digitalbusker

If there's anybody out there who's opposed Shalladin on the grounds that it's too obvious and simultaneously supported Jasnobody-at-all... I would encourage them to examine those positions side-by-side. You want non-obvious romantic subplots? Give the mature, driven, powerful woman who's apparently content to remain single indefinitely a romantic subplot (bonus points if it's unconventional) and leave one or more of the twenty-something protagonists single.

I always wondered why Honorblades were less efficient than the Nahel bond. I think you may have stumbled on the meta reason.

First thoughts were to wonder if I'm broken enough for a Nahel bond, or failing that, disciplined enough to become somebody's Squire. Then I wondered if I know enough about circuit design to invent a fabrial computer. Realistically, though, my safety would be best served by "Hey Vasher, if I tell you where Nightblood is about to be, can you take me to Scadrial?" (I'm highly amused by the number of people who said something like "I'm going to go explain to [Taravangian/the Stone Shamans/etc] how they're wrong about everything and then...". There's no "and then," dude. Assuming you manage to convince them you know something you can't possibly know, you're not leaving.)

The Thrill is not unique to Shardbearers.

I kinda worry what effect exposure to the Diagram would have on the little guy. He might rupture a fractal or something.

--1pt

damnation it, now I want a t-shirt with "Honor is dead... but I'll see what I can do." Or maybe, just to make it a little more comprehensible: God is dead... but I'll see what I can do.

Well if he said "legitimate" then one or both of them being the son of a different mother would require Dalinar to have been married twice, unless there's a twisty Rosharan customary usage of "legitimate" that includes what we'd historically have called an acknowledged bastard.

Okay, if anybody is the Dos Equis guy, it's... well, it's not Adolin.

Obligatory quote from the Letter: WoK Ch 14: "Payday" epigraph I always assumed that was the Lerasium. The last sentence is certainly consistent with having eaten it, although it could also mean he implanted it and healed around it as a way to hide it.

Don't forget that one of the things Syl mentioned to Kaladin when she was explaining what she remembers of his time in the army was that other soldiers, even some of the lighteyes, looked up to him. I think the spren-attraction has components of both attributes.

My money's on "tries its best to adapt, but runs out of stormlight or hits the limits of its malleability well before it fits the chasmfiend."

No comment. I didn't! It was Odium, probably!

An excerpt from Tomes Unfeasible: Volume III of Book X of The Stormlight Archive. That's how I hope it ends.

That was "that's impossible" in the Luke Skywalker sense of "I refuse to believe this is true, because it has implications with which I am not comfortable," not "I literally do not believe this is possible based on my understanding of physics." "If this person is a Knight Radiant, then the thing I was punished for saying is true, and I should never have been made Truthless, and all these horrible things I've been doing for the last six-plus years were not my deserved punishment for heresy, but just horrible things I did. I do not wish that to be the case, so: 'That's impossible!'"

The next Oath will be "I will not needlessly cripple myself to satisfy society's gender norms."

Kandra sex workers: I wouldn't be surprised if the First Contract had some kind of escape clause in case of extreme circumstances, but yeah, it's possible. I tend to think the economic factors would keep it from being too widespread (certainly not on the level where you'd call it a kandra brothel), and if it makes you feel any better, it seems like there's a certain element of choice in which kandras go out on contracts, and maybe even in which kandra takes a specific contract. There's every chance that the kandra hired to replace Lord Whatshisname's favorite mistress picked the job because it doesn't see why humans get so worked up about all this "sex" stuff. Half-kandra: Other people have already pointed out that kandra have enough control over their organs to not have to worry about accidental fertilization. I'll also say that I severely doubt that kandra are capable of producing human-compatible sperm or eggs (though maybe it could salvage and preserve those of the body it's wearing, if it acts fast enough--we're all using the same gametes we made during puberty, after all). I could see, maybe, a kandra with a lot of experience and knowledge of human biology and anatomy serving as a surrogate womb for an implanted pregnancy. That could actually be an interesting occupation for kandra in the modern and future trilogies--sort of like a walking uterine replicator (where my Bujold fans at?).

I've been following the "Weight has nothing to do with allomantic Push/pull strength" thread for a while, and I think we're using the wrong model for framing physics questions related to Pushing and Pulling. What is the behavior observed in the books? If Coinshot A Pushes with allomantic strength B on coin C, we observe that both A and C will experience acceleration proportional to B but inversely proportional to their mass. So as long as C is not anchored, it will accelerate rapidly while A is barely affected, but when C hits the ground or a sturdy wall suddenly its effective mass is increased to the mass of the combined system (coin plus wall, or coin plus planet), and its acceleration drops way off while A's acceleration spikes. When we use F=ma, the problem that arises is that the acceleration a Coinshot experiences when Pushing a coin should depend only on the magnitude of the force applied, not on whether the coin is anchored. If we view the magic as a simple action/reaction between the Coinshot and their target, the behavior we observe in the books is not preserved. There is a well defined physics model that deals with two objects interacting in a way that changes their velocities to a degree that's inversely proportional to their masses: elastic collisions. If we reframe this situation in terms of an elastic collision, then the allomantic strength term becomes not force but kinetic energy. A given allomancer's push strength is the amount of kinetic energy they can add to the system. What happens to the velocities of the components of the system is then subject to conservation of (the new, higher) momentum. This preserves the behavior we see in the books. (Actually a person's Steelpush strength would be delta-kinetic energy per unit time, but integrating over time is left as an exercise for the reader.) If you'd like a pseudo-concrete framework for thinking about this, imagine that the blue lines you see while burning Steel are tangible to the things at either end of them. Normally they are happy to simply change length to remain in contact with their endpoints, but when Pushed or Pulled, an Allomancer pours some Investiture into them and makes them grow or shrink with some amount of power. The line doesn't care where its center winds up, or how long or short it winds up being, it just knows how hard to push, and the end that resists less will be moved farther than the other. So to bring this back around to the question of whether your Push/Pull strength depends on your mass: Yes and No. There's some innate Allomantic Strength term that's independent of your mass, but in practice the things you can do with Allomantic iron or Allomantic steel are influenced by both your strength and your mass. (When you're trying to move yourself it's better to be lighter, when you're trying to move other things it's better to be heavier.)

So the original reason I asked about what we knew about Scadrial's calendar was that I'm going to be running a Mistborn Adventure Game campaign set in the Alloy era, and I always like to be able to include in-world dates. I thought I'd share what I decided on. First off, what we've learned since the thread was started, from the Alloy Chapter 3 Annotation: And this is what I wound up using: Months Kelsivar Maresil Vinuarch Elenduary Tyndwist Sazelle Brieze Hammondust Doxil Spooktober Cladentil Marshek Days of the weekVationsday (Preservation's Day) Roonsday (Ruin's Day) Harmsday (Harmony's Day) Sheksday (Rashek's Day) Ryversday (Survivor's Day) Ireday (Ironeyes's Day) Yonday (The God Beyond's Day) I'd be happy to entertain any better weekday names, or crew-based month names that roll off the tongue better. (Except for Spooktober. Spooktober stays.) Also: any audiobook people want to clue me in on how to pronounce "Vinuarch"?

This passage was apparently written after the Recreance, by someone who lived through it, about events that took place before it. I take this passage as indicating that peacetime (i.e. non-Desolation) use of the Oathgates was a thing, and that it was administered by the Knights Radiant. It's possible, I suppose, that Stormseat's Oathgate alone didn't work because Taln was dead at the time*, but then why did Natanatan get to be a Silver Kingdom? Why let the one kingdom whose Oathgate doesn't work play? *: I was on the moon, with Steve!

You just had to go and say it, didn't you. Sigh....

How specifically was the "person who arrived at the warcamps" identified? Does the wording leave room for Taln to swap places with Borden? I don't advocate this theory, but since this question is rapidly turning into Stormlight's "Who killed Asmodean?" I figure no loony theory is too loony.

How many times did Taln almost give in but not? Oh, we don't know? So this whole conversation is Apples vs Oranges Part n: The Pulpening? On a more serious note: I used to volunteer at a crisis hotline. Depression and suicidal thoughts are real things that real people really struggle with, and that does not make them weak. If you know someone that you suspect is contemplating suicide, don't be afraid to ask them about it directly, and do encourage them to seek help. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

If you need a break from soundtrack/orchestral but still want to keep the instrumental vibe, you might check out Rodrigo y Gabriela. Acoustic guitars, played very fast. It sounds appropriate for the a rocky landscape, to me.

Because Sadeas is doing things Taravangian likes, and Dalinar is doing things that Taravangian hates? Because killing another Kholin is a bigger coup than killing somebody else? In some way it's got to boil down to "based on the information available at the time, killing Dalinar seems more likely to promote the desired response." Szeth's killings under Taravangian's direction haven't been assassinations, really, in that the death of the target wasn't the only goal. He's under orders to do it visibly, much as he was when he killed Gavilar. So he's not killing Dalinar because Dalinar's awesome and important, or at least not only that, but because killing Dalinar is supposed to cause some effect.