Mason Wheeler

I'm about halfway through the story right now, (chapter 29,) and here's what I think so far: Fun main character! Spensa is weird but her weirdness actually makes sense from the perspective of her POV, much like Wayne. Why was Spensa surprised to learn that Cobb was the one who shot her father down? It says in the prologue that he was shot down by his own flight in retribution for breaking and fleeing, which really narrows it down to a few candidates, and with the way he behaves towards her, it seemed pretty obvious from the start that he felt guilty and was trying to atone for something in his past, with "being the one to shoot him down" the most likely candidate. I love the AI. I'm a computer programmer, and Brandon's done a pretty good job of taking the bizarre ways a program with corrupted data can behave (while having no idea anything is wrong because its code is still operating exactly as designed) and mapping it onto a sentient being. I'm really liking the character of Jerkface. He was set up as... well... a real jerkface, by casting him in a specific character archetype, (OK, let's just say it; he was basically introduced as this book's Draco Malfoy,) but every time we get a closer look at him we see those expectations subverted. It almost feels like he's being subtly set up as a potential love interest for Spin eventually. (Possible love triangle with Rig? Not sure, but I could see it happening.) Cytonic hyperdrive! Doomslug is not, as some people on here were expecting, the ship's AI. So then what is it and why is it so important in those first few chapters? (And why has it fallen off the radar ever since then?) On Writing Excuses, Brandon & co talk a lot about "promises," the idea that when you set up certain questions or expectations at the start of a story, they need to pay off by the end of the story. Here's what I feel we've been promised: Learning who/what the Krell are (this one might wait for a later book) Learning what really happened on her father's last flight (this book) Getting to fly M-Bot in battle (this book) Learning where M-Bot came from (this book) I think Spin is going to "break" at some point. She's going to end up running from a battle, and she's going to have a very good reason to do so, which others won't understand/believe, leading to her being branded a coward. By the classic trilogy formula, that should happen at the climax of book 2, but pacing-wise it kind of feels like it's going to happen in this book. Guess I'll have to see...

I didn't get much this time. There weren't any outlets available, and my computer ran out of power before Brandon was finished with the reading. (One of the more interesting ones quite in a while! He was reading a Taln POV scene from Way of Kings Prime, for the first time ever according to him. I saw @OrangeJedi recording it and I hope his came out well!) So I wasn't able to record people's questions during the signing portion, and I ended up not staying for the whole thing anyway because it was getting really late and I had work today that I couldn't skip out on because work-related reasons. I did manage to get in one question during the general Q&A, though: Q: Several times we've seen Shards that can hear people's thoughts, or send thoughts to people. What we'd call "telepathy" in another setting. A: Yeah... Q: Are there any Shardworlds that have a magic system where ordinary people get telepathy? A: I don't want to actually canonize this yet, but yes, I do have a really fun idea for a world like that in the Cosmere.

You're in Dumbledore's Army?

So I dropped by the store on my way in to work, and @JoyBlu recognized me, showed me where the sign-up sheet was, and offered to get my wristband and buy my book for me and let me pay her back tonight. This fandom is awesome!

Blargh. I have to leave for work before 9 in order to be off work and back here in time for the event, and I'm sure I'm far from the only one in that particular boat. Why do the people running this not take that into account?

As usual, I'll be there to record stuff. Looking forward to seeing you guys!

Hey @Chaos, voting seems to be broken on this page specifically. Trying to upvote anything ends up with the vote never registering. Any idea what's going on?

Well that was fun. Due to other obligations, I missed basically everything before the signing, so I'll be looking forward to seeing other people post recaps. I did get one good question in, though. (I have more, but I'm saving them for the Skyward release.) Q: So Taravangian's changes happen during the night, while he sleeps? A: Yeah. Q: Has he ever thought to pull an all-nighter and see what happens? A: Yes, and it still happens. Q: He changes, while he's awake and conscious for it? A: Yes.

I'm not sure if it can go back that far, simply because there had to have also been time for civilization to arise on Ashyn, for their knowledge of magic to have grown to such a high degree that they were able to lay waste to the entire planet, and Odium's involvement means that a lot of this, at the very least, happened post-Shattering. And after that, the refugees came to Roshar and spent several generations (apparently) living in Shinovar before the whole Girl Who Looked Up bit kicked off the original Desolation. Make the Desolations period too long and you start butting up against the start of the timeline.

Woohoo! You opened with my Nightblood questions! Yeah, that was a lot of fun getting those confirmations from Brandon.

Argh! I just saw this and I was thinking "I'm totally going to go," and then I saw the time and I have other commitments at that time. I may or may not show up towards the end of it, but... ugh, I wish I'd known about this last week!

I can't put my finger on why, but I'm totally envisioning Cobb as Laurence Fishburne here. Anyone else see it?

Did anyone else hear Chaos say how Evi "tried so hard" and immediately think, "and got so far, but in the end, it didn't even matter"?

The thing about Sel magic users being more powerful than anyone except "knights radiant with a Bondsmith powering them" was a bit odd to hear, because a while back I asked Brandon if Dalinar opening a Perpendicularity was a Bondsmith power or something else, and he RAFO'd it. This sure sounds like confirmation that it's a Bondsmith power, though!

The story of the Salt Lake Comic Con getting sued is much more involved and nuanced than "the SLCC people were at SDCC trying to get fans to go to their con instead," and the people who come across looking like the bad guys when you know the broader story are the folks in San Diego. What you have to understand is that the term "comic con" is both 1) descriptive (the literal meaning of the words is simply to describe the class of thing that a comic con is) and 2) generic (in broad, general use and generally understood by the public to refer to the class of thing that the name describes.) According to trademark law, both of those are things that can not be trademarked. (Just imagine if IBM tried to trademark the word "computer," for example!) And yet the folks at SDCC somehow managed to get a trademark on the term "comic con" anyway, and started extorting all of the other comic-cons in the country to pay them licensing fees on the name. The guys at SLCC said no, that's not how trademark works, and they were right. There is no possible way that that trademark is valid given the above, especially considering that there were other groups using the term before SDCC first opened! Unfortunately, SDCC managed to get the case heard in a court in San Diego (so much for impartiality!) where the judge did a bunch of completely absurd things--including a completely illegal gag order that violated SLCC's basic rights and got overturned by an appeals court on First Amendment grounds--so it's not surprising that the ruling, when it came, ruled against them. Appeals are still ongoing, of course, but for the moment that's the ruling so they had to change their name. And honestly, if they were doing stuff like that to me, I'd try to draw fans away from them too! Afterall, this is a convention for geeks, and the one thing geeks hate more than anything else is bullies. With the stunt SDCC pulled, they deserve to be boycotted out of existence!

He went off with Ji.

My favorite Legion story was Skin Deep. It felt like it went into a bit more depth (heh) and I really loved the ending, stopping the assassins by buying out the company that had hired them. Having said that, reading Lies of the Beholder and seeing an Aspect named Mason mentioned was rather cool for me. I do agree with the criticism on this podcast about it feeling really rushed, too short, too quick, without enough explanation about critical stuff, etc. That was the feeling I had about the story as well. I kinda hope Brandon doesn't listen to this one, though, because he seemed really invested in this. At the release party he mentioned how this book is the most intensely personal thing he had ever written, and then everyone comes out and says they don't like it... that would hurt, I'd imagine.

OK, here we go. Audio of the general session, for the enjoyment of everyone who couldn't make it.

OK, I just uploaded the signing Q&A recording to Arcanum. The audio quality is not the best, because the people in line were noisy and my filters to reduce that made things sound a bit tinny, but trust me, it sounds much better than the raw version with all the background noise. Brandon was speaking loud and clear, but being able to hear the people asking questions is kind of hit-and-miss. I noticed at least one other person had a recording device there. @RShara maybe? She has a recording posted already of the Q&A from the general meeting beforehand, but not of the signing line yet. Anyway, if anyone else was recording this, let's see if you were able to get a better sound quality. Meanwhile, I got a recording of the entire general meeting. I'll be putting that up on YouTube shortly, as I have with other similar things in the past.

At one point Brandon turned to me and he was like, "wow, people are asking a lot of really great questions tonight." I kinda nodded, but I was a bit surprised because that was not my impression. Maybe it just shows different priorities. As a Sharder, I was there primarily for the Cosmere stuff, but what I had noticed at this signing was a lot of people asking him questions that were either personal questions about his life, or questions about writing and being a writer, with comparatively little in the way of Cosmere lore...

...Cultivation would be unamused and step in in some spectacular way?

During the signing, someone asked if, hypothetically, the entire city of Newcago could be used as one giant steelmind. Brandon laughed and said yeah, that would probably work. I said to him as an aside once the asker had left, "and that's how you get someone who can outrace Barry Allen," which drew laughing agreement from him.

Q: Are we just going to see Szeth kill a lot of people in the next book? A: So Szeth is... let's say, um... has some better influences than he's had in a long while. It's been a long time since he has had as good influences on him as he now has. I wouldn't count Nightblood as one of those, but... but at the same time, he's had worse influences than Nightblood. After this questioner left, since I was sitting right there recording and the next person wasn't up yet, I sort of waved to Brandon. Q: Speaking of Szeth's current situation... "Oh hi. You're the guy who killed my first husband. Now you're my new husband's bodyguard. I am strangely OK with this." A: Yeah, yeah... Q: That just feels a bit weird. A: It does feel a bit weird. And it is a bit weird. And you're going to see a lot of awkwardness. You'll see... So I've got some new character interaction fun to look forward to in Stormlight 4.

Q: So we know that there are Siah Aimian/human hybrids, right, like the Natans. A: Yes. Q: Do Dysian Aimian hybrids exist? And if no, could they? A: Ha! I don't think the biology is compatible.

Q: My only question is, can I have a RAFO card? A: Well, ask me something that I can't answer. Which isn't that hard to do. Q: Hmm... What is the ending to the 4th Stormlight book? A: There you go! Nice! *hands her a card* You do have to jump through the hoop to get the RAFO card.