their future endeavors...

10/10 saaaaaved

Hah, great catch with Odium likely being behind the Tranquiline Halls mythos, I guess I should've re-read TWoK after RoW after all. I think that's all we know about it, though - except the juicy tidbit that El is aware of the Cosmere war. "Roshar will be united in its service of the greater war. / And I will march proudly at the head of a human legion." WHAT DID RAYSE TELL THEM?!

Oh my god, I hope they have coffee. Our Heroes are gonna need it for some late night strategizing.

And now I point out that Kaladin's character arc so far is basically "I need to learn to be okay with people I care about dying." A good mindset to have when you're immortal... and Brandon has outright stated that Kal is so close to Honor that it's almost unhealthy, which mirrors Jezrien (the other heralds refer to him as being the most honorable, multiple times, IIRC). Edit: I didn't even remember the whole "Kal being the only one called Child of Tanavast" thing and Wit's apparent obsession with tailoring his character. Then there's a TON of dialogue that could be seen as foreshadowing this choice (which I expect Kal to have, he wouldn't be forced to do it), such as: Sheesh, lotta pollen in the air today, could someone hand me a tissue?

My paperback copy of WoR has a broken spine, but I think it was a binding issue or something since I'm careful with my books. TWoK Prime was probably my biggest mistake: I forgot about the digital copy and got so excited when I received it that I punctured the wrap before it hit me that I didn't need to. Sad times TWoK was in good shape, but I ended up giving it to a friend when I got the hardcover. Now there's a tiny part of me that I have to keep locked away because it does nothing but whisper "if you get another paperback copy, you can keep the hardcover in pristine condition." Never mind that my OB and RoW show wear. That said, if all you have is the smaller paperback, you're really missing out on the artwork, especially the... artwork stuck to the inside of the cover. Endpages, right? Yeah, that was my problem, I got TWoK and WoR in paperback, but knew I'd be getting everything from OB on in hardcover, so I had to get the first two in hardcover as well (is it just those of us talking about it, or do readers really tend to have a higher population of people with some level of OCD than most other groups?). Just one shelf? Bruh, between the books, the novellas, and the leatherbounds, I expect I'll need 2, maybe 3, just for the hardcover Cosmere Of course, I have a vertical bookcase, so the shelves aren't super wide, but I've already got one shelf that might not have enough room for Book 5 + WoR Leatherbound + Kickstarter goodies and it's just Stormlight hardcovers. On second thought, I doubt I can fit all of Stormlight onto 3 shelves if 5 books + 2 LBs & goodies fills a shelf, because there's no way that the remaining 6 LBs could fit on a shelf. I guess I'm going to have a full bookcase just for the Cosmere by the time this is done Yay for rambling!

Man, imagine how confusing it would get if Brandon let an old Vessel take up another Shard or two later. Then there could be multiple Bavadiniums with vastly different abilities depending on what era we're talking about lol

That sentence I'm quoting, why can't I keep from thinking "doesn't mean it wasn't her"? By all accounts, until the end of RoW, Cultivation exhibited few signs of interest in affairs *on* Roshar. Oathbringer showed us that she had set stuff in motion, but she still wasn't active until Rayse was killed (as far as the spren could tell: they thought she was ignoring Roshar for quite a while). *Please take all Era 2 Mistborn talk with a grain of salt, it's been ages since I reread them and may be confusing things* "The Set" has a theme of mathematical growth in the name; where do we know someone who recently declared a combo of two shards to be 'science' (please don't make me explain why the two are the same here)? Where do we know someone with access to agents who can look like anything - as long as you don't look too close - and can even do suicide missions as long as they have replacement hordelings? I'm as certain as you are that Autonomy is Era 3 Saze's problem, and very interested to know why you think VargOdium is involved, but the more I think about it... most of the cross-cosmere agents we've seen have been meddling with Roshar, maybe we should be looking for signs of Roshar doing its own meddling. Of course, I suspect that Cultivation's doing Adonalsium things (probably Endowment, too), so I'd buy that she would frame Autonomy to get Sazed to pay attention to the threats around him, if Brandon goes in that direction.

Whoops, forgot to even reply to the topic lol RE: whether or not Brandon would write Odium winning - I think it's mandatory. "And so the night shall reign, for the choice of honor is life." There is no honor in murder, no matter what the reasoning is. Think about it this way: imagine Odium chooses Moash. He's an absolute piece of trash with no redeeming qualities, right? It's worth it to kill him to save a literal planet, right? Except what if it isn't? What if forgiving him leads to a far better future even if it's a much more difficult present? That possibility of a better future is what people usually use to argue against killing a baby to save the world, like once we hit a certain age we're incapable of change, but even if you KNOW "it's a net positive, universe-wide, to kill them," the entire point of the first Ideal is to accept that the ends don't justify the means. Life before death, even if you're talking about killing one jerk to save the universe. I'll admit I'm a little biased because I can't help but imagine, as far gone as he is, how beautiful it would be for our prodigal son to make the choice that Amaram didn't, but that's not a factor with the actual argument, so deal with it

Keep in mind that the Vessel has quite a bit of sway over this, so if Navani herself were the one to take both Shards, it should 100% become Science. Honestly, combining Shards is where I have the most fun, because it encourages pondering Platonic Ideals. Cultivation's truest Intent, the one thing that every Vessel has to attune to, seems likely to be Growth. Not simply "I want things to change", but rather "I want to encourage things to grow." Honor, on the other hand, may be influenced by Tanavast, and may really be something closer to Order (or 'Order' is one of the Dawnshard groups, but I suspect that all Investiture can be labeled as either Emotion / "Passion" / Individual or Logic / "Choice" / Societal). This is where things get interesting, because "orderly growth" IMO is expansion. Depending on the Vessel, it could be interpreted as Manifest Destiny, which, as we know from history and (MAJOR ERA 4 spoilers) EDIT: I re-read a bit of the end of RoW looking for something for another thread and happened to notice that "choice" is a frequently italicized word, then realized it works far better than 'control' to convey the expression of logic, so I'm going with that for now

I think this is simply the result of their decision to stop Surgebinding. Can't exactly be doing the right thing by flying or teleporting back if you're certain that doing so is bad for the planet. Great post, though. Someone else theorized that Kora intends for Adult Lift to take her Shard (since she's the third person we know Kora influenced and the other two have taken up Odium and the remnants of Honor), which could be to adjust for how the power has bound her - perhaps whatever she's planning for can only be accomplished by a trio of relatively new Vessels. Now I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and remind you all that Honor had -some- capacity for future sight, meaning Brandon could theoretically have Tanavast start dying as soon as the Heralds' betrayal of Taln became inevitable (since that's the point at which his future ceased to be uncertain). I've typed and deleted at least 3 paragraphs trying to explain how that works, but I can't figure out how to simplify it. Basically, beings which exist outside of time and space are weird. [I wasted half an hour thinking this through before remembering that the spren do this "once it happened, it always was" kind of crap all the time, and you've all likely accepted it even if you don't understand it. Oh well.]

Not necessarily, they may be non-sapient spren like Plate. IIRC, Navani is literally the only viewpoint character we know has handled a real Soulcaster, but that was before she was invested. Furthermore, even if they are dead sapient spren, do they still scream if they've begun to heal? I don't believe we've seen a Radiant touch Maya, but it's plausible that the Soulcasters have unwittingly been healing the dead spren (brb, rereading Kaza's interlude...welp, there's nothing obvious there) the same way Adolin is healing Maya, and once the process reaches a point, they stop screaming. We've already seen Oathbringer respond to Dalinar's honor, but do we know whether it screams or just whimpers for other Radiants? I assume it only whimpers for Rock because I don't remember Brandon saying otherwise but seriously, there's soooooo much that we can only guess about. Honestly, it kinda bugs me when people extrapolate things based on a single point of data. Brandon LOVES to give us outliers for our first look at something, then people assume "what you see is what you get" and end up nowhere near the truth. Pre-Oathbringer, the Coppermind declared that all Shardplate was either blue or tan, full stop lol That all said, though, IDK if I'll be able to suspend my disbelief if Brandon says that Soulcasters scream, because there's literally no way that Lift hasn't poked one to find out. Not unless we get a PoV from Lift where everyone discovers it and her reaction is "wait, you guys didn't just start poking everything in sight the moment things started screaming at you?" I just can't buy that we've gone this long without a single character thinking "touch it and find out", especially when so many have access to them, which would make Soulcaster spren either non-sapient or healing.

Ah, another sentence to add to the loooong list of lines which seem to foreshadow Kal taking Jezrien's place, in that it's a simple description of what happens to Heralds: they die, first, before being imprisoned.

Kaladin -explicitly- called Moash the one who saved his life. Elhokar was heavily implied to be "the one who killed [Kal's] promises." Syl tells Kal to raise his hand, and he does so, speaking the Third Ideal. The Stormfather accepts his words. It is 1000% a reference to Kal speaking the Third Ideal. That said, I'll be the last person to discourage you from believing that the Sandman is somehow going to make it fit for a future scene as well, which... well, to be completely honest, when I started typing this post out I was thinking that it's a ludicrous idea, but right now I'm chuckling to myself because I have to admit that if any author could pull it off in a satisfying way, it would be Brandon Sanderson

D'awwwwwww, that would be so sweet, I'm in! Oh, wow, I cannot overstate how surprised I am that I'm not the only one shipping Jenedin (and loving the thought of all the crap that the legendary Stormblessed would get when she makes him get a hair cut) There's no way that a single person can handle all the love that The Lopen has to give. Dawnshard gave me some The Cord vibes