PanLin

Considering most of his books are for an adult audience, anything approaching a sex scene is actually really lacking in detail, especially compared to a lot of other authors. Kind of, but he's on record saying that he loves how the recent rise in romantasy is getting more adults back into reading in general. He doesn't like writing smut himself but has no issue with other people finding enjoyment in writing or reading it.

There are some really interesting WoBs building on this idea, and inspired by the fact that singers can basically change their form at will. Sanderson has also said a few times that he wants to include more queer characters, he just wants to make sure he does it right. You can find them all with this search query: https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=transgender (I'm conscious we're in the Stormlight forum, so just be careful of spoilers if you haven't read the other Cosmere books!). The first WoB below is spoiler-free if you're up to date on Stormlight: Minor spoilers for Warbreaker: Minor spoilers for Mistborn: Which is all to say that various applications of Investiture seem to hint that we might see a rise in transhumanism and other forms of radical self-expression in the future of the Cosmere, let alone just gender non-conformity.

yep! I mean, that conversation you're quoting is in itself canonical evidence that the Sibling is non-binary. Gender is a purely social construct, and the Sibling clearly doesn't feel like they're either male or female, hence: non-binary / agender. Technically, all parshendi are non-binary because their society recognises 4 genders, so an agender parshendi would technically be non-quarternary instead (but agender is probably cleaner).

Thanks for sharing, this really resonated with me. tw for self-harm details in spoiler: Anyway, I hope you're doing ok! I see my own scars as a permanent reminder of how far I've come since making them; I hope you can get to a similar point. I know people throw this sort of invite around willy-nilly, but my DMs are open if you (or anyone else reading this) ever do need to vent/chat with a friendly ear who might understand some of what you're going through

Oh yeah, Shard mapping is my jam. I know you said the specific names aren't final, but can I ask how you came to the conclusion of these specific pairings? For the Dawnshards, did you try to fill out the blank two first and then work toward the Shards, or did you group the Shards and work backward to see what was missing? And where did Adonalsium's aspects come from? It kind of feels like you just picked some that would work alongside the Dawnshards as personality mappings, and not like a cohesive, comprehensive framework for the overall personality of God. Starting with a criticism (sorry!). It's been mentioned a few times that Preservation and Ruin are kind of unique in how perfectly they mirror each other, and that all the Shards don't have 'true' opposites. WoBs: Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the Shards didn't start as a perfect mapping like you propose, and it's just that they've drifted over time due to Intent, Identity and perception. Personally, I think it does imply that they've never been a perfect mapping, and that (who'd've thunk it) killing a god and sharing its power among a group of people is pretty messy work. Also, Honor and Odium definitely aren't opposites. Harmony is constantly fighting to keep both of his Shardic Intents happy and balanced; if he doesn't want to become Discord, he basically just has to not interfere or do anything at all. Retribution carries no such turmoil (as far as we've seen), and it seems perfectly acceptable to warmonger while keeping both Honor and Odium happy. Some quotes from the end of Wind and Truth below; they pretty strongly imply that the two Shards can synergise and amplify each other as long as Taravangian manages them properly, which is very different to Sazed's experience with Preservation and Ruin. EDIT: I see you addressed this anyway: Valid, I'm on board, but I still don't think Honor and Odium can be called opposites by any stretch. Odium is pure emotion; if it did have a true opposite, I'd expect it to be something like Virtuosity or Reason. So we're Myers-Briggs-ing the Shards? Can I just ask where this is confirmed, please? Would love to read up on it. I agree pretty wholeheartedly with this. Preservation and Ruin wanted completely antithetical things, but Dominion and Devotion both essentially seem to want the same thing (Unity), and just have different thoughts on how to get there. Even further, I think they both carry a similar thread of "sacrifice self for the greater good", they mostly just differ on whether people should be able to choose that sacrifice or not. On individual Shards: Whimsy as Honor's opposite is a much cleaner pairing imo! But yeah like you say, it's hard to say anything with full conviction until we see what Whimsy is actually like in-text. On both of these points, I think there's probably a bit of both going on. We know that Sanderson intentionally set it up so cognitive Perception has a real, tangible effect on the universe. Even if the Shattering created 16 perfectly spaced Shards of 8 pairs of opposing Intents, they've since been taken on by a range of different people with a range of different backgrounds and a range of different ideas about what it means to be a god. Further, like we've seen with spren and other Shardic Splinters, they will have been warped even further over the last few millenia by the perceptions of everyone in the Cosmere; stories, myths and legends all have tangible effects on entities like the Shards. Which is all to say: I concede that, even though it's confirmed that Preservation/Ruin is the only true opposite now, that doesn't mean there weren't more true opposites when the Shards originally ascended. Personally, I think the Intents and perceptions of the to-be-vessels messed the whole system up the moment they killed Adonalsium, but that's kind of moot until we learn more about the Shattering.

Don't see why not! Although you'd obviously have to make sure you were somewhere extremely safe while the world zips around you. You'd also probably have to pop out of the bubble every now and then to eat, sleep, and do other things necessary to stay alive. Spoilers for Stormlight Archive: WoB: Almost certainly—Sanderson has stated a few times, both in-text and in WoBs, that all savantism carries negative side effects as a sort of narrative deterrent to just burning lots of metals all the time. All allomantic savantism creates a dependency/addiction on that metal, for a start. As for the specific effects, I don't think we know for sure yet. Cadmium and Bendalloy side-step relativity issues by pulling extra energy directly from the spiritual realm, so there might be something there. Maybe their spiritweb starts to become unstable, or they start to become untethered from the physical realm? WoB:

Well, it's specifically time travel into the past that Sanderson has ruled out for the Cosmere. He explicitly states in that quote that relativity is a-ok (we've seen local examples of it with time bubbles), as is time travel into the future. The three-realms model actually gives a cleaner solution to FTL/information/observer paradoxes. Spooky action at a distance? Oh nah, they just communicated through the spiritual realm, where physical distance doesn't mean anything. Did you? now don't get me wrong, I LOVE time travel in media. I specifically love consistent time travel. I just don't see anything in our real world understanding of the universe that means time travel into the past is automatically possible in the Cosmere. Also, I started watching the video but there aren't any chapters or anything—if you could link me the timestamp of the time travel bit you're referring to, I'll happily watch that specifically and come back to you! The only bits I could see scanning through were the problems with FTL in the non-local Newtonion model that helped lead to the development of general relativity, and a discussion later in the video explaining why entanglement straight-up can't send information (let alone mass) into the past.

Small note on this—being an allomancer requires having a piece of Preservation in your spiritweb (burning Lerasium makes you a stronger allomancer as a side effect of essentially attaching a bigger chunk of Preservation directly to your spiritweb), and each Breath is a little chunk of Endowment. So it's not quite just having a bigger soul, but a more Invested one, and that Investiture is almost always keyed to a specific Shard. Having more of Endowment's Investiture via Breaths wouldn't directly make you a stronger allomancer, but it would make you generally stronger and potentially able to better utilise allomantic powers. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding, but the power gained from allomancy can only be used for allomancy, because of how Preservation set it up. It's a pretty strict Invested Art in terms of how much 'power' you get for burning different metals, which is why Compounding is so nutty in how it bypasses the guard rails entirely. Similarly, AonDor can only be fuelled with Dor. Generally speaking, you can't use keyed Investiture of one Shard to directly power the Art of another. Vasher, for example, can survive on Stormlight because he just needs raw Investiture, but he can't (or at least, hasn't yet worked out how to) use it to power Endowment's Awakening. WoB: This is an edge case, but one that Hoid shares. We don't really understand Dawnshards well enough yet. Can they innately unkey Investiture? Or is it just that the abilities they grant can be fuelled by any Investiture, similar to Vasher surviving on Stormlight? (Based on how Sig and Aux talk about storing BEUs of Investiture, my money's on the latter) Either way, holding a bunch of any Investiture makes you generally stronger (Heightenings aren't unique to Breaths, they're just what happens when someone is heavily Invested), but you can still only fuel Invested Arts with the right Shard's Investiture (or unkeyed Investiture, of course). Obviously there are ways of unkeying and hacking Investiture to do different things, but in Preservation's case, you don't get an influx of Stasislight or whatever when burning a metal, you directly get the power associated with that metal, so it isn't really in a format you can use to just store the Investiture. The Dor is so interesting because there's just a bunch of raw Investiture kind of sat there twiddling its thumbs in the Selish sub-astral, ready for the taking (as long as you can survive the extremely hostile environment caused by it). A much better solution would've been to collect and unkey Stormlight, but obviously that's a bit more difficult now the main source of Investiture on Roshar comes from Retribution, who actively decides who to give it to. There's nothing inherently special about allomantic metals; they're not Invested. With the general tech level advancing across the Cosmere, a better angle here would be something like: finding and hoarding an asteroid or similar that contains a huge supply of an otherwise rare metal finding a more efficient way to generate otherwise rare metals (looking at you, aluminum) To summarise: Hoid has access to a wide range of abilities and Investiture, but he can't intermix the power sources and effects directly without unkeying the Investiture or finding other hacky workarounds.

It could well be that the 16 vessels, Frost, and Hoid each represented three different 'factions' with competing ideas on what to do about Adonalsium. Hoid obviously chose not to take a Shard, so maybe Frost and Hoid both opposed the 16, but for different (and competing) reasons.

Interesting insight, and actually has a fun overlap with a theory I posted recently. Links in spoiler: And a wee diagram to show how I'm visualising it: As a quick summary of all the above, I basically think: There are different 'tiers' of Orders, based on their positioning in the Double Eye diagram. These aren't tiers of power level, more like tiers of increasing abstraction: Primary: Bondsmiths, Truthwatchers (added in as extra Orders and therefore artificially closer to the Shards than the other Orders are) Secondary: Windrunners, Edgedancers, Lightweavers, Stonewards Tertiary: Skybreakers, Dustbringers, Elsecallers, Willshapers There are only 8 Surges across the Cosmere, and Honor basically squeezed a couple of extra ones in to make a neat 10-Surge system to fit nicely on Roshar: Adhesion was added as Honor's True Surge (actually an application of Tension) Progression was added as Cultivation's True Surge (actually an application of Illumination) Also, going through them all, it feels like there might be a pattern that primary and secondary Orders tend to favour one Surge, and tertiary Orders tend to attune both their Surges equally (but I may well be taking some liberties just to make my theory sound more plausible ). So, based on what you've laid out, I wonder if, had the Radiants been set up to have 8 Orders, Windrunners should have had access to Tension, and Edgedancers should have had access to Illumination, which is why they feel closer to Gravitation and Abrasion. Further, it may just be the case that, in an 8-Surge system, all the Orders were supposed to have equal affinity to their two Surges, but the addition of Adhesion and Progression sort of made the whole thing a bit wonky. I'm going to take your original points and respond to each of them in a spoiler, using info from the list of Order descriptions on the Sanderson blog. I'm also going to focus more on the canonical purpose and name of each Order—with so few in-text examples of most of the Orders, it's almost impossible to separate 'Order affinity' from 'personal preference/expression'. This would've been class.

As we've seen with Sazed's internal struggle between Harmony and Discord, and how Ati's personality was warped so much while he held Ruin, vessels only have some amount of influence over the Intent of their Shards. Trying to change it too much was Tanavast's problem with Honor. The Intents of Honor and Odium were defined at the Shattering. It isn't so much that Taravangian decided what the new Shard should be, but more that the combined Intents of Honor, Odium, and Taravangian resulted in Retribution.

Potentially! Trellium hemalurgic spikes have red in them, a colour associated with corrupted Investiture. I'm not sure if that red is actually confirmed to be because of corrupted Investiture, but Autonomy's whole approach to Invested arts seems to revolve around using the people and Investiture that exist across the Cosmere for her own ends. We also know that sand mastery is probably intentionally a mimicry of aethers, which implies that Autonomy likes to steal ideas/inspiration from other Invested arts. From the wiki:

Yeah valid! As I say, eager to read the full theory when you post it Love the enthusiasm And yes, I completely agree! Especially considering the philosophical and religious context that obviously inspires Sanderson. Perception and Intent are both wildly powerful and important in the Cosmere (I have a theory that they actually defined what specific Shards we ended up with after the Shattering), and I really think that Investiture is essentially the mechanism/force/law that allows for them to have that influence over reality. It seems to be this extra nebulous 'thing' that gives Sanderson a way to weave divinity and consciousness into the fundamental laws of reality. It's entirely possible that we won't ever truly understand what Investiture actually is, and will only have these mathematical/predictive models that approximate it well enough. We already know that a lot of the in-universe explanations of things are given by unreliable narrators (yes, even Khriss)—Rosharans are prone to calling all kinetic Investiture Surgebinding, for example. I fully enjoyed the rant, thanks. From everything we've seen so far, it feels like he's trying to posit Investiture as an add-on that makes reality in the Cosmere fundamentally different from our own, rather than something squeezed into real-world physics models.

Fiiiine, and yes I agree

Inb4 we get future-era Scadrians walking around looking like people from the Matrix. Imagine some sort of secret agent with like a briefcase of modified spikes ready to plug-and-go as they like.

No worries, I always appreciate the discussion! And yeah for sure that's moot, I was just responding to the original post as a theoretical point Ah understood, and yes agreed! I just mean that, with the sheer power and versatility available to a Fullborn, I imagine they'd have ways of preventing or recovering from the savantism that would be super dangerous to a Misting. Gotcha, valid call-out. Well yes exactly, hence my pedantry in my first post Honestly

Eh, I have a habit of rambling so I try to make sure I lead with my actual point. It hides the recipient from Harmony (it's how Bleeder was able to operate the way she did); I assumed that property would extend to other Shards, but I had forgotten that Autonomy can take control of people through it, so maybe not from the wiki: Yep! All up to date—did I get something wrong? Ha I genuinely forgot about aethers, good point! I wonder if there's a type of anti-light that would work against them. And yes, agreed re 'intervention', which is why I answered the question as-is anyway Ah sorry—Compounding. Yep! And he had access to all the abilities. Savantism is normally pretty detrimental, more so for some metals than others. Harmony 'cured' Spook of his savantism, further implying it's a negative/harmful thing. From the wiki: Yeah both valid points! I suppose even a theoretical bubble shield of anti-light is useless if someone with F-steel just runs around you and fires a bunch of automatic weapons at you from outside said bubble. I'd really like to know what I got wrong I'm sure it's unintentional, but this whole reply reads a bit hostile/condescending. Which puts it on-par with the Honorblades, with the extra downside that Nightblood will try to kill you every time you wield them. Dragons definitely aren't normal mortals and the Heralds were definitely created with direct Shardic intervention (similar to Returned and arguably similar to Elantrians). Plus, I really think a full Metalborn who knows what they're doing is up there.

Well following this logic, I wonder if Scadrial will end up with a much bigger freelancer economy than the real world. Especially once global communication is established, I imagine there'll be loads of agencies (and later, websites like Fiverr) where people advertise their various misting and ferring powers for hire. F-pewter sherpas/bodyguards, A-zinc/brass crowd control / party hype-people (those people who stand on the street and try to get you to come to their club would be much more effective if they could amp up your FOMO), F-bronze sentries / CCTV monitors. I'd genuinely be surprised if there isn't at least a small industry based around this.

I think the Lopen is just one of those people who is so innocent and pure in their desire to spread joy and love to everyone around them, and he has a fairly secure ego and self-image. The Lopen temporarily having one arm meant he was, in a way, 'allowed' to make jokes about disabled people that may have come across as insensitive or condescending if he didn't appear to be disabled himself*, but were now opportunities to make connections and help disabled people feel more seen and at ease. He also probably used jokes highlighting his arm as a way to make other people more comfortable around him and his missing arm (something that, unfortunately, a lot of people have to deal with in some way just to stop non-disabled people pitying them or feeling awkward). With that angle, part of him may have just been clinging to the two-armed perception of himself as a way to deal with how people started treating him differently. *I'm neurodiverse myself and well aware that not all disabilities are visible, but this is a commentary on perception.

Nice easy WoB for this one: So duralumin only catalyses the Investiture already inside the person burning it. Someone attempting this would need enough duralumin to last while they constantly breathe in more Stormlight. I don't even know if they would be able to absorb it fast enough to keep up. As for the effects, similar to savantism and compounding, bypassing the safety rails like this is just as likely to kill the person attempting it as it is to create some super impressive displays of power. Unless, of course, you get lucky and the wildly increased amount of Honor's Investiture inside you just forcibly ascends you as Honor's vessel.

Oop sorry, didn't see your other points when I first replied! Yep agreed! Even in the real world, the more we understand about energy and matter, the more it feels like trying to cleanly define either as its own separate thing is almost redundant at the quantum level. Investiture in the Cosmere is like adding a third variable to that famous equation. As we learn more about its mechanics, I expect it will either come to be defined as: straight-up a third form that 'stuff' can exist as, alongside energy and matter a sort of mirror, where we end up with physical energy-matter and Invested energy-matter (depends how different, realmatically, kinetic and static Investiture are) I do kind of disagree with the bolded bit—granted, it may have been because of Ruin's machinations, but Scadrial was messed up after that clash, and required immediate reshaping and repairing by Harmony. Although it would help to explain why Honor and Odium almost tore Roshar apart when Preservation and Ruin were able to Invest Scadrial for ages without anything as dramatic, unless that was just part of the agreement between Leras and Ati. That said, you may still be right! I'm going to follow you and eagerly await the full theory

Gosh, big words! Thanks so much for reading and leaving the feedback. Oh for sure, and I'll be the first to disprove my own theories when new information comes out I'm a data professional at heart and can't stand misinformation. I really appreciate that, thanks! Be sure to let me know if you do think of anything though, I genuinely love having my ideas and theories challenged.

My actual nit-picky answer is that, like any 'who would win' scenario, the only correct answer is 'whoever the author wants to win for the better story', but I did a bit of research anyway. Very similar question has been answered on the Coppermind: But then also: Metalborn are mad powerful, but living Shardplate makes them immune/resistant to all kinds of pushing/pulling, emotional manipulation, etc. Removing duralamin (a base metal) while keeping atium (a god alloy, assuming you mean malatium) seems a weird restriction, but I think malatium on its own is probably enough for Vin to take it unless Kal and Syl have some shenanigans prepared.

tl;dr: Taking your question as-is, being a master of anti-light is imo the strongest you can get (considering every opponent and obstacle you face will likely be Invested) while technically keeping to the 'no Shardic intervention' rule. If we ignore that rule, I reckon a full Metalborn with a Trellium spike is about as close as you can get to god-level power without ascending. So, first of all, how do you define 'Shard intervention'? Being a Mistborn requires having a piece of Preservation in your spiritweb Honorblades are literally pieces of Honor Even if we don't count spren as Shardic intervention, the Stormfather again is/contains the largest remaining fragment of Honor Nightblood is iffy, but we don't fully know how they were made Anti-light is probably the cleanest option here, but even then, it requires attuning to a Shard with the Intent to disrupt it Sorry, not trying to poo-poo your ideas, but since the Shattering, ALL Investiture is inherently Shardic intervention. I suppose if you found a way to access the spiritual realm without Invested means (which I assume is impossible), you might be able to gather some raw Investiture that isn't linked to a Shard (though I think that would technically just be Adonalsic intervention). If I stop being pedantic about the Shardic intervention, here's how I'd rank your suggestions:

Hoid, of course