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Interview #1130: MiniCon 2015, Entry #4

Ruro272

Is there a reason why shadows go toward the light in Shadesmar, or is it just worldbuilding flavor?

Brandon Sanderson

There is a reason, but its not super important. It’s like a cultural thing, things have reasons but they aren’t always super relevant to the story. It’s like safehands–do you know how safehands came to be? It’s a cultural thing but it came from somewhere. This is something you probably won’t read in the books but I can tell you. The idea of the safehand has to do with one-handed arts being feminine but two handed are masculine, and it all started after the Knights Radiant cast down their Shardblades. There was a huge power grab for these weapons and people quickly realized that the differences between men and women didn’t matter when they had power armor, so the idea of one-handed arts being feminine and the safehand arose from that over many years of cultural evolution.

Footnote

Obviously this is very much paraphrased since it was a long answer and my notes and memory are not perfect, but I think I captured the important points without adding any of my own thoughts. Interesting that the safehands arose from the power grab after the Recreance as a way to maintain the division between men and women.

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