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

The books make it clear times and again that the a'dam is unescapable. and yet, just because you can't take it off, it doesn't mean you are completely helpless. premise: you are a prisoner. you will be tortured, abused and broken into killing your former friends. this is a fate worse than death. therefore, death counts as victory for you. if you die, it's a good outcome; you are not expecting to come out of this alive anyway. whatever damage you can deal to the seanchan before you die, that's just bonus. premise 2: an experienced channeler could just control your flows, like nynaeve did with moggy. however, the sul'dam are anything but experienced. they do not know they can do that, just like they don't know they can channel. you have that little advantage. with those premises, let's see a few things you could do to foil the empress 1) the martial artist You cannot use weapons while wearing an a'dam. egwene was unable to touch the brooch of water after she thought of hitting renna with it. But! Book canon establishes that you can still use your bare hands. when egwene was first collared, she punched her sul'dam, and nothing stopped the punch. sure, she was disabled by the pain afterwards, but she could deliver one good punch in the process. it's perfectly possible to kill a person with a single well-delivered punch, especially if they are helpless because they are not expecting it. i was thinking a solid blow on the occiput, it's the most frail part of the skull and a strong blow there often results in permanent damage. Sure, if you kill - or even seriously wound - your sul'dam you are going to die of feedback pain, but we established in the premise that's exactly what you wanted. you mercy-killed yourself, you denied the empire a powerful resource, and you managed to bring a hard-to-replace sul'dam with you. you can also try to kill other damane, they are very valuable resources - and whether they are tortured prisoners or willing soldiers, they are legitimate targets in both cases, if for different reasons. killing a damane should be easy, if you can still throw punches and you don't get pain feedback. main disadvantage is, for something like that they are likely to cut your hands, which would prevent you from further exploiting this technique and would make your life even more miserable than it already was. The main disadvantage is that killing someone with a single blow is hard, even if you can deliver a good surprise punch on the occiput, especially if you are a tiny woman. 2) friendly fire go along with enslavement. don't resist. play pretend. if the sul'dam sense that you are not truly tamed, just say "[name] doesn't want to be punished", which is pretty realistic anyway. try to get them with the guard down. eventually, you'll be used in combat. you are expected to channel letal blows in that case. when you form a deadly wave, instead of throwing, release it at your feet. the sul'dam can sense what you do, and can stop you. however, especially if you've been fighting normally for a while, they are extremely, extremely unlikely to be expecting something like that. people have limited concentration, and they tend to get distracted if involved in a monotonous routine. you only need your sul'dam to drop her guard for a second. the disadantage is that it's unreliable. it requires your sul'dam to not be expecting a suicide move, that she'll be too slow to react. and, if you try it first, it's more likely the sul'dam will be attentive; you will have to kill some of your former companions at first. But if it succeeds, you could take upwards to a dozen damane with you, dealing a major blow to the empire. 3) the stoic Just refuse to do anything. they will punish you; keep refusing. by tuon's accounting, ryma was about to die before she was broken by playing good cop. it means it's possible to just deny your captors, and ryma would most likely have died had she not found tuon. it requires a ludicrous amount of willpower, though, if even egwene couldn't manage it. 4) the least amount necessary to kill While it's normally accepted that you can't channel at all while wearing the a'dam, you actually can. during one of her chapters, egwene was doing just that. and she could channel only a tiny tiny trickle of power, and she was getting nauseated, and she could not open the a'dam. but she could still move small objects. and it doesn't really take all that much strenght to kill a person with a needle through the eye or ear canal. make a needle of air, you may just be able to kill a sul'dam that way. or at least to gouge out her eyes, which would still mark her a casualty for the empire. it's even possible you could puncture her eyes, then threaten to kill her if she doesn't release you. if she folds to your demands, you may even potentially survive and escape, but better to not get your hopes up. probably they will find you standing before a dead sul'dam. still, even if they mutilate you, they have no way to prevent you from doing the same again, so they will likely have to execute you anyway. and you may also manage to kill other damane, which are much more valuable resources than sul'dam. in the end, there are several ways to defeat the a'dam. sure, they all require a very strong willpower, and most are chancy. and they all will see you dead in the end. but really, you've been captured and collared, what do you have to lose at this point?