Ok, So After The Skyeel Came Out Yesterday, I Decided To Try A Chull Today.  I'm Not Entirely Happy

I hear it’s face day, so here’s my face XD. But also, look at the shiny new hat that I test-knit for @thechronicferuchemist ! It probably should be blocked, but even without blocking I’m super happy with how it came out :D (Her post about the hat is here)

Ok.  Completely new post because the other one keeps reverting to the cut off version.  This is my interpretation of Shallan's Lullaby from Words of Radiance. So far as I am aware the tune doesn't belong to anything else.

Rithmatics: Part 3, the potential for 8 point defenses

In the previous installments we have covered acute triangles with 3 distinct angles, equilateral triangles, and all right triangle.  In this post we look at acute isosceles triangles.  

The Potential for 8 Point Defenses and the Hypothetical Owl Defense

Let's look at what happens when we have an acute isosceles triangle.  The altitude from the different angle will bisect the opposite side, which means the midpoint of the base will count as two points.  However,  the 7 remaining points are all distinct this gives us 8 separate points.  

It is interesting to note that, as with the 4 point construction, we have one side of the circle that is tangent to the triangle.  The 4-point Sumsion Defense has a tangent Line of Forbiddance at one of the bind points.  As this is the only defense we know with such a tangent line, it seems reasonable that its existence could be related to the fact that the 4 point circle is the only one we have examples of that has one tangent side with its corresponding triangle. (All three sides of the triangle for the 6 point construction are tangent, but including all of them would trap you - it isn't clear whether it would be a problem to include just one or whether this actually matters at all.  This is something else I hope to ask about at the signing.) Following this logic, I used the Sumsion Defense as starting point for constructing a potential 8 point defense.  It ended up looking rather like an owl :-)

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

I don't particularly identify with Melody, but I love her character and think it is super important that she exists (and a young adult novel is exactly the right place for her). Across his books, Sanderson has given us a whole collection of fantastic women who represent a wide range of personalities and strengths. Melody is our stereotypical high school girl. She loves unicorns and pegasus and flowers and drawing and is completely unapologetic about it. She dislikes math and is convinced that she is hopeless at it. She desperately wants to live up to expectations but hates the form they take and thinks they are impossible. She feels lost and alone. She is also amazing.

Spoilers for The Rithmatist under the break.  

She really does struggle with math. It doesn't come easily to her. At the same time though, we get to see that with the right teacher and the right motivation and working at the right pace, she can learn the math. It isn't something she needs to or should just give up at. Even by the end of the book, she still isn't great at math. She has improved, but it is a level of improvement that is reasonable given the amount of time she has been working. We see promise for her to improve more as she continues to work at it. It feels real.

Despite this (in some sense because of it) ends up playing a very important role. Everybody knows that rithmatics is all about the math and the precision of getting your lines and curves and binding points in exactly the right place. It is essentially a science. There are Lines of Making and you can sort of affect what they are good at by their shape, but controlling them is essentially an exercise in programing. You have to know ahead of time what you want them to do and you have to give the instructions carefully. Chalklings are notoriously difficult to work with.

Melody sees things differently. She struggles with the science of rithmatics, but excels at the art. Her chalklings are not the rough sketches thrown in almost as an after thought. Every one is a work of art. They are elegant and detailed and at least approximately anatomically correct. She believes in them. She whispers instructions and they do her bidding. For Melody, working with chalklings, the thing everyone knows is a lost cause, comes naturally. Her role is just as important as Joel's in their final battle, and the fact that she can do magic and he can't is only a very small part of why. Her wonderful unicorns were just as important as Joel's fancy defense circle and carefully placed shots.

Melody is the woman on the programming project who makes sure the user interface is intuitive and functional even if she doesn't do much of the actual programming. She is the mathematician or the physicist who struggles with the more involved computations, but can easily see the symmetries that turn a nasty problem into a much more straight forward one. She is the inventor who sees beautiful, functional things in the natural world and asks why we don't just do it that way. She is Important even as she is very much a stereotypical girl.

Melody is there for all of the high school girls who are convinced they can't do math (or other traditional subjects) and that their passions don't matter. She is there to show them that if they work at it, they can succeed at the areas they feel hopeless in and that their passions do matter. At the same time, she reminds the rest of us that the more unusual perspectives and talents are important. They can provide solutions that simply do not occur to more conventional people.

Hey guys, let's think about bendalloy ferrings, aka Subsumers, for a minute.

We know they can store nutrition and calories in a metalmind which means they can eat as much as they want when there is lots of food and then tap it later.  

Think about a Subsumer at a Scadrial eating competition.  "Sure, I can scarf away as many hot-dogs as you want. No problem."

Think about a Subsumer at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  They get to try everything and then go back for as much more as they want of everything they like. Such restaurants would have to have special rules for subsumers...maybe a pay by the hour thing?

Imagine if Lift gets a hemalurgic spike that lets her become a bendalloy ferring. She would have the best stormlight storage system.   She could eat loads, store most of it in her metalmind(s), and then tap into it whenever she needs stormlight.  Unlike spheres, it wouldn't leak away and if she is tapping it from the metalmind she isn't sucking the energy out of her body.

On the darker side of things, you probably also get the occasional Subsumer who is desperately afraid of gaining weight and always stores everything they eat in their metal minds and never taps them.  Most people don't know that they are a ferring and everyone sees them eating, so people don't realize there is a problem until it has gotten really bad.

Inspired by a conversation with Ashiok in the chat :-)

The Sorting

I read a lot and have a lot of books that I enjoy, but a friend recently introduced me to the Stormlight Archive and it has inspired a level of obsessiveness that I haven't had since I met the Harry Potter series back in middle school. My new obsession led me to the Cosmere Challenge tumbler and then the current prompt led to this.  Hopefully someone else will also find this entertaining :-)

Rough premise:  Something has caused Shallan, Kaladin, Adolin and Renarin to be thrown into the Hogwarts world with their character development through the end of Words of Radiance but Hogwarts aged.  I'm imagining that it is Harry's 4th or 5th year and that Renarin is Harry's age and the others are older. I have multiple plot bunnies in my head that require variations on the premise.  Regardless, here is what I imagine happening when they are sorted:

The sorting hat barely touches Adolin's head before calling out “Gryffindor!” Adolin doesn't know quite how to handle the new situation he has found himself in and falls back on what he does understand as a defense. Unfortunately, this means he comes across as a superficial person who is extremely cocky and a huge flirt and the general impression that everyone gets is that they have been saddled with a new McLaggan. It takes several months and lots of set backs while Adolin learns how to interact with a world where the fact that he is a lighteyes Highprince is irrelevant, but he eventually finds his way and is accepted into the Gryffindor fold.

The sorting hat is less sure what to do with Renarin. It recognizes his quiet intelligence and wit and considers Ravenclaw, but Renarin wants Gryffindor. He has been told from the time he was very young that he is not cut out to be a warrior to the point that he has internalized the idea that he can't be. Despite this, he has always wanted to be able to follow in his father's and brother's footsteps. He is not at all confident that he truly belongs in Gryffindor, but he does know that that is where he really wants to be. The sorting hat considers and tells him that it would probably be truer to himself for Renarin to go to Ravenclaw, but that Gryffindor will also help him grow and respects his choice. Once he is in Gryffindor, Neville recognizes him as a kindred spirit and takes him under his wing. He is shocked the first time he has one of his minor epileptic fits and the other boys just shrug it off – after all, it is nothing compared to Harry's Voldemort induced visions. It boggles his mind that, for once, he is more popular than his brother and that it is more common here for him to need to defend Adolin's character than the other way around.

Kaladin doesn't believe it at first when they tell him a storming hat is going to sort him into a “house,” whatever that nonsense is. It sounds like a lighteyes thing – house Kholin, house Davar – and he wants nothing to do with it. Further explanations lead to the conclusion that it is more like being sorted into different barracks, which is at least something he can understand. Then they bring the hat out and it is an ancient thing that talks using a rip in its fabric as a mouth. Kaladin seriously considers throwing his hands up and walking out, but Adolin and Renarin are here, which means he needs to be here as well, so he grits his teeth and plays along. They put the hat on his head and he can suddenly hear it talking in his mind. Apparently these people have trapped a spren in a hat. The hat laughs at this thought and responds that it is not a bad analogy, but assures him that it is fine and there is no real hatspren that needs rescuing. At this point, to the surprise of the hat, Syl joins in the conversation. After much confusion, the sorting hat decides it is going to have to treat Kaladin and Syl as a single entity. It almost sends them to Gryffindor, but then realizes Kaladin's strong sense of honor is deeply rooted in his belief in the powers of hard work and doing what is right even when it isn't easy and sends them to Hufflepuff. Syl is pleased by this, but Kaladin is so overwhelmed by the whole business at this point that his only immediate reaction is to grumble that it is going to be hard to keep an eye on the storming Gryffindor Highprinces when he is in a different house.

Shallan gives the hat it's biggest challenge – at least until it discovers Pattern. Her dedication to her family and the hardwork and determination she showed while convicing Jasnah to taker her as a ward make her a solid candidate for Hufflepuff. Her clever use of lightweaving and willingness to do anything to achieve her goals, despite the questionable legality/morality of it, makes her the epitome of a Slytherin. She has the Gryffindor tendency to dive into things without fully thinking them through and a Ravenclaw's passion for learning. In the end it is Pattern's philosophy that “Truth is individual” and that “Your truth is what you see” that tips the scales and makes the hat decide to send them to Slytherin. Once in Slytherin, Shallan concludes that what she learned while figuring out how to navigate the Ghostbloods will serve her well in her new situation. It is going to be a challenge, but, with Pattern's help, she is absolutely up for it. [Note: There is so much potential here I can't even...  We will see if I can get any of it to solidify. If anyone else wants to play with it (or any of the rest of it) I'm totally cool with that.] 

In an alternate premise where Renarin is the only one who has jumped universes:

The sorting hat recognizes Renarin's courage and inner strength and wants to put him in Gryffindor. However, for the first time Renarin is in a place where no one knows him, where there are no preset expectations for him. In this new world, no one thinks it odd for a man to want to read and write. No one knows that he is the son of a Highprince. No one thinks he is a failure for not being comfortable around swords in general and shardeblades in particular. Gryffindor feels too much like the expectations he has escaped. He thinks Ravenclaw sounds acceptable. He would prefer not to be thrown into any preconceived classification, but if he has to have one, scholar sounds like a breath of fresh air. He thinks this might be an expectation he could actually live up to. The sorting hat grumbles about it and tells him that Gryffindor would be good for him, but accepts Renarin's choice in the end.

Badger and I were contemplating what color axehounds should be and then they said there should be sparkle axehounds and that reminded me of My Little Pony and then Badger drew this and it is EXCELLENT. 

my little axehound, my little axehound ~

Oathbringer Speculation: Timbre

The descriptions of Timbre would fit with the name “lightspren”. We know that she communicates with Venli by pulsing to different rhythms. During the first shadesmar boat trip, Shallan speculates that the Reachers/lightspresn are using vibrations (ie pulses) to communicate.

This suggests that Timbre is a Reacher, but I suspect that she’s not just any Reacher. We meet Ico in Shadesmar and learn that his father is a deadeye and his daughter “ran off chasing stupid dreams”. Then Timbre tells Venli that her own grandfather was lost to human betrayal. Putting all of this together, I strongly suspect that Timbre is Ico’s daughter. I’m not sure what implications this will have for the future. But it’s a thing.

Citations: (Note: Page numbers come from the Kindle edition.)

What was that small spren that had crept out from beneath Eshonai’s corpse? It looked like a small ball of white fire; it gave off little rings of light and trailed a streak behind it. Like a comet. (pg 340) 

“The copper vibrates,” Shallan said. “And they keep touching it. I think they might be using it to communicate somehow.” (pg 931)

 “Wait!” Adolin said. “Ico, I saw something moving back there.” Ico locked the door and hung the keys on his belt. “My father.” “Your father?” Adolin said. “You keep your father locked up?” “Can’t stand the thought of him wandering around somewhere,” Ico said, eyes forward. (Pg 946)

Ico speaking:  “My daughter used to work there, before she ran off chasing stupid dreams.”  (Pg 948)

Timbre pulsed to Irritation, then the Lost. “That many? I had no idea the human betrayal had cost so many of your people’s lives. And your own grandfather?” (pg 1196)