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So I just got to Chapter 36 of TDR. Some reccuring Aiel characters make thier first appearance. I always liked Rhuarc, he is one of my favourite of the Aiel. I forgot how ridiculously bloodthirsty Egwene is in this part of the story. I do like that when they hear Grey Men is after Mat from Egwene's dream, they immediately assume it is after him because it's trying to gently caress with them in some way. Aes Sedai seem to vastly underestimate the importance of ta'veren in this story. i think Moiraine and Verin are the only ones who currently aprreciate the fact that finding two ta'veren in the same village as the dragon reborn, with the last battle coming might be important
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Mar 8, 2012 19:20
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Quad posted:I've noticed really bad anime does this too, stuff like Bleach will have 2 minutes of catchup/intro at the beginning of each 18 minute episode. Is it that these things are written for teenage boys, and we really don't want to challenge them, even to challenge basic reading comprehension? I can't speak to its use in long book series like this, because it kinda annoys me too (seriously, Jim butcher, I don't need to read AGAIN how when you see something with the Sight it is forever burned into your mind). I can understand in more episodic series, and maybe the first one or two books of a series, but by book loving 8 of the Wheel of Time you better know how the taint works. In anime, this usually shows up when the anime is adapted from a currently ongoing comic work. If they catch up with the comic (because a weekly issue of a comic is not 22 minutes of content) they will have no content, so they have filler. There are two ways to do this, filler arcs with totally original plots written by people who don't seem to have any writing ability at all, or extensive padding of each episode. Getting a longer opening song, having people power up for 8 minutes each fight, excessive repetitive dialogue, repeating scenes at either end of commercial breaks and stupid flashbacks are all popular methods of padding. Hell Naruto's second episode or something had a flashback to the first episode. And there was a later episode which had a flashback to EARLIER IN THE SAME EPISODE
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Mar 9, 2012 04:06
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This book and the previous really don't cast the Wonder Girls in a favourable light. I'm starting to wonder if RJ was deliberately writing them as unlikeable, incompetent, self-righteous assholes at this stage of the plot. At least Nynaeve becomes cool again later. The bit near the end when mat rescues them and they treat him like some poo poo stuck to their shoe really annoys me for some reason. Maybe it's just Matt-bias? When Faile is in the book and she is one of the most likeable females, you know those girls are doing something wrong. Book 4: Thankfully, next book the girls catch up a bit with the other main heroes and start to actually succeed and poo poo. At least, I think the whole thing in Tanchico with Moghedien is Book 4
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Mar 11, 2012 23:51
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uugengiven posted:I'm reading the first book and just wanted to mention that you missed arms folded under the breasts in the first book, at the first meeting of Nyneave. Egwene is behind her in the stance, accentuating away. I said earlier in the thread, but I only started counting those in book 2 because someone suggested it after I posted the count for EOTW, and I didn't want to go back and reread the whole book just for a few mentions. In retrospect, I dunno why I added those lines when I reposted the results for the total in that post.
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Mar 13, 2012 16:14
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veekie posted:Not sure if the thread is there yet but, in fact, it was on that exact day that she would have announced that the Dragon is Reborn, has taken Tear, and has a 'trusted' Aes Sedai guiding him, so they must ready to move to bring the world behind him. Instead Elaida takes over, the trusted Aes Sedai is now a rebel and the Tower is missing the Blues, and half of everyone else. When they need precisely the Blues, who have the closest links to world leaders, for the 'approaching rulers' phase. I always thought that this was a ploy by the Black Ajah. I mean, we know at least one of the Red Sitters is a Black Sister and the woman who Elaida is forced to have as her keeper is Alviarin, the leader of the entire Black Ajah. The timing is a little convienient, since I don't think they could have known what Siuan planned, but the Forsaken surely knew about Callandor and could have easily sent some instructions through. One or two spoilers from Book 6 or so there I think.
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Mar 17, 2012 14:05
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Moiraine sees EVERYONE as tools in her mission to stop the shadow, though, so it's nothing personal. She's pretty much thrown away her entire life in order to have a slim chance at saving the world, which is a hell of a lot more than a lot of other characters are prepared to do in this series.
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Mar 20, 2012 21:50
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There fact that Wise Ones can channel is pretty heavily implied in Book 3. Rhuarc mentions that they have Dreaming powers (which, as far as we know at the time, has to do with the Power) and at least one of the other Aiel mention that one or two Wise ones are able to heal wounds so that it is as though they never happened.
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Mar 23, 2012 06:06
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Reading through Book 4, and I just got to the first chapter from Elayne's perspective. Almost every single line of dialogue and inner thought from every single character in this scene makes me want to strangle these people. It's really an amazing piece of writing, creating a scene where everyone is so completely unlikeable in every way.
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Mar 24, 2012 01:13
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Hobbes24 posted:I don't remember this arc. It must have been too long since I read it. Basically all you need to remember is that everything Elayne does is terrible. I like Nynaeve's character arc, I think, but she is always surrounded by bad events. then she later decides to go hang out with the main character and get all her poo poo together and everything is rosy I've just recently read the chapters where the whole Rand/Elayne romance thing has "kicked off" and I'm really not buying it. We are basically just told they are in love because I guess destiny said so, even though Elayne admits that have spoken like six times ever (only one of those being on screen, back in book one). They then proceed to apparently just snog and talk about grain shipments or some poo poo over the next 3 days.
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Mar 25, 2012 01:16
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veekie posted:Well, each of them seem to have SOME piece of the puzzle. Well, if every main character was forthright and communicative about everything they knew/suspected was going on, we wouldn't have a story at all and the dark one would be resealed by now.
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Mar 26, 2012 17:46
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So I just got through the whole flashback sequence at Rhuidean, it's still great. I think that whole sequence is my favourite in the entire series. It communicates a lot of cool little details with every scene and interaction. It also neatly explains things like why the Aiel were so keen to give Avendoraldera to the Cairhienin and why the prophecies of the dragon are still remembered so fondly. It also shows the origin of the tuatha'an being complete cunts to their own people, which is a consistent theme at least.
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Apr 1, 2012 15:30
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werdnam posted:I think it's pretty strongly implied it's suicide. Rand sees Muradin (sp?) in the glass columns, and Muradin has clawed out his own eyes and eaten them. I guess that might not kill you (it didn't kill Oedipus), so you may be right. I didn't read it so much as him eating his own eyes (what?!) as him clawing out his eyes and then chewing his own tongue out.
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Apr 4, 2012 23:48
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Yeah it's the same here in the UK. There is a tiny strip of art on the back pages which , according to the back of my copy of no. 6 is by Sweet, but it's just a bit of landscape so you really can't see any of the terribleness that the US editions have.
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Apr 5, 2012 16:53
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On my re-read, I have come to think that he isn't just expecting the Forsaken showdown in Book 4, he was, I think, actively planning to sever Asmodean from the Dark one and force him to teach him. But I think the plan he can't let Moirane and such know about is his plan to cleanse saidin, which with hindsight he already seems to have formulated
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Apr 13, 2012 02:38
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Ani posted:
Possible spoilers from book 12 maybe: He definitely had the idea before because we can tell from inference, I think, that one of his questions to the Finn was something along the lines of "How do I cleanse Saidin?" That combined with how he reacts to the Chodean Kal keys just makes me think he already had at least the basics of his plan down.
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Apr 13, 2012 04:04
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BattyKiara posted:Just finished book 4, have a few questions but I'll wait until I don't have to spoiler them. This spoiler comes up later so you may not want to read this but as far as I know it isn't a plot spoiler in any way even as of book 12, we have no clue how angreals are made, so it's up in the air the reasons why they can't/don't. In book 2 when Egwene was captured her sul'dam indicated that only some certain women can make the a'dams, which are ter'angreals. All the greatest things in the Age of Legends were said to be made by men and women working together too, it's possible there are some things that are just flat out impossible to do without using saidin and saidar together, and I don't think the forsaken are the type to cooperate. Even if some would, if they require a full circle at least two of the Forsaken died before they were all free and presumably they don't want to bring in Black Ajah because it'd kinda ruin their reputation as godlike entities. SageSepth posted:edit: Seems it's narrated by Kramer and Reading who did the Codex Alera, so I know the reading will be good, but what is the story about? Does Kramer do loving everything? I just started listening to the Way of Kings audiobook and it's kinda weird since I associate his voice so much with Wheel of Time. The woman (I don't THINK it's Reading) has a noticeable lisp which kinda sets my teeth on edge a little.
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Apr 13, 2012 14:55
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:I guess he is fully capable of "earning the mark", he had just not gone through the proper steps as far as attainment goes. (Just like being capable of doing something but not having the stamp of approval because you didn't take the proper class, or something.) Rand's perception of it may be off too. He learned from Lan who is at one point described as the best swordsman of his generation, and he did beat that Seanchan blademaster, even if it was partly luck. It's been about a year, I think since he started learning the blade at this point, and from what little we hear of what he was up to in Book 3, he's had a fair bit of practise. Later books: He's also probably getting a bit of skill bleed-over from Lews Therin, like when he learns how to paint completely from his past life's skill. And he only gets better as the series progresses. Be'Lal beating him is pretty predictable, from what he says he and Lews Therin invented swordfighting in the Age of Legends
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Apr 21, 2012 00:13
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Neurosis posted:I think the only things that really annoyed me about the swordfighting in WoT are the absence of shields and the fact that remaining evidence from medieval times indicates wrestling was a big part of melee combat. In a lot of ways WoT is still kind of an action fantasy series. And no one wants to read about realistic hand to hand fighting and swordduels when there are wizards and poo poo. If every single fistfight ended with the two fighters going all UFC manhandling on the floor and wrestling the swords out of each other's hand's I'd probably be even more bored than I am from Jordan spending 12 pages describing the particular type of thread used in Elayne's left sleeve. The shields thing I can accept, though since the blades are all katanas I think he's going for a classic samurai duelling thing here and bucklers and whatnot don't really play into it.
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Apr 22, 2012 01:37
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Daedalus Esquire posted:The aiel have a combination Irish+Japan thing. Try are all redheads who love whiskey with weird Japanese honor rules. All the sept/clan stuff is straight up scottish, who had weird honour stuff of a sort, and they are early on said to have pipers who play them into battle and don't like to fight without their music, though that seems to have fallen by the wayside. And they apparently have some zulu and aborigine in there too, though all the talk of the dream kinda faded from the speech of non-wise one aiel. Mish mash of warrior cultures. I know, intellectually. that the descriptions of seanchan helmets as buglike and the segmented armour is meant to evoke something like this. But I originally took it as much more literal and just have an image in my mind like a weird medieval mashup of different things.
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Oct 6, 2012 02:26
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Seanchan is a big loving place - bigger than Randland is, I think, so I'm not surprised there are a few dark skinned and light skinned peeps over there, only a small fraction of the people there would have been Hawkwing's people after all. Tuon is dark, but not all Seanchan are. It doesn't seem to be a big deal in WoT, actually. None of the characters seem to pay it much heed, hell Rand stands out more for being a redhead than any character's skin colour singles them out. Julin Sandar is pretty much straight up described as a black guy, and of the forsaken not just Semhirage, but Rahvin too is described as having a darker complexion. The Saldeans always came across to me as middle-eastern too, actually.
Rohan Kishibe fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 17:38
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