I had a blog at harshapps.net which is defunct since when my brother stopped paying for it. There were maybe 5 people who visited the site and out of which four engaged in the comments section. If you look at it, it was 80% engagement. But I stopped writing it. Writing a blog like how numerous people have monologued about, it helps me put stuff into a place and into perspective. I started writing this after the election day(Thought I was heading in that direction for this blog but did not - left it for context). Although I have been trying to push to git, on numerous times over the past two years to host a blog. There were numerous iterations, trying out many different jekyll themes and then re-iterating with hugo. Claude + Cursor has definitely sped up this process. Maybe I could have started out how I have been using claude+cursor. Maybe I could have started with writing about the election from my POV, not that anybody cares (Elections always brings so many thoughts. I love it. Again maybe another blog.). But I thought starting out with why I named my all encompassing stuff under sreesmere.com was the way to go.\

If you glanced over my goodreads profile, you’d notice I read fantasy almost exclusively. Among those around 5% of my read count are books written by Brandon Sanderson. My “love” for reading started out when I was a kid. It might not have been due to love for them back then. My mother raised me to be competitive and I wanted to compete with my friends on who would read the most books in my library. That definitely was not the intention of my teachers and the librarian, Mohana Rengen. But somehow unintentionally I started loving it. I was transported into these new worlds that the authors somehow came up with out of thin air(Yeah yeah I hear AI can do it but is it really out of thin air? - will delve about “on the shoulders of giants past”). I started craving that. My first fantasy book that I probably read was harry potter (What else did you expect? Every kid read that back then). Immediately I started wearing a jumper(I now know what I was wearing was a jumper although I just wore since my uncle had brought it from the US) and carrying a stick-wand and casting out spells. From then on I sought out fantasy books pretty much disproportionately. During my masters I came across Brandon Sanderson. I think I was a bit late to the brando sando party, but man was I hooked.\

Vini in mistborn navigating the magic system introduced me to a whole new way of writing fantasy. It was no more - stick is wand and if Harry says some words it does something (although just stating that it does is fun as well)- but it was that -the allomantic properties of the world in which they lived was conducive for using some materials that enhanced those properties-. This was a magic system and no more just magic. He did not just stop there though. He analyzed Vini in such detail that you started to have feelings for the words in the book. It did not just stop there. He wrote The Way of the Kings. I feel this is where his writing culminated into what he was striving for and is his best product. The way he describes the things that went on inside Kaladin’s mind and heart, you almost felt it was a bit intrusive. The magic system again was, well for a lack of better description, OUT OF THIS WORLD(yes in blocks). Then he went one step further, he created a universe and connected Vini’s world to Kal’s. This universe thingy was definitely something new in a fantasy book series(maybe new for me in books). It felt like a much better ecstasy than watching action heroes crossover in Marvel. And this is where cosmere comes from.

Cosmere was the universe. And in cosmere there is shadesmar where the inception of the thoughts lived. If a character thought about something, the mirror world - shadesmar - had the manifestation of this thought as a speck, bead or a “spren” based on the intricacies of the thought. I thought what better world to draw inspiration from. This space that I have in the internet is now my shadesmar which is a subset of Sree’s cosmere. And hence the name sreesmere. Sreesmere is the universe with me as the origin point in space, time. Yeah I know, how presumptuous of me thinking I am the center of the universe. Well sreesmere is not the actual universe but specifically the universe with respect to me. You have to give me that much leeway. So here it is. This is why I came up with the name. You will find this blog under books and maybe disappointed or rather irritated that this blog does not actually deal with books but rather some lame origin story of my blog’s name. But I thought you were curious as to why I named my universe after Brandon Sanderson’s cosmere. This is it.