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Would Stormlight healing, Progression, or Feruchemical gold healing count as some of the ways that a transgender person could change their body to match their identity?
Yes. Those would work. In fact, that's kind of the main way that you would make that happen. Injections of Investiture making the body match the Spiritual and Cognitive.
Is Nightwatcher Cultivation, or an analogue of the Stormfather to [Tanavast]?
These are excellent questions you should be asking.
I've been thinking about Idealism as a philosophy and how the concept of the... Cognitive Realm is sort of like a very realistic version of Idealism. Is there any influence there at all?
Oh, definitely. I was a closet philosophy major in college. I didn't actually do that, but I attended a lot of philosophy classes. And I'll tell you this, philosophers don't know to write. That's the most annoying part. You read their essays, and they're full of brilliant ideas, with these enormous run-on sentences that make no sense. You have to like-- So I got really frustrated by that. But I really loved the classes and reading and things like that, and the touch of it is all over my books. If you look for it, you'll find a lot of the different philosophies, you'll find all those guys in different places on different philosophers and different religions and stuff like that.
With a yes or no answer, would the following analogy be correct? If Syl is to Stormfather, as Wyndle is to Nightwatcher, then is Pattern to Cusicesh?
No, not exactly.
The Stormlight Archive deals with mental health significantly. Are you telling a story of overcoming mental health and its difficulties, or are you telling a story of ongoing...
I am telling a story about characters that I want to be as real to my lived experience as possible. So the story of The Stormlight Archive, what is it about? It is not about mental health. It is about people, but a disproportionate number of them do struggle with kind of dynamic mental health issues.
Mental health is one of these things where there’s always individual answers. If we talk about my wife Emily, there is no cure for depression. Even medication is about managing depression. For her, the right answer is cognitive behavioral therapy and learning what it is to live with depression, and then countering that proactively in her mind, at least for her. That is the answer that she has found that works very well for her. Other people might be able to… I have had a family member who had depressive episodes that lasted a number of years. And they, through therapy, were able to get to where they no longer would be considered having depression, because for them it was a different sort of thing. And these are two explorations of what we would lump as the same sort of mental health issue. But is it even? Everyone is so individual, right?
For the vast majority of people struggling with mental health issues, it is more like Emily than it is like this family member that it was about overcoming it. I consider it to the individual, that the story I’m telling about. I will use the example of the difference between (for physical handicaps) Rysn and Lopen. For Lopen, the story is: there’s going to be a cure, and I have been cured. For Rysn, there is no cure, and it’s about, instead, living with the disability. Overcoming the disability, yes, but it always being part of who she is. And those are two life experiences that we can find people in this room who have probably... Some are continuing to live with a handicap, and others have found that there is some way to just completely get over. And that’s an individual thing.
And I’m not trying to say in The Stormlight Archive, “This is the right path.” Except for the right path being: getting help is okay. Working on it’s okay. And society should maybe do a better job about understanding it.
I know that certain characters (like the Heralds, and others) cannot leave their planet 'cause they're so heavily Invested in that, and they can't leave through the Cognitive Realm. If there was a spaceship (I know there's gonna be spaceships, but I mean spaceships without any other things), could they leave their planet that way? And if not, what would happen to their Physical body?
They would not be able to leave. It would be pretty destructive for them, because it would basically rip out their Spiritual component, and it would have to stay. The squishy matter stuff might keep going, but it would be a disaster. Even a physical spaceship to convey them away would not work. But the answer to how it can happen is in Rhythm of War. Read Rhythm of War... they're figuring things out.
Would a big block of cheese stop a Shardblade? All I can think of is how hard it is to cut cheese with a knife no matter how sharp it is because the cheese can form a suction to the sides of the blade and make it way harder to cut. Would that be a problem for a Shardblade?
When I first designed Shardblades all the way back when, I added in my head a little bit of extra de-friction-izing to the Shardblade blade itself, and some little bit of magick-in going on to allow them to actually cut at the level I want them to. Because it's not just cheese that would do that. Cutting through stone, even if you have the sharpest thing in the earth, that stone... It doesn't work as easily as it would if you were just extra sharp. And so, Shardblades are magically good at cutting, to the point that they would cut through a block of cheese as easily as they would cut through something else. Or a wheel of cheese, a giant thing of cheese. Any editorial additions to this?
Dalinar does, when he's using the Shardhammer to cut the latrine. He does talk about-
It does get wedged in, and you can wedge in and hang from it, but I think cutting any stone, unless you have a little bit of extra magic on it, I don't think it would work. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it actually would.
Because I wanted Adolin to be able to hang off of it or people, when they build it like that. I particularly think when you cut a block and it actually falls, then it's gonna still put pressure on the blade. But when you slice into a rock, you're not getting rid of any of the stone with a blade. Where does that extra stone to make the hole go? Magic! That's where we're getting into magic-level sort of stuff, because I'm just not convinced that no matter how sharp you were, that you would be able to-
Does it go to the Cognitive Realm, or the Spiritual Realm?
RAFO! Shardblades are magically good at slicing so we can actually have Shardblades that cut through stone. That's your answer. And so it would work on cheese the same way.
Did Adonalisum leave a Cognitive Shadow? And if so, has Hoid spoken to it?
RAFO; good question. There's an enormous RAFO.
When someone is spiked, and dies, does that affect the time they spend in the Cognitive?
If they are spiked, yes because if you are extra Invested, which spiking technically does, if you have a spike stapling a bit of someone else's soul to yours--
The other way. Someone spikes through you and you die--
Ohhhhh, oh okay, no, that might make you go faster.
Is that why Harmony doesn’t know who's spiking people? Or--
Hmm. Yeah. Okay. I had not considered that. But yeah, sure. *laughter* Suuureee. You added to the canon. I mean, the actual answer was, when you're spiking somebody, you're ripping of the soul, so kind of, there's not enough left to talk. I mean, you're ripping off enough of the soul, so it's a bad thing. It's a very bad thing. So you go "Who killed you?" and it's just somebody who is essentially-- But yes, they would go faster too.
Why can Rock see Syl?
Ooh, good question, why do you think Rock can see Syl?
My personal theory here is because his people have such a strong belief and reverence in them it allows him to see them for that reason because his strong belief creates some sort of cognitive or spiritual pressure which allows them...
He would agree with that philosophy. I would say, usually when something like that happens there is also something physiological going on.
Is there any Spiritual or Cognitive effect on the subject of Shallan's memory collecting?
Well… …
Simply from taking the memory, not from the consequences of seeing the pictures or anything.
Right… no, I would say no, but there is a sliiiiight Spiritual Connection happening. So, so… but it doesn't really have an effect on the person. I mean, you could say, you could make the argument that any slight Connection like that does have one. But I don't want you to read that much into it. So the answer is yes, with an asterisk of no.
Obviously, we know that spren look different in the Cognitive Realm, as opposed to in the Physical. Seons, from Elantris. Do they look different?
Yes.
Is Urithiru a means for our characters getting between planets?
Getting to the Cognitive Realm would be the first step in getting between planets for most of the ways that people move. So, you could say yes.
One of those, however, is this: Venli doesn't see herself as a hero, nor is she interested in being one. Emotionally, she's not really about saying ideals. She feels she's the wrong person for whatever it is that has started to happen to her.
It is good for the characters to be different so I don't have any problem with this. However, it seems as if she will speak the ideals over a long period of time because of this. We had a theory floating around that Venli can go to the cognitive realm for the escape. I guess she will either need to speak the third ideal (it looks like this will take time) or she will need help from someone else. Maybe BRDIGE 4?
RAFO.
Would Moash (not Vyre) be on her side if given the opportunity? I mean, would he empathize with her and understand her point?
Moash and Vyre are not distinct personalities, so that part of the question isn't as relevant. However, I'd say that he wouldn't really care one way or the other about Venli's problems.
Are you planning to resurrect Kelsier?
Well, how far have you read in this book?
I have read it all.
So he's not really dead.
Well, it depends on what you count as Cognitive Shadow. So resurrect… no… but…
There was this quote about the kite that was without a string.
Yes, he’s looking for a string. He’s indeed looking for a string, so what’s actually going to happen is RAFO.
When the Five Scholars traveled to Roshar, this happened post Recreance, so most Shardblades would have been dead, how did Nightblood gain sapience?
Shardblades weren’t the only Blades around that were active, there were Honorblades. Honorblades are self-aware, but do not manifest a spren in the Cognitive Realm.
Is there a reason for why so many early Radiants were family? Including theorized ones, we have Tien and Kaladin, Jasnah and Elhokar, Dalinar and Renarin, Shallan and Helaran...
Yes, so I can give you the "how the sausage is made," I call this the narrative reason vs the in-world reason. I can give you both.
In-world reasoning is that, when these bonds are forming, these human beings have bonds to other people, and that naturally leads the spren along those bonds. When Kaladin is forming a bond with a windspren [honorspren], and windspren [honorspren] start looking, or even other sapient spren start looking for people, they're going to notice. Remember, they're coming into the Physical Realm, it's very hard for them. They're doing this partially from the Cognitive Realm, searching and trying to get pulled through by the attention and the bond that is forming. They're naturally led to other people who are related. You could even say that, because of Tien, Syl found Kaladin.
I built this in for a narrative reason, and the narrative reason is: we generally are going to want to have a larger than average number of people among the core characters, who are involved in the magic system, and involved in the narrative. Because the magic system is so important in my books, I knew that I was gonna have a lot of friends and family of main characters end up with spren bonds.
But I don't think this is unusual. In fact, I think this is more true to life. It's not one of those coincidences we make up for a book; it's one of those coincidences that happens in life that seems unusual. It seems unusual if you look at it and say, "There are five people who became full-time in the publishing industry during the year Brandon was a senior at BYU. And they are all friends; in fact, they were all friends before they got published." This seems unusual; like, why didn't anyone else? There is nobody else that I know that broke in into the industry from that year. Maybe it happened, but nobody I knew who wasn't in our immediate friend group. Well, this is not that surprising if you actually look at it, because when one person breaks in, it becomes so much easier for everyone else that knew that person. Not just for networking reasons. (Networking reasons: obvious). The other obvious one is: the people are gonna know each other because they're all gonna be moving in the same circles, looking for each other without knowing it. They're gonna be looking for other good writers, and they're gonna be making connections with them. They're gonna notice when people ask questions in a class that are the right kinds of questions to be asking about getting published.
But even beyond those two things, once I broke in, Dan Wells has said before he realized, "Brandon did this; this is real. He actually did this. I can do this." And indeed, he went and broke in. Once this thing that seems impossible, whether it's becoming a full time novelist, or forming a spren bond and becoming a Knight Radiant; once you've seen somebody do it, it becomes way easier for you to conceive of yourself doing it. This is why C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were in the same writing group. This is why you see this sort of thing happening all around the world and in all sorts of professions, that people who were friends together... Every time that people are like, "Wow, these three major Hollywood stars knew each other in high school." Well, yes, that is actually more likely to happen than not, because of all these reasons I've talked about.
So I was looking at the letter sent by Hoid to Frost and vice versa and I was wondering how he sent them? Like is there some sort of Cosmere Postal Service in the Cognitive Realm?
He's not using it, but there is active trade between several of the planets (and a version of a postal service.)
At the risk of getting too technical, is there anything besides lack of knowledge preventing a soulcaster from turning some rocks into a bunch of plutonium and exploding?
I know you've got some rules attached to time bubbles to avoid those going nuclear so I wouldn't be surprised if there was something or another.
Well, Soulcasting isn't fission or fusion. It's a spiritual transformation process, not a physical one, and so you don't have to worry about some of these issues. There IS historical precedent of accidentally setting off fission reactions in the cosmere using the magic, but that was a different process. Soulcasting is actually pretty safe. (Well, on a grand scale.)
You could end up irradiating yourself, though, which wouldn't be very fun.
If you know what you were doing, making plutonium or uranium on Roshar wouldn't be difficult. The problem is more a matter of knowledge, and room for scientific exploration. They're unlikely to make atom bombs for the same reason they haven't made gunpowder. Once they figure out that some substances are important, they can learn to make them with Soulcasting (assuming they have Radiants) but some substances just don't occur naturally--so discovering them in the first place is difficult, and would require more modern scientific process.
Okay, just to clarify here (since I'm not sure how up you are on early nuke designs)
A big enough chunk of uranium or plutonium will explode regardless of whether it's in a bomb or not. Early bomb designs just slammed two smaller chunks together so they'd be one big chunk.
For plutonium 'big enough' is about 35 pounds in one place - a chunk somewhere between the size of baseball and volleyball.
If I understand properly, people can soulcast from the cognitive realm into the physical, which implies once we get into a more modern stormlight setting soulcasters will make nuclear submarines look like small potatoes.
Slamming two chunks together so they became one big chunk seems an understatement, from what I remember. I'm under the impression that you had to use a great deal of explosive force to ram them together in order to set off a viable fission reaction. Doesn't it have to be compressed somewhat in order to react with itself?
I'll admit, it's been a long time since I've looked at this, but I remember glancing it over, and deciding that you'd need more than just soulcasting to get it to happen. Though it's not outside of reason that a soulcaster could learn to create super-dense plutonium. The problem is one of understanding, however.
Just like it's totally possible that we, with our current technology, could figure out some huge breakthrough in science allowing FTL or other incredible discoveries. But we don't have the understanding to pull it off yet.
In a modern setting, however, a lot of these complaints go out the window. Let's just say that this isn't the only reason a modern society that can instantly transmute one substance to another is potentially a very interesting place.
You're totally right that everyone currently uses an 'implosion' style compression design. It's a lot more bang for your buck, and you need less radioactive material to work with. They're also a lot safer, because just sitting around they're well below critical mass - without the power-boosting tricks they basically can't go off.
The old "nobody uses these anymore" designs were 'Gun-Type'. Very simple - shoot a uranium bullet into the center of a uranium ring (or vice versa). Inefficient as heck (the Hiroshima bomb only fissioned 1.4% of its uranium), but also super simple to put together.
Despite being simple to build, gun-types were also super unsafe relative to modern implosion devices (among other worries, dropping a gun-type device into the ocean could potentially set it off because of how neutrons react with water). Also, getting the timing perfect on the fissile 'bullet' was a problem, so practically speaking it could only be done with uranium.
After WWII, the only use the US ever had for gun-types was in bunker busters and nuclear artillery (because of course that was a good idea).
Darn, that post turned out longer than I expected it to.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to see you make something really cool out of a post-scarcity transmutropolis setting (especially since the liespren would be in charge of nuclear treaties), and also my roommate just pointed out all the laying out of nuclear bomb details is pointless if they could just make antimatter instead. D'oh.
This is useful information for me, but my gut says that Rosharans couldn't get this working with their current tech level. That said, the REAL issue (as you mentioned in your original question) is knowledge, not feasibility. They'd have to know how to make the right kind of Uranium or Plutonium--and would need to be able to get this across to a soulcaster in a way that works, then THEY would need to get this across to spren. Cross that hurdle, and I suppose it's not at all implausible to imagine Alethi during Dalinar's era with nukes. I suspect the right kind of fabrial could make a trigger device to match ring and bullet at the right time. Depends on how quickly it needs to be going, though.
Are Steelpush and Ironpull strictly momentum conserving
I believe they are, Peter has the math, but I believe that they are. You are not losing anything to the cognitive and spiritual realms, if that’s you are asking. You are pulling energy from those places, but only to cause the push/pull.
I've you say in other interviews that the Stormlight Archives was your go at a big epic everything's-on-the-table fantasy series. But was there any particular series or religion or myths that inspired the story?
There's a whole bunch going on. You will find a whole lot of Eastern shamanism, like shinto or things like that, built around the idea of everything having a spren. That is one obvious influence.
Another one is Plato's theory of the Forms (from the Phaedrus, I believe it is), and this idea of different realms of existence directly became Realmatic theory, which is the Physical, Spiritual, and Cognitive of the books. He just had two; I ended up with three. But you can directly trace that to Plato.
A lot of the Alethi culture came from me wanting to build something based off of my research into the Mongol people, particularly during the time of Genghis Khan. But I took away the horses; you don't have cavalries on Roshar to the extent that you would on Earth. And I thought that was really interesting, because most people who base anything on the Mongols go with the whole horse lords things to the point that it's become a cliche. So I'm like, "What if I strip that away, and I'm forced to look at other nuances of their culture?" Particularly, I love the moment (trying to remember what the name of the dynasty was) where the Mongols conquered China, and then basically became a dynasty in China and became basically another Chinese government. The Chinese were used to this idea, that different people take over, the bureaucrats start serving them instead, and the big machine that is China keeps going with a new Dynasty in charge; now they're Mongols. That's really cool to me. And this idea of the Alethi as this famous infantry, this conquering infantry, that (also kind of you see this in Dalinar) have to, in some ways, settle down and rule an empire now that they have one. That's really cool to me, that's really interesting. And that's probably one of the most direct things you can point to Mongol culture for, is this idea. But also kind of, I feel like when people do a warrior culture in fantasy, too often 1) they all feel alike in some ways, and I didn't like that. I wanted to do where you were reading through the eyes of people who were from what I thought was a nuanced, realistic warrior culture. And you didn't realize until you were partway through the book, you were like, "This is a warrior culture! This is, like Klingons. These are the bad guys to a lot of people's eyes!" But it's more nuanced, it's not one note, and so you've got a lot of variety in the culture and a lot of people to it, and a lot of different opinions and perspectives that you may not even notice.
I love doing stuff like this. Like, Elantris is a zombie story. The original premise for Elantris is a zombie story. And I hope that a lot of people don't even realize that. Because I'm trying to strip away some of the trappings and use some of the core concepts. I like it when people get done with Elantris, and they're like, "Wait, zombie story? Oh, yeah!" And I like it when people are reading the Alethi, and they get to the end and they're like, "Oh, those are the Mongols? This is a warrior culture? I didn't even get that! I was through their eyes, and I didn't understand that these are the scourge that everyone else is afraid of, because I was seeing through their eyes and just seeing them as people." That's a greater sort of worldbuilding and storytelling philosophy that I have.
The highstorms came from tidal pools. A lot of the ecology on Roshar was, "Can I create something that looks like a tidal pool or a reef that's, like, a break for the waves, where things are crashing into it a lot." Just kind of building this idea around that.
There's a few of them for you. There are tons more. Stormlight Archive, it's hard to point out one idea for. In fact, it's really hard to point out one idea for the plot premise at all, because telling people what The Way of Kings is about is really hard. Mistborn's easy, right? This is why I think it would probably be wise, if we're going to do any media, is to start with Mistborn. Because we can pitch Mistborn. "Hero failed. Gang of these rob the Dark Lord." Easy pitch. What is Way of Kings about? "Uh... it's about this guy who's trained as a surgeon and he finds out he's really good at killing people and he goes to war but he doesn't actually get to fight, he gets put in the bridge crews, but it really about him building a team of friends among these people in this terrible situation... But it's actually about restoring lost Orders of Knights from long ago... But it's actually about an impending war that they were set up to fight, these Knights, that they told everyone that they'd won, but they really didn't win, but they kind of did..." It just gets really convoluted. It is hard to explain what The Way of Kings is about. This is why The Way of Kings has three prologues. (Don't do that, by the way. One prologue is bad enough; you don't need three. Unless you're writing Way of Kings. Then it was totally necessary.)
If I enter a Shardpool, could i use it to fully enter the Cognitive Realm?
I have been wondering...what would happen if all of the seons in Elantris entered Devotion's Shardpool.
RAFO
Do you already have designs for the spren we didn't see in the Cognitive Realm (such as angerspren or musicspren) or will those be fleshed out if you need reference in a future book?
They'll be fleshed out as we need them for future books.
What do kandra look like in the Cognitive Realm?
RAFO. But it will be answered eventually.
I wonder whether Jasnah has been to the Cognitive Realm of planets other than Roshar?
She has not, she is not horribly cosmere-aware as of the end of Oathbringer, she is starting to get an inkling. Give her some time and you might be impressed with how quickly she can come up to speed.
In OB, you explained that the Singers have four sexes. I was wondering... Can the Singers have genders other than those four, like humans? Even as simple as just not going with male, female, or malen/femalen. Could a transgender Singer use their ability to shift forms to change their biological reality? And, finally, could a Spren be non-binary, if it wasn't personified in a typical male/female way?
In the cosmere as a whole, a person's perception of themselves has a lot of power over both their Spiritual and Physical forms. It is possible, with Investiture, to change their biology to match Cognitive perceptions--and while this could be easier for some races (like the Singers) it's not outside plausibility for any race.
There are non-binary spren, actually--and you should be meeting one important one quite soon in the books.
Is Cultivation the same thing as the Nightwatcher?
They are related but they are not exactly the same. It's more like the similarity between the Stormfather and Honor.
Was Shallan's mom a Herald?
What would make you ask that? The chat, why would they ask that? The Stormfather said that the Heralds-- that that's impossible.
When it comes to the epic-level spren on Roshar, like the Nightwatcher and the Stormfather-- Is the number of epic-level spren equal to the number of Bondsmiths that you can have on Roshar?
Hmm, is the number of epic-level spren related to the number of Bondsmiths you have? Well, I've said there's a maximum of three. And there are three Shards involved in Roshar. I'm not gonna tell you if that's a coincidence or not. Sorry.
Regarding Dysian Aimians. The cremlings that make them up are spread about in a large area--
They can lose touch if the distance is too far. They can lose contact with the mind of the whole thing.
Would their Cognitive aspect be affected by that?
Yes it would be. I'll just leave it there, but yes.
You said that the Pits are a leak from the Spiritual into the Physical—
A necessary leak.
Ok. Are the spren a similar leak but from the Cognitive?
The next book [Words of Radiance] is going to explore the spren a lot further.
If a live Elantrian entered the pool outside of the city, could they also use it to travel to the Cognitive Realm?
Let’s just say that the characters in the book do not fully understand the pool or its power.
So, if Dalinar used Spiritual Adhesion to forge a bond between Sja-anat and Honor or Cultivation or whoever, then could Sja-anat corrupt a spren, an Odiumspren back to Honor or Cultivation?
Maybe. Nyeh...
What about the Fused?
The Fused-- I mean, it's the same kind of thing, they're a Cognitive Shadow. Eh? Eh. I'm gonna give you an "Eh." on that one... *waves hands* I don't know how you write that on the forums.
So Kandra that just bones. Obviously they need that physically but is there a Cognitive and Spiritual purpose to the bones too?
Uh, no the bones are just there for the muscles to pull against.
So they don't need it, some spiritual link for the bones to...
No, good question.
My question is, your stories are so intricate and huge and I-- maybe it's because I'm not as genius as you are *Brandon makes a funny face* but where do you come up with these ideas in the first place. Like are you given a vision by the Stormfather, or-- *laughter*
So here's what I say to this, if you think I'm naturally a genius go read the story I wrote in high school. I posted it on my website and it is terrible... It's a matter of practice and a lot of spending time working on these sorts of things. This is kind of what I wanted to do my whole life now, so I practiced to be able to do it. And it's a good thing I took off because I would be worthless otherwise. I mean I did go to college, I did get a Master's degree, but all the other people in the Master's degree were running right and left to get into PhD programs and being on Student Council/Government or things like that. And meanwhile I was just writing stories. I didn't do any of that stuff. And so I'm very lucky that it took off.
I do have my own wiki, which you can't find, it's only on my computer and my assistants' computers to keep track of all this, because it has grown to the size that we need tools like that. In fact Peter Ahlstrom's wife, Karen Ahlstrom is the keeper of the wiki and her job is to go through my books and keep the wiki updated and make sure that I'm not contradicting myself.
Are the usual quadrants (Physical, Mental, Temporal, Enhancement) preserved in Feruchemy and Hemalurgy?
No. In Feruchemy, it is based Realmatically. There is a quadrant of Spiritual, a quadrant of Cognitive and two quadrants of Physical.
The Patji lake, theoretically, could an Aviar fly into the lake on its own and enter the Cognitive Realm? Like, have a bird catcher on the other side waiting for the bird to fly in and catch it?
Theoretically... I'm going to RAFO that, but it's not a big RAFO. It's more along the lines of, I'm going to get into the mechanics of how things go through Shardpools in future books. Um, what you just described is not outside of reason.
And could also, one of the grubs or one of the parasites or the rotten fruit, whatever, could that have fallen through the lake?
That is plausible. The question is, once it gets to be a non-sentient thing, how does going through the--- to the Realms work, and that's where it starts to get-- that's where you get your asterisk. Like, just a piece of fruit falling. I'm going to asterisk that one.
If you pull a campfire soul out of your pocket in the Cognitive Realm near Threnody, will shades get mad?
RAFO!
So, I was curious about Hoid and how he is sending letters to a dragon, while he is on Roshar and the dragon is elsewhere?
Yes. So, there is a courier service you can hire in the cosmere.
So, it's like a Pony Express and that on the...
Yes. Not everything he's doing is going via that, but it is a thing that exists.
Like, in the Cognitive Realm?
Yeah, they have to go through Shadesmar. So... you can hire a very specialized group to get things where they're supposed to go.
A few people have wondered if we're ever going to see time travel in the cosmere.
Time travel into the past is something that I decided very early in the life of the cosmere that I was not going to deal with. So people can time travel into the future, but we can do that right now - not very much, but if you go fast, you are time traveling into the future by laws of relativity, and it's easier to do that in the cosmere. There are a couple things for storytelling that really throw a lot of wrenches into your worldbuilding. One of them's time travel; as soon as you introduce time travel, it changes everything.
Another one is bringing characters back from the dead, and since my very first cosmere book starts with someone being resurrected in chapter one, I knew that people coming back from the dead was not something I could have a hard fast rule against in the cosmere. Multiple books are based on the idea of people being resurrected; that's where Warbreaker and Elantris both come from, is that kind of idea.
Since I knew I was going to be doing that one, the other two that I think that really mess with things in strange ways are alternate dimensions and time travel. And that's when I just said I'm going to put those both off-limits in the cosmere. You saw me doing alternate dimension stuff in Steelheart, in part because I won't let myself do it in the cosmere. I'm already playing with fire with the way that people can become cognitive shadows in the cosmere, and I don't want to have the other two messing up narratives and storylines and things on the level that they would. So no time travel into the past ever in the cosmere.
What were you dissatisfied with in WoR?
It's twofold. Spoilers follow, obviously.
In the original draft, none of the alpha readers felt that I had 'sold' Jasnah dying to them, and were all like, "Ha. Nice try. No body. She's alive.' So I kicked the assassination scene up a notch, until betas were like, "Stormfather! Jasnah just died!"
That was a mistake, I now believe. (Though this didn't get changed, and won't get changed.) Sometimes, I over-emphasize to myself the importance of surprises and twists. The book is fine if readers suspect Jasnah is still alive--actually, I think it's stronger, because it is more satisfying to be right in that situation, and doesn't detract from Szeth's miraculous survival at the end.
I knew this soon after I'd released the book, but decided it was just too extensive a change to try tweaking.
The other one I did tweak. In the battle at the end between Kaladin and Szeth, I'd toyed with letting the storm take Szeth--him essentially committing suicide--as opposed to him spreading his hands and letting Kaladin kill him. I felt that after the oath Kaladin had just sworn, stabbing a docile opponent unwilling to fight back just didn't jive. This I tweaked, changing the paperback from the hardcover, which has produced mixed results.
Most people agree the change is better, but they also say they'd rather not have the hardcover and paperback have different accounts in it, and would rather I just stick to what we put in the hardcover. It was interesting to try, to see what the response would be like, but it seems that the better option all around is to just wait until I'm certain I don't want to revert any of the revisions or tweak anything new.
Your books are unusual for the fantasy genre in that they are interested in exploring traditional Christian values, usually coming down in their favor (especially faith in providence and the willingness to believe in a divine plan for the world and the individual, something which comes up again and again in your work.) At the same time, your characters have reason to be suspicious of the specific forms of religious practice in their worlds, and the cult of the survivor in particular can be read as a conflicted portrayal of religion: it's a kind of religious belief which works in some way for its faithful despite being based on a falsehood, and Kelsier is a kind of dark parody of Christ. The cosmere seems to have an implicit theology which separates the truly divine, which is fundamentally inaccessible even to the most knowledgeable characters, from the apparently divine shards and splinters. I guess my question is, how do you think about integrating religious themes into a fantasy universe, particularly given your systematic style?
There are a lot of things mixing here--more, probably, than I'm aware of myself. (This is the sort of area where I let reader analysis and criticism do the work, as they're probably going to be able to notice connections more explicitly than I will. Like most writers, I'm working by instinct much of the time.)
One element I can talk about is the need for the cosmere to have questions that will go unanswered. This is most expressly manifest in the "big" questions. Is there a God? What is the actual afterlife like, if there really is one? Is there such a thing as a soul, and are cognitive shadows the actual person, or a manifestation of the magic imitating a person's thought processes?
The reason I don't answer these as myself (though characters certainly have ideas) is because I feel it important the text not undermine the characters who choose not to believe in these things. Though I think I've found answers in life, people rationally disagree with me--and to express only my worldview in the books would severely hamper my ability to have characters who disagree with me, and other characters.
In short, if I were to say, "Yes, there's an all-powerful God" then it would directly undermine characters like Jasnah, who argue otherwise. At the same time, I want characters like Kelsier to develop naturally, and do things that are in line with how sometimes, religions develop on our world, without having it be a statement. (Or, at least one other than, "Hey, this happens some time on our world. It happened here too.")
Fantasy offers some unique opportunities to explore the human condition with religion, and I want to take advantage of that, to see where it takes me and to see what I can learn from the process.
We have this one bizarre question, that actually was really, really weird but we have to know it.
There was a question about Siamese twins. If they were born gold Feruchemists, and they they were split apart, would they like, form together again?
Uhhhnn... It depends on how they view themselves
That's the answer to every question like that!
Right! But that's the whole point of the cosmere is that-- Spiritual Realm is filtered through the Cognitive Realm to the Physical Realm, right? And this lens is going to filter how things work. Perception is really important in the cosmere. That's where most of these things come from, and so-- Yeah that is the answer to everything. But that's the point of the answer to everything, is that there aren't a lot of hard and fast rules when it comes to a lot of these things, with Identity and whatnot is going be filtered through perception.
So it is technically possible for them, if they are seeing each other as one.
Right.
So we can--
Now the big hard question is, what if one of them views them as one and one of them doesn't?
Oh.
Aaaaoooohhh! Then it depends on who's using the magic.
What if both of them are?
Both of them what? Are gold? If both of them are healing and one doesn't want to and one does, magic's gonna cancel each other out and nothing will happen.
Ok.
Mmhmm. Yeah I made your question harder and weirder.
Well it was a very logical answer to a very unlogical question.
Yes. I've had to answer a lot of these. My feeling is that if I can make the fundamental magic principles work then you can answer those questions rationally but really what you would have to do is-- Even I'm not the expert on these things. Like I'm the ultimate word in some ways but in another ways the answer would be "I don't know, let's have a thought experiment and if it ever comes up, try it out and see what happens". But yeah, there you go. There is my best answer to you.
Stormfather is the spren of the storm. What is the Nightwatcher the spren of?
RAFO.
You've talked about some of the correlation between Aviar abilities and Allomantic abilities. Are there any Aviar abilities that are not related to Allomancy, or what are some other abilities that we might see?
I'll RAFO that, mostly because I want to be free to pick and choose from my list as I canonize them. A lot of Aviar abilities are Cognitive type stuff, just from the way I built them so I can separate the magics. The whole Seeker/coppercloud thing, a lot of Aviar abilities are going to be riffs on that, or they're going to be riffs on glimpsing the Spiritual a little bit. And you see a lot of that in Allomancy. There are abilities that they have that you won't see in Allomancy.
The trick is Allomany is so broad. I built the main magic systems to be able to get a little bit of everything. You see the same thing in Stormlight. So seeing Aviar abilities that you haven't seen some version of it in Mistborn or Stormlight, it's going to be... Mistborn and Stormlight touch on all different parts of the magic system on purpose. But I think you will eventually see some that don't. But they're all going to work on the Cosmere magic, so you can say they're all related.
Where might we see them?
Aviar are known in the Cosmere but are very, very rare. But as you move forward in the future, perhaps you'll see them more often.
In [Oathbringer], when they first enter Shadesmar, they see a bunch of spren that are a few inches tall, green or orange. Are those Cognitive manifestations of one or more Dysian Aimians that were in Kholinar?
No, but good question.
If you built a computer and you programmed it to view the world in a certain way, would that affect the world, like, Cognitive aspect?
Not unless the computer starts to become self-aware.
What if it was an Awakened computer?
If the computer were becoming self-aware, then it would act like any other sapient entity.
Can I ask you about the body of a Shard in the Physical Realm? About the different states of matter. What determines the state of matter that they are in? Because I've been reading the bits very carefully, and I haven't noticed much in terms of temperature difference.
The idea for me working on this was that they transcend-- They permeate everything, right? They permeate all life on all the Realms. And that there are manifestations of them that leak out, and it's kind of like they make-- they appear there in the various states but-- When you say that you've got the gas, you've got the liquid, you've got the solid: but you've also got inside of you, and inside of that plant, and like-- they're everywhere. And so what determines it? In my head it's just like when some of that power permeates, some of it distills, just like water. There's some water in the air, there's some that freezes: that's temperature. But it's not always temperature whether it's in the air, or whether it's falling. Imagine a Spiritual version of humidity, that is influenced by what's happening on the Spiritual Realm and the Cognitive, and that's what you'll get.
Okay, so I'm contractually obligated to ask about time bubbles one more time.
Yes.
So what's up with frame of reference for time bubbles; in that obviously if you make a bubble and it's still it's not really still, like time moves differently but--
We deal with that a little bit in Era 2 Book 2 [Shadows of Self], where we talk about the fact that you know-- obviously the bubble is moving with the planet. So they're not-- the frame of reference is not absolute.
Yeah.
And so we talk about sorta' the idea of mass and momentum and time bubbles and things like that.
Okay.
For instance you can make a time bubble on a train.
Oh and it stays on the train?!
Yes, but when you start catching stuff off of the train, it's gonna' jar each time, and it's probably going to ruin your time bubble, right?
So does it get it's "anchor" from-- it's asking all the things that are within it what they think "still" is?
Yes. That's a good way of looking at it. Frame of reference for the Cognitive things around. Make sense?
Okay, the things around or the things within it, specifically?
The things that it's cutting into, specifically, but yeah.
Shardblades, they sever <limbs? people’s?> connection to the Spiritual Realm. So, that being said, they cut inanimate matter like a regular sword but inanimate matter is projected into the Cognitive Realm. So does inanimate matter have a Connection to the Spiritual Realm? In the same way living things do?
Yes, but it doesn’t have the same thing going on.
