Which allomantic power is most invasive?

[Oudeis]

You live on Scadrial. Your buddy comes up to you and says, "That dude over there is a [fill in the blank]. He could be using his power on us right now. Kinda creepy, right?"

 

Which power do you think best fits that blank? i.e. which power you do personally think is the most invasive? Which would you be most sympathetic to hearing someone say they hope never gets used on them?

[Dunkum]

Have to go brass/zinc.  The ability to actively manipulate someone's emotions allomantically seems much more invasive than just being able to see past/alternate versions of the person.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Have to go with Hemalurgist. That stuff's super invasive.

[Oudeis]

But not an allomantic power.

 

Emotional allomancy can be noticed, prepared for, dealt with. I personally feel more exposed to someone who can not only see the mistakes I've hidden in my past, but can even see mistakes I never made, but could have.

[Kobold King]

Do we know how precise malatium is?

 

In the belly of a skilled burner, how precise could it be? With practice could Vin have deliberately seen when Rashek was a newborn infant? Could she have seen him naked, the last time he took a shower?

 

Can it see the general history of a physical location, objects and scenery included? (Atium tracks inanimate objects as well as people, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to speculate that malatium is capable of the inverse.) If so, then it could essentially function as full retrocognition, and could be used to uncover any possible secret in a person's past.

 

If any of this speculation is even remotely accurate, I'd be most scared of malatium. The potential for abuse is limitless.

[Kipper]

Have to go brass/zinc.  The ability to actively manipulate someone's emotions allomantically seems much more invasive than just being able to see past/alternate versions of the person.

Kobold brings up some good points, but I agree with this.

It also seems to be more invasive to make someone feel emotions they didn't have, rather than ease emotions they did already, in my mind.

[Dunkum]

Do we know how precise malatium is?

 

In the belly of a skilled burner, how precise could it be? With practice could Vin have deliberately seen when Rashek was a newborn infant? Could she have seen him naked, the last time he took a shower?

 

Can it see the general history of a physical location, objects and scenery included? (Atium tracks inanimate objects as well as people, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to speculate that malatium is capable of the inverse.) If so, then it could essentially function as full retrocognition, and could be used to uncover any possible secret in a person's past.

 

If any of this speculation is even remotely accurate, I'd be most scared of malatium. The potential for abuse is limitless.

I think the general idea is that it works similar to gold, but for another person.  So based on Vin's use of it, and Miles's gold burning scene, it seems that it should let you see an alternate version of the person if they had made different choices.  So while it can reveal some secrets if you know how to read what you are seeing, I doubt it could do anything like directly reproduce scenes from someone's past

[natc]

Kobold brings up some good points, but I agree with this.

It also seems to be more invasive to make someone feel emotions they didn't have, rather than ease emotions they did already, in my mind.

I was under the impression that rioting can also only amplify existing emotions.

[Voidus]

Steel. Nothing more invasive than having a coin shoved into your eyesocket without permission.

[Infinight888]

This really depends on the individual. For somebody like Shallan in the Stormlight Archive, who bases her entire life around secrets and lies, I could see Malatium being something much more invasive. There are several people out there that have secrets they want to keep hidden, that something like Malatium could reveal to someone who was skilled in its use. Most of these lies don't even have to go as deep as Shallan's. Take Kalladin, for example. How would he feel if someone used Malatium on him, looking at him during his darkest moment, when he was contemplating his suicide? Even Vin, I think, would be made uncomfortable with someone seeing who she was before she became a Mistborn.

 

That's not to say that Brass and Zinc aren't invasive. They are. For those who are more open about who they are and who they were, these would be the most invasive of the options. As other have said, though, they can be prepared for and guarded against. Their influences also aren't particularly strong. The exception, of course, is when it's Duralumin-enhanced. That's just scary.

[skaa]

Some would even say that Chromium is the most invasive, especially if they're Copperclouds or Mistborn.

Or Tin, if they hate being seen in the dark, or are paranoid/afraid of espionage.

Edited January 29, 2015 by skaa

[Dunkum]

Not quite allomancy, but Feruchemical Duralumin would be pretty invasive, being able to manufacture a connection with someone like that...

[Bronzeheart]

I got to agree with the Brass/Zinc crowd on this. While they don't manufacture emotions, Soothers and Rioters are able to manipulate others in a more subtle sense through their powers. Look at Vin's first encounter with Breeze. While Breeze was a very good person overall, imagine a power like that being in the hands of someone like, say, Hitler or Stalin...

[AerionBFII]

I always thought Bronze and Zinc. Simply because if you were out at a bar and say you happened to find an attractive young lady a ~little ~tweek ~ here~a~little~tweek~there~ 

 

But i imagine just getting your past self looked at i mean i'd just show them my passport photo from 5 years ago it would make me cringe but i'd live. Besides if they were a attractive young woman a ~little ~tweek ~ here~a~little~tweek~there~ 

[kinxer]

I had picked Brass/Zinc, but Kobold's terrifying time-journalist idea made me change my vote.

[Oudeis]

Do we know how precise malatium is?

 

In the belly of a skilled burner, how precise could it be? With practice could Vin have deliberately seen when Rashek was a newborn infant? Could she have seen him naked, the last time he took a shower?

 

Can it see the general history of a physical location, objects and scenery included? (Atium tracks inanimate objects as well as people, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to speculate that malatium is capable of the inverse.) If so, then it could essentially function as full retrocognition, and could be used to uncover any possible secret in a person's past.

 

If any of this speculation is even remotely accurate, I'd be most scared of malatium. The potential for abuse is limitless.

 

I feel like there's so much reason to suspect it can be even scarier than that. You can spend your life resisting temptation literally every time it presents itself, your own actual history might be pristine and pure, but a malatium burner might be able to see all the might-have-beens. They're all things that could actually have happened, so if they see you doing something lecherous, it can't mean you'd never consider such a thing. On the outskirts of possibility, at a ridiculous level of control, it's theoretically possible to keep your own literal past secure and inviolate... but a malatium burner can still see every temptation you resisted, every bad choice you didn't even make, the literal worst possible version of you that could ever have been.

 

I find myself wondering if burning gold has some capacity to spoof malatium the way electrum works for atium... is it possible that if you're burning gold, you at least get to direct where the past-vision goes? Maybe the malatium user can only see the vision that you select, if your own skill is good enough to deliberately select one?

[Kaymyth]

I feel like there's so much reason to suspect it can be even scarier than that. You can spend your life resisting temptation literally every time it presents itself, your own actual history might be pristine and pure, but a malatium burner might be able to see all the might-have-beens. They're all things that could actually have happened, so if they see you doing something lecherous, it can't mean you'd never consider such a thing. On the outskirts of possibility, at a ridiculous level of control, it's theoretically possible to keep your own literal past secure and inviolate... but a malatium burner can still see every temptation you resisted, every bad choice you didn't even make, the literal worst possible version of you that could ever have been.

 

 

I think this idea depends a lot on one's point of view and philosophical stance.  For me, I believe that a lot of who I am is the sum of my choices.  Sure, I could have done some stupid, stupid things, maybe was even tempted.  But I didn't, and that's part of what makes me me.  So, if a malatium burner were to look at me and sneer and say, "Haha!  You almost did X, Y, & Z!"  I don't think it would bother me that much.   Great.  So now you know who I'm not.  A could have been does not the quality of my character make.

 

By the same token, I'm pretty happy with the way my life has turned out so far.  Are there choices I could have made better?  Sure, but I learned from those mistakes.  So again, whatevs, dude.  Burn away.  And if you spot a version of me that cured cancer or solved the secret of the universe, I will totally ghost-high-five Alternate Universe Me.

[Voidus]

I think this idea depends a lot on one's point of view and philosophical stance.  For me, I believe that a lot of who I am is the sum of my choices.  Sure, I could have done some stupid, stupid things, maybe was even tempted.  But I didn't, and that's part of what makes me me.  So, if a malatium burner were to look at me and sneer and say, "Haha!  You almost did X, Y, & Z!"  I don't think it would bother me that much.   Great.  So now you know who I'm not.  A could have been does not the quality of my character make.

 

By the same token, I'm pretty happy with the way my life has turned out so far.  Are there choices I could have made better?  Sure, but I learned from those mistakes.  So again, whatevs, dude.  Burn away.  And if you spot a version of me that cured cancer or solved the secret of the universe, I will totally ghost-high-five Alternate Universe Me.

^This

I believe that the world is deterministic, so someone saying to me "Your life could have wound up like this!" is pretty meaningless.

[Oudeis]

I think you're both sorta missing my point... it's not about pointing out flaws that don't exist. It's about... imagine there's one particular person that in high school you had a problem with. And this malatium burner (is there a Misting name for malatium? prolly not) sees a vision of you standing over this guy, he's curled up in the fetal position and you're standing over him holding an iron bar covered in blood. Obviously that never happened, prolly never would have happened, but he was able to find the person in your past who, when you were young and hormones and the judgement center of your brain hadn't fully formed, could have driven you to an act of real violence. Imagine you're not that one person on the planet with no issues, and thinking about this guy still takes you back to that angry place in your head. You never let anyone know how much this douche bothered you, even your best friends think he was just another jerk in your graduating class, but now this misting knows.

 

Emotional allomancy can force feelings on you, but they'll be externally applied. Someone can try to force shame or anger on me, but it won't be my own anger, and my own psyche will work in my favor to help me discount it because there is nothing I'm really associating those emotions with, not a person, a memory, a sight, anything. But malatium? Someone can reach into my past, find the things that bother me, not just point out "hey, here's a time you didn't run a red light. BUT YOU COULD HAVE" but actually find the worst times in my entire past, the actions I was afraid I would take, the man I would've become if she hadn't been there to help me see the light, and this malatium burner, with a few well-chosen words, can bring it all back. In excruciating detail, he can tell me all about the man I'm terrified I might've been if I hadn't been saved. In this scenario, my own mind will be his willing accomplice, bringing up scenarios I've spent years trying not to think about, and it'll be all the worse because I know it's not the crazy ramblings borne of fear, but the actual worst-case scenario of what might have been.

 

Look at Vin. She burned gold once, and was forced to face two possible paths her life could have taken. A sad, pathetic, desperate wretch, a life of fear and pain, hunger and need, barely surviving minute to minute, knowing every time she closed her eyes she might never open them again. And on the other hand... a life without pain. A life of trust, even comfort. A mockery of the life she's led, the crucible she's had to endure. One of the people in the entire first book who hurts her the worst is Shan, because on some level Vin wants that, she wants the dresses and the balls and the beauty, the majesty and the great dance of politics and power between noble houses, and burning gold shoved into her face that her life was the width of a shadow away from everything she could have had, instead. She burns gold for a moment, and it's enough to cause actual physical distress to her body. Maybe that was just the jarring effect of an odd metal, but it's telling that no other metal of any sort, even a few that work on similar principles to gold, have any similar deleterious effect.

 

Of course, there's an obvious rebuttal to everything I've said. Maybe you're totally secure in your life and always have been. Maybe you currently have everything you've ever wanted and never had a moment in your own past where things could have gone horribly wrong. Maybe you were never so scared that something might happen that even knowing now that it never did, the memory of that fear haunts you to this day. In which case, you're a very lucky person, and you're right, malatium holds no fear for you. I still think it's a more invasive metal.

[Voidus]

Still don't think it's that bad, in your example of the jerk from your class all that would show is that you're a better person than another hypothetical person who in the same situation might have committed murder. From my perspective I never could and never would have committed that act, all the misting saw is what another person in my position might have done, that's not invasive of me at all.

[Kaymyth]

I definitely got the point, but I also admit that my psyche has kind of an odd structure to it.  I had the horrible bullies (and worse); some of what you've described could very easily come up in a malatium reading on me.  I had some traumatic stuff happen to me as a kid, and there are a number of nexus points in my past where things could indeed have gone horribly, horribly wrong.  But part of the way that I put myself back together after all of that wound up putting me in balance with my inner dark side. 

 

Also bear in mind that Vin is very young in the books.  Yes, she's been through a lot, but all of that pain is still very fresh for her.  I can see myself of 10, 15 years ago being a lot more affected by that sort of thing.  But....well, I'm on the downslide towards 40 now, and I've shaken a lot of those fears and insecurities out of my system over the years.

 

I'm not saying that the way I look at it is at all typical.  Everyone's brains operate a little differently.  I'm just saying that I'd take someone manipulating my emotions a lot more personally than them taking a look at my paths not taken.

[the winter system]

Imagine in a Malatium savant. Or Duralium Malatium. Every wrong choice you did make. Seeing the events that drive you over the edge. With Emotionmancy they don't know what to make you feel. They guess. But what if the Malatium Savant/Enhanced Malatium Burner knew exactly what to say to drive you over the edge?