Purelake Earthquake

Yeah, that's some emotion allomancy, but I believe there's a WoB that Hoid did not use that Lerasium for himself, so he must have acquired his powers some other way.

This is called compounding. When you have an both abilities of the same metal you can use allomancy to fuel the feruchemical power. They fill a metalmind and burn it with allomancy, this hacks the feruchemical ability so that it's end positive. When burned the user is getting a higher return on their investment, so they don't have to spend all the time filling. There is still a bunch of stuff we don't know about compounding, and I could have misphrased some of this, I don't quite understand it all myself. For more information see the wiki: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Compounding (this article hasn't been updated with information for the later books yet, so there are no spoilers beyond Alloy at this point)

I don't know much about either. Coming up with two random items for the next person to associate is like taking a raccoon to a rock concert.

They both have a large Impact. Pokemon are like artichokes

It seems like every thread about Kell eventually turns into this discussion. How good where his motivations? Honestly, it's a mixture. To say he did the things he did only to serve himself is as ridiculous as saying that he did them all for the greater good. A person can do things for multiple reasons simultaneously. He wanted to make the world a better place, he wanted to look after his friends, but he also wanted a lot of things for himself. He wanted vengeance, he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it, he wanted to stick it to the man, he wanted to jump around in the mists and kill people. (Sometimes people seem like they think Kell was all in it for the Survivorism worship, but I don't really get the vibe that that was a super strong motivator for him, not as much as some of the other self-interested ones. Though he probably gets a good kick out of it.) I would also posit that as his arc progresses he moves closer towards the good motivation side of the spectrum. Learning to accept Elend, I feel, was a big step up for him. Kelsier was lucky, those motivations were pretty well aligned for him. We learn more about people when their self-interested desires and their more altruistic goals don't line up as well. Anyway I think it's best to say that his motivations fall somewhere in the middle, not necessarily at the middle, just anywhere between the two extremes. You could go on for pages and pages trying to decide where that ratio lies.

How could I have forgotten about the hardest language of them all? The Incarna language.

What Eki said about translations, basically. It's actually a pretty common perspective for non-Earth based fantasies, I believe. I know Sanderson describes it this way, and I think Brent Weeks has as well. It's all about conservation of tone. The characters are getting across the same information to each other, and their doing it with the same tone. So, they might be making a pun at around that point, but it might not be the same pun. The best example I can give of this is in anime translations, sometimes if there's a pun there will be a whole bunch of subtitles explaining how the pun works, other times it will just insert an English pun that kind of fits what's going on (or they just leave it literally and let the audience be confused). That second option is what's going on with wordplay on secondary world fantasy most of the time. The problem in real translations is that those often wind up being either clunky in the conversation or just awkward half-puns. In the fantasy situation you don't have to bother with the specifics of the language (unless you're Tolkien), you just assume that what you're writing is the best possible translation of the pure ideas that are being conveyed in the fantasy language. So, there's still some suspension of disbelief going on here. It can get even more complicated where you have situations where the fantasy text is being written literally. Usually this is when it's a language the characters aren't fluent in, or you're trying to say something particular about the language. if an English book had some instances of untranslated French dialogue interspersed and it's being translated into Spanish, they should leave the French sentences intact. Brandon likes puns, so I think most of his books will at least slip one of them in somewhere. I can't think of any off the top of my head though, except for the already mentioned characters. I'd imagine the original mistborn trilogy had some in there as well. But Stormlight is the only one with full out wordplay battles between characters.

Sazed and Jasnah are fairly similar. Both are viewed as wise and knowledgeable. One's an atheist, one's a believer. Both are hiding awesome magical powers that aren't wildly known about in the world at the time. Both escape the bounds of the physical realm. I kind of want to say that Vasher and TenSoon, particularly Era 2 TenSoon, are similar. But I have kind of a hard time reading them. Especially TenSoon. General Cosmere spoilers Both Kell and Kal had their lives defined by a tragic event in their past. Particularly, loosing someone they cared deeply about. Kal seems like he's almost as much of a survivor as Kelsier was. Both are driven by vengeance and have a nasty, if understandable, hatred of the upper class.

Okay, here's something that really grinds my gears, people who whine about grammar. Now this could be a contentious topic because it's possible because some of these grammar issues might by other people's pet peeves. Here it goes, anti-grammar-rant rant following: Here's another (much shorter) problem I have on a somewhat similar topic. When people get all up in a tizzy about what an awful language English is. I hear it all the time that English is by far the worst language out of all of them. And I can't help but find myself skeptical. Every piece I hear people write about it sites the same things. English has homonyms. Sometimes words that are spelled similarly use different suffixes, (taught, preached; boxes, oxen) And maybe other similar things I can't think of right now. Now this is where I'm confused. I don't know a lot about linguistics and languages, so maybe someone can correct me here, but these hardly sound like unique problems to English (homonyms, really?). It's possible that a lot of these people just mean to be poking fun at language in general, but a lot of them cite it as the worst language, using these things as evidence. I know English has got a ton of problems and stupid quirks, but it's got a lot of points in it's favor. Regular nouns don't have genders, adjectives don't change at all depending on tense or anything like that, there's a simple character system that matches up to the spoken language, just off the top of my head. Also, has anyone here seen the Danish counting system, it's absolutely ridiculous. (Here's a comic about it, there is some swearing: http://satwcomic.com/just-a-number) I know there are studies and stuff about how it's supposed to be harder to learn than others, but I'm at the point where my brain just automatically edits out whenever I see someone mention a study, I just have so little faith in them. Again, I could be wrong here, but if you google "English worst language" all you get are lists of these quirks, which I assume are not uncommon in other languages as well. Anyway, I'm glad to get this off my chest, now I can stop harboring my annoyance and get on with my life.

Here's one I found that sounds like one of the seeds that became the Legion series. It seems very similar, except for the obvious difference of this being physical clones instead of hallucinations. He's often talked about Legion being inspired by Dan Wells' schizophrenia book they were working on in their writing group. He probably merged the schizophrenia idea with the aspects idea and found it was strong enough for a full story. Thought I'd put this in a reply here since you've been looking through all these old posts, and I didn't want to make a new thread.

I just looked it up and apparently Nightvale and Gravity Falls were released on the exact same day, according to Wikipedia, at least. Anyway, I like the podcast, haven't gotten around to the novel yet.

My understanding of the Beyond, and the God Beyond for that matter, is based on the fact that Brandon tries to write his stories so that they don't contradict any of the reader's belief systems. I think he talks about this kind of stuff when people ask him about Jasnah and writing about beliefs other than his own. He doesn't want atheists to see all these gods running around and think that Brandon's saying with his books that religion is true. On the same note he doesn't want theists to see that those gods running around, who are essential just really powerful people, and think that he's using them as a replacement for an actual God. He also describes writing his magic systems as adding a few new laws of physics to the universe (for him it's Realmatics, Investiture, and attributes like Connection), so far the Beyond doesn't seem to fit with any of these rules added, it's not in any of the three realms. That's why it's the Beyond, it's beyond the three realms and all of the Cosmere. Brandon saying, "Hey everyone, in my universe, the afterlife is real, that's just the way it's going to be," would feel kind of cheap to me. He doesn't want anyone to have to set aside their own beliefs to enjoy the story. This is how I've always interpreted the Beyond, ever since HoA. Asking if there's an afterlife in the Cosmere would be the same as asking if there's an afterlife in real life. Some people say yes, some people say no, and there's no direct evidence one way or the other. That's the beauty of the system, I can read it and think that they're all reunited, but Jasnah could read it and think that the Beyond is a comforting lie, and what's important is the time they spent together. This is only my interpretation, but I think it's pretty grounded. It doesn't matter if I think the Beyond is a happy afterlife, and it doesn't matter what Sazed thinks (because what Sazed thinks is just that). All that matters is what Kelsier thinks. he never believed before, and I can't imagine that changing much. I wasn't expecting to find a quote that shows how he feels so well, but I dug one up, from the first chapter when he's "recruiting" Fuzz and he's starting to slip away: I don't think he needs to be afraid of the Beyond, he wasn't that afraid of death either, and he thought that ended with nothing also. That doesn't mean he should jump into it for no reason. He already preserved himself when he went into the Well, I don't think he feels the pull of the Beyond anymore. Kelsier seemed plenty living to me, though this is more subject to interpretation. Preservation describes going through the Cognitive Realm after death as a transitory state; it's between life and death. They also talk about the three parts of a person, body, mind, and soul. Kell's body died, but his mind and soul are still fine, if I'm understanding everything correctly. Fuzz compares Kelsier to a kite without a string, where the string is his body which ties him to the physical realm. If this metaphor is close to accurate it doesn't seem like the body is an integral part of what makes a person alive, it's just what lets them interact with the regular world. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by being alive. If we base it on actions and self-awareness, he doesn't seem any different than when he had a body. If you just mean that he's broken the natural order of life and death, yeah he did that, but it's already been done. In my mind, once he goes in the Well, he's already come back from the death. What's done is done, it would seem counterproductive to just go ahead and die just because he finished saving the world. I can't even think of a way that he could go Beyond anymore that wasn't directly suicide (I don't think he can just let go or will it). So in a sense, going Beyond at this point, would be going against the natural order again. The stream's already been diverted, this is the way it's going now. I don't really see any way that that quote could have anything to do with Kelsier moving on. First off, during the whole conversation between Vin and him, Kelsier continuing to stay in the cognitive realm isn't even mentioned. The closest it comes is when Vin first confronts Kelsier and says, "Oh, Kelsier. You always did make your own rules." That's it. During the whole conversation, nothing is said at all about the possibility of Kell going beyond. So, I don't think Vin, in that quote, would be indicating disapproval about a topic she never even broached. So instead of "You've got a lot to learn about love," referring to something Vin hasn't expressed any interest in, I think she's referring what they were just talking about, Kell wanting to keep Vin there with him.I think what Kell doesn't know about love here, is letting people go. An important thing Vin learned was when she didn't use the power to save Elend during WoA, she was learning to let go and make people make their own sacrifices. She was willing to do this because of her love. Kell need to let go and let Vin and Elend move on. I don't think Vin would even care whether or not Kell goes to the Beyond yet. That's his own business. I don't think she's reprimanding him, she's giving him her parting words of wisdom. (Sidenote, I'm starting to view the situation between Vin and Kelsier as a reversal on the Mentor Dying trope. Kell teaches Vin how to use her potential and also trust other people. Then Kelsier dies a martyr and Vin has to step up and make her way on her own. That's the standard trope. But, Vin also was a great influence on Kelsier, she taught him how to be a better person and care about others. Then, Kelsier doesn't die and Vin dies for good. Vin gives Kell her final words of wisdom, and now it's up to him to find the rest of his way on his own. Kell can't complete this arc, and heed her advice by stepping it up on his own and continuing to become a better person if he goes Beyond right away.) Sorry for all the long posts. I've become too Invested in this thread.

It's also possible that Hoid could've had multiple names initially, like Wax (less likely) or just a first name, last name situation.

All this time, I thought it was Khriss who dropped that name, but I checked, it was Leras. We know that at least some of the Dragonsteel sequence takes place on Yolen before the Shattering and it tells Hoid's origin story. Hoid 'steals' the name Hoid somewhere around this time, probably closer to the beginning of the sequence rather than the end. I think it could go either way. It could've been a pseudonym he'd taken somewhere down the road, or it could've been his name before he started taking psuedonyms in the first place.

That's what I was thinking. Maybe instead of being someone like Iyatil, it was just Iyatil herself. Seems like something Brandon would do.