YMMV / The Cosmere

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Adonalsium is a central figure of the series, but also the one the least is known about, resulting in copious amount of this. Is Was Once a Man in effect, or was Adonalsium simply sentient Investiture? Why did he need to be Shattered? Did he decide to abandon his creation, did he plan to destroy it, or perhaps he was already dying and final blow needed to be dealt? Did he know about future Vessels' plan to destroy him, and if so, did he approve? Is everything going according to his plan, or did the Cosmere go completely, irrevocably Off the Rails?
  • Bavadin/Autonomy. Why is she working with Odium? Does it have to do with Hoid’s hatred of her? Did she aid the Splintering of Aona and Skai? If you take those questions to the forums, you'll get all possible combinations of answers.
  • Skai, AKA Dominion, gets her share. What was her relationship with Aona/Devotion? Was she evil and/or focused on global conquest, or was she benevolent?
    • Actually, most of the Shards that we haven’t met face-to-face yet are steeped in mystery. What is about Mercy that worries Harmony? (Odds are it’s related to the battle on Threnody, but that itself is steeped in mystery). What does he mean by Whimsy “not being very useful”? Why isn’t Invention returning his calls? And why did Virtuosity splinter herself?
  • Hoid. Just what are his goals in the Cosmere? Is he the unsung hero, a regretful Anti-Hero, or an outright villain? What does he plan to do? Just how did he get immortal and unable to harm living beings? Word of God is that Hoid was a Dawnshard at some point, which only raises further questions, most importantly HOW he gained it (probably related to the Shattering) and lost it.
• Archive Panic: Brandon Sanderson's impressive output has made the panic already present, and only going to increase thanks to the sheer number of books planned to be published. The whole Cosmere sequence is expected to encompass at least 35 novels, likely more, not counting novellas or graphic-novels. While currently mostly manageable for avid fantasy readers, casual readers can get easily intimidated.
  • The Stormlight Archive can cause this by itself. The books are by far the longest in the Cosmere^note  Notably just one Stormlight book is just a little under all four Wax and Wayne books, clocking in around 390k-450k words with 4 published, out of 10 planned. There are also 2 novellas, with at least one more planned, though likely many more than that will be released.
  • Mistborn has multiple sub-series set across different eras. There's the Original Trilogy with books about 210k-250k words long, plus a novella, Wax and Wayne which had four books around 130k-160k words long, as well as a planned Ghostbloods trilogy of a similar length to Original Trilogy, and a space opera trilogy with books Stormlight-length. Sanderson has also expressed interest in writing another era in between the third and fourth eras.
  • There is also currently stand-alone books Elantris and Warbreaker around 200k words long, with Elantris set for two sequels, and the possibility of one for Warbreaker, and the graphic-novel trilogy White Sand (expected to get a sequel at some point) to round out the main books in the Cosmere.
  • On the side there are three Secret Projects, Tress of the Emerald Sea, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and The Sunlit Man, just over 100k words each, as well as the novellas The Emperor's Soul, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, Sixth of the Dusk.
  • Furthermore Dan Wells and Issac Stewart are also working on writing even more Cosmere books.
• Complete Monster:
  • Mistborn:
    • Original trilogy: Lord Straff Venture is introduced in The Final Empire as a brutal noble ready to commit all manner of atrocities to cement his power. He systematically abuses his children to force them to conform to his standards, even trying to have his son Elend assassinated. He sires illegitimate children to use as loyal assassins and spies, and discards his mistresses when they get too old—too old being late teens. In The Well of Ascension, he allows an army of monsters, known for their ruthlessness and utter lack of mercy, to attack an enemy city, regardless of collateral damage. He later decides to allow the city's destruction, concluding he only cares about the Atium rumored to be hidden in the city. Caring for nothing but his own power and advancement, and seeing others as nothing but tools to use or obstacles to be destroyed, Venture stands out as one of the only humans in The Cosmere completely devoid of sympathy.
    • Wax and Wayne: Telsin Ladrian/Sequence is a ruthless manipulator driven by an endless desire for more. A rule-breaker since childhood, she became much worse as she grew older, rising to be a high-ranking member of the Set, who recruited her similarly high-ranking uncle Edwarn. Found overseeing the torture and experimentation of Malwish, Telsin fools Wax into thinking that she was an unwilling participant forced by Edwarn, even killing one of her own men to maintain the guise. Telsin ultimately uses this opportunity to shoot Wax, her own brother, when he's off guard. When things begin to go poorly, Telsin promptly flees leaving Edwarn and all her subordinates behind. Resurfacing six years later, Telsin masterminds a plot to destroy the city of Elendel, inhabited by millions, claiming that it is necessary to stop a more destructive invasion from the god Autonomy, yet Telsin ignores less violent solutions, with the plan actually intended to impress Autonomy enough so that they will make Telsin a god. When it appears her plan will succeed, Telsin reveals to Wax that she has always hated him since childhood, and gloats about her success, revealing her to be nothing more than a petty and callous individual who only cares about proving herself superior to others, indifferent to the countless lives that her actions take.
  • The Stormlight Archive: Rayse, the Vessel of the Shard of Odium, is a stern, tyrannical man who made it his mission to hunt down and sunder the other Shardborn. Heedless of who gets in his way, Rayse is willing to burn entire worlds to shatter the rest, having murdered those seen as "The Almighty" in the process while sowing his dark influence on worlds to create war and bloodshed until he can conquer or raze it to nothing. On the world where the series is set, Rayse's influence is responsible for the mental lobotomies and enslavement of the Parshendi race, the massive wars and the corruption of many others with his own Fused being little more than slaves he will send to eternal damnation for failure. Arriving himself, Rayse intends to slaughter everything in the world until all that is left are him and his own twisted armies, a process he will repeat through the cosmos.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Hoid, the Cosmere's original darkhorse.
  • Bavadin seems to be on track to become this, thanks to the fun habit of pretending to be different deities (of both genders) and forming entire pantheons made up only by different personas of her. The fandom has taken the idea and ran with it.
  • Cultivation, due to being The Chessmaster and being confirmed by Word of God as a DRAGON.
• Fanfic Fuel: There’s still one Shard that remains unnamed, with almost nothing known about five other Shards, and there are millennia-long gaps between various books. Oh, and there's an entire city of Worldhoppers out there, so fanfic authors can run wild.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Brandon Sanderson" is 16 letters long if you don't count the space. The Arc Number of the Cosmere makes his parents naming of him a riot.
• Memetic Bystander:
  • Hoid was there for, or at least involved with, pretty much everything.
  • Bavadin is quickly growing into this with the reveal that she's been pretending to be many different gods and that there are entire pantheons where every member is actually Bavadin. Everyone is Bavadin now!
• Memetic Mutation: According to Word of God, Hoid is very interested in Scadrial... because they’re this close to figuring out how to make instant noodles. Naturally, the fanbase has taken this and ran with it. In Secret Project #3, Design and Hoid have even begun running their own noodle shop.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: The first mention of Bavadin was lacking gender-pronouns, and a stray Word of God pegged them as male. Come Arcanum Unbounded, two years later, and Bavadin is confirmed to be a woman, with Sanderson clarifying that some level of Ambiguous Gender Identity is going on.

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