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Pattern's True Name


KalynaAnne

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Our dear friend Pattern is a fractal. This much is clear from Shallan's comment the first time she draws him:


 


“The pattern seemed impossible to capture. Its complex repetitions twisted down into infinity.” (pg 67, WoR kindle edition)


 


It takes a while, but Shallan finally gets around to asking Pattern if he has a name beyond the one she has given him. His response:


 


“Name is numbers. Many numbers. Hard to say. Pattern…Pattern is fine.” (pg 215, WoR)


 


Fractal patterns that are on some level infinitely complex can often be described by seemingly simple equations and/or sets of rules. You can see this in things like the Koch snowflake, Sierpinski's triangle, the Mandelbrot set, and the Julia set.  


 


Theory: Pattern’s true name is a mathematical description (in some form or other, there are multiple possibilities here) of his fractal form. The fractal exists in multiple dimensions and his appearance in the physical realm is just one tiny slice of his full form - the intersection of his fractal with the physical realm. His apparently changing patterns are not actually his pattern changing, but instead him moving so that the intersection changes and we get different views of him. His ability to shrink corresponds to moving so that his intersection with the physical realm is smaller. As a fractal, even a tiny intersection would have the complexity necessary to, say, pick a lock.   


 


Now I really want to know Pattern’s true name.


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I like the speculation, though I disagree on the Pattern moving bit. Pattern says his kind change all the time, but that they change in the exact same way. This suggests something like a multibrot to me, where the exponent is hooked up to a time-varying periodic function like sin(t). His ability to shrink just suggests to me that he's a representation of one of the fundamental forces on Roshar, Transformation, much like Syl can fly because she's a concrete example of Gravity.

Edited by Moogle
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Hmmm, I'd forgotten about that part, Moogle.  But ok, so we factor in the time dimension.  His name could still describe the exact shape of the fractal part of his form at any given time.  It could still be the case that the only movement Pattern has control over is effectively translation/rotation type movement.  I really like the idea of a fractal character who has to work within the confines of his form rather than being able to simply move around like a human.  The intricacies of his shape would give him a lot of freedom in what he would be able to do, but the process for making it happen would be completely different.

 

Pattern has some control over how much of him is present in the Physical realm as displayed by his ability to both hang out on the surface of things and to appear as a wriggling mass of lines.  It doesn't seem out of the question to me that he could move to where we are getting a smaller cross section when he shrinks.  

 

Transformation being represented by a mathematical construct makes me really happy.   

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Transformation being represented by a mathematical construct makes me really happy.   

 

That and everything up above are making me happy, too!  It's been years since I was fully immersed in mathematics (it being my college major), but I don't use it every day now and a lot of neat things have slipped my mind...until you mentioned them.  I don't know that we'll ever be able to actually discover his specific 'name' so much as speculate and hope Brandon will confirm that Pattern does operate as you're theorizing.  That would tickle me infinitely.  :D

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