I think I remember that you be have read Brandon Sanderson, but I can't remember if you've read Mistborn. If you have, I'd be interested to hear what you think about Vin as a character. My boyfriend thinks she's annoyingly emotional and too overpowered, do you agree?
You remember correctly, my friend! I love Sanderson and everything he touches, that includes Mistborn. Your boyfriend and I very much disagree on both the overpowered and the annoyingly emotional part. I hope you’ve both read the entire first trilogy because there is about to be some spoilers!
If he thinks Vin is overpowered then does he not think Kelsier and Elend are overpowered too? I think giving Vin that much power is excusable because Kell and Elend also have that same amount of power, just like the other Mistborns in the story. It shows the power she has is not just because she’s a special snowflake, it just comes with the territory of being a Mistborn. Then there is the fact that Vin is a bit more clever with her powers than Elend, but that has two easy explanations 1) She grew up Skaa and a street kid, she is a clever cookie and 2) Kelsier trained her. And Kelsier was amazing.
Personally, I think Sanderson shows that Vin is powerful, but she is not unbeatable. We get to se her genuinely vulnerable. She is in real danger a lot of the times, she almost gets beaten a few times, she gets captured, she has to be saved and she has a lot of help along the way. I mean, the biggest example of this is if Marsh hadn’t come through in both the ending of The Final Empire and the ending of Hero of Ages things would have ended a lot differently.
I would be curios to know why he thinks Vin is annoyingly emotional. Because while Kelsier is my favorite ever he is also way more emotionally driven than Vin. It’s just that we get more of Vin’s inner dialogue. Vin is a teenager. Teenagers’ emotions are all over the place. Whatever they feel it’s hightened because hormones and brain development etc etc etc. And in this story she is surrounded by adults so her seeming more emotional than them only makes sense. Second of all, Vin’s emotional journey is important to the story. Learning to trust people, to trust herself, learning to care for people, learning to love and finding her own values and how she looks at the world. I don’t think Mistbron would be half the trilogy it is without that aspect.
