Mr. Staccato

You have been abducted by the Beast and now live in his castle to serve as his Belle. Homework is sent from your school to you via carrier pigeon and the living, breathing furniture and cleaning implements answer your papers and do your math homework for you. Voila! You now have less homework to do! (P.S. You might want to tell off the bottle of gin who insists on answering your math questions for you because he can't count for the love of crap. (Because he's drunk - no duh.)) Oh, and also, your toes have been Awakened and they have nightly dalliances with the teapot and her son when you're sleeping. (I'm high, thank you.) I wish for the stupidest thing a man could possibly wish for.

This sounds more like my mom when she's taking inventory of the kitchen... By the by, I was genuinely headbanging my table while reading the chorus and oh my God I heard Taylor Swift singing the words 'cause the Mistings gonna burn, burn, burn, burn and I was having a moment of complete, unabashed lack of self-awareness after that. You just made my day~

If you knew they were coming, would you still bother waking up?

You might have started a new tradition here... *I feel bad for the future generation of would-be sharders* Hi @Starla! And welcome to the Shard - oh, and, I apologize for the spike sticking out of you.

You have magically become an expert in making palindromes. Also, the Nightwatcher applauds you for your responsible use of her powers in settling the wish dispute - and also the savage burns you have inflicted to your fellow sharders in the process. So she takes it easy on you. Your bane is that you now think that the latest Fantastic Four movie was awesome - and your friends are undoubtedly judging you for your poor taste in movies I wish for a statue of myself to magically appear somewhere in New Zealand.

Oh shoot I forgot about that rule. Thanks for flagging me down here. Anyway that little bit about slatrification being 'wildly different' from the rest of their powers is helpful enough for my theories I guess. Oh and slatter sounds like a plausible origin for the word slatrify which is cool too. Thanks @Weltall!

So burn them. Burn them all. They aren't people - less than dogs. If they wish martyrdom, let them. Let them sing their blasted songs. Yearn for freedom? Settle for fire. Tonight Rome burns with my permission- For I am the only One.

I see I'm too late for an intervention here. Huh. Oh well, welcome aboard @Zennix!

A question for all those who've read the prose: was slatrification ever explicitly stated to be part of the sandmastery magic system? I mean, yes, I've read mentions of people saying sand masters were able to slatrify but what I don't understand is that is slatrification supposed to be an off-shoot of sandmastery, a natural skill you learn to adapt the better you are at mastering, or is it a different but related system of magic to it (like allomancy is to feruchemy)? For all we know, the two are different and the reason why the skill is so rare among sandmasters is because it's not actually possible to do so with just the one magic system. Also, just to put this out there: does anyone know the etymology of the world slatrify? We might get clues from there, so, yeah.

Granted. Your delusions of grandeur have come to pass, and afterwards they have also subsequently passed away. You can no longer consume PBJ sandwiches or any other one of its variants. I wish for a voodoo doll.

@Left Oh... well. Gee. (This is what I get for not bothering to read up on earlier posts~) Now that I think about it that actually sounds more plausible. Excuse me while I go find myself a bare wall to bang my head against.

Oh my God, you're mom is awesome. Me however - I'm currently playing ObsCure, ObsCure: The Aftermath, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, an english translation of Nanashi no Game on the DS, and as soon as I'm done with any of those I'm going to go back to playing the original Fatal Frame and maybe Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. If none of you hear from me in the next couple of days, then that's probably because I've suffered from a heart attack or a caffeine crash of epic proportions.

We haven't really come across each other on the site threads but I distinctly remember getting a very humble, self-content vibe from one of your posts and I thought it was kinda cool. Also your signature is awesome (pure magic!) and your sharder title is adorable.

"Definitions are important - if only so we could have something to throw crap at." -From some sitcom that I cannot be bothered to look up at the moment And also... *read the sigs underneath* Hahahahaha.

Well, to be fair, I think if ever the true nature of the voidbringers comes to light, some of the higher-ups in Alethkar might order for one. In fact, I am almost CERTAIN that at some point in the series someone is going to end up saying "Egad! Are you saying that the Parshmen - our Parshmen? - are actually budging voidbringers? Lord Almighty, kill them all then, what are you waiting for?!" So the genocide is going to be attempted but of course, Dalinar will be firmly against this idea. In fact, why don't I just go ahead and say that it's only a matter of time until Brandon decides to make this little theory of mine canon? So yes, along with @Pattern my answer to the question of should all Parshmen be killed would be a very, very big NO.

Thank you, thank you - you're making me blush. Kind of a debate geek here. I didn't actually think someone would agree with me on this but it's nice to know you find the idea plausible. You just made my day~

Anyway, so the ten named shards are as follows: Ambition - desire to achieve success or greatness; tangentially related to determination and hope Devotion - related to belief and/or loyalty to something else; may also refer to compassion Dominion - this confused me a bit because I used to conflate dominion with the need to rule over people or enslave - but it's more accurately portrayed in the series as something like responsibility, the right to rule; authority Honor - a sense of personal morality - also touches upon respect, justice, and obligation to do good; truth falls under here as well but not necessarily Cultivation - the act of cultivating, which in itself means to care for something in great detail, to watch over it, to personally supervise; also means to refine something or to foster warmth and affection in someone - though this is a bit subjective Odium - pure, unadulterated hatred; I believe a WoB (or was it an in-world reference that said it?) once stated that Odium is god's hatred seperated from that which gave it context Ruin - destruction, death - although Ruin is portrayed as malicious, he is more a natural force than an actual emotion; he also symbolizes change and renewal Preservation - stasis, the state in which something remains as it is; can also mean to protect someone from harm but it can also be construed as stagnation Autonomy - the capacity of one to make decisions for himself or herself; freedom is autonomy but autonomy isn't necessarily freedom - more like will, being, sentience Endowment - to provide freely; endowment means to bequeath or give - to entrust someone with something else; compared to devotion and cultivation it's a bit more passive Now that I have that covered, let me move on to what I believe the remaining shards are. First, I don't really believe in positive-negative pairs though this may naturally come as a result with the shards intent - meaning that although they are in fact a positive-negative pair, it was never truly deliberate. I also have a thing against the idea of godly attributes because surely some of the things that we see here aren't "godly." For one Ruin and Preservation aren't attributes - they are forces naturally present in world; Autonomy too, since if you look at it, one can argue that some of the other shards pertain to emotion - these emotions come to us all - some natural, some not - but Autonomy precedes all that with the simple idea of something so inherently human as being able to think for ourselves. Maybe the shards really are just simple. Things that are either inherent forces in the world, human emotion pushed towards the far absolute, or concepts that we simply learn by ourselves as we grow and mature. For that reason I humbly present the following as my guesses at the remaining shards: Nihilism - a belief in nothing and no one; often used in the context of not believing in any religion like atheism, but nihilism can also mean a belief in simply nothing - the end result of this can be selfishness or apathy. Shards don't have deliberate opposites but opposites born of the natural consequences of what their intents symbolize - if that is the case then Nihilism may be perceived as the opposite of Honor (whose very intent is to believe in something or someone), Devotion (to surrender oneself to someone else), or Endowment (who entrusts to others what is needed). If Nihilism is in fact a shard then there is every chance that he is the runaway of the sixteen (because believing in nothing causes him to value himself more than anything else in the world). Valor - to be honest I got this idea from Diablo 3 (Imperius, anyone?). I mean, we have shards that indicate compassion (Devotion, Cultivation), impartiality (Dominion, Autonomy), and belief (Honor, Ambition), but courage and fearlessness is something that humans seem to idolize among the rest and arguably if we would take into consideration the idea of godly attributes then valor is very high on that list. I mean, look - valor does not need to be honorable though it is often described in tandem as such. I think of Valor more like a synergistic pair to Honor in the same way that some have said that Cultivation and Preservation operate under the same way. Birth - I can't get the name right for this one. See, Ruin is destruction and change, Preservation is protection or prolonging something, Cultivation is essentially changing something for the better without destruction - so that leaves the simple act of creation. I named this shard Birth because while it gives life, it's not compassionate - I was going for something like pure creation - the simple act of creating, leaving everything that's been given birth to fend for themselves, that way it would balance out with Preservation and Cultivation who have shown varying degrees of kindness but with the inability to create.

Btw who's that person on your profile pic? I have a feeling that I should know who that is but my mind keeps on insisting that it's Darth Vader and clearly it is very, very wrong on the matter (Dear Brain, shut up). So if you could help me settle this debate with myself I'd be very, very grateful.

Every time you post one of these things, it feels like I'm cracking open a packet of peanuts - after which I stare in shock at the sight of them exploding from my nervous fingers and watching them scatter every where. You should change your forum name from @Confused to Enlightened.

I actually have the exact opposite view on this . Sazed acknowledges the fact the isn't a "perfect" god - that only makes it more imperative of him to keep the shard. We all know Saze is messing up, but Saze also knows that one must be aware that just having the power of a god doesn't mean that you can do everything right by it - especially since Harmony is a very, very difficult concept or intent to fall in line to. So basically my point is this. Yes, Saze and the shard are having problems - but he also happens to be one of the most compassionate and self-aware beings in the planet even prior to his ascension. A person like that, especially since he knows he could do a fat lot of good with it, would be unwilling to simply give up the shard to someone else even if there were people better suited to holding it. This is because at the end of it all, it isn't what you could do with the shard that matters most. What matters most to holding a shard is knowing your limitations, not the things you could do. So he is not a perfect god. He doesn't intend to become one. He won't give up the shard - even if that were possible - because Saze may be the only person in the entirety of Scadrial who knows the truth. Other people with this shard might strive to do what they can in adherence to this concept of perfection and whatnot but Sazed won't.

@Extesian I haven't actually read White Sand though - number one reason for this being that our bookstores suck around these parts. (And I'm not being mean here, okay? It's 2017! What are these people still doing stocking the shelves with the Divergent series??? For god's sake the franchise has ended... ) So I was a bit surprised when @teknopathetic said that Sandmastery might be something Autonomy was something he wanted stamped out. Huh, so that wasn't true. Anyway I have this theory. Isn't Autonomy the capacity for one individual to make decisions for himself/herself? It's not really freedom, per se, otherwise you know the shard name would be Freedom - not Autonomy. So what is the underlying concept of being autonomous? What does being free to decide your own decisions for yourself entail? Simple. Willpower. Sandmastery is tied to will. Extrapolating from what everyone's said of the series (since again I haven't read the book), then probably the reason why Kenton was so weak with sandmastery was because he had something to prove to his father - and contrary to popular belief, when you do something just so you could prove some one wrong, then you're not actually exercising your will - your only under the illusion of exercising it but in truth you're undermining it by letting someone else's perceptions and wishes dominate it. When his father died, his will - so used to following someone else's wishes - faded. It was only when he started making decisions for himself; harried, confused decisions but very much his own - after years of waylaying it in favor of someone else's - that it came to him with the full force of repressed freedom. As for the question of skill, I think that has more to do with inherent talent. Then again feel free to poke holes in this. I haven't read anything yet - I cannot claim expertise in any of this.

Er, Harambe died May 2016... It's March 2017 now. Unless @Ammanas is secretly an eleven month old child with enough knowledge about the english language to post this thread in the first place then clearly he isn't the reincarnation of Harambe. On that note though, are you secretly an eleven month old superbaby? Haha just joking. Now for the question: french toast or english muffin?

Well, I guess I can live with that explanation... But honestly though, I already knew that there was going to be a problem with the pairing ever since it was thought of - first and foremost fact of course being that there was little to no precedence for such a pairing to occur in the first place judging from the last few books - but to be fair, there is a lot of room for anything to occur between them, so I'm still going to hold out for a little bit. Oh and I'm not being persistent btw. I find Renarin and Shallan pairing up perfect because not only is Shallan one of the most dangerous main characters in the series as of the moment due in part to her hidden strength, moral flexibility (there's a better word for this - I just can't find it), and her more-than-a-little-bit reckless drive to achieve what she wants achieved (which, compared to the other current radiants pretty much cements her in an area of moral ambiguity), but also because she is wracked with a sort of destructive guilt that is far more incriminating and sinister in nature than the rest of the cast. Renarin meanwhile is meek, sickly, and although he is far from complacent, I get the feeling that Shallan would find him a little bit weak (please oh please do not let Feather get wind of this). But if there's one thing Renarin has that Shallan doesn't, it's that Renarin is a far more forgiving and accepting person than she is. He does not seek to rebel against his illness nor does he let it define him - instead he acts with what he has and he looks out for people bare of any discriminating or judgmental lenses. Renarin could be Shallan's catalyst to self-acceptance. Although this is possible with Kaladin and Adolin as well, they both have unique takes to the concept and none of them really tie in as well to the idea of self-acceptance. Then again, this is just me rambling on and on. Maybe Shallan will find acceptance somewhere else - maybe she doesn't even need it. *shrugs* Anyway if this never happens, I'm still elated by the idea of Renarin and Drehy (no matter how unlikely that idea might also be). As for the idea of Kaladin and Shallan, I think I'm with @sonNeturo and @maxal. I see whatever the two of them have building up between each other ending up with an acknowledgement of each others' feelings but never pursuing anything in the end - this is because Kaladin is rapidly being built up like a hero whose inevitable faith is to pitch himself over a mountain with the end goal of sacrificing himself for the betterment, of mankind or whatnot (and even if that doesn't really happen, Kaladin is a little too intense and driven by his oaths to ever fully consider a life out of the context of his own), and because I find it unlikely that Kaladin will actually be able to persuade Shallan out of her recklessness because the act in itself would be hypocritical of him. And also, and yes this is the most superficial reason I have - the relationship they symbolize is kinda, er, dare I say it? Well, it's overrated. If the ship does sail though - I think a lot of things have to change first with the circumstances they're in in order for it to be feasible.