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Data Graham posted:Yeah but I want to know what kind of crazy. Like what did he actually do. What was the narrative of him going crazy like? What literally happened? Did he kill everyone around him and feast upon their entrails? Did he set himself on fire? Did he roll around in a pigsty? The opening of EotW has LTT completely bugnuts talking to a once close friend now enemy while standing over the dead body of his wife oblivious. He keeps repeating she "must be here somewhere". He cries out ~"Ilyena my love?! We Have Guests!". Dead Ilyena isn't moved, or even noticed by LTT until healed. The series literally cold opens on insane Lews Therin, and in the process he is "healed" by Shai'Tan's power as channeled by Ishmael. We then see him flee and form dragonmount as he remembers murdering his family. Arguably LTT went insane -twice- in the age of legends. Once when the dark one struck back, once again when his insanity was temporarily lifted by Ishmael. It is entirely gripping, and one of the most analyzed prologues in fiction precisely because it does such a magnificent job of grabbing reader attention. I was going to quote it here but it's too much. Go reread it. Anias fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Nov 14, 2019 |
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Nov 14, 2019 15:18
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https://www.tor.com/2009/01/20/the-wheel-of-time-re-read-the-eye-of-the-world-part-1/ It's been torn apart by a lot of different editors/authors trying to figure out why it works so well. I linked tor.com's stuff by Leigh Butler above but she's hardly alone. I suppose I could amend it to "modern publishing" if you prefer. I'm not trying to argue that it's taught in schools, I'm saying that actual writers/editors/publishers have been tearing that particular prologue apart for nearly 30 years. If you talk with a recently established author of epic fantasy, they have almost certainly looked at EotW, much like older authors have almost certainly looked at Tolkien.
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Nov 14, 2019 16:17
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:Also Birgitte and Mat got drunk together. Robert Jordan's The Waste of Time - Also Birgitte and Mat got drunk together. It really is the best summary of these books.
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Nov 23, 2019 17:10
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ChubbyChecker posted:The thread's name is a superior one. For a thread title sure, but as a one sentence summary - "Mat and birgitte get drunk together" has everything you need to know.
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Nov 23, 2019 18:10
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You have access to the world of dreams and traveling, and yet somehow you aren't just opening gates in bad people's heads. A problem with WoT if you think too hard about it.
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Dec 9, 2019 15:11
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silvergoose posted:How many of them are gay, given the uh pillow friends in the white tower all of them, they know how to channel through the taint.
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Dec 9, 2019 19:39
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The Lord Bude posted:Nah they need Maggie Smith. Judi Dench
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Dec 13, 2019 03:22
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Vavrek posted:I never imagine anybody that old playing an Aes Sedai. It's basically cadsuane being described as ancient all over the place.
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Dec 13, 2019 03:30
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Invalid Validation posted:Why fuss over weapons when you can blender and entire army with saidin? The entire idea of the battle at shayol ghul is comical given the feats of channeling performed elsewhere in the books. Like, just level the pass with lava from 40,000 feet for a week. Then dump an ocean on it.
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Dec 15, 2019 18:15
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Invalid Validation posted:The Dark One wasn’t very good at picking Forsaken with all the chances they had to actually kill Rand. I mean pretty much any of them could have just strolled up to him and BAM. The dark one wins by rand (the patterns representative) breaking the pattern when he goes to the last battle, not by killing rand and waiting for the pattern to spin up another taveren.
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Dec 17, 2019 05:29
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Now part of me wants the entire show to take place in a stedding as various ogier children retell the story and argue about why channeling doesn’t work.
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Dec 17, 2019 20:44
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Yeah, Eye of the World is probably one of the better standalone hero's journey books in modern fiction, and The Great Hunt keeps the momentum going. Between the two of them it's easy to see why the series took off.
Anias fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 15:00
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A good friend of mine pronounced Gawyn as nearly indistinguishable from “Gown” we never bothered arguing about it. Just the imagery of a fabulous dress going off to sword people against the wishes of the women in its life is amusing enough.
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Dec 20, 2019 18:25
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EotW sold very well to young adults, in it's first printing, it turns out. Great cover art + prologue ending in a guy building a volcano did just fine. The split was more about "printing bloody great doorstoppers is expensive and splitting them is profitable" than anything else I'd guess.
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Jan 9, 2020 16:44
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eke out posted:this brings up the big question: who's playin lews therin SNL Guest Comedian roulette style
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Jan 10, 2020 04:11
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Honestly Lanfear's early bits are really great in general, she's just trying to suss out -exactly- how bad this is going to be. She knows it's going to be bad, and has known that for some thousand of years, but exactly how bad an apocalypse is a win by the dragon (the most likely outcome in any given meeting) going to be this time. I still think my favorite parts of the forsaken is when they acknowledge precisely how hosed they are and then just carry on anyways.
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Jan 12, 2020 01:39
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I enjoyed how from the POV of the dark one, this is all just endless cyclical torture with occasional discussions with The Dragon on Behalf of Pattern Incorporated (A Delaware Limited Liability Holding Company) about how things are just going to keep on keeping on world without end, because that was in the EULA. Then Ish is like - You know, you have a point sir.
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Jan 13, 2020 15:35
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The dark one was ok with a world without him in it - one of rand's flailing attempts to fight back was "a world without you" and the dark one was like "ok, done, sign me the gently caress up". Literally any option other than "Locked up inside the wheel for another few thousand cycles" sounds great to TDO. It seems clear that the only way the dark one could get out of the endless cycle is if he could convince The Dragon, acting on behalf of The Pattern, to let him go. Meanwhile, as we have long since established, the Dragon is sort of an rear end in a top hat and keeps jamming him back into his eternal hamster wheel.
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Jan 13, 2020 15:57
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One of these days I’ll just read the mat povs to see how it holds up by itself.
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Jan 20, 2020 19:19
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Mat and Rand both turn down their share of women. Hell, Rand builds an entire game of it for the maidens, and does so even while doing his best to accommodate their frankly insane attachment to the idea of him. It’s just Perrin being written as a dullard who never lets any of his cleverness show up in his own thinking while being some kind of logistics savant that makes his interactions with women the worst.
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Jan 22, 2020 00:30
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The Lord Bude posted:Honestly this is the first thing I’ve seen that has me really concerned for the show. There is more than enough content in book one for a season of television. Book one is arguably one of the best of the books, so rushing to get into TGH which is also great but not quite as formulaic as book 1 is baffling. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:That's a dumb reason to cite for doing or not doing anything. If the show gets cancelled then nothing matters, so you can only assume that you won't be while planning the series out. This is understandable I suppose, but I think it weakens S1, keeps S2 about the same, in order to make S3 stronger. That seems odd given I don't think they already signed up for 3 seasons of this. Anias fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jan 23, 2020 |
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Jan 23, 2020 16:47
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ExtraMoreBiglierDeath was booked for other engagements.
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Feb 3, 2020 15:58
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The Neal! posted:Good point. Everyone is dumb and out of touch except for like one or two kings or queens that come once every 1000 years and likely have really dumb kids. So a story about humans then.
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Feb 11, 2020 01:29
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silvergoose posted:Darlin is the best king in the series anyway Lan.
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Mar 1, 2020 16:30
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Zore posted:Mat beating the poo poo out of Gawain and Galad with a quarterstaff The drill master setting that up was hilarious.
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Mar 10, 2020 00:57
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:It is worth noting he mutilated musicians better than him just because. The man was a petty tyrant. Every single character in Randland is a petty tyrant at some point though, so IDK if that's much of an indictment of Asmo. RJ simply didn't believe in humanity being good consistently, because that wouldn't be human. Most characters try hard for whatever vision they have in their head of good and still fail. Even Sanderson's ending caught on to this - the world without the Dark One is a "win" for the dark.
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Mar 10, 2020 21:52
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She swore herself to the dark for knowledge/power, which given the way the dark is entirely agnostic during the final battle, is arguably as valid as any of the other power-using darkfriends. The dark one doesn't mind a world where all the darkfriends are gone. That's as much a win as any other end to the cycle. Darkfriends are essentially entropists. Lots of them want to be the one true king/queen of randland forever and ever, and that's fine with the dark one since that means the cycle of the wheel is broken. Others want to defeat the dark one forever, and again that's fine with the dark one since that also means the wheel is broken. Satan is just tired of talking to Rand every thousand years, and can you blame him? There's probably a win for the dark one where he gets an impenetrable prison that can never be opened ever.
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Mar 11, 2020 03:57
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Vavrek posted:It suddenly occurs to me that she's everything Harriet/Moghedian wasn't. Jordan commented that all of the female characters were influenced by his wife. So elayne and moghedian are Harriet arguing with herself if she should be bold or cautious.
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Mar 20, 2020 23:49
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Yeah some entirely show canon pov from the forsaken being competent in securing whatever goals they choose seems good. In particular ishamael has a good day clips from the time when he was loose could be amazing.
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Mar 23, 2020 23:49
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With jordan's penchant for fading to black, it's unclear exactly what level of sex lanfear and any particular character engaged in, but that's sort of moot. INVADING DREAMS is certainly a non-consensual rape part, and all the dreamers do that on the regular. They're not good people.
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Apr 21, 2020 18:26
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:I mean, how lovely of a person do you have to be to be that beautiful and not get any? Then later ENSLAVE SATAN You know, because that makes her a better person. I’ve said it before but I think the actual DO gets a bad rap, dude just wants to stop dealing with these people every cycle of the ages. Unlike everyone else in the cosmology he has to remember all these interactions back across however many iterations. I still like lanfear as a character because she is genuinely evil and keeps getting away with it, which is a great inversion of the misunderstood baddy trope. Even when she herself is enslaved she’s still down for slavery, just gotta be the one holding the leash. As a person though she’s nearly the worst.
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Apr 22, 2020 17:33
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That it’s a close run race between rand and mat for most directed slaying is on the face of it completely insane given mat and the band are not an order of ninja wizards, and yet. The part of these books that completely confounds me is that morale isn’t just gone within a minute among the common troops. Deathgates vs massed cannons through gateways. Good luck soldier, you have a loving spear. All men die indeed.
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May 4, 2020 20:34
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silvergoose posted:Gawyn, the worst. It just rolls off the tongue
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May 6, 2020 19:58
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Thanks for posting your takes as you read through, it's great.
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May 12, 2020 14:48
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Data Graham posted:Cut out every inn where the innkeeper is described as “bustling” and you could get it down to six I laugh every time I read it thinking of some new character playing with overly ridiculous skirts, like the pattern refuses to let them stay in an inn without a woman needing help keeping her skirt up. (I know the intended meaning, but just imagining it as fussing with clothes fits so well with the flavor of rj’s writing.)
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May 16, 2020 03:40
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Healing talk This also has great benefit of foreshadowing why True Power is required for sealing the bore without taint leaking. Honestly the higher level metaphysics treating saidin/saidar and TruePower/Taint as phases of similar but different energy is one of the better bits. As the symmetry that a weave made of saidin might hold up better to saidar, or a weave made of saidar might hold up better to saidin, nicely mirrors the resolution to the taint issues where TP insulates the saidar/saidin weave from TDO’s taint when it is sealed, which in turn was further foreshadowed by the large pile of (presumably) TP that was present in aridhol could be used to neutralize the taint on saidin during the cleansing.
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May 21, 2020 21:24
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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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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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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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Given the fantastical nature of "power-wrought" weapons, just assume everything made by the power has a mono molecular edge and cannot break. Physics will get the rest done, eventually. It's a much less insane thing than balefire, for example, to assume literal magic can improve the sharpening of a blade by an order of magnitude. (The best blades in the world - industrial or surgical - are on the order of a few manometers at their cutting edge. Water molecules are on the order of .3 nanometers in scale.)
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Jun 6, 2020 01:31
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