#also a note: alcohol consumption is not one of Shallan's coping mechanisms- it's Veil's.

[riverbeatsaber]

Hello all! Here's a Stormlight Archive observation I'd like to share. Shallan's coping mechanisms are not:

❌ Veil

❌ Radiant

Veil, Radiant, and headmates in general are actually people! How would you feel if someone called you a coping mechanism or an unhealthy coping mechanism, or implied or outright said that you were not real? Yes, Veil and Radiant are characters, but there are also systems who exist in real life and can hear how you talk about them.*

To be fair, I know that for the first two books, Brandon Sanderson himself was not writing Radiant and Veil as their own people, and there is an argument to be made that he never fully pivoted away from that, but I believe/hope that we as a fandom can do better than him.

In addition, what Shallan's coping mechanisms are, from my observation:

Drawing, to distract herself from things that are stressing her out.

Being a scholar, especially in the earlier books.

Dissociation, which, interestingly, in the flashback chapters seems to be fully blanking out for a while, and in current time is written more as active repression (maybe so that Shallan can just decide not to repress her memories and achieve Character Development more easily? Not sure.)

This is kinda a sneak peak of a giant character analysis of Shallan that I've been doing for a while. I got stuck writing down quotes in Oathbringer, but I've been picking it up again recently. I hope to be posting more thoughts from that in the future:]

*I am the host of one of those systems who see y'all posting. just to make it clear