CryoZenith

It's an issue of breaking suspension of disbelief, essentially. In a world where magic is commonplace and accessible by a decent chunk of the population, and that chunk of the population is generously dishing out their talents to the community (which is what tends to happen when being a nice person is basically the requirement to become magical in the first place) the existence of an in-world character who is clueless about the magic is a pretty big question mark. Like, if you were reading a book taking place during post-Catacendre Scadrial, and you saw a scene with someone genuinely confused, asking why people are drinking shavings of metal, you wouldn't think "This is fine". You would think "This is probably a worldhopper right". Yep, that is the literary-device-reason for the one-chance nature of petitioning. To give me a convenient tool for exploring character struggles and especially things such as self-confidence and guilt. The in-world mechanical reason has more to do with the theme of "don't forget, this word's god is a god with lowercase g".

I think this is a polarizing taste-based thing. Some people have fun with being thrown in the middle of the action without context, other people prefer going slow and steady. I had a friend to whom I recommended Way of Kings, they got off put by how *immediately aggro* the beginning is with the whole Szeth scene without context, I pleaded to them to keep going because they will like the book, they DID eventually admit, after finishing the book, that they liked it, but even after finishing the book, they still said they didn't like how it began. That's just... a them's the breaks sort of situation. Of course, if you can avoid a polarizing technique for free, you should, but it's definitely harder in settings where "magic isn't mysterious". One way I could do this without a literal verbal lesson is with a training montage. Describing how one of the main characters mentally prepares to petition. "show, don't tell" if you may. Haha, great intuition! I do have one of my main characters having that exact concern (about god being unfair for making petitioning single-try). I have the reason in my notes, but didn't think about how they'll find out yet.

Two points: 1. Brandon never explicitly says which type of meat soulcast meat looks closest to, but he does say soul cast meat is nearly pure muscle, with almost no oils or fat in it. So even if a piece of soulcast meat was technically crustacean-like meat, it would definitely NOT taste crustacean. 2. The average Rosharan doesn't eat soulcast meat. Most soulcasters that can soulcast meat are concentrated in Alethkar and Herdaz; most people in the other countries have either never had access to it or only tried it once or twice. In any case, it's not a staple food outside of those two countries.

Granted. The Nightwatcher doesn't hurt you with a bane, but she does punch you for wasting her time by visiting without asking for a boon. I wish for a piece of chewing gum.

CryoZenith was famished after having missed dinner today, so the potato and bean army had perfect timing.

Fortunately for Thaidakar, CryoZenith had bio-engineered all sharks to become herbivorous, and they peacefully swam besides Thaidakar, ignoring him.

If you can't explain something to a goat, you don't understand it.

Kiss Spook, marry Elend (money money monaaay), kill Harmony, take up Harmony Shard Khriss, Hoid, Vasher

My general plan for the relationship between in-world character knowledge and magic in this setting is that it's pretty well understood. Like, the requirements for Ascending are actually challenging but not SUPER hard. To give an educated guess, a solid 15% or so of the world population is "Worthy" enough to Ascend. The actual number who try is much lower than that, because of the entire "you have only one chance to petition so make sure you're the real deal" thing, but it's not an entire order of magnitude lower. So the number of Ascended is large enough and the number of Mundanes who know of them is large enough that it's pretty much "common knowledge". And "common knowledge" is not something you go get lectures about, usually. Someone on Dorumar infodumping about the magic system would be equivalent to someone on Earth infodumping about basic arithmetic. So aside from the "quality of writing" reasons, I have in-world reasons to avoid infodumps.

@#1 Taln Fan The plan is for this to be a standalone, but more on the range of ~250'000 words rather than 100'000. Great suggestion in making a clear separation between the elements I actively plan on making plot points around and ones that are just there for personal consistency, will help greatly with my tidiness. Also thanks for the advice of spoilering for length. For some reason it didn't cross my mind :)) fixed. @Channelknight Fadran I'm all ears.

There was a WoB that said as a general rule a Shard being destroyed or split or combined into another doesn't affect reserves of already existing pieces of its God Metal in the world. So I'm pretty confident that there's a bunch of Adonalsiumium around. I also have a feeling a lot of it is on Yolen. For the longest time I thought Adonalsium's god metal was aluminum, but then Brando said that soulcasting can't produce god metals (but can produce aluminum) so that hypothesis is dead haha.

Ooh, ooh, could you try a dragon? Dragons are cute. I really love your Jay btw.

My main concern is simplification of exposition vs simplification of execution. In other words, the goal of any fantasy novel (even a novel in which worldbuilding IS the main selling point) is to deliver the plot. For the most part, the worldbuilding should be gleaned from what is happening, rather than directly described by characters talking about it. So, naturally, in terms of exposition, the readers don't get all the details, and they don't need to (the details mainly being in the background for the writer to make sure he's not oopsing anything. For example, in Stormlight Archive, we never get told in-story what is the circumference and density of Roshar, but Brando does have exact numbers for those stored somewhere because they're necessary for cross reference). Simplification of *execution* is an entirely different beast though - when, for the sake of improving the plot, you actually have to change the *mechanics*. I don't know if I would have to do that for Dorumar but I suspect I might have to.

Oh, this is the *short version*. It doesn't have the spell lists of the blessings, it doesn't have the Ward list, and it doesn't talk much about Outsider magic. :3 Looking forward to your thoughts!

Thanks bruv. I really need to explore my "art viewing" in general.

``'You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in which goat hurts you.`'

It varies with the activity I'm engaging in alongside the music, really. If I'm mainly listening for the music/chilling and doing nothing else, I usually go for symphonic metal (stuff like Haggard and Therion). If I'm gaming or studying, I usually go for kpop or EDM (any blinks here?). If I'm at a bar/dancing/at the gym, I like me some reggaeton (I mostly listen to the mainstream people, like Balvin or Jam or Ozuna). I'm afraid I don't follow or check out enough fanart to have an opinion, but if you have great suggestions to get me started, have at it! My favorite book series/grouping in terms of all books I've ever read is probably Kant's critique essays. In terms of purely fiction it's the gentlemen bastards. I'm actually not a huge fan of solid sweets, I get most of my sugar from energy drinks and coca cola. My dessert of choice is closer to something like potato and onion pies. So I don't like cookies but I would be genuinely grateful if someone was offering <3.

Haha Moash is the classic. Wait she actually your favorite? I guess you are a Willshaper but... it's Venli :3.

Venli. I guess she's not necessarily the character I hate the most in a vacuum (though she's high on the list in that sense too) but having an entire third of a book trying to see things from her POV and still struggling to hate her less propels her to the top. Hbu?

In the same vein. "I accept there are goats I cannot protect."

We would have to find out what Excisors are and how exactly they work before we can fully determine how "overpowered" unsealed metalminds are. Because that might be, say, a bottleneck to mass production of medallions. So like, I feel pretty strongly that you are descriptively correct about "unsealedness" being permanent (as in, about a medallion staying a functional medallion no matter how much it is used) but exactly how powerful that is relies on the specifics of other rungs in the medallion production process. Because it might very well be the case that an unsealed metalmind is like a shardblade. In that it could go through tens of users and hundreds of years passing and still be a "functional" shardblade, but there's only so many shardblades that can exist, so there's no exponential power explosion.

I've never been scared of heights. I've only ever been scared of falling. Would you rather have apples, have oranges, or compare apples to oranges?

Thaidakar's declaration against pineapple on pizza was the drop that filled the cup of the cognitive concept of pineapple on pizza to gain sentience off its sheer size alone.