Which Ferring ability? pt.1 Physical Metals

This post contains minor spoilers for the Mistborn Trilogy. It wouldn't ruin your experience of the books all that much, but I don't know. If you haven't read the trilogy, then you're probably not interested anyway, so it shouldn't be that much of a problem.

Oh, I suppose talking about the existence of a ferring is also super minor spoilers to Alloy of Law. (A Ferring is a feruchemist who can only use one power (like the mistings of feruchemical powers)). But, it's such a minor spoiler that I gave the spoiler in the spoiler warning. So. Yeah.

Which ferring ability would I most like to have?

Ok, let's start with the Physical metals since they happen to be at the top left of the chart. I do plan on making some form of decision on which ability I would want by the end of the post, but most of the time I'll just be weighing the pros and cons of each metal. I may situate things differently at a later point.

Couple points I wanted to make before I begin: I'm assuming I am the only person with any powers. It would also be in my current life. I'm not talking about the idea of me being in their world. I'm talking about me getting on of the powers in my current life.

Also, since I'm the only person with powers, Hemalurgy has no influence on my decisions. Granted, it wouldn't if other people had powers since I'm not one to murder people.

So, I was typing up the ending to this post and I realized an inherent problem with some of these abilities. They would just be too obvious. If my muscles could grow and I used that power in public, I would quickly become a phenomenon. That's a problem. So, for purposes of everything, I'm going to say that for some reason people don't question things. They don't question when I tap pewter and my muscles grow. They don't question when I'm floating on the winds as I store lots of weight. I don't know why they don't question, but I need to put that rule into place otherwise a lot of the powers would become a whole lot less useful/cool, since I wouldn't be able to use them with nonfamily nearby.

Iron (Weight): This has always been a fun one. We get to see a lot of its cool uses with Wax and such, but Wax is also a Coinshot, so. Regardless, its power is both useful when storing and tapping it, which I think is pretty important to me. However, gaining weight isn't actually all that useful (in our lives) now that I think about it. So I'd mostly be storing it. Which would be a lot of fun, granted. Going around with a constant spring in my step is appealing, plus, if I really felt like it (and I would), I could store a whole lot of weight and drift off in the wind.

But overall, I don't think it would be that useful to me.

Drifting is super cool, though.

Verdict: Middle of the road, I suppose.

Steel (Speed): This one is super fun on paper. Thomas says it's near the top of his list of powers he would want. I'm pretty sure Joseph has similar thoughts. I, on the other hand, wouldn't care for it. The first major problem, is it sucks to store. Having to struggle to take breathes just doesn't sound fun. Moving through molasses, so to speak, sounds like a sad time. I bring up the breathing because that means, even if I'm sitting still, it's still pretty annoying to store. Also, I don't find the upside all that appealing. Sure, it's interesting enough, but I don't know. It's just, like, when would I use it? The only real times I can think of it just moving to different parts in my house/whatever. But I do just fine as I am right now. But, like, the thought of being super quick is pretty cool. However, even then you couldn't tap too much of it at once because you would need some mental speed to be able to keep up with your body.

Verdict: Meh. Cool, but not interested.

Tin (Senses): This one is definitely interesting to me. In many cases, both storing and tapping would be useful. When storing: Sight, can be mitigated by simply wearing glasses; Taste, allows you to eat super unappealing foods (would be helpful on my mission and at other times when I want to eat super healthy, but unappetizing food); Hearing, instant earplugs whenever you need them; Smelling, allows you to easily bear horrible smells; Sense, I don't know about this one. It might be useful for something.

When tapping: Sight, can see something far away (pretty straight forward upside). Taste, sometimes you just really want to taste that meal real well; Hearing, need to hear something far away or something quiet; Smelling, need to identify something? I'm not sure on this one; Sense, feel something more.

Point being: many of these have good storing and tapping abilities, making it super versatile. Having to have a metalmind for each is a slight downside, though. But I'm sure there's a relatively easy way around that.

Verdict: Definitely keeping my eye (no pun intended? Not sure if that really counts as a pun anyway) on this one. Wouldn't be surprised if a few different abilities beat it out for the top, though.

Pewter (Strength): This one has obvious uses. Being weak wouldn't be fun, but it's not really that big of a burden if you're just sitting around reading/watching something/playing a video game. It isn't useful to become weaker, obviously, but it really wouldn't be that bad at most times. Being stronger obviously has its uses when you need strength to do things. Helping people move, doing the order at work ("the order at work" involves moving lots of boxes filled with stuff as you put things in their correct locations) etc.

Verdict: Not bad, but definitely not impressive. There are just so many more useful abilities out there.

I'm sure there's more intricacies to all these things, but I'm going over them enough to make me happy. This was large enough that I've decided to break this into four separate posts (one for each section of the metals (Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Hybrid (I suppose I'll chuck in the God Metals at some point as well))). Also, I've decided to rank them. At the end of the four-ish posts, I'll combine the list into a large 18 metal list of my ranking of which powers I would want. It shouldn't be too much time between the posts, but we'll see.

So, for this first section:

1. Tin      Clearly my favorite out of these four. So useful both storing and tapping. Very versatile. 

2. Pewter        Storing strength isn't bad and being able to be stronger is useful in so many situations in life. Sure, if I didn't have the extra strength I would be fine, but the convenience is nice.

3. Iron           Floating around is super cool. But it's not useful. Plus, two problems with floating around: 1. It's annoying to get back to home/wherever 2. Would it really be that enjoyable after the first few times? You're just at the whims of the winds. You'd have to worry about running into a tree or something. Going around at about 3/4 weight would be nice, though. Regardless, this and Pewter are fairly close and I could definitely see myself being persuaded by someone to rank this above Pewter in the future.

4. Steel         Sorry Tom and Joe. I just don't care for this one. The downside is worse than pewter's by a lot. And being fast just doesn't seem useful. It might be cool for a bit, but it would rarely be applicable to my life. If I'm walking somewhere, that means it's already nearby, so I'm cool with just walking at my normal pace.