Date: 2011-11-23
Type: Paraphrased
Location: Manchester, UK
Reporter: Tortellini
Hey everyone, I attended the Manchester signing on Nov 23rd, here’s my report. I’ve been travelling and Manchester was one stop (I arranged the timing to be there for the signing ) but I haven’t really had access to a computer till now. Some interesting stuff here.
He read from an unpublished work he’s writing for an anthology of GRRM tentatively titled “Dangerous Women”. It was something he worked on for the trip, and it was quite funny and very promising. No spoilers from me on this one, all I will say is that it doesn’t seem cosmere-related and that the White Fox is one dangerous dude… Looking forward to reading that in full!
Then he answered a lot of questions, on what it is to be a writer, how the whole Wheel of Time deal went (including a hilarious description of the day Harriet called him) and so on. Nothing really spoilery or cosmere-related here, but a great hour of fun for all. Also, a guy called Jordan was trolled in the worst way via Brandon himself. He called out through the whole room “Is there a guy called X here?” and when that guy replied, Brandon just shouted “Your friend Adam wants you to know that you just lost the game.” Half the room nearly died from geek overdose.
Then the signing came and Brandon answered questions for people while signing their books. At first, my friend and I were stuck at the very end of the queue, but then we figured we’d just sit near the signing and listen in until the queue was gone. Brandon was incredibly nice and friendly the whole time, it was quite amazing. And some info came up that’s quite interesting:
Someone asked if it were hard to write Jasnah, an atheist character, for a devout Christian.
Brandon said he read a lot of atheist message boards for inspiration. Also, it sounded like he’d had the character in his head for a while, but hadn’t found the right book to put it in—e.g. he said it would make no sense to put an atheist in a world where gods walk around (i.e. Warbreaker ).
This is a big one and I hadn’t heard any of this before. A girl asked what was up with Taravangian, since it seemed a rough break between the tottering old man and the scheming mastermind that Szeth meets at the end.
The answer is quite surprising. Brandon said that Taravangian used the Old Magic, and that he wakes up each day with a different IQ. Sometimes he’s a genius, sometimes he’s an idiot. So what he does is he writes up math puzzles for himself in the evening, and if he cannot get a certain score in the morning the guards have orders to just take care of him and keep him away from important decisions for that day. That way he keeps his effect (personal speculation, it could be his curse, but also his boon if e.g. he asked for intelligence and only got it part-time) under control.
There was more, but I can’t really remember anything major. Finally, I came up and got to ask my questions. Since I started the thread about outposts and stone bridges, I felt like getting some input there.
Brandon told me that single highprinces could not erect outposts because due to the superior mobility of the Parshendi—they would overwhelm any small outpost quickly. Soulcasting stone bridges is also not plausible. Apparently, they would need to first get the wooden bridge out there, then soulcast it and then, since the stone is heavier than the wood, they would have to reinforce it, e.g. with ropes. These could then be cut by the Parshendi, so it would not help at all. Dalinar with his mobile bridges is on a better track in his opinion. He did say however that several highprinces working together could easily establish outposts in the Plains. He said the competitive nature of the Alethi was doing them a huge disservice in the war and that if they would work together, they could have taken the Plains long ago.
My next question was a random idea I had based on the answer about entities living primarily in the cognitive realm given here. I asked (stupidly, you’ll see why in a second): “Could it be that spren and seons are basically very similar things?”
He smiled, thought about how to answer that for a second and then said… “Yes, it could be.”
I very much got the impression that I was correct though, but I gave him the perfect opening to appreciate the question without answering it at all. Stupid me. I explained that I had the idea that seons exist primarily as cognitive entities with smaller presences in the physical world, while spren are primarily spiritual, also with smaller presences in the physical world. He just smiled for a second, and I said I’d take that as a possible yes and let him get back to signing books for the awesome Waterstone’s in Manchester. I’m writing up my thoughts on that in this post.
The evening also included Brandon kicking ass at Magic, which was quite spectacular to see. I have never seen anyone play 3 Hypnotic Specters and then lose so definitely… All in all, a great evening and some new ideas to dissect.
So you must be (of) the guys that asked me about my question about Axies the Creator:
I asked if Axies could regrow limbs, and he stated that he could do ‘some interesting things’, and that the two species of Aimian (whom Axies is of) each do different interesting things.
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