#cfsbf

Take a couple characters from Stormlight for an example:

Amaram is annoying because he’s wrong and loud and has no self-awareness. That last aspect is the key to it all. It’s absolutely infuriating that Amaram never thinks he’s done anything wrong, and that is irritating in a *good* way because it provokes a sense of justice and encourages further sympathy with Kaladin. He is so annoying and also the worst, actually, and it’s great.

Hoid is annoying because he definitely knows what’s happening better than you, and he won’t tell you, and he has so many secrets that he is so smarmy about. I won’t lie, I found him so irritating on my first read of the books. I get it now. It’s good characterization. It’s why everyone hates him and thinks he’s the worst. And it’s why the scene in RoW where Odium gets the best of him is so effective.

The most notable traits for Taln was his dependenability and his iron will. The more he suffered, the stronger he became until something snapped in him and he ceased to be a person and became a sapient seal. He didn't break, so he could not break. It was too late. His humanity was replaced by his mythology as the Bearer of Agonies.

—

Where my lady laid her head

Grew a many-shaded gift,

Which collected was reflected in a puddle by a rift.

Where the living give the dead

Grew a huddle of a town,

And its towers made the bowers where my lady laid her down.

For the people in the flowers Edgli fashioned her a boon

That the edge of life should come forgiving, some gone late to death.

With a passion in their fates

And a power in their Breath,

So my lady’s chosen givers came to live another moon.

With the oils of a painter and the fortune of a fool

Did my lady’s people toil for a portion of her grace.

With the visions of a saint,

She would guide this shaded place,

And her people with derision lay aside their fated rule.

As the years become the ages and the sages lose their art,

So the people of a vessel grow to fear their lady’s heart.

As they nestled in the rift

Snuggled in her hand

Warring for her gift

Struggling for land

Peoples torn apart

Thus a folk in reddened crowns

Lay in doom down to the boy

With their dead as gray as stone

Bearing axes sown with life.

Fell the blooms in browning blight

In a barren field of strife

To a smoke as black as night

Wielded only to destroy.

But my lady saw her beauty in the vibrant shades of death

And she watched to the exclusion of her duty to the kind

An illusion yet to fade

In the fiber of her mind

When a fellow of the chosen laid his blade and gave his breath.

So a vessel lives and breathes,

As divisions rise and fall.

So my lady chose their savior though she slumbered through his call.

In designs our vision weaves

The behavior of our lands

So their futures without number always nestle in our hands.

May the people of the bower know my lady’s caring face.

May they know her grief is wider than the power of her grace.

May they thank her for her guidance through their brief and narrow years,

From the perspective of a visitor to the capital of the Elendel Basin in Mistborn Era 2

Those sullen streets

With wings of cold

Lit by lights

And dreams of gold

A shining mirror of the land

That we claimed

We couldn't stand

Luthadel, it went and came

Changed oppressions,

Changed its name

So no one now knows

🎵🎶🎵