Cosmere Adaptation Announcement

[king of nowhere]

meanwhile, brandon was supposed to go live to discuss it. that stream was postponed. anyone knows when it will be held? speculation is well and good, but i'd rather hear more from brandon himself.

[Frustration]

15 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

meanwhile, brandon was supposed to go live to discuss it. that stream was postponed. anyone knows when it will be held? speculation is well and good, but i'd rather hear more from brandon himself.

They said he would announce it when they were ready. I don't think we'll get anything until at least Monday

[Schizoposting]

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

That is we do not have a situation where the aristocrats form an oppressive government. They are in a priviledged position under such a government, which they abuse. I'd say that is a distinction you cannot do without even in an adaption.

I think that we have different interpretations of Mistborn; it seems like you put the moral responsibility for the Final Empire, on Rashek instead of on the Nobles; while I agree that he was a terrible person, I think that the nobles are just as responsible for the mistreatment of the Skaa as TLR.

24 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

meanwhile, brandon was supposed to go live to discuss it. that stream was postponed. anyone knows when it will be held? speculation is well and good, but i'd rather hear more from brandon himself.

I've seen speculation that Apple has forced him to keep quiet; he added a Mistborn script progress bar (at 2%), only for it to be removed. If that's the case, we're unlikely to hear anything until the film starts production. 

Edited February 1 by Schizoposting

[Qianweilian He/him]

47 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

I've seen speculation that Apple has forced him to keep quiet; he added a Mistborn script progress bar (at 2%), only for it to be removed. If that's the case, we're unlikely to hear anything until the film starts production.

The longer he goes without saying more, I think this is more likely.

[king of nowhere]

he could at least say he can't say more because of a non disclosure agreement. so i'd stop waiting for news

[Nesh he/him]

I'm sure if it was something where nothing could be said they would have told us that instead of saying it would be rescheduled.

[Schizoposting]

There're two interesting WOB's where Brandon discussed a possible Mistborn adaptation:   

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

I've come to the mindset that there are two general ways to approach adaptation. One is to try to be very faithful to the actual text, and the other is to redo almost the entire thing for the new medium, while trying to keep the soul of it the same.

I've actually written treatments of Mistborn that do both of these. As an exercise, I did one more recently (for the screen) where I threw out every scene from the book and asked myself, "If I were doing what was absolutely best for a film, but telling the same story, how would I have written this?"

That treatment for that screenplay was very different from the book, while at the same time still being the book--same soul, same characters, same basic plot beats. But no actual scenes from the book except Vin/Elend on the balcony. Everything was approaching the story from a cinematic viewpoint--and I found that in a lot of cases, this new treatment was stronger.

There is, of course, a continuum between these extremes. But it taught me a lot about adaptation. And the Wheel of Time I saw tonight was absolutely worthy to be called the Wheel of Time, even though a lot of the scenes were new.

My perspective is, perhaps, skewed by my experiences. I tend to be someone who LIKES seeing film and television adaptations do new things. That doesn't prevent me from, as a producer on this, warning Rafe of places where I think the fans will prefer he stay closer to the source material. (Indeed, there are lots of places where I would prefer that he did.) But it does let me appreciate what he's doing, and how well it works. And a part of me likes that I can go and treat this as something new, rather than just a clone of something I've already read some two dozen times.

General Reddit 2021 (Nov. 20, 2021)

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

So, one thing I think I did wrong in the books was not having more allomancer guards and soldiers who were women. I don't think our same gender norms would be the case on Scadrial.

One of the [screenplay] revisions is this: Shan is no longer Elend's fiance, but his sister. Their father has left on business to the outer domninances, and so Shan is making a play to secure the heirship, trying to prove she is more bold and strong than her brother. This is what gives the team an opening, and why they're striking now with the heist, as in this version, House Venture maintains the city policing and has access to the atium stash.

The plan is to put a few Allomancers (including Ham) into the Venture house guard, and exploit Shan's desire to prove herself by creating chaos in the city that she'll think she needs to put down with decisive action. That will involve her pulling out the atium stash, which will in turn let the team know where to go to rob them.

It streamlines the book's story in some elegant ways to do this. Shan becomes the primary "mark" of the book, in many ways. It also lets me explain a little more succinctly what various members of the crew are doing in the background while we focus on Vin, who is to get close to Shan as a confidant--which is why she's sent to the parties. And why Shan being a brat to her isn't just annoying, it means a major part of the plan isn't yet in place.

It explains way better, in my opinion, why Shan would act against Elend. It's all clicking into place as I move pieces around. That said, I understand those who want a Television show. I could see going that way, perhaps.

Trouble is, nobody in streaming needs a big fantasy property. Anywhere I go right now, I'd be in a distant second or third place to Tolkien, WoT, Witcher, or Kingkiller. The offers I've gotten have been for a fraction of the budget of those shows--since everyone has already spent big money on their big fantasy show, and isn't really interested in another.

I'm confident feature is the place I want Mistborn; but even if I weren't, I'm not thrilled by the idea of being lost on Netflix as their "other" fantasy show.

Rapharasium

I don't know if I'm being negative, but these changes really worry and disappoint me. I really like Era 1 as it is, and all this change in the dynamics of society and the plot as too drastic.

Brandon Sanderson

This isn't negative; I understand this response, and think it's valid.

At the same time, I'm of the personal philosophy that a film should generally be a different beast than a book--a book can lean into the little intricacies of a story, while a film should be a bold but unified statement.

Nothing will happen to the books; those will remain the same. But if I want this film to work as a film, I believe I need to be willing to re-imagine parts of the story.

Mycroft_canner

With Elend having a sister does that mean you don’t need the Zane plot anymore?

Brandon Sanderson

That's from the second book--so it would be in the television show, and we'd likely still do it.

DataLoreHD

prove she is more bold and strong than her brother

Which brother?It certainly could not be Elend, right? Elend had no Allomancy powers (before he ate the lerasium in WoA), so Straff despised Elend and thought him too weak.And Zane was a bastard and also mad dog.If Shan was Straff's legitimate daughter, then her succession was already 100% secure. She wouldn't need to prove anything to anybody.

Brandon Sanderson

It will be Elend, but it's more that this is the first time that Shan gets to be on her own, leading by herself, and wants to show off for the Lord Ruler. Also, there's the question of whether the male heir--though inferior in this case--might get the nod for sexism reasons. I think it's going to work just fine, but I'll admit, it's getting a little rough to discuss all these details on a thread like this--I can't answer everyone's questions, I'm afraid. I just wanted to indicate the kinds of changes I'm looking at making.

Whatever I do will go through my standard "show it to tons of beta readers and get feedback" process, so I should be able to catch problems and fix them.

meh84f

The bit about atium is a bit confusing. The Ventures are going to have the Atium stash? Not the stash that we don’t find until the end I’m assuming? So it’ll be a stash but much smaller than expected?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I'm not sure I can explain it all in this, but one big change I wished I'd made from the start of Mistborn is making atium usable by all Allomancers. As I've gotten further in the cosmere, using a god metal as just for Mistborn has felt off.

So the lore change for the films will mean any Allomancer can use atium. This, in turn, lets House Venture have access to the LR's atium as a "Control the city" last resort. They keep a task force of allomancers for this purpose--which Ham can join, in anticipation of being able to steal it once Shan accesses it. (They don't know that House Venture is only given about a hundred beads of atium, not access to the full mythical cache, which will be reserved for the third movie.)

Makes the worldbuilding and storytelling more elegant, I've found, in the film. And it fits better with more "modern" cosmere fundamentals as have developed over the last decade. I think I'd make this change even if we moved to a television show and long form.

The Lord Ruler is still the "big bad" but Shan and the Inquisitors both get a little more screen time. (Actually, about the same as in the books--it's just that other parts are being trimmed, making them more front-and-center.)

Phantine

Based on that, you're also streamlining away the Sign of Sixteen if it gets a sequel? To be honest, that didn't really work for me in the novel anyway.

Brandon Sanderson

It's one of my least favorite parts of the trilogy. It (along with Vin drawing upon the mists in book one) are big changes I'm hoping to make to fix weaker sections of the continuity.

General Reddit 2020 (June 22, 2020)

Now, judging from the context, I think it's pretty clear that the second screenplay is the one where Shan is Elend's sister, so the book purists are probably going to be disappointed by the direction that the adaptation will take. Personally, I agree with the decision on a philosophical level, since (IMO) the goal of an adaptation is to make a good film, with faithfulness being a secondary priority.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

9 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I think that we have different interpretations of Mistborn; it seems like you put the moral responsibility for the Final Empire, on Rashek instead of on the Nobles; while I agree that he was a terrible person, I think that the nobles are just as responsible for the mistreatment of the Skaa as TLR.

I wouldn't call this a moral question, but one of power. TLR, if it came to that, commands the Kolloss. He can send them in to pacify (meaning mostly razing) Luthadel, if he really has to. He also forces the nobility to do what they really do not want to do.

He forces them to kill their potentially pregnant lovers. That is against their own interests. We know that because the most powerful of them, shown in the example of Straff Venture, flaunt that requirement and breed armies of allomancers.
In fact I am fairly certain that it takes TLR to keep the social system stable. It should develop to polygyny for the exact reason Straff Venture effectively practices it.

This matters dramaturgically. Nothing short of killing TLR can work. Kelsier is the fanatic who is right. There can be no compromise. In terms of power and conflict that is the core of Mistborn.

In terms of morals you can and probably should despise the nobility. Again, you can and should show that. And it is easy to do with cinematic means. But it is not enough. You never see the Kolloss. In fact that probably needs to be changed in a movie. Possibly you could show the Skaa army lose a battle against Kolloss rather than ordinary troops and have Vin just ask what those monsters are and thus tell the audience that they are under TLR's personal command by mysterious means.

9 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I've seen speculation that Apple has forced him to keep quiet; he added a Mistborn script progress bar (at 2%), only for it to be removed. If that's the case, we're unlikely to hear anything until the film starts production. 

You think so? They'd lose the publicity of the man who domineered Kickstarter. I am fairly certain AppleTV has a team charged with developing strategies in case plans leak.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

5 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I wouldn't call this a moral question, but one of power. TLR, if it came to that, commands the Kolloss. He can send them in to pacify (meaning mostly razing) Luthadel, if he really has to. He also forces the nobility to do what they really do not want to do.

He forces them to kill their potentially pregnant lovers. That is against their own interests. We know that because the most powerful of them, shown in the example of Straff Venture, flaunt that requirement and breed armies of allomancers.
In fact I am fairly certain that it takes TLR to keep the social system stable. It should develop to polygyny for the exact reason Straff Venture effectively practices it.

I do believe that this is the very first time someone has looked at a situation and said "this society should develop to have more people like Straff Venture and it's oppression that it didn't."

[Frustration]

6 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I do believe that this is the very first time someone has looked at a situation and said "this society should develop to have more people like Straff Venture and it's oppression that it didn't."

I had a conversation about this with @Trusk'our in 2023 and we came to the same conclusion.

[Schizoposting]

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I wouldn't call this a moral question, but one of power. TLR, if it came to that, commands the Kolloss. He can send them in to pacify (meaning mostly razing) Luthadel, if he really has to. He also forces the nobility to do what they really do not want to do.

This goes for any socio-political system—just because the nobles are subordinate to the government does not change the fact that they're the ruling class. TLR is just the embodiment of a broader political system; you could replace him with a council of inquisitors, and the result would be exactly the same; it's not like he takes a particularly direct role in running the Final Empire.

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

He forces them to kill their potentially pregnant lovers.

"Lovers", is a... questionable choice of words. 

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

That is against their own interests.

This is the case for any government, which necessarily represses some individual interests; this does not equal oppression, unless if you believe that collective decision making is inherently oppressive.

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

This matters dramaturgically. Nothing short of killing TLR can work. Kelsier is the fanatic who is right. There can be no compromise. In terms of power and conflict that is the core of Mistborn.

I agree that there can be no compromise, but I think that killing TLR is not enough; certainly, getting rid of an immortal demigod would be hugely beneficial, but simply getting rid of him does not end the oppression of the Skaa.

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

You never see the Kolloss. In fact that probably needs to be changed in a movie. Possibly you could show the Skaa army lose a battle against Kolloss rather than ordinary troops and have Vin just ask what those monsters are and thus tell the audience that they are under TLR's personal command by mysterious means.

I strongly disagree; like in a horror movie, you want to show TLR as little as possible and only gives hints about how terrible he is. Simply saying that he has an army of terrible monsters, works a lot more powerfully than showing them onscreen, where they'll just be glorified orcs.

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

You think so? They'd lose the publicity of the man who domineered Kickstarter. I am fairly certain AppleTV has a team charged with developing strategies in case plans leak.

I think that the series of events went something like this: AppleTV acquires the rights to Mistborn and Stormlight, and (for whatever reason), does not disclose this; the news gets leaked by The Hollywood Reporter; Brandon sees that the cat is out of the bag, and publicly comments, and adds a progress bar for the Mistborn script; Apple contacts him, and tells him to keep quite; thus, he cancels the stream, and removes the progress bar. 

Now, as to why Apple may want to keep quiet, I think that it's part of some marketing strategy, or because they don't want people to get their hopes up on a property that may not work out (e.g. if the script is bad, or if Brandon is difficult to work with). I assume that they're having discussions right now, about how Brandon's fan interaction will play into the marketing.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

11 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

This goes for any socio-political system—just because the nobles are subordinate to the government does not change the fact that they're the ruling class.

That is not the only constraint they are living under. The empire is being ruled in ways that are not just subordinating individual nobles to laws, but is being run against their group interests

• requirement to use arbiters for all contracts
• subjecting the nobility to censorship
• the atium regime
• enforced monogamy
• limits on scientific research

just to give the most obvious examples

11 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

TLR is just the embodiment of a broader political system; you could replace him with a council of inquisitors, and the result would be exactly the same; it's not like he takes a particularly direct role in running the Final Empire.

Well, no, you couldn't because thanks to the Kolloss TLR has the final say. A council of inquisitors would fragment. A god-emperor cannot fragment.

TLR is like nuclear weapons in international politics. He changes everything because he could act, even if he never does.

11 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

"Lovers", is a... questionable choice of words. 

Yes. It is the subset they really care about though. My apologies.

11 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I agree that there can be no compromise, but I think that killing TLR is not enough; certainly, getting rid of an immortal demigod would be hugely beneficial, but simply getting rid of him does not end the oppression of the Skaa.

Yes. But that matters only in the later books and consequently subsequent movies.

11 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I strongly disagree; like in a horror movie, you want to show TLR as little as possible and only gives hints about how terrible he is. Simply saying that he has an army of terrible monsters, works a lot more powerfully than showing them onscreen, where they'll just be glorified orcs.

Are you sure of that? I mean they basically are glorified orcs.

To quote you: film is a visual medium

11 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

Now, as to why Apple may want to keep quiet, I think that it's part of some marketing strategy, or because they don't want people to get their hopes up on a property that may not work out (e.g. if the script is bad, or if Brandon is difficult to work with). I assume that they're having discussions right now, about how Brandon's fan interaction will play into the marketing.

That makes sense. Yet, silence for multiple years?

[Nesh he/him]

Well, the progress bar is back.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

18 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

That is not the only constraint they are living under. The empire is being ruled in ways that are not just subordinating individual nobles to laws, but is being run against their group interests

• requirement to use arbiters for all contracts
• subjecting the nobility to censorship
• the atium regime
• enforced monogamy
• limits on scientific research

just to give the most obvious examples

Having witnesses for contracts is very common in pre-modern societies.  Even in our secular modernity, we have witnesses and lawyers.

As for censorship, this very forum has rules on what content can or cannot be displayed, and certain things are not allowed.  Having boundaries on expression is a feature of all but the most anarchic societies.  Censorship, being preventative, is thus of Preservation.

Monogamy is, to be fair, established by Tindwyl as something the skaa want and value.  It is heavily implied to be either one of the last surviving echoes of the traditions and ways of life that existed before the Final Empire or a desperate desire for some form of social protection against abuse (both of which would be of Preservation), and the profligacy/abuse of the nobility is one of the depredations the skaa are forced to endure.  If anything, the vilest part of the Final Empire is the (relative to anything acceptable) lack of restrictions on sexual abuse.  I'm not sure how you read the books and think "Man, these nobles are unfairly kept from exercising their natural rights and it's unfair that they can't have what they want, there are too many laws restraining them in matters of consent".

Scientific Research is a thing of change, and thus of Ruin.  Furthermore, most if not all real-life societies place limits on scientific research on the basis of ethics.  If Scientific Research was an inherent good, we wouldn't have the Mad Scientist/Evil Scientist archetype.

As for Atium, yeah, that's messed up, but it's messed up in a way that still places the nobility at the top of society.

Just as any governance inherently represses some individual interests, it must also repress some group interests.

 

Rashek, in my view, is arguably written less like a modern dictator and more like Narnia's White Witch, keeping a conquered beautiful world blanketed in colorful stuff that falls from the sky, claiming a false spiritual jurisdiction over all who live in that world, and enslaving the world's inhabitants in a "always winter, never Christmas" stagnation without hope of a better future, while prohibiting even the mention of true divinity out of fear of its return, and, in the end, failing to prevent the fulfillment of prophecy.  

Alternately, Rashek can be taken as a Dark Lord figure in the vein of Morgoth and Sauron, with Scadrial's conquest and The Final Empire being a look into the kind of "Bad Future" that the heroes in fantasy strive to prevent.  Scadrial might be seen as "Middle-Earth, but if the ringbearer had failed and become the new Dark Lord".  The ashmounts and barren harshness of the land can be seen as something like Tolkien's descriptions of Mount Doom and Mordor.

So, being both the White Witch and the Dark Lord, Rashek is the Black-And-White Sorcerer Tyrant.  And guess which two colors he wears in the books as The Lord Ruler?

Yes, the servants of evil tyrants do not get true joy from it, only pleasure and pride, because wickedness never was happiness, but evil being cruel even to those it sets above all others is basic Fantasy Villain stuff.  The interplay of being subordinate-to-the-tyrant but oppressive-over-the-masses is already structurally baked into the very idea of nobility under an evil king/pharoah/emperor.  I mean, we get the dynamic from the word "nobility".

Focusing on the perceived restrictions his rule places upon those he raises above all others is... questionable theming for a story revolving around the skaa rebelling against their abusive masters, a story that is already likely going to lose much of its color, richness, worldbuilding, and depth in being trimmed for film.

If anything, it's more important to set up Straff and his ilk for The Well Of Ascension.

Edited February 4 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[+Oltux72 he/him]

10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Having witnesses for contracts is very common in pre-modern societies.  Even in our secular modernity, we have witnesses and lawyers.

But not for every little transaction. Nor is TFE strictly premodern.

10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

As for censorship, this very forum has rules on what content can or cannot be displayed, and certain things are not allowed.  Having boundaries on expression is a feature of all but the most anarchic societies.  Censorship, being preventative, is thus of Preservation.

It may be of Preservation, but what does that have to do with nobles letting the government decide what they can have in their libraries?

10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If anything, the vilest part of the Final Empire is the (relative to anything acceptable) lack of restrictions on sexual abuse.  I'm not sure how you read the books and think "Man, these nobles are unfairly kept from exercising their natural rights and it's unfair that they can't have what they want, there are too many laws restraining them in matters of consent".

OK, this is not about sex. Sex and sexual abuse matter in moral terms.
Again, this is not about morals. Morals is easy. Showing morals in a movie borders on the trivial. Power structures are different.

Let me spell it out in detail. Nobles want power. Power comes from having loyal allomancers fighting for you. Allomancers come from, well, procreation. That means sexual intercourse between allomancers, or, if you don't have that many allomancers, allomancers and mundane people, resulting in offspring.
In other words, every house lord who can afford it should have a harem of Skaa women, preferably Skaa women with nobility in their pedigree in order to breed Allomancers. This is exactly what Straff Venture does and TLR wants to prevent and has established institutions to prevent.

This is not about fairness. This is about applying the logic of power to a genetic system of magic. It invariably leeds to breeding people for magic. Game theory, basically.
So, yes, the nobility in TFE is forced to act against their core interests.

That is exactly what Kelsier alluded to when he spoke with Harmony in The Lost Metal

10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

So, being both the White Witch and the Dark Lord, Rashek is the Black-And-White Sorcerer Tyrant.  And guess which two colors he wears in the books as The Lord Ruler?

Absolutely. Rashek should remain a mystery. However, that is not the same as the means of his power remaining a mystery. You cannot understand Mistborn if you see TLR as an extension or the pinnacle of noble power. He is not. 

10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Focusing on the perceived restrictions his rule places upon those he raises above all others is... questionable theming for a story revolving around the skaa rebelling against their abusive masters, a story that is already likely going to lose much of its color, richness, worldbuilding, and depth in being trimmed for film.

They just are not rebelling against their masters. They are rebelling against TLR.

10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If anything, it's more important to set up Straff and his ilk for The Well Of Ascension.

I am not sure Straff Venture needs to be in the sequel. He is actually the side show. The main theme is "What have we done? Have we doomed the world by finally getting justice and freedom?"

[Isilel]

23 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

This is exactly what Straff Venture does and TLR wants to prevent and has established institutions to prevent.

 

I am pretty sure that it is mentioned somewhere, either in the text itself or in a WoB that women in Straff's harem weren't skaa, but poor nobles. 

Nobles in Mistborn weren't just the rich and the powerful, but also just personally free people who had to work for a living, after all. That's who both Kelsier's and Vin's mothers pretended to be. 

Personally, I always thought that the Final Empire should have had a class of free people between the nobles and the skaa, like all societies had iRL.

Nobles weren't forced into monogamy either, they were just forbidden to breed with the skaa. It seems like it was something that had been allowed at some point in the past, since Lord Cett attributed relative lack of allomancy in his family to "too much skaa blood", but something motivated TLR to go nuclear on it. 

Concerning the news in general - I am in the minority of not being enthused, particularly since Sanderson apparently wants to be a showrunner, if a Stormlight show gets off the ground.

I have really enjoyed the steady flow of cosmere books and hoped that Sanderson being able to concentrate on the Ghostbloods trilogy and write it in one piece would allow him to make it something special. Now he is going to be endlessly distracted.

It doesn't help that nothing seems to be happening with the possible cosmere collaborations with other writers, which might have filled the void, somewhat...

 

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

16 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

OK, this is not about sex. Sex and sexual abuse matter in moral terms.
Again, this is not about morals. Morals is easy. Showing morals in a movie borders on the trivial. Power structures are different.

Let me spell it out in detail. Nobles want power. Power comes from having loyal allomancers fighting for you. Allomancers come from, well, procreation. That means sexual intercourse between allomancers, or, if you don't have that many allomancers, allomancers and mundane people, resulting in offspring.
In other words, every house lord who can afford it should have a harem of Skaa women, preferably Skaa women with nobility in their pedigree in order to breed Allomancers. This is exactly what Straff Venture does and TLR wants to prevent and has established institutions to prevent.

This is not about fairness. This is about applying the logic of power to a genetic system of magic. It invariably leeds to breeding people for magic. Game theory, basically.
So, yes, the nobility in TFE is forced to act against their core interests.

That is exactly what Kelsier alluded to when he spoke with Harmony in The Lost Metal

If that is the logic of power than it is not worth having.  No framework in which treating people like that is normal is acceptable.

Also, no, it does not invariably lead to anything, people have free will and choose.  The atrocities are not inevitable.  Ignoring the obvious moral issues with this "logic of power" for the moment, I'd dispute that it's actually reasonable to apply game theory or game theory-adjacent frameworks in this context.

Game theory is rigorous within its own mathematical framework, and accurately models simple interactions between perfectly "logical" players, but outside of that tends to be tautology, both prescriptive and descriptive.  It has predictive power only within its own assumptions about the decision-making processes of thinking beings, assumptions that, when applied outside of its scope, fail to describe the actual behavior of thinking beings, because it was never meant to be applied outside of the contrived zero-sum-game thought-experiments of game theory.  This is due to its weaknesses as a predictive multivariate analysis from a combinatorial point of view, failing to account for "illogical" confounding factors in decision-making.  More than that, it tends not to have room for the distinctions of short-term, middle-term, and long-term outcomes, presupposing only a single "result", a single score for its games with an inevitable end.  In other words, I don't think your "logic of power" has predictive power in the context of real people, and I especially doubt its applicability in a universe where Whimsy is as fundamental to reality as Reason.

Furthermore, if "enlightened self-interest" justifies the Scadrian nobility, then, logically, it justifies Rashek's restrictions on them (because preventing the nobility from becoming too powerful is in his interests) AND the skaa rebelling, so there is no basis in your framework to hold the nobility as both wrongly treated AND as guiltlessly doing only what the inevitable logic of power demands.

Edited February 5 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[+Oltux72 he/him]

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If that is the logic of power than it is not worth having.  No framework in which treating people like that is normal is acceptable.

At the risk of repeating myself: You are seeking justification when talking about a question of consequences.

That just makes no sense.

[NameIess]

23 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If that is the logic of power than it is not worth having.  No framework in which treating people like that is normal is acceptable.

Also, no, it does not invariably lead to anything, people have free will and choose.  The atrocities are not inevitable.  Ignoring the obvious moral issues with this "logic of power" for the moment, I'd dispute that it's actually reasonable to apply game theory or game theory-adjacent frameworks in this context.

Game theory is rigorous within its own mathematical framework, and accurately models simple interactions between perfectly "logical" players, but outside of that tends to be tautology, both prescriptive and descriptive.  It has predictive power only within its own assumptions about the decision-making processes of thinking beings, assumptions that, when applied outside of its scope, fail to describe the actual behavior of thinking beings, because it was never meant to be applied outside of the contrived zero-sum-game thought-experiments of game theory.  This is due to its weaknesses as a predictive multivariate analysis from a combinatorial point of view, failing to account for "illogical" confounding factors in decision-making.  More than that, it tends not to have room for the distinctions of short-term, middle-term, and long-term outcomes, presupposing only a single "result", a single score for its games with an inevitable end.  In other words, I don't think your "logic of power" has predictive power in the context of real people, and I especially doubt its applicability in a universe where Whimsy is as fundamental to reality as Reason.

Furthermore, if "enlightened self-interest" justifies the Scadrian nobility, then, logically, it justifies Rashek's restrictions on them (because preventing the nobility from becoming too powerful is in his interests) AND the skaa rebelling, so there is no basis in your framework to hold the nobility as both wrongly treated AND as guiltlessly doing only what the inevitable logic of power demands.

I do not believe @Oltux72 was attempting to justify polygyny or Straff Venture's actions, merely pointing out that without TLR around to prevent it, nobles like Straff, with harems to create armies of allomancer children, would be much more common. Looking at the history of earth, polygyny was already common among the powerful. Add in the benefit of allomancer children? Many more nobles would have harems and act as Straff did. Does that make it right? No. Would that be better/worse than the system under TLR, where many nobles simply added murder to rape? Hard to say, since at least in the harems the women would not be murdered and would likely be well-treated if they had allomantic heritage. The point, if I understand Oltux's argument, is that TLR is responsible for the system he set up. Many of the nobles are terrible, terrible people, but TLR set up the system that allows them to be so evil, and is thus the most important thing to focus on. So yes, the movie should focus on how terrible the system that TLR set up is, which includes showing how terrible the nobility is, but it should show that so we know that TLR is the person responsible for this messed up world.

On 2/4/2026 at 3:42 AM, Oltux72 said:

I am not sure Straff Venture needs to be in the sequel. He is actually the side show. The main theme is "What have we done? Have we doomed the world by finally getting justice and freedom?"

Mm, that's more of a sideplot in book two, until the end at least. I would say the main theme of book two is: Now that we have freedom, can we keep it? In that sense we need someone like Straff, who would be just as bad or worse than TLR as a ruler (at least short-term, since he's not immortal), in order to provide a 'was it worth it' angle to the books.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

10 hours ago, NameIess said:

 Add in the benefit of allomancer children? Many more nobles would have harems and act as Straff did.

All of them would. The next house war would wipe out those who don't, as they would be outnumbered.

10 hours ago, NameIess said:

The point, if I understand Oltux's argument, is that TLR is responsible for the system he set up.

He is also necessary to uphold it. That changes the power dynamics.

Therefore seeing Mistborn as a revolution against an aristocratic regime is just wrong. It is an uprising against a theocratic monarchy. The revolution even preserves the aristocracy, their priviledges, which are arguably even increased in the political realm under Elend's constitution, and the economic structure.

10 hours ago, NameIess said:

Mm, that's more of a sideplot in book two, until the end at least. I would say the main theme of book two is: Now that we have freedom, can we keep it?

Yes, but there is no point in keeping freedom, if the end of the world comes within a few months of keeping that freedom. Nor can you just leave this out if you want to turn the Cosmere into a cinematic universe. Movies about the fallout of revolutions have been made. Shows are being made about it. Movies about the end of the world in a contest between gods not so many.

For the Cosmere at large you need

1. The story of Preservation, Ruin and Harmony 
2. Kelsier's continuation and cult
3. The Catacendre and remaking of the world

The Hero of Ages is much more significant than The Well of Ascension to the Cosmere as a whole. In fact I don't think that in a movie you have the option of doing Secret History separately. It would repeat a story already told. Nor can we be sure that we can get three, let alone four Mistborn movies out Era 1.
Hence, if you need to cut, the middle book and especially the civil war, is the natural victim.

[king of nowhere]

4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

All of them would. The next house war would wipe out those who don't, as they would be outnumbered.

 

in theory, yes. but you are assuming that those allomantic illegitimate children would be loial to your house. instead of, i don't know, plotting to overthrow you. it would carry its own risks

[Isilel]

16 hours ago, NameIess said:

without TLR around to prevent it, nobles like Straff, with harems to create armies of allomancer children, would be much more common.

 

It is odd that this wasn't more common even under TLR, honestly. There are plenty of mentions of poor noblewomen becoming mistresses of men who could support them or even working in brothels. And chances of them having allomancer children should have been much more favourable.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 2/6/2026 at 3:00 PM, Isilel said:

 

It is odd that this wasn't more common even under TLR, honestly. There are plenty of mentions of poor noblewomen becoming mistresses of men who could support them or even working in brothels. And chances of them having allomancer children should have been much more favourable.

I always assumed that TLR was using more subtle means to prevent this, like you'd find that you lose all bidings for public contracts when you are too blatant with such things. Hence only the most powerful got away with it.