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Hoid in HoA


Eternal Khol

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So in HoA Vin is supposed to go see hoid about something but as she's walking up she gets a sense that something is wrong so she turns around and leaves without a word.

This scene mirrors the one is Secret History when Kelsier finds Hoid and touches him and gets jolt through his "body"

I just realized that the reason Vin turned around was because Kelsier got through to Vin's mind/subconscious and told her not to talk to him

I love how much foresight Brandon has when it comes to things like this.

 

This WoB is relevant:

Brandon Sanderson

No, that was something I wanted to do from the beginning. I was inspired by Isaac Asimov combining his Robots books and his Foundation books, and he did it late in his career. It kind of felt a bit hacked together a bit, but it blew my mind when he did it and, as a writer, I always thought, what if somebody did this from the get-go.

The actual origins of the kind of worldhoppers for me was reading books as a teenager and inserting Hoid into them. I really did this.... Do you read books and you like change what is happening in the book, or maybe it's just a me thing? I would have my character interacting with the characters in the books, in my head, as I played the movie of that book in my head, while I was reading it, and there was this character hopping between worlds, with this knowing smirk on his face.

And so, when I was working on Elantris I said, "OK", I knew I had something in that book that was good, that was important, that was relevant, I was very confident in that book. It was my sixth novel, by the way, so I kind of had a handle on these things, and so that's when I decided I'm going to start doing some of this, I'm going to insert Hoid into this and I'm going to start planning this larger epic. It was particularly important to me because I knew I was not going to write a sequel to Elantris immediately, but I wanted to be writing epic stories, and the reason I didn't want to write a sequel to Elantris is because, if an editor rejected Elantris I wanted to be able to send them another book, because when you're getting close to publishing you'll start getting rejections that are like "This is actually a really good book, it doesn't fit our line, you just wrote a great mystical llama book but we just bought one of those, do you have anything else?". I wanted to be able to send them "here's my next thing" rather than "oh, I've got a sequel to the one you just rejected". And so I sat down and wrote the sequel, which was not a sequel, it was called Dragonsteel, which was Hoid's origin story. And then I jumped forward and I wrote White Sand which is another book connected to all these things and it went on, you know, it went crazy from there. And then when I actually sold Elantris it was already going and already in there, and I was able to sit down and write Mistborn, well in hand, knowing what was going to happen. That's why you find Hoid in Elantris and Mistborn and the sneaky, the scary-- well, it's not sneaky and it's not scary-- the moment in the third book when Vin gets creeped out by Hoid is a very important moment, Cosmerologically, but I'm not going to tell you why!

Shadows of Self Newcastle UK signing (Oct. 20, 2015) 

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In both HoA and Secret History Kelsier tried to tell her to go away but Vin didn't react. Then her own well-honed instincts told her to avoid Hoid.

I think he's talking about Hoid's importance to the Cosmere sequence in that quote

Edited by Dreamer
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9 minutes ago, Dreamer said:

In both HoA and Secret History Kelsier tried to tell her to go away but Vin didn't react. Then her own well-honed instincts told her to avoid Hoid.

I think he's talking about Hoid's importance to the Cosmere sequence in that quote

Kelsier in SH

"“Vin,” Kelsier said. “Vin! Listen, please. That man is trouble. Don’t approach him. Don’t—” Vin cocked her head, then leaped off the roof, away from the Drifter. “Hell,” Kelsier said. “Did she actually hear me?” Or was it a coincidence? Kelsier leaped after Vin, tossing himself carelessly from the building. He didn’t have Allomancy, but he was light, and could fall without getting hurt. He landed softly and sprinted across the springy ground, tailing Vin as best he could, running through buildings, ignoring walls, trying to stay close. She still got ahead of him. Kelsier … Preservation’s voice whispered at him. Something thrummed through him, a familiar jolt of power, a warmth within. It reminded him of burning metals. Preservation’s own essence, empowering him. He ran faster, jumped farther. It wasn’t true Allomancy, but instead was something more raw and primal. It surged through Kelsier, warming his soul, letting him reach Vin—who had stopped in the street before a large building. Soon after he reached her, she took off again down the street, but this time Kelsier managed to keep pace, barely. And she knew he was there.

 

Vin in HoA

"She was being followed. She only caught hints of him behind her, obscured by the patterns of swirling mist. Tentatively, Vin burned bronze, and was rewarded with a very faint thumping from behind. An obscured Allomantic pulse.

 

I think a small part of him got to her, or maybe it was just after.

Edited by Eternal Khol
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2 hours ago, Dreamer said:

I read it as coincidence and Vin's own own instincts and possibly Ruin's interference.

It was Kelsier. Or so he thinks

"But why could Vin hear me? What was he missing?" -- this is right after the Hoid/Vin Scene

"Over the next few days, Kelsier tried to replicate his success in getting Vin to listen to him. Unfortunately, Ruin was watching for him now. Each time Kelsier got close, Ruin interfered, surrounding him, holding him back. Choking him with black smoke and driving him away." -- from beginning of chapter right after Hoid/Vin Scene

"But anytime Kelsier tried to speak directly with her, Ruin punished him." -- from beginning of chapter right after Hoid/Vin Scene

Ruin knows Kelsier can get through to Vin

 

 

"the moment in the third book when Vin gets creeped out by Hoid is a very important moment, Cosmerologically, but I'm not going to tell you why!" 

SH came out just a few months after this WoB. Brandon, presumably, didn't tell us why this scene is important because we'd find out more about it when SH came out just a few months later

 

@Dreamer it looks like we were both right;)

final Edit: 

"I went back and forth on this one, honestly. I knew Keslier would be involved, but one thing I was really worried about with Secret History was undermining Vin's story or her agency. While I liked Ender's Shadow, the closest parallel I knew of to a story like this, I didn't like how it weakened a lot of what Ender accomplished and gave it to Bean instead. (I think I've mentioned this in conjunction with Secret History before.)

So I wanted something to have stopped Vin, regardless of whether or not I ever wrote Kelsier's behind-the-scenes story or not. The official answer in my head is not that it was anything specific, but that the whole package that Hoid was presenting was WRONG to her. Her instincts picked up a dozen subtle cues that he was more dangerous than he seemed, and that made her freeze and assess. And that gave Kelsier the chance to nudge her away.

I wasn't trying to lead people to figure out a specific answer, with those comments. I was trying to hint that something was wrong, and Vin didn't quite know what set her off--because it wasn't one thing, but many. So I don't have a smoking gun, so to speak, of things Hoid was doing to drive her off."

 

it was a mix of Vin's own instincts that Hoid wasn't what he seemed and Kelsier telling her not to.

Edited by Eternal Khol
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