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The Wheel of Time: Jane Farstrider Herself (Book Spoilers)


Ran

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9 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

My interpretation of the scene is that it was a wailing ritual so it was meant to be overblown. The old Warder says Lan will be the one to express all their grief.

The writers get to decide how the grief is expressed. Lan could have expressed his grief with more subtly. There's no reason Lan had to be a clown.

It was not necessary to put Lan in the context that he behaved completely opposite of his manner. He had outbursts scattered throughout the books, but even those outbursts were fairly contained, and very brief.

I'm pretty sure that I have more composure and equanimity than the show Warders, who in my opinion are portrayed as emotionally weak. I half expect a future episode to be devoted to grief counseling of Warders.

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3 hours ago, IFR said:

The writers get to decide how the grief is expressed. Lan could have expressed his grief with more subtly. There's no reason Lan had to be a clown.

It was not necessary to put Lan in the context that he behaved completely opposite of his manner. He had outbursts scattered throughout the books, but even those outbursts were fairly contained, and very brief.

I'm pretty sure that I have more composure and equanimity than the show Warders, who in my opinion are portrayed as emotionally weak. I half expect a future episode to be devoted to grief counseling of Warders.

Having flashbacks to Tony Soprano's "whatever happened to Gary Cooper? You know; the strong, silent type?"  :lol:

I think Lan, in the book, is a bit of a boring character to be honest; and the kind of character that we've just seen way too often in traditional fantasy. The stoic, hyper-masculine warrior etc. I find the Warders in the show more interesting, and I'm all for the "sensitive warrior" archetype that has become more accepted in film and TV lately.

We've certainly come a long way since, say, The Lord of the Rings films, where I remember some mainstream film goers complaining that Aragorn was too "soft" :blink:

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20 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

For the guys who know stuff - do the Browns (Verin aside, of course) ever contribute anything of note to the plot in future books?

And, more importantly, can anybody name any important philosophic contribution of the Whites who are supposed to be 'philosophers'.

As I said, the Grays, Whites, and Browns could also include non-channelers in their ranks, heping them doing scholarly stuff, philosophy, politics, and diplomacy. None of their professions seem to imply they have to be able to channel to excel at their professions.

The only Ajah who actually need channelers seem to be the Yellow and Green - the Reds could also have non-channeler man-haters in their ranks, helping them to capture male channelers, the Blues could work with mundane folks who also like to have 'causes', and so on.

This is a widespread problem with hero fiction.  Channeling capability in no way corresponds to intelligence, competency, empathy, ethics, good judgment or any mandate to govern the 99.9% of the population who don’t have those powers.  Just like comic book super powers don’t actually mean the heroes are intelligent, just or innately imbued with moral authority.

From gods, to classical heroes, to caped crusaders, perhaps we should drop the idea that might makes right.  It’s probably another instance of subconsciously wishing for all-powerful benevolent parent figures beyond childhood.  But we don’t need armchair psychology to say that it’s a huge weakness in world-building within fiction. 

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When everyone's sensitive, it just comes out as emotionally flat to me. 

@IFR is spot on that the show made a deliberate choice to put Lan in this position. 

One could just as easily have seen them do the whole ritual another way: Show everyone enter, and make sure we see Aes Sedai walking in with their Warders and then their separating to either side of the room. Make it plain all the Aes Sedai there are bonded to the Warders present, a fact that isn't clear in the show.

Then, have Maxsim or Ihvon be chosen (they clearly were as close to Stepin as Lan was, given that they were there preparing him for the funeral and had been with him on the campaign to capture Logain) and let them do their thing. Everyone else just beats their chest in time, just on the show. But then pan to Moiraine, and where all the other Aes Sedai there are calm enough, even Alanna, Moraine's' the only the one who's cracked and openly weeping -- perhaps outright sobbing -- and you realize that she can't hold back expressing what Lan's actually feeling but has trained himself to not express, a rawer and deeper grief than seemingly any other Warder there; she weeps because despite his stony face that is how he feels, whereas as they've done it she could be read as simply weeping in sympathy to his ritual grief. It's a subtly different thing. 

It makes him exceptional, both among the named and nameless Warders who feel the loss of Stepin less deeply, but also among the cast of main characters, who wear their emotions on their sleeves. Lan isn't emotionless, he's simply a man who has learned to bury the emotions deep and not let them get away from him. And not only isn't he emotionless, he actually feels his emotions with great, even heroic depth, like some hero of the epics.

That's just more colorful and interesting on the face of it. And you can  see the question that arises from it: will there be a time when Lan's armor cracks, and he can't hold back that emotion, whether it's grief or hate ... or love? Just because he has armored himself that much doesn't mean that armor will never be pierced.

That's a narrative. It's an appealing and interesting one to tell simply because it makes a contrast with the other characters who are tonally similar in their open emotionality.

What narrative about the character has come out of the funeral scene there? He's basically just doing what the ritual requires, right? Expressing everyone's grief? And so then when Moiraine is weeping, she's just caught up in the ritual grief he's expressing, or at least the audience is left without any more knowledge of Lan than they did when the episode started. He acts as you expect a person to act when they lose a friend, so his acting differently is the thing that is intriguing.

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6 minutes ago, Ran said:

When everyone's sensitive, it just comes out as emotionally flat to me. 

@IFR is spot on that the show made a deliberate choice to put Lan in this position. 

One could just as easily have seen them do the whole ritual another way: Show everyone enter, and make sure we see Aes Sedai walking in with their Warders and then their separating to either side of the room. Make it plain all the Aes Sedai there are bonded to the Warders present, a fact that isn't clear in the show.

Then, have Maxsim or Ihvon be chosen (they clearly were as close to Stepin as Lan was, given that they were there preparing him for the funeral and had been with him on the campaign to capture Logain) and let them do their thing. Everyone else just beats their chest in time, just on the show. But then pan to Moiraine, and where all the other Aes Sedai there are calm enough, even Alanna, Moraine's' the only the one who's cracked and openly weeping -- perhaps outright sobbing -- and you realize that she can't hold back expressing what Lan's actually feeling but has trained himself to not express, a rawer and deeper grief than seemingly any other Warder there; she weeps because despite his stony face that is how he feels, whereas as they've done it she could be read as simply weeping in sympathy to his ritual grief. It's a subtly different thing. 

It makes him exceptional, both among the named and nameless Warders who feel the loss of Stepin less deeply, but also among the cast of main characters, who wear their emotions on their sleeves. Lan isn't emotionless, he's simply a man who has learned to bury the emotions deep and not let them get away from him. And not only isn't he emotionless, he actually feels his emotions with great, even heroic depth, like some hero of the epics.

That's just more colorful and interesting on the face of it. And you can  see the question that arises from it: will there be a time when Lan's armor cracks, and he can't hold back that emotion, whether it's grief or hate ... or love? Just because he has armored himself that much doesn't mean that armor will never be pierced.

That's a narrative. It's an appealing and interesting one to tell simply because it makes a contrast with the other characters who are tonally similar in their open emotionality.

What narrative about the character has come out of the funeral scene there? He's basically just doing what the ritual requires, right? Expressing everyone's grief? And so then when Moiraine is weeping, she's just caught up in the ritual grief he's expressing, or at least the audience is left without any more knowledge of Lan than they did when the episode started. He acts as you expect a person to act when they lose a friend, so his acting differently is the thing that is intriguing.

Yeah this could have worked pretty well. But I still like that there was an expansion of the Warder culture, regardless of how it was executed. Your comment about Moiraine being the only one weeping because she felt Lan's emotions made me think of the funeral scene from Milius's Conan the Barbarian. He is Conan! He does not cry. So I cry for him. Which is funny because book Lan and Jordan's Conan are very similar.

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5 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Your comment about Moiraine being the only one weeping because she felt Lan's emotions made me think of the funeral scene from Milius's Conan the Barbarian. He is Conan! He does not cry. So I cry for him. Which is funny because book Lan and Jordan's Conan are very similar.

Man, I love that film and that particular scene in it. That's exactly right.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with the ritual, per se, since they devote so much time to Stepin, but definitely think they could have done something much more interesting (while staying truer to the character) with it.

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14 minutes ago, Ran said:

When everyone's sensitive, it just comes out as emotionally flat to me. 

@IFR is spot on that the show made a deliberate choice to put Lan in this position. 

One could just as easily have seen them do the whole ritual another way: Show everyone enter, and make sure we see Aes Sedai walking in with their Warders and then their separating to either side of the room. Make it plain all the Aes Sedai there are bonded to the Warders present, a fact that isn't clear in the show.

Then, have Maxsim or Ihvon be chosen (they clearly were as close to Stepin as Lan was, given that they were there preparing him for the funeral and had been with him on the campaign to capture Logain) and let them do their thing. Everyone else just beats their chest in time, just on the show. But then pan to Moiraine, and where all the other Aes Sedai there are calm enough, even Alanna, Moraine's' the only the one who's cracked and openly weeping -- perhaps outright sobbing -- and you realize that she can't hold back expressing what Lan's actually feeling but has trained himself to not express, a rawer and deeper grief than seemingly any other Warder there; she weeps because despite his stony face that is how he feels, whereas as they've done it she could be read as simply weeping in sympathy to his ritual grief. It's a subtly different thing. 

It makes him exceptional, both among the named and nameless Warders who feel the loss of Stepin less deeply, but also among the cast of main characters, who wear their emotions on their sleeves. Lan isn't emotionless, he's simply a man who has learned to bury the emotions deep and not let them get away from him. And not only isn't he emotionless, he actually feels his emotions with great, even heroic depth, like some hero of the epics.

That's just more colorful and interesting on the face of it. And you can  see the question that arises from it: will there be a time when Lan's armor cracks, and he can't hold back that emotion, whether it's grief or hate ... or love? Just because he has armored himself that much doesn't mean that armor will never be pierced.

That's a narrative. It's an appealing and interesting one to tell simply because it makes a contrast with the other characters who are tonally similar in their open emotionality.

What narrative about the character has come out of the funeral scene there? He's basically just doing what the ritual requires, right? Expressing everyone's grief? And so then when Moiraine is weeping, she's just caught up in the ritual grief he's expressing, or at least the audience is left without any more knowledge of Lan than they did when the episode started. He acts as you expect a person to act when they lose a friend, so his acting differently is the thing that is intriguing.

Sadly I just don't think the writing on this show is going to reach that level of subtlety. It would be great if it did.

Furthermore this is something only book readers could read into it, and the mainstream audience just hasn't gotten to know Lan well enough yet to be expected to pick up on something like that.

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2 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

This is a widespread problem with hero fiction.  Channeling capability in no way corresponds to intelligence, competency, empathy, ethics, good judgment or any mandate to govern the 99.9% of the population who don’t have those powers.  Just like comic book super powers don’t actually mean the heroes are intelligent, just or innately imbued with moral authority.

From gods, to classical heroes, to caped crusaders, perhaps we should drop the idea that might makes right.  It’s probably another instance of subconsciously wishing for all-powerful benevolent parent figures beyond childhood.  But we don’t need armchair psychology to say that it’s a huge weakness in world-building within fiction. 

Of course channeling/magic doesn't give you special powers with regards to basic intelligence, logic, diplomacy or ethics. But that absolutely doesn't mean organizations of magic users would open themselves to those who cannot use magic.

At least, if they choose not to, that would be an all too human  thing. Jordan does explore the alternative, with the Wise Ones, who absolutely do accept non-channelers, and just because you're a channeler doesn't make you stand higher, and they don't give a damn about how strongly you can channel either. You earn your position of authority by your actions, as opposed to what you're born with.

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On a positive note, I have come to really enjoy the title sequence. My only criticism of it is that I think it should focus on various players/factions, not just Aes Sedai, but considering how much of the story so far has been dedicated to AS, it makes sense. But I really like the visuals of it and the accompanying music. I never skip it as it allows me to be ready to immerse myself in the story and the world, which is what a good title sequence should do.

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9 minutes ago, wolverine said:

Maybe this was discussed, but wasn't Siuan relatively weak in the power?

Here's Jordan's power chart.

Prior to the arrival of the "Wonder Girls" (in TDR Elayne and Egwene are suggested to be the strongest channelers to come around in 1,000 years,and  Nynaeve being practically off the charts and was probably the most powerful channeler to ever enter the Tower ["With training, [Nynaeve] will shine like a bonfire beside the candles of Elayne and Egwene"]), and excluding Cadsuane (who seems not to have been invented by the time of that remark in TDR and who Jordan ended up retroactively making her the actual strongest Aes Sedai in 1,000 years [though she's still a notch below Nyn]), Moiraine and Siuan were the strongest Aes Sedai in the White Tower.

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Apparently the show passed (at least temporarily) Hawkeye for number one streaming show so I guess it’s doing good. My only concern right now is how long the break will be after these first eight. I’d heard some rumors it could be over a year which would be a shame.

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See, this whole power chart is soooooo not my jam and I think it just unnecessarily complicates things. Maybe Jordan needed a rough power chart for his own internal recordkeeping and that makes sense, but I am not the part of the fandom that cares about the details. I'd be fine with a rough idea of strength, and having someone be Talented in an area, or just more skilled being enough reason to overpower or outshine someone. Raw strength seems boring. Syrio Forel would never have been First Sword of Braavos if that was the standard. :p

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Let's bear in mind that, although this hasn't been introduced in the show yet, Aes Sedai are supposed to follow the stronger channeler around. So the Amyrlin should always be at least one of the top three channelers out there.
The reason why Siuan can be seen as "weak" is only because many exceptional individuals appear (or re-appear) with the Last Battle (and, let's be honest, for plot convenience).

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33 minutes ago, wolverine said:

Maybe this was discussed, but wasn't Siuan relatively weak in the power?

 

Also, did Moiraine make a gateway to visit Siuan?

Ran mentioned Siuan was powerful, but there is something down the line that reduces her power. Moiraine seemed to be using a ter'angreal to visit Siuan, Siuan had a matching picture in her room. We don't konw the specifics of how it works, where it goes, or the limitations of it.

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3 hours ago, Darryk said:

Having flashbacks to Tony Soprano's "whatever happened to Gary Cooper? You know; the strong, silent type?"  :lol:

:lol: That's the Warder culture written in the books. That was what Lan was written to be. The warriors in Jordan's world are steeped in machismo, no doubt inspired by Jordan's own experiences in war, when soldiers were expected to do their duty and internalize all their harrowing experiences.

3 hours ago, Darryk said:

I think Lan, in the book, is a bit of a boring character to be honest; and the kind of character that we've just seen way too often in traditional fantasy. The stoic, hyper-masculine warrior etc. I find the Warders in the show more interesting, and I'm all for the "sensitive warrior" archetype that has become more accepted in film and TV lately.

This show is rife with cliches, so I don't see why the strong, silent type warrior would be a problem. Especially because it is an important part of Rand's development. Lan definitely is a role model for him early on, and the accepting stoicism becomes an integral part of Rand's character arc. "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather." And you can let go of your duty when your dead. Etc.

Rand gets so carried away with trying to be the stoic whipping boy of the world that when he breaks it becomes highly destructive. He forgets to laugh and cry, nearly to the world's undoing. I think Jordan did a good job exploring a culture of trauma where there isn't an outlet for release, but it is all internalized.

By going the "sensitive warrior" route, the writers are going to potentially undermine this.

36 minutes ago, wolverine said:

Also, did Moiraine make a gateway to visit Siuan?

I thought it was to TAR, but apparently according to bonus materials it is a Traveling ter'angreal, which is crazy to me. So many questions. Why would they hide such an important artifact? Just so they could have their discreet booty calls? How can no one else have discovered this, since it must be an artifact from the Age of Legends? Etc.

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8 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Let's bear in mind that, although this hasn't been introduced in the show yet, Aes Sedai are supposed to follow the stronger channeler around. So the Amyrlin should always be at least one of the top three channelers out there.
The reason why Siuan can be seen as "weak" is only because many exceptional individuals appear (or re-appear) with the Last Battle (and, let's be honest, for plot convenience).

Be fair - she can also be considered weak by people who get pre-stilling Siuan and post-unstilling Siuan confused.

 

As with Gertrude though - I couldn't really care less beyond approximations of hierarchy - and I only care that much because it affects character interactions.

 

As for the warders - book-Lan was a cardboard cutout; as such, he was also, by a long way, the most fleshed out of the warders. Show warders are infinitely more interesting (though I still didn't like the morning scene - that's because I didn't like it, rather than anything else)

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Slightly odd to see calls for Lan to be a toxic masculine cliche (he was, a bit, in the books until Nynaeve kind of snapped him out of it, but I guess they decided they didn't want him to spend half the show's runtime as an emotionless rock). Also worth noting that the Warder ritual is apparently based on a Korean funeral rite, which Daniel Henney (who is Korean-American) appreciated. The show seems to be going with the idea that Lan actually has his shit together at the start of the storyline and knows when to be stoic and when to be supportive and when to show emotion, which was not the case in the books.

Cadsuane was in the plan for the series from Day One. In fact, a "Kadsuane" is mentioned as a principle Aes Sedai in RJ's very early notes for the series, when Rand was Rhys al'Thor, Mat and Perrin didn't exist and the Dark One was a dimension-hopping demon. Her power level was definitely retconned, though. In fact, I don't think RJ had the power chart to hand when writing the early books. It might have only started coming together when he did the massive revamp of the worldbuilding between Books 7 and 8 (in which case the chart comes after Cadsuane was invented, but he probably rethought her power level later on).

More image leaks: 

Spoiler

Lews Therin flashback in Episode 7 more or less confirmed, and it looks like he's wearing a semi-SF kind of outfit or uniform.

 

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