king of nowhere

would actually be a pretty good theory. except for the "Above silence, the illuminating storms—dying storms—illuminate the silence above." which is noted to be particularly relevant. if the gatherers give special attention to this one, it means most are similar. the one given by taravangian's mother was passable, though

yes indeed. no country every fought to the last man. in a real war, "how much are you willing to sacrifice before you give up" is a lot more important than the strict "how powerful you are". which is why all the hypoteticals "could X win a war against Y" are silly. they posit scenarios in a vacuum, without the political and economical context that would actually make all the difference. sure, you can theorize that if you put together the army of X and the army of Y and pitch them in an open battle, X would win. but then X would just learn that it can't win a direct engagement, disperse its remaining forces and start guerrilla operations. then victory would go to whomever can outlast the enemy. with that said, i'll say that america cannot conquer roshar - because the american population has no interest in the war to conquer a planet with a hostile environment and no strategic interest that did nothing to them, and would never agree to the war, while the rosharans would resist fanatically because they are a warlike people led by warlike leaders. on the other hand, a dictatorship may manage to conquer roshar. a dictatorship may have the willingness to deploy millions of men and carry out campaigns of extermination against the natives - which eventually work at quelling resistance; they just require carrying out destruction on such large scale that very few real world nations would be willing to do it.

people near death saw glimpses of the future. the silent gatherers collected thousands such death rattles for the purpose of informing the diagram. and yet, none of those rattles were in any way clear. even us, with the benefit of knowing all the plots, can only figure out the meaning after the fact happened. much less try to use the rattle to influence the events in an informed way. so, besides the general vague feeling of dread and imminent catastrophe pushing for the need to act, was there any actually useful information that the death rattles did provide to the diagram?

I have no doubt that a modern military, backed with the political will to pursue the occupation, would make short work of rosharan armies. radiants are strong enough to be dangerous to modern armies, but there's not many of them, while weapon production can be scaled up almost indefinitely. and all their powers work from close range. sure, a windrunner can potentially deflect a missile, but in practice the missile flies so fast, it most likely will hit before anyone sees it coming or has time to react. it also packs enough explosive to blow shardplate to bits and leave the radiant in pieces too small to regenerate. miniguns would clear the skies very easily, and kamikaza drones would work against most radiants. on the other hand, the problem is logistics. how do you deal with them? I assume a modern military ship can survive a highstorm (though all fighter jets on the deck of a carrier would be blown to the sea, forcing to carry only a small contingent that can be stored inside), but it can't be a pleasant experience. but the moment you move on land? you need to keep your troops supplied, and highstorms - plus complete lack of modern roads - would be a huge pain. like, how can you make a supply depot? how do you store airplanes and helicopters on the ground? how do you justify to your public opinion the enormous costs of an operation that basically amounts to imperialism and will surely entail a large amount of war crimes, plus using modern weaponry against people with swords? so no, in a practical sense the invasion wouldn't go anywhere.

I am concerned. But,given the choice to never have dragonsteel and mistborn 4 see the light, but to have good adaptations, and having full cosmere, but crappy or mediocre adaptations or no adaptations, i'd take the first. We already have dozens of cosmere books. We don't have any good cosmere tv show, and in fact we have very few good fantasy shows at all

i only have the third book in electronic form. but i checked the first appearance of the kitsen in book two, and it says 15. so it seems it's book 3 that got it wrong.

I'm rereading the whole saga right now, and i see a discrepancy. in book 2 and 3, kitsen are consistently described as 25 centimeters tall in book 4, they are consistently described instead as 15 centimeters tall which one is correct? how did such a discrepancy made it past the editors and beta readers anyway?

I haven't read all the four pages, that's a lot, but from what I skimmed I saw nobody point out a few things that paint jasnah in a better light. first, about seeing others as tools. remember in the first book, when shallan tries repeatedly to become her ward and is repeatedly turned down? when did shallan succeed? "i am uneducated through no fault of my own. please help me get an education" and after jasnah discovers she stole the soulcaster, what gets her to mellow? "I made a mistake. i will make others. i need your guidance" jasnah doesn't care about shallan the social climber. she doesn't care about using her for some schemes. what persuades jasnah, both time, is a plea for help from a person in need. Jasnah cares about helping others. deeply. some of her actions may be off, but i never saw her entertain any selfish thought. and what she did with her political power? she freed slaves. she democratized the government. she turned the highprinces from warring warlord into state functionaries. she always had the good of the people in mind. that fact cannot be denied. as for her acting like she's everyone's intellectual superior, everything in the story seem to point that she actually is. no mortal could match her wit, except taravangian in his best days. how much being smarter than those around you gives you a right to boss over them is debatable, but i linked it to a weaker form of omniscent morality license: in a fantasy story with prophecies, people can be forgiven for doing terrible things because they knew for certain all the consequences and knew it was the best outcome. jasnah doesn't know all the consequences as she's not omniscent, but she does know better than anyone else, which gives her some leeway. I will not discuss the main point about plotting murders of your rivals because it's been done a lot. I'll only add my bit here, saying that in an environment filled with the likes of sadeas, planning countermeasures in case your allies betray you is not cruel, it's basic survival instinct. she didn't carry out any of those assassinations that i'm aware of.

no need to be so cynical. it is often the case that without proof of the worst happening, public opinion - or at least the media and the government spokespeople - must assume the worst didn't happen. just like the hostages are just disappeared, so are the guards

if the guards inside simply disappeared, it's possible they were not counted as "being hurt" because their wereabouts were still unknown. nobody was hurt as far as the public knew. just in the same way that the hostages were disappeared

to my knowledge, we don't have explanations. but i can guess that maybe the locked car was locked and the guards were on adjacent wagons. maybe the vanishers picked their targets specifically based on which trains wouldn't have guards actually inside the locked wagon - and they also needed to have an actual replica of the wagon

I think you need intent, saying words at random doesn't normally work for cosmere magic. Not sure if awakening is an exception

yes, i am well aware of that, but here we're discussing specifically their use for war on nalthis. vasher didn't kill shashara because she wanted to use nightblood to kill highly invested beings. vasher probably didn't even knew what highly invested beings were at the time. no, vasher did kill shashara because she wanted to give the secret of nightblood to the armies. besides, all that stuff under WaT spoiler wasn't possible at the time of warbreaker, and vasher had no idea it would be possible - in fact, both the book and annotations show he has a blind spot in that regard, thinking nightblood can't learn. so yes, take szeth or kaladin or someone like that, give them nightblood, they could absolutely turn a war on nalthis in the time of the book. but that's completely irrelevant for vasher's reasoning. if someone had the ability to mass produce weapons that cost 1000 breath to make, they'd be a serious threat simply because of how many breath they'd have. sure, with modern technology and investiture sources you can mass produce that. but on nalthis during the time of the five scholars? no chance. you can't mass produce something that expensive because you can't lower cost.

the whole tragedy between denth and vasher started when she made nightblood and wanted to make more. vasher decided the sword is too destructive to use, and killed her. my question is, is nightblood really a good weapon? because what i know of weapons says, not at all. of course, it's very effective. but the cost is ludicrous. remember, every breath is one lifless. nightblood costs 1000 breath. additionally, nightblood drains breath from the user, at a pretty fast rate of a breath every few seconds. So, let's say you need 1000 breath to make a copy of nightblood, and another 1000 for someone to use it. with that much breath, you could make 2000 lifeless. what's more useful? my money is the lifeless getting a lucky hit well before the guy with nightblood can kill all of them. nightblood is, in the best case, the equivalent of hypersonic missiles: they have some niche use, but they are too rare and expensive to have a major impact on the war. in the worst case, it's the equivalent of the yamato or the p-1000 ratte: ludicrously expensive superweapons that end up actually crippling your war effort before either being scrapped for their sheer impracticality, or dealing way too little damage to justify their cost before being overwhelmed by numbers. so, vasher overreacted. shashara sharing the construction of nightblood with the armies wouldn't have affected the war much, there was no need to kill her. the one-breath command for the creation of lifless, that one is the real breakthrough. the one thing nightblood actually does well is to counter kalad's phantoms: those things each cost as much as 50 regular lifeless, but they pay themselves by being virtually impervious to regular weapons. but to nightblood, it doesn't matter. 2000 breath spent on a nightblood clone may actually beat 2000 breath spent on kalad's phantoms. though killing 40 without getting hit is still not easy.

and yet, we got no announcement whatsoever, even a week later. it's just weird. if he could not disclose any more because of the contract, he could have just made this simple statement to cancel the event. if it was some organizational issue, he could have just sent a message to reassure that the even will happen eventually. i've never seen brandon postpone a live stream and then for over a week make no communication whatsoever, to the point that we don't even know it will be eventually held or not

in theory, yes. but you are assuming that those allomantic illegitimate children would be loial to your house. instead of, i don't know, plotting to overthrow you. it would carry its own risks

he could at least say he can't say more because of a non disclosure agreement. so i'd stop waiting for news

meanwhile, brandon was supposed to go live to discuss it. that stream was postponed. anyone knows when it will be held? speculation is well and good, but i'd rather hear more from brandon himself.

ok, you do need the final empire to be evil for kelsier to work. my point is that you do not need to be needlessly graphic about it. you do not need to show heads flying on screen for a full ten minutes - though that scene with kelsier saying "this is what we're fighting" would be great for a movie and i think it will be kept. just in the same way that the sexual abuse is part of what makes the lord ruler and most of the nobility so terrible, but we do not need to actually see it on screen to experience it.

yet another option, since the room was scarcely lit by a fire, would be to have siri in full frontal nudity, but with shadows covering all the relevant bits. they could easily add more shadows as a special effect.

i disagree. how many heads were chopped on a fountain has nothing to do with the quality of a book. in fact, some media arte trying too hard to take a grimdark tone thinking it's better, but it ruins all. you don't have to show blood and gore to make a good story. TFE works because it has great plot, great characters, great magic, and that's it. I'd say later books work less because the plot becomes more sprawling and the magic becomes softer - while still being used to fix all problems like it was a harder magic.

actually, i was quoting pratchett and gayman when they were asked about a possible movie adaptation of good omens: one of them said he'd believe it after watching the end credits, and the other said, not even then. anyway, even in the best case scenario we won't get anything before 2 more years, and in a more realistic case it will be 3-5. in the pessimistic case it will collapse like other deals (and in the very pessimistic case, they will make movies, they will suck, and nobody will ever try to produce cosmere again). so all the discussion on how to deal with the influx of movie fans is way premature. putting the ox in front of the cart, when you're a caveman who just discovered that new round thing you invented could revolutionize transportation.

Dune was great. Both movies. Game of thrones was good for the first half. Wheel of time wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either. And it had great moments. Rhuidean alone was worth it. One piece was wonderful. Arcane, though not a real adaptation, was amazing. So, there have been good adaptations. Especially when creators were given freedom and the original writer was supervising, which will be the case here. Even if this ends up less than stellar, it will probably still have plenty of stuff worth salvaging. No, the only thing i'm not optimistic about is whether they will actually do it, or if the contract will collapse like all others. I'll believe this is really happening when i will be in the theater watching the end credits of the first mistborn movie.

that is a post-fact justification, and it can be applied to anything; hence it doesn't prove anything, most of all that rashek did anything smart. rashek almost destroied the world many times with his blunders, but in the end the world was saved, so it's good. and we just give him credit as "all part of his plan"? no, his plan backfired in several ways. rashek subjugated the entire world under a brutal teocracy, and no, he didn't have to do that. it didn't even advance his cause. i suppose he made it legal for noblemen to dispose of the skaa as they wanted because otherwise ruin would have found a way to use those skaa? was that all part of some great plan too? no, rashek was just a petty suprematist who applied his ideals of racial domination to the world. then, after a mere 1000 years, the first time ruin could try to rock his boat, ruin actually won. rashek held all the cards: he was functionally immortal, invincible, and firmly in charge of the whole world. ruin had no capacity to influence things at large. yet rashek let himself be beated. or, if your interpretation is correct, choose to not fight, despite knowing that the world itself was on the line. with the fall of rashek, ruin had huge armies of hemalurgic servants ready to dominate. Yeah, good job rashek! he needed all those hemalurgic servants because he could not trust human armies, because despite all his power (both personal and political), he could not make the world into anything better than the crappiest dictatorship ever with a 0% approval rating. it's not like he could have turned the world a little better, so there would be less rebellions and he wouldn't need those servants... by the way, are you really justifying that rashek prevented the invention of advanced medicine because "ruin would have found some way to use it against the world", but then completely glossing on him building up koloss armies? and the whole world was left unprepared. sure, there were the caverns. the storages. but only the kandra actually knew ruin even exhisted, and they were so secretive, they never shared this knowledge with others. oh, the inquisitors knew, as they has kwaan's plate in their stronghold. yeah, put the secret knowledge where only the mind-controlled servants of the enemy can access it. Surely this is all part of some grand plan and not a colossal blunder. as a result, vin got swiftly manipulated into releasing ruin. it's not like this was an easy accomplishment. it was literally almost impossible for ruin to get released: a bad person would take the power of the well for himself, while a good person would not release ruin. but rashek managed to serve to ruin the perfect combination needed to release him. i could go on from there. but in the end, ruin almost won, and vin found the secret just barely at the last second. actually, marsh and kelsier did. and that was preservation's plan, not rashek. still, of a continent's worth of people, there were only a few tens of thousands of survivors. and even if rashek could have kept ruin imprisoned, his enforced dark age guaranteed, by the time the other planets discovered insterstellar travel, his planet would be completely unprotected against any external threat. no, i'm not buying the "it was the only way" argument. it absolutely wasn't the only way, and anyone remotely competent could have done much, much better. unfortunately, the only person kwaan could get to stop alendi was a bigoted, ignorant, hateful packman whose only positive qualities was to have superpowers that would allow him to kill alendi, and some leadership among similarly closeminded packmen. too bad he could not use that charisma to get a better public image, so that the people would revolt less and he would not need to keep koloss armies ready for ruin to take. Rashek did well in hiding the atium - well, not great, because when it was time to burn it quickly, there was nobody who knew the secret, nor a convenient force of seers as the very existence of people with the right power to hinder ruin was a secret. preservation had to snap them himself. but ruin didn't find the atium, so rashek at least got a pass there. and he did well with the caves. ok, those were useful. none of those two things alone would have saved the world, as ruin was slowly destroying it even without atium. everything else rashek did, it was easily taken advantage by ruin, and was only useful to the heroes in ways that are very hard to justify as a grand plan.

by the results, i'd call rashek a borderline moron. aside from stuff he did while holding preservation, there is nothing brilliant in the way he conquered and ruled the final empire. his whole atium scheme was fine, but that's nothing compared to taravangian's diagram. besides, rashek got himself killed very uncerimoniously, while holding all the cards. he was immortal and invincible in any way. there was only one weakness. and he let that happen. and he knew the well was about to get filled, and he knew that ruin would try something, and still he took no precautions. he could have killed kelsier and vin easily had he used his powers fully - had he prowled the city with bronze and tin, he could have easily discovered any mistborn, and quickly found the ones that weren't nobles. but no, he was too complacent to take any step.