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Karnegal posted:The other frequent instance of this is all of the religious bullshit. I'll acknowledge that I think Sanderson's personal religion is dumb as hell - religions look especially dumb they were started after we had reliable records that show their founder was a huckster or that they decided god changed his mind about black people around the same time US policy shifted. But again, if you're going to try to make an argument, be loving subtle if you aren't writing an overt religious argument. I was face-palming around the point where Wax is literally being told that Harmony (god) allows or makes lovely stuff happen to him because he knows Wax can handle it. Why don't you just write your thoughts on god down elsewhere instead of having a character monologue it mid fantasy novel? Really, it's a book where the message is more or less "God is an rear end in a top hat, and he doesn't know what he's doing" and that's your takeaway?
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Oct 12, 2015 11:19
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flosofl posted:and that's your takeaway? Agreed. My take away from this? "God is chained by God. Regrets being bad at being God." Also MeLaan might just be spouting her own opinion, after all, Harmony didn't turn the Kandra into mindless drones. Admittedly that reasoning's abit of a cop out.  I'm struggling to write the rest of this without feeling like some dumb fanboy, "attacking" Karnegal for no good reason, so I'll just try to be honest; I can understand the author's real life influencing opinion's on their work. I can also understand someone who refuses to divorce the author and the work (gently caress the guy who wrote Enders Game. gently caress the guy who wrote Sword of Truth.) on principle because of said author's opinions, even if such opinions are never seen in the work itself. I've never had that with Sanderson's work nor have I felt Sanderson trying to preach to me, but with Karnegal's example? I can understand how it can be seen as such. Oh, and to be entirely clear, I don't consider it a "problem" to dislike an author and his/her work because of ideological differences. I'd be a hypocrite if I did, but I sure as hell wish I could entirely divorce such things and enjoy media on its own merits and condemn it on its own failures. Apologies for my rambling.  Now to enjoy that post-reading phase of regret that I dont have more to read. 
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Oct 12, 2015 12:27
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Yeah, Sanderson is like the fantasy version of Clancy--prolific, you don't go looking for any deep stories, and pretty good within his niche and not one step outside it. That said, he's always trying to grow outside it so I have to give him points for trying (even if the work itself doesn't quite come together well). It's pretty much a love it/hate it thing when it comes to his work. I can sit back and enjoy it seeing the hints and shadows of the cosmere arc starting to fall into place. The characters themselves tend towards...anachronistically annoying, but most of the time it isn't terrible and can be powered through (Kaladin is a terrible offender here). All that being said, he's pretty consistent with having a "floor" of his work being mediocre at worst, and damned fun and entertaining when he shines.
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Oct 12, 2015 17:15
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I think Wayne actually does have some kind of mental illness or form of dementia. I think there's a line about him hitting his head against a wall a ton to make voices stop as a child? He might have literally caused himself brain damage. Or he's a high functioning autist, might explain his talent at remembering stuff like manerisms and ascents so easily.
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Oct 12, 2015 17:30
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Sazed seems to realize that he's not very good at his job, and even more so doesn't seem to be enjoying it at all. I wonder if it's possible to give up a shard (and if it's possible to survive doing so?). It seems hard to rationalize why Sazed would willingly inflict the emotional scarring of the loss of a loved one on another, when he himself pretty much went to pieces after it happening to him. Unless Sazed is trying to duplicate the pattern? Wax seems to have a strong connection with the mists, has had a similar crisis of faith forced on him that Harmony had, and now at the end of the book is given Vin's old magical earring. I wonder if Sazed is trying to groom Wax to be his replacement. Another possibility: the well of preservation might building up to another surge of power like when the Lord Ruler and Vin tapped it (every 1000 years or so?). Maybe Sazed doesn't know how to stop the well from making slivers of mortals and is trying to set Wax up to handle being the next Sliver of Preservation/Harmony.
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Oct 12, 2015 17:45
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Velius posted:All right. Working through the Shadows of Self and I have some theories. I'm about 60% in so spoilers abound. It was a plot point in the original mistborn trilogy that it's possible to act against a shard's intent when one first gains possession of it. The shard's influence isnt felt strongly until you've had it for a while. This is probably why Sazed was able to be "too nice"
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Oct 12, 2015 18:24
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I really love his books, but there's nothing wrong with not liking them, or the way Brandon writes his characters etc. But I find your attitude towards him and his religion really offensive, and I'm saying that as some who's agnostic. Yes, Mormonism is certainly a lot stranger than vanilla Christian sects, but this has nothing to do with his books. Faith is obviously hugely important for Sanderson, and this is reflected in his works. But it's always in a very non-specific way, none of the shardholders are ever comparable to the Christian god. Contrast that with fantasy Atlas Shrugged a.k.a. Sword of Truth, where the objectivism bullshit gets worse and worse until Goodkind dials it down a bit in his last three books. Yes, he incorporates the age-old question how an omnipotent, omniscient and most importantly omnibenevolent god can create a world in which all these horrible things happen. But that's actually something that's a lot more applicable to many fantasy works, in which you have certainty that god(s) exist, and yet they often don't really seem to act with the best interests of their faithful in mind. Rand al'Thor in Wheel of Time can have one of the shittiest lives in his entire universe, yet he never questions the Creator. The Dark One does a lot of things, inculding plunging the world in a endless winter, yet the Creator never intervenes. Why do none of these characters ever have a crisis of faith? Similarly, Richard Rahl never has an issue with the Creator in Sword of Truth. I really appreciate it that Brandon explores the concept of an apparently benevolent, rather powerful (but not omnipotent) and actually active god, and and what that means for his world. Deep Space Nine also had a comparable big focus on faith and religion, and it's part of what makes it the best Star Trek series. Same with Babylon 5. Apart from his fascination with faith, which is not altogether a bad thing, he never pushes his beliefs on you in the books, or outside of them for that matter. He's no Goodkind, who has his characters monologue about why socialism is super evil, how pacifists are also evil, and why anybody who doesn't own a gun is dumb (and gun control is also evil). He's no Orson Scott Card, who's openly homophobic. By all means, criticize the quality of Sanderson's works, but attacking him for his faith even though you couldn't tell that he's a Mormon from reading his books at all, that's lovely in my opinion.
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Oct 12, 2015 18:38
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Law Cheetah posted:It was a plot point in the original mistborn trilogy that it's possible to act against a shard's intent when one first gains possession of it. The shard's influence isnt felt strongly until you've had it for a while. This is probably why Sazed was able to be "too nice" Note that sazed is actually imbalanced towards having too much ruin, not the other way around. He might be bleeding some of that away somehow, but that might explain some of his slide as well.
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Oct 12, 2015 18:51
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flosofl posted:Really, it's a book where the message is more or less "God is an rear end in a top hat, and he doesn't know what he's doing" and that's your takeaway? I saw it more as do you actually want free will or do you really want to just be puppets that do what Harmony wants? Complaining that bad stuff happens because Harmony feels people can handle it is dumb. That part of the book could've been worded better, since harmony requires both good and bad things otherwise you end up out of balance, but considering how pretty much every Shard has rather severe issues it's weird anyone can look at them as if Sanderson's trying to be positive about religion. Seeing this as an attempt at anything but a negative light on Sazed and co is like watching Star Trek:TNG and coming away with the conclusion that Q is anything but an omnipotent rear end in a top hat. The Shards of the cosmere are definitely not omniscient. Maybe the actual powers are but the people who hold them aren't, even when augmented by the shard itself. Maybe if/when someone reforms all the shards in to a single entity they'd be truly omnipotent and omniscient but the pieces seem to be on par with (non-Zeus/Athena) Greek gods at best. SoS made it really clear that the shards are very poor 'gods' and that they're all parts of a once greater whole shows through the issues they all have. I also don't think Hoid's end game is to try and kill/take all the shards for himself. I think he wants power from all of them but not to actually become them. Either way he definitely has no short term plans to face one since on Roshar he mentions he is very much trying to avoid being noticed by Odium. Law Cheetah posted:It was a plot point in the original mistborn trilogy that it's possible to act against a shard's intent when one first gains possession of it. The shard's influence isnt felt strongly until you've had it for a while. This is probably why Sazed was able to be "too nice" Makes sense, considering he clearly regrets the extent that he 'fixed' things, especially with the ultra-fertile basin that he sees as having made people too comfortable and stunted their development. Basically as Harmony he's now seeing that some of his earliest actions were very much things that threw nature out of harmony, just not in the same way that the Lord Ruler did when he hosed up the entire planet.
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Oct 12, 2015 19:01
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I enjoy Sanderson's books quite a bit, but I also agree with almost everything Karnegal said (except I don't really think The Emperor's Soul is that much better than all of Sanderson's other contemporary books). One additional issue I have is that sometimes it really seems like you can see the bones of the outline when reading a Sanderson book. It's as if he starts with the structure of the entire plot with all of the different clues or foreshadowing elements and then he goes back later and fills in the details around them. When you're reading it, sometimes you'll come across a line that doesn't really seem to fit or seems too forced that you eventually realize was just in there so that something that happens later in the book didn't seem to come out of nowhere. Conversely, there also don't seem to be a lot of worldbuilding details that aren't intrinsically related to the plot or the overall cosmology. It seems like both of those complaints are a little less true for longer books, like in the Stormlight Archive, but that could be because I don't know how all of the plot threads tie together or because a lot of detail is Cosmere-related.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:53
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Torrannor posted:I really love his books, but there's nothing wrong with not liking them, or the way Brandon writes his characters etc. How do you think his faith doesn't influence how he writes? I mean he's progressed a little since his Dumbledore days, but even at the surface level don't you think that you can draw a pretty clear line from his weird aversion to profanity (in a series where people have loving metal spikes rammed through their eyes) to a religious prescriptions against profanity? Or maybe you can see how the cartoonish drunks are a symptom of not imbibing and apparently having a relatively juvenile idea of what people who are drinking act like? In terms of the broader issues, I don't know how you get to the third Mistborn book and don't see that Sanderson is putting his religious views into the text. Maybe you need to step up your critical reading skills because by the time I got to the third book, I stopped and went, " oh man, this guy is in some sort of crazy branch of Christianity isn't he." Admittedly, I couldn't pin it as Mormon as opposed to one of the various fundamentalist strains, but it was pretty clear. So, I Googled him, and, oh hey, I was 100% right. So, your assertion that "you couldn't tell that he's a Mormon from reading his books at all" is wildly off base. I figured out his religious proclivities from reading his books with zero knowledge of him outside of Mistborn, which was the first thing of his I encountered. You're right that he isn't Goodkind or Card. I never said he was a reprehensible human being. I said that his religious stuff is overt and usually DOES come in either these sorts of monologues or lengthy inner thought sequences. In any case, he's saying these things overtly instead of leading the reader part of the way and letting them get there on their own. If you think that me calling his religion dumb is offensive, I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm not going to respect something that leads people to say idiotic poo poo like "I accept and sustain the leaders of the LDS church. I believe that a prophet of God has said that widespread legislation to approve gay marriage will bring pain and suffering to all involved. I trust those whom I have accepted as my spiritual leaders. I feel that what they have said is God’s will." That's a load of poo poo. Those are lovely beliefs, and the fact that they're religiously informed is no excuse for holding them, and I will continue to call them out for being lovely. In fact, this is all a great illustration of how bullshit religion is and why it's bad for people. Sanderson seems like a guy who, had he not be indoctrinated into his religion, would have 0 issues whatsoever with gay people. I mean, in that same essay he acknowledges his privilege as a white man. If you read his books, it's pretty clear that the guy recognizes that sexism is real and women don't get an equal shake even though they deserve it. This is apparent throughout many of his books even if his female characters aren't quite there yet and he's too overt with these arguments (he has improved though). He seems to go out of his way to be inclusive in terms of having major female characters in his books, but, he doesn't do that with any gay characters. I believe pretty strongly that given a clear interest in representing characters other than white men as protagonists and considering his crazy output, we would probably have seen a gay major character by now if not for his religious beliefs that acting on same-sex attractions is a sin. As I see it, his religion is holding him back from writing more interesting things. His religion is also worthy of reproach given it's historical positions (black people aren't equal to white people) and it's present ones (acting on same-sex attraction is sinful). flosofl posted:Really, it's a book where the message is more or less "God is an rear end in a top hat, and he doesn't know what he's doing" and that's your takeaway? I don't think that's the message. You get the message pretty directly. Marasi, as the reader's proxy, pretty much asks MeLaan the obvious question of why Harmony would do this etc. Marasi wants to know why Harmony would do the seemingly "rear end in a top hat" thing and she gets a bunch of rebukes that essentially add up to - if there is to be any free will he can't control everything. If he isn't controlling everything, then actions have consequences and even good actions can have negative consequences (the example of saving a man who later in life makes a child sick). Given that, he is only putting burdens where they can be borne. This is not a "god is an rear end in a top hat" perspective from any sort of Christian angle - you're talking about a religion with countless figures who are given burdens that they must bear for "God's plan.".
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Oct 13, 2015 02:59
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Karnegal posted:I don't think that's the message. You get the message pretty directly. Marasi, as the reader's proxy, pretty much asks MeLaan the obvious question of why Harmony would do this etc. Marasi wants to know why Harmony would do the seemingly "rear end in a top hat" thing and she gets a bunch of rebukes that essentially add up to - if there is to be any free will he can't control everything. If he isn't controlling everything, then actions have consequences and even good actions can have negative consequences (the example of saving a man who later in life makes a child sick). Given that, he is only putting burdens where they can be borne. This is not a "god is an rear end in a top hat" perspective from any sort of Christian angle - you're talking about a religion with countless figures who are given burdens that they must bear for "God's plan.". I just finished reading SoS and came back here to read all the spoilered stuff and disagreed with your criticism in the same way the other people have. The characters' interaction with harmony does not seem to be informed by Sanderson's faith at all so it's pretty dumb for you to call it out as a mormon conspiracy. This part I've quoted doesn't seem to have anything to do with his mormonism and is a general theological debate, which is what you'd expect in a fantasy novel where communication with God is actually possible.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:07
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I really enjoyed seeing a mortal talk to a god so gently caress off
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Oct 13, 2015 04:39
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mewse posted:I just finished reading SoS and came back here to read all the spoilered stuff and disagreed with your criticism in the same way the other people have. The characters' interaction with harmony does not seem to be informed by Sanderson's faith at all so it's pretty dumb for you to call it out as a mormon conspiracy. This part I've quoted doesn't seem to have anything to do with his mormonism and is a general theological debate, which is what you'd expect in a fantasy novel where communication with God is actually possible. If you read a book expecting to be offended, you shockingly find things to be offended about. Weird.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:51
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Please tell us more about how Mormonism tainted a book series by making denizens of each world use relevant terminology for cursing instead of just taking the lazy way out by having everyone say poo poo gently caress piss oval office...etc, or how people who get drunk don't slur their words in the magical land you come from. We care. Really. Nobody cares about you being a militant atheist. mewse posted:I just finished reading SoS and came back here to read all the spoilered stuff and disagreed with your criticism in the same way the other people have. The characters' interaction with harmony does not seem to be informed by Sanderson's faith at all so it's pretty dumb for you to call it out as a mormon conspiracy. This part I've quoted doesn't seem to have anything to do with his mormonism and is a general theological debate, which is what you'd expect in a fantasy novel where communication with God is actually possible. This goes for the Cosmere setting as a while. It's a polytheist setting (though some worlds may have only a single 'god' unlike others). Every religious figure is pretty much a giant fuckup in one way or another and they're all very clearly flawed. I mean the only real thing you could point to in Mistborn as being a "Mormon" thing would be Ruin can't read/alter metal, so the truth about him/the well is recorded on metal plates which you could try and argue is similar to the John Smith "read magic plates in a hat" thing, except anyone could read these plates and unless I forgot a part in Hero of Ages where they got destroyed, said plate is likely still intact in the SoS world since I really doubt Sazed would've destroyed it (intentionally). It'd certainly be a better argument than "Sanderson writes that people get drunk and slur their speech" since no, he's not really doing that in cases where it wouldn't apply. Wayne would absolutely be slurring his speech when he goes to the University because he drank a considerable amount of hard liquor, and since he can burn health to recover in an instant I'm going to guess if he stores health while drinking he can get drunk even faster if he'd really want to.
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Oct 13, 2015 06:35
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I thought Sanderson was an atheist or maybe Hindu. Isn't an author who writes about multiple Gods more likely to not belong to a monotheistic religion? 
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Oct 13, 2015 07:09
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The Gardenator posted:I thought Sanderson was an atheist or maybe Hindu. Isn't an author who writes about multiple Gods more likely to not belong to a monotheistic religion? I've always been under the impression that Sanderson, despite insisting that he adheres to the Official Mormon Doctrine (probably since you aren't allowed to deviate and still be a Real Mormon, which means losing touch with all your friends and family and church) leans towards a more sort of general theist philosophy that all religions are touching on the same sort of divine truth in different ways - similar to the way Sazed was in the first Mistborn trilogy, even if he might think Mormonism is 'closer'. This is entirely the impression I get from the way he handles religion in his books than out of any actual facts or anything though - he seems very open minded about most religions having some sort of validity even if it isn't accurately describing the (very much existing) gods. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 07:27
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Sexuality doesn't really have a place in fantasy. I know that's probably a loaded statement but really, who gives a gently caress if Character XYZ wants to put their square peg in someone's round hole, or wiggle it against someone elses' peg?
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Oct 13, 2015 07:27
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Odette posted:Sexuality doesn't really have a place in fantasy. I know that's probably a loaded statement but really, who gives a gently caress if Character XYZ wants to put their square peg in someone's round hole, or wiggle it against someone elses' peg? I wouldn't say that - many fantasy books explore relationships between people, even if it's not in the same depth as romance, and the relationship between two characters who are, or could become, romantically interested in each other can be much different than two characters who aren't or can't. If you just broadly say 'sexuality doesn't really have a place in fantasy' it'd just tend to reset to the default of 'non-standard sexuality doesn't really have a place in fantasy' since sexuality of that sort's been in fantasy since day 1.
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Oct 13, 2015 07:32
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Odette posted:who gives a gently caress if Character XYZ wants to put their square peg in someone's round hole, or wiggle it against someone elses' peg? The evil empire that murdered one of the protagonist's fathers? The protagonist that wants to destroy the evil empire?
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Oct 13, 2015 07:42
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Does anyone else think that Sazed really hosed up? Not just in the setup, but when Paalm dies she mentions that she won't be Sazed's slave again, implying that (despite what he told Wax), he actually did Assume Direct Control on multiple occasions. The kandra figured out how to commit suicide just in case Sazed were to start trying that poo poo - I think he's just lost a lot of their trust.
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Oct 13, 2015 21:32
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Tunicate posted:Does anyone else think that Sazed really hosed up? Not just in the setup, but when Paalm dies she mentions that she won't be Sazed's slave again, implying that (despite what he told Wax), he actually did Assume Direct Control on multiple occasions. Yeah. IIRC it was explained that Paalm was sent to the roughs by Sazed to be Wax's bodyguard. That seems to be before she removed one of her spikes.
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Oct 13, 2015 22:06
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Tunicate posted:Does anyone else think that Sazed really hosed up? Not just in the setup, but when Paalm dies she mentions that she won't be Sazed's slave again, implying that (despite what he told Wax), he actually did Assume Direct Control on multiple occasions. Sazed may or may not be hosed up, but I think you are wrong about the Kandra and Paalm. First, if you think yourself agents of God (Preservation), but then find out that the Devil (Ruin) can take direct control of you, and indeed enslaves your entire race to help him bring about the apocalypse... what more motivation do you need to figure out how to prevent that sort of thing ever happening again? Even apart from Sazed abusing his power, the right kinds of allomancers can also control them through their spikes. As for Paalm, Sazed claimed that he did not assume direct control, but did push her to get Wax back to Elendel, even if it means to let herself be killed and thus end her relationship with him. She's clearly insane, so it's difficult how much we can take her words at face value. She could simply mean that she felt like a slave, with the threat of him taking control of her always being present. Yet the rest of the Kandra don't seem to share her sentiment. She's always portrait as an aberration, so I think the others are mostly still faithful servants of Sazed.
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Oct 13, 2015 22:14
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Torrannor posted:Sazed may or may not be hosed up, but I think you are wrong about the Kandra and Paalm. First, if you think yourself agents of God (Preservation), but then find out that the Devil (Ruin) can take direct control of you, and indeed enslaves your entire race to help him bring about the apocalypse... what more motivation do you need to figure out how to prevent that sort of thing ever happening again? Even apart from Sazed abusing his power, the right kinds of allomancers can also control them through their spikes. They already had a plan in place, though. Removing their spikes. Paalm said she refused to go back to being a slave after she had both of her spikes in - regardless of whether she was crazy or not before, she clearly was (at that moment) in full command of her mental facilities. And she had to be in her right mind to decide to remove a spike in the first place. Getting mindraped by Sazed (who she thought she could trust) and being forced to act like a puppet to his will would easily be sufficient motivation for that. Allomancers don't seem like a real problem anymore, since allomancers are far weaker, and aluminum blocks soothing/rioting and is readily available. I'm just finding it hard to trust Sazed as a reliable source of information, given how he's been quite dishonest and manipulative throughout AoL. And when his best defense is 'I just leaned really hard on her emotions about the situation and stopped short of puppeteering her body', he's already admitted to being scummy. Plus, Sazed's justification for trying to control her in the first place was that she "has disobeyed her Contract". 'Do my bidding or I will take control of your body' isn't a really benevolent stance to take. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 22:27
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Tunicate posted:
Thats the nice thing about being "Harmony", it doesn't exactly demand niceness. For example; it could be a harmonious act to keep humanity in check to avoid bringing ruin to the rest of the world.
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Oct 14, 2015 01:45
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Tunicate posted:Does anyone else think that Sazed really hosed up? Not just in the setup, but when Paalm dies she mentions that she won't be Sazed's slave again, implying that (despite what he told Wax), he actually did Assume Direct Control on multiple occasions. You're off on the 2nd thing kandra didn't find a way to kill themselves due to fear of Sazed controlling them, they did it because of what Ruin did and wanted to make sure that couldn't happen again. One of the Kandra (MeLaan?) explicitly states this. That it'd let them do the same against Sazed (or any future shard holder) is a given but if Sazed didn't want them to be able to do so he'd probably have tried to circumvent their actions. Tunicate posted:They already had a plan in place, though. Removing their spikes. Removing spikes doesn't kill them, it just reverts them to Mistwraiths. When Ruin takes over it's pretty much instant and they can't control their bodies any more. It's likely the same deal as Ruin controlling the Inquisitors. Marsh was fully aware of what happened but he couldn't stop it in any way. The Kandra devised a way to die that wouldn't require spikes being removed or having physical control of their bodies. I think Marsh would've loved to have had that option to put it mildly. All said, I think Harmony's acting pretty on point with how you'd expect their nature to be.
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Oct 14, 2015 02:26
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I'm not sure the series will go that direction, but the idea that Harmony might be an unreliable narrator of sorts and may turn toward the darker side is tantalizing to me exactly for the reasons of his journey to become Harmony in the Mistborn trilogy. Taking a hero and then tarnishing that - if done well - would be great. Especially since Harmony has a slight imbalance toward Ruin - on a long enough timeline, it's going to become more evident and because Harmony IS Harmony, Sazed is going to think everything is perfectly kosher while things grow problematic.
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Oct 14, 2015 02:27
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Evil Fluffy posted:\ It wasn't instant, though. That's why the kandra Resolution at the end of Hero of Ages worked - they knew they were being controlled and were capable of removing their spikes in time to avoid it, effectively committing suicide. They already had a tested and working countermeasure. Yet despite that, and despite having the ability to directly communicate with sazed for a century (and presumably get a feel for his motives and personality), they continued suicide research. I'm not sure how difficult developing a suicide technique is, but I doubt it's particularly safe. If the kandra are so worried about Sazed going bad that they want to make sure their suicide is fully irreversible, that's a hint that he isn't nearly as benevolent as he seems to think Basically, I got to this point in the novel, and I was like 'wow, sazed has become a real controlling rear end in a top hat'. Break a deal with him, and he doesn't give a gently caress about your free will anymore, he'll puppet around your body and do what he feels like quote:“So stop her!”
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Oct 14, 2015 02:43
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Yea, I really can't buy the Mormon critique as someone who is generally really sensitive to religious bullshit. MeeLan's opinion is just that, her opinion, given at the end to try to balance out how relentlessly Harmony has been torn down as both an effective and good god. Even her defense is basically "Yes he fucks up a lot but he's doing the best he can". Theodicy is actually a fascinating them when applied to a god whose motivations and limitations you know. Having an impotent god who allows bad things to happen because of powerlessness is about as far from Christian theology as you can get. Sanderson's ideology, as much as you can read into it, is, as others have said, more of a interfaith idea where religions are wrong about the nature of world but all still valuable as reflections of faith. Note that the only 'true' religion in the books is Pathism, which as a religion is basically as distant from Mormonism as you can get. On broader implications/ Ars Arcanum So Harmonium turning up means that we could have another set of 16 alloys floating around at some point, if harmonium is ever around in a reasonable quantity. The new god metal has huge implications too. Has a new shard arrived on Scadrial? Autonomy does seem like an enticing force of opposition, but it could well be one of the unidentified shards as well.
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Oct 14, 2015 02:44
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sarmhan posted:
It's apparnetly one that we know, so we can rule out total unknowns.
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Oct 14, 2015 02:45
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I hope Harmony makes some more Mistborn sometime soon. Mainly to see some of the crazy things Sanderson can come up for them to do with the new metals, especially the time ones. Though with the metals that cause people to use up all their metals most fights end the moment anybody gets touched. In the god talk I really want to know how Trell's religion changed so much from what started out as a bunch of super chill astronomers.
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Oct 14, 2015 03:19
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Ethiser posted:I hope Harmony makes some more Mistborn sometime soon. Mainly to see some of the crazy things Sanderson can come up for them to do with the new metals, especially the time ones. Though with the metals that cause people to use up all their metals most fights end the moment anybody gets touched.
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Oct 14, 2015 04:03
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Ethiser posted:I hope Harmony makes some more Mistborn sometime soon. Mainly to see some of the crazy things Sanderson can come up for them to do with the new metals, especially the time ones. Though with the metals that cause people to use up all their metals most fights end the moment anybody gets touched. The new mistborn combat gear will be aluminum disco jumpsuits
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Oct 14, 2015 05:47
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Tunicate posted:It wasn't instant, though. That's why the kandra Resolution at the end of Hero of Ages worked - they knew they were being controlled and were capable of removing their spikes in time to avoid it, effectively committing suicide. I read the motivation for developing a suicide technique as being a way out of the boredom of immortality for Kandra, not as a possible counter to takeovers. Pulling out the spikes works fine for that, but living forever can do very strange things. I wouldn't be surprised if Kandra started using copper feruchemy spikes to wipe away their old memories and 'start fresh' in the future. They'd only need the one spike and could just share it around.
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Oct 14, 2015 07:07
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What happens if you compound copper, anyway? Do you just remember stuff really hard?
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Oct 14, 2015 10:39
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mossyfisk posted:What happens if you compound copper, anyway? Do you just remember stuff really hard? Limitless.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:09
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mossyfisk posted:What happens if you compound copper, anyway? Do you just remember stuff really hard? You become a mixture of Sherlock Holmes and Batman when it comes to detective skills.
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Oct 14, 2015 16:16
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mossyfisk posted:What happens if you compound copper, anyway? Do you just remember stuff really hard? Compounding connection or fortune could be rather broken though. Be really good friends with anyone instantly, or be lucky whenever you want.
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Oct 14, 2015 18:23
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Being super lucky all the time sounds like a great power to give a long lasting antagonist.
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Oct 14, 2015 18:51
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 00:25 |
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Ethiser posted:Being super lucky all the time sounds like a great power to give a long lasting antagonist. Makes you think about how ridiculously overpowered the Lord Ruler was.
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Oct 14, 2015 18:54
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