maxal Posted July 6, 2015 Report Share Posted July 6, 2015 (edited) I am unsure what this conversation is trying to prove. A WoB stated there was a link in between the spren gender and its knight, though not the one Brandon assumed his questioner thought of. Quite nebulous to say the least. However, since this idea has been discussed before, I would thus be tempted to believe Brandon thought Feather was referring to either gender identity or to sexual preferences which would thus nullify the theory the two phenomenons are linked. Now this is tenuous analysis at best and hardly conclusive, but this is how I would interpret this new WoB at hand. When it comes to gender identity or sexual preferences, I tend to consider the characters own POV as the greatest clues we have. Dalinar, Kaladin, Adolin and Shallan have all reflected on their personal life at one moment or another and none has ever expressed any doubt as to which side of the fence they may like to dance. In a society presumably (I make this mere assumption based on the fact we have seen no such unions and Alethi are very divided when it comes to gender) frowning on same sex unions, I genuinely believe an individual falling outside the mold would dedicate large part of its inner thoughts on this specific issue. None of the four mentioned characters have expressed such thought, quite the opposite. All three male comments on women they alternatively find attractive and Shallan giggles quite a lot when it comes to men. It would demand serious writing and investment to change these characters to make them believably fall into another gender/sexual preference then those currently assumed. I thus cannot back the theory the gender of the spren is linked to the gender/sexual preference of its knight. However, other reasons could explain it and make it relevant without tackling this issue. It could be as it was suggested that knights project into their sprens the gender being most significant for them or perhaps the gender they believe they need to complement themselves. Renarin needs a male spren because he has issues succeeding at anything male-related whereas he is quite good at female-related task (presumably). Kaladin, Shallan and Jasnah fall right within the expectations of their gender so they end up bonding an opposite gender spren. Dalinar is a special case... He may feel he need to merge with Galivar, hence he bonds male Stormfather... In any advent, I seriously doubt any of these characters are either bisexual or homosexual. Edit: I also do not understand why Adolin is mentioned in this discussion: he does not have a spren. The discussion thus fall on Dalinar and Renarin. Adolin has nothing to do with it, though if my personal assumption are exact, his future spren should be female. Edited July 6, 2015 by maxal 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Titan Arum Posted July 6, 2015 Report Share Posted July 6, 2015 (edited) I hate to keep riding this, but vindication, by the very definition of "statistically meaningful", it IS statistically meaningful. Our sample size is now five. We have one-tailed, two-category categorical data, and a spread of 5-0. Our p-level is therefore 0.03; the probability of the null is 1/32, and by the commonly-accepted definition of statistical significance as "significant at p=0.05", our data simply IS statistically significant. And now we have WoB that spren gender is significant. I don't know what this means aout Renarin, but by WoB, it means something. I am certainly not convinced that the Kholins are intersex or LGBT. But if the easy explanation goes away, can anyone propose an explanation that accounts for the consistent opposite-sex assortment early on, and also account for the same-sex assortment with the Kholins? You're still looking at the significance of one observation/draw of four or five Radiants. Which means you're still ignoring the Type 1 Error. Your sample size is too small. You're conveniently confusing probabilities of one event to imply significance overall for all events. And you're conveniently forgetting that it should be a two-sided test. Not one-sided, since we have TWO instances of same-sex spren bonding. Again, just because you flip 5 heads in a row, does not cause me to reject the null hypothesis that the coin is fair. I would want to repeat the test of flipping a coin 5 times in a row over and over again. Because our sample size is going to be much larger in this situation, our statistical precision, or standard error, will be better. As we reach an infinite amount of tests, you'll conclude that the coin is fair and you will not reject the null hypothesis. Without sounding too rude, you're using statistics and interpreting significance incorrectly. Edited July 6, 2015 by Titan Arum 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhavaer Posted July 6, 2015 Report Share Posted July 6, 2015 Shallan giggles quite a lot when it comes to men. She also gets a paragraph or two in both books of drooling over Jasnah. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Honor Spren Posted July 6, 2015 Report Share Posted July 6, 2015 Ummm what is going on in page two?? My Internet is blocking it, saying it has pornography on it. . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxal Posted July 6, 2015 Report Share Posted July 6, 2015 She also gets a paragraph or two in both books of drooling over Jasnah. Alright. I had forgotten about that one, though I did not get she was entertaining any sexual thoughts, but point taken. Ummm what is going on in page two?? My Internet is blocking it, saying it has pornography on it. . . There is a naked picture of all male Kohlin plus Kaladin so we could compare Sorry. I had to say it 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaellok Posted July 7, 2015 Report Share Posted July 7, 2015 (edited) This could just be an effect of the small sample size used to reach the prior conclusion. going on. I think you may be right! Let me give you a true counter-example. My senior year in high school, 100% of the gay population was African American, and 50% of the African American population was gay. There were 254 or so people in total for the sample size that proved that 100% of Caucasian, Hispanics, and Asians are hetero. Does that really make a damnation bit of sense to you? Or would it make more sense that something completely unrelated is going on? Like I lived in central Kansas, and due to school district lines went to a rich suburb high school instead of a poor inner-city one (lived in Wichita, pop. 350k, went to school in Goddard, pop. rich). Let's use another counter-example! Last week I had Indian (chicken tikka masala and paneer butter masala curry) for lunch on Mon, Tues, and Wed. On Thursday and Friday, I had Thai (panang curry). What meaningful conclusions can you draw from that? Right, none. Except that I love curry--and even that is a stretch. You could acknowledge that your sample size is too ridiculously small to be drawing any sort of conclusion about literally anything, or, I guess, you could, like, continue being a troll. And I'm thoroughly convinced of the troll-nature of your troll-posts after having read the entire thread. Edit: speling Edited July 7, 2015 by kaellok 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blad3mast3r Posted July 7, 2015 Report Share Posted July 7, 2015 I though renarin's spren was referred to as "he" pretty sure none of the main characters are LGBT, and honestly, it doesn't matter Also, a spren bond is not sexual at all, its more like a friendship/co-worker kinda thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FeatherWriter Posted July 7, 2015 Report Share Posted July 7, 2015 I though renarin's spren was referred to as "he" pretty sure none of the main characters are LGBT, and honestly, it doesn't matter Also, a spren bond is not sexual at all, its more like a friendship/co-worker kinda thing. Yes, Glys (who is Renarin's spren) is referred to with masculine pronouns. The current speculation is on the grounds of the fact that most of the other Nahel bonds involve opposite gender pairs, with Renarin and Dalinar proving the exception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moogle Posted July 7, 2015 Report Share Posted July 7, 2015 (edited) If we're looking for patterns, most of the male spren so far have been on the bottom half of the Surgebinding chart (the side with all the female Heralds), and our one female spren is from the Windrunners, who are associated with a male Herald. Bondsmiths prove the exception here.Because spren sort of made the system on their own (copying the Honorblades), I don't think we're going to see a particularly neat system. Brandon's described how he likes systems that aren't clean when talking about spren types not being a clear correlation with the orders (eg. why would a spren of mathematical truth love the lying Lightweavers?)Perhaps the general pattern (which will have exceptions) is that certain orders are more likely to attract people of a certain gender. Scholarship is done by females, so the Elsecallers/Truthwatchers are generally female and get male spren. Fighting is typically a male thing, so you see the Windrunners as getting a female spren. Why the opposite gender from the Herald involved, I don't know.I will however get behind making the prediction that Szeth gets a female spren if he does become a Skybreaker. I'm not very confident, but I think the chance is a little greater than 50%.I don't think the order's spren will have differing genders. Syl says that all spren (I think she meant of a singular type) are essentially the same individual. Could be wrong, though. EDIT:A new WoB confirms that spren are not all the same gender, so there goes that idea. Edited July 9, 2015 by Moogle 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurkistan Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 (Double posting to actually get this thread back up. I'm terrible and will edit into a single post in a little while.) A new WoB confirms that spren are not all the same gender, so there goes that idea. Interestingly, though, that WoB does suggest that "significant, but maybe not in the way that [Feather] was imagining" might be so simple as referring to gender ratios for certain types of spren. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted July 10, 2015 Report Share Posted July 10, 2015 It's also interesting that his response seems to indicate that simply having gender is typical of spren, which I'm surprised to learn. Still, he didn't flat-out say it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VindicationKnight Posted July 10, 2015 Report Share Posted July 10, 2015 It's also interesting that his response seems to indicate that simply having gender is typical of spren, which I'm surprised to learn. Still, he didn't flat-out say it. Well they are shaped by human perception, and humans do tend to personify things with familiar traits so in a way it makes a certain sense... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted July 10, 2015 Report Share Posted July 10, 2015 Flamespren and Rainspren aren't shown as things with gender. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natc Posted July 10, 2015 Report Share Posted July 10, 2015 And nobody has ever bonded one or seen one in Shadesmar yet either. Well, nobody who has done so in a PoV chapter anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudeis Posted July 10, 2015 Report Share Posted July 10, 2015 And nobody has ever bonded one or seen one in Shadesmar yet either. Well, nobody who has done so in a PoV chapter anyway. The question didn't say bonding spren, just spren. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natc Posted July 10, 2015 Report Share Posted July 10, 2015 And spren in general look like pretty much whatever they're named for. We've never seen a humanoid flamespren, period, or heard one speak. You can't really just look at a blob of fire and say it is a dude. Even Syl looks like random stuff a lot of the time, and she's honorspren. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParadoxicalZen Posted July 10, 2015 Report Share Posted July 10, 2015 Bear in mind that a Spren's appearance will more than likely differ between Cognitive and Physical perceptions going from what Ivory describes of Painspren appearing in Shadesmar Just because they appear as something insiginificant in the Physical Realm, their Cognitive form could differ tremendously. They might not even have a gender Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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