Argent

I don't know if Harmony's role in this new Scadrial is what caused the problems we see in the series so far. I think it's just a natural response of a society that's undergoing significant changes. I am a poor student of history, but I expect we can see similar effects around the time of our own industrial revolution.

I don't think it works like this. Nothing I've seen suggests that healing via Divine Breath imparts a fraction of that Breath on the recipient. You could maybe make the argument that a Returned healing his or her own child would be a special case because the Breath will stick better due to the family connection, but I won't buy that.

Interestingly, I found the following WoB while browsing old Q&As (emphasis mine): I don't think I've seen that last bit come up anywhere, though I admit I don't fully understand what Brandon means here. That while the Returned can't have children, if somebody Returns while pregnant the yet-unborn children end up inheriting some of the Divine Breath?

Oh, Rusts... It kind of fits. Or, rather, it could fit. I want to think that Kelsier changed towards the end, especially with him saving Elend and presumably keeping an eye on how things developed after his own demise, but I'll be willing to buy the argument that it wasn't enough to change him. I will owe some of you a big hat tip of Kelsier ends up behind all this. I don't think he will, but I am far from convinced. It's far too possible for me to just discard.

Possible, but I am ruling it out (for myself) until concrete evidence presents itself.

I knew it wasn't present perfect, but didn't know what it actually was. Education!

Wax (pretty much) only wears the earing when he is praying - he makes a point of it in The Alloy of Law, it's a religious thing for Pathians. He also puts it on before his final confrontation with Miles, thinking that the event was important enough to warrant a bit of extra divine mojo. I don't think his pursuit of Bloody Tan would've ranked quite as high, the prologue made it seem like it was a normal job for him and Lessie. They didn't even have Wayne at the time. So I very much doubt he would've had his earring on.

I... don't know. I think I was answering a "how would a kandra fight a Steelrunner" kind of question, which now that I am using my actual eyes to read, is not the case. =\

*sad trombone*

I've been reading old WoBs and stumbled over one that made my brain itch a little. This is from The Hero of Ages Q&A back from 2008. 2008. At this point the only Cosmere books published were Mistborn (Era 1) and Elantris. Warbreaker doesn't come out until 2009. Yet we are talking about a total of 6 Shards - Ruin, Preservation, and four more. Devotion and Dominion are obviously two of them. Odium has to be one of the last two - his... effect... on Skai and Aona can be interpreted as either "power" or "influence". But that still leaves us with one more Shard. Harmony could qualify, I suppose (though I will argue that we have met him directly). Or am I maybe overanalyzing this?

Oh, come on, it's got to be practically trivial for a kandra to assassinate someone. A moderately skilled one should be able to impersonate somebody the victim will trust for a few seconds - and it doesn't have to be a good disguise either, the kandra would only need a few moments. Even a regular ambush might work.

Perhaps the epigraphs are different from the Words of Founding and Saze just left both.

I think optics is the key here. From what I am gathering from these chapters, it looks like Harmony left a lot of hints and/or instructions in the Words of Founding about the knowledge that was lost during the Final Empire. Maybe the people before the Lord Ruler weren't advanced enough in optics, and so the post-Catacendre (sp?) world isn't either. Scientific discoveries are weird.

Hmm. I very much doubt Bloody Tan works for Harmony, so maybe there is a different explanation. Maybe those words Wayne found in Idashwy's pocket are unique to Tan, but are rather something he and his peers, whoever those are, say. I don't know. All my guesses feel overengineered.

I finished The Fifth Elephant a few days ago - great book, by the way, it's definitely one of my Pratchett favorites so far, - did a quick reread of The Alloy of Law in preparation for Shadows of Self, and am now reading Night Watch. Ideally I would've finished it, Thud!, and Snuff before October 6, so I can wrap up the City Watch mini-series before I jump into other authors, but I can't afford to delay a new Brandon book by even a single day.

Only for questioning, I'm afraid.

Huh, the thick plottens. I want to find out what the deal is with Bloody Tan. No combination of Metallic Arts would allow him to survive Wax killing him in the prologue of The Alloy of Law, but he would have to be some kind of Metalborn to know to move Lessie. What's our current stance on kandra with Hemalurgic spikes?

Brandon actually said he won't be answering questions about why Vin avoided Hoid in that scene. It is, however, a literal RAFO - we are scheduled to find out in, I think, Bands of Mourning. As for Shards and damage to their original bodies, recall that Vin actually vaporized when she took on the power of Preservation. She didn't have a body when she was a Shard. Sazed also goes on about how a Shard's body and power are really the same thing. So I don't think this question applies.

I certainly plan on holding Brandon as long as I possibly can.

We also had a newspaper clipping, I believe, from The Alloy of Law mentioning the same thing.

It sounds like you have a decent grasp of the general idea. As for the that particular scene, I think you need to consider the character(s)'s motivations, not just what happens in the scene itself. How you define those motivations will determine which branch of the formula you fall under. If you consider Maleficent your main character (as, I believe, you should), then her objective could be to find true love and happiness or get together with the prince, or something along those lines. In that case you have a "no, and" situation. If her goal had been to, I don't know, spend more time with the prince, then you have a "yes, but". Regardless, don't worry too much about that. The takeaway is that if you want to apply this technique, you want to decide what the goal(s) of the character(s) is, whether this goal is reached, or at least made progress towards (the yes/no part), and how things are going to get worse, or at least more complicated because of that (the but/and part).

Weren't the infamous elongated features a result of the Terrismen being eunuchs? In other words, not a genetic trait, but rather an environmental one.

That's kind of what I was thinking too. Somebody highjacking the Hemalurgic landline.

We knew Allomantic pewter makes it pretty hard, if not downright impossible, to get drunk. Hemalurgic gold is even better at healing.

That's a very... Pratchett thing to say. He likes to throw this idea every other book. Am I the only one who sees Pratchett everywhere in this chapter? An exchange like this is very common during the City Watch subseries, usually between Vimes and Carrot. Wait, did we already know that High Imperial was Spook's dialect?! Hello, Hemalurgy. So what's the Terris manner? First vowel is stressed and pronounced as it appears in the alphabet? So Wax - Asinthew - would be ey-sinthü? Did we know about this cameo? The only reference to Peter I could recall was the Ahlstrom Square. Man, I need to reread The Alloy of Law approximately ASAP... That's a clever evolution of language. I approve.