Connectors need friends

[Red Ferring he/him]

I was thinking about Feruchemy (the best of Brandon's magic systems ) and about Duralumin ferrings: Connectors.

 

"Connector Ferrings store spiritual connectedness. Reducing other people's awareness and friendship with them during active storage. Tapping it can help speedily form trust relationships with others."

 

Since a ferring needs to possess the attribute to store it (this attribute being others' awareness of and friendship with the Ferring), does this mean that a Ferring with social awkwardness that has trouble making friends and gets ignored won't be able to store their attribute? Or at least not very well?

 

And a followup question: Could a Connector start a huge commotion in a crowd and everyone looks toward the Connector who then starts storing his attribute like crazy! What wuold happen? They stop caring and look away?

 

Also I can see it being used in future books as a plot element of a Connector Ferring storing the attribute to sneak around and not get noticed. Because it stores people's awareness of the Ferring. That's so NINJA!

 

First time posting! Any thoughts/ remarks/ critques? I'd love to hear them!

[Oudeis he/him]

It's gonna be hard to say for sure, because so very little is known about feruchemical duralumin. It's possible that it's like body heat, where if you're very cold you just have no heat to store.

 

Another possibility is that it's more like sight. Most people can see. If you're in a dark room, I don't think there's evidence that you're unable to store sight. You're storing your capacity to see. When we see Sazed tap a sight tinmind, he doesn't suddenly see what he was looking at when he stored, his vision now improves, implying that he stores his capacity to see, not his current vision.

 

By that metric, even if someone doesn't make a lot of friends, even if his skill in making friends is limited, he's still got just as much capacity to have a friend as anyone else, and could therefore store just as much connection in duralumin as anyone. After all, it's about awareness, yes? If Ashton Kutcher dropped a vase, or an autistic guy dropped a vase, the sound would cause just as many people to glance over and see what happened. Their reactions thereafter would be very different, but there's nothing inherent about gregarious people that makes them inherently more "noticeable" to any huge degree. It's possible someone very very outgoing could store connection faster than someone who tends to get ignored at parties, but to follow the tin/sight analogy, neither of them are "blind," and I'd expect the difference between them to be minimal.

 

There's also a recent WoB I know someone posted recently and I'm having the devil's own time finding about feruchemical duralumin storing a connection to the planet, so that's presumably something everyone has at least some of, even if they don't have friends.

 

And, of course, we can't know anything definitive, anyway. We simply haven't seen enough of feruchemical duralumin in text or WoB to do more than speculate. But I'm always pleased to find a fellow speculator. Welcome to the Shard! Keep the ideas flowing.

 

EDIT: And my buddy hates it when I do this, but I'm upvoting you just for that hilarious name.

Edited January 30, 2015 by Oudeis

[Guest]

There's also a recent WoB I know someone posted recently and I'm having the devil's own time finding about feruchemical duralumin storing a connection to the planet, so that's presumably something everyone has at least some of, even if they don't have friends.

Is this what you're referring to?

[Edgedancer he/him]

Is this what you're referring to?

Uh, that´s very interesting. So could a Feruchemist from Scardrial still become an Elantrian or return on Naltis?

[Guest]

Possibly. This has been suggested in a WoB that I'm too lazy/tired to find right now.

RAFO.

[Red Ferring he/him]

"Another possibility is that it's more like sight. Most people can see. If you're in a dark room, I don't think there's evidence that you're unable to store sight. You're storing your capacity to see. When we see Sazed tap a sight tinmind, he doesn't suddenly see what he was looking at when he stored, his vision now improves, implying that he stores his capacity to see, not his current vision."

(I don't know how to quote so I put it in quotations)

@Oudies

I love your thoughts on this and that analogy of Sazed's tin/sight had me convinced for a moment. Of course, all of this is speculation and that WoB could make this whole discussion pointless (per the usual, right?) but for the sake of discussion, I'd like to toss that analogy back at you with a spin.

Sazed can store his vision because he possesses sight. A blind Feruchemist wouldn't be able to because he can't store what he does not already possess. And with that logic, the "spiritual connectedness" of a Connector Ferring must be possessed in order to store it. And a "connection" requires 2 separate points. So the Ferring being 1 point then requires another point (a friend with whom they're spiritually connected) in order to store said connectedness.

So with that in mind, I'm still thinking a Connector who has lost their family and has no friends would have a pretty difficult time storing their attribute. Again, the WoB stating a connection to the planet would mean a constant connection that they can store, but like you said Oudeis, probably not as well as a highly outgoing person with a wide social circle.

Thoughts?

Edited January 31, 2015 by Red Ferring

[Edgedancer he/him]

So with that in mind, I'm still thinking a Connector who has lost their family and has no friends would have a pretty difficult time storing their attribute. Again, the WoB stating a connection to the planet would mean a constant connection that they can store, but like you said Oudeis, probably not as well as a highly outgoing person with a wide social circle.

Thoughts?

Depends on wheter or not Connectors store different kind of connection or on a general basis. If it´s generally, then they would still store connections with their surroundings, planet ect. and could then use that on other people. However, if it´s like storing different senses in different Tinminds, then a anti-social Connector might be rather limited in using his power on other people.

 

...Wait a minute. Connection with planet. In Surgebinding

the Surge of Gravitiy works by altering the spiritual connection between an object an its planet. So, maybe they can manipulate how gravity affects them as well.

[Guest]

That's a good point. Perhaps it works like tin, in that a separate metalmind is needed for each different type of Connection.

[Oudeis he/him]

"Another possibility is that it's more like sight. Most people can see. If you're in a dark room, I don't think there's evidence that you're unable to store sight. You're storing your capacity to see. When we see Sazed tap a sight tinmind, he doesn't suddenly see what he was looking at when he stored, his vision now improves, implying that he stores his capacity to see, not his current vision."

(I don't know how to quote so I put it in quotations)

@Oudies

I love your thoughts on this and that analogy of Sazed's tin/sight had me convinced for a moment. Of course, all of this is speculation and that WoB could make this whole discussion pointless (per the usual, right?) but for the sake of discussion, I'd like to toss that analogy back at you with a spin.

Sazed can store his vision because he possesses sight. A blind Feruchemist wouldn't be able to because he can't store what he does not already possess. And with that logic, the "spiritual connectedness" of a Connector Ferring must be possessed in order to store it. And a "connection" requires 2 separate points. So the Ferring being 1 point then requires another point (a friend with whom they're spiritually connected) in order to store said connectedness.

So with that in mind, I'm still thinking a Connector who has lost their family and has no friends would have a pretty difficult time storing their attribute. Again, the WoB stating a connection to the planet would mean a constant connection that they can store, but like you said Oudeis, probably not as well as a highly outgoing person with a wide social circle.

Thoughts?

 

I still think in your example you're conflating a blind person with someone in a dark room. It could be said that "sight" requires photons hitting your eyes. A perfectly-sighted feruchemist in a pitch dark room can likely still store, since he's storing the ability to see, not simply the sights that are in front of his eyes. By that metric, even if a feruchemist isn't currently connected to those around him, he's got the capacity to connect, and I believe that's what gets stored.

 

Keep in mind, the feruchemy we see most often is copper, and that clearly works very, very differently from most metals. Perhaps you are storing individual connections, but that would make duralumin like only one other metal, instead of like most of the metals.

 

And, of course, the other metal we see a lot of for feruchemy is iron, which kinda stores mass but kinda stores weight but doesn't quite store either. So what I'm saying is we've got something of a dearth of good practical experience with feruchemy.

[Red Ferring he/him]

That's very true on feruchemy. They all work within their own sphere of logic.

I don't want to beat a dead horse even if it did eat all my carrots. But I don't think I'm conflating the two (even if I did have to look up the definition of "conflating" just now). If the simple concept of friends could be used to apply what I'm saying, then I'm saying that storing spiritual connectedness is the storing of existing friendships. While storing the capacity to become spiritually connected is like storing your social prowess and likability.

Like iron, you're not storing your capacity to gain weight but storing (the effect of) your current weight. I think to tap a duraluminmind and form trust friendships quickly, you must have, at a previous time, lessened the spiritual connection you had with your (then current and existing) friendships. Meaning that you had friendships at the time of storing and not just a capacity

Edited January 31, 2015 by Red Ferring

[vertigo 1]

we will just have to wait and see.

[Oudeis he/him]

then I'm saying that storing spiritual connectedness is the storing of existing friendships.

 

You're modeling this as though it's copper or what some people think of things like aluminum, and I think what little we know proves that it is not. Storing specific friendships is like storing specific memories, and when you tap memories, you don't turn past memories into a new capacity to remember stuff, you simply recall the old memories. If you were storing specific friendships, then in the future when you tap them you'd only be increasing those specific friendships. What little we have in-text about duralumin tells us, "...can tap it at a later time in order to speedily form trust relationships with others." That seems pretty clear to me that it's saying stored connection can be used on people who weren't already your friends. Your analogy sounds like you're saying you could only store tin if you're currently seeing things, then use it later to see whole new things, when the way tin works, you instead store your capacity to see things, even if your eyes are closed or you're in a dark room.

 

But, the spiritual metals are the least known about, feruchemically, so it's entirely possible they actually do function in a manner unlike anything we've ever seen.