|
eke out posted:this brings up the big question: who's playin lews therin H Jon Benjamin.
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2020 04:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:50 |
|
|
Old Kentucky Shark posted:I think you need to start with the Prologue because without that, being The Dragon Reborn would come across like this cool fantasy chosen one thing, the way it would be in any other story. The prologue sets things up so that you understand that Rand is the reincarnation of the end of the Beast that’s ends the world. I mean, I think that works fine. You set up this fantasy story with pretty strong LOTR elements, Rand seems like the hero but uh oh looks like he's actually the reincarnation of the dude that pretty much hosed the world over by saving it. If we're getting 10 eps and the last one is the showdown at the Green Man's spot then do the prologue as a cold open to that episode. Really show how things got so messed up and hint at how outmatched the heroes are against the Shadow.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2020 19:34
|
|
|
EvilTaytoMan posted:He sees that she has the same darkness behind her eyes as the people who get forcibly turned to the Shadow have iirc, and he freaks the gently caress out. I guess the point of that "vision" is that without a choice between good and evil that any distinction between the two will eventually collapse and then end up being the same? So in the end without the Dark One's influence to act as an opposite pole to the Light the Dark One ends up winning anyway. It always read really suspect to me, like a 19 year old philosophy major's idea of morality with some boomer "both sides are equally bad" thrown in, but maybe I'm an outlier.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2020 17:51
|
|
|
Drone Jett posted:The Wheel of Time, a series about free will and how history eternally repeats and nothing ever changes except the small details. Free will, the force that drives the pattern to make people agree with ta'veren and entire villages to spontaneously have mass weddings. Just don't think about it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2020 02:15
|
|
|
I thought we were getting 8 episodes? 6 seems really really short to try and pack all of book 1 in.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2020 22:31
|
|
|
Soonmot posted:So no whitebridge, bayle doman, elyas, tinkers? That's a lot of fun stuff to ditch. Assuming the show does well that's a lot of stuff that can be rolled into the Great Hunt portion of book 2 where the entire cast is basically travelling across the continent anyway. Not ideal but I'm sure they put some thought into how to make it all work. And ostensibly season 2 would have a bigger budget, so they can do those elements right. Fingers crossed anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2020 23:31
|
|
|
Colonel Cool posted:I get a lot of complaints about book one from people I get to read this. People say it's a slowly paced rip off of Lord of the Rings and I have to tell them that the series does get a lot weirder and more unique after that. They're not wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2020 18:01
|
|
|
Zore posted:Having just finished it again, the ending of The Eye of the World still jars horribly with most of the rest of the series. The Forsaken get taken down by the "primitive" protagonists throughout the series because of their hubris. Also they had just popped out of botched cryosleep and were basically sentient zombies, it makes sense to me that the heroes could get the jump on them although they still got their licks in. I always read it as the actual Creator speaking to Rand. The thing at Tarwin's Gap, the fight with Ishamael, etc just seem to be an effect of him tapping into pure Saidin and (probably) drawing on knowledge from LTT that he didn't know he had yet. The sequence definitely has a lot of artistic license it in but it never read as incongruent with the rest of the series to me.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2020 19:30
|
|
|
Zore posted:Mat beating the poo poo out of Gawain and Galad with a quarterstaff This is definitely top 3, along with either of the Gholam showdowns. I think Rand's fight with Lanfear in the Wastes is up there too. It's a nice demo of the subtleties of fighting with the Power plus Rand's internal struggles, the entire sequence is just so bleak.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2020 01:56
|
|
|
UltraRed posted:The cover: 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2020 15:53
|
|
|
COOL CORN posted:So the Seanchan are the de facto descendants of Artur Hawkwing, but I thought he was a beloved ruler? So why are the Seanchan such shitheads Well that's kind of the point - they came back to Randland expecting to find a sister empire ruled by Hawkwing descendants and instead they found a patchwork of feudal nations where the rulers don't respect or care about the Hawkwing legacy, and let Aes Sedai run wild to boot. Also the Hawkwing expedition spent several centuries merging with the native Seanchan culture, which was apparently all about subterfuge and infighting and extremely high stakes political intrigue, plus being manipulated to be a destabilizing, chaos maximizing force. I feel like the Seanchan worked really well as an example of weird cultural and/or societal fusions and they ended up being significant to the story without being 100% aligned with the protags. I'm kind of bummed we're never going to get the outrigger novels about Mat & Tuon going back, tbh.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2020 22:34
|
|
|
The Glumslinger posted:Still my favorite interview answer Big sub energy.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2020 00:25
|
|
|
Probably just a convention of the pre-internet world where the author couldn't assume that your average reader had immediate access to an encyclopedia of information about the work in their pocket. It does make for a slog though.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2020 16:09
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just realized: he's definitely gonna bang lanfear in the TV show, isn't he We definitely get a dream sequence of them fooling around if nothing else. Or maybe Rand sees an alternate timeline where he and Lanfear rule together during a Portal Stone jaunt.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2020 17:24
|
|
|
I always read it as a combination of - Aes Sedai insularity and overly critical standards for recruitment - Groups like the Kin hoovering up wilders and keeping them out of the hands of the Tower, plus the Wise Ones sending a few weak Aiel channelers to the allay suspicions, Sea Folk doing their own thing, etc. But mostly I think it's just the fact that the Dragon is Reborn and the Last Battle is imminent so the Pattern said "time to start pumping out channelers of significant strength in both genders, YOLO". COOL CORN posted:Do we ever find out why Emond's Field is so special? People keep saying things like "wow, 2 Aes Sedai and 3 ta'veren from one place, it must be very special!" But like... is there actually something more going on? The blood and legacy of Manethren, plus ta'veren influence.
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2020 18:59
|
|
|
awesmoe posted:Speaking of, how come perrins hammer didn’t violate the oath to not make a weapon? It could technically be a tool for use in a forge?
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2020 20:32
|
|
|
Comrade Blyatlov posted:I even liked Pedron Niall to be fair. Tywin would have Niall killed with his own chess pieces before he even realized what was happening. Also Galad owns.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2020 15:39
|
|
|
silvergoose posted:Wait what's wrong with it, and what was surprising about it? Unless you're talking the very strong hints in the first few books. No, you said Sanderson... It feels extremely forced even if it is a nice  moment. I guess we're supposed to see it as really romantic that Thom gets over his hatred of Aes Sedai and Moiraine connects to another human being without manipulation or detachment but there's the barest minimum of set up for it.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2020 15:44
|
|
|
VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:At which time Moiraine was already in the White Tower, though, right? Thom was probably naturally wary that Moiraine knew about him being more than a court bard, though except for the fact that little escapes Moiraine I would have said she wouldn’t necessarily have known Thom. Safe to assume that she knew basically everything. Its Moiraine. Comrade Blyatlov posted:Oh, found it. Yeah, I could see that. Thom is definitely in my top 3 favorite characters for this reason alone. In any other story or any other Age he'd be a Hero in his own right. Comrade Blyatlov posted:Thom Ehrmentraut 
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2020 02:18
|
|
|
There's no official confirmation however IIRC it's pretty safe to assume that was the original plan but Jordan got spooked by readers figuring it out on late 90s message boards and went in a different direction. FWIW the conclusion we get for those two characters is probably better overall, especially in Demandred's case.
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2020 04:49
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:I think warders wear swords because trollocs are like 50% taller and more massive than humans, and also usually heavily armored? I guess a quarterstaff isn't that useful against such an enemy. You'd think halberds would be more popular in that case. Best of both worlds.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2020 15:11
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think the real problem with taimandred was that as less Theron came more and more to the forefront it was less and less believable that Rand didn't just drop a mountain on his head on sight. It made very little sense that Rand didn't tear Taim into tiny pieces after the Ashaman traitor attack that nearly killed him and Min. The most charitable reading is that Taim's reaction - snarling like a boss who is angry that his underlings botched an important job rather than someone concerned for his liege lord and the prophesized savior of the world - just confirms Rand's mindset at that time that everyone is out to betray him, he can't trust anybody, and better to have his enemies where he can see them and maybe use them for his own ends. However, given that we're talking about Taim in particular...obviously that blows up in a very very bad way and Rand should've seen that coming sufficiently to put the dude in a box if nothing else. Looking forward to seeing that action sequence on the show if they make it that far. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jun 4, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2020 16:25
|
|
|
posted:Discovered in a dusty storage room in Chachin, the pages were in a chest full of old bills and receipts, students' copy books and private diaries, some so foxed by age and with ink so faded as to be unreadable where the pages themselves had not crumbled. The fragmentary manuscript was readable, barely, but presented the usual problems, quite aside from the difficulties of translation and dealing with centuries of copyists' errors; such a history would no doubt be a vast, multi-volume work (please see the author's Note at the end), yet of the two hundred and twelve surviving pages, the largest number of consecutive pages number six, and nowhere else more than two. Such dates as are given are totally incomprehensible, as no calendar dating from the Age of Legends has ever been found. Many references to cataclysmic events (dinner parties and happy hours destroyed by balefire during the War of the Shadow, whole regions covered by endless mimosa bars and brunch pop-up restaurants raised overnight during the Breaking) and to such minutiae as the appearance of a certain person are but curiosities. The pages which might reveal exactly where these things happened, what their special significance was, the resolution or end result, are usually missing. Why then is this collection so important? First because, sundered as it is, it contains more information of the War of the Shadow than any other known single source, perhaps as much as all other sources combined in some ways. But even more importantly, it gives a great deal of information available nowhere else. And most importantly of all, the six consecutive pages and others which must be placed close to them contain the only known account of events surrounding what surely must be the most far-reaching single event in the history of the world, in any Age: the sealing of the sale at Bed, Bath, and Beyond by Lews Therin Telamon and the Hundred Companions.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2020 16:06
|
|
|
wallaka posted:His goal was never to mimic the writing. I have to get started on my series re-read soon but I will say that the style change in AMoL was enough to put me off finishing the series for a long while. It's not a knock against Sanderson - he had a very daunting task to accomplish and by all accounts he did better than one might expect. But it was jarring. I chalk it up to him needing one book to find the right rhythm of a style that is similar enough to RJ but still his own.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2020 01:38
|
|
|
The Olver/Gaidal thing really feels like another one of those plot lines where RJ got spooked by so many people figuring it out and expecting it to happen that he pulled a switcheroo instead.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2020 02:25
|
|
|
IIRC the definitive evidence that he's not Gaidal is that we've already met Olver by the time Birgitte mentions that Gaidal's been missing from Telaranrhiod for a while, so he must've been spun out, right? And that's fairly early on - book 4? So unless time in the dream world is much wackier than we can discern from the books, it can't be Olver. Which is fine, how it played out isn't a mark against the ending IMO. Shame we'll never get a follow-up about Olver Hornsounder though.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2020 02:39
|
|
|
I always figured that the Dragon being bound to the Horn was something that could backfire if the Forsaken ever stopped being bumblers. Surely Ishamael of all people could find a way to use it to either keep the Dragon from being spun out or remove him from the Pattern completely. I do wonder what it looks like for Rand, since he has some new powers by the end. Probably safe to assume he's not functionally immortal, since that would cause some issues. Also is the Dragon always male in every incarnation?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2020 18:59
|
|
|
No you're correct, they won't fight for the Shadow. But Hawkwing himself says that the Shadow forces know how to harm them, incapacitate them, or force them back into the dream, so good thing that the Horn was effectively safeguarded all those years of the binding. Also heroes can refuse to be bound to the Horn apparently, which is an interesting development.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2020 19:25
|
|
|
Not really. I've had some people recommend the Locke Lamora books as a sort of spiritual successor to Mat's storyline/characterization but I found them to be pretty obnoxious. Maybe other folks can think of something that actually hits the mark?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2020 20:05
|
|
|
Zore posted:Honestly Conan kinda fits. I really like the RJ Conan books and I need to rebuy them at some point because I lost my old copies in a move like a decade ago. They definitely scratch that itch of "rogueish character keeps finding himself in caught up in world-changing adventures, entangled with powerful women, and elevated as a leader of men when all he really wants to do is drink and gamble in comfort" and they're entertaining stories to boot. Plus 90% less weird racism compared to the originals! I never made the connection in my mind to it being akin to Mat's character because, well, it's Conan. But that checks out to me after giving it a thought and you could certainly do worse.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2020 23:21
|
|
|
Johnny Joestar posted:i mean, some people might not want to hear it but mat is basically the most stereotypical fantasy character out of the group, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find a book with a protagonist like him compared to the others 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2020 02:02
|
|
|
Yeah I'm digging all of those. Abell Cauthon looks like a dude that would always be slyly coming ahead in any deal.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2020 03:15
|
|
|
If Tuon is a latent channeler who could be trained to improve her ability and Mat had multiple sisters who were sent to the Tower on the strength of their ability it's probably a safe bet to assume that at least some of any children they have will be channelers and there's no way in hell Mat would let anyone shackle his kids. So you have a situation where the defacto Seanchan ruler and her consort, the legendary general who just outmaneuvered the Shadow to win the Last Battle, oppose one of the pillars holding up the empire. Leaving things open ended was definitely meant to show that the world is not perfect even with the Shadow vanquished but there's no way that conflict doesn't end with enslaving channelers going away, at least in the Westlands. How that port it over to the fractured, destabilized Seanchan homeland would be interesting to read about. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jun 30, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2020 15:27
|
|
|
Nope, just an Aes Sedai who wanted to ally with Luthair Hawkwing and underestimated his hatred of channelers. She made the collar for him and then taught others how to make them for the invasion force before being collared herself. Given Ishamael's influence on the Hawkwing empire it's possible he seeded the idea but I don't think he was loose during the time of the Seanchan colonization.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2020 16:45
|
|
|
Submarine Sandpaper posted:I won't be surprised if the ax the sniffer entirely You monster!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2020 00:01
|
|
|
Thinking about it in that context, especially that exchange, makes me wonder if Elayne as a character was meant to be some sort of not very flattering commentary on second wave feminism. Hard to say without knowing more about Jordan's personal politics but seems like more going on than can be solely attributed to her being an entitled princess.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2020 04:29
|
|
|
jng2058 posted:Given that Cadsuane probably ends up as Amyrlin Seat after the end of the books and that Nynaeve at least is still part of the White Tower hierarchy, I imagine some sort of retribution will fall on them before too long. I would like to read about them trying to make Nynaeve do anything she doesn't want to do while Lan is alive and breathing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2020 16:51
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:So everyone's coming around to my initial read that the whole thing was (or at least started as) a reaction to the "Tolkien-dominated fantasy is a sausage-fest" landscape by saying "OK so what if we made a topsy turvy universe where women were in charge because men raped the world" Isn't there an interview from back in the day where RJ explicitly says as much, albeit more from a standpoint of fantasy in general being male-centric tester than specifically calling out LotR?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2020 02:38
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:So, I'm up to Book 2 in my first audiobook outing, and I've noticed something I never put together when reading (which is why I like audiobooks of stuff I've read, I catch things that I otherwise skim over). Doesn't Elaida also spend some time with Fain? Interesting parallel there for sure.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2020 02:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:50 |
|
|
Invalid Validation posted:Imagine an ogier warder. Complete death machine. With Loial's advocacy for the Ogier to get more actively involved in the outside world instead of just noping out and the increase in Seanchan influence post Last Battle I could see it happening eventually. Just make sure it's an Aiel Aes Sedai that gets the Ogier warder 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2020 01:09
|
|