Badger And I Were Contemplating What Color Axehounds Should Be And Then They Said There Should Be Sparkle

(Probably Crazy) Nightblood Theory

So, I just had a probably crazy idea.  

What if Nightblood isn't actually completely native to Nalthis? What if Nale is bringing it back home when he gives it to Szeth? Nightblood could have been a Rosharian Shardblade (Szeth doesn't seem to question it being a shardblade) that ended up on Nalthis. Then when Vashar and Shashara awakened it, the process roused the dead/trapped spren in the shardblade.  From what we have seen,  spren require an active bond with a human to remain sentient in the physical realm.  Awakening would interact strangely with this resulting in the spren needing a steady supply of breath to remain active.  This could provide an explanation for why it sucks the breath out of people (something that is never really explained in Warbreaker). 

Nightblood's inability to fully understand what evil is and place it in a human context runs reasonably parallel to Pattern and Syl's attempts to understand the more abstract concepts of the human world.  In Nightblood's case, the spren is still trapped in the sword and since it doesn't have a proper bond with a person, it is even harder for it to learn, so it can't progress as well or as quickly as Pattern and Syl.

The more I think about this the better it is working...

This feels like a crazy long shot, but do I know anyone who plays Pokemon Go in the Uxie region?

Rithmatics: Part 1

Hello!  I'm rather fascinated with Rithmatics (the magic system in Brandon Sanderson's The Rithmatist) at the moment, which means you are going to be getting a series of mathy posts.  They will all be tagged with #rithmatics .  I've been encouraged to add the cfsbf tag.  If this bothers anyone, please let me know.

In this first post we explore how all of the binding patterns for circular defenses can be derived from 9 point circles. You might be able to get everything from the pictures, but I give explanations as well.

9 Point Defenses

Let's start by talking about 9 point circles.  Start with a triangle.  Absolutely any triangle will do, but for 9 point defenses we want acute triangles (all angles less than 90 degrees) where all of the angles are distinct.  Mark the midpoints of each side and draw in the three altitudes (start at each vertex and draw the line perpendicular to the opposite side) of the triangles.  Mark the points where the altitudes intersect the sides of the triangles (there are 3 such points, one for each altitude).  Note that all of the altitudes meet a single point. Mark the midpoint of each segment connecting P to one of the vertices of the triangle.  This gives you three more points for a total of 9.  These 9 points will be distinct and lay on a circle.

This explains how to get the bind points for any 9-point defense.  However, not all defenses have 9 points.  These turn out to be very special cases of 9 point triangles where some of the points coincide.  

6 Point Defenses

To get 6 points, start with an equilateral triangle.  Any time two angles of a triangle have the same measure, the altitude from the third angle will bisect its opposite side.  Since all of the angles are the same here, all of the altitudes bisect their opposing sides.  This gives us a "9-point" circle with 6 evenly spaced points.

4 Point Defenses

This time we want an isosceles right triangle (you might know it better as a 45-45-90 triangle).  In right triangles, the legs are also altitudes, which means that the vertex at the right angle is also the point where the altitudes intersect each other. It is also the point where each leg "intersects" the other and the "half way point" between the intersection of the altitudes and itself, so it counts as 3 of the 9 points.  The resulting 4 points form a square and so are evenly spaced around the circle.

2 Point Defenses

This is the strangest case.  Here our triangle is degenerate - one of the sides has length 0, which means that the "triangle" is just a line.  To see how to follow the 9 point construction in this case, we can look at a limit.  Start with a really skinny isosceles triangle.  If you follow the construction, you get three points grouped near each approximately half way up the triangle.  The other 6 points are clustered down near the narrow base.  Now pretend the narrow point is a hinge and slowly close it. As you do, the three points in the middle get closer and closer together, the base gets narrower and narrower and the 6 points near it get closer and closer together.  In the limit this gives us a line segment and a circle which uses half of the line segment as a diameter

Hey y’all, it’s Kaly reads a poem time again.  This one is called Entropy’s Embrace.  It isn’t quite a cosmere specific poem, but it is a great poem, was written by our friend worldsingers and it does have some lovely cosmere evoking imagery.  You can find the text and a review of the poem here.

I just finished part 4 of The Final Empire and I need to rage for a bit before I can keep reading.  Don't mind me. Ranting and wild theorizing under the cut.

"I represent the thing you've never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope."

 speech and presented yourself as a STORMING IDIOT MARTYR and LET THE LORD RULER KILL YOU WITHOUT FIGHTING BACK. DAMMIT KELL.

This is why you spent all of that time building your reputation among the skaa and getting them to practically worship you. This is why you were asking Sazed about the Valla. You were reassuring yourself that the movement would continue even stronger after you sacrificed yourself. You hoped it wouldn't come to this, but you knew it would. You've trained Vin as your replacement.  She proved her competence in her fight against Shan and her power by seeing through your copper cloud. In the process she helped you understand what happened with Mare so that you could let it rest. SHE JUST ASKED YOU A COUPLE NIGHTS WHEN YOU WERE GOING TO LEAVE HER and you hedged. You didn't know exactly when, but you knew this was coming. You knew it would probably be soon. Dammit Kell.  

Elend, you lovable naive fool of a nobleman, you need to find Vin and help her hold herself together so she can take over. Or maybe so the pair of you can take the lead if you can rally your friends and make them actually care enough to act. She has just had her brother's training that everyone will abandon her reinforced though, so she's probably going to try to push you away in a form of emotional self defense. I hope you don't let her. She is unbelievably strong, but there is power in having people you truly care about that she doesn't fully understand yet (The very last thing Kelsier said to Vin was "You still have some things to learn about friendship, Vin. I hope someday you realize what they are."  Dammit Kell. That sounds like you knew you weren't going to be there. Maybe you had already decided that today was the day to get yourself martyred afterall.)

Other Thoughts:

* IF there really is an 11th metal (which I'm skeptical of), then there needs to be a 12th.  They come in pairs.  

* There is more to gold that Vin currently understands. Gold is disturbing and creepy and no one wants to burn it which also means no one has fully explored it.  

* Feruchemisty is going to become important.  Vin's experiment with Sazed's metal is going to come back.  It could have just happened to answer the question of whether the two can interact (because I was definitely questioning it before it happened) but I will be surprised if it never surfaces again. 

* In fact, some combination of Feruchemistry and Allomancy could very well be what lets the Lord Ruler survive things like having a spear run through his chest.  Oh Storms.  What if the reason he has been so intent on killing Keepers is because there is a way to store their life force in a metal (Gold? If I had to guess it would be gold) and then he can steal that life force by burning the metal.  It would be like Allomancy meets Feruchemistry meets Chromatic Breath and the immortality of the Returned in Warbreaker.  

oh god I'm back

I know, I know. I said I’d just step out for a second. Maybe touch some grass. Maybe not scroll for hours through a website that is basically a dopamine slot machine designed specifically for me. But here I am. Again.

So, hi. I’ve been avoiding Tumblr like it’s a cursed artifact because every time I log in, I lose entire days to posts about sad wizards, incredibly niche fandom memes, and, let’s be honest, pictures of adorable cute animals. But I return to you now, at the turning of the tide, because someone at a recent book signing mentioned that I really needed to talk to y'all in some other way than an 'automatic repost from my own site.'

Fair. It was never you. It was always me.

Now, that said, I'm still talking about FULL NEGATIVE, the scifi book that I'm crowding over on Backerkit, because, well, it's still live, and will be until April 11. I am actively trying to convince you all to throw money at it in exchange for an absolutely unhinged space opera full of telepaths, betrayals, sexy spies, and—because I’m me—an aggressively overcomplicated plot full of feelings. If we hit our stretch goals, we get more cool stuff. YOU get a very cool book. (And there is a limited edition, numbered version of the hardcover available that will ONLY be available through this crowdfunding campaign. Once that window is gone, it's gone FOREVER.)

If you like X-Men, Star Wars, Jason Bourne, or just generally enjoy watching characters make terrible decisions in space, this book is for you. And if you don’t like those things… honestly, what are you doing here? Go, live a better life. Read something wholesome. Avoid the pain I am about to unleash.

So yeah. Click the link, check out the Backerkit, and help me make this book a reality. And if you see me reblogging cat pictures at 2 a.m.? No, you didn’t. I’m totally working.

Merry Christmas! And I hope that any of you who don't celebrate Christmas have a wonderful day as well :-)

Look. One of Wit’s goals in life is to poke fun at people and make them uncomfortable. I’m choosing to believe that that is Wit’s goal here. Jasnah gets it and knows that reacting will just encourage him, so she does her best to avoid reacting outwardly and just inwardly rolls her eyes.

They get along well. They are friends. They are co-conspirators. They challenge each other. Jasnah appreciates that enough to put up with the nonsense. That’s all. 

active footage of me trying to rationalize chapter 99 in my brain

I used fallenwithstyle's chart to knit myself a Pattern hat! The brown is KnitPicks City Tweed DK and the purple is KnitPicks Wool of the Andes sport. They were both sitting in my stash of yarn waiting to be right for something. I need to work on my consistency with keeping the floats loose enough in stranded knitting, but it isn't bad enough to be a problem.The hat also came out slightly longer than I usually prefer, but I'm super happy with it anyway :-). While I was knitting it, it occurred to me that there is potential for an amazing Pattern hat done with cables rather than colorwork. I'm not sure when I will get to it, but designing that pattern has gone in my "projects I will get to at some point" file. 

Sprenhead!

Here’s my finished Pattern hat! I’m really happy with how it came out not just as fanart but as a hat in general (and I said I didn’t need any more hats…).

I changed the chart sightly from the original version I posted, so here is the final version (it doesn’t include instructions for the flared brim or picot hem though, just the colorwork).