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Mistborn: The Final Eyebrow

An analysis of Allomancer social dynamics that will have you raising your brows.

Hands-On Tutorials

TLDR: Enjoy some interactive visualizations summarizing eyebrow interaction data in Mistborn.

If you’ve found yourself raising your eyebrows at the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, you are not alone. Yes, Mistborn is a fun fantasy read: the first era features a lovable bunch of thieves who navigate social disparity, political intrigue, and revolution amidst the steely rule of an oppressive Empire. And while Mistborn’s magic system of Allomancy – the ability to wield cleverly versatile powers from ingesting small shavings of various metals – is perhaps the coolest magic system I’ve ever read, there’s a certain feature of the story that really rises above the rest: eyebrows.

Yes, eyebrows. The number of times the characters of this series "raise an eyebrow" at each other is astounding. Perhaps it was the intonation of the audiobook narrator that made the phrase jump out so distinctly, but it became such a joke with my partner as we were listening that whenever a character "raised an eyebrow," we’d immediately turn to each other with our wildest eyebrow-contorting expression.

But then… I got curious.

How many times did Kelsier "raise an eyebrow"? Was there a pattern to it? Did he raise his eyebrows equally at all his crewmates or did he find certain crewmates particularly perplexing? As an aspiring data scientist… I decided to dig in a bit further.

Below is a pilot analysis of the social dynamics present in the first book of the Mistborn series, The Final Empire, as conveyed through the raising of eyebrows. Books 2 and 3 will be covered in a future post. This article contains spoilers for The Final Empire, so if you haven’t read it __ yet and want to, stop here and save this for later. But if you’re caught up and intrigued, read on for data and interpretation covering three main analyses:

  1. Which characters raised their eyebrows most often? Which characters were the most frequent recipients of eyebrow raises?
  2. Is there a temporal significance to characters’ eyebrow raising behaviors?
  3. What can we infer about the social dynamics between characters based on the frequency and directionality of their eyebrow exchanges?

Eyebrow data collection

Just to provide a brief summary for how the data were collected:

  • We borrowed an eBook copy of The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages.
  • We ‘control-F’ed for instances of the word "eyebrow."
  • We read the passage surrounding the eyebrow interaction to ensure it was indeed a "raising" or "cocking" or "lifting" of said eyebrow – basically we counted any sort of elevation.
  • ** Notably, the word "eyebrow" only occurred twice in the entire series without an associated interaction between characters: in book 3, The Hero of Ages, Marsh raises his eyebrows upon entering an empty room, and Slowswift is described as having "bushy eyebrows." These were not included in the data.
  • Finally, we recorded: 1) the character raising the eyebrow ("source"), 2) the character at whom the eyebrow was raised ("target"), and 3) the page number of the interaction.

In total, we recorded 53 eyebrow interactions in The Final Empire, 48 in The Well of Ascension, and 42 in The Hero of Ages.

For whom the brows raise

My first analysis was to simply count the total number of eyebrow source ("raiser") and target ("raisee") instances for each character (Figure 1).

Unsurprisingly, Kelsier is far and away the most frequent eyebrow source, doling out 19 distinct raises. This makes sense: his position as crew leader combined with his roguish charisma naturally lends itself to witty banter and friendly condescension towards his oddball crew. Additionally, if "raising an eyebrow" is one of Sanderson’s author quirks, Kelsier’s role as one of the two primary point-of-view (POV) characters simply gives him more page time during which to waggle those brows.

The next most frequent eyebrow source is Kelsier’s apprentice and co-primary-POV character, Vin, clocking in with 8 raises. Again, Vin gets a ton of page time so her second place "raiser" status is not too surprising, though sarcastic Soother Breeze is not far behind her with 6. But what really stands out about Vin is her first place eyebrow target status: Vin is the recipient of a whopping 22 eyebrow raises! Quiet and strange, the crew don’t always know what to make of Vin and often regard her with concern or skepticism. However, this veritable mountain of eyebrow targeting can’t be purely explained by page time as Kelsier receives only 6 raises and says plenty of ridiculous things.

So far, these results aren’t all that exciting: the two POV characters are involved the bulk of the eyebrow interactions, with the main support cast – Breeze, Ham, Dockson, Sazed, and Elend – racking up a handful each. Several minor characters fire off a brow or two in passing.

Next, I investigated the temporal dynamics of eyebrow interactions to see if characters’ brow behaviors changed throughout the story.

Temporal arcs of eyebrow snark

To get a better sense of the distribution of eyebrow raises across the series, for each character, I plotted each of their eyebrow interactions – both as a source or a target – over time. The x-axis is the page number (time) and y-axis includes the main characters involved in at least 3 interactions (Figure 2).

From this view, we can still clearly see that Kelsier and Vin are involved in the most eyebrow interactions as they have the most dots, but there is an intriguing difference in when these interactions are occurring! Kelsier has a relatively regular pattern of eyebrow raises throughout the beginning of the story, interspersed with a sprinkling of eyebrows targeted at him. But at about ⅔ of the way through the book, he suddenly stops raising his brows at others… It’s not his death – that happens towards the very end of the book and in the figure we can see that he is still alive and targetable (orange dots) in the final few hundred pages. I believe this sudden brow ceasefire approximately coincides with a major setback to his plans (the destruction of Yeden’s hidden forces). Though aware that his plan to overthrow the Lord Ruler is extremely risky and the odds of success are highly improbable, perhaps Kelsier realizes that the time for playful banter has come to an end and he needs to get serious. Sure, he still spiels the crew about the importance of smiling and keeping a positive outlook, but his highly animated eyebrows are no longer part of his leadership style as he adjusts his plan for the final act…

Conversely, Vin spends the entire first half of the book as a target of eyebrow raises. As discussed earlier, her skittish disposition is something that takes a while for the others to get used to and she remains wary as she tries to find her place among this goofy crew.

But then! Something shifts: right at the halfway point through the story, Vin suddenly becomes an eyebrow raiser 5 times in quick succession! While she still receives a handful of raises after her sudden cluster as an eyebrow source, this moment seems to have opened her up and she becomes comfortable raising her eyebrows in the future…

So what happened? What triggered this shift? To dig further into this question, I reformatted the figure design to additionally visualize the connection between the source and target of each eyebrow encounter (Figure 3). This figure is a bit wild, and I apologize in advance for the visual complexity! While I enjoy the simplicity of Figure 2, I designed this alternate version to allow for investigation of the specific eyebrow interchanges __ over time. I think the figure is slightly more effective as an interactive visualization, available here.

Just to orient you, it’s set up the same way as Figure 2: the x-axis is page number (time) and the y-axis has a section for each character to mark their eyebrow exchanges. Now instead of blue and orange, a point is a diamond if the character was the eyebrow source and a circle if the character was the eyebrow target. Vertical lines now directly connect the source and target of each interaction, with the color tied to the source character.

Getting back to the analysis of Vin’s sudden venture into the league of eyebrow raisers, let’s focus on her pattern of interactions, emphasized in bold below:

Sliding along Vin’s track in the middle of the plot, we still see the open circles marking her as the target of many eyebrow raises – they primarily come from Kelsier but Ham, Breeze, Marsh, and Sazed all join in. But Vin’s eyebrow source cluster mentioned above is entirely directed at Elend! Elend sneaks in a raise at Vin a few pages earlier upon their initial encounter at the ball at Keep Venture, but by Vin’s second and third balls, she has built up the nerve to raise her eyebrows at a prominent nobleman.

This marks a key moment in Vin’s transformation: we meet her as a street urchin – skirting in the shadows, trying to avoid scrutiny – and watch her become a real player in the game of courtly intrigue and grow into a self-confident crew member as she comes into her power as a Mistborn. Brow raises are clearly an important marker of this arc: after flexing her eyebrow muscles openly and often at Elend, she then proceeds to fire shots at her closest mentors, Sazed and Kelsier. In fact, Kelsier’s final eyebrow interaction of the series is as a recipient from Vin. Oh, how the Apprentice indeed becomes the Master…

One Brow to raise them all, and in the Deepness bind them

In my final analysis, I was curious about the overall social network of characters as defined by their eyebrow exchanges. Here I dropped the time component and summarized the data in a directed graph (Figure 4).

Again, this network shows that Vin and Kelsier are the hubs of eyebrow activity, but there is a clear distinction between raises from Kelsier to Vin (12) versus from Vin to Kelsier (1). This directionality feels important to capture as it emphasizes the Master of Snark vs Perplexing Apprentice power dynamic.

We can also see more crew dynamics: Breeze and Ham create a tightly connected component with Kelsier and Vin. Perhaps we can perceive Breeze’s heightened exasperation with Ham’s philosophizing given the thicker flow of brow raises from Breeze’s node to Ham’s. Additionally, Vin and Kelsier exchange eyebrows at about equal rates with Sazed while stalwart Dockson only has outgoing eyebrows: towards Kelsier and an unnamed soldier. Ever logical, no one finds cause to raise an eyebrow at Dox.

Notably, Vin is the only crew member to exchange eyebrows with the members of the nobility. She is also a bit of a mystery to the nobles and earns both friendly and not-so-friendly raises from Elend and Shan. But the thickest arrow again marks that solid outflow of brow-raises towards Elend, demonstrating her growing confidence. While her noblewoman improvisation is a bit rough around the edges, she eventually embraces her role and evolves from political pawn to political player.

(An interactive version of the network is available below. While interactivity is not essential to understanding the network, I’m learning/practicing D3 and thought it was fun to drag the character bubbles around.)

Low brows and no brows

While "raising an eyebrow" is a mannerism shared by many characters in the Mistborn universe, there are a few notable exceptions. Among the crew, Clubs is involved in zero eyebrow exchanges. The grizzled general isn’t outwardly phased by any of the crew’s shenanigans, nor does he say anything particularly perplexing. Among the villainy, two Obligators raise several brows, but we get none from the Lord Ruler or any Steel Inquisitors (do they even have eyebrows?). When these baddies arrive on scene, intense action swiftly follows, leaving no extra time for brow-based banter.

Eyebrows rise, Empires fall

(🎵 We have seen the Crew do it all!🎵 __ )

By their brows combined, this goofy crew pulled off the impossible. While their metallic mastery takes center stage as they Steel Push, Iron Pull, and Pewter… Pummel their way to a shattering victory over the Lord Ruler, the brows in the background really knit them all together. Overall, the exchange of eyebrows seems to play an important role in shaping social dynamics between characters, as well as underscore key moments of character transformation as they reckon with their changing worlds.

And that’s The Final Eyebrow of The Final Empire! It’s always wonderful when series nail character development trajectories across books, and thus examining changes in characters’ eyebrow behaviors between this book and the rest of the series may reveal some interesting patterns. Especially with the kingpin brow-raiser, Kelsier, sidelined for the remainder of the series, who’s brows will rise to the occasion?


Keep an eye out for a follow up analysis delving further into the eyebrow antics in The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, books 2 and 3 of the Mistborn series. Just for fun:

A big thanks to Matt Johnson, Claire Johnson, and Kylie Fournier for help with data collection/visualization and early feedback!


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