The Wheel of Time and Lord Varys (second attempt)

[Lord Varys]

The idiocy that is Lanfear:

So Lanfear is posing as Else ... so far so good.

Then she is seen by Mat and she acts like those books were written by a five-year-old. Mat recognizes her and she doesn't pretend that she knows him, too. Earlier she sucked up to him but she doesn't need this opportunity to suck up to him as Else? Why??? Then, and for those of you people who only enjoy my ranting and don't bother with the actual books (which is the best thing you can do!) I'll give you my first quote from the book:

Quote

She went past him along the other side, watching to make sure he did not come closer. Once by, she quickened her steps, glancing over her shoulder at him until she was out of sight around a bend.

We are talking about a millennia-old, super-powerful, very devious evil witch here. And the author has her behave like a ten-year-old looking over her shoulder the entire time to ensure nobody follows her.

Later 'Else' pretends the Amyrlin has sent her to pass on a message to the girls - something the morons that are 'heroes' in this story don't bother to actually double-check since, if they did, our childish author could not continue with his contrived plot - and Egwene encounters her in her true form shortly thereafter, in which she also appears as a complete moron. The woman is a former Aes Sedai, infiltrates the headquarters of the Aes Sedai, and basically poses as an Aes Sedai when she interacts with people ... but she still cannot stomach it if she is addressed as Aes Sedai. That the author didn't write 'I'm the evil Forsaken bitch Lanfear' on her forehead is something the reader doesn't understand.

I mean, is it so hard to actually write a scene that is believable or only bearable where an evil person pretends they are good and do show their true colors in a manner you can actually buy? For Jordan, it apparently is.

As for the Ajahs:

It is pretty silly that there are 'magical schools' in an order of sorceresses who have pretty little or nothing to do with the magical stuff. We do have two geek orders, the Brown and White Ajah, both of which could profit if they would include/where open to mundane philosophers/scholars. We do have an Ajah, the Grays, focusing on politics and diplomacy which is also not a profession you need magical skills for ... meaning they, too, could be open to mundane politicians and diplomats.

To do what those three Ajahs do you don't need magical skills at all. Which is why it is extremely weird that doing those things is connected to be part of the Aes Sedai. The characteristics of those Ajahs should be defined either by certain aspects of mastering the One Power - certain magical skills and talents, if you will - or by ideologies and approaches how to use the One Power in the world at large.

In light of that, the Yellow, the Red, and the Green Ajah do make sense. The Blues kind of make sense ... although their goals could also open them to mundane people sharing in the ideals of the Blue, travelling the world and doing good deeds isn't dependent on being a sorceress, after all.

Other thing:

Got to Mat's magical fighting skills. There you also see how bad Jordan is at exposition. It would have been so easy to write this scene better.

1. Have Mat wager that he can hold his own for a couple of minutes against Galad and Gawyn, not beat the crap out of them.

2. Use the magical background you yourself established as explanation as to how and why Mat suddenly can fight reasonably well. There are two obvious ways how this could have been done. By ways of the (silly) genetic memory/old blood of Manetheren thing - which could have been greatly amplified by his near death experience - and/or by having his increased exposure to the dagger having a lasting 'magical effect' in the fighting skills department.

Instead, Jordan just turns Mat's dad it the second Two Rivers super fighter, directly after Tam. And while this makes sense for Tam considering he left his home, learned how to fight, entered the army, etc. ... nothing like that is true for Mat or his dad.

That is just lazy and stupid. The entire scene has Mary Sue written all over it since we are to buy that a guy who just survived a mortal illness and is still physically weak can stand against two youths who have been trained to fight their entire life. That is just not something you can do as a critical reader ... at least not if you do not switch your brain off.

[Lord Varys]

Also, what kind of hilarious and inconsistent crap is it to insert nonsense 'build-up lines' to 'explain' how Mat even knows about Gawyn and Galad. It has been established repeatedly that the boy scarcely remembers anything when the dagger's influence is the strongest - both before and after Moiraine contained its effects to a degree. When Mat wakes up in the White Tower he himself admits he can scarcely remember Cairhien (!) and Falme ... when he was still not as bad as on the way to Tar Valon.

Yet if it is convenient for Jordan he has Elayne ramble on about her brother to a guy she barely knows who couldn't care less about people he doesn't know. In fact, Mat should also barely remember Elayne Trakand herself, having met her only at Falme when he was already in what would constitute his dagger-induced daze. He wouldn't care about her, and he wouldn't care about her brothers.

[Lord Varys]

Oh, I'm surprised. I had forgotten that the Else warning does come up when the Amyrlin talks in completely clumsily written 'subtle scene' with Nynaeve.

That said - the girls actually buying a Darkfriend message, following it to a hidden room where they might have been captured, turned, or murdered, and using the hints there as sufficient reasoning to go to Tear is just utter stupidity.

They do not have the powers nor the resources to actually defeat thirteen Black Ajah ... even less so if they had had the brains to figure out the the 'he' Lanfear showed and talked about in the dream world is a Forsaken.

In light of all that - Siuan should sent actual Aes Sedai to Tear, not a bunch of girls.

Then we get an entirely pointless scene where friends have to push a friend for paragraphs and paragraphs to do them a favor - which is just utter silliness and a waste of time.

Also, a more general question:

Jordan never bothers explaining why Gray Men, etc. are behind specific people at specific times, right? We will never learn why and who targeted Egwene earlier, nor who the hell sent the Gray Man after Mat in Tar Valon, right? Just as we certainly have no clue why Ba'alzamon commanded Ingtar to let the Gray Man in who tried to murder Rand in book 2, right?

We also don't get any explanation where exactly those guys come from (they cannot teleport, it seems, nor should there be a hidden Gray Man storage room in Tar Valon). Them being Shadowspawn would indicate that, like the Trollocs, Myrddraals, etc. they come from Shayol Ghul and the Blight ... which would mean that somebody higher up in the chain of command of the Shadow would authorize such attacks. And we can be pretty sure that it isn't Lanfear who is right there are could murder them all by herself.

I expect that Jordan thinks it is subtle and complex story-telling if the evil guys are split and we never really understand what they are after but can pretend there must be a reason for what they do because stuff happens. If that's the case then this is just bad writing yet again.

The concept of the evil guys infighting isn't bad at all - but we, the readers, should know at least something about the contradicting interests and goals they have ... and so far nothing like that is given in the books.

Also, a question for the experts:

Where exactly was the Darkfriends Social arranged in the Prologue of TGH? Common sense would indicate this having taken place in the dream world since neither of the attendees we know where there - Bors, Liandrin, Ingtar - could have physically travelled to the Blight and back without anybody realizing they were gone for days and weeks. Even if they had been using Waygates they would have been away far too long ... and Ba'alzamon definitely wouldn't lower himself to teleport his lackeys to his lair (which is also nothing Bors remembers having happened)

Yet the way the chapter is written very much indicates that Bors is at a real place, interacts with real servants, etc. If he had been in Ishamael's private space in the dream world there wouldn't have been a need for that ... nor would they actually be at Shayol Ghul like the Prologue claims they are.

This seems to be another instance of really bad writing since the reader is not supposed to ask the question how the people got there even after we learn that Liandrin travelled to Fal Dara with the Amyrlin while also attending this gathering ... and Ingtar being at Fal Dara with Rand and company the entire time.

[fionwe1987]

41 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, I'm surprised. I had forgotten that the Else warning does come up when the Amyrlin talks in completely clumsily written 'subtle scene' with Nynaeve.

Changing your tune again, I see. You've spent multiple posts insisting any explanation that comes chronologically later in the series is a retcon. If so, this shouldn't surprise you at all, and should be par for the course.

Or, I dunno, you accept that authors don't reveal the answers to mysteries all the time, and a lot of multiple volume fantasies do exactly that.

It would be nice if there were consistency in the nonsense you spew. 

Otherwise, it's just silly, right?

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, fionwe1987 said:

Changing your tune again, I see. You've spent multiple posts insisting any explanation that comes chronologically later in the series is a retcon. If so, this shouldn't surprise you at all, and should be par for the course.

Or, I dunno, you accept that authors don't reveal the answers to mysteries all the time, and a lot of multiple volume fantasies do exactly that.

It would be nice if there were consistency in the nonsense you spew. 

Otherwise, it's just silly, right?

LOL, not every explanation - only explanations that try to fix clear contraditions/silly behavior in earlier novels.

The issue with the issue at hand still is that the girls just buy Else's claim without checking it out first. That Nynaeve learns that they had been fooled by a Darkfriend there isn't something they figured out because of their own initiative ... but because the Amyrlin approached her. I mean you don't seem to be as stupid as Jordan. If you or I were the Amyrlin setting up the girls as investigators we would also establish some sort of communciations system - say, a dead drop, a coded phrase identifying a message as genuine, that sort of thing. We would also figure out a way how to talk directly regularly if we felt we could literally trust no one. But these people never even thought about setting something like that up. It is complete and ineffective nonsense.

And that they now go to Tear is even worse than if they hadn't double-checked with the Amyrlin as I expect the would since it means they walk into a trap with open eyes and without the means to actually defeat their enemies.

Also, how silly is it that apparently only very few sisters know about Callandor? That's what Siuan said when Nynaeve asked about it. It is a crucial part of the prophecy of the Dragon Reborn and apparently those prophecies are well-known among the people for them to affect the belief of the people in Rand ... but the Aes Sedai do not really know much about the thing? A floating sword in what's the oldest non-Aes Sedai fortress in the known world? How does that make sense?

[fionwe1987]

In short, you will inconsistently call out whatever you want not on any objective basis, but because you want to shit on the series. As we knew all along. 

Callandor is held in a fortress in a land that doesn't like Aes Sedai at all, where no Aes Sedai has been allowed to step foot for millennia. Exactly why is it shocking that most of them don't know what the specific function of Callandor is? Sa'angreal aren't known for their floating ability, in general. That's something specific to Callandor's wards, which use techniques the Aes Sedai have lost, anyway. 

[Lord Varys]

4 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

In short, you will inconsistently call out whatever you want not on any objective basis, but because you want to shit on the series. As we knew all along. 

Callandor is held in a fortress in a land that doesn't like Aes Sedai at all, where no Aes Sedai has been allowed to step foot for millennia. Exactly why is it shocking that most of them don't know what the specific function of Callandor is? Sa'angreal aren't known for their floating ability, in general. That's something specific to Callandor's wards, which use techniques the Aes Sedai have lost, anyway. 

LOL, don't try to defend this silliness. It doesn't work. We talk about the most powerful organization on that continent and 3,000 years of collective information gathering. Are you trying to tell me the people - Aes Sedai - know about the fucking Dragon and his prophecies but not about his clichéd prop thingy? That they do not have their agents in Tear like they do in any other place? And that they do not talk about what they know?

A floating sword clearly cannot be a normal sword ... and the Dragon being a powerful male channeler wouldn't have any use for a mundane sword, anyway. Or do those morons believe he can slay the Dark One with a common sword? People might lack confirmation that the thing is a sa'angreal ... but that it is either an angreal, a sa'angreal or a ter'angreal would be obvious to any person knowing that such things do exist, i.e. to all Aes Sedai.

And everybody knowing the prophecies of the Dragon - which actually do include our backwater boys - would also immediately assume that the Dragon's super sword wouldn't just be mundane sword for similar reasons. They also don't think the Dragon is an average guy. This is magical artifact meant for the Dragon ... so everybody would think it was a magical artifact.

And I don't want to shit over that series. I have to, because it sucks. Hard. It sucks both on a conceptual level and in execution, i.e. it is badly plotted and badly written.

So far there isn't even a coherently written larger story. We don't know what the characters want.

[El Kabong]

Why is this thread even allowed to continue? It's just hate and bile at this point.

[fionwe1987]

A great, sa’angreal, or ter’angreal is a long long way away from “one of the strongest sa’angreal known”. Ter’angreal can be literally anything. It’s like calling it a “machine”. It’s a thing that uses the One Power to achieve something. Siuan said few in the Tower know what it is. I have no idea why you felt the need to subject us to your unnecessary blather about it not being a mundane sword. 

Not being a mundane sword doesn’t make it a sa’angreal. Those are not two mutually exclusive categories. 

[polishgenius]

4 hours ago, El Kabong said:

Why is this thread even allowed to continue? It's just hate and bile at this point.

 

Why should it be closed? It's not LordVarys' fault Fionwe can't stay out of it.

[El Kabong]

16 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

Why should it be closed? It's not LordVarys' fault Fionwe can't stay out of it.

Because it’s just LordVarys gleefully hate reading and shitting on something under the guise of “analysis”, And poorly at that. Fionwe has pointed out all the contradictions, and yeah maybe if we stopped responding it would die out, but this thread is one of the most gleefully hateful things I’ve seen and I’m not even that big a fan. I extremely dislike Dresden but I’m not going to start a thread just to shit on it. Abd please, don’t try and tell me this isn’t a hate read. I think that’s been shown to be bull crap many times at this point.

[polishgenius]

3 minutes ago, El Kabong said:

Because it’s just LordVarys gleefully hate reading and shitting on something under the guise of “analysis”, And poorly at that

 

Yeah, but he specifically made a separate thread for it. If he was piling into an extant WoT thread to tell all the fans how shit it is all the time I'd see the point (I mean, I did when he did that), but I don't see anything wrong with a bit of a hate-read just there on its own. This forum used to have whole series of hate-threads for other authors/series- why should this one be disallowed just coz this series is, for other people, better? 

[Lightning Lord]

5 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Yeah, but he specifically made a separate thread for it. If he was piling into an extant WoT thread to tell all the fans how shit it is all the time I'd see the point (I mean, I did when he did that), but I don't see anything wrong with a bit of a hate-read just there on its own. This forum used to have whole series of hate-threads for other authors/series- why should this one be disallowed just coz this series is, for other people, better? 

Gotta agree with this. The thread title explicitly states that this is, essentially, LV's reading journal. Others feel like commenting - sure. It's a public forum and opinions are welcome.

There are plenty of threads on this board that aren't for me. You know what's way better than walking into them and picking fights? Clicking on something else and leaving those to other people. Some specific posters are the ones coming in and insulting the OP, the ones that cannot leave it (someone else's reading experience) alone. Varys accepted that their thoughts were not best-placed in a dedicated WoT fans thread and made their own. How is that an issue?

I like WoT but it is a deeply flawed series. I loved it at the time and have a lot of nostalgia for it, though I don't think it holds up well to scrutiny (something Varys is offering in spades).

Varys - I like reading the way someone else experiences something that I first encountered nearly twenty-five years ago. I don't agree with everything you write but, whatever, it's your experience. Keep it up.

[Lord Varys]

13 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

A great, sa’angreal, or ter’angreal is a long long way away from “one of the strongest sa’angreal known”. Ter’angreal can be literally anything. It’s like calling it a “machine”. It’s a thing that uses the One Power to achieve something. Siuan said few in the Tower know what it is. I have no idea why you felt the need to subject us to your unnecessary blather about it not being a mundane sword. 

Not being a mundane sword doesn’t make it a sa’angreal. Those are not two mutually exclusive categories. 

The point here is, that this is a conceptual flaw. It is silly from the author to (try to) make it so that the entire Aes Sedai order doesn't really *know* what Callandor is. That could make sense if the Dragon Reborn himself were to be treated as a myth by the majority of the organization. There is no conceivable reason why what Callandor is would be kept secret by the Aes Sedai.

Other silly detail I stumbled upon yesterday:

When Mat meets Thom - which is a plot contrivance in itself since chance encounters are always things you should avoid when writing something (and if you are using them anyway, make them plausible) - it is revealed he spent weeks in Tar Valon (!) and actually saw Elaida on the streets.

This is the series where the author tries to convince us that everybody (!!!) will know about the arrival of a bunch of guys five minutes after they enter an inn and talk to the innkeep and/or some of the people there. Yet if Thom Merrilin, a-not-so-unprominent gleeman with Aes Sedai enemies goes to the Aes Sedai city and performs there in a not-so-bad-inn then the Aes Sedai and their agents do not catch up on that. How is that consistent with what's established elsewhere? Who can take this shit seriously? Honestly?

This is utter nonsense. And it is nonsense the author could have avoided easily enough by having Thom not seeing Elaida on the street and, more importantly, have him arrive just a day or two before he encounters Mat and by having him keep a low profile in Tar Valon.

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

The point here is, that this is a conceptual flaw. It is silly from the author to (try to) make it so that the entire Aes Sedai order doesn't really *know* what Callandor is. That could make sense if the Dragon Reborn himself were to be treated as a myth by the majority of the organization. There is no conceivable reason why what Callandor is would be kept secret by the Aes Sedai.

Again, you're assuming/making up stuff. Siuan did not say it was a secret. And it isn't. It's just obscure lore from 3000 years ago. It has had zero bearing on the life of any Aes Sedai for 3000 years. Barring experts on the Dragon Reborn, why the hell would Aes Sedai Jane know or care about Callandor?

Now, as you'll find out, Siuan is wrong about the number of people outside the Tower who know what Callandor is. In fact, some know way more about it than Siuan does. But she doesn't know that, of course.

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Other silly detail I stumbled upon yesterday:

When Mat meets Thom - which is a plot contrivance in itself since chance encounters are always things you should avoid when writing something (and if you are using them anyway, make them plausible) - it is revealed he spent weeks in Tar Valon (!) and actually saw Elaida on the streets.

This is the series where the author tries to convince us that everybody (!!!) will know about the arrival of a bunch of guys five minutes after they enter an inn and talk to the innkeep and/or some of the people there. Yet if Thom Merrilin, a-not-so-unprominent gleeman with Aes Sedai enemies goes to the Aes Sedai city and performs there in a not-so-bad-inn then the Aes Sedai and their agents do not catch up on that. How is that consistent with what's established elsewhere? Who can take this shit seriously? Honestly?

This is utter nonsense. And it is nonsense the author could have avoided easily enough by having Thom not seeing Elaida on the street and, more importantly, have him arrive just a day or two before he encounters Mat and by having him keep a low profile in Tar Valon.

Tar Valon has a population of more than a million people. Are you seriously asking for it to have the same level and speed of word-of-mouth that a small village or town with a single or at most a few inns would have?

Elaida didn't immediately know where to find Rand in Caemlyn either. And heck, Moiraine only did because of the Finder weave. If you didn't see that as an issue, you shouldn't be seeing this as an issue, either, except, again, you're looking for things to whine about. 

All you're doing is convincing us your reading comprehension skills are spectacularly shitty. 

[fionwe1987]

13 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Why should it be closed? It's not LordVarys' fault Fionwe can't stay out of it.

I have no idea why I'm obliged to stay out of it, any more than Lord Varys is obliged to stop posting. You can agree with one of us more that the other, but you can't stand for only one side of the different opinions being posted. If you don't like what I write, skip the posts and move on with your life. 

[El Kabong]

Fair enough. I'm newish here so I'll just bow out of this one.

[polishgenius]

15 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

I have no idea why I'm obliged to stay out of it, any more than Lord Varys is obliged to stop posting. You can agree with one of us more that the other, but you can't stand for only one side of the different opinions being posted. If you don't like what I write, skip the posts and move on with your life. 

 

I've got no problem with anyone arguing with Varys. This topic would be pretty dull if they didn't. 

But you're the only one who can't seem to resist spicing up your disagreement with aggression and personal attacks (and don't get me wrong, I've been there. Hell, I've been told for it on this very forum in the past, quite rightly. But sometimes you just have to let it go, especially when you're the one coming at someone). I don't know if you're personally offended that he hasn't listened to your early criticism and modulated his critique or what, but as the topic's gone on there's been more and more of this sort of thing:

 

15 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

All you're doing is convincing us your reading comprehension skills are spectacularly shitty. 

 

On 11/18/2021 at 8:04 PM, fionwe1987 said:

It would be nice if there were consistency in the nonsense you spew. 

 

 

Like I say, if he was invading an extant WoT topic to do this I'd get it but you're specifically having to click into his discussion to get here, and then getting what appears to be furiously angry about it. To paraphrase some words of wisdom: if you don't like what he writes, skip the posts and move on with your life.

 

[fionwe1987]

4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I've got no problem with anyone arguing with Varys. This topic would be pretty dull if they didn't. 

But you're the only one who can't seem to resist spicing up your disagreement with aggression and personal attacks (and don't get me wrong, I've been there. Hell, I've been told for it on this very forum in the past, quite rightly. But sometimes you just have to let it go, especially when you're the one coming at someone). I don't know if you're personally offended that he hasn't listened to your early criticism and modulated his critique or what, but as the topic's gone on there's been more and more of this sort of thing:

 

 

 

Like I say, if he was invading an extant WoT topic to do this I'd get it but you're specifically having to click into his discussion to get here, and then getting what appears to be furiously angry about it. To paraphrase some words of wisdom: if you don't like what he writes, skip the posts and move on with your life.

 

This would be fine coming from him. What I don't get is why you think you should come in here very few pages or so to snipe, and move on. How exactly is that contributory to the discussion?

[polishgenius]

 

Seriously? You're complaining that I shouldn't call out what I'm reading as personal abuse coz I'm not the one being abused?
 

eta: I'm aware that abuse is a strong word and it's not really that serious, but you get the point.