Draigwyrdd

I actually don't think the end of a Desolation meant that the war was "won" in the sense that all the Singers were neutralised/routed/no longer in control of any territory or other locations. Coppermind says that Heralds had a set amount of time they could be present on Roshar, and if they exceeded it, there would be a new Desolation. So it seems like sometimes they probably just had to leave, even if they would rather stay to fight on. Initially there were no Knights Radiant, so it makes sense that Singers would persist after the Heralds are no longer there to lead the humans, who would have been battered and broken after near-apocalyptic wars. The level of devastation is said to have been absolutely insane, so I don't really think anyone was able to do much more than scratch out some sort of life amidst the rubble. The Singers may not have had Fused or voidspren to lead them, but they probably still did have parsh in Regal forms--they don't have to go to Braize, and to my knowledge the form doesn't "expire". So I doubt the Singers were defenceless even though they were probably just as ravaged as the humans. I imagine between Desolations both sides settle into a kind of cold war with numerous little "hot" wars spread between them, if they even have the population density and general level of sophistication to go about such a costly endeavour (which I doubt). It's entirely possible the whole world was just scattered groups of humans along with scattered groups of Singers eking out difficult existences in the wilderness.

This is going to be an unpopular one but I kind of ship Moash and Kaladin. It'd be an absolute mess, but the textual evidence is pretty strong. And Moash is obviously gay for Kaladin. I also kind of just assumed that Ati and Leras were together in some way, even though I don't think they necessarily were. But like, they did decide to specifically settle in the same solar system and create their own planetbaby, so...

This reminds me of that broadsheet snippet from one of the Era 2 books talking about "talking tools"!

I always read the Stormfather saying Dalinar won't have shards as "I'm not doing that" rather than "I can't do that". Which ... I mean, kind of fits his personality. The Sibling I think might not be able to do it, since they are Urithiru in presumably the same way that they would be a blade. But perhaps the Nightwatcher can and does become a blade for her Bondsmith. Who knows?

I hesitate to suggest this because it seems like Brandon is generally quite on the ball with his thinking about things, but it's entirely possible he underestimated how many blades would be "left" and just didn't think about it. But something tells me that it's probably closer to what I suggested, with maybe something else completely unexpected being the case as well. There are some suggestions that Ash knows how to get a Shardblade relatively easily; maybe the Heralds collected them after the Recreance and stashed them somewhere? We know they've been involved in things over the last few thousand years, but we have almost no idea what. It could also be true that there's a massive cache of blades hidden somewhere that the Recreants put there "just in case" that's waiting to be found. Surely some of them would have felt bad about their spren being stuck as a blade, right?

I don't think book 5 necessarily has to only span 10 days. I think thematically there are good reasons for it to do so, but narratively there seem to be quite a few things that need to happen within those ten days and it might be difficult to resolve them in that time. I could see perhaps half the book taking ten days, and the rest of the book happens after the ten days. But also, I find that it's equally possible for it to only take place over 10 days. They have a lot of options for fast/instantaneous transportation after all. Even though Shallan and Adolin don't have their own ability to fly, and that they probably won't be able to use an Oathgate to go where they need to go, there is a whole order of Windrunners who are, like, partially for ferrying around people who can't fly.

I think it's a case of "all of the possible options are correct to some degree". Some of the deadeye sprenblades probably ended up stuck in the rock and got covered in crem, some were taken up and used and passed along throughout the ages (only for some of those to get lost themselves), and I think it's probable that one or more groups of people (e.g. the Shin, the various secret societies and other groups like the Sleepless) have been stockpiling them for whatever reason (outside of the obvious "it's an overpowered magic sword"). I tend to think that the Shin are a lot more involved in various kinds of nonsense than everyone in-world assumes, so maybe they have thousands of them just hanging around.

I think it's a bit of both. There's some level of suggestion that the Heralds simply just don't know the workarounds necessary to be alive for thousands of years and remain sane. We know that one way Hoid stores his memories, for example, is in his BioChromatic Breaths - he probably keeps them "in" himself and in the various weird things he gives certain people (e.g. the flute, which has to be important for some reason). It's possible while Honor was still around he made it so the Heralds didn't need to do that kind of thing, and in the ~4000 or so years since his death, they've gone totally off the rails. Although I think it's multiple things affecting them. There's the trauma of fighting, dying, and being reborn only to do it all over again, along with their long, long lives and lack of "memory storage", and BAM may have something to do with it.

I don't think Kaladin dying would mesh well with his character arc. His whole deal for basically four entire books has been "learning to want to be alive"; killing him off, however nobly, would be like a slap in the face--not just to Kaladin, but to readers as well. For Kaladin to have spent so long coming to terms with his depression, to finally want to live and not throw away his life at the first opportunity, and then to just say "haha jokes I'm gonna do it lol" would be totally wrong in my opinion.

Yeah. When I read about what happened with Lessie I had to read it a few times because I just kept thinking, "Harmony did what?"

I feel like at the moment we're meant to think Wax is Harmony's sword, but I also kind of think that it might be a misdirection and we'll see the true champion in Era 3. Kaladin seems like he's a Stormlight Archive character rather than a Cosmere character.

Right? Their continent gets eroded and recreated by the cycle of highstorms over and over and over again. I wonder if they've noticed? One assumes no, given the timescales involved. Do they even have plate tectonics? Like what's going on with Roshar's core?

I think narratively, the purpose of Kaladin learning things from Zahel was so that the reader (who may not have read any other Cosmere works) learns the relevant things, not necessarily for Kaladin to do so. He takes something away, but I think it's more for the reader than Kaladin.

I feel like Venli will grow on me. At the moment I find her to be pretty objectionable as a person, but I do think that's the point. I think we'll see her come into her own in the next book (or even the back five), since a lot of her appearances have been to set up her role for later. That's the impression I get anyway.

Maybe they have to learn languages. Maybe they have some Connection type deal where they know the language of the Physical Realm location where their CR home is. Maybe they Connect to their human and learn their language that way, but can't do it to other humans. Or maybe they do have to learn human languages and every spren we've seen thus far just chose someone whose language they knew how to speak?

It seems as if the Singers had begun calling themselves the Parsh by the time of BAM's capture. It seems like "Parshmen" (as in the slaveforms) came after "the Parsh" (from the gem archive):

That's an interesting thought. I could buy into it! Rall Elorim has been set up as something interesting, so there is definitely a thing of some significance there. Perhaps it is BAM, and the difficulty in freeing her will come not from finding her necessarily, but in getting to her.

I don't think every form is asexual, just most of them. So there may be a number of forms that aren't specifically for reproduction like mateform, but are male or female rather than malen or femalen. That was my impression at least.

Taravangium wants to turn Roshar into a training ground for his future war to [something] the Cosmere (I think he'd say "save" it but I have concerns), which doesn't actually sound all that pleasant. Nor do his plans for after that's done. Like, okay, most people probably won't be pressed into active service ... but what if some of the other Shards invade Roshar? And living in some sort of endless crucible of war sounds like a dismal experience. I guess it's better than when Rayse was Odium, but not better than when Odium was unable to do anything at all. And if you live in Alethkar or Herdaz, you might be upset that those places don't exist anymore.

This was my thought as well. The humans were given Shinovar as theirs, and told not to expand outside of it. This became deeply ingrained into the Shin people and culture over many thousands of years so that even though the milk has already spilled and humans are all over the place, they still largely keep to the prohibitions today (whether or not they truly understand why they exist). I do wonder what Stone Shamanism is all about, though. The "shamanism" suggests something a bit more active than "we like stones a lot". Like if it had been called "Stone Idolatry" I'd assume it was a boring "we worship rocks" deal, but "shamanism" is suggestive of something more.

I can see how this would work! I had thought that it meant something more literal, like, "this is the the place of our second big offensive during the last ever time we go to war for Odium", but I see how it could be more metaphorical too.