AlmightyGir

Sorry if I made you feel that way. I actually consider that to be part of the wonder

See... To me, this is romance, this is the essence of it. I think with some of your other points you've possibly conflated a few issues into one. It's entirely possible for people to have a loving, romantic relationship without sexual involvement. Heck, Freddie Mercury was famously gay, but has said the love of his life was Mary Austen, to whom he left almost his entire estate, and considered her his common-law wife. Humans are very complex. The nature of romance, love, attraction, and sex, is all very messy, dirty, chaotic, and wonderful. And I think it's important to remember that those things can exist in a fictional context, too.

Yeah I'm not a zoologist, but I do find our biological history very interesting. I just thought it was worth mentioning this in the context of the current discussion, as people seem to be trying to worm their arguments away from moral philosophy and into the realm of "science" as a way to prove their points, but they have no footing on either platform. Preference is one thing, and honestly it's fine. If someone doesn't like the idea of it, that's up to them, I'm not going to hold anyone against that. Just be honest about it. This entire thread reeks of dishonest discourse from so many people (this is a generalisation, I'm not pointing it at you, I'm quoting you because you made an interesting point).

Blackthorn becoming similar to Dalinar would have some fairly serious implications about the nature of fate within the Cosmere... Something along the lines of "Dalinar was always capable of becoming, and Cultivation just hastened the process". Would certainly be interesting.

I feel it's important to point out: Homosapiens and Neanderthals are now proven to have bred with each other, and produce fertile offspring: https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/12/12/a-new-timeline-for-neanderthal-interbreeding-with-modern-humans/#:~:text=The analysis%2C which involved present,of about 47%2C000 years ago. That's two different species, interbreeding. We also have examples in the animal world of species who are close enough to each other genetically to be able to breed (lions and tigers are a good example), but I don't think they produce fertile offspring. Either of these things is enough, if you want science and not morality, to say there's nothing wrong with the various species in the cosmere interbreeding.

I wonder if you made bars of each Godmetal, and then struck them, would they "hum" with their respective tones?

Fair. I suppose that's speculation on my part, but I do think Ishar made the outcome obvious.

In my mind, it works essentially like the point of singularity... If/when we ever get to the stage that we can upload our consciousnesses, we're not uploading *us*, we're uploading a copy of us in that moment. That copy will then live on and have its own experiences, while we finish up our lives (assuming we survive the process) and have another set of experiences. To the copy, they might as well be us, because as far as they're concerned, they're us up until the point of the copy and beyond, including the experience of being copied and whatever comes after. Kaladin died to become a Herald. Ishar made that quite clear when it happened. Ishar created a copy of him and filled it with enough investiture that it has an imprinting on all three realms. It has a spirit, in so much as it is invested heavily enough to have a presence on the spiritual realm, but Kaladin's actual spirit is gone, what is left is not him. But it will believe it's him, act like him, make decisions like him... Until, eventually, it won't anymore, just like the other Heralds. I'm not convinced that their madness is purely due to their torture. I think at least a part of it is the fact that their human memories only stretch so far, and as the investiture that keeps them "alive" is just energy, it cannot process human thought, emotion, etc. In the same way an actual human mind can. It's an imitation of humanity that eventually must fail, otherwise the path to immortality in the cosmere is relatively straightforward.

Before we actually had people going into Shadesmar, I thought of the Cognitive realm as kind of like The Matrix. It's your minds projection, and getting hurt in there hurts your physical self outside. How it's turned out to be, and the Spiritual Realm for that matter, all feels a bit disappointing in that aspect.

On the Godmetal argument specifically: I believe there's a WOB that states Nightblood is one of the most heavily Invested objects in the Cosmere, though he doesn't specifically state that they're more powerful than, or even equal to a Shard, and it would indeed make sense that they aren't so. However, given that Nightblood drinks Investiture, it's possible that over time one could argue that they've become a Godmetal alloy. Having drunk Breaths, Stormlight, and Voidlight that we know of, and possibly other forms of Investiture throughout the cosmere. We know that the Shards unused Investiture coalesces and becomes tangible via their Shardpools. So if Nightblood is drinking that Investiture and holding it within themselves, it's entirely possible that those Investitures have transformed their physical form.

I cannot believe that stealing a Shard in its entirety could be as simple as just entering its pool and drinking all the juice.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/105/#e1265 Brandon himself says that blood in motion is required for Hemalurgy. Which makes it a safe assumption as to its naming.

@ChickenBonanzaThe word Hemalurgy (a fictional word) means "Working with Blood", Hema = blood, Lurgy = working. Similar to Metallurgy (a real word) means "to work with metal". If Hemalurgy were specific to metals, it would be called Metallurgy. It's not, it's specific to moving blood from one person/being to another via an invested object, the act of which tears part of the spiritweb of the first person and pins it to the second.

Glad it wasn't complete nonsense then

I don't think the gems need to be perfect at all, in fact Moash was described as having the gems growing out the top of his head, wasn't he? It's possible that the gems used in this instance didn't look the way they do now when the process started. On the note of Ironsight vs sprensight... I would be willing to bet that they are essentially the same thing, and that Ironsight is actually the lesser version of it. They both see investiture. Metals in Scadrial all seem to be invested in some small way, you burn them to gain access to the investiture they hold. So I think Ironsight is just a method of viewing investiture, and on Scadrial, metals are invested enough to be seen in this way. That of course, doesn't explain why it can't see invested people. A small hole in the theory, to be sure.

I'm with you. Moash deserves the most ignoble, uneventful death one could conceive.

No. Violet is the furthest point on the visible spectrum, and is furthest away from red. It is not the mixture of blue and red. Given how heavily Cosmeric science seems to lean towards the idea of vibration and/or frequency in general, this may be a pretty important point. You might be referring to the colours positions on a colour wheel. But A colour wheel is not how light actually works.

It's kind-of wild that Sig would say that about walking away from his oaths. WAT makes it explicitly clear why. I also find it dumb that Vienta won't talk to him anymore too... Taking on pain to save another is 100% a windrunner thing to do, the pain they both felt, and the sacrifice he made in order to save her life was bonkers. Textbook honourable behaviour, though I suppose we know that the power of Honor would hate it.

Heh... I often recommend Warbreaker as an ease in to the Cosmere. One book, indicative of both Sanderson's overall writing style, and what you'll get from a lot of the books, but no need to commit to a whole set. From there I go Mistborn.

Everyone has the ability to become a hero, or show valor in their behaviour. There are many examples of cowards being valorous in their final moments, usually in order to save something or someone truly precious. While the power of Valor might detest cowardice, it would certainly be aware, and encouraging, of anyone's ability to change.

The surges aren't specific to Honor, or any other Shard for that matter.

Didn't Tanavast initially say that 16 would be the best number, but 10 works too? 1 would be very powerful, and 5 is weak as it lacks symmetry. And 9 was not right either, which is why the heralds recruited Taln, to make it 10. They didn't want to burden one person, and they couldn't find another 7 people to make 16. They just needed one more to make 10. While there are a lot of things that point to 10 being an important number to Tanavast and/or Honor, I don't personally think it's his number. It was just the best number available at the point in time where they would form a group of people so monumental that people would then attribute that number to him.

I might be wrong, but throughout pretty much all of Stormlight it's been assumed that Honor was splintered, and it took Dalinar pulling them together, or at least enough of them, for the power of Honor to be taken up again. Some of Wind and Truth changes my opinion on that, I don't think Honor was truly splintered during the death of Tanavast, and I do find it curious that Rayse/Odium deliberately didn't splinter the power after Tanavast died, I imagine it would have been his highest priority in that moment... To not do so would have been a huge oversight on his part and very much against what we know of Rayse and his goals. Going on Sanderson's words about giving up a shard, it's likely that Honor was at least partially splintered, if not entirely, but that those splinters still retained or even grew some form of collective sentience over time. This could also be the case for the other splintered shards, if the right person with the right Intent were in the right place at the right time, maybe they could pull the shard back together. After all, their Investiture still exists. The power still exists. And power can be collected. Whether the shard is the same after being reformed is an entirely more interesting question, however.

I just think if someone would get this bent out of shape over a work of fiction, I dread to think how they react to reality.

Let's be real, as long as the right Hat was involved, I think Wayne would have been down for just about anything.