Are the metals intentional?

[Drainfree]

I was just wondering if anyone knows if the metals chosen for each allomantic ability were intentional or not. Is there a reason zinc was chosen to riot emotions? What about steel? Why were certain metals left out, like silver?

Does anyone think there are reasons?

[Voidus]

Do you mean intentional as in by BS or by Preservation? If the former I think one of the annotations could be helpful here I'll try to find it.

EDIT: sorry it was in the interview database

INTERVIEW: Jul, 2009

Twitter: Brandonothology collection (Verbatim)

MNEHRING

How did you come up with what metal would give what powers in Mistborn?

BRANDON SANDERSON

The metals just worked out right. [later] I see I misunderstood. The assignment of metals to powers was done mostly randomly. I started by trying to mix and match colors and hues, but that ended up not working. I also originally wanted the physical to be more common, and then move toward less common with mental and others. Hence, iron is physical, Gold is mental, [sic] Atium is temporal. The mentals don’t quite fit this, though.

Edited April 4, 2012 by Voidus

[Shivertongue he/him]

I was just wondering if anyone knows if the metals chosen for each allomantic ability were intentional or not. Is there a reason zinc was chosen to riot emotions? What about steel? Why were certain metals left out, like silver?

Does anyone think there are reasons?

I know that Brandon originally wanted to use silver instead of tin, because he'd heard as a kid that pewter was alloyed from silver. This turned out to be wrong when he researched it later on for Mistborn, and he almost kept it, because he thought Silvereye sounded better than Tineye.

Other than that, no idea. Probably just picked metals one has easy access to. The temporal metals are largely unknown, as, unless I am mistaken, they are relatively rare/hard to make.

[LevenThumps]

He chose pairs of metals where one was an alloy of the other, but apart from that, I think there's no pattern.

[Commander Spoonface he/him]

If you mean by Preservation, we don't know. I personally don't think so, because the same metals are used in Hemalurgy, which has nothing to do with Preservation. I believe that they are used because its a property of Scadrial itself.

[Drainfree]

I meant by Brandon, not preservation. Although, it is interesting to think if preservation wanted them to be intentional.. I think I agree that that is probably not the case though.

Hm, darn. I was hoping there was some sort of connection to the real life metals. I do think it's nice that each pair was an alloy though.

[Commander Spoonface he/him]

It mentions that in HoA, I believe.