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I agree that it's super unimportant and the reader never needed to know it, but I also think if you're going to go to the trouble of including it, at least make it understandable. I'm going to need an advanced degree in one power studies for that to make any sense to me.
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Nov 3, 2015 10:10
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Hah. Sister wanted to read something and I recommended wheel of time. Bought her the first book and read it myself first. Then I just kept buying and reading and giving away the rest of the books. I'm at book 5 now. I've read the series maybe 4 times. At least the first 7-8 books. I've always loved them but.. They're not that good any more. I'm annoyed at the overlong descriptions and the fact that people act like idiots. And the weird misogyny. Or maybe not that. Maybe a lack of understanding how women and men interact at all? Even in a hypothetical matriarchal world. Still you appreciate other things. Elayne and Nynaeves adventures are probably the best. Rands descent into madness is nice too. I know I will love Mat until he gets to Ebou Dar. That is just poorly written IMHO. Then I will love him again.
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Nov 3, 2015 12:56
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Why read them if you don't think they're good? serious quesiton
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Nov 3, 2015 12:57
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I didn't say that. I said they aren't as good as I used to think.
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Nov 3, 2015 16:06
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The sunk cost fallacy is real, and it is strong.
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Nov 4, 2015 02:54
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I need to get something off my chest that's been bothering me for twenty years. In most books - good books, bad books, whatever - I see something of myself in the characters. Their thoughts reflect thoughts that I might have in the situations in which the characters find themselves. They even have thoughts that I've had before, but which I thought were perspectives unique to me. The characters' actions make sense, at least in an internal-consistency type fashion. In the Wheel of Time books ... well, when I was younger, the Wheel of Time frankly made me think there was something wrong with me. Nobody's though processes quite made sense, especially the female characters'. "Okay, I must not understand women." There were all these whole classes characters whose motivations were just completely opaque and nonsensical to me - Aes Sedai, Warders, Aiel, etc., as groups, do not evince believable psychologies. There are whole chapters in the latter, crappier books that are entirely the thought processes of some characters, and nothing EVER feels like the train of thought of an actual human. As a grown-rear end person, I can safely say that it's not me that's the problem. The Wheel of Time feels like it was written by an alien or AI that doesn't quite understand humans and is just trying lots of experiments to see if it can concoct something believable, as if trying to pass the Turing test, and usually failing. I don't want to say that WOT "messed me up" but when I was an adolescent I definitely tried to model my thoughts after these unnatural, bizarre patterns that I was reading, simply because that's what your brain does when you're an adolescent, it looks for things to latch onto. Now I like to entertain a headcanon that the people in WOT are not actually humans. Maybe they're so many turns of the Wheel away that their brains work differently than ours, they're more/less/differently evolved, like how Neanderthals probably thought and behaved differently from us even though we could breed with them. I like to pretend that Jordan was writing some really advanced science fiction about humans as-they-might-be if subjected to eons of cyclic evolution. But I don't really believe that. Calef fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Nov 4, 2015 |
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Nov 4, 2015 16:52
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Robert Jordan had some really bizarre ideas about human interaction, particularly regarding the relationship between the sexes.
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Nov 4, 2015 21:01
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I'm not so sure all that weird-seeming behavior is really so weird. There are a lot of people who do very irrational things, and I think this tendency gets magnified when groups of people wield power, especially if they've been in power for a long time. Does the behavior of Aes Sedai really seem so weird when compared to the US Congress? There's certainly a lot of individual behaviors that seem odd, but we also have to remember that most of the main characters are teenagers (who by default are crazy and know nothing), and they're operating in a world with very specific prophecies (often about them). Also, magic. For a lot of the gender stuff, I think it would be really interesting to have the books rewritten with most of the genders reversed and see how people feel about it. A lot of what people think is weird probably has at least something to do with the reversal of our cultural gender norms/roles. I could be totally wrong too.
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Nov 5, 2015 05:11
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Honestly I'd say the Aes Sedai are more sane than our last couple of Congresses.
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Nov 5, 2015 06:41
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Kilson posted:I'm not so sure all that weird-seeming behavior is really so weird. There are a lot of people who do very irrational things, and I think this tendency gets magnified when groups of people wield power, especially if they've been in power for a long time. Does the behavior of Aes Sedai really seem so weird when compared to the US Congress? Forget Congress, compare the Aes Sedai to the Catholic Church.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:06
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Not to mention the events in the book are basically happening in the WoT world's equivalent of the dark ages/early enlightenment.
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Nov 5, 2015 18:30
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Plus Jordan's characters are.often very deliberately written as irrational. Whitecloaks aren't supposed to be acting reasonably; for that matter neither is Rand. None of the characters are really "normal." I think the original conceit of the books was "military vet deals with PTSD in a fantasy setting" but he decided to rewrite it with teen protagonist s (in early drafts Tam was the protagonist). So yeah the characters aren't normal but they aren't intentded to be. They aren't even meant to be abnormal in the "its cool to be different!" sense you see in a lot of fantasy protagonists. Jordan was at least trying to write about people who were genuinely disturbed by having to go through all this saving the world poo poo.
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Nov 5, 2015 18:41
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Mat is normal and thats why everyone likes him 
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Nov 5, 2015 18:48
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I can understand the thought-process of a Catholic Priest even if I don't share them. I've experienced doublethink, I've experienced political maneuvering in a professional capacity, I've experienced suppressed sexuality at times, I've experienced a feeling of wanting to devote myself to something larger than myself. I can believe that such a person as a Catholic Preist exists, and that they are not merely actors playing a role. Forget the Aes Sedai. The real offender is the Aiel. I don't buy the Aiel culture for a second. Let's talk about Gai'Shain. Imagine you live in an inhospitable wasteland. Your whole world is your small settlement, which contains almost all your friends and loved ones, your wife, your mother and father, your children. A band of raiders from a neighboring tribe invades without warning and starts loving slaughtering everybody. You are a warrior; you pick up your spear. One of the invaders touches you without killing you. "Oh, well," you say, dropping your weapons and serenely surrendering as your family is butchered before your eyes. "Ya got me fair and square!" You then go and serve the man who murdered your family, without ever stabbing him to death in his sleep. I call bullshit. Culture has to make sense as a layer on top of basic human psychology. There seems to be an argument in these pages that the Aiel are an Honor Culture, and, like the Samurai, would do basically anything to preserve their Honor. But Honor is more complicated than the ji'e'toh that Aiel are portrayed as having. Honor is a sort of cultural technology, evolved in service of useful things. Specific mechanisms e.g. seppuku are highly evolved release valves that allow a man to be executed in a way that subtly protects his family and his allies, by showing that he accepts the execution. Honor in feudal systems makes perfect sense. Honor almost boils down to a formalization of "how you should act to most effectively protect you and yours under the specific circumstances of feudalism". There's no practical reason for the Gai'Shain institution. It's just a "cool idea" that RJ thought up. "What if there was an Honor-culture or warriors who consented meekly to slavery if they were ever bested in combat?" And, y'know, I'm actually cool with bizarre cultures in fiction, but if I'm going to swallow them, I need to see how they actually make sense. You can't just drop them in there and pretend you did the hard work of making them consistent. Another warrior-culture fixated on Honor would be the Spartans. They're a great analogue for the Aiel warrior culture. And the Spartans maintained a permanent underclass of slaves. No Spartan warrior would have ever meekly consented to slavery. Culture can push people into weirdly self-destructive extremes, yes. There is such a thing as Jainism. There are Raelians and Scientologists. But even within these warped bubbles of culture, you can see simple psychological mechanisms whirring away. These people have been convinced by cultural pressure to believe that they need to do crazy things in order to ensure their Eternal, Infinite Reward. The behavior makes internal sense because it's just another example of a human responding to a perceived incentive. A cultist drinking poisoned seems, at the time, to be advancing their own interests. A Scientologist going broke from donations thinks they're getting something extremely valuable in return. What does becoming a Gai'Shain get you? On any level? I didn't even mean to target the idea of Gai'Shain so specifically. I think that idea is just a symptom of the fact the RJ doesn't possess a working Human Mind Simulator to constrain him from concocting completely unrealistic characters and cultures. edit: Yes, Mat may be the only actual human in the series.
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Nov 5, 2015 19:09
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Calef posted:Imagine you live in an inhospitable wasteland. Your whole world is your small settlement, which contains almost all your friends and loved ones, your wife, your mother and father, your children. A band of raiders from a neighboring tribe invades without warning and starts loving slaughtering everybody. You are a warrior; you pick up your spear. One of the invaders touches you without killing you. From what I can tell since 99% of every Aiel clan/sept/whatever is on the ji-e-toh honor train I'm guessing actual Aiel-vs-Aiel combat doesn't tend to get bloody very often. So a lot of settlement raiding just tends to end up being a social activity that gets their gene pools to mix up (consider how often the gai'shain thing is depicted as ending up with getting the various families involved mixed). Actual serious fighting is mostly done against the inhospitable environment, the Blight, and outsiders.
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Nov 5, 2015 20:28
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Blood feuds would complicate that reasoning. Although I'm not certain I buy this interpretation: Calef posted:Imagine you live in an inhospitable wasteland. Your whole world is your small settlement, which contains almost all your friends and loved ones, your wife, your mother and father, your children. A band of raiders from a neighboring tribe invades without warning and starts loving slaughtering everybody. You are a warrior; you pick up your spear. One of the invaders touches you without killing you. It's been a while since I read the books closely, but from what I remember this is not the process that gets followed. Combat happens among the Aiel and is chaotic as it is elsewhere. Only after the fighting stops does anyone take stock and figure out what Ji Eh Toh requires of them (and, in addition, whether they wish to even abide by it - as it isn't compulsory to become gai shain). e: That being said I would have really liked some deeper exposition about Aiel culture and history, particularly as it relates to the different warrior societies. We get introduced to several of them, but that's as far as the details go for a bunch of them (ie: what are Knife-hands?) JawKnee fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Nov 5, 2015 |
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Nov 5, 2015 20:45
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JawKnee posted:(ie: what are Knife-hands?) They're the drill instructors.
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Nov 5, 2015 21:08
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The gai'shain system helps mitigate the cost of a warrior society by rewarding a non-lethal resolution mechanic. It places the least honor on killing and the most honor on touching an opponent without harming them. Because of this, I would imagine that in their livestock raids or whatever, much of the fighting ends up being two people trying to take each other gai'shain instead of going for the kill. Additionally, the bulk of the warriors taken gai'shain are likely to be your least experienced and youngest warriors; these are precisely the people you want to send to live with another clan for a year, so that they get experience out of their home and don't other-ize the other clans. I mean, yeah, it's not gonna be perfect. People die. In the case of blood feuds and such lots of people die. But that's warrior society for you. The honor system helps mitigate that. Seems reasonable to me.
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Nov 5, 2015 21:09
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Jordan's characters are also deliberately not meant to be normal. The way the women act towards men is stupid, but then you only need to flip the gender and think of how men treated women just 100 years ago, and it suddenly makes a lot more sense. It's still stupid since they are starting from false assumptions, but it's suddenly sort of understandable why the think the things they do.
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Nov 5, 2015 22:14
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I think the only really silly thing about the Aiel is how many of them their are. They really shouldn't be able to support that kind of militarized population in that kind of terrain. But yeah, running up and touching people as a mark of honor was totally a thing several societies have done. Counting coup is the big example.
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Nov 5, 2015 22:51
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the JJ posted:But yeah, running up and touching people as a mark of honor was totally a thing several societies have done. Counting coup is the big example. That's a good observation, but counting coup is something that earns prestige among warriors, it doesn't imply that the warrior you touched is now your slave. I think something like Gai'Shain might even make sense in some other non-warrior culture, but I can't see that mechanism existing in a culture possessing all the other qualities that the Aiel possess. Khizan posted:The gai'shain system helps mitigate the cost of a warrior society by rewarding a non-lethal resolution mechanic. It places the least honor on killing and the most honor on touching an opponent without harming them. Because of this, I would imagine that in their livestock raids or whatever, much of the fighting ends up being two people trying to take each other gai'shain instead of going for the kill. There are cultures where groups meet for violent-but-preferably-nonlethal ritualized sport-warfare. That's true. But the type of fighting that happens on a livestock raid is not the same type of fighting that occurs during a show-war. If you're coming to steal my livestock or resources, you're stealing food out of my children's mouths. The matter has gone beyond honor and into basic low-level Maslow's Heirarchy poo poo. People are going to go chimpmode. Khizan posted:Additionally, the bulk of the warriors taken gai'shain are likely to be your least experienced and youngest warriors; these are precisely the people you want to send to live with another clan for a year, so that they get experience out of their home and don't other-ize the other clans. You could almost sell me on the idea that the whole Aiel warfare system is evolved to minimize actual death tolls, except that the Aiel are viewed as being the most fearsome warriors in the world. This would imply that they become the most fearsome warriors in the world while living a lifestyle of purely mock warfare. You can either have a true cutthroat warrior mentality ("The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means.") or you can have a culture of bravado and ritualized gamesmanship (e.g. counting coup) but I don't see how you can credibly have both. Either they're fearsome warriors or they're pretty good spear-and-buckler skirmishers who don't actually know how to kill en masse. JawKnee posted:Blood feuds would complicate that reasoning. That's another thing, I don't see how blood feuds could even be a thing within the ji'e'toh framework. They should either happen all the time (Border Reaver culture) or not happen at all (any modern Western culture). broken clock opsec posted:From what I can tell since 99% of every Aiel clan/sept/whatever is on the ji-e-toh honor train I'm guessing actual Aiel-vs-Aiel combat doesn't tend to get bloody very often. So a lot of settlement raiding just tends to end up being a social activity that gets their gene pools to mix up (consider how often the gai'shain thing is depicted as ending up with getting the various families involved mixed). Actual serious fighting is mostly done against the inhospitable environment, the Blight, and outsiders. Do they fight that much against outsiders? Do the clans living in the southern parts of the Waste ever fight against the Blight? If no to both, and if they don't actually fight to kill against each other, why are they so good at true warfare?
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Nov 6, 2015 16:51
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It's also because of their routes as people who followed the Way of the Leaf. Half of the Aiel's really screwed up Ji-e-toh system comes from the fact that they're desperately trying to cling to this ideal of what an Aiel should be without any real idea of what that actually entails any more. Further, their culture doesn't really seem to have a concept of Total War. It doesn't seem like any of the clans have gone after the Big Holds at any point and on top of that they've got a code about harming Blacksmiths for example. It feels more like that they'd raid each other's outposts for food and water, but wouldn't get down to civilian killing because it's just not in their nature to do so. Edit: Oh also the Aiel are literally described as incredibly good irregulars but poor soldiers overall. The only reasons the four clans kick the poo poo out of people at the Blood Snow is because the Grand Alliance takes ages getting poo poo into gear and have no idea what the hell the Aiel's strategy is meant to be. Like, imagine a dude who trains everyday in mock skirmish warfare with a solid strategy behind him against the majority of the Nation's armies which are poor people press ganged into picking up a pike and trying to fight, whilst their generals spend more time bickering with each other than doing anything. This is the same War where commanders throw the Borderlander soldiers, their best infantry and horse into a suicidal defensive position because they just don't like them that much. Compared to the rest of the nations they are just incredible fighters, but come the last battle when everyone's on the same page, you goddamn send the Defenders of the Stone up with the Aiel because the Aiel just aren't equipped to hold a fortified position as well. Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 16:52
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I think it may have to do with Robert Jordan realizing that he has to distinguish them from the Fremen of Arrakis somehow .
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Nov 6, 2015 17:38
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This isn't how it works at all. There are several important things to remember about the Aiel identity. First, the Aiel consciousness is focused entirely on the idea that one's life is dedicated to a greater cause or ideal. Hell, the name "Aiel" itself means "Dedicated." In the ancient past this code was the Way of the Leaf, and over time morphed into the complex code of honor and obligation that became known as Ji'e'toh. For an Aielman, one's sense of self is relatively insignificant. It's how one leads his life in observance of and submission to this ideal that defines who he is. This is why the Aiel sense of justice isn't so much about catching a criminal in the act, detaining them, and judging them from on high. Instead, the idea of submitting to a greater code of conduct is so central to Aiel psychology that an Aielman who commits a wrong is deeply conscious of his misdeeds and will willingly submit himself to punishment before a Wise One. This means that one of the most central virtues in Aiel culture appears to be, oddly enough, humility. Being humble is the ultimate expression of submitting to a greater ideal. And Gai'shain, an artifact of the collective Aiel past, are the epitome of this. Gai'shain are not slaves. Touching another Aielman in battle does not make him your slave. What happens is that when an Aielman touches you in battle and gets away without being wounded he has shown an extraordinary amount of skill in doing so. He's basically all like "gently caress yeah I'm an amazing raider" and earns a certain degree of honor and status in doing so. The fact that he has gained honor at your expense is something that pisses you off, so you go to him and exercise your right to be taken Gai'shain. Doing so is not primarily about servitude. First and foremost it is showing your opponent and the rest of his sept that you are actually capable of a greater sense of virtue, in submitting to a higher cause. Willingly becoming Gai'shain is the ultimate expression of humility and dedication. It's one-upsmanship at its finest, and serves as a passive-aggressive reminder to your opponent and his sept that martial skill is only a secondary value to the Aiel. As for Aiel warfare... it's important to remember how Aiel society is structured. While the Aiel as a whole are subdivided among twelve clans, the warriors of each clan are also further subdivided into different warrior societies. This means that Aiel loyalties are balanced between two intermingled groups: suppose you're a Red Shield of the Shaarad clan and one of your other Red Shield buddies is from the Nakai and you guys chill out and share oosquai every so often. Even though you're from two different clans you share a sense of kinship from being of the same warrior society. Now suppose the Nakai one day raid your clan. Would you stab the gently caress out of every Nakai you see? Well no, you'd have to exercise some sense of restraint not only because some of the attackers are Red Shields like yourself, but because one of those Nakai warriors from other societies might be a relative or even the adopted first-brother of that Nakai Red Shield buddy. Similarly, the Nakai would also have to fight you with the same sense of restraint. In essence, the highly intermeshed nature of Aiel social structure makes wholesale slaughter impossible and promotes less lethal forms of battle. The fact that Aiel Wise Ones in theory can pass freely between the clans provides another avenue of social and cultural crosstalk and an additional way to moderate the violence between the two clans. Stop distorting Aiel culture. Wetlander no baka. ShadowCatboy fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 18:30
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ShadowCatboy posted:For an Aielman, one's sense of self is relatively insignificant. It's how one leads his life in observance of and submission to this ideal that is defines who he is. This is why the Aiel sense of justice isn't so much about catching a criminal in the act, detaining them, and judging them from on high. Instead, the idea of submitting to a greater code of conduct is so central to Aiel psychology that an Aielman who commits a wrong is deeply conscious of his misdeeds and will willingly submit himself to punishment before a Wise One. Alright, sure. If we posit, as an axiom, that this group of people is able to behave in this way, then I accept everything in your post and everything about the Aiel. My problem is that human societies are vulnerable to the free rider problem. Humans are opportunistic. Even if the majority is "virtuous" it only takes a handful of assholes to ruin it for everybody. I think on some level RJ gets this, too! Just look at the damage Sevanna did. She almost singlehandedly ruined the whole Shaido culture. Think about that. Notice how easy that was to do. Notice how fragile that culture must've been to begin with. Now imagine if there were ten of her. In real life, there would be ten of her. There are psychopaths in every culture. edit: Thus, all it takes to be a perfect criminal in Aiel culture is just be lucky enough to be born a psychopath and then have the earthshattering revelation that you can just not turn yourself in. Likewise, Sevanna has the earthshattering revelation that the Wise Ones will accept her as a Wise One if she just insists that she already is one, because she gets Aiel culture while not actually feeling obligated to it. Calef fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 19:04
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I think it helps that the clan elders can literally commune with their ancestors and have magic powers. And people who can't deal with this particular brand of bullshit die and so don't become leaders/magical power users. So yeah. People not with the program don't get to lead, and leadership has the power (societal and magical) to keep rear end in a top hat in check. That gets hosed with the Shaido because a. Rand took away some of that obfuscation that let the leadership keep their hold and b. wossname hosed with the system by letting an rear end in a top hat fake credentials.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:38
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^^^ Right, Sevanna needed a massive loving wedge to actually get started. (Also, prior to her Wise Ones and Clan Leaders had to pass through Rhuidean, Wise Ones had to do it TWICE.)
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Nov 6, 2015 19:41
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Calef posted:Alright, sure. If we posit, as an axiom, that this group of people is able to behave in this way, then I accept everything in your post and everything about the Aiel. There used to be like 30 Aiel clans several generations immediately after the Breaking. Those who couldn't get with the picture of contemporary Aiel society essentially went extinct likely due to the sort of infighting you described: cultural natural selection at its finest. The opportunists like Sevannah also would've been weeded out from any main leadership role because they likely wouldn't have survived Rhuidean. Additionally, harsh environments tend to have a dual effect. On the one hand they tend to stimulate the development of raiding culture as you see with the Aiel as they fight over scarce resources. On the other hand these cultures also adopt deeply-ingrained rules of proper conduct since survival is also rooted in interdependence and cooperation (ever notice, for example, how Middle Eastern tribes are almost aggressively polite and hospitable?) Those who couldn't play nice in society would've been left to die in the deserts. EDIT: Also the rare Aielman who does go rogue as you describe would probably get caught sooner or later and made da'tsang. Those who cannot dedicate themselves from within are aberrant and despised, and thus must be controlled through external means by being made to wear black and routinely beaten and such. ShadowCatboy fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 19:46
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I forgot about Rhuidean. gently caress, the Aiel make sense now.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:51
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Calef posted:I forgot about Rhuidean. Yeah, the 'modern' Aiel culture is pretty close to an engineered artifact by the Aes Sedai and the Jenn Aiel.
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Nov 6, 2015 20:26
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ShadowCatboy posted:There used to be like 30 Aiel clans several generations immediately after the Breaking. Those who couldn't get with the picture of contemporary Aiel society essentially went extinct likely due to the sort of infighting you described: cultural natural selection at its finest. The opportunists like Sevannah also would've been weeded out from any main leadership role because they likely wouldn't have survived Rhuidean. One theory for why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed was not because of all the (gay) sex, it was because they were not following the principles of guest-right. After all, Lot was saved from destruction after he had offered his own daughters to the whims of the crowd in order to protect his guests from harm.
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Nov 7, 2015 20:21
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DarkHorse posted:It's also why in such societies why adhering to social niceties is so important, and anyone that would violate those tenets are to be despised. Anyone could get caught out in the desert and desperately need water and food to recuperate, so being hospitable was literally a life or death prospect. Suspicion that inviting someone inside, sharing food and water, and then killing him was a possibility would just lead to more deaths overall for the entire culture. This is also likely why Aiel looting is limited to "taking the Fifth." A lot of Aiel customs arose in order to allow for raiding in order to obtain needed resources, but also to prevent wanton slaughter or hardship. Their culture is based on a complex web of interrelations rather than loyalty to one sole faction, so even when in opposition to other groups of Aiel they are obligated to offer them certain protections. This not only means that you would fall under those same protections at some point, but that your kin-groups who live in other clans are protected. On the other hand, Wetlanders do NOT get any such protections because they exist totally outside of the social kinship system of the Aiel, which is probably why they have no problem killing outsiders and are considered ruthless warriors. Frankly, I'd say that the Aiel are one of the most well-developed fictional cultures I've come across.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:45
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the JJ posted:I think the only really silly thing about the Aiel is how many of them their are. They really shouldn't be able to support that kind of militarized population in that kind of terrain. Yeah this really threw me for a loop. One of them mentions like a 2x2 foot hole of water was like a massive treasure and it just doesn't make sense you can't sustain a hundreds of thousands populations without a large water source even desert cultures have a river or something nearby to live off of.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:15
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GreyPowerVan posted:Honestly I'd say the Aes Sedai are more sane than our last couple of Congresses. I'm pretty sure that if some teenaged boy grabbed Nancy Pelosi, threw her over his knee and spanked her rear end til she cried because that's what you do when a bitch gives a man lip, there would be serious consequences. Especially if Pelosi was a centuries-old wizard. I also doubt that if she was enslaved by some cranky old dude she would fall madly in love with him as she realized how much she enjoyed doing his laundry. Gender relations in WoT are pretty hosed up, but for the most part they are hosed up in a very traditional way. The Little Kielbasa fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 8, 2015 14:30
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The Little Kielbasa posted:I'm pretty sure that if some teenaged boy grabbed Nancy Pelosi, threw her over his knee and spanked her rear end til she cried because that's what you do when a bitch gives a man lip, there would be serious consequences. Especially if Pelosi was a centuries-old wizard. I also doubt that if she was enslaved by some cranky old dude she would fall madly in love with him as she realized how much she enjoyed doing his laundry. they're streets ahead of some other fantasy series where it seems a rape is pretty much the same as a hello
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Nov 11, 2015 05:22
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Calef posted:The Wheel of Time feels like it was written by an alien or AI that doesn't quite understand humans and is just trying lots of experiments to see if it can concoct something believable, as if trying to pass the Turing test, and usually failing. well, bob jordan was freemason... makes you think
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Nov 11, 2015 10:51
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The Little Kielbasa posted:I'm pretty sure that if some teenaged boy grabbed Nancy Pelosi, threw her over his knee and spanked her rear end til she cried because that's what you do when a bitch gives a man lip, there would be serious consequences. Especially if Pelosi was a centuries-old wizard. I also doubt that if she was enslaved by some cranky old dude she would fall madly in love with him as she realized how much she enjoyed doing his laundry. Forced labor as a punishment for crimes also has nothing to do with gender relations. And considering that Siuan was pretty much free to do whatever she wanted as long as his laundry was done, comparing her situation to slavery is also highly disingenuous. Also, female (queen) on male (main character) rape isn't a sign of traditional gender roles.
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Nov 11, 2015 14:27
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Two Finger posted:they're streets ahead of some other fantasy series where it seems a rape is pretty much the same as a hello There's no doubt that the Gurm lurks alone atop the perversity pyramid, thank goodness.
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Nov 12, 2015 13:40
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The Little Kielbasa posted:There's no doubt that the Gurm lurks alone atop the perversity pyramid, thank goodness. If you want something done right, you need someone who's a good kind
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Nov 12, 2015 19:05
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Two Finger posted:If you want something done right, you need someone who's a good kind I've only read the first two ASOIAF books, compared to those the Sword of Truth books by Goodkind win in the perversity Olympics.
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Nov 12, 2015 19:31
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