I think people watching the show would think the two are the same - Mazrim Taim and Demandred are always described as having an identical physical appearance. Mazrim Taim's identity as Demandred could be explained by retconning Mazrim Taim's murder by Demandred, who then takes his place - Mazrim Taim was going insane by that time, so he never really understands what is happening to him until Demandred's final attack, and Demandred takes over his appearance with the Saldaean officers and their wives, eaving them effectively cored/pithed and useless for anything other than serving.

I thought it might be worth pointing out that what Berelain does in chasing Perrin is sexual harassment - unwanted sexual attention.

And also pointing out that RJ is simultaneously taking aim at the attitude amongst women that men have no feelings besides their glans penis, and the only permissible emotions for a male are lust and rage. Also the perception that a man enjoys any sexual attention he gets - I got a knife pulled on me once by one older woman for pointing out to her that we were still in the negotiation stage, instead of the getting down and dirty stage. Eventually she cooled down, but every time I hear about "don't be that guy!", I wonder, do women ever hear "Don't be that girl!"

We should compare and contrast the various sexual relations and attractions in WOT, from the ones where one person abuses and manipulates the other, to the ones of mutual attraction and respect.

On 10/6/2021 at 6:57 AM, DojoToad said:

Then one of the crazy trees picks her off Bela and rips her in half.  Now that would be a plot change...

And the next time we see her, she is married to the tree and happily raising a bunch of little monsters ...

We discover, much to our surprise, that the Old Tongue for Daughter-Heir has been mistranslated, and actually means "Hairy Daughter". That's because the Lion Throne is actually a ter'angreal that only works on channelers or when a channeler is nearby, to reverse hair loss and augment hair growth. The first queen Ishara was a weak latent channeler, and was known in family circles as Ishara The Hairy, on account of her hairy chest and carefully shaven beard. Rand is predictably dismayed when he finds out, but Faile explains it can't be all that bad! (Morgase is a weak latent channeler like her ancestress Ishara, but as she has not had many occasions to sit on the Lion Throne of late, Tallanvor is not so dismayed.) ? (If someone as strong as Rahvin or Rand were to sit on the Lion Throne, they would supply enough hair in a week for a month's work for the famed Wigmakers' Street in Caemlyn.)

Ba'alzamon aka Moridin also posing as Shaidar Haran meets Rand, accidentally on purpose, and tells him, "Stanley Tweedle, I am your father!"

Rand replies, "Sod off Baldrick!"

And much to his surprise, on his way to rescue Moiraine, Thom Merrilin is accused by the Aelfinn and Eelfinn of being the Barking Bard, who has been barred from barking - singing, reciting, even meowing are fine, but never barking. Mat starts barking in sympathy. In outrage and almost uncontrollable fury the Aelfinn and Eelfinn throw him, Thom, Moiraine and Noal out ...

And the Great Mortification of the Spirit, when Lanfear discovers that The Dark One is actually The Duck One, Scrooge McDuck, who has been paying to have them remake Randland into a place where he can store all his ill-gotten wealth. They've been mispronouncing his name for over three thousand years!!!

'Fraid so. Am now in Tear, watching Rand and Elayne's Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind ... just before she heads off to Tanchico and he heads off to Rhuidean, and she pens him a couple of very confusing letters ... ?

And then is the Great Reveal where Egwene confesses that her name is actually Omlettewene, much to Gawyn's distress and Galad's outrage - "You lied to us!" (She says her parents tried Scrambled Egwene and Poached Egwene before settling on Omlettewene - but Omlettewene insisted that everybody use Egwene ... as is where is. :) )

18 hours ago, CaddySedai said:

I really love the idea of just hijacking other series’ plots but with our people. LMAO.

 

Rand screws up with a portal stone and meets multiple versions of himself including Trolloc-Rand … who is born of a union between a trolloc and an aiel (but romantic like…don’t be weird) who is named Dnar. But the highlight is when he falls in love with a female version of himself and the Dark One just gives up on destroying and remaking the Pattern in his image and becomes good because its too cute and also a bit naughty!

 

Daww.

 

If you want extra credit…what are some other Rand’s he might meet? Lol

Besides the obvious - he meets up with Azog the Defiler and becomes his drinking buddy - there's Rand and the Monolith, where he becomes the Star Child; Rand the Master Chef - with his control of the One Paua: Abalone if you really want to know, and the True Chutney - he wins it every time ...

Shaidar Haran is prowling around the halls and corridors of the White Tower when he encounters Egwene. Smitten, he falls to his knees and offers her his hand in marriage - and just by-the-way, the hand of Geofram Bornhald, Jaret Byar, and anyone else she might like ... on being refused, he becomes a C&W singer, wandering the villages of Randland singing of the girl that got away .... ?

Well, I'm not much into merch myself, but ... seven seals, perhaps? Or walruses, if they can't manage seals. ? Authentic, natch, and displaying the ancient sign of the Aes Sedai. And a bonsai Avendoraldera, of course, plus Laman's head, likewise bonsai. And the access keys to the choedan kal, authentic ones only, of course! And the Sword that isn't a Sword.

I've just started a re-read, and the thought also occured to me too.

The entire journey through the memory angreal in Rhuidean, seeing what was lost in the Breaking. And the anguish that was suffered.

The point he was getting at in that is, after having set herself up as this terrible, terrible creature who can make people do terrible things to each other, and cause exquisite agony to those who fall into her hands, she has given herself a massive ego.

Along comes Cadsuane, sees what she's up against, treats her like a novice again, a very immature novice into the bargain, and puts her down in front of the people she was hoping to intimidate.

I remember reading something on a set of cards the US Information Service was distributing to Australian schools back in the 70s, about how the authorities would break people who considered themselves very strong outlaws - by tying them up in front of a huge crowd, then blowing tear gas across their faces. A strong defiant individual doesn't seem so strong or defiant when he's got tears pouring down his face.

I've just run a check over some of my books and my copy of EOTW has it but not TDR, and my guess is that it's a printer's mark, for coordinating separated batch printings of page sets. Or in other words, if you're printing a thousand copies of the first five hundred pages, and someone else is printing the next five hundred pages, and so on and so forth, and you're all going to combine the lot to make a book, having something like that is useful. But that's just my guess - I can't say for certain that is it.

I've just started reading Cheyenne Raiders, which has that byline: Robert Jordan writing as Jackson O'Reilly. For a novel set in classical Spaghetti Western territory, it seems to have been written more as a historical novel, judging from the first few pages. He's written a trilogy, The Fallon Blood, The Fallon Pride, and The Fallon Legacy, as Reagan O'Neal. What's the general consensus on those novels? (Considering that the German public have been very well served with Karl May's Winnetou parodies, and likewise the Finns with the Hulkkonen Western parodies, it would not have surprised me if Robert Jordan had parodied the westerns, but he doesn't seem to - he certainly took the mickey out of Conan if my guess is right, with his Conan series. ? )

Nynaeve points out that it's the sign of a personal commitment to fight the Shadow. I expect there would be men who wouldn't wear it, though they would not be many, and even Darkfriends would wear it to blend in. Though in the southlands, it's become interpreted as a warning: "Treat with respect. This man may be volatile".

I doubt Malkieri would've slept with hadori on, except on active duty in the field.

On 1/20/2021 at 12:43 PM, Elder_Haman said:

Tolkien is the OG. He's really the pioneer of the genre, which before that was classified mostly as fairy tales geared toward children. But there's no real question that Harry Potter's popularity eclipsed any of Tolkien's works - the movie adaptations included. 

 

There were some significant authors before Tolkien. Arthur Machen wrote a lot of fantastic literature - mostly short stories or novellas - that would fit into the "dark fantasy" pigeonhole nowadays. Read The Inmost Light or The Great God Pan if you want dark fantasy without 21stC trappings - his trappings are 20thC.. ER Eddison wrote The Worm Ouroboros, the Zimiamvian trilogy comprising Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate, left unfinished at the time of his death. And then there was William Morris, wallpaper designer, socialist, and fantastic fiction writer - read The Wood Behind the World, and The Well at the World's End if you get a chance to - he's very good. And then you have Lord Dunsany, who wrote a lot of short fiction, and some of it very funny, though some very grim as well: The King of Elfland's Daughter is well worth the reading, and likewise The Hoard of the Gibbelins. And of course, there is the one and only James Branch Cabell, a Virginian of all things, and the writer of Jurgen, Figures of Earth, and a number of other works set in the land of Poictesme. Cabell is most definitely not a children's writer - he's a satirist and very funny. And that's only touched the surface.

I was more amused than offended by Nynaeve and Lan. Min and Rand was "fated" which generally means "contrived for the sake of the plot" - however, Robert Jordan had the skill to turn that into a real relationship between two people. I got sick of the Egwene - Galad - Gawyn triangle, and it got worse imho, when it got trimmed down to Egwene and Gawyn. Egwene getting trapped in Gawyn's dream time and again was not the same as real character and relationship building. Mat and Tuon was the obverse of Min and Rand - "fated", but not enough done to draw it out of the "contrived" basket. Mat was a real person - I felt Tuon was more of a cardboard cutout - quick, what are the usual characteristics of a dictator-in-training, so i can complete this assignment-sort of thing. Thom and Moiraine should have been done a lot better - that is one that might have worked in real life if they had talked a lot more, and it would've been a lot more believable if we had seen the initial contact between the two as holding some potential for development - instead, they are diametrically opposed, and we never see any contacts that might indicate they see beyond that initial hostility, except for that one meeting in the Stone when they take each other's measure - and that is all. FWVLIW

That's difficult, and very much depends on the criteria, but based on the assumption that constant re-reading of a book indicates recognition of its qualities, that would have to be:

Lord of the Rings

Wheel of Time

Wizard of Earth-Sea

The Eternal Champion, mostly the Elric and Corum books

and it's a toss-up for fifth place between Kristine Katherine Rusch's Fey and Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn

15 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

LOL

 

 

I nearly died laughing at how horrible that sword play was when it first came out.

 

Richard would be dead, the very first second of combat, jumping with an overhead strike like that.

Yes. where's a nice, friendly mriswith just when you need him? Hint, for those writing stories where people with shields fight those without - a shield was regarded by Homer, for example, as an offensive as well as a defensive weapon, and several people in both armies, Greek or Troian, had their fights severely upset when they got bashed with a shield - not to forget, their faces smashed in ... he was probably writing from observation. And those soldiers weren't very coordinated, going in separately. No wonder they lost out to Richard.

That's probably the best way to see it, instead of some imposition by The Man (if you're one of those lunatics) or something unpleasant that you'll do because it offers a tiny bit of hope that something will improve along the way ...

Veiled and ready to do battle, with my trusty spear/briefcase/whatever in hand, I issue forth ... en garde, world! Touche!!! ?

On 12/15/2020 at 5:35 AM, Elder_Haman said:

The biggest tell is this: I read both series beginning (roughly) when they came out. I finished the entire WoT saga, devouring the books immediately when they were released and spending way too much time wondering what would happen. I have since re-read the entire series once and am on my third listen-through on the audiobooks. Jordan was a genius.

 

I stopped somewhere in the middle of SoT. Hadn't thought about it until someone revived this thread. Didn't remember a single thing about it except that the sexual aspects were disquieting. I'd kinda forgotten Goodkind even existed. 

Well, finding this thread brought a bit of it back to me. I started reading Terry Goodkind with his Debt of Bones novella, and that, looking back, is probably the best piece of work he's ever written. Then I came across Stone of Tears in a public library for-sale bin, and bought it. I was put off on opening the book by the mad creature that haunted Richard and Kahla in the first chapter, though I struggled through to finishing the book. Later I bought the first and second books to try to find if he was worth reading, but decided that he wasn't, and haven't thought about them since. I hated the way he used the "mudmen" - I was born in Papua New Guinea, and Terry Goodkind's "mudmen" are an obvious use-or-abuse of a particular group of Papua New Guineans whose traditional ceremonial costume involves mud masks. But Terry Goodkind makes them mere tokens. If he had had Richard or Kahla find the answer to some problem from the "mudmen" or some such thing, I could've forgiven him. But he didn't - that was mere tokenism. After making my torturous way through another of the series, I decided that the mriswith were the real heroes of the series, not the humans, and concluded that I had much much better books to spend my money on, the WoT series being a prime example of a worthy use of discretionary cash.

On 11/20/2020 at 3:36 PM, Jsbrads2 said:

I think joining the Dragon’s Peace was a mistake. Aviendha thinks the Aiel’s purpose is to be warriors.

But that is why they must join the Dragon's Peace. Their original purpose was to be peaceful and non-aggressive, servants to the Aes Sedai; only the Tinkers still hold to the peaceful part. Aviendha's quite right - the only way to ground their aggressiveness after three thousand years of constant battle against each other, is to give it a purpose, to act as a buffer between the kingdoms and states of Randland and a guarantee of the Peace Treaty's provisions.