Lil Wayne I Am Not Human Being

[Dionisio Sechser]

SoWayne's ability to understand people has been bothering me all book. The focus was mostly on the accents before, and that's something I could accept as an uncanny skill, but Shadows of Self made it look much bigger. Wayne doesn't simply adopt people's mannerisms, he starts thinking like them. Not in the a conman might, deciding what the other person would think like, but actually thinking the appropriate thoughts. I find this suspicious.

You know it makes me think of? Spiritual identity or connection. Feruchemical aluminum or duralumin. How, I don't know. The only thing that makes sense to me is a spike - if it's a small aluminum spike Wax wouldn't have been able to randomly detect it, so it wouldn't come up in the text.

it could be a spike, but i doubt it is because there is no hint of it whatsoever. i mean, wax's earring being a spike was hinted in several ways. vin's earring became fairly obvious once you were halfway through hero of ages. but there is no mention whatsoever that wayne may be spiked. i don't think that's the kind of thing that would set up a big reveal - I mean, there was no indication of lassie being a kandra, but that was because readers should absolutely not figure it out in advance; i can't see something similar done for a spike on wayne.

I was struck by how well Wayne and MeLaan seemed to get along. In particular, she seemed to understand his ideas about imitation, and the importance of accents and small things. And we note that the kandra have superhuman (more correctly, inhuman) healing ability. It's a bit harder to connect the actual temporal ability, but kandra are immortal and can manipulate their bodies at very high speed.

This is a very tenous connection, I know, but it seems that the Perk that Twinborn get would have to be subconscious or nearly so. Wayne's mastery of this art at an almost subconscious level seems very similar to the Radiant Perks.

I have to think that there's something more going on than Wayne being good at imitation. In pretty much all of BS's books whenever someone has a strange psychological quirk or an unusual ability (Vin's obsession with the Well, Kaladin's response to shardblades, Shallan's skill at drawing) there's something larger going on. Wayne's inability to touch a gun or bullet has something to do with this too.

I thought about Wayne maybe getting his imitation skill as a Twinborn perk, but it just doesn't make sense to me. It seems so completely unrelated. If Wax's bullet deflection bubble is his Twinborn perk (as I theorized somewhere else, but should probably put in a separate thread), it could kind of work - both of his Metallic abilities deal with core principles of Newtonian motion, so I can see his perk being in the same general area. Wayne, though, he's got Feruchemical healing and Allomantic time acceleration. Totally different concepts. And not only are they different, but his proposed perk - imitation - is a whole different animal in itself. I can't buy into the argument that because kandra are good at healing and they are good at imitation, the same would apply to other people. Plus, if anything, Miles should've been an amazing imitator, and there's nothing to suggest that; on the contrary, he may have been imitating Suit subconsciously.

However, if we think about the Perks in the Knights Radiant, there's no reason some combination of Gravitation and Division should have anything to do with supernatural sense of guilt, or that Illumination and Transformation have to do with Memory. Granted, these Perks fit very well into the framework of the Knights, but they're otherwise far from obvious.

Basically, I'm not so sure that the Perk from a combination of powers has anything to do with the actual nature of the powers themselves. And while I like the idea that Wax's steel bubble is his Perk, he could also just be a steel savant of great skill.

The considerable abilities of the Skybreakers for making such amounted to an almost divine skill, for which no specific Surge or spren grants capacity, but however the order came to such an aptitude, the fact of it was real and acknowledged even by their rivals.

In pretty much all of BS's books whenever someone has a strange psychological quirk or an unusual ability (Vin's obsession with the Well, Kaladin's response to shardblades, Shallan's skill at drawing) there's something larger going on.

even in sanderson's books, most times people have strange quirks or unusual abilities, they are just part of them, what makes them people instead of just characters in a story. Otherwise, hiding secrets in those quirks would be nowhere near as effective.

It's not Wayne's skill that made me suspicious, it's what happens inside his head. In a small way he stops being Wayne and becomes whoever he is impersonating. There is a time in The Alloy of Law when he is pretending to be an old lady, and - while in his viewpoint - we get to read about some kids nearby remind him - her - of her own grandchildren. That's not something people do when they pull a con.

I didn't take that as being him literally believing those thoughts. I just thought that it was part of his act--to actually think things about the character's motivations to himself so as to really sell the role. But you might be right about something more going on there.

And it's not supernatural; Wayne puts a lot of work into this. In AoL, it's mentioned that he used to take trips to Elendel to learn new accents, even when he was living in the roughs. And his conversation with MeLaan demonstrates his knowledge of grammar and accent. He is the one who knows what a perfect is, after all.

I thought about Wayne maybe getting his imitation skill as a Twinborn perk, but it just doesn't make sense to me. It seems so completely unrelated. If Wax's bullet deflection bubble is his Twinborn perk (as I theorized somewhere else, but should probably put in a separate thread)

Argent, could you link this post? My assumption was that Wax's steel bubble was a result of being a steel savant, and his Twinborn perk was the conservation of momentum we saw during the climactic chase scene.

Regardless, I agree that Wayne's immitation abilities don't seem related to his Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities. I am far more interested in the possibility of interbreeding. If there are human-koloss, why not human-kandra?

I believe the reason that there are Human/Koloss is because Koloss were originally Human to begin with. Kandra start out as a blob of Jello. Although, Bleeder does mention that she is aware of Human beings cells. Perhaps she could imitate a human well enough to fool the 'real' human half of the reproductive system to achieve conception. On the other hand that might just create a normal human in that case.

I've always felt like his acting ability could be explained through the feruchemical use of aluminum, which he now has access to copious amounts of. He's got a thing for hats, too, which are somewhat commonly lined with aluminum to prevent being affected by emotional allomancy. I mean, he could put an aluminum bullet casing inside of any hat and fill it with an identity.

And it's not just identity that Wayne is so proficient with. At the end of AoL, Wax internally remarks how well Wayne establishes connection with the constables (Duralumin). Wayne's always eating in SoS, potentially storing calories (bendalloy, which he rarely goes without). He falls asleep at the drop of a hat (badumtish), potentially storing wakefulness (Bronze). He "can't smell worth a heap of beans" (SoS, page 45 Kindle Edition), so he might be constantly storing smell, or other senses (tin). And he's constantly talking about his lucky hat, which I think is lined with Chromium. EDIT: He also says he's usually "only suicidal in the morning". This could be because he stores determination (Electrum).

Lil Wayne is not back. Not yet. As of this writing, he's due to be released from the Eric M. Taylor Center at Rikers Island on November 4. But even when he switches from inmate #02616544L to Dwayne Carter, free man, will he return as the world beater who stunned us with mixtapes like Dedication 2 and albums like Tha Carter III or will he continue to explore (um) riskier sonic territory la Rebirth? And, considering his penchant toward exuberant rhymes and a lifestyle blissfully unaware of the word "no," will we ever see the same Wayne that stomped straight into the camera rapping "I'd rather be pushin' flowers than to be in the pen sharin' showers," in the "A Milli" video? On July 22, 2007, just hours before he would be caught with the .40 caliber pistol that would eventually land him in jail, I saw Wayne end a triumphant NYC show at the famed, fancy Beacon Theater by blaring Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" through the speakers. That night he was funny and dangerous and unpredictable. So: Even when Wayne ends his eight months of forced containment, will that Wayne really be back?

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