Timewaster's Guide Archive

Why a lesbian?

What a strange question... why any other type of character? Because that's who they are, and that lets them play their role in the story.

You're forgetting that a connection between man and spren doesn't necessarily mean man and honorspren.  It's been stated that it could be another type of spren, maybe flame, rot, death, wind etc... So if that is the case who know what other kind of powers there could be.  We've seen a surgebinders powers as far as windrunning used by Kaladin and Szeth, the lashing and so on but I don't think we've seen everything yet.  The powers that Kaladin and Szeth are almost unheard of and not much is known.  Only one character had even a slight idea of what Kaladin was doing and he came from a family who was passing the knowledge down through the generations.  As far as Szeth having his powers through his oathstone I'm not so sure about that.  He has never actually had it in his possession, only his masters have.  Now he could be connected to it and have powers that way, but it sounds like that would be a first as every fabrial or magical type item, from shards to lanterns, have had to be touched in some way to be manipulated. 

The working theory we've been going on is that each Order has an affinity with a different type or type(s) of Spren.

Anyone else considered that this could be why the shattered plains exist?

Quote from: jacobfake on September 28, 2010, 03:36:22 AM

Nohadon said "alas, not all spren are as discerning as honorspren" in one of Dalinar's visions.

Hmm yeah I'd forgotten about that. Still there is a conspicuous lack of spren everywhere else, I'm not willing to believe Brandon just forgot to include them. There has to be a reason they aren't mentioned.

It could just be the "white room effect" where Dalinar simply wasn't paying attention to the Spren, but it is a little suspicious. I wouldn't call it a huge thing, though.

Shadesmar is definitely the cognitive realm. Which means I'm sure that everything, even goblets could possibly have sentience in this realm. Though I thought that struck me is maybe the spren that is hidden in the goblet (as theorised by Kaladin's mum) is merely the cognitive form of that goblet. So Shallan is talking to both the goblet and its spren (one and the same).

Where the stormlight comes from is interesting. It is not already in Shadesmar, and if we accept that the bead she was holding came from shadesmar, then where did the stormlight come from? Do they just have to be on her (such as in her safepouch) or does she actually have to be touching them?

It could simply be that you draw in all the stormlight-infused items around you. It would be very problematic if you could come to Shadesmar without Stormlight and have difficulty finding it, so it would make a lot more sense as a magic system if you brought your Stormlight with you.

Quote from: Erunion on September 24, 2010, 05:51:55 PM

No, the beads in Shadesmar weren't all currency gems. She was drowning in a see of them, but there was one in her hand, specifically, the thing she was touching in the Physical Realm, the goblet. (She wasn't touching her currency gems, as they were in her Safepouch I believe.) She communicated with the goblet's somewhat intelligent manifestation in the Cognitive realm, which was represented by a bead. She asked the bead to change (unintentionally), and gave it stormlight in order to do so.
Soulcasting is essentially bribing the conscious representation of items (their spren, perhaps?) in order to make them change form.

I have a feeling that the beads in shadesmar were different from the beads which hold stormlight, which is what she was clutching in her hand. That was why when she went to shadesmar the second time without a stormlight infused gem she nearly got lost. If the gems in the sea where stormlight infused, she wouldn't have had a problem the second time.

In addition, note that the map of shadesmar on the back cover corresponds to the land of Roshar. Does this mean that when Shallan visited shadesmar, she went to the sea of lost thoughts? (I dont have the US book, so I am reading this off blurry pictures. Is this correct?) Would it make a difference to her soulcasting if she was in a different region of shadesmar?

The context of the sentence heavily implied the bead was one of the ones from the sea of beads, not a normal infused sphere.

As for Shadesmar, you could be right, but Jasnah's warning on entering Shadesmar without sufficient stormlight probably implies that it's dangerous in some way wherever you enter it.

Not to mention that the English language, especially American English, is (as the singer put it) ka-RAAAYY-zeeee... it's loaded with synonymic idiosyncrasies and pronunciation/definition tricks that you generally only pick up in context.

While English is a little worse than other languages because we steadfastly resist a comprehensive spelling reform, (I'm not talking about the vague and half-hearted attempts Americans well-meaningly implemented to clean up a little, that's not even a beginning) I think crazy is going a bit far. All languages have irregularities because that's just how languages evolve, because there's some interchange of words and they don't always get fully (or sometimes not even partially) naturalised, and finally because irregular words make the words themselves stand out, which can be pretty convenient for an irregular verb like "to be".

I've seen a quote somewhere stating something like "English likes to hunt down other languages in dark alleys and go through their pockets for loose grammar." English is an unusually difficult language to learn for non-native speakers because it has a huge number of words, phrases, and special cases adopted from other languages, and many of these have exceptions to normal English grammatical rules because for that particular word/phrase/etc. the rules of the language it came from were adopted with it. As a result, English has an enormous number of exceptions to every rule, and really learning the language well requires learning both the rules and the gigantic list of exceptions.

From the perspective of designing a language from scratch, English has an extremely impractical and illogical language design. This hasn't done anything to stop it from becoming the dominant language in much (most?) of the world.

Your quote is from Terry Pratchett.