DSC01

On 12/1/2016 at 1:57 AM, DSC01 said:

No, but I keep seeing ads for it. Orbit really wants me to buy that book. Do I really want to get snookered into getting myself caught up in yet another unfinished series? ...Probably. I bet I'll get an Amazon gift card or two for Christmas, so...

Yes, I am quoting myself. I just finished this book last night. I thought it was definitely pretty good. All the comparisons to Jordan and Sanderson are probably a little overblown--it's not that good--but it is a very good page-turner of a book. I mean, I finished it in two days, so it can't be too bad, right? For maybe the first half, I wasn't so sure, but it really gets interesting as time goes on. I saw some of the big plot twists coming, myself, but that wasn't necessarily bad. Things were set up so that if they had turned out differently, I wouldn't be surprised. 

@WEZ313 @harambe Yeah, that or you realize that your brilliant theory doesn't work, in light of all the info that the other Sharders have teased out from details that you barely even noticed. RIP my ultimately really dumb Shallash = Khriss theory that I was so very fond of.

On 12/13/2016 at 1:24 AM, Demandred said:

 The first book on Weeks Night Angel trilogy is also good. though I thought the 2nd and 3rd went downhill.

I agree with you on Night Angel. It always seems so odd to me that it tends to be more popular than Lightbringer (that's based on my unscientific observation of fan reactions; I may be totally wrong).

I don't know that book 2 is necessarily downhill from 1 as much as 3 is the letdown. Middle books in trilogies often have the transitional curse and are their retrospective quality is determined by the third book.

The problem was that the third Night Angel book could have easily been three books all on its own. Every last bit of the behind-the-scenes mythological stuff is revealed in the third book. There are character arcs that begin and end in that single volume, when they should have had room to breathe over the course of at least two books. It's been a while since I've read it, so I don't remember enough for this to even need to be spoilered out, but there's some plot point where a character briefly joins up with a group of people (maybe is imprisoned by them? I really don't remember), then gets away/leaves, and ends up back with them (and/or captured by them, but I think that was all part of the plan or something). Mainly, what I remember is that the departure and return seemed pointless, but if the initial encounter had happened in one book and the second in another, it would have seemed clever, like, "Ah ha! I remember those guys! Brilliant plan!" 

Expanding Lightbringer to 5 books probably saved Weeks's second series from the same fate.

I mean, Lightflame may have predicted it, but being that they are also the source of the idea (by way of asking Brandon on a Reddit thread, as a joke, if it would happen), it's not exactly an uncanny prophecy. Still awesome, though.

3 hours ago, Praying Allomantis said:

Shardcake.

Not cookies?

@Orlion Determined In other words, you ADMIT THAT YOU ARE WRONG!!!, right? I mean, that's what I got from that...  

I kid, of course.

Recently, I've been thinking about what questions I would ask if I could interview Brandon Sanderson in a context where I could assume that the intended audience is fully informed about the Cosmere--an interview just for Sharders.

I'm not talking about a personal Q&A session--say, throwing out some pet theories, pulling a few choice questions from The Ultimate List, and collecting a handful of RAFO cards. I'm talking about a real interview, just one where the interviewer just happens to know all about the author's work (and is asking questions for an audience that does as well).

What would you guys ask? How would you approach an interview that isn't "for the n00bs" at all?

Ideally, this wouldn't yield any RAFOs (or maybe just one--on a convoluted, just-for-the-big-fans question at the very end of the interview--but, otherwise, none). I'm talking about an interview that skirts the very edge of what we know (and can know) right now, without ever crossing over into RAFO territory--an interview that respects the author, as an artist, as much as it respects the eager audience and the visceral excitement that they feel in reading about the actual diegesis of the tale. 

I put this thread on this board because, despite it not being an actual Cosmere theory, I fully expect you guys to be overflowing with amazing questions that are so full of spoilers that they can only be posted in Cosmere Theories. So gimme some questions, y'all!

Even if it is all academic!

Without commenting on the theory as a whole--because there is a great deal of merit, even if I disagree with individual points--I do have to stay that I completely disagree with the notion that Adonalsium was inactive by virtue of containing so many opposing Intents. More Shards should equal more ability to act.

In the case of Harmony, this is somewhat disguised by the fact that his two Shards are diametrically opposed to each other, but the creation of Scadrial happened only because Preservation and Ruin collaborated. As their relationship deteriorated, Preservation increasingly could only strive to keep things the same, while Ruin worked only to break it all down to dust. However, Harmony could create something new all on his own. A new creation that balanced preservation and ruin in its life cycle might be very much in line with Harmony's Intent.

Now, if Sazed picked up another Shard, he would have much more freedom to act because the new Intent would interact with both Preservation and Ruin. Instead of being ruled by two equal but opposite urges, another desire would come into play. Say, Ambition--I think we can imagine, even knowing next to nothing about the Shard, that Ambition would not clash much with either Preservation or Ruin, and might even serve as a bridge between the two warring Intents.

Of course, per WoB, if Sazed died, he would not drop Preservation and Ruin. He would drop Harmony. The original Shards exist only in the sense that they are the material composing the new Shard and its Intent can only be a combination of theirs. This means that, in Adonalsium, we did not have 16 Shards balancing each other; we had one power, composed of many traits. That makes action much, much easier.

Instead of singular obsessions, you have, "A part of me wants things to stay the way they are now forever, but another part of me wants to burn my whole life down just so things won't be the same. But then there's another part of me that really loves the people in my life, and I know that desperately trying to keep everything the same and burning it all down would hurt them. Another part of me really wants to be independent and not worry too much about what those people might think, but of course, there's also a part of me that wants to give of myself to others, and that makes me not want to remain too aloof. So, I guess I'll cut the things that need to go out of my life, keep the things that are working, take care of others when it's healthy, be fiercely independent when that is healthy, and use love to guide me in how to best achieve that." Boom! Preservation, Ruin, Devotion, Autonomy, and Endowment come together and make a semi-functional personality. Eleven more would just improve that.

The Shards know about the other planets in their solar systems. Their awareness alone should be enough to create a Cognitive presence, no? 

I'm with @emailanimal. The Ghostbloods are like the anti-17th Shard. That doesn't mean there's no connection. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that one or more members of the Ghostbloods used to be part of the 17th Shard or even that the group started as a reaction against them.

Heck, maybe the Shard and the Ghostbloods used to be the same organization, assuming that the non-interventionist policy was adopted over time (which Frost may be implying when he says, "Is not the destruction we have wrought enough? The worlds you now tread bear the touch and design of Adonalsium. Our interference so far has brought nothing but pain," though the interference he refers to could just be the Shattering itself), and the dissidents who thought that they should actively influence the Shardworlds broke off into their own group. 

I think we need to know more about the Ghostbloods and their goals before any informed theories can be crafted, but the idea that they are the opposite of the 17th Shard (perhaps intentionally so) is something interesting to keep in mind.

@Orlion Determined Hmm... I don't know that I can really disagree with your assessment, and yet I still do, to some degree (but maybe in such a way that we more or less see things the same way but express it differently).

For example, would I say that it's not as good as The Emperor's Soul? Well, kind of. TES is an excellent standalone novella. Which do I, personally, like better? Probably Edgedancer. It is very much a chapter in The Stormlight Archive--an essential one, even--and Stormlight is my favorite Cosmere series. As a Stormlight novella, it is exactly what it should be. If it were more like TES, it wouldn't be as good for what it is, even if it were better as a standalone novella. 

I definitely agree with your observations on the contrast to Secret History. Sure, Edgedancer probably wouldn't be all that satisfying to someone who had not read the rest of Stormlight, but a casual fan of the series would still love it, while someone who had read Mistborn without getting obsessed with the deeper mysteries would read Secret History and be like, "Wut."

Now, here's the sticky point: does Edgedancer justify the purchase of the collection all on its own? It basically did for me, and I had zero buyer's remorse after reading it. If Edgedancer hadn't been in the collection, I may have bought AU eventually, but I sure wouldn't have pre-ordered it. It's nice to have physical copies of stuff I had otherwise only read digitally--which, along with the artwork and bonus material from Khriss, makes the price worth it to me--but that isn't enough of a draw on its own to drop $20. If I had no interest at all in the rest of the material? I guess I can imagine someone who might fit that description (but, surely, they're relatively rare in this fan community), and for them, the price might be a bit steep. I still think most would reluctantly buy it anyway, be a little miffed about having to pay so much, but still end up happy with the story.

@maxal Yes, it probably only makes sense if the spren are talking to each other about potential Radiants. On the other hand, it could be that there are very specific personality traits that they are looking for. As outside observers, we think, Oh, they look for people who strive to help the downtrodden, but in their eyes, they are looking for people who experience a very particular feeling and think along very specific lines when they feel the urge to help the downtrodden. In that case, there might only be a handful of living people who fit the qualifications, and the coincidence isn't odd at all. Being that they are primarily Cognitive beings, they probably are sensitive to the way people think in the same way that humans are sensitive to how people look.

What if you were able to search through everyone in the world and find all the people who seem to look exactly like another--how many would belong to each group of dead-ringer lookalikes? Probably very few, depending on how exactly you demanded that they match each other's looks. Similarly, a particular pattern of thought or specific way of feeling an emotion may be that unique, where only a relative handful of individuals fits the qualifications.

7 minutes ago, maxal said:

But it seems like such a stretch... What were the odds of this happening? 

Not necessarily. There is probably an overlap in the characteristics that the various types of spren are looking for in their Knights, and those with coinciding interests might actually associate with each other a lot. In fact, we don't know that the Ring is full of cultivationspren. It could well be that they're a council consisting of several types of closely related spren, and the decision to send Wyndle to Lift instead of Ym was as much because they thought that Ym made a better Truthwatcher as it was that they thought Wyndle should go to Lift.

Of course, it is also possible that Brandon was messing with us when he said that Ym is not an Edgedancer. Maybe he was an Edgedancer, but is now no kind of Radiant at all because he's dead. I think that's less likely, but who knows?

It's the Rosharan version of quantum physics. I think that what's happening with the spanreeds is that they trap a spren in a gemstone, then cut that gem in half and put one half in each of a pair of linked spanreeds. Okay, yes, the Coppermind confirms. That is how all conjoiner fabrials work. Even though it's based somewhat in quantum physics, I'm sure that the Cosmere explanation leans heavily on Realmatic Theory.

On 11/28/2016 at 11:13 PM, Bromo_Sapien said:

Has anyone read The Shadow of What Was Lost yet? It was just published by Orbit about 3 weeks ago but was apparently self-published before that and had enough of a following to garner a reddit thread in r/fantasy and comparisons to Sanderson and Jordan. I read a sample chapter on the author's (James Islington) website and it seemed pretty good.

No, but I keep seeing ads for it. Orbit really wants me to buy that book. Do I really want to get snookered into getting myself caught up in yet another unfinished series? ...Probably. I bet I'll get an Amazon gift card or two for Christmas, so...

@djammmer That's my current hypothesis. So much on Roshar works by way of bonds. You have the Listeners, the Radiants, the Voidbringers, the skyeels (probably), the macro-fauna... I think that the Dysian Aimians are the same thing: beings similar or even identical to spren who bond with many organisms instead of a single one. Their symbiosis works opposite to how it does with, say, the spren that prevent chasmfiends from collapsing under their own weight. That is, while a chasmfiend's spren basically serve the Physical creature, the Physical creatures involved in the Dysian Aimians' bonds serve the Cognitive/Spiritual creature.

7 hours ago, Argent said:

I disagree with the application of Occam's razor here. I am (at least partially) with @ROSHtaFARian2.0 here - the scenario where the original Vessels planned to and caused the Shattering, but didn't anticipate Adonalsium's power becoming obtainable is at least as likely as any other. In fact, the powers could've been forced upon them (a la the Fantastic Four).

I wouldn't say that it is necessarily at least as likely. It's still a very possible scenario, but Frost does say of Rayse in the second letter, "He is what we made him to be, old friend. And that is what he, unfortunately, wished to become." That implies that there was some degree of premeditation; although, one must concede that there are a lot of ways to interpret that. I may be just splitting hairs, here, but it seems that the implications are enough that we can say that it is a bit more likely that at least some of those involved in the Shattering anticipated the subsequent Ascension of the Vessels, even as we admit that it won't be a total shock for it eventually come out that the situation with the Shards was wholly unanticipated.

@Zmann966 One might argue that Nightblood is very much a Skybreaker-aligned weapon. It does not know what evil is, but it tries very hard to fulfill its directive to destroy it. The Skybreakers--or at least Nalan--don't seem to know what evil is, either. They simply follow the law to the letter and don't consider the spirit of the law at all.

On 11/28/2016 at 11:36 AM, Argent said:

I personally wouldn't read too much into this, as I believe there is a real world equivalent to this philosophy, which is what I think Arclo is mirroring here.

Well, that's true of just about everything in the Cosmere. I only mean that it is a recurring theme in the Cosmere, which is kind of related to the greater theme of, "What happens when normal people get godlike powers?" I would definitely not try to draw a direct connection between The Emperor's Soul and what Arclo said, beyond the themes being similar.

Come on, guys! THE WHEEL OF TIME!!! Okay, to be fair, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I can't think of any popular fantasy series out there that doesn't have a whole contingent of naysayers just waiting for it to come up so they can to jump in and say how much they hated it. I've read it 4 times. It's worth it!

A lot of people don't know about The Moontide Quartet by David Hair, but I enjoyed it. Reading it, you can't help but feel that it's a bit derivative, but I really can't point the finger at any one series and say that it's a ripoff of that  one. I think the author just managed to combine a lot of familiar elements in a new enough way, and that made it an entertaining read.

The foretelling thing is what I thought from the beginning with Renarin and Truthwatchers in general; although, after reading WoBs about something being odd about Renarin's spren, I do wonder.

With such a strong tradition of seeing the future being evil on Roshar, there must be something a little fishy here. Honor himself (or his Cognitive Shadow, anyway) said that he is very bad at seeing the future, and Cultivation is better at it, so it seems like some Radiants could have some foretelling ability. In all likelihood, this is an area in which Odium excels, and that's the reason for the tradition.

Being that we know that foretelling the future is something that all Shards can do to some degree and that other magic systems do have ways to see something of the future without having any link to Odium, we can safely say that the Rosharan belief in it being evil is off-base to some extent. I have a half-baked hypothesis that voidspren have corresponding forms among radiantspren (i.e. there are 10 Orders of Voidbringers, just like there are 10 Orders of Radiants, and they run parallel to each other in some way, even if it's not something as literal as "______form" is the evil version of an Edgedancer), and that Glys may actually be a voidspren that defected and is close enough to a Truthwatcher spren that he is able to give basically the same Surges to Renarin, with some possible small differences.

EDIT: I'm kind of getting offtrack from what this thread is even about, but I just wanted to mention that idea because in talking about Radiants' Resonances in general, the example we have in Renarin is suspect, and that's just an idea I had.

1 hour ago, old aggie said:

We know Arclo is "made of" cremlings, but does it necessarily follow that all other Dysian Aimians are cremlings too? What if they are plants - shalebark, or drop-deads, or even grass? Or what if they're skyeels? or ...? etc. Just don't want to see us box ourselves into a corner too quickly.

Then again, I think I remember Lift saying that, the further west you go, the weirder the cremlings are - and Aimia is in the west - so maybe it is just cremlings.

Oathbringer cannot come soon enough!

That's what I've been thinking, too--that it could be more than just cremlings.

@maxal I just realized why exactly I am vexed by your stance on Adolin and feel so bad about how disappointed you are in his arc: I don't really care that much about any individual character. Who cares if Brandon has determined that Kaladin or Dalinar or Renarin or Lift is the most important character? Who cares if anyone, personally, hates one or all of those characters?

Stormlight is a vast tapestry of hundreds of characters, and the ultimate significance of even the most notable one is hardly relevant to the overall plan, especially if one looks at things in the context of the overarching Cosmere narrative. By the time the final Mistborn series is released (probably 40 years from now, and I hope that we're all lucky enough to live that long, and Brandon is too), all of the Stormlight characters will probably be irrelevant.

The story itself is what has me hooked. If I happen to really like a character more than the author himself seems to, well, they were always going to be dead (or turned into an immortal being much different from the original character) long before we got to the end, anyway. So who cares? The plot itself is what has me hooked, and I don't really care which characters advance it, so long as it remains an incredibly enjoyable read. A part of me just can't understand why anyone would get so upset over the arc of one character, when they couldn't possibly be all that important, no matter what. Every single Stormlight book could be mostly about Adolin, and it still wouldn't be that big of a deal for the Cosmere as a whole.

I think that I am simply incredulous: how can anyone (no just you, so please don't be offended) care so much about one man, when so much more is going on?

I agree that Nightblood is probably the cause. I also think that it is very possible that Lift is the only one who can see his afterimages, but any explanation that isn't, "I dunno, man--Nightblood is crazy!" is probably missing the mark. I won't be shocked if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that I'm right.