Elegy

Edit: Oops, this comment was originally meant for the "Books you're reading" topic. Anyway, regarding stopping mid-series (rather than mid-book), I've never read Wise Man's Fear, despite liking (although not loving) Name of the Wind. I generally like to read series when the last book is in sight (......), plus what I read about the tropes in there really made me not want to read it... I do respect Rothfuss' writing though.

To add to the Painted Man discussion, I dropped it after the first book and it seems I haven't missed much. It's been a while, but I remember the author randomly deciding to have horrible things happen to main characters without any set-up or reason, which is, imo, the antithesis of good storytelling. It's one of my least favorite fantasy books ever. I'm also sick of hyper sexist fantasy worlds as an excuse to portray gratuitous violence against women - it's overused and tiring and doesn't add anything new to a genre that is widely regarded to have sexist tendencies anyway.

There"s a "Song of War" among the Listener Songs in the Words of Radiance epigraphs, so it could be connected to that one.

Fixed! Thank you!

So ... the animation and the world-building are both top-notch, but I find it narratively so frustrating ...

I've recently finished my re-read (I love it even more than before), so I have a more specific opinion now. Basically, I think the way the movies cut things together is brilliant. They combine different scenes/situations/pieces of dialogue in such logical ways, and tighten it up. It's not as thorough anymore (and wow, are the books thorough; the attention to detail is amazing), but the pacing has been greatly improved. I think I prefer Fellowship's first half in the film version for that reason. Altogether, the films just do an astonishing job, and most of the decisions were logical and good (except for the Aragorn tangent in the middle of the second one, which just wasn't necessary, and the ghost army's presence in battle in the third, which cheapened the victory). Also, Théoden in the films is a whole new level. I love his conflict, his hopelessness. In the books it lasts one paragraph, right before the Pelennor battle. Sowing the seeds for that way earlier has made that sequence much more powerful.

Thanks for sharing this! Whatever reason there was to be hopeful is gone now. At this point, there's no reason for it to be made at all, as I see it. It's a well-worded and honest statement though! I really like "Bryke"!

Re-reading Hobbit+Lord of the Rings, I've just finished the Rohan arc. Beautiful, beautiful prose, historical lore as deep as imaginable, and - as a result of both - such a unique atmosphere. I love these books (despite some problems with pacing and dramaturgy)!

Not a huge Rush fan, I'm afraid, but I've been knee deep into progressive rock (early 70s Yes/Genesis are my faves, not that deep into it anymore though), so I know, like, four or five Rush albums at least. They're very good instrumentalists, undeniably!

Yes! With only four releases at that! As soon as Rhythm of War is out, it will be easily more than half of it. Then after book 5, Mistborn will presumably catch up a bit, but I doubt it will ever reach it again (adding ~150,000 words for Lost Metal and ~700,000 for the next trilogy would make it almost 2 million words, while Stormlight, even without novellas, will almost certainly surpass 2 million with book 5).

Thanks! It counts the total number of POV scenes of all characters in the book combined. That's the difference between a "POV" and a "POV character", and this is the former - I should find a way to make that clearer, because now I see how it seems misleading. I took the data for the Final Empire from this page and double-checking, it should be correct. I just phrased it in a confusing way, well, I didn't phrase at all, since I just took the phrasing from the Coppermind and didn't think of the change of context. I'll change it when I get up I should also add a note that every new chapter is automatically a new POV (even if the character remains the same), while it's still the same POV if it's a new scene within the same chapter with the same character - because that's how the Coppermind pages handle it. EDIT: Done - I hope it's clearer now! Let me know if I should change other things, I will happily do it to make the tables more understandable!

If you count every character with a Coppermind page, it looks like this: Shardworld (8) Characters (1,377) % of total Characters POV Characters POV % of characters on that Shardworld Roshar 731 53.09% 42 5.75% Scadrial 379 27.23% 34 8.97% Sel 120 8.71% 12 10% Nalthis 66 4.79% 6 9.09% Taldain 48 3.49% n/a n/a Threnody 18 1.31% 2 11.11% First of the Sun 12 0.87% 1 8.33% Other 3 0.22% 1 33.33% The characters in the „Other“ category are: Hoid, Frost, Uli Da Every character counts only once Shard Vessels are assigned to the world they are Invested in Roshar POV characters are two less than the Stormlight character number above because of the two POV characters in Stormlight that are not Rosharan

(EDIT: Just noticed - to see the whole tables on the mobile page, you have to use the horizontal mode! Sorry for not seeing that earlier ) So, I finally pulled this through: This is a statistical analysis of word count of stories and POV (point of view) characters in the Cosmere, pre-Rhythm of War. It's based on those on the Coppermind both in concept and data, so it was not as much work for me as it looks like (still a bit ). So, I necessarily followed the analysis conventions of the Coppermind, which means that I didn't include the following sorts of text: Ars Arcanum entries essays epigraphs Graphic Novels (naturally) chapter titles, generally text outside of the actual POVs (like text on illustrations and, in one of the short stories, footnotes) These explain why these word counts are generally a bit shorter than information on other sources might imply. On top of that, every new chapter is automatically a new POV (even if the character remains the same), while it's still the same POV if it's a new scene within the same chapter with the same character. The analysis is also limited to the canonical Cosmere, so no Aether of the Night, White Sand Prose, etc. This means that White Sand/Taldain, despite being canonical, are not represented in this statistic at all. I plan on doing another analysis that is the same but with White Sand Prose included. Since White Sand Prose is only allowed to be discussed in its sub-forum, I will post it under my Statistical Analysis of White Sand Prose there, once I find the time to do it. So, there we go: 1. Series Story (8) POV Characters (98) % of POV Characters Word Count (2,818,129) % of Word Count The Stormlight Archive 44 44.9% 1,276,934 45.31% Mistborn Era 1 20 20.41% 731,642 25.96% Mistborn Era 2 14 14.29% 337,427 11.97% Elantris 10 10.2% 208,212 7.39% Warbreaker 6 6.12% 196,014 6.96% The Emperor’s Soul 3 3.06% 31,925 1.13% Sixth of the Dusk 1 1.02% 18,083 0.64% Shadows for Silence 2 2.04% 17,892 0.63% I counted the two Scadrial Eras separately, as well as Emperor’s Soul. This is mostly because it’s easier to just add the separate datas together. I counted Secret History as Era 1, and Allomancer Jak as Era 2. The character numbers don’t add up because two characters have POVs in several stories. They count in every story they're in, but only once in the total character number. --- 2. Single Works Book / novella / short story (19) # of individual POVs (all characters) (1,423) % of Total POVs Word Count (2,818,129) % of Word Count Oathbringer 273 19.18% 454,440 16.13% Words of Radiance 178 12.51% 398,238 14.13% The Way of Kings 123 8.64% 384,265 13.64% The Well of Ascension 147 10.33% 244,371 8.67% The Hero of Ages 131 9.21% 225,372 8% The Final Empire 74 5.2% 210,103 7.46% Elantris 122 8.57% 201,372 7.25% Warbreaker 110 7.73% 196,014 6.96% The Bands of Mourning 83 5.83% 127,456 4.52% Shadows of Self 70 4.92% 110,019 3.9% The Alloy of Law 36 2.53% 94,652 3.36% Mistborn: Secret History 26 1.83% 44,981 1.6% Edgedancer 20 1.41% 40,660 1.44% The Emperor’s Soul 21 1.48% 31,925 1.13% Sixth of the Dusk 1 0.07% 18,083 0.64% Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell 3 0.21% 17,892 0.63% The Hope of Elantris 3 0.21% 6,840 0.24% The Eleventh Metal 1 0.07% 6,815 0.24% Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Elantia 1 0.07% 5,300 0.19% The word count for The Hope of Elantris is not exact but based on word count per page of the other Arcanum Unbounded stories without chapter division. I think it might be a bit less than indicated here, but it's close anyway. --- 3. Shardworlds Shardworld (6) Works (19) % of Works Word Count (2,818,129) % of Word Count Roshar 4 21.05% 1,276,934 45.31% Scadrial 9 47.37% 1,069,069 37.94% Sel 3 15.79% 240,137 8.52% Nalthis 1 5.26% 196,014 6.96% First of the Sun 1 5.26% 18,083 0.64% Threnody 1 5.26% 17,892 0.63% --- 4. Complete Character POV Analysis (spoilered for length)

That's debatable. But Tolkien wrote stories about him that were disconnected from the Legendarium, so it's basically official that he's not bound to one specific continuity. Edit: Just read that Tolkien re-purposed his poems about Bombadil as songs sung about him in-world after the fact, so this comment was only half true. But he's a character that was not created for Middle-Earth but for his children (apparently based on a toy of theirs) and then rather spontaneously integrated into the continuity when he wrote Fellowship of the Ring. So that's why he doesn't really fit the Middle-Earth mythology.

I think @Honorless also wanted to see this Awesome! Now that this ball is rolling, I think I'll upload a "whole canonical Cosmere" statistical analysis in the next days.

Beautiful! I love statistics I took the formating from the Coppermind's Statistical Analysis pages (but left out the chapter percentages, since I felt they didn't say all that much). Judging from the pages' histories, I believe the user to establish this was @cem, so that's where the model and the idea come from!

Yeah, from time to time ... I also tend to intuitively sort characters into Orders or to Shards. It just happens: Someone acts a certain way and it's ... Oh. Dustbringer. Also, Tom Bombadil is a worldhopper and you can't convince me otherwise

Lift would have to be Kirby Robin with darker hair is Renarin Adolin might be Shulk Silver-haired Zelda is some Elantrian Game & Watch is some kind of spren, maybe a cryptic Bowser is a baby chasmfiend Dog-form TenSoon got an Aviar and became Duck Hunt Duo And maybe Yolish dragons look a bit like Charizard, so that could be our Frost

Stephen Sondheim musicals: Sweeney Todd: Sunday in the Park with George: Into the Woods:

Brandon has also proven that his eventual answers are plausible, satisfying, and potentially guessable, so we have a fundemental trust that it will all eventually make sense and that it's possible to get it right due to foreshadowing etc. I think there's been enough "I knew it!"s and "I should have known!"s in his books to make us feel both gratified and challenged to go on and try.

I guess that sort of confirms what we have been theorizing for quite some time. Thinking of it as some kind of extended sequel to the Kaza interlude makes me pretty excited! That said, the title does sound a bit flat to me, especially when compared to the other Stormlight titles. It's cool for what it implies, but I don't think it sounds particularly good.

This WOB makes it sound like he just feeds on Stormlight without converting: Converting would be possible, but it's hard to figure out: --- Last time he was asked, Brandon hadn't figured out the answer himself: But that was 2017. We will eventually get official numbers, I hope, but that might still take a lot of time... Oh, and welcome to the Shard!

There's recently been a news article about this: https://www.17thshard.com/news/brandon-news/post-row-plans

Don't know if there are other methods, but usually worldhoppers seem to use places with huge amounts of Investiture to make time pass faster: