Why Emotions Matter

[Mushroom Catalog]

I've seen others, and have myself, speculate about emotions and their relevance. So, a theory as for why they are important.

Where we see this: (Not everything, just off the top of my head.)

• Odium - Give me your pain
• Koloss - Soothing to take control
• Spren - Attracted to them. Maybe live off them?
• Inquisitors - Break free from Ruin with strong emotions

Why I think this is important:

Humans have innate investiture. I think that they have the ability to "flavor" this Investiture with their emotions or feelings, which for certain reasons flows out of them. Their emotions come off of them in waves, rippling out through the physical realm. This emotional ripple Investiture is keyed to different Shards, as each shard is associated with an emotion or virtue. Emotions keyed towards those virtues can be absorbed by Shards encompassing those emotions.

For each of the above points

Odium - I think that Odium wants them to do this so that they have space for other things. With Dalinar, his grieving stopped him from hating. Hating which would feed into Odium's power. I think that the fact that people hate may be why Odium is able to splinter so many shards. He has an edge. (My computer wants to spellcheck Odium into Sodium. )

Koloss - By Soothing away all emotion, beings with Investiture are able to get into the cracks in their soul. Ruin has enough power to do this without soothing, while humans have to sooth away their emotion. This is because Investiture can block other Investiture - something we see with shards and soulcasting. By removing their natural emotion Investiture bubble, people can get into the cracks in a Koloss' soul.

Spren - Spren have the ability to feed on these emotional Investiture bubbles - when a bubble gets strong due to strong emotion, nearby spren that want that kind of emotion or feeling can get it and absorb it. Without it, they lose their Investiture over time.

Inquisitors - By creating lots of strong emotion, they get their Investiture bubble up and strong enough to resist Ruin - See Marsh and Vin in HoA.

TL;DR

I think that Investiture keyed to the emotion people are feeling radiates off of them - This Investiture can be absorbed by beings with the ability to do so, including Shards and Spren. It also causes a protective Investiture bubble.

Any thoughts? Does it make sense or need clarification? 

[Karger]

1 hour ago, Mushroom Catalog said:

Any thoughts? Does it make sense or need clarification? 

It makes sense.  I believe it is also mostly confirmed.  Nice going.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Karger

[Honorless]

This might be connected to this:

As for that Odium is doing with his "give me your pain", I've always wondered if it might be connected to the underlying Realmatic mechanics of his Shardic Intent which gets translated into Odium, like how Honor's Intent gets translated

Quote

Questioner

Shards. We started with fairly obvious ones, magic wise. Trying to keep this spoiler free, so: Ruin, Preservation, this kind of thing. Then we get the weird ones. Why do we have Shards that can only exist in the mind of a sentient creature? ...Like the concept of Honor can only be done when it's carried out, essentially, by a sentient creature.

Brandon Sanderson

So when I split Adonalsium I said, "I'm going to take aspects of Adonalsium's nature." And this involves personality to me. So the Shattering of Adonalsium was primal forces attached to certain aspects of personality. And so I view every one of them this way. And when I wrote Mistborn we had Ruin and Preservation. They are the primal forces of entropy and whatever you call the opposite, staying-the-same-ism-y. Like, you've got these two contrasts, between things changing and things not changing. And then humans do have a part, there's a personality. Ruin is a charged term for something that actually is the way that life exists. And Preservation is a charged term for stasis, for staying the same. And those are the personality aspects, and the way they are viewed by people and by the entity that was Adonalsium.

So I view this for all of them. Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by. And there's this sense that that is noble, that's the honor aspect to it, but there's also something not honorable about Honor if taken from the other direction. So a lot of them do kind of have this both-- cultural component, I would say, that is trying to represent something that is also natural. And not all of them are gonna have a 100% balance between those two things, I would say, because there's only so many fundamental laws of the universe that I can ascribe personalities to in that way. 

So I find Honor very interesting, but I find Autonomy a very interesting one for the exact same reason. What does autonomy mean? We attach a lot to it, but what is the actual, if you get rid of the charged terms, what does it mean? And this is where you end up with things like Odium claiming "I am all emotion." Rather than-- But then there's a charged term for it that is associated with this Shard. I'm not going to tell you whether he's right or not, but he has an argument. 

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

 

[Mushroom Catalog]

21 hours ago, Karger said:

It makes sense.  I believe it is also mostly confirmed.  Nice going.

I didn't know it was mostly confirmed... Thanks! 

17 hours ago, Honorless said:

This might be connected to this:

I feel like if this exists, then it will be just as connected as everything else is. Although, I think mental DNA might just be a part of the Spiritual realm.