Terisen

Well, I wouldn't call it a "spren".  When Kaladin is holding the Honorblade and talking to Syl, she specifically says it's not a spren.

"What about this?" he asked, looking over the thin, silvery weapon.  An unornamented Blade.  That was supposed to be odd.  "It doesn't scream when I hold it."

"That's because it's not a spren," Syl said softly.

Now, granted, Syl doesn't know everything.  But she is able to identify other things as spren accurately (like the red spren nobody could initially see). 

However, I think if you look at the Blades in a larger scheme, you might be on to something.  They called Shardblades, after all.  They're made from spren, which are splinters.  Or, in other terms, "shards" of a shard.  Perhaps, as you say, the Honorblades are splinters of Adonalsium.  

My gut feel, however, is that the Honorblades are specific splinters of Honor and/or Cultivation, different from spren (like how other splinters aren't spren), but still parts of a shard.  Hence how the Honorblades are still Shardblades.  The whole "all squares are rectangles but all rectangles aren't squares" argument.

This is faulty logic. If you intertwine to threads together they are not the same thing. If you drop them they will stay together. but just because they are twisted upon each and do not immediately come apart, does not mean they are now one thread. Its the same thing here. A better example that i just thought of is play-dough. you can push it together, but it is still able to be separated even if you mix the 2 colors completely together, with enough time and effort you can separate each and every bit of both colors back into their respective separate colors.

It's a matter of how much you want to abstract the combinations.  Almost everything can be separated into constituent parts with enough effort.  Take something like tap water.  To us, it's just water.  But you can remove out minerals and electrolytes and leave just pure H₂O.  But that can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen.  And those can be broken down into electrons, protons and neutrons.  And so on.  

So, really, it's a matter of how "mixed" they are, not if they can be seen as two different things.  Everything can be seen as made up of multiple parts.

I wonder if it has to do with where Brandon claims the name came from in real life.  He says in the annotations that the father of his girlfriend at the time was named Vance and he tweaked it to Vancer and then Vasher (though, the editor notes that Vasher was a name he'd used in another story previous to that experience).  I wonder if Denth's statement is Brandon's way of winking at that playing on the name in the actual story.

I'm actually wondering if there's a limit to how much Investiture Nightblood can consume over a given period.  That is, what's the rate of consumption and does he ever get "full"?  

Compare to humans.  We eat constantly over the course of a day (well, most of us do!), but we hit a point where we fill up due to our physiology.  Any excess energy is stored for later use.  We haven't seen too much of Nightblood "eating", unfortunately, but I'm wondering if he can store up Investiture or is it just simply used up like a flame burning gas in the air.  We know that Stormlight can be stored by humans, however imperfectly, so I'm curious if something like Nightblood can store in the presence of a lot of Investiture being present.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "pick up".  There are sections where the action moves along quite nicely in the middle of the book, but then there are parts that deal with exploring the world and the characters, which many (including myself) find quite enjoyable.  That said, the end of the novel, as is typical of Sanderson, ends with a rush in the last 100 or so pages.

And I'm not sure what you mean by part 1 and 2.  Do you mean which is better between Way of Kings and Words of Radiance?

We are watching SAO II and enjoying it, even if Kirito is more of a Mary Sue than ever.

As much as I love Kirito, it pains me to admit how accurate this statement is.  

My life has been consumed with Bravely Default of late.  That game, coupled with things in real life (what's that?), has meant that I haven't really been on the boards much lately.  Post or play games?  Games have been winning!  

I had a similar thought about the Epics all being gifters.  Calamity seems to be sort of a "prime gifter", as people with powers only appeared after it showed up.  

Wow, am I seriously the first person that is going for consoles here?  I'm surrounded and outgunned!

I used to do the whole PC gaming thing years ago.  I actually did console and PC for a good long while.  I slid over to the console side not for any gaming reason, but I just don't have the time to dedicate to it that I used to.  Consoles offered me a way to just pop in and go without having to worry about hardware.  I didn't want to have to keep up with upgrade cycles and rebuilding my machines, though that was fun back in the day.

It's funny how for 17th Sharders, the word "social" means "crazy meme wars everywhere".

That's far tamer than other places other internet!

I'm a fan of the "Stormlight as the cause of the size" notion.  Stormlight (and Investiture in general) is a highly concentrated source of energy.  That energy could certainly be stored as mass and cause massive growth through the different stages of the chasmfiend's lifecycle.  We don't really get to see what happens after pupation either as every one of those chasmfiends have been slaughtered by the Alethi and Parshendi.

I think the chasmfiends have to use Stormlight anyway, I think, due to their sheer size and the square-cube law.  They'd collapse on themselves otherwise.

@Terisen ( Can't quote because my computer has decided to throw a tantrum. )

 

In regards to the Breath thing. Breath is Investiture not the Spiritweb. The fact that an Awakener can store it outside the body and retrieve it later isn't an indication that the same can be done with the Spiritweb. Breath is also designed to be removed, I don't think that the same could be said of the Spiritweb.

 

Hemalurgy is probably the best example of what happens when the Spiritweb is removed. As in when it is removed the person no longer has access to the Investiture that is stored in that particular point. Though to be fair Hemalurgy isn't all that great as an example because the Spiritweb is being forcibly removed by an outside source, not the 'owner' ( for lack of a better term. ) of the Spiritweb.

Admittedly, not a great example.  I don't think there's a direct analogue that can be used here.  Hemalurgy is different because, as you point out, you're ripping it away from the individual.  It's gone.  Plus, I don't think the spiritweb ever comes into the physical realm with the spike.  The spike is just a mechanism to move something around within the spiritual.

A person's spiritweb is still them, so whether or not it's in the physical realm or not, it should still be able to be used by the individual.

I was rereading WoK today, and found this tidbit from when Dalinar killed some Parshendi archers aiming at Bridge 4:

 

 

Any theories on this? We know that Dalinar has been subconsciously using Stormlight for a while -- and I think that his descriptions of 'being the Blackthorn' sound like something beyond just the Thrill -- so that might explain it.  

To be honest, I don't have much to say on this.  Glowing has always been associated with a good amount of Stormlight in this series, so he had Stormlight coming from SOMEWHERE, possibly the Parshendi gems, but we don't really know if he was the one pulling it in.

Well, that's disappointing on both points!  I would have hoped it would be just as good as Fate/Zero.

You all know that every single example given so far takes way more than one Breath, right?

Well, yes, but the point still holds, I think.  If it takes, say, 50 Breaths to awaken a rope and that rope is cut, does each smaller piece take 25 Breaths?  If so, wouldn't that mean that they don't have enough Breath to power the Awakening and would, therefore, stop moving?  Or is it 50 Breaths still in two items that sees itself as one?  What would happen if you cut the rope into 51 pieces?

Caster made for a good initial villain, though I thought the Matou clan thing with the worms was a little more disturbing.

I think the flashbacks were supposed to give Kiritsugu a little more depth, but I didn't find they were entirely necessary.  Plus, they took time away from the awesome Servant battles.

Have you ever seen Fate/stay night?  I haven't looked to hard for it, so I don't know if it's on any of the streaming services yet.

I KNEW I'd seen those swords somewhere! There's a new season? Not another mmo is it...............Kirito's brain and stuff should seriously be messed up.

 

I've stayed away from Kill la Kill because of the over the topness. Violence I can kind of do, but I stick away from raunchiness. Fate/Zero is seriously amazing for those who haven't seen it. It's on netflix now.

Ha, yeah, it's a new MMO called Gun Gale Online.  And who says Kirito's brain isn't messed up? 

Agreed on the raunchiness of Kill la Kill.  That's one of the reasons I'm not sold on it.  I don't think it adds anything.  I can't tell if it's supposed to be a parody of battle anime or if it's just one that's turned up to 11.

I loved Fate/Zero.  The first opening music is still stuck in my head.

YES!!! Someone who's seen Trigun! Hahahahahaha, oh you are my new friend!

 

Oh and good taste in not finishing SAO, it got REALLY weird.

As someone who loved SAO (*cough*my avatar*cough*), I do admit the second half was strange.  Though the next season has started and it looks very promising.

I started watching Kill la Kill this weekend.  Man, that one is so over the top.  Can't decide what I think about it yet.  Anyone else seen it?

This is a very interesting question.  There's actual a scene where this happens.

She Awakened a pair of rope pieces, telling them to grab when thrown.

A couple paragraphs later:

She tossed the rope at him, threw the other a Tonk Fah, then dashed into the room.

 

Denth reacted immediately, cutting the rope out of the air with his dagger.  The pieces of it twisted and wriggled, but weren't long enough to grab anything.

What's interesting is that she never attempts to recover the Breath from the rope pieces, so we don't know if the Breath has been indeed split into two smaller Breaths or if the rope still sees itself as one whole, which would mean one Breath is needed still.  In any case, splitting something that had Breath doesn't seem to have much effect on the object.

If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that it boils down to how the object views itself in the Cognitive.  If you can dissect it enough that the object stops seeing itself as, say, a rope, then the Breath is lost and the Awakening is destroyed.

Also another thought I had, for the camp of the machine NOT containing dularium. What if all the birds/the island felt the probabilities that resulted from the machine being open, were so catastrophic that it was a psychic overload. Kind of like watching a nuclear bomb go off up close and personal.

Based on Vathi's reaction to Sak, where she claimed that Sak's ability was brand new. I'd say that the most of the other Aviars don't have the same Atium-like ability.  So I'd be surprised if this was the case.

Mmm, I suppose. Though I have another question, if it is the KR's Spiritweb how can they use magic if they can separate themselves from their soul enough to not feel the hit/be damaged by the hit? I mean their soul is now outside their body. How can they access the Investiture that the Spiritweb holds?

We're obviously past using a lot of text sources for this, so I'm simply offering up my opinion here.  I would think that it doesn't really make a difference that the spiritweb is brought into the Physical in terms of accessing the Investiture.  It's still a part of the person, so they'd be able to access it.

The closest thing in the Cosmere that I can equate it to is Breath.

It's not a perfect 1-to-1 comparison, but it does show that Spiritual aspects do no become completely detached.

And interesting thought. It sounds likely, but I am inclined to disagree. As far as I can tell, the Aviars are a fairly recent product of Brandon's creativity, something he came up not too long before the podcast in which they brainstormed Shadows Beneath. So a couple of years tops. The Way of Kings and the Purelake fish have been around longer than that.

Well, that's not to say that the idea might have been there when he created the Purelake and then came up with another vehicle for it in the Aviars.  Though I certainly could be wrong.  I didn't listen to the Writing Excuses casts nor have I yet read the additional material in the ebook yet.

I guess I've read enough of his reviews that I kinda ignore the random bolding now.  I don't know if it's OSC that puts them in or an editor, since these reviews originally appear in a local paper called the Rhinoceros Times.

I also didn't find his statement about writing things down for someone to finish as patronizing.  As large as Brandon's projects are and as GOOD as the stories are, we definitely want to see how the stories play out.  Card isn't really different in that regard.  I mean, you never know what's going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, etc.  Hard to bring up such things in a tactful way, I guess.  Plus, Card himself is getting older, so he's probably more keenly aware of his own mortality and projecting that on to others.

And he's a bit of a curmudgeon anyway.  

Does anyone else find it amusing that we're all reviewing a review, and then reviewing each other's review of the review? 

This is what the internet does best though!  

If the Shardplate is a KR Spiritweb, then wouldn't it hurt to be hit? Wouldn't breaking the Shardplate cause actual physical damage to the KR? Or are the three Aspects of a person not so intrinsically linked?

It might.  Could function like padding in sports.  Protects you, but you still feel the hit.  Personally, I would say that the Shardplate is disconnected enough to avoid that when a Radiant uses it.  Though, Kaladin does note that it really hurt to take that Shardblade hit to the forearm when Szeth cut him.

When I saw the title I was skeptical in the extreme, but I quite like the theory now that I've read it. You're definitely one of my favorite theorists. How do you explain how Shardblades can't cut Shardplate?

In overly simplistic terms, it has Investiture.  Shardblades do eventually cut through Plate, so it's not as if it's an absolute barrier.  Just takes more work.  As to the nitty gritty mechanics of it, your guess is a good as mine!

Personally, I don't think the two things are directly related. Swearing would have been the result of the way society viewed the Heralds, distorted by 4000 years. Whereas the body foci is the result of scholarly determination.

 

I imagine the swearing could be in reference to just about anything dealing with the Herald. They most often seem to have reference to their divine attributes or title. But some of them are quite confusing, no doubt. What is up with Vedel's golden keys?

Well, I agree that it's been distorted.  But I find it odd that's the part they're referring to (eyes, soul, etc) are also body foci (I do enjoy being able to use the word "foci" here  ).

I'm also interested in Vedel's golden keys.  Actually, when I was first putting this together, I read it as "Vedeledev's golden eyes" and was going to include it.  Glad I double checked to save myself embarrassment!  It seems oddly specific.  Wonder what she could have possibly opened with those keys.

Maybe it's because I read OSC's reviews a lot, but I see this as high praise.  Generally, if he doesn't like it, he will let you know in no uncertain terms.  We here obsess over the minutiae of the novels, something that a person like Card doesn't (outside of his own novels).  Defensiveness is kinda expected.  

But you get lines like these that show Card loved the two books:

But there can be no doubt that The Stormlight Archives is meant to be his magnum opus, and deserves to be.

Thus the storytelling in The Stormlight Archives is lush and endlessly surprising, yet never feels false or contrived.

They're good because he understands human nature, and writes compelling characters into exciting, moving, intelligent stories.

Yep, he likes the books!  He also loved the Mistborn trilogy.  Gave that a glowing review a few years back.