Argent

Brandon doesn't see his lack of sex (in the books) as a flaw, so I don't see him wanting to "improve" that. He has made a decision to be vague and general about this stuff.

Peeing and pooping are pretty essential too, and far more frequent than sex (you claim otherwise, I call you a dirty liar), but it's almost never present in books. Throwaway figures of speech ("um," "uh," "er...") are another fact of life we rarely see in books. Books, and novels especially, filter much of reality in order to paint a picture whose emphasis is in line with the idea of the book. So Martin's books focus on a world where violence and sex are dominant enough aspects to warrant a presence in his prose. Which, to me, is not a very interesting world - I would, in a heartbeat, replace all the sex scenes with infodumps about dragons and Old Valyria.

Approximately never.

The "mega highstorm" is that highstorm that happens right in the middle of the Weeping. Just clarifying.

He doesn't really consider Pat a rival - but Brandon has said jokingly that he is jealous of Pat's beauty of language. They are very good friends, so I wouldn't bet on Brandon doing things in his books because Pat has.

Hoid might not even have a purpose - though given his increased involvement in The Way of Kings (compared to other books), he might actually want to do something. He could be there for the show - we know (WoB) that he has a knack for showing up at interesting place at the right times.

Except Renarin is not normal. He has some rare blood disease, he is mildly autistic (which may or may not be the same thing), and he is the second son of Dalinar Kholin, the Blackthorn, Highprince of War, and a man in a unique position to influence the king of Alethkar. By proxy alone, if nothing else, Renarin is not normal. Though I I understand what you are saying. I just don't necessarily subscribe to it - normal people, by definition, don't do extraordinary things (often; maybe once or twice). I don't read fantasy for the normal people - I read it for those who do great things.

2) Maybe. Vasher does some really interesting thing with his own Awakened clothing ("become my fingers and grab that which I must" is pretty darn sophisticated). If you can make a few tassels mirror your fingers' movements - intelligently too, so they don't just mirror you one-to-one but attempt to grab things - then surely you can Awaken a robotic arm (or leg) to mirror your entire arm. So yes, I believe you can make an Awakened robot this way. But wouldn't you build the robot first, and then Awaken it with the "fight for me as if you were me" Command (which Vasher uses on a couple of sets of shirts + pants)? 3) Maybe, again. It would create a really interesting world. At first I was skeptical, because I thought you'd run into issues where people would Awaken their household items, but wouldn't be able to recover all of them before their death, ultimately wasting Breaths on technology that would become outdated in a several decades, potentially. But no, if technology moves quickly enough, you would Awaken, say, a car and then retrieve your Breath after only a few years. Or even reAwaken it every so often. The real question is, how advanced of a technology can you create using Breaths and Commands? I can't see anyone creating Awakening a computer, for example.

Meh. As long as we understand each other, your English doesn't matter

I am not sure how long you'll go unspoiled before stumbling over a post talking about Eshonai's interlude... There is a tidbit in it that explains the relationship between the Parshendi and the Parshmen (I'll say much - they are the same species, biologically speaking). Still, even armed with this knowledge, we are no closer to understanding why Shen seems to be acting differently - if he is acting differently. Parshmen are supposed to be perfectly obedient, but they don't seem incredibly intelligent - I am thinking of drunken bees, of all things, for some really odd reason... I doubt this will be the case, but the following might explain things: Parshmen could have weak memory formation capabilities. Because of Eshonai's interlude we know that they are probably not very intelligent, so memory could be lost along with the other mental faculties. This could explain why Shen doesn't seem to hold grudge against his crewmates for disturbing the Parshendi dead. Still though, it's been only a couple of days after the battle for the Tower, and it seems like the Parshmen can remember longer than that... Didn't Shen skulk for more than just a few days after Kaladin's original transgression? Shen is reading the implied behavior amongst Bridge Four - you are part of the crew, you get tatted up.

No, healing doesn't have to be the same, but the laws of magic do. Mostly, we are bouncing ideas, trying to figure out how things work by looking at as many examples as we can get, putting the pieces of the puzzle back together. Only we've got about three pieces, none of them are corners, and the puzzle is not even created yet

I agree with the eyes part, it's what I didn't mention then. Magic eyes are an unexplained side effect of magic I am willing to leave unexplained pretty much everywhere. Blood, however... Let's your blood does carry Stormlight. If it powers you instead of oxygen, then why would you deposit it in the lungs to be exhaled? Carbon dioxide, which we can tentatively refer to as "used-up oxygen," gets dumped the because it's handful to our bodies and because of how diffusion works for gases. The direct reason is the latter though: oxygen enters the body, just as carbon dioxide leaves it, because the lungs are porous enough to allow for the gases to move towards and equilibrium. Stormlight doesn't move like that though. It moves not based on concentration, but shape of the container (i.e. its free form gravitates towards certain containers, Namely gemhearts). So there is no physical reason for Stormlight to be exhaled if it travels by blood - if this were the case, the only way to leave it would be through the blood and pores of the body. All this being said, blood does have a special significance in the cosmere. It's easy to dismiss all my science with just a little handwavium.

[#1] Nothing interesting will happen. Duralumin works pretty straightforwardly - it gives all the metals you are burning a superburn. You need to be actively burning the other metal in order to get its effect, and as a Misting this is a no go. Otherwise Vin would deplete herself of almost everything every time she burned duralumin, because of the trace amounts of various metals in her system. [#2] Probably. I've seen nothing that suggests otherwise.

I don't know about the blood being the carrier for Stormlight... I thought that was the case too, but it doesn't explain very well the glowing eyes or the clouds of Stormlight Kaladin exhales.

Funny you should mention that quote. I wanted to talk about it a while back, but couldn't find a good thread for it, and my comments didn't warrant a new topic, so I just let it sit. But now... yes, it is possible that the report is true, but it stinks a little to me. Maybe it's the way it's delivered, but it sounds too simple to me - and neither the real world, nor Brandon is usually this simple. For some odd reason I find it likely that the priests were receiving prophecies, but from a source other than the Almighty, and they knew it. So instead of admitting that they had been listening to some dark god, they tell the Sunmaker's gang that it was all a fabrication. I don't know, but they feel like martyrs to me here. It would be a very Brandon thing to do...

My pet theory on the matter has always been that Urithiru (@Natans, a good way to remember the spelling is to remember that it reads the same, phonetically, front to back and back to front - it's a palindrome) was a floating city and it fell - for some reason - in the area now known as the Shattered Plains. There is very little that suggests this (the belief that one cannot simply walk into Mordor Urithiru, the fact that the Shattered Plains look like something big fell in their middle, and Eshonai's comment that there are old buildings underneath the plains), so I won't call it a full theory, but it's one of those things I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being true.

You are correct, in a way. Brandon writes with the visual imagery in mind - when he wants to put together a scene that looks cool, he makes it look cool. Literally every Brandon avalanche (man, I never see this term used these days...) is a cinematic marvel, but things don't stop there - many of the scenes before and after would look epic on a screen. It's just how he writes. Robert Jordan, for example, is not as concerned with this - in fact, one of Brandon's recent Wheel of Time blogs talks about the differences in styles between the two of them, battle scenes in particular. Jordan aims for accuracy. Brandon is willing to sacrifice some of that accuracy for the sake of showmanship.

As a scientist and an engineer myself, I find it not at all surprising that Brandon's magic systems draw you in - they are science on more levels than one. Plus, the fact that he is a heavy-duty outliner/architect means that his books are crafted with extreme precision. A testament to that is the frighteningly high number of fan theories that rely on little more than a casual remark, or even a single word of phrase, here and there. And what's even more worrysome is that even though I rant about people not providing enough evidence, I have seen some really plausible extrapolations from such small data sets. It's one of the many things I love about Brandon (and, to be fair, Pat Rothfuss) - he is a true wordsmith. If he writes a certain word, it's not by chance.

I think the freedom-bridge-four glyphtrio could be made to look interesting, with the glyph usually stylized into imagery and all. I can't begin to imagine how the "freedom" glyph could look like, but even a mediocre artist could sketch up designs for "bridge" and "four." I have a vague picture in my head, with the freedom glyph in the middle, symmetric, fanning out on top a little like wings, the other two roughly the same shape on each side.

That's assuming spren have this kind of freedom of choice. I am not sure they, even the Ring, can go "oh, a Desolation is coming, let's send a few spren to bond with some important people, so we can help them out."

I agree - it seems very unlikely to me that any Herald would do harm to Taln. I would not at all be surprised if they all still feel a little guilty for what they did to him. @jcoop513, normal Shardblades don't disappear when they owner dies. If they had been dismissed at the time, they appear close to the body; if they had been summoned, nothing exciting happens. See Szeth vs. Gavilar and Kaladin vs. the unknown Shardbearer. We also know that Honorblades do disappear with their owner's death, from Kalak's viewpoint in the prelude. He doesn't say whether they disappear the moment the Herald dies, but it would make sense. Or, rather, it wouldn't make sense for them to linger around - there is no reason for that. @Alaxel, this is pretty much what I was thinking. There isn't much Taln can fail at while in Damnation (or wherever else he is). I don't think the Heralds are meant to, or even can, prevent the Desolations while in their realm of torture. They seem more like champions who show up just before a Desolation starts and then aid humanity in minimizing the damage and hopefully not lose the world to Odium in the process. The only thing I can see Taln failing at is the timing of his departure from Damnation. He either left too early (because, for example, he broke before the torture), in which case he failed to resist the torment; or he left too late (because, for example, the Heralds have to fight their way out when a Desolation approaches), in which case he failed to... well, leave on time and prepare humankind.

Oh, of course. My reaction is about as rational as my going "they are all gone!" the first time somebody mentioned the Heralds. Just a way for a reader to react to the story.

Nah, Syl is no different - or if she is, this scene doesn't reveal it. I finished a reread a week ago, I should know Haha, yes! In some ways I feel like this about every interesting book I read, but SA is a prime example. It's such a childish (not to mention fangirly...) thing to do, but I just want to grab Kaladin, shake him, and yell "Dalinar is one of the best men alive, go talk to him!" in his face.

Especially considering how much has to happen... I just finished rereading The Name of the Wind, and man, is the writing beautiful. I've been telling people that it is, but it had been my memory of an impression - I got to feel the words again. Pat and Brandon are still the only authors I feel about the same way...

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