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Nahel bond spren/human opposite gender


Lexodio

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There's a bunch of WoBs on the matter, but this one's the best I know of:

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Questioner

What's the relationship between the Knights Radiant and their opposite gender spren? Is that important or not?

Brandon Sanderson

Ah it is slightly important.

Questioner

I have to RAFO it though?

Brandon Sanderson

It's more important narratively than it is in the world. It happens more often but it doesn't mean anything when it doesn't happen, does that makes sense? So it's slightly important, partialy it's a narrative trick. I want to keep some gender balance and it's a lot easier to play off someone different than yourself, and things like that so I naturally do that. It doesn't necessarily mean anything when I don't. It depends on the personality of the spren.

 

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Honestly I just chocked it up to a sort of cliche that lots of authors do. You see things like this in many books where there's an animal/being that is "bonded" or connected to characters in one way or another and more often than not it seems that the gender relationship between the human and the spren (or other such creature) is inverse. One big example of this is Phillip Pullmans His Dark Materials series where people have dæmons that are 90% of the time the opposite gender. I've personally just chocked this up to a reference to psychology. More specifically theories from Freud and his student Carl Jeung about how all people have either an anima or an animus inside them that is essentially their spirit animal. Jeung said that males had an anima (female) and females had an animus (male). 

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Yeah, the short version is that most Nahel Bonds are opposite gender but same-gender ones happen, the gender of the spren doesn't necessarily imply anything about the Radiant's sexual orientation and spren gender tends to be fluid so it's all kind of a moot point. As Kurkistan and Jonathon mention, it's got more to do with storytelling than anything in-universe.

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On 13.11.2017 at 4:08 AM, Jonathon said:

Honestly I just chocked it up to a sort of cliche that lots of authors do. You see things like this in many books where there's an animal/being that is "bonded" or connected to characters in one way or another and more often than not it seems that the gender relationship between the human and the spren (or other such creature) is inverse. One big example of this is Phillip Pullmans His Dark Materials series where people have dæmons that are 90% of the time the opposite gender. I've personally just chocked this up to a reference to psychology. More specifically theories from Freud and his student Carl Jung about how all people have either an anima or an animus inside them that is essentially their spirit animal. Jeung said that males had an anima (female) and females had an animus (male). 

Its funny I thought of Pullman immediately as well. The mind also wanders to McCaffreys Dragonrider where all women riding male dragons were butch lesibians. I'm not quite sure if this is relevant but I do remember it being mentioned in the books, that with more powerful spren there where four genders. So there the math really wouldn't work out anymore :D It would also not be very in line with what we know about the bond so far. It seems to be much more of a choice of the spren based on the persons experiences, capabilities, beliefs and values of the human, rather than the spren being a manifestation of the radiants soul or something. Also word of god has Shallan as bi.

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