The 17th Shard’s Tenth Anniversary: Your Favorite Memories

[+Keeper Exile]

Sanderson Memes for sure is my favorite thread, and the people in the Waffles V. Pancakes Thread and PM are pretty great.

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him]

I got sucked into the Fandom during the run up to the release of Oathbringer when TOR was pre-releasing the chapters. Like a Stormlight junkie, I would park my car after dropping my kids off at school and devour the week's new chapter. The thing that got me through to the next chapter release was discussing the chapters on the TOR chapter forum, and there was some great speculation to be sure, but in researching specific items I kept coming across theories on the 17th shard, and the proverbial scales fell away from eyes. I realized at TOR I was taking a community College level course in the Cosmere, when the whole time I could have been studying at the Cosmere equivalent of Oxford. So I joined the Shard, and went to my first Signing, driving 4 hrs in a day and getting back home at 2 in the morning. It was the Oathbringer release, and I got my first WOB about Awakened Toupees. I also got to see what an amazing person Brandon is too, I think he's a large part of why this Fandom is so amazing.

The people that participate in discussions here, and who run this site, have the 4 qualities I value most, in equal measure, they are intelligent, kind, funny and amazingly creative. I don't really participate in too many forums, but the 17th shard is special.

One of the things that keeps me coming back too is Shardcast. I love the times it spirals into pendantic-cast because the nuance and details they explore are important. High level stuff.

1. My favorite thread, the one that kept pulling me back into the Shard life is Tornament: Cosmere Character Roast Battles. @Zath roasts with Spook burning other Cosmere character's in High Imperial, @Archer roasts as Allomancer Jak roasting people with corrective Handerwyn footnotes, @Herowannabe roasts as Human the Koloss (with awesome custom koloss emojis) and @Paranoid King roast as Tilluane the butler are some of the funniest things I've ever read. Solid gold.
2. The Shakespearean exchange with @Toaster Retribution in the Roast thread about returning his Oryginal Folio Had me dying.
3. When I first came to the shard and was speculating wildly based on intuition instead of facts, I really appreciated the incredibly nice way that @Calderisand @RShara would point out a theories flaws, always with lightning fast WOBs. You know you've got a decent theory it if makes past those two. T is a plant still makes me laugh.
4. @Jofwu post on the Moons of Roshar, and his comprehensive timeline are amazing. @Pagerunner post on the Physics of Allomancy was incredible, and later in that thread the work that one sharder did on creating simulations of different physics models for steel pushing for a video game that he was making (can't remember his username) were really great). Pretty much any thread that @Argent puts out. The thread were you could see the work that went into cracking the women's script. I basically love all the threads (and there really are too many too count) that could be college level thesises with supporting WOB citation. I'm getting really excited for the RoW release!
5. My theory (that's since been debunked) that the Aimians were agents of Cultivation. I got a signed book WOB that put a nail in the theory's coffin, but it was a fun ride until it was over. I have some MP3s that I was recording using the Soundmapper on my computer when that theory was still actively being discussed and they are full of notification sounds that someone replied to that thread, and when I listen to those songs now and hear that little notification burble noise it makes me smile.
6. I loved the time right after OB's release when the theories were coming in hot and fast. My only friend who loves Brandon's work is 400 miles away, so the Shard is where I go when the need to talk about the Cosmere. Thankfully I can relive those times this coming November and I'm super excited y'all will be there!

Congratulations on the 10 years! With Brandon's long term plans for the Cosmere in my mind, hopefully I'll still be around to congratulate you on your 50th anniversary!

[Jofwu he/him]

42 minutes ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

and later in that thread the work that one sharder did on creating simulations of different physics models for steel pushing for a video game that he was making (can't remember his username) were really great)

That was (is) @Artemos!

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I joined the shard 7 years ago when I was bored in a high school class held in a computer lab. For a while I skimmed the theories, but now I mostly hang out in the Sanderson Elimination subforum. All of my favorite memories of the shard are pretty much attached to SE.

My favorite memory of a game is the first anniversary game. My character, Aralis, was a grumpy old skeptic who died here. Then, us dead folks got together in a google doc to help our GM do an amazing writeup for the death of @little wilson here.

In general, the subforum (and the forum in general) has been a great place to hang out throughout the years, regardless of how much time I have to spend on it.

Perhaps my proudest moment was winning the Steelheart Bad Metaphor contest with the following (probably helped by the fact I was the first to post):

Spoiler

Bad Simile: Playing Sanderson Elimination is like being food on a young kid's plate when his parents are making him eat everything.

No, see, it totally makes sense! The tasty foods are the players like Meta, who everyone likes, and they always get eaten, or killed, first. Some of the less tasty items survive by sneaking away into a pocket, or on the floor, and manage to survive through inactivity. And in the end, anything left over gets thrown away, just like the spiked in the Anniversary Games.

If I could relive a day, it would probably be doing the Shardhunt (I don't think this is possible to do anymore, sadly, since the site update a while back). For the newer members of the forum, this was as site-wide scavenger hunt with the reward being a bunch of downloadable goodies, including a Metallic Arts Table that was my desktop background until recently. Great way to spend a boring class at school .

[Argent he/him]

Ah, it hasn't been quite 10 years for me because I didn't immediately jump ship from TWG. If memory serves, I didn't make the transition to 17S until TWG announced that it would shut down (or maybe that the Brandon section will shut down? or will move here? I don't remember the ancient days very well), but I am sitting pretty at just over 9 years on the Shard - even I wasn't super active during the early ones, and even if I am not super active right now (though I mostly make up for it a little bit with Discord and Shardcast!). 

I feel like my favorite memories tend to revolve less around this community and more about my interactions with Brandon at signings - and then around my interactions with the community. I think I started gathering steam... a little before the Steelheart release? It established a tradition of me workshopping the questions I would bring to the signing, something I keep up with (mostly) to this day. Oh, and I participated in the Steelhunt - does anyone remember that? It was great community fun.

But yeah, that's around that time I started getting more engaged in theory work, contributing, poking holes, coming up with my own, and asking questions. It helped that I got a lot of Brandon time during some of his earlier Chicago signings; didn't quite have him all for myself, but I feel like some of those signings had fewer than 200 people. Oh, how nice those were...

I think I remained active until around the time Oathbringer came out, at which point it kind of felt like the fandom had gotten too big for me to keep up with (and I was also working, so that ate into my forum time). At some point I moved to Discord, in part because of the more casual nature of it. I could more easily accept that I won't keep up with all the talk. Oh, and I became a mod around that time, I guess. By that time I had somehow become known as the WoB guy, and had some reasonable theories under my belt, and I've been riding that fame since.

Oh, JordanCon 2018 was also a big fandom moment for me. It was that first JordanCon (or any con) I had gone to, I met with a bunch of wonderful people - many of which were Sharders - got randomly recognized by some people for my Shardcast appearance (which was pretty neat, you guys; if you have the opportunity to become a celebrity for a small group of people, I recommend doing that, feels nice), got trolled by both Brandon and Peter, hung out with Isaac and Kara, and got to shoot a bunch of questions at Brandon on/for my birthday. All in all, a very productive couple of days

[18th Shard he/him]

I have been a member of the forum for 7 years, though I lurked for a year or two previous to that. I remember searching through theoryland's interview databases and the coppermind pages after finishing Way of Kings, and accidentally spoiling myself a couple times about Elantris (though fortunately I'd forgotten them by the time I started reading, so I only remembered just before they occurred in story). After finishing Mistborn, I read through every topic in that subforum - which was a bit easier to do then - before posting my own first theory on Compounding. I remember playing in the second Sanderson Elimination game, participating in the Steelhunt (which was a ton of fun), and joining the recently formed Dark Alley (I also remember the thankfully no longer occurring spambots assaults). I remember the insanity of the secrets in Roshar's map thread, and the revelation of new Shard names.

I think some of my fondest memories of the Shard aren't necessarily these moments, but the community attitude that comes out in little moments. I remember the Religions thread which went on for dozens of pages completely civilly, with complex discussions of beliefs and philosophies. I look at other forums and websites and see how terse replies are and how quickly things devolve into either angry arguments or suggestive material (take almost any reddit page for an example), and the contrast with the 17th Shard, where eloquent responses and gracious apologies are far more common than topics that need to be locked, and kind helpful respondees more common than persons needing to be banned, is simply wonderful. The fact that there are threads that can discuss ethics, religions, and mental illness with such respect is part of why this forum is the only one that I am active on instead of lurking. The fact that we all love to overanalyze minutia of the cosmere only heightens the greatness of the 17th Shard.

Thanks to all the admin and members of the Shard who keep this such an awesome community!

[Toaster Retribution he/him]

First off, thanks to Chaos and all the mods for keeping the place up and running. Its really amazing.

The best memories I have from here is the OB release hype. The chapter discussions were amazing. I would rush home from school to read, and then log on to the forums and post. There were tons of great jokes there too. @Argent especially never ceased to amaze.

Another awesome thing is all the nice people on here. I can count the times I have encountered someone I found genuinely unpleasant on one hand. @Calderis, @Steeldancer, @Nathrangking, @hoiditthroughthegrapevine, @Extesian, @Pathfinder, @maxal, @RShara and so many others are all amazing people. The discussions in the thread for stupid ranks with Cal, when Steel and I became a hivemind, the Amaram debates with Pathfinder... wow, so much fun. 

My proudest moments are probably the Hemalurgic Beaver thread, and my post on Amaram, which people who really dislike the guy thought was well thought out. 

Thanks, and may there be another ten years (and then more!)

(Also, @Chaos, we should have a big 17th anniversary in seven years... you know, 17th Shard, 17th Anniversary... you get it). 

[+Extesian he/him]

I've been a 17 Sharder for almost half the life of this fandom, but it still feels like I'm pretty new and the old guard is anyone before me! But Brandon's books and this community have dominated the last 5 years of my life. I love everything about this fandom, the people, the moderation, the variety of expertise (from linguistic to scientific) and the humour.

I have a lot of amazing memories, but I'll run through my highlights, themed!

Administration

• ARCANUM!!! For those who weren't around before Arcanum, they were days where WoB knowledge was largely contained to a few people dedicated and experienced enough to understand trawling Theoryland, TWG, forum posts and reddit. I developed by WoBfu during these dark days. The creation of Arcanum changed it all, not just making it so easy to find WoBs, but to actually hear the audio, and in some ways most importantly to allow anyone in the fandom to transcribe. The effort of transcribing events amongst a few people is formidable. Arcanum changed everything. Special thanks to @WeiryWriter and @Mestiv for making it happen, and to the other Arcanists who transcribed so much, particularly Argent and Pagerunner from memory. Being asked to be an arcanist was a real honor at the time as well, even if I've not been the best arcanist.
• Discord! I used to use the forums crazily, doing 30 or 40 posts a day for a year or two, until I started to have less time and realised it's really hard to keep track of the forums. And then Discord came along! Now I can drop in and out of topics, give a quick answer rather than a detailed one, and opt in and opt out of conversations easily. I do almost all my sharding on Discord now. It's great to chat with a lot of the older members who really don't use the forums at all.
• WoBBot!! An add-on for Arcanum, for Discord, that itself transformed the use of Arcanum to enable extremely quick call-ups of exactly the WoB you want, beautifully presented. WoBBot also has the cuuuutest emojis, if you haven't seen them, ask an Arcanist to demonstrate (they can only be called up by Arcanum staff). Big thanks to @WireSegal for this amazing feature.
• Shardcast!!! We get some of the most knowledgeable (and funny) sharders weekly or bi-weekly to go over WoBs, theories and quizzes. It's fantastic and a highlight of my fortnight, especially as it's expanded to include outstanding newer staff like Argent, @Jofwu, @thegatorgirl00 and Paleo (yes, they're still new staff to me, even you Argent).

People

• First callout is to the man, and then the men, that I felt so in tune with on activity level, theorizing and personal views that we ended up somehow becoming The Hive, one of the better known memes in this community. @Calderis and I spent our formative year with the shard (he'd been an inactive member for two years) bouncing off each other, becoming obsessed with the finer details of lore and realmatics, and making each other laugh. Doesn't hurt that we have the same shardversary date, and our birthdays are two days apart. There were many early jokes about us being the same person. Then @Oversleep became so in tune with us (also a member for longer) that together we became The Hivemind (or Hive for short). Many fun times, including our annual absurdity with Ookla where we share user pics and use each other's names all month until we finally all become Ookla the Hivemind. Makes people want to kill us every year, and I love it. One day we'll do a Hivecast.
• Second level callout is to the great theorizers/WoBbers/fountains of knowledge, the sharders that made me realise how deep the cosmere goes and how knowledgeable one can become. All people I've had great conversations with and who got me excited in the fandom (and there are many other fantastic newer members, but these are the people that contributed to my early formative Wisdom - @Argent, @Yata, @Pagerunner, @Blightsong, @Toaster Retribution, @Steeldancer to name but a few.
• Final callout is to the people I've just come to really enjoy and consider an integral part of the fandom, particularly through Discord interactions. R'shara (coz of your stupid name I can't tag you as I don't know how to do an upside down R), @LadyLameness, @Otto Didact, @Kon-Tiki, @Paleo, @Botanica, @asmodeus and one of my absolute favourite people here, @Ravioli, to name just a few.

Canon

• I finished the cosmere books just before SoS, BoM and Secret History were released. Ooooooh boy was that a time to be alive, but to be someone who wasn't a member of the fandom and simply didn't know what so many knew. It's extraordinary to reflect on the fact that there has been 1, ONE, cosmere novel release since then, Oathbringer. Yes I don't count White Sand  (and i essentially consider Edgedancer part of OB). Seriously though, 1. Lord I'm looking forward to Brandon restarting non-stormlight cosmere after taking a break my entire time as a fan.
• The Oathbringer preview chapters. What a wonderful time to be a fan. Killed me that all the reading and discussion would go on while I was asleep, and then at work, but just wonderful times.
• The release of the one other Cosmere thing, Arcanum Unbounded. Those essays are just amazing.
• WoBs. Just...all the WoBs. Some incredible events, some incredible questions. Far too many to name. They're my bread.

And a final thank you to @Chaos, @Windrunner and @WeiryWriter in particular, for their years of truly dedicated service to the fandom, Ian in WoBs, Dave in Coppermind and Eric for everything.  

 

Edit - I'll add to this one thing in two parts - I was gifted the Elantris leatherbound by a wonderful, wonderful member of the fandom, I bought the Warbreaker leatherbound coz I adore it, and was just given for my birthday all three Mistborn leatherbounds and the Way of Kings leatherbound when it comes out! Just divine. 

Edited June 15, 2020 by Extesian