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Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:

To revise, uh, Taringail was a dumbass for even thinking it could've worked.

e2:

Anyway in a patrilineal society you'd be like who knows who Roger had a son with, but in a matrilineal society ... they just don't have to care about who the sperm donor is. There's no argument that Morgase gave birth to Galad, Gawyn, and Elayne, and that Elayne would be the one to inherit.

Morgase didn't actually give birth to Galad. Galad is the son of Tigraine and Taringail, who then stuck around when Taringail remarried Morgase. And now he's a double uncle to Elayne and Rand's kids. Another thing along those lines is how Taringail is Moiraine's brother, making her Elayne/Gawyn/Galad's aunt. Also Moiraine bonded and then married the guy who killed her brother. It's weird how the books never really bother to address either of those things - I have to imagine that the show will go into more detail.

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Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
OK Ba'alzamon

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
I wonder if the lack of emphasis on days of the week is intentional? For most of history, the specific days of the calendar only really mattered for religious purposes - the Sabbath as a day of rest, or various saints' days or what have you. Normal people didn't have to care about what day it was (aside from the Sabbath) until people started moving to factory/office jobs and everything became more regimented and Fordist. But Randland isn't at that level of technological development yet, and their Church-equivalent is a lot more monastic and uninvolved in everyday religious life. So there's no good reason that normal people ought to care what day of the week it is.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Thinking about all the Lanfear chat, if she'd waited until he was a loony then tried her whole 'yo we can kill the Dark One together,' it may have actually worked. Maybe. I dunno.

Isn't that what Moiraine saw in the 'finn ter'angreal, which then led to her tackling Lanfear into the other one? I don't remember if that was explicitly stated or not, but that was the impression I got.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Torrannor posted:

I'm still sad that we won't ever get those outrigger novels about Mat and Tuon reclaiming Seanchan. Those would have probably showed at least hints of how the Seanchan society reformed to a more palatable state. And it also would have been interesting to see the Randland Seanchan fighting the others. They have things like Healing and Traveling that the others lack, both of which would have been huge advantages. And it would have been more good writing by Robert Jordan :(

Also the bit from AMoL about Tuon dragooning Min as an advisor that would have set up a bunch of wacky sitcom shenanigans, with Rand sneaking around trying to spend time with Min, Mat running elaborate schemes to keep Rand's identity from Tuon and the rest of the Seanchan, and Tuon thinking that Min is just dating some gross peasant guy.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
The other thing is that Mat ends up marrying a dominatrix, and a lot of their interactions involve her trying to assert control over him only for him to slip out. Maybe Jordan just liked using Mat to depict that particular kink that he had?

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Prairie Bus posted:

Thinking about it, does Sanderson ever explain why Egwene didn’t just dream travel out of the Tower once her captivity ramped up? Forkroot doesn’t interrupt her ability to enter the dream. Where I’m at in TGS she’s in the cell and thinking about escape. Why doesn’t she just dream herself out? She’d look super powerful (she can travel when dosed to the gills on forkroot) and could just dream back into the Tower to foment dissent on her own time.

She's trying to convince the Aes Sedai who stayed behind in the Tower to accept her as Amyrlin instead of Elaida. A lot of the sisters who stayed behind did so specifically because they believe in following the rules (Elaida was legally chosen after all, or at least it appeared legal to people who didn't know about the Black Ajah's involvement). By staying in jail and using argument to convince the sisters that she's being wrongly held, Egwene is demonstrating that she cares more about the Tower's laws and institutions than Elaida does. If she broke out, that would be her breaking those laws and defying those institutions, making her just as bad as Elaida in their eyes.

It's a political move - Egwene has to stay in jail in order to win over a bunch of Elaida's support. In the short term it helps Egwene topple Elaida, and in the medium term it lets her reunite the Tower instead of leaving it splintered.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
In-universe, the Prophecies of the Dragon say "There can be no health in us, nor any good thing grow, for the land is one with the Dragon Reborn, and he is one with the land." Out-of-universe, it's a riff on the Fisher King, an Arthurian character whose incurable wound was reflected in the sorry state of his land. It depends on the version, but the Fisher King is usually healed through the forgiveness of Jesus. Although Rand has incurable wounds on his side, the relevant wound here is his PTSD, which he heals by forgiving himself on Dragonmount (because Rand is Jesus).

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

jng2058 posted:

Thing is, it may not have been unwinnable at that moment. The alternate future Aiel from Aviendha's vision waited a full generation to take their shot at the Seanchan, and by then it was too late. It was "The Raven Empire" by then, and presumably Mat and Tuon had gone back to Seanchan proper and unfucked the place and re-established control.

But if Egwene led the combined Black and White Towers against just the foothold the Seanchan had in the west, without the additional resources of an entire continent behind them, with the Aiel on side? It might have worked. No guarantees, of course, because you'd have to beat Mat and Tuon working together and that's a real power couple, but it probably would have been their best chance.

Actually, maybe the best chance would be right after Mat and Tuon leave for Seanchan. Then you bum's rush Galgan or Tylee or whomever they left behind to be in charge. Still risky, but maybe doable.

Why would Mat be willing to fight a war against his Aes Sedai/Warder friends Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve, Lan, Moiraine, and Thom, not to mention his own sister and probably every other government including Perrin's? (end-series spoiler) Why would Rand be okay with one of his girlfriends being dragooned into a war against his other two? Even if the leaders wanted to fight another war immediately after the Last Battle, wouldn't the troops just mutiny like they did at the end of World War I? And then, like, what does a "win" look like in that situation? Randland gets even more devastated and militarily exhausted, while back in Seanchan some general has time to consolidate power, extends the damane system to male channelers, and then comes back to try this Correne thing again?

To me, the point of the (same spoiler you cited) future vision was that any status quo pitting the Seanchan against anybody else would be unwinnable in the end. It wasn't just the Aiel who needed to be integrated into the post-war political order - it was the Seanchan as well. To continue the WWI analogy, just beating the Seanchan wouldn't be enough, because they would eventually come back just like Germany did. The only lasting solution was to give the Seanchan a stake in the existing order, just like the US and USSR did with Germany after World War II. (Hopefully denazification goes better in Randland than it did in actual world history.)

Ponsonby Britt fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Jul 14, 2020

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Prairie Bus posted:

Ah, I guess I don't buy that. She's sworn to the Oath Rod and signed the Dragon's Peace. The Aiel would threaten the Tower if she started trying to wiggle around that. On top of that, the Hall was still a legitimate threat to her rule, right? I'm pretty fuzzy on aMoL.

It's funny you mention the Oath Rod, because Egwene was originally against its use. She realized that the Wise Ones, not to mention the Windfinders and the Kin, were all living for centuries longer than the Aes Sedai because they weren't bound. I think at one point she also made an argument that the Oaths were causing people to distrust Aes Sedai and spend all their time looking for the loopholes in their promises. Then later on she changed her mind and insisted that the Oaths were actually important and it was actually really important that she, Nynaeve, and Elayne all swear them. This was also around the time that Egwene's maids randomly ran away or something and Sheriam found her that lovely new maid Halima who was able to massage away the headaches that Egwene also randomly started having around that time period, probably due to the stress of leadership or something. I don't know why I included that part, it's just a random thought I had. Or something.

It wasn't just Fain's influence (although that's a really good catch). Egwene was also being compelled by Aran'gar into keeping the Oath Rod around and who knows what else.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
I think there's some kind of strong emotional feedback that happens to the surviving party when a bond is broken by death. Warders go suicidal berserker and go off to die against the Shadow, and sisters collapse into crying wrecks. That's the reason why Moiraine passes Lan's bond - she wants him to have a normal amount of grief about his dead friend, instead of a supernatural amount of grief compelling him to his death. It's also why an army wouldn't work - if one of those soldiers dies, the channeler they're bonded to will probably be useless for the rest of that fight, and for that matter the rest of the soldiers are probably going to get a lot of backwash grief that makes them useless or mostly so. And of course if the enemy can take out the channeler, then all of the soldiers are going to stop doing tactics or listening to orders and will be easier pickings than if they were never bonded. (Is the Myrddraal-Trolloc bond a corrupted version of the warder bond?)

Also specific to Aes Sedai, a lot of their behavior is motivated by the need to appear like they're really special and important and above it all. An Aes Sedai's place in battle is to stride around majestically throwing fireballs and inspiring the troops. They're not going to agree to a plan where they hide in the back as glorified network hubs.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
In retrospect they do spend an awful lot of time talking about "the taint."

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

aparmenideanmonad posted:

Moiraine for sure knows, just cause that's the kind of poo poo she would know and just never tell anyone. 99% sure she put that together while she and Siuan were questing on behalf of Gitara/Tamra.

I thought the missing piece of the puzzle was the fact that when Tigraine disappeared, she went off to the Waste and became a Maiden of the Spear. Nobody in Randland knew about that, so Moiraine only learned it from the Aiel at the same time that Rand did. Based on that, Moiraine probably figured out Rand and Galad's relationship before Rand did. After all, Moiraine was Tigraine's sister-in-law and Galad's aunt - even if she didn't super care about Cairhienin royal politics anymore, she was still paying more attention to that kind of thing than Rand was.

On the point about "is Galad terrible for joining the literal Klan," while he definitely is, one mitigating circumstance is that his concept of Aes Sedai was shaped by the one he grew up with, his stepmom's advisor... Elaida. That's definitely going to give anybody a jaundiced view of what Aes Sedai are like and whether they should have a substantial amount of political power.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

rndmnmbr posted:

The thing that got me about the Whitecloaks was, here is this heavy cavalry that is basically the standing military force of Amadicia, let's let them conduct military operations in Andor! Instead of Gareth Bryne meeting them at the border with his own heavy cavalry plus pike formations and inform them they can disarm themselves, ride back the way they came, or violate Andor's borders in an act of warfare and meet the Lion in battle.

Well the Two Rivers is nominally within Andor's claimed borders, but in practice the early books have a lot of POV bits from the kids about how they didn't know they were part of Andor, they don't pay taxes, they don't have a lord who's a part of Andoran feudal structures, etc. If they're not even important enough for Morgase to collect taxes from, they're definitely not important enough to pay an army to defend. At the start of the series, the Two Rivers isn't really in an organized state, it's just a collection of autonomous villages.

One thing I really like about Perrin's story is how he doesn't understand this. He's just like "I'm a simple blacksmith or at best an Andoran lord" and Faile is quietly assembling a confederation of low to medium-powered states behind him to build into something strong enough to gobble up a chunk of Elayne's country and resurrect a former empire on her doorstep. And Faile assumes that he totally does understand all that and is just dissembling about being a loyal Andoran subject for political reasons; and in turn that political misunderstanding contributes to their personal conflict.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

seaborgium posted:

They also had that town that Luc went to and talked about growing up in. He was talking about how there were other orphans and regular humans there so there must be food and some infrastructure.

Very pedantically, Luc didn't go to the Blight until he was an adult. It was Isam who grew up in the Blight.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Invalid Validation posted:

It’s magical world he could have been split into 3 people at some point which would be kinda fun.

I actually think this sort of happened. I mean, not him literally being three people, but I think this is why the Pattern spun out Mat and Perrin, as sort of proxy Dragons. They go around doing Dragon stuff that he can't. Mat is a surrogate military leader who commands the armies of the Light while Rand is busy at the Bore and Perrin is a surrogate political leader who unites a bunch of different factions that mostly can't/won't follow Rand directly because he's crazy and brutal for a lot of the series. So if Rand died or went (too) insane or something, the Pattern would still have some backup Pseudodragons to try and push events somewhat back on course.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:

Or if being "theatrical" with her channeling was a thing for her or any other Aes Sedai past the book. Like she's obviously making a demonstration by spinning a staff of flames when she's telling the Manetheren story.

I'm rereading Path of Daggers, and there's a bit where Perrin tells some Wise Ones to scare off some Dragonsworn. One of them just channels a big loud thunderclap of Air, but the other one makes a giant spinning wheel of fire and has it shoot out gouts of flame as it spins around.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
Another thing is, Moiraine went in knowing that there were three ta'veren in this area. So to the extent that she twigs anything unusual about Thom, she should already be really primed for the explanation to be as random and unlikely as possible. (Another other thing is, who else in Randland has that mustache? That's probably enough to identify him regardless of anything else.)

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I think this is probably 99% of it, yeah, Jordan just wasn't thinking at all about trans or even gay people when he wrote at least the first few books; even later stuff like "pillow friends' reads like "oh poo poo, yes, gay people do exist, I should shoehorn some of them in somewhere" additions.

The big problem is going to be that early speech between where Moiraine tells Egwene that a bird cannot teach a fish to swim etc. The secondary related problem is the way that the One Power symbol is the yin/yang -- except the traditional yin/yang has a black dot in the white and a white dot in the black and the One Power symbol does not and that's why it's copyrightable and trademarkable (arguably). To the extent Jordan was thinking about gender at all he was thinking about a *strict* binary, and he chose that deliberately for narrative purposes.

I think there's already kind of a theme in the original books of "strict gender-based essentialism is bad," though. The Aes Sedai are presented as wrong and overzealous for how they treat male channellers, and over the course of the book that breaks down as various factions start to realize the benefit from working with Asha'man. Along the same lines, at the beginning of the series the Randland characters have strong taboos against women fighting or wearing pants or whatever, but Min/the Aiel/Birgitte break those down and it's presented as a good thing. And on an interpersonal level, all of the Two Rivers people start out with very strong essentialist ideas about men/women, which they all eventually realize are wrong. Mat goes from "men only pursue women" to being pursued; Perrin goes from "Faile is a fragile flower who must be protected" to respecting her autonomy; Rand goes from "women are up on a pedestal" to valuing his female troops in just the same way that he values his male ones; etc. Even that speech from Moiraine is eventually proven wrong - I remember in particular, the stuff with severing where male channelers learn from Nynaeve's healing and then other female channelers learn from the men.

I think the show could lean into that element and foreground it more. That way, you could keep a lot of details about the existing world the same in order to placate super-fans. But then you also show that changing as the characters change and the plot progresses, in a way that satisfies people with modern gender attitudes. I have no idea whether they actually will do that, but I think the needle could be threaded.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
I think it's also that Jordan was operating in the context of second-wave feminism, which was a lot more essentialist about gender/sex/sexuality than modern feminism. So some of this is stuff that was progressive according to the understanding of the time, even though nowadays we see those blind spots and have moved past them.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

seaborgium posted:

Perrin would be perfect at that, he and Faile were really good as a team at getting people to do poo poo. Watching politicians poo poo themselves because they don't realize he means what he says and is going to do what he says with Faile knifing anyone who disagrees is fun.

Also, the next tease will probably be a clear pool, or a tree that turns around to show a face and everyone will think they're ripping off Groot.

This could also be used to give Elayne better stuff to do in the mid to late series, instead of chasing the Black Ajah like an idiot and taking baths she could be actively trying to diplomatically counter these people who are building a new, larger kingdom next door to hers.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

.....yes? Can you maybe think of a few other things going on that we don't have here? Madmen wiping out entire villages? Trolloc raiders? The aforementioned servant of Satan loving with the world every chance he got?

I have some bad news for you about how settler colonialism worked!

1637: English settlers, working with the Narragansetts and Mohegans, set fire to a fortified Pequot village near the Mystic River in what is now Connecticut. The settlers kill several hundred Pequots. A few escape. Others survive only to be captured and sold into slavery in the West Indies.

1854: Californian settlers kill most of the inhabitants of a Tolowa village and force the rest to go live on a reservation in Oregon.

1779:George Washington is given the name "Town Destroyer" by the Iroquois after he burns down 40 of their villages as reprisal for siding with the British.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Honestly that's still preferable to 2% of the male population wasting at least themselves if not many many more, let alone what a false Dragon could wreak.

From 1492 to the beginning of the 1600s, 90% of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas died (primarily from pandemics, secondarily from deliberate extermination), which worked out to about 10% of the entire world's population. I don't recall the books ever giving real numbers about how many male channelers there were or how many other people got killed, but if our number is "2% of the male population" then that at least is clearly much less severe than settler colonialism was in even its first century of existence. Again, settler colonialism: really bad!

https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-01-31/european-colonization-americas-killed-10-percent-world-population-and-caused

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Shageletic posted:

It'd be a lot cooler if progress was written a little more realistically, based on collaboration and general societal developments and advances. But then again ppl shooting fire and shepherds being kings, I guess that's a little too much here

That does happen with non-channeling science. In one of the early books Rand visits one of those academies he set up and is like "wow, this is a bunch of cool stuff but I can't really see the practical application," and then in a later book he or somebody else goes back and the researchers have been talking to each other and combining their impractical discoveries to make steam-powered cars or whatever. Another example is how political upheaval destroys the Illuminators, pushing Aludra out into the world where she meets Mat, who introduces her to Elayne, and now there are cannons.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Invalid Validation posted:

Although it’s all rather pointless since she knows everything she sees comes true. I was hoping at some point one of her visions could be changed or something just to put doubt to them but nah they all come true.

There is doubt, in the sense that she sees what the Pattern will look like in the future. But that presupposes that the Pattern will continue to exist in the future. If the Dark One wins, he probably destroys the Pattern (either because it's his prison cell and he wants to bust out or because he wants to unweave it to do his own thing or what have you). So Min can only see a future where Rand wins, and her predictions are ironclad for that future, but that future isn't guaranteed.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

ONE YEAR LATER posted:

The Two Rivers is isolated but people aren't marrying cousins due to the small population, plus they fight off the Trollocs in book 4 so there needs to be at least 6-700 people in the wider area.

I love Rand's brief moment of panic later in the series when somebody refers to Morgase and Tigraine as "cousins." Explicit textual proof that the Two Rivers has a taboo against that sort of thing!

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Goofballs posted:

In my head Margo Martindale is Verin but the role is low on scenes for too long so I don't see them getting her

They could just reenact scenes from some of her other work and it would fit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvX9sL5qkwc

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Rarity posted:

Dude has been waging a one-man war on the Blight since birth. It's wicked obvious

If you think about it, Lan is basically Batman.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

Rand and the Band?

"What's wrong, Moiraine?"
"It's the Wheel, Rand. This Wheel's on fire."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-sdVxv8NPk

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Harton posted:

Maybe it was just so bad I can’t remember but I deffo read the first 2 books. I’m not sure why anyone would “skim” a book, that seems real dumb and bad.

What hosed up thing does kaladin do? I honestly don’t remember.

Why did zero characters leave an impression on me after 2 books?

In the second book he betrays his ideals, causing his best friend to die, and then he spends like half the book marinating in the depression of that. He then almost helps a murder happen, again a fundamental betrayal of his core ideal of "protect people."

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
From a descriptive (in-universe) perspective, the Whitecloaks exist because of various structural failures in the Randland body politic. On the one hand, they're an indicator of how badly state capacity has declined. The rulers of various countries can't guarantee public safety, so the Whitecloaks can exploit that gap and provide protection to some peasants or merchants at the cost of preying on others. On the other hand, the Aes Sedai are basically immune to any external oversight because they have an apparent monopoly on channeling power, and their internal self-policing is garbage due to both their institutional egotism and the Black Ajah (and the Reds) deliberately undermining whatever mechanisms do exist. So the Whitecloaks are able to exploit that gap as well by offering some kind of response that isn't just "let the Aes Sedai do whatever they want with no accountability."

I believe this is a deliberate situation that Jordan set up, and that the books show the other characters dealing with it. State capacity gets strengthened during the leadup to the Last Battle - Rand and Tuon both impose it by force wherever they go, and people like Elayne and Perrin act as magnets for a more voluntary form of strengthened organization. And the Aes Sedai also get better. In part this happens because they have external constraints forcing them to stop being assholes. Channelling moves from a unipolar system to a multipolar one, so they have to balance against the Seanchan/Wise Ones/Asha'man/Kin/whoever. They have to at least pretend not to be assholes, in the same way that the Cold War forced the US to get less obviously bad about civil rights. And then in an internal sense, Egwene comes in and cleans house, getting rid of the people in the Tower who were most dug in about being above the law. So the net effect of all of this is that the protagonists of the book are well on the way to fixing the structural problems that allowed the Whitecloaks to exist in the first place. And I think that's the moral statement that Jordan intended to make - if you have a situation like the Whitecloaks in real society, you have to address the structural problems that led to them existing in the first place.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

DTurtle posted:

In this day and age of streaming, I would really, really love for them to simply rework some of the worst bits of Episode 8 with tiny little fixes. Things like making it more obvious that Nynaeve isn't dead, better CGI Trollocs, removing Moiraine's "tell," etc. No huge reshoots, but just small, easily made changes that improve the experience of watching the series.

I do expect that we will get some of the removed scenes from early episodes.

Streaming content does not have to be static after release! Obviously continuity has to be preserved, so they can't change huge things, but why not address some of the bad stuff that happened?

Lan shot first.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

jng2058 posted:

Obviously, RJ never gives specific numbers, but I think we can infer by how quickly the Seanchan empire collapsed into civil war that the whole adventure put their system under a lot of strain, such that the disruption at the top toppled the whole house of cards.

The Seanchan Empire was fundamentally structured around conquest. Hawkwing's kid went over there at the head of an army, and took hundreds of years to actually conquer the place, so for that entire time the whole political system was oriented around that goal. And then when they finally finished the conquest, all of the nobles and traders and whoever were used to a system where their money/political power came from conquering stuff. So they came up with the Correne as a new outlet for conquest because that kept their military-industrial complex rolling along with them at the top. Which I think implies that the civil war was always going to happen, after the main force of the invasion got smashed up by Rand at Falme and the conquest largely stalled out.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Hexel posted:

As the only exotic race in Randland that is not Shadowspawn; it always confounded me how the Ogier Gardeners could serve the Seanchan Empire.

Every other indication from Loial to the various visits to steddings and the elders and poo poo gives the impression Ogier are predisposed to "goodness".

Randland had the Trolloc Wars a thousand years after the Breaking, which unified the individual Aes Sedai into an institution that tried to keep things peaceful. Seanchan only had a few trollocs invade, so the Aes Sedai remained splintered, self-interested, and without the norm of "don't kill people with the Power." And then 2000 years later, Randland had Hawkwing, who fought a big war that lasted his lifetime but then ended when he did. Seanchan had Hawkwing's kid, who spent the next few hundred years engaged in conquest. So basically Seanchan's history is much more violent over a sustained period of time compared to Randland's. And since there were more steddings in Seanchan, the Ogier found them more quickly than Randland and so the Longing was a lot less. So the Ogier would have been more able to go out and interact with humans and their culture would have intertwined with human cultures a lot more. Because of all the violence the humans develop in a more militaristic direction, and hence so do the Ogier.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?
I feel like Lan needed to be updated for the show because his book character is tied into the conception of gender that people had 30 years ago that Jordan was critiquing. Lan is stoic, hard, emotionless, toxic masculinity. That's ultimately presented as a bad thing in the books, but that's a whole arc that Jordan has to deliberately lead the reader through because most of the audience back then would have also shared Lan's ideal of masculinity to start with. But nowadays, a lot fewer people buy into that ideal, so it's not as relevant and compelling as an emotional hook. And in a narrative sense, nowadays it would read as a lot more unrealistic if a strong woman like Moiraine partnered with him without calling him on his bullshit. Lan needs to be less emotionally closed-off and more chilled out in order to stay plausible as Moiraine's buddy cop/Nynaeve's love interest to a modern audience.

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Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

Gully Foyle posted:

People were freaking out because matches were invented later on in-book by Aludra (the ex-Illuminator that Mat rescues, who gave him the fireworks that he used to blow his way into the Stone) - Tam should not have had matches, especially out in the boonies.

Of all the things to get mad about, it's a very minor thing, but those kinds of fans tend not to react quietly.

Is the show even going to include the "wacky good guy stumbles into inventing guns" storyline? I feel like modern audiences are a lot less likely to connote guns with either wacky or good than a white Southerner was 30 years ago. If they're cutting the gunpowder thing then it doesn't matter whether Tam has matches or not.

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