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  1. Y'ALL I GOT AN INVITE TO USE THE DALL-E 2 BETA LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO give me image prompt ideas and I'll make them
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  2. Ok guys have you had that feeling where you only have last book of a series left and you really wanna read it but then again you really don't wanna read it becuase you don't want it to end and you know that that last book is going to absolutely heart breaking. btw the poppy war trilogy is pure pain and i love it and reccomend it to anyone who likes militaristic fantasy and can handle the trigger warnings
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  3. My pet theory is that using a Rasium metalmind would store your emotion or passion at the time. This could be really useful in making calm rational decisions. Not sure how useful releasing said emotions would be in large quantities (maybe for therapy)?
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  4. I'd like to share with you all some full song lyrics that resonate deeply with my soul. The song in question is titled Six, and is by the amazing artist Sleeping At Last. I will now proceed with an in depth analysis of all these lyrics. "I had the most vivid dream/My feet had left the ground I was floating to heaven/But I could only look down" In dreaming that I had perhaps died or something similar, I would have discovered I would not have been able to let go of my earthly tethers. I would (and still do) constantly worry about everyone I care about. "My mind was heavy/Running ragged with worst case scenarios Emergency exits and the distance below/I woke up so worried that the angels let go" I overthink everything, literally everything. It's honestly a problem, and as such, I need to constantly be reassured. It's a miracle I haven't scared away half of my friends. "Oh, God, I'm so tired/Of being afraid" Nothing else to say other than I'm legitimately so tired, of all the worrying, the constant nagging in the back of my mind. "What would it feel like/To put this baggage down? If I'm being honest/I'm not sure I'd know how" Metaphorical baggage, guys. I have so much weight on my shoulders, and I can't figure out how to put it down. There is no easy way for me to do it. I haven't figured it out. "I want to take shelter, but I'm ready, ready to fight/Somewhere in the middle, I feel a little paralysed Maybe I'm stronger/Than I realize" I'm always being told I'm stronger than I realize, and it paralyzes me. It shocks me to my bones, and I don't know how to believe it. "I want to believe/No, I choose to believe That I was made to become/A sanctuary" Screw the fear. I am a sanctuary for all of my friends, and then some. Even if it absolutely ruins me mentally, I make sure everyone around me is smiling. "Fear won't go away/But I can keep it at bay These invisible walls/Just might keep us safe" Somehow I make sure the walls around my heart and mind's core components stay safe and well stocked against the fear and anxiety and worry. Sometimes it breaks through, though, resulting in an anxiety attack. "With a vigilant heart/I'll push into the dark And I'll learn to breathe deep/And make peace with the stars" With every anxiety attack, I find new ways to get through it. I find people I need to be around to preserve my mental health. One such person is my girlfriend, DoomslugLuna, who helped me through my anxiety attack last night by taking my hand and silently directing me to take deep breaths. For that, I thank her. "Is it courage or faith/To show up every day? To trust that there will be light/Always waiting behind/Even the darkest of nights" I make it through every day with this in mind. Is it courage? Is it faith? Will there ever be the same amount of light there was before? Has it permanently dimmed? Can I recover? I am still unsure to the answers to these questions. But I am working on it. "No matter what/Somehow we'll be okay/Don't be afraid" No matter what, somehow I'll be ok. I don't need to be afraid. And yet, I find myself afraid, I find myself wondering if it will actually be okay. But I want to believe. And I choose to believe. Thank you for reading, and I hope you all can learn to see the light. It's beautiful.
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  5. welll i had my second anxiety attack (i've discovered thats what they are, not panic attacks) yesterday. In a church building. During seminary kickoff. With 230+ people in the room. Next to my girlfriend. Bless her, she realized what was going on and helped me through it. But bruhhhh I don't like anxiety attacks.
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  6. A good question, and one we have answer to (unless Brandon changed his mind later, as in another later WoB he RAFOed it). Basically, anything living touching the bubble is fully affected, so as long as part of body is inside the bubble the whole body is affected, and then it stops immediately once nothing touches the bubble. Relevant WoBs
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  7. To defend Chaos's example about the face detection algorithm a bit. I work with machine learning models for my day job, and most of the recent press about bias in these algorithms has been due to these machine learning models not being trained on varied enough data (e.g. they fed it a lot of pictures of white people, and very few pictures of black people). So in this case the skill level of the developers in entirely irrelevant, the actual algorithm does not change at all, it just needs more varied training data. The problem was that no one at the organization even thought to ask the question "How well does this work on people who aren't white?" before they published the model. The problem was not one of skill, but rather a lack of perspective. I don't want to speak for the staff, but I assume that when it comes to diversity, they are not looking to improve in areas they are already pretty good at (though that may well happen), but rather have their eyes opened to problems that they never would have thought to question themselves.
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  8. I'm referring to this statement: I do not think this is relevant. Now, I would say if you took that statement as true and you really went down that path and its implications, I think that can lead to some dark stuff. But let's not get into that. Let's assume that's true for the sake of argument. So what? Let's say hypothetically 95% of Brandon fans are male (this is of course not true, but roll with me). Does that mean we should not actively search out female fans for potential staff positions? Of course not. That's why your point is irrelevant. Regardless of how things are proportioned, intentionally looking for skilled people of various backgrounds to join us is good. Women exist and they should feel welcome here. Let's have gender diversity. Let's have racial diversity. Let's have religious diversity, etc. We need people from a variety of backgrounds so we as a staff can make good judgments and decisions. It's easy to see examples of this being the case, so let's talk about religious diversity. Would people want every staff member to be religious? Every staff member to be LDS? Every staff member to be an atheist? Of course not. You certainly want a mix of that to make sure our decisions respect religious people and nonreligious people together, because they both groups that matter. You can easily imagine this same logic applying to many other qualities that we list. Having diversity means we have less bias on staff. This is good! We would be doing a huge disservice to everyone here if we didn't try to address biases. It's impossible for us to not have biases and distinct perspectives, but we can make sure we have a team where we can balance these things and make effective, fair calls that live up to our ideals in our Code of Conduct. I want to back up a second and talk about skill, as you keep mentioning it. You say "skill" should be the only factor that should be relevant. Argent, LewsTherinTelescope, and I have explained faults in this, but okay, let's assume that is also true. What does it mean to be skilled, particularly in a staff/moderation standpoint? Imagine a programming job. You want to hire the best programmer. Say you create a test to evaluate the skills you want this person to have, and you give it to your candidates. You score it traditionally, from 0 to 100. Let's say one is at the top at a 95/100, and others are in a band in the high-80s. Okay, so we have someone who definitely scored in a class of their own. (We don't need to get into the details of creating the test fairly and grading, but that is a whole thing.) So you maybe say, cool, let's get that person. They are the best, they have the most technical skill. But then you call their references and you learn that though they are indeed very skilled, there was some conflict at their previous work that involved them, and they don't have the best team dynamic. That may not necessarily be a problem, but this position is in a team of ten people. This could lead to problems. Maybe the person who placed second in the test had effusive references and showed good team leadership. Now the choice is not as obvious as to which is the "best" candidate. It could be the person who had the most technical ability, but not necessarily, and maybe the slight difference in technical ability between the two candidates is not a sufficient difference to appreciably matter. That's just two competing things, and it's already kind of complicated to determine who the "best" person is. There's probably a threshold where the delta in technical skill matters enough that the first place person is best, but that's probably fuzzy. (Though I imagine tech companies probably use a lot of analytics to quantify and evaluate these.) In reality, it's not just two qualities that are being balanced, it's tons. Instead of a 0 to 100 scale, it's maybe twenty 0 to 100 scales, and almost assuredly no one is to score the best in every conceivable desirable quality. It gets messy and nonobvious who the best is. For moderation, I think it's harder than a position that has some objective, demonstrable technical skill. We want people who are passionate about Brandon's works, who work well in a team, who have good judgment. These are hard to evaluate and not clear-cut. For passion about Brandon's works, that can manifest in very different ways. A person who read every book 20x times is not necessarily "better" than someone who read them twice. Do you need to read every book? Not necessarily. Is a candidate worse for not reading, say, Snapshot or Sixth of the Dusk? Not necessarily. They could be awesome in other ways. What about working in a team? That could be demonstrated in many ways, but again, I don't think it's clear-cut. You don't need to have worked on a team like this to do well here (in fact, many of our staff had not done something like this before). Certainly if someone did have a lot of experience working in a team, that can be nice, but that isn't the only way to do things. And those are just two things. There are many, many other qualities that could lead to a person being a great staff member. It's actually really complicated to determine what is "best". So I find this notion that you keep referring to about skill being the only thing that matters seems... Simplistic. You always need to balance the qualities you want. There won't necessarily be a clear best, most skillful. There could be, but certainly not necessarily. Much more likely there are people coming in with different backgrounds, skills, and passions that are not directly comparable and we would need to make difficult choices from there. So I'm just saying, "pick the most skilled" is easy to say, but super complicated in practice. Perhaps your meaning is going as follows: if more people are from one group then, by absolute numbers, there are more good candidates from that group. Which, sure, but that doesn't invalidate that there are surely other candidates from other groups who are also great, which we can now capture much better due to random chance with this questionnaire. But more importantly, this does not mean we aren't going avoid staffing, say, a white cishet males anymore. So if anyone is reading this, that's you, and you're wondering if you can still apply, of course! We are not going to be avoiding amazing candidates here. All we are doing is intentionally thinking about our practices and identifying barriers to diversity, so that people of any group--who are qualified and awesome, as that must exist--can be found and included. That's what diversity, equity, and inclusion is about. There is no way there are not people of most any group you can think of who can be passionate about Brandon's works and have qualities we are looking for, and we'd like to find them. And for anyone worried that this is a big change, it really isn't. We have long done things like this in many respects, such as gender, time zone, and race/ethnicity, and more. It has always been a factor. Now we can just more intentionally do the same thing with this questionnaire. I realize I wrote way too much here, and you stated you wanted to bow out, so my sincere apologies on that. You are always welcome to message me or PM any of us staff if you wish if you'd like to discuss further. No worries if not. I hope I explained our perspective effectively so that you can understand where we are coming from.
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  9. Bula Bula!!! My name is Insanity, and I am new around here! I just wanted to say Hi and I am exited to get into this! I have read a lot of The Cosmere and I am ready to start discussing!
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  10. Hi fellow Sanderfans! I'm probably going to Dragonsteel Con this year, so I decided to stop lurking and start posting. I discovered the Mistborn series four or five years ago and my nerdy heart fell in love with the complex, scientifically thought out magic system. I read the Reckoners next and loved it. After a couple of years savoring the anticipation of my next Sanderson read, I caught myself up on Elantris, Warbreaker, Stormlight, and some of the novellas. Right now, I'm rereading Mistborn in preparation for Wax & Wayne 4 (like everyone is probably doing) and planning my (hopefully) epic Vin cosplay for Dragonsteel Con. Favorite Sanderson series: if I had to pick just one, Stormlight. But Mistborn is a close second. Favorite novella: The Emperor's Soul
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  11. Chapter 45, Shallan: What the storm just happened??? A cold voice, a warm voice, creatures, a sea of beads, a faraway sun, spontaneous soulcasting, Shallan momentarily jumping into another dimension, "I will change"... Do these emojis look baffled enough? Who knew Shallan would discover her powers before Kaladin. And what's that about ten heartbeats, Shallan is a Shardbearer??? It's like this entire book is a drawing on a page, slowly building, and this chapter is a knife suddenly cutting through the page!
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  12. Okay, so for those of you who don't know, I'm love to improvise on the piano. The problem is, lately a lot of my playing has taken on the same vibe. I'm trying to experiment with different emotions and feelings, but I keep going back to what I'm comfortable with and staying "inside the box" (for me, that's playing really melodramatic and emotional music). So my idea was to come to you guys to get inspired. Give me your craziest prompts! Surprise me with the most bizzare and wild stories! Hit me (don't actually hit me) with the awesomest concepts that you've been dying to be turned into music form! Who knows, if I'm inspired enough I might post a recording of one of the prompts
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  13. If I recall correctly there is a WoB that I will try to find later, that says that something is either in the bubble or not, and there is a certain point where they simply cross over.
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  14. Indeed, and this is actually a strong reason for why we're posting this. As Argent and Chaos discussed above, diversity is a useful trait with its own merits for teams of many kinds, and it's something we think is important to have. However, when a community has a meaningful majority of one group (be it race, sexuality, ableness, etc), simple probability makes this diversity less likely to arise on its own (the ten blue skittles problem you reference). And when said community is entirely pseudonymous and online, it's hard to notice this, much less try to correct for it when picking out moderators. As such, we're testing this form out as a way to draw attention to those candidates who are qualified but otherwise by simple chance (or other reasons, such as feeling uncomfortable putting themselves out there publicly) may not be seen "organically". We don't know whether it will work or not, or whether we'll keep it around, but our current system is clearly not producing the results we need as a team and as a community, so we're trying something else and seeing if that improves the situation. Edit: My bad, that message was sent while I was still typing and I didn't see it until after posting. I'm still going to leave this response up, however, for anyone else that may have this concern. I will note that this is likely partially just exposure bias. The staff members who do a lot of different things (such as Shardcast, moderation, and writing articles) are more likely to be seen all over the place, while the staff who mainly do just one thing (such as coding or policy discussion) aren't as visible. In fact, I'd go as far as to say most staff do one or two things. That said, that appearance is a very real barrier of its own, and unfortunately one where the solutions have their own tradeoffs, as Chaos mentions. We appreciate the feedback, as it's often hard to judge things when they're just hypotheticals on what people might think, and having actual opinions is useful for deciding how to approach things. We'll be sure to keep this factor in mind and consider whether there's anything we can do to help it.
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  15. This is explained in Comatose's initial post very clearly, which is why we are trying to intentionally resolve this discovery aspect. Diversity matters for the reasons we are explaining. We should find them because we are stronger with them and we will be more inclusive to all people. Saying the Brandon fandom is pretty white is not an excuse to do nothing. This question is not relevant, as you readily say that we are not in this hypothetical you state. But for another example, it has long been falsely said that women are not interested in STEM fields as an explanation for why they aren't in STEM professional positions. Research has shown this is totally incorrect. It is important those fields very actively combat these cultural biases so that women feel they can be in these fields. Things are improving, but it's hard. Why am I bringing this up? Because I don't really think there's anything truly inherent going on here. Women can be awesome programmers and scientists! There's nothing inherent about being female that means you're less interested, but culture can sure try and beat it out of you. Don't fall into the trap that there's something inherent going on in this situation. Everyone of background can love these books. I think having more people at the top who are of diverse backgrounds not only makes our policies strictly better, but can expand our fandom so more people feel like they can belong here. Seeing people who are like yourself will only help lead to more people of that background feeling welcome. The only possible downside is if we recruit people who are not qualified, which is not what we are going to do. We are simply intentionally trying to seek out diversity here, as we stated here. It's going to take time to institute change, but we are here to do the work.
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  16. So I did want to comment on this. Long ago, when the community was much smaller, we did have different staff roles, but that didn't work for a variety of reasons. Maybe in the future. There have been a lot of advantages to having staff be on basically equal footing and can choose what to do. Please note that you do not need to satisfy the entire list of things we are looking for! Most of our staff aren't coders, for example. Some should apply, though. I do see what you're saying. One pitfall is we don't want to get people from underrepresented groups to feel like they are second class, which would be totally antithetical to our goals here. There's probably a way to navigate that, but I'm just saying that equal footing of staff is very useful. In addition, many policy things come up in the course of moderating as well, or being present in discussions on what moderation to do. (There are many staff who don't like, get in the direct moderation or disciplining aspects.) I see these as pretty connected, but perhaps I am not creative enough to imagine how this workflow works in practice. It's something to think about. I don't think more granular staff roles will happen soon, though, but perhaps eventually. Argent had great comments to say here, and I agree with everything he said. I wanted to quickly chime in and say that it seems impossible to imagine that people of one distinct background (racial or otherwise) are the only ones who could be good staff. That just seems like that cannot possibly be true. Also I wanted to mention that even in the technology industry, where you might think only skill matters and diversity doesn't, there have been real, tangible examples where programmers create an algorithm that just doesn't work as well for people of color. The example comes to mind is facial recognition, and that got some serious (justifiably so) blowback for there being an algorithm that couldn't recognize Black faces as well. That's really bad! That's a situation where you need both skill and diversity, so your blind spots don't lead to unintended consequences. It's a very real issue in many areas.
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  17. If don't already know, Mistborn has been optioned to become a film. That may still mean a fillm won't happen, but it's a cool first step. That won't stop us from talking about choices on actors! I'll start. Personally, I was always a fan of the notion of Nathan Fillion for Kelsier, but then someone brought up Robert Downey Jr., and he might be the perfect choice. For Vin, I'm also pro-Summer Glau, but there's a big Ellen Page movement on TWG. Thoughts?
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  18. I kept looking for a good mistcloak tutorial, and I couldn't find a really good one. I found a few that helped me flesh out the idea and construction but wanted to make my own, putting everything I did together, with LOTS of pictures. Most of the tutorials I see are one layer of fleece that is cut into tassels, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make a caplet, and attach ribbon as the tassels. That way I didn't have to worry about anything fraying, or the tassels being different widths. My materials: Sheet to practice Fabric scissors Marking pen Pins or clips Fleece Fabric Organza ribbon (for the tassels) Frog closures I kept playing with ideas in my head for how to construct the caplet (a mini cape-like thing that just goes to the elbows or above) I knew I wanted 2 layers for the caplet and one for the hood, so I would need enough fabric for that. I wasn't sure how I wanted to cut out the fabric , so to help me decide, I took a sheet we had to mark it (to figure out the amount of fabric I'd need) and cut it in different ways to see how it would lay over my husbands shoulders. I cut out a circle with the neck hole in the middle, and it looked pretty good, but I thought about making it shorter in the front, so also cut out a high low circle pattern. Same circle, but with the neck hole cut out about 2/3 down instead of the middle. That looked better in my opinion, so we decided to go with that. I knew I wanted the caplet to be about 15 inches long in the back and 10 inches in the front, so including the neck hole (2.75 inch), that meant I needed about 30 inches in diameter. (So I could have extra fabric and seam allowance) I first folded the sheet in half, and then in half the other way, to make a quarter circle shape. I drew a line at 18 inches from the corner to make a circle and cut it out. (For the regular circle pattern, you also cut out a neck hole at the corner, 2.75 inches from the corner) For the high-low, after you cut the outer circle, you unfold and refold the circle with one half higher than the other. Fold it in half, and mark the neck hole, and cut it out. I drew out a few things on my sheet and did other practice cuts to figure out the amount of fabric I would need and ended up buying 2 and 1/3 a yard for charcoal Heather fleece. The sheet is wider than the fleece, so make sure you account for that when calculating the fabric needed. I started cutting my fabric. I washed it first to make sure it wouldn't shrink, laid it onthe floor and folded it in half longways. Since this fabric is thick, I cut out my pieces into semi circles, not quarters. I measured 30 inches along the fold, marked it, and then marked the halfway point at 15 inches. I then used my flexible measuring tape and some chalk to mark a semi circle 15 inches from the midpoint. I marked two semi circles. I then cut it out along that marking, and now I had 2 circles 30 inches in diameter. I folded them back in half, and then folded it again about 1/3 of the way down, and marked my neck hole. I measured 2.75 inches from that corner and cut it out. I did the same for the other circle, and now I had 2 circles with an off center neck hole. I then cut a slit on the shorter half to be the open side of the capelet. My ribbon I bought is 1 inch wide. So looking up the math, the circumference of a 30 inch circle is 94.24 inches. Because I will be layering my ribbon in-between the layers of fleece, I wanted to keep a few centimeters free along the short slit I made before. I think I would need 94 1 inch strips to make a full layer of ribbon. I had bought 100 yards of 1 inch ribbon, and 50 yards of 5/8 Before I started cutting them though, I measured my husband to figure out about how long the ribbon would need to be on different points of him. For example, along the front it needed to be 52 inches long, but the back only needed a out 46 inches. I also measured by where the shoulders were, and then went from there. After I cut them, I sorted them in groups. So I had some 54 inches, 53 inches, and basically down to 46 inches, and then I pinned them on in sections so I wouldn't misplace any by size. I ran out of ribbon and pins, so just get more ribbon than you think. I had to buy more of both, so that I could also have enough pins to attach the skinnier ribbon at the same time. That way I'd only need to sew down the ribbons in one go. They will get sewn again when I sew the second layer of fleece on. After I got all the ribbons pinned down, it was a huge mess of ribbons: I sewed along that edge, to attach them. Make sure the pins are far enough up that the sewing foot doesn't go over them. Most of mine were okay, but some were pushed out by the sewing foot hitting them. Once the ribbons were sewn on, I had my husband try it, and it looked amazing! They flowed perfectly and really did look like the mists. This next part was a bit trickier. I took the ribbons in small groups and knotted them together to stay out of the way. I then covered the smaller bunches with tin foil to wrap them more securely, since I needed to sew the other circle fleece right sides together. (Side note, my kids threw away my original piece, so to make another, I needed to cut out 2 halves of a circle, and then sew them together up the back. And then cut out another neck hole. I made this circle a little bit wider, since it was going to lay on top of the fleece and ribbon.) So I laid the circle piece plus ribbons as flat as I could. I pinned the front opening right side down together. Then I laid the second layer on top of the first, and pinned along the outer edge, sandwiching the ribbon bunches inside, and I pinned the neck hole together to make sure it was all in the right place. It ended up being like a big pocket of sorts. I sewed all the pinned sides, but NOT the neck hole. (so where the red line is. That was hole the ribbons would come through when I turned it all right side out. Then I had my husband try it on again, and had him stand on a chair to trim the ribbon to be right around his feet. Some of the ribbons ended up being too short for what I was going for, but I'm not too upset about it. The way to fix that is to make the ribbon all the longest length and cut them all at the end. I was just trying to not waste too much ribbon. So I trimmed them to be about foot length on my husband. And then we took a lighter and burned down each ribbon edge, to keep them from fraying. So now I have am almost completed cloak. I need a hood next. I copied the shape of a sweatshirt my husband had, and cut it out. I had the top part be on fold, so that I only needed to do the seam up the back. Since my hood was basically a squarish shape, I needed to gather the bottom to fit the cloak. I made 2 straight stitches next to each other along the bottom. Then holding just the top stitches, I tugged the hood toward the middle seam. I made both sides be 10 inches. I then pinned the hood seam, along the middle seam of ONE layer of cloak. Then I pinned the edge to the edge, and then sewed them together. But now I needed to sew the second layer down. I didn't want to fold it over, because then I would have too many layers of fleece to be sewn, so I just laid the cloak layer on top of the hood Seam, and tip stitched down pretty close to the edge. Since it's on the inside, it isn't too noticeable, and since its fleece, it won't fray. The last thing I need to do, is hand sew a closure to the cloak so it doesn't fall off when moving around. I picked a medium sized frog closure and hand stitched it on about 3 inches up of the front opening. And this is the finished Mistcloak! It took longer than I thought, and that was because of the ribbons. It took a lot of time to cut them out, and then to pin them on. I was hunched over so it was hurting my back, but I'm so proud of how it turned out!
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  19. This thread is only in this forum because Virtuosity is mentioned. We know one of the Dawnshards is Change, and another has something to do with binding. Hoid's Dawnshard, its aftereffects preventing him from harming anyone or eating meat, is likely something like "Protect" or "Remain (the same)". The 4 Shards under "Change" are likely: 1. Ruin - (entropy) 2. Cultivation (controlled/directed growth) 3. Whimsy (change for the sake of change/undirected change) 4. Odium (whose core intent, from RoW, I think is conflict, or conflict for conflict's sake perhaps, rather than simply hate). Under "Protect/Remain" (Hoid's) would be: 5. Preservation-- stasis, remaining the same 6. Valor -- risking oneself to protect 7. Autonomy-- separation or protection from external influences 8. Mercy -- protection from punishment or the bad effects of one's actions The ones associated with "Bind" would be: 9. Devotion - unity through love 10. Dominion- unity through force/compulsion/power 11. Honor- oaths/bonds 12. Perhaps Ambition, depending on what Ambition's precise intent is (is it more about increasing one's influence over others, which would fit this quadrant? Or more about self improvement, which wouldn't fit?) The 3 remaining known Shards are: 13. Virtuosity (artistic creativity) 14. Endowment (giving a part of oneself) 15. Invention (technological creativity perhaps?) That IMO suggests that the last Dawnshard is something like "Create" or "Bestow". -- To get very speculative, the use of the Dawnshards as weapons against Adonalsium might have involved using Change to make the unity of Adonalsium changeable/fragile; Create/Bestow to Bestow separate Intents on the parts; Bind to Bind them to sixteen Vessels, ripping Adonalsium apart; and Remain/Protect to stabilize the new Shards.
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  20. While reading the Stormlight Archive books, I realized that spren are 'real life' emoticons. So naturally I made some emoticons involving spren. To use an emote, copy the link next to it in the parentheses and paste it into your post. You can also right-click the link and choose "Copy Link Location", then paste it in your message. 17thshard.com forums allow you to load pictures into your posts by pasting the URL of the image into the post's content. It may be helpful to save a .txt file in notepad with all of the links you prefer to use in order to copy and paste elsewhere. Also, more cosmere-themed emoticons are under construction. Enjoy: Alespren (http://i.imgur.com/ktwO0cb.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/bbMSt3L.png) Angerspren (http://i.imgur.com/D6J6xRU.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/cCqVYgw.png) Anticipationspren (http://i.imgur.com/BM44BrV.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/1tjwhIn.png) Awespren (http://i.imgur.com/3YfOz4J.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/VkpiJTb.png) Awespren (canon) (https://i.imgur.com/7C8wANr.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/9xD7XH0.png) Bindspren (https://i.imgur.com/2tmDaoQ.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/32yBzwl.png) Coldspren (https://i.imgur.com/uOFJI3L.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/e137yIJ.png) Creationspren (http://i.imgur.com/THDwKRq.gif) and static versions (https://i.imgur.com/8lMJI4Z.png), (https://i.imgur.com/1bSjE7G.png), and (https://i.imgur.com/AH8WdWC.png) Fearspren (http://i.imgur.com/fwkGdLK.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/RTfcvUl.png) Gloryspren (http://i.imgur.com/IiBDG5u.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/60gRN2F.png) (alternate version) (http://i.imgur.com/0rFKCWU.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/844IBnV.png) I edited the laughterspren to make it more visible, but left the old one up so links aren't broken: Laughterspren (https://i.imgur.com/HLCjBvQ.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/YcigcGe.png) (alternate) (https://i.imgur.com/UVYzqQB.gif) and static version (https://i.imgur.com/IFaGQje.png) (old) (http://i.imgur.com/dk9SAg9.gif) (dark version) (http://i.imgur.com/twskx1S.gif) Shardblade (http://i.imgur.com/6tU3gRQ.gif) and static versions (https://i.imgur.com/PVjEeQv.png) and (https://i.imgur.com/6UkYJJG.png)
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  21. From the album: SART - WOPL

    What I start doing when I get bored. Copied it from Shallan's sketchbook. Outlined it with a pencil first, then literally colored the curves with a black pen. The biggest challenge was probably keeping the curves' thickness consistent. I do like how it turned out though!
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  22. A tendril of corrupted chaotic-dark energy manifests and begins to sing a haunting song about lost love. Page 2022 is a fun milestone
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  23. I once had a teacher who didn’t like Tolkien. I made meme after meme (In a somewhat threatening manner, if I’m being honest) stating that he should like LOTR.
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  24. No joke- I get asked that question probably twice a week. I'm know as Mr. Jazz in some of these parts
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  25. Favorite fruit has got to be either white peaches, grapes, or nectarines. Do I like jazz? Yes, I guess so. (Plus everyone loves the Bee movie) Hmmmmm… the origin of the universe is an interesting topic. No matter what, you always end with: “Well what was there before that?” Or “Well how did that get there?”
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  26. A little thing that makes me happy is when people smile. That goes kind of weird with my title, but I do actually love it when people smile.
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  27. You can also sign up to post weekly in this forum. It's a good place to get feedback. Just read through how to join up here: https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/1369-welcome-to-reading-excuses/?page=1
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  28. Yes, the longer you wield Nightblood (unsheathed), the faster the Investiture drains. At the end of Ch. 74 of Warbreaker, as Vasher throws NB away from him before it took everything from him:
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  30. Did you know that Steven paid for everyones college? Relax it's only a interdimensional squirrel demon that I promised your soul to.
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  31. Did you know that cucumbers are actually fruits? How is that good news?! That's terrible!
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  32. Welcome to the cult! (Kidding. We're not a cult) (But we are very happy to have you anyways)
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  33. Real tired and I don’t have time to dissect your argument or weigh into the missing vote debate (both things which I should do tomorrow) but… why did you tag me? I see that your argument is that I’m the Forsaken, Because, or something, when from what I’ve seen that’s like just flat out untrue, there are many other options if we have one in the first place and also my GM PM. But either way idk what the tag is doing, there wasn’t a question posed to me or really anything I can argue against idk maybe I’m just tired Edit: also, if you’re elim reading xino too I don’t see what the problem is :P. Also also sorry if my tone is meh here, blame aforementioned tiredness
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  34. I found an old dream release schedule for Brandon's works in an old notebook of mine. I think it's from 2016 or 2017, but I'm not sure. Either way, it's before The Apocalypse Guard was taken off the slate and Skyward was announced. The release schedule with some added thoughts: 2018 - The Apocalypse Guard (Someday I still want to see this, even if it's one of the books the Shard gives out) 2018 - Rithmatist 2 (HA!) 2018 - Alcatraz 6 (...four years later?) 2018 - The Lost Metal (...four years later...) 2019 - The Apocalypse Guard 2 (Replace this with Starsight and I'm right on the money. But according to Dan Wells, he has ideas for a sequel!) 2020 - The Apocalypse Guard 3 (Nope.) 2020 - Stormlight 4 (Ay, I was right!) 2020 - Elantris 2 (HA!) 2020 - Dark One 1 (...well, Dark One Volume 1's original run was in 2020... This prediction was made when Dark One was still going to be a YA book series. I thought it might be the follow-up to Apocalypse Guard) 2021 - Dark One 2 (Nope, but we did get a second run of Vol 1) 2022 - Dark One 3 (No, but we're getting Dark One: Forgotten in October!) 2022 - Stormlight 5 (What an optimistic sword wielder I was...) 2022 - Elantris 3 (knowing what I now know about Sanderson's schedule, I'm not sure how on earth he would have accomplished this) I have DOZENS if not hundreds of little prediction lists like these. All of them are wrong, of course, but I guess you know you're a Sanderson fan when you create these instead of just doodling like a normal person.
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  35. Why postpone? Isn't the fun of this kind of question the speculation? Some assorted thoughts from me, One thing to consider is that as an individual becomes more and more invested the type of fight they can have might look less like a superhero showdown, and more how we see the different shards "fight" each other. Fullborn are so tough because they can just pull as much investiture as they want from preservation through the spiritual realm. Most of the other magic systems require some sort of power source to fuel it in the physical or cognitive realm. Really the way compounding can be used to just pull out preservation investiture at such a high rate almost feels like a loophole in the magic system. It could be that part of the reason it works the way it does is because at the time preservation was mostly brain dead, and following Leras's "programming" by rote. I think that the biggest reason fullborn are so strong is because the only plot relevant fullborn we have seen has been an immortal god emperor. I think when Brandon actually sits down to create a plot involving a fullborn or a steel compounder he will end up retconning in a few more limitations. I mean the way compounding can be used makes it hard to maintain the stakes of a story, and at the end of the day that is what Brandon cares the most about.
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  36. "What's with all the agonyspren around? And the angerspren? And the... gloomspren? Oh, captivityspren... Betrayalspren? Okay, Amaram. Something shady's going on. Who's in your closet?"
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  37. We know theirs is (very specifically) a supernatural thing and not a normal mental illness. It's related to their ongoing natures as Cognitive Shadows. Hoid implies that steps like storing their Memories externally could help. I suspect there other things that could help too, and Feruchemy excels at personal/internal manipulation so it's likely a good bet. Vasher has not had the opportunity to complete his Purpose for Returning, so I doubt it's (just) about healing the Heralds, but could be about a related but more pivotal specific moment.
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  38. This is exactly what I meant in regards to that example. Thanks! Regarding your last paragraph, certainly in regards to diversity that is our primary goal. But there's of course an aspect of just, hey, we need more hands on deck for the absurd 2023 that is coming toward us, with Year of Sanderson as well as this adaptation stuff.
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  39. I LOVE that statue. Looks very greek and dark academic 10/10
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  40. What if Kaladin killed Szeth? Oh wait...
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  41. IF anyone ascends, Kaladin is the obvious choice. Especially after RoW, where there was so much religious faith in him. Dont forget that the Windrunner, Jezrien, was leader of the Heralds. I personally think that the Dalinar and Kaladin relationship needs to change. It is still ultimately based on the terrible Vorin caste system. Even from book 1 it was clear to me that Kaladin is the much more natural leader. We saw that in the Battle of the Tower IMO, where he basically took charge of the entire retreat, easily getting Lighteyes to follow his orders. We saw that in the way he took over Bridge Four. We saw that in the way he took over the Wall Guard. We see that in the way humans look up to him in Rhythm of War. I love Dalinar as much as anyone, but a lot of his authority always came from his rank. We saw how he struggled at uniting the Highprinces behind him (granted, that was not an easy task, but neither was what Kal did to Bridge 4). My personal opinion is that over time their positions need to flip, where Dalinar takes on more of a consulting role with Kaladin as the number 1. Dalinar also has a problem with clinging to power, as Sadeas has observed and sometimes exploited in the first two books. This is another reason why he should not be the leader of the Knights Radiant. ( I still love him) It is also a thing of how Kaladin always saw himself as serving his men, similar to how it's described in The Way of Kings (the canon book).
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  42. I really don’t want Syl to become a “real girl” and date Kaladin. I don’t think that’s where it’s going either. Kaladin being a surgeon will give him a break to figure some things out. It’s a diversion, he can’t protect people by being a total pacifist like his dad, but the time away from killing will help him with his 4th ideal. Also, Syl openly assuming Kaladin is Dalinar’s champion all but guarantees it won’t be him right? He’s sort of the obvious choice anyways.
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  43. After reading her conversation with Dalinar, I'm thinking that this is totally where Syl's and Kaladin's relationship is heading. She wants to understand Kaladin and is willing to go so far as to change her nature to accomplish that. But I'm going to take it one step beyond. I think this conversation is foreshadowing of Syl's eventual transformation into a fully Physical "human" being, forsaking her spren life to become a mortal so she can be with Kaladin. Hmm... I think I ship Syladin now....
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  44. It's the story of a piece of God that was trying to understand the pain of a human and went to a god to ask for help, but he couldn't give it to her. So she went to a human that experienced pain himself, and he made her look into herself to find a way to understand. It's a fairytale with Stormlight characters. I've been in a somewhat emotionally fragile state since I read it.
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