Chaos

Brandon did say in the 17S interview that burning metals that were spikes essentially knocks the person out.

I know. Rather, it's directed chaos, so to speak. And since all Shards are a directed some-and-such, the closest we could get to an Entropy Shard is, in fact, Ruin.

So, I did some research on this in MB3, and I have come to the conclusion that, given that Entropy is synonymous with Chaos, it cannot be a Shard. The key is that Ruin doesn't act randomly. This is because a consciousness controls it. I think an Entropy Shard could not operate on this level. How do you "plan" disorder? And certainly, a consciousness is a key component to a Shard.

You know, I've been listening to Hoot! for the past few days, completely independently of you, Feather XD

Living Pokedex - It's probably bad that over a decade later, I can still recite facts about Pokemon off the top of my head. Encyclopedic knowledge is best with the first 250 Pokemon, and is extremely prejudiced against sucky ones. Excessive Theorizing - I have the "gift" of wasting a lot of time on this forum, making ridiculously long posts. They are usually wrong. Oh, that last one reminded me of something. I just wrote that sentence as "They usually wrong." So: Forgetting Key Words in Sentences - My brain likes to skip over the main verb in a sentence, or forget the word "not" in a negative paragraph, thus confusing everyone completely!

I suppose that would depend on a lot of factors, like whether Honor was Splintered, and if so, what forms do those Splinters take.

Huh, I don't know about that. The way I envision in it my mind, the Shards are each a fragment of creation. Their Intents are sixteen different aspects of creation. I would doubt that there are Shards which are kind of mixtures. Shards are fundamental, as far as I know. Hi Fell! I suppose it is possible. The existence of such a quadrant would largely depend on where Ruin lies. So, here's some food for thought: if Ruin and Preservation are in separate quadrants, what made them such great opposites that those two had to be together? Meaning, why couldn't Ruin balance another Shard in the quadrant Preservation is in? The way I see it, there is a deeper significance to Ruin and Preservation's pairing, and I think a model which inherently pairs them from the beginning explains that significance much better than "well, they are in separate quadrants but there was something else which drew them together." Might as well reduce a degree of freedom. (Plus, Preservation does not seem to enhance things. I suppose you could argue that Allomancy enhances an Allomancer, but that's bad logic, because pretty much any magic enhances its users ) The way I read it, Ruin is Entropy, and an Entropy Shard wouldn't be distinct enough to work.

I'm not quite sure I follow you. Firstly, humans were designed to have a bit more Preservation in them than Ruin. This seems a little imprecise, that's all. I might be misunderstanding you, but it also doesn't explain how one can both an Allomancer and Feruchemist. I like these ideas a ton. Probably dissipate into the Physical Realms? Or something.

I saw Thor today and enjoyed myself. It was standard comic movie fair, but it worked well enough.

Oh, you wanted a substantial post. The main admin, Mae, had her grandma die (I think... There was a death, I am sure) which caused her to relinquish her duties. Their new admin thought she would have enough time to revive the site, but she actually didn't, and no one else had time to do so. Hence it was decided that they would close down.

I would just like to announce that adonalsium.net has closed, making us the only all-purpose Brandon Sanderson fansite. That is all. Let's stay vigilant, though

It was indeed implied that they were spiked into him, and Brandon did say the Lord Ruler's "most dramatic effects" came from Hemalurgy. I don't know any other specifics, however. I am not certain that the metalminds that got into Sazed were Hemalurgically charged, though. Anyone can be stabbing metal.

Yes, it was reported in the Vericon report. I've always maintained that Harmony is not actually a new Shard. That's kind of maddening talk. In any case, these Shard names don't feel base enough to me. I don't think they are the ones.

For me, there's no question: Mistborn takes the cake. I'm going to say some startling things to you, but initially, I didn't like Way of Kings at first. It's taken me another readthrough to fully appreciate it. The characters and the whole battle in Part Four was amazing. But I guess I was expecting... So, feel free to eviscerate me for that blasphemy. I like the book a lot better now, but I'm still a touch frustrated. The book is undoubtedly better written, that's for certain. It could come down to reader demands. I liked the tightness of Mistborn. That book stands much better as an individual volume, I think. I also liked the high magic level of Mistborn. We see plenty of hints of the magic in Way of Kings, which is nice. That was unavoidable, but I still like Mistborn much better. I probably just like that type of book more. It's a symptom of Stormlight Archive not being about tight plotting--it's about total fantasy immersion. I have complete confidence that Stormlight Archive will become Brandon's best series, but for me, no single volume can compare with Mistborn. MB1 is my favorite of Brandon's books. Sue me, I like the Brandon Avalanche a lot. He's said that he is toning down the Avalanche intentionally. While I understand this, Mistborn still stands as the high mark for endings, in no small part because of such an awesome Avalanche.

It occurs to me that this magic system feels more than a little like the "one curse, one blessing" thing.

Is there OpenOffice support for that, or just Microsoft Office?

Could be Peter. He's logged into Brandon's account once before.

There's so little stock of the Transformer; I was lucky to get this one. The keyboard attachment still hasn't appeared, and I certainly want to actually transform the thing

My Eee Pad Transformer (awesome tablet) has arrived, and it is awesome.

I don't blame you for not liking additional software--I know I don't. I would say that the Amazon uploader program isn't as dumb as it seems. At first I groaned. More software? Really? Why can't I just drag and drop? Well, when you're uploading gigabytes of music, it's kind of handy to be able to pause. The Amazon software is surprisingly low key and hardly infuriating. It does its one task and it's done. You don't have to worry about it. This isn't a dealbreaker for me, and I'm always annoyed by that crap. Highly recommended. (I simply like the power to access my whole music library from anywhere, and any device.) Plus, having this option makes me want to actually buy mp3 music. I'm certainly not buying anything from iTunes in my life. You know iTunes sucks when Amazon's web music player is superior software. The problem with Amazon is that it is just like an external hard drive. I think this works effectively with music, because you aren't going to be editing those files. But documents? Trust me when I say that having files all synced to the same place is far more valuable. I've spent the entire week going through all of my files, and with multiple flash drives, there was a lot of duplicate information. Don't do that. So, Amazon isn't really useful for that purpose. Google Docs is wonderful if you use it, but if you're one of those weirdos who like to type on local office programs, Dropbox is great. It's low key and works well.

Sort! You're alive! For backing things up, I have literally spent the past week organizing all of my files. It was boring. (The reason for the punishment being so that when my tablet arrives, I can just get my files from the cloud.) I use Google Docs almost exclusively for writing, so that's nice. But if you like writing locally, I highly recommend Dropbox. There's really no reason these days why things can't automatically back up. Auto-save is wonderful. Anyways, I'm excited to see you back!

The answer is obvious: theorizing. Or wait, that may be only obvious to me. Welcome, Kuri! I look forward to seeing your stuff around the boards.

(Wait, we can add polls to blog posts? That's awesome!) I think, for one thing, that having atium in the mix is cheating. It's pretty special, and we shouldn't include it. If you include atium, you should include lerasium, and if I picked that metal, it would definitely ruin the point of this debate. So, limited to base metals, I would have to pick brass. Since I'm a pansy in the physique department, I really don't think iron or steel would be helpful for me. But Soothing or Rioting? Those abilities are much more applicable to daily life. So what if I don't get to be Superman or Spiderman? I don't need that kind of responsibility.