i have to say, i always love the good-natured way ishamael says he's called betrayer of hope. the juxtaposition between his look as nice guy and his mannerism of nice guy and what he actually says is both hilarious and frightening

True. The best book-friendly explanation would be that the wall is a terangreal

I agree it could have been better. There was no need for the BA to get up and calmly walk to the middle, as if for a ball, before channeling. A quick weave while seated would have worked better for surprise. Though, thinking of it, the very BA didn't knew each other identities, so moving to the middle could have been a way to identify each other and avoid friendly fire. Yes, the way siuan and the others were knocked out, there was no reason to not finish them; better put them under a pile of rubble, like nynaeve. However, most sitters reacting poorly to the fight was absolutely justified. Both because most of them haven't fought with the power since their final test a century before, and because of how surprising it was to have not one, but five black sitters. Ultimately, what could have been better were small details. There may be practivlcal filming reasons they did it like that, too

You are right that men with the spark don't get old. But you are miscalculating the demographics of a preindustrial society, even one with oddly effective healtcare. If you remove children, as they are too young to have manifested channeling, those between 14 to 21 years of age may well be over 20% of the total, maybe even 30%. Anyway, the greater point is that the reds we see are sitting in tar valon, not chasing channelers. This strongly sabotages their effectiveness. The tower divisions also sabotage it; i wouldn't put it past the blue ajah to not share news of male channelers from their own spy network simply to make the reds look bad Regarding dumai wells, the wise ones are also mot accustomed to fighting with the power. And they were far, which reduces their effectiveness. Regarding the raid on tar valon, it was a small military unit surrounded and outnumbered in enemy territory; a well organized military would have rebuffed them hard. Oh, and i absolutely agree your main point that the respective power and competence are bent for story sake. It's happened already. Some of that, like nynaeve struggling with her block, is in the book. Just saying that for the specific scene, aes sedai giving a poor show is not unexpected

i don't know, the books don't clarify it either. but cadsuane alone found more male channelers than any four red combined. this means she was doing something right, and the rest of the reds were not. as a rule of thumb, i think staying in the tower playing politics wasn't helping in their goal. the tower was viewed as such, yes, but how much was it reality? we're talking the same tower that let everyone think they let malkier fall to hide the fact that they were unable to help. also, their suckiness has to be put in perspective. the tower was immensely strong, because it held one thousand channelers. it had monopoly on channelers. a single channeler can destroy hundreds on a battlefield, can reach kings and queens. so the tower was really the biggest power on randland, but only because of the lack of competition. which also ties into the tower suckiness. they never had to try. they were so strong, being the only ones with the power, that they never needed to use the power. the threat was enough. so they stopped using the power for anything practical, and they lost training and capacity for it. no aes sedai was trained for fighting over channelers, because there was nobody else for them to fight - except some hapless male channeler, completely untrained, half mad, and outnumbered five to one. they went into decay, but since they were still so strong that nobody could challenge them, they never had to reform. and the black ajah was sabotaging them all the time, of course.

dude, if you didn't understand how much the tower sucks and is useless, you haven't read the same books as i did. yes, the aes sedai were damn useless, and their whole institution made channeling useless. the reds were supposed to chase channeling men, but were actually doing a really poor job of it, finding only a handful. it's not like they moved out of the tower to actually go searching. the grees were supposedly the battle ajah, trained in battle... except we never saw any of them training for battle, ever. you'd think they may want to send a contingent to the borderlands, to help battle the trollocs. no, they were stuck in the tower playing politics. the yellow were devoted to healing with the power. now, if i were them, i'd send a handful of yellow sisters in every major city in the world to actually heal people. you can build a lot of goodwill towards the white tower, and you can screen the people passing in your hospital for potential novices. no, they also holed themselves up in their tower. i suppose they were healing the people of tar valon, at least. the grey were diplomats. they may have done some good, but it doesn't take the power to do that. they may as well have put someone else to the task. the blue were politicians, even more so than the other ajahs. that also doesn't take the power, so they may have put someone else to the task. the white were philosophers. again, no need for the power. the brown were scientists. doesn't take the power, though extended lifetime may help you get more experience in the field. and in fact, the moment some channelers actually trained in battle showed up - be them damane or asha'men - most aes sedai crumpled like wet tissue paper. even the so-called battle ajah. exceptions are women like moiraine or cadsuane that went adventuring and got some actual combat experience. additionally, the whole way of training is extremely toxic; i couldn't think of any better way to prepare potential recruits for the black ajah than tearing your girls away from their families, putting them in a harsh unfamiliar place, stripping them of friendships and having ambition and climbing the hierarchies as the only thing that matters. no wonder 20%+ of them turned to the shadow. yes, the whole organization of the tower sucked mightily. it had lost its purpose. most aes sedai had no use for the power, those that did use the power did so poorly. that's the actual books, and the show is being faithful to them. well, ok, most book black ajah were equally poor at battle than their counterparts. anyway, your complains about the white tower are perfectly legitimate, but they aren't legitimate attacks on the tv show, because the books portrays the tower so. it sucks because robert jordan wanted it to suck.

No, it was mentioned that the meeting was called with the minimum legal number of 11. So it was 4 against 7, and with a couple aes sedai killed by surprise, it was close to even numbers Because all your attacks with the power were being blocked, a staff can be equally lethal, bypass a weaving of spirit meant to block the power, and be unexpected. I mean, you weren't expecting leane to club a black to death, right? Nynaeve does the exact same thing against moghedien in tanchico, and it worked. The book shows time and again that those who focus solely on the power, dismissing all other avenues of attack, are fools.

indeed, my main worry was that the battle would suck, but no, it's good. loved every minute. loved the feeling of "wtf how many black sisters are there???" though in the books we don't get there until a lot later. i don't understand what alanna thinks she can do alone against a dozen black sisters though. not unless she has a saangreal

Only a solid blow would be incapacitating, a shield still has value. Especially behind a spear wall. That said, nobody ever tried to fight against opponents of superhuman strenght, so there are no tested tactics for that. The closest exammple i know is romans against celts, though: the average roman was 1.65 meters, the average celt was 1.85, and yet despite the difference in size and strenght the shield wall was very effective. So, we don't know what exactly would work best against actual trollocs, and i'm willing to give anything shown some leeway. As a larger point, hollywood tactics worry me a lot, and the show has done poorly in the past but the two river battle is supposed to be dumb brutes against untrained farmers, so if the tactics used are poor, it's only to be expected. they'll have a much harder time persuading me that mat has become a great general, but that won't happen until the next season

haven't looked the other details closely, but i focused on that 1:46 and it looked great to me. those shields look like they were improvised from pieces of dinner tables, and the weapons like they were refurbished farming implements. which is exactly what they are supposed to be

the first three books were hardest to adapt. with them out of the way and the main plot elements established, the show has great potential to come back on track. i am somewhat worried for the white tower battle, it can be great, or it can come off lame as the wizard battle in the witcher, with the giant ring of fire slowly falling from the sky; at least i didn't see anything like that, the ball of fire around liandrin looks like first she was alone and shielded and was being interrogated, and then her colleagues burst in to rescue her. all the scenery is amazing, except for the aiel spearheads, they look made of rubber. which is most likely the case we didn't see much of the age of legends, will have to wait one month for that. all in all, looks very promising

where did you got all those information? i browse this forum to keep up with the news, and i've only seen the 1 minute teaser

that always left me puzzled. i can understand that people who are punished repeatedly want to avoid punishment. with time, it becomes a routine. eventually, they just start to go along with it. they can even form camaraderie with the sul'dam and other damane. but i can't imagine suddenly wanting to protect the person torturing me. torture may change how you act, but not how you feel - except for feeling afraid. which is why i always assumed that the part about reading emotions was a bit of an exaggeration, very vague at best. and, most important, that a general feeling of fear would be acceptable. if the damane is complying because she's afraid, she won't be punished. it will only make her even more afraid. in fact, we even have a rare sul'dam pow with bethamin in WH chapter 20 that was along the lines of "for now they stopped demanding their jewelry back, that's progress, gradually they will adapt". which is why i think that as long as you play along and obey all orders, and the sul'dam will feel you are afraid of them, it should be acceptable behavior.

mat is in tanchico, so most likely they dropped out the whole portal sequence and use him being a hero of the horn to justify his memories. i'm not particularly happy, but it can work.

it probably can cause heart attack, or kill indirectly by other forms of shock, but it's not reliable in any way. i think that the death of your sul'dam is fatal was said in the book, possibly by renna, and she never lied about anything else concerning the a'damn. but i don't remember exact quotes

i mean, the death of a sul'dam while wearing the bracelet. of course, when they retire and eventually die of old age, it has no effect. i think Renna said that whatever the sul'dam feels, the damane feels more, even to the point of death, so a damane must protect her sul'dam in battle even more than herself. but it says nothing of painless conditions, like being incapacitated by a blow to the head. would that cause the damane to fall unconscious too? some drugs kill without pain, one falls asleep and dies; what if it's administered to a sul'dam? we don't have any solid data on any of that - though we can surmise, at least, that poison effects would be shared, as elayne and birgitte could get each other drunk through the warder bond, and the a'dam is not too dissimilar.

iirc, it's ambiguous. it's implied, but never stated for certain. nor is established in any way what would happen with a painless death.

actually, it's pretty well established you can't do those. the cramps prevent your muscles from moving. a cramp happens when a muscle doesn't respond to commands. similarly, weaves meant specifically to open the a'dam fail. egwene tried that, i think.

the problem with adapting beautiful characters is that all actors are reasonably beautiful. i can't talk about male beauty, but lanfear is supposedly the most beautiful woman in the book, and yet i prefer... let me think... almost every other woman in the main cast to her. with galad is going to be the same. just go along with it

no, that's completely wrong. channeling works with some science and reproducibility. what one channeler can weave, others can copy. talents can influence how powerful is the result, but every weaving is reproducible- there isn't a single example contradicting this in 14 books. there is no such thing as a one-off. therefore, if nynaeve was dead, it means resurrecting the dead is possible, and others can figure it out as well. although, to be fair, it seems that channeling is not so well understood that one can predict much of what is possible. it's not like physics "time travel is impossible, here's the math that proves it". it's clear that with channeling, "it's impossible" simply means "people have tried and failed long enough that everyone gave up". so, if somebody discovered resurrection (possibly using a true power weave, as the DO is known to be able to resurrect, or more accurately reincarnate), it would not directly contradict the worldbuilding. but having resurrection in a story creates a huge set of problems that one has to account for. and robert jordan explicitly said it's impossible anyway.

that doesn't mean much, a lot of little details were done to hint things from the book but were actually deprived of any plot significance. for example, they did cast cenn buie and basel gill, but both appear in just a couple of scenes and have maybe one line of dialogues and their names are not given. same for the grinwell. so, i wouldn't draw plot conclusions from a rug design. still, i'd be happy if they managed to keep that part of the plot

so, if you are told that magic can heal people but not resurrect them, and you see someone badly burned on the ground, and magic brought her to her feet again, you have 2 options: 1) clearly, she wasn't dead yet. after all, unless major brain injury is involved, people take some time to die 2) omg she was resurrected even though it should not be possible! they completely broke their rules and ruined the worldbuilding forever. I just wonder why anyone would ever pick 2) when 1) is available full agreement on this one. however, one should not assume that the world building was damaged if there are other perfectly plausible alternatives

well, the central square of rhuidean was littered with items of power, among which the foxhead medallion could easily be placed. mat having access to previous memories due to being a hero of the horn would absolutely justify him picking up a specific one. similarly, moiraine can die for real and not be rescued, as everything she does in the last battle can be done by someone else. and the stuff rand was told through the portal in tear could easily be part of the karaeton cycle. therefore, ultimately, the finns could easily be skipped. i hope it doesn't happen. unlike bryne or morgase, this is a more important story arc, and i'd be much happier if it was included. however, it can be cut without significant ripple effects on the rest of the plot, and i can see how cutting it would reduce the need for exposition.

so, considering all the complains whenever a girl saves a boy and it's not in the book, I was expecting this role reversal would be met more favorably

oh, please. bryne is a personal favourite. i have a soft spot for the quiet helper that keeps things together while the protagonists gobble the spotlight, AND for the badass normal guy that manages to stay relevant in a world of superpowered. but with the huge ensemble of characters, bryne is nowhere near important enough, and his story arc can be cut without any large change to the rest of the story. characters like him are the first to be cut in an adaptation. similarly, i expect morgase to die for real, because her later arc can also be cut. sure, she's instrumental for getting galad to listen to perrin, but really, do you think jordan couldn't have come up with another excuse for it if he wanted? this is the same book saga where a high sea folk dignitary agreed to mat's "bargain" of "do as i say, or I'll carry you by force" under ta'veren effect.