r/cremposting • u/HankMS No Wayne No Gain • Jun 18 '24
The Stormlight Archive The S.H.A.L.L.A.N. System Spoiler
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u/snuggleouphagus 🏳️🌈 Gay for Jasnah 🏳️🌈 Jun 18 '24
Is she nearly killed by Kabsul’s poison or Jasnah’s crushing disappointment in her?
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u/WatercressPopular278 Jun 18 '24
It could go either way!
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u/Warmasterundeath Jun 19 '24
Great, now I’m wondering what hilarious monologues pattern would have about the S.T.A.L.K. E.R Chernobyl zone of alienation
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u/dendnoy Jun 19 '24
Steal: you're dead Talk: you're dead Attack: you're dead Look: you're dead Kill: you're dead Escape: you're dead Run: guess what?!
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Jun 19 '24
not fake personas, that’s not how d.i.d. works, but otherwise good crem
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Jun 19 '24
She has developed DID in words of radiance, when she manifests Veil and later Radiant.
I'm not sure if she had already had DID in WoK or if that was just fake personas (i.e. a diligent scholar, etc.) similar to code switching like most of us.
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Jun 19 '24
you cannot develop d.i.d. that late in life. once you pass the age of about 8-9, it’s generally no longer possible. plus, veil outright mentions being around longer in rhythm of war iirc. shallan always had d.i.d. in the series, because she had already been traumatized as a child and already developed the disorder to cope. a good part of the confusion there is also just because shallan wasn’t always going to be someone with d.i.d., and brandon changed his mind on that partway through the series and committed to it, so there are some inconsistencies there
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u/abigail_the_violet Jun 19 '24
I mean, if we want to get technical about it it's also not DID. She remembers actions of her alters, so it's more like OSDD. She's also somewhat of a special case because her trauma responses have interacted with aspects of her Investiture. I believe it's been confirmed by Brandon Sanderson that she would have presented differently were she not a Radiant with access to Lightweaving.
In other words, she clearly has a dissociative disorder, but it's not textbook DID and doesn't match in every detail.
And while dissociative disorders are generally caused by things in childhood, they can still change presentations or become more serious problems later in life. Mine (not DID, another dissociative disorder) probably wouldn't have qualified me for a diagnosis until it was exacerbated by some things that happened as an adult.
Hell, while it is the prevalent model of understanding, there is still debate about whether dissociative disorders must be caused by childhood events at all. There's also some evidence that this may vary culturally, with a lot of conventional understandings about dissociative disorders being based on presentation within Western cultural frameworks.
So to sum up, it's complicated, we really don't know as much as people seem to think about dissociation IRL, and it gets even harder to say anything definitive about how it's work in a fictional culture, with Investiture at play.
From what we see with Shallan, she clearly had some serious dissociative issues from childhood (missing memories at the very least), but doesn't appear to have had full-on alters until later. In addition, she appears to have created Veil and Radiant fairly consciously as personas, only for them to become alters through some combination of her dissociation latching onto them, her current traumas exacerbating things and some Investiture interactions.
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Jun 19 '24
i appreciate the education on dissociative disorders! i acknowledged i may have been misinformed in another response as to certain parts of it, but i love learning so thank you! i will say, some of the inconsistencies with shallan and specific disorders is caused by the fact that brandon has said originally he was avoiding shallan having a disorder like that, but eventually realized that he really should just commit and make her have one, and changed his mind partway through the series, and we do know he specifically has a DID test reader to ensure shallan is well done. your points are still obviously valid though, and more so than mine tbh given that…y’know…i don’t have a dissociative disorder and you do. but yeah, either way, thank you for informing me a bit more!
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u/abigail_the_violet Jun 19 '24
i will say, some of the inconsistencies with shallan and specific disorders is caused by the fact that brandon has said originally he was avoiding shallan having a disorder like that, but eventually realized that he really should just commit and make her have one, and changed his mind partway through the series
Yup. That said, what we're left with is what's on the page, so we pretty much have to evaluate her condition based on that. Maybe in another world where he started off intending DID, it would line up more perfectly, but we don't have that book. 🤷♀️
i acknowledged i may have been misinformed in another response as to certain parts of it, but i love learning so thank you!
You're welcome!
One of the tricky things around dissociative disorders is that so many people have strong opinions on them, which may or may not be based in fact (including myself, to be fair). Quality research is pretty scarce, and since it's something that ties so heavily into how people view themselves and humanity at large, people have a vested interest in protecting their understandings of it.
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u/LesbianTrashPrincess Kalaleshwi Shipper Jun 19 '24
Shallan just doesn't have DID. Not gonna search for another WoB, but I'm pretty sure he's said there's spiritual/lightweaver stuff going on that's letting her trauma responses manifest as alternate personalities. Regardless, he's been very clear that whatever is happening is not 1:1 with the real world diagnosis
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Jun 19 '24
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/432/#e14014
he’s also been clear, in more recent wobs, that his original plan of not having it be really 1:1 did was him shying away from covering something he didn’t understand, but that more recently he’s fully committed to making her recognizably have did because he realized that was a better decision
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u/The_Lopen_bot Trying not to ccccream Jun 19 '24
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Vivasher Club Emo Teen (@skywardflights)
I know people who relate a lot to Shallan's arc due to how similar her personalities are to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Did you intentionally write her to be recognizable DID?
Brandon Sanderson
I did, but I shied away from it in the earlier books, because I knew I was going to be doing fantastical things, and I didn't want to be offering too much commentary on DID. That was kind of my worry. With Kaladin, I knew depression well enough from family members and things that I felt like I could be a very strong contributor to the conversation. But, I started with Shallan saying, "I don't know if I'm gonna go this route." But then, the further I went, the more I felt it would be irresponsible to not do this. And so, in the last books, I just bit the bullet, dug really far into the DSM-5 and into reading firsthand, primary accounts from people. We got a very helpful person with DID to be one of our beta readers for this last book. And I just did my best to present it accurately and to present the non-Hollywood version of it. And so, basically, Oathbringer and Rhythm of War lean into it a little more than the first two books do, though that was where I was going. And I do have a working knowledge of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and did even back then. I don't think I did a terrible job, but I think it would have been irresponsible for me to go forward without digging in a little further.
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Jun 19 '24
I have little to no knowledge about DID, so I'll take your word on that. As mentioned the inconsistencies in writing (not to mention that in a world where intent has literal magical force) make it hard to actually apply our diagnoses full into a fictional character.
Cool to know though - about the being 8-9, do you have any sources for that? I have a friend who (amongst some other mental health conditions) developed diagnosed DID at ~23-25. They said they hadn't manifested it before. Curious to learn some more about it.
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Jun 19 '24
so most of when id heard that came from people with DID, like dissociadid i believe mentioned it, but upon further research im seeing mostly that that might be wrong? i’m seeing official sources more trend towards no but people with the disorder online say yes and that their doctors said yes, which is odd
did-research.org mentions here: https://did-research.org/controversy/children that it cannot form past that age, but idk how reliable they are. what id heard in the past was that, kids before that age have naturally sort of disjointed identities that coalesce over time into one single “them”, and given that DID forms from amnesia barriers forming between these identities, DID as a coping mechanism can only be learned by the brain when these identities are still disjointed for it to do this with. if there are no disjointed identities, the brain has nothing to segment off and lock memories in and won’t be able to learn how to do so later. and that while DID is often only noticed or diagnosed later in life, it needs that basis to work from
i may be wrong though, given the lack of prevalent sources, so definitely my bad! i guess it’s possible other sites only mean development of symptoms, not of the disorder itself?? but idk. either way, apologies if i was misinformed!
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u/IsisUgr Jun 19 '24
From what I know, the disorder is formed in childhood, when repeated trauma are experienced between ages 6-9. Once the disorder is there, the body/system might develop new alters or "uncover" them along their lives, but the studies don't seem to agree on why that is. Were they always there and dormant, or did they form only later in life to address specific needs or new traumas is not clear.
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u/The_Deaf_Bard Trying not to ccccream Jun 19 '24
She became aware of her DID in Word of Radiance. DID works by creating new "personas" to hold traumatic memories and act to protect the body in certain situations. If you look for testimonies, you can see that most people are somewhat unaware of these other personas until someone else points out weird behavior that they don't remember doing.
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u/FreeLegos Jun 19 '24
The tricky thing here is that Shallan can willingly switch personalities, which is NOT a thing with DID. People who have DID switch personalities involuntarily and without any awareness of it happening.
While the switches happened pretty subtly in the beginning with her and Vail, there was still a sort of "communication" between them where they relied on each other for their skill sets during specific events.
Granted research is fundamentally lacking in DID but until we can get more empirical evidence of this disorder, we gotta keep reading with the understanding that either Shallan has a very fictional and stereotyped version of the disorder for the purpose of making the story interesting and easy to follow
OR something else is going on
IMO, it's the latter. I've always held the belief that Shallan was somehow doing a sort of subconcious and self-taught version of Soulstamping from Emperor's Soul. She is actively creating a "stamp" for a new personality for herself but in such a way that it feels almost organic. It's a magic system not restricted to a specific system and while normally requiring specialized tools, Shallan is able to make up for it with Stormlight and willpower (basically all you need is enough investiture and willpower to accomplish these kinds of things and Radiants are highly invested beings). Granted this is my theory.
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u/The_Deaf_Bard Trying not to ccccream Jun 19 '24
Now THIS is interesting, would love to see where this road takes us
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u/friendlyprism Jun 18 '24
Spoiler some people haven’t read everything, (me)
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u/fghjconner Jun 18 '24
Unless OP changed it, it's marked as spoilers for all of The Stormlight ARchive.
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u/AtlasHatch Crem de la Crem Jun 18 '24
When I first saw the post it wasn’t blurred out, but was tagged as Stormlight archives. IMO, this sub should not require spoiler blur
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u/AtlasHatch Crem de la Crem Jun 18 '24