king of nowhere

Still nowhere near enough to accumulate a nuke's worth of power over a week.

your physics is wrong because you are measuring the thermal energy in degrees, that's a temperature. you should be measuring the energy in joules, because the same amount of heat will cause different heating if applied to a big tank of water or to a small pebble. Anyway, even without calculation, his blasts should be nuke-level in power to destroy a whole city, and there's no way he can absorb enough energy from the sun in one week to do that. if the sun was that powerful, we woudn't have to worry about clean energy because a single rooftop covvered in solar panels would generate enough electricity too power the whole city. Also, the planet would be a ball of olten metal for the extreme heat, so we wouldn't exist and we wouldn't have to worry about anything at all. But epic powers defy the laws of physics, so that's not a concern. obliteration can probably store much more than just the amount of energy he absorbs.

yeah, you would say how much he can lift over his head, or how much he can run before needing to rest.. that's why I find the idea of channeling "levels" quite unsatisfying. I would prefer that they used some objective parameter, like how much wheight one could lift with the power, or what would be the biggest size of a fireball they could make. On the other hand, putting those things on paper would have constrained jordan. instead, he simply preferred to write who was stronger than who for keeping consistent. So you got a list like "A stronger than B much stronger than C about equal to D..." and from there to assign levels it is a small step

I thought the curse was that he is now incapable of stopping writing

I don't remember his name, but that guy remained with the bridge since then. he was in ptsd during all the first book, not sure if he recovered in the second. anyway, we know his wereabouts and he is not one of the heralds

I was hoping for some answers, especially about tia and prof's past, but it actually raises more questions. tia's whereabouts are not mentioned, obviously prof will try to kill her as the person who likely knows more about him, but she's too important to die off panel in the pause between one book and the other. seems prof has been hunting down the reckoners, something some epic should have done long since. his former group is the last surviving. also there is no mention of conflux. II wonder how the foundry can exist in the first place. no matter how good its defences, they are no more than speed bumps for an high epic - for some, not even that. and epics have an interest in not letting that kind of technology be available to everyone, so one of them should have destroied the complex. I suppose there is actually at least one epic ruling it, maybe a whole gang. I further predict that one of them has some power allowing him to manipulate other epics; it is fairly reasonable to assume that the "epic technology" is actually the power of an epic who can transfer the power of another dead epic into a piece of machinery. If this gguy had negating powers, it woulld also explain why other epics leave him alone. could be the key to defeating prof, if they could recruit him. I'm also curious on what happened to the rest of the word. countires outside of north america are never mentioned, and everything important is happening on the terrain of the former united states. i doubt transoceanic travel is still available, so does it mean that in europe there are no epic-based technology? are there reckoners too? did society fared better, or even worse? are there isolated towns in siberia or tibet where simply no epic showed up and life continues mostly as before?

there are many references to other media in the reckoners books, so it's unlikely to be coincidence. For example, in the first book there is mention of the "durkon principle", named after the chracter of the order of the stick, and David's gun is made by gottschalk, a reference to the gottschalk-yutani corporation that produces pretty much everything in the novels of A. Altieri. And there are many more similar references and they are listed somewhere on the internet (I'm sure tvtropes lists many more). But it's not because there is a connection. They are simply homages. Otherwise, we should conclude that at some future point Xykon will teleport in and smoke prof with energy drains.

raw strenght in the power is llike strenght in wheight-lifting. it provides a measurable information on what your muscles can do. of course it does not equate with skill in its use.

The easiest way is to select "special bbcode", just left of "font", and there you will find the option "spoiler". Or you can press the quote button, then activate the bbcode option (the one high on the extreme left of the options around your post, three icons left of font. then you manually swap "quote" for "spoiler".

Ah, well, you know how it is, in the movies everytime someone goes in the past to stop hitler something worse happens and no one find it strange, so I was trying to apply the same idea to the american civil war. Not being american, I don't know american hystory as well as you, so if you want something more accurate you can just make your own crazy-pot joke-theory on how stopping the american civil war would have caused something worse to happens. Because, going back to the past with all the knowledge from our time, trying to make things better, and it just works, would be terribly anticlimatic.

the letters appear one phrase at a time, so that they don't make much sense by themselves. go check again your books. Also, you should have made a new thread, sincce this is totally an unrelated argument.

With US constitution forbidding slavery from the first moment, the nations of the south won't enter the union in the first plae, feeling it would bring them economic ruination. Sothe enmity between the north and south sparks much sooner than in the real world, before the north had built its industrial base that granted its victory. And so in that alternate past the south won the war, and forced the north to adopt slavery too. All the american continent would become dominated by a fascist slavist tiranny, which would then proceed to win the world war and subject europe too - forget the marshall plan, those slavers didn't come to liberate, ushering the world towards another dark era. Never mess up with history. Although, on the plus side, there would be no islamic state (EDIT: I am referring of course to the terrorists of the self-proclaimed caliphate, not to any state with islamic religion. I'm putting this specification because some people PMed me about it) , because all the arabs would have been enslaved, and there would be no ebola epidemics, because it would have been avoided by killing off any slave that was withing 10 km of a known ebola case to prevent further contagion. Brandon sanderson would have still exxisted, but mistborn would be recounted from the point of view of straff venture and be the story of how he vanquished magically empowered terrorists who wanted to subvert his rightful rule over his property. and syl would tell kaladin to stay in his place and not rebel.

having memories that you can access sharply at any time and never forget while they are stored is far from useless, even if the modern era of portable electronic memories. I'd definitelly want to store my university exams there; I have forgotten 90% of the stuff anyway, may as well make sure that I can remember it when I need it. since I am a boring normal human, instead, if I need something I studied in an exam I will have to fish out the books and notes about it from my stash of university books and study it again to remember it. How about a vacation, a nice time, some valuable experience? memory fades anyway, you may as well store the memory of the thing in a coppermind while only keeping in your head the memory that you actually did the thing. then, when you want to remember, it will be fresh. Also the "forget" ooption is pretty useful; whenever i reread a book, I could dump all the content of it into a coppermind and it will be as new. The use you suggest, dumping your mistakes to forget them, is actually a pretty stupid use of copper feruchemy. if you forget you did something stupid and regretted it, you'll do it again. also, once you start to do it regularly, you may start to wonder who you really are and if the guy you remember being is really you or just an idealized version you concocted to satisfy your ego. better if you remember. although you can forget just enough to be more comfortable with the memory.

It's not a matter of working ethics, but how much you can actually write. I wrote a book myself (nothing grand, it was some satire, and while several people told me that they liked it, it sold no more than a few hundred copies; I had never even considered publishing it except that one of those guys who liked it has a small publishing house), and some days I would sit in front of the pc and wrote several pages on a rush, while other days I would sit in front of the pc, stare the screen blankly, write some lines then reject them, and ended up closing the file one hour later without having advanced a single word. To write something meaningful you need inspiration, and that's not something you can conjure up. It's not a matter of working ethics. Doing creative work is not like carrying bricks. You can't really control your rate of advancement. I am really astonished that sanderson manages to do just that. P.S. Argent, do you also happen to have a link to the full article? I'd like to read what it says.

do we? I have no idea how that would end. rand is very good with the sword, likely as much as kaladin is with a spear. feels a bit unfair that kaladin had to work hard for his skill while rand got it in a few months because he has memories seeping from lews therin but that's how it is. rand got fighting, channeling and leadership skills for free, while poor kaladin only got leadership and some extra fighting, In fact, now that I think it, I don't want them to fight with weapons. I''d rather see them bash each other with the big neon signs they carry over their heads. you know, the ones saying "CHOSEN ONE" in flashing giant letters. I think rand would win that particular contest, but not by that great a margin.

Keep him away from shardpools!

actually, it takes fairly little. sanderson said that a bead of atium properly used could translate to a few centuries of life. Even if tlr didn't use it as effectively, what he used is still apittance compared to what the nobility used. and my estimate takes that into account: from the 10 millions mined, I ended up with 7 in the trust, assuming the rest was consumed by nobles and tlr. the atium was in small beads. that's how it is found, and it makes no sense to melt it into a single block.

There were a few hundreds of slaves working in the pits at any time (let's assume 200), and each one had to bring a geode every week. that makes 200*365*1000/7 = roughly ten millions atium beads. some of that atium was used by the nobles, and the pits hadn't been in function all the time, but the majority of the atium went to the trust, so we can assume 7 millions beads. That makes 20000 beads for everyone in team elend. When vin burned atium, a bead lasted around half a minute, so that would mean every seer had enough beads to last 10000 minutes, which is about a week. By the way, if we assume 1 cubic centimeter per bead, then all the trust would fill around 7 cubic meters, which is consistent with the size it is described to have. So... either the seers were flaring atium a lot, thus expending it much faster, or the pits of hatsin were smaller than assumed most of the time.

I also agree on that. my problem of unrealistic lack of swearing was with lotr, not with sanderson. also the too-idealistic and too black-and-white characters is not an issue i have with sanderson. but some people may have an issue with it.

I am also like curiosity in that if people are too enthusiastic in something I tend to be contrary, simply because I don't like excessive enthusiasm (unless it's a very sweet girl doing it. exposure to excess female sweetness has on me the effect of a duraluminium rioting) and I don't like too strongly black and white opinions. I don't do it for spite, I just try to balance things. Now, some more details; about the prose, I don't think anyone can criticize sanderson. one may not like it, but not say that he does bad things. Alas, some people don't always see the difference. BUt then, one criticism he makes can make sense: the fact that the characters are "cartoonish" and "unbelievable". That can easily be explained if he is more into "grim and dark" stuff. Those stories where everything is crapsack and even the heroes are not people you would want to hang around with. Some people think that is realistic, and sanderson's characters, which are more idealistic, may sound cartoonish and unbelievable to them. well, my own life experience says that at least the people I met are more like sanderson'ss characters (maybe I've been lucky, or maybe being introverted means that people who want to use you will find more difficult to get close to you and won't cnsider the effort worth making), so I found those realistic and I find the darker novels unbelievable - that, plus I feel like shouting "if you think people arereally like that, why haven't you suicided yet?!?". Plus, I tend to mistrust such people; those who think others are bad are more likely to not give a damnation about them. Anyway, that could be a reason for ssome criticism. EDIT: I'm thinking now that also the lack of swearing could contribute. while I know there are people who are offended by it, let's be realistic, most people swear on occasions, and people from the criminal underworld or people who risk their lives often tend to swear a lot. So that could also contribute to generate a feeling of "unreality" in someone. I have no problems with sanderson, but i remember that "unrealistically low level of swearing" is one criticism I have on the lord of the ring, and in that boook is low enough that at times it challenges my suspension of disbelief. and maybe also the low sex content could contribute. in a world like that of mistborn, rape should be a common everyday thing, people are too busy trying to stay alive to worry too much or do something about it; and in fact it is a common thing, it's just that we are told and not shown (i generally have no problems with depictions of rape or sex as llong as i get the impression that they support the story and they were not put there to be anvilicious or to be fanservice)

What andarist said. Plus, there is technologica innovation and social change going on in the discworld, so for example by one of the medium books a system of long-distance communication with semaphore towers is devised and it progressively spread throughout the books until by the last ones it is as ubiquitous as internet is nowadays. So, that could be a bit confusing if you don't read the books in order. discworld books can be read out of order and each can work as standalone, but they are better when read in order and seeing the connections. A bit like the cosmere, actually, except that in discworld the fact that all those books happen in the same world and some characters are the same is openly acknowledged

So, I can't influence the past by teaching science to the ancient people, and I can't get more informations than I can get by that question and a bit of looking around... I'd like to solve some big scientific mystery, but the past is not reallly the place for that. and i can't think of any hystorical mystery that is important enough to research, or a lost object that is important enough to do this for (actually, I would like to hear the location of the ark of the covenant, but even if i could ask the babylonian soldiers who pilfered it, they would probably onlly know that it was karried to babylonia, but who knows where it was brought from there in the subsequent 2500 years. Plus, there's a very good chance it was simply melted for the gold). So, I'd be left with a question for personal curiosity. I can think of four right now, in no particular order of importance 1) go to the first society who started to consider sex a taboo, and ask them what was wrong with it. My pet theory is that those first people interpreted sexually transmitted deseases as divine wrath and inferred that the gods didn't like sex, but it would be nice to know 2) go to the first society to consider the woman inferior, and ask them why. my pet theory is that at the time women were needed to be mothers full time, since most children died of desease and new replacements were needed, but I would like to confirm it, and also would like to see how from that came the idea that women are dumber. 3) go to the first society who invented the taboo of nudity and ask them what's the problem of being naked. no pet theory here, but I really can't see what would be wrong if we all went around naked all the time (climate permitting), so I'd like to find out how the idea started. 4) go to the first man who used fire and ask him what the rest of his tribe thought about it. When arguing with people thinking science should not do something because it could be dangerous, I often argue that the first man who invented fire was probably frowned upon because fire is dangeroud, and when people say we should not research into something because it's blasphemous I reply that the first man who invented fire was probably told that fire belong to the gods and he should not meddle with it. We'll never know if I''m right, and the metaphorical value of the example is good nonetheless, but I'm curious to know if it actually happened.

I was trying to think of something deep to say, but the only thing that came to my mind was "pit". Thanks for filling the gap for me. This expresses exactly how I feel

So what? it always was the same dress, just under a different light Ok, back to topic: we don't know the reason brandon changed the scene. Some people argued that it should have made him look morally better, and it failed; i also agree that it does not make kaladin look better, but that does not mean the change failed because we don't know it was supposed to make him look better. it probably wasn't. Brandon shows complex moral dilemmas in his books (I love jasnah's lesson in applied phylosophy), he wouldn't just take the naive idealistic view that sparing the villain is the heroic thing to do and put it there to make his characters look better. also he rarely writes black or white characters, there's the occasional one but they all have shades, so it would not make sense that he would suddenly try to make his main character look like the paladin from a child educational tale. So, we cannot know if the change was succesful until we know what was aimed at. which we don't, unless I missed something in the post. I'd say we should wait at least until after book 3 before we can guess. I also agree that it seems a silly change; what is gained? kaladin stabbed szeth as part of a fight, he had no idea szeth would not parry, and no one would have said anything if he just completed the stab before realizing it - or realized it but thought it was some kind of feint. kaladin was also right in chasing the blade over szeth; each of those blades is worth hundreds of men in a battlefield, and humankind will need every resource it can muster to face the desolation. plus, being one of the original honorblades, it is reasonable that it can be used as a macguffin.The only criticism for it was that if kaladin wanted to make the "morally right" decision of sparing szeth, then letting him fall afterwards is hypocrite; but we don't know the reasons kaladin had for sparing szeth, so it needs not be a conflict. If it was, it could be intended as such. But yeah, in general I agree that the change doesn't seem to make any real difference, moral-wise, on the characters. And yet brandon decided it was important enough to retcon, something he's never done before. HE's certainly aware that people won't like retcons. So he must have some real good reason for doing it. Something we can't yet figure out. It's like when a chessmaster apparently put a piece under attack. Yes, it may certainly be a blunder, but it is much more likely that he has seen everything and he has a winning combination if you try to take advantage of the apparent mistake. Don't jump to conclusions before careful analysis. Also, as I said previously, I'm also not happy that he retconned a scene, but it's the first time he does that in a lot of books, I'm willing to give him some credit. P.S. If you play against a chessmaster, I still suggest playing like he made a blunder. probably he's seen everything and you will lose, but if you can't see how he will win and he can then he is the stronger player and he will win anyway, so you better chance is to jump at the opportunity and hope it actually was a blunder. I won some games i totally deserved to lose against weaker players because they assumed my mistakes were clever traps. And I lost some games against stronger people for taking obvious baits, but I was going to lose those games anyway, and I think if they can bait me and I cannot see the trick even after they placed the bait, then they deserved to win.

Just curious, how did you introduce that to people without knowledge of what a shardblade is? Did you have to explain it beforehand, or did you substitute for some real-world priceless thing like a big diamond?