Does Atium Interfere with Electrum?

[Steel Speedster ♂]

So, we all know that burning electrum makes one immune to atium. What I'm wondering is do they cancel each other out, or does electrum continue to work properly? Currently, I think that electrum is not affected, or at least, not neutralized.

Let's walk through an example and see what happens. We have an electrum burner and an atium burner, which we'll call the Oracle and the Seer, respectively (even though those are actually the same thing.) They are evenly matched, the only differences being the metal they are burning, and that each is proficient in that metal.

The Oracle sees their own future, including any attack that the atium burner tries to hit them with. This allows them to change the future, compounding the number of future shadows. This gives electrum its ability to block atium. The Seer now sees a cloud of shadows around the Oracle. They can try attacking these shadows, but it's most likely not going to work, because the Oracle sees the same shadows and can avoid the attack. Where the Oracle has the advantage is that electrum will let you see the outcome of any attack that the Seer makes (whether you avoid it or get hit), but atium cannot see the outcome (atium doesn't seem take into account the effects of what the atium burner will do. It just shows other peoples' futures disregarding that you could change them.)

What it comes down to is this: all that the Seer can do is try randomly attacking at shadows, whereas the Oracle only has to find one future in which they avoid the next hit and follow that shadow. Thus, in an atium vs. electrum fight, electrum has the advantage.

The caveat to this is that atium probably still multiplies the number of shadows the Oracle sees, which makes it harder to process, possibly to the point where it's easier for both fighters to just ignore all the future shadows, thus effectively nullifying both.

So, in answer to my own question, does atium interfere with electrum? Yes, it does probably interfere, but it does not completely neutralize it--the electrum will still work, whereas atium becomes essentially useless.

Those are my conclusions. A lot of this is just speculation from what we already know, so it's not completely airtight, but I think it's a pretty solid theory. Any thoughts?

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 minutes ago, Speeding Steelrunner said:

So, we all know that burning electrum makes one immune to atium. What I'm wondering is do they cancel each other out, or does electrum continue to work properly? Currently, I think that electrum is not affected, or at least, not neutralized.

Let's walk through an example and see what happens. We have an electrum burner and an atium burner, which we'll call the Oracle and the Seer, respectively (even though those are actually the same thing.) They are evenly matched, the only differences being the metal they are burning, and that each is proficient in that metal.

The Oracle sees their own future, including any attack that the atium burner tries to hit them with. This allows them to change the future, compounding the number of future shadows. This gives electrum its ability to block atium. The Seer now sees a cloud of shadows around the Oracle. They can try attacking these shadows, but it's most likely not going to work, because the Oracle sees the same shadows and can avoid the attack. Where the Oracle has the advantage is that electrum will let you see the outcome of any attack that the Seer makes (whether you avoid it or get hit), but atium cannot see the outcome (atium doesn't seem take into account the effects of what the atium burner will do. It just shows other peoples' futures disregarding that you could change them.)

What it comes down to is this: all that the Seer can do is try randomly attacking at shadows, whereas the Oracle only has to find one future in which they avoid the next hit and follow that shadow. Thus, in an atium vs. electrum fight, electrum has the advantage.

The caveat to this is that atium probably still multiplies the number of shadows the Oracle sees, which makes it harder to process, possibly to the point where it's easier for both fighters to just ignore all the future shadows, thus effectively nullifying both.

So, in answer to my own question, does atium interfere with electrum? Yes, it does probably interfere, but it does not completely neutralize it--the electrum will still work, whereas atium becomes essentially useless.

Those are my conclusions. A lot of this is just speculation from what we already know, so it's not completely airtight, but I think it's a pretty solid theory. Any thoughts?

My thinking is that the Atium would still make the electrum more or less useless, as I don't think it's the fact that the Oracle can still see their shadows, but that there's far too many to comprehend. 

Also, I think when future sight interferes with other future sight it's the potential to see and counter a future possibility, not necessarily actually seeing and using it.

Vin and Elend didn't use their electrum shadows as actual guides for their actions, they just burned the metal. 

SA spoilers:

Spoiler

Renarin's future sight seems similar in its scope; he sees further than a Seer, but much more cloudily, making any actions he could take using that information much less effective. However, even that cloudy futures sight is enough to disrupt Odium's own significantly better future sight because Renarin now has the potential to act in a different way, thus infinitely expanding the possible outcomes of the future. 

As such, any future sight with the potential to influence an action in some given way should interfere with any other future sight in that scenario.