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Bavadin's Gender


emailanimal

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2 minutes ago, Chull #445 said:

So what did Brandon mean:

1. Bavadin can change gender and appearance at will.

2. Bavadin is known as many different persons/deities.

3. Both above.

He meant 3. All of the above.  Both of these are actually foreshadowed by other Shards: 1 is implied by Ruin's control over his avatar, and 2 can be deduced by the number of names picked up by Preservation and by Honor, on their respective worlds (They each have upwards of 2 different names in addition to their Intents, and that's without trying all that hard).  We now have confirmation that Autonomy weaponizes this for her own ends.  

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2 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

 We now have confirmation that Autonomy weaponizes this for her own ends.

I like how you put it.

 

Back to @Chull #445's comment: I think it is fair to make the following statements:

 

1. Prior to the Shattering Bavadin was a female of her species.

2. We do not know if she is a human, a dragon, or whatever the name of the third Yolish species was (escapes me at the moment). We suspect she might not be human, but we do not have solid evidence as of yet.

3. In her role as the Vessel of the Shard Autonomy Bavadin has chosen to advance her goals by establishing, supporting, coopting and possibly corrupting multiple religions.

4. We suspect not all of those religions are limited to Taldain.

5. Bavadin impersonates deities of the religions she elects to patronize/establish. Sometimes she impersonates ALL the deities in those religions.

6. In doing so she takes both male and female forms.

7. She has well-known (in-universe) and well-attested (possibly both in- and out- of universe, i.e., in books) male forms.

8. She has well-known and well-attested female forms. She has more female forms than male forms.

9. To put in @Landis963's terms, Bavadin weaponizes  support for multiple religions. This is her MO.

10. We have suspicions that outside of Taldain Bavadin is up to no good. 

11. She is confirmed to have played a certain (Brandon hemmed on it, so it must be something other than a direct participation to aid Odium) part in the events on Sel that yielded the Splintering of Devotion and Dominion.

12. Hoid has beef with her, or she has beef with Hoid. Not saying much here, it seems like everyone has beef with Hoid. Except for Rock. Rock just knows.

13. There are very unsubtle hints that she has played a role of Trell in the resurfacing of Trell as a religious cult on Scadrial, although, this is, by far, not a given. There are other candidates who are in the running.

14. The new preponderance of evidence suggests that she may be behind the old Trell as well, or at least that the old Trell was brought to Scadrial from Taldain. Again, not a given.

15. In the realm of speculation, but it is also possible, given what we know, that she is responsible for a slate of "prohibitionist" religions in various parts of Cosmere. A goal of a "prohibitionist" religion is to prevent the usage of Investiture on the planet. In some prior posts I called these "Abomination cults": they teach that the use of Investiture in whatever local form is an Abomination and must be stopped.... (Back then I was told it was all a dream and a coincidence, but guess who is laughing now....BWAHAHA)... But I digress.

16. We were also told 

Spoiler

[UA Spoiler] Bavadin is not letting Taldain be visited. Given that we know of at least two worldhoppers from Taldain, looks like it might work only one way. But poor Khriss, not being able to spend a vacation at home.

 

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@emailanimal the essay seems suggest that Autonomy NOW stop travel, but maybe/probably it wasn't in that way when Khriss leaved the planet.

Another thing, I don't really know if a Shard may "move around" so freely among the Cosmere, if She is Invested in Taldain she is quite bind to Taldain...I may think she influence far away places but in indirect ways, not with her actually going there

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@emailanimal Thanks for the recap. But we dont believe that Bavadin can physically change her original gender? That she can appear in whatever form she wants is one thing (like Ruin, just as you said), but is she actually able to change her "real" gender back and forth. In that case, she might belong to the unknown third Yolish race. Brandons statement can be read both ways.

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Eh... I would advise to avoid focusing on gender too much. There are plenty of species with either a single gender, or more than two - and there are species who can change their gender at will. Who's to say Bavadin doesn't belong to a race similar to those? 

It's probably better to concentrate on her personas.

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@Chull #445: I am with @Argent on this one: whether Bavadin is capable of actually changing her gender appears to be less relevant to our main pursuits than the fact that she takes on both male and female personas, and many people know her by a lot of different, male and female names.

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Yeah, I think its a mistake to read too much into Bavadin's physical gender or any shapeshifting powers, because Honor is really the only Shard we've seen thus far actually use a human avatar to interact with mortals. Ruin, Preservation, Endowment, etc....none of them needed to be physically present in order to manipulate people or present themselves to people, so there's no real reason to assume that Bavadin has to have some kind of physical shapeshifting capability in order to present herself as multiple people of varying gender.

I mean, she's pretty much a god to cosmere mortals, and so when interacting with a god, even if the only perception you have of said god is some kind of voice in your head or words appearing out of nowhere or changing their shape or order, you're going to take said god's word for it as to whether they're male or female. All Bavadin needs to do is say 'I am Trell' and use he/him pronouns in reference to that particular persona, and bam. She becomes he, as far as anyone on Scadrial is concerned. No actual shapeshifting required.

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More Brandon's quotes from the same thread in response to @Argent:  (linky)

Quote

mistborn:

Bavadin is awesome. One regret of finally moving on from White Sand (and doing the graphic novel, instead of doing an entire trilogy myself) is because I won't get to show her off as a character for a while. It should still happen, mind you, but I have enough on my plate right now that I just can't do it all.

and a bit later (quoting only the directly related to Bavadin part):

Quote

mistborn:

... Let's at least let White Sand finish first--you will find her in there, though her touch on the story (directly) is light. She prefers to allow her personas to become the focus of attention.

 

Confirmation of what we've been just thinking above.

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I still think Bavadin isn't human, primarily because while it could be her just exercising her powers, the fact that she takes the route seems to imply that before the Shattering, she was already culturally attuned to changing forms to fit her whims / purposes, at least from my perspective. For example, I come from a military background, and as a result, my knee jerk reaction to considering the applications of magic lean towards weaponize it, and I tend to take that more seriously / explore that more in depth than perhaps a botanist would in how it applies to plantlife. Not sure if this accurately portrays my point, but yeah...

I have no idea what the third Yolish race is, nor how dragon's shapeshifting works exactly, but I do think her unique origins were a factor in her unique development, compared to the human shards we've all seen. Plus, I've seen a theory somewhere that Edgli (Endowment) might be a dragon, too, and if that's the case, that might help explain why her Slivers (the Returned) are so easily capable of "shapeshifting" (to a lesser extent).

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What if Bavadin is genderfluid? I mean... I know he's kinda said he doesn't really want to write LGBT characters until he's sure he doesn't mess it up, but, it's pretty cool to think about! 


Also, worshipping an entire pantheon of Bavadin? That's kinda hilarious. 

 

Wait. I just realized something. 

GUYS. 


LIGHTSONG IS BAVADIN. Or... Bavadin is Lightsong. 

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6 hours ago, winter devotion said:

Also, worshipping an entire pantheon of Bavadin? That's kinda hilarious. 

And now we need to come up with a term for a group of Bavadin. I do kinda like pantheon, actually.

A murder of crows.

A herd of cows.

A crowd of people.

A pantheon of Bavadin.

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16 hours ago, emailanimal said:

Let's at least let White Sand finish first--you will find her in there, though her touch on the story (directly) is light.

16 hours ago, emailanimal said:

her touch on the story (directly) is light

16 hours ago, emailanimal said:

light

Is Brandon being really clever here? Given the theory of Invested sunlight...:ph34r:

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21 hours ago, emailanimal said:

@Chull #445: I am with @Argent on this one: whether Bavadin is capable of actually changing her gender appears to be less relevant to our main pursuits than the fact that she takes on both male and female personas, and many people know her by a lot of different, male and female names.

Do we have any evidence of the Heralds actually using investiture. Not the Knights Radiant but the Heralds themselves. I know it's not likely but could the Heralds be Bavadin?

 

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