AndrewStirlingMacDonald

On October 25, 2017 at 10:26 PM, TheOneKEA said:

Here’s my SWAG: It’s a Magic The Gathering novella, written for the same reasons that Brandon wrote the Infinity Blade novellas.

This would make me the happiest person. Also, one of my dreams is for WotC to bring on occasional guest creative team consultants, the way they occasionally do with developers (like bringing Richard Garfield back for Dominaria). Brandon would be perfect for the job - he could write a few of the key chapters in the Magic Story, and be part of the creative team that finalizes names and flavor text and gives notes to the artists, just for one set. 

Nice!

I am sad about no East Coast locations, but I will probably try to make the 12-hour drive to Chicago from Allentown anyway. If anyone is interested in carpooling, drop me a line. Allentown is about an hour west of NYC and an hour north of Philly.

I'll be there, probably with my three kids in tow (as my sitter fell through at the last minute and I haven't found anyone else so far). I'm coming from Allentown, which isn't too far. The auditorium seats 100 and then has additional standing room. I was told seating will be first come, first serve, so I'll probably try to get there as early as I can to ensure a seat - I pulled a muscle in my leg yesterday, and it's still getting more sore. Anyway, the point is, what I really mean, if anyone wants to sit around talking cosmere, or maybe playing Magic (I'll bring the standard deck I've most been playing with lately) or something, I'm definitely planning to go into full-on line-party mode for this one. So come find me! I'll be the big guy with the kilt and the beard and the ltattoos of Aon Kii and Allomantic Bronze (pre-Catacendre version). Hope to see you all there!

Vasher/Zahel also fits the bill of a wanderer, a wild piece, one who makes no sense... Or even possibly Nightblood.

On 7/11/2016 at 10:47 AM, Tharatariel10 said:

Hey - so I'm new to the forums and I've actually been working on Stormlight Archive music.  I'm having a blast and really enjoying the creative process of composing themes.  Currently I have: Tien's Theme: Kaladin Remembers and Veden Lullaby. I'm working on an overall theme for The Way of Kings (otherwise Dalinar's theme) and one for Shallan/Kharbranth.  

However, it's me (voice), my random assortment of recorders, whistles, flutes, a piano/keyboard and Audacity.  I'm curious, @AndrewStirlingMacDonald if you use a program like Finale/Sibelius or if it's all you playing live? And what program do you use to record?  I'm totally new to this.  

Even though I've shared these on the SA threads, I guess this may be a better thread in which to post them. Here are my two completed works thus far.  Encouragement and recording advice appreciated!

 

Very nice, love the music, keep it coming!

So, I pretty much work with whatever I have. Most of my recordings are a combination of live players and synths. I compose in Finale, and I use Cubase and whatever the sound-mixing software was that came with Adobe CS5. Soundbooth, maybe? It has a killer de-hisser, for when you don't have a soundproof studio to record in. I recently subscribed to EWQL but haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet, though I'm very excited to get started.

I feel like Kelsier is actually an ESTP. Good MBTI typing usually has three levels, and I try to make sure that the person fits into each of the three before I am satisfied with their type.

First is figuring out whether they are an SJ, SP, NF or NT.

Second is justifying each of the four parts, I/E, S/N, T/F. P/J

Finally, third is making sure that they work as the type. Sometimes it will seem like someone is, for example, an I, an N, an F and a P, but then when you think of them as an INFP it doesn't click.

If ANY of the three don't click, I usually start over and try to figure out where I'm going wrong. I will try to justify Kelsier in all three of these ways.

I will first justify him as an SP, and then parse out each aspect of him, then finally justify him to the whole type in general.

First! SP:

Kelsier always lets people THINK that his planning is superb, but it actually is not all that superb. Instead, he is just good - not good, amazingly, practically godlike - at improvising. He thinks on his feet INCREDIBLY well, which is something that no Js really do. An NT is a spider in the middle of an incredibly intricate web of people and ideas and secrets that they tug at, strand by strand, tiny bit by tiny bit, until everything falls into place just so. NTJs plan their every move, sometimes for years ahead, and plan for every possible eventuality that they can think of NTPs make their web as varied and massive as possible so that anytime they need something, they are only a tug or two away from getting whatever it is they need to have happen. Kelsier imagines that he is like this - secrets within secrets, etc, that is the mythos that he tries (and really somewhat succeeds) at cultivating, but his secrets are not actually that deep or complex, and his plans change with the wind; everytime he gets new information he adjusts everything to take that new information into account. This is because he is an SP, and incredibly good at improvising and reacting to things in the moment, on the spot. Many of these tendencies are similar to other noted SP leaders like Stonewall Jackson.

So, here we go for part two, breakdown of each aspect:

E - Kel is energized by people. He basks in their admiration. He loves attention both from giant crowds and from spending time in the company of his close-knit group of friends. The fewer people that are around, the quieter and sadder he gets. He needs alone time once in a while - every person does, Extraverts included - but he doesn't recharge his energy by being alone. He gets his energy from being in a crowd.

S - Kel is big about observation and sensory input. This is particularly evident in his analysis of the logbook, especially when you compare it to Sazed, the strongest N we hear from regarding the manuscript. He relies VERY heavily on his senses to give him the information he needs about the world, and he is far more concerned with the way things ARE than what they MIGHT be. He has a vision for how the world ought to be, but it isn't his vision, it's Mare's. His job, as he sees it, isn't to figure out how the world should be. Someone else told him, and now he just has to figure out how to make it that, or as close as possible.

T - With Ts, especially in fiction (or in a person you are in a very close friendship with), it is always important to remember a valuable axiom - "Every T is a closet F." The reason this gets hairy in fiction, or with people you are very close to, is that we see those people at their most vulnerable, they reveal their closeted emotions to us. We see his passion for Mare, his fatherly affection for Vin, his deep sadness at his troubled relationship with Marsh - but he doesn't show those things to most of the people around him. Ts feel every bit as strongly as Fs, they simply prioritize thinking ahead of feeling, so that their actions tend to reflect the things they think rather than the things that they feel. Kel's actions are generally informed by thought rather than feeling. The only time we see him REALLY make a decision based entirely off of emotion is when he is about to attack the entire Imperial Guard after they slaughter the rebel skaa army, and at that point he is unbelievably exhausted. Those are exactly the times that Ts are likely to let their closeted Fs out - at that point of exhaustion, almost no T would be able to act based on thought rather than feeling.

P - Here is where that improvisation thing comes into play. Kel is a master of dealing with issues as they spring up all around him. He is able to make decisions based of a whim, without any real deliberation at all (really more unique to SPs, even NxPs deliberate a little before acting), and act on them with zero hesitation. When he caught wind of the rebel skaa disaster, how long did it take him to leave, to literally run all the way there? Like ten seconds. From his own POVs we often saw him sort of meandering without much of a plan - sometimes a general sort of outline, but often just a vague "I'm going to cause some mischief when I find the opportunity."

Finally, part three, the ESTP whole picture:

ESTPs are your stereotypical rock stars, sports stars - they were the coolest of the cool kids in high school. Not the valedictorian, the person that the valedictorian WANTED to be. People flock around them and fawn over them and they just love every minute of it. Most everything technical-skill related seems to come with them with ease, and the stuff they can't figure out they usually either get a free pass on, or they have someone who's willing to just do it for them.

Sounds like Kel to me.

So there you have it, my considered opinion on why I type Kelsier as an ESTP. Eventually I hope I can do these detail character breakdowns for a lot of characters. I have some done that just need to be cleaned up and typed up. especially for pre-catacendre Scadrial, like Vin - ISTP, Sazed - ENFJ, Breeze - ENFP, Marsh - ISTJ.... I hope I'll get the chance to post them fairly soon. Hope this was an enjoyable (and perhaps enlightening) read.

Very happy to see this thread resurrected. I'm close to [finally] finishing the Wheel of Time series - and by close I mean nearly halfway through book nine. It's taken me a good year to get to this point, but I feel confident that once I hit the Sanderson books I will fly through the end of the series. Anyway, I haven't spent much time typing Mistborn Era 2 or letting the new information from Secret History sink in and help to grow my opinions on the MBTI from Mistborn, so once I finish WOT I'm going to actually spend some time doing some typing in those books and White Sand, as well as re-reading WoR again and hopefully tracking some MBTI morsels in that as well. Excited for this summer!

This is one of my favorite short Mistborn fics ever.

Here is a link to some of the music I've written for various soundtracks:

I'm also including a .pdf score for a piece I wrote about the Heralds from Stormlight, arranged for piano and violin. I haven't made a recording of that one, but if some of you feel like printing and playing, feel free

The-Heralds.pdf

I do believe that Battle of the Bastards is my favorite cinematic battle sequence to date. In fact, cinematically, this episode was gorgeous, start to finish. The silouette of Davos atop the snow-covered hill the night before the battle... the calvalry charge... the master's ships doing their thing.. and of course that amazing tracking shot of Jon.

Definitely my favorite episode this season, and definitely one of my favorites of the whole series to date.

I published this post on my blog, and I wonder if people agree with my idea, or have other perspectives or ideas to offer.

The TL;DR is basically that I wish fantasy series had special editions published that cut out all of the "recap" exposition in the sequels so that it doesn't drag the narrative down for people who are reading the whole series one-book-after-another.

http://www.andrewstirlingmacdonald.com/2016/05/your-favorite-epic-fantasy-series-im.html

Yeah, there were a decent number of Sharders there, which was nice, and Oudeis had the foresight to print up a ton of question cards - basically index cards with different Cosmere questions printed on them. After we got our books signed, we went back through the line socializing with the people who were waiting. Whenever we heard someone lamenting that they could never think of good questions to ask, Oudeis offered to let them peruse the cards and find a question or two that they liked. It was a really good idea.

(left to right - Oudeis, myself, some random dude, Macros, Titan Arum)

I had an awesome time! I really hope I get to make it down to DC at some point and hang out with you guys again sometime.

​I got to ask some of my own questions and some from Oudeis' question cards (by the way, the question cards were an awesome idea, props for making that happen, Oudeis)

​My theory that Mistcloaks were inspired by some ancient worldhopping Nalthian is dead.

Confirmed that a Parshendi heartbeat is "very, very similar" to a human one.

There are shades of animals on Threnody

The way vension on Threnody is butchered basically amounts to "very, very carefully"

​Cognitive shadows travelling to Threnody would not automatically turn into shades

One of the Aviar talents has to do with navigation

but the biggest shocker of the night for me was a RAFO:

​Did Theopolis turn into a shade?  RAFO!!!!!

​Oudeis should have all of these on the transcript, so I'm just paraphrasing for now.

​@art-zealot thanks so much for the shardblade drawing in my Alcatraz book! I love it!

I was GOING to be dressed as Prof, but my lab coat dye join turned out more grey than black. So I'll probably just be my usually self: The big guy with the beard and the kilt and the Allomantic symbol for Brass tattooed on his wrist.

If it helps at all, I have someone who I considered my best friend at one point who I can now look back on and say that he was the most loathsome of individuals, even when I considered him to be my best friend.

Last time, for the ill-fated Firefight signing, they were fine with me buying any book, as long as I bought SOMETHING from him there. I ordered a copy of Way of Kings.

Don't love everything on the original list, but you get an upvote for Weird Al as Hoid and George Takei as Nightblood. Both would be perfect.

Yeah, that was the chronology I used when I put together my theory. My point is that Warbreaker taking place chronologically after the Final Empire doesn't actually mean anything in a question of whether Awakeners or Mistborn came first.

Is there a WoB that says that Mistborn are older than Awakeners?

​Here's what we know (as best as I can recall):

​1 - The Final Empire is set "before" Warbreaker, but we don't know how much before.

2 - Although Preservation and Ruin settled on Scadrial, and Feruchemy was around during Rashek's ascension, "Mistborn," at least the way we think of them now, didn't come about until after Rashek's ascension. He gave some of his trusted companions Lerasium and got the nobility started off with a bang.

3 - 300 years before the events of Warbreaker, Vasher, already Returned, travelled to Roshar, saw a Shardblade, and was all like "zomg I'm totally gonna do that." And then he did it.

So here's the thing - we know so very little about Vasher/Zahel. We have no idea how long he was alive when we see him in Warbreaker. He doesn't age, and he doesn't, as a rule, talk about his past. When we see him in Warbreaker he could've already been Returned for ten thousand years. And we know even less [read:literally nothing except the fact that he was born on Nalthis] about his pre-Returned persona.

I feel like unless there is a WoB saying explicitly that Mistborns predate Awakeners, there's not just not enough information about the chronology to make that call ourselves.

Oh I'm not saying that an awakener would grab a Mistcloak and be like "hey! This is a super-useful garment!" (unless they have a ton of breaths stored). I'm positing that an Awakener worldhopper visited Scadrial back in the day and Scadrians were like "oh snap! I'm totally going to wear something similar to that super-cool Scholar person!"

Honestly I'd be shocked if Kelsier doesn't have multiple ways to work around Harmony by now. And I guarantee you that the centuries he and Sazed have spent together have revealed some pretty huge ideological differences between them (especial since Harmony must, by his own nature, embody Ruin these days). Kelsier definitely is going to have an agenda that Harmony is not a fan of.

I always tag stuff of interest as I do my first read-through of a Cosmere work (part of why I love my kindle is how easy it is to pull everything up in one place and do instant cross-referencing, something that has definitely helped me tease out some hints I would've missed otherwise.)

Here's two paragraphs I tagged on my first read-through, before I read Secret History (before I even read the end of BoM):

 

It was like he wanted people to recognize the contradiction in his religion. He commanded that people survive, yet the death imagery associated with him was a cruel reminder that they'd eventually fail in that task. Survivorism therefore was not about winning, but about lasting as long as you could before you lost.

The Survivor himself, of course, broke the rules. He always had. Doctrine explained that he was not dead, but surviving - and planning to return in their time of greatest need. But if the end of the world hadn't been enough to get him to return in his glory, then what could possibly be so?

 

This jumped out at me on the first readthrough, and now it seems even more glaring considering what we now know about Kel's state as a voluntary cognitive shadow. Until now I've assumed that the Church of the Survivor was just a sort of Cosmeric joke on Kelsier, worshipping someone who would totes hate being worshiped. But now we see that the church actually got some facts about Kelsier shockingly correct. It makes me think (especially since we now have a WoB that he has a whole sequence of Secret Histories planned) that Kel is actually using his church as a tool. He is selecting his most dedicated followers, and having them survive the same way he did. He greets them as they enter Scadesmar (sorry, couldn't help it, but you know what I mean, Scadrial Cognitive Realm) and before they have a chance to move on, he gives them a chance to Survive - survive the same way he did. It seems likely he even has a way (or at least a plan) to reinhabit the physical realm someday.

​This also makes it suddenly make more sense - to me, at least - why Demoux, of all people, is (Way of Kings Spoilers) 

He was the ORIGINAL Survivorist. He was espousing Kelsier's ideals waaaay before it was cool. He makes perfect sense to be the first of Kelsier's followers to follow his example, even in death.

So, my question is - why is the Survivor building an army of cognitive shadows? 

​I don't know the answer, (I suspect we won't find out the answer until the sci-fi Mistborn series) but I do know that when the Ire thought there might be an army of cognitive shadows coming their way from Threnody, they kind of freaked out. And those cognitive shadows we're (as far as we know) united in purpose and following an incredibly charismatic and psychopathic leader. Just sayin'.

I think it fits with the motifs he has been building towards. The perspective flip. Wayne, through the lenses of Kelsier, is a straight-up evil villain. He is a sleazy, creepy, crude man, who was allowed to get away with murder scott-free thanks to his nobleman crony and continues to get away with pretty much whatever he pleases. He even says to Marasi in Bands "Wax has a huge blind spot where I'm concerned." He is super-rich, practically nobility by wealth alone, but goes around pretending to be poor, "slumming it." Guarantee that the Survivor hates his rusting guts.

​Of course, none of that stops me from loving the hell out of him.