Shallan - Like or Dislike?

[Aleksiel]

I dislike what Kaladin described as Shallan trying too hard. She's always trying to come up with a wisecrack or word-game or whatever. That isn't what wins arguments in my book and turning every single sentence into something that's supposed to be witty annoys me more than it entertains me. It's fun and cool when used at times, but all the time? Not my cup of tea.

 

Yes, I get due to her life she tries to look everything on the bright side, always trying to laugh at things. It just doesn't work for me. And I'm still not over her character representing the attribute of honesty. I might accept it in the future, but her 'artistic interpretations' or whatever you choose to call them aren't my thing. I'm more of a straight forwardness fan and both Kaladin and Dalinar are my type of honesty, Aes Sedai's truths work for me, but so far Shallan's representing honesty just doesn't.

[Guest]

I wasn't trying to make you give up or go away, maxal, and I apologize if you think I was.  I was just trying to help you understand her character better, so that you can get more enjoyment out of the books.  I felt at least as strongly against Kaladin as you do against Kaladin for quite some time after reading WoR, to the point that I literally thought the book was better to have a good 50% of his PoV chapters removed (or more).  I spent a lot of time yelling and arguing in a couple different forums about how much I didn't like him, but other people offering explanations let me appreciate him as a character more--that's all I was trying to do for you.

 

Sanderson has done a rather phenomenal job in WoR with presenting broken and flawed characters that can still be sympathetic or relatable while also behaving in incredibly believable ways.  I've definitely enjoyed the discussion that you started, even if I disagree with you, and I would hope you could say the same.

 

I do appreciate your inputs :-) It was a nice discussion and of course we all have our favorites. You did help me see Shallan throught a more positive ligth. I just got really annoyed when she said those hard things to Pattern mainly because I love Pattern (he is my favorite spren). I was also annoyed by some of her behavior throughout the book, but I do get how she got there. I will anxously await to see how she plays her cards in the next book.

 

On the positive side, I have enjoyed the contrast between Shallan who always try to see things from a positive light and Kaladin who seems to do the contrary. And I still enjoyed reading her POV.

 

On the other hand, I can understand why people would dislike Kal after WoR. He's had annoying moments too.

[FeatherWriter she/her]

I despised her in WoK. In reread I skipped her and felt it improved the book in ever way. Early in WoR my dislike like of her hurt my enjoyment of the book but she grew on me throughout the book and by the end I enjoyed her PoVs as much as any. I don't know if the improvement is from learning more about her, Pattern constantly calling her a liar, the service she did by introducing Stick or FeatherWriters reactions in the splintercast but I'm glad she grew on me as she would be much harder to skip in this book.

 

Glad to see I'm helping win people over to liking characters! Especially because... Shallan was one that I needed help liking again after WoR. She's a great character and I think she's really trying to do the right things and be a good person, but one of her flaws hit me in the face and made me unable to like her for a bit. I got... invested and couldn't forgive her for some of the things that she does at the end of WoR. (People familiar with me and my character preferences can probably guess what this was).

 

Eventually I had some friends who helped me remember all of the wonderful things that Shallan did and all of the reasons why I loved her in the first place. I love her flaws, because the kinds of characters that I like to read about are those who are having to overcome their issues and grow from them. Characters who struggle in order to do the right thing... and sometimes fail to do the right thing and have to deal with the consequences. 

 

I just got into a bad place when Shallan's flaws caused her to hurt a character that I really love (yes, that one) and I had a very hard time forgiving her. Thankfully enough, I've got friends who talked me through stuff, and brought me back from the brink of writing Shallan off until she ammended her behavior (which is good, because she really is a great character.)

[Guest]

I like Nynaeve. And Aviendha. I dislike Elayne and Egwene though, very, very bland characters. 

 

I liked Egewen up until A Memory of Light were she just ended up discovering the anti-balefire weave and thus ended as the sacrificial lamb. It is just annoying when a character just doesn't seem to have flaws.

 

Nynaeve was awesome. Aviendha too, but I couldn't stand Elayne.

Besides, Jordan's certainly never been pregnant to think a 5 months pregnant women with twins could go horseback riding into war. Blah.

Edited April 24, 2014 by maxal

[kari-no-sugata]

Maxal, sorry I didn't have time to reply earlier but not quite had time: seemed to me like you wanted to like Shallan more but was having trouble. I can understand since it's not nice reading a series with an annoying character - if I don't like the main character in a series I can't read the book basically. It looks like you're in a better place now but maybe I could contribute something if there's still some things that particularly bug you - I've been preparing some character analysis notes on Shallan for some time and might be able to help.

[Kobold King he/him]

I liked Egewen up until A Memory of Light were she just ended up discovering the anti-balefire weave and thus ended as the sacrificial lamb. It is just annoying when a character just doesn't seem to have flaws.

 

Nynaeve was awesome. Aviendha too, but I couldn't stand Elayne. Besides, Jordan's certainly never been pregnant to think a 5 months pregnant women with twins could go horseback riding into war. Blah.

 

Please format WoT plot details with spoiler tags. I and presumably many others have not yet finished the series, and are not expecting pertinent plot spoilers in a Shallan thread. Could you please use spoiler tags in the future? Thank you.

[Guest]

Soory about the spoilers. I didn't think :-( I'll try to be more carefull.

Edited April 24, 2014 by maxal

[Guest]

Maxal, sorry I didn't have time to reply earlier but not quite had time: seemed to me like you wanted to like Shallan more but was having trouble. I can understand since it's not nice reading a series with an annoying character - if I don't like the main character in a series I can't read the book basically. It looks like you're in a better place now but maybe I could contribute something if there's still some things that particularly bug you - I've been preparing some character analysis notes on Shallan for some time and might be able to help.

 

I am always trying to like all characters as I agree reading a story with an annoying main character is tedious. Except perhaps for villains, having a good character to hate is also pleasant. I do want to like Shallan, but I have issues with her. Hopefully, it will come around. She had her moments, therefore I do not despise her, but she did left me with an uneasy feeling. I sincerely hope she will come around with her relationship with Pattern whom I absolutely love    The scene where he asks Shallan to draw him nudes before confessing having spied on Sebarial's bath was priceless. Or the scene where he mentions he saw Dalinar and Navani hugged, talked softly and then made strange noises he volonteers to reproduce had me laughing. Oh Pattern. I do not want Shallan to hurt him

[Kobold King he/him]

Soory about the spoilers. I didn't think :-( I'll try to be more carefull.

That's all right, I didn't actually see much. All is awesome

 

 

I am always trying to like all characters as I agree reading a story with an annoying main character is tedious. Except perhaps for villains, having a good character to hate is also pleasant. I do want to like Shallan, but I have issues with her. Hopefully, it will come around. She had her moments, therefore I do not despise her, but she did left me with an uneasy feeling. I sincerely hope she will come around with her relationship with Pattern whom I absolutely love    The scene where he asks Shallan to draw him nudes before confessing having spied on Sebarial's bath was priceless. Or the scene where he mentions he saw Dalinar and Navani hugged, talked softly and then made strange noises he volonteers to reproduce had me laughing. Oh Pattern. I do not want Shallan to hurt him

I am hoping that Shallan's statement "I hate you" is simply her being caught up in the moment, and doesn't actually imply much future negativity in their relationship. I would hate for Shallan to start irrationally hating Pattern.

[Swimmingly he/him]

I think it's going to make her treat him more impersonally, like a tool rather than a companion, and he may confront her on that eventually.

[kaellok he/him]

I think it's going to make her treat him more impersonally, like a tool rather than a companion, and he may confront her on that eventually.

So, she'll treat him like Kaladin starts treating Syl?  If so, I definitely hope that Pattern calls her on it, just like I wish Syl would have called Kal on it in WoK and again in WoR.  I really like both of those spren, and they deserve much better than that.

 

Also, I went back to re-read the section in question again, and noticed something new:

 

 

"I hate you," she whispered, staring into her mother's dead eyes.

I really think that at least a part of the emotion she's feeling is directed at her dead mother, as well.  If her mother hadn't gone crazy, then Shallan wouldn't have had to kill her in order to live, and the life she could have had would have been perfect (in her mind).  So, there's a whole lot of tangled, mixed emotions going on in the scene, and where it goes from there is left basically completely unresolved.

 

[FeatherWriter she/her]

I agree that Shallan and Pattern are probably going to have some contention and/or distance in their relationship after that last scene... however I don't think Pattern's going to call her out on this. Remember, Pattern's the one who talked about her killing him. I... I think Pattern believes that coming to find a Nahel bond was something of a suicide mission, to tell the truth. I have a feeling he is resigned to her mistreating him. He expects her to use him like a tool. 

 

I think he liked when she was nice to him, but he also knew that she was repressing the memories of what really happened, and that everything was going to change after she accepted them. I probably believes that her kindness was something temporary that is now gone. And that's what I think might be the saddest part of this whole ordeal. Pattern is going to just... endure his relationship with her. 

 

I'm hoping Shallan surprises him and gets over her problems with him and reaches out to reconnect. I feel like that's something he wouldn't expect from her and it might make them closer than they were before.

[Swimmingly he/him]

On the other hand, Pattern gets to geek out studying humans, so it's not all bad for him.

Not to mention that he's a sentient fractal. His perception of relationships is probably different than we'd expect.

[kari-no-sugata]

Unless Shallan changes significantly, I would be highly surprised if she shows any real "hatred" for Pattern in the next book. This is partly down to her general personality but also note that she takes responsibility for killing her mother in that scene - she says that she "killed them" and doesn't blame Pattern for their deaths. She specifically says she doesn't want revenge. I'm pretty sure her "I hate you" is for Pattern forcing her to remember / stop pretending, rather than something he did in the past. Thought we don't see anything more from her point of view, she seems to be "normal" in Dalinar's point of view (he specifically says she looks fine after being in quite bad shape after arriving).

 

Too optimistic? Well, this is definitely a very very bad memory for Shallan, worse than anything else she's faced so maybe we will see a different side to her afterwards. But I think Pattern judged that Shallan is now strong enough to cope with the memory so decided to force the issue after Shallan dodged it several times.

 

Shallan didn't want to kill the Chasmfiend that was attacking her (and Kaladin). She didn't want to kill the Parshmen even though she was convinced that they were Voidbringers. She was angry with Amaran after he basically claimed to have killed her beloved brother right in front of her - she does hate to some degree him but even then she realises there's mitigating circumstances and her anger seems to be fading. She's not tried or thought to get revenge on him. I really don't see her killing Pattern unless she fundamentally changes or Pattern tries to kill her.

Edited April 25, 2014 by kari-no-sugata

[FeatherWriter she/her]

Well I don't think Shallan killing Pattern would be intentional. The Nahel bond's a finicky thing and when it's in danger, so's the spren. I mean, Kaladin nearly killed Syl this book and those two are incredibly close. This wouldn't be Shallan like, murdering Pattern outright, just if she slips up in her oaths or doesn't keep putting effort into the bond, it could suffer, and Pattern would be in danger. The Stormfather and Pattern seem to see it as only a matter of time unitl the humans break their oaths and kill the spren again. It's up to our heroes to prove them wrong and show that they could be honorable!

[WitSpren he/him]

Unless Shallan changes significantly, I would be highly surprised if she shows any real "hatred" for Pattern in the next book. This is partly down to her general personality but also note that she takes responsibility for killing her mother in that scene - she says that she "killed them" and doesn't blame Pattern for their deaths. She specifically says she doesn't want revenge. I'm pretty sure her "I hate you" is for Pattern forcing her to remember / stop pretending, rather than something he did in the past. Thought we don't see anything more from her point of view, she seems to be "normal" in Dalinar's point of view (he specifically says she looks fine after being in quite bad shape after arriving).

 

Too optimistic? Well, this is definitely a very very bad memory for Shallan, worse than anything else she's faced so maybe we will see a different side to her afterwards. But I think Pattern judged that Shallan is now strong enough to cope with the memory so decided to force the issue after Shallan dodged it several times.

 

Shallan didn't want to kill the Chasmfiend that was attacking her (and Kaladin). She didn't want to kill the Parshmen even though she was convinced that they were Voidbringers. She was angry with Amaran after he basically claimed to have killed her beloved brother right in front of her - she does hate to some degree him but even then she realises there's mitigating circumstances and her anger seems to be fading. She's not tried or thought to get revenge on him. I really don't see her killing Pattern unless she fundamentally changes or Pattern tries to kill her.

Absolutely!!!       100% correct.      

 

 

Unless we see a huge change in her in the next book it will never happen on purpose.     She is FAR from perfect - all the characters are far from perfect.     I can't believe the gigantic number of stupid things that all the characters (good and bad) do.      But the way BS wrote them, they were perfectly understandable.    (DON'T DO THAT YOU FOOL!!!  STUPID!!!)    But it was just GREAT!!      I hate it when characters don't screw up in realistic ways.

 

I also think that it would be much harder for Shallan to kill Pattern - by accident -  than for Kal to kill Syl.      It is the nature of the Spren.     I also am sure that something else way going on for all the KRs to kill the Spren at the same time.    That many people going bad at the same time had an external cause.

 

 

[kari-no-sugata]

Well I don't think Shallan killing Pattern would be intentional. The Nahel bond's a finicky thing and when it's in danger, so's the spren. I mean, Kaladin nearly killed Syl this book and those two are incredibly close. This wouldn't be Shallan like, murdering Pattern outright, just if she slips up in her oaths or doesn't keep putting effort into the bond, it could suffer, and Pattern would be in danger. The Stormfather and Pattern seem to see it as only a matter of time unitl the humans break their oaths and kill the spren again. It's up to our heroes to prove them wrong and show that they could be honorable!

 

There's a lot of ways in which Shallan could go wrong, despite all the amazing things she's done, so I agree that this is a possibility. That Pattern expects it to happen legitimises it to some degree - though in a way that would also make it less of a surprise.

 

But what seemingly happened to the spren bonded at the time of the Recreance looks to have been fundamentally different to what happened to Syl in WoR and Pattern between the death of Shallan's mother and her re-summoning him at the start of WoR. Certainly the Recreance KRs did what they did deliberately and almost certainly knew what they were doing - they were also using their powers just before (the KRs who flew in at least) so it wasn't that their bonds were fading. It does feel more like "murder".

 

I wonder what the underlying reason for the difference is between what happened to Pattern at the time of Shallan's mother's death and what happened to Syl. When Shallan summoned Pattern again he started out "dumb", as if he had never been bonded before. But when Syl "returned" she seemed to be back to normal pretty much instantly. So it seems reasonable to say that whatever happened to Pattern during those 6 years was worse than what happened to Syl. But it wasn't fatal.

 

Which does does make me wonder why Stormfather said Kaladin had "killed" Syl since it doesn't really seem accurate. As far as I can tell, if a KR does things against their ideals or otherwise lets the bond weaken that does not "kill" the spren, though that's NOT to say that they're not harmed or that we should not be concerned.

 

Going back to Shallan and Pattern: with their final scene in WoR the bond should have just gotten stronger, not weaker because Shallan admitted to the hidden truth. Would rather suck for it to backfire.

 

 

[Patrick Star]

Do I like Shallan?

 

I'll put it this way: I agree with The Stick

[Tacticka]

I love her. But Kaladin gets under my skin at times.

[kari-no-sugata]

I think many readers have trouble warming up to Shallan beyond specific things she does in the books. I've got some thoughts on why - I'd be interested in what others think:

 

• when we're first introduced to her, though she's being proactive and challenging herself (normally attractive in a character), what she's actually trying to achieve with that is theft. Her justifications are weak to the readers - we don't know much about her or her family to care much and there's not much justification for Jasnah being the victim apart her being a weak target (other Soulcasters are carefully controlled) and a heretic. She later describes her actions there as being "stupid and naive".
• regardless of circumstance it's hard not to distrust a character who has killed her own mother and father
• we only see Shallan from her point of view in the first book and she's not particularly complimentary about herself (I also notice that she uses self-deprecating humour a lot, particularly in WoR). This is less of a problem in WoR but I don't think it helps that her almost only see her from her own PoV because she doesn't always realise just how impressive some of her actions are and some can be quite subtle - to a large degree you have to work harder to understand Shallan. I don't think it helps that Kaladin's initial PoVs of her are so negative (unfairly so as he later acknowledges) since I think most readers would tend to side with Kaladin.
• with Shallan in WoR there's constant discussion of truth and "lies" which probably makes many readers more sensitive to her lies than otherwise - I think this is referred to as "priming" as psychology.
• in the first third of the book (Shallan getting to the Shattered Plains) I suspect most readers sympathise strongly with her situation and are impressed with what she achieves. She makes more achievements during the middle part but sometimes in a dubious manner or otherwise manages to upset the fans of the other major characters. In the last third of the book she almost single handedly saves the army (30-40,000 people?) but this is overshadowed by Kaladin and Dalinar's triumphs and it was so obviously going to happen that she'd achieve it. in her final PoV it's officially revealed that she killed her own mother - hardly the best ending.

Please note that with the above that I'm trying to keep a high level view - generalities rather than specifics. I'm also not saying that Shallan uniquely has these problems either.

 

 

[Loki27]

      .     

On 4/21/2014 at 4:06 PM, maxal said:

I was going through some parts of WoR when something hit me scare in the face... I am unsure as to weither I like or dislike Shallan as a character.

 

In WoK, I was ambivalent towards her. I could emphasize with some part of her: the young girl going into an impossible mission to save her family. However, I never could understand why she didn't try simple, blunt honnesty with Jasnah. That troubled me greatly. I understand why she planned to rob the soulcaster, however, once she found out Jasnah was a pretty decent person, she could just have told her the truth. No. With Shallan, it is always about lies.

 

In WoR, I was, at first, highly interested in her character development. How she went from being lost on this beach to being in charge of a whole caravan. I like how she used her skills and how she never gave up. I was thrilled how she managed to backslap Dalinar Kohlin and get her invited within Sebarial camp. I was a great moment for me. However, I was very perplex as to why she let Tyn teach her, why she even went for *that*. I was troubled she decided to investigate the Ghostblood. She could simply have come clean with the Kohlins and ask for their help. No, she had to invent this new persona and enter into a double life. By the end of re-read, I found I sort of disliked her. I do not like how she told Dalinar and Navani about her being a Radiant and not Adolin. I do not like how she uses him for her own purpose and more important, I do not like that she blames Pattern for her family's bad fortune. If someone is to blame, it is her mother. I sort of overlooked the part where she mentions her desire to kill Pattern on my first read.

 

Bottomline is I do not see Shallan going into a nice place. She is affiliated with the Ghostblood and I do not think she intend to come clean to Dalinar about it. She hates her spren. She uses her fiance to her own ends, obnoxious to the fact he actually likes her, for real. She lies about everything and I found I hate, absolutely hate that in a person.

 

How about you? How are you feeling about Shallan?

She is a liar and manipulator. I find her character realistic but not remotely likable. She destroyed and poisoned her family. She is important to the story though. 

The lie about her mother destroyed them. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Loki27 said:

      .     

She is a liar and manipulator. I find her character realistic but not remotely likable. She destroyed and poisoned her family. She is important to the story though. 

The lie about her mother destroyed them. 

This is one very old thread... You shouldn't quote people on stuff they said 2 years ago: much of my writing as changed since then.

[PlanetReelo she/her]

I'm in a strange place when it comes to Shallan. I'm not entirely sure I like her character, but I do enjoy reading about her. Does that make sense? I suppose the bottom line is that I'm still undecided.

I wasn't her biggest fan in WoK, mainly because of her hypocrisy. She used the fact that Jasnah killed those bandits as a way to justify her stealing the soulcaster. It just felt like she maintained an incredibly 'high and mighty' attitude despite her wrong doings. But I suppose humans tend to look for justification of their actions, so her flaw is incredibly human. I thought she was far better developed in WoR however, and enjoyed her interactions with the other main characters and her past.

 

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, PlanetReelo said:

I'm in a strange place when it comes to Shallan. I'm not entirely sure I like her character, but I do enjoy reading about her. Does that make sense? I suppose the bottom line is that I'm still undecided.

I wasn't her biggest fan in WoK, mainly because of her hypocrisy. She used the fact that Jasnah killed those bandits as a way to justify her stealing the soulcaster. It just felt like she maintained an incredibly 'high and mighty' attitude despite her wrong doings. But I suppose humans tend to look for justification of their actions, so her flaw is incredibly human. I thought she was far better developed in WoR however, and enjoyed her interactions with the other main characters and her past.

 

Shallan's mental shortcuts when it came to Jasnah's treatment of the thugs isn't unlike Kaladin using Roshone's pettiness as an excuse to justify killing Elhokar and thus extracting personal vengeance. He too used very tenuous mental shortcuts to justify his actions and he too was found out to be... wrong about them.

I think it is great characters are allowed to be petty and self-centered at times: it makes them more realistic.

[PlanetReelo she/her]

8 minutes ago, maxal said:

Shallan's mental shortcuts when it came to Jasnah's treatment of the thugs isn't unlike Kaladin using Roshone's pettiness as an excuse to justify killing Elhokar and thus extracting personal vengeance. He too used very tenuous mental shortcuts to justify his actions and he too was found out to be... wrong about them.

I think it is great characters are allowed to be petty and self-centered at times: it makes them more realistic.

That's a very good point! I hadn't thought about it that way. I think whilst reading WoK, all I could see was a stark contrast between Kaladin fighting for his and the bridgemen's lives, whilst Shallan seemed self absorbed and conniving in her deception. That bias stuck with me, but it was slowly undone in WoR, where I found myself really enjoying the flaws in characters, including Kaladin and Shallan. So i'm very much on the fence with her at the moment!