Kaymyth

Accept my offering of a tiny, snuggly corgi puppy: I recently "upgraded" from Finale 2001 to 2007. Still getting used to the changes, but at least I can do that much. Notepad must be a hot mess.

I have a husband who cannot dance. It is tres sad. YOU GOT THE 1337 REP!

Nonspoilery nitpick: Vikings are not the name of the people! The people were the Norse! Viking was a job description! Also, Vikings did not have horns on their helmets! (I blame Wagner for that one.)

I light a candle and set it on top of the box. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.

Not at all. I actually have Elantris and The Way of Kings bought and sitting on my bookshelf, just waiting.

Woo, page 101! It'll get locked, but not deleted. The mods don't like for threads to get much more than 100 pages long.

They had spikes, but it was never specified what the metal was. They just said, "this is one of the spikes she was using," with no specificity (that I recall) as to whether her other spikes were made out of the same metal. Paalm may have had just one of those Shardmetal spikes; she may have had all Shardmetal spikes. Unless there's a line that I missed, we don't have enough information to know how many "special" spikes she had amongst the rest.

Yeah, I generally don't add folks until I've had some sort of interaction with them on-board. Just going, "Oh, hey, I like this person's posts! I'm going to add them even though they have no clue who I am!" seems weird to me. RP is more of a collaborative writing exercise, and it's easier to edit by post/scene. The book-writing experience is entirely different, especially under the pressures of NaNo. The first draft is getting the words out, putting the events in place, and seeing what works. The second draft is where things start looking pretty. (I think. I mean, this is the first book-length thing I've ever written. I might just have no idea what I'm talking about.) I really need to start reading the other Cosmere books. I've been so wrapped up in Mistborn and my own fanfic writing that I haven't had the time. But I will.

Hooray! Hah! Funny, because I'm always a little bit worried when I friend people that they'll be all, "What, no, I don't want this daffy ponywoman on my list! Off with you!" But nobody I've added has deleted me yet, so that's a thing. Ayup. Last year was when I started the project; I got my 50,000 words and wasn't done with the story. Unfortunately, without the NaNo pressure, I slacked off a lot. But then Shadows of Self loomed and I told myself, "Rosemary, you aren't allowed to read Shadows of Self until your rough draft is done." And then I went, "eeep!" and wrote faster. And now it's done. And I changed my mind about certain details partway through, so continuity is a hot mess, and some of the scenes I wrote during NaNo last year were just pure dross or need to be combined. And I know me; there's probably a lot of duplicated phrases in spots or bits in fight scenes that just aren't described clearly enough. And I kept forgetting minor characters' names and started sticking in bits that just said <Name>, so I sorta need to make a list during all of this. And this whole time, there's this piece of my brain that's been going, "What in the name of all the sparkly little gods do I think I'm doing? When the heck did I turn into a writer? Where did all of this self-discipline come from?!" ...there are not enough upvotes in the world for this.

Oh! Okay. Carry on, then! EDIT: Dangit, somebody post something! Edgedancer ninja'd me, and I can't figure out how to quote in an edit!

Added you to my friends, so you'll get my profile feed and updates. Given that the Beta draft is going to get written during NaNoWriMo, I expect to have the story up by February at the latest. ...117,000 words. I really need to trim that down some. Reeeeeeaaad Miiistbooooorn

Just normal silver. It'll be over some old fabric draped over my torso. I need to make a dressform suitable for holding a corset, and I need it to be a reasonable approximation of my shape in order to set properly. A duct tape pattern will do this. I also have a life-size plastic skeleton I got at the Halloween store and dismembered it, and I'm going to put some stiff-dry insulation foam into the ribcage to make it more rigid. I want the dressform to squish where I squish, and not squish where I have bones. This will let me set the corset properly, and then I can start sewing the scale mail on and shape the other upper-body armor pieces correctly to my body.

I need to convince my husband to wrap me in duct tape tomorrow.

Look back in the archives; I started a thread about it all in my early days on the forum. Strictly speaking from the math, it came out to be 1/2500 were Twinborn, and 1/16 Twinborn were Compounders. However - that assumes an equal distribution of Metalborn types and an equal mixing of the bloodlines, which isn't the case. Certain types of Ferrings and Mistings appear to be more common than others, and you only get Twinborn when there's some Terris in their bloodline back somewhere, and a majority of the Terrisfolk have made an effort to keep from intermixing too much. (I think we get a lot of the reasoning why there in Grandma V's worry about the Metallic Arts mixing.) So, while Mistings and Ferrings are relatively common in Era 2, there aren't as many Twinborn as the raw math would make it out to be.

The statistic I've seen is closer to 1/50 (correction, 1/25), though that's from the MAG which isn't strictly canon.

And, you know, if you really want to see what my writing is like, you can read Swift as Steel after I post it up. I also need to take that ridiculous little My Little Pony blurb that I wrote about Discord giving Twilight Sparkle the first 5 Game of Thrones books and expand it into an entire "Discord gives the Mane Six terrible presents" fic. Most larger cities, people identify themselves by the suburb they live in. Because that's their legal address and stuff. Granted, in this case, I can't just make myself another chainmail tunic on the spur of the moment because the old one's too tight...

I enjoyed the heck out of seeing MeLaan, and she is indeed awesome. But when it comes to her and Wayne I got more of an impression of, "aww, what an adorable and clever little puppy! I think I'll play with him for a while!"

Actually, I think the numbers in AoL are considerably higher, probably (at least in part) due to the lowering of the Snap threshold.

Oh, ouch. Poor Wax. I started suspecting that Paalm actually was Lessie early in that final conversation, and settled at confirmation when she talked about not having the heart to kill Wayne. That implied a strong personal connection. I almost wonder if Paalm had somehow manipulated her into going off on her own and actually being involved in the attack. Idashwy started the madness whilst Paalm was disguised as the bodyguard fellow? And the Paalm spiked her for her power afterwards? Eh, it's a stretch, I know, but we still haven't reconciled someone matching Idashwy's description at the party vs the fact that Paalm couldn't have used her bones. Oh, man. Soonie cubs. I NEED DIS. Quote snipped, emphasis mine. I think, actually, that this is Wayne's way of trying to punish himself. He makes himself go there, every month, to look her in the eye and acknowledge what he's done. We know he has a strong sense of guilt about what he did, to the point where has a gun-triggered PTSD reaction. He drinks to numb the pain, but when he finally comes face-to-face with her, he burns off the alcohol and sobers up. This is one of the few things in his life that he truly takes seriously, deep down. He jokes and buffoons around when leading up to it (because he's Wayne, and humor is one of the ways he deals with life in general), but again, he's dead serious when he meets with her. Unfortunately, he's also rather self-centered, so it never really occurs to him the effect he could be having on Allriandre herself. I'm certainly not saying that he's not flawed, but ultimately, I think in his mind he feels as though he deserves to have to face that pain every month. It's a very Wayne way of facing up to his responsibilities. I think we're slipping into Geek Social Fallacy territory here. Is Steris awesome? Yes. Is Wayne my favorite? Absolutely. Do they have personalities that clash horribly? Ayup. It'd be a wonderful world if all of the people we liked could get along with each other, but sometimes that just isn't possible.

I'll give you that much in regards to the immediate effects of super-speed, but I don't think that Feruchemy is likely to save you if you trip over your shoelaces and faceplant into the concrete.

Yeah, the way events seem to be lining up in my head: 1 - Harmony sends Paalm to protect Wax. Romantic shenanigans ensue, Harmony facepalms. 2 - Harmony wants to send Wax back to Elendel. Paalm says nuh-uh. 3 - Before they have a chance to resolve that argument, the Bloody Tan incident happens. Speculation: Paalm got her first alien Godmetal spike from Tan's body. Tan was being manipulated by the other Shardic influence, possibly specifically to get to Paalm in order to set events into motion. 3a - Harmony foresees Paalm's fake death, isn't directly responsible for it, but does nothing to stop it. He pushes Paalm to not reveal herself as still alive to Wax, and this is her breakpoint. 4 - Paalm replaces her normal kandra spikes with the alien Shardspike and goes completely bugnuts (i.e. it's the combination of only one spike and the Shardspike's influence that sends her into true insanity). It puts her in contact with that Shard or its agents, and she is able to obtain more for use in hemalurgy. (Edit: On further examination, there is no evidence that she had more than one of the Shardspikes. Still, having it in her for long enough could have sent her onto this course.) Further speculation - had she not suicided at the end of the book, it's possible that removing the godmetal spike and restoring her normal spikes would have brought her back to some level of sanity. This is most likely what Harmony viewed as the best-case scenario.

Autism also can present quite differently in females than in males; this may be why a lot more boys than girls get diagnosed. A lot of Steris's oddities feel very similar to me to my sort-of-but-not-quite "adopted" sister. I learned a lot about how her thought processes worked from hours of translating human behavior that she found inexplicable.

I believe that's a case of Wayne existing in a state of extreme denial. There may also be some other issues at play; staying hung up on Ranette is "safe". He knows exactly what to expect, so there's no risk in actually falling for someone who would return his affections. Maybe it's tied up in the guilt he still feels about the man he killed when he was a teenager, that this is part of his self-punishment, sticking to someone he knows he doesn't have a chance with. Or I could be over-analyzing and it's just Wayne being inexplicably Wayne. I think it makes sense that they get along; he's unusually skilled in an area that the kandra usually consider to be their domain. "Oh, hey, look at the cute little clever human! Who's a good human? You are!"

I only just finished the book, so I'm still working may way through the spoiler forums and don't know if anyone's brought this up yet or not - but is it possible that the thing Harmony wanted Paalm to do that she really, really didn't want to do was let Wax keep thinking she was dead?

I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed that it was Paalm the whole time; kandra are resilient in ways that humans just aren't, which didn't give us much information as to the limitations of steel compounding. Sure, you can move fast. But you're still subject to the limitations of your own body's ability to absorb sudden changes in speed. Change directions too fast, and your innards get squished around in unpleasant ways. Stop too fast, and it's like a car smashing into a brick wall. Hit someone while moving too fast, and you could break your own arm in the process. There's a lot of potential for broken bones and dislocated joints in that picture. And if you've got long hair, best keep those braids pinned tightly to your head, lest someone get lucky and manage to grab hold of one...