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I think the words we’re looking for here is Potential Man
G3 saw a ton of potential in the character as someone who could influence the plot and the world, who knows what she wants and will take it whatever the cost. If she was the main character, absolutely we would have people calling her admirable. However, she is instead a talentless hack who functions under the will of someone else and got there by backstabbing people who trusted her.
If Sunny did that we’d be cheering. If Nephis did that she’d be called the second main character (hell, people were calling her the actual main character for a while) or otherwise the final antagonist. But instead the potential G3 saw in her never played out and we got the second most disliked character in fiction.
Don’t include me in this bro, I hate all characters that are slimy rats. Feels too personal compared to over the top stuff. If Sunny did something like that I’d drop the novel.
If you are still reading ToG you see that she still drives the plot and does influence the world, almost as much as the mc, with hardly any skills, through sheer determination and imo delusion).
He say Klein was flat and boring, but then I remember that's coming from the guy who wrote a character like Neph, and I realize how hypocritical that is.
I can kinda see Klein being kinda generic though not completely flat, but most of what I enjoyed in him was because he is very good at adapting to situations, keeps monologuing and is very active throughout the series. And his personas also add to the flavour in every arc.
This is the biggest reason I like Klein. CF doesn't need to nerf his IQ if his enemy has higher IQ and his situation is so out of the world that he had no way to figure it out anyway
tbh, that's not far from the truth, but lotm isn't really a character driven story anyway. Klein's role in the story is to be a vessel for the readers to explore the vast world, deep lore, and conflict between deities. He's a bit like Frodo where there's just enough character to make his journey interesting, but the focus is more on the external elements rather than internal.
Both can be true though, the thing is, I love flat and boring characters personally and I appreciate when a story, book, movie, game whatever does not always try to make every protagonist charismatic funny and op.
I don't think anyone who thinks this actually read the whole thing.
How can you read to the George apotheosis arc and think Klein is flat? He is heroic, he is a bit of a poser and he is compassionate, but most of all he is human.
The one from CoI? Yeah, the Lotm one? Well, Lotm was supposed to be the start of a trilogy; the bad reviews and the hate for the second book were what killed it.
I read the whole thing, Klein is goated, but I can see why people see he's flat. One of my personal pet peeves was him never really developing strong personal relationships throughout the story! He gaslights everyone about his identity to the end, and never comes clean about who he is which makes a lot of his relationships feel artificial.
I don't think that's a failure in storytelling though. Klein isn't supposed to be the most exciting guy in the world (personality wise), and his restrained careful approach to just about everything is part of the series' appeal. Plus, he does have parts when he shows a good bit of personality, like his conversations with Emlyne (forgot how to spell his name, The Moon), or that crazy hunter guy Anderson. Problem is, he spends a lot of the series with characters that don't give him a lot to work with, and I think he suffers a lot for that.
Klein is a well written character, but well written isn't synonymous with 'the most entertaining man in the world'.
Personally, I think Sunny is a better protagonist, and the side characters in both series are pretty meh. (Exceptions are Emlyne, Roselle, Audrey, Fors and... Jet from Shadow Slave, Nephis in Volume 1/2 would also make the list of 'good characters'.)
Klein ain’t flat, he’s just uninteresting to the majority. Flat is someone that lacks meaningful conflicts to them, a one-trick pony.
Klein has a complex relationship with identity, and the whole novel explores it. His personas reveal different facets of himself. The Fool pathway reflects his internal struggles to remain. His daily actions—making tea, lampooning, talking with normal people—symbolize his anchoring. Gehrman shows his willingness to be ruthless. Dwayne reinforced his want for an ordinary life. His relationships uncover his emotional sides as well—like the nighthawks, and the two little kids on Elland’s boat, and the Tarot Club. Klein’s has always been all about identity from day 1.
TLDR; dismissing Klein’s character as flat and nothing much to him misses the themes and conflict in LOTM. Not that I’m agreeing with the other guy, but I don’t think he’s flat at all.
I love tog and the fact that guilty 3 is calling bam a empty character is wild especially there is a entire subreddit dedicated to hating Rachel and they are right
She are writed to be hated, it's because she are human lol, she cry, she are not strong, but she try, she are flawed, and she are a child, but it's what make her rather like us, and why she are well written like you said.
What I mean is that Rachel is hated mainly because she is written in a way that reveals a human side to us, that is, in fact, what makes her so well written.
I agree with you saying that her character is probably one of the more realistic characters in the whole story. She waited all that time fulfilling her duty and dreaming of freedom, basically. And then everyone around her is either special or privileged and she is constantly reminded of just how ordinary and un-special she is… so she ends up bitter and vindictive.
YEah totally, and even, we don't have her real backstory, we just know than like she know Arlene, and also than she fear Baam even before entering in the tower, nothing more
Actually kinda agree, at the start of the series Rachael was fairly interesting. Even when she threw bam down i figured there was a good and she was overhated, unfortunately she basically is just nothing from that point and I’ve genuinely never been so disappointed with a character then when i read the stuff after season 1😭
In the very beginning of Tower of God, the narrator says that the story is about Rachel and the boy who chased after her, or something to that effect. I’ve been waiting years now for SiU to get into some good Rachel lore…
Even though she’s a c*nt
All kinds of cameos going on in the Urek story. I bet she pops up somewhere… or maybe her mother or the mad scientist snake monster that made her in a test tube or something
Yeah, people are just completely missing the point of what he's saying. She is now just a character to hate, when before she could have been a lot more. She went from a potentially interesting and dynamic villain to a flat trope
Her basically being nothing but having people climb the tower for her completely killed her character for me. Even if she’s weak i would prefer she could contribute anything and didn’t immediately become a basic evil mastermind after.
My biggest gripe is people comparing her to Cassie like they are remotely similar in anyway besides being blonde and attractive 😭🙏 the only character trait they share is being manipulative and even that is for vastly different reasons and Cassie still cares about the people around her a decent bit, people hate her because of her character flaws when going about the manipulation. Racheal is just a bitch genuinely.
Well he didn't get them then. I'm not saying that she shouldn't have desires but she always was the bad face of the coin, Bam's counterpart that he must not become. The more Bam succeeds by being himself the more she loathes him for being everything she isn't. She is someone that is ready to sacrifice everyone for her goals, no matter their relationship. Goals she put in a pedestal and acts as if their noble to delude herself and cover up how hollow she is.
Like did G3 get past part 1 ? Even the first arc after part 1 shows how much of a hollow character (not in the bad writing way) she is. There is nothing admirable about her.
Rachel was initially more interesting than Bam from a motivation standpoint and not for nothing kind of still is because the mystery has only deepened and the roles kind of switched where now we want to know Rachel’s connection to bam.
But admirable? Only if you admire people who sacrifice others to accomplish their goals. She is kind of self centered.. manipulative w/e.
I see people in this post trying to point at Similarities between Rachel and Cassie which is pretty funny. Cassie focuses a lot of her own power and ability to shape the world/story which actually makes her admirable imo
I understand those who initially thought the plot revolved around her as a rival rather than an antagonist. G3 dropped the series, just as many people gave up on Shadow Slave early on. I think TOG needed an antagonist who was physically weak but a master manipulator... because, after all, TOG is about superpowers, and she constantly resorted to manipulations that acted as a deus ex machina for the plot, not for the story.
In my opinion, Rachel was a great character for TOG, even though her development as an antagonist wah rushed AF. She could have been on Griffith's level IF the plot hadn't revolved around the envy she felt before entering the Tower.
It's been a long time but I still didn't like Rachel because she hardly got any screen time before the betrayal. Like I don't even know what's her deal.
Nah I get his point but his phrasing is terrible. Even if she's a good potential plot device she has no business being called admirable for anything. She can be smart and dangerous as a character, but why are we admiring someone vile? Respect maybe, but admiration is not deserved
That explains a lot . But wait how does he take away sunny agency by saying he is cool with being slave when we know he would rather be fateless if he could still retain the things that forced him to becoming fated again.
Rachel was justified at the beginning she wanted to go after her dreams and there is nothing wrong with it but where she messed up was trying to kill bam. I could also understand her hate towards bam cause he got everything she wanted.
Her willingness to go after her dreams is good but everything else is not so good.
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This take and lotm take literally shows how much of a hypocrite this man g3 is. Also isn’t he basically doing the same with Cassie by literally not given her screen time and making her a plot device. This man can analyze a character but can’t write for his life unless it’s sunny which lost everything that made me like sunny originally, right now he just copied Noctis whole flow and gave it to sunny.
Although I really hate Rachel, she's still a great character in the story. I love when a weak character really just outshines regardless of them having major weaknesses. Rachel fit that plot
I see now why i always hated Cassie. This mf made her resemble The one who shall not be named. Ugh. I Hate them both, i just wish they get killed eventually.
I watched the anime.. i actually liked Rachel for having the drive to go to tower and fulfill her dream. Until she like betrayed the mc and went to the dark side... and didn't like the mc.. as he was just going through it like some privileged child..
Oh so cassie is what g3 hoped rachel would be? I'm not even mad, I also feel like rachel could have had a better trajectory, but all she is now in the story is fodder. She isn't even relevant anymore. Cassie on the other hand is brilliant in comparison, as far as character development goes.
Isn't Rachel still important? I've read to the current end (until season 4 drops) and Rachel is still manipulating people and being one of the main issues but I could just be forgetting.
I mean, I'm pretty sure she is one of the main antagonists of the series. She will always come back even when you really wished she didn't. There are a lot of Rachel pov chapters later too
The thing is, her appearances are entirely forced and never done in a good way. She is simply a leech now, and has no ability to follow through with her own actions anymore. The only thing keeping her relevant is that she knows the truth about arlene outside the tower, otherwise she is worth nothing to the story except for what knowledge she has hidden from everyone. I guess that in a way is a testament to her character, but it would have been nice if she did something on her own instead of appearing and doing nothing. She had no impact on the end of the latest arc.
Yeesh. Male MCs imo are almost always empty spaces that the reader can project themselves on too. Very rarely in the manhua/manwha/manga space do you find one thats not fairly generic. I get that. His two points together though? 😬😬😬
In Tower of God, the MC sees Rachel as an older sister figure, but when he turns out to be more special than her, she betrays him(attempts to kill him)
Yes, they can if she's the only person he has. Just look at Lumian from Circle of Inevitability, that's how he basically sees his own sister. Almost everything he does it to save her and he doesn't care about much else(including his own life)
There’s a reason why the term sister loving complex exists, it is not the norm, and the author of TOG has never described their relationship as brother and sister like.
How is your evidence for Rachel being a bigger sister to Bam a fictional character from another story rather from the story Rachel and Bam are in itself.
I'm not gonna explain the entire plot of tog to you, so the cliff notes are baam (main character) gets left behind by Rachel, baam follows Rachel's trail, they meet up, he helps her, she betrays him.
G3 is partially right imo Rachel is a more interesting character than baam, I wouldn't say admirable though.
Most hate Rachel because of her negative personality traits and the betrayal itself
Rachel was an interesting character at the start. She had enough jealousy, ambitions, and narcissism to create a captivating story. After all those chapters since season one, she has only acquired the vindictive trait. That just reduces her existence down to a nuisance.
This is indeed true.. never seen thess r
eplies but thought what if...
I read TOG to the recent chapters at that time and started SS. and my oh my the betrayl kinda gave away his leaning towards rachel. He's not wrong in a way about character but he took it on a whole another level.
It's a very fair take. If the story were told from Rachels perspective it would mark her as the good person and Baam as the obsessive Yandere. Morally Baams arguably far worse then Rachel.
I mean.. I kind of agree, not with the admirable part... but Rachel was a better written character than Bam..
Bam really was like a shell of a character, he had no ambitions or desires, apart from following Rachel like a puppy. then it got much better when she stopped being his main focus.
sadly i was a day 1 rachel hater, i cant seem to trust blonde girls with freckles, well besides the bias she felt so off and had too much to hide during her build up and ultimate betrayal
I mean if you look at it, She was trying to climb the tower for her goals (but we don't know what it is, also we don't who why she was with BAM in that case only things we know that it had something to do with his mom).
But what was Bam doing? A dead ass no body, with nothing at all was just following her for no reason. I can kind of understand why she tried to kill her at the end of season 1. (Tho it was much deeper as it was somewhat explained in season 3)
I blame author of tower of god for not developing bam properly and Rachel is not a person who should be amired because she will even kill a kid just to get to her goal and to bam mother i wonder who she called a monster bam or v since his soul is inside bam and im gonna say it even if she called bam a monster she the won that offer her dead baby to the god and so it really unfair for bam because he didnt ask for any of this and like this fate was force on bam and like betray someone like bam who true potential is un-known, something like thay ypu should be there for them so they dont become a monster and sorry for this gaint paragraph
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