Argent

Brandon apparently considers it very similar to programming. As a developer myself I can't say that I see it. I don't have the full picture though, so there's that.

I think this is a part of the reason I held off on reading it for 8 years...

Not to this question, but there is some relevant information.

I would have to reread his passages in both books when I have some more time, I barely remember him from my previous reads...

Uh, tough one. I am partial to Taravangian - villains with a strong argument for doing the right thing work well for me.

So, White Sand has been a fun experience. On one hand, yay for Cosmere and a flashy magic system. On the other, the characters can be downright abysmal at times. If there is one thing Brandon must've learned since he wrote this, it's how to write characters, character arcs, and dialogue. That, and foreshadowing - I saw some of the reveals coming from a mile away, and I am notoriously bad at spotting those things. Still, overall I enjoyed it. I am now reading Empire Ascendant and am a little concerned I'll be lost for more than half of the book. It hasn't been that long since I read the first book in the series, but it was not a book I remember very well, so after a couple of hours of reading, I am more than a little confused about who exactly everyone is, and what they have been doing all of the first book.

So, I've had the Roshar map, and the Allomancy/Feruchemy tables from Brandon's store for a few months now, and they've been sitting on their boxes because I don't have frames for them. Does anyone know of a good place to buy (somewhat) cheap poster frames? The two tables are 16" x 21.5", and the map is 18" x 24". I can't seem to find anything under $25-30, and that gives me the sads...

I need the swag packs like a sports player needs scissors - with how active they are, they must be sweating a ton, sweat getting in their eyes and all. It would be so handy for them to have a pair of scissors on hand, cut a piece of their uniform, and use it as a handkerchief! Makes you wonder why they don't have people running around the fields, handing scissors to players, it really does...

No, that's what I am disagreeing with The origins of the metal doesn't matter for Allomancy because the metal is just a key. With Sand Mastery, they key is the water - so it is the origins of the water that wouldn't matter. The sand is important, I think.

It wouldn't work like that, I think. Using Allomancy to explain Sand Mastery is not a perfect analogy, even if it is a valid one. If water is a key, or focus, for Sand Mastery the same way metal is for Allomancy, then you can't equate metal composition in the context of Allomancy with different sands in Sand Mastery - you would be comparing the focus of one magic system with... whatever sand is... of another. A better way to approach this, I think, is to say both water and metals allow the magic user to be Invested. Investiture in Allomancy manifests in the ability to perform specific things with it - push and pull in various ways. Therefore Investiture in Sand Mastery would do something similar - grant the ability to manipulate sand, grant the ability to turn sand into water, maybe others as well. The sand itself is no more important than, say, a steel rod is for Allomancy. The miniscule fungus that covers it must be important, but that's a different topic.

Preordered mine from Amazon yesterday. Maybe I should've waited and seen if Brandon will offer it through his store, and bought it from there.

Having finished White Sand just recently, I haven't been part of the infamous PM thread, so I'll bring something that seems obvious to me - why are we not considering that water could be to sand mastery what metals are to Allomancy - a key? It is the only two times (outside of Lift) where a magic user turns resources from their own body into magic.

Was that from the convention where you got to ask 76517867176718657 questions?

Bah, I just finished the book, now I need to go back to it!

Yeah, it's fine, man. I understand that people treat homosexuality as something special because people believe it to be something special, not because it inherently is. It's easier for us to talk about this, than for Brandon to write a character - he, or any other author, would need to have a far better understanding about whether, how, and why his character is different, and ultimately the two of us don't have this kind of intimate knowledge. A good example is writing short and tall characters - neither is significantly different from your average character, but every person who is noticeably taller or shorter than those around them is just more aware of their own height. They don't think about it all the time, but they notice it more often. If you are of somewhat average height, you wouldn't notice whether a character is making note of other people's heights a little more often than usual; for somebody on either side of the average, it's one of those small things that make the character relatable. It's this kind of stuff that makes a character believable, not the big things. Which is why I am sure there are aspects, maybe small ones, to the people in a homosexual relationship that would push from being believable to you and me, and being believable to someone with the necessary personal experience to pass judgment.

That's the thing, though, maybe homsexual relationships do work differently - one can't know without some kind of experience, e.g. talking to people. I happen to agree with the assumption that relationships are relationships, and the only differences come when sexytime happens; but I am not an author, my beliefs reach a fairly small number of people, and if I get something wrong I can apologize to all of them personally. I wouldn't be nearly as confident if my words were reaching thousands of people.

Oh, how innocent you are...

I doubt there will be enough air humidity.

I finally started reading Brandon's White Sand manuscript. I've been putting this one off for practically as long as I've been reading him (not sure why, to be honest), but decided that I need to be able to feel smug about having read the prose when the graphic novels start coming out, and I am having a convenient gap in my reading schedule. I am maybe 15-20% and loving it so far. I can see the quality is not quite there, the character dialogue is... a little cringeworthy at times. The worldbuilding is obviously still there and good, but the way it's presented is a little confusing at times. All in all, I still think I would pay money for it, but I can definitely see why he felt it needed serious revision.

The GA link in my thread has Kaladin and Dalinar in higher resolution and without the GA text

I think you got the links there wrong

Good ol' Mendel could actually work, it's the hair pigmentation genes that seem weird. Now that I think about it, we've seen this type mixed coloration in at least one place in our world - cat fur. If I recall correctly, the reason cats have stripes of differently colored fur is because the gene that determines the color is a sex-linked chromosome, and (and here I am skipping some science I don't remember well) during the embryo's development some of its cells end up with the father's copy of the gene (and so, if they end up being responsible for producing fur, will produce it in the same color as the father), and some end up with the mother's copy (and will color likewise). Mendelian genetics has no issue with this. So it's possible - and I wouldn't be very surprised if it so - that the gene(s) that code for hair color in the Alethi - or maybe all Rosharans? - get bundled on a sex-linked chromosome. I don't see why that would be the case, unless Adonalsium (or some Shard(s)) decided it would look cool, but it's at least possible.

Think I've shared this story in this thread before, but it bears repeating because I like whining. I started with Recluse because my best friend recommended them. Read most of them, maybe 70-80%, and I can't bring myself to finish them or try anything else by him. He has interesting ideas (though I found the magic system there no particularly interesting), but the writing felt atrocious. One of the very few authors I just can't read... Edit: Look at what you've done, I came here to give an update of my reading progress, and instead I ranted about Modesitt Jr... again. I finished Thief of Time, the book I consider to be the end of the Pratchett reread I vowed to do about a year ago, soon after his death. I expected it to be good (it was actually the only Death book I hadn't read back in middle school), and was definitely not disappointed - it was great. Everything I could ask from it. Fantastic book, fantastic end of its series, and a fantastic end of my reread. I'll probably go back and finish the short stories and Tiffany Aching sometime, but for now I'll go back to epic fantasy for while.

These are some of reasons I thought the chart portrays Voidbinding.

Yeah, sorry. I understand that objectively you have it worse. But subjectively, metaphorically speaking, I get to try the appetizer with no hope for dessert. Honestly, I am still parsing through all that...