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Most of the problems in the books would have been solved if people just loving talked about stuff. And a cellphone, which they kinda do get at a point.
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Jun 11, 2020 21:06
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Isn't Faile also a few years younger than the group? I thought she was younger than Egwene but I may be misremembering.
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Jun 11, 2020 22:14
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calandryll posted:Isn't Faile also a few years younger than the group? I thought she was younger than Egwene but I may be misremembering. She's about the same age as Egwene and 3 years younger than Mat/Perrin/Rand She enters the story when she's like 16/17 and end right when she's about 19. Berelain is about the boy's age.
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Jun 11, 2020 22:20
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The Notorious ZSB posted:Maybe Berelain was genuinely attracted to Perrin, but none of her overtures ever came off to me as anything more than her political maneuvering. She really wants to be in a position close the Dragon Reborn to secure Mayene's continued autonomy and I think she believes Perrin is the easiest way to achieve that. She isn't successful, but unlike Faile I don't think she ever truly cared about or understood what Perrin cared for. If so many of her chapters hadn't been tangled up with MURDEROUSLY JEALOUS OF EVERYTHING bullshit, especially when Berelin was involved, Faile would have been great, because you're right, she's super competent, driven, and intelligent. She honestly loves Perrin and the two of them together are way more powerful than they would have been apart. But that jealousy throughline is so off putting, especially alongside the "i will never tell you what I want" bullshit.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:08
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No one in the entire series really directly says what they want outside of a handful of occasions. Without a doubt it is an infuriating device to never have people just sit down and talk about the OBVIOUS topics. I also can't say bad communication isn't a hallmark of a lot of relationships especially when you're young. which I think is easy to forget with these characters. They're thrust into positions of massive importance, and they're all hardly even 20 somethings by time its done. Egwene probably didn't make it out of her teens. I always tried to cut the characters a little slack for some of that because honestly, real people fail to communicate honestly a lot of the time too. But ugh how often characters are left waiting for the other party to guess their true intentions is just way too over used. vvv said it quicker
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Jun 11, 2020 23:16
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silvergoose posted:The main problem I keep having with Faile is that she has desires and wants for the relationship and refuses flat out to voice them. Probably the most realistic thing in the books to be fair. People are generally bad at communicating and teenagers are especially bad at being honest with themselves and others.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:16
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Soonmot posted:If so many of her chapters hadn't been tangled up with MURDEROUSLY JEALOUS OF EVERYTHING bullshit, especially when Berelin was involved, Faile would have been great, because you're right, she's super competent, driven, and intelligent. She honestly loves Perrin and the two of them together are way more powerful than they would have been apart. But that jealousy throughline is so off putting, especially alongside the "i will never tell you what I want" bullshit. Still, though, keep in mind you're getting the "murderously jealous of everything" part from the unreliable POV of Perrin who has no way to contextualize what his powers are telling him. The irony is, the more Perrin tries to assuage her sense of jealousy the more it looks to everyone else like she has something she ought to be jealous over.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:18
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:Probably the most realistic thing in the books to be fair. People are generally bad at communicating and teenagers are especially bad at being honest with themselves and others. Oh I know it's realistic. I hate it when people do it too. 
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Jun 11, 2020 23:22
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And after 20 years I’m finally finished. What a trip. Killed off a lot more people than I expected.
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Jun 12, 2020 00:50
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Siuan  at least she went out going "gently caress it, this is way more important than my life"
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Jun 12, 2020 00:51
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:Probably the most realistic thing in the books to be fair. People are generally bad at communicating and teenagers are especially bad at being honest with themselves and others. With Faile specifically, so much of the conflict is that she is almost as completely clueless about Perrin's culture as he is about hers. The special anniversary ceremony is a prime example - she didn't know that the Two Rivers didn't celebrate it, and didn't even think to check until the last minute. Perrin trying to use his special senses to make up for that lack is the biggest problem - he can "read" her at a deep level, but doesn't have the full cultural context to actually understand that reading.
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Jun 12, 2020 01:06
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On alternate author chat, I've been thinking a lot how well Stephen King's Dark Tower series would mesh with that of Wheel of Time. The Crimson King just another agent of the Dark One, forgotten in Roland's age. Roland woven endlessly through the pattern, slowly repairing the beams of the world.
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Jun 12, 2020 01:31
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Ya know at the end there Rand realizes there needs to be darkness since if there’s no darkness then everyone is kind of a zombie? Well guess what Rand? You going through the motions of doing the exact thing prophecy says you will isn’t exactly the high mark of free will you think it is.
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Jun 12, 2020 01:35
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Zore posted:She's about the same age as Egwene and 3 years younger than Mat/Perrin/Rand Seriously? I thought Faile was a couple years older than Perrin. Wild. (I tend to slightly overestimate ages, though.)
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Jun 12, 2020 02:05
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Vavrek posted:Seriously? I thought Faile was a couple years older than Perrin. Wild. She was the youngest Hunter of the Horn at the swearing in. She's basically a cosplaying hot topic teenager at the start of the books. Invalid Validation posted:Ya know at the end there Rand realizes there needs to be darkness since if there’s no darkness then everyone is kind of a zombie? Well guess what Rand? You going through the motions of doing the exact thing prophecy says you will isn’t exactly the high mark of free will you think it is. Yeah, the underlying moral philosophy and meta-cosmology of the books never really pans out, although it's possible Jordan would have handled it better if he'd lived. It's best not to dwell on it too much.
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Jun 12, 2020 02:10
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Invalid Validation posted:Ya know at the end there Rand realizes there needs to be darkness since if there’s no darkness then everyone is kind of a zombie? Well guess what Rand? You going through the motions of doing the exact thing prophecy says you will isn’t exactly the high mark of free will you think it is. In his defense he was mostly following prophecy because he had no idea what he was doing and just hoping that he'd survive. Kind of a crash-course in saving the world. And there's something to be said about choosing to go along with it, even if it makes you a slave to destiny. "Duty heavier than a mountain" and all that. And he's not wrong; imagine if everyone was like Galad 
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Jun 12, 2020 02:51
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I dunno seemed all right to me nobody even knew what a sword was (looks out at the killing fields where there is so much blood it turned the dirt to mud)
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Jun 12, 2020 03:00
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DarkHorse posted:In his defense he was mostly following prophecy because he had no idea what he was doing and just hoping that he'd survive. Kind of a crash-course in saving the world. And there's something to be said about choosing to go along with it, even if it makes you a slave to destiny. "Duty heavier than a mountain" and all that. If everyone was like Galad there would be no Forsaken and the Bore would never have been opened Change my mind
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Jun 12, 2020 03:08
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That only follows if you assume that everyone would adopt a "every magic user is in league with Satan" mindset. The Bore was opened because the Aes Sedai of the age discovered a power source both men and women could use, and thought that this would drive their magitech to even greater heights because male-female cooperation would be even more effective. There's no indication that most of the people involved realized that the new power source was Literally Satan.
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Jun 12, 2020 03:30
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I think there was one small reference to Lanfear possibly knowing before opening it.
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Jun 12, 2020 03:33
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More that Galad does what is right no matter who it hurts, and I can't believe for one second he would look at a fancy new power source and go 'HELL YES GIMME DAT'
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Jun 12, 2020 03:37
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Except that the motivation of everyone involved except possibly Lanfear was not "HELL YEAH! MORE POWER!", but more "Think how much good we could achieve with this! How much greater can we become once men and women shape the same power!". The motives were pure enough that I think even Galad would sign off on the project, knowing only what they knew.
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Jun 12, 2020 03:41
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Mmmmm, I see your argument, but my gut tells me that he would be a firm believer in knowing one's place and sticking to it. Still, interesting to see both sides.
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Jun 12, 2020 03:46
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Gene Wolfe: Elayne watches a play for the first time but her description of the play and intimate knowledge of the production leave open the possibility that this isn't the first play she's seen and in fact she may be an actress herself or perhaps even in the play at the very moment that she is watching it; hundreds of pages later Rand's perspective uses a single word that Elayne also used in her description of the play leading to the theory that Rand is actually Elayne in disguise and his "madness" has been used to mask the incongruities in his personality introduced when she took over his identity; others think that this only how events play out on one possible version of the Third Age that happens simultaneously with another age referred to as the Fourth Age by some; Rand at the Bore is actually all of the possible timelines started at the transport stone collapsing together and a merging of all known Rands into a single ur-Rand; Matt never snuggled anyone, but certainly told everyone he did.
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Jun 12, 2020 03:53
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Lanfear or someone says they opened the bore for true power.
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Jun 12, 2020 04:17
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Gnoman posted:Except that the motivation of everyone involved except possibly Lanfear was not "HELL YEAH! MORE POWER!", but more "Think how much good we could achieve with this! How much greater can we become once men and women shape the same power!". I mean, they were probably after both. Lanfear in particular was gunning for a Third Name, which was the Age of Legends equivalent of a knighthood, and she probably wasn't the only one. It seems just as likely that her whole team got so geared up to make a new discovery and become famous that they didn't take adequate safety precautions, as evidenced by the fact that almost all of them immediately exploded.
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Jun 12, 2020 05:01
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How did Lanfear survive? We see in the flashback that the thing exploded and fell from the sky. Stranger things have happened, sure, but part of me wonders if she didn't just wake up late that day, knowing there was a chance poo poo might have gone wrong.
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Jun 12, 2020 05:21
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:How did Lanfear survive? We see in the flashback that the thing exploded and fell from the sky. Stranger things have happened, sure, but part of me wonders if she didn't just wake up late that day, knowing there was a chance poo poo might have gone wrong. I've always assumed she cut her deal with the Dark One in that very moment and became the first Forsaken then and there. She didn't reveal herself as such until much later, but she was working for the Dark One from then on. The other Aes Sedai in the ritual refused and the Dark One blew them to pieces for it. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 05:28
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:She was the youngest Hunter of the Horn at the swearing in. She's basically a cosplaying hot topic teenager at the start of the books. New mental image gained. Thanks for that. (No, really. Faile makes a lot more sense if she's like 17 than the 22-23 I thought she was.)
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Jun 12, 2020 06:04
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Vavrek posted:New mental image gained. Thanks for that. (No, really. Faile makes a lot more sense if she's like 17 than the 22-23 I thought she was.) "This is totally how Mommy and Daddy get along, why doesn't Perrin love meeeeee?"
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Jun 12, 2020 06:36
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Arguing over everything turns me on.
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Jun 12, 2020 07:23
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Invalid Validation posted:Most of the problems in the books would have been solved if people just loving talked about stuff. And a cellphone, which they kinda do get at a point. I had this thought too, and while I understand from that little audio clip from Jordan that they played at the end of most of the audio books that distrust and miscommunication are at the core of the WoT, particularly in response to LotR, it still bugged me when poo poo went wrong because some part of Team Two Rivers knows poo poo that the other part really needs to know, but they just aren't sharing! I wonder if the prevalence of D&D and other RPGs and cooperative board games and the like make the failures in teamwork so much more galling. Barring games with a traitor mechanic, the "right" way to play those kinds of games is nearly always total information sharing and pooling of specialized abilities for the benefit of the team. I know that a lot of the time, I was viewing WoT from a D&D party's perspective and yelling at the audiobooks. Especially once everyone had Travelling, the fact that they never manage to get the whole team together for a big planning session was maddening! jng2058 fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 07:35
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:GRRM: still waiting on a book to be finished Nah, he'll turn RJ's notes into six books of more and more elaborate bullshit, then promises to finally really end the series in books 7 and 8. Then he starts blogging about football instead. The series never ends.
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Jun 12, 2020 07:50
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jng2058 posted:I wonder if the prevalence of D&D and other RPGs and cooperative board games and the like make the failures in teamwork so much more galling. Barring games with a traitor mechanic, the "right" way to play those kinds of games is nearly always total information sharing and pooling of specialized abilities for the benefit of the team. I know that a lot of the time, I was viewing WoT from a D&D party's perspective and yelling at the audiobooks. Especially once everyone had Travelling, the fact that they never manage to get the whole team together for a big planning session was maddening! Once everyone has Travelling is right around once everyone has stopped being comfortable trusting each other, I think. I'm just on the cusp of that, early in A Crown of Swords. Everybody's clearly changed a lot, and nobody's sure how they feel about everybody else. I feel like if Moiraine had been there, she might've been able to convince everybody to sit down together somewhere. (Just trying to think of someone that everyone had met, that everyone might still trust.)
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Jun 12, 2020 08:55
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:How did Lanfear survive? We see in the flashback that the thing exploded and fell from the sky. Stranger things have happened, sure, but part of me wonders if she didn't just wake up late that day, knowing there was a chance poo poo might have gone wrong. I think she just gated away in the nick of time. She was an immensely powerful Aes Sedai. Her research partner also survived, although he later killed himself from shame.
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Jun 12, 2020 11:17
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Vavrek posted:New mental image gained. Thanks for that. (No, really. Faile makes a lot more sense if she's like 17 than the 22-23 I thought she was.) If you read between the lines, she also had an extremely structured and restrictive childhood; Perrin may have been the first boy her age she'd ever been left alone with.
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Jun 12, 2020 11:22
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There's no way jealousy smelling makes it into the show
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Jun 12, 2020 16:32
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:I think she just gated away in the nick of time. She was an immensely powerful Aes Sedai. I'm pretty sure he was lynched by a mob that blamed him for serving the Forsaken.
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Jun 12, 2020 16:55
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I'm pretty sure he was lynched by a mob that blamed him for serving the Forsaken. Nah that was her aiel servant.
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Jun 12, 2020 16:57
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Right. Beidomon's fate isn't in the books, it was revealed in an interview with RJ. See, after he was offhandedly mention in TSR, the fans started developing more and more elaborate theories about what had happened to him, including him becoming one of the other forsaken or, weirdly, Lews Therin Telamon. Eventually Jordan had to clarify that he was just some guy.
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Jun 12, 2020 17:19
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