Returned

He'd definitely have some scope to do it, but I don't think he'd have as much as people are imagining or that it would prompt much change in the country. Do you really believe that Sadeas would give him valuable lands to rule, and treat him fairly with an honest chance to make things work his own way? I'm not clear on what people expect a good example would achieve, what that example would produce that Alethkar cares about, or that having the Shards would give Kaladin the social and political capital to be influential like Adolin or Jasnah rather than, say, Roshone. Kaladin would have done a great job in the role and been able to make good use of the Shards. But I think that assuming Kaladin could use them to drive much change throughout Alethkar is very optimistic.

It's hard to approach the question of whether or not what Kaladin chose was right without drawing from material to OP hasn't read yet. But with what's covered so far in the book I do agree with Kaladin's choice, even though I think it would have been a defensible choice for him to have accepted the Shards. His decision is definitely consistent with his character (certainly at that point in time), and additional sections of the books may influence your thinking down the line. The benefits Kaladin could have made use of, had he accepted the Shards, would also have represented a wholesale acceptance of the society which he increasingly dislikes and also undermined the balance he's trying to maintain between soldiering and healing. Things like lighteyes being right to rule over everyone regardless of what that rule actually does to the people who are ruled. Or becoming a peerless killing machine with Plate and Blade when he's just demonstrated that he doesn't need those things to be able to oppose a Shardbearer. Slaughter isn't Kaladin's preferred method of action. The Shards would certainly have elevated him above many people (socially, politically, and on the battlefield) but would not have been enough to let him just do what he wants-- he would still have to pledge fealty to someone else, and do what that person said just because they said it. And at least at that point in the story and location there aren't many (or any) brightlords that would help, or allow, Kaladin to accomplish things he might have wanted to do. It's not like Sadeas would have stopped using bridgemen at Kaladin's request, for example, nor would he have allowed Kaladin to protect them on plateau runs. Kaladin doesn't follow an "ends justify the means" philosophy, and even if he did it's not really clear what ends he might be able to achieve with the Shards that he couldn't otherwise. Taking them would mainly have resulted in vastly more corpses to lay at his feet and more deeply embedded him in (and reinforced) a political and social system he deeply disagreed with and viewed as the primary mechanism that destroyed his life.

Inspired by another question in this section: Since Soulcasting allows for radical changes in what objects are and how they're composed, could awareness of Soulcasting make Forgery much easier and more powerful? A Forger wouldn't need any plausible details for the change or even to know much of the history of an object. As long as the Forger is (1) aware of Soulcasting and (2) could plausibly (by Forgery standards) suggest that a Soulcaster might have been near an object at some point, the Forged history of the object could just involve a Soulcaster arbitrarily changing it. For the purposes of this question we'll handwave away the potential issues with a Soulcaster leaving Roshar and/or a Forger being able to access their art away from Sel. Would the magics interact this way, or are there other obstacles that would prevent it?

@cometaryorbit I've made my points, and if I haven't persuaded you by now I'm not going to, so we'll have to leave it here until we get some more text to work with. We might get more details from any series, but we may be left uncertain until as late as the back half of SA (which feels like it's forever away!).

You're right that there is an argument to be made. I simply don't find it persuasive. We don't really have any examples of a non-corporeal cognitive shadow that thinks or acts differently from one that is corporeal, and a couple which suggest they are precisely similar. But if a mind thinks and behaves in the exact same patterns, reaching the same conclusions from the same inputs, etc., does it matter if the underlying mechanisms differ? What if, for example, a cognitive shadow has a brain with the same physical structure and mechanisms as it had in life, but they're just composed of Investiture instead of ordinary matter? If literally the only difference between them is that you want to label one "supernatural" and the other "normal" it strikes me as a distinction without a difference. It is 100% possible that the Heralds are so radically different from ordinary humans in ways relevant to this discussion that they cannot experience any human problems. But I've not seen any evidence that that is actually the case, so I'm not ready to accept that conclusion. I'm not suggesting anything-- this is Kalak's narration in the prologue of Way of Kings: No wiggle room there. Given the above quote, it seems irrelevant if the Heralds are physically embodied on Braize or not. If they are embodied then the position you've advanced is moot. If they're not embodied, Kalak's description about what happens to them there is still accurate. Details like it seeming hard to capture and hold Heralds don't matter when it's a reported fact that those things are always accomplished, eventually. This example strongly suggests that the form of a cognitive shadow in the cognitive realm is different from, say, a spren's-- there is no particular reason to think that they wouldn't have a form precisely analogous to their physical body's, even if the cognitive body is made purely of Investiture rather than matter. They still have skin to sear, fat to melt, etc. That's where the leap is. Your position seems to be that non-supernatural damage to the mind can only be expressed as physical damage to the physical structure of or operation of the brain. So pain in the physical realm is one thing, and pain in the cognitive realm (for a cognitive shadow) is something altogether different, even though we know the latter to be a product of the cognitive shadow's cognitive processes (which precisely mirror the physical effects we would expect in the physical realm). The reasoning you've presented would mean that Kelsier's persuasion of Fuzz in Secret History is a supernatural persuasion, and his anger at Elend being crowned is a supernatural anger. If you watched a scary movie in the CR as a cognitive shadow and became scared of clowns, that would be supernatural fear of clowns because it happened to your cognitive body's mind in the CR. If you were then reincarnated and still felt scared of clowns, it would still be a supernatural fear. Meanwhile, if you did the same thing in the physical realm throughout it would be a completely mundane fear of clowns. That's the part where I think that conclusion is way too strong. If applying the same stimuli in the same way produces the same outcomes in either the physical realm or the cognitive, and we have no examples of differences at any point, I'm not willing to assert a difference exists at all. Certainly not a consequential one. We explicitly know that a cognitive shadow's soul can be directly damaged, and just as explicitly know that this is a different process from "physical" harm inducing "physical" reactions and sensations. Cognitive shadows (and, really, anyone) absolutely can suffer spiritual damage in the Cosmere, and I agree that Heralds and Fused alike are suffering from that. But that doesn't mean that that's the only type of damage they can experience.

I'll certainly agree that it implies they have other issues as well; I don't see that it suggests they have no issues of any type which a mundane human might experience. There are definitely different elements to the Heralds' madness (Taln's seems different from and more intense than the others', but the others have gotten worse as well despite not returning to Braize for four thousand years). This is the sticking point, then, and one that we probably aren't going to resolve. I'll absolutely agree that there is an inescapably supernatural element in the Heralds dying and returning. Disembodied cognitive shadows also have at least the potential to experience physical pain differently from a corporeal entity, but that's a function of the shadow's mind and perceptions and I don't think we've seen one behave differently from one that has become corporeal. As described in Secret Histories: There is perfect continuity of identity, knowledge, and experience at all points (as far as we know), and the torture is largely if not entirely physical and imposed on bodies that perceive it physically (Kelek describes hooks tearing flesh, melting fat, etc.). Despite all their knowledge of the workings of the Cosmere the Heralds never got past experiencing pain as pain and responding normally. There is nothing which suggests that Taln experiences the torment on Braize any differently than he would a purely physical form of it, and his mind is continuous across both states. The distinction you're drawing is akin to saying that if Kaladin stabbed someone with a knife it would be a mundane physical wound, but that if he lashed a knife such that it fell into someone and stabbed them in the exact same way the wound would be supernatural, even if the wound is identical in both cases. The wound isn't supernatural at all nor does it differ between the two cases, even though the ultimate mechanism of stabbing is magical in one case but not the other.

I think that you're right on this. Syl, Pattern, etc. don't have much, if any, representation in the cognitive realm once they've made the transition unless they physically travel there via Oathgate or Elsecalling. But being "in" the physical realm seems like a kind of unclear concept for something that is, primarily, an idea and is native to a realm where physical details are not all that fixed. So there may be an element of "in the physical realm, but not manifested physically" to deal with. Syl can barely interact with physical objects most of the time, but when she manifests as metal she can interact with physical objects pretty dramatically. Her personality becomes more detailed and her ability to think improves along with the bond, but so too do her abilities to appear as different shapes and colors. Compare this with deadeyes, who are 100% in the cognitive realm until summoned as a blade, at which point they disappear from the cognitive and appear fully in the physical realm. Or Sja-Anat, who fundamentally exists in both places simultaneously.

I love those sorts of references too, like Shallan's ten heartbeats thought (referenced above). Information that you can notice and draw inferences from just in the course of normal reading of a given book or series (as opposed to the multi-thousand page, multi-series, WoB-charged references we increasingly tend to focus on).

Well, yes, we can, as Brandon has explicitly said as much. Quoted from upthread: It's the "large part" comment that indicates there are non-supernatural components involved, though I think you're wise to be cautious of over-interpreting it. My main basis for the argument is that literal millennia of torture is all but guaranteed to have an impact on Taln's mental state regardless of anything else that's going on, and not a positive one. I think that it is unreasonable to suggest that all of that is "wiped clean" upon reincarnation or death. More detail in future Cosmere works will probably clarify in one direction or another. Psychological problems are varied and far from well understood, but at least some seem like they can be non-physical (like a trauma-linked phobia). Many mental disorders are diagnosed by observation and impact on "normal" function: if you prefer being in your house to going out, that's not necessarily any kind of mental disorder, but if you have paralyzing anxiety at the thought of going out of your house you might be diagnosed with agoraphobia. "Madness" is a maddeningly imprecise term, and both the nature of Taln's problems and the mechanics of his reincarnation are mostly unknown. So it's hard to draw a clean line. If he has a "mundane" mental disorder that is 100% attributable to brain chemistry, and his reincarnation into a new body exactly reproduces that brain chemistry, would you say that the disorder is supernatural? For comparison, if Taln picks up a rock and sets it down elsewhere would you say that he moved the rock via some supernatural mechanism just because he himself is a cognitive shadow?

I mean, any guess is really as good as any other at this point. But the Worldsingers aren't secret at all, are they? Even a lowly bridgman knew that they existed and a bit about what they did. Shallan had hopes that one would be at her Middlefest fair as a child. They're way less of a secret than a group of hunted refugees which is presumed to have been wiped out in the chasms.

With the vibrant colors detail, you've convinced me. It would be vastly easier to get that detail right and really make it come to life with animation than with anything live-action related. So I'm pro-animation for Warbreaker (and Mistborn too, but that's a different thread). However, I'll push back on the argument that it "might make a cheesy live action film". Any movie can be terrible, animated or not. We at least live in a time where we've seen a good crop of high-quality action movies (as opposed to, say, movies in the 80s and 90s).

I'm not sure I follow how those apply to the speed bubble situation (which is likely a failing of mine, not of your explanation). I don't see that the velocity of the bullet would change from one side of the bubble to the other, because since the transition is instantaneous and complete the bullet is always 100% in local time from its own frame of reference. More concretely, I'm thinking of the situation this way: In the bubble a bullet of some arbitrary mass is fired and might be going at 1700 miles per hour (sped-up time compared with most of the world, as we're in the bubble), which would appear far faster to an observer outside of the bubble and normal to an observer within. The bullet then hits a decisive point in the bubble's surface and is immediately 100% outside of the bubble, and at that time it's still going at 1700 miles per hour (regular time with regard to the world), which would seem far slower to someone observing from inside the bubble. The "sped up" properties from being inside of the bubble immediately and completely cease to apply once the bullet leaves, and the media are the same on both sides of the bubble except for the arbitrary difference in rate of passage of time. From the bullet's perspective nothing changes at any point, and it's always going at 1700 miles per hour through the air. It should be, to my understanding, no different than the speed bubble dropping after the bullet is fired but before it reaches the bubble's edge. I'm not sure we've seen or heard of any such experiment in the books though, so maybe it isn't! It doesn't seem like the surface of the bubble itself has any refractive properties (that I recall, at least). We don't see visual distortions (like viewing through the surface of a liquid), or red or blue shifts (though the characters that we'd need to notice them in order for us to read that are probably unaware of what they'd need to make note of), and from the outside of a bubble you can view things on the far side of the bubble through the bubble itself without any effect. I may still be missing the relevant elements, but please don't feel pressure to write out fuller explanations if you don't already want to. The relevant pieces may be too far outside of my expertise to grasp without a lot of study, and I'm comfortable just calling all of the seeming discrepancies "magic" and letting that be the full explanation. Certainly unless and until there is a scenario in one of the books that fixes an additional property into the official rules of speed bubbles. Since Cosmere magical effects themselves are arbitrary I strongly suspect that at least some of their limitations are also arbitrary. This one might be primarily narrative. If bullets didn't deflect from a Bendalloy bubble then gunfights against Wax and Wayne would be pretty unexciting. They'd just be sniper-style executions of every adversary over the course of very little ordinary time, while Wax and Wayne are never in much danger or even hard-pressed. We can read all kinds of extensions into whatever arbitrary rules we've seen, but I don't think that trying to do the reverse is especially reliable. There isn't much that "should" happen when interacting with a speed bubble because speed bubbles are already explicitly, magically unreal.

Right, obviously. What I was trying to get across is that it's not clear to me why that would cause a deflection: a bullet is in one frame of reference at point A, and then is in a totally different frame of reference at point B, and neither point has different properties local to the bullet. It's not like the bullet is in air at point A and suddenly in water at point B. If the transition is instantaneous (the bullet is 100% in and then 100% out with no transition state) what is it that's causing the deflection? Is it all wind shear or something? I imagine this has been touched on elsewhere, but if I've come across it I don't remember it so I apologize if we're re-treading well-trod ground.

It seems like there is still some transition at some point. If not, we wouldn't see effects like bullet deflection. But there could be other reasons for those sorts of effects. But more broadly there is some point at which reality as we know it breaks to allow for magic at all, and since the magic itself covers that break we could also just extend it to cover any transitions as well.

I suspect that the problems Taln suffers from are much deeper and more intricate than a discrete case of "madness" that can simply "be cured". There are almost certainly many methods which could bring him much closer to his "normal" function, but those seem likely to be more like dealing with death by making someone into a cognitive shadow. They're still alive, in some sense, and so death is kind of elided, but the death itself continues to have taken place and be relevant. We can separate out the supernatural elements of Taln's problems from the more mundane ones, but we don't know the exact mix he suffers from. I think it's an almost sure bet that the source of the supernatural part of his condition will be fixed, but that won't be specific to Taln (i.e., Taln's recovery will be an effect of that action, which will also help Nale and the others, provided they survive to that point). While the mechanism of that fix may be simple I think that putting it into motion will be difficult and expensive, and probably not the result of a trick we've already seen (like Vasher giving up his divine breath). And he'd still have mental and spiritual problems to deal with, so may not be as improved as we're thinking. SA's magic is getting bigger and bigger, with more and more spectacular effects as we go on. I don't think we'll see a character as important as Vasher do something as simple and direct as granting perfect pitch or healing someone significant, both because we've seen those things might be accomplished more easily and cheaply in other ways and also because we've already seen that exact solution to a similar problem. If Taln and company recover, which may not happen at all, it will be down to something we haven't seen before.

Both of the groups I mentioned would have existed during WoR (with some potential fudging for Leshwi's, but her "finally forgiven us" suggests a well-aged idea), so they're at least potentially included in the groups. But that's exactly why I dislike this kind of WoB tease-- it could be anybody we've seen or haven't seen because so much remains unwritten and unexplained while any degree of travel is workable (even through time!). And it may or may not include any of the groups we've definitely seen, depending on whether or not they're "secret" enough. I like speculating about the Cosmere as much as most people here do, but this question is an algebra problem with too few values defined to actually evaluate. Thinking it out is still fun but it's hard to see that we could make much definitive progress absent more WoB comments or new books/novellas/short stories.

You don't think that modern CGI would be up to showing those sorts of things?

I'd think that the guiding principal is wealth more than eye color, as wealth seems to be how Alethi move up in station (Gaz mentions to someone, I think Shallan, that his nahn is what it is because he never managed to buy himself anything better). You're sorted directly into one of two groups based on eye color, but circumstances vary wildly within each set of dahns/nahns. For that to stably be the case for millennia it must be true that eye color is pretty strongly heritable. We just don't hear anything about darkeyed families suddenly having lighteyed children (or the reverse for lighteyed families), and even when that does happen the assumption would be infidelity. Especially in Rhythm we see that social privileges are pretty light for a tenth dahn lighteyes, though they can certainly command more formal and informal support from society than could even a first nahn darkeyed citizen. A first nahn citizen probably is wealthier than a tenth dahn citizen, and while the latter would get all kinds of official deference (especially from strangers) I'd bet that the former lives better and has more practical influence over the world. And while a highprince might be able to disparage Redin to his face, woe betide a lower-dahn lighteyes (read: far less wealthy) who tried the same.

We have a few other options too, even if they don't have official names yet. I would consider the refugee Listeners to be a possibility, as well as whatever group or ideology Leshwi is revealed to be a part of at the end of Rhythm. Every extant Shard would conceivably count as well, at least if they were operating on Roshar in Oathbringer. We have several nations and important families which are pursuing their own goals in secret-- the Horneaters have an awful lot of insight into the nature of things on Roshar, for example. Honestly, this is the kind of WoB that I hate. Not that that will stop me from trying to figure it out... but unless and until the ninth group (or any of others) does something relevant to the plot of Stormlight or any other series, any one candidate is as likely and plausible as any other, and virtually anyone we've seen or had described is a plausible candidate.

My suggestion is just to write, while not framing that writing as a massive task. Much like @Coolmint said, even brief writing sessions are fine. I'll also recommend not getting too fixated on writing a book as opposed to just writing-- even a short book is a huge undertaking and is something most people need to chip away at over a long period of time. You might find that a lot of smaller pieces you've written have elements that might fit together in various ways to make most of a book anyways! And you'll certainly find yourself a better writer. I like writing short, focused prose for proper writing sessions (those meant to generate new content that others might someday read an edited version of). A short story, a scene, even an outline. Something with a natural scale for progress you can measure in some way. It really adds up. Even 30 minutes of writing per day amounts to around 15 hours per month, and that's a lot of time! I don't recommend allocating that time to editing until you have a finished piece, though that may be a personal issue (I tend to hate what I write for the first couple of drafts, and tend to lose motivation while editing instead of writing new things which might be what I need). Unless I'm especially inspired I usually start to have trouble after just a few continuous pages of new stuff and so I don't write more than that in one sitting. If writing new stuff is causing burnout there are exercises I like which are still helpful as writing practice. Take a scene from a movie or TV show you like and write it out as prose, making special note of what sounds/images/moods/etc. you feel are most important to express in writing and how you translate those into words. Or re-write a scene (including one you've already written) to give it or the characters in it a different tone: suspenseful, weary, hopeful, or anything else. Or write sentences describing a single thing in different ways and think about how those expressions differ (like a glass being half empty, half full, or twice as large as it needs to be. They're all valid descriptions of the same thing but express different ideas through different connotations). Look for patterns in your writing and try to develop your skills in directions you like. For example, I have a tendency to write sentences that are too long. So I might write something out with an eye towards keeping it more clipped or avoiding more complex sentence structures. I think that the reality of most activities is that they involve aspects you won't like so much, even if you enjoy the activity overall. Unless you want to write only for recreation, you'll have to write sometimes even if you don't feel like it. As long as you don't start to hate doing it, that's OK.

That looks great! I especially like the movement of the tassels. Nice tutorial, too. It would look great with pocket-sized mist generators.

I think that, among Cosmere books, Warbreaker has the most striking visuals that would easily adapt to the screen. I see the parallels to Disney princess movies. But I wouldn't want Disney to do it, at least under the Disney banner. Warbreaker has a lot of pretty dark elements and I think an adaptation that removes them would be worse for it. But a different studio, or a one-season HBO show? Sign me up.

I like all of the books, and feel that era 2 gets a bad objective rap but a fair relative reputation. I think that they're better books than they are often rated but are still less good than era 1. There are a few reasons I feel Alloy is the weakest of the Mistborn novels (and era 2 is the weakest grouping in that series): The pulp stylings are interesting to me, but getting the stories into that form sometimes comes off as a bit shallow and gimmicky (pulp has some characteristic shallowness to it, and I perceived some of the writing choices as being motivated more by "this book is a Western, so this detail is here" rather than "these details are organic to the story, and also fit a Western, so this story has a Western vibe"). And I don't love pulp enough for excitement about that form to compensate for things I like less. Most Sanderson books take cool, original ideas and then extend them naturally and logically into the world of that book. We got glimpses of how Allomancy and Feruchemy shaped the very original setting of the Final Empire, how a Soother might think of a problem compared with a Pewterarm, how becoming a tin savant would change the way you experience the world, and things like that. In era 2, we have a setting defined by the trappings that relate it to the genres it's aiming for (the Roughs are obviously "Old West" towns and deliver little beyond what you'd expect from any Western) and magic powers are just sort of... there, for the most part. Some of this is by design, as Allomancy and Feruchemy are both weaker and less common in era 2, but the effect is the same regardless. BoM breaks with this in describing South Scadrial, where Feruchemy is all but necessary for life and civilization, but that's only in the tail end of three novels. The characters are relatively static and flat, especially in Alloy. They're largely the same people at the beginning of Alloy as they are at the end, which is fine because they already had and were all of the things they needed to have and be to deal with the obstacles in the plot. Major character points tend to have already happened off-camera (like Wayne's manslaughter) and internal doubt about what they're doing and why is rare. This isn't 100% the case across the books, especially for Wax in SoS and BoM (he grows quite a bit). It also happens, to a much lesser extent, with Marasi and Steris, but most of that is achieved by a character's own declaration ("I was that way, which wasn't suitable, so now I'm this way instead"). But there is less growth and change in characters than was the case in the first set of Mistborn books, and even that lesser degree of growth takes far more pages to come to pass with only modest development along the way. I still like the characters (especially Steris!), but this is a problem for me. The characters are almost flawlessly good at their (non-overlapping) specialties and expert at when to deploy them, while complications tend to be arbitrary and orthogonal to the tasks at hand. In other words, the characters nearly always succeed at what they're trying to do and the complications would always have come up regardless of what they did. These led to me having a hard time getting invested in the stakes of any particular conflict in the books. A few examples: When Wayne puts on a disguise, regardless of the situation or goal, the disguise works perfectly and accomplishes whatever the objective was without issue. When Marasi considers statistics, she always identifies the correct details and comes to the right conclusions in time to make a difference. Worst of all, Wax is more or less a Mary Sue-- he's irresistibly good at everything, and saying "a lawman in the Roughs needs to be good at a lot of things" is a weak lampshade. The era 2 books are more strongly serialized than era 1 but paced a bit awkwardly (for my tastes). Too many pages are used explicitly setting up things that don't matter much now and won't be addressed until a later book. The Set is a pretty persistent antagonist group and gets a lot of screen time and discussion, yet very little information about them has come across except to underscore that. And even then the protagonists deal with them mostly indirectly and reluctantly, despite being aware of the Set as their major enemies. Era 2 feels more like Batman vs. the Joker to me-- the Joker is the villain in this book and will be the villain in the next one, and nothing Batman does will influence that or affect in any way what the Joker tries to do or how he tries to do it. The era 1 books have connections that link them and are apparent on re-reading but each volume stands fairly well on its own. I still like the era 2 books, and am very excited for Lost Metal. But while the era 2 books are exciting and fun I, personally, also find them shallower, less compelling, and containing fewer novel ideas than era 1. The genre details that undergird much of era 2 are fun and often interesting, but not enough so for my personal tastes to offset those. Era 2 barely even approaches era 1 in my esteem slightly because era 2 is a little bit awkward, but mainly because I think so highly of era 1.

I don't think that there is necessarily a standardized way that atheists talk about them, but it's more or less a central belief of atheism that the one thing those experiences definitely aren't is an experience driven by something deific or supernatural. Though that last bit is kind of wobbly since there are plenty of atheists who nevertheless believe in a wide range of mystical or mysticism-adjacent things. I'm very excited for you to read Side Carry. Reading your thoughts as you go through the book makes me very nostalgic about my own first reading, which feels like it was forever ago.

I don't have definitive proof to back this up, but from various WoB statements I think that the degree of Investiture that we're talking about here would make Forgery as a magic system irrelevant to what you're doing. "Plausible enough" is sort of the whole basis of Forgery in the first place. When fully Invested by Preservation's power, for example, a Vessel can do things way beyond what any of the Metallic Arts grant without even using any metals. This circumvents all of the limitations and mechanisms of Allomancy even in cases where action might use Allomantic mechanisms-- it's power beyond Allomancy. By the same token using enough Investiture to totally obviate the mechanisms and limitations of Forgery should be in such a different category that it doesn't even count as Forgery any more. With enough Investiture you can do pretty much anything without any constraints.