Beeeeeesssss!!!!

Anything can be an epic adventure with the right music playing (the lord of the rings soundtrack is the right music imo)

Winter

Akaroa, South Island, New Zealand

Stormlight 5.5 novella in Nightblood's pov of Wat but it's only the chat between the honorblades with the most bat shit lore reveals in the most abstract and no time sense order of events

In August this year Dragonsteel asked me if I could add some concept art and designs as inspiration for the Worldhopper ball mainly to visualize the room and the wedding attire of both Adolin and Shallan. 

As usual I loved to get into the tiny details - from embroidery patterns to alethi wedding traditions. Some of them made it into the final event some of them did not and this is why I am so happy I can finally share them with you! 

So to say that I made some high pitched noises when i stepped into the venue at the ball last December is probably an understatement. Paladin Creative, Dragonsteel and their many helpers did such an impressive job making this immersive ball reality and fun – especially considering with so little time beforehand. 

Thanks to @paladincreative, @valentine.bridal and @kayleemakescrafts for making these designs physical! 💙

Thank you to @officialsavannahcarrasco and @jacksupertoast for bringing these two to life those nights! ❤️

And of course major thanks to @brandsanderson and @izykstewart for letting me help dress Adolin and Shallan for their wedding! (I felt weirdly like a proud mum 😆)🧡

“Strangely, treating knowledge as an end in itself reaps the kind of practical rewards that valuing merely instrumental knowledge may struggle to produce.”

- from “How We Lost Our Focus (and why it should scare you)” by Unsolicited advice (https://youtu.be/oxJkj-C4vjs)

Honestly it is my opinion that knowledge and learning and thinking and all that they entail are valuable in and of themselves: that is to say I take the original poster’s idea a step farther and value ‘useless degrees’ even if they are objectively useless from a practical sense. For me knowledge is an end unto itself, valuable because it is and not because of what it might do.

It’s also worth noting that a lot of very valuable math with a lot of practical applications now started out this way: as purely abstract and only valuable in and of itself. So it seems to me that this perspective doesn’t harm applying the concepts in the long term, but actually helps it.

It seems to be the case that by only chasing what is immediately useful we will miss vast amounts of information and thoughts and development that will become useful or even needed later down the line.

One of my favorite parts of The Stormlight Archive, especially The Way of Kings, is how Sanderson introduces this deeply alien landscape to us. He does so mostly by not introducing things specifically, only narrating as if the viewpoint character were looking at normal stuff that everyone sees all the time—which, to them, they are! Sanderson also often uses one-off names for things, like I think he uses the word "chull" before he actually describes one, and leaves you, the reader, to make your assumptions on what those words could mean. Often you assume you're in "rabbits are called 'glips'" territory, where normal things are called by a fantastical name just for flavor.

The reason why I like this is that you get some moments that are... the closest feeling I can compare it to is "dawning horror," when you realize your assumptions are wrong. Like I heard about "songlings," and I assumed, "Ah, yes, birds!" And then I heard about axehounds and I assumed, "Ah, dogs :)"

And then you actually encounter songlings in the text and. Oh. They're cricket-crab things. Uh.

And then Sanderson actually shows you an axehound and it's even worse, it's a crab-dog!

After that you're left sweating. What else is actually crab? Are the horses secretly crabs? They keep mentioning hogs, but we never see a hog described, are they actually crabs??

But the answer is no. They're just pigs. Brilliant.

Winter

by jhamilbader