Ari

This is the only time we've confirmed him using allomancy "on-camera," so there's also an outside possibility that for some reason he's just a Soother or Rioter. (given that he had Lerasium him being Mistborn does make the most sense of course) And yes, we've known for a while that Stormlight Archive is after Mistborn Era 1, because almost all of Brandon's Cosmere works have been released in sequential in-universe order. (Alloy of Law (further forward than it's release indicates) and the forthcoming White Sand (further back in the timeline than its release, iirc) being the exceptions, with Sixth of Dusk eventually following suit because it's set so far forward in the timeline) And yeah, that's when we all confirmed that Hoid has a fair number of breaths, which I guess you'd expect after seeing him on Nalthis.

That's one for the record, if Yata thinks something can't be a bond you're certainly straying into dangerous territory in speculating about a bond, lol. I'm pretty sure what Brandon is having to walk around here is that Shu-Korath has some philosophical similarities to Devotion, and that you need to be sufficiently attuned to Devotion to be initiated as an Elantrian, so arguably being aligned with Shu-Korath might get you a better chance at being initiated.

Don't we also have WoB that Seons and Skaze are Splinters? I would expect that if you're getting similarly nitpicky, you'd talk about the force or emotion that drives the Spren being a Splinter.

Metals falling into four groups is just a consequence of dividing sixteen into smaller chunks. It's a better question to ask "why these four groups?", IMO. I imagine there are similar groupings to the shards but I'd be very surprised if anything but the applicability of the chart format itself extends to the Shards.

Brandon's confirmed in WoB before that investiture follows conservation of energy, it just does so with at least one additional category of "energy." So there's some energy input needed for investiture to recharge, (such as Atium being generated over time, or Preservation's pool periodically refilling) we just don't know exactly what's used to do this "recharge".

I'm not really sure one way or another on this theory in terms of the supporting evidence, but I would caution that narratively it doesn't sound super interesting, and that Brandon has said before that "end-negative" magic systems are rather uncommon in the Cosmere.

Well, assuming you weren't okay with Shards of unequal power, anyway.

This (the presumption of Dualism) is actually the thing I most disagree with/dislike about Realmatics, as it implies that you have a brain but you are a soul. To pervert Lewis Caroll slightly, you don't have a brain, you are a brain. Mental phenomena arise out of physical phenomena. (that is, concepts, sense of self, and memories have physical analogues in pathways and chemicals in my brain) This is actually a provable phenomena in reality, and is the reason why stroke and brain damage victims often undergo changes in personalities after their injury, something you would not expect under dualism. Epiphenomenalism is more reasonable, (although completely unfalsifiable and thus worse than useless as a scientific hypothesis, the same way intelligent design is, but hey, philosophy is rife with those sorts of theories unfortunately) but doesn't actually seem to be how the Cosmere actually works based on that WoB about Cosmere souls being composed of investiture that a being gains upon conception. (as from a physical standpoint conception isn't really where you'd expect anything soul-like to fully develop, because if the soul is a result mirroring physical phenomena, you would expect a soul to be something that would develop well after an infant is born, as its personality starts becoming more complex, because cognitive development arguably doesn't stop until you're about 21, depending on your definitions of adolescence)

With regards to the BoM Connection medallions, remember the reason they let you speak the local language only is because they're a store of Connection that has been anonymised, probably as an inherent result of storing identity at the same time as storing Connection. So by contrast we should expect connections on the spritweb to always work in a way that ties into your identity, rather than in a generic fashion like the medallions did.

There's definite hints that Odium is involved to some degree in whatever "trell" is doing. That doesn't necessarily mean Odium is Trell, either because the hints are misleading, because Odium is assisting a different Shard that's actually Trell, or because Brandon is planting a red herring in the prison scene in BoM.

Hoods are a good easy to way to hide and unhide your face without looking too much like you're hiding your face. Like most options to do so, it's a trade-off between peripheral vision and stealth. For criminals, hoods make sense, and without having played Destiny, I will say that most warlocks are considered criminal mages- so if you're flinging around demonic magics and don't want to be identified, a hood *might* be a good idea, and the Destiny class might be a scifi analogy of that. Hoods for priests or other types of mages only really make sense if there's an ideological reason for them, or you live in cold weather.

Jasnah explains by way of implication that she was off talking to Spren in the epilogue. It's possible she talked to cognitive life on another planet, but I'm not sure that Jasnah wouldn't have made a bigger deal of it, and the implication that she was in Shadesmar as opposed to the wider Cognitive Realm was reasonably strong.

Mmm, without throwing rocks, I would heavily suggest reading far more widely and re-evaluating that opinion. Ayn Rand, being charitable, wrote the political equivalent of chic tracts, and did so for an incredibly extreme and naive political position that doesn't actually reflect the way the world works, regardless of whether you fall on the left or right side of the political spectrum. (Seriously, ask an economist whether Atlas Shrugged makes any sense.They're generally pretty right-wing and I've never heard a serious economist agree that a capitalist counter-revolution would actually work the way she says) That's not to say heavily political books can't be good, just that I think by any critical measure the reason Ayn Rand's books aren't good is unrelated to their political philosophy or their level of politicization. It would be a shame to have anyone thinking that Ayn Rand was as good as literature could get. (or even, you know, relatively passable)

Don't disagree. Just saying that it's a little wrong-headed to assume if there are people/creatures flying through the vacuum at all in the Cosmere that they're doing it naturally rather than using Investiture to do it, as it's actually more believable that they have access to that much magic than it is that they naturally evolved biological space travel- it would take a pretty wacky environment to put in place selection pressures that resulted in the necessary features.

Is there? I thought we all agreed he was tapping Luck before deciding what to do...

I don't know! It would be interesting to see It totally makes sense that you'd be able to call on your Spren's abilities while tapping generic connection on Roshar, and you'd probably still be bonded to the Spren even when not tapping Connection... (although possibly it would have an interesting effect on the Spren similar to what happened to Elantrian Seons...) however we don't exactly have good evidence one way or another whether temporary rewrites like somehow spiking yourself with someone else's connection to their planet, or tapping generic connection on another planet, would be enough to maintain access to the magic system after your connection runs out or your spike was removed. Hoid seems to have permanent access to Feruchemy and probably Allomancy despite being from Yolen, but we don't know whether he did a permanent rewrite to his sDNA as opposed to a temporary one in order to get it. (I wonder if, for instance, alloying a metalmind with connection stored in it with Lerasium would permanently add connection to where you currently are into your sDNA, allowing you to always be a Radiant/etc...) It's a matter of whether Brandon thinks you would need the spiritual connection to a place just to get initiated, or if it's a requirement to even use the power in the first place. Based on events in Elantris, I would expect Brandon would lean towards the latter type of system. We do know that when Hoid used allomancy he was on Roshar, which is definitely evidence that there's a way to both get access to another planet's power and use that power on an unrelated third planet. (Which rules out using Feruchemical connection to enable the power to work) So it's just a matter of us not having thought of the particular hack that could make you able to be, say, an Allomancer on Roshar despite coming from Yolen, or being, I don't know, a Radiant on Sel despite coming from Threnody or something. What Hoid's managed to do doesn't (yet) fit what we know about Feruchemy or Hemalurgy, and it takes a lot of speculation to get there. (eg. Hoid has a hidden hemalurgical spike that works a way we don't know, or alloying metalminds with Lerasium hacks Lerasium the same way being a Twinborn hacks Allomancy)

As far as we know, 16 is only significant to Adonalsium due to the Shattering generating 16 pieces, not any other reason. It's possible there are other reasons but I think you're gonna need more evidence to establish a pattern or possible hints at reasons to the pattern before it becomes compelling. In a similar vein, as per Word of Brandon, 10 is significant to Tanavast/Honour. We don't have any evidence of any other significance to the number, so there's no particular reason to think that sixteen is actually an approximation of phi x 10 as opposed to simply the number of future Vessels that got together to perpetrate the Shattering. Phi is relevant to the shape of Roshar because IIRC its shape is based on a fractal pattern. There could be a reason for that beyond Brandon just thinking it makes cool art, but again, we have nothing to tie that together with the other instances of phi showing up. (and it showing up in Shallan's sketches is just good art, alien creatures SHOULD follow the golden ratio for obvious reasons) Phi is common in nature for a reason, so it's not a particularly persuasive theory without more evidence IMO.

The way Brandon's talked about this similarity seems to imply that for most magic systems said "spiritual cracks" are a prerequisite of Initiation in general. I'd say it's an interesting discussion to have, because we don't exactly know when the cracks would be regarded as "full." We know there are variations to have many powers you can have, (with the maximum for Scadrian investiture being no less than being a full Feruchemist and lerasium Mistborn, as the Lord Ruler demonstrated, although arguably lerasium might have got him around that maximum somehow, in which case the normal max would be being Mistborn or a full Feruchemist) so it's a bit open to debate. I'd actually have thought the biggest obstacle to being a Radiant Misting (or similar) would actually be that you'd need a Spiritual Connection to both Scadrial and Roshar. You could possibly hack this with feruchemy or feruchemical medallions using generic connection to attract a Spren and swear the oaths, although I'd find it very interesting whether your abilities as a Radiant would be able to function when you're not tapping generic connection on Roshar if you employed that hack, or if you'd need to do something to permanently write a connection to Roshar into your spirit web. (which maybe could be a human attribute you could spike someone for...)

It was a red-herring for Sarene to follow so that she didn't come to the correct conclusion that he was Lord Spirit.

I'm pretty sure after M:SH that it's a giant "plane," which is probably what you might be referring to as "flat."

*cough* Cadmium *cough* Lets you wait for critical events even without becoming ageless/age-extended.

There's also Mraize collecting invested objects, everything that's going on in Mistborn: Secret History, (which you might not have been counting- if you want your mind blown with cosmere stuff, read it!) the mystery in Alloy's series as to which Shard Trell is, the hints as to what happened on Elantris, (it looks pretty likely that the sky in the Cognitive Realm broke open and spilled a bunch of power into it) As to HTML- it's very rarely that boards let you use real HTML for formatting. This one uses pretty standard BBcode, which is somewhat similar but with a few more intuitive markup names and square brackets. Press the buttons in the editor for examples and you'll pick it up fast enough.

Which is effectively Honour's, Cultivation's, and Odium's magics as of the Stormlight Archive, which complicates things. For all we know Odium's touch on things makes them interact with the focus in a different way than Honour's does. Or perhaps Parshendi don't need to use a focus because they're not actually using the Spren to do magic as it's normally done on Roshar- rather the Spren is filling a coginitive hole in their being similar to how a Spike functions for Kandra, and the Spren is using stormlight to enact a physical change based on what type of Spren they are. I'm still rather undecided on what's going on and would like more info.

Um, by definition you can't "breathe in a vacuum." You could survive in a vacuum without breathing, but as there's no atmosphere, there's no breathing. You would essentially need some sort of airtight shell that can withstand extreme temperatures, (and extreme variations of temperature on either side) various types of radiation, and impacts from small, fast-moving objects in order to physically travel in space without some sort of vacuum suit or spacecraft. You'd also need to be able to "hold your breath" for the duration of your time in vacuum, and a way to generate thrust without compromising your protection from the vacuum. A windrunner with sufficient stormlight can essentially meet this requirement, although instead of preventing the damage to their skin with a shell, they simply magically heal the damage, the stormlight replaces their need to breathe, and they can manipulate gravity in order to generate thrust. If Frost can survive in a vacuum, I imagine it would be due to reasons more similar to why a Windrunner can than for physiological reasons.

An interesting argument for sure, but you should possibly be wary of using the Parshendi as an argument for how Honour's magic works, as arguably they're in a completely different magic system, so their interaction with the planet's focus may be different. I would've said the best argument for Spren-as-Focus is that almost every single time we've seen investiture used on Roshar, a Spren has been involved- either captive in a fabrial, bonded to a Knight Radiant, or to switch Parshendi forms. The lone exception appears to be use of the Honourblades.