SPOILERS for final Vin and Elend Mistborn novel! SPOILERS

[Yvainnie]

4 minutes ago, Illythyrra Dark said:

I'm just going to have to deal with it I guess.  I know people will tell me that I am wrong, and maybe I am, but I really really hate it when protags get killed in the final chapter of a story.  It's supposed to make people sad, and if it does, then the author has done their job well.  Perhaps it's because of my own real world anxiety and depression issues that I seem to feel it more than others do, not sure. 

It's true that not everything has to be sunshine and roses all the time, and I do not expect it to, but it bothers me anyway.  *Shrugs.

Could also be that my first exposure was the Mistborn Trilogy and I see them all as "mine" or the Mascots of the Cosmere now, or some other reason.  Or maybe I am just stupidly overthinking it, another extremely bad habit of mine.

 

Thanks for all the replies in this topic though, everyone.

I was sad too. But Secret History had made it a little better. 

I also have anxiety a depression and I also wanted a happy ending but it made me realize (after SH) that happy ending means different things to anyone and in real life as well which helped me a lot. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Yvainnie said:

I was sad too. But Secret History had made it a little better. 

I also have anxiety a depression and I also wanted a happy ending but it made me realize (after SH) that happy ending means different things to anyone and in real life as well which helped me a lot. 

Makes me want it more and more.  Come on, June!

[The One Who Connects]

11 hours ago, Illythyrra Dark said:

It also raises another question with me:  What exactly is the afterlife like in the Cosmere?  Everyone ends up there, in a place wherever Vin and Elend are, or only good people?  and not just for Mistborn either, but the Cosmere on the whole.  Roshar seems to have a Hell like place of torment, Mistborn did not really go into it, and Neither did Warbreaker (what happens to a returned, if they die again? Where do they go?)

So... there's the afterlife, and the after-afterlife.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson
So in the Cosmere there is "dead" and "mostly dead". Okay? And this has been shown several times so once someone dies there is a period before they transition. Sazed talks about this in Mistborn 3. And so most of the implications are for before transition. Does that make sense? Post-transition you are going to have to ask the philosophers and the theologians who are the ones that talk about that. So there is an afterlife and an after-afterlife.

When somebody dies, their ties to the physical realm are severed. At that point in time, their "soul" is a Cognitive Shadow, and resides in the Cognitive Realm. This is the "afterlife," and as long as they are in this stage, they can be revived through some manner of magic trickery(or Shardic interference, a la the Returned). It's just the normal Cognitive Realm that anybody can get to, and the Heralds only seem to be in a place of torment because Odium is interfering.

Everybody has a time limit though, as souls feel the call of the Beyond(the after-afterlife). It is my understanding that this pull is always happening, but without a tie to the physical realm(ie: a body), that pull becomes much harder to resist. Usage of Investiture during life "invests" your soul, and the more invested you are, the better able to resist the Call of the Beyond you are. A normal person could probably persist as a Shadow for... a day(arbitrary number), whereas Mistborn/Surgebinders could resist for months or more, and a former Vessel of a Shard(or TLR) could resist it for practically forever if they wanted. At any time though, a Shadow can willingly surrender to the call and go to the Beyond immediately.

The Beyond is the Cosmere equivalent to Heaven in Religion/Mythology. What that boils down to is that nobody knows anything for certain. As Weltall mentioned, not even the Shards can see into the Beyond, which speaks volumes about it, since the Shards can peer through time and space without much trouble. Brandon has been fairly adamant about not explaining further, as he doesn't want to trample on beliefs (of us or the characters) by saying "this is wrong," so consider the true afterlife to be as people imagine it to be.

9 hours ago, Illythyrra Dark said:

Are you and Brandon suggesting that when he wrote sazed as saying he may be able to return Vin and Elends souls to their bodies, that it was an error and something he should not have had Sazed say because it's never going to happen?

It may have been something that Brandon changed as time went on, rather than a mistake made when writing Mistborn. Either way, Sazed's inaccuracy is an easy enough fix: Sazed thought that he could do so, but wasn't able to. Bear in mind that the scenes at the end of Era 1 are directly after the Catacendre, so Sazed hadn't really had enough time/practice/information to know that he can't bring back a soul that's passed into the Beyond. It's entirely reasonable for him to consider a lack of experience as a possible cause of his inability, and revise that statement later on once he had more information.

[Unhinged]

7 hours ago, Illythyrra Dark said:

I'm just going to have to deal with it I guess.  I know people will tell me that I am wrong, and maybe I am, but I really really hate it when protags get killed in the final chapter of a story.  It's supposed to make people sad, and if it does, then the author has done their job well.  Perhaps it's because of my own real world anxiety and depression issues that I seem to feel it more than others do, not sure. 

It's true that not everything has to be sunshine and roses all the time, and I do not expect it to, but it bothers me anyway.  *Shrugs.

Could also be that my first exposure was the Mistborn Trilogy and I see them all as "mine" or the Mascots of the Cosmere now, or some other reason.  Or maybe I am just stupidly overthinking it, another extremely bad habit of mine.

 

Thanks for all the replies in this topic though, everyone.

Well when you read AU I'd encourage you to pay special attention to Edgdancer it's subtle but there are some similarities between our little Reshi protagonist and Vin. Admittedly it probably wasn't intentional and Sanderson just let a little bit of Vin bleed into Lift due to their backstories. But after going through it I can't help but wonder if maybe reincarnation is a thing in the Cosmer. I doubt it, but I do hope Sanderson deliberately leaves some of Lift vague so we can draw our own conclusions about her similarities to vin being pure chance or something more.

[Yvainnie]

 

2 hours ago, Unhinged said:

Well when you read AU I'd encourage you to pay special attention to Edgdancer it's subtle but there are some similarities between our little Reshi protagonist and Vin. Admittedly it probably wasn't intentional and Sanderson just let a little bit of Vin bleed into Lift due to their backstories. But after going through it I can't help but wonder if maybe reincarnation is a thing in the Cosmer. I doubt it, but I do hope Sanderson deliberately leaves some of Lift vague so we can draw our own conclusions about her similarities to vin being pure chance or something more.

Really? Because I think they are not similar at all. I loved Vin a lot but Lift is just annoying. May be if they were a bit alike I would like her too at least a bit. 

[Guest]

This is what I love about this place, I may not remember all of that really interesting lore information, but at least now I can find it and go back to it if I want to.  Thanks everybody

[ScarletSabre]

Personally, if we were to get Elend and Vin again somehow, I'd want it to be in spirit form, perhaps someone connecting with the Spiritual Realm and getting words of encouragement from them, for example.

A great example of the kind of thing I mean from the Marvel Avengers Vs X-Men event.

Spoiler

Cyclops has a fragment of the Phoenix Force within him, and while everyone is fighting against him and he's losing control, his consciousness drifts between moments in his life and different planes of telepathic power, musing on the vastness of it, and how strong he is as he absorbs more of the power and goes Dark Phoenix.

He drifts and grows, contemplating destroying the whole planet, perhaps the solar system or universe, and starting it again. As he considers his own power, wondering if this is how Jean felt before she died, he reaches a wall of whiteness that he can't access beyond, he reaches out and touches it.

And hears Jean's voice, chuckling and telling him that he's an idiot, and giving a message to pass on to Wolverine, telling him that she loves the fact he named the new school after her.

I may be a sucker for sap like this, but it brings a tear to my eye.

Edited May 2, 2018 by ScarletSabre

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, ScarletSabre said:

Personally, if we were to get Elend and Vin again somehow, I'd want it to be in spirit form, perhaps someone connecting with the Spiritual Realm and getting words of encouragement from them, for example.

A great example of the kind of thing I mean from the Marvel Avengers Vs X-Men event.

  Reveal hidden contents

Cyclops has a fragment of the Phoenix Force within him, and while everyone is fighting against him and he's losing control, his consciousness drifts between moments in his life and different planes of telepathic power, musing on the vastness of it, and how strong he is as he absorbs more of the power and goes Dark Phoenix.

He drifts and grows, contemplating destroying the whole planet, perhaps the solar system or universe, and starting it again. As he considers his own power, wondering if this is how Jean felt before she died, he reaches a wall of whiteness that he can't access beyond, he reaches out and touches it.

And hears Jean's voice, chuckling and telling him that he's an idiot, and giving a message to pass on to Wolverine, telling him that she loves the fact he named the new school after her.

I may be a sucker for sap like this, but it brings a tear to my eye.

Nothing wrong with that To be honest, if they can't have another go at a living life together to grow old, have children, have a nice little home somewhere, then I would love the idea of them having spirit bodies together and acting as "angels" for Harmony.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Illythyrra Dark

[+robardin]

On 4/28/2018 at 4:27 PM, king of nowhere said:

We don't. people fade to beyond, and even shards do not know what happens to them. as far as we know, there could be nothing at all.

 

I'll say it's not a Secret History spoiler to throw out there that it seems likely that there are archaic VAX/VMS workstations in the Beyond, in at least one character's opinion, who would be in a position to have some better basis for expectations than others.

 

[The One Who Connects]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

likely that there are archaic VAX/VMS workstations in the Beyond, in at least one character's opinion,

Okay, I clearly missed something. When in Karzahni did this happen?

[+robardin]

19 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Okay, I clearly missed something. When in Karzahni did this happen?

Spoiler

Ruin stood up nearby, blinking. Or . . . no, it wasn’t Ruin any longer. It was just the Vessel, Ati. The man who had held the power. Ati ran his hand through his red hair, then looked about. “Vax?” he said, sounding confused.

Sorry, it was a dated and very geeky reference on my part

But about as good as any other meaning we have yet about “Vax” in the Cosmere

[Xtafa]

I love the characters but I hope they stay dead, you already have Kelsier semi running around. Its a trope I hate, it makes deaths meaningless and keeps peoples hopes up whenever anyone dies.