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Thucydides

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Everything posted by Thucydides

  1. I have been more absent than not from the 17thShard, and indeed the Cosmere in its entirety, for the past few weeks or so. Unfortunately this is going to be something of an unbreakable trend for say, the next two years or more. In February I will be flying down to Brazil to begin a two year proselyting mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, yep, I'm a Mormon. I won't have access to even so much as an Elendel Broadsheet for the entirety of that time, and I certainly won't be able to get on here. During the next month and a half I will be preparing myself, learning Portuguese among other things. So, that's it, next time I see you all I will speak Portuguese and be so far outdated on all things cosmere that I won't be able to say anything intelligent for six months. I look forward to catching up on everything when I get back. Until then, Happy Theorizing, and may you find many questions and answers!
  2. I had a thought, I am not sure if this has already been brought up, but I looked around and I didn't see it anywhere. Could we have a place for posting reviews of Brandon's books? Maybe a pinned thread for each book at the top of the appropriate forums - though that could be a problem in forums worlds with more books like Mistborn, it would add some four more pinned threads to the top - or a separate Reviews forum with a topic for each book. I saw a twitter post by Brandon mentioning that he was worried about fans reaction to alloy (though he probably isn't worried anymore, Congrats Brandon!) and I thought if we had a spot where we could go and give our reactions it might get back to him, and then he could stop worrying about his more dedicated fans all the faster. It would also give a place that fans could find reviews by fellow fans to see if this or that book would be to their taste. On the other hand I suppose it could be a bit dangerous asking for reviews, it might invite trolls and be more trouble than it is worth, but it's just a thought.
  3. I agree that premium membership is a bad idea. Tempting as a source of funds, but I would definitely shy away from it. I might go for a T-shirt, and I think the automatic account idea is very cool, though it might not be all that effective as it seems to me that most of the people who end up on this type of site are the ones who, like myself, enjoy keeping up on the news. You might consider putting up a way to contribute donations online, even if it didn't get a huge response it would be there just in case, and it wouldn't need a lot of maintenance after you set it up would it? Whatever comes we are grateful for this awesome site and support your decisions; I trust you guys to do what is necessary in the best way possible. Good Luck!
  4. I think that the "tower" referred to in the death quote is Urithiru, the home of the Radiants. The spear is probably connected to Kaladin in some way, either because Kaladin is the "He" in the quote, or for some other reason. There's no definite connection between the first part of the death quote and the second part. I'm sure they're related, but it's not clear how. I think the Fallen Title is symbolic of Dalinar being crushed by the Parshendi. On page 420 of the Hardback, about two thirds through chapter 28, as Dalinar walks with Navani back to his personal complex from pounding out the Latrine with his hammer, he describes the Glyphpair on his banners as being shaped into a Crown and a Tower. If Kaladin hadn't saved Dalinar House Kholin would have been practically finished, sounds like a fallen title to me, and the spear refers to the fact that he was refusing to use anything but that spear with the head knocked off, it means that he had to pick up the spear and fight again.
  5. So far as we have seen splinters are not/cannot be people, they are always things (spiritual objects?). The Divine Breath are splinters of Endowment, and, I may be wrong, but I think those are the only confirmed splinters that we have. It is heavily speculated that Seons and Skaze are splinters of SFHA (Shard formerly held by Aona) and SFHS (Shard Formerly held by Skaze), but I don't think we have any confirmation either way. We do know for a fact that Elantrians are not splinters or slivers. We had this all out with Brandon while back.
  6. I would think that the bubble would have the same frame of reference as it's creator. If you are on a train, the train appears stationary while the landscape moves; therefore, your bubble will move with the train. However you yourself don't appear stationary from your own point of view, when you take a step it appears as if you moved one step while the train stood still; therefore the bubble will not move with you. Basically when you create a bubble it will be rooted to whatever appears stationary from your frame of reference at the time you created the bubble. So... I would guess it would move with a ship, which would be really cool if you could make one big enough to encompass the entire ship, but that would be a really tiny little ship.
  7. Not any longer than some of Chaos theories I finished, and enjoyed, the entire post, thank you very much for writing it. Between Monday the 1st and Monday the 7th we got a foot of snow where I live. I was thinking of you guys (even though you were in a different and distant state...)
  8. We should create several different timelines; one with Elantris as 0, another that starts at the Shattering, and a third that begins at a random point between Elantris and the Shattering. Then we can all split up into different camps and shake pens at each other! (Though ultimately the one with the armies gets to set the calendar) Sorry, my first thoughts when people started to throw out ideas were of the different calendars that different peoples used throughout history. Carry on.
  9. Small note, the two researchers are not married. As Ardents they cannot be married, this is made pretty clear by Shallan when Kabsal practically proposes to her, the woman actually thinks something to the effect of "it would be foolish to waste a lifetime of dedication" in connection with thoughts of the man and the oaths they have both taken. Sorry I am feeling to lazy to find the quote right now, you will have to look it up yourself.
  10. Well someone should write up a theory and we can start espousing it. Thank you happyman, no I have not. The feeling I had was that Hoid did know where they were, but they were much closer than he wanted them. So when he says: 28: I believe they're still lost, following a false trail I left for them. he is mostly using bravado. Yes, they are on a false trail, but they are still on the right planet, much too close for comfort. That may not be the case, maybe Hoid really is worried about them as little as his words convey, but I think there is a strong possibility he is bluffing at least a little. edit - small grammatical error
  11. I couldn't find any such description. Maybe someone else will have better luck.
  12. First things first,I am just going to assume the letter writer was Hoid until someone can bring forward another good, viable theory more specific than "someone we haven't met yet". I apologize to those who dislike this assumption, feel free to substitute "the author" if it makes you feel better (hopefully that won't cause any of my points to fall through). Now that that is out of the way... These lines really imply to me that: The recipient, actually lets call him Fred, much easier; so, they imply Fred is either the one who set the seventeenth shard on Hoid's trail in the first place, or he is their leader/master/director. It could be both though I am inclined to think he just asked them to find Hoid, or set them on his trail, especially as they are referred to as "your friends of the Seventeenth Shard". That doesn't imply leadership to me. In fact reading over it again it seemed to me that one of, if not The, main objective of the letter was to get Fred to interfere with the Seventeenth Shard's search. Look at the structure of the letter: These first nine lines are all housekeeping, pleasantries, touching on important topics of the past in order to dismiss them, and setting Fred at ease. That is not to say I don't think they are packed with good information and may contain key clues, both for us and Fred, but right now I am talking about Hoid's intent in writing them. What was his purpose behind writing these lines? This theory says it was to put Fred in the right mood for his future request. Here Hoid quickly rehashes the pertinent parts of their previous disagreement, probably because he wants Fred to know he has not changed his views either, therefore they need not re-cover old ground; and skillfully uses those past disagreements to bring forward his best and strongest arguments. The placement of these lines in conjunction with the sudden switch to the topic of being chased in the following lines is what really makes me feel that Hoid wants Fred to intervene with the Seventeenth Shard much more than he actually puts in writing. Presumably because, as Fred is angry at him, has been for a long time, and will continue to be for some time yet, he might be less inclined to comply if Hoid said outright how badly he wanted him to intervene. He downplays both the intelligence and power of the Seventeenth Shard implying that he sees them as of little importance to anything, making it a small request to ask Fred to call them off, though the placement implies much more importance. Small request, easy to comply with, doesn't require a break in the policy of nonintervention. And then the grand finale. Hoid hits the strongest points of his previous argument, calling up any stirrings that argument may have made in the heart of Fred, and finally closes with an all out plea relying on the strength of the friendship they once had, reaching back across time and bitter feelings to a time when they felt the common bond of that friendship. Notice the word I bolded, that word ties this final plea to the previous request, lending that request a very large amount significance without stating right out how important Hoid finds it that the Seventeenth Shard be asked to stop chasing him. Now, I make no claims as to whether Hoid really cares that the Seventeenth Shard are chasing him. He may find them as unimportant as he pretends. I think they are probably more of a nuisance than he lets on, but that they are not the real reason he tries so hard to get Fred to call them off. What he really wants is for Fred to get involved, but Fred doesn't want to get involved, so Hoid brings out all the big guns calling forth his considerable powers of persuasion and tries to get Fred to do one simple thing. Something won't actually break any of Fred's self-imposed policies, something that will relieve a very large and potentially disastrous (when you are engaged in the kind of war Hoid is, and that war is coming to such a critical turning point as what we see in the Stormlight Archive, anything going wrong, even something small, is disastrous) relieve a large and potentially disastrous annoyance, but ultimately something that will get Fred involved with Hoid again and thereby make him more likely to respond favorably later when a second bigger, but much more urgent, request is made. I am sorry, my thoughts surely do ramble about. Hopefully this makes some sort of sense.
  13. Wow So far out of my understanding. I have some serious studying to do. What kind of classes does one take in college in order to go further in this and related subjects?
  14. This is quite simply not true. The culture and politics of Alethi society would never allow him to leave the war. To simply leave the war, for any reason, a Highprince would have to be even further disconnected with regular Alethi thought patterns then is Dalinar. There is another factor here that has not yet been brought up. Soulcasting is heavily tied up in religion. To use it in any sort of innovation, especially one that might result in unwanted witnesses, would be a daring and provocative move indeed. The Highprinces are all much to comfortable to try anything of that kind, though it will be interesting to see what Dalinar does once he is made Highprince of War. Somehow, I think anything along these lines would be to dangerous for him to attempt for quite some time, there is already a risk that appointing him Highprince of War will splinter the Alethi unity, without adding further reasons for the others to attack him. But I guess we will see.
  15. He made the necessary adjustments that came with the increased notoriety and workload brought on by the Wheel of Time. It is sad, but the change was not a bad thing, it was something that had to happen. He has handled it quite gracefully from what I have seen.
  16. Haha! Thanks CabbageHead. Someday I will know all the common features of all the important software programs. At which point someone will do something new and revolutionize everything, making my knowledge obsolete. Oh well. Sorry for the tangent, resume your discussion.
  17. That is an interesting idea, I wish I knew more about storm systems. Has anyone tried analyzing the Highstorms for similarities to the EYE of a hurricane? Using the assumption that everywhere the Highstorm is not, is actually the storm? Edit: I also have a completely unrelated and off topic question. How do you get your quote to say in the heading where it came from? I just use the quote tags when I quote someone, and apparently there is a better way when quoting from a post that is on this website. What is it?
  18. Consider me interested. There's no way to not be interested, especially if you have read the sample chapters. Thanks for putting this together!
  19. Jordan first. If you cut Jordan's less than clean stuff I would like them evenly. I respectfully, and forcefully disagree! Brandon has done a fantastic job taking on the near impossible task of finishing The Wheel of Time, but Robert Jordan was infinitely better, after all it was his world. Nobody can match Jordan in his own world with his own characters, that's not to say he was a better writer than Brandon, just that he was better at writing The Wheel of Time, after all it is his creation. I have greatly enjoyed both The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, but I will always mourn the fact that Jordan did not have the opportunity to write them himself.
  20. On the subject of the Runes along the side of the Warcamps Map and the Tower Battle Map, two things: First, the runes on the Warcamp map could very easily represent the different houses, while the runes used in the Tower Battle are: Dalinar, and: Sadeas, not their respective house. Second, if you look closely the third Rune down from the top of the map looks very much like the rune used for Sadeas in the Battle except that it is upside down, but the closest correlation I could see for Dalinar's Rune is the bottommost one on the Warcamp map.
  21. I found the source, albeit a month or so late. Turns out it is not a direct quote, but rather a WoT fan on Theoryland paraphrasing what Brandon said. Here is the link: Pancakes & Fries, and it can also be found on the Wiki in the Brandonothology, right at the bottom under Europe Tour. Edit: I forgot the disclaimer, I added the bold in both quotes
  22. We are a little bit at odds with Brandon on this point. As fans when we began talking of Shards and Shardholders Brandon said that when a person holds a Shard of Adonalsium they essentially become that Shard and he then refers to them as the Shard. He didn't say we had to do it that way, in fact he graciously gave us license to do whatever we want, but that was his way of doing it. As fans I don't think we have established a firm rule on this yet, though I think we still tend to refer to a Shard and their holder as being distinct and separate. If someone could find that quote for me I would appreciate it. I have yet to successfully log onto the Brandonothology since the update, my internet being too slow.
  23. Awesome, awesome. Thanks for getting and posting these.
  24. Brandon said this. I am 90% certain I remember him saying (well, typing) this in an interview. I was 100% sure, but then you cast doubt on it's authenticity, and my memory on these sorts of things has led me astray before... so now I am 90% sure. I do know that I didn't read it in the brandonothology, however, ever since that was updated my computer freezes with any attempt to view it, so if anything was added (as opposed to simply rearranged) in the update, I won't have read it.
  25. I do love this theory but I feel I can't espouse it any longer. On all of this: I agree completely. But this: just doesn't seem right to me. I would say rather, that there are limits to the power that a Shard can access at any given time. Just as our bodies only hold so much energy and after we use it we need to sleep and to eat, just so a Shard can run out of energy, in the moment. However, just as a man who has spent a week working himself to the bone can rest and recover, a Shard who has expended all of it's energy can also rest and recover, but you wouldn't say that the energy the man expended came back to him (sure in a roundabout way you could say it has but you understand my meaning here), instead you would say he got new energy from his food and rest. So don't say that energy comes back when a shard acts according to it's intent, that seems to imply that a Shard has an Absolute amount of energy, and when it acts outside it's intent it loses that energy thus becoming less, FOREVER. Rather say that a Shard only has so much energy at a given time and using it for something other than that Shard's specific intent will be more difficult, and use more energy than doing something in accordance with the intent (not to mention there has to be psychological barrier, the whole "molded to the intent of the Shard thing). So in our analogy you could say our man is a professional weight lifter, that is what he is best at (his intent). If he goes running that doesn't mean he won't recover the energy he used, but running will be more difficult for him, it will tire him more quickly and to a greater degree, therefore requiring longer and more restful recovery, than if he had done his usual weight training. That is how I see things, please, point out the errors in my reasoning, there are bound to be a few.
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