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Colonel Cool posted:I'd expect them to focus more on unstable rage crazy man, personally. Done right it could be pretty cool. Have most of an episode switch back and forth between his internal thoughts and another character watching him do stuff. The muttering to himself and randomly laughing and other crazy poo poo he does followed by the same scene from Rand's POV, that kind of thing. There's a lot of scenes in the books where if they're done right they could be amazing, but so easy to mess up.
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Jun 5, 2020 18:12
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ConfusedUs posted:Yeah, he was Osan'Gar, who was the re-homed soul of that Forsaken that got wasted in Eye of the World. Bethamel, I think? Other way around. Aginor was the super educated one who made most of the shadow spawn. Bethamel was the carouser who was a hedonist.
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Jun 5, 2020 20:21
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Colonel Cool posted:It seems like you'd want something with more punch than a sword in that case. Do power-wrought weapons cut through armour? Reading Fires of Heaven now, and Mat's ashanderei blade is described as going through trolloc armor as easily as flesh (in the battle just before they get to Jangai Pass) Personally I think power-wrought weapons probably do go through armor better than regular blades. Maybe not hot-knife-through-butter easily, but still more easily that plain steel Regardless, the most effective thing for fighting Trollocs would be pole-arms of some sort you can brace on the ground; keep them at a distance, cross-bars to prevent them charging up the blade, negate their reach advantage, use their strength and mass against them especially if they charge DarkHorse fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jun 5, 2020 |
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Jun 5, 2020 23:09
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DarkHorse posted:Regardless, the most effective thing for fighting Trollocs would be pole-arms of some sort you can brace on the ground; keep them at a distance, cross-bars to prevent them charging up the blade, negate their reach advantage, use their strength and mass against them especially if they charge And that's basically the defensive ring around Emond's Field in TSR. They didn't beat plowshares into swords for everyone (though they did come up with some, for a relative few), they planted stakes around the perimeter, sharpened those, and gave everyone in the circle polearms.
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Jun 5, 2020 23:16
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:And that's basically the defensive ring around Emond's Field in TSR. They didn't beat plowshares into swords for everyone (though they did come up with some, for a relative few), they planted stakes around the perimeter, sharpened those, and gave everyone in the circle polearms. The Borderlanders had a bunch as well, they were just more heavy cavalry than infantry. Also, they trained basically from birth, so sword fighting was a little bit more effective.
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Jun 6, 2020 01:29
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Given the fantastical nature of "power-wrought" weapons, just assume everything made by the power has a mono molecular edge and cannot break. Physics will get the rest done, eventually. It's a much less insane thing than balefire, for example, to assume literal magic can improve the sharpening of a blade by an order of magnitude. (The best blades in the world - industrial or surgical - are on the order of a few manometers at their cutting edge. Water molecules are on the order of .3 nanometers in scale.)
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Jun 6, 2020 01:31
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Anias posted:Given the fantastical nature of "power-wrought" weapons, just assume everything made by the power has a mono molecular edge and cannot break. Physics will get the rest done, eventually. It's a much less insane thing than balefire, for example, to assume literal magic can improve the sharpening of a blade by an order of magnitude. (The best blades in the world - industrial or surgical - are on the order of a few manometers at their cutting edge. Water molecules are on the order of .3 nanometers in scale.) In Hot Zone (a book about Ebola virus and an actual outbreak in America) they talk about the blades used for the electron microscope samples. It's a diamond chipped to insane sharpness and if you touched it with your fingertip you wouldn't feel it slice through (and also destroy the blade) To give you an example of the samples it was slicing, an individual cell was cured into a huge blob of resin before being sliced. An individual cell, sliced up like a salami. That huge blob? The size of the period at the end of this sentence.
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Jun 6, 2020 01:44
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*arms all the womenfolk with power-wrought skillets and rolling pins*
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Jun 6, 2020 04:31
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Data Graham posted:power-wrought skillets That's one hell of a nonstick surface.
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Jun 6, 2020 05:57
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Problem with power wrought skillets is the oil doesnt sink into the iron anymore THANKS FOR NOTHING AES SEDAI
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Jun 6, 2020 06:21
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Make it a cuendillar skillet that doesn't transfer any heat for something even more useless
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Jun 6, 2020 06:25
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That also happens to be one of the seals on the Dark One's prison
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Jun 6, 2020 06:48
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"Light-blasted decorative Aes Sedai skillet breaks just when I have guests over ..."
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Jun 6, 2020 07:01
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"I win again, Lews Therin," said Ishamael, sitting at the dining room table.
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Jun 6, 2020 07:55
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As Lews Therin was burnt to his soul by The Dark One's chilli con carne
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Jun 6, 2020 08:18
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The Aiel even make cornbread.
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Jun 6, 2020 11:45
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I don’t blame them; it’s delicious. I fondly remember my first visit to an American restaurant in my early 20s. It was a life changing experience.
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Jun 6, 2020 12:56
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rndmnmbr posted:"I win again, Lews Therin," said Ishamael, sitting at the dining room table. the dragonloaf was named that after lews therin howled and made his roast catch on fire in the oven
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Jun 6, 2020 14:54
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posted:Discovered in a dusty storage room in Chachin, the pages were in a chest full of old bills and receipts, students' copy books and private diaries, some so foxed by age and with ink so faded as to be unreadable where the pages themselves had not crumbled. The fragmentary manuscript was readable, barely, but presented the usual problems, quite aside from the difficulties of translation and dealing with centuries of copyists' errors; such a history would no doubt be a vast, multi-volume work (please see the author's Note at the end), yet of the two hundred and twelve surviving pages, the largest number of consecutive pages number six, and nowhere else more than two. Such dates as are given are totally incomprehensible, as no calendar dating from the Age of Legends has ever been found. Many references to cataclysmic events (dinner parties and happy hours destroyed by balefire during the War of the Shadow, whole regions covered by endless mimosa bars and brunch pop-up restaurants raised overnight during the Breaking) and to such minutiae as the appearance of a certain person are but curiosities. The pages which might reveal exactly where these things happened, what their special significance was, the resolution or end result, are usually missing. Why then is this collection so important? First because, sundered as it is, it contains more information of the War of the Shadow than any other known single source, perhaps as much as all other sources combined in some ways. But even more importantly, it gives a great deal of information available nowhere else. And most importantly of all, the six consecutive pages and others which must be placed close to them contain the only known account of events surrounding what surely must be the most far-reaching single event in the history of the world, in any Age: the sealing of the sale at Bed, Bath, and Beyond by Lews Therin Telamon and the Hundred Companions.
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Jun 6, 2020 16:06
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Hopping in late, but swords are basically ineffective against most forms of armor. Thrusting and stabbing have some effectiveness but cuts hardly work against even thick padded cloth armor. They’re good for killing unarmored peasants though.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:55
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Which, frankly, seems like what a Warder would need to defend their Aes Sedai against more often than an armored soldier.
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Jun 6, 2020 20:00
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Been rereading these over the past year in prep for the TV show, and it led me to do a thought experiment about how I would organize the material. I took a break, but plan on trying to get through outlining the rest of it this summer. I'd love to get some further feedback and goons are generally actually good at that. https://wottvot.blogspot.com/ If anyone needs to waste some time I have written words. I also gotta say "the slog" might not be as bad when you can read straight through it, but the narrative pace drawing to a crawl is super evident starting in book 8 and whoa it makes it harder. The Notorious ZSB fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jun 9, 2020 |
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Jun 9, 2020 18:37
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The Notorious ZSB posted:Been rereading these over the past year in prep for the TV show, and it led me to do a thought experiment about how I would organize the material. I took a break, but plan on trying to get through outlining the rest of it this summer. I'd love to get some further feedback and goons are generally actually good at that. Yeah, I originally read them when Winter's Heart (book 9) was just coming out and that was right in the middle of the slog. (to me anyway - the slog is from Dumai's Wells to Shadar Logoth) My first re-read was after the last book had come out, and I ended up skimming through massive sections of the middle books which makes the narrative pace a lot easier to handle.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:24
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hannibal posted:Yeah, I originally read them when Winter's Heart (book 9) was just coming out and that was right in the middle of the slog. (to me anyway - the slog is from Dumai's Wells to Shadar Logoth) My first re-read was after the last book had come out, and I ended up skimming through massive sections of the middle books which makes the narrative pace a lot easier to handle. That's what I've taken to, just skimming huge chunks of the chapters. I like your definition for it, I've found my wall is always somewhere in the middle of 8. I do find I'm trying to push to get to Shadar Logoth because I know post the cleansing it picks back up.
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Jun 9, 2020 19:54
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I’m sure someone has done it at this point but an abridged version would be very nice. I’m also very surprised after a cursory google search there isn’t a random sword technique generator.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:09
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i'm getting into crossroads of twilight and it's definitely more fine than i remember, to be honest. the big thing just happened at the end of the last book, but taking some time to chill and look at other people is great.
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Jun 9, 2020 20:26
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I finished my re-read last week. Some random thoughts. * Towers of Midnight is easily the best of the Sanderson books and may tie with The Great Hunt for my favorite book of the series. * I liked Nyanaeve far more as an adult than on my last full read, back when I was a teenager * I loved reading about the Seanchan and their weird-rear end society all the way through the end, even if it's objectively awful with all the slavery and tyranny. * I absolutely love how Mat's legend starts outstripping him before the end of the books. By time AMoL comes around, most Seanchan can't decide if they're horrified or awestruck every time he's on screen. * A Memory of Light is kind of a mess, isn't it? It's not bad, exactly, but it reads more like a dry history of events than the evocative tale of high fantasy that we got from earlier books, even the other Sanderson books. Thing happens, then next thing happens, then another thing happens, and... * Every alternate universe flashback or flash-forward is amazing. All of them. "I have won again, Lews Therin." * Can someone spoil what the hell happened to Noal in the time between when he was gallivanting about as Jain Farstrider and the time that he joins up with Mat in Ebu Dar? I get the sense that he was doing something, somewhere, that was important to the plot. Did he show up in someone else's chapters, or as some kind of behind-the-scenes mover and shaker? * The Black Tower plotline was, ultimately, disappointing. * Androl owns, but why wasn't he spewing lava or whatever over entire fields of trollocs during the whole last battle? * Does Traveling have a distance limit? Could someone, perhaps, Travel to the moon? (Obviously it would be a short trip unless they could deal with vacuum, but still)
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Jun 9, 2020 21:10
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ConfusedUs posted:I finished my re-read last week. Some random thoughts. Agreed with it being the best Sanderson book, but I like Shadow Rising more than The Great Hunt. quote:* I liked Nyanaeve far more as an adult than on my last full read, back when I was a teenager This is very common for WoT readers, welcome to the club  quote:* I loved reading about the Seanchan and their weird-rear end society all the way through the end, even if it's objectively awful with all the slavery and tyranny. Yes. I touched upon this in the old thread. A Memory of Light needed to be at least two books long, if not three, to give all unresolved plots the space they were due. Unfortunately, Sandersan already had to split the "definitely final novel" into three, and I think the fandom would have revolted if they had to wait even longer for the conclusion of the series. quote:* Can someone spoil what the hell happened to Noal in the time between when he was gallivanting about as Jain Farstrider and the time that he joins up with Mat in Ebu Dar? I get the sense that he was doing something, somewhere, that was important to the plot. Did he show up in someone else's chapters, or as some kind of behind-the-scenes mover and shaker? A man matching his description was seen among Graendal's pets, notable for not being young and beautiful like the rest of them. But I've forgotten most of the details of his backstory, somebody else needs to do a more thorough write-up.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:30
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I think Ba'alzamon says he painted him like a fool and sent him to the Ogier thinking he was free of him? He brought one of the traitors of Malkier to justice and based on him asking Mat to tell the Malkier he died clean, I'd infer that the Shadow took him and used him. One could probably also infer that him capturing the traitor was a serious bloody nose for the Shadow - you only go to the effort of humiliating your worst enemies.
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Jun 9, 2020 21:42
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Torrannor posted:Agreed with it being the best Sanderson book, but I like Shadow Rising more than The Great Hunt. Shadow Rising is I think the best of the entire series. It has all our main characters doing important things as the world expands. It is so well paced and just an epic series of events that the other books generally can't compete with in terms of "poo poo that matters happening".
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Jun 9, 2020 21:45
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ConfusedUs posted:
I actually kind of liked that - it sort of cemented the "This fight is for everything, so everybody's throwing all their chips in the pot" feel of chaos.
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Jun 9, 2020 22:04
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You can definitely tell when Jordan dies cause Sanderson starts leaving behind the stuff Jordan has written and starts doing his own style more. He jumps around characters too much. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or what but it can be somewhat annoying at times. You start settling into a characters rad story and bloop off to cool your poo poo down with Elayne. I’m not sure he even understood the basic meaning of the chapter drawings. Jordan used them to convey who you would most likely follow and/or what to expect in the chapter. Sanderson just kinda....doesn’t do it. Seems so fundamental to me if you ever read the previous books and wanted to mimic the writing.
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Jun 9, 2020 22:12
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Invalid Validation posted:You can definitely tell when Jordan dies cause Sanderson starts leaving behind the stuff Jordan has written and starts doing his own style more. He jumps around characters too much. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or what but it can be somewhat annoying at times. You start settling into a characters rad story and bloop off to cool your poo poo down with Elayne. I’m not sure he even understood the basic meaning of the chapter drawings. Jordan used them to convey who you would most likely follow and/or what to expect in the chapter. Sanderson just kinda....doesn’t do it. Seems so fundamental to me if you ever read the previous books and wanted to mimic the writing. His goal was never to mimic the writing.
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Jun 9, 2020 22:30
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ConfusedUs posted:* Can someone spoil what the hell happened to Noal in the time between when he was gallivanting about as Jain Farstrider and the time that he joins up with Mat in Ebu Dar? I get the sense that he was doing something, somewhere, that was important to the plot. Did he show up in someone else's chapters, or as some kind of behind-the-scenes mover and shaker? Twice in the books it's said that Jain vanished during his last journey when he traveled north into the blasted lands, to try to see what lay beyond the Blight. This would have been about 20 years before the events of the books, around the time of the Aiel war. He was probably captured in the Blight, and taken to Shayol Ghul, where a still partially bound Ishamael tried to turn him to the dark side and, failing that, worked compulsion on him in order to get him to do what he wanted. He comes out of the Blight just after the Aiel War, and winds up at an Ogier stedding, nearly dead, where he warns the Ogier that the Dark one is searching for the Eye of the World, and then moves on. This was apparently part of Ishamael's design, to lay seeds that would bring Rand to the Eye of the World so that prophecy could be fulfilled. From this point Jain just vanishes for twenty years. We know that he has a wife, and that she dies at some point during this, and that her death in some way causes him to realize that he has been working for Ishamael under compulsion. Ashamed, he abandons his identity, and possibly goes hunting for Ishamael. He shows up again in Grandeal's palace after Ishamael dies for the first time. It seems as if she picked him up -- because of his fame he would have made a decent pet, even if ugly -- and layered more compulsion on him to turn him into one of her hounds, which left him with mental blocks and memory loss. She sends him to Ebou Dar to spy on the network of Darkfriends that are initially working for Moghedien, and then Sammael, to search for a cache of angreal and ter'angreal. Mat showing up seems to allow him to break most of his compulsion, and then the events of the books happen. If I had to guess, the reason that Noel's plot never entirely pays off is it was bound up with the Luc/Issam backstory, as well as the Lan/Malkieri kingship plot. It seems like Jordan lays a lot of groundwork during the earliest books, especially EotW, for a Tolkienesque return of the true king narrative that became less and less important as the focus of the books shifted over time.
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Jun 9, 2020 23:54
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wallaka posted:His goal was never to mimic the writing. I have to get started on my series re-read soon but I will say that the style change in AMoL was enough to put me off finishing the series for a long while. It's not a knock against Sanderson - he had a very daunting task to accomplish and by all accounts he did better than one might expect. But it was jarring. I chalk it up to him needing one book to find the right rhythm of a style that is similar enough to RJ but still his own.
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Jun 10, 2020 01:38
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I am on my first read of the series and finally on AMoL after almost one year of reading. The transition has been pretty jarring and so far AMoL does feel a little like checking boxes for all the poo poo before the Last Battle. More Elayne hate chat: She was told by the Black Ajah of the invasion coming that turned out to be Trollocs through the Waygate at Caemlyn. She then completely forgets about it to get Cairhein. Then she takes all of her forces leaving behind the four weakest Kinswomen for Travelling and then Caemlyn is lost. She basically exists for people to die or endanger themselves. I really enjoyed the Tower of Ghenjei sequence but think the payoff with Thom and Moiraine did not feel earned. I feel like Sanderson doesn’t really know what to do with Egwene now. I get introducing Androl as a way into the happenings at the Black Tower but it feels a little forced. I haven’t finished yet but couldn’t this be achieved by showing Logain’s POV instead so we don’t have to learn new characters with 1.25 books left?
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Jun 10, 2020 04:17
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Yoked posted:I am on my first read of the series and finally on AMoL after almost one year of reading. The transition has been pretty jarring and so far AMoL does feel a little like checking boxes for all the poo poo before the Last Battle. Yes, but with Androl, it was a nice try at going 'hey, there's actually more going on here than just the big names, ordinary men aren't frightened of learning to channel either' but it wasn't really fleshed out that well. He gave it a good try, and I like the idea. Except for the bit where he's trying to get into Pevara's panties by using gateways to make her a cup of tea, that was a bit much. Further to this, I actually really liked Pevara laying the seeds of the Red Ajah being the one to start working with men and perhaps find the ones that can channel to bring them to the Black Tower. It was surprisingly forward-thinking for such a stubborn organisation. Comrade Blyatlov fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 04:24
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I just want a whole book of Mat doing Mat things.
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Jun 10, 2020 05:13
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you want book 8 then
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Jun 10, 2020 05:13
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He's having so much fun in book 8 with his friends, just right out frame.
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Jun 10, 2020 05:49
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