Pewter or tin

[+robardin he/him]

5 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Okay, to save myself the pain this causes, I've figured out that zinc ferrings, would be better accountants, and bronze ferrings better long distance drivers

Perhaps, but also far more rare. And unless they can access Compounded investiture, they'll have to spend at least equal time slow of thought or dozing off/asleep as charged up!

[Myst He/Him]

On another depressing note, the same is true here of rioters and soothers.

Once they had the ability to incite change, influence the masses, and be the most persuasive and influential people in the world. Making people look past certain details, act rashly, or even allow them to be scammed.

And now, with everyone wearing aluminum, they’re nothing more than glorified temporary therapists

[Isilel]

11 hours ago, robardin said:

That’s a depressing thought.

<Snip>

Now, with aluminum guns and bullets commonplace, pewter was now most useful for professional sports leagues that permitted it, and for the endurance it granted. Like in long-distance airship piloting, long-haul trucking, and untangling accounts receivable, he thought wryly.”

 

Why is it depressing, though? One of my pet peeves with Era 2 was that we saw almost no casual use of Metallic Arts for non-combat purposes, or by people who were neither protagonists nor antagonists. They really should have been more integrated into overall worldbuilding, even taking into account their relative rarity, which I also didn't expect, given that after mist-snapping at the end of Era 1, the amount of Metal born in the overall population increased significantly.

Most Pewterarms wouldn't want to be warriors anyway. 

 

8 hours ago, Myst said:

And now, with everyone wearing aluminum, they’re nothing more than glorified temporary therapists

 

Well, as an upside, imagine the fashion of wearing hats not going away as a result of having to protect against emotional allomancy! Hats were awesome. A-hem.

Anyway, another mundane, but very beneficial use for emotional allomancy could be helping people concentrate on learning or work. Imagine a Soother librarian at a University library, for example... 

As to the thread question, I would take pewter allomancy over tin one, but if tin Feruchemy was in the running, I'd certainly pick that. It can be so beneficial both storing and tapping and also very versatile, if the user is sufficiently creative.

 

 

[+robardin he/him]

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

 

Why is it depressing, though? One of my pet peeves with Era 2 was that we saw almost no casual use of Metallic Arts for non-combat purposes, or by people who were neither protagonists nor antagonists. They really should have been more integrated into overall worldbuilding, even taking into account their relative rarity, which I also didn't expect, given that after mist-snapping at the end of Era 1, the amount of Metal born in the overall population increased significantly.

Most Pewterarms wouldn't want to be warriors anyway. 

Well, as an upside, imagine the fashion of wearing hats not going away as a result of having to protect against emotional allomancy! Hats were awesome. A-hem.

Anyway, another mundane, but very beneficial use for emotional allomancy could be helping people concentrate on learning or work. Imagine a Soother librarian at a University library, for example... 

As to the thread question, I would take pewter allomancy over tin one, but if tin Feruchemy was in the running, I'd certainly pick that. It can be so beneficial both storing and tapping and also very versatile, if the user is sufficiently creative.

It wasn’t depressing because it was a mundane and modern use of Allomancy.

It was depressing because I’ve been That Guy up until midnight debugging/reconciling stuff on a glowing CRT screen, and imagining that I would be accessing “a piece of divine power” just so I could keep on doing it instead of tapping out and going to bed, is like picturing The Flash being made to clean house and fold laundry in 10 minutes before some last-minute guests arrive.

Can he do it? Yes. Is he specially gifted to do so? Also yes. So, would he do it? I suppose so.

But would he be thinking the whole time, how did it come to this? You better believe it

[Frustration]

3 hours ago, Isilel said:

One of my pet peeves with Era 2 was that we saw almost no casual use of Metallic Arts for non-combat purposes, or by people who were neither protagonists nor antagonists. They really should have been more integrated into overall worldbuilding

Did you read the broadsheets? They had a couple of ads asking for metalborn to apply for positions.

[Myst He/Him]

5 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Did you read the broadsheets? They had a couple of ads asking for metalborn to apply for positions.

The bendalloy “quick eats” one was hilarious to me because of how much money they’d burn for it

[Frustration]

10 minutes ago, Myst said:

The bendalloy “quick eats” one was hilarious to me because of how much money they’d burn for it

It's a large up front investment, but it's a fixed cost, so the more customers you have the better it gets. I mean, if you had a fast food joint that no matter what always has your food in under a minute it'd be an instant success. Just put as many stovetops inside the bubble as you can.

[Isilel]

4 minutes ago, Frustration said:

It's a large up front investment, but it's a fixed cost, so the more customers you have the better it gets.

 

This advertisement makes zero sense and Sanderson should have caught the discrepancy. Sliders are very rare. Finding one that was also a decent enough cook to do it professionally would have been like winning at lottery.

Bendalloy is so expensive during the Era 2, that even once Wax became the lord of his House, he could only provide Wayne with smallish amounts of it, enough for minutes, not hours.

Finally a slider is literally burning their own lifetime when they burn - they'd need to be extremely well payed to do this continuously.

I could imagine the richest businesses being able to afford having them burn for hours at a time during particularly sensitive periods. But some restaurant, while also requiring them to work, as well as burn? It contradicts everything that we were able to observe from Wax and Wayne.

Likewise, Steel Ferrings are also very rare and a bad choice for speedy food delivery, because they need to spend so much time storing that speed. Coinshots or just mundane bicycle messengers would have been much more effective, not to mention actually affordable.

I would have liked for Our Heroes to see Coinshots zipping around, like the broadsheets keep complaining about, Lurcher construction workers building the skyscrapers, etc. when moving through the city, instead of it always being just Wax and maybe some antagonist. He did meet one(!) Coinshot messenger on page in SoS and she wasn't even jumping through the city at the time.

Settings where only heroes and villains have powers and only use them to fight are a dime a dozen. Scadrial is supposed to be different and I want to finally see it front and center.

[Frustration]

16 minutes ago, Isilel said:

This advertisement makes zero sense and Sanderson should have caught the discrepancy. Sliders are very rare. Finding one that was also a decent enough cook to do it professionally would have been like winning at lottery.

You don't need them to cook, just to keep the bubble up, others can cook.

21 minutes ago, Isilel said:

Bendalloy is so expensive during the Era 2, that even once Wax became the lord of his House, he could only provide Wayne with smallish amounts of it, enough for minutes, not hours.

That's something I hadn't thought of, but the biggest problem is actually that Wax can't afford it, with the resources he has that shouldn't be a problem. I mean Marassi always has plenty of Cadmium. I suppose she does say that Wayne uses his frivolously for no reason, so that's part of it, but not enough.

26 minutes ago, Isilel said:

Finally a slider is literally burning their own lifetime when they burn - they'd need to be extremely well payed to do this continuously.

Eh, they can spend the time at their job now, or later. Just pay them the same with the wages adjusted to their time perspective.

[+robardin he/him]

44 minutes ago, Isilel said:

This advertisement makes zero sense and Sanderson should have caught the discrepancy. Sliders are very rare. Finding one that was also a decent enough cook to do it professionally would have been like winning at lottery.

I always assumed burying that in the fine print of a broadsheet insert into a Mistborn Era 2 novel was the equivalent of an Easter Egg joke referencing “sliders” being invented IRL in 1921, the very first “fast food” hamburger

https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2023-03-22/white-castle-hamburger-wichita-kansas-sliders-fast-food-history-mcdonalds

[Isilel]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

You don't need them to cook

 

The advertisement was for a Slider cook, though, not just a Slider. 

 

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

. I mean Marassi always has plenty of Cadmium.

 

She very rarely had a reason to use her cadmium and it is a slow-burning metal, as opposed to bendalloy, which is fast-burning. Even once she had allomantic grenades, she needed to burn very little to prime them. 

Wayne was able to use bendalloy frivolously only once he secretly became very rich himself. Even so, he wasn't doing it for hours every day, as the advertisement says a Slider cook would have to.

I also doubt that anyone would chose to age much quicker than their contemporaries, unless they were extremely generously compensated or  utterly desperate.

 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

an Easter Egg joke referencing “sliders” being invented IRL in 1921, the very first “fast food” hamburger

 

You are undoubtedly right, which is why it sticks out like a sore thumb. I wish that Sanderson (and Stewart? I think that he was responsible for the broadsheets) hadn't decided to compromise the integrity of the setting for an obscure joke.

In any case, this means that the advertisement exists to break the fourth wall and isn't meant to be taken seriously.

[Cosmer]

They very most talented people in our society (top 1% athletes) benefit greatly from that natural born ability...usually. Is it normally in athletics or entertainment? For sure, but that's OK. People love sports and entertainment! I think technology wipes out most of the tineye advantage. So pewter for me. 

[+robardin he/him]

7 hours ago, Isilel said:

You are undoubtedly right [about the broadsheets ad looking for bendalloy burning Allomancers -- "Sliders" -- being sought after for a new "fast food" enterprise being an IRL White Castle reference], which is why it sticks out like a sore thumb. I wish that Sanderson (and Stewart? I think that he was responsible for the broadsheets) hadn't decided to compromise the integrity of the setting for an obscure joke.

In any case, this means that the advertisement exists to break the fourth wall and isn't meant to be taken seriously.

Well, Scadrial is meant to "kind of parallel" late 19th/20th Century Earth from Era 2 going into Era 3. And the Era 2 broadsheet material ALL looks to be rather tongue in cheek (though there are the occasional "lorish" tidbits, too).

So if it better pleases your sensibilities, you can headcanon this as being being the Scadrian Guy Who Thought Of Fast Food Burgers (the analog of the person in our so-called real world who did so) dubbing his invention "sliders" for the same reason they acquired that nickname in our world (they're small, steamed soft, kind of greasy, and easy to just "slide" down the gullet), and now putting out ads to hire actual Sliders (the Allomancers) more as an advertising gimmick than a core production component, whether or not any actual Allomancers ever responded to the ad.

Kind of like if, I don't know, if Burger King put out ads looking for claimants to being the Tsar of Russia In Exile, or the heir to the Bourbon or Napoleonic titles to being the King of France, to be the face of their restaurant?

Edited May 28 by robardin

[Vatsug]

Probably pewter tbh. Tin would be good, but pewter seems more useful. Especially the ability to withstand injury.