Jofwu

Guys that's 9 exclamation points. Can't be coincidence.

I figure we need a forum thread to keep track of opinions shared on Discord. Feel free to edit this post to keep track of the big decisions and to-dos. I don't have time right now to read the entire #summaries channel, so if anybody thinks of something already discussed please chime in. Format Summaries on the main "/summaries" page should be very brief. (one or two paragraphs?) No epigraphs or character lists. Avoid spoilers. Prioritize getting these done first? Each chapter should get a dedicated summary page (like with WoR) with a very thorough chapter summary. (see WoR prologue) Spoilers allowed, but only as a footnote or obscured somehow? Otherwise content should only cover what the reader is currently aware of. more to come...

Well... I've read it about three times. So I could partake. I'm just not sure I'm enough of a con person spend the money and enjoy it. Don't know anybody I would go with. If I did go, it would definitely primarily be to see Brandon, however much I like WoT. Maybe that's just what I'll have to do though... I'm nervous he'll reach GRRM-tier famous before I meet him, and become that much harder to see! Just saying that a simple signing event would be ideal. We really need an east coast or deep south tour.

The lack of Atlanta visits is killing me. (DragonCon is expensive and packed with people, and I feel uncomfortable going to JordanCon primarily to see Brandon) Charlotte would also work! Maybe one day...

I think you're assuming way too much with the Skybreakers. There are a thousand explanations of why he may have killed them, and I tend to think Arclo was being honest. Reread that section (chapter 18). He considers Lift to be an ally, and claims he killed the Skybreakers because they asked for a fight. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not happy with what they are doing (on behalf of Nale). I also think the Scouring didn't happen that long ago. Jasnah talks about it as something that happened in Alethkar's recent past. And Axies says it was "just long enough" for stories and legends to be well known. The Scouring was maybe a couple of generations back- not some ancient event.

Pagerunner's point is that the force changes instantaneously in some cases, but *not* in others. He's basically just looking for a crazy mathematical way to bridge the gap between those observations. It's not a matter of different skill levels. You can pick the same character and find instances of both. He was just saying that the difference between Wax and Vin is more stark.

I think this is maybe the fourth time I've read through White Sand and I just noticed this on the first page of chapter 2. What am I looking at here? Because it looks like a massive VCR or a radio, and I can't unsee it.

I suspect this is what Brandon was thinking when he created the magic system. The fault in the logic is the magnitude of the forces involved. If you push a coin away from your body so fast that it accelerates to lethal speeds, you would absolutely feel something. This is what the recoil of firing a gun is. Though it's potentially even worse, because a gun only "pushes" as the bullet leaves the barrel. An Allomancer could potentially continue pushing (and feeling that recoil force) for the duration of the coin's flight. It's confusing perhaps because it takes very little force to push something as small as a coin. You're not limited by how hard you can push, but merely by how fast your muscles can extend. By how much work it takes to move the arm itself. Even if you extend your arm as fast as possible, you're applying very little force to the coin. That same force applied to a wall would not knock you over. It makes more sense if you replace the coin with something that takes a measurable amount of work to push. Imagine lifting a 5-lb object into the air slowly. Now imagine you try to throw that object into the air as high as you can. The second takes a lot more force. If I push you sideways with 5 pounds of force, it probably won't knock you over. If I shove you as hard as I can it probably will. Pushing a coin lightly across a table is the first case. Hurling it at the speed of sound is the second.

My degree is in Civil. Practically speaking (in the industry) MEs generally handle think moving parts and CEs handle things like utilities, earthwork, drainage, etc. Structural Engineers make buildings and bridges. At this point, most people say, "So like an architect?" which makes me squirm. Architects worry about things like building layout, function, aesthetic, etc. SEs are the ones who actually make it work. We decide how big this beam needs to be, what style of bracing to use there, or how many bolts to use in that connection. Architects are more well known because they're dealing with the parts people actually see. Nobody thinks about structural engineers until something collapses.

I'm a structural engineer, so if anyone is trying to build a tower... Kerbal Space Program has also taught me a lot about orbital mechanics and rockets. I suppose that's all captured by "classical physics".

Just something to think about... Compared to the Words of Radiance summaries, is there anything that ought to be done differently? Summaries that are longer/shorter, anything different with the character lists, etc.? Just a question that came to mind...

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To address the OP... I'm unsure about modern fabrials being related to the Shards. The short version of the argument is that these fabrials appear to be very "scientific". They observe and research a natural phenomenon, and then create a "mechanical" device which harnesses that natural phenomenon. As far as I can see, all of the components predated the Shards on Roshar. So while I could be convinced otherwise, I tend to assume that these work naturally without some tweak made by a Shard. In any case, I feel more strongly about the Old Magic. I definitely think that one predates the Shards. Khriss doesn't know what to make of it and Brandon lists it off to the side as something other. And the name itself? All signs point to something very ancient. Nightwatcher's current association doesn't mean the Old Magic is "of" Cultivation. I agree with your classification of ancient fabrials. I have something to add, but it's Oathbringer spoilers: I'm more hesitant to make assumptions about the "void" magic. I AM very skeptical that the actions of the Voidbringers are a case of Voidbinding. But I'm also skeptical that spren-monsters (e.g. thunderclasts) are a case of Voidbinding. Honestly, I don't know what to make of Voidbinding. I can definitely see how it may be a twisted form of Surgebinding. But I don't really like the idea that Voidbringer Powers, as you call them, are related to Cultivation. Because if we're going with the theme of "Odium took existing magic and corrupted it", I don't know how to trace this one back to Cultivation. I've theorized before that the Forms of Power are totally natural. Just listener bonds with voidspren rather than normal spren. The Everstorm-bringing song doesn't seem any more magical to me than the Rhythms. So I'm afraid to attribute to a Shard. I think that spren are the focus on Roshar. At least in most cases? The gem type/color is definitely suspicious... But that oddity seems to be specifically related to soulcasting. So I'm betting it's not right to call gem type a focus. Maybe it's a second focus, if that's possible, in a particular case. Otherwise it's just an oddity of how soulcasting works. Not enough to sway me from the simple answer that works 90% of the time. Edit: Oh, and a comment about Surgebinding... One notable aspect of the magic system is the growth that we see in the surgebinder and the spren. The surgebinder seems to undergo development of some kind. You could attribute this to the oaths and the structure that was set up... But it's odd to me that the oaths come so naturally. And even more interesting is the effect of the bond on the spren. They willingly enter these relationships because of the growth they receive. These both point at Cultivation, to me.

I mean, if he decided to write a biography about Abraham Lincoln, his usually publishers aren't going to pick it up and I don't think he could convinced publishers of another genre to pick it up just because he's popular "over there".

Some of them are certainly already under contract with a publisher. But I doubt the ones further down the road have already been worked out (Nightblood, Elantris sequels, Silverlight...). I think he's definitely reached a status where he can write pretty much whatever he wants (within reason) and somebody will publish it.

Challenge: Rewrite Brandon's books as a (brief) children's story! I'm not much of a writer, but I'll start off with a poor attempt. Curious what others can come up with! Elantris:

I disagree with this. Listeners and spren were on Roshar before Honor arrived, and I see no reason to assume they nature changed significantly after.

I'm pretty sure the dates for Vin are correct. She was 16, and turns 17 part of the way through.

I really like Zmann's theory here. Has this been expounded elsewhere? A long time passes after the last Desolation. Things start happening and the Radiants and/or Heralds are wondering if another Desolation is on its way. We know that the Radiants were fighting "demons" on the front lines when the Recreance happened, just as is described in the Melishi epigraph. So what do you do? You short circuit the full Desolation. Knock out the ability of the Voidbringers to come into being and the Desolation can't happen. Right? Maybe? Worth a shot. Only the realmatic trick that makes this possible will ALSO destroy every existing Radiant bond. (for reasons we can only speculate on) How do you get ALL the Radiants to break their oaths? You convince them (perhaps mistakenly) that doing so will prevent the Desolation from going forward. Perhaps under the direction of Ishi, given some things said about him in Edgedancer. The Radiants who show up at Feverstone Keep are just donating their weapons to the cause ("Here, you'll need these to clean up when we're gone."). It's not perfect. What about the Skybreakers? Perhaps some small number of Radiants left behind wouldn't make a difference. So Nale and the Skybreakers (perhaps at a smaller size) are charged with preventing the return of Surgebinders. @Blightsong, I think the existence of some normal Listeners is a mistake. They turned MOST of them into Parshmen, but some escaped that fate. (maybe they weren't present... maybe they took on dullform to escape their fate...) As for why breaking the nahel bonds was necessary... We can only guess. But realmatics can be crazy stuff. And I don't think it necessarily conflicts with the heart of your own theory here. It would still require the Bondsmiths to have some active role in the process. It's just that the broken bonds are necessary in that process, for some reason.

I'm also curious if we need to make a list of pages that really need to be updated before Oathbringer drops. Either because it will make subsequent updating easier or because people will be searching for things while reading the new book.

I can't think of any examples where an Allomancer is racing a coin, but I'm highly skeptical they can achieve the same acceleration that they Push objects with. Coins seem to achieve the speed of early bullets within a meter or two. Let's say 300 m/s in one meter, which is probably a very low estimation. That's an average acceleration of 4500g. Allomancers can't match that. They'd die, even if it were brief. That's only a 900N average force (200 lb), by the way, if we assume a 20 gram coin. The force has to drop off with distance. So if the force of a Push against a stationary coin at some distance (say 10 m) can knock you over, then the force at point-blank range should be pretty high. I expect that they can actually push with a force quite a bit stronger than what I've calculated above. Coins could probably reach much higher speeds without drag. Humans can reach speeds high enough for our purposes since they don't get into significant drag. To hop 30 meters up (10 stories) an 80kg person uses 24 kJ of energy. That requires a constant force of 2400N of Pushing over 10 meters. Assuming a linear drop down to zero (because of distance/velocity increasing) that's an initial force of 4800N (1080 lb). About five times higher than what I calculated before. Seems like the right ballpark to me. An average force of 3000N on a 20g coin over 0.5m will accelerate it to 387m/s. You can push a coin at such high forces without falling over simply because their duration is so brief. The coin accelerates to a high velocity very fast (and gets further away) so that high force isn't sustained long enough to knock you over. Like a gun recoil. Remember that a person doesn't necessarily have to be Pushing the whole time. Kelsier kills people with coins in relatively close range fighting without being thrown backwards himself. The implication is that the coins reach deadly speed early on and then he "lets go". Drag slows things down, but counteracting it isn't always necessary if you give them a high top speed to begin with. Vin wouldn't have fallen over if she had known to let go of the coin after accelerating it fast enough early on. But she was new to the powers and tried accelerating it as fast as she could the whole way.

@Idealistic Mistborn, your equations aren't wrong, but I think you are making a common mistake in interpreting what they actually mean. When the coin is pushed against a wall, Vin is suddenly thrown back. This implies the magnitude of the force of her push has suddenly increased. Pagerunner is trying to explain why that happens. @cometaryorbit, I think the distaste for "anchor quality" (for me at least) is that it's so amorphous. Take that last example where two people pushing opposite on a coin feel an increase in force. Why do they suddenly get pushed back more firmly just because someone else is pushing on it? You can wave your hand and say "the anchor quality has changed", perhaps because of some cognitive matter. But that's not very satisfying when you're trying to explain the physics. I think the explanation would need to go further: defining what affects "anchor quality" and how. @Pagerunner, I still like that notion that force is proportional to e^-v. I think it introduces an important concept that the books are awkwardly silent on, but it's definitely the most elegant explanation I've heard for the discontinuity in force.

I suspect fabrial magic goes WAY deeper than what we've seen with modern "fabrials". They're probably like electrical circuits compared to computers.

I wanted to back up what @Pagerunner is saying here. This seems to be a common misunderstanding of the physics involved. I can push a wall with 1 pound of force just as I can push a wall with 100 pounds of force. One I will hardly notice. The other will require me to brace myself. The exact same thing is true of a ball rather than a wall. Or a person or the air. You are imagining a soft, steady push on a basketball and a full strength push on a wall. It's not an even comparison. When Vin pushes a coin into a wall, why would she suddenly increase the magnitude of her pushing? If pushing the free coin with X Newtons didn't knock her over, pushing it against a wall with X Newtons won't knock her over.

Willshapers unite!