Zerovirus

I absolutely loved this story. I adore simulation-universes, utilization of narrative tropes as in-universe mechanisms, and meta-as-heck cosmologies in stories, and as a result this one hit literally all the buttons for me. The culture clash between Kai and Sophie was great, and Sophie's character was exquisitely unique- a feminist who rebels against her role as progressive and starts a world war just because she wants to buck the trend? That is such a delicious mix of paradoxical ideals and it makes Sophie so three-dimensional. And then it turns out Sophie was a complete fake. And if someone as deep and thoughtful as Sophie could be a fake, what does that mean for the metaphysical status of the actual Liveborn- many of which, according to Sophie, aren't nearly as interesting or deep as she is as a character? This is probably my favorite Sanderson work of all time, now, edging out Stormlight. (Sequel hook: Kai receives a list of all the Liveborn in adjacent jars. The list is composed of the protagonists from each Cosmere story.)

Eshonai ought to be leading a class on singing.

Y'know, it's interesting that Galath's idea of a perfect world is a world of immortal demigodly-good martial fighters wearing incredibly fantastic armor and bearing incredible melee weapons, beating each other and/or fantasy monsters down in a melee slugfest, and whenever the world deviates from that standard Galath wipes it out and starts over again. I've always got the (distinctly headcanon) impression that Galath's original world collapsed in some sort of apocalypse and ever since then the guy's been trying to rebuild it and recreate the world of his childhood, or something. I wonder what Galath's original civilization was like, for the Infinity Blade setting to be merely a paltry shadow of that world, according to Galath?

I'd also classify that under creation, really. When I say destruction, I don't mean 'utilization of elements you'd more commonly use in destruction.' Directing an action movie in which a lot of cars happen to blow up is still inspiring others through creation. It's if you wanted to intimidate others by showing how powerful you were (by blowing up those same cars, say), which could classify as inspiration through destruction. As with most Sanderson magic, Intent matters. Yes, I do realize that I'm taking this significantly more seriously than most everybody else here. That's just how I roll, I suppose.

Sometimes, even if we know that, going by probability, we're most likely screwed anyways, we still have to try our hardest to live. Mankind has more immediate problems to solve than the fact that thermodynamic constraints put an upper boundary on the universe's lifespan, but if somehow we survive to the point where heat-death actually becomes the most immediate existential threat, I don't think the most-Radiant thing to do is just to put down our arms and give up in the face of the inevitable end of the universe. Maybe nothing can be done. One must still try anyways. Journey before Destination. The Windrunners must know, like Kaladin has learned, that they cannot protect everybody, even if they've sworn an oath to try. The same logic can be applied to my oath. Defeat is an outcome imposed upon you by reality, that thing that nobody can change (though perhaps in Cosmere-verse, reality as spren-consensus would be a bit more malleable than anybody might imagine). But, in contrast to that, surrender is an outcome imposed upon you by yourself, and it is the act of surrender that my oath deals with. Lol, it's okay. My original art thread is here, if you're interested.

I will not fear to show others the truths of my heart. The Radiant must be able to trust themselves. To bring safety and peace to others, one must first be at safety and peace themselves. A house whose walls are broken can offer no shelter against a highstorm. Secrecy leads to deceit, which leads to corruption and betrayal, and the Radiants must be accountable to the people, lest a second Recreance occur. I will promote enlightenment whatever form it takes, even in a form which I disagree with. The Radiant must value the honest pursuit of truth and understanding. Those who are bogged down in the mires of politics soon find themselves consumed by internal squabbling. Mutual understanding is the path towards unity. I will inspire through creation before I inspire through destruction. Human tendency is to respect brutal shows of power- but it takes more skill to wield the smallest paintbrush than it does to wield the most monumental Shardblade. Before I lead as a warrior, I shall lead as an artist, and my art shall inspire the world towards better things. I will never surrender and accept any limitation as insurmountable. Humanity's inherent spirit is to overcome challenges, through artifabrication and industry and science. The Radiant must understand the boundless potential within each and every human, lighteyed or darkeyed. Humanity has overcome disease and pain and trauma through science and medicine and healing, and humanity will go on to overcome yet greater trials. The Radiant who despairs of changing the world through their own strength is a Radiant forsworn, for the path of the Radiants, and of humanity, is to pursue the glorious morning with every step. I will not hate those who do wrong. All men are born into a world of blood and pain, and none can wade through the mud-waters of our world without raking up some crem. We are all broken people, simply by virtue of being born into an imperfect world where pain and death and sadness yet exist. No man does evil for its own sake, and it is not the place of the Radiant to make judgments, no matter how justified he may feel himself.

A lot of the gems in SA contain aluminum that gives them their distinct coloring which makes them different from each other. Not all of them; diamond and quartz don't contain aluminum, usually- but a lot. Probably doesn't have much significance, though.

The way you put it makes it sound surprisingly plausible. I'm not sure about what'd /happen/ if T picked up Odium while incredibly stupid and compassionate, but all the possible outcomes sound so interesting that I think I'm going to consider that my favorite theory about T.

Maybe if we combined a shardblade with a void-sphere it'd come back to life? Or maybe if we somehow took a cognitive sphere out of the cognitive realm and combined it with a shardblade, it'd give the shardblade identity and consciousness? (inb4 Stickblade) Has anybody ever tried looking at what a Shardblade looks like in Shadesmar? Perhaps all the shardblades' cognitive aspects are floating out in the spheresea of shadesmar, waiting to be found and returned to their shardblades or something.

It might not be him taking action, exactly. Something like 'oh hey we've got a magic ritual to defeat Odium forever except we need to use the mind of a person completely devoid of intellect, because that's the only mind that's empty enough to hold Odium and not do anything with the shard', or something? It almost certainly won't be exactly that, it sounds hackneyed even to me, but the principle of the matter, I think, is that the way Taravangian is used in the end won't be anything like any of us are expecting. My model of the situation is that T is sort of a... reagent, not an agent. It won't be his master plan that saves the world, he's just a pawn who happens to have the highly-desirable-for-some-unknown-reason property of being a complete drooling idiot at times.

Assuming that the premise that Taravangian's boon was actually his stupid/mercy state and the curse his superintelligent sociopath state, I'd venture to predict that the way in which Taravangian saves the world will have almost nothing to do with his Diagram at all.Taravangian noticeably suffers motive decay whenever he goes smarter; the Diagram's endgame is unlikely to be something that Taravangian would normally want. Perhaps there's a form of magic necessary to defeat Odium which can only be used by someone of complete mercy and love, or perhaps Taravangian's specific mindset is needed to bind a special spren of some kind which is instrumental in the final scenes of the story. In the end, the question is: what can a stupid but compassionate person do which a superintelligent sociopath, or even your normal everyman, cannot do? Being that this is the Cosmere, I'm putting my money on magic which requires, or utilizes, the state of mind which only one person in the world has from time to time.

So here's a thought I had. What if the Champion of Odium doesn't know they're the Champion until the final fight's about to go down? That is, the Champion is something of a comparative rather than absolute rank, like 'Person Who Most Fits Odium's Criteria For Being His Champion' rather than 'Person who has personally agreed to become Odium's Champion'. In the same way that one might be the best in the world at something but not technically be aware of the fact, the Champion might not be aware that they're the best personal choice for Champion- and thus the Champion of Odium- until the very end. Which would be a deliciously tragic twist; after all that anticipation of fighting some dark overlord, servant of Odium in all ways, instead it turns out that Kaladin and co. have to kill one of their friends to defeat the 'Champion'. Hell, it could turn out to be Kaladin himself if Kaladin never gets over his negative emotions. Or it could be Moash. Moash is basically the best example of a character who still considers themselves good even as they exhibit every attribute that Odium likes to see in a person- and he's also interested enough in redemption that being informed, 'nope, you can't have redemption ever, you are now the champion of the god of evil whether you like it or not' would be pretty horrifying.

"The thousand-faced enemy breaks through, and the armor of my soul collapses. Four giants of steel and flame break apart one by one, but the final layer must withstand. I deny you with the power of those who will come after and those who have gone before!" And, maybe... "His silver light is healing and love and defiance and life. Finally, Death has seen our sun and evaporated."

Only thing I don't get is what sword she's wielding. Just a generic sword? Pattern's supposed to turn into the shardblade, after all.

I think the whole 'does fanfic help people develop writing skills?' misses the point of fanfiction entirely. It's like if you saw a kid playing with action figures and snatched the action-figure out of their hands, and then yelled at them about how 'Playing with action figures doesn't teach you sculpture!' Of course it doesn't- the playing is its own purpose, not an intermediary towards some other goal. Let people play with the things they want, and when they ask to borrow the toys you designed don't refuse them. Writing should be played with like action-figures, meant for human interaction, not locked away like ancient greek statues, made for a look-don't-touch mentality.

Well, one of them, at least; a Windrunner, to be exact, holding more Stormlight than is probably good for him. This is probably the most detailed painting I've ever managed to finish, so hopefully you guys like it. My Shardplate design deviates a bit from what seems to be the comparatively bulky norm, but I'm sure the Knights Radiant were inclusive of all body types, right? Bonus: a swordless version is attached below!

Man, I can't remember the guy's name, but I really feel sorry for the spren of the shoemaker that Nalan killed. Little guy was just starting to attain intelligence before being cut down in its youth. I wonder what it'd have been like had it grown to full lucidity? (Favorite of the ones that we've actually seen a lot of is probably still Syl, though, let's be honest. Syl is just too great.)

So, after reading Words of Radiance, I went back and reread Way of Kings for kicks. And Sadeas' portrayal seems to have drastically changed from WoK to WoR; in WoK, Dalinar explicitly mentions how both he and Sadeas hated each other but tolerated each other for the sake of protecting Elhokar. In WoR, on the other hand, Sadeas ponders the idea of assassinating Elhokar and finds that he has basically no aversion to the thought anymore. Which... doesn't match the image of Sadeas as someone who would devote his life to protecting Elhokar, as Dalinar portrays him. Sure, maybe Sadeas was planning to betray Gavilar all along and never really cared about Elhokar from the start, but in that case, the incredibly suicidally brave idea of pretending to be Gavilar to draw Szeth's attention probably wouldn't have occurred to this hypothetical always-a-traitor-Sadeas. So... when did Sadeas change? Why did Sadeas change? Dalinar seemed to think that Sadeas was still the same man he'd always been, loyal to Gavilar and Elhokar's throne, up until he betrays them and leaves them to die- and even that's not totally out-of-character for someone who wants to protect Elhokar, not if he legitimately thinks that a mad Dalinar is a threat to the throne (after all, the Blackthorn would always be a threat to Elhokar if only through his sheer force of personality). Honestly, after reading WoK again, I'm of the opinion that some supernatural influence changed Sadeas slowly for the worse- a corruption of some sort or other, possibly done by one of the Unmade. After all, we know that the Thrill is caused by Nergaoul, and whereas Dalinar resisted the Thrill, Sadeas became addicted and started pursuing the Thrill (as described in WoR), which may have made it easier for him to be corrupted by Bad Things. Thoughts?

For a hypothetical Kandra brothel, the ability to do away with actual functioning reproduction would only be another convenient reason why Kandra make better prostitutes than skaa. On the other hand, if a 'mad noble' REALLY did want to have a child with a 'lost love'... well, Kandra have to obey /every/ command. Every one. I think I need some brain bleach. Actually, I think I need the whole brain laundromat.

Fair warning: this is going to be really creepy. So, obviously, Kandra are good at imitating the external appearances and the behaviors of people. They are very, very good at this. Wherever there are people, there exists a demand for sex. The supply that fills this demand in our world comes in the form of prostitution and brothels, but in a world where it's trivially, inconsequentially easy to abduct the most sexually appealing members of a disenfranchised population and create exact replicas of them that will obey everything you order them to do, no matter how much they might personally despise it? Kandra brothels must have existed. There's just no way they didn't. At the very least, there must have been Lords in Luthadel who kept Kandra in contracts which were essentially just sexual slavery. The implications of this I will leave you to imagine yourself. No wonder the Kandra hated humans. On a different note, though, there's no biological reason at least why a Kandra wouldn't be able to support a pregnancy in a female body, which leads to the question of whether Kandra-born children would be able to inherit any form of magic- perhaps the Feruchemy which their Kandra parents would have been born with, were they humans instead of Kandra, or perhaps a limited ability to change their own appearances- a half-Kandra, perhaps? (To all of you roleplayer-types: a kandra-born, half-kandra child might be an interesting idea to try, no?)

Obviously Gaz is the champion of Honor, and Kaladin ends up pulling a heel-face turn and becomes the champion of Odium.

I've been reading Sanderson for a while, but never really bothered with a forum account until now. Hopefully I can contribute some stuff to the discussion of the man's latest work! So, it's pretty obvious that each of the books will start with Dalinar's assassination as the prologue, as seen from the eyes of a different participant or character at the time. With Words of Radiance's release, a lot of interesting stuff has been revealed that wasn't shown in Szeth's version of the scene, and there's a /lot/ of weird future hooks that I don't think I've seen addressed anywhere else. For starters, who was Jasnah planning to assassinate? If the two letters she wrote were similar, then it'd imply that Jasnah had reason to possibly want Aesudan dead- but why? More importantly, though, has anybody analyzed what Jasnah overheard in the hallway? So who's 'Ash'? Who's the person who's 'getting worse'? What exactly are they 'getting worse' in? I'm personally of the opinion that 'That creature' is Szeth, but that raises the question of who 'my lord' is, and why the Azish ambassadors should think that Szeth's Honorblade ought to belong to their lord instead. Alternatively, maybe they're talking about Nalan, Nightblood, and Vasher? That makes so much less sense, though- as far as we know, none of them show up in the scene anywhere. And just /what/ exactly did these people 'do' which they thought was wrong, and how does it relate to Szeth keeping his Honorblade? I have so many questions about this scene. ------- On a different note, I also noticed something strange about the prelude to Way of Kings. In the Way of Kings, in the introduction scene where Kalak and Jezrien prepare to abandon the Oathpact, Kalak describes seeing "Men in primitive wraps, carrying spears topped by bronze heads." This matches exactly Talenel's statement in Words of Radiance that, after every desolation, people would be reduced to stone-age level technology, with bronze being their highest technological achievement which could only be reached when the Heralds returned. This raises a few questions, because Kalak also states that the primitive bronze-using men were juxtaposed with "others in gleaming plate armor", presumably Knights Radiant- and it's been stated that the Knights Radiant were founded by Ishar, to preserve knowledge of the past and to help protect men. Does that mean that, as soon as the Knights Radiant were founded, the Heralds immediately gave up their burdens? There's little other way to explain the convergence of the 'primitive stone-age men' period with the 'knights radiant protect humanity' period. But if so, that means that the Knights Radiant only ever fought /one/ single Desolation before the Recreance alongside the Heralds, if even that. Otherwise, with the Knights Radiant around to do their job of protecting and teaching, humanity wouldn't have been reduced to not even knowing how to cast bronze every desolation. So... seriously, Heralds? You just give up the oathpact as /soon/ as you set up the Knights Radiant? Not even a few generations to make sure that you've taught them everything important about fighting Desolations and being Honorable and whatnot? The lack of foresight the Heralds display here is, honestly, completely galling. Though that's not really a surprise, once you take into account the state of Roshar, four-and-a-half millennia later. More interesting, though, is why the Heralds felt like they /could/ put down the Oathpact once they set up the Knights Radiant. The Heralds thought that perhaps they could end the cycle of Desolations forever by setting down the Oathpact- in which case, setting up the Knights Radiant feels almost pointless. If there's no more Desolations to protect humanity from, why even set up an elite corps of magic knights? So, ultimately, my question is this: did the abandonment of the Oathpact require, somehow, that others- the Radiants- take it up? If not, what was the /true/ purpose for why the Radiants were formed? The pieces of information I have doesn't add up to a coherent whole, and I notice I am confused.