Oudeis

We don't know that spheres cannot be used to Soulcast, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that maybe they can.

Nope. The gems in the soulcaster were smokestone, ruby, and diamond. The same ones in the "broken" Soulcaster Jasnah had. The only garnet in the equation was the lantern-gem Kabsal gave Shallan. I do recall wondering about this when I read it and thinking I had come to a satisfactory conclusion... but I must admit, the facts you present do point to an inconsistency. I'm definitely keeping my eye out for this sequence.

I gathered she had to wait a while, days at least. She was bored and desparate for visitors when she asked King Taravangion to allow her visitors. And I don't believe it was right away that both Kabsal and Jasnah came to see her. I've just begun a re-read and I'll watch out for this scene. I do recall it happened just at the end of one of the Parts, and that thereafter neither Shallan nor Jasnah were in the next Part... so Part 3, probably? Since the rest of their story takes us to the end of the book quite quickly.

I'm still very confused by you. We know for a fact that ingesting metals isn't the only way to access their power; we've had a WoB for months that the Southern Scadrians do it mechanically. Someone spoke people thinking they have to ingest it and so having to ingest it, and you yourself talked about people subconsciously putting themselves into boxes; you both made it sound like people were just deciding not to use metal without ingesting it. Now you're admitting that ingesting it is one entire mechanism, but you're acting like it's a revelation that it might not be the only mechanism. More holes in your theory. If a Lurcher could access power just by drawing the letter B... how would that have gone unnoticed all this time? Again, Vin uses pewter instinctively, and has never even heard of swallowing metals. You think her hand has never touched the letter O before? Reen taught her her letters. Shouldn't she have realized that when she was practicing any word with an R in it (like Reen?) that she suddenly had a wealth of Luck? Also, AonDor is basically the opposite of an alphabet. These symbols already exist with intrinsic meaning, and people have simply discovered it. For your theory to hold water, people would have to have discovered the symbols first in the context of their influence on the metallic arts, and only thereafter have assigned sounds to them. If that were the case, how in the world was this entire process ever wiped from the collective consciousness of all mankind? Your ideas make no sense, are entirely unsupported, and boil down to you trying to find a way to munchkin the system.

Hrm. There was time but not, I think, opportunity for the garnet to be re-infused in a Highstorm, yes? That alone should raise questions. Even without the Light being used, it's now been weeks since it was infused. It should have turned dun regardless.

Well. Electrum is internal. We don't know about atium. And steel and iron are external, yet they produce lines only the allomancer can see. Internal metals are... weird. What is is that electrum "pushes" on inside of you that allows you to see many potential futures at once? Hrm. That's an interesting idea. So is there always an electrum shadow proceeding you, but you don't see it until you burn electrum, at which point it splits into a cloud?

The power would be incredibly useful. There's an entire range above what humans are physically capable of doing before you run into the problem of squashing yourself through poor reaction time, and all manner of smaller actions like pulling a lever rapidly back and forth that you can do without having to react to anything. And who says ever power has to be useful? Iron has uses, but no part of iron allomancy prevents you from pulling a knife into your own heart. And aluminum is of almost no utility at all. Duralumin mistings require hemalurgy to have the least utility. I do believe you'll be given a certain capacity to handle the actions you take while fast, but I do not believe this will be absolute. A more-or-less even path, your body will adapt to small changes in grade faster than it might, but if your foot lands on a rock that you think is stable but isn't, your body won't automagically adapt. If you're in a low-light situation where you'd have to go slower than a walk to pick your way carefully anyway, I see no reason to assume you'll be able to do so any faster just because you're tapping steel. If someone fires eight bullets at you in rapid succession, you'll have the physical speed to pick up a hubcap and block them all... but I see nothing to suggest you'd be able to see and mentally intercept them, just from tapping steel.

They indicate that it's a rising house with a great deal of wealth. This question was actually provoked by reading that exact passage; it does not flat-out state whether or not House Harms has existed for a long time in a position of minor nobility, or if Lord Harms was born Mr. Harms, and simply bought his way into being armigerous. Steris does seem to have many distant cousins within the nobility, and remember she is an allomantically powerful line. Neither of which actually proves anything. I wonder. Could the terms of their marriage indicate that their second male child will become the heir to Harms's estate? More specifically, to his vote on the Senate? He seems a young enough man to at least live until his second grandson is past "infant mortality" age, perhaps he could set up Steris as legal guardian until he comes of a certain age. Now I feel the urge to write a story with this scenario... three brothers. The eldest is to inherit his father's title. The second has been raised as the heir to his maternal grandfather, who otherwise has no male issue. However, tragedy strikes the eldest brother, and now the question. The other two brothers will inherit. But does the now-eldest brother take over his father's lands, or the lands he was raised to? Does the younger brother take the vacant title, or take the middle-brother's hand-me-downs as they all shuffle up a spot?

This... what are you saying here? You're making no sense. Your example works on the assumption that the person did initially have to ingest the metal in order to access it, but then you seem to be using it to say that it proves an assumption that you have to swallow it grew naturally. If all people needed was contact, why was there never a lurcher who held a shovel and realized, hey this iron is letting me pull metal to me? Your scenario only works if the laws of allomancy state, metal must be ingested. You cannot therefore use it to prove that people could have invented the idea of ingesting metal and trapped themselves thereby. Vin, for example, has never had anything about allomancy explained to her. She says the flatware is made of pewter. Since she's instinctively burning pewter, why wouldn't she burn it every time she touches a plate?

I had always assumed this was like how the listeners grow crops faster by putting infused Gemhearts amongst them. I don't believe the people are technically infusing with Stormlight, I think just being bathed in Stormlight encourages the growth of life. In plants, it makes them grow faster. In people, it slightly strengthens the immune system. Just my two cents. The difference is splitting hairs at this point; does the Stormlight touch their skin and heal them, or do they technically Invest tiny, tiny amounts for brief moments and thereby heal? However, plants do not "inhale" the way humans do, so it's difficult to imagine them subconsciously choosing to Invest. I suspect it's just the light bath.

Inquivision is weird. It's described in-world as seeing everything in blue outline. And sometimes needs light, and sometimes doesn't, and may or may not be enhanced by allomantic tin.

It makes sense in my head, but as with all things time-related, it doesn't make full and complete sense. Your points are totally valid that it is somewhat confusing, and to an extent I just sorta take a lot of it on faith. However, I also agree with the people up above. You don't have to consciously react to each electrum-shadow, you only have to have the potential to react to it, for it to start splitting, and that's what happens. If it helps, think of it this way. Seeing the future with precision is very, very difficult. Throwing up some confusion about one aspect of it is easier. You don't need to know how to send out a complicated radio signal if all you're trying to do is scramble one. You just need to throw up some random signal for interference.

I concur that Doppler was perhaps not the best choice of analogy for a few reasons. I disagree with the quoted statement above, as does Kelsier. The rule is, if you can see a line, you can Pull on it. If you cannot see a line, then you cannot. Ergo, since you can see the lines from further away for larger things, you absolutely can Pull (or Push) on larger objects from further away (ergo, longer). If two Coinshots are standing over ingots, one of iron, one of gold, they can both Push themselves into the air. Once they get to 50 feet, the iron one will no longer have access to his line, and the only forces acting on his momentum will be gravity and air resistance. At the same point, the gold one will still have the line, and will be able to continue Pushing, for a longer period of time. By your reasoning, when Kelsier had been standing looking at Keep Venture, only seeing one single line for the metal on the roof, he didn't have to pull on it; simply knowing there would be thousands of small bits of metal, he could have chosen to Pull on all of them, even though he couldn't see them, just because he knew they were there. I do not believe this to be the case.

So... if I'm standing next to an ingot of gold and an ingot of iron of the same volume, the ingot of gold will have a thicker line, but their illumination will be equal. Then if I travel away from them 39.5 feet, the width of the lines will not have changed. But the gold line will still be brightly glowing, while the iron line will have faded to almost nothing. In another 30 feet, I won't see the iron line, and the gold line will have faded to almost nothing. Is this your model?

Probably not; you can store memory of the entire event, but there's no evidence to suggest that you can store only aspects of the event. Even if you could store "how you felt", still remembering "oh wow I got stabbed and almost died" would likely terrify you anew. Can repressed memories be stored? While Shallan was still in her fugue state and had no conscious access to those memories, could she have stuck them in their black box into a coppermind, if she were a feruchemist? Would that have resolved her underlying trauma? If you suffer trauma and experience PTSD, would storing the memory of the trauma eliminate your PTSD?

On a logical level, I recognize that I should totally agree with what you're saying. On a rabid fanboy level, how dare you say there's a good side to the horrible tragedy that befall my beloved Jasnah.

Well thought out, well presented. Well done. A few thoughts. Mass must have an effect on distance, somehow. When Kelsier steals the atium from Keep Venture, he says that the roof is the only source of metal large enough to give him an ironline that far out. So maybe... thicker blue lines put off more "illumination", allowing them to be detected (and utilized) farther? Wax confirms your idea that more mass of a metal means a more powerful Push; he leaps off a lamp post once, and expressly says that it gives him a lot of Push expressly because it is so big. (Also, fyi, Vin wasn't hovering over a coin, I don't think. It was an ingot. Which is interesting. If the ingot, presumably many times the mass of a coin, could only be sensed 40 feet out (the height of the Luthadel wall) how close do you have to be before you can sense a coin?

Minor point of clarification; she does need the time to summon her Blade to kill Tyn. She summons a Lightweaving to confuse and distract her the precious seconds she requires because apparently even to save her own life she will not, at this point, acknowledge what's happened. Interesting selective memory. The Lightweaving, which she did not specifically and directly use to kill someone, she simply forgets about, completely and utterly. (Though she is better at it than Soulcasting; perhaps she's not figuring things out, so much as taking the excuse of "learning" to let herself remember what she once knew.) The Blade, which presumably has more traumatic memories associated, she doesn't forget entirely, but forgets many of the specifics, and invents a few specific lies around it. Then, when she's accepting herself as a Radiant and re-learning about the thing she'd initially fully forgotten, she still has the mental block about her Blade for quite some time thereafter. Am I the only one who thinks that what changed was the Ghostbloods? For the first time in her life, people expect competence from her, and even still are surprised at what she accomplishes. She was loved by her family, but never respected. In a letter, Nan Balat as much as admits that he never thought she'd succeed. When she does it, they're almost insultingly shocked that she did. What seems to have helped her heal, given her the confidence to face the demons of her own past, is the time she spent with the Ghostbloods. Even Jasnah, who eventually warmed to her, initially treated her dismissively; not necessarily meanly, but from a presumption that she was just a silly girl. Even compliments were along the lines of, "Wow, I hadn't expected basic competence from you!" The Ghostblood do expect a lot from her. As Iyatil even says, Mraize was impressed by her... and Mraize isn't impressed by anyone. It's almost the first time she's received a compliment that wasn't tinged with rock-bottom expectations. I dunno. Maybe just my head!canon, but I feel like this is a large part of how she finally gains the strength to survive knowledge of her past.

Well... to be fair, I'm certain that if it turns out to be eroded mountains, Mr. Sanderson will write it in such a way that eroded mountains are AMAZING. But I concur. I would not be surprised if it turns out that crem is like (mistborn) Even if it is "just" the dust kicked up from the land into the storm, I suspect it gets Invested and changed (maybe Soulcast?) by the power of the Highstorm into crem.

Thank you! Kay, I have begun with the basic charts. The four basic charts are now up on that page. If you look through them, perhaps you will be able to get a better idea of what I am talking about. I hope to add more charts as I go along, sorting the various abilities, attributes, and whatnot in various ways, trying to find patterns

Thus far, we have seen feruchemical copper store exclusively episodic memory; specific recollections of experiences. Current scienctific thought on the matter suggests that there are three distinct kinds of memory humans possess; the other two are procedural memory (what you probably call muscle memory) when a specific physical task becomes so repetitive that it no longer requires explicit thought; skill at sports tends to fall into this, as do things like typing (when most people decide to type a W, they don't think about it, their left ring finger just inches up slightly and strikes). The last is semantic memory, which includes langauges, rules, and skills. That's why Jason Bourne knows English, and German. He can't remember anything about learning German, but the actual knowledge of the language is stored in a different part of the brain. Whether or not you remember the first time someone told you that red means stop and what a blinker is, you probably still know "the rules of the road". Can feruchemical copper store semantic/procedural memory? I played Heroes of the Storm with my cousin last night. Halfway through the night, he switched characters. For the first battle after that, every time he wanted to stun the enemy, his fingers hit E, instead of Q. If he were an Archivist, could he have a small penny labeled "Muradin", and when he's done playing he stores the procedural memory in it, and then draws out the memory of Malfurion to play Malfurion without trying to use Muradin's powers?

Not why I disagree, and I also don't think you're portraying that scene accurately, but while I'd love to have this discussion in a relevant thread, for now I am going to try staying on-topic. I have decided upon "A-B" for Alloy and Base. Then, rather than Internal/External, I'm calling all the metals which, in allomancy, are classified Internal as "Metal 1" and all the externals as "Metal 2". So 1A means the alloy of the first metal in the set, 2B means the base metal of the second pair. Just because that nicely makes it 1/2 and A/B. Apart from semantics, any other thoughts/questions/concerns? Or can someone disabuse me of the notion that it is impossible to post a table here? Maybe I'll construct one on the Coppermind and link. Is that a thing that's possible? Is there a place on the Coppermind for research, speculation and theory?

I believe it was his family name. Only Sazed knew it, though, so it's not like there were a lot of people who had the pieces to put it together. Was House Harms formed at the Origin? Can Houses arise? We know they can fall; Wax comments that if his House falls, the workers will find other employers. What happens to his seat on the Senate? Is he by any chance in a voting bloc with people who would be willing to give him favorable conditions on deals, just to keep his vote on the Senate?

But when she summoned it to kill Tyn it didn't seem to be a big, revelatory Truthful moment...

Heh. Still, it would amuse me a great deal to have someone who self-identifies Terris, but is an allomancer and not a feruchemist. For all Mr. Sanderson's talk of people like Dox and how vital they are and how you don't have to have Powers to be cool, he has surprisingly few protagonists in any series who don't have powers. In fact, most of them are frighteningly powerful even compared to average powered people. Not gonna lie, it sorta bothers me.