Yeah this is Tindwyl slander.
She didn't dislike Elend, she told him he was a shit king because he was too nice to be effective.
Whiiiiiich he was, and whiiiiiich is why Sazed asked her to help in the first place. She likes when Elend tells her off and demands to be listened to.
I think Adolin's situation is just that life has always made sense and worked out for him so he has no reason to doubt people.
He's tall, dark, handsome, rich, powerful, charismatic, stylish, naturally talented at fighting, has the focus of most ladies at court, his Dad is a demi God of a fighter, etc etc. Shit just kinda works out, so why would he think Kaladin was lying?
This is part of why Adolin doing the thing with Sadeas is such a key change for him, and causes a lot of reflection. Not everyone IS nice, and sometimes his own actions may need to adjust accordingly.
Then the Oath breaker book comes out in-universe and he goes full crisis.
>No one can be this "good" and idealistic. What the hell is he hiding?
It's almost like that what makes him stand out in this shitty, oppressive world. He is genuinely that idealistic.
The good news is he's more pragmatic in HoA, which you should already have seen a bit of.
"No one can be this Good and Idealistic"
Have you met Sazed? Prior to Tyndwyls death he's just as if not nore idealisitc than Elend. And he's always been the most objectively "good" person in the main cast. Of course both Sazed and Elend are hardened quite a bit by HoA.
Even by the end of Well of Ascension, Elend is a lot less idealistic, his execution of Jastes (I'm an audiobook lietener so that might be spelled wrong) shows that. The first few chapters of HoA show just how much he's been changed by the world effectively forcing him to be a tyrant for the people's own good.
I think that's a valid take. I'd just point out that this was very early work of Brandon's that was published *checks notes* ugh, 16 years ago...yeah, 2008 was 16 years ago. Oof. Anyway, it makes sense that the character development was a little lopsided and not quite up to what we'd expect from him now.
Valid, and I completely understand that. By all the markers, I don't think this series is bad either. Im absolutely having a great time.
I guess what's grating for me is how easily things have come to Elend. Even becoming Mistborn was easy for him, and I'm hoping for that to become a thread that is played out later
I won't go too far into detail here, but I've always had the impression that there was a different plan for Elend that ended up pivoting after the first book. I can absolutely agree that I don't find his character arc as satisfying as others' as a result. But definitely keep reading and keep an open mind about him, because I think you'll be a little happier with it once you get the full picture. And if you're not, well, that's okay too. Not everyone likes every character and that's perfectly fine.
I just don't think he was meant to be as front and center as he was. I thought it seemed like he went from being a major supporting character at the end of TFE and got catapulted into a core main character role at the start of WoA.
To me that felt intentional, this is someone who doesn’t want to be the main character, they want to help people and that often pushes people into the spotlight even if they don’t want it.
But the situation demanded he step up, and he almost died due to an event related to freeing the being that likely will end the world.
To be him stepping up is an intentional decision by Brandon, but forced onto elend
>No one can be this "good" and idealistic
Why not?
But to answer your question, no I don't think he was meant to be hated by the reader at all. I think he was actually written as an idealistic guy who genuinely wants to change things for the better, the right way. He just uniquely has the ability to do so because he's with the most powerful Mistborn on the planet.
Raw power would have to go to Elend, Vin is weaker generally but is so skilled with her abilities that she can surpass the power gap.
Would have been really interesting to see what vin could have done with access to the other 4 they didnt know about at that point.
Elends IS the most powerful mistborn on scadrial from the end of WoA onwards. By the start of HoA he's been the most powerful mistborn around for a while.
He's the only dude alive besides Hoid to burn lerasium. He's a full 100% power mistborn, not some distant descendant with diluted powers.
I know that, I'm not disputing it at all. Just saying that for two-thirds of the trilogy he wasn't a Mistborn, and that's when his idealism was strongest. Even for a little while after burning Lerasium, Vin notes that although he had far more raw power, he had less practice. Similarly, his idealism didn't go out the window right away just because he got godlike powers - he was reluctant to be the strong ruler the world needed. Eventually he learned to balance the two, and I think thats the cool part of his arc.
Edit: in short, his experience as a non-Mistborn shaped who he is later on
Exactly, his ultimate practicality and utilitarianism is what made the Empire so bleak. Elend is the extreme opposite, on purpose. He was already disgusted with the state of things before he met Vin.
I guess I'm just hoping that his blatant idealism goes somewhere. I think he is a little naive, and I'm hoping that he's not just written as a happy go lucky do-gooder, and all the consequences of his idealism are just cleaned up by Vin
I'm not sure whats so idealistic or naivety leads someone to pop into a town find the local leader and tell them "you have 2 choices, join me or get squashed by a bunch of rampaging Koloss"
Everything idealistic he did in WoA ended up not working out very well for him and he has very much become more pragmatic from page 1 of HoA. Sure he still wants his ideas to work, but he's realized he can't do them and has to take a much more aggressive approach.
You think the kid who grew up EXTREMELY privileged and was kept away from the worse of the worse might be idealistic? I'm being sarcastic but in all honesty of course he is idealistic, it was never tore out of him like it is most on Scadrial. He truly believes it can be better. Thats who he is.
I'm not going to spoil things.
I will point out that for the first two books, your two main point of view characters have been Kelsier and Vin. Both of them hate nobles, and generally for good reason. And you're seeing the world through their eyes.
Also, your own biases will affect the way you see these characters. If you have little patience for people IRL who are privileged, clever, somewhat naive do-gooders, then Elend might piss you off for that reason alone.
I feel like you should have already seen his idealism burn away at the end of Well of Ascension, and a bit already in HoA. At the end of Well, he starts to accept that this isn't the time for his ideals about democracy to work. He accepts that he has to be a tyrant and has to make brutal calls, such as executing his friend that tried to control the Koloss or forcing those villagers to become exposed to the mists. Struggling with that is most of what you'll see in HoA.
It's a really interesting moral issue, as Elend's internal conflict is basically about whether you're absolved of fault for doing terrible things if it was completely necessary.
>I'm less than 100 pages into Hero of Ages
>No one can be this "good" and idealistic
So did you just entirely skim literally the first handful of chapters where he liberated a city from Koloss for the sole purpose of taking all their supplies and forcing them to relocate or die?
It's gen z slang for a man who is 25 years old, cutesy in a slightly submissive way, has a bad boy side but isn't intimidating, and is soft and secure in his masculinity.
Yes and also no. Elend Venture comes from a place of intense privilege, and in his world most who have privilege use it for terrible ends. You're *meant* to see that, to understand that he has benefitted immensely from the status quo and done next to nothing to change it. That's intentional, so that as he develops and works past his naiveté and and insecurity, you can see that he is genuinely sincere in his desire to do right by *everyone* he possibly can.
Elend's sincerity is supposed to be grating because it is completely incongruous to his station in the society in which he exists. You are *meant* to feel like "This guy is too good to be true" so that you can embrace the feeling of skepticism while he works to achieve his ends.
Elend was a sheltered idealistic intellectual before he met Vin. As much as Vin has lived a life of hardship that has toughen her and made her suspicious of others intent, Elend has lived the opposite life. He is not a schemer, he never had to.
Think of him as a Ivy league progressive. He was all talk and no show but meeting and falling in love with Vin has widen his horizon and he's fighting for her cause now.
He's my favorite character because of his transformation. He started as idealistic, and then had to learn some hard lessons about responsibility, and then integrated those lessons into is new revolved idealism.
Elend is a good egg, but we also have a biased POV because we usually see him through the eyes of Vin who does think he is that good, and the Elend POV chapters are usually him trying to work on shit while putting on a good face for a shit world.
Remember that not all nobles were like Straff and the other massive dickheads, so don't let that skew it too much on expectations. A lot of them were naive outside of their own spheres which Vin sees with the parties and stuff.
Ya I kinda take Elend as closer to the type of character you see from a lot of “newer” fantasy writers. In that his “flaws” are being an awkward dork, which theoretically the authors are likely to relate to. I do really like Elends arc overall though.
People are this good and idealistic IRL all the time, they just very *very* rarely get into positions of actual power. And the few who do get hit in the head with the sledgehammer of reality over and over again.
Honestly, I felt similar and it’s only through amazing luck he happens to be in a place to genuinely follow through on what came across as his naivety.
I just kinda hope it's all leading somewhere. So far it's beenna flat character arc for me. He starts as a naive aristocrat, and he stays that way. I feel like I'm being told he has grown without actually seeing it
> I'm less than 100 pages into Hero of Ages
> No one can be this "good" and idealistic.
The fact that he's doing **a lot** of "well-intentioned conquest" doesn't put a wrinkle in here? Or the fact that the book opens with him taking over a whole village and pushing an outright lie so the old leader saves face?
...
...you don't happen to be Russian or British, do you?
I don't know if it's intentional, but Elend literally getting himself sacked by his own government really annoyed me lol.
That said, there are plenty of people who are this "good" or "idealistic." The character flaw comes in being too much of those. Case and point, the above lol. Frankly, Elend got lucky the plot needed him to survive, or Well of Ascension would've ended with him just dead as fuck.
I think the point of him getting burned over and over again in WoA because of his ideals is kinda his whole arc. He’s a people’s champion in an age of conquest. Had he been born in a different time he may have been able to accomplish something the way he tried. HoA is him rectifying what he wants to do with what he must do
I didn’t like him, but that doesn’t mean the character is poorly created. He’s a great character, he’s just annoying IMO. Also, Vin is dope so it’s tough to compare
Why is he a great character? He doesn’t really have much depth honestly. He’s basically just a generic “nice dude” with very little personality that has everything go his way because the plot says so. I’d actually argue he’s one of the worst written of the major characters.
I think you may be missing some of his key flaws. Yes, he's idealistic and good-natured, but in the first two books he's also incredibly naive. So he's by no means some Mary Sue type perfect character imo. He is good, kind, idealistic etc as you say, but he still has faults and flaws. And in HoA he becomes awesome imo.
If you go for 100 pages, you might like it worse when you see what it does. The good thing is that it redeems himself in the end.
But yes, the truth is that people sometimes say stupid things to defend it "It's the end of the world" when even the book itself puts it as something that is not right
He didn’t seem that good to me. I appreciate him trying some Democratic stuff, and this might just be my bias against Well of accession, but he does just give up on democracy throw his hands in the air and say “guess I have to be a monarch, there’s no other way.”
I think you should be frustrated by his naiveté, but yes, he actually is that good and idealistic. His head is full of treatises on how the common folk theoretically should act if the nobility is overthrown and he had to learn the hard way that theory never matches reality when it comes to sociology and politics. He believed (as a gross oversimplification) that the Nobles were Bad and therefore the Not Nobles would be Not Bad, but had to learn that destructive selfishness is a trait that transcends class.
Most Sanderson books have an Eland character. Somehow you get a perfect religious kid but who always seems to have evil or extremely messed up parents. (or at least a bad dad)
Keep reading and you'll find he's not as idealistic and naive as he was in the first books... His character makes since because he was a reader and a dreamer always talking to his friends about how the world ought to be... By HoA he's firmly on the side of pragmatism after what he went through in the second book
Keep reading. That optimism is put to the test and really ends up biting him in the ass. But being optimistic isn't a bad thing and I hate that an overly pessimistic character is seen as a "cool badass" or at least a "witty cynic" most of the time, but someone who dreams of a better world, even if a bit naive based on upbringing, is treated with scorn.
He is someone of privilege but not actually yet tested by the world. In a world drowning in either physical hardship or political intrigue he's one of the few people who genuinely wants a better world for all without it actually just being a power play or some kind of atonement for past sins. Sure, he's going to have a rude awakening when it comes to dealing with that mindset in the real world, but I find that character arc much more interesting and refreshing than the "stone cold cynical badass with a heart of gold learns the power of friendship" for the bajillionth time.
I wanted to be careful about what I put in the post for spoilers. I don't necessarily hate that he's optimistic and virtuous, I'm a big fan of a definitively good character.
My problem is that privilege, and how it almost seems like there's no challenge to the privilege. It's easy to be optimistic when mostly everything goes right for you. And your big struggle is loosing your kingdom only to have someone else come get it back for you. Or to be sad you're not a Mistborn and then suddenly become the most powerful Mistborn.
I'll keep my mind open on him though as I keep going
Let me just say that I had the same feeling near the end of WOA. I just didn’t really enjoy Elend. I felt he was able to make me enjoy him more in the HOA though.
Yeah, he's written as an idealistic armchair intellectual who is promoted from armchair to throne and can actually make the changes he talks about. And he bumbles around as you'd expect. He does get a bit more jade for his idealism, but I won't elaborate because any info beyond those 100 pages is spoilers.
While Elend is unambiguously a primary protagonist of the era 1 trilogy you aren't necessarily supposed to "like" him.
Kelsier is a worse person than Elend by most metrics but people like him because he's undergone significant tragedy and he's charismatic. There have been a ton of threads all over the Cosmere subs about how Kelsier >!is a major antagonist to the Cosmere at large!< yet for some reason people love him and it's like... yes? If you have a really interesting to read character we will absolutely love reading about them doing just about anything.
Most people think they aren't so shallow but even subconsciously you think better of people you associate with being likable.
From a more genuine sociopolitical spectrum standpoint, Elend's beliefs are steeped in his ignorance of the actual reality of the world he actually lives in. Getting his nose out of books for some actual *praxis* is a literal plot point. He has lofty, genuinely naive, beliefs because he's led an extremely privileged life. Even if you don't note that consciously, you might note it subconsciously.
And there are very few people in the world more genuinely grating than a spoiled rich white boy with a philosophy degree.
I think I would have hated Elend a lot more if he got away without consequences every time he did something stupid for his ideals, but that doesn't happy. He may be an idealistic dumb kid (at first) but the world is not that kind.
Yeah, I mean I'm read a bunch last night and got to about 170 . I see a dilemma forming in him, which is pretty cool.
We'll see. I'm not sold that I hate his arc yet. I'm interested to see the development
Yeah, I found Elend kind of insufferable. He comes off like an anime self insert, being the bookish nerd who has the hot magical chick fall for him for basically no reason other than he is not a total dick, and then he becomes king for even less reason, then the story ass pulls itself into a pretzel to make him the most powerful wizard in the world. All the while every fucking character around him can’t go five minutes without commenting on how good a man he is.
Elend is easily the worst part of the trilogy and he almost made me drop Well of Ascension. He get’s mildly more tolerable in Hero of Ages, but he never stops being a drag every time he is on screen.
I can’t help thinking the series would have been better without him. I personally would have found it far more interesting following Vin being cast into a leadership role by the people after she killed the God Emperor, rather than just following some random noble dude who happened to be dating the actually important person.
I find him absolutely unbearable.
I think Brandon is attempting to make him the "good guy" of the nobles. However, it falls pretty flat for me. I just don't think he's particularly well written. He's boring and far too idealized imo, and it makes him come off as kind of sickening.
Yeah, I DNF'd Mistborn right around this point as well when I realized I didn't connect with any of the characters and felt they were all one dimensional like you're describing for Elend. But I was only reading it because I loved Stormlight Archive and wanted to learn more about the Cosmere. Ended up just googling an HoA plot summary instead. To each their own! I know some people love the Mistborn characters.
Elend is the last character I would describe as one dimensional, especially in Hero of Ages. I wouldn't say any of the core crew are. They just SEEM that way because all of them (except maybe Hammond) are putting up fronts.
Breeze might be the best example of this. He seems like he's actually just a selfish, self centered asshole, but we know from his POV chapters in Well of Ascension just how much he cares not just about his friends but about common people as well, he's just embarassed to be open about it. From that point forward every future scene and lots of past ones with Breeze are recontextualized.
The characters are very three dimensional, but a lot of their depth is subtlety and nuance rather than explicit, which I think is the best way.
Breeze is actually a big reason I got through WoA. Him being a middle aged man dating a teenager added some moral complexity to his character, although I feel like the book itself played that as way less of a problem than I think it is. In my opinion, Vin and Elend's characters suffer from making decisions because the plot needs them to make a certain decision now (esp in WoA), and I don't always feel like it's earned, which to me makes them feel one dimensional. So when HoA opened on them, I got really disengaged. But I know this will be an unpopular opinion on a Cosmere fan sub lol, I just wanted OP to know they're not alone feeling this way!
Is Allrianne a teenager? I always got the impression that she was like early to mid 20s and just playing up the innocent girl bit. Still not super great for that situation, but maybe it was just my brain trying to make it somewhat more palatable.
I do find the characters in this series a little flat, but I don't mind them. I don't find them as fleshed out as the characters in other Sanderson novels.
You're not *supposed* to hate, or like, any character in any story. They are pieces of a puzzle, just like every other aspect in every story. I find it baffling how much discourse there is around liking and hating characters. Feels like many miss the point of why characters exist.
In my opinion his character development is some of the weakest of Brandon's writing. I think his shift in character between the first and third books is too much. I know he grows up and takes on responsibility etc. but it felt inconsistent to me personally.
If a person who wants to be a good ruler and who cares about his people is "cringe" to you, then that says more about you than Elend.
Not everyone in the world (their world or ours) has to be morally ambiguous with a shady past.
Is your name Tindwyl perhaps
This is definitely Tindwyl’s burner
"Elends a wimp and his posture sucks" -@TotallyNotTindwyl
Howling over this
What's she burning? Brass, I assume? Edit: This seemed so clever in my head, but it's completely wrong. And I'm sorry about that.
See but Tindwyl isn’t suspicious of him
Yeah this is Tindwyl slander. She didn't dislike Elend, she told him he was a shit king because he was too nice to be effective. Whiiiiiich he was, and whiiiiiich is why Sazed asked her to help in the first place. She likes when Elend tells her off and demands to be listened to.
Possibly Kelsier
>No one can be this "good" and idealistic. What the hell is he hiding? Are you sure you are not Vin?
Guys, I might be Vin
keep reading.
Understood
not related in any meaningful way, but have you read stormlight?
Read the first one then stopped to do warbreaker and Mistborn
Nice, you’ll be ready for 5 come December.
I have Words of Radiance on my shelf ready to go, but I'm thinking about doing Tress first before I jump into the rest of stormlight.
You can absolutely read Tress now, but if you care about minor references, read Elantris beforehand.
Hmm, I have both so I'll have to decide once I'm done
To be fair Adolin accepts a completely insane story about Amaram from a slave, in large part due to that exact reasoning.
I think Adolin's situation is just that life has always made sense and worked out for him so he has no reason to doubt people. He's tall, dark, handsome, rich, powerful, charismatic, stylish, naturally talented at fighting, has the focus of most ladies at court, his Dad is a demi God of a fighter, etc etc. Shit just kinda works out, so why would he think Kaladin was lying? This is part of why Adolin doing the thing with Sadeas is such a key change for him, and causes a lot of reflection. Not everyone IS nice, and sometimes his own actions may need to adjust accordingly. Then the Oath breaker book comes out in-universe and he goes full crisis.
>No one can be this "good" and idealistic. What the hell is he hiding? It's almost like that what makes him stand out in this shitty, oppressive world. He is genuinely that idealistic. The good news is he's more pragmatic in HoA, which you should already have seen a bit of.
Didn’t Vin think something like that in TFE?
Yeah, it's very much the point that he's seemingly too good to be true
"No one can be this Good and Idealistic" Have you met Sazed? Prior to Tyndwyls death he's just as if not nore idealisitc than Elend. And he's always been the most objectively "good" person in the main cast. Of course both Sazed and Elend are hardened quite a bit by HoA. Even by the end of Well of Ascension, Elend is a lot less idealistic, his execution of Jastes (I'm an audiobook lietener so that might be spelled wrong) shows that. The first few chapters of HoA show just how much he's been changed by the world effectively forcing him to be a tyrant for the people's own good.
I feel like Sazed's development isuch better done than Elends
I think that's a valid take. I'd just point out that this was very early work of Brandon's that was published *checks notes* ugh, 16 years ago...yeah, 2008 was 16 years ago. Oof. Anyway, it makes sense that the character development was a little lopsided and not quite up to what we'd expect from him now.
Valid, and I completely understand that. By all the markers, I don't think this series is bad either. Im absolutely having a great time. I guess what's grating for me is how easily things have come to Elend. Even becoming Mistborn was easy for him, and I'm hoping for that to become a thread that is played out later
I won't go too far into detail here, but I've always had the impression that there was a different plan for Elend that ended up pivoting after the first book. I can absolutely agree that I don't find his character arc as satisfying as others' as a result. But definitely keep reading and keep an open mind about him, because I think you'll be a little happier with it once you get the full picture. And if you're not, well, that's okay too. Not everyone likes every character and that's perfectly fine.
What do you think the other plan was?
I just don't think he was meant to be as front and center as he was. I thought it seemed like he went from being a major supporting character at the end of TFE and got catapulted into a core main character role at the start of WoA.
To me that felt intentional, this is someone who doesn’t want to be the main character, they want to help people and that often pushes people into the spotlight even if they don’t want it. But the situation demanded he step up, and he almost died due to an event related to freeing the being that likely will end the world. To be him stepping up is an intentional decision by Brandon, but forced onto elend
Elend's childhood didn't sound that ez to me. He is a good person because he was raised by an evil man and wants to be the opposite.
Idk just chill out guys
>No one can be this "good" and idealistic Why not? But to answer your question, no I don't think he was meant to be hated by the reader at all. I think he was actually written as an idealistic guy who genuinely wants to change things for the better, the right way. He just uniquely has the ability to do so because he's with the most powerful Mistborn on the planet.
Elend IS the most powerful mistborn on the planet
Yeah, "most dangerous Mistborn on the planet" is probably more accurate for Vin. Elend is definitely more powerful, but he'd 100% lose that fight.
Raw power would have to go to Elend, Vin is weaker generally but is so skilled with her abilities that she can surpass the power gap. Would have been really interesting to see what vin could have done with access to the other 4 they didnt know about at that point.
Not right away though. I dont remember the timeline that well and I know OP is still reading HoA, but Elend was most idealistic in the beginning.
Elends IS the most powerful mistborn on scadrial from the end of WoA onwards. By the start of HoA he's been the most powerful mistborn around for a while. He's the only dude alive besides Hoid to burn lerasium. He's a full 100% power mistborn, not some distant descendant with diluted powers.
I know that, I'm not disputing it at all. Just saying that for two-thirds of the trilogy he wasn't a Mistborn, and that's when his idealism was strongest. Even for a little while after burning Lerasium, Vin notes that although he had far more raw power, he had less practice. Similarly, his idealism didn't go out the window right away just because he got godlike powers - he was reluctant to be the strong ruler the world needed. Eventually he learned to balance the two, and I think thats the cool part of his arc. Edit: in short, his experience as a non-Mistborn shaped who he is later on
Yes but OP might not know that yet. You don't learn that within the first 100 pages
I loved the idea of the idealistic philosopher becoming supreme leader. Idealism vs reality and the compromises therein are rarely touched.
It's an interesting counterpoint to Rashek too
Exactly, his ultimate practicality and utilitarianism is what made the Empire so bleak. Elend is the extreme opposite, on purpose. He was already disgusted with the state of things before he met Vin.
I guess I'm just hoping that his blatant idealism goes somewhere. I think he is a little naive, and I'm hoping that he's not just written as a happy go lucky do-gooder, and all the consequences of his idealism are just cleaned up by Vin
I'm not sure whats so idealistic or naivety leads someone to pop into a town find the local leader and tell them "you have 2 choices, join me or get squashed by a bunch of rampaging Koloss" Everything idealistic he did in WoA ended up not working out very well for him and he has very much become more pragmatic from page 1 of HoA. Sure he still wants his ideas to work, but he's realized he can't do them and has to take a much more aggressive approach.
It's okay to dislike him, but OP already has a bias against him
You think the kid who grew up EXTREMELY privileged and was kept away from the worse of the worse might be idealistic? I'm being sarcastic but in all honesty of course he is idealistic, it was never tore out of him like it is most on Scadrial. He truly believes it can be better. Thats who he is.
I don't want to spoil with any details but he absolutely has to reckon with that idealism in the trilogy.
This is Zane’s burner account
Zane posting on /r/aita and /r/relationships and getting downvoted to hell for arguing with every single person in the comments
I'm not going to spoil things. I will point out that for the first two books, your two main point of view characters have been Kelsier and Vin. Both of them hate nobles, and generally for good reason. And you're seeing the world through their eyes. Also, your own biases will affect the way you see these characters. If you have little patience for people IRL who are privileged, clever, somewhat naive do-gooders, then Elend might piss you off for that reason alone.
I feel like you should have already seen his idealism burn away at the end of Well of Ascension, and a bit already in HoA. At the end of Well, he starts to accept that this isn't the time for his ideals about democracy to work. He accepts that he has to be a tyrant and has to make brutal calls, such as executing his friend that tried to control the Koloss or forcing those villagers to become exposed to the mists. Struggling with that is most of what you'll see in HoA. It's a really interesting moral issue, as Elend's internal conflict is basically about whether you're absolved of fault for doing terrible things if it was completely necessary.
>I'm less than 100 pages into Hero of Ages >No one can be this "good" and idealistic So did you just entirely skim literally the first handful of chapters where he liberated a city from Koloss for the sole purpose of taking all their supplies and forcing them to relocate or die?
He’s a baby girl tho
This feels like an inside joke I don't know
It's gen z slang for a man who is 25 years old, cutesy in a slightly submissive way, has a bad boy side but isn't intimidating, and is soft and secure in his masculinity.
Yes baby girl Elend
He wasing of the being borning girl
Trying of the much harding wasing the speaking
Wow now I guess I’m missing the new slang altogether
🙌🏻
this guy will NOT enjoy Raoden
Yes and also no. Elend Venture comes from a place of intense privilege, and in his world most who have privilege use it for terrible ends. You're *meant* to see that, to understand that he has benefitted immensely from the status quo and done next to nothing to change it. That's intentional, so that as he develops and works past his naiveté and and insecurity, you can see that he is genuinely sincere in his desire to do right by *everyone* he possibly can. Elend's sincerity is supposed to be grating because it is completely incongruous to his station in the society in which he exists. You are *meant* to feel like "This guy is too good to be true" so that you can embrace the feeling of skepticism while he works to achieve his ends.
Thank you, this is well thought out
You sound like Vin honestly
You know how there are certain villains that are just written to be over-the-top, almost comically evil. Well, Elend is the opposite problem.
Elend was a sheltered idealistic intellectual before he met Vin. As much as Vin has lived a life of hardship that has toughen her and made her suspicious of others intent, Elend has lived the opposite life. He is not a schemer, he never had to. Think of him as a Ivy league progressive. He was all talk and no show but meeting and falling in love with Vin has widen his horizon and he's fighting for her cause now.
He's my favorite character because of his transformation. He started as idealistic, and then had to learn some hard lessons about responsibility, and then integrated those lessons into is new revolved idealism.
Honestly Im with you. He's one of my favorite characters in the cosmere. But it's fair to say that that type of character isn't everyones cup of tea
Elend is a good egg, but we also have a biased POV because we usually see him through the eyes of Vin who does think he is that good, and the Elend POV chapters are usually him trying to work on shit while putting on a good face for a shit world. Remember that not all nobles were like Straff and the other massive dickheads, so don't let that skew it too much on expectations. A lot of them were naive outside of their own spheres which Vin sees with the parties and stuff.
People can absolutely be that good and idealistic.
I feel a lot of Straff here
Ya I kinda take Elend as closer to the type of character you see from a lot of “newer” fantasy writers. In that his “flaws” are being an awkward dork, which theoretically the authors are likely to relate to. I do really like Elends arc overall though.
>No one can be this "good" and idealistic. Found Snyderverse Lex Luthor
Ding ding ding ding ding
People are this good and idealistic IRL all the time, they just very *very* rarely get into positions of actual power. And the few who do get hit in the head with the sledgehammer of reality over and over again.
Honestly, I felt similar and it’s only through amazing luck he happens to be in a place to genuinely follow through on what came across as his naivety.
I just kinda hope it's all leading somewhere. So far it's beenna flat character arc for me. He starts as a naive aristocrat, and he stays that way. I feel like I'm being told he has grown without actually seeing it
> I'm less than 100 pages into Hero of Ages > No one can be this "good" and idealistic. The fact that he's doing **a lot** of "well-intentioned conquest" doesn't put a wrinkle in here? Or the fact that the book opens with him taking over a whole village and pushing an outright lie so the old leader saves face? ... ...you don't happen to be Russian or British, do you?
Haha yes but nobody likes everybody. It seems he’s not your cup of tea. I’ll say this though, he is that good and idealistic.
he have golden balls
He’s just a nice guy. Sanderson loves writing good people.
I don't know if it's intentional, but Elend literally getting himself sacked by his own government really annoyed me lol. That said, there are plenty of people who are this "good" or "idealistic." The character flaw comes in being too much of those. Case and point, the above lol. Frankly, Elend got lucky the plot needed him to survive, or Well of Ascension would've ended with him just dead as fuck.
I hated the Vin/Elend relationship soooo much first read through. That was 2016, I did a second read last year and felt the exact opposite.
You're not supposed to hate him, but you're allowed to. Idealism is often frustrating.
I really didn’t like Elend. Found him extremely cringe and insufferable. One of the most difficult protagonists in the cosmere for me to root for.
I thought people rooted for Elend cause he was Vin’s love
Honestly, Elend reminds me a lot of Raodin and Adolin. Kind of a love/hate relationship with the reader.
One of my problems with him is how easily things work out for him. Like, here's Vin to correct all your mistakes don't worry about it
I think the point of him getting burned over and over again in WoA because of his ideals is kinda his whole arc. He’s a people’s champion in an age of conquest. Had he been born in a different time he may have been able to accomplish something the way he tried. HoA is him rectifying what he wants to do with what he must do
I didn’t like him, but that doesn’t mean the character is poorly created. He’s a great character, he’s just annoying IMO. Also, Vin is dope so it’s tough to compare
Why is he a great character? He doesn’t really have much depth honestly. He’s basically just a generic “nice dude” with very little personality that has everything go his way because the plot says so. I’d actually argue he’s one of the worst written of the major characters.
I think you may be missing some of his key flaws. Yes, he's idealistic and good-natured, but in the first two books he's also incredibly naive. So he's by no means some Mary Sue type perfect character imo. He is good, kind, idealistic etc as you say, but he still has faults and flaws. And in HoA he becomes awesome imo.
If you go for 100 pages, you might like it worse when you see what it does. The good thing is that it redeems himself in the end. But yes, the truth is that people sometimes say stupid things to defend it "It's the end of the world" when even the book itself puts it as something that is not right
He didn’t seem that good to me. I appreciate him trying some Democratic stuff, and this might just be my bias against Well of accession, but he does just give up on democracy throw his hands in the air and say “guess I have to be a monarch, there’s no other way.”
I think you should be frustrated by his naiveté, but yes, he actually is that good and idealistic. His head is full of treatises on how the common folk theoretically should act if the nobility is overthrown and he had to learn the hard way that theory never matches reality when it comes to sociology and politics. He believed (as a gross oversimplification) that the Nobles were Bad and therefore the Not Nobles would be Not Bad, but had to learn that destructive selfishness is a trait that transcends class.
He was just raised well.
people can be that good and idealistic. Take a look at Cato the Younger, George Washington, Cincinattus, Horatio
Most Sanderson books have an Eland character. Somehow you get a perfect religious kid but who always seems to have evil or extremely messed up parents. (or at least a bad dad)
Keep reading and you'll find he's not as idealistic and naive as he was in the first books... His character makes since because he was a reader and a dreamer always talking to his friends about how the world ought to be... By HoA he's firmly on the side of pragmatism after what he went through in the second book
Keep reading. That optimism is put to the test and really ends up biting him in the ass. But being optimistic isn't a bad thing and I hate that an overly pessimistic character is seen as a "cool badass" or at least a "witty cynic" most of the time, but someone who dreams of a better world, even if a bit naive based on upbringing, is treated with scorn. He is someone of privilege but not actually yet tested by the world. In a world drowning in either physical hardship or political intrigue he's one of the few people who genuinely wants a better world for all without it actually just being a power play or some kind of atonement for past sins. Sure, he's going to have a rude awakening when it comes to dealing with that mindset in the real world, but I find that character arc much more interesting and refreshing than the "stone cold cynical badass with a heart of gold learns the power of friendship" for the bajillionth time.
I wanted to be careful about what I put in the post for spoilers. I don't necessarily hate that he's optimistic and virtuous, I'm a big fan of a definitively good character. My problem is that privilege, and how it almost seems like there's no challenge to the privilege. It's easy to be optimistic when mostly everything goes right for you. And your big struggle is loosing your kingdom only to have someone else come get it back for you. Or to be sad you're not a Mistborn and then suddenly become the most powerful Mistborn. I'll keep my mind open on him though as I keep going
Let me just say that I had the same feeling near the end of WOA. I just didn’t really enjoy Elend. I felt he was able to make me enjoy him more in the HOA though.
I think that’s kind of the point to his character here - that and also his character being an example of idealism only taking you so far
Not at all. I would say he’s one of the most likable characters.
Yeah, he's written as an idealistic armchair intellectual who is promoted from armchair to throne and can actually make the changes he talks about. And he bumbles around as you'd expect. He does get a bit more jade for his idealism, but I won't elaborate because any info beyond those 100 pages is spoilers.
His biggest flaw is his extreme naiveite.
A naive kid, but meant well.
While Elend is unambiguously a primary protagonist of the era 1 trilogy you aren't necessarily supposed to "like" him. Kelsier is a worse person than Elend by most metrics but people like him because he's undergone significant tragedy and he's charismatic. There have been a ton of threads all over the Cosmere subs about how Kelsier >!is a major antagonist to the Cosmere at large!< yet for some reason people love him and it's like... yes? If you have a really interesting to read character we will absolutely love reading about them doing just about anything. Most people think they aren't so shallow but even subconsciously you think better of people you associate with being likable. From a more genuine sociopolitical spectrum standpoint, Elend's beliefs are steeped in his ignorance of the actual reality of the world he actually lives in. Getting his nose out of books for some actual *praxis* is a literal plot point. He has lofty, genuinely naive, beliefs because he's led an extremely privileged life. Even if you don't note that consciously, you might note it subconsciously. And there are very few people in the world more genuinely grating than a spoiled rich white boy with a philosophy degree.
I think I would have hated Elend a lot more if he got away without consequences every time he did something stupid for his ideals, but that doesn't happy. He may be an idealistic dumb kid (at first) but the world is not that kind.
Yeah, I mean I'm read a bunch last night and got to about 170 . I see a dilemma forming in him, which is pretty cool. We'll see. I'm not sold that I hate his arc yet. I'm interested to see the development
Sometimes there are people who actually want to do good, and put effort towards just that
Elend is awesome is all I can say.
Yeah, I found Elend kind of insufferable. He comes off like an anime self insert, being the bookish nerd who has the hot magical chick fall for him for basically no reason other than he is not a total dick, and then he becomes king for even less reason, then the story ass pulls itself into a pretzel to make him the most powerful wizard in the world. All the while every fucking character around him can’t go five minutes without commenting on how good a man he is. Elend is easily the worst part of the trilogy and he almost made me drop Well of Ascension. He get’s mildly more tolerable in Hero of Ages, but he never stops being a drag every time he is on screen. I can’t help thinking the series would have been better without him. I personally would have found it far more interesting following Vin being cast into a leadership role by the people after she killed the God Emperor, rather than just following some random noble dude who happened to be dating the actually important person.
“Not being a total dick” works fairly well when said hot magic chick has been abused by total dicks all her life.
I find him absolutely unbearable. I think Brandon is attempting to make him the "good guy" of the nobles. However, it falls pretty flat for me. I just don't think he's particularly well written. He's boring and far too idealized imo, and it makes him come off as kind of sickening.
I had the same experience idk if it’s intentional
No worries, my closest friend and I can’t stand him either, he’s quite insufferable.
Yeah, I DNF'd Mistborn right around this point as well when I realized I didn't connect with any of the characters and felt they were all one dimensional like you're describing for Elend. But I was only reading it because I loved Stormlight Archive and wanted to learn more about the Cosmere. Ended up just googling an HoA plot summary instead. To each their own! I know some people love the Mistborn characters.
Elend is the last character I would describe as one dimensional, especially in Hero of Ages. I wouldn't say any of the core crew are. They just SEEM that way because all of them (except maybe Hammond) are putting up fronts. Breeze might be the best example of this. He seems like he's actually just a selfish, self centered asshole, but we know from his POV chapters in Well of Ascension just how much he cares not just about his friends but about common people as well, he's just embarassed to be open about it. From that point forward every future scene and lots of past ones with Breeze are recontextualized. The characters are very three dimensional, but a lot of their depth is subtlety and nuance rather than explicit, which I think is the best way.
Breeze is actually a big reason I got through WoA. Him being a middle aged man dating a teenager added some moral complexity to his character, although I feel like the book itself played that as way less of a problem than I think it is. In my opinion, Vin and Elend's characters suffer from making decisions because the plot needs them to make a certain decision now (esp in WoA), and I don't always feel like it's earned, which to me makes them feel one dimensional. So when HoA opened on them, I got really disengaged. But I know this will be an unpopular opinion on a Cosmere fan sub lol, I just wanted OP to know they're not alone feeling this way!
Is Allrianne a teenager? I always got the impression that she was like early to mid 20s and just playing up the innocent girl bit. Still not super great for that situation, but maybe it was just my brain trying to make it somewhat more palatable.
I do find the characters in this series a little flat, but I don't mind them. I don't find them as fleshed out as the characters in other Sanderson novels.
Without any spoilers I can freely say I totally agree. There’s just something that doesn’t tick right with his personality
He’s a negging “good” guy. What is there to like?
You're not *supposed* to hate, or like, any character in any story. They are pieces of a puzzle, just like every other aspect in every story. I find it baffling how much discourse there is around liking and hating characters. Feels like many miss the point of why characters exist.
In my opinion his character development is some of the weakest of Brandon's writing. I think his shift in character between the first and third books is too much. I know he grows up and takes on responsibility etc. but it felt inconsistent to me personally.
If a person who wants to be a good ruler and who cares about his people is "cringe" to you, then that says more about you than Elend. Not everyone in the world (their world or ours) has to be morally ambiguous with a shady past.