El hate

[Treamayne]

13 hours ago, NovaRay said:

Hate let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate el

You may want to consider editing the thread title with a Support Tag (at least it seems you want a safe place to vent, not a debate on El's merits and flaws). 

Hope that helps

Edited January 22 by Treamayne
SPAG

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

13 hours ago, TwinStorm said:

the pursuers kinda annoying ngl

He was so obviously a villain of the book who had to be killed off before the next one. It would have been a pain for Kaladin if these was this guy teleporting after him for the whole of WaT but never actually being that much of a threat. 

It should have been Leshwi who was menacing him. That was they could mirror the romantic tension between Raboniel and Navani.

 

On the actual topic:
Yeah, El is a bit lame. 

[DoctaDajman]

Random question and looking for spoilers.  Does El soulcast? His own carapace into aluminum? 

Haven't read RoW or WaT but wish you would spoil this for me. It could be years before I get around to those books. 

[Ink and Embers Any pronouns]

Personally I think El is really interesting; I think he's mainly underrated because we've seen so little of him so far. He seems...nice??? At least compared to all of the other Fused. He's probably one of the characters I'm most looking forward to learning about in the back five. 

Spoiler

I may be biased because my chosen name is El...

 

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

Random question and looking for spoilers.  Does El soulcast? His own carapace into aluminum? 

Haven't read RoW or WaT but wish you would spoil this for me. It could be years before I get around to those books. 

From the Coppermind:

Spoiler

At each rebirth, he removes his carapace and replaces it with metal. The metal heals and integrates into his body through a combination of Voidlight healing and his own, currently unknown, abilities.^[2]

We do not yet know what metal he uses or what process he accomplishes this change.

WoB:

Spoiler

2min2midnite

What is the metal used by El when substituting his carapace? Is it just regular steel to make armour or is it something like aluminium, to make him less vulnerable to Shardblades, for example?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO!

General Reddit 2020 (Dec. 22, 2020)

 

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

21 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

There's Kul and Mash.  They're brothers by blood or blood-brothers or something.  Everybody was certain that Kul died but then Kul came back and said "SURPRISE I'M ALIVE".  Mash has spikies where his eyes used to be.  Mash once did a sneaky and killed King Elly who was a big fancypants (and who was also nicer than his dad).  This was after Mash got grumpy and fought his own friends.  Also they tried to get rid of Kul this one time by putting him in some sort of geographically-significant cavernous locale and making him do work without recompense.

There's Shashy.  She's supposedly very creative, in a scary way.  Also a nerd and a fighter, and maybe insane.

There's also Sez.  He's very polite and proper, always plays by the rules.  Wins fights, best person.

My sad face when nobody appreciates my effort to make a rorschach test to see if people read Mistborn and Warbreaker first or read The Stormlight Archive first.

[Hmmm lies she/her]

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

My sad face when nobody appreciates my effort to make a rorschach test to see if people read Mistborn and Warbreaker first or read The Stormlight Archive first.

I noticed your first paragraph, I didn't notice the other two.

 

This kind of fits in with my biggest problem with WaT. (If you disagree, please don't let me know, I've heard every reason to dislike WaT, and I agree with some of them, and disagree with a lot of them.) (spoilers for WaT just in case)

Spoiler

WaT introduces a lot of (in my opinion) unnecessary elements, and doesn't payoff well on a lot of things. El does practically nothing. Moash gets badass crystal eyes, kills like one guy, and does nothing. Abidi the discount Pursuer is introduced, does nothing. Shallon gets a cool new power which she barely uses. The Wind, Stone, and Night are introduced despite having practically no build up. The fourth moon reveal I accept but I don't especially like it. The Spiritual Realm timeshifting nonsense. Heralds get stat boosts just for being Heralds. Nightblood can copy Surges. (would have been cool with more build-up) Dai-Gonarthis is introduced as a plot device to teleport forces. 

Basically, I don't take offense with any of the characters actions or anything, but I dislike elements of the narrative. El just so happens to be one of those problems.

[Qianweilian He/him]

8 hours ago, Hmmm lies said:

Abidi the discount Pursuer is introduced, does nothing.

I actually liked Abidi as a villain-of-the-book for Adolin. His arrogance, strength, and pettiness puts him in the perfect position to get hurt by Adolin.

[Elsecaller_17.5 he/him]

On 1/21/2026 at 9:14 PM, Frustration said:

I was rather disappointed with El in WaT, he got a lot of build up and then did next to nothing.

I definitely think he was under utilized. I know people think WaT was too long, but I'm not in that camp. I would have loved to see more of the Listeners and Singers. The fact that he pulled out, what seems to be a Radiant, Shardblade with no explanation kills me.

[Frustration]

6 minutes ago, Elsecaller_17.5 said:

I definitely think he was under utilized. I know people think WaT was too long, but I'm not in that camp. I would have loved to see more of the Listeners and Singers. The fact that he pulled out, what seems to be a Radiant, Shardblade with no explanation kills me.

The entire fight at the Shattered Plains  needed more page time, Yelig-nar shows up for the second time in the series and we just skip over it like it was no big deal.

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

Yelig-nar shows up for the second time in the series and we just skip over it like it was no big deal.

Yeah, because it isn't a big deal. Amaram wearing the Super Unplate Crystals is a meaningful enemy for exactly Kaladin, especially since he is at this battle in part because of postponing his 4th ideal.

That was a build to a payoff, so it was really cool. It even had meaningful consequences with Lunamor having to leave because he had to kill Amaram for Kaladin.

Yelig-nar is less interesting than a Thundercast, since at least those always have to fall over and change the terrain for the rest of the scene.

 

 

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Yeah, because it isn't a big deal. Amaram wearing the Super Unplate Crystals is a meaningful enemy for exactly Kaladin, especially since he is at this battle in part because of postponing his 4th ideal.

That was a build to a payoff, so it was really cool. It even had meaningful consequences with Lunamor having to leave because he had to kill Amaram for Kaladin.

Yelig-nar is less interesting than a Thundercast, since at least those always have to fall over and change the terrain for the rest of the scene.

 

 

It very much is. They make a whole point that during that battle they've lost sixty radiants.

My question is: to what? Aside from the Focused ones and Moash none of the enemies they fight really seem like a threat.

And honestly Yelig-nar should make Moash look like a toddler by comparison in threat level, he should put stakes back in the game, actually make it feel like Radiants could lose.

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

22 minutes ago, Frustration said:

They make a whole point that during that battle they've lost sixty radiants.

I don't think those were meaningful characters. You can put them on Yelig-na's scoreboard if you want, it makes Yelig-nar have a good KD ratio.

You can put Moash in Yelig-nar and give him both Jerzin's and IIshar's Honorblades. That would make Yelig-nar meaningful again, since now Moash has like, all the Surges so... how does Kaladin beat that without spawning a novella of consequences?

 

[Frustration]

6 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

I don't think those were meaningful characters. You can put them on Yelig-na's scoreboard if you want, it makes Yelig-nar have a good KD ratio.

You can put Moash in Yelig-nar and give him both Jerzin's and IIshar's Honorblades. That would make Yelig-nar meaningful again, since now Moash has like, all the Surges so... how does Kaladin beat that without spawning a novella of consequences?

 

Or just have Yelig-nar on his own beat the crap put of Sigzil and Co. now, so that in book 8 or whatever when Moash does use it it's even more impactful as we know that Yelig-nar on his own can kill Radiants?

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

44 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Sigzil and Co. now, so that in book 8 or whatever when Moash does use it it's even more impactful as we know that Yelig-nar on his own can kill Radiants?

I never really got caring about Sigzil. I get that armies need people who do numbers, but I cannot recall feeling much anything about him.

I probably will not care about Yelig-nar for having killed a bunch of them in the half decade plus time.

[Frustration]

7 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

I never really got caring about Sigzil. I get that armies need people who do numbers, but I cannot recall feeling much anything about him.

I probably will not care about Yelig-nar for having killed a bunch of them in the half decade plus time.

I can't argue against your feelings, but here's why it should still be important.

If Yelig-nar is established to be very dangerous, not just stated, but actually shown to us, then he will feel more dangerous against character you do care about in the future.

Edited January 24 by Frustration

[Immortal Platypus]

6 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I can't argue against your feelings, but here's why it should still be important.

If Yelig-nar is established to be very dangerous, not just stated, but actually shown to us, then he will feel more dangerous against character you do care about in the future.

yes, one of the major rules of storytelling is show, don't tell. This is done excellently in the prologue to WoK, with Szeth using crazy powers, not simply thinking about what powers he could use. I wish it had been done more with Yelig-nar (so little was done I forgot that he showed up) and with El in WaT (I thought him killing the Pursuer was good showing), but overall, I liked WaT.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

5 hours ago, Immortal Platypus said:

yes, one of the major rules of storytelling is show, don't tell. This is done excellently in the prologue to WoK, with Szeth using crazy powers, not simply thinking about what powers he could use. I wish it had been done more with Yelig-nar (so little was done I forgot that he showed up) and with El in WaT (I thought him killing the Pursuer was good showing), but overall, I liked WaT.

On the one hand, "Show, Don't Tell" can easily be misused and is arguably bad advice.  Many of the great stories tell rather than show (much of what happens in The Illiad is recounted through dialogue rather than narration, the classics of Greek Theatre and Shakespeare are bursting at the seams with exposition, and so on and so on in all sorts of storytelling forms).  A better rule might be to know what to show and what to tell.  There's also the principle that "Nothing in scarier than what the reader/audience imagines" (which applies not just to "scarier", but for a whole lot of adjectives), with a classic example being The Shark in Jaws.

On the other hand, it's arguably bad storytelling advice, so it's probably something we should be teaching as much as we can to discourage young would-be storytellers so they find better things to do, like making sandwiches for me to eat.

Edited January 24 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Immortal Platypus]

2 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

On the one hand, "Show, Don't Tell" can easily be misused and is arguably bad advice.  Many of the great stories tell rather than show (much of what happens in The Illiad is recounted through dialogue rather than narration, the classics of Greek Theatre and Shakespeare are bursting at the seams with exposition, and so on and so on in all sorts of storytelling forms).  A better rule might be to know what to show and what to tell.  There's also the principle that "Nothing in scarier than what the reader/audience imagines" (which applies not just to "scarier", but for a whole lot of adjectives), with a classic example being The Shark in Jaws.

On the other hand, it's arguably bad storytelling advice, so it's probably something we should be teaching as much as we can to discourage young would-be storytellers so they find better things to do, like making sandwiches for me to eat.

true. I do think that generally, when it comes to how strong an opponent is, it's better to show and not tell, which is what applies here.

Edited January 25 by Immortal Platypus

[Verdance he/him]

On 1/21/2026 at 10:53 PM, NovaRay said:

You read that correctly. Don’t act confused

No like I agree. Lezadin, I pronounce as “lunacy”