text: I wonder if the reference to the Eelfinn taking nourishment from food have something to do with the real-world Celtic folk tales on which the Eelfinn are based. I haven't been able to find the particulars of those tales, but in the anthology Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, Neil Gaiman has a short story, set in Ireland, with a creature that reminds me of the 'finns.
  In "The Truth Is in a Cave in the Black Mountains", there's a spirit in a cave that allows you to take its gold (if gold is your need), as much as you can carry, but in return it feeds on your ability to enjoy life, and know right from wrong. And once it has fed on you, it can see through your eyes for the rest of your life. The spirit says:
  I taste their pleasure and their joy. I feed, a little, feed on what they do not need and do not value. A taste of heart, a lick and a nibble of their fine consciences, a sliver of soul. And in return a fragment of me leaves this cave with them and gazes out at the world through their eyes, sees what they see until their lives are done and I take back what is mine.
  Gaiman frequently uses and expands upon existing folklore; this spirit and Jordan's 'finns may come from a common source story. Stealing the joy from experiences could be represented metaphorically as taking the nourishment from food; perhaps Tuon is referencing the legend as it exists in our reality.
  Does anyone in the forum know of any book stores in Denver that are staying open until midnight and selling Towers Of Midnight? If you do, I'd be grateful for the details! (Web searches for midnight releases of Towers of Midnight don't work very well...)
  RJ and BS make a special point in that one of rands personalities says "at least he isn't pretending to be anybody else" to the other.
  As always, Weiramon looked even more the fool for attempting to style himself as anything other than a buffoon; his beard was waxed, his hair was carefully arranged to hide just how much he was balding and his clothing was rich -- a coat and breeches cut as if to be a field unifoorm, but no man would wear such fine cloth into battle. No man but Weiramon.
  He's honest, Lews Therin replied, then laughed. More than I am, for certain! A man doesn't choose to be an idiot, but he does choose to be loyal. We could do much worse than have this man as a follower.
  Personally, I'd like to believe that RJ was lying, and Taim is in fact Demandred. Not likely, I know, but Taim seems more formidable than any of the Forsaken we've seen to date, and he's commanding a more powerful army than anyone on the continent except maybe the Seanchan. The Dark One should fire one of his idiot Chosen and send Taim an offer letter.
  We don't have to focsu so hard on "how can Fain have infected Hinderstap" or how SL taint has spread to Hinderstap. We know that Aridhold wasn't always SL, and we therefore know that it started at some point. The same process can easily be happening to Hinderstap if we want to posit the SL similarities to be caused by a similar reason or mechanic.
  It's important to separate the origin stories from the end results. I think people are getting hung up over the fact that it took a long time for Aridhol to become Shadar Logoth, and they make assumptions about how Mashadar first manifested after its citizens destroyed themselves. (In truth, we' don't know the mechanics of Mashadar's origin, just its behavior.)
  People argue against Hinderstap's nightly murder frenzy being related to Mashadar, thinking that Hinderstap would have to go through the same process Aridhol did, over the same time period. That's a bad assumption. Shadar Logoth's evil, and the Mashadar entity, are currently (1) fully manifest, (2) communicable, and (3) on the move through a vector once called Padan Fain. Knowing these three facts, we should expect to see Shadar Logoth/Mashadar type effects somewhere in the world. We know the evil-formerly-known-as-Fain has been growing in power, so it's not unreasonable to assume the effects he leaves will be more pronounced at this stage in the story.
  And that brings us to Hinderstap. I've listed several behavioral similarities between Hinderstap's nightly murder frenzy and Mashadar's, as well as a passage where Hinderstap's fights are described in a way that recalls Mashadar's physicality. I've noted how Sanderson deliberately reminds us of Shadar Logoth in the previous chapter, seeding the idea that the two phenomena could be related. We may not know the precise mechanism, but it makes the most narrative sense to interpret Hinderstap's nightly troubles as a "baby Mashadar", even if Hinderstap's and Shadar Logoth's histories are dissimilar.