Rust and Ruin

I should make a "Test post, please don't downvote" post somewhere and summon hordes of downvotes to bring me back to my rightful mindless Awakened state.

Oh damnation and Odium - my last post actually pushed me past Awakened Object, where I was perfectly happy to stay.

I don't know about anyone else, but I am perfectly ok with staying at my new current rep level (Awakened Object). I keep imagining myself as a little straw man running around Cobalt Guards, Shardbearers, and Mistings and annoying them mercilessly with my straw man arguments.

I just assumed that Hoid hides his Investitures by burning Copper.

I disagree. Shardplate has shown itself to be very different from shardblades - blades do not seem to need stormlight to function, unlike plate. If anything, the closest thing Plate reminds me of is surgebinding. You invest stormlight and gain an effect - in this case protection. The more stormlight you pump into it, the longer it lasts. Chasmfiends also seem to grow a type of plate that is powered by their bond with what may be Cultivation's spren and a gemheart - the gem heart in particular seems like it cpuld be a key component in Plate, but I'm pulling that out out of my chull and have no real evidence for it.

Is Brandon going to get some other side projects in beyond Firefight and Rithmatist 2? From the Q and A's it seemed like Tor was pushing for a priority on book 3.

She'd always known she could summon Pattern-as-shardblade. She just hadn't accepted what that meant until the end of WoR.

Unless Brandon veers off from his usual speed, maybe a late 2015/early 2016 - no Wheel of Time to eat up his attention this time around. The man is a machine. If a headline came out tomorrow that read, Police bust writing sweatshop full of prolific author clones, a lot of people would probably just nod and say, "Well, that explains a lot."

Sorry, I don't usually discount theories, but there are a number of facts presented in WoR that go against this. 1. Szeth's Honorblade did not scream when Kaladin touched it. This is the biggest hole in an honorspren theory - if Szeth's weapon were not an honorblade, it would have screamed when Kaladin picked it up. Even if it were his own spren turning into a weapon (and it did not glow or do the things that we've seen Syl do), how did it escape from the stone that commands Szeth? 2. Szeth's form of honor is different from the ones espoused by Windrunners, particularly the second and third ideals. Who was he protecting that could not protect themselves when he assassinated kings and those who guarded the king (where is the honor in killing Adolin after launching Dalinar into the air to his death?)? His spren would have died - an honorspren like Syl died for much less and she shudders at the idea of what Szeth was doing. Now, if you'd said that Szeth had a highspren all along, I think that could be defensible.

Yes! Sadeas used to be so conniving and aggressive in tWoK and then...nothing. I thought his wife would be whispering wicked words in his ear and convincing him to one-up his grand betrayal, or to undermine what Kaladin was becoming... If anything it seemed like his character throughout WoR was to make way for his wife to come into the spotlight with her political savvy in a post-Radiant Kholinar.

This is really cool - I keep forgetting to go back and think more about details like this. Good catch on the Windstance reference - while Stance 1 seems extremely utilitarian (from kendo, against a foe holding a sword like this, it is difficult to know if the sword is going to come straight down, diagonally, or from the side because it can very quickly become either strike - holding a sword like this invites mindgames and bluffing), the "sweeping, majestic" description that seems to better fit with Stance 9, though the sword point is incorrect. Stonestance seems like 5 - the way the legs are straighter and more spread apart than other stances seems to indicate less focus on mobility, and the sword itself is point forward, making it more defensive than offensive. Flamestance seems to be very reminiscent of Saito Hajime's signature stance in Kenshin: http://www.gigaventure.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/HZEKr.jpg (from the live action movie) Thanks for taking the time to work on this. Makes me wonder if Kaladin is going to learn any of these forms or transition them to his own style.

It also adds to the idea that Dalinar wasn't meant to lead the Radiants, just gather them/ find them. By finding more people who knew the words/ideals, he would be finding and gathering more Radiants.

I believe Brandon mentioned that different Investitures can work across systems, though the effects that they have aren't the same as a system's natural Investiture. There is a very good chance that Hoid is of at least the second Heightening, if not more. The fact that people don't comment or notice the change in color around him could mean that he simply burns copper to hide his Investitures.

Ugh, I hate to even think this, but what if Sadeas is not dead/revived in some way (i.e. through surgebinding)? A lot that has to do with his character hasn't been resolved and it wouldn't be the first time we've seen someone popping back up from the dead. I dearly hope he stays dead, though.

Sorry, I think that was because it was Kaladin who did the lastclap, not Adolin: