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I made a turkey!

I met someone with the last name “Bridgeman” yesterday.

This WoB was recently posted to Arcanum. This heavily, heavily implies Odium and Autonomy have at least an understanding between them that they won't go after each other, if they aren't outright allied. The two shardholders were lumped together by Hoid in the Way of Kings letter to Frost. I wonder if Bavadin / Autonomy will send someone to send an Avatar to Roshar as they might be upset that someone killed Rayse if they had a pre-ascension relationship and a post-ascension alliance. Not all the Avatars do, but Bavadin might. Autonomy can mold their Avatars in OB Ch. 50 epigraph they mention instilling a new Avatar with an intense dislike of Hoid. Bavadin might make one that's really not happy about what happened to Rayse.

Due to limited time and restrictive rules, I only had the opportunity to ask one question this time around. It's something I'd been wondering ever since I read The Bands of Mourning and noticed some suspicious characters at the party. I immediately thought "that woman and the gossippy guy are 'not from around here.'" (This was back before I was aware of the term "worldhopper." The woman, of course, was Khriss.) So last night, I finally asked about it: Q: In Bands of Mourning, at the party, Hoid and Khriss were both there, and talked with Wax. A: Yeah. Q: Were there any other worldhoppers present, and if so how many? A: Hmm... yes, at least one. Maybe two. Also, I collected a few awesome cosplayer pics. Steris: A flock of Mistborn: A giant Doomslug. (The person wearing it was standing upright inside the inflatable Doomslug near the front.) Also, me, (on the left, not in costume,) facing off against an opponent in Shardblade Sparring. If you couldn't come, you really missed out for that alone!

Fun Fact: You can’t smell the rain, your sense of smell just works better with there is more moisture and humidity in the air.

The sky is blue

*enters* (Era 1) The Inquisitor Mantra: *leaves*

I'm back from the dead! School is really time-consuming. So...when did they change the logo? And also, 11 days since the last RP post?

Yes I did start Ookla season early, I'm going to be out of town for a while and didn't want to miss it.

That’s plausible enough. Makes me wonder whether Yolish Lightweaving is somehow more volatile/powerful, just like Khriss suggests that another Yolish version of a surge was in the RoW Ars Arcanum.

That was specifically about

Is this maybe a reference to how:[Dawnshard spoilers]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssss. Kingsdaughter pretty much summed up my entire experience but here's my own rant: I liked this book. It was FUN. I loved Starsight, but tbh when that ending implied that Spensa will be away from fighting the war with the Superiority and embark on a side quest, I was a bit worried that Cytonic will end up falling in the "just a filler book" category despite it being a main novel (and the series being about Spensa's story). In some ways it did feel that way, but hot damn I was wrong for the most part though. I found it more chill and enjoyable, a pleasant contrast to the others--novellas included--which dealt with more serious things. Can I just say though, Spensa and M-Bot's childish excitement to the stuff we would find pretty normal (like the ocean and mushrooms) was SO PURE. It made my heart melt seeing her finally just getting to live you know?? During the adventuring she acted just like a kid who'd been taken to a theme park for the first time and *incoherent babbling* I LOVE it. Loved the reveals and the stuff we learned. Space pirates were cool, I kinda hope we'll see them again (especially since Spensa still has that promise). The relationship between Spin, the pirates, M-Bot, Chet were fun (Oh and her relationship with Jorgen hhhhhh my precious babies got together, finally). Spensa's character development was one of the hit points of the book for me: she matured in this one yet still remains to be the little aggressive little gremlin who owns my heart (spoilering the next part because my main rant is getting too long XD, feel free to skip it) AND THAT ENDING *bangs fists on table* DAYUM BRANDON WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO ME. And the lore about the delvers, cytonics, AI was...wow it's great finally getting some answers, so now let's go beat Winzik's a- Super hyped for Evershore and Defiant!! Final thoughts: Liked and enjoyed it. A lot. The reveals were great, though I suspect it wouldn't be as fun on a reread anymore since the whole surprise aspect was what made them super exciting, but oh well. It was an enjoyable break from the more serious books, but in terms of the books as a whole I still think my ranking would be Starsight>>Skyward>>(Sunreach & Redawn)>>Cytonic. However, Cytonic does now hold the 'Most Favorite Book-ish Moments' title (sorry Skyward) and that says a lot.

Linnea. @Otto Didact suggested it during the Sunreach spoiler period, and Janci liked the name, so she's been rolling with it. Regarding readings and Arcanum audio, things may either not happen, or take a little while. The official release event was livestreamed (privately) on YouTube, but I expect that one to become public at a later date (personal speculation). I am being told that the Spoiler Q&A was also recorded by Dragonsteel, presumably with the intent to post it at some point, but we don't know anything more there. Until these things become public, the only stuff we'll be putting in Arcanum are people's personal reports here, and elsewhere on the Internet. So if anyone has WoBs still fresh in their memory, post away

So I did like Cytonic. But the thing I found odd was how much time we interacted with pirates and how little tension there was in the space combat except at the very end. Spensa is just too good of a pilot, and with the worldbuilding decision that they didn't use live ammo... that made the fights decidedly not tense for me. One thing I am surprised about: I love the delvers again! I hated how easy the delver was to beat in Starsight, but I totally loved that that was now a corrupted, shunned delver. I dug that a lot. I found their backstory great. I am very surprised Brandon pulled it out for me because man, I was so deflated after Starsight. That said, I still think there should have been way more casualties from the delver there. It's kind of hilarious to me that the one casualty in Starsight came back to life in this book, with Hesho, haha.

Alright, time for my final update of Q&A stuff for this Con, as I wasn't one of the lucky 150. I'll quote questions I asked, and paraphrase the responses. Direct quotes will be in quotation marks, and everything else is paraphrased. Janci was later asked which era she would like to write in, and confessed that it didn't really matter to her. She then went on to explain that she'd like to write a YA story that would ultimately bridge the gap between the times. (So more like what Wax & Wayne was originally intended as in an Era 1.5 sort of story.) Kimmalyn will most likely be a future Skyward novella character*, and will most likely be a LGBTQ+ character, as a future LGBTQ+ romance IS coming. (Not confirmed, but Janci wiggled her eyebrows suggestively when directly asked about Kimmalyn.) Janci also ships Alanik and Arturo and doesn't want their relationship to end at just friendship. Janci also wants to name Spensa's mom Linea (sp.) EDIT: Most of the above has already been listed. (By me...earlier today...whoops...) I'm keeping these up though, just for posterity's sake. White Sand Omnibus is done! They're working with the publisher on it, and it will probably be released next year sometime. Isaac is also about halfway through his Nikki story. Lastly are some questions and answers from tonight's Q&A. Since this one was streamed, I'm pretty sure the Arcanum will use that footage instead. Still: @Wyndlerunnerreported the Ashyn magic stuff. (Cultivation has briefly been to Ashyn as well.) At the Bands of Mourning dance ball where Hoid and Khriss are, there is at least one, but probably two other worldhoppers present. Dune's monopoly on intergalactic travel narrative influenced the Cytoverse. Once again Brandon mentioned a videogame project he can't announce.** Ilos (sp.) wanted to work with Brandon, but was rejected due to another project being accepted. This rejected project was one of two denied, and has enough information out there that people have started comparing it to Mistborn. (This may be Forspoken, but the compony mentioned - which I completely misspelled - is neither Luminous Projects or Square Enix, the two driving forces behind Forspoken. I may have misheard however.) Aimians don't have Parshendi blood, but RAFO on other races mixing to result in them. Rithmatist - getting someone who has Aztec heritage to co-author the sequel is being looked into and a probably direction. This is not new information. "What do Doomslugs taste like?" "They taste like...knowing you're a terrible person." A worldhopper in The Lost Metal comes from a culture inspired by the Indian subcontinent. (I believe there's been speculation about a potential Elantrian country/continent, but there's no hard WoBs on this.) Total Readings as far as I know: The Lost Metal (Chapters 1 & 2) Evershore (Prologue & Chapter 1) In the Shadow of Lightning (Brian McClellan's new book) (First part of a character's first viewpoint) Kingmaker (Prologue & Chapter 1) *This may or may not have been confirmed during the Skyward panel. I wasn't there. **Insert Soulburner speculation and hype.

I got my question asked! My breakdown: If I wasn't 100% behind Soulburner being a videogame before, I am now. I think there's a not small chance that Soulburner is actually the PS4 game Forspoken. Reddit sniffed out a couple of sources a few months ago, and the information from that speculation has been proved accurate. Add in Brandon's comment about doing a call with a videogame company earlier this week, and it feels like there's something brewing. This also matches up with Brandon not being able to tell us anything IMO. The only problem is why Brandon would have an NDA so far into this project when others seemingly don't. And that's something I can't answer. Other things of note: I asked Steven Bohls if he and Brandon have any cool ideas for the next Lux book in terms of cool settings or cities - he mentioned that Book 5 will most likely be set in the New Orleans bayou/deep swamp area. (Or at least that's what he'd like.) It will most likely be a shorter book, at around 100k words overall; and there's a good chance that Mizzy will be a major POV character in the next book. Fun fact - Mizzy was supposed to show up in Lux, as Jax was supposed to go from Boston through New York, meet Mizzy and see Regalia flood the city, and then end up in Texas. This part ended up being cut as it was too tangential to the story. (Wingflare's original gimmick was going to be sound and a sound effect, but this was cut - as were most sound effects - as it felt too much like a gimmick.) Brandon currently wants Lux to be a trilogy, and the second book in that trilogy may be released sometime next November. (The two have ideas, but they were waiting on some sales reports and contract stuff first, and that may have just arrived this past week.) Dan is writing the novelization of Dark One at the moment. It's not following the outline, so don't expect it to end up like the graphic novel (sadly). Dan is planning on this being about a 100-120k novel overall. Janci unofficially announced more Skyward novellas, with a surprise POV character for one of them coming up. Brandon will give the official announcement tomorrow/today. This isn't really big spoiler-y or surprising news, as Janci a few months ago mentioned that there were things she couldn't talk about related to Skyward and that we can infer from there, and then Brandon mentioned that he had talks with Janci during his 11/19 SandoWriMo update - the one where he also talks about a meeting with a videogame company. Brandon Q&A tidbits, all paraphrased: Hoid should not be a Rosharan and Yolish Lightweaver, as it's getting close to something related to Dawnshards. There are other Surges related to Yolish magic. There are other Godmetals that can be used/burned by anyone. The "Crown, Tower, Spear" Death Rattle has not happened yet, either on-screen or off-screen.

Taking this WoB and WoP together (and I'm sure a few others I can't track down), we can see that Brandon thinks all god metals should have been burnable by anyone in the way Lerasium was. The fact that Atium could only be burned by Mistborn or Oracles was a result of Cosmere rules not yet being fully fleshed out yet, and might retroactively be explained by a Shard tinkering with things at the time. Likewise, we know that both Atium and Lerasium work as spikes (for given value of 'work,' in the case of Lerasium) in hemalurgy, as does Trellium. So since we can see that god metals can apparently freely interface with Ruin's metallic art, and they at least should freely interface with Preservation's, what's to prevent them from freely interfacing with their shared metallic art? What's to prevent someone with the right Intent from storing their youth in an atium nugget, then drawing it back out again later?

Alternately rereading and relistening to Howl's Moving Castle for the umpteenth time. I love Jenny Sterlin as the narrator, she reads the characters exactly how I imagined them.

Mistborn

Thanks for the correction and updates! Oh thanks for the reminder! I legitimately forgot! I believe it was lumped into the question about other Surges being related to Yolish surges/powers. (But I have it as beforehand in my notes, so it may not be.) Brandon kept saying that Hoid should not be a Lightweaver, and mentioned that it was bringing him close to something related to the Dawnshards. I wish it in more detail, but that's the best I can do at the moment and there wasn't a lot of explanation.

This mention of Odium potentially double-crossing Autonomy, and the fact that Hoid lumps them together in his grudge, makes me think that Odium and Autonomy had more than just an understanding together. The following WoB hints towards them being somewhat involved together in the splintering of Devotion and Dominion: If I recall correctly, there was also a WoB that Odium's battle with Ambition had a third participant in it, but I need to find that (will edit when I do). If that extra participant was Autonomy, that could point towards the two of them working together actively to splinter other Shards! (edit: The WoB does not exist but was an Epigraph from RoW stating that the participant was Mercy)

Definitely surges? Aesudan.

@Kingsdaughter613 Yes. Thank you for summing up perfectly why I loved this book.

I am happy to, on occasion, change this back if needed. The limit is just there so people don't change their username super frequently, as that can be quite confusing for the general community when that changes. So just message me, Robin, because obviously you just changed your username's formatting, which makes perfect sense. Participate in Ookla season and message me when you would like it back.

We got Evershore in the newsletter

TLM may be up, depending if Team Dragonsteel recorded that session and puts it online, and when. If they only recorded tonight's session and decide to release that, then we'll get Kingmaker instead. Evershore is a bit more nebulous. I imagine we'll get a teaser and/or maybe even the first chapter as a preview for the release, but I don't think they'll the convention version. Then again, I've been wrong before.

This is a very interesting book. On first this first readthrough, I think I liked it better than Starsight. I'm really afraid I'll dislike it as I think about it more, but that rarely happens with Sanderson books. This book really felt like a Storm-lite book, but for Rhythm of War instead of just in general like Skyward was. Here, Spensa's journey was all about a new discover linked with old roots, not unlike Navani and Venli's discoveries in RoW. However, this felt more like The Empire Strikes Back instead of RoW's The Last Jedi. (Although Spensa's confrontations with Brade definitely felt like early Rey/Kylo Ren Force-times.) It's also interesting to see how much story Brandon is learning to compact into 100k words. I think he's practicing this now so that Stormlight books can be a little more compact in the future. This book is more akin to what I think I wanted from Starsight, but also not, if that makes sense. Like, I like who Spensa and M-Bot become during this book, but we needed Starsight to get there. As mentioned both others, this book does suffer from the same problems that Starsight did, but I don't think nearly to the degree the second book did. Here we got ample Jorgen; and while the rest of the flight was missing, the novellas really softened that blow. Defending Elysium's tie-ins were expected from Beta/Gamma reviews on Goodreads, but still very surprising in their implementation. And as @Chaos mentioned in his review, the book had a certain lack of tension that the first book did, and the sacrifices didn't hurt as much.* Still, it was an enjoyable, if safe and unsurprising (to me) ride. Still, this book has done a great job at hyping me up for Defiant, which I guess is officially the title now Evershore. My current Cytoverse ranking: Skyward ReDawn Sunreach & Cytonic Defending Elysium & Starsight *Although to be fair, sacrifices in books rarely hurt me emotionally, and I may just be too tired to have this one be sad.

(I was serious about that question, by the way. Maybe I ought to clarify that it doesn't have to be classical. Just tell me your favorite song and I'll go find a piano cover of it! It's for book research...stuff.)

Brandon was asked what Shard is the source of Ashyn's magic, to which he responded Cultivation

Janci's spotlight panel stuff: Evershore Prologue and Chapter 1 read. Kimmalyn will most likely be a new novella character. She will also most likely be the LGBTQ+ character, as Janci wiggled her eyebrows suspiciously when asked. Janci would love to do a YA story set in Mistborn (it's not happening though, so don't spread rumors.) Also, will anyone be at the Skyward spotlight panel at 4? Janci teased some big announcements, but I won't be there - I'm heading to Brian McClellan's panel.

While it's possible that Jasnah wants Hoid's child (though not likely, in my opinion), I think there's a much simpler transactional reason outlined in Jasnah's PoV: Wit has vast depths of knowledge at his disposal -- some of which no other living creature has access to, and some of which only "gods" (i.e., shardholders) have access to. Jasnah is extremely passionate about knowledge, and it is Hoid's knowledge she is attracted to. In her estimation, her lack of a sex drive is not a dealbreaker when it comes to having a sexual relationship with Hoid, because she does get something from him that she is truly passionate about. It's similar to a classic transactional relationship, like a pre-modern woman choosing to marry someone she doesn't love because he can provide her with food, shelter, and children -- except that Jasnah may actually be attracted to Hoid himself because of his knowledge. As for Hoid -- despite his age, Hoid may not actually have experience dealing with (or coming to understand) asexual people. Jasnah notes that he engages in flirtatious physical contact, thinking that it will engender romantic feelings in her -- which for the vast majority of people would have proven true. It's a believable blindspot to have, because if he's caressed hundreds (or thousands) of people during his immortality, and the most frequent responses have been either attraction or revulsion, it would be easy for him to misinterpret Jasnah's lack of revulsion as attraction. It is human to paint with a broad brush and project our feelings on others.

This summer I embarked to a project to log all of my SE games, since I was coming up on 100 games. Now, 4+ months later, my personal spreadsheet is done! I had a blast going back and rereading (or at least skimming) all of these games, and would highly recommend players to go back and reread their own older games, and some of the more iconic games that they might not have played in. I was kind of amazed at how many wildly different (and quite often broken) rulesets we have played with, and was somewhat inspired to try and think up my own overly complicated ruleset. Now that I've started GMing, who knows? I made notes of many of my favorite moments in the spreadsheet, and I found a couple of my own quotes regarding the meta that are worth remembering: From AG 6: From LG 68, in a PM with Kas: And this isn't a quote, but starting with LG 50, I explicitly ignored all the inactive players when doing my analysis, and this was where I first felt like I really was playing well as a villager. In terms of the actual numbers, I'm not sure that the percentages mean a whole lot, given the number of imbalanced games involved. But if they are significant, I'm clearly total garbage at MRs, and happy with where I fall on the other types of games. I'm currently in the middle of my longest losing streak , which is about to catch up to my longest evil streak. And @Quintessential destroyed what could have been an 11 game survival streak, with a C1 kill no less . We also need to run a QF faction game, a QF with neutral roles, and a free-for-all MR so that I can get rid of the divide by 0 errors . And I have some associated RP I started that I'll post underneath here whenever I get around to writing it. Possibly accompanied by a ruleset.

Checked out Sweet Silver Blues by Glenn Cook based on a recommendation from @Ammanas . It's the first book in the Garrett P. I. series and it was really good. It's a hardboiled detective story set in a fantasy world, kind of like Raymond Chandler crossed with Piers Anthony (on one of Piers Anthony's good days). The story is good, the analogies are novel and fun, the mystery is compelling and fully explained, and the characters are great. Garrett, the human beer swilling detective, teams up with a Dark Elf vegan bruiser named Motley Dotes, consults an oracular animate corpse known as the Dead Man, and stays just one jump ahead of all the various factions that are tangled up in the plot who want to rub him out. Also just read Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest and though it was good, I have to say I liked Sweet Silver Blues better. I think I'm tired of books that lionize anti-heroes.

I like it. Makes a ton of sense, and nothing I can think of rules any of it out. Fits well with my speculation that Jasnah and Hoid are heading towards an ugly breakup, followed by an EPIC "evil ex" dynamic - two powerful, resourceful, and dangerous people who used to love each other but are now bitter enemies. Nothing would get Jansah fired up more than Hoid betraying her trust and throwing all of Roshar under the bus.

Yeah I have to say, I tried to come up with a semi plausible in-world explanation like "maybe Notum just mean forefather!", but he gave his entire pedigree generation by generation from an honorspren by the Stormfather after the Recreance that began with his great-grandmother, so there's just no deadeyes in his family tree what with it being a single line for spren. Meanwhile, Ico was another ship's captain from Oathbringer whose father was a deadeye from before the Recreance... Albeit a lightspren who had care of that deadeye father in his ship's hold. So it's not even just that Brandon "confused Notum with Ico", more like "Oops, he thought that bit about Ico's backstory was Notum's and as an honorspren deadeye, of course he would be in Lasting Integrity". UInless a comical sidetrack dialogue were imagined as head-canon. "Your father, Notum? Didn't you say you were the great-great-grandson of the Stormfather himself, of a line he started long after the Recreance, after the death of Honor?" "Ah, well, I was thinking of this honorspren in Lasting Integrity who I spent a lot of time around while growing up." "One you were as close to as your father?" "Closer, even! He was more of a father to me than my so-called real father ever was!" "Even though he'd been a deadeye since the Recreance four generations before you." "Yes. My father was really, really distant, you see." "..." "Honorspren humor. It takes too long to explain to humans. Probably a bad time for it. It's because of the abuse I just endured as a captive. Anyway, about your deadeye fighting back-to-back with you against those humans..."

Hero of Ages

Death and the Survivor 26: (Mistborn spoilers)

I suspect that you're right about the ritual thing to an extent. My thought is Nahz and the og threnodites could turn themselves into CS to travel the cosmere, and that there was many of the CS people just living among the normal people. Once the Evil came it currupted the Investitutre and turned all the normal freindly ghost peeps into shades. That could be why Silence's grandma won't attack her, because they retain a smigin of control still.

Page 2:

She also mentions that she so often thinks of her grandmother and the God Beyond as the same

Also when she's shouting into the forest when William Ann is near death, I believe she mentions that she's not sure whether she's shouting at the shades, the God Beyond, or her grandmother

As Karger said, the Threnodites, after being forced to flee their Homeland with the advent of the Evil, settling in the Forests of Hell full of Shades, just developed a culture that had Puritanical names. If you're wondering why Nazh doesn't, seems like he's just embarrassed:

Ashyn comes to mind, as does Final Empire era Scadrial, planet-wide magic in the Cosmere are potentially extinction-level threats

Poll: would you be afraid of a supervillain if his "costume" was just a cardboard box he put over his head. If not, what if he's drawn a crude smiley face in marker on the front of the box. If not, what if there are no eye holes in the box because his powers allow him to perfectly sense everything within a mile radius of him without need for his other senses. If still not, what if he can choose to disintegrate anything around him into black dust at will. If still not, what if underneath his box he's actually a whirling, stirring mass of black dust in the rough shape of the human he once was before he disintegrated himself, now only clinging to life by sheer force of will and desire to crumble everything else in the world. If still not, please help me, because Box has been in my head all week and I'm scared.

Currently I'm using this But I was using this I may, for a lark, briefly use this one