Ep 36 of The Letters Page! Discussion - Maria Helena Teresa Fafila Servanda Jimena Mansuara Paterna Domenga Gelvira Pl

I'm already excited just from looking at the show notes. Art of Arataki! Reveals that whomever guessed La Comodora created Haka's powers gets a cookie! That we're going to get info about the Quando? Ahora! heroes! Squee!

Along awaited. Time for some nonsense.

Also Squee on the show note Picture.

AH, La Capitan At last we meet again for the first time for the last time...ish ... wait, Yeah!

Not actually finished yet, but they just mentioned a question about sword fighting was coming up, and if they answered my crappy sword fighting question I am going to die

EDIT: THEY DID WOO!

CHRISTOPHER!

Can we get an Editor notes of La Capitan and Chrono Ranger stories? I will listen to 3+ hours of that.

Thank you.

And Christopher quits the podcast for the first time! That's usually Adam's thing. :V

Boy I feel sorry for anyone who's a Maria Helena fan. :B It's like Christopher and Adam created these characters having no idea people would get to really care about them. I guess her fate could be worse?

Not nearly enough info on the Cuando? Ahora! characters, if you ask me. :B But hey, two hours is way reasonable. :D I also appreciate their mention of wanting to talk about minor things after they do Oblivaeon. Means if you're here for direct, pertinent lore, you won't be here forever, and if you like cool stories, they'll have more cool stories to tell!

I love the idea of La Commadora as a writer cop out for the SC writers to explain things.

I wonder how fans of Haka felt about their characters origin explained just to show how powerful this new hero is (Especially an ex-villain like LC)

I seem to continue to be bad at the whole thing where I flip between either asking questions everyone else asked, or I don't ask a question figuring someone else will ask it only to have that not happen.

Also a little sad that that was not as much info as I was hoping for about the QA altheroes. I hope someday we'll just have a Alternate Everybody episode that covers all the various alttwins floating around.

Also... was it ever explained what the heck caused the vortex that La Cap fell into in the first place? That was a lot of timey-wimey stuff to process.

Always ask questions.  Christopher and Adam seem to have some method figured out on what questions to go through and which ones to skip.  

As to what caused her intital vortex I'd say the best guess is OblivAeon but nothing outright that they said I recall. 

At least Adam is looking for a replacement already.  Christoper doesn't seem to have any thoughts on who would replace Adam.  

Yeah I was kind of amused at how instead of doing his usual thing of quitting, Adam goes for firing Christopher instead. I think the Cult of Gloom power is getting to him.

Christopher is a terrible pirate 

Seconded.

Christopher is the worst pirate, and I find this to be one of his most endearing qualities.

I was right about La Commadora being behind Haka's powers!!! That seriously made my day when I saw that in the show notes.

Also, am I the only one who gets choked up thinking about the La Paradoja Magnifica?

I picture La Commadora talking with Concordia, realizing how hopeless things are truly getting. Then, quietly, giving the order. "Ramming Speed", a shot where we can't see her face as her ship, her home for pretty much her entire life (she enters time stream as a teenager and leaves as someone who looks to be in their sixties to me), everything she has ever done, everything she owns, and the very source of the freedom she has cherished and had for all her years is destroyed in a violent exposion.

I think it is one of the biggest sacrifices we've had from a character yet in the Oblivaeon fight. Sure, Ra and Nightmist die, but dying for a cause is vastly different. They've left behind things, the work they did, the things they owned. La Commodora destroys everything, and sacrfices not her life, but the ultimate freedom to travel an infinte sea.

It touches me in a way I didn't expect from this episode.

I thought it was insanely badass.

I mean, the way they presented it, it sounded like she was aboard the ship, driving it right into Oblivaeon, and that's just the coolest thing you can do with a vessel of any kind, as the movies have taught me. :B

I don't know about that. It seems like she's left her mark not only on our story, but on time itself. She undid as much damage from her reckless youth as she could, she cures one of the smarted people from the Rat Plague, she(temporarily) saves one of the most powerful beings from the Void Guard, she single-handedly binds and intertwines beings together to creates one of the most powerful heroes ever... And her last act is to make one final massive hit on OblivAeon which aids the heroes in (presumably)defeating him?

And she does all that for the sake of giving us the best shot we can get to defeating OblivAeon. Sounds like almost all her actions in the later portion of her own story was dedicated torward one cause.

So has she really destroyed everything? No. I think she's left behind one hell of a legacy.

I'm seeing this as almost exactly like the end of Starcraft, with the heroic leader taking her ship, all charged up with time energy, and smashing it right at the heart of the villain. I don't think it's the final blow, given what we know about Oblivaeon, but I'd be surprised if it didn't at least finish off one of his forms.

Edit: except that I guess she doesn't die, so there's that!

I would hope that she would have enough style to avoid shouting "Ramming Speed".

This episode gave me an idea that I really wish I'd had before the episode (stupid inability to access time travel).  Hopefully I can figure out how to work it into a decent Editor's Note question.

Now I just have to think of a response to that pesky lagamorph.  Hmm... I wonder if I can fit "pesky lagamorph" into a limerick...

I counter with the clip on this KS Page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterchayward/scuttle-the-pirate-ca...

There once was a lagomorph pest

Who thought that his rhymes were the best

Something something eat him with lemon zest :B

... and a Heritage too depending on which timeline you follow 

There once was a lagomorph pest

Who though that his rhymes were the best

But his caution will fall

As he keeps up that call

And we'll eat him with Lemon-lime zest.

Oh I agree, it's too heavy a moment for her to shout.

Unless, of course, she goes full bore with a sneak attack.

Then I could see her yelling something appropriately cutting to Oblivaeon moments before the ship portals and impacts, but I like the quiet moments more. When there is a lull in a combat like that is when you know the momentous has occurred.

Finally got through it. 

I could almost hear Christopher's brain throwing on the brakes sometimes to avoid using the phrase "What-if" when discussing Disparation (although he still said it at least once).

i don't know why it never occurred to me that a comics brand with such a strong "multiverse" presence should have that kind of title.

On the other hand, I could see her coming out of the portal singing either I am a Pirate King Queen or With Cat-like Tread.

Haha! I am only at 01:08, but it's all worth it for that moment when I was listening to the Southwest Sentinels episode and realized it was Talk Like a Pirate Day! Sorry, Christopher - I heard that sigh. Glad you had fun, Adam. I just wish I could have concocted some better questions. Of course, partway through the episode, I now have more...

For posterity, here is the question as I submitted it under the name TrajectARR (even though I'm not a Biomancer clone):

But would ye be a BiomanceARRR clone instead? :V

Nooooooo, not me!

Now that I've finished:

The whole La Comodora yanking a weapon of need out of a portal as she runs through a firefight image is amazing. And crashing La Paradoja Magnifica into OblivAeon to destroy one of his forms is badass; I shouted "awesome!" in my car when I heard that. I can't wait to play her hero deck. And I wonder what "locked outside time" and "the future is inaccessible to her" really mean...

Christopher & Adam, from your discussion of swords and spears, I think you might enjoy reading "The Way of Kings!"

The "drawing weapons through portals" thing really got my attention as a fun thing to plan/draw as a concept.

it also really reminded me of Minmax and his sword Oblivious from the Goblins webcomic. He found a sword in a dungeon that would copy the qualities of any magical item he touched it to. Then the group almost immediately runs across a rift into oblivion/nothingness (due to the actions of the bad guy of the moment) and he sticks the sword into it, paradoxically copying the concept of nothingness.

The sword no longer copies traits, but now the only thing that can effect the sword is Minmax himself. Blocking/parrying attacks is trivial as the opponents can't overpower him - the sword is immobile from their perspective. However, time itself can't affect it either. If Minmax lets it go, it's immediately grabbed through a portal to the next time Minmax needs it (which is fun in a comic as we often get to hear dialog from the future/past whenever it happens). 

I'm fan, although the update schedule is erratic (and the early art leaves a lot to be desired).

I remember hearing Christopher say during a twitch stream at one point that Stormlight Archive was one of his "ideal" IP to do a liscensed game for. Also, ask him about his tattoos sometime!

I. Would. Play. The SHIT. Out. Of. That.

He also said he would want the series to be complete first and we are almost to book 3 out of 10 planned. Sanderson is a fast writer but we would still have a ways to go even if it was a thing. It would be an awesome thing though!

I just finished reading books one and two recently, but I thought it was gong to just be a trilogy.

10 books... Wow, that is going to be an intense series when it is finished. Kaladin and Sylph are already one of my favorite pairs of all time.

Maybe that can be it's own thing, I think they said they were going to do an AU episode at some point.

The entire series will be 10 books, split into two 5 book arcs.  And there's a reasonable chance that it will actually stick to that number - he's learned from Robert Jordan and George RR Martin, and is actively taking steps to keep it from growing in length (mostly he's carefully managing how many viewpoint characters he has).

That's really cool. And I love the fact he's looking at shrinking the margins. I totally looked into doing things like that in the past, and sometimes it even worked.

However, all this has got me thinking of only one thing.

Finish Wax and Wayne's story first please, MR. Sanderson. My love of Mistborn came first and it is a truly fascinating array of things you are doing with that series. Taking a world and moving it to an entirely new age, with new challenges and developments is great, plus I love the riffs of classic archetypes, so I'd really be disappointed in waiting for that til after your done doing ridiculous things with the world of Stormlight.

Especially, if I may turn towards criticism for a moment, the world he presents for Alethar and all that is so strangely foreign that at times it feels like we have too many scenes devoted simply to showing me how wierd the world is with mostly crustaceans and plants that retreat into the ground, instead of focusing on the journey's and arcs of the characters. It is a very alien and cool world, but it almost becomes more important that the world is strange and wierd than if we have actually progressed the story.

Alternatively, in the Wax and Wayne books, the world is still very recognizably similiar to our own, so I'm able to focus much more on the aspects that make it different and the characterizatons of the various people we get to encounter.

It's all great, but the more I think on it the more I have some clear favorites.

Arcanist Lupus you have to post the Pirate King song to the Musical forums. I totally wanna see Maira Helena Do that song.

One thing I enjoyed learning from this episode is that Christopher speaks pretty good Spanish and Adam speaks pretty good Japanese.

(At least as far as I can tell--I'm not very good at either language.)

Unfortunately, my Spanish is relatively awful. (Relative to what it was decades ago.) But I'm semi-decent at pronunciation, at least.

To be honest, every time you guys pronounce La Commodora, it always reminds me of those hispanic news anchors who speak in a perfect midwestern standard accent for every word they ever utter except when they get to their own name.

Heh, yeah.  White people trying to make spanish words sound authentic is often a pretty painful proposition.

I often have this issue with French words: when to use the Americanized pronunciation? It just sounds strange to render 'Paris' in the French way, but 'Le Havre' sounds really funny in the Americanized way. In the episode, 'La Commodora' and 'La Capitan' sounded a little strange, but it would have been more odd to give Maria Helena's full name in an American accent.

I was just thinking this morning. La Commodora does everything she does to stop OblivAeon because she saw the end of time, but, ultimately, it was still the end of time for her.

Yeah, that's a good point.

WILD SPECULATION AHOY!

I asked a question in Editor's Note 11, and in the answer, Christopher said that he and Adam have future plans for La Comodora! Woohoo, speedyolrac and I can look forward to more adventures with her!

First of all, I love the idea that the reason Maria Helena turns heroic is because as her skill increases she comes to look down on her previous work more and more. It's basically like if Adam could time-travel back to when his past self was doing the art for expansions before Shattered Timelines!

Thanks to another question in that episode, we learned the following things:

• La Comodora is in the ether outside all the universes/timelines of the Multiverse (the tea of the boba tea)
• The fragments of La Paradoja Magnifica are also in this place
• This is the same place Chrono-Ranger was when he was outside of time after his badge busted
• La Comodora has been here before; in fact, she was able to sail in and out of this space at will on La Paradoja Magnifica

We also already knew, from the episode about Maria Helena, that La Paradoja Magnifica is saturated with chronal energy and has been gaining power and precision as it accrues artifacts from throughout time - and that this trove allowed La Paradoja to target the time periods of various artifacts as it sailed through time.

So, what have we got here?

La Comodora is alive. She has fragments of her timeship. She has powerful fragments of her timeship, that is infused with pieces of history that let her target particular time periods.

I know the timelines are blocked off after the defeat of OblivAeon. But Maria Helena does not give up easily.

She would try to take the fragments of her timeship, and use them to get back into a reality. She's wily and perseverant. She's clever. She's an excellent time-traveler. And she wants to travel through time.

My theory is: we're going to see her slowly appear in the timelines again, either RPG or Tactics. I'm guessing that she'll figure out a way to phase herself into one of them. She won't be able to leave it, because the timelines are no longer shattered, but I think she'll phase into one of them in the future. To do this, she will have to use an artifact she's acquired from that timeline, so I bet she'll preserve a little of La Paradoja Magnifica's abilities to travel through that timeline. She'll have some localized blink time-travel capabilities, somewhat like what's in Chrono-Ranger's future. Perhaps as a further distinguishing feature, she'll retain some limited ability to open portals to fragments of her ship and pull things through - I mean, come on, that's totally awesome! - but she won't be able to use those portals to leave the timeline she's in.

You know, she's beyond time and space after OblivAeon...

What if she is the traitorous Scion?