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Elend- Pros and cons


Ark1002

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So, for me, I had an interesting experience with Elend. I loved his character in book one. Went down in enjoyment some in 2, but still liked him. Then he got lerasium. The moment he got more powerful than Vin, I hated him. Every time it showed up, I wanted to throw the book across the room. And then Vin burned the mists a second time, and I liked him again. By the end, I loved him. So, yeah, Love, like, hate, like, love. Strange.

I'm interested in seeing other peoples experiences with Elend.

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I actually felt the opposite. I didn't really like him in book one, i started to like him in book two and when Tindwyl took over and he started acting like a king i actually loved him!

I gues it's just based in the kind of character you like, i like regal, powerful characters who inspire respect in other people (See Dalinar, Kaladin and Jasnah).

 

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Yeah, I was like Xavier.

In book one he just seemed so much like an armchair philosopher who thinks he can change the world, and I didn’t really like him that much.

Then, when he started being trained and actually becoming a king I really liked it. How he was beginning to take responsibility and sort out the city.

I was really expecting him to die at the end of WoA.

At the end where it turned out he was a Mistborn felt too much like “he’s a mistborn now too!” I always felt like one of Elend’s greatest strengths was the fact he didn’t have any powers. He was like Dox, both were extremely capable without powers, and I think having Elend and Dox were a great reminder that non-powered people were awesome too (especially Elend, who was a king).

The sudden fact that he became not only a mistborn, but a super Lerasium Mistborn seemed too abrupt.

But in HoA, seeing that first scene made me like him again, so in the end I really liked him as a character, and I liked his growth.

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On 1/4/2019 at 2:17 PM, 2001Kra said:

So, for me, I had an interesting experience with Elend. I loved his character in book one. Went down in enjoyment some in 2, but still liked him. Then he got lerasium. The moment he got more powerful than Vin, I hated him. Every time it showed up, I wanted to throw the book across the room. And then Vin burned the mists a second time, and I liked him again. By the end, I loved him. So, yeah, Love, like, hate, like, love. Strange.

I'm interested in seeing other peoples experiences with Elend.

SAME! I love Elend, but when he turned into an UBER strong allomancer, I just began to hate him. I only liked him again he found all the Atium Mistings

BTW, what are those called?

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Just now, Kelsier'sGodComplex said:

SAME! I love Elend, but when he turned into an UBER strong allomancer, I just began to hate him. I only liked him again he found all the Atium Mistings

BTW, what are those called?

Seer's.

11 hours ago, Xavier Iriarte said:

See Dalinar, Kaladin and Jasnah

I like Dalinar and Jasnah. I find Kaladin boring. I like regal inspiring characters, just not Elend as one.

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I personally like Elend, and I find his development as a king to be a pretty great arc over the series. He starts out very idealistic, but experiences make him far more pragmatic, while still being a mostly decent person. I also find Tindwyl's lessons highly amusing.

I'm not really a fan of him becoming an uber-mistborn, but keep in mind that even though he has a lot of allomantic power, Vin can almost certainly still kick his chull in any type of actual fight. He may be more powerful, but she is far, far more skilled.

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I always felt like Elend becoming a Mistborn was Vin's reward for making the right choice. For most of the book she was conflicted about who she "belonged" with, the Mistborn or the person she loved. In the end she chose love and was "rewarded" with having that person made a Mistborn and her "equal".

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I didn’t like Elend all that much in the first book, he just felt like someone to be Vin’s romantic interest. He actually became interesting as he struggled to become a king in WoA, when he became a Mistborn, and especially as he struggled with almost becoming a tyrant during HoA.

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I liked his gruffer side in book 1 better than his Kingly persona, but I never really minded that too much. What irritated me about Elend was how the moral crisis was handled; he never actually did anything that would make the reader question him. I jumped for joy at the line "if I ever become like the Lord Ruler, let me know," because I expected that Elend would become like the Lord Ruler, and Vin, even though she couldn't care less about human rights and all that jazz, would have to break through to her husband. There was a lot of potential here -- especially if he started to get like his father, but was still really nice to Vin -- and instead we got a whole wad of half-baked internal monologue.

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  • 2 weeks later...
10 hours ago, Subvisual Haze said:

He felt a little too much like an author self-insert or character clearly designed for nerds to identify with.  Particularly in Book 2 when he was fighting for the affection of the girl against the bad boy character.

Hmm well it is true he was modeled after a bookworm/nerdy type of person but i don't think it is a self-insert.

He has waay too many flaws that Sanderson likes to expose alot in the story (being dumb enough to make himself impeachable before stability of the new government, or how he doesn't have the charisma of great leader which affects his governing and the morale of people, or how realistically he doesn't even skill as a mistborn despite being exceedingly broken) to be self-insert and he even evolved into a person that takes charge from getting uhm taken charge of.

Personally i think Elend is fine. He became an interesting character to read about by the time of book 3 but in book 1 not so much. I did like Vin's point of conflict with Kelsier/Crew/Rebellion/Mission with her interest with Elend. 

I found his personal struggle as King/who-he-is and a King/Tyrant much more  interesting than Vin's conflict generally tbh.

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I never had a problem with him. I thought he was really interesting and never felt like he was upstaging Vin or anything. He had that plot where his ideals hit the meatgrinder and he wasn't sure whether he was gonna come out of it as the person he wanted to be. It was quite different from Vin's struggles and what she was going through, so I didn't think to compare them that way. I just think he was trying really hard and I can respect that.

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I suppose Vin and Elend's struggles are incomparable but i do find Elend's Tyrant vs Good King vs Idealist struggles so much more interesting than Vin's identity struggle as a person with much power/responsibilities that doesn't know where she belongs

Edited by goody153
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Hum. It is quite obviois that I at least liked him a little. I liked him most of the time. But sometimes he is a bit...well, meh. Particularly in book 3. I liked him more in the end though. Also, it seemed like brandon stuffed way too many inuendos and sexual references in The Well of Ascension before they were married:rolleyes:. Now, see, it was likley very awkward for Spook, being a tinear and all during that period while the three of them were traveling mear the end of The Well of Ascension because the activities of Vin and Elend in their thin-walled tent. Sound travels very well from a tent, so as a tineye, lets just say that Spook probably wasn't enjoying listening to that.;)

Edited by ElendVenture
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  • 2 months later...

I went back in forth on Elend throughout the books. I didn't like him becoming such a powerful Mistborn all of a sudden. I mean, I understand why it happens that way and whatnot, but I'd have preferred if Elend had remained a 'normal' human and left Vin as the only Mistborn in the group-- I mean, honestly, Elend being a Mistborn didn't add much to his story aside from a bonus of 'oh Elend is so good and pure and true and now he is a mega-Mistborn on top of it'. I felt like there was more time spent with other characters telling us that Elend Venture was this great person than us actually seeing Elend himself being that great. I don't think he was a bad guy by any stretch and he did grow up and into his role as king. But I just don't think he was as good as the others made him out to be and would have preferred to either see them (especially Vin) acknowledge his flaws instead of defending him as such a great man whenever someone did point anything bad out.

I didn't particularly like the development of his relationship with Vin, for that matter. But from what I've seen thus far (in the original Mistborn trilogy and the first 3 Stormlight books), writing romances is just not Brandon's strong suit. Elend and Vin weren't bad together or anything, but they just didn't really grow and develop as a romance very organically, in my opinion.

Since I am not 100% on the spoiler rules of these forums, I'm putting the below part behind tags just in case, but it pertains to Elend compared with a Stormlight character. I don't think anything I say in here is that spoilery, but just in case you haven't ready Stormlight yet and don't want to read anything related to it...

Spoiler

In some ways my reading of Elend seems akin to how many have read Adolin in Stormlight. Generally a good guy, but not some magnificent hero type-- yet someone the other characters seem to view that way, which makes him kind of irritating-- like show me why he's so great, don't just have other characters tell me he's the best. They do have some Mary Sue tendencies, basically. I personally find Adolin more entertaining than Elend, but a lot of the complaints I've seen about Adolin are things I'd say about Elend. And I do see the similarities, so in a way, Elend has helped me understand what it is people dislike about Adolin. I hope that Adolin doesn't go the Elend route and somehow become mega-powerful, but who knows. To be clear though, I don't hate or love either Elend or Adolin, personally. Adolin has grown on me quite a bit through Stormlight, more than Elend managed through Mistborn, but he's not my favorite or anything, and neither Elend nor Adolin-centric chapters are my favorite portions of their respective series.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/27/2019 at 6:51 PM, giveuptheghost said:

I went back in forth on Elend throughout the books. I didn't like him becoming such a powerful Mistborn all of a sudden. I mean, I understand why it happens that way and whatnot, but I'd have preferred if Elend had remained a 'normal' human and left Vin as the only Mistborn in the group

I agree, Elend shouldn't have been made a Mistborn in my opinion.  I also didn't like how he was suddenly a powerful Mistborn by book 3, I know that time passed in between but I just didn't like how he suddenly shifted from a guy who could barely defend himself to a powerful Mistborn.

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