Kadrok

Axies's immortality is a result of interactions in the magic or some such, so that probably counts.

Maybe I just despise memory erasure as a solution, and am therefore more inclined to blame the troll elder... EDIT: Clarification... when I said I despised memory erasure as a solution, I was meaning within the world of the narrative, not on the level of the narrative. In other words, I'm not saying I think it was poorly written, I'm saying I find memory erasure horribly unethical.

I've only seen it once, but I loved it. Given that I read some of this topic before I saw it, I was far less bothered by Olaf than I thought I'd be. On Hans and Anna and Anna/Elsa's synchronization: Brilliant! I hadn't thought about that contrast! On the Trolls: During the movie I was mildly irritated by my observation that "this is all the Troll Sage's fault!" It seems like everyone who should know what they're talking about completely screws up when handling magic, and it ruins everything for everyone. Bonus points: I was surprised how forgiving the populace were. I mean, we the audience get to see what is really going on, but the average Joe knows nothing and is just expected to accept the craziness and instability: "We finally get a look at our reclusive ruler who has lorded over us from behind the forbidden zone. I wonder what she and her sister are like." "Ah! She's a witch! And she brought summer to an end! I guess the good policies which made us accept her absent rule were her sister's doing... I guess her departure is for the best." "Nope, her sister has taken off alone to chase the witch who has brought about a presumably perpetual winter, and left a foreigner in charge about whom we know even less..." "This foreigner actually seem decent. He's clothing us. What a man of the people! Hope the witch and her sister don't come back into power." "Nope, he's run off looking for the princess. Maybe we should think about democracy." "The witch is back in power, and has exiled the foreigner who cared for the people! Her sister has married a commoner from who knows where, how indecorous! And there's some kind of snow abomination running around! At least Summer has returned, but for how long... what a crazy weekend." I got goosebumps and teared up too, which is my measure of a good song, not during my viewing in the cinema, but afterwards when I was watching that song again. Of course then the line "My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around" distracted me from the feels and made me wonder how she knew about fractals... I don't really know that much about them, but I thought that was a relatively recent development... so does that knowledge come with the magic, or was the kingdom of Arendelle ahead of its time... Definitely want the soundtrack.

Mind blown. That's amazing. I love it.

As I understand it, Aluminium Gnats can only clean unwanted investitures from themselves. Now a Soulbearer can pour Investiture charges into the Spinner's Chromiumminds, destroying the stored Fortune, but again the spinner might be lucky enough to avoid them. Just sight them in a city and then nuke the city immediately. (They might be able to luckily find a worldhopper, so make sure you mind-nuke Shadesmar simultaneously). Problem solved.

What a coincidince, I know all the words in English.

Similar issue: Why are people unsettled by the prospect of drinking recycled water? I think it would take a bit of adjustment for people to warm to the idea that their food and shelter were once the community's sewage.

If I were on Roshar, I'd pursue the "feminine arts", but do it in a manly, badass way. *Ahem* On topic: Fascinating theory, but I am inclined to agree with Featherwriter's arguments.

I seem to remember liking Axies the Collector, but I'd probably have to do a reread to confirm this.

I've suggested sex-appeal in the past, but otherwise... Creativity. Intuition (perhaps a contender for how Hoid knows where to be?) I was going to suggest melanin, but that creates so much weirdness.

I'm not arguing that the Parshendi are immortal. I'm suggesting that Parshmen without a form have an indefinite lifespan. This is based on the fact that the Parshendi seem to need to breed to sustain their population and, as you have noted, age. If the Parshmen aged and died, like the Parshendi do, they'd need to be able to reproduce, and a change of forms, and particularly the acquisition of needs, wants and a personality that that entails, would be noteworthy to the Alethi, I would think. So what I am suggesting is that in their proto-form (ie without a form) the race doesn't age. A formless listener can survive indefinitely, but I wouldn't exactly call it living. In response to the suggestion that it would have been noted... why? Unformed Parshmen lack personality, or anything else that would set them apart; through Alethi eyes, all Parshemen look the same, how would they know the Parshmen serving their drinks (or whatever) is the same one who served their great great grandfather drinks? Add to that the fact that people are in the habit of ignoring their slaves, and specifically not identifying with their slaves, and I can see this particular feature of Parshmen being overlooked. If it isn't overlooked, it could easily be ignored. Afterall, it's not like it's an exciting immortality, being a workerbot and having no self. If we had a slave race of barely sentient robots, would we care that they could last longer than us, or would we take it for granted?

So Way of Kings happens in the 300 year gap between Hero of Ages and Alloy of Law? Intriguing.

Come to Queensland Brandon!

I'm just going to throw this into the ring, such as it is... It sounds to me like mateform is a necessary, and generally undesireable, form to occupy. If there was a way to breed without it, I suspect the Parshendi would have done so, especially Eshonai who has shown the ingenuity to push the boundaries of the forms. There's a great utility in the ability to shut down not just distracting sexual urges, but the majority of biological infrastructure of reproduction, allowing that energy to be redirected. The adjustable modes of the Parshendi seems like an incredible advantage to me. They forgot most forms, but remembered mateform. This strikes me as good evidence that mateform was necessary for the Parshendi to reproduce. If parshendi did need mateform, then perhaps only parshendi in slaveform (that is, the formless parshmen) have an indefinite lifespan.

I like this; it does seem weird. Do we know of any system that could fit with staring into the sky with no concern for water getting in your eyes?

Wait wait wait... if the Parshendi need to be in mateform to breed, and the Parshmen are all in slaveform, does that mean the Parshmen have an indefinite lifespan?

Kurk and I were discussing this on Steel Ministry, and I thought I'd just chime in with my perspective over here. I don't think an Aluminium Ferring can tap anyone else's metalminds without limit... just the metalminds of other Soulbearers. I'd be surprised if you didn't need the proper ability to access the power Feruchemically, and so in my view while a Soulbearer could get past the identity restriction on a Brute's pewtermind, it wouldn't help them over much given that they don't have the ability to use Pewter Feruchemically in the first place. However, someone burning the identity-fixed metalmind would be accessing the power Allomantically, and so provided the identity restriction is somehow removed, I can see that working, provided they have the Allomantic ability for that metal. This is the way I interpret Brandon's response. Kurk asks if the Augor could compound health from the goldmind, not tap it. Kurk argues that this implies that the Auger (or anyone) could tap the goldmind. I disagree. Basically, my argument is that the Auger has the ability to burn gold, not tap it. I interpret Brandon as saying that once the identity key is set up properly, the Auger can burn the gold Allomantically to get a surge of healing. I don't think Brandon is saying that the hypothetical Auger, who has no Feruchemical ability, could tap an identity rigged metalmind... I think an identity rigged metalmind allows anyone with the ability to use that kind of metalmind to tap it, without the identity restriction that is normally in place. What this does mean is that a Full Feruchemist could, say, identity-rig an Iron mind and give it to a Lurcher or Mistborn, who could then burn it Allomantically as a metal whose power is to increase the Allomancer's weight, simulating some of the useful effects of being a Crasher through Allomancy; the Mistborn could burn Steel, focus on the target, and then burn Feru-Iron to tear down a building, and burning Feru-Gold acts like a health potion. This makes me wonder what the burn rate on the Feru-Metals are... perhaps the reason Rashek needed to be constantly tapping Youth was beause Atium is no good on the slow burn. If Feru-Iron as an Allomantic metal burns at Iron's natural burn rate, it could be practical as an on off thing for putting some extra weight behind pushes and pulls.

I like it. Upvote. Even if it was terrible, though, I'd upvote it because intertextuality is hilarious.

I was pretty sure we also had WoB that he had still lived longer than he should have. He could be of the Fifth Heightening, and just hiding it like some of the other characters do, although we don't know a great deal about the mechanics of that and whether it is viable. He could also have visited Elantris, and become an Elantrian, although the mechanics of AonDor working on other planets, and whether the immortality could function that far away from Elantris is another issue. I highly doubt he's doing something as haphazard as compound youth.

Elantris is the cosmere book I've most recently read, and I absolutely loved it. In terms of characters, my favourite(s) is(are)... well I loved Hrathen, Sarene and Raoden for different reasons Sarene: I like strong, opinionated women with more than two brain cells to rub together, and I liked her arc. A little disappointed more wasn't made of the gender power dynamic with all the women learning to fight, while the men wasted their time counting coins, but whatever... Raoden: Very hard to put my finger on why I like him so much. I could be a terrible narcissist and claim to have a lot in common with him, but a lot of that is tied into something I have no intention of testing. See, whenever I watch things featuring a Zombie apocalypse or survival situation or whatever, I always think of what I would do, and that is usually centered on not just surviving, but figuring out why things are the way they are. Thus, I like to imagine that were I in Raoden's shoes, I too would have attempted to coordinate the populace in a productive harmony, and poured effort into understanding the situation and how to fix it. Naturally, I have no way of knowing how I'd actually act in that situation, so it's all just a bit armchair survivalist, but I suppose it all amounts to... Raoden did exactly what I wanted him to do in the story, and that aided in identifying with him. Or some gibberish like that... Brace yourself for a rant. Hrathen: FINALLY! Finally!!! My gosh, finally! A "religious" character who believes what he does not because of some mystical "faith" (read: blind faith) but because he finds it the most rational explanation for the evidence he's seen. I nearly clawed my eyes out at that conversation between him and the Korathi priest about faith, and was relieved at the end of his stay in Elantris when he realised that his rational position would be sufficient for his God. I am so sick to death of "religious" character "cameoing" in episodes of whatever, who are questioned about their beliefs by the hegemonic-ally central secular humanist characters, and all they can come up with by way of explanation is "I have faith" as if a) blind faith is actually a good reason to believe something b ) there are no good arguments for the existence of God. c) the non-"religious" characters are somehow completely without faith, possessing a somehow pure objective outlook with absolutely no assumptions at all... as if evidence is never interpreted, filtered through a worldview. I say "religious" in quotation marks because I dislike the designation of certain worldviews as "religious", I don't see what function it serves, other than as a means for the holders of certain worldviews to denigrate other worldviews, and thereby avoid having to actually deal with the evidence and arguments for and against either side. *AHEM* Rant over. So yeah, I identified a lot with Hrathen because I identify with his version of faith (aka, well thought out and rational).

If I may: There are at least some hereditary magics on Roshar as demonstrated by the Aimians.You could argue that their shapeshifting isn't strictly magic in the investiture sense (I imagine the same is true for Kandra shapeshifting), and you may be right, but all I want to note is that there are super-human, seemingly magical things at work on Roshar that are hereditary. 99% of Rosharan "magic" may be driven by actions, and that is fair enough, but there are at least some hereditary properties at work, and being light eyes may be one of these. Given that hereditary "magical" properties aren't completely absent from Roshar, let me propose something I imagine has been proposed before... the "light eyes" trait is a marker of someone's ability to feel the Thrill. As far as I know, this is what we know about the Thrill: Brandon's cryptic answer does present potential issues for this suggestion. Regardless, what I am proposing is that just as the Aimians are a distinct human racial group with the ability to shapeshift, so to are the light eyes a distinct racial group with the ability to feel (or perhaps the vulnerability to) the Thrill. Thoughts?

I think of Hoid's ability to worldhop on Sel to be more akin to experience than some magical trick. Like a sailor who is very familiar with the very dangerous reef around an island who knows exactly where to steer the ship to avoid becoming a wreck. Regardless of how he does it, we know Hoid has a base somewhere in the Cosmere... why not Sel, somewhere that is difficult for others (such as the 17th Shard) to get in and out of?

Source: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#20 (Number 20) EDIT: Also, thank you Shardbearer.

There's another WoB somewhere where Brandon is asked about the existing imbalance between Ruin and Preservation (you'll recall that because there was more Preservation in humans, that Preservation was left marginally weaker than Ruin). Brandon responds by saying coyly something to the effect of "I wonder what he could be doing with that extra Ruin?" Couldn't find the quote, but it's out there. Also, Sorry, but where does it say that the leak is necessary?

Awww man! Why didn't we think of that! Balance is boring (English translation at the bottom of the article). I'm happy with the way the thread has gone.