Reading The Emperor's Soul in close proximity to my reread of tWoK gave me what I believe are some good insights into the nature of Shardblades--specifically, why they cut seamlessly through nonliving materials such as stone, metal, hair, etc., while they have a very different effect on living beings. There's been a lot of talk about Shai's lecture on the nature of Forgery in TES where she says:
That got me thinking about Shardblades. I know a lot of people have theorized that a Shardblade cuts some sort of spiritual link in a person or animal, but that doesn't really answer why Shardblades cut seamlessly and almost effortlessly through inanimate objects. What I've started to think is that a Shardblade severs an object's Cognitive sense of "complete identity," rather than the physical object itself. Thus, if you cut a rock in half with a Blade, you're not cutting the physical rock at all; rather, you're severing the rock's identity in the Cognitive Realm, which in turn causes the rock to split into two distinct and separate parts, each with its own new identity as a half-rock.
In much the same way, then, if you slice a person or animal through a vital part (the spine or heart, generally), the Cognitive link that binds that being's spirit to its body is severed. Where before, the spirit and body had been together long enough to view themselves as the same thing, the Shardblade overrides that connection and makes them think that they are separate, much like the two chunks of rock in the previous example. Similarly, if a Shardblade passes through a limb, that limb becomes dead and unresponsive. This is because nothing in the Physical Realm has changed, but the Cognitive identity of the limb is suddenly separate from the identity of the rest of the being--the limb thinks it's nothing but a limb, and the being thinks that it's missing a limb.
I'm not sure what the implications of this are, but it makes sense to me. It seems to me, though, that the Blades were created to fight Cognitively rather than Physically, which I take to mean that the way that they kill (eyes blackened and smoking), is more of a Nasty Side Effect than the actual intended purpose.
Anyway, feel free to pick holes. If this is true, I still can't quite grasp why Plate and those Half-Shards are able to block a Blade. If someone else has already theorized this, I'm terribly sorry, but I just didn't see it. Feel free to decry me as a plagiarist--after all, what is it that men value most if not innovation and timeliness?
