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From the album: The Girl who Looked Up
Another poster-style piece in Shadesmar. I guess I'm just drawn to the place!-
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In the Way of Kings, we first see a glimpse of Shadesmar when Shallan accidentally discovers it after giving a Cryptic (Pattern, I'm sure) a truth about herself. We see that there are bizarre floating flames in the part of Shadesmar where Shallan landed. Then, in Words of Radiance, we finally learn what those flames are supposed to be: So those flames supposedly represent the minds of living things. I shall henceforth call them "Mind flames". Anyway, when I first read that, I remembered a particularly exciting scene from the Way of Kings involving Jasnah and Soulcasting: (A sidenote: Why did the second footpad's clothing get transformed along with him, while the clothing of the last two remained untouched? I have no idea.) Anyway, I thought to myself: If living things were represented as flames in Shadesmar, does that mean Jasnah had to touch those Shadesmar flames in order to transform the first two footpads? That's some pretty cool imagery right there: Jasnah getting hold of the floating flame of her enemy's mind, casually ignoring the heat, and then sending Stormlight to it to turn her enemy into quartz. But there's a problem with that scenario: People who die have their "Mind flames" snuffed out. Here's a scene from Word of Radiance: The problem here is that a corpse is a non-living thing, and therefore should exist as a glass Identity bead in Shadesmar. If the Mind flame is the thing targeted when Soulcasting a living person, then that mind-flame should transform into a sphere upon that person's death, not vanish as described in that excerpt. So, it seems that the Mind flame is not simply a living thing's version of a dead thing's Identity bead. I now think that each person should have both a Mind flame and an Identity bead on Shadesmar, two distinct Cognitive objects. This duality reminds me of Hesina's little lecture in the Way of Kings: I guess Hesina's "soul" terminology might refer to the Mind flame, while the "very small" spren refers to the Identity beads of each body part (or even each cell). There has to be one Identity bead that represents the whole body, though. I think that Identity bead was the thing Jasnah targeted during that fight with the footpads, not the Mind flame. Even if my theory (that a person has both a Mind flame and an Identity bead on Shadesmar) is correct, I still wonder if there are Surgebinders who can affect Mind flames. Dustbringers have the Essence of Spark, but they're not known to visit Shadesmar, so I don't think they'll be able to do this. Since fire is a form of light energy, I feel that Lightweavers should be able to affect Mind flames somehow. Lightweavers are also adept at changing people's minds, so that fits with the idea of manipulating a representation of a mind. Perhaps Shallan should experiment with using the Illumination Surge on one of those when she next visits Shadesmar? As for Elsecallers, perhaps they can somehow access their own Mind flame in Shadesmar and do funky Elsecaller-y things with it. I'm a bit too sleepy to ponder on specific theoretical scenarios, though. How about you guys? What do you think?