Painter (Nikaro) is a lonely man making his living by trapping nightmares in paintings. He considers himself a lone warrior protecting the city, nevermind the fraternity of fellow painters who work with him. He is not a particularly fortunate man, but he makes his life more difficult by brooding. All he wants is to be important, not realizing that he is the biggest obstacle in his own way. Chekhov's Gun: After the time spent at the carnival, Yumi draws a very simple (and not really good) picture showing her and Painter's hands. Near the end, Painter passes that picture to her through nightmare-Liyun, which allows Yumi to regain memories stolen by the machine. For every episode, we randomly draw a set of clues from all submissions, so yours might take some time to appear Yumi, on the other hand, is a tragic delight. She’s kept in an emotional prison, unable to think or feel for herself. During her adventures with Painter, she discovers freedom. She makes friends. She lives for the first time. And she begins to understand all the wonderful, terrible things that living can bring.

Corrupted Contingency: After his adventures on Lumar, or possibly after (Cosmere spoilers!) discovering what Taravangian did to his memories, Hoid put protections on himself against having his mind or soul interfered with. When he arrived on Komashi and the Machine tried to seize his soul, his protections activated... and froze him into a kind of stasis for the next three years, until Yumi defeated the Machine. He notes that this was not what he'd intended to happen, and presumably the protections will be further refined.God Is Dead: A normalcy for a book related to the Cosmere. In this case, the reason the planet is so screwed up is because the Shard Virtuosity committed suicide. Or at least, it seems like this is the reason. Design even says you normally don't see things like this except as a direct result of a dead god. But in the end, it was something entirely different, though perhaps Virtuosity could have done something if she had still been alive. Alien Among Us: According to Hoid, one of the first problems a world faces when they leave their world and discover life elsewhere in the Cosmere is the fact that everyone else has been likely visiting their world for quite a while. The only reason worldhoppers don't help uplift the locals on their own is because it requires a lot of paperwork.

That was Yumi and the Nightmare Painter for me. The unanticipated story of two people who find one another.It's mentioned that Yumi averages twelve spirits called each session (compared to ten for most others), but she manages thirty-seven the first day we see her. Yes that was explicitly exceptional even for her, but it's still a huge jump. Because she's been living this same day over and over for almost two thousand years, her skill has grown to incalculable levels, so from her perspective her output suddenly jumped by a huge amount overnight. Emotion Eater: The nightmares seem to gain sustenance from the fears of humans. This is because they are themselves former humans and absorbing the raw emotions of living people (specifically fear, being the most primal) help them regain some sense of their humanity. Hoid: She... did not do a good job acting human. I take no blame, as she repeatedly refused my counsel on the matter. At least her disguise was holding up. Gondor Calls for Aid: Akane and her friends manage to bring thirty-seven painters, about ten percent of all the painters in the city, to help Painter when he tells them an army of nightmares is coming. In a variant, no one is quite there because they want to help; most of them are there because they think it might be funny, or because they were bribed into coming with debts called in or favors promised. They're all rather annoyed when they realize Nikaro is involved, and they almost all leave pretty early on. Then the nightmares come. Good with Numbers: Design only gives out discounts in prime numbers, and chose her form partly because it reminded her of a cosine.

Yumi is a yoki-hijo, a sacred caller of spirits who binds them to a task. Her life is regimented to exacting detail, every step ritualized to protect her position. Her gift sets her apart from normal people, and her skill sets her apart from the gifted. All she wants is to live a normal life, for just one day, but her duty binds her too tightly even when she has the opportunity. The third of Brandon Sanderson's four "Secret Novels," this book is beautifully illustrated by Aliya Chen and meticulously designed. Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Nikaro's bachelor suite is cluttered with laundry, dirty dishes, and old take-out containers. He tries to convince himself he's Married to the Job as a distraction from the utter mess he's made of his social life.Nepotism: The Dreamwatch, allegedly the most elite nightmare painters, are actually a bunch of rich and powerful people's relatives who treat the job as a social club and steal the credit from the subordinates who do the actual work. The nightmares are able to be shaped by a person's perception of them, but the difficulty in doing this makes it necessary to actualize that perception in the form of a painting. Gentle Giant: Tojin. While he is very big and seems obsessed with his muscles and exercise regime, in reality he is a good person, and a little shy. Amnesia Loop: The father-machine doesn't have enough power to trap the souls of the fourteen yoki-hijo the way it trapped everyone else, but it does have just enough power to erase a day's worth of their memories. So it uses its captured souls to create fake villages and has each yoki-hijo live out the same day over and over again, erasing their memories each night, for seventeen hundred years.