king of nowhere

they started filming the tv series almost 6 months ago by now. and yet in all this time all we got was the names of the main actors and !one! picture. shouldn't they start releasing trailers soon? shouldn't they be trying to increase anticipation in the fandom?

i appreciate all the speculations, but i was hoping that maybe we could attract the attention of someone who is into the editorial process and actually knows this kind of stuff. Perhaps by summoning @PeterAhlstrom?

When you see a car licence plate AX 272 XA and you marvel at the ketek, trying to ponder some deeper meaning in it (in italy licence plates are made of with two letters, three numbers and two more letters, and are given consecutively. unlike in some other countries, you cannot personalize your licence plate nor pick up a number of your choice)

i did specifically say character count, not page count. of course page count is even more finnicky, depending also on font, character size and page size. but both "preposterous" and "the" count as one word, yet one is four times longer than the other.

just a random curiosity here, but if your purpose as an editor is gauge the amount of paper you'd need to print it, won't it be more accurate to directly count the characters? the average length of a word can change a lot (i'd hazard perhaps as much as 20%) depending on the kind of prose and one's preference for long words. and i can't think of any single reason why counting characters would be worse. so, anyone knows? thanks

after the slow crawl of the first draft (yes, i know, brandon was keeping a good pace; it's just that 4000 words on a big book is still only 1% progress), it's refreshing to see the further drafts moving at a steady pace

well, as a human straight male, i am only qualified to comment on the attractiveness of human females. but this raises a good point: what if the jury is made of listeners or aimians or other kind of aliens?

the difference is, nobody in the world has been a skaa, or a koloss, or a god. so brandon cannot do those things wrong. on the other hand, plenty of people are gay, and some of them can be very touchy about it. for the same reason brandon stated that he prefers to do something in his worldbuilding to skew what would be realistic in our world, to force things to be a bit different, specifically because then nobody can say he wasn't accurate enough: you know what, you make lots of sense and i see your point. I guess my needs there are slightly different there so i don't realize it. my attitude of "those things are not what define a person, so you should avoid thinking of them too much" works well on a personal level (especially for the whole "don't define them based on their sexuality" pitfall), lbut it leaves some open issues if applied on a society-wide level. still, while i understand more the need for stronger representation in the media (i'm always surprised that they are not more represented; i tend to expect that if roughly 5% of people are gays, then also 5% of writers, filmmakers, showmen and other similar people are gays, and they should produce a relevant amount of ccontent showing their point of view, but it's clearly not happening). but i stand my points that nobody should feel obliged to write an inclusive character, and that brandon may not be the most appropriate writer to do it. not because of mormonism, but because he doesn't have enough exposure to the lgbt community. and yes, he certainly has the capacity to write lgbt characters with enough research (will it be any more removed from his experience than an atheist?). but he should not feel forced to do so. well, thanks for putting in the time to answer, and you make good points. and yes, i got a bit carried away in that post... anyway, some comments 1) i meant changed sex, not gender. but yeah, you got me. 3) you are right, i didn't consider that. but again, there are a lot of other issues that could be introduced in a similar way. there is also the risk that if a random survivorist kid makes a random throwaway derisive comment to hint at that aspect of worldbuilding, some readers may mistake it as a genuine opinion from the author. which sound ridiculous - when the rold ruler says that the stronger should be made dominant, nobody takes it as a genuine opinion from the author - but inclusion is a hot topic, and hot topics tend to get people to react passionately. 4) I try to be nice to everyone, in general. I would not put up with people being homophobic, or racist. as a techer, whenever homosexuality is mentioned i tell my kids that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality on the premise that adult people can do whatever they want among themselves anyway and considerations of individual freedom, and that i was apalled to discover that there are still so many troglodytes (i use this specific term) still living in the middle age culture-wise. and granted, i rarely had to give this speech, because i very rarely heard homophobic speech. I donate money regularly to avaaz, a platform launching internet campaigns for social causes, including lgbt rights, for which i signed many petititions. WHAT MORE SHOULD I DO? 7) damnation, i'm so stupid. of course if there is a thing like nerd culture, then of course there is a thing like gay culture. again, i'm looking at the tree and not the forest. then again, i don't like much the concept because I believe strongly in individual differences (and the whole "if you like this, then you probably also like that" don't work much on me; i don't fit much any mold, which further reinforced my opinion on the uselessness of molds... even when they actually have a purpose). but yeah, anyway, i should have seen it coming. 10 by "intimacy" i mean generally "things you don't discuss with strangers". which include almost anything about romance. it was about the "we need to be told that those characters are dating a same-sex person", but well, i generally am told about the relationships of my friends in the same way. for most of my friends i've never met their s.o. so i don't see anything special in that we are told that, for example, ranette has a girlfriend instead of seeing the two being intimate on screen. 11 oh, please. i put there to not trust the mentally ill specifically in cosmere books, and specifically because there are so many plot-critical characters masquerading as one of them. "be wary about that random homeless guy asking the main character a coin, there's a good chance he's actually a spy in disguise". i hope you were joking and not trying to hold it against me oh, i see how that could get misinterpreted. no, wasn't a problem the flirting. the problem was the mathematics. mass effect has, like, as many homosexual romantic interest as straight ones. it was "come on, there are more gays or bisexuals than straight people, what are the odds?". i thought it was clear, it clearly wasn't. ok, for this i have to open a tangent, because it's NOT related to adoptions or to anything else but i feel it's very important. I am a scientist, and I was taught and shown times and again that there is ALWAYS need for evidence. And there is ESPECIALLY need for evidence when you are absolutely convinced of something. Because the more you are convinced of something, and the more you are likely to ignore or disregard evidence to the contrary. in fact, strongly believing in a certain result is enough to disqualify one from conducting many tests, because there is a risk of inconscious bias. And so, me wanting something to be true - a large part of society wanting it to be true - is specifically the reason i would like so badly to collect evidence over it instead of taking it by faith. on the plus side, if we had this data and it would show what we expect, we could have one more argument against the haters. not that the evidence would affect my opinion. as i believe in individual differences over social groups, even if a significant statistical anomaly was proven, it would be no reason to judge someone over it. It's like, it's statistically proven that most crimes are committed by single men between age 20 and 30, but this does not make me a criminal and arresting all single men would be exceedingly dumb. and so it would be equally dumb to judge an individual case according to a general tendency of a group, even when that tendency is proven, which is not the case. and this is also part of the speeches i give to my kids when the subject is raised. well, my long-winded post did mention the use of the word omertà in my native italian language...

huh? i have no problems with anyone yes, i am aware. and if their kids are doing just fine - something of which i am absolutely convinced - then there should be no problem whatsoever getting some hard data to showcase this, right? I don't understand why people on both sides of an argument make big claims, but when one proposes to collect some data to actually verify who is in the right he gets flak from both sides. seriously. just because i don't think people should read anything in a political light, and in fact they should try to not do it? and that's wrong again. i said that i wouldn't care about the sexuality of a character, meaning that i would have no problem reading a gay character. why you get from this that i would not buy books is beyond me. you are taking my criticism of your arguments as intolerance. and as i said in the first post i wrote in this thread, i'm sure there are plenty of gay authors who could do a better job at it. and once they have done it, the heterosexual authors will also have some good inspiration to know how to do it, and could start doing it better too. what i am against is the idea that brandon sanderson, personally, has to write such a character, when he specifically stated that he fears he wouldn't be able to do a good job at it. who knows, the man is great at doing research, and he has shown interest in the topic, and he has some gay friends who could help him. so perhaps one of those years sanderson will do a lot of research and then come up with a gay protagonist. great! but he shouldn't write a gay character because he has to. he shouldn't face flak on the sole base that he didn't do it enough. that's where you stop asking and you start shoehorning an agenda. now, perhaps i also am misreading you, just like you are misreading me. perhaps you were just expressing a wish and i read it as stronger than it was, and i reacted as if it was a demand, and then you reacted as if i was against including gay protagonists in general. so let me reiterate it in the hope of clarity: asking for more gay characters represented in the media is good. i fully support this proposition. demanding that a specific author includes a gay protagonist for the sole sake of being inclusive, even when the author has perfectly legitimate reasons to not want to do it, that is shoehorning an agenda. and that's what i oppose.

yes, we know. there are still large parts of the world that disagree with the notion of equal women rights, much less sexual minorities. even in the western world, where they have received equal legal standing in most places, they still face fairly large pokets of resistance. there are still plenty of douchebags around, and since douchebag's money is as good as everyone else's, there's also many firms that won't take a stand for fear of losing customers (in italian we have a nice word for it, omertà; strictly speaking it refers to the regime of intimidation set up by the mafia so that the people won't testify against them, but it is used more generally for any instance of not speaking up against injustice for fear of personal consequences, even when very mild. a person who won't speak up is omertoso. It's a word that carries a certain moral judgment; someone who is omertoso is, first and foremost, a chicken, a coward. Second, he is also an indirect accomplice of the injustice he won't speak up against. And third, as he suffers because of the injustice but won't try to fix it, he's also bringing it upon himself. won't stop most people from lapsing to omertà rather than having to stand up for their beliefs, though. So, the creators of the elder scrolls are omertosi. I can't find a satisfying english translation.) yes, lgbt discrimination - and specificallyt male gay discrimination - exhists and it is still strong, even in those countries that gave gays full rights. but that does not mean that everything regarding homosexuality has to be laced in discrimination. especially sanderson, who appears to be making a good job at it I don't for both of them, and many other people also don't. for ranette, it really has no bearing on her story whatsoever. if instead of being a lesbian she was merely not interested in wayne, if instead of having a girlfriend she had a boyfriend, or she was happily single, there would be absolutely nothing changing about the story of herself. regarding drehy, i also don't see what would change about his story if he was straight. it's been a while since my last reread of the stormlight archive, but i don't remember him being given more space than most other minor crewmembers. his homosexuality is mentioned in passing, when it was being talked about other bridgemen romantic lives. Huio is visiting prostitutes. Bisig is in a relationship. Punio is married, even though he was trying to hide it. Drehy is gay. I don't remember it getting more comment than that. It gets some attention, but that's normal; the normal assumption is heterosexuality because it's by far the most statistically abundant, and once you know your friend is gay you have to take note on a few levels - his significant other is he and not she, you should not try to introduce him to single girls, those kind of things. From my point of view, i found that can relate the experience of his friends to mine when i discovered that my aunt's best friend was really her girlfriend. "huh, you're getting married, nice, can't believe i didn't connect the dots earlier", then conversation moves on. really I don't see drehy being gay as defining his character or his storyline. I do believe instead that you are mistaking those characters because of your involvment. to me, they are just characters. their sexual orientation has no more influence on how i see them than it has on how i see my aunt - and really, the only difference there is that now that i know she's fully bisexual and her wife is lesbian i somethimes ask them some questions on how it is life as a lesbian; they are the only people of a sexual minority that are close enough to me to ask personal questions. so, that ranette is a lesbian is totally unimportant to me; doesn't change who she is, and unlike my aunt i can't even ask her personal questions. But for you? you want to see gays represented. you are eager for it. you think the rest of the world should be shown more of them. And so, because of your priorities, the fact that those two characters are gays is the most important thing about them. because you see them as representing the whole category. because to you and your beliefs, their sexual orientation is important and paints a big bright sign over their head. and you are accidentally mistaking that for importance in the story and those character's role in it. fair point. on the other hand, how many couple do we see at all? i don't know, but i doubt it's more than a few dozens. to the best of my knowledge, lgbt comprises about 5% of the population. that we see drehy in stormlight archive, ranette in mistborn, feels just about right statistically. could be two characters in the same book, tops. again, this correlates well with my personal heterosexual experience. besides my aunt, i knew a gay from university (just a guy living in the same dorm; he was nice, but i never exchanged more than a few words with him) and once i went out with my cousin and some of her friends and among them was a transsexual (a former girl who became a man; by the way, am i supposed to call him a transsexual woman, or transsexual men?). He was nice, he is an engineer so we had a lot in common as men of science, but i never saw him again, as my cousin lives very far and i only visit occasionally. so, in my experience gays are not popping out of stones. they are rare, you meet one occasionally. for most people you meet you'll never inquire anyway; probably some of my coworkers are gays, some of my students; i only know a few of them enough to know. (similarily, there are probably many more gays than you know in those books. perhaps the butler was, or one of the cooks, or some of the minor nobles who are never mentioned by name.) so, if i read a book and we are introduced to a handful of main characters and a double handful of minor characters, and one of those characters is gay, it feels just right. If it turned out every other person was gay or bisexual, it would certainly be statistically weird (and that's how i reacted in mass effect when kaidan tried to hit on me: "oh come on, what are the odds?") Now, if there was a major gay character, I'd expect that guy to also have many gay friends. i expect he knows some places that are mostly frequented by other gays, because people with something in common tend to want each other's company. I'd take it as one more reason it would be harder for a straight author to write a gay protagonist. are we even told that survivorism is against homosexuality, except in commentary? I don't think so. how much do we know of those religions tenets from the books alone? not much. while worldbuilding is awesome, there is a limit to it. you only have so muh space in a book. we don't have enough space to be told the detailed tenets of survivorism, we don't have enough space to be told specifically about homosexuality, and we certainly don't have enough space to see a clash over it. again, i assume it comes down to our differences. for you, it is an important topic. if you want to be told one thing, it's how are homosexuals considered. but to most of us - especially to most of us who are not prejudiced - it's not even a topic at all. what do you think of lgbt right? - of course those guys have rights like anyone else. is there even anything to discuss? what do you think of gay marriages? - they can do whatever they want gay adoptions? - i would prefer to start with a small batch and gather some hard scientific evidence before greenlighting it, but i don't expect any problem gay culture? - is that even a thing? I assume every gay will have his own passions and interests like everyone else. Just like i reject the idea of masculine culture gay discrimination? - of course it's terrible. no, i have no idea what we should do about it; i don't partake in it and nobody i know partakes in it; for more, ask a sociologist would you be interested in reading a book with a gay protagonist? - why would i even care? would you like to know more about gays? - what is there to know? I assume on the surface they are just like us, and on a deeper level they are just as individually diverse as anyone else. but if i want to know more, i ask my aunt i am campaigning against gay discrimination - well that is good. go do it where there's actual need you see, this reaction is pretty common among people i know. it's not that we have anything against lgbt. it's not that we are unaware of their exhistance. it's not even that we are insensitive to their plight - though perhaps we underestimate it because we take our attitude for granted too much. we are just not particularly interested in learning about a complete stranger's intimacy - which is what the whole argument boils down to, for us. and so we are not particularly interested in exploring about those topics in a book, besides knowing that they exhist. probably i would care if there was a well-written main character who made me care, but i certainly would never buy a book for that specific reason alone. ------------------- now there is only one thing i need to figure out: if i don't care much about gay representation, why did i spent the last two hours writing a long and personal answer? thinking a bit more about it, i can see that i perceive in the op a forced interpretation of the world according to an ideological framework. i think you have this preconceived notion and you are trying to see everything in this light, and this always brings me into a debate. it's better if i close here, before blabbering a couple more hours about my own deeper convictions and personality traits. but thank you for allowing me to dig up some new personal insight. that's also why i like debating beliefs (gaahh! i said i have to stop!)

on top of that, sigzil being all scandalized because drehy didn't fill the proper paperwork to be gay was absolutely priceless

me too. just because she was not interested in wayne, it didn't mean anything. I learned that she was lesbian in the commentary. and how many lines of text are devoted to her being lesbian? in the first book wax says that he doesn't think she is interested in any man. in the second, someone tells wayne that she has a girlfriend. and in the third wayne makes one single suggestion about it. since all those instances (and any i may have forgotten to include) are all related to wayne trying to hit on her to her dismay, I would that even if you wanted to have her sexuality as her dominant trait, then it's not being a lesbian, but being wayne's love interest for the first two books: Ranette: the gun-toting lesbian unrequited coprotagonist's love interest. not that she does much toting in the first place; she makes the guns, i don't remember her using them. I'd liken her to a sort of Q

another relevant wob that surprisingly nobody dug out until now: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40-the-alloy-of-law-annotations/#e705 this commentary actually shaped a lot of my opinions on the topic, because i never considered it much until i read it, and then i was like "oh, this makes so much sense" regarding books with well-fleshed gay characters, john scalzi has a couple in the old men's war saga, a gay in book 1 and a lesbian in book 5 (or 3, depending on how you count a couple of short stories). neither is a major character, but they are important enough to have a developed personality. the gay does get killed, but then again, the colonial defence force has like 80% casualty rate; a lot of the protagonist's friends get killed in that book.

brandon has specifically said that he avoids doing a gay main character because he is unsure he would write it well. and people who are angry at the lack of gay main characters will be much angrier at a poorly-written charicature of a gay main character. even if it was actually the author's best attempt. it makes sense. on the other hand, i would expect that there would be a few gay authors, and i expect they would be more likely to write a gay main character. if they don't, I have no idea why. it's actually an unintended consequence of all the heat that was brought on the "inclusion" theme in the latest years; it's such a hot topic, people avoid it for fear of doing something wrong. i also may point out that while similar problems can arise when writing a woman, 50% of your alpha readers are women, and they can give you good advice and fix mistakes. on the other hand, you are unlikely to have more than one or two gays alpha readers. them being a numerical minority makes it harder to get good feedback. I don't think it's a problem of masculinity. perhaps those gay authors can write some gay protagonists and pave the way for others? I'm sure if the literature included some well-written gay protagonists, someone like brandon could have some good example on how to do it. of course, i come from a social context that has no beef against homosexuality. I don't know the realities where prejudices are still radicated, and perhaps i am underestimating them. +1 on that. I hate reading phrases like "strong female lead" or "inclusive cast"; I read them as meaning "the protagonist is a woman/minority/LGBT solely because it's fashionable nowadays, and we are trying to use this point to sell this book/movie to feminists/minorities/LGBT". NO! equality means that your sex/gendr/ethnicity is not important. Promoting equality by getting all hang-up about sex/gendr/ethnicity is a contradiction. at best it can be a quick band-aid to temporarily cover the open wound. at worst, it goes in the wrong direction, it actually reinforces people's belief that those things actually matter - and they also make them annoyed with minorities. depends on how strictly you define a love triangle. I can only think of vin and shallan, and none of them has the amount of unnecessary drama I associate with the concept. thy were just two young women who had to make clarity about who they were, and that's it. may i also point out that all love triangles i can think of involve a woman choosing between two men? i guess it's "empowering" to have the woman do the choosing between two men who just obediently take her crap, while showing a men able to pick a woman of his choice is considered demeaning. no, wait, i'm now remembering that geralt of rivia had triss merigold also flinging herself at him, although it's not a real triangle because geralt's choice was never in doubt and he never tried to press for advantage. compare how yennefer behaves with geralt and istredd (in the books, not the tv show, where she's much less of a jerk): if a male character did the same, the author would be burned at the stake by a mob of angry feminists. (NOTE: I hope i do not come across as inflamatory; I am just pointing out that there are many double standards going both ways)

really? are they any worse than shameful ribbon?

there is also a nice subversion/deconstruction of many fantasy archetypes that is done in mistborn (mostly in later books, or i'd have thought to mention it earlier). at the beginning, we are presented with the 11th metal, a legendary secret thing that has the power to defeat the villain. a villain who is otherwise immortal, without any real reason given. and we have seen this thing before - heck, the lord of the rings used it - and so we accept it without questioning it much. but in the end, the secret artifact that should defeat the villain does nothing - even getting into the secret chamber inside the lord ruler palace does nothing. and the immortality was actually powered by the same magic that the protagonists were using also, you may not know that brandon wrote some commentary on each chapter on his site. he used to do that in the old times, unfortunately he does not anymore. they provide a lot of interesting insights into his stories, and they may give you some good material. link for mistborn annotations

so, let's see what comes to my mind. trust is one big theme of the book. vin grew without trust, but she has to learn to trust her crew. also kelsier has his issue with mare coming from trust. a few times in the book there are discussions on whether it is better to trust and risk betrayal, or to not trust to stay safe. prejudice and discrimination is another one. we see the skaa being mistreated by the nobility, but we also see kelsier and his crew being equally prejudiced. vin's rebuttal of kelsier ("you can't trust elend, he's a noble" "so are you") was a wonderful moment. A big theme of the book is "there is always another secret". throughout the book, in fact the whole saga, we keep learning more and more complex things that change our perspective on what we knew. to be noted that they do not invalidate what we already knew. "you've been lied to all along" is a common literary device, but one that can easily have the reader give up on the book and skip directly to the last page, because if everything you are told before is wrong, why bother? in fact, the whole story of the lord ruler has much more truth that we would ever give it credit for at the beginning, and kelsier's secret plan does not invalidate anything of what he does before. breeze also introduces some nice themes on manipulation, as in "getting other people to do what you want". how it is a big part of social interactions, and how it is used and abused. there are also a few interesting questions raised by ham. i'm thinking of the whole "if tlr is god, are we wrong in opposing him?" now, tlr is not god, but it ties nicely in the concept of right of rebellion. which is further compounded in the second trilogy, when we have wax defend the system instead. you could also spend some time on the more generic concept of functional magic, what does it mean to have magic in a story, and tie up with sanderson's first law of magic, and compare with the concept of deus ex machina. I'm sure there's still people out there disliking fantasy because they think magic removes any logical foundation to a plot it's all i can think of for now. you probably already knew most of this

Nah. much more fun the other way

strange. when i read it the first time, the prologue was utter nonsense to me. no sooner than book 4 i could make full sense of it. anyway yes, you get epic fights and big plot twists in the wot, but it's pretty slow. it's slow to start, the more the main characters will become badass, the more epic fights you will see. there is one such climatic fight near the end, and while i didn't like it because it felt pulled out of nowhere (again, after rereading and knowing what is actually happening, i can appreciate it better), but if you liked the prologue, you should also like the end. if you manage to reach so far without putting down the book. also, there is a lot of political intrigue too. in fact, there will be long stretches where nobody is fighting and everyone is politicking. anyway, you can do much worse than wheel of time with slow. i was gifted a book where the main character spends 30 pages making a phone call with her mother, where absolutely no plot relevant information is discussed. in the beginning, the book starts with an inspection in an informatic network after an alarm triggered, and nothing was found out of place. it took 50 pages. in wot you may not be interested in some of the subplots, but at least stuff does keep happening.

still, blue light can become green light by absorption/emission dinamics, so there should be enough green light to see at least some effect. not to mention the receptors for green light (but also for other colors) have a pretty broad absorption range, they can get some stimulation over many wavelenghts. so, the brain can still tell some color difference, even if it won't see exactly as we do. which brings me to the next point people of scadrial has no frame of reference. no comparison with our experience. no concept of our colors. they have known their world, their colors, all their lives. they adapted to those, and they gave them names. just like in roshar they talk about summer or winter even though they don't have seasons in our traditional sense, or they have a concept of hounds that's very different from our. just like elend uniform was really gray, but it still stood out against the much darker background and they called it white because it's the best approximation they could get. so, probably kelsier's hair weren't really all that blonde, but they were noticeably lighter than everyone else's, so they called him blond, as they've never saw a real blond guy.

i also doubt the filter was 100% effective. even if it was, there are several effects of absorption/desorption of light that effectively increase its wavelenght. so, there would be some red light regardless. and the brain adapts, as others have mentioned.

please, don't be confused. and yet IT should have made it clear: the stick is not chuck norris. the stick is a stick. period. you could not soulcast IT into chuck norris if you tried

if there are scadrian judges, ironeyes would definitely win. it turns out it is the height of fashion and style to have iron spikes hammered into your eyes. nobody can resist the rugged charm of ironeyes. please don't kill us, lord ironeyes. we'll do anything you want, lord ironeyes

taln counted up to infinity. twice. while under torture. once semirhage captured taln and made him one of her "patients". she only commented on the experience with the word "frustrating"

taln does not die. at most, he takes a trip to another planet. taln had stopped the whole voidbringer invasion for four millennia without doing anything