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Eminent Domain posted:I haven't read it in a while and the Zane/Elend romance subplot tends to grate, but I believe she goes on about how she would belong better or similar with someone like Zane because of their powers. That’s my point she just rationalizes it. It’s always “i should be with zane” not “i want to be with zane”.
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Feb 25, 2020 10:24
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Been reading alloy of law books again and I am just wondering, is it just me who sees Wax exactly like Timothy Olyphant? It's rare that I can put a real face on a book character like that. Like lifted wholesale out of Deadwood.
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Feb 28, 2020 09:41
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Nope that’s how I saw him too.
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Feb 28, 2020 19:41
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weird i kinda lost interest in words of radiance about half way through. was mostly enjoying it. i think i just don't like the whole constant switching of perspectives and going into flashbacks in the middle of things happening. i'd be fine with it if he switched around after the conclusion of one episode but pretty much every single chapter ends with a cliffhanger. some small some really big. it's just a bit exhausting after a while like, ah now this chapter is getting good - of course, now is the time to dip back to shallan's childhood. so it's like, i basically read one chapter and then the next one is something unrelated and i just go eh, pick this up another time, and the gaps kept getting longer. it's light reading though so i feel like i can pick it back up whenever and not need to even really refresh what's going on, the scenario is crystal clear.
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Feb 29, 2020 17:32
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I'm a nerd who likes to talk Power Levels. Are the Shards the strongest beings in the Cosmere? Harmony is afraid of whatever that red stuff is after all and he has two Shards. Which reminds me. Somebody said he's technically stronger than Odium due to having Ruin and Preservation. Yet hasn't Odium killed other Shard-bearers? Why didn't he take up their Shards? Is it because he knew it could potentially gently caress up his abilities like with how Ruin + Preservation made Sazed kinda impassive? I ask also about power levels because I recall the Stormfather - who is always presented as quite powerful and imposing - basically being reduced to a whimpering child when Odium appeared to Dalinar.
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Mar 6, 2020 01:47
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm a nerd who likes to talk Power Levels. Are the Shards the strongest beings in the Cosmere? Harmony is afraid of whatever that red stuff is after all and he has two Shards. iirc, taking both shards almost atomized sazed and it only worked because the shards were diametrically opposed so they were able to balance out. he might only be able to also take up whatever his diametric opposite is which would probably fundamentally change him as well harmony might be able to grab more shards explicitly because of the aspect of harmony now?? but that's wild conjecture based on nothing
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Mar 6, 2020 01:56
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm a nerd who likes to talk Power Levels. Are the Shards the strongest beings in the Cosmere? Harmony is afraid of whatever that red stuff is after all and he has two Shards. Storm father I think is a splinter, a fragment of Honor's shard like all spren Odium definitely doesn't want to contaminate himself with other shards and is content with simply shattering them.
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Mar 6, 2020 01:58
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NikkolasKing posted:Which reminds me. Somebody said he's technically stronger than Odium due to having Ruin and Preservation. Yet hasn't Odium killed other Shard-bearers? Why didn't he take up their Shards? Is it because he knew it could potentially gently caress up his abilities like with how Ruin + Preservation made Sazed kinda impassive? he physically killed the people holding the Shards then destroyed the Shards themselves, no one else can take them up (yet, at least -- maybe eventually someone can put poo poo back together. it's sanderson so i assume it'll happen eventually). that's why Honor exists as a million spren and Devotion/Dominion now a giant magical explosion that never ends and Ambition is dead somewhere (but we don't know much about that one)
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Mar 6, 2020 01:58
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm a nerd who likes to talk Power Levels. Are the Shards the strongest beings in the Cosmere? Harmony is afraid of whatever that red stuff is after all and he has two Shards. power levels are only one half of the equation: sazed could absolutely trounce odium on pure power, especially because odium is spread so thin BUT shards can't act against their nature. or at least it's very difficult. as harmony sazed can probably not take aggressive action without an incredibly good reason. it's the same reason that odium or autonomy likely couldn't ever take hold of another shard. odium because they are hate, and they hate everything; and autonomy because taking up another shard would change them fundamentally, causing them to lose their independent nature. I'd guess having a shard like cultivation or preservation would make taking a second shard easier, and I could imagine being able to convince honour or endowment to give their shards up to you willingly but sazed is probably just the strongest being in the cosmere yeah (also WRT sazed being impassive, I suspect sometime soon we'll see him take action because another shard bringing war to his planet isn't exactly a harmonious action)
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Mar 6, 2020 02:26
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If Trell is Autonomy as we think and Harmony gets that upgrade, hoo boy watch the gently caress out Odium. It's Sazed but he's unshackled now.
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Mar 6, 2020 06:46
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fully autonomous luxury space harmony
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Mar 6, 2020 09:18
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If we want to go way out there, Autonomic Harmony gobbles up Odium, and then whoops, it's Sazed but now he's evil and also a full 1/4 Adonalsium. Which would be one hell of a twist. e. Sazed is the new badguy, and now Hoid and the rest of the worldhopper are desperately scrambling to Voltron together another four-shard god to counter him. Including someone desperately putting splintered shards back together the same way we'd superglue a vase back together before the wife made it home. Also another one begging Dalinar to come stick his hand in this particular ball of crazy because he kinda might be the only one with the chops to pull it off. It almost writes itself. e2. "We kinda stuck Ambition and Endowment together, then stuck on the bits of Honor and Dominion we could scrape together, and maybe some manky bits we grabbed from Threnody. Come on, Dalinar, just try it on. If you don't we'll have to grab The Lopen and use him, yes we are that desperate just stick your hand in the hosed up looking thing Dalinar come on!" rndmnmbr fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 09:58
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Thanks for all the input everyone. I'm starting on my first reread of TSA. My first time through I had no Internet so this time I hope to maybe post my occasional thoughts and get help from the lore experts. In the meantime though, I've read only the big name modern fantasy stories like Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire and now Sanderson's stuff. I mainly contrast the latter two since they're giant, dense brick tomes. I remember first reading The Final Empire and how the description of the Empire made it sound even worse than Westeros. But Sanderson's work is so much more optimistic than Martin's that I don't think, even at its worst, his worlds ever appears as bleak and hosed up as Martin's. But I feel like one similarity they have is, when talking of ASOIAF and TSA, is the gradual re-enchantment of the world. I think it was a common old fantasy trope that "the magic goes away." You see this in Tolkien with the world becoming more and more mundane with each Age. The Way of Kings and pretty much all of ASOIAF have this low fantasy stuff with lots of aristocratic politics taking center stage. So the story begins very mundane but gradually escalates with the fantastical reappearing and making everything that came before seem so small and insignificant. Cersei and Sadeas play their petty political games when dragons and gods are returning to an active role in the world. I think this is a very cool thing. I wonder what the deeper meaning (if any) of this is. This shift from the distant past being wondrous and the modern world being so...bland to saying that both the past and the present are wondrous.
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Mar 6, 2020 12:53
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rndmnmbr posted:If we want to go way out there, Autonomic Harmony gobbles up Odium, and then whoops, it's Sazed but now he's evil and also a full 1/4 Adonalsium. Which would be one hell of a twist. Odium isn't hate technically. The shard itself is closer to "Strong Emotions" so it could just as easily have ended up as Love instead, which would have made for a far less confrontational cosmere. Rayse was just an rear end in a top hat to begin with and when you give an angry agressive person the cosmic power of emotions, we see the result.
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Mar 6, 2020 16:06
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M_Gargantua posted:Odium isn't hate technically. The shard itself is closer to "Strong Emotions" so it could just as easily have ended up as Love instead, which would have made for a far less confrontational cosmere. Rayse was just an rear end in a top hat to begin with and when you give an angry agressive person the cosmic power of emotions, we see the result. At least that's what Odium says. I don't think we know how much of this is true. Devotion is a strong emotion, too. Ruin was not purely negative (it also stood for change), but it's destruction component obviously overshadowed this. Odium may be "strong passions" in general, too. But I'm relatively sure that hate is the main aspect of the shard.
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Mar 6, 2020 16:42
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Torrannor posted:At least that's what Odium says. I don't think we know how much of this is true. Devotion is a strong emotion, too. Ruin was not purely negative (it also stood for change), but it's destruction component obviously overshadowed this. Odium may be "strong passions" in general, too. But I'm relatively sure that hate is the main aspect of the shard. yeah I think Sanderson has said that Rayse wasn't lying but that that's also his own self-justification. probably someone else could moderate it somewhat if they were less of an rear end in a top hat than Rayse, but I assume you'd still need an opposing shard, Harmony-style, to counterbalance it so you didn't rapidly turn evil my theory is still that Odium is basically the low-level threat that will be dispensed with by the end of the first five book cycle, and either Autonomy or someone else is the Bigger Bad. but we still don't even know what, like, half the shards in this universe even are, so there's plenty of room for things to get much crazier
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Mar 6, 2020 16:51
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Odium (if that's actually the real name for the Shard) would stand out for its intent being different grammatically. All the others have a reflexive quality, i.e. their intents stand alone without reference to anyone or anything else, but Odium has a reciprocal quality, where his intent needs to be related to and dependent on someone or something else. Having fifteen shards being fundamental cosmic forces and neutral personality traits that have both a push and a pull if taken to extremes, and the sixteenth being "villain" that's purely bad guy energy doesn't make sense. If Passion was following your heart instead of keeping your oaths like Honor (which counterbalances the inflexibility that we'd be doomed to if we always followed the rules without fail), and Rayse's heart was cruel and mean, it would make sense that the shard ended up as a bad guy. Most of the shards would be generally villainous if they set their minds to evil, so it seems like there's got to be a reveal somewhere along the line that Odium actually had a different intent if Rayse is killed and his power is taken over by someone else. Like, if Passion and Honor were united, they seem pretty counterbalanced, but it's hard to name it something besides Wisdom or Discretion.
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Mar 6, 2020 18:08
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Torrannor posted:It's still hilarious that Brandon was all like "oh no, book 3 can't be Szeth's book, Stones Unhallowed, because that could lead to title confusion with the surely imminent release of Doors of Stone by my good friend Patrick Rothfuss", then he was like "oh no, book 4 can't be Szeth's book because of Doors of Stone". I wonder if Sanderson will realize that there will never be a third Kingkiller book, or if he renames book 5 just in case. How dare you speak such hateful truth!
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Mar 6, 2020 18:10
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Infinite Karma posted:Odium (if that's actually the real name for the Shard) would stand out for its intent being different grammatically. All the others have a reflexive quality, i.e. their intents stand alone without reference to anyone or anything else, but Odium has a reciprocal quality, where his intent needs to be related to and dependent on someone or something else. Having fifteen shards being fundamental cosmic forces and neutral personality traits that have both a push and a pull if taken to extremes, and the sixteenth being "villain" that's purely bad guy energy doesn't make sense. If Passion was following your heart instead of keeping your oaths like Honor (which counterbalances the inflexibility that we'd be doomed to if we always followed the rules without fail), and Rayse's heart was cruel and mean, it would make sense that the shard ended up as a bad guy. Most of the shards would be generally villainous if they set their minds to evil, so it seems like there's got to be a reveal somewhere along the line that Odium actually had a different intent if Rayse is killed and his power is taken over by someone else. It's true that Odium's name stands out. There are surely quite a few revelations about it coming in the next two Stormlight books at least. How he could kill and shatter shards so (seemingly) easily. How Honor can still hold him in the Roshar system. What his exact nature is. But there's precedent for a shard being "evil" anyway. "Ati was a kind and gentle man", as one of the letters said, yet Ruin was anything but. There are surely some twists that Sanderson will throw at us, but I have a hard time seeing Odium as anything but a villain. Dr. Pangloss posted:How dare you speak such hateful truth! I'm sorry! I admit, I'm mildly curious how the trilogy (?) would end myself, but I've stopped believing in there ever being a third book.
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Mar 6, 2020 18:24
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Torrannor posted:It's true that Odium's name stands out. There are surely quite a few revelations about it coming in the next two Stormlight books at least. How he could kill and shatter shards so (seemingly) easily. How Honor can still hold him in the Roshar system. What his exact nature is. Don't disagree with you at all. Learning that truth is painful, but necessary for any reader of Wise Man's Fear. More on topic, you guys have inspired me to pick up Oathbreaker again and do a re-read of my own. Far too many "oh right, forgot about that" on my part reading over the last ten pages of this thread.
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Mar 6, 2020 19:07
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Torrannor posted:It's true that Odium's name stands out. There are surely quite a few revelations about it coming in the next two Stormlight books at least. How he could kill and shatter shards so (seemingly) easily. How Honor can still hold him in the Roshar system. What his exact nature is. One thing I legit wonder is how much the people knew beforehand about which Shards they were picking up and their Intents -- like did Tanavast say "Yep I think I'll pick up Honor" or was it just "We'll all see what happens when we do this"? The naming confusion would make even more sense in-universe if all they had to go off was what the person who picked it up told them and how that person behaves, what with Rayse telling everyone he's Passion and everyone else being like "Uh no that guy is basically pure hate." there's probably a wob somewhere about this
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Mar 6, 2020 21:51
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I think there's a book about it instead. In like, 2040.
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Mar 6, 2020 22:26
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eke out posted:One thing I legit wonder is how much the people knew beforehand about which Shards they were picking up and their Intents -- like did Tanavast say "Yep I think I'll pick up Honor" or was it just "We'll all see what happens when we do this"? Yeah, there are: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/175/#e8394 quote:Paladin Brewer https://wob.coppermind.net/events/324/#e9363 quote:Questioner
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Mar 6, 2020 22:40
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rndmnmbr posted:If Trell is Autonomy as we think and Harmony gets that upgrade, hoo boy watch the gently caress out Odium. It's Sazed but he's unshackled now. IIRC, harmony wants to act against odium right now and can’t because of the immediate threat Trell poses.
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Mar 7, 2020 18:20
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm a nerd who likes to talk Power Levels. Are the Shards the strongest beings in the Cosmere? Harmony is afraid of whatever that red stuff is after all and he has two Shards. Yeah basically, and among them, Harmony is the most powerful in absolute terms. The next most Invested thing is Nightblood I believe. Picking up a shard means the Vessel needs to act in a way that expresses the Intent of the shard. How that Intent is interpreted is in some ways up to the Vessel but ultimately they don't have a choice. If the Vessel and the shard's Intent aren't well matched, it doesn't bode well for the Vessel's sanity (see Ati in Mistborn). There are WoBs stating that both Sazed and Rayse are well suited to the Intent of the their respective shards. So essentially Rayse kills other Vessels and then splinters the shard because he doesn't want to change the Intent of his shard. eke out posted:there's probably a wob somewhere about this Less a WoB and more answered in text in my opinion - you can only pick up a shard that you have sufficient Connection to - Hero of Ages/Secret History spoilers not only is it the entire basis of the Ire's plan to steal a functional shard for themselves, see also Hero of Ages when Sazed picks up Ruin and Preservation, then the same scene in Secret History when Kelsier is watching: Secret History posted:ers, one with each hand. Kelsier stood in awe of the way they combined. He’d always seen these powers as opposites, yet as they swirled around Sazed it seemed that they actually belonged to one another. “How?” he whispered. “How is he Connected to them both, so evenly? Patware posted:iirc, taking both shards almost atomized sazed and it only worked because the shards were diametrically opposed so they were able to balance out. he might only be able to also take up whatever his diametric opposite is which would probably fundamentally change him as well Picking up a shard automatically atomizes the body, you see this happen when Vin did it as well. When a Vessel dies, their body drops back out and separates from the shard. Sazed explained why he's so passive in the epigraphs in Oathbringer: Oathbringer posted:I am the least equipped, of all, to aid you in this endeavor. I am finding that the powers I hold are in such conflict that the most simple of actions can be difficult. Evil Fluffy posted:IIRC, harmony wants to act against odium right now and can’t because of the immediate threat Trell poses. Not sure that's actually the case. His powers are in conflict and it's stopping him from doing a lot: WoB posted:Questioner Leng fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Mar 8, 2020 |
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Mar 8, 2020 13:14
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Nightblood is one of the most invested thing aside from a full shard, so any single shard is above Nightblood in terms of power. quote:Questioner
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Mar 8, 2020 14:31
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I'm just starting Starsight and the first few pages are the obligatory recap of the previous book. While I appreciate the refresher on something I read months ago, it seems like it makes some big jumps. The final revelatory chapter introduced some things that I thought were supposed to be understood by the reader but still mysterious to the characters, but now she's rattling them off very matter-of-factly. Was there some bonus material between the books that I missed?
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Mar 8, 2020 16:42
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His Divine Shadow posted:Nightblood is one of the most invested thing aside from a full shard, so any single shard is above Nightblood in terms of power. Oops, thought I had made that clear, but on a reread clearly not!! Yes, Harmony > any other shard > Nightblood wizzardstaff posted:Was there some bonus material between the books that I missed? There was about a six month gap between Skyward and Starsight. Apart from M-Bot downloading a bunch of data at the end of Skyward, Rig and the engineers have taken over a bunch of the platforms, gaining access to more systems. Plus Cobb now runs the DDF so the days of secrecy under Ironsides are over. I don't remember anything Spensa rattling off as being a thing that wasn't already known at the end of Skyward.
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Mar 8, 2020 21:52
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Leng posted:There was about a six month gap between Skyward and Starsight. Apart from M-Bot downloading a bunch of data at the end of Skyward, Rig and the engineers have taken over a bunch of the platforms, gaining access to more systems. Plus Cobb now runs the DDF so the days of secrecy under Ironsides are over. I don't remember anything Spensa rattling off as being a thing that wasn't already known at the end of Skyward. I went back and found the epilogue to Skyward and it was a lot more comprehensive than I remembered. It didn't mention Superiority by name or banning AIs, but the former is just a proper noun and the latter might have come up earlier in the book and I just forgot. The logistical developments in the time-jump might have made a nice story to read on their own rather than being summarized in a paragraph, but I'll get over it. If it comes down to a choice between that hypothetical novella and a few more months of time to work on Stormlight, I know what I choose. Incidentally as I was looking around for background info on Skyward I found that it was originally planned as a Cosmere novel but moved to its own universe because it needed to reference Earth. Really curious how the Cosmere connections would have come into play here.
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Mar 9, 2020 05:29
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Man, Mistborn was so simple now I look back on it. That's not a criticism or compliment, just a statement of fact. I'm done with Part 2 of Way of Kings and I had totally forgotten so, so much from just this book alone. I don't even want to think about all the details from the next two TSA books that have completely slipped my mind. How does Sanderson remember all this stuff? Not only remember it, that's what we do and I guess that can be relatively easy. He's got plans for the future that he has to balance around remembering everything. It's insane.
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Mar 9, 2020 08:26
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It's surprisingly easy to subtly remind a reader of things you've already established. People's memories are better than they think, there's just a lot in deep recall that requires some prompting.
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Mar 9, 2020 08:37
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NikkolasKing posted:How does Sanderson remember all this stuff? Not only remember it, that's what we do and I guess that can be relatively easy. He's got plans for the future that he has to balance around remembering everything. It's insane. He tracks everything on a private wiki and has a dedicated continuity wrangler.
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Mar 9, 2020 10:42
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eszett engma posted:He tracks everything on a private wiki and has a dedicated continuity wrangler. Right. And it's this kind of dedication to getting it right that makes me feel so much better about getting these stories done as compared to GRRM/GoT.
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Mar 9, 2020 16:35
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After finishing WoT, I started on the Stormlight Archives and it's pretty drat hard to follow. I'll get a character or two's point of views, and after a few chapters it's onto other characters in a different time period. I feel like this happened 2-3 times now in Part 1. As soon as I start piecing together a character's story and what they're doing, bam, next character. I just hit Part 2 and it's yet another character in... some timeline. Does this poo poo ever start to make sense? I assume so, but it's kind of frustrating to have no idea what's going on.
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Mar 9, 2020 18:23
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:After finishing WoT, I started on the Stormlight Archives and it's pretty drat hard to follow. I'll get a character or two's point of views, and after a few chapters it's onto other characters in a different time period. I feel like this happened 2-3 times now in Part 1. As soon as I start piecing together a character's story and what they're doing, bam, next character. I just hit Part 2 and it's yet another character in... some timeline. Everything is happening at the same time except for the flashbacks, the prelude, and the prologue. Everything else is happening contemporaneously. The prologue isn't really intended to make sense up front. It makes more sense over time. The flashbacks in the first book are all Kaladin's. It should be pretty obvious immediately when it's a Kaladin flashback, because his situation is drastically different or he's a child. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Mar 9, 2020 |
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Mar 9, 2020 18:26
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The prologue with Szeth is his perspective on the night of gavilar's death, each of the first five books have one. And since he's a big name fantasy author, brandon has a big team of beta readers who just nitpick continuity
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Mar 9, 2020 18:31
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There are also Interludes in between the main Parts that feature other minor characters. Those aren’t normal point of view characters but they tell some other smaller portion of the story. It’s mainly just Shallan, Kaladin, Dalinar and Adolin in the first book right?
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Mar 9, 2020 18:59
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Daric posted:There are also Interludes in between the main Parts that feature other minor characters. Those aren’t normal point of view characters but they tell some other smaller portion of the story. It’s mainly just Shallan, Kaladin, Dalinar and Adolin in the first book right? Yeah, pretty much. Szeth shows up a few times, but I think just in interludes. Regardless, all of those characters' plotlines are happening contemporaneously.
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Mar 9, 2020 19:04
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To me it was all the quotes at the start of each chapter. I don't know what they're called but they're in all the books and man are they super confusing the first time through. I understand them somewhat better now - I realize it's Hoid talking in the first few in Way of Kings but I had no idea who he was talking to until somebody elsewhere informed me - but several of their meanings still elude me.
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Mar 9, 2020 19:13
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NikkolasKing posted:To me it was all the quotes at the start of each chapter. I don't know what they're called but they're in all the books and man are they super confusing the first time through. The epigraphs at the start of the chapters are just for flavor. They provide hints or clues as to the larger plot, but aren't immediately relevant to what's going on.
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Mar 9, 2020 19:23
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