#realmates

[liltalle]

Shardic Opposite-Pairs – Cosmere Theory

It's been said that some of the Shards have opposite Intents (Preservation and Ruin). The obvious question is how inherent is this to the system? Given the symmetry of the original 16, do all of the Shards fit into 8 opposite-pairs?

As of Wind & Truth, we know the names of all 16, so I'm going to try to pair up each and see how they fit. (Cosmere spoilers below)

(Our pool: Devotion, Dominion, Preservation, Ruin, Odium, Cultivation, Honor, Endowment, Autonomy, Ambition, Invention, Mercy, Valor, Whimsy, Virtuosity, Reason)

Preservation/Ruin - This is our canonical example. I don't know that I need to elaborate on their locked conflict on Scadrial and Harmony's difficulty integrating them.

Devotion/Dominion - Khriss describes these two as having "a polarized relationship [...] Forced together as they are, trapped and bursting to escape". Also, the submission/dominance dichotomy seems obvious here.

Cultivation/Endowment - The Nightwatcher is all about fair if esoteric prices for the good she offers, and Cultivation takes that to a deeper level—her deal with Dalinar is about the loss necessary to relief, and the pain necessary to growth. Whereas, Endowment grants godhood freely as she sees fit.

(These first 3 seem pretty clear to me, and they're some of the Shards we know the most about. Those that follow I'm less sure of.)

Odium/Mercy - Odium represents many emotions, but the strongest emotion is hatred, which... I think could be described as a passionate attachment to a wound, lashing out at its perceived source. (That adding Honor's sense of righteousness yields Retribution supports this interpretation.) Mercy is the opposite of that, of Justice classically, letting go of wounds and forgiving. (The two things we know about Mercy canonically are that Harmony was disturbed by discussing Odium with them, and that they were involved in the clash of Odium and Ambition. The former could be Mercy expressing mercy for Rayse himself, but that's not well determined. What happened around Threnody is known to be disturbing, so that's a more obvious interpretation, and this is complicated by knowing that Vessels and Intents don't always align. So, the name is all canon really gives us.)

Autonomy/Honor - (On with my bolder choices.) Harmony says "Autonomy is driven to divide off from the rest of us, go her own way," while Honor's most famous directive is "Unite them." Autonomy's individualism and distinctiveness contrast with Honor's legalism and uniformity. Autonomy avoids constraint while Honor is all about binding people. (This one surprised me, but I think it holds up quite well. Another option was Honor with Whimsy, constraint vs. spontaneity, but I think this split is better, as I'll elaborate later.)

(We know very little about any of the remaining 6 Shards.)

Ambition/Valor - Ruthless self-preservation and accomplishment (Ambition would be mono-black in Magic: the Gathering, Brandon says) vs. selfless defense of others. (Here's a decent place to note my recurring thought that the saying "Discretion is the better part of Valor" is relevant to Hoid not being able to find her, though she does talk to others, so I don't know if that fully tracks.)

Invention/Virtuosity - My flaw here is that I've not read Yumi & the Nightmare Painter yet, only skimmed Virtuosity's Coppermind article. Still, there seems like a basic opposition here between the creation of new things vs. the mastery of existing arts (Renaissance art's focus on proper perspective, photographic painting, etc. vs. Modern art's focus on surprise and violation of convention).

Whimsy/Reason - Whimsy could well be defined as not doing things for reasons, but following unanalyzed spontaneous impulses. We're told the Shard is not congruous with intense planning or ambitions (per Coppermind, which is an argument for Whimsy/Ambition, but I'm guessing the planning aspect might be more important.) It's also not dignified. Reason, however, seems to be our most dignified and deliberate Shard. It's the Survival Shard, of which Brandon said "The intent is related but only tangentially. Mostly it just knows what's going on and is smart enough to get out of there." This sounds to me like Reason is relevant in that it channels the knowledge of the Vessel to a coherent conclusion that it follows very consistently. Having the discipline to hide from other gods for millennia does seem antithetical to the fun and spontaneity of Whimsy.

So... that fit better than I expected. There's a few other shufflings I could see, and if anyone wants to reblog with their own arrangements I'd be delighted to read your arguments. But it feels just coherent enough that this might actually be Brandon's intention and not only me projecting and forcing patterns to make it more interesting (as my OCD likes to do).

The obvious next question is whether these pairs are part of a more complex structure, analogous to the 16 mundane metals in the Metallic Arts. Each pair would then be like a Push/Pull duality, the 16 should be divisible into 4 quadrants, and so on. I do not know if Brandon planned that far ahead, but... the question of whether each of the four Dawnshards corresponds to a quartet of Shards was RAFO'd, so maybe (Cultivation and Ruin as under Change makes sense, Preservation then under Exist... maybe I should stop here, we only know 2 of the Commands anyway). Again, any thoughts are welcome 😉

[uinferno]

Or if they do, they're certainly not drawing it.

[eggplantlive]

Ishar calling the other heralds to reforge the oathpact & them all just being like “alright bet” before really even having the fact that they didn’t actually have to get tortured explained to them lol. Good job guys way to be good sports.

[youngmasterwisdomperson]

In Barbie (2023), Barbie Land is presented in such a way as to suggest that it takes up a significant portion of Earth’s cognitive realm. And indeed, the various Barbies and Kens are in many ways similar in nature to Rosharan spren and other sentient idea-based splinters, including in their need for a powerful Connection with a human in order to take on more aspects of reality and manifest properly in the physical realm. This has numerous interesting implications in terms of the Barbie Movie’s otherwise unexplained magic system, not the least of which being that the ghost of Ruth is similar in numerous ways to a Nalthian Returned. In this essay I will-

[onlycosmere]

Questioner: Is it possible for people to be Mistborn in another world other than the one that...

Brandon Sanderson: It is not possible for them to be born Mistborn, but a Mistborn can travel to one of those worlds. And you could theoretically create one out of Hemalurgy on another world. You would need to bring people, right? But you could actually do it. Nothing would prevent you, other than the horrific, gruesome nature of it.

[thekinglemingle]

Ah, no. I see the mistake you've made here targeted advertising algorithm. I do post a lot about Bonds, Cultivation, Harmony and Connection. But it's not for Jesus reasons.

[il3x]

you can really tell that the cosmere is just magic physics by how every post about cosmere mechanics/realmatic theory starts off with "Firstly, assume that..."

[the-prince-of-the-ravens]

if i cared about school half as much as i care about cosmere lore i could've been one of those child prodigies accepted into harvard when they were 12

[thestormlightnetwork]

Seeing Sanderson's notes on realmatic theory is not a want it's a need because... what do you mean Ba-Ado-Mishram is trapped in the Spiritual realm....

[cosmereclysmic]

If emotional pain feels like physical pain could you replicate Odium-numbing-Moash levels of numbing with a Painrial? 🤔🤔🤔

[commanderofthegrey]

the way i am not caught up on the cosmere at all.

[highly-invested]

What do you guys think the trick to better Connection spoofing? Alik, Vasher, and Galladon all have issues with their own cultures' idioms and word choices bleeding through (one of these is probably by choice though lol.) Whereas Hoid and that Terriswoman worldhopper from RoW for example do not. I think the fact that one of the few worldhoppers we see who isn't either unreasonably realmatically versed or well established, who also doesn't have issues with using connection to hop a language barrier is a Terriswoman.

I think the trick to good connection spoofing is to store or blank your Identity so your Connection with your homeworld/history offworld isn't fighting with the blank Connection you're tapping.

[eggplantlive]

Moss burying himself under the floor during Szeth’s visit to the lightweaver monastery was lowkey giving saddam hussein hiding spot

[shouldprobablybereading]

Doesn’t this make sigzil like, VERY highly invested? Which I guess makes sense if he’s possibly held a dawnchard. (I checked the list of heightenings on the coppermind and it’s lower than I thought, but he wants to be around 4th-5th heightening)

I purposefully didn’t reread the preview chapters beforehand so I can’t remember what has been mentioned before but getting units for measuring investiture is really interesting (and gives sad implications about how far into the future this must be). It’s interesting that it’s in breath and not stormlight given that that is the resource that people presumably want to power investiture with. Yet in nearly all secret projects all I can remember is awakening technology (+hion)

[onlycosmere]

Questioner: What is the biggest editorial change you have ever made to one of your stories from your arcanists who said, "Oh you can't do this because of *inaudible* or for canon content?"

Brandon Sanderson: I'm not sure if I can come up with the biggest. I can list a couple of them that I did change.

They have a lot of influence over Sunlit Man and my weird little tiny planet, my Little Prince planet, that you're traveling around. Getting me to do that accurately... to the point that, at some points, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm gonna give a magical solution to that." And they're like, "That's fine. Know that physicists will complain." And then they did. But then they got mad... not mad, but they're like, "But there is a magical reason."

I only have a full arcanist team on a couple of books so far. They've been involved in all the Secret Projects. They're working with me on Stormlight Five. This is just me finding the people who ask the questions that make me go, "Huh, I hadn't considered that," and then putting them to work to be doing that on my behalf. Really, most of what they do is not say "no," they say "we would like an explanation; you should make sure that this is included." And once in a while, it makes me pull back on an idea. But they're usually really small things that are gonna cause issues for the future, and things like that. I just met with them on Stormlight Five, for instance, and they gave me a few pointers on things. They'd say, "You probably should explain this. You probably should not use this line, because people are gonna explore that and extrapolate that direction." And I'm like, "you are right."

Most of the cases, they're like, "What is this?" And then I explain it, and they're like, "Great. You have an answer. We can move on." You'd have to ask them, but I'd say that one out of ten times, I don't have an answer. But those one out of ten times are really handy for them to be asking those questions that I don't have answers to. Because I have to go do this for all of you, and I'd better have the answers by then.

[pocketramblr]

STILL sitting here like 'why is her monster side effected by the first golden kingdom village monster curse but not the second melini monster curse'