TheWisestBear

That particular detail felt a little spoilerish so I didn't go into that level of precision for this spoiler-free video. But you're right. Thanks for your feedback on the rest!

There was quite a bit of fun astronomy in this book. If you like thinking about that sort of thing, I finally finished my analysis of the astronomy in The Sunlit Man in this video here: https://youtu.be/e4-XQgj75vw Let me know what you think!

I do remember this pericope well, and I read this I thought to myself: What? Has the Church of the Survivor made its own edition of the Words of Founding? Kind of like the Samaritan Pentateuch? After all, Sanderson likes to play with religion and the perception of truth. Furthermore, Marasi's account is not verified by Harmony's own servant MeLaan who was herself present during Era 1. Is she playing dumb and catering to Marasi's beliefs, like she played with Marasi's boss with the thee's and thou's? Therefore, this episode was by no means decisive in determining that Kelsier was alive. Remember: by this point in the story of Scadrial, we know nothing about the afterlife other than the fact that there is one, and that Sazed did not know how to bring Vin and Elend back. If indeed the details about Kelsier's resurrection will be revealed in Eras 3 or 4, then why did Sanderson reveal those details about pinning his soul to a kandra (or whatever it was) in the WoB? I find it unsatisfying to get those details from encyclopedia-sounding articles instead of from a story. Perhaps more details are revealed in story form in the rest of the cosmere books. I have indeed read them all, but I may not remember all of them well. And I'm not sure I read them in publication order (probably not). As for the annotations, I don't usually read these from any author, but the ones I have glanced at are usually along the lines of "my inspiration for this character/scene/situation was...". But if Sanderson's annotations also reveal the in-world mechanisms of the magic system, or reveal details like Kelsier being alive in HoA, I feel that starts to become spoilerish for future works, and more importantly violates the age-old story-telling principle of "show, don't tell." I recognize that a lot of people like this kind of thing since the cosmere is so intricate and huge, but I would prefer to be able to understand a story without the need to refer to the author's annotations.

Neat! I was not aware of these features, so thanks for this. But if I shouldn't be doing double posts, then this will be one long post as I'll have to respond to different topics in one place. Well here goes. I knew he spent some time in Korea, but it was only 2 years and he seemed to be primarily doing church activities, so I wasn't sure of his level of fluency. I'm sure we can all think of many people who live somewhere for many years without ever getting beyond basic greetings and ordering from the menu. I don't feel that this level of ability qualifies as being able to "speak" the language. But I can give Sanderson (and his more knowledgeable fans) the benefit of doubt and assume he's perfectly fluent in Korean. In that case, he would be bilingual, but not natively since he learned as an adult. What I was really trying to get at was that the idea of a universal translator where you hear someone else speak in "your own language" assumes that everyone is natively monolingual. However there are plenty of people who are natively bilingual who cannot tell you which language is their "primary" language, or the one they think in most. There are people in my own family like that. What about places were there's more than one language, roughly evenly split in predominance? Which language would the locals hear from a speaker Connected to the land? Or a place like Dubai where the most commonly spoken language is English (not necessarily natively), but the official language is Arabic. Which language would the locals hear from a speaker Connected to the land? Off the top of my head? The banter, the snark, the type of humour, the individualism. Even in the same language context on Earth, there's a lot of variation in how people sound. For example Harry Potter realistically depicts how you can distinguish different social classes in England from their written speech even though they're all speaking English natively. Another example: hobbits sound like they're from a different culture from the men of Gondor even though they're speaking the same native language. But the citizens of the cosmere (and Star Trek and many other worlds) sound far more uniform despite being from different planets. You're all reminding me that were a lot more different-sounding people in Stormlight. It's been a while since I read it, but yes you're right. I could also name a few more examples from Mistborn: Sazed speaks with a higher register than Kelsier, and Marasi sounds nothing like Wayne who speaks with a drawl. But they're all from the same planet and speak the same language. Surely the aliens should sound even more different? My point is that a worldhopper sounding like a native speaker of the local language through Connection is no excuse for them to sound like they're from the same culture. I did appreciate the deference they had for Allomancers (deference is not really a thing in American culture), but then it quickly morphed into deference with snark, and then the deference disappeared entirely, and Allik became the same as the Northerners except that he spoke with lots of "ya's". I know that I'm mashing language issues together with cultural issues. But that's because they are so interrelated that I can't separate them. So for example, the "ya's" were far more convincing when Allik spoke with his earlier deference. But later, it just sounded contrived. I would agree that worldhoppers could easily be briefed on cultural practices and values. But there's no way that they could pass as a local without years of experience. I do get that it would be hard to tell the stories of the cosmere if all the world hoppers have to also learn new languages/cultures. Just like it would have been hard to tell Star Trek stories without warp drive (and aliens that only have minor variations on the human anatomy). But even if I can't think of an easy solution, I still feel the trope is problematic. If you'll be patient with me a little longer, I think I can describe what bothers me about the trope. In fantasy it's fun to think of all the possibilities. We can't fly. We can't make speed bubbles. We can't store health in metal. What it would be like in a world where people could do these things? That's fun to think about. But what the universal translator does is to take a shortcut to what is already possible. We don't have to ask what it would be like to speak a different language in a different culture, because we already know! Lots of people do it. And our experience is nothing like what is depicted in these stories. In essence, the experience and hard work of real cross-cultural emissaries is ignored and considered unimportant. It's a little like having a magic amulet that suddenly makes you a good leader. As soon as Elend realized he was a lousy leader, he could have picked up that amulet and we could have skipped all that character development and gone straight to the "real" story about the war with Ruin. Or we could invent a metal for Wayne that when burned grants him a sense of forgiveness. I think you get my point. We understand that it wouldn't make a good story for someone to gain character qualities through magic and zero growth. But universal translators do just that: the character development necessary for different cultures to interact peaceably is granted for free through magic (or technology in sci-fi). Like I said, I still enjoy these stories. I just have to roll my eyes and suspend disbelief whenever I read this trope.

I grant that Connection is magical, so it would more likely pick the correct meaning in the case of multiple meanings like your Korean example (and Google Translate wouldn't). However there should still be a lot more big misunderstandings than are currently portrayed in the Cosmere, not just the occasional malapropisms. Navigating big cultural misunderstandings was most of the hard work I was referring to, not really the learning of other languages (which is also really hard work). Language influences the way people think (and vice versa), and the way people think is vastly different between cultures in our own world. But in the cosmere, even people from different planets all think and sound like Americans. An example of what I mean: I just recently read The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin, which was translated from Chinese to English by Ken Liu, a native speaker of both languages and intimately familiar with both cultures. The translation was of course in perfect English, and yet it sounded so foreign to English cultures. I'm sure we can all think of other translated books that are perfectly fluent and grammatically flawless in the target language, but still sound very foreign. It's not the language that makes them sound foreign, it's the culture, style and ways of thinking. I'm sorry, but adding multiple "ya's" to Southern Scadrian speech really doesn't come anywhere near the mark. I know that Sanderson tries: there are examples that show this, such as your examples from Stormlight. And this is more than I can say about most monolingual authors I've read. Speaking of monolinguals, consider this: lots of people are native speakers of multiple languages. Which language do they hear a Connected speaker in? Monolingual authors never think of this and it drives me up the wall. Anyway my thing against universal translators is just a little gripe, just like scientists gripe about the inaccuracies in science fiction, or lawyers about court dramas. I still really enjoy the stories!

Perhaps I should clarify what I meant with my last criticism:

I'm a big fan of Mistborn, but since you asked for criticisms, here's a list off the top of my head: - I did post in another thread about how the astronomy in Hero of Ages (as described in the text - not WoB) is problematic. Summarized here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84ZWDwBt4P4 - This more a broader criticism of a popular trope, but one of my pet peeves is the use of the "universal translator" trope in so many English works of fantasy/sci-fi. And it made an appearance in Era 2, book 3, I think. It just seems lazy to not make the characters *work* to understand each other. In the real world, it's a LOT of work to understand people from a different linguistic and cultural background. People think that Google translate solves everything. It doesn't. It's not enough to know the dictionary meanings, you need *context* and experience, and Google and feruchemical medalions just can't give you that. - No women on Kelsier's crew, and no female friendships for Vin. (But I hear that will be fixed in the movie). The women in Era 2 also have no female friends. It seems like only men like Wax and Wayne can be good friends. (This is another broader criticism about the portrayal of women in fantasy.) - I didn't find the formation and development of the Church of the Survivor very believable as a way a religion develops. I have a lot more to say about this, but discussions about religion can be, well, you know. - Book 1 of Era 2 was really a low point in the series for me. Shoot 'em up isn't really my thing. But I'm glad I stuck it out and read the next books because I enjoyed them. - I wish TenSoon had more screen time, in both eras. - Book 4 of Era 2 wasn't as epic and Sanderlanche-y as I hoped. But still enjoyable. That's all I could think of for now. But I want to re-iterate that despite these criticisms I still loved Mistborn. Era 1 is one of my all time favourite series.

Hmm, interesting idea. I think I do remember Sazed saying something like he remembers the history of the powers.

A blue white supergiant? Oh dear. I do hope Autonomy is protecting that planet...

Thanks for that information about Scadrial's calendar being preserved and position in a star cluster. We didn't know that. Using the length of the original year + Kepler's 3rd law to place Scadrial's orbit would certainly be a lot easier than working out the positions of the planets. However, the text of HoA explicitly says that Sazed used the star maps and planets to place Scadrial. I guess that was the text that raised my human's eyebrows. Regardless of Sazed's Shard-like eyesight, he is limited by the precision of the Nelazan star maps, which would need to be as precise as the Gaia satellite (ie above the atmosphere kind of precision with tiny pixels) if he was going to use stellar parallax. Alpha Centauri is only the closest star. The vast majority of the visible stars are 100's of light years away, including the brightest stars, so you'd still have to move the planet a long way in order to see the constellations change, and not just one or two stars. Also even if Scadrial was in a star cluster, the typical distance between stars would be about a light year. (If it's much denser than that, like in the core of a globular cluster, the orbits of planets would not survive the gravitational interactions.) So if the Scadrial-sun distance was comparable to the Earth-Sun distance, that would produce a parallax angle of about 1/1000th of a degree, which is comparable to the degree of atmospheric blur on Earth. Therefore the Nelazan maps would still look the same between the old and new orbits. I'm also worried about the implications for the brightness of the stars in the cosmere. A star like Betelgeuse for example, if it were 10 ly away, would be appear brighter than our Moon. And every cluster has several red giant stars like Betelgeuse, or if it's a young cluster, it will have blue giants. But I suppose stellar evolution might work differently in the cosmere. Note that there are also implications for the orbits of the other planets if one planet is moved, because of the conservation of angular momentum. But in my video I decided to ignore that effect (despite protests from my human buddy) because I figured people wouldn't be as interested in physics as they would be in astronomy . As you can see, I love being nitpicky too! Just to be clear: I love Mistborn and all the cosmere books. For me, picking fiction apart scientifically is fun, and in no way spoils my enjoyment of the stories.

Hi all, If anyone is interested in the astronomy in Mistborn, I discuss the plausibility and implausibility of the ending of the Hero of Ages here: https://youtu.be/84ZWDwBt4P4 Let me know what you think!

I loved this book. There were so many things I loved about it: the beautiful art, the mystery of the plot, the floating trees and flowers, the ending, and I loved that Asian-like culture was getting some representation in a book for western audiences. I also loved that there was a stuffie. We also need more stuffie representation in fantasy, in my opinion. There were some cringy moments however, moments I didn't expect from Sanderson, and that were so unnecessary to the plot or character development. But that's a pretty minor point. I also loved that the day after I started reading Yumi, I came across a real life set of dozens of rock stacks. It as a nice visual for my reading.

I loved the floating flowers and trees so I'm glad the people of Kilahito can experience them now that the shroud is gone. And I'm also a sap for happy endings.

Cosmere fan here. I've read everything in the cosmere (but I don't necessarily remember everything)...