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Sorry, it was msotly just meant as a Cryptic joke, since your chosen name one. They are just two different kinds of fractal patterns, which are mostly just Math-based Art. They are fun and pretty, and occasionally useful for sciency hoodoo reasons. Here's a pretty cool one. https://www.reddit.com/r/fractals/ EDIT: Exotic candies, have you ever tried one of those Durian fruit candies, and if so do you regret it?

If a Returned BECOMES Pregnant, we know they would give a fragment of a Divine Breath to their child and grant some some amount of Returned Power, low-grade shapeshifting via The Royal Locks in the known example. I diont think we have any word on what would happen if the person was already Pregnant when they die and Returned. I personally think it would manifest similarly to when a Returned gets pregnant where some aspect of the Returned's Divine Breath is Endowed onto the Child, especially if the bulk of the pregnancy happened after the Return; but if it happened immediately, like if the Returning itself triggered the birth, then there probably would be enough exposure to make the transfer. If it was entirely incompatible I think Endowment would simply not let it happen, since she is choosing the Returned Personally. I dont think she's the Smiting sort that would choose to kill a child, but she's apparently inconsistent.

As a motivation that is an interesting one, and one I dont think Ive seen before. That still doesnt explain the Deadeyes though. If the Radiants and their spren mutually decided that there shouldnt be radiants anymore, the spren can end the bond at any time without harm; that's why all the spren assumed Betrayal. Instead, they "Chose" to do something Else, something that for the first time resulted in the creation of Deaeyes which hadnt existed prior to that point. I dont know what, but I think they were looking forward and trying to make something new. And if true then there's a decent chance Cultivation was behind it.

Julia Set or Mandelbrot?

Same thing, I think. If you attempt to spike something out of a person that doesnt exist, it's the same as hitting the "incorrect" Bind Point and steal something unexpected in the same general "sector" of the spiritweb circuitry. Allomancy, for example, functions via a Connection to Preservation, so if the person had another similar Power Connection to some other shard it might steal that instead (assuming the metal used is compatible and all that). Essentially it will (most likely) successfully rip off some chunk of Spiritweb and take an Investiture Charge, but that chunk may or may not be Functional once it's implanted in a Donor. Or it might be functional but require some specific unknown Bind point to be implanted successfully, making it useless for any practical purposes. The analogy for Hemalurgy is that you are ripping off chunks of a Circuit board and splicing it into some other one. The Ripping is easy and pretty reliable, but the ability to rip the chunk in the right places and splice it back in gets more complicated and can fail.

Good Luck and Godspeed

Short of asking him outright (or similar but more round-about investigation) you Cant really know for sure, and you can drive yourself (and everyone around you) crazy trying to read his mind. So the question is: Do YOU Like him back or would you rather just be friends? If you just want to be friends then you can proceed accordingly and hopefully dodge the issue (depends on how perceptive the dude is, I guess). If you like him back, eventually one of you will have to make the Leap of Faith and broach the topic directly. Which is always tough, because it feels like you are making yourself vulnerable. It is always hard, but for what it's worth I find it far easier to do it yourself instead of expecting the other party to do it for you. Waiting for them to come around and do the hard part becomes two people stuck holding the door for each other with nobody walking through. -advice from a 38 year old married guy

You have to have the Intent of Hemalurgy to pierce the realms and interact with the Spriitweb. But past that you can absolutely steal something unintended by missing the Bind Point, etc, which is where the distasteful experimentation comes in. You can make it easier, for example, by using a specific metal that targets the type/wavelength of you want to steal in addition to the Bind Point factors, but with an Atium spike it's all about the Bind Point and the Intent.

The Returned ability is closer to proper Shapeshiftinging than any of the (more focused) feruchemical metals. You can see it in the lesser Royal Locks, which WOB says could be stoked up to the Returned's shapeshifting. Im pretty sure they actually gain Matter and thus mass when they do their change, more like feruchemical pewter that adds muscle mass than storing weight that is some sort of Hoggs field effect that kinda breaks physics.

The Vessel can and does Interpret and sort of Filter the Shard's Intent, so the intent can be expressed differently under different management. But short of combining Shards like that time, the vessel cannot make any sort of permanent change to the Shard's nature itself. The shards are each 1/16 of everything, broken along whatever lines of the initial Shattering and they are too infinte to be modified by still finite people, expanded though they may be.

I would think so yes. In that case he's famous enough there might also be a specific glyph pair to represent him in that era (as a general rather than highprince).

I think sand is likely to be the most useful Metric and Measuring tool, at least on the low end of the scale given how it can be charged by simple proximity to kinetic Investiture even by "quiet" effects like Lightweaving. As long as grain size does not vary a whole lot, Charged White Sand by weight or volume would provide both a repeatable unit of measure and a convenient and obvious measurement tool. Breaths probably work better for the upper end of the scale. The measurement process (or at least the means of calibration) wouldnt be Breaths themselves so much as a Returned, since we can assume one week's worth of Investiture sustenance should be equivalent regardless of flavor.

What follows is language about Language that I do not understand, but may be relevant (something about how the K in Kholin is pronounced): EDIT: To take a stab at your actual question: When english spelling is not compatible, they seem to go phonetically as close as possible. This is similar to how you will see English translated into Japanese for example, where nearly all the consonants are paired with a vowel. We saw this in how they "wrote" the other planets like Scadrial and Nalthis with extra vowels (Scadarial and Nalathis, iirc). For all practical purposes, C is pointless in modern english; it has no sounds that is not covered by S, K, or CH. I would anticipate they just substitute for the closest appropriate consonant. I had a teacher in high school that argued C and Q should both be re-purposed to capture the SH and CH sounds. He was more sparking critical thinking than trying to re-work the language, but he made some good arguments.

And so long as Breaths prove divisible and their uses scale appropriately to fit that, sure that might work. Still, we dont measure molecules by the Mile for a reason...

Not that we've seen, but we've seen almost no uses of Identity outside of UnKeying metalminds (and similar magic access/compatibility issues), and mechanics of all the spiritual metals are being RAFO'd until era3. I think the only independent use we have is that both Blanking Identity and Tapping connection could get you a local accent, when Connection alone might not. Everything else is all about what magics will and will not affect you. I dont personally think the Returned shapeshifting ability is based on spiritual healing enough to be able to grant the Ability itself. A Returned should be able to fill a boatload of them, though, but doing so might use up enough Investiture the their Divine Breath needs to eat/refuel more often.

This WOB makes me very much think they map to the 4 quadrants of the metallic arts charts, though Im assuming Temporal is the more Thematically relevant one than "Hybrid" Fwiw, here's the old write-up I had for the Quadrant Theory, though it definitely needs to be updated for what all we learned in Dawnshard and RoW

I think that shows one of the issues that would come from using Breaths as the discrete unit of measure: they represent a relatively large quantity of Investiture compared to other storable forms.

I doubt it will have anything helpful in OB. If I recall correctly he said a big driver for the Opening of the Perpendicularity (aside from all the narrative culmination bits) was to justify situationally Unlimited Stormlight so that he wouldnt have to work out the math for all the different powers.

They've been kicking that can down the road and will do so for as long as they can, I think. So long as they havent worked it out adn published it, Brandon isnt actually bound by the (likely competing and hard to reconcile) maths for the various effects we've already seen on stage. As long as they havent released that, we the uber-nerds of the Cosmere cant start calling them on interplanetary Conservation issues.

As a part that wasnt a physician or chemist, the explanation was FASCINATING! So thank you and @Tamriel Wolfsbaine for showing the complexities involved, it was definitely helpful to me. Now there is a part of me that really wants to derail this into "Would The Abyss oxygen fluid actually work?" but that's probably a topic for another time. For Cadmium, a Magic Wand is probably inevitable somewhere (it is magic after all) but where it lands in the process will decide what else it can narratively do later on. One way or the other I assume it will be used for Space Age Life Support, but that could look a lot of different ways and operate on different principles. I think these are the general Possibilities (I think in decending order of Hand-wavinss), what do you all think? Spiritual "Support". This is the most hand-wavey because it just directly supplements you're Spiriweb's "need" for Breathing and handwaves the physical layer entirely, kinda like Spiritual Healing does. Temporal Manipulation: It literally Rewinds vs Accelerates some specified metabolic process via selective temporal manipulation, with Breathing being the most immediate default. I like this because of the metal quadrant involved, it would have pleasing symmetry with the allomantic function. Blood chemistry manipulation: The idea is that Storing and Tapping operate via converting Matter into Investiture and recovering it in a different more useful form. This has some interesting options if we can assume that Breathing is just most instinctively understood chemical process, and that the Metalmind could manipulated other more specific compounds or processes once they were understood enough to provide the requisite Intent. Internal "Lung Field": This version is manipulating the molecules inside your lungs to continuously Refresh the o2 available by converting the appropriate ratios of Co2, O2, N2, H2O, etc. This introduces some gas volume (and related thermodynamic) questions. This makes it pretty specific (and thus limited) in purpose and function, but will get them to the stars.

My take on some of the newer Shards: For the Quadrants, the bold are the ones I have spefic arguments for. The rest are more just me slotting them in where gaps remain. Physical (Be) Outward Increase = Invention Outward Decrease = Ruin Inward Increase = Valor(?) Inward Decrease = ?? Cognitive (Think/Perceive) Outward Increase = Dominion (OR Endowment?) Outward Decrease =Odium Inward Increase = Devotion Inward Decrease = Whimsy Spiritual = (Connect/Bind?) Outward Increase = Honor Outward Decrease = Mercy Inward Increase = Valor(?) Inward Decrease = Autonomy Temporal ("Change") Outward Increase = Cultivation (Or Ruin?) Outward Decrease = Preservation Inward Increase = Ambition Inward Decrease = ?? Mercy is the Anti-Honor. Where "Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by", Mercy is about breaking those same rules and Bonds. Autonomy is similar but more Internal and about not letting those Bonds hold you personally. Similar, if Odium is being motivated by inflating the importance of a thing (ie Passion), Whimsy is the lack of that Passion, instead doing it just to do it. Also may be more internal than Odium appears to be. Invention is a Physical quadrant, I think, as the most direct Creation shard. I see Devotion in the Cognitive/Think rather than the Spiritual/Bind, but it's a little tenuous. I think it's a more internalized thing than Odium but asimilar Inflating of Importance, but also potentially too one-sided to be a Spiritual Bond-thing that requires two parties. Per this WOB, Preservation, Cultivation, and Ruin are all External/Outward shards, and per a few Endowment is all about external grants. Ruin makes a lot of statements about being the embodiment of Change, so I can understand the argument of it being a Temporal Shard. But the only one that would fit is The Outward Increase slot which is also the only real possibility I see for Cultivation. And while Ruin can exist as a concept in a steady State, Cultivation requires Time and Change at a fundamental level.

Haha, that's perfect!

I agree in spirit but Im drawing a blank on what you are referring to with Syl?

EVERYONE! Go watch Peacemaker. You will not regret it. Well, unless you make the mistake of watching it with any children in the room. Lots of regrets there... But it's one of the best shows I've watched in a long time, and by a WIDE margin the best thing in the DCEU.

This is where I land as well. I believe that it's possible, because he is still alive and capable of choices. I'd even say I believe it's possible because Brandon is one of the most talented writers around and I think it's within his skill to do it in a satisfying way. I have no idea what that would look like, how many books worth of developments it would take, or if he'd live many moments past whatever did it (Self-sacrifice is a classic for this sort of turn-around). And I dont know if it would be more satisfying than other outcomes (comeuppance, etc)