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Mason Wheeler

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Everything posted by Mason Wheeler

  1. Mason Wheeler
    ...which is why I said he's difficult to categorize. Both interpretations are valid, depending on which perspective you look at him from.
  2. Mason Wheeler
    I just ran across this article from last year, discussing how the plots of stories have "shapes" based on the emotional highs and lows of the protagonist, and that most of them can be categorized into six basic shapes: Rags to Riches (rise) Riches to Rags (fall) Man in a Hole (fall then rise) Icarus (rise then fall) Cinderella (rise then fall then rise) Oedipus (fall then rise then fall) I saw this and immediately thought, "so what is the 'shape' of the various Cosmere stories?" It's particularly complicated for a lot of the stories because of the way Brandon uses multiple protagonists in different ways. In Warbreaker, for example, Siri, despite already starting out as a princess, follows the Rags to Riches plot, whereas Vivenna is a Woman in a Hole. Likewise for Elantris, Prince Raoden is a Man in a (sludge-filled, zombie-infested) Hole, Sarene (appropriately enough, as she is a princess) is a Cinderella, and Hrathen is kind of hard to categorize. And I suspect all but the bravest of scholars would absolutely despair at trying to categorize the Stormlight books according to this framework...
  3. Mason Wheeler
    @Hawkido Umm... I didn't say any of those things.
  4. Mason Wheeler
    I actually didn't know that. Source?
  5. Mason Wheeler
    I haven't had the opportunity to read the book, but given that the Liar of Partinel, set on the same world, takes place in a Bronze Age civilization, I would guess that dragonsteel is exactly what it sounds like: a near-miraculous metal of great strength that can only be forged by the powerful flames of dragon breath.
  6. Mason Wheeler
    Now that would be interesting! Gather a bit of the god-metals of all 16 shards, alloy them together, and you have a bead of... well... of Adonalsium. I wonder what you could do with that...
  7. Mason Wheeler
    I looked, but didn't find any topics about this. So in case you didn't see the blog post, Brandon recently did an interview with Bulgarian fantasy outlet Shadowdance. You can read the interview in English or Bulgarian here. Here are a few highlights. When asked about writing screenplays for Cosmere or WoT movies: If only he had said baseball instead of soccer. The Michael Jordan jokes would practically tell themselves! The Mistborn: The Final Empire cover from the Spanish translation is truly horrible: But Brandon doesn't hold it against the artist. He didn't have much to work with, because the artwork was commissioned before the Spanish translation was done. (Which immediately raises three more questions: Why did they commission it so early, why not commission it from someone who could read English, and why do they need a new piece of cover art in the first place?) On literary quality: Also, a bunch of fun official and fan artwork, including this:
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  8. Mason Wheeler
    On a related note, do we have any WoB as to which metal he was using in the Shallan flashback? To "make people respond to him" it had to have been either Zinc or Brass, and looking back at that scene I could see a good case for either one, either Soothing Shallan's father and dampening his infamous temper, or Rioting Shallan afterwards when he was speaking to her alone and trying to get her to realize/admit she's a proto-Radiant.
  9. Mason Wheeler
  10. Mason Wheeler
    We know that Radiants get power by "speaking the words". But the way it works seems pretty inconsistent. Kaladin clearly had Syl bonded to him, and was able to draw in Stormlight, before speaking even the First Ideal. He was able to instinctively use Surgebinding to deflect arrows long before speaking the Second, and after speaking the Second Ideal, he didn't have any noticeable improvement in his Surgebinding abilities; he still had to spend a bunch of time in Words of Radiance learning how to use his powers. Lift spoke the First Ideal before her flashback started, and (in her admittedly unreliable mind at least) doing so was necessary to bond her "voidbringer." She was pretty adept at manipulating both friction and Growth before she ever spoke the second. Dalinar was unable to even bond a spren at all before speaking both of the first two Ideals. The one thing that seems completely consistent so far (except in Dalinar's case, because grumpyspren) is that you get your Blade with the Third Ideal. But what do the first two do?
  11. Mason Wheeler
    ...which still doesn't tell us anything except that the name Jaddeth has been around for a long time in Fjordell mythology.
  12. Mason Wheeler
    Do we have any evidence at all that Jaddeth even exists, or ever did?
  13. Mason Wheeler
    The problem I had with it was that the twist was telegraphed from the very beginning. I probably would have noticed this even if I hadn't been listening to Writing Excuses, but hearing the way they talk about "promises" really drove the point home on this: when you introduce a mystery in chapter one, you're making a promise to the reader that they'll see a resolution to it by the end of the story. And the one thing that the narrative went out of the way to underscore as being "mysterious" was what a Reality Badge looks like when you're on the receiving end. This immediately sets off the following train of thought: By the end of the story, the reader will know what a Reality Badge looks like from the duplicate's POV The reader is following Davis's POV By the end of the story, we'll have Davis be inside a Snapshot With this pacing, the story isn't really big enough to cover more than one Snapshot ...SNAPCEPTION!
  14. Mason Wheeler
    Just one problem with all of this: Devotion was not the Jaddeth-side Shard. Devotion was held by Aona (as in the Aons) and was the primary influence on the Shu-Korath religion. Dominion's Shardholder was named Skai (as in the Skaze, the "evil Seons" who advise the Dakhor) and his power influenced the formation of Shu-Dereth.
  15. Mason Wheeler
    Elantris was actually the one Graphic Audio recording I really didn't enjoy. The voice actresses for both Sarene and the young girl cousin (can't remember her name) had voices that were really strident, and it got very grating very quickly, listening to them.
  16. Mason Wheeler
    You mention that "about half a day" might be significant as how long her food-power reservoir lasts. It's worth noting that "about half a [waking] day" is how long it takes for you to go from satiated to really hungry.
  17. Mason Wheeler
    A few notes: I have no idea how Nale is officially pronounced in Words of Radiance, but there's a character with the same name in The Order of the Stick, and one memorable scene is full of wordplay that only works if his name is pronounced exactly the same as the word "nail". Calling Dalinar the de facto king of Alethkar does not mean they made him king; rather the opposite actually. It means he's the one who wields the power of kingship in actual fact, but not officially.
  18. Mason Wheeler
    Awesome, thanks!
  19. Mason Wheeler
    I pre-ordered Snapshot, and it says it's supposed to be released "February," which could be anytime during the next four weeks. Sometime during the next four weeks, I'm going to be moving. So among all the other zillion things going on, I need to know whether or not I need to contact the publisher and get them to change the shipping address. Do we have any more precise release date yet? I'd imagine we would, seeing as how it's happening this month, but if so I can't find it...
  20. Mason Wheeler
    Just noticed this. I don't recall if Rock was specifically mentioned after the Everstorm, but it appears that Lopen and his clan of Herdazians came through it all right. Then again, now that I think about it in this light, (no pun intended,) that might be why he was able to inhale stormlight and regenerate at the very end. I always assumed it was because of his association with Kaladin, like in the vision Dalinar saw where the soldiers working with the Radiants were able to make some use of Stormlight too.
  21. Mason Wheeler
    Occam's Razor. If they did, it's reasonable to assume that someone would have mentioned them. We should be seeing people farming skyeels, for example, instead of them just being a curiosity of a wild animal.
  22. Mason Wheeler
    Interesting idea, but if they're for the spren bond, then why do skyeels and Ryshadium not have gemhearts?
  23. Mason Wheeler
    You could say... *CSI glasses pull* ...they really butchered it!
  24. Mason Wheeler

    Gemhearts

    Mason Wheeler posted a question in Cosmere Q&A

    Has anyone thought to ask Brandon yet, what biological purpose do gemhearts serve? They're obviously not actually hearts, (blood-pumping organs,) so what do they do? Why do they grow within some greatshells?
  25. Mason Wheeler
    ...except that everyone who looks at that seems to immediately respond with "huh? What in the world were they thinking?!?" because Stormlight would be horrible as a movie; there's just way too much stuff for 2 hours (or even 3!) to even come close to doing a Stormlight book justice. It really needs to be a TV series; ideally I'd like to see Mistborn: The Final Empire or possibly Warbreaker as the first Cosmere movie. But The Way of Kings? Oh rust and ruin, no!
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