allomancy Tin and allomantic classification

[spaidapig he/him]

So tin is the physical internal pulling metal.

Does someone know where it was described how the "pulling" effect was justified? So like, what is pulled and pushed by the internal physical metal. The rest is pretty obvious, but these two are still confusing from time to time.

I couldn't find anything but I'm sure I read about it somewhere.

 

[+Invocation]

The Push/Pull thing was based on the bronze-pulsing. Pewter's pulses seem to beat against the Seeker burning, while Tin's seem to pull on the Seeker. Page 336 on my copy, where Marsh is training Vin in bronze:

Quote

"You can tell a Pulling metal from a Pushing metal by the Allomantic signature. Actually, that's how some of the metals were originally divided into their categories. It isn't intuitive, for instance, that tin Pulls while pewter Pushes."

 

[spaidapig he/him]

Ah perfect. Thank you.

This was the scene I was looking for.

So the classification comes from a meta level and not an actual effect on the allomancer.

 

[+Invocation]

3 minutes ago, spaidapig said:

So the classification comes from a meta level and not an actual effect on the allomancer.

Not on the Thug or Tineye, but it comes from the effect on the Seeker, so it's kind of grey whether it's actually a meta thing that exists only because Brandon needed a way to explain the classifications or something that would have developed naturally.

[spaidapig he/him]

It probably has some cosmere-lorewise reasoning behind it.

[+Invocation]

Just now, spaidapig said:

It probably has some cosmere-lorewise reasoning behind it.

More than likely! There's been a few theories about it relating to (stormlight spoilers)

Spoiler

the songs of the parsh/singers/Listeners, since there was a WOB that a Seeker could hear them (I think, but I can't find it at the moment) and another that I can find about the Rhythms and bronze-pulses being related in some way.

Quote

Questioner

If a Parshendi were to attain Allomancy and burn Bronze, how would they feel about the Bronze pulses?

Brandon Sanderson

They would feel that they were somewhat familiar but a little odd.

Skyward San Diego signing (Nov. 7, 2018)

 

 

[go_go_gragdet]

I was wondering: do people from the Central Dominance pronounce "tin" differently than an American would?

[spaidapig he/him]

1 minute ago, Invocation said:

More than likely! There's been a few theories about it relating to (stormlight spoilers)

  Reveal hidden contents

the songs of the parsh/singers/Listeners, since there was a WOB that a Seeker could hear them (I think, but I can't find it at the moment) and another that I can find about the Rhythms and bronze-pulses being related in some way.

 

 

Jup I know about them. Just didn't want to put them into the Mistborn forum

[Stormlight/Rythm of War]

Spoiler

The Fabrial use as well

 

[+Invocation]

3 minutes ago, go_go_gragdet said:

I was wondering: do people from the Central Dominance pronounce "tin" differently than an American would?

Eh. Tin being pronounced in a semi-French accent just sounds like tin with a lot of phlegm behind it. Not like Hoid, which would end up being pronounced like Wad, more or less, which...uh...yeah that's strange.

3 minutes ago, spaidapig said:

Jup I know about them. Just didn't want to put them into the Mistborn forum

Spoiler

Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff like that happening. All that behind the scenes stuff is a mystery to us still, but we're getting there.

 

[go_go_gragdet]

3 hours ago, Invocation said:

Eh. Tin being pronounced in a semi-French accent just sounds like tin with a lot of phlegm behind it. Not like Hoid, which would end up being pronounced like Wad, more or less, which...uh...yeah that's strange.

Or "Wah", like the ending of "froid" (cold)... unless they add an umlaut on the "i" (which the French sometimes do for words like polaroid or celluloid, lest someone pronounce them polar-wah or cellul-wah); in this case Hoid would sound much closer to the English pronunciation (but without the H): 'o-eed

[+Invocation]

15 hours ago, go_go_gragdet said:

Or "Wah", like the ending of "froid" (cold)... unless they add an umlaut on the "i" (which the French sometimes do for words like polaroid or celluloid, lest someone pronounce them polar-wah or cellul-wah); in this case Hoid would sound much closer to the English pronunciation (but without the H): 'o-eed

Fair, but both of those...they just sound strange.

[HSuperLee]

In my head I've always seen it as pulling in extra information and details from the world around you via your senses. Is that just me justifying it away? Yes. But that's how it makes sense to me to think about it.

[+Invocation]

2 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

In my head I've always seen it as pulling in extra information and details from the world around you via your senses. Is that just me justifying it away? Yes. But that's how it makes sense to me to think about it.

Hey, whatever works man. Gotta remember it somehow.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Iron pulls, and its alloy, Steel, pushes.

Copper and Zinc pull, and their alloys, Bronze and Brass, push.

Therefore, Tin pulls, and its alloy, Pewter, pushes.

 

When I read books, I often like to keep a notebook where I write stuff down.  Characters, places, relationship, etc.

When I first read Mistborn, at the end of Chapter Two I was sure I wouldn't be able to keep eight different metals straight, so I made a chart of Iron, Steel, Copper, Zinc, Bronze, Brass, Tin and Pewter. I put Steel, Pewter, Bronze, and Brass in the center of a square and Iron, Tin, Copper, and Zinc at the corners.  Alloys are blends, combinations, mixtures, so it felt right to put them close to one another, and the ones I knew were separate elements felt like they needed to be further apart from each other.  Then, as I continued reading the book and writing what each metal did, I marked the pushing metals with an asterisk and the pulling metals with parentheses, realized that the pushers were all alloys, and felt like I was smart because I'd noticed a thing I usually wouldn't.  After all, you push someone into quicksand, but you pull someone out of quicksand, so the pushing metals being on the inside had to mean I was right.  I mean, sure, I had to erase Brass and Bronze and rewrite them so that Bronze went with Copper and Brass went with Zinc (both alloys contain both elements), and sure, the non-basic metals meant I needed at least one more chart, but still, it was probably the moment that I first truly appreciated Sanderson's magic systems.

 

(Of course, on a reread, I found that Kelsier explains early on to Vin that the pushing metals are typically alloys of the pulling metals and I'd evidently not noticed that because I'm an idiot).

 

(Also, imagine my frustration when The Well Of Ascension has a metal chart at the back with an entirely different shape and organization).

For me, it's harder to remember which metals are internal and which metals are external, but I guess I'm the reverse of HSuperLee and Invocation.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[AquaRegia he/him]

38 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

When I first read Mistborn, at the end of Chapter Two I was sure I wouldn't be able to keep eight different metals straight, so I made a chart of Iron, Steel, Copper, Zinc, Bronze, Brass, Tin and Pewter. I put Steel, Pewter, Bronze, and Brass in the center of a square and Iron, Tin, Copper, and Zinc at the corners.  Alloys are blends, combinations, mixtures, so it felt right to put them close to one another, and the ones I knew were separate elements felt like they needed to be further apart from each other.  Then, as I continued reading the book and writing what each metal did, I marked the pushing metals with an asterisk and the pulling metals with parentheses, realized that the pushers were all alloys, and felt like I was smart because I'd noticed a thing I usually wouldn't.  After all, you push someone into quicksand, but you pull someone out of quicksand, so the pushing metals being on the inside had to mean I was right.  I mean, sure, I had to erase Brass and Bronze and rewrite them so that Bronze went with Copper and Brass went with Zinc (both alloys contain both elements), and sure, the non-basic metals meant I needed at least one more chart, but still, it was probably the moment that I first truly appreciated Sanderson's magic systems.

As a chemist, I applaud your self-motivated efforts to create an Allomantic Periodic table.  As with the "real" Periodic table, many different schemes can work.  Just because theirs is different does not make yours wrong!

I will point out that your statement in bold above is not quite true.  Alloys are complex and can be difficult to classify... but in general, brass = copper + zinc, and bronze = copper + tin.  Some bronzes do contain zinc, but almost no brasses contain any tin, and for the ones that do, it's only like 1%.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

If I remember right, though, the Red Brasses (which were to a large degree replaced by steel once industrial Steel could be mass-produced) can have more than 1% tin, and those few brasses which contain about 1% tin are, or at least once were not uncommon (Tin helps things survive seawater, which historically been a good feature for a metal).  For a pre-industrial setting like Mistborn's original trilogy, and one in which people can get trace metals from water, I assumed that those tin-containing brasses which were historically so useful for bells, plumbing (given that Vin getting trace metals from drinking water is a plot-point, I assumed that Luthadel had some sort of water-pipes made of metal), seafaring, and early machinery (There aren't guns, so I guess that rules out the main use of a good portion of the Red Brasses, but there are watches, so there's got to be at least the beginnings of early machinery, thinks my younger self), would be relatively preva-okay yeah I'm an idiot and didn't do the research.

 

Accursed alloys, always messing me up.

Edited February 17, 2021 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[mathiau he/him]

On 10/09/2020 at 9:59 PM, HSuperLee said:

In my head I've always seen it as pulling in extra information and details from the world around you via your senses. Is that just me justifying it away? Yes. But that's how it makes sense to me to think about it.

Honestly, Tin being pulling always made more sense to me than Zinc, you can pull down and push up so I didn't see the logic.

[StanLemon]

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

Honestly, Tin being pulling always made more sense to me than Zinc, you can pull down and push up so I didn't see the logic.

I've viewed it more of compression (Push) vs stretching (Pull) 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

16 hours ago, StanLemon said:

I've viewed it more of compression (Push) vs stretching (Pull) 

Yep. That's how i thought about it too.

[AquaRegia he/him]

18 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If I remember right, though, the Red Brasses (which were to a large degree replaced by steel once industrial Steel could be mass-produced) can have more than 1% tin

Indeed this is true - I learned some stuff today!  From Wikipedia:

"Red Brass (85% copper, 5% each zinc, tin and lead) is an American term for the copper-zinc-tin alloy known as gunmetal, and an alloy which is considered both a brass and a bronze."

I remember, after reading MB E2 for the first time, being surprised to learn that all those new alloys were real things.  I had never heard of nicrosil, for example, and I knew the term "Wood's metal", but not "bendalloy".