absolutly loathes Kel ?
Okay, I know, there are about a hundred other post with this, but I had to get it out of my system.
I love just about everything else that Tammy has written, but I can't stand Kel. Why ?
SHE IS TOO PERFICT TO BE REAL !!!!!
I like Tammy for her realistic characters, but Kel doesn't seem to have a flaw. And I hated Joren for the same reason
HE IS TO MEAN TO BE REAL !!!!!
He just doesn't seem to have one good trait about him. It is just like 'He is evil, lets just leave it at that'
So maybe I didn't know Hitler on a personal baisis, but I am willing to give him the benifit of the doubt


No, I am not crazy
These staight jackets are all the rage where I come from

l agree
and hitler *was* a pretty good artist... and maybe l am the only one to see this as a plus... but he was also a dreamer...

rahel

thats why its a FANTASY book. coz nothing is real!!!
EDIT: come to think of it i get really sick of her stupid Yumani faces

Lady Angelina of Goldenlake

Personally I am a big fan of Kel.
She is not actually perfect at all. She has a fear of heights and she over-comes that. She didn't get her friends easily.
It's not like they all just worship her, especially not in first test. Yeah I agree with Lady angelina of Goldenlake, Its a FANTASY book.
To me she does have flaws and maybe if you read the books again you might appreciate her more.
About Joren, I never really had a problem with him. I reckon he is evil but so what? I sorta like evil people, heheee.......

Yes, it is a fantasy book, but the point of a book is to get you to believe it is real, which is why us fantasy writers have to be so much more skilled than everybody else.
And as for her fear of hieghts, that isn't a really big problem that she is constantly struggleing to over come. And her friends DO like her from the start, Neal likes her the first day when they are picking guides or whatever for the first years.

No, I am not crazy
These staight jackets are all the rage where I come from

>thats why its a FANTASY book. coz nothing is real!!!
>EDIT: now that i think of it... i get really sick of her stupid Yumani faces
>EDIT EDIT EDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHH SORRY WHATS GOING ON HERE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! JUST IGNORE THIS IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!! (and this post)
>Lady Angelina of Goldenlake
>
>
>
>


Lady Angelina of Goldenlake

wow...so many pictures of orlando in that last post....droolage factor 8000!

Read my blog: http://blog.myspace.com/allyfin

If people are 'perfect', do they have fears? Feelings of insecurity? Make mistakes?

Kel is not perfect. If she were perfect, she woud not have been afraid of heights. She would not have felt that Cleon might have left her for a girl with dimples. She would have been smart enough to think that the griffin should be handled with more care. She would not have personal insecurities about her height.

As for Joren, we had only one point of view from which to base our assumptions of him. The books are mainly written from Kel's point of view. Kel, being the one persecuted by him the most, would naturally view him as the spawn of Satan. Don't tell me that there's never been anyone that you've hated with the passion of a thousand fiery hells.

If your idea of flawed is something particularly outstanding, like Alanna's hot temper, then look at normal, everyday life where people can make mistakes any day, fully acknowledge that they are human, and seem perfect.

Ok, I've ranted long enough. Someone else take a turn.

~Steph~

'I'm a Rogue. I thought hero came with the territory.'
-Corran Horn, X-Wing: Rogue Squadron

I agree with everything silverstar said. The whole PoV thing about Joren was exactly what I was going to say.

Another flaw of Kel's is that she thinks Jon's decision to put her on probation is unfair to her. Yes, it is unfair, but whoever said life was fair? She doesn't look at it from Jon's PoV, doesn't even think to look at it from his PoV, only thinks it's unfair because it's targeting her. She probably wouldn't be as adament if it was some other girl on probation and it wasn't affecting her - so, she's selfish about it. And most people her age would act the same way; we all think people should be fair to us and to everyone, but when it doesn't work out that way, we get angry.

Just Finished: Vacations From Hell by Libba Bray, etc.
Currently Reading: The Singing by Alison Croggon

Novel Count for 2010: 26

>She probably wouldn't be as adament if it was
>some other girl on probation and it wasn't affecting her - so, she's
>selfish about it. And most people her age would act the same way;
>we all think people should be fair to us and to everyone, but when
>it doesn't work out that way, we get angry.

While I agree that MOST people her age would act the same way, Kel doesn't. She's the one who goes around on her little anti-hazing crusades every night for 4 years. My major problem with Kel is that she's perfect AND she knows it. I don't think that in order for a character not to be annoyingly perfect, she needs to have a huge character flaw, such as Alanna's temper. However, though Kel does little things wrong, she is ALWAYS acting for the greater good, which means she gets to feel obnoxiously saintly. She has never worked hard for anything in her life. Yes, she went through 4 years of page training and 4 years of being a squire. Yes, she worked. But it was all handed to her on a silver platter. She picks up a staff and a lance and she becomes great without working incredibly hard. Look at Alanna and her sword practice. Show me where Kel worked half that hard. She didn't.

Kel has never suffered a humiliating defeat. Never. And she knows this. She is capable, competent, forgiving and so noble she makes me sick (ie her whole "B/c I, unlike everyone else, am concerned for the greater good and only want to do my personal best, I will forgive everyone and make huge sacrifices for them, regardless of the personal cost" thing.) She needs to have her face brutally smashed into the dust several times before she'll become remotely bearable.

I, for one, volunteer to do the smashing!

Mighty Hogweed is avenged.


Thanks, dameragnall!

She has never worked hard for anything in her life. Yes, she went through 4 years
>of page training and 4 years of being a squire. Yes, she worked. But
>it was all handed to her on a silver platter. She picks up a staff
>and a lance and she becomes great without working incredibly hard.
>Look at Alanna and her sword practice. Show me where Kel worked half
>that hard.

Umm, getting up at the crack of dawn every morning for four years to practise with her glaive so she would get stronger cos she was physically weaker than most of the boys, using weighted practise weponds to learn with so she could build up muscles, getting beat up over and over again then having to train while hurt cos she wasn't allowed to see a healer, forcing herself to confrount her fear of heights becuase she knew it was a weakness, hleping Lalasa to learn self defense, hepling the other pages with their staff work.

When you look at it, Alanna didn;t do half the stuff that Kel did in her spare time. When did Alanna use her own free time to help others? Yeah, she's a knight and she rides around the country saving people's lives, but would she have put her life on the line to save the refugee's like Kel did?

Personally, I'm not sure. Yeah, she's a great knight and she worked hard for her knighthood, but you can't say that Kle didn't work just as hard as Alanna to get were she wanted, maybe harder because of the prejudice she had to face that Alanna didn't because people didn't know she was a girl.

You may be able to tell that I think Kel's great. Personally, I think she's more believable than Alanna was, but that's just me, I guess.

"I suppose I'm being rash and peculiar again" -Neal

Get that squirrel!"- Rikash

I like Kel because she is both real and fantasy. You could believe who she was, and she could be real, definately.

"I am an endangered species- But I sing no victim's song. I am a woman, I am an artist, and I know where my voice belongs. I know where my soul belongs. I know where I belong."

I don't hate her, but i'm not that fond of her either. Probably my biggest pet peeve about her is that, SHE CAN'T DECIDE WHO SHE LOVES. i mean oh my crud kel, your boyfriend leaves for a while and you don't think you love him anymore? And not that that happened once it was TWICE!!! The good points are that she can kick butt, become stone, and is protector of the small. `~tEE-hEE`~

She's eighteen. Are you telling me that your love life is going to be set in stone when you're eighteen?

~Steph~

'I'm a Rogue. I thought hero came with the territory.'
-Corran Horn, X-Wing: Rogue Squadron

I never thought of Kel as perfect, because the only reason she's good at so many things is that she works her butt off. And she's still learning at the end of the quartet. (I like that she was so much younger at the end of PotS than Alanna was at the end of SotL -- I could relate to even adult Alanna because I'm a lot like her, but as for Kel, she'd have to still be a teenager. Sometimes I don't think my personality has anything in common with hers.)

What bugs me about her from time to time is that even if I don't think she's flawless, most of the characters seem to. She's perfectly realistic as far as having to push herself as hard as she can, being harder on herself than on other people, and thinking now and than that she was insane to ever want to become a knight. But the fact that hardly anyone KNOWS about that can get on my nerves. You can tell that anybody who isn't very close to her thinks she's Superwoman. She never visibly loses patience with any person or situation or ANYTHING but herself. She spent less time in Yaman with a bunch of "warrior stoics," as Myles puts it, than in Tortall with a palaceful of average Joes who wear their hearts on their sleeves. The way I see it, she SHOULD slip now and then.

Consult the bones!

"And I will not rest until every year, families gather to spend December 25th together at Osama's Homobortionpot'n'commiejizzporium."

  

I know what you mean, She never shows anger, impatience... ect. I mean everyone slips once in a while but she doesn't though apart from that she could be real

well she did leave tortall when she was only 4 and its from this age that you learn quicker so she had learnt not to show her emotions at all before she went back to tortall and its the kind of thing that will stick with you. anyway she does show her emotions when she thinks it is worth it like alanna learnt to do just when she was older.

About Joren being mean b/c its Kel's point of view
Yes, but Tammy could have done something to make him seem a little more 3-dimentional and a little less shallow

No, I am not crazy
These staight jackets are all the rage where I come from

Kel is a bit perfect to me, but some people, even in this world, seem more perfect than you or me. For instance, take on of your favorite movie stars or role models, and it seems (well, to me) that they are perfect or close to it. It doesn't seem fair that they have (such a body, hair, etc.) Plus, as others said earlier, this is fantasy and people are allowed to be perfect. Me personally, any character Tammy creates is fine, I love them all.

Personally, I think Kel has no brain whatsoever. She's just...stupid, with no sense of imagination. I didn't hate her, I pitied her.
IBBY
Why do you build me up build me up buttercupp baby just to let me down let me down and mess me around!

I don't hate her but I like Alanna better. Kel was a little too unemotional for my taste. I still like the books though.

I don't love Kel, but I don't hate her either. The way she keeps changing her mind about who she loves really bugged me. I also thing she has no imagination. As for Hitler, he had great chariama and was a born leader.

~Juniper

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."-Eleanor Roosevelt

Kel isn't perfect but she sure can be a pain in the butt with her whole yamani face thing and just I don't like a lot of things about her. But I liked her actually very well in Lady Knight though in the first three ones she annoyed the fire out of me. If I'm not making much sense I'm sorry...I'm trying to state my opinion without offending anybody

And with Joren well yeah he seemed maybe a little too evil and 'I'm gonna kill you, Kel!' But he was probably a little insecure too which didn't help much

I like Kel. She's quieter then Alanna or Daine, but she still gets the job done. I've heard of a lot meaner than Joren, so I don't think he was too mean to be real,I just think he was rather one-sided. We never heard about any of his good points.
Amanda

Jack Sparrow: Me? I'm just dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.

Okay, about the whole Yamani face thing? Kel lived with the Yamanis, therefore, she and her family had to adopt certain customs of Yaman to be accepted there. Maybe they were accepted because Ilane saved the sacred swords, but the fact that they were willing to adopt customs that were not their own had to go a long way with the Yamanis.

I'm Malaysian Chinese and I go to an international school. If you compare the asians to the caucasians, you find that the quieter people are the asians. There is a japanese girl in my class who was brought up in America. She is more outgoing and willing to speak up than other asians our age. It basically boils down to culture differences. I understand how Kel works and feels because sometimes I just want to stand up and scream when something is wrong, but I don't, because it's not in my nature. Someone else might. But we're all different and we have to learn to accept that.

The main reason people think Kel is 'perfect' is because of her yamani face and her quietness. When I first went to the international school here in Singapore, I adopted my own sort of yamani face; partly because I didn't know anyone and partly because I had come from a different school system and didn't know how to do much. My 'yamani face' was a sort of shield against any barbs anyone might throw at me. I'm one of the quietest girls in school and I am in no way perfect. The only way we can do well in what we do is because we practice a lot. Personally, I think that everone should understand that not everyone can be an Alanna or a Daine with a huge temper and the power to back it up. A huge split in a vase makes it look ugly, but many tiny little cracks can enhance the overall beauty.

~Steph~

I thought I should at least say something in Kel's defense, since I'm the one who introduced her to the world. You who dislike her may still disagree, or feel I should have made it clearer in the book, but at least I will have tried.

Multiple loves thing: from my own experience, from the time I started 6th grade till I graduated high school I had serious physical and emotional feelings for (okay, gotta stop to count) 11 guys, one of whom I continued to have passionate feelings about up until 1979, one of whom I dated one more time after high school. Even living with a guy in college didn't stop me from getting crushes on three other men. And that's not counting how I felt about certain characters or actors along the way. Moreover, most of the women I know have been the same. Different people fulfill different needs, and hormones are crazy things.

Yamani faces: when she was four years old, fresh from being hung upside down from a balcony, Kel left her fairly open and frank culture to live in one in which open displays of emotion are regarded as rude, immature, tasteless, and even shameless. In that culture, so long as she and her family chose to live as they would at home, they were completely isolated, or at least, her father and mother were treated politely and distantly because they, poor things, didn't know how to act, but they represented an important ally. If their children, like Kel, were to make any friends and take part in any cultural life, they had to join the culture. Kids don't allow each other any slack. After six years of this, Kel comes home, at bottom a Yamani. After only a short time to adjust, she is pitchforked into a world where she is constantly watched by people who would be very happy to make her cry. Now it's not just a matter of her Yamani self; it's a matter of pride that they not see her cry, or appear doubtful, or falter. So she hides in plain sight, behind the mask of politeness she has already been conditioned to wear, reciting the mantras that all Yamanis use to prevent themselves from shameful displays of emotion.

As for being too noble and protecting everyone who gets hazed: Kel has principles. Since she's a very stubborn person, her principles are very hard to dislodge. She thinks hazing is wrong, so she opposes it. It doesn't matter to her that she gets beat up. It doesn't matter to her that she gets in trouble. Think of her as a self-righteous prig if you like, but her decision to interfere has nothing to do with who's being hazed, and everything to do with the fact that she believes it's wrong and is determined to show everyone how wrong it is. And she sucks at it at first, so she keeps getting trashed.

Other people have addressed the training stuff, like the fact that she turns a cruel joke into a training aid, and that she runs uphill even when she's tired because she knows it's the only way to get better. That's discipline. Ask any Olympic athlete how much time they spend in physical training, whether they want to do it or not, because they have something they really want to gain.

Kel would be the first to tell you she owns up to no extra portion of virtue at all. She would also tell you that she is mule-headed to a fault. Once she decides on something, she won't back down. That can get a girl into trouble. One of the many things she is stubborn about is duty--her duty as a noble and a knight. Alanna, you may recall, was equally un-budge-able on the issues of chivalry and honor.

Oh, hell. Maybe you're right, I don't know. If I didn't convey it in the books, then I guess I missed my mark. But I thought I'd try to explain, even if it means I failed to show it where I needed to, in the books themselves.

Tammy

“No person is your friend who demands your silence.”
Alice Walker

Uhh.... I never thought of her like this, mainly because some people formed that kind of opinion about me. I get up before dawn every day like Kel, to work to achieve- and it hurts like hell when people accuse me of sailing through with no effort.

Now I'm not saying that working your back off is a good thing, or that defending the weak is incredibly perfect. Kel isn't real, for a start, and we are. Many of the things she face are thing's we'll be up against all our lives.

And as for not settling on a crush- the most people I ever had a crush on was... *counts on fingers* 5 in a week. At the moment it's on Zero

And yup, Kel sure as hell is stubbor I don't know anyone else who WANTS to throw up on their birthday...

Anyway, I'll remain with no real opinion either way. I don't hate her, but she isn't my favorite by any means.

*reads back* Holy hell, an essay!! What did I eat?

>Uhh.... I never thought of her like this, mainly because some
>people formed that kind of opinion about me. I get up before
>dawn every day like Kel, to work to achieve- and it hurts like hell
>when people accuse me of sailing through with no effort.
>
>Now I'm not saying that working your back off is a good thing

But don't you find that working really hard becomes a habit, so it doesn't look like you are working that hard because the effort you make is what you're used to making? So that, when everyone else is moaning and complaining about having to work as hard as you do anyway, it can seem like you're sailing through with no effort?

*Reads back through* Does that make sense?

Because that's how I related to Kel's work ethic. Lots of people have commented to me in the past when I do well in things that seem to come easily to me, and I've even agreed with them, but then I realised it was because I was doing all the things they weren't - like doing homework thoroughly and on time, reading and re-reading the text book, actually paying attention in class and thinking about my work. It's just that those things were habit for me, not effort, or rather that it was a habit for me to make that kind of effort.

It is habit for Kel to work that hard, and so it seems like the effort is not an effort at all. It's the same with her 'perfect' composure - not perfect at all, but she has enough practice at making it seem that way that no-one else can tell the difference. After eight years, of course she has a thick skin.

Her principle are, in fact, very realistic - if you look at the big historical changes in people's rights (in England, anyway), such as the abolishment of the slave trade and voting rights, they are often campaigned for not by the people directly affected, but by those higher up the social scale, people with principle and with influence. Just because Kel is noble, and surrounded by nobles, doesn't mean that her principles can't be different from other nobles', or that she would stick to them any less that her peers do. Funnily enough people seem more able to bear a hardship when they are upholding their principles than at any other time, especially if the principle involves other people, not just themselves.

Wow, this really is an essay.
I'll stop now. just wanted to say, Tammy, I got it, even if no-one else did!
Kinky.

"Age and treachery!"

>But don't you find that working really hard becomes a habit, so it
>doesn't look like you are working that hard because the effort you
>make is what you're used to making? So that, when everyone else is
>moaning and complaining about having to work as hard as you do
>anyway, it can seem like you're sailing through with no effort?

Yes, I guess you're right. Although I always figured that the people who were moaning hadn't bothered to put effort in in the first place, so what right did they have to moan? Their damn funeral. And they waste time moaning to me (or in the boys' case, flirting with me so I'll 'help' them.)

*sigh* I'm confused.

As much as I would love to say that Daine is my favorite because of her ability with animals, I have always felt that I "get" Kel the most. Her entire thing with the sevents rights is how I feel with animal rights. Not only is she not understood, people just don't want to listen to her.

She is strong and detirmined. I love Kel.

Fiver Beyond!

I'm not going to be your monkey~Jon Stewart

Kel's one of, if not the number one, my favorite Tammy characters. I never thought she was too perfect, just that she had amazing discipline, and I admire anyone who can always get through things and keep going like that.

~Blueness~

J/T
Music is deceiving, hard as lightning, soft as candlelight

  

Hey,

Just wanted to say that I think Kel is a great character and maybe because I started reading Protector of the small first, but she's the character I can relate to most. Maybe because I'm always described as rather quiet and hated it, but know that's what I'm like. She's really inspiring, having no special abilities to start off with, like magic.
I actually thought the fact that there was little romance in the protector of the small quartet was refreshing, a girl can have a really adventurous story without romance and magic too right?

Protector of the small was my favourite quartet so far in Tortall....still have to find a copy of "in the hand of the goddess". I just wished there had been more of Kel's adventures - things were just getting more exciting at the end of Lady Knight as if there would be more coming.

~ * Pine * ~

"When life throws you a knife, there are two ways of catching it, by the handle or by the blade" (Anon)

I read POTS ages ago, and I didn't enjoy it as much , I don't think.Squire is doing a reprint in the UK so I'm not reading them until december, when it comes back out. The time before when I read POTS, I only read FT and P.
Diamondflame