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Which character most annoys you?

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 7:41 pm
by lennyathena
for me, it was randi. her totally twisted views on achilles and her son really disgusted me. han qing-jao and her super-devoutness was a close second.

you guys?

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 8:26 pm
by spanish_rockette
Virlomi! she is acting like a godess. i mean in shadow if the hegemon, shes kinda ok. by the next one, she gets annoying. like what happend to the page, but if itsher? :!: now everytime see her name in any of the books, i skip the page. then i missed something important i reread the page.

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 9:38 pm
by Janus%TheDoorman
It's been a while since I read through the Speaker set but I remember always being annoyed with Novinha. All the time.

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 9:57 pm
by spanish_rockette
Novinha is next to virlomi on my list

Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:00 pm
by ptr.arkanian
For me its Allesandra and her mother in Ender in Exile. like, what the hell did they have to do with anything. Without their stupid part in the story, that book could've flowed better and not been so irritatingly stereotyped. It did nothing for the story except hurt it.

Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 7:53 pm
by spanish_rockette
why? to me ender in exlie is about ender growing up, and going through what every teenage boy throughs. and the thing that ties ender's game to speaker for the dead. so i think alessandra and her mother are kinda important cause i cant see them not in it but not so much. but i do agree with DORABELLA being annoying.

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 12:53 am
by Janus%TheDoorman
I'd bet Alessandra and her mother exist because OSC realized that simply having Ender out maneuver the Captain for the governorship would have been boring and exactly what we expected, given that it's a foregone conclusion, but adding in those two brought a bit of character drama to the events. Maybe he also felt the need to show the kind of situations that would compel people to make risky journeys to the colonies, but the whole crazy-ass grandmother thing is a bit too much for that.

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 4:56 pm
by lennyathena
i remember reading that it was from a short story osc had written that he put in exile later. but i kind of liked the story, the little half-romance with alessandra made ender's life a little more "normal" and it was interesting to see how dorabella was trying to manipulate things.

dorabella didn't annoy me so much as amuse me, but novinha did. she's trying to play the "innocent-girl-who's-lost-everything" but she's so... aggh.

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 8:05 am
by spanish_rockette
i agree with Janus about the crazy-ass grandmother. too much. and dorabella is annoy and amusing in way. but virlomi and novinha are still annoying for different reasons.

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 4:52 pm
by neo-dragon
No one else wanted to smack Qing-Jao upside the head?

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 6:25 pm
by spanish_rockette
i skipped those pages because they got boring, but then i went back and i read some of them.

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2010 9:12 pm
by perspicacious.emperor
Pretty much all the girls annoyed me.

Except Petra.

Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2010 8:25 pm
by lennyathena
No one else wanted to smack Qing-Jao upside the head?
but of course! :D

while i was reading i was intrinsically shouting "QING-JAO GET A BRAIN WILL YOU?" i don't think she heard me though.

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 1:08 pm
by 1chapelcredit
Novinha, Quara and Qing-jao were all almost unbearably horrible and, for that matter, quite one-dimensional in their awfulness. If I didn't know better, after reading Xenocide and Children of the Mind I would assume that OSC must really, really hate women.

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 1:17 pm
by spanish_rockette
I found Quara really amusing. To me, Quara is the older sister I'll never have.

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 4:49 pm
by Psudo
I was fascinated with Qing-Jao. It's a little cruel for you to condemn her as "horrible" for the brainwashing she endured from a genetic alteration imposed upon her by a tyrannous government. You might as well call victims of Stockholm Syndrome "traitors," as if they had some choice in the matter.

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 8:28 pm
by neo-dragon
Oh yes, she was certainly a victim, and pitiable, but still frustrating in her blindness.

Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 8:26 am
by Psudo
Oh yes, she was certainly a victim, and pitiable, but still frustrating in her blindness.
Aren't we all.

Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 9:00 am
by neo-dragon
Some A LOT more than others.

Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 4:00 pm
by neo-dragon
Re-reading Speaker, I had forgotten how cute Quara was before she grew up and became bitchy.
Quara: "You only lasted a couple of days. Everybody hates you now."
Ender: "Do you?"
Quara: "Oh, yes. I hated you first of all. Except maybe Quim... You want to see me do arithmetic?"
And later:
Quara: "Is the Speaker our father now?"

:lol:

Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 2:44 pm
by spanish_rockette
That is true. Quara was really cute. And when I read Xenocide and Children of the Mind, I was like, "What happened to the cute little girl?" But she was amusing at the same time.

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 2:57 pm
by Jeesh_girl15
For me, I disliked Virlomi, Randi, and Novinha. Don't know why I had to say that, because you guys have already hit on the reasons not to like them. But I felt the need to state my opinion.

I didn't think Qing-Jao was that bad. She did have a (was it genetic?) condition. However, I think she went slightly mad in Xenocide, so if anything, I pitied her.

Quara wasn't so bad either. She wasn't as nice as her other family members (so yeah, she was kind of bitchy), but she had reasons too.

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 10:23 am
by Glaucon
Wow, I never thought about how most of the "annoying" characters are women. And the most annoying male in EG is named "pretty boy." OSC is like the Christopher Nolan of novelists.

... I would therefore like to nominate Nolan to front the EG/ES movie. ha

I hate Novinha.

Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 10:04 am
by TO117
Novinha. She was so freakin mean to Ender! He didnt deserve any of it. He was doing the best he could. I can understand people saying Han-Qing Jao, but I discount her because she was twisted by her religion.

Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 4:43 pm
by spanish_rockette
Novinha would not be that if way if her life was different.
it all started when her parents died when she was like 5, I really dont remember what age she was when they died, i havent read the book in a while.

Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 3:09 am
by JeffersonSteelflex
Ever time I read through'em I get sick of reading about Plikt. Could've filled out more about Olhado or Grego or even Jakt, she was so far in the background.

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 8:35 pm
by MisterQwerty
The only character that really annoyed me was Randi.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 3:49 pm
by spanish_rockette
Plikt, I feel never had an importance in the book, just because she was in the background. So I dont really get annoyed by her

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:22 pm
by MisterQwerty
Okay, Quing-Jao was also unbearable.

Ender

Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 11:53 pm
by Locke Delphiki
Is it weird to say ender annoyed me most? I mean I care about the character and I like him, and his progression really spoke to me. At the end however, both in ender's game, and Ender in exile how he emotionally divorces his friends for no other reason than. "He's moved on" really irked me, Alai specifically. We watch a relationship evolve the entire book, a deep bond being formed, and then it just fizzles still doesn't sit well with me.

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:35 am
by Mitchi
Novinha, hands down. she's just so irritating, and a giant walking pity party. mother of the year, amirite?

also Quara. for obvious reasons already mentioned. Quim in SftD also.annoyed the crap out of me, but I liked that he mellowed out.

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 6:46 pm
by spanish_rockette
Uhhh, have you ever heard that people grow apart??


and I was never annoyed of Quim, because he was i guess religious or something.

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 6:51 pm
by waffleman
Vrilomi and Randi definitely. It just makes me annoyed at their stupidity/ignorance.

Grow apart

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 11:04 pm
by Locke Delphiki
Grow apart sure, after long stretches of time, and growth, this was a few months, a year tops they were away from one another (Talking everyone not just Alai) and he's visibly excited to hear from them. however I'm not saying I don't understand that after all he went through he might feel that way, It just annoyed me that it went down that way

Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2011 11:55 am
by Kill Devil Hill
I could never be annoyed by Ender. D: He's one of my all-time favourite characters of ANY books (behind only Atticus Finch and Holden Caulfield). Then again, I have friends that hate Jay Gatsby, so anything's possible.

I would say Novinha (particularly in Xenocide and Children of the Mind; she had a good excuse in Speaker for the Dead) and Randi. Especially Randi. Reading the passages about her was downright excruciating. I've never been so pissed at a character.

I liked Dorabella and Alessandra, but their storyline wasn't necessary. I loved EiE, and it's one of my favourites in the series, but Alessandra and Dorabella were certainly not the reason.

I have sympathy for Qing Jao (especially at the beginning of Xenocide) and Virlomi. Virlomi did become a bit of a megalomaniac, but she had good intentions at the outset. Anybody in her position could have ended up that way.

I'm surprised nobody said Zeck was annoying. I get he was abused and the whole nine yards, but if I hadn't known that and if I was Dink Meeker, that boy would've been dead to me.