Thread:Stryzzar/@comment-27329394-20150101070953

Imma post the reasoning on here. I won't be able to give as much reasoning as with Lightning and Sugar since I don't like Topher as much as them but I'll try to pull off something.

To start off, I do actually think that he's funny, but that isn't going to convince someone that he's good if you think he's annoying. At the very least though, it does help give him a defined personality, and this personality stays true with him during his whole stay.

A big part of the reason I like Topher is because it helps Chris clock in one of his best seasons. It may not be directly related to the cast, but Chris is still an overarching factor for everything. While there are other reasons Chris saw an improvement, it was the first time in a while we saw him actually have a plot where he wasn't just an ass the whole time. Sure, we got to see him and Dakota interact, but Chris was generally unlikeable that season and he was also despicable towards Dakota. Same with Ezekiel. All the other seasons he didn't really have much to do regarding a specific contestant, other than mostly having a mutual dislike towards all of them. But with Topher, we see an interaction not seen since the days of Sierra, except this time Topher seemingly has more of the advantage and it is longer lasting. And I believe it is deceptively significant - it actually helps explore Chris as a character and outlines some of his fears. Sure, Topher doesn't succeed, but that's to be expected. Basically, I thought it was a nice arc for Chris.

A lot of people mention that his limited interactions hold him back, but as another user pointed out to me, it isn't that much worse than everyone else's. The big pointer is that Chris is the host whereas Topher is a contestant, which is the pair that Topher is a part of. It is similar to like how, for most of the season, Shawn/Jasmine, Dave/Sky, Ella/Sugar, Amy/Samey, and especially Max/Scarlett were the main interacting pairs, but with the occasional added interaction like Jasmine/Samey and Sky/Sugar happening when their partners were gone. Topher didn't have as many additional interactions, but it was still about as many as Scarlett and Max had. Heck, if you take away Dave and Shawn's not-that-prominent friendship, both of them didn't have all that many external interactions, either. It is more of the season that is at fault than anything else.

I'm sure I have touched on this before, but I still think there is a bit of an overrexaggeration that a Topher making it to eighth was such a bad thing. This is the Pits! introduces his first (relatively long) interaction with not-Chris, which addresses one of the issues people had in the first place, whereas Three Zones and a Baby finishes up their plot. I know a lot of people say that they saw the ending coming or it could have been wrapped up earlier, but I still think he was the best choice for eighth. Excluding the first four, regardless of potential Samey showed, the way her character was going was going to severely limit what she could do, and Ella seemed to wrap everything up when she was eliminated. I know it took a while for Topher's plan to enact, but in the end he seemed to go around the right time the way everything unfolded. If nothing else, he was in the bottom 50%, signaling that he wasn't supposed to be a mainstay to begin with.

Is he the best ever? Of course not. But I don't think he is deserving of being treated as one of the worst characters to ever grace the series, which is what you seem to hold him to be. I also don't think there are as quite as many missed opportunities as people seem to think. And, even if you still think he's bad and irrelevant, I don't see how he lasted long enough or did enough to cause as much "damage" as you claim, and seemingly not enough to mention on a large portion of your TDPI related posts.

And that's why I think he is a good character that gets too much hate. I definitely understand why there is dislike towards him, but I don't think he has enough going against him to deserve this much of it. 