FeatherWriter

To talk from my experience, I was really glad that Alice emphasized how much work betaing is. I know there's a lot of people out there who just hear "you get to read the book early, sign me up!" without realizing it's a huge commitment of time and effort. Sure, reading through the draft the first time is fun, but going back through the 400+ comments that I made on a part and having to intersperse them with everyone else's, sorting them into chronological order. Then you've got to make sure you're filing the comment under the right section and also that you're not duplicating what anyone else said. And if you've got some time after that, read through the other 80 comments on that one chapter and vote for and respond to what everyone else said. Oof. It's a TON of work. As Alice mentioned, having paragraph numbers in the later parts of the beta was a godsend. Before that it was like, okay I've got my quote of what this comment refers to, but now I need to look at the quotes that everyone else put down in this section and figure out which one it needs to be sandwiched between. And since I obviously don't have every sentence in the draft memorized, it was a lot of word searching and "okay, that quote happens after mine, okay the next one is way before, is there a mistake here and there's another quote that's closer to it? Where is it actually supposed to fit?" Super time consuming. As for the actual beta commenting itself, I was afraid I wsn't going to be able to catch as much as I did. What ended up really helping me was the fact that I was reading Way of Kings aloud to my housemate and Words of Radiance aloud to my mom and sister at the same time I was beta-ing Oathbringer, so the original books were really fresh in my mind. There'd be times where I was reading WoK in the car and had to stop and say "wait, that contradicts something that I just read in OB, I need to go make a comment about that so Team Sanderson knows!" Also, my various hyperfixations on certain Stormlight things helped me out too. There's the debates on the forums and within the fandom that I've been in time and time again and I just know those quotes and the logic behind them super well because it's the stuff I've talked about all the time. When stuff like that shows up in the beta draft, I feel equipped to engage with those topics with some manner of expertise, and I feel like my thoughts and opinions there are worthwhile. But yeah, that was some of my experience with beta reading. I'd previously helped with the Calamity beta read, but whew, Oathbringer was a different beast entirely! As Chaos said though, it really is amazing. You guys are going to love it.

I might post some of my beta comments somewhere after the book is out. The ones that are still relevant, that is!

Nah, that's the reason. I dropped a comment on the last episode of Splintercast, after the cat got out of the bag. Can't Splintercast and beta at the same time!

Mom, look I'm famous! They quoted me on Tor.com!!

*salutes* There's a few offhand references in there...

See, I'm not allowed to play these games, I tell myself, because I just spend the whole time narcissistically laughing at how funny I think I am.

I am actually seeking an answer, though it wasn't the idea of a one-essence Soulcaster that was the issue, actually. Shallan lets us know in Chapter 5 of WoK that there's a lot of Soulcasters that do only very limited things, like Kaza's. My issue is Kaza's phrasing regarding her Soulcaster having only "only one mode, not the full three." That makes it sound like three is the maximum number of essences that a Soulcaster can transform things into, and yet, as we see above, Jasnah was claiming that her "Soulcaster" was capable of doing all 10 essences, even though it was stronger at 3 specifically. I doubt someone as intelligent as Jasnah would claim she had a Soulcaster that could do a thing that no other Soulcaster in the world could do. That'd be super suspicious, wouldn't it be? But Kaza's phrasing here, then, is odd to me. We'll see if it gets changed in the final draft. That said, regarding how they work, I've got no special knowledge on the topic, but I wouldn't be surprised if Soulcasters function differently than modern fabrials. They might not even be powered by spren. Navani was extremely surprised to find out that Dalinar's visions didn't show any ancient fabrials in them, since apparently modern scholarship believes the ancients were experts at making fabrials. I mean, they seemed to think that Shardblades and Shardplate were the result of fabrial technology, too, and we know that's not true. Soulcasting fabrials come from the same era, and I'm pretty sure modern artifabrians can't make them. That makes me feel like they're probably wrong about them being normal fabrials in the first place.

Chaos, you got to READ my reactions, nerd. But also awwwww, what a sweet thing to say, now I'm blushing. u////u I might end up posting my beta comments somewhere after the book is released, because I still have all those documents. I'll just trim out any that are no longer relevant or don't refer to anything anymore. Rest assured, there's plenty of comments that are simply me informing Brandon that I woke my housemates up screaming or laughing or crying because Renarin is a person that exists sometimes. Heh, also I can brag about the timeline inconsistencies I caught. Humility is for the weak!

Heads up guys, I was kind of cagey about reasons because I didn't know whether or not I'd be sharing this around, but now I've started telling people, so: The reason there's no Oathbringer Splintercast is because... I'm an Oathbringer beta reader! The beta was an amazing opportunity and I'm super grateful to Team Sanderson for letting me help out with this process, but unfortunately, it means there's not really a good way to do a reaction podcast. I couldn't record and take down beta comments at the same time, and the beta drafts change quite a bit from the final version, so there'd be stuff in my reactions that didn't make it into the final draft, which would be weird. It just wasn't something that would feasibly work out, so unfortunately, Splintercast will not be, at least for this book. However, I can tell you guys this: it's an amazing book and you're all going to love it.

Since bringing this back was @Mestiv's idea, I'll toss my vote that way too! Though I do very much appreciate the vote for me, @Claincy!

Shakadolrin would be the ship name for when you're shipping Shallan/Kaladin/Adolin/Renarin together as a group (though most people tend to say that in such a match-up, Adolin and Renarin wouldn't be involved with each other, to avoid incest implications.) But yeah, it's an "everyone is dating everyone" sort of situation. Tends to be known as "the OT4" for short, which is a term that evolved from the common fandom term for a ship, "OTP" or "one true pairing." People expanded OTP to OT3, for "one true threesome" and it helped that it rhymed. And from there it just kind of became OT(number) for however many characters you've got in a big ship pile. Admittedly, it's definitely more of a tumblr thing. I tried to mix some 17S stuff in with the tumblr stuff for these cards, but there's certainly things from both spheres of influence. People also tend to use the term "the OT4" to just refer to the main 4 SA characters in that age group, even outside of an explicitly romantic context, too.

I... I think I'm in love. What a gorgeous ketek! I'm just sitting here in awe that something so lovely and beautiful exists in this world. *sighs dreamily*

Quick Mod Note: Y'all are doing a good job of self moderating (making my job easy), but yes, double posting and running threads off topic are frowned upon. Thanks, everyone, for helping to keep the thread tidy. I don't think we derailed too much in here! Now then, as theory poster, I don't know if I ever discussed resonances re: Renarin. I'm... pretty unconvinced that the future thing is a resonance. Again, it just doesn't seem to be on par with other resonances. They don't match up. Resonances seem like little perks or quirks of each order, which kind of make them unique or help them out. I mean, Windrunners get more squires, Lightweavers get good memories, and Truthwatchers get all-consuming and utterly uncontrollable visions of the future, which entirely take over their body? It just doesn't line up, for me. We're talking about very different classes of things here.

I'll pop in to respond on this count, since I think my theory is probably the one that's swayed so many people in this direction. What struck me about Renarin's abilities and the reason why I don't think they're normal surgebinding is the involuntary nature of them. Though we see Shallan and Kaladin surgebinding accidentally without realizing it, we never see other surgebinders being forced to use their abilities actively against their will. We don't see instances where their bodies are taken over and controlled by their powers, leaving them helpless. I mean, Renarin falls to the floor, crying and screaming "Almighty why have you cursed me so?" That doesn't feel right. Quite clearly at the end (and with plenty of hints leading up to it), Renarin is not fully in control of himself when the visions take over. He's forced to write or carve while he's in the throes of it, something he'd never do of his own volition. I mean, on one hand, it's deeply unmasculine, even if they're just glyphs, which is something Renarin's already very insecure about, but also, if he's going to so much trouble to try to hide the fact that he's having visions, why leave very obvious evidence behind that someone's seeing things, like number countdowns and written prophecies? My answer: he didn't have a choice. And though Brandon has confirmed that there is an involuntary element to Renarin's visions, he has not confirmed whether or not they're surgebinding. I got a hard (and evil laughing) RAFO on that question.

Aww, you guys have left such nice comments about wanting me to do more Splintercast. I know I'm not going to be able to do OB, but I'd like to try to maybe do some of the other books in the future! It's been wonderful having you guys along on my book journeys with me!

If you look very closely, it appears that all of the steps are actually floating. Which I... don't think is something Elsecallers do. My personal theory is that nothing's floating at all and Jasnah, in true anime fashion, is soulcasting stairs from the air and then running up them even as they fall to the ground. Sure, it's terribly inefficient, but it looks really cool, so, worth it.

Probably one of my favorite covers from Whelan. I really really love his portrayal of Jasnah here! Honestly my only quibbles are that his first black and white draft in this pose had lighting that made the brass look more metalic than it does in the final, and the thunderclast seems a bit wonky, but other than that? Spot on. Jasnah in particular looks amazing.

Admittedly, some of the delay on posting these next two was on me. I didn't get them edited until about two weeks ago, so they were late when @Chaos got them. I think he's been busy since then, but I'll go ahead and nudge him about posting. They are both finished now! Hopefully they'll be up soon!