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Was Syl starting to bond with Tien before he died?
No, good question. But Tien was starting to bond a different spren.
I was suspecting that he was bonding a spren, but then Syl says, at one point, I think she was familiar with Kaladin's hometown, so I was like, maybe!
Good question, but no, he was going in a different direction.
Can you tell me--
Lightweaver.
On Sel, in the dialogue from Khriss, the Arcanum Unbounded, she mentions that the Cognitive Realm is especially dangerous because Devotion and Dominion were killed there. Why is it dangerous? Are there bad spren?
Well it's called the Expanse of the Densities in Roshar for a very good reason.
That reminds me of a question someone asked you on the forum about memespren.
Yes, there would totally be memespren, absolutely... I'm probably not gonna go there.
At JordanCon, you said that Gavilar's black sphere was something that, "It's what you expect it to be." Does that mean that it's holding an Unmade?
Not necessarily. Voidlight can be trapped like Stormlight can. Unmade can be trapped like spren can. Does not mean that the sphere has an Unmade.
Do you need a perfect gemstone to imprison an Unmade or a powerful spren?
Yeah. Well, the stronger the spren, the better the gemstone needs to be. Those flaws in the crystal structure are going to lead to leaking if it's not. But an Unmade requires an extra-special level of perfection.
WOR, why can no one hear/see Sylphrena but they can see Pattern?
Different spren have different properties. They talk about this in the series at some point, I believe.
Are mandras gravityspren?
*Very hesitantly* Nooooo? Kind of-- So the actual gravityspren, you're talking about the things Kaladin saw stuck to the wall? Those are not mandras.
Oh no, I was thinking about the ones that appear around dead chasmfiends.
Oh, dead chasmfiends, okay. Yyyes. The arrowheads, yeah.
But you're saying those are not gravityspren, they're--
Well--
--they're mandras?
I am not-- Yeah. I am-- So the things Kaladin saw stuck to the wall are not gravityspren, right? But I want to make sure-- So arrowhead spren, that Shallan is philosophizing, theorizing about, are mandras.
In Kaza's interlude, she pulls out her Soulcaster and kind of describes, what seems like a presence of a spren that's there? Is that similar to the Oathgate spren?
Uh, yes. Good job.
Spren grant control over surges because surges are perceived as fundamental powers on Roshar. Would other Cognitive beings grant different powers based on what they perceive to be fundamental? Such as electromagnetism is on Earth?
It is plausible, although this was set up in a specific way.
By Honor or Adonalsium?
RAFO on that. Set up might be the wrong word. There were seeds that caused this to happen the way it did.
The Surgebinding thing?
Yes, specifically... Those influenced what people perceived as fundamental forces.
Rosharans are good with math, because you did the whole... They're aware of the normal distribution and all that. So, do like, complex numbers, imaginary numbers, do they live in the Cognitive Realm? And would prime [numbers] be the brighteyes of the Cognitive Realm?
We will get into this. I would say--I've actually thought about this--that right now, there are spren that kind of represent abstract mathematics but not individual concepts within abstract mathematics. Like when you draw a spren that represents creativity, it's not necessarily divided into, "Painting," even though some of them may edge in that direction. So you could perhaps find a spren where you go, "Oh!"
I just want to see pi and phi arguing.
Would you consider or have you considered romantic relationships between spren and humans?
That's a RAFO.
If two Surgebinders are next to each other in the Physical Realm and their spren are with them, chatting or whatever. Would this proximity be reflected in Shadesmar somehow? For example if there's a third Surgebinder in the same physical location, but in Shadesmar. Would they be able to deduce that this is what the physical-
Yeah, theoretically possible.
Maybe difficult?
I'll dig into the mechanics. Not necessarily though.
The mistspren, who crewed the Honorspren ship. Are they Radiant spren?
No they are not.
Lightspren, the ones who like to travel, are they the Willshaper spren? I thought it was pretty obvious.
Yeah.
The many faces of Cusicesh, are they of real people?
RAFO.
The cracked stone spren that we saw, we didn't get a name for them, are they the Stoneward spren?
Yes-- Oh wait, yes.
Do they have a name you can canonize right now?
No, I don't.
Are gloryspren composed entirely of Honor's investiture?
RAFO.
It is said by a spren, Syl, that everything has a spren. Does aluminum have a spren?
Does aluminum have a spren? This is a good question for philosophers in world. I would say the majority of them would say yes, its just a very isolated and unresponsive spren. There are some who would say no, it is the dead material, that has no spren, but others would argue that a dead material with no spren would just disintegrate to death, so aluminum is kind of a strange duck.
Could a higher spren manifest on a world other than Roshar in their spren form, not as a Blade?
Well, they would have to get off first.
That doesn't answer my question!
A lot of these questions I have to be careful because they're presupposing things as foundational assumptions. A lot of time people-- The really sneaky ones will ask me these questions knowing if I answer the question, that there are three steps back assumptions that I am then canonizing, so I'm just going to RAFO that one, because I'm giving you the answer, "They would to have to get off first."
So, when did Cusicesh the Protector first appear off the coast of Iri?
Um, a while ago. It's not
About 2,000 years ago?
It's not a recent event.
Large gemstone, Oathbringer. Not leaking Stormlight. Is shining. Is there a spren inside of it? ...Is there a spren trapped in it?
...There is not. Good question. I mean, at various points in the story, there are, but the one you're referencing.
Can a higher spren leave Roshar?
They do not know how to right now.
If you need to bring food into Shadesmar, why don't you need to bring air?
Y'know, we actually talked and thought about this. There are certain things I just decided for narrative reasons... I wanted Shadesmar to be travelable and I wanted it to be a real place, and so I just made air, I came up with kind of my own hacks. There are times I do this for narrative reasons.
Let me give you an easier example. In the Mistborn books, and I've told people this before, I was working on speed bubbles. Slowing down time, speeding up time in a small little bubble around you, right? I went to Peter and I'm like, "This is what I'm going to do, what are the problems with this?" And he's like, "Well, redshift." Which means that basically you would be irradiating everyone with the light coming from inside the speed bubble. I'm like, "alright, we're just going to say that doesn't happen." This is where the line between for me science fiction and fantasy exists. When I'm building my story, I do try to have one foot in science with things like this. But I tend to work backward... A lot of science fiction starts with what we have now and extrapolates forward to [an] interesting, plausible premise. For my fantasy works, I start with some cool idea. And then I work backward in plausibility, trying to justify it. And we kind of meet in the center, but at the end of the day I am breaking the laws of thermodynamics, right? Just straight-up breaking laws-- I mean, we have our whole Realmatic Theory and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, I am trying to tell stories where certain extreme situations exist. Like, I bent over backwards to make the science of Roshar work with the greatshells, but at the end of the day, we still have to have a magical solution, right. To get beasties as big as we want to do, it doesn't matter how high your oxygen content is, if you've got .7 gravity or not, all these concessions we've made: the square-cube law says those things crush themselves. You just can't have things this big. And so we built in a magical solution. The spren creating this symbiotic bond is making it so these things don't crush themselves.
And when I was looking at Shadesmar, there are a couple things-- what I want for the narrative is this place. I am going to work backward and try to make as many concessions and nods toward science as I can. But the air one, I just said "You know what? There's just gonna be air in Shadesmar. I am just gonna make it so that you can." I want you to be able to walk between the planets on Shadesmar, I don't want people to have to worry about bringing a Windrunner with them and plants or whatever to get oxygen. I'm just gonna make that the case. Your in-world answers, I'm like "Well, air kind of permeates and has escaped through and things," but really do we have an oxygen cycle there? We've got plants, but are they really--
The answer is, there is air in Shadesmar because I want there to be air in Shadesmar.
Do the spren that we know of as the Cryptics exist before Honor and Cultivation came to Roshar?
Ah, good question! No. Cryptics would be one of the forms of spren that were a later creation. Creation is the wrong term, but yeah.
Later development? Evolution?
All of the sapient spren are later developments.
Are they evolved from the earlier spren?
Evolution doesn't work the same way on the spren, right? The spren were created more than evolved, I would say.
Maybe cultivated?
Yeah, cultivated. *laughter*
Do deadeyes disappear in Shadesmar when they are summoned as blades to the Physical Realm?
Yes, mostly.
Nazh writes that "spren fishing" is illegal in Ravizadth. What exactly is spren fishing?
It is the act of forcefully attracting spren in Shadesmar for your own purposes. For example, you know how when Adolin is genuinely afraid there, his fear attracts fearspren naturally? That's okay. But if someone were to engineer situations that would attract certain kinds of spren because they wanted to make use of those spren - for study, or other reasons - that would be "fishing". If spren have formal ethics, this would be unethical.
So this has a lot to do with consent? Drawing spren naturally is part of how spren work, but forcing them to come, that's a no-no?
Pretty much.
Can you Hemalurgically spike a highspren?
Yes, asterisk.
In the Celebrant Market, there's a nice piece of jewelry that's mentioned.
Yes, I wouldn't call it jewelry, but yes.
Say a spren in humanoid form there put that on, could they manifest in Roshar in their humanoid form?
So he's asking about the odd chain that's mentioned in the Celebrant Market. You are way off on this one. I'm going to say, point different directions than that on that one.
He clarified that Nazh was caught spren fishing because he was trying to attract a spren to be his stooge and do some work for him. He got in trouble for it because he didn't know that was illegal.
If we spiked a singer with Feruchemical nicrosil, could he store the spren he's bonded to and lose form in the process? Could he bond another spren then? Could he then change forms at will by carefully storing and tapping nicrosil?
RAFO :)
I want to know if Shadesmar contains memespren or (since they're defined as idea viruses) memetic plague. If anyone can make literal meme magic, it'd be u/mistborn.
Ha. Yeah, that could probably become a thing in the cosmere, though I doubt I'd go there. (At least, if I did, it would have to be done very carefully.)
In 2014, Brandon said First of the Sun - the planet in Sixth of the Dusk - is a minor Shardworld, in that it does not have a Shard present (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/103-salt-lake-city-comic-con-2014/#e1010). However, we've now gotten a WoB saying that Patji - the Father island - IS a Shard (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256-oathbringer-london-signing/#e8606). Patji was a Shard, but isn't during SotD? Or did we finally get confirmation on that elusive "Survival Shard"? What do you guys think?
I stand by them. Though, as always, quotes and WoBs at signings aren't always as deliberately thought out as I'd like them to be. Answering questions on the fly can be challenging, and my phrasing can be bad in retrospect.
But no Shard was in residence on First of the Sun during the events of that story. The Investiture on that planet is residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium. Everything happening there could happen with or without a Shard present. Indeed, I would say that no Shard was ever "in residence" on First of the Sun.
The being called Patji still exists, and is a Shard of Adonalsium. Shards in the past have been interested in First of the Sun, and have meddled in small ways there. (Like they have on a lot of Shardworlds.)
Note that I might have been a little misleading in the first quote by bringing up Threnody, which is a real corner case in the cosmere because of uncommon events there.
That said, I'm sure that every story I write about a planet will bring up the quirks and unusual interactions of the magic there, because that's kind of what I do. (First of the Sun has its own oddities, as mentioned in Arcanum Unbounded.) Every planet is likely to end up as a corner case in some way, just like every person is distinctive in their own way, and never fully fits expectations.
I still consider one of the major dividing lines between "major" and "minor" Shardworlds (other than Shard residence) to be in strength of access to the magic, and control over it. I intend the minor Shardworlds to involve interactions with the magic as setting--coming back to spren, you could have a minor Shardworld with people who use, befriend, even bond spren. (Or the local equivalent--Seon, Aviar, etc.) But you'd never see power on the level of the city of Elantris, the actions of a Bondsmith, or even the broad power suite of a Mistborn.
But, as ever, the cosmere is a work in progress. The needs of telling a great story trump things I've said about what I'm planning. (I do try as much as I can to avoid having two texts contradict one another. And when they do, that's often a lapse on my part.)
Wait.
I'm confused.
So the Investiture on First of the Sun is associated with a Shard or is it residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium?
Cause the question was a follow up (on this) where you revealed that all Investiture in Cosmere got assigned to a Shard even if it wasn't part of a Shard.
And then you said that the one on First of the Sun is directly associated with one of the Shards (and since later you revealed Patji to be an avatar of Autonomy (also, what are avatars and how do they work?)) we took it to mean that at one point Autonomy Invested in First of the Sun.
But now you're saying it didn't?
If there was no Shard ever on First of the Sun but Patji is a Shard/avatar of a Shard then where is Patji, actually?
Could you please clarify all that?
So the Investiture on First of the Sun is associated with a Shard or is it residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium?"
The reason I have so much trouble answering these questions (and you'll see me struggling to get an answer in the 10-15 seconds I have when someone asks me in a signing line) is because this isn't an either or. Is this computer I'm using matter associated with Earth, the Big Bang, or such-and-such star that went supernova long ago? Well, it's probably all three.
When people ask, "What Shard is this Investiture associated with" it gets very complicated. Shards influence and tweak certain Investiture, giving it a kind of spin or magnetism, but all Investiture ever predates the Shattering--and in the cosmere matter, energy, and Investiture are one thing.
I always imagine Investiture having certain states, certain magnetisms if you will, associated with certain aspects of Adonalsium. So it's all "assigned" to a Shard--because it's always been associated with that Shard. To Investiture, Adonalsium's Shattering meant everything and nothing at the same time.
We generally mean the term "Invested" to mean a Shard has taken permanent residence in a location, a kind of base of operations--but at the same time, this is meaningless, since distance has no meaning on the Spiritual Realm, where most Shards are. So imprisonment of a Shard like Ruin or Odium is a crude expression--but the best we have.
Autonomy never "Invested" on First of the Sun. But even answering (as someone else asked) if they created an avatar without visiting is a difficult thing to explain--because even explaining how a Shard travels (when motion is irrelevant) is difficult to manage. It's a subject that I intend to be up for debate, discussion, and argument by in-world philosophers and arcanists.
You can see why I have such troubles explaining these things at signings--and why I fail when I try to, considering the time limitations and (often) fatigue limitations placed upon me. These are concepts I intend to spend entire, lengthy epic volumes explaining and exploring.
Let's say you were Autonomy, and you have--through expanding and exploring your understanding--found a gathering of Investiture that has always been there, you always knew about, but still didn't actually recognize until the moment you considered and explored it. (Because even though your power is infinite, accessing and using that infinity is beyond your reach.) Were you "Invested" there? No, no more than you're Invested on Roshar, where parts of what were Adonalsium still exist that are associated with you (in the very fabric of matter and existence.) But suddenly, you have a chance to tweak, influence, and do things that were always possible, but which you never could do because you knew, but didn't know, at the same time.
And...I'm already into WAY more than I want to be typing this out right now. If it's confusing, it's because it's practically impossible for me to explain these things in a short span of time.
I'm going to leave it here, understanding that no, I haven't fully explained your question. (I didn't even get into what avatars are, what Patji was, and what happened to Patji the being--and how that relates to Patji the island.) But hopefully this kind of starts to point the right direction, though I probably should have just left this question alone because I bet this post is going to raise more questions than it answers...
You've confused things so much now. We thought we had a pretty good grasp of this whole Patji situation (Autonomy visited the planet at some point, got themselves all Invested and created an avatar which is called Patji by the locals).
Now you're saying no Shard has ever visited there? And that the pool would have existed if no Shard had ever interfered? But that Patji still exists and is a Shard?
Does that mean Autonomy edited First of the Sun from afar without actually going there? And that the pool would have already existed without any intervention? Does this mean it was associated with Autonomy from the beginning? I'm really confused now.
I don't believe I said no Shard had visited. I said no Shard was there during the events of the story.
Investiture on First of the Sun predates any Shards fiddling with it.
Shards have fiddled with it by the time of the story.
I think fandom might be going down too far a rabbit hole on this one.
Are you saying here that Patji is an avatar of Autonomy, or is it a separate Shard and not an avatar of Autonomy?
When I said Patji was a Shard, I was meaning Automony--but it is not quite that simple.
Take this post to mean "no, you should not be looking toward another Shard for Patji's origins. Autonomy is the one relevant." But Autonomy's relationships with entities like this (not sure entity is the right word, even) is complex. I'm not trying to confuse the issue, though.
If a Knight Radiant were to store Connection and Identity into the appropriate metalminds on a heavy basis, would it affect their spren bond, and how?
Oh, right. Yes, but I won't answer the how, but it definitely has an effect.
Why do spren appear on Roshar and nowhere else?
They do, but they're in different shapes. Seons are the same thing that spren are, for instance. So there are places where you will see them, it just is going to depend on how the worldbuilding is built and how the magic is channeled and things like that.
I think there's a flaw in my understanding of Cognitive Shadows. I assume that... they would have more visibility into the Cognitive Realm, like a Herald would be able to see spren more easily, that kind of thing. Is that incorrect?
That is incorrect. A Cognitive Shadow simply means a copy of the Cognitive side made by a deep amount of Investiture. And everybody has a Cognitive side. Basically it's a fake soul. Or, fake is the wrong term. Fake is the wrong term. Even in-world they don't know if it's really them or not. It is Investiture has replaced the Investiture that is fleeing from them as they die, or enhancing it in some way to keep it around. So some Cognitive Shadows trapped on the Cognitive Realm are going to be-- have a lot of Cognitive-- I mean, they're there, right? But some Cognitive Shadows inhabiting a body in the same way that your mind inhabits your body, the way the cosmere works... So a Herald is going to feel like they are alive just like-- but their soul has been somehow transformed. It's not really transformed, it's been reproduced or copied by an injection of Investiture...
And I'll say for the purpose of the recordings, I haven't canonized any of that terminology that I just used about Cognitive Shadows. I'm just talking about it, I'm not necessarily saying that this is how you are supposed to refer to it. You can refer to it however you want. I've often used the metaphor of how fossils get made. When a fossil is made there is a pattern and it is slowly replaced with another substance that is stronger and more endurant, and has the shape of it, but is it still the bone? When you have a fossil bone is it the dinosaur bone? In most cases no, but yes. It's the ship of Theseus sort of thing again. Is this the bone or is it not? Is this the soul? Is this the person or is it not? That's the same sort of thing is happening with Cognitive Shadows. And it's happening on all three Realms to an extent, though of course the body is not. The body stays. It's happening on two Realms. It's happening Spiritually, mostly Cognitively.
Can a spren willingly break their bond anytime between the First and Fifth Oath, with their Radiant?
Yes, this is possible--
Essentially committing suicide isn't it though--
I just ascribe to that question-- A spren could at any point break it. Can they break it safely? That's a different question.
Can they break it safely? *laughs*
There are methods in place where it can be stopped. So yes it can be done. But once you've started into this, once you've chosen on both sides, it's a dangerous process. But yes it can be done, and it can be done safely.
In Stormlight Archive before the full disadvantaged duel, there's foreshadowing of Shardblades being spren and Adolin talking to his Blade, tradition. But then also... Adolin says, "Oh I forgot my mom's lucky necklace," and I don't think there's ever a reference to that again. Do we see something come back up about that necklace?
The necklace is just pure superstition on his part, it's not seeding something in... I have to sometimes make certain things not relevant, otherwise everything is relevant. So the chicken and the necklace mean nothing, but obviously the talking to the sword is a tradition that has a meaning, and it comes into play in Oathbringer.
The smoky, shadowy spren that's at the battle of Thaylen fields, that's Yelig-nar, right?
...Yes.
For the creatures on Roshar... where do you start in your worldbuilding for that kind of thing?
So where I started for Roshar was the highstorm. So I knew I had the highstorm and I was going to want to build out from that, and I would want an ecology that incorporated the magic. Those were kind of the two things I was looking for. I wanted everything to deal with the storms in some way and be affected by them, and I wanted Stormlight and spren to be integrated into the way that the worldbuilding happened because this was my big worldbuilding epic. So I started along those two lines, and that's where gemhearts came from. That is where-- The [singers] grew naturally out of that. A lot of the creatures and things I looked toward tidal pools because I figured this was kind of a similar sort of thing, an environment that has to deal with a drastic change, a biome that deals with this repeatedly every day.
Are the [singers] living computers, and are spren variables in a computer system?
Excellent question. The answer is: I would say no, I wouldn't consider this. But I have considered this idea, and there is a place in the cosmere where people are using spren-- not spren but something similar on another planet, for a little bit of computation. Which I want to be able to write that story some day, but-- It's a very fun thing that I dug down a rabbit hole in one time. You might see this somewhere in the cosmere, but it's not actually Roshar. I wouldn't call them that.
Is there any effect on a Shardblade if the deadeye is really far away from where the Blade is?
Define really.
The one that's trapped on the ship. Let's say they're taking him to the far side of Shadesmar, but the dude that owns that Blade lives in...
We will deal with that in the books. There is an effect, but that's not enough of an effect.
Considering no one says that their Shardblade is acting weird in two and a half thousand years.
That happens all the time in Shadesmar. If you were able to get it off the planet, it would have an effect.
If you as the owner of the Shardblade were offworld and you tried to summon it, that would be the effect?
Either way. But you can't take spren off-world. I mean, you can, but you can't really. Really all that I have in the notes for it to do right now, is to add slightly more time. So you're like, "That's weird that felt like not ten heartbeats, it felt like twelve." But it's like, you're on another planet, then it's suddenly speed of light type stuff. So suddenly it's like, "This is taking three years instead. That's a pretty big deal!"
...So I've got a few weird speed of light things mixed into the cosmere, and that's one of them.
The spren that Hoid picks up, is that the one meant for Elhokar?
It is, yep.
Has Eshonai left for the Beyond?
Yes. I'll canonize this. I'm sorry.
*sounds of horror and shock* Noooo, nooooo, RAFO it!
You wanted-- That was a RAFO-bait but, so I never intended that-- If you want to leave this one out there-- But I never intended Timbre to be Eshonai's soul. When people said that in the beta, I'm like, "Oh, I guess you could see that, but I mean that's not how spren work, right?"
I was going to say, so you're saying Timbre is not Eshonai's soul.
No. I never even thought they would make that connection. Because we saw Timbre in the previous book... I mean, I don't want to kill people's fan theories. But that one kind of blindsided me in the beta. I'm like, "Well I guess we'll go ahead and let people think that but no." No.
You can leave that one off if you want to tease people and things. Some people really want to believe that.
I made a bet that Eshonai was not only still be alive after Words of Radiance, but would also become Radiant. And then the bet was if not I had to eat a shoe.
Oh no!
So I've been trying to get out of it for like--
Well you could eat a gummy shoe or something like that...
But no, I didn't intend this. No. There are-- Yeah.
So Hoid has a Cryptic.
It is heavily implied that Hoid is trying to get this Cryptic to--
And Soulcasting in some sense or another transports someone into Shadesmar. So does he no longer need a perpendicularity?
So, Hoid has been breaking certain rules along those lines for a long while. I guess he's not breaking any actual rules... He has found, by Stormlight, to do things in ways that others are not using. How about that?
That is excellent.
He is looking forward to having a spren bond that will make things like this easier...
And, audio recorder, that one is not quite canon yet. The one about Hoid.
When you get, like, bonded with a spren-- the type of spren that is bonded to you, it depends on your personality and beliefs, right?
Yes, mmhmm. The spren kind of choose, but they-- It's not a hundred percent choice. More like if they're drawn to it, things like that. So who you are, what your beliefs are, what your kind of moral code is can influence what type of spren you would get.
We've seen that it's possible to bond multiple Shardblades, what about multiple spren?
RAFO!
How was Nale able to keep recruiting Skybreakers even after the Recreance?
The spren simply didn't leave, and kept bonding Radiants.
Do the gemstones in fabrial Soulcasters contain spren?
Soulcasters are strange. And if you read closely, you might be able to figure it out.
I was reading Elantris, with my passive work being Jorge Luis Borges "Book of Imaginary Beings". The chapters are encyclopedic and short, and are meant to have a kaleidoscope style of reading. With Cosmere on my mind, I can across a really interesting entry:
Sylphs For each of the four roots or elements into which the Greeks divided matter there was a corresponding spirit. In the words of Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist and physician, we find four elementary spirits: the Gnomes of the earth, the Nymphs of water, the Salamanders of fire, and the Sylphs or Sylphides of air. The words are Greek origin. Litre has sought the etymology of "sylph" in the Celtic tongues, but it is most unlikely that Paracelsus would have known, or even suspected the existence of, those languages. Today, no one believes in Sylphs, but the phrase "a syphlike figure" is still applied to slender women, as a somewhat cliched compliment. The Sylphs occupy a place between that of material beings and that of immaterial beings. Romantic poetry and the ballet find them useful.
I don't think it is a far stretch or much of projection when I say that reminds me of a certain Spren. Either way, it made my day to come across this while reading.
If you poke around a bit, you can probably find where the names of some other spren (like Notum) come from. In a lot of their names, I'm looking for something similar to what I did with Syl. My rationale is that if you heard her name in-world (which might not actually be the exact sounds Syl) you'd have the benefit of local traditions, word roots, and mythologies. You'd hear it and say, "Huh, that sounds like a word for wind." So, when the books are "translated" to English, the translator creates names in English that evoke the same feel in readers here.
I feel like society on Roshar would develop a bit differently because of emotion spren. You'd have to be very careful talking/ interacting with people since you can't hide things like fear, anger, awe, anticipation, joy, passion and shame. Imagine going through high school having to deal with them...
I have to imagine it alters things like, say, the concept of masculinity. Obviously the Alethi have very strong ideas about masculinity, but attracting fearspren/feeling fear doesn't seem to be a negative within that like it would be in our culture. Men attract fearspren all the time, and it's totally fine.
It also seems like it might be taboo to mention someone else's emotion spren. People are constantly noticing internally that other people are attracting them, but they NEVER EVER comment on it (until the part in OB where they're investigating it in Kholinar). There must be a really strong boundary around commenting on other people's spren.
It's one thing I did want to ask Brandon about if he does another AMA--how emotion spren affect Rosharan culture.
This is some good theorizing here. I'd agree with what /u/The_Bravinator says.
The effects are all over the place, but they are just how life is on Roshar, so I rarely point them out. For example, the classic Alethi sort of idolizing being "straightforward" with people. No assassinations. (Well, supposedly.) You're used to being able to see people's emotions, so you take it for granted that only hyper untrustworthy people do things in ways that don't expose emotions. Emotions aren't bad, they simply are, and everyone has them. Views of masculinity are certainly changed.
Is it taboo to mention emotion spren that other people are attracting, or do people just not generally think to do so?
Depends on the situation, really. Not exactly the same, but note how in Earth societies the different responses to something like passing gas, depending on context, culture, etc.
