Schizoposting

I remember how right after RoW came out, at least half of the fandom was absolutely convinced that Hoid had outsmarted Taravangian somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary. Now, we have same thing, except with Cultivation. I understand that it's scary reading about a world where the villains have won, but this does not mean that it's divinely preordained that everything will turn out alright for our heroes. And if you don't believe me, we have a WoB that directly states that Cultivation is "part of the problem, not the solution":

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey 2. Once Upon a Time in America 3. Mulholland Drive 4. Inglourious Basterds I specifically choose films that were critically acclaimed, but that I personally hated. At least with something like Last Man Standing (the one with Bruce Willis), the film doesn't take itself too seriously, and it sometimes can stray into "so bad that it's good territory"; conversely, the ones on my list are either excruciatingly boring, completely incomprehensible, or straight up sociopathic.

While it's certainly true that China only started to see its truly spectacular growth after 1978, in terms of things like literacy, infrastructure, state capacity, and industrial output, they were substantially ahead of India (even the Cultural Revolution had less of an impact than you might think). This is why they managed to be the world's fastest growing economy for over 30 years, despite every other third world country also being capitalist. The modern Indian caste system emerged out of British colonialism, so that is not exactly a fair comparison. And historically, many societies have had some kind of caste system, like in Korea, which had the Paekchŏng, who were analogous to the Dalit. The real question is why India is still stuck with this system, while many other countries overcame it.

I am sympathetic, because the caste system is truly terrible, and is undeniably holding India back. But this isn't unique: it's just a particular form of feudal underdevelopment, common amongst the third world. Even China had the same issues prior to its modernization. So, the issue of Caste should be included only to the extent to which Brandon intends to critique it, no different to any other social problem. But given the optics, I don't think that he will go down that route. (Although this depends on the people who are helping him with the lore.) There's absolutely nothing intrinsic about the difference the two: for the first half of the 20th century China was far more of a basket case than India—it wasn't even a unified country until 1949. It's only after the CCP took power, that China pulled ahead, through modernizing programs like land reform, and expanding women's rights. But even then, India is still managing to achieve substantial economic growth through the same export-oriented industrialization. While it's difficult to imagine it ever getting close to China's success, it's perfectly plausible that it can become a Thailand or even a Brazil, which given India's enormous population, would make it a major world power.

IIRC, it takes a few days for them to return using the non-Everstorm method. But given the fact that there are only 4000 Fused, and the fact that suicide bombings/attacks are common IRL, I don't think that they would have any trouble getting volunteers. And worst comes to worst, they can just force Singers into becoming hosts.

Well, it's explicitly stated that humanity won every single desolation, so I don't see this as a problem. Also, the Fused are unkillable, so they can attrit Radiants though "meatgrinder" tactics, which can somewhat compensate for their relative weakness. Yeah, I think that the optimal strategy for the Singers would be an insurgency, where instead of trying to win military victory, they aim to cause the maximum amount of damage to human society. For instance, targeting scribes, massacring peasants, and just wreaking havoc in general. Although humans are far more fecund than Singers, so the former are likely to win any long war of attrition, which, incidentally, is exactly what happened.

They've been known to seed legends in various cultures, like the Bene Gesserit, so the mere cultural knowledge of dragons does not necessarily mean their current presence. And ones that we are talking about, aren't true Dragons anyway. Well, anything is possible, but some things are far more likely than others. From a thematic perspective, Mercy would make far more sense as the shard of December's world than the alternatives. Ultimately what a lot of people in the fandom forget to take into account (and I'm not necessarily accusing you of this), is that Brandon's decisions as a writer, are motivated the principles of good storytelling and writing. A lot of bad theories fail because they don't consider this. (Although he has made his fair share of bad decisions, like the Chanarach reveal—I am not a very big fan of reducing everything to petty interpersonal drama.)

In the WoB, Brandon literally says that he has not gotten around to writing the story about lesser dragons. So, this obviously precludes December's world from having them.

According to WoB, Valor's world has "lesser Dragons":

Given that December is a healer who helps the sick and needy, even when she despises (like when she cared for Bark when he was sick), I think that there's a strong thematic reason to think that this is Mercy's world, especially since the demon would (presumably) require vast quantities of investiture, only available on a shard world. It also cannot be Valor's world (which is likely Mythos), because there are no dragons in FoD. And Whimsy, obviously doesn't make sense. Judging from the other secret projects, the name of the world will be entirely new to us.

FoD takes place on a newly introduced planet: So, it can't be on any that we already know of.

It would depend on the specific class that I would be teaching. I am not very well read, so I don't know that many books, but if I was teaching a basic course on fantasy, I would probably choose the following: 1. A Wizard of Earthsea 2. Lord of Light 3. Tigana 4. Assassin's Apprentice For a class covering science fiction I would choose: 1. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas 2. Foundation 3. Dune 4. Roadside Picnic And for a more classic literature course: 1. Julius Caesar 2. Pride and Prejudice 3. Martin Eden 4. The Great Gatsby The criteria for my selections are that I must have already read it, that the book must not be too long or difficult, and finally, that it's highbrow enough that I wouldn't be embarrassed teaching it.

I'm curious: what makes you think that this is better than his other works? I agree that it was very fun and action packed, but many of his other works (like The Lost Metal) are like this as well. So, for me at least, it doesn't really standout. Out of the entire collection, I would say that Snapshot, Perfect State, and Defending Elysium, are the best (the latter is criminally underrated, in my opinion), with Moment Zero being a tier below them.

Recently, as part of the Tailored Realities collection, Brandon has published a new sci-fi action novel: Moment Zero. Since I haven't seen anyone else discuss it, I decided to make this thread to review it. The basic premise of the novel is a buddy cop story, in which an apocalyptic event sends one cop into the future, and their partner, into the past, before said apocalypse. They must then work to stop the event from happening, from both time streams. Now, Moment Zero reads as if it was expressly meant to be adapted—and I don't necessarily mean this as a bad thing: it's simply that it's written in such a way that it can easily be turned into a marketable action film, without losing anything. Conversely, something like Mistborn, would take a lot more ingenuity and reworking to be successfully adapted. As for the novel itself, it's very fast paced, and it never fails to be entertaining. However, while it did have an interesting postmodern take on heroism, Moment Zero felt a bit flat at times, particularly pertaining to the villain's motivation. I think that this is partially because of the novel's short length, which limited the scope of the themes that it could explore. (Although, Defending Elysium managed to do more with far less). Overall, I think that Moment Zero is good, but it lacks the literary depth to be truly exceptional. But I'm curious to see if anyone else has any other opinions regarding this work.

He's obviously a devastating one: and a Dustbringer, given his focus on self-mastery.

I finished The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie, the first book of The First Law trilogy. While it's too early to make any judgements, I think that Abercrombie did a very good job in creating a gritty atmosphere, particularly in the way he writes fight scenes, where, instead of sanitizing them, he really shows how brutal and ignoble combat really is. In addition, having the heroes be morally gray (although it depends on the character), and a liberal use of profanity, adds to this as well. Overall, while the book is mostly setup, and as such, does not work as a standalone, it's still a good read.

You have probably talked about it before, but I have a few questions regarding your book: what made you write it? What's the writing process like? Did you have any prior experience in creative writing? And if not, did you take any lessons or read/watch any guides? Do you think that the book is publishable, or is it just a passion project? I am asking this, because, I have to admit, I have been at least somewhat tempted by the prospect of writing something of my own, so I'm curious as to what it's like.

I think that we should distinguish between the essence of a story, and its appearance—Eyes Wide Shut, for instance, is a very faithful adaptation of Dream Story, despite it completely changing the setting. Conversely, Starship Trooper accurately follows the details of the story, only for it to turn it into a satire of the original. In other words, what matters is that the spirit of the story is preserved, not the exact details. The fact that there will be only 2-3 hours to tell a story longer than Dune (which took 2 films to adapt), necessitates that preserving said essence will likely involve cutting and or changing many of the details—otherwise the former will come at the expense of the latter. To me, at least, what matters is that it's the same story at heart, not whether or not Shan Elariel is Elend's sister or Fiancée. You're thinking too linearly here: the way to condense the story isn't to cut out large sections—it's to rewrite the story from scratch, to be more efficient, and cover all the necessary details, while leaving out anything superfluous. I'm not a writer, so I don't exactly know how this would look like, but Brandon has talked about how a script that didn't include any of the original scenes (except the balcony one), worked better than one that was more direct. And ultimately, many plotlines and characters are completely unnecessary to the broader story, like half of the crew. So, they can easily be simplified or cut out entirely. "Guarantee" may be too strong of a word, but failure is certainly unlikely—box office bombs are the exception, not the rule, otherwise nobody would be making films. And often times, films fail for reasons other than quality. Even if fans end up being disappointed, it's difficult to imagine the film being anything less than competently made. I even think that there's a substantial chance that the adaptation can overcome some of the issues of the original, making it an improvement.

I think that this would only apply to casual viewers—I can't imagine hardcore Cosmere fans never reading the books, even if they were introduced to it via film/television. If nothing else, all the lore will be in the former. Personally, I'm agnostic on the issue, but worst comes to worst, you can just ignore them.

I'm curious—what's your issue with the YouTube channels? Is that a lot of their viewers watch them without reading the books? I have never watched these channels, so I genuinely don't know anything about them.

I never understood the desire that people have for an adaptation to correspond perfectly to the source material—I would rather have an unfaithful adaptation that's a good film, than an adaptation that suffers because it sticks too closely to the original. For every adaption that made too many (bad) deviations, there's an adaptation that doesn't make enough changes (like Watchmen). The way that Mistborn is written, it will require substantial reworking to work as a film at all—it's simply too long and complex for a direct scene to scene adaptation. I disagree—many blockbuster films are intentionally meant to be as bland and anodyne as possible, to appeal the lowest common denominator. Films like A Minecraft Movie were clearly never intended to be anything more than mediocre. In fact, it's so unusual for studios to focus on actually creating good films, that the ones who do, like A24, become famous for it. In Apple's case, it has access to many talented people, who are perfectly capable of making a good film—it's not some esoteric art. While it's by no means guaranteed, there's no reason to believe that they don't have what it takes to make the adaption work. Especially given Brandon's involvement, which will ensure that it's faithful to his vision, at least. As for his screenplay, while Brandon's not a professional screenwriter, he has written previous screenplays, and his skills as an author presumably carry over to screenwriting, at least to some extent. And, while I obviously don't know him personally, he seems to be genuinely humble and easy to work with, so I think that he'll be able to take criticism when necessary.

The point of an adaptation is to adapt the source material to a new medium—not to make a one-to-one copy. Naturally, this necessitates making substantial changes. In the case of Mistborn, this will mean streamlining and condensing the story. I don't think that page count is a very useful metric here, since the density of text, per page, may be different for different books—wordcount does a much better job of comparing the length of texts. This will only be a problem if the screenplay is too faithful to the original—the solution is to change the story so that it works effectively as a film. Given Brandon's philosophy towards adaptations, this is presumably what we'll see. Furthermore, since Apple is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this, they're almost certainly going to put in the effort to make a good film. Worst comes to worst, it'll be a mediocre Marvel-style blockbuster—they're not going to release something actively bad.

I am a fast reader, and I generally don't like rereading (I'd rather read something new), so I mainly read non-Cosmere books. I have read some of Brandon's other works, and I found them to be in the same general range of quality as the Cosmere. He's also releasing an urban fantasy series in collaboration with Peter Orullian this summer, so that's something to look forward to.

I admit, I don't watch many contemporary films (I don't care much for superheroes), but I will have to disagree here—Inception, Her, Rogue One, Arrival, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oppenheimer, etc., all came out in the last 15 years or so, and they're good stories, in my opinion at least. I would also imagine that some of the Marvel films are at least competently made, fun, films in the vein of Avatar or Jurassic Park. It's certainly true that Hollywood outputs a lot of derivative garbage, but similar things can be said of contemporary writing, like Fifty Shades of Grey, or James Patterson. And in fantasy, you have authors like Terry Brooks or David Eddings who told the same basic story over and over again (although competently). So, I don't think that this is exclusive to Hollywood. Good art does not have to be antithetical to good story telling (although it may be), and I would argue that the latter requires the former, at least to some extent. But I would not say that Brandon's work has no artistic depth: in my view, he's like Nolan in that he combines spectacle with a moderate amount of said depth. This makes them better than most directors/authors, but at the end of the day, their work is still entertainment.

Personally, I think a useful analogy is that Brandon's work is the literary equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster—he's more interested in telling a good story than a deep meditation on the human condition. If (like most people) the only things that you've ever read outside of school are Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and The Da Vinci Code, then reading Mistborn or The Stormlight Archive is going to be mind-blowing. But if you're already acquainted with some of the best wordsmiths of the English language, then Brandon's writing will feel somewhat lacking in comparison. That's why a lot of casual readers consider him to be one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time, while conversely, those who are pretentious call him "slop".