#elantris spoilers

[bowlingwithplanets]

Me when Hoid showed up in the last 50 pages of Elantris:

[brookeuwo]

The Stormlight archive’s position on deity is “if you squint hard enough everything wrong with society is in some way god’s fault”

Mistborn era 1’s position on deity is “god and god’s edgy lover are both stupid and dying and a personal relationship to faith is way more valuable than whatever an actual higher power could ever give you”

Mistborn era 2’s position on deity is “religious freedom is cool also god is a stupid fucking asshole whose divine attribute is “upholding the status quo” so he didn’t realize all of the people in power were worshipping the same pyramid scheme cult”

Warbreaker’s position on deity is “if god did exist then she’d turn faith into a capitalist nightmare where people sell their souls for the precognition industrial complex because she’s too obsessed with making people look cool to make the world into an actual nice place”

Elantris’s position on deity is “whatever the fuck the Elantrians are doing with their post-scarcity socialist utopia is way cooler than what would be happening if either of their gods were alive, also god is a pyramid scheme made to enforce imperialism” (dubious)

White sand’s position on deity is “the coolest thing god ever did was make someone too cool for god’s bullshit” and “I don’t know I’ve never read white sand”

IN SUMMARY:

The Cosmere’s position on deity is:

God is best when ripped apart violently and divided among the people, if god was one guy that guy would suck and would have a lot of blood on their hands

Shatter all shards 2023

[to-shards-you-say]

whats your job on the elantrian commune. im the guy who slaps everyone on their bald heads

[highly-invested]

What do you guys think the trick to better Connection spoofing? Alik, Vasher, and Galladon all have issues with their own cultures' idioms and word choices bleeding through (one of these is probably by choice though lol.) Whereas Hoid and that Terriswoman worldhopper from RoW for example do not. I think the fact that one of the few worldhoppers we see who isn't either unreasonably realmatically versed or well established, who also doesn't have issues with using connection to hop a language barrier is a Terriswoman.

I think the trick to good connection spoofing is to store or blank your Identity so your Connection with your homeworld/history offworld isn't fighting with the blank Connection you're tapping.

[knightsgaydiant]

The thing is that Hrathen’s love language is power struggle, so to me it makes perfect sense that he’s in love with both Sarene and Dilaf.

[cosmereplay]

Ok so I need to know the difference between the Aonic that Sarene was speaking and the actual Aons. Because you can only hear "Lord Rao" so many times before you put together that "Rao" might mean "Raoden".

Either the Aonic she speaks is significantly different than the aons or Brandon seriously underestimated my faith in Sarene's intellect.

Or is it like "John", like there are so many of them that the name gets hidden in its ubiquity?

[deoxys314]

Cosmere Connections in Secret Project 1 (spoilers)

I had the day off yesterday, so I did in fact read SP1 on the first day. I thought I'd put together a post about the connections to other planets and magical mechanics that I noticed, interspersed with some of my theories.

Spoilers for every published Cosmere work.

Let's start with the things on Lumar:

There are 12 different varieties of aethers, which are apparently not the "true" form of them. Instead, they are described as spores.

We know of: Blue/zephyr, crimson/spikes, verdant/vines, black/midnight essence, pink/roseite, yellow/light(/heat)

Each type of aether pours from a moon, which is very close to the planet and apparently they are arranged roughly in the center of a pentagon, so that the planet, while spherical so far as we know, is decorated like a dodecahedron.

These are created in HUGE numbers, enough to form the planet's ocean and sail upon. When not being liquefied, they can even be walked on, if you're bold.

They "activate" when exposed to water, creating a burst of their essence.

I'd hazard a guess that these are somehow related to the 10 essences known on Roshar. The spikes and midnight seem like the odd ones out, and that leaves 10, of which zephyr, heat/fire, vine and stone match up.

When dealing with Midnight Essence, Hoid describes the Luhel Bond. It consumes something physical, water from the human(/spaient being) side, in contrast to the Nahel bond, which is Spiritual.

These bonds apparently have a naming scheme, [syllable]-hel. I had thought that Nahel was someone's name, maybe someone who researched it, but perhaps these names come from somewhere else. Or, maybe several types of bond are catalogued and a consistent naming scheme was come up with by those scholars.

Hoid is there. In fact, he's telling us this story. He sort of cross-cuts so I'll talk about him in other planets. Here, I'll note that despite being cursed, he appears to know a good deal about the aethers. Experience from another planet, or something he picked up bumming locally?

Now references to other planets, in no particular order.

Scadrial:

The roseite essence, at least, responds to iron and steel: they pull and push it. gasp consistency! I would be fascinated to know a: what the other metals to to roseite and b: what reactions the other essences have.

There's a kandra around, just vibing. He's learned how to graft parts of humans onto himself. Presumably any kandra who wanted to learn a high degree of bodily control could do so.

The kandra have apparently been released to . . . wander the cosmere? We hear Sazed released them, so I wonder if Harmony, in line with previous actions realized he couldn't force them to serve him and let them all through the perpendicularity if they wanted, or perhaps Discord just doesn't care about them right now.

Roshar

Hoid is here but we don't see Design so far as I can tell. This could be because Hoid is not on screen terribly much, or the bond could be broken, or maybe, as a lightweaver, Hoid just disguised it.

Big one: the black spores produce Midnight Essence. This is the same name, and apparently the same substance as what is produced by Re-Shephir, the Midnight Mother.

The MM creates ME, as does the spores produced by the black moon. How these two places/entities are related is not known.

The ME on Roshar do not seem to require water. One wonders what sort of bond they have and what they feed on (emotions, so maybe some more Spiritual or Cognitive stuff?)

Threnody

As on Threnody, silver blunts or disables the magic system here, in the form of killing the spores. notably, this works in a ranged manner, and does not tarnish or use up the silver in any way that we see.

Aluminum also blocks the effects of silver.

First of the Sun

Hoid mentions in passing the tale of Linji, who tried to sail around the world with no Aviar. (ch 24)

There are also a few other things which make me think he is telling this story to a First-of-the-Sunnian. (Is there a better demonym for that?) References to ships coming from "your sky" and so on.

Taldain

At some point, someone references a 13th type of spore. Apparently, no one can agree if it's white or black. I read this as being White Sand from the Dayside of Taldain. (ch 23)

Nalthis

The iron soldiers of the Sorceress are Awakened, with some reasonably complex commands. This is already in line with what we've seen from Warbreaker.

The tablets that Fort uses are apparently at least part Awakened, and use Connection and Intent to be supremely useful devices. They are described by Hoid in technological terms ("tablet", "hacked", etc) and I suspect that they bear some relation to our conception of a tablet or high-tech artifact. So far as we know, physics in the cosmere is the same as the real world plus the magic, so there's no theoretical reason anyone couldn't make a semiconductor-based computing device with "mundane" principles. (Though as I said up top, this device is described as at least partly powered by Awakening.) It even recharges with solar power.

Sel

The Sorceress is Riina. We last saw her as one of the members of the IRE trying to fake connection to and take up the shard of Preservation. (Kelsier scared them off the Scadrain sub-astral, good fun.)

She is an Elantrian, and apparently has no issues accessing that power very far from Sel. There was a clunky device doing that in the Cognitive realm when we saw her in Secret History. We don't see any realm but the Physical in this book, so unknown if that is still the method or something more elegant has been devised.

Hey speaking of SH, she's really old! Elantrians don't age much, if at all.

Hoid went to see her to get enough Connection to join/hack into/trick into being an Elantrian himself. Hoid is obviously not from Sel, so there must be some process that is known for inviting someone or making someone into one of them.

She is adept at curses, which can have apparently wide-ranging effects (e.g., transfiguring someone into a rat.) These also take the form of a geas, a compulsion placed upon the subject. In general, they can't talk about the curse or how to reverse it. (It's unknown if that is a general feature of the curses or if Riina must "set" it each time she casts one.)

These curses are probably Selish? They seem to be strongly related to language. Hoid cannot just break the curse, but he can sort of twiddle the requirements to make it easier for the subject to break. Also, the new requirements sort of rhyme with the old.

Anyway, I'll read this book again sometime. Probably later this year as I do my Cosmere re-read. I think this is the farthest along we've ever gotten temporally, so it will probably be last.

What did I miss? Did I get anything wrong? I'd love to discuss.

[lunaticbookblog]

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

I read it mostly for the Cosmere lore. This book was sometimes fine but it’s the second Cosmere book I almost decided not to finish. Not to say it was bad, but it never hit a point where I was particularly engaged. The characters (Sarene and Raoden) often felt like prototypes for ones in later works who feel more complex and complete. Like this was a practice run.

The chapter point of view alternated every chapter in a consistent pattern that sometimes felt forced, as if the narrative pacing was forced to fit the structure rather than using the structure to enhance the narrative. This resulted in very odd pacing.

The magic system manages to be the most pedantic in the Cosmere to date, which isn’t a criticism, just a comment. I don’t mind it at all.

Character’s personal arcs didn’t always make much sense. And one character is named Dilaf which was really distracting as I kept misreading it as DILF, which kind of took me out of the scene.

There were hints of Cosmere lore, and recognizable people and magic that I saw in other books and now make sense. It was nice to get a more in depth explanation for Elantris based magic that has been spotted in other Cosmere books.

“”We’re not dead, Galladon, and we’re not damned. We’re just unfinished.””

[ahhfear]

Spoilers for the end of Elantris

Dilaf tells Hrathen his sad backstory

[blazmaniv]

RIP to Hrathen, you would have loved Roshar.

Or just shardplate

[boundingfeather]

Finished Elantris! Don't have any pithy comments but I did want to share this: my list of cosmere siblings ranked from best to worst. Incomplete as I haven't read Mistborn Era 2, Warbreaker, or Tress yet, I'll update it when I do.

1. Adolin and Renarin - obviously

2. Kaladin and Tien - also obviously

3. Kiin's children - so originally they were gonna be 4 but then the twist about Adien happened and I realized: 5 years and the two 10 year olds NEVER said shit about their brother being Elantrian. Do you know how big of a fucking narc 10 year Olds are? Those kids must have really loved their brother. A++ 10/10 family

4. Beldre and The Citizen - generally look out for each other as long as one of them isn't possessed by Ruin. Upon reflection even IF one is possessed by Ruin

5. The Davar siblings - they love each other its just...boy their family is dysfunctional

6. Jasnah and Elhokar - more distant but hey, they still like each other

7. Elend and Zane - literally never met and by their own admission do not hate each other so

8. Kelsier and Marsh - put here but I'm literally expecting them to try to kill each other at some point

9. Kiin and Eventeo - so uh...dont know exactly what the fuck's going on there but it ain't GOOD

10. Venli and Eshonai - care for each other but probably would be best if they stayed far apart

(10.5 Raoden and Eton - my man got cut from the final book so he doesn't count but if he did they'd go here)

11. Gavilar and Dalinar - fucked up!

12: Vin and Reen - Really fucked up!

[knight-of-skyloft]

If someone had come up to me like eight years ago when I was first getting into the cosmere and told me that Kelsier was going to have a Skype call with Kaise I just.  I don’t know what I would have done.

[thehalfbloodfreak]

Woah what is up with King Iadon??

[to-shards-you-say]

does the nature of the dor even get revealed in this book or was that just some shit brandon said at a book signing five years later. merciful domi this and that, do they even learn that her juice is loose in the mirror dimension

[construction-cat]

This is making me as angry at myself for not realizing sooner as when we found out why elantris wasn't elantring (he gotta draw the picture with the funny line)

OH FUCK OFF GOLD BURNING MISTINGS SEE AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF THEMSELVES. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. AU. AU IS THE ELEMENT SHORTHAND THING FOR GOLD. FUCK YOU BRANDON. FUCK.

[knightsgaydiant]

jfc Raoden, in just how many forms/disguises are you going to get your wife to fall in love with you??