Rakei

On the coppermind there is a little trivia section that makes the claim that in the prime versio of tWoK Renarin wrote the Diagram, based on that kind of assumption (and his truthwatcher-ness and potential to see the future) as well as the very specific wording of his boon, he asked for Capacity, not intelligence, it's quite possible that the two look and seem correlated but aren't strictly speaking the same. He speaks about how on his most "intelligent" days he has to be kept from making decisions because he would make decisions that seem logical to him based on his capacity, while neglecting the application of common sense and pragmatism. capacity refers to mental or physical ability, but also to the ability to hold, store and accommodate. His boon might be in reference to a capacity to reach a higher consciousness, perhaps touch on the territory of Truthwatchers, predicting the future through the perception of prior information, making very elaborate probability functions and statistically predicting the future. That seems to me the most likely answer, collecting the death utterances, and having studied extensively, while in a state of higher consciousness he made elaborate deductions based on known facts, and that's also why he keeps lamenting not having had another day like that to correct the Diagram fully, because it has started to deviate.

I'm pretty sure the latter half of the sentence is more important, it speaks of allowing the orders that were inferior in accessing shadesmar, to come along, and never relinquishing their place as prime liasons with the great ones of the spren. That speaks to me of an arrogance, and well it was prodigiously benevolent to allow the other orders to join them as auxillary on excursions to shadesmar.

There is in either tWoK or WoR a drawing ostensibly by Shallan which illustrates skyeels (which just look like regular eels) The image on the surgebinding chart, looks much more like the chasm-fiends, again a there have been two drawings of them one in each of the books.

I completely disagree on Shallan, multiple times Shallan speaks of many repressed memories, she talks about having many locked boxes, when pattern confronts her to be open about her memories he speaks directly about how it was the Lies that drew him to her, her repressing memories being the lies, the lies of the life she was living at that time. You may disagree but that's how I'm interpreting this. It wasn't the she had pattern killed her mother and then started repressing memories, otherwise Pattern saying he was drawn to her lies (in the context of the massive memory of killing her mother) makes very little sense. Apocrypha again, see there is nothing in the text itself, the work so to speak, that invalidates what I've proposed, not as I've interpret it. I subscribe to the idea of Barthes - the author is "dead", apocrypha is all well and good but it's coherence within in the work that matters not the intent of the author.

Thankfully we're dealing with literary theory and thus unless there is internal incoherence the theory remains valid, though you may disagree that's the the beauty and conundrum of subjective interpretation. I see nothing in the WoB that rejects the notion that the Knights Radiant could well all be burden with mental issues, so far all the ones we know enough off exhibit some profound issue or has been speculated about. It simply states it's doing that's important, but like I said you might have hundreds of people on Roshar who're as focus as Kaladin on protecting and are very honourable, but he's the one who bonded with a Spren. We'll have to agree to disagree. Also I tend to take apocrypha with grains of salt because things change, sometimes there are patterns the writer doesn't notice etc.

I read it and couldn't think of any instance where someone seemed to be pushing or pulling... But I wouldn't rule it out... ingesting metals isn't the same as USING allomancy.

I don't think that's necessarily what's happened. I mean he wears glasses but he sees clearly with them so I don't think he would necessarily think he should have glasses, and if he takes the glasses off he'll be in a state where he can't see which wouldn't seem normal? So the stormlight might just be trying to correct his vision in that way without a conscious will shaping it. kind of like Lopen having his arm growing back, it seems unnatural to him still to be one-armed, and if you wear glasses it is possible to forget about them and when you remove them you go oh now there is no focus. it would just seem odd that Dalinars boon/curse would affect Renarin.

As I'm understanding it from the text itself, Kaladin yells at Syl that he is broken (and therefore not at all capable of being a knight) to which she responds - They all were, silly To further explain I'm going to do a thought experiment. Say you have a one-legged person (with a prosthetic leg) and a hale person and they both run a race, the one with the prosthetic leg will look more impressive. Another, we have two people who're going to give a lecture, they're your average students, but one has social anxiety and a near debilitating stage fright. The both manage to give the lecture, but it's more impressive that the person with social anxiety and debilitating stage fright did it. So living the codes and convictions of the knights, while good and fine, it's not as impressive as a person who has a mental issue (I called it neuroatypical to not offend anyone) which we would normally consider something you had therapy and pharmaceuticals for. I think it's entirely possible that the Ghostsbloods were trying to create a Radiant, the Envisagers were doing a similar thing, but they likely lacked the specific knowledge about the formation of a bond, it can't be forced (at least by the persons themselves) but creating conditions that might create a proto-radiant could be possible. The envisagers all knew what they were trying to do, but none of the Davar children would know they were part of an experiment, they wouldn't be trying to get power, they'd either rise against the odds and perhaps become "proto-radiants" or not. On Lift, I went with what I got from the little we saw of her, she could have abandonment issues on top of everything else, she might turn out to have a very different past than the little we've seen, she could have trust issues which don't specifically have to do with abandonment, she implies she's had a period of emotionlessness (she recognizes it in Darkness' eyes)

Pattern directly tells Shallan that her strong "lies" is what drew him to her, and she has multiple "memory boxes" that she keeps unwanted memories in repressing them to keep from "breaking" I think it might be entirely possible Shallan came from a very broken home from a very early age, much more broken than we've seen so far, and to protect her mind from the reality of her life she dissociated and "lied" so strongly that her very perception of reality warped, which likely drew pattern to her. She then must have said the first words at some point, we haven't seen yet. The weird thing about Patter and Lightweavers seems to be that he can become her shardblade without needing any deeper bond.

I'd say stormlight = pure investiture, lift transforming food into investiture she would be able to do anywhere. But the use of different magics requires somekind of spiritweb grafting to allow it. So if lift worldhopped and didn't bring her spren, she'd basically just invest herself, she might heal, but she'd probably just glow otherwise.

So a few ideas. One the definition of cultivation, we have a scene during an interlude of Eshonai where she mentions crops being grown with stormlight, this might be unique to parshmen, and I wouldn't be able to speculate on if it's a magic as such. Then there is the parshmen forms, they change forms through symbiosis with certain types of spren, that's a kind of cultivation as well. The bond between men and spren, could also be called a symbiosis, at least pattern refers to it as such, a deal where the spren gets something and in return gives power in return. There has been a lot of emphasis on symbiosis between spren and the animals of Roshar e.g. chasmfiends, skyeels, greatshells if one looks at it like that... Surgebinding = C+H voidbinding = C+O (a system which incorporates fabrials) = O+H? / C+O+H (less inclined to think cultivation has any part of a system that captures spren in gemstones, to do the bidding of the user through the consumption of stormlight, is this a Rosharan end-negative investiture?)

That's an interesting idea, also interesting of course that there is that connection between "pressure" and illumination (sound-waves). I wonder if that means there are other surges/orders that have powers that might imitate each other to some degree, or make use of similar concepts to achieve different goals.

ah thanks for the information, dunno how I missed that. Still makes the surge incredibly confusing, I mean if you can decrease pressure (create vacuum) to bind things together which I would then think is how the binding works, is it then theoretically possible to increase pressure and crush something? Maybe it's possible but no one has had the level of understanding needed to affect that into reality... scary though if windrunners theoretically could increase atmospheric pressure and crush an armoured man, or shelled beast... Well I imagine a possessor of the surge abrasion could affect more with the surge than just their body, so they could make a branch extremely abrasive and light it at fire easily?

Both can be true. It can also be that neither humans nor pharsmen are originally of Roshar at all. But it is at least interesting to note that unlike scadrial neither of the humanoids were created in anyway by the shards that ascended/arrived on Roshar.

My understanding of adhesion is that at its fundamental it's a surge that influences electromagnetic fields and thus has very little to do with friction or the abrasiveness of the surfaces, what that implies is that even two completely frictionless slick surfaces would stick together by influencing the electromagnetic field of the objects through the adhesion surge. So I don't think there is anything that precludes the ability to increase abrasiveness as well as diminish it? But I mean that's just how I've been considering it.

I would assume Jasnah would be the recipient of the story, as a distraction from having a real conversation with Hoid, similarly to how he treated Kaladin, it could even fit in the sense that it would be a parallel Jasnah wouldn't immediately see how she is connected to it and therefore be an almost meaningless story for her. So if it's a parallel of Shallan and Jasnah hears it she won't immediately know she's been told something important. Similarly to how Kaladin received the story the Wandersail the parallel of Szeth, a story he doesn't know yet was important. The story of Fleet was fundamentally different in that Kaladin told the parallel himself at a time when he needed to hear it, it was supposed to be a lesson for him to learn from so he could help himself.

As I understand the basic lashing, alters the direction that gravity works on the windrunner or an object. Which means the natural rules of the world bends so long as they hold stormlight/Investiture to affect that change.

"Humans and parshmen don't have a common ancestor. And as a side note, both of these strains of humanoids predate the ascension of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium." I would take that to mean Humans and Parshmen, they're separate humanoid strains, which existed prior to the shattering. it also means that Rosharan humans are not originally of Honor, Cultivation or Odium. So maybe Men are not of Cultivation. It would make sense that Honor and Cultivation split between them the two humanoid strains. Or potentially humans are now of cultivation because odium came, Parshmen are much more susceptible to Odium because they cultivate deep merging with Spren, welcome to the discovery of the odium spren which would start the desolations. Similarly to how Preservation interfered, Cultivation could well have acted to grant Humans the ability to bond with spren in a very different way to how the parshmen did so as to be able to oppose the voidbringers more effectively than Honor and the Heralds with their Honorblades. but obviously that's all speculation.

It's possible it's a parallel to Shallan, if the God's Light refers to actual light and the truth that light reveals.

I think a major hurdle would come just from the fact they're locked in place as a blade of specific design. A design that's been recorded and drawn and measured in numerous book, as Shallan is updating the current one with better pictures. As I understand it spren are like quantum particles and it seems as soon as they're measured they lock in place, becoming whatever was measured. So I'd guess primarily the physical knowledge about the blades would have to be destroyed or forgotten. Alternatively an unknown shardblade might have a better chance of revival. and then there is the question of can they be revived in the physical realm? or would the reviver need to travel to shadesmar before attempting to revive the spren? I think the latter would be a part of it, the very summoning of the blade into the physical world = measurement.

I've always thought that since the spren = the shardblade they could change shape as an of course, the reason all the blades look unique is because that was the shape they were in when the bond was broken. I'd also assume that the same goes for shardplate. It would be a surprise to me if the KR needed help to put on their plate rather than just summon it when needed.

I didn't postulate about what made someone a Radiant, my only speculation was about how a bond might form and that to me seems to be with people who are neuroatypical. Bonding a spren and being capable of becoming a KR are two different matters in my mind. Deepening the bond from the base level would require the correct and relevant oaths (or equivalent) or a spren might lose interest and drift away until they found another who attracted their attention.

I disagree, as I see it all of them are victims of circumstance to a large degree, with Elhokar at this point in the narrative it's like condemning him because he's like Kaladin in the cage on the way to the shattered plains. it's not certain how Elhokar was before his father was murdered suddenly, and at the point in time control was to a large extend ripped from him, he was suddenly King of a country at war that was barely holding together before as a single country, then he's in his uncle the Blackthorns shadow. Similar to how Shallan for much of her life before her fathers death seemed to have been outside her control as well. Renarin is a victim of his circumstance, he was born with a difficulty that was very challenging and prevented him from following the path of his brother and father, even if that was what he wished.

Ok the conversation seems to have turned in a direction I can't fully say is wrong, and yes I think the term "broken"-ness might have been a tad overstated and then it seems to become a competition about giving every possible radiant a terrible past that's been traumatic, because of our experiences with Kaladin and Shallan. I'm going to restate things here to a more general way of looking at it and why I think inborn disabilities, which most of the ones listed are, Shallan and Kaladin were at least predisposed to their own issues. So my thinking is less "broken" more along the lines of these are all people who are mentally interesting, and spren do seem to value the ones they bond to because they find them interesting. So I wouldn't expect every Radiant ever to have had a traumatic event happen to them, and it was probably less an issue in the days before the Recreance where spren bonding would have been more common and not considered a terrible thing (from the side of Spren). So we have neuroatypical people, people who think different from everyone else, and they become fascinating to spren for this very reason, lets imagine in the cognitive realm, everyone is a little light and the lights colour, brightness, and flickering are determined by how their thoughts work. Spren of certain types might become interested in anything out of the ordinary, such as a person who experiences season affective disorder, or someone who has autism, or someone who has a dissociative disorder. What might also be interesting to bring in Jasnah is someone who is markedly different in their view of the world to everyone who shares their culture and traditions. Jasnah might have been attractive to Spren more because of how she looks at the world. She might have been impacted in some way when younger in a way that lead her seek a new way of considering the world.

That's why I have usually said "broken" - because I consider it more the fact that their brains are are apparently wired in a way that's not typical. Maybe on some level it's a cognitive thing, if they feel broken it might be enough to be "broken". I have to admit I've considered if Jasnahs "breaking" wasn't a lot closer to the Snappings we see in mistborn, a violent traumatic event, possibly involving men. (Not that I consider her apparent asexuality an issue that has to be dealt with)