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Did Lopen bond a spren or is he a squire?
As of right now, Lopen is a squire.
Okay, as of right now. So it's a potential RAFO.
Uh, I answered your question exactly. *questioner laughs* That's not a RAFO, that's an exact answer to the question you asked.
Do you have any advice on writing multiple magic systems? How to write it so that the reader is not confused in there being more than one? How to foreshadow combining them? How to play them off each other? How to balance them in one setting?
I really like to make sure I don't do too much at once. What has worked for me (both in Mistborn and Stormlight) is to introduce one system up front, and use it to start exploring the setting. Then I slowly add more in future books.
In Awakening, can you with some mental gymnastics, view yourself as both the donor and recipient of Breaths? Is this how Vasher hides his Divine Breath (and consequently nature), by tucking it inside of himself rather than an external object? Theoretically, can you Awaken yourself, and with the right Commands enhance/extend yourself Cognitively, like how burning atium comes with Cognitive enhancements to process the raw information?
This is a theory worth exploring. You're not quite there, but you are on to something.
This is incredible. If you don't mind me asking a more technical question, how long did it take to develop your method of laying all this out?
This right here isn't actually how my outline looks. It's far more in-depth, and a lot more crazy. This is a quick visualization I imagined when trying to explain it all to people.
My method, in more detail, has to do with character motivations, sub-plots, and promises. I talk about it in depth in my youtube writing lecture videos.
I notice that the two most complicated Investiture systems that we know of, those being Hemalurgy and Forging, are both the Investitures of Shards whose names have a generally negative connotation. Is there any correlation?
I would say that is not an intentional correlation.
That is just a coincidence?
Yes.
Are half-shards made with Radiant spren?
RAFO! Good question!
With Cosmere movies looking more and more like a reality, are there any other types of media you would like to see your works in? Personally I feel Mistborn would translate very well into an anime.
I'd investigate that if it were an actual possibility, but the chances of it happening are basically zero. Anime companies are not regularly buying western books for adaptation--aside from the few by Miazaki's company (which I'm not going to try to spell because I can never remember how the vowels go.) I would of course say yes to them, were the chance to arise. But an anime based on my books is not something I've ever seen the faintest, tiniest nibble on from any Japanese company.
(Generally, western fantasy novels do not sell well in Japan; they seem to prefer science fiction in prose form, at least from America.)
How about western animation? For example, Avatar: The Last Airbender or Legend Of Korra? I feel Stormlight would do very well animated, since all the visual problems go away. And Legend Of Korra feels very much like Second Era Mistborn.
The problem is that these, though great, are still pitched as children's programming. I know there are all kinds of arguments with that, but the reality is that the marketing people control things like this, and the chances are really, really slim.
At FantasyCon they had a panel on why there was so many Mormon sci-fi/fantasy authors and lots of opinions were put out there. Since you tend to think about trends and things like that I wondered what your take was.
What is my take on why there are so many Mormon science fiction/fantasy writers-- successful ones-- Why are there so many. We all have our own theories. It's funny, this is-- Like my first visit to my publisher in New York. One of the editors there asked me that very question, they're like "what's going on out there?" and I've had a lot of time to think about it. I've got a couple of answers, and these are just my arm chair answers.
Looking at myself, I grew up in Nebraska... so it wasn't like I was really immersed in Utah culture and things but I did notice when Tracy Hickman, and when the fantasy books I was reading, one was written by Tracy Hickman and he had on the back that he was LDS, and Orson Scott Card's books. I thought, "Wow, these are people like me and they are doing this." I think the early success of Scott Card and Tracy Hickman and some of these people was a big deal for those of us who were like "Oh, this is something that I can legitimately do."
I also think that science fiction/fantasy was a safe counter-culture, meaning, y'know for me in the eighties, yeah, y'know. Counter Cultures were big, sixties, seventies, eighties. They still are of course but you've got this punk and all of this stuff and, y'know, all my friends were smoking pot and all of this stuff and you want to rebel against your parents, right? At the same time you're a good kid, like "I don't want to rebel-rebel", and so when i got into sci fi/fantasy and they didn't get it at all I'm like "I found it!" I can rebel against my parents by playing Dungeons and Dragons, right. This is my grand rebellion! My mother heard all this stuff about Dungeons and Dragons and to her credit she came and just watched us and since there was actually a girl in our group, afterwards I asked her and she was like "You were hanging out with members of the opposite gender, talking to people instead of just playing video games like you always do? I thought it was awesome!" but she didn't tell us that. If I'd known she thought it was awesome it might have been bad, cause she was always like "uhhhh, roleplaying." So I think that that is part of it.
Early successes, safe counter culture, and then there's kind of the focus on literacy and reading in the community without, kind of-- like, for some reason, I think you can blame Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the community is not as scared of fantasy as some other religious communities are. You find a lot of Jews in publishing and science fiction and fantasy too, and I think for some of the same reasons that the community, the religion is not quite as frightened of these sorts of things for some reason, so with the focus on literacy you end up, I think, with writers of a lot of different stock. So that's my little sort of three part take on it. Maybe its true, maybe its not.
Who are the back five characters...
Jasnah, Renarin, Lift, Taln, and Ash. Yeah, being able to flashback to Herald times is something I've been really looking forward to. There should be some new flashbacks *inaudible*.
In Alethkar, a lot of the consonant sounds are “C” sounds or “K’s”, like Kaladin. [Can’t hear the rest of the question here very well]
It’s just based on the rules I came up for it when I was designing it. They’re mostly semitic origins or middle eastern origins. Kholin is actually [pronounces it], but I don’t expect the audiobook narrators to do “chuh” every time they see a “kh”. The “k” is a “c” sound. That and the “j” are the only weird ones, for Alethi. In Tashikk, I can’t even do the Arabic glottal. The double “q” or the double “k” in the Azish often is that, but I can’t do it. Peter can.
When was Silverlight founded, relative to the stories of the currently published books?
Silverlight is much earlier than the current books, at least in its very first form.
Why didn't Vin know the Atium bead Zane gave her wasn't real? Cant she sense how big reserves are?
Atium reserves always look bigger than they are to an allomancer. It burns so quickly.
She just didn’t have enough experience with atium to realize she’d been duped.
How much older is Wax than Wayne?
Uh... 17... 20 years... Something like that. No, no, no, not quite that much. It's more like 10 years isn't it?
Which one?
Let's see, I'm trying to remember how-- Wax is 40s... Wayne... Yeah, it's about 10 years.
Will we ever read from a spren's viewpoint?
It is likely you someday will.
A book where the flashbacks are spren?
Probably not. Or it’s not planned right now.
How did Hoid get the name Cephandrius?
Cephandrius? Cephandrius is one of his very earliest aliases. Not his real name, but very soon after he stopped using his real name.
Okay. Is there any relation to his real name? With that?
I will give you a RAFO card.
At the end of Hero of Ages, there’s the--I forget what it’s called, when the kandra all remove their Hemalurgic nails--and then I forget which character wakes up and just sees the blobs everywhere, and then after what everything that happens I don’t really know what happened to the kandra after that.
They returned their spikes but that left them with holes in their memory.
Who did? The survivors?
Yeah, the survivors.
If you were presented with the 3 options:
Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to AAA videogames.
Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to Blockbuster Movies.
Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to HBO/Netflix production level tv shows
Assuming these would each do the series the justice they deserve, which would you take? I would think that going on a series by series basis would be best (i.e. like a movie for Elantris or Warbreaker, a videogame for Mistborn or a TV show for Stormlight), but let's say whoever is offering wants the rights to the whole of the Cosmere.
You know, I've never been asked that question--and I've not given it huge amounts of thought. But I think it's a great question.
I think...perfect world...I'd go with the television series. I think that in a perfect world, 20-season of magically-somehow-all-awesome episodes would be the best way to approach doing the stories I tell.
You guys forgot anime! I have this feeling these stories could be told so much better through animation
I wouldn't say no if the right anime studio came to me.
What is your favorite color?
Usually, I say maroon.
It must be very difficult to write Dalinar, since it's--
Yeah he's a very different person, it's kind of brutal to write him now. But it works, it's a good counterpoint.
*inaudible* Shallan and Kal are both younger, so you have less to write about than Dalinar?
Oh yeah the flashbacks cross about 20, 30 years with Dalinar so it is a challenge. But you get to see a lot of sweeping changes in his personality which is really fun.
Do we get to find out, what happens, where Calamity comes from?
Yes. Eventually, like the next trilogy I do will dig into that... You've gotta remember, in the teen books I’m not going to dig into lore as much, they're written as action novels. So in the next series I'll get you some of your answers, but that's not what the point of these books-- like The Stormlight Archive, the point is the lore. In these books, the point is “have fun”. So. So you will, but it's going to take a little bit longer.
Well I'm an English teacher major for little kids and I was wondering what you think, or any advice, on how to make my students life long writers and readers.
When I was a teenager and I didn't like books and a teacher, the first teacher who really took the time to find a book that would match me rather than assigning me a book that they liked, was the one that got me hooked, so I kind of focus on that idea. I tell kids sometimes, books are like shoes, not everyone wears the same kind of shoes and when you wear the wrong size you might think shoes are painful but if you get the right size they make your life way better. Books are kinda the same way so try lots of different things, introduce them to a lot of different things and encourage them to read what they love.
is Barlesha Lhan the scholar/author of Topics and Lhan from the Pai interlude the same person/related?
I think one is a first name and the other a last name, so not related
You said earlier... putting back splinters. Was the Oath breaking part of that?
Oath breaking? Oh, the Oathpact. The abandoning of the Oathpact we will talk a lot more about in the future, so I'm gonna RAFO that for now.
Llarimar Reveals That the Face Lightsong Sees Isn't His Wife
I'm not sure what readers' reactions to this will be. No, she's not his wife—or even his lover.
In a way, this probably makes it okay for him to harbor his love for Blushweaver like he does, though I suspect that some readers are a little disappointed to find that he isn't imagining the face of his wife.
PART FOUR: STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE PUBLICATION SCHEDULE
Now on to Stormlight Two. (The title was originally Highprince of War, but I’m feeling in my outlining that this book needs to be weighted more toward Shallan, so a different title is likely). I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here on this one. Writing a Stormlight book, like writing a Wheel of Time book, is a huge undertaking. Getting one of each out in the same year required fourteen-hour days, six days a week, for a good year and a half. I can’t ask my family to go through that again. Beyond that, the buffer is gone. (I still had a little bit of it when working on Towers of Midnight—not to mention the first version of The Way of Kings that I’d written in 2002. I threw it away and started over, but having written it once before sped the process a great deal.)
So . . . what do I do? I’m feeling right now that I will go straight into Stormlight Two after A Memory of Light. But that means (at very best) it won’t be out until the fall of 2012. I don’t really have a choice, however. The Wheel of Time fans have waited too long for their ending already. I need to do AMoL, and I need to do it right, no matter how long it takes. So I can’t make any promises about Stormlight Two except that I won’t take a break after AMoL, but will go right into it and try to have it done in time for the fall 2012 season.
That means, by a quirk of the publishing business, that I have two epics this year, none next year, and two the following year. (If I meet my Stormlight deadline, which may or may not happen.) Still, this is what I’m planning to do. Barring something unexpected, this is what you should anticipate. I don’t think there will be a book at all from me next year, which punches me in the gut. But that’s what we get for pushing to have two books out last year and two books this year.
When you finished a book, or years away from a book, when you realized, "Oh, there was a loophole here, something didn't make sense." How do you react to that?
I react to it by saying, "Well, that always happens." Happens to everybody. You got two options. Well, maybe, like, three. One is, you just leave it alone. One is to do what Tolkien did, where he just rewrote the book. The Hobbit, he just did a new version that had the loophole closed. Or you can later on find a reason to explain it in world, which we call 'retconning' it. Any of those are fine. Don't stress about it: everybody makes mistakes. If Grandpa Tolkien had loopholes, then everybody's gonna have loopholes.
Vin Talks to Sazed about the Deepness
The Deepness. Is it the mists? Vin makes some very good arguments here, as does Sazed. I won't come out and explain who is right and who is wrong right now, but I will note that some people reach this point and feel a little let down.
I'm sorry if the Deepness-mists connection seems a little bit anti-climactic to you. To me, it's a major plot point, and I was surprised when a few alpha readers didn't think much of it. Give me a little bit more time through the series, and perhaps you'll see why it's more impressive to me.
You said before, when you outlined the Dark One’s story, it felt more like a comic than a novel to you. What is the difference between a novel outline and a comic outline?
I haven’t done a ton of comic outlines, so understand that I am speaking from the position of a novelist doing a comic outline.
Because I intended this to be a television show, it was dialogue-heavy. Now, you can write dialogue-heavy books, but because it was so dialogue-heavy, it felt like a graphic novel. It was focused on a large number of characters, but also a lot of quick-moving plots, because I had designed it as a television how. It felt like it was broken into episodes, rather than parts. Granted, I didn’t plot it like a television show that’s completely episodic; it’s a continuing story. But because I had broken it into these episode chunks, it felt more like a serial form of storytelling, which graphic novels often are. Though we ended up doing it as just a single graphic novel, it could have been released as issues, if we had decided to go that route. And those are the two main things: dialogue-heavy, and sequential/serialized.
I want to know if Kelsier and Hoid will ever get along?
They, uh-- that's a RAFO, but I wouldn't hold my breath. There are mashing of egos that just don't mesh well going on there.
How long will Kelsier's story go?
Kelsier's story has some more stages to it. I'm gonna RAFO that... But the stuff that's happening right now is set up for a later story with him.
You’re very talented at taking seemingly mundane or unusual things and creating magic systems around them, like color in Warbreaker, metals in Mistborn, and light in The Way of Kings. Can you explain how you decide what to use for a magical system in a book, and your process for building a coherent system once the initial concept has been decided?
First of all, I’m looking for something that fits the book that I’m writing. So for instance, in Mistborn, I was looking for powers that would enhance what thieves could do. I was also looking for something that had one foot in alchemy, in that kind of “coming-of-age magic into science” way. Alchemy is a great example because it’s a blend of science and magic… well, really, a blend of science and superstition, because the magic part doesn’t work. So something resonates there.
I’m also looking for interesting ways to ground [the magic] in our world, and using something mundane is a great way to do that. Magic is naturally fantastical, and so if I can instead use something normal, and then make it fantastical, it immediately creates a sort of… ease of understanding. Burning metals sounds so weird, but it was chosen for that same reason, because we gain a lot of our energy through metabolism. We eat something, we turn the sugars into energy, boom. So that’s actually a very natural feeling. When I started writing out some sample things, it felt surprisingly natural, that people eat metal and gain powers, even though it sounds so weird. It’s because of this kind of natural biology. So I’m looking for that.
Once I have a magic system, I look for really great limitations. Limitations really make a magic system work better. Wheel of Time is a great example. Having a magic system where you can weave all these threads is awesome. Having a magic system where you do that, and then it drives you mad, is even better. It creates plot hooks, it creates drama, it creates challenge. [That limitation] is brilliant, I think it is one of the most brilliant ever made, especially because it also changes your characters. It has a deep influence on your character arcs, so you can tie it into character.
Beyond that (and this is kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit), there is no specific defined place where someone goes mad, so you can actually stretch it out and use it when you need it. It doesn’t constrain you too much. Like if your magic system’s limitation is, “When you use this magic, you have to use the head of one of your grandparents.” (laughs) You can use that magic four times! It’s limited, but also very constrained. Going mad is not as constrained. There’s a spectrum there - you can use it when you need it. So I’m looking for cool limitations that will work that way, in ways that I can use to force the characters to be creative. A good limitation will force you to be creative, and your characters to be creative. Pushing and pulling metals is basically telekinesis, right? But by making it center of mass, you can only pull directly towards yourself or push directly away from yourself... Number one: it’s vector science. It has one foot in sciences. Number two: it feels very natural to us because this is how we manipulate force ourselves. Number three: it limits things so much that it forces creativity upon the characters. There’s that sweet spot, where they can be creative and do cool things, where it doesn’t become too limited, but it also keeps you from having too much power in the hands of the characters, so they are still being challenged. I’m looking for all that, and on top of that I want to have good sensory ways to use magic.
I don’t want to have two wizards staring at each other, and then be like “and they stared at each other very deeply! And then they stared harder!” I don’t want it all to be internal, which is where the lines for the metals came from. You see something, you push it forward. The pulses that some of the allomancers use, they’ll hear. I wanted sensory applications.
So, Brandon, you just introduced a really amazing female character [Spensa] to us. Your female characters throughout all your books are resourceful and independent. Some of them are leaders, some of them go through very interesting journeys of growth and self-discovery. Some of your female characters, like Vin and Sarene, they have mentors and teachers who are men, but their decisions about who to be and what to do are always their own. They always have agency. Was it a conscious choice to write these female characters and their journeys like this, and can you tell us if the process was easy or difficult?
So, there are a number of different responses to this. One is, I came into fantasy by way of some excellent female novelists that I highly recommend. Barbara Hambly was my first experience with fantasy, and then Anne McCaffery, Melanie Rawn, and Jane Yolen were kind of my introduction to fantasy. It's how I got pulled into it-- To the point that when I was first given a David Eddings book, I was hesitant, because I was like, "Is this a genre guys can write?" was my honest reaction to that. So, when I started writing my own books, I knew I wanted to do a good job with this, but I was really bad at it at the start. It was very embarrassing to me as a writer. And this happens to all new writers. There are things that you want do that, in your head, you imagine yourself doing very well, and then when you start out, you just do poorly. And the later in life that you start writing your stories, the more you're generally able to recognize how poorly you're doing things that you want to do well. And my very first book, that I didn't publish, particularly the female lead was very generic, and written very much to fill the role of the love interest rather than to be a character. And I recognized it, even as I was writing it, but I didn't know how to do it differently. And it took practice. It took a lot of work. It really shouldn't, on one hand, right? Write the characters as people. rather than as roles. That's what you have to learn is: everybody is the hero of their own story in their head. They're the protagonist, whoever they are. And writing the characters so that they view themselves that way, and so they have autonomy, and they aren't being shoved around by the plot or by the protagonist, or things like this, but it's just very hard to do. I had a lot of early readers who were very helpful. I often credit my friend Annie as being one of the big reasons why Sarene eventually ended up working in Elantris. And she gave me some early reads, and things like this.
But, you know, it is hard to abandon our own preconceptions that we don't even know are there without practice, effort, and somebody pointing them out to you. And it was just a matter of practice and trying to get better. And I still think that there are lots of times I get it wrong. And you mentioned Mistborn. And I was really determined that I was going to do a good female protagonist. I try to stay away from the kind of cliched term "strong female character." Because we don't talk about "strong male characters." We talk about characters who are distinctive, interesting, flawed, and real people. And I was determined to do this with Vin. And I feel like I did a pretty good job. But, of course, I had a completely different blind side in that I defaulted to making the rest of the crew that Vin interacts with all guys. This is because my story archetype for Mistborn was the heist novel, the heist story, and my favorite heist movies are Ocean's Eleven and Sneakers and The Sting, and these are great stories. I absolutely love them. But they all are almost exclusively male casts. And that's not to say that, you know, someone can't write an all-male cast if they want to. But it wasn't like I had sat down and said, "I'm intentionally going to write an all-male cast." I just defaulted to making the rest of the cast male because that was the archetype that was in my head, that I hadn't examined. And so, when I got done with those books, I looked back, and I'm like, "Wouldn't this have been a better and more interesting story if there had been more women in the cast?" And I absolutely think it would have been. But becoming a writer, becoming an artist, is a long process of learning what you do well, what you do poorly, what you've done well once and want to learn how to replicate, what you've done poorly and want to learn to get better at. It's a very long process, I think, becoming the writer that we want to be.
For all the spren, like the honorspren and the liespren, I’ve noticed that all of the characters, the honorspren have been girls and all the liespren have been boys. Is that just ‘cause all the people who attract liespren are girls and all the other people--
So it’s not a one to one ratio of people who are more likely to attract a spren of the opposite gender.
Is there a reason for that?
Yeah I’ll delve into it eventually in the books. Maybe just obliquely, but there is a reason for it.
Is the Seventeenth Shard meant to represent a specific Shardic intent?
The Seventeenth Shard has a specific purpose, and the name was chosen very deliberately.
Do you know when we're going to get Nightblood?
I don't know for sure. Your best bet at Nightblood is after Stormlight 5. I'll take a little bit longer break than normal between 5 and 6 because there are two five-book arcs, and I'm really hoping to squeeze Nightblood in there.
Is finding out what the deal was with Mare, is that an Era 2 thing we're going find out or is that...
No, unfortunately it is to be left, probably, as a mystery. It is a minor secret that I do not consider a major Cosmere thing, more of a backstory thing. I might eventually get around to it. The chances of it factoring in are very, very slim. I stay closed lipped about it because there is a part of me that thinks I will work it into Secret History 2, sort of like flash-backing material, but I'm not 100% sure I will.
The Reshi King from Rysn's interlude is probably trans. This statement is based on a few points
1: Everybody but Rysn (who's whole thing is that she's extremely green and unaware of the world) uses He/Him pronouns to refer to the reshi king.
2: When Rysn first meets the king, She genders him as a man, until she notices that he has breasts. This suggests that he has taken measures to present more masculine.
3: When Rysn refuses to call the king "king" his son loses his temper and tries to send her away. Up until then, he had been firm, but that was the point where he outright tells her to leave.
There is one line in the text where The king's son says "gender is irrelevant" in response to a question Rysn has about the king's gender.
I will say that this was written before the Author stopped using Gender and Sex interchangeably according to the WoB database.
Beyond that, I doubt the language they were speaking (thaylen) would have a robust understanding of sex and gender.
/u/mistborn was this your intention with the scene if you can confirm it? Or was it more the Egyptian style Hatshepsut-like others are mentioning?
I love Hatshepsut as an interesting quirk of history, and have long thought about ways to incorporate something similar. I did have that partially in mind when I was writing this, but more in the way that the culture was trying to understand him, rather than his own view of himself.
The king sees himself as male, and wishes to be treated that way--not just in title. In fact, in the coming months, you will see this character again briefly in some scenes I've already written, if you keep an eye out.
ooh are we going back to the Reshi Isles? Will we get a beach episode?
Ha. RAFO. :)
When Wax dies, he sees a red cloud haze. What is that?
That is the effects of another Shard trying to do something.
Who is that?
Mmm, that part's a RAFO.
As Elantris was getting published, I sat down and did an outline for the Mistborn trilogy (which I expanded to nine books in the middle of that outline" and said, "What if I made this backbone series to the cosmere?" (As I was then kind of officially calling it in my head.) I went to my editor, I pitched it; I talked about Adonalsium, this god who was Shattered long ago, and sixteen individuals took up pieces of that god, the Intents of the god. Like that god's Honor, or that god's sense of entropy (which was called Ruin) or things like this, and then went out into the cosmere and were kind of ruling over these planets, or involved in these planets, or sometimes just lightly touching these planets. The sixteen Shards of Adonalsium, as we call them.
When did Preservation decide to imprison Ruin in the Well? No need to be specific, I should think. A simple "Near Alendi's time" or "Way before Alendi's time" would suffice, or whichever time of reference you want to use.
Also, this one is not a question, but nice Hoid reference in there. I especially like it how the Ars Arcanum refers to Slowswift as "bears a striking resemblance to a well-known storyteller." I'm on to you...
Way before Alendi's time. Hence the need for the prophecies. But Ruin managed to corrupt them.
*posting a thread in the "WhoWouldWin" subreddit titled "Randland vs Scadrial"*
Round 1: Zen Rand (after revelation, before last battle) vs Mist Vin (Feeding on infinite metal sources) - Both at their top tiers, they should, by my estimation, be matched because of the rays of power vs seeing the future.
Round 2: The armies of Randland vs The armies of Scadrial - Aes Sedai, Asha'man, dragons/cannons, vs koloss, mistings, mistborns.
Bonus round: The Lord Ruler and his armies have to take on the Dark One, and his armies. How well do they fare?
Other rounds would be cool if you come up with more.
EDIT: Since people seem to think that RandLand would stomp, how would Vin and crew, with/without the Lord Ruler, fare if they had full knowledge of Rand's abilities and 6 months to prepare?
I think that while Vin in the state you mention might be able to give a good fight to Rand, overall, Randland winds. Channelers are more powerful and versatile than most metalborn. Randland has far better generals; everyone on Scadrial is basically still winging it. I hand this one to Randland, unless Kelsier can pull off some improbable assassinations before the whole thing begins.
Would the time reversing properties of balefire remove the ability [of atium] to see the future?
Boy, this one is a tough call. Mixing cosmologies is tough. If we're IN Randland, then atium would work by reading the pattern--but in the cosmere, it looks into the Spiritual Realm--where all times, locations, and possibilities conflate. Either way, I'd say Balefire could counteract atium--but it would be tricky to use correctly, as you'd basically have to balefire some object that the atium burner was factoring into their plans very soon, tripping them up and catching them unable to adjust to the new futures quickly enough.
Not too long ago you told us atium works in the Cognitive - to quote you in reference to how stronger atium burns, "However, there's a certain breaking point where you kind of crack the whole system, peer straight into the cognitive realm, and kind of have a "It's full of stars" moment."
Are the two replies still compatible?
I meant Spiritual there. Sorry. I deal with the cognitive so much in the books, and Spiritual so infrequently, I often have a silver/tin moment when my fingers just type the thing I'm used to typing.
At the Pixel Project event, you talked about a further extent of Cultivation's magic than just the boon and bane? Are there any people alive at the end of Oathbringer who are influenced by that magic?
Yes, Lift. Well, I guess that's a boon, isn't it? Yes, there are. But nobody on screen that has Cultivation magic, other than boons or curses from the Nightwatcher. Yes, there is such a thing, no, there's no one else on screen. But what Lift does is a hint.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Vin sits and thinks in the mists
Most of the logbook entries that you're seeing Vin reference in this book were used as epigraphs in the first book. As I mentioned in that book's annotations, one of my goals in this series was to finish the rough drafts of all three books before the first novel went into production. I had a lot of plans for the series when I started the first book, but I knew that there would be a lot of things I wouldn't be able to nail down until I had Book Three worked out. (You'd be surprised at the connections and ideas you come up with as you work through things on the page.)
I realized that I'd want to be able to foreshadow and worldbuild in a way that pointed toward the third book, as I thought that would give the series a powerful cohesion. For instance, when I was working on the first book (and planning the series) I knew I wanted to use the mist spirits and the koloss in this second book. However, when I was planning the series, my worldbuilding had included the use of SEVERAL different "Mist Spirits" rather than just one. In addition, as I was working on the first book, I realized that the koloss just weren't working, and so I cut them from that book to leave them for this novel, where I would have more time with them. (Allowing me to better define for myself what they were like.)
By the time I finished this book, I realized that–for the mythology I wanted–there could only be a single mist spirit. Also, I knew pretty darn well what koloss were. It was very helpful to have finished this novel before Book One came out, as I was able to go back and revise the logbook entries which referenced "spirits" in the mists so that they spoke of just a single spirit instead. I also had characters speak of koloss in book one the same way they do in book two.
Not big changes, but I think they improve the feel of the series.
What's the difference between a spike prepared for a Koloss and a spike prepared for a Mistwraith or Kandra? What side effects might occur from... [?]... Koloss spikes?
It's the pieces of the soul that are being ripped off and the amount of the soul that's being ripped off. That's a big part of it. What side effects would there be? You would probably not get something as intelligent.
What's the difference in how you prepare those spikes?
The Koloss spikes, you've seen how they're done. The Kandra spikes were prepared by the Lord Ruler. He gave them to them, and so we don't know what he did, at least in canon.
That means that we kind of screwed up the role playing.
You can totally do- I imagine all the role playing happening in a slightly different alternate universe, where there are slight variations and differences.
But yeah, there are no- Kandra spikes are prepared and given by the Lord Ruler, they didn't even know how to make them themselves. I mean they had an inkling of what went on, but they didn't know.
What was the inspiration for the necromancer pizza delivery story?
Death by Pizza. I came up with laws of necromancy that I thought would be super cool and I tried to find a book that would fit it. And, that book was fun, but bad. The rules were that necromancy is someone that has been killed and returned to life and each time they return they are more powerful. So a guy who has died five times and got more powerful throughout the course of a novel is a cool archetype that I thought would be a fun thing. So, it's like at the end of the novel, "I need more power, so do I die and get it? Or, not" and things like this. It was a cool concept and even with a mash-up with an urban fantasy world, the world was not built enough so that in the end it was like he was running around an empty city not one populated with as much mythology and wonder and storybook as I wanted an so I eventually said it isn't working and maybe I’ll pick it up again another time.
Is Tien's spren still around, or are they recovering like Syl did after her prior Radiant's death?
We'll RAFO that for now. Tien's spren is not going to be a deadeye. Tien didn't break his oaths, Tien was killed. So we'll RAFO what's up with his spren for now. But you can rest assured that it's not any of that.
Would a Soother be able to affect a Listener attuning a Rhythm?
Yes, I think they would be able to.
...Would it dampen Odium's effect on them?
Potentially, yes.
I'm imagining that killing a Dawnshard would work similarly to killing a Shard? As in, depending on how they're killed the Dawnshard either "drops" or is splintered?
RAFO.
Was Sadeas ever affected directly by Odium or an Unmade, not counting the Thrill?
NOT counting the Thrill, ok uhhhhm. There are affects of other unmade around, and Odium's effect - direct effect? I'm going to say, no, maybe some indirect effects.
What about Roshone?
Uhhhm, no. The Thrill is the main thing that is getting the Alethi so, I mean, there are others around, but it's not as obvious with that as with other things.
Can you give us some of the magic systems that you've rejected?
Magic systems I've rejected. Rejects for me are kind of a weird thing in that they stick in the back of my brain, and when I reject something, it's more along the lines of "this isn't ready yet." And I'm constantly thinking, do I want to do this, do I not want to do this. I've wanted to do one with sound waves forever, visualizing sound waves and things, and I have not been able to write it in a way that either felt different enough from other magic systems that approached this, or that just worked on the page. It's very hard to take something auditory and make it-- put it into a book for some reason. Some things work, I mean, Pat [Rothfuss] has made an entire career of having music to his language... so it can work, but I've never been able to get a really solidly sound-wave-focused magic to work, but I think of and discard tons of these things everyday. Sometimes, I discard them, because I'm like, "No, that's too Brandon." It's like, it's too much, a challenge. "Can I make peanuts into a magic system?" That's one I haven't done.
By the way, I wanted to do a story about a leekromancer, who had power over legumes. Yeah? Uh-huh. See. That's just too Brandon. You can read that, and say, "He wrote this entire story just to make the leekromancer pun!"
Are Parshendi/human hybrids possible?
They are. In fact, both the Horneaters and the Herdazians are descendants of human/Parshendi, human/listener hybrids. And there's very, very small remnants of it; they are mostly human. But they have a bit of listener heritage, just like a lot of us have some Neanderthal heritage. They, perhaps, have a little bit more in their past.
So, yes, this is possible.
