Mason Wheeler

"Here's something that doesn't make any sense, and it will be explained in a later book" is fine. I have no problem with that, generally speaking. But when it's "here's something used to resolve an important piece of narrative conflict that doesn't make any sense," that's a violation of the First Law. I had three problems with that one specifically. It just took the whole "Shallan's repressed memories" theme above-and-beyond and into ludicrous territory. Here's someone who has seen the visions, who's seen the Heralds as they truly look, and she never once noticed and said "hey, that one looks just like my mom!" And adding in "and she showed up at the wedding, but the whole thing got pushed off onto Veil" just feels like a really weak hand-wave. Heralds apparently have "herald powers" that give them superhuman speed and reaction time, among other things. We see this with both Ishar and Taln, the latter of which is able to move fast enough to cause something akin to a sonic boom, so we know it's not exclusive to just one Herald. Are we truly to believe that a little child was able to get the drop on one of them, even with a Shardblade summoning? It compounds the trauma of "I killed my father" and "I killed my mother" with "I caused the Desolation," and does so rather pointlessly since there's really nothing she can learn from it.

Honestly, I felt like the Unoathed and also Szeth skipping an ideal both violated Sanderson's First Law. They came out of nowhere, because we had no understanding that either of them were possible. I hate to have to say this, but someone's got to say it: I found this book disappointing overall. From solutions that came out of nowhere, to validating so many of the worst fan theories out there, (Chana Davar, Renarin/Rlain, Gavilar as Odium's champion, etc,) to the resolution to the SIgzil questions that The Sunlit Man set up being just a few brief paragraphs at the end that felt like they were tacked on in a rush just to tick that specific box, to the way that we really can't call the remaining books "The Stormlight Archive" anymore, to so many important details from before being left unexplained (particularly involving Dalinar: what does "I am Unity" mean? What does "we killed you" mean?), to entirely new important details being left unexplained with no indication that they're significant enough to revisit in later books (everything about Zahel's captivity), the story gave a sense of being rushed and unpolished that's entirely at odds with the 4 years it took to produce when Brandon has historically gone 3 years between Stormlight books.

Cultivation sucks. It doesn't get discussed much in here, but it seems pretty clear that at virtually every turn, she screwed up and made things worse. And yeah, there's a whole lot of blame to go around for how things turned out in the end, but the lion's (dragon's?) share definitely belongs to her.

In chapter 100, we see Tanavast's perspective of arrival on Roshar. Soon after this, Koravellium Avast, AKA Cultivation, shows up. Tanavast has a brief argument with the power of Honor, which revolts at him breaking his word, the agreement that the Vessels all made with one another to go their separate ways and not have anything to do with each other anymore. But he shouts it down: I find this a bit irritating, because six years ago I asked Brandon about this: That was a very intriguing answer, and I've been kind of hoping ever since then to see some explanation of how that worked. And now we get one, and the book makes it clear that he blatantly did not keep his word afterall; he just decided "screw keeping my word; I decide that in this case, the promise is worth discarding."

One thing I noticed is that he said that without nitroglycerine, diatomaceous earth is worthless. This is not entirely accurate; it's a powerful dessicant (drying-out agent) which makes it a very effective insecticide to protect gardens and trees from bugs without leaving poisonous residue on the food produced.

17! An auspicious number!

Well that was unexpected. While reading through technical documentation on the PostgreSQL database, I came across this example block: BEGIN WORK; -- Set up a cursor: DECLARE liahona SCROLL CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM films; -- Fetch the first 5 rows in the cursor liahona: FETCH FORWARD 5 FROM liahona; code | title | did | date_prod | kind | len -------+-------------------------+-----+------------+----------+------- BL101 | The Third Man | 101 | 1949-12-23 | Drama | 01:44 BL102 | The African Queen | 101 | 1951-08-11 | Romantic | 01:43 JL201 | Une Femme est une Femme | 102 | 1961-03-12 | Romantic | 01:25 P_301 | Vertigo | 103 | 1958-11-14 | Action | 02:08 P_302 | Becket | 103 | 1964-02-03 | Drama | 02:28 -- Fetch the previous row: FETCH PRIOR FROM liahona; code | title | did | date_prod | kind | len -------+---------+-----+------------+--------+------- P_301 | Vertigo | 103 | 1958-11-14 | Action | 02:08 -- Close the cursor and end the transaction: CLOSE liahona; COMMIT WORK; Suddenly I'm very curious as to who's writing these docs!

Wow, there's a lot of that going around lately! Congrats to all the new missionaries!

Fair enough. Back when I was in school, I was not living in Utah.

In 2020, before the pandemic, I was working at an office in South Jordan. We could see two different temples out one of the windows! I don't think I've ever had that debate. Your ward (or maybe your stake; not sure which) is assigned to a specific temple district, generally the one that's closest to you, and you go there by default unless you have a specific reason to go somewhere else. When I was in Pennsylvania, before they opened the temple in Philly it was a 4-hour drive to DC. Shortly after that, the DC temple closed for renovations, and the people there had to drive 4 hours to Philadelphia!

Beautiful temple! I used to be a temple worker there, as I was living in the area back when the temple opened. If you've never been a temple worker, you really have no idea how much stuff is going on behind the scenes to make all the work run smoothly!

The more things change...

Honestly, I liked the original ending to Sixth of the Dusk better than the one Brandon decided on in the final draft. It feels like it fits the story and the characters better.

Also, "verily." That's basically the literal meaning of it: "I'm speaking literally here."

A friend of mine said a while back, "I used to be a high priest. Now I'm not. I used to be a home teacher. Now I'm not. I used to be a Mormon. Now I'm not. But I'm still faithful!"

Have you put your papers in yet? Any idea where you're going to be headed?

One that I keep coming back to is 2 Nephi 9: 28-29. It's an important reminder to be humble, particularly in our day when we always hear people say that the Gospel and its principles can and must be discarded as outdated nonsense, and that we have a far better understanding today with all our science and technology. Because inevitably, if you wait long enough, you always see these "new and improved" ideas collapse and cause great suffering. Well, those of us who paid attention to the Gospel, and anchored our souls to the Lord (Hebrews 6: 19) to not continue to be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4: 14) ended up avoiding all that suffering. I'll always remember, in the early 2000s, my stepfather's employer offered a new plan to invest their retirement savings in the stock market to help it grow more quickly. Everyone thought this was awesome and jumped on board... except for him. He thought back to President Hinckley's advice to get your houses in order and be cautious in temporal and financial matters, and he turned down the opportunity. He missed out on a few rip-roaring years in the stock market, but he also missed out on the 2008 crash that wiped out his coworkers' gains. In the end, the only one to profit was the one who listened to the Prophet!

Has anyone asked Brandon this? "Will the eventual development of fingerprinting technology make it harder for kandra to impersonate somebody?" Unlike facial features, fingerprints cannot be inferred from bones, nor even from DNA. (We know this because identical twins have distinct fingerprints.) So unless a kandra gets a person's body while it's still fresh, and knows exactly what to look for, you'd expect that they'd have no idea how to recreate authentic fingerprints.

56:04: Argent: "I guess Hoid just... got better? " Have you read the ending scene of Dragonsteel Prime? While it's of dubious canonicity, it does show that Hoid's ability to "just get better" is for all intents and purposes limitless.

It even works on higher-level leadership. I heard a talk in sacrament meeting a while back, it went something like this: If you met some random guy on a ski lift, would you ever suspect it's someone whose face you really should recognize, when they're not wearing a suit? But here he was, just out enjoying the slopes, some random guy on a ski lift like anyone else.

When I was in high school, I was involved in a theatrical production authored by one of our high councilors, called Abinadi. (No points for guessing what it was about.) The role of Abinadi was played by a councilor in the stake presidency. One day during rehearsals, he was reading one of his lines, and someone in the scene with him made a joke, and he cracked up so hard it took him over a minute to stop laughing. Finally he took a few deep breaths and said "we're going to need to rewrite that line, because I'm never going to be able to say it with a straight face again." This really drove home to me that, underneath the mantle of authority, he was just a guy like anyone else. I've found church leaders a lot less intimidating ever since.

Some Jasnah fanboys disagree, largely out of motivated reasoning, but it seems quite clear that Jasnah is a psychopath, of the charismatic, pro-social variety that is largely overrepresented among CEOs and politicians. There are plenty of reasons to believe this, but the most obvious one is the way her go-to solution to every problem is murder. For example: Don't like your brother's new wife? Hire an assassin to keep tabs on her, and don't so much as bat an eye when the assassin points out that assassins aren't hired just to keep tabs on someone. Thugs robbing people downtown? Use a Soulcaster to brutally slaughter them all. Trouble with the Fused? We should find some Heralds and kill them. Something fishy going on with Renarin's spren? Better murder him; it's the only way to be sure. She doesn't always go through with it, but it appears to always be the first obvious solution that pops into her head. Because she's a psychopath. Having her on the throne of Alethkar is horrifying.