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Brandon Sanderson / Categories for metals: thoughts (HoA spoilers)
« on: October 27, 2008, 04:41:14 AM »
On page 476, Yomen definitively classified the metals as physical, mental, temporal, and "enhancement" (this might have been implicit or explicit elsewhere in the past; I know Kelsier did a few in book 1, and the appendices might have had a breakdown, but I don't really read those). I've got a few comments on how this comes off to me.
I apologize, but not too sincerely, if some of this has been said before. I only started reading this forum a few months ago, and anything that was discussed before the summer is buried so deep I can't be bothered to dig it up and cross-reference my ideas to those in an old discussion. As for overlap with more recent threads...I don't want to hijack one of those by adding this behemoth of a post to it. If someone else said before what I'm saying here, just assume I'm too lazy to figure out all the ways we agree and differ, and give attribution where and to whom it is due.
tl;dr: A lot of speculation on what the meaning of the metals' effects is, whether other metals "divine" like atium and lerasium might give rise to new categories of Allomancy, and a suggestion that copper and bronze are miscategorized.
1. "Enhancement" is out of place: it's adverbial in nature (not as an English word, though) where the others are adjectival. You have to enhance something; it doesn't exist on its own. In a way, this reminds me of the early misperception that there were eight "base" allomantic metals and two higher ones, gold and atium, which had the mystical effect of piercing time; however, it seems to me that the major virtue of the fourfold classification scheme for metals is that it demystifies these two and reveals them as just temporal metals (atium is later re-mystified, but Brandon has hinted that a further demystification is imminent).
2. On that subject, however: atium really is a higher metal, since it is the power of a god, Ruin; Brandon has revealed in this forum that it has a complement, lerasium, which is the nugget Elend took and is the power of Preservation. Lerasium grants allomantic powers, an effect which is pretty similar to aluminum and duralumin, which also affect allomancy (if you ask me, this is also what copper and bronze do, and I'll get to that later, but even if they really are "mental" metals, the point remains), while atium has a temporal effect like gold and electrum. This suggests to me that the temporal metals, along with whatever category includes aluminum, are the "higher" metals after all. In addition, the point is made in the book that atium can't be natural because its power, which grants a vision of the future, is "divine", but electrum does that also and is apparently not divine; actually, the whole class of temporal metals gives powers which are beyond those of man. By analogy, lerasium is linked with allomancy itself, clearly in the same way as aluminum and duralumin, and allomancy is itself a divine creation. So the temporal metals and whatever class includes aluminum (as Brandon would have it, "enhancement", but I'll say something about that at the end) are both higher metals after all.
3. Running with the higher metals concept. One speculates about what kinds of metals would correspond to the powers of the other "shards" to which Brandon has alluded, teasingly, in the Q&A thread. There really isn't any philosophical reason that there should be only sixteen metals (though there is the inconvenient fact that the number sixteen is built into the mist-Snapping system; however, that was all the doing of Preservation, who was trying to leave numerological hints what was going on, and explicitly contains the atium irregularity while not containing an irregularity for the similarly "divine" malatium, and apparently not leaving any provision for the "real" external temporal metals Brandon has teasingly alluded to, so I don't think this number has any universal meaning): while Yomen has his numerological rationalizations, he is incorrect that they are "two by two by two by two": they are "two by two by four", and there's no reason that four couldn't be any other number. For that matter, there's no reason that the physical and mental metals are not themselves attached to some "shard" we haven't met in these books, and whose corresponding "divine" metal is unknown to us because it has never been created. A "divine" mental metal might improve cognition (the mind is surely part of the soul, which has been explicity stated to be a divine creation in these books); one wonders what a divine physical metal would do.
4. Brandon has said that lerasium could be alloyed with any of the other metals to produce a nugget that, when burned, would grant Misting powers in that metal alone (and atium+lerasium would do what?). This is rather out of keeping with the workings of the other metals, which have only one alloyed pair; of course, allomancy is apparently a creation of Leras (Preservation) alone, but on the other hand it has been said to be a part of the workings of the universe itself, so there is again no reason not to think that atium doesn't have a similar universal alloy property. Presumably all the alloys would confer some temporal ability, just as all the alloys of lerasium grant allomantic powers. Possibly the "two by two by four" scheme is really "two by two by four by infinity", where the infinity means the possibility of alloying any metal with any of the "divine" metals that might exist. Of course, it might be that lerasium is just weird that way.
5. Speaking of lerasium and the lack of a "Mistborn" effect in the mist-Snapping: as Sazed noted in an epigraph, and Brandon has confirmed, Allomancy predates the Ascension but only in the form of Mistings; it was lerasium that created Mistborn. Allomancy is apparently a natural phenomenon, and Mistborn are not "part of the system". I guess the mists didn't Snap any of them at all. If I had to guess (but as you've probably noticed by now, not having to isn't stopping me) I would say that they exist only as a provision that Preservation made to "sensitize" a large number of people to his power so that, when the time came, he would be able to find and cultivate a Vin.
6. Going back to how enhancement is wrong. I had assumed, before Yomen gave his explanation to Elend, that the categories were physical, mental, temporal, and Allomantic, and broke down as follows:
The physical metals are demonstrably:
Iron/steel: Because Kelsier said so, and because they affect physical external objects.
Tin/pewter: Again, Kelsier said so, and because they affect one's own physical capabilities. Tin isn't obviously physical (it could easily be mental or enhancement), but it's paired with pewter, which is obviously physical.
The temporal metals are demonstrably:
Gold/electrum: one's own past and future.
Atium/malatium: other people's pasts and futures.
No ambiguity with these, even given that atium isn't the "real" external metal, the clue apparently being that although it is pure and thus pulls, it "does" the future like electrum, which is alloyed and thus pushes. Brandon has confirmed this in a RAFO-ish way.
The mental metals obviously include:
Zinc/brass: they affect other people's emotions. Obviously external.
Without being told the category is "mental", one could be forgiven for thinking it is "emotional", though then one is at a loss to imagine what the internal metals would do. As much crap as aluminum is, the ability to affect one's own emotions seems singularly pointless.
The last category obviously includes:
Aluminum/duralumin: they affect your own metals. Obviously internal.
This leaves copper/bronze in the lurch. Copper is really weird: it definitely pulls, because it's pure; however, its effect is rather pushy: it suppresses emotional allomancy as well as shielding from others' bronze. Bronze, of course, is like an Allomantic version of tin, but technically pushes. However, Marsh covered this a long time ago so I won't harp on it. The point is that both of them are 100% devoted to allomancy, as are aluminum and duralumin. However, they are both obviously internal; notwithstanding that "push" and "pull" are arbitrary metaphors for some Allomantic attribute and don't literally apply all the time, "internal" and "external" are pretty clear and the metaphor is never broken or even really stretched with the other metals; bronze is exactly like tin, which is internal, and copper's two powers are respectively obviously internal and arguably internal (it does, after all, suppress external bronze, but more by way of making oneself immune, as with emotional allomancy). This argument is borne out by the fact that Brandon made these internal metals
Okay, so the system as set up basically forbids copper/bronze from being in the same class as aluminum/duralumin. On the other hand, the system as speculated by Sazed contains a catch at the human/divine boundary: to see the future is a thing of gods, he says, and reasons that atium must be Ruin's power. Well, Allomancy is a thing of gods as well, and it is demonstrably Preservation's power (both for reasons explained in the book and because of lerasium). Copper/bronze just don't fit with the mundane zinc/brass; Breeze spends the entire series talking about how his Allomancy is really just a refinement of the natural ability to socialize and influence people, and Elend muses on how his strengths lie in emotional Allomancy because of his upbringing as a socialite. Tin and pewter are likewise Allomantic versions of natural traits, perception and endurance, and iron and steel are just magnetism (except they work for non-magnetic metals too). In this sense, every one of the other metals is an enhancement metal: they just do better what we can already do. Copper and bronze are not like this: they do what no one who is not an Allomancer could do. Just like gold and electrum, which show alternate histories and possible futures (let alone atium), and aluminum and duralumin, which alter the functioning of Allomancy.
I'm aware that I've been totally inconsistent on whether or not "higher" metals exist: sometimes I've been arguing that gold should be special, and sometimes I've argued that it shouldn't be. That's okay; I never do both at once. I'm just speculating here anyway.
7. Brandon is of course the last word on how things work, but I feel that this is a bit of a logical gap in his system. The fourth category should be "allomancy", and with a bit of creative reinterpretation, the metals could have been rearranged to fit this system, without changing the plot. Copper would become external by being directed (a nice characterization of what "external" means, by the way), projecting a coppercloud into individuals, possibly oneself (which confuses internal and external, but so does the existing effect). The effect of bronze, which was the subject of a nontrivial comment by Marsh, is ultimately a bit of "culture" but one which is unused elsewhere in the series; it is basically an allomantic-effect version of tin, and should be internal pulling. Its effect could be given to aluminum. This fits beautifully with duralumin, which is similar to pewter (it pushes your allomantic abilities rather than your physical ones). Bronze itself could do something more useful than aluminum does (aluminum's actual effect is basically a plot token; it is utterly useless in every way except as a tool of coersion, and possibly for "cleaning out" before bed, which is a very minor effect), and its suppression (along with that of duralumin) could have functioned as a bit of foreshadowing about the absence of more metals. Your mileage may vary on the virtue of this last point. Regardless, the Allomantic powers necessary to the plot would remain even under my fantasy system.
Let it not be said that I'm telling Brandon what to do. I've never written a word of good fiction in my life; instead, I'm a mathematician, and this sort of system is exactly the sort of thing I like to think about. Anything I come up with is likely to suffer from the problems generally perceived in math: elegant and unrealistic. What Brandon has done contains far more consideration of literary merit than what I would do.
I apologize, but not too sincerely, if some of this has been said before. I only started reading this forum a few months ago, and anything that was discussed before the summer is buried so deep I can't be bothered to dig it up and cross-reference my ideas to those in an old discussion. As for overlap with more recent threads...I don't want to hijack one of those by adding this behemoth of a post to it. If someone else said before what I'm saying here, just assume I'm too lazy to figure out all the ways we agree and differ, and give attribution where and to whom it is due.
tl;dr: A lot of speculation on what the meaning of the metals' effects is, whether other metals "divine" like atium and lerasium might give rise to new categories of Allomancy, and a suggestion that copper and bronze are miscategorized.
1. "Enhancement" is out of place: it's adverbial in nature (not as an English word, though) where the others are adjectival. You have to enhance something; it doesn't exist on its own. In a way, this reminds me of the early misperception that there were eight "base" allomantic metals and two higher ones, gold and atium, which had the mystical effect of piercing time; however, it seems to me that the major virtue of the fourfold classification scheme for metals is that it demystifies these two and reveals them as just temporal metals (atium is later re-mystified, but Brandon has hinted that a further demystification is imminent).
2. On that subject, however: atium really is a higher metal, since it is the power of a god, Ruin; Brandon has revealed in this forum that it has a complement, lerasium, which is the nugget Elend took and is the power of Preservation. Lerasium grants allomantic powers, an effect which is pretty similar to aluminum and duralumin, which also affect allomancy (if you ask me, this is also what copper and bronze do, and I'll get to that later, but even if they really are "mental" metals, the point remains), while atium has a temporal effect like gold and electrum. This suggests to me that the temporal metals, along with whatever category includes aluminum, are the "higher" metals after all. In addition, the point is made in the book that atium can't be natural because its power, which grants a vision of the future, is "divine", but electrum does that also and is apparently not divine; actually, the whole class of temporal metals gives powers which are beyond those of man. By analogy, lerasium is linked with allomancy itself, clearly in the same way as aluminum and duralumin, and allomancy is itself a divine creation. So the temporal metals and whatever class includes aluminum (as Brandon would have it, "enhancement", but I'll say something about that at the end) are both higher metals after all.
3. Running with the higher metals concept. One speculates about what kinds of metals would correspond to the powers of the other "shards" to which Brandon has alluded, teasingly, in the Q&A thread. There really isn't any philosophical reason that there should be only sixteen metals (though there is the inconvenient fact that the number sixteen is built into the mist-Snapping system; however, that was all the doing of Preservation, who was trying to leave numerological hints what was going on, and explicitly contains the atium irregularity while not containing an irregularity for the similarly "divine" malatium, and apparently not leaving any provision for the "real" external temporal metals Brandon has teasingly alluded to, so I don't think this number has any universal meaning): while Yomen has his numerological rationalizations, he is incorrect that they are "two by two by two by two": they are "two by two by four", and there's no reason that four couldn't be any other number. For that matter, there's no reason that the physical and mental metals are not themselves attached to some "shard" we haven't met in these books, and whose corresponding "divine" metal is unknown to us because it has never been created. A "divine" mental metal might improve cognition (the mind is surely part of the soul, which has been explicity stated to be a divine creation in these books); one wonders what a divine physical metal would do.
4. Brandon has said that lerasium could be alloyed with any of the other metals to produce a nugget that, when burned, would grant Misting powers in that metal alone (and atium+lerasium would do what?). This is rather out of keeping with the workings of the other metals, which have only one alloyed pair; of course, allomancy is apparently a creation of Leras (Preservation) alone, but on the other hand it has been said to be a part of the workings of the universe itself, so there is again no reason not to think that atium doesn't have a similar universal alloy property. Presumably all the alloys would confer some temporal ability, just as all the alloys of lerasium grant allomantic powers. Possibly the "two by two by four" scheme is really "two by two by four by infinity", where the infinity means the possibility of alloying any metal with any of the "divine" metals that might exist. Of course, it might be that lerasium is just weird that way.
5. Speaking of lerasium and the lack of a "Mistborn" effect in the mist-Snapping: as Sazed noted in an epigraph, and Brandon has confirmed, Allomancy predates the Ascension but only in the form of Mistings; it was lerasium that created Mistborn. Allomancy is apparently a natural phenomenon, and Mistborn are not "part of the system". I guess the mists didn't Snap any of them at all. If I had to guess (but as you've probably noticed by now, not having to isn't stopping me) I would say that they exist only as a provision that Preservation made to "sensitize" a large number of people to his power so that, when the time came, he would be able to find and cultivate a Vin.
6. Going back to how enhancement is wrong. I had assumed, before Yomen gave his explanation to Elend, that the categories were physical, mental, temporal, and Allomantic, and broke down as follows:
The physical metals are demonstrably:
Iron/steel: Because Kelsier said so, and because they affect physical external objects.
Tin/pewter: Again, Kelsier said so, and because they affect one's own physical capabilities. Tin isn't obviously physical (it could easily be mental or enhancement), but it's paired with pewter, which is obviously physical.
The temporal metals are demonstrably:
Gold/electrum: one's own past and future.
Atium/malatium: other people's pasts and futures.
No ambiguity with these, even given that atium isn't the "real" external metal, the clue apparently being that although it is pure and thus pulls, it "does" the future like electrum, which is alloyed and thus pushes. Brandon has confirmed this in a RAFO-ish way.
The mental metals obviously include:
Zinc/brass: they affect other people's emotions. Obviously external.
Without being told the category is "mental", one could be forgiven for thinking it is "emotional", though then one is at a loss to imagine what the internal metals would do. As much crap as aluminum is, the ability to affect one's own emotions seems singularly pointless.
The last category obviously includes:
Aluminum/duralumin: they affect your own metals. Obviously internal.
This leaves copper/bronze in the lurch. Copper is really weird: it definitely pulls, because it's pure; however, its effect is rather pushy: it suppresses emotional allomancy as well as shielding from others' bronze. Bronze, of course, is like an Allomantic version of tin, but technically pushes. However, Marsh covered this a long time ago so I won't harp on it. The point is that both of them are 100% devoted to allomancy, as are aluminum and duralumin. However, they are both obviously internal; notwithstanding that "push" and "pull" are arbitrary metaphors for some Allomantic attribute and don't literally apply all the time, "internal" and "external" are pretty clear and the metaphor is never broken or even really stretched with the other metals; bronze is exactly like tin, which is internal, and copper's two powers are respectively obviously internal and arguably internal (it does, after all, suppress external bronze, but more by way of making oneself immune, as with emotional allomancy). This argument is borne out by the fact that Brandon made these internal metals
Okay, so the system as set up basically forbids copper/bronze from being in the same class as aluminum/duralumin. On the other hand, the system as speculated by Sazed contains a catch at the human/divine boundary: to see the future is a thing of gods, he says, and reasons that atium must be Ruin's power. Well, Allomancy is a thing of gods as well, and it is demonstrably Preservation's power (both for reasons explained in the book and because of lerasium). Copper/bronze just don't fit with the mundane zinc/brass; Breeze spends the entire series talking about how his Allomancy is really just a refinement of the natural ability to socialize and influence people, and Elend muses on how his strengths lie in emotional Allomancy because of his upbringing as a socialite. Tin and pewter are likewise Allomantic versions of natural traits, perception and endurance, and iron and steel are just magnetism (except they work for non-magnetic metals too). In this sense, every one of the other metals is an enhancement metal: they just do better what we can already do. Copper and bronze are not like this: they do what no one who is not an Allomancer could do. Just like gold and electrum, which show alternate histories and possible futures (let alone atium), and aluminum and duralumin, which alter the functioning of Allomancy.
I'm aware that I've been totally inconsistent on whether or not "higher" metals exist: sometimes I've been arguing that gold should be special, and sometimes I've argued that it shouldn't be. That's okay; I never do both at once. I'm just speculating here anyway.
7. Brandon is of course the last word on how things work, but I feel that this is a bit of a logical gap in his system. The fourth category should be "allomancy", and with a bit of creative reinterpretation, the metals could have been rearranged to fit this system, without changing the plot. Copper would become external by being directed (a nice characterization of what "external" means, by the way), projecting a coppercloud into individuals, possibly oneself (which confuses internal and external, but so does the existing effect). The effect of bronze, which was the subject of a nontrivial comment by Marsh, is ultimately a bit of "culture" but one which is unused elsewhere in the series; it is basically an allomantic-effect version of tin, and should be internal pulling. Its effect could be given to aluminum. This fits beautifully with duralumin, which is similar to pewter (it pushes your allomantic abilities rather than your physical ones). Bronze itself could do something more useful than aluminum does (aluminum's actual effect is basically a plot token; it is utterly useless in every way except as a tool of coersion, and possibly for "cleaning out" before bed, which is a very minor effect), and its suppression (along with that of duralumin) could have functioned as a bit of foreshadowing about the absence of more metals. Your mileage may vary on the virtue of this last point. Regardless, the Allomantic powers necessary to the plot would remain even under my fantasy system.
Let it not be said that I'm telling Brandon what to do. I've never written a word of good fiction in my life; instead, I'm a mathematician, and this sort of system is exactly the sort of thing I like to think about. Anything I come up with is likely to suffer from the problems generally perceived in math: elegant and unrealistic. What Brandon has done contains far more consideration of literary merit than what I would do.