ecohansen

Has Brandon ever said if he was influenced by Weiss and Hickman's Death Gate cycle? It seems to have most of the defining elements of the Cosmere in embryonic form: one world shattered into many, several well-rationalized magic systems which are explained in appendices, a Fool-character who survived from the original world and now hops between daughter-worlds with an obscure agenda (Hoid/Zifnab), and morally ambiguous protagonists and antagonists embedded in a higher absolute morality.

I'll plug one of my pet theories again. Kelsier only found the book in The Eleventh Metal. That book must have contained a clue that led him to the place he STATED he found the eleventh metal in: a land far to the north ("near the northern peninsula") that still remembered its ancient name. I'm convinced that that name is "Nelazan", the ancient northern home of Trelagism. TRELL discovered malatium.

Hi Meg (last off-topic post, I swear) The idea evolved out of the thread where I proposed the Aimian-Natan-Baatharnam connection. My second post in that thread had the nucleus of the idea. http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/32999-speculation-selay-and-natans-are-human-aimian-hybrids/ And yup, what we know about the Scouring is pretty vague, but ethnic cleansing is the most natural interpretation. Have you ever read C.J. Cherryh's Faded Sun Trilogy? It involves a race of people who, for one reason and another, were universally hated wherever they went. Although they themselves did relatively little that was wrong, every planet they settled on wound up getting nuked into oblivion by other cultures that hated them. One wonders if the Aiminas might be like that: innocent themselves, but still bringing doom to every place they settle. I don't have much else to back up this speculation, but if you think there's enough community interest, we could definitely start up a new thread to discuss it, or necro the old one.

Yup, Pathfinder, those were my thoughts exactly. Aimia had blue-skinned people, and experienced a major disaster (Scouring). The Plains had blue-skinned people (Natans), and experienced a major disaster (Shattering). The Purelake has blue-veined Babatharnams and Marebethians with "eyes of red and blue"--and at the very least, Dalinar's vision-tower in the Purelake is missing now (Tor.com seems confident that the vision DID take place in the purelake [ http://www.tor.com/2014/07/10/words-of-radiance-reread-chapter-4/ ]). At most, the purelake looks kinda like a crater. I'll admit that the purelake connection is super-weaksauce on all fronts. So, for some reason, wherever there are Aimians, there is also a disaster. This explains why Aimians are hated and feared. All this ties in with another almost-entirely unsupported hunch of mine: the Voidbringers and the Dawnsingers seem to be presented as opposites, and the Parshendi are the Voidbringers. So, it makes sense that Aimians, as the other nonhuman intelligence, would be the Dawnsingers. Moreover, the Plains, with their symmetry, seem to have been shattered with cymatic vibrations. Could the Plains have been Shattered by vibrations from Aimian/Natans engaged in Dawnsinging？

Decorative lightshows with no clear point. Computers are like contracts.

I just got my second Brandon-confirmed theory! I'm so proud! Q: Are either the blue-skinned Natans or blue-veined Babatharnams human-Aimian hybrids? A: Yes. Now I'm VERY curious about whether there is a connection between the Scouring of Aimia, the Shattering of the Plains, and the formation of the Purelake.

So what method of Shattering would make Odium most innocuous? What if we took your suggestion of Wrath and Passive Aggression one step further, and said that what Odium does is first judge things to be hateful, and then act on that hate? Could we Shatter Odium into Negative Judgment (AKA Grumpiness) and Action? Grumpiness wuld just look at everything in the cosmere and decide that it sucks, but never do anything. Action would always act, but for no particular reason. Action would definitely be a wildcard, but it would only be half as powerful as Odium, and would at least have a chance of leading to good results sometimes. But I'm sure we can come up with a more prudent Shattering scheme than that.

How much knowledge does Connection grant? If a Roman time-travelled to the present and tapped duralumin to gain Connection, and then saw a car, would he call it a "fire chariot" or a "car"? The ancient greeks had a dozen different words for different types of love (platonic, fraternal, sexay, etc), but no word for "love". If I traveled to ancient Greece, tapped connection, and started talking about love, would I have an instinctive understanding of the fine-grained distinctions made by the greeks, or would the english word "love" come out untranslated? What about languages like Eastern Pomo, which require evidentiality--i.e. citing your source? Before you can make any statement, you have to modify the verb to tell people how you know what you're saying--for example pʰa·békʰ-ink’e="it burned (I felt it burning)", while pʰa·bék-ine="it burned (I saw evidence of burning, and inferred that burning must have happened)". Currently, I don't remember how I learned most of the things I think I know, and would have great difficulty speaking Pomo, since I wouldn't be able to modify the verbs for evidentiality. But if I tapped Connection, would I suddenly remember how I learned everything so that I could modify the verbs correctly? For that matter, what about verb tense? Chinese doesn't have to modify verbs to show time: Instead of saying "I ate" or "I will eat", in Chinese you just straight-up say the time, if you happen to think it's important: "yesterday I eat" and "tomorrow I eat". Several studies have shown that Chinese people are much less likely than Westerners to remember the time-sequence of different events, since their language doesn't require that they remember it. If a Chinese person tapped connection in America, would her memory of time sequences improve? If I went to a club-room where only physics faculty members are allowed, and where everyday conversation constantly referred to physics, and I tapped Connection so that I would belong in the room, would I suddenly understand advanced physics? We see that more advanced terms like "ettmetal" are left untranslated because the target language doesn't have a matching term. But if the target language only has terms more advanced than the ones in my mind, am I suddenly able to master those advanced concepts? **** Suppose I went to Brussels, where both French and Dutch are spoken natively. Suppose further that I was in a room with a monolingual Frenchman and a monolingual Dutchman. If I tapped connection, would I speak French or Dutch? Could I control which one I spoke? If I were on a Panamanian ship in the middle of the Pacific, where no-one had ever been before, and channelled Connection, would I speak Spanish and be able to talk to the people on the ship? Or would I speak the Polynesian language of the closest land-mass? Or would I speak in dolphin clicks, since that would be the closest thing to a "language" that was actually native to the place I was in? Suppose I went to the court of Norman-speaking William the Conquerer the day after he conquered the Anglo-Saxons. I assume I'd speak Anglo-Saxon instead of Norman. If I went to the same palace ten years later, would Connection make me speak Anglo-Saxon or Norman? How long does a language have to be in a place before it becomes the language that Connection selects?

I'm absolutely sure that I CAN'T be the first to have thought of this, but I couldn't find a thread proposing it. If anyone could point me to a prior discussion, I'd be very grateful. I was just re-reading the first chapters of TFE, and noticed: What are the odds that that kingdom was called Nelazan? As in, the original home of Trelagism, in the far north?

Oh, I like that Nahema--And welcome to the Shard! The conventicle is definitely more likely than the guard hut. So what would a conventicle in the south mean?

M.T. Anderrson's series starting with Whales on Stilts has a similar frenetic awesomeness.

At least on the Tresting plantation, skaa hovels are described as "moundlike", which doesn't jive too well with the description above. But maybe the hovels at other plantations were more long, narrow, and bunkerlike.

So, have we seen a long, narrow bunkerlike building that Kelsier would have seen but Wax would not have? My first thought was the Lord Ruler's hut, but Wax saw that in Shadows of Self. My second thought was something in Secret History, but Similarly, nothing in the Eleventh Metal seemed to fit. So, how about the guard hut at the Pits of Hathsin that Sazed visits in HoA? Kelsier would probably have seen it when he was entering the Pits, and when he left. That building was never described very thoroughly, but it seems like it might fit. So, if that's the case, it could mean one of two things. One (1), mining communities everywhere put particular constraints on architecture, so this could mean that Kelsier recognized the architecture of a mining town, and the Southerners already had a significant metal industry before he arrived (What were they using it for)? It would make sense that mining communities could survive the longest, since they could make use of a bit of geothermal heat. The second option (2), of course, is that it WAS the guard building at the Pits of Hathsin: Harmony moved the Pits to the South Pole, and the Southerners will have a monopoly on Atium when it re-emerges. But I'm definitely not convinced that I've identified the right building. Anybody else have any ideas on what the building might be?

If you look t the ars arcanum in, for example, Shadows of Self, you'll see that in the Ferruchemical column Chromium "stores Fortune" with a capital F. A person tapping chromium will become more lucky. "Not every coincidence is a sign of someone drawing upon Fortune" is an idiom like "not all that glitters is gold".

So, were aspens the only green-leaved flowering plants in the Final Empire?

Because there were no flowering plants, and nothing with green leaves.

1. (Probaby already answered, but couldn't find it) So, you're walking on the ocean in Shadesmar, when a submarine filled with intelligent people passes beneath your location in the physical realm. Do you sink? 2. Bands spoilers: 3. What were the "aspens" in TFE and WoA? Did they survive post-Catacendre?

This bit was very interesting to me. Wax has the opportunity to straight-up ask a deity about the Problem of Evil, one of the best-known arguments against religion. And instead of giving any of the sanctioned Christian/Mormon responses, Sazed gives the Manichean response. Why is there evil in the world? Because the evil deity is stronger than the good deity, and the good deity has his hands full. What do you think are the odds that this is the final answer in the Cosmere? Does the God Beyond have an evil opponent that is even stronger than itself? Is there an infinite regress--a good god, then a stronger evil god above him, then an even stronger good god above that, then an evil god who's stronger yet, and so on forever?

Peter said Thank you so much for the reply, and I really hate to flog a dead horse, but the folder and the earring are very confusing. On Kindle edition location 1070, we have: At location 1107, AFTER VenDell has already given Wax the folder, we have the following: So we know VenDell had the earring AFTER he gave the folder to Wax. At location 1557: At location 1660: So, EITHER VenDell had already placed a different earring in the folder before he ever offered one to Wax, or someone snuck an earring in after Wax already had possession of the folder, or the folder that Marasi had is a different one than the one Wax had--but that sees to be contraindicated by the folder being referred to as "THE stack VenDell had delivered." There's a mystery now, and that's the sort of thing that attracts Sanderfans' attention. Finally, we have location 1690: This seems to solve the mystery: There were two different folders, and VenDell gave Marasi a different copy AFTER he gave the first copy to Wax, slipping the earring into Marasi's copy. But then why did Marasi need to give her copy to Wax, instead of just reminding him to read up on his own? And why wasn't the note worded like "Marasi,please give this earring to Waxillium in case he needs it"? **** TL;DR: I'd just like confirmation on whether this is a typo, or the solution to a mystery.

I don't eat meat from the Southlands; I don't eat Southlands meat.

RShara, geographical terms often don't have to be possessive: "I don't like Washington bureaucrats" vs "I don't like Washington's bureaucrats". **** I mentioned this one in a different thread, and there's still a small chance that it's a clue to something instead of a continuity error, but that doesn't seem likely now that we've gotten the whole book. So, in chapter 4, VenDell gives the folder of notes to WAX, but on page 82 Marasi "held up the pages VenDell had given her."

So, aspens show up three times in The Final Empire and three times in Well of Ascension. They are not mentioned in HoA, or any of the post-Catacendre works so far (AoL, SoS, BoM). I don't have a searchable copy of Secret History. So, was Brandon caling a Smeerp a rabbit? Were 'Aspens' actually strange brown-leaved ash-trees? Since Brandon typically makes new names for novel species, why did he choose not to this time? Or were aspens the only surviving flowering plant on Mistworld? Their use as high-falutin' decorations seems to suggest this. So why is there no evidence that Sazed continued to preserve them into the post-Catacendre world?

For some reason Theoryland isn't letting me search right now, but I'm sure I remember WoB that Ruin's actions represent the "least harmful" interpretation of Ruin's intent. That would seem to imply that Ati still had a bit of influence on Ruin, which in turn would seem to imply that Ati wasn't completely comatose. I think.

A technical issue rather than a typo: when I read in Google Play, the book freezes after page 97. There doesn't appear to be pps 98-99: at page 97, I hae to manually type in page 100, and the text picks up from page 97 without a break. Did anyone else have this issue?

Welcome, Trampador! so wow. I've definitely got a lot more clarity on a number of aspects of the Cosmere now. Is Trell *Devotion*?!!! I never saw that coming. It's interesting that we never saw any direct interaction between Kelsier and Demoux. How do we explain Demoux' almost-miraculous knowledge in HoA? I've always loved the genre-hopping in Brandon's short standalones: Shadows for Silence let him tell a ghost story, Sixth of Dusk was a tropical adventure, AoL was a western, etc. I felt like this novella was a Grimms-esque fairy-tale, or a myth about a trickster-god. The genre choice let Brandon play a little more fast-and-loose with character continuity than he usually does. At first, I had trouble with the Ire section: these are people who have set up the most advanced outpost we've seen yet, and who are planning to steal a Shard from a living Preservation, under the nose of Ruin at the height of his power. Khriss, the most knowledgeable entity in the Cosmere, doesn't want to mess with them. And they're acolytes of Devotion, which we should expect means that they're utterly committed to their cause. In other words, they're the ultimate badasses. But Kelsier gets them to scatter and run with some spooky voices and some fire under his shirt? --It didn't seem believable. But then I realized the story Brandon was telling was the story of a trickster-God, like Coyote or Raven or Loki or Renard. Standards for believability in this genre are different from standards in other genres, and a lot of the best stuff ever written was in this genre--if you've never read Amos Tutuola's "The Palm Wine Drinkard and his dead Palm Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town", go read it right now. I have to admit I was a bit less immersed in this novella than in Brandon's others--there seemed to be a bit of tension between the plot and info-dumps. That said, the info was incredible, and I'll definitely be doing a re-read soon.