Shatter He/Him Posted August 22, 2024 Posted August 22, 2024 What does Brandon Sanderson have against aluminium? It blocks both Shardblades and the Metallic Arts...
alder24 Posted August 22, 2024 Posted August 22, 2024 (edited) 1 hour ago, Kiriv Velonall said: What does Brandon Sanderson have against aluminium? It blocks both Shardblades and the Metallic Arts... That's not hate, that's love! Aluminum is special in Cosmere because of its investiture blocking abilities. It can't be Soulcasted, Awakened, Forged, it affects Fabrials, stops healing and isolates connections. Brandon chose aluminum because it's very hard to get in the pre-industrial society (being more expensive than even gold), but once industrialization starts, it becomes very cheap and common and that makes for an interesting shift in power dynamics. This forces magical uses to innovate and explore the boundaries of their abilities to overcome this newly found limitation. Spoiler Questioner What's the deal with silver? Why does it not fit cleanly into the Allomantic metals, why is aluminum a special one and not silver. Why is it silver powder and not aluminum powder on Threnody? These kinds of questions. Brandon Sanderson Do you want the in-world answer... or the writerly answer? Questioner Well really I want the in-world answer. Brandon Sanderson ...The in-world answer is that people are not sure yet. Questioner Well, that's not the in-world answer. That's the in world answer from Khriss, right? What about the in-world answer from-- Brandon Sanderson That's the in-world answer--they're not sure yet... The writerly answer is that we started with silver in place of tin. And by the time I swapped it out, aluminum was already its thing. If I had to do it over again, I might make silver aluminum, but I wanted what aluminum does to be rare, and silver isn't. So I might not have. I love what aluminum does because it's super-rare pre-industrial, but you hit industrial and it's everywhere. So it allowed me to do, when we get to modern era, to have real checks on Allomancy as Allomancy gets more powerful. Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018) Edited August 22, 2024 by alder24 5
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