name_here

Right, I'm thinking that once the Everstorm started, the Unmade woke up/got loose, so their side effects like the Thrill stopped affecting humans. Alternately, the source is moving very, very quickly elsewhere but Stormform produces the same effects.

I think Moelach might actually be another name for Yelignar, who was described as one who could speak like a man, "though often his voice was accompanied by the wails of those he consumed". Certainly seems like a reasonable enough mythological description. Also, apparently Moelach was on the move, and Yelignar is called Blightwind and there's a plague in the Purelake, so it seems plausible he was there when the Everstorm began.

Nalan's Sword appears to be Nightblood from Warbreaker or another result of the same process. So if there is such a connection then the sphere is probably not directly associated with Odium. Also, if Nergaoul was in the sphere it apparently broke. Adolin didn't feel the Thrill at all once the Everstorm song began. Speaking of which, the Voidlight sphere theory seems to be dead. Apparently it's red, not black, because that's the color of the lightning and Stormform's eyes when glowing.

My money is on soulcasting in a crude clone to cover for teleporting out. A knife through the heart is generally pretty fatal and she didn't seem to be glowing. Most likely, she didn't have anywhere near enough stormlight to take out the entire attack force, since the Ghostbloods seemed to have some idea she was a Radiant and when they opted for a horribly unsubtle attack they sent too many people for her to take on. While I can see her deliberately faking her death, potentially even with massive collateral damage if the stakes are high enough, I doubt she'd intentionally go for a plan that would put her out of contact with everyone for ~60 days under the circumstances.

Actually, I think releasing Allomancy was an integral part of the massively elaborate Atium gambit that was significantly responsible for ultimate victory. So he's in the clear on that one. I do blame him for the rapes, because he had the power and authority to stop them. By claiming absolute power, he effectively took responsibility for everything his subjects do, so he's indirectly complicit in any abuses he knows of and does not stop.

I would not go so far as to say he was a good person. While I am willing to give a lot of ethical leeway for a successful effort to save the world, the ends only justify the means when the means are necessary for the ends. The skaa were treated much worse than necessary. I'll accept some mistreatment on the basis that ashfalls made farming horribly labor-intensive and slavery was an efficient means of feeding everyone, but the casual acceptance of killing skaa at a whim is wholly unnecessary, as is permitting rape, especially since skaa were considered his property on loan, giving him grounds to demand any execution be justified to the Steel Ministry. However, I am willing to believe he incorrectly believed that it was necessary because that's how the previous slave-holding empires worked and he didn't want to change things because it risked starvation if he made the wrong changes.

My take on TLR is that he was manifestly unqualified for the responsibility that wound up getting dumped on him, and lacking any sort of grounding in coherent political philosophy he hastily assembled one from various bits of previous empires into something that could hold together in the harsh conditions. The abuses in the Final Empire were largely based on abuses endemic in preexisting societies. I will grant it was far from the most ethical system that would work, but on the other hand it was assembled by a young rural laborer of some sort after a virtual apocalypse and not everyone died. Plus, by the time of the books Ruin had been attempting to drive him insane for over a thousand years. It was probably getting to him.

I felt Vin's insecurities were very well-handled, because they felt deeply ingrained. She's absolutely convinced that she is not particularly special or competent and rejects evidence to the contrary. Whenever someone praises her skill at something she gets uncomfortable and changes the subject. I did want her to get over them, but wasn't annoyed at her for not doing so. Also, I must take issue with your complaint about her loving balls and fluffy dresses. Those are perfectly acceptable things to like, and liking them is not incompatible with being a highly skilled Mistborn.

I assumed he was using his Ta'vern nature and has gained enough control over its effects on the Pattern to perform blatant reality alteration, possibly as a result of directly manipulating the raw material of the Pattern in the Bore. Its effects certainly started intensifying back in The Gathering Storm; food in his vicinity rotted and light distorted when he was angry, and in Towers Of Midnight he blocked or reversed decay throughout entire cities. The Sea Folk food shipment was probably the most blatant. Food rotted into something extremely poisonous almost instantly, but when he came back all the unopened containers were miraculously fine. While that's technically only highly improbable, being able to cause something that unlikely and reality alteration are basically indistinguishable, because there's always a physically possible but highly unlikely event that could do what you want.

I voted for Skyrim. The first one I played was Oblivion, but its leveling system was a complete mess. I've gone back and played Morrowind and Daggerfall briefly, but I gave up in under an hour because I found combat incredibly clunky.

No, Booker did not get baptized in his origin timeline. Him getting cold feet and backing out of the ceremony at the last second was the original Booker/Comstock point of divergence, actually. See, Booker felt that the sins he'd committed could not be washed away with mere water, and given that he got fired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency (famous for their extremely brutal suppression of labor strikes) for conduct unbecoming an officer and was exceptionally brutal by the standards of his unit in the Indian Wars, that's a fairly understandable thing to think. Comstock, however, did get baptized. And he kind of missed the point, because instead of renouncing and repenting for his past actions he decided that the baptism made them no longer sinful and gloried in them. So all the commentary about baptism washing away sins is what Comstock believed. I actually really liked the Vox Populi turning out to be just as violent as Comstock. In a horrifically ironic way, it shows that people are the same no matter their skin color. See, the ideology of the Vox is itself racist, just in the other direction. Sure, they're legitimately oppressed, but they generalize hatred of their oppressors to hatred of everyone with the skin color of their oppressors. Once they're in power, their actions are really no different, because they're really no different. Now, I did feel them turning on Booker was poorly handled. I understand why their leader did it, because she's as power-hungry as Comstock, but I'm not sure why the rank-and-file went along with it. Booker just got done coming back from dying as a martyr for the cause and leading them to a crushing victory. I would expect most of them to react with stunned confusion and likely fall to infighting as some tried to kill him and others protected him. Yeah, this gets confusingly alluded to by the twins in their rambling explanations. Whenever those choices pop up onscreen, it's an event which can alter the timeline. But certain patterns reoccur whatever happens. The choices have consequences but cannot alter the fate of Columbia. Even if Columbia weren't built, there would be a city, a lighthouse, and a civil war. Only the details would change. How this works in practice is that the choices have a cosmetic effect that lasts for the entire game, but the end result of the encounter is the same. I think if you throw at the couple, someone notices the brand on Booker's hand that identifies him as the False Shepard. ---- I think one of my main problems with the ending is that it sort of negates everything that came before it, and in a particularly nasty manner. Everything that happened in Columbia is rendered pointless because, assuming that Elizabeth is correctly interpreting local time-travel physics, it no longer ever existed. So at the resolution, none of the events happened. Now, usually that's the point to time travel, but this one didn't sell me on it. First, the motive for doing it felt pretty shaky. At the point where Elizabeth gains unbounded time-travel powers, Columbia has fallen and the Vox Populi have a new leader who is likely more moderate. So in the timeline you occupy, you don't need to change history to win. Supposedly you're doing it for other timelines, but that is a pretty questionable motive because you're blindly undoing a lot of timelines that could be good or bad. Probably the most solid motive is preventing an alternate Comstock from attacking other timelines, but if one were powerful enough to do that then he could block the plan. Second, resolving it by retroactively killing Booker lends the whole affair an almost spiteful air. It says that things would have been better if the main character were never born. Then there's the logic problems; I'm not convinced that you can construct a theory of time travel where the ending is both possible and a good solution. If events have set outcomes, then it should be impossible to kill Booker at the baptism. If they don't, then Comstock could be killed after the divergence. Even if only certain events can be altered, Comstock could be killed at the next branch. Plus, why bring Booker back in time and kill him? Since he and Comstock were both in Columbia, clearly you can have physical duplicates by rift travel, so I don't see why killing the Booker who got sent back would kill the one already present. On a semi-related note, there's one aspect that confused me with Booker's relation to Elizabeth. When we get to the revelation that Booker sold Elizabeth, it's accompanied by disorientation and a nosebleed. That's the sign of dimensional integration, so it seems to imply that the viewpoint Booker didn't do it but went to a reality where the local Booker did. But that's never brought up.

I liked the story and gameplay up until the ending. However, the ending gave me the distinct impression that the writers had decided to put all the exposition at the end in the hopes of confusing players into ignoring the bit where the final resolution makes absolutely no sense. The thing is, you can have a model of time travel where the timeline splits into new universes or a model where it doesn't. However, if the ending runs under the first type of model then retroactively killing Booker would simply create new universes without altering existing ones and if it's the second type where do all the alternate universes come from? Even if you have timelines diverge only absent time travel, there's the question of whether time travel will alter divergences later on the tree, because if not there shouldn't have been multiple copies of Elizabeth for one copy of Booker. And even disregarding that, I don't see a convincing reason to kill Booker prior to the point where he first split from Comstock instead of killing Comstock afterwards. And I don't see why killing the guy who got sent back in time actually accomplishes anything, because his past self should still be alive, and we're clearly not doing mental time travel because there's more than one Elizabeth.

I think they were set up plenty well. Frankly, I think defining Deus Ex Machina as any unexpected resolution of the plot is entirely too broad. If the end could be predicted the entire time then it'd make for a pretty boring story. I generally define it as a sudden resolution that was not hinted at even in retrospect. The end of the first book is foreshadowed by a number of factors. The mists swirl around Allomancers, hinting at a connection. Vin frequently displays superior ability with Allomancy, so it's not a stretch to show more. Copperclouds prove rather less impenetrable than would be expected,so it's reasonable that flesh shielding metal is also flexible. Likewise, the end of the trilogy is foreshadowed by the prophecy, the epigraphs, and Vin obtaining Preservation. The second book is set up very effectively by the tampering with information. So they follow from what comes before, but in a vague enough manner people don't see them coming beforehand.

Personally, as far as I'm concerned the worst books are five (THE AMAZING CIRCUS ADVENTURE!, or Nynaeve and Elayne compete to annoy me) and ten, where the massive number of characters makes the story kind of choke because all of them show up and therefore don't have a chance to actually accomplish anything. While I'm apparently in the minority on this, I really like 7 to 9. I'm not really sure why they get a bad rap, really. Granted, they include the begining of the second most annoying arc with Perrin and Faile: They also introduce Casudene, who is one of the most annoying characters. She's a really old and smug Aes Sedai who decides to show up and bug Rand, and basically demands he treat her like a superior but refuses to act politely towards him. It makes her look arrogant and stupid; firstly Rand is the one who is in charge, and secondly he is entirely capable of just walking out on her. Overall, though, they mark the beginning of the mass channeler-on-channeler fights that really make the series for me. The way gateways and sensing channeling work make for a very unique and interesting highly mobile style of combat.

I was thinking something like this:

People frequently carry around infused gemstones, including into battle. So shardblades would occasionally strike them in a fight. While it wouldn't happen often, it would almost certainly have happened at least once. Everyone seems convinced they can cut through anything, so it seems doubtful there's a readily available exception. Also, when Adolin is cutting out a gemheart, he's careful not to cut the gem itself. So apparently Shardblades can damage gemhearts.

I'm pretty certain that Shardblades can cut straight through infused gemstones. Seems like it would have been mentioned if they had any noticeable trouble.

Hm, interesting possibility. Personally, I assumed that Spren are pretty much omnipresent and merely become visible when the appropriate conditions are met. Of course, if we do have duality, that means implications. Because the thing with light's wave-particle duality is that it can act like either or both and this can be exploited. So if the same holds for stormlight and spren, that would mean that it would be possible to alter a lashing by interfering with the associated spren, or spren could be used to fill dun spheres. ---- Just as a reminder to everyone, one key difference between the spren experiment and actual quantum mechanics is that the spren was affected by writing down the measurement while in quantum mechanics it's taking the measurement that has the effect. This probably means something really important to do with cognative aspects.

There's apparently a slight tug of resistance when a shardblade cuts through a living creature. I think that's from their spirit interfering with the shardblade. But using that as a scale, it would be really hard to actually stop one.

I think that it would provide some degree of resistance, but probably not enough to actually stop a Shardblade. Investiture generally provides a limited shielding effect against external influence, but as noted a fabrial designed to block a Shardblade was extraordinarily difficult to create.

I think the physical works more-or-less like our world, but investiture can add or subtract energy in fairly arbitrary manners. This actually doesn't necessarily violate thermodynamics; properly stated the entropy of the universe does not decrease. As defined in the context, the other realms would be included in the universe, so a decrease in entropy of something in the physical could be matched by an increase in another realm. I think that Atium and Lerasium are both elements, but their heavy investiture lets them defy normal decay rates. Atium, at least, seems to be chemically unique. Duralumin and Nicrosil are both real alloys. Probably some fairly ordinary alloy, with most of their properties provided by investiture instead of composition. The answer to both of these is that the Metallic Arts are apparently based off chemical properties and crystalline structure. Turning iron to zinc would alter that and probably just break it because the investiture is keyed to the original material. However, it's also possible that storage isn't typed and so if you can change the material of the metalmind instantaneously you could tap it as the new type. Isotope changes should be fine because that only alters atomic mass and nuclear stability.

Atium is not presently known to exist except in the hands of Marsh (and presumably Demoux). However, there are some strange rumors concerning a region known as The Pits inhabited by Koloss. By my understanding of the mechanics, the power in the original Atium should be re-manifesting about at the time of Alloy Of Law, since that's when Kelsier predicted the geodes would regenerate. The entire plan hinged on Ruin being unable to reclaim the power in burned Atium, so it clearly doesn't snap back to the original Shard automatically. Now, since Preservation set this up in the first place, Harmony could presumably unmake it and take the Atium power back or lock it away indefinitely.

My theory is that the Shardplate is designed to defend against hostile surgebinding, and Szeth can't get Shardplate to recognize his lashings as friendly. So it blocks his outgoing lashings. Certainly, the Radiants would want a defense against Voidbinding, and it'd be really convenient if the orders with wide-area attacks could drop them directly on the front lines without worrying about friendly fire.

Well, Mitosis seems to imply that Epic weaknesses are related to things they hated and/or feared, so as a former kindly teacher Prof's probably wouldn't be children. I don't know what it would be specifically, though, since we don't have much information. It might very well be something related to school administration, curriculum, or pay, because in my experience those are the subjects most likely to send grade-school teachers into angry ranting. As for how he ended up with his power, under the speculation regarding Mitosis, it's quite possible he wanted to protect the students; he's got force-fields for defending against attacks, giftable healing for treating injuries, and tensors for extracting people from rubble. But then the powers drove him mad.

Dust scatters light. It's annoyingly infuriating to any illusionist, because if it's a mental projection you need to make sure to account for the dust to keep objects from looking fake because it passes through them, and if you're a photonic manipulator like Firefight dust passing through a construct can scatter it unless you're actively paying attention to get it to react properly. It should be noted that she did use her powers once in a passage where tensors had been in use,