Adonalsium- the deity of neutrality

[Mushroom Catalog he/him]

I once it heard proposed that Adonalsium was made of opposites, like Ruin and Preservation. Obviously not true, because math.

But Shards don't need to be direct opposites to oppose each other, if indirectly. We see all the Shardic conflict going on around, and few of those Shards are in direct conflict of intent. Ati, the vessel of Ruin himself says to Preservation, "Anything you do, I counter." 

Being composed of so many individual parts on conflict, it might have been difficult for Adonalsium to do anything. It's like a plate made of different glass fragments, it still functions, but may not do it as well or look as good. A solid, one color plate, is much nicer to eat off of. Of course, that depends on the color. I don't want to really eat off of a Ruin colored plate.

This is why I think the Shattering was necessary. Adonalsium, while probably a decent deity, was not as functional as he could have been. Without the future sight of a Shard, those who Shattered him probably decided that breaking it up was necessary to get some stuff going in the universe.

And as we can read, there is a lot of stuff happening with the Shards running loose.

[RShara she/her]

I'm pretty sure Adonalsium was a complete entity, with a full mind and personality, myself. We all have those drives and emotions in us--Ambition, Honor, Hatred, Love, etc. When he Shattered, those parts of him got divided out along with his power. Holding some of them, the way they are now, can cause conflicts in intent, but they were all originally part of a whole that held them in context, just like a normal person would.

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)

Edit:

We also know that much of the cosmere and the life on the cosmere  was created by Adonalsium. If he wasn't able to act, then he wouldn't have been able to create all of that. Look at the really incredible originality  and craziness that is Roshar, which Adonalsium deliberately created for some specific purpose, as an example.

Edited September 18, 2019 by RShara

[Mushroom Catalog he/him]

6 minutes ago, RShara said:

We also know that much of the cosmere and the life on the cosmere  was created by Adonalsium. If he wasn't able to act, then he wouldn't have been able to create all of that. Look at the really incredible originality  and craziness that is Roshar, which Adonalsium deliberately created for some specific purpose, as an example.

Not necessarily unable to act, but unable to act to the Shatterer's liking. 

Revised theory: Adonalsium was the kind of person who doesn't like to do things without debating over it forever and like Harmony says, he couldn't ever do enough for the sentient species. So they killed him and tried to do it themselves.

[agrabes]

18 hours ago, RShara said:

I'm pretty sure Adonalsium was a complete entity, with a full mind and personality, myself. We all have those drives and emotions in us--Ambition, Honor, Hatred, Love, etc. When he Shattered, those parts of him got divided out along with his power. Holding some of them, the way they are now, can cause conflicts in intent, but they were all originally part of a whole that held them in context, just like a normal person would.

Edit:

We also know that much of the cosmere and the life on the cosmere  was created by Adonalsium. If he wasn't able to act, then he wouldn't have been able to create all of that. Look at the really incredible originality  and craziness that is Roshar, which Adonalsium deliberately created for some specific purpose, as an example.

I think the WOB you just quoted is very interesting.  But doesn't it sort of contradict one of your pet peeves regarding Odium?  This WOB directly states that Odium has a valid argument to say that he does represent all emotion (Passion) rather than simply hatred.

It  says that the names of many of the shards aren't really precise.  For example - Sanderson says that Honor actually represents a sense of being bound by rules.  This includes things that many people would consider dishonorable such as following rules or laws that are immoral (see the Skybreakers).  So, you could really say that Honor the shard does not truly represent "honor" the concept.  If he did, then he would not include things that a reasonable person could consider dishonorable.  You could definitely argue that Honor is more "honorable" than "dishonorable," but it's still too simplistic to just call him Honor if you want to accurately describe what his shard represents. 

It seems likely based on this WOB that it's also too simplistic to just call Odium hate.  The implication was that the name of his shard was given by all the other shards based on what they perceived him to be.  They disliked the true and objective intent of his shard and therefore named him in a way that has a negative connotation (odium -> odious) the way they did with Ruin.  Most likely, Odium is not exactly "hate" in the same way that Honor is not exactly "honor."  It's just that his actual, objectively described intent does tend to lead to hate more often than not.  So, maybe it's not a meaningful distinction.  I'm wondering, based on the descriptions of various gods in real world religious history, if his "God's own divine hatred" description means that like many gods in many religions throughout history (particularly ancient religions) he loves his followers and hates all others.

[RShara she/her]

2 hours ago, agrabes said:

I think the WOB you just quoted is very interesting.  But doesn't it sort of contradict one of your pet peeves regarding Odium?  This WOB directly states that Odium has a valid argument to say that he does represent all emotion (Passion) rather than simply hatred.

It  says that the names of many of the shards aren't really precise.  For example - Sanderson says that Honor actually represents a sense of being bound by rules.  This includes things that many people would consider dishonorable such as following rules or laws that are immoral (see the Skybreakers).  So, you could really say that Honor the shard does not truly represent "honor" the concept.  If he did, then he would not include things that a reasonable person could consider dishonorable.  You could definitely argue that Honor is more "honorable" than "dishonorable," but it's still too simplistic to just call him Honor if you want to accurately describe what his shard represents. 

It seems likely based on this WOB that it's also too simplistic to just call Odium hate.  The implication was that the name of his shard was given by all the other shards based on what they perceived him to be.  They disliked the true and objective intent of his shard and therefore named him in a way that has a negative connotation (odium -> odious) the way they did with Ruin.  Most likely, Odium is not exactly "hate" in the same way that Honor is not exactly "honor."  It's just that his actual, objectively described intent does tend to lead to hate more often than not.  So, maybe it's not a meaningful distinction. 

The names of the Shards are just a rough idea of the general facet of personality that's associated with their power. It's like the tip of an iceberg. So yeah, Odium could have an argument that he's not just Hatred, and there's probably a degree of truth to that. But to claim he is Passion instead of Hate is what I object to. I've stated my arguments on that and don't really want to derail the thread into that again, so I'm just going to leave it at the fact that I don't find his arguments compelling, and the other WoB we have on the matter say that he's lying to himself about what he is.

Quote

I'm wondering, based on the descriptions of various gods in real world religious history, if his "God's own divine hatred" description means that like many gods in many religions throughout history (particularly ancient religions) he loves his followers and hates all others.

Given he's freely threatened his own followers with destruction if they disobeyed him, I highly doubt that.

Edited September 19, 2019 by RShara

[agrabes]

2 hours ago, RShara said:

The names of the Shards are just a rough idea of the general facet of personality that's associated with their power. It's like the tip of an iceberg. So yeah, Odium could have an argument that he's not just Hatred, and there's probably a degree of truth to that. But to claim he is Passion instead of Hate is what I object to. I've stated my arguments on that and don't really want to derail the thread into that again, so I'm just going to leave it at the fact that I don't find his arguments compelling, and the other WoB we have on the matter say that he's lying to himself about what he is.

Given he's freely threatened his own followers with destruction if they disobeyed him, I highly doubt that.

Yeah, no need to go into a full on discussion and jack the thread.  Just thought it was interesting.  Threatening to destroy (or severely punish) his followers if they disobey is also par for the course of the "divine hatred" aspect of a god of just about any religion we have in the real world though.