coolsnow7

And yet, the epigraphs tell us that all the spren disappear… I’ll go out on a limb and say all of you are getting suckered by Brandon. All this pat dialogue, just-so stories, (did everyone see Kaladin TOTALLY OWN that stuffy librarian?) and explicit exclamations of how our wee little heroes are all grown up - this is not normal Cosmere writing, not by a long shot. Hell it’s too cheesy for the YA series. What’s actually happening is Brandon is giving us “one last moment” with our favorite characters before he plunges them into chaos, similar to how Vin and Elend got their final ball together at which they danced for the first/last time before the whole world quite literally started falling apart and they died. This book will probably not have a happy ending for these characters - not the first person to predict this, I know, but that’s how we should all be reading these chapters: one last moment of relative tranquility before disaster. I’m expecting something like the ending to The Expanse in terms of what it means to the characters, if not as final an ending (for obvious reasons). TL;DR: if Brandon is setting up Sylladin, it’s to rip them apart tragically before the book ends.

I’m just gonna say you’re trying awfully hard to get Cultivation to be a “good guy”, and also to have deeper plans than anyone else. I don’t have any evidence beyond some circumstantial evidence that Cultivation isn’t a good guy. But it’s abundantly clear from Taravangian’s most recent chapter that Cultivation thought she was neutralizing Odium by having Taravangian be the Vessel, but in reality did completely the opposite. I don’t think we need to do more than take Cultivation’s plans at face value: she was trying to get new Vessels for Odium, and maybe for Honor and her own shard too. That’s it. That’s her planning.

Some further evidence I dug up over Shabbat, in the very first scene we see of Dalinar, 34 years ago, in Oathbringer Chapter 3: Dalinar captures a prodigious enemy archer alive, and insists that he join Dalinar’s army. The enemy archer wavers, asks for his Brightlord to be spared, Dalinar already killed him, yadda yadda yadda. Then we get this: Coincidence? That Dalinar is giving this archer the exact same choice: join Odium, or Odium destroys Roshar? Note also that this is juxtaposed to the final vision from the Almighty, wherein Roshar gets destroyed by Odium (it’s actually much more explicit in this book than in The Way of Kings).

Absolutely not - it would mean that, in the absence of the burdens of being a Herald, Shallan was able to grow a lot - and now the challenge is integrating her developed self with her Heraldic baggage.

In a nutshell, the thematic case for the Shallan = Chana theory is as follows: If Shallan’s big reveal is “as a ten year old I did an oopsie and pressed the Desolation button in the process of killing my mom in self defense”, this series sucks. Reading a ‘90s Arabic soap opera about how Shallan will never get over her shame for doing something completely unintentionally is not compelling, and would be a tremendous letdown after 5 books of buildup to actual moral ambiguity and actual character development for other characters - and for Shallan herself earlier. (It is also inconsistent with Kelsier’s point “I don’t think we did much, I think this tide was coming no matter what we did”, and with the other Cosmere works where these giant coincidences required Shards setting things up - but this is veering from a thematic case to a technical case.) By contrast, if the big reveal is that Shallan had a daughter, killed that daughter, and found a way to conceal herself in that daughter’s identity because she couldn’t handle the torment of being a Herald anymore? And now she has to find a way to redeem herself? That’s the sort of ambiguity and character development that’s consistent with the author who gave us Dalinar, Szeth, and Taravangian to wrestle with.

This makes a ton of assumptions about the relevant mechanics. But there’s no point speculating about the mechanics because they haven’t been unveiled yet. We have another 6 books from an author who loved to introduce new mechanics in every book - plenty of time for this to work itself out.

Well, Radiant is Chana. We’ll have to wait to see if she’s a projection of Shallan’s mom or Shallan herself, though I’m feeling even better than I already was about “Shallan = Chana” theories.

Dalinar just represents humanity and/or Honor. Honor’s restrictions on Odium persisted even after Honor died; Dalinar dying shouldn’t do anything at all. Dalinar losing his title as leader of humanity is a different story - but that’s not what you’re asking. This is silly: in literally any legal system real-life humanity has devised, if you and I make an agreement obligating you to something, I am empowered to release you from your obligation under any circumstances I choose. Odium agreed to leave Kharbranth intact in exchange for Taravangian’s help; his obligation is to Taravangian, ie himself. If you want to postulate different principles that Shard law operates on, I mean, no one can stop you I guess.

No. Today’s reading explicitly stated that double-bonds were always known to be possible. I’m not sure what the Fused thinking Shallan might be an Elsecaller proves. But this is proving my point: that to the extent that the Ghostbloods want a source of unlimited Investiture, Lift is simply unhelpful even if technically fulfilling the specifications.

Historian and philosopher candidates as of Chapters 5 & 6: - Sigzil - Jasnah - Shallan Notably not Kaladin - unless his personality takes some really odd turns, I don’t see Kaladin switching careers to academic scholarship.

These WoB are cited in the other thread for this - but are actually evidence to the contrary: Why shouldn’t the Nightwatcher Bondsmith exist? Why would this freak out Rayse? Moreover if the Nightwatcher were bonded, it seems more than a bit unlikely that the Fused wouldn’t know - they’re keeping tabs on the ideals individual Radiants have reached, and seem to know better than Dalinar (and us) where Dalinar is at. What is different about Dalinar or Navani’s Spiritweb that would allow them to convert mass to Investiture directly? Ironically if you read the WoB carefully then while we’re finding out that Lift is very weird, it’s actually contrary evidence to her being the Nightwatcher Bondsmith. Further evidence that whatever makes Lift weird, it’s not that: Mraize is hunting her. Why would a Bondsmith be of particular interest to the Ghostbloods - but not Dalinar? More likely is that Lift is some kind of new Cosmere mechanic that will catch us all completely off guard.

Well, we definitely know who’s picking up Just kidding - in actuality this has the signs of a classic Brandon fakeout. But in either case, this is both foreshadowing and straight up telegraphing (given the deathrattle) that Dalinar won’t survive.

These are both good points. I would add that Taravangian is exactly the person to convince himself that, actually, the honorable thing to do is to sacrifice his homeland for the “benefit” of his “saving” the broader Cosmere from their broken gods. “Would that I could save Kharbranth” blah blah blah all over again. But yes the theory does hinge on Taravangian no longer prioritizing Kharbranth the way he did before his Ascent.

Literally all of these places are either accessible via Oathgate, or are being flown to. And actually in the case of Shinovar I have a feeling Kaladin and Szeth aren’t flying, but are rather traveling via some other means.

The writing - both here and the prologue - is just substantially better. Less use of punctuation and italics to make a point, crisp-er sentences, more information in less time. I’ll be honest that when I saw the first draft of the prologue I was worried the writing had fallen off a cliff.

I’m surprised no one is jumping to the Willshaper resonance. Would make sense that combining Stoneshaping and Transportation you’d be able to create a self-sustaining structure that would facilitate elsecalling. This would be an “advanced” skill in the sense that it requires access to both surges and their resonance, and it would be something that Elsecallers can’t do already themselves. Which is important, because so far there’s no reason to think of Willshapers as anything but second-rate Elsecallers.

Simple: if Chana body-swapped with her daughter Shallan first, then killed her. The fact is that this theory requires us to postulate some new mechanics a bit, so it’s not worth dwelling on those aspects. The strength of the theory is that it fits thematically and in terms of what Shallan says about herself, much much better than “I accidentally pressed the Desolation button.” If Brandon goes the route of “Oops! I accidentally pressed the Desolation button! I need to learn not to hate myself” I will be disappointed, bored, and depressed. I don’t think he will, because he too understands that that’s not a book worth writing. Now, “I intentionally caused a Desolation and betrayed the Oathpact in a bid to escape my thousands year history as a Herald, and I’m hiding that fact from myself and everybody else” - that’s a book worth writing.

I believe there’s a WOB that it did not happen yet.

Idk man this is extremely unconvincing. This would work if we got this explanation in RoW when we found out that Shallan had bonded Testament in the first place. Like this, you’re basically saying you expect the big reveal of what Radiant is and her purpose to provide zero development of Shallan’s character. And Radiant The irony is, if you pay attention to Radiant’s personality, she doesn’t fit the ideals of a Lightweaver - she’s not particularly creative, she’s not good at drawing like other Lightweavers (whenever Shallan has to do that stuff, she has to take over) and she’s not honest - she lied to Shallan about killing Ialai after all. What she does fit - complete with sword skills that Shallan can’t possibly have acquired - is… the Brave/Obedient ideal of the Dustbringers. So your direction actually strengthens the Shallan = Chana theory which you don’t buy.

There’s simply nothing there to support this. And the personality emerged basically the same way and time Veil did.

I posted a dark horse theory that there will be a bunch of shardic intent reshuffling and Szeth will wind up as a single shard but with combination Honor + Odium intent - except instead of War, the intent will be Vengeance. The mechanism for these changes would be the Change Dawnshard. Idk doesn’t fit this Death Rattle but it’s along the same lines.

No. Because the Stormfather says “so close, and yet so far”. Point being, the words weren’t right, but the intent was finally there - whereas before Gavilar said all sorts of words that would probably have been accepted, but with literally negative intent.

Do you really think Odium is going to allow life to be chill? At the very least he will oppress his new slaves to such an extent that their lives will not remotely be chill.

Of course not, the theory is riddled with holes and would make Shallan’s arc shallower than season 8 of Game of Thrones, but none of that is going to hold back the Cosmerenauts around here from taking some red hair and a line about a herald dying and blasting off with it.

RoW: You guys have taken a rough pattern with syllables in names and taken it way further than the evidence warrants.