lil_literalist

I've been looking around for information on Hoid for awhile, and I've found some interesting things. He was there when Adonalsium splintered. He probably wrote the letter in WoK (which would also imply that he knows most of the Shardholders personally). He uses Shadesmar to travel between worlds. And now, recently, I've learned that he has slight precognitive powers. This all seems to point to one thing, but I haven't seen anyone mention it yet. Is there any reason why Hoid couldn't be a Shardholder?

I was looking at this letter to see if there was any evidence that supported Sazed being the recipient of this letter. I've decided against it, but I have come up with a new thought. Hoid addresses the recipient as "you old reptile." What if that's not a figure of speech? Hoid is, after all, from the Dragonsteel world. He could be writing to a dragon-person. And it sounds as if he's known this person for a long time, possibly indicating that they were on the same world together. There really isn't much to go on, and I think that we'll have to wait for some time before this theory can be confirmed or disproven, but what do you guys think?

If you didn't care as much about disrupting the canon of either universe, then I'd advise you to go with the characters from the OT, set a few years after RotJ (but before Han and Leia get married), to make it interesting. If you'd prefer to use your own Jedi characters and insert them without contradicting canon, then you'd probably be best off with a random Jedi Knight and Padawan during the time of the Clone Wars.

I would also much rather be a Feruchemist than a Misting, or even a full Mistborn. But there's another topic for that.

"Turn into a laptop forever" can be seen in an early revision of Mythwalker. There's some strange little blue animals that do that. It's non-canon and all (doubly so, since it was written out), but it was once on Brandon's mind!

Well, I guess that makes sense. I rather do like it when it's possible to find two pieces that seem like they should fit together like that. I see no reason why Scoot wouldn't be Susebron's chief priest, especially since he's the chief priest of the Returned that saved Susebron's life.

But if you spike him again, you'll grant him greater powers! Unless you just want to stick him with a non-hemalurgic spike. Just to show that you mean business. Of course, that's not very nice.

Unless I'm mistaken, if you go to your profile, your user number should be in the URL. For instance, here's mine. http://www.17thshard.com/forum/user/2450-lil-literalist/ I'm number 2450.

Said what? What did you say? Tell us, so that we can learn from your mistakes!

Of course, if it's ever telling you to give me money or baked goods, that is actually an order.

When Bridge 4 lined up for a run one time, there weren't any fearspren or anticipationspren around them, because they were attracted more to the other crews. So yes, your assumption is correct. Brandon said that the phrase, "There's a spren for that," is not too far from the truth. This makes me think that perhaps, the spren were split into every aspect of whatever can be found on Roshar. I'm not explaining this very well, but uh... yeah.

I would love to help, but I only joined... 3 days ago (I haven't gone to sleep yet, so it's still the 24th). I won't really be able to answer your questions, but I can tell you about my experience as a newcomer. I have a social forum that I frequent far more frequently than here, which I've been a part of for close to 8 or so years. I'm used to online community. When I came here, I wanted to distinguish myself, and prove that I was more than just a random poster who would post a few times and then disappear. As such, I tried to contribute as much as I could to any topics that were fairly new. I did feel quite intimidated by some of the cosmere stuff, though--especially shards and Adonalsium. Although I have a decent grasp of the basics, I'm not certain of exactly how it works, and I got lost just reading some of the more advanced theories. Although I'm able to understand most of it now, I still feel that anything I have to say in those topics is inadequate, unless it's tangential. I'm a physics major, so when I saw several topics about physics, I was glad that I would be able to prove myself, in a way. On a board full of Sanderson fans, I'm seeking to distinguish myself, and since it's difficult to do so on topics with which other posters are more familiar, I go about it in a different manner. I'm also curious about the waffles. As a side note, I do have some original ideas, but most of them are saved on my computer at home. And the computer that I use for Internet access is not in the same place as my books, so I also have issues with that. This summer, after I do a bit more fact-checking, I'll be releasing my theories.

Precognitive visions? Is this actually something that Hoid has, or are we just talking about his uncanny knack for showing up in places at the right time?

So if Returned can't have children, will the unnamed baby Returned (intended to be the next God King) be adopted by Siri and Susebron? How active will Susebron and Siri be in politics, now that Susebron can speak? I love the idea of Arsteel returning as a Lifeless, though. But would it be possible to make a Lifeless out of a Returned? My gut instinct says no, but perhaps it can be done. It might require more breaths, or it might have to be fed a breath every week, just the same as when it was living.

Pretty awesome, although I'm not sure if I would choose a college solely because your favorite author teaches there. Then again, if your goal is to become a professional writer, perhaps that isn't a completely terrible idea. For now, you can watch some of his lectures online. There's a thread in the "Brandon News and Discussion" section about it.

In that case, it would seem that the fire might be a way of drawing attention to the prayer. If so, then the form of destroying the prayer would matter, whereas it does not matter for spren's measurements. So in conclusion, the two are similar but unrelated phenomena.

I'm a little rusty on my chemistry (ok, remarkably rusty), but wouldn't a completely pure metal have a molality of 0? I realize that on Scadrial, they probably aren't going to be making completely pure metals. But then when you square it, it will get even smaller. And when you divide by a small number, the force will get bigger, which clearly isn't the case. I like that unit of measurement, though. You just didn't evaluate the limit at both endpoints. Perhaps dividing by (1+P)^2 would provide a proper fix. Also, I haven't encountered the MAG yet (although I was able to figure out that it meant the Mistborn Adventure Game). The added effort and ability does indeed make for easy shorthand, but it was designed that way, to be easily calculated. It's good to remember, though, that regulating the force of your pushes is pretty hard, so most allomancers just regulate the time that they spend pushing on something. EDIT: Ok, I checked over my books this morning. The coin-pushing contest between Kelsier and Vin said that the coin hung in midair, "directly between" the two. That means that they were pushing with an equal force, which also means that unless Vin has far more of ability than Kelsier (which I highly doubt), their mass should not matter. Also, I just realized that the (1+P)^2 doesn't work after all, since 1 is unit-less and P is not. However, P is really just a constant times a percentage of how pure the metal is, so it's really just arbitrary anyway. I will eventually do another equation to take into account some of the stuff that we've talked about, I promise!

I chose this signature only partly because I like to keep things simple (although I do like to speculate about plot elements, which are based upon creativity). The other reason is because I have a full, luscious beard. (Sig preserved for future generations: "The only razor I use is Occam's.")

Congratulations! And, contrary to what Joe says, you don't even have to be spiked to be an ardent! In fact, that would be kind of weird and all, at least in this stage of the events of the cosmere... We look forward to your career with great anticipation.

I'm not going to argue against the theory as a whole, but there are a few parts that are incorrect. First of all, the Parshendi themselves use Plate and Blade. There probably aren't many shardbearers, but we know from several lines that they have them. King Gavilar almost witnessed a Parshendi summoning his Blade, so they probably don't want to destroy the shards, and wouldn't view them as evil. Also, Dalinar won several shards, but he gave them to Elkohar, for him to distribute as he saw fit. So there's now humans wearing shards taken from Parshendi shardbearers. And Dalinar speculated that the Parshendi also tried to win their own shards in battle. As for the rest of the theory, go nuts. Since it's baseless, there's not really much to argue against it.

By "gets more out of pewter," you mean, jumps higher? Then yes, I agree. But a normal Thug would also be able to do some pretty impressive jumping stunts as well, if the amount of power gained was directly related to body mass. But if Vin can jump far higher than a heavier Thug can, this means that they are generating roughly the same force. Now, I don't recall seeing evidence that Vin was significantly stronger than other allomancers (except in Bronze, of course). What made her special, apart from being a mistborn, was her skill in using her powers, and how quickly she learned them. So her innate ability with Pewter should have been roughly on par with a normal Thug. If Thugs were able to use their larger mass in order to burn more pewter to compensate for their heavier bodies, then seeing her jump several feet (AFB, and I don't recall the exact number) wouldn't have been as remarkable as it was. We don't see any indications in the books that the burn rates are different for different-sized people. In fact, I would bet that we would have heard something if it were true, especially with regards to Atium. If mass were a factor in the equation, then two coinshots of different weights pushing themselves upwards off of coin would peak at roughly the same height. On the other hand, If those same coinshots pushed against the same coin in-between them (as Kelsier and Vin did), then the coin would be closer to the lighter allomancer than the heavier (if the coinshots were anchored like Vin and Kel). I'm AFB, but I believe that the coin that Vin and Kel smashed up was described as mid-way between them. I think that I'm comfortable with your physics, just not with your basic assumptions. If we can't agree on how allomancy works, then I'm afraid that we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Welcome to the forums, twinborn!

I'm sorry, but your theory is just simply too much of a stretch. Even in the first 8 metals, you only had rational arguments for iron, steel, copper, and bronze. For the others, what you are claiming is just too complex. And there is no reason why in Zinc, Brass, Tin, or Pewter, pushing should effect one response and Pulling another. It would seem completely arbitrary to say that one set of metals speeds something up while another slows it down. Also, you are incorrect in saying that there is metal in everything. Particularly, your understanding of how a brain receives signals is inadequate. Nerve impulses are part electrical and part chemical. But even so, thoughts are so much more complex than a single impulse, feelings even moreso. It's so much more complex that the allomancer would have to do this without understanding in the least what he is doing. And if no one could possibly understand what's going on because it's so incredibly complex that they're doing it instinctively... Isn't that basically saying what we already know, except trying to ascribe complicated, somewhat-unfounded reasons to it? Now, I'm all for the development of theories on how and why things work the way they do. But I prefer exegesis, not eisegesis. I like looking at the evidence and then coming up with a theory that connects it all, rather than finding a theory and then trying to shoehorn in all of the evidence. I felt bad because this post is so critical, but then I noted in your original post that all feedback is welcome, so I feel a bit better.

Another physics topic! Hooray! It looks like the quantum-mechanics side of it has been explained fairly well, though I'll just touch on a few points. When we get down to a quantum scale (atomic-sized stuff and smaller), this is where QM really rears its head. Now, when we talk about not knowing a particle's position, it's not just that we can't measure it but it does exist at one point. The particle's location really isn't determined, and actually exists as a probability. The uncertainty principle, if applied to the spren here, would mean that once you measured a spren and its size was fixed, some other aspect of the spren would begin to fluctuate wildly. And then measuring that aspect would free up the spren's size again. As Chaos said, the spren's behavior is more analogous to the waveform collapsing. (Unless, possibly, the aspect of the spren that changes is not in the physical realm.) Also, most of the "laws" in physics are actually "theories." Although some theories are generally always accepted as laws, many physicists aren't going to say for certain that the theory will hold true in every single instance, no matter what the circumstances. But for laws in classical mechanics, where we can observe things with ease, we tend to call things laws just because within certain guidelines, the theories will hold true. I don't have much else to add to the spren discussion, but I'd like to talk about burning the prayers. Now, is it reasonable to assume that these prayers are actually heard by Honor, Cultivation, or some deity? On one hand, these prayers are treated almost the same way as simple charms, like the ones the bridgemen buy. On the other hand, they are being burned, transformed into fire--one of the ten essences. Is it possible that this could somehow be related? I would say no, because we see very little spiritual significance of fire in other places, and there shouldn't be any reason why this would stand alone. Also, going by that logic, prayers could be written in blood. ... Anyway... Let's just assume that a Shard or a deity is listening. The one thing that seems to separate the prayers from the charms is the act of destruction. Just like erasing the figures for the spren (which is how the two were linked in the first place). But in that case, the prayers wouldn't necessarily need to be burned, if all that was needed was the destruction of the form. The prayers could be ripped to shreds, soaked in water, written in disappearing ink (even Navani's burn ink left a burn mark, so complete destruction shouldn't be necessary), or even eaten. So why burn them? I doubt that there's anything along this line of reasoning, but I just thought I would bring it up for other people to digest. Of course, it's also possible that the burned prayers are just a wasted effort, and that only special people like those who form Nahel bonds can interact with the Shards.