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It's been almost 18 months since I logged in, so I figured I should drop a line here to say thanks for holding down the fort. Initially I took a break to finish my PhD (turns out that obsessing over online forums can contribute to a detrimental effect on your productivity), but then when I finally graduated I got sucked into the Worm fandom and have been reading and writing way too many fanfics in that community. If you don't know me from before, I am the proud author of "If Doctor Seuss Wrote the Stormlight Archive" (linked in my sig) and I used to help with the tracking thread (I see several notifications from people tagging me over there, so I'll be trying to belatedly follow up on those things right after this). I have a year and a half of WoBs to catch up on, plus I need to read Starsight and anything else that I've been neglecting since then. If you have any favorite or particularly revelatory WoB from the past year, link me to it! I'm looking forward to being back.

Updated! Sorry for the delay, I've been off the site for a while. Thanks for summoning me, @BitBitio

Updated! That is, unless some of that Hebrew text included locations. We have a fair number of Hebrew speakers here, but I'm not one myself :-(

Thanks for all the kind words! I'm glad that you have been enjoying my Seussified Roshar. I did in fact give Brandon a printed copy when I saw him last year. I only saw his to the first page, but I think he appreciated it. I've thought a bit more about this one, and may have something to show for it before too long.

I think so, at least parts of them were calculated with Excel. I'll look for my file, but it may be a few days.

I'm shocked that nobody on the podcast or in the comments has mentioned Amaram yet. The way his character was handled in Oathbringer was awful. On a scale from off-putting to rage-inducing, his arc was a solid "Why even have motivations if they are going to totally reverse off-screen?" with an added dose of "Sure, let's melt the brain of this personally meaningful antagonist, then remove him from the series with an unfulfilling fight scene." Graaah! For the record, I was not on the Amaram hate train prior to OB. I liked his character and wanted too see where he went. Apparently he went to become the level 1 mini-boss and retconned his own life story in the process.

Well, if I were to speculate I'd say it's because Nazh is aware that it isn't too fanciful, because he's seen one just like it at the point in time he's collecting these papers. That's just a guess, but since Argent can't comment let's pretend he chimed in here to say that I'm exactly right. The best alternative if that's not the answer is that he's trying prompt Khriss to build him one.

Aww, I'm flattered! (Link is here or in my signature.) Yeah, it's currently sitting at 620K words. It just reached the end of what the author is calling "season one," and there appear to be firm outlines for at least one more season. The good news, if you decide you like it, is that there are regular updates (at least weekly) and it's only taken 18 months to get this far. So while I've only recently started consuming web serials, this one stands with the best in terms of frequent content.

Thanks for getting some confirmation on these, Argent. It's always nice to get a look at the answer key. Called it! For the Taker of Secrets page, it's great to get some more confirmation: @Subvisual Haze was absolutely right about the flipped, mirrored symbols and strokes. They get the credit for figuring out those symbol redundancies. I'm also a bit frustrated with this response, though, because the confirmed words are the ones we were most confident of. For the record, this is the translation as we have it. Bold are confident assignments, while italics are sections of text with low confidence transliterations or undeciphered words, including some letters obscured by the artistic misty border. If anyone wants to take a crack at the remaining portions, the updated translation key is here. As it happens, most of my guesses in that post were way off. "Corrupted" and "Darkness" were the only things even close to correct.

Awesome! Everyone has been added.

You spent a long time talking about why the fused were scared to perma-kill (or trap?) Jezrien. My reading of that scene was that they were just scared of the knife that was going to do the stabbing. It is a potent artifact with the power to kill or capture a cognitive shadow with an inherent respawn ability. It is no wonder the fused wouldn't want to touch it.

I haven't looked at it yet. What is the timeframe in which you are hoping for feedback? Work is extremely busy this month and I doubt I will be able to make time for this until things calm down a bit. If the timing works out, it might make more sense for me to read through a later draft after you've Incorporated some of the suggestions from other readers.

Another sharder (Kearin on discord, not sure what their handle is here) recently pointed me to Life Ore Death by Obloquy, and I'm enjoying it a lot. It takes a full feruchemist from shortly after the Catacendre and dimension-hops her into the DC universe. The interactions between the Metallic Arts and DC powers are interesting and well thought out, and the main character's backstory is not only awesome but also fits well enough into the gaps of Era 1 events that I am adopting it as headcanon.

Agreed. I've added @Nohadon, and I'm happy to add @MoHaam if they post here themselves. Thanks for tagging them so they know it's an option.

Neato! I'm interested to see how the multi-media approach works out. In that respect it's similar to the kingkiller adaptations currently in the works. I'm not quite sure what "dark and twisted" means in the context of a Sanderson project. I wonder how that "multi-volume" projection impacts his publishing obligations, since these apparently fall under his Random House works (Reckoners, Skyward, etc.) From the article, this quote by Brandon is interesting. I wonder what visual storytelling techniques made it start working.

Excellent points, @Jess. I agree with all of your arguments here. I also strongly agree with Ian's point at the beginning about how distilling a shard's being into a single word is a pointless exercise that often gives misleading ideas about the nature of the shard. Supposing that the entirety of the power can be encapsulated in a single word sets you up for all the mistakes that come from oversimplification. To take a round-about approach to things, I have several points that lead into each other. I think it is significant that all of the shard names we know have a connotation of action. For example, Kelsier's experience of Leras' shard (things unchanging, one note held for eternity, all moments compressed into one) could easily be described as "Stasis," but instead the shard is called "Preservation." The connotation is that things aren't just staying the same--rather, some agency is actively preventing change. The same can be said for Cultivation, Honor, Devotion, Dominion, Endowment, Ruin. These are words that have verb forms and a strong feeling of volition. This makes a lot of sense when we remember that the shards need a mind to direct them. A dropped shard will seek out a vessel, and if that investiture is left untended then it will develop intelligence on its own. A lot of the discussion in this cast was about how much of an influence the vessel's mind has on the interpretation of a shard. To paraphrase several stances (at the risk of putting words in others' mouths): Some say the shard itself is Passion, but when held by Rayse the more appropriate name for the combined entity is Odium based on how the shard expresses itself. Others say the opposite, that the shard alone is more closely aligned to Odium (since that is what everyone else calls it instinctively) but since Rayse's mind filters it as Passion, that is a more accurate name for the entity he became. Still others argue that the vessel's influence is transient and doesn't impact the identity of the shard, so whatever name it would have alone is necessarily the same regardless of the vessel's interpretation. I don't know the best way to say this next part, but I'm starting to wonder if the essential volition of a shard, the need for a directing mind, means that the names we apply to shards are only meaningful or applicable to the combined entity. So, when Leras drops Preservation that pile of investiture retains its realmatic "flavor" of keeping stuff the same and out of convenience we continue to call it "Preservation," but it isn't truly Preservation again until the next vessel picks it up. Perhaps the unheld power Leras dropped would be better named as Stasis until it acquires a mind to direct it. I'm not entirely convinced of this idea, but I think it has some merit.

Feeling super relieved today. For several months now my wife has been showing symptoms that pointed to multiple sclerosis. Her mom has MS, so we were pretty sure that was what was going on. Well, she had her MRI last week and today was the followup appointment. Turns out there are zero lesions to indicate MS, and her symptoms are actually caused by something much more benign (cavernous hemangioma) that doesn't result in chronic or progressive debilitation like MS. Whew! It's a huge weight off, and I feel like I actually have the emotional energy now to address all of the craziness that is happening at work. Feel very blessed & fortunate.

I'm sensing a theme here :-) I enjoyed the initial section where we get May's reflections on the main cast. I thought I had a good idea of where this was headed, and then the chapter took an immediate turn into entirely different territory--and it was loads of fun! a super boring babysitting job. (I'm not gonna argue with May.) I'm looking forward to the next episode. Out of curiosity, is the pile of goop supposed to be WalDo or a new, unrelated individual?

I like this take on May's character. Looking forward to future installments!

Does it retain the idea of household? That is, if I said "This is House Kholin," would that word apply? (Or to get Biblical, is it related to "House of Israel" phrasing?)

After reading the sample chapters that were posted with the cover reveal (news post here) I still can't guess what continuity the story is in. As much as I love Defending Elysium it just doesn't fit, in my opinion. Firstborn is a possibility, but also doesn't feel right. I am excited about the book, though. Those sample chapters paint a good picture of where things are expected to go, and I'm having fun imagining the twists Brandon will throw into the mix. (I also like that Peter gets an starfighter maneuver named after him this time, instead of a location. The McCaffrey nod is obvious, but I'm wondering if any of those other names are also tributes to authors. Anybody recognize them?)

The reading was from the prologue. In the main events she is 17 (per the sample chapters linked above). After reading the sample, I'm even more excited for the book. I still can't figure out what continuity it belongs in. The world doesn't match any of his other works that I recognize. An argument could be made for Firstborn, but I don't see it. That Brandon is being cagey about confirming any connections to other works makes me think that the reveal will be exciting for anyone who catches it.

Thank you for the kind feedback! I'm really glad you liked it. Naming him Gerund/Ing was super funny to me, and I'm happy with the timing of the joke. (I'm actually pretty curious what portion of readers will appreciate it. Of the three editors who gave feedback, one thought it was hilarious, one rolled her eyes, andone didn't even notice.) I'm flattered at the Rothfuss comparison. I hadn't thought about it, but that may well have been an unconscious influence on structuring the intro. @thegatorgirl00, I confirmed the Kindle Unlimited situation. Yes, authors get a royalty when you read via KU. The amount varies, though. As I understand it, there is a monthly pot of royalty money that gets split between all KU authors based on a monthly count of pages read, number of readers, and the list price. So I have no sense yet for how the KU royalty compares to a sale royalty in hard numbers.

Thanks for the correction on that R'Shara. You're right, those events were very separate. Not sure what I was thinking. I'll need to go back to my notes and see what the real question was before I did my rewording pass.