#that doesnt mean her own hypocrisy should go unnoticed

[kingjasnah]

Unpopular opinion (apparently): Navani is a compelling character actually! Who is interesting to read! and really doesn't deserve all the fandom hate directed at her that I've been seeing lately

Honestly it's kind of confusing actually? By their own metrics, she's actually less problematic than Dalinar, but they give him a pass for all the same things they claim she's done (which are usually a massive reach anyway? They said she did war crimes and I said bitch where) Navani is supposed to be a war criminal because she a) was married to a conquering imperialist and b) she didn't vocally & wholeheartedly condemn him, but instead helped him run said empire. Oookay? Like. That's not objectively awesome in an ideal perfect world maybe but like...what?? Meanwhile, Dalinar literally commits war crimes on screen, and I don't see people arguing that this makes him a bad or even uninteresting character. If it comes up at all they're calling him a war criminal (affectionate), but they use the same label to argue that Navani is a waste-of-space character who shouldn't get any screen time.

The Geneva Conventions don't exist on Roshar lmao so it's kinda moot anyway, but fr I'm honestly struggling to remember a time when Navani broke them, explicit or implicit, so I'm honestly just really confused why that's a label ppl are latching onto, and perturbed by the double standard here. It's a non-issue for uwu Dadlinar, but why are y'all using the same yardstick to declare an older woman character poorly written and not compelling? Hypocrisy much, but also?? how do the two things even correlate lmaooooooo

(this post paid for by the Navani Kohlin protection squad. Haters come up with a reason that isn't thinly veiled sexism and/or ageism and then we'll talk.

Fine print: You're well within your rights to not like/enjoy a character but ffs words mean things, you can't just come up with these convoluted justifications to "prove" why the things you dislike are bad because you're so pure and only consume pure things so anything you vaguely dislike has to be irredeemably evil)

this might just be cause i haven't seen any egregious navani hate (certainly not made by people who like dalinar lmao) so im like.....i agree you can't forget about dalinar and gavilar's roles while criticizing hers, but that doesn't mean you can forget about her deal as well. the thing with stormlight is that nearly every lighteyed character has done pretty bad things, and the way the unification of alethkar was presented was very much a joint venture between gavilar, navani, sadeas, and ialai with dalinar also there. she wasn't the one riding out with them but she was very much instrumental in making those decisions. and she's not alone in her responsibility, but the responsibility exists. that doesn't impede on my or your ability to enjoy a character, like you said, I mean raboniel invented chemical gas attacks or something and everyone's obsessed with her.

she is a compelling character, and i do enjoy reading her pov chapters. i just feel like there's a bit of strawmanning going on here, and if im wrong and there are scores of posts that hate on navani while not having an issue with dalinar or gavilar i apologize, but there are valid reasons to dislike her