Fanghur Rahl

Wouldn’t saying that a Splinter picked up the Shard be a little like saying that a droplet of water on the floor absorbed the flood that washed over it? As I understand it, a Splinter is effectively a ‘small’ fragment of a Shard. So wouldn’t reuniting a Splinter with the Shard simply mean putting the Shard back together?

Like I said, I don’t want to derail the thread. But insofar as what philosophers of metaphysics mean by ‘substance’, which is also the way I was using the term, as far as we can tell everything in the universe (that we can see at least) IS one substance.

Can’t cognitive shadows hold a Shard though? Kelsier did, briefly.

This might qualify as a tinfoil hat-type idea, but I’ve kinda been wondering whether it might be possible for a Shard to invest enough of their own power into another person to cause that person to ‘Ascend’ into something far less powerful than them but still effectively a post-physical entity like them? I mentioned it in passing on another post the other day, but the closest analogy I can think of would that if we think of the Shard as God, the person they invest would become loosely the equivalent to an angel/archangel. Regardless of whether it will actually happen, and I very much doubt that it will, at least in the way I’ve described here, but is there any reason that a Shard couldn’t do something like this if they wanted to? Or would it be impossible?

Does fully Ascending count as ‘dying’? I’m rather fond of the idea of Dalinar becoming Honor/Unity and Cultivation choosing to baton-pass her Shard to join Tanavast in the Beyond and Navani becoming the new Cultivation (or whatever near-synonym she’d end up as). Also, I’m pretty sure Szeth will eventually die for real, probably in some kind of heroic sacrifice to save his people. Not sure about the others though.

Fair enough, I just don’t think it’s AS big of a deal as many people make it out to be. And thanks for letting me know, I hadn’t known that. It won’t happen again.

Yes, but the things each realm contains are physical, mental, and spiritual, respectively, which is all I meant. And I don’t really wanna derail the thread too much by starting a philosophical debate, but since you asked, in order for two substances to be capable of interacting with each other, they must do so via one or more fundamental attributes that they share in common. But if they share common attributes then by definition they aren’t actually distinct substances but rather different ‘manifestations’ of the same substance. That’s the fundamental problem with non-monistic ontologies, and why the overwhelming majority of modern philosophers (at least those who aren’t driven by dogma) are monists of one stripe or another, at least as far as I’ve been able to tell.

That’s way too strong a word, at least after one has read Secret History. Kelsier may be callous, hyper-pragmatic, and unforgiving toward those he perceives as enemies (almost all of whom this is entirely justified) but we have still seen him able to empathize with others on more than one occasion. There’s a big difference between someone who is driven by a desire for vengeance and someone who completely lacks a conscience and a moral code; the latter does not apply to Kelsier. At worst he’s just an extremist who fanatically looks out for those he perceives as his ‘people’.

Actually, quantum mechanics has largely turned this on its head; the classical conception of matter simply doesn’t appear tenable anymore. Indeed, many physicists now suspect that spacetime itself actually emerges FROM what we now call ‘matter’.

Well, logically only one of the three realms/substances (matter, mind, and spirit) CAN be fundamental, since the idea of three independent and fundamental substances being able to interact with each other despite not sharing any common attributes is not tenable. So regardless of the means, the Cosmere can’t truly be pluralistic in ontology (or at least it shouldn’t be if Brandon knows his philosophy). From what I’ve been able to tell, it seems that the three realms have a kind of Russian Matrioshka doll structure, with Physical emerging from Cognitive (setting aside for the moment the obvious chicken/egg paradox that leads to) which in turn emerges from Spirit. But that was my basic point in the original thread: in the real world, matter (and by extension the laws that describe it) at least appears to be fundamental, whereas in the Cosmere this is simply not the case. So to say that what constitutes whether something counts as ‘Metal’ in the Cosmere is the laws of physics is, at best, an incomplete description. But then again, there does seem to be some inconsistencies in how the three realms are described as being structured, the only real commonality being that Spiritual is the most fundamental one. But sometimes it’s implied that the Physical Realm emerges from the Cognitive, other times vice versa, and still other times it implies that both Physical AND Cognitive are equally emergent from both each other and the Spiritual and are in some sense merely different ways of looking at the same underlying reality. I really hope that Brandon can flesh this out a little better in later works, because as it currently stands we have way more questions than we do answers with respect to this issue.

Plus, you know, just look at how mind-bogglingly terrible the DBZ and Attack on Titan movies were, at least in part because most of the actors couldn’t act worth a frakk. I know the common consensus is that the movie Gods of Egypt wasn’t great, and lots of people started screaming the “white wash!” card, but give me a break, the fact that it was a sub-optimal movie had literally nothing to do with that and everything to do with its lousy writing. Incidentally, just on a tangent, and ironic thing about all of the Japanese animes and the movie is that sometimes get made out of them, is that technically the animes white wash themselves; Attack on Titan, Dragon Ball, Sword Art Online, etc. all are lead by ostensibly Japanese main characters and yet all of them look completely Caucasian, albeit with unnatural hair colours and styles. That’s something I’ve always found quite funny.

Agreed. It certainly wouldn’t be a big deal in the case of Stormlight; like I said, I wouldn’t even have known that the Alethi aren’t basically dark-tanned Caucasians from reading the books, and honestly, my mental image of Szeth is, ironically, at the very least certainly NOT Caucasian, but rather something more Asian. So in my opinion, it’s a complete non-issue.

Well it’s not only that, but also the fact that the physical realm does not seem to be the most fundamental realm in this universe, or at the very least that’s the implication that I’ve got from the books I’ve read so far. The implication seems to be that the Spiritual Realm is it in some sense fundamental whereas the Cognitive Realm and the Physical Realm (which would include matter) are in some sense emergent from that. Maybe I’m just completely misinterpreting what’s been said about the Spiritual Realm, but if not then that would absolutely change the focus of this entire discussion, I think.

Well it worked for a certain megalomaniac with a god-complex, so who knows?

Is this even a fruitful conversation to have? I mean this isn’t the real world were talking about, this is a fantasy world where magic exists in a fundamental way. Do atoms and fundamental forces even exist as such in this world? Or is everything basically a manifestation of Investiture?

Honestly, stipulating that only a human can be a Sliver seems completely arbitrary to me. Sapient Spren are ‘people’ by any meaningful definition too after all, so why couldn’t a Spren be a sliver? It’s always been a distinction that doesn’t make much sense to me.

I agree. I was just pointing out that it’s wrong to assert that because an author says X that X is necessarily true.

I thought a sliver was someone who has/had absorbed a portion of a Shard’s power... I mean Brandon has referred to him as a ‘sliver’ in the beginning of Oathbringer.

Is it legally possible for an author to sell movie rights to his books but include in the contract the right to veto at any time if he feels they’re making a mockery of his work?

Well actually, not even Brandon can be correct if his explanation is either internally inconsistent or inconsistent with what we’ve seen in the books, which is the point I think Ripheus was making.

True.

Maybe. Either way, I’m more thinking something along the lines of the archangels on Supernatural as compared to God/Chuck, only difference being that they started out as human before God turned them into the energy-based archangels rather than creating them that way to start, which is more what I think Autonomy is probably doing.

That’s a good question. I don’t think he necessarily would, since Honorspren existed AS Spren even while Honor was still alive despite technically still being “part of” Honor. Then again, the Stormfather absorbed enough of Honor’s power to qualify as a sliver, so maybe he’d have to sacrifice himself so that the new Honor/Unity would have enough power to fight Odium?

Maybe, but I don’t really get the impression that she’s turning other people into avatars, rather she’s creating new people out of raw Investiture as avatars. Though admittedly, the information about what exactly she’s doing is very vague.

Honestly, I think the whole ‘white-washing’ thing is dumb, at least in the overwhelming majority of instances. Unless the race is actually an essential aspect of the story, I honestly could care less if a Caucasian got cast to play someone who happened to be Hispanic in the book, or vice versa for that matter. The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of Hollywood actors are either Caucasian, half-Caucasian, or raised from birth in Caucasian countries. So I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever people start throwing ‘white-washing’ around willy-nilly. As far as I’m concerned, acting should be a meritocracy.