Oudeis

Glad I checked to see if I was being Ninja'd before I hit reply... Kurk hit every one I was gonna. But totally Breeze.

An interesting thought... can you Lash in space? When you're so far from any planet that "gravity" is an infinitesimal tug, if you Lash yourself in any one direction, will you only be going that fast? Would it take a thousand lashes before you started to notice the movement? Is Stormlight spent based on the force, or number of lashes? Does it cost x amount of Stormlight to Lash once, 6x to Lash six times? If it's simply by the actual force applied, no problem, you might have to think "lash lash lash" for several minutes straight, but you wouldn't have a fuel problem. If there's a flat fee just to do any Lash at all, you'd run out of Stormlight before you moved three inches. Or is it that you can do a single Lash to any degree of gravity, it's just that people on Roshar are naturally inclined to default to Rosharan standard? Or since the arcana comes from something invested in the planet, is any Basic Lash going to default to Rosharan standard? If Kaladin were to Worldhop to the Earth-analogue that is Scadrial and tried to Lash Wayne upwards, would he end up with a net upwards force of .4G? (Or that number might not be exactly accurate, depending on which of several possible models handle the nitty-gritty of Lashings...)

...Are we talking about the same Jasnah? I realize that deep down she's just an old softy, but... it's pretty deep. Deeper than "sense that someone is emotionally distressed by me" in the middle of the most important, all-consuming research anyone has done, ever.

Suction cups do NOT operate under the principle of adhesion... adhesion is a chemical bonding of two dissimilar substances. Glue works by adhesion. Suction cups would fall under Abrasion, as the vacuum is simply creating a force holding the two objects together physically (not chemically) and friction does the rest.

First: You can edit a post so you don't have to double-post. Second: I'm going to look into this, because I've discussed self-defense with lawyers before when we were doing a story on Florida's law about home invasion. I don't know what your credentials are, but I know that I've talked about this issue with actual criminal defense lawyers. The laws regulating murder are different from state to state just within the united states, and I have even less idea what they are elsewhere in the world. It has admittedly been years since I had this talk, so I might be getting the details fuzzy, but I'd be surprised if I were misremembering such a crucial detail so completely. As far as the internet can be believed... Choice quotes: "the use of reasonable force" "cannot be an excuse to continue the attack or use excessive force" Soulcasting two to three fleeing men is both excessive, and a continuation of the attack. I know you've said that the fact that at least two, possibly all three men were fleeing is "splitting hairs" but... well, it simply isn't. It's written directly into the law that if your assailant is fleeing, you've immediately lost all justification in continuing your attack. End of story. Also, a few philosophical texts hardly constitutes "common thinking". The majority of Rosharan population are peasants, or at best lower-class workers in a city. A few ivory tower philosophers considering objective morality as an intellectual exercise are unlikely to encapsulate "common thinking." A minor point, but I'm not a fan of inaccuracy.

...Again, where are you getting this information from? What is the source that informed you that he only possesses one of the powers of Allomancy?

Tanavast was the name of the original mortal who ended up taking on the Shard of Honor and traveling to Roshar with Cultivation (Whose name, i believe, we do not yet know). Elithanathile is one of the ten names he is known by in Vorinism. It's associated with the Surge of Transformation. I personally speculate that the ten names correlate to the ten Surges.

Red blood is human. Orange blood is listener. Violet blood is greatshell. It's possible Aimians were also there and their blood is also one of these colors.

Keep in mind, Jasnah was always reasonably private about her Soulcasting. She only started doing it when she grew used to Shallan's presence, so it's not like she does it all willy-nilly. Also keep in mind, immediately following the incident, Shallan was tasked to research the philosophy of the actions, meaning the time when she "didn't see Jasnah Soulcast" was a period of time when she didn't necessarily see much of Jasnah at all. I'm basically on the fence. There might well be a reason Jasnah couldn't Soulcast until Kabsal's attempted poisoning. Or it might be that she could all along, and by a small stretch of coincidence Shallan never saw. I would accept either. While I'm obviously in favor of the more interesting turn of events, not every point in the plot can be top-full of meaning. This is a minor enough thing that I find myself hoping he doesn't turn it into a big deal and crowd out something else that would be even more interesting.

An interesting theory and one I wish i could endorse cuz that would be AWESOME... however... most Rattles come with a moment of clarity and assurety, being spoken loudly and clearly even if the person had a speech impediment or had their torso crushed and shouldn't even be able to breathe. It is the last thing Gavilar says, but he "seems dazed" when he says it, he stutters and repeats himself, pauses halfway through. It would be fantastic if that moment were made even more weird by the addition of a Death Rattle, but it doesn't have the hallmarks of one.

?? Huh? Where does Preservation ever see his own past?

The Honorblades were abandoned in the Prelude and the Stone Shamans have them by the time of the books. Do we know when during all that the Shamans got it? It's 4.5K Rosharan years (6 earth millenia), and for all we know the Shamans only collected the whole set two or three generations ago. Actually as I think about it... this is an odd thing. There were Radiants in the Prelude. Did they have any say in the Honorblades? Were the Honorblades ever in Radiant possession? Can Honorblades operate the Oathgate? Szeth comments in an interlude that he was taken to Urithiru upon being made Truthless. Do the Shin retain a functional Oathgate?

You're judging him by human standards (or, I guess, by the standards of Slenderman based on a superficial resemblance to an internet meme/urban legend which... um, is specious). Ivory might very well have strict morals; most Nahel-bonding spren seem to. They simply aren't human-typical.

"I am... I was... God. The one you call the Almighty, the creator of mankind." - Honor. The last paragraph of the last chapter (before the epilogue) of The Way of Kings.

This is not an accurate statement, I don't think? In most states in America, at least (let's just leave Florida alone for now) "self defense" is not a blanket pardon for killing someone. If someone comes at me with a knife and I empty a clip into his head, that is considered escalation and excessive force, and most states consider it murder. Not to mention entrapment (or enticement as I believe it's called in England). Regardless, only the first guy was self-defense, as he was the only person who carried through on an attempt to harm her. The second guy fell over as he attempted to abort his attack; whether he was still a danger to her is questionable. And it's not splitting hairs to point out that the two fleeing guys were clearly disengaging. At that point, killing them was in no way self-defense. None of which matters to the central point, since whatever Ivory's morality is, it's unlikely to be "whatever criminal justice on Earth says it is".

The closest we've got to evidence that Elantrians are immortal is a line in a prologue that reads like a fable and admits that "eternity ended ten years ago." We know they can die of injuries, and while we don't know who the narrator is it seems to be set at the time of the events of the book, when arguably as little factual data was known about Elantrians by anyone as ever in history. So... you've really just got Breaths, and "becoming a God". While I grant it's a feasible hypothesis, two points of data are little enough to base it on.

Keep in mind, though, that he told Szeth "too late" when he thought Szeth worked for someone like Thaidakar. Upon hearing that he was from the listeners, Gavilar basically did a spit-take. It seems like whatever he was doing to bring back the "listener Gods" he assumed they'd be pleased. Granted, it's possible he assumed the listeners would be pleased, but that the Ghostbloods wouldn't.

?? Was there a time when the lack of him mentioning it was conspicuous? What I'm saying is, why are you so sure that the Hero of Ages not saying "something was wrong with her soul" means something couldn't have been wrong with her soul?

There's a girl; we tried dating in college, and it failed miserably, so we simply became very good friends. She recently got engaged; she's also a huge fan of Zap Brannigan. So on that day while everyone else was posting "Congratulations!" to her Facewall, I posted, "Our love has had to endure your constant hatred, and now this!?!?"

What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

There's a moderately famous series of quotes saying that listeners are not originally of Odium, not originally of Cultivation, and not of Honor. Yet look at the kandra. They always claimed to be of Preservation, despite the fact that their sentience and powers came from Ruin's arcana. The Hero of Ages backs up this claim, basically saying that regardless of Investiture, being "of" a Shard or God is more a matter of devotion and choice. It's not like saying, "This candy bar is chocolate, while that one is fruit-flavored," it's not an intrinsic physical characteristic. It's a matter of viewpoints and free will. So my question. In the three quotes above, when he says the listeners are not of honor, and weren't originally of Odium or Cultivation, is he talking about some internal immutable fact like "this is a Shard who has had an impact in the evolution of the race" or does he simply mean the same way the Kandra were "of Preservation" simply because they worshiped him?

...I find it unlikely that the Kandra First Generation were saying to themselves, "Yeah, but Kelsier, amirite?" It was pretty clear from context that they were talking about Preservation, how he was almost gone, that he had left his shadow of self behind but that it was probably already dead.

You have to close the tag by putting another bracket with "/spoiler" at the end. Also, it's spoiler, not spoilers. My personal contention is that something which rips your very soul to shreds has an impact in the afterlife; similarly, I think that walking around with a scrap of someone else's soul stapled to your own like an elbow nailed to your forehead will have implications for the host, as well.

I suppose I don't have much to back this up, but I've always thought that thinking of them as three discrete phenomena was a flawed model. I don't believe that Vin is nothing but her physical body, and that the cognitive and spiritual aspects were simply shadows. I see it all as one entity. Not like, I move my arm so that movement is reflected in my shadow, but my shadow is a distinct thing from myself. I see it more like muscle, bone and blood. You can talk about any one of the three individually, and some things will affect one and not the others, but they are clearly all one cohesive system. Changing one changes all, because they are all one thing, connected and dependent, part of a single entity, not side-by-side like three bottles on a shelf. Rather, like a cocktail with three ingredients. Within the glass there's technically rum, lime juice, and simple syrup, no more than physically mixed and technically separable, but together clearly making a single daquiri. Just one man's opinion.

It's a point I mention in some of my Fedik theories. Since the book is called Shadows of Self and the mist spirit is apparently a Shadow of Self, I have hopes that we'll learn more about the black mist spirit from Alendi's time.