Possible Mistborn Reference

[Darth Revan]

In Chapter 17 of Words of Radiance, Shallan is trying to figure out how to use her Lightweaving. She asks Pattern, "So, how do I make it work?" He replies, "Perhaps eat it?" Shallan, of course, finds this a bit ridiculous, but I think she'd be surprised how far some of the other denizens of the Cosmere go to use their powers.

[A Budgie]

23 minutes ago, Darth Revan said:

In Chapter 17 of Words of Radiance, Shallan is trying to figure out how to use her Lightweaving. She asks Pattern, "So, how do I make it work?" He replies, "Perhaps eat it?" Shallan, of course, finds this a bit ridiculous, but I think she'd be surprised how far some of the other denizens of the Cosmere go to use their powers.

Ha. I can imagine when people travel from one planet to another in the cosmere, the Scadrians get people going 'do people really eat metal to use investiture?' and them finding it not weird at all.
Although, it's quite possible there are weirder systems out there. I mean, I seem to remember Brandon talking about a story he had an idea for where people got powers from diseases...it's probably very hard to make jokes like that one in the cosmere without actually mentioning a real magic system.
'Eating metal? That's ridiculous! That's like...getting powers from doing maths!'
'I've seen that one, too. Very dangerous.'

[windrunningmistborn]

Well, I'll mention it here because I've been harboring this pet theory for a little while.

Spren are reincarnations of people.

There's really only one piece of evidence for this theory, and it's quite petty, but yours is a second piece. If you're interested, I'll dig up the quote that made me think of this idea. 

[Oversleep]

IIRC Pattern at this stage was trying to figure out the whole food thing - why we put one thing into our mouths and the things that come out the other ways we try to hide. The suggestion "Perhaps eat it?" serves to indicate it.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Quoth @The One Who Connects:

Quote

We get so caught up on the magical that we forget about the practical.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Oversleep

[WhiteLeeopard]

You could also see it as a link to Lift.

[Yata]

5 hours ago, windrunningmistborn said:

Spren are reincarnations of people.

I am sorry to go aganist.

But Spren are not People's reincarnation.

Spren are Splinters, pieces of Investiture that becomed sentient.

The Cosmere doesn't allow the reincarnation. We know to a certain degree how the death works in the Cosmere and the reincarnation is quite impossible.

I could carry other proves but I think It's enough.

Luckly/unluckly the Realmatic Theory Upon the Cosmere is based leaves really no doubt.

[Steeldancer]

52 minutes ago, Yata said:

I am sorry to go aganist.

But Spren are not People's reincarnation.

Spren are Splinters, pieces of Investiture that becomed sentient.

The Cosmere doesn't allow the reincarnation. We know to a certain degree how the death works in the Cosmere and the reincarnation is quite impossible.

I could carry other proves but I think It's enough.

Luckly/unluckly the Realmatic Theory Upon the Cosmere is based leaves really no doubt.

I'm going to play devils advocate. We have no idea what happens in the beyond, do we? And we probably will never find out. So it is POSSIBLE that it might be reincarnation. But it won't be, because Brandon isn't going to go into the Beyond. 

[The One Who Connects]

6 minutes ago, The Flash said:

I'm going to play devils advocate. We have no idea what happens in the beyond, do we? And we probably will never find out. So it is POSSIBLE that it might be reincarnation. But it won't be, because Brandon isn't going to go into the Beyond. 

The Beyond is always described as something that has more akin to an "afterlife" than "reincarnation," but that's a matter of semantics since Brandon doesn't go into much detail

[Calderis]

6 minutes ago, The Flash said:

I'm going to play devils advocate. We have no idea what happens in the beyond, do we? And we probably will never find out. So it is POSSIBLE that it might be reincarnation. But it won't be, because Brandon isn't going to go into the Beyond. 

From a technical in world perspective I agree with your point of devil's advocate. 

From a storytelling perspective I have to side with @Yata. With death functioning the way it does in the Cosmere, the beyond is how we know for sure that a character is gone. Introducing a mechanic to subvert this is something I don't think we'll ever see. 

[Yata]

8 hours ago, The Flash said:

I'm going to play devils advocate. We have no idea what happens in the beyond, do we? And we probably will never find out. So it is POSSIBLE that it might be reincarnation. But it won't be, because Brandon isn't going to go into the Beyond. 

I don't want to go too deeper in this as It's OT (so if you want to continue this chat we could start a new topic about) but beings with a Perfect Realmatic knowledge doesn't know what the Beyond is or if there is a Beyond at all.

I am talking of being with an intrinsec connection to their "Humans" or in a more Extreme cases beings that composes the very body and soul of the shardworld's inabitant.

We know also that when someone dies, After a while his Soul's Investiture returns to the owner (a Shard in this case).

[retrorocket1]

Well as we know in the cosmere, you can travel betwen planets via shadesmar, spren are from shadesmar, spren see travelers from other planets, which includes Scadrial. pattern might have a memory of hearing about the consumption of metal. But as other people have said pattern was in the middle of trying to understand food so probably wrong.

[Weltall]

On 5/29/2017 at 5:16 AM, A Budgie said:

Although, it's quite possible there are weirder systems out there. I mean, I seem to remember Brandon talking about a story he had an idea for where people got powers from diseases...it's probably very hard to make jokes like that one in the cosmere without actually mentioning a real magic system.

That would be The Silence Divine, still on Brandon's back burner but there's a reading he did of some of its prologue floating around.

And it's not too hard to cast any magic system in 'weird' terms if you think about it sideways. For example, AonDor is magical drawings in midair that Do Things, ChayShan is interpretive dance, BioChroma involves eating (part of) someone's soul and then consuming colors and using heavy breathing to make inanimate things live and so on. Weird, no?

The Metallic Arts probably have the best 'violation of common sense' rating of the systems we know about so far though, since most people would think that eating metal flakes is a really dumb idea and then there's Hemalurgy...

[Krandacth]

On 2017-5-29 at 1:47 PM, windrunningmistborn said:

Well, I'll mention it here because I've been harboring this pet theory for a little while.

Spren are reincarnations of people.

There's really only one piece of evidence for this theory, and it's quite petty, but yours is a second piece. If you're interested, I'll dig up the quote that made me think of this idea. 

I started a thread a while ago that fleshes out this theory a bit. It isn't full reincarnation, but it is definitely related: