Problems with Shards

[Aspiring Writer]

55 minutes ago, mathiau said:

They have not even archived self-control, how could they be worthy of any kind of worship? And yes, most gods in fiction are straight out jokes.

You, my friend, cleary do not read greek myths, where the gods are sometimes the prettiest beings you can ever have the misfortune of coming across. People can and do workshop anything, that's how religion exists.

[mathiau he/him]

Just now, Aspiring Writer said:

You, my friend, cleary do not read greek myths, where the gods are sometimes the prettiest beings you can ever have the misfortune of coming across. People can and do workshop anything, that's how religion exists.

I've read them, petty doesn't even begin to describe them. The lameness of Greeks and Romans's gods always bugged me, that along the fact that we still make glorious retailing of the tales of these rapists.

[Aspiring Writer]

2 minutes ago, mathiau said:

I've read them, petty doesn't even begin to describe them. The lameness of Greeks and Romans's gods always bugged me, that along the fact that we still make glorious retailing of the tales of these rapists.

I would not say they are lame, just more human, which is the reason we like them. They are actual characters with some motivations and are more interesting than most other myths about bland gods that are supposedly all-powerful while doing nothing whatsoever. Honestly, I prefer those kinds of myths.

[StanLemon]

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

They have not even archived self-control, how could they be worthy of any kind of worship? And yes, most gods in fiction are straight out jokes.

I'd still consider the Shards to be more "godly" than most gods actually worshipped in real life history 

[mathiau he/him]

4 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

I'd still consider the Shards to be more "godly" than most gods actually worshipped in real life history 

To be fair, yes.

[Szmit]

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I was disappointed by the death of Rayse.

~Cultivation's plan.

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He failed in epic proportion with turning Dalinar in OB

 

~Cultivation's plan

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and failed to turn Kaladin after.

~Sidequest proposed by a mortal subordinate.

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His forces captured Urithiru and were defeated by basically a single Radiant and Navani.

~Sidequest proposed by a mortal subordinate.

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Then, he entered into a pathetic deal with Dalinar..

~Honestly exterminating humanity wouldn't be that much better for him. Cultivation wrecked his entire plan based on having Dalinar, and he decided to cut the losses, since at that time he was bacisally wasting soldiers that could be used against other Shards.

In other words: His plans were defeated by Cultivation, (who was pretending to be inactive, and in fact made power move after power move) and only plans of his mortal subordinates were actually stopped by the Radiants.

Cultivation is probably the best futuresight user. Ruin only lost because Preservation made a plan that encompassed everything. In other words when Shards fail it's because of another Shard that is better at planing decides to storm them over.

[Aspiring Writer]

8 hours ago, Szmit said:

~Honestly exterminating humanity wouldn't be that much better for him. Cultivation wrecked his entire plan based on having Dalinar, and he decided to cut the losses, since at that time he was bacisally wasting soldiers that could be used against other Shards.

also was starting to lose his mind and becoming impatient and desparate

[LeahAstonished]

1 hour ago, Aspiring Writer said:

also was starting to lose his mind and becoming impatient and desparate

Do you think dragons/immortal beings can just hold it together over the years better than humans/mortal beings? Koravellium Avast and Edgli (theorized dragon) seem to be doing ok. Rayse, Tanavast, Leras, & Ati all seemed to be losing it before the end. Do we have confirmation on what type of beings they are? I think of them all as human.

Edited January 10, 2021 by LeahAstonished

[StanLemon]

11 minutes ago, LeahAstonished said:

Do you think dragons/immortal beings can just hold it together over the years better than humans/mortal beings? Koravellium Avast and Edgli (theorized dragon) seem to be doing ok. Rayse, Tanavast, Leras, & Ati all seemed to be losing it before the end. Do we have confirmation on what type of beings they are? I think of them all as human.

It's hard to tell, We've never seen a Vessel from the Shattering that was both human and not traumatized horribly. The Leras we see was after he ripped his own mind apart to stop Ruin. Ati was horribly unaligned with his Shard's Intent assuming what Hoid's letter said was wholly accurate and he spent thousands of years impotent, possibly even more so than Odium. Rayse had been bound by the Oathpact for seven thousand years and his goals were always being thwarted. And the only view of Tanavast we've had was him while he was dying.

[Aspiring Writer]

4 hours ago, LeahAstonished said:

Do you think dragons/immortal beings can just hold it together over the years better than humans/mortal beings? Koravellium Avast and Edgli (theorized dragon) seem to be doing ok. Rayse, Tanavast, Leras, & Ati all seemed to be losing it before the end. Do we have confirmation on what type of beings they are? I think of them all as human.

Not sure, but I don't think it's because of their long life but because of how long they have had to deal with a shardic intent, and so naturally living longer shouldn't matter, especially since we have very long-lived characters like Marsh, Vasher, TLR, and Hoid who seem fairly sane.

[Chinkoln he/him]

From what we have seen, Shards are all powerful, with a few minor exceptions. Other Shards can kill them, or bind them, but binding another Shard weakens them. Also Nightblood. Endowment is all powerful on their planet. They can do anything they want because there is no opposing Shard and there is no binding on them. If they were to somehow turn evil, they would be the most feared thing in the Cosmere, because they are all powerful. I bet that eventually there will be one Shard that frees itself from restraint and rampages.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

On 1/1/2021 at 5:23 PM, StanLemon said:

Keep in mind that most of the victories humans have had against Shards happen through a combination of previous Shard bindings and the manipulations of other Shards. Dalinar was able to resist Odium because of Cultivation's manipulations. Odium was forced to rely on his followers because of Honor's prison. Ruin was stopped because of a plan that Preservation put into place thousands of years ago. It seems to me that the Cosmere is merely in a cold war between Shardic machinations. It's not merely mortals beating gods, but gods using mortals to outmaneuver other gods

Worth noting that Ruin’s loss took three different Vessels of Preservation. Leras created the original plan, but Ruin figures out a way to prevent it from working and kills Leras.

Then Kelsier as Preservation conned Ruin by using his personal understanding of the players. For which Ruin nearly sent him Beyond, except that Vin Ascended, distracting Ruin.

And Ruin STILL almost won them, except that he outplayed himself by killing Elend. This gave Vin as Preservation the impetus to kill Ruin, which also killed her.

THREE vessels. To defeat ONE Shard. Who ended up being defeated because his own Intent meant that he had to act to Ruin on multiple levels. (Using Marsh and Spook against Kelsier and killing Elend to hurt Vin.) Worth noting that that has also been the only time we’ve seen two Shards in direct combat and it did not go well for Scadrial.

On 1/8/2021 at 3:30 AM, Lunu’anaki said:

I'm not sure that's true... I thought it was mentioned multiple times in RoW and once or twice in Oathbringer as well? I could very well be imagining that though? I know Dalinar was at least realizing that the vessel Rayse could be manipulated since Oathbringer.

I do agree though, It was not clear that Rayse was having a tough time controlling himself until moments before his death, which is weak foreshadowing. (Brandon is literally the master of foreshadowing in every other case though, so I'm very forgiving on this one, even though it is a pretty big deal.)

This is one of the many reasons I say that SH should be read before RoW. If you’ve read SH then you know EXACTLY what it means when Sja Anat says that the power doesn’t agree with Rayse, because you’ve seen that before, when Kelsier held Preservation.

But if you haven’t read Secret History, then it isn’t clear at all. Honestly, without Secret History one revelation seems to come from left field (the power disliking Rayse) and another can be missed entirely (Kelsier being Thaidakar.)

Secret History is basically foreshadowing for RoW, which is a bit of a problem as you can’t read SH on its own and it isn’t part of SA at all. But without the Realmatic background on Shardic interactions it gives you, this book isn’t nearly as good. I doubt I would have enjoyed RoW as much without the knowledge of Shards, Shadows, and Realmatics I got from Secret History. Everything there becomes relevant here - and that’s a problem because the foreshadowing for RoW should have occurred in Stormlight, not a novella from another series.

[Ba-Ado-Fisherman]

On 1/8/2021 at 1:17 PM, mathiau said:

They have not even archived self-control, how could they be worthy of any kind of worship? And yes, most gods in fiction are straight out jokes.

So you don't think Honor is worthy of any king of worship?

[Chinkoln he/him]

1 minute ago, Ba-Ado-Fisherman said:

So you don't think Honor is worthy of any king of worship?

There are positive and negative aspects to all leaders. Honor allowed Ashton to be destroyed, but he also gave power to found the Radiants and form the Oathpact. He bound Odium to Braize, but he went insane and gave odd commands to the Radiants and spren in his final days. Also, Mathias said MOST. In any group of beings/entities, there is at least one that will rise above the others and be better.

[Ba-Ado-Fisherman]

32 minutes ago, Chinkoln said:

There are positive and negative aspects to all leaders. Honor allowed Ashton to be destroyed, but he also gave power to found the Radiants and form the Oathpact. He bound Odium to Braize, but he went insane and gave odd commands to the Radiants and spren in his final days. Also, Mathias said MOST. In any group of beings/entities, there is at least one that will rise above the others and be better.

Right, but my point is that Honor is most definitely worthy of worship, as are many Shards, simply due to the enormous impact that they've had in the worlds they are invested in.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

12 minutes ago, Ba-Ado-Fisherman said:

Right, but my point is that Honor is most definitely worthy of worship, as are many Shards, simply due to the enormous impact that they've had in the worlds they are invested in.

Respect, certainly. Worship? I don't know if I'd go that far, not if you know what they are in truth. Like... I see why they are worshiped, but it's hard to imagine someone worshipping a shard if they know that they are just ascended humans incapable of acting outside of certain Intent-defined parameters. 

[Ba-Ado-Fisherman]

1 hour ago, Lunu’anaki said:

Respect, certainly. Worship? I don't know if I'd go that far, not if you know what they are in truth. Like... I see why they are worshiped, but it's hard to imagine someone worshipping a shard if they know that they are just ascended humans incapable of acting outside of certain Intent-defined parameters. 

I really don't know what the say anymore regarding this topic.  They can literally create and destroy entire planets.  This alone justifies worshiping them.  A god doesn't need to be benevolent to inspire worship. 

[mathiau he/him]

8 minutes ago, Ba-Ado-Fisherman said:

I really don't know what the say anymore regarding this topic.  They can literally create and destroy entire planets.  This alone justifies worshiping them.  A god doesn't need to be benevolent to inspire worship. 

I'm pretty sure it's not confirmed Honour can create planets, neither Ruin nor Preservation could.

Also, I'm Christian so I have very high standards for "worthy of worship", endorsed by an omniscient omnipotent omnipresent being is the minimum. And shards clearly don't have that.

[StanLemon]

49 minutes ago, mathiau said:

I'm pretty sure it's not confirmed Honour can create planets, neither Ruin nor Preservation could.

Also, I'm Christian so I have very high standards for "worthy of worship", endorsed by an omniscient omnipotent omnipresent being is the minimum. And shards clearly don't have that.

Not to get into a theological debate, but something I want to point out is that in the Old Testimate even the Abrahamic God had several limitations. I'll leave it there as I don't want this thread to devolve into arguing. 

Now, Ruin and Preservation were fully capable in terms of power to create a planet and all the life on it in the form of Scadrial. That by pretty much any metric would make them gods of Scadrial. The reason they had to work together wasn't their power but the limits of their Intents.

As far as worship goes, I personally think that that is dependent on if the actions of the god are worthy of worship

[Chinkoln he/him]

58 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Also, I'm Christian so I have very high standards for "worthy of worship", endorsed by an omniscient omnipotent omnipresent being is the minimum. And shards clearly don't have that.

I agree with you, I am also Christian. In real life, I have the same standards of a God who knows everything, sees everything, can do anything and is always everywhere. But this is a book. I have different standards in a book because we are already bending the rules of reality with magic, which is something that my God could theoretically do if He was so inclined. Of course, I believe in a God that can do anything, yet always follows the laws of nature. Sometimes, we don't understand all the laws of nature, but He does.

I don't know, all I am trying to say is that, this is a book, and if a book did have a God that met my standards, then the storyline would be... different. If the God was evil then it would be LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for Him to die.

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

1 hour ago, Ba-Ado-Fisherman said:

I really don't know what the say anymore regarding this topic.  They can literally create and destroy entire planets.  This alone justifies worshiping them.  A god doesn't need to be benevolent to inspire worship. 

Like many have said here, it's a mute point anyways. Worship is a very personal thing. I know people who would Worship the stick from WoR, and explain quite coherently their moral argument for doing so. So in that respect, everyone could be worthy of worship in someone's eyes. The more important questions in this discussion are "What are the Shards actually capable of?" and "Are they good antagonists."

I think we don't have a full picture for the first question, but have some specific answers and evidence to base assumptions off of. As for the second question, it's subjective but It feels like most of the people in this thread agree with the basic premise that Odium's arc up to this point was anticlimactic in some capacity.