king of nowhere

aren't there some specific parts of the bible that specifically condemn homosexuality? i'm not an expert and I'm not even religious, I'm asking this for personal curiosity, but I know there are some very strange prohibitions in the bible, like a prohibition of wearing clothes made with two different materials, or something if that kind. I'd be surprised if they said nothing about homosexuality after that. See also: live and let live. I keep suggesting that. On the other hand, how many of those named people are confirmed heterosexual? If we want to care about true statistics, we have to avoid the pitfalls of data handling. You are taking 160 names and assuming that each one of them is heterosexual until proven differently, and that's a reasonable stance to have when meeting people because the vast majority of them are indeed heterosexual. but when it comes to counting, we can only compare the confirmed gays with the confirmed straight. And there are a ton of minor characters whose sexuality is never mentioned. how about denth and tonk fah? we never saw them with any lover. How about Yeden? the lord ruler himself? It's one of the points I tried to raise early on, when i said that there's a lot of people in the background that we know nothing about: in the end, any book doesn't have room to expand on the personal life of most characters. And sexuality/gender is generally not something very important for a story. Also consider that in a heteronormative society that isn't particularly aware of homosexuality, most people will assume that they are heterosexual by default. Many people discover that they are homosexual later in life. And in a society with arranged marriage, or simply one where people marry young, several gay people will still marry someone of the opposite sex. Some won't even ever realize; they will be sexually unhappy but never know why. In a prudish society where sexual pleasure is considered sinful (like the one we had until a couple of generations ago) people won't even know that they are supposed to be sexually happy. But here I'm going on a tangent. But what I mean is, we can't even put on our list of "certainly heterosexual" many married characters. Take all the ladies at court in elantris. what are the chances that none of them is a lesbian? well, perhaps one or two of them really are, but they had an arranged marriage as common for the nobility. how about all of adolin's former girlfriends? just because they were in a relationship with him, perhaps they will discover later in their life that they are really on the other side. there's also the observer effect. people tend to hang around other similar people. homosexual people tend to hang around with each other, because they have something in common. so they tend to form closed groups, which have less contacts with groups of heterosexual people. that's why people in the lgbt community know a lot of other lgbt people, and people who are close friends with them also know a lot of lgbt people, but most heterosexuals know one or two gays, or perhaps none at all. So, if the protagonist is straight, and the book focuses on him and his close friends, there is less chance that some of them will be gays. for the same reason, if we had a gay protagonist, I would be really surprised if he was the only gay in the book. I'd expect him to have several gay friends/aquaintances. Heck, 160 names must be close enough to the amount of people I know, and 2 confirmed gays are exactly how many I know, too (technically, one lesbian and one transgender; not counting my bisexual aunt). Because for most of those 160, I don't know them enough to know if they may be gays. because I've never been close enough to those lgbt people to get introduced to their friends. it's not random chance. I'm sure if I had spent more time with the transsexual guy or the lesbian woman I would have met a lot more lgbt people, but it didn't happen. And so, 2 confirmed gays over a cast of 160 named characters, when filtered through those lenses, are actually a sensible statistic. They certainly feel real to me, because they are consistent with the amount of lgbt people I experience in my life.they are consistent with the amount of lgbt people that most heterosexual people experience in their lives.

are you aware that our cheapest coins are worth less than the metals they are made of? You could take a bunch of cents, melt them, sell them as scrap metal, and you'd be at a net gain. it's just too impractical to do

nope. they were never friends in the first place. from what we glimps from the letters, they had always been at odds, and they only worked together for necessity. if you need to ship someone, ati and leras would make far better candidates, as we know ati was good before holding ruin corrupted him. on the other hand, i don't see it fitting much with established events, unless they created scadrial only millennia after taking on the shards, when ati's previous personality was essentially deleted. and in this case, what did they do before? as far as exhisting characters, brandon could try his hand with either renarin or jasnah. we have no indication whatsoever about renarin, while i see jasnah more as asexual, but she still could turn out in many ways. i don't think brandon will make renarin gay, though, because he is scheduled to have a book in the second five. So, assuming that brandon is looking forward to try giving more roles to gay characters but he is not sure it will work out, he would not commit to make a gay character that he already promised will be a major one later. he'd rather use a secondary character - one that has about renarin's current importance - that he can still put in the background in case it end up not working. So, assuming brandon's stance has mutated from that old interview to "i'd like to eventually do it, but i need to work gradually on my way there", his best chance right now would still be to give expanded roles to drehy and ranette.

now i hope they make "roshar total war" as yet another game in the "total war" installment. play as any one of the alethi highprinces and carve your empire. genocide against the azish is optional

ultimately, it all depends on the availability of gems. gems are needed for all fabrials, both to make them work, and to hold stormlight to make them keep working. gems are a renewable resource. they grow in animals. on the other hand, gems are also not forever. infusing and draining them eventually cracks them. so, we can infer that a stationary state will be reached, with many new gems being harvested and just as many old gems breaking under use, or getting lost or destroied accidentally. there will be a roughly fixed, stable amount of gems in the society. the question is, how many gems will be available per capita? the answer to this will dictate if they can make a flourishing society or an oligarchy where only the rich has access to technology. And we cannot answer this question. the OP tried to, by estimating current availability of gems. for those criticizing the intrinsic value of currency, remember that a sphere of larger denomination has a larger piece of gem inside, so it seems there is a direct relation. and right now, comparing the size of the gems needed for fabrials with the size of gems in spheres, and with the amount of spheres available to the average joe, it seems that there are few gems. however, gem production is dependent upon demand and request. Now that gems are useful for a lot more things than currency and light, a lot more people will want them. and breeding animals for the gems will be a lot more convenient. so we can expect gemstones production and availability to increase. and this will start all the dance of consequences and feedback mechanisms. with more technology fueled by gems agriculture will be more efficient, so less terrain will be needed for crops, more can be used to breed gems. but with better living conditions the population will grow, thus reducing the amount of gems per capita. and with more use, gems will crack more often. and so on. we simply cannot predict what the result will be. this kind of analysis would require very detailed data, which for roshar simply does not exhist. so sanderson is free to make up whatever he pleases, for he will be fully able to justify it afterwards.

soulcasting is an addititional source of food, not the solution to all food-related problems. soulcasting is still limited by how many gems you can harvest. many animals grow them, but then you need to breed the animal, which requires pastures. no, soulcasters do not hugely impact food production. they are good to supply an army, because instead of sending a long line of carts heaped with food which may spoil anyway, you just need some gems. but getting those gems was no less expensive than farming the equivalent food in the first place. And a lot of land on roshar is too rough to be farmed. too exposed to the winds, mostly. so, there's your population cap. now, from the families we see (dalinar and kaladin) it seems that the population practices some form of birth control, because we don't see any of the large families with a half dozen brothers that were common in the past. probably they have some natural contraceptive.

depends on how hard you push. pushing too hard will make people feel threatened. people will start picturing a future where every fiction has a checklist of minorities to insert, and those that don't are blacklisted. Yes, I know, nobody suggested that. but some posts were forceful, they could have been taken the wrong way. people are wary of change. they tend to latch on the worst scenario. In this case, the worst scenario is a society censoring works that aren't "representative" enough. And since we're there, we may also start banning them if they go against some political agenda. perhaps it's a bit far-fetched, but it would be not the first time censorship was introduced "to promote correct values". I was putting me on the defensive, after all, so it could have done the same for other people too. or it could just encourage sympathetic exhaustion.

As I said, often conflict is born simply because someone feels attacked and get defensive and it escalates on both sides. Anyway, I was victim of bullying as a kid, at a time when bullying still wasn't perceived as such a huge social problem, so the teachers didn't do much for me. And I had no friends because I was nerdy and introverted (before it was considered ok). And my parents told me that those people bullying me were douchebags and I should just ignore them. And it worked. i went to high school, met better people, got some friends, was not bullied anymore. I still had few friends, because of the whole nerdy and introverted. and my parents tried to push me to get in various activities to meet people. And it did not work at all. I didn't even know what to say in those situations. i befriended none of the people I met there, though i found some good friends otherwise. Now I am happy. my life experience strongly affects how I see acceptance. Now I am glad other middle graders bullied me, because if they hadn't I would have been their friend, and ewww, why would i want to be friend with them? and I am strongly skeptic of any organized attempt to find acceptance; my parents kept trying to put me among people, but it wasn't working from my side. I know acceptance of sexual identity is different from what i had to face, but part of the problem is still the same: people are mean to me and won't be my friends. So my instinct would have me very dismissive towards acceptance. my solution would be "dump those douchebags, you don't want to be their friend anyway. and find better friends. but don't bother looking for them too hard, because that won't work; just drift through life and be ready to latch onto other kindred spirits you'll find along the way". and so, when I see on the news a sit-in by the westboro baptist church, I'm less "this is so wrong and should not happen" and more "thanks for letting me know you are douchebags, so i can avoid you better" it took me a while to realize that this attitude works on a personal level, but cannot be applied to society as a whole. still, just like my parents trying to push me into social groups was a recipe for disaster, so I think that any attempt to push for acceptance too hard can't work.

The above is...actually a fact...like, by definition, if there aren’t minorities, then the work is not inclusive of those minorities. It doesn’t include them. Implying that that stance is an opinion is simply incorrect. yes, but on the other hand, there are so many minorities (lgbt, women, black people, asian people, latin american, mentally disabled...) that if you had to include a character for each of those minorities, you could do so only by writing huge sagas. and then any kind of story would just feel like a checklist where some elements have to be included. And if some of them are not included, then it will convey the message that some minorities are more important than others. what I fear is politically correct gone mad. I fear that after all the trouble we went through to remove censorship, peer pressure and media backlash will push us to censure ourselves again. And I think that every time a piece of fiction is analyzed in terms of "inclusion" or "strong role model", we are moving towards the slippery slope. perhaps i am paranoid. but i have seen some instances of politically correct gone mad, and I fear it more than most other scenarios. EDIT: that said, if a piece of fiction shows nothing but chatolic white men with a career and catholic white women housewives, then that piece of fiction has a problem. Let's just say that I fear excesses on both sides /EDIT On the other hand, I have also seen many people do bad things in the name of "making progress". I have seen people calling themselves "anti-fascist" vandalize a pub that a right-wing movement had hired for a meeting. So, they are fighting fascism by using fascist intimidation against those who don't share their opinions. what could possibly go wrong? And I have seen majors close city centers to car traffic on some sundays to protect the environment. this only means that whoever needed to pass through the city center will just have to take the detour around the city, taking a longer road and burning up more fuel. I don't think that's very effective. And I have heard the argument that to favor inclusion of disadvantaged students, we should abolish school rejection. Now, it's already difficult enough to get kids to study when they do risk rejection. but one good thing to promote inclusion is that in italy we have good public schools, so even the poor can study well and get a good degree. Except that in the last decade we started a lot of measures to "increase inclusion", and all the data shows the quality of our instruction plummeting. So, the poor kids who actually want to study cannot, because they are put in the same classroom with a couple dozen #### who don't care and disturb enough to make teaching nigh impossible. We keep on like that, soon the only way to get a good instruction will be private schools. How is that favoring inclusion? So, just because people are trying to make progress, it does not mean that they are doing something good. It is possible to screw things up royally in the name of progress, and it happens all the time. And I've seen it happen in the name of inclusion too. And so long as people don't realize that they may actually be going too far, too fast, and may end up doing more harm than good, then I need to make this argument.

sorry that i give the wrong impression. and, before i forget, thanks for trying to reach out to me. as i tried to make clear, i have nothing against activism. i have a beef against people that commit excesses in the name of activism, that use it as an excuse to bullying or to get a better treatment. sure, those people are rare, and sure, we should not let ourselves be blinded by those few bad people. but people committing excess in the name of supposedly good causes exhist, and i've dealt with a few of them in real life. people who felt that just because they are members of some minorities, or they are spearheading some political campaign for rights, that they are allowed to do things that they would not do otherwise. it's not just "sympahtetic exhaustion". It's not "yes, whatever, I don't really care"; perhaps i seem petty to you because you read that in my stance? if that was the case, i wouldn't even bother to write here. what i am against is well intentioned extremists pushing things too far. Even if I agree with them on a fundamental level. And I think it is important for me to make this argument because those excesses are not helping your cause. instead, they are alienating support. I've heard many people who were indifferent toward minorities (of any kind) gradually become antagonistic because said minorities were asking, or getting, preferential treatment. and most often those minorities weren't, really. most members of those minorities were only asking equal treatment. but the media will often latch to the most vocal people, who often enough are also the most fanatics. and then there are always a few bad apples who are just trying to take advantage of their minority status to get away with stuff, and they stand out. But when this happens, it can give a bad reputation to the whole minority. I assume this goes both ways. I assume that whenever a straight person starts with "I have nothing against gays, but..." it would also put you on the defensive, because you may have heard that incipit from many bigoted people who basically meant "I have nothing against gays, but i actually do". I assume that I gave you the same vibe, and so I thank you again for trying to reach out instead of closing. And so I hope that my message can get across. that it's all right to ask for representation, inclusion, acceptance, but if you move from asking to demanding you cross a line, and it will put people on the defensive; even those who would have supported you. and that things like acceptance and inclusion must come from within the other person if they are to be genuine. you can't force acceptance; if you do, it's no acceptance at all. Personally, I think the inclusion of gay protagonists will simply take time. I think so because I think writers write largely based on their experience, and consider how fast lgbt rights have moved. 50 years ago homosexuality was a crime punished by the law. 20 years ago the general vibe was "they are free to do whatever among them, as long as they stay hidden". then in just those two decades it moved to "a friend of mine is gay, and I don't see him any different than anyone else" to "same sex marriages should have the same rights as regular ones". But until 20-odd years ago, homosexuality was virtually invisible. So, most people who are now adults grew up in a world without lgbt people. they weren't part of their experience. and so, they don't think to put in an lgbt character, because it's outside of their experience. The whole lgbt topic being riddled with pitfalls also doesn't help making people comfortable with it. But people growing up now are most likely to know some declared lgbt. so it will feel natural for them to see some such people around, and those of them who will pick up an artistic career will see fit to include more of them. And seeing more of them in books will also make tv producers less wary of the topic. and perhaps more gay couples will feel comfortable enough kissing in public, and more people will get used to it. and the people who will grow up in this environment will start writing gay protagonists without anyone telling them to. Some processes require time, and trying to hasten them too much backfires. and perhaps it will go for brandon too. He said that he wouldn't feel comfortable writing gay protagonists because he feels he would blotch them. but he started writing ranette and drehy. those had a very minor role in their first appearences, but they gained more visibility. perhaps the next mistborn book will have a short ranette pov, or perhaps rythm of war will have a short drehy pov. and from there, and getting feedback, brandon will feel comfortable in expanding roles for lgbt characters, and he will eventually write a gay male protagonist. brandon likes to try new things with his style, there's a good chance he will get there eventually. in due time. conversely, putting pressure on him may only make him feel less comfortable. By the way, I can make this argument in person without problems, but those few times I tried on the internet it often went poorly. too many people react as if i were a bigot hiding under a paper-thin cover, and from there it escalates. I wouldn't mind some tips to figure out how to convey this argument better. without resorting to a wall of text as I did here, possibly.

i can't figure out if you are being serious, or you are trying to make a joke, or you are trying to provoke me. but assuming you are serious, this kind of comments is exactly what i am fighting against. i am fighting against the idea that minorities can accuse of intolerance anyone who dares to disagree with them. also, please tell me how can i be accused of discrimination for claiming that everyone should be treated equally

well, if one says that an author should include minorities because otherwise his work is not inclusive, if one implies that an author is bad because he is not inserting something, then he's doing exactly that.

it means that it must not be an obligation. one should not have a list of minorities to add like a checklist (black dude? check. single mother? check. asian? lgbt? check. Black woman single lgbt mother? damnation, i miss that one, i must put one in the story). that's not inclusion, that's politically correct gone mad. furthermore, i am a big fan of the "live and let live" principle. and according to that principle, no one has any right to tell an author that he must put something in the story just to show inclusion. making it an obligation to include lgbt themes - or. heck, any other topic - also goes against freedom of artistic expression. the emphasis is all on "would be nice if he did X" against "must do X". would be nice, certainly. but the moment we force people to conform their art to a canon, we are pushing it too far. now, regarding an author choosing whether to make a character lgbt when it's not a plot point, i assume it would go more or less like any other fluff descriptor that is not important to the plot. as in, i have no idea, but i trust that an author does. I mean, in mistborn commentary brandon said that initially vin was male, but worked better as female. why? I'm not sure. I don't know enough to tell why brandon felt that vin had to be female. but i trust that just as brandon figured it for some reason, so he can figure when he'd rather his character is gay.

brandon himself acknowledged that a heist story like ocean eleven was part of his inspiration. he said that his first plan was to make the book a full heist story, but then as he wrote other elements took over.

also, most people on this forum have read mistborn a half dozen times, have read the author's commentary, and the various related extra tidbits that brandon released in various interviews and q&a with fans, and discussed it in the forum in depth. So yes, I do believe everyone answering to a mistborn post here is most likely to be a mistborn expert

Put me in that camp too. Incidentally, this option should be added to the poll, because it's not the same as "no, adolin should stay as he is" I'd rather see someone managing to stay useful despite their lack of superpowers. It's a minor beef I have with the worldbuilding: the regenerative powers of stormlight are too strong, making invested people almost unkillable for muggles. I prefer muggles to stay relevant.

i think book writing is one of the few processes that is not going to be influenced by the coronavirus. everyone involved was working from his home already. it may delay printing, if the outbreak is still not contained by late summer, but i don't see it impacting the revisions. Also: he just released update 8! while his site still links to update 6

yes, you are not the only one to have similar ideas there's always another secret

wasn't accusing you of accusing. it was more of a "well, of course there will be a few small contradictions here and there" IIRC, WoBs are not considered strictly canon (though they are the next best thing) specifically because there may be something like that. brandon goes from memory when answering at conventions. he may get something wrong. the fans may get something wrong. or, he may decide to change something because a new book requires it. so, nothing should be done, because wobs have some uncertainty in the first place

cut him some slack, he can forget stuff every once in a while. especially something he said to a fan two years prior.

i'm a teacher too and want to show her some sympathy

no, it picks up more stuff when the winds are stronger. in shinovar it's just rain, it wouldn't be able to keep sediments flying. there's clearly some magical source for it; if not for the crem itself, then at least for the mechanism with which it goes up in the air

on the other hand, hurricanes do not drop crem. highstorms certainly need something to refill it with solids.

it's a helluva lot of cubic kilometers of water that rains down with storms. not sure the body of a god would have a taste so persistent when diluted so much. could be perfectly natural due to the content of stormwater. we know stormwater has sediments in it, and those sediments harden to clay. Clay contains lots of stuff, but one major component is aluminium sulfate. it also has decent amounts of iron. and plenty of calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium ions, but those would not taste metallic in the first place.

Actually, explosive does NOT rely on atmospheric oxygen. the reaction would be too slow. explosives carry their own oxydizers in the mixture. bullets and bombs would explode in the vacuum just as well as they would in the atmosphere. there's a good point concerning combustion engines, but i don't think they will just catch fire so easily. consider that pretty much all of modern technology still works in high mountains (as long as it's not the top of the everest), with a very different amount of air and oxygen. so, it's true that some technology would be off, but nowhere near as much as you think. rifles would still fire. trucks would still move. airplanes would still fly. radios would still communicate. authomatic tracking systems would require some correction for the lower gravity, which could easily be done by a patch (it's just one single value in the program). You mentioned WWII. Do you really think swords and spears could stand up to tanks, machine guns and strategic bombers? A heavy caliber machine gun punches holes through thick concrete walls. shardplate is strong, but is it stronger than a concrete wall? and remember than you have maybe 100 plates in the whole roshar. while you can mass produce millions of machine guns how does a cognitive bead work when its object is moving? Still, I don't think that's feasible. if the bead moves with the rocket, then it also moves at kilometers per second, and you have no chance of ever seeing it. if the bead stands still, then it may be standing still anywhere from america to russia. you may be able to collect the beads beforehand without raising the alarm, but there is always the risk of missing some. Condier also that we have no indication there are easy ways to find a specific bead, even when you are in the right place and know what you're looking for. also, it seems the number of radiants is somewhat limited for some reason. even at their apex there were a few thousands, but not millions. they'd be stretched thin. i doubt you'd ever have enough radiants to make a ring around the border. so, i think scale is still the greater problem. this is not kaladin facing a fused in the air. this thing happens on the scale of whole continents, which are crossed in minutes. good point, but this raises the question: how exactly are we defining this scenario? certainly the earthlings would not arrive by space ships, as that would imply a technology. let's say there is a portal? large enough to move armies and big machinery, but not for flying a missile? (why would this portal be so specific?) and are we even assuming the magic would work on the earth side? anyway, you can always bring a long range truck-transported missile through that portal, and launch it from roshar. maybe won't go round the world, but it will certainly go a 1000 kilometers. in fact, in roshar's lower gravity, it may even go around the world. or, you can deliver it from an airplane. which is only mildly slower than an ICBM me, i was assuming that a continent was just popped into the middle of roshar ocean, in which case icbm are available elsecallers are good spies, but not perfect. they can imitate appearence well, but if their exhistence is known, there are many ways to counter them. i expect a lot of patrol groups shouting at each other "what's your grandmother's name? which college did you attend?" and touching each other's faces to find illusions. also heat sensors (maybe lightweaving can fool the infrared, but your body heats surrounding air, that could give you away), movement sensors, trip wires, closed doors. and perhaps composite materials are harder to soulcast because they lack a unitarian cognitive identity (it works against forging, which works on similar principles). rosharans are not the only ones who can adapt to counter new tricks. so, it can be attempted, but it's far from foolproof. the only reason shallan does so well is that nobody is prepared