What is wax?

[Koloss17 She/They]

His steel bubble is apparently not because of savantism. If that’s not it, then what is it?

[Frustration he/him]

Probably a resonance as that was what it was intended to be, a reasonable between savant steel and F-iron. Just cut savantism out.

[+robardin he/him]

52 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Probably a resonance as that was what it was intended to be, a reasonable between savant steel and F-iron. Just cut savantism out.

Hmm, but Wax noticed the brawny Coinshot who attacks him on the train to New Seran in Ch. 7 of The Bands of Mourning (the one who kept wanting to fistfight with him) was also doing the steel bubble thing. And that guy was very, very unlikely to also have been a Crasher Twinborn.

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The brute came in again, and Wax dodged to the side, barely, and managed to connect with the man's face. Once, twice, three quick jabs.

The brute smiled. Doors still rattled around him - he was a Coinshot, obviously, Pushing out with a bubble like the one Wax used. It even pressed a little on the metalminds Wax wore on his upper arms, which were resistant to Allomancy.

This man could have ended the fight at any moment by grabbing a bit of metal and shooting it. He preferred the hand-to-hand fight. Indeed, the man raised his fists and nodded to Wax, still grinning, inviting him to come in for another round.

The guy did seem unusually physically strong, though, beyond simply being big. Exceptionally strong Allomancy, too. Since the Set have access to hemalurgy, perhaps he was enhanced with a spike for A-steel (increasing his strength), and maybe also for A-pewter? With a mission not to kill Wax, but to distract him with a mystery and a challenge?

[Koloss17 She/They]

I didn’t notice that! It would definitely distract us sharders with that type of mystery. Heck, it’s doing just that!

[Karger he/him]

It could also be just a learned skill.  Something he has figured out with a great deal of time and practice.

[Honorless he/him]

Brandon's changed his mind on this one a couple of times it seems

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Questioner

There is quantitative difference in Allomancy (e.g. Elend is stronger than Vin), there is skill difference (e.g. Breeze is better than Vin with zinc), but is there a qualitative difference too?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s the scale of what we call savant. Wax can do more with less. It’s not just skill, the burning for long, using for so long, will actually adapt your soul to the power.

Questioner

So can bronze savants pierce copperclouds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a bronze savant should be able to pierce copperclouds. It depends on the strengths of the coppercloud and the strength of the savant, but yes.

Questioner

So Elend could theoretically learn to pierce copperclouds?

Brandon Sanderson

Weaker ones, yeah, totally. He can learn how to do it by brute force.

Shadows of Self San Francisco signing (Oct. 9, 2015)

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Argent

Have we seen the resonances of either Wax or Wayne?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, well, Wax is really good at sculpting bullets and things away from him.

Argent

The bubble.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah and things like this. This is playing with the fact that he is-- Let's just say that the abilities make this happen, and I’ll let you theorize on why, but it's just an enhancement to what he can do.

Argent

I might be wrong, but I thought you said it was because he was becoming a steel savant.

Brandon Sanderson

A savant, yeah, definitely, but this is what this is coming from.

Argent

But being a savant has to do with being really good with one power--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Argent

--and resonances--

Brandon Sanderson

Being a savant has to do with using Investiture a lot, and it's starting to permeate your soul. Like we've ta--

Argent

So he's more a savant with both of--

Brandon Sanderson

He's used them a lot, and they are changing his soul, and so the powers are morphing and changing. Just in slight, little ways. You're not gonna see a whole bunch. But you can imagine these two separate powers are kind of becoming one to him.

Argent

Yeah I can see that. And Wayne?

Brandon Sanderson

So Wayne's is not as obvious. I'll go ahead and RAFO that right now.

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

But then he followed it up with this:

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Brandon Sanderson

Warning, Evgeni. I'm really considering doing a backpedal on savants. The more i think about them, the less I'm not liking how my current course has them being treated in upcoming books. I think it deviates too far from my original vision.

Argent

Hey, I wouldn't normally contact you directly like this, but given that you thought it important enough to reach out and let me know you might change how savants work, I figured you probably wouldn't be too upset by this message. I replied to your Facebook comment, asking if you could clarify a little bit which aspects of savantism you are thinking of keeping and/or cutting. I don't need an essay on the topic (though you know I'd love one!), just some details on what we can consider canon for theories, and what we should be careful around.

Brandon Sanderson

Evgeni,

So here's the problem. The more I dig into savants in the later outlines, the more I feel that I'm in a dangerous area--in that I'm disobeying their original intention. (Which is that using the power so much that it permeates your soul can be dangerous, a kind of uncontrolled version of a spren bond.)

And so, I don't want to let myself just start making people savants right and left. It needs to be a specific thing. Wax is the troubling one, as I have him burning so much steel that he's well on his way, but isn't showing any side effects. If I'm going to give him savant-like abilities, he needs savant-like consequences.

That's the danger, just falling back on savanthood to do some of the things I want, so often that it undermines the actual point and purpose of them in the cosmere lore.

So if I backpedal, it will be to contain this and point myself the right way, sharply curtailing my desire to make people savants without their savanthood being an intrinsic part of their story and conflict in life. (Like it was for Spook, and is for Soulcasting savants on Roshar.)

Feel free to share this.

Argent

Okay, so - if you do decide to go this route, I see the story implications (larger focus on consequences, less easy to get to the point where a character can be considered a savant). What I am not sure about is the potential for a mechanical change. Would a backpedal on your side cause a conflict with information you've shared with us, in or out of your books? Are you saying that it's possible that Wax won't be considered a savant (if you can't squeeze a good ramifications plot for him that doesn't contradict the apparent lack of consequences so far, for example)?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't decided on anything yet. It's mostly consequences for the future--just a kind of, "be aware I'm not 100% pleased with how Wax turned out, re: savanthood and Allomantic resonance."

The idea of resonance is that two powers, combined, meld kind of into one single power. This is a manifestation of the way Shards combine. Wax was intended as a savant of the two melded powers. But without consequences in his plot, I'm not confident that I'll continue in the same vein for future books.

Footnote: The first message comes from Brandon reaching out to Argent (Evgeni) on Facebook with a follow-up regarding this entry. This rest is from a Reddit PM exchange between Argent and Brandon.
Miscellaneous 2016 (Dec. 15, 2016)

Piercing Copperclouds, possibly better Soothing is Savantism but Kelsier's skilled steelpushing & Ironpulling wasn't:

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Podman36

So, in the scene where Kelsier has all the metal around him, and he's Pushing and Pulling on [parts of the metal that are] not center of mass, is that something more along the lines of savantism, or is it just Rule of Cool?

Brandon Sanderson

No no, that I was pushing toward... I wouldn't call Kelsier a savant, but I would say that there were certainly steps toward that, and it's something I actually wanted people who were really skilled with the magic to be able to do.

Podman36

So it's not Rule of Cool.

Brandon Sanderson

I would not call that one Rule of Cool, I would say that I want that to actually be part of the magic, that I wanted there to be some level, particularly in Pushing and Pulling, of skill that lets you deviate from the normal. And I've tried to show in other places that people who are really skilled can do some different things like that, particularly with Pushing and Pulling, both on emotions and on metals. So no, not Rule of Cool there, I do occasionally do Rule of Cool stuff, but I wouldn't call that one.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

It's very confusing

[+robardin he/him]

As far as Kelsier's mastery of steel and iron goes, for him to get so good with those metals so quickly must mean he had a natural prodigy-like affinity for them, but not a "savantism" resulting from long use of the Investiture... That should require a LOT of time burning a metal, and he's a Mistborn who only burns them part of the time (versus a Coinshot like Wax who burns steel all the time, when he's burning any metal at all).

Plus, he only even Snapped as a Mistborn after several months at the Pits of Hathsin. We don't know exactly how long ago that was prior to the events of the first Mistborn book (do we?); given the time he spent training with Gemmel in the far Northern Dominance and planning his scheme and all that, that had to taken years. But still, compared to most Allomancers who Snapped as children (the noble ones getting a professional beating to see if it would happen if they hadn't already by a certain age), he's actually had a lot LESS time using his powers than usual by the time he does his Allomantic duel with the Inquisitor.

[bruhsam]

I assume that we still do not have an definitive answer to "Why is Wax such a good shot?"

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

2 hours ago, bruhsam said:

I assume that we still do not have an definitive answer to "Why is Wax such a good shot?"

I want to say it's a mix of Resonance and skill, and the bubble is just a clever, "if you know you can do it, you can do it" type of thing. You have to believe you can do it or else the power won't do it on its own.

[ftl]

It's confusing because Brandon's gone back and forth on it. The possible explanations are resonance (in which case only someone with the same pair of powers could do it), savantism (in which case any coinshot could do it but at some cost) and just skill (in which case any coinshot could do it). Brandon has gone back and forth on how much "savantism" can contribute here and isn't quite happy with how it turned out, which is why the WoBs are inconclusive and the text is too.

[+robardin he/him]

14 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

I want to say it's a mix of Resonance and skill, and the bubble is just a clever, "if you know you can do it, you can do it" type of thing. You have to believe you can do it or else the power won't do it on its own.

It's also worth pointing out that it's not something you would necessarily even think to try to do as a Coinshot until there was so much metal around - specifically, high burst rate metal or metal-tipped projectile weapons being a common threat. TLR worked hard to suppress technology, particularly gunpowder and anything mechanically automated, specifically to keep Allomancy the only way to do incredible things, and its users (himself and the nobility) on top of the power structure.

[+Bzhydack he/him]

Wax Steel Bubble is clearly skill. We see other Coinshot able to do this as well. In Era 1 it was no need for such skill, but now, in fight, without this even Coinshot can be hit by bullet, so they learn to make protective field. Because of Waxes ability to manipulate mass, his Bubble will be better than normal, but its just it.

[bruhsam]

But, to get back to my original post, it seems that no, we do not have a definitive answer to the question. No WOB or in-text explanation anywhere. 

(I've been away from Sanderson readings for a while so didn't know if anything had come out in the last couple years)

[+robardin he/him]

7 hours ago, bruhsam said:

But, to get back to my original post, it seems that no, we do not have a definitive answer to the question. No WOB or in-text explanation anywhere. 

(I've been away from Sanderson readings for a while so didn't know if anything had come out in the last couple years)

No it's actually the opposite - I have seen semi- or fully conflicting WoBs on this and related topics.

I won't go digging in the Arcanum, but I'm pretty sure you can find WoBs on both sides (yes and no) saying Wax's bubble thing is/is not a Twinborn resonance; or if it's a expression of being an A-steel savant; or even being a Crasher savant specifically; or something else special about Wax we may yet to find out (hey, being "Harmony's Ruin" in the world has to have some kind of perk, right?).

That's because Sanderson has told his fans about his concept of there being such things as "resonances" and "perks" when two magic powers blend, and also such a thing as savantism from using a cosmere magic at a high flare for a long time (as we already saw with Spook), but not yet nailed down canon-wise exactly what things we've seen in the books are due to what factor, and to what degree.

At least we can rule out the Twinborn or Wax Is Special angle after Bands of Mourning, because we saw another guy doing it. (Unless that guy from the Set was indeed a Crasher Twinborn like Wax, or hemalurgically enabled for the same resonance plus with enough practice time to have acheived it, which seems very unlikely.)

Edited August 28, 2020 by robardin

[StanLemon]

Based on a comment from Brandon saying that Wax is very good at sculpting his bullet trajectory during one of the comments about his Resonance, that he can make the bubble without really knowing how he's doing it, Miles comments about how good of a shot he is, and the Ars Arcanum mentioning that Metalic Arts Resonances are subtle. I think his Resonance gives him an intuitive understanding of vectors of force and trajectory