Observer

Of course, that would only apply if the hate was given context. In time, you'd probably just wind up hating absolutely everything, or having a permanent disposition towards hatred. It's not a position I'd envy, honestly.

I'm reasonably sure that the Board Game isn't very accurate for the sake of gaming balance. A Spinner seems to be able to increase the odds of a favorable result, or more likely and specifically: To influence the likelyhood that they themselves will take an action that will eventually become beneficial to them. When compounding, this basically means that they'll decided to heed the call of nature right before your bombs go off, unintentionally flip any coin just right to make it land well, randomly sidestep to not die or randomly flail to hit important spots, etc. Normally this would be impossible without knowledge of how much fortune is changed by feruchemy. Fortunately (Hee hee) this is compounding. We can just assume that the Spinner's every move will be, of the thousands they can make, the most beneficial to their intent. Emphasis: Their intent. Find something they want, and keep yourself enough steps removed from them so as to prevent any of their many actions from ruining you plans, and then set things up so that their own goals lead them to their deaths. I imagine survival becomes a priority over all else the less and less likely outside forces make it, but ideally you'll have cut off all other beneficial routes by then. They may land every shot they fire perfectly, but this doesn't matter against a team of coinshots. They may dodge your hits, but if you have a steel ferring or a zinc ferring with a gun, their twitchy dodges won't do them a whole lot of good. They will always happen to make the right decisions if they follow the luck, but sometimes there just isn't a winning move.

Metals like Bendalloy or Chromium aren't exactly easy to come by, especially in a broken world. I'm sure somebody else will one-up me on this, but I think we have WoB that TLR didn't have Chromium.EDIT: Aaaaaand the aforementioned one-up has indeed arrived. Nice catch GHM! Main reasons he didn't do it were because he's god and almost nobody's ever heard of Feruchemy, few people could ever connect it to him, and even fewer could realize his secret. Then of course there's Ruin and his emotional influence, making him feel like toying with Vin. After all, he really did sound kind of fed up with these assassination things and felt like ranting in safety. There's the thing about the mists totally screwing him over, and one little point that's actually my own instead of everybody elses: Even if he did have Chromium to hold his luck, it doesn't work like that. Feruchemy is internal, and only works on the user. He couldn't make Vin miss a stab, he could only make himself luckily dodge her stab. At that point there's only so much luck can do, especially if he feels no reason to leave his palace.

She's even hooking up with a Prince, go figure. Heck, the Fairy Godmother even wears robes, and she's just being perceived differently thanks to a broken mind. Seriously, this is brilliant, I love it.

I'm almost 100% sure that Taln was just doing what a 4.5K + year old warrior does when small, deadly projectiles go flying. Knowing Amaram, he'd have taken note if Taln was emitting Stormlight, so it seems to me that this was just Taln's normal state of being. His consciousness is almost all gone, but his subconscious, much faster and more attentive anyways, is wide awake and doing what it does.

And it's exactly this line of thinking that I would like to discourage. We have no idea how Elsecalling works, but if Hoid and all the Elsecaller epigraphs are any indication, it's almost exlusively through Shadesmar. Tell me, honestly, that it doesn't take a massive stretch to say that Jasnah was able to teleport either the knife or a piece of it through Shadesmar, direct it into a nearby body or something for a second or two, and then seamlessly transported it back, and then maybe soulcast a bit of blood onto it for good measure, all while probably not knowing a whole lot about her transportation abilities. Honestly tell me that isn't a bit of a logical leap, and I'll eat my hat.No, that's not meant to be read conscendingly. I really hate text sometimes. Anyways, to Elsecalling, and how ready Jasnah was: If Jasnah had mastered Elsecalling, she and Shallan probably wouldn't be on a boat. They need to get to the Plains as quickly as possible, and Jasnah is scared to death they won't be there quickly enough to make a difference. If Elsecalling was both something she'd mastered, and as quick method of getting around as Teft implies, they'd have just poofed over to it, or at least closer. HOWEVER. There's still the issue of how much she knew. My version of events requires no foreknowledge, she just did it all by reflex. To those who think she totally saw this coming, I ask: Why in Damnation's tenth name she would make a plan that involves leaving another Radiant all on her own, with a bunch of assassins, right after telling her that they were meant to be near one another, and when she could have just as easily run them all through with a blade or, even better, soulcast them to death, or EVEN BETTER, told the frickin sailors about it ahead of time so that they'd be ready and not all die. Of course, I won't say that she didn't, on some small level, have a plan just in case. She's running in/from a dozen secret cults, she's probably got some kind of plan for if they come after her. However, I highly doubt it was specific enough to involve soulcasting blood onto a knife and elsecalling stuff around. Faking her death isn't worth it, if she has a plan, it's one that involves not being inconvenienced much or dying. The very fact that she wound up leaving Shallan all alone and arriving too late to do anything to help tells me that, whether she had a preprepared plan or not, she was caught off her guard and instinct kicked in. There, I said it. TL;DR: Shallan was left all alone, and Jasnah arrived too late to do anything, her huge mask-breaking fear. If she planned any of this or did much at all by anything other than instinct, her plan must be crazy kinds of messed up. EDIT: (Warning, pretentiousness below. Do not discuss this, this is completely OT)

Spinners can be killed a number of ways, but the easiest one is a Morton's Fork. Just back them into a situation where "LUCK DO3SN'T 4CTU4LLY M4TT3R", and screw them over. Remember that Feruchemy is 100% internal, it only controls their own luck. They can't get lucky and have YOU miss a shot or trip, but they can get lucky and duck your shot or trip under it. They can't get lucky and have you not find them. They can get lucky and accidentally obfuscate their location from you, but they can't actually make your bombs fail to detonate. Either set everything up so it's all about your actions rather than theirs, or force them to make a series of lifesaving decisions that inevitably backs them into a checkmate. Either way, they aren't the kinds of Twinborn you can fight without a ton of pre-planning.

Okay, these Mistborn puns are amazingly bad. Have a Metal. (Yay, recycling!)

Alright everybody, let's go over the points we've established, ignored, established, ignored, repeatedly. 1: Jasnah could totally survive a couple of stabs. Stormlight let Kaladin hold his breath for almost a half an hour back when he only had the first ideal down. Jasnah obviously has a few more than that, so her Stormlight efficiency is almost certainly enough to let her not die from loss of oxygen. We've seen Kaladin and Shallan both survive chasmfalls, which basically means they can heal from their entire bodies being destroyed, and for further proof, Kaladin fixes a pair of broken legs in a matter of seconds. If a pair of broken legs, as well as a shardblade wound, can be healed in a matter of seconds and oxygen isn't a problem, there is NO WAY a pair of stab wounds would kill Jasnah. 2: Jasnah was caught by surprise. Jasnah REALLY needed to get to the Shattered Plains, and quickly. Just look at her when she pops out with Hoid, she felt it was important to warn of and/or stop it ASAP. If she knew they were coming and for some reason decided to leave Shallan all by herself via convoluted deathfaking plan, she probably would have chosen to do it in a much more controlled way, so she could actually do what we've established she's terrified of screwing up. She might be annoyed by assassins, but I don't see her throwing away her chance to warn everyone or fix the problem just to get rid of some assassins who obviously didn't even know what she could do, and therefore probably wouldn't be much of an issue any other time. 3: Jasnah has the surges of Transportation, Transformation, and very little Stormlight here. Yes, it's fun to say that she did some complicated crap with illusions or teleporting knives or soulcasting blood or something, but sometimes simple is better. They caught her by surprise, she needed to survive, so she poofed herself over to Shadesmar, where either time was different or the dangers mentioned by Pattern made her stay a while and listen for far too long. I'll admit, this one is more my opinion than the others, but it simply seems unlikely that, if Jasnah really felt the need to run and leave Shallan all on her own, she would probably have found a better way to do it besides Elsecalling and wasting a ton of time.

Though I can barely remember it anymore, I distinctly remember the whole "Let's read Inkheart" think it did with the little ones turned out poorly because we all hated it as it went on. And of course, in the name of beating a dead thing that could have once been a horse but we're not really sure anymore, the Super-preachy Sword of Truth series. EDIT: I should probably just change my siggy to say "All my posts can't have line breaks until edited" knowing how many times today this has happened.

I'd like to point out that interpreting the Shard's intent only seems to work for so long. Brandon doesn't consider Ruin to be Ati, for example. Maybe there was a time when he was Ati, heavily corrupted by Ruin, but still able to bend the intent to his own desires, but he is now Ruin, pure and unadulterated. Eventually there comes a time when there's simply not enough of you left to command the shard. Honestly I can't help but wonder if this is the point of a Shard. They can't function well enough on their own, lacking a Cognitive aspect. Once taken, their will is bent. In time, however, everybody becomes a part of the Shard, not a wielder, but the tool itself. Anyways, tangent. From what we've seen, there's no real way to fight off Shardic influence. If you give the thing up, I actually think that the corruption might be permanent. Like, if Ati dropped Ruin for a century or two, he'd probably still be a complete and utter psycho, his cognitive aspect warped beyond natural repair. Even with the clone idea, it technically isn't even you who holds the shard, it's a copy of yourself. The question isn't whether or not you'd like to hold a shard long enough to enjoy godhood, but short enough to not be corrupted. It's whether or not it's worth it to hold a shard for as long as it takes to fade away entirely, and then a few more centuries to boot. Is the power worth to complete and utter loss of self, even to a concept that is "good" or "better than the rest"? EDIT: And as usual the instant I post all of my line breaks stop existing.

Do we have WoB that Cultivation and Honor created Roshar, or at least the things on it? In HoA Eating rocks wouldn't work if they didn't have the Investure of a Shardic object though.

Alright, I don't want to clog up everybody's threads with my stupid questions, so I'll put them up here for public mockery instead. While reading WoR, I noticed two things that kind of stuck out and bothered me a little, and I was wondering if anybody knew the answers. One: Water isn't one of the essences, is it? Because Shallan turns the ship directly into water, instead of like, air or smoke or blood, despite the fact that, IIRC, Jasnah mentioned that blood would be way easier and more natural that water. Anybody else notice/answer this already? Secondly, do the Parshendi have Soulcasters or not? They're going to for gemhearts, and when they get one they say they can keep eating. The Alethi armies all assume that they have them, because why else would they go for the gemhearts and how would they live for so long when they're cut off? But at one point Navani says that the Parshendi probably aren't nomadic, because they'd have to have Soulcasters to do that, and they don't. Then there's the issue of whether or not they'd even be able to operate one in the first place. So, what's up with that? Thanks in advance. EDIT: For some reason the line breaks weren't there. Weird.

In light of Quiver's request, I think we should cease these Ham-fisted attempts at punnery. I think I'm just a few posts Shai of losing some rep points. However, I feel the need to go out with a bang, and so I will commit pun suicide with the following statement: I can't stop making these puns. It's just too Shard.

I'm almost 100% sure we have confirmation that they're written by either the Seventeenth Shard or Hoid, though it's pretty clear thanks to them using words like Investure and Shards. Not overly sure somebody whole complains about having to dig up Cosmere relics would be the kind of guy to write the AA in his spare time. I can see it being him, but I'm thinking it'll be somebody else. Nahz is just a collector of pieces, not the author.

Of course, the reason her body fat drops off could be related to why the metals are consumed when burned, and why Feruchemy loses a little bit of power when drawn. I don't find it impossible for Lift to be using herself as a gateway, burning through nutrition at high speeds. I guess I just highly doubt that the food itself is turning back into Investure. Also, while I'm digging myself this hole, I also support the theory that Lift cannot breathe in Stormlight, for the meta reasons of overpoweredness but also because it feels like something Cultivation would do. Whatever, that's my very unconfident $0.02

Reminds me of when I Awaken, except I'm screaming at a head.

Worth noting is that the Pattern sketches were also mostly dry as well. Likewise, he mentions being owed a new coat, so apparently he didn't just grab the thing's Shadesmar bead and run. I know it's stupid, but now I'm imagining him taking his awesome multicolor coat and Awakening it to "Find pages" or something in a pinch, and then getting mad as like, a set of gray rags throw him some sketches a week later.

I have no idea how up to date this is, but I recall that forever ago he mentioned a "Conflux" book that would basically the all of the worlds coming together. Considering how he feels about not forcing readers to have already read all of his other books just to access a new one, I'm not sure how applicable this is anymore.

Szeth is going to get all 10 honorblades by the end of book 5. He will then use all of his abilities at once while drawing Nightblood in a High/Everstorm collision, and he will suck up all the investures of both, finally bringing peace and balance to Roshar. Yeah.

IIRC we have WoB that the next desolation would come when they Heralds gave up and decided to return to Roshar. This leads me to believe that their presence on Roshar gives Odium access to it, but their returning to Braize or wherever prevents him from attacking. If so, it would make sense for him to spend his spare time brutally torturing them, since he wants them to just give up and go back already. When they apparently figured out that he wouldn't be able to return properly unless all ten of them were on Roshar, they left Taln behind, who was able to withstand an unprecedented amount of suffering from Odium before finally breaking down and returning. I don't know if we have WoB, but somebody speculated that the Heralds would return when their weakest members broke down, and Taln was apparently several times stronger than that. *Wishing I had quotes on these*

If the Heralds have to willingly go back to Braize (Prologue of WoK), does that mean that they've figured out worldhopping? I mean, it would make sense, after a few thousand years of living and having at least two orders capable of it. It would provide an explanation for any cosmere-awareness that wouldn't normally fit their profiles.

I can't fly in my lucid dreams thanks to never caring for it as a kid, so I rely on Steelpushing and Lashings to move from place to place quickly. I feel the need to point out how stupidly disorienting combining those two magic systems can be, flipping gravity and then Pushing and Pulling around cities and plains.

When the solution to being unable to fly in Lucid Dreams is to ingest Steel.

So there I was, thinking about the Cosmere, when the question came to me. If I had the opportunity to take one up, would I become a Shard? If so, which one would it be? This is the question I pose to all of you, hoping that this hasn't already been asked and I just can't find it under pages of Shard-related threads. If you had the chance to become a Shard, to basically become a god at the cost of your own personality and mind, would you do it, and which shard would you choose to take? Most importantly of all: Why?