Theories on the other shards

[Jonathon]

Okay, I don't know if anything like this has been mentioned before so, sorry if it has. Anyway, I realized recently that in the cosmere there seem to be a lot of opposites and parallels to everything. 

 

When kelsier is first teaching Vin about allomancy he says that every push has a pull (or something like that) meaning that everything has an opposite or a consequence. Every allomantic metal has an opposite to it and when combined they (most of the time) cancel out. 

We see more opposites on Sel, where the seons seem to be the exact opposites of the skaze. One emits light while the other seems to absorb light. 

On Roshar we see that honorspren are the opposites of cryptically and tend to dislike them, just how shallan and kaladin hated each other at first. 

But then we also see that a bunch of the shards seem to have opposites, so what if they all have opposites? It isn't really sixteen different shards but eight pairs of opposites. Ruin vs Preservation. Odium (hatred) vs Devotion (love). Autonomy (self sufficiency) vs Dominion (control). These are the obvious pairings but there are also unobvious ones:

Honor (morality) vs Ambition (desire)

and

Endowment (natural skill) vs Cultivation (improving or refining something)

So with this trend of opposite shards, perhaps we can learn more about the six shards whose intent we don't know. Brandon has mentioned that there is a shard who "just wants to survive" but he hasn't specifically named its intent as survival or anything else. With this we can try to speculate what the opposite of a shard who just wants to survive would be. The answer could be A) A shard who just wants to die, B) A shard who wants to kill/destroy or C) Something else entirely

Then if we could figure out that pair it would leave us with four more shards of unknown intent which would only be two pairs, so we'd be close to figuring them all out. 

 

Let me know if you have any other proof, or prove me wrong. Either way we'll be one step closer to unraveling some of the biggest mysteries in the cosmere. 

[+Extesian he/him]

There is a long fascinating thread on this from a few months ago that you may want to have a look at. We've taken that kind of approach to the point of attempting to map out quadrants with patterns for opposites, pushing/pulling, different realms and godly attributes. It's a pretty good read even if it all turns out to be wrong

That's not to discourage your post or people using it is a fresh opportunity to analyze this! That thread hasn't been active much recently anyway. But there's certainly some good ideas on there that you can have a think about or to feed into ideas that come up here. 

[Jonathon]

Thank you for letting me know, I tried to search for another topic like this but couldn't find one. I'll go check out the other thread now!  

 

Edit:

I just checked out the other thread and read some of it, skimming through other sections. While reading it I came up with another idea for a shard intent, well two actually. 

The first is Fear, because a god would need its followers to have a respectful fear of him and the other one I thought of was Humility to keep god from becoming arrogant and not caring about the world he created. Also we know there was a force that opposed adonalsium, so it would be bad if he got too cocky in regards to that. 

Also I originally started thinking about the shards being paired like allomantic metals at first as one person in the thread tried to do, but I couldn't figure out the logistics of how it would make sense the same way. Perhaps it could be something like:

Preservation, Ruin, Endowment, Cultivation

Devotion, Odium, Honor, Ambition

Autonomy, Dominion, Humility, Intimidation

???, ???, ???, ???

 

Edit 2:

I realized that I was saying it wrong when I said fear. What I really meant is something along the lines of Intimidation to make others fear him, and Intimidation could be considered an indirect opposite of Humility so I have adjusted the chart accordingly. 

At first I was toying around with the idea of Pride being one of them but I don't think that would fit with what we know so far. I thought of it originally as a possible opposite to Humility, but it seemed too... obvious, I guess and I ruled it out. 

Also perhaps the shard that "just wants to survive" is something like Desperation (or maybe there is actually a Fear). I'm not confident enough in this thought to put it in my chart yet, but I'm just throwing the idea out there for anyone to build on. 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Jonathon

[Farnsworth]

On ‎5‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 8:25 PM, Jonathon said:

When kelsier is first teaching Vin about allomancy he says that every push has a pull (or something like that) meaning that everything has an opposite or a consequence. Every allomantic metal has an opposite to it and when combined they (most of the time) cancel out. 

This is only the case on Scadrial where Preservation and Ruin cancel eachother out. Everything there is from one of the two so that is how the world works. This is not the case on, say, Threnody where there are no shards.

[RyFighter]

I like the theory that there are opposites, in allomancy and furrochemy there are 16 metals, or 8 sets of 2. So it would make sense that the 16 shards of the cosmere would follow a similar pattern. One thing, I've been thinking for a while, is that there is a subtle influence on scadrial that has only been tangentially referenced. A third shard called "anonymity". Its influence would obviously be subtle because it doesn't want to be known and it's foil could actually be devotion. I think we see some of its influence in era 1 with the characters' need for secrecy and in era 2 with identityless metalminds and the mechanical metallic arts. 

[Jonathon]

I like this idea but I don't think it is possible for a third shard to be on Scadrial. Scadrial is referred to by khris in the AU as a dishardic planet meaning it only has two shards. Otherwise I would totally agree with you.

[Ethan_sedai he/him]

if every push has a pull, is there an opposite for Harmony?

[Catladyman]

@ethan_sedai it would make sense, something like Chaos? The question is whether it would also be a dual-shard, like Harmony, or a single, unknown shard? If a dual-shard, I would like to see Cultivation as part of the equation. It seems naturally opposed to Preservation by centering on change, and it opposes Ruin by emphasizing growth.