I'm not getting into this argument again, though I will say that I don't think Egwene is a psychopath (I'd come closer to agreeing that she's a sociopath than a psychopath, but I think it's borderline there, rather than a certainty) and that she is, undoubtedly, a narcissist. In fact, I think she suffers from Narcissist Personality Disorder, but anyway...

I suggest that the issue isn't Egwene being a narcissist, but RJ not understanding what's wrong with narcissism. He unrealistically gives Egwene traits of narcissism, without following through and making her a menace. Likewise, he unrealistically gives the Aes Sedai and Wise Ones horrible initiation rituals where they strip young women naked and subject them to severe physical and emotional trauma -- and doesn't follow through on the consequences there either. Egwene is tortured by Silviana remember, and they become bffs after. Cadsuane had an Amyrlyn kidnapped and abused in order to make her "stronger" -- and it worked!

It's unfair to blame the characters for this. This is a universe where torturing people is good for them, and narcissism isn't a severe personality disorder that destroys families. If you're desperate for an in-world explanation, blame it on the Bore, and the Dark One having more influence over people's emotions. I think it's just author bias though.

I'd forgotten about Egwene's wedding until this little discussion popped up. I'm normally for blaming author bias when Egwene is unsympathetic. RJ had a massive blind spot on bullying and hazing, and doesn't realize when he makes a character unsympathetic by participating in them. He's not making characters bullies on purpose; he just has really weird standards where if you aren't as bad as Elaida or Semirhage, you're fine.

But Silviana presiding over Egwene and Gawyn's marriage... That's just creepy. Who has a Red Sister perform a marriage? Maybe Egwene and Brandon collectively had a brain fart on it. Egwene can be callous when she has a goal in mind, but she isn't plain mean like that, especially not to Gawyn.

Well, Sanderson did admit to being influenced by Portal so perhaps that's where the plot holes came from.

I thought someone asked him about Portal and he said no? Besides, most of the things he did with gateways are things fans though of over a decade ago.

 

Plus the mystery scepter probably had a buffer, which Vora's wand didn't, so you have Egwene's already massive capacity + an unlimited draw. 

That mace was suppose to be just a little less powerful then the statue Rand melted. 

Logain sensed more power from Rand at Shayol Ghul than at the Cleansing. So overdrawing must be pretty insanely overpowered, even if Rand was overdrawing through Callandor, but I don't think he was using that even.

Egwene could have used a little bit of help from Sorilea and Cadsuane in the "I have to be so TOUGH for people to respect me!" department. You would have thought her training with the Wise Ones would have kept her from being an Aes Sedai Ice Queen, but apparently she just ditched that perspective because it didn't suit her.

 

She's like 3 books behind Rand in terms of character development. I'd thought she had made such progress in The Gathering Storm...then Rand shows up and she antagonizes him for no good reason. Ah, vintage Jordan!

I share the disappointment that Egwene is just innately a perfect leader, while Rand is a disaster and needs to learn so much before he can do it right. But Egwene did have much better teachers than Rand, and a powerful example of what not to be, in Elaida. I don't think she was 3 months behind Rand. She had more to learn surely, in being nicer to her friends. But she just doesn't have the same issues with leadership that Rand did; it's different for her.

I can't think of any other thread for this, since Bela is Egwene's horse!

Do we know why Harriet killed Bela? I can think of a bunch of reasons, the most boring being that Bela was always supposed to die and Brandon missed it. But it's pure speculation. Just wondering if we actually know anything about it yet.

 

Am I the only one who found the whole anti-Balefire thing to be a bit of an ass-pull?

You aren't alone. If it had been written differently, I probably wouldn't have minded.

 

A scene between Egwene and Nynaeve, before everyone split up, with Egwene commenting on the ground looking as though it were breaking apart and the darkness inside and Nynaeve commenting on how it reminded her of Healing men who have been severed would have fit nicely. Nynaeve is the expert on Healing what can't be healed, and Egwene excels at Earth and Fire. If Nyn had explained to her about how a severed channeler has to have something to bridge the gap that was created by the severing, then she would have thought on it (she has always been the type to think out weaves before trying them rather than fly by the seat of her pants the way Nynaeve does) and managed to reason out that the "nothingness" created in the land by balefire had to be filled with something...and that something is probably life/soul/whatever.

I feel the same way, but I would've liked a cuendillar-based inspiration for it, rather than Healing. Cuendillar actually can ignore balefire, and Egwene is extremely talented at making cuendillar, even figuring out most of it herself. Just a sentence or two, either in that scene or in the one where Egwene healed the cracks, about cuendillar weaves, would've helped smooth it over for me a lot.

Also the sa'angreal having no buffer... just mentioning it anywhere sooner than the same page Egwene died on might've done it for me. In a way I appreciate that the death wasn't foreshadowed, since it's appropriate that death be shocking rather than expected. But the mention of the lack of a buffer was so abrupt that it feels like it was added as a last-minute "correction", not worked in organically.

When I was deconstructing Mat & Tylin and deciding whether I care enough to do an analysis, I learned that the first modern romance novel is called The Flame and the Flower.

Is it known whether the methods of seizing saidin and embracing saidar are an intentional homage to this? RJ must've known about the novel, as at one point in his career he was considering writing romance.

WOW the fandom is way sketchier than i thought, if someone actually asked that question to RJ. And i thought i was weird....

The question and answer are still around: http://www.theorylan...tvmain.php?i=55. The question is almost innocent; it's the answer that's sketchy.

But that just goes to prove my point. I understand what the saying is supposed to mean, but I'm say it's a silly saying.

I agree. I think most of the appeal of the saying is in cognitive dissonance. People hear it several times, even dozens of times, without understanding what it meant. When it's finally explained to them, they decide the entire process was worth it, and that the saying is great.

Can a man lead in a circle with 1 man and 2 women? I know a woman can lead, but I don't know whether it's a choice or a requirement.

I really don't understand how you're both so certain. Unless there's something I'm forgetting or simply don't know (in which case, I'll appreciate an explanation over a simple confirmation ), I see no certainty here. First, Moghedien doesn't see anything, so it's always possible that Moridin provided transportation (we know he hears the DO wherever he is, so the coordination would present no difficulty). Second, this is Shayol Ghul we're talking about; for all we know, her prison might've moved to the room next to Moridin's hall, and a door might've appeared to admit her. Third, and BTW I like this option much less, it's possible this is something else SH can do that has nothing to do with shadow-jumping, such as disconnecting FS from the source, making black fire appear, binding and floating Mesaana etc.

I agree, especially with the bolded part. She was being kept in a vacuole, and I always assumed the Dark One just fuzzed space and time to get her into the next room; it's said somewhere that "reality is clay" to him around Shayol Ghul.

I don't like the idea of Myrddraal being able to transport people, because I think it's so powerful that we would have seen it used by now, to free Moghedien without Halima's help, or transport high-ranking Darkfriends or do kidnappings. The horses could be special if they're raised in the pony farm city in the Blight, or if the Myrdrraal has some special bond with them.

If there's a bore drilled in every turning of the wheel,. and man can't fix the DOs prison as well as it was orginally made, does that mean everytime they drill thru the bore they drill through the patch?

Fel has a real argument for why they didn't drill through a patch in the AoL; it would mean that the Creator originally created the prison with a hole in it, and a patch over it.

His argument for how Rand can't fully repair it isn't very good; he just appeals to quasi-religious sentiment, in humility before the Creator. He could just as well say "The Creator made humans. Therefore, humans can't have children." Or have an argument that humans can't channel, can't boil a pot of water, whatever. Besides, Fel's argument is outright fallacious because he concludes only the Creator can fix the prison, but we know 1) the prison gets fixed at least once every time through the Ages, and 2) the Creator doesn't interfere. So Fel is wrong, somewhere.

And if the Patch is the weak spot, as it is not creator made and allows the DO to touch the world, why was there violence and such in the world before they drilled back thru the original patch in AOL, and if they drilled thru that patch, when Lews resealed it, why didn't evil thoughts go away again?

We don't know that the Creator likes peace and happiness, only that he likes making worlds, and is opposed to the Dark One destroying them all. He may feel that because he has to struggle against the Dark One, there's nothing amiss in creating worlds where his creations also have to struggle.

I also dislike WoT's interpretation of gender. When I was younger I was intimidated the author's insistence that these were strong women and anyone who disagreed was a closet sexist. It was also the 1990s, the era of political correctness, where feminism (and almost everything, actually) was more concerned spreading hate and scaring the hell out of people than with social progress. So I was too intimidated to criticize WoT's presentation of gender, even though it was patently absurd.

Now that I'm older, and now that society approaches equality more casually, without the "confrontational" style of political correctness, I'm able to look at WoT with more perspective, and without fear of being burned at the stake for accusations of sexism. I'm outright ashamed that I ever gave the benefit of the doubt to WoT's interpretation of gender: it is horrible. It scares me to think back on the 1990s, and remember how oppressed we were by the omnipresent fear of being accused of bigotry. It's one thing to remember this abstractly, but to have the concrete example of WoT, and actually being afraid to criticize it in spite of its absurdity, makes the memory sharper and more chilling.

I still enjoy the series, but I think it's tainted by sexism, in a similar way that H. P. Lovecraft's works are tainted by racism. Some of it can be written off as "a product of its time", but excuses only go so far, and it takes effort to enjoy the works in spite of this.

in Lord of Chaos when Rand goes to Shadar Logoth with elder Hammon and that, why did Lews Therins voice say I must kill Demandred?

I just reread the scene and couldn't see anything specific that would make the voice think of Demandred. Demandred's betrayal is a big obsession of the voice's though, second only to Ilyena's death, so it makes sense that sometimes the voice would rant about it without provocation.

COT is the only book i haven't reread...

I wasn't able to read it my first two times through the series. Only on my third read through, just now, was I able to read CoT cover-to-cover. It's almost enjoyable now, but it really does feel like a missing chapter, or deleted scenes, not something you have to read.

Oh, and do we know if balefire affects the history of inanimate objects?

This has always felt like a fuzzy area in the mechanics of balefire to me though. Why not just balefire murder weapons, like you said?

Hey, let's all complain about alleged post-count padding by creating even more posts!

Hey Now

What's the deal with the storm Rand *makes* in the Stone of Tear using Callandor? --You know the one that only kills darkspawn-- Can he never use such a storm agian because Callandor is flawed? Maybe with the 2 women 1 man link Cadsuane found out about? Maybe without Callandor at all?  ???

We really have no details about it, except that Moiraine was surprised it was possible. I never expected it to have long-term significance, except that it was a way for Rand to use Callandor for something big, followed immediately by the scene where he tried to bring the dead girl back to life, to contrast Callandor's power with its danger.

What I found particularly interesting is that Ishamael died in T'A'R but it didn't amount to permanent death. It doesn't prove anything because the DO was involved, and we were never sure humans die permanently in T'A'R like wolves do, but it's still interesting.

Could anyone tell me in what book & chapter (if known) was it that Tuon and (Semi) her first Truth Speaker were talking about collaring Rand?

I don't have the book around, but I remembered the phrase "how dangerous you are to him", and Ideal Seek says it's WH Chapter 14.

I had to search for "riding skirt" but it's probably the same thing:

http://www.wwmerc.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?item=CL70-C&type=store&category=4150

It has two legs like pants, but overall is shaped like a skirt.

I was taking it for granted that this was part of his ta'veren status, and that it manifests differently in different ta'veren. But if not that, maybe it's a side-effect of blowing the Horn.

After the white-haired Aes Sedai left, Moiraine gathered her cloak and, muttering to herself, went into the garden. There was something in what Vandene had said that tugged at her mind, but she could not remember what it was. An answer, or a hint to an answer, for a question she had not asked-but she could not bring the question to mind, either.

[...]

"And will you find your answers where you are going?" Vandene asked.

"I may already have found one I did not know I sought. I only hope I am not too late. I will need pen and parchment." She drew Vandene toward the house, leaving Adeleas to deal with the Draghkar.

That passage has bothered me ever since I've first read it. Do any of you know what it was Vandene said that Moiraine is referring to? The last part is probably about the Blacks' involvement, but Moiraine's first comment can't be about that.

This is still a mystery. A lot of people think this is where Moiraine learned balefire. If not that, then it could be a secret related to TG, and the reason Moiraine has to be rescued for Rand to have any chance. Hopefully we find out in ToM.

Well maybe not that. :P But every female AS of sufficient strength joined the Fateful Concord, so she must've been weaker if she didn't join it. And I think we would've heard in all LTT's rantings by now if Ilyena joined it.