vineyarddawg

Who's to say he didn't? (raises eyebrow) (Spoilers for Warbreaker, Stormlight, and Perfect State)

Wait, I thought we were giving him a break from Cosmere questions! /ducks //runs

Thanks!

Ah, I see now. Thanks, Pagerunner and yurisses. I thought it was kind of hilarious in a way when Rashek just basically said, "screw you guys, I'm outta here" and blinked off without much pomp or fanfare at all. Not sure if it was meant to be funny, but I did chuckle to myself when I read that. EDIT: I would upvote you guys for providing helpful answers, but I'm a serial upvoter, apparently, and have already used up all my quota for the day!

This is probably a dumb question... but what was the spoiler for Bands of Mourning in Secret History? Was it just because the book gives us far more evidence to support that fact that the "Southern Lord Ruler" is actually Kelsier (since we know from the Epilogue that he was getting Spook to help him find a way to come back into the Physical Realm)?

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG (takes breath) Well, that was the best of any of the Era 2 Mistborn books so far, IMO. So much that I'd been hoping/waiting to see, and a little realmatic revelation thrown in, too! My favorite storyline, by far, is the Wax/Steris relationship. I guess I felt a natural empathy with Steris from the very beginning, and I've been wanting her to grow into something more, and wanting Wax to grow into being someone that could appreciate her... uh, "more-ness." That was paid off in spades here, and I am about as thrilled as I've ever been with a storyline that wasn't related to the Stormlight Archive. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that pretty much everyone didn't see Telsin turning on Wax from the very beginning. It seemed natural to me that she would be part of the Set, just like Edwarn, though I was surprised that she actually outranked him and was the one that recruited him into the Set. (There's always another secret...) And speaking of another secret... anybody else completely, totally unsurprised that Kelsier turns out to be the "southern Lord Ruler?" (Or, at least, clearly appears to be.) I mean, I wasn't sure until the big reveal at the end of the book, but I figured that it was equally as likely to be Kelsier as it was to be Rashek. As for the Set... like Argent and other have said, I'm trying to figure out what that means. It seems clear that the Set is being driven by Trell, but what does that mean for who Trell is? All of the Set's rankings/titles appear to be mathematical in nature (and, given that context, so is the very name "The Set"), but what shard would that most fit into? Dominion? Devotion? Autonomy? Odium? I don't have a strong answer, but I'm now leaning away from Odium, as I don't see a natural correlation between "God's own divine hatred" and a mathematical construct/analogy. If anything, that might lend some credence to Dominion, since we know Dominion is somewhat geographically-based on Sel, so in order to have power in other places, there needs to be something tying dominion to that place. And what's the universal constant/universal language? Mathematics! So much else, too... Wayne/MeLaan, Wayne blowing somebody's face off with a shotgun, Scadrial Fabrials (we should be calling these ScadFabs, IMO), my cup overfloweth to the point where I can't fully process it all at the moment! And for all the shippers who had put Marasi with a little green masked man from Mars SoScad... make sure you have your tickets ready to cash in soon.

I was an OSC fan long before I found any of Sanderson's work, and I simply cannot fathom how I would make an argument that OSC is a better writer. I will say this, though: I think his earlier work is much better than his most recent stuff. The Alvin Maker series, for example, is first-rate alternate history/fantasy. I also think the biggest problem is that OSC is much better at beginning stories than ending them. The first half of a story arc is usually pretty gripping, and then he kind of gets lost somewhere in the 3rd quarter of the story... and then once the end of the story arc rolls around (usually the 3rd book in a trilogy), you're left wondering what the heck just happened, and why you feel so dissatisfied. The Enderverse is a great example of this to me. Unlike some folks in this thread, I loved Ender's Game, and I loved the way it ended. So open-ended... so full of possibilities and promise. I also really loved Speaker for the Dead, and I enjoyed Xenocide. By the time Children of the Mind ended, though, I had mentally checked out about 100-200 pages earlier. I was just reading to see how the story ended. It was incredibly unfulfilling to me. (Can't get into too many specifics without spoilers, I guess.) Same thing with the Bean storyline. I couldn't put down Ender's Shadow, but by the time I got to the end of Shadows in Flight, I thought to myself, "Well, that was a complete waste of my time." I guess that's actually a step up from the book before it, though (Ender in Exile), where I was actively angry at the author for publishing something that was a waste of my money to buy, a waste of my time to read, and destroyed part of the canon he'd written in his first two Ender books. (And which he acknowledged that he did willingly, essentially giving ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as an explanation for why it was done.) That goes for the Pathfinder series, too. It took me a little while to get into Pathfinder, but I did end up really liking it. The third book in that trilogy, though (Visitors), was borderline-unreadable to me. I literally almost set the book down at about the 50% point and just stopped reading. In retrospect, I probably would have been happier if I had. (I'm probably not even going to buy the third book in the Mithermages series for this reason.) So OSC is really good at starting stories, but is really bad at finishing them. I think Brandon is really good at both, but he's especially good at finishing both a book and an epic arc in a really fulfilling way, which is even more important than starting well.

Hmph... airsick lowlanders.

It's so hard to say anything of Sanderson's is overrated, since I like even my least-favorite Sanderson story more than pretty much any other author I've ever read. With that said, though... I don't know how "rated" Perfect State is, but if I'd call anything "overrated," it would be that. It was entertaining, don't get me wrong, but it just didn't "do it" for me like so much of Brandon's other work does. I feel like someone sitting around a campfire (or something... I don't know where people tell stories anymore) could have told that story in about 10 minutes and hit all of the important plot points. And the world-hopping stuff just didn't feel really right. The ending (and "twist") was good, but I just didn't think it was at the same level as the rest of his work. As for "most underrated," I'll go with The Rithmatist, because I think it gets less attention due to being a non-cosmere story. It's a magnificent bit of storytelling that's engaging for both kids and adults, and that's a hard thing to achieve. On a note some other folks have been mentioning, I don't think Reckoners is overrated, because I've always thought of them as novelizations of a superhero "comic book style" story, and they deliver on that point. No, the world isn't built out as much as a Stormlight Archive book, but no superhero story is built that way.

As I read this and start to process it, it becomes clear just how different young Dalinar is from "contemporary" Dalinar. No ethics on the battlefield... just win, baby. Winning at any cost makes your actions ethical. (And to be fair, Alethi society rewards this kind of attitude.) Bloodthirsty, uncaring, and ruthlessly efficient... a perfect Alethi warlord for that society. It's not surprising that a man with this kind of record would turn to alcohol during times of peace to escape the demons of his own mind... even to the point of being passed-out drunk during the great celebration of a peace his brother brokered with the Parshendi. I'm wondering how functional Dalinar even was between the time the Alethi war ended and the Parshendi were discovered. I'll bet he was more often in the bottom of a bottle than not. And what he says in this passage maps rather well to the man that contemporary Dalinar continues to be... Dalinar didn't plan and politic, he just went where Gavilar pointed and killed people. And as an older man, he still is excellent at actual battlefield tactics and strategies, but he struggles mightily with the "bigger picture" of political maneuvering and intrigue. His whole life, Dalinar has used to being a weapon, not an architect. ... and now I can't wait to read the rest of the book. (Even more than before.)

Man that "geek shaming" rant is so right on. It really hits close to home, having myself been both on the receiving and, occasionally (to my shame), on the giving end.

Here's the WoB in question: There would be no reason to say the first statement if the shards were not still 2 separate entities, though intermingled. He would just say, "Harmony, because that's the shard now." It's like saying if you mix salt and water, do you then have a completely new substance? No, you have saltwater... they're intermingled. You can separate the salt and water with effort, but if you drop a glass full of saltwater, then saltwater would come out of it. (This is what Odiumslug fears happening, by the way.)

Well, we know that the intent of a shard will eventually bend the holder to its intent, no matter what kind of person the holder originally was. And Sazed holds not just one shard, but two. And those two shards have intents that seem to be about as opposite as one can get. In addition, the original Ruin and Preservation (Ati and Leras) only managed to coexist on the same planet by achieving a kind of long-term detente. Add that all up with the fact that Sazed chose "Harmony" as his god-name when he acquired both shards, and it seems to me that the primary driving factor in Sazed's motivations at this point is to keep the two shards "in balance." To me, that probably means that he can't do anything "too good" or "too bad" to his world. Any actions his old "chaotic good" self might want to take might be fine with the intent of Preservation, but it would run contrary to the intent of Ruin, so he'd be stalemated into inaction. As a result, Sazed can only "nudge" things in one direction or the other. Maybe it could be said that with regards to the intents of the shards, they have to maintain "true neutral" to remain in harmony. But Sazed, as a person, would still be "chaotic good." When you combine the two... well, it's hard to say at this point. The shards would tend to make Sazed drift towards "true neutral," but he'd probably never actually get there (or, at least, not for a very, very long time). Would that still make him "chaotic good," or does that make him more "chaotic neutral" or "neutral good?" I don't think any of those labels apply, to be honest. He's kind of in the middle of all of them at the moment.

Yes Ruin and Preservation still count as two shards. Sazed just calls himself "Harmony" because that's how he conceptualizes his role as the holder of the two shards with seemingly opposite intents. (And since that's what he calls himself, that's what the people of Scadrial call him, because they have no reason to know any better.) So "Harmony" isn't actually a shard... it's just what Sazed calls himself now that he holds both the shard of Ruin and the shard of Preservation.

Ranette and Lift. /drops mic

Reckoners Spoilers:

What I imply from that WoB seems to make the most sense, at least in my headcanon: Seons are splinters of Devotion. Devotion was not splintered before Odium arrived (because Odium splintered Devotion). Therefore, Odium indirectly caused Seons to exist, because they were made possible/came about by the splintering of Devotion. Also, strictly going by this timeline, there is no possible way Odium could have directly caused the earthquake that created the chasm. EDIT: To clarify that I'm not disagreeing with Argent... just taking the logic a step further.

(SarcasmFont) Perhaps Rian was Pattern? (/SarcasmFont)

I really need to find it. I know I've read something about shards being able to "hack" other shard's magic systems, but it might not have been specifically in reference to SoS. I'll search some more and see if I can figure out where I've seen it. EDIT: Ok, so I've found this and this at Theoryland. That doesn't say exactly what I had in my mind, and I'm sure I've read something else more recently, but that says that a shard's investiture can be "hacked" into another planet's magic system.

Ok, I was trying to avoid spoilers in the title, but it seems clear that Bleeder's spikes are from a new shard, right? That's been established, so nothing new there. And we've gotten a WoB (that my google-fu can't seem to find right now... grumble) that this new spike is due to another shard's "hacking" the Scadrian magic system. So the question is just which shard it is, and why they're on Scadrial. But a shard doesn't just show up on a new planet for no reason, right? What would have drawn the new shard, whomever it is, to come to Scadrial in the first place? Well, here's what I'm thinking. In the Menlo Park signing, Brandon answered the question, "You mentioned that Kelsier is still around meddling, are you planning on having him meddle in a little more overt manner any time soon?" with "That’s a RAFO. A big, big RAFO." So, I'm thinking Kelsier got frustrated with Sazed's inaction (or, perhaps more precisely, with Sazed's lack of ability to take direct action due to the competing nature of his shards). As a result of Kelsier's desire to more directly influence Scadrial, he somehow convinced Bavadin to bring his shard of autonomy into play on Scadrial. Or perhaps Bavadin's not even there, and somehow Kelsier alone is responsible for using Bavadin's god metal to hack Scadrial's magic system. I do think that the autonomy shard makes more sense than Odium, because Bleeder's actions don't appear to be directly aimed at destroying Harmony... just freeing the people of northern Scadrial from its influence. In other words... making them more autonomous. Either way, though, if Kelsier sees a major threat coming to the northern Scadrians from, say the technologically advanced peoples of southern Scadrial, or even if he just gets really ticked off that all the nobles are once again squashing the commoners/"new skaa," that would give him a sufficient reason to act.

I might be reading too much into Brandon's answer here, but... (Stormlight spoilers)

The more I think about Scadrial fabrials, the more I think about what an enormous advantage they could be. Here are a few I came up with: - You might be able to create allomantic "dead zones" in any populated area with a copper fabrial, or an "allomantic proximity alarm" around sensitive areas with a bronze fabrial. (Yes, you can do this today in northern Scadrial, but you have to have an allomancer, or a team of allomancers to keep those things up 24/7. With a fabrial, it can be set up in any place by any person who has the requisite training on how to use the fabrial.) - Scadrian Shardplate. 'Nuff said. - You could possibly have the potential to create a "flash-bang" kind of grenade with a tin/nicrosil fabrial that would temporarily blind and deafen (or at least severely disorient) everyone in its range. - I'm sure there are WMD-type potentials as well, though I'm not sure what they would be. Perhaps an "allomantic EMP" of sorts with a Chromium fabrial? And one that has a Stormlight Archive spoiler, so spoiler block for it: Stormlight Spoilers:

Probably could have linked it in my other post, but I was too lazy to google it then. Here are the two links from Theoryland that establish Ranette as a gay character.

"Hi Brandon, I brought something special I hoped you would sign. I'm not saying it's (the) dragons (picture). But it's (the) dragons (picture)."

(SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)