ErikModi

Potassium: Firework Ferrings can store Explosiveness in a Potassiumind. While storing, explosions near a Fireworker are less powerful, and possibly fizzle out completely. While tapping, nearby explosions can be more powerful, and if sufficient Explosiveness is tapped at once, any item can be made to explode just by touching it. Many Firework Ferrings are missing fingers as a result.

That was pretty obviously MeLaan's "Combat Body," what with swords stored in the armbones and such. Wood, Crystal, rock, etc. that's soft enough to be easily shaped into a proper skeleton won't be strong enough to survive the rigors of combat, especially against Allomancers and Feruchemists, as we've seen a few times with TenSoon in the Original Trilogy. Thus, she needed a metal. Personally, I get the impression that kandra bodies are a little different from human bodies, and the "can't sense/push/pull" rule is a little less solid (pun intended) where they're concerned, and it's hardly a true absolute even for humans. Thus, MeLaan would want a metal for her metal combat body that she could be absolutely certain would be undetectable via Allomancy (since if it wasn't she'd be a pretty bad infiltrator) and one that couldn't be affected by Allomancy (otherwise it'd be a pretty bad combat body). Plus, as mentioned, she has the swords in the arms, and possibly other weapons elsewhere, at which point she's deliberately taking parts of her skeleton out of her body, where the no sense/push/pull rule no longer applies. As such, aluminum makes perfect sense for this kind of application. Plus, it makes for a rad Terminator shout-out.

Yes, that's what the RPG talks about as it gets into the mechanics of compounding. You store ten charges, burn the metal you stored them in, and have 100 charges, which you can then either tap immediately or store immediately in other metalminds. So instead of spending a day two years older to spend a day two years younger, you spend a day two years older to charge up twenty other metalminds with youth, which you can tap or burn as you see fit.

Very well, I stand corrected.

Well, Sazed does comment near the end of the first book that the pewter ring he swallowed can't hold much of a Feruchemical charge. The RPG (not 100% canon, I know) also applies hard limits to how many charges a metalmind can store based on its size. I think Sazed also comments of the rings he was charging near the end of the second book that they couldn't hold much, but he wanted them for backups to his other metalminds (since they'd be embroiled in battle soon, and he wanted access to all the power he could get). So I'd say yes, there is a hard limit to how much Feruchemical charge can be stored in a given metalmind. Allomancy works on a similar principal, the more of a metal you've swallowed, the longer you can burn it before you run out.

Questioning having the thinking of this: WoBing writing thing, stressing the nip of the seeing of the speaking?

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Remember, the first time Vin actually broke into TLR's place to try and kill him, she saw him as an old man. And he was in that place that he goes every few days and spends a lot of time there, the result being the very heavy implication that he still needs to spend some time old to store youth that he can compound. Compounding by allomantically burning a feruchemically charged metalmind lets you get out of the metalmind more than you put into it. Now, you can easily reach a point where you have "infinite" of an attribute stored up to tap/burn at will, but it still requires the initial input of the attribute in the first place, and since different metals burn at different rates, you might have to store your reserves more often to keep a suitable level of compoundable metalminds available. Miles Hundredlives is pretty much constantly burning/storing health in metalminds, either for regular tapping or compounding, so he's reached a point where he has far more health stored than he can feasibly use, getting into the "infinite loop" concept. But even for a compounder, you'll hit a point where you have no more metalminds to burn (or don't want to burn a particular metalmind for some reason) and have to start storing over again. I know the RPG isn't 100% canon, but I think it illustrates this concept very well. Metalminds can store a certain number of charges based on how big they are, and you have to put charges into it to take charges out, and there are whole charts about what happens based on how many charges of something you tap at any given moment. The Alloy of Law supplement gets into compounding, where you can burn an appropriate metalmind and receive far more charges out of it than you put into it, which can either be used as normal or stored in other metalminds. I believe you get one hundred times the charges for compounding (recently switched computers, haven't redownloaded the pdfs yet). So, take a small gold ring, store 10 charges of health, burn it, you have 100 charges of health you can put in ten more small rings, burn one of those, you now have 200 charges of health, and so on. As for Copper compounding specifically, the game glosses over most of the effects of storing memories, basically treating it as bonuses to various intellectual rolls based on knowledge you might have stored in your copperminds. All compounding really does is give you WAY more charges to apply to adding bonuses. But I think copper compounding is one of those things that, as pointed out here a few times, has some really interesting unforseen consequences, especially when you start adding in the Identity/Investiture tricks. Gold metalminds anyone can use may revolutionize health care on Scadrial, compounding copperminds are going to be something else entirely.

Well, at the most basic, you could just make the Riot music louder, but you could experiment with faster beat and tempo, more brass instead of woodwind, more dominant percussion, etc. This is really stretching my knowledge of music, so I couldn't elaborate more than that, which is why I say get a really talented composer.

Emotional allomancy wouldn't be a visual, handle it through the music, since that's what a film score does anyway (enhance the emotion of the scene). Get a really good composer, and have them write pieces of score to bring out the emotions being Soothed/Rioted. Especially in, for instance, the scene with Vin and Breeze at the recruitment meeting, with Breeze narrating exactly what he's doing with people's emotions, and the score reinforcing it with the right music. Breeze as a character would have either a very simple or very complicated theme tune, able to be tailored to a wide variety of emotional responses by varying key, pitch, time, etc.

Without giving anything away for future Wax and Wayne books, I'll say that if the skaa/noble "relations" in the original Mistborn trilogy didn't make you cringe (assuming you read that first), the other Wax and Wayne books shouldn't. The fourth book isn't out yet, but at least in the Mistborn series so far, Sanderson has proven his ability to skirt such issues effectively, placing them where appropriate for the world he's creating without trivializing them, making them prurient, or carrying them into so much detail they alienate the audience.

Yeah, Iron/Steel/Tin/Pewter are completely different across pairs (and Tin/Pewter are even completely different from each other), so there's that. Hmm, come to think of it: Iron/Steel (External Physical): Identical and opposite effects (see metal, Pull/Push metal) Tin/Pewter (Internal Physical): Completely different effects (Enhance Senses, Enhance Physicality) Zinc/Brass (External Mental): Identical and opposite effects (Riot/Soothe emotions) Copper/Bronze (Internal Mental): Vaguely related effects (Detect Allomancy, resist Copper detection in an area and resist Zinc/Brass against yourself) It appears Enhancement is the only category where the powers have the exact same effects Internal/External and opposite effects for Push/Pull, and Temporal is the only category where they're opposite Push/Pull but unrelated between Internal/External. I can't help but feel I'm on the verge of something big here, but rusted if I know what it is. . .

Ah, I misread. Apologies.

There some Wild Mass Guessing over on TvTropes that, because Allomancy is Preservation's power, Preservation "snuck" Atium into Allomancy and gave it a ridiculously useful power so people would have an incentive to burn it, thus continually depriving Ruin of his "body." It's kind of the only thing that bugs me about Wax and Wayne: Cool as speed bubbles are, they don't quite make sense in the Allomancy tables as "replacements" Atium and Malatium. Gold and Electrum no longer quite "gel" with the other "temporal metals," their effects are too different. Then again, the Zinc/Brass/Copper/Bronze mental quartet doesn't really relate to each other across pairs, so maybe I'm overthinking this.

Well, Wax's "steel bubble" seems to be something anyone can learn (the Coinshot bandit he fights in Bands seems to use the same, or very similar, power), and it's a Stunt any Coinshot can take in the RPG (again, I know, not 100% canon). I'd be hesitant to write off any character's innate talents and skills as the result of magical combination powers. Once could just as easily argue that Marasi's grasp of statistics is because she's got magical power in that event (even though she isn't Twinborn). Steris' almost-prescient levels of Crazy Preparedness would be the equal of Wayne's affinity for accents and Wax's sense of justice, and she isn't even Metalborn (I know there's speculation that she's some kind of Metalborn and keeping it very hidden, but I doubt for two reasons: 1) Was pegged Marasi as an Allomancer after knowing her for about five minutes, I find it hard to believe he'd miss his wife being Metalborn 2) Steris is SO much cooler as just a Badass Normal.) Given how scientific the Metallic Arts are, I'd find it really bizarre if the "extra effect" was something completely out of left field, instead of something that naturally followed from the combination of the two powers. Even if it isn't an obvious A+B at first blush, I think it would make sense as a logical extension of how these two particular powers interact. Wax being able to decide exactly how much weight to throw behind his Steelpushes is obvious, him benefiting from Conservation of Momentum isn't (except for those readers who really know Newtonian physics inside and out). In other words, I'd imagine it's less A+B=D, and more A+B+Physics=D. Hmm. Makes me wonder if that comment about speed bubbles and redshift is more than just acknowledging a potential violation of the Laws of Physics, and more a very subtle hint about speed bubbles themselves and how they might interact with Wayne's gold. . .

I think it has more to do with the way the two powers interact uniquely. Wax can Push on things with his Steel, and his Iron Feruchemy lets him manipulate his weight. As a result, he can Push himself off objects a normal Coinshot couldn't be decreasing his weight. . . and Push away objects a normal Coinshot couldn't by increasing his weight. Then there's his little "conservation of momentum" conversation in Bands of Mourning. Wax can essentially manipulate his speed while "Coinflying" by manipulating his weight. . . decrease it he speeds up, increase it he slows down. Wayne's powers don't interact as obviously, but he can tap Gold to heal himself quickly, and burn Bendalloy to create a bubble of sped-up time around himself. So he can literally heal wounds in the blink of an eye by combining both abilities. Subjectively for him, he has to tap the same amount of health over the same amount of time to heal a wound, but subjectively from someone outside his bubble, Wayne can make gunshots simply vanish. The combo that fascinates me is Pewter Misting/Gold Ferring. In the RPG (not exactly canon, I know) Pewter's ability to make a person more resilient to damage is represented by increasing their Health trait. . . and this increased health from burning Pewter can be stored with Gold Feruchemy. So a Bloodbrute Twinborn could store more health more quickly than a regular Bloodmaker, or store health without getting as weak and sickly as a regular Bloodmaker, and doesn't need to tap health as often, because they're harder to hurt while burning Pewter. In short, while it's tempting to look at Twinborn as having two separate powers which may or may not synergize well, in reality each combination is its own unique power with two distinct aspects, a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

I want to state, I didn't think Mistborn was boring, it just wasn't holding my interest. "Boring" is "I really need to do something, anything, else other than read this," "not holding my interest" is "okay, this is passing the time, but there's a few other things I can think of I'd rather be doing." Having read through all the thus-far published Mistborn stories (except Secret History), I do love and appreciate what was going on now.

A Feruchemist's favorite ride at the amusement park? The Terris Wheel. The wedding of Lord Waxilium Ladrian and Lady Steris Harms? I heard it went swimmingly. Sazed's favorite kind of music? Two-Part Harmony.

Yes, the ending is perfect.

It took me about the first half of Mistborn to really get sucked in, which I talk about at length in my own thread (which has spoilers). To paraphrase, while the world and characters are quite compelling, you really have to spend some time with them and get to know them before that likeability starts coming through. Once you hit about the halfway point, specifically a scene involving some Inquisitors, you should be all-in.

I was actually wondering about that. There did seem a very noticeable uptick in the quality of his writing. Again, not that he was bad before, but it got much better. I actually had the impression the original Mistborn Trilogy was a great idea that maybe should have been postponed until Mr. Sanderson had the skill to really make it sing. Now I'm very curious to read Elantris, and see how his skill has evolved. It's somewhat fascinating to me to see how an author improves (or declines) over the course of their career.

Oh, yes, I own Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning, just finished Bands the other day and am rereading Shadows. I intended "Wax and Wayne" to refer to their series as a whole, not just Alloy of Law. I should have noted that, after finishing the borrowed copy of Alloy, I went out and bought Mistborn and Alloy of Law/Shadows of Self (Bands hadn't come out on paperback yet), and have since re-read Mistborn and Alloy before heading into Shadows (my job gives me LOTS of downtime to read). I have to say, I don't mind a slow start, I don't mind worldbuilding and laying the groundwork for the future. I'm a struggling writer myself, and I get needing to lay a foundation before building the house, as it were. I can't point to specifically why Mistborn didn't grab me right away, all I can point out are some minor gripes that hampered my initial enjoyment. Which is mostly why I posed this: are my issues just endemic to Mr. Sanderson's writing style, meaning I won't enjoy his books as much as I might enjoy others? Which is fine, not every writer's style works for every reader. Thank you for the replies so far, they are actually very helpful.

So, some of this thread is going to come off a little negative, but please bear with me. I want to explain things. Some spoilers for the Mistborn Trilogy ahead. First, the question: Should I read Brandon Sanderson's non-Mistborn books? The reason I ask is because of my relationship with the Mistborn series, which is where the aforementioned negativity comes in. This is going to be a bit long. A friend of mine, who reads voraciously, loaned me the books (Mistborn trilogy and Alloy of Law) absolutely gushing over them. It's not at all rare for him to talk about whatever book or series he's actively reading, but it's rather rare for him to be so taken with one he'll insist I read it. His main selling point was "it has an amazingly cool magic system." So, I started reading Mistborn, and was really beginning to wonder what he was seeing in it. I thought Mr. Sanderson's "voice" was rather bland and generic, he didn't pull me in with his writing style the way, say, Andy Weir or Simon R. Green did. The world was interesting, but at the same time I felt rather dumped into it without sufficient framework to understand what he was talking about. What the heck is a dueling cane, what's an obligator, are the skaa a visually distinct race, etc. The characters also didn't really jump out at me as being very interesting. Vin, in particular, felt like an odd combination of a Mary Sue and a main character the author thought was less interesting than another main character (Kelsier). Most annoyingly to me, Mr. Sanderson seemed to be working too hard at being mysterious, dropping in oblique references and seemingly pointing them out, as though saying to the reader "Ooh, burning tin? What does that mean? Don't you want to keep reading and find out?" This is the most negative thing I think I'll say, and I honestly do not want it to sound insulting, but from my perspective, it felt a little manipulative. Like Mr. Sanderson didn't have confidence we'd engage with the story and characters on our own, so he had to tease us into turning the page. To be fair, I was not engaged with the story and characters on my own at this point, but I wonder if the effort spent on being mysterious might have been better spent polishing the early parts of the book to engage the reader on their own merits. Now, I wish to stress that I didn't think the book was bad at this point, but it wasn't really holding my interest. I made a conscious decision, which I rarely do reading books, to give Mr. Sanderson a time limit. My middle school language arts teacher had said "Give the author 20 pages. If they don't hook you by then, they aren't going to. If you're not hooked 20 pages in, put the book down and find another one." 20 pages always seemed a bit brief to me (and I was well past that point in Mistborn already), so I decided that Mr. Sanderson had until the explanation of Allomancy. If he lost me there, I'd return the books to my friend with a polite "thanks, but no thanks." Well, he obviously didn't lose me there. The explanation was interesting and self-consistent, and really felt like Mr. Sanderson was a gamer, writing Allomancy with a GM checklist at his elbow. "This would be overpowered, no; this would be crazy broken, no; this would be awesome and should totally be allowed." I mean that as a very sincere compliment. But I still wasn't engaged. I was getting to know the world and the characters better, but I wasn't feeling that drive to continue reading, to find out what happens next, to keep living in this world with these characters. So I set another time limit. If I still wasn't engaged at the end of this book, I had no drive to continue the series. Not long after, it happened. During the scene with Kelsier, Vin, and the Inquisitors at Kredik Shaw, I became hooked. The scene was taut, tense, pulse-pounding, edge-of-my-seat thrilling. Now, I cared about the answers to the questions being raised. How had Sazed rescued Vin? What made Steel Inquisitors so powerful? How do they see, nevermind live, with iron spikes through their eyes? More importantly, I found I now liked the characters. Which isn't to say I'd disliked them before, I just hadn't had any strong feelings about them. Now, I wanted Vin to get better, I wanted Kelsier and his crew to succeed, I wanted Vin and Elend's relationship to grow. I was hooked. I devoured the rest of the Mistborn books, and moved on to Alloy of Law, which I actually found to be a substantial improvement. Compared to the Mistborn Trilogy, I thought the writing in Alloy of Law was crisper, the characters better developed, and the dialogue way funnier. I chuckled a few times reading the trilogy, I laugh out loud often reading Wax and Wayne. And I thought the end of the Mistborn Trilogy was perfect, just an absolutely sublime, tearjerkingly awesome conclusion. Except for one of the final lines, where Sazed/Harmony mentions "Oh, by the way, there's a bunch more Allomantic metals, but I'm not going to tell you what they are yet." Okay, yet another obvious piece of mystery to get me to keep reading, except this series is over. I know there's a sequel, but really, if I've been with you for three books, is there honestly a chance I'm not at least going to give the fourth a shot? So, going back to the question, and the reason I dredge all this up, should I read Mr. Sanderson's other books? Are they more like the original Mistborn Trilogy, or more like Wax and Wayne? Would some of the things that bother me in Mistborn bother me in other works (namely, the constant layering of self-aware mysteries to get me to turn the page)? On the one hand, a part of me says "You've found a series you can read and reread with enjoyment, leave it at that," while another says "Well, you liked this, so give his other stuff a chance," while the first part retorts "Yeah, but he also annoyed us at places, and he might annoy us more elsewhere." So I put this out to people who have read his other works to help settle the debate. Thank you for your time, and again, I sincerely hope my criticisms are taken in the manner in which they are intended, and do not offend.

How about Jaqueline Toboni for Vin? http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6452826/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t11

Loving these. Excellent work, and great resonance with both real Tarot and the world of Mistborn! A+

Shame Marasi wasted her education and joined the constabulary. She could have been alloyer. The most malleable Allomantic metal? Bendalloy. Why do they call him Wax Dawnshot? He has the Bands of Morning. Forgetting where you put your Coppermind? Nope, still not irony. Shame TenSoon kept that wolfhound body. With hands instead of paws, he's a great artist, he really kandra! Did you hear about that army that attacked Elend Venture? It was a total koloss. Of course everyone uses two at a time, they're called "dualing canes."