Super Spoiler PoV

[Sharaman]

In rereading some backstory in preperation for ToM, I came across this nugget on Encycopedia-WoT inthe section for the EoTW: Prologue section.

 

He calls for Ilyena, his wife, not noticing her dead body on the ground. A man appears, "the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a man."¹

 

If you follow the footnote:

 

 

Notes

1. At <A href="http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/books/guide/index.html#3">signings Robert Jordan confirmed that this is Traveling using the True Power.

 

Yet in the Graendal POV in the ToM Prologue, Graendal used the TP to travel and it used a gateway like she would with Saidar. Is this a mistake on BS part? Or something else?

 

She didn't- she let the bird go, struggled to embrace saidar and then used a saidar Gateway

[Rcurran]

Most of this sort of mistake (dark one, light etc) is the fault of the editor, ultimately. Brandon is a straight up regular guy, tweet at him and he'll tweet back. Here's an example of a BWS mistake - in Warbreaker he said something about walking on cobbles being easier than a flat surface, which it isn't - I told him about how cobbles in Edinburgh where I live were designed to help horses walk up hills and keep grip going down them, while walking on them is a chore for us humans. He tweeter back at me about it, happy to have had the input.

 

That's the sort of thing an editor wouldn't normally pay too much attention to when compared with terminology etc. It really makes me wonder what Maria is there for and if Harriet's main job as editor is to veto chapter arrangments.

[Bob T Dwarf]

 

Mat and Avienda are alive because Rahvin didn't exist when he was supposed to kill them. By that logic, Graendal is suppose to be dead because the palace didn't exists when it was supposed to hold her.

 

That's the jist of my argument for Graendal "having" to have been killed. Yet, as we see in the Prologue, Graendal was not killed. So, there is some kind of huge mess-up going on here.

 

Rand hit Natrin's Barrow and everything and everyone in it with enough balefire to remove it from the Pattern before Doofusface got Compelled, therefore, based on how Mat Aviendha, and Asmodean survived in Caemlyn, Graendal, because she is in the fortress at the time it and everything and everyone in it gets destroyed, has to have died.

 

 

For exemple, Nyneave was moved a few hundreds of feet behind because she was in the boat when it was balefired. So the boat and its content were moved. Graendal wasn't in her palace, so she didn't "move" (no the palace doesn't move but you get my point).

 

This kind of proves my point. Nyneave wasn't hit by balefire but her position was altered because of something in her past that wasn't there when it was suppose to. The fact that she was "in" the boat is irrelevant. It's not like the pattern is some kind of computer game that redefine people who board boats as part of the boat.

 

And Nynaeve also survives because the boat was NOT hit with enough balefire to destroy it and everyone in it completely, unlike Natrin's Barrow. Only enough of the boat got destroyed in the past to cause it's location and state of seaworthiness to change.

 

Balefire makes everyone's head hurt. Nobody but Jordan really understands how it is supposed to work and he isn't here to straighten this mess out. We are now stuck with how the whole Graendal thing has been written, but I still have to hold that her survival violates what Jordan himself previously wrote concerning how balefire works.

[Guest Lisa Campbell]

nnokwoodeye, on 07 October 2010 - 03:36 AM, said:

 

This kind of proves my point. Nyneave wasn't hit by balefire but her position was altered because of something in her past that wasn't there when it was suppose to. The fact that she was "in" the boat is irrelevant. It's not like the pattern is some kind of computer game that redefine people who board boats as part of the boat.

 

 

 

And Nynaeve also survives because the boat was NOT hit with enough balefire to destroy it and everyone in it completely, unlike Natrin's Barrow. Only enough of the boat got destroyed in the past to cause it's location and state of seaworthiness to change.

 

The boat Nynaeve was on was hit with balefire and so were the rowers. The boat moved because the last few minutes the rowers had rowed was "rewound". The boat obviously wasn't completely destroyed because boats of that era were not made of one piece.

[Aquarius]

Balefire makes everyone's head hurt. Nobody but Jordan really understands how it is supposed to work and he isn't here to straighten this mess out. We are now stuck with how the whole Graendal thing has been written, but I still have to hold that her survival violates what Jordan himself previously wrote concerning how balefire works.

I read a pretty funny article a few days back about all the inconsistencies in the "Back to the future" movies, they were pretty uge with some I hadn't seen when I last saw the movies (15 years ago). So I guess we can live with a little trickery on the authors part and still fall in love with the whole thing.

[Bob T Dwarf]

Balefire makes everyone's head hurt. Nobody but Jordan really understands how it is supposed to work and he isn't here to straighten this mess out. We are now stuck with how the whole Graendal thing has been written, but I still have to hold that her survival violates what Jordan himself previously wrote concerning how balefire works.

I read a pretty funny article a few days back about all the inconsistencies in the "Back to the future" movies, they were pretty uge with some I hadn't seen when I last saw the movies (15 years ago). So I guess we can live with a little trickery on the authors part and still fall in love with the whole thing.

 

I could live with "ordinary" errors, a minor character out-of-place, Graendal saying "Dark One", that sort of thing, but balefire is a really major plot device. So far it's the only known way for any character to be completely removed from play.

 

What Rand did altered the past such that Doofusface never got Compelled. In fact, since Doofusface still continued to exist, balefire had to have destroyed Natrin's Barrow at a point-in-time before Doofusface knocked on the front door. If he was never able to enter, Graendal was never able to learn that she was in danger and never able to take any precautions.

 

In fact, in a case where an event can be altered before it happens, the is no such thing as a precaution; precautions become impossible.

[Lironah]

For exemple, Nyneave was moved a few hundreds of feet behind because she was in the boat when it was balefired. So the boat and its content were moved. Graendal wasn't in her palace, so she didn't "move" (no the palace doesn't move but you get my point).

 

This kind of proves my point. Nyneave wasn't hit by balefire but her position was altered because of something in her past that wasn't there when it was suppose to. The fact that she was "in" the boat is irrelevant. It's not like the pattern is some kind of computer game that redefine people who board boats as part of the boat.

 

 

Correction. Position of Boat was altered. Peace. If Rand had somehow managed to move the land on which palace was standing or balefired the ground itself, you have a point.

 

Ok. Gotta clear this up, guys.

 

The boat did not move backwards in the water because it was balefired. The boat moved because the rowers were balefired. Boat, water it was in, palace - all seemed to end up existing up until the point they were balefired. Probably because they don't have a soul.

[Bob T Dwarf]

 

Ok. Gotta clear this up, guys.

 

The boat did not move backwards in the water because it was balefired. The boat moved because the rowers were balefired. Boat, water it was in, palace - all seemed to end up existing up until the point they were balefired. Probably because they don't have a soul.

 

No. The boat changed position because the balefire cut it in half in the past. The rowers being in the part of he boat that got destroyed is irrelevant. The boat's progress would stop as soon as it got cut in half.

 

Balefire burns threads backwards in time. Everything in WOT has a thread. People, trees, rocks, dirt, the sky, and boats and palaces, too.

 

For further proof see the Darkhounds that Rand balefired in Rhuidean. Darkhounds have no soul, yet the damage done to both the door and to Mat's arm was reduced due to Rand's balefire having killed the Darkhounds before most of that damage was caused.