The Most Original Thing Brandon Has Ever Written, featuring the Shattering.

[A Radiant In Shiny Armor]

Let's talk about The Shattering of Adonalsium. (bit of a long post, I know, but trust me).

Now, we can all agree that the Shattering is A Big Deal™ by Cosmere standards, and we've all been dying to get any tidbits as to the how's and why's of such a monumental event. Storms, we barely know the where's and who's! Most we can say is it happened A Long Time ago, in Yolen, and maybe Uncle Andy went along with it?

That is why whenever Hoid or Khriss or whoever makes a reference to the Shattering, we pay VERY close attention! We are desperate to know what it looked like, why it happened, how it went about, what everyone in the Cosmere felt, and a million other things. We would love nothing more than a first-hand account of Adonalsium's death.

But you know what Brandon gave us instead? Not a recollection of events by a scholar, not exposition by one of the Shards, not the how's or why's or the answer to any of those questions; no, instead of telling us how it looked or sounded or came about, Brandon showed us how the Shattering felt.

 

From Dawnshard, ch. 16:

Quote

[Rysn] swore she could feel the heat of that sun, burning, washing over her. It was not angry, though she knew it was being ripped apart like a person on some awful torture device. She felt something emanating from it. Resignation? Confidence? Understanding?

 

Now I don't know about you folks but to me it seems that the first ever look we get at the Shattering, the first POV from the death of Adonalsium, is in the form of emotions. Those are the emotions that Adonalsium itself felt at the moment of its death.

And how amazing is that?! For such a foundational event for the entirety of the Cosmere, we don't get something "normal" like 'Hoid remembered that fatal day, when everything ended' or some "regular" storytelling like that! Any other saga based on such an event would have just released a prequel featuring the Shattering. But instead, we get to experience firsthand what the Shattering felt like. We learn not what was said, nor the details of what transpired, but the feelings of God's death from millenia ago.

And that, dear Sharders ,is the most original thing Brandon has ever written.

 

Thanks you for coming to my TED talk.

[Could Be Fire]

On 2/24/2021 at 9:35 AM, A Radiant In Shiny Armor said:

Resignation? Confidence? Understanding?

If this is Adonalsium's feelings during the shattering (which I totally believe now, this is such a great theory), then it's super interesting.

I know one of the arguments has been the Adonalsium somehow planned/enacted their own shattering, and if this is what they thought while it happened, it provides some evidence in support of that.

Also, the call-outs of specific individual emotions (Resignation, Confidence, Understanding) really remind me of intents. I'd been of the belief that the Intents of the shards were influenced by the people doing the shattering; that they were their beliefs/intents for doing so. Like, someone was shattering to Preserve life, another for Honor, a third because of hatred/Odium, and so on. But this makes me think that the 16 pieces may be the intents/feeling Adolusim itself had about the Shattering. 

One of the missing shards has a Wisdom/Prudence mapped intent, which matches really well with 'understanding'. 'Resignation' could be Ruin (all things must come to an end) and 'confidence' could be Ambition. This is total tinfoil, but there might be something here.