deacon

I'm really excited to see more of the Reachers! It was so interesting to see spren culture on full display, and it was so cool to see them as they are, when unattached to humans. Cannot wait to see that developed.

Truly, I don't see the difference between the conversation you and StrikerEZ had and the rest. They do not ring bells for me as being unusually good; it's all good. I was enjoying it up until recently. You can continue doing as you like, but if both of us are saying 'what you are doing inhibits discussion' and we choose to ignore that, then this is meaningless. Feel free to respond to posts of mine in the future, I'm not angry or anything.

I'm pretty leery about the timeskip between OB and SA4, so what I'm hoping we don't see is a ton of interesting things that happen in that year and then we find out just in conversation that x cool thing happened back then, over and over and over again. I also really don't want to see Shallan become a mother. Please, no.

I would like to respond to this by saying that is already the understanding we have in a place like this. You and I and many others are responding to each other's posts, agreeing and disagreeing with others' interpretations. I agree. But if what we're doing qualifies as telling you you're wrong, then so are your responses. Pointing out weaknesses in an argument is not a rude thing in and of itself, yes; people love to theorize and guess and the discussion of those will involve disagreeing with each other. This kind of discussion is something I find fun, and I make the assumption this is the case for everyone else, but I don't enjoy having intentions or tones assumed of my posts when I didn't put it there. But maybe you were thinking of someone else when you wrote this, but it was left open. That said, I think I'm with the topic for the moment. I do make reasonable inferences from the WoBs and in-book facts we're given, and it's not fun to get the response that the inference can't be true because such-and-such hasn't technically been ruled out. Requiring concrete evidence for others' theories but not requiring them for your own doesn't make for a fun conversation on the other side of it. Yes, yes, the 17th Shard is the Shard of Pedantry and a haven for splitting hairs, lol, but there comes a point when one is done. Til the next one, I guess.

I am previously aware of the scientific method, yep. My responses I think are going to overlap with things already said, but that is life in a discussion forum. Well, the idea that there was a change of summoning speed is not based on anything. In three books, it has not been touched on and nothing we've seen or heard of in the books has suggested that the ten heartbeats can be circumvented, until Maya. People's hearts beat faster when in battle and in need (dat adrenaline~), but this is not new to the function of Shardblades. This is business as usual. This is not new to the Perpendicularity. It's still ten heartbeats, even if the heart is beating faster because of adrenaline or urgent need. An increase in investiture does not make dead Shardblades summon faster; it has not been noted in any of the books so far. It's still always ten heartbeats. Even in the Perpendicularity, everyone else who used Shardblades summoned them in the normal 10 heartbeats, and in the Battle of Thaylen, just about everyone was in urgent need. If Adolin was able to summon it faster the third time because of need but no one else who was in need could do that, then it can't be because of an effect in the area. Being aware that this is only an example guess to you, still, here's an example response. Already, I feel it's important to note this is already mostly the main theory I see going around. A combination of Adolin living the oaths, Maya starting to stir - whatever we think exactly that means - and a non-zero amount of people think the Bondsmith abilities are going to help. I personally don't care one way or the other if Bondsmith abilities are involved somehow, just that it doesn't make sense that the Bondsmith powers are the main/only facilitator here. That's what I meant when I said there was no detail to it, though I'd love more on this. Anyone can make any kind of guess they want because it's so broad and vague, so in my opinion, it needs further reasoning to be used in an argument. Still a very fun WoB. Bondsmiths being used don't dispute your theory, either, because Bondsmiths can 100% affect the power of Connection. It's just that Connection is not investiture, and they work differently. Connection isn't going to follow the same rules as investiture. Your opinion that Bondsmiths can jump the hurtle of assigned investiture is a risky one and I don't think there's enough of a foundation there. Dalinar has affected the powers' of people he already knows - he personally has Connection with Shallan - and affecting the connection of dead Blades that never belonged to him is still completely unknown territory. We've never seen the Bondsmith powers affect a third-party relationship - ie. the kind of personal only-two-allowed-here relationship that is a Radiant and their spren/Shardbearer and their Shardblade. So while I'm saying I don't think it's ruled out, I also think there's not anything to support it, either. That tends to be my philosophy. It's my experience that "the lack of opposing evidence to the theory" is not the same thing as "evidence that supports the theory". Of course everyone is allowed to theorize and play in the space Brandon made, but after a lot of frustrations in the past, I am never going to support a theory whose strongest argument is just that it's possible. Otherwise, I'll never get through the gaps in between SA books. I've already said that Connection and investiture are different. If a Bondsmith is involved, it can't be investiture. They are not the same thing and have different rules. Bondsmiths might be able to affect the Connection between Blade and bearer, but investiture wouldn't affect Connection. You'd have to ignore all the WoBs about the nature of investiture and Connection to say that investiture could be used to fix a broken Connection. To use your metaphor, that'd be like placing two broken cords (damaged Connection) next to each other, sending electricity (investiture) through both, and then saying that the cord is now whole. Connection and investiture are two different things. The Connection between the bearer and Blade IS the bond between the bearer and Blade. I've just been using them interchangeably; perhaps I assumed people reading would understand I meant they were the exact same thing. But Bondsmiths would be involved in the future; we haven't seen a Bondsmith powers affecting Adolin and Maya's bond in the books.

Added to more of the hemalurgic leaking: Brandon didn't say power either. He said there was leaking specifically in relation to the fact that it would take longer to summon; he specifically said the form of the Blade wouldn't change. Hemalurgy always degrades, it always loses something in the process. In the Mistborn series (treading around spoilers carefully!) what's lost is the trait that's being stolen. It's really important to know that Hemalurgy doesn't only steal investiture. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Hemalurgy/table There are physical traits it can steal, too. Ergo, the logic says, connection is not inherently investiture. It's the same here: the questioner and Brandon are both talking about the connection/bond to the Blade, not the Blade itself. It's similar to the other topic that's in here, about how gems work with Shardblades. The gem just helps hacks the bond but the Blade itself isn't changed. According to the very question and answer, it's only the bond that's being affected. Power and/or investiture aren't mentioned at all. Knowing that (1) the spren are what's made of investiture, (2) summoning the dead Blade, Hemalurgy or not, requires Connection (3) Connection is not made of investiture means that more investiture = faster summoning doesn't work. The spren in the dead Blade are certainly damaged, but they aren't losing or gaining investiture when being summoned and dismissed. They're in the same state they've always been since the Recreance. We know this because Brandon said above that even though Hemalurgy would have a decayed bond meaning that it takes longer to summon, the Blade itself is unchanged, it in itself is not more damaged. Connection and investiture are two separate things, here. (my god, all the words I just had to teach my web browser just in these few paragraphs!) EDIT: Oh, I got all excited about it but here's WoBs: Brandon confirming that Connection is not made up of investiture, but is its own separate force and also that spren are comprised of investiture Spren are investiture, little bits of it that have developed personalities Here's a fun one: spren CAN take in more investiture and become different - "level up into a higher form of spren" unfortunately the wob goes into so little detail here - god I hope this is expanded on soon

I'm sorry, but I don't find this to be a relevant argument because I don't think anybody was talking in terms of faster summoning in terms of seconds. Obviously many times when filled with adrenaline, ten heartbeats goes faster than when you're relaxed - but it's still ten heartbeats. Under stress or in a relaxed state, seven heartbeats will always go by faster than ten heartbeats. I don't think anyone is arguing that you can say some ten heartbeats are faster than others - but Maya coming faster than ten heartbeats is the first time we've ever seen or heard of this rule being broken. I'm afraid I just don't see how timing it in seconds has any relevance to the question of timing it in heartbeats. We even see in book people talk about how much faster it is to summon their Blades when they're already afraid/in the middle of battle/etc. so this is known information. I think so, but I haven't seen anyone in this conversation say just saying the oaths alone would do the trick. I've seen people say forming a nahel bond, swear and live out the first few oaths as well as a full Edgedancer would have (three oaths, I think I saw someone say, because that's when you can make the spren go in and out of Blade form? iirc? I'm not sure), a combination of the oaths AND external healing, but I don't think anyone has been arguing this point. Actually, in the WoB, Brandon doesn't say that it's investiture that's leaking. I don't think it can be investiture, actually. Spren themselves are investiture. That just doesn't work with the information that we have, especially since Brandon confirms the physical form of the Blade is still intact and the person wouldn't lose bits of the spren. It seems like a much better fit to say that the Connection has a leak, that hemalurgy does an inferior job of taking the bond itself. The gem bond is already an inferior bond to a real living nahel bond, that's why Radiants can summon their spren instantaneously and dead Blades need ten heartbeats to be summoned - it's because the connection is inferior, not the spren itself. The hemalurgy just takes the inferior gem bond and makes it worse. Saying that it's investiture is an idea, but it just doesn't work with what we know about how Shardblades work.

Do you think people on the other side of the conversation ever get annoyed and leave, too? I'm sure it happens, too. Are there people who wish for it not to happen? Everyone has biases; it doesn't make the arguments any of us make inherently illogical because we have an opinion about what we want or don't want to see. Edited for extra clarity

That's okay. We don't all have to agree with each other or be convinced. I've seen plenty of arguments that didn't convince me, but it's easy to just walk away and say "we'll see in SA4" haha. That's how I feel about it all, anyway.

Well, why couldn't it be both? Why does it have to be one or the other? It can have a nice romantic reason and a cold logical reason at the same time. Insofar as I'm understanding the arguments here, I'm sure many people with Shardblades have desperately needed their Blades to come faster than the ten heartbeats and it didn't work that way. I'm sure people even at the Perpendicularity would've likely wanted their Blades coming much faster and there was no response. It sounds very likely it can be both Adolin desperately needing it and Maya recognizing that need and hurrying the process along. Also this topic has been so interesting to follow! The other book series forums don't have as much fun character discussions at all.

Oh, weird. I can see that, though! Personally I feel like the Toy Story world felt kind of blank? Like it was just too empty feeling, kinda gave me the creeps.

Yeah, I don't know either. It still seems really up in the air to me? Like, is Brandon not saying anything about Edgedancers and this question because he doesn't want to give away that he will be one? Or because he doesn't want to give away that he isn't? Brandon obviously isn't going to say anything before SA4 so all we have is the evidence in the books, and Adolin definitely won't be approached by any radiant spren while he has Maya, oh definitely. I know some people think it's 100% confirmed but I really think it could go either way.

I don't know, I think Jasnah would care a lot if it's someone who's hurt/killed a family member. She seems to care about them very much. If her and Kaladin were to happen, it'd be because they both love the family - she could never be with someone she saw as a threat to them. She almost assassinated Elhokar's wife and they had already been married at that point!

Hmm, I guess I'll just disagree. But my point was addressed to Void, who was talking about becoming a Knight Radiant in general. I didn't say anything about Edgedancers. Oh, well!

That's a really cool idea actually. Umm... I mean, like Yelig-nar is technically a mini-mini-Shard (splintering off of Odium and all that). Isn't Nightblood kinda similar in that he has lots and lots of Shard power?

There's a lot to quote (whew!) so I'm just gonna keep the bit I'm particularly responding to? I do like looking at the WoBs and according to Brandon, there are Orders of Radiants who would be totally okay with how the murder of Sadeas went down: And we also know that there isn't only one to think of the First Oath. Even someone with ideas as way different from the Windrunners as a Machiavellian could say and mean the First Oath. Anyway, I definitely agree that he won't be a Radiant when we see him again for the first time in SA4, but I just think the reason won't be because the murder excludes him. Imo if Brandon actually does make Adolin a Radiant (who knows, like, 50/50 odds? He refuses to confirm or deny anything.), it's cause it'd be way too boring to have that happen right at the beginning. Brandon could always surprise me I guess but that's what I think right now.

I was thinking about this a while, but I wasn't coming up with a lot beyond Dalinar and Navani? Lol the love triangle business was just really disappointing for me. It ended with a whimper and in the end I wasn't satisfied with anything that happened. The thing going on between Shallan and Kaladin went nowhere and was never dealt with; and then very little time is devoted to the Shallan/Adolin relationship so when it ended with the offscreen wedding I was like what? I don't know what was happening with those plots, and left me with... strong feelings about having no feelings there. (And Shallan isn't ready to commit imo?) So in the end that leaves me with the most positive ship I really enjoy reading is Dalinar and Navani. It's cute how they flirt, heh.

I just finished Kingdom Hearts 3! I don't want to put spoilers, but mannn… It did a LOT of things I didn't think it was gonna do. Got a little teary at parts, ngl!

Yeah!! As soon the stuff about "keeping the population down" I thought of exactly the same thing!

That'd sure be more interesting than what we got for Amaram. Maybe someone could ask Brandon, since Amaram is dead now! He just seemed the whole time like he never really sees beyond his own nose - or in this case, his ideas for how the world should be. A darkeyed man refusing to accept a Shardblade he'd won goes against a lot of people's ideas for how the world should be and I kinda think anybody would raise eyebrows at it.

I never had a problem with him. I thought he was really interesting and never felt like he was upstaging Vin or anything. He had that plot where his ideals hit the meatgrinder and he wasn't sure whether he was gonna come out of it as the person he wanted to be. It was quite different from Vin's struggles and what she was going through, so I didn't think to compare them that way. I just think he was trying really hard and I can respect that.

That's awesome! thanks for making the list.

I've also read Mistborn, though I don't remember a lot, and Warbreaker, and Elantris, and the Emperor's Soul. What about you?

Oh, good to know. @Mistspren I didn't really think about it until after I was done reading. And then I thought about every other book I read and realized how weird it was. But you're right, it does seem so right.

I don't really like them, exactly, but I've never seen a fantasy novel that has anything like it so it really sticks out as awesome. Zellyia, I upvoted you, thanks for the drawing!