Foggy Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 Does anyone know why Brandon decided bridge 4 was the worst bridge to get assigned to? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AonEne Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 Do you mean why he decided it was the fourth one (pretty sure that was random) or why he decided to make it be worse at all (story purposes)? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunamor Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 If you are asking for the reason of Bridge 4’s terribleness, it’s because all of the bad behaving or weak slaves are sent there, so the heights of the bridgemen don’t match up. Most other crews have pretty uniform heights, so Bridge 4 has things extra difficult. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karger Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 Torr's reread says this. Quote I also wonder how it came to be that Bridge Four was designated Worst Bridge Ever. It’s sound policy, as evil policies go. You need to make sure that even your most downtrodden slaves have someone to look down on, or it’ll be harder to keep them downtrodden. But I wonder if it was an executive order or developed organically as the result of endemically terrible leadership. I wonder if I can find a way to blame Gaz. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aneonfoxtribute Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 One can also point to Bridge 4 being the worse because of the "4 Is Death" trope. Basically, in Japanese, how you say 4 is similar to how you say death, so 4 is seen as bad luck over there, and it's a fairly common trope to make something with the number 4 be very deadly. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foggy Posted July 12, 2020 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 Yeah I was wondering if the number 4 had some special meaning. I was looking around on the forum and found this post It looks like aneon is right. Maybe something he decided to use after his time in Korea. I guess if the book gets translated to an east asian language it will read "Bridge Death". Thanks for the replies! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
18th Shard Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 Quote Questioner How did the name Bridge Four [come about]? Brandon Sanderson So, I stole Bridge Four (there's an interesting story to it)... Dragonsteel was my seventh novel, and it's Hoid's origin story, and it takes place... the series is Hoid's origin story, though that book doesn't really get into it. We have a few viewpoints from him, but it's not really about him. And the idea was, I was gonna kind of lead into this epic fantasy, and then start talking about this mysterious character who was a big part of it. And the main character I decided to lead in with that was this person who got stuck in a bridge crew. It's not Kaladin, it's a very different character, but the idea of the bridge crews. Well, eventually, I took Dalinar out of... even before I was writing Dragonsteel, I pulled him out, set him for a different book. And eventually it became clear to me that I needed to pull the bridge crews out and move them to Roshar because they just worked better. I had this great idea for these bridge crews, but the world they're in just didn't match. And the chasms and things matched very well. So I moved them out and made them a part of Kaladin's story. What I'm getting at is, I came up with the bridge crews, like, twenty years ago, and I have no idea why I picked four, other than... I have no idea. Bridge Four has been Bridge Four to me for years. In fact, if you read Dragonsteel, you can still find Rock in Bridge Four from twenty years ago, acting kind of the same. And a few of the other characters are still there, as well. Shadows of Self San Jose signing (Oct. 9, 2015) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honorless Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) 12 hours ago, AonEne said: Do you mean why he decided it was the fourth one (pretty sure that was random) or why he decided to make it be worse at all (story purposes)? 4 is an unlucky number in Japanese. It's pronounced either yon or shi, the latter also means death (different kanji). Edit: ah wait, ninja'ed Edited July 12, 2020 by The First Post 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thejopen27 Posted July 15, 2020 Report Share Posted July 15, 2020 I always got the sense it developed organically. Bridge 4 had a couple bad runs in a row, it got the reputation for being unlucky, so they started sending the rejects and weak slaves there which led Bridge 4 to be slower and less efficient which caused even worse things to happen. It's stated in WoK that the Parshendi focus fire on the bridges that look like they're about to fall so a sloppy bridge is more likely to be targeted. Over time the issues compound and feed into each other. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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