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Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Ketchup does not exist in the Final Empire, since it is from a fruit, which are flowering plants. The Lord Ruler did not engineer fruit. Mostly people eat vegetables and roots.

Questioner

Someone on the forum I'm on wanted me to ask you about citrus fruits during Vin's time.

Brandon Sanderson

Citrus fruits during Vin's time because of the lack of flowers, and things like that? Their fruits were not our fruits. Let's say that.

Questioner

Were they close to, like, Rosharan, like bulb fruit?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, there were definitely some bulb fruits. But any actual citruses, I don't think that there were.

JoyBlu

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

JoyBlue

And could also, one of the grubs or one of the parasites or the rotten fruit, whatever, could that have fallen through the lake?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

R'Shara

The Aviar that we see in Sixth of the Dusk were all fruit eaters, they all have to eat the fruit that the grubs live in. However, Mraize's Aviar seems a lot more like a predator than a herbivore.

Brandon Sanderson

It is!

R'Shara

Did his species become extinct or is it a unique Aviar like Sak?

Brandon Sanderson

Neither. But yes, it is a carnivoristic Aviar. I will confirm that, which it's not confirming much, you guys already knew that. But that is indeed what is going on there.

Questioner

On Sixth of the Dusk, First of the Sun, if humans eat the fruit or the seed of the worms, will they gain Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

No. They tried that. Someone has tried that.

Questioner

Has Hoid been there?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO.

Trae Cooper

In the past we deeply discussed the mechanism with which Breaths are decided to be doled out or endowed on Nalthis. And you said that there is an intellect that is doling them out, but that their intentions or that their goals are difficult to predict or nonstandard. And my question is: are they nonstandard because the base Vessel behind them does not have, at its core, a standard human psychology? 

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! Good question. Excellent question. RAFO, I like the way you're theorizing. I have said before, that there are multiple nonhuman Vessels in the Cosmere. So, your theorizing perhaps is going to bear fruit. 

Did someone say "chulls"? No, it's not the chulls. There are no chulls that are holding Shards in the Cosmere. 

Aila

Would food from Hallandren be considered men or women's food in Alethkar?

Brandon Sanderson

Food from Hallandren I think is mostly going to be considered masculine food. Let me see-- I'd have to go and look and see at my notes what they're eating because there's a lot of Pacific islander influence on the area, not the culture, but where they are. So there's going to be a lot of fruit in their diet, but I think I mention that-- yeah I think it's gonna be mostly man-food. Actually no, I'm going to retract that, it's going to be both. They're going to be weirded out by it, because they're not-- you know, like our food, if they came here and ate, they would be weirded out by it. Number one a lot of it would be too bland. So they'd be like ehh, we're not sure.

Questioner

What would you say are one or two aspects in the fantasy genre that are not well-appreciated by the masses?

Brandon Sanderson

I've already mentioned it, but I think that truly great humorous fantasy is not appreciated for the difficulty that writing good humorous fantasy that also has good plot and worldbuilding... I'm speaking of Sir Terry again. Writing really good comedic fantasy is as hard as writing regular fantasy, plus more difficult for that extra layer. So I don't think that's appreciated.

But in a general term, anything we do that's not about our prose is generally not appreciated. Because we have a tradition that has grown up, and it's actually fairly recent (because novels are fairly recent) in the last hundred years or so, that elevates one type of storytelling above all others. That type of storytelling is still pretty cool, right? I can read something that got a Nobel Prize and be like, "Wow, this is pretty awesome. I love what they're doing with this." But it's basically like awards only ever being given to one flavor of ice cream. So, if you have the Best Ice Cream of the Year Award, but Rocky Road and its various incarnations always win, and a fruit sorbet never wins. And that's kind of how it feels, that a lot of the book awards go, where it's only one type of art that's seen as valid. Whereas when I look at something that's really intricately plotted that I'm amazed by, and no one cares in the awards committee, that kind of bothers me. 'Cause I'm like, "Don't you see that there's lots of different types of art that create great stories?" And I would love to see more awards given to someone who is able to create a really cool world and integrate it really well, because I think that's as hard as writing pretty prose.

Granted, you get some people who can do it all, and they make me angry. Pat Rothfuss. But, you know.

Questioner #1

On Roshar, all the alcohol on Roshar is called wine.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep.

Questioner #1

Some of it is different from what we have on Earth...

Brandon Sanderson

Yep. All of it, actually. Well, not all of it--there's some actual Shin wine that you would call wine.

Questioner #1

So, on Roshar, do they have distillation processes, or do they have some sort of super yeast that can go way higher than the 20% cap?

Brandon Sanderson

A lot of what you're seeing we would just call spirits or liqueurs here. They do have some grain based things and stuff like that. They're not making beer, they're mostly making spirits.

This whole linguistic thing is one of those little clues that I embedded for certain reasons that we won't go into. The reason they call everything wine, the reason that seasons... they call seasons and we're like, "Wait! Those aren't seasons!", and things like that... *with some audience nudging* Chickens is the other big one. This is all there for a specific reason, but the further we get and the better help I get from beta readers... thank the beta readers for the scenes in Oathbringer, where a certain character is getting drunk--they helped me a lot on that. The better information I get from the betas in these things, I write stuff and then they tell me "Ah Brandon, you know nothing about beer!" and I'm like "Well yes, I do not know much about beer!" *laughter* "So tell me..." and the better it gets. I'm trying to give you more and more in the books about that because it is important to specifically several of the characters, and so I wanted to get it right. But most of what they're drinking would be harder than what you might assume.

Questioner #1

So, distilled or brewed?

Brandon Sanderson

Distilled, mostly distilled.

Questioner #2

Are there fermentation spren? *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

I would say yes. There are probably fermentation spren. Because some of the lower... like some of the colors are actual fruit... like *asking back* what do you do when making wine, you're brewing wine, and *with audience help* pressing wine, and you ferment wine. And so, some of them you would drink and be like, "Okay, this is wine-like. It's not made from grapes, but its wine-like." A lot of the... further on the wheel, you'd drink and you'd be like "Oh, this tastes like Vodka! Why're you calling it wine?" Well that's what their word for alcohol is.

Questioner (paraphrased)

You very clearly make rules for the wine in this world, like the different colors and different alcohol content. I was wondering what the inspiration for that is, and also what some of them are actually made from, because it doesn't seem like grapes.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It's not grapes, it's a local fruit. So we would not probably call it wine, we would probably call it something else. And it's based on my desire to do funky things with world building in every way I can. The color is a cultural thing.

Deana Whitney

I'm working on a food article about Roshar, so a few questions. Lavis equals corn?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, ish. That would be a nice *indistinguishable*

Deana Whitney

Is one of the other grains like buckwheat, do they have bananas or similar-tasting fruit, and what is the Earth equivalent of the most popular vegetable in Alethi cuisine?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably a sweet potato, though I hate them, would be the closest thing to the tuber that they use. There is a somewhat buckwheat-ish grain, but most -- like the Thaylen bread that they talk about and stuff, you've got to be getting wheat in from Shinovar. But yes, they have a grain that's slightly more of the consistency, so if you saw it or if you ate something from it you would be like this is some weird form of wheat. They're forming the flatbreads out of it. I would have to go to my notes and find out which one it is. I know I've mentioned it in the books before. If I didn't end up mentioning it I got it in the wiki, so you can drop us an email and I can pull it out of the wiki for you.

Deana Whitney

I was also hoping they have garlic.

Brandon Sanderson

They have things similar enough to garlic that you could just use garlic.

Jane Sagan

Is diabetes prominent in Vorin women? Or is there physiology and that of the sweeteners different enough that the diet affects their bodies differently?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I would say no. For a couple of reasons. One is, it's not like they're eating candy. They do eat candy, but I would say, glycemically and things like this, their average meal is not going to be as high as our average meal, even, modern-day, because their grains are not refined. Yes, they're adding sweeteners to things, but a lot of them are fruit sweeteners. And they're getting probably less of a load than a person eating a bowl of white rice in our culture. So, no.

LettersWords

The Fused only use nine of the Surges (they don't use Adhesion), and Raboniel describes Adhesion as "not a true Surge." Does this mean, in its original form on Ashyn, Surgebinding had no equivalent to Adhesion, and it was created by Honor later?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a valid way of theorizing, and I would encourage you to go that direction. Raboniel is biased. So take those two sentences as separate things. Do be aware she is very, very biased, but also your theorizing could bear fruit going that direction.

VeryNiceName16

With everything else you guys are doing next year, what is the plan for the Stormlight 4.5 novella?

Brandon Sanderson

Still on my list to do when I finish Stormlight 5. I think it needs to be written; I am excited by it. We will see what happens, because Stormlight 5 is almost assuredly 2024 now. And that's partially the Secret Projects, but not as much as you guys probably would assume.

The main reason has been movie and television stuff. As jofwu anticipated in the first question, I still can't say anything. This is the year the Hollywood came calling, and came calling in a very big way, even before the Kickstarter. They saw that, basically - all of Hollywood was watching and seeing that fantasy can work that is not Game of Thrones. The Witcher, and Shadow and Bone, and plenty of other excellent properties. I mean, Arcane is fantastic; another fantastic example. They're like "Oh, people like these and it can be done if it's not George R.R. Martin". And every one of those studio execs has had someone say "Well, get us one of these," or "get us more of these."

And every one of them went to BookScan, which is the ratings for how books sell. And every one of them sorted the BookScan and said, "Alright, what authors are there out there that have not had anything made?" And, far as I can tell, I am definitely the best selling science fiction and fantasy writer who's never had an adaptation. I might be the best selling author in the world who's never had an adaptation. That's hard for me to say, because it's harder to penetrate different subgenres and figure out where their sales factors are. And, you know, it depends what you count as adaptation.

Basically, they all arrived at the same name, and then the Kickstarter happened. They were already calling, and then they started calling more. And so this is the year where I've had to take numerous meetings with all of the streaming services and a large number of the various studios and producers and things. And that takes time. Just takes a lot of time to be on all of those meetings.

We will bear fruit from this eventually. But I'm being very careful. In fact, when I did my call with Netflix, I led off by saying to them, "I am both very fortunate and very unfortunate. Very unfortunate in that I've never actually had anything made. I've sold tons and tons of things, and nobody was able to get one off the ground. That's unfortunate because I'm an unproven quality in Hollywood, and I understand that. I am also very fortunate in that none of those things actually got made. So nothing bad got made." And all the rights have come back to me, basically. And here I'm sitting in a world where everyone wants fantasy and I have my rights and I can say yes or no. That puts me in a very good position also. Which lets... you know, then I don't need the money. Hollywood doesn't know what to do with people that don't need their money. It's very bizarre to them. So we get to be very discerning and picky with what we want to do.