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  2. Store memories of spoilers when rereading books, or watching reruns.
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  3. The guidelines listed here are still current as of January 2021. What is Reading Excuses? Reading Excuses is an online critique group and a spin-off of the popular podcast Writing Excuses (note: we are a fan group and not affiliated with the Writing Excuses podcast). In other words, we read each others' fiction to provide constructive criticism that will help improve your work. Reading Excuses is open to anyone. To join, send a PM to both Silk and Robinski with the email address that you'd like to receive submissions at, and one of us will add that email address to the group's email list. Discussion threads happen here on the forum; submissions are sent out by email each week. I will always respond to your request to join the group. I try to be reasonably prompt about doing so, and usually respond to requests in a couple of days. I do miss things sometimes, though, so if you haven't heard from me within a week, feel free to re-send the request. This group is meant for writers of all levels who intend their work for publication. Writers of any genre are welcome to join, but we're primarily science fiction and fantasy writers, so if you're writing outside of SFF you may find that we're not the audience you're looking for. The posts below tell you how the group operates. Please read the "How Do I Submit" and "Code of Conduct and Critiquing Guidelines" sections before submitting or critiquing. How Do I Submit? Formatting Submissions Length Guidelines Content Tags Naming Conventions How to Submit When to Submit FAQs Code of Conduct and Critiquing Guidelines Code of Conduct Critiquing Guidelines Receiving Critiques How Often Do I Need to Critique? Sharing Work From RE Other Resources RE Administravia Extra Credit Your opinion ... The Writing World
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  4. Alright, so I don't believe anybody has done this yet, so I'll go ahead and post it. I've organized the Death Cries into various categories in the hopes that we might make a little more sense out of them. And with that sad little intro behind us, let's move on! Please note, this now includes spoilers for Words of Radiance, especially the Confirmed section. Continue at your own risk. Original quotes, mostly in order, complete with chapter name and notations. Sorted by time pre-death Sorted by notation comments on usefulness. Recognized Events. Confirmed Events. I plan to add to this list as I get more time and see more connections. For now, speculate on what we have.
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  5. For those of you who have the Mistborn adventure game, around page 262, there is a full-page drawing of a steel inquisitor with symbols, obviously a written language, describing the drawing. Much like the drawings in the Way of Kings, the symbols do not directly correlate to our alphabet, but after some work I was able to translate them. I present this unto thee, fellow sharders. Hemalurgy, holiest of holy powers. By The LORD RULER, who shall live forever, God over men. Let not the knowledge of these sacred pages pass beyond the ministers, who dwell within his house, by his Holy Grace Unending. Hemalurgy is greater by far than the lesser powers of allomancy or the barbarian powers of feruchemy, for it is the sum of both and more. Once granted unto the blessed of STEEL, they shall be forever changed. Iron: Grant strength taken from humans. Steel: Grant a physical power of Allomancy. Tin: Enhance the human senses. Pewter: Grant a physical power of Feruchemy. Zinc: Enhance emotional fortitude. Brass: Grant a mental power of Feruchemy Copper: Enhance memory and intelligence. Bronze: Grant a mental power of Allomancy. Atium: Grant a power of temporal Allomancy. Aluminum: Enhance a power of Allomancy. Though you strike out their eyes, they shall see the hearts of men. For those who would truly serve His Grace, there shall ever be three of Steel to mark them. Two shall bind their sight, and one shall bind their soul. Let the sacred spike of blessed metal pierce the heart of the sacrifice, to consume the soul and power. Thus prepared, the spike is thrust into the body and blood of the chosen by the Lord Ruler to receive his benediction. Hope you guys enjoy! Edit: Corrected a few minor mistranslations, as pointed out by Inkthinker. and finally figured out the typo that people were talking about. It is now "greater by far" as it should be.
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  6. You missed one. I think this one implies that you shouldn't try to jump in front of a car driven by a Voidbringer.
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  7. Well, you could scroll down and check out the Reading Excuses subforum. They're all writers working on their craft. Welcome to 17th Shard! We're glad you're here.
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  8. I'm new here, so I figured I might as well post. I have an...interesting story following my joining this site. I have a friend here, who got really interested in this around the time he joined. I told him that the whole "Cosmere" thing probably wasn't going to happen, this site was pretty much a place for conspiracy theorists and whatnot. Anyway, I somehow ended up being convinced that the Cosmere was actually happening, and I ended up joining. So, uh, hi!
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  9. I'd feel better about this one if Dilaf hadn't once done exactly that just to show that he could.
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  10. Okay I'm going to get majorly off-topic for a second here, Straff. My apologies. I think you overestimate the power of the Inquisitors. Firstly, Hemalurgic decay would have made it more difficult to store an attribute, as well as receiving less power when the metalmind burned. Secondly, there weren't a whole bunch of Inquisitors left, and there were no hints of making more. If I'm recalling correctly there was about 12-15 left throughout Scadrial during the events of the second and third books. So their resources would have been stretched thin. Thirdly, most inquisitors wouldn't have the ability to do a whole lot of compounding. Lets just talk about the (arguably) most useful abilities for an Inquisitor. Double gold and pewter would have been difficult to beat. However, there were very few Inquisitors equipped with an Allomantic gold spike. The Lord Ruler wouldn't have wanted them to have one. So the options here are either to find an Augur, which are considered fictional so most would be unaware of their powers, or to kill a Mistborn. Unless you're an Inquisitor who was previously a Mistborn (which is rare and they wouldn't even need an Allomantic gold spike) most regular Mistborn would be a difficult opponents, even to an iron and steel savant like an Inquisitor. It would be extremely hard to get a spike in the right bindpoint. Another point to keep in mind is that many Mistborn were slaughtered in the wars between the books, while the Inquisitors were busy sacking Tathingdwen and tricking themselves out with Allomantic powers. Now we can talk about double pewter, the other real combat problem. Firstly, no Inquisitor (in my memory, which isn't infallible) no Inquisitor ever really got a punch in on Elend or Vin. They could have been waiting for them to get closer and never got the chance. Also, you have to keep in mind that Ruin considered Vin and Elend to be his as much as he did any Inquisitor. He allowed them to kill the Inquisitors so they'd have an army that would be ready to turn on them, as well as trying to spike Elend and also so that they felt like they were accomplishing something. He really wasn't trying to kill them until the Battle of Fadrex City. If you remember then, Marsh was the only Inquisitor in the area. They weren't close enough to utterly slaughter them. All the Inquisitors were sent after Vin in Luthadel, and they really stomped her, which makes sense if they were Compounding. (They wouldn't be able to do any of that Pushing on metals in stomachs because they weren't Lerasium Mistborn and they had no nicrosil for Allomantic Compounding) They broke her arms like toothpicks and had overwhelming numbers. They might not have even felt the need to Compound, until Vin drew the mists they had an assurance of victory. After she drew the mists those who could Compound a useful power would have been doing so, but she was practically impossible to beat, so she wouldn't have noticed. Marsh fighting Elend didn't go well for Elend either. After he lost the power of atium, he was pretty much dead right away. I really really don't think it's a plot hole that some Inquisitors could Compound. If it was impossible or some sDNA trick, I don't think Brandon would have gone wishy washy. He would have either said no or RAFO'd us. If you look at the interviews, he never really lies or intentionally misleads us on things. He either sidesteps a question or refuses to answer it. Do I have any flaws in my arguments, that I've missed? Everything that I can think of checks out just fine according to what I know, but I'm not infallible (especially when it comes to Mistborn) so there's a real possibility that I've missed a detail somewhere. Yes, this possibility was brought up here. Feel free to add anything we missed there.
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  11. I was thinking that Honor could fit as the counterpart to Odium: it binds things together, while Odium seems to drive things apart. It doesn't go out of its way to break things apart -that's Ruin's territory- but it's not averse to doing that, and war is a spectacular way to do both. We've generally been thinking of the word "odium" as meaning "hate": even in TWoK, that's how Kaladin thinks of it. It can indeed mean this, but there's a second meaning: that which provokes hatred, or perhaps more to the point, that which should be hated. This second meaning is where the word "odious" comes from. If honor is taken to mean that which should be respected and/or followed, then it could indeed be said to be the opposite of odium. The big weakness I see in this theory is the fact that Odium isn't native to Roshar. Although unpaired Shards (as Honor and Cultivation seem to be) can inhabit the same world, it seems far less likely that paired Shards would wind up on different worlds. Of course, if Odium is indeed that which drives things apart, then if any paired Shard were to start apart from its opposite, it would be him. But also worth noting is that Brandon hasn't said anything similar about Honor/Tanavast yet: perhaps it wasn't native to Roshar either, and it began with Odium on a world long since abandoned (and probably broken by Odium's wars).
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  12. Shouldn't be a problem, go ahead
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  13. On page 282 of The Mistborn RPG, Brandon encourages players to use Hemalurgy to create monsters, stating that "Hemalurgy is poorly understood, even by its practitioners. Many creatures can be crafted with the dark art, and only a few are commonly found in the Final Empire" The semi-canon contribution of the RPG is the monsterwraith, a mistwraith that has absorbed a koloss corpse which still has its spikes. Granted a four-spike Blessing of Potency without the two spikes that grant the Blessing of Awareness, you get a creature that combines the amorphous shape-shifting ability of the kandra with the psychotic rage and strength of a koloss. Scary stuff. So long as you're following the logic of The Treatise Metallurgic, I'd say it's a pretty open field. With 1000 years of history to play in, there's plenty of room for experimentation on the part of TLR, the Ministry, and the chance evolution of threats.
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  14. Caleb, Trizee, you're both down for Monday.
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  15. We should be okay. There are two Windrunners now, so the Knights Radiant are standing again. I can lend you guys some Dawnshards and we'll be good to go. Do we have any volunteers to be Odium's champion?
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  16. I just finished the audiobook version, and it was incredible. Kramer gives Wayne an Australian accent for his natural dialect, and does all his other accents perfectly. Really added a lot for me.
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  17. I wouldn't really call that a pet theory, the book only comes a little bit short of stating that explicitly.
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  18. Code of Conduct and Critiquing Guidelines Code of Conduct Joining Reading Excuses means joining the larger 17th Shard community. Please review and respect the forum rules. The nature of online forums means that you're interacting with people from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds, often without knowing what those backgrounds are. Don't make assumptions about someone else's background; if you find yourself doing so while responding to someone on the forum, revise your comment accordingly. Personal attacks or attack, mocking, or disparagement of another person's identity, including race, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, ability, and religious belief, will not be tolerated under any circumstance. Critiquing Guidelines: First of all, don't worry too much about the length of your critique or whether your comments are "good enough." Some of us have gotten into the habit of detailed line-by-line commentary, but that's not an expectation by any means. Overviews, general impressions, and reader reactions are all completely fine. Similarly, don't worry if your comments are very similar to (or different than) others in the group. It is always useful for an author to know whether or not different people have reacted in the same way to the same story, scene or beat, and getting multiple reactions to the same piece is a feature of the group, not a bug. That said, please keep the below points top of mind when providing critiques on the forum. Hopefully they also serve as a useful place to start. Please abbreviate character names and other unique "author-created" names (place names might be one example) when critiquing. Should a work submitted for critique here ultimately be published, this helps ensure that fans searching for the book don't accidentally stumble on the material in this forum instead of the finished product. For the same reason, please be careful about quoting people's work. It's not possible to avoid this altogether, but try to quote as little as possible to make your point. A page number or quoting the first and last bits of a particularly long sentence can both be helpful in helping the author find the line you're talking about. In general, be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Tell the author how you reacted to their work, rather than what you think they should do to fix it. Your vision of where you think the story's going may not match the author's vision. Include positive as well as negative reactions. It's just as important for the author to know what works as it is for them to know what doesn't. Be mindful of the stage the work is at. If it's a first draft, all sorts of things will probably change. A critique of line-level prose or pointing out grammatical errors may not be terribly valuable if the author is still working on character, plot, pacing. Most of the time, you'll probably want to focus on big-picture things. Be mindful of what the author is looking for. They may be very interested in a line-level critique, or have specific questions they're hoping you can answer. Be willing to adapt the style and tone of your critique to meet the needs of the author you're critiquing. At the receiving end of every critique you give is a person with feelings, and it can be very difficult to put your work out there, especially when you're new to a group and/or new to writing in general. RE has had writers at all levels of skill and experience, from completely new writers to published authors. Everyone should be able to expect a fair and honest critique of their work here, but that doesn't necessitate listing every flaw or opportunity for improvement. Some writers may find that very valuable; others may find it frustrating or discouraging, at which point it becomes not very valuable at all. Similarly, keep an eye on the tone of your critiques. Some people don't mind very blunt critiques; others find them discouraging. If you know you're critiquing a new author or someone who doesn't find much value in very blunt or very detailed critiques, write your critique accordingly. If they're new to the group or you're just not sure, err on the side of caution. Receiving critiques is a skill, just as providing them is, as is writing itself. These things take time and practice. Part of our job on this forum is to provide a welcoming space for new writers to do just that. It's been on my wish-list for a long time to expand the guideline for providing and receiving critiques into something more complete, and I'd welcome any suggestions for items to include in the in-house guidelines, or external resources that can be linked to. In the meantime, there's this podcast you could listen to on the subject of writing groups, by some folks you might have heard of. Receiving Critiques Receiving critiques is a skill, though we don't always think of it this way. Here are some guidelines for how to do it effectively. First and foremost, listen. Resist the urge to defend or explain your work. Maybe someone has found a flaw on page 27, or maybe that thing on page 27 is actually addressed perfectly on page 86. Either way, they're giving you valuable information about how they're experiencing your story right now. That being said, don't be afraid to ask a critiquer to expand or clarify, or to ask others in the group if they found the same thing. Knowing whether others in the group had similar or different experiences can be very instructive. You're not obligated to incorporate every piece of feedback you use. Don't feel badly when you discard someone's comments; you haven't wasted their time if you decide to go in a different direction. Now you have a better idea of how that scene, that line, etc. is going to affect some people in your audience. On a similar note: you're going to be getting feedback from a lot of different people. Inevitably, some of it will conflict. This can feel extremely frustrating. But again, knowing that different people react differently to the same scene can be useful. Maybe there is a solution that can make everyone in the audience happy, or maybe you just need to decide that the story needs to go somewhere that doesn't work for some people. It happens. Either way, once you know how different people react to the same scene, you're ahead of the game. If there are specific aspects of your story you'd like feedback on, ask! How Often Do I Need to Critique? This group functions by trading critiques. The more you're able to participate and critique others' work, the better the group works for everyone (and the more likely you are to get a good response rate from your peers when you submit). That said, we realise that everyone is busy, and that a good critique takes time. At minimum, you are required to provide 1 critique for every 1 item you submit to the group. If you want to jump into critiquing someone's ongoing project--for example, you want to critique Chapter 3, but haven't read Chapters 1 and 2--you can use the summary that each submitter provides in the body of their email to help get up to speed--just be aware that this will affect the perceptions of their story. Alternatively, you can ask the author in question to simply send you the earlier part of the work. Nobody is obligated to do this, but people are generally happy to. Sharing Work From RE: Don't. All work submitted to RE remains the property of the original author and is protected by the copyright law of the author's country of origin. You may not, under any circumstances excepting the explicit permission of the author(s), re-post or otherwise share material that is submitted to this group. Anyone who shares another author's work without permission will be removed from the group's mailing list and reported to the site administrators.
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  19. How Do I Submit? Please ensure that your submission adheres to these guidelines. They may seem stringent, but they're designed to make things as easy as possible for everyone in the group. Formatting Submissions: Please don't simply post your work on the forums, as absolutely anyone can view content posted here. Instead, send your submissions as an email attachment in .docx, .rtf, or .pdf format. Manuscripts should be double-spaced and in a legible font and font size. Courier and Times New Roman, at 10- and 12-point font respectively, are manuscript standard. Sans serif fonts are best for accessibility. Length Guidelines: Individual submissions should be no longer than about 5000 words. This doesn't have to be exact, but please stick as close to the limit as possible. For submissions that are significantly over the word limit, split your submission. With 5 submissions, even a little adds up quickly. There is no minimum length. Content Tags: We're not interested in censoring content, but we do expect all of our writers to be considerate of others when submitting potentially difficult content. It's your responsibility to be aware of the kind of content you're submitting, and, when applicable, tag it using the following labels: L (language), V (violence), G (gore), S (sexual or suggestive content), SA (sexual assault), and D (drug or substance abuse). You know your content better than we do. If there's something in your submission that isn't adequately covered under these labels, or you'd like to emphasize the nature of the submission's content more than the label allows, please include a warning in the body of your email. The goal is not to provide a plot summary, but to give other readers enough information to decide whether they're willing and able to effectively critique the content you're submitting. Finally, be aware that such submissions will sometimes evoke some strong responses. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, even if the feedback you're receiving is negative, but it's something you should be prepared for. Receive critiques of this kind of content the same way you would for anything else: be polite, don't get defensive, and listen. If people do react strongly to something you wrote, that's valuable information. Naming Conventions: We have specific naming conventions for submission emails, attachments, and forum threads. This allows people to filter their emails in a way that they find convenient, makes it easier to keep track of who is submitting what, and saves everyone from downloading and renaming half a dozen files named "Chapter One" every week. Please format the email subject line like this: "Reading Excuses - [date] - [username] - [title] (Content tags)", where "username" is your 17th Shard username. Just glance at any of the existing submission threads for an example. Follow the same format for forum topic and file name, but you can omit the "Reading Excuses" prefix, which is just there for email filtering purposes. Please make sure you have your username on the file attachment! It is extremely hard to tell who's submission is whose when you have multiple submissions. The username really makes a difference. How to Submit: 1. Once you're sure that your submission complies with the guidelines above, send your submission to: all[at]readingexcuses[dot]com 2. If you are submitting something other than the beginning of a story (the later half of short story or novelette, or Chapter 2 or later of a novel) please include a 1-2 sentence summary of the previous material in the body of the email. This will make it easier for people who haven't read the previous material to critique your most recent submissions. 3. Post a topic on here on the Reading Excuses forum so that people can comment on your work. When to Submit: Our submission date is every Monday. Please note that you will not have the opportunity to submit every week. We allow five people to submit per week. That's the maximum amount we can handle while ensuring that everybody gets feedback. To request to submit, post to the Email List and Submission Dates thread prior to your target submission date and let me know you're interested. I post a list of confirmed submitters every week by Sunday. When the group is busy, those who have had the opportunity to submit frequently may be asked to delay to make way for other submitters. I will also give priority to people writing to a submission deadline, within reason. FAQs: What happens if I ask to submit but don't get a slot? This happens rarely, but it does happen. If I have to ask you NOT to submit for a week, I'll let you know at the same time as I post the list of confirmed submitters. I'll then place you on the list tentatively for the following week (although please do post a request again the next week so I have a reminder/confirmation) but if the next week is also quite busy I may still ask you not to submit. I do attempt to ensure that everyone gets a slot within two weeks of their original request, even during busier times, and so far I haven't had a problem making this happen. If you feel badly because you've "bumped" someone out of a slot for this week, don't! This is how the group is supposed to function, to make sure everyone gets a chance to have their work read, and everyone in this group is wonderfully gracious about deferring their submissions when required. Can I request a slot more than one week in advance? Yes, but it's best if you repost your request during the appropriate week, to confirm that you are still interested in submitting and to make sure your request doesn't accidentally get overlooked. Please refrain from requesting a submission date more than 2 weeks in advance as such a request is almost guaranteed to get lost in the shuffle. Do I have to submit right away? You definitely do not have to submit immediately upon joining, and in fact, we recommend that new members read and critique for at least week or two before submitting, to get a feel for how things work around here and the kind of feedback you're likely to get. There's no rush to get that first submission in. On the flip side, if you're a new member with a piece that you're eager to submit, you're certainly welcome to request a spot in the queue. If you choose this route, we definitely recommend that you read some of the older threads here to get an idea of how the group works and make sure that this is really for you. Once you've done that, if you're still comfortable submitting, make sure you follow the request and submission process outlined here. The roster isn't full, can I take up more than one 5000-word "slot"? Generally speaking, no. We occasionally make exceptions to this rule when someone has an imminent professional deadline upcoming (i.e. professional contests, submissions deadlines for an agent or publisher). If you're hoping to get a whole manuscript read more quickly than the weekly submission limits allow, you can always check out the Alpha Readers Thread to see if anyone has the ability to do a full read-through. Just remember that it's a voluntary 'extra'! I didn't get any of this week's submissions/I didn't get all of this week's submissions. We have had recent issues where some members aren't receiving all of the submissions in any given week. If this is you, there are a couple quick things you can try: Check your Spam folder. Email verification is enabled, so nobody's subs should be landing in Spam, but it does happen occasionally. If you're using a Gmail account, check your Promotions tab. For some reason, some people have been finding that Gmail files some (but not all) RE emails there. Do a quick search of your email client to see if you can find the email of the submission you're looking for. As noted in the above bullet, we've been finding lately that email clients have been filing group emails in odd places. If none of those work, let me know and I'll see if there's anything I can do on my end to help.
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