Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

This thread is strangely elucidating and strangely confusing. I've read WoBs that Shin are said to have large eyes because they lack the epicanthic fold, but then there are WoBs referenced in this thread that say that Shin would be the most obviously Caucasian race on Roshar. I'm left with the feeling that I've learned something but forgotten something at the same time. I think this is one of those times where subjective interpretation should reign supreme, because it seems like even Brandon has a hard time pinning down what the ethnicities on Roshar should look like (or maybe I am just being obtuse). Honestly, I always pictured the Shin looking like bald hobbits with big eyes, but imagination is a nation unto itself, right?

Perhaps someone else knows if this is a reference to something else from the cosmere - it didn't sound familiar to me. I suppose it could be invested sand from White Sand that has been partially drained, or maybe something from Threnody. She noticed this after Hoid finished telling his story of Tsa and Mishim, it's most likely invested sand from Taldain that Hoid drew investiture from while Yolenically lightweaving his story. I believe this correct, but do correct me if I'm wrong.

Holy crap, totally second your opinion here. In a world of dull moments punctuated by interesting singular events, it's incredible to read 122 chapters, 12 interludes and a prologue and epilogue and always be on the edge of my seat to see what was going to happen. AMAZING! This was the best book I've ever read, and I've read a lot. After WoR the bar was set incredibly high, but Holy Crap Brandon doesn't understand anything about bars because this a magnitude of ten kind of jump over the bar from WoR. His writing has gotten so much better too, I really think that this series will pass out of the realm of "fantasy" literature, and when he and Peter sit down and write the authoritative volume of Realmatic theory it will be required reading in Philosophy 101.

I like this formulation a lot, probably the best formulation of the apparent onsceen sentiment of the Recreance I have read. It seems to fit with Dalinar's vision of Feverstone keep and how the KRs gave up their blades. They weren't inflamed with passion when they abandoned their shards, they seemed mildly disillusioned but not overly distraught. Have an upvote.

Sorry Lou, you hulked your Hulk, but the world is more complicated now.

This is not true, one of the keys to breaking the dawnchant was that Dalinar slipped into a different dialect during the Purelake vision where they were chasing a corrupted spren (and we got our first view of living thunderclast). My whole point is that the chronology of everything is at this point, I think intentionally, squishy at best. This is the history of Herodotus not the history of Thucydides. I think this is by design, i think that this is necessary to obscure what is really going on. I for one am onboard for whatever ride brandon has set out for us, becuase he is both a genius and a serious outliner. I am SO looking forward to the big reveal about what the Recreance acutally is, but we realistically have 4 years to wait for that revelation, so like the poor miserable sods that we are...err I mean scholarly thoughtful individuals that we are, we will pick incessantly at the small crumbs he has left scattered across all that he is written (at this moment, some one is probably upending a garbage bag full of dirty nappys, coffee grounds and precious secret WoBs on post it notes he wrote to Peter). Holy crap, mountain out of a mole hill is a very good description of our work here. But the thing that is satisfying is that in the Cosmere Mountains truly are built out of mole hills. Another upvote for you good sir, let us investigate this mole hill more thoroughly.

Ok, this is for real awesome, listen to the link of the song for Mack the Knife in a separate window, and while the song is playing, sing the lyrics for Szeth's New Knife. it's freaking amazing!

One point in favor of this theory is that Autonomy on Taldain is invested as the Sun itself. No other shard has taken on such a singular and deific manifestation as Autonomy has. When your organism is represented by the sole source of energy for an entire solar system, what logical leap is it to view your body or self as an extension in planetary terms. Like the head is to a body, the sun is to a composite being of multiple planets spread out through space. This is very similar to the way Dysian Aimian view identity. Constituent pieces of a larger whole, the semi-sentient composite constituting the one of I. Also, I just read the prose version of White Sand and (Spoilered for those who haven't read it):

This passage from the Eila Stele has been used to refute more than one of my speculative theories, but I posit this, we are viewing the history of Roshar through the glass darkly, much is being obfuscated to create the exact uncertainty that we are disputing here. There have been multiple waves of human immigration to Roshar, at this point we know enough from WoB to unequivocally say we don't know enough. The only thing that the Eila Stele explicitly proves is that the Voidbringers were not Listeners. This comment about them lacking carapace could have applied to the 2nd, 3rd or 4th wave of immigrants to Roshar. At this point we don't have information. The pre Aharietiam days are referred to as the Shadowdays for a reason. They are obscure and scarecly documented. One of the oldest extant writings on Roshar is the Way of Kings, which only survived because it was the guidebook for the KRs. If the dawnchant was phased out before Aharietiam why can Navani use the utterings of Dalinar in the throes of his vision to crack the Dawnchant if he isn't in fact speaking in the dawnchant? The whole point of the Ellista interlude is to show that the Dawnchant, at the time of written records, was used exclusively for writing. Local dialects and languages already existed, they were being phonetically transcibed into the dawnchant because that was the syllabic language that was common to Roshar. All I'm trying to say is that the fused could potentially be KRs, and I don't think the dawnchant or the Eila Stele disprove this theory. You got an upvote because it's having someone smart to argue the other side always makes a theory stronger.

The I-2 Interlude with Ellista shows that the Dawnchant was the written lingua franca after Aharietiam, prior to that there are really no written records, so we have no proof that the Knight Radiant's didn't speak in dawnchant. Actually, we have positive proof that they did, Navani was able to crack the dawn chant when scribing Dalinar's vision (I believe it was even the Fever Storm Keep Recreance vision), this proves that the KRs did speak in Dawn Chant because Dalinar was always using his Spiritual Adhesion in the visions to interact with the simulacra that Honor created of the people in the visions. The desire to exterminate all humans might be because these cognitive shadow KRs have been broken by Odium, because of their high level of investiture they linger longer in the Cognitive Realm before transitioning to the Great Beyond, and because they are Invested with Odium (they are his people) he is there when make the transition after death from the Physical Realm to the Cognitive Realm, and instead of letting them slip off to the great beyond he shoves them into his Damnation shard pool (which is like Dante's Inferno). Then over time he corrupts them, in a similar way that he broke the heralds, he lets them leave eternal damnation if they agree to Return and be his agents. That is my argument, it is total speculation but I think that it has great potential. It would explain the limitation of surges by the Fused to a single savant like surge (the KR's primary surge) and it would also add another aspect to the reason for the Recreance, that the KRs realized that the more investiture they had (the higher up the Ideal chain they were) the more likely they were either to suffer eternal damnation or be corrupted into an agent of the Enemy.

Here's another one for your humble enjoyment. Szeth's New Knife (Sung to the tune of Mack the Knife from The Three Penny Opera) Oh the Sword has an aluminum sheath, dear Just to keep it, from leakin' Night That's a bald shin Szeth Son-Naturo, Yeah its you know, the Assassin in White. When the sword fights without his sheath, dear Midnight billows start to spread, lots of Stormlight needs shin Szeth, dear So he doesn't wind up dead In the Purelake, some poor crim'nal Lies in the water losing life Szeth the detective talks to sword Nimi "Why did that Reshi have a knife?" In a prison stinking awfully, Only one guard is found dead "Shouldn't you be Destroyin' Evil?" His sword Nimi, says in his head. Then shin Szeth finds the beefy Noble, who's been skimmin' off the cash. And then Nightblood destroys that evil, Did our Shin do something Rash? Here come Listeners, and Ner-agoul, that's Yelignar, and Odium Oh the chances look mighty slim, dear Glad sword Nimi's back in town

Rad, and of Course Lift would be Gavroche and would sing "Look Down, I Stole your Lunch". Kaladin is totally Jean Valjean, but hard to believe, maybe even more brooding.

I know what I would command a magical Awakened blade to do "Keep the yard tidy". Then I can lay back in my hammock, drinking something strong out of a hollowed out coconut and think about how wonderful it is to have an awakened Landscaper.

I think that we've only seen the tip of the voidbinding iceberg at this point, my guess is that Listener forms of power are numerous, and that they are the real meat and potatoes of voidbinding. Some one speculated that the Fused are surgebinding Savants, seeming to only have access to one surge, and this makes a certain amount of sense. They are returned cognitive shadows that have merged with a sapient host (destroying the vessel in the process). I have been speculating that the Fused might not be Ancient listeners, but rather KRs that have been corrupted by Odium, maybe the process of returning the Fused gives them access only to their primary surge. The forms of Power though from the Listeners songs, seems like their might be something on the order of 99 forms (based on the stanza numbers for the Song of Listing: "Dullform dread, with the mind most lost. The lowest, and one not bright. To find this form, one needs banish cost. It finds you and brings you to blight." —final stanza[8] It seems that each stanza refers to a separate type of basic form, and we know from Venli that it is possible to bond two separate spren in the same gem heart. So my guess is that the forms of power are a combination of one void spren and one normal spren, yielding a voidishly augmented base listener form. This would make Voidbinding far more interesting than what it currently looks like, which is just a weakened form of Surgebinding accomplished with VoidLight. I know that Venli is currently in Envoy form, which seems to be based on capturing only a high order void spren in her gemheart, but the fact that she has also has second spren in her gemheart shows that gemhearts can accomodate multiple spren. I like the idea of one uncorrupted spren giving a Listener a particular intent, focus, and base form being combined with another voidish spren that corrupts the original intent, controls the listener and augments the listener's power.

*EDIT* @Personification just alerted me, there's a HUGE thread on this already with amazing songs, you can find it here: Scene 1: A man lays prostrate on a circular stone platform, lit by a single spotlight. Behind this solitary figure a sheet with striated bands of different shades of grey roils tempestuously. Another figure, hidden in the darkness stage left, with hair spangled with glowing rubies and wearing a Vorin Havah approaches the prostrate figure while singing: Song 1: Memory (sung to the tune of Memory from Cats) Good Knight, Laid out on the Pavement, Has this man lost his memory? He is weeping alone In the dim light, the petaled shame collects at his feet And his Spren begins to moan. Every dead-voice seems to scream An Abominable witness, The Thrill it claims him, the dead-voices shame him, And he begs for forgiveness. Memory, All alone without Stormlight He can see her from old days She was beautiful then He remembers, he killed her and watched Rathalis burn Now her memory lives again Now for the game part, pick one of your favorite scenes from SLA, pick a song from a Musical, write alternate lyrics and link to a video of the song being sung so that Sharders can sing your altered lyrics to the tune of a musical number. Mwhahahah, let the fun begin.

While rereading OB now, I have another small grain of proof to add to my speculation that Hoid is the girl who looked up, and that the story of the Girl who looked up is about Hoid Stealing the first Gem, Adonalsium. During the trip through Shadesmar, in Chapter 97 Riino, Kaladin notices the following pictures in Riino the lighthouse keeper/fortune seer room: The 2nd picture with a wall between the shadowed city and the glowing light seems like an obvious reference to the Wall in the story of the Girl Who Looked up. The other picture could possibly be our first on screen view of Adonalsium pre-shattering. I could see the great god of the Cosmere, who transcends space and time, being contained in a single brilliant pane of glass (like a mirror) and a shattered mirror would naturally cleave into what the participants of the shattering would refer to as "shards". In the same chapter, after Kaladin's mystical trip through the fortune teller's glass to find Dalinar in his need, Azure is talking to Kal about fortune tellers on Nalthis and says this: I think that it's no mere coincidence that Hoid is brought up so soon after Kaladin saw those pictures, and I think that's pretty awesome that we might have a description of what Adonalsium looked like right before the shattering. Another grain of sand for this proof is that Riino is a very unusual character. He is Shin in appearance, practices a form of magic in the Cognitive Realm that is forbidden on Roshar, he uses the Selish "Merciful Domi" when he is surprised, knows about Nalthis based Heightenings and knows about Surgebinding. After Kaladin uses the Rii Oracle he says this: So Rii has knowledge of 3 separately invested worlds Nalthis, Sel, and Roshar and has most likely been able to extend his life with Nalthian breath (the quote above implies that he's able to see that Kaladin doesn't have a bio-chromatically enhanced aura) or with some other form of investiture because he says surgebinding has begun again (implying that he might have been around pre-recreance). Hoid, a very strange and singular character, coming up in a casual conversation in another strange and singular character's house, Riino, who also happens to have pictures hanging on his wall that look suspiciously like they might be depicting events that happened prior to the shattering of Adonalsium. All of these are small points, but I think added together they heavily imply that Hoid is the Girl Who Looked up.

Hands down the best casting on an amazingly well casted show, holy crap that guy is an AMAZING Mormont. Totally not who I see for the role of Dalinar, but if he was cast as Dalinar I think he could make it work, he's an oustanding actor.

That's a good Dalinar, my first choice for Dalinar would be impractical, Jurgen Prochnow is 76 now, but take a look at how awesome he would be as Dalinar: If I had to pick someone closer to an age where they could acutally play Dalinar, I would pick Gabriel Byrne, here's a recent pick from the fan site Byrneholics (pretty hilarious name for a fan site btw): You want someone that has the emotional Depth to pull of the Unity scene, and the flashbacks, holy crap Gabriel Byrne could do it.

Whoaaaaa! That is an amazing idea!!! I have made many attempts at speculating what the real cause of the Recreance is, but holy crap, what if this is it? What if by swearing the 5th ideal each KR is splitting off a chunk of Honor, and really all KRs using the Nahel bond are miniauture splinters of Honor, what if they all realized that the reason Honor was starting to go slightly off his rocker was because they were the ones who were actually splintering him! What if this was Odium's long con all along—Create an apparently massive threat, wait for Honor to do the Honorable thing (create splinters of himself to make the honorblades), continue repetitive cycle of immanent destruction, wait for Honor to create more splinters of himself, repeat cycle of immanent destruction, wait for Honor to start to dis-corporate (like Preservation) due to increased creation of splinters and loss of investiture then turn the moral screws of robbing the Parsh of their connection and Identity while also revealing that the KRs are destroying Honor by there simple existence. This is the con part of the long con, because Honor could have continued to be splintered (the sum total of Investiture is very great) but Odium got the KRs to abandon their oaths, which because they were so heavily invested in Honor, splintered him for real. Then you have the post recreance slow dissipation of Honor.

I think this is interesting that only certain lesser spren are corrupted by Sja-anat. We know that pain spren, shame spren and glory spren are corrupted, but that hunger spren are not. We also know that the corruption results in altered coloration (sometimes?) for the effected spren and changed physical manifestation (Glory spren appear as cubes instead of spheres, pain spren appear as sickly green sinewy hands instead of skin covered orange hands, and shame spren appear as falling shards of glass instead of falling pink and red flower petals). These lesser spren seem to be corrupted by proximity to Sja-anat, while higher spren need to actively be corrupted (like the Oathgate spren, which turned from white to red, red being the sign of corrupted investiture). From the journey through Shadesmar, we know that the physical realm manifestation of a spren is only a partial aspect of the spren's true being, but that being the case, what kind of transformation is actually taking place? Is her effect one of corrupting the very idea of an emotional state? Like does the idea of glory to an impartial observer subject to her corruption seem subjectively different than it would to an impartial observer not being effected by her corruption? Maybe this is a window into the nature of her corruption and how she is able to corrupt, and maybe this is also a window into the levers that Odium uses to control/corrupt his voidbringers. He and Sja-anat can corrupt their vessels using the phenomena of Pain, Shame and Glory possibly because these are emotions that can be projected or rationalized away. He seems in OB to work on the principle of "Let me be the cause of X behaviour, it's not your fault, blame me" and this tradeoff (as seen with Moash and as narrowly averted by Dalinar) seem to rob the person who accepts this rationalization of more of their identity (creating the void in Voidbringer). It would be incredibly interesting to see how some of these corrupted spren differ from the non-corrupted versions in Shadesmar.

The first on-screen summoning of shard plate will happen when Hoid summons a shardplate cod-piece to tell the Story of the Recreance in interpretive dance. There will also be a chorus of Aviar birds, the end effect will be a lot like I just can't wait to be King from the Lion King, but with a lot more Hoid.

I let my girls use mine, the ink is refillable and the tips are replaceable. You essentially pay a lot for the plastic tube and color coded end cap. I wish that Prismacolor markers were still being made, I like those a lot better (the Cerulean blue shades are amazing), but Copic is a pretty decent replacement (and the refillable feature is a bonus). There's one thing that you might look into getting, it's called the Famous Artists Course, it was a correspondence art school where incredibly talented illustrators and artists created lessons (like Norman Rockwell). Here's a link, you can see the course outlines. If you have a good used book store in your area it's totally worth asking them if they have any of these. They are ring bound lessons, and they summarize a lot of what I learned from art school incredibly well. The lessons on Perspective, Figure Drawing, and Clothing and Drapery folds are amazing. Another thing you can do is if you live in a modestly sized city, you can probably find drop in figure drawing classes, where you pay a flat fee and have a live model that you draw from. There's no better way to learn how to draw then to actually do it, and studying the human figure in a variety of poses strengthens pretty much every drawing muscle you need. I like the latest drawing by the way, the carapace heads look great!

I found this to be quite interesting, guess we'll see what we can figure out in the next few years. This is very interesting, during the chapter pre-release, I was speculating on the Tor.com forums that Mraize is an Anti-Hoid. Shallan when she first sees him in the Basement of a Basement bunker in Sebarial's war camp mistakes him for Hoid, he's like the version of Hoid that came out of the Black Lodge. We have seem him, like Hoid, gathering quite a few items of Investiture, and I think that these lines from Chapter 22, the Darkness Within are very telling about the Ghostbloods' purpose: I think that the Ghostbloods might be trying to resuscitate the shard Ambition, the bolded portions of both quotes above I think emphasize this, or they are trying for the grander prize, like Hoid, to refashion a new God shard. Interesting to speculate about for sure.

I used the wrong word, sorry about that. I meant that the returned are infinitesimal splinters of Endowment (we know that shards can willingly create their own splinters), and that Endowment uses these splinters to achieve either the unfinished goal of the Returned Soul or to achieve some larger goal of Endowment based on Endowments future sight (like the case of an infant returned liked Susebron). My understanding of a sliver, which could be wrong, is that a sliver is a cognitive shadow that has held enough investiture to resist the pull to the great beyond, so I can see how my misuse of words was very confusing. I think the realmatic explanation for a sliver is that holding that amount of investiture causes an expansion of the vessels spirit web and anchors the spirit web to the object that the shards investiture has been invested in (so for Kelsier's case this would be the planet and people of Scadrial because that's where Preservation's investiture was invested). Vin and Elend both could have become Slivers if they wanted to, but they were content with what they had done in life so they went to the Great Beyond.This has probably been mentioned on another Thread, but I think with Kelsier moving through the Cognitive realm, it's highly likely that he will assemble the component splinters of Devotion, Ambition and Honor to become a new shard with a new intent, Survival. Very interesting, have an upvote for creative & critical thinking! Thanks, one other possible area for Investigation is to look at which races on Roshar the Heralds match up with. The thinking here is that if we know the races of each of the Heralds, we would know which races were in opposition to the First Voidbringers because the Heralds themselves are really the only solid pieces of evidence we have about the Initial coalition to stop Odium. Through a process of elimination, we might be able to get closer to determining who the original people of Odium are. I keep going back and forth about whether the Shin or the Alethi were the original people of Odium, but I think if we know a herald is of a particular race, we could eliminate that race from the possible canidates of original Voidbringers. Nale - Is obviously Azish, so they are elimintated Taln - Is obviously Makabaki, so they are eliminated Ishar - ?? Jezrien - Is he Alethi?? Shalash - Related to Jezrien but ?? Vedel - Reshi maybe ?? Chanarach - ?? Pailiah - ?? Battar - ?? Kalak - He is short, don't know if there are any other good descriptions of him ?? I think that OB has some deliberate obfuscation and some deliberate hints at the true answer for who the Original voidbringers were, one thought just digging a lit bit deeper is maybe the original Voidbringers were the Natanan people. There's the Interlude with Puuli where he is in his lighthouse waiting for the Voidbringers to sail from the Origin and he remembers this chillingly cryptic remark from his grandfather: You couple this with the fact that both Sigzil and Hoid told the story of the Natan queen Tsa switching places with the moon Mishim to beget children with the moon Nomon, and that this describes the strange birth of the Natan people. This sounds like an interplanetary exodus story wrapped in myth. At the end of the day, still feels like we need more information, it's really like: