Dunkum

but newton's third law says that while you push out on teh water it pushes back in on you, I don't see any reason why that would be suspended here, so the bouyancy effects should still hold

A few of these comments seem to suggest that you'd sink without friction, but is that actually true? it seems like bouyancy is completely independent from friction or hydrodyanmics. so friction should be able to modify some of the force needed to move through water, but not the force needed to adjust your height specifically. moving up or down involves both forces, but only one of them is changing because of the abrasion surge.

Superman religous undertones don't necessarily bother me in themselves, though I doubt snyder did them well. I considered watching Man of Steel, btu bad reviews and the price of movie tickets kept me away. For BvS however, the constantly glowering face of superman in every ad just turned me off to it completely. Wonder Woman looked good, and Justice league looked passable, but I didn't care enough about either to go see them.

for a question that big the easiest thing to do is point you to the Coppermind. there is a lot of information available there, especially about the basics, though beware of spoilers. but for a few short items: - all the worlds in the cosmere are in the same dwarf galaxy, but generally in different star systems. - the various magics are powered by something called investiture, which has some laws it follows (liek a conservation principle simliar to conservation of energy, for instance) and which can obviously manifest in a great variety of ways. - there are also 3 realms - the physical realm, which is the normal physical world, the Cognitive realm, which is a realm of the mind, and the spritual realm. distances in these realms do not necessarily correlate to each other (in fact I think it has been said that there is no distance in the spirtual at all), so it is possible to move between worlds in a reasonable time by traveling in the cognitive realm then jumping back to the physical at your destination, for instance.

I didn't mean knowledge so much as behavior. though fair point about the environment, as it still applies to what I am talking about. I was unconciously comparing him against people I have met, but your standard American 19 year old would have a much easier life than even an alethi lighteyes, most likely, so the comparison isn't really apples to apples.

Fair enough, though I'd say Kaladin generally shows a lot more maturity than a 19 (or even 22) year old. I'd actually say mid to upper twenties feels more accurate for him.

Well bear in mind the rosharan year is longer than ours. 19 on roshar is closer to early or mid twenties on earth. conversion factor is about 1.1, so he is more like 22 in earth years.

Some questions on interaction between systems (spoilered because of the length):

The short answer is it varies a lot, partly because the different kinds of investiture behave differently. we know a few things: Hemalurgy should work about the same everywhere, for instance. And the Returned from Warbreaker can live on Stormlight even more easily than they do breath. For the rest, we know certain effects should be pretty universal (bronze allomancy should allow the user to detect other types of investiture, for instance, if they knew what to look for), but its hard to say what could or couldn't go together in what ways.

it's more if you don't already have nicrosil ferruchemy, then you shouldnt be able to use a nicrosilmind, even if it doesn't have an identity key. but in practice, based on what we see in the books, it appears that it doesn't work that way. for some reason the medallions seem to grant not just whatever ferruchemy or allomancy that they are designed to grant, but also enough nicroil ferruchemy to access those abilities. However, based on the description of the medallions, it is not clear how they do that, unless any nicrosil metalmind automatically grants nicrosil ferrruchemy, which seems unlikely.

Ferruchemical Nicrosil stores the ability to use investiture. on Scadrial, that is going to be ferruchemical or allomantic abilittes. so an unkeyed nicrosil mind that is stored with a given allomantic ability would grant that allomancy. so a medallion that granted allomantic steel, for instance, would have to have that nicrosil-mind as part of it.

Except we know from his later conversation with the Stormfather that whatever he did was painful to the Stormfather. So whatever it was, and I'm certainly willing to accept that it wasn't as simple as just forming a shardblade, it wasn't just taking a bunch of stormlight and creating a key. At a guess, I'd say he pulled on at least some part of the Stormfather and used that.

Yea, I'd bet that the mechanics of it would probably work pretty similarly to how they normally do, but it wouldn't be all that useful to the person themself, since they wouldnt be able to use it. I wonder if the various nations have laws for scenarios like that. I feel like Alethkar at least would probably hve a law on the books to force him to unbond it and pass it to someone else.

This has been bothering me for a little bit. I missed it at first, but caught it during my reread: When Dalinar flees back to Urithiru from Thaylen City, he is able to activate the oathgate. We know for the other orders that this would normally require a living sprenblade to accomplish, and it appears that what Dalinar does is roughly equivalent to forcing the Stormfather to become a shardblade to operate the gate for him. However, up to this point, we have only seen Dalinar swear 2 obvious Oaths. Relying on the other orders, we know the both Kaladin and Lift didn't get a shardblade until their 3rd Oath, so it seems like Dalinar is 1 oath too early to be able to do that. so did Dalinar swear a 3rd oath somewhere? I assume we would have seen if he had, given how major of a character he is. If not, is this just a case of the Bondsmith being special?

but we know specific body parts can be included or excluded when increasing or decreasing friction. I am not 100% sure about the mechanics of swimming, but it seems like the torso and head could be slicked while the arms and legs remain untouched and you would provide some benefit.

for that matter in Lift's chapters she mentions that it lets her slide through the air faster, so it stands to reason it would affect water too.

I can't speak to most of the unpublished works, but I will second this bit. Mythwalker itself celarly has some problems but it is cool to see which pieces were taken and used elsewhere, and how they changed in the process.

That's sort of what I was trying to get at. it just sort of amused me that while you have a hard time understanding why people wouldn't like it, I have the same trouble understanding how anyone could love it.

Personally, I thought it was OK, but nothing more. the whole virtual world scavenger hunt thing appeals to me a bit, so the premise was doing a lot more work than any of the characters in terms of what parts of it I did enjoy. but honestly I don't understand how anyone can love it as much as the last few comments on it in this thread indicate. it baffles me that anyone could feel that level of like for what I thought was pretty mediocre. rereading what I just wrote, it comes off a bit harsh, and that isn't really intentional, but I did want to throw out a countervailing opinion on it and don't have the energy to rewrite it just now.

The magic systems of Sel vary based on location, but they all have certain similarities. The characters used in soul stamps are different from Elantrian Aons, which are different from the body forms of the Jindo chay-shan. the Fjordell version involves altering the shape of the persons bones into fjordell characters to grant different powers, including things like strength and speed. the altered bones themselves also tend to be stronger. the perceived metal plates under the skin are drastically altered bones.

oof, completely forgot about edgedancer, which is weird because I like Lift. Edgedancer should definitely come before OB but after WOR

agree.

Fantasy and Sci Fi. I highly recommend her to anyone interested in either genre.

That reading order looks about as good as anything else, honestly. you are missing some short stories and novellas, though. all of that is in Arcanum Unbounded, but when you should or shouldnt read it varies story by story. the only bit of ordering I would specifically recommend is warbreaker before stormlight, and you were already planning that