CryoZenith

While I concede that it would make sense in terms of plot, and would be really interesting, I really dislike it conceptually in terms of the magic system. So I will keep assuming that Taravangian's boon/bane disappeared when he Ascended until proven otherwise (not necessarily IC, WoBs work too). Yes, I will feel really silly if I turn out to be wrong, but I'm biting the bullet. (to be specific, there are three main issues with the boon/bane persisting, beyond even what it says about the power level of Cultivation's magic: 1. Since Todium is mostly in the SR, the concept of intelligence and empathy changing randomly every *day* doesn't really track to anything. 2. As a vessel, with the expanded mind customary to being a vessel, even "bad intelligence days" would manifest as high intelligence for Todium. 3. If Cultivation really is planning something that would put Todium in danger or put him under her control, all Todium needs is ONE "good intelligence day" to figure it all out.)

Oooh. This sounds right

As much as I'd love that, it might be the case that Invention doesn't have a shardworld.

We just need Vasher or Leshwy to sustain a shallow cut from a silver blade in SA 5 and we'll be able to put that to rest. My guess is most cogshadows don't care.

Marasi is just a huge vibe for me. She reminds me to a surprisingly large degree of myself.

I'm just gonna point out something that might support the theory. Iri. Ire. Very similar words. Could easily be etymologically evolved from each other.

It's not standard package, it's budget :D. And as the guide specifically said, the budget package comes with temporary memory loss :D. So I don't think that's suspicious. I do agree that the second part is very suspicious, though - traveling in a way that destroys the guidebook is definitely not part of any package.

It's possible for a maladaptive trait to coast by if there are insufficient environmental pressures on a species that would cause that trait to reduce fitness. So the timeline would look like this: the beings evolved extremely precise hearing because it was initially an upside, their hearing kept getting stronger and stronger with each generation, until at a certain point it got too strong, to the point of becoming a weakness, but at this point, they were already the apex predators with no reliable competitors in their ecosystem, so nothing could force them to need to dial it back anymore. Also, there is a feedback loop here with the environment: for the other species surrounding the monsters, it was beneficial for fitness to become more silent in order to survive their sound-based predators, so in the present day, strong-sound-making adaptations would serve them well, but they already selected themselves out of that option completely. There's another possibility which is a bit out there. And I say "out there" not because it's super implausible that this could happen evolutionarily, but "out there" because in a writerly sense, most non-biologists wouldn't consider it. Namely, that there's a gene cluster that coincidentally grants both the armor plating and the sound weakness. And even though this cluster is not strict upside, it's still "worth it", so the monsters that had this cluster outbred the monsters that didn't.

Illumination is not primarily mental illusions. It's (for the most part) photomancy. You are creating actual, real photons, real light. So I doubt tin would help pierce through it, but bronze probably would!

I can't find it off the cuff, but there is a WoB where Brando says something along the lines of "well emeralds are just aluminum oxide, but they don't have any of the investiture-inert properties of aluminum metal." So it is definitely possible that when you sufficiently chemically alter something, it does the trick.

Oooh, spicy.

Not sure if regrowth would work that way, since the Spiritual Ideal of a human is a human that lacks breath (otherwise Radiants would give themselves one breath accidentally, right?). So my guess would be that if you take a drab and apply regrowth to them, it won't literally do nothing (it probably would boost their innate investiture some), but I doubt it would re-give them the property of having a breath.

I don't think it's that wild to speculate that Brandon now regrets that he made Atium easy to push-pull, and if he had to write mistborn era 1 all over again, that would be one of the things he would change. I don't think this was meant to holistically make sense.