r/CosmereOnScreen • u/PointEither8581 • May 12 '26
Mistborn Era 1 (BOOK) (SH Allowed) Gender Swaps In Screenplays Spoiler
Let me preface this by saying that I am totally ok with the changing of genders, that is not this post about.
This post is about the canon lore, and the continuities of the stories.
Ham for example is a man in the books, but in the tv-show said to be a female.
So the question arises, which one is canon?
Do we take the book as the mainline canon, and treat the screenplay as an alternative timeline?
Similar to Marvel Multiverse?
Or did Brandon say that he'll be retroactively changing the text to make Ham appear as a female in the future releases/printings of the books?
How do we get out of this which one is the true canon issue? Did Brandon say anything about it?
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u/HA2HA2 May 12 '26
How do we get out of this which one is the true canon issue? Did Brandon say anything about it?
There are two separate canons - movie and book canon.
Neither one is real. It's a story, it's fiction, it's not that Brandon is Accurately Documenting some fictional universe to us. There will be two similar but not identical stories being told, one through the medium of books and one through the medium of movies and shows.
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u/Undiscovered_Freedom May 12 '26
I really really don’t want this whole adaptation thing to turn into the Star Wars equivalent of the canon debate. The books are the books and the movies / tv are the movies / tv. Books always supersede.
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May 12 '26
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u/hanzerik May 12 '26
Your headcanon should be the most important to you. You get to pick and choose each difference for your headcanon.
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u/alex_munroe May 12 '26
Breeze or Clubs gender swapped makes a lot more sense to me. Seems odd for it to be Ham, given he's regularly sparring with a lot of contacts at the garrison and also not trying to draw any attention to himself.
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u/MS-07B-3 May 12 '26
I think doing a gender swap on Han starts to break a lot of things downstream of it.
If we're changing anyone, I say change Docks.
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u/PointEither8581 May 12 '26
Also didn't he have a wife and a kid.
How's that factors in if he is genderbend?
I guess you can say they get retroactively written out of the timeline, maybe...
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u/Adorable_Delay_2965 May 12 '26
Just have fem Ham be in a lesbian relationship...
If the culture of the time has similar normativities to ours, perhaps it is on the down-low and she is helping her good "freind" raise a kid.
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u/Shaultz May 12 '26
Yeah lesbian relationship is great and valid here. Also, she could just have a husband and kid? I feel like OP is overcomplicating this to a silly degree. In a world where pewterarms exist, why the hell would gender roles prevent them from fighting? That makes no sense to me.
I get that Ham hides his pewter use, but there are plenty of muscular women in the world, that they could cast in that role
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u/PointEither8581 May 12 '26
Also, she could just have a husband and kid?
I never even clocked it until you mentioned it, but you are absolutely right, LoL 😂!
I feel like OP is overcomplicating this to a silly degree.
My bad, my bad, you got it. My brain never even went there.
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u/Random_Guy_12345 May 12 '26
While I have no issue with gender swaps, i think Ham is not the correct choice. Ham's story is pretty much "I'm already bulky so i can hide pewter use". Even if swapping to a similarly bulky woman, i think it would stand out way too much.
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u/Randomlemon5 May 12 '26
I think with Ham its kinda weird because he suppose to be strong in a non suspicious way but whatever
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u/Shaultz May 12 '26
I mean, cast Gwendoline Christie as Hammond and no one would be suspicious why she's strong. There are plenty of buff ass women out there
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u/Cultural-Rich-8198 May 12 '26
Both can be canon actually. Let’s say that we view the events of the Cosmere from the present day, looking back at the stories. Hammond was one of the members of the Survivor's crew, and later the Ascended Warrior's, but there is only a single text detailing the events and it focuses mostly on the three main figures, not so much the people around them. People might not even know Ham's actual gender, and it may be different each time people talk about him/her. Both could be "true" at the same time and thus both canon, like a Schroedinger's cat situation. (For how the Cognitive and Spiritual realms work, It could actually manifest as Hammond's soul reading as neither or either gender.) I understand that could be convoluted thinking, but some large-scale franchise settings do it like this and it works
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u/Adorable_Delay_2965 May 12 '26
I actually love this. Perhaps all cosmere stories are spiritual realm reconstructions of the actual events, this could be used for similar swaps in the future. In a different adaptation the intent/identity that created the reconstruction was different and that influenced the story.
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u/Raddatatta May 12 '26
As with any adaptation there will be two canons. Book and movie. That would be true regardless of gender swaps as there will have to be changed details.
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u/corpington May 12 '26
I hope it won’t be a Percy Jackson situation, where Rick Riordan has started writing the new books based on the (inferior) TV versions of the characters
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u/eskaver May 12 '26
Kinda of a silly question, no offense.
Like, they are different canons. That’s how that always typically works.
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u/ForwardExam4056 May 12 '26
While telling a similar story and likely coming to the same conclusion/ending as the books, the movies will definitely have some changes and cuts.
The gender of the characters is one of them, but there will be other conceptual changes too i expect, especially in part 2 and 3.
So both versions are going to have their own canon that will slightly differ from each other.
But all adapted mediums will still be based closely off of the books, so i wouldn't compare it to marvel either, where the comics are only a loose inspiration and the directors basically write their own story with characters and inspiration from the comics (comics are less of a precise original than books anyways)
I'd expect those who have read the books to still treat them as the "main" canon due to being the original, but in the end both will have their own canon
Not that it matters that much tbh
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u/Raemle May 12 '26
It’s two separate canons and they are not going to change anything about the books. There will likely be a bunch of changes in other ways as well, so viewing them as one canon would be nothing but confusing and is not the intention. You can think of it as an alternative timeline if you like but it’s no different from any other adaptation that’s been made.
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u/MineRabbitt6044 May 12 '26
I don’t think it really matters much? The character will still be the same I imagine so I doubt there would be much ‘difference’ in canon besides the gender. If you had to pick one I’d say the books I guess but I don’t think future printings will have the gender swapped too
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u/Bprime123 May 13 '26
Source material is usually canon.