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NOW I am worried about Shallan


Michael Portz

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Shallan had always viewed Sadeas as a blowhard. A fortress like this—and the escape tunnel she’d traveled through—made Veil revise that assessment. She sifted through Shallan’s memories, and what Veil saw in the man was pure craftiness.

So now I am finally worried about Shallan. This quote suggests imho that the border between the personalities is getting more and more fuzzy.

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16 minutes ago, Michael Portz said:

So now I am finally worried about Shallan. This quote suggests imho that the border between the personalities is getting more and more fuzzy.

Not more fuzzy, I'd say, but in fact more distinct. She's more fully compartmentalizing her personas into roles that they're good at. Veil is more suspicious and analyzing of people's hidden motives, because she's the ruthless and scheming side of Shallan herself - having Veil "sift over" her memories from before she fully formed the Veil persona is pretty useful.

And she's continuing to develop these roles internally - they can work together (or argue with each other...) "in her head" fluidly and in real time, she does't have to flip out a sketchpad to take on their forms, and hasn't in some time.

I just hope Veil doesn't ever turn on Radiant...

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Edited by robardin
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They switch depending on their talents, it's really weird.

I got worried at this point:

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They led her through the streets quickly, the hood still on. Shallan took over, as she had an incredible—likely supernatural—ability to sense and memorize direction

 

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10 minutes ago, The_Truthwatcher said:

Doesn't DID have memory gaps? If so, then what Shallan has doesn't seem like DID.

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According to the DSM-5, the following criteria must be met for an individual to be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder:

  • The individual experiences two or more distinct identities or personality states (each with its own enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self). Some cultures describe this as an experience of possession.
  • The disruption in identity involves a change in sense of self, sense of agency, and changes in behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and motor function.
  • Frequent gaps are found in the individual’s memories of personal history, including people, places, and events, for both the distant and recent past. These recurrent gaps are not consistent with ordinary forgetting.
  • The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Yellow is what thinking of.  Shallan does have memory gaps for her past I don't know if she has them for her present. 

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1 minute ago, Karger said:
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According to the DSM-5, the following criteria must be met for an individual to be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder:

  • The individual experiences two or more distinct identities or personality states (each with its own enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self). Some cultures describe this as an experience of possession.
  • The disruption in identity involves a change in sense of self, sense of agency, and changes in behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and motor function.
  • Frequent gaps are found in the individual’s memories of personal history, including people, places, and events, for both the distant and recent past. These recurrent gaps are not consistent with ordinary forgetting.
  • The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Yellow is what thinking of.  Shallan does have memory gaps for her past I don't know if she has them for her present. 

The very next criteria tells us that there must be recurrent gaps in memory. We know that Shallan does not have memory gaps in the recent past. Ergo, she doesn't have DID.

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1 hour ago, robardin said:

Not more fuzzy, I'd say, but in fact more distinct. She's more fully compartmentalizing her personas into roles that they're good at. Veil is more suspicious and analyzing of people's hidden motives, because she's the ruthless and scheming side of Shallan herself - having Veil "sift over" her memories from before she fully formed the Veil persona is pretty useful.

And she's continuing to develop these roles internally - they can work together (or argue with each other...) "in her head" fluidly and in real time, she does't have to flip out a sketchpad to take on their forms, and hasn't in some time.

I see more fuzziness in this chapter than in the previous ones. There everything was clear cut action 1 => Shallan, action 2 => Veil etc., but here in Chapter 6 apparently switches take place in one single thought; it begins as Veil, turns to Shallan and is back to Veil before it the thought is finished.

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28 minutes ago, The_Truthwatcher said:

The very next criteria tells us that there must be recurrent gaps in memory. We know that Shallan does not have memory gaps in the recent past. Ergo, she doesn't have DID.

What about when she stops listening to pattern in WoR?  Also how would she know about any recent memory gaps?

Edited by Karger
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Just now, Karger said:

What about when she stops listening to pattern in WoR?  Also how would she know about any recent memory gaps?

She wouldn't but those around her would, e.g. Pattern. The old memory gaps are just repression of memories, and do not have anything to do with DID.

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Just now, The_Truthwatcher said:

She wouldn't but those around her would, e.g. Pattern. The old memory gaps are just repression of memories, and do not have anything to do with DID.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjDwdObzJPrAhVyoHIEHYKaDRsQwqsBMAB6BAgMEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DZlFF-E_Ek-Q&usg=AOvVaw2PWRZpYFinTnhj9Tb2ZJIj

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Here's an annotation for these chapters! One of the most revised sequences of this book were these Shallan chapters--continuing through the entire novel. As I have said elsewhere, I originally designed Shallan's mental state to be a more fantastical look at something like Dissociative Identity Disorder. (Like the fantastical look at Schizophrenia I did with Stephen Leeds.)

I was fascinated by how something like mental health challenges relating to identity would intersect with magic that let you quite literally become someone else. The original version of this was for a character I wrote in Dragonsteel--which I'll eventually release to the public like I've done with TWOK Prime.

In this series, however, I've found myself leaning away from the fantastical elements more and more, and trying to lean into the real science and best mental health practices. This is because I've realized that having Shallan's ailment be completely fantastical was both irresponsible (in representation terms) and less realistic. Where I settled earlier in the series was in representing not someone with a fantastical disease, but someone with a very real disease--that is exacerbated by fantastical elements.

 

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So two things:

1. Alters can communicate with each other. So there can still be amnesia due to other alters being in control but still have knowledge due to the alters telling them what happened/is happening. As we see with Shallan the three are regularly communicating.

2. Here is the most recent WoB on the subject. Brandon confirmed it is DID. Certainly respect some people may disagree with the representation, but at least as per the author, DID is what she canonically has. 

 

Vivasher Club Emo Teen (@skywardflights)

I know people who relate a lot to Shallan's arc due to how similar her personalities are to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Did you intentionally write her to be recognizable DID?

Brandon Sanderson

I did, but I shied away from it in the earlier books, because I knew I was going to be doing fantastical things, and I didn't want to be offering too much commentary on DID. That was kind of my worry. With Kaladin, I knew depression well enough from family members and things that I felt like I could be a very strong contributor to the conversation. But, I started with Shallan saying, "I don't know if I'm gonna go this route." But then, the further I went, the more I felt it would be irresponsible to not do this. And so, in the last books, I just bit the bullet, dug really far into the DSMV and into reading firsthand, primary accounts from people. We got a very helpful person with DID to be one of our beta readers for this last book. And I just did my best to present it accurately and to present the non-Hollywood verison of it. And so, basically, Oathbringer and Rhythm of War lean into it a little more than the first two books do, though that was where I was going. And I do have a working knowledge of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and did even back then. I don't think I did a terrible job, but I think it would have been irresponsible for me to go forward without digging in a little further.

YouTube Livestream 13 (July 23, 2020)

Edited by Pathfinder
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3 hours ago, The_Truthwatcher said:

We know that Shallan does not have memory gaps in the recent past. Ergo, she doesn't have DID.

I'm jumping in on this to second what @Pathfinder said above. There are many people who may not know what DID is our may have stigmatized views of this disorder. I didn't know much more than how the mainstream represents it until a few weeks ago. Then I did some research.

There are many criticisms that we can make about Brandon's representation of DID in Shallan as a character, it's far from perfect. But please don't say "She doesn't have DID because it doesn't fit the clinical diagnostics perfectly". This isn't how real life mental disorders actually work, there are blurring of lines, people may have one symptom more pronounced than another AND it isn't actually accurate. The character was written to have DID, the author says she has DID, accept it then bring your criticisms to help others understand why and how it could be portrayed better.

 

Also, with respect to your actual comment about why she doesn't, a treatment goal in some cases is for reintegration where all the alters regain the full memories of the host and are able to communicate. It isn't accurate to say that she has DID in this scenario, she is just at a different stage of healing/coping that most people suffering from DID are at or will ever get to.

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I'm just thrilled that I have confirmation that no, everything is not all right with Shallan, and yes, she is indeed still on the path downwards, towards killing Pattern, not upwards, towards greater self-awareness. From Brandon himself, as of yesterday, emphasis mine:

Quote

What you're noticing is not just me changing the way I'm writing her. More, I realized that her downward spiral was going to require me to actively deal with her mental illness in a responsible way, if that makes sense.

I wouldn't change much about the past books. It was more that I realized that the place she was going in this one required a more delicate touch than I could manage without some expert help.

Annotations

Future tense! The place she is going is a downward spiral!

I feel personally vindicated, because I was beating the drum that Shallan was not OK at the end of Oathbringer, and in fact was moving backwards. The main refutations framed what happened as a plateau, or resting place, and that with Adolin she would become more centered and work within her personae. No, the foreshadowing has held, she hasn't made progress, and in fact will fall further in this book. I look forward to revisiting this once the book is out, but Act 1 is leading her downward.

To me, the least interesting part of Shallan is how her experiences match up with real-world DID. I know Brandon wants to be sensitive and respectful of people who suffer this in reality, but this is a story about giant swords and power armor and gods fighting over the realms of man with mortals as their playthings (very Greek, that). You can spare me the DSM as long as her character is well-written and compelling.

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26 minutes ago, Rainier said:

I feel personally vindicated, because I was beating the drum that Shallan was not OK at the end of Oathbringer, and in fact was moving backwards

Depends on what she is moving toward.  I personally think she was making progress.  She avoided self destructing with her Adolin relationship, she is starting to trust him, is learning to work with her different personas and she is starting to remember things.  This is all huge progress for her character.

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33 minutes ago, Karger said:

I personally think she was making progress.  She avoided self destructing with her Adolin relationship, she is starting to trust him, is learning to work with her different personas and she is starting to remember things.  This is all huge progress for her character.

Huge progress, yet not enough to arrest or reverse her downward spiral. Rock bottom hasn't happened yet, which means everything she's done is prior (leading) to her lowest point and necessary upward arc. We saw this with Elhokar, whose rock bottom was at the end of Words of Radiance, when he's drunk and despondent, having been indolent for two books. If I were to point to a point in his story that matches Shallan's current moment, it would be when Elhokar got his chest nearly crushed by Dalinar. It was good for him, he seemed he might be better, but he hadn't reached his lowest point. That matches, somewhat, to where Shallan is at the start of this book.

38 minutes ago, Karger said:

she is starting to remember things

She started back in WoR. She has remembered some, and hidden others. She still, as of RoW, is suppressing memories, and fighting with herself over facing it.

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Wow that's a definitive statement from Mr. Sanderson!  Now we know we are going to see a cratering of Shallan in this book, but I think there will be outside forces (Adolin... and what they've done together in the time skip ;) ) that pull her back from the brink.  I think this only sets up a way for her marriage to be stronger for having gone through these rough times.

Not to go too Jane Austen, but I can just see an end of Pride & Prejudice scene at the epilogue of Book 5 with Adolin and Shallan, and Kaladin and Laral, in a carriage pulled by their Rhyshadium and driven by Hoid with him telling a story about how the four of them together averted the end of Roshar!  Ok, that's probably a little far-fetched (because Kaladin and Laral probably isn't going to be more than a cute fling this book), but a girl can dream!

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I think we're soon to see a conflict of interests between her personalities, specifically regarding murder in cold bloodIt's not Radiant's first choice, but it seems like she'll allow it. Veil claims it is to support Shallan, but I don't think chapter 6 gave any word on Shallan's actual thoughts.  She has killed before, but once (that I can think of) not in sudden self defense but with deliberate forethought: her father, which obviously traumatized her. I can't help but think that event and memories are suddenly going to crash down and cause....literal internal strife. 

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9 minutes ago, Zelly said:

I think we're soon to see a conflict of interests between her personalities, specifically regarding murder in cold bloodIt's not Radiant's first choice, but it seems like she'll allow it. Veil claims it is to support Shallan, but I don't think chapter 6 gave any word on Shallan's actual thoughts.

Veil's job is to protect Shallan.  However she is not a good problem solver.  That is Shallan's thing.  Radiant is good for dealing with formalities but she can't really be intimate and is to "pure" to make ethical judgements a lot of the time.  It will really be up to Shallan.

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6 hours ago, Rainier said:

I feel personally vindicated, because I was beating the drum that Shallan was not OK at the end of Oathbringer, and in fact was moving backwards. The main refutations framed what happened as a plateau, or resting place, and that with Adolin she would become more centered and work within her personae. No, the foreshadowing has held, she hasn't made progress, and in fact will fall further in this book. I look forward to revisiting this once the book is out, but Act 1 is leading her downward.

The fact that Shallan is going to experience a downward trajectory for her character arc only makes sense for the narrative, as it would be weird if it were only Kaladin on the downward trend.

The real question is whether or not Adolin's tragic death awaits her at rock bottom...possibly at her hands. I'd put money down on that at the tables, oh yes I would. No character arc of his own, no personal flaws or self reflection. No personal growth or challenges to overcome. A normal functioning, capable, competent, honorable, self sacrificing, noble, and completely likeable and popular character. A character with nothing to do but to be pulled along in Shallan's wake on her descent.

Had to log in to give you an upvote, thought I might as well post while here. Glad that Tor is serializing Part 1 for free, as Shallan's actions and state of mind over the next several chapters are largely what will determine whether or not I buy the book on release.

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15 minutes ago, DeployParachute said:

The real question is whether or not Adolin's tragic death awaits her at rock bottom...possibly at her hands

Dude!

15 minutes ago, DeployParachute said:

No character arc of his own, no personal flaws or self reflection. No personal growth or challenges to overcome.

Inadequacy, living up to impossible expectations, prior trouble in holding down a stable relationship.  Adolin has plenty of problems.  He is just generally a more mature person.  That does not mean that he does not have room for personal growth.

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20 minutes ago, Karger said:

Inadequacy, living up to impossible expectations, prior trouble in holding down a stable relationship.  Adolin has plenty of problems.  He is just generally a more mature person.  That does not mean that he does not have room for personal growth.

You may have been "told" these things in the writing, over the course of a couple of books, but none of it has been shown to have any meaningful negative consequences to him as a literary character.

Tell me, when have any of these things prevented Adolin from getting something he wanted, or needed. When have any of the things you outlined stopped him from accomplishing goals, or from achieving results. When have these things so negatively affected him that he has struggled to do what has been asked of him? In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to identify much if anything that Adolin actually does want. Not because they couldn't be there, but simply because Brandon hasn't taken the time to write them.

Inadequacy? Brandon may have written various internal monologues for Adolin that express these feelings, but how have they come to fruition in his capabilities or interactions with others?

Impossible expectations? The only thing keeping Adolin from being this series biggest baddest superhuman is the fact that he hasn't attracted a spren to give him superpowers, and even then he manages quite capably. The only expectations he doesn't live up to are the ones he chooses not to.

Prior trouble holding down a stable relationship? Didn't seem to trip him up one bit when the "woman of his dreams" showed up out of nowhere, and announced she was his betrothed. He seemed to say and do all the right things at all the right times, excepting the one instance when he told her that he would always protect her (WoR i believe), and she very briefly took offense at that.

No, I'm afraid that you are taking the prose around Adolin at face value. Brandon may have "told" you that Adolin is this or that, or Adolin feels this or that, but he has not really done much to show you how those things actually impact him personally as character. He experiences no direct challenges or hardships as a consequence of these "flaws", and the reason for this is because Brandon has not spent the time writing them. The first rule of character writing: show, don't tell. Actions speak louder than words. Consequences convey more weight to the reader than dictation and exposition.

Adolin's narrative arc was done long ago, back when he was struggling to decide whether to believe in his father or not in WoR, and even that struggle didn't cost him much, since the things he lost (status in the Alethi nobility, friends, etc) didn't seem to bother him in the end, as he realized that he truly didn't care. There was some promise to his character, briefly, when he murdered Sadeas in a rage. But, well, we see how that turned out. No personal consequences for him thus far, and the consequence to the narrative being Sadeas' army turning at the end of OB, something that Brandon needed to happen anyway.

Really, you could look at Adolin as a story tool. Something that Brandon uses to plug holes, or build opportunities for when he needs to get things moving, or keep things moving, and there are limited options for doing so. And now, Adolin will be Brandon's tool for showing us Shallan's spiraling mental deterioration, and possibly a tool for triggering her way out. And don't fall for the thought that Adolin's challenge this book is his marriage to Shallan, because he has no agency in that either. He is not contributing to their marriage problems. Shallan's mental state are not a result of Adolin's direct actions or personal failings. He is not a cause of her condition, thus it is not an obstacle in his own personal development to overcome. No arc, no growth. A tool for Shallan.

So if Brandon wants this state of affairs to change in his narrative, he needs to do something, anything with this "character" called Adolin. 

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5 minutes ago, DeployParachute said:

You may have been "told" these things in the writing, over the course of a couple of books, but none of it has been shown to have any meaningful negative consequences to him as a literary character.

All of his messed up romances, a strained relationship with a loving father(that nearly destroyed the world if you think about it), trouble sorting out how to behave around Kaladin, nearly getting himself killed at the dueling arena in WoR, nearly failing his relationship with the "woman of his dreams"...

I actually think that Adolin is one of the more well balanced characters in SA.  His arcs are largely internal but they are still happening.  He is just a friendly guy trying to help out, thinking about what he wants, and wondering why he fails part of the time and if that is important or not.  That sounds like my average weekday.  His arc is mine.

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5 hours ago, Zelly said:

I think we're soon to see a conflict of interests between her personalities, specifically regarding murder in cold bloodIt's not Radiant's first choice, but it seems like she'll allow it.

Radiant will not let a traitor get away. She may be a problem when Veil proceeds to eliminate all witnesses, who have seen a living Blade being used..

5 hours ago, Zelly said:

Veil claims it is to support Shallan, but I don't think chapter 6 gave any word on Shallan's actual thoughts.  She has killed before, but once (that I can think of) not in sudden self defense but with deliberate forethought: her father, which obviously traumatized her. I can't help but think that event and memories are suddenly going to crash down and cause....literal internal strife. 

Well, there is a war going on. We have no idea how many fights she has been in.

5 hours ago, Karger said:

Veil's job is to protect Shallan.  However she is not a good problem solver.

In this case she is. Arresting the head of Sadeas inside her own war camp is not a practical proposition. She will bring guards. And you really do not want Alethi fighting Alethi, which is what would happen if Adolin came onto the scene. Nor is the idea of Dalinar sending in a Knight Radiant arresting a High Prince an idea the other High Princes would stand for.

And if you had her in court, then what? What evidence beyond witnesses working for the prosecution do you have? And do you really want to give somebody an opportunity in court to question Shallan's sanity?

No, this is not a problem that needs a clever solution. This problem needs a ruthless solution.

 

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