AHHHH I Just Discovered That Somewhere In The Convoluted Process Of Getting The File From SoundRecorder

Gonna attempt Febroary, a snow lep for day 1 !

On Shardblades and Horcruxes

I'm working on a longer SA/HP story, but this notion got into my head.  It won't fit in the larger story, but it also won't leave me alone:

In the Harry Potter universe Kaladin finds out about horcruxes when Syl passes through an object without appearing to harm it (maybe he is going on a rampage in the room of requirement which gave him things that he could destroy to relieve stress and he comes across the diadem?).  When Shardblades pierce living things, they kill or cut off the soul rather than harming the physical shell, so it stands to reason that a shardblade passing through a horcrux would destroy the soul piece instead of the object.  He eventually learns about the horcrux in Harry and has Syl manifest as a scalpel so he can remove the soul piece from Harry's scar.

Because Syl would be fascinated by lava lamps and try to emulate them.  Clearly.

Rithmatics digression

We've talked about 9-point circles.  Here is a further exploration of 9-point conics in case you are curious:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1268017280/potions-a-curious-tale/widget/video.html

Potions: A Curious Tale - Adventure through an enchanted world where your wits are your greatest weapon and combat is not always the answer. - http://kck.st/1oIP0qQ

The leading creative director of this project is Renee Gittins. She was a frosh at Harvey Mudd my senior year so while I didn’t know her well, she and I have several mutual friends who are excited about this. From what I’ve seen on the kickstarter, this game looks like it has a lot of potential so I wanted to spread the word.  

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)

I'm having trouble getting the next chapter of my Shallan in HP land crossover right, so I've been rereading Shallan chapters trying to figure out why things aren't working.  It's getting there.  In the mean time, have some Pattern thoughts:

“The pattern seemed impossible to capture. Its complex repetitions twisted down into infinity.” (pg 67)

Our dear friend Pattern is a fractal. This much is clear. It takes a while, but Shallan finally gets around to asking Pattern if he has a name beyond the one she has given him. His response:

“Name is numbers. Many numbers. Hard to say. Pattern...Pattern is fine.” (pg 215)

Fractal patterns that are on some level infinitely complex can often be described by seemingly simple equations or sets of rules.

Theory/ Headcanon: Pattern's true name is a mathematical description of his fractal form. The fractal exists in multiple dimensions and his appearance in the physical realm is just one tiny slice of his full form: the intersection of the fractal with the physical realm. His apparently changing patterns are not actually his pattern changing, but instead him moving so that the intersection changes and we get different views of him. His ability to shrink corresponds to moving so that his intersection with the physical realm is smaller.   

Now I really want to know Pattern's true name.

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.  

Rithmatics: Part 8, Intro to Lines of Vigor

Let's start with what we know for sure from the books:

Lines of Vigor can only affect chalk creations

You have to draw at least two waveforms to shoot a Line of Vigor

Lines of Vigor can damage or move Lines of Warding (and other chalk creations)

"smaller curves" are stronger [1]

A "large arc" lets them move other lines [2]

Lines of Vigor can bounce off of Lines of Forbiddance

We have previously established that the source of the illustrations in the book is playing fast and loose with the definition of curvature, so the notions of "smaller" and "larger" in the above are not entirely clear.  I know what I want them to mean though...

Theory Time

You know what this sounds like to me?  This sounds like electromagnetic waves.  EM waves are often modeled with transverse waves (the sine curves all of our examples of LoV look like are transverse waves). Higher frequency radiation, such as UV rays is better at penetration than lower frequency radiation, like infrared.  Infrared, on the other hand, is much better at transferring energy, which could very reasonably lead to a transfer of momentum here and thus lead to things moving.  As long as velocity is constant, frequency and wavelength are inversely proportional.  This means that the tighter the curve is the higher the frequency. Theory: Lines of Vigor are based on EM waves.

Possible Implications:

A EM wave with a larger amplitude has more energy.  This would suggest that a Line of Vigor with a short wave length and high amplitude would be better at punching through things and one with the same wavelength and small amplitude.  The effect could be even more pronounced with high amplitude long wave length waves that are trying to push things around

EM waves follow the law of superposition - if you stack two on top of each other you can add them at every point to get a new wave.  This would suggest that there might be more interesting LoV. Instead of just sin(x), we could get things like sin(x)+sin(x/2).  The more complicated ones could be tricky to get right, but might be able to do interesting things.

Related to the previous point, you could get interesting effects if LoV could have interference patterns like EM waves do...

EM waves travel with different speeds through different materials and you get refraction when they move between materials.  Since LoV only affect chalk, it is possible they are only affected by chalk, but if the material they move across affects their velocity, you could get refracted LoV when they move from the sidewalk to the asphalt.

Lines of Forbiddance would be playing the role of mirrors. I have lots of ideas here, but those are for a future post or this one will end up ridiculous.