digitalbusker

Did Ishar need any particular powerset to create the Oathpact? Wouldn't writing it up and getting Odium and Honor to agree to it be binding, based on what we know now of Shardic deals?

@Drag0nR3born, I'm not sure Dalinar would have made it to the next Desolation without this intervention. But I suspect what she meant by "weapon" was the possibility of Odium prematurely returning his memories. 

56 minutes ago, ALAKA said:

Does that make him "deeply flawed"? Perhaps, but he wouldn't even think of it like that.

Yes, and being unaware of it doesn't make it less of a flaw.

Although I wouldn't be so sure nobody in the book is going to be aware of that flaw. Kaladin is well on his way towards a universal declaration of sapient rights, and I think Dalinar is on a path to a place where he'll be able to hear that, if not come up with it himself. He already knows that Vorinism primarily exists to support the machine, see his conversation with Kabsal in the monastery when he's looking for Taln's room.

On 12/31/2017 at 3:24 AM, dvoraen said:

Venli will likely be the settling point here, being in possession of a bond with Timbre and a Voidspren simultaneously, yet curiously not manifesting red eyes.

She can if she wants to.

That's the thing that Shallan catches watching her rendition of The Girl Who Looked Up, right? I had assumed it was a Midnight Essence critter, because it's during the part of the book where she's trying to figure that whole thing out, but....

Doesn't one of the epigraphs say that Re-Shephir's critters have gotten more sophisticated over time? That's how I accounted for the difference between this and the blooby axehound-shaped smoke bags from Dalinar's vision.

On 1/6/2018 at 3:02 PM, Islipperyharp said:

First, The Night Watcher has an insane amount of of these abilities so she can offer almost anything...

In your model, is she making a copy of stuff so she can hand a particular thing out more than once?

38 minutes ago, hypatia said:

I was a little bit astounded how a second row Kholin had gotten all this knowledge

Maybe the Unmade told her, maybe Gavilar could tell she was a kindred spirit and told her what he was up to, or maybe the one person in Elhokar's immediate family who was there by choice (arguably Navani too) was brighter and more devious than Elhokar.

See also: Devotary -> devoted

Oh, here we go with Thread #17/b-34 again...

But seriously, folks.

Like @MonsterMetroid I tend to avoid ASK shipping threads. Also: all other shipping threads. And "here's what I didn't like about $THING". Nothing wrong with those things as topics of discussion, nor with the people who discuss them! It's just not what I choose to spend my limited forum time on.

I'm also a little rueful every time I see a new "Hey I just finished and I think $THING1 means $THING2, and by the time you click this thread @RShara will already have provided the WoB that flat out says it doesn't!" but that doesn't stop me from reading it.

16 hours ago, Vissy said:

Haven't really gotten the "feels" from Stormlight, but rather big adrenaline rushes from fight scenes and the such. Kaladin's Oaths, Tower, Adolin 3on1.

I'm reminded of a scene I happened to catch from a TV show somebody else was watching. (I think it was Scandal, if that matters.)

Character A: You have feelings for me!

Character B: I don't have feelings for you! I like you, and respect you, and I'm angry with you....

Me: Those are all feelings!

On 12/20/2017 at 5:17 PM, Tea said:

But that would raise the question.. what would a protector be looking for?

Let's line up some Heralds (any of the surviving ones really, but especially Taln) in front of it and see if it reacts.

None can withstand the deliciousness of Hoidstess Fruit Pies!

Renarin reassuring the Voidbringers that they didn't miss the joke.

Kaladin in WoR finding out that Adolin has been in prison too.

Shallan being chased by Cryptics in Kharbaranth.

One narrative function this could serve is illuminating Jasnah's decision to have Aesudan killed. I think if we get an answer to this, it's likely to be in Jasnah's flashbacks.

Obviously this is confirmation that the language of Yolen is Greek, so Hoid thinks of wisdom as "sofia".

I dig it! I don't know that we'll ever find out for sure (maybe in a Jasnah flashback), but I think we can take it as a certainty that she wasn't trying to make that situation better.

42 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Uh, I'm not seeing it. He shot down the idea that Urithiru is a spaceship but he doesn't explicitly shoot down the idea of other things being spaceships.

Yeah, I just misread your post. I thought you were saying "Okay, Urithiru isn't one of the flying cities, but it might still be a spaceship." 

6 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Well, if you really want to split hairs doesn't actually say you couldn't move something really big through space, just that Urithiru isn't one of the floating cities from Ashyn specifically. So the theory lives, for now.

He clearly shot down the more general version of the theory before being presented with the specific one.

From Words of Jocularity, by Jasnah Kholin:

Why is six afraid of seven?

Six is. Seven is. It makes no sense to attribute emotions to them. I reject the premise of the joke.

Undertext: Ivory insists this is hilarious in his native language; perhaps it loses something in translation.

(Also: if you haven't already seen this thread... you're welcome.)

*sings: FAB-rials!

(Despite the ethical implications. I'd love it if we could get a Flintstones-style aside where a painspren sticks its head out of Navani's bracer, shrugs, and says "It's a living.")

Given that you can only become a Cognitive Shadow through an infusion of Investiture, which is usually thought to come from the Spiritual realm, is it safe to say that a CS is already "stapled" to the Cognitive realm? That is to say, whatever's preserving one's mind is doing so by standing in for the piece of one that's already gone Beyond?

Depending on what we decide to call that missing piece, this could have unfortunate associations for Cognitive Shadows (e.g. "soulless"), but it doesn't seem like being a CS has to change your personality (Threnodite shades excepted).

40 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

B ) Doing something bad in itself

C) Agitating the person they are trying to course correct with their hypocrisy. If a hypocrite tells you something, you are unlikely to do as they say. It is basically the man in the mirror. Fix your own faults before hammering down on others.

B is the part I'm less sure about. Or at least that its badness is significant compared to the active bad thing.

And as for "Fix your own faults before hammering down on others," I get the impulse, I do. And it's not an unworthy attitude, to the extent that it promotes empathy and tolerance. But you're never going to be done fixing yourself, so this can always be used as a cudgel to shut down a debate.

Thanks for listening to me vent. I have probably staked out a more extreme position in this thread than I should have, but I do think this is an interesting debate.

9 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

She is mad that Robert Baratheon took her throne, and hates him and demands it back because it is her right. She then happily conquers other peoples cities, tries to be their queen, and burns the protesters.

That last part is bad! All by itself! Don't do the bad thing! Encourage other people not to do the bad thing! Don't waste energy trying to figure out whether the person doing the bad thing has ever said anything inconsistent with their behavior!

ETA: I see how pointing out hypocrisy can be useful rhetorically; if you can convince someone that they're doing something that actually believe it's wrong, you've got a shot at changing that behavior. The thing I'm complaining about is when the accusation of hypocrisy is used as an end in itself, or to shut down debate.

I didn't figure out what the Bridge 4 and Moash icons were showing until my reread, and probably only then because somebody mentioned the relationship in the Moash episode of Shardcast.

I thought the patch was a mask, like on No-Face.

I am terrible at tracking chapter icons. I was when I was reading the Wheel of Time, too. Other fans would be like "Obviously $NAME is a $THING! Didn't you see that he used $ICON for their first appearance?!"

Quote

“I respect you greatly, Brightlord,” Amaram said. “Your life has been one of grand accomplishment, and you have spent it seeking the good of Alethkar. But you—and take this with the respect I intend—are a hypocrite.
“You stand where you do because of a brutal determination to do what had to be done. It is because of that trail of corpses that you have the luxury to uphold some lofty, nebulous code. Well, it might make you feel better about your past, but morality is not a thing you can simply doff to put on the helm of battle, then put back on when you’re done with the slaughter.”

That's from Oathbringer (the book) right after Dalinar returns Oathbringer (the sword) to Ialai and learns that Amaram is to be the new Highprince Sadeas. Daliar's actual reaction was to have his feelings hurt and leave abruptly. Here's what he should have said:

"Storms, Amaram, you've figured it out! You may be the first to ever figure that out! Would you like a... I don't know, a ribbon? A pat on the head? Both of my sons are pretty bright, you see, so I don't actually know what the customary reward is for a slightly slow child who has managed to solve a riddle of middling difficulty. Yes, I have done terrible things. I have killed and burned and ended innocent lives the length and breadth of Alethkar. And in so doing, I have amassed power and prestige which I have no intention of giving up now. It's all true. You want to talk about what morality is and isn't, Meridas? Morality isn't a footrace. You don't get extra points for being less vile than the next man. When we die, the being who weighs our souls isn't going to compare the reading to a ledger of those who came before. I am disgusted by the man I was, but I will use him. I will use his reputation and his ill-gotten gains to stop other people from falling to his level, if I can. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite, maybe just a fool. But I am too busy trying to save the world to worry about that just now.

"Enjoy your new title, and your shards. Enjoy swinging around the corpse of a being once bonded to a better person than you will ever be."

(Mostly I hate it when people treat "you're a hypocrite!" like a super-duper sick burn. Essentially they're saying "I accept your stated position on what is right and wrong, and rather than debate that, I am going to point out that you don't live up to your standards either." I think hypocrisy might actually be morally neutral! Whatever bad thing you're doing is bad, but saying it's bad doesn't make it worse.)