dannnex

my guilty pleasure is opening this website every 2-3 months and searching up my own name to see if anyone has been talking about me

This might be too niche and I might just be being overly aggressive, but some of the cosmere-themed social media accounts out there annoy me so much.

Like I don't want to gatekeep anything, people should be free to engage with these books however they want, and I'm aware I'm being overly critical about something that doesn't matter at all but...

There's like 2 accounts in particular that really just tick me off, one on instagram and one on twitter. Both have 20k+ followers. They're not related afaik but they're similar in tone. Both "Cosmere News and Memes!"-type accounts. The type of account that portrays themselves as a community authority figure just because they know how to repost Tor articles. 

Like you didn't create your account until 2023, calm down. You are not an authority on anything. I think that's genuinely a fair thing to "gatekeep", like anyone and everyone is welcome to be apart of the Sanderson community, but elevating yourself to the "Best source of Brandon Sanderson News!" is just so annoying. The amount of attitude these accounts have, you'd think they wrote the books themselves!

It's not just people posting for the love of the game either, these are the type of people with amazon affiliate links to sanderson merch in their bio. Actively trying to profit off of the community by reposting things other people make. The twitter account in particular peeved me last year when it made a separate tweet for every single line in the State of the Sanderson address that could be considered "news". Never mentioned the newsletter itself btw, just deconstructed it and copied every line. 

And I have to mention the "memes" these accounts post. They just aren't funny. This is probably my most invalid and/or gatekeepy critique, but they're just not funny I don't know what to say. Making jokes on the internet is a skill, you don't have it just because you know how to use imgflip and mematic. 

It's all just slop, reposts from official Dragonsteel sources, and more slop. I have no clue how these accounts are as big as they are. I think we, as a community, can do better. 

I've been thinking a lot about the different ways we engage with fiction, and the ways we talk about our reading experiences with others. Specifically I've been looking at the factors that can cause a person to either like or dislike a character. I'm starting to notice two very distinct ways that people view characters. This will sound obvious when I say it, but I think there's actually a lot of nuance here. 

Some people tend to look at characters from an above-story perspective, you judge a character based on the quality of the writing in which they're portrayed, and based on how they fit into the overall plot. Other people view characters from a within-story perspective, they judge a character based on their personality and the way they act towards other characters. They'll dislike a character if they'd also dislike a real person who acted the same way. 

I don't think anyone falls 100% into either category, it changes from character to character. I think we're more likely to fall into the second camp if a character strikes a nerve with us, if they remind us of people we've interacted with in our own lives. I also think we rarely use this perspective if our conclusion is that we like the character. This perspective tends to accompany a negative opinion. I think its rare to enjoy reading a character who is written poorly, but portrays the personality of a person that you'd theoretically enjoy spending time with irl.

There's obviously no "wrong" way to come to a conclusion about a character, your opinions are your own. But I think this is a good thing to keep in mind, especially when discussing characters with other people. It can help you identify both your own and others' biases.

Almost a decade ago, someone asked me what I thought was the most "sci-fi" technology that already exists in society. For a long long time my answer to this question was contact lenses. Magic little gel hemispheres that are relatively cheap and manufactured with so much precision that they bend light in exactly the right way to allow someone to see clearly. That's insane. (The history of contact lenses is super interesting too, they're both insanely old and super new depending on how you look at it. The very first idea that resembled modern day contact lenses was proposed by mfing DA VINCI in 1508, but modern silicone hydrogel lenses were only invented in 1998.)

And that might still be my answer in some contexts. But from a more aesthetic/philosophical standpoint I think the answer has got to be street lights.

Now the technology of "large lightbulb on a stick" doesn't exactly scream sci-fi, but the purpose and infrastructure around them absolutely do. The single most constant ecological feature of this planet is the night-day cycle. Long before the first microorganisms, even before WATER was present on this planet, the earth rotated during its orbit around the sun. The cycle of day-night-day-night has never been broken in 4.5 BILLION years.

Until now. 

Ours is the first society to say "yeah we'll pass" when confronted with the mandatory darkness of night. A society so constant and unyielding, so full of momentum, that we decided we don't need the sun to light our paths anymore. We'll do it ourselves. Our society must grow, must expand, and before we eventually expand upwards and outwards into the solar system, into "3D darkness", we had to expand into 4D darkness, expand not our usable physical area but our usable temporal area. We claim the night as OUR time, say that these are hours that we WILL use, and we will MAKE them usable, natural order be damned.

If that isn't sci-fi, I don't know what is.

alright fine, i'll be the one to finally say it.

it's messed up that cubes have 6 faces. 6 is not a squarey number. it should have 4. or 8.

Isn’t she beautiful

wind and truth in 3 days wind and truth in 3 days wind and trUTH IN 3 DAYS WIND AND TRUTH IN 3 DAYS WIND AND TRUTH IN 3 DAYS

i'm a grown adult and i'm absolutely freaking out

this is the culmination of a story arc that started almost 15 years ago. FIFTEEN YEARS.

this is historical. a book release that will define a decade, if not a generation.

Dec 6th is gonna be such a good day for media enjoyers

not only is WaT releasing (obviously)

but Interstellar is getting rereleased in theaters in 70mm imax film. 

i watched Oppenheimer in 70mm and it was the greatest theatrical experience of my life. Film is just better idk. There’s only 19 theaters in the USA capable of showing 70mm imax films, and one is like 20 mins from my house. 

COSMERE TTRPG LOOKS SO GOOD WTF

im about to spend so much money on this kickstarter this is insane it’s so cool

but then it isn’t actually releasing for OVER A YEAR

might get a ghostblood symbol tattoo soon

a really small and subtle one since it would be my first tat

thinking like the size of the nail on my thumb, just a simple shape

not sure where i’d put it though

the ankle is classic, might go with that 

just finished my first ever reread of RoW

dont mind me just reading oathbringer again and sobbing

i love dalinar so much

so we do a lot of fancasts on this website

like what actor you want to play what character 

but what if we did the reverse?

congratulations, you just got cast in the cosmere adaptation of your choice. What character are you playing and why?

I don’t think i could take any of the main roles. it’s too much pressure and i’m not a good enough actor. i could be a good bridge 4 guy i think. just like a Scar or a Drehy. nobody super unique like Rock or Lopen but still a named member.

the arrogant part of me thinks i’d be a good Hoid. Specifically on Roshar as Wit. i’m definitely knowledgeable enough in the cosmere lol. i think i could strike that balance between “goofy silly little guy” and “insanely somber powerful being of old” pretty well. And while he’s an important character, he’s never a focal character, so i wouldn’t be in the spotlight that much. 

how hard do you think it would be to buy the rights to a cosmere property myself

like if i choose a niche medium and a smaller property, could I convince brandon to let me buy the rights

like what if i try to by the videogame rights to 6th of the Dusk or something

and then i just make like a tiny fishing minigame but it’s officially licensed for no reason

When is brandon going to realize that he can just crowdfund a movie. 

like he made 41 million dollars from the year of sanderson kickstarter alone, and another 23 million from the WoR leatherbound. 64 million dollars for relatively small products.

The LOTR trilogy cost 514 million dollars, adjusted for inflation. That’s not that much more.

Okay sure it’s about 10x as much, but the fandom would be WAY more excited about getting a movie than about the Year of Sanderson. Probably around 10x as excited, by my estimation.

And then Brandon would have COMPLETE creative control. It’s the perfect solution. 

hatsune miku is an honorspren

thats it

that's the post

Do you ever just randomly find a work of art that moves you in a surprisingly deep way

I've been staring at this for like 3 hours

Just a random image found while searching for visual aids for my dnd campaign

inspired me to add an entirely new plot thread.

Anyone have any unique ideas for a cursed weapon

i feel like everything's been done before

in a dnd campaign that im running, i just had a player find a cult hideout, where they picked up a sickle covered in blood that they found lying on an altar.

so like naturally this is gonna be some kind of cursed blade

but i dont actually know what it's effects are gonna be yet

any ideas? all the obvious stuff has been done a million times, "steals its user's life force" and "drives the holder to a murderous rampage" are a bit well worn at this point

631

the numbers mason

what do they mean

So I have been using tumblr a little bit.
as a shard alternative since this place broke.

and it kinda sucks for a multitude of reasons

but i came here today to complain about one thing in particular

CosmereTumblr doesn't care about spoilers at ALL

it makes me so PISSED

like the website is literally built around TAGS. "Tagging" things is the core that the whole site is built around.

and people DONT TAG SPOILERS

saw someone post the most climactic moment of TLM, literally the very end of the book and the very end of the TRILOGY

and there were ZERO spoiler tags. but it was worse than that, they tagged it #cosmere and #brandon_sanderson. The most GENERIC TAGS POSSIBLE FOR COSMERE FANS ON TUMBLR. Someone just getting into the series could be looking through that tag, and just get hit with the very end of a book or a major character death. its terrible. 

i miss this place so much somebody get them to fix notifications so i can come back

Nobody sees these anymore but *things* have been happening with the minecraft server so figured I'd update y'all.

So remember how I said we'd be resetting the server in July
that
did not happen

So long story short, but our server hosting provider, Minehut, absolutely messed up and deleted our server, with our only backup being from over a month ago. Nobody wanted to redo an entire month of work, so we started Sharders Season 1.5.

Brand new world, much more polished serverside, cool discord integrations now, its nice. A world download is available for Season 1 in our discord too, if you're just curious what we've been up to.

So if you want to join a brand new SMP, check it out, now's the time. We're gonna be adding plugins and datapacks and stuff and just generally have fun with this. Season 2 is still scheduled for minecraft 1.21, so this isn't gonna be a super longstanding world. Or maybe we keep this world and just update, not sure yet. 

Gotta verify your account in the Discord now, join here: https://discord.gg/w5444SzaXd
And ofc the server IP is still:  sharders.minehut.gg

todays date reads like how i count 5/4 measures

Notifications are broken, site is unusable, prob not gonna be here much anymore except for actual brandon sanderson conversation. i just can't use it as a "social" platform anymore it just doesn't work. 

add me on discord if you wanna stay in touch ig

might go back to using my tumblr (ew cringe) for when i have the "gotta make a status update" thought 

so if you've ever liked any of my quote unquote "poetry" posts or mindless rambles maybe go find me over there idk

i have not gotten a single notification from this website in over a week

Art is Divine.

I do not care what religion you believe in, or if you are religious at all. Art is Divine. Or let me say, Art itself is Divinity. Outside of any other religious mental framework. 

The Act of Creation, in all its forms, is the most noble and glorious thing one can do in this life. 

When you create, you are violating one of the most basic laws of this universe. Taking raw materials and ending up with something more complex than its parts. That's decreasing entropy. Now that's not entirely true, 2nd law of thermodynamics and all that, but in at least a local and not quite literal sense, in that limited system, entropy is decreasing. Complexity arising from simplicity is the most unnatural thing in this universe, and the single most natural thing to humanity. It is ingrained in our deepest instincts to dance and sing and love and create. 

Life itself follows this pattern. Procreation is the exact same thing. Taking raw matter, bunches of atoms, and giving way to consciousness. Do you realize how insane that is? Matter becoming self-aware. In a universe where entropy is meant to increase. Human Consciousness is the single biggest mystery in the entire universe. How are we? Literally? Conscious beings seem to be contrary to every natural physical law, even more than simple biologics already are. 

So we have a group of self-aware monkeys that suddenly popped up on some small planet in some small system in some small corner of the universe, defying entropy by their very existence. And what do they do? They actively defy it even more. We draw and write and compose and paint and sculpt and build and farm and plan and love. Organizing matter into something more complex than its parts is the single most human thing you can do. We create art because we are art. We are complexities creating complexities. Monkey see monkey do. Heh.

It's more than defying physical entropy, we go even further and defy informational entropy too. We give art meaning. The curtains aren't just blue. We try to give our art the same consciousness we have. We create worlds and people. Self-aware beings with no self. 

Are you seeing the pattern yet???? The glory???? The divinity?????

Creations creating creations creating creations. Attempts at eternity in a definitively temporary universe. Finding meaning in the meaning that we are.

I'm lost in the sauce. I don't think I'm making sense any more.
but i am making. and that's the whole point. that's the whole. point.

Just gonna end with this: 

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Make your words fork lightning friends.