Stormgate he/him Posted December 23, 2015 Posted December 23, 2015 It's what i want to say. You may take Shard's Intent with different criteria and you may obtain many possible "opposite". For example to me the relationship Ruin-Cultivation are quite similar to the relationship Devotion-Dominion. In both pairs the members aim to the same thing ( Change for Ruin&Cultivation and Cohesion for D&D) but use different methods to get it. You bring up a good point. I have a theory that each Allomantic metal can be linked to a Shard. I'm not sure how the different quadrants work yet, but perhaps Ruin and Cultivation are in the same quadrant, or something.
Ari he/him Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 I'm simply saying that Devotion and Dominion are opposites, not quite like Preservation and Ruin, but similar. In my view, not really. Devotion and Dominion are in conflict. Significiant conflict. But their intents are also in agreement on a number of things- like the importance of unity, that servitude to others is a positive thing, and would probably be in less conflict (but also offer a less broad range of perspective and abilities) if merged than Harmony is. I would consider Devotion to potentially be closest to the direct opposite of Odium, if anything, and Dominion to be the closest opposite to Autonomy. It's what i want to say. You may take Shard's Intent with different criteria and you may obtain many possible "opposite". For example to me the relationship Ruin-Cultivation are quite similar to the relationship Devotion-Dominion. In both pairs the members aim to the same thing ( Change for Ruin&Cultivation and Cohesion for D&D) but use different methods to get it. I would agree with Yata here. I would describe the relationship between Dominion and Devotion as complementary, the same way I would describe the relationship between Ruin and Cultivation, or perhaps Preservation and Endowment. They have both significant point of conflict and significant points of agreement in their intents. It's POSSIBLE that the shards can be arranged into quadrants where you group opposing and complementary shards together and they follow some sort of larger theme for each quadrant. (In which case, I would expect Honour, Odium, and Devotion to be in the same group, for instance) I'd want to know at least 13 of them before claiming that myself so we can be certain we have Shards from each potential grouping. I wouldn't expect there to be any overlap between the function of metals in the metallic arts and Shard intents, however.
natc Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 To be honest, even the level of conflict between Preservation and Ruin isn't absolute, just extremely high when compared to other combinations. Because they are indeed in agreement on one thing: creation is forbidden and not allowable. In that regard, and very little else, the concepts of stagnation and decay align. Even with both of them together it probably took a decent effort to create Scadrial, and I'd wager their mental contamination was weaker then too. 1
Ari he/him Posted January 3, 2016 Posted January 3, 2016 (edited) To be honest, even the level of conflict between Preservation and Ruin isn't absolute, just extremely high when compared to other combinations. Because they are indeed in agreement on one thing: creation is forbidden and not allowable. In that regard, and very little else, the concepts of stagnation and decay align. Even with both of them together it probably took a decent effort to create Scadrial, and I'd wager their mental contamination was weaker then too. I feel like you're kinda missing the point of that particular cosmere history lesson. It was the fact that they were so opposite and thus have such broad abilities when working together that they could create life together from scratch. They don't "agree" on creation being against their intents, (If anything, they disagree on which half of the job is "forbidden," for lack of a better word) rather, they're each against doing half of the job that creation requires, thus when working together they could do it. Their intents are in fact so cleanly opposite that the gaps in their powers and the powers of the other shard are complementary. This is precisely what you would expect from an opposed pair that co-operated by necessity. If pairing is a part of the structure of there being 16 shards we would expect to find at least two, if not four or eight, opposing pairs. (Brandon has ruled out 8 however in an earlier WoB, so you'd be looking for a maximum of four opposing pairs) Edited January 3, 2016 by Ari
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