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Invalid Validation posted:It happened with all the portal ones. Even the accepted trials were really good. I dunno how I feel about the 100 weaves ones though. Too human controlled, as it were.
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May 27, 2020 04:49
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Invalid Validation posted:It happened with all the portal ones. Even the accepted trials were really good. Always bugged me that Egwene, Aviendha, and Nynaeve (twice!) got one of those sequences, but we never see one for Elayne.
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May 27, 2020 04:56
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silvergoose posted:I dunno how I feel about the 100 weaves ones though. Too human controlled, as it were. Yea but you get a real nice gently caress you from Nynaeve at the end.
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May 27, 2020 05:25
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jng2058 posted:Always bugged me that Egwene, Aviendha, and Nynaeve (twice!) got one of those sequences, but we never see one for Elayne. It's kind of interesting because Nynaeve and Egwene both had to make clean cuts in those Acceptatron tests from being the people they were before. But that is most emphatically not the case for Elayne--she is expected to become Queen, ruler of her own nation, and that is an obligation that tacitly transcends the normal Aes Sedai structure. Imagine if the Aes Sedai managed to lose her to a parallel reality in the test.
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May 27, 2020 07:24
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:It's kind of interesting because Nynaeve and Egwene both had to make clean cuts in those Acceptatron tests from being the people they were before. That's why I find it so frustrating that we never get to see Elayne's Accepted Test. Because there should have been a moment, possibly two or three moments, where she needed to put becoming an Aes Sedai ahead of being Queen of Andor. That we never see her make that choice, particularly since she chooses her responsibilities to Andor over her responsibilities to the Tower again and again in the latter third of the series does make you wonder how she survived the Accepted Test in the first place! I know that the TV show has so much material that will need to get cut, especially if the rumors that they're aiming for roughly two books per season and eight seasons total are correct, so the odds of them adding very much is slim. But if they are adding things, they should add this: Show us Elayne's Accepted Test! 
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May 27, 2020 07:46
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She had to choose to let her soldiers die and did so without hesitation She had to choose to let her Warder die and did so without hesitation She had to choose to let her capital city burn and did so without hesitation
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May 27, 2020 08:05
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:She had to choose to let her soldiers die and did so without hesitation Well, she didn't choose the second one...she was helpless to stop it, and would have if she could have. And the other two are decisions she made for Andor, not for the Aes Sedai. Which is kind of my point. Elayne is always Daughter-Heir and then Queen of Andor first, Aes Sedai second. But to pass her Accepted Test she needed to be able to choose being Aes Sedai over anything else, and it sucks that we didn't get to see her make that choice. I know there's a lot of Elayne hate, both here and elsewhere, but not from me. I like Elayne, I like her royal politics chapters, and I like her story arc. That's why I feel cheated that what should have been a crucial moment for her we never get to see. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 08:58 on May 27, 2020 |
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May 27, 2020 08:30
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I generally like Elayne too, but holy gently caress does she get stupid in the last few books
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May 27, 2020 08:54
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:I generally like Elayne too, but holy gently caress does she get stupid in the last few books She's fixated on her supposed invincibility because of Min's viewing, which gets a bunch of other people killed because she recklessly runs into danger and it's only the sacrifice of others that ensures the veracity of Min's viewing in the first place. What's frustrating about Elayne isn't that she tries to abuse prophecy. Rand, Moiraine, and some of the Forsaken try that too. What's frustrating about Elayne is that she tries it, gets a bunch of people killed, then doesn't learn from it and keeps on doing it. 
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May 27, 2020 09:05
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The problem with Elayne is the Captain Kirk Problem, which is that for obvious and sensible reasons the captain does not go on away missions, because if there's one person who, when they die everything falls apart, you put that person in a nice safe bunker behind all of the walls and bulkheads. But that doesn't make for good television, so for the sake of narrative convenience the captain goes on away missions and we, the audience, implicitly understand that they'll never get menaced too much, because it's all in service of better storytelling. And that's Elayne. Daughter heir and Aes Sedai, adventure-princess, leading from the front and walking face first into ever danger. Except that Robert Jordan has a realistic enough take on worldbuilding that he does write in the natural consequences that come from having a daughter heir and queen who gallivants around personally endangering herself, even though her death, or even temporary absence, would be incredibly politically destabilizing to her kingdom. People die because she fucks off to Falme, or Ebou Dar, or Tanchico, or wherever. Soldiers are dispatched, there are riots in the streets. There's a low key civil war. It ends up being a net positive, because it keeps her out of Rhavin's hands and allows her to discover a talent for terrangreal and a ton of other necessary plot stuff, but she can't possibly have known that before hurling herself into the thick of it. So what you end up with, in order to have a character who is in the places she needs to be to give the readers a viewpoint on the action, is that Elayne, when viewed objectively from the outside, is undeniably very brave, but also undeniably dumb as a loving stump. And that's all leaving aside the Min's viewing temporary immortality shenanigans.
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May 27, 2020 11:19
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jng2058 posted:Show us Elayne's Accepted Test! It would have to be a seriously deft bit of writing to make it happen and work, and I don't know who I'd trust to make it work. One problem is that it would be too easy to fall back to a pattern of making what should be important character moments be the caricatures of those characters, and that's something Brandon Sanderson often fell prey to in the final novels. One thing you could do is cut the Battle for Caemlyn from Egwene's test, and recontextualize it for Elayne. It would actually be pretty cool and I wonder if that wasn't originally the plan, but RJ couldn't come up with a good way to try to make Elayne decide between her previous life and an Aes Sedai life for the other tests so decided to cut her testing and give this particular scene to Egwene. If Egwene's #2 Accepted Test "viewing" was given to Elayne, it would mean, and this is just the top 2 off my head: 1) Elayne again sees (a version of) Rand before they meet up again at the end of TDR. It could either assist in telling the story of how she fell for him, or tell her, by her response in the viewing, that in two meet-ups she has fallen for him. (e: they do meet up at the end of TGH, though I'd have to look again to see if Rand was conscious at all before the girls take off for Tar Valon with Mat) 2) Elayne would see a devastated Caemlyn, and resolve to both complete her journey to the shawl and ring, and to return to help Caemlyn avert that disaster. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 01:25 on May 28, 2020 |
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May 27, 2020 17:00
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:
At least in typical Jordan fashion she constantly beats herself for not being as brave as Egwene or Nynaeve, so her internal monologue juxtaposed with her actions make for good dramatic irony. That, and all the times people comment about her having her nose in the air and being snooty. But goddamn is she stupidly reckless with other people's lives. Related, Perrin defending the Two Rivers is such good writing. I teared up at multiple points, in between bits of fear and rage and despair, and this is on a reread! I know what's going to happen, and it still got to me!
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May 27, 2020 18:56
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DarkHorse posted:Related, Perrin defending the Two Rivers is such good writing. I teared up at multiple points, in between bits of fear and rage and despair, and this is on a reread! I know what's going to happen, and it still got to me! Chapters 53 and 56 are as fine pieces of writing as you can find in WoT.
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May 27, 2020 19:00
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If 56 is Goldeneyes, yes
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May 27, 2020 19:27
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Those chapters buoyed my affection for Perrin & Faile through my first read. Great writing, absolutely. Getting through their chapters on my re-read in Lord of Chaos and A Crown is Swords feels like a chore.
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May 27, 2020 20:07
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faile’s arc suffers from antagonist boredom. Messaana, and the Shaido Aiel are just not as well done for whatever reason and I drags on faile and in turn Perrin. If faile was rallying manetheren while nynaeve was rallying the borderlands instead, it would have been more compelling. Showing the two women coordinating with each other through letters learning to be queens of two different people etc would have been more on point for that period in the books. When nynaeve goes to prepare the way for lan and just keep having people show up it’s assumed she learned who to talk to in the background, but it’s not well covered. Chopping a books worth of wandering around whining about the shaido aiel would have been great.
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May 27, 2020 20:43
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The only bit of that whole subplot I enjoyed, other than the conclusion Sanderson wrote, was discovering who the remnant of a remnant of the Aiel were.
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May 27, 2020 21:12
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rndmnmbr posted:The only bit of that whole subplot I enjoyed, other than the conclusion Sanderson wrote, was discovering who the remnant of a remnant of the Aiel were. Uhhhh.... remind me?
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May 27, 2020 21:28
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It’s vague but a small group of shaido go to the wastes eventually. There other contenders, And interpretations of that prophecy vary.
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May 27, 2020 21:35
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Yeah I thought that was what it was, but I wondered if something else
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May 27, 2020 21:38
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I like the take that assumes each remnant is transformative, so Age of legends, waste, dragon peace, but it’s vague enough to never really know for sure.
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May 27, 2020 23:31
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I got to that scene between Mat and Tylin. To borrow from Perd Hapley, it had the “cadence of a joke” but everything about it was stomach turning. How was that scene initially received? I know our understandings have changed, but that felt egregious even for the 90s.
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Jun 1, 2020 17:00
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i think it's intentionally meant to not sit right, iirc, if you mean basically everything between the two
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Jun 1, 2020 17:08
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Prairie Bus posted:I got to that scene between Mat and Tylin. To borrow from Perd Hapley, it had the “cadence of a joke” but everything about it was stomach turning. How was that scene initially received? I know our understandings have changed, but that felt egregious even for the 90s. People seem to love sexy rape in the 10s and 20s still so I'm not sure how egregious Tylin and Mat really is. Lords raping their "lessers" is already in the series, and it's not like it's not an omnipresent cliche in the genre. Is it just that for once it's from a relatively sympathetic major character doing it to a main character? VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 17:53
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Specially back then but even today people think if you’re a guy it’s not rape.
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Jun 1, 2020 18:05
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One thing that I think is a constant in facile criticism of WoT is "women aren't allowed to do that", so factor in that "can't rape a guy" and "women aren't allowed to do X" and there's probably a ton of dissonance in how those sequences are viewed.
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Jun 1, 2020 18:12
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:One thing that I think is a constant in facile criticism of WoT is "women aren't allowed to do that", so factor in that "can't rape a guy" and "women aren't allowed to do X" and there's probably a ton of dissonance in how those sequences are viewed. I would love to read a comparison of WoT's treatment of gender vs Naomi Alderman's The Power (two books I had never thought to compare before this moment).
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Jun 1, 2020 18:23
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:Is it just that for once it's from a relatively sympathetic major character doing it to a main character? Nah, it’s that it’s intended to be read as funny. The text itself is very clear that it’s a rape- lots of “knife at his throat” and no’s all around. But everyone, including Mat, laughs at it and treats it like a joke. There are long descriptions suggesting the tables have turned on Mat and treating it like a comeuppance. Compare it to the previous instances of sexual violence with Fain and Valda - dark, terse passages filled with implications and without explicit mention of what happened.
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Jun 1, 2020 18:26
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buffalo all day posted:I would love to read a comparison of WoT's treatment of gender vs Naomi Alderman's The Power (two books I had never thought to compare before this moment). That book is super good, super hard to read, and everyone but especially guys should all read it. ...I had not compared it to wot either, but I can see that.
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Jun 1, 2020 19:09
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Prairie Bus posted:Nah, it’s that it’s intended to be read as funny. The text itself is very clear that it’s a rape- lots of “knife at his throat” and no’s all around. But everyone, including Mat, laughs at it and treats it like a joke. There are long descriptions suggesting the tables have turned on Mat and treating it like a comeuppance. Compare it to the previous instances of sexual violence with Fain and Valda - dark, terse passages filled with implications and without explicit mention of what happened. Read over that section carefully, and note it is only Mat and (oddly) Tylin's son that really sees what's going on. Everyone else seems to assume that it is part of some game they are playing, except for Mat's old associates who think he's just upset at being the toy in the relationship for a change. As soon as she hears his side of it, Avihenda flips out. It isn't so much a case of "female on male rape is funny", but one of "this guy isn't being believed".
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Jun 1, 2020 19:41
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Again, the way it’s narrated is completely different from past episodes of sexual violence. There’s certainly stark descriptions of the act the leave no room for alternative interpretation, but the tone is a lot more “ah shucks.”
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Jun 1, 2020 20:04
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It might as well being Jordan going: “Well Mat deserved it cause he was wearing that Ta’veren.” Then Mat having Stockholm Syndrome and actually caring about her later on. See it’s funny? Mat treats women like objects and now he gets treated like an object! But men love sex so it’s not gross!
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Jun 1, 2020 20:35
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I'm still in Lord of Chaos, but isn't there a scene of Mat crying to himself after Elayne and Nynaeve dismiss his complaints and walk away? That's what always stood out to me.
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Jun 1, 2020 21:32
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Vavrek posted:I'm still in Lord of Chaos, but isn't there a scene of Mat crying to himself after Elayne and Nynaeve dismiss his complaints and walk away? That's what always stood out to me. Yes, and then he explains it in more detail to Elayne who chortles "taste of his own medicine". Even though he doesn't, y'know, rape anyone.
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Jun 1, 2020 21:43
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silvergoose posted:Yes, and then he explains it in more detail to Elayne who chortles "taste of his own medicine". his characterizations of the female characters gets more and more unhinged, but Elayne stands out as the worst. it's a shame too. I'm enjoying the early character arcs of all the characters in the first few novels. especially egwene and perrin after meeting the tinkers.
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Jun 1, 2020 21:45
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Elayne is the worst by far. She starts out fairly likable but then we end up dealing with her whiney rear end queen drama for like 5 books instead of her just sitting around figuring out/making cool angreals. Jordan gave her something unique to do then just kinda ignores it for the most part.
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Jun 1, 2020 21:50
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Invalid Validation posted:Elayne is the worst by far. She starts out fairly likable but then we end up dealing with her whiney rear end queen drama for like 5 books instead of her just sitting around figuring out/making cool angreals. Jordan gave her something unique to do then just kinda ignores it for the most part. 😬
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Jun 1, 2020 22:53
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Invalid Validation posted:Jordan ... something unique ... then just kinda ignores it for the most part. I feel like that can be said for many things in the series  Any word for how badly Corona has hosed up filming of Amazon's TV series?
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Jun 1, 2020 23:21
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Last I heard it was on hiatus until further notice
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Jun 1, 2020 23:36
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silvergoose posted:Yes, and then he explains it in more detail to Elayne who chortles "taste of his own medicine". Yeah, that was pretty hosed up. Every woman Mat chases, even the ones who aren't interested, make it quite clear that he backs off if it's unwanted. He's flirty but not pushy at all, so it always boggled my mind how much Elayne and Nynaeve poo poo on him for it.
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Jun 1, 2020 23:37
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