king of nowhere

you expressed your persnal opinions, which are different from those of most others here. not because we are mindless fans who like everything their idol does, but because liking what sanderson does made us fans. it is strange to find on this site one with so much disagreement with the writer because one with so much disagreement generally does not become involved enough to post on a fan forum. preamble said, I disagree with most all of your opinions. - sexuality. I like it as it is, or at most hinted a bit more. not because I am prude or shy, in fact I have quite a lot of experience with erotic literature, but simply because I don't think the books would gain anything from more sex. ok, we know those two guys are having sex. do we really need a description? Not me. It would feel like a bit of the aforementioned erotic literature just got teleported into the middle of a fantasy book. It just doesn't work for me. I've read books with more explicit sexuality, and I never enjoied it. While I don't mind hints that characters have a sexual life (since you mentioned wot, I appreciated the references to the white tower being ripe with lesbism, which is a realistic consequence of segregating so many pubescent girls together away from boys) I would rather the details remained private among the characters. - religion. You are wrong in saying that in sanderson's books religious characters are good characters. There are plenty of religious negative characters (dilaf and his dakor monks come first, hraten at least has good intentions, but there is also vivenna's judgmental attitude) and plenty of not-religious good characters (jasnah takes the cake here, but kelsier is also another shining example). heck, brandon is regularly praised by atheistic people telling him how well he represented one of them and how amazed they were at fidning a strongly religious person who could portray and atheist so well. he takes effort in giving justice to any ideological view different from his own, and he does a really good job of it. I think you cherry-picked a couple of examples that are not representative of brandon's general writing. - death. yes, most times his characters die at the end of the story arc. but then, brandon always kills his characters when he feels it's appropriate for the story. most times it's at the end, which makes sense because it's the climax, the time when the characters take more risks. ok, it would be a bit more realistic to have, say, adolin randomly killed by a stray arrow through the eyeslit in a meaningless plateau run, but again, i don't see the story gaining much from it. in fact, the story follows the main characters because they are main characters. if they get killed before accomplishing much, then clearly they didn't add much to the story, and they are not worthy of being followed closely, they are not main characters. giving lots of space to someone who will just get killed may not be the best storytelling. - genre. I don't consider myself a fan of fantasy. in fact, most standard fantasy just feels to me like a cheap lord of the rings ripoff. what i actually like about fantasy in interesting worldbuilding. if a world was sketched well enough, I could read about it without even a story happening. And so i strongly apppreciate that brandon is carrying his worlds in different directions. I absolutely love what he's doing with scadrial, and I absolutely love the way he's mixing magic and technology. I never appreciated how the two didn't mix in the wot. I am a scientist and a strong believer in progress, and the general attitude of traditional fantasy of progress=bad, ancient=good, things get worse with time, was always veery unsatisfying to me. anyway, i love the exploration part of fantasy, and so exploring what happens to a world with the passing of time is very interesting to me.

My alternate theory is that since steelrunning was used by an antagonist, it can afford to be overpowered beyond reason. your theory in fact fails to explain some more side effects we see in SoS: - steelrunning allows running at superspeed, so fast as to be invisible. While that may seem reasonable, you have to take into account that every running step is a jump forward, and the law of gravity dictates how fast you fall. You would not be able to run with increased speed. Though you could jump like a cangaroo or an astronaut on the moon - the similarity shows that kind of jumping is the most effective way to move when you have muscles that are overproportionated for your local gravity. And the speed and maneuverability one can have with that jumping is limited. - steelrunning allowes stunts at superspeed on a polished marble floor. everyone who tried to run on a floor knows how you skid if you try to change direction too fast. try to do it while moving even faster, it would be like trying to run on ice. apparently steelrunning allows increased friction with the floor. - slamming your feet against the ground at super speed will break your bones - just to mention a damage even a kandra cannot ignore. that is another limitation to how fast you can move that steelrunners seem to ignore. basically, steelrunning seem to ignore all sensible limitations that are sort of built-in in other feruchemical powers. the only limitation is that it runs out really fast, and that is used to justify the heroes never, ever having access to it when it matters. sazed runs out of it running back to elendel, sazed runs out of it before he can mop the floor with marsh, sazed does not have it for all the combat situations in the third book and he only manages to store enough to free himself, but no more, the title does not say BoM spoilers so I will avoid telling how the heroes will be deprived of steelrunning in that book. I think sanderson made one of his few mistakes in making Feruchemical steel so powerful. If you keep having to write ways for your characters to run out of a certain power, there's a problem.

I don't remember that stuff from wor. he only muses a bit, but in the middle of a battle he can't spend long being distracted. is the flashback posted somewhere on the internet? if so, can i get a link?

So, what does this mean? brandon is probably giving in to the huge adolin fandom. or maybe he is just growing attached to the character, or finding he can't get rid of adolin. After all, there must be reasons he made him not die in the first place, and I doubt it's because adolin worldhopped to the real world and threatened him with a shardblade if he did. Or maybe all the rafos were because brandon always had big plans for adolin, and the lack of interest was faked. but anyway, only the ten main characters are getting flashbacks so far. So it could mean brandon is already going wheel of time on us and adding more books (no, just joking there) it's akin to a rafo actually. he tells us that dalinar will punish adolin if he discovered it, but without telling if dalinar will actually do the discovering.

the post--mortem ascension of kelsier is included in the words of founding. There was a discussion between marasi and melaan when the former was stating that kelsier survived death and ascended, to which melaan was surprised, because she never bothered to read the words of founding. So yes, northern scadrians know that kelsier is around as a cognitive shadow. of course they don't call him a cognitive shadow, and they are hazy as to what he can or cannot actually do, and they certainly ignore his exploits in the southern continent... but the general idea that something of kelsier survived and is still around is pretty much gospel.

Actually, that's covered in my argument as a specific case. If by acting blindly you do more damage than good, then not using the power really is the best you can do with it. But the moral reasoning is not "it is not right for me to use the power, I must give it up"; it is rather "using the power does more harm than good, so I should refrain from using it - or rather, I should use it only if I'm really, really sure". Heck, considering the lord ruler's track record, I think it is safe to conclude that he should not attempt to do anything with it on a large scale. sazed, though, did more good than ill with it; the ill he did were mostly unintended consequences of other greater goods, or failed ploys. As long as he keeps a positive score, he should keep going. Especially knowing that another shard is attacking scadrial, so sazed quitting would result in game over for everyone

@ maxal, two short remarks: 1) it's not a matter of convincing people here that adolin is important, as many people are already convinced. it's a matter of convincing brandon. you could try talking to him at some signing or convention 2) re: adolin reviving his blade theory: the reason that theory is losing traction lately is that brandon keep saying he don't want to explore adolin in detail. and since reviving a spren sort of implies an adolin-centered story, it becomes less likely. Oh, by the way, did anyone wonder if brandon is just deceiving us to cover spoilers? I mean, he kept telling that there would be only five alcatraz books, after all. I wouldn't put it past him to downplay the role of adolin to make the sword revival more surprising

I was going to say that. Face it, once you have power, you can't escape using it. Not using the power, or giving away the power, is a way of using the power. Using the power will have consequences, and you will be responsible. Even not using the power has consequences, and you are responsible for what happens as a result of you not using the power. There is absolutely NOTHING sazed could do that would not be controversial. If there was somebody more qualified than himself, then sazed would be right in giving the power to that somebody, but even before the ascension, sazed was probably the single most qualified person on scadrial to deal with those topics. No, all those things about not doing anything or splintering the shard are not easy ways out. They are merely ways to avoid responsibility. They would not make the world a better place, they would merely let sazed sit aside and watch the world go down the drain while saying "hey, it was not my fault". So, doing the best he can with the power is actually the right option for sazed.

Unless she has ways to move fast in shadesmar, and so far we don't think she has - even hoid must spend time to go around there - visiting other planets take months, possibly years. and since she discovered her powers, jasnah has been busy with the desolation business. even if she's somehow aware that there are other planets out there (something that is not apparent from just visiting the cognitive realm) i doubt she'd spend so much time investigating what, as far as she's concerned, is merely an academic curiosity

a bandolier is a sort of belt going from shoulder to the opposite hip to which you can tie small objects. It's hardly something unique to one culture. it's not like she has a revolver, a tinfoil hat and a medallion tied to her upper arm seemingly made of different metals.

@ maxal, I am going to add one more point: adolin is the only one in the main cast without superpowers. I always tend to find the muggle sidekick more interesting the actual superhero. I mean, everyone can be a hero and do stuff if given crazy superpowers. It takes a really special person to do it all without any special help. Unfortunately, it brings another point where adolin's story will suffer: he cannot keep up in power level. As good as he is, stormlight is just too much of an edge. I was hoping he'd at least put up some resistance with szeth, but he came out thoroughly humiliated. Hey, come to think about it, if he becomes a cohort of a radiant (and he only has to choose) he will be able to use stormlight's passive bonuses, which should be enough to put him back into useful status. of course he could become a radiant himself, but that would defy my point

do you really think brandon will write a bad story just because he can't be bothered to do better? when was the last time that brandon failed his readers? While the law of great numbers states that eventually he will fail, it also states that on any specific matter he's very unlikely to disappoint. And his previous writing record strongly suggests that he will wriite the best story arc he can for adolin, within the limits of his part in the story, because that's what brandon does. he's just earned too much credit for me to not give him credit on this matter too. We don't kill people for expressing their opinion politely, no matter how unpopular they may be, nor we start flame wars. welcome to the 17th shard, one of the nicest places on the internet.

I'm just saying that adolin does not necessarily need to have his own arc to gain resolution, nor does he need to die or be exiled (disappear from the story) to avoid cluttering the narrative. there are dozens of ways brandon could keep him a secondary character while giving him a satisfying story. I'm now thinking of thom merrilin; he was a secondary character always in the shadow of the main protagonists, yet he has a fulfilling story. adolin could have a role like that maybe. but the fact that brandon mentioned that adolin's evolution is the most surprising (something like that) makes me think that our "most likely" ideas are bound to be wrong. Anyway, if adolin dies a meaningful death accomplishing something useful, I'd still call it a good story. I'm sure adolin wouldn't mind dieing for something greater than him. Now I'm thinking of siuan sanche, and by extension gareth bryne. Sad story, but also inspiring, and the characters walked into it with their eyes open. I am a peculiar brand of optimistic. I expect things to go wrong, but I also am fully confident that they can be fixed. Well, things already went wrong, with brandon having little interest in writing adolin. this can be fixed, in that brandon can write adolin a good story nonetheless. who knows, maybe he'll write a story about a character he's not interested in as a writing excercice?

It's funny how we are trying to make prediction based on storytelling conventions that are only loose guidelines at best. It reminded me of a character from "the order of the stick" (whom any reader will identify, but I don't mention her name to avoid spoilers for eventual future readers). she was good with several issues, then she had a series of breakdown, she got crazy and did some really stupid stuff, and then... she died. the author wrote that sometimes life does not give us a chance to fix our messes. Who knows what brandon has in store for us?

And yet, even seeing the measurements, jasnah still seems bigger. Probably because she's in the center, while kaladin is nestled in a corner. Also the kaladin cover loses context without seeing szeth on the other side, though. No, but we have several precedents in the cosmere for invested people looking the way they think they should, most notably the returned and the functioning of healing. So if kaladin loses the freedom tattoo every time he takes in stomrlight because the stormlight heals him and he does not see the tattoo as belonging to him, then assuming that jasnah loses extra fat every time she takes in stormlight because she doesn't see the fat as belonging to her is a small step. Then again, I just came back form a museum where there was an ancient book as big as me, if those are the books jasnah is reading it totally justifies her frame P.S. regarding the women & weight argument: generally whenever a woman mentions dieting I tell her that she's perfect as she is. My rationale is that most women who are dieting don't really need it, but they do it so that they can tell others that they are dieting, and others will then say "you don't need, you're perfect as you are"; so they tell they are dieting ultimately because they are fishing for compliments, and I skip directly to the end of the process. I also explain the rationale afterwards; most of them laugh.

They had a perfectly good image for the cover, i.e. the full image. the choice of zooming it on jasnah, losing all the context, is... questionable. hopefully, the rest of the image would still be visible in the back. As for its capability of attracting new readers, I cannot judge, since I don't pick books based on the cover. In fact, I am familiar enough of marketing ploys - and suspicious enough - that I never buy anything new unless a friend recommends it to me. That puts me in a bad position to judge how effective a marketing ploy actually is.

eh, I totally agree with the pose thing. the full image (with the thunderclast and the everstorm) is a very beautiful image, while the small part of it they put on cover is... a beautiful woman (though fully dressed) holding a sword and doing magic stuff. without context, it seems the cover is trying too hard. unfortunately, it is just marketing. this kind of thing sells, and so they'll keep making it. Sexism has little to do with it, at least not directly. it appears there are plenty of men who can be turned into gullible fools by showing them some boobs, and plenty of women who are more than willing to take unfair advantage of that, and marketing does the pragmatic thing. Just because it is not politically correct to say it, it doesn't mean it is not true. @ beauty of main characters in SA: I don't remember the parts about jasnah and navani being praised for beauty by the general public, but if you say there are, then I trust you. Then... yeah, there is a statistical anomaly there. Probably my mind was toning down those descriptions exactly to mitigate that statistical anomaly. Well, I already admitted all his main female characters are at least sensibly above average (with the exception of short stories; I did not include Silence or shai because I don't remember any real description of them). At least the supporting cast seems to be evenly distributed. Oh, by the way, if they ever make movies out of his books, you can bet all the girls would be drop-dead-gorgeous anyway. maybe shai would have a soulstamp that would turn her into a supermodel, and she would use that to seduce the guards into letting her go. but only after facing the undead things and taking obligtory clothing damage

ok, but it makes sense for jasnah to be dressed like that. when doing physical activity, you want stuff that won't tangle or catch into something. You may notice how gymnasts and dancers (of both sexes) also routinely use outfits that leave little to the imagination, simply because they are the more practical to do that kind of activity. So it makes sense for jasnah to have a form-fitting dress, what actually makes little sense is the cape and the things dangling from her waist - bad for fighting. Ok, the best choice would be an armor, but since jasnah isn't armor-trained, and she can heal very well, an armor would probably hinder more than protect. Plus, jasnah is described as beautiful in several occasions (how did she got that physique by being a scholar, by the way? she must have done some really heavy book-lifting), and she cares for her appearance, not for flirting but for power. I can totally see her getting her hair and makeup done before a battle before she thinks the soldiers will follow her better if she does. Anyway, when you have a beautiful woman, pretty much any outfit you put her in could qualify as fanservice. The only way to completely avoid it would be to use a burqua, and really, better not go down that lane. Especially, the problem is not pretty women being shown in revealing clothes when it makes sense for them to dress such; the problem is pretty women being shown with revealing clothes completely inadequate to what they are doing for the sole purpose of fanservice. Alas, that's a real problem, though one of media as a whole. In movies, women who are supposed to be ugly just... aren't. I think sanderson is less guilty here than others are. navani is described as beautiful only by dalinar, who had a preexisting attraction for her. jasnah is described as beautiful, but she also spends a lot of effort for her looks. I always got the impression that without that, she'd be above average, but nothing special (I don't know where I get this idea; it may be totally unsupported and just triggered by my standard reaction to any woman with a lot of makeup). Laral is described as beautiful by kaladin, a teenager who is getting into puberty and who is only allowed to hang out with one girl. Shallan is very pretty and Danlan is at least pretty, but they are both in their late teens; most girls are pretty at that age. I look at events through the eyes of a scientist and I tend to latch on statistical oddities (did anyone notice how the number "7" turns up in a lot of Marasi's statistics? That's because people asked a random number between 1 and 10 will generally say 3 or 7. From that you can see those statistics are made up), and female beauty distribution is one of the things I keep track of, and none of sanderson's books triggered my "improbable-o-meter". When his whole production is taken into account, you get vin, siri, vivenna and marasi as the only other main characters who are really beautiful - with many others of ordinary or mid-high looks, like tia (no remarks), steris (plain at best), sarene (some older people complimented her, but I never got the impression that she was exceptional), tyndwil (sazed loved her, but I don't recall any other character remarking on her beauty), ranette (we can see she's ugly even through the pink-tinted descriptions of vayne). Even among those who are actually described as beautiful, I always got the impression - again, personal impression - that vivenna, like jasnah, was more groomed than really beautiful (incidentally, women judging other women tend to overstate much those kind of things, along with lack of flaws, "poise" and "elegance". Don't care much about those stuff. That's why many girls fixate on dieting, only to go to their male friends to say "look, I lost 3 kilos" and get replies like "I don't see any difference" or "I liked you better before". Last time I explained all this to a girl, she answered "I am fully aware, but I'm not doing it to be liked better by men; I am doing it to be more envied by other girls". Well, can't argue with that All this long digression because both jasnah and vivenna were described as beautiful specifically by women who remarked a lot on their poise and impeccable clothing and makeup). And that Vin was more "kitty-cute" than beautiful. And siri was given a full beauty treatmment every day before her meetings with the god-king. The statistic distribution is realistic enough; the main anomaly is that the protagonists tend to be most beautiful and the supporting characters are more plain. Shallan is probably the only one who is really, objectively 1-in-100-beautiful (and also very kitty-cute). And being the only one among several dozens characters, she is statistically appropriate. And the more I think about it, the more I think the drawings are realistic. Marasi, as seen in the cover of SoS, is pretty, but you can walk around and find many girls as pretty. Steris has been groomed to her best, but you can guess her plainess underneath. and jasnah, she looks like a pretty woman in her late thirties who used makeup to get some extra points.

right, I did not notice the glove. So she's already being very progressive re: jasnah-kaladin: I'm not sure anyone can qualify to be jasnah's intellectual peer. kaladin is close enough, though.

I am surprised. really astonished. there is a fantasy illustration with a pretty girl fighting, and yet she doesn't have a stripperiffic outfit, nor is she battling in high heels! Must be unique in its realism. (I would still point out that a dress is not the most practical garment to fight in, but it is possible jasnah got surprised by the attack and did not have time to change into something more comfortable. plus, she may have chosen the dress to project a better leadershipto the soldiers). So we have the first book, which is kaladin's book, with dalinar in the cover. Kaldin actually appears in the cover of the second, which is shallan's. and in the third we have jasnah, which we know will be a flashback character in one of the ten books, while the book is dalinar's... Now, my dear students, we have a problem for you. The stormlight archive has 10 books, and every book has a main character, and every cover features one such main character, but not the one of that book. Calculate how many cover combinantions are possible. seems to me the pikes are there holding the position, but we don't see what they actually do

So I'm not the only one who, upon reading the thread title, tought it was about shipping the two characters...

nope. the lord ruler has as much Feruchemical steel as he wants. he moves so fast that nobody can even see him. prof cannot target him if he has no idea where he is. though admittedly he is the only one who can have a shot at tlr. wrong. the atium bracelet contained youth. it made him ageless. it did nothing for healing wounds. you need Feruchemical gold for it. of course tlr had that too. vin only won with a massive deus ex machina. namely Once you read bands of mourning, you realize how incredibly ridiculous was tlr power, and how vin could have had absolutely no chance otherwise. Heck, every single inhabitant of the final empire could have been a mistborn full of atium, and tlr could have killed them all anyway with nothing but a pinch of metals. EDIT: for further clarification, (bands of mourning BIG spoilers)

i don't know how it is supposed to work, but it seems all pretty moot to me. the lord ruler just wipes everyone alone if he's putting some effort into it. he is simply too fast. none of the others can even see him. the only one who can offer some resistance is prof, by holing himself inside a shield, but i think compounded pewter will eventully broke through that too. and he will smash prof into pieces too small to regenerate. take the lord ruler out of the equation, and prof kills everyone. he can fly, so most others cannot reach him. only the windrunners and steelheart can try to atttack him. against the windrunners he is the only one who can hit from afar, using his shields as spears. he should be able to keep his distance and hit until he scores. he also does not have a limited fuel for his power, unlike windrunners. against steelheart, even if prof can't hurt steelheart, he can trap him in a shield (it withstood a nuke equivalent, it's far above anything steelheart can do to free himself) and let him starve. take prof out of the equation, and my money is on steelheart against everyone else. fly out of range, blast with energy from afar, invulnerable to anyone except a feruchemist (if tapping determination is not enough to make you afraid, just store into a coppermind all memories of who steelheart is, you can't be afraid of someone you don't know). or possibly obliteration, i don't know. just too much of a difference in power level between the lord ruler, a high epic, and everyone else.

i think we are saying the same things, just from slightly different perspectives

I'm not saying adolin has no isssues whatsoever. Any balanced and functional person, if you scratch deep enough, has some kind of vulnerability, and everyone will eventually break if pushed in the wrong ways and strong enough. I maintain that adolin really is pretty strong; he is however being pushed hard in the wrong places, and he may collapse as a result.