ILuvHats

I like this breakdown. I've felt similarly, but haven't been able to put it in words like you have. Of the orders we are intimately familiar with, this line of thought looks to be an excellent model for the oaths. It might even be useful for predicting unseen oaths, to an extent. @Karger I'm not sure if you're doubting the validity of the OP or not. If you are, here's how I see it. The oaths themselves were originally a social construct, since they weren't inherent to surgebinding, but were later added to keep surgebinders in check. Also, it's likely the oaths were based off of the herald's attitudes considering the spren were already trying to mimic the herald's abilities, and mimicking their ideologies would just be taking it one step further. So, there's a clear connection between the oaths and the attributes. I agree that the current perceptions of the divine attributes and the rituals/traditions surrounding them is probably a lot of fluff, but the core concepts of the attributes were based on the herald's ideologies, which led to the the oaths. So the OP's line of reasoning seems correct to me. Even if social constructs blur the truth, they're usually based in facts.

I agree that you shouldn't simply make a character LGBT just to check a box. However, you can always look for opportunities where such a character would better fit the story or add more to it than a straight\cisgender one. And I'm not talking about stories where the entire plot revolves around LGBT themes. I'm talking about much subtler ways that an LGBT protagonist could lend themself to the plot. To make a comparison, Vin in her original form was male. When Brandon began writing what we now know as Mistborn, he realized that a female protagonist would be a much better match than a male one.

Hurt grey, heal purple. Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Grey - 3 Green - 6 Purple - 10 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 10 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 10 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 10 Viridian - 7 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 7 Periwinkle - 6

Hurt black, heal purple. Black - 1 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 7 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 10 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 10 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 10 Viridian - 6 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Hurt black, heal purple. Black - 3 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 6 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 10 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 10 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 10 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Welcome to the forums Vahlia! I am definitely in the same boat as you when it comes to finding real life fans of Brandon. I’ve met a few, but only at signings. None of my friends are into fantasy, let alone Brandon’s books. What are you planning on reading next? Personally, of the cosmere books you haven’t read yet, Warbreaker is my favorite. It also has a few connections to Stormlight. So that’s my recommendation.

Hurt violet, heal indigo. Black - 4 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 5 Violet - 1 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 10 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 10 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 9 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Hurt violet, heal indigo. Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 5 Violet - 3 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 9 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 8 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Kill white, heal indigo. White - 0 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 8 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 7 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Hurt white, heal indigo. White - 2 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 7 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 6 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Pink yelped in surprise. “How have you discovered my only weakness? Listen, I can be reasonable. I’ll stop attacking you if you stop splashing water on me.” Hurt white, heal indigo. White - 4 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 6 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 10 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 5 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Pink gasped. He had been mistaken all along! He had mistaken this Aqua for another one. Still, it was too late to back down now. Hurt aqua, heal no one. White - 5 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 6 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Ultraviolet - 1 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 5 Emerald - 10 Aqua - 9 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 10 Amaranth - 5 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

That is true. I just need an excuse cuz otherwise it’s a little boring. If it’s annoying you I’ll stop. The RPing, that is not the hurting . Feel free to hurt my color back though. Surprisingly, no body’s gone for pink yet. Hurt aqua, heal pink. White - 5 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 5 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Ultraviolet - 4 Orange - 1 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 10 Indigo - 5 Emerald - 9 Aqua - 9 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 9 Amaranth - 5 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Aiiiieehhh! Why is everyone helping Aqua?! Has no one watched Konosuba? Useless, I say, useless! Hurt Aqua, heal pink. White - 5 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 5 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Ultraviolet - 4 Orange - 2 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 9 Indigo - 5 Emerald - 9 Aqua - 9 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 9 Amaranth - 5 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Welcome to the shard! Always happy to see new members. So if Shallan’s your least favorite character, who’s your favorite?

Dear heavens! It appears Aqua is suffering from memory loss. It’s okay, my dear. I’ll soon put you out of your misery. Hurt Aqua, heal pink. White - 5 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 5 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Ultraviolet - 4 Orange - 3 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 8 Indigo - 5 Emerald - 9 Aqua - 9 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 9 Amaranth - 5 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Anime reference. Hurt Aqua, heal pink. White - 5 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 5 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Ultraviolet - 4 Orange - 4 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 7 Indigo - 5 Emerald - 9 Aqua - 10 Azure - 9 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 9 Amaranth - 5 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Aqua’s such a useless goddess. Therefore she must BURN IN HELL. Hurt Aqua, heal pink. White - 5 Black - 5 Blue - 10 Silver - 10 Gray - 5 Green - 5 Purple - 5 Violet - 5 Ultraviolet - 4 Orange - 5 Turquoise - 10 Pink - 6 Indigo - 5 Emerald - 9 Aqua - 9 Azure - 10 Cerulean - 10 Cerise - 9 Amaranth - 5 Viridian - 5 Vermilion - 6 Cyan - 6 Periwinkle - 6

Does this beauty pageant now officially include both genders? If so, @Allendrius, can you update the OP to include male recommendations mentioned in the thread? It might help people like RShara feel more comfortable.

I’ve been ninja’d multiple times, but I’ve spent a lot of time on this, so I’ll post it anyways. Here’s my perception of the ideological differences between Windrunners and Skybreakers. At the beginning of their oaths, Windrunners are focused purely on protecting others. People’s well-being and safety are what matter above all else, even if they don’t deserve it in the Windrunner’s opinion. This is a huge difference between the Skybreakers and the Windrunners. Notice that the Windrunner’s don’t care about fairness, whether or not somebody deserves to be saved. Their ideology is that everyone is worth saving, including their enemies. Reconciling this belief with the belief that some people need to be opposed and fought against is a core part of their journey. Another part of a Windrunners journey is learning how to let others fend for themselves and let go of some of the responsibility they feel for everyone. The Skybreakers, meanwhile, focus on justice, which to them means punishing those who’ve done wrong in order to protect those who are innocent. Unlike the Windrunners, they don’t believe everyone deserves protection. There are those who do harm, and they must be stopped in order to protect those who are innocent. Skybreakers begin with the ideology that the law is to be upheld above all else. Much like Nale, novice Skybreakers generally follow the law because they don’t trust in their own ability to determine what is right and wrong, and how severely different crimes must be punished. So, they look towards an external code, or law. Much of their journey is centered around becoming confident in their own ability to discern right and wrong and mete out justice. The 5th ideal, after all, is “I am the law.”

@Kureshi Ironclaw I love your introduction. Seriously, it flows so well, and you definitely seem like an experienced writer. So if you're looking for beta readers... . Anyways, I can definitely see why you'd be questioning whether you can keep the scene and still maintain a sense of mystery. I'll agree with you that most readers could probably tell what's going on, and I think I probably could have even if you hadn't told me what was happening. However, if you haven't run it past any beta readers without prior knowledge, you should do that to get a good idea of how apparent the true events are. Because I'm biased by my prior knowledge. It's hard to judge without the context of the entire book. That's pretty obvious with my previous post, considering that what I was suggesting didn't fall in line with what you were trying to accomplish. But the way I see it, you have two options. As you've discussed, you can change your story to rely a lot less on suspense from the mystery, which may or may not be feasible. I don't know how much of the book you've completed and how reliant it is on the mystery. If you have other sources of tension which are still very compelling, than you can certainly let the mystery element fall to the sideline in favor of these other arcs. Or maybe the mystery is solved relatively early in the story so the reader doesn't have a lot of time to think about what's going on, and then you switch over to another source of tension. Your other option is to change your intro. Now, I think there are some easy edits that can obscure things a lot more. The first one that comes to mind is cutting out the following line. This is the only instance where you clearly telegraph what's going on. Remove or alter this significantly, and it suddenly becomes much tougher for the reader to see through the unreliable narration. I'd also omit a lot of Catrius's lines after getting attacked. Although it's plausible to Alias that he's talking about the shades, the ambiguity of the lines makes it pretty apparent to the reader that he's instead talking about Alias being the killer. And considering he's being torn apart, it's easy to imagine that Catrius would go into shock and wouldn't say much that's intelligible, so him saying nothing makes sense. Obscuring the truth even furrther would probably involve completely excising Alias's interactions with Catrius and possibly his daughter, inserting a separate viewpoint instead that's more removed from the action. But as you've mentioned, the problem with this is that you wouldn't be able to showcase the magic system like you want to. So maybe try some simpler edits like the ones I mentioned and maybe a few more, and run the intro by some more beta readers who haven't read it before. Then you can see if the mystery is maintained to the extent you want it to be. Also, I'm sorry, but I can't resist from nitpicking your intro. It's a bit implausible that Alias, who's allegedly not a conductor, could imitate a conductor accurately. It takes an immense amount of skill and practice to conduct well, despite how easy it may seem. You have to think about how you breathe, the precise timing of every cue, and a lot more. And if you're not familiar with the particular piece, conducting is unfeasible. You wouldn't even know the tempo to start with! Even if you yourself are a conductor and have conducted the piece before, imitating another conductor throughout an entire piece is difficult since there's no way your interpretation lines up exactly with the other's, and the orchestra will eventually realize something's off when you suddenly conduct certain segments differently than rehearsed. Of course, if you have conducted the piece before, I don't think the musicians would notice immediately that you're not the original director, particularly considering that experienced orchestras can operate without a conductor. You indicate that with this line. So for the purposes of the introduction, Alias could maintain the illusion that he's Catrius, but I'd give him some sort of background with conducting, possibly. At the very least he's familiar with the piece the orchestra's playing. Since Whistling seems to be music based, a background in conducting/music wouldn't be unexpected. Maybe Alias has worked with Catrius before, or has seen him conduct a lot since they're friends, and thus is able to imitate him accurately. Basically, I think you should alter the following line to instead make Catrius familiar with the piece, and hint that he's familiar with conducting, particularly Catrius's style. Just being a musician probably wouldn't cut it, because I can tell you from experience that just because you can play a piece, does not mean you can conduct it. Anyways, sorry for the nitpicking, but I get very particular about whether musicians are portrayed accurately. Hope some of my comments help.

I'll ditto Aluminum that chronoflyghist stands out as an peculiar and overcomplicated name compared to the others. Also, I have a few questions. Is it more common for people to get their powers young than old? Is it a normal distribution centered around middle years (~40s)? Basically, how common is it for someone to be born with the powers late vs someone early vs someone middle aged? Does precision increase as well with increasing power level, or is precision gained through practice? Is efficiency affected by how late you gain your powers? For example, if someone gains their power later, can they perform the same task as someone who gained their powers earlier without growing as tired? What are the conditions determining whether you can affect a force? Does it need to be acting on you? Does the affect of the force have to be within your line of sight? Something else? I'm guessing it's the first. Otherwise, Windshredders and Stormdancers can essentially mobilize anyone they can see simply by messing with the force exerted by them walking/running. What are Nostroms exactly? You make it sound like they're an organized guild instead of just a classification for each person's magic type. This line in particular interests me. It sounds like the power level is in relation to your genetic predisposition to die at a certain age. However, the maximum age people can live to is variable, and doesn't rely purely on genetics. The healthiness of your lifestyle has a large impact on how long you can live. So is the predetermined date of death based on how long someone can live if they live an ideally healthy life? Also, if someone is born with a genetic condition limiting their life to only 20 or 30 years, their abilities could be very powerful even if they manifest when the person is young, correct? Overall, I like what you're doing with the magic. The dichotomy between age and power level is particularly interesting, because there's a natural trade-off between skill and raw abilities, inherently limiting and balancing the system. However, I need more meat! Give me context for the magic system, more background information about how it affects society and other juicy details. It's harder to judge the magic system without this kind of info. Keep up the awesome worldbuilding though.

@Pathfinder You are correct. That’s basically what I was saying. I hadn’t seen all of the WoBs Honorless listed, but I figured Mraize was at least of Rosharan descent if not a native considering he uses a lot of Thaylen terms. But the Ghostbloods clearly recruit from many sources. Mraize is Rosharan, Iyatil is ethnically South Scadrial but from Silverlight, and we have a WoB somewhere that the Ghostbloods are perfectly willing to recruit from the 17th shard.

Equally crackpot theorizing: It stuck out to me that the speaker doesn't speak of Threnody as a whole, but "the powers." This line makes me think of the Ghostbloods. Plenty of people have speculated that the Ghostbloods were founded by Threnodites, or that the organization has some sort of strong connection to the planet. The "evidence" being that Ghost could be a reference to shades, and Mraize's attitude, which reflects the ruthless pursuit of power above all else. And people have noted that this attitude reeks of ambition, or should I say Ambition. And I don't know about you, but I'd love to see conflict between the Ghostbloods and the IRE.

@The Silverlight Scholar If you look above the thread you started, you should see Moderation Actions. If you click on that, it'll give you the option to hide the post, which basically removes it from the forums.