Dive into your creative stream
*dances around* Not only did I get to meet Brandon Sanderson and have him sign my books, I ALSO got to meet Ben McSweeney (see previous post)!
While hanging out in the bookstore waiting for the signing to start, I met a couple of other fans. One of them had gotten there early enough to get one of the special "get a seat at the front of the Q+A" wristbands but didn't have a question. I got him to ask what Horneater stew would be like on earth. It is apparently based on a spicy Korean seafood soup that traditionally is made by just throwing anything acquired from the sea (shrimp, clams, mussels, etc) into the pot whole, shells and all. He gave the name of the soup. It's Korean. I would probably butcher the spelling completely, so I'm not going to try.
When I got through the line, I asked if he could draw the Blad defense in The Rithmatist. His response was a look that very clearly said "You expect me to remember which one that is by name?" I clarified and he just kind of laughed and drew me one of the 4 point circles and suggested that maybe I could get one of the more complex ones from Ben.
I asked for something about Kaladin when he was signing WoR. Before I tell you what he wrote, I should mention that he was halfway through writing it when I opened my rithimatics notebook and kind of distracted him. "Kaladin has known multiple lightweilders."
So. Rithmatics. I pretty much just started flipping through my notebook asking questions about each page. Most of the questions got a simple affirmative. For the other things, I'm paraphrasing:
Yes, 5 and 8 point defenses could exist. They haven't really been explored in world though.
You can always bind more than one thing to a bind point, but binding multiple things weakens the point. It is a much better idea to add a small circle that gets 3 additional bind points. It doesn't change anything if the point comes from multiple points in the 9-point construction.
When I showed him the 9-point ellipses constructed from different triangle centers he stared at them for a moment before answering. He hesitantly said that, yes, those constructions should be valid in theory, but that they shouldn't be used in practice. The sides of ellipses are weak enough that if you expect to need to defend your sides you really should be using a circle.
At this point he started to say that we shouldn't hold up the line too long as I flipped to a page titled Lines of Vigor. I was going to let it go, but he glanced at the page and told me to go ahead and ask :D
Yes, Lines of Vigor behave like light waves. (I'm so glad I was right on this)
To clarify I double checked that this means that higher frequency waves are better for doing damage, lower frequency waves are better for transferring energy (and thus moving things)
Yes, Lines of Vigor follow the rule that the angle of incidence =angle of reflection.
GUYS. LINES OF VIGOR ALSO REFRACT. I asked it in terms of whether they slightly change speed and direction when they move between materials like, say, concrete and asphalt. He said yes and that you also get the wavelength adjusting. Ben then commented that he hadn't known that. *flails*
I got "Oh, wow"'s from both of them while I was flipping through the notebook :-). At that point, Brandon passed me off to Ben and we chatted about inconsequential things while he took one of my spare sheets of paper from my notebook and drew me a picture *flails more*
I'm still on such a high guys, it's crazy. *dances around*
(very minor edit to fix a typo that was bugging me)