as i said, the divina commedia shows people who lived to their 20s, but died shortly later. of course, many people did not die, several got old, but it's for the "mortality was high even among healty adults". this is no longer about sex, just about life expectations in old times. for numbers, i have three pieces of hard data on mortality in ancient times: unfortunately, i cannot provide references, they are numbers i remember reading somewhere but can't place. - in the roman empire, adult life expectancy (that is, average life span AFTER you already survived childhood) was 55 years for men, 40 for women. women died a lot of childbirth - in the late roman empire, people enlisted for 25 years military service. of those that did, roughly half of them survived to be honorably discharged. - in the XVII century, in a small village in the italian mountains (population uncertain, estimated between slightly less than 1000 and a few thousands) there was roughly one murder per year. that's the same level of murders per inhabitant of el salvador at the peak of the gang wars. again, this has no longer anything to do with the sex arguments. just thought it would be interesting to share some data on how frail was human life before the modern age

in the Divina Commedia, Dante meets a lot of his friends and rivals in the afterlife; most of them were around his same age. Dante is 35 in the year he set the divina commedia. those people survived childhood, else they could not have become dante's friends or rivals. and yet, for dante to put them in hell or purgatory, they all died between age 20 and 40. and they were all rich people, they were properly fed and had access to what little medicine was available at the time. It gives a feeling for how frail was human life at the time. something else that no book has ever attempted to capture

but religion was shaped by seeing promiscuous people struck by strange disease. Tribal people also are religious, and those religions we know - practiced by isolated tribed still living in remote jungles today - tend to be more liberal. Because a small isolated tribe doesn't get many disease. Meanwhile, the larger a society is, the more disease can circulate, and all religions of such societies are various levels of prudish. Romans and greeks were more liberal - at least regarding men - but they changed with time. I asked a couple of friends who graduated in history if this is factual, or i'm making a bunch of wild deductive leaps. They said the theory has merit, but they see no way to prove or disprove it for certain. But the fact remains that there are several sex-positive (or close enough to it) tribes, but there has never been any sex-positive major civilization, and that's unlikely to be a coincidence

well, i can't think of any fantasy book hinting at the exhistance of venereal disease. however, even if they had managed to eradicate all such disease in the age of legends, 3000 years of evolution are more than enough time for virus and bacteria to start exploting that wonderful opportunity offered by a large human population with low disease resistance. that said, my suspension of disbelief chafes with big inconsistencies, but can accept small ones. therefore, "randland has no major STD because they were all eradicated in the age of legends" is my new headcanon. thank you for giving me this plausible excuse for enjoying more the show

it reminds me of some philosopher of the XX century who claimed that by freeing society, we made it more oppressive, because people no longer could feel cool by doing something forbidden. Perhaps it's the same kind of argument. i studied that at school. i always thought it was a pile of rubbish. mind you, i get the point of the argument: to a certain mindset, breaking rules feels liberatory. however, i find the whole argument brought to this extreme incredibly immature and irrational. "I want to do X, but X is forbidden, so I'll do X regardless, **** the system!" "ok, we realized there's really nothing wrong in X and so from now on it's allowed" "nooooo how dare you! now doing X is no longer satisfactory!" 🤨🤨🤮 On the other hand, i'm also taking the chance to say that this sex-positive representation of a preindustrial society is absurd. In general, most media representing ancient societies project our values on them, and I know enough history to realize how dumb is the notion. there are two very good reasons all major ancient societies were bigots, and it's not religion or nosy neighboors. they are venereal disease and unwanted pregnancies. despite near-constant warfare and rampant crime, disease was still the main cause of death. and they had no way to prevent it, and only herbal remedies of limited effectiveness. being promiscuous back at the time was only a short step from suicidal. pregnancies were almost equally dangerous, because there was no welfare state - not because they were evil, but because society was always a bad harvest away from starvation and couldn't spare many resources - so good luck finding money to raise the chold. good luck finding a husband that would pay your bills and accept someone else's child into it. however, explaining all that to the uneducated ancient farmer is complicated. much simpler to teach them that sex outside marriage is bad, and you should not question it. or maybe they saw that the promiscuous ones got sick more often, and saw that as divine punishment. or maybe some civilization remained sex-positive despite the cost, but then it got invaded by a sex-negative civilization that won because they had more soldiers, having lesser mortality rates from venereal disease... regardless, it became part of common morality without a reason. today, condoms and modern medicine take care of both, so we can afford to be relaxed about sex. it's a luxury of our times. just like the freedom to choose your job is a luxury that we have thanks to public schools, which we have because we have enough surplus food to pay a bunch of people to do nothing but teach all the kids a bunch of skills they won't use, just so they will be able to pick one they want to use. and we tend to think of those as universal inalienable rights, that are good and just simply because, and we forget that we must pay a cost to have those right, a cost that is small for us, but that an ancient society could never have afforded. long story short, the aes sedai, with their healing, could afford to be carefree about sex. the people of tar valon, who could take a short walk to get healed by an aes sedai, could afford to be carefree. everyone else would expose himself to mortal risk every time they exchanged bodily fluids with someone else. they should be bigots, for the very practical reason that bigotry raises your life expectancy. wisdoms can do wonders with herbs, but there are limits. and most places don't have good wisdoms anyway. seeing a preindustrial society with a sex-positive attitude is like seeing an ancient roman filming the gladiatorial games with a smartphone. not that robert jordan was much better. he modeled the gender dinamics around those of the 80s in rural america.

i've seen somebody theorize that the girls had been unconsciously healing their mother of her hangovers for a while, so healing was their wilder trick. while not very satisfying, it is the best explanation to keep some sense in what happened.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/04/19/an-update-on-the-wheel-of-time-season-4-on-amazon-prime-video/ An article saying S4 is likely to be greenlit, based on interviews, and generally praising the show

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/04/19/an-update-on-the-wheel-of-time-season-4-on-amazon-prime-video/ I found this article saying that, based on interviews with the cast, S4 is likely. Not sure how reliable it is, though. Those involved had always been optimistic

why would egwene need a mentor to teach her politics? egwene will be inexplicably good at politics from the first day she's thrown into the role. just like she's been inexplicably good at everything else. i don't blame the script for this. it always happens in movies, and in most books. the only one who really worked hard for his skill is lan

while i disagree that any time someone is wounded and then healed it's a fake-out death, it's just combat with healing, i'd specifically point out that lanfear was already established in S2 to be able to survive a slit throat, so it doesn't count. also, i don't remember dain nor maksim getting wounded at all

yes, my idea too. still, they didn't feel like they were fighting with the kind of power that could level cities. instead of melting the whole area, they were tossing each other around. softly enough for it to be survivable

the reasons for this is simply that they cut some plots for timing reasons. for example, the whole plot with siuan surviving the stilling, escaping, rejoining the salidar aes sedai and everything, it was a lot of story to tell, but the bigger story doesn't need it. so, siuan's plot is excised, and the character is disposed of as unnecessary. same with loial. as they must cut a lot of secondary plots to fit the show in the allotted time, so a lot of secondary characters must similarly be cut. literally, in siuan's case. meanwhile, other characters are taking some of those plots up. maksim keeps living because, clearly, they still have something to do with him.

after being very happy with all the season, here i am... less happy. actually, in keeping with the other seasons, the ending is the weakest part. this is still better than the endings of the previous seasons, so S3 is still a step up compared to the other two. and there were good things. i am very happy with mat. i knew the show had very little time for him, so i thought they'd either skip the portals anyway, or they would make a rushed, bad job of it. while the whole episode felt rushed, the portal was great. in a limited time, they managed to convey all the relevant stuff. including the whole hanging. they still didn't give him the luck, yet. on the other hand, i was deeply disappointed by liandrin and nynaeve. really? throw her in the water and leave her? pierce holes in the skull of the extras, but throw around the main characters and leave them? this was classic bond villain stuff. plus, we saw very little of balefire. and it was really poorly aimed when used against the main characters. we never see what happens with thom merrilin (again; they could make it his whole thing, every season ending with him left to uncertain fate). all in all, the whole tanchico part felt rushed. alcair dal was mismanaged. in the books, rand revealed what he saw in rhuidean, couladin also revealed what he thought he should have seen, and the wise ones and clan chiefs confirm that rand is the real car'a'carn. makes perfect sense. here, rand says what he saw. couladin makes vague promises. then rand makes rain. then the aiel kneel. so all you needed to do was channel some rain to be acclaimed? on the other hand, good that they brought down those army numbers to more realistic levels. one hundred thousand aiel warriors is already a lot. the worst part was moiraine. with such a powerful sa'angreal, she should have been able to easily overpower lanfear. it never felt like she was actually using such a strong weapon. had they shown lanfear cutting her weaves while remarking that it doesn't matter how strong moiraine is if she can't land a hit would have made the fight more believable. but hey, good thing we're told moiraine has to die. she may actually die of being impaled through the torso, the first instance in the whole tv show. the stuff in the tower was great. siuan sanche's last speech was moving. i was expecting she'd be killed for real in this retelling.

balefire. alcair dal. a likely showdown between lanfear and moiraine. good potential

i am not complaining. i was answering to another post claiming that wounding alanna to remove her from battle was a contrived coincidence and therefore bad writing, to which i replied that every plot in every story is a bunch of contrived coincidences

really, pretty much everything in writing is a contrived coincidence to allow the plot to unfold just right. sometimes, it's masked better than other times. for example, rand and moiraine are the most powerful group, and they are facing sammael and lanfear, the strongest foes. the girls are in tanchico, where they will face moghedien, who's just coincidentally at the same power of nynaeve. and perrin, without any channeler, will face trollocs without channelers. the main characters and the villains are split in such a way that it gives three very balanced fights. what are the odds? if a single dreadlord had come to the two rivers, the battle would have been very short. if egwene or nynave had, the battle also would have been short. of course, the book has the concept of ta'veren (i really blame rafe for not having used the word anymore after season 1; in season 1 it wasn't properly explained, and now that it would make sense, it's not used). how convenient that mat got a wall dropped on him when he needed to be separated by the other characters. how doubly convenient that he got separated from anyone who could travel. three books of his plot would have been avoided had any of the main character remained with him - or even had anyone bothered to contact him in tel'aran'riod. stories are built like that. sure, they could have had alanna pummel the trollocs for a good hour, then collapse from exhaustion and let the muggles defend. wouldn't it have been equally contrived that there were just enough trollocs to exhaust alanna, with those remaining being just enough to seriously endanger the villagers - but not enough to just roll over them? what i actually blame is the show's lack of consistency with the power. in the books, it was clearly stated that while verin and alanna could kill dozens, they weren't strong enough to hold on their own. in the show, we don't have any clear reference for that.

yes, so what? people who die in the battle still die. whatever objective people are trying to achieve stay achieved. from my perspective, what you say only makes sense if the only purpose of battle was to wound people and watch them die of their wounds. which it isn't. again, the point is not to raise the stakes. again, you seem to reiterate the impression that the sole purpose of wounding a character in battle is to make the audience fear they are about to die. it's your expectation on the purpose of wounding that causes you distress. you see alanna impaled, you think "oh, they are trying to make us think that she'll die again! of course she won't, enough of it" i see alanna impaled, and I think "oh, they are removing her from the rest of the battle because she was too powerful. that works". though they did fool me a bit when they showed the sisters being unable to channel. but that got nothing to do with the impalement. also compare loial death scene and alanna's. I can't describe it, but something in the atmosphere of the scene seem very distinct. the alanna scenes didn't feel like death scenes, and i wasn't expecting one. the loial scene did seem a death scene, and i'm not expecting him to come back - indeed, as others pointed out, he did very little for the future plot. of course, it may just be that i am the biased one, and my own perception is skewed by "they can't possibly believe the viewers can be such morons, so they must have some other reason". or perhaps i'm already used to games with healing spells, so i'm already used to the idea that grievous wounds are only that much dangerous, and they will disappear as soon as it's the healer's turn. regardless, it all comes down to the intent you ascribe to the scene

Many people have voiced this complaint, and frankly i don't get it. I mean, yes, i absolutely agree with everything written in the quoted paragraph. I just don't see it being a bad thing. Yes, in this world people can get healed from near death. Yes, this changes how a fight goes, at least when channelers are involved. You just have to accept that this world has different rules and expectations. Saying that healing cheapens the impact of wounds is like complaining, in star wars, that luke getting a mechanical hand cheapens the impact of him being made a cripple. Now whenever i see someone losing an arm, i expect them to be fine a few days later. Yes, the story works like that, and you can write the story around it.

Yes, i appreciated that. Though to be honest, hollywood has set my bar pretty low. Generally armies defend a castle by charging out of the main door, and they fight in front of the stakes so that someone can be pushed backwards and impaled. Anything better than that, i count at least a decent showing of the battle. Random things i loved: the way bain and chiad smiled before defending the waygate. They clearly love that they get to fight. Aiel are so unhinged. The tuata'an quoting the line about burying the dead and moving on, what else is there?

i have to point out, what happens to alanna is actually the realistic reaction. unless the arrow cuts some major blood vessel, it took hours or days for a gut wound to kill before modern medicine - but it would kill almost certainly. an arrow to the chest could take hours, and depending on where it hits exactly, it may even be survivable. regardless, it rarely kills fast. it's the people that go down like sacks of potatoes that are not realistic. but showing the realistic version of a battlefield littered with wounded beyond saving would be too harsh

I loved this episode, almost as much as rhuidean. It was strong, emotionsl, and it conveyed a good story. I can see why they made the changes from the books. My only regret is that they never mentiined ta'veren once. As for alanna, i doubt they impaled her again to create tension or a fake death. I think they simply had to remove her from combat, else she could have held the pass all by herself. I loved daisy congar. Her time was too brief

the biggest mistake people make in analyzing data is to draw a line and assume it will keep going forever to infinity. or, in this case, to zero. there will always be people interested in forums, and there will also be a niche for forums. the number is shrinking right now, but it won't go to zero, it's bound to stabilize eventually. some forums are abandoned while others are born, but the general concept of "forum" will stay. or be replaced by something close enough as to make no difference. that said, i agree that we can't extract meaningful statistical information from the number of posts in this forum

Just because more people use something else, it doesn't mean something is dieing. A great thing about the internet is that there is room for niche interests. I would never be able to have a discussion on a fantasy book with people i know in person. So, there is also room for those few who prefer forums

That goes for every character in every fiction. It's called plot. Some works of fiction mask it better than others. Some have a perfect in-world justification for it and turn it into a plot point

the next cold open will be a flashback to S1E3, when nynaeve stabs the trolloc inside the pool. it shows the trolloc getting healed. darkfriends ambush mat and stab him, leaving him for dead. "wait, what are we doing? everyone who got stabbed got healed just fine" "by the great lord, you're right. what do we do then?" "in episode 5, when they arrived in tanchico, they passed by a few hanged people. none of them was healed at the last second" "so, a 100% success rate as far as this show is concerned! you're a genius, let's do it" and that's how mat got hanged