Argent

I've moved this to General Brandon Discussion. Technically it's even strongly related to Brandon, so it might better belong to something like Entertainment, but I think this works a little better, assuming people want to bring up non-spoilery aspects to Brandon's writing.

Because Brandon just doesn't know how to do only one thing at a time.

It is one of the meanings of the word, though a more obscure one. It is also, apparently, among other things, an Irish funeral song. Kind of makes sense, I suppose, if there are spren like joyspren and laughterspren, a keenspren wouldn't be unlikely.

Reddit post.

That would be awfully convenient and a bit Mary Sue-ish, I think. Doesn't feel right. But the chain was in a weapons shop, so there's that to keep in mind.

Uh-oh, it looks like you double-posted, @Chaos! I am afraid we discourage this kind of behavior in these forums and I am going to have to go ahead and merge your repl-- Oh. I can't...

Yeah, I guess we dropped the ball a little bit here. It's easy to focus on the big flashy moments (e.g. Dalinar's meeting with Odium) and the easy content (WoBs we can search for and filter), so offhanded remarks sometimes get overlooked. I am not sure if either one of the lines you bring up would've swayed me in either direction - the Stormfather probably lacks the subtlety to see through Odium's lies (though you could argue that his Connection to Honor might make give him an instinctive understanding of his enemy), and I believe Harmony was talking about Ati's Ruin in the Words of Founding; and not only Ati's Ruin, but his Ruin towards the end. Regardless, it would've been nice to mention these things, I don't disagree. I am not sure what we do to prepare better, since it's just us going off our memories, and rereads are not really feasible, but I'll bring it up and we'll see if we can come up with something.

He usually goes to Europe at least once a year. He mentioned possibly visiting Poland in 2020. I wouldn't be surprised if his Skyward tour takes him to England too, I imagine it's an easy place for him to go to.

Man, I've always wanted to know a Diego. It's a strong name. Welcome to the Shard! I hope you enjoy you time here. If you haven't noticed, we also have a Discord server, you can drop by there and chat with people more casually. And if you are interested in getting involved with the community, both the Coppermind wiki and the Arcanum website could use extra hands (or eyes, or ears...)

You may be onto something here. I've spent about an hour writing and editing the following post, and I am not entirely happy with it, but hopefully I've managed to organize it into something that's at least somewhat coherent. Thinking back to Frost's "he bears the weight of God's own divine hatred," and contextualizing this with the Shattering, what if events unfolded like so: Adonalsium's emotions and attributes, by virtue of Adonalsium's divinity, can all be described as divine - divine devotion, divine honor, divine hatred, and so on. Within Adonalsium, as a single entity, all of these emotions and attributes play off one another: Adonalsium's sense of honor was balanced, or at least influenced by the things Adonalsium wanted to preserve, or was devoted to, or hated. Adonalsium's hatred was not a blind hatred for all things, it was shaped by things changing, and a sense of independence and autonomy. "Separated from the virtues that gave it context," however, Odium - and all Shards, I think - are... incomplete. So I don't think Odium is a single emotion, a single passion, he is not blind and mindless hatred, I still think that's too small for a Shard to be; but without other divine attributes to give him reason for his hatred, to balance this hatred, we are essentially looking at Rayse's mortal emotions trying - and failing - to give context to Odium's divine hatred. And it's an uneven battle. Another way to look at this is that emotions, for the most part, belong to all of the Shards in a small way, and so Odium's claim that he is Passion is not entirely baseless, but it is Passion devoid of devotion, and sense of preservation, and change, and cultivation, and honor (because other Vessels hold these Shards), and possibly enhanced by hatred. And when you do the math, when you take away all of these virtues, but leave the hatred in, I can see how Rayse might be best described as Odium even though there are other passions that are still a part of the Shard. It's less that he is Odium and Odium is all that he is, and more that when you take all passions, all the strong, driving, primal emotions, and take away the "good" ones, what you are left with is a package that is particularly susceptible to hatred. He is joy, but it's joy that cannot come from honor, preservation, or endowment, or any of the other Shards. He is sorrow, but it's sorrow that doesn't have the tempering touch of one's knowledge that all things must end. And when you take away all of this context, what you are left with is a bundle of emotions that can easily either fuel or be fueled by hatred (especially to a crafty and loathsome individual, I imagine). I think this is where I'll make my stand. Both Odium and Passion are accurate, but both omit important bits. Rayse's Shard is not just Odium, because there are other emotions, other passions in there that are of similar magnitude. But it is not Passion either because it is not all passions, and the passions that are in there can all be tied to hatred pretty easily. So if anything, Odium is a convenient label in a common denominator kind of way.

Amazing, how so many of you can be so wrong. It is obvious that Odium alone is too limiting of a description, even among other limiting descriptions. If you are #TeamOdium you might as well be #TeamGrowth where Ruin is concerned, because that's about as limited of a description of it.

Huh, this is pretty good. Haven't seen a theory this solid in a while, it makes me happy. I think you are definitely onto something with the Urithiru paintings of what we assume are the Bondsmith spren. Somehow I always read that passage as the first two sentences belonging together ("A solitary figure hovering above the ground before a large blue disc, arms stretched to the side as if to embrace it. Depictions of the Almighty in his traditional form as a cloud bursting with energy and light." and then "A woman in the shape of a tree, hands spreading toward the sky and becoming branches."). I never liked how those first two sentences fit together, but I think I got stuck in thinking that we see depictions of the Honor and Cultivation, when depictions of the Bondsmith spren makes much more sense now. The connection between the destruction of Stormseat and the retreat of the Sibling is also an uncanny one, though there may be problems with it hidden in the annals of history. Jasnah, I believe, says she believes that Stormseat was destroyed during the Last Desolation, but the Sibling didn't starting pulling away until the False Desolation; of course, Jasnah could be wrong about this, since information about the Desolations is scarce and prone to errors anyway. Honestly, I just find myself agreeing with a lot of what you are saying. I might try to prod Brandon next time I see him, see if I can get him to confirm some parts of this.

I've moved this to the Cosmere Discussion forum, where it more appropriately belongs. Introduce Yourself is really more for just saying hi

Nazh's spren fishing doesn't really have anything to do with fish though, it's more like "spren baiting". Forcefully attracting certain kinds of spren - a little bit like what Dalinar did with Nergaoul, I guess. So I don't think Dai-Gonarthis will play into this, at least not for this reason.

Event threads are a pretty safe place for these kinds of things. With images - such as personalizations - you could upload them directly to Arcanum, but the event thread will be just as fine (an Arcanist will pick it up from there eventually). Either way, thank you for contributing!

Hey, welcome! Hope you like the place, and if you find anything unsavory, feel free to flag down a mod. Those banhammers are just gathering dust these days...

One of us! One of us!

Should've been on Discord, there was chatter there earlier. @WeiryWriter and @Ravioli should be around.

If you don't hate this episode, you are not enjoying it correctly.

Can't keep you away from cons anymore

A bit late piece of not super exciting news, but my friend Lightshaper_ sat down with Assistant Karen, maintainer of the Dragonsteel Wiki and a wielder of amazing rainbow hair, and had her pull up the colors the Alethi highprinces are usually associated with. This is all coming from the books, so I guess I didn't need to wait this long to share it, but I kept forgetting =\ Anyway. Here are Lightshaper_'s notes, make of them what you will: Good job, Sebarial, you got style. As expected.