Dunkum

Unless they have ferruchemical Iron to increase their mass for a steel push/iron pull (do they? i foget what teh standard spikes were for an inquisitor) I highly doubt their coins are travelling at bullet speeds. more like arrow or crossbow. and we know someone in shardplate can pretty much ignore arrows. so put simply, I dont think an inquisitor could actually hurt someone in shardplate, at least not without getting close, and at close range gettign hit by a shardplate powered punch is deadly, or at least close to it. throw in a shardblade and the potential of having a cut sever one or more of the hemalurgic spikes thus losing them their powers (or just straight up killing them) and I think it goes to Dalinar.

so to get to your original concept: I don't think the spiritual damage from spiking someone is nearly as great as what a shardblade does. We haven't necessarily seen the full extent of what hemalurgy can do, but so far most metals are taking specific traits, not like, an entire spritweb or even like the entire use of a limb like a shardblade sort of does. the spritweb damage is a lot more precise than that, and on its own is probably not likely to kill someone the way teh spritual damage from a shardblade does. now having said that, you could imagine darts or knives or whatever of the right metals being used in ways that help in a fight. someone upthread mentioned using a dart to steal someone's healing powers, which could potentially negate a huge advantage they would otherwise have. and obviously similar logic would apply to pretty much any magic based powers. We know it works on allomancy and ferruchemy, and I think we have WOBs confirming that you could steal a spren bond (goodbye surgebinding) and it stands to reason that you could steal someone's connection to Elantris (or wherever on Sel) and render them unable to use Selish magics that way, etc. you could also imagine someone using weapons of the right metals to disable an opponent during combat. like an iron knife sapping their strength if you hit the right spot, or a tin knife blinding them by stealing their sense of sight, which could be useful because it could turn what otherwise might be a flesh wound into a debilitating condition. these all require a certain amount of precision, but, per Brandon, there are hundreds of bindpoints, so it seems likely that most actual hits might be close enough to one of them to do something; though again, we don't necessarily have all the details on how the bindpoints work to say that for sure.

for me it would likely be somewhere in the western/southwestern US. either California near the Sierra Nevada range (especially the southern part near Sequoia National Park; my favorite of the 7ish national parks i've been to) or else somewhere in the rockies, probably Colorado if i wanted to be closer to people or Wyoming to get further away.

yea, between imprecise gestures from humans and imprecise motion tracking, it seems like drawing aons would be pretty limited. but you could definitely make a system that allows for say the top 50 or so most visual aons, and give each maybe 2 or 3 modes depending on overall size (small medium large, for instance).

good point. I was thinking strictly NPC, but yea, it would be impossible to do to a human player barring horrifically invasive innovations in machine/brain interfaces anyway This one would be pretty cool, though it would end up having to be severely limited compared to the system as described in Elantris. for one thing, there is the precision level. its been a while since my last elantris reread, but i recall that things like line length and width would affect the overall power of the Aon, which is somethign that woudl be difficult to handle. plus there are so many aons, some with potentially subtle or difficult powers that just coding for all of them would be a nightmare.

I think you could do some form of soothing/rioting in VR, but that it would be hard to show except under ideal conditions. like its easy-ish for a computer to keep a score of mental state of various characters, including emotions that are soothable/riotable, but minor changes in those things wouldnt necessarily register visually. I think the other big issue with tryign to depict cosmere magics (ore really most magics) in a vr or other gaming environment is that one of the most interesting things is how they interact with each other. and unless you are planning to spend countless hours programming in all those interactions, a lot of that is going to get lost.

a while back Brandon actually did a set of posts on how he thinks about magic systems. i forget the name, but it was something like Brandon Sandersons laws of magic. anyway, one of the things he discusses in one of them is the differences between harder and softer magic systems, and part of what he says about it is like a soft magic system has very few rules or at least very few explained and established rules, but as a result, if you use it in your story to solve a problem, then it almost feels like cheating, and it isn't as satisfying. with a hard magic system, on the other hand, the rules are well established, so as long as your solutions dont break the rules, then it ends up being a more satisfying solution for the readers. Harry Potter sort of walks the line between these because, on the one hand, there are clearly fairly few hard and fast rules in the system, and experienced users like voldemort and dumbledore can basically do whatever they want, but on the other hand, our main characters are children who are still learning, so for all intents and purposes their use of the magic is extremely limited to the handful of spells that theyve learned.

this I think is potentially very interesting. I'm pretty sure we have a WoB that if you soulcast say a metalmind into some other (feruchemically viable) metal you wouldnt be able to tap the investiture, because the metal and investiture wouldnt match up, though i've never been good at finding those things. but since compunding overwrites the allomantic use of the metal with the ferruchemic signature of the stored investiture, would it matter allomantically if the ferruchemical metal was wrong?

Unfinished tales is worth reading from an almost academic standpoint since, if memory serves, it includes things like excerpts from letters and things showing unpolished ideas. so it gives you some idea of tolkein's writing process which is sort of interesting to see. sort of like how some of Brandon's unpublished work is interesting because you can see which ideas were scavenged into other works (warbreaker prime/mythwalker is really interesting for this reason).

unfinished tales is definitely worth a read. but otherwise i'm with you. I liked the short version of children of hurin, and have never made ti far when I tried lost tales

to-go food is allowed, but large groups are not and even small grous are discouraged, so it still wouldnt work. plus 2 of those things I listed sort of require specialized equipment that I don't have (basically at-table cooking for hotpot and the korean bbq) in order to do them right. the big problem here isnt accessing the food, its the communal aspect which, even aside from the size of the gathering, involves sitting close together and sharing food, which is basically the easiest way to spread a virus

me for abotu 80% of the things Harry does: "Harry you are, at best, a D student who is only passing because Hermione is smart and capable enough to drag you and Ron up with her. you are approximately the least qulified person to be investigating whatever it is you are looking for right now." there is also a certain amount of "it wasn't Snape last year, or the year before or the year before, so maybe stop suspecting him."

well Gen 4 does take some of the worst pieces from gen 3 and roll with them entirely too far. Groudon and Kyogre were already too OP, but Dialga and Palkia are still an enormous step further. that said, I hate all the starters in Gen 3, while i like the water and grass starters for gen 4 so i tend to cut gen 4 a bit of extra slack for that (side note, no generation has been able to best the gen 1 trio of starters, though gen 4 and 2 probably come closest imo). edit to add: i also disagree with you on the signifigance of the legendaries in the earlier generations. I have no idea what the remakes (fire red, leaf green, heart gold, sould silver) may have done with them, but I'm fairly certain that in the originals, they were just very powerful and/or very rare pokemon. no one in red or blue talks about Articuno as having godlike power over elemental ice, in fact, i don't recall any specific mentions of them at all. even mew and mewtwo are just a rare pokemon and its immensely powerful offspring respectively. in the first 2 generations, the closest you get to that level of deification is Celebi, who is the guardian of a single forest; a bit mystical, but not anywhere close to the status you get with later legendaries.

Not going to quote that long block of text, but I will say this: I think the writing for the pokemon games is generally terrible. its part of why I like gen 1 so much. there wasn't much in the way of plot, even Team rocket's shenanigans always felt more like an obstacle in my way than a plot point (though I do agree with your ranking of gen 2). that said, generation 3 started a few of my least favorite trends: 1. the fire/fighting starter - once is fine, 3 times in a row is obnoxious and 2.overpowering the legendaries (plot-wise i mean) it kind of kills my immersion when the game tells me that the pokemon i just caught and am now ordering around has power over all of time, and 3. inserting the legendaries into the plot. I absolutely hate the fact that all the subsequent generations (give or take 7? i havent played 7 or 8) have this major fight with a legendary pokemon as part of the game's plot. I much preferred the gen 1 and 2 legendaries, being hidden away in out-of-the-way locations where you have to go hunt them down to find them.

ahh, right. good point. i'm not sure. we never get a lot of details into how resealing works, so its hard to say for sure.

he did. Shai explains that he will need to be restamped daily once the stamp takes.

Actually rereading the series right now, and I find myself audibly scoffing at some of the dumber things that characters do, and some of the more nonsensical things in their world. I more or less agree with the opinion that its a decent read, with a number of flaws. when it first came out, I was in middle school and had been reading fantasy (tolkein included) for years, so while everyone was gushing over this new series, i was reading it and thinking how much i liked other books better, which sort of tainted my enjoyment a bit. so i had been intending to reread it eventually after most fo the hype had died down. I will say that I think Rowling sets up the Horcrux stuff in the last books reasonably well though.

that would be really cool, if they could get it right, but i think it would be really hard to manage. In general I think Nalthis/awakening may be the most difficult cosmere magic to depict visually because it requires that level of visual and audio distinction that may not register correctly for everyone.

I would imagine so. progression and AonDor healing would probably keep, because once the healing is complete the investiture is used up, forgery healing on the other hand seems liek it should require the forged person to maintain the forgery, so It would make sense that burning that investiture away using aluminum would revert your body back to normal/wounded state.

theres a bunch of stuff I can't do for reasons other than the pandemic, but as far as stuff being restricted due to Covid...I want to go out to eat. especially to some place communal, like Hot Pot, or Ethiopian, or this all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ place near us - some place where the whole table shares the food.

I've played through Metroid Fusion a few times, and Super Metroid, Metroid 2, and Metroid Zero Mission at least once each. The Sa-X encoutners in Metroid Fusion migth be the most scared i've been playign a video game

I'll nominate the FF XII version of Cid. he isn't the main villain, but he is the main villain' lieutenant, and I always found him to be wildly entertaining whenever he was on screen. I'll also throw out Raul Julia's M. Bison from the Street Fighter movie. He is a bright spot in an otherwise pretty bad film, and delivered this fantastic bit of dialogue: "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday." (I haven't seen/dont plan to see the Sonic movie, btu evey still or clip i see from it suggests that Jim Carey's Robotnik/eggman/whatever they are callign him might be in a similar position) Also almost every villain in Avatar: The Last Airbender and the season 3 and 4 villains from Legend of Korra

been a while since i watched much anime, but I will gladly second Cowboy Bebop, Baccano, and Gurren Lagan

pretty sure it only goes up to leaving midgard. so like...1/3 of the way through disk 1 give or take? and yea, i agree about waiting for it to be finished, it looks good, but ive still got the PS1 disks in my basement so I can play the full game whenever.

more likely related to wealth disparities. I don't know how the stats break down in NYC specifically, but across the USA in general black and hispanic people are more likley to be porr as compared to whites and asians. people who are poor generally 1. don't have as good of options for health care vs wealthier people and 2. are more likely to work in service industry jobs where they can't take time off (don't have the leave and/or can't afford to lose the hours/paycheck) and are thus being exposed to more people. those 2 factors would likely explain a lot of the differences right there