Ta'veren-ness bugs me

[muddasssir]

I mean right in the second book when HoH came that guy with justice what was his name Artur hawkwing say it in his face we have fought a million times with each other sometimes on the same side and sometimes on the opposing side do you need any other proof that other side can have taverens.

 

Warning this is full of spoilers so watch out and stay out of my way or else............

 

 

One last thing I do not know you have reached the point in series or not, but we know it for a fact that DO is outside the pattern. So Pattern cannot effect any of his doings. There you go you have a villain that is so scarily mighty that pattern cannot stand a chance against him. Taveren are the self defence mechanism of the pattern. Do is outside and he can do pretty much what he please with pattern to the extent of bringing back dead people and making changes in the weaving of pattern we see the entire pattern unravelling and it just leaves the taveren as the focus points trying to hold the pattern together. There you go It is not just a plot ploy so to speak it has deep meanings in the story and they come out in later books. I am repeating myself we have a villain that is outside the pattern and he can effect the weaving of pattern. Taveren is the Pattern's way of fighting back against that enemy. Now how hard is that?

[TootThatHorn]

You are making yourself clear just fine, but the problem is so is everyone else and it's not getting through. Also, I'm getting the impression that you are thinking of the Pattern first as something sentient, which it's not, it's more like a machine if you ask me. Second, it also sounds like you are considering the pattern to have already been woven, which it's not; to me it runs more along the same time as the characters, weaving as they live there lives.

 

Now as far as the taveren thing, think of it like this. If there were no taveren and no heroes, but there were still darkfriends and forsaken, the pattern would be screwed and the Dark One would have already won by now. Now since you gotta have heroes, taveren are spun out to try to balance the dark forces. There is nothing special or complicated going on here, you simply have an informal title for your hero, just like so many other series that have wizards or god-emperors or whatever. There is ABSOLUTELY nothing special going on here.

 

Also by now you have already run in to several instances where the taveren boys have been hurt, or near death, or possessed, or surrounded by the wrong people, or literally dead. Their lives are constantly filled with peril even up to the part you've read to.

 

Taveren is nothing special other than a device actually, for once, being named in a series to explain heroes surviving rather than just assuming that they got lucky and got out just in the nick of time by some miraculous intervention. Also it gets some interesting side effects that get thrown in that frankly I enjoy reading. Also, it also makes them magnets for things like the bubbles of evil, which is no way a blessing.

 

In short, I don't see it as something that should be an issue, and it's been explained so many different ways that I can't imagine it not making sense by now, so you may just have a huge want to not like it, which if that's the case, you're missing out.

 

 

The good guys always win

 

[muddasssir]

No @ TtH I am not trying to think of Pattern as a sentient being. Let me correct it is the wheel that weaves the pattern and therefore wheel weaves as wheel wills SO let me correct and say that taveren are the fail safe mechanism weaved in by the wheel to protect the pattern from unraveling.

[TootThatHorn]

@Muddasssir That was directed at OP not you.

[Ferdawoon]

Part of me want to say: Successful troll is successful..

 

Anyway, to the topic. 

As have been said, the Pattern, nor the Wheel, are not sentient.

RJ have said that the Ages are not complete copies each time. That the tapestries of the same age over many cycles might look the same from afar but if you get closer you see a lot of differences. Maybe the next time around it will be the women who go mad and not the men?

 

The general idea is there, the painting is made with a very crude brush. It's a bit like those childrens coloring books. The pattern have a basic outline of how the tapestry should look, but it might get the colors all wrong, Like the Pattern have been watching too many Picasso paintings, it know the parts a human have, but not really got the grasp of how they all fit together. It is like a CAD-machine with just the general shape programmed. All the details are left out. As long as the outer edges are not affected, or seriously going to be affected, the Pattern have no reason to react.

 

It is like a bacteria. Once the body sense something is wrong, events are set in motion to try to prevent (further) damage and try to isolate and destroy the problem. The action by the body is in proportion to the danger percieved. Minor danger might mean no action at all while an aggressive virus might cause the body to launch everything it have.

As long as the bacteria work within the rules of the body and dont make too much of a fuss, maybe even working in symbiosis towards a common goal (bacteria get nutrients while the body get something that the bacteria can produce, such as vitamins) then no action is taken. 

 

 

Yes, some events are pre-destinied.

It is generally agreed that the Fight over Falme is one event that the Pattern had pretty much hardcoded into it. It actively tried to nudge and push so that the event happened. Not sure when this happens so Spoiler-tagging it.

 

There is also a balance. Always a balance. If there is Creation there is Destruction. If there is Good there must be Bad. If there is Light, there must be Dark. If there is Yin, there must be Yang. If there is Saidin, there must be Saidar. If there is the Creator, there must be the Dark One.

The pattern try to uphold the balance. Some events in the Pattern may tilt that balance, such as the Dark One suddenly getting more influence, and so the Pattern add more influential threads to try to get everything back on track. Those threads may still get cut off in advance, or end up making the whole thing even worse, so the Pattern might try to make those important threads have less of an effect (remove their ta'vereness) and grant it to another thread instead.

 

It is like driving a car with auto-pilot or a GPS. The car just goes straight ahead and follow the road. It might sway back and forth a bit, but it still stay on the road. Sometimes a gentle nudge is required to stay on track but sometimes the road might end in a cliff and more drastic measures are required. The algorithms in the autopilot then fire off some extra events to prevent you from falling down the hole. You are still free to keep the road on track as ususal, but with dire consequences. The autopilot might notice something a long time in advance and nudge you to take another way but you say "Meeeh, this looks perfectly safe!" and 5 minutes later you get stuck in a traffic jam, or fall down that cliff.

 

Ta'vereness is a bit like playing war games. You can play out your big tank, and it might seem invincible and it might seem like you are sure to win. But if it get overrun, or if it gets ambushed, it is gone. Then you are back to building a new supertank, but it might all be too late and the war is lost.