ButChrisNo

Hey all, the article and charts are updated! (http://www.tor.com/2017/06/06/brandon-sanderson-worldhoppers/) Feel free to let me know here if there are accuracy tweaks to be made in the text. (The paragraph on the Cognitive Realm may be a little squirrelly since I'm mixing stuff from SA and AU. There's a lot there that I'm leaving for a curious reader to investigate on their own.) Ya'll were super right about Sel being less of a focal point. Silverlight and Odium's chase makes it all fairly moot. Thank you for all the help and clarification, everyone! Hopefully after this I can make some time to jump into theorizing in the threads here. @Chaos, managing a Sanderson wiki sounds...intense. I really appreciate the work you and the other admins have put into it. I tend to use it a lot when reading or rereading a Sanderson work, so I can remind myself what is known and not known about the various aspects of the Cosmere.

No worries about the criticism, folks! There's a lot to fix (deleting a whole planet!), so the outrage is perfectly understandable, and your criticism was honest and didn't veer into personal attacks, which I VERY much appreciate. Finding out that I didn't do the job right the first time is dispiriting for sure, but we're all working towards the same goal: To enjoy and theorize about these epics. I'm just about done updating the charts based on your feedback. I'll have to step away for the evening but I'm hoping to have the article updated by tomorrow morning!

Thanks, Oversleep and Argent! (Oh, and yes this is Chris.) The text of the piece will have to undergo some reworking along with the charts but I'm hopeful that it can all be corrected in the next two days. The problem some of us had was that the original article didn't flag speculations as such and presented them as confirmed facts instead; a problem only magnified by the fact that a Tor article probably gets a ton more views than any single thread or article on this website, which - in my own opinion, at least - means it needs to pass all sorts of rigorous fact-checking before it gets published. But I approach much of Brandon's writing like an academic would approach a science journal, so maybe my opinion is not entirely valid in this... I think that's a reasonable expectation in regards to a piece such as this. The article is meant to be open-ended and fun, but it's also meant to give more casual readers some knowledge and terms to explore so they know where to go next in their exploration of Sanderson's worlds. Not being clear enough between the speculative and factual works against that intent. I thought I had gotten my details straight, but clearly not! I appreciate ya'll helping me out with this.

Hi folks. Author of the article here. Thanks to Pagerunner for nudging me on over so we can make a better Cosmere relationship chart! My main sources for the piece were Coppermind (which I'm now gathering is out of date?), the novels/short stories, and the Arcanum Unbounded, so there were naturally going to be some inaccuracies. Sounds like I've got some straight up misrepresentations in there, however, so those should get fixed, and I'd like to rework the charts and article so that the speculation is separate from canon and/or Word of Brandon. One caveat: I'd like to avoid displaying connections that aren't published yet, as my intent with the chart was to be introductory and show casual Sanderson readers how to conceptualize and explore the larger narrative framework of the Cosmere, therefore I want to avoid spoilers for forthcoming works, like White Sand Vol. 2 and Oathbringer. Let me know if the following changes sound accurate: To change under Shardholders chart: Odium's path: Yolen to Threnody THEN to Sel THEN to Braize? Ruin's path: No Vax? Change nomenclature to "Vessels"? To change under Observers chart: Hoid: Add directional arrows to signify repeat visits to Scadrial. Change nomenclature to "Scholars"? To change under full chart: Talk about Frost on Yolen. Add Ire line between Threnody and Sel. Omit Mraize since most destinations are unconfirmed/speculative based on items. Would it be accurate to add the 17th Shard as a group? It seemed like it was more of an affiliation between individuals roaming the Cosmere. Of the Five Scholars we've only seen one (Vasher) appear on another world, right? Despite the group being able to hop anywhere? The question of Silverlight: There's no confirmed physical location of Silverlight, correct? And it connects to, or can observe, everywhere?