Djarskublar

Pretty much. This is basically the only reason that will get me to put down a book, normally. It's the reason I dislike Harry Potter and the like. Bringing Sun Tzu into this? I will say, in single combat this doesn't always hold true. It is very similar to chess in that regard. One person has a higher probability of winning, but it isn't guaranteed if the skill level is similar. Spur of the moment decisions and random chance make a difference. Naw, they ambush a goblin by a river. The ground by it was slick and muddy, and one of the characters slips in it. They also force it up against the river so it can't escape. I guess by terrain I more mean footing.

The real reason? It's easier to keep the characters from breaking the plot by being overpowered. I mean, the Force is already a huge advantage, and having swords that they use with extreme finesse (canon wise, anyway. I used to fence, and I can confidently say that fight choreography in media is terrible most of the time). Also, I imagine that with all the restrictions placed on them, the Jedi in charge just subconsciously wanted to get up close and personal when they kill something... Venting, you know? That joke aside, they do seem like the kind of people whose philosophy considers close combat, especially with the 'sword,' to be more honorable. Besides that, if they have a gun, they can get around their most important weakness. If you surround a Jedi at a fair distance, they will likely get hit before they can reach you simply because there are hard limits to how fast you can deflect incoming fire. If they can shoot back, you are in more trouble. The main weakness of Jedi is their relatively limited mobility compared to the sheer numbers they are frequently asked to face. Limitations are better than more powers, after all . Dogfights, on the other hand, are a much more even playing field. That first saber fight between Vader and Kenobi was laughable. Their props were delicate, so they couldn't do more than tap the lights they were using together gently. It has gotten progressively better to the point where the Clone Wars is actually palatable. I could go on for a long time on fight choreography, but I can say that I have only ever seen one fight sequence in any medium that truly impressed me. The second episode of the Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash anime has a truly superb fight scene. It is a little gory as fair warning, but just some blood, really. It has everything that most fights lack. The 2 sides are actually trying to kill each other, rather than the bad guys jumping on the heroes swords, and the heroes inexperience is plainly shown; terrain is clearly considered since one character slips in the mud; the slashes are actually trying to hit the other party and the attacks actually make sense, rather than just hitting swords together; and, from an entertainment perspective, the best part of it is that it's intense -- you can feel the stakes and emotions of people forced to kill for the first time just to be able to eat. Many things just kind of sweep the trauma of killing for the first time under the rug to get on with the story, and that bothers me on a fundamental level. My only criticism of the sequence is that they don't all rush in at once and have done with it, especially at one part, but it was done better than many fights where people take turns attacking since the fledgling mage casts a couple of spells at the enemy while others kept them basically in place. That turned out much longer than I was hoping... *realizes that this may be one of the longest posts in the thread and feels mildly guilty* TL;DR is that they can't use blasters from an authorial perspective, since with the Force helping them be more accurate and having a Lightsaber to deflect incoming fire, they would lose a lot of their important limitations.

Yeah I just didn't want to go on and say 'oh I'll take that' and sub out of the blue with no go ahead. I'm in for this week with edits on last time's flash, plus another piece. I'll actually crit this time since I wanted to get a feel for it from reading crits of stuff I've actually read. I fully intend to be here for the long haul.

There is one issue with this approach. Bendalloy stores calories, not nutrition in general. You couldn't survive on tapping alone, you would experience vitamin deficiency. The ships would need to carry supplements. Those are light, though. Now I'm imagining a fast food joint where you literally pay, touch a medallion on the wall, tap till you're full, and leave. That would be sooo fast.

Welcome to the Shard. I assume you have been a lurker for at least a bit. I think you could just look up some of his signings and such because he talks a lot about his writing process in those. They are easily the most common questions asked of him. To actually be helpful, I would discuss how unique his worldbuilding is, as @Figberts suggested. For his life, I would be sure to mention that he wrote 13 books before he got any published, and the one that got published was the 6th-- Elantris. Maybe mention that even though some of the books are pretty large, they are well paced so that you hardly notice the length for how well he sucks you in. I would mention how many books he has published (I don't know the exact number, and it would depend a bit on how you count them).

@Rockobar My question is why you felt the need to post this. I don't really care what you send to Brandon. It made for an interesting read anyway, but I don't think that posting something that I think should have been more private between you and Brandon is fully appropriate. I won't judge for it since that is your prerogative, but that was my first thought on seeing this, since it wasn't just a question you asked that he answered. Beyond that, your language was confrontational and demanding. If I was Brandon, I would just throw your letter in the trash after reading the first couple paragraphs simply because your tone was rude. You are projecting your personal feelings on to Brandon and demanding that he write to conform to your view, rather than allow the artistry you respect by simply pointing out things you think are flawed for him to think about. On another point, I disagree with many of your premises and points. If it was a choice between my family dying and the rest of humanity dying, or even the number of people in my family plus one, I would choose to lose my family. Storms, I would pull the trigger myself. Those 6 billion people you are willing to kill are no more or less valuable than the people in my family. I will take the choice that results in less loss of life. It is better that I personally suffer the grief than many others grieving over their families that I could have saved. Even though that would certainly be emotionally traumatic for me, the net suffering is lower this way. On your points about having sex in books, I partially disagree with you. I agree that it shouldn't be avoided entirely, but you don't need anything graphic. Discussion of sex is fine, but showing people having sex is not something that fits Brandon's aesthetic. Children read these books, and adding in erotic scenes really isn't appropriate for that audience. You have also taken your examples pretty selectively. In Mistborn, you criticize Elend and Vin for not having sex that you know of before they are married. Beyond that, in Mistborn there are entire discussions about the nobles raping skaa women, and it is one of the central moral issues in the book. I think that fulfills your requirement. I completely disagree with pretty much all of your other points entirely. Elantris had many religiously devoted people. Dilaf was extremely zealous, and he didn't come out on top of anything other than the pile of monk bodies. Hrathen held true to his beliefs to the end, and was honestly one of the best villains I have ever read. My only regret with that was that he was unable to express his reasons to Sarene. Also, your near complete dismissal of religion is frankly more a sign of ignorance than sophistication. Even if you think it is only a social construct, it still had many more effects than just controlling STIs. Religions are integral to humanity. Wars are fought over them, science is propelled by them, and statistically speaking, people with religious beliefs are happier. To provide examples, conflicts over Israel are partially over religion, astronomy is what it is today due to studying the stars because of religious belief, and statistics speak for themselves. All of those points don't even mention whether there is any form of deity or not. What your and my religious beliefs are is irrelevant to the discussion. I think his handling of death has been quality so far. He is highly aware of the difficulties around character death, and has talked about this subject pretty extensively. Part of the reason fewer people die during the body of his books is because most of the important action happens at the end. It isn't that there isn't anything going on before then, but there is less action and more character development and positioning for the climax. If someone needs to die to set that up, Brandon will kill them. If nobody needs to die, then adding in more deaths would only lessen the impact of important deaths. He has expressed concern that his resurrection of certain characters will cheapen death like Marvel has done. All in all, welcome to the Shard, but keep it casual. Also, I have been ninja'd by Oversleep. I think this thread really should be done now, before we end up in all out flame war.

That moment when you realize there must be Sanderfans at Ford. Edit: since some people don't spot it easily, it's on the right half.

I could re-sub the stuff I subbed this last week so people can see the edits. I don't really care either way, so only if those two slots stay open.

I agree with @Knight Oblivion that Breaths aren't an individual quanta of Investiture. For the same reason that there are different levels of quality with Breaths, and the best example of that being Divine Breaths. Another reason is that Breaths in an awakened object wear out over time so the item eventually runs down. Those aren't traits individual quanta would ever be able to express. And you are still insisting that there is something important with Nalthis' radiation. That simply doesn't make sense from the text. It uses the properties in the object drained that give it color as fuel, not the light that is hitting it. The reason higher Heightenings drain it to white is that it more fully draws out the color giving properties until they are all gone and it reflects all light. The light provides evidence of what is being drained, it isn't the thing being drained itself. If it was just using the light, the object would go black, or to be more specific, it would be 'invisible' since there would be no light coming off it. I agree that there are things inherent to the various Shardworlds that influence the foci of their planet, but I do not agree with all this stuff about Sel's ground being extra invested and such stuff. There just isn't any evidence for it. You are trying to add additional causes to things that are already understood well with existing mechanics. All magic on Sel comes from the Dor (barring the possibility of some entirely different magic left over from pre-Shattering). It all comes from the same system. The ground has nothing to do with it, geography and human constructs like borders have to do with it. The city of Elantris, for example, would function exactly the same if it was levitated a foot off the ground. Remove some of the buildings, however, and you are in trouble. The planets matter to foci, yes. They do not matter as much to how individual systems manifest. That is the domain of Shards, and appears to still be somewhat random, if I remember correctly.

Ach I went back and re-read your post, and I see now that I misinterpreted one of your answers to one of Confused's questions. I thought you had implied that with your response, but apparently I wasn't reading it properly. I was probably influenced by what he had said before, so I was thinking in that context. I do think @Confused is perhaps confused on this idea, but I'm not certain yet. On the subject of conservation, it definitely matters to your model. It is something that any truly comprehensive model needs to at least attempt to reconcile. My personal theory about it is that when the object affected by the magic would feel the equivalent of entropy or friction or whatever, it doesn't lose energy, it loses Investiture. That was a horrible way to put it, but an example might illustrate the point. When Kaladin Lashes a ball to the sky, it experiences resistant forces. As the ball just leaks Light anyway since it isn't a perfect container, it loses some that way. The ball should also be heating up due to friction, but my guess is that it doesn't and rather loses some of the Light in it to fricative forces. I don't have any idea how accurate that it, but it is my personal theory until I see something better.

It is 2 a.m. here, so I will just get this out there while the idea is fresh, and then I can flesh it out and find sources tomorrow when I have more time and am a little more sane. My idea is that Roshar is actually the (relatively) normal planet, foci wise, and the other two multi-Shardic planets we have seen are exceptions. The thing is, both Scadrial and Sel are exceptions to the rule. Scadrial was created by two Shards working together, and this theory guesses that they deliberately chose to have the same foci for their systems, and feruchemy just used the same focus since it is a magic that results from the Shards being there and uses the same focus as the other two it is made of (kinda like a resonance, actually...). Sel only has one focus-- programmable homeland symbols-- because the Dor is effectively one Shard now and is stuck in the CR. I hypothesize that before Odium came and ruined the fun, there were actually multiple foci on Sel depending on the specific system. They were probably highly form dependent foci as they are now, but the homeland stipulation came from the Dor getting stuffed into the CR so that location mattered. Other planets are governed by one Shard or no Shard, and the focus is only related to one system (? maybe not Taldain, haven't read White Sand beyond the excerpt in AU), so there is only one focus. This is the normal way of things. On Roshar, on the other hand, there are 3 Shards, each with their own systems. Plus one of the Shards is broken and melded into the Storm and mixed with some of the power of another Shard, so it is still over-complicated, just more normal. Surgebinding is a combination magic of Honor/Cultivation governed by the spren of both, so it only has one focus in the bonds. Honorblade Surgebinding was presumably originally powered directly by Honor, so it didn't need a focus beyond having the blade. Fabrial science, on the other hand, has its own focus as a completely separate system. This focus is similar to the metals or Dor forms in that the shape and gem type of the fabrial matters, though I could also see an argument for it being related to the spren trapped in the gems. Presumably voidbinding either continues the bond-with-spren trend, or has a completely separate focus because it is Odium's system. All the systems on Roshar, if I am right, should have a similar yet different focus. Whereas other planets only have one focus due to exceptional circumstances. The general category of the focus seems to be influenced by the native planet, not the Shard. R/P made Scadrial, though, so they could effectively choose exactly what its focus was.

Alrighty @Confused, I have gained a greater understanding of your theory, and am more ready to say that it is within the realm of possibility (but not the Spiritual Realm :p). I have a few caveats to this, though, and I still disagree with it fundamentally. The first is that I disagree with both you and @Yata about the form of raw Investiture. I think that all Investiture has Intent attached to it. Period. Regardless of the Realm it resides in. Even the bits of Investiture from Adonalsium that are still floating around unattached to a Shard have Intent attached to them. That Intent is just complete, so it behaves essentially the same as so called 'blank' Investiture. The Shards are the way they are because the huge quantity of Investiture they are composed of have a driving Intent. This Intent isn't some metaphor applied by in-world scholars, it is hard wired into the Investiture they constitute. Even knowledgeable individuals such as Hoid and Leras/Ati use the names of the Shards as is, and that is compelling evidence. I would argue that the individual quanta of Investiture Shards hold have an individual, slightly varied Intent that add up to whatever intent the Shard holds, similar to a rainbow having many bands of specific colors, but some of them being generally categorized as 'red' or 'green.' In this metaphor, Adonalsium's Investiture would be white, composed of all colors. If this wasn't the case, then the Shards themselves wouldn't have an Intent, and the Investiture would gain an Intent specific to how/why it is used when brought into use by mortals. I.e. you could burn steel, and you would get Investiture flowing through you that matches your Intent in burning the metal, rather than Preservation Investiture. So in essence, all Investiture is, as you put it, Unique Investiture. To use canon terminology, that Investiture has Intent. Please use canon terminology whenever possible, when you start using other stuff, it just confuses discussion. This is one of the main reasons your theory is so difficult to grasp. Your explanations are accurate, but not precise, if you know the more technical definitions of the two.) You are misquoting or misunderstanding here. The first quote is about external vs internal, whereas the second is about end-positive/neutral/negative, which are two different things. External systems are powered by something other than your self, while internal systems are powered by your self. End-nets are more about how much Investiture is in your given system at the end of the reaction. End positive systems end with more energy in them than they started with. Allomancy is end-positive within the system of the Allomancer. Feruchemy is clearly end-neutral, ignoring imperfect conversion efficiencies. Hemalurgy is end-negative because the amount of Investiture that is in the spike and spiked person is less than the Investiture that constituted that trait in the spiked person originally. So all end-positive systems will be external because the power has to come from somewhere, but end-neutral/negative systems can be either internal or external, and it makes no difference mechanically which it is, since all we are doing is considering a system's energy. Think of them like D&D alignments. They are similar, but different. Another thing that I disagree with is the physical forms of Investiture. You speak of Stormlight and the mists as if they aren't Investiture, but just some gas you consume like a metal to Connect to the relevant Shard. This is not the case. That is what metals do in Allomancy, yes, but the mists are the power of Preservation manifest in the Physical Realm. You use the mists to fuel you directly, which is why they aren't constrained to being used for any individual power. Lerasium is the same, but because it is rigid in a solid form, it can only be used in a specific manner. It comes pre-filtered to a specific effect. I think it can be seen pretty plainly from the text that Stormlight is Investiture, not some gas you draw in to Connect to Investiture. That is why it can store in gemstones. That is why, when it leaks, it leaks as Stormlight, rather than being consumed like metals would be and leaking something else. When Light is stored in your body, it just generally makes you better, but when you Surgebind, you have to push that Light through the filter of the Nahel bond into some specific form (or whatever the focus is on Roshar...). I think that covers everything that bothered me with that post, but I may be back later. Live long and prosper _\\//

My guess is that the Light would leak from a metalmind just like anything else. They aren't a perfect container either, though you might be able to get a better one than a gem. Plus, they can most likely hold far more than a gem. And your super unlikely situation is more so since you can't convert one type into another that easily, if at all. I have asked about using Allomancy/Feruchemy to do some whacky things on Roshar, but Brandon has said that it would require Light since it has the Intent necessary. This wouldn't apply to fueling powers as much as what I was suggesting, since I was asking about 'manufacturing' spren to bond with, but it would still be an issue. To clarify, you can use Harmony's Investiture to power Surges, but you can't use Harmony's power to make Stormlight. Harmony already has the mists, so it probably can't get another gaseous form.

See, these parasites really interest me, mostly in idle thoughts on how to hack them into giving abilities they shouldn't, or to creatures they shouldn't. I wonder, specifically, if you could genetically engineer them to survive in humans and grant them abilities, among other things. In the past I have also posted thoughts on whether a kandra could replicate the features necessary to host the parasites and get something from it, though I haven't asked Brandon about it yet, since it was after the Arcanum Tour that I thought of it.

I know it's ridiculous that I'm subbing this now, but, well... life happened and I couldn't do anything creative in the time I had to think about this stuff. I just barely finished editing based on the peer review I had on Monday morning. Feel free to rip it to shreds, I'm not particularly attached to any of it.

Did you catch the Norse reference?

See, I don't really see where you are coming from. The one sentence asking why they liked it was somewhat attacking, but the rest was me detailing what I thought of the books. I made no mention of the other person at all. I disagreed with their taste and told them why. I am pretty vocal about this sort of thing, so if it came across as a personal attack, I apologize, but looking at it a day later, I still see no reason for it to be seen as such. If anything, they called me out by asking how I dared dislike Beyonders. I told them. Besides that, has anybody else finished this yet? Did you like it?

I recently read Half Upon a Time, and it is perhaps the most amusing thing I've ever read. The main character lives in a village where everyone is training to become heroes to rescue princesses, but the MC is totally disillusioned with the likelihood and reasonability of it ever happening. Of course, a damsel in distress does appear, and he is the only one smart enough to help her. The first 20 pages or so made my sides ache with how much the MC mocked the tropes of fairytales. The third book floored me. It referenced Norse mythology so seamlessly in a book that was a Snow White remake that it took me a minute to fully realize what happened. It was an obvious reference to me, but I can see it would be impossible to catch if you don't know what was going on. It wasn't necessary to understand the plot, but it was a really interesting touch, and made this series one of my new favorites.

I was legitimately asking for @Captains Domon's opinion. Though I guess it did come off petulant. To answer your point, @Sunbird, I have no issue with middle-grade books in general, though the quality standards for them tend to be lower. I read Alcatraz, after all, and loved it. The story doesn't need to be gritty, it just needs to have a base level of believablity, which Beyonders did not have for me. There is a difference between a middle-grade story and a story where the villain's actions make no sense when considered from their perspective, or even outside it. A good example of a decent middle-grade book would be Slathbog's Gold. While I would criticize it for making the MC too powerful, I wouldn't voice that very loudly. The villains are still really tough, so there is a sense of danger. Plus, the side characters could actually die, so that adds to the tension. The characters have a good chemistry with each other, and interesting life philosophies. Beyond that, the book avoids my most hated issue, where the characters are really powerful, and then rarely use their power because it would break the plot otherwise. Examples of that would be Harry Potter or Leven Thumps. Slathbog's Gold felt almost like a D&D game with very high level characters. My issue with Beyonders is that until the girl learns magic (in the third book, mind), both of the MCs are ridiculously underpowered. They are literally just two kids. No magic sword, no special powers, nothing to make them worth the food they consume in that world. And yet, they are a thorn in the side of the villain for so long. And even with all this, they never really have anything go wrong for them. The only thing I really felt that they truly accomplished for themselves was the guy beating the vizier or whatever in the puzzle game to get one of the syllables. Beyond that, they were shoehorned in, lucked out, or someone else did all the real work to get pretty much everything else done. There were also a couple instances where their normal life skills came in handy, but were nothing unique, like the ability to run across the boiling mud-lake. The MCs could have not been present and the story could have been basically the same for the first two books if that one musician guy had started the quest instead of them. Beyond that, the MCs were sooo cookie-cutter. They had no character quirks. They didn't even have much moral dilemma beyond 'do I have to be the one to do this?' for about 5 seconds per book. There was not really any 'holy crap I might die, this might not be worth it' or 'hey this villain does have at least a tiny moral gray area, so is it really for the best to get rid of him? There is law and order after all.' They were, in a word, boring. The threat of not being able to go home was their only motivator beyond altruism, and that somehow pushed them forward past everything they knew. With Fablehaven, on the other hand, the characters are interesting. Seth is a total goofball, and Kendra is basically his other half. The characters have depth that I just didn't see in Beyonders. Beyond that (pun intended), the characters have power and protections, and they use them to their advantage. They rarely luck their way out of anything, and mostly get through things with cleverness and good use of their resources. The Beyonders just run away all the time and let other people do all the fighting. They were literally just vehicles to get prophecies rolling and getting the resistance off its collective butt. It was highly disappointing. I feel I have thoroughly made my case. I would like to see a similar reply on why Beyonders was good from someone who liked it. BUT! This thread isn't about Beyonders, it's about Dragonwatch, and holy cow, it will definitely be worth a re-read or two, which is very rare for me. I even re-read the climax scene again right after finishing the book because it was just that good. Dragonwatch spoilers:

I don't know how many books are planned, probably 5 again, at a guess. And how could you like Beyonders? I finished the first two, but only got ~100 pages into the third before I just read the last 20 and put it down. The first book was okay, I couldn't really see anything to recommend it, but I didn't hate it either. The second book started to really strain plausibility, and by the third book, I was done. I couldn't believe it any more. Everything happening was just too improbable. By any stretch of the imagination, they should have lost at some point, or at least had more of them die. Jason only survived by sheer luck and because his opponents were too honorable to just finish him. The duel with billiard balls? Um, no. That should never have been a thing. Through the whole thing, I was just thinking 'why doesn't the evil king just zap them?' He is certainly powerful enough to do it, he just doesn't bother. Dragonwatch (and Fablehaven, for that matter) were much better. The characters were in real trouble, and were powerful and clever enough to get out of it. There was luck involved, but it wasn't constant sheer luck. Dragonwatch made large strides in character development that I never really saw in Beyonders. I was very concerned that it would be bad, but I was very pleasantly surprised. There will definitely be a sequel, I just don't know how many. I would have like Dragonwatch better if it had been 50-100 pages longer, but it was okay as is. The end was really awesome, but required one improbability that I didn't like, though it made the story have more potential side plots in the future, which is good.

This came out the other day, and it was pretty good. I'd give it an 8/10. I felt that it was a little fast paced, but I was pleased by it. It returned to the same characters, which was good. Without spoiling anything, Seth was waaay less annoying in this book. His character growth made him much more likeable by the end. I always liked him, but now he has the awesome without the pure stupidity. At least, by the end he does. There were some plot gimmicks that didn't sit well with me at the end, but the story was good and well foreshadowed. Overall good stuff. I was especially happy since I didn't even finish the Beyonders stuff. It was crap. I even got to read it a day early since my grandmother is a librarian and let me read it the day before she stocked it in the library.

This is slightly off. The difference between mandated and blank Investiture is the source, not the world. Preservation's Investiture has a Preservation Intent/mandate. On the other hand, the pool we see in Sixth of the Dusk is actually ambient Investiture from when Adonalsium created the world, and therefor has 'Adonalsium' Intent. Since Mr A was complete, this Investiture is effectively blank of any Intent/mandate. I am okay with the concept that there are blank Investitures on most of the world that people could tap into, though I will be highly skeptical of any particular example, since they idea doesn't have a ton of evidence. The exception to this is Scadrial, since it was created by Ruin and Preservation, so it doesn't have any blank Investiture from pre-Shattering creation. This made me laugh, since I'm pretty sure I have been around longer than at least one or two of them. I looked at profiles, and it looks like I joined only a month after Yata. Spool has only been around a year or so. I was just a lurker for a long time, then posted a few things and went inactive for a year or so, and that combined with not posting just a few sentences frequently made it so I have a lower post count. I have some interesting thoughts on the final battle in HoA that I really should go back and necro, since I dug up the thread recently and was horrified by how bad of a case I made. Note: I'm not bragging here or stating anything about our relative cosmere knowledge, it was just amusing.

Sounds good. If it doesn't work out for this week, it's not the end of the world, but it would be mighty convenient. I have a peer review on Monday, so I was going to do some edits based on that before submitting. I was hoping it would all go nicely like that (this may be a pipe dream, though). It's cool if I need to wait a week first because then I can get some critiquing in and see more of how it all works before submitting something, so either way works for me.

New guy, and Silk hasn't seen my PM by now, but I'd like to submit for the 20th if possible. I have some flash fiction for my creative writing class that I would like to get some feedback on. On that subject, is it okay to put in multiple pieces of said flash fiction as long as I'm below the word count limit? It will probably be under 3k words. I'll stick around for a while at least, since I have plans for a mystery novel as well.

What did one catquisitor say to the other? Meow. Anybody want a cookie? Get your full daily value of iron with just one! Ugh I can't think of anything else decent, only truly terrible puns.