Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

I really liked Dust of Dreams the 2nd time through, a lot of the parts that felt disjointed, slow and just plain odd the first time through made much more sense. I was also stealing myself for the Kharkanus books, so the Tiste Andii and Shake subplots were much more interesting. The Crippled God is such a great book! It's so much more satisfying the second time through, and like you pointed out @Ammanas the return to the weather vane at Mock's hold and the recasting of Ganoes' talk with Whidkeyjack is so amazingly good! I listened to first chapter of the Ralph Lister Gardens of the Moon right after finishing TCG, and almost got suckked into relistening to the whole Book of the Fallen. I'm glad I read Forge of Darkness instead, the biggest fault of which is that it has almost no real story. The early days of Tiste are nothing like I expected them to be, and it's really interesting pulling back the veil and glimpsing the time of myth before the myths took shape. There are some amazing bits in this book, and it's nice to see that the origins of things are as complicated as the application of things. Kadispala, oh my heart breaks for you. I was just looking on Steven Erickson's Facebook page, and he linked to a pretty awesome Gardens of the moon casting video that looks like the opening to a 90's sitcom: I don't know how many of you are Bauchelain and Korbal Broach fans, but Erickson has posted a new novella in 6 hand written MS pages on his Facebook page too, here's a link to the first page; https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1521558584663103&id=884647141687587&__tn__=*s*s-R

A worthy guess, but not it. I added the punchline in a spoiler tag below the cartoon. Any other takers for making cartoon riddles/punny jokes?

Hmm, a skinny dipping banana, what could possibly be lewd about that... JK, I tried to make it as cute as possible, but it is what is. I'll get to this later, but I'll take a stab at making a washcloth dog, sounds adorable. "Anticipate my arrival" doesn't have a lot of comic potential, do you have any other awakened dog washcloth commands that are more humor potential?

So this doesn't necessarily have to be done in cartoon form, but I think it's fun this way, and really a good drawing is one that conveys what you are trying to communicate, so go for it sharders, create your cartoon punchline riddles, we're all friends here. To start things off, here's a rather classy one, where, if you so choose, you can try to figure out what the champagne cork attendant is telling the bottle of wine. If you guess it correctly you will win one genuine upvote, if no one guesses it by tomorrow at this same time (1:20 PST), I'll post the solution: The cork says to the bottle...

Here it is, a Banana awakened with the command "Go Skinny Dipping" in storyboard form (it's spoilered because it's vertically very tall). Here's an animated gif of the skinny dippin' bananer, spoilered because, you know, it's fun to click spoiler tags sometimes: Now that I've finished it, I realize that I should have had the banana jumping into a lake of chocolate sauce, oh well, tomorrow's a new day and all that positive, uplifting, aphorism type stuff that you mutter to yourself as you look for a pair of socks in the morning with cold, cold feet. The request line is open, what else do you all want to see awakened?

Sorry for the long delayed response, I actually started this a couple of times on my phone, but I wanted to wait until I had some time to sit down and address this more seriously (i.e typing on a real keyboard). That's not exactly right, I think that he succeeds in Book of the Fallen because he is willing to go places and address certain topics, that were he not successful, would result in him being labeled pretentious. The aspersion of pretentiousness is only cast after the fact, and it's only applied when someone thinks that the creator's ambition outstrips their capacity, or that their opinion of themselves and their work is out of line with reality. I have read a couple of interviews with Erickson, and have read some of the blog posts that he has written, and his opinion of himself is rather on the high side, but I'm of the philosophy that the work exists separate and apart from the creator, and stands or falls based on it's own merits or failings. I'm listening/reading Dust of Dreams right now, and with the exception of the very tiresome White Faced barghast story line, it's not dragging nearly as much as it did for the me the first time through. Admittedly I just started part 3 so the long slog through the glass desert has just begun, but the Master Sergeant Pores/Captain Kindly interplay is some of the best comic material in all of Malazan. The part too where Kalyth, Destriant to the K'Chain Che'Malle is contemplating taking the spotted horse, and she describes the retrograde motion of the Elan shaman's soul through the slipstream of time is amazing and incredibly well thought out, and is an example of the depth of Erickson's thought that is just plain absent in ICE. My point is really this, can you call Steven Erickson's work pretentious? Yes, yes you can, and at times it's possibly even deserved (though I still think it's a very subjective critique). Could you call Scarborough Fair/Canticle by Simon and Garfunkel pretentious? Yes, yes you can, but does that keep it from being beautiful, and more to the point, the fact that the singer is requesting a Cambric shirt is ridiculous only if you fail to allow yourself to be drawn up into the atmosphere and mood of the piece. Wading through the self-important poetry slam-esque soliloquies of Baddalle is hard, but she is a counterpoint to the Forkrul Assail (which are such amazingly good villains!), and though the whole Ribby snake bit is tiresome and somewhat tedious, it's in service of a larger theme, a small detail showing how, like Arkhast Korvalain, words have intrinsic power. And if you can swallow the over the top, crank up the suffering to 11 ridiculousness of Shattered Plains Bridge crew runs, the hyperbole of a caravan of preyed upon children used to ratchet up the stakes shouldn't be that much harder to swallow. The effect is similar, it's overblown tension to illicit a reaction. I am beginning to ramble in my digressions, so I'll leave it at that.

Talking about Malazan is the thing that usually breaks my long hiatus from the shard, such a good series! Sounds like Udinas's wonderful parables from Reaper's Gale. The one that is like the old lady that swallows the fly about the Eels put into the lake to control the dangerous fish, that spirals out of control until they end up poisoning the lake is one of my favorite moments in all of Malazan. This makes me really excited to read Kharkanus! Pretentiousness is only pretentiousness if it doesn't end up working. Erickson goes for it, and for the most part he pulls it off. I much prefer the falling away into pretentiousness than the inability to go deep that I'm afraid Esselmont suffers from. I really like the Paths to Ascendancy books, but the depth of thought is just not there. Totally just my opinion, and I am someone that pretty much everyone I've ever known says that I think too much (whatever that means). Admittedly I am just finishing Toll of the Hounds, which I think is Erickson's best book. Formally, the structure is amazing, Kruppe's narrations are some of the best writing in all of Malazan, and the ending is so freaking amazing. Really I am posting this because during my 2nd pass through of the Book of the Fallen, I've been reading/listening to it with an eye towards the release of the Witness Trilogy (which by checking on Amazon, I see that book 1 is slated for a November 9th, 2021 release). In a different post I mentioned Felisin Paran's prophecy about Karsa (which I will update this post with), which was pretty cool. But an even better foreshadowing tidbit occurs in TotH, when Toc the Younger in one of his final acts as Hood's Herald comes into the cave where Picker's soul has been trapped, and he says the following: "Find the Toblakai, find the killer, and remind him, remind him, do you understand me? And torc bearere, lead him to war". I am pretty sure that by referring to Karsa as the killer, he's talking about his killing of Fener, but do you guys have any idea what else Picker specifically would be reminding Karsa about? Interesting stuff to be sure, don't know about you all but I am getting really excited for the Witness Trilogy!

Your calligraphy on that one looks amazing, nice work! I experimented some more with the mica powder, and it's pretty freaking amazing. You can paint with it just in suspension with water (but you need to coat with fixative after it dries or it can rub off). Some samples of what it looks like are spoiled below.

Mushroom Girl, awakened to "Find and bring back truffles"

Hahahaha, I have no idea what this is but that is so freaking awesome! Someone, please, bring God that hand! I'll be thinking about this for sure...

So the idea that T's boon/bane was specifically created to take out Odium (as espoused by @RShara, @Calderis, and many others, myself included) just got one more serious bit of evidence with this recent WoB from the Tel Aviv signing: It seemed pretty obvious with the nature of T's boon/bane that it most likely required direct shardic intervention, but this is confirmation that Cultivation herself gave T his vacillating states of extreme intelligence/callousness and extreme stupidity/emotional empathy. It can be conjectured with near certainty from reading Oathbringer that the unfolding of Dalinar's boon/bane was specifically timed for effect. In Dalinar's case the memories arrived at key times to keep him moving along his path of Spiritual Growth. The fact that T has seen Cultivation herself and his bane/boon is most likely unfolding under the, at times, active guidance of Cultivation makes it far more likely, as Rshara likes to say, that T is a Plant, and that he and the Diagram are weapons specifically designed to take down Odium. What's incredibly interesting is that the Diagram has multiple layers of subterfuge, in a sense it exists to distract Odium from the true plan, while at the same time guiding key actors towards the desired end goal. So it is both smoke and mirrors and the true plan. There are quite a few threads with the specifics of this theory, I'll update this OP with spoilered thread links later, I've got to get some work done. Just saw this WoB and was pretty excited about the mini confirmation of one of the most exciting theories on the Shard. Exciting stuff!

I do believe this is the full quote, from the Secret Life of Walter Mitty (which according to my incredibly shallow internet research is also the official motto of Life Magazine, go figure): "To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life." I think you're up @Snipexe if you want to google up a qoute.

Really nice work! I just found this out recently, you can buy colored mica powder with metallic casts (like gold, bronze, silver, etc) and then mix that into whatever black ink you are using and it mixes with the ink in suspension and looks freaking amazing when it's dry. Since it's a powder you are adding you can completely control the level of metallic sheen too, here's a link to the mica powder I'm talking about: https://www.amazon.com/Mica-Powder-COMPETITORS-Cosmetic-Beautiful/dp/B07C2YFGD2/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=Gold+mica+powder&qid=1571763336&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFUNk5IQkEwUUoyM04mZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTAyMzU2OTQyNE5TNzZMTTdLNDc2JmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAyNTk5NTcxTkc5OFM1REZEQjNUJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ== I only have first hand experience using the bronze colored powder, and it was mixed in with sumi ink. The dried results are pretty remarkable though. This should also work with acrylic or oil paints too, I haven't tried those out yet, but it's really fun to paint with metallic ink! Seriously nice work!

It's always great to see the Limericks thread back on top again (where it belongs). So toot toot, pip pip and cheerio and so forth and so on, without further ado here's another limerick for you. On Scadrial it's alright to waffle, But on Roshar you'll probably feel awful if you make a mistake and try the tenth pancake— Unless it's your spirit that's wanting a jaw-full.

I just asked my daughter what book she was going to read, and being delightfully oblivious in an Usagi from Sailor Moon kind of way she told me she was going to read that book I gave her, "You know that one by Brandon Samsung, We are the Kings".

I use a Cross Century II, it has a fine split nib that gives good thick to thin variation in line with differential pressure. Also. I can get a nice tech pen style ultra thin line if I turn my pen upside down and write just with the tip. It's worth trying with your pens because it's a really nice effect. Awesome, thanks for the recommendations!

First off, I really like your analysis @Ripheus23, but I think this is one of those cases where complexity tends to distract from the solution to the problem. Let's analyze the sentence "This sentence is false". Firstly what is the proposition that is being assigned a truth value of true or false here? Let's look at a couple different ways we could write similar sentences, that takes out the self-referential "this" so we can get a sense of what the truth statement we are trying to determine is. The sentence is false. Tommy's sentence is false. These are provable/refutable assertions because the subject of the statement corresponds to a discrete object, that is not the sentence itself. The assertion contained in both is that were you to examine "the" sentence or Tommy's sentence you would find that they were false. So the assertion of the Liar's index sentence is that were you to examine the sentence itself you would find that it is false, but there is no testable proposition. It's simply a tautological assertion that the sentence itself "is" something, namely false. Paradoxes abound when you construct self-testing identity statements. As far as Quine's paradox goes, it's another case where the object that is subjected to the truth value test is self contained and self referencing. When you examine what the assertion the sentence Is actually making, it is simply a self negating identity. This particular variant does away with the "this" and the "is", but the net effect is the same. These are paradoxes because they were constructed to be paradoxes, but unlike paradoxes like Xeno's paradox they are essentially meaningless because they are self referential, so they in effect aren't saying anything outside of themselves. While admittedly being very fun to think about, the net effect of these paradoxes is to aid the net increase of entropy in the universe, as brains churn out heat spinning in meaningless self-recurssive cycles.

I have a cross refillable fountain pen which has a refillable ink cartridge, so with one fountain pen I can use pretty much any ink I want, which is really nice. The nice thing about drawing with my fountain pen is that I can get thick to thin line variations with the pen nib and I can use a non-waterproof ink and then use a wet paintbrush to activate the ink and pull it from the lines. It's really fun to shade pen and ink drawings with cross-hatching and then pull the ink around with a wet brush, it's a really nice effect. @Kasimir do you use any special types of ink? I really like Mont Blanc black, it has a really nice and subtle blue cast.

I love this song and your parody's amazing, great work Personifcation!

Is it part of "A Whole New Wotld from Aladdin"?

Heiress, Ferris, Embarass, compare-us, scare-us, etc. You've got this. Have you ever noticed the word Embarass looks like it's describing the picture on the coppertone suntan lotion bottle? Em-bar-chull?

That is so pretty! Syl looks great in her human form, and I love the stylized Shadesmar too. The sea of glass beads looks great, the sky looks freaking amazing, and the composition is really interesting and well balanced, nice work!

The Nightwatcher shakes her head and tsk tsks you. "Do you not realize the gravity of the situation? Do you not comprehend that by bending knee before me as a beggar before a feast you make your life my plaything, and for what, some stuff?" The Nightwatcher begins pacing, her trailing tendrils animatedly drumming in either a fit of pique or extreme agitation. "Some stuff-that could be a moldy apple and a used coffee filter, or two packets of sugar, or a handful of dirt, a rusty tin can and some stinking fish guts. Or even worse it could be 3 Reshi islands that I make appear right over your head!" "What I am I to do with you? Quit slouching, and look at me when I'm talking to you!" Having had quite enough of the NightWatcher's patronizing tirade you say "Hey, I didn't ask for a lecture I just asked for some stuff." The Nightwatcher turns her frosty glare on you and hisses "Fine, enjoy your dog's dinner of a wish" In your hand appears a manky, dirty oversized lollipop that has obviously been dropped on the forest floor. On your head is a pointed dunce cap that says "Dumb as a Chull", and your final boon from the Nightwatcher is a piece of paper affixed to your rear end that says "Please kind sir or madam, kick me ever so hard". Your bane is that you can't drop the lollipop until you've eaten it. You can't take off the dunce cap until you've graduated Magna Cum Laude from an accredited institution of higher learning. And the sign shall remain on your backside for eternity (even when you go to the great beyond). I wish that you could buy guacamole that could be dispensed out of a can, kind of like Easy cheese.

Is it this Jack Nicholson line from the movie A Few Good Men: "Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom."

That's it, nice job @Lunamor!! One of my favorite quotes of all time! You're up Luna, can't wait to see the next googled up quote. Edit: Here's the full translation chain spoilered below because it's long: