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Interesting ideas! I think that they would dovetail nicely with Kelsier's growing suspicion of Harmony. And I can't help but feel that Kelsier is pretty aligned, personality- and goal-wise, with Autonomy in the first place. His continued presence on Scadrial might promote Autonomy's interests regardless of whether or not he chooses to support her in any explicit way. But at the same time I wonder how much increased fractiousness would impede Discord and help other Shards. If fractiousness is Discord's primary thing, could it be effectively turned against him? It would be like trying to defeat Honor by keeping your promises, to defeat Cultivation by growing and developing things, to defeat Odium by hating things, or to defeat Endowment by giving things away. Not that strife necessarily benefits Discord. But my thinking is that Autonomy "wins" by her operational definition of autonomy becoming more prominent on Scadrial, while just making people and groups less harmonious there is playing Discord's game on Discord's turf, so to speak. I could definitely imagine an angle in which Hemalurgy becomes prized so that individuals can become more independent and less susceptible to influence or control by others (except Autonomy herself, but that core contradiction is pretty explicitly a part of her representation in the books). I've been unclear about how Shard-to-Shard conflict actually plays out, and the events of Lost Metal have really upended my thinking there. Do you think that conventional/mundane operations (like military invasion or fomenting revolutions) are the primary, or most effective, mode of action when Shards fight one another?

The basic answers have been well covered above: it is possible for them to be love interests, such a thing would not really require Syl to become more humanoid than she is, but she isn't a human (or human-esque being, like a Singer) and so there would be fundamental differences between such a relationship and one between people like Adolin and Shallan. Many people like the idea of a relationship between Kal and Syl, and as you have experienced (rather forcefully) there are many that absolutely do not. OP, I'm sorry you received responses that were... on the more aggressive side of things to such an innocent question, one which only asks about whether or not the idea is possible and does not advocate for it at all. I hope that you don't consider it to be a typical experience on the forum. There isn't anything wrong with thinking the two characters might be a good match for one another in a romantic relationship, nor with wanting to see them together in that way. I, personally, do not like the idea of them being romantically entangled because I think that their relationship is already a good one and there isn't much in-text evidence (as I read things, at least) that there is any particular reason they might want that relationship to be different than it is. But while I, personally, would prefer that their plot lines not develop in that direction I am not affronted by the idea that someone else might have a different preference.

I mentioned credit, not blame; I wouldn't expect goodness to need to be forgiven either! My question was aimed more at seeing if your judgement runs more along a good/evil axis, with responsibility-mitigating features on the evil side only, or more of a noble/base axis, which is more about capacity to resist impulse. Or some other mode of alignment, there are obviously more options. As for the shameless and unabashed judgement by feel, you obviously can and should approach things however seems best to you. I was trying to get additional detail for further discussion, not to make you justify yourself or feel bad. If your assessments are based on your internal, case-by-case feelings then there won't be more to discuss in that direction, which is also an answer to the question. So I won't badger you with additional chatter along that line.

Do you correspondingly not credit a character like Kaladin for behaving well in response to stimuli that were technically out of his control and would reasonably drive most men to insanity or violence? Relatedly, do you have a heuristic for when stimuli make a decision count or not count, in terms of personal responsibility or morality?

It will definitely be widespread, or at least that is my prediction. Hemalurgy a matter of knowledge and very basic supplies. The latter really can't be restricted while the former would be hard to root out and could always be rediscovered. And since the result of Hemalurgy is power for the user I imagine we will see a lot of power-hungry people and groups making use of it. And when some people are using Hemalurgy to get an edge, potential opponents will have a pretty strong incentive to use it themselves. Especially when a Hemalurgic spike is portable and reusable, meaning that you can separate the rewards for Hemalurgy from the work involved in getting those rewards. I doubt we'll see everyday people spiking themselves all the time (though some certainly will), with most preferring something like the medallions as pointed out by @Lewis Nethur. But the medallions don't seem to be less Hemalurgic than spikes, and even if the medallions didn't exist I suspect that a lot of people would use them whether there is a taboo surrounding it or not. Access to Allomancy and Feruchemy is too useful and too flexible for people, collectively, to decline in practice.

I've been wondering how the later SA books will address the division between honor and law because they aren't really that different. As written they're more like perspectives or angles on the same idea than they are distinct things and neither is really about morality. In the books honor is about following through with a commitment that you make (even if you've committed to something "bad") and the law is about following rules that the community around you has made (even if those laws require you to do something "bad"). I think that readers tend to think of honor as "protect the weak", etc., because that's what we see Kaladin and the Windrunners focus on, but all of the Radiant orders are associated with Honor in the same ways and so I don't think that the Skybreakers are less honorable than the Windrunners. There is way too much flexibility and overlap between the two categories: for example, Kaladin's views on whom it is appropriate/necessary to kill change over time which feels more fluid than Nale's obsessive focus on following local laws. But Nale himself chooses which laws are relevant when he sides with the Fused over the rest of Roshar, and what "the law" dictates he must do was very different the day before he made that decision than it was the day after. If you were all-in on following your own personal code of honor, would you say that your code is different from a set of laws defining what you must or may not do? If a law is written down but requires interpretation in what it means or how and when it should be applied, would you not be using your own ideas about what is right to do when you make that interpretation? Neither concept has an obvious moral inflection to it (as presented in the books, at least), and neither seems to me to be inherently or reliably better or worse than the other. Either can and will produce a horrible outcome, at some point, and neither really protects you from error.

I think the answer is that Rayse had other goals and that in the course of pursuing them he was compelled somehow to Invest himself. We don't know a whole lot about his plans and hopes, but one of the things we do know that he is hunting other Shards. My feeling is that he ended up Investing on Roshar more than he had hoped or intended to, perhaps in part of an effort to destroy Honor and/or Cultivation. The result on Roshar is that he became too Invested there to leave, hence all of the "trapped" and "prison" verbiage we see knowledgeable Cosmere figures use to describe him. We know that Rayse was successful in destroying other Shards in other places before Roshar, so he must have been able to do so without Investing himself there enough to be trapped, or extricated himself somehow. My sketchy outline of events, based on what we know so far, is that Odium was Invested to some degree on Ashyn and probably had some influence on the humans there. When they migrated to Roshar Odium came with them (freely choosing to do so or not), and this is probably where the permission came into play. On Roshar the humans then re-aligned themselves with Cultivation and especially Honor, and out of necessity, convenience, or spite Odium then began to interfere with the Singers. That interference ultimately led to many of the Singers becoming semi-immortal, spren-like entities, which required or entailed them becoming "permeated with his essence". I don't know if any major, departure-preventing Investment took place earlier but at that point Odium was probably too attached to leave the system easily. But really, who knows? We still have very little information on how Shards operate and interact with each other, and not much information on Roshar during the relevant time periods. I think that "asking permission" to settle somewhere (from the WoB) might be over-interpreted here, and we have a small amount of evidence that this is the case (The Lost Metal spoiler):

Edit: Shoot, Duxredux covered most of this already, and better! I think that Breeze's thoughts around Soothing are relevant here as well. While there's something specific to being magically influenced directly and precisely (Allomancy), it's not functionally different from any other process that would affect your emotional state. Aluminum is only going to protect you from the former. The latter is something a lot of people seem to like to pretend isn't true of themselves ("I can't be influenced like that!") but there is quite a lot of evidence suggesting that it is true. A pretty face alone can do a lot to alter your mind. A skilled manipulator, Allomancer or not, is going to have a lot of options for fiddling with your emotional state even without magic. If your aluminum-lined hat isn't going to help you avoid buying a timeshare at the high-pressure timeshare sales event, then what is it really worth even if the hat itself is costless? I also think that the more concerned a person is about Allomantic influence the less likely they would be to rely on something easy, like just having a hat. What if the aluminum is counterfeit? You'd have no protection at all while assuming that you had total protection, which is a bad situation to be in. An adversary might be able to do something more tailored as well, like swapping out your hat for a fake while you sleep, introducing a crack in one portion of the metal and remembering what angle is now vulnerable, or something else. "I'll just wear my hat" is the attitude of someone with a general, casual concern and a general, casual countermeasure. That kind of person might not be very thorough in their preparation, and so Allomancy wouldn't be obsolete against them. Someone who is more specifically concerned about being magically influenced will have to do a lot more for the hat to really protect them. All else being equal I think that the best countermeasure is one we've already seen in Obligators from era 1: practice being the object of someone's emotional Allomancy and learn how it feels when it's happening to you so that you can identify the effect if and when it occurs.

I can appreciate what you're saying, and I agree with some of it. As far as the original trilogy, I loved them all. Final Empire is the best (for me) because of its originality, scope, and characters. It's focused and tightly written. Well of Ascension I enjoyed quite a bit as well, though I will agree that a lot of the development there is internal to the characters rather than the world overall (Vin and Elend especially). I enjoyed seeing Vin's doubts and struggles but I agree that the love triangle was not an ideal vehicle for showing it-- it worked, but was a bit flat because Vin's attachment to Elend always felt very arbitrary to me, and her attraction to Zane was better developed but still not very deep. My biggest problem with WoA is that Elend's character never quite came together for me, which is a problem when he is so central to the novel's events and plot. He's an idealist with every possible resource (especially Vin), and his arc is that he comes to understand the constraints of reality late and underappreciates how much those constraints damage his plans and goals. Elend does bow to this (thanks to Tindwyl), but it's not so clear what he becomes instead of his youthful, idealist self. He's just... some guy who assembles compliance out of a desperate situation. He doesn't feel that different from Penrod or Philen in the end, which was unsatisfying given how different Elend was from everyone around him at the start. Hero of Ages I liked more than WoA but I felt suffered somewhat from the introduction of so many new groups (Fadrex under Yomen, Urteau under the Citizen, the Kandra homeland and its residents, the Koloss and their system of organization). The general air of pathetic-ness to all of the jockeying that comes with the impending apocalypse made it hard for me to get so invested in all of these, regardless of how interesting the details were to me. The storage cavern scavenger hunt Vin and Elend were focused on also didn't feel quite as grand as their earlier exploits, and Spook's interest in Beldre also felt very arbitrary and tacked-on to me. But overall I was satisfied with how HoA tied up all of the threads and hints from the previous two books and provided the sweeping, epic conclusion I'd been craving. So, of the original trilogy, I don't feel that the books were bloated or overstayed their welcome. The things I disliked about them were more about how the core plot developed, and the elements of the plot I disliked meant that the parts which focused on those elements were less interesting to me even when they were directly a part of moving the plot forward. I feel that the era 2 books are all superfluous (not that that makes them bad, but they aren't necessary to the series in the way that WoA is necessary for the original three books). They have a lot to recommend them, and I really enjoyed the themes that they explored (particularly Shadows of Self). But the books overall felt more like fan fiction to me than proper entries in the grand scope of the Scadrial novels, and the weaker foundations (what we now call era 2 started as a writing exercise) were very difficult to overcome. I still enjoyed Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, and Bands of Mourning quite a lot but tempered my expectations of them-- I don't think it's quite fair to compare era 2 with era 1 given the (apparent) difference in inspiration and purpose between them. The Lost Metal was... OK in its own right, but I felt it had a ton of filler that was only meant to reference other Cosmere settings and suffered greatly as a result. It answers very few questions, even those raised specifically by the preceding era 2 books (I expected to learn more than nothing about Southern Scadrial, for example), its groups are sketchily constructed and flimsily situated in the world, and overall I feel that the book can't make a very strong case for its own existence. I don't fault people for enjoying it, and it definitely has its bit to offer, but I personally was brutally disappointed by it and it's my least favorite Cosmere book of all. Finally, I think that Secret History was pretty good although it, too, is largely focused on filling in gaps in other Cosmere settings more than it is dealing with Scadrial. I think that Kelsier is a great character and so seeing him in a proactive role (as opposed to him inThe Eleventh Metal) is generally interesting to me. Its one element necessary to the other Mistborn books (explaining the mysterious figure Vin chased over rooftops) was annoying to me in that it was an obvious loose thread from the earlier books which was only explained so much later and so bluntly. I generally dislike the practice of mini-works and other formats being necessary to consume the mainline works' stories, so I am generally biased against individually published novellas and short stories like this (and Dawnshard, and similar). Being published in a compendium of similar works eased my annoyance in this case, however.

I have! I think that it can still work with jumping back in time (narratively), but there are limits to how often it can be done because the main plot stagnates when it's forced to wait for every character's individual perspective, so it's best used in small, strategic amounts. The latter books of Wheel of Time had some serious issues in this regard, and some books are very rigid about updating us on every character every moment to the point that it takes pages and pages to get through one minute of in-book time (I'm looking at you, Against All Things Ending). I think that WoK and WoR did it perfectly, while Elantris did it well enough but struggled a bit in places for me (I didn't like Sarene's plotline enough in certain points to feel it was worth stalling out the main plot's pace). We have enough active characters in the various Cosmere settings at this point that it risks becoming unwieldy and so I'm not critiquing the lack too strongly, but I do miss it.

I felt the same way about those two books (and all of Mistborn era 2 as well): I was disappointed, but subsequent readings were a lot more enjoyable. I resist reading sample chapters because they lack the context that makes them interesting parts of a great book, and by nature they are either inconsequential (intro chapters that have a lot of recapping and exposition) or hard to interpret (because the events that set them up are not available). I broke on WaT and read the initial sample chapters but am otherwise holding strong for that very reason. I'm too eager for the book for any sample to satisfy me for more than a few minutes at most! I agree that the quality, specifically polish and craft, have declined in recent Sanderson works but I'm less sanguine about that than many. I want to know the whole Cosmere story, but only because the initial books intrigued me so much. If Sanderson published a wiki-style outline of every major character and event through the rest of the books instead of actually writing the novels we'd get the Cosmere story, but what would be the point? I'd rather see excellent books and never get the finish than have the finish, but have it and everything leading up to be lesser experiences. I think that he's a great writer because his writing has been great, but if the writing starts to suffer then what remains? A more clipped, formulaic style used largely to adhere to an arbitrary schedule suggests a greater focus on business than on art, which can be unfortunate for an artist. What really bothers me about Sanderson's apparent approach is that he has dedicated increasing amounts of time to fan service, fan management, and being a brand in himself. Interactions with fans are great, and important, including fan-demanded content in books is fine, and I don't begrudge him doing that nor investing his time and effort in promoting his work so that he can be as commercially successful as possible. But if the books are lacking, and more time spent on them might have improved them... well, I'd prefer his time be invested in making the books awesome rather than making the atmosphere around the books awesome with the books themselves just... existing. I don't care about a podcast (not compared to a novel I'll love forever), I don't care about merchandise, I'd rather have none of that than compromise on the novels to have them. I don't mean to judge his process nor to dictate what someone else must do to satisfy my desires, and Sanderson himself is going to be the best judge of what he needs to do to accomplish his chosen tasks. He's investing a lot of time and work to produce things that I want. And it's unfair to demand that people be constantly inspired on the level of the best work they ever produced. But I truly believe that, if his initial Cosmere novels had the quality and character of his most recent releases, he would not have risen to the level of prominence he currently enjoys. I don't want to end up reading Dragonsteel only because it's coasting on great ideas and great work that all happened thirty years earlier.

This is a more general description than specific moments, but I really enjoy when different characters have different views of the same event, expressed in real time. A couple of examples are when Dalinar concedes to using Sadeas' bridge crews in WoK (he doesn't want to but is compelled by his desire to demonstrate working together with other highprinces), and Kaladin sees the same thing from a bridgeman's perspective and is disgusted. Also, when Kaladin's leg is wounded in the chasms Shallan's POV is described as "he [Kaladin] seemed to think he didn't need a tourniquet", along with her reasoning that he's probably seen a lot more battlefield injuries than her and so her background in anatomy and biology is less useful. Meanwhile, we know that he's actually a very skilled surgeon so it's a lot more than just battlefield experience! Those moments did a lot to help differentiate characters even when they're experiencing the same events. It came up a lot in WoK and WoR but seems a lot less common in the later books. Most characters have all of the same information about events around them and it's rarer for them to filter any of it through their own understanding than it used to be.

How do you consider Ati's effect on Ruin in this model? It was stated pretty clearly in a WoB (I think I recall this, at least) that Ati's influence caused Ruin to be more like entropy than wanton destruction. Ruin's influence on Ati is undeniable, but would you consider the channeling of the epistemological concept of ruin into entropy to be a negligible effect? Obviously we'd have to assume quite a bit about what other expressions might be possible to answer this, but I'm curious about your thoughts. As for the rest of the ideas expressed upthread, I'm already on record as thinking that by era 2 Sazed has already failed in causing his combined Shard to be "Harmony" as he wished at the end of era 1. The name has stuck around but is no longer an appropriate description and hasn't been for a long time. I won't subject everyone to a rehash of the rationale here, but the general idea is that Shards' influence on the worlds they inhabit is profound and pervasive, that Sazed's need to act through agents on Scadrial both represents and exacerbates his inability to be harmonious, and that changes in Sazed himself (as we see them, at least) strongly suggest that he is both failing in his ambitions towards harmony and that he is aware of those failures. The middle point is pretty relevant to this thread topic. If it is true that Harmony requires agents more than other Shards due to his dual nature making direct action difficult (as opposed to Shards like Rayse-as-Odium, who simply preferred working through agents to risking damage to himself), could the fractiousness of those agents have some direct influence on the nature of the Shard Harmony itself?

I'll add another mark of approval to this, I think you described the core insight really well! Branching off from this, I think that there is a typical case in literature (so common as to be beyond a trope) that characters are either blatantly heroic or anti-heroic. In both cases they are fundamentally "good-aligned", doing good things for the right reasons for the former and bad things for the right reasons for the latter. They may have flaws but their intentions and actions are usually pointed the "right" way. Characters who do bad things for evil reasons are almost always villains, and often shallowly depicted in how and why they do the things they do. Moash is different in that he is a well-drawn character who has a very similar backstory to Kaladin (who is a pretty clearly heroic character) who then makes increasingly "bad" choices for increasingly wicked reasons. I think that his background, his contrast to Kaladin, and his strong character development make it especially poignant for him to have turned so wholly to the dark side. I liked Moash a lot in WoK, and only a little less so in WoR, but his ongoing choices are offensive and upsetting to me. That's a huge part of what made him such an engaging character for me, even as I dislike and disapprove of him now. I think that that's the big reason there is a group that wants redemption for Moash but not for Amaram (in particular) or Torol Sadeas.

The book version of those knock-off movies like Transmorphers, Hansel and Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft, and The Day the Earth Stopped. I would guess it's a shameless, low-effort attempt to prey on people who have heard of WoK in passing. I'm surprised at how blatant the character names are, given how easy it would be to just make up new ones. I predict mediocre sales, at best, strongly correlated with holiday gifts to disappointed recipients. The misspelling of "journeys" is not promising. Though I suppose you never know... 50 Shades had a similar origin and did well.

I'm mostly worried about any redemption feeling arbitrary, much more so than having a strong opinion on whether or not Moash is redeemed. I want a good journey, regardless of the destination! The thing with Moash is that he consistently makes decisions which are exactly opposite anything that we might call redemptive. He's not just "not redeemed", he's continuing to make choices that take him farther from redemption. He can start making different, better choices at any time (that's a common thing for Radiants in the first place), and so the issue isn't whether or not it's technically impossible as whether or not Moash will do it. What would prompt such a change, and how plausible would it feel for Moash to completely shift how he views things and makes his decisions? Moash has clearly been developed as a villain and in many ways an anti-Radiant We have some complicating issues, such as Odium's influence on Moash affecting his moral responsibility for what he's done, futuresight and Fortune influencing his situation and behaviors, etc. But I think that generally people don't want Moash to be redeemed because they feel that, if he is, he won't be appropriately punished for his bad actions. People who favor the redemption seem to feel that Moash in some sense deserved to do all the horrible things that he's done, and so further punishment is inappropriate, or are committed to the idea that anyone can be redeemed and so we should always hope for that. I, personally, view it narratively more than anything since he's a character in a series of novels (as opposed to a real person). For a Moash redemption arc to be satisfying he'd almost certainly need a lot of screen time, likely as a POV character, and I don't really want that. Moash-as-Vyre is barely a character any more, we've seen a lot of him, and there are other characters that are more interesting to me. He could pull off a last-minute key action that saves the books' heroes, particularly if he dies in the process, but "at the last minute, less than 100% evil" isn't much of a redemption. Further, many of the heroic characters in the books are already moving through redemption arcs and it balances the story for someone to make a different set of choices. Maybe Malata will serve a role like this, too, but variety seems important to me-- not everyone overcomes their issues and becomes Radiant. Ultimately I don't think that Moash "deserves" redemption unless and until he starts trying to be redeemed and so far he has done the exact opposite at every opportunity. His circumstances are tragic but his response to them has been consistently monstrous. I'm not inclined to preemptively grant him absolution even though I can extend some compassion for his ill treatment.

I like the angle! It does seem that humanity and holding a Shard simply don't work together very well. I don't think that the juxtaposition of harmony and discord is the strong part of the evidence (they're antonyms, and Syl is specifically drawing a contrast), but the distinction between humans and everything else seems important. The Shards seem like they would exist whether or not humans do, but Shard-Vessel friction seems like one of the main drivers of imbalance in a lot of the books with Vessels we've seen up close.

Thanks, this is a great reference! You're always good at these sorts of WoB.

Do we have any definitive information on where Taravangian encountered the term "Nahel bond"? It'd be a term from the Shadowdays at most recent, and even the people most learned about the Radiants seemed not to know about the spren-bonding angle of their nature. That he is ruler of the city which maintains the Palanaeum seems the most obvious answer, but seems unsatisfying to me because there are just so many texts there. A more plausible guess is perhaps encountering a source with more direct access to the information. Gavilar probably knew it, and the Heralds on Roshar certainly did, as did Odium and Cultivation. Worldhoppers are another good guess, and I would wager that at least Mraize and Iyatil knew it prior to Way of Kings. Taravangian almost certainly knew the term before he wrote the Diagram (he uses it, but how could he have derived "Nahel" as a proper noun from his existing knowledge?). Is the most likely answer just an interaction, never described in-text, with someone who knew it?

Thanks to everyone weighing in so far! If people will indulge me, I have a couple of general clarifying questions: 1. Is seeing possible futures actually futuresight? I don't think I did a good job of laying this out in my initial post, but it was already pretty long and dense. I don't need to see the future to imagine a possible outcome, after all, and a prediction that in five years some specific thing either will, won't, or will kind of happen isn't much of a prediction. If we're still going to call that "futuresight", what specifically does magic bring to the viewer? I had intended item 5 on my list to represent this: you can see future outcomes without actually having the information that would allow you to conceive them. An example of this might be Cultivation's alleged plan, mentioned by @Xiahida: if she initiated this plan centuries before Taravangian was born, futuresight might be a good explanation of how and why she would do so: she knows that someone appropriately positioned to supplant Rayse as Taravangian did will (at least probably) exist within some window of time, and plans around that knowledge. Conversely, if she intended to arrange events such that someone like Taravangian would be born and seek out the Old Magic with a request she could twist in order to supplant Rayse, then what value does futuresight really have for her? She could just work on accomplishing that, and knowledge that the outcome might happen, somehow, is kind of worthless. It's the "might" that's the issue, unless we are asserting that the outcome is unimaginable to the future-looker without observing a future in which it occurs. Is this what people think futuresight offers? If not, the Diagram example again becomes relevant. The expanded minds of Vessels when they hold their Shards should be at least on par with Taravangian-who-wrote-the-Diagram, and probably quite a bit beyond that as well. If the Diagram can be assembled via mundane means it's hard for me to see how much magical futuresight really offers, unless it's a shortcut which elides the need for that intelligence. But why would that matter to a Shard? One final question under this item: we know from WoBs that Shards can be variably good at seeing the future. Preservation was quite good at it, while Ruin was not. But if all we are getting from futuresight is a set of outcomes that are not literally impossible, what does this mean in practice? 1a. An easy way to square the circle of (1) is to involve what we've heard about how Fortune works. You could glean some supernatural sense of what actions will make your desired outcome more likely, and take them, thereby "causing" your outcome to occur. But I would argue that this isn't futuresight, it is future-guidance, and doesn't really require that you know the outcome you want to pursue (in the sense that such knowledge is irrelevant, in a practical way, to identifying the actions that you should take). I think that this would be an interesting angle, but it seems to me that it would seriously degrade the "knowledge of future events" which is implied by terms like "futuresight". But at the same time, how can actions be identified as the "correct" ones without an end result in mind? Perhaps this is where the Intent aspect of Cosmere magic intersects with Fortune, but I still feel that "seeing the future" is not an element of what would make this work. So again, what does "seeing" "the" "future" actually offer someone? 2. Can we distinguish between being bad at futuresight, interference in futuresight, and futuresight not being possible/meaningful? What I took from the Stormfather's analogy of looking into the future being like looking at a shattering window was that the future is more difficult to see farther out, not that the future is less fixed the farther it is from the present. This would allow for something like the differing abilities of Preservation and Ruin as well as the different results they got from their plans. It probably wouldn't matter for the narratives of the books, but does matter for describing the mechanisms at work and therefore for our theorizing about anything that touches on futuresight. Renarin seems bad at futuresight: his prediction of how Jasnah would react towards him near the end of Oathbringer was wrong, but we have no evidence of any interference from any other future-viewer disrupting those events. He saw clearly and interpreted correctly, but his vision was simply wrong. Vin was amazing at futuresight: her conclusions about the future were always right (when using atium), and she understood enough about how it worked that she could use those conclusions while also making others' conclusions from their own atium unreliable even when lacking it herself. Rayse's and Ruin's futuresight seems meaningless: had they perceived even a small likelihood of their destruction, they would have avoided the situations in which the destruction occurred. And yet, they did not. We can claim interference (Renarin for sure, Rashek a bit less decisively), we can claim personal failings leading to irrational behaviors at key moments. But if we lay Rayse's demise at Cultivation's feet we are forced to ask about why she could see outcomes of Renarin's actions when Rayse was totally blind to them. This is the biggest reason I struggle with futuresight in the novels. Thus far, when, whether, and how well it works seems to respond to whatever is needed to make the plot fit together, rather than the plot following from the ability's properties. Obviously there is a lot of content to come which might explain all of this in a highly satisfying way, but prophecies and time-bending knowledge are often not internally consistent in fiction. Given how tight Sanderson usually is with his magic systems, and how central futuresight seems to be to key events in the Cosmere, I would be very disappointed if this were the case here. 3. It seems as though respondents, so far, broadly agree that futuresight exists and reliably works (via whatever mechanism) except for interference from others who view the future. But there is a lot of interference going around, and someone doesn't necessarily need to oppose your goals for interference to jam you up. If this is so, futuresight is an incredibly unreliable tool if looking more than a few minutes ahead, and the Shards at least should surely know this. Why, then, do so many seem to rely on it? The most obvious answer is that, futuresight aside, people strive towards their goals even without knowing that they will succeed. Futuresight may not be a guarantee any more than Kaladin can be certain his (non-Shard)spear won't break in a fight. If a tool fails, you'll just have to deal with it, and if it doesn't fail then you're probably better off for having had it in the first place. It's hard to tell how much the Shards are really relying on it, so maybe it's a reasonable amount. But if I were Renarin, after the end of Oathbringer I would be hard-pressed to trust any of my visions when planning for the future. At this point I imagine that that is exactly the lesson Renarin learned from that event, and we just haven't gotten access to his PoV yet to illuminate that. So, as I've thought through your responses and organized my ideas I have reached a tentative conclusion: "futuresight" is too generous a name for the ability even while it's not inaccurate, and it is a terrible idea to rely on it. Accessing Fortune may or may not be more reliable, but is certainly the practical element that makes futuresight work.

Futuresight is, by now, clearly an ongoing concern in the Cosmere. We don't have enough information to conclusively state what it is and how it works, but there seems to be a (loose) consensus on how it operates in practice: it allows the being using it to see possible futures, but nothing is certain. I, personally, do not like this. You don't need magic to know what the future might be like, and so magic which accomplishes only this is pointless. It is a case (perhaps a special case) of the prophecy problem in fantasy literature. Prophecies are generally treated as definitive statements about events that will definitely take place in the future, except for when they don't, in which case they were... something else, usually not very clearly defined. The reason that I don't like this is because using the word "prophecy" indicates that the information so described is different from a guess, extrapolation, deduction, possibility, or hope. Calling something a prophecy, but then saying that it's nothing more than something that might happen, strips meaning from the concept of "prophecy" in the first place. It is then (usually) relegated to just being a plot device, something that motivates characters in various ways but does not actually constrain events at all. This is where futuresight seems to be stuck, at least with what we know so far. I'd like input on how other people assess the ability. My current thinking is that "futuresight" (and all similar descriptions) is a fair name but used imprecisely in ways that overstate what's happening. There are two examples from the text that I think are illuminating: Atium (the kind Vin used, not the real stuff): atium involves no guesswork and allows no mistakes. If you are burning atium, and no one else has access to information about the future, the atium shadows you see are exactly what will happen moments in the future. Not a guess, not just a possibility. It's only when someone else accesses information about the future that atium becomes unreliable, and even then the atium itself shows you that the future is no longer definite (or, maybe more precisely, it shows a recursive chain of things which will happen but are then overwritten by people using that information to make choices that will alter the future). The Diagram: Rayse explicitly notes that what Taravangian did in creating the Diagram was done without access to Fortune and then displays how much greater his own ability is. It's not necessarily clear that Taravangian didn't have access to Fortune when creating the Diagram (Rayse could have been mistaken), nor that Rayse himself is using Fortune for his display (he may have had a better version of Taravangian's deductive reasoning skills thanks to holding a Shard), so we shouldn't overinterpret this. But the interaction strongly implies that there is a distinction between what Taravangian accomplished (incredibly accurate, far-reaching conclusions based on extrapolations from existing knowledge) and whatever mechanism Rayse used to assess the future. Atium is the wrinkle, because it is so precise and accurate about the future it is hard to dispute that it really is giving exact information about something that will, for certain, happen. The only thing that can change that course of events is a person with specific foreknowledge actually drawn from the future in some way, who can then use that foreknowledge to do something they otherwise would not have done. Outside of this sort of change we have never seen atium be anything other than perfectly reliable, which strongly suggests that the future exists and already, to some degree, written (though not immutably). From these two examples I have thought of a few possibilities regarding futuresight: It exists and is accurate, but only possible across very short time scales. Maybe the future is deterministic but only in a rolling 5-second chunk, or something. It exists and is accurate, but individuals may be variably capable of using it. The future is deterministic, and therefore can be known, but it's hard to tell how good one's own ability to look at and know that future is. Failures are in one's self, not in futuresight. It exists and is accurate, but subject to interference. When knowledge of the future allows one to change it, more people having access to that knowledge means more potential for changes and more motivations for changing it. So the future is deterministic absent interference by people with knowledge of it, but there are people with that knowledge and so "the" future is always in flux. In this case futuresight exists and is accurate but not reliable, and the unreliability is hard to get around. It doesn't exist but is instead a perspective-limited interpretation of having enough knowledge and intellectual capacity to deduce future events. The future isn't deterministic but is path-dependent on the present, and so one can predict what will happen given what has happened before and is happening now, but you are not in any sense drawing information from a time which has not yet come. Or, the future is deterministic but cannot be directly observed in advance. This is the text-as-presented explanation for the Diagram. Futuresight as such doesn't exist, but a magical ability which gives information a person doesn't/can't personally know does exist. This information can then be used for deducing the future (if the future is deterministic) or estimating the likelihood of futures (if the future is not deterministic). This is the best representation I've thought of for the consensus opinion on these forums, assuming the latter item about estimating likely futures. The future, in the sense of some time to come in which specific events or situations will occur/be present, does not exist and so it cannot be observed in any way. Extrapolations based on current events will, however, define the state of the world as time moves forward. I'll give a more concrete example that may help delineate between some of these: you and I are playing Connect 4 correctly (we are following all of the rules). Because the number of allowed moves is limited by the game board, I necessarily know every possible move that you might make. This is not seeing the future, even though I "know" every possible future state. I don't have any idea which future state will actually happen. If I calculate the contingent probabilities of me winning after making a specific move on my turn (or the inverse, selecting moves to prevent you from winning), and move accordingly I am affecting my chance of winning (or not losing) but still not seeing the future-- I'm aware of the the number of winning moves (or moves leading to a draw) based on the state of the game in the present and behaving according to that information. No information on events that haven't happened yet is involved. If we have played many times, and I know that you are characteristically likely to make certain moves rather than others in different situations, I can influence what moves you make by using my own turns to prime those characteristic likelihoods. This is not knowing the future, but knowing the past, and I use that information to move towards a future state that I want. If I know what move you will make on your next turn (which slot you'll put a token into), and you will in fact make that move, then I know the future but only a little ways out. If I know every move that you will make after any of my turns, and you will make those moves, then I know "the future". I choose which future will come to pass by choosing my own moves, but I will never be surprised by any move you make. If I know every move that you will make, and this cannot be altered, then I know the future but cannot make much use of that knowledge-- I will somehow be constrained from making choices which prohibit your fated moves, and nothing I do will alter anything. The future can be known, but the knowledge is mostly inert. In conclusion, I think that what we see in the Cosmere is a combination of numbers 2 and 3 from my list. The future exists and includes outcomes that will happen, absent interference, but one's ability to perceive that future is imperfect to an unknowable degree and there are tons of people that are constantly interfering. So the future exists, and the ability to perceive it to in ways that could be used exists, but in practice seeing the future only serves to frustrate others' efforts to use futuresight. Futuresight is precise but not accurate and a very unreliable tool. I'm interested in others' ideas on futuresight in the Cosmere. Do you think that it works differently from this? Are any of my points or critiques way off?

Mmmmm... I agree that it would be difficult and impractical at best, as even a a little bit of cover would inhibit sensing metal, let alone Pushing or Pulling on it (as alder24 said). Plus we empirically observe many powerful Allomancers who specifically do not ever do this, even when it would be useful (it would have made Vin's horseshoe trick unnecessary, for example). A supremely powerful Allomancer might be able to, such as Rashek, whom we know was able to Push nuggets of metal even inside of Vin's stomach, but Rashek is an exception to so many things and in so many ways that I don't want to generalize from what we saw of him.

I'm curious about what others think on this, which has occurred to me on my pre-Wind and Truth re-read of the series, and this thread brought to mind: The nature and progression of Oaths seems different for Lightweavers compared with the other Orders. But the generic problems that Radiance addresses (variably described as brokenness or trauma severe enough to cause cracks in a person's Spiritweb) do not obviously vary in a similar way. That is, Shallan's traumas (as far as I am aware of them at this point) don't seem radically different from Kaladin's, Dalinar's, or Venli's. So the main question I have is: do people agree with this assessment, that the traumas are similar for members of these Orders but the development towards Radiance is not, at least between Lightweavers and the rest? If there are differences, how might those be expressed in the world? If Shallan were a Windrunner instead, would her 5th-Oath self be different in some meaningful way from the Lightweaver version in terms of repairing her Spiritweb or addressing her traumas? Might one be more fully restored than another, or could the quality of the re-forging differ if one is less suited to an Order but still progress to a given Ideal? Further, could the question even be meaningful in the first place? I still think that 5th Oath Radiants are going to be pretty rare, and perhaps not only will just a few people be capable of reaching that point but the possibility will exist only if they end up in the "right" Order for them? I wonder if Malchin might have been better served in an Order other than the Lightweavers, and if so how did he wind up as one instead? I used to trust Radiant sprens' judgement on selecting people to bond, but maybe they're looking first for someone damaged enough to bond and the specific attributes that make them a fit for a given Order is more secondary, or perhaps even less meaningful than that. Hoid might be a good example to think on, because while Lightweaving seems like an obvious Order for him it seems more like he took the spren that was available and Design was just... resigned to bonding someone who was at least minimally passable, since she'd already crossed realms and had suffered the attendant damage.

It's explicitly stated in one of the epigrams attributed to Words of Radiance (and in Words of Radiance) that Lightweavers' Oaths bring them to self-awareness, and that their Oaths are different from those of the other orders in being more liberally considered. The other Oaths we've seen are more about what the Radiant must do, developing their views of how they should interact with external events, while Lightweavers (with what little evidence we have) seem to develop an understanding of who and what they are. It's less about the particular fact that she's admitting is true being Earth-shattering. I'm not sure the Oaths are really supposed to be the same, and the implication I've drawn is that budding Lightweavers are limited by their commitment to the lies they tell themselves about themselves, which is different from, say, a Windrunner being uncertain what "protecting others" really means in practice and so not being able to identify and do the "right" thing. At this point we know that Shallan is such an unreliable narrator and window into Radiance that I hesitate to assume her progression is normal for Lightweavers, but I would argue that her truths are at least as significant as Kaladin's and Dalinar's. The situation that led to her killing her father meant that she was at the center of her family's misery, and killing her father was perhaps less of a solution to that misery than it was a choice of a path forward. Shallan being the kind of person who could and would do that is a pretty core part of a lot of what she's done since admitting that to herself, and I feel it's on par with Kaladin realizing he needs to protect Elhokar even though he hated the man. All that said, I agree with you that there is something going on with Shallan for sure. I don't know if we have any basis for half-Oaths being a thing that a person can do and still gain powers, but I think that whatever she's dealing with is well outside of things we've seen other characters handle in their progressions. I could imagine her being 4th or even 5th Oathed but faking being a new Radiant so thoroughly that she herself is deceived, or a Herald whose mind is broken enough to think she's this girl called Shallan, to having Oaths with multiple spren, to things I haven't even imagined yet. Wind and Truth is still so far away, it's maddening!

A different organizational scheme might have worked better than what the Radiants used. I suppose we'll never know. But I think that fundamental organization of mixed-Order teams would have been difficult due to the divergent views and values of the Orders themselves along with seeing that factionalism was problematic. Quarrels among the Orders would probably not have been avoided by forcing them to interact more (though who knows? Maybe it would have!). The factionalism piece seems difficult to me, though. Even with ten factions united in purpose, duty, and heritage there was still dissension and scheming. Creating a large number of mixed squads sounds to me like it would be at least as prone to factionalism and dissent. But ultimately I doubt it would have helped anyone much. The Radiants displayed strong unity (well, 9 out of 10 Orders' worth of unity) in the Recreance, which was a result of horror and revulsion over truths that considerably predated the Knights. We don't know a whole lot about the pre-Recreance days, but the Radiants seem to have been generally present and effective enough in their duties. The organization's failures that we know about were mostly the Recreance itself and the binding and imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram, neither of which would have been improved by any particular internal structure. Or so I think, at least.