Dunkum

Pretty sure Potter was popular around here after book 1 or 2, though it could just be that I was associating with the types of folks who were more alert to that sort of thing. Our elementary school library didn't have a fantasy section, they were just kind of all mixed into the fiction section, I think, but the local public library had a decent sci-fi/fantasy section, plus the ability to borrow books from across the county, and if necessary the state.

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.

Well, it could possibly be that you can steal some kind of "healthfulness" trait from someone and transfer that to yourself to remove an allergy, but that you couldn't actually use hemalurgy to steal and transfer an allergy. not saying it is that way, but could be.

The problem there is our source for that is Venli. I'm not actually sure we should believe her. When I get a chance, I'll try to look up the passage that i'm thinking of. I could definitely be wrong, but i think there's a bit where Eshonai says something to the effect that Venli took to the new form much more quickly than would be normal, and is suspicious about that.

adding on to this: could you use hemalurgy to steal your own allergy and spike someone else to transfer it to them?

Wow, all the folks citing Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and Inheritance make me feel old. Harry Potter came out when I was well into middle school and Inheritance and Percy Jackson weren't big until I was in college. The earliest Fantasy I can remember is probably The Hobbit, though it has some competition from The Dark is Rising series, and a book in our elementary school library: Gom on Windy Mountain. All of those, I read some time in elementary school. On a somewhat more Sci-Fi note the Animorphs books were coming out at that time too, and I got really into those as well. I also remember trying to read the Narnia books, but never really getting into them. After that though, I devoured our public library's fantasy section, reading eddings, fairland, weis and hickman, brooks, feist, and probably several more that i can't recall offhand. I actually got in trouble for reading during class at least once or twice (it was middle school, it's not like I was actually learning anything anyway)

First name is Sean. spelled the proper way, none of this "Sh" nonsense. One of my favorite minor details about my trip to Ireland last year was that I didn't have to constantly spell my name for people, they just kind of assumed the right one, since it is spelled that way over there. And Kipper: I understood exactly what you were talking about. I knew a guy whose nickname was "Chester" because one of his friends' first impression of him was that he looked like someone who would be named "Chester." See also the character "Wesley Snipes" from 30 Rock

Pewter Cadmium chromium and bronze would make for a very very good mistborn seeker. bronze your way to finding someone, then use cadmium to slow time until reinforcements arrive. presumably there would be some fighting involved, but pewter lets you take a beating pretty well, and chromium can help you deplete your opponent's metal supplies, both prolonging the fight. another good one for that would be tin bronze brass chromium. this is more useful for mistings, particularly ones that aren't copperclouds: bronze and tin to find them, then, similar to the above zinc/nicrosil idea use brass to soothe away anxiety/distrust/etc, and chromium to sap metal reserves. maybe swap tin out for pewter in order to help with actual capturing. I agree that the 8 power item is least interesting, since you pretty much automatically disregard gold and aluminum as worthless, its then just a matter of playing favorites. cadmium and bronze probably aren't going to be very high on most people's lists either, and without atium around, electrum is going to be less useful too. You could try to build a very good support person: zinc and brass to bolster allies and deflate enemies, iron and steel to deflect attacks, tin and bronze for detection, nicrosil to improve allies/surprise enemies and copper to hide/protect allies. maybe swap the copper out for pewter to improve reaction times (unless tin already does that, that is sort of in between what those 2 do) or bendalloy to give allies a chance to get a breathe in in between enemies. and you could swap out one each of iron/steel and zinc/brass since they do work better together, btu are alright on their own. Now all of this changes some if you chose to introduce 1. atium or 2. ferruchemy into the mix. Atium pairs well with all but a couple metals (gold, aluminum being main exceptions. though burning atium and electrum at the same time seems like it would be weird) and there is a whole different thread for crazy things the lord ruler could do with his ferruchemy/allomancy combinations (I think we decided he could probably launch himself into space, for instance) so adding those in would be a whole different dynamic.

It could also just be accidental. Based on what we see in the books, the different forms are tied to different spren. could just be that Venli saw a new kind of spren, tried using it, and came by stormform on accident. I seem to recall it being somewhat implied that she had tested out the form prior to sharing its existence with the other Parshendi. then it would just be a question of whether the odium corruption remains after they take another form, which I could see arguments either way. Venli leading a rogue group also seems plausible. anyway, the key was Eshonai. since she was well liked/trusted, once she had been corrupted, it is easy to see the other parshendi following her lead unknowing. that was my take anyway. I don't see it as a plot hole at all.

I think there is a WoB that says the God King could conceive a child, though doesn't go into how. You are right on how the priests deal with it.

Sword of Shannara is a transparent Lord of the Rings ripoff for the most part, and Elfstones of Shannara is kinda cliched. I liked Wishsong and the scions series though, and recall liking the voyage of the Jerle Shannara series. not sure I read any of the others

tiffany aching, and she is basically a continuation of the witches, so that makes a certain amount of sense. I hadn't even started reading the books until just a couple years ago, so I'm not due for a reread any time particularly soon, but if I run short on other reading material, I may look up the city watch books at the library.

I admit I hadn't considered the heating caused by the atmosphere, but I think that between gold and brass, he could probably handle that. and between steel and pewter, he could provide a sufficiently strong burst of speed/strength to achieve liftoff. especially since he'd want to tap that brassmind as soon as he got into space and the temperature dropped. I think at this point the biggest potential hurdle is the size of the various metalminds he would need. i think there was something like 6 or 7 different ones he would need just do this and to stay alive, and I am not sure how big they need to be to store all of these attributes he needs for as long as hed need them

You're missing one important point: sure, allomantically, pushing all of that would be difficult, if not impossible, but he isn't limited to Allmoncy. Vin's limitations don't matter very much, when compounding pewter lets him fill as many/as large of a petwermind as he wants. Put another way, if he had a massive pewtemind, the size of a building, he could easily fill it by compounding pewter, then he could draw all of that ferruchemical strength into himself for a immensely strong burst of strength presumably thousands if not millions of times stronger than a normal human. combine that with the fact that he can reduce his weight to next to nothing, and he ought to be able to propel himself, plus a small payload of metalminds, at incredible speeds. a cursory search leads me to believe a normal person can leap vertically with speeds around 1-2 m/s, so if TLR can briefly increase his strength to around 5000-10000 or so times a normal person (again, drawing down an absolute ton of ferruchemical strength in a few seconds), he should be able to achieve escape velocity. granted all of that ignores air resistance, which, I suspect, poses a bigger problem, but you may be able to counteract the air resistance by steelpushing on a small stock of fuel. plus, there is a question of how ferruchemical nicrosil works. who knows how being able to store and tap investiture would change any of this.

Not sure you could bring enough Iron and brass with you to pull that off. or ingest enough of them. Though I guess maybe you could fill a bunch of brass and iron minds and then compound pewter and throw them up into space... be a bit hard to find them afterwards, though,I think.

exactly. it helps if you give it a little time and have a chance to forget some of the cards that are in there, then when someone plays one, it hits harder. I think this is partly why I like the pick two and pick three cards more than the regular ones. there are exponentially more choices of combinations of 2 and 3 cards than there are singles, and so you are more likely to get that surprise element from a new combo than from any individual card.

My friend has I think the base plus the first or second expansion of Bang!, and I've played it a good amount, including one time where the renegade (I think that is the term for the role, its been a few months) went almost the whole game without being found out by the sherrif and deputies. she started cackling when they finally determined what her role was. also, I'll second Munchkin and Cards against Humanity. we have the latter, and, if you're in the right mood, it can be a lot of fun. on the other hand you can't play it too often or you kinda become desensitized to the humor of it.

Beyond a certain point, they stop being Rincewind books and start being wizards/unseen academy books. and I would recommend the city watch books, unless you are trying to save the best for last or something. That said, If you haven't already, you should read Small Gods, which is pretty stand-alone. not necessary for understanding things, but one of the best in the whole series.

I, and most people I know who have read the Cosmere works, generally consider Elantris to be the weakest one. Still enjoyable, but the others are better.

You and I have very different opinions. The second book was my favorite. Basically all of the Julia chapters are amazing. easily better than all the rest, in my mind.

Also, the letter refers to the recipient as "essentially immortal" which doesn't describe a whole lot of people who aren't shards

The model I tend to use to vizualize iron/steel allomancy is something like this (it isn't perfect, but it helps me): Imagine you have 2 electromagnets, with no power running through them at the moment. you align them, while they are weak/off (this may not be how electromagnets actually work, but ignore that) so that they will push or pull on each other depending on whether you want to simulate iron or steel. now turn the power on to both of them at once. they will immediately start pushing against/pulling on each other, with each one exerting exactly the same force on the other as is exerted on it. also note that since magnetism follows an inverse square law, once the two are separated by a certain distance, the other forces (gravity, friction, etc) will balance out the magnetic force and it will cease to be meaningful, which compares nicely to the point, say at the top of a steelpush jump, where the allomancer cannot get any higher (we see this in the books a few times). here is where weight/mass comes in. if one of them is substantially more massive than the other, than it will accelerate a lot less. F=ma, so if F is the same, and m increases, then a has to decrease by the same factor. to put that into more concrete terms, if one is 2x as massive as the other, then it experiences 1/2 the acceleration. All of this is also ignoring friction, which increases with mass. at some point, the friction experienced by the more massive magnet is sufficient to overcome the force exerted on it. since it is unable to move, the other magnet will do all of the moving, until it moves far enough away to reduce the force past its own friction. This is more or less the example of the coins. they are substantially less massive than a person, so the same force acting on them will have a much greater effect than on the allomancer (to the tune of 50,000x greater for Vin, a bit more for someone larger). this means that the allomancer feels some force, but it is extremely brief, since the coin is speeding away very quickly, and the force diminishes very rapidly (id guess it follows an inverse square law too, but have no real evidence of that). now if instead of just being bigger, you have one of them attached to a wall, then what you see is that you have increased its effective mass to equal that of the wall. In addition, the wall itself probably resists motion due to other forces acting on it. In this case, the attached magnet cannot move, so all of the motion must carry to the unattached. This is like the allomancer pushing on a steel bar in order to gain height. the bar cannot move down, so the allomancer has to move up. I admit this isn't perfect. Using the above, pushing on any object, no matter how small, should produce some kind of recoil effect at the least, which doesn't seem to happen. I haven't actually found a good way to reconcile this. If the force (rather than just the acceleration) is actually proportional to the allomancer/target's mass, then pushing on something like TLR's castle should have basically launched Vin into the startosphere, but instead just seems to work like pushing on anything else, but if it isn't dependent on that, then that recoil should be there. that said, I think it more or less works for a basic understanding, and at least some of it should be applicable regardless.

I just reread that interlude earlier today (it's one of my favorites), and my impression was that she made most of her body slick, but did not do anything to her hands/feet.

I have seen some discussion that recipient of the letter in the epigraphs of Way of Kings, who is referred to as "you old reptile," is a shard and might be a dragon. I personally like the theory, but it is pretty much pure speculation at this point.

To add on to what others have said: 1. Atium Ferruchemy allows you to store age (or rather youth, I guess, since I think pulling from it is what decreases your age). atium compounding, therefore lets you decrease your age to pretty much whatever you'd like, since you get back more than you put in. however, you need more and more of the stored youth to keep you the same age (i.e. to appear 20 at age 50, you need 30 years, but at age 300, you need 270 years) so as you age you need more and more atium just to keep up. The way the Lord Ruler did this is explained in the first book, confirmation that that is what Marsh is doing here: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#3 2. Having trouble finding a source for this, but my understanding is that since Ferruchemy is partly based on Ruin's power (it is a combination of Ruin and Preservation) when a ferruchemist goes to store a memory into a metalmind, or take one out, he can alter them. I am not sure he can actually change them once in the coppermind, but as long as he can do it when they come in or go out, it doesn't matter. and since the memory being stored is erased from the ferruchemist's mind, they will not be able to recognize that it has changed, especially if their written documents are altered as well. Patchwork: Inquisitors are essentially a different species by this point. Their bodies have been modified significantly (in order to allow them to survive spikes in places that shouldn't be survivable). As for lifespan, it varies a bit, they are very difficult to kill, but it is mentioned that they have to be replaced from time to time, so most of them aren't normally immortal, especially since The Lord Ruler prefers to keep some things, like atium compounding, secret/away from them. Some of Marsh's spikes come after the Lord Ruler is gone, otherwise he'd have tried to stop them.