Returned

We don't know what Hoid's designs really are, so it's possible that the Recreance was basically irrelevant to him (in that dimension of his schemes, at least). To suggest that he should have been there requires us to think of reasons that the Recreance was bad for him, which we don't have. The OP's suggestion seems to me to be off: This strikes me as the opposite of what's presented in the books. The Shards away from Roshar don't appear to care much about what happened there provided that Rayse remained trapped ("Rayse is contained"). Hoid very much wanted some sort of intervention to deal with Rayse and struggled to persuade others to help with that, though the only specific actions in that direction that we know of took place in the timeframe of WoK-- that factor may not have been meaningful around the time of the Recreance. We also know that Hoid was specifically afraid of Rayse and being caught by him on Roshar, and that is not the sort of thing which has concerned him much anywhere else. Roshar may have been uniquely dangerous and going there when Rayse's opposition suffered a serious blow (losing Honor entirely) may not have been an appealing or worthwhile prospect even if there were some benefit to be had. So in summary I think that the "need" which Hoid's magic causes him to meet may not have had any relation to the Recreance, that Hoid would have faced extreme danger in trying to interfere with the event, and that the tenuous balance on Roshar was very much not something he wanted to preserve anyways. At this point in the Cosmere works we know enough about Hoid's mode of operation, and that mode makes it hard for him to be anything but a plot device. He winds up where he's most needed when it's most necessary that he be there, and whatever that specific situation is, it is (so far) self-authorizing and decisive. Had it mattered, he would have been there. Therefore, empirically, Hoid's presence wasn't necessary and probably would not have been helpful, productive, nor meaningful.

Yup, the party line of the Vorin church has a terrible track record for accuracy. Accuracy may not have been what they were going for, though we know so little about the organization (both the Hierocracy and the later iterations) that we can't get a good idea even of that. I can kind of see ways that a post-Recreance figure might consider the Knights Radiant to be a fraud but I think that Kadash's position is outside of that-- he was just wrong about the world (though not necessarily the Hierocracy).

We don't know. We have a quote from an ardent in contemporary Roshar saying that there were no such visions and that Hierocracy made them up as a way to seize power. As far as I'm aware they never claimed visions of the future, but rather communications from the Almighty and so no Vorin prohibitions were violated. It seems unlikely to me that the purported visions were similar to Dalinar's experience-- that seems to have been a product of the impending Desolation, and the Hierocracy was a very long time before that. I don't think that it was Autonomy doing anything, though we have so little information about it that I don't think we can rule it out. I don't see any specific evidence to suggest it. For example, we don't have any suggestion that there was an avatar present. Secular, cynical reasons are sufficient to explain everything we know about the Hierocracy. As for Vorinism, I am on record as saying that I think it's dead. Every central tenet of it has been disproven or undermined and the social organization it imposed has been shattered. We'll probably see it grow into something else (the ardentia won't just go away) but I think it will be a major break from everything that came before as there is no longer any space for the old beliefs to persist.

There is also the issue of Jasnah being described as different things by different people for different reasons. Even we, the readers, do not have an exhaustive understanding of Jasnah's mind and beliefs; in absolute number of statements we barely have more information now than we did at the end of, say Oathbringer. Her hewing to cultural norms, like covering her safehand, may blur the line a bit with regard to social conformity versus religious conformity. Jasnah is a heretic: Jasnah specifically spoke against Vorin teachings, highlighting some of those beliefs as wrong. She didn't just not believe the orthodoxy, nor did she just remove herself from the religion, she said that individual beliefs and traditions were wrong. That's heresy. Jasnah is an atheist: especially in the earlier SA volumes Jasnah was reputed not to believe in any deities. This may have been a product of her specifically denying each established religion in turn (which might better be described as non-religious rather than specifically atheist), but I think it's probably better described by her own stance towards religion. Specifically, she said that she viewed religion as taking natural phenomena and ascribing supernatural causes to them while she preferred to take supernatural phenomena and ascribe mundane causes to them (I'm sure I mangled the quote a bit, but that's the spirit of it). That's not the same as saying no deities exist, exactly, but she won't accept a divine explanation for anything until she's proven it's not anything else at all, and that she could only truly do if she had perfect knowledge of everything. She does not and will not have that, and doubtless she knows it. Maybe a practical atheist, then. Jasnah is an agnostic: Jasnah admits that she does not know everything about the universe and does not specifically rule out that deities exist and operate in the world. She doesn't know enough to state that they don't exist, only that she doesn't know that they exist and/or that existing deities have any particular characteristics. Jasnah is a deist: Jasnah may believe in some deity or deities (at least suggested by WaT) but does not necessarily believe that they interact with the world in any way. She's a practical person, and something existing but not influencing nor being influenced by anything else anywhere, ever, may as well not exist. Jasnah is sloppy with her terminology or Rosharan languages lack vocabulary specific enough to express her meaning: Jasnah may use terms like "gods" to indicate something other than divine-creator-ruler-source of morality. Beings referred to as gods, such as the Shards, may exist, but they're more like really powerful people than categorically different entities. A trained warrior is more capable in many ways than some random person. A Surgebinder has way more capacity than a trained warrior and radically more than some random person. A Shard has ludicrously more capacity than a Surgebinder. "God" might be the best word that would be commonly understood to indicate that difference in scope and scale but doesn't necessarily indicate any religious, spiritual, ethical, or philosophical attitude towards them.

I think that the orbital bombardment idea is too real-world and not Cosmeric enough to be an issue. Orbital bombardment is a big deal with real physical limitations but with Cosmere magic it doesn't seem especially worthwhile. The destruction of Ashyn is strong evidence that you don't need a ton of people or conventional military action/ordinance to destroy a planet, if that's even a goal you want to pursue. And that super-powered individuals issue seems likely to become more acute as knowledge of Investiture becomes more advanced and Investiture itself becomes more commoditized and practical. Don't bring a tungsten rod to a magic fight!

The role of all of the Heralds will be different now that the war against the Fused has changed so radically. I'm not sure exactly what this will look like, especially now that the Heralds don't need to endure acute torture to seal Braize. I suspect that their new role will be more insurgent. They are still running on some portion of Honor's power and the initial commitments they made with the Shard, but Honor is different now that it has some sapience as well as being subject to Taravangian's efforts to direct it in directions that will suit his aims. I think that Vorinism is dead both as a religion and as a social organization system. Everything about it has been upended by Retribution's conquest of everywhere but Azir and the Shattered Plains. Moash being undercut doesn't seem like it will matter as he's left behind basically everything he used to believe in. As for Kaladin specifically I think that he will be juxtaposed directly against Retribution. He was already too great a fighter and soldier to keep finding mid-boss type enemies, and immortality plus sparring with the superhumanly skilled Heralds will only widen that gap. His new focus on mental perspective and healing strikes me as being very opposed to Retribution's conceptual theme of focusing on past wrongs and getting back at people. But who knows? The thing I'm most confident of is that we'll see a lot less of him on screen now that he's become what he's become.

There is magic, so we're always going to run into fundamental differences between Cosmere chemistry and real chemistry. Godmetals do not fit into the periodic table (those slots are already taken, absent magic changing the rules) and so no standard, real-world metallurgy or chemistry is going to explain them or how they behave in physical or chemical processes. Even to the extent mundane explanations apply, just because something is a combination of two things doesn't necessarily mean that it is only a combination of those two things, or that it can be decomposed only into two particular things. Chemical reactions are full of that: different conditions, different reagents, different steps, and you can turn "one" thing into a variety of combinations of other things. Coal and diamonds are the same stuff, but while you might be able to make coal into a diamond I'm not aware of a way to do the reverse. Coal can be burned, diamonds not so much. What I think Sanderson has meant when he says that harmonium is not just a combination of lerasium and atium is that you can't just melt the latter two metals then pour them together in some fixed ratio to make harmonium. As you've noted, that doesn't tell us much about what we can do with any of these metals. The decomposition into lerasium and atium can work, as we've seen, but seems to require some magical element in the process-- without the magic, whatever resulting compounds you get aren't lerasium or atium. Or at least not fully those things, and not enough to have their most interesting properties. I think that the implication is that before Sazed took both Shards (during Final Empire, for example) no one would be able to produce harmonium by any means even though lerasium and atium both existed. The advent of a new Shard has changed reality, physically and metaphysically, in such a way that a totally new thing can exist. There is no real-world analogue that can approach that situation, so magic has to fill in the gaps.

I was originally going to say the Dor, as the splintered nature of the Shards seems like a good avenue for them to recombine in ways that they might not if they were in their normal states. It seems to me that none of the Shards are going to be all that interested in changing their fundamental natures via fusion with others, since they are all expressions of single sets of ideas. But Harmony seems like the best bet. Sazed's issue is that he isn't balancing his Shards very well and the problems that causes seem to be accruing to his detriment. Certainly he could learn to deal with that in other ways but adding another Shard seems like it might offer unique possibilities to break the stalemate between Preservation and Ruin, and triangulating against the opposition those two Shards have to each other might be the best and most stable way to handle things. No idea which Shard he would take up to do that, though. I agree with other posters that Autonomy seems like an odd fit to blend with any other Shards, but at the same time freedom to act as he wishes is something which seems like it would appeal greatly to Sazed since that is exactly what the balance between Preservation and Ruin makes so difficult. I'm not sure how I feel about Shards generally being open to blending with one another (as above, it seems like they should mostly all oppose it absent a specific will and intent to combine in a holistic way). So while Autonomy seems like it should be the worst I'm not sure it would be materially less capable of merging with another. I could be convinced away from that, though.

They are inconsistent, though specific examples are hard to pin down because so much about what they can do (and how and why) has not been revealed. They are also bound by agreements which limit their ability to use their powers in certain ways, at least sometimes, so what we see isn't a reliable way to determine the scope of their abilities. The biggest issue, I think, is that much about Shardic existence and the Shards themselves are explicitly beyond mortal comprehension-- you need the expanded mind and existential properties of a Shard to really understand it. For the rest it's a lot like explaining three dimensions to a being that exists in two dimensions: very abstract, and some of it just isn't going to translate. It used to be less of a problem because we saw the Shards so infrequently but now that they're on the main stage so often and their abilities so core to what plays out on the page that issues are more obvious than they used to be. When more has been written we might see that there is an internally consistent, highly satisfying system which governs all of this but that's a long way off. For now some things are going to be whatever the plot needs them to be and we won't be able to tell if that's a sign of awkward writing or a very nuanced system. Futuresight is a particularly frustrating issue for me because in practice it's narratively arbitrary. It's either unbeatable or worthless, perfectly informative or no better than guesswork, and you can't know which until a whole scheme is over. Consequently the specific mechanics of it don't matter that much, though fans here love to speculate regardless .

Regardless of whether or not Kaladin is aromantic (or anything else in that space), I have never liked jamming major characters together into relationships. Sometimes it feels organic and interesting but often it feels very forced to me. Even if characters have some compatibility, chemistry, etc., it's kind of awkward to insist that the story involve them getting together. It's worse in things like sitcoms where there are maybe eight characters that are developed at all and so the whole pool of choices for any one character is one of the other seven, but even counting all the minor characters in SA it's still a shallow pool. Just because two people are often in the same room doesn't mean they should get together, nor that they will want to get together, nor that it would be good if they did. So I'll throw down my marker: I don't read him as aromantic, but Kaladin's story simply doesn't and won't involve much romance. Certainly not a soulmate/happily-ever-after type. He's got Laral and Tarah in his backstory, Shallan and Lyn on screen, and that's about it. The issues with these relationships are folded into his broader issue of struggling to maintain personal relationships of any sort-- he has problems even with his most stalwart companions like Syl and Teft. Kaladin's story is that his romantic relationships don't seem to work very well, not so much that he's just encountering the wrong people. I don't see this changing for him, especially now that he's moved beyond mortal concerns in so many ways. His story has already involved the romances he's going to get, and they have shown what that topic holds for him as a result of his personality and the role of personal relationships in his life. He's not headed towards some person who will be his significant other. It's true that some characters might be better or worse romantic matches for him than others but that doesn't mean that the "best" match is someone that the story will bring together. Kaladin and Leshwi are similar in some ways and different in others. I think that a romantic relationship with Leshwi would probably be better for Kaladin than one with Jasnah and healthier than one with Syl but I don't think it would be good. And that's even if he hadn't ascended to being a Herald. Now... I think that Kaladin's social life (in the way we usually use the term) is just over.

It's totally possible, I just haven't ever considered it from the angle you describe. Long-simmering anger about an odds-based prediction made due to an objectively true medical complication does sound a bit strange to me, given Taravangian's medical orientation, but that's basically all supposition on my part. One question I still have on the topic is: do we actually know that the physician was wrong? Taravangian seems to always have had a reputation for, let's say, unremarkable intelligence. The big break away from that is obviously his deal with the Nightwatcher. But prior to that, might Taravangian's anger and frustration (to the extent that they were present) be directed at the situation being true rather than the physician for making an uncharitable prediction? I don't know, but on my next re-read of the series I'll keep an eye out for hints. In the meantime, are there any moments that stood out for you as being particularly good displays of Taravangian's pre-ascension spitefulness? That wasn't my read of that conversation at all. As I read it, it was very matter-of-fact from Taravangian and very in keeping with following the Diagram. "There is a script, we're all following it", etc. And it was a pretty normal day, without a big swing towards intelligence or emotion. Little to no gloating that I perceived, no malice or spite, just commitment to the plan, as always. Practical things only. It's true that he didn't admit anything even as the king tried to prod him into it, but there was a witness who would (and needed to) survive, and confirmation of Taravangian being a schemer would have been bad for his ambitions. After ascending, I 100% agree that Taravangian is very spiteful and loves to gloat. But it comes across to me as a kind of disjointed change, not a smooth ramp from how he was before. Obviously that's not conclusive of anything, and I imagine we'll learn more at some point. It took an awfully long time for Honor to do anything other than ineffectually resist Tanavast, and even then it didn't just jump ship to another person or to isolation until a better vessel came along. It's not clear to me that they even can do something like that. It seems to me that when Shards and Vessel intentions are contradictory the Shard simply becomes less tractable and harder to use, while the pressure on the Vessel's mind is constant and insidious. A Vessel doesn't have to bow to the power to be changed. Consider: It's on record in a WoB that Rayse was not controlling Odium very well by the end. Will Taravangian be worse than Rayse in this way? And whatever the answer to that question, do we think that he has any particular ability to resist the influence of the Shards on his mind? Maybe the time scale remaining in this plot line will just be too brief for those effects to have much impact. Of course things can be cultivated infinitely, if time continues infinitely. No ecosystem is static, it's always a dynamic equilibrium at most. Cultivation's whole thing is growth and change, and an endpoint is kind of definitionally the end of changes. I definitely believe that she has goals and preferences about how things ought to be, but it doesn't seem like "endpoint" would be in her vocabulary. I don't think that she could aim herself at some static state any more than Preservation could destroy something to preserve something else-- it's just not what the powers do. As for planning specific events, I personally feel that futuresight's existence and representation in the Cosmere has made it fundamentally impossible for us to evaluate Shards' schemes in that way. But that's a whole other issue I've belabored elsewhere, and I won't force another thread to discuss it

"Death" is an underspecified term in the Cosmere, and will remain so (by WoB). For the vast majority of characters the experience of dying will be essentially the same in the Cosmere as it would be in the real world but for others the differences will be material enough that words like "dead" and "death" don't carry much specific meaning. The Heralds died often but their "souls" persisted, along with all of their memories, until the weight of time made all that memory unmanageable. The Returned died once and their "souls" came back without any memories at all but they retained a specific purpose they conceived before their death went all the way through. Kelsier died, kept his memories, and his "soul" didn't go anywhere. Ashravan's body never died but some aspect of him did, and that aspect was sort of replaced by a stamp. Szeth died, and his "soul" almost left but didn't quite go to completion and was placed back into his body, and while he kept his memories he lost at least some of the spiritual connections that we know death (and almost nothing else) forcibly severs. Even if all of these cases are internally consistent with one another somehow (which they may not be), death in the Cosmere doesn't seem directly analogous to death in the real world. Short of the soul (or whatever) going to the Beyond I'm not sure describing any in-Cosmere event as a death is appropriate, accurate, or meaningful. It's just fundamentally more complex and abstract than the common meanings of that word can express.

As I've thought about your post, I have begun wondering about the fusion of Odium and Honor being Retribution and how odd it is for Taravangian to have been the one to forge them together that way. I'm not sure I'm sold on the self loathing aspect, but I do think that Taravangian is ultimately going to be a poor vessel for the Odium aspect for reasons similar to what you've presented. He has some elements for both, individually: his intense emotionality has at least given him experience in dealing with an overwhelming tumult of emotion, and his unwavering commitment to the Diagram regardless of what it cost him or anyone else feels on-brand for Honor (before it started to gain self-awareness, at least). But the retribution aspect is pretty new and doesn't track so obviously with Taravangian pre-ascension. He was very positive in his ambitions (even though his optimistic case for preserving humanity may not have been terribly hopeful) and virtually of the emotion we saw on-screen was sadness and regret: he was weighed down by what he had to do. He never really displayed negative emotions for others, no spite or resentment or anything like that. But after the ascension that darker set of emotions is pretty much all we see, which is fitting for Odium but an absolutely terrible fit for the man himself. Experience with strong emotion suits Odium about as well as liking heights suits being thrown out of an airplane with no parachute. "Smart" Taravangian had little capacity for emotion but had arrogance in abundance. No restraint, no second thoughts, no (apparent) ability to doubt his own conclusions or thought processes-- the most complete evidence of his being right about something he could ever want is his own observation of himself believing that he's right. No need to bow to, or even acknowledge, others or their needs. Shards don't like that. It didn't work for Rayse. It didn't work for Tanavast. There is at least one other (outside of SA) for whom it didn't work, and perhaps more depending on how you want to think about it. Taravangian doesn't seem better equipped to deal with raw hatred than anyone else, and his closest relevant experience with emotion isn't that similar to what Odium has been feeding him. This is the classic Shard/Vessel problem we've seen before, and I'm not that confident that Taravangian's practiced arrogance is going to impress Odium or keep it under control. That, in turn, will impede his ability to keep Honor satisfied and integrated (even more so now that it has some self-awareness). But I don't think that we're likely to see the Shards rejecting Taravangian in the sense that he loses them. Rather, I think that the Shards' tensions with each other and Taravangian will alter his mind and cause the whole being to shift its inflection, similar to Harmony potentially collapsing towards Discord. I have no prediction for what that new inflection will be. I decline to speculate on Cultivation's plans and how Retribution might fit into them other than to note that, due to her Shard's nature, she may not have the philosophical orientation to have endgames.

I agree with this and wanted to add an additional consideration. It's hard to come up with a single description like "good" or "bad" of someone complex, which I feel Kelsier certainly is. It's common for people to deal with that complexity by picking and choosing which details matter and then disregarding the rest. Kelsier's most heroic act (dying at the Lord Ruler's hand to enact his ultimate contingency plan) was indeed heroic. But I'll push back against the idea that he can only ever be (or ever have been) a hero-- his self-sacrifice doesn't give him unlimited moral credit to do terrible things but never ever become a bad guy. And it's very notable that his story is ongoing, meaning that it's too early to say the book is closed on his character. The seeds of him becoming something different from the hero we see on-screen during the brief periods of his existence we observe are already pretty well-laid, in my opinion. His egocentric nature has been a consistent throughline for him, dominating his behavior prior to his disastrous attempt to rob the Lord Ruler the first time, and even the plan involving his heroic martyring had a huge element of him becoming a revered, beloved religious legend forever. One of the most consistent plot elements in the Cosmere has been that people are flawed, those flaws don't go away with enormous power or influence, and they can have material impacts on what people try to do and how they go about their efforts. The similarities between Kelsier and the Lord Ruler have grown ever sharper while their contrasts have become blurrier as we learn more about his time as Thaidakar. I don't want to try to control anyone's interpretations or reading experience but if you think that we already know everything we need to know about Kelsier's moral status I feel that you are missing part of the Cosmere story as dramatically as if you just omitted several of the books. One thing that @Oltux72's comments have helped me solidify in my mind is something I had trouble expressing (even to myself) previously: previous Cosmere entries (pre-RoW) had a lot of complex characters in situations that helped show a lot of their complexity. RoW and WaT were (among other reasons) underwhelming to me in that dimension not because the characters were less complex but rather because the situations they encountered were. I liked Oltux72's description of war not affecting the complexity of questions but instead enforcing simplistic answers to those questions. The battle lines were so starkly drawn in WaT that there wasn't much room for complicated characters or goals forced into contention with ambiguous weighting between them. A lot of the characters felt shallower to me because (again, among other reasons) their situation forced shallowness upon them. That's a difficult conclusion to a story arc that was formerly about characters coming to understand themselves and their relationships with world more deeply.

Secret History came out nine years ago. I appreciate the concerns expressed here but I think it might be worth considering that at this point these aren't spoilers. They're just the text revealing information that's in the stories. No one complains that Hoid being revealed as a worldhopper is spoiled no matter where they realize it first, nor that Nightblood's presence on Roshar spoils information about him in Warbreaker. This sort of information is now just hints or cross-references which are increasingly unavoidable as the intermingling of series becomes more and more overt (which is what has been promised will happen). It's an irreducible problem with a bunch of distinct series that are really one large story, and if you're picking and choosing which reveals get to be dramatic for you and which will be lackluster you're already losing something from the reading experience. If a person refuses to read in publication order then they've made their choice that these sorts of references-as-surprises don't matter to them as much as other things, and they'll get the dramatic versions of revelations for the stories they like the best (that is, the series they're reading) and intriguing connections for the others. After suggesting publication order I wouldn't encroach on their reading order beyond identifying which setting/magic system/characters they like the best and turning them loose on that series to make of things what they can. We've still got at least 11 books' worth of big reveals to come!

This is the big item. While as far as I can recall it has not been explicitly confirmed that Design was intending to bond Elhokar but had to make do with Hoid it's strongly implied. If not, we have to answer whom it was that Design had intended to bond in Kholinar but was unable to, leaving Hoid as the only choice. EDIT: Per @Treamayne's WoB posted, above, this was explicitly confirmed.

My impression was that Teft was special to Bridge 4-- he was one of the first to get behind Kaladin and so was important in forming Bridge 4 in the first place, and as the irascible sergeant with previous military experience he was directly involved in overseeing their development from slaves into individuals again. Sort of like a beloved uncle, although I don't recall Moash having any special affection for him. But he was especially important to Kaladin, and my feeling in RoW was that Moash wanted to kill him specifically because that would hurt Kaladin the most, though that may just be plot structure (Moash had to test the dagger, and he didn't really have a lot of choices at the time besides Teft). I think you're right that Moash didn't target Teft when he set out that day but was fully prepared to kill anyone from Bridge 4. I think that the section you're referencing in the spiritual realm with Karbranth was for the readers, not necessarily Taravangian, but it should work out the same either way. The key section that leads me to think that is Taravangian's discussion with Dalinar about the hogmen in Oathbringer: he describes Dalinar's solution (a compromise in imprisoning the guilty and the innocent for a while) not as wrong, but as Dalinar being unwilling to commit. He suggests that it's not a morally defensible solution but rather a sop to Dalinar's conscience One of the most common human issues in moral reasoning that I have observed is that most people have a hard time accepting that they would choose an action and be immoral in that choice. I don't think that Taravangian has that issue, and he would be willing to admit that what he did doesn't match his moral system. But the conclusion would not be that his moral reasoning is incorrect but simply that he was unwilling to fully commit to it. And even that I'm not sure would come up because all the Kharbranthians actually are dead and the city actually destroyed (that's how he blunted Cultivation's threat), and the sort-of preservation he undertook doesn't actually affect anything else and so doesn't impact his utilitarian outlook and goals. I think that your description of Moash in the quoted section above is on-target but reversed. The key item here is that Moash places what he wanted (revenge against Elhokar) above all else, and his respect for Kaladin was subordinate to that. Kaladin could only be right to the degree that he agreed with Moash in the first place, and Moash himself was always perfectly righteous. He returns to following his gut instinct to identify what's right again and again, sometimes bothering to justify it and sometimes not. But because he judges morality by his knee-jerk satisfaction or dissatisfaction he can't actually engage with the topic, or Kaladin on it. Killing Elhokar felt right to Moash and he never examined it beyond observing that feeling in himself, so Kaladin was wrong but Moash couldn't express (or even really conceive) why. I do think that there was/is potential for Kaladin to inject some doubt into Moash but that thread seems to have been dropped (and dropped pretty explicitly after killing Teft) so I'm unsure if the story will ever revisit the topic for him. I'm interested to hear more about your thoughts on why you feel Taravangian and Moash know that they are behaving in ways contrary to their moral values-- why they are wrong (even bad) but continue to behave in those ways.

I'm not sure I agree that Moash is more in alignment with Taravangian/Retribution now than he was with Rayse/Odium before, I'll have to think about it more. I'd think that old Moash was all about retribution (his grudge against Elhokar, which sort of bled out to include lighteyes generally, though loosely), but after killing Elhokar he hasn't really been looking for payback against anyone. He does want to prove to Kaladin that his own views and decisions were right (which he did most pointedly during Rayse's tenure in RoW), which lines up with Taravangian's behavior around Dalinar and Jasnah. I definitely don't agree that Taravangian and Moash know that they're wrong, or that they even admit the possibility, but that seems tangential to the thread. Regardless, Moash continuing trying to prove his actions from three books ago were and are right is a plot that strikes me as prone to stagnation. It's literally the same argument as was there in the middle of WoR, and as Kaladin has thoughtfully progressed in his attitudes and sense of morality he's moved far from the persuade-able figure who bought into and then rejected Moash's whole position. That's how I read the whole drive-Kaladin-to-suicide plot in RoW: Moash knew he'd lost the argument and Kaladin would not be persuaded, so the only alternative to the suffering Kaladin's wrong position would cause himself would be Kaladin's suicide. And that's where my concerns about Moash really come in. It's not that he for some reason fundamentally could never do something interesting again, it's that the circumstances of his existence have narrowed so much that it's hard for me to see him latching on to something new rather than filling the implacable antagonist role. Like, he doesn't have any activities of daily life any longer, nor any social interactions nor interests, so what new experiences will he have or things will he see that might give him a new goal, a new motivation, or a new perspective? "I hate Kaladin" or "I work for Retribution and do what he says" are fine to move him through future story events, but those look to me like rehashing his old hits again and don't give him much agency or scope for action outside of what he's already done for more than half of the books. I liked Moash in the early books, but the current iteration reminds me of Lezian and Abidi: serviceable, but kind of flat. I agree with @RedBlue that a big part of Moash lately has been how little screen time he's had, but I differ in that I don't think Moash had more to offer than that since early RoW. Vyre didn't have much to say to anyone about anything. Things do seem more open for him now that he's no longer directly enthralled by Odium, and so maybe in the future we'll get some POV sections that will breathe some life back into him and round him out again but I'm not going to hold my breath. At this point I don't feel I'd get more out of a Moash revival than I would out of a totally new character who could express the same themes and ideas without the narrative baggage.

It's hard for me to see him having any real relevance like that any more. It's not even really clear why he's still a threat. I can accept that he's a great fighter, but it strains credulity that he's always fundamentally better than every Bridge 4 member, even in combination, and yet he easily outclasses everyone that encounters him. I maintain my position that Moash is now just a generic anti-Radiant. His character exists to show the inverse of Radiant progression (he gives in to his problems every time in order to stay the same, while Radiants struggle against their problems and grow to become different). His big thing now, with the crystal eyes, is that he can reliably kill spren and thereby sever Radiant bonds. But that's a stagnant position. He's nursing the same resentments he started with thousands of pages ago, even after getting what he wanted (killing Elhokar). He doesn't really pursue new things, his new gimmicks aren't all that interesting or flexible (Odium's favor, controlling Kaladin's dreams, the crystal eyes, the "shift" from being backed by Odium to by Retribution, etc.), and he's now become sort of a Cosmeric chimera where he gets a new gadget once in a while but he's still just the same old obstacle to the same people for the same arbitrary reasons. He doesn't do much, he doesn't drive much of any plot, he doesn't really want anything in particular, and lingering over his resentments makes it very hard for him to change, narratively. He's overstayed his welcome and I can't think of anything that might involve him at this point that I would find satisfying anymore-- even Kaladin striking him down (which would have been fine with me all the way through RoW) would feel flat and pointless to me. I wouldn't really mind if the books just never mentioned him again or there was a disjointed line to lampshade it like "Note: Moash died on the way back to his home planet". He's a dead end of characterization and narrative, and if Sanderson has been trying to do something else with him I don't think it's been working. It seems like even Sanderson is tired of him and bored with what he can offer. Maybe there's something that will recover things in the works but I feel that featuring more Moash is just compounding the errors already made and it would be better to just move on. Time we spend with Moash is time that could have been spent with an interesting or meaningful character instead.

We don't have much insight into his thinking so this is only a guess, but I think that it leans even more into the egotistical Fused culture. The Fused are already very competent and immortal, so even the least distinctive would have trouble avoiding titles and legendary deeds over their millennia of existence. The titles may differ from one person to another, but everyone has at least a couple. Everyone except for one: El, the individual so consequential and so dangerous that he doesn't need a title to announce himself, the one so centrally important that there could be no confusion about whom you mean when you say his name by itself. His name alone announces him and no deed or event could overshadow his identity as himself. Your question does make me wonder if he has a deeper reason, especially if there might be a practical one (does it help preserve or strengthen his cognitive/spiritual identity in some way?). But that would raise another question about why no other Fused have pursued those benefits. I'm also curious if the lack of titles is related to whatever thing El did/thing that happened to El that cut him off from the rhythms.

It wasn't my intention to make you feel bad. What I was trying to say is that things like this often stick out by design-- when the author wants to highlight a certain trait for purposes of representation and inclusion but without writing a story that is specifically about that trait you get something that is hard to miss, and variably well-integrated into the story. The grand, sweeping format of Cosmere stories (and especially Stormlight) has made some character development uneven. We'll get more Renarin stuff in subsequent books and we might then see some smoother or more gradually developed characteristics about him. So far we only know a little, if only because relatively few pages have been dedicated to him and his POV, which might make it feel more jarring for some: making his sexual orientation unmissable to readers was kind of bluntly delivered, had little buildup (as with nearly all things Renarin so far), and makes up a lot of his known characteristics because relatively little has been shown so far. I, personally, was a bit disappointed that so much of Renarin's character so far is defined his relationship with Rlain. That makes him more of an object of the story than a subject, and given his relevance to events in WaT that felt a bit underwhelming to me. I expect that to even out with books from the back half and I may even change my perspective on WaT once those releases start coming. But if someone feels shock around the in-text revelation of Renarin's sexuality I suspect that that shock would have been present whenever that revelation happened, even if it were in the first lines of text describing the character. And if there is such a shock for many readers I think that it only underlines the purpose in making such traits explicit: once it's not so shocking there won't be as much point in highlighting it that way.

It's an interesting conundrum. One of the big goals of representation is to show different types of people in the world as characters in media. But it's not unusual that some traits are real for those characters but not relevant to the broader story, so it's hard for them to come up smoothly and clearly. The traits aren't supposed to be strange, but explicitly highlighting them already marks them out as different and suggests that they are important, which fits awkwardly against unmarked categories. No one wonders about Colot's sexuality and it never comes up at all, but if he offhandedly mentioned a date with a woman the night before no one would think anything of it. If he were to mention a date with a man the night before there is a group of readers who would think it's making a statement of some kind since, as an offhand comment that doesn't drive the plot he didn't "need" to say it or reveal that about himself, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of Stormlight characters don't reveal anything about themselves in this dimension. The only way for readers to know the trait exists for a character is to suggest it without saying it outright (perhaps like Rushu, which is miss-able by readers), to say so out of text (like Renarin before WaT), to make a point of indicating it in-text even though it isn't significant for the plot (like Sarkuin in WaT), or to make a plotline which features it (like Renarin in WaT). I generally suspect that people who are shocked by such a detail would be shocked in either of the latter cases and are likely to miss it completely in the former two, though maybe that's uncharitable.

Christianity features heavily here because that's the most vocal group (as far as I am aware) that agitates against relationships like Renarin and Rlain in popular fiction. I also tried to be explicit that I don't view the issue of imperfectly following religious obligations as a religious failing as much as a human one which happens to present in a religious context. There are also secular opponents of homosexual relationships which suffer from similar problems. I think I'm missing your point on the rest-- are you suggesting that Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism do not have any dictates regarding what is right or wrong to do, or that followers of those can be more or less successful in fulfilling what is required of them? I'm not sure I quite follow this either. Islam famously is centered on the absolute inerrancy of its central text, and the prescribed and proscribed behaviors come from that text as a result. I think it is unarguable that there are regimes which claim the mantle of Islam and which very strongly enforce things that they believe are prohibited by their sacred text. To my knowledge homosexuality is not more accepted in, say Saudi Arabia or Iran than it is in the U.S.-- rather the opposite. And the "doing-focused aspects" of Islam in those places (as they relate to homosexuality) certainly don't strike me as less severe. I think that maybe I am misunderstanding what you're saying, and I'm definitely not an expert in world religions so I would not be surprised to find gaps in my knowledge which are relevant to this topic and many others. I don't understand your basis for this as a response, maybe you can clarify? I'm not suggesting that anyone is a bad person (I really try to avoid making such judgements, with varying success), but a divine command is not based in "being useful to your life"-- if your religion clearly and explicitly obligates you to do certain things, those things are useful to your life because god has told you to live in that manner (or you have a similar spiritual/cosmic duty to do so). If a person's faith includes divinely decreed obligations, what scope does an individual have to override those? The same applies if your religion requires some things and forbids others for any reason. There are Buddhists who believe in radical nonviolence, taking great care not to step on insects and filtering water so as not to consume any microorganisms (to the degree that's possible). But there are also violent Buddhist nationalists who engage in ethnic cleansing against non-Buddhists. Would you suggest that people in either group are equally living up to what their (nominally the same) religion requires? This goes back to my "a religion is not a buffet" argument. If your religion contains a divine precept that you are not ever allowed to eat the flesh of swine, I don't see any way that you could be permitted to eat bacon-- you are prohibited from it, and it's pretty clear and specific. If you decide to eat bacon anyways because you like it, you are doing that part of your religion "wrong", and it seems difficult to me to claim that you are a devout believer and follower of the religion when you just ignore something pretty clear-cut due to a personal preference. Other areas might have more space for interpretation: could you eat broth made from fully-cleaned pork bones? Maybe, I don't know. I don't care about it either way (it's not my rule), but by the standards of this contrived-for-example religion itself the bacon-eater isn't doing the religion as well as they could, and that failure may or may not be serious and may or may not reflect on their status as a follower of that religion. I 100% agree that many, perhaps most, religious precepts are not so clear. Interpretation of religious matters is incredibly important, and that's the main reason that I suggest humility, thoughtfulness, and caution in making those interpretations, especially when the answers have implications for other people. I think it's broadly not appropriate for an outsider to tell a believer what some specific aspect of their faith means, but I don't think that personal preference, comfort, or convenience is a valid basis for determining right or wrong in any case and certainly not to override an otherwise accepted/clearly stated divine command. If a person is pretty sure that their religion is true and that it commands something, but they find that command uncomfortable, it's an odd stance to say "god said it but got that one wrong, though the rest is right because god said it". Apparently, we (at the broadest level) cannot. I don't agree with the definitions of harm that are advanced in opposing same-sex relationships, I don't agree with the arguments presented to reify that opposition, and I at least sometimes doubt the honesty of those presenting those arguments. But there is a non-trivial group (in both in number of people and in cultural influence) which fundamentally rejects the core position you've stated and will never agree to it.

I totally agree with your view of the situation, and the story could well go in that direction. It would be a newer tone for Sanderson but that might be refreshing (even with such a bleak turn!). My fussiness is only about the term "grimdark", and not at all about a story that might be described that way; even if everyone were to agree that the story is whatever they felt grimdark means I would prefer (not insist upon) a different adjective/set of adjectives, that's all. I just wanted to complain about one of my pet annoyances a little bit. Notably, the citation linked from your first post may not even include the portmanteau at all (it's a transcription of something someone said, so we can't know for sure), but Sanderson didn't say it. I wonder if we can use Mistborn as a guideline. The scenario in Final Empire and, to a lesser extent, the one in Hero of Ages had a lot of that bleakness, maybe enough to typify the entire books. I myself probably wouldn't describe the actual stories themselves as being that way (too much comic relief and hopefulness among the characters for the books' whole tone to earn the description) but definitely more in that direction than his other works. How would you rate those books in terms of what you're describing?

Regarding the new covenant: my understanding is that Jesus was explicit that not one word of the old law (from Moses) would change as a result of his new teachings. I think the common translation is "not one jot or one tittle will pass away from the law". The new covenant is a thing, supplanting the old, but it in no way removes any of the old laws which (per the scripture) remain as relevant as they ever were for the faithful. I imagine that's a big part of why the Bible still includes the Old Testament at all. Not that it necessarily matters here, as detailed below. As for why it's OK to ignore parts of biblical commands, the stock answer is that it isn't. People are nowhere near perfect and most (in my observation) lack the study, reflection, and conviction to do a particularly good job of following their religions' requirements (or moral and ethical requirements, for the non-religious-- this is not a religion problem, it's a human problem). That doesn't mean that they are insincere, necessarily (though that could also produce similar results), but they are often... unskilled as adherents to their faith. I struggled to think of an appropriate word, but all the ones I tested besides "unskilled" sounded to me to be pretty harsh and accusatory. Most faithful I'm people I'm familiar with are aware of this, and they are at least trying to work on it. While I agree that there is something specific about which obligations people deem worthy of following (why fixate on this thing rather than others? There is almost certainly some reason) it will never be persuasive to tell people they're doing a poor and incomplete job of living their faith, so why not do a poor and incomplete job that is more convenient/comfortable for others? Another way of saying it might be, the answer to that observation is maybe to not get a tattoo rather than to ignore yet another (perceived) obligation. Many religious people are likely to hear that as "you're a bad [follower of your religion], so why not be a little bit worse still at it, to my benefit?". Finally, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why one person might believe another person's freedom to do something should be constrained. We all do this, and we all think that our rationales are good even if we later change our minds. But I truly believe that the issue on this particular subject is not as related to religious beliefs as many claim, and for that reason I'm not going to dignify the arguments I've come across for why it should be the case here by repeating them. I'll let any proponents of those arguments speak for themselves, if they care to. In my own experience those arguments are often disingenuous and consequently they aren't even wrong (by which I mean they aren't relevant or coherent enough to rise to the level of being incorrect), which is why arguing against them is generally not productive. That's not to say that there aren't people who are sincere and honest in their belief that homosexuality is wrong and cannot be supported-- there are many who truly believe that they are fulfilling their duties in opposing it. But that's kind of the issue: the core position is a divine edict, and therefore doesn't need examination and very possibly cannot be examined, so the only choices are to obey or to be fundamentally wrong. In cases where the true opposition isn't actually religious (but religion is claimed as the reason anyways) the position is similarly arbitrary.