AltText Alex (he/him)

Ally and #A11y. ADHD+Dysgraphia. Fantasy nerd, gamer geek, gadget fan. Fandoms: Cosmere, WoT, PJO, Critical Role. #TwitterOfTime refugee

[brothermouse-skeleton]

The fun thing about Brandon Sanderson's magic systems is that, like ttrpg players, his characters are constantly trying to exploit the system in novel and insane ways.

What do I have to roll to get around the connection check on these metal minds?

I want to make a bond with the spirit without making any oaths. Just, like, as friends.

What if I fed the magic worms to a different kind of bird?

I'm going to use these deadly, explosive spores to make a gun, which is also deadly and explosive, so it shouldn't be that hard.

I'd like to put even more points into my rock stacking modifier. I want even a crit fail to count as a nat 106.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

the thing about being "good with kids" is all it takes is literally just not trying to control and mould them with every interaction. it's just being a normal person and engaging with them through normal interactions like having conversations and playing games. it's just being genuine and friendly and not perceiving them as lumps of wet clay you are there to shape. "oh you're so good with kids" thanks it's because I think they are people

[cungadero]

i hate viruses so fucking much. literally getting attacked by a fucking shape. a concept. consumes no energy. responds to no stimuli. its only existence is to fuck with you. like fuck offf

[thrice-the-nobling]

prev's tags are too good not to save

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tumblr tags reading: #right??? #it's not even a beast or a creature #a bacterium is at least a guy. a horrible little scallawag of a guy but a guy nonetheless #a virus is just. a mean tiny complicated philips head screwdriver #fuck off out of here. go back to concept town /End ID]

[targetedknowledge]

[benjaminbadger]

I think there's some medias that you just cannot meaningfully engage with if your main priority is shipping

[benjaminbadger]

(Tired aroace voice, metaphorical cigarette in hand) You don't have to make them kiss... they don't always have to kiss...

[bear-ylee-stable]

So many other kinds of human connection get put to the wayside with our current culture’s obsession with romantic love.

Don’t get me wrong it’s ok to ship romance but it doesn’t have to be the only type of relationship we celebrate in media, fandom space included.

[benjaminbadger]

[inolienkiki]

By far the best and funniest introduction to an immortal character I’ve ever read was in Warbreaker, where Vasher is consistently presented for the first 400 pages as a grumpy, disheveled, ambiguously moral vigilante, who is competent enough at everything that it’s clear he’s an experienced guy, but has no social graces and barely any reputation except among a few people. He wears rags and ties his pants up with a piece of rope and his closest personal relationship is being a dad slash cleanup crew for a very cursed talking sword with memory issues.

Then, more than 2/3 of the way through the book, he finally has a conversation with another one of the main characters, who asks him about how the magic works. He proceeds to spend the next four pages giving a highly technical explanation of how all of the previously mentioned elements of the magic system function and fit together into a larger whole, explaining what is not known about the magic and detailing numerous edge cases and theoretical situations. His audience is understandably confused about where and when and *why* he got a PhD??

Later he explains how he is also three other apparently unrelated historical figures and a zombie. Of course he has a PhD, he’s old enough to be five different people.

[savrenim]

......suddenly struck by the idea for a piece of worldbuilding of "fae don't like iron bc it is the most stable element*"

*as in elements higher you can extract energy via fission and lower you can extract energy via fusion but iron itself there is no excess binding energy to extract at all

[savrenim]

YOU. YOU SEE MY VISION.

[ospreyonthemoon]

People: exposure to the fae realms makes you weak and sickly. Because of the fae

The fae: wow wow wow i LOVE uranium!!!! We should put it ALLLL over our land!!! This won't cause problems!

[byjove]

people fail to understand that you can name your child what you want but you cannot make people call them that name. like, you can name your daughter Tragedeigh but you cannot stop her from being called Dee by her classmates. I would get parents being mad if they had named their child a name from their language/culture and their kid’s lazy Anglophone peers refused to learn how to pronounce it but it is always people who named their kid something like Abcde screaming and crying and throwing up about how no one calls their kid by the right name. it is even funnier when the kid is of an age where they can choose what they want to be called and they have CHOSEN the nickname and the parent is still mad. sometimes, I feel like terrible names are a way for these parents to assert control and permanently ruin their kid’s life and it makes them mad when it doesn’t work.

[tyresw]

[cosmereplay]

[ID: A rewritten four panel Calvin and Hobbes comic. Calvin's dad walks up to Calvin, who's sitting on the floor listening to a record. Calvin's dad says, "Relistening to the Stormlight Archive? I'll show you something interesting." He kneels down to point at the record. "The two types of characters are either Kaladins or Tiens. All characters fall into these two categories. Szeth? Tien. Taln? Kaladin." Calvin leans in, interested, and says, "Yeah..."

Calvin's dad continues, "Elhokar? Tien. Dalinar? Kaladin. Despite being Stormblessed, Kaladin is a Tien." The last panel shows Calvin in bed late that night, plagued with thoughts and unable to sleep. End ID.]

[cosmereplay]

Take Kaladin's Assessment uquiz!

(WaT spoilers!)

[ravioliet]

okay more serious version of my other post about this but the fact that arachnophobia modes that censor spiders are the video game accessibility settings things that have become widespread instead of other accessibility settings perplexes me so much. like if you can remove spiders from your game but not things like flashing lights or effects that cause motion sickness i think you might need to reconsider your priorities

[indecisor]

Ted Chiang, “Why A.I. isn’t Going to Make Art.” The New Yorker.

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Text reading: Some individuals have defended large language models by saying that most of what human beings say or write isn't particularly original. That is true, but it's also irrelevant. When someone says "I'm sorry" to you, it doesn't matter that other people have said sorry in the past; it doesn't matter that "I'm sorry" is a string of text that is statistically unremarkable. If someone is being sincere, their apology is valuable and meaningful, even though apologies have previously been uttered. Likewise, when you tell someone that you're happy to see them, you are saying something meaningful, even if it lacks novelty. /End ID]

[petricorah]

For US.

Say no to repealing Section 230.

Say no to internet censorship.

Quick info on calling here. Doesn't take too long: https://x.com/omarsbigsister/status/1998542899915395414?s=46 [ID in alt]

[petricorah]

As of February, we still need to protect Section 230 and say no to internet censorship bills like KOSA! Please call your reps with the above quick steps!

Link + script here

And while you're at it, tell them no on the SAVE act which would cause problems in voting for anyone with a name that doesn't match their birth certificate.

[nepofledgling]

“do you really wanna be on that medication for the rest of your life :(?” yes actually I would love that. I know what I’m like off it

[punkrorschach]

no you don't understand. i *get* to be on this medication for the rest of my life :)

[autism-things-for-my-parents]

👆That

[stickthisbig]

Buddy, if you'd seen me off this medication, you'd start wishing I had a court order to keep me on it

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tumblr tag reading: #I have a "rest of my life" because of the medications /End ID]

[mumblingsage]

This was a kind of sweet dashboard coincidence.

[icaruspendragon]

how am i meant to show my love when i peel an orange but need a shovel to give you a slice

[icaruspendragon]

i wish i had the words to express what this means to me.

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tumblr reply form faustLightTheme reading: oh is this about death i thought it was about being bad at peeling oranges /End ID]

[mushroominaforest]

Shout out to the doctor who responded with complete sincerity when I (on anesthesia) uttered the phrase “chat are we cooked” in her medical professional vicinity. You’re such a real one for that fr fr

[kalgayming]

I think, when discussing Sanderson's political commentary especially, it's important to keep in mind that he mostly writes his worlds as a backdrop to write sick stories about kings and swords and emperors and magic. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of shit, especially in Kaladin's arcs regarding the light eyes, comes off so distastefully. It makes sense from a "I want these badass characters working with each other as fast as possible and also I need them to be super traumatized for the story to work."

I am NOT defending his treatment of the darkeyes/lighteyes binary or the Singers. They are absolutely the biggest flaw in the Stormlight Archives and is worth discussing how his approach from privilege ends up making these worldbuilding elements turn sour. But it's worth mentioning that I don't think he was ever particularly interested in exploring those aspects of his world to begin with.

[rhythm-of-lesbianism]

I get where you’re coming from and to some extent I agree. I like the cool stuff, it’s why Stormlight is such a big interest of mine. I can turn off my analytical brain and enjoy the action.

I just am curious why we assume he wasn’t trying to do anything political when he explicitly created a world that has systemic oppression baked into it. He did not have to make the singers enslaved. He also did not have to have a chunk of Oathbringer dedicated to Kaladin realizing that the singers are people with justified reasons for fighting. If he just wanted a cool world backdrop, he could have omitted these things. He did not have to have the “villains” of his story be formerly enslaved singers fighting against their enslavers. He could have made the lighteyes/darkeyes system less akin to real-world race and class struggles. He could have made all of Kaladin’s trauma centered around PTSD and war rather than adding in the element of systemic oppression.

My frustration (and a lot of other fans’ frustration) comes from the way he did intentionally set up these themes, he did attempt to engage with them in the earlier books, and then he dropped them completely later on. It would be easier to wave away if he hadn’t brought them in and then pulled back. And I know some people claim he did this on accident, but I just don’t see how that’s possible.

[cosmereplay]

Can't speak for OP but for myself, and why I agree with OP, is that I don't think it was accidental. I think he intentionally baked these things into the narrative but he included them only to serve certain specific individual plot points or to make readers sympathize with the characters at a specific point in the story. So for example, I see the slavery piece being put in the story to create a sympathetic backstory for the Windrunners so they could rise up and become important players. He then, intentionally, moved on from that because it wasn't important to his plot after that.

For people who care about the effects of systemic oppression, who relate to it, who connected to oppressed characters because of their own experiences, reading that story shift is like whiplash.

Actually this is similar to how I conceptualize his writing for disability--if he's aware of it and cares enough to investigate it, he's pretty good at publishing something respectful. That goes for his research into writing a deaf character, an amputee, a person with a spinal cord injury. But the way he treats blindness shows he has not thought of it much outside its use as a rhetorical device. The number of times characters say "I feel blind," not to mention how he treats blindness as a punishment for a villain.... AUGH

I think it's similar in the way he's only looked enough into systems of oppression to know how to set one up 😅 In other words, I don't think it's a matter of accident so much as it's a matter of disinterest in pursuing the effects of the oppression he set up.