Dunkum

I multiplied the first 2 or 3 terms out and didn't see any particularly easy patterns to turn into sequence notation, but as Chaos notes, the trig functions have interesting forms in the complex plane. it is not impossible that what would be an intractable expression in the reals turns out to be a lot simpler when put in terms of e and i.

I don't have a full answer to this, but we do know that Bronze can theoretically be used to detect other forms of investiture (source) presumably copper could similarly protect from certain direct effects of external investiture as well, though I don't think we know that for sure. though I think lightweaving is a bad example for the smoker. lightweaving actually directly manipulates physical phenomena, so presumably the smoker would still see the illusion (though i suppose it is possible that an active smoker would make it more difficult to form the illusion in the first place. probably worth asking Brandon about)

at the very least I suspect they'd be abel to come up with a concrete answer to the problem, as opposed to here where it is pure philosophy

hmm, ok, yea, I guess I see where you are getting that from then. I don't know. I am still not 100% convinced (my own personal read was that the cymatics were the design for the cities, which were then built by people, though i'm not sure how well supported that is either), but I can definitely see how you get what you are saying from that passage. I also forgot the part where Shallan specifically says that the city was at the center.

Do we have any evidence for any of that? I've read WoR twice and I don't recall seeing anything that would indicate that the oathgates vibrate or that the plains were created by those cymatics vibrations.

Sword is pretty much an LOTR clone, for sure, but if you are going to copy something, it helps to copy the best. Elfstones I recall being sort of generic and predictable, but not too bad. Wishsong is where the series starts to differentiate itself from the sort of generic fantasy to become its own thing.

I'll agree withe pretty much everything you said about Flash and Legends, with the addendum that Darhk and Merlyn as a villain team works amazingly well. Reverse Flash doesn't hurt, but he is nowhere near either of their levels in terms of how fun he is to watch. also, I loved the meta-jokes that had digging into their first season's weaknesses. For Arrow: I am optimistic about it, but it hasn't quite gotten to the level where I can give it full-throated praise. for this specific episode: and though you're not covering it: Supergirl. This week's episode was pretty good, and if i'm being honest, I'd rank this season of Supergirl above the last 2 seasons of Arrow and the last year of Flash (back half of season 2, beginning half of season 3). it has its problems, but it is nowhere near as mopey and boring as those shows were at their worst. about 90% of this comes down to the show's inherent optimism, which is part of what I liked about the first season and a half of the Flash, and is somethign that I will be glad to see if it does return on that show. for what it is worth, as of the midseason break this year, my rankings for these shows this year is : 1. Legends - easily the winner of "Most Improved" award. we are talking Parks and Rec level improvement from season 1 to season 2. they dropped the worst pieces of the show, grabbed some of the potential best bits from the other shows, and then improved some of the decent, but not extraordinary pieces from last year. it is easily the most fun of these shows, and as long as you can ignore some of the dumber bits it is probably one of the most fun shows on tv right now. 2. Supergirl - another show in the much improved category. last season was watchable almost exclusively because Melissa Benoist was basically perfectly cast as Supergirl. her and a couple of the main cast around her carried the show, lord knows the writers and villain were only dragging it down. so far this season has broadened the show's scope a bit in a way that is working for it, and has added a couple good characters to balance out losing Cat Grant (your mileage may vary on her, but I thought she mostly worked). still a couple problem pieces, but like I said, there is an optimism to this show that is sort of infectious. it goes a long way 3. probably Flash - it was a little hard to pick between Arrow and Flash this year, because they are both coming off some pretty low points, but Flash has a couple things going for it (Cisco, Joe West, whatever version of Harrison Wells that Tom Cavanaugh feels like playing this season) that give it an edge. Still, up to the midseason break, so not including this weeks ep, it had not managed to fully course correct from the end of last season. that said, the future is lookign brighter, so we will see. 4. Arrow - they dug themselves a pretty deep hole in the last 2 years, but they are also coming out of it much faster than Flash is, ironically. finally getting the Russia flashbacks helps, especially since Anatoli is a lot of fun, and Dolph Lundgren plays a fantastic villain. I think for me personally, this show was always going to be the lowest though, the others are more inclined to a sort of sunniness that is just easier to like. Arrow is darker and mroe dramatic, but that means it can't just lean on its cast's chemistry to pull it up, it needs better writing and better villains in order for it to feel like it is on even ground with the others. but when ti does that well, it can come off amazing. season 2 might be the best season any of these have done, and season 4 could have been great (every scene with Darhk was) but a lot of the writing was just horrid.

though in that case, I suspect that someone who had had a gender reassignment surgery would not "heal" back to their old biological gender

For whatever its worth, stamping yourself while you are full of stormlight would also probably be harder than when you are not, since someone/thing holding investiture tends to resist being further invested.

one point of clarification on the death of shards: you can kill the holder of the shard without splintering the shard. We see this happen twice in Mistborn, first when Preservation Dies and then later when Vin kills Ruin. in both cases, the shard was left intact (not splintered) so that later Sazed is able to take both shards up. if they had been splintered, he would not have been able to do that. Having said that, of the ones we know to have died, at least 3 have been splintered.

that has been asked before: source: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=977#167

We actually do know that you can make alloys from the god metals. we see atium-gold in the first era mistborn books, and there are WOBs to the effect that Lerasium alloys could create mistings the same way pure lerasium turned Elend into a mistborn. it isn't 100% clear if there is a specific pattern to the effects of these alloys in all of the magic systems, but we do know that there are viable versions of them.

I'd say the two are unrelated. The shattered plains don't look the way they do because of a massive earthquake, we see in WoR that their appearance is caused by hundreds, if not thousands of years (I don't know the exact timeline) of crem accumulating on what once was a city. The plateaus are buildings (characters enter some of them in the book) that have been covered in so much crem that they no longer even look like buildings, and the chasms are the streets in between.

when I said "that number", I was referring to my original one, 1114111, though I see where my phrasing is a bit bad; should have said "my number". the one you suggested clearly does allow for a harmonium/atium etc combinations. my later number 2^65536 etc. allows for any combination of godmetals made from any combination of shards.

yea, that number doesn't account for questions like is there actually a difference between harmonium(shouldn't we call this sazedium or maybe sazium) and an atium/lerasium alloy (for the record, I assume those would be the same thing). in which case the actual possible number is much higher: i think it maxes out around (2^65536)*17 -1 if we both assume that harmonium is separate from atium/lerasium alloy and that you could have a distinct effect from a harmonium/atium or harmonium/lerasium or harmoniumatium/lerasium alloy. maybe higher if we allow for splinters to be their own thing....

Just double checking the math, but I think this is correct. (65536*17) -1=1114111 according to google (side note, I like how that number looks a lot better :P). for my own math: the number of possible combinations of k items out of a group of n total items is n choose k, sum as k goes from 0 to n of n choose k is 2^n (had to google this, but it is a direct corollary of the binomial theorem), so total possible number of god metal combinations (including the no godmetal case) is 2^16 or 65536. then as you say all the alloys plus the pure godmetal case, minus the no metal case.

to be clear, I was just trying to follow the logic that would suggest Ambition as being related. for my own part, I think Odium makes the most sense as well, just from the perspective of simplicity.

There is a quote from Words of Radiance: " But as for the Bondsmiths, they had members only three, which number was not uncommon for them" it goes on a bit, but the gist of it is that the Bondsmiths tend only to have 3 members. I am not sure how Ambition is supposed to factor into this, especially given that he has been splintered, or at least killed, but presumably the logic is along these lines: 1. Dalinar is a Bondsmith, and he bonded the Stormfather, Honor's cognitive shadow. so 2. it stands to reason that if Cultivation has a similar cognitive shadow, that it might be associated with the 2nd Bondsmith. but that leaves 1 bondsmith remaining, and no probable shard for them to be associated with (there are 3 shards int he Roshar system, but Odium seems improbable, under the circumstances)

sure, all of that applies, but I mostly meant hemalurgically. like does a larger spike decay more slowly etc.

Yea, I mean, hemalurgy doesn't seem to use a whole lot of investiture to begin with, so I assume that if there is a minimum amount needed, i is probably microscopic. I mean we have seen earrings function as hemalurgic spikes, so obviously the Inquisitors' gigantic spikes are probably not necessary....though that brings me to a further elaboration question: assuming ther is some minimum, is there any benefit, aside from just being easier to hit a bindpoint, for having a larger spike?

1. Is there a minimum size for a hemalurgic spike (even if it is so small that functionally it does not matter)? and 2. does the amount of investiture in the initial spike (before any decay sets in) vary depending on the person being spiked? e.g if you try to spike physical strength out of a body builder, will there be more investiture than if you tried to spike it from someone a lot weaker, like a very old man?

An Honorblade, on the other hand, may very well be pure Honor. that would probably be closer to Tanavastium.

to elaborate a bit: he seems to be able to use stormlight as fuel to keep himself alive, but he probably could not use it as fuel for awakening. I seem to remember there being a WOB about burning Shardblade, which would probably apply to shardplate, but I was unable to find it.

I never care too much about tournament type news, since I don't play those sorts of things anyway. purely casual. but quite frankly I'm of the opinion that "you control target player's turn" is a stupid ability that should never have been printed. whoever suggested it should have been laughed out of the company.

The Tiffany Aching books are pretty good, though I suspect they might get a bit repetitive if you read them all back to back to back. I read them interspersed within a full discworld read-through by publishing order, so there was a gap between them with other books, and I liked them well enough.