Haelbarde he/him Posted July 1, 2015 Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 (edited) Upvote for having a single eyeball in your profile pic, like me! Because having two eyes is too mainstream. (Puts hipster glasses on) Should it not be 'hipster glass', having only one eye? I don't think his weakness is Tia or the act of gambling. I think it has something to do with risk/planning etc. He got upset pre-Calamity about losing a contest to be an astronaut for a month when he never even entered to participate. He avoided men like David from joining the Reckoners because he takes risks and pushes the plan into spontaneous directions. Tia may have something to do with his fears, but I think what he fears most is chaos, or risk/random chance of some kind. Or it could be rejection of his leadership (he teaches fifth grade because it can be controlled. He hires people for the Reckoners who follow orders. He likes control). Teaching kids because they can be controlled? Well I guess to a certain degree. But I'm pretty sure a 5th grader class is not going to be free of surprises. It has children in it. Edited July 1, 2015 by Haelbarde 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her Posted July 1, 2015 Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 Teaching kids because they can be controlled? Well I guess to a certain degree. But I'm pretty sure a 5th grader class is not going to be free of surprises. It has children in it. And it would depend on what kind of class he taught. I grew up partly in a mid-sized town, where the schools usually had two sets of teachers—one for the "advanced" students and one for the students who were falling behind, had behavioral issues, or both. My brother and I were homeschooled, so when we went into public school, the administration automatically decided we must be idiots, even though we had consistently tested in the 80-90th percentile for our respective grade levels. So my brother went into the fifth-grade class full of students with behavioral issues, where his good academic performance and behavior convinced his teacher not to quit in the middle of the school year. The year after that, our good grades convinced administration to move us onto the "advanced" track, where behavioral problems among the students were rare and nearly all of them wanted to succeed, and so learned without complaint. If Prof were a teacher for the "advanced" track, the idea that he became a teacher to maintain control would make some sense. However, bear in mind that most public school teachers start out at the bottom of the ladder (and I mean the very bottom) so he probably would have taught unruly students who were falling behind for at least the first few years of his career. He would have known this would be the case before he took his first job, having heard professors and students in their practicums talk while still at university, so it seems unlikely that he would choose teaching because it offered him control. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackhoof Posted July 1, 2015 Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 It also seems a bit creepy. Sure he is a planner and a control freak- but not an obsessively narcicistic control freak who would base his entire life over controlling himself and others, enough to choose a career path based on it. and if losing control is his weakness, how would it manifest? why hasn't it so far? losing control over himself lead him deeper into his powers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phantasmagorically she/her Posted July 1, 2015 Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 Just a random thought: Couldn't he have purposely used his weakness to negate his powers so he wouldn't have to worry about using them and giving in to the rending? That could have solved a ton of problems, if I'm not misunderstanding something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her Posted July 1, 2015 Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 Just a random thought: Couldn't he have purposely used his weakness to negate his powers so he wouldn't have to worry about using them and giving in to the rending? That could have solved a ton of problems, if I'm not misunderstanding something. Theoretically, yes, but weaknesses function like PTSD triggers. Exposing himself to his weakness could have led to him removing the corruption, though we've seen that he's still corrupted, so it's more likely that he would avoid exposure. From what we've seen, exposure usually either makes the Epic angry, leaves them a terrified mess, or both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phantasmagorically she/her Posted July 1, 2015 Report Share Posted July 1, 2015 yeah, that makes sense Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackhoof Posted July 2, 2015 Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 And he possibly didn't know his weakness. Remember how he was insistent that there wasn't a pattern behind weaknesses? He wouldn't lie, I don't think, so he must have believed that there was no link. If your greatest fear just happened to be your only weakness, would you really not guess that? I think he doesn't know, because he never used his powers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her Posted July 2, 2015 Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 It's also possible that his greatest fear is something he would never in a million years associate with being a fear. Take Steelheart. Fearing people who don't fear you isn't a common fear in the slightest, and it's something most people wouldn't even guess they had until they'd gone through years of therapy. Even then, they might not be able to verbalize it. The same goes for Newton's weakness--it's something she might not even connect to her root fear, but it's something that triggers bad memories regardless. Prof's fear might be something he doesn't even classify as a fear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomRevival he/him Posted July 2, 2015 Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 Should it not be 'hipster glass', having only one eye?Well played sir. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Varyn he/him Posted July 2, 2015 Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 What if his fear is using his powers, so he is vulnerable at the exact moment he activates his abilities? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her Posted July 2, 2015 Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 What if his fear is using his powers, so he is vulnerable at the exact moment he activates his abilities? How could Calamity have made him into an Epic at all, if he didn't gain that fear until after he'd become an Epic? Remember, Calamity latches onto existing fears and uses them to grant powers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edgedancer he/him Posted July 2, 2015 Report Share Posted July 2, 2015 (edited) What if his fear is using his powers, so he is vulnerable at the exact moment he activates his abilities? Then how would his healing work? Plus, we have WoB that no weaknesses work in a way that makes the powers inherently useless. Edited July 2, 2015 by Edgedancer 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kes_ Posted July 8, 2015 Report Share Posted July 8, 2015 I've been thinking it was monumentally irresponsible for him not to have his weakness in safe hands somewhere to be exposed if he went bad. Like criminal levels of negligence. Maybe Tia knows it or has it secured somewhere, but if I had been him, the moment I went bad, it would have been broadcasted across the country to shut me down. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StormyAngel he/him Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 I really agree, although given Prof's fear of falling to the epic side, I think that considering his own weakness would have been too much to face for him. And since Plan A was not turning evil in the first place, planning for it would sort of demonstrate a lack of confidence... Personally, I think Prof's fear is a fear of losing. He hates games of chance, because they're out of his control and so he could lose. He clearly wouldn't mind winning, since he did enjoy the trip to NASA anyway. So in a way Megan is probably best suited to use his weakness against him. With a clever use of illusions, she can make him believe that he's lost. The worst part of this is knowing that Sanderson has definitely put all the necessary information in the first two books (cause he does stuff like that) but I still can't figure it out for certain. Gahh, I can't wait for Calamity. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenelisha Posted July 16, 2015 Report Share Posted July 16, 2015 I like your idea, and it could explain why he alwais has a plan (he fears that without a plan he'll lose). a problem with your theory, however, is that if is so afraid of losing, i do'nt think he would have started the reckoners, because it is such a hopeless cause. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Looter he/him Posted February 8, 2016 Report Share Posted February 8, 2016 I think his weakness is either being apart from Tia or harm to Tia or both. Remember when he was torn apart by not being able to go on the nasa trip? I think he was only able to stop his rampage in the school because of tia. I think this also explains their relationship of being close but seemingly not as close as when they were dating. I think she knows how important she is to him and stays around because she hopes for him to be able to return from the brink and because she is the strongest tether holding back the monster inside. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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