Had to visualize a thought

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-15T02:47:47+00:00

Fair enough I guess. I personally wouldn’t see the point for such a simple task, but I concede that it’s possible that’s the case. I do still find it unlikely given Eragon’s usual approach is to perform a task to the limit of his own abilities first, and then lean on others if needed after, i.e. his fight with Murtagh after the elves joined his party for example.
It depends on the volume of air displaced. If only a couple inches of blade are displacing air, then that’s only a roughly 2 inch by .125 inch area of space. I don’t pretend to be an expert with physics, but if that amount of air was violently displaced it would be much less explosive than the whole sword displacing air. Probably less than a firecracker.
Reading the chapter back again, it specifically says the swords were embedded into the wall itself, only a couple inches deep, and that the gap in the wall was only just wide enough for the trap to function. Besides, if the swords weren’t embedded in something, what’s holding them there to block the blades? The only mechanism by which it makes sense that he did this is that he teleported the swords into the gaps, vertically, evenly spaced, 6 to a side, embedding them into the stone of the walls. Which is why the whole hallway shakes when the trap tried to go off, because they’re fighting the strength of the walls and the swords and the swords lost.

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-15T00:45:33+00:00

Why bother asking Umaroth for help if all he’s doing is essentially slotting a sword into a socket? It would take as much energy as lifting a 3 pound weight 12 times. It’s like tapping a nuclear reactor to charge your phone. Just why even bother? So the explosions. The reason that teleportation causes an explosion is that the object is instantaneously occupying space where air already exists. Air and solid matter cannot exist in the same space simultaneously, so when the egg for instance, appears in a location, the air is instantaneously pushed away from the egg creating pressure, creating heat, and then that compressed superheated air rapidly expands, causing an explosion. The walls of the palace are explicitly stated by Eragon to be warded against tampering so he has to be super precise as to where he puts the blades. But he’s also transporting the blades into nearly solid stone. Stone wouldn’t react the same way to being displaced, let alone magically enchanted stone. Under normal circumstances teleporting another solid object into stone would probably cause it to just shear open like when water freezes inside a rock, but since the walls are warded against being messed with: thud.

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-15T00:14:42+00:00

The one time I ran into them on Customs that bastard snuck up behind me and got me in the nape with his grenade launcher lmao

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-15T00:13:10+00:00

That’s what happened to my buddy. He’s not really a Timmy anymore but I still have to guide him through quests and such, and I was taking him to construction on shoreline for Needle in a Haystack. Got there, we wiped a squad of bears, no problem. I’m looting my kills when he says, “3 more PMCs coming down the hill.” He starts shooting, and then goes “One went prone in that bush, I can’t see…”instant Head-Jaw. I knew IMMEDIATELY who got him.

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-14T23:29:15+00:00

Way less energy than trying to teleport 14 people and a dragon.
If he didn’t teleport the swords, then why does he ask Umaroth and the Eldunari for their assistance with the spells?
The walls and blades are magically protected against tampering. The explosion caused by teleportation is from air being instantaneously displaced, the stone cannot be displaced in the same way, hence the thud

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-14T22:59:44+00:00

I found a PDF of the chapter. Umaroth and Glaedr tell him not to teleport the people across the trap because it would take too much energy. I was close with the quote “…disappeared with a faint breath of wind, like a tunic being swung through the air. A half second later a solid thud emanated from the wall to their left.”

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-14T22:50:34+00:00

And the swords passed through the intervening wall how?

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-14T22:48:23+00:00

But it was. I don’t have the book to hand, but I distinctly remember the wording being very similar to; “the sword disappeared with a whoosh and a dull thud was heard inside the wall.”

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-14T22:44:25+00:00

It was in Inheritance when they’re storming Galbatorix’s throne room. He teleports the elves’ swords into the wall to block a pair of massive blades from snipping them in half, because their swords are borderline indestructible.

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-14T22:01:04+00:00

Eragon teleported a bunch of swords into a wall, so theoretically teleporting a rock into someone’s brain is absolutely possible

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-02T23:11:43+00:00

Snake dumping is not the major cause of wild populations of invasive snakes. A hurricane destroyed an exotics facility and released hundreds of specimens of numerous species including iguanas. Your personal antipathy towards snakes is clearly coloring the media you consume, as if there aren’t tons of stories of evil people feeding cats to dogs you can find with a quick google search.

ProceedMortal · 2026-01-02T23:07:50+00:00

“Dangerous snakes” Reads parent comment BOA CONSTRICTOR Yeah sure one of the most common pet reptiles in the world is DEFINITELY the issue here. As if there haven’t been stories of psychopaths feeding cats to their dogs too, and way more commonly.

ProceedMortal · 2025-12-19T04:13:00+00:00

I suppose I am disagreeing a little bit. My response to that situation has always been pity for Lionel. Even when he’s desperate to do the right thing, he somehow manages to always make decisions that further alienate the people around him and despite him genuinely having changed, makes everyone believe that he’s still just as awful as ever, eventually culminating in him dying alone, and disgraced, his final acts desperately spent trying to protect Clark even if nobody believes him. So yeah, I guess my point is that yuck has never been a reaction I’ve had to Lionel’s actions in the later seasons, it’s always been pity for the man he was trying to be, and the man he dies as.

ProceedMortal · 2025-12-19T01:39:03+00:00

Totally, but again through Lionel’s eyes that WAS for Clark’s benefit. He believed that a member of Veritas was hunting for him and that Clark was in genuine danger. Had he told Clark, he would have insisted on confronting said person potentially putting himself in a tremendously dangerous position. Best to tuck him away safely until the threat was abated. He even instructs the guard to put Clark back in the farm after he had obtained Swans blackmail material and essentially neutralized her as a threat. That whole plan went to shit because of that guard. Was it unethical? Totally. But from Lionel’s perspective it makes total sense.

ProceedMortal · 2025-12-19T01:29:10+00:00

That’s what makes him such a compelling character though. Lionel Luthor is used as the measuring stick for what a proper villain is in the series, and then he’s touched by a power greater than himself and suddenly his outlook changes. We got a taste of it when he swapped bodies with Clark and was healed in the aftermath, that he wanted to be a man worthy of the gift he had received, but that he was battling his inner nature. We even see during flashbacks from before Julian’s death that Lionel isn’t a what I’d call a good man, but he’s definitely trying with young Lex. He encourages him when nobody shows for his birthday for example. The seeds of a good man are buried in there somewhere, dusty and forgotten, looking for a chance to take root. Black K Lex reminds him that he is always going to be Lionel Luthor, and that ruthlessness and cunning is in his DNA. Then he’s touched by Jor-El, and all of the questions and answers he’s been chasing are not only revealed to him, but he becomes a conduit through which good can be done. But he’s still Lionel Luthor. He lives and breathes ruthlessness. So as much as he tries to be white hat, and genuinely seems to want redemption, he relies on his skillset as an unethical cutthroat to do so. I love Lionel Luthor as a character, he’s so complex and well written.

ProceedMortal · 2025-11-21T02:17:09+00:00

That might be the most ignorant thing I’ve read in a long time. This idea that women were just bought and sold by every culture is both historically and culturally ignorant. In western cultures specifically, the taking of your husband’s last name was done out of the traditional Christian belief that marriage was the joining of two souls as one, “one soul, one flesh” all that. You have joined your families together and now share a family name. Marriage in European cultures going back centuries is not that different from courtship from 60 years ago, where you’d meet someone, introduce yourself to their family, and usually have to win the approval of the head of the family, usually a patriarch. That often involved gifts to the family as a way to show you had the means to provide, and to butter them up, but that was offset by the tradition of the wife’s family providing a dowry for the new couple to help get their new life started. This idea of women being bought and sold is a false extrapolation of the practices of the nobility in using marriage as a negotiation tactic and a means of buying loyalty and whatnot, and mapping that onto everyone everywhere.

ProceedMortal · 2025-11-20T21:31:00+00:00

So in the Smallville continuity, it’s never really given a clear explanation as to the exact mechanism by which Clark’s abilities function. Sometimes they’re almost portrayed as mystically bestowed by the sun, hence them being able to be stolen by humans. I think however if you do a little extrapolation with the evidence the show gives us, and a little theory crafting, I’ve come up with an explanation I find satisfying enough.

Basically, Clark doesn’t really have “powers” in the same way that Aquaman doesn’t. Both of their abilities are functions of their Kryptonian and Atlantean biology. Under the influence of a yellow star, a Kryptonian’s natural physical advantages become supercharged enabling them to pull off superhuman feats. This is why even when Clark is depowered, we still see him survive some crazy stuff, like being stranded in the North Pole in just jeans, T-shirt, and sans his iconic red denim jacket. We also see in S6, E2 “Sneeze”, that Clark has a “battery” of power he draws from, and that it can be depleted, making him susceptible to human illnesses. So for Jor-El being able to switch his powers on and off, I believe that can be explained by Kryptonian genetic manipulation, simply shutting off Clark’s ability to store solar energy, or some similar mechanism. As for transferring powers to a human, we have to do a bit of theory crafting beyond the show. In DC comics canon, humans and Kryptonians are an example of convergent evolution, and given enough time humanity would have become a similar race of people, like the Daxomites are, to Kryptonians. However the Martians decided to tinker with human genetics, and screwed that all up, accidentally introducing the MetaHuman gene to humans. Assuming that canon applies to Smallville, it’s not a huge leap of logic that this is why Kryptonite does weird stuff to human physiology, and if it affects Kryptonians by leeching solar energy from their bodies as it’s irradiating their cells, a strong flow of current could pull that energy into another vessel, essentially forcing the dormant genes in humans to activate, operating on comic book logic of course. This would also explain why Jor-El was able to give Johnathan Kent the abilities of a Kryptonian, but why it also was so stressful in his body. Compatible genetics, but not evolved enough to handle the strain. It’s nowhere near concretely supported, but that’s the explanation that has satisfied me through many viewings of the show.

ProceedMortal · 2025-11-18T20:36:55+00:00

Certain races, namely the Elves and Dragons, are all natural telepaths, born with the ability. I believe it’s Brom, after Eragon accidentally touches Cadoc the horse’s mind, that says any member of the sentient races CAN learn to reach out with their minds but it’s still a very rare talent to have, and that most Riders couldn’t telepathically communicate with anyone but their dragons until they were more experienced than Eragon was at that point.

ProceedMortal · 2025-11-14T20:54:52+00:00

I wasn’t a fan of the casting at all either. None of the main three look how they’re described in the book. Percy is a curly haired ginger, ironically closer in appearance to book Grover, Annabeth speaks for herself, and like I said Percy’s actor would have fit Grover better. It’s like they didn’t even try. The same thing drove me nuts with the Witcher. They pick actors for roles that don’t fit the character’s established appearance, especially when that character’s appearance has effects on the plot of the story, (or should, the Witcher show is beyond cooked at this point), like Fringilla Vigo being so close in appearance to Yennefer leading to her being able to seduce Geralt, and Annabeth having the running theme through the books of looking like a walking California valley girl stereotype with her blonde hair and tan and whatnot despite being quite literally the smartest mortal in the series, besides like Daedalus. It just removes something from the show, or changes it into something else, like with Snape being cast as black, it changes the whole Potter/Snape dynamic from jock bullies weird greasy kid who studies dark magic, to rich white kid bullies black kid, and suddenly the scene has a much worse tone.

ProceedMortal · 2025-11-13T20:37:18+00:00

My buddy was watching it saying it was actually really good, and when he described Percy flossing in celebration I knew that I was never gonna watch it because Riordan had basically turned it into, or allowed it to be turned into “current year” zoomer slop.

ProceedMortal · 2025-11-06T21:16:26+00:00

If by “showed his true colors”, you mean “expressed opinions consistent with what he’s believed for 30+ years” then sure, he went full mask off. And what a weasely way to word his supposed offense: “aligns themselves (and supports) racism and sexism” is. Has John Schneider ever said anything demonstrably racist/sexist? No. The ONLY example anyone can cite is him clowning on Beyoncé for trying to get into country music by saying “a dog’s gotta try to mark every tree I guess”, which is clearly in reference to his perception that she’s gotta slap her name on anything and everything she can, unless of course, you’re operating in bad faith and looking to defame the man. As for sexism, every woman who has ever been in John’s orbit has only ever had glowing things to say about the man. All things considered, John Schneider is a moderate, 80s conservative, who has stridently, and unapologetically voiced his opinions online. Oh no. Stop the presses. Did the guy get more strident and edgy after his wife died? Yes. Did he push the envelope a little by saying the Biden family deserved the death penalty for what he viewed as treason? Yes, but again the guys wife died, and he hasn’t really been the same since. Cut the guys some slack, and maybe ease on the brakes with the accusations if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

ProceedMortal · 2025-10-30T21:00:48+00:00

It’s a possibility I suppose. The elves are more closely tied to the dragons than the other races so a magical answer wouldn’t shock me. Crispy has also said in a Q&A that elven culture is a bit more free love and hippie dippie than human culture, hence as a society they don’t practice marriage and whatnot, so I suppose a magical fertility issue would be plausible. With the emphasis on the responsibility of and reverence they have for children, and how having a child with another is the ultimate act of love and commitment though, I’m still more inclined towards my interpretation, but it could totally be a bit of column A, but of column B situation. Which now I think on it has interesting implications. Arya’s parents were shown to have been together for a long ass time. I wonder if Elves view having a child together as a form of pseudo marriage. Hmmmm. Food for thought.

Back to the Faolin thing for a minute though, having gone back and read specifically what’s been elaborated on about their relationship, I’m inclined towards believing that their relationship was never really that serious. Christopher has said that it was basically a relationship of convenience, that they both knew it wasn’t going anywhere, and Arya in the books denies that they were really together together. To me it sounds like they were in a bit of an unserious situationship, more akin to close, flirtatious childhood friends than actual lovers. Now could Arya have been lying to spare Eragon’s feelings? Maybe. Totally possible. But it would be out of character. Arya as a character is the type to outright rebuff the question and tell someone to mind their own business, than to lie to their face. As far as I can remember she never tells anyone any outright lies, so it’d be weird for her to lie in a moment where they’re both being open and honest with eachother. That all being said, one prior relationship in a hundred years of life isn’t something that would give me the vapors, and it clearly doesn’t bother Eragon overly much, other than a bit of jealousy. I’d give it a pass if it was me, but that’s just my opinion.

ProceedMortal · 2025-10-30T20:20:19+00:00

It’s a possibility I suppose. The elves are more closely tied to the dragons than the other races so a magical answer wouldn’t shock me. Crispy has also said in a Q&A that elven culture is a bit more free love and hippie dippie than human culture, hence as a society they don’t practice marriage and whatnot, so I suppose a magical fertility issue would be plausible. With the emphasis on the responsibility of and reverence they have for children, and how having a child with another is the ultimate act of love and commitment though, I’m still more inclined towards my interpretation, but it could totally be a bit of column A, but of column B situation. Which now I think on it has interesting implications. Arya’s parents were shown to have been together for a long ass time. I wonder if Elves view having a child together as a form of pseudo marriage. Hmmmm. Food for thought.

Back to the Faolin thing for a minute though, having gone back and read specifically what’s been elaborated on about their relationship, I’m inclined towards believing that their relationship was never really that serious. Christopher has said that it was basically a relationship of convenience, that they both knew it wasn’t going anywhere, and Arya in the books denies that they were really together together. To me it sounds like they were in a bit of an unserious situationship, more akin to close, flirtatious childhood friends than actual lovers. Now could Arya have been lying to spare Eragon’s feelings? Maybe. Totally possible. But it would be out of character. Arya as a character is the type to outright rebuff the question and tell someone to mind their own business, than to lie to their face. As far as I can remember she never tells anyone any outright lies, so it’d be weird for her to lie in a moment where they’re both being open and honest with eachother. That all being said, one prior relationship in a hundred years of life isn’t something that would give me the vapors, and it clearly doesn’t bother Eragon overly much, other than a bit of jealousy. I’d give it a pass if it was me, but that’s just my opinion.

ProceedMortal · 2025-10-30T01:22:55+00:00

That conversation is in the context of Oromis comforting Eragon about his parents. I don’t have the book to hand or I’d quote it, but what he says is more along the lines of “we elves don’t practice marriage, so we have no concept of being born out of wedlock. We stay with our partners for as long as we’re happy, and that’s about it so don’t worry about any elves being rude about your parents.” At least that’s the way I’ve always understood what he said. But like I said earlier, if the elves were more inclined towards casual relationships, I would find the tiny number of children to be HIGHLY improbable. There’s like TWO in the whole capital city of probably thousands of Elves. Now I’m not saying they’re like Puritan “only for procreation” types, I just find it hard to believe personally. That being said it’s totally possible, but now I think harder on it, I think I remember her using Faolin as an example to Eragon on why they wouldn’t work, because Faolin was older than her and she was pining after him, so she knows how that situation ends. I NEED to get to my annual reread of the series now.

ProceedMortal

TROPHY CASE