kari-no-sugata

Couple of interesting new WoBs: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/176-oathbringer-chicago-signing/#e8480 Well, perhaps a hint that there's something magical about Shallan's personas? (Perhaps magically enhanced or entrenched...? Probably building on top of existing mechanisms in the brain if so though...) https://wob.coppermind.net/events/176-oathbringer-chicago-signing/#e8452 Rather unclear unfortunately. Brandon has previously indicated that Shallan's eyesight is magically enhanced or something - perhaps that's what he's referring to (This WoB)? But then, why would Pattern directly refer to the Surge of Transformation when Shallan persuaded the deserters to help her? Or is Brandon referring to something else? Some older WoB perhaps related to previous discussion on what happened to Pattern after Shallan killed her mother: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/161-words-of-radiance-washington-dc-signing/#e6997 It would be interesting to know if "betray his oaths" means betraying all oaths completely (like the Radiants at the Recreance) or just by going down a level. Some older WoBs for reference: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/60-firefight-san-francisco-signing/#e6663 I hope we do actually find out... someday... https://wob.coppermind.net/events/156-words-of-radiance-lexington-signing/#e2846 Shame we don't have this one done precisely.... https://wob.coppermind.net/events/221-words-of-radiance-omaha-signing/#e7874

I like this theory. It'll be interesting to see what such a development would mean for Rock. It would be interesting to know more about how squires work in terms of Surges and their potential order as a Radiant. If we assume that the squire bond is a human-to-human bond that depends upon the connection between the two (distance + personal closeness) then I don't see any reason why being a squire of a Windrunner precludes one from joining another order as a Radiant. Another reason to think that this might be the case is that otherwise the Windrunners would seem highly likely to be massively over-represented as a percentage of total Radiants as they get far more squires than anyone else.

Shallan's drawings of Jasnah are specifically said to be "an interpretation that was not exact". She's attempting to go beyond simply copying to creating. I think there's a WoB somewhere that Shallan normally shouldn't need her drawings the way she uses them. Pattern says this in WoR as well, or something like that. Shallan feels that she can create the image of her as a broken girl because she knows it so well - it's a special exception. We know the other Cryptics are literally there. The one Shallan talks to doesn't talk quite like Pattern. She thinks the voice is different. I'm not going to ignore all that in combination without a really good reason. Hmm? The deck going green is after Shallan summons Pattern. He's there and specifically trying to make Shallan remember her past. Or do you mean summoned him as a Shardblade? In which case I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying that it's a pure coincidence that Shallan figured out how to do sound after her level up and that it's unrelated? Illumination is said to be the Surge of "Light, Sound and Various Waveforms". I don't think it's unreasonable that some aspects of that become much easier at higher Ideals. Perhaps a musician focused Lightweaver would have been able to create sound at the 3rd Ideal but struggled with it but became great at it as the 4th Ideal? Maybe we'll see the "various waveforms" bit when Shallan hits the 5th Ideal? (perhaps making solids vibrate, for example) I would like to know more about how other Lightweavers do it too. We seem to be talking about very different things here.

btw, here's a list of interesting WoBs. They help set the scene a bit: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5899 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/222-words-of-radiance-houston-signing/#e5609 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/221-words-of-radiance-omaha-signing/#e7874 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/167-steelheart-chicago-signing/#e3028 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100-rbooks-ama-2015/#e3493 One general thing I'd like to point out: in OB, Shallan's memory seems distinctly better. She's able to remember various things that she had forgotten. She's able to Lightweave people she that not drawn in years etc - in WoR, her ability to Lightweave based on a drawing lasted about half a day to a day. However, between the start of tWoK and the end of WoR her memory doesn't noticeably improve. I suspect that it would have if she had progressed a level as a Radiant during this time. The WoR quote (from chapter 6) about what Shallan experienced in tWoK is: I don't think Shallan would have been able to speak to Pattern in tWoK as he was too dead at the time - I don't think he could speak to Shallan at all until the start of WoR. She didn't even know he existed. So I think it's different to Syl speaking to Kaladin while being sort-of dead near the end of WoR. I think it was only after Shallan pulled Pattern back to the Physical Realm (by drawing him at the start of WoR) that Pattern could speak to her again. I don't see a good reason to believe that Shallan's opinion in the quote above is wrong. As a general point about tWoK, Shallan was trying to Soulcast (once she stole Jasnah's Soulcaster). So I think the Cryptics took advantage of this opportunity to try to get Shallan to use Soulcasting by herself. At no point did she try to Lightweave (that I can think of). So what's actually going on here? To be honest, I have a few ideas but I'm not sure which aspects were the most important. I don't think we've seen anything similar so we don't have much to go on. I'm pretty sure that her actual ability to Soulcast depends on her bond with Pattern - that she wouldn't have been able to Soulcast if she hadn't tried to summon Patternblade is very strong evidence. So I think these other Cryptics formed either a temporary bond with Shallan that piggybacked her existing bond with Pattern or they somehow stimulated her to use her existing bond with Pattern. Something along those lines. I think it's highly likely that their motivation was to help Shallan rekindle her bond with Pattern by prompting her to become more self-aware. I very much doubt that any old truth spoken to a Cryptic grants you a level up. On a side note, my guess is that the Lightweavers don't get access to Soulcasting until the 3rd Ideal. This would be consistent with some other Orders. In addition, Jasnah initially suspected Shallan was also an Elsecaller - probably because as far as Jasnah knew Shallan started with Soulcasting (rather than Lightweaving). We'll probably need a WoB or to see new Lightweavers to know for sure. I don't follow this argument. Shallan didn't Lightweave once until after she had summoned Pattern at the start of WoR. The "I'm terrified" and "I killed my father" lines came before then, in tWoK. So how can you say that they're directly part of her progress as a Lightweaver in WoR since they happened in tWoK? Her improving ability in Lightweaving is simply experience as she figures out the mechanics. Same as Kaladin's ability to "fly". She had to start from zero experience but had the advantage that she was already at the 3rd Ideal. Early on she could make "augmentations" work quite well (making herself look prettier etc) but external Lightweavings were terrible. She finally made the direct connection between her drawings and Lightweaving after she got to the warcamps, which helped her ability a lot. I suspect "augmentations" are a 2nd Ideal Lightweaving skill and the more complex disguises and external Lightweaving is a 3rd Ideal Lightweaving skill. To repeat my argument, I don't think Shallan admitting to killing her father counted as a level up for the simple reason that it was not a truth that she could no longer ignore, unlike her admitting to killing her mother. (ie the former didn't count as an Ideal but the later one did) However... I do think that her admitting to her killing her father was important. I doubt she'd have been able to summon Pattern without that. We see in WoR that when Kaladin starts to go against his 2nd Ideal that Syl gets weaker and his Surges get weaker. So there is variation in the bond outside of levelling up (or down). During the years between when Shallan killed her mother and when she killed her father, her memory of killing her mother was slowly improving and she was becoming more self-aware. However, killing her father knocked her back a lot (but not an entire level). So properly admitting to killing her father helped her general self-awareness improve but wasn't an actual level-up. That's my best explanation for now at least. The first time Shallan actually summoned Patternblade was with Tyn, yes. I believe she would have been able to summon him at any time (including in tWoK) though - I seem to remember there being a WoB about this but I can't find it.

I'm not sure I got my theory across so I'll try explaining it again. So, I'm taking the following as evidence: In tWoK we know Shallan was surrounded by Cryptics. In WoR she believes the one(s) she spoke to were not Pattern. (Makes logical sense too, considering Pattern's state prior to WoR) In WoR, Pattern believes that Shallan could Lightweave sound in the past, but she fails to achieve it in the present despite a lot of testing In OB, Shallan is able to Lightweave sound. At this point she is one level higher than in WoR Per WoB, Shallan is one level higher than Kaladin. He's at the 3rd Ideal so this puts Shallan at the 4th Ideal. (Side note, Shallan refers to her truths as the odd Ideals of the Lightweavers, so I'm using "Ideal" for consistent terminology across Radiant orders) In OB, we find out that speaking a truth that progresses one as a Lightweaver makes it impossible to forget/ignore that truth. The in-world WoR book says Lightweavers progress by becoming more self-aware. #5 is evidence that her truth at the end of WoR is the only one (that readers know of) that progressed her a level as a Lightweaver. This means that "I am afraid" and "I killed my father" did not progress her as a Lightweaver. This makes logical sense based on #1 because she is not bonded to the Cryptics she spoke to. In other words she is only bonded to Pattern so only truths spoken to him can count towards her progressing a level as a Lightweaver. Based on this and #4, I believe Shallan was at the 3rd Ideal the whole time since she killed her mother. Taking #2 and #3 suggests that Lightweavers can only manipulate sound once they reach the 4th Ideal. This suggests that Shallan was at the 4th Ideal before killing her mother. Based on #6 I believe that Shallan suppressing her memory of killing her mother (and her memories of Pattern) reduced her self-awareness enough to drop her down a level (from 4th Ideal to 3rd Ideal). By admitting to this at the end of WoR, Shallan returns to the 4th Ideal. This is why I think "new lies" (after having bonded a Cryptic) will not help you progress. A big enough new lie would push you down a level of self-awareness. Admitting to that lie would only get you back to where you were before. Hence, I believe only by admitting to old lies can a Lightweaver ultimately progress. If you don't have ones that are significant enough to progress then you're stymied (like Malchin) and can't progress. This might seem nasty but I think it makes sense given that it's not easy for other Orders to reach the higher Ideals as well - I think Lightweavers need a different limiting factor that makes 5th Ideal Lightweavers to be as rare as in other Orders. So I think it's the number of significant enough lies they have prior to bonding. Just to be clear: yes I'm aware that this is all a theory. I'm not presenting this as fact/truth. I would have liked to ask Brandon about it for confirmation but for me it was more important to sort out what was happening to Shallan in OB. I think it's logically consistent with the available evidence but I'm not suggesting that this is the only possible explanation.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/86-gollanczfest-london/#e5675 If I hadn't have had questions about OB for Brandon, I would probably have asked him some questions about this and some related topics. As I said previously, I think when Shallan killed her mother she regressed as a Radiant from the 4th Ideal to the 3rd Ideal. That was enough for her to keep her Shardblade. I think if she had gone lower she probably wouldn't have been able to keep the Shardblade and it might have killed Pattern for real. So I think she had to be 3rd Ideal all the time until the end of WoR. The first time we find out that speaking Truths locks that memory in and means it can't be ignored is in OB. Those "truths" she spoke in tWoK are different and not locked into her. Those were to different Cryptics and not enough to advance her as a Radiant... but were enough to help restore her bond to Pattern. That's how I see it at least, but there's other possibilities. With regards to power ups with advancement, Lift didn't get anything visible and Szeth got something minor. It seems that the Windrunners are unusually flashy for some reason. I suspect that the Lightweavers don't get anything special.

Regarding Shallan's potential final Truth/Ideal... Narratively, we need to know what happened in Shallan's early childhood. Or rather, there's still clearly plenty of questions left there. OB gave us a few more clues but to a large degree we're just as ignorant as ever. There's also various questions about Helaran still too. Shallan seems to know more than what has currently come up in the text but not much more. It's unlikely that we'll find out more unless it becomes relevant to the plot and the most obvious way to achieve that is by making something deep in her past relevant to her Final Ideal. We also have this from WoR: So the implication here (though other interpretations are possible) is that Shallan's mind would already have broken before she met Pattern, except that "lies" (at least how Cryptics consider lies) saved her. Since Shallan first started doing Lightweaving years before she killed her mother, she was probably 8 at most at this time. I think it's likely that these "lies" relate to her Final Ideal. We also have this from tWoK: This is probably one of the other Cryptics around Shallan at the time. I'm guessing they form a temporary bond (probably building on top of Shallan's existing bond to Pattern). Based on this I think for a truth to be a Truth (an Ideal) it needs to be strong enough and deeply hidden enough. From the point at which Shallan bonded Pattern, I suspect that only "old" Truths will work for advancement. Imagine if you could use "new" Truths - that would mean you could deliberately delude yourself then use that as a means for progression. In other words, it would be possible to "cheat". When Shallan killed her mother, I'm pretty sure that this new lie caused her to go backwards in her progression as a Radiant - before as a child she could use sound, but during WoR she couldn't, but she can in OB after having advanced. So I think she was at the 4th Ideal before she killed her mother, then dropped to the 3rd Ideal for 6 years and returned to the 4th Ideal at the end of WoR.

I had been wondering if we might see some mother/daughter type interactions between Shallan and Palona early on. Shallan did feel that Palona was "mothering" her after all, in Part 1. It seems they got along well enough from the brief bits we saw (more in WoR). I would have been fine with something between Shallan and Navani as well, but unfortunately we saw nothing about them from either POV. I'm not sure that would have been enough to make a significant enough difference to Shallan though. To give an alternative, let's say Jasnah noticed that Shallan didn't think much of her accomplishments (in WoR) and so Jasnah took the time to go over with Shallan everything she had achieved and thank her for it. After all, without Shallan, Jasnah's family would probably have been in a much worse state - quite possibly wiped out. If Jasnah did that I think that would have meant a lot for Shallan. I enjoyed all the major POV characters a lot in tWoK, but Shallan felt the most unique and interesting (Jasnah also seemed very unique and interesting but we never got her POVs). In WoR, Shallan was even more interesting so I enjoyed that a lot. OB was the first time I struggled to enjoy reading Shallan (not in the whole book, just certain sections). It can be quite hard being a Shallan fan at times but until OB I had always enjoyed reading her (okay, to be honest there were two scenes in WoR that made me cringe a bit). I'm not an author and I don't have any aspirations to be one but if I were to change the scene where Adolin stares into Shallan's eyes and she suddenly pulls herself together, maybe I would do something like this: Shallan is tiredly sitting against the wall, as before, and decides to pull out her sketchbooks and glance through them all to pass the time (with her personas throwing in various comments). While doing that she realises that all her sketches of Adolin were reliably done well (unlike everyone else). She also realises that she hadn't had a chance to re-evaluate her opinion of Adolin after he told her about killing Sadeas and living a lie in front of everyone else. Shallan realises that she had underestimated Adolin and that they had even more in common than she had previously thought. Veil (and maybe Radiant) then chimes in with some disparaging comments on Adolin and Shallan angrily tells Veil to "Storm off!" When her personas start responding in kind, Shallan takes properly takes control and silences them, as before. I dunno if that would read better but it would give Shallan more agency for a start. I'll PM you later...

It does sound like that level of subtlety, maybe even more so, but I'm pretty sure Brandon specifically said there were visible shifts due to Lightweaving with the persona shifts. I remember thinking at the time that such a thing felt a bit creepy. Hopefully the exact words were recorded. I think that was Wit (decent case for him being able to do it, no good case I can see for anyone else) and I also think he was giving Shallan two options and yes she seems to have taken the 2nd option (rule over them) but I don't think she's doing it quite like a "king" yet. Not quite sure how to phrase it. It's almost like they're friends but with a big difference in social standing between Shallan and the others (ie friendly on the surface but Shallan can easily overrule the others). It's hard to guess how Shallan+co might be like by the time the next book starts - I guess a lot will depend on how stressful she finds everything else that's going on (taking on more official responsibility and all sorts of bad things going on in the world).

Yes, there is that Adolin viewpoint of Shallan shifting to Veil while she looks at Kaladin in Part 4 where Adolin notes multiple things.There is another scene in Part 4 from Shallan's point of view where Adolin seems to be able to accurately tell that Shallan is Shallan at the time but it's rather vague. In the scene at the end that I asked Brandon about, Shallan is sitting down at the time and Adolin is only looking at her eyes (and Navani and Jasnah didn't seem to notice anything too unusual just prior). So, per Brandon, Adolin had gone a lot further than indicated in Part 4 and had learned to spot what persona Shallan was in based on more subtle cues - that Shallan visibly changes due to her Lightweaving each time she shifts personas, but the change is small enough that you wouldn't notice unless you were looking closely. So it's not overt visual cues like in Part 4, but something more subtle that's hard to describe. So from Adolin's point of view, he saw something strange was going on (Shallan was continuously cycling between personas) which is why he reacted quite different to Jasnah and Navani. Without Evi, Dalinar wouldn't have felt guilt in the first place from The Rift, most likely. She humanised him enough. Without Evi, Dalinar wouldn't have been much different to Sadeas. I can't help you much here unless you want to know why I thought Shallan and Adolin was looked likely to work out based on the text since WoR. For example, I thought Shallan falling for Adolin at first sight was a pretty decent clue. Well, there is that line "until they had proclaimed that Jasnah Kholin's love would fail" in chapter 120. I suspect that refers to Dalinar.

Hi @PhineasGage I only have a few minutes for a quick reply, but a few things stood out for me: That we know of I don't think Shallan created any personas/alts until very recently. In Earth terms she's nearly 20. Veil and Radiant aren't from Shallan's early childhood. I don't see why you categorise Shallan as a EP instead of an ANP - Shallan has been the one doing everything in recent memory without any (known) personas/alts. Most people in-world consider Shallan to be relatively normal. Adolin's ability to recognise Shallan's personas is directly related to her ability as a Lightweaver (as I understood it - hopefully the exact wording was recorded) because that's what gives him the visual cues and it's something anyone could do if they paid Shallan sufficient attention for a long enough period. I don't know where Brandon went to for his research. It's possible that there's non-trivial differences in different parts of the world in terms of how such issues are diagnosed and treated. I certainly agree with you on some things - too many things were skipped over too quickly or left too vague. Regarding the romance, let's not get into that here. Feel free to PM me about that if you want a debate.

Yeah, I can imagine Shallan attracting creationspren, Jasnah attracting logicspren, Dalinar attracting gloryspren, but it seems hard to imagine how Kaladin could have attracted windspren as a child. Well, we do know that he feels invigorated by storms - perhaps that played a part somehow? Or maybe it was slightly inverted and Kaladin paid windspren much more attention than normal people did...? I would very much enjoy seeing how the whole process works from a spren's perspective. For Kaladin, he might well have been considered suspicious by the Skybreakers during his time with Amaram (in addition to the one who was apparently eliminated)... but then Amaram seemingly killed Helaran and Kaladin was made a slave so perhaps Kaladin got forgotten about...? If Kaladin had kept the Shards maybe he would have been considered to be highly suspicious by the Skybreakers. For Shallan, Mraize's letter says "Your mother had intimate contact with a Skybreaker acolyte and you know the result of that relationship". This is presumably the guy who came with Shallan's mother to their manor and it seems that Shallan's mother was not in fact a personal member of the Skybreakers (though probably knew something). It seems like the Skybreakers were tipped off about "something suspicious" but not who and they mistakenly believed it was Helaran.

Glad I could help others too. I was frustrated myself with how Shallan's arc was portrayed at the end of OB, but not because of where she ended up but because it was frustratingly vague (and one of the steps at the end was really hard to understand). If Shallan was in more of a mess at the end then the next book would probably feel more like a repeat of OB, which I don't think would be too exciting to read. Instead, we'll probably see new and deeper battles for Shallan to face, as part of her progress to the Final Ideal. I have no idea how much it will cover the "scars" (personas etc) she has picked up from previous battles and whether those will be becoming better or worse separately to her bigger problems. Shallan is sort of the "quiet one". Her battles are really all on the inside - others generally don't even notice. Even her Surges are "quiet" (don't get a reaction during Part 3). In the final battle she's basically just standing/sitting there quietly - yet she's holding back thousands of soldiers and going through a huge amount of pain as a side-effect. Yeah, it's positive development for Shallan but not purely positive and she still has some ways to go. She won the battle but it wasn't a decisive victory and she didn't come through unscathed. But overall she's probably stronger than ever before, mentally. I have my own problems with some of Shallan's portrayal but she's not the only one to have been somewhat saved by love - Dalinar would have remained a "beast" without "beauty" (Evi). I'm sorry to hear you feel that way. I would be curious to know what specifically led you to feeling this way though (ie what just changed for you?) I can't claim to have much knowledge in this area, so the following are purely my impressions as a general reader: My impression is that Shallan's personas were a side-effect of a bigger problem and not an independent problem, and while she made real progress on her bigger problem, the side-effects (her personas) are still there, and she also still has a ways to go in general. So perhaps her personas will independently become a problem in of themselves, or perhaps they will get worse as we start to get very deep into her personal problems (eg Final Ideal and/or what really happened in her early childhood), or maybe they'll turn out to be some kind of solution.

Funnily enough, I had wanted to squeeze in a question to Brandon that referenced that quote (but I was starting to over-stay my welcome). I wanted to ask if Lightweavers can only progress as far as the number of (sufficiently deep) secrets they have. Eg, if you have just 1 deep secret then you'll forever be stymied at the 2nd Ideal. It kinda makes sense to me, else I don't see how Lightweavers would work in terms of progression - I think we can safely assume that reaching the Final Ideal is hard for all Orders, so something has to limit Lightweavers. I don't think this is necessarily the best way to phrase it but it seems like (for Lightweavers at least), the more broken you are the more you can potentially progress.

The reason I rushed out earlier was to go meet Brandon so I have a fresh set of WoBs: I was always planning to ask some questions about Shallan at the end of Oathbringer. (Unfortunately, I am dead tired today so my memory isn't too good). Question 3 is highly relevant to this thread, though question 2 is also relevant.

Have you watched any of his writing classes or listened to Writing Excuses? I've done some of that out of pure curiosity (I have no plans to be an author) and I found much of it to be very interesting. There's also a general page here: https://brandonsanderson.com/writing-advice/

Just got home. Brr, spent about 90 minutes in the cold. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's still people outside queuing! I brought a present for Brandon - a copy of Surely you're joking Mr Feynman! Basically as a thank-you for creating Shallan. She's such a unique character and there's hardly anyone else like her in fiction (Moist von Lipwig from Discworld is a bit similar), and a few months ago I remembered the Feynman book (I had read it about 20 years ago). He's not the same as Shallan (he's a scientist first and an artist second) but he's rather similar at times in all sorts of ways - an early chapter talks about how he stole a door and got away with it by telling the truth Anyway, I managed to get my questions answered. I would have asked more but I was kinda overstaying my welcome.

Maybe I got here too early. Feels quiet edit: nope, 1 hour queue - I was in the wrong place

Just about to rush out so quick reply: Yep, that's what I meant, thanks.

Taking a step back about - what actually is Wit's advice? I would say it's mostly about solving the "root cause" of Shallan's issues. I would say that her personas are really a recent symptom of her issues and the root cause goes much deeper - I think some readers are focusing on the personas too much (they're new and shiny after all). So what are Shallan's issues? Looking at it generally - lack of self-belief, lack of self-respect, lack of self-trust, lack of confidence, lack of self-worth, etc (yes those all overlap a lot). In short, she has a highly negative opinion about herself. We see all this since the start of tWoK, to varying degrees and more in WoR. We get to the trigger for this at the end of WoR - that Shallan killed her mother. Rather than describing the general Shallan we've seen since the start as a persona I would say it's more like that she got into the habit of ignoring painful things, trying to focus on positive things, trying to ignore her problems etc. Despite her problems, Shallan still wants to achieve things so actively tries to work around her problems. However, she can no longer do that in OB. Her old methods no longer work well enough and the pain is too much be endure, hence the new symptom of the personas. I would say that the root cause of Shallan's problems is the overwhelming mental pain from the things she was forced to do, with her other issues flowing from that, directly and indirectly. So Wit's advice is mostly about facing that pain and the associated issues. That Shallan's pain is natural but also not something she has to accept. She doesn't deserve to be in pain. That she is stronger than she believes and can cope with it. That she has value. That she deserves to exist and that it's better for the world that she does. That it's better to "see" and accept the consequences than to blind herself. To accept what happened, to move on, to became a more positive person. Unfortunately, Shallan's state at the end is rather unclear. If we accept her final scene as presented then she is finally able to be positive about herself. I would say that Adolin indirectly played a key role by being an example of someone who valued Shallan herself very highly. Essentially, that Shallan could (finally) believe in Adolin's love for her and feel that she deserved it. So after delaying the wedding (as Part 2 hints at) she accepts and it becomes a tangible step forwards.

Lots to agree with here. Nice summary! Regarding "Dovcanti wrote an epic about it somewhere around fifteen hundred years ago" - I wonder if this is before or after the Recreance. I'm guessing there's not much of a time gap between the two - feels practically synonymous. So this likely puts the Recreance at least 1500 years ago. I wonder if the failings of Urithiru are related to Honor dying? ie they both started dying at about the same time, so possibly there's a correlation? Urithiru was supposed to be the place closest to Honor, after all.

It's not like they're all equally important. Shallan is the dominant personality at the end, as she should be. It's not clear but it seems that Veil and Radiant appear at the same time because Shallan intentionally called them, not because they showed up involuntarily. They fade away together as well. So my best guess is that this is showing that Shallan is in control (as Wit suggested, though how precisely is debatable) and that she has been this way since she decided to take control after the end of the battle. It feels to me like Shallan is treating them like personal advisors to a ruler (her). Shallan has final authority but let's them have their say. Shallan does actually say this: Radiant is certainly for it. Veil isn't enthusiastic but certainly isn't opposing and is also happy for Shallan. He tells her this in "Aim for the sun": I agree with the rest of what you say apart from "stop creating personalities to please other people" - he never explicitly tells her to stop using personas and it's not like that's why Shallan is creating personas in the first place. He very much encourages to take control of them and that being Shallan should be more appealing, amongst other things. If we assume it is Wit talking to her remotely (I'd say almost certainly) then he's either suggesting she treats life as a myriad of roles to experience or alternatively to rule her personas like a king. I think you have to read it in the full context: So basically, he's saying: Yes you can control them, you are better (more wonderful) than your personas, you are worth protecting, it's you who has been the one standing up all this time, it is you who is strong (not your personas). He's encouraging her to believe in herself, to like herself, to value herself. (This is shortly after Shallan calls herself worthless) The first step that Shallan has to make on her path to recovery is to do this. It has to come first. Finalising what she does with her personas can only come after that - they are a symptom of her problem, not the problem itself. To quote a phrase - "Don't let perfection get in the way of progress". (Well, perhaps forgiving herself is the real first step though it's kinda unclear if she has really done this or not. Wit seems to be saying that she has but it doesn't quite feel that way)

I hope to go to this event. The previous one I went to lasted for like 4 hours. Brandon is amazing to his fans!

Quite possibly. Veil uses a white hat and a white coat. Bluth's hat was white and Shallan traded for it.

This is hard for me to answer since it's the main problem I have with OB - it's too vague here. Particularly since Shallan has so obviously been shown to be an unreliable narrator for the whole series. Wit seems to be saying that she is able to stand up because she has forgiven herself, but it doesn't really feel like she has. There's certainly no scene where she clearly forgives herself properly. In the "Aim for the sun" chapter, Wit does also encourage her to be less down on herself / to be happy: Well, she's certainly happy at the end. For the scene quoted in the OP, there is a callback to this in chapter 97: It feels like she does this in the last scene. She allows herself the right to have come this far, to allow herself to be happy, that it's okay to be happy, that it's okay to deserve this. After that she stops feeling embarrassed. Unfortunately, it feels rather corny. It also feels incomplete (even if we ignore her personas). I think it would be highly unlikely that the next book starts with Shallan in a bad state. After all, that would be way too much of a repeat of OB. So, logically... I would expect her to be in a better place in the next book. She still has internal problems to solve of course. There's also her Final Ideal to deal with as well - I think her progress towards her Final Ideal will be a big part of the next book. So I think we're supposed to view Shallan in the end as having made real progress but also that further progress is still required. Anyway, that's what logic tells me. But my inner cynic suggests that Shallan is going to revert to her bad old ways as soon as we turn our backs on her. This is because the text is much too vague on Shallan's progress at the end. Because of this, I'm having trouble accepting it emotionally (and it actually left me rather depressed after finishing reading the book). Edit: With regards to Adolin... Shallan believes he helps her at least. He definitely does listen to her properly. Sometimes there's not much he can say but he does what he can to comfort and support her. She is more relaxed around him. She tends to be herself more around him. He helps Shallan regain dominance over her personas in the end. I personally thought it was really important that he told her that he just wants her (Shallan) as she is. This means she doesn't have to force herself around him, or to keep a mask on herself around him, or try to come up with new masks in order to please him. I think Adolin approving of Shallan herself plays a big part in how she resolves her internal issues at the end. It helps give Shallan self-confidence and self-worth. I think it could have been portrayed much better but that's what I think is going on. It's rather subjective though and open to debate though, unfortunately.