Chromium Compounder

This is kinda a weird video. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be about standing up to bullies, but it made me think of ChayShan starting at about 1:08 and then a few more times throughout the video.

I was just thinking about when Hoid tells the Fleet story to Kaladin, how he has Kaladin help tell the story. And in WoK Kaladin is able to see hints about what’s coming up in the story. It could just be Hoid being a good storyteller, but I had the thought that maybe he wants Kaladin to learn to tap into the Spiritual Realm to learn things. Maybe he was prepping him for what he did in the Cognitive Realm to find out where they needed to go, or for something yet to come. Possibly not, but maybe.

While this might be fun to theorize about, I’m glad we don’t see these kinds of things often in the stories, and when we do they’re generally not main characters. There’s a reason that Superman is far less popular than Batman. OP characters are boring. I’d much rather read/watch a Twinborn or a Radiant, or someone of the Third Heightening, or a Forger than I would Fullborn, or a Herald, or the Godking, or an Elantrian (after Raoden fixes the symbol). It’s more interesting to see them struggle, claw, and connive their way to victory than it is to see someone who is simply too powerful swat their enemies like flies.

There’s a couple problems there. First is that all surgebinders have 2 types of investiture (their 2 surges), so also being a duralumin gnat would give them three, which would disrupt their resonance. Second is that what you’re referring to doesn’t sound like resonance. It sounds more like you’re just asking if duralumin could be used to do a burst effect of stormlight. For that I would expect that it can.

I would think inverting it (destroying the connections in other groups) sounds more like a Dustbringer power.

I agree with what seems to be the consensus on this, but one idea occurred to me. If the edges of where the Cognitive aspect of a world meets the beginnings of representation of space (like between Alaska and Russia as mentioned before) is defined by the majority of thoughts on the matter, then there are two situations that become interesting. One was mentioned earlier, but I didn’t see any responses to it. That’s the situation where there are two continents and they are unaware of the existence of each other. How would they show up in relation to each other? I suspect that in that situation the thoughts of lesser species would have greater impact and would nudge them into positions that make sense to the animals of the sea and/or sky. The second situation is what if someone managed to get a new map accepted as the standard throughout the world. Unlikely, but conceivable. Would the arrangement of things shift based on the thoughts caused by the new map? Actually, a new thought occurred to me. This is related to the spiritual realm, where time is all in one, causing things like ‘Kaladin is a great spearman because he would become a great spearman’. Maybe for things like both of these situations the thoughts of those in the future and past could affect it. We do know that people can change the edges of continents in the physical realm (dikes, etc) and that that will eventually be reflected in the Cognitive. There’s a WoB on that, but I don’t want to look it up. (On my phone right now.). Anyway, so that kind of goes against that last thought, unless it’s that present thoughts have greater impact than future. If so that makes me think the effectiveness of the thoughts would be relative to when they occur compared to now. Which would make it so a dike situation would have a small effect in the Cognitive realm before the dike was actually built, but probably only a very small one.

I love Harmony, but I feel like that’s a cop out. After him is Cultivation and Endowment. Autonomy is interesting, but needs more screen time. I also think Devotion and Dominion were probably very interesting before Odium got to them.

True, but cracks in the spiritweb aren’t enough. Similar to how a proto-radiant has to already be trying to live by the ideals of their order, a proto-misting has to demonstrate preservation. I get that it’s hard for a baby to do that, but at the very least they can want to live rather than just giving up.

For Allomancy, I believe the thing with snapping is that you have to come near to death but then choose to preserve yourself.

Which is where we tend to have the edge of our maps.

A perpendicularity will allow you to get from the Cognitive realm of one world to the physical realm of that world, but it doesn’t make it so you can get to other worlds. I’ve always thought of the Cognitive realm as being like a map. Picture a map of the whole universe, with a map of each individual planet laid on top of the universe map at the location of the planet. Now remember that most models of the solar system that people make are super not to scale, because empty space is boring, so you can squish together the vast distances of empty space to be much less vast. The problem people have with this is that we know that each world is round in the physical realm, but even though we know the earth is round, for practical purposes we generally treat it as flat in our minds, which is why we have maps of the world. I expect that the shape of the Cognitive realm for each world probably matches the way most people think of the world. By that I mean where the edges of the world map are.

Agreed

Hmm, I looked at it the other way. I thought the letter went to a particular Avatar, but Patji is responding instead. And when he/she/it says "We, instead, will take your communication to us", the "us" is referring to Autonomy as a whole, which I picture as being like a hive mind at this point.

I believe it's that he wrote it to a different Avatar, but Patji is responding for that Avatar, because, as Patji says, the other Avatar can't respond. I don't think we know the name or location of the other Avatar.

I understand that, and I probably was more harsh than I should have been, but Sixth of the Dusk is the only Brandon story I've listened/read only one time. I feel absolutely no desire to give it another listen. I would probably rate it between Lame and Meh. For some authors that's okay, but his second worst story in my opinion is White Sand, and I'd put that as Okay. As an interesting side note, I read this in your voice, which I know thanks to shardcast. It was kind of weird to hear your voice in my head like that, but cool.

BOOOOO!!! I hate sixth of the dusk, but I'm especially mad that he's doing this instead of working on something that I actually like. Lost Metal was supposed to be finished LAST YEAR! He has yet to start it.

I feel certain that Seons and Skaze are technically capable of this, but they don’t know how. The spren learned it by copying the Honorblades, but there haven’t been any Honorblades or Shardblades on Sel for the Seons and Skaze to copy.

I tried Pendragon and Scythe. They were okay. Artemis Fowl was fun, but I lost interest in the one where he had that magic sickness.

I’ve read WoT, but it was exhausting. I enjoyed it, but I can’t do it again. Haven’t heard of Septumis Heap. I’ll take a look.

I couldn’t find anywhere in the forums that seemed like an appropriate place for this, but I figured I’d get better responses here than anywhere else I talk to people. I’ve already got all of Brandon’s works on audible and I’ve listened to everything at least twice, most more than that. I’ve currently got two audible credits and I’m struggling to find anything I'm interested in. I want something new to hold me over until SA 4 and Lost Metal. I’ve also got everything by Jim Butcher and Kevin Hearne, as well as most of the Percy Jackson and related stuff (eventually lost interest). I tried Rothfuss and Martin, but I decided Rothfuss was too depressing and Martin deserves to suffer the death of one of the halfway decent characters he killed. (I’m not an angry person, but I honestly would be happy if he died, preferably before he can finish that abomination of a series.) I’ve tried lots of other things as well, but those are the big names. Anything else I should try?

My most recent listen through Oathbringer as soon as I realized Elhokar’s death was coming up I started crying. Had to pause audible before I could get through it. I’ve never cried for the end of HoA or for Lightsong’s death scene. Both of them just felt so beautifully crafted, and the deaths didn’t really seem like something to mourn. They were happy to sacrifice for what they knew was right. It was bittersweet, but mostly sweet. And I am totally with you on the anger toward Dalinar. I feel like I can never forgive him. He committed genocide. I know tons of people expect him to become Honor, or Unity, or something, but I will honestly be mad if that happens. I’d be okay if it’s a brief thing ending with him sacrificing himself (like Vin) so someone VASTLY more worthy can take it up after him (probably Kaladin, but I’d be okay with pretty much any other protagonist rather than Dalinar), but if he ends up staying as a shard for more than a few days then I’m going to be ticked.

It actually reminds me of the magic system in Larry Correia’s Grimnoir series. In that each type of magic is connected to a different location of a magical pattern created by a cosmic entity. Each has neighboring types that can be tapped into with effort. There’s other ways to get access to other types, but that’s one.

I don’t think Brandon has ever said this, but I expect that gravity’s pull on you must change proportionally as you store and tap speed. Let me explain. So, when tapping speed we can see that you effectively become a Speedster (like the flash), but the problem is that when an object moves at speeds like that without something tethering it to the ground (sufficient weight like a train, aerodynamics intentionally pushing it down like a race car, or something tethering it into place like a roller coaster) it becomes a projectile. So if you wanted to go more than about double the speed of an Olympic sprinter you would basically be a large bullet rather than the Flash. So, in order for this to work your gravitational pull would have to increase in order to keep you on the ground when tapping speed. You might not notice it, but it has to exist. I’m curious to know how gravity would interact while storing speed. I hope it would be decreased, meaning that if you store while falling you would fall either more slowly, more softly, or both. Similarly, it’s safe to assume that your mental speed would have to be increased while tapping speed as well. Otherwise you would not only be crashing into things because you would have trouble thinking fast enough to avoid them, but also your brain wouldn’t be able to keep up with your feet and you’d trip every few feet. We can actually observe this in Shadows of Self, when Wax and Wayne are in a speed bubble and Bleeder looks at them and is surprised. Without increased mental speed she wouldn’t have time for the thought to register. When storing speed again you likely lose some mental speed. These are both interesting on their own, but they also indicate that it’s likely that similar things happen for other attributes,

I feel like he’s not JUST hatred. I agree that he doesn’t own all emotion, and certainly not the calmer emotions, but I feel like in some ways passion is closer to his intent than just Odium.

The obvious ones: Yo mama so stable, we call her Preservation. Yo mama so loving, we call her Devotion. Yo mama so rich, she makes Dominion jealous. Yo mama so giving, she gives investiture to Endowment. Yo mama so ambitious, Rayse thought Uli Da had survived. A little less obvious: Yo mama so careful, she keeps her Nightblood sheath in a Nightblood sheath sheath. Yo mama so persuasive, Breeze learned Soothing from her.