The most traumatized radiant group

[Keke They/he]

so random questions. What’s the most traumatized radiant group? Im inclined to say lightweaver because they lie to themselves and whatnot but im not an expert. What do you think?

[Quantus he/him]

Lightweavers dont Lie to themselves, they are forced to face the Truth about themselves.  By oaths it's probably the Elsecallers or Dustrbringers as being the most focused on their personal failings and potential for harm.  

[#1 Taln Fan he/him]

I've moved this topic to the Stormlight Archive forum, as it's better suited here.

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Thee insane said:

so random questions. What’s the most traumatized radiant group? Im inclined to say lightweaver because they lie to themselves and whatnot but im not an expert. What do you think?

I think there are two major flaws with both this question and the line-of-reasoning that leads to this:

1. Trauma is not required to become Radiant (WoBs below) - it's an in-world theory based on an incomplete understanding of the Realmatics involved in how Investiture manifests in Spiritwebs.
2. The idea that Trauma can or should be comparable is horrible. Is a mother less or more traumatized by the death of a child than another of her children is at the death of a sibling? Is a person that has been beaten, raped, scarred, etc. more or less traumatized than a person who has been gaslit, emotionally abused, psychologically tortured? What about the person maimed on the battlefield? Or, as the WoBs point out, just people who are neurodivergent or have dysmorphia of some kind? This is not the Dystopian Olympics and there is no reason to "compare trauma" as if the burdens of one are ever "lesser" than the burdens of another. 
   • Trying to group this in some way is even worse, as if all Windrunners, regardless of any trauma they may bear, are somehow the same and that they should, as a group, be compared to another group to determine who has it worse. 

People are people and those with burdens to bear are still people. Physical, Psychologic, Emotional, Spiritual impacts to their life should not be considered some "score card of suffering." Be kind, be supportive. As Ms. McGuire says in her essay (Altered Perceptions) where she frankly discusses her OCD Diagnosis and how that impacts her writing and her life: 

Quote

Seanan McGuire

<snip>

The dominant idea of OCD is still Adrian Monk or Hannelore, or Emma from Glee. I’ve been in tears over her many times since the show began, because it breaks my heart a little when I see her struggling to control something she never asked for, never did anything to earn, and has to deal with all the same. Most people with OCD aren’t these stereotypes. They’re your friend who always has hand sanitizer, or your cousin who never leaves the house until seven minutes after the hour. They’re the guy you went to college with who has a collection of lawn gnomes in his bathroom, and buys a new one every six months. They’re your favorite football player. They’re that composer you like.

They’re me.

Remember that just because someone is a functional, relatively normal-seeming human being, that doesn’t mean they’re wired the same way that you are. I have to remind myself that not everybody wants their day broken down into fifteen-minute increments, because for me, that is the norm. The human mind is an amazing thing, full of possibilities, and each of us expresses them differently. I am a cybernetic space princess from Mars, and that’s not a choice I made; that’s the way I was made. I can get an address on Earth, but Mars will always be my home.

I made a comment on Twitter not long ago that I was an “odd duck,” because I wanted to dance to a Ludo song at my wedding (no, one isn’t planned, I just like to think ahead). A friend of mine replied, “You’re not an odd duck, you’re a normal platypus.” I think I’m going to roll with that. So the next time someone wants to be early, or can’t leave the house without checking that the toaster is unplugged, or does something else you can’t understand but that doesn’t actually hurt you, please try to remember that it’s a big ecosystem. We have room for ducks and platypi.

Everybody loves a semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action, right?

WoBs:

Spoiler

Quote

AndrewStirlingMacDonald (paraphrased)

Is being a little bit crazy a prerequisite to becoming a Knight Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Well, so, for many of the cosmere magics to work, you have to... it has to get into the soul somehow. Right? Sometimes you ram it in by spiking someone else's soul and ripping off a piece and sticking it into yours. Sometimes, it just seeps in the cracks. Sometimes the bond allows it to kind of bypass some of this, but it's usually traumatic experience. So crazy is not required, but there's got to be a place for the magic to go, to get in.

Shadows of Self Boston signing (Oct. 14, 2015)

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Edited for length and relevance

Brandon Sanderson

Well, the Shard-- Like, here's the thing we have to get at with this, what we're getting at, which is the question of, for instance, is Kaladin's depression a flaw in him that needs to be healed? And that is a question for philosophers. There are certainly people, cosmere and outside the cosmere, that say "Yes, this needs to be healed" and things like this. But what about somebody who's-- say, someone who is autistic, and their mind just works in a different way, and this way allows a certain bond to happen that couldn't otherwise happen? Is that a flaw, or is that-- is it a bug or a feature, to speak in coding terms? Is what's up with Kaladin a bug or a feature? I know that my wife would probably get rid of her depression if she could, but it's also been fundamental in how she sees the world and who she is, would that change her into a different person? And things like this. So, I want you when you discuss this, to be very careful about treating mental illness as a flaw as opposed to an aspect of a human personality that allows certain different things to happen. Does that make sense? *applause*

JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016)

Quote

Questioner

The Stormlight Archive deals with mental health significantly. Are you telling a story of overcoming mental health and its difficulties, or are you telling a story of ongoing...

Brandon Sanderson

I am telling a story about characters that I want to be as real to my lived experience as possible. So the story of The Stormlight Archive, what is it about? It is not about mental health. It is about people, but a disproportionate number of them do struggle with kind of dynamic mental health issues.

Mental health is one of these things where there’s always individual answers. If we talk about my wife Emily, there is no cure for depression. Even medication is about managing depression. For her, the right answer is cognitive behavioral therapy and learning what it is to live with depression, and then countering that proactively in her mind, at least for her. That is the answer that she has found that works very well for her. Other people might be able to… I have had a family member who had depressive episodes that lasted a number of years. And they, through therapy, were able to get to where they no longer would be considered having depression, because for them it was a different sort of thing. And these are two explorations of what we would lump as the same sort of mental health issue. But is it even? Everyone is so individual, right?

For the vast majority of people struggling with mental health issues, it is more like Emily than it is like this family member that it was about overcoming it. I consider it to the individual, that the story I’m telling about. I will use the example of the difference between (for physical handicaps) Rysn and Lopen. For Lopen, the story is: there’s going to be a cure, and I have been cured. For Rysn, there is no cure, and it’s about, instead, living with the disability. Overcoming the disability, yes, but it always being part of who she is. And those are two life experiences that we can find people in this room who have probably... Some are continuing to live with a handicap, and others have found that there is some way to just completely get over. And that’s an individual thing.

And I’m not trying to say in The Stormlight Archive, “This is the right path.” Except for the right path being: getting help is okay. Working on it’s okay. And society should maybe do a better job about understanding it.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

Sorry for the mini-rant, but the implications in this kind of question, I think, deserve to be put in context quickly for how dismissive and hurtful they feel.

Mods will let me know if I have gone too far in my response, and I will correct it if necessary. 

Edited January 24, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG