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the portal stones and the ways were neat and all but i do feel like if they had to be gone over like every single time they were used in a theoretical gateway-less series then it would probably get annoying or the alternative would be them just skipping over anything about the journeys using them after a while but at that point they might as well just be gateways with maybe a little travel time. and then there'd be more people annoyed at missed connections in the books than they already are. anyways long-distance traveling methods are a land of contrasts
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Mar 22, 2021 21:23
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Yea I wish they’d have used the Ways more. I actually thought they’d cleanse it for sure but after portals who needs em?
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Mar 22, 2021 21:28
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Invalid Validation posted:Yea I wish they’d have used the Ways more. I actually thought they’d cleanse it for sure but after portals who needs em? Some did!
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Mar 22, 2021 21:33
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The thing about gateways was they existed for a long time but the main characters would go like 10 books without interacting.
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Mar 22, 2021 22:14
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socialsecurity posted:The thing about gateways was they existed for a long time but the main characters would go like 10 books without interacting. I mentioned The Magicians TV series, and they messed up by adding instant travel to that show and had to immediately nerf every single character they gave it to because it destroys any sort of plot tension. Jordan really goes the extra mile by introducing like 3 different non-instaportal methods and then just goes ahead and puts them in anyway. It's pretty much always a bad move to do, he should have kept to the Ways.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:34
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Jaxyon posted:I mentioned The Magicians TV series, and they messed up by adding instant travel to that show and had to immediately nerf every single character they gave it to because it destroys any sort of plot tension. Honestly even Skimming would have been a bit better since it involves travel time and only the amount of people who can fit on the platform travelling at a time instead of just holding a doorway open for people to go through.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:41
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Game of Thrones introduced instant travel without magic, with some pretty terrible results.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:42
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Having Loial create new taint free Ways would have been rad.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:49
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It's non-canonical but they did it: https://www.tor.com/2019/01/28/unfettered-iii-wheel-of-time-a-fire-within-the-ways/
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Mar 22, 2021 23:51
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Zore posted:Honestly even Skimming would have been a bit better since it involves travel time and only the amount of people who can fit on the platform travelling at a time instead of just holding a doorway open for people to go through. Yes literally anything is better for a story than widely available instant travel. The Ways was an awesome idea....moody atmospheric travel that comes with an element of danger so you have to make trade-offs if you want to use it. Or you use portal stones and might end up in the wrong dimension.
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Mar 22, 2021 23:56
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It doesn't help that a bunch of the plotlines in later books were still based on walking somewhere without using gateways. Jordan just had to come up with some excuse to not do it: Masema doesn't want to and we're respecting his wishes for some reason, the Seanchan will read the weaves and learn to travel, we might open a gateway up and accidentally cut the palace employees in half, it wouldn't be fair to our political enemies if we use our Aes Sedai magic to give us an advantage, etc.
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Mar 23, 2021 00:12
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Honestly I wouldn't despise them removing instant travel through portals, there aren't that many plot points that hinge on them. In fact, Egwene quick traveling through t'a'r is a great scene and then she just figures instant out for some reason.
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Mar 23, 2021 00:19
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Donkey posted:It doesn't help that a bunch of the plotlines in later books were still based on walking somewhere without using gateways. Jordan just had to come up with some excuse to not do it: Masema doesn't want to and we're respecting his wishes for some reason, the Seanchan will read the weaves and learn to travel, we might open a gateway up and accidentally cut the palace employees in half, it wouldn't be fair to our political enemies if we use our Aes Sedai magic to give us an advantage, etc. It's like how Kelvin-Universe Abrams Star Trek movies keep introducing tech that essentially invalidates entire plots. "I can teleport across the universe now without a ship, so uh..." "Khan blood cures death so I guess we're immortal" It's not good writing. I think Jordan just got impatient as he went on.
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Mar 23, 2021 00:20
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Donkey posted:we might open a gateway up and accidentally cut the palace employees in half, That one, at least, seems kind of reasonable. It's mentioned during one of the Forsaken chats that in the Age of Legends, there was a social protocol about how to handle creating (but not opening) a gateway and just knocking, then waiting for a reply before you actually open the gateway and come in.
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Mar 23, 2021 00:20
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Yeah that was pretty fun. Something like graendal hearing a chime, and lifting her eyebrows at the apparent civility in this barbarous age
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Mar 23, 2021 00:22
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the plot point about not letting the seanchan learn gateway secrets was pretty good, but i forget offhand if they ever get a chance to really put it to use
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Mar 23, 2021 00:30
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Kinda? They make an atomic bomb out of a gateway that never gets brought up again.
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Mar 23, 2021 00:59
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Johnny Joestar posted:the plot point about not letting the seanchan learn gateway secrets was pretty good, but i forget offhand if they ever get a chance to really put it to use There's nothing really to it, they just don't let the Seanchan get it until they treats the tower itself and carry off Elaida.
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Mar 23, 2021 01:18
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Invalid Validation posted:Kinda? They make an atomic bomb out of a gateway that never gets brought up again. That was aviendha or someone unraveling a gateway and the weave collapsing into a bomb, did they ever say they could reproduce it?
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Mar 23, 2021 01:22
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No, but the Seanchan don't know that. It leads directly to the attack on the Tower, which is possibly the only time Elayne gets people killed by accident.
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Mar 23, 2021 01:29
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They explicitly said that a weave unravelling like that has unpredictable effects. I think we can probably infer that they wouldn't be able to reproduce it exactly. Did we ever learn for sure if it was the gateway bomb or the bowl of the winds that caused the power to feel weird in the area for a few weeks(months?) afterwards?
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Mar 23, 2021 01:41
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It was never made explicit, but the sheer distance it was felt for suggests that it was a side effect of over-stressing the Bowl. It is made explicit that the Bowl shouldn't have been able to be used that way, but the Windfinders knew more about weather control than the Age of Legends people.
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Mar 23, 2021 01:51
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they won't get far with that, we needed an entire network of them for a continent and WHAT THE gently caress
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Mar 23, 2021 02:07
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:they won't get far with that, we needed an entire network of them for a continent and WHAT THE gently caress The occasional "how the gently caress did these ignorant shits do that" are such good moments.
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Mar 23, 2021 02:48
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IMO the Ways were added largely so that the Shadow would have a way to maneuver their forces around to threaten places without issues like "How did everybody miss an army of Trollocs marching to the Two Rivers?"DarkHorse posted:That was aviendha or someone unraveling a gateway and the weave collapsing into a bomb, did they ever say they could reproduce it? Everybody other than the Aiel goes all  at the thought of unpicking weaves because if you make a mistake it will fail in ways that are unpredictable and often catastrophic. You might get a flash of light, you might get a tactical nuke, you might still every channeler nearby, etc. A failed unweaving at the end of the Last Battle results in Graendal's compulsion backfiring on her and causing her to serve Aviendha. It's not predictable enough to use as a weapon with any reliability, and it's too dangerous to do if there's any other real option. Unless you're Aiel, in which case gently caress it, go for it.
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Mar 23, 2021 03:02
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Spek posted:They explicitly said that a weave unravelling like that has unpredictable effects. I think we can probably infer that they wouldn't be able to reproduce it exactly. I figured it was from the gateway collapse, that the power oddity was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb leaving fallout all over. But I don't remember any real details from those scenes anymore.
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Mar 23, 2021 03:07
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I thought it was from the sheer amount of Power needed to redo the weather for an entire continent, plus the fact that it probably wasn't just a one-and-done and there were lingering.... power.... thingys.... still doing their thing for a while afterward.
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Mar 23, 2021 03:10
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Just the sheer power isn't enough of an explanation, because the Cleansing used far more and didn't leave the same effects. After looking back at the text, it is clearly the bowl's fault in some way because there's indications of something strange before the explosion.quote:Talaan wavered, a reed in the wind, casting surreptitious glances at her mother, plainly afraid to sit. Aviendha stood straight, her fixed expression saying that willpower had as much to do with that as anything else. She gave a slight smile, though, and made a gesture in Maiden handtalk—worth the price—and then another—more—right behind. More than worth the price. Everyone looked weary, if not so much as those who had used angreal. The Bowl of the Winds went quiet at last, just a wide bowl of clear crystal, but decorated now with towering waves. Saidar still seemed to be there, though, not being wielded by anyone, not visible, but in dimly felt flashes like those that had played around the Bowl at the end. quote:Elayne stared after her. Her hat? She would have liked to know where her own hat had gone to—it was a beautiful thing—but really! Maybe being in a circle working that much of the Power, using an angreal doing it, had unsettled Nynaeve’s wits temporarily. She still felt a trifle odd, herself, as though she could pluck little bits of saidar out of the air around her. In any case, she had other matters to worry about right then. Like being ready to get away before the Seanchan descended. From what she had seen in Falme, they really might bring a hundred damane, or more, and based on the little Egwene would let herself say of her captivity, most of those women really would be eager to help collar others. She said that what had turned her stomach most had been the sight of damane from Seanchan laughing with their sul’dam, fawning and playing with them, well-trained hounds with their affectionate handlers. Egwene said some of the women collared in Falme had been that way, too. It made Elayne’s blood run cold. She would die before letting them put that leash on her! And she would as soon let the Forsaken have what she had found as the Seanchan. She went running to the cistern, Aviendha at her side breathing almost as hard as she was herself.
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Mar 23, 2021 03:17
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Saidin is also weird around Ebou Dar during Rand's campaign and it unnerves the gently caress out of Osan'gar, which further points to the bowl of the winds (because it used saidin and the gateway failure didn't).
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Mar 23, 2021 04:15
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:No, but the Seanchan don't know that. It leads directly to the attack on the Tower, which is possibly the only time Elayne gets people killed by accident. Nah, the attack was planned because of this, but the empress wasn't sure about the risks until good old Rand scared her to death when he went Nega-Taveren that one time Only after that incident did she give the go-ahead, thinking peace was now impossible
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Mar 23, 2021 07:17
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You're right sorry, but when in doubt, blame Elayne
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Mar 23, 2021 07:22
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Libluini posted:Nah, the attack was planned because of this, but the empress wasn't sure about the risks until good old Rand scared her to death when he went Nega-Taveren that one time It's been a while since I read it, nega Taverning is Rand beating the Seanchan in combat while also blowing up his own people?
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Mar 23, 2021 09:16
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Shageletic posted:It's been a while since I read it, nega Taverning is Rand beating the Seanchan in combat while also blowing up his own people?  ha ha oh boy, you sweet summer childRand got far, far worse later Edit: I'm talking about the scene where Rand has an official meeting with Tuon and tries to mind control her into giving up Tuon sees the influence of the Dark One around Rand and nearly vomits There's no peace And right after, she gives the order to assault Tar Valon. Libluini fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Mar 23, 2021 09:43
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The most glaring example is when he tries to nuke Ebou Dar, but am I wrong in thinking that Rand's physical reaction to saidin gets worse the more horrific his intent is?
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Mar 23, 2021 10:02
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:The most glaring example is when he tries to nuke Ebou Dar, but am I wrong in thinking that Rand's physical reaction to saidin gets worse the more horrific his intent is? It's almost certainly related to his overall disposition, though, since it gets worse as he does and he's reeeeeally far gone by Ebou Dar redux.
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Mar 23, 2021 13:37
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silvergoose posted:The occasional "how the gently caress did these ignorant shits do that" are such good moments. I love those moments but somehow had never realized the seafolk using the bowl of the winds was one of them. Probably because the seafolk are so loving insufferable most of the time that I kinda skim chapters that heavily feature them but not Mat on rereads.
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Mar 23, 2021 15:30
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Imagine you're accidentally frozen and wake up a thousand years in the future where society has regressed to a quasi medieval state. People live in provincial little villages and haven't even heard of indoor running water much less electricity, gasoline cars, jet planes, television, or computers. You have some minor advantages since you know how things used to work but a lot is negated because the infrastructure needed for them no longer exists- paved roads for cars, sources of oil, electricity supplied to outlets, etc. Then some guy from a bumfuck backwater discovers an old legend from the past, something they called the "Dish the Saddle Ate" and you laugh because what the gently caress are they hoping to accomplish with a radar/antenna to a weather satellite when they don't even have electricity. And then those assholes start banging wires connected to it with rocks and somehow they're not only connected to it they're changing the orbits of whole fleets of satellites and altering the weather with them
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Mar 23, 2021 16:44
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DarkHorse posted:Imagine you're accidentally frozen and wake up a thousand years in the future where society has regressed to a quasi medieval state. People live in provincial little villages and haven't even heard of indoor running water much less electricity, gasoline cars, jet planes, television, or computers. You have some minor advantages since you know how things used to work but a lot is negated because the infrastructure needed for them no longer exists- paved roads for cars, sources of oil, electricity supplied to outlets, etc. "Dish the Saddle Ate" is definitely some poo poo RJ would've written, this is a good post.
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Mar 25, 2021 01:36
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Aye, I did see it, like a great silver bowl with a spike through the top. By my aged grandmother, it did have a horse painted on its side, with a saddle large enough to eat the dish itself.
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Mar 25, 2021 01:49
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A lot of the same energy as this:quote:Bait Shop Clerk: Yep, "General Sherman". They say he's five hundred pounds of bottom-dwelling fury, don't you know. No one knows how old he is, but if you ask me (and most people do), he's hundred years if he's a day. Which I just realized is basically how all legends/myths work in the Wheel of Time.
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Mar 25, 2021 07:52
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