poll [OB] Who is your least favorite Antagonist?

[Lord Mistborn Bondbreaker]

 Who is your least favorite Antagonist?

Edited January 8, 2018 by Herald Of Justice

[Toaster Retribution]

Sigh. Poor Amaram :-(

I voted for Straff. You can't be more despicable, really, unless you are written by GRRM.

Edited January 7, 2018 by Toaster Retribution

[Kaleid]

Why is Ialai not on there? I liked her less than Sadeas.

 

That said, I'm selecting Sadeas. I liked him and his wife VERY little. Goddamn pair of traitors.

[Necessary Eagle]

In-world or meta?

[Sira]

57 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

Sigh. Poor Amaram :-(

I voted for Straff. You can't be more despicable, really, unless you are written by GRRM.

I have to agree with you. You can't be more despicable than Straff.

I know many people hate Moash but I just can't bring myself to hate him more than the other characters listed here. I still see him as part of Bridge 4...

[TequilaJack]

1. Moash. The worst kind of traitor, trying to kill the man who saved him from slavery and death. Loathsome.

2. Taravangian - Agree to throw the entire world to die just so he can save his own kingdom. Despicable.

 

[Aleksiel]

I'm not sure why you added two from MB, they feel out of place.

Least favorite as in least interesting? If so, then Tanalan, I didn't care about him at all. Amaram had the least interesting motivation and became a plot devise mutant, so overall boring. Nalan made an incredibly dumb choice after learning something he has no excuse not knowing already, his plot twist felt more like a plot hole. May be Nale and Amaram are a tie for me... Although Nale was overall more interesting, but the ending of OB killed my previous enjoyment of his character. I hate Moash, such a petty little cremling, but well-written overall, so it's a good and intended kind of hate. It's too soon to say anything about Ishar, he hasn't even made an appearance yet.  

[Toaster Retribution]

By the way, who is Lady Lewishi? Nales unknown daughter?

[maxal]

Amaram turned out to be pretty bland and one-dimensional. His turn to Odium was a great miss for me within OB. I did not feel his motivations were well-explained and they seemed overall weak. Had we seen more scenes of Amaram trying to interact with the Kholins, trying to make it work, only to constantly be rebuffed. Had we seen Adolin push more on Amaram's buttons by keeping on publicly blaming him for Kaladin. Had we read how his guilt towards having killed Kaladin's squad turned to scorn, then to misplaced hate towards Kaladin as "he made him". Had we seen this progression, then Amaram could have been a very good villain, especially if he were to survive the Thaylen battle to keep on causing ruckus within future books. If the Sadeas's princedom betrayal turned out to fracture Alethkar with Ruthar siding with them, then yeah, Amaram would have worked better.

I however dislike Moash the most because I just hate reading his viewpoints. I also don't get why we even need him within the story: it seems to me we could have done without him. I just wish he had been killed early on by the Fused so we'd have closure on his character without needing to read his chapters.

[Toaster Retribution]

40 minutes ago, maxal said:

Amaram turned out to be pretty bland and one-dimensional. His turn to Odium was a great miss for me within OB. I did not feel his motivations were well-explained and they seemed overall weak. Had we seen more scenes of Amaram trying to interact with the Kholins, trying to make it work, only to constantly be rebuffed. Had we seen Adolin push more on Amaram's buttons by keeping on publicly blaming him for Kaladin. Had we read how his guilt towards having killed Kaladin's squad turned to scorn, then to misplaced hate towards Kaladin as "he made him". Had we seen this progression, then Amaram could have been a very good villain, especially if he were to survive the Thaylen battle to keep on causing ruckus within future books. If the Sadeas's princedom betrayal turned out to fracture Alethkar with Ruthar siding with them, then yeah, Amaram would have worked better.

I heavily disagree about Amaram being bland and one-dimensional. The problem is that the complexity is hinted at, but never fully explored. 

On the other hand, I totally agree about the rest. If I got to make one change to Oathbringer, I would add in a bunch of Amaram POV-scenes, where we see his guilt, where we see him break down, and where we can gain some sympathy for him. It would have worked great, and made his fight with Kaladin much more epic, because we would be a lot more invested in his character. It would also have worked as a nice mirror too Dalinars character: the major difference between Dalinar and Amaram is that Dalinar could rise above his guilt, which Amaram failed to do. In the end, I feel like the concept and pieces that exist for Amaram is great, but we could have had so much more. I might be the only one on the Shard to say this, but I'd rather gotten an Amaram POV-section than the Bridge 4 one (which was nice, but not as necessary).

[maxal]

2 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

I heavily disagree about Amaram being bland and one-dimensional. The problem is that the complexity is hinted at, but never fully explored. 

This is exactly it. I do agree the complexity is hinted at, but since it was never explored properly, it made the character appear too simplistic, bland and one-dimensional. There are two types of characters I will consider bland and one-dimensional: characters really without any depth nor substance and characters with hinted potential and depth, but left unexplored. In both cases, I find we are left with a character which misses the mark. If in the first case, we can just toss the character away as a meaningless minor bland character, in the second case we are left thinking so much more could have been added to make this specific narrative more powerful.

Amaram is definitely a character I felt was done a disservice into the narrative. He has interesting potential as a tormented villain. I can't say he lived up to it.

2 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

On the other hand, I totally agree about the rest. If I got to make one change to Oathbringer, I would add in a bunch of Amaram POV-scenes, where we see his guilt, where we see him break down, and where we can gain some sympathy for him. It would have worked great, and made his fight with Kaladin much more epic, because we would be a lot more invested in his character. It would also have worked as a nice mirror too Dalinars character: the major difference between Dalinar and Amaram is that Dalinar could rise above his guilt, which Amaram failed to do. In the end, I feel like the concept and pieces that exist for Amaram is great, but we could have had so much more. I might be the only one on the Shard to say this, but I'd rather gotten an Amaram POV-section than the Bridge 4 one (which was nice, but not as necessary).

Totally agree with your ideas and your analogy. It would have also spiced up Dalinar's story arc which I felt was a tad boring and repetitive at times.

There however are more changes I would make to several narratives to make them more effective and emotionally powerful. On average, I feel OB missed the mark with many of those: character development often done in an after-thought and for characters not being one of the main three, it is so sparse, it doesn't even count as character development.

Amaram is one example of a "good idea of a character", someone with a lot of "hinted at interesting depths", but badly explored, apparently falling victim to the book structure where nobody but the top three is really allowed introspective, deepened story arcs. A shame. There were so many story arcs I felt were more interesting to focus on than the ones we got... 

Edited January 7, 2018 by maxal

[Devout Pathian]

When going to this poll, I assumed I would vote for Taravangian or Sadeas.  However, once I saw Straff on here I had to vote for him.  I hate him so much, there is nothing about him I like.  At least Sadeas is sometimes funny and Wit makes fun of him.  Straff there is nothing good about him.  When I finished the Final Empire, I mentioned to my mom how much I hated him.  My mom was then like you’ll hate him more just read book 2.  I didn’t think it would be possible to dislike him even more, but my mom proved right.

As far as Moash goes, I have conflicting feelings about him.  He is a buttface and needs to be smacked.  He makes me angry at times, but then I reread book one and found I loved him again.  I like Moash.  I just wish he would turn around and become good again.

[Calderis]

I voted for Moash, because as much as there are characters I hate more, your supposed to hate them. They're filling the role they're meant to. 

I was torn between Moash and Amaram, but went for Moash because his storyline felt so... Abrupt. I hate how it was like a switch flipped.

There was no buildup. He just went from feeling guilty about Kaladin and the things he did, to "welp, humans are bad." 

Amaram had much the same issue, but I expected more from Moash as we got actual PoVs. 

[Nymeros]

Amaram.....so boring.

[Kered]

I voted for Moash. His actions and the extremes he went to in OB didn't feel justified. 

Amaram is a close second for me, for already stated reasons. I'm sure it would of been better if we would have gotten a little more info or scenes with Amaram conversing with Odium, but I think if Brandon did do that it would have messed up the pacing. So without that extra look behind the scenes at the process of Amaram's corruption, it just looks rushed. 

[Toaster Retribution]

Also, which Tanalan is in the poll? There were two of them in the book.

[maxal]

6 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

Also, which Tanalan is in the poll? There were two of them in the book.

It has to be Tanalan Jr. Tanalan the father did nothing reprehensible: he only tried to defend himself against an invading army with the means he had. Tanalan Jr launched a rebellion against the man who spared him. It can however be argued he was justified in not wanting to accept Gavilar's rule.

I have a hard time picturing him as an antagonist to hate as I consider the antagonist, within the Rift story arc, was not Tanalan, but Dalinar.

[Isilel]

Amaram. Such a waste of potential, just to have a comic-book fight for Kaladin. I keep thinking about Sanderson's original plan for WoR, where Szeth and Amaram were supposed to really and permanently die in their respective near-death experiences and Sadeas lived. I was ecstatic at Torol's death, but looking back, it would have been interesting to see Dalinar's perception and interaction with him change, as he regained his memories. I have said elsewhere that IMHO, Dalinar's misguided attempts to conciliate and ally with Sadeas were in great part rooted in his missing memories. If he had remembered what Thrill addiction felt like and what awful people they all used to be in the "good old days", he would have immediately seen what his "old friend" was up to. In a way, Dalinar probably legitimately came across as somewhat addled to Sadeas .

Moash, we shall see. Personally, I found his PoV interesting, though possibly over-long, because we saw how the Fused re-model Alethkar at some depth. And his flip was well enough motivated, I thought. I very much hope that he won't get a build-up into some kind of a big bad, though, it wouldn't feel believable.

[Devout Pathian]

10 minutes ago, maxal said:

It has to be Tanalan Jr. Tanalan the father did nothing reprehensible: he only tried to defend himself against an invading army with the means he had. Tanalan Jr launched a rebellion against the man who spared him. It can however be argued he was justified in not wanting to accept Gavilar's rule.

I have a hard time picturing him as an antagonist to hate as I consider the antagonist, within the Rift story arc, was not Tanalan, but Dalinar.

I agree, Tanalan wasn’t a great person, but he was trying to fight what he saw was an opressive tyrant. Dalinar was the villian in that part, but honestly I think out of the three main characters Dalinar is my favorite, depsite that he was a horrible monster when he was younger. 

[Iarwainiel I]

6 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

By the way, who is Lady Lewishi? Nales unknown daughter?

Pretty sure the OP meant Lady Leshwi, the Fused that Moash killed at one point and who later talks with him

[WhiteLeeopard]

Is this the antagonist you hate the most? Or the antagonist you least like to read?

Voted Moash in any case, he started down that path the moment he betrayed Kaladin. He wins most hated spot hands down. And his chapters were also the most boring part to read, will likely skip them on the rereads.

[Varenus]

Most hated person: Straff all the way, he has no redeeming qualities at all. (Sadeas was bad, but Straff is next level)

Most hated traitor: Nale, he didn't deserve that hug that Lift gave him.

If Odium dies in the first five books, then he is my least favorite dark god. Otherwise he is my favorite dark god. He needs to prove he was worth the hype.

Favorite antagonist (no one asked for this, but i'm doing it anyway): tie between Mraize and Miles.

Edit: Most evil spren: Ulim (he is kind of funny though)

Edited January 8, 2018 by Varenus

[Song]

I went with Taravagian. I know he is probably most people's favourite. But his Utilitarian attitude really bugs me. Life doesn't work like that. In no world should you hang the 4 just in case. 

And that he appeared kind and simple in WoK and then turned out to be Szeth's cold master and a murderer of his own patients? I still haven't forgiven him, even if we understand his motivations better in later books.

I know there are theories that he is really on the good-side or a pawn for Cultivation, and you also could say he is a victim of his curse/boon but the fact that he values his intelligents over his compassion shows his priorities. And his compassion is really just a 'I feel bad', not a willingness to act with compassion. 

But I do love reading his arc. 

And I agree with previous people, I would have enjoyed a bit more of Amarans POV

[Devout Pathian]

11 hours ago, Song said:

I went with Taravagian. I know he is probably most people's favourite. But his Utilitarian attitude really bugs me. Life doesn't work like that. In no world should you hang the 4 just in case. 

And that he appeared kind and simple in WoK and then turned out to be Szeth's cold master and a murderer of his own patients? I still haven't forgiven him, even if we understand his motivations better in later books.

I know there are theories that he is really on the good-side or a pawn for Cultivation, and you also could say he is a victim of his curse/boon but the fact that he values his intelligents over his compassion shows his priorities. And his compassion is really just a 'I feel bad', not a willingness to act with compassion. 

But I do love reading his arc. 

I agree.  I know with Taravagian’s curse and boon that when he is “smart” he isn’t compassionate, so I understand that and forgive him for it.  However, when he is “dumb” and more compassionate he decideds to trust and follow his “smart” self, so no matter what he feels he is choosing not to be compassionate.  He is evil and yes I know he is trying to save his city from Odium, but at what cost?  

[Blazenella]

Moash

Nuff said