Necessary Eagle

Paalm's story seems to me to be a deconstruction of the trope of the Fridged Woman. In AoL, Lessie is presented as your Standardized Fridged Love Interest, in the same way that Steris is the Sitcom Unsuitable Fiancee and Marisi is obviously going to be the Real Love Interest. Lessie gets through all of one prologue before she dies tragically and her purpose in the story is pretty much to drive Wax in the direction of the plot and give him something to angst over. Then comes Shadows of Self, and we find out she was meta-fridged. Writers are often accused of giving female love interests little characterization beyond "she loves the Hero"; "Lessie" (as opposed to Paalm) literally only exists for Wax. When Lessie refuses to get Wax back to Elendel-- in a sense, when she refuses to further the plot-- God himself kills her off to motivate the hero. Except that while Lessie is dead, Paalm is still there to take back her agency. She still has a voice. And she is pissed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she's not really a villain or something-- when your business card says "serial killer", it's time to think hard on your life decisions. I'm not even saying Harmony was wrong in the scheme of things. But as awful as Paalm's actions end up being, her rage is very understandable. I don't know if Brandon did this on purpose, or it just came out that way. But every time I read Era Two, I can't help but see Lessie as standing in for fiction's silenced, disposable women.

Okay, good to know! Is there a way to tell someone has Snapped, though, if they haven't had access to their metal? Again, this might be some stupid obvious thing I'm forgetting.

Because if you're not a Pulser, swallowing cadmium is just going to murder your kidneys. And society at large thinks Pulsers are useless, anyway. So why would someone try burning it in the first place? Is there some stupidly obvious way to tell an allomancer from the outside that I'm forgetting? Because if not, who goes,"Hey, I should eat this horrible poison on the off chance that I have one of the lamest superpowers on Scadrial!" (I suppose you could ask that about a lot of Allomatic metals, but cadmium is the nastiest one on the chart, right? And with a lot less payoff).

Well she can't keep her malen body from growing a beard. It's smaller than a normal malen beard, but she still has to shave.

All right, it seems unanimous! @AonEne I didn't use the term "asexual romance" because I don't think it would be exactly a 1:1 correspondence with human experience... but it's probably close enough, right? (I'm aroace, so I have no idea what goes on with human "mateform", let alone singer stuff).

Putting this is the RoW sections because Rlain/Renarin and Kaladin/Leshwi. Okay! So, Singer sexuality. In every form but mateform they pretty much have no sexual desire whatsoever. Also, no one wants to go into mateform because "Yay, mateform, my favorite!" You go into mateform (at least on purpose) for the sole purpose of having children, after having found a person of the opposite sex who you think would make a good partner. At least, that's the overwhelming impression I got from the Singer/Listener POVS. Which makes me wonder if Renarin's crush on Rlain can even be reciprocated. Sure, it's implied that in mateform Rlain is gay, but in warform he has no interest in either dudes or ladies. I mean, if it was a het human/singer pairing, I could at least see the singer saying, "this person seems like she would make a good mother, I suppose I might as well make halfie babies with her." But Rlain doesn't even have that excuse to go into mateform. On that note, for all the people shipping Kaleshwi: Leshwi is almost certainly in a malen body at the end of RoW. As her days of bodysnatching are at an end, well, unless she becomes a Radiant and transitions, she's stuck as biologically malen. So again, no possibility of making crabhuman babies, no reason she'd go mateform with him. If Fused can even do regular forms. Some thoughts of how your favorite ship possibly could get around this: -maybe malens and femalens have something akin to asexual romantic feelings? It's possible they don't choose their mates solely for practical reasons. Not like we've seen any choosing happen, can't disprove anything. -shenanigans involving a singer going out into the storm with a partner and then ending up not compatible. I mean, that's kinda what was implied to have happened with Rlain, right? So you've got a mateform dealing with *urges*, the next highstorm is weeks away, there's a meet-cute with another mateform or a human, hilarity ensues... -adventurous singer willing to "experiment" with their human best bud

I think normally this sort of thing would go in a general chat forum, but it's RoW spoilers. So it has to go here, right? Dunno why I'm suddenly having Stormlight dreams when I've been on a Mistborn kick the last week or two, but there you go. Odium crashed a formal Kholin dinner, in person in a physical form, and no one could really do anything about it because that happens in Mistborn a lot politics. So Odium was sitting next to Dalinar, and awkwardly chatting him up. Odium said, "So, just to clarify, this contract says that if I kill you I get to keep you, correct?" And Dalinar said, yeah, that was how it went. And then Odium just took this huge sword out of nowhere and stabbed Dalinar in the chest, sheath and all. And Dalinar died (reader: "Noooooooo!") and Odium possessed his corpse.

This might be the funniest thing I've seen all week: a podcast host took two people who knew nothing about Mistborn, showed them TFE fanart, and asked them to reconstruct the story. Featuring some very alternative history, with bonus hilarious nicknames. Sanderlanche Podcast: Christmas Special

Asked and answered. Thank you, @Weltall!

warning: I've put what I can in spoiler tags, but there's unavoidable Dawnshard theorizing. enter at your own risk. I've been trying to figure out what changing text has to do with the power of Ruin, specifically. I'm mean, it's a great plot twist, it's just that it's been bugging me that it's not particularly Ruinous. And that only thing that comes to mind is that Ruin = Change and Preservation = Stasis. Which would imply one of two things: 1. Ruin can change words because change is his shtick. Or rather [Dawnshard spoilers] Which would imply that insert-your-grouping-here can do the same thing-- my money's on Cultivation, Invention, and Ambition, personally. But in any case, there's other gods that can cause typos in your forum posts. 2. Preservation can't change words because stasis is his shtick. So everyone but Preservation can mess with your books, or maybe everyone but [Dawnshard] Again, that leaves a lot of Shards that can forge a check. So do you think my logic is sound here? And if so, why have we never seen this dirty but incredibly useful trick elsewhere? Did it use to be there and then it got... removed?

You can always PM me and see whether or not we can get ideas flowing.

I wish I was one of those people who could make the inspiration spren show up on command, because I want to read that story, too.

We'll always have Shallan.

Hoid's 100% Correct true Cosmere Facts Hoid decides to have a bit of fun with his new penpal Harmony. Full Mistborn & Stormlight spoilers. My first-ever Cosmere fic, inspired by this thread. Feel free to comment with your own Correct True Facts.

Snack confirmed as missing Shard.

I don't remember everything from my first read, I think I saw someone reccing Mistborn on a message board and I decided to check it out.

The other one, too, forgot the name atm

That's weird, I could have sworn it was there... I blame Ruin.

On the subject of Lift: remember, she couldn't use Abrasion. So it's not as simple as just "she runs on Lifelight".

Unless he becomes a human Fused and comes back. Again and again and again. Sweet dreams!

I didn't even know it was a trope.

Sja-anat got away with helping Team Honor because Rayse knew that she was betraying him, but he couldn't prove it. So as long as he didn't catch her, she was able to play I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know games with Odium. Now that the new Odium has that proof, firsthand. And he's decided he's in this to win. I think he's going to keep a much closer eye on S-a, and she's going to have to actually work against the Radiants. And they're going to keep sort-of trusting her because she's been sincere until now, and they're going to fall into a trap.

Lezian getting shanked by El is up there with Adolin stabbing Sadeas in terms of cathartic death scenes. "Enjoy this final Passion, Defeated One!"

I thought smart!T was using dumb!T to trick Odium.

His name was listed in the part 5 POV groups, I think. But yeah, I expect to see him as a grownup in the second half.