Juanaton

21 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

She [Vivenna] seems calm about most things.

Isn't that a specific result of her upbringing? Something that was ALWAYS true about her pre-Warbreaker and while she does allow her emotions to show a little even now (hair changing when they entered Shadesmar for example), it seems like it's just something she has regained now that she has accepted herself and her nature as an Awakener...and that Awakening isn't evil.

On 7/3/2018 at 11:17 AM, Selleshar said:

I suppose that another advantage would be that a Line of Warding wouldn't be effective. They could just reach over. You'd have to use a Line of Forbiddance, which might corner you into a box. Though considering how easily wild chalklings can tear through Lines of Warding, it might not be a huge advantage compared to what they already have. Perhaps 3D "non-wild" chalklings would enable each individual chalkling to fight humans directly. What are your thoughts?

Again, I think the advantages of being a 2D being able to interact with the 3D world via the glyph or rending (or however it is that wild chalklings do it...since they clearly do) far outweigh the advantages of actually being 3D, especially since humans are already very practiced at fighting in 3D and have a hard time wrapping our minds around the additional vulnerabilities that 2D opponents can exploit that their 3D brethren would be unable to use.

42 minutes ago, Dalakaar said:

Here's an interesting way to really tie Kaladins hands with an oath he'll have a bloody hard time holding.

"I will only save lives, I will not take them."

Kaladin gets the kid gloves if he wants his armor. No more killing. To be clear, not sure I actually believe this'll be it, just an interesting idea that'd really muddle his choices, and works within the confines of his surgeon/do-no-harm background.

This doesn’t fit with the wind runner in Dalinar’s vision who was definitely able to kill AND had his armor. There are individual differences in the oaths, but I doubt they go so far as to allow some to kill while prohibiting others from doing so.

35 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Worst possible ending: Moash/Vyre stabs him in the back as he tries to protect Dalinar in the battle of champions.

Of course, that could be the exact thing that enables Teft to succeed in protecting Dalinar because he doesn't have hangups about Moash/Vyre so in the end it's a heroic sacrifice from Kaladin that manages to protect Dalinar after all...leaving his soul content and satisfied and enabling him to not be sucked into the soul sucking knife....

6 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Purity is in that system. 

 

Ah thanks...it’s one of those “outer gas giant” type planets. I forgot the Threnodite system had one of those.

On 10/24/2018 at 11:05 PM, Yata said:

Purity is one of the planets of Therenodite system and Nazh comes from Therenody. It's a cultural figure of speech

I believe the planets in that system were Elegy, Threnody, and Monody or something like that. Definitely all names for types of songs of mourning...not Purity.

On 10/24/2018 at 2:14 PM, Kal-Eldin said:

Was it misheard, because he may have cursed "Patji's Eye," as he is a world hopper.

While I was listening to an audiobook, I’m pretty sure that section is an image of a written report from Nazh, not an overheard conversation.

In the part of oathbringer where it’s a report on the Alethi glyphs and the infiltration of the calligraphers guild that Nazh (I think) performed, he curses by “Purity’s Eye.” Could that be a reference to a previously unknown (at least to me) Shard?

3 hours ago, Steel Inqusitive said:

I'm interested in the part where she says the Rhythms guide people... How do the Rhythms guide people to the right words?

 

The same way putting epic poetry to music helped the bards and skalds to remember the words. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Norse Eddas were all songs for a LONG time before they were written down.

So given the wonderful (for a certain interpretation of that word) revelation about Eshonai’s fate, I thought it might be good emotional preparation to try predicting some other plot resolutions. Feel free to add your own, or contradicting predictions to mine.

Vyre won’t get far. The fused didn’t realize just how much stormlight the honor blade used up and he fell from quite high before catching up to them right after getting the blade.

Kaladin tried again to rescue his family. Again his father refuses to be rescued. Accepting and respecting Lirin’s decision, knowing it will cause his suffering, is what enables Kaladin to swear the fourth oath of the Windrunners.

So the Iriali are on their generational quest to populate every world in the cosmere (I know that’s not exactly it, but you get the idea). Do we know, or have any clues, about what started that journey? Was a specific shard responsible, and if so which one? Could they be connected to Trell?

On 10/3/2018 at 3:15 AM, Jenet said:

I cannot understand how people think Shallan fails to do something impressive.

That's easy. She annoyed them so much they didn't read her portions. Dumb, but easy.

On 9/26/2018 at 6:05 AM, Fanghur Rahl said:

So how does the concept of ‘measures’ fit into it? The way I heard it described by physicists Alan Guth, Max Tegmark, and Sean Carroll, many physicists now think that a multiverse exists, either in the sense of one spacetime that is spatially infinite or the sense of a potentially infinite ‘sea’ of discrete spacetimes (or both). But they said that the problem with it is that in either case predictions are difficult because in an infinite universe, anything physically possible, regardless of how unlikely it is, will occur an infinite number of times, and we don’t know how to meaningfully talk about one thing being any more ‘likely’ than another in this framework. And they said we currently lack the correct ‘measure’ to accurately make useful predictions based on it. Is this just something completely unrelated to ‘infinity’ in the context of this discussion? Or are you just using different terminology? Because that’s why I previously was under the impression that whether one infinity is ‘larger’ than another just depends on the parameters you choose to analyze it by. I’m guessing based on what you said that I’ve misunderstood their point?

I'm a math professor so i just have to point out that physicists are weird. But also, that's a completely different discussion than what we are having. They are talking about making predictions of likelihood (probabilities) in infinite systems, while we are/were talking about the way infinities can have different sizes.

2 minutes ago, HSuperLee said:

I'm personally not prepared to converse on that level of math, but it seems to me you would still hit some trouble when it comes to Leras trapping part of Ruins power so that they were equal. Certainly unless you're subtracting infinite power from an infinite source you can't actually remove enough to make a difference. Is that correct?

For the rational functions view, if we use x for Ruin's power and x-1 for Preservation's power (post creation of Scadrian humans), the limiting value of the ratio is still 1. However, 1000/999 is a bit more than 1, and 10000000/9999999 is too. So there is still a VERY slight power imbalance that could result in the future victory of Ruin without Leras' plans for dealing with the imbalance.

So I'm a bit late seeing this one...which is sad for me since I'm actually a math professor so I could MAYBE have explained about the sizes of infinities earlier. But better late than never.

The different sizes of infinity ARE really different. However, the size differences DON'T happen where our "common sense" says they should.

The cardinality of the natural numbers (1,2,3,...) and the integers (...,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,...) are the same. There are no more integers than there are natural numbers, even though one way of "counting" them would seem to indicate there are twice as many. To see this, you have to order the integers differently than they are on the number line. If you write down all the integers using the pattern 0,1,-1,2,-2,3,-3,... you can see that you can assign a natural number to every integer and never run out...so those infinities are the same size. In other words, 2*infinity is NOT greater than infinity. In fact, there is even a way to assign a natural number to every possible fraction of integers, so even if you add in every rational number, the infinity hasn't grown at all. These levels of infinity are all the "smallest" type of infinity, and are called "countably infinite."

A truly larger infinity is the cardinality of the real numbers between 0 and 1. No matter what numbering scheme you come up with, there are ALWAYS infinitely many values between 0 and 1 that your numbering system misses. So there are truly more numbers in there than there are counting numbers. Both are infinite, but one is infinitely larger than the other.

That said, I don't think the differences in cardinality are how we should think about the different comparative power levels of the Shards. Rather, we should be viewing the power levels of the shards like polynomial functions and their comparative power levels as rational functions. If each of the 16 original shards were similarly powerful, we can consider that power to be x for all of them. So their power is limitless, or it's limit is infinity. However, if we then compare the power of one Shard to another, we get the ratio x/x, which is just 1. But if one person (Sazed) picks up TWO Shards, their powers add together since x+x=2x. Now comparing the power of Harmony to another Shard gives the ration 2x/x, which is 2. So Harmony is twice as powerful as a standard Shard, even though both shards (or all three, depending on how you count Harmony), are infinitely powerful.

Edit: and now I look back more carefully and see Quantus did address the cardinality stuff a little bit. Even describing how we were able to establish the countability of the rational numbers. Anyway, I still like my functional analysis of shard powers better than cardinality so there's still that.

52 minutes ago, Walin said:

In terms of Tanavast and Larsta being of the same language, I think that makes me more uncertain. On the one hand, maybe Tanavast and Cultivation lived in the same place...

Well, they were lovers, so....WoB evidence

39 minutes ago, supersmith said:

I wish for a legal way to not pay taxes. 

Granted. You no longer have any income and thus cannot buy anything either. Your bane is exactly the same as your boon.

I wish this game more closely followed the rules of the Nightwatcher boons and banes instead of the trickery of Genies and Leprechauns.

The key part of your question may be the word usually. Perhaps Cusicech is more fully in the Physical Realm than the Cognitive, a la Windspren.

On 8/31/2018 at 3:56 PM, tmnsquirtle said:

I know this is wild speculation, but I think this story will only have one bondsmith. And if there are more, they won't be working for team Kholin. It just seems too convenient to me for some reason, having all the super-powered perpindicularity-summoning badchulls come from the pool of people that is generally considered the protagonists.

Not all Bondsmiths can generate perpendicularities...in fact, none before Dalinar had that ability. So I doubt any others would be able to create perpendicularities. That doesn't mean there WILL be more, just that you may have an overestimate of the power of additional Bondsmiths.

On 9/1/2018 at 1:57 AM, Ciridae said:

I imagine it a bit like realizing that you have a hand, calling that hand Bob, telling that hand that it likes ice cream and then letting that hand do whatever it wants. 

Seriously missed a chance to make an Addams Family reference there.

15 hours ago, Naurock said:

If I had the option of Shardplate or a Blade I'd personally take the Shardplate. 

Dalinar agrees with you, so that's probably a point in your favor here. Admittedly, this is his opinion during the fight in which he won his blade so he didn't have one yet, but he literally points out that one solid hit from him ends the fight in his favor, while it will take the blade repeated solid hits to cause him problems...it's still not an easy fight thanks to the reach of the blade, and he might not be the best "average shard plate user" to use as a baseline, but he rates plate as the more useful of the two.

6 hours ago, Jace21 said:

With regards to Vathah though, I see no reason why he can't be a Lightweaver, he took to spying exceptionally quickly and could have some artistic talent we have yet to see. I don't think lack of self-awareness is required to be a Lightweaver, only that high-ideal Lightweavers need to be self-aware.

I agree with this, plus Vathah HAS exhibited usage of the surge of illumination already. He creates a disguise for himself when the innkeeper surprises him while he is looking at Shallan's drawing of the old beggar man who kept his area clean.

On 8/29/2018 at 7:54 AM, LadyLameness said:

Nah, @Juanaton he definitely gave it to her. 

They might have left it behind but I doubt it. 

Ah...the drawbacks of getting everything from audiobooks. I missed that, you are right.

47 minutes ago, LadyLameness said:

Hmm, I disagree that if Gavilar had Sja-Anat then he gave her to Eshonai.  If he did, then surely the Alethi would have seen more corrupted spren on the Shattered Plains during the entire war? Szeth was also given a sphere as well.

If Gavilar found Sja-anat, I'm more inclined to agree with OP that she was stuck in Kholinar. 

Depends on what you think the purpose of him giving the sphere to her was for. I don't think he was giving her something to try and bring back her gods, I think he gave it to her as a reminder of the power that the Listeners were denying themselves.

But the corrupted spren that we see in Kholinar are still recognisable as what they once were, where as it's never mentioned that the stormspren look the same (but corrupted) as windspren and Syl notices them several times before the Everstorm but never says anything about them being similar to windspren. 

Though I have no answer to your question about how they had enough stormspren. 

 

 

I don’t think Gavilar gave a sphere to Eshonai at all. He showed it to her, and talked about it, but he only gave it up to Szeth when he was dying.

On 8/27/2018 at 9:17 AM, Li0nhunter said:

I like it, and I’m not gonna blow to hard, but a heart beat means a sleeping unmade? That’s one hell of a stretch.

Particularly when Ashertmarn manifested as a heart...

Perhaps it’s more like control building and platform ...I’ll have to think some more.