your friendly neighbourhood disappointment @brokentomatobasket - Tumblr Blog

petalya

all I feel like doing is kissing and being kissed and not having anything to think about for a little while

thethursday

I mean, don't spoil me but somebody please tell me Kaladin finds a piece of happiness eventually

princessantisocial

onlycosmere

Questioner: Now that Skyward and Reckoners are over, and it seems like Apocalypse Guard is never gonna get written, is there anything you can tell us about the connection between their multiverses?

Brandon Sanderson: I've kinda been playing loose and freaky. Multiverses are annoying, right?

When I wrote Steelheart, I realized, "Ah, multiverses are annoying." And the more I worked on Apocalypse Guard, the more I realized I didn't want to lean into this. And I'm glad I didn't, because as certain media properties have shown us, multiverses are just real hard to juggle and keep any sense of weight or value to the actions of the characters. And so, one of the reasons I didn't want to release Apocalypse Guard is I want to rethink all of that.

I do prefer things like I did in Frugal Wizard, where I'm like, "There are certain stable realities. It's not an infinite number of realities; there's an infinite number of possible realities, but some of them are solid. Some of them are real." So you can find alternate versions of yourself, just not an infinite number of them.

So that's one of the places I was going with that. And Apocalypse Guard did lean into this and start to progress that idea. I think one way you could do a multiverse (kind of have your cake and eat it, too) is just be like, "There's not four billion versions of you. There might be seven." And things like that, that are what we call stable, and "real." Which allows you to kind of play with that idea of multiple versions of yourself without everything going out the window in terms of... You know, you guys have seen Rick and Morty. It doesn't matter if we die or if we mess up the plan. There's another one over there. We can only do this an infinite number of times. So, that was one of the things I was playing with, there.

And then, multiverses are just, like, so overdone. Everything Everywhere All At Once did the best one, and we don't need to even try. But that movie is proof you can still have emotional connection and power in a story that is about alternate versions of yourself. And so it is possible.

So what's the connection? I do kind of have in my head that each of these non-Cosmere properties kind of are on the continuum with this multiverse and are shades of one another, and Apocalypse Guard was gonna kind of be jumping between them. But whether or not we'll get to that, I don't know, because I certainly don't want to have Skyward be ruined by the existence of multiverses.

I like how Skyward turned out; the whole series, I'm really proud of. So that's the question mark in the back of my head.

emrystheedgedancer

Can we talk about how cool the visual of Renarin’s visions being like stained glass is???

greelin

this is going to have me on my hands and knees dry heaving

catilinas

help i’m in london w my dad and he keeps pointing at buildings and saying ‘there used to be a coffee shop here’ but by ‘used to be’ he means. in the seventeenth century

catilinas

we went past a pub and he was like ‘when this was a coffee shop (in the seventeenth century) isaac newton dissected a dolphin in the back room one time’ like ok. we are about to miss the train

arctic-hands

Your dad was present for all of these things

zevveli

I still think that my favorite urban legend/folklore fact is that there are certain areas in New Orleans where you cannot get a taxi late at night not because it isn’t safe, but because taxi companies have had recurring problems of picking up ghosts in those areas who are not aware that they are dead and disappearing from the cab before reaching the destination and therefore stiffing the driver on the fare causing a loss for the company.

elsajeni

An occupational hazard of cab driving I had not previously considered

princessnijireiki

I love that the nola problem here is not “ghosts in my taxi cab,” but “ghosts are FUCKING BROKE DEAD BASTARDS & I GOT BILLS”

siderealsandman

Horror is when ghosts get into cabs and scare drivers Magical realism is when cab companies have to develop policies to prevent ghastly fare-theft

kc749

In a book about the tsunami in Japan in 2011, the writer talked about how there was a huge increase in reports of ghostly activity. Apparently in Japan treating ghosts rudely is basically considered the stupidest thing you could possibly do. For months after the tsunami, taxi drivers would pick up a passenger only to have them give an address in one of the devastated areas. The cab driver often looked up halfway to the destination to find their fare had disappeared. Not wanting to be impolite to the person (even if they were dead) they’d drive to the address, open the door to let them out, then drive away.