I mean I know people who grew up in farming communities, they were at it from the age of 14, as one friend of mine said, you see all that sex happening on the farm all the time and as teenagers you meet up at get togethers and all partner up and just have lots of fun. So from the experience I have 2nd hand knowledge of it all Emonds Field always felt far to sacharine sweet.

The difference is that Nynaeves scene made sense, Perrin is artificially kept by BS from goig to the black tower, the writing of that whole scene is just so clunky that there is no real tension, no real feeling of excitement or relief that Androl gets free, it is all so telegraphed, but also, BS uses a Dream spike twice, very close to each other, in exactly the same way, Perrin, by sheer chance, saves Egwene with it in Tar Valon, and then, again by chance, he saves the black tower, he doesn't turn it off knowing people are trapped, or that it is stopping them escaping, he just turns it off and jumps away because he assumes Slayer will be there to attack him. If perrin had known Slayer would not be there he would not of gone. It all feels so, all I can say is bad, in terms of the writing. I don't know why, it just does.

I am aware of that yes, but the writing of the whole scene is still really artificially done, he relies on the dropping of the spike triggering that moment, Androl had no idea the spike was going to be removed. There are a few moments in the books where BS relies on artifically generating tension through a series of very unlikely events.

Warning massive book spoilers ahead. So in the TV show it is clear that Liandrin has been found out, this means she can go the same route as the books, escaping Tar Valon with a bunch of toys and other black sisters to give the girls an enemy to chase. But, how do we see her arc ending? the way it does in the books the way of Alviarin Or another way? With confirmation that Ingtars reveal is on the cutting room floor I don't see her having a redemption arc.

the boys could have all travelled together following the horn and ended up in Cairhen, Rand then gets split off by Lanfer, Moiraine still finds them both and stabs Lanfer while perrin and matt are chasing to Falme, then Rand catches them up after meeting the AS and freeing the shield. This then matches the books a little closer.

Yep another cool character that got dropped at the end.

Looks are also the defining feature if a man would want to sleep with a women, or marry her, or even dance with her.

My big issue with Androl is how artificial his arc is, it just jars so much with the rest of the writing in the entire series. In particular, Brandon Sandersons need to create artificial tension around the dream spike, Perrin "suddenly closing it", it is just such bad writing that it sticks out a mile compared to the rest of the series. At no point did RJ need to create artificial tension in this way, the way he then also uses Androl as a get out of jail free card for other key moments. As an aside, I also want to say please watch the words you use, the word Spastic is horrifically insulting to people, it is the reason why a charity changed its name in 1994, I have a friend who if they had read that would have been triggered because of childhood bullying. I get it is a word in the english language but it has conetations that go far beyond its actual meaning.

So as I said I didn't agree with all these, but I am also aware I am both male and have 20 years of book reading, I do find myself, when I re read now days, thinking that if 43 year old me picked this series up now then I would think I was reading something written for teenage boys. I also think that we need to take someones opinion (hers) and see that it might have some validity, maybe not all the points, but if she is reading something and at a minimum feeling that it feels very dated (which it does in moments) then maybe it should be accepted that an adaptation will need bringing into the 2020's.

We can all dissect her opinion and read into it because we now the author, have grown up with him in may cases and so see alot more nuance, but, having her point these things out to me the biggest thing I takeaway is that the books really do feel, especially early on, that they have a demographic in mind for who is consuming them, and they are pitched at that demo (nothing wrong with that and probably the publshers as much as RJ himself). I just think it interesting getting an opinion from someone about 10 years younger then me who consumes a lot of books, including fantasy and so has a lot of comparison and her take on the books as a first time reader.

It possibly was the right choice for the episode, I don’t think enough build up had been put in to make that reveal an emotional moment for the audience and it very much would have been lost in the noise of everything else that was going on. Also it makes no logical sense, Ishy wanted the horn in Falme, he was in Falme, why send Ingtar to hunt the horn down?

I mean the Aiel as a people are almost a carbon copy of the freman from dune, Avi is very close to Chani as a character. But the history and how they became Aiel is what stands them out, and brilliantly shows how a culture can organically change over centuries.

That’s your opinion, re reading. Multiple times I can see a lot of the issues she points out, it is a very male centric book in terms of the prose etc.

The constant insistance that "men and women don't know what each other is thinking" the emphasis on the attractiveness of a women, the need to always emphasise "bosoms" very stereotypical ideas on the way men and women operate (men bluster around, women manipulate them to get things done), she actually said that for a fantasy series that is supposed to show women as being a central power in general women in the world still are not able to project real power in the story and instead have to rely on men to do that work for them with just a couple of exceptions, but even then Morgase is shown to have not had any real power when she was younger, having to use who she married to acquire it, and Tuon is presented as a petulant child, who yes is in charge, but is also a bad guy in it, she even said that Aes Sedai show this, an entire group of powerful females forced to restrict what they can do by a man, spending there lives manipulating and controlling because "thats what women are good at". Oh and nakedness, she said alot of female nakedness, which is ok in itself, why should a women getting topless be different to a man, but in her words "the author never bothers describing his male characters in the same way he does his female ones, uou never get a sense of the broadness of chest, or how they present themselves in the same way as you know for every female character if they are large or small breasted, pretty or plain etc. She did like that Ebou Dar at least is a culture where women have real genuine power, but said the fact that it is presented as being "odd" to outsiders emphasis how the rest of Randland is very much stuck in the "women stay at home" trope. She even found examples on characters I hadn't even thought of, Aludra, she asks would she have had as much trouble if she was a male illuminator. I don't agree with all her points, but I can't really disagree when she says the book feels like it was aimed at teenage/early 20's boys in much of the writing. I also can see her points that for all we try and say RJ created a world where women had power, they actually still only have that power largely at the behest of men.

ahh see I look at it slightly differently, yes it is a machine, and the weaves the wind finders use are like a new kind of code, tey don't "superpower it" but they use it in ways that make it behave differently, and that is only possible because of there skill with weather weaves, which are aligned to the kinds of weaves the bowl already creates. Now there ability with the weather may stem from investigating the bowl and the weaves it makes, I can see that in the age of legends something like weather control, once managed, does not really gather much interest i terms of research. If the weather can be turned on and off at will anyway then why look for better ways of doing that. once the breaking happens if the Sea Folk are reliant on the bowl to stay safe that means they can't leave the area of the bowl, so it makes sense they find ways to control the weather in a similar way to the bowl so allowing them to become less and less reliant on it. That then in turn allows them to push the envelope of what it is capable of further and further through the application of new weaves they themselves have learnt.

Jordan’s book was forward thinking for the day it was written in, it is also very dated today. I think people took that Rafe statement and ran with it in the wrong way. Any work adapted is changed to make it more palatable for the viewing audience, lord of the rings added in a whole plot line for a female character at the expense of a male one, added in more about romance because it was based off a book that regardless of its pedigree in some ways has not aged well. A friend read wheel of time for then first time recently after watching the tv show, she commented on how sexist Robert Jordan was in his writing and how glad she is the tv show is not like that. Some things age well, some things don’t and when something hasn’t aged well you change it. I have no doubt had RJ written WOT now then there would be a lot less of men are from mars women are from Venus writing in the relationships and he would have been emboldened to have been more open with the existence of same sex relationships in the world. He took the risks he could in the 90’s and he stuck on lane and played it safe where he felt he needed to. But he did take risks, risks that now days feel like they are behind the times we live in.

RJ established it with long exposition that was really outside of the story. Or POV thoughts, in the visual medium things need to be fed to the audience slower so they have time to land and grow, a viewer can’t go back and re read a paragraph to make sure they understand a thing.

For me this just highlights he was maybe the wrong choice, I would really love to see what a different author would do given access to all the same material at BS.

I don’t look at it quite that way, if you think of a computer someone who understands hardware and software can push the limits of the computer almost to breaking point, getting increased performance, pushing more power through it, programming it to do things differently, The sea folk have developed skills and abilities beyond what even the designers of the bowl could do, they can look at it and use it in ways that where not thought of in order to achieved results that seem miraculous.

Thank you @Jsbrads2 hopefully this clarifies things for you, I am hoping you take the very words of the author as canon. He clearly thought about the bowl of the winds in detail, he also confirms that men could also have channeled into it, which also cancels out many of the post breaking assumptions. If men could not have channeled into it then he would have made that point explicit.

I mean, he had 1600 pages to be creative, he could have focused on finishing Fain off properly, or writing a better Verin send off, or just writing better books, Robert Jordan did not leave him a half finished book, he left him a load of notes and ideas that he had to put together into a story. Now personally I actually like Androl, I like the arc he gets and I enjoyed the use of gateways, I really hope we see the volcano scene. But, we don’t get any real depth to Ansrol, he is a typical BS character, the issue is he looked better then the actually RJ characters that Brandon tried to change.

Min was not wrong, Matt stabbed Rand. In the books there are multiple cases of Min seeing a vision and have no idea what it actually means. In fact one key arc for her is finally, when with Tuon, realising she can use her ability to find the spy. So she warned Matt if you go you will stab Rand, well he did stab Rand.

Tying a shield is not something non black ajah channelers know, the Foresaken have been interacting with the white tower, so you can imagine they would remove some knowledge from “good aes sedai” and keep that knowledge to “bad” aes Sedai.

Or, Liandrin is Black Ajah and has been taught because, you know, they have skills.

lol I really hope this is tongue in cheek lol. Because in no way was GOT season 7 and 8 better then anything on TV let alone it’s own series.