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Multi colored hair


Shaukan-son-Hasweth

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So on Roshar, people like Renarin, Adolin and Laral have multicolored hair.

Hair-color doesent work like that for humans in real life. And I wan't to suggest that it actually doesen't work like that for humans in the cosmere or Roshar as well.
The singers on the other hand naturally have multicolored hair. With strands representing the skinpatterns underneath. Like fur color with a cow or a dog.

I think the unusual way haircolor works for those people could be related to most people on Roshar having Singer ancestry. It shows up more in Herdazians and Unkalaki but basically everyone has singerblood in them by now. And maybe the reverse could be said for the Singers as well. I wish we could see how the mixed ancestry of those groups came to be. If it was peacefull intermingeling or due to the more sinister aspects of war....

This would fit the story as well. The war must end. And why erradicate one or the other spieces when herritage clearly shows that unity is possible.

What do you think?

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I've kinda taken it the opposite way, and assumed it was a trait that might have come from Ashyn. If there's any planet on the Cosmere where I'd expect people's genetics to be all weird and result in unusual inheritance patterns, it would be the planet where diseases became invested. Now, do I actually have any good reason to believe that? Nope. I've got no real evidence for it. But I do agree that Rosharan hair patterns are definitely not normal for most humans in the Cosmere.

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As unlike Brandon as it is, I always just kind of chalked this up as the Rule of Cool taking effect, just like how some other stories will have impossible eye colors taken as normal in world.  Come to think of it, don't some people in Stormlight have Violet eyes?

Should it work / does it have an in world justification? No.  Is it cool?  Hell yeah.

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1 minute ago, Anomander Rake said:

What in world explanation is there for human development of violet eyes?

Investiture. Radiant ancestry.

Quote

Questioner

On the eye colors on Roshar, there are some weird ones, like orange and yellow. Are those there for a specific reason, or are they just--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. The whole eye color thing is kinda based a little bit on the Knights Radiant, the eyes changing is involved there. What's normal eye colors to them, it's just normal to them. It's not weird to see violet eyes and things like that. But it would be weird to us.

Questioner

Did the eyes have to do with the Orders?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Oathbringer San Francisco signing (Nov. 15, 2017)

 

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Just now, Anomander Rake said:

Fair.  Hadn't seen that WoB before.

I really only meant to use eye color as another example, seems it was a poor choice by me.  I maintain my point on the hair though.

My money is on there being something to explain the hair that just hasn't been revealed. There's no other reason for all the hair colors to breed true like that, or for the potential for a rainbow-haired child to exist.

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7 minutes ago, Invocation said:

My money is on there being something to explain the hair that just hasn't been revealed. There's no other reason for all the hair colors to breed true like that, or for the potential for a rainbow-haired child to exist.

Very well could be that, I mean, you've just gone over the perfect precedent for this to be the case with the eyes and everything lol.

To raise my original point though, there certainly is at least one reason the hair breeds true - its cool!  Pure black + red hair would be awesome, rip shalladin

Do you think the rainbow kid would have his hair grow in a pleasing gradient of colors?  Or a patchwork mess lol.

Edited by Anomander Rake
comma
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1 minute ago, Invocation said:

My money is on there being something to explain the hair that just hasn't been revealed. There's no other reason for all the hair colors to breed true like that, or for the potential for a rainbow-haired child to exist.

It could be as simple as a passive effect of Cultivation making genetic Diversity and/or Divergence more expressive.  Granted this might be an outdated idea, it was my first impression on the Rosharan human subspecies, back before we knew the actual history of the peoples on Roshar. I figured Cultivation was causing the evolutionary diversity on the planet to increase and Diverge and that was why there were folks with metallic gold hair, "Samson Eyebrows", blue skin, stone fingernails, etc.  We now know there are unique, specific explanations for some of those, so it's probably not as simple as that.

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1 minute ago, Anomander Rake said:

Do you think the rainbow kid would have his hair grow in a pleasing gradient of colors?  Or a patchwork mess lol.

Patchwork mess is funnier, but I keep imagining a gradient layered out from the scalp.

Just now, Quantus said:

It could be as simple as a passive effect of Cultivation making genetic Diversity and/or Divergence more expressive.  Granted this might be an outdated idea, it was my first impression on the Rosharan human subspecies, back before we knew the actual history of the peoples on Roshar. I figured Cultivation was causing the evolutionary diversity on the planet to increase and Diverge and that was why there were folks with metallic gold hair, "Samson Eyebrows", blue skin, stone fingernails, etc.  We now know there are unique, specific explanations for some of those, so it's probably not as simple as that.

I figure it's some combination of a little bit of that, a little bit of worldhopper shenanigan genetics entering Roshar's gene shardpool, other side effects of Radiant ancestry that were more lowkey than eye color, all with a dash of high Investiture environment highlighting it.

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On 2/11/2022 at 0:50 PM, Quantus said:

It could be as simple as a passive effect of Cultivation making genetic Diversity and/or Divergence more expressive

it could also be that, because Roshar has a less... active mantle/core, it means that it has less of an electromagnetic field that can deflect harmful radiation which causes more genetic mutations. Rosharans would also be less susceptible to cancer, as latent investiture would strengthen their immune systems.

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