king of nowhere

there's word of brandon that ruin was influencing him. Yes, I don't know how that is possible, since tlr never used hemalurgy on himself - those atium bracers piercing his skin weren't hemalurgical. maybe he formed a connection with ruin after taking the power at the well, and that connection allowed ruin to talk to him. maybe ruin can talk to people without spikes if it had a long time to focus. maybe it's because the lord rules was going insane, and insane people are easily influenced by ruin without spikes - note that he wasn't completely sane even before taking the power at the well.

I don't think it would work. Even if a homosexual person sees himself of the different gender, he knows what his body looks like. he just wish he had a different one. Actually, from that point of view his condition is no different from a regular person who wish he would have a better physique. HE would like to be different, he feels that he should be different, but he knows that he is not. No matter how much you identify yourself with arnold schwarznegger, magical healing will never grow your muscles. If that analogy holds, on the other hand, returned would have a pretty good chance of being able to change sex, since they appear how they think they look like. It is possible that there are already homosexual returned, they just returned as the gender they identify with, and since they don't know anything of their old lives (and in general people don't talk about them) they never know that they changed sex when returning.

Yeah. Yes, he could have killed vin with a tought any time he wished. but he had no reasons to. vin was no treath to him whatsoever. why fretting over killing her? Plus, ruin was probably influencing him to make him more complacent, since ruin wanted vin to kill tlr.

Well, if you look closely enough, all religions and mithology have stuff in common. there's only so many different mythologies you can conceive before they start resembling something else. And it's especially true if said mythologies were not created in ancient time over generations but by a single writer. sanderson can only have that much creativity. So I'd say the only thing they have in common is that all those religions worship some shard (it is unclear from the tone of your intervention if you know about the cosmere and the shards of adonalsium, but I'll assume you do; if you don't, google "coppermind wiki adonalsium", it should yield a lot of information). as far as we know, humans were originary from yolen and were spread around by the shards. if I'm correct shards created new humans on the planets they settled, using the original humans as a template. so while humans in the cosmere are not related in the strict genealogical term, they share the same genome - with some adaptations to local environment. the shards spoke the language of yolen, and that language was diffused in the cosmere. millennia of isolation means that said language evolved independently in all the planets, and so the languages spoken there would be very different, but they are still remotely related, thus explaining the phonetical similarities. So, you correctly recognized a pattern of similarities as "people from roshhar and sel are related", but got the wrong conclusions from it: it's not "people on sel come from roshar" but "people from both sel and roshar come from yolen". Also, we know from the letter that odiumm spent some time on sel, where he shattered the local shards. it is possible some of that left trace among the people. There had been much speculation and several questions to sanderson about contacts between planets, but none of those theories ever got confirmed or seemed much likely. As far as we know the only contact among humans from different planets come with the 17th sharders moving around.

As a guy who read the coppermind every once in a while, I'd definitely agree to putting theories there, as long as they are clearly labeled as such. there are many fields where most of what we have are speculation, and sometimes putting well-founded speculation is better than putting nothing. Also, one may want to visit the coppermind to update himself on the current state of art of speculations.4

I'm making a few calculations to see what would be the orbital distance of scadrial. The amount of heat a planet receives from its sun is proportional to the square of the orbital radius. the heat lost by irradiation is proportional to temperature^4. The formula to calculate the orbital period is found at this link as small body orbiting a central body (I don't know how to write a formula with forum tool) Now, if we assume that the average temperature of scadrial increased by 30 degrees (enough to make human life impossible in the temperate regions, but to keep the poles livable) and approximating the average earth temperature to 27 degrees (just to have the round number of 300 kelvin) it would take 1.46 times more energy to keep the planet that warm. It means the new orbit should have a radius 0.83 times the old radius. by fitting that into the orbital period formula, the new orbital period would be 76% of the old one. By that calendar, vin should be twelve at the beginning of tfe. In the final empire, the increase in temperature was less than 30 degrees because of the ashmounts, an in fact temperate latitudes were still livable. An increase of average temperature of 30 degrees would be enough to make even subpolar latitudes unlivable - cause in the summer the temperature there can reach 20 degrees, that translates to 50 degrees with that model, enough to kill everyone if it keeps for a few days. In a more optimistic calculation, we can assume the increase in temperature to only have been 20 degrees. In which case the planet would need 1.3 times more energy, the orbital radius would be 88% of the old one, and the orbital period would be 83% of the old one, and Vin would be 13 at most; since it is implied that she reched sexual maturity a few years before, I'd say we can discard that. Furthermore, those calculations are quite optimistic, because filling the atmosphere with ash would have a dramatic effect. greenhouse effect and albedo counts for much more than pure irradiation, which is why venus is twice as distant from the sun as mercury, gets fours times less energy, but is actually hotter on the surface. So the planet was probably closer to its star than my assumption. At this point the best explanation is that they still count years in pre-ascension calendar. I don't like it, because tlr worked hard to stamp out memories of pre-ascension times , so why keep the old calendar? But it's still a better explanation than vin actually being 12.

So the chasm would actually be east of the mountains? Well, then retconning it with a new map should be more reasonable. OR, if brandon fears confusing casual readers who will pick up the books and find two different maps, he could just post a new (stylized) map in his site, complete with explanation for those who stumble onto it, and leave the old map for the published books. And, I was quite afraid to find a plot hole in a sanderson's book, because I deeply care for consistency and sanderson is one of the few that never let me down (which is a reason it took me so long to make that post; I've been thinking about it for a long time). But I found that I can actually live with that. brandon is still a human, after all well, except that no human could ever write so many books by himself. But it looks like he has no other superpowers other than that

there's something I've never understood about the new aons. the chasm line goes where the chasm appeared. looking on the map, the chasm is west of the mountains. so the chasm line should be on the left of the ondulated line. But, when in the end raoden figured out that elantris + the four surrounding cities formed a majestic aon rao, he takes a stick and draws the missing line. outside of the city. How is that possible? iif my take on the aons is correct, then the chasm line should be on the left of the curved line, pointing towards the point representing the lake. so it should be inside elantris, and would have been impossible to draw because 1) raoden would have never made it as far as the gates, and 2) it would have been impossible to draw the line with buildings blocking the way. What I'm missing here? Do we have any canon drawings of the marks post-chasm? Did I misread the chapter and raoden was actually into elantris drawing on a conveniently-placed road? thanks for any clarification. I'd like to not discover this to be a plot hole.

i was a shard, and now I am demoted to what is basically a redshirt. years of posting for the dubious honor of defending a shardbearer in battle - I mean, if something is giving troubles to a shardbearer, what are YOUR chances of getting alive out of it?

this bring memories... it's exactly how I ended up on this forum. not sure if i was waiting any specific book or just couldn't get enough of sanderson

Well, first we must make the distinction beteeen gender orientation and body shape. It is not clear, at least to me, if the original question was "could we use magic to get a transgendered person and give him a different body" or "could we use magic to change sexual orientation of a person". For the first, my take would be that it is possible hypotetically, but not at the current state of art. Soulcasting cannot replicate living flesh in such a good way it's not like making a crystal structure, or a solutiion with a complex but definite composition. it's about twisting atom by atom. it would be like firing bits of metals in the air with multiple cannons in a way that is calculated exactly so that they will collide midair and twist together to form a perfectly functioning airplane. theoretically possible, practically impossible. Soulstamping would be better, but still it needs plausibility. shai could have become a warrior monk, if her life had taken a different path. Shai was born a woman, and there's no way she could have changed her body to that of a male. Stamping the instruction "when she was conceived, the sperm cell carried an Y chromosome instead of an X one" would probably not worked, as if she would have been conceived from a different sperm cell she would have been a different person. Stamping could turn people into transsexuals if they could become transsexuals by other means. so if on sel there was sex changing surgery, it would be possible to stamp people so that they took it. You could stamp them to have done the sex surgery with the best surgeons, with a perfectly succesful intervention, and having already recovered, so it would definitely be better than actually taking the surgery. But it would only work because it would be possible to do sex surgery. since on sel there isn't the technology for that, I'd say forgery would fail. Now that I think about it, AonDor would have a reasonable chance of doing it. It's probably beyond the current level of knowledge, but if they can fix wounds, they may be able to also perform surgery with it. they may be able to figure out sex surgery (would be more difficult, because it's not about putting the body back together, but changing it). Once the elantrains manage that, forgery would become plausible. As for the second part, it is possible to change the sexual orientation of somebody, that seems more difficult. I haven't yet read WoR, so I don't know much about lightweaving and I will leave that aside. And no one knows much about storing identity in aluminium. But I'm going to assume you can only store general identity, you can't store single personality traits. and even if you could, you can either recover them or get rid of them, so at most you could become asexual. Again, forgery seem more likely. And here the question becomes controversial, because forgery can alter the story of your life, but probably not your dna. So, is homosexuality written in the dna, or is it something that people develop over time? Or, can a genetically homosexual person be influenced by stereotypes so much that he would consider himself eterosexual overcoming his genetic inclination (only maybe to discover one day that he never felt attracted to his wife in the first place)? People tend to feel strongly about the answer to that question, and they generally tend to support the option that lends wheight to their preconceived ideas, because people are more likely to believe what they already think to be truth. Those who think homosexuality is an illness will believe that it is "picked up" somehow, while homosexuals believe it is genetic and no one can ask them to change. The only scientific truth is that we still have no proof either way. I find that when different causes are suspected, it's generally all of them to some extent. So for gender orientation it's likely a bit of both. I'd say there must be some genetical factor because otherwise homosexuality wouldn't be diffused in animals, or even in societies that are strongly against it. But there must also be some cultural influence, because in our western society - who mostly stopped discriminating, but still carries some seeds from the older times when homosexuality was considered immoral - most men would find the idea of having sex with another man to be repulsive, while in ancient greece sex between men was commonplace. Note that this is just a working hypotesys, I'm sure there can be other explanation. there wouldn't be any argument about it if the solution was so simple. If that hypotesys is correct, than some people would be genetically straight regardless of life experience, some would be genetically gay regardless of life experience, and some aren't well defined and could come either way as their life progress. In which case, those last group could be gender-changed with forging, while the other two groups not. If sexual orientation is completely genetic, instead, forging could do very little about it - at most putting a very strong prejudice in the forged person, along with an inner convinction that they must pretend to be the "correct" orientation. If sexual orientation is mostly cultural, then it would be possible to change the gender of all, or most, people. As for AonDor, I don't think it could make it. all the effects I can think of so far have been purely physical, not cognitive. Note: I'm using homosexual as synonim of transgender. I know there's a difference between them, but I'm not very experienced in what it exactly is, and I think you understand what I'm trying to say anyway. I mostly use homosexual because I know how to write homosexuality, but not "transgenderality" EDIT: wow, I managed quite the wall of text

actually, the fact that you can theorize that kind of things is one of the things I like about sanderson. his fans are mostly curious, inquisitive people. people wanting to figure out things. it is normal for that kind of people to wonder how magic would work. we were sanderfans before sanderson ever started writing. he simply provided us with something that appealed to us. sometimes before we ourselves knew what we wanted. Compare, for example, with the lord of the rings: "why didn't gandalf just make a spell to defeat the orcs in moria? because he could not. he don't have the power to do that. why then did he use a spell to kill the ballrog? Because he could". Quite unsatisfying to have to take an author's word that way.

the rosharan day is 20 hours, with a rosharan hour roughly equivalent to a earth hour. So the scadrial year is equivalent to 1.14 earth years. It may also interest you to know that the gravity on roshar is 0.7 g and the atmosphere is richer in oxygen (we don't know by how much)

again, nope. the mass of the planet is irrelevant for the orbital period. only the mass of the star and the orbital radius counts. so unless tlr changed the mass of the star, which he didn't (because that would open a completely new can of worms, and anyway if he didn't have enough power to keep pushing the planet around he certainly couldn't change the mass of the star), the scadrial year became shorter.

i wonder why we didn't got the prologue and f9irst chapter. for prologue maybe he's keeping something hidden about bloody tan, but why the first?

Impossible. for a planet rotating around the sun at a certain distance, the angolar momentum required to keep that distance is automatically fixed. the closer a planet is to its star, the faster it will go, and the shorter the orbital time.

In the newly published annotation for alloy of law, sanderson mentions that scadrial is very similar to earth, including the lenght of the year being the same. That actually make me wonder on a potential contradiction. in the ashworld, the planet was closer to the sun (much closer, if the characters felt the sun burning immediately without ash). So for the laws of gravitation the ashworld year had to be shorter to accomodate a shorter orbit. significantly shorter. And so a year during the ashworld was bound to be shorter than our year (note that they still have one winter per year, so they're not using the old pre-ascension calendar). Vin at the beginning of the story is 15. 15 ashworld year. That would make her, like, 12 in earth years. And I'm not willing to believe she was that young. she's clearly an adolescent, and she's been for a while. So, what's the catch? did the lord ruler change humanity so that thhey would grow faster? and somehow make them smarter so they could mentally grow faster too? Am I overstimating the shortening of the year, so that the ashworld year and the earth year still differed by less than 10%? but how that relates to elend in HoA getting sunburned in a few seconds before vin turn the world?

Well, I don't know exactly how much you know about the cosmere, but I'll assume you know the fundamentals about adonalsium, so I'll just say a few random facts and speculations that come to my mind - sazed/harmony, bearing two shards, is potentially the most powerful being in the cosmere. Odium knows of harmony, and plans to splinter him too. it is unknown if plans for it are already in motion, and if odium hass the power to splinter harmony in the first place. some argue that the intent of the shard is more important than the number of shards one has. - while the four books dealt with events in the northern emisphere, there were people in the southern emisphere too, who survived the ashworld near the pole. they never got any lerasium (the metal that turned elend into a mistborn, aka solidified power of preservation) so mistborn are unheard and mistings very rare, but they have a different, more "technological" use of allomancy. Much speculation on what that "technological" meant, as it is the only tidbit brandon gave. - allomancy makes faster-than-light travel possible. many theories have been proposed, but none seems particularly convincing. we probably miss some particular bit of allomancy that is crucial to that. - the allomantic metals are much more than 16+ the 2 god metals. for every metal, there is an alloy of both god metals with it. metal+lerasium turn you into a misting of that metal, no idea what metal+atium does (some speculation says that it makes the metal influence other people, as that was what malatium did to gold, but it's pure speculation). it has been speculated (and is considered almost certain) that an alloy of atium and lerasium (commonly referred as sazedium) would turn you into a full feruchemist, and metal+atium+lerasium into a ferring of that metal. There's much speculation on the subject of the exact number of god metal alloys and what they do. - the feruchemical table give some pretty strange effects for metals, like the spinner feruchemist who can store and tap luck, or the one that let you store connection. we don't know exactly how those metal works. Those are all the topics I can think of for now.

I don't believe brandon writ4es for that reason, but i think he's a good man (i mean, look at all the charity auctions he's raising) and he puts that in his books. I also quite like the way his books are on the scale between cynism and idealism. many works of fictions are excessively idealized, people getting rewarded for doing the right choices, everythin fixing in the end even if there was no good reason for it, that kind of stuff. not realistic, quite silly if applied to the real world. then there are the grim dark books, where everyone is evil, good people are dumb and will die soon, and people are rewarded for taking the wrong decisions, even when there was no need for it. Some people call them realistic, makes me think what kind of crappy life they had. if the world was so bad, we wouldn't have stuff like human rights or state healtcare. The works of sanderson are in the middle. sometimes characters are rewarded for taking the good action (example: vin convincing goradel to disert from the imperial army instead of killing him, goradel rescues her later) sometimes they have to pay a price for it (example: elend losing the crown). overall i never get the impression that the author is trying to use karma to pass a message. he shows people taking decisions and paying the prices. and he shows people deciding to be good not because it gives better or worse results than choosing evil, but because it is the right thing to do. and there is realistic conflict there. personally, I can say that fantasy influenced my decision to become a better person - although most of it came from rpg videogames, cause I discovered sanderson only later. still, sometimes I think about sanderson's books to give me strength. Like, when I videogame online I am often tempted to thrwo sportsmanship to the wind, cause there's plenty of bad people there, but then I think, "someone must give the good example, so that others can follow" "yeah, I tried, but those people keep being jerkasses anyway, might as well stop caring" "kaladin had it harder than you, but he kept trying and he made the world a better place". Then I start laughing at the sillyness of comparing not-ragequitting with making the world a better place. But still, I end up feeling I would lose some self respect if I behaved uncorrectly.

atium is best used withh duraluminium (or nicrosil); it allows to see the ultimate consequences of your actions, and would be invaluable to politicians, but also good to random people before making important decisions. atium alone is probably of little use probably. in chess it would at most allow you to see one move ahead, which is completely useless to skilled players. could be good in speed chess cause sometimes to move faster you start moving your arm before opponent makes his move, and if he make a different move than you expected you may be screwed. it also says that atium "expand your mind", but that is only to process the informations for the atium shadows (which would be too cconfusing to a normal person) and there's no indication that it would make you think better. You could use atium to win at sports, but that would be cheating. you could use it to make sure you don't have car accidents, but it is way too expensive to keep burning all the time. So I'd say atium alone would be nigh useless, atium+burst would be invaluable - but could also be very dangerous if only a small elite had access to it; then world domination plot would become much more realistic.

seems likely. i'd say for sure that it is not the color by itself, because, well, magic drawing power from organic policonjugated molecules, or from transition metal ions? would seem pretty weird. too arbitrary. it's not like allomancy, where you needed a specific metal for a specific effect. so I fully agree that the pigmentation itself is unlikely to have any importance, and it has to be a spiritual/cognitive connection.

Well, in AoL we see that from the moment marasi activated the bubble, a few minutes passed, while on the outside iit was several hours. So we can assume a time dilatation factor of roughly 100. that would mean that to skip 400 years you'd need to stay 4 years (or 2, or 8; this is an approximated calculation) inside a bubble. Not impossible, but not easy. even if cadmium burns slowly, it would require loads of it, and you can't store enough food inside the bubble, and if you store it outside it will probably spoil after a few decades, no matter how well preserved. and there's no telling how much the world around you can change. Why you say specifically 400 years?

the compariston with mat cauthon is a good one, and maybe the best example we can have as for how a spinner works. If that's the case, then killing one isn't as difficult as it may appear. while every archer trying to kill him from afar would have missed, any poisoned food you tried to give him would have been eaten by someone else, and so on, but one hundred soldiers surrounding him would definitely kill him. his luck don't extend as far as all his opponents in melee missing. so, just overwhel them with enough power that you can say "no one could survive that". but don't say that out loud, cause foortune is blind, but has perfect hearing.

i would like to see it just for the scenery.one thing is to read the descritpion and see some drawings, but in a movie the backgr4ound would be much more majestic. I enjoied the lord of the rings much better after seeing the movie just because of that. But I agree, in all likelyhood we'll never see it. pity

that brings another question: if the lord ruler had won, vin would have died. we know that both ruin and preservation had plans for her: ruin wanted to use her to be released, preservation wanted her to take the shard. What would ruin and preservation have done if vin had died?