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(OB) Most Disliked Stormlight Character


Who is the most disliked?  

368 members have voted

  1. 1. Who is your least favorite?

    • Sadeas
      59
    • Amaram
      65
    • Moash/Vyre
      117
    • Roshone
      33
    • Elhokar
      11
    • Shallan Davar
      57
    • Other
      48
    • Lift
      23
    • Taravangian
      14
    • Adolin
      14


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19 minutes ago, agrabes said:

Yeah, it's really a matter of personal taste. 

I guess I personally see his entire character and over the top antics as part of his humor - annoying to me.  All the things you're saying that could be positive definitely would be with most other characters.  

But it all comes down to is personal taste.  I don't think there's anything wrong with Lopen, I just dislike his character. 

I can definitely agree with this, by no means at all is Lopen a bad guy, just reading him is almost entirely jokes at least as of now, and to some people like myself, we just don't find those jokes to be funny. I did like Lopen at the beginning, his entrance to the bridgecrew and what he brought then, but its just grown a little stale in my opinion. I could easily do without having to read any more Lopen really. 

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9 hours ago, The traveller said:

I think it is more because we see him from kaladin's perspective and Lopen has not got as much pov chapters as lift or wayne.. 

Totally agreed @Obnoxiousspren I had felt that there is some depth to him after all when i read this scene..

I would not be surprised if by SA4 lopen is running around having one-armed soldiers as his potential squires.. I think that there is depth to him which he tries to hide behind all the jokes..

Also, I would like to point out that Kaladin had entrusted Elhokar, King of Alethkar to Lopen, that shows the level of trust Kaladin puts in him.. 

Yeah, he probably has depth. He is a Sanderson character after all. But judging him from what I have seen, my feeling is that he doesn’t work for me. Small doses is okay, but he can really easily become too much. 

And Kaladin trusting him doesn’t really matter to me when judging him as a character. He is loyal, yes, and I appreciate that, but it is a pretty common trait among heroes in fantasy.

@Minimanmax1 is pretty much summarizing not only his view on Lopen, but mine too. Good post.

Edited by Toaster Retribution
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11 minutes ago, Llstml said:

My least favorite character is Gavilar, I don't think he's badly written, I just think he's a jerk, especially after reading the Sa4 prologue.

Yeah he’s a lovely mix of arrogance, hubris, and sexism. Super endearing. One of the only times I’m okay with a character’s death only mattering as a plot device for our other characters’ growth.

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  • 9 months later...

I have to vote for Lift. The worst person to have around in a serious situation (like the end of the world) is one who does not outwardly take the situation seriously, that is the feeling I get from Lift. She may have very useful powers and be a good person but if she doesn't work effectively with the team she is worse than useless, she is actually a liability. I found it incredibly grating when she refused to listen to wyndel on how to take better advantage of her powers.  

Lift just gives me anxiety as a character and I find her poorly written, she is literally a collection of her own tropes and the word "awesome". Her personality and writing are VERY jarring and just don't fit with the mood or theme of stormlight at all.

That being said, because she starts from such an obnoxious spot, and is literally a child, I feel like she has a lot of potential for growth and depending on how she changes, I may grow to like her. 

Edited by Powerful Meower
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4 hours ago, Powerful Meower said:

I have to vote for Lift. The worst person to have around in a serious situation (like the end of the world) is one who does not outwardly take the situation seriously, that is the feeling I get from Lift. She may have very useful powers and be a good person but if she doesn't work effectively with the team she is worse than useless, she is actually a liability. I found it incredibly grating when she refused to listen to wyndel on how to take better advantage of her powers.  

Lift just gives me anxiety as a character and I find her poorly written, she is literally a collection of her own tropes and the word "awesome". Her personality and writing are VERY jarring and just don't fit with the mood or theme of stormlight at all.

That being said, because she starts from such an obnoxious spot, and is literally a child, I feel like she has a lot of potential for growth and depending on how she changes, I may grow to like her. 

What I like about Lift is that while she acts like she doesn't take anything seriously, when it comes to doing things she actually does a lot. Saves Gawx and Stump, is influential in getting Gawx and the Azish to listen to Dalinar, works together with Szeth to steal back the ruby that imprisoned Nergaoul. That said, I totally understand people finding her annoying.

 

The character I hate most is Taravangian, and it seems like I'm a minority here. I think he'll well written, but I find him loathsome. He excuses his crimes with the perfect excuse of "oh, I'm just doing all this to save the world", but meanwhile he's responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people (the hospitals, the Veden civil war and the other massacres), and he has no guarantee that his plan will actually work. 

Taravangian goes on and on about how he's sacrificing his own morality for a greater good, but his doubts of the morality of his actions never stop him or even make him hesitate. And in actual fact the sacrifices are done by other people - innocent people who have done nothing to deserve their fate, and are killed because Taravangian thinks he can profit from their death. This is basically Elhokar's or Amaram's crimes, times a hundred.

Taravangian puts his faith in the Diagram as the means of saving the world, despite two issues: the first, that the diagram (or his interpretation of it) has been wrong - but no, he has to keep his trust in the almighty diagram, and the second issue, that because his intelligence and empathy are proportioned inversely, that on his genius day his mindset was the most un-empathetic, and likely extremely cruel. In other words, the diagram is the product of a genius but malicious brain.

Honestly, I hope Taravangian lives just long enough for all of his plans to fail, and for him to die full of pain and regret.

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19 hours ago, Black_Shoshan said:

What I like about Lift is that while she acts like she doesn't take anything seriously, when it comes to doing things she actually does a lot. Saves Gawx and Stump, is influential in getting Gawx and the Azish to listen to Dalinar, works together with Szeth to steal back the ruby that imprisoned Nergaoul. That said, I totally understand people finding her annoying.

I feel like that isn't nessisaroly her taking things seriously, I more feel like those are just actions inconsistent with her character than prevent her from being a bad person (brandon realized he was writing a character that comes off as apathetic and didn't want that). She is a good person, in the way a 10 year old can be a good person but not take other important parts of their life seriously, that is the main reason I struggle to read through lift. The rest of it is the spamming of the word awesome, really if she would use a less obnoxious word I would probably not hate her so much.

19 hours ago, Black_Shoshan said:

The character I hate most is Taravangian, and it seems like I'm a minority here. I think he'll well written, but I find him loathsome. He excuses his crimes with the perfect excuse of "oh, I'm just doing all this to save the world", but meanwhile he's responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people (the hospitals, the Veden civil war and the other massacres), and he has no guarantee that his plan will actually work. 

Taravangian goes on and on about how he's sacrificing his own morality for a greater good, but his doubts of the morality of his actions never stop him or even make him hesitate. And in actual fact the sacrifices are done by other people - innocent people who have done nothing to deserve their fate, and are killed because Taravangian thinks he can profit from their death. This is basically Elhokar's or Amaram's crimes, times a hundred.

Taravangian puts his faith in the Diagram as the means of saving the world, despite two issues: the first, that the diagram (or his interpretation of it) has been wrong - but no, he has to keep his trust in the almighty diagram, and the second issue, that because his intelligence and empathy are proportioned inversely, that on his genius day his mindset was the most un-empathetic, and likely extremely cruel. In other words, the diagram is the product of a genius but malicious brain.

Honestly, I hope Taravangian lives just long enough for all of his plans to fail, and for him to die full of pain and regret.

I definitely found Taravangian frustrating to read because even when its clear he is misunderstanding what he wrote down he just moves forward with reckless abandon. It is similar to lift in that he has abstracted his goals so far from his day to day experience that it seems he no longer takes what he is doing seriously himself. Because if he did there would be room for advisement and admitting he didn't understand what the plan was anymore. At some point it feels like he is just trying to maintain his glory from when he was deifically brilliant just assuming that he is doing the right thing because he thought this was the right plan when he had the powers of premonition. 

What if his brilliance was the work of odium? And what looked like premonition was actually just Odium showing Taravangian what Odium wanted him to see so that he would go around killing honorable men.

All of that being said I am excited to read about Taravangian, I am still dreading Lift's future chapters. 

 

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23 hours ago, Black_Shoshan said:

The character I hate most is Taravangian, and it seems like I'm a minority here. I think he'll well written, but I find him loathsome. He excuses his crimes with the perfect excuse of "oh, I'm just doing all this to save the world", but meanwhile he's responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people (the hospitals, the Veden civil war and the other massacres), and he has no guarantee that his plan will actually work. 

Taravangian goes on and on about how he's sacrificing his own morality for a greater good, but his doubts of the morality of his actions never stop him or even make him hesitate. And in actual fact the sacrifices are done by other people - innocent people who have done nothing to deserve their fate, and are killed because Taravangian thinks he can profit from their death. This is basically Elhokar's or Amaram's crimes, times a hundred.

Taravangian puts his faith in the Diagram as the means of saving the world, despite two issues: the first, that the diagram (or his interpretation of it) has been wrong - but no, he has to keep his trust in the almighty diagram, and the second issue, that because his intelligence and empathy are proportioned inversely, that on his genius day his mindset was the most un-empathetic, and likely extremely cruel. In other words, the diagram is the product of a genius but malicious brain.

Honestly, I hope Taravangian lives just long enough for all of his plans to fail, and for him to die full of pain and regret.

If your plan requires a bunch of people to be murdered/sacrificed, and you aren't insisting that you be the very first person on the chopping block, you're an evil person.  Maybe an evil person is necessary to save the species from world-ending destruction.  I would contest that point, but for the sake of argument let's assume that Taravangian's plan will work exactly as intended (100% guaranteed) and assume that the Radiants cannot win.  So, Taravangian sacrifices 99% of the world in order to save 1%.  Much better than everyone dying!  But he's asking for a very specific 1%, for the place where he lives and resides, where his family dwells, where he rules.  Even in his victory and rescuing humanity from extinction (on Roshar) he will benefit orders of magnitude more than anyone else because, no matter what he tells himself, he's not a good person.  Maybe he's just the most selfish person the world has ever seen, and he's willing to see the world fall to ash and ruin just to save his granddaughter.  The lengths he goes to with drive and purpose make him evil.

If he had chosen some other city as the bargain, that all of them would live and thrive, then there could be some argument that he's doing this for others.  But he's not; he is purely selfish in deed, if not in thought.

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On 17/09/2020 at 1:53 AM, Black_Shoshan said:

The character I hate most is Taravangian, and it seems like I'm a minority here. I think he'll well written, but I find him loathsome. He excuses his crimes with the perfect excuse of "oh, I'm just doing all this to save the world", but meanwhile he's responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people (the hospitals, the Veden civil war and the other massacres), and he has no guarantee that his plan will actually work. 

Taravangian goes on and on about how he's sacrificing his own morality for a greater good, but his doubts of the morality of his actions never stop him or even make him hesitate. And in actual fact the sacrifices are done by other people - innocent people who have done nothing to deserve their fate, and are killed because Taravangian thinks he can profit from their death. This is basically Elhokar's or Amaram's crimes, times a hundred.

Taravangian puts his faith in the Diagram as the means of saving the world, despite two issues: the first, that the diagram (or his interpretation of it) has been wrong - but no, he has to keep his trust in the almighty diagram, and the second issue, that because his intelligence and empathy are proportioned inversely, that on his genius day his mindset was the most un-empathetic, and likely extremely cruel. In other words, the diagram is the product of a genius but malicious brain.

Honestly, I hope Taravangian lives just long enough for all of his plans to fail, and for him to die full of pain and regret.

Minority we may be, but we are not alone in hating Taravangian. Mr. T is also one of the characters that I hate most.
I also find it strange that Moash gets so much hate when in reality his actions comprises killing two people really and one of them we did not even like till OB! 

Row spoilers :

Spoiler

The count is three now but frankly did anyone really like Roshone!

Whereas Mr. T has quite literally caused mass destruction! And people excuse him for reasons like 

- it is difficult to hate an octogenarian

- he has good intentions though, he thinks he is protecting the world !! 
(well for all we know Odium probably also thinks that he is saving the cosmere at large by sacrificing a few lives or  gods or planets !) 
 
- they believe in the genius MR. T and his diagram to save Roshar. 

 These reasons I find quite..... inadequate to forgive him, personally. He is back stabbing Dalinar all the way through OB and what he is doing in his hospitals is quite frankly totally unacceptable! so what if he sheds tears while doing it, he is still doing it! 

well, 
I like that he is a conflicted character and is written brilliantly but still I believe that Mr. T is not even discussed as a major villain which he should be. 

I had even started a topic where we had discussed why T is not hated and discussed at all. 
 

@kaellok I agree. I also think that more than his belief that radiants can not win or that dalinars alliance will not win, it is his issue with the fact that it is dalinar who will get to be the one who saved the world and not Taravangian. Since wor, we see that he insists that Dalinar needs to be stopped but why ? He has never explained. Why? Because if Dalinar is not stopped, then he will succeed in saving the world and not Taravangian. 
I think like he believes he has sacrificed his sanity ( most of the days he is a blubbering idiot) in order to have the capacity to save the world and he deserves to get the credit for saving it. 
And if he does not get the credit due to him, he would rather see the world destroyed as long as he can save his city and his family and friends. 
Do you have any doubts that then he will harp on about how he saved them. They alone survived thanks to him.

In order to feed his vanity he will see Roshar destroyed. He is definitely not a good person! 
In truth, he is an evil person who likes to project to the world that he is good and compassionate. And I for one, am not fooled. 

Edited by The Traveller
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So I'm re-reading the books in preparation for Book 4, and I'm struck how Amaram is almost exactly the same as Mr T, but smaller-scale; and yet he's hated more than even Sadeas.

Let's play a game called "Who said it?!"  Below are near-exact quotes (incredibly minor changes that do not, in any way, change the meaning of the original, and made only to not make it 100% obvious) from WoK.  One is from Amaram, one from Mr T.

"I can't worry about the lives of a few when thousands of people may be saved by my decision."

"It is better for one man to sin than for a people to be destroyed."

Oh, and remember when Mr T, in the Diagram, counsels his own self against the blood-lettings and murders to get the death rattles?  But of course he's not willing to listen to that part of the Diagram.  (Then again, maybe I'm mis-remembering, as I have not reached that point again in my re-read.)

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So first and foremost, I am not saying Taravangian is a bang up guy that is great. Also I do agree Amaram and Taravangian should be seen in similar regard in my mind. What I would like to point out however is in regards to the quotes you mentioned:

17 hours ago, kaellok said:

"I can't worry about the lives of a few when thousands of people may be saved by my decision."

This one is narcissistic and does not acknowledge or care that what he did was wrong. His decisions make it ok, because in his mind, thousands hinge on his decisions. Grandiose self view 

17 hours ago, kaellok said:

"It is better for one man to sin than for a people to be destroyed."

This one acknowledges what he does is wrong, and does not seek absolution. Only the goal. He will readily accept the consequences of his heinous actions and knows them to be heinous.

 

We both know which quote is to who. I will leave this post with this:

 

Coachdorax

Did you write Amaram as an opposite of Dalinar or was he simply a bad guy meant to spur Kaladin?

Brandon Sanderson

I meant Amaram to be the representation of the corrupt side of the Alethi. Meaning they are all talk and very little heart. Very little of what they say, to the worst of the Alethi, gets to who they really are. They would rather be known as someone honorable than be actually honorable. And this I consider a major problem with their society, and I needed somebody to represent this. Part of it is, to represent a contrast to Kaladin’s ideals. This belief that lighteyes were these paragons of virtue. But I also needed somebody, you may say an opposite to Dalinar. In a way, he is an opposite to Dalinar, but more he just represents Alethi society. And I did want it to be that he wasn’t just all the way corrupt. When he makes his decision in Book One in the flashbacks, he is making a decision. There is a moment where he is considering. By the time you are seeing him in later books, that decision has taken him down a path that leaves him very far from any sort of redemption. But it was a choice. And he wasn’t just corrupt from the get go. But yeah, he represents what I feel would be bad about Alethi society. A kind of honor society that is more about looking honorable than being.

YouTube Livestream 2 (Jan. 20, 2020)
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On 12/2/2017 at 6:18 PM, Matt Snow said:

Tl/dr: I voted for Shallan because in general I don't like her chapters.

I felt the same way I read through the first 2 times, she has grown on me but sometimes she just gets on my nerves. though definitely my least favorite is Amaram, I just found him very annoying and extreme all the time, everything he did seemed blown up in some way and the whole time I just wanted to slap him. moash is a definite runner up for obvious reasons as well as killing elhokar whom I liked a lot, even with his many many flaws.

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I have been wondering if there is correlation between finding Shallan chapters boring and knowledge about the Cosmere. I love Shallans chapters even without cosmere reverences but I think I get even more out of it because I get teh references. I look forward to Shallan chapters because a lot of time there are greater meanings for Roshar and the cosmere as a whole. She is the one who interacts with Hoid the most (OB) and there have been hints of the Ghostbloods having greater consequence.

Maybe I should make a poll and see if I find correlation.

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I just re-read Words of Radiance and I'm starting to reread Oathbringer today in preparation for Rhythm of War... I think I hated Sadeas more in my first read-through, but I've grown to hate Amaram so much more. Sadeas is at least blunt about his wanting to undermine Dalinar at every step. Amaram is just a smug Lighteyes who thinks he can get away with anything and everything. After reading WoR again, Moash is probably up there too though. I also wasn't a big fan of Adolin and his treatment of Kaladin until the middle of WoR when Shallan shows up in the warcamps. I think that Shallan is a perfect foil for Adolin and forces him to experience humility for the first time in his life.

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