Mad_Scientist

The contest ends around the time of my birthday. Nice timing, though even if I win the book of course won't reach me till a while after it. And in case it is not already clear from this post, I want to sign up for the contest.

Yah, for example I believe that Cartoon network refuses to allow smoking (though they broke that rule for Miyazaki movies, because they had too), so Sanji's smoking in One Piece still had to be edited out even in the Funimation version. Also, it seemed like Cartoon Network didn't want a show that had previously been TV-Y7 suddenly turned into a TV-PG show, so Funimation still had to tone the violence down a lot. But at least the DVDs and web streaming of One Piece remained unedited.

Actually, Viz is doing Naruto and Bleach. Funimation is doing One Piece. That said, Funimation definitely won't edit the show, at least for dvds. If it somehow ends up broadcasted again there's a chance the tv version could have edits though (just like the tv version of One Piece continued to have some edits even after Funimation took over).

My two brother-in-laws (who are themselves brothers) were both big fans of the books. I had read and loved Tolkien, but hadn't read much other fantasy yet, and I found some of their conversations about the Wheel of Time quite interesting. I decided to borrow the first book from one of them eventually. I remember that I hesitated to do so for a while though, as the series was huge and unfinished (10 books were out when I finally started reading) and I half wondered if Robert Jordan would ever finish the series. Looking back now, some of my comments before I started reading are both sad and ironic.

Why no option for the Black Ajah? Hmm. In all seriousness, I have little idea. Maybe Brown? I do love reading.

I think darniil was trying to make two points. The first is that though Ruin and Preservation have not merged together, they are linked in a fashion. Let's use legos as an analogy. Let's say we got two legos, a blue one and a red one, named Preservation and Ruin respectively. Some guy named Sazed goes over to the the legos and picks them up. He holds the blue lego in left hand and the red lego in his right hand. Thus, the legos are completely separate from each other, and the only connection they have to each other is that they are both being held by the same person. This is the way most people seem to view Sazed's current state in relation to the Shards he holds. Not let's consider another example. Sazed goes over and picks up the blue and red legos and smashes them together somehow. Poof! Now he's just holding a single lego, and it's got a new color, purple. This is the idea that Chaos and KChan so vehemently disagree with, the idea that the Shards have merged and now have a new intent. This is also not what darniil was suggesting. Final example. Sazed goes over to the two legos, and sticks the red one onto the blue one. They are now held together in the standard lego way and can be moved about as though they were a single piece. But they are still separate. The red lego is still red, the blue lego is still blue, they are still two different legos. But they now have a connection to each other, a connection that is more than just "they are being held by the same person" like in the first example. This, I believe, is what darnill was thinking. Basically, his idea is that when two Shards come together, there are more than just two possibilities. It's not just "they become a single Shard" or "they remain totally separate with absolutely no connection to each other." It's possible for them to become linked together while remaining distinct, or so darnill is speculating. The second point I got from darniil's post was that just because Ruin and Preservation remain separate Shards now (or so most of us think) doesn't mean they will remain that way always. Perhaps, if Sazed holds them long enough, they will indeed combine into one. The red and blue lego attached to each other will become a single purple lego. As for my own views, assuming the above understanding of darniil's points is correct, I'm not sure. I do think that there is a way to merge Shards together, but I don't think it's something simple or something that will happen automatically just by Sazed holding two Shards together. I'm also not sure whether I think it's possible to merge only some of the Shards together or whether you have to merge all 16 together at once. Regardless, I don't think Ruin and Preservation will ever become a single Shard just by Sazed holding the both of them for a long period of time. As for whether Sazed is holding two legos separately or has attached them to each other, I also am unsure. It's something to think about I suppose.

Interesting. In this thread it was speculated that the doors to the Palanaeum might be the Surgebinding chart. But now I'm thinking it may actually be the "evil" symbols on the door instead, though I'm sure the colors are different than those on the book illustration.

I have an idea that it relates to either Amaran(Brightlord who betrayed Kaladin) or Sadeas. Not sure which idea I like better.

Except Szeth is an oddity. as he definitely has the powers of a Windrunner and uses both gravity and pressure. But I suspect that Szeth's current abilities are abnormal in some way and were not gotten in the normal Radiant way, and that if he ever does develop as a Radiant, he will have slightly different powers than he does now.

If Kaladin's mother's conversation stood alone, I might think the same thing. Heck, my first time reading Way of Kings I did think that way. But when I re-read it looking for cosmere clues, I noticed some things that add credence to her words. One of those things is Syl's cryptic comment about spren being basically the same individual. Syl's words can be interpreted many ways, but they do fit nicely with Hesina's words. But the biggest reason I think Hesina is right is because of Soulcasting. When Shallan accidentally Soulcast, she turned a goblet into blood. She communicated with the goblet, or more precisely, with the spren of the goblet. Now, I suppose it's possible that Shallan is mistaken, but I got the impression that she was right, and that all Soulcasting involves spren. That would mean that everything would have to have a spren, or at the very least everything that can be Soulcast would have to have a spren. Now, going back to the goblet that Shallan turned into blood. She talked to the spren and caused it to change. But, what if she shattered the goblet first? Presumably, she'd be able to Soulcast the pieces. But that would mean that each piece of the goblet would have a spren now. One goblet, one spren. A dozen goblet pieces, one spren inside each of them, a dozen spren. Where does the spren of the goblet go when it breaks? Where do the spren of the pieces come from? The best explanation, to me at least, is that Hesina is exactly right. The spren of the goblet breaks into pieces itself, and little bits of it become new spren inside each of the goblet's pieces.

One thing to note about that Brandon quote is that it seems a bit outdated. He mentions two main magic systems there, and from the descriptions it seems clear that one is Surgebinding and one is Soulcasting. But in current Way of Kings, Soulcasting is actually a part of of Surgebinding (Brandon has confirmed this) and not a separate magic system. There are also other magic systems such as the Old Magic and Voidbinding that we don't know much about. It seems the "two main magic systems" thing is no longer entirely valid, at least as far as classification goes. It also seems to me that when he was commenting on the magic system that manipulates "fundamental forces" he was giving general examples of the type of thing it does rather than specifically outlining its powers. All things considered, while it's possible that there may be a form of Surgebinding that can manipulate atomic forces, I wouldn't be too surprised if there isn't.

The story given in the book itself was that the Lord Ruler was completely decapitated, and Brandon revealed somewhere (either an annotation or an interview, can't remember which) that this was indeed an exageration. So was being burned all the way down to a skeleton. But... he also revealed that both things were based on real life events, one being an incident where he suffered severe burns, another where he was almost decapitated but his head remained attached to his body. Don't think Brandon mentioned anything about whether the spine was severed or not though.