What is your LEAST favorite part about the books? (no major spoilers)

[jack of shadows]

I didn't say that!!!

[Faroresdragn]

@faroresdragn,

"...this was the fallout from the breaking

When men were generally distrusted..."

Why?why distrust 95 percent of the men in randland for something they had nothing to do with?

Is it even rational?

it seems like you did, unless i misunderstood somehow

[jack of shadows]

Ok,let me elaborate,it wasn't a statement,it was a question,and for the record,i do believe that misogyny/misandry,gender equality(or lack thereof) and the breaking of the world by male channelers are separate issues.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

 

@faroresdragn,

"...this was the fallout from the breaking

When men were generally distrusted..."

Why?why distrust 95 percent of the men in randland for something they had nothing to do with?

Is it even rational?

 

it seems like you did, unless i misunderstood somehow

He was responding to fdragon who said that and disagreeing or at least asking for more explanation. Hence the @ and quotation marks. And the why.

[Faroresdragn]

1. I am faroresdragn, which is why i responded.

2. @jack i understood you werent making a statement, i was trying to give my opinion on the answer in the first post where i quoted you.

3. then in that other post i was explaining that i was talking about the real world in response to jack's question. 

 

... i was just saying there was a definite reason for that. jack said was it even rational for the men to be put down because of the breaking, and i used the real world as an example that people can be made less in society for much less rational reasons then for all intents and purposes ending the world. or that cultural attitudes dont need a rational basis.

 

i guess it would have been clearer if i wrote asked instead of said. 

 

does that clear things up?

 

didnt mean to get so off topic.

Edited May 1, 2017 by Faroresdragn

[jack of shadows]

Yes,crystal clear.

[Sabio]

There is some level of gender equality for the most part i guess, at least when it comes to them interacting day to day or having roughly the same career opportunities maybe, but you cant say that the world isnt matriarchal on the whole. And the villiage council and the womens circle is the prime example of that. the villiage counsil, made up of men, is described as having little to no actual power, and that the womens circle just lets them believe that they have a say in things. its the womens circle you go to when youre in trouble. 

 

There are more powerful women then there are powerful men, with Aes Sedai being all women, and the amerlyn being essentially the most powerful person on the planet. And even beyond channeling, women are more often than not more highly ranked than men: the wise ones among the aeil dont answer to clan chiefs, and are above blood fueds, and although all women who can channel are forced into the wise ones, thats not a requirement, and many who cant channel have more authority than those that can. also among the aeil men arent even allowed to own property. and the one societal advantage that men would usually have over women, being able to fight or be soldiers, is shared with women among the aeil. not to mention the "men dont have a say in the polygamal marriage" thing. In the Sea Folk,only women can have the most important positions, with the highest male position being not very important from what i could pick up. the master of blades didnt seem to be in charge of much besides trade, and even then he could probably be overridden in trade by the mistress of ships. The Seanchan are ruled by their Empress, who rules absolutely. The countries where youd think men would be the most dominant would be the borderlands, where their lives are based on constant war, and unlike with the aeil, the women dont fight. and even there the men lots of times defer to women, and women are supposed to be fierce and strong and saldea at least is ruled by a queen, although im not sure if thats a set thing like in Andor. 

 

definitely most if not all societies lean toward women being in charge. i was just saying there was a definite reason for that. jack said was it even rational for the men to be put down because of the breaking, and i used the real world as an example that people can be made less in society for much less rational reasons then for all intents and purposes ending the world. or that cultural attitudes dont need a rational basis.

 

Andor is only nation I can think of where rulership is for only women, and secretly Shara where the women who can channel secretly run things.  Seanchan hasn't had a king in awhile, but nothing set in stone preventing it. 

 

Children of Light seem men only.  Tarabon has a King and Panarch and sounds as if Illian and Amadica always have kings.  Not sure if a lady can help rule Tear or not.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Sabio

[Faroresdragn]

yeah i forgot about the children of the light. but theyre an independent malitiant group. even though they technically controlled amadacia, they didnt have any alliance or answer to any nation. so im not sure how that reflects on societies views on men as a whole. but on average everyone does hate the whitecloaks, although that's more related to the fact that their an organization of self-important, power-hungry assholes than to their male-ness. 

 

Good points on Tear and Illian and Tarabon though. while i purposefully didnt mention Tarabon i honestly forgot about the other two.

 

I guess the argument can be made for either side, but I still think the women outweigh the men.

 

and honestly (coming full circle to go completely opposite from the original intention of the thread), thats one of my favorite things about the books. As poor of a job as Jordon does representing womens behavior and personalities, it's really refreshing to have a world where it's not automatically patriarchal. It seems like fantasy leans towards men more often than even other genres, so I liked having a world with so many important powerful women in charge. 

[Sabio]

I agree that I like the wide variety on rulership styles in the series.  The one thing I have noticed is you don't see many if any of mixed gender styles.  There doesn't seem to be a group of men and women together, unless you count Tarabon.  It seems all the council of nine is men, there is a womens council and a group of men in Two Rivers.  Where one group of men and women seems like it would be more efficient. There doesn't seem to be a lot groups where men and women are ruling together.  I only added the whitecloaks since they seem to be a male only group that is the actual power of a nation.  I forgot we could count the sea folk where it seems the women hold power.

 

But that has to be my biggest gripe is the childish way the sexes (At least the wonder girls) seem to view each other throughout the  series.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

well they are very young and that's not very unusual. in the white tower they're essentially at a girls boarding school and wouldn't have been

picking up much real world practical knowledge.

[Faroresdragn]

But that has to be my biggest gripe is the childish way the sexes (At least the wonder girls) seem to view each other throughout the  series.

yeah I think that is the issue. its very weird that we have some really close cross-gender relationships that he actually expand on alot, like Perrin and Faile, or Mat and Tuon, or Rand and Min/Avihendra (he never really expanded on Rand and Elayne's relationship, that felt kind of tacked on to be honest), and obviously Aes Sedai are close to their Warders, if not in an emotional way in public, but other than that the two genders cant ever seem to get along, especially in a professional setting. Weird there would be no inbetween. Even friends of opposite genders dont trust or try to understand eachother, even if they feel some obligation to them. Even in Tanchico where they have a king and a panarch, they both live in their own separate palaces on opposite ends of the city, and dont really consult eachother as far as I remember. 

 

I feel like I always was aware of that, but never really knew it until just now.

[Jagen Sedai]

faroresdragn: I have to admit, your rant on names seemed ill-informed. Sumeko and Yukiri are obviously Japanese women's names. I say obviously because even assuming you're unfamiliar with said names, a quick Google search would reveal this knowledge. As another poster pointed out, Birgitte is actually a common name in at least one country. Randland isn't the USA, you know. You're also complaining no two characters have the same name, but this is technically untrue, as flipping through the WoT Companion reveals--but then you complain two characters' names are too similar. Cant' have it both ways. Besides, statistically speaking, I know plenty of small groups of people that are often together where two people have similar-sounding names, or the same name, so Saerin and Sarine are not unrealistic. Lastly, many fantasy book series and even D&D related stuff has very unique names that do not always point to a real-world origin.

 

also... "As poor of a job as Jordan does representing womens behavior and personalities..." I keep seeing men saying this hella lot more than women. Myself, I think he did just fine. Amazingly good, actually, considering RJ himself is obviously a guy. I actually saw a poster once say "women seem to have little problem with the female characters of the books [how they're portrayed], but people in general don't like them..." By "people" he obviously meant *men*. And I really wish men would stop saying they saw the women as unrealistic. I would liek to say "Until you know a woman's way of thinking, probably just stop saying this would be nice," BUT I will acknowledge that AS A WHOLE, the Aes Sedai, for example, were far too into themselves and catty, BUT this could be a side-effect of being cut off from the world for so long while being indoctrinated into this women's only place... HOWEVER the Wise Ones are another group of powerful women, and the Sea Folk Windfinders and Sailmistresses, who were by far better... WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THEIR CULTURE. And people keep ignoring culture and just focusing on gender to make this argument against RJ's portrayal of women. IN my humbel opnion, the biggest thing he fucked up with just the AS and WT.

 

 

For some of my own complaints:

- The Aes Sedai and the WT in general should have been handled better. As an organization they should have been more efficient and on a personal level, more humble and not so uppity.

- Anything having to do with Perrin and/or Faile. I seriously hate them both and find them completely useless to the ENTIRE storyline.

- Disappointed Rand let the Black Tower go on by itself, and gave so much power to men he barely knew regarding the BT.

- ELAYNE.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Jagen Sedai

[Sabio]

The Aes Sedai were as I say caught in a time warp.  There never tried to adapt or change, as you saw when novices were brought in, they were quickly made to adapt to the WT.  The Aes Sedai were big into, this is the way it's always been done mentality.  If you tried to experiment with weaves, you were punished.   I see each ajah as a politcal party, each with their own idea of what was best.  Hence all the infighting, also you have to remember some of that infighting was probably BA made through out the years.  They had a power that set them apart from everyone else, so it was sort of natural many would have sort of a superior attitude, especially the Reds.

[Jagen Sedai]

I wonder if the Black Ajah is why the White Tower was discouraging from progressing in general... I mean the BA had a ridiculous amount of members!

[Faroresdragn]

Yeah I really didnt word my thoughts quite right. I was off track with the "no names the same" thing. My complaint can be summed up as "I couldnt keep all the damn names straight, when the complex plot demanded I keep them straight."

 

I did know that names from Kandor like Yukiri, and the other borderlands were more strongly based on asian names, and I never had any problem with Birgittes name, which I also knew about and appreciated. That was another example of me grasping at straws trying to find an excuse as to why the names were so hard for me. 

 

It was just the fact that there were so many tertiary characters whos quests and descriptions I was supposed to remember across multiple ~800 page books when their subplots were only mentioned in the prologues. For example, Im reading book 11 right now. Spoilers i guess. There was a chapter about a grey sister named Beonin (i think) who sneaks into the WT to talk to Elaida for some reason that hasnt been revealed yet.

 

Every chapter like this makes me think "ok, so has he mentioned Beonin before?" she could have been involved in the main plot directly for like 4 books with him making note of her one time, and now shes doing something important and that bugs me. And its a valid question because Jordan loves to talk about some random Aes Sedai's doings in a prologue for like 4 pages, then never mention them again until the prologue of the next book, 800 pages later, and expects me to remember who "Toveine" was and what she was last doing just at the drop of her name, when i have 1000 other named characters to worry about. that was what really got me going. And it just got worse as the story went on and he started writing prologues that literally took up 1/8 of the whole book. 

 

And statistics be damned. Im still going to gripe about Saerin and Sarine, because even if its statistically probable thered be some people with similar names who have to deal with eachother, Jordan obviously has complete control over everything. So him choosing to have two sisters with anagram names deal with eachother all the time is just a dick move, and you really cant convince me otherwise.

 

And ive never heard anyone defend the women in the books before. I thought he portrayed alot of them as overly conceited and somewhat incompetent a lot of the time. And I really didnt like how quickly they would just fall in love with men all of a sudden, and then spend 3 books trying to deny it to themselves, before melting in their arms. He just made it seem like even the strongest, most independent women just melt helplessly when it comes to being attracted to a man. I know this is fantasy, but come on. When you have like 8 different romantic relationships, 6 to 7 of them shouldnt play out the same way.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

I've often defended the women in the books though I've gotten tired of bickering with people who see it differently. and those people are often men.

 

when eotw came out, women were mostly invisible in sci fi fantasy, or flawless goddesses a la Tolkien. there were few "real" or politically powerful women, and even when there were (like queen riders in

mccaffrey books) they were so often subject to knee jerk sexism in world that it was difficult to read.

 

so when wot came out the other women I knew who read this kind of stuff loved it. this was before I had any inkling that people discussed this stuff anonymously on the Internet.

 

it wasn't until I discovered wot stuff on the Internet that I encountered what seemed like

mostly very young men voicing actual hatred of fictional characters because they behaved in..,, a much less sexist way than most men behave irl.

 

so consider this me defending the female characterizations and dropping it because the

need to defend what are actually, IMO, quite decent characters is already annoying me, and I hate being annoyed on the internet.

 

but yeah, lots of people love them, lots of those people are women, and

lots of the people that have issues are not women. not all but lots and lots. afaict from anonymous internet posts.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Mrs. Cindy Gill

[dawnflower8]

I'm not a fan of book 8. It always bored me, even more so than book 10. 

 

As for the women in the series, I like most of them - yet I never could like Elayne. Nynaeve, Faile, and Egwene are all fine...but Elayne? I just never liked her.

[jack of shadows]

welcome back dawn,you were absent more than 2 years.

[dawnflower8]

Yep, I sure was. Also, your avatar is awesome.

[jack of shadows]

thank you,a ghost variation of the original silence of the lambs movie poster.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

Welcome back dawn!

 

thank you,a ghost variation of the original silence of the lambs movie poster.

Yikes

[dawnflower8]

I only got the Ghost part, but I love that band. 

[jack of shadows]

so do i lol.

[Faroresdragn]

hopefully this is the last time Ill post something actually relevant to this topic, but i cant believe I forgot to mention something. You can forget everything else I mentioned disliking so far in favor of this.

 

I really dont know how to describe it succinct way. But whenever Jordan (and maybe Sanderson carried this on, havent gotten that far) is writing the characters "thoughts" (third person omniscient narration of their thoughts), They always kind of repeat or quickly contradict themselves for emphasis, or maybe to show that they are in denial about something or arent really sure about it themselves.

 

ex: She would not allow herself to become woolheaded over some man. She would not. OR She was nervous to meet with so many nobles. Not because Rand would be there. Surely not. Mostly.

 

Dont know why both my examples had to do with Elayne and Rand but that's what came to mind. This just bugged me because it seems like something that "works" when youre talking aloud or to yourself but just made me cringe when I read it in a novel. I've never seen anything like that in any other novel I've read. Like its something my 5th grade English teacher would have marked me down for in an essay. I dont like it at all. 

[Vetra]

The blue ajah, like what is the reason they exist? "to be involved in causes," yet the only causes we see are TDR, which the green should've really be leading, or WT politics cleaning the failures of the red ajah, which is also poorly done why did every red amyrlin fail? Why not have a grey or green or blue fail as amyrlin? Honestly what is the difference between the blue and grey? Grey involve themselves with politics but wouldn't that be where most of the causes are? The blue ajah is nothing more than a plot device some unnecessary excuse for Moraines actions. 

The build up of the red ajah as being horrible they are seen as cruel and untrustworthy, which makes sense for Rand but that was no reason for the other characters poor treatment by them or the stupidity and paranoia of Eladia who is mentioned as being smart then only shown as being stupid. Their history of failure in the books is horrible one failure should've been enough but they have two of two past amyrlins who were stilled. When RJ tried to bring them back into the light it was too late. 

Also every ajah has a stereotype and they all commit to it and have little to no verity, except pevara great character, The WT was just poorly written overall