Returned

15 hours ago, NameIess said:

The ending for me was set up well. We see that invested entities can be affected by how people think about them and more specifically by painters. We see Nikaro returning Identity to nightmares by painting them. We know that Yumi is invested enough to persist after death. After the shroud is gone, Yumi doesn’t have a connection to the physical realm, and begins to lose her Identity. Painter gives Yumi that connection and reminds her of her Identity like he did with the nightmares. Unlike them, Yumi’s invested enough to make herself a new body and survive.

I hadn't thought about it that way before,  but I can see that angle. I'll have to re-read the ending with it in mind. I still dislike that type of ending as a structure (meaningful death, especially as a sacrifice chosen by that character, then immediate, free resurrection) but that's  different thing. And it is a romance story, where that sort of thing is more expected (and it's certainly a romantic ending).

1 hour ago, NameIess said:

I disagree that the ending undermined the themes of the story.

My issue with the ending is less that Yumi survived and more that death-and-resurrection-via-wanting-it-enough-at-the-last-minute is an arbitrary device which really damages the weight of the death in the first place. You can have your cake and eat it, too. The thematic mismatch is more broad (for me), and I agree that what was written suits Yumi' character arc, as you outlined very well. Nikaro really can just spin up a wish that the world will rearrange itself to accommodate. Yumi's sacrifices really were unimportant, just as the more liberally raised yoki-hijo demonstrated in her proper time. I don't like those things as much.

The alternative ending I would prefer isn't necessarily one in which Yumi simply dies. It's one in which the last-minute magic Nikaro works was set up in some way, or the happy ending was achieved through less sudden, arbitrary means to immediately undo Yumi's self-sacrifice. Choices and sacrifices characters make should impact the ending more, and tidy, happy endings are overdone enough that I tend not to get any particular satisfaction from them.

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

Korean actually, as Brandon lived in Korea for two years and learned the language.

Thanks, it was the Japanese names (Yumi, Akane, etc.) that threw me.

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

I made a thread to explain this back during the spoiler period - extracted:

Nice primer! I understand the concept well enough. But whatever the specifics, they aren't properly expressible in English which can make it awkward to directly "translate", especially without the actual antecedents. I like the highly/lowly approach taken in Yumi for a bit of exoticism and worldbuilding (it really emphasizes the different social context) but dislike it as prose style. I don't like the approach much as a literary device either, and Hoid's "this is the best I can translate it to your language" puts it firmly in that territory. Mostly a personal taste and preference thing for me, not much of a critique beyond that.

I really enjoyed it. The setting was interesting, as was the split between contexts. I thought that the context-swapping concept was done well and suited the story, the contrasts of different art styles and commitment to them were interesting, and that the setups and reveals were pretty well done (I was intrigued throughout, at least). The romance plot was fine, though I thought the beginning was a little bit rushed/asserted more than shown but it came together in a satisfying way. I liked the structure of the climax, that Yumi could be contained and kept from learning enough to really challenge her containment but that her development and skill in her art could not be controlled.

I thought that the villain, an established and disinterested machine, was an interesting change of pace, and the attendant scholars who were enslaved but happy to be part of their great design was also interesting. I enjoyed the nature of the nightmares, especially Liyun's personality and dedication overcoming the nature of her nightmare existence.

I agree that the ending was awful: unearned, poorly set up and contrary to what was developing, undermining the story and themes of the book to give a tidy, happy ending. The ending alone drags my rating down by at least a star. I also got tired of Design and Hoid quickly, though I think a good portion of that was lingering distaste for Hoid's narration in Tress (which I had finished just before starting Yumi). I liked the pictures as a change of pace, even though I wish they had focused less often on the romance for subjects and composition.

The hierarchies of politeness in speech as expressed through grammar is an interesting and real-world thing to include, and done adequately enough, but only just barely so-- I acknowledge that English doesn't have grammar to do that, and so it can't be expressed as it can in Japanese (which was clearly the inspiration [EDIT: Frustration points out that the specific inspiration is Korean, though similar structures exist in Japanese]; I wonder how a Japanese [or Korean] translation expresses it in the book), but the "this novel is an in-world translation of an in-world language" device is generally one that leaves me cold. What would be subtle and artful as inflection becomes blunt and flat when dialogue is frequently modified with "he said respectfully/disrespectfully". The device wasn't quite overused, but it's fundamentally "tell rather than show" and pretending that it would be "shown rather than told" in some language in which the book is not written doesn't fix that for me.

I'm not sure the Arcanum Unbounded map is necessarily to scale or even especially accurate (like, it could be a projection to get everything into one plane for the image). So that's one possible explanation.

I don't recall in detail the section you quote and can't look it up right now, but might they have been discussing the perpendicularity as important in regards to travel through the cognitive realm? Physical arrangement is far less rigid there and does not really mirror the physical realm precisely. Travel between Scadrial and Roshar through the CR might be greatly aided by having a waypoint (especially one which allows travel to the physical realm, and therefore physical supply), regardless of the physical locations of the planets.

21 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Why does a substantial minority of the fandom passionately despise this book? Simply saying that people disliked it because they thought it was bad is tautological.

Not at all. There are plenty of works that I think are not very good but still enjoy. There are works that I think are well done, meticulously crafted and just what the creator wished, but that I don't enjoy. The group that disliked the book has been pretty vocal about why, and the sum of their complaints (voiced or not) is what leads to the assessment of the book's quality.

21 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I don't think that it's at all "arrogant" to treat people's perspectives as the object of critique—if anything, it's the highest form of respect to take these views seriously, instead of dismissing them by saying that all perspectives are equally valid. 

I have a difficult time seeing it as a sign of respect to immediately reject someone's stated reason for why they disliked something, and then assert a totally different reason they never expressed as the reason that is unquestionably correct. Rejecting a view out of hand is the opposite of taking it seriously. It doesn't seem like you're engaging in any inquiry about people's opinions (in this thread at least, which obviously isn't the only one and isn't necessarily representative), instead saying that a variety of expressed opinions can only be wrong both as descriptions of the book and also as description of their own preferences.

And it's not like you're raising those points when people say they liked the book because the fight scenes were great or Kaladin is soo coooool or subverting structure necessarily produces great works or whatever. It's only the people who feel differently than you about the book that are told to justify their feelings and rationales to you, or else have them dismissed as false and irrelevant.

21 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Nor do I think that people are "stupid" for disliking WaT—people like or dislike things for myriads of reasons, which may or may have anything to do with its actual quality.

As I read your posts in this thread I come away with the impression that you think people who disliked WaT mainly felt that way because they are addicted to the narrative structure used in the first three SA books, are incapable of appreciating or enduring that structural change, are incapable of expressing (or even knowing) that that change is what they disliked, and so blindly grasp at an arbitrary (and invalid) detail and wrongly identify it as the explanation, then utterly commit to it anyways in some sort of fumbling, belligerent ignorance. It's a description of someone foolish and shallow.

Comments like "most people are very bad at understanding why like certain things over others beyond the purely superficial: if people find the plot boring, or are disappointed by the ending, the real question is why they feel these things" and "Naturally, this is going to upset the people, who feel attached to ideals being deconstructed, which happens to be a substantial part of the fandom. But since these people are not truly capable of the literary analysis to articulate why WaT discomforts them, they randomly latch on to superficial details that they did not like and fetishize them as being the reason why they feel this way" really radiate contempt and denigration, especially when dismissing those people's opinions (both their evaluation of the book as well as why they evaluated it that way).

Maybe that's not your actual sentiment and we're dealing with forum-induced lack of clarity or poor articulation. I don't want to assert the contents of your own mind to you, but I suspect most people will read what was written as an intentional, proudly-delivered insult rather than a gambit in an open, good-faith discussion.

I liked it, though it wasn't my favorite Cosmere novella. It was focused and pretty tightly written. it reminded me a lot of fairy tales, which I think was what Sanderson was going for. I really liked the idea of the spore seas and thought they were used well. If it had been longer I would have wanted more depth and a more complex plot, but for the length it had I thought it worked well. I did not like Hoid's narration, though I did get more used to it I never really warmed up to it. It sounds like it landed for you, which must have really enhanced the read!

On 6/13/2026 at 3:45 PM, Schizoposting said:

Quite frankly, the popularity (or lack of thereof) of a given work has very little to do with its artistic merit—the only way to determine whether a book is good or bad is through literary critique.

"Good" and "bad" are extremely subjective, as is artistic merit. While I agree that popularity is not a good metric for how worthwhile something is as a piece of art (which, for the record, also applies to one liking it as well as disliking it), it is absolutely a good metric for whether or not it is well liked, which is what the question "do you like WaT" in this thread actually asks.

On 6/13/2026 at 3:45 PM, Schizoposting said:

Naturally, this is going to upset the people, who feel attached to ideals being deconstructed, which happens to be a substantial part of the fandom. But since these people are not truly capable of the literary analysis to articulate why WaT discomforts them, they randomly latch on to superficial details that they did not like and fetishize them as being the reason why they feel this way. Combine this with the dynamics of fandom, and internet "hyperreality", and you get the sort of backlash that WaT got.

I agree that, if someone dislikes WaT and their only critique of it is that the dialogue was too modern, that seems like a thin reason to me. It may nevertheless be true: if someone doesn't like the book, and that's the reason, then they don't like it because of the dialogue. Just because we might be baffled at how that would ruin the book for them (I found the modernity to be pretty rare, though it did stick out) doesn't mean that it can't actually be the reason someone didn't like it. Some people are really frustrated that their preferred romantic pairings didn't happen, and if that alone leaves them disappointed in the book then that's the reason, even if it's something I happen not to care about at all. Telling people that they're wrong about why they didn't like something, and that the real reason they didn't like it can only be because they're shallow and stupid, isn't any less shallow than the critiques you refuse to entertain.

I'm sure that some people really did dislike WaT for reasons like you suggest. But it's an error to say that that's the only way people could dislike it. Comparing WaT to earlier SA entries, I found the writing to be less polished and more formulaic, the plotting and pacing less natural, the characterization far weaker, the dialogue worse (though not particularly due to being too modern), the development and presentation of themes and ideas far more crude and less intriguing, and the worldbuilding details less imaginative and less smoothly integrated into the narrative and prose. None of that makes the things the book does well any less good. But I think that the book could have accomplished everything you claim about it while also being better written than it was-- my issues are not about what the book was supposedly trying to do but rather about the execution of the attempt.

People may disagree with any or all of those opinions I hold, and even for those who do agree these items may not have detracted from their experience as much as they did mine. But others may feel similarly, or have other complaints that negatively impacted their enjoyment of the book. I'm glad that you liked it. It's really disrespectful and arrogant to tell others that they're too foolish and incompetent to appreciate the book or even know their own thoughts about it, based primarily on their not liking it so much. There is absolutely room for real critique, and disagreeing with your enthusiasm is not an impressive heuristic for dismissing that.

I think it's just magic fuzzing the boundaries of real-world mechanisms in uneven ways. Iron stores weight but not all associated properties, which is part of the magic. And magically manipulating weight without needing to account for those other properties should allow for all sorts of tricks we haven't seen yet. Wax certainly made interesting use of it.

That said, I think that iron will mostly stick to manipulating weight and not branch out into density (density-as-toughness sounds like a pewter-type effect), though I wouldn't want to bet a lot on it.

We've known it's possible to push on metalminds since The Final Empire-- we saw Vin do it to Rashek's bracers (which were even harder to push due to their piercing his skin). It comes down to Invested objects resisting being affected by other Investiture, and a more Invested object resists more and so takes more strength to affect.

The Bands of Mourning were extremely Invested (well, before they were drained at least) and so they would take a lot of strength to affect. Far more than an everyday era 2 Allomancer could muster, apparently. Sazed's metalminds were very small (you're referring to the bag of rings, I think?) and so would hold far less Investiture, even when full, than the Bands did. Marsh was a more concentratedly powerful Allomancer (as all were in era 1) and also may have had enhanced steel Allomancy (I don't recall if we know how many relevant spikes he had, but we know you can stack Allomantic power by adding more) and may have had some of Ruin's own power to draw on (though I think that latter possibility is pretty shaky).

So, Wax's maximum Allomantic strength was less than Marsh's, possibly far less, while he also had far more Investiture resisting his efforts than Marsh did.

22 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Some of these criticisms are fair, but most of them are not particularly unique to WaT—the Stormlight archive has always been bloated, and dialogue has never been Brandon's strong suite. While some of the backlash has undoubtedly been amplified by the dynamics of fandom, for many people there's something fundamental that didn't work in WaT. And the reason, I think, is quite simply that Brandon abandoned the classic Stormlight formula used in the first three books of the series. Which is why he (correctly) anticipated that the book would be very controversial. 

A critique of WaT is not valid only if it is unique to that book; if features are detrimental, they are detrimental, possibly in other books as well. Further, I disagree that they are not focused on WaT in particular. I suspect that we disagree on what constitutes "bloat" and doubt that we'll resolve that. My complaint about dialogue was not that it is bad, in WaT or in all Cosmere books, but that it has changed in WaT so that most characters speak far more similarly than they used to.

I'm on the fence about the change-from-formula argument. On the one hand, I agree that it happened and was clearly intentional, and I'm sure that it, in itself, bothered at least some people. On the other, just being different from the structure of previous books doesn't necessarily involve the newer structure being good (or having any number of other qualities or meeting any number of other goals). They aren't tightly coupled: it's possible to maintain a structure and also write a good book, and possible to change a structure and also write a bad book. There is no accounting for individual taste, but even so it is totally possible for people to dislike WaT for reasons other than its structure diverging from other SA entries. 

It's one thing to say he knows a book will be controversial because he is subverting or disappointing expectations in service of some goal (even if we don't know what that goal is right now), and we'll have to see how this book fits in with later entries to truly evaluate it. I'm willing to wait and see with an open mind on that, even if I would have preferred a book that can stand on its own a bit better in the process. It's quite another thing to say, six months after release and mixed reception, that he meant all along to disappoint readers and so he nailed it, therefore the book is great.

It's interesting that you give Sanderson a pass on explaining that he intentionally changed the structure in a way that would disappoint without expressing what he intended to accomplish by doing so ("my artistic instincts say this is what's right"), but brush aside readers' comments about what they disliked as wrong unless they explain why to some unspecified degree (people are bad at understanding what they like, so my response by default is to reject their complaints). It seems easier to me to accept that WaT might be a weaker book than other SA volumes in ways that many readers value, and therefore many don't like it as much as those other volumes, than it is to accept that readers can't understand what they like and so being disappointed by a book that was written specifically to not give them what they want is evidence that it's great because if they knew what they liked they wouldn't have been so disappointed with the book that was written to disappoint them. Those are some rough convolutions. There is even room for both of those, especially with such a large fan base, but I think concluding that most of the dislike of the book is shallow and wrongheaded is too dismissive.

I, too, think the BAM angle is most likely, though it may not be clear at the outset that she's the driving force. Other possibilities: El seems like a good candidate for stirring things up, the Radiants in Urithiru aren't going to stay sequestered forever, and once the time dilation ends we will start seeing offworlders with their own agendas. They all have options within and outside of Odium's schemes which may upset the current balance.

I also think it's possible that Odium will advance his own schemes in ways that will change things on Roshar, and that might drive a lot of change. But I suspect he'll be a far less front-and-center actor than he has been since Oathbringer, at least for a while.

A lot of the major points of contention have already been mentioned, so I'll add that there is a lot of great stuff in WaT but that the execution was poor. Lots of great individual moments but poor connections and structure between them. Especially when compared with other SA books. A lot of stuff is technically there, in a check-the-box sense, but it was a less elegantly written book than the earlier volumes (a problem I feel has been increasing across Cosmere books, generally).

Judged only by itself, it's maybe a 3 star book, 4 depending on personal taste and generosity. Judged as a SA book against the other four, it's probably more firmly a 3. Judged as a SA book and the scope of expectations it set up, I'd rate it as a 2.x. "Fine" is a damning assessment of a book which caps a well-regarded flagship series.

• A lot of the dialogue was weak, but more significant for me was how much most characters speak in the same way now. Gaz and Shallan should speak differently, and they used to. Characterization suffered a lot, particularly in more subtle writing that the previous books had.
• There was filler and bloat which was mechanically imposed. People can argue about what constitutes "filler", but it became clear long before the climactic portion of the book that none of the separate plot threads were going to resolve, or even change much, before the others-- the fighting at the Shattered Plains was not going to be over any sooner nor any later than the fight in Azir, nor the spiritual realms exposition, nor anything else. It drained a lot of the tension and investment to know that none of the characters' situations were going to really change for the next few hundred pages.
• The buildup for plot events was enormous, but much of what actually happened was pretty flat in comparison. El's huge, game-changing stratagem for which Taravangian was willing to pay such a high price was... bring more soldiers to the front (and it failed!). The contest ended up being a pretty minor and dull event. Some of that is by design, I think, as its conclusion was meant to repudiate the cycles of violence and conquest that had governed Roshar since the Desolations began. But it also lacked a lot of strong narration-- there weren't moments like Kaladin leaping onto the Tower, or Dalinar walking alone out of Thaylenah with only a book in his hands.
• Exposition dumps abounded. Dalinar and Navani's stories over almost the entire book were nothing but watching a historical documentary about Roshar, and that also removed them from events.
• The Shinovar portion was just a tunnel, with Kaladin and Szeth moving from points A to B to C to D to E (etc.). Few, if any, decisions for the characters to make, few surprises, little suspense. The fight sequences were cool and exciting. But I really expected more than that for two of the series' most important and dynamic characters-- in terms of character development and depth of presentation, there was nothing for them on par with Way of Kings or Words of Radiance.
• A lot of the novelty and creativity about Radiant powers had already been used or was already reserved for future revelations, and the power inflation of characters had already reached extreme levels. That's not the book's fault, but it still makes for a rougher comparison to other SA books. And some characters were just removed from the field entirely.

There is a lot to like about WaT, and I suspect I will enjoy it more on re-reads than I did during my first pass. I don't think that anyone who loves it is wrong to do so, but I don't think that it should be that shocking that others feel differently. There's quite a bit of rough around the gems, though the gems are as valuable as they ever were.

It may also be worth noting that we don't know how large the radius defining the center of the storm is. Also, regions where all three realms are pierced may exhibit oddities when trying to consider them from the perspective of just one realm (such as, physical distance is mostly a physical idea, less stable in the cognitive realm and totally meaningless in the spiritual realm).

I agree that Radiants' ability to draw Stormlight might give them the ability to "pull" it from farther away than a gemstone's passively being filled can, which may explain why gems only fill at a particular point and all at once. It would be an easy experiment to put out lines of gemstone clusters and measure the effect, but that may not be important enough for anyone in the books to bother doing.

I can appreciate the sentiment, but I think that the substance of community engagement on the Shard is what it is-- reputation reflects that reality rather than leads it. My own impression is that the community would be pretty much the same as it is now, with most reputations mostly unchanged from what they are today and a handful being modestly higher. "Actual contributions to the Shard" is maybe a bit loosely defined, but that's a different topic. To be clear, I'm not saying I think it's a bad idea, only that I don't think it would move the needle much for users nor change the site very much.

Big reputation increases tend to track with book releases, especially major ones, since that's when there is the biggest flurry of users logging in and the period in which new information is actually new rather than picked apart ad infinitum. For the long lulls between releases it can be very hard to introduce ideas that are fresh and intriguing to the hardcore fans who hang out here during the interregnums. In the midst of those quieter periods I'm not sure that there are a whole lot more follows on threads than there are likes on posts within them, or that gleaning an extra 3-5 reputation points per thread would result in more/better threads being posted or greater community engagement. Maybe I'm mistaken or thinking too narrowly. But high-engagement threads already tend to generate reputation via likes, even while the reputation system is far from perfect.

I think Dalinar accepted that his information was incomplete and was going to remain that way. Sending a mundane soldier to physically trek through the forbidding mountain peaks around Urithiru, into a fortified location he believes may be under enemy influence and which is already sending reports that everything is mostly OK, seems like a mediocre plan at best. If an enemy has enough control to hold the tower, send false reports, and suppress Radiant powers, what is a random soldier wandering inside going to accomplish and why would that soldier's report be trustworthy?

Even worse, what would Dalinar be able to do even if he could confirm that Urithiru had been taken? His army was stuck in an engagement with an enemy army (by the enemy's design), and the Oathgate (even if unlocked) doesn't seem like a good option if the whole city is occupied. Maybe I'm not imagining the same sort of plan as you, and so I'm missing something you intend. Even if he did as you described, how would that be conclusive for him? What would the outcome be except more false reports and continuing suspicions? What actions could he have taken even if he were able to confirm that the Fused had conquered it?

That's how I think of it, anyway. Dalinar is an excellent military strategist and tactician, and he knew and accepted the limits of his information and ability to act on information in that scenario.

4 hours ago, mordtirith said:

Does the entire spren body go into the gemstone, or just the small part that manifests on the PR, and the rest of the spren stays glued to that location?

It seems to me that the entire body goes in. Again, consider Nergaoul: "physically" huge in size and with a substantial effect when not contained, but wholly contained in a gemstone (in the physical realm) and no longer exerting its effects afterwards (the Thrill vanished). It's the latter part that makes me think there isn't any "overflow" from inside the gemstone to anywhere else. It seems to me that the gemstone trapping imposes enough physicality on a spren to fully contain it.

Whether or not a spren cares about that doesn't seem to me to be about physical space concerns (for example, when Syl was confined to a cabin on the Honorspren ship she wasn't in an oubliette, but she still didn't like being stuck in a room). I'm not sure that, in the physical realm, spren care about size or space constraints or can feel cramped, but maybe I'm forgetting some scene or descriptions about it. My impression is that spren size in the physical realm is more like an incidental expression than it is a real, inherent physical property. But that's just my impression. (Also, for the record Cryptics can change their size in the physical realm, we see Pattern do it when he picks locks and, more pedantically, when he changes from 3D to flat-- it's being invisible that they can't do. But I think there are spren who cannot change their size or shape, so the point is well taken).

Frustration's comment about Ba-Ado-Mishram being inside of a gemstone in the spiritual realm also seems like evidence in the "fully contained" direction, and although she did have some interaction with Renarin and Rlain I'd chalk that up to spiritual realm oddness instead of the gemstones being less confining.

18 hours ago, Xabben said:

If that is the case, why not leave a spanreed near the Oathgates of Urithiru in the cognitive realm to communicate with Adolin, Shallan etc. during their trip to Lasting Integrity?

I'm not totally sure it would work in the CR. Paired gemstones seem to have strong physical character (based on Navani's experiments), and we know that distance eventually causes the connection between fabrials based on gemstone pairing to weaken or fail. Physical distance isn't consistent in Shadesmar, so I wonder if the paired properties of gemstones apply there in a way similar to how they behave in the physical realm. Maybe they'd work less well, or maybe better. It does seem like the embassy should have had a way to communicate with Urithiru if possible, so that they did not carry spanreeds suggests that they don't work properly in Shadesmar.

17 hours ago, mordtirith said:

I don't doubt they'd be stuck to it, incapable of leaving the place where the gemstone is. I just wonder if, in the CR, the entire body of the spren would be locked inside the gemstone or if the rest of the spren would still manifest as usual. Locked in place by the gemstone, yes, but mostly growing around it.

I think it's more likely the entire body goes in the gem, that would lend some credence to the Sibling's horror because just imagine, someone locks your tongue on a rock that is more or less the size of it and your entire body is shoved in there, that would be horrifying beyond the concept of caging them.

I agree that it seems likely that the entire spren is inside of the gemstone. "Inside" seems like a physical property, and that's consistent with what we observed with Nergaoul in Oathbringer. Though, on the last point, do we have any indication that spren care about their physical size? The Sibling's concerns seem relevant, but in the physical realm they don't have bodies in the same sense that physical beings do. Syl doesn't seem to care if she's large or small. I'm drawing a blank on any examples of how that might work in the Cognitive Realm, though-- spren bodies don't seem very plastic there, so maybe there's a cognitive element that is important.

On 5/20/2026 at 7:30 PM, Qianweilian said:

I mean, he kinda did, eventually, although not through the Diagram. He rules all of Roshar other than Azir, only saved due to Adolin, the Shattered Plains, only saved due to the listeners, and Urithiru, again, only saved because of the protagonists.

The "not through the Diagram" piece is what I was referring to. He may have succeeded in his goal, but not through his plans (at least, as he understood them). Hence the "plans didn't work" comment. We can't rule out that the true plan, devised by the ultra-brilliant Taravangian, was exactly what ended up happening, however difficult that may be to believe.

On 5/20/2026 at 7:30 PM, Qianweilian said:

I mean, I wouldn't want to face the Thaylen navy when having only the navies of places like Alethkar and Jah Keved at my disposal. Thaylenah is a militarily important target.

But less important that Alethkar and Jah Keved, which are famed for having the best soldiers and most expansive militaries in the world. Most of Roshar is not accessible by boat. The navy matters and is an important military target (as you say), but it's not as important a military to control in pursuit of conquering Roshar, which is what I was trying to describe.

Edit: I don't mean to suggest that Thaylenah has an incompetent or ineffective military, but rather that it probably wouldn't be the first one to take command of for someone who wants military dominance. Important, but less so than Alethkar and Jah Keved.

It's always frustrating and tricky to evaluate anything based off of the Diagram because it's more detailed and dense than we can comprehend (maybe we can identify with Taravangian and company on that!). So we always have the possibilities that the Diagram was wrong, that it was right but misinterpreted by its followers, that it was right but didn't have time to come to fruition, and other issues surrounding our indefinable lack of knowledge about it. Here are a couple of considerations/guesses:

1. Taravangian's plans ultimately didn't work: he wasn't the king of everything, and so his imagined deal with Odium didn't work out as he had originally intended. It didn't even work for nations he actually was king of, like Jah Keved. So we should be careful of thinking that every single move was perfect and precise.
    
2. He couldn't do everything at once (he often complained about lacking time), so "why not X?" might be better looked at as "why not X yet?". I tend to view the Diagram as less about making nothing but decisive moves than it was about playing the odds to create circumstances that he could later exploit in ways that were favorable to him. When there was a decisive opportunity, he took it, but there also seemed to be a lot of conditionality in predictions. Lots of contingencies, essentially, so that he could make the best possible decisions depending on how certain events played out. That he could have become Prime (if, indeed, he could) is probably less important than making sure that he became Prime in an appropriate way at an appropriate time.
    
3. His schemes missed quite a bit, almost certainly including Szeth's death and rejection of being Truthless. They were also cut short (or seriously diverted by events). There is no reason to think that he had fully completed the waves of assassinations and subsequent machinations he had planned out, so perhaps Iri and Theylenah were spared because the plans were disrupted.
    
4. Taravangian didn't want a shattered Alethkar, he wanted a whole one that he could control indirectly (by controlling Dalinar, which seems to have been his original plan) or directly in some other way. Dealing with ten Highprincedoms seems harder and worse than one single nation, though I have to think that Taravangian would have plots and plans for dealing with such a thing were it really more attractive to do so. As it was, Dalinar sidelined Elhokar and effectively ruled the nation anyhow. Removing Elhokar as a figurehead would probably have upset that. It was only when Dalinar turned away from the "path of the warlord", and therefore became a rival to him, that Taravangian sent Szeth to kill him.
    
5. Taravangian's assassinations were widespread and (apparently) carefully chosen and planned, presumably to cause chaos and unease but also to create conditions that he could further exploit to achieve his ends. Paralyzing Azir by ensuring that the most capable candidates for Prime didn't want the position (because of fear of more assassination) may have pushed it into the state he wanted.
    
6. Taravangian went to an enormous amount of trouble to hide his ultimate goals, such as being crowned king of Jah Keved "by accident". It was important to his schemes that he be seen as nonthreatening and something other than a power-hungry conqueror. Explicitly claiming the office of Prime wouldn't work well with that (even if it were legally possible, which it may not have been), while submitting an impossibly great essay would destroy his image as a doddering, kindly old man. For all we know, that was his ultimate plan but it had to come later when subterfuge was no longer necessary.
    
7. He made use of the tensions caused by no one knowing who had hired the Assassin in White. We know very little about international relations and politics prior to the coming of the Everstorm, and even less about internal considerations for basically everywhere except Alethkar and Jah Keved. If we assume that the plan the Diagram outlined was pretty good, and that the participants in the conspiracy were doing an adequate job of decoding it, then we must also assume that these sorts of issues weren't oversights.
    
8. Taravangian's early efforts were to control the most militarily powerful nations on Roshar. Maybe that was coincidence, but to me it suggests that military conquest was the route to becoming king of at least some places. But you aren't going to start with Theylenah for that, or even the regionally fractious Azir.

Delays happen and we are generally told about them, as well as other updates on his writing progress. But he's also shown that he is pretty good at sticking to his release schedules, sometimes perhaps to the books' detriment. Delays to his book releases are kind of a mixed thing for me. I think that his aggressive schedule and efforts to follow it have demonstrably led to less polished releases, and those books would really have benefitted from more writing time. But when delays are from ever more projects it seems like more writing time and attention won't be the result.

In short, I'm not worried about the books being finished so much as I'm worried about them being given too little attention on their way to becoming finished. Every side project that comes up, especially big ones not totally under his control, do increase my worries about this.

5 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I think that the reason for the shower scene was to foreshadow Shallan's pregnancy, and to emphasize her relationship with Adolin, since they latter end up separated. So, for me, at least, its inclusion was fully justified, especially given that it was just a few pages in a 1300-page book.

I hadn't thought about it that way, but that sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. The scene didn't bother me, so maybe I'm easy to satisfy, but the only thing about the shower sequence that made it stand out for me is how unusual such a scene is in Cosmere books generally. That's probably what makes those scenes feel so disjointed to me: characters don't really have much... nonviolent, interpersonal physical activity. They don't do much kissing, there's little physical contact between them, and they don't even have very much physical attraction or response described. So to go from almost no interactions or content in that mode to giggling together in the shower, or hammock, or wherever, just feels abrupt.

5 hours ago, Enderuser53 said:

It’s the stuff with ellands dad, and the thaylena scene that bothers me the most

For Straff I read every scene involving his mistresses/slave victims as expressing how violent, cruel, vicious, and self-centered he is. Wrapping those traits in sexual encounters made them more visceral and impactful for me, in ways that simple narrations and his other actions didn't really convey. I didn't like those scenes, but I did think they were effective in demonstrating Straff's awfulness in ways that were distinctive. And even then they were not all that explicit or detailed. I put them on the same level as the scene in which he kills Amaranta: brutal, awful, and very much an expression of Straff himself. Not strictly necessary, maybe, but evocative.

The Queen Fen scene just didn't bother me, or really even register for me. They might as well have been sitting in a dining room, wearing more clothing than ever, for all the detail or impact it had. Instead it had maybe four references to her being nude and some barely-veiled references to what she and her consort get up to (which itself is no surprise, given that he is her consort). I never even read it as a sex scene until re-reading it in response to this thread; I'd thought the scene was after they were done with everything and maybe cuddling a bit, but I think it's more than fair to read it differently (especially with Kmakl's comment on page 139). Awfully mild either way. But if it bothers you, because of the nudity or anything else, it bothers you. At least those sequences are rare and brief.

18 hours ago, Enderuser53 said:

like I don’t seem the point in that, it’s just unnecessary crudeness in my opinion 

None of these books were written to please and fully satisfy any one person, specifically. That you, personally, don't like it or find it interesting isn't really something that you can call the author to account over. Some people don't like fantasy novels, so most of Stormlight is, for them, unnecessary nonsense. Some people don't like moral philosophy, so the sections of Stormlight that talk about it are, for them, unnecessary diversions. Some people don't like violence, and so the violence in Cosmere novels is unnecessary and bad for them. Some people don't like narrative depth or complexity, and much of Sanderson's writing is tedious or upsetting to them. Some people would find even the mention of sexual activity to be too crass, leaving the suggestion in the OP similarly baffling and upsetting to them as the content you're complaining about.

Some people find sexuality to be a fundamental part of human existence, and so not including it for any characters, in any way, ever seems odd and incomplete to them. Especially for characters whose relationships might suggest it is appropriate or expected. Some people find raciness exciting and will like a book better if it includes a bit of it. Sometimes elements like nudity or sex give fuller shape to a scene or theme, suggesting the dynamics of a situation or aspects of characters. I can't tell you why these specific scenes were included. In WaT I don't think that they were done very well, nor did they seem to serve any purpose I could discern (unless it really was just tossed in to appeal to those who might want such scenes). But those issues are not about nudity nor sexuality.

I liked well enough the WoA implications between Elend and Vin because they were appropriate to their relationship and contrasted tragically with the grim backdrop against which their marriage took place. It was also extraordinarily mild and far from explicit or detailed, as the citation from Treamayne demonstrates-- it's hard to see that as graphic content that was shoved in the reader's face. Maybe those elements didn't land for you and what little detail was there was too much for you. But calling it baffling and valueless only because you, personally, don't like any amount of that content is an awkward standard to force onto an author.

17 hours ago, Enderuser53 said:

Bro, he goes into detail for the one in thaylena or wherever, but it’s not doing the thing, it’s when one guy walks in on them doing it, and then in mistborn 2 had lots of stuff

I wouldn't really call any of those scenes "detailed". They're present, which is a change from most of his novels. I don't recall any comments Sanderson has made about those particular sequences and so I can't give a definitive answer to your question. I do think that "just say[ing] it happened" seems like a pretty awkward thing to write in, even more so than the scenes themselves. I don't see any reason they would come up in dialogue, or how they would be worked into narration while also being totally off-screen given that they are not in any way plot-relevant. Every piece of every book was included by the author for some reason or other, and we don't usually get much specific explanation for why each one was chosen (or omitted).

They do give a bit more of a view into characters' lives and relationships, which is worth something even if not very impactful or important. The only book in which it registered for me at all was WaT, and then only because the scenes felt very tacked on. If forced to guess I might think it was a part of working gender and sexuality into WaT more broadly, where those elements have a (small) bit more prominence than in the other books. But that's a weak guess and I don't think that the small handful of references to sex do much in that direction.

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Here's my thing, we know that some orders, not the knights Radiant, but some individual orders, had members in the low thousands. There were only 4,000 Fused, that's almost 2-3 Radiants per Fused. If good fortifications with a garrison are basically impervious to attack, and the humans had Heralds on top of that, along with the Fused slowly going insane I have to say it strains credibility not only that humans were almost wiped out by the Desolations, but that the Fused were ever a threat after the Radiants formed in the first place.

"At the highest" is doing some heavy lifting on that low thousands estimate and is suggestive about timing. I'd wager that that number is post-Aharietiam, possibly close to the Recreance, when the Radiants were active and did not have to deal with the Desolations or anything else that degraded the human populations and their infrastructure. The ideas that there were many thousands of Radiants, that they were as capable against the Fused as we've observed, and Aharietiam was one of the worst Desolations ever (per Kalak, I think?) simply doesn't track.

So either that WoB is a mistake, Sanderson is lazy and sloppy with the worldbuilding of his flagship series that he's been writing for decades, there are factors in the struggle between Radiants and Fused we aren't aware of or aren't considering, your assessment (and our observations of the Fused's performance) is off, or the highest number of Radiants ever was not typical enough of their forces to govern their conflicts. Take your pick of those options, but at minimum the lattermost seems very parsimonious to me. 

I also think that the Fused performance estimate is at least incomplete, and that battlefield performance isn't the standard we should be using to evaluate them. Even from Oathbringer on the Fused, while in many ways not very successful, are too much for the Radiants to overwhelm or even control during the war. WaT is really striking in how poorly the Fused fare, especially in Azimir and the Shattered Plains. It seems more plausible to me (and more agreeable) that that book is the piece that doesn't fit well, rather than retroactively unraveling the entire six-millennia backstory and making all of the books nonsensical. New details may shift my thinking, but I'd rather not tank the whole series just to accommodate Sigzil's performance against a listless and incompetent Fused army.