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CryoZenith

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Everything posted by CryoZenith

  1. While I concede that it would make sense in terms of plot, and would be really interesting, I really dislike it conceptually in terms of the magic system. So I will keep assuming that Taravangian's boon/bane disappeared when he Ascended until proven otherwise (not necessarily IC, WoBs work too). Yes, I will feel really silly if I turn out to be wrong, but I'm biting the bullet. (to be specific, there are three main issues with the boon/bane persisting, beyond even what it says about the power level of Cultivation's magic: 1. Since Todium is mostly in the SR, the concept of intelligence and empathy changing randomly every *day* doesn't really track to anything. 2. As a vessel, with the expanded mind customary to being a vessel, even "bad intelligence days" would manifest as high intelligence for Todium. 3. If Cultivation really is planning something that would put Todium in danger or put him under her control, all Todium needs is ONE "good intelligence day" to figure it all out.)
  2. As much as I'd love that, it might be the case that Invention doesn't have a shardworld.
  3. We just need Vasher or Leshwy to sustain a shallow cut from a silver blade in SA 5 and we'll be able to put that to rest. My guess is most cogshadows don't care.
  4. Marasi is just a huge vibe for me. She reminds me to a surprisingly large degree of myself.
  5. I'm just gonna point out something that might support the theory. Iri. Ire. Very similar words. Could easily be etymologically evolved from each other.
  6. It's not standard package, it's budget :D. And as the guide specifically said, the budget package comes with temporary memory loss :D. So I don't think that's suspicious. I do agree that the second part is very suspicious, though - traveling in a way that destroys the guidebook is definitely not part of any package.
  7. It's possible for a maladaptive trait to coast by if there are insufficient environmental pressures on a species that would cause that trait to reduce fitness. So the timeline would look like this: the beings evolved extremely precise hearing because it was initially an upside, their hearing kept getting stronger and stronger with each generation, until at a certain point it got too strong, to the point of becoming a weakness, but at this point, they were already the apex predators with no reliable competitors in their ecosystem, so nothing could force them to need to dial it back anymore. Also, there is a feedback loop here with the environment: for the other species surrounding the monsters, it was beneficial for fitness to become more silent in order to survive their sound-based predators, so in the present day, strong-sound-making adaptations would serve them well, but they already selected themselves out of that option completely. There's another possibility which is a bit out there. And I say "out there" not because it's super implausible that this could happen evolutionarily, but "out there" because in a writerly sense, most non-biologists wouldn't consider it. Namely, that there's a gene cluster that coincidentally grants both the armor plating and the sound weakness. And even though this cluster is not strict upside, it's still "worth it", so the monsters that had this cluster outbred the monsters that didn't.
  8. Illumination is not primarily mental illusions. It's (for the most part) photomancy. You are creating actual, real photons, real light. So I doubt tin would help pierce through it, but bronze probably would!
  9. I can't find it off the cuff, but there is a WoB where Brando says something along the lines of "well emeralds are just aluminum oxide, but they don't have any of the investiture-inert properties of aluminum metal." So it is definitely possible that when you sufficiently chemically alter something, it does the trick.
  10. Not sure if regrowth would work that way, since the Spiritual Ideal of a human is a human that lacks breath (otherwise Radiants would give themselves one breath accidentally, right?). So my guess would be that if you take a drab and apply regrowth to them, it won't literally do nothing (it probably would boost their innate investiture some), but I doubt it would re-give them the property of having a breath.
  11. I don't think it's that wild to speculate that Brandon now regrets that he made Atium easy to push-pull, and if he had to write mistborn era 1 all over again, that would be one of the things he would change. I don't think this was meant to holistically make sense.
  12. Creation and being or not being created is a very finicky construct (and I don't even mean metaphysically; I'm talking about linguistics and language use). Like, we generally say that our parents created us, but we don't typically say that our grandparents created us, but despite the latter, we do say that our way-back ancestors created our lineage (although we don't quite think of it in terms of them creating us). But then we're fine with saying that God created us (and not just us as in humanity, but us as in us-us). We're also cool with crediting God with creating different pieces of natural landscape and geography, even if they're too young/recent to have been made "at the beginning" (even in a young earth sense) but we don't credit God with creating anthropic things like the internet or toilet paper. Basically, my point is that "to be created by" is such a linguistically fuzzy term and its relationship with degrees of separation is so haphazard that I don't think we can productively speculate on what it means for Brandon to say that the Aethers don't think Adonalsium created them, not until we get to see how the Aethers express this belief IC.
  13. This is off topic. Regardless of what powers being a Son of Tanavast entails, they're not powers related to being a 4th ideal radiant, so should have no bearing in a powerscaling debate between a fullborn and a 4th ideal radiant.
  14. I basically just think Invention is probably in residence nowhere, rather than in residence somewhere that isn't a planet. I pretty much picture him as Odium was before he came to Roshar, unbound to a specific planet. And I am making the assumption that when a shard is unbound/has no resident planet, they are hard to find by everyone, not just ordinary people, but also worldhoppers and even other shards. There might be worlds minorly influenced by his Investiture, like Ashyn is by Cultivation or First of the Sun is by Autonomy, but probably nothing else. I think this is more likely than him residing in a fleet of spaceships or something because if he really was just in that sort of conjecture, I don't see why Sazed would be unable to locate him.
  15. Possibly. But I would guess with 12 massive blobs of sentient investiture chilling around Lunar humans are innately invested to near Rosharan levels, which presumably comes attached with some cardiovascular protection.
  16. (it's Invention not Innovation) I take "Invention not residing on a planet" as meaning that Invention is currently not Invested-bound anywhere in the physical, rather than that his physical presence is somewhere in space. Essentially that all of him is in the SR. I wouldn't bet on it, but if I had to bet, I think it would be more likely that we get to meet Mercy or Valor than that we get to meet Invention.
  17. The writerly answer (which is different from the in-world answer) is that if you left silver as the only weakness of the spores, you would have a vastly depopulated Lumar, possibly even extinct. In a way, Threnody works the same. It's just that in Threnody the "number two method" is not a substance, but a behavior (following of the Simple Rules). If, writerly speaking, having silver available was the only way to deal with Shades on Threnody, and they would be enraged regardless if you followed any rules or not, then that planet would be vastly depopulated too. The in-world answer I'm not sure about. By the way, here is a fun culinary thing to get you (potentially) disturbed. The human body is 0.5% salt by mass. That is a decently high amount of salt. That is *not enough* to deactivate the verdant spores, not even approximately enough. Which means that the salted tea they drink on the rock is 1% salt by mass or more. I just want everyone to be aware of just how SALTY that is, how much of an acquired taste it would need to be.
  18. Presuming the following two things: 1. I'm burning this IRL 2. I'm the only person IRL who is a misting I'd pick brass. Not only is it super useful to have access to any kind of mind control in so many situations (even this weak of mind control) but nobody would see it coming or guard against it, or know that I'm the one doing it. Let me just put it this way: if burning brass and zinc wasn't that useful for manipulating people, Elendel wouldn't have had to pass a law banning it. And it would be even more effective IRL as people would just assume they're having an off day and suspect nothing.
  19. There's also (as per WoB) the fact that steel inquisitors have naturally longer lifespans than humans, so presumably the way that influences the math is by making them require less atium for the same amount of youth.
  20. Granted, your boon is that you become very gifted as a writer. Your bane is that you lose all your business and budgeting sense, and you are never able to publish a book again. I wish to become fireproof.
  21. Hm. Couple things on my mind. Some in direct disagreement with your post, some in somewhat of a contrast. 1. Style and substance can both greatly benefit a book, but they're not equal. Think about it this way: what you get when you combine a ton of style with almost zero substance is something like James Joyce's Ulysses, which is widely considered one of the best pieces of literature ever. On the other hand, what you get when you combine a ton of substance with almost zero style is a Dungeon's & Dragons supplementary DM's book, arguably not a piece of literature at all. Being able to present something, no matter how mundane, in a very flowery and interesting and intricate way, is what makes a writer a writer. Now, writing about a something that happens to be extraordinary rather than mundane is a cherry on top, it helps, but it's not the point. 2. Mind the difference between realism and internal consistency. Realism is not a requirement for good literature, but internal consistency often is. It's fine for a writer to write whatever the hell they want, but they have to include ties to the oddities in the "initial conditions of the world". So it's not a problem to have dragons, but it is a problem to have dragons without at least some lip service to "why" the dragons are there (if the dragons are pivotal to the plot, otherwise, w/e). Because it breaks immersion. 3. Mind the difference between a book being bad and a book being badly written. Somebody who dislikes a book because, say, it has too much gore, or it has too much sex, or it doesn't have enough lgbt representation, or it has too much lgbt representation, or it has too much sexism, or it doesn't have enough sexism (relative to how the in-world culture should realistically be), thinks that nobody should read it because it's harmful, not because it's aesthetically underwhelming (that's an orthogonal axis). Sure, there are readers who confuse the two emotions, but I would guess that most readers can tell the difference. 4. If too many readers have the "I don't like this, I should look for something else" mentality (or, alternatively, the "if I don't have something nice to say, I should say nothing at all" mentality), that's counterproductive to writers. If writers *only* received constructive criticism from readers who *did* overall like their book, then they would improve at a much slower pace. We need *some* amount of respectful-but-overall-disapproving vocal readership for optimal growth.
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