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  1. There is a certain... symmetry in the ending of OB, that might also be relevant. See, on one side, we have Dalinar having his big moment in rejecting Odium. Then, he goes to Nergaoul and captures it in the Honor's Drop, a perfect gem. The end result is that Dalinar's side now has a gem in which a powerful spren of Odium is trapped, and one which softly glows with Voidlight. Dalinar asks Navani to study it. On the other side, Moash hunts down Jezrein. He stabs him with a special knife given to him by the Singers, and this breaks Jezrein's cycle of rebirth by capturing his "soul" in a gem at the end of the knife. That gem gains a soft glow. The end result is that Odium's side gets a gem in which a powerful "spren" of Honor is trapped, and one which softly glows with Stormlight. We don't know what they're gonna do with it, but suffice it to say that the Fused probably have plans. It is also interesting that Odium and/or the Fused go after Jezrein's soul only after Nergaoul is captured by Dalinar.
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  2. Congratulations on reading this after that title. However I wanted to talk about what was in there. Recently I have encountered a long standing disagreement between different members of the shard(including myself) about what Roshar's immediate future is going to be like assuming they survive the current desolation. I just wanted to put forward my view for discussion for those who are interested. Skip if you find the math of economics and production boring. Roshar is different from earth in a lot of ways but in terms of technology they use fabrials in place of nearly anything that is earth equivalent. There are two interesting thing about fabrials that are of importance to this discussion. The first which I discuss here is that they require gemstones. From Kaladin's bridge four run we know that a well paid freeman doing manual labor in an "urban" environment earns two clear marks a day plus minimum room and board. A mark is the second smallest Rosharan denomination worth five chips which are each worth a piece of street candy. The smallest and probably least expensive fabrail we have seen is the spanreed. Spanreeds are extremely simple and useful so their production has most likely been streamlined and a great deal of study has been put into making them as inexpensive as possible. The description indicates that they require a pair of rubies of at least a broam each (really one ruby split) to manufacture. For reference that is equal to 400 chips(probably more due to the fact that the gem was more valuable before splitting). If you take that and add a 100% for manufacture and transporting costs you end up with 800 chips or three months pay just to get the cheapest widely available fabrial. It gets worse. Most Rosharans have no capital and are not real wage earners. Assuming Roshar follows earth patterns in this respect at least 75% of the population should be working in these food production with very limited expendable income. Of the remaining 25% (described here https://medium.com/@zavidovych/what-we-can-learn-by-looking-at-prices-and-wages-in-medieval-england-8dc207cfd20a) odds are a good that most of them were working bridgeman wages and would want to save disposable income for expenses or insurance. The fifth who are better off or 5% of the population will probably be making around three times that so it will still take them a month's earnings to acquire a single spanreed pair. Bottom line. The gemstones that are required https://coppermind.net/wiki/Spheres are generally too expensive for a good 95% of Rosharans to afford and most of the remaining five percent are going to have to save for long periods of time to own items that will increasingly become necessary for their business and trade. This brings us to the second fabrial oddity. Only a few people are required to make any given fabrial and making a complex one seems fairly easy. Acquiring and cutting the necessary gemstone is really the only difficult part. Both the spren and the stormlight can be had for free as far as we know and the metal parts don't seem any like a challenge for a competent blacksmith. This means wide scale cooperation is not required for building one. Most fabrials also last a fairly long time so for those with money, including the Alethi nobility, fabrail conveniences will be widespread. It is more then possible for an Alethi highprince to enjoy a standard of living and have the conveniences associated with an earth household of the 1960s. Lower level nobles will enjoy some of these benefits as well. In cities some fabrails may also be used in public works assuming intelligently minded civic planers. However the high costs and the reality of economic unfairness and inequality that exists on Roshar indicates that baring some radical change in another generation hearthstone will look exactly as it does now. The individuals who live there will have the same or a similar standard of living and preforming the same kind of subsistence farming. Sad as it may seem well the common man may know about fabrials odds are that despite them existing he will own none. At the same time the wealthy will enjoy a high standard of living and a large number of modern conveniences at comparatively little cost. I welcome all comments criticisms and analysis.
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  3. sorry that i give the wrong impression. and, before i forget, thanks for trying to reach out to me. as i tried to make clear, i have nothing against activism. i have a beef against people that commit excesses in the name of activism, that use it as an excuse to bullying or to get a better treatment. sure, those people are rare, and sure, we should not let ourselves be blinded by those few bad people. but people committing excess in the name of supposedly good causes exhist, and i've dealt with a few of them in real life. people who felt that just because they are members of some minorities, or they are spearheading some political campaign for rights, that they are allowed to do things that they would not do otherwise. it's not just "sympahtetic exhaustion". It's not "yes, whatever, I don't really care"; perhaps i seem petty to you because you read that in my stance? if that was the case, i wouldn't even bother to write here. what i am against is well intentioned extremists pushing things too far. Even if I agree with them on a fundamental level. And I think it is important for me to make this argument because those excesses are not helping your cause. instead, they are alienating support. I've heard many people who were indifferent toward minorities (of any kind) gradually become antagonistic because said minorities were asking, or getting, preferential treatment. and most often those minorities weren't, really. most members of those minorities were only asking equal treatment. but the media will often latch to the most vocal people, who often enough are also the most fanatics. and then there are always a few bad apples who are just trying to take advantage of their minority status to get away with stuff, and they stand out. But when this happens, it can give a bad reputation to the whole minority. I assume this goes both ways. I assume that whenever a straight person starts with "I have nothing against gays, but..." it would also put you on the defensive, because you may have heard that incipit from many bigoted people who basically meant "I have nothing against gays, but i actually do". I assume that I gave you the same vibe, and so I thank you again for trying to reach out instead of closing. And so I hope that my message can get across. that it's all right to ask for representation, inclusion, acceptance, but if you move from asking to demanding you cross a line, and it will put people on the defensive; even those who would have supported you. and that things like acceptance and inclusion must come from within the other person if they are to be genuine. you can't force acceptance; if you do, it's no acceptance at all. Personally, I think the inclusion of gay protagonists will simply take time. I think so because I think writers write largely based on their experience, and consider how fast lgbt rights have moved. 50 years ago homosexuality was a crime punished by the law. 20 years ago the general vibe was "they are free to do whatever among them, as long as they stay hidden". then in just those two decades it moved to "a friend of mine is gay, and I don't see him any different than anyone else" to "same sex marriages should have the same rights as regular ones". But until 20-odd years ago, homosexuality was virtually invisible. So, most people who are now adults grew up in a world without lgbt people. they weren't part of their experience. and so, they don't think to put in an lgbt character, because it's outside of their experience. The whole lgbt topic being riddled with pitfalls also doesn't help making people comfortable with it. But people growing up now are most likely to know some declared lgbt. so it will feel natural for them to see some such people around, and those of them who will pick up an artistic career will see fit to include more of them. And seeing more of them in books will also make tv producers less wary of the topic. and perhaps more gay couples will feel comfortable enough kissing in public, and more people will get used to it. and the people who will grow up in this environment will start writing gay protagonists without anyone telling them to. Some processes require time, and trying to hasten them too much backfires. and perhaps it will go for brandon too. He said that he wouldn't feel comfortable writing gay protagonists because he feels he would blotch them. but he started writing ranette and drehy. those had a very minor role in their first appearences, but they gained more visibility. perhaps the next mistborn book will have a short ranette pov, or perhaps rythm of war will have a short drehy pov. and from there, and getting feedback, brandon will feel comfortable in expanding roles for lgbt characters, and he will eventually write a gay male protagonist. brandon likes to try new things with his style, there's a good chance he will get there eventually. in due time. conversely, putting pressure on him may only make him feel less comfortable. By the way, I can make this argument in person without problems, but those few times I tried on the internet it often went poorly. too many people react as if i were a bigot hiding under a paper-thin cover, and from there it escalates. I wouldn't mind some tips to figure out how to convey this argument better. without resorting to a wall of text as I did here, possibly.
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  4. Despite these hard times now is the time of geula and hope. I wish to all a Chag Sameach vikasher. May this be a time of healing and a new redemption for our times!!
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  5. It’s been too long since I reminded everyone about this
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  6. HI everyone! A bit (lot) self-promotional this morning, as I just opened up the Kickstarter for Facets and Fall, which you kind folks have been reviewing.You can find the campaign here:https://kickstarter.com/projects/spacewizard/the-dissolution-cycle-books-2-and-3-science-fantasy-lgbtq You can also get a look at a few of the characters, as I have the first illustrations posted in the campaign: G sitting on K, and one of the Elg! Any social media shares are appreciated!
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  7. Letś start of with this shall we?
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  8. Doesn´t this just make your heart go warm?
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  9. The gay male protagonist. Bane of mainstream literature. But things are better now™. *sigh* LGBT literature is still very much- actually hold that thought. The existence of that term alone shows the problem: that LGBT literature is a separate thing from straight literature. We rarely have fantasy, mystery or sci-fi whose main character happens to be gay, we have gay fiction which happens to have a fantasy, mystery or sci-fi setting, rarely. Mostly it's just romance. Written by women. *sigh* It's mostly erotica, basically not even aimed at the same gender. There are gay authors: Adam Silvera, TJ Klune, Will Walton, Benjamin Alire Sáenz,... well-known LGBT authors. Special thanks to Richard Morgan who finally wrote a non-romance with a gay male character as the main protagonist. Also Robin Hobb. Gay characters are almost never the main protagonist in the mainstream literature. Gay literature is still a niche genre and generally not taken to be a part of mainstream literature. When gay characters do appear in the mainstream and they're not badly written, they're usually secondary characters or at most, the deuteragonist. These authors are then treated like the bastion of LGBT literature and everyone else would remember their example for the next ten years as completion of the required dosage of gayness they can handle on their reading list. They will then cite these books everytime some poor sod mentions we need more representation, "wasn't that one book from 5 years ago with that one gay character (who probably dies later on) enough?" And these authors too, even after all this time, are in the minority compared to those who simply ignore that gay people exist. These are the books most likely to have a lot of romantic subplots. Love triangles, ahoy! "But we need romance in our books!" "Why do we need to have a gay character?" "what does it add to the character?" Female gay characters are, of course, fine. I mean there's also less gay female characters because it's not as daring and "female lead" is still something that can be used to sort books but at least people aren't directly opposed to them. Gay male characters on the other hand are an insult and a threat to masculinity everywhere *long exhale* So we have Ranette and Drehy filling the quota of gay characters in the Cosmere and they're tertiary characters. So far, we have maybe-promises from the author regarding gay characters in the future. On a completely unrelated note, how many love triangles have we had in the Cosmere so far again? This post is my anger and this post is my logic: Also check out this comment by @The Awakened Salad which addresses the question of why a character would "need" to be gay:
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  10. We’ve (somewhat) recently received the first of our official information about Rhythm of War. Here’s the publisher’s summary, from Amazon: An arms race was not what I’d been expecting, for sure. It caught me a little by surprise; had this been foreshadowed at all? We’ve seen bits and pieces of human advancement with fabrial science, but it seemed like the Fused worked with different tools entirely. (Thunderclasts vs Shardbearers, Fused vs Radiants, Voidlight vs Stormlight, Unmade vs... well, there’s no real analogue on the human’s side that I can see.) So what’s this arms race going to look like? After thinking a little more about it, I decided that there must be some hints in the first few books about the Fused side of the fabrial arms race. That’s just how Brandon rolls. So, what were they up to in Oathbringer that might be a portent of this? And there is one big mystery to their actions: the collection of Shardblades and Shardplate. They track down Eshonai’s body, they steal them from Moash and Graves. Perhaps they’re behind the request from the Iriali to recover Adolin’s Shardplate; now that Iri has aligned with the Fused, there may be more to this request than meets the eye. But we don’t see anyone using them in battle. The Fused wouldn’t be able to use the Plate; it would interfere with their magic. But we don’t see any of them using Blades, either. How does that tie in with fabrials? As I listed above, the Fused and the humans don’t simply copy each other; they have competing advancements. The Red Queen hypothesis, so to speak. Every Desolation, each side needs to come up with new tools and tactics to stay ahead of the other side’s tricks. This go-around, the Fused already unleashed the Everstorm. We’ve seen our hints of the Coalition developing more advanced fabrials, like flying ships (from one of the OB artwork pages). How are the Fused going to counter? I think they are going to make fabrials out of Shardblades and Shardplate. The essence of fabrial science is through trapping spren. We know that Shardblades are spren, and we have some pretty strong hints that Shardplate comes from lesser spren, as well, which I won’t dive into in this thread. What if the Fused are trapping unwilling deadeyes and making them run some powerful new fabrials? How does this “reveal the secrets of the ancient tower”? This gets down to the fabrials suffusing Urithiru and the gemstone pillar in the center. I suspect that it’s supposed to use an intelligent spren to power the city: specifically, the Sibling. (Another quick aside I won’t dive into: I believe Melishi was the Bondsmith of the Stormfather, and that the Sibling was not bonded, but their retreat caused the shutdown of the Urithiru tower’s fabrial system before Melishi brought about the Recreance. Lots of epigraphs I could quote, but I don’t want to lose focus from the theory just now.) As the humans try to understand what the Fused are making new fabrials, they’ll realize that it’s how the Sibling used to interact with Urithiru. There’s one more loose end that I think this ties up: the missing Blades and Plate. From Dalinar’s Feverstone Keep vision: That is just Stonewards and Windrunners who have achieved Blade and Plate (fourth Oath for Windrunners, presumably the same for Stonewards). I assume these were all the fourth-Oath-ers and fifth-Oath-ers; on top of them, you’ve definitely got third-Oather-ers running around somewhere with Blades and no Plate. And you’ve got the other six Orders with Shards. (No Bondsmith or Skybreaker blades). We can get a sense of scope from the modern Skybreaker order. From one of Szeth's tests in Oathbringer: That’s about a hundred total Skybreakers, a hundred fourth-Oath Stonewards, and two hundred fourth-oath Windrunners. If the other Orders are around those numbers, I’m gonna pull some numbers out of my posterior and estimate a thousands sets of Plate and two thousand Blades. That’s a lot of missing Shards. We know those Blades are still in the Physical Realm, at the very least: I’m wondering if this “arms race” is also going to be a literal race for armaments: there’s a stash of Blades and Plates somewhere on the continent, Katana Fleet style, and the heroes and Fused are racing to find them first. Where could they be, and who has them? I’d lean towards a Herald; there are a few of them still entirely unaccounted for, and of the parties to potentially collect and hide Shards, a Herald would be my top candidate to never use them and just bury them. TL;DR: in the “arms race,” the Fused will be using captured Blades and Plate to make new fabrials. The missing Blades and Plate from the Recreance will be found... but by whom?
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  11. so in this scenario lets assume you have up to the ninth heignting and are aware of night blood or shard blades and you want to make a viable piece of armor simaler to them in capability any form of armor is allowed and organic and inorganic materials will be allowed what creative way and command would you give this piece of armor for a desired out come for me it would be a wicker shield in the shape of a person given the command to protect me so lets hear your idea wiith me pictuirng shard plate or or a half shard to create an inteligent shield that can withstand such weapons like a shardblade other creative uses of awakening are also allowed
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  12. 5 more years... Bowser jr is now a master feruchemist, Jax is...well...struggling. I realized, that Jax is still at square 1 because hes not a feruchemist at all! (this is where you gasp.) A couple days later I feel like an Idiot because, hes a freaking MISTBORN! No wonder he failed every single test and task. Nevertheless Im still proud of him for just being a mistborn, for they are rare. I am sending Jax to a strange man named Kesier, im sure you do not know who im talking about. I am worried for Jax because he´s with a strange man, (who is probably crazy.) but I did have a feeling that this was the right decision. Kelsier said that Jax will be back in 6 years. I am a little glad however, that Jax is leaving, for he go bullied quite a bit by Bowser. Jax left 3 days ago. Earlier today Bowser asked me why did you name me bowser, I said that would take a lot of explaining. But I told him, and it took all night... Till next time...
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  13. So be it. The Final Ascension. Gone be Booknerd to be remembered only in signature and the Tittles of Booknerds Guide to the Cosmere which will continue under the same name. I AM FRUSTRATION!
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  14. It kinda seems like Soulcasters aren't common enough outside of Alethkar to be able to prevent famine. Like we had that scene with Evi's brother (whose name escapes me) where they had to explain to him that Soulcasters made sieges pointless, implying that that's not the way things work in Iri.
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  15. OP, I think you are wrong about a couple of your key points. Firstly, the common people already can get fabrials - Lirin has one. In one of the Kaladin flashbacks, he mentioned that they have a fabrial clock. Now, this might be explained away by the fact that Hesina was born to rich parents, so they could have given it to her, but it still is something to consider. Spanreeds are not the cheapest fabrial. My other point is this: fabrials are a very new technology. They are only around 70 years old, from what I remember. Because of all the new fabrial discoveries that are being made, as well as the fabrial arms race we can expect in RoW, the price of their creation should drop dramatically. In my opinion, the biggest limiting factor here is the fact the gemstones are their currency. I agree with the other commenters that once they move on to a symbolic currency, we can expect to see a major boom in fabrial accessibility.
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  16. I am experiencing eternal frustration that Frustration keeps saying i am frustrated.
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  17. This one looks the most experienced.
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  18. These are all good points. I think the only way around these problems is a pretty serious cultural revolution, part of which involves moving away from gemstone currency. For thousands of years, Stormlight has been used as a light source, a battery for fabrials and Shardplate which only the wealthy really possess, and a decoration. This made it semi-precious. But now, Stormlight can be used to heal deadly wounds, to repair destroyed structures, to teleport armies and trade goods, to radically accelerate the growth of crops, to make soldiers fly, and so on. It's absolutely the most essential resource in the world, and the world is having an emergency. We're also seeing Elsecallers and Lightweavers appear, which means that the inefficient and debilitating Soulcasting fabrials might not be nearly as needed in the future. I think, taken all together, it makes sense for Roshar to begin transitioning to a symbolic currency, like our essentially worthless coins and cloth paper. They still need to manage their economy, but civilization is collapsing and Stormlight is the difference between cities standing and falling. Every gemstone is a weapon, a first aid kit, an escape plan. The wise thing to do is stop using them to buy chouta.
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  19. At least we have the shard to pass time during our quarantine.
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  20. Just because this happens does NOT mean that cats are better. (If you can´t already tell, I voted dog.)
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  21. The only way Sanderson will be able to have a super-major gay character will be to have a society or set of societies where for some reason they need two guys or girls to get pre-arranged married. So either in an unexplored region of a known world, or on a fully unexplored world? {I mean unexplored from the readers' POV.}
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  22. Wouldn't it be FAFO? Fight and find out?
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  23. As I said, often conflict is born simply because someone feels attacked and get defensive and it escalates on both sides. Anyway, I was victim of bullying as a kid, at a time when bullying still wasn't perceived as such a huge social problem, so the teachers didn't do much for me. And I had no friends because I was nerdy and introverted (before it was considered ok). And my parents told me that those people bullying me were douchebags and I should just ignore them. And it worked. i went to high school, met better people, got some friends, was not bullied anymore. I still had few friends, because of the whole nerdy and introverted. and my parents tried to push me to get in various activities to meet people. And it did not work at all. I didn't even know what to say in those situations. i befriended none of the people I met there, though i found some good friends otherwise. Now I am happy. my life experience strongly affects how I see acceptance. Now I am glad other middle graders bullied me, because if they hadn't I would have been their friend, and ewww, why would i want to be friend with them? and I am strongly skeptic of any organized attempt to find acceptance; my parents kept trying to put me among people, but it wasn't working from my side. I know acceptance of sexual identity is different from what i had to face, but part of the problem is still the same: people are mean to me and won't be my friends. So my instinct would have me very dismissive towards acceptance. my solution would be "dump those douchebags, you don't want to be their friend anyway. and find better friends. but don't bother looking for them too hard, because that won't work; just drift through life and be ready to latch onto other kindred spirits you'll find along the way". and so, when I see on the news a sit-in by the westboro baptist church, I'm less "this is so wrong and should not happen" and more "thanks for letting me know you are douchebags, so i can avoid you better" it took me a while to realize that this attitude works on a personal level, but cannot be applied to society as a whole. still, just like my parents trying to push me into social groups was a recipe for disaster, so I think that any attempt to push for acceptance too hard can't work.
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  24. Well first I find a way to use Stormlight to power awakening(Add talk to Hoid to my to do list) Then stand in CR HighstormAnd give Wooden armor the command Protect me, and Heal when you are damaged All the while thinking about Shardplate. Force Literally tons of investiture into it and voila.
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  25. Wayne, Lift and Nightblood in the same room. Meeting betwen Kelsier and Kaladin Kelsier taking revenge on Hoid Meeting of Vasher, Vivenna and Nightblood
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  26. So much goodness! A new proclamation, the Hosanna shout, youth speakers, a new church symbol, and a temple in China! This is also the first conference I made it through all ten hours. I usually watch one each day and go back to read the others. The trick for me is to walk outside in my neighborhood (one of my favorite pastimes) for a hour and listen via the ksl app. I then return and watch the rest. Ive already printed out the proclamation and look forward to studying the talks as well. I hope I remember to participate in the fast. I’m losing track of days in this quarantine haha
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  27. A lot of your comments, intentionally or otherwise, are rather... hurtful This is a reminder that you're not just expressing your discontent against certain issues but also hurting a certain subsection of people who are so often maligned. Plus, nowadays people seem to really be against any form of activism. They cite sympathetic exhaustion, and I understand that or at least try to, to some degree. But there are so many people still suffering from what they say they're tired of fighting against. It's okay, that some people are tired of the fighting but don't bash or ignore those who still are I understand that I seem petty to you. But I've already told you that your last contents hurt me deeply and yet... You seem far more petty to me
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  28. i can't figure out if you are being serious, or you are trying to make a joke, or you are trying to provoke me. but assuming you are serious, this kind of comments is exactly what i am fighting against. i am fighting against the idea that minorities can accuse of intolerance anyone who dares to disagree with them. also, please tell me how can i be accused of discrimination for claiming that everyone should be treated equally
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  29. it means that it must not be an obligation. one should not have a list of minorities to add like a checklist (black dude? check. single mother? check. asian? lgbt? check. Black woman single lgbt mother? damnation, i miss that one, i must put one in the story). that's not inclusion, that's politically correct gone mad. furthermore, i am a big fan of the "live and let live" principle. and according to that principle, no one has any right to tell an author that he must put something in the story just to show inclusion. making it an obligation to include lgbt themes - or. heck, any other topic - also goes against freedom of artistic expression. the emphasis is all on "would be nice if he did X" against "must do X". would be nice, certainly. but the moment we force people to conform their art to a canon, we are pushing it too far. now, regarding an author choosing whether to make a character lgbt when it's not a plot point, i assume it would go more or less like any other fluff descriptor that is not important to the plot. as in, i have no idea, but i trust that an author does. I mean, in mistborn commentary brandon said that initially vin was male, but worked better as female. why? I'm not sure. I don't know enough to tell why brandon felt that vin had to be female. but i trust that just as brandon figured it for some reason, so he can figure when he'd rather his character is gay.
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  30. Now THAT is an arms race for you. Nice thinking.
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  31. YES! I LOVE BOB ROSS! On two-times speed, he's a weird sort of therapeutic. Also, Please tell me you've heard this before. I will literally have this on loop for hours.
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  32. There was this one time but.... We do not speak of such things. You don't wanna know. Seriously no decoders. I'm trusting you on this: Inp st ql lvde
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  33. I don't see why there has to be any more to it than the Fused attempting to track down, collect and use all the deadplate and deadeyes from the Recreance. We didn't see the Fused use shardblades yet, but do we have any reason to think that they possessed more than a couple of them in OB? They got 2 complete shardsets from Graves and Moash and might have also obtained Teleb's plate, which was lost during the battle for Narak, IIRC, and never recovered. That's not a lot, there is a certain learning curve to becoming proficient with a shardblade and Odium expected the battle for Thaylenah to be a slumdunk, so it is no wonder that the shardblades weren't transported there. Also, certain types of Fused might not be hindered by the dead shardplate in their surge-binding, as long as they left one hand bare - those with Division, Soulcasting, Tension and Cohesion, even Illumination, as long as they didn't try to disguise themselves. Even if for some reason the Fused can't use the shardplate, giving it to the new singers in appropriate combat-oriented forms would greatly enhance their military capability. And I am pretty sure that we'll see hundreds of Fused armed with deadeyes, which is going to be a massive paradigm shift from all the previous Desolations, where they had to make do with inferior weapons. They have already looted some soulcasters too, so they now have a number of tools that were previously restricted to their opponents. And, as @Dreamer pointed out, there is an odiuminium dagger as a new development, with either other 9 like it or swappable trap-gems, which is their "final solution" to the Oathpact problem. Also, the Everstorm. They might also try for the rest of the Honorblades. That's their side of the arms race, IMHO, while the new Radiants and their allies are going to be inventing new fabrials, with the goal of giving non-invested people a chance to fend off the Fused and the thunderclasts, because with them respawning via Everstorm the new Radiants won't be able to delude themselves into believing that they could win without greatly enhancing military capabilities of normal soldiers, as their predecessors disastrously did. Possibly the anti-Odium side will get some magi-tech input from a certain outworlder, because of this WoB: BTW, do we know that the Stonewards had fewer _knights_ than the Windrunners before the Recreance? I always thought that the Windrunners were the most numerous because of their many squires. But in any case, there used to be thousands of Radiants back then, so the knights in the Feverstone vision likely don't even represent the majorities of their respective Orders...
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  34. I have a similar yet different theory. I agree that the fabrials and unique spren are in fact critical to this arms race but I don't think it is just blades and plate that they are after. Roshar is famous for the large number of unique spren that it has. Some are worshiped and some are just odd but we have been introduced to a large number of highly varied spren over the past three books. In the final chapter of OB Dalinar captured one and gave it to one of Roshar's preeminent fabrial scholars. What if the race is over these unique spren? Specifically the unmade along with spren like Cusicesh and the knowledge of how to make them into fabrials? Shallan has demonstrated a knack for getting rid of them. Against that kind of opponent the fused are going to have to alter their original method of using them. Imagine what a diminishing thrill fabrial would do to an army.
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  35. That's kind of what I'm hoping for with the unique bond thing. My small idea was that Adolin's dedication and revival of Maya would center her Connection to him instead of to the Rosharan system, allowing her to follow him off-world where other spren can't.
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  36. I would like Adolin to become a Radiant, but I'm sure that I'll be happy whichever way Brandon takes it.
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  37. I want him to be Radiant-adjacent, with a unique situation. We need more cool stuff stuff happening with unique spren bonds.
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  38. And now my Stick memes Has this one been done?
    2 likes
  39. Someone call the Alethi army and tell them that their bridge crew technology has been rendered obsolete.
    2 likes
  40. Does she have a support with Lorenz, at all? Or with the noble Ferdinand von Aegir? I really want to see how they’d interact.
    1 like
  41. The above is...actually a fact...like, by definition, if there aren’t minorities, then the work is not inclusive of those minorities. It doesn’t include them. Implying that that stance is an opinion is simply incorrect. yes, but on the other hand, there are so many minorities (lgbt, women, black people, asian people, latin american, mentally disabled...) that if you had to include a character for each of those minorities, you could do so only by writing huge sagas. and then any kind of story would just feel like a checklist where some elements have to be included. And if some of them are not included, then it will convey the message that some minorities are more important than others. what I fear is politically correct gone mad. I fear that after all the trouble we went through to remove censorship, peer pressure and media backlash will push us to censure ourselves again. And I think that every time a piece of fiction is analyzed in terms of "inclusion" or "strong role model", we are moving towards the slippery slope. perhaps i am paranoid. but i have seen some instances of politically correct gone mad, and I fear it more than most other scenarios. EDIT: that said, if a piece of fiction shows nothing but chatolic white men with a career and catholic white women housewives, then that piece of fiction has a problem. Let's just say that I fear excesses on both sides /EDIT On the other hand, I have also seen many people do bad things in the name of "making progress". I have seen people calling themselves "anti-fascist" vandalize a pub that a right-wing movement had hired for a meeting. So, they are fighting fascism by using fascist intimidation against those who don't share their opinions. what could possibly go wrong? And I have seen majors close city centers to car traffic on some sundays to protect the environment. this only means that whoever needed to pass through the city center will just have to take the detour around the city, taking a longer road and burning up more fuel. I don't think that's very effective. And I have heard the argument that to favor inclusion of disadvantaged students, we should abolish school rejection. Now, it's already difficult enough to get kids to study when they do risk rejection. but one good thing to promote inclusion is that in italy we have good public schools, so even the poor can study well and get a good degree. Except that in the last decade we started a lot of measures to "increase inclusion", and all the data shows the quality of our instruction plummeting. So, the poor kids who actually want to study cannot, because they are put in the same classroom with a couple dozen #### who don't care and disturb enough to make teaching nigh impossible. We keep on like that, soon the only way to get a good instruction will be private schools. How is that favoring inclusion? So, just because people are trying to make progress, it does not mean that they are doing something good. It is possible to screw things up royally in the name of progress, and it happens all the time. And I've seen it happen in the name of inclusion too. And so long as people don't realize that they may actually be going too far, too fast, and may end up doing more harm than good, then I need to make this argument.
    1 like
  42. Good, that is what i am shooting for. Also...........since this topic is about FOOD........WAFFLES!
    1 like
  43. Everyone would try to get quarantined on Ashyn so they could get powers out of their infection, supposing they got infected.
    1 like
  44. *hisses and scrambles back into a corner* Don’t use the M word!
    1 like
  45. What is love? Baby don’t hurt me. Really though, this is all super cool!
    1 like
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