I've always liked to think of realmatic theory as a video game. The physical realm is the game you're playing itself, the cognitive realm is the code and the spiritual realm is like the electricity powering the device.
Am now 10 chapters into the Way of Kings, which I started immediately after finishing the era 1 Mistborn trilogy. This video was not only fantastic for helping me contextualize the unique peculiarities of Roshar, but it also helped me re-contextualize the lore of Scadriel! Like, for example, the fractures in a person's soul allowing for Investiture to seep in and grant the person power explains why in Mistborn, the characters have to experience intense trauma and "snap" before they can use Allomancy. There are so many other little connections like that I was able to make, too. Thanks a ton for this!! So excited to keep falling down the Sanderson rabbit hole :D
I leaned so much from this. My appreciation for the Cosmere is even greater now. So much thought went into crafting this universe, I can’t wait to see how far he takes it. Wow.
The artwork is on point for a visual person, and the author does a very good job explaining abstract concepts. Her voice reminds me of a flat Janis Ian from Mean Girls, or a dry Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both of which are cool.
Bravo! Wonderfully explained with a unique voice and style. Hope you keep going and I get to brag about subscribing at the ground floor of a great new channel, haha. Journey before destination.
Wow, I've read Mistborn and Started reading Stormlight but I had no Idea that the Cosmere was this complex, my mind is absolutely blown away. Fantastic Video excellently presented.
This was awesome ty! I just recently dove into Stormlight Archive, completely blind, and burned through all the books currently out. LOVED it, but I was confused about some things, and this really helped me make sense of stuff
Thanks for this clever, thoughtful, and fun explainer! I just started The Way of Kings and found this information very helpful without being spoilery. :)
This video is honestly fantastic. Even as someone who knew all the individual bits explained in this video, just having a single cohesive explanation for how these different concepts interact with each other is very useful making everything more understandable.
this was very helpful! I think I’ve read all the cosmere books except the rithmatist but didn’t do much further research other than reading the books so I didn’t have a great grasp of worldhopping and investiture. Thank you!
I'm really glad! There's so much stuff that's implied in a lot of books but takes proper research to get confirmation for, and so much more that's been discussed in little bits at signings over the years but has never made it into the books, so I'm really glad to have been able to lay stuff out in one place for folk. :) Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoy RoW!
If Rithmatist feels like it could be a part of the Cosmere that’s because it originally was planned to be. But then Brandon realized the complexity that would come about by throwing Earth into the mix, so he made it it’s own original thing instead.
All I can do is ditto all the last comments. So clear, so listenable, so cohesive. If you taught a college course, I’d sign up regardless of the topic.
i love this video so much and it's way less spoilery than i initially thought, so i'm defs gonna send it to my friends and partners to try and get them into the cosmere
INCREDIBLE video! I've been a fan of the Cosmere for a while now, and have been able to intuit a lot of this, but this video has really helped me fully understand the whole thing and I've drawn a couple new connections because of it! All without having to risk being spoiled by the 17th Shard / Coppermind (my curiosity has gotten the better of me once or twice. Wish I could just have all the books now and finish them in one afternoon, though I know I'd just be left hungry for more Cosmere).
Yo this video is the shit. I just finished Stormlight Archives and I’m about to start consuming the rest of the cosmere content. By the time the fifth Stormlight book comes out I’ll know EVERYTHING.
While I gathered most of this over time, it is nice to have it all in one place and you voice some interesting ideas. You have earned yourself one subscriber
It’s amazing how Sanderson created an overarching system of basically supernatural science… to the point where magic in the cosmere isn’t really magic at all but a different set of physical and meta-physical laws that only seem like magic to us because our laws of physics are very different.
Great video. I started reading Brandon's books in December with Mistborn era 1 and now I'm caught up with Stormlight as well and this is the most concise and generally easy to understand explanation of the realms and magic system as it applies to the whole cosmere. Spoilers for Oathbringer below: . . . . . . . When you drew the picture of the realms being pulled together I finally grasped how Honor's Perpendicularity worked to charge Stormlight and for travel. It makes sense conceptually in the books but being able to see it drawn like that made so many things click instantly!
Starting to read Way of Kings, 2 years after reading Mistborn 1, it's very interesting how (to me at least) The magic sustem is linked with Plato's philosophies
Holy moly, I'm on my second read-through of stormlight right now (already back to rhythm of war :)) but its my first and only cosmere books I've read through. This video helped me bend my mind around the cosmere so much more and makes me want to get into other cosmere books. The implications for Stormlight V are INSANE to me now.
I really loved this video. Please take time to explain as much as you can. I need this spelled out to me and the corners is amazing to even mis the smallest parts from. Keep.up the good work
Awesome video. Love how articulate and in depth it is while not being overwhelming. Also your visual representations are rad. Appreciate the effort it must of taken you!
Just started re-reading s lot of Sanderson's books, and was about to start on Stormlight Archive - my all time favorite series. I tried watching quite a couple of videos to get me back up to speeds, as it's been a while, and I've forgotten a lot of details. This video is, by far, the best and easiest understandable of them all. I had a hard time following others' explanations and summarises, but your style really got it all through in a nice and very enjoyable way. Thank you so much, - now I'm ready to enjoy the first three books for the third time and Rhythm of War for the first 😁 So excited to read it
Fantastic video allison! You really managed to explain many complex concepts in an easy to understand way and the art just made it all light-hearted and fun to learn rather than sound more like an essay :)
Just re watched this again, this video is superb, and your narration is excellent. You have the cadence of a classic educational video. You should work for SciShow or something.
this was fascinating, I've read Mistborn and am on the 2nd book in the stormlight archive but I never realised they occupied the same universe that's a really, really clever way to have multiple magic systems concurrently though I will tip my hat to Brandon Sanderson
This was so interesting I got through the whole thing, despite the heavy level of nerd accent in your voice. It was really tough, but I made it through.
It’s the podcast / video “podcast” that the 17th Shard does periodically where they delve into Cosmere lore/theories. After seeing this video and your video about Skybreaker morality, I think you’d be an awesome guest to have on there! Again, good work and keep going!
Great video!!! I wish you had talked about Identity, though. I'm not sure if it's just a form of connection to an object (planet) or if it's its own thing.
Very impressed with this video! Very well-made and concise description of the Cosmere's mechanics - and apart from anything else you've got a wonderful art style for the gremlin man that is Hoid. Hoping to see more!
I loved this explanation! Thank you so much for that. Great info plus your voice sounds like lady (daughter) from the tv show Rosanne who later played Leslie Winkle on The Big bang theory. Lol. I love it! You did a great job in this video and I wonder if you'll be doing more that explain all the cosmere related stuff from each book as they come out? All the deeper cosmere connections and meaning would be a great listen after we all read them then come here to see what we missed. Keep up the good work. And fyi.... the "how the F#$% does that work" had me rolling! One of my fav lines. Almost as good as Hoid's unspoken "nah, I'm good!" Priceless!👏👏👏😁
Hey, I'm really glad you liked it! I'll definitely be doing some more Cosmere video work (though I don't intend it to be the only topic I do videos on, certainly), but probably not book by book breakdowns of the mechanics at play. Things you CAN look forward to are some thematic analysis and a couple more explainers of how certain weird worldbuilding elements fit together--I also might do one that's just a list of artifacts and people from other Cosmere works, but I'd need to figure out how to make that interesting to watch first! I really like aggregating information and pulling out the big picture patterns and shapes of stuff, so that will definitely be my focus, but there are for sure resources out there if you want to get into all the details. I'm not super familiar with Cosmere-tube yet, but for sure the Seventeenth Shard forums and the Coppermind wiki are places where a lot of really good detailed discussion happens.
@@AllisonPaley hello again. I've poked around the copper mind and 17th shard a bit and have gotten great info from them but this video was completely different than theirs and a lot of fun. You helped me understand the specific realms a lot more than I had previously. Your criptic-like way amassing info and finding the pattern (mmmmm) is very helpful and you definitely found a good way to make this video enjoyable. So, again, thank you and I'll be checking back to see the other works you share with us in the future. Thx.
I would argue that in the spiritual realm, space and time exist, they just aren't as rigid or limiting a they are in other places. For example, the Lord Tyrant's spirit knew what age he *should* be; it was aware of the "temporal distance" between the point of "now" and when he was born. It's just far easier to circumvent in the spiritual realm than anywhere else. Like imagine that in the spiritual realm, any object's distance from you is simply represented by a number written on a whiteboard. Something can be 1 mile away or 100 miles. Either way, it takes roughly the same effort to erase that number and put in "5 feet". The difference between something being far and near still exists, it's just a very different process to impact. Sometimes far easier.
Spoiler warning for stormlight archive up to oathbringer: I’ve herd the story of adonalsium and being shattered but which story is it that explains what happened? I’ve read stormlight 1 2 and 3. Mistborn book 1. Warbreaker and elantris and still nobody has explained adonalsium except for Hoid in way of kings once.
Hey! Glad you liked the video! :) So a lot of stuff was talked about in Secret History, which is part of the Arcanum Unbounded collection of short stories, and elements were discussed in the recently released Dawnshard novella, but I hadn't actually read Dawnshard when I put this together. The truth is, a lot of what we know comes from a source outside any of the texts: Brandon himself. Brandon often answers questions about the Cosmere at signings. So often, in fact, that he has actual cards he gives out to folk who ask him questions he can't answer because of spoilers. A group of dedicated readers have taken to recording and collecting all of these exchanges verbatim, and have compiled a website to store and tag them all. When they're referenced you'll hear them referred to as Words of Brandon (WoB). You can read through it and put together a lot if you work at it, but spoilers abound so be careful if you're not here for that. Here's a link to the tag with all the answers about the shattering: wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?tags=shattering+of+adonalsium In putting together this video I spent a LOT of time looking through the WoB to build evidence for my claims and make sure I wasn't misunderstanding anything. This is a good way to become very knowledgeable about a lot of minutia you may or may not care about very quickly, but it's not the MOST organized, so if you're okay with spoilers or have read everything you can also check out the Coppermind wiki (coppermind.net/wiki/Coppermind:Welcome) where folk have put together solid articles on most topics you could want to know about. If you're writing an essay make sure to check the citations and make sure you agree with the conclusions drawn from them, but if you just want to learn about stuff it's probably the best resource I can recommend. It makes a lot of the raw information out there way more comprehensible. Thank you again for watching and subscribing, and I hope you enjoy Rhythm of War!
Lol nice video, my friend was really interested in wit from way of kings, guessing him to be evil or a herald, i said id give him a hint "Wit is just VERY Fortunate" lol.
Keep up the work! Remonds me of the Stuff ALT-J does on GoT. If SLA Kicks off big, with a tv adaptation you might find your channel exploding, so just continue your stuff :)
I haven't read the books, just watched 2 videos, this one included, and I already have a theory :)) well, actually more like a question or a theory which could be easily debunked if false: is it established that the god was really killed, like for good? If this isn't clearly or strongly stated, then he might reform out of the shards or something at some point, or maybe he is very much alive in some sense and controls the universe throughout the series.
SPIRITUAL REALM IS A FREAKING SINGULARITY-WORMHOLE OF THE COSMERE!!!!! Crazy shit. There was this one thing about represent a concept of wormhole in a better way then "bent paper and a pencil" - this he video will be quiet the contender. And Sanderson of course, as the author of the cosmere. But just how cool is that?!
"common set of rules, threads, and characters" * hoid shows up* beautiful amazing my boy my snarky little boy edit: The lil disgruntled Hoid drawing yeeting around for description purposes brings me unparalleled joy Hmm allomantic gold and atium feel very fortune-funky (i mean ik this is roshar but the mistborn brainrot is real)
