TheKittyOfAtlantis

Let the record show that I overlooked the existence of this thread.

I'm not familiar with all of the Cosmere magics under discussion, but there are probably Epics with powers that have similar effects in the Reckoners 'verse. There are definitely illusionist Epics who could create the image of a dog... although I wonder. Would the illusion of a dog provoking Edmund's fear of them be enough to activate his weakness, or would Edmund's powers/Calamity/whatever be able to tell that it's not a real dog? For that matter, if a dog was near Edmund but he was not aware of its presence, would it affect his powers? I don't think this was explored in the books. Since it's based on fear, you would think that the Epic's perception and emotional response would be what matters, but then wouldn't Epics' powers be affected just by imagining their weaknesses? Anyway! We don't see any in canon, but it's easy to imagine that there could be mind-manipulating Epics who could suppress a person's fear and enable them to harm Steelheart, or force Prof to think about his past failures. An Epic with precognition or danger sense could potentially be countered by another Epic with a similar power. Of course, as Sheridan_rd pointed out, most of these ideas would still require the attacking Epic to know their target's weakness. Unless you have some special technique like a checkmate that reliably works against all Epics with a certain type of power, or you can find a loophole in how their powers work, identifying their weakness is pretty much always going to be the most important step in defeating an Epic of any appreciable power.

And Prof is a gifter... I mean, I have no idea if that's intentional. Jonathan is such a common name that using it as a meaningful character name would be a surprising choice, but it's amusing in any case. What I'd really like to know is, why Phaedrus? I imagine it has something to do with the chariot allegory (which, perhaps embarrassingly, I only know of because I looked up "Phaedrus" while reading Steelheart), but who knows? (Brandon Sanderson does, I don't.)

I'd noticed the similarity between the names, but it hadn't occurred to me that alternate Prof and Tia deliberately named their daughter after David. I figured it was intentional on Sanderson's part, to suggest that Tavi's role in her universe is similar to David's role in his. But depending on the timing of things, your interpretation could work too.

That's a good suggestion. Upon consideration, the link does seem a bit more direct than the one I thought of.

That is an angle I had not considered. If being in the presence of someone who doesn't fear him is SH's true weakness, which is what I think you mean (and please correct me if I'm mistaken), then what about the fact that he doesn't fear himself?

...in which case the audience didn't, either. In the prologue of Steelheart, David describes Epic weaknesses thusly: By this definition, an Epic whose weakness is in effect should be unable to use their powers in any way whatsoever, as if they were no longer an Epic at all. Being attacked by or being in the presence of a person who does not fear him does not appear to have this effect on Steelheart. Although an attack from a person who does not fear him is shown to be able to bypass his defensive power, he is able to use his other abilities within seconds of suffering such an attack, as seen when he mortally wounds Blain Charleston with a super-strength-enhanced punch just after the latter's bullet grazes him. I suppose it is possible that Steelheart's other powers simply do not work while he is being attacked by someone who doesn't fear him, but upon consideration, another explanation presents itself. In Firefight, the Reckoners confront the Epic Sourcefield, whose weakness is Kool-Aid. While fighting her, David notices that different degrees of exposure to her weakness seem to affect her powers in different ways. Pouring it over one of her forcefields causes that particular field to disappear, and splashing it on her body causes her personal protective field to momentarily flicker and weaken. However, only when David removes her mouth guard and forces her to drink some do her powers shut down completely. Sourcefield's true weakness, the condition that makes her functionally an ordinary person, is drinking Kool-Aid; having it touch her body or her forcefields is what we might call a "pseudo-weakness", a related condition that dampens an Epic's powers but doesn't entirely stop them. Another example of this phenomenon is a major plot point in Calamity. So, if being attacked by someone who doesn't fear him is a pseudo-weakness for Steelheart, what might his true weakness be? Perhaps his powers would shut down if no one in the world, or at least no one within a certain distance of him, feared him at all? We will probably never know. (Does this post need to be in the Calamity subforum? It's not specifically about Calamity, but it does mention Calamity spoilers as part of its argument. Apologies if I've misplaced it.)

I know I've read that too, so I can verify that it exists and that it probably wasn't Writing Excuses, since I don't listen to that. I don't have a link handy, though. Sorry.

This thread is old and I am new, so pardon me if this is a useless or unwanted comment, but all of the images for the pony comics are broken.

So you're saying he should have given more of his power to the other Reckoners so that they could use it to fight Steelheart more directly? That would have been a pretty impressive battle. I think that would have made it too obvious after the fact that there had been an Epic on the Reckoners' side, though. And Prof never seemed to be interested in spreading the information, because he didn't believe it was applicable to any Epics other than gifters, who are pretty rare. That's the other half of the question, isn't it: how would David have reacted to the truth? He had already met Edmund, so the groundwork for him to accept the idea of non-malicious Epics had already been laid. Discovering that Megan was Firefight was another big step, however, and that hadn't happened yet when David and Prof had this conversation, so it's hard to say for sure. I think you're right that David probably would have reacted with more open alarm, confusion, and perhaps anger than he did at the canonical revelation. The question then becomes, would Prof have been able to calm him down and convince him to make peace with the fact that the Reckoners are led by an Epic, and what would have happened if he couldn't? In Firefight, David tells us that he was initially deeply disturbed by the discovery that Prof was an Epic - "it was like finding out that Santa Claus was secretly a Nazi" - and that eventually he "got over it", but we don't see much of that struggle directly. It could be interesting to explore it, and to see Prof himself explain how he reconciles the contradictions of his own role.

Hello, 17th Shard. Here's a question. As you probably remember, towards the end of Steelheart, Prof caught David alone and apologized to him for having been inappropriately harsh and cold towards him earlier (while under the influence of his Epicness, although of course David did not know this at the time). They discussed the incident, which David believed was caused by some sort of traumatic experience in Prof's past involving the tensors. In the course of the conversation, Prof offered to answer one question about his past. David considered asking something about the tensors, such as "How did you create them?" or "Why does using them mess with your head?", but eventually he decided to ask something else. If David had asked any direct question about the tensors, a truthful answer would have pretty much boiled down to "Because I'm an Epic". So, if David had asked such a question, how would Prof have responded? I actually think he might have told the truth. While David was thinking about what to ask, he noticed that Prof seemed to be "bracing himself". I think Prof was aware that, given the conversation they'd just been having, it was likely that David was thinking of asking something about the tensors. He knew he might be put in the position of having to either tell a convincing lie or admit to being an Epic, and the idea of "bracing oneself to reveal a secret and deal with the possible fallout thereof" makes more sense to me than "bracing oneself to tell a lie". We know that Prof has no qualms about lying like a rug if it'll serve the cause, so why would he be visibly anxious about doing so here? Moreover, why offer to answer a question as a gesture of apology if he wasn't prepared to answer a very likely line of questioning honestly? Why not just avoid the situation altogether? I don't know. It seems like a strange and perhaps unwise decision to make such a game-changing revelation on the eve of the big battle, but I'm pretty sure he was at least considering it. What do you all think?