Morsk

Oh gross. Someone crying "1st Amendment" when they shouldn't is not an excuse for that XKCD, which is completely wrong from the first panel. Freedom of speech is a moral and social principle, not just a legal right. It's fine to say there are limits to speech in private communities, but not that the 1st Amendment = Free Speech, nor that we should never fear the social consequences of limiting speech. As well say religious tolerance, or racial and gender equality, are only laws and not moral principles. It's sad the amount of traffic that XKCD gets, simply because it's convenient.

I can't get excited about a ship unless it's somehow subversive in fandom, so I'm not sure how I feel about this one yet. Does it annoy anyone?

2 hours ago, Unlicensed Hemalurgist said:

Wait, what other male Cosmere protagonists can fly other than Kaladin? 

Some Mistborn characters have it, but it would be spoilery if I made a list. I don't think it necessarily has to be male characters either, just that once a world has flying magic, there are always going to be PoV characters using it.

Maybe Szeth is enough! If he doesn't die. But even he's set as a PoV character more for the first half, than the second half. I'm not expecting to see more of Szeth and Kaladin in Stromlight 6-10 than we see Jasnah now, if they live at all.

I used to expect Kaladin to die, until I realized how many of Brandon's male protagonists can fly. If he kills Kaladin, he's going to have to spend many pages replacing him with another man who can fly. It sounds like too much bother.

Maybe Taln will get the other Honorblade instead of his original, and use it to fly. Any hint of that though, and we know Kaladin is toast.

I don't follow the connection between Kant's inability to imagine a perceptual category other than space and time, and the inability to have third categories between mass and energy. Is it just an analogy?

Mass and matter are not the same thing. Matter is anything that takes up space and has inertia. It isn't a fundamental quantity, only a useful description of some things. Maybe in the past some people only matter had mass, and energy never had mass, but no one thinks that anymore. I'd say solving this problem is as simple as saying investiture only has mass in the Physical realm, and not the others. Maybe Brandon has another solution, but that should work.

Gloryspren don't make sense to me, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've been retconned.

Quote

A swarm of small glowing orbs materialized around Kaladin’s head, spren the shape of golden spheres that darted this way and that. He started, looking at them. Gloryspren. Storms. He felt as if he hadn’t seen the like in years.

Syl zipped up into the air and joined them, giggling and spinning around Kaladin’s head.

“Feeling proud of yourself?”

“Teft,” Kaladin said. “He’s a leader.”

-- Words of Radiance, Chapter 9

So Syl is saying they're actually pridespren, and people call them gloryspren because they usually appear when someone is feeling proud of themselves. That makes them just another emotion spren. But Oathbringer plays them up so much that I was starting to think they were splinters of Honor from his death.

It could be the God Beyond. If the vision were obviously real, I'd think it couldn't be, because the God Beyond is never canon.

The suspicious part for me is that Nohadon says he thinks life is fair, even if people can't always see why. I find this amazingly stupid for anyone to say, unless they're an omnibenevolent God who fixes everything eventually.

I changed my mind. I think it's more likely the Spiritual Realm's "copy" of Nohadon. I can forgive silly ideas about life being fair, since this version of Nohadon is connected to everything, and it's not a real person. The Aimian in the Interlude says some people have magic to draw knowledge from the dead. Dalinar must be one of those people.

I don't like the idea of the God Beyond showing up for multiple pages, anyway. I expect it to maybe have manipulated one thing per book, or maybe not have. Appearing is a bit much.

On 8/17/2018 at 4:23 PM, 1stBondsmith said:

In the original post there are several incorrect statements about how the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints understand the Godhead,

Thanks for pointing this out. I only know LDS from mormon.org and Wikipedia, but the idea that Jesus is a demiurge who created the Earth is not something I'd ever heard; it sounds completely made up.

Many fantasy authors do copypaste their religion's theology into their fiction. Tolkein is famous not only for doing it, but for believing it was a sin not to. And sometimes they lie; Robert Jordan claimed not to be doing it, but fandom eventually found out he was a Freemason and held organized religion in disdain, which is what we see in his books. So I understand the impulse to go assuming Brandon is doing it too, but I believe Brandon is actually different and isn't doing it.

edit: I regret writing this. I dislike theories that claim Brandon's cosmology is from LDS, as I think it's stereotyping, and we shouldn't stereotype people by their religion, or anything else. But I shouldn't talk about religion because nothing good comes of talking about it.

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Spheres#Value

Sapphire and Amethyst are tied for second-most valuable, after Emerald. Emerald makes food, and Amethyst makes metal. Very useful. But Sapphire makes air, and only if air Soulcasters even exist, which I'm not sure they do.

Lacking any other explanation, I'd guess the air Soulcasters exist and are used widely for sanitation. Strange that we've seen smoke multiple times though, and never air.

I like the theory in a fun way, but I see Quote #2 as evidence against, because if Kelsier were running the Ghostbloods, Brandon would have treated it as a secret to keep, not a fun question to throw away a fun answer to.

The Ghostbloods treating everything as a hunt, and respecting members' rights to kill each other within limits, sound more like they're associated with remnants of Ambition.

Brandon hasn't said this, but Feruchemy at least approaches being end-negative if you tap extra for a larger effect, and I see this as Ruin's influence over the system. Preservation would enable gently storing power to use later, while Ruin would like you to store a lot of power only to use it very quickly. It also relates to Ruin's theme of time-related powers.

Large uses wasting some of the power is canon, but the rest I'm just imagining.

Quote

 

Sporkify

This is more towards the whole physics stuff, but is Feruchemy really balanced? If it gives diminishing returns, wouldn't this end up as a net loss of power?

Brandon Sanderson

It doesn't diminish. Or, well, it does—but only if you compound it. You get 1 for 1 back, but compounding the power requires an expenditure of the power itself. For instance, if you are weak for one hour, you can gain the lost strength for one hour. But that's not really that much strength. After all, you probably weren't as weak as zero people during that time. So if you want to be as strong as two men, you couldn't do it for a full hour. You'd have to spend some energy to compound, then spend the compounded energy itself.

In more mathematical terms, let's say you spend one hour at 50% strength. You could then spend one hour at 150% strength, or perhaps 25 min at 200% strength, or maybe 10min at 250% strength. Each increment is harder, and therefore 'strains' you more and burns your energy more quickly. And since most Feruchemists don't store at 50% strength, but instead at something like 80% strength (it feels like much more when they do it, but you can't really push the body to that much forced weakness without risking death) you can burn through a few day's strength in a very short time if you aren't careful.

Footnote: This question was asked when fueling Feruchemy with Allomancy had only been seen in Rashek. As such, the term compounding is used purely to reference tapping at a higher rate than can be stored.
source

 

He also has Monody and Elegy, which are also planets in the Threnody system. They're all songs of mourning.

Monody is the best one. Unbelievably good. Some music makes me feel like I can fly, or stop the world and be everywhere at once. Monody makes me feel like I'm unfurling wings of golden light.

7 minutes ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

wich Religion is openly anti gay in Mistborn BoM spoilers ahead

Spoiler because I think the names of which religions exist in Era 2 is is a spoiler for Era 1

I was surprised Vorin didn't make a fuss out of it, since they're so obsessively conformist about other things. Not only the gender roles, but the prudishness, social stratification, and war culture... all of it makes me think they'd hate anything "different" because different.

Maybe Brandon already had the Christian analog religion in Mistborn Era 2 be against gay marriage, and he didn't want to do the same thing twice. Or maybe it's deliberately paradoxical and defying our expectations?

On 8/10/2018 at 1:30 AM, Calderis said:

Earlier in the thread, when I said the command caused Nightblood to draw on Ruin, I did not say, and did not mean, Ati. 

...

The things that we have learned recently about Autonomy have shown us that investiture for all of the Shards permeates the Cosmere. There are pockets of them all everywhere, not just where a Shard has chosen to invest.

I think that the Awakening provided the initial spark needed to create a sentient being in Nightblood, and that then "called a soul unto itself" built around the command it was given. That command, to destroy, aligned Nightblood with Ruin, and so the soul drew on Ruin in its birth providing the investiture that is so unexplained. 

I really like this, but I'm going to disagree with the "not from Ati" part since I'm thinking it's literally the atium from the Battle of Hathsin. The investiture is unaccounted for. I think the default theory was that it would eventually return to Harmony, unbalancing him, and forcing him to create atium again, or creating plot hooks about the imbalance. But none of that seems to be happening. The investiture is just gone. Maybe you're right that some little bit of "unaffiliated" Ruin was called into the new mind of Nightblood, but I'd say it immediately found a Connection to a ton of other investiture wanting to be alive, and taking the outlet it was given.

The Manywar is 300 years before Warbreaker. Hero of Ages is also before Warbreaker, but we don't know exactly how much. It could fit.

I think the name was supposed to be deliberately mysterious. Fandom latched on to "Adonai" being God, and not the "-ium" being a metal. It was supposed to be unclear whether Adonalsium was a person or a thing; it was years before Brandon ever called Adonalsium "he" instead of "it".

This does make Adonalsium is strange word in-world though, because it seems like a word atheists would use, to deny the personhood of Adonalsium. To call it metal rather than a person is literally objectification. No one says Ruin is just atium, but they do this so thoroughly with Adonalsium that we don't even have another name for it.

I just changed / expanded this, and added 2 quotes. I think it more likely Ishar destroyed the Radiants for selfish reasons. Although it could be a bit of both. He may have justified it to himself with nicer reasoning.

TLDR: Ishar never liked the idea of normal humans with Surges, and only tolerated them as a tool against the Voidbringers. As soon as they were no longer needed, he disposed of them. The sense of "pain and betrayal" Dalinar feels in the Recreance vision is the Knights and spren betrayed by Ishar, not the spren betrayed by their Knights. Alternately, if Ishar is less evil, maybe it has to do with Odium being bound by the spirit of agreements, not the letter. Enslaving the parshmen risked letting Odium view things as "unfair" and letting him out of agreements, and Ishar rushed to cause the Recreance to balance things.

I find it unbelievable that Windrunners, Lightweavers, and Elsecallers were unanimous in breaking their oaths. No exceptions. And we don't know about the other 6 Orders; maybe there are no exceptions there either. But we know every Honorspren, Cryptic, and Inkspren except Sylphrena was killed in the Recreance. It's just not realistic. No dissent, no exceptions, no spren who resisted and escaped?

It must be magic, and only Ishar has the level of magic to do this, if anyone does.

Quote

But as for Ishi’Elin, his was the part most important at their inception; he readily understood the implications of Surges being granted to men, and caused organization to be thrust upon them; as having too great power, he let it be known that he would destroy each and every one, unless they agreed to be bound by precepts and laws.

-- Words of Radiance, epigraph for Chapter 42

He was strong enough to destroy every Radiant once, and would only have greater power to do it after he got them to swear his Oaths. Maybe, somehow, Ishar has power over the First Ideal, and can use it against anyone who's sworn it. He met with Nale, worked out a way to keep the Skybreakers safe from what he was doing, and then did something to the First Ideal so it was impossible to keep, forcing everyone to break it.

Quote

“Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above.”

-- Way of Kings, epigraph for Chapter 36

This is someone using a Dawnshard at the top of Urithiru. More likely the creation of the Orders than causing the Recreance, since the latter would be a secret. We've seen what a normal Bondsmith can do with a perfect gem. What Ishar could do with a Dawnshard could be world-changing, and the source of his power to destroy the Orders at any later time.

Quote

“One of Ishar’s Knights,” the madman whispered. His eyes narrowed. “I remember . . . He founded them? Yes. Several Desolations ago. No longer just talk. It hasn’t been talk for thousands of years. But . . . When . . .”

-- Words of Radiance, Chapter 63. Taln is talking to Shallan.

Even another Herald views the Knights as Ishar's. All the Knights, because he's associating a Lightweaver with Ishar, not a Bondsmith. "No longer just talk" may mean the Oaths were originally a cultural practice from Nohadon's book, and Ishar later made them magically binding.

Quote

“ ‘A warning,’ ” Navani read, “ ‘from Tezim the Great, last and first man, Herald of Heralds and bearer of the Oathpact. His grandness, immortality, and power be praised. Lift up your heads and hear, men of the east, of your God’s proclamation.

“ ‘None are Radiant but him. His fury is ignited by your pitiful claims, and your unlawful capture of his holy city is an act of rebellion, depravity, and wickedness. Open your gates, men of the east, to his righteous soldiers and deliver unto him your spoils.

-- Oathbringer, Chapter 24. Tezim is known to be Ishar.

This sure sounds like someone who would cause the Recreance, if he had the power to. Past Ishar may have been less insane than the current Ishar writing to Dalinar, but he was still insane, and on the path to being this bad.

Evidence Against

The Stormfather says they broke their Oaths because reasons, but his memory is unreliable without the bond, and he's bad at understanding human motivations. The Oaths were broken, but he may not understand why.

The Diagram says they lost faith and broke their oaths, and I think Super Taravangian would know the truth. But I also think he put lies in the Diagram; he distrusts less intelligent versions of himself, and only tells them what they need to know.

Are the highspren really keeping this a secret? No other spren would know why the Recreance happened, if it happened too quickly and there were no survivors. But the highspren would know. Maybe they can lie if it's "lawful", maybe even have to lie if they promised, but it's still quite a secret.

On 8/4/2018 at 7:10 AM, earthexile said:

It seems to me that the entire Cosmere concept is based on a somewhat arcane belief in Mormonism, which is that any given human has the ultimate potential to ascend to godhood and raise their own world full of people. His stories all seem to include the concept of people growing towards divinity, and what a gigantic and consciousness-altering responsibility that would be.

I'm not LDS, but I think this is better seen as an artistic inspiration of Brandon's, not as if the Shards are an LDS analog. It's not limited to Shards, or even cosmere, since it's in Reckoners too with the Epics. There's a general theme of what people would do with power, on many different levels, from something small like Breeze's ability to control emotions, to Harmony running an entire planet.

A lot of fantasy settings have some gods that used to be human, so I'm wary of stereotyping these as due to Brandon's religion. Also there's the mythological parallel of killing a primordial being and splitting the pieces, which isn't LDS at all, but is in other religions with things like Tiamat and Ymir.

On 7/31/2018 at 9:06 PM, goody153 said:

That would be interesting. Isn't Sanderson a serious christian(mormon) as well ? I always found it interesting that somebody like him would portray religion both in a good and bad way. 

He's said he thinks misuse of religion is one of the most evil things someone can do. So it would explain why this is often found in villains.

I'm more at a loss to understand why other fantasy authors don't write the way Brandon does, than to explain Brandon. In almost every fantasy, the religion is obviously true or false, depending on whether the author is a Christian or an atheist. I can usually guess an author's religion from the story; they make it obvious. Maybe it's as simple as that. Authors want their religion to be obvious, and so it is. But then you can never create a character like Vivenna, whose religion is partly inspired by the divine, but she's left to wonder how much is inspired, and how divine the inspiration really was.

8 hours ago, Nymeros said:

How did people immediately guess Dalinar would be Odium's Champion?

It looks like only 1/3 of people did, but for me it was just because of the Shardplate in the initial vision, and then never rethinking it. If a few parts of the story had a character stop and ask "Who will the Champion be; how can we stop this?" I probably would have changed to Moash or Venli, but it didn't happen.

When rereading Oathbringer, I got the feeling that the identity of the champion was supposed to be a mystery, at least for a time. But I never felt this way my first time through the book. It was always, obviously Dalinar to me. I'm not even sure why. I guess because Dalinar is always wearing Shardplate and killing everyone.

So I'm curious if this feels like more of a mystery to people who don't jump to conclusions like I did.

6 hours ago, MountainKing said:

Can someone explain to me the danger of the knowing this thwory..

It's probably just that it sounds silly if stated plainly. Sometime like "we're all in a book, in real life", or whatever.

17 hours ago, CosmicSieve said:

So, why did Nale give this mega-sword specifically to Szeth?

I think Nale wants to be judged, and judged by someone who can condemn him to true death, not just sending him to respawn on Braize. So he's setting Szeth up to be able to do this. But we really have no idea.

I don't think I've ever had a Stormlight prediction be correct, so now that I've posted this it's almost guaranteed to be wrong...

I never liked Brandon turning Elend into an action hero. I suppose it's because the events of Mistborn-3 are so world-altering that only an action hero could be at the center of them for the story, but I just don't like Elend having to be changed to fit this. Now any time Brandon makes a male protagonist that can fly, I think "Oh, Elend again. Why do they all need to be able to fly?"