RoW Chapter 9 Discussion

[DeployParachute]

5 hours ago, Harbour said:

Im pretty sure his question about Veil being with someone else was dropped for a reason and the tension will keep rising. I hope it wont end up in the same spot Gavilar and Navani ended up in prologue.

I highly doubt this. I took those lines as almost a required statement Brandon needed to insert, because he knew it would be at the back of any readers' heads, and needed to address it up front so that it is out of the way. Almost like he needed to do some more cleanup on his sloppy resolution for Shallan's physical attraction to Kaladin, which was shoved onto the Veil alter, and hastily denoted as inconsequential. He's reminding us: hey, this is where I left this in OB, and nothing has changed about that, in case you were worried, don't be.

Because realistically, even if he intended this to be a setup for future events, how would that even happen in the narrative. Out of the two people other than Adolin that the cosmere entity known as "Shallan Davar" has expressed any kind of attraction for, one is dead (RIP Brother Kabsal), and the other is extremely unlikely to spend any amount of screen time with "Shallan Davar" to where such a situation (where an alter and lightweaving is used) can be developed in the narrative in a believable way. And if not those two options, then do you REALLY see Brandon taking the required narrative time to write such an interaction with some rando? Maybe Mraize, now THAT would be interesting (but also extremely unlikely).

No, I think it much more likely that Brandon is using Adolin here to address both Adolin's in narrative concerns, and our own (as readers) meta concerns, owing to the rushed and ambiguous conclusion to "Shallan Davar"s physcial attraction for the "bridgeboy".

[+Wax]

PS Did anyone get the same feel as the Brightness Radiant chapter in OB?

Seems a very similar structure with the story.  Although 18 chapters vs 32 chapters in OB part 1?

[+Czernobog]

8 hours ago, agrabes said:

Amazing chapter.  A few thoughts:

Kaladin is definitely being hit by either an Unmade or Odium.

Or possibly Malata, if she's still around. These lines have always bugged me: "Malata blew off the ash. The Surge she used, Division, caused objects to degrade, burn, or turn to dust. It also worked on people."

[Karger]

1 minute ago, Czernobog said:

Or possibly Malata, if she's still around. These lines have always bugged me: "Malata blew off the ash. The Surge she used, Division, caused objects to degrade, burn, or turn to dust. It also worked on people."

Malata can disintegrate people physically.

[+Czernobog]

That would be the literal interpretation, yes. Degradation of spirit via division is more the direction I was pondering.

[Subvisual Haze]

I feel like people are overreading the Shallan formless comment.  The simplest explanation is the answer she gave back in Words of Radiance shortly before drawing Veil the first time. 

Quote

An image formed in front of her, born of Stormlight, created by instinct. She hadn't needed to draw this image first, for she knew it too well.

The image was of herself. Shallan, as she should be. Curled in a huddle on the bed, unable to weep for she had long since run out of tears. This girl... not a woman, a girl... flinched whenever spoken to. She expected everyone to shout at her. She could not laugh, for laughter had been squeezed from her by a childhood of darkness and pain.

That was the real Shallan. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. The person she had become instead was a lie, one she had fabricated in the name of survival. To remember herself as a child, discovering Light in the gardens, Patterns in the stomework, and dreams that became real...

 

[Harbour]

1 hour ago, DeployParachute said:

He's reminding us: hey, this is where I left this in OB, and nothing has changed about that, in case you were worried, don't be.

To me Chapter 9 sent quite opposite message. It was largely the "admitting the problems Adolin and Shallan have despite what happened in the end of OB" chapter. 
In fact, its basically knocked the soil from under Shadolin's foundation and credibility with Shallan admitting herself being the fakest of her three (four) persons. Veil non-chalantly talking about her in third person while sitting before Adolin is in no way normal give how seemingly uneasy for Adolin to handle that situation. It does seem like a narrative aiming at Adolin eventually accepting the fact that he married the cardboard poster girl with the set of created traits, not the actual person.

I predict it will eventually be followed by either peaceful break up, or toxic one, because i cant see any magic way in which Shallan and Adolin will suddenly solve "the cardboard poster girl" problem.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Harbour

[DeployParachute]

18 minutes ago, Harbour said:

It was largely the "admitting the problems Adolin and Shallan have despite what happened in the end of OB" chapter.

My point was written to address specifically any lingering questions about "Shallan Davar"s  potentially unresolved physical attraction for another character, not that there were not any other serious issues for the married couple still on the table. On that we are in agreement

[Scriptorian]

I’m going to be contrary and push back against the idea that “Shallan” is a persona in the same way that Veil and Radiant are. Before OB, where Shallan starts having her current problems with disassociation, we see her already asserting that her current self is “lie” because she believes she should instead be the broken and utterly despondent image she shows Pattern. The thing is, I think this is her being an unreliable narrator: Shallan thinks it’s impossible that she can be the not-broken, sassy person we see her as in most of her POVs. But this is not necessarily true. Granted, she undergoes changes (dare I say, character development) through WoK to WoR, but there’s a consistent through line with her character arc and her personality. 
 

But because she believes that she is fundamentally broken, she attributes her newfound self-confidence and competence to just another layer of lies. At this point, this seemed pretty clearly to just be part of her pathological inability to see herself in a positive light. This reaches critical mass in Oathbringer, where, because she assumes that “Shallan” is broken and incompetent, she developed alternate personas, each of whom are allowed to be competent and functional in their spheres. In my arm-chair opinion, the only reason Veil and Radiant exist is because Shallan will not acknowledge to herself that she is capable of everything that her personas are. And while Investiture certainly complicates this assessment; I don’t think her personas have external validity other than as an expression of Shallan’s pathology. It’s all Shallan; just an extreme form of psychological dissociation reinforced by her surgebinding. 
 

Some people seem to be taking Shallan’s word for everything when it comes to her personas. The thing is, we can say with absolute certainty that she is far from a reliable narrator. In particular, we know that she considered “Shallan” to be fake long before the personas developed. Until Oathbringer, we had no reason to assume that her personality was literally a magical construct with ontological distinctness from whoever she originally was, which is what some are treating Veil and Radiant as. 
 

As I’ve alluded to previously, I don’t think the key to her character development is going to be based on remembering more dark buried secrets that reveal what a horrible person she is. Though there very well could be more dark terrible things in her past that we haven’t discovered yet, she already thinks of herself as a monster without having remembered them. Her development isn’t going to be based around her somehow being worse than she already thinks (she already assumes the worst about herself). Her entire arc up till this point is based around her inability let herself move past the things she’s done (Radiant was created as an almost direct consequence of her being unable to face having killed her mother). The personas aren’t the solution, they are just another way of her dodging her need to let herself be herself. 
 

Dalinar’s whole arc in Oathbringer was about taking responsibility for who he used to be, while still moving forward. Shallan doesn’t need to accept that “Shallan” is just a lie and find who she really is; she needs to accept that she is Shallan, flaws and all, but, more importantly, that she is worth fixing. The lie that she has to overcome is that she is not worthy of redemption.  
 

And oops I’ve written an essay instead of a forum post. Feel free to disagree, but I’m going to go find some food. 

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not saying that it's "all in her head" or that she should just "get over it". I'm saying she suffers severe emotional trauma and what constitutes a psychiatric disorder, which should be handled with all the steadfastness and empathy such things warrant.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Scriptorian

[Karger]

46 minutes ago, Scriptorian said:

And oops I’ve written an essay instead of a forum post. Feel free to disagree, but I’m going to go find some food. 

Your armchair psychological assessment is inaccurate but your understanding of Shallan as a character is spot on.  Kudos.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Karger

[Scriptorian]

5 minutes ago, Karger said:

Your armchair physiological assessment is inaccurate but your understanding of Shallan as a character is spot on.  Kudos.

*squints* "Physiological"? I claim even fewer armchair-credentials with physiology than psychology, so I'm not surprised that I would be wrong in such an assessment, I just didn't think I'd made one .

[Karger]

1 minute ago, Scriptorian said:

*squints* "Physiological"? I claim even fewer armchair-credentials with physiology than psychology, so I'm not surprised that I would be wrong in such an assessment, I just didn't think I'd made one .

Curses spell check eloquently.

[Greywatch]

43 minutes ago, Scriptorian said:

Before OB, where Shallan starts having her current problems with disassociation, we see her already asserting that her current self is “lie” because she believes she should instead be the broken and utterly despondent image she shows Pattern. The thing is, I think this is her being an unreliable narrator: Shallan thinks it’s impossible that she can be the not-broken, sassy person we see her as in most of her POVs. But this is not necessarily true. Granted, she undergoes changes (dare I say, character development) through WoK to WoR, but there’s a consistent through line with her character arc and her personality.

But because she believes that she is fundamentally broken, she attributes her newfound self-confidence and competence to just another layer of lies. At this point, this seemed pretty clearly to just be part of her pathological inability to see herself in a positive light.

Some people seem to be taking Shallan’s word for everything when it comes to her personas. The thing is, we can say with absolute certainty that she is far from a reliable narrator. In particular, we know that she considered “Shallan” to be fake long before the personas developed. Until Oathbringer, we had no reason to assume that her personality was literally a magical construct with ontological distinctness from whoever she originally was, which is what some are treating Veil and Radiant as. 

Ooh, I completely agree, especially with the sections I quoted. I think "pathological inability to see herself in a positive light" is right on the money - Shallan hates herself so much. In light of how she's thought about herself for the entire series, I don't think who we've been reading as Shallan for three books - starting on four - is a fake personality. That would feel pretty crummy and cheap. It seems clear to me that Shallan's self-hatred drenches every aspect of her POV, and Shallan thinking of herself as a bad person doesn't actually make her a bad person. So it goes: Shallan thinking she's fake doesn't make her fake.

[ftl]

Oh, I like that even better than having a secret child alter be the "real Shallan!"

Nicely done.

[+Harrycrapper]

9 hours ago, Subvisual Haze said:

I think Syl is onto something here.  Kaladin's rebuttal is kind of wishy washy, but I think there's a good chance Kaladin never told Moash (or anyone else) about his almost suicide, indicating that an Unmade was messing with him.

Gaz knew, he saw Kaladin went down there and he indicated he would kill himself. 

[StanLemon]

I'm also of the belief that Kaladin is being supernaturally affected. I think by either Odium himself or possibly Dai-gonarthis is pushing on his depression making it worse. The scene where he thinks back to Moash's statement "I can take away the pain" was very reminiscent to me of what Ruin did to Vin. 

[joesleepsalot]

12 hours ago, Karger said:

How would the sibling do that though?  Bondsmith spren traditionally only have adhesion and tension.

I dunno man..... but (I admittedly just quoted this and skipped every comment in between) it’s plausible that perhaps the Sibling is in Aimia or something and he utilized one of the sleepless to place the span reed and also communicate. Now I’m sorta rusty.... are the sleepless the cremlings that create a humanoid looking body? And the cremlings are given Easter egg appearances all over Roshar.... and somehow transfer the things they observe to like a “brain” way far off right? That’s how the sleepless know so much. 
 

it’s possible that the “slumbering” sibling is using this mechanism while hiding out in a place of relative safety. 

Edited September 2, 2020 by joesleepsalot

[ftl]

43 minutes ago, joesleepsalot said:

 Now I’m sorta rusty.... are the sleepless the cremlings that create a humanoid looking body? And the cremlings are given Easter egg appearances all over Roshar.... and somehow transfer the things they observe to like a “brain” way far off right? That’s how the sleepless know so much. 

Yep, I think that's right.

I think the hordelings all together make a hive mind, though - there isn't a central "brain" somewhere, it's just that when you get enough of the hordelings together they're capable of higher thought.

(That also makes each Sleepless colony, in a sense, immortal - while individual hordelings grow and die, the whole Sleepless together doesn't seem to. So that's also why they know so much.)

Edited September 2, 2020 by ftl

[Karger]

6 hours ago, joesleepsalot said:

I dunno man..... but (I admittedly just quoted this and skipped every comment in between) it’s plausible that perhaps the Sibling is in Aimia or something and he utilized one of the sleepless to place the span reed and also communicate

Spren have confirmed to Navani in past chapters that the Sibling is asleep.

[Ailvara]

11 hours ago, Scriptorian said:

I’m going to be contrary and push back against the idea that “Shallan” is a persona in the same way that Veil and Radiant are. Before OB, where Shallan starts having her current problems with disassociation, we see her already asserting that her current self is “lie” because she believes she should instead be the broken and utterly despondent image she shows Pattern. The thing is, I think this is her being an unreliable narrator: Shallan thinks it’s impossible that she can be the not-broken, sassy person we see her as in most of her POVs. But this is not necessarily true. Granted, she undergoes changes (dare I say, character development) through WoK to WoR, but there’s a consistent through line with her character arc and her personality. 

She was a person made of an inscrutable mix of truth and lies long before OB disassociation. The whole problem is, in order to be an 'unbroken' person Shallan took a shortcut and buried her memories. What she truly needs to do is to be a person who remembers her whole trauma and then still keeps going. Whoever that person turns out be, needs to be a mix of both how she's been influenced by the darkness inside her and how she would stand up to it. It won't be the same sassy girl from WoK - and she doesn't necessarily even want to be that:

Quote

She drew upon the part of her that hated the way everyone assumed she was so nice, so sweet. The part of her that hated being described as diverting or clever.

Her humor and wit was a coping mechanism destined to keep her family together and keep her safe in the first place. I can imagine deep down she somewhat hates it for that.

11 hours ago, Scriptorian said:

But because she believes that she is fundamentally broken, she attributes her newfound self-confidence and competence to just another layer of lies. At this point, this seemed pretty clearly to just be part of her pathological inability to see herself in a positive light. This reaches critical mass in Oathbringer, where, because she assumes that “Shallan” is broken and incompetent, she developed alternate personas, each of whom are allowed to be competent and functional in their spheres. In my arm-chair opinion, the only reason Veil and Radiant exist is because Shallan will not acknowledge to herself that she is capable of everything that her personas are. And while Investiture certainly complicates this assessment; I don’t think her personas have external validity other than as an expression of Shallan’s pathology. It’s all Shallan; just an extreme form of psychological dissociation reinforced by her surgebinding. 

I... don't understand. Of course, it is all Shallan. Some alters got in the split more of her 'core' personality and some more of her coping mechanisms but 'Shallan', Veil, Radiant and Formless are all Shallan. That's exactly why she can't just take back her abilities from them and run. They are not separate people:

Quote

DID was called multiple personality disorder up until 1994, when the name was changed to reflect a better understanding of the condition—namely, that it is characterized by a fragmentation or splintering of identity, rather than by a proliferation or growth of separate personalities.

So no, she didn't just create Veil and Radiant - she split into 'Shallan', Veil and Radiant. How good we can finally rely on real-world DID to settle things like that.

11 hours ago, Scriptorian said:

Some people seem to be taking Shallan’s word for everything when it comes to her personas. The thing is, we can say with absolute certainty that she is far from a reliable narrator. In particular, we know that she considered “Shallan” to be fake long before the personas developed. Until Oathbringer, we had no reason to assume that her personality was literally a magical construct with ontological distinctness from whoever she originally was, which is what some are treating Veil and Radiant as. 

She did have a reason. She knew, even if deep, deep down, that she already created the first (or, as we call it here, 4th) alter long ago as a child. That she buried the part of her identity and personality that had anything to do with her mother's murder. There are hints of that in WoR already e.g. WRT to her drawing. She always knew.

As for her being unreliable narrator, sure. She is unreliable, for example, when she says that she's accepted her pain and that she doesn't deserve it (see chapter 8; chapter 9 makes it clear she accepted neither). The problem with 'Shallan' being fakest is that it's been hinted at numerous times and not only through Shallan's words:

Quote

 "Veil is the false identity, Mraize," Shallan said.  "I am me."

He inspected her.  "I think not."

She met that gaze, but shivered inside.

Quote

I was suspicious when Veil… when you told me to go on this mission, she said. Then I saw the illusions, and guessed. She paused. I had it reversed. I though Brightness Shallan was the persona.

As for 'magical construct with ontological distinctness', I've already addressed that.

11 hours ago, Scriptorian said:

As I’ve alluded to previously, I don’t think the key to her character development is going to be based on remembering more dark buried secrets that reveal what a horrible person she is. Though there very well could be more dark terrible things in her past that we haven’t discovered yet, she already thinks of herself as a monster without having remembered them. Her development isn’t going to be based around her somehow being worse than she already thinks (she already assumes the worst about herself). Her entire arc up till this point is based around her inability let herself move past the things she’s done (Radiant was created as an almost direct consequence of her being unable to face having killed her mother). The personas aren’t the solution, they are just another way of her dodging her need to let herself be herself. 

Yes, she needs to remember, not in order to see how terrible she is, but in order to embrace it, accept it, forgive herself and go on. Same as Dalinar had to accept his guilt in order to become properly freed of it. You can't move on if you just keep running away.

11 hours ago, Scriptorian said:

Dalinar’s whole arc in Oathbringer was about taking responsibility for who he used to be, while still moving forward. Shallan doesn’t need to accept that “Shallan” is just a lie and find who she really is; she needs to accept that she is Shallan, flaws and all, but, more importantly, that she is worth fixing. The lie that she has to overcome is that she is not worthy of redemption.  

You're still assuming here 'Shallan' is some main and true persona and the rest of alters are made-up. This is not how DID works. This would all be just right if not for this assumption. But as it is, yes, she absolutely needs to accept that 'Shallan' is a lie but it doesn't mean she'll go looking for her true personality somewhere. It's all there in her fractured self already. 'Shallan' on her own doesn't even need redemption - without accepting Formless, the 'frenzied child who had murdered her mother' as part of herself, there is nothing there to redeem.

[Harbour]

Imo Shallan arc is to stop being Formless, to accept herself and stop rely on creation of Shallan, Veil, Radiant. She need to absorb their traits and accept them as her own, not their. 

Stand on her own legs firmly, like Wit said to her, without personas wheelchair. 

Stop being Formless and become One. Because while being formless, she creates those forms in shape of Shallan, Veil and Radiant. When she will become One, there would be no need in coping mechanisms.

I think culmination of her arc would be discovering her deepest secret, which is connected to who she truly was before coping mechanisms kicked in her childhood.

 

[Scriptorian]

Quote

She was a person made of an inscrutable mix of truth and lies long before OB disassociation. The whole problem is, in order to be an 'unbroken' person Shallan took a shortcut and buried her memories. What she truly needs to do is to be a person who remembers her whole trauma and then still keeps going. Whoever that person turns out be, needs to be a mix of both how she's been influenced by the darkness inside her and how she would stand up to it. It won't be the same sassy girl from WoK - and she doesn't necessarily even want to be that:

Her humor and wit was a coping mechanism destined to keep her family together and keep her safe in the first place. I can imagine deep down she somewhat hates it for that.

So I can see an argument that Shallan is a persona in the sense that "I am broken and traumatized inside, but I smile and crack jokes so people don't see it" is her deliberately putting on a false face. But she's often aware that this is what she is doing. There is a notable difference, in my mind, between the above and "I am now Veil, a gruff darkeyes that really likes knives". To be reductive, Veil never questions who she is, but Shallan does. To me, this suggests a qualitative difference in the way that "Shallan" is a lie versus Veil.

Quote

I... don't understand. Of course, it is all Shallan. Some alters got in the split more of her 'core' personality and some more of her coping mechanisms but 'Shallan', Veil, Radiant and Formless are all Shallan. That's exactly why she can't just take back her abilities from them and run. They are not separate people:

I think we're on the same page here. I was just reacting against an idea I've seen intimated a few times, that Veil and Radiant are individuals in their own right, and that re-integrating them would be like killing them.

Quote

So no, she didn't just create Veil and Radiant - she split into 'Shallan', Veil and Radiant. How good we can finally rely on real-world DID to settle things like that.

Eh...I disagree. There are multiple times where she consciously develops and assigns traits to the other personas, traits she doesn't normally have, like she's writing characters. Though there are cases of things we'd normally attribute to Shallan splitting into Veil or Radiant, her attraction to Kaladin being notable. In any case, I'd hesitate to use every particular of a real-world diagnosis here because the magic-system involved is almost certainly complicating things. The completeness to which the personas developed in such a short span of time suggests to me that something more is going on here than vanilla dissociative personality problems.

2 hours ago, Ailvara said:

She did have a reason. She knew, even if deep, deep down, that she already created the first (or, as we call it here, 4th) alter long ago as a child. That she buried the part of her identity and personality that had anything to do with her mother's murder. There are hints of that in WoR already e.g. WRT to her drawing. She always knew.

As for her being unreliable narrator, sure. She is unreliable, for example, when she says that she's accepted her pain and that she doesn't deserve it (see chapter 8; chapter 9 makes it clear she accepted neither). The problem with 'Shallan' being fakest is that it's been hinted at numerous times and not only through Shallan's words:

...

You're still assuming here 'Shallan' is some main and true persona and the rest of alters are made-up. This is not how DID works. This would all be just right if not for this assumption. But as it is, yes, she absolutely needs to accept that 'Shallan' is a lie but it doesn't mean she'll go looking for her true personality somewhere. It's all there in her fractured self already. 'Shallan' on her own doesn't even need redemption - without accepting Formless, the 'frenzied child who had murdered her mother' as part of herself, there is nothing there to redeem.

This really is were we disagree. Although I believe the text is deliberately ambiguous on this point, so your's is a valid interpretation. As I indicated above, I think there is a distinct difference between the Shallan personality and the two added in Oathbrigner. Though I will grant that there are definitely aspects to her personality that are the result of trauma and maladaptive coping strategies, I don't think her current personality was created as a response to her early trauma. I think rather that she began to internalize the lie that "I can't be this optimistic quirky person because such a person would never kill their parents". She tells herself that she must deep down be a monster, and so "Shallan" must be a lie, despite the fact that she's been "Shallan" for most of her life with no major discrepancies in her personality, other than what could be accounted for by her deliberately masking her trauma, and her natural character growth. There doesn't have to be a secret, dark and murderous aspect to her, she was just a confused child who reacted in self-defense. That's where I think she's an unreliable narrator: she's not secretly a monster, but that she's been telling herself that for so long that she believes it.

But there is room for interpretation here, this is just where I see her arc going.

In any case, free-willed human beings are able to shape themselves over time, so regardless of where Shallan started, she is capable of becoming whoever she wants to be. But her current mindset has her partitioning aspects of herself into predefined personas, so she won't be able to develop into a better version of herself so long as she doesn't accept herself as one complete, flawed individual.

[Soby]

Crazy takes and just pontificating:

      1. Someone in the thread mentioned their tiredness of Kaladin’s dreariness. I admit, I can empathize for Kal, but honestly, his arc with his mental state (trauma, etc.) is getting repetitive. There’s not really much growth. Brandon is a fan of GRRM, and if Kal stays on this path, I honestly could see a surprise coming like the death of Kaladin that would shock everyone. I love Kal. Overall, he may be my favorite character, but I could also see his arc coming to a close if all that’s left of his story is ups-and-downs until he finally gets past whatever is clogging his mind to progress to the next ideal, over and over and over. I almost could see him sacrificing himself in someway to protect others. 
 

     2. There’s a lot of theories on who Navani’s communicating with via spanreed. Just a thought for me was that maybe it’s a spren—ie The Nightwatcher? The Stormfather opened up dialogue with Dalinar in a strange way. It seems that the Sibling and Nightwatcher will probably have unique lines of introductory communication with whoever they choose to bond. Navani becoming a Bondsmith seems a bit redundant, but I wouldn’t put it out of question. Cultivation has hidden herself from Odium and now that Odium failed to make Dalinar his champion and now would “have to face Dalinar himself” as revealed by Taravangian’s vision in OB, Navani could be the safest bond for the Nightwatcher. The Stormfather has protective feelings for spren and was also a bit demented as he continues to come to himself via his bond with Dalinar through time. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the the Sibling or Nightwatcher has similar protective feelings towards Spren and are a bit demented until they bond a human and grow. Navani also seems to fit with the characteristics that Cultivation would deem as admirable. Side note: I’m hoping Rlain is a Bondsmith as well...

    Also, bondsmith’s May have to sacrifice some things that other radiant’s are allowed to enjoy. The Stormfather requires that Dalinar doesn’t use him as a Shardblade because he sees them as abominations. Similarly, if it’s say, the Nightwatcher opening lines of communication with Navani, it may require her to give up her love of fabrials for the same reason Dalinar is required to give up his love of Shardblades.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Soby

[Rainier]

3 hours ago, Ailvara said:

What she truly needs to do is to be a person who remembers her whole trauma and then still keeps going.

Or, to put it another way, she smiles anyway.

3 hours ago, Ailvara said:

So no, she didn't just create Veil and Radiant - she split into 'Shallan', Veil and Radiant. How good we can finally rely on real-world DID to settle things like that.

21 minutes ago, Scriptorian said:

So I can see an argument that Shallan is a persona in the sense that "I am broken and traumatized inside, but I smile and crack jokes so people don't see it" is her deliberately putting on a false face.

Specifically, she created Shallan a year and a half before the events of WoR, and narratively, she creates Shallan immediately after she shows the vision of the broken child. The next chapter, the flashback, starts with "Shallan became the perfect daughter." Brandon comes out and tells us that she's fake, that Shallan was created to serve a purpose, just like Veil and Radiant.

23 minutes ago, Scriptorian said:

despite the fact that she's been "Shallan" for most of her life with no major discrepancies in her personality

If you re-read the flashbacks in WoR, she definitely changed her personality. That was the whole point, wasn't it? She had to become someone else to protect herself, her brothers, and her stepmother. She became a perfect daughter. The person she became still answered to Shallan, but that doesn't mean she didn't change. She changed greatly, which is exactly what the flashback chapters are meant to show us. This was the first alter, and Brandon showed us the very moment she was created.

27 minutes ago, Scriptorian said:

But her current mindset has her partitioning aspects of herself into predefined personas, so she won't be able to develop into a better version of herself so long as she doesn't accept herself as one complete, flawed individual.

Yes, you're right here, you're just not starting far enough back. She started this after her mother died, and her father started to go off the rails. She partitioned her 'perfect daughter' aspect into a persona, named Shallan, which is most of what we see throughout WoK. It takes her as far as it can, which is when she creates Veil, which, again, takes her as far as it can, before she needs Radiant. All three partitions were created when the existing person was insufficient for the tasks at hand, first when she killed her mother, next when she was separated from Jasnah and completely alone, and finally when she was expected to lead others and publicly embody the Knights Radiant. 

[Scriptorian]

15 minutes ago, Rainier said:

Or, to put it another way, she smiles anyway.

Specifically, she created Shallan a year and a half before the events of WoR, and narratively, she creates Shallan immediately after she shows the vision of the broken child. The next chapter, the flashback, starts with "Shallan became the perfect daughter." Brandon comes out and tells us that she's fake, that Shallan was created to serve a purpose, just like Veil and Radiant.

If you re-read the flashbacks in WoR, she definitely changed her personality. That was the whole point, wasn't it? She had to become someone else to protect herself, her brothers, and her stepmother. She became a perfect daughter. The person she became still answered to Shallan, but that doesn't mean she didn't change. She changed greatly, which is exactly what the flashback chapters are meant to show us. This was the first alter, and Brandon showed us the very moment she was created.

Yes, you're right here, you're just not starting far enough back. She started this after her mother died, and her father started to go off the rails. She partitioned her 'perfect daughter' aspect into a persona, named Shallan, which is most of what we see throughout WoK. It takes her as far as it can, which is when she creates Veil, which, again, takes her as far as it can, before she needs Radiant. All three partitions were created when the existing person was insufficient for the tasks at hand, first when she killed her mother, next when she was separated from Jasnah and completely alone, and finally when she was expected to lead others and publicly embody the Knights Radiant. 

My argument though is that these changes in personality don't constitute a separate "persona" in the same way that Veil and Radiant do. Chronologically, there is a shift in her persoanlity, starting with the flashbacks, through WoK, and then WoR, but it's gradual overtime. She doesn't slip in and out of entirely different outlooks like she does in Oathbringer. Veil thinks like Veil; she's tough, gritty, and revels in her difference from Shallan. When Shallan is being the "perfect daughter", she's constantly torn up inside. She's behaving differently sure, but her internal narrative doesn't suddenly switch to respecting her father and have all the sensibilities of proper lighteyed lady. Yes, she tries to be a different person, and acts accordingly, but there is a difference between that and literally thinking she is a different person with different skills and backstory. The former fits perfectly with someone whose suffered that kind of trauma and abuse, and doesn't require it being the result of a new "persona". (Though, granted that real-world dissociative identity problems are often the result of abuse and trauma. We might just be splitting hairs here.)

Edited September 2, 2020 by Scriptorian