Morsk

Soulcasting could produce perfectly regular stone. Maybe they use cymatics and Soulcasting together to do it in some kind of feedback: stone becomes purer -> sound works better -> Soulcasting works better -> cymatics works better -> etc. Whatever it is would take an awful lot of power. At that power level, it's hard to distinguish "Symmetry is holy to the gods, so they made it this way," from "Symmetry is power on this planet, so the magic had to work this way."

Wit's story fits Szeth perfectly, with him committing atrocities because he thinks he has to, when he almost certainly doesn't. (I don't think permanent death exists in the cosmere. Brandon likes writing corrupted religion as much as he likes writing benevolent religion, and "Murder or face annihilation!" sounds awfully suspicious of being one of the corrupted religions, not the legitimate ones.) I could never understand why Wit bothered telling a story about Szeth to Kaladin though! That the story is really about the Radians fits better. But what if it's about both, and Szeth's enslavement to a corrupted honor code is similar to what happened to the Radiants?

I read the thread and saw people talking about evidence that something sounds more like Spook, but I can't figure it out. Is this from an unposted audio reading?

The line of silencing definitely doesn't fit my theory, but it's so weird anyway that there could be other things going on with it.

I was satisfied that he wasn't Snape when (oh, I suppose this is Harry Potter spoilers, if anyone actually doesn't know) That was enough subversion of Snape parallel for me; after it I didn't care how it went.

Also, lines that can affect the real world are straight, or angular. Lines that only affect chalk are curved. Whatever the Glyph of Rending is, I expect it to be really pointy, with lots of straight lines, as a way of conveying the "straight lines -> real world" property onto the chalking.

I thought of a way to explain the spren's strange behavior, without it being a direct QM analog. (I have a tremendous loathing of QM analogies. Yes it's bias, but whatever; sometimes bias is useful.) Say spren have no physical presence, or so little physical presence that they really are as delicate as little particles and waves. Humans can perceive them without disturbing them -- cheating the entire thing that makes QM so weird -- because the human is not perceiving them physically at all. The spren wouldn't show up in a photograph (that's a guess), and the human isn't perceiving it through light and eyes and all that; it's a Realmatic perception. But if a human perceives a spren, and does something physical in reaction to perceiving the spren, that indirectly has forced the spren to interact with the physical world. And that's when you get the vaguely QM-like behavior, where they're so delicate and easily affected by measurement. It also might involve the Nahel bond, and why it has to involve people's actions. Perceiving Syl would do little or nothing. Perceiving Syl and acting more honorably because of her influence -- doing actual physical things because of Syl -- would tie Syl more into the physical world.

It would have to be a weird sort of sound. Can anyone with more understanding of physics explain this? I only know enough to get into a mess asking questions... If human-audible sound frequencies produce cynamtic patterns on a plate, making the same pattern on a larger scale, the size of cities, would require much larger waves, with much lower frequencies that humans can't hear. I think this is what Wikipedia is calling Infrasound, and it mentions that it's used to monitor earthquakes. So what created the Dawncities could really be a special kind of plate tectonics that creates these harmonic waves on a low frequency... or something like that. (At this point it's magic and there's handwaving.) It wouldn't be sound people could hear.

I want to see Jasnah and Dalinar's theological discussion, about what it means to be a theist or atheist when God is dead. (Brandon said they'd have this discussion, but didn't say what book it'll be in. I hope Book 2!) I wonder if she'd believe in the Almighty, since the language in the visions is real evidence, but still call herself an atheist by denying that the Almighty was a source of truth or authority, and not worthy of the title God. Like, she'd say he was just a powerful spren, like some people say about the Nightwatcher. The reaction from Shallan would be priceless too. "What, you believe in the Almighty now but you're still an atheist?!" Or ... it could go other ways too. I just want to read it!

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/3507-rithmatist-omaha-ne-signing/?p=56239 "[A]ll the defenses names are based off of families he knew in Nebraska, and the evil tower is paced where his childhood house would be." It's still possible that Nebrask has additional parallels, maybe including Tesla's death ray. Artists like combining things. But it seems more of a stretch to me.

You seem to be taking for granted that a reaction to a book has to be personal, when it doesn't. I'd take offense at a war myth that only presented the glory, not the causalities. WoT doesn't have that problem with war, but it does with hazing and torture. They're shown as glorious obstacles for our heroes to overcome, and not only never really hurt anyone, but in most cases make people stronger. I saw your Mark Twain quote. I don't know if you've read his reasons for not reading Jane Austen, but it's that he finds the characters so unlikable that he's unable to finish reading the stories. That's all I'm saying here. Some people don't want to read graphic brutality. Other people, like Mark Twain and myself, don't want to read ridiculously unlikable characters. I did read end up reading them anyway in this case, but it was a big detraction for me.

edit: Er, I was confusing Cronus and Uranus. I don't have time to look up more now. I like the "Lord" theories, but it also ends in -ium which is the ending for metals and other scientific things, although I think that's a side-effect of it being from Latin. Someone who actually knows some Latin would be able to say more about it! I just think -ium sounds more appropriate for a thing than a person, whatever it is.

Giant super-magical Surge-ponies. Not horses that can't even talk!

I wonder if this actually broke other Atium alloys as a side-effect, explaining why we never see them. Or if it only effects which type of Mistings were being Snapped.

It's "mean", but it's not spreading hatred. If killing people to extract death-visions is part of Voidbinding (just guessing), that would be Odium's intent, because it's encouraging people to do horrible things that provoke hatred. The Thrill does the same thing, whatever it is. But fabrials do nothing to encourage people to hate each other. Maybe it's both, and gemhearts are natural fabrials, Cultivation's magic. Then later on, humans figure out how to hack it for technology, when Cultivation was just trying to make huge crab monsters.

I can't write it to sound as good as a book blurb, like some people did. But I'd explain the story as being about Vin and the balls, since that's how I always remember it. She grew up as a street child, unconsciously using her latent powers to survive. At the start of the story she's "discovered" by high-class thieves who train her as a spy and assassin, give her the first real family in her life, and send her to infiltrate high society. Also their goal is to assassinate an immortal tyrant who's ruled for 1000 years.

And then they explode!

How is Q&A data entered on Theoryland currently? Is there a format for it at all, or is someone manually interacting with a database UI? edit: n/m I guess you just answered this.

This would be new information blabbed about Dragonsteel if anyone did it. I've read everything publicly available, including years back in the forums, and I don't know the name of this character.

Which cosmere worlds have pizza? In the Rithmatist world, did JoSeun conquest prevent pizza from being invented in Italy? Was it invented somewhere else instead?

I really like the idea that "fourth" relates to the view of time as a fourth dimension. Maybe the Shadowblaze naturally exists in a timeless, three-dimensional state, and it becomes two-dimensional when it tries to exist within time. (It's still three-dimensional, but one of its dimensions gets translated into time.) Or maybe it's not timeless, but has an alien system of time, and this has to be "removed" in order to bind its other three dimensions into our world.

My theory is that Joel's reaction to the chalk guy was too analytical, and that this is why they normally do the ritual on children, and also why it's done as a religious ritual surrounded by awe and wonder. It's sort of the same idea as the gear scaring wild chalkings, only more internal.

Were there any jokes about Nebraska and Nebrask?

Where are you getting the names for them, that one is the KR symbol? I figured they were both just different ways of drawing the Double Eye, and that similarity goes without saying. It's a religious symbol, and artists are going to stylize it differently. (Like this sticker I just found on Google, with 30 different ways of drawing a cross.) I had completely the opposite reaction; I thought the similarity was so obvious that it didn't mean anything. Did you notice that the second one is an eye with 2 pupils?

This would mean all the Atium Mistings were really Electrum Mistings, probably? I like that. I always thought it was weird that there could even be an Atium Misting. I think there should only be 16 kinds. edit: Electrum is gold and silver though. How would you get the silver out to make malatium without it being obvious what was going on?