HSuperLee

The Lord Ruler was just that powerful of a Mistborn. He represented the theoretical apex of that particular branch of power, even without cheating. He didn't need duralumin to pull off those effects, he could do it with a normal burn.

I half agree with Sythrin on this. I was profoundly uninterested in Starling's part of the story and was disappointed whenever the book switched to her perspective. Dusk's story, however, had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Just watching him try to survive in a new and hostile environment, experimenting and making discoveries, was exhilarating. I would have liked the book more if it had been longer and we'd seen more of Dusk's exploration before he encounters the Scadrians. I think we were supposed to be more endeared to Starling's crew more than I ended up being. Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I think I'm getting tired of the "ragtag bunch of misfits become a found family" trope.

Lifeforce is generally quite strange as far as epics go. His corruption is also very different from what we see in the original Reckoner's trilogy. As far as gifting, you'd think that if he was a normal gifter then he'd be providing his troops with the power to transfer their injuries to people they're touching, but instead they get the power to transfer their injuries to people Lifeforce is touching. As I said in a post years ago, other gifters act like a battery where they can give someone, say, 5% of their total power and then that slowly gets used up by the giftee until it fades away whereas Lifeforce acts more like a relay where people can use his power as if they were him. My point is just that he seems to be the exception to many rules, not just the one you mentioned. With this in mind, my conclusion is that he's so weird because of Deathrise. Unfortunately, we might never get any elaboration on what Deathrise is or how it interacted with Lifeforce's powers, so anything beyond that is mere speculation.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to this, I don't have as much time as I'd like to indulge in the forum anymore. I'm not so convinced it is in this particular context. Since the general topic is on romantic relationships, it can be assumed that we're discussing Eros unless otherwise stated. Yes, I mentioned more types of love than that (mainly Storge) but that was as a general point of demonstrating that love and abuse can (unfortunately) coexist. I anchored that argument in the idea of love as an emotion, that is to say, what we often call "falling in love." I then proceeded to contrast that with the idea of love as, "willing the good of another, and the greater good more than the lesser good," which I believe is a definition that can apply to all forms of love, being the core trait that they all share. Yes, that can take various forms, but whether Storge, Phileo, Eros, or Agape, it all comes down to two elements: the emotion of "being in love,"--which I would say, defines the four types of love as affection, friendship, romance, and reverence respectively--and the deeper commitment of love which is willing the good of another--I prefer the term "charity" for this to try and avoid confusion--which is the core of the most noble form of all four. This discussion is mostly on the two levels of Eros, being the emotion of Eros and the charity of Eros. Sure. Responding to your first point actually helped give me the language to explain what I was trying to say in my previous post more clearly. As I was saying, I believe the core of love is charity, which I am presently defining as, "to will the good of another, and the greater good more than the lesser." My previous argument was that a relationship needs to be more than just about the emotional part of love to be good, they also need to contain the charity of love. My previous post argued that the emotion of love can exist without the charity with my example being relationships where the emotion is present alongside abuse. Alright, that preamble aside my assertion is that a romantic relationship needs some manifestation of charity in order to be good. This means the relationship needs to be in some way working towards the good of all parties involved. "The good," here is a complicated term. I believe in virtue-ethics, not consequentialism or deontology, so my definition of "the good" can be understood as that which demonstrates prudence, courage, temperance, justice, faithfulness, or hopefulness. For those of other ethical frameworks, you'd need to rework this idea with your sense of what is ultimately good. Anyway, this means that for a relationship to be good, I'd argue it needs to promote virtue in its participants, and prefer the development of greater virtue over the development of lesser virtue. As a consequence, this means I don't just condemn the lion-share of inter-species relationships in fiction, which are often written purely based on the emotions of love and neglect the charity, but must also condemn many same-species relationships in fiction for the same reason. But I'm merely acknowledging with that statement a possible objection that people may bring up which I find irrelevant. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. It sounds like you're saying that the first step to a deeper (read: charitable) romantic relationship is often the emotion of love. I agree, but its rather annoying when authors present the emotions as if they're the end goal, whereas I would say the chief benefit of the emotions of love is that they encourage one to develop charity towards the recipient of their love.

Huh. I've been avoiding commenting on this issue because I know everyone will hate my opinion, but if this discussion is still going on, I guess its important enough we should probably have it. Alright, here's my hot take, I generally don't like inter-species relationships in fiction because love alone is not a sufficient foundation upon which to build a relationship. Okay, I know everyone is going to be upset after reading that, but hear me out, because I think you probably agree with me, you just don't know it. I don't think anyone would disagree with the idea that its possible for a victim to genuinely love their abuser. If I had to give an example from fiction (because I'm not bringing real life into this) I'd reference Jane Eyre from the novel of the same title. She genuinely loves a man whom she believes she cannot be in a relationship with and leaves him because she believes that if she stayed he'd abuse her. Really, part of the reason she leaves is so that he won't cross that line and thus do more damage to himself by becoming an abuser. Its a neat book. Anyway, I don't think that point is especially contentious. What will be is my assertion that an abuser can genuinely love the person they abuse. The examples in fiction that I'll point to are Thanos with Gamora and Omniman with Invincible. Now, you can argue "that's not really love!" but from their perspective it is. Even if they fail to live up to the ideal of love, they still experience the emotional sensations that we call "being in love." That feeling, "being in love" is really what I'm talking about. I believe that is an insufficient foundation for a romantic relationship. Its probably a fine foundation to start a relationship on, but there must be another element to the foundation to build upon. Like what? Well, look at the reasons people get married: Security, mutual health benefits, business (yes, I know modern culture doesn't like it but that is a reason), cultural continuity, reproduction, diplomacy, moral development, etc. There are many reasons to seek a romantic relationship outside of "being in love." My problem with many inter-species relationships in fiction is that they exist solely for the purpose of "being in love." The individuals like how they feel when they are around each other or act romantically towards each other, that is it. For any given relationship, you can ask what each person is getting out of the relationship beyond the feeling of being in love. If the answer is nothing, and the two provide security, health, cultural continuity, etc without needing to be in a romantic relationship, they I struggle to see the point of the romantic relationship. See, the problem is, with the exception of a very small number of individuals who seem to be able to make it work, being in a romantic relationship with someone means you will not be in a romantic relationship with anyone else, and thus the benefits that can come with a romantic relationship are cut off, not merely from you but also from your community. That's my final point: no man is an island. Your relationships matter not just to you but to the people around you. Your relationships impact the people around you and the people who come after you. Its all well and good to pretend that only two people matter in a relationship, but that's just not how reality works, even in books. I'm not saying that you need to get permission from anyone to start a relationship, but people should consider the implications of their relationships when evaluating whether or not they're worth starting. Renarin and Rlain definitely considered the diplomatic implications alongside the feelings they have for one another. Evidently they decided it was worth it. I'm not entirely convinced I agree. That's a debate I'm frankly not interested in. If I had to simplify my issues with inter-species relationships as briefly as possible, I'd say that they usually bother me because they depict "being in love" as the be-all-end-all of a romantic relationship, and I do not agree. A relationship needs to be about more than just being "in love" to be good.

I agree that we'll eventually get lerasium mistborn again. Its possible that lerasium will only be able to be created in tiny amounts such that we won't see any Elend-strength mistborn again. But if nothing else, the title of the series is Mistborn and it would be rather odd if we had to tell people, "yeah, that title can only be applied to the first three books and then the seventh. After that, mistborn don't really come up again." As for feruchemy, I actually think that's the easier part of it. Feruchemy is very closely correlated with pure Terris bloodlines, which can be accounted for. As squicky as it can be for modern audiences, arranged (business) marriages make up most of human history and are still very much a thing on Scadrial and we know that the Terris are interested in trying to produce a full feruchemist. I suspect they will eventually succeed, no magical intervention required. Once full feruchemists (we seriously need a better term for that. Feruborn?) begin being born, then the harder part is producing the lerasium. Put the two together and Spook's your uncle: fullborn. It only took several years, but my propaganda has begun spreading. Excellent.

I don't agree with the idea that "power" is a completely neutral concept and morality depends on how it is used. I believe its possible for some powers to be innately good or innately bad. You may be able to use bad powers for a good outcome, and maybe you can even use good powers for a bad outcome, but in the end, some powers have a morality implicitly associated with their use. A deal with the devil is an evil action, even if you sell your soul to heal someone else. I'm not completely convinced that Hemalurgy is an innately evil power, but I do think it is close to being one. The soul is the Cosmere isn't very soul-like, which might be what saves Hemalurgy in the end. If the soul is just another organ, rather than the center of being and the constant miracle, then alteration of the soul is just surgery. As it stands, Hemalurgy is on thin ice in my view, but I'm not ready to completely condemn it. Yet.

No spoilers that I have discovered. They are transcribed on Arcanum. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/528-saythewords/

The way I'm thinking about it is that the soul has various "organs" and one such organ is the allomancy organ. Now, that's definitely an oversimplification, or you wouldn't need different metals to steal different powers, but it helps us consider things. Savantism is when you have had enough investiture flowing through your soul that it leaks out of the power organ and begins to transform other parts of the soul. A spike is very specific, in that it steals a defined portion of the soul. A spike can't steal savantism, because, by definition, that savantism has leaked out to other parts of the soul that wouldn't be targeted by the spike. Hoid is weird because his whole soul is suffused not only with the influence of a Dawnshard, but also by all the powers he's collected, and probably even his age. I think spiking Hoid would actually be a really difficult process as his soul may not even be shaped like a normal human soul anymore. Its possible that however you try to spike him, you'll get something wildly different than you'd expect.

Actually, there's no speculation at all. We have a definite answer to this.

Admittedly, this goes beyond my understanding of physics, but once you break the sound barrier in atmosphere, isn't there some other effect of air resistance that's not affected by friction? I'm not sure how well Abrasion works once you start going beyond sonic speeds. Granted, this wouldn't be an issue at all in space, but if we're talking about practical uses of speed here, nothing short of allomantic FTL is going to be useful for cosmic distances, and I'm pretty sure that eventually you start getting diminishing returns in atmosphere, where you have to put in more and more power for smaller and smaller increases to speed. Yes, you technically get those in space too, but not until you start reaching relativistic speeds.

Well, that quote definitely cinches things. Thanks, @Frustration. The aluminum bullet trick would almost certainly work then, assuming the spore-parasite doesn't have some special way of perceiving such a thing that we just don't know about yet. Additionally, any kind of indirect harm should do the trick, as the spore-parasite shouldn't be able to recognize it.

I like to think Lift's bird will share with her the ability to see spren. If for no other reason than me wanting the bird to be able to see Windle so that they end up competing for Lift's attention.

There is a difference between being invisible and being opaque. Steelsight might not treat aluminum as a movable metal, but its not exactly "blind" to it either. An aluminum sheet would be as visible to an Inquisitor as shadows are to us. Sure, there might not be any light coming off of it for us to see, but we can see it all the same due to the contrast with the lit areas around it. I suspect for other kinds of investiture based perception, a similar effect would apply, where aluminum is obvious due to its opaqueness. That aside (not talking specifically to you anymore, Frus), do we know that the aether in a spore-eater can't use the human senses of their host? Yeah, human senses don't help you intercept a bullet, but they can intercept a blade. And depending on the aether, you might not actually need to see the bullet coming to stop it. I imagine a rosite spore-eater's parasite might see a gun through human senses and just decide to create armor around them until the gun isn't present anymore, regardless of what ammunition is being fired. Though that does make me wonder, do we have any idea how intelligent the aether-parasite is?

Kelsier became invested enough to stick around permanently by jumping into the Well of Ascension before he moved to the Beyond. He's still capable of moving on at any point, he just doesn't want to. But its natural in the Cosmere for people to want to move on after death and the Lord Ruler intentionally chose to, even though he also could have chosen to stick around.

If this was the case, it would have some weird effects. The human respiratory system is CO2 driven, not O2 driven. If your body isn't accumulating CO2, then your autonomic system (the reason you don't have to think about breathing most of the time) isn't going to see a reason to inhale or exhale. Now, this might not be an issue so long as you're tapping. If anything, it might save your life, because you wouldn't reflexively breath in a hazardous environment, and you wouldn't feel like you were holding your breath. But as soon as the you stop tapping, you'd need to intentionally take a breath to restart their normal breathing process. This is all assuming that if your blood is being magically oxygenated, it will be magically de-carbonated so that you aren't just spontaneously generating CO2 out of Investiture.

I mean, any of the Shards could probably kill him in the right circumstances. Personally I'd ask Ruin to do it. If Ruin can't find a way, they'll just delete the planet and solve it that way. Personally I'd love to see a Shard actually manifest a body at some point and do their best Olympian impression, but I don't know how many of them have access to physical godhood as part of their portfolio. It would certainly be quite the spectacle to see Odium or Ruin make a body for themself and try to take on Super Rashek in divinely powered hand-to-hand combat.

I wonder if at some point, technologically speaking, it would be easier to have a layer of some kind of aluminum mesh or netting inside of clothing. Not only would it protect the metalminds, but it would also protect the wearer from most direct magics. Yeah, it would stop coinshots from being able to push or pull, but there are probably designs that could compensate for that. If nothing else, you could have the mesh around the upper arms only and then have metalmind bracers underneath that.

I just need to point out there are two separate conversations going on here. How big is Nightblood's stomach and how big is Nightblood's mouth. Is Nightblood's stomach big enough to hold an entire shardblade? I'd be in disbelief if it wasn't. Is Nightblood's mouth big enough to swallow a shardblade whole? I'd be surprised if it was, but I'm open to the possibility. That is all I am saying. And I'm not trying to undersell Nightblood, I'm trying to hype up shardblades. I think shardblades are one of the most Invested things we've seen in the Cosmere. As far as I understand it, they're basically godmetals. Kaladin described Syl in shardplate form as being like an already full cup, that is my point. Other than exceptions like Nightblood, who seems to be undergoing some of the ballooning experienced by vessels, I think shardblades represent something close to the limit of Investiture able to put into physical materials. In other words, shardblades are dangerous.

Yeah, but Nightblood also couldn't destroy an Honorblade. I realize that Honorblades and shardblades are very different things, but my conclusion from Nightblood nicking an Honorblade yet killing Rayse is that Vessels themselves are substantially less invested than we'd initially presume. As for collapsing a perpendicularity, that, I admit, is quite the feat, but I think its complicated. Nightblood stole investiture faster than the perpendicularity could maintain the portal, which is not the same as draining the total output of the perpendicularity. This is where I hold to the fact that I'm not sure about whether or not Nightblood could eat a shardblade in one move. It wouldn't surprise me if Nightblood could and it wouldn't surprise me if Nightblood couldn't.

I'm not sure Nightblood's stomach is big enough to hold a whole Shardblade at once, but I also am aware that I'm mostly alone in thinking Nightblood's capacity is a lot smaller than most people seem to assume. That said, I have no doubt that Nightblood can hurt and even kill a spren, I'm just not sure Nightblood could do it instantly. It think it would take several strikes. All that said, I agree that fighting Nightblood with a shardblade is not a great idea, but its probably a better idea than trying to fight Nightblood with most non-ballistic weapons.

I should clarify, I wasn't replying to you, alder. Your message appeared while I was typing mine. Sorry about that.

Frus is right on this one. AI may be very useful in fields with definitive answers, but for something like the Sanderfandom, there's too much speculation and interpretation going on for a chinese-room to keep up. WoB's would probably confuse AI to a high degree. Many of them are contradictory, poorly worded, or incomplete. AI outputs are based entirely on the quality and quantity of data. While it may seem like the quantity condition is fulfilled, when we're talking about computers and data, we actually don't have all that much, as far as I understand things. Sure, it might indicate some interesting patterns or correlations we've never seen before, but feeding an AI all of Sanderson's works won't give us a Diagram of Sanderson's writing plans. Heck, I don't think Sanderson himself could give us the future of his writing plans, what with him being a discovery writer and all.

This is a lot more complicated in the Cosmere, where reproduction is more than a biological process. It is also a spiritual process by which new spiritwebs are formed. As a result, we could think of reproduction in the Cosmere as a magic system. The fact humans and singers can create viable hybrid offspring would appear to be more of an outgrowth of the Cosmere's reproductive magic system than a function of biology. This would put it in a similar category to stormlight healing, where even genetics takes a backseat to cognitive and spiritual aspects.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Sanderson has commented on this: I know that's a lot less exciting and seems kind of cheap, but that is the answer we have been given.