Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Brandon Sanderson RAFOlympics at JordanCon 8 (Verbatim)

So for the Old Magic, in this classification system of end-positive, end-neutral, and end-negative, where would that fall under?

So, almost every magic in the Cosmere is end-positive, almost every magic is relying upon an external source of Investiture to power it. So that is mostly more relevant to Scadrial than anywhere else, because that concept is how I’m dealing with things like the laws of thermodynamics, and even what they call end-neutral is relying a little bit on the power of Investiture to facilitate. So even an end-neutral magic system as they define it on Scadrial is not actually end-neutral. What you put in you get out, but the power is facilitating that transfer. So that phrasing is kind of a....uh...Take that as a science on Scadrial that does not extrapolate well, and may not even be 100% accurate. [...] I look at it as, is there an Investiture externally powering the magic, and if you look at Allomancy, yes it is. You are drawing that power out. Feruchemy, you are putting Investiture in from your own body, it’s your energy transferring to Investiture, which is then stored, which you are then drawing out, and things like that. But that changing forms is facilitated by the magic. Whereas when you’re stealing stuff with - You could look for instance at the magic on Nalthis, you could look at that one as being, as kind of working as end-negative, meaning “I am taking it away from someone else”, or end-positive depending on if you’re the one receiving it or not. So again, it’s a phrasing that could be useful as a tool but doesn’t scale well to the other magics.

old magic, investiture, Brandon on magic, end-neutral, end-positive, end-negative,