Nesh

Well, as of the February 17, 2026 weekly update we have an answer, it has to do with the weird stuff going on with the Writer's Guild of America right now.  It will happen at some point

37 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

Brandon has always been woke though, like the entire Stormlight Archive is about settler colonialism, racism, and sexism; even back in the day he was relatively liberal, for a member of the LDS church that is—if you read the (now) infamous blog post that Brandon wrote about homosexuality, then you'll see that 90% of it is him criticizing other religious conservatives for being too homophobic.

In general, I find that the average reader does not understand why like something or not; so, they latch on to random details; this is what happened with WAT, IMO—people disliked the book, and then retroactively latched on to modern language as the issue. The same goes for wokeness—The Little Mermaid was bad because it was soulless remake, not because they race swapped the main character.

The real reason why WAT and ROW (although I feel like the latter has been reappraised to a certain extent) were so poorly received, is because Brandon broke the established formula that, the fans loved; he talks about it more, here. He was right in doing so IMO, because doing the exact same thing for 10 books, would have quickly become trite.

(As an aside, I find that Brandon talking about his writing process, and the publishing industry, is a lot more interesting than some lore bomb.)

I don't necessarily agree with that particular criticism, I liked WaT for the most part, just relaying what I've seen online. the Shallan stuff was weak, but not because of Renarian and Rlain.  Yeah, the Shinovar arc could have used, idk something more, but I wasn't expecting Kal to be fighting much after RoW, and he'd just invented therapy like a month ago, I didn't think it should be sophisticated.  I'm saying this as an LDS member that leans a bit more to the right on some issues.  To be fair though, I've only read WaT once.  I need to work my way back through the series for a reread

On 2/4/2026 at 10:38 PM, Schizoposting said:

Personally, I think that giving up on an author you like just because they wrote one bad book, is... a strange decision, to say the least. But whatever floats their boat, I guess.

I think a sizable portion of it, not all mind you, but a good chunk has to do with how generally polarized things are.  The amount of comments on the internet I've seen saying they're done with Brandon because he went a certain W word after WaT, but at the same time there would be people calling him all sorts of phobic if he didn't include gay or trans characters.  Hell, even now there are people who hate him purely because of his faith despite his efforts to let the gay, ace, and trans portion of his fanbase know they are seen.  There are legitimate gripes to have with WaT, but the current cultural climate didn't help.

Well, the progress bar is back.

I'm sure if it was something where nothing could be said they would have told us that instead of saying it would be rescheduled.

3 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

I think that while apple might not initially make it super connected, I believe in Brandon making it perfect. I think he will fight to perserve the connectedness.

No, point in worrying too much, the earliest we'd see anything is probably 2028 or 2029.

1 minute ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

I am very excited, and believe that you are right in that Nightblood wont hit as hard, but there are many SA readers who haven't read Warbreaker. They may see Warbreaker later as like an origin story for nightblood, or something.

Oh, I'm still excited.  I'll back this stuff with my mond when and if the time comes, and with Apple, I feel like it actually will.  I'm just worried we won;t see the Cosmere be really connected on screen the way we do in the books.  It's part of what I like about it.

3 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

It is still far bigger than any Harry Potter or LotR deal, we are just disapointed because the big corporation didn't want to commit to a HUGE franchise with a huge catalogue of books with no direct confirmation on whether or not they will make any money off of it.

And while I agree the reporters should have checked their facts better, they are human, and they at least had the decency to tell us about it.

While I am a little disapointed, I don't think it changes much.

We have 2 scenarios, scenario 1:

Mistborn is a hit.

In this scenario, Apple is eager to buy the rest of the cosmere, and continues making all of the movies, regardless of if they already had the deal.

Mistborn is a flop.

We already had confirmation Apple was getting a SA TV show, so they would probably do that, and if it takes off, they do the above, albeit more wearily. But if both Mistborn & SA flop, (And Apple might just shut down SA if Mistborn flops) then with or without a full cosmere deal, we aren't getting the other cosmere films/TV Shows.

I actually think that less of a commitment is better for both parties (If apple decides to drop it, Brandon still had the rights to the rest of the cosmere (albiet less popular books) and apple doesn't pay a bunch of money for a "bad" franchise)

I understand the business behind it.  It jut makes the connection that we'd want to see a little bit harder.  I'm thinking like Nightblood not hitting quite as hard without Warbreaker.  It's small stuff like that.  It's a smart move on Apple's part, I agree and it's still a big deal.  It's just less exciting than we thought.  I knowb if that Final Empire movie actually comes to frution I'm going to watch it ASAP and hope it's good and that we get the other stuff.  I honestly have more hope for Mistborn than Stormlight, given the concerns I voiced about adapting Stormlight.

1 minute ago, Schizoposting said:

I don't think it really matters, to be honest; if Mistborn is a success, then Apple will almost certainly be willing to make other adaptations.

Well, yes, I just meant the deal isn't as big as we initially thought, and I wish the reporters had made sure they had the correct facts is all.

14 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

Apparently, Apple TV has only acquired the rights to Mistborn and Stormlight, not the entire Cosmere (I imagine that this would change if they're successfully adapted), so this discussion regarding Warbreaker is a moot point. I think talking about anything other than the upcoming Mistborn film is putting the cart before the horse, because the existence of any other adaptations will depend on its success or failure.

Well, that's somewhat disappointing, I wish the articles got it right the first time.

I'm most worried about how they'll handle Stormlight in general, and they way of Kings specifically, and I'm not talking about the CGI.  The structure of the book makes it a pain to adapt.  The beginning starts with three time jumps in as many chapters, though to be fair the Cenn chapter could probably be folded into the Kaladin flashbacks. 

There are large portions of the book where major POV characters just don't appear (Shallan not having a POV in part 2 for example), then there's what to do with the Interludes.  Plus, you would probably have to film every scene that takes place at Gavilar's feast during season 1's production so the actors don't age and create a discontinuity between the flashbacks because of the time beween seasons with the actors aging.  Yeah, it's a TV show so they have more run time to work with, which is great given the book length, but it's still going to be a nightmare...

19 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

It seems like it's a universal quality of fandoms, to want to get new converts, and to expand membership. Personally, as someone who has seen this play out with other communities, I'm ambivalent. To be sure, reading is probably a superior activity to doomscrolling TikTok, and Sanderson is a far better writer, than, say, Rebecca Yarros or Terry Goodkind; but having a massive influx of "normies" will probably be very annoying for a lot of established fans, and will likely decrease the quality of the community.   

I think it's just the natural human inclination to want to share things we love.

2 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

Why would it be nice to have? I'm genuinely curious why you think this.

First of all, I want to reiterate, I don't think it's needed, the books are good and popular on their own (Even the ones I have some things I didn't like in then like Wind and Truth were still good).  That said, this will help Brandon reach a wider audience, and some of them will pick up the books and future books, even if the majority might not.  It having a visual adaptation opens to door to some other things I would like to see, but that's got nothing to do with adaptation itself.  All that said, studios wanted these rights because of the built-in audience they know they can ask for lots of money from, so a faithful adaptation (Faithful not one to one as much as we'd like it, the nature of movies means things will be cut and changed) is paramount to getting those fans to watch it and to have good word of mouth.

3 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

If the books were good enough, there'd be no need to make an adaptation.

I don't think there's a need for adaptation per se, but it's nice to have.

53 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Vin drawing upon the mists is one of my favorite parts of book one.

Don't get me wrong, I adore book 1, but I understand some of the issue with drawing on the mists does come across as a deus ex machina in that book.

28 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

TFE was Brandon's second published book, and while the concept is great, the actual execution isn't the best—a film adaption would negate the issues with the prose and dialogue, whilst (potentially) streamlining and improving the plot. While some purists may prefer the books, if the films end up being better, then the former will be overshadowed by the latter.

I also used to think that a film adaptation should be 100% faithful to the source; but overtime I realized that film is a fundamentally different medium, and that what works in a book, doesn't necessarily work in film. To put it bluntly: faithfulness to original doesn't matter; what matters is how good the film is. That's why Starship Troopers is a great adaptation, even though it's incredibly unfaithful.

I mean, I've watched three different films that are adapted from Stephen King's book's (The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile), and I've yet to read a single one of them. Most people are not going to read a book when they've already watched a film with the same basic story unless if the books are substantially better/different. (As an aside, I think that LOTR is a lot better than the adaptation, but that's a discussion for another day.)

I wonder to what extent Brandon is going to be associated with the films—Game of Thrones was a massive sensation, and yet George R. R. Martin isn't that well known. I guess it'll depend on the marketing and branding. Also, I don't think that there'll be much theorizing in the casual film/television watching community, since all the answers will already be in the books. So, that aspect will probably decrease in importance in the fandom.

I mean, I'm probably going to be a bit of a book purists (Not out of any sort of malice or superiority complex for having read them, I hope the adaptations are good.), even if the adaptation is good, especially when it comes to Era 1 for personal reasons.  Heck, when I went to the Worldhopper Ball this year, small costuming inaccuracies and changed lines stuck out like a sore thumb to me because I've read Final Empire probably too many times.  Honestly, I'm not too worried about it, the books aren't going anywhere, an adaptation probably won't change much for me, and if it means more Cosmere fans, all the better.

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

There's an interesting possibility that I haven't really seen anyone mention—suppose that the Mistborn film is an excellent adaptation that not only preserves, but also improves upon, the source material; wouldn't this result in it supplanting the original?

For example, in this hypothetical, if someone new to the Cosmere asks whether or not they should read TFE, people will just tell them to watch the film instead, because it's just the better version. Even if the film isn't substantially better than the novel, as long as it's good adaptation, it'll probably replace the original in public consciousness, simply because films are a lot more popular (and accessible) than books.

I like watching films and reading books, so this doesn't particularly bother me; but I suspect that a lot of the purists here are going to be very annoyed by all the "normie" fans who will only watch the films/television but will refuse to read the books.

The odds of an adaptation being so good that it completely supplants the books is vanishingly small.  I have hope that it'll be good, but stuff is going have to but cut and Brandon has already talked about changes he wants to make.  With how loved these books are, I don't see them pulling a The Princess Bride.  It's not like new people don't get into the Lord of the Rings books every year.

I feel like Brandon knows why the stories worked, and what his fans liked.  Yes, there will be changes, he's already talked about some of the changes he wants in Final Empire, some of which I'm unsure about, but with this much creative control, I'm sure the general plot and spirit will be there, and if worse comes to worse the books aren't going anywhere.

4 minutes ago, Hmmm lies said:

I don't think the Mistborn trilogy is the LDS piece you think it is.

The two get married in Chapter 48, close to the end of the book, so Elend and Vin were clearly engaging in premarital sex. I know you distaste the WOBs, but this is very clearly something he had in mind while he was writing WoA. 

 

Regardless, I've always found Mistborn Era 1 to be far more PG-13 than the Stormlight Archive ever was.

Not to mention all the stuff that happens to the skaa, Era 1 wasn't exactly shy about that, even if it didn't show it often (and it never overtly showed what happened to skaa women nobles took a liking to, thank god.)

I'm excited, but I do worry about this delaying Ghostbloods.  In his reddit post, he said he'd be working on the Mistborn (presumably just Final Empire for now), screenplay for the next five months, between that and him needing to do edits of Fires of December...

A new Cosmere book in about two weeks! (Well, kind of new given the incorporation of Sixth of the Dusk as flashbacks.)

15 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

But did a book that calls every bird a chicken for immersions sake really have to call him a therapist? 

To be fair, that was a Hoid thing, a word he likely picked up on another world.  Kaladin just didn't have another word for what he was as he's inventing a new medical field on Roshar, and since Hoid said he was a therapist, it stuck.  It was even called out, by I can't remember if it was Ishar or Nale.  I'm paraphrasing here:

"What are you to him? (Szeth)"

"I'm his therapist."

"What is that?"

"I have no idea."

WOBs say that Era 2 takes places between SA 5 & 6, with WaT out now we can see it's a little more nuanced than that because of the time dilation.  In the WaT epilogue we see Hoid applying for the job of being Wax's coachman, which he first had in Shadows of Self.   Months after Retribution is formed Shallan contacts Kelsier, and Kell says it's been years for them, and that the time dilation hadn't quite settled yet, and it was worse at the start than it will be in once things stabilize.  Combine that with Kell's mention of a crisis and I think we can place Shadows, Bands, and Lost Metal all in that "months" long period post the formation of Retribution, where Shallan was travelling to the Horneater peaks in Shadesmar.

Alloy of Law is a bit more ambiguous, given that was a year before Shadows of Self.  Hoid was there for the Yomen-Ostlin wedding dinner, but we see him arriving some time before Shadows pretty right after Retribution is formed.  That puts Alloy before WaT.  Now a Rosharan year is 1.1 Cosmere standard years, which are equivalent to Earth years, which both Yolen and Scadrial share.  There Rhythm of War leads directly into WaT, but there was a year gap between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War.  So, given the new information that puts the main part Alloy of Law, somewhere in the Oathbringer-Rhythm of War timeskip.

EDIT: Disregard the bit about Alloy, when Hoid appears on Scadrial he says he'd left instructions for his things years ago, and in the epilogue, he mentions busting out his beggar costume for appearances, and that is what he wore for the wedding dinner.  So, we can place Alloy after his arrival but before the epilogue.

I think Taravangian made a miscalculation in his Interlude that may come back to bite him down the.  Specifically, when it comes to Sazed.  He thinks the other Shards are ignoring him and that Sazed is impotent.  We know from the Letters that Sazed recognizes the threat of Odium and is willing to do what he can to fight against him, and with what we saw in Lost Metal (Though that is after WaT) he may not be impotent for much longer... Also, it's interesting that he was able to contact Valor but Taravangian can't find her.

3 minutes ago, Moirne said:

Also, a minor plot point but… anyone know what animal this references? I couldn’t think of any large Scadrian fauna, so maybe it’s something from the south.

 

It's probably just normal cow leather.