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Family portrait

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I really hope Asriel comes home in Deltarune and he looks exactly like this but as a goat.

Please Toby see my vision and hear my prayers.

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this is my hope for how the kris/player conflict will pan out

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widehead

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The best part of Warbreaker is that each character thinks they're in a very different book.

Susebron: "I'm the prince from a cautionary fairy tale!"

Siri: "I'm the rebellious protagonist girl from a light-dystopian YA novel!"

Blushweaver: "I'm a master manipulator from Game of Thrones!"

Nightblood: "I'm in a buddy cop comedy! Oh, or a sword anime! Oh OH! I'm Pinocchio and I'm going to be a real boy!"

Vasher: "No we're not, and no you're fucking not."

Lightsong: "I'm the Hardy Boys! From the Hardy Boys!"

Vivenna: "I'M IN HELL!!!!!!"

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@akanemnon

The people must know. We await the 22nd impatiently.

(no we don't. we will wait at the apt amount of patience. this is just an excuse for one more flowey before the flowey)

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Bestie English - best friend Bestie Czech - beast, brute, monster

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The fact that Sanderson managed to make a storm worse than EITHER of the ones on Roshar is absolutely insane. This planet is just so awful it’s insane. Literally how. How did they possibly manage to live here this long.

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o,o

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There have been some really good conversations between Brandon Sanderson and fans on Reddit about Wind and Truth, amd I haven’t seen much duscussion of them here so I though I’d post sone of the bits I found most interesting. One of the things I like best about Brandon is that he tends to engage thoughtfully with criticism (in contrast with his Reddit fans, who can be dismissive of it).

This part is about some of the complaints from fans about WAT feeling too “real-world” and not fantasy-like enough in its language (introduction of real-world swear worlds, the “therapist” joke, amd some of the other jokes).

One Reddit commentor writes:

Brandon has been having quips since the beginning of his time as an author though. I feel like people that compare everything to the MCU are the actual brain poisoned people, not the various authors that now get this insane critique lobbed at them (because it's not just Brandon dealing with it).

Brandon responds:

I wouldn't call people brain poisoned for this.

Warning: long dissection next.

I'd say that this type of humor (which is very much a Gen X style) was overplayed by the people in charge of Star Wars and the MCU, using the humor in bad ways, which has made the entire humor style feel less sincere than it once did.

When it worked, the goal was to humanize characters and make the world seem more real, more "every day life." That was the goal of, for example, Buffy itself--to take fantastic, out-of-this world situations reserved for action stars, and put normal people in those situations. The quips, then, didn't break the fourth wall, but helped make people seem real.

"Puny God" is a good example. It undercuts not the audience, but the arrogance of Loki, while also earning a laugh because we think, "Yeah, that's what would actually happen." It gives a pressure valve and makes things feel real.

But when Poe makes a your mom joke at the start of a Star Wars film, it does the opposite. We don't need the tension relief, and it doesn't feel like a character acting real--it feels like "insert undercut the moment joke A here." See the entire film Love and Thunder.

I think what's happening here, personally, is that readers want sincerity from their stories--there's this growing sense in cinema that we can't take anything seriously, because otherwise we'll be nerds, and only NERDS would like this unironically. So everything has to be ironic and making fun of itself. They long for, say, the sincerity of the LOTR films. (Which still had these moments, usually with Gimli and Legolas, but underplayed them.) Stories that say, "We're not ashamed of the drama, power, and beauty of a fantasy/sf story that takes itself seriously.” Andor and Dune are beloved for these very reasons. EDIT: I also should mention that Deadpool, somehow, manages to be both at once. You have the undercut moments, like when Deadpool trips and falls at the end of the extended fight against all the other deadpools. Yet it doesn't shy away from being sincere at the climax--shockingly sincere. So it kind of uses this humor in reverse; instead of the occasional jolt of humor, it uses a ton of humor, so it can have the occasional jolt of sincerity. Really an interesting storytelling style that absolutely should not work, and wouldn't, without the exact right people in charge. Again, Love and Thunder tried this, and I think largely failed.)

Anyway, I feel that audiences are associating this humor with insincerity more and more, so they're rightly sensitive to them.

(Note to u/kuroinferuno: they did complain about Therapist. I kept it, because at the end of the day, I get to keep a joke now and then that makes me smile, even if I know some won't laugh. Remember, in my books, I try to have a variety of different kinds of humor, because what some people cringe at, others laugh at--and vice versa. I loved that Kaladin, here at this moment of climax, was still baffled by Hoid. And, as I said, this is a genre of humor from my youth that is still powerful for me. From "Boring conversation anyway" to "He's adopted," lines like this really work for me if not overused. But I can see that the current environment of storytelling has made them stand out more, and feel more "hand of the author" than they once were, which in turn kicks people out. Which is something you really want to avoid as an author. At the end of the day, I'd have kept that one, but I'd probably have been a little more careful about other modern language uses so that I could keep the ones I really love, without kicking people out so often.)

I think it’s a solid analysis of when and where quippiness does and doesn’t work, and the problems with how it’s been used as a default for too long and as a substitute for sincerity.

Brandon’s post prior to this one was also very interesting to me, because it got into some of the things that I noticed in Wind and Truth – specifically, how the jumps between character POVs were much more frequent (very few chapters were sole-POV, in contrast to previous books) and seemingly unnecessary (we’d have, say, an Adolin-Kaladin chapter and the a Kaladin-Adolin one, both cutting to a different POV in the middle of what was going on, instead of one Adolin chapter followed by one Kaladin chapter.

Brandon comments on the reason for this:

The goal here was to give a sense of disquietude to WaT by breaking the formula in uncomfortable ways--leading to a sense of uncertainty while reading the book, a sense that something was off, that the average reader (which may not include the people of this subreddit) wouldn't pick up on directly except for a sense of something being "out of tune" as they read.

…The pacing is strange by intention. Instead of an opening action sequence as is common in Stormlight books, there's this disquieting sense of things breaking apart--Kaladin saying goodbye, Shallan and Adolin splitting, Dalinar and Navani being torn away from their kingdom. Instead of fast, slow, fast (as is the general pacing of a stormlight book) it is slow for a distressing amount of time, then jerky--jumping between viewpoints faster than Stormlight books generally do, with far more leaning on a variety of viewpoint characters than previous books have had.

As it goes, there's the uncomfortable sense that none of this is going to get fixed. That it's going to stay this way, despite this being a climactic book. The sense of stress to the book shouldn't simply be "Kaladin is away" it should be all of these things, together, leading to the uncomfortable conclusion that you're not seeing a series wrap up...but a series unravel.

Now, I don't say this to detract from anyone's criticisms of the book--just as explanation for what I was doing. The goal is a symphony going further and further out of tune until you realize, "Wait. This isn't going to correct. It's going to stay that way."

It’s really good to know that Sanderson was doing this intentionally, that the book was supposed to feel jerky. A deliberate stylistic decision (whether or not I enjoy it) is a very different thing from a writing problem the author is unaware of.

Sanderson also talks about the balance in writing for an online fandom who will predict polot developments way ahead of time, while also writing for readers for readers that aren’t part of those lore-amd-plot-analysis-heavy forums. And in retrospect it feels like Sanderson was trying really hard to not blindside the not-online people with the ending – the disquieting pacing and the crumbling chapter-heading art both serving to signal that this isn’t going to be a happy ending. Given that Sanderson’s books, including all 4 previous installments in the Stormlight Archive, tend to lead ypu to the edge of disaster before averting it, I get why he wanted to somewhat telegraph that that wasn’t happening this time around.

But honestly, the most surprising thing to me in the comment was that Sanderson has watched (and liked!) Deadpool and Wolverine. 🤣

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today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern today I’m going to break the pattern

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[ID: Deltarune fanart. Kris faces down the Knight, frowning as they think: "Oh, fuck. The Soul is cracked at this."

Ralsei smiles with relief, thinking: "Thank the heavens the player is cracked at this." Susie grins and makes a fist, thinking: "Thank the heavens Kris is cracked at this."

To Ralsei's surprise, Gaster appears behind him. Gaster rubs his chin and smiles, saying: "Very very interesting. You are cracked at this." End ID.] Thanks for the suggestion, @/anistarrose Original idea About what happens in a no-hit run

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I really like the idea of Dess having fire magic/theme in contrast to her sister

inspired from this

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Player soul

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castletown retirement home

inspo:

continuing my pursuit of being their biggest advocate

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I just figured out what made Spamton and Jevil go insane

SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 4

It was the Prophecy.

Let's start with Jevil, which mostly turned into talking about Seam, since it's hard to get a coherent word out of Jevil himself.

Talking to King in chapter 4 and picking "Jester" nets you the following dialogue:

The phrasing here is what I specifically want to point out, because it's framed less like Jevil gave King instructions on how to rise to power, and more like Jevil was PREDICTING King's rise to power.

But like most things Jevil, our bombshells when it comes to him come from Seam.

This dialogue should be familiar, it's one of the first things we learned about Jevil outside of his bossfight, and our main hint connecting him to Gaster. Him saying things that both did and didn't make sense to me suggests the Prophecy, but that may also be confirmation bias.

But it's THIS dialogue that I really wanted to highlight here.

Seam's worldview is EXTREMELY nihilistic. While they don't outright discourage you from going on your adventures, they seem amused at the fact that you're even trying at all. On top of this, Seam has a lot of dialogue about stuff they could not reasonably know about, either because it happened nowhere near them, or it hasn't happened yet.

They knows about the super bosses and the Shadow Crystals you can collect from them:

They know about Mettaton designing Spamton NEO's body:

They know about the Knight ambushing you at the end of Chapter 3, and how you need the Shadow Mantle to beat it (unless you're a tryhard):

And they know about the Old Man as well:

(There's one more piece of dialogue that's relevant here, but I'm going to save that for when I talk about Spamton.)

This is a quality that Seam shares with Jevil, as Jevil neatly predicts Queen's appearance in Chapter 2 if you defeat him with violence:

All of this combined, to me, implies that the "strange words" Jevil told Seam were, in fact, the Prophecy he got from Gaster. The reason Seam is so nihilistic is because they already know exactly what's going to happen... specifically, the Roaring is coming, and there's nothing they can do to stop it.

There's only one thing that seems to genuinely surprise them: defeating the Knight in Chapter 3.

...which later prompts this dialogue.

The fact that we did something Seam, someone who knows the Prophecy, genuinely wasn't expecting, gives them hope. Because that could mean that the Prophecy isn't set in stone, and the Roaring may yet be averted.

Now lets move on to Spamton, because Chapter 3 gave us a LOT more to work with there. Spamton's backstory specifically gave me the idea for this theory, because a lot of things about it start making sense when viewed through this lens.

Spamton was an unsuccessful salesman who dreamed of making it big. One day, he was contacted by someone (Gaster) on the phone, and suddenly all of his businesses skyrocketed, becoming so successful that he got a room in Queen's mansion. However, one day the person who contacted him stopped calling, and his entire life came crashing down around him to the point that he ended up homeless and living in a dumpster.

This didn't make sense to me at first. If Gaster was just giving him business advice, taking that away shouldn't have allowed his empire to collapse overnight. What makes more sense is that Gaster was telling Spamton parts of the Prophecy, specifically the parts on how he was going to make it big. All Spamton had to do is follow Gaster's advice, and he'd become the BIG SHOT he'd always wanted to be.

As a bit of extra proof for this, here's seemingly random bit of dialogue from Seam.

Someone who knows the Prophecy using it to see the future in order to beat the Addisons specifically? That seems like a pretty obvious hint.

Chapter 3 also tells us more about Spamton's relationship with Tenna. Spamton and Tenna used to be business partners, with Tenna wanting to learn what made Spamton a BIG SHOT in the first place. But then...

It's implied that this is when Spamton stopped receiving calls. So why exactly did Gaster stop calling?

Because Tenna is in the Prophecy. Specifically, the part about him getting cut down by the Knight (I'd add a screenshot here but I cannot fucking find it, it is in there, trust me).

Gaster was most likely aware that, if Tenna found out about his pre-destined death, he'd try to find a way to prevent it, or at the very least get better at watching his back. So, he called Spamton to say he was cutting him off, and without the Prophecy giving him advice, everything came crashing down around him.

As a result, Spamton is obsessed with finding a way to learn more about the Prophecy, and how to use it to predict the future again. He wants to be big enough to see past the darkness obscuring that knowledge from him.

As such, he recruits Kris into helping him see past the bounds of reality and find the full Prophecy. That's what [Hyperlink Blocked] is. It's literally a broken hyperlink to the Prophecy.

But if you do the Weird Route, you're likely going directly against the Prophecy. Things that are specifically pre-ordained do not happen in the Weird Route - most clearly seen with Ralsei's reaction to Susie and Noelle not going on their ferris wheel ride.

Ralsei has full knowledge of the Prophecy, and is understandably freaking the fuck out when he realizes we have just done something that directly contradicts it.

And what does Spamton have to say about your Weird Route antics?

We don't need his Prophecy anymore, because we're making our own.

But that does leave a question though. If Spamton was destined to make it big, why did he need Gaster's help? Why did his empire collapse as soon as Gaster stopped helping, if his success was pre-determined? Why did Gaster need to tell Jevil how to get King into power, and to get him to worship the Knight?

Why does Gaster's involvement specifically seem to change the Prophecy?

Because Gaster is the one writing it.