Twinborn Resonance

[lukaash]

I was thinking about possible twinborn combinations, and I wanted to know if we have heard anything from Sanderson about what the possible resonance are for twinborn. Coppermind does not have much. Does anyone know any more about this topic?

[Treamayne]

8 hours ago, lukaash said:

I was thinking about possible twinborn combinations, and I wanted to know if we have heard anything from Sanderson about what the possible resonance are for twinborn. Coppermind does not have much. Does anyone know any more about this topic?

All we really have so far is a bunch of RAFOs - because Sanderson does not what to make anything Canon until he writes a story using a combination so he is not boxed-in when he gets to those stories. The Mistborn RPG (Alloy of Law Supplement) has a bunch of Twinborn names combos and some Resonances (IIRC), but those are not canon. 

We don't even know for sure what Wax or Wayne's Resonances were - since Wax's intended resonance was backpedaled (not a retcon because it was never in the books specifically as such, but the direction he planned after Alloy of Law turned out not to be feasible, so he changed directions) and Wayne's has not yet been revealed. 

Spoiler

Quote

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)

Quote

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)

Quote

timi1993

What's [Wayne's] effect from his Twinborn abilities?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't think I've released that yet.

Shadows of Self London UK signing (Oct. 19, 2015)

Quote

Questioner

I have a question about Wayne, are his skills of taking another personality, is it his trait, or something magical?

Brandon Sanderson

It is not magical, he’s just really good at it.

Kraków signing (March 21, 2017)

Quote

Yata

There is something that recently was debated by some fans and I hope you may give some clue about the "side effect of interaction between magic" as was pointed in the Twinborn and Surgebinder cases: Are those "perks" stackable? To say if I am a Fullborn like Rashek, wil I have all the possible Twinborn's perks or a specific "Fullborn's perk"? And about the same topic, a Mistborn or Full Feruchemist has his own perk/perks?

Brandon Sanderson

I've worked under the premise that if you hold too many of the powers, like a Mistborn, the result is a loss of these little quirks. The mechanics of it are interesting, but I'll leave you to theorize on that sort of thing.

General Reddit 2016 (Oct. 5, 2016)

Quote

Questioner

Are we ever going to get a list of Wayne's Twinborn names?

Brandon Sanderson

Heh, what do you mean? The--

Questioner

He claims to have all the Twinborns memorized?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, okay.

Questioner

Are we going to have a list of that anywhere sometime?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah I think I let the RPG go wild with naming them, and-- I haven't named them all, I'll be honest with you. I name the ones that I need when I need them.

Shadows of Self release party (Oct. 5, 2015)

 

Hope that helps. 

Also, please see this thread by @Koloss17 dedicated to theorizing Twinborn combinations.  

Edited June 5 by Treamayne

[+hwiles]

7 hours ago, lukaash said:

I was thinking about possible twinborn combinations, and I wanted to know if we have heard anything from Sanderson about what the possible resonance are for twinborn. Coppermind does not have much. Does anyone know any more about this topic?

Due to the complexity and rarity of the subject coming up on-screen, I think it's reasonable to assume at this point that resonance functions will only ever be cannonized when their disclosure is 100% necessary for a character's arc and development.

When theorizing about resonance, my understanding is that it's important to bear in mind how wave functions stack and superimpose upon eachother in real life on basic mathematical principle. For example, consider the nested function:

y=sin(x*cos(x)).

Relative to the function, y=sin(x), you end up with a wavy-wave with an irregular period that periodically spikes dramatically here and there. That's interesting! And also easy enough to understand that a person affected by it could make enough sense of it to leverage (metaphorically!!)

If you nest TOO many functions, then you end up with absolute chaos, a soul that cannot leverage the natural interactions of it's component parts because there are too many of them rattling and shaking together to make rational independent sense of (lines going all over the place, lots of imaginary components, crazy asymptotic spikes, ect.). Such a soul is ridiculously powerful in and of itself though, so this isn't considered a handicap (the lord ruler is implied to have had this going on in his heart...). If you have periodically similar/compatible Overlaid functions playing together in small quantities, then you can produce some very exotic and powerful waves with spikes that are predictable, large, and interesting without being asymptotic, purely imaginary, or hyper-chaotic.

Hopefully this helps and I didn't strain the metaphor too far on this one!

Edit: EXTREMELY unfortunate auto-correct replacements that had to be manually fixed. Oh dear lord. Sorry to anyone who saw.

Edited June 5 by hwiles