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Lord Varys and the Wheel of Time (second attempt) #2


Lord Varys

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I realize now why I forgot that Faile got her spanking. Because Jordan seems to be ashamed about that himself, sort of glossing it over when it happens.

But this whole childish shit show that is their journey to the Two Rivers actually makes you think you are trapped in a Kafka-like world where everybody behaves like a child.

And afterwards it gets worse. There are possibly evil ravens and a guy shooting down birds ... but, no, Perrin doesn't tell the girls about any of that. And they have TWO FUCKING CAMPS after the ABUSIVE BITCH can no longer blackmail/force Loial to do her bidding. What shit is this ... seriously, what shit is this? And then we have grown-up people irritating each other by pretending they joke and laugh about them. That's stuff for little children, not grown up people.

And then we return to 'when in doubt/you don't have any clue what do just go to sleep'. That routine is getting so old by that time. Why can't you get the plot going by just proceeding to the Two Rivers or see observe/meet people in the waking world. Is that so hard?

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Yeah, Faile is unbearable here IMO. I try to remember she is younger even than the boys (17 maybe?) but that doesn't help much. Perrin is frustrating here as well, but ... ugh, Faile.

Once they get to the Two Rivers she steps up and their story there is one of my favorite parts of the books. That doesn't mean it doesn't regress, but they do work out their relationship and they both mature and give more by the end. Again - that does not mean I think they aren't mostly unbearable for most of the series, because they are. Perrin broods and Faile ... is Faile.

I do like the version of Faile when she's not dealing with relationship angst, but unfortunately that's most of what we get from her.

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17 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

This thread reminds me of the LotR movie quote.

“He hates and loves the ring, as he hates and loves himself.”

LOL, since I'm actually wearing (a version of) the One Ring for over twenty years now - I got it a couple of days before I watched FOTR in 2001 - I actually take this as a compliment.

How Jordan can ruin Christmas:

Can any of the fans tell me that my impression is correct that Jordan just invents Perrin's entire family, names and all, just to kill them five seconds later? I don't recall them being mentioned back in TEotW ... I was under the impression that Perrin is alone and his only relations/friends in Emond's Field were the folks from the smithy where he was apprentice.

And then the awful way in which Jordan depicts his grief. He can weep for a moment and then it is business as usual and we talk about how women control men again. What a sad excuse for a story is this? This isn't even funny anymore. It is a travesty of a story, a caricature of things should be depicted.

And now we have Perrin trying to save the family of the two guys who didn't bother to come back home.

Also, you know, fucking Rand didn't seem to tell Perrin that he knew fucking PADAN FAIN told him he would get back at him by targeting the Two Rivers. But Perrin only learned that Fain is at the Two Rivers when he is there and is told by Egwene's parents. Why would Rand not want to prepare his buddy for what he might be facing?

And when they meet with Verin and Alanna we return to 'the Aes Sedai are evil schemers' plot which is so old it doesn't even have a beard at that point. How on earth can they even want to use Perrin as 'a pawn' in that backwater place with Whitecloaks and Shadowspawn threatening their very lives, and one Warder already dead?

And Alanna still hasn't heard about Rand being the Dragon Reborn? Seriously?

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Bah, what a drag ... Perrin the unwilling hero/leader is unbearable. Also the constant anti-Aes Sedai paranoia and the fact that the moron seems to have more mental issues with stupid Faile than the fact that his entire family has been slaughtered borders on the insane. Jordan just used that as a cheap trick, the whole thing has no substance.

Also - in what world makes it sense that the lives of two silly Whitecloak red shirts are literally dragged throughout this entire series? As I read up - even Galad is later still dealing with that shit. While nobody seems to care at all about all the folks the Whitecloaks murder and torture and imprison ... at least not the point that individuals are hunted for such crimes volumes later.

Also, the idea that folks would constantly get obsessed with Perrin is very hard to swallow.

Were the Whitecloaks Fain corrupted directly involved in the Aybara murders? He didn't do that all by himself, no? If so, then the Whitecloaks as an institution are already much more guilty than Perrin ever was.

Other thought:

Isn't Lews Therin a much greater hero than Rand? Not being guided by silly prophecies or artifacts various folks created specifically for him so he can do his job? Lews Therin was just a very talented guy who ended up in a leadership role because of what his abilities allowed him to do ... not because silly prophecies demanded it.

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On 12/26/2021 at 8:05 AM, Lord Varys said:

Isn't Lews Therin a much greater hero than Rand? Not being guided by silly prophecies or artifacts various folks created specifically for him so he can do his job? Lews Therin was just a very talented guy who ended up in a leadership role because of what his abilities allowed him to do ... not because silly prophecies demanded it.

*shrug* Lews was educated/trained by an incredibly advanced civilisation that was perfectly willing to accept him in a leadership role, had far more access to artifacts than Rand, and achieved a temporary and partial victory against the Dark One at a terrible cost. Rand was raised as a shepherd, but goes on to fix the mistakes of Lews' time and achieve a total victory.

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2 hours ago, felice said:

*shrug* Lews was educated/trained by an incredibly advanced civilisation that was perfectly willing to accept him in a leadership role, had far more access to artifacts than Rand, and achieved a temporary and partial victory against the Dark One at a terrible cost. Rand was raised as a shepherd, but goes on to fix the mistakes of Lews' time and achieve a total victory.

Oh, I understand the difference, it is just that a hero who isn't surrounded left and right by prophecy looks a lot more competent than a guy who just seems to have one original idea every once in a while ... and whose basic talents all go back to the fact that he learned how to do what he does in another life.

Bah, was Amys's treatment of Egwene silly. Jordan is all about women humiliating other women, no? The basic concept makes no sense at all - Egwene has promised her friends to contact her in the Dream World. She has to do this, it is part of their mission for the Amyrlin Seat and in the best interest of pretty much everyone who isn't a Darkfriend.

Why would it be a problem that Egwene has to contact her friends? Why would they only establish that she can do that under supervision after she got humiliated?

Yet Jordan insist of turning her apprenticeship there into a domineering and abusive mistress-slave relationship.

Also: How fucked up is Aiel society when nobody ever talks about what they saw in Rhuidean?

Isn't that another completely superfluous way to make Rand seem important? If these people had the grace and good sense to actually use the city to gain information about their past then they wouldn't need a silly prophecy to do that for them.

Unless I'm misremembering Rand doesn't really tell them anything the Wise Women and chieftains didn't already know, or does he?

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11 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

The chiefs and wise ones already knew; that’s how they knew he hsd really been to Rhuidan and Couladin hadnt.

Yes, I get that ... and there is literally no reason but cowardice/unwillingness on the side of the leaders of the Aiel to tell their people who and what they truly were, once?

In what reality does this make sense?

This turns the Rand prophecy into a complete joke ... which is already acted out in the book when the people in charge hand all the power to Rand instead of - you know - just tell their people the truth as they could have done centuries ago.

This whole thing would have worked much better - and would actually make sense - if Rand's unique abilities had provided the Aiel with missing pieces to complete the mysterious puzzle of their origins. Pieces that would fit together with stuff the Aiel leaders already knew to be true.

And then it would be a mixture of Rand's abilities, his knowledge, and his actions which would convince some of the Aiel that he was a worthy leader and all ... but no, we cannot have something nuanced or convincing, it must be completely unbelievable.

Also, what controlling assholes are those Wise Women? The way they treat Aviendha borders on sadism. How can those hags even remotely be seen as 'the good guys'? The most laughable line I read so far was their insistence that Aviendha do as they tell her just because they tell her. She has no right to have an agency or motives or reasons of her own.

What kind of society can work when you force people into leadership roles against their will? Aviendha didn't want to a Wise Woman ... so why force her? If you do that you risk that she will fuck things up later intentionally or unintentionally.

Insofar as how this can affect the reader:

If you are a young impressionable boy and you read this stuff you really can develop a hatred of women. All women are depicted as insidious schemers ... both the 'good women' and the 'bad women'. Nobody wants to be secretly controlled by another person, so if what you take away from those books is that women can't be trusted it will be a very bad result.

Even I feel how I start to hate all those women for their shenanigans ... it is badly written and all, but it is effective in the sense that I really don't want them 'to control' Rand and the other boys. Jordan also gets you to the point where you actually want Perrin to really, really beat up Faile.

Also, Jordan cannot really write women in relation to their own bodies. They are constantly ashamed when they see themselves or other women naked - which isn't the standard reaction in such cases. Nor is the first idea of women that they show off their breasts to entice some guy. Those things are just breasts. Every woman has them, they are a natural part of her body and don't exist so that Elayne can throw them at Rand. They would also not describe each other's body parts the way they do ... and never really look at men in the same manner.

Aviendha would also not describe Elayne to Rand as if she was describing a piece of cattle or act as her pimp. And while we are at that - if I were living in this world of scheming evil women and I were the guy who was to change everything ... why would I permit the scheming women to put a spy right under my nose? I mean, seriously, if I were Rand al'Thor I'd surround myself with people of my choosing, not the ones some desert witches want me to spend time with?

Also, how fucked up is the way they interact when talking Rand's biological parents? Egwene and other women presume to know better how the guy feels and want him to guilt him into feeling/expressing guilt the way they want it?

In context - they actually tell Rand then and there that he has a half-brother and literally nothing comes out of that? The mighty Dragon Reborn doesn't really look into his family relations until much later in the series and then never actually reaches out to Galad? If you make nothing of that ... then why the hell reveal at that early point in the story that Rand's mother did have another child besides Rand?

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Questions for the people who know:

Is it ever revealed who sent the Myrddraal to give Bors the command to kill Rand?

Whoever did that must be a complete moron. For one, Jaichim Carridin was in Amadicia when he received that order, and told to return up north while Rand was going to Tear at the same time. How is he even able to his job, especially since as per TSR nobody seems to have told him where Rand despite the fact that 'the evil guys in general' very much do know where he is.

The whole Tanchico stuff is pretty well written right now. I enjoyed Egeanin as a POV character, which revealed that the Seanchan are not basically all evil (Darkfriends). I don't like it that Suroth as a Darkfriend is one of the main Seanchan POV characters.

I also enjoyed Liandrin knowing who Bors is and forcing him to submit to her. That is a nice play with the overconfident Darkfriend ego Bors showed off in the Prologue of TGH. But then you see female dumbness at the end of their exchange where Liandrin actually tells Bors her true name ... while forbidding him to use it. What real person would do that? If he cannot use the name then why would you give it away if the guy doesn't know you already? It gives you more power over the guy if he doesn't know who you are.

The evil Black Ajah make so far pretty much no sense in Tanchico.

We get insight into them but what we learn is that they like to kill each other's cats ... but the basic questions we all have about them were not answered at all, namely:

1. Who gave them the order to leave Tar Valon and go to Tear?

2. How is it that they still have all the ter'angreals they stole from Tar Valon when they joined Be'lal weeks before his death? Didn't he take possession of the stuff they brought? And if he did - how did they get the things back?

3. Who gave the order to leave Tear and go to Tanchico? They were an integral (yet curiously absent) part of Be'lal's plan to forcefully turn Rand to the Shadow. Be'lal's - and Ishamael's subsequent - death wasn't part of 'the plan', so who on earth could have reached them in time to flee Tear before the good guys could capture them?

4. How on earth can those Black Ajah figure out who is a Darkfriend in a place they never were? There is no central Darkfriend registry, is there? Liandrin can know who Bors is since they were at a meeting together ... but the Black Ajah are, mostly, at Tar Valon, meaning they do not really have the time to attend many local Darkfriend cells and stuff.

That Moghedien is among them posing as that serving girl is something they only discover later, so she most definitely wouldn't have given the order to go to Tanchico.

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Are you kidding me? Now the girl gang needs the men they didn't want to bring along as 'protectors' in Tanchico, Elayne slut-shames her mother, Thom slaps her for that, and then we Nynaeve PUTTING ELAYNE'S FACE REPEATEDLY INTO A BUCKET OF WATER, nearly drowning her in the process, just TO PUNISH HER BECAUSE SHE IS SOMEWHAT DRUNK!

What shit is that?

I mean, seriously, these people are not friends, they are abusive, evil pricks who enjoy hurting and abusing each other.

Pretty much every character comments on and interferes with the private lives (and life decisions) of other characters. At this point, one can only hope the reader has some evil woman (for a man would never do that, of course) beat up and abusive Nynaeve with us really enjoying the POV of 'the evil woman' ... because at this point Nynaeve clearly has become unbearable.

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Alright, let me jump in:

Yes, related or otherwise connected people often illogically don't anknowledge it in WoT. For instance, Moiraine is an aunt of the younger Trakands and Galad, it is not a secret, but it never gets aknowledged by any of them.

Rand figures out who Galad is to him in book 6 and knows how important her older son was to their mother, but never thinks to let his brother know. IIRC Rand leaves him a letter in the end, instead of telling him face-to-face or asking one of the (ex-)Maidens who knew Shaiel to speak to him.

With Thom and Elayne it is a bit different - yes, he knew her when she was a small child, but that was long ago. He wasn't really a step-parent to her. At the same time, he carries the trauma of having failed his nephew by abandoning him to the AS mercies and sees Rand, another channeling lad, as a sort of a second chance. He is at this point more attached to Rand than to Elayne and wants to protect him. So, it didn't seem implausible to me that Moiraine had to bribe him to go away with Elayne.

As to Lan, he is a very honor-and-duty-bound person. Nyn knew that even if Moiraine released him (which I don't remember if something like that was established as possible at this point of the series), he still couldn't have lived with himself if she died because he broke faith with her and wasn't there to protect her. Which is why Nyn refused to let him come to Tanchico. And yes, she is constantly afraid of older people/men  usurping her agency and authority, which leads to her extremely overbearing behavior. But she is not wrong  about them trying to do so! IIRC she also doesn't know about Thom's nephew because people in WoT never exchange information if they can help it, sigh.

Concerning the Sea Folk - didn't you say that the Panarch being in charge of collecting money while the king spent it signified her being responsible for domestic sphere and now for the Sea Folk the cargomaster being in charge of earning money means that the captain, who spends money is in charge of domestic sphere? Kinda contradictory? The captain decides where the ship goes and also makes long-term agreements. Not that I love the gender-essentialism of WoT or how the responsibilities are divided in most ofthe  depicted cultures, but the Sea Folk are not egregious in this respect.

Rand decided that he can't allow himself to be blackmailed by threats to the TR, so he pretends not to care what happens there. Mat loves his new life and isn't looking back. OTOH, it is also made very clear that the iron hand of the author Pattern is keeping him close to Rand at the moment. He would have happily left Tear to go relieve people of their money elsewhere, but he couldn't and then he was told that he needed to go to Rhuidean or die. So now he is stuck in the Waste.

Yea, an average Aielman is very invested in their rigid customs and ignorant of what happened 3 millenia previously. And Jordan somehow seems to think that the Wise Ones are better than the Aes Sedai, when they seem to me far more culturally blinkered and less willing to change their views when confronted with new facts or compromise with other cultures. Aviendha is forced to join the Wise Ones because she is a sparker who is on the cusp of her first channeling or already channeled. The Aiel find all such women and train them, so that 3/4 of them don't die like happens to the wilders elsewhere. But the price is that they have to join the Wise Ones. The 2 ter'angreal tests are supposed to weed out the unsuitables, but...

It is an unanswered question how the Aiel could have been forgotten about, which is also connected to the question how Travelling could have been possibly forgotten about. The one big flaw of the columns flashback sequence is - why is nobody worried about madmen Travelling in when the Aiel leave Paaran Disen? Why weren't the Aiel Gated out instead of leaving at the speed of footmarch/horse?  Etc. Once those 4 AS joined the Jenn, I guess that they had a Foretelling that the Aiel needed to stay separate and insular so that they would be ready for the Last Battle.

Concerning LTT, he was like 300 at the time the Bore was opened, so yes, he didn't need all the prophecies, but he was the strongest channeler ever, had the best education ever, had lived for centuries and also became a strongest ta'veren ever at some point. :rolleyes:

 

On 12/30/2021 at 1:13 AM, Lord Varys said:

Is it ever revealed who sent the Myrddraal to give Bors the command to kill Rand?

Maybe Sammael? I am not sure.

 

On 12/30/2021 at 1:13 AM, Lord Varys said:

1. Who gave them the order to leave Tar Valon and go to Tear?

Pretty sure that it was Bel'al - they were part of his plan to turn the DR after using him to grab Callandor, weren't they?

 

On 12/30/2021 at 1:13 AM, Lord Varys said:

2. How is it that they still have all the ter'angreals they stole from Tar Valon when they joined Be'lal weeks before his death?

Weren't they  all saidar-operated, so useless to him personally?

 

On 12/30/2021 at 1:13 AM, Lord Varys said:

3. Who gave the order to leave Tear and go to Tanchico?

Moghedien took possession of them after Bel'al's death, I thought. She could do it via Dreamworld, where she is an expert.

 

On 12/30/2021 at 1:13 AM, Lord Varys said:

4. How on earth can those Black Ajah figure out who is a Darkfriend in a place they never were?

The Darkfriends have secret recognition signs, which they used, I presume. The individual sisters likely also had their personal eyes-and-ears in the city too.

 

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2 hours ago, Maia said:

Alright, let me jump in:

Yes, related or otherwise connected people often illogically don't anknowledge it in WoT. For instance, Moiraine is an aunt of the younger Trakands and Galad, it is not a secret, but it never gets aknowledged by any of them.

Yes, I realized that, too, although considering the fact that neither of them had any close contact with the dead guy and Moiraine is an Aes Sedai I don't have that much of an issue with that. Still, one would expect it to be mentioned occasionally, and that Madam Manipulatrix would use her kinship bond with Elayne to try to influence her ... or people at least fearing she would do that.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Rand figures out who Galad is to him in book 6 and knows how important her older son was to their mother, but never thinks to let his brother know. IIRC Rand leaves him a letter in the end, instead of telling him face-to-face or asking one of the (ex-)Maidens who knew Shaiel to speak to him.

Sounds not exactly like the way a real person would handle this...

2 hours ago, Maia said:

With Thom and Elayne it is a bit different - yes, he knew her when she was a small child, but that was long ago. He wasn't really a step-parent to her. At the same time, he carries the trauma of having failed his nephew by abandoning him to the AS mercies and sees Rand, another channeling lad, as a sort of a second chance. He is at this point more attached to Rand than to Elayne and wants to protect him. So, it didn't seem implausible to me that Moiraine had to bribe him to go away with Elayne.

The issue isn't so much that Thom *may have needed a reason* to leave Rand ... but that Moiraine effectively needed him to push or force him to accompany Elayne. Jordan could have written it so that Thom actually wanted to join Elayne due to the bond he once had with Morgase ... or Rand could have asked him to do it.

Making it this twisted thing just feels weirdly forced and unrealistic.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

As to Lan, he is a very honor-and-duty-bound person. Nyn knew that even if Moiraine released him (which I don't remember if something like that was established as possible at this point of the series), he still couldn't have lived with himself if she died because he broke faith with her and wasn't there to protect her. Which is why Nyn refused to let him come to Tanchico. And yes, she is constantly afraid of older people/men  usurping her agency and authority, which leads to her extremely overbearing behavior. But she is not wrong  about them trying to do so! IIRC she also doesn't know about Thom's nephew because people in WoT never exchange information if they can help it, sigh.

That whole scene just felt childish in light of what those people feel for each other.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Concerning the Sea Folk - didn't you say that the Panarch being in charge of collecting money while the king spent it signified her being responsible for domestic sphere and now for the Sea Folk the cargomaster being in charge of earning money means that the captain, who spends money is in charge of domestic sphere? Kinda contradictory? The captain decides where the ship goes and also makes long-term agreements. Not that I love the gender-essentialism of WoT or how the responsibilities are divided in most ofthe  depicted cultures, but the Sea Folk are not egregious in this respect.

I'd say those are different things. The Sea Folk's ship captains are, in effect, merchants. They sail around and make money by doing trade - which means the people in charge are, in the end, the men because they make and control the money. The women have, in the end, to go where they can do trade, or they will lose their ships.

The Panarch situation is different in the sense that we talk the government of a kingdom there, not private enterprises where it is crucial that people earn money to pay their bills and maintain their ships. The Panarch controlling the tax collectors means she is in the inferior position since said tax collectors would, in the end, be paid by the king who controls the incoming money.

In a state, the power lies with the people who control how the money is spent.

Of course, the Panarch could cripple the government if she were to refuse to collect any taxes, but that would ruin herself as much as the king.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Rand decided that he can't allow himself to be blackmailed by threats to the TR, so he pretends not to care what happens there. Mat loves his new life and isn't looking back. OTOH, it is also made very clear that the iron hand of the author Pattern is keeping him close to Rand at the moment. He would have happily left Tear to go relieve people of their money elsewhere, but he couldn't and then he was told that he needed to go to Rhuidean or die. So now he is stuck in the Waste.

I didn't complain about what Mat decided to do after he talked to the transdimensional plot devices ... it was his earlier attitude I had issues with. Once he got that prophecy it makes sense that he would want to go to Rhuidean. But he didn't bother with his family or friends back home even before getting the prophecy.

The character of Mat just doesn't make any sense to me at this point.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Yea, an average Aielman is very invested in their rigid customs and ignorant of what happened 3 millenia previously. And Jordan somehow seems to think that the Wise Ones are better than the Aes Sedai, when they seem to me far more culturally blinkered and less willing to change their views when confronted with new facts or compromise with other cultures. Aviendha is forced to join the Wise Ones because she is a sparker who is on the cusp of her first channeling or already channeled. The Aiel find all such women and train them, so that 3/4 of them don't die like happens to the wilders elsewhere. But the price is that they have to join the Wise Ones. The 2 ter'angreal tests are supposed to weed out the unsuitables, but...

Oh, I understand why Aviendha has to be trained ... but if she doesn't want to become a silly Wise Woman she shouldn't be forced.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

It is an unanswered question how the Aiel could have been forgotten about, which is also connected to the question how Travelling could have been possibly forgotten about. The one big flaw of the columns flashback sequence is - why is nobody worried about madmen Travelling in when the Aiel leave Paaran Disen? Why weren't the Aiel Gated out instead of leaving at the speed of footmarch/horse?  Etc. Once those 4 AS joined the Jenn, I guess that they had a Foretelling that the Aiel needed to stay separate and insular so that they would be ready for the Last Battle.

I'd say the entire 'Aiel protect magical artifacts' plot makes no sense at all, unless we assume those women were even madder than the average mad male Aes Sedai. Nobody in their right mind would entrust powerful magical artifacts to a bunch of pacificist when society was collapsing.

Instead, the way to handle this would have been to put those things into some cave where nobody would find them. Yes, perhaps they end up being destroyed as the world breaks apart, but that way they would not be used for evil. Handling them to the Aiel is the same as handing them to everybody - Darkfriends, Shadowspawn, mad Aes Sedai, just evil people ... because they could never provent any of them from taking what they wanted.

I thought that the teleportation stuff is going to turn out to be pretty complicated, so if all Aes Sedai who could do it died they might have forgotten how the reinvent it.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Maybe Sammael? I am not sure.

This is something we should have some clue about. I mean, the guy is really in pain now, and we keep hearing how this is all kind of weird, but nobody seems to be understanding what's actually going on.

I guess in light of the fact that Ishamael wanted to kill Rand in the end at Tear back in TDR - and that he was, perhaps, also the guy who sent all the incompetent Darkfriends after Rand - it might make sense that he sent the Myrddraal. After all, Ishamael is the Forsaken we know actually knows and noticed Bors, giving him commands back in TGH.

But it still makes no sense to give specific commands to Bors of all people who is very far away from Rand al'Thor and not exactly in a good position to kill him.

But then - the whole 'evil plots' in TDR really make no sense if Ishamael truly wanted Rand dead after Falme since if his Darkfriend jokers could find Rand then ... so could he, the mighty Ishamael. So why didn't he slay Rand personally, perhaps when a couple of his Darkfriend goons were distracting Rand during one of the childishly plotted assassination attempts?

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Pretty sure that it was Bel'al - they were part of his plan to turn the DR after using him to grab Callandor, weren't they?

Yes, but Liandrin just thinks about them having gotten the command to steal certain ter'angreals - and being annoyed that they had not been allowed to steal any angreals - but never actually telling us who gave them that order. This is something she should know, and it is something we would like to know.

If it was Be'lal then this begs the question - as I already said - of how Be'lal knew to contact any Black Ajah at Tar Valon (they were Ishamael's assets, and Be'lal clearly had a different objective at Tear than Ishamael.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Weren't they  all saidar-operated, so useless to him personally?

Not sure - but even if this were the case, one would imagine that a specific command to bring them would cause them to hand them over to the Forsaken in question upon arrival - unless the Black Ajah were supposed to do something with them at Tear ... which didn't seem to be the case.

Also - if Be'lal gave the original order one would wonder (1) why he would command them to take only saidar-operated ter'angreals, and (2) how the hell he would even know what ter'angreals there were at Tar Valon.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

Moghedien took possession of them after Bel'al's death, I thought. She could do it via Dreamworld, where she is an expert.

That could be the case. It might be that this is going to be addressed later in the book, but so far Liandrin gave no indication that they are working on behalf of another Forsaken nor does she suspect that a Forsaken is already in their midst. She doesn't even seem to expect that a Forsaken will show up.

The whole Dream World stuff seems to be the answer to everything. The Darkfriend Social from TGH must have taken place there despite the fact that the Prologue as such doesn't indicate that it didn't happen in the real world. There is no chance that Liandrin and Suroth and Ingtar and Jaichin could have been there in the real world, even if they were teleported to Shayol Ghul and back. An absence of a couple of hours would have been noticed by the sisters on their way to Fal Dara, on whatever Seanchan ship Suroth was at the time, not to mention Ingtar's duties at Fal Dara or Bors' duties with the Children.

Even if it were just a couple of hours - which isn't what we take from Bors' Prologue, it would have been far too long for nobody to notice their absence.

2 hours ago, Maia said:

The Darkfriends have secret recognition signs, which they used, I presume. The individual sisters likely also had their personal eyes-and-ears in the city too.

Yes, but to use those you do need to know where the local Darkfriend meeting place is, at least. You cannot just walk around and use secret code phrases and signs on any random stranger you meet.

This is the kind of thing one would wish the author would elaborate on.

It wouldn't be that hard to do it, say, by establishing that one of the Black sisters actually had knew fellow Darkfriends in Tanchico, etc.

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I've lost the will to continue this discussion in any detail, but the ter'angreal and other items of Power were a pretext to get the Aiel out of Paraan Disen. The scene makes it clear that the person in that group with the Foretelling had figured out the Aiel were important to the Dragon's next rebirth, just not how, and so they give the Aiel this fake task to keep them moving, rather than have them throw themselves in front of the male channelers as they did elsewhere.

As for Travelling... Where would they Travel to ? Nowhere was actually safe from male channelers. Even steddings were moving or being destroyed. There was no location to open a gateway to where the Aiel would suddenly be safe. No one among those Aes Sedai had any kind of guarantees, just some of the vague, earliest Foretellings that comprise the Prophesies of the Dragon, and they set things in motion, with no guarantees or specific knowledge.

They sent the Aiel away, which ended up with this branch of them becoming the Aiel of the Waste, who gave up on the Way of the Leaf. They set up Callandor at the Stone, and built the Eye of the World, which killed them all.

These are the last desperate acts of the shreds of a civilization that has no guarantee of survival. If you read the book with a reasonable amount of immersion, you wouldn't be expecting perfect plans from this group. 

You are, as always, ignoring core aspects of the setting to make your case that the story is bad. 

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23 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

I've lost the will to continue this discussion in any detail, but the ter'angreal and other items of Power were a pretext to get the Aiel out of Paraan Disen. The scene makes it clear that the person in that group with the Foretelling had figured out the Aiel were important to the Dragon's next rebirth, just not how, and so they give the Aiel this fake task to keep them moving, rather than have them throw themselves in front of the male channelers as they did elsewhere.

Even if we go with that 'interpretation' - which is no way a given since it seems quite clear that the Aes Sedai could have just commanded them to stop this suicidal behavior - then it is still quite ridiculous to assume that any sane person would entrust valuable objects to a bunch of pacificists expecting that them actually guarding precious stuff should allow them to survive the coming anarchy.

Rather it should make them a target, resulting in their destruction.

Also, why on earth didn't some Aes Sedai stay with the Aiel? We are to believe this people continued to birth channelers, developing their own - much worse - Aes Sedai copies in their Wise Women, but no Aes Sedai decided to accompany them in the start or team up with them later? That's just ridiculous ... as is the scenario that the Aes Sedai who are there when they built Rhuidean would not inform the White Tower of what they are doing.

Or - my main point - that the Aes Sedai themselves would ever forget who and what the Aiel were. And if they hadn't forgotten, then they would have told them after the Breaking.

23 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

As for Travelling... Where would they Travel to ? Nowhere was actually safe from male channelers. Even steddings were moving or being destroyed. There was no location to open a gateway to where the Aiel would suddenly be safe. No one among those Aes Sedai had any kind of guarantees, just some of the vague, earliest Foretellings that comprise the Prophesies of the Dragon, and they set things in motion, with no guarantees or specific knowledge.

There should have been ways to create a safe place. As we know, not everybody got mad at the same time and, one imagines, not every madness resulted in the same kind of mad rampage - or the same quality of mad rampage.

Lots and lots of people did survive, after all, so if the Aes Sedai had decided to create a safe place which they guarded with the One Power they certainly could have kept people and things safe there - like they obviously did with the Eye of the World.

23 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

You are, as always, ignoring core aspects of the setting to make your case that the story is bad. 

LOL, the core aspects are the aspects that suck - like the idea that the Aiel would forget/refuse to acknowledge who and what they are, and, more importantly, that the Aes Sedai would forget this as well.

Other stuff:

How warped was Jordan's 'view of women' that he actually has Lanfear - who deliberately disguises herself as a fat and ugly woman - to be jealous of some attractive Darkfriend filly she herself controls and who could not possibly rival her in her true form?

How weird and one-dimensional must your view of women be to portray this as the realistic behavior of a millennia-old super witch who was born in an utopian society?

As for Jordan's inconsistent mess of a 'worldbuilding':

A big thing in the first book is that Tam al'Thor nearly dies when he is injured by a Trolloc - a Trolloc who was actually sent to the Two Rivers to capture the Dragon Reborn not to kill him, so he should technically not use poisoned weaponry. That he does seems to indicate that Shadowspawn weapons are always poisoned. We have this confirmed for the evil swords of the Myrddraals, for instance.

Yet in TSR our great and unwilling 'hero', Perrin, gets shot by a Trolloc who clearly aimed to kill (working for Slayer), yet he survives for days (!!!) without magical Aes Sedai help and without quickly falling into the kind of feverish coma Tam entered into mere hours after suffering minor injuries by a Trolloc weapon. Perrin got shot by an arrow in the side and the arrow head - which we would expect to have been poisoned - remains in his body without this having any drastic consequences.

This is both incredibly lazy and quite insulting to anyone who remembers what transpired in the first book.

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18 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Even if we go with that 'interpretation' - which is no way a given since it seems quite clear that the Aes Sedai could have just commanded them to stop this suicidal behavior - then it is still quite ridiculous to assume that any sane person would entrust valuable objects to a bunch of pacificists expecting that them actually guarding precious stuff should allow them to survive the coming anarchy.

Rather it should make them a target, resulting in their destruction.

Also, why on earth didn't some Aes Sedai stay with the Aiel? We are to believe this people continued to birth channelers, developing their own - much worse - Aes Sedai copies in their Wise Women, but no Aes Sedai decided to accompany them in the start or team up with them later? That's just ridiculous ... as is the scenario that the Aes Sedai who are there when they built Rhuidean would not inform the White Tower of what they are doing.

Or - my main point - that the Aes Sedai themselves would ever forget who and what the Aiel were. And if they hadn't forgotten, then they would have told them after the Breaking.

There should have been ways to create a safe place. As we know, not everybody got mad at the same time and, one imagines, not every madness resulted in the same kind of mad rampage - or the same quality of mad rampage.

Lots and lots of people did survive, after all, so if the Aes Sedai had decided to create a safe place which they guarded with the One Power they certainly could have kept people and things safe there - like they obviously did with the Eye of the World.

LOL, the core aspects are the aspects that suck - like the idea that the Aiel would forget/refuse to acknowledge who and what they are, and, more importantly, that the Aes Sedai would forget this as well.

Other stuff:

How warped was Jordan's 'view of women' that he actually has Lanfear - who deliberately disguises herself as a fat and ugly woman - to be jealous of some attractive Darkfriend filly she herself controls and who could not possibly rival her in her true form?

How weird and one-dimensional must your view of women be to portray this as the realistic behavior of a millennia-old super witch who was born in an utopian society?

As for Jordan's inconsistent mess of a 'worldbuilding':

A big thing in the first book is that Tam al'Thor nearly dies when he is injured by a Trolloc - a Trolloc who was actually sent to the Two Rivers to capture the Dragon Reborn not to kill him, so he should technically not use poisoned weaponry. That he does seems to indicate that Shadowspawn weapons are always poisoned. We have this confirmed for the evil swords of the Myrddraals, for instance.

Yet in TSR our great and unwilling 'hero', Perrin, gets shot by a Trolloc who clearly aimed to kill (working for Slayer), yet he survives for days (!!!) without magical Aes Sedai help and without quickly falling into the kind of feverish coma Tam entered into mere hours after suffering minor injuries by a Trolloc weapon. Perrin got shot by an arrow in the side and the arrow head - which we would expect to have been poisoned - remains in his body without this having any drastic consequences.

This is both incredibly lazy and quite insulting to anyone who remembers what transpired in the first book.

Can you sum up a major complaint about the series to be “Ta’veren is plot armor disguised as world building”?

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4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Can you sum up a major complaint about the series to be “Ta’veren is plot armor disguised as world building”?

So far I actually don't find 'ta'veren' to be that big of a plot armor thing ... mostly because we actually get the 'the evil guys are completely - and quite visibly - incompetent morons' plot armor in this series (e.g. the bad guys only attacking in full force whenever the good guys are ready for them and/or actually have the means (or are in the state of mind) to defeat them - not to mention one of the worst written 'seduction attempts' in the history of art).

The whole ta'veren thing actually doesn't seem to work well for two of them - namely Perrin and Mat - who, so far, are just sidekicks to His Randness.

It even gets much, much worse in the way how Jordan depicts those 'ta'veren' - as unwilling heroes/leaders - which, in any realistic scenario, would cause those folks to simply never become heroes/leaders.

They also have no real charisma to speak of - at least we do not see it depicted as such - just as the feelings in the other sex they entice seem to be completely unintentional and unprovoked. Elayne we could describe as 'dripping wet' the entire time Rand comes up ... yet she barely knows the guy and gives neither the reader nor herself any reason why Rand she should be interested in Rand.

It is the same with Rand's other harem girls - Min's only motivation 'to have the hots for him' seems to be that prophecy tells her is destined for him, and what the hell Aviendha does see in the guy I don't know so far.

With Faile and Perrin it is basically the same. So far there isn't the slightest indication why the woman basically stalks Perrin throughout the series.

A good author would not just mention this 'ta'veren' concept but also depict how this affects everyone - he would, perhaps, show how people have/develop charisma, would give us the description of one of the ta'veren through the eyes of somebody who gets caught up in their projects, etc.

But all we get are weird developments mainly from the POV of the ta'veren themselves who basically never want any of this ... which makes it completely silly, sort of like Alexander or Augustus conquering the world basically against their own will. Which could never happen.

Now that Mat got his weird special powers - the very idea that him not being able to remember a lot of stuff that happened after he took the dagger (which the big exception of everything involving Elayne who he first met when his delirium was at the worst, but never mind) would create enough of a 'hole in his mind' to fill it with the knowledge of hundreds of super generals is ridiculous - I guess they serve as his plot armor not so much that he is 'ta'veren'. In that sense his plot seems to be more the work of the transdimensional plot devices.

In that sense - the ta'veren thing is clumsy and not very well implemented, but I'd not call it plot armor.

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Speaking of ta'veren, I've seen an argument come up a lot recently with the show changes. Now that Egwene is also a ta'veren, that diminishes her accomplishments. I call bullshit on this, obviously. No one thinks Rand or Mat or Perrin are less accomplished or less bad-ass because of their ta'veren nature. It's just being used now because it wasn't like that in the books and I suspect it upsets the balance of the boys being the center of the story, even though it really is kind of Rand and Egwene as the big movers and shakers and the power players here.

Just curious to hear thoughts about this.

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