A Memory of Light [FULL SPOILER DISCUSSION] Part 2

[Gertrude]

Eh, no. We had quite a few opposing opinions about slavery expressed in the books. Not so much condoned in Randland. Yes, it's normal for the Seanchan, but obviously Tylin sees no wrong in her doings either. Slavery is not considered ok through the lens of our heroes, unlike Mat's treatment at the hands of Tylin. I think it was poorly handled. Especially seeing how many people didn't even get what RJ was going for, and when it's pointed out will still argue that it wasn't really rape. Mat liked it! No one has tried to argue that the Seanchan don't really enslave people, it's for their own good!

[Shryke]

Been flipping through the book, thinking about some stuff, and one thing that came to me while chatting with a friend about it was that RJ's biggest problem with the whole of Tarmon Gai'don is he does a really bad job of selling the mood.

I think alot of people miss just how fucked the world is in AMOL. And for the last, like, 4 books too. RJ puts the information there in the book, but it never seems to quite set the mood I think he wants.

Which is a shame since the entire way the Last Battle goes down, for all of AMOL, is dependant on this fact. Mat himself explicitly points it out: they have to win now or they will all starve to death within a few weeks/months. We see this fact, although it's impact isn't quite obvious yet, as far back as CoT, where half the purpose of Perrin's scenes is establishing this fact.

I like how this sets up the nature of the battles in AMOL. A multiple points, they think of hiding or fortifying in a city or something, and realise it's useless. In part because of the One Power, but also because the DO's forces will just siege them in and take off, leaving them to starve to death while the Trollocs rampage across the countryside eating people to stay fed.

Despite the fact that they are constantly retreating, they are really fighting an offensive war. They are constantly taking he fight to the enemy because they have no other choice. They can choose the site of the battle, because of travelling, but they must engage the enemy as quickly as possible to keep them bottled up and because they must win the fight now or they starve.

I don't think RJ does a good job of really setting this mood for the book though. Which is kinda interesting since I think one thing Sanderson did really well is sell the same mood for basically the exact same reasons in his 3rd Mistborn book. And I think he fails at it in WOT as much as RJ did.

[Shryke]

Eh, no. We had quite a few opposing opinions about slavery expressed in the books. Not so much condoned in Randland. Yes, it's normal for the Seanchan, but obviously Tylin sees no wrong in her doings either. Slavery is not considered ok through the lens of our heroes, unlike Mat's treatment at the hands of Tylin. I think it was poorly handled. Especially seeing how many people didn't even get what RJ was going for, and when it's pointed out will still argue that it wasn't really rape. Mat liked it! No one has tried to argue that the Seanchan don't really enslave people, it's for their own good!

That's because we share the same values, so we automatically think Rand and Co's side is obviously right.

The book doesn't lack for characters expressing the positive aspects of slavery, nor for the book itself showing positives to the Seanchan slavery system. Even the appendices highlight that it's not all bad. But because our culture has a rather strong aversion to the practice, we are never really swayed by any of this.

Plenty of people miss the point on the Mat/Tylin issue because in the real world, plenty of people don't actually see the problem.

[Gertrude]

How can you argue that since we share the same values as our heroes that we can't judge slavery, but we can judge Tylin? You are acknowledging that it is a problem, yes? It's true that many people don't even see it (again, problem with execution, I think), but that's irrelevant to this specific point.

[Shryke]

How can you argue that since we share the same values as our heroes that we can't judge slavery, but we can judge Tylin? You are acknowledging that it is a problem, yes? It's true that many people don't even see it (again, problem with execution, I think), but that's irrelevant to this specific point.

Slavery was brought up as something condoned in the book, but obviously wrong. You say the difference between slavery and the book and the Mat/Tylin relationship is our heroes perspective. I'm saying it's our perspective.

No one reading the book thinks the issue of slavery was, to use your words, "poorly handled". Why is that? The book is 100 times more pro-slavery then it is pro-rape.

​The difference is, pretty much no one thinks slavery is ok so we read the book and we understand that it's giving us a perspective on the issue, not endorsing it. Whereas something like Mat/Tylin is not something pretty much no one thinks is ok because, hey, some people thought there was nothing wrong with it. People who do think about that sort of thing thought "Man, that's fucked up". People who don't see it as problematic, just think it's funny or something.

The difference is not the presentation Plenty of characters think it's funny in the book, but any Seanchan in the book will also tell you slavery is ok. The difference is the readers acceptance of that viewpoint. And that acceptance is based on how closely their viewpoint matches ours.

I never said we couldn't judge either incident. I explicitly say we DO judge it. The difference between how we judge the two incidents is based on our own morals, not the books presentation. (Well, some of it is probably the book's presentation. I'd say the lion's share is people just not thinking it's a problem to begin with.)

[Gertrude]

I'm still not sure what you are saying.

Slavery is presented as right and just by the Seanchan, but our heroes (us) know better so don't buy into it.

Rape is presented as 'a taste of his own medicine' (i.e. slut deserved it) and our heroes (us) don't blink an eye. They say Tylin acted badly, but they do so as they blush and smile to themselves.

I'm not sure where we are disagreeing. If you're saying that it's because people reading this book condone rape in some circumstances (date rape, the victim dresssed slutty, flirted, etc), I think that's wrong. It has nothing to do with whether or not they even see it. It was seen by our heroes and they laughed it off. That is what I think the major failing was.

[Shryke]

I'm still not sure what you are saying.

Slavery is presented as right and just by the Seanchan, but our heroes (us) know better so don't buy into it.

Rape is presented as 'a taste of his own medicine' (i.e. slut deserved it) and our heroes (us) don't blink an eye. They say Tylin acted badly, but they do so as they blush and smile to themselves.

I'm not sure where we are disagreeing. If you're saying that it's because people reading this book condone rape in some circumstances (date rape, the victim dresssed slutty, flirted, etc), I think that's wrong. It has nothing to do with whether or not they even see it. It was seen by our heroes and they laughed it off. That is what I think the major failing was.

That's not a failing though. Our heroes have viewpoints that make sense for their characters. Those viewpoints don't need to line up with ours. They shouldn't, frankly, considering the society they come from.

We don't have to agree with everything our heroes say any more then we must agree with the Seanchan.

[Gertrude]

I consider it a failing because it was intended to explain what rape actually is. (took this from the previous discussion about this topic)

RJ wrote the Mat/Tylin scenario as a humorous role-reversal thing. His editor, and wife, thought it was a good discussion of sexual harassment and rape with comic undertones. She liked it because it dealt with very serious issues in a humorous way. She seemed to think it would be a good way to explain to men/boys what this can be like for women/girls, showing the fear, etc.

It didn't exactly explain it to people who don't already get it. If even one person (besides Mat) had had a problem with it, or even silently questioned it in their head, then maybe it would have served the purpose. But it really just didn't. That's why I think it's a failing.

[Shryke]

I consider it a failing because it was intended to explain what rape actually is. (took this from the previous discussion about this topic)

It didn't exactly explain it to people who don't already get it. If even one person (besides Mat) had had a problem with it, or even silently questioned it in their head, then maybe it would have served the purpose. But it really just didn't. That's why I think it's a failing.

Then virtually every thing written on feminism and rape ever has the exact same failing.

[Gertrude]

We can agree to disagree. I didn't expect this to be the magical solution that would turn everyone around, but it felt like a half-assed attempt. The focus was on the funny. If you're going to address a situation that you know is touchy, you should do it well or stay away from it. WoT is very YA when it comes to adult themes, IMO, and this was better left out. Nothing wrong with that, but know your limits and audience. That's all.

[fionwe1987]

Especially seeing how many people didn't even get what RJ was going for, and when it's pointed out will still argue that it wasn't really rape.

This is not RJ's fault, but wilful blindness on the part of those denying rape. Go through the thread where this was discussed. I showed quotes where he was forced to have sex at knife point, where he sits down and crys over the harassment, where's he starved to the point of having to give in...

Several people responded to all that with: Mat is an ubercool badass. If he really wanted to get out of it, he would have.

This has nothing to do with presentation as much as an idiotic belief that men can't be raped. Because men are strong. And cool. And we'd never sit still for crap like that unless we actually want it.

I call it stockholm's syndrome by proxy. Mat is a character its really easy to identify with, and just as Mat himself starts revising history in his head to make his time with Tylin better and better, his fanboys who refuse to accept the possibility of rape also blanked out or completely twisted scenes that make it abundantly clear Mat was raped and harassed.

[Myrddin]

Might've worked, too.

That, WilliamofToms is the best first (and only) post I've seen in a long time. :thumbsup:

[Werthead]

Never meant to imply that it did. What I wanted to say was that the territories that are now Shara and Seanchan were most likely occupied by forces of the Shadow during the War of Power and this influenced development of their societies in the Third Age.

I don't think it did, at all. The Breaking was the systematic destruction of most of the planet's landmasses and the creation of new ones. Although Seanchan may be an altered version of North and South America, it may also be a completely new continent, and the same could be true for Shara (though if we subscribe to the Land of Madmen = Australia theory, Shara may roughly be located in China and the western Pacific). Very, very little in the way of culture survived the Breaking, and people were constantly on the move. There were no settled societies at that time to be influenced.

I'm curious as to where you got the idea that Luthairs forces were culturally absorbed given that all the evidence is that the Seanchan "system" as it were came around due to Luthair and his descendants playing other forces off each other until they could be absorbed in the system set by Hawkwing's heirs. The exception is the damane but given how Ishmael had already poisoned Hawkwing (and likely his kids) into hating channelers this wasn't a big step culture-wise, more of a natural extension. One could argue that Ishamael created the Seanchan system through his contamination of Hawkwing I think but not that the system was subverted by native forces in the continent itself.

Much of the Seanchan system pre-dated Luthair's arrival. The cultural stuff and the slavery certainly did. Luthair introduced the a'dam and damane, but not much more beyond that. The Seanchan even changed the system after Luthair's death so that only women could sit on the Crystal Throne, a throwback to the pre-Luthair system of hundreds of small kingdoms mostly ruled by women.

He did not. He never over-described them, never lingered on them. Those scenes are perfunctory, at best. And there is spanking due to the nature of the White Tower, not because of some weird wish to show it.

It should be noted that even The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which does not have much space for each entry, makes special mention of the series' obsession with corporal punishment during its entry on Jordan. It's something that stands out even to more independently-minded critics.

this is not the world Jordan is trying to create. He wants us to see women as more empowered. There are Queens and powerful Aes Sedai. Even look at the Women's Circle in Emond's Field. At worst, women are seen as different but equal.

It may have been an EotWism, but it always struck me as odd that there was that innkeeper on the Caemlyn Road who had no problem smacking his bargirls around. In Amadicia or a more remote part of Tear, sure, but in public, right in the heart of Andor it always struck me as an odd thing to do. The guy was a Darkfriend, but even that doesn't wholly explain it because even the Darkfriends seem fairly equal-opportunities.

- one of the futures Rand shows the Dark One seems to be consistent with what happened in the book (the one where Emond's Field has become a great city). Sometimes visions of the future are regarded as being set in stone in the series, I'm guessing this isn't one of those, it's just one possible outcome?

It's a possible outcome depending on the very circumstances that take place at the end of the book. Given those circumstances take place, my take was that future (or one very close to it) is indeed how everything will fall out: a lot, lot better but not perfect.

[WilliamofToms]

That, WilliamofToms is the best first (and only) post I've seen in a long time. :thumbsup:

LOL...I registed just to make that post. I'm more a lurker :)

[wolverine]

I consider it a failing because it was intended to explain what rape actually is. (took this from the previous discussion about this topic)

It didn't exactly explain it to people who don't already get it. If even one person (besides Mat) had had a problem with it, or even silently questioned it in their head, then maybe it would have served the purpose. But it really just didn't. That's why I think it's a failing.

Quote

RJ wrote the Mat/Tylin scenario as a humorous role-reversal thing. His editor, and wife, thought it was a good discussion of sexual harassment and rape with comic undertones. She liked it because it dealt with very serious issues in a humorous way. She seemed to think it would be a good way to explain to men/boys what this can be like for women/girls, showing the fear, etc.

If this quote was the goal, then I feel like it was an utter failure. I am one of those dense readers, maybe with my own preconceptions of men getting raped, who didn't really see it as rape until others pointed it out. It was nothing like what I think it would be like for most women to be raped. I got no sense of fear and just a little sense of helplessness from Mat.

Been flipping through the book, thinking about some stuff, and one thing that came to me while chatting with a friend about it was that RJ's biggest problem with the whole of Tarmon Gai'don is he does a really bad job of selling the mood.

I think alot of people miss just how fucked the world is in AMOL. And for the last, like, 4 books too. RJ puts the information there in the book, but it never seems to quite set the mood I think he wants.

Which is a shame since the entire way the Last Battle goes down, for all of AMOL, is dependant on this fact. Mat himself explicitly points it out: they have to win now or they will all starve to death within a few weeks/months. We see this fact, although it's impact isn't quite obvious yet, as far back as CoT, where half the purpose of Perrin's scenes is establishing this fact.

I like how this sets up the nature of the battles in AMOL. A multiple points, they think of hiding or fortifying in a city or something, and realise it's useless. In part because of the One Power, but also because the DO's forces will just siege them in and take off, leaving them to starve to death while the Trollocs rampage across the countryside eating people to stay fed.

Despite the fact that they are constantly retreating, they are really fighting an offensive war. They are constantly taking he fight to the enemy because they have no other choice. They can choose the site of the battle, because of travelling, but they must engage the enemy as quickly as possible to keep them bottled up and because they must win the fight now or they starve.

I don't think RJ does a good job of really setting this mood for the book though. Which is kinda interesting since I think one thing Sanderson did really well is sell the same mood for basically the exact same reasons in his 3rd Mistborn book. And I think he fails at it in WOT as much as RJ did.

I totally agree with this and I can't really explain why the mood did not feel as dire as it should have. Maybe because some of the failings of the pattern felt hokey to me. Like rooms being randomly reorganized and steel swords turning to a wax-like consistency.

[Rhom]

For all the great things Jordan did, conveying a sense of doom or something being terrible was not one of them. I always think back to his comments about a consequence of the cleansing and said "Readers will gasp and say 'how horrible!'" I was excited to read this scene and find out what the horrible thing was... Turns out a bunch of people we never met killed themselves off screen. /yawn

Nothing about it conveyed the proper sense of terror of an entire culture committing mass suicide.

The same goes for his ineffective display of the Dark One's touch on the pattern. Yes, something bad happens; no, I don't feel unnerved by it.

[fionwe1987]

For all the great things Jordan did, conveying a sense of doom or something being terrible was not one of them. I always think back to his comments about a consequence of the cleansing and said "Readers will gasp and say 'how horrible!'" I was excited to read this scene and find out what the horrible thing was... Turns out a bunch of people we never met killed themselves off screen. /yawn

Nothing about it conveyed the proper sense of terror of an entire culture committing mass suicide.

The same goes for his ineffective display of the Dark One's touch on the pattern. Yes, something bad happens; no, I don't feel unnerved by it.

This is true. One of the great failings of the books is that the sense of terror actually reduced as we got closer to the Last Battle. The first few books were actually better, with some scenes being pretty creepy. As the characters powered up, and their challenges became more political, the sense of a world struggling to survive totally receded. I like that the end of the world didn't forcefully put and end to all politics suddenly. That's believable. But RJ was unable to show how really desperate the situation was. I think we needed more secondary, or even major, characters who could serve as everyman types, to be able to see the vast chaos first hand, rather than from intelligence reports. An entire country was razed to the ground, yet all we see none of it. An entire culture commits suicide, and we only see a report. The entire Seanchan court is killed in one day, and an entire continent thrown into bloody chaos. And we only hear of it second hand. Seeing all of these, and more, on screen would have significantly altered people's perception of the LB, and its WoT's greatest failing that the supposedly cataclysmic end of the world battle came across as far less. The War of the Shadow, and the Breaking both come across as significantly more damaging, but I don't quite think that was the intent.

[Reposado]

This is true. One of the great failings of the books is that the sense of terror actually reduced as we got closer to the Last Battle. The first few books were actually better, with some scenes being pretty creepy. As the characters powered up, and their challenges became more political, the sense of a world struggling to survive totally receded. I like that the end of the world didn't forcefully put and end to all politics suddenly. That's believable. But RJ was unable to show how really desperate the situation was. I think we needed more secondary, or even major, characters who could serve as everyman types, to be able to see the vast chaos first hand, rather than from intelligence reports. An entire country was razed to the ground, yet all we see none of it. An entire culture commits suicide, and we only see a report. The entire Seanchan court is killed in one day, and an entire continent thrown into bloody chaos. And we only hear of it second hand. Seeing all of these, and more, on screen would have significantly altered people's perception of the LB, and its WoT's greatest failing that the supposedly cataclysmic end of the world battle came across as far less. The War of the Shadow, and the Breaking both come across as significantly more damaging, but I don't quite think that was the intent.

i think this is very true, which is strange since i think one of the failings of the second half of the series is the lack of the ability to let things happen off screen. not sure if we needed to see the seanchan court, but yeah the last battle had to be more destructive.

there were way more events and perspective making the last battle ominous than in making it actually horrific

[Frey Pie]

This is not RJ's fault, but wilful blindness on the part of those denying rape. Go through the thread where this was discussed. I showed quotes where he was forced to have sex at knife point, where he sits down and crys over the harassment, where's he starved to the point of having to give in...

Several people responded to all that with: Mat is an ubercool badass. If he really wanted to get out of it, he would have.

This has nothing to do with presentation as much as an idiotic belief that men can't be raped. Because men are strong. And cool. And we'd never sit still for crap like that unless we actually want it.

I call it stockholm's syndrome by proxy. Mat is a character its really easy to identify with, and just as Mat himself starts revising history in his head to make his time with Tylin better and better, his fanboys who refuse to accept the possibility of rape also blanked out or completely twisted scenes that make it abundantly clear Mat was raped and harassed.

As i was part of this discussion i will say this isnt true. As you will no doubt recall once you supplied a certain quote from the book i recanted on my views. Mine, and many others views were influenced as said earlier by Mats conflicted mind set, in which he is shown as having very real feelings for Tylin. This combined with a lack of a recent re-read of this particular books is what led me to question whether it was rape or not, not some macho idiotic belief that men cannot be raped as we are superior as you would make it seem. It was an honest mistake adn should be taken as such

In any case i agree wth alot of others have said recently. However, i think BS said he was going for the feeling of weariness and desperation in war, attempting to capture the meaninglessness of it all. The gargantuan amount of fighting does indeed convey this sense of weariness IMO. Its not exactly what i wante, or how i would have handled it, but i see where he was coming from

[Frey Pie]

As for the feelings of impending doom:perhaps a few small POVs from people in other areas, unaffected by the actual fighting? Perhaps bubbles of evil in cities such as Jehannah etc., or mass starvation in Saldaea and such would have added to the sense of doom and destruction, which is happening world-wide, not just on the battlefield