fakelogic

Yeah doubtful the meeting was just to gloat for ego sake, but we know Hoid’s main weapon is usually his words/storytelling/knowledge. Just spitballing here, but perhaps he set that meeting up knowing riling up Odium’s vessel would be helpful to his goals and/or maybe he needed to make sure the new protections were in place (which could explain the “exactly as he’d imagined” ie wasn’t instantly destroyed on the spot or something). I still think we are filling in too many blanks in Hoid’s favor simply because we’re used to him being in complete control. There’s those inner thought passages I quoted above even before he’s attacked that can’t be explained. If Hoid had planned for Odium (regardless of the vessel) to steal his memories, it’s strange for him to think that after walking out of the room. And I’d like to believe Brandon isn’t writing misleading things just to make Hoid be even more impressive than he’s already portrayed as.

Yeah I think you’re right that there’s likely some extra reason why Hoid planned to meet the original Odium other than boasting about the new contract, but this passage prior to Odium attacking stood out to me: I can’t see any reason why we’d get Hoid’s inner thoughts expressing doubt/worry and the “unless” (can’t wait to find out what the loophole is) if the whole memory loss thing was part of his plan. It’s unlikely that Odium can read his mind and only knew the jig was up via how Hoid reacted to his champion question.

But he’s very often meta—it’s makes more storytelling sense to pull the rug out from under Hoid’s invincibility rather than depict more of the same, at least in this limited interaction. Not saying he doesn’t have counters or ultimately win in the long run, but pretty sure Hoid is being implied to have fallibilities, which ultimately makes finding out how he’s so special even more interesting, imho.

I think all we can say for certain is we’re supposed to think of Kelsier from the clues. We shouldn’t be considering some other unknown character. But Brandon clearly leaves himself with plenty of creative wiggle room to decide if it really is Kelsier or some Kelsier-adjacent character or any other narrative twist involving Kelsier. But it involves Kelsier—which I think is a pretty cool thing no matter what and will be super exciting to see resolved.

I like that we all have different entry points into the Cosmere just like the various perpendicularities.

Huge fan of the Hoid character like many of us are, but as someone said above I think our bias for our boy may be showing here. TOdium got the jump on him. Though I prefer to think Hoid just got unlucky in this instance rather than beat. Besides the fact a key underlying Sanderson theme is fallibility of literally everyone (including gods and Hoid with the pen thing earlier in the novel), a few meta questions I asked myself to confirm this was a “loss”: -Narratively, does it strengthen the threat of the new Odium by making him fooled by Hoid the very next scene after he becomes the vessel? Seems silly to kneecap him so early. -What does Hoid clearly gain by fooling TOdium like this? Without the epilogue, we would’ve already assumed Hoid is steps ahead of him. Writing a whole scene that shows the opposite seems like a stretch to just re-emphasize Hoid’s competence. I trust Brandon not to be that manipulative in his plotting. -Finally, does Brandon likely think we want to read more about Hoid always mysteriously being steps ahead or finding out how he reacts to obstacles? Especially as the stakes go up and the climax gets closer.

I was introduced to the Cosmere through Mistborn, so The Final Empire will always be #1 for me

The last 100 pages were