The Dragon Reborn "Continuity" Issues

[Aan-Alone]

On 8/4/2023 at 5:35 PM, Asthereal said:

 

I'm not going to say that you're wrong - I'm not deep enough into the lore to say much for sure anyway - but a point against would be that the Seanchan channelers were also having lots of trouble using saidar, which would suggest that uncontrolled saidin wasn't the problem. I like the idea though.

There are tons of options for solutions to the Power working okay at the cleansing but not at Falme with the Bowl, apart from my cheap idea that the effect might have a delay. A few that I can think of right now:
a) The channeler in charge: Rand at this point is a lot more versatile and experienced than the Seafolk channeler who controlled the circle at the use of the Bowl, who seems to be rather one-sided in her knowledge of the power.
b) The target: Rand and Nynaeve were aiming their efforts at specific targets, being the taint in saidin and Mashadar at Shadar Logoth. Rand knew exactly what he wanted to do, as opposed to the use of the Bowl, which was much more scattered, aiming all around. The women didn't really know what they were doing and were mostly just figuring it out as they went along.

c) The Bowl itself: they know very little about the device when they use it, and they might be doing a number of things wrong, causing all sorts of issues.

 

By all means come up with several more. 😉

'Twere explained that extreme over-stressing of the Bowl affected the area around Ebou Dar AND along (six?) 'spokes' that radiated outward from the hilltop and was what made both halves of the OP strange.

 

Shadar Logoth isn't [wasn't] near Ebou Dar or close enough to one of the radiated spokes to have OP use there affected.

 

The Windfinders for sure knew what they were doing, as much as they could though. It's explained, either in story or via Team Jordan, that the Sea Folk had the BotW at the time of the Breaking. They used it to calm the seas so they could survive on the water/islands. They were in possession of the BotW and used such up until 1000 years before current story time, when the Bowl was lost. 

 

That's what I recall anyhow.

[Scarloc99]

You can try and find reasons for the plot holes, but the clear fact is that Robert Jordan was still very much writing book to book when he started writing the dragon reborn, he was still finding his voice and the voice of his characters and was unsure how many books he would have to finish the story in. 
 

If you look across the first 3 books there are some big inconsistencies, many of these come from the fact he didn’t know how big a series he was writing and so didn’t know how to pace his characters development to have them reach the peak of powers by the end.