Kurkistan

Yup, noticed that one myself. This new quote goes into quite a lot more detail, is unambiguous as to the bubble being on the train, and is newer, and so trumps the old one if they are in fact in conflict. I can't find it at the moment, but someone has suggested that a way to reconcile the two WoBs is that for the first Brandon was thinking of the big picture where the bubble is shortly ripped off the train by the "jarring". Reading the newer WoB, a charitable interpretation has "it's probably going to ruin your time bubble" occurring over the course of instants, rather than minutes or seconds. Myself I lean more towards this just being an evolution of how Brandon models bubble frame of reference, at least to some extent. Perhaps there's just a seen in an AoL-era book that he was like "it would be cool if there were a time bubble on this train..." and then he got to thinking more deeply about why it wouldn't work and decided to weaken a previous "well the ground intersecting the bubble would just instantly pull it out" to a weaker "the ground intersecting the bubble will just gradually pull it out", or the like.

More answers: http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr1yp2q?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr2g9ed?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr2gb2t?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr2pnwf?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr49co2?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr49dwp?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr6st0x?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr6vymp?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr7519d?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr752fq?context=3 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crau1jf?context=3 These last two are more interesting, I think: http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cr9e453?context=3- Lift's weird stormlight-generating is unique to her and she wasn't born with it: essentially reaffirming that she got it because of the Nightwatcher. http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crau1qi?context=3- Kobold got some of his wish. P.S. Anyone can feel free to do the work of copying over and properly formatting the text, I'm just swooshing by with the links for the moment.

Okay, I really need to update the OP. I'll just add in direct links later, I guess. :/ This weekend, probably. Sorry for not updating earlier, but a signing back in February March had some very interesting stuff to say on the anchoring problem. --- That said, an interesting thought on how anchoring might have worked if not for this WoB. Though I believe I may have been unclear on exactly what we needed out of anchoring: so far as I can tell, the Bendalloy bubbles very much need to not move with the ship if we want FTL.

My reading of this latest WoB is such that there is no "Kaladin Ideal" separate from what just got cut into by a shardblade. So it's all one soul: no "sub-souls" to be had. That kind of demands that we go out to the "Human Ideal" if anything.

An interesting thought, though I have no knowledge of the subject myself, so can't really comment. Who knows, it may be time to inquire to Brandon about philosophical underpinnings, if you find the parallel so compelling.

UPDATE: I'll just swoop in and necro this for posterity's sake. I asked Brandon about this at a signing and then someone else also asked more about it, so we got some good amount of info: Source: And then later: ---- So for the first it's basically a restating of the SLCC quote that started all of this (though now directly confirming that the impetus to heal is indeed Spiritual), plus me kind of twisting Brandon's arm a bit on exactly how the Cognitive portion of the mechanism is described: for what it's worth he didn't say no, but an uncharitable reading of the WoB doesn't leave us that much new info. - The second is far more interesting. Once again Evil Kurkistan was trying a bit to get Brandon to comment directly on my own theory of how healing works. A bit more successfully this time, I think. In regards to the theory of how Forms interact with soul-healing, I got definite (though perhaps biased) impressions that Brandon was dodging the point quite intentionally (this impression buttressed by the fact that Brandon says that's what he's doing). Despite this, the astute reader will grow suspicious of Formic shenanigans when Brandon starts talking about "So if you can get it up there" (suggesting "elevating" the soul to be on par with some higher-order ideals, at least in my mind) and "ways to do- to recreate..." because the soul is an ideal; Brandon also confirms that there's only the one soul for us to worry about for people who get soul-injured. - On a broader and more unexpected scale, Kevin was kind enough to expand for us this new notion of "patches" on the soul, which apparently work the same way as investiture filling in the cracks left over by snapping-like events. So maybe infinite spikes for everyone might have some adverse side effects on the donors after all, though I have to say Kaladin's arm seemed perfectly fine...

My thread-knowledge is more spotty. There was a bit there were it seemed every other new theory post would have me as its first reply saying "<url>this thread</url> might interest you" as I recalled older theory posts, but that relies on me staying very very on the ball with quite a larger volume of stuff than just tracking WoBs, so it's harder both to stay abreast and to find again for linkage. That post was only 6 months ago, not a year. If I had to guess, though, I'd say "soon".

How amusing that you think that I don't already instinctively know when someone posts a new theory worthy of consideration. It's going to be a thing in a bit when the site updates, is my understanding.

EDIT: Ah, my apologies, I see you were likely referring to the "with skill and effort" line, rather than the general point. In that, you are correct: I overstated the point, thinking more of Vasher's intentional gymnastics than subconscious changes. Looking at the text of Warbreaker again, it does indeed look like Returned can and do have some subconscious effect on the nature of their bodies, with the main evidence being Allmother growing older. I'll stand by the general point on social beauty standards being the main factor in base appearance, though. --- No? Here are the relevant WoBs again: Source: Source: Source (Warbreaker Annotation): Relevant text on Returned appearance/Allmother. Italics in original (represent thoughts): Warbreaker Ch 30. Bold added to highlight that Allmother is non-unique; then to highlight literally the one passage within the book that even attempts to come to a conclusion about why Returned look like they do. Warbreaker Ch 42. Reading these passages again, you may be on to something, to some small extent. Knowing what we do now, particularly from the annotations, I would say that Brandon was likely using some of the passages about Allmother, particularly her looking older, to hint at some degree of unconscious control of Returned over how they look: Allmother is feeling her age and responsibility, and so begins to look older. So far as general point of some Returned being old and others young, myself I'd wager that the gods who look physically older were just flat-out old when they died, and had made peace with that as how they were: this versus the young-to-middle-aged who likely would see their ideal selves at early-thirties. On the broader point of different Returned having different versions of ideal bodies, I think it fair to surmise that that also burns down to some subconscious personal preference and/or body type when they died. But all of this is still quite thoroughly constrained by the bounds of social ideals of beauty so far as we can see. -- Beyond this, the WoBs are rather clear in backing up Lightsong's musings about social ideals being the ultimate source of truth here, rather than just personal taste. --- As a general point, and I believe I've said the like elsewhere, I believe it's a mistake to make the general argument of "they're not all young and beautiful in the same way, therefore they aren't all based on the same template". If you look at how the Olympian gods are depicted, they range widely in age and physical characteristics, but any favorable depiction is still going to show them as physically pleasing by the standards of the age.

@Moogle Regarding Forgery: That's an excellent thought. Have a theory-earned upvote (I tend to be stingy with those ). Brandon has mentioned how it's a bit "transcendent" with things going back and forth between the realms (first Q/A here), seeming to go along with me when I talked about median Cognitive ideals forms, so it might well be that Form-based effects are mediated by the local Cognitive medians: this would actually solve the general problem, allowing for Cosmere-universal Ideals of Meat and Steel and Beauty that are exceptionally general, while relying on the local Cognitive medians to interpret those ideals for individual planets/cultures. Like how healing already works (see other part of that link and the SLCC transcript for details on that) , but on a much larger scale. So my "sForms" (wow I was a bit too into jargon when I wrote that thread...) are in fact better modeled by having them be Cognitive rather than just smaller versions of "uForms", with actual Forms that are fully Spiritual just being my "uForms".

The Spiritual realm storing Shardblades is, so far as I've been able to determine, an unsourced rumor. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but we don't have any actual proof either way that I know of. So far as "storage" of souls go, we may simply not be going abstract enough. A lot of what we've heard of the Spiritual so far makes it sound like it's defined by relationships, so it might be better to start thinking of Spiritual interactions as being based on sets of relations between things that just "are" rather than those things needed to be "located" in any meaningful way. P.S. Found a quote on changing body shape: it's referring to Vivienne using her own little mini-Divine Breath, but is in the context of her being able to do what Vasher does.

Yes Returned can, with skill and effort, alter their appearance (described in the annotations, sorry, link isn't handy from the phone), but it appears that the "default version" is sourced elsewhere: http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1ced7z/iamstilla_novelist_named_brandon_sanderson_ama/c9hh5j1?context=3 A later WoB would show that these things that Spren are based on are spiritual ideals.

Theorywise, what I find most interesting about this is that it may imply a far simpler layout of Forms than I've been proposing. At a naive reading, this implies that there is exactly 1 ideal of Fire in the entire Cosmere, 1 ideal of "Window", rather than at least some things having their own version per planet and/or culture. This has particular impact on Forgery, since (by my own theories, at least) it might end with you getting a "generic" stained glass window on Sel that's unfluenced by Scadrian artistry. Other such implications, such as the "generics" that Soulcasting produces being so influenced, also come to the fore. This may not be quite so simple, though: one piece of evidence against such strict universality is how Returned reflected Nalthian beauty standards, rather than some aggregate of the whole Cosmere's standards. Unless of course beauty standards are in fact Cosmere Universal and their Spiritual ideals have some kind of trickle-down effect into the minds of people everywhere to standardize it...

Nice (though I feel like we might have seen something like this before). What was the question?

Yeah... this on my end too. I'm a bit of a picky fan, I think.

It continues, never to end, and yet never to answer my own questions... :'(

I can't find it at the moment, but I believe I recall Brandon confirming that it was Renarin writing on the walls.

Myself I've never really seen this difference of description of spren between Parshendi and human viewpoints that way. You say that Parshendi and humans simply see spren differently, but so far as I can tell they see them exactly the same—but only at the very end of the spren's arrival, when they manifest. Everything weird we've seen from Eshonai's perspective has been a matter of the spren "in-transit". It's very important to note here that only ever in the Parshendi viewpoints do we actually see spren in the act of being drawn to someone: with everyone else they just show up right near by. Angerspren: look/move like lightning as they are attracted to anger, but then are a pool of red when they finally get there. Stormspren (the only not-completely definitive example so far as I can see, but still I think pretty much in line with the others): Weird until it's in Eshonai, then just mention of "tendrils of red spreading outwards": Dalinar then sees just the tendrils of red right near the bodies and then zip off and vanish into thin air immediately. Fearspren: Eshonai sees them lightning-worm their way over, but then when they get there they're just wriggling in the ground. Exhaustionspren: The clearest evidence so far, I think, perhaps tied with angerspren. Here we see clearly the break even from the Parshendi viewpoint of how the spren appear when "in transit" and how they appear when they become "stronger". -- So I think it fairly easy to argue here that the Parshendi, being more in the Cognitive, are seeing at least some of the type of thing Shallan saw when she was in Shadesmar. But when the spren manifest more fully in the Physical, the spren do in fact take on the same appearance to Parshendi as they do to humans: by this logic, a human who gained a bit more Cognitive insight should start being able to see the same "in transit" forms of spren as Parshendi do. -- So, to go back to the original point, perhaps Kaladin and Eshonai saw different things if the spren they saw were at different "levels of manifestation." I doubt that, though, if only because every other time the Parshendi see a spren "in-place" rather than being actively attracted, it's taken on the same form as it does for humans.

This is the nearest we have on it, I believe. Source:

Ooh, nice diagram.

Sorry about the un-findability, I've been waiting on that interview getting in the database before updating this thread. By interstellar medium I just mean all the stuff that's in "empty space". There's not much of it, but I'm sure a sphere of any respectable size will intersect at least some of it. Brandon's clarification is key here for resolving where exactly the bubble looks for its frame of reference, I think: So it's very specifically the things the surface of the bubble is "cutting into": not the things that are in/around the bubble. So if you have your ship that's sitting at the center of a kilometer-radius bubble, the bubble will only be "cutting through" space; more specifically a bunch of hydrogen and whatnot in space. EDIT: Ah, I misread you. You were talking about what the interstellar medium would perceive as "still", and suggesting it could adopt the view of the ship. An interesting concern, and I hadn't focused/thought as much about the implications of Brandon saying "cognitive things" there instead of just "things." So if an object is in the middle of the void with not even enough thought going on for its location to have a presence in Shadesmar, what does that mean for what that object can tell a time bubble about relative motion? Hmm... Okay, thinking about it we may still be cool. So three broad options here: The interstellar medium won't register to the bubble at all. It's left not "cutting through" anything, so far as the bubble is concerned. That's... going to be weird. Aside from the universe exploding at the edge case, I guess the simplest behavior here would be for the bubble to "default" to the frame of reference of its caster. So FTL fails in that case. The interstellar medium (and everything, really) intrinsically contains at the very least enough of a Cognitive presence to maintain that "I am still" is true. Not too wild an idea, I think, and meshes nicely with the realities of physics in that everything essentially behaves that way. The interstellar medium borrows its perception of stillness from the Cognitive beings who are "observing" it, i.e. those on the ship. In this case there are two subcategories: i) The medium borrows directly from the ship's crew: it goes "oh I'll just copy them" and begins to see the ship's movement as "still". This doesn't make sense, I don't think. No one on the ship thinks the medium is moving (here I say "moving" to mean "moving in the sense that the ship is moving"), the medium isn't moving, the medium doesn't have any reason to think it's moving. ii) The medium acquires a concept of itself as either "still" because the crew thinks of it that way or "moving very very fast in the opposite direction of the ship" because the crew sees it that way. Either of these options is perfectly fine for getting the bubble to have a frame of reference that accelerates the ship's movement through space. I lean towards 2, myself.

Not by virtue of just being a dude from not-Nalthis, no (there's quite a few WoB's on this, one here, several here, some more scattered about). It's another question whether his Radiant-ness would change anything in this regard, but I'm very heavily betting no, since Breaths are explicitly Endowmenty in nature.

Sadly it seems such shenanigans with different-timed steelpushes aren't to be allowed. Source: - Regarding the ship "still moving at the compressed speed" if it were somehow only partially in the bubble: I don't believe changing the positioning of the bubble would help much. The problem as I see it isn't simply that the ship itself is the "anchor" for the bubble, but that the ship is stationary (or nearly so) from the bubble's frame of reference. So no accelerated movement for you. -(If you look at the end of the post I just Sourced to, I think you may find that the anchoring problem just got a whole lot simpler).

*Later* Do we know the timeline on this maybe getting into the database? I've established an arbitrary timeline on myself that I won't update my various posts/theories until I can link to the WoBs individually, you see...

Myself I'd always interpreted the "the" in that quote as meaning that the ideal was singular. This along with the fact that Platonism is all about their being singular ideals.