Howdy! I'm one of the two original authors of the reddit post (I'm gonna go ahead and assume verification of this fact is unnecessary). We considered posting our theory here as well, but until now I've just been a 17th Shard occasional visitor instead of poster, and thus chose to stick to reddit. I'm flattered that someone enjoyed our theory enough to cross-post it, though. I figured I'd drop in and address a few of the concerns brought up above, in order.
Allomantic metals aren't Invested.
First off, you're completely correct that Allomantic metals are not themselves specifically Invested. It was a necessary simplification for the main post body that I ended up addressing in the comments. What really happens, as stated in the most recent AMA, is that burning metal acts as a conduit for the latent power of Preservation. The metal glows in the Cognitive Realm since Preservation's Investiture seeks to flow into the world through it. Thus, we felt okay with simplifying it to "Investiture comes from metal", even with the slight but important distinction as compared to Breath or Stormlight.
Intent is the least important thing in Selish magic, beyond the fact you need it to draw an Aon. "Drawing symbols precisely" has nothing to do with willpower. You don't even need to know what you're doing in AonDor, you could just copy Aons from a textbook.
While you're correct about the textbook thing, I'd like to back up our source for that argument with the line from the Ars Arcanum published with the Elantris 10th anniversary edition. The author writes "As in other forms of Investiture, intent is very important. An Elantrian can't accidentally draw an Aon. Because of their complexity, this would be highly unlikely, but I have tested it to my satisfaction. One must wish to draw an Aon, and have an inkling of the required shape, before anything will happen". Sure, you could teach someone to draw Aons through rote memorization, but they'd need to be aware of what they're doing, and probably what their intended result would be. Thus, Raoden couldn't draw Aons until he saw Galladon do so and directly attempted to do so.
Or... because zinc causes you to think faster, so your brain needs more sugar? I don't think being hungry is a "cost" to using a zincmind in the way you need to consume metals or drain color or drain heat. Most Feruchemy has no similar need for fuel.
I'm not certain that it's true that most Feruchemy does not have some costs. It's noted a couple of times that Inquisitors needed to sleep a lot; if I remember correctly it's because tapping speed makes you sleepy. I suspect there are more costs that are as yet unknown. However, I freely admit this is a place where we could be wrong; it might just be that the way Feruchemy works does not require additional connections to the Physical Realm beyond simply the possession of a metalmind.
I don't see how this follows from the given theory at all. I don't see why Connection needs to be involved, or why a constant stream of Investiture would be needed to keep them tethered.
Strictly speaking, the discussion of death is not a 100% natural consequence of the base theory. It is rather an attempt to expand upon it in correspondence with the additional information we've gotten from Secret History and BoA. Because of the massively spoilerific nature of our original post, the cross-poster (reasonably) removed the direct references we used as evidence here. I recommend looking at the version on reddit for the clearer picture here. The short version is once you die you begin to unravel across the three Realms and approach an Afterlife; it takes Investiture to prevent that "decay" and maintain the Realmatic tethers protecting your body from the worms and your soul from Beyond.
One example: Soothing/Rioting. You're not trying to change the Cognitive through a Spiritual or Physical change.
This one has been tricky for my coauthor and I. I agree it requires the most squinting. Our best attempt to pidgeonhole comes from the fact that you're protected from emotional Allomancy by aluminum-lined hats. If we go by the commonly held theory that aluminum has particularly strong Identity (which is why it can't be Pushed and is un-Forgable) you could possibly make the argument that you're messing with the Spiritual self in order to cause Cognitive changes. The main thing is that brass and zinc don't play by the rules of the Cognitive Realm as we've seen them in Stormlight and Secret History, which is how we get the "realm boundary fuzzing" aspect into it.
On the theory itself, I believe it is trying to extrapolate from the example of the soul having a "pushback" which can cause Physical changes (in the style of atium Feruchemy). I think it extrapolates way too much.
Atium is one of the cornerstone examples we use, yes. However, Soulcasting also works pretty directly via using the Cognitive Rules (as seen by Kelsier's adventures) to cause Physical shifts. Forgery also is a key piece of evidence, since we know it involves reshaping a Spiritual trait (an object's past) in order to manipulate its Physical state. I agree with your claim that this is all a huge amount of extrapolation, though. We did say so right in the opening paragraph . The key thing is that we feel it's consistent with all that we've seen and simple enough in the right ways to subscribe to Sanderson's Laws of writing magic systems, which is why we like it as a baseline theory that can be adapted once new information becomes available.
[Secret History Spoilers] Unifying theory of Investiture and Realmatics
in Mistborn
Posted
Howdy! I'm one of the two original authors of the reddit post (I'm gonna go ahead and assume verification of this fact is unnecessary). We considered posting our theory here as well, but until now I've just been a 17th Shard occasional visitor instead of poster, and thus chose to stick to reddit. I'm flattered that someone enjoyed our theory enough to cross-post it, though. I figured I'd drop in and address a few of the concerns brought up above, in order.
First off, you're completely correct that Allomantic metals are not themselves specifically Invested. It was a necessary simplification for the main post body that I ended up addressing in the comments. What really happens, as stated in the most recent AMA, is that burning metal acts as a conduit for the latent power of Preservation. The metal glows in the Cognitive Realm since Preservation's Investiture seeks to flow into the world through it. Thus, we felt okay with simplifying it to "Investiture comes from metal", even with the slight but important distinction as compared to Breath or Stormlight.
While you're correct about the textbook thing, I'd like to back up our source for that argument with the line from the Ars Arcanum published with the Elantris 10th anniversary edition. The author writes "As in other forms of Investiture, intent is very important. An Elantrian can't accidentally draw an Aon. Because of their complexity, this would be highly unlikely, but I have tested it to my satisfaction. One must wish to draw an Aon, and have an inkling of the required shape, before anything will happen". Sure, you could teach someone to draw Aons through rote memorization, but they'd need to be aware of what they're doing, and probably what their intended result would be. Thus, Raoden couldn't draw Aons until he saw Galladon do so and directly attempted to do so.
I'm not certain that it's true that most Feruchemy does not have some costs. It's noted a couple of times that Inquisitors needed to sleep a lot; if I remember correctly it's because tapping speed makes you sleepy. I suspect there are more costs that are as yet unknown. However, I freely admit this is a place where we could be wrong; it might just be that the way Feruchemy works does not require additional connections to the Physical Realm beyond simply the possession of a metalmind.
Strictly speaking, the discussion of death is not a 100% natural consequence of the base theory. It is rather an attempt to expand upon it in correspondence with the additional information we've gotten from Secret History and BoA. Because of the massively spoilerific nature of our original post, the cross-poster (reasonably) removed the direct references we used as evidence here. I recommend looking at the version on reddit for the clearer picture here. The short version is once you die you begin to unravel across the three Realms and approach an Afterlife; it takes Investiture to prevent that "decay" and maintain the Realmatic tethers protecting your body from the worms and your soul from Beyond.
This one has been tricky for my coauthor and I. I agree it requires the most squinting. Our best attempt to pidgeonhole comes from the fact that you're protected from emotional Allomancy by aluminum-lined hats. If we go by the commonly held theory that aluminum has particularly strong Identity (which is why it can't be Pushed and is un-Forgable) you could possibly make the argument that you're messing with the Spiritual self in order to cause Cognitive changes. The main thing is that brass and zinc don't play by the rules of the Cognitive Realm as we've seen them in Stormlight and Secret History, which is how we get the "realm boundary fuzzing" aspect into it.
Atium is one of the cornerstone examples we use, yes. However, Soulcasting also works pretty directly via using the Cognitive Rules (as seen by Kelsier's adventures) to cause Physical shifts. Forgery also is a key piece of evidence, since we know it involves reshaping a Spiritual trait (an object's past) in order to manipulate its Physical state. I agree with your claim that this is all a huge amount of extrapolation, though. We did say so right in the opening paragraph
. The key thing is that we feel it's consistent with all that we've seen and simple enough in the right ways to subscribe to Sanderson's Laws of writing magic systems, which is why we like it as a baseline theory that can be adapted once new information becomes available.