Internal vs External Shards

[Paragrin she/her]

So, everybody's trying to classify the Shards, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

I've got two categories, internal and external.

 

Internal: Honor, Devotion, Odium, Survival (with current info)

External: Ruin, Preservation, Endowment, Cultivation, Dominion

 

Internal Shards are self-oriented, goals that relate to yourself, while external Shards are other-oriented, goals that relate to the world.

 

I tried to make it a Physical/Cognitive/Spiritual divide, but all the external ones came out as Physical (except maybe Dominion and Endowment) and I couldn't decide which Realm to put the others in. This worked better.

 

Further subdividing/disagreement/extensions are welcome!

Edited July 14, 2014 by Paragrin

[Argent he/him]

This makes me think of the categorization of metals in Allomancy. Which would make a very weird and meta sort of sense, because if the Shards could be divided into categories, then I wouldn't be too surprised to see Preservation keep those categories when designing his/her own magic system.

[Left he/him]

Sounds good. Like it. I assume Survival Shard goes in external?

[Paragrin she/her]

Hmm. No, it's more like, goals relating to yourself and goals relating to others, so as survival is self-oriented, that would go in internal. Editing to reflect.

[Oudeis he/him]

I feel "Survival" needs an asterisk, as we don't actually know it's name. (That I know of; have we learned anything more about it than the bit Mr. Sanderson wrote in someone's book saying, "there's a shard that just wants to survive"?) It's Intent might end up being something external that simply results in it wishing to stay alone and survive, like Fear.

 

...this whole concept is starting to make me think of Princess Tutu...

[Edgedancer he/him]

Sorry but I don´t see this categories. Honor maybe, in that you preserve your own honor even when you keep your promise to someone else, but you very much devote yourself to something that isn´t you and are more likely to hate someone who isn´t yourself. Plus, in a meta way, Shards intends don´t seem to apply to themselfes and as such are always external

[Oudeis he/him]

This thread suddenly makes me want to make an Adonalsium pun about, "To all Intents and purposes."

 

I can sorta see what Edgedancer is saying... "Emotions" versus "Goals" might be a better classification than "Internal" versus "External." I can sorta see what you're getting at, but like Edgedancer says, they're sorta all Internal, and they're sorta all External. Odium simply is hate, and doesn't hate any specifically, he just hates it all. Just like Ruin wants to ruin everything, but again, it's not directed at any one thing. He doesn't want to Ruin one flower more than another, the urge to ruin everything is coming from inside him.

 

I dunno about Honor... it's a pretty nebulous concept, I feel like no one can say, "This is the definition of Honor, it means all of this and nothing else." I think there are parts of Honor that are internal, but as Edgedancer said, you can make the Oaths to something external, and your actions in upholding those oaths are external. I suppose there's at least one version of honor where you only pledge to yourself and your duties to uphold are all internal... but that's surely not the sum total of all there is to know of Honor, and not really how we see Tanavast act.

[Paragrin she/her]

It's... mostly based on gut feel, honestly. It's kinda a "you are" vs "you do" thing, but that's not all of it.... It all makes perfect sense in my head, really!