Aliroz-The-Confused

As of The Lost Metal, the children of Ashyn have gotten to Scadrial.

Oh. I suppose that answers my question, then. Am I allowed to be unhappy about this?

Yeah, I don't think Warbreaker works as a movie. In a book, you can close the book and take a long walk to process what you just read before continuing, you can skip ahead or skim over stuff, and on rereads you can skip chapters. You control the pacing. In a book-on-tape, you can't do that as much (unless you press the fast-forward on your tape player, but that's much more awkward as far as re-entering the story goes, especially on the first go-around), and you don't control the pacing, though you can stop it and take a long walk whenever you need to. Movies aren't made for that kind of thing. The pacing is precisely controlled down to shots and frames, the medium is geared towards watching with other people which means any interruption/skipping has an impact on whoever is watching with you, and there's an "intended" viewing experience of passive observation.

It would be the biggest troll move to make a Warbreaker film in black and white.

ParaTulip, you're a good person, and I appreciate the effort. Thank you. There are major publications with budgets of millions who don't bother to try to figure this stuff out. (For the record, I myself often find it difficult to construct sentences with regards to this exact thing!) In the end, I try to live by what my grandfather said: "Seek neither to give nor receive offense, but to all give goodwill and the benefit of the doubt."

The final form of my question is as such: Aliroz-The-Confused says: Mister Sanderson, I'm a longtime fan (since 2009), and we share the same faith. One of the things that meant a lot to me about the original Mistborn trilogy was that certain things were open to multiple interpretations, particularly Vin and Elend's relationship prior to their marriage (which you have said you imagine one way but leave it open for people with such standards to imagine it as more chaste... an interpretation which resonates deeply with me in the same way that Renarin, Rlain, and Ranette resonate with the ones who feel represented by them). My question is this: Will the movies also be open to such interpretation, or do you intend to close that door and confirm explicit interpretations of the characters' relationships even if it means making readers like me feel excluded?

I don't think mister Sanderson wants me to feel that.

As always, mister Sanderson's casual contempt for his earlier work is disappointing and deeply sad, and shows that his intention is to overwrite and correct what he sees as Not Good or at least Not Good Enough. The sign of sixteen is one of my favorite plot twists in fiction. Vin drawing upon the mists is one of my favorite parts of book one. I don't mind gender changes at all, but I wish mister Sanderson could appreciate that his earlier work can be and is loved just the way it is without needing to be "better".

I absolutely disagree. I think Rocky is better than Rocky II, and so on, with Rocky > Rocky II > Rocky III > Rocky IV > Rocky V. Later works aren't necessarily better. And TFE was nowhere near Moshe Feder's first work.

-Furiously types 70,000,000,000 word diatribe defending Kelsier from all accusations of having done anything wrong, ever-

Reddit? I haven't even seen it. (ba-dum-tish!)

What I don't have a good word for and (probably confusingly) call "representation" isn't just about the characters. It's about the world, the worldview, the tone, the story. In my interpretation...It's about being in a horrible world and not being of that world, it's about the sacred duty to preserve the memory of the past, Sazed's search for the long-lost true religion among all the various teachings and faiths, about how all these freaking authority figures react to any violence with a kajillion times more violence, about a city trying to survive when opposition is on all sides, about how the world is so much worse than it ought to be, than it was created, than it will be when all is made right. It's about divine plans made before the creation of the world. It's about ancient truth written in metal, about whether the new faith survives its mortal leader's death, about how man can become divine, where resilience through trials is both living another gosh-darn day and a holy principle, It's about living in a world about to end. The "vibes" are representative. And part of that, yes, is the kind of vibes where it can be believable that teenagers in love can choose to be chaste. The characters experience traumas that resonate with the historical traumas of the faith, survive them (or die that others might survive) through embodying principles of love, faith, resilience, resourcefulness, and hope which resonate for much the same reason, and wrestle with the anxieties of constancy and change both being divine aspects of the spirit (a paradox where the keeping of the past is paramount but improvement and progression are, too). To be glib, the characters are "LDS-coded" in my (rather isolate) opinion, and I think that was, if not a reading intended by the author, at least a reading allowed by the author, and my question is "will the movies allow this interpretation, or will they stick to the author's preferred interpretation?"

I like this, but I worry that the phrasing "conservative values" opens up a massive can of worms with regards to politics and might imply a position very far from my own (my view is that the Cosmere is for everybody and representation is good, and that the part of "everybody" which includes me is represented in the original Mistborn trilogy). Changing, say, Clubs' gender/race/age/demographic? No problem. Having Clubs drop an f-bomb? No bueno. It's not so much "avoids alienating" as much as it is "gives deeply appreciated (if understated and existing only through interpretation) representation of". Vin and Elend's relationship is the main concern, but I'd honestly be :( about Spook and Beldre or a flashback to Kelsier and Mare if it confirmed that kind of thing. The contrast between the heroes and the villains is heightened, I think, if the heroes do things the traditional "skaa" way of fidelity in marriage and abstinence outside of it which Tindwyl mentions in book 2.

That doesn't say what the interpretation is, though, or how it has to do with inclusion.

I guess the gist is in my posts in this and the last two pages with regards to the applicability and accessibility of the work as LDS fiction and as representation and with interpretation and whether or not I'm allowed to be a Cosmere fan in the same way that the people who get direct and explicit representation are, and that WOB about how he said it's okay to interpret the work the way I do but I don't know if that will apply to the new one. Spoilered for tedious metaphor that's more context to why the question matters than it is relevant to the question.

I don't know how to put it into words, though.

Oh. If there are questions, I'd like it if somebody would ask whether or not he still wants to keep the story open to the interpretation that the characters are living certain standards, or if he wants to close that door. Because I really really want to be excited for this, but if he doesn't intend for it to be accessible in that way or engaged with like that then I'd rather know ahead of time so I can process the disappointment and then enjoy it in the way that I enjoy his other works and not be disappointed from a false expectation that I'll be able to connect with it like I connected to the original Mistborn trilogy and Elantris; and if he actually does intend for it to be accessible in that way and open to being something I can feel truly included in, I'd like to know ahead of time so I can enjoy the hype/anticipation/inclusion/prospect-of-representation.

If this happens, we riot.

Keke, Breeze isn't a scumbag because he isn't exactly to my personal idea of high standards, he's a scumbag because he regularly uses magic to control people's emotions and thus compromise their free will, and is in a relationship with a much younger person in which the consent of either party is incredibly dubious at best and actively compromised by any but an incredibly charitable reading. Also, he was Lord Ladrian, and I'm pretty sure that involved some evil heinous crud (especially regarding his ability to control people's emotions) that his actions for the Crew are an attempt to redeem himself for. Yes, mister Sanderson writes stuff for those who don't live by the way I live. It's just... it's just that he wrote Elantris and Mistborn in such a way that they could be interpreted as having been written for me, for people who live the way I live... and almost nothing else in fiction ever did that, ever connected to my life experience, ever made me feel like I was understood and belonged and that maybe the author was thinking of someone like me when he wrote these people and wrote them to be good despite having some of the same flaws I do. I don't begrudge him for including everyone else. I just... I just feel like it left me behind in some ways, for people who needed the representation more, who needed to feel included more. And I'm fine with that, but if he's going back over that territory that feels like Home and Safe to me... I don't want to feel excluded, you know? I don't want to feel like it was never really for me and that it was only incidentally and mistakenly that I connected to the work. Every other book, fine, I made my peace with it back in 2010 (Appeal-To-The-Hedonistic-Masses-With-Bawdy-Jokes-And-Go-PG-13 juice was meant as joke more than a real criticism, after all, we'd lose Shakespeare and Euripides and all the good that they have to offer, all the lessons they have to teach, if we insisted everything be PG all the time), but I'd really like for Elantris and Mistborn to stay as something that I could connect with the way that other people connect with Stormlight.

In my opinion, the author alone does not determine canon. To me, the editor and the publisher are necessary parts of the book existing, and so, anything that is not published on the printed page is not canon in my eyes. If mister Sanderson wants something to be regarded as canon by me, he has to put it through the gauntlet of getting it onto the published page for the readers to read. Otherwise, we get crud like whatever nonsense J.K. Rowling decides to write in between saying unforgivable things about marginalized people. (And, to be fair, that WOB means that "Vin and Elend did not" and "Vin and Elend did" are equally acceptable interpretations according to mister Sanderson, so I still maintain that mister Sanderson meant for Mistborn's original trilogy to be validly interpreted in the way that I read it back in 2009, even if other interpretations are also valid). As always, Frus, you're on-point. My apologies for derailing the thread. May the adaptation be good, but not good enough that people forget to love the original books. May it give people the same joy that the books give me.

WOBS AREN'T CANON.

It's the 28th.

Look, there's one and only one way I'm accepting this, and that's if mister Sanderson at long last remembers his roots. Like Elantris, the Mistborn trilogy is is LDS fiction at its heart where girls don't kiss until 16, earrings are morally suspect, the true scripture is preserved in metal, the good guys never do drugs or gamble or swear (and if they do it's Ds and Hs) or drink caffeinated substances, preserving the memory of the past is a sacred duty, and dresses are always past the knee. Alcohol is only had by adult anti-heroes and even then in moderation. Breeze, the token worldly scumbag on the team, exists as a contrast to the actual protagonists. The casual reality of genocide, religious persecution, and the entire world being horrible and against you and full of sin and evil and not at all anything like the paradisiacal glory it ought to be (and becomes, in the end) resonates with, rather than contradicts, this framework, because that is the heritage and the worldview. Mister Sanderson didn't drink Appeal-To-The-Hedonistic-Masses-With-Bawdy-Jokes-And-Go-PG-13 juice until 2010's The Way Of Kings.

It doesn't NEED to grow, to see new heights. It needs to be preserved, maintained, sustained! We know he outright loathes Elantris, having said as much in interviews.

By writing an adaptation, he declares that his earlier work is not good enough and needs to be changed, improved, altered, adapted, ruined. It's incredibly disrespectful to the two people who still like the original books, and to Moshe Feder who worked so hard to edit them. He doesn't treat any of his other works this horribly, he doesn't act as though Tress of The Emerald Sea needs to be improved.