king of nowhere

From rand I can expect it, but I would have hoped at least the aes sedai should have tought about something. Yet I admitted myself that it is partially justified by the fact that they (and the wise ones, and the windfinders) never fought. even the so-called battle ajah never really saw battle, as they assumed that sending a few aes sedai to reinforce the blightborder would be a waste of resources. insteatd they devoted to politics, which was an even greater waste since it didn't rquire any channeling ability. But then, aes sedai being closeminded and not nearly as competent as they assumed is a common theme of the series. From that point of view, all the new strategies introduced by sanderson, those that came into being because sanderson is a powergamer and jordan was not, actually make sense in context: after 11 books of battles, they started t put some toughts on new ideas. The only institution from whom I should really expect better is the seanchan military. Military leaders are chosen because they can come up with new tactics, and even if the damane themselves were too brainwashed to do anything but obey, some der'sul'dam should have wondered if they could do something more inventive than throwing fire and lightning. On the other hand, the seanchan army always did well with just fire and lightning, so that again could explain why they never felt the need to innovate until they found a foe that managed to stand to them.

This. it is probably the biggest criticism I can make to the whole series. the magic in wot is extremely powerful and very ill applied. Some of that is justified by it being dangerous to experiment, but some applications are much more effective than what was done in the books and should have been tought out. For example, for a single channeler against an army, why not make a shield of air all around yourself and tie it? leave it open on top (at a height of several meters, so that arrows cannot hit directly) to breath, then just rain death outside. You don't need fireballs. A thin thread of air takes very little of the power, is invisible to non channelers, and will slice up anyone who hit it. just tie a few of them around the battlefield and watch as the soldiers stumble helplessly wondering if every step will be their last. Asmodean used it once against rand, who saw and dodged them, and nothing more was done with it. The capability to tie a weave is incredibly powerful. For gateways, on the problem of risking to hit someone: even without knowing horizontal ones, why not open a small gateway at a height of 3 meters and see if the area is clear, instead of losing days to travel on foot from the nearest wilderness to where you actually wanted to go? And why did the two ashaman with perrin get tired keeping gateways open, when they could have just tied them for as long as it took to pass? So, yes, the channelers had NO IDEA what they could do with just some more creativity in applying the powers they already had. They seemed like noobs playing Magic and using the devastating wurm because hey, it's a 6/4! and ignoring all the ccombos you can make that will win your game with the 7 mana needed for it. On the other hand, we are nerds and powergamers. We like to think about that kind of stuff. We see problems as games, and games as excercices to obtain the greater possible effectiveness. I'm still somewhat baffled when I spend time with some friends and see that when they play a game they aren't trying to win or to implement the best strategy but merely to spend some idle time. Brr, what a horrible tought But then, people using the power in real life or death situations should have really taken the time to think a bit more about it. I especially love sanderson for exploring the ramifications of his magic systems and having the characters approach them in the systematical way of someone needing it to overcome obstacles. But I have absolutely no problem with balefire. it's just another tool, and no more broken that basically anything else you could do with the power. To keep with the Magic example, a darksteel colossus is not overpowered because there are many more stronger things you can do with the same mana. No, I actually liked the way it was pulled out. If the wot was even slightly less well written, it would have seemed a deus ex machina. As it was, it was part of worldbuilding, and it never felt forced to me.

I think many people here are understimating the prote4ction offered by gold compounding. sure, you're basically immune to normal bullets, but it has been stated that decapitation will still kill you. any grenade weapon that can tear your body to pieces is effectively decapitating you, therefore killing you. also miniguns and other machine guns, they have a high enough rate of fire and impact power that they will not perforate you, they will tear you to shreds, again killing you. a flamethrower would also work, if you are exposed for some time. being hit by a cannon or a missile is definitely death for you. and iif a plane drop a bomb on you, atium/platinum won't help: you'll see the room exploding one second before it does, at which point it will already be too late to reach safety. The powers of mistborn and feruchemist ccombined are awesome, but not enough to challenge the armies of all the world. at least not without considerable chances of failure. you're fast healing, you don't have superman's invulnerability. I don't want to discuss your actions one by one, I'll only point something I see as a fatal flaw here: you claim to do all this for freedom, but then you are forcing your opinions on everyone. you call all the politicians corrupted, but the law of probability states that most of them are likely to be well intentioned. you're killing them all just for disagreeing with you. you're killing every rich person who is influencing the economy. but is there any way a billionaire can NOT influence the economy? and shouldn't freedom also allow them the chance to influence the economy? you'll be imposing your ideals on everything in the name of freedom. shouldn't freedom also mean that a people is free to govern itself, including deciding whether they want medicare or not, if they want foreign aid or not, or all the other kind of stuff? If you are instating a tiranny in the name of freedom, something is deeply wrong. Anyway there will be rebellions, big ones, and since everyone will own a gun they will be very bloody. you'll have to kill millions of people. tens of millions. and they won't be bad guys, they'll be people who loves freedom like you. they want to be free from a guy who assassinated the government that was freely elected and forced everyone to do like him. You'll probably have also to forbid free speech, all in the name of freedom. And remember, hitler was sure he was doing the world a favor by getting rid of jews. stalin was sure he was doing the best for his country. most dictators were convinced they were doing good, but they only managed to kill lots of people for no reason. the world still remember them as tyrants however. That's why I would be afraid of using those powers. I also tought a similar list, adjusted for my own political ideas, starting with "go to the parlament. ask all the people there if they are honest or not. zinc compound and use tin to detect all the stuff like eye movement, sweating, heartbeat, that willn give away a lie. kill those most dishonest, make sure the other moderatly dishonest will be expelled. take the remaining, and ask them if they are competent at their job. you barely completed high school after failing twice? out. you changed university to get an easier grade because you could not pass your original one? out. You're a very skilled medic? that's great, but you should be healing people, not passing laws. out. Those who remain, that are both honest and competent, I will charge with fixing the country". But then it will all spiral downwards. I'd kill all the members of mafia, then I'd kill all the people who did business with mafia, then I killed all those who were too scared to denounce the mafia. I'd kill all the people who won't be sincere in answering yes when I ask them "are you honest?". I'd end up killing half the world population. the rest will probably enter in a war between those who support me and those who are trying to kill me. Now that i think about it, taking down mafia and making sure the parliament is honest is something I could do. But I would have to be very careful to stop there and not go power crazy.

the wheel of time is not a story, it is a world. a world where stuff happens. what we call the "beginning" and "ending" of the story are just arbitrary points in time. life goes on.

WoK will never be converted into a tv series. There aren't enough sex scenes or it. sad but true. Same applies to a movie, but it would be too long for it. as for the anime option, I'm now picturing myself a dragonball-style version of way of kings. It's hilarious, in a trash-movie way. I definitely want to NOT see it. And videogames, even when they have a good plot, tend to turn it into an endless excuse to mow down mooks and do sidequests. I can picture kaladin going around the camp bringing messages and talking to people to get the early sidequests. no thanks. So, unless some billionaire fan decides to single-handedly finance a 10-hour long movie just for the sake of it, I think we're better off without adaptation.

given the kind of information released, I'd rather not partecipate in it and not get stuff spoilered. I'm going to read it all eventually anyway, in the proper narrative order, after it has been properly edited. Yeah, it's totally NOT because I am in another continent and i have no twitter/facebook/stuf like that. Wait, I'm actually glad I'm in another continent. If I lived within 500 km of a signing, I would never resist getting there and trying for a code. and then I'd have to read all the stuff, and I'd regret getting the spoilers. Just like I regretted reading mat's chapter from a memory of light before the book came out but I could not resist doing it anyway. Or reading the first 6 chapters of alloy of law, I wondered how the book would develop for one year after that, i'd have been happier with oblivion and reading the book all at once.

in aol, during one of the first miles pow, he states that while his body regenerates any harm it is dealt, he will still eventually die of old age. the thing is, there is no such thing as death by old age. What actually happens is that every day our body collects billions of small damages to the dna, and while it has some real fancy self-repairing mechanisms, after a while it cannot fix itself as it was before. This accumulation of small damages is what we call old age, and death comes by any kind of illness or organ failure caused by those damages. When someone dies of old age, he actually died of heart failure, lungs failure, kidney failure, or whatever else failure. It stands to reason that gold compounding should take care of that too. Shouldn't miles remain young forever? A couple of obvious answers I already considered and discarded: 1) It has been established gold feruchemy is connected to the cognitive realm. You heal in the way you percevie yourself as healed, and that's why a bullet that's lodged in your body will be expelled by the healing, but a piercing will stay pierced. So miles will get old because he think he will get old, and that changes his self-perception and therefore his healing. To this I answer that no young man really think he's going to get old, and even old people tend to perceive themselves as much younger than they are. age sneaks up on us, not the opther way. so miles should not expect to age strongly enough to modify his image in the cognitive realm. 2) another cause of old age is the self-destruction mechanism that is in our cells and activates after a given number of cell divisions. it is a mechanism that evolved to prevent tumor, and it remained because the extra chance of developing cancer without it was greater than the chance of dieing of old age. Before we developed civilization, almost no one lived past 40 anyway. So maybe miles will get old for this mechanism. To this I answer that there's no reason gold healing should not be able to regenerate cells dead from apopthosis. after all, the shortening of the telomeric sequences at every cell division is not something that is in the cognitive realm, so gold healing should generate new cells with all their self-replicating capability intact. Therefore, I see no reason why a gold compounder should die of old age. This also applies to the lord ruler needing atium feruchemy, now that I think about it.

I didn't find it a criticism towards sanderson's books, but towards some of his overzealous fans. Well, I tried myself to get other people to pick up his books, but I am careful to not insist, as I know other people won't be particularly intersted. Anyway, I found it totally lacking any kind of humorism. It just wasn't funny. It didn't even look like it was supposed to be funny. And not because it was picking on sanderson, I generally like satire on stuff I like (the wheel of time article on the italian unycyclopedia is probably my single favourite article there, and I started enough mock threads in this forum myself). I simply found it kinda stupid and lacking whatever special twist is required for humorism. Too bad, the subject of the joke had good potential.

Well, probably ien felt like he was dead to ashe. yes, the fact that ien supposedly died with raoden would be a bit strange, but probably not a totally uncommon occurrence for a seon to die when his master dies. Also, as far as suspecting elantris, remember that sarene knew next to nothing of elantris before she started investigating it. In fact, even the guards didn't knew very much about elantris and elantrians.

navani would suddenly start being a real jerk towards dalinar, finding evewry excuse to be angry at him and beat him for no reason. All this because she would like him to shout back and show his strenght, but of course she won't explain. Even if it was an habit she picked up in a distant land and there wass no way dalinar could know about it. In general, every woman in love will act most of the time like she hated her beloved. Even in her point of view, she would think like she actually hated him most of the time. women will beat men all the time and everyone will see it as absolutely normal behaviour.

Shallan has a shardblade, it is confirmed by a couple of references. I don't have the book with me right now, so I don't remember exact quotes, but in one she said that her greatest sin was "ten hearbeats aside", while in the other she started to summon it. As for the almighty, we all got the impression that the shard of honor, held by tanavast and now splintered, is what people used to worship as honor. However, I'm not sure we can exclude they also didn't put cultivation into it. I doubt they would know the difference.

I think I'd probably be paralyzed by indecision. My instinct would be to use those powers for good. So my first idea would be to go to the various governments and either kill the corrupted politicians, or force them to resign. The problem is, who are the corrupt politicians, and who the good ones? I have opinions on it, but what if my opinions were wrong? Or, what if the corrupted politicians were actually more competent than the honest-buit-naive ones, and would lead the country to a general well-being while stealing a negligible amount, while the honest ones would lead all the country to ruination by wrong choices? Then I could think to look for third world dictatorship. At least I can be sure those guys are evil. Except, maybe if I remove the dictator the country will fall into anarchy and civil war, and then a new dictator will take power, even worse than the one before. Probably I would reveal my powers (at least some of them) to the world, and then use my gold compounding to donate liters of blood every day. What I like about being a blood donor is that it is the one thing I do that I can be absolutely sure is not accidentally making things worse. with gold compounding I could probably regenerate whole organs, so I could also become an organ donor - the only man to have provided 8 kidenys and 3 hearts all by himself to those in need. Maybe I could work for medical research. Go on, inoculate me with the ebola virus, and then give me this experimental cure that may heal me or kill me faster than ebola. if I am cured, great, the cure works. If not, I just have to tap my gold to fix everything. I would ask to be paied for all of that, so I won't have to worry about making a living. But I won't try to gain millions. I always favored a simple lifestyle and I dislike ostentation and waste, I wouldn't even know what to do with that kind of money. In short, I will try to use my powerws for good, but without meddling in politics because I could not be sure I'm not misguidded into making things worse. Maybe with time I will start feeling I can do something more and try to become a power "to make things better", but I'm not sure I would actually succeed at that. Plus, those powers are cool, but they don't grant invincibility in the modern world. A cannon or missile would disintegrate me well beyond the capability of gold compounding, and even a flamethrower or a minigun would be dangerous. even enough regular soldiers probably would cause me to run out of gold eventually. I don't think I would have the power to rule the world by myself.

I doubt anyone will understand this, and it would be more awesome than horrible, but I just have to say it: any of sanderson's work readapted as sticktale. Explanation: the order of the stick (or oots for short) is a humorous webcomic that parodies both epic fantasy and roleplaying games. sticktales is a spinoff of that, where classical stories are remade with the characters from the order of the stick in place of the real characters of the story, exploiting the way the various characters quirks adapt with their new narrative role. most of the oots storyline is available for free on the internet, but sticktales adaptations only apppeared in one of the published books and as a bonus for kickstarter backers. While oots has hundreds of thousands of readers, and I expect at least a few sanderson's fans to be familiar with it, the books are only bought by tens of thousands people, and that is why I don't expect more than one or two people here will know what sticktales are. But they are absolutely amazing, and the two retellings of classical shakespear's plays are some of my favourite reads. gratuitous advertisment Now, many of you are thinking that there must be hundreds of "humorous webcomic that parodies both gratuitous advertisment roleplaying games", and oots isn't likely to be anything special. You are wrong. this is one of the most gratuitous advertisment most popular, because of how good it is. This is a webcomic that raised 1,25 million dollars in a kickstarter to gratuitous advertisment out-of-stock books. This is not any webcomic. This is something worth checking. Plus, I often praised sanderson's work on its forum, so it's only fair I reciprocate here. I think it would work particularly well with elantris or warbreaker. damnation, if I was the richest man in the world, I'd drop a few million dollars to both brandon sanderson and rich burlew to see it happen.

I don't think the highstorms were caused by honor's death. the way life is adapted to them is something that cannoth have happened in a few thousands years. highstorms must have existed for millions of years at least.

others took the power before rashek, many times. I'm sure we have confirmation of that. And we also got confirmation that the period of the well was 1024 years, so rashek had only taken the power once

Well, I'm thinking that simply the chasmfiendds will start dwindling in numbers, and at some point there won't be enough of them to provide enough gemstones to soulcast food for the armies.

chull an italian, I would approve of that

Maybe the shard of storytelling, that gives you the powers of being a stereotypical fantasy hero and is fueled by saving damsels in distress (the good side) or trying to take over the world with some ridiculously over-the-top scheme (the bad side)

if the sparker is fast enough, the seer will never be able to dodge. dodging would require to move before the sparker moves, but then the sparker would just hit the new position of the seer. there's a level of power over which no strategy can succeed. there's a level of speed over which no foresight can prevail. From the seer point of view, he would probably see the atium shadow split, because his attempt to dodge would change the attack strategy of the sparker. It's a bit like a chessplayer who calculated every possible move and saw that he's going to lose in each and every one of them.

sazed had been storing healt for several days into his ring. we only see him for an hour. As for vayne, the gunshot he complained about with wax was the second he received in the day. and he still had enough left to neutralize a letal dose of poison and third degree burns on all his back. Which means, by the way, that healing a gunshot takes much more that healing poison or burns. it makes sense, since healing poison rquires the enzymes in your liver to work more, and even heavy buruns only damage the skin, which is a fast-healing organ. Anyway, I don't see any discrepancy

I also get very invested in characters, and was sad as three quarters of the main cast was wiped out. But those deaths made sense to the story. they were right. and the story is something I care for even more than characters. I wouldn't mind seeing all the main characters survive, if that was the fitting ending. but it rarely is. in every heroic books the protagonists have to face overwhelming odds, they have to take risks and sometimes make sacrifices. And sometimes they can get away with it, but not always. For example, in the wheel of time I cheered when Lan survived his wound; but if every single character had survived, it would have sucked greatly. It would have felt like a huge deus ex machina. the only character whose death I hadn't apppreciated was siuan, and by extension bryne. because she died for nothing. she just got smoked during a sneak attack on the command post, her death meaning nothing. Even if she got a good closing speech jus before, when min tell her she'd die if she stays away from bryne and she replies what she's doing is important and she accept the risk. Plus, back to mistborn, with a confirmed afterlife, dieing is no different than moving to another city. I like to imagine Vin and elend reunited with kelsier and mare as a big happy family, with the rest of the crew coming over dinners. In fact, as a testament to how much I got invested in those characters, I just got teary eyed thinking of that. So, in a way it is an happy ending. The only thing I'm quite sad of is that sazed could not reunite with tyndwyl. with all that power, he should have a way to at least talk with her spirit.

Do we know the gauntlet contains an infusion point? it seems quite awkward, putting a gem into a glove. a glove should have to be as thin as possible to grant more mobility, it would be a bad place to make a niche for a gem. I got the impression all the ten gems are in the breastplate. Of course I could be wrong, we have no certain indication of where the gems go. If we got confirmation that there is an infusion point in the gauntlet, it would very well give credit to your theory. Could be something to ask sandrson the next ama.

I'm not sure. we know that, if the plate is shattered, by infusing any one of the pieces with stormlight, you can regrow the full plate, then all the other pieces would lose power. we know that a single glove is enough to regrow the full set. it's like the thing had a soul, and I assume it is tied somehow to the cognitive realm. we don't know if there is a minimum size to regrow the plate. It is possible that if you shatter a shardplate to fine dust, by picking up any single grain of dust you could regrow the plate. Not sure how far it can go. If you dissolve the plate in acid, so as to reduce it to its single atomic components, and then dump the sludge into the ocean, would it then be popssible, by taking a bowl of sea water (which statistically will contain a dozen atomes approximately), to regrow the full plate? Is it possible to kill the soul of the armor?

yes, i remember certainly kelsier pushing an end of a bar and pulling the other end to make the bar spin and use it to deflect arrows. So it is possible, which mean a lurcher could use electricity cables as a spikeway. Maybe it requires plenty of skill to do so and that's why we don't see it often. Just like pushing with a small amount of strenght.

If that was the case, I'd quit reading sanderson right now. Iìm pretty sure it won't be the case.