Tempus

If you liked SAO, you should check out Log Horizon. Same sort of premise, but less action scenes and moping and more worldbuilding and tactics.

Ha, that's totally appropriate. I find it disappointing by the time he wrote the blog post, he was already sold out of both the phone call and the ARC's for Stormlight 3. That said, if the phone call service was a hotline we'd probably get Peter as the secretary, and he would drop cryptic hints making us even more thirsty and tell us to PAFO all the time. Dang, that sounds like a good business model.

I'm honestly not sure if you're being self-effacing or self-aggrandizing here Kurk! In a nutshell, though, your theories are good, well thought out, and super interesting. They tend to ramble, which probably puts some people off, but the underlying logic is usually sound and flows from your premise and assumptions. They're great theories! I'm not espousing anything just yet since I'm still picking away at my own things, but a lot of your material (on forms especially) I agree with. I'm sure we'll be having some more discussions on em' in the future (*gets a strange and disturbing glint in his eye*)! As for divisions, I'm not certain if I feel the need or if I don't. The tags have a threefold purpose. The first is to allow browsers of the Theory Index a brief glimpse at the quality of a theory before reading it, hopefully allowing them to sort through theories a little better. This is the lesser purpose however - many poorly presented theories have interesting ideas at their heart. For this purpose, staying with fewer divisions would be better, as it avoids confusion. The second and more central purpose is to encourage theorizers to properly develop and present their theories so that they can get more imaginary internet points. I designed the system, and it still works for me - my theories since I started the Index have all been Gold Star theories because I won't let myself make something worse, haha. My hope is that theorists in general are motivated to increase both their output and their quality in order to see themselves improve on the Index. This purpose would benefit from a more closely refined division of score which provides superior feedback. The last purpose is to allow new theorists and theory readers to identify people they can emulate, people who might support them, and people they can look to provide reasoned and sourced responses in a thread. Your own reputation is quite fearsome, and when you arrive in a thread theorists tremble before you! There are many other well qualified theorists I'd like to recognize in such a fashion, for the above reasons. For this purpose, Either method of tagging should be fine. Since I'm having trouble deciding, I thought I'd ask for opinions - even if that opinion is only 'My theories should be ranked even better', that shows me purpose two is getting traction. Edit: I forgot my update! Thou shalt not waste posts. We're up to 500 theories exact, with 15 pages to go in Cosmere boards. TES did indeed spawn theories, but even more was the Sanderson reddit thread, which blew minds. Kurk has been climbing the ranks again, and we're starting to see the high quality / low quantity posters get crowded towards the bottom by more casual but prolific theorists. The WoR theorists are starting to pop up on the radar as well, even though we're only just in early 2013. I suspect many of the bigger names began to join starting at the time when the book was announced. I also updated my script to do a rudimentary topic list automatically, so that's nice. Hall of Fame and Graph Stats pages have been updated.

Given the centre of mass restrictions, there are only a few punches you could use. Notably, you could use a devastating uppercut. Also notably, you might chew up your hand when you push the metal against it. You'd need special gear to protect yourself from self harm, and lots of training for your hand, arm, and shoulder as they would get wrenched pretty badly.

About to head out for the day, I'll get to em tomorrow if I can. By High Imperial name do you mean simply Leftinch...?

You should put 'Mentos: The BreathTaker' as your title when you do.

I don't necessarily agree with that. Brandon loves his twists! Spoiler free forum here, but the major antagonist almost NEVER turns out to be the one you originally were introduced to at the beginning. I have no idea why he would change that pattern. Odium is gonna be a red herring, Stormlight will probably cover his story (it being a major plotline of the Cosmere meta-narrative), then we're gonna get a 'break' for the Dragonsteel prequels (perfect time for a flashback), the Mistborn 2nd trilogy, and then off to finish off the meta-narrative with the Space Opera and a Cosmere concluding book (if he decides to write one) where we'll get to see the real conflict.

Alrighty, here we go! First up, for Leo-nard, we have the astrological sign of Nard: I'm fond of the next one. Breath goes better, Mentos Breath and full of Life! Mentos... the BreathTaker! And lastly, DeLights Full. You're female, so you get a manly crate.

Excellent theory. I have a theory about frequency, but rather than the whole theory, here is a brief selection and a quote base of how all Investiture seems to have a frequency. A frequency of course doesn't imply music, necessarily, but it should still be interesting to you. While I generally work from highest principles and move down (Music is a high level way of expressing the Investiture frequencies), you've done the opposite here (Investiture frequencies should be properly expressed as rhythm). Some other music-y things from the cosmere. In Warbreaker, gaining Breaths grants you perfect pitch. Dawnchant is an unknown musical thing that is apparently important. Skaa did not play music (and were genetically less inclined to Allomancy and not at all to Feruchemy...) Shallan can produce sounds and music via her Lightweaving surge. Hoid's storytelling method involves musical accompaniment and illusions. Hrathen in Elantris often is described as 'rhythmic' when he is controlling crowds. Seons speak with a particular and peculiar rhythm to their talk When Shallen draws from her memory, she often is described as following a cadence or falling into a rhythm Allomancy, as you say, is full of rhythms and pulses. The Well of Ascension had a very strong thudding rhythm When Kaladin used his lashings unconsciously to attract arrows, he would pound his shield to a rhythm Many animals on Roshar are described in terms of rhythm, from the way they move to the patterns on their backs The Thrill is described as the Rhythm of battle by Dalinar The symmetry of the Rosharan cities is produced by cymmatics. The highstorm is described as a 'a terrible song without rhythm' People on Roshar are noted by Shallan to move in a pulsing rhythm rather than a steady stream in Sebarial's Highcamp If all of that isn't interesting, here's a Brandon quote from Warbreaker Annotations regarding Color Harmonics Also, Peter Ahlstrom is a musician, as is Brandon's wife. Those are lots of supporting points, but....

I'm not so certain it will involve the drive. I think the drive is quite plausible in the Mistborn universe, but as Kurk states in my thread, Brandon has specifically said that it involves an unknown allomantic ability, and the lost energy from certain thermodynamic issues in allomancy, and has called a theory involving time bubbles as 'getting closer'. That said, I'm still hopeful that my theory will prove to be a working alternative to the one Brandon may have developed.

As to the psychics of the Alcubierre drive, I have no particular comment. I took first year physics and first year chem in uni as electives, so I'm not exactly an expert. But if NASA believes it is viable (or maybe viable), they've probably got a better group of people working on it than little ol' me. The Allomantic bubble issue is way more sticky. Allomantic time bubbles have very limited information, but a lot of issues to overcome for general FTL use. As far as duralumin cadmium goes, we don't have any good predictions as to size yet. We believe they can vary in size, but don't have significant examples to form any sort of extrapolation. Flaring a temporal metal seems to increase the time dilation effects, rather than change the size of the bubble. I'm not super up to date on my bendalloy/cadmium theories so I might be mistaken on some of this. Kurk would be the one to ask - he's looked at FTL involving time bubbles a lot. There are no known ways to 'link' allomantic powers such as you describe, but other forms of allomancy and time bubbles do have some interesting rules for interactions (and probably many we are unaware of). As far as timeline goes, trilogy two is set 1980's tech, I believe. The third trilogy is listed as 'space opera', no known time scale that I can recall. The gap between trilogy one and trilogy two is about 400 years, though. Alloy of Law (prequel to Trilogy 2) is set 341 years after HoA. Presumably we can extrapolate a rough guess of 100-500 years assuming it will follow similar jumps. Another point is that most books in the Cosmere timeline follow a similar sort of jump between them.

Aha, a potential theorist! Excellent. How our numbers grow *runs away cackling*.

Well, he'd still have the power from his original Shard. Also recall the scale of Shardic powers is huge. Kaladin can lash himself and a couple rocks. The Lord Ruler picked up Preservation and lashed the planet. Edit: Odium and Honor sounds more like Retribution than Justice.

I agree with this, I was lax in my terminology. What I mean by kill is 'remove the shardholder from the shard's power and intent'. In the one on-screen instance of this, the holder died. Thus my silly choice of words. I agree that the Shardholder dying doesn't splinter the shard - I'm suggesting exactly that. The Shard must be splintered consciously by Odium after picking up the new Intent, it doesn't splinter automatically. Not only that, it takes him a while to splinter off all the intents. Again, Shards can be splintered consciously. Presumably if Harmony wanted to, he could splinter off bits of Preservation or Ruin of himself. This process is probably similar to investing, as splinters are just big bundles of investiture. It needn't necessarily be a new person entirely. Cultivation is still around and alive. Though, in my mind, Cultivation + Odium would end up with something like Vengeance, so that doesn't sound too great. Since Splinters like the Stormfather or spren have cognitive aspects, you could even theoretically give the Shard power directly to one of them anyway. Though it's likely with their significantly decreased power, they may not have enough effect on the Intent (presuming these things scale by power).

I haven't posted my own theory on the splintering of shards, but I suggest that Odium probably can't have intents forced on him. Here's the logic. Shards can splinter themselves consciously (Endowment in Warbreaker is the best example) When Odium kills a shard, Brandon calls it splintering When Vin picked up Preservation, she had time before it would begin to change her with its intent Thus, my theory is that what Odium does is kill the Shard (à la Vin), take up its Power and Intent, and then consciously make a whole bunch of splinters of its Intent until there is none of the intent left. This is corroborated by the WoB that say that neither Seons or Skaze were around pre-Odium, and also that the worldhopping on Sel is dangerous due to cognitive splinters running around crazy. Given that scenario, I don't think you could force him to keep his intent. I'm also not sure splintering him is gonna be good either. I agree with you that a lot of little Odium splinters running around sounds dangerous (In fact I've got a little forum game on the backburner which is based on that premise). I might suggest that the reverse makes more sense - kill Odium, and give his shard to some other Shardholder with an intent that can counterbalance it, like Sloth, Stupidity, Mistakes, Apathy, or Scaredypants (which is a confirmed Shard ).

That article doesn't actually describe much or any of the science behind it at all, unfortunately. It's full of chock. That says, it's chock based on the real thing - there is a faster than light drive that uses those principles, and it is being researched by NASA, and it's called an Alcubierre drive. And I have a theory on it. A brief explanation, the science (like most good science) is easy to understand at the general level, and hard when you try to figure it out up close. Basically, the universe as we know it can be described in terms of spacetime - basically time and space together at the same time. Spacetime can be warped. The best example of this is a black hole, which deforms spacetime as it approaches the central gravity mass. All good so far. So, the interesting thing is that if spacetime deforms, you can move without moving. Instead of moving within spacetime, you can simply warp spacetime around you directionally. You don't move, the universe moves around you. This is where it starts to get weird. To accomplish the warping of spacetime in such a manner, you need a field (any field would do, but a bubble is easiest) where the direction you want to go in has extremely high positive mass, and the other direction has a type of exotic matter known as negative mass (not proven to exist yet). And then it's basically like running your hand through bathwater: on one side you get a lot of spacetime (the wave in front of your hand), and behind your hand the water rushes in the fill the void. Same thing, except it is all of time and space instead of sudsy hot water. Anyway, long story short, the key to warping spacetime is control of mass, not time. Though it does make me question the nature of those allomantic time bubbles.

I'll make a few more tomorrow - been busy the last two days. Hold tight guys.

I don't necessarily agree, PorridgeBrick. Sanderson wrote Dragonsteel, and is gonna change it. He wrote Aether, and an entire planet and magic system, and those got changed. Mythwalker also had an entire planet and magic system - again, changed completely. Mistborn Prime, Final Empire Prime, also changed. TES was written long after Elantris, and yes it fits there, but it's not the only planet we've seen with magic subdivided (stares hard at Taldain). Most of those are non-canon works now, and I think that that is relevant. Brandon will change things as he goes along in order to improve them, and he doesn't necessarily have every system completely nailed down to the ground yet. In fact, were I Brandon, I would give myself room to innovate. He knows he likes to come up with new ideas and develop them, I wouldn't be surprised if he has a few worlds floating out there 'empty' or with just a brief framework to give himself the freedom to imagine and invent.

We only know eight of the 'core shardworlds', as far as I'm aware. It's entirely possible Sixth could take place on one of the remaining two core shardworlds, in the same way that TES took place on Sel.

I want to discuss the technical aspects of waffles. For example, the clear and obvious advantage of a yeast based batter for making crispy yet soft waffles over any other batter, the proper temperature with which to achieve maximum crispness without burning (400°F is my go to temp), or the benefits to using a lard and butter mixture over simple butter on it's own.

Hey Kurk, I did read the entire theory, even two of the great Nepene wars. Love it. Best theory of the night, possibly best I've read period so far. As for the Seminal Theory, I do sort of have a moniker. The topic 'overarching theory' is used when I feel the theory attempts to explain the entirety of the category for the planet. Thus, a theory that attempts to explain all (or a wide swath) of Realmatics in the Cosmere gets 'Overarching Theory'. Likewise, a theory that attempted to describe and predict the entirety of the plot for the remaining eight Stormlight books would also get an 'Overarching Theory' topic. It's not quite the same as a Seminal Theory as you describe it - those are more Theories that are important or have set the current knowledge on a subject. Unfortunately, I do find it difficult to judge theories like that. They are more subjective judgements, and I'm attempting to keep the rating tags as objective as I can. The other problem is that I haven't been on 17th Shard that long. I'm not certain what theories were completely unknown, which became the accepted theories, or when. If yourself or perhaps Chaos or Windrunner should nominate several, I'll see what I can do about marking them. Either that or I'll work them into the wiki summary I intend to begin to complete the index. Any thoughts on further subdivision of the tags? Is that something that would be useful, or no?

I'm afraid I do not agree. Divide the glyph in half, and the former middle part is almost exactly the same shape as the sword, up to and including the swirl of the base above the hilt.

The best you can do, really, is drive around any city Brandon has done a signing in and check every bookstore, paying special attention to airport bookstores. Call it a pilgrimage.

Hello! Theories are awesome. You should post them.

Nothing like a triple post! Ah well, I enjoy sharing my little adventures. We're now up to 473 theories, and a bit less than halfway through the Cosmere boards! The theories have been tending to thin out a little lately, and also lower a bit in quality in general. Bit of a lull patch in late 2012, I suspect - Alloy of Law had been out for almost two years, Way of Kings threeish. And Emperor's Soul hadn't come out quite yet. TES should perk things up a bit, and then I expect it'll pitter off for almost a year until late 2013 and WoR details start filtering out. As for the Index itself, I've gone ahead and written a script which analyzes the metrics for me, and does a bunch of neat things like generate the Hall of Fame automatically, output some statistics, and put all data into a nice SQL database so I can query it as desired. To celebrate that, I quickly whipped up a page with some Google Charts! I'll be making a much nicer page for stats as I go along - I like that sort of thing. A question to anyone who has perused the Index: Should I further refine the grading scheme? Right now, the grading scheme is Underdeveloped Theory, Normal, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Five categories. However, with the expected 900 or so theories, the Index can certainly support more than five categories. In fact, I'm already grading for six categories - some of the better Silver threads get labelled as 'Gold Candidates'. After reading Kurk's Motivation, Execution, Consequence: A Realmatic Theory, I've noted that there are also a few Golds I'm feeling should be raised higher than Gold. Should I do so? A new scheme could be something like... Ruby Crystal Gold Silver Bronze - Bandaid That may not be 'intuitive' enough, though. I could grade on a letter scale A+ A B C D - F That might be a little discouraging, however. I could also attempt to make it cosmere related. Something like... Fifth Heightening Fourth Heightening Third Heightening Second Heightening First Heightening - Drab Your thoughts?