what if cadsuane SNITCHES

[SinisterDeath]

7 hours ago, bringbackthomsmoustache said:

which are likely to have been more complex than most of Rands instinctive uses (other than the washing fatigue and strengthening he does on Bela he appears to use simple wind to slam a trolloc with the boom on Bale Domon's ship and relatively simple calling lightning from an existing storm).  

Forgetting what he did at the Eye of the World? Those weren't simple weaves.

[DojoToad]

2 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Forgetting what he did at the Eye of the World? Those weren't simple weaves.

They were not, but was he copying what the Forsaken tried to do to him?

[SinisterDeath]

Just now, DojoToad said:

They were not, but was he copying what the Forsaken tried to do to him?

I don't think so. For one, he couldn't even see their weaves.
Also remember when he teleported to Tarwin's Gap, and rippled the earth like lifting a bed sheet? When he killed the trolloc armies?

[DojoToad]

27 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

I don't think so. For one, he couldn't even see their weaves.
Also remember when he teleported to Tarwin's Gap, and rippled the earth like lifting a bed sheet? When he killed the trolloc armies?

Ah yes.  So Rand is either an instinctual savant, or Lews took the wheel?

[SinisterDeath]

9 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Ah yes.  So Rand is either an instinctual savant, or Lews took the wheel?

Or, whatever power he used at the end of the book, he used at the beginning. 😉 

[Stedding Tofu]

On 10/26/2022 at 3:57 PM, SinisterDeath said:

Also remember when he teleported to Tarwin's Gap, and rippled the earth like lifting a bed sheet? When he killed the trolloc armies?

 

I always took this as the final crisis of his innate channelling ability manifesting itself and the reaction to it being immediate rather than delayed.  In other words he wants something very badly but rather than it being Bela keeping up, the Trolloc about to spit him not doing so or the barred window no longer imprisoning him and Mat, it's the destruction of The Dark One's Army.  So he conjures weaves unconsciously but, as before, they reflect what he wants to happen (same for Nynaeve healing Egwene's childhood fever or all the other instances where she healed people before she's trained) and as the reaction is immediate rather than delayed, he falls over, pounding the ground, wanting "it" to end, "it" being both the reaction he is having and the struggle against The Dark One.

 

Perhaps the reaction in Tarwin's Gap is to drawing so much saidin from The Eye of the World rather than what he conjures in The Gap itself but I don't think so: he recovers and goes on to face Ishamael, drawing so much power that Ishamael is consumed by fire (in the prologue to TGH his burns still aren't fully healed).  It fits the pattern of development Moiraine explains to Nynaeve earlier on and it's in real time: if he didn't weather that crisis, and Moiraine tells Nynaeve that only one in three/four? do, he would have died.

[ForsakenPotato]

It's more likely that one of Rand's wives snitches eventually (or inadvertently gives him up) than Cadsuane, who has way more power if he's not in the picture.

 

But also, even though he seems to want at the time the books end to remain in obscurity forever, we really have no idea if that will last. He's 22, so he practically has his whole life ahead of him, and I don't understand what the big deal is if a few people find out. Only people that know him would believe it anyway since he looks different.

 

I think it's much weirder that someone who gave this speech (copied from goodreads so I dunno if entirely correct)

Quote

Here is your flaw, Shaitan, Lord of the Dark, Lord of Envy, Lord of Nothing, here is why you fail. It was not about me. It’s never been about me.”
It was about a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet. A woman who had crawled when she had to. That woman still fought.
It was about a man that love repeatedly forsook. A man who found relevance in a world that others would have let pass them by. A man who remembered stories and who took fool boys under his wing when the smarter move would have been to keep on walking. That man still fought.
It was about a woman with a secret, a hope for the future. A woman who had hunted the truth before others could. A woman who had given her life, then had it returned. That woman still fought.
It was about a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall in his sorrow and protected those he could.
It was about a woman who refused to believe that she could not help, could not heal those who had been harmed.
It was about a hero who insisted with every breath that he was anything but a hero.
It was about a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten, and who shown with a light for all who watched, including Rand.
It was about them all.

decides to walk away from all those people and let them believe he is dead forever. Rand's big revelation in the last part of the series is how much he loves these people and how much a mistake it's been to try to go it alone. How is he gonna make new friends that are as close as the friends he went through the last battle with? My personal opinion is that he takes a vacation for a few years but eventually does reconnect with the people that matter to him, but doesn't become a public figure again.

Edited October 27, 2022 by ForsakenPotato

[Elder_Haman]

On 10/26/2022 at 5:30 AM, SinisterDeath said:

Those weren't simple weaves.

It's JUST A WEAVE.

[wotfan4472]

The answer is really bad news if a certain character finds out, now that a certain theory has been confirmed to be true.

[Aan-Alone]

On 1/8/2023 at 8:01 AM, wotfan4472 said:

The answer is really bad news if a certain character finds out, now that a certain theory has been confirmed to be true.

Certainly, for certain. But I doubt [L]oial reads these forums.

[Bugglesley]

On 10/25/2022 at 9:18 AM, SinisterDeath said:

I personally go so far as, this is a power he's had since book 1.

Early in the series we learn just how dangerous weaving is. One wrong thread placement, and catastrophe. 

I often describe what Rand did to Bela, at the Inn, on the ship, and at the eye of the world, akin to cross stitching a 10'x10' tapestry of the entire wheel of time series as seen from the creators POV, behind his back, blindfolded while his hands fell asleep.

My running theory is:

  Reveal hidden contents

Rand wants something to happen, and that pattern is injected into reality. Observers would see the threads form the weave.

Nynaeve wants to heal, so that weave is injected into reality, and the threads do what they do.

Everyone else, they learn to see what they're doing, and then apply the scientific method to the OP to understand how it works. When Rand & Nynaeve learn to see what they're doing, they unlearn what they were doing before, and learn how the system works from those who believe they know how it works.

I'm probably wrong in my theory, but IMO it fits within the theme ever present in the book.
"Those in power, only think they know how the world works."

 

I'm really not a fan of this theory; I think it is ignoring the development of a text and making up material to fill in gaps that don't exist. The magic system definitely shifts over the course of the series, from a much more mysterious, inexplicable "soft" version at the start to a much more categorized, ordered "hard" system by the end. I have seen this written off as RJ being flat consistent all the way through but the characters learning more, but I honestly don't think that holds up under the scrutiny of a reread; you get early PoVs of characters (Moiraine, various Forsaken, the Wonder Girls in the tower, etc) where the way the use of the Power is described is quite distinct from how it is described later in the books. The lack of description of weaves, to me, is an indication of absolutely nothing.

 

This theory also mistakenly conflates two things; complexity and danger. Weaving is repeatedly and constantly described as dangerous. However, it is only ever described as complex in comparison to other weaves. There is never, never once, a scene where a character describes learning a weave stitch by stitch. There are dozens upon dozens of scenes (especially later, after RJ had clarified the system to himself) where a character sees a weave exactly once, and then immediately reproduces it, safely and in full. When LTT takes the wheel and is weaving at the estate in Tear, Logain and all the other Asha'man see the deathgates and the death flowers and other mysterious ancient battle weaves once and within seconds, during a pitched battle, are repeating them flawlessly. The Aes Sedai of the series are showing each other weaves to immediately reproduce them constantly. Gateways themselves spread like wildfire, and never once is it a challenge to learn it; the only stated limitation is how much power is available to create it. Elayne erases two square miles of Altara picking apart a gateway because just the residue would be enough to teach the damane how to Travel.

 

It's not just seeing weaves, either! Channellers create functional weaves instinctively all the time. Honestly, the theme you mention is best reinforced by how the sclerotic systems of power like the White Tower are exactly what enforce an understanding of the OP as limited and complex. Moiraine's eavesdropping and both Liandrin's and Verin's limited Compulsions are both powerful, functional weaves that they intuited from nothing before they came to the Tower; it's only the culture of third age Aes Sedai that means they keep them to themselves 1) to get one over on other Aes Sedai and 2) because they would immediately and out of hand be dismissed as "wilder weaves" that no self-respecting Aes Sedai would give the time of day to.

 

So we have definite text that wilders regularly successfully are able to channel, if they survive their harrowing. Further, every male channeler of this age, canonically including Taim and Logain, are self-taught. Weren't they too, all of them, cross stitching (which tbh isn't that hard, it's way easier than the original metaphor of weaving, why not stick with that?) a tapestry of the universe blindfolded with sleeping hands behind their back upside down in a blizzard uphill both ways while getting a sensual massage from a scantily clad Domani masseuse?

 

It's cute to "often describe" something thus, but it's flat out not supported by the text. The most experienced weaver can't reproduce a tapestry after seeing it once, much less just figure out on their own how to make a new one from scratch when trial-and-error literally means burning to a cinder, and yet that happens over and over and over. And it's not just our super special chosen ones doing it! The average channeller does, throughout the later books.

 

And with that established, this theory withers on the vine. Why invent a new, super ultra secret backup magic system when every single thing (aside from the pipe, a series ending stinger to keep you guessing and much better explained by what happened in the cave) can be explained by the system that's already here? It's not described in those terms in EotW, sure, but then nothing anyone does with the Power is because RJ hadn't nailed down how he was going to talk about it yet. Our old pal Occam has something to say about this. If you don't think the One Power allows for things that the One Power regularly does... maybe your understanding of the One Power is what is wrong.

 

[SinisterDeath]

4 hours ago, Bugglesley said:

It's cute to "often describe" something thus, but it's flat out not supported by the text. The most experienced weaver can't reproduce a tapestry after seeing it once, much less just figure out on their own how to make a new one from scratch when trial-and-error literally means burning to a cinder, and yet that happens over and over and over. And it's not just our super special chosen ones doing it! The average channeller does, throughout the later books.

It was a metaphor to explain teaching weaves to others, compared to what was happening to Rand in the first book, and the difficulty of constantly doing that thing over and over again without catastrophic failure.

In the first book, Rand was effectively blind, deaf, and dumb.

He couldn't see his weaves. He couldn't feel his weaves, and he didn't know what he was doing, or that he was even doing anything at all! By the end of the book he was making things happen because he wanted (willed) them to happen.

Contrary to your statement, the above paragraph is supported In the text. 

 

4 hours ago, Bugglesley said:

And with that established, this theory withers on the vine. Why invent a new, super ultra secret backup magic system when every single thing (aside from the pipe, a series ending stinger to keep you guessing and much better explained by what happened in the cave) can be explained by the system that's already here? It's not described in those terms in EotW, sure, but then nothing anyone does with the Power is because RJ hadn't nailed down how he was going to talk about it yet. Our old pal Occam has something to say about this. If you don't think the One Power allows for things that the One Power regularly does... maybe your understanding of the One Power is what is wrong.

This has nothing to do with creating some super secret backup magic system.

 

It's applying everything we know from the beginning of the first book to the ending of the last book, and assuming every inconsistency in the novels magic system is "true", and then figuring out how to make everything "consistent" when you have a bunch of inconsistencies!

Rand used a gateway at the end of book 1 to Tarwin's gap. He didn't know his start location at all, though he had a good idea of where he wanted to go... He forgets how to use the weave after using it! Even though Rand learns weaves the first time he sees/uses them... And then he uses them again and again in books 3 and 4 until he finally learns travelling for real in book 5 after realizing like a big thick dummy head what he's been doing all the damn time, and he would never have figured it out if he never relieved some stress in that igloo...

When he gets to Tarwin's gap, he does this weird matrix warp effect on the ground which causes the earth to ripple around him and that Matrix style volcanic Eruption kills a ton of Trollocs in the process - LTT was not in control during this, and he completely forgot that weave to.

Yes they were weaves, but I also think Rand just made those weaves happen instead of him blindly weaving a billion threads of the one power. The Plot armor is strong in Rand.

Yes, Occam's razor - RJ evolved his magic system and fleshed it out over time. Blah blah, don't care. Magic pipe, and his quotes about "magic" in the 4th age being "very weird" says otherwise. One of the literal themes of the books is "rules are meant to be broken" / "Authority doesn't know what they think they know". Authority figures like the Aes Sedai love to think they know everything, and the one power is made up of nothing but rules, and and they're constantly being broken! lol

The idea in the post you replied to. To expand on that.
It's entirely plausible that Aes Sedai in the 2nd Age applied the scientific method to the one power. (Re: See RJ's personal religious views) This could be RJ's form of commentary on how "scientists" have applied the scientific method to the natural world, and the world at large, and how it's "demystified" everything, and how it's removed the "magic" and "mystery" from the world.

Bu applying that method to the one power, they've created rules like "this works" and "this doesn't work" . That leads to tradition and self imposed rules and limitations upon institutions (---> white tower). Which is why the Forsaken were surprised that certain things were possible when they thought they were impossible.

 

Your assertion that I'm creating a new magic system is baloney. I'm just trying to keep everything consistently true (in my own head canon) instead of hand-waving away that RJ evolved his magic system and ignore how "magic" worked in the first 3 books.

I believe there are things that happen in the final books (magic wise) that parallel the first books that when you look at them together, it's worth reexamining that RJ's "plan" was intentional, and that not everything should just be hand-waved away as "he was just fleshing out the magic system" and "more was going on then we know".
(Example being, the fight in Book 3 = We now know those happened what we now know are called Dream Shards)

The One Power is a "Hard Magic system with Soft spots". It's a system that has self imposed rules and limitations created by humans, because humans create their own reality, and Rand has the ability to change reality as we know it.

[dwn]

Years ago I speculated that the bubbles of evil and shifting environments were the result of the barriers between the real world and T'A'R breaking down. Following that line of thought, what Rand does at the end feels a lot like a Dreamer's manipulation of T'A'R, or that reality isn't quite as solid (anymore?) as everyone assumes.

 

And although it's a metaphor, the Aiel have always described death as waking from the dream.

 

Whether or not you subscribe to my pet theory or not, we have a plethora of weird Talents and effects (Wolfbrothers, Min, Singing, Luck, The Horn of Valere, etc.) that aren't directly tied to channeling or the OP.

 

(I personally disliked Rand lighting his pipe like that, not because it was weird, but because it felt completely unnecessary.)

[Asthereal]

On 1/8/2023 at 2:01 PM, wotfan4472 said:

The answer is really bad news if a certain character finds out, now that a certain theory has been confirmed to be true.

 

Meh, fourth wife. Whatever. 🤣

 

Anyway, I don't think Cadsuane would ever snitch. Neither would any of his wives. He's got smart women attached to him, who tend to think before they act. And for Cadsuane: the fact that she's more powerful as long as the Dragon "stays dead" was already mentioned, but more importantly I think she'd never snitch because it doesn't serve a purpose. Rand has done his duty, she knows he'll just want to live his life in anonimity now. There's no point. And Cadsuane can be a huge pain in the behind, but she never does things without express purpose. The knowledge that the Dragon still lives is a powerful one in theory, but in practice it'll never come in handy. Besides, saying the Dragon lives only to point at a dude who looks completely different, and who can't channel at all, could undermine her power quite a bit.

[Bugglesley]

On 1/19/2024 at 2:12 PM, SinisterDeath said:

He couldn't see his weaves. He couldn't feel his weaves, and he didn't know what he was doing, 

 

Nobody could, though. Moiraine can't see her weaves. In book 2 Egwene is not once described seeing or feeling her weaves in the tower. Are they too in the grip of Plot Willpower Power (tm)?

 

On 1/19/2024 at 2:12 PM, SinisterDeath said:

It's applying everything we know from the beginning of the first book to the ending of the last book, and assuming every inconsistency in the novels magic system is "true", and then figuring out how to make everything "consistent" when you have a bunch of inconsistencies!

 

I do have to acknowledge that at some point we're just approaching fiction from utterly different perspectives, which is fine. I won't be trying to talk you out of that; I will do my best to stick only to arguments "in universe."

 

On 1/19/2024 at 2:12 PM, SinisterDeath said:

It's entirely plausible that Aes Sedai in the 2nd Age applied the scientific method to the one power. (Re: See RJ's personal religious views) This could be RJ's form of commentary on how "scientists" have applied the scientific method to the natural world, and the world at large, and how it's "demystified" everything, and how it's removed the "magic" and "mystery" from the world.

Bu applying that method to the one power, they've created rules like "this works" and "this doesn't work" . That leads to tradition and self imposed rules and limitations upon institutions (---> white tower). Which is why the Forsaken were surprised that certain things were possible when they thought they were impossible.

 

Your assertion that I'm creating a new magic system is baloney. I'm just trying to keep everything consistently true (in my own head canon) instead of hand-waving away that RJ evolved his magic system and ignore how "magic" worked in the first 3 books.

 

I agree to some extent with this read on the Power as interpreted in the 2nd Age, and the Forsaken's sneering disdain for these "savages" means they are repeatedly blindsided. I'd go further, with the various Forsaken All-Hands meetings where they mention things like Mesaana being a "researcher," Aran'gar talking about how she (as Balthamel) "studied savage cultures," or the use of the Dream Shards you mentioned specifically for research. I would say it's not just plausible but a definite aspect of the narrative that the 2nd Age was a time of focused, systematized inquiry into the One Power.

 

That said, I don't think the conclusions you find follow this premise. "They did science to it, so they made rules, so they stopped truly understanding it" breaks down halfway through. For one, I think it's a misguided understanding of the (real world) philosophy of science that I don't think RJ shared--as much as science measures, defines, and restricts, it is definitionally infinitely recursive and open to change. Every physicist dreams of getting an impossible result in an experiment! That's how breakthroughs happen, that's what makes careers! Surely if results in experiments had showed "if you want it bad enough it just kind of happens" that would be the scientific understanding of the 2nd age? Yet it is not.

 

A second-order narrative reliability concern is that the 2nd Age approached things "scientifically," sure, but our window into that culture, the Forsaken, were not very good scientists. They were the ones in it for power and prestige and not learning or the joy of discovery. They were the professors who lord it over students instead of really teaching, they were the ones who were petty and cruel and wanted shortcuts. In other words, the kind of people who would sign up when the Ancient Evil comes to murder everyone and promises them eternal life and infinite power for the low low price of condemning everyone else to be tortured to death. This is the selection criteria! They were the kind of people that spring up in any institution, regardless of its underlying philosophy.

 

Further, I think adding "(---> white tower)" is a disastrous oversimplification for the ages. The White Tower are the savages! Some of the things the Tower knows are some of the aspects the Forsaken are most shocked by (warder bonds, picking apart weaves). If anything, the central weakness of 3rd Age Aes Sedai is that they mystify the power too much. The endless strict rules on when and where and how you can channel, the refusal to experiment or try anything new; these are not signs of an institution that seeks to demystify, they are an institution that's so deep in mysticism they can't conceptualize the power as anything but terrifying and unknowable, and seek to stay exclusively in the "shallow end" where they can prove it's safe.

 

In other words, a binary between "mysticism = intuition = freedom = true understanding" and "science = intellectualizing = institution = limited understanding" breaks down completely upon close examination. These aspects are orthogonal to each other. You can have heavily institutionalized mystics and decentralized, chaotic science; you're equivocating ontological approaches with social organization. Modern, real-world scientific approaches definitely run one way and the 2nd Age follows it, but it is perhaps a fascinating historical exercise to ask how truly different Kings College Oxford runs today than it did when its primary job was to train people to debate heretics about the Trinity.

 

And broadly, again in the real world, would you really argue that an Oxford graduate in 1324, a more mystical time in many places to be sure, understands the world better than any human with a high school education in 2024? Be serious. There is still much that is mysterious and unknown and unknowable, but if you wish to live in a time and place where nobody knows how measure and harness electricity, understand and defeat germs, practice agricultural chemistry, or establish systems that allow, encourage, and have succeeded in furthering each of those understandings over time... idk what to tell you. Enjoy famines and cholera ig?

 

All this is to say; yes, I agree that we do not have clear Authorial Intent on what exactly the One Power is, and we have a variety of people in a variety of times and places applying a variety of approaches to understand the things they can apparently do with it. Many of them have decided they know what rules govern it; many of those rules are broken in the course of the narrative. However, on its face it appears your argument boils to "the One Power is the power to reshape reality however you want, if you want it bad enough, the only limits are the ones you place on it with your own conception of what you think it can do" which.. does not hold up to the most basic of scrutiny? Connection to and strength in the power is, even in the mystical 3rd age, reproducible and testable by multiple independent observers. Weaves do consistently perform (unless funky things are happening with the pattern, like after using the BoW outside Ebou Dar) as expected when reproduced consistently. In other words, it is something you can do science to. Is science wrong sometimes? Yes! Does an incorrect result or an eventually disproven belief mean an entire edifice of study should be thrown down and replaced with the mystical feelings? Why in the world would you think that?

 

And with all that said, there is clearly knowledge about how to use it that is to some level instinctual in channellers, and which does appear to track relatively consistently with strength in the power. Your level of connection to the One Power will also determine how much you can split flows (Egwene embarrassing Accepted in the Tower during her captivity), how complex the weaves you can intuit are (Nyneave healing in unprecedented ways via trying to bully death itself), and how quickly and accurately you can copy the weaves of others. So a channeller's connection to the power is a kind of window, there is a innate and relatively fixed characteristic of people that determines how wide that window opens, and both power and knowledge flow through it. If you apply that knowledge and/or power outside of certain guidelines, you can break the window or yourself, either dying or losing access to the power; and so institutions spring up to strictly regulate what you go ahead and bring through. In the Second Age, those institutions expanded to creating guidelines for safety and then intentionally exploring (and exploiting!) the windows as much as possible; in the Third Age, those institutions only have enough juice to revolve around fearing the window or finding what you need and practicing how to use it in terms of pure utility (White Tower & Wise Ones, vs Seanchan & Windfinders respectively).

 

We also know that your mental state is, to some extent, critically important--different for saidin and saidar, but either way you will not be able to successfully embrace the source without the right mindset; this can result in blocks or require the use of external tools, such as early in the tEotW where Moiraine used her fancy wizard's staff or forehead gem as a focus (neither were angreal, to my knowledge, just focus objects) before RJ got bored of that idea (or she was just the only one who needed them and it's never mentioned again, since we can't acknowledge these are books written by a person who changed his mind about a variety of things over actual human decades).

 

And at long last, we come to Rand at Tarwin's Gap. Again, his actions throughout the early book are far from exceptional; he has a very strong connection to the power, and he survives his Harrowing. He weaves basic healing for Bela, he weaves a lightning bolt to escape the inn, and each time he suffers the physical effects of embracing and channeling saidin for the first time without guidance.

 

I'm going to be perfectly honest; when I reread the book series for the first time as an adult a few years ago I did turn to google and poked around threads here, on reddit, on tar valon library about what exactly was even happening at the end of tEotW. It's wild and confusing! As, surely, the experience of doing that much with that much Power was for Rand.

 

But still, what you've all been waiting for: how could he do it while being as afraid and baffled as the reader is the whole time? Was he simply exercising his Will to Power? Is our entire conception of the One Power just a bunch of misguided, foolishly "scientific" rules and attempts to obscure the simple fact that Rand is an Ubermensch who can alter reality through his pure intention? And the answer is really quite simple. It's the name of the book!

 

What is the Eye of the World? It is a gigantic well of clean, untainted saidin put in one place in the hopes it would be used in the next turning of the wheel to fight the Dark One, as the Breaking-era Aes Sedai were able to reason out that you would need that half of the One Power to succeed and that the taint would mean at the very least there was no tradition of male channellers to provide it, possibly no sane male channellers whatsoever.

 

The Well is really a pretty singular object in the series; Nyneave and Cadsuane have Ter'angreal that fulfill a similar purpose, but are comparatively tiny to the point the comparison is between a drop of water and a reservoir for a major city.

 

This is where it becomes a battle of speculations, but a syllogism to consider:

- We know the One Power can carry information as well as power

- We know the Well was filled by extremely knowledgeable, powerful male Aes Sedai

- We can speculate that the saidin within the well carried some of their knowledge

 

And with that, Rand's typical Harrowing weaves are explained, and his atypical defeat of Ishmael and the Trollocs at Tarwin's gap is explained, all within our regular old One Power. Rand is simply a vessel, channelling the power and knowledge of those who made the Well in the first place, using it a little before it was really intended but exactly when and how it was really needed. He doesn't remember how to make a Gateway or the Matrix Smash because he was simply releasing those weaves from where they had been stored. He is not the Creator, he is not a god (or a God), just a simple farmer who was called to do great things and learned, through suffering and success, to do so. I'm more than willing to separate these phenomena, it was the Eye of the World in book 1 and then to behold the pipe at the conclusion and imagine that exposure to the Creator directly has after effects.

 

I get that, thematically, at the end of the day Rand's greatest challenge is not to wield the Power; it is to make a decision. At the end of the day his journey is not really about developing as a wizard but as a person. It was all so that, at the end of all things, he can know that the world is better if people have the ability to choose, even if those choices are often evil. Those themes, that conclusion, don't add up to the further revelation that The Secret is real in Randland and every person (or maybe only the Specials?) can reshape reality without limits once they have fully self-manifested because they can not only choose their actions, but choose their very reality.

[SinisterDeath]

10 minutes ago, Bugglesley said:

And broadly, again in the real world, would you really argue that an Oxford graduate in 1324, a more mystical time in many places to be sure, understands the world better than any human with a high school education in 2024? Be serious. There is still much that is mysterious and unknown and unknowable, but if you wish to live in a time and place where nobody knows how measure and harness electricity, understand and defeat germs, practice agricultural chemistry, or establish systems that allow, encourage, and have succeeded in furthering each of those understandings over time... idk what to tell you. Enjoy famines and cholera ig?

You're reading waaay too much into what I typed as it pertains to the real world, versus how it pertains to the world of the wheel of time.

 

10 minutes ago, Bugglesley said:

This is where it becomes a battle of speculations, but a syllogism to consider:

- We know the One Power can carry information as well as power

- We know the Well was filled by extremely knowledgeable, powerful male Aes Sedai

- We can speculate that the saidin within the well carried some of their knowledge

Earlier you accused me of making up an entire magic system out of thin air... and here you are... creating memories within the well of the eye of the world, when nothing in the text, supports this.

 

  

11 minutes ago, Bugglesley said:

I'm more than willing to separate these phenomena, it was the Eye of the World in book 1 and then to behold the pipe at the conclusion and imagine that exposure to the Creator directly has after effects.

If you recall at the end of the 3rd age Rand Sealed the Dark One in his Prison. And when you begin the book series again we're greeted with the iconic line

 

Quote

Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.

Think about that for a minute in context about the Creator Sealing the Dark one at the "moment of creation", and what Rand just did... at the end of the 3rd age.... And that there are neither beginnings or endings in... the wheel of time... Because legend fades myth.... and myth is long forgotten...

[CaddySedai]

Curious, at which point is it defined that the One Power carries knowledge? If that were the case then the moment one accessed the power would they not just KNOW how to channel, and not just instinctual stuff like rand "Willing" things to happen - but the knowledge of weaves? If that is the case why are any weaves or talents lost? Why would anything need to be rediscovered? Just distill a venerable Aes Sedai's knowledge into the Wheel of Time version of a Pensieve and call it a day - boom...everyone be making Ter'Angreal in no time.

 

Additionally and related in some ways, few other channelers seem to have the same experience as Rand and LTT, which could be explained to the power in the SOUL that he is rebirthed from and not the power itself. He was unique in being GIVEN knowledge rather than having to be taught it in a traditional sense.

 

This is supported in some ways with Hawkwing: "I have fought by your side times beyond number, Lews Therin, and faced you as many more. The Wheel spins us out for its purposes, not ours, to serve the Pattern. I know you, if you do not know yourself. We will drive these invaders out for you."

 

So either he too had a similar experience with past knowledge as Rand, or his soul - once freed from its mortal coil - knows all the knowledge of his past. Either way it seems this knowledge is soulbound rather than power driven. Mat being able to bring forth memories from his blood implies as such as well.

 

So I am not of a mind that the Eye of the World in any way contained any knowledge of the One Power, Channeling, or any such things but was exactly as it was stated. A repository of untainted Saidin. To be used in a way that even those that created it could not comprehend. I do not believe they in any way intended for it to be used in the way Rand used it so any "knowledge" imparted to him if it even was possible would not have jived with his use. That is like someone writing a manual in Aramaic about technical support for a HP printer, and you are using the manual to diagnose problems with your dishwasher and only understand English.  

 

 

Edited January 22 by CaddySedai
Spelling derps.

[Bugglesley]

As mentioned, this is a discussion of speculation vs speculation, so there will not be a definite resolution as to which one is right outright in the text; my own theory being a theory is no more an argument against it than yours being one. They are both based in the text to some degree but require inference to some degree.

 

That said I still think I'm right, and that what we do have lines up with it more satisfactorily. I did my best to "show my work" in terms of how to get to the conclusion that the power comes "with its own instructions," so to speak. To elucidate:

 

So we have 3 competing explanations for how wilders (including Rand but speaking generally) are able to successfully perform complex weaves without dying/burning out--which is still, textually, a likely outcome,  but we're asking why it isn't a certainty given the nexus of danger and complexity involved:

 

- The Power contains information, weaves "feel right" for a particular desired outcome because the One Power has those processes communicated through the "window" with the power to actually do it; some people grasp this and some don't

 

- Everyone has some level of access to past lives' memories; not necessarily in the form of full conversations, but on a level of instinct and intuition. Wilders who are able to better access these memories can remember the times their past lives learned them and successfully channel. This does have (unreliable narrator alert) background from when Semirhage is trying to explain to everyone how Rand is mad, and how the fact that the voice in his head is real is actually worse, you see how that's worse, right?

 

- All of our mechanisms for understanding the power are an over-rationalized explanation for what's really happening. All of the in-universe explanations are just how those characters have chosen to understand an underlying mechanism for reifying the will of an individual on the world, much as characters alter reality in TAR. The whole ediface of weaves, webs, power, flows etc is something like a 2-dimensional projection of a 5-dimensional reality that Rand (and other channellers?) have been tapping into. It's how this power is expressed, but it isn't what it is. Rand moves from doing it "the real way" unintentionally, to thinking, learning, and understanding "weaving" (that actually sets him back by holding him to imagined limitations), and transcends to understanding and mastering the real power and control over reality by the end.

 

I have tried my best to get out of "cast opponent's arguments as uncharitably as possible and mine as obvious as possible" mode to summarize here. I can understand reading this and saying "that summary is accurate, and it clearly shows door 3 is the best." However, if anyone has been sticking with my walls of text so far, I'd like to try to convince you otherwise.

 

I have already gone over when I don't buy narratively that the 2nd Age Aes Sedai were fundamentally and utterly wrong about what the power is. To elaborate, what I do buy completely is that the 2nd Age AS we see are arrogant, sneering chauvinists would be shocked that, in 3,000 years of constant use and experimentation, the 3rd Age channellers could have figured out some tricks they never did or that allowed for the Power to be used in ways they didn't think to use it. In real life there are places where the wheel was simply never put to widespread use outside of children's toys or where atlatls were preferred to any kind of bow; it's really, really, definitionally difficult to think of something outside the paradigm you're working with, and back to 2nd Age Randland I'd bet it'd be hard to get research funding to study picking apart weaves when everyone knows it's impossible and the time/resources spent on it would be wasted.

 

In other words, it's bare narrative reality that they are wrong about some things, but I don't think they were fundamentally wrong about everything. The fact that wilders were, presumably, vanishingly rare in the 2nd age and the fact that the origins of weaves in general were shrouded in history mean that it makes sense they wouldn't understand where weaves "come from" in a vacuum; "they're carried by the power" is something they could get wrong, "you really are just imposing your will on the world and the weaves follow" is also possible but seems less likely to be missed.

 

For second, I think that as much as TAR and the "real" world exist in parallel and are reflections of each other, RJ does consistently keep them separated. Moving from one to the other in the flesh is anathema to the Aiel, a horrible perversion of how things should work when whatever Slayer is does it, and is used sparingly as a tool by 2nd Age AS like the Forsaken. I don't think the intention was to collapse their fundamental natures; "life is a dream" from the Aiel is a pretty common trope among cultures that venerate warfare and warriors throughout history and this alternate cause swamps any cosmological hints it could be dropping, to me.

 

Finally, and this is something of a personal bugbear, but I do strongly dislike supernatural power systems built around "wanting it badly enough." It always, to me, makes me wonder: for every channelling-capable character who canonically saw their entire life fall apart around them, the worst possible things happen to their loved ones, of all the Aes Sedai tortured to death while shielded by darkfriends or slaughtered by whitecloaks or torn to shreds by Trollocs, not a one "wanted" that to stop badly enough? Again the real world is bleeding through, but it's the fundamental cruelty of all "power of positive thinking" ideology: the more you overstate its effects, the more the inverse becomes that anything bad is your fault because you could have stopped it by not wanting it to happen. It's unimaginably callous! Shields are just a weave!

 

We are to believe that while yes, Rand suffered and learned, nobody else ever in all of recorded 3rd age history suffered as much as him? Or learned as he did? He is a chosen one and Ta'veren, yes, but neither of those are really germane to becoming 3rd-age Buddha, alone achieving enlightenment. I feel the causality runs rather backwards to this, that he bends the pattern around him because the pattern bends it around him, that he has a strong connection to the Power, and this allows him to accomplish extraordinary things despite and along with the suffering, that the suffering affected his moral character and not his wizard one. Making them one in the same is less satisfying, somehow, to me.

 

Anyway I'm really enjoying this let me know what you all think.

 

Edited January 25 by Bugglesley

[Aan-Alone]

On 1/22/2024 at 12:15 PM, Bugglesley said:

They did science to it, so they made rules, so they stopped truly understanding it" breaks down halfway through. For one, I think it's a misguided understanding of the (real world) philosophy of science

 

On 1/22/2024 at 12:20 PM, SinisterDeath said:

On 1/22/2024 at 12:15 PM, Bugglesley said:

Expand  

You're reading waaay too much into what I typed as it pertains to the real world,

Pity. I thought you were putting forth a 'misguided' critique of the assumptions that underpin the 'Scientific Method'. It's ok. I've got one in a pocket somewhere.

 

There's 7 or 12 assumptions, iirc. Good luck finding them though. We discussed them in school only once, and briefly at that. Last time I searched the 'net for them, I couldn't dig them up.If I'm confusing anyone, an example of one assumption is: complex things can be broken up into smaller components that can be understood. [Baseball, molecules, atoms, quantum stuffs].

 

Discover something that challenges those assumptions and you're far from celebrated. You're publicly discredited and ostracized. 

 

Which is informative but somewhat off-topic. More to the OP's point...RJ was known as a planner. So @SinisterDeath could very well be correct in their assumptions and RJ has those 2 Epic OP use endpoints mapped-out at least as early as tEotW. Here's my speculative contribution. What's reality made from?

 

The difference between the two halves of the OP is what drives the WoT, not the actual OP. And the Wheel creates creation [reality], but out of what? What's the underlying fabric of the Pattern?

 

Why was the OP strange in the vicinity of Ebou Dar? From the Bowl of the Winds being severely over-stressed, sure, but why would that make the OP strange?

 

Perhaps the OP is part of the fabric of reality?  Or just maybe the One Power IS the fabric of reality?