ILuvHats

He spared the nobles, but it wasn’t because he cared about them. He did it for Vin, since she cared about Elend (I think I’m thinking of the same scene as you?). And as for the skaa, I don’t think he cared that much about them as individuals. I imagine he sees them as manifestations of what he suffered at the hands of the Final Empire. So instead of caring about their own stories and what they’ve gone through, Kelsier sees them more as testimonies to his personal suffering. That’s not to say there weren’t skaa/half-skaa like him that he considered friends, but in general, everything is filtered through his own ego. It’s important to note that psychopaths aren’t social islands; they can form emotional bonds with people, and I think it’s obvious that Kelsier cared about some people, including Vin and of course Mare. But psychopaths have the ability to switch their empathy on and off at will. It is incredibly easy for them to dehumanize someone else in their mind, especially people they don’t know. We see this in how easily Kelsier kills noblemen. Yes, he has an obvious reason to hate them, and he’s not alone in his hatred, you’ve got Dockson and plenty of other skaa. But Kelsier is flippant about others lives that I don’t think other characters can rival. It’s hard to see this in Mistborn 1 because of the reasons he has for hating nobles and the apparent altruistic motivations for supporting the rebellion, but the hints are there. And this is on top of the explicit WoBs already mentioned. Honestly, it took me a while to see Kelsier as something other than a selfless hero, but I’ve been convinced after looking at the wobs and rereading Mistborn.

One thing I don’t think I’ve seen much talk of is the use of ground transportation in the cognitive realm. If you could get a train system there, especially one that runs on fuel found in shadesmar, you could suddenly make a journey in 2-3 weeks that would normally take half a year. I don’t think FTL travel would go too much faster than that. Technically it could, but I imagine that Brandon would still want traveling between planets to be a bit of a journey, something taking longer than a day or two. Obviously, cognitive realm trains would require an insane amount of infrastructure, and other modes of transportation, like air travel or trucks, are much less fuel efficient. But time wise, it seems to me like a close match for FTL.

I remember one of my first posts was that I thought Wayne was a world hopper. My evidence was that at the beginning of Shadows for Silence, Daggon sees a man and notes that he had "a hat." Those were the good old days...

One theory that @Child of Hodor alludes to is that Liss is actually Chanarach. There's not too much to go on except that she seems to be a very unique character and was present on the night of the assassination like many of the other Heralds. Plus, her current occupation could be a corruption of the Dustbringer attributes, Obedience and Bravery. After all, assassinating people in the dark rather than facing them on the battlefield could be considered cowardly, and obeying the highest bidder is extremely different than obeying somebody because you trust and support them. It's hard to say though considering how little we know about the Dustbringers.

I'll DM you what I have so far. I will say that I don't necessarily see the theme as it's own piece necessarily. As in, maybe it would be better to incorporate the theme into other pieces that are based on scenes or events in which Vin is active, kind of like what Black Piper did with the Knights Radiant theme. Who knows though, I'll have to see where it goes. You know, at first I didn't believe in you. But then I looked it up, and I couldn't find any composers other than Richard Williams and Michael Bahnmiller who worked on the album. Huh. Guess I learned something new.

I saw it finally! And it was so much better than I hoped. I was a little reticent because of I wouldn’t place it in my top 5 marvel films personally, but it definitely held its own. IMO it lost a little momentum after the half way point, and the final fight scene wasn’t as tense as I might have hoped, but it was still a very solid story. And Samuel L. Jackson had me cracking up a few times.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! WAS IT GOOD?!! I actually haven't seen it yet, but I'm going to on Saturday. What was your opinion of it? I'm afraid to look at Rotten Tomatoes, because that might bias me towards the film.

Yeah, I know you’ve been coming out with Mistborn music for a while @Firerust. I’ve listened to most of what you’ve put on the shard . If you really want, I can DM you what I have, but be warned about its quality. I just jotted down the essentials on GarageBand really quick so I don’t forget it, so it’s super rough. It would be awesome to collaborate, but anything serious would have to wait until mid June. I’m planning on using Apple Pro Logic X to arrange the pieces, but I have literally no experience with it, so I’ll need 2-3 weeks to get the basics down. And I won’t have that kind of time until the end of the school year.

I've been thinking about composing a Mistborn soundtrack for a long time now, ever since the Kaladin album really. I haven't gotten around to it (hopefully I'll be able to this summer when I'll be less busy), I've just been letting ideas bounce around in my head. Then yesterday, I hit upon a really good theme for Vin, and its getting me pumped for this upcoming break.

It’s scary how long your post is.

I forgot this thread existed, so I didn’t buy the books today exactly. More like a week ago. But I bought the first 2 books of the Lightbringer series, and I have to say I have a new 2nd favorite author. I’d been meaning to look into Brent Weeks for 6-7 months now, and I finally got the Night Angel trilogy I’m January. I burned through that in about 2 weeks and loved it, though the last book felt a little rushed. I was aware he had a second series, but I also knew that if I started it, I wouldn’t be able to put it down, and I had midterms coming. So I waited for 2 months, then started digging in. And it is so amazing.

Wow, she’s good. She did these by hand?

I just found out today that my boss used to be a huge fan of Brandon back when he first started getting his books published. He hasn't read any cosmere books since 2012, but apparently, he was involved enough that he's in the acknowledgements of Warbreaker under his username, which I'm trying to remember right now... I know it started with a "D." Demented Yam maybe? Anyways, that was a funny coincidence. I can't believe it took me this long to find out.

This one’s crazy, but it’s been a pet theory of mine ever since I cooked it up. I never shared it because it’s pure insanity, though strangely enough I originally believed it was legitimate for Agee seconds until I thought through it more thoroughly. Rayse isn’t Odium’s vessel, at least currently. He gave it up prior to the expulsion from Ashyn to someone who he knew would serve his interests, and hid the exchange from people who actually knew him, which is why Hoid still believes he is Odium’s vessel. And then, Rayse infiltrated Honor’s own chosen heroes. That’s right, Rayse is a herald. Or to be more specific, Taln. That’s how he was able to kill Tanavast. As an insider, he was able to provide the current holder of Odium with an opportunity to shatter Honor. And then while the heralds thought he was being tortured on Braize, he was instead in a hot tub drinking martinis. Okay, I threw a few extra ideas in there so now there’s a bunch of chronological contradictions, and I’m too lazy to revise it. The original idea was that Rayse and Taln switched places, but I expanded it over the course of posting this.

Gigantic crustacean turtles. Turtle crabs. Almost sounds like an actual animal.

Well, you’re pretty much straight on. Great shells are basically crustaceans that evolved to a level of complexity comparable to modern day mammals. One interesting thing I’d add is that the various blood coloring for the great shells and the Singers have analogues on earth. For example, a lot of crustaceans, like lobsters, horseshoe crabs, etc have blue blood. If we’re looking for violet blood (what greatshells and other Rosharan creatures like axe hounds have), apparently some rare marine invertebrates have it due to the protein hemerythrin. And like Singers, female cockroaches have orange blood, though only when they’re pregnant.

Well, Szeth will be the flashback character for SA 5, so he’ll likely be alive until then. But yeah, the way characters reacted to his arrival was definitely a weakness in OB. I distinctly remember Jasnah thinking about him for 2 seconds during the battle for Thaylenah, refer to him as the “storming assassin in white,” and then move on. No anger at seeing the murder of her father, in fact, no emotions at all towards him at all, really. And yes, she was in the middle of a battle, but I still expected a stronger reaction than what we got. The only other time a main character thinks about him is Dalinar in Urithiru when Szeth is guarding the door. And again, no real reaction. It’s just another weakness in OB because the word count was too high and Brandon had to cut stuff. I really hope he’ll step up his game in SA 4 when it comes to deciding what arcs/plot points to include given a limited word count. Because each book has gotten longer as Brandon juggles more and more plot points, and at OB he hit a point where he’d introduced too many to deal with properly in one novel. So hopefully he’s aware of the problem and will be able to hit a hard reset diving into the next one.

But dragons have metallic silver skin, or eyes if they’re in human form. They’re not metallic gold colored either. So IMO the Elantrian theory has about as much merit as the dragon one when it comes to colors. Though I still like the idea of dragons better, especially because there’s more symmetry to the Iriali’s journey starting on Yolen. The correlation between the names is likely coincidence. Iri comes directly from the word Iriali, which doesn’t seem to have any Aonic roots.

All I can say is have faith in Brandon. We just came to 2 opposite conclusions when considering the facts about Dalinar, and it really comes down to I think he’s a good enough writer to avoid this pitfall, and you don’t think he is. So... uh... See, now I’m curious why you think Brandon is a poor writer in this respect. Did you see other people with this opinion on the shard or Reddit? Did you just come to your opinion by reading his books? Was there a book in particular that solidified your opinion of him as a writer? As a person who thinks Brandon is probably in the top 5 fantasy authors out there, I’m just trying to understand your perspective.

About main characters dying... I disagree with @CrazyRioter that Kaladin is the most likely to die by the end of arc 1. The fact that he's such an archetypal character, the one you'd expect to sacrifice himself for the greater good, makes me think he'll survive. Or, alternatively, he'll die in disgrace, but that would piss off a lot of people (including me), so him surviving seems like a good bet. Dalinar should live through book 5 as well. He's not really set up as the type to sacrifice himself, either as a surprise to readers or not. I'm not saying Dalinar wouldn't sacrifice himself if necessary, but he does a lot more alive, leading the war effort and UNITING than he does dead. Plus, IMO he's been set up to be heading towards greater things. His weird visions of light, the Nohadon vision, they are all indicating that he's headed to become something greater than a man. Him dying before that happens would be a huge writing no no, since none of our expectations as readers would be met, and Brandon's a better writer than that. And him dying in a sacrificial way after Ascending or something would be really similar to making me think that it needs to be something different from that. So, I'd again bet that Dalinar will likely survive arc 1. There do need to be casualties among the main protagonists though to maintain the stakes of the story, which leads us to the question of who's gonna die. I have to admit I've always liked the "Taravangian sacrifice" theory, that after being placed in a position to betray Odium in OB, he'll eventually save everyone but die doing so. Of course, he's not really a main character though. On that note, I could see Adolin dying. And yes, that would remove one of the only non-radiant POVs we have. But his death would have huge ramifications for other characters, and honestly, it could fit where his arc seems to be headed. He's the "normal" person caught up in this global conflict. It calls to mind when Adolin thinks to himself how the world has become a place of gods and radiants, and he's not sure how he fits into this new world. And, what happens to normal people in catastrophes? They die. "Normal" people are often the victims, because they can't control what goes on around them. So to me, Adolin's number 1 on my list of most likely to die before SA 5.

I’m not looking to become one, but I’m curious.

This has probably been done before, but considering recent events, I thought I might as well.

You should definitely give it another try. Despite being the weakest book in Mistborn Era 1, there was a lot I loved about it. Elends arc and the kandra mystery were both fascinating, and the ending was some insanely genre bending stuff. Plus, I’ve found that I usually enjoy slower books more on rereads.

You've probably heard this before, but it bears repeating . Sleep a minimum of 8 hours the day before, eat a breakfast with some protein, and take a break every 2-3 hours or so when studying to increase productivity. Now I'll actually give some useful advice. It's kind of obvious, but try to avoid ever making the same mistake twice doing practice problems. If you get something wrong not because of some silly errors, which always turn up occasionally, but because you don't fully understand underlying concepts or didn't know them, look up the information you need to know and do a few problems of the same variety until you're confident. Also, it's good to keep a list of these concepts just as a refresher before the exam. You don't need to write down all the equations necessarily (in the case of math), but simply put down the name of the topic, which will hopefully trigger your memory of the problems. Also, depending on the type of test you're taking, there are little shortcuts you can take advantage of to shave off a few minutes, which is important if you're not finishing on time or are cutting it to the last second. For example, in the ACT science section, some of the problems provide a lot of information that you don't need to read. If you can recognize these types of problems, you can skip the reading section and just refer to the graphs/diagrams when answering. There are other tricks too, many of which are taught in test prep classes. However, I wouldn't advise taking a preparatory course, though of course it couldn't hurt. I never found them that useful. In my experience, you spend a lot of time practicing exams that you could do on your own time, with little bits of advice sprinkled in, most which can be found online. If you're bad at self-motivating yourself to practice (like I was), it can be helpful, but otherwise a waste of money. For topic specific advice, I'll focus on the ACT since that's what I took, but some of it should be applicable to other standardized tests. English: I'll be honest, I've got nothing for you here. A lot of the questions can be answered by answering whatever sounds the most correct, unless English isn't your first language. Review all the basic grammar views, but that's all I can think of. Reading: Don't skim the reading section. Just don't. It's tempting to get to the questions as quickly as possible, but it's more important to thoroughly understand what the author is talking about. If you realize you just skimmed a few sentences and don't remember what they talked about, go back and read them, then continue. If you have a comprehensive view of the essay, even if you need to refer back to the text you have a general idea where certain parts were talked about and its easier to find information. So, go as fast as you can, while still understanding it. Science: Not too much to say here either. As you probably know, they give you all the information you need. You just need to be good at reading graphs and logicking your way through analyses. Math: This is true for all the sections, but most important for math. If you spend more than a minute on a problem and you're not making any progress, make a light mark on your answer sheet so you can come back if you have time, and skip it. Sometimes, looking at other problems will remind of you some concept, some of the one's you skipped might click when you come back to them. Next, remember that for the first 20 or so questions, speed is key. The questions are easy enough that almost everyone's going to get them, so your goal is to finish them as quickly as possible to give yourself as much time to do the harder ones coming later. Also, when you come across those problems you really have no clue about, don't agonize over trying to guesstimate the answer. By that, I mean looking for that bit of information in the question that makes you think that answer is probably more right than the others. Spend maybe 15 seconds trying to find some link, then just put down a random answer and move on. You probably know a lot of this already, but hopefully there's something in here that'll help.

Storm it @Calderis. Got ninja’d. Edit: Stormit stupid mobile version! Double posted.