Timewaster's Guide Archive

I'll agree that the lost king of Malkier could top any of them, but Rand was the best on the list. It's been a while since my last read-through (waiting until the announce of the release date for aMoL), and I totally forgot that he lost to Raitin... that and I confused him with Galad in my head for a second (you know, when he totally emasculated Valda?).

Lan has been wounded before, though I don't think we ever saw it happen. There was right after he lost Moraine, he walked into Myrelle's (wasn't it Myrelle?) camp and was scratched up and such, right on the verge of dying. Think we could get Lan added to the list? I'd vote for him...

A plant can still synthesize food when it lacks the green bit of light from the visible spectrum (which the sun makes en masse), they just tend to be less efficient at it, since green tends to strike through fluids (atmosphere and water) the easiest. Lacking that, they would attempt to pull from as many parts of the spectrum as possible, trying to make up for that massive loss of energy.

I vaguely recall hearing something about the Ashmounts being as they are in the name of Preservation, and it's an interesting theory. What if the names of the Ashmounts are those of particularly rebellious cities/countries that TLR felt he could do without?

What if the ability to burn metals isn't so much a limitation of genetics as it is a limitation of the mind? I don't know if this road has been jaunted down yet, but what if everyone has the innate power to burn every metal, but not the natural instinct/reflex/drivers to do it? It would explain why if you can burn more than one, you can burn them all (because by having a second or third sample to check against, your brain could decipher the others). Then the thing that Elend ate could have just been something that imparted the necessary knowledge to his subconscious.

Alright, It's late, I'm off to bed.

If we're going to get a volcanologist, why stop there? physics professor, meteorologist, biologist, and a philosopher too, just to make sure we have our bases covered...

I'm still sticking to the theory that the Ashfalls are a reaction to a change TLR made when he re-landscaped the world, the sheer Newtonian "equal and opposite reaction" thing seems to be prevalent enough to put reasonable acceptance behind that theory in my mind.

Always open for a good argument/ripping though...

Well, we know the Allomancers are connected to the mists, and we've never seen it take agressive action toward any of the allomancers we know, so doesn't it stand to reason that maybe the mists can't be used as a tool to attack them?

Here's an insane, completely out there thought: maybe the ones that survived were Hemalurgists, made by accident... you know, like stabbing a nail through a leg, etc.    (J/k, mostly)

Rand is the good guy, but couldn't he have stayed the good guy if he'd gone to work for Shai'tan like Ishmael had offered in the first book? He could have just as easily ruled over earth benevolently...

As for the arguement that the creator won't involve himself directly, thats where the beauty of it comes in, what better way to be an all powerful being and affect things than if you strip away all your memories and limit your power? It's like any of the Horn heroes while in Tel'Aran'Rhoid (sp?), they get back all of their memories and have considerable power, elsewhile, here, they are just simple humans who have a stronger will to fight.

(4 or so hours of sleep... and a lot of caffeine)

I thought it was fairly well concluded that the bead was what did it... Guess that's what I get for assuming. Anyway, I agree that it must have gotten weaker, but it's interesting theory that it existed before and came back do to an action taken by TLR... Maybe allomancy is a thing of Preservation, and when Ruin had control last, it repressed it?

That brings on another theory now that I think about it... what if all those people the mists started to attack, but didn't, were unSnapped mistings and mistborn?

Well, assuming that Houses in TFE are like their counterparts in most other books (like WoT), then they would likely be composed of people who were 3rd or 4th cousins, and probably even a few times removed beyond that. What Straff seems to be saying is that there aren't any others in his direct bloodline, yet earlier implications are that there are other Mistborn in the service of the House (which is entirely sensical), most likely from a different branch of the family.

Back to the genetics aspect for a minute as my mind wanders... Do you think it takes having an affirmative gene combination for each of the powers to become Mistborn, or would it be a separate gene all to itself? I guess the former would explain their rarity...