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The Wheel of Time: The Thread Reborn (Book Spoilers)


A True Kaniggit

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The show is not perfect and has it's low-budget moments, but overall I am enjoying it. The heal bomb didn't land with me, but it wasn't so cheesy that it soured me. I've never really been invested in power rankings, just like I've never participated in the threads here on who the best swordsman in Westeros is. I just don't care other than some vague indication of who is good and are they staying consistent?

I know the One Power is supposed to be two halves of the whole, opposite yet harmonious, blah blah. I never liked how the power was divided, it was just a bunch of arbitrary rules that didn't add anything more that what was already there at the core - two powers, one source. The surrendering vs seizing was ok, but still raises some small hackles with me as I was reading it. The fact that women were weaker, but more dexterous and could link just seemed like bullshit to me and I kinda hated it. I'd be more than fine if they did away with that and just had them equal - woman are just as powerful as men, men can also link, some people may be weaker, but are more skillful and that can equalize the power balance as well.

If it's problematic to have men linking, well, just have them be ignorant. How are they supposed to know everything that was lost? Rand (Lews) and Taim would know, but why would they give this knowledge to the men until they had to? They are both paranoid and guarded dudes.

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So any one else struck by the thought that maybe the heal bomb also cured Logain's madness and his first sane thoughts in years were something like, "Wow, why did I ever think I was the Dragon Reborn?  That untrained peasant woman has more power than I ever dreamed of, like the sun.  Maybe it's time to go home, back to the farm. But first I should really offer to help fix any damage I might have caused... AARGH!"   And he is forcibly gelded.

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1 hour ago, felice said:

It made for an effective moment, but yes, I found it problematic. It felt much too soon for her feelings for Lan to be that strong. And healing should require knowledge and focus, not just raw power; instinctively coming up with an area-effect fix-whatever-happens-to-be-wrong weave is a big jump from subconsciously enhancing the effectiveness of specific mundane treatments.

Hopefully, they'll show her rage-healing other injuries and establish that Nynaeve does get angry when she sees anyone hurt, just like in the books. 

8 minutes ago, Leofric said:

So any one else struck by the thought that maybe the heal bomb also cured Logain's madness and his first sane thoughts in years were something like, "Wow, why did I ever think I was the Dragon Reborn?  That untrained peasant woman has more power than I ever dreamed of, like the sun.  Maybe it's time to go home, back to the farm. But first I should really offer to help fix any damage I might have caused... AARGH!"   And he is forcibly gelded.

Well, you can't Heal madness like that. Unless they want to make the whole history of WoT utter nonsense, I don't think they meant to imply he was Healed.

That said, Logain wasn't fully in the grip of madness either, so it wasn't like he needed to be Healed there to realize whatever he realized. 

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Oh no. I hate it when you find out people you liked say things that you disagree with and lose a little respect for them.

Shad, of Shadiversity Youtube fame is a medieval enthusiast who puts out a  lot of information videos. I found them interesting. He is also reviewing Wheel of Time with friends and he, and mostly his friend, dislike the show for reasons I don't respect. (hint: the words "woke" and "agenda" are used liberally). I can respect reasoned criticism while also disagreeing, but criticizing something without examining why a change might be made and blaming the strawman of woke Hollywood agenda and "them" for all that's bad and making Lan a pussy, sorry - can't get on board. Also borrowing trouble from the future show and being upset that Elayne and Aviendha might be bi is worth throwing a fit over right now! To be fair, Shad himself doesn't quite go to the 'woke' well, but he skirts it and really sets it up for his friend (who hasn't read the book) to hit the softball out of the park and then they laugh together, so he's not really pushing back a lot. Shad is more along the book purist lines and will call out the things he likes, but he really gives his friend free reign to be an ass.

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4 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Based on this, Logain seeing Mat/Rand and laughing is happening after he's gentled. Dunno how I missed that implication after episode 4, but are we to believe Talents survive gentling, , now?

I don't think we ever got any evidence in the books about this one way or the other.

Personally I don't see why an ability that doesn't relate to channelling would be impacted by gentling. The books associate the word Talent with channelling but it gets used in some wildly differing contexts from proficiency and skill / ability with certain weaves through to the ability to do extremely rare things with the power which don't work for others, and then also to things not necessarily directly related to the power at all and I don't think they all really fall under the same heading at all. Personally I don't really see how a passive ability like being able to see ta'veren would at all be linked to or affected by the ability to touch the source, any more than attempting to sever Min or Perrin would take away their being a seer or a Wolfbrother respectively, even if either of them could learn to channel.

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3 hours ago, Babblebauble said:

But if they both just tried to run away there's zero chance he'd have murdered his wife with his own hand. I just cannot see how I'm supposed to want this character to go into battle again, let alone cheer on his courage and resolve against evil. The biggest evil in this dude's life is that he killed his wife. 

I mean storytelling 101 is that this guy's happy ending is that he finds a place of peace to put his talents to use and never does violence again, never has to risk hurting anyone else at all. Making him soldier on isn't brave or heroic, it's horrifying! 

 

It baffles me still. (Which you've probably all figured out). I'd love to hear the reasoning behind that one because as it stands now it just doesn't make any sense.

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32 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

Oh no. I hate it when you find out people you liked say things that you disagree with and lose a little respect for them.

Shad, of Shadiversity Youtube fame is a medieval enthusiast who puts out a  lot of information videos. I found them interesting. He is also reviewing Wheel of Time with friends and he, and mostly his friend, dislike the books for reasons I don't respect. (hint: the words "woke" and "agenda" are used liberally). I can respect reasoned criticism while also disagreeing, but criticizing something without examining why a change might be made and blaming the strawman of woke Hollywood agenda and "them" for all that's bad and making Lan a pussy, sorry - can't get on board. Also borrowing trouble from the future show and being upset that Elayne and Aviendha might be bi is worth throwing a fit over right now! To be fair, Shad himself doesn't quite go here, but he really sets it up for his friend (who hasn't read the book) to hit the softball out of the park and then they laugh together, so he's not really pushing back a lot. Shad is more along the book purist lines and will call out the things he likes, but he really gives his friend free reign to be an ass.

Aviendha and Elayne bi? That's a pretty natural pairing, there. I like that idea quite a bit, they're perfect for each other. 

Spoiler

The spanking scenes write themselves!

 

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2 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Oh no. I hate it when you find out people you liked say things that you disagree with and lose a little respect for them.

Shad, of Shadiversity Youtube fame is a medieval enthusiast who puts out a  lot of information videos. I found them interesting. He is also reviewing Wheel of Time with friends and he, and mostly his friend, dislike the books for reasons I don't respect. (hint: the words "woke" and "agenda" are used liberally). I can respect reasoned criticism while also disagreeing, but criticizing something without examining why a change might be made and blaming the strawman of woke Hollywood agenda and "them" for all that's bad and making Lan a pussy, sorry - can't get on board. Also borrowing trouble from the future show and being upset that Elayne and Aviendha might be bi is worth throwing a fit over right now! To be fair, Shad himself doesn't quite go here, but he really sets it up for his friend (who hasn't read the book) to hit the softball out of the park and then they laugh together, so he's not really pushing back a lot. Shad is more along the book purist lines and will call out the things he likes, but he really gives his friend free reign to be an ass.

Not a surprise given WoT came out in 91. Your average 20 year old then would be 50 now. I’d already unsubscribed long ago from Shad (as well as Lindybeige) so not surprised to see this from him. Jordan had a lot of good ideas but tbh a lot of his gender interactions and distinctions between how he portrayed genders in the series are pretty dated and really don’t need to be held on to.


I think he was a bit better with race but he did have the habit of making nation A is the white people nation and B is the Indians and C is the whatever and so on. Given that the ancestry of the whole world is a world spanning metropolis only a few thousand years ago that’s not really time to make everyone distinct again.

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I'm really not bothered by Nyns mass healing. Maybe I just never had the same understanding/visualization of how channeling worked, but given the unique way she does healing it's easy for me to see it as a single weave that supercharges the bodies healing and winds through everyone, rather than needing to be a distinct weave for each person that directly heals the specific injury they've sustained. There are some obvious limitations that would work around this sort of healing, like being unable to heal poisons (such as the trolloc poison for a show relevant example) or anything else that the bodies natural healing lacks the tools to handle. Simple lacerations from shrapnel though? The body simply lacks the resources and time to fix those before bleeding out, but it has the toolkit to knit cuts so it works.

Gertrude - yeah complaining about woke agendas is a red flag for me too. It's a pretty easy shorthand to tell them what they think of me

Babble - I actually agree with the emotional impact of the fridging making Perrin's need to fight anyway a tragic outcome, I just think that's both good and the point of the change. It's supposed to be tragic and bad, but I was too thick to get that from the books and was just annoyed at him being indecisive and naive. With this change I think it's a lot more obvious that I should be sympathetic to his struggles. That's why I actually think the fridging works, it's just unfortunate that it's a trope.

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6 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Well, you can't Heal madness like that. Unless they want to make the whole history of WoT utter nonsense, I don't think they meant to imply he was Healed.

Nyn literally healed the taint madness, so there's no reason why her inadvertent, uncontrolled super-heal AOE wouldn't cure his madness as well other than screenwriter fiat. That she did it once doesn't mean she knows how to do it again, of course, but I suppose it could lead to a future turn of "Hmm, I healed Logain's madness when I went Super Saiyan that one time, I should try and figure out how that's done."

 

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

Maybe I just never had the same understanding/visualization of how channeling worked, but given the unique way she does healing it's easy for me to see it as a single weave that supercharges the bodies healing and winds through everyone, rather than needing to be a distinct weave for each person that directly heals the specific injury they've sustained.

The funny thing is that it's sort of the exact opposite of how Aes Sedai heal compared to Nyn -- they're the ones who can't heal specific injuries but instead accelerate healing across the whole body, while Nyn is the one who can target specific injuries. 

I doubt we'll see that particular AOE heal again on the show. One time only for effect.

 

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Clearly my memory of the descriptions of her hearing are almost as rusty as that passage from aMoL Fionwe posted yesterday :rofl:

I thought I remembered the AS method taxed the channeler while hers used the energy of the one being healed but sounds like I had that flipped too?

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1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I thought I remembered the AS method taxed the channeler while hers used the energy of the one being healed but sounds like I had that flipped too?

There's this situation where a Yellow had to balance healing just enough that a person would survive with enough energy  vs. healing too much and leaving them too weak to survive. 

Aes Sedai healing does take energy from the person while Nyn's doesn't, but all channeling naturally taxes a channeler so they have limits to how much they can do in any given day.

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5 hours ago, Ran said:

Nyn literally healed the taint madness, so there's no reason why her inadvertent, uncontrolled super-heal AOE wouldn't cure his madness as well other than screenwriter fiat. That she did it once doesn't mean she knows how to do it again, of course, but I suppose it could lead to a future turn of "Hmm, I healed Logain's madness when I went Super Saiyan that one time, I should try and figure out how that's done."

Nynaeve used a combination of Compulsion reversal and regular (for her) Healing to Heal taint madness. General Healing, of the type we see here, cannot cure taint madness.

It's also questionable if what Nynaeve did would have worked before the cleansing of saidin.

5 hours ago, Ran said:

 

The funny thing is that it's sort of the exact opposite of how Aes Sedai heal compared to Nyn -- they're the ones who can't heal specific injuries but instead accelerate healing across the whole body, while Nyn is the one who can target specific injuries. 

This is later, though. Early on, the Healing she uses is similar to the Aes Sedai weaves, in that it takes energy from the patient, though she uses all of the Five Powers, not just Spirit, Air and Water, like other Aes Sedai do.

Only after she Heals stilling do Nynaeve and the Yellows start coming up with individualized weaves that are specific to the injury/sickness. This is also spurred on by Moghedien revealing that the kind of Healing Nynaeve and the Aes Sedai use was considered to be battlefield Healing in the Age of Legends. 

5 hours ago, Ran said:

I doubt we'll see that particular AOE heal again on the show. One time only for effect.

I wouldn't be surprised if so. And that'll make it stand out as dumb even more. 

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