king of nowhere

on the other hand, brandon's concern that celebrities will sway opinions in ignorance is also well founded. I can speak my mind freely and if i happen to say something stupid about things i don't understand, there's nothing wrong with it, i'll just be ignored. but someone like sanderson saying something stupid because he does not understand a topic will have people pick it up and resonate. seeing it from outside, i don't know what's it really like and i am surprised about phrases like "legitimize the demands" and "protect the protestors". I mean, the protestors are asking that the police stop killing random people because some officer is too trigger-happy or he had a bad day and is venting out on some poor fellow. what's there to legitimize? there shouldn't be any question about it. especially not in a country that is proud of a long democratic tradition and that is still strongly influenced by its origin as a rebel colony against an oppressive empire. You even have the constitution declaring that everyone has a right to bear arms, because the people must be able to rebel against the government if the government turns oppressive. I would expect one such country would be extremely jealous of individual rights; that in such a country the police can stop people and beat them up for no real reason, and mostly get away with it, is a living contradiction. seen from the outside world, the president supporting the protests in hong kong and then shouting LAW AND ORDER and deploying the army for the protests in his country, the whole business looks like a joke. it would look like a joke, if people hadn't died for it. on the other hand, the police also cannot be blamed entirely, because their lives are on the line. many policemen are shot because they try to be nice and the other guy pulls a gun - a downside of having weapons sold freely because of the right of revolt. From my outsider perspective, the real problem in usa is social inequality. no help for people in need. no perspective of better future for those who live in the ghettos. america spends a pittance on social help compared to european countries. it stems from the fierce indepentent spirit of the country; my life, my problems, his life, his problems. And i actually like that ideal. I clean up my own mess, and I hate that I also have to clean up someone else's because they did something stupid. I worked hard to do something with my life and i hate that other people would not work hard and i have to work harder to provide for them. Unfortunately, this way of thinking does not work, because everything is interconnected. if your neighbor drop off school because he was too lazy, that's his problem, and you may not want to help. but if he can't find a job and he breaks into your house to rob you, it's become your problem. and if he robs me, it's become my problem, even though I had nothing to do with the whole business in the first place. worse, the whole "i worked hard and they didn't" is not as accurate as we like to think. some research shows poor people often work harder, and get rewarded less. ultimately, people who grow up in the ghettos stay ignorant because they can't afford the fancy schools, so then they can't afford the fancy jobs and stay poor, and their children will also live in the ghettos, and the cycle goes on. Some people will manage, individually, to break it, but not enough to really change things. incidentally, lots of black people live in ghettos, because their parents lived there, and their parent's parents, all the way back since they were discriminated by the law. if more black people had a chance to move upwards in society, less of them would turn to crime, and it would also help with racism. in europe we spend more money on social policies, we have less inequality, and less crime. and while this means some people will just idle their lives off the work of someone else, most of those people recovered from the ghettos actually become good contributing citizens. like in bridge 4, you got to rescue people like rock and sigzil, even though you got one moash amid the group. though the real test for europe will be how well we'll handle the current wave of immigrants, if in 30 years their children will be well-integrated or they will be living in ghettos and making troubles. everything is interconnected. my neighboor problem is my problem; not because i like my neighboor or because i am charitable, but because if his problem is not solved, then eventually, somehow, it will find a way to reach me. and america has a hard time with this idea because it stinks of communism, and americans spent 50 years opposing the "dirty commies". but perhaps once you take away the dictatorship and police state and gulag system, perhaps there's something there's worth salvaging. perhaps you can take the best of both world. else, you are forced to close off your undesirables in reserves, and have an army to keep them in. and perhaps i don't know social issues enough and i am saying something stupid, but I'm not a celebrity, I don't have fans and followers hanging on my lips ready to do something stupid if i give the wrong word, so i can afford to speak my mind and perhaps make mistakes. brandon cannot.

i am surprised you could take brandon's silence for lack of support, as all his books show his faith in humanity, and specifically in the lowly. take bridge 4, where the people who were discarded by society are turned into an elite unit. take elantris, where you have a savage society turned into an utopia. think of marasi, with her "social reforms prevent crime more than the police" and "if you have to stop a criminal by shooting at him, society already failed". does the guy who writes this strikes you as a white suprematist?

in my experience, this is a very free community. i've been in several discussions touching on politics, some got pretty heated, but they were also civil and productive. in fact, this is the one forum where i feel safe enough discussing about heated topics. the mods closing an occasional thread every once in a while is not enough for me to revise this opinion. i would like to comment on the tone of the locked thread (which i missed, by the way), but i am afraid that would only result in moving the discussion to a new place, so i will refrain. Though frankly i am surprised that a statement against racism is needed, i mean, it would be like having to officially declare that water is wet, but then again, given events that happen, perhaps there is actually the need but just to reiterate: this forum is not censored, and it is very good place to discuss heated topics. i've been here for over 5 years, and i never found a reason to complain about the mods once.

I'm actually referring to a more recent comment

last update we had, brandon said he was on good track to finish the current revision by the end of may, or even earlier. any news about it?

I wouldn't know about that. Sure, there's plenty of people in this forum who are fellow mormons from utah, but brandon's got millions of fans worldwide, they can't be all mormons from utah. admittedly, i don't have any idea about the demography of brandon's average fanbase, but i assume it should be quite differentiated. furthermore, brandon already made clear that he writes what he wants to write and he does not chase the public. he made a lot of speeches about it, that if you write what you think the public will want instead, you won't have passion in your writing, and the quality of it will drop. he mentioned a point in his life when he tried to write a grimdark novel because they were the fashion at the time, and it didn't work at all, and he decided afterwards that he would write for his own sake, and if he never got published for it, that was fine. He's also pretty rich by this point, so if he were to alienate half of his fanbase - with a subsequent drop in sales - it wouldn't impact him. no, brandon often writes stuff because he wants to try it. he may want to try a gay male protagonist at some point, or he may not. i'm pretty sure pressure from the fanbase either way won't factor hugely in his decision.

when one of your students apologizes for not having made the exercices, and your first thought is "no apologies. Boots!" unfortunately, none of my students read sanderson (in italy he's not very famous among the main public), so he would not understand.

just a random thought struck me: if the supremacy frowns so much on violence, and everyone is so strongly against violence and can't stomach it, then what kind of entertainment do they have? what movies, stories, games? no action movies. ewww, all that violence. appalling. not even slapstick cartoons. trying to portray violence in a funny way to make it appealing to children. horrible. in fact, no movies, books or anything that involves any kind of aggression. no contact sports. can you imagine those guys trying to play football? the ball rolls in an empty area of the playing field. two varvax from different teams run to take it. they notice each other, and they stop on their tracks "sorry, i didn't see you wanted to catch the ball. please, do take it" "no, no, you take it. i almost run the risk of trampling you in my recklessness. I'm coming to enjoy aggression too much, I should visit a psycologist" no war games. no strategic games, either real time or turn-based. no first person shooters or third person shooters. no stealth-based games. no 90% of adventure games. all stuff way more violent than any respectable sapient of first intelligence can stomach. probably not even monopoly, trying to bankrupt your opponent is already pretty edgy. chess and related games should still be on the table, if we change some of the terminology that betray their origin as war simulations. some comedies would be ok, and romance too. pinball. athletics, which pretty much groups all the sports where you don't directly compete against anyone. and i can't think of anything else what kind of life would that be? is it as bleak as it seems? now that I think of it, I'm not picturing all those superiority races spending their days watching porn, because that (excepting a few extreme subcategories) has no aggression and would be one of the few things still allowed. P.S. some may retort that probably they have our same entertainment because we also would not want to actually fight a war, but that's different. we don't want to engage in violence because it hurts people, us included, but we actually like violence. we like the thrill, the adrenaline rush, and that's why we found so many ways to simulate violence, so that we can get that rush without any of the drawbacks. but as far as i can see of the superiority, most people living there actively finds violence repulsive, they do not enjoy adrenaline rush (or whatever equivalent hormone is secreted by their alien bodies) and they find the whole experience taxing or sickening. the pilots remotely controlling krell ships were basically playing a videogame, and they were in the state of mind of exterminating pest, and yet even then they would only last a few months on the job before retiring for the stress.

what? shallan and kaladin in the chasm was one of my favourite parts. great character interactions. the two of them were so sweet, and i loved seeing them getting past their blocks and opening up.

you could persuade a bunch of machinery that it is a scientific freezer for ultracold research, the ones that go very close to absolute zero. that's as cool as physically possible [ducks]

it's not like he went from nothing to 60%. he simply had not updated since a month earlier. i surmise he's done with parts 1 to 3. this will fit the 60% scheme

actually, it was more or less the first scene brandon had written, in what we call way of kings prime. and brandon ended up ditching that because the character was not interesting. that said, it was still an idiotic decision.

now i'm picturing a rich idiot giving those breaths to his pet dog. the sapient pet dog then kills the guy for having him neutered, and take over the financial empire.

i think it's more of a matter of writers making main characters hot. I mean, how many main characters (of both genders) have you ever seen that weren't attractive? and let's not even start about movies. though regarding shallan specifically, i never saw her sexualized. that's because she hits all my protective instincts in the right spots, i see her like a little sister.

that does not count, because, as wayne himself said, she's still her. she's just her with a different outfit. I can totally understand him. if i had a girlfriend with cool shapeshifting powers, i would not be put out by her being able to assume male form. oh, i would not find her particularly attractive in male form. i would definitely not want to have sex with her while she's in male form (though if she wanted to experiment, i could be persuaded to go along with it for her sake). but still, it's her. she does not stop being her when she shapeshifts. and i'm not alone in this perception, because i have another friend whom i got into sanderson who was initially squicked by it - not for the male-on-male potential, but because melaan is a shapeshifter, and not a real woman. as in "eww, this is a strange alien creature putting on the shape of a human". but then i explained him that kandras have a distinct gender identity, and that melaan is female regardless of what form she takes, and he was fine. so, 100% of the interwieved sample of heterosexual male would be ok with a shapeshifter as long as he had a female gender identity.

the part about the "relatable" make me think, i always relate more to the side characters. in stormlight, i relate more to adolin. in mistborn era 1, to ham. in mistborn era 2, to marasi. probably because i'm a natural follower. i don't know if i'm alone in this.

the answer to this is always no. you should never have to do something, especially not to follow the fashion While i think fantasy will move in that direction, and I welcome that, and I think the concept of fantasy as limited to swords is, well, limiting. many authors will want to explore in that direction. but you don't have to be one of them. and classic fantasy will always have fans anyway.

In italy we have a figure of speech of calling someone a "grey burocrat", which is close enough in meaning to the anglophone "obstructive burocrat". "grey" especially refers to them having no color, no shades. they want the papers filled and all the minutiae respected, and they won't care about your life or the actual intent or anything else. Well, my boss is a grey burocrat. And I am wondering if she may be a lifeless, as the color theme would be appropriate.

I prefer lgbt because, in the italian pronunciation, it rolls off the tongue easily. just adding the Q makes it nigh-unpronounceable. it also strikes a good balance between putting in enough terms without being too long.

aluminium is very common everywhere in the universe, but it binds very tightly with oxygen, so it is extremely difficult to extract from its rocks. in our world we only managed it in the XIX century, and before the modern process it was more expensive than gold. from what we've seen, nalthis does not have the technology to smelt aluminium. it requires some relatively advanced chemistry. however, this is not insurmontable. there are three options: - nalthis is chemically more advanced than we know. we simply did not saw enough of their society, plus there is a whole world out there of which we've seen very little. - nalthis has some native aluminium. It is debated whether metallic aluminium could exhist in some volcanoes, in very specific geochemical conditions. it is not completely implausible. we know that scadrial had some such aluminium in the ashmounts, so there is at least a precedent established for the cosmere. it could also come from an asteroid, just like some ancient people's only source of metallic iron were fallen asteroids, an asteroid with a high amount of aluminium is also possible - it is simply possible vasher got it from some other planet. roshar knows aluminium, and there are some WoBs hinting at an early contact between vasher and roshar.

more exactly, they are 17 different metalminds put together. 16 for the feruchemical metals, and 1 nicrosil to allow you to burn metals as mistborn.

not really. there is a fundamental limitation: a metalmind must touch the skin. and harmonium burns in contact with water. and if it burns in contact with water, it is very reactive with a plethora of other substances. as skin contains water, you should see the problem. I am a chemist, but i don't know any way to solve this; everything that can be done would stop that "touch the skin" condition. you are right that burning lerasium gives you all. but on the other hand, an atium spike does not give you all. ultimately, we cannot infer on the effects of harmonium until they are canonized in a book. Incidentally, i wonder if it would be possible to split harmonium into atium and lerasium. the two separated are much more useful. the medallions are not made of harmonium. all the allomantic metals are not very reactive. some of them will oxydize with time, but none will react violently. from what little we are told, it seems harmonium is more reactive than cesium, which is the most reactive metal of all.

perhaps because harmonium is very rare and very explosive, so it is unsuitable to be worn or used outside of special devices. furthermore, what would you gain from a harmonium metalmind? just because it can store any attribute, it does not mean it can store them all together. in likely does not: an atium spike lets you steal any attribute, but it does not let you steal all attributes together. so, you cannot use an harmonium medallion to gain more than one power.

to be fair, nobody said or thought that you should not have a major gay character. the discussion was mostly on how much of an obligation writers have to do this (they should? they don't have to, but it would be nice if they do? it's entirely up to them, no pressure?). plus, there were several tangents. well, it's true that we rarely see trans people in old times. that's because most of the times they would be stoned, or burned at the stake, or executed in some other creative way. in the same way you also see few instances of rape in the past, because rape was considered the woman's fault, so women tried to hide it if it happened. they also tended to stay holed up in home and only go outside with a husband or male relative to act as bodyguard. it can certainly be called a "first world problem" if we define the term as "you would not care about this if you were still struggling to get adequate food and basic sanitation". by that definition, of course, every problem we have is a first world problem, and the definition is quite meaningless. except perhaps to remind us how far we've came, that we have resources enough to care for problems that don't have anything to do with immediate survival. So, yay progress! Now let's go back to tackle first world problems. what would be the point of progress if it didn't allow us to care for things beyond immediate survival?

Scheduled for execution in any decent society? In desperate need of professional help? Yeah those are both more then 1 word. Calm down. the question did not specify any action taken. Are we talking about people who actively persecute gays? Or are we talking about people who simply do not like them? Because the first kind of people, they are criminals, no arguments about it. and we do have laws against randomly assaulting people on the street, with hate being a further aggravating circumstance. but the second kind of people, the ones who simply do not like gays but are not doing anything against them, they have every right to exhist. The key here is that just not liking somebody - not liking everyone who does a certain thing - is not a criminal offence, nor is it an offence of any kind. It actually falls under freedom of thought. the thing is, we have hundreds and hundreds of different cultures on our world. most of them evolved for centuries mostly isolated from others. most of them evolved really conflicting values. but it was all fine, because membres of those cultures were unlikely to come across each other. now we have cheap air travel and even cheaper and faster communication, so we are coming into contact with dozens and dozens of cultures that do stuff we don't like. And we disapprove of them. I myself could make a list of things i disapprove that would end up covering over 90% of the human race. So, you can't really ask people to not disapprove of other cultures. it would require massive brainwashing and destruction of identities anyway. but if we are to avoid a worldwide war among supporters of different ideologies, the only way is to recognize that even if we don't like them, even if we don't like what they do, they have a right to keep exhisting as they are, as long as they recognize the same right to us. this is the final goal of the "live and let live" phylosophy. It is not an hymn to apathia. Not an invitation to mind your own business - though there is some of that. No, it is an attempt to avoid conflict. It is an attempt to reconcile two people who disagree on a fundamental level, in that as long as they can agree to disagree and leave each other alone, there is no need for conflict. I can see the criticism "but if we allow this way of thinking, we encourage homophobic people to turn their head when they see a gay being beaten". No, that's not how it works. Live and let live requires that people are willing to treat each other as equals. All those low-key acts of small discrimination are against the ideal. the ideal is that if you disapprove someone's culture you can be curt, cool, businesslike with them. you don't have to be their friend, to be nice. but you are not supposed to turn a blind eye when injustice is done to them. Treating everyone with fairness is the least you can ask to anybody. It's also the most you can ask. So, people who are mildly homophobic but who are not supporting active discrimination should not be attacked. Finally, also consider that until some 50 years ago, homosexuality was regarded somewhat like paedophilia is regarded today. Consider that people were raised in that environment. In the light of that, can you really blame them for "not liking gays"? Can you really expect more from them than "eh, I don't really like them, but they are free to do whatever among themselves"? Personally, considering how much society changed, I already consider it a minor miracle that a majority of people could come that far.