ejberkenpas22 Posted July 12, 2018 Report Share Posted July 12, 2018 I am about 3/4 of the way through Oathbringer so please do not include any spoilers in your answers. I am a little confused about Shallan's lightweaving. The way I've understood it, is she basically uses stormlight to create images of other people/things. Generally, she is attaching images of Veil/Radiant/etc. to herself. That all makes sense. What doesn't make sense is how the personalities of each of those personas she's created seem to be attached to the lightweavings and I don't believe that's how they work. In short, I don't understand how Shallan can't summon her shardblade because of her history with the thing but Radiant can with no issue. She's still the same person and unless the lightweaving changes her personality too, Radiant should have the exact same issue with summoning the shardblade as Shallan does. This issue arises for me in many other areas with Shallan's character. I love these books but with my current understanding of lightweaving, Shallan's character seems a little broken or unrealistic to me. Any help/explanations are greatly appreciated. And again, please note that I am only 3/4 of the way through Oathbringer so please no spoilers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calderis Posted July 12, 2018 Report Share Posted July 12, 2018 I've requested that this be moved to the OB board as it's a purely OB topic. In answer. Spoiler Her personas are not a result of her illusions, she created illusions to match her personas. The masks that she wears are purely in her mind. The powers basically aid her in lying to herself, but she'd be doing that to herself regardless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarletSabre Posted July 12, 2018 Report Share Posted July 12, 2018 (edited) You should probably put this in the Oathbringer Spoiler board, and put [OB] in the title! Spoiler And what you're seeing is essentially Shallan's mental health issues given form. Notice how she disassosiates herself with each of her personas, and even convinces herself that they're real, including her Shallan persona. She compartmentalises aspects of herself to deal with them, she puts her pragmatism and focus as a warrior, her need to be serious and straight-laced and live up to her perceived expectations as a Radiant into, well, Radiant. She's someone who can not think about her history with Pattern the Blade. She puts her lust for Kaladin into Veil, or rather, that's the persona where it manifests, and there's certainly bleedover of the personas, since we see Shallan herself oogling Kaladin at several points, unknowingly. I think this is actually when she starts actively pushing that onto Veil, in fact, saying that Veil has "terrible taste in men". Her Lightweaving and proficiency with it allows her to disassociate with her personas more easily and exacerbates the problem, so what you're seeing isn't so much an effect of the Lightweaving, but how Shallan is using it. The Lightweaving isn't creating the personas, rather it's allowing Shallan to more easily disassociate and make the personas more real, especially as she continues to push off unwanted feelings and thoughts onto them, and compartmentalise things into them. Edited July 12, 2018 by ScarletSabre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ejberkenpas22 Posted July 12, 2018 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2018 10 minutes ago, ScarletSabre said: You should probably put this in the Oathbringer Spoiler board, and put [OB] in the title! Sorry, I am new to this forum and not sure of the right places to post things yet. Thank you for bearing with me. Thank you for the answer as well, that really does help me understand her and I feel much more settled about her character now. She's one insane girl haha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaladin Zahel Posted July 12, 2018 Report Share Posted July 12, 2018 If youve seen the movie 'Split' it operates the same way with clothing essentially. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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