Hexagonal

Shards cannot usually take direct action due to this leaving them open to being attacked by another shard. In this scenario, Honor was not in that great of a position to counter Odium's actions. I am not entirely certain if we have a true answer to your question, but at least part of it is due to how unwilling Honor and cultivation were to counteract Odium. Side note, due to thread topics being able to be seen from the home page, I would recommend renaming the thread to something else. Could be something like "Odium's direct action"

That's a fair statement, but I am fairly certain that it is being used in the manner of a curse. There have been other examples, especially before the Stormfather becomes a character we meet, of using his name in a similar manner.

One of my favorite quotes is from Kaladin and Amaram's fight in OB, where Kaladin remarks that he is the spear that did not break. It is such a powerful line that really builds up his character of determination.

That is a very interesting theory, and it makes sense. Taln remarks that his whole existence is fire and pain, which suggests he was tortured a fairly heavy amount. To build on what you said, it's possible that Taln was initially imprisoned to give the fused and Odium time to prepare and once they were ready, they tortured him. The torture could be immense for a long time, but as Taln was not breaking(and did not break as per WoBs), they sought a new way to get to Roshar(The Everstorm).

This likely would have left him open to a) losing Honor(which he just got) and b) taken a lot more power. Urithiru is a giant shardcity made up of a bunch of manifested spren, so the new oathpact and retribution having Honor likely stopped that. As well, it is a lot of investiture(yes, Hoid/Wit is heavily invested, but probably not as much as all of Urithiru) that would likely have been a much more difficult and strenuous task. Retribution was on a sort of time crunch with all eyes being on him now.

Retribution went into hiding as of the end of WaT(IIRC), as the whole cosmere was now aware of him. I think it is reasonable that Retribution going into hiding while roshar got back on the right time scale left an opportunity for Autonomy to attack her only other main threat(Harmony, as a dual shard). It would seem reasonable(to me at least), that Roshar being all timey-wimey and retribution being gone allow Autonomy to ignore him, for now.

It seems more likely to be the soul and body being disconnected. We are not entirely sure if cognitive shadows are the soul or a copy or some mix(I am personally of the camp that they are the soul with a bit of extra investiture, but I can see the copy argument too), so Kaladin's transformation into a herald could be seen as death in some interpretations. The burning of the eyes resembles Nightblood cutting into things and popping them into smoke. I think the smoke could be an attack in all three realms, as few things have smoke with their attacks.

I Really agree with you on this, WoK and WoR were so character driven that they really made you feel. Part of why I prefer RoW over OB(OB isn't bad, but it b=puts a lot into the war)

I picked Whimsy myself, as Brandon has said it is most dangerous to one's self worth and decorum. I think it could be really fun to just be full silly.

I think there is a mix of the deal and innate shardic powers. There is a WoB that says some shards cannot just smite people. As well, Ruin was missing some of his power(all the Atium that eventually got burned). While we don't really know if Ruin can just smite people, it seems likely that it would have left him open to attack.

They all seem pretty close to them. I would agree with you for a real world actor or actress for the characters, but the in world characters are a phenotype that is very rare IRL. Kaladin is pretty tan and has epicanthic folds, and while Shallan is described as being light skinned within roshar, just about everyone on roshar is fairly tan.

I think you're right, and the way that Sigzil did it was through his dawnshard nature. I bet a regular radiant could use stormlight to help their spren manifest larger with some training and/or an additional MoI. The possibilities(maybe using armor spren and radiant spren to manifest different parts for like a shard engine or something?), could be fascinating and practically endless.

Considering that part of Dalinar and the Stormfather's bond was that Dalinar would not have shards, it would seem that Syl as a blade wouldn't change. She could be more invested now, which might change her ability to change in size, but I doubt that would be too noticeable.

Adolin outright states that Shardblades do not bend, so I think having some kind of thin sword could definitely work. The size limit was suggested in TSM, with Aux using some of Sig's investiture to grow larger(dome at the end of the book). To me it seems like shardblades do definitely have a size barrier, and Aux was only able to overcome it because of Sig's dawnshard nature and/or Aux being consumed a bit. There is likely a different way to help invest a spren to manifest as a larger size in the PR, but as of now they are unknown.

That is an excellent point, but I don't see Retribution making SprenThorn(great name from the community btw) live through too much immense pain. We still don't know much about the training that Gav underwent besides is being visions of the past and battle training(the memory of Dalinar almost killing Elhokar seems to have had a big effect on him[maybe experienced it many times in the 20 years of SR training]), so the limits are not known. I think it would be possible for Retribution to have SprenThorn train in his own memories of battle with specific weaknesses(to help make life ending mistakes to learn from in the way that Brandon describes Taln having).