A possibly stupid question about Identity and F-Gold

[FireflyGuardian he/him]

Say you are a Full Feruchemist. You want to take somebodies place, but you're not a kandra.

Step 1: Store all of your Identity in a duralumin metalmind and safekeep it for later.
Step 2: Spike the person your want to impersonate with duralumin and Steal their Identity.
Step 3: Insert the duralumin Spike into yourself.
Step 4: Tap F-Gold, which is supposed to transform your body into what your Identity thinks you are (I think?).
Step 5: You now look exactly like them and act like them.

I'm not fully versed in how Identity and F-Gold work, so I'm unsure on what exactly what happens.
Sorry if this has been asked before.

Would this work?

[alder24]

1 hour ago, FireflyGuardian said:

Say you are a Full Feruchemist. You want to take somebodies place, but you're not a kandra.

Step 1: Store all of your Identity in a duralumin metalmind and safekeep it for later.
Step 2: Spike the person your want to impersonate with duralumin and Steal their Identity.
Step 3: Insert the duralumin Spike into yourself.
Step 4: Tap F-Gold, which is supposed to transform your body into what your Identity thinks you are (I think?).
Step 5: You now look exactly like them and act like them.

I'm not fully versed in how Identity and F-Gold work, so I'm unsure on what exactly what happens.
Sorry if this has been asked before.

Would this work?

Don't worry, we don't know that either, Identity is something that is not explored well yet, Brandon keeps it for the future books. From what we know it's more like an encryption code that tells stuff "it belongs to you," not literally your personality and who you are.

Healing in Cosmere is done by aligning your physical body to your spiritual ideal of yourself, filtered by how you view yourself. Your perception of yourself is the most important thing when you heal and it can allow you to change quite a lot. Your Identity is connected to your spiritual ideal, so changing your identity might affect the way you heal, but your perception will still dominate what's happening. So stealing your Identity won't make you somebody else, but with addition of healing - who knows. At best it will allow you to change your appearance into that person, but I highly doubt you will behave and act like them. However even if you were to steal somebody's identity you still need to truly believe that you are looking like them, otherwise your healing won't change anything. Perception is really important here and that's the hardest part. It's hard to tell if it's an Identity that you need to steal or something else, like the spiritual ideal of that person, which isn't their Identity.

WoBs:

Spoiler

realhitvz

Could you use the Feruchemical ability to store Identity to heal damage done to you in the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Um... yes, but it's gonna take a roundabout method to make it happen... Yes, but Identity can be very useful for all sorts of things like this.

Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing (March 21, 2014)

 

Spoiler

Krios (paraphrased)

If you have a form of manipulating your Identity and a form of healing, are you able to shapeshift or even evolve your body like growing wings?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You'd have to do some real work on your Spiritweb to make that work. It'd take more work than you're implying, but the [SA spoilers removed] for instance are doing this. It'll take a little more work, it's not just blanking your Identity. Hemalurgy would make it very easy, but also very evil. But what you want to achieve is possible.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

 

Spoiler

[SA spoilers removed]

Brandon Sanderson

So [...] healing, there's a couple things that have to be considered. But in reference to what you're saying, the person's perception of themselves is a huge part of it.  The way healing works in the cosmere is, you've got the three versions of yourself. You've got your Physical version, your Cognitive version, and your Spiritual version, And a lot of [healing] is taking your Physical version and matching it to the Spiritual version which is your ideal self.  But it has to be filtered through the lens of your mind, and things like this.

[...]

Orem signing (March 10, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

We know that magical healing has a lot to do with Identity, like [SA spoilers removed]. Suppose someone was tapping Identity from an unkeyed metalmind, and then you tried to heal them with any kind of magical healing. What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, that person’s perspective of themself is going to filter that unkeyed metalmind, and so what’s going to happen is what would normally happen to that person. In most instances. There are ways to get around that, but the vast majority, that’s what you’re gonna see.

Questioner

And if they were storing Identity instead?

Brandon Sanderson

Then you’re gonna go back to their Cognitive picture of themselves, which is going to be what’s filtering this, how they see themselves. If you knock them unconscious, they can’t see themselves, you’re blanking them of Identity, and things like that. They still, basically, will have… it’s gonna be really hard to get that all separated. The mental picture of themselves still exists on the Spiritual Realm. Remember, Realmatics is based on Plato’s theories of the forms, but your perspective is what’s shaping that. So there’s still gonna be, like, on the Spiritual Realm, there’s gonna be some version of yourself that is deeply influenced by how you view yourself that is going to be what that Investiture is trying to match, it’s trying to bring your body into alignment with that. So you’ve gotta replace that thing if you want it to do something different. Which you can do with Hemalurgy.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

This last WoB suggests it's not the Identity you have to steal to achieve what you want - blanking or tapping Identity doesn't change your Cognitive or Spiritual Ideal, you need to steal them directly. And while Identity will be helpful here as it tells investiture it belongs to you, but it seems it's not the only thing you need to steal.

 

[FireflyGuardian he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Don't worry, we don't know that either, Identity is something that is not explored well yet, Brandon keeps it for the future books. From what we know it's more like an encryption code that tells stuff "it belongs to you," not literally your personality and who you are.

Healing in Cosmere is done by aligning your physical body to your spiritual ideal of yourself, filtered by how you view yourself. Your perception of yourself is the most important thing when you heal and it can allow you to change quite a lot. Your Identity is connected to your spiritual ideal, so changing your identity might affect the way you heal, but your perception will still dominate what's happening. So stealing your Identity won't make you somebody else, but with addition of healing - who knows. At best it will allow you to change your appearance into that person, but I highly doubt you will behave and act like them. However even if you were to steal somebody's identity you still need to truly believe that you are looking like them, otherwise your healing won't change anything. Perception is really important here and that's the hardest part. It's hard to tell if it's an Identity that you need to steal or something else, like the spiritual ideal of that person, which isn't their Identity.

WoBs:

  Reveal hidden contents

realhitvz

Could you use the Feruchemical ability to store Identity to heal damage done to you in the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Um... yes, but it's gonna take a roundabout method to make it happen... Yes, but Identity can be very useful for all sorts of things like this.

Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing (March 21, 2014)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Krios (paraphrased)

If you have a form of manipulating your Identity and a form of healing, are you able to shapeshift or even evolve your body like growing wings?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You'd have to do some real work on your Spiritweb to make that work. It'd take more work than you're implying, but the [SA spoilers removed] for instance are doing this. It'll take a little more work, it's not just blanking your Identity. Hemalurgy would make it very easy, but also very evil. But what you want to achieve is possible.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

[SA spoilers removed]

Brandon Sanderson

So [...] healing, there's a couple things that have to be considered. But in reference to what you're saying, the person's perception of themselves is a huge part of it.  The way healing works in the cosmere is, you've got the three versions of yourself. You've got your Physical version, your Cognitive version, and your Spiritual version, And a lot of [healing] is taking your Physical version and matching it to the Spiritual version which is your ideal self.  But it has to be filtered through the lens of your mind, and things like this.

[...]

Orem signing (March 10, 2018)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

We know that magical healing has a lot to do with Identity, like [SA spoilers removed]. Suppose someone was tapping Identity from an unkeyed metalmind, and then you tried to heal them with any kind of magical healing. What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, that person’s perspective of themself is going to filter that unkeyed metalmind, and so what’s going to happen is what would normally happen to that person. In most instances. There are ways to get around that, but the vast majority, that’s what you’re gonna see.

Questioner

And if they were storing Identity instead?

Brandon Sanderson

Then you’re gonna go back to their Cognitive picture of themselves, which is going to be what’s filtering this, how they see themselves. If you knock them unconscious, they can’t see themselves, you’re blanking them of Identity, and things like that. They still, basically, will have… it’s gonna be really hard to get that all separated. The mental picture of themselves still exists on the Spiritual Realm. Remember, Realmatics is based on Plato’s theories of the forms, but your perspective is what’s shaping that. So there’s still gonna be, like, on the Spiritual Realm, there’s gonna be some version of yourself that is deeply influenced by how you view yourself that is going to be what that Investiture is trying to match, it’s trying to bring your body into alignment with that. So you’ve gotta replace that thing if you want it to do something different. Which you can do with Hemalurgy.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

This last WoB suggests it's not the Identity you have to steal to achieve what you want - blanking or tapping Identity doesn't change your Cognitive or Spiritual Ideal, you need to steal them directly. And while Identity will be helpful here as it tells investiture it belongs to you, but it seems it's not the only thing you need to steal.

 

Ok, so it might change your physical appearance, but probably not.