Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

@Alderant I thought your analysis was really good, I'm excited to see the categorical analysis of later chapters (I really like the categories you are analysing this by, by the way). I especially like (as others have already mentioned) the broken pottery bit. Makes me wonder if Brandon has a similar view of pottery as an extended metaphor for Spiritual Being like Philip K. Dick does. Works on a lot of levels, but really nicely put together. Excited to read the next installment!

Chuckling while I sell. Turns out the ghostbloods' many machinations are really just an attempt to corner the Cosmere market for Instant Noodles, using Roshar as their base. No wonder Hoid is willing to watch Roshar burn to achieve his objectives...

I'll be in my 50's too, the consolation on this front is that Brandon will be too. Another consolation on this front is that if I ever end up in a retirement home, instead of Bridge I'll be playing Magic the Gathering. Not so bad. One point to add to the Jasnah discussion is that in the WoR prologue, Jasnah takes it in stride that her shadow starts pointing towards the light. This, I think, hints at the fact that she has previous experience with these visits from Ivory, or has at the very least straddled the line between realms before this confrontation with Ivory where she finally earns his respect.

@Cosmé interesting ideas, I would like to hear more about how you think this would work: Rad ideas though. @Calderis and @The One Who Connects, as per usual I have been spending far too much time on this, but I really can't stop myself. So in an effort to truly understand what is going on with conjoined fabrials I am going to be making a series of though experiment diagrams that all will use the following standardized symbol set: In working through this, I realize that in earlier attempts to figure out what was going on, I forgot to factor in the fact that the force applied against a far more massive object results only in mechanical strain. So here is a partial view of the archery parapet example, where the archery parapet is shown as being 1.5x as massive as the raised, supported platform: You can see in this case in panel 2 that the total force once the Force of Gravity experienced by Platform A and Platform B are balanced out and applied in the proper direction (FGAcon and FGBcon) is pushing Platform A into the ground. A force with the same magnitude is attempting to push Platform B up, but since Platform A can not go down due to it's motion being interrupted by the ground, the actual effect of the Conjoined force is mechanical strain on the fabrials equal to the force imbalance because any motion must be mirrored to the conjoined fabrial. So after platform B's support is removed, Platform B's mass is offset by the inverted gravitational force affecting Platform A, and the remaining force opposite to gravity is absorbed as mechanical strain and neither of the Platforms move. Looking at another case, where the heavier platform is raised on the support and similar series of steps is taken, we find that if there is no means of offsetting the weight of the heavier platform on the support (like tension in a pulley system imparting an upward thrust) then when conjoined the heavier mass on the rolling support would continue to be pressed against the support and when it was wheeled away Platform A would go with the support. Also, Platform B would be pushed in the opposite direction of the rolled cart (and pushing the wheeled support would require more force because they would be moving the conjoined mass of the two platforms and would have to overcome the coeffecient of static friction for Platform B, though it would be accelerating a downward force less than that of gravity because there would be a net positvie upward thrust which is retarded by Platform A's inability to be pushed down into the wheeled support). I might edit this text later to make it clearer, but I think the diagrams are pretty clearly laid out and I am excited to dig into this some more when I have more time, there are some pretty interesting thought experiment you can do if you add pulleys, latched spring platforms, or spring mounted platforms with removable supports. The next series of diagrams that I add will be ones that try and clarify what is going on with the one known use case we have of conjoined fabrials, namely the archery parapet conjoined fabrial system. Now back down into the digital coal mine for me, Hi-Ho-Hi-Ho and all that merry jazz.

It was a pedantic but important point, as most good points are. Like I've said other places I really value your contribution to the forum and I was glad to edit my post to make it clearer and better. Any theory that lasts through the scrutiny of you, Calderis, and the One Who Connects is battle proved. It's the theory that didn't break, and is worth more than 10 broken theories because of it (to borrow Kaladin's analogy somewhat, hopefully not in a derivative way).

That thread is awesome! Truly top notch analysis and I am excited to see more chapters analyzed. Great work! I think that it's better to have more specific threads, I know that I largely stayed away from the ASK thread because it was so freaking large. I have a limited amount of time to read things on this forum, and at 100+ pages that's getting to the length of a Stormlight Archive novel, I don't have the time to read the whole thread, and I don't like to comment unless I've read all of the previous posts. I would like to say, though I've only been on the forum for a little over 3 months, and I haven't been on the ASK thread except for one post which was basically a silly meme (due to it's daunting size), all the times that I have seen moderators step in on other threads were when the tone of the posts had gotten to the level of personal attack. Obviously we all feel passionately about these books, or we wouldn't be on the shard, but I have seen Chaos, Mestiv and Jowfu do a great job at diffusing situations that were spiraling into the territory of ad hominem attacks. The advice to walk away and grab some relaxing herbal tea is great advice, because at the end of the day, everyone that is on the shard is here because they like discussing their favorite intricacies of the complicated works of Brandon Sanderson with some of the nicest, most intelligent and interesting people in the world. I personally am interested mostly in the Science of the magic systems and the Philosophical underpinnings of the Cosmere and the different shardworlds, but the relationships in the books are amazing, the characters are incredibly well done and I like reading well formulated, well though out posts no matter what subject they are on. I also think that we as a community are truly lucky to have the some of the foremost experts on the Cosmere administer, maintain and update this site and give so freely of their time. Arcanum is freaking awesome, and it was built by unpaid volunteers whose only payment is the satisfaction that they have made a central repository for the out of book definitive statements about details of the Cosmere so that it is accessible to all. I love arcanum! I think that it might be possible that more slack is potentially cut to some users because of the commitment to the time they put in to make this a truly amazing place. Someone that volunteers to spend a lot of time to do a difficult and time consuming task has shown by this commitment that they are doing what they are doing for the right reasons. It would be silly not to cut people who are working hard out a love for their project some extra slack, because one of their fundamental intentions is known, to add to the collective knowledge of fans of Brandons work. I know when I first came over from the Tor forum (which was really fun, but was like community college level speculating) I would say things that weren't really thought out or supported and would be shut down pretty fast. This is to the good, like Nietzsche said "What does not destroy me makes me stronger", if a theory can't get past a cursory comparison to the known facts then it needs to be revised and rethought. If you look at how active both Calderis and RShara and how they try and head off speculation that is going against known facts, this is a great service to the community, that comes at no small commitment of their time. I personally appreciate their hard work of correcting errors because they are in reality sharing their deep knowledge of the more arcane area of cosmere knowledge, namely the Words of Brandon, Peter and Issac (man that makes it sound like I'm talking about the bible). I am in no way trying to minimize anyone else opinions in expressing my own, but I have been nothing but impressed with this forum. From the quality of the administration, to the quality of the intellectual level of the posts, to just the overall decency of everyone that participates on this forum. I think that these kind of conflicts are bound to happen, but I think another testament to both the forum users and the admins base level of decency is that these are the exceptions not the rule. End of Wall of Text (slightly paraphrased from the Master Control Program)

I now stand in deeper awe of your diagramming skills, that's like Michelangelo carving the pieta with a fork, brilliant!

Interesting WoB, but I would say that this is only really eliminating the possibility of an Adonalsium self destruct sequence. It does make it far less likely that his death was a direct result of his long term plan and directly orchestrated plan, but doesn't eliminate the possibility that his death is a part of long time scale inherently necessary phenomena.

Duh, I guess since I just ordered these I should post the questions that I asked, seems kind of like a no-brainer. So here are the questions that I asked (1st one mine, 2nd Calderis' and 3rd Oversleep's):

Hey Leyrann, I just put an order in for the Mistborn hardcovers (not the leatherbound, I too, can't afford that awesomeness). I asked Brandon's assistant Kara at Dragonsteel how best to do it, and here's a link to a post that I wrote that sums up the process on a different thread: Onward and Upward!

This is the link to the Event page on Brandon's website, it looks like he's only going to be signing on Thursday and Friday: https://brandonsanderson.com/upcoming-events/#13204 The schedule from his site is spoilered below: I've got a friend that loves Brandon's work and lives in the Seattle area, I'll talk to him and see if he can make it to one of those signing times, if so I might be able to get him to ask a couple of your questions, I'll let you know if it works out.

Thanks for the the scene dump Rshara, I thought I remembered Raoden going into the pool but not transitioning, but it's good to see the actual text. Looking on Arcanum, there are some interesting WoB's that make me think that there might still be some merit in the line of speculation that Rock's strength is derived from an Achilles dip into Cultivation's shardpool, or rather that the idea that Horneaters can swim in Cultivation's shardpool might still be significant. All WoB's are spoilered because this is only tangential to the point of this thread. It is technically possible for non-human life to pass through a perpendicularity, possibly (but not definitively) showing that the default state of a shard pool is to cause sentient beings to transition to the Cognitive Realm: As far as the scene where Raoden doesn't transition through the Devotion's pool, the actual text is very interesting. We know that Devotion and Dominion have already been shattered, and that their power has been trapped in the Cognitive Realm on Sel. Yet when Raoden goes into the pool, he feels like the pool is alive and further he hears it calling to him in his mind. Like RShara say, he doesn't transition because he doesn't intend to. But I think this might be a special case. We know that anyone that transitions to the CR from this shardpool would most likely be torn apart by the force of the Dor, so I think that this voice that Raoden hears might be a cognitive shadow of Devotion, and that the barrier to entry to the CR on Sel might be because this cognitive Shadow of Devotion realizes that certain death awaits the transitioner. The bar to entry being an Intent on the part of Hoed to end their pain filled miserable life could be a compassionate, willfully enforced safeguard. And there is definitely precedence for an Achilles like effect of being immersed in a Shardpool (an analogy Brandon made to show how Kelsier was able to stave off the transition to the Great Beyond in MB:SH) And finally here are a couple of WoB's that show that it could be possible for the Kings on the Horneater peaks to drink Rosharan Ambrosia like the Gods of Olympus (this is actually pretty rad):

One possibly interesting thing to think about is that Rock mentions swimming in Cultivation's shardpool, and that this is something that only horneaters are able to do. Like the Hoed that have given up on Sel and are put into Devotion's shardpool, it seems the natural state of a being entering a shard pool perpendicularity is physical transition to a different realm. In Secret History, Hoid uses his corpse canoe to control the specific spot at which he transitions to the PR. Maybe the horneater's additional Strength is more like Achilles being dipped into the River Styx. Maybe being able to resist the transition between realms allows them to osmotically absorb pure Investiture. I don't remember exactly what happens when Roaden dipped into the Selish perpendicularity, it's been a long time since I've read Elantris, but if the details of that aren't in direct conflict with this idea, it's at least another interesting possible explanation for Rock's ability to use a shard bow.

I'm a professional Illustrator, so I use Adobe Illustrator CS 6 and Macromedia Freehand MX to make my diagrams. My profile pic is from an illustration that I did for Make: magazine about how to build your own R2-D2 based on the official blueprints from Astromech.net. They have blueprints for pretty much every star wars R-Series droid, and they've actually taken physical measurements from the real props used in the Star Wars movies, pretty freaking awesome. My R2 was modified slightly from their blueprints to make R2 look closer to how he looks in Empire Strikes back, a larger version of it is spoilered below: I would wager good spheres that you use a vector based drawing program to make your diagrams, what program do you use? Your diagrams are really good, they very clearly illustrate the point you are trying to make and visualizations are always helpful (unless they're not). @Calderis I've been thinking about this a lot more than is possibly healthy (considering how my work is piling up), but I will get back to you about your points over the weekend. I was doing some research about quantum entanglement experiments, and saw this amazing video produced by a group at MIT where they have filmed in super slow motion the movement of a single photon of light through a 1-liter bottle. The photon of light is created by titanium sapphire laser, and it truly looks like a bit of stormlight moving through the bottle, here's a video of it spoilered below (freaking amazing):

Very nice WoB, as per usual. I have slowly been working on a seriously impressive diagram where I was attempting to solve what was going on with conjoined fabrials pictorially and mathematically using the Physics equations for Total Mechanical Energy of a system. But, using the Gillette Mach 3 model of Occam's razor, the simplest explanation for the archery platform test is probably the true solution. If the archery parapet is heavier than the conjoined square platform and the energy from the stormlight investiture used by the conjoined fabrials is ensuring parity of motion between the two systems, the fact that the square platform doesn't move after the supports are taken away is simple to explain. Say that archery parapet A weighs 1000kg with the archers and that the square platform it is conjoined with, platform B, weighs 600 kg. Platform A would be experiencing a force of 6,864 N due to gravity directed towards the center of Roshar (F=m*a, and the surface gravity of Roshar is 6.864 m/s^2). Platform B would be experiencing a force of 4118.4 N due to gravity likewise directed towards the center of Roshar. If the force affecting platform A is subject to is inverted and applied to Platform B, then you have a net upwards force of 2,745.6 N that is being applied to platform B after the fabrials are conjoined. This implies that the work being done by the stormlight would be in offsetting this force differential to maintain positional parity. Actually, now that I am typing this up, this still implies that at the moment of conjoining a new relational baseline needs to be established, because unless you used precisely matched Masses for conjoining their would always be a drift due to a mass imbalance at the time of conjoining paired fabrials at different heights and the force of Gravity Maybe the simplest explanation is that the magical effect of the reverser conjoined fabrials is simply cancelling out the effect of mass in the system. Say that conjoined fabrials are only concerned with Position. All of the differences in mass are done away with through consumption of stormlight. Whatever external non-conserved energy that is necessary to maintain exact inverted positional parity is handled through conversion of Investiture (in the stored gemstones) into energy to maintain force relations so that positional parity is maintained after the initial baseline reference frame is set when the fabrials are first conjoined. Until we get further information, this is the official position on this that I will maintain, that conjoined fabrials work by ensuring complete inverted positional parity using stormlight as necessary to provide non-conserved energy to balance out the forces in play (really just the effects of gravity) to ensure that the positions in relation to the baseline positions are inverted. This would imply that if you used a 1 kg sphere to try and raise a 1000 kg platform, you would require an insane amount of stormlight and the gems would most likely crack due to the "the multiplied strain of simultaneous infusion drain and physical stress". So for reals, I was working on an epic Diagram, I believe that it is now mostly useless, but I do think it's still kind of fun to look at, so it's spoilered below:

Ok, let's try a slightly different tack here, how about describing the Cosmere characters as different prescription or illicit drugs or medical procedures... STORMLIGHT: Tien - Prozac (for Kaladin) Teft - Oxycodone Renarin - Ritalin Jansah - Huperzine A Shallan - Thorazine Lopen - Lavis Beer Dalinar the Barbarian - Amphetamines Dalinar the Penitent - Ethyl Alcohol Taravangian - Chemotherapy...Ouch Venli - Anti-Retro viral (the duplicitous double-double agent in medicine) Adolin - Placebo (come on, you know he's a total sugar pill) Evi - Nitroglycerin (saved dalinar's heart after all) Axies the Collector - LSD Arclo and the other Dysian Aimians - Hallucinogenic Frog Licking MISTBORN: Kelsier - Epinephrine Breeze - Barbiturates Ham - Steroids Marsh - Mineral water enema Sazed - Alka-Seltzer Clubs - Tucks Medicated Pads Demoux - Ergotism Spook - Red Bull Elend - Castor Oil MISTBORN ERA 2: Wax - High Fiber Diet Steris - Glycerin suppository Wayne - High Fructose Corn Syrup Allomancer Jack - 100% pure, certifiably guaranteed authentic genuine snake oil* *Note does not contain any oil, or any product derived from a snake WARBREAKER: Susebron - Powdered Sugar Siri - Pure Cane Sugar Tonk Fah - Ether designed to be huffed (like Frank Booth in Blue Velvet) Vivena - Liquid Nitrogen (useful for removing unwanted warts...) Vasher - Traumatic Surgery (sorry, that limb can't be saved we have to remove it) Lightsong - Non-alcoholic beer (he can't handle his liquor because he heals too quickly)

So, I feel duty bound to weigh in since this has grown to 7 freaking pages. Oathbringer is my favorite book of all times, and the Stormlight Archives is my favorite series of all time. Brandon doesn't concern himself with things as common as linear progression, each of the SLA books has been geometrically better than the previous installment. The Way of Kings was masterful, Words of Radiance was TWoK^2 and Oathbringe was WoR^4. This is a very large book, and my only real complaint with this book is that it wasn't longer. The Dalinar flashbacks are the best series of flashbacks in any of the SLA books, and there was never a moment in this book where I wasn't dying to turn the page and find out more. That is masterful storytelling. Most of the criticisms of this book are purely in the negative, focusing on what didn't happen in OB. This also seems like a criticism that I can agree with, namely that Oathbringer wasn't long enough. I've yet to read a book where Brandon didn't deliver a satisfying and surprising conclusion to a long hinted at mystery. I think the version of the Recreance that we got in OB was only the details of the actual event that were tailor made to drive a wedge in between Dalinar and the members of the coalition. All of the details that were revealed were set in motion by Taravangian, and we know his primary motive was to undermine Dalinar so that he could take over leadership of the coalition. I think the details hinted at in the Gem archive are closer to the real reason for the Recreance, and we've basically only seen, to draw a parallel to MB, Alendi's path to being the hero of ages. I think there is, as Kelsier would say, always another secret. The onion of the Recreance still has some layers to be peeled before we get to the true reason. A lot of people seem to be upset by the perceived lack of progression of Kaladin and Shallan, but I think that their story arcs in OB were brilliant. The Girl Who looked up with the continuation of the Girl Who Stood Up is one of the most powerful allegories I have ever read, when Hoid tells a broken Shallan that what sets her apart is that she is the one who stood up, I was deeply moved. This is powerful stuff, and though she wasn't magically fixed by this revelation, it was an important object lesson to learn, that the world is better place because of the fact that even after failing she stands up and keeps trying to make the world a better place. That is progression along a meaningful moral dimension. Kaladin likewise struggles with his inability to swear an oath because he's not sure he can swear this oath and actually believe in it. I personally think this has something to do with realizing that he can't save everyone, and his inability to believe that this is true about himself is one of his greatest virtues as a hero. I hope that he's a Windrunner frozen at the 3rd Ideal, who continues to try and save everyone and feel deeply when he is unable to do so, this is what makes him who is, this is the thing about him that I think is truly heroic, and I hope that he doesn't trade his ideals in for a set of plate. We got tons of information about the Unmade, we got to see the Unmade manifest in 2 realms, and the Battle of Thaylen Fields was epic and incredibly well told. I don't mean to hijack this thread with abundant praise for OB, but I do think that criticizing Oathbringer is like looking at Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise after only 3 of the reliefs were done and criticizing the whole door because it's mostly unadorned. We are only 3 books into what is the most Epic of all Epic fantasy, and I have every confidence in BWS's ability to give the most epic fantasy series ever written the most epic and satisfying ending that has ever been.

He didn't wrestle the hog, he managed to get out of the manacles before the Hog ate him (which means he escaped the manacles REALLY quickly). During the interlude scene where he is giving the aforementioned options of unpleasant death to the squad captain that sent Tien to his death he is escaping from handcuffs. This is just something that the Herdazian general likes to do, like a Herdazian Houdini.

Hahahahaha, and she's still hungry! But it turns out that after eating Vax, she discovered another heavily invested shard-world, Invested by the shard of Antacid. After devouring Tums, Lift takes a brief break and enjoys the temporary relief from the pains of her unusual diet. Thankfully she was fully able to convert the Dawnshards, Vax, Unity and Dragonsteel to investiture, but since the Recreance is more of a concept than an amalgam of Investiture, she has to work out the alimentary details of processing a concept. But don't worry, she has a lot of Mistborn Era 2 broadsheets to read while she "works out" these details.

That's funny, NetHack was the game I thought you were probably referring to, but the daunting number of forks and other RogueLike games made me think that as an internet dilettante I was out of my depths. But using my cursory and newly acquired knowledge of Nethack, I feel somewhat confident that I can indeed bestow upon you a boon and bane. So to do this up right: Granted, you now have blessed greased fixed +2 grey dragon scale mail in your inventory, but unfortunately you use an unidentified scroll named "DAIYEN FOOELS" and it asks for an item to apply it to, and you select your recently acquired awesome armor. Then you get the following message "Your blessed greased fixed +2 grey dragon scale mail glows for a moment." and it loses one of it's enchantments and is cursed. Also, your computer that had all of your NetHack saved games on it explodes. Youch. I wish that the Empire, instead of cloning Jango Fett, would have cloned Frank Zappa instead for their clone army. Holy crap, I would be on the side of the Empire if we had 3+ million frank zappas. The universe would indeed be a strange place.

So, I'm going to order my books today, and I was thinking that if you are okay with it, I would prefer to ask one of the following 2 questions: OR Since your question was the one that got the most upvotes, I really like both of the questions above pretty equally (leaning a bit more towards The Sovereign's Iyatil question, but would be completely happy with either), so if you want you can pick which of those 2 questions I ask. Or if you feel REALLY REALLY strongly about the Eshonai being dead and gone question, I would still ask that one. It just seems like a shame to use a question to get 100% confirmation on something that really is at least 99% confirmed already.

Renarin, in one of his visions of the future sees what the real reason for the Recreance was, because he sees Dalinar going down the same path as Tanavast. We're all well aware that the Stormfather is the grouchiest of all spren, but he's just a mere splinter of Honor. Honor's true intent was Griping! As Dalinar amasses more and more of Honor's power, Renarin sees him changing in his visions of the future. No longer the man of action that he once was, he sees him puttering around in his bathrobe, complaining about teenagers, and how the modern heatrials aren't as good as the fires from the old days, etc. And Renarin sees that just like during the Recreance of the past, all of the Knights Radiants and their Spren are being driven completely bonkers by Dalinar's incessant backwards looking rants and complaints, and so the spren willingly kill themselves and the Knights Radiants abandon their oaths just to get away from the ceaseless raving inanities of Dalinar. Sorry if this spoiled the back 5 for you all, but this is totally how this is going to play out...

Granted! Unfortunately you kind of mumbled when you made your wish, so you show up to your Dark Alley and see you a whole lot of people who look like this: You're Dark Alley has been turned into a Dork Alley! I wish that someone would grant @Drake Marshall's wish: I did some initial internet research to try and figure out what this was referring to, but I could tell that I was seeing shallowly and dimly into an arcane sub-world and that I lack the requisite esoteric knowledge to come up with a suitable bane/boon for this one...