Elegy

Since this board is/was (?) the only place to talk about White Sand Prose, the Coppermind has never had a POV/word count Statistical Analysis page for that story like it has for the published books - but I'm kind of a statistics geek and was interested in how it would turn out, so here it is. I didn't count chapter headlines and stuff like that, which is why the total word count is less than what the document would count. I also didn't double-check every single number, but it should be close enough at the very least. Enjoy: Chapter by Chapter Breakdown (spoilered for length) Unique POV Breakdown: Character (10) # of POVs (141) % of Total POVs Word Count (208,838) % of Word Count Kenton 62 43.97% 108,690 52.05% Khriss 49 34.75% 75,393 36.1% Ais 19 13.48% 19,636 9.4% Praxton 1 0.71% 1,500 0.72% Eric 4 2.84% 1,077 0.52% Delious 2 1.42% 1,065 0.51% Reen 1 0.71% 598 0.29% Narrator 1 0.71% 493 0.24% Iador 1 0.71% 482 0.23% Nilto 1 0.71% 177 0.08%

Found the combined glyph for Skybreakers and Stonewards:

After a few more runs, I've had varying results between Edgedancer and Truthwatcher ... but I think Truthwatcher fits a bit better. This chart is pretty exemplary for my results, I think. That said, I previously thought that Skybreakers would be a bit higher (mostly because @paintweaver, the anti-Skybreaker in person, thought so ). I'm happy with the results though - and with the new pieces of information as well!

If it comforts you all, he has very positive feelings about his new companion: He also seems to be quite okay in Mistborn Era 2:

Windrunner is very present for some reason. It seems very easy to get that one - while Bondsmiths (and Dustbringers) seem to be much harder. I wonder if that is intentional and is meant to represent how many Knights the Orders usually had, with Windrunners having the most members and Bondsmiths having the fewest.

I also believe that they meant Dalinar. Renarin's own future sight showed a future of Dalinar as Odium's champion - it seems to have been very likely to happen and it's plausible that they saw the same.

I'm now annoying people who never read the books with this. They are all very confused. But my guesses have mostly been right.

Truthwatcher, as I had hoped and predicted for years, despite not knowing much about them! Edgedancers are a close second, which I am also happy with.

I remember a WOB saying that there are cultures that work differently in the cosmere, but the stories are mostly from the perspective of those that are more likely to be digestable to his readers. On Roshar, for example, I could imagine the Reshi culture to be very loose, since a lot of people seem to go there specifically to escape the strict traditions of the Honor-soaked rest of Roshar. That said, I can't seem to find that WOB right now. It's hard to find the right search words for it...

It was fanastic! I read the Mistborn trilogy, Warbreaker and Elantris (in that order) in 2010. I have always been kind of obsessed with the idea of shared continuity and just the thought that two characters from entirely seperate stories would experience the same reality is oddly fascinating to me. So when I noticed how similar these stories were in some ways, I started joking to myself, they could be set in the same, like, ... solar system, wouldn't that be nice? I liked that thought. But what was that Adonalsium thing mentioned in the Hero of Ages epigraphs? Kinda mysterious, but hey, I like riddles for the ages in stories! And on I went, not thinking much more about it. Then, in 2011, I read Way of Kings, needless to say I had become a huge Sanderson fan over the year. I fell in love with the book, especially with Kaladin, well before I got the "the" scene, Hoid just casually standing there and saying "Adonalsium", and that was a bomb shell in my brain, I immediately put the book down and walked through the room for several minutes and it all fell into place - interestingly, I never doubted that Elantris and Warbreaker would be part of the same mythos while I never considered Alcatraz being in it, which I had also read. I guess you just notice from the way the stories work. After that, I found the Coppermind, found out about Hoid being in all of the other books (another big moment - he was there all along!) and also learnt about the other Shards. In 2012, I started a chronological re-read with the books that were out (up to Alloy of Law), and took notes while reading. That's when I knew this was going to be a long-term thing.

A Stormlight song by the Blind Guardian vocalist's side-project - it was about time he covered that series as well!

Yep, I feel you. It's a quirky, pretty uneven movie. It wants to be fun yet have a serious message and convey it in an appropriate way, and I think that's a respectable goal, but it stumbles on the way because it doesn't really manage to blend these things together. I liked it better than Snowpiercer, but worlds below Parasite (which I love).

There are so conflicting opinions portrayed in the Stormlight Archive, on all sorts of stuff, like religion, justice, morality, pretty much anything - but if there's one thing that every single character, even those that love him, seems to agree on it's that Elhokar was a bad king. I agree that in an alternate timeline, he could have become a good king, and also probably still would have if things had gone differently in Kholinar - after all, he showed some signs of redemption. But, well, he sadly didn't. So yes, I think he was a bad king, but, that said, I totally agree that he wasn't a bad person either way.

Hm ... Elantrians, honestly. They glow, don't age, can do all kind of mystic stuff with the Aon Dor and have an ancient sparkling city they live in.

I personally don't see reliable proof that 10 is specifically Honor's number. There are two Shards directly on Roshar, and I honestly don't see a good reason why the 10-centric nature of Roshar would be only associated with Honor and not at all with the other Shard, Cultivation, who has been consciously active for 2000 more years than Honor (due to him being Splintered). Roshar would logically have two different numbers, but it has been repeatedly stated that Roshar is explicitly 10-centric. Same for Scadrial with 16. So, I generally think that the Shards weren't assigned numbers from the beginning, but either the planets were, or the planets and Shards got numbers assigned through constant interaction. Meaning that Honor's number for example could possibly have been various things, depending on where he went. Relevant WOB: He RAFOs it, but the last answer still heavily points at the planets being one/the crucial factor rather than the Shards.

On top of that, the Cosmere stories have an above-average Ravenclaw tendency even by the standard of books: Scholarly protagonists abound, mysteries over mysteries, and lots of words of wisdom shared . . .

Just that it's a slow read and way more heavy and uncompromising in its approach than the main books - I like it, although not as much as the Lord of the Rings. The Beren and Luthien story in particular is certainly one of Tolkien's best works, I love that one. It's undoubtedly challenging as a whole, but I don't mean that as an measure of how much I enjoyed it! --- One thing I feel is worth bringing up is that in general, Tolkien never aimed at a cinematic/overly visual writing style like most modern authors do. That's because he was mostly inspired by actual works of mythology and conceptualized Middle-Earth as a whole as a fictional mythology rather than a fantasy universe - it's why most of his work is closer to Homer, the Bible, Beowulf, and the Kalevala (my personal favorite myth) than to, say, Brandon or Robert Jordan. Since such a piece of mythology could not really faithfully be reconstructed in film (especially since the people who would tell and write down these stories in-world do not have that technology, so the films would not be the "original documents" of their culture), they can't possibly win in the same game the books play. So they play their own game - grand scope blockbuster cinema - and master it in their own right. I think it's always important to make that distinction between the goals of both works, and recognize how confident they are in both. Tolkien has certainly achieved the more extraordinary goal, while the film trilogy is not as revolutionary, but has had more of an emotional impact on me personally - which is why I probably prefer it at the end of the day.

Yeah, the Hobbit films are just terrible, for the reasons mentioned and many more. Can't really phrase it any other way. I really like the book, too... Yes, but at the same time, it is more or less a history book in-world, so I think that only fits. It makes it a comparatively slow read though, I agree with that. That's nothing in comparison to the Silmarillion though. That one really makes no prisoners.

I agree with what has been said here. All in all, I think that the books (in combination with the Hobbit book) are, in a way, the definite, complete experience, in that they are more expanded, have a lot of lore unmentioned in the movies and are more true to the mythological roots of the ideas in the story. That said, the films have more of an emotional impact on me, mostly because the greater depth to side characters (especially Theoden, Faramir, and Denethor, whose madness is blamed on Sauron's influence rather than internal conflict in the books) makes for better drama. It's very different from what the books try to achieve, both are fantastic at what they do, both among the best trilogies in their respective medium. So, I guess the best summary for my take on this is: the books are the main canon, the films are my favorite, both are highest tier.

They all look way too handsome in my opinion (well, maybe except for Kaladin), but I realize that this is probably deliberate, like, a romanticized, kitschy interpretation. Cool stuff though! The credits are a fun little thing. Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

Yes! It's one of my favorite animated shows ever, so special, distinct and imaginative. It fits better with the Halloween season, but there's no bad time for it, and in fact, it's barely 2 hours long in total, so there's really no excuse! Also, the 9 minute pilot short film Tome of the Unknown is on YouTube. I think it fits between episode 3 and 4 chronologically, but works perfectly well as an introduction either way. The whole thing's on Netflix in Germany, don't know about other places.

The star constellation on the top right is the Mourner (the constellation that inhabits the Threnodite system).

There was a bit of a technological evolution from Avatar to Legend of Korra, which was nice to see. Further back, the Edge Chronicles showed a bizarre alien biology world develop into a steampunk setting, which is pretty interesting. Both of these are young adult oriented, so they don't go deep into social developments etc. There's definitely a lot of potential there. I'd love to see more of this, mainly because the "timeless world" premise has been done to death for 70 years now. I'm very confident that the fantasy genre will continue the way of the last decade - trying to find more things that writers can do with it. For example, there's been more non-European fantasy worlds lately. I think the genre is finally opening up to its endless possibilities. An issue with the poll though, you can't really answer an "either/or" question with yes or no.

I'm pretty sure her first truth was "I'm terrified" towards the end of WOK - Pattern reacts accordingly, at least. The other two were more obvious, so that makes it 3 truths/4 oaths. Technically, there could have been an off-sceen truth, but the aim of Lightweavers on the path to the last truth seems to be figuring themselves out (becoming "honest" on top of "creative", the two Divine Attributes of the Order), and she isn't there yet at all, so I doubt it. She might have reached the fourth or fifth oath before (definitely went far enough to have the Shardblade), but fell back to oath 1 because of her new lies/loss of self-honesty due to trauma.