Oathbringer Portland signing

Event details
Name
Name Oathbringer Portland signing
Date
Date Nov. 16, 2017
Location
Location Beaverton, OR
Tour
Tour Oathbringer
Bookstore
Bookstore Powell's Books
Entries
Entries 45
Upload sources
#2 Copy

Questioner

If a kandra were a Parshendi, would he be able to take the forms?

Brandon Sanderson

The Forms? The actual-- To an extent, yes. To an extent, yes, but part of that is the spren bond. You're not gonna get everything. You could look like one, but there'll be certain things you won't be able to do, even with the Form. You couldn't take a form of power... You could pass.

#3 Copy

Questioner

Are there historical figures that were inspirations for Elhokar?

Brandon Sanderson

Dalinar is based very slightly on Subutai, the great Mongol general. Elhokar, no one specific. I thought of him when I was a kid, when I was, like, fourteen, I wanted to do a story about a weak king and his uncle who's a really strong figure, and that interplay, and that's where he came from.

#6 Copy

Questioner

For Jasnah, it seems like maybe a couple times it's been hinted that maybe she prefers women *inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just have you Read on And Find Out on that one. There is-- Her book isn't 'til, like-- at the earliest, Book Eight. So, we've got a long ways to go before we're digging into Jasnah some more.

#9 Copy

Questioner 1

The drawers with the infused gemstones. Is that the Stormlight Archive?

Brandon Sanderson

No. That is not the Stormlight Archive.

Questioner 2

Is there a Stormlight Archive?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. But... it means the books. The archive of books that are all named after in-world books. The Archive is a pun on archived collection of books.

#10 Copy

Questioner

Would all the different powers, or magic. Would they all work on the other--

Brandon Sanderson

Almost all of them will. AonDor, and the ones from Sel, are very hard to get to work elsewhere, because of certain things, but others are much easier. For instance, if you can get Breaths to another world, you can just use them, you don't need to do anything special.

#17 Copy

Questioner

Glyphpairs, or glyphs, for the specific Surges. Are they supposed to be slightly different? Or are they perfectly symmetrical?

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on who paints them and how. Most of them are supposed to be symmetrical.

Questioner

Because I got the Progression tattoo, and my tattoo artist noticed that it was slightly different on both sides, where there was a curve instead of having a square. And he said, is it not supposed to be perfectly squared off? Because then it would be--

Brandon Sanderson

Some people draw them that way, depends on what they're writing, and things like that. So, I would ask Isaac. Write an email to [email protected] and ask him about it, because he designs all those. I just give him general directions, he's the one that can actually write them.

#18 Copy

Questioner

In Herdazian, is there no personal pronoun, and that's why Lopen always refers to himself as "The Lopen"?

Brandon Sanderson

No, that is his personal thing. In Rock's language, most nouns are gendered, masculine, which is why you always see him flipping-- screwing that up. But Lopen, just his thing. Just his thing.

#20 Copy

Questioner

Hoid seems to know things that are not explained. He'll show up places, when the Herald showed up, or when Jasnah comes back. Is that something that's just not been explained yet? Or is that something that's a part of some magic system that we've heard about? Or is that something different?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, so, he has access to things that other people do not. It is explainable, but it has not been explained yet. He can be places he needs to be, but if you watch, he doesn't always know why he needs to be there. He's really good at covering that part up. But he does-- he knows he needs to be somewhere, and so he gets there.

#24 Copy

Questioner

Why pancakes?

Brandon Sanderson

My kids love pancakes, I thought Lift would really like pancakes. And pancakes are pretty universal, like, most cultures come up with a pancake-type thing. Now they aren't always the sweet pancakes, fluffy ones that we imagine. But, like, almost every culture, pancakes are a thing. Some weird batter with stuff in it you pour onto a hot skillet.

#25 Copy

Questioner

I just have been noticing this, and it's not exclusive to any author, it's just this kind of theme that simply tires me. Main characters, they die, and then they come back to life. or they just don't die. And it makes it so much less exciting for me. So, I wanted to ask you what you think about that?

Brandon Sanderson

So, here's the thing. Because fiction isn't real, death is meaningless in fiction. The only real things in fiction are the emotions we make you feel, and different stories try to do that in different ways with different themes. For instance, I don't think Lord of the Rings is ruined by the fact that Gandalf has a resurrection, because of the emotions you feel, and then the other emotions you feel, and things like this-- and there's something universal about it. And so, I don't think I'm as big on it as that, because deaths-- maybe it's because I'm a writer, everything feels arbitrary in books, except the emotion that I put upon it, if that makes sense? And I always find that what the characters are going through is the more interesting than an abrupt end, but I guess that's just kinda me.

If you say that, then books can't have resurrection as a theme, or rebirth, which is, like, one of the most interesting themes in existence. But everyone has different tastes, there's no wrong. Not liking it is not wrong. I mean, plot armor also has this thing where we tend to not kill characters arbitrarily, we tend to do it at dramatic moments, and things like this, because the story is better that way, right? And there are some people, like George Martin, who just try to throw this out the window, to tell a different story by doing that. But, of course, resurrection is a huge theme in those books.

#26 Copy

Questioner

I want to ask you a question about Pattern. Could you speak to anything about where your idea for...

Brandon Sanderson

I wanted different spren to look drastically different. And, as I was building-- Like, I wanted a lot of the spren of a lot of the Orders of Knights Radiant to kind of have an internal, natural conflict. Like, that's one of the division lines between a spren that's not sapient, and spren that is. For instance, Windrunner, honorspren, right? Honor is about rigidity in a lot of ways, and Syl is the embodiment of a lot of the opposite of that. And Pattern, who is so interested in lies, is a mathematical fractal-- a mathematical equation. This sort of thing, like naming the inkspren Ivory is just-- I want that internal, natural contrast to be part of them. And Pattern, I really wanted a spren that wasn't just another ball of light. 'Cause Syl is basically a ball of light. And a lot of the others are basically balls of light. And I'm like, I need something that's different, I want something that looks different, that feels different. That's where I went.

#28 Copy

Questioner

How did you design the mistcloak cloaks?

Brandon Sanderson

Because it looks cool, obviously!

Questioner

It is highly impractical!

Brandon Sanderson

Not if you're Mistborn! The only trouble we really had is stepping on the tassels. 

Questioner

And getting tangled up in them.

Brandon Sanderson

Well, a lot of the tassels, a lot of the ones for mistcloaks we've made, use thicker material in them, and they lie straighter, and they don't tangle nearly as much. As long as you don't make them too long, 'cause if you do, you step on them, particularly on stairs... We've got some costume persons that work-- you'll find, if you use a thicker, stronger material-- yeah.

#29 Copy

Questioner

A friend of mine wanted me to ask: Was the cataclysm that rocked Ashyn and forced its inhabitants into the flying cities Investiture-based, and if it was was it Shardic in nature?

Brandon Sanderson

The same cataclysm that the-- did you finish [Oathbringer]?

Questioner

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

The same cataclysm that they were fleeing, that they caused, is the one that forced people into the skies...

#32 Copy

Questioner

How do states of matter affect how things look in the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms?

Brandon Sanderson

So, generally, how people perceive something is very important to the reflection in the Cognitive Realm, and so the physical state of matter is going to be involved in that, but generally, it flows the other direction from the Spiritual Realm.

Questioner

Do the forms of Investiture that we've seen, Stormlight, metals, Shardpools, do the fact that those happen in general the same types of states of matter, all physical, solid, is kinda going to be like metal for Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that is generally the way it will be.

#37 Copy

ShadowSgt

The history of Nightblood, we know that it's created by knowledge of the Shardblades. Would you say that Vasher's first trip to Roshar coincided with a certain individual that tried to take over all of Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

You're talking about Sadees?

ShadowSgt

The Sunmaker?

Brandon Sanderson

...I'd have to look at the timeline, but it was not-- it is not something I have present in my mind. It could have overlapped. So, it might overlap, but there's not a cause-and-effect there.

ShadowSgt

So, Sunmaker and Vasher are sep--

Brandon Sanderson

Are not the same people, good question. Sunmaker is legitimately Dalinar's ancestor.

#39 Copy

Questioner

How did you come up with Shardpools and travel between the worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

...So, what happened is (close as I can remember; it's been a long time now), close as I can remember, I wrote Elantris in, like, 1998 or 1999, and I, at that point, didn't really have the cosmere in place. I knew I wanted to do some sort of grand epic, I knew I wanted to do some sort of thing, but I just wrote that book-- Elantris is mostly a discovery-written book, rather than an outlined book. And I wrote this book, and that's when I started a lot of these ideas. I stepped away from it, and I started writing a book called Dragonsteel, which was Hoid's origin story. And then I kinda got into the dark age where I was trying to be George R.R. Martin for a while. And then when I came out of that, I wrote The Way of Kings [Prime]. And during those days, I was really looking for these tying agents. When I put the first Shardpool in, I had-- I'm just like "Here's a well of power. I don't know what this does." I was discovery-writing the book. By the time I sold Mistborn and Elantris, I sold those two in a deal in 2003, that's when I'm like, "All right, now I'm gonna do this for real." I've had all this trial run-- I'd written thirteen novels at this point, and I'd sold #6 and #14, Mistborn not being written yet... So, I sat down with Elantris, and I built out the cosmere, and I built out these things, like "Why do I have this pool of power? What am I gonna do with the pool of power in the next book? I want this to be a theme." And I started building out the cosmere from there. So, part of it was organic, part of it was by design.

#40 Copy

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Could an Awakened toupee be commanded to act like real hair?

Brandon Sanderson

...Totally! Absolutely, yes!

Questioner

Would it be convincing?

Brandon Sanderson

Would it be convincing? Yeah, I think that it would be. It depends.

Questioner

It depends on the number of Breaths?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it depends on factors, but I totally think that could be very convincing. Yes, yes, yes.

Questioner

Could it also be given enough Breath to Command "Protect me?"

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it could. That would be really weird. But yes.

#43 Copy

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

Is Hoid the girl who looked up? Is this the story of the shattering of Adonalsium, and did the group shatter adonalsium to figure out analytically the nature of Divinity. Was this an attempt to separate the different components of god to understand the unitary whole better?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said that this was not quite right but thinking along the right track

#45 Copy

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

If Nightblood were in the cognitive realm and was used to stab a bead that was the cognitive representation of a castle, would the castle be destroyed in the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If you could get Nightblood into the Cognitive Realm, then yes. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

What would happen to people who were in the castle at the time? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They wouldn't be affected (other than possibly plummeting to their death).

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

How about a carpet that had been in the castle for 50 years? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, 50 years most likely wouldn't be enough time. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

Is this like the "Ship of Theseus?" 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes

Event details
Name
Name Oathbringer Portland signing
Date
Date Nov. 16, 2017
Location
Location Beaverton, OR
Tour
Tour Oathbringer
Bookstore
Bookstore Powell's Books
Entries
Entries 45
Upload sources