Series pacing, thoughts?

[Jagen Sedai]

On 8/17/2018 at 11:01 AM, BFG said:

This is how I feel about all of Perrin and his character arcs. 

[solarz]

23 hours ago, Jagen Sedai said:

This is how I feel about all of Perrin and his character arcs. 

 

Honestly, I attribute that to Sanderson. Perrin should have been a great leader, a builder to counter Rand the destroyer. He brought the largest army to the Fields of Merrilor. His opinion should have had much greater influence, and his support for Rand should have been instrumental.

 

Instead, Sanderson made him into a subordinate of Elayne and sent him to duel Slayer.

[Jagen Sedai]

I have longggg held these feelings about Perrin. I just didn't care for him after the first three books.

[Talmanes]

I really don't think it was Sanderson that made Perrin the way he was. If you look at his arcs for the most part, he does very little of important for most of the series, and is overall one of (if not the most) useless of the main characters.

 

Rand's conquering Tear.

Mat's rescuing Elayne/Nyn.

Perrin is... blacksmith...and saving his GF in a dream.

 

Rand's in the Waste getting the Aiel.

Mat is getting his battle memories and key to Finnland.

Perrin...went home (granted I liked the arc of battling the Trollocs in Two Rivers, but it's not really important to the overall story)

 

Rand is taking back Carhien and battling Shaido.

Mat is forming the Band, kills Couladin.

Perrin is...on his way to Carhien.

 

And most importantly:

Rand is cleansing the Source, preparing for the Last Battle.

Mat is binding the Seanchan to Rand becoming royalty.

Perrin, oh Perrin, is spending three books trying to rescue his wife (and not doing the specific thing he was asked to do).

 

I know a lot of those are over simplifications, but in my current reread it's really hit me harder than ever before how useless Perrin is most if the book. His big moments pale to the big moments of Rand and Mat, and while I get that each serves a role and has a distinctive personality, it's Perrin who just doesn't do much.

 

Not to mention it's Perrin who tries to get out of his authority position so often. Rand embraced his destiny early on, Mat complains he's no lord, but keeps going anyway, but literally even toward the end of the books he's still not feeling like a leader for his people.

[Jagen Sedai]

Talmanes, on point. I hated all of Perrin's story line. Completely unimpressed. There was so much potential for the dreamwalking thing, the wolf dream stuff, but it never went anywhere exciting.

[Guest]

I completely disagree about Perrin's story lines. Remember, without Perrin, Rand probably would not have had his "come to Jesus moment" there on Dragonmount. Also, without Perrin protecting Rand from Slayer while he was fighting Moridin and then the Dark One, I have no doubts that Rand would have died and been unsuccessful in defeating the Dark One.

[Jagen Sedai]

But we wouldn't have had a Slayer without a Perrin :p

[TheSociopath]

actually, Slayer is originally introduced to be a Lan villain, what with also being Malkier and being tasked with killing him and Nynaeve

[Wulf]

Sure was a lot of payoff with that one, right?

[TheSociopath]

well, no... but my point was that if Perrin wasn't around, Slayer still would've been a character, and might've still been a significant threat to Rand

[Wulf]

But was there even enough non-Perrin stuff to believe he'd still have existed?

 

My memory's a bit hazy on the Slayer matter but I can't think of anything he did that had to happen for the story to progress (at least, nothing that couldn't have happened slightly differently).

 

Without the Wolf, the Wolfkiller wouldn't have been created.

[TheSociopath]

well, he first appeared as an assassin tasked with killing Lan, it got edited quickly, but it could've been interesting

[Sabio]

If you mean the Slayer killing those old people in their sleep, according to the companion he was trying to kill Rand.  I always thought his target was Lan but the companion said it was under orders of Taim to kill Rand.  Which explains Slayers confusion as to why a Chosen would conceal their identity when trying to give him an order.

[TheSociopath]

Actually, you're right. I was thinking of the line where Slayer mentions "killing my nephew and his wench." Since I pretty much never think of Slayer as Luc, I jumped immediately to Lan, but I guess that Lan would be Isam's cousin, while Rand actually is Luc's nephew.

 

However, there is still Moiraine's line in the GH about how she didn't dare mention to Lan that Isam was mentioned in the Shadow Prophecies for fear of what he'd do.

Later, in Tel'aran'rhiod, Nynaeve runs into him near the Two Rivers, (I think, it might have been somewhere else) and remarks about how similar to Lan he looked.

 

There was still a lot of room for him to have become a Lan villain.

[Sabio]

Ummm RJ can't write anything and BS is done writing WOT.  

Edited December 18, 2018 by Sabio

[Songstress]

21 hours ago, Sabio said:

Ummm RJ can't write anything and BS is done writing WOT.  

 

Yeah, that's a spammer.  We'll get it taken care of

[Apple151]

Finally yes the sereiis is tragically altered by rapid shifts in the intensity...

 

The first one is straight and suffers a bit for it.

 

2-4 go much quicker for example.