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  1. My favorite cosmere character is Marsh. Several reasons: - Characters who have to fight their own psychology or other corrupting influences are interesting to me for some reason. (Peter Wiggin is my favorite character in the Ender's Game cycle, and I loved the John Wayne Cleaver books by Dan Wells). - With nothing but cleverness, strength of will, and a bit of luck, he manages to screw up Ruin's plans (even though Ruin was using him as his chief pawn) and plays as big of a part in saving the world as anyone but Sazed. And nobody even knows (except Sazed, apparently). - And then he shows up at the end of Alloy of Law as Hemalurgic Batman. And mentions that he and Scadrial's god don't always see eye to eye. This scene (and similar ones for Sazed, TenSoon, and even Vin and Spook) was worth reading the book for even if the story itself hadn't been any good. (One thing Alloy of Law era Scadrial has in common with the Discworld: an awesome personification of Death) On an unrelated note: Funny how many of these are also true of the Doctor...
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  2. I disagree with a few points here. I'm not going to go into detail, because that would take forever. Suffice it to say that Sanderson's villains tend to be very complex characters, usually just as much, if not more so, than the protagonists. There are many different ways to depict shades of morality, and the one Sanderson generally follows is that most people are not truly evil. Most people in Sanderson's works feel justified in doing what they do. Even Ruin isn't really evil. Destroying things is just what he does. This is of course, not such a good thing from the perspective of the people he kills. I wouldn't say that this is any less realistic than the darker tone of Martin's story. It isn't necessary to make someone cynical to have them be a 'realistic' character. Idealism is just as viable as cynicism. At it's simplest, an idealist is someone who believes that people are good, and a cynic is someone who believes that people are bad. This has nothing to do with how heroic or villainous the character is. A murderous zealot can be an idealist, and the most morally upright people can be cynics. For me, how much I enjoy a series has less to do with how cynical or idealistic it is than with how those viewpoints conflict with events in the story. And I would say that Brandon's works are not totally idealistic. Note how Elend decides that he cannot always follow an absolute set of principles in the real world. He never gives up his ethics, but he accepts that sometimes he has to choose between the lesser of two evils. Despite this, he still retains his basic faith in humanity. Elend would be a much less compelling character if he abandoned his morality.
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  3. I would like to announce that the following is going to begin on a national scale:
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  4. Vivenna disagrees. I agree that Kaladin, despite his deep backstory and awesomeness, isn't that intriguing of a character. He's a lot more intriguing for what he does than for who he is. He's mostly just obsessed with hating Lighteyes. Dalinar, however, is badassery incarnate. Retired warlord trying to learn ancient magical religions so he can effing UNITE people, even though they all think he's crazy. Guess how many craps Dalinar gives? ZERO. The Blackthorne could take any of his haters ezpz any day of the week except during a Highstorm, when he's too busy having AWESOME PROPHETIC VISIONS and chatting with the Almighty. Oh, people say he's only hardcore when he's wielding a shardblade? Np, he'll just trade one for some slaves, and while he's at it, give some plate to his handicapped son ('cause you know that awesomeness runs in the fam). He'll just go pick up another pair from the lifeless bodies of his enemies. Speaking of enemies, even THEY'RE forced to acknowledge his uber sweetness (see: giant Parshendi shardbearer). King sends him on a wild goose chase? The Blackthorne slams him against the wall and makes him piss his pants. Did I mention that he made a pact with the Old God? So between all this badassery, what does he do for a break? Nothing -- he just cuts giant rocks with his sword and lifts the chunks out with his own hands. Oh, and in his spare time, he has a train of chicks coming to his tent all day to read ancient scripture to him, so he can live by an ancient moral code that nobody else believes in. Dalinar is a Sliver of the Awesomeness Shard.
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  5. That's four ways now that I know of to get past the blackout. 1. Use Mobile Wiki 2. Disable Javascript 3. Use a different language, and translate it into English with Google Translate (or something similar) 4. add ?banner=none to the end of the URL. Also: ████'█ ███ ██████. the ████ ████ ██ ████ ████ █████ government████ ███ ██ knows█████ ██ ██████ ███ best█ █████ ██ ███ ██████ █████ █████ ████/████ ███'█ █
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  6. Dealt with Turos' bugs, added rules for suffixes which add a 't' onto the end of words, added a few more "pp" rules, although there might be a few more floating around. Specifically, a few of the bugs that Turos pointed out were actually intentional on my part based upon Dictionary.com phonetics: I meant which->huiC. I messed up with case->seys, but it should have been case->keys all along. Many of the cases of .a->.uh are actually intentional, although it varies by word, and so is still worth double checking.
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  7. On an issue not pertaining to wikipedia not being around I would like to announce that I was quite amused to discover that in Mons the first shot and last shot plaques for British commonwealth forces are less that 30m apart and was less amused and more impressed to discover that my grand father was present as a scout sniper at not only the first battle (which I already knew) but at the last one also. I also stood on the modern replacement for the bridge his unit defended there in the first battle, sadly the older bridge is lost and I was only able to take photos of what I assumed to be the foundations of the original bridge.
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  8. Do the shardworlds themselves have an effect on the magics that are created? If Preservation and Ruin had set up shop on a different planet, without other shards being there, would the Three Metallic Arts still have come into existence as we know them?
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  9. That was fun. Thanks again for putting in all of that work. Now you get to re-check everything to make sure my fixes didn't mess anything else up! Yeah! I probably need to sit down and reorganize the grammars to eliminate interference, which was the cause of a fair amount of your issues, but I'm too close to it right now. I didn't get your tab problem, so if you still have it for this version, then please send me the before and after text files that contain that specific error. I also disagree with your categorical "ged\n"->"jeg\n." There's some nuance there. Fixed all of Turos's most recent bugs, added in "pp" rules, as well as rules for sufixes of words ending in 'p.' EDTI: Deleted some of the old versions to make room in my attachments.
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  10. Jasnah doesn't set fire to people. She just stares them down until they become fire. If she reads in a similar way, that makes her the Chuck Norris of Roshar.
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  11. Is the rate at which Soulcasting happens fixed? ex: does it always take X seconds to Soulcast Y amount of material, regardless of both original form and Soulcasted form? I'm thinking if a natural Soulcaster (Jasnah, Shallan) can control the rate of transformation, it could end up being less likely to crack the gems because the Stormlight isn't draining as fast. Or more likely, if they try to Soulcast very quickly, like in combat or other stressful situations.
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  12. I agree with you about Jasnah, I'm an atheist myself and I was really impressed with how well Brandon did writing an atheist character, that's' something that a lot of religious authors have problems with. Atheist characters in fiction often end up as a cartoonish villain or they end up being "saved" by the most basic arguments, as if they'd never heard them before and didn't know anything about religion until the main character showed up. Sorry, pet peeve.
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  13. I always thought it relevant that shards can... speak with the dead? Maybe bring them back? If shardic power is tied to the afterlife of the Cosmere, who's to say the seventeenth shard members aren't already dead? Perhaps Shadesmar is the afterlife, in a similar way to Heroes of the Horn hanging around in the Dream world of the Wheel of Time series. That sure would be a convenient way to explain how they're everywhere, if the whole cosmere shares the same afterlife.
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  14. Brandon sets a very different tone than Martin. You're never going to get Martin's level of Gritty realism out of Brandon's books. In Brandon's worlds idealists succeed(To an extent). We're along for the ride to find out why and how. (That may be colored by his backstory, one of perseverance toward a dream in direct opposition to what society would have him do.) In reality war breaks some idealists and lets others succeed. No one path or mindset is right for everything, in life or in literature. Personally, while Martin is far more realistic, I prefer Brandon. He's much more fun and interesting to read. I don't hate the world when I finish his books.
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  15. It is a little difficult to translate into a phonetics system another person has devised when my own system of phonetics is different. But I'll look at your code to get an idea. Also, here's a list of english suffixes, which might help for finding rarer ones: http://www.michigan-proficiency-exams.com/suffix-list.html tion > Sun, should also affect 'tionate', 'tionately' and 'tioning'. sion > Sun, should also affect 'sionate' and 'sionately'. tech > tek ocean > oSun ture > Cur advance > advans, not advuhns row > ro, not rau low > lo, not lau age\n > aij\n 'ged\n' > 'jed' 'ridge' could be 'rij' instead of 'ridge' (or instead of 'ridje' if the above suggestion were changed) ques\n > ks\n, not kuues\n, but this should not interefere with 'question'. 'que\n' > 'k\n', but this should not interfere with 'question'. 'reading' becomes 'reeyding', but 'reader' doesn't change. strategies should not become 'strategkiez'. possibilities should not become 'posibilitkiez'. ture > Cur ely\n > lee\n 'typically' should have the -lee suffix, but this should not interfere with the word 'ally' when a change is made. 'specific' should not be 'spesuhfik', but 'spesifik'. tual\n > Cual\n 'one' should be 'uuhn', not 'uhn' I guess... kind of a wierd one without long and short vowel characters. 'while' could be 'uhyl' instead of 'uhhyl'. Here's a tough one: 'disciplines' should have 'plinez' and not 'plahynez', but 'plahynez' is perfect for 'splines'. 'insight' should be 'insahyt', not 'insigt'. 'rightly' should be 'rahytlee', not 'rigtlee'. 'wrongly' should be 'ronglee', not 'rongly'. 'deciding' should be 'desahyding', not 'dekahyding'. 'services' should be 'servisez', not 'servahysez'. 'associated' should be 'asoSiated', not 'asociated'. Not sure how that 'c' got through. 'accomplishing' should be 'akompliSing', not 'aksompliSing'. 'highly' should be 'hahylee', not 'hilee'. 'have' should be 'hav', not 'heyv'. 'references' should be 'referensez', not 'referenseez'. 'quickly' should be 'kuiklee', not 'kuuiklee'. This one is not a big deal, just has an extra letter. 'tacit' > 'tasit'. It's a word that didn't get the 'c' converted. 'practice' should be 'praktis', not 'practahys'. 'quite' should be 'kuahyt', not 'kuuite'. Notice the extra 'u' again. There was a reference to T.S. Eliot. As you can imagine, this messed with the punctuation. Don't know how to even suggest tackling something like this... Also, abreviations tend to have extra periods. Maybe a list of common abbreviations would be good to include for the purpose of removing those extra periods. Sounds hard to me though. Here's a few that are common in books, used in referencing other works: p. > page; pg. > page; pgs. > pages; lit. > literally; no. > number (man this one sucks...); who knows what others... maybe these are a "That's too bad" scenario, haha. I found an instance where a sentence was indented with the tab key. When the period was moved to the front, it was placed before the indentation with a gap before the first word of the sentence. I found one case where the word 'poetry' was translated to 'poetree', but a few words later, another instance of the same word followed by a comma was not converted. Maybe commas mess with the '-try' suffix? Perhaps removing commas first thing might be beneficial. Also, is it possible to convert all number characters into their spelled forms? Actually, maybe I will add number symbols. That will make it easier. Is it possible to remove all extra characters such as ' , ; : @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) - _ = + / \ | ` ~ < > [ ] { } Hope this helps! And regardless of the existing glitches, this program is amazing. I see lots of complex words transliterated perfectly throughout the article. Great work man!
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  16. Here's a fancy tool to keep you from having to use Command Prompt every time: You can make a batch file that will run all of the commands you put in it when you double-click it. -Open Notepad. -Paste this text in and make changes to make your folder setup and file names: cd \Your\Folder\Path\Here set path=%path%;C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_02\bin java AlethiTranslator_1_2_1 -Make sure to change 'C:' to whatever your hard-drive letter is. -Also change the name of Kurkistan's file to the current version and the jdk1.7.0_02 to whatver version of the JDK you are using. -Save the file as a .bat extension. When you run it, just enter the name of the .txt file you want to convert, and make sure it's in the same folder as your .class file. And yes, I will make a version with a lined space, too. Unfortunately, I'm still figuring out the font creator program, so I don't know how to make it larger yet, but will try to find out.
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  17. @Kurkistan: ... you sir, are a mad genius! Plus plus plus! Ok, so from what I have noticed so far, you still need to include what to do with w and q at the end of a word. I think q would be a k sound probably and w, maybe just a u? Then again, words that end with 'ow' make a much different sound: How would technically be Hau But this is where it gets tricky. Tow should be To, with a long 'o'. I don't know, maybe it would be best if I made a unique symbol for w for these cases. That would be taking quite a bit of artistic license, but what can you do? Either way, great work bro! Yours is truly a heart of linguistic fervor! Ps: I also has some more thoughts on this section: body = replace(body, "sc","s"); body = replace(body, "cy","si"); body = replace(body, "cy","si"); body = replace(body, "cea","sea"); //? body = replace(body, "cea","sea"); body = replace(body, "ce ","es"); body = replace(body, "ce\n","es"); body = replace(body, "ces","eses"); 'sc' as in 'scene' should definitely be 's', but there is the rare case like in 'skyscraper' where it should be 'sk' instead. 'cy' as in 'cycle' should for certain be 'si', but not in the case of 'fancy', where a long 'e' would be proper as opposed to a long 'i'. for 'cea', just thought I would help you save a few bytes of data by pointing out you have it down twice. I can't think of a case where 'cea' is used, but that could be a proper translation, either 'sea' or maybe just 'se', depending. Here's where I'm confused. 'ce' seems to me to make a 's' hiss sound, and not a pronunciation of the name of the letter as 'es'. An example would be 'since' = 'sins'. You've probably found a different case where 'ce' is used, but be aware of cases like 'since'. Same would go for 'ces'. I don't see a need for the beginning 'e' before 'ses'. Also, if you wanna get really technically and muck things up like crazy, (almost) anything ending in 's', other than names, would sound like a 'z' instead. Again, I have no idea how much work would be involved in making such an exception which really doesn't matter anyway. Other than those bits, your program is amazingly accurate from what I can tell! PPS: Oh ya! Since you are putting so much effort into this sweet script, let me know if you want a personalized version of the font to fit better with what you want to make the program do. PPPS: Oh right, about the 'gh' thing, I can only think of two examples at the moment: 'bough' = 'bau' (like the act of bowing) 'cough' = 'kof' And of course the lame silent 'gh' like in 'bought', and the wierd 'gh' used in 'ghost'
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