Timewaster's Guide Archive

I'm not sure if I agree with this essay. It seems to me that when the heroes use a special ability (like magic) to get out of trouble, there are three discrete possibilities, and not (as the essay contends) a continuum. The possibilities are:

• 1. The reader knew beforehand that the hero had that specific special ability.
  
  For example, if you already established that your hero can turn people into frogs, then it's okay for the hero to get out of trouble by turning a bad guy into a frog. In this case, it doesn't matter whether you've spent pages and pages establishing the rules of magic and how turning people into frogs works because a person's body is a physical manifestation of their ethereal selves and magic lets you mess with stuff on the ethereal plane and blah dee blah, or whether you just said "hey, this guy can magically turn people into frogs" back in chapter one. The ethereal planes explanation might help to flesh out the setting, or it might just get in the way, but either way, once the power is established, your hero is allowed to turn people into frogs to get out of trouble.
  
  I think this is the most common type of magic. Frodo knows the ring turns you invisible, so he can turn invisible in the Prancing Pony. Spiderman can climb walls and shoot webs, because he's Spiderman (and mutant DNA aside, this is basically just the author saying "hey, this guy can shoot webs" back in chapter one). Harry Potter learned a spell to cast a patro-whatever to get rid of the nightmare-monster-thingies, so when the monster-thingies show up, it's okay for him to cast the patro-whatever to get out of trouble.
  

• 2. The reader didn't know that the hero had that specific ability, but could have figured it out.
  
  If you had laid out the rules of magic with physical manifestations and ethereal planes as I described above, but didn't actually say that this meant the hero could turn people into frogs, then the hero could still turn bad guys into frogs to get out of trouble, because the reader (and maybe the hero) could figure out that the system of magic allowed for it.
  
  This is the only situation where you need rules of magic. It also takes some setting up, so it's probably the least common type of magic, though I guess Brandon likes to use it once or twice per novel. Raoden figuring out that drawing a line to turn Elantris into a magic symbol would make the magic work again is an example of this, but his subsequent use of magic to teleport and shoot at bad guys is an example of Type 1 magic, since we already knew the magic could do that stuff.
  

• 3. It's deus ex machina, baby.
  
  Huh. Turns out the hero could make those bad guys into frogs all along. Guess we got all worried for nothing.
  
  This is more common than we would like. (Of course, it's not deus ex machina if the magic isn't used to get the heroes out of trouble. Harry Potter can do any old spell in class, where it doesn't matter, but he can only use the spells that we've already seen to get out of trouble.)

So, having a well-developed magic system can help flesh out your setting, but it doesn't affect your ability to get the heroes out of trouble with magic, as long as you're using Type 1 magic (or Type 3, I guess). If you use Type 2 magic, then you do have to have a well-developed magic system, but there's a discrete cutoff -- the magic system has to be just developed enough to make it clear that the hero can do whatever it is that he actually does.  Any further development is just setting-building.

It just occurred to me that awakening could also be a matter of psychology -- a drained object would reflect the same colors of light as a regular one, but would emit some kinda magic ray that would make everyone looking at it think it's gray. For the purposes of this discussion, this is indistinguishable from awakening as a matter of physics (doesn't work in the dark, can use gray objects, can't dye or reuse objects, blah blah blah), though of course you could easily design an experiment to tell whether drained objects were changing the light ("physics"), or just messing with your head ("psychology").

Practically, though, the only application of this (indeed, the only application of this entire discussion, most likely) would be to give Vasher or someone like him something to babble about  when Brandon needs him to wax technical.

Vadia--

Speaking of anal...

I think the convention is that the Halladrens don't speak English (that would be an even bigger coincidence than them reinventing Freud), so Brandon has helpfully translated their speech and their slang into something that would make sense to his audience, all at no extra charge.

Rose; Matt--

I came up with a thought experiment that could, er, shed a little light on this (admittedly picayune) problem.

Suppose you took a piece of gray or white paper into a light-proof room, illuminated only with colored light (say, a red laser diode). Then, the paper would appear, in our example, red. What would happen if you tried to use it for awakening?

If you could use the paper for awakening, but it stayed red, then there's no draining of color, and you just broke the magic system.

If you could use the paper for awakening, and it turned gray, then the "drained" paper must be somehow changing the light that hits it into white light. I think this is what Matt meant by the draining being a "matter of physics".
- In this case, the color of the paper depends on the color of light that was hitting it initially, so you wouldn't be able to use it for awakening in the dark.
- Also, white and gray objects could be used for awakening (as you just did with the gray paper), but only once.
- You could tell if something had been used for awakening before by shining a colored light on it. If the reflected light came back white or gray, then you'd know the object had been used for awakening. Otherwise, it's just an ordinary white or gray object.

If you couldn't use the paper for awakening, then the magic must somehow "know" the paper is white or gray, even though it looks red. So when things turn gray, it must represent a change in the thing, not just the light that comes off of it. I think that's what Matt meant by a "matter of chemistry".
- In this case, you could do awakening in the dark.
- But you couldn't do awakening with a white or gray object, since there'd be no difference between an ordinary white or gray object and a drained object.

So, from this thought experiment, we can see that EITHER you can do awakening in the dark, and awakening is a matter of chemistry, and gray objects can't be used; OR you can't do awakening in the dark, and awakening is a matter of physics, and gray objects can be used. All from column A, or all from column B; no combinations. (OR, awakening is a matter of (soft-core) magic, and not comprehensible under any set of rules, but I think Brandon's allergic to that.)

I'm leaning towards awakening being a matter of chemistry, because it makes more sense that way that vibrant colors would be more effective. (The other option has objects undergoing a huge qualitative change when they're used for draining, where light actually physically changes when it comes in contact with the object. All objects would undergo this change equally, regardless of how vibrant they previously were.)

Of course, it goes without saying that a physical or chemical mechanism that would explain the color changes would have to be so complicated that it's not worth trying to figure it out.

Thanks for the sample chapters! I liked it. If there had been more, I would have kept reading, so as a hook, these chapters worked for me.

But...you asked for criticism. I'll be focusing on the negatives, so this'll sound a lot worse than it is.

I didn't get into Midius's character at all. I don't understand the reasons for most of what he does, and his character feels inconsistent to me, somehow. For example, he was going on in the first chapter about how gullible and stupid people are, but later on he gets stage fright, has a tough time telling stories to anyone, and it turns out he's never even tried to lie to people before, he just practiced in front of Hoid. Also, I take it I'm supposed to be worried that Theus is going to kill Midius, but Midius decided to let himself be captured (the fact that he caught the first spear suggests that he could have fought off the guards if he wanted to), and didn't even try to escape (depending on how realistic his illusions are, I can think of several possible escape plans). So either Midius has a death wish, or he knew that Theus wouldn't kill him (which implies he's working with Naysho, since if it weren't for Naysho, Midius would have had him killed -- not a spoiler since this is almost certainly wrong), or he had some kind of protection that would have kept him from dying even if Jend had tried to kill him. So, my feeling is that Midius should have clearer motives from the beginning of the story.

Also, Midius's first chapter-and-a-half feels like filler, like you didn't have anything important for Midius to do, but just wanted to break up Theus's parts. I especially disliked the first chapter. Hoid is annoying and patronizing. I hope this isn't one of those books where there'd be no plot of Hoid had just told Midius what he needed to know at the beginning, because those suck. And if you took out Hoid's babbling, you could cover everything in this chapter in about three paragraphs. Less, if you started the book later, and had just Midius remember Hoid's death.

The beginning of Midius's second chapter isn't as bad. I liked the feel of the Fain; it reminds me in a good way of the toxic jungle from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds. But it's not like Midius hasn't seen it before, so  there's no reason for him to spend so much time just staring at the scenery. And he doesn't do anything else but stare at scenery in that scene.

You described the Fain as "alien" twice. The second time, I started wondering if you were doing on purpose, and actually meant to imply that it had extraterrestrial origins.

Naysho's city is sometimes spelled "Rens" and sometimes "Renz", but you probably already knew that.

After Theus lets Midius go, he has a sort of argument with Naysho. He figures he's in Naysho's debt because Naysho sent for an Aetherlin. But that's retarded. If the Aetherlin solves Partinel's problems, then Theus will be in Naysho's debt, but until then, Naysho wants the Aetherlin in the city and Theus doesn't, so it's really Naysho who's in Theus's debt. For example, Theus ought to be able to control Naysho by threatening to change his mind and turn the Aetherlin out of the city, and then telling the king of Rens that he did it because Naysho thought having the Aetherlin around gave him the right to be too obnoxious (thus destroying Naysho's career). Naysho would know that Theus probably wouldn't carry out that threat, but he'd also know that Theus didn't really want the Aetherlin around, so he might.

Yunmi was awesome when she showed up, but seemed too businesslike in her viewpoint section. I wanted her cheerfulness not to be an act, darn it.

Glimmer is going to get really annoying really fast if it keeps...speaking with...ellipses every...other word....

Regarding Vivenna's hair, one notes that it didn't grow or change color during the couple of weeks when she was storing her breath in the shawl, but it changed color within ten minutes of her getting it back. Vivenna thinks that that's because she was on the streets for those two weeks, and was scared the whole time...still, it's suggestive.

This doesn't really address your point, but I dislike calling breath "potential energy". The term has a specific meaning which is different from what you're using it to mean, unless you're literally suggesting that breath can be converted in a definite ratio to heat and electricity, and someone with a lot of breath should weigh more than someone with none (in accordance with relativity*).

It would make sense for drabs to live shorter lives and be sick more often than regular people, but nothing about that has been mentioned in the story (as far as I remember). It seems like if that were true, then people would be more reluctant to give up their breaths than they seem to be in the story (ie. people wouldn't encourage their kids to give their breaths to the gods if they knew that that would make the kids get sick and live shorter lives). So maybe the added lifespan/immune system boost that you get with a single breath is small enough not to be noticeable and it takes a few hundred to have any real effect.

*They wouldn't weigh much more, of course. If we assume that one breath provides enough energy for one lifeless to live for about one human lifespan (I assumed 2000 food calories per day for 80 years), and the God King absorbs 2 extra breaths per day, then he would gain about 2 kilograms every 1000 years.

Yeah, if Denth or Vasher are working for Vivenna's dad, then the part about using Vivenna to help forward their plans must be their own initiative, as Vivenna's dad would probably have commanded them to send her home so that he could give her a Stern Talking-To.

MasterBombadil - Humans are alive; humans have biochroma. I can't think of a sensible definition for "biochromatic entities" that excludes humans. (Actually, I thought that the snazzy thing about my table was that it includes all matter in the universe.)

Also -- Vasher says, "every living being is born with a certain BioChromatic Investiture.  This could also explain why Type Ones retain sentience". Maybe if you're born with biochroma, you're automatically sentient, and you don't need to keep the breath in order to stay alive. That means that in order to make Nightblood, someone just had to forge a sword out of previously-awakened steel. (It also means that if you were to take away all of Nightblood's breaths, it would still be alive.)

(So, you ask, what happens when Returned die? The same thing as when normal humans die, presumably.)

Horrifyingly, this implies that if someone were to cook using the methods I alluded to earlier, the result would be sentient food.

Also, I may be misremembering, but I think the command to awaken lifeless with just one breath is a closely guarded secret, so Jewels couldn't have awakened Clod herself. (Could you imagine if anyone could do that? People could -- sort of -- bring back their dear dead friends, relatives, loved ones, pet pigeons, whatever. Kids who got mad enough in the schoolyard and didn't understand enough about consequences would create lifelesses to beat on each other. Kids whose parents were rich enough to buy them a new breath when they used up the one they were born with would do it on a regular basis. I think if I wanted to take over Halladren, I'd try to find out how to awaken lifeless with one breath, publish the method to the general public, and just wait for the city to tear itself apart.)

Dawn --

You're right that Vasher obviously doesn't want to kill Vivenna. Then again, neither did Denth.

Instead, Vasher wants to use Vivenna to convince the Idrisese (or whatever) to do something (or not, as the case may be)...just like Denth did.

It is conceivable that getting the Idrisese to submit to the Halladrens is no more in their best interests than trying to start a war with them was. (The only reason it could be is Vasher's assurance that the war is still avoidable -- which might or might not be true.) It's also possible that the only reason Vasher let Vivenna know the command to get her breath back was because she wouldn't have been a very convincing princess if she were still sick.

So it's still possible that both Vasher and Denth are bad guys (though of course, Vasher hasn't yet  clinched the issue by kicking the dog, or parrot, as the case may be). I'm not saying that this is likely, but considering Vivenna's recent experiences, she'd probably at least consider it. (Someone once said, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on, er, shame on you.")