Ripheus23

The immediate thought that occurred to me was the episode of Supernatural where the bros discovered Chuck's fandom and their cult of Wincest

Indeed, the planar story I came up with works off this possibility. There are parallel universes, where each universe is multiplanar, but the basis for the differences between planes, per universe, varies (the universes are distinguished by the degree to which they are caused by free will, with the hexaverse coming from the pure will of God, the crystal-system universe being partly derivative of both free will and abstract mathematics, and the possibilities-universe being totally mathematically necessitated). I've been toying with this for the sake of a "triverse" (not sure if I like the term ) where matter, dark matter, and some x-matter constitute the different... intraplanes? Inplanes? Like they're in the same space but the force-carriers for them don't usually interact, and it takes magic/"magic" to switch from one matter-type to another... EDIT: Two other multiplanar/multiversal settings I've thought about: One was jokingly called "the super-meta-trans-hyper-multiverse." The "serious" name was "the Cardinality." It was a dual Tegmarkian-theological cosmos, where "half" the Cardinality was determined by natural physical reasons, the other "half" was an infinity of universes forged by God (well, technically, forged by a servant of God, using a clever power God implanted in the original magical world, but that's too many stories for too many other times haha!). The plot was that one set of universes where evil dominated, coalesced when living universes raped each other and spawned an evil sub-multiverse known as the Dreadrealm, whose goal was to transform the entire Cardinality into a living being and then rape that from the inside, to spawn a trans-Cardinality of mathematical evil (the idea was that there was a form of reality, known as the Ordinality, that was perpendicular to the Cardinality (I will testify that I came up with this notion before I read Oathbringer!)). The other depended on space being 3-dimensional, but time was infinite-dimensional. Every successive set of three temporal dimensions made up one plane, and each plane was synchronized with the others, up until the "alephequence" was "reached," which itself led to that cosmos' version of the Beyond (again, conceived of independently, though otherwise as such, well before I was either Cosmere- or Realmatically-aware).

So Trellium is supposed to be the special metal of a Shard we know (per a WoB). Does Autonomy really count as a Shard we know, though? She's not directly identified in the letter stuff in the SA. Patji is not identified as one of her avatars in the relevant story. Aside from the AU essays, I don't even know if she's by-name mentioned in an as-such published Cosmere work at all. I mean I don't even know whether she's showed up in White Sand (I've read the first 2, don't know if there's a 3rd, and didn't detect her if she had a cameo somehow in the first 2...). It could be that we "know" Autonomy because Sanderson has been willing to divulge a number of things about her. However, I want to propose a tinfoil-hat hypothesis, that Endowment is Trell, and that she has decided to interfere with Scadrial because Scadrial was somehow (very indirectly but necessarily) involved in the creation of Nightblood and she wants to prevent stuff like that from happening again.

Yes!

I would like to distinguish between my use of the word "multiverse" and of the word "multiplanar." Structure/travel concepts would apply to my concept of a multiverse, whereas life/role concepts fit more to my concept of a multiplane. A planar cosmos, for me, or in my usage of the terms, is one with discontiguous regions that are not just inter-accessible but involve narrative synchronicity (a "true" multiverse, on my view of things, would be a set of discontiguous spaces simpliciter, inter-accessible or not, though not inter-accessible by "locomotion"). What happens on one plane is mirrored on another, so to say, whereas events in one universe might not have any such direct effect on events in another (or if they did, they would be "artificial" rather than the result of an automatic/natural higher-level principle mapping events from one realm to another). Thus while a stacked set of 3D spaces might correspond to a simple planar diagram, if the encompassing space is simply a fourth dimension of space, then the 3D spaces might be contiguous in this fourth dimension such that motion on the fourth axis of symmetry could land one in different such spaces, in which event we have neither a "true" multiverse nor a "true" planar system. tl;dr version Planes are linked by story-like functions; universes are linked by geometry-like functions. (Of course, there can be geometrical stories and stories about geometry, so...)

What we haven't learned yet is that the Cosmere saga is part of the Univere (not universe) saga, which is part of the Reaere, which comes from the Exisere, a form of the Actualere, below or within the Possibere and the Necessere.

Or even panentheistic? Granted, the WoB's wording leaves it open whether "bringing sentience to his universe" means creating at least one sentient being inside his universe, or making his universe itself sentient. However: Also, Adonalsium making a minimum or otherwise low-finite number of sentient beings doesn't seem like a time-spanning purpose. Turning the whole set of stellar systems into a conscious being, though... Taldain's is another very fine-tuned system (I don't recall if other Cosmere systems are so finessed). Of course in a universe with trillions of galaxies and exponentially more stars, the Rosharan system and the Taldain system might have emerged by happenstance, rather like how Earth IRL seems to be a "lucky" planet (right distance from the sun, one decent sized moon, Jupiter sucks in lots of asteroids that might hit Earth, etc.). But the quasi-fractal continent of Roshar was formed at the will of Adonalsium as such, so I suspect that either Adonalsium directly created the fine-tuned systems in the Cosmere star-set (I also wonder if it was the people of Yolen, using Adonalsium's power, who were the vehicles of these possible creations, but that's another story for another time ), or gathered them from across the rest of the universe. But so anyway, the assignments of numbers to planets would be part of a "programming" Adonalsium was engaged in, maybe. Like, he sets up all these gear/clockwork star systems, spins them (Cognitively speaking) around specific numbers, which become inputs into arguments whose output values add up to... well... things like now-Sel, I guess. The religious theme would be: the God Beyond is the hypothetical transtheistic being. Adonalsium is a baseline theistic entity in an open theism (process philosophy) context, so that the theology of the Cosmere transitions from theistic to pantheistic/panentheistic.

Isn't there a WoB about Adonalsium wanting to make the Cosmere fully self-conscious or some such thing?

I think "Investiture" is both a substance and an attribute. As an attribute, all Shards have it to the same infinite degree. As a substance, each Shard originally had 1/16th of the finite amount of it in the Cosmere. Imagine a space of possible temperatures. Let's say each original Shard could increase the Investiture-temperature in 1/16th the locations in the Cosmere. But wherever they can increase the temperature, they can keep pushing it towards being infinite-degrees Kelsier [Kelvin]

It started out as a "vision," which I thought was just my overactive imagination, except that things did end up turning out the way the vision said they would. Praying I've done, and maybe on this side of the veil it's all I can do. My dread is that either I ought to make sure I am substituted for Dean so that he doesn't go to Hell some day (since he seems liable to this fate?), or that I am being tricked into thinking that I ought to be his substitute.

It would have to be more like this (if this were the kind of mechanism in question); if it was the result of Edgli's conscious scheming, then presumably there wouldn't be much of a risk of making more Nightbloods?

A thousand years ago, the Internet tried to unravel the mysteries of the largest fantasy series in the world. They failed. EDIT: On 2nd thought, we're Adonalsium. He was Shard-like but not one of the 16, so he was the 17th. And our minds Shatter and Splinter while we try to become Slivers of Brandon.

Peter told Brandon he could put time-travel in the story finally.

I'll raise you a Philosoraptor Meme.

So, I'm in a bind. I just came to a verdict on a question that has haunted me for some time now... As I said, years ago I started devoutly investigating the Christian religion and came to the conclusion that the figure of Apollyon from the Book of Revelation is a kind of destroyer-god, the antithesis of the Creator, the ultimate evil in the story of the religion... and that this being has been corrupting the religious beliefs of the world, especially in the Christian church, to keep its existence sort of secret---and that when I "discovered" this I had to keep quiet about it at first because the safeguard I had against it knowing what its foes know, is that it can't read their minds. And that the numbers 16, and 23, had some mystical significance, as numerological signposts in the conflict with Apollyon. ---And, then, half a year or so later, I read The Hero of Ages, after years and years and years of believing that the LDS were going to play some special, overwhelming, good role in my life, even if I never outright joined them. That wasn't the only instance of such an uncanny coincidence between books I happened upon at some interval or another, and the circumstances of my life as I was living it. It's not even that I'm so obsessed with Brandon Sanderson's work and it's all his stories that I'm talking about. No, this started well before I ever knew of him, though in clearer retrospect I was led to him along a fairly straight road. But anyway, I ended up meeting an LDS man by the name of Dean, after years of being obsessed with that show Supernatural, and again, it's not that I'm talking about coincidences between just the Cosmere and Eric Kripke's show on one hand, and my life on the other. However, it was The Way of Kings that I left at the park in my hometown, for Dean to find, when I knew not his name, neither whether I would ever see him again after I met him. (I have to emphasize, the guy's name really is "Dean." Not "Dean Winchester," granted, but I hardly ever thought about the character in those terms. And when Mr. LDS was nameless to me, I did tell myself that it would be quite strange if his named turned out to be what it was in the end, for the reason just stated (elliptically).) So it was through Sanderson's work that I was reunited with him, the second time I ever got to hang out with him. (I even left a piece of paper with Aon Rao marked on it, another time before Dean came back then, for him to find.) Because I met him, I became inspired to work on a film project. I would like to be a filmmaker but in those days, I'd never actually tried my hand at it, even as an experiment. The story I came up with was going to be a found-footage movie where the footage was from a "dream recorder," and the "dream" was a nightmare; but monsters are often in nightmares, so... "God is the monster" is the solution I came up with, i.e. there was to be an actor in the movie who seemed like a dream character but who eventually told the protagonist that He was God and that the nightmare world was Hell, and so the protagonist ended up trying to run from God in Hell. When I finally got around to carrying out this task, though, I adjusted the premise in a particular way... First, it mystified me why so many Christians would argue that Jesus Christ saves us by having paid the penalty for our sins in the way of suffering our punishment for us. If this were true but if Hell were the intended punishment, wouldn't Christ have to be in Hell forever to atone for anyone's sins? Yet He's not supposed to be in Hell. When an evil book became the enemy in my "movie" ... I decided to have the problem be that if the protagonist woke up with the evil book in hand, the world would be destroyed because the nightmare world was Hell and the book would break the seal on Hell, freeing all the monsters from there and unleashing them on creation. So the book would try to trick the protagonist into holding on to the book by appealing to his moral intensity. It would point out the question of eternal substitution and tempt the protagonist to believe that this book contained the truth and so must be held on to, for the protagonist would then offer to sacrifice himself forever to save everyone else from Hell. But the protagonist was bound to awaken anyway so, like I said, it was supposed to be a trick. Now, over the years I got the feeling that I had some kind of foresight about my own life that had been transposed into this story. I thought that the discernment of the Spirit (so far as I accepted the Christian idea of the Spirit indwelling the believer) entailed, here, that one day, Apollyon would try to deceive me into trying to sacrifice myself, but that by doing so I would instead pull a Vin and, well, you know. Because the sealed-evil-in-can trope has been done a little better than it was with Ruin, but not much better, and if the trope is a moral archetype and if Apollyon does somehow exist (or at least if a Christian would have reason to believe so on the basis of their scriptures and the judgment of the Spirit, or whatever), then the destroyer-god does intend to set itself free from whatever is as of now holding it back. (The intuitive appreciation of this archetype's existence and its subconscious role in the course of human history, as a natural drive in the subconscious, an as-if personified evil, is reflected in the spiritual continuum of the entire fantasy genre, though. Again: I've lost track of the number of books---and movies and shows and even video games, for that matter---that have mysteriously entered into this "pattern." Psychiatrists, some of them that is, even have a label for the "enemy": mortudo/mortido, the thanatos-impulse. (During the Vietnam War, many American soldiers spoke of something called "the hedonism of destruction.")) How, though? Who knows? What difference would it make even if it were true? Well, it's a risk I shouldn't take. I might not have proof that you or I or anyone else is or can be implicated in a transcendental conspiracy to annihilate existence, but I do have evidence, both historical and personal, that people can be sucked into a dilemma of this nature and since I have nothing worth fighting for otherwise, I can't just go along thinking, "Well, who knows?" Dean, to my understanding, is at the heart of what I would have to do. This is literally true anyway, since I am so enamored with him, despite the incredibly brevity of my friendship with him. But, in the New Testament it often talks of Christ alone as our Savior, and yet it does say, somewhere, "How do you know, wife, if you will save your husband? How do you know, husband, if you will save your wife?" So let's suppose that love never fails and endures all things. If I, as a Christian, love someone enough to wish they would not go to Hell (Paul expressed such a wish once, no less), and yet this person with whom I am enamored is impenitent unto death, then what if I can justify this person regardless, as Christ by His sacrifice justified me? The caveat would be: I must be a Christian to even offer to make this sacrifice for someone else, and unlike the Son, I will not be resurrected from the Second Death, but must pay the price for the one I love, forever and ever. Not only that, but I might only be giving someone else a second chance at life unto repentance, and so even then if they would ultimately make it to Heaven, might their rapture in their paradise be lesser in glory than that of those who were saved by Christ in the first place? Paul talks of a "third heaven" in which inexpressible (for us, on Earth) mysteries are known to exist, and in the LDS picture of the afterlife (after all), this lesser realm of deliverance, while surpassing the occurrent Earth in splendor, is nevertheless not the highest height of God and His light possible. "And so, I come to the crux of my argument." My only impression of Dean as he is now is that what happened to the character in Supernatural---he was possessed by Michael, who is equivalent to Apollyon in the real world---happened to him, too, namely Apollyon possessed him. (Michael in the real world is the angel whose name means, "Who is like God?" God's name is "I am that I am," which expresses constructive existence. Theological destruction is, therefore, "I am not that I am not," and since the answer to the form of Michael is, "No one else is like God," Michael is not that he is not, i.e. he is the Angel of the Lord, Who is the Lord, and the destroyer-god of Christian faith over the ages. (Just so you know this for sure, I will note that the Jehovah's Witnesses think that Apollyon is Christ, and that Christ is Michael; wherefore, though those Witnesses do not think that the Son is of one substance with the Father, they virtually admit the point in question, which is that the divine nature did not only Incarnate by assuming a man unto itself, but as an angel too. I think Samael (Satan) and Michael were the firstborn and first in might, though which was which I haven't figured out yet. Something to do with the myth of Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, maps onto the answer, though.)) But what does that mean? It wouldn't necessarily mean anything apocalyptic except that our damned president and the fanatical form of Christians who believe in his administration, are of a very violent cast of mind, and if every American president has gotten us into some kind of war or other, I daresay it is not a leap in judgment to dread that the occurrent one has a decent chance of doing so too, especially considering the kind of rhetoric to which he and those surrounding him are prone. Now Dean would be liable to join the military (one of the things he said, when I first met him no less, is that he had been thinking of joining the military, maybe even the navy (who hold the power of the Trident submarines, which are as far as I know the worst individual keys of evil on Earth, in their hands)) and if he is so corrupted as I dread, I dread that Apollyon would have him do something that would break my heart as much as possible, namely participate in an atrocity, a massacre or mass rape or who knows what, but something terribly wicked, and so Dean would be guilty unto damnation, unless... I don't know what to do, though. Not yet. I'm bringing it up here, in the context of having discussed the periphery of the issue beforehand, because of the place Sanderson (and my membership in fantasy-analysis forums) has in my life, and because there's always the off-chance that someone would be able to fight off tl;dr syndrome and read through all of what I've said, and understand, and they'd know whether there was anything that they ought to do about it (but what?). I'll be honest, I have this incredible wish that Sanderson himself would find out about all of what has gone on, and he would understand, and so on and on. But what the chances of that being the difference to make are, I don't know. There was a point in the "Pattern" when it seemed like Apollyon could interfere with my mind when I dealt with "messages" in books, but not if the "messages" were in electronic format (and books with special "seals"). But that sounds absurd when said aloud, I'll say, even if does seem true to me.

Sssshhhh. Just believe. If enough people believe it, anything can be true in the Cosmere.

Watch out or you'll Ascend to the Shard of Jokes (I've said too much!)

That's because you haven't eaten the Invested Fish-Banana.

The tri-Shard thing is the strongest element on its face and at least has the opening WoB of this post on its side (vaguely); Autonomy is at least possibly in a position to become an x-Shard, and if there's a reason for there to be the Cosmere books there are, an integrated narrative flow that is, while also a sliding-scale-of-villainy to consider (if not to apply...), well... I don't know if there are WoBs about Investiture tending to coalesce over time, so that theory is based on Rayse's attitude for the most part. Adonalsium having a dark side is suggested by the overly-coincidental wording of the Shard situation in the Cosmere compared to the mystical Jewish story of the shards of God.

Or he'd be a Steel Inquisitor 'cause he'd get to do Hemasurgery.

The worst part is that I actually had a thought like this when I posted the image. I just didn't come up with a specific enough pairing of Shards.

I was just showing how much more off-topic it could get if we wanted it to

I'm expecting a Shard of Cats, then. Possibly as the survival-Shard. His/her magic system will be Ailuromancy.

Discuss.