listerfeend

9 hours ago, therunner said:

Szeth was anything but morally consistent. 
He literally murders people knowing it is wrong, just because someone told him to. How is that morally consistent?

It's almost like you don't understand the indoctrination and mental status of Szeth... 

7 minutes ago, PanLin said:

So I guess there's a few potential ways to hack it, right? Either:

• Change your Spiritweb to allow burning of different metals (we've seen this one happen)
• Mess with that metal's Identity or Connection (?) to make it open a different door, maybe even to a different Shard (would that even work?)
• Interrupt the Investiture you get back from Preservation so it does something else

I suspect that messing with the Identity AND Connection would be required, and you'd have to have some pretty Shard level amounts of Investiture to make that happen (I would think). You're basically forcing a Connection to another Shard at that point, and that could have some pretty disastrous consequences, especially if you are trying to Connect to one of the more hostile Shards (Odium and Ruin come to mind).

I think you're second theory is much more interesting though.

9 minutes ago, PanLin said:

f you, an allomancer and feruchemist, burned any metal while storing all the Identity you could, could you unkey the Investiture you get back and channel it into a jar or something, rather than have it fuel the ability it's supposed to

I'm not sure if this would work, at least not exactly as described, but I highly suspect there is something here, and it's probably what Ghostbloods are using to "unkey" the Dor. So, the reason I think there is another step: Storing your Identity doesn't change the Identity of the Investiture you are getting back. It just blanks the "This Investiture can be used only by this Identity" safeguard. So, storing Investiture this way is essentially how we have the Allomantic grenades and the Medallions. 

However, finding some way to blank the Identity of the Investiture itself, then storing that in a nicrosil mind, while also storing your own Identity, would definitely provide a completely unkeyed source of Investiture.

16 hours ago, PanLin said:

I wonder if Scadrians will find a way to rewire the rules of Allomancy and be able to use different metals for different powers

I'm sure it's possible, I wonder if Brando will go there though. With the right spirit web modifications, and a bit of inspiration, I'm sure that there is a way to 'build' a Mistborn that could use metals to power Radiant Surges or something along those lines. Possibly, anyway.

16 hours ago, PanLin said:

Plus, I'm pretty sure we know that Allomancers can use unkeyed Investiture to fuel any Allomantic power their Spiritweb allows for.

This is 100% accurate and is told to us in Mistborn Era 2. Shai basically directly tells Marasi that the unkeyed Dor they are using would power her, but it wouldn't be super duper useful because Marasi can only use Cadmium.

4 minutes ago, PanLin said:

 You're so right, my bad. I started thinking of the drive as maintaining a bubble of unmodified spacetime and my brain went "oh hey bubbles, like temporal allomancy"

Honestly I suspect that time bubbles would absolutely be another way to achieve FTL travel though... Maybe even a better way, though the metals for it are extremely expensive and rare...that may end up not being the case later on though. I'm willing to bet that Soulcasting doesn't stay a Roshar restricted thing for too much longer (someone will figure out a way to make more Soulcasters of the 'fabrial' variety soon enough), and that would make obtaining Cadmium and Bendalloy trivial for Scadrians of means...

7 minutes ago, PanLin said:

I wonder if this would also need a careful application of Allomantic time bubbles and physical pushing/pulling? Or at least to do something similar that wouldn't be possible in the real world: time and the speed of light are inseparably linked, so theoretically could Feruchemists store weight/mass while Allomancers speed time up inside the vessel, both to counteract the time dilation that naturally happens as matter reaches the speed of light?

This is actually I viable secondary option for FTL, rather than something that would be needed for the Feruchemical version I hastily thought up above. I think. See, the beauty of something like an Alcubierre Drive is that the vessel itself is not traveling faster than light, therefor there would be no time dilation to deal with. You see, by contracting space in front of, and expanding it behind, the vessel, space itself is doing the traveling. The vessel, for all intents and purposes, is actually just sitting still while spacetime flows around it. 

On 2/2/2026 at 6:34 PM, Qianweilian said:

With the one caveat that narrators can be unreliable, so there may be a case where a character says one thing in a book, and a WoB says something else, and the WoB is right.

And also the caveat that, sometimes, a WoB retcons things and that then becomes canon... Honestly, it's extremely confusing sometimes, trying to keep up with everything.

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, it seems we are trying to achieve FTL travel using Feruchemy alone? Or are you specifically attempting to create Teleportation without the use of the Surge of Transportation? 

I am fairly certain you could use Feruchemy to achieve FTL travel in a "warp drive" kind of sense, but I doubt that you could manipulate it in such a way as to teleport something across any kind of distance. There are just too many things that make up an object or person to transport, and no real way to combine them again at the end. Remember, Identity is really only one aspect of a thing in the Cosmere. 

I think a much more realistic use of Feruchemy to achieve FTL travel would be to essentially create an Alcubierre adjacent drive of some kind, by storing weight (mass, hopefully, Brandon has been super cagey about whether mass==weight in the context of Feruchemy) and tapping it on either end of a ship, thereby contracting spacetime at the front, and expanding it in the rear, to achieve FTL. This would PROBABLY require compounding, in some way, so you'd need a Misting and Ferring of iron and steel.  

24 minutes ago, Jult said:

Maybe all the previous posts are influencing my opinion a bit, but I also can't help but picture some kind of dueling viking-adjacent culture.

I don't have much of an idea on what Valor's magic system would look like, but we already have a viking-adjacent culture on Sel, so I sort of doubt Brando would go that route...That's not to say he wouldn't, but it seems, to me, like he'd have something different. Maybe something closer to Feudal Japan/Samurai culture

17 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

I will never know, but I speculate that the alpha/beta readers and/or editor(s) must have expressed doubts about "December" to the point where Brandon, in love with the idea, put in Hoid's explanation rather than just all her "Winter" or "Frostmoon" or something.

If I'm right ... I disagree with him.

I suspect something along those lines is exactly what happened. And, don't get me wrong, I'm gonna read the crap out of this book, it's gonna be fine. This has all just been me pointing out a trend that I disagree with in his work

13 minutes ago, Jult said:

  Hide contents

Could this be the thing Ed mentioned that Harmony/Discord is the "only known living Shard" to have done? An Oathpact to protect his people from himself?

Possibly

IotE

23 hours ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

would still leave Sazed able to use the other shard.

And exclusively that shard, which could have far ranging impacts, probably sending him to Discord, as has been foretold

3 hours ago, Ninth of the Night said:

It isn't that complicated, the story is basically being translated twice. Hoid translating in-world for his audience (where he does not use the word December), and then Brandon translating for his irl audience.

It's really just that simple. No need to overthink it or let it ruin your enjoyment of the surrounding story. 

This doesn't quite work for me, as Brandon has chosen to put those words in Hoid's mouth. If he had said something along the lines of 

Quote

Her name was December, named after the coldest month of the year

And just left it at that, we could assume that the standard Sci-Fi/Fantasy translation convention is in play. Immersion breaking, still, but less so than having Hoid literally say "I'm translating this to December". I'm not overthinking anything here, Brandon himself specifically called out this thing, and then drew more attention to it in the text. It's not overthinking something to think about the thing that is explicitly being called out.

17 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

instead of doing a serious analysis about the work in question, people just complain about random details not meeting some arbitrary standard.

Funny, seems like doing a serious analysis about the work in question would involve analyzing important things like: World building, setting, consistency, and the deliberate choices of the author for the work in question. Thing is, this is a trend that has been happening since RoW, and I see many posts on this forum discussing this very topic. "Dating" being a word in Stormlight, or therapy/therapist, etc... have been called out by many, not just me, enough that Brandon has said he'd go back and choose different words to convey the same meaning. 

This doesn't "Ruin" (ha) the story for me, it's just a continuation of a trend that I'm concerned about.

17 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I don't mean to be abrasive here, but do you even know what it means to break the fourth wall? Because—whatever you may think of the decision—naming a character "December" is very much not a breaking of the fourth wall. It honestly seems like you heard this phrase somewhere and are just repeating it, without actually knowing what it means.

Let's see, my definition of a Fourth Wall Break would be something like: when a work acknowledges the existence of the audience, or the work's fictional nature in a way the breaks the illusion that the work is a self contained world.

I'd argue this absolutely does do that, in an explicit way that we haven't seen before in the Cosmere. Brandon likes to use Tolkein as an example of this. He's called out that Sam's name wasn't actually Sam in TLotR, but actually "Banazîr Galpsi", which is then translated to us. But that is done entirely consistently, it's never called out in the text as a translation, no one even acknowledges that this translation convention is actually taking place. It's one thing to name your characters easy to pronounce and read names that probably shouldn't exist for that world. I'm not sure if it was you or someone else that mentioned the name Charlie in Tress. Obviously an english language, common name, true. It's also true that Hoid never acknowledges the translation going on, and it's just taken at face value and the story progresses without a hitch. Naming Charlie Tuesday would be just as bad as this though, as there is no real translation from some alien language that would make any sense. Same thing here. Not to mention that Hoid specifically calls out he is translating, which, as I said above, takes away pretty much any suspension of disbelief that you could have that Hoid himself does not know the words he is using. 

20 hours ago, Isilel said:

At the same time I do think that both Mistborn and Radiants were rather overpowered and the former would be even more so with additional metals. 

This is a fair point, and I'm hoping this is kind of like normal video game logic (eg. many games start you as OP to get you into it, and then nerf the heck out of you so you can build back up again). Once Radiants got some light in them, they pretty much became un-killable, until basic RoW when we started getting the anti-light/Raysium weapons. Now they can't even get Light outside the Tower.

20 hours ago, Isilel said:

As to the Radiants, I would have wished  them to be less unkillable to begin with. At this point I can only wonder how Odium's forces were ever a significant threat to them in the past, leave alone to the Heralds. I guess that now availability of the investiture will become the hard limiter. 

Exactly. Taln, with no Honorblade, took on enough Fused and Singers to create a literal hill to die on. How did he ever actually die during the Desolations? Especially given that they were connected directly to Honor, and therefore had unlimited Stormlight... Still, it feels like the nerfs went way too far, especially in W&W. That felt to me like batman in the old west more than Mistborn anything.... And I think that is the main issue I'm running into with all the nerfs and the era changes in general. I love Epic Fantasy, specifically set in Pre-Modern times. Now we are getting more to kind of generic fantasy, set in essentially modern times, and turning everything that is cool about magic into "science".

1 minute ago, Frustration said:

No, you were right. He is telling them to a Cosmere audience

So this basically is changing the entire frame of the narrative in a way that he (Brando) has never done before in the cosmere. He's never broken the fourth wall this hard. He's barely even knocked on it in ALL of his other books, and I honestly can't remember any specific instance of a fourth wall break, though I'm sure there are a few. Yet, this is taking a sledge hammer to it, and it starts on the cover. He could have named her "Winter" and I would have been super ok with that, or some other sufficiently descriptive name to indicate a "really really cold time of year". 

20 hours ago, Isilel said:

No, his uncle had three. I imagine that most trappers have more than one, since a mind-shielder is non-negotiable for survival on and around those islands

Yeah, that was what I thought as well. Glad I'm not absolutely crazy

3 minutes ago, Frustration said:

He did say she was named after the coldest month of the year in her region of the world, but I highly doubt she will be called July in the Australian edition.

You know, I honestly hadn't even put that together. That's not even the coldest month of the year every where here in America, so I think I just completely missed that entire reference. Where I'm from, January is the coldest month of the year. I can at least understand the connection, I'm not that dense, but I didn't catch that connection on my first, second, or third read-through of the pre-released chapters. 

6 minutes ago, Frustration said:

As for why she's called December in text, Brandon's explanation is that even Hoid isn't calling her December, but he is "translating" it as December for our understanding.

This is honestly where I have the most issues. I've pretty much been under the impression that Hoid was telling these stories to someone IN the cosmere, with enough knowledge of current and historical events that references to other books would make sense to them. Or, at the very least, would be able to guess from context what they are talking about.

Maybe that's on me, maybe I missed a WoB somewhere where he tells us Hoid is telling these stories directly to us, or I just made conclusions about context that I was supposed to draw different conclusions from. 

 

17 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

I legitimately don't understand this sentiment—absolutely nobody complained about the name Charlie, despite it also existing IRL, or the fact that the word Hemalurgy is derived from ancient Greek roots. That's to say, the Cosmere already has many references to Earth, so why are you (and others) so worked up about this particular one?

Besides, lore isn't the end all be all of things, and the name December is much better than something like Chachanan or Vinuarch.

You can be fine with it, that's totally cool. To me it feels both extremely lazy, and immersion breaking. December is not a generic name like Charlie, nor is it a "fantasy" version of some ancient Greek root like Hemalurgy. At least the word "Hemalurgy" sounds like a technical term, and it doesn't actually exist in any language here in the real world. December is a month on our calendar.

Furthermore, Brandon himself called out that it was likely going to be an issue for many readers, and essentially promised an actual explanation, within the reading that he did. That explanation was the most lazy, hand wavey thing I think Brandon has ever put to paper. It has nothing to do with her name, and certainly does nothing to explain why he is translating her name to a month on the Gregorian calendar—something Hoid, for all his vast knowledge, couldn't possibly be aware of. I would have been totally fine with it if he had had some kind of in world explanation for the name. Or he was able to make some kind of nod and wink that would draw some kind of comparison to the month, the season, or SOMETHING, other than just "Her name isn't that, but I'm going to translate it as such".

Hoid translating her name to a proper noun tied explicitly to an Earth calendar system that doesn't and shouldn't exist in the Cosmere makes about as much sense as him calling her Tuesday, or Christmas.

On 12/21/2025 at 11:48 PM, Schizoposting said:

In principle I don't oppose having a greater diversity of worlds, but given the size and ambition of the Cosmere, as is, and the fact that Brandon has a finite amount of time, it would be better for him to focus on worlds that are narratively important, like Threnody, rather than on worlds that are literally never mentioned again. If it wasn't for the greater Cosmere as a whole, I would not be so opposed to more Hoid stories, so long as they're good. But again, I also don't want Brandon to be like Terry Brooks and repeat the same basic story, again, and again, and again.

It does feel like, with a decade to go before we even get SA6, Elantris 2 and 3, Warbreaker 2, Dragonsteel, Era 3 and 4 of MB, and whatever he needs to do to tie up the entire Cosmere by the end, these distractions feel.... like just that. They are fun stories and are great for Cosmere building, but don't move the overall plot forward in any meaningful way. 

I also have a fairly minor quibble about his statement

Quote

"December? That doesn't fit in the cosmere." It'll make sense once I do the reading"

No Brandon, it still doesn't make sense. Having Hoid say "t was a different word in their language, naturally, but I shall use a translation and call the child December." Doesn't explain why Hoid would be translating a name to a month on OUR calendar. Not at all. I was fine with all the modern science adjacent terms in KWaT (really, what else are you going to call therapy/therapists besides that? Brain fixers?) but it really feels like December is just... almost lazy. Brandon obviously isn't, he writes more than pretty much any author I've ever even heard of. But...December? C'mon man

On 10/24/2025 at 7:35 AM, Treamayne said:

Interesting theory - but Dusk is the one with two bonds and Sak is the one with the ability. Possible, but not knowing what ability other Ravens get (IED Ch 15) makes it hard to analyze. That said, I think it is either:

1. Patji intervened, so Sak received an ability speficically to help Dusk achive Patji's goals
2. Sak is not a Raven; instead is a related, but different, subspecies of Covidae (and First of the Sun biologists have not yet mapped enough of the frozen southern continent to realize a separation of Species)

Hope that helps

Is Dusk very unique in the fact that he has two Aviar? I don't recall the number of bonds feeling unique to him, just the death visions. I would assume that, if trying to replicate that specific ability by taking ravens to the island, they would have at least tried to replicate the scenario as closely as possible.

18 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

This is kinda related:

I had seen that WoB and it really stuck out to me that Brandon said he hadn't realized that was a theme. How did he not see that? He's nerfing magic across the board, it seems, in the universe all about interesting MoI...

I LOVE the Cosmere. Some of it is certainly "better" than others (MB era 1, hello?), but I've truly enjoyed everything up till now, even if Wax and Wayne was difficult for me to get through, I still enjoyed where we ended up. I've even been defensive and offended that so many people had so many complaints about KWaT. I point that out because I realize I'm coming across quite negative in my outlook here. I'm sure I'm going to like Ghostbloods, and whatever Era 4 is going to be called. I can't WAIT for the back half of SA, especially since the time jump for them is only supposed to be a few years, instead of the hundreds we had between Era 1 and 2. I can't WAIT for Dragonsteel to actually come out and get all those juicy details of Hoid and the Shattering. However, I can't help but feel like the best is already behind us, and I'm sticking it out to get to the destination, and the journey is no longer as magical an experience (literally and figuratively).

On 1/16/2026 at 12:38 PM, Mage of Lirigon said:

The Cosmere was always heading in this direction

I recognize that fact, I even stated that in my post. That doesn't mean it doesn't feel like a bait and switch in many ways. He's changing the entire genre of the cosmere. Again, I recognize that that has been his plan all along, I just didn't know that when I started these and fell in love with the entire concept of the cosmere and what he had going on. I am sure that these books are going to be good. I'm just not sure I'm going to like love (edited, I will certainly like them)  them. And that's heartbreaking. 

On 1/16/2026 at 12:34 PM, ChillPenguin said:

I hear what you’re saying - it’s frustrating to not have mistborn at all but Sanderson’s books have to change or else it’s stale. He’s redistributed the power to get more longevity out of the magic system. Now that I think about it, something similar has happened in Stormlight. I think we will get mistborn back someday and this shift adds more depth while reducing the possibility of power creep.

I know you know this, but it's not just the lack of Mistborn in the Mistborn series. It's that we've replaced Mistborn, and to a lesser extent Mistings, Feruchemists, and everything else, with what? Computers, guns, and grenades? We're going from Skyrim to Cyberpunk 2077 here, and while that still leaves the door open for compelling stories, obviously, it feels like it sucks the magic out of it all. Sure, there are super clever applications of the same concepts going on, and it's neat that we can use Awakening to make multifunction AI whiteboards and the like, but I can go down the hall here at work and see largely the same thing. I can't go down the hall and see Kelsier juggling hundreds of metal fragments with his mind in an attempt to make the God King bleed.

I'm honestly trying not to be super pessimistic about this, I can't wait to get more lore and figure out what the endgame is here. It's exciting, for sure. But it feels more and more like I'll be looking forward to flashbacks and lore dumps, rather than the actual setting or characters.

On 10/11/2025 at 9:15 PM, bmcclure7 said:

Well I hope you’re wrong as have characters with cool powers is what brought me to the cosmere his underpowered books are alright but don’t think I would be interested in cosmere where they were the norm

I feel this so much. Wax and Wayne is my least favorite cosmere series, and it's not even close. Mistborn drew me into the cosmere, and I've read everything I can get my hands on since then. Wax and Wayne felt so far removed from what I initially fell in love with as the Cosmere that it was a genuine struggle for me to get through. I have a ton of doubts about the Ghostbloods series, even more so after the readings we got a few months ago. I recognize that this was always Brandon's Plan™, but I read Epic and High Fantasy precisely because I enjoy magic and its creative application to specific problems, and not the "Sufficiently advanced science looks like magic" kind of settings. Which is where the Cosmere is headed, and it fills me with trepidation. Storming Mistborn don't even exist in the Mistborn series anymore.

4 minutes ago, BinarySecond said:

It doesn't follow that the wife is part of the "either of the twins"; "Either of the twins" reads as an entirely different subject as someone who could help Hoid.

That's how I read it as well. That whole conversation about his wife and the twins doesn't imply to me that the wife is one of the twins at all. In normal conversation, no one mentions their wife like that, and then categorizes them as a package deal with their sibling. "My wife blah blah blah. Anyway, either of the twins..." That's not how people talk. However, train of thought would easily go from wife to offspring. "Either of the twins" is either referring to their children, or another set of twins that could help and aren't related to his wife at all. 

OK, apologies if this has been asked already, the search doesn't really seem to be working for me right now, but I was just having a conversation with my buddy, and something jumped back out at me that I have speculated on in the past, and now makes even less sense than it did before. 

When Dalinar first opens Honor's perpendicularity, ROdium is mega shook, and exclaims something along the lines of  "HOW TF YOU DO THAT? WE KILLED YOU!"

At the time, there was some speculation that maybe Cultivation and Odium teamed up on Honor for some reason or another, but, now we know, definitively, that is not case. We also know that there was no "WE" in the death of Tanavast, so...why did Odium react this way? What does he mean "We killed you"? This doesn't make much sense to me, after reading WaT

14 hours ago, aetherbound said:

I think Cakoban might be doing something similar to a nightmare painter when he turns the Evil into the Dakwara.

I'm not sure if it was your theory that I read that made me think this, but, I agree. There is a thread on here talking about how the entities have at least a bit of Uli-Da's consciousness in them, and comparing them to super juiced Nightmares. We are given the impression that, after drinking all of the liquid investiture he had, Cakoban was pretty highly invested at that time, maybe enough to give him the juice needed to force the "Nightmare" into a daccwaga, or at least into a thing bound by the rules of the daccwaga as he knew them. Over time, after the story had been told through generations, this solidified the creature into the Dakwara.