51 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

This is a weird one for me.  On one hand it's deliberate and shows they ARE thinking about these details.  On the other hand.  Most damane are accepting or sometimes even happy with their lot in life thanks to being broken down so far and subjected to so much brainwashing and stockholme syndrome.

So unless this particular Damane is going to be shown to be a recently capture Westlander or otherwise somewhat significant I'll be a bit confused over the tears.

I think she just got gold paint in her eyes.?

1 hour ago, Asthereal said:

This is a good point. I have several times gone back to confusing or vital moments for a sanity check while in my first read-through. Especially the ending of TEotW, Dumai's Wells and the end of WH.

 

Stuff I didn't go back to, but should have:

-Rand in Rhuiddean (TSR)

-... Rand in Rhuiddean!!!
Why oh why did I not go back to re-read that bit at least a few times? ?

Occasionally, when I've gone back over something I thought I remembered differently, I actually discovered a contradiction (or at least an inconsistency).  I think the first example of that was the length of a week, of all things.

Usually, I discovered that I had misread something to begin with.  And going back over it cleared up the confusion.

1 hour ago, expat said:

Isn't this the real problem?  They are Robert Jordon's characters, world, story and magic system.  They are not the fans.  While I enjoyed reading the books, I had nothing to do with their writing, so I have no personal stake in them.  I can enjoy (or not) the TV series, but again, I had nothing to do with the series, so I have no personal stake in it.  In my opinion (you can certainly disagree), when individuals start personalizing the books in such a fashion to say unapologetically "our characters ...", then they are too close to the material which could affect their judgement.

Except it's not all that unusual.

In fact, it's not too far out of line to say that considering them "our characters, etc." is the entire point of this very website.  It's a kind of community, which the members continue in some way to be "theirs."

It doesn't necessarily imply a feeling of ownership, just of fellowship.

Do we imply ownership when we talk about "our friends?"

5 hours ago, Pembie said:

Hmm maybe I will make notes from now on I don’t really want to start again it’s taken a long time to get here 

At least go back and skim.

I find that if I do that, the things I wasn't sure I remembered can seem to jump off the page as I go back over them.

Even things as seemingly simple as who was where at what point in the story can help resolve things.  And skimming can help fix those things in your mind.

Believe me, if you're experiencing confusion now, the story will turn into a complete maze if you don't.

I have no problem with Taim having long been a darkfriend, and having been to Shayol Ghul or learned from one or more Forsaken.  No need for that to have even been against his will.  After all, those comments about "so-called" Aes Sedai and Aeil were a big part of the Taimandred idea to begin with.

But I don't think he can be Be'lal.

None of the other examples we know about where Forsaken were resurrected into an existing body show the new entity retaining any of the body's memories.  And we know for certain that Taim still has Taim's memories.

It's possible that they do retain their memories and the books just never mentioned it, but there's no reason to insert that belief into what we do know.

There's also always a certain amount of time that passes before any such transfer takes place, and I think that it hasn't been long enough between Be'lal's death and Taim's reappearance.

But also, I think you dismiss the effects of Balefire too glibly.

Yes, those effects vary according to how powerful the Balefire blast was.  But even the tiniest beam burns the thread from the Pattern completely.  Rand used the smallest amount he could to kill the Darkhounds in Rhuidean, but they were still completely gone, and what they had done was partially reversed.  It doesn't sound like it's even possible to dial it back enough that it only kills, without everything else.

In addition, we have the word of people who know its effects better than anyone that a soul killed with Balefire is no longer a candidate for resurrection.  Both from other Forsaken, and from the Dark One himself.

The "watching eyes" could be early signs of the paranoia that comes from the madness.

Or they could be one of the first indications in Rand of what Moiraine says is a protection that goes along with channeling - the ability to "feel" the presence of agents of the Dark One.

We know there were darkfriends in the Keep at the time.  And giving the timing of events we can be fairly confident there were already Shadowspawn there as well.  At minimum, the man who fired the arrow that nicked the Amyrlin was probably a Gray Man.  And we know later in the books that he can sense them.

Without him knowing what that sensation meant, I think he could easily have interpreted it as feeling eyes watching him wherever he went.

Regarding Miere/Mierin - I don't think so.

What we know of the Old Tongue (both from Jordan's published details, and from fan labor) does certainly show that suffixes like that are sometimes used to modify the root word.  But none of the examples we have of "miere" ever do so.  Prefixes, certainly.  But not suffixes.  

Similarly, we have many examples of surnames having Old Tongue meanings, but I can recall no such examples of birth names that do.  And we have no indication from any of the lore that links Lanfear to water in any way that would hint at that name.

It is actually somewhat more likely that a name originally based on an Old Tongue word might be corrupted over time into a name with a similar pronunciation but a changed spelling - like Aemon becoming Emond.

So a surname originally meaning "son/daughter of the sea" could have evolved over time into al'Meara.  ?

On 1/28/2022 at 6:58 AM, Pembie said:

As you can probably tell this story confuses me thanks for your help

My pleasure.

But I would still recommend - especially since you appear to be getting more confused as you proceed - that you stop and re-read from the beginning.

Otherwise you just end up piling confusion on top of confusion.  It's a vicious cycle you might not ever be able to break if you go on.

7 hours ago, wastingtime said:

Maybe I'm being simplistic, but wouldn't it be pretty much what we see with a certain reincarnated forsaken character later on in the books? IE the physical body is female, but the soul -and the associated half of the One Power - is still male... 

It's possible that the changes the show makes to the lore would account for that.  Though there is (so far) no indication that the Aes Sedai in Rafeworld have ever encountered a woman who could channel a power they couldn't see.  Or a man channeling a power they could.

But it doesn't align with the lore in the books.  In which souls are gendered, and only reincarnate into bodies of the same gender.

That particular change was made artificially, not by the natural process of rebirth.  I would call it a resurrection, not a reincarnation.

On 1/24/2022 at 8:42 PM, Pukel-man said:

I know one that that won't happen in season two - Rand can't defeat High Lord Turok in an epic sword duel. He hasn't had a shred of training with that heron-mark blade, and the only thing he can really do with it is seppuku.

He's going to walk all the way back home and have Tam teach him.

It is (sort of) on the way between Shienar and Falme.

Either that, or he's going to remember that the trollocs got to Two Rivers via the Ways, and figure he can do the same.

He'll sort of remember how Moiraine did something he couldn't see, and read what only an Ogier can read, and pop up right at home in Manetheren.  He'll have months to learn the sword before he skips over the mountains to the coast.

So I went back through the episode checking some things.  Including what's in this thread.  And I have some new answers.

Sorry, but this is kind of long.

In the book, Winternight (Bel Tine Eve) celebrated the end of winter, and Bel Tine celebrated the beginning of spring.  The practices associated with the holiday were all about that - a celebration of new life.  So we have physical contests, Spring Pole dancing, coming-of-age rituals, etc.  In a normal year, the first crops have already started to sprout.  In the year the book takes place, winter is late, there's still snow on the ground in patches, and planting hasn't happened yet. 

In the show, literally none of that is still true.

It's obviously not a late winter with patches of snow in places.  Everything is green, and it's warm.  But is that simply because the unseasonably late winter bit was dropped from the show for ... reasons, or because it's actually a different time of year?

We have an answer to that.

When Perrin tells Rand and Mat about troops in Taren Ferry (and Mat colorfully describes what Callie Coplin might do regarding rain), he says it was witnessed by "the boys who went to Taren Ferry with the wool last week."  In sheep-farming communities, the first shearing of the season doesn't *start* until the weather has warmed up enough that newly-shorn sheep won't suffer at night.  So somewhere around late May.  In mountain villages it's even later.  Say early June.  That's when shearing starts.

A town the size of Two Rivers would probably take about a week to finish that first shearing, and get the wool ready to take to market.  Say the second week of June.  Since that happened "last week," Bel Tine is now placed around the third week of June.

In other words, at the Summer Solstice.

Not to mention the fact that you don't throw someone into a river - in the mountains - at the end of winter - and expect them to do anything other than die of hypothermia.

In the show, Bel Tine is no longer a "first day of Spring" holiday, or even May Day.  It's a "Midsummer" holiday.  Winternight is no longer part of it, because winter ended three months earlier.

Since it's now a Midsummer holiday, none of the early spring celebrations make sense.  So Rafe changed the entire point of the holiday to be not about celebrating new life, but about commemorating the dead.  Of course, the Midsummer celebrations have all those contests as well, but why pick nits?

And it appears that the only reason he changed all that was to allow some early exposition on the concepts of the Wheel and reincarnation.

I guess he couldn't figure out how to do that with a Spring holiday.

Or how to use the name of the actual Midsummer holiday from the books - Sunday.

1 hour ago, Pembie said:

I know his with Tylin and Tuon but he is on the run 

Neither of which are anywhere near the Black Tower or Dumai's Wells.

1 hour ago, Pembie said:

Wasn’t Measma the false prophet with Perrin they were walking back to Rand I’m sure in Crossroads he seems to have gone off to the white cloaks have I gotten this wrong 

Rand sent Perrin to bring back Masema (the Prophet).  Masema has been in contact with every authority in the area, possibly including the Whitecloaks, but he hasn't gone off with any of them.

Perrin wouldn't want to meet with the Whitecloaks, since they want to kill him.

1 hour ago, WhiteVeils said:

Sorry for misfire post.

 

Book Mat does have flaws. He wouldn't be nearly as good a character if he didn't.

 

But you can choose to hate whatever you like. 

No one said he didn't have flaws.  He's a prankster, a complainer, and perennially incapable of taking things seriously.  He makes decisions that get him into trouble.

What he isn't, is any of the things the show paints him as, or that your story has Moiraine believing him to be.  He isn't a coward.  He isn't a thief.  He isn't disloyal.  He isn't unintelligent.

I really don't know where you get the idea that people who object to his portrayal in the show think he's a saint in the books.

26 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

In the book, we don't know what Moiraine thinks of any of them. It's not from her POV.  

Character assassination is a lot different than 'a negative opinion'.  But I'll grant you this:  Although the show gives better reasons for Mat's flaws than the book, (bad family, poverty and obligations to his sisters), it does make those flaws more explicit than the book.  If that's character assassination, I'll accept your argument.
As to the other, there's a million ways to get them to Genji.  I'm not worried about it.  The show may or may not get there...It may be cancelled in two seasons, after all (though I hope not).

Except that it doesn't "give better reasons for flaws."  It invents flaws that don't exist.

In the books, Mat is not a coward or a thief.  In the show, he's both.   The reasons the show uses to explain his cowardice and thievery don't change the fact that it invented them in the first place.  And that's not "a negative opinion," it's character assassination.

And while it's true that we don't know what's inside her head, we do know what she says and how she acts.  And nothing about either of those matches what's in what you wrote.

13 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Mat is.  You may have noticed that this story is Moiraine's POV.  Just because she thinks he is something (and acts accordingly) doesn't mean he is.  For my fiction I thought it was a good dynamic for her to really not think much of Mat early on because it makes the Tower of Genji payoff much better.

Which doesn't excuse the character assassination in the show.

Just because it's Moiraine's opinion rather than an explicit declaration by the show doesn't change that.

By this time in the books, Moiraine absolutely did not think that poorly of him.  She thought he would be a discipline problem - in fact, she never really stopped thinking that - but she didn't remotely think he was "weak and craven," or that he had shown he wasn't "brave, self-sacrificing, resilient or intelligent."

Yes, what you wrote fits the way he's treated by the show.  That's the problem.

And since Mat was never in a position (on Bayle Domon's boat) in the show to see the Tower of Ghenjei and know where it is, do you really think that's going to happen?

12 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

otoh, i never liked the whole "eye of the world" business in the book. it appears in book 1 as a sort of macguffin, it's used in a poorly explained scene, then - excepting that rhuidean flashback - it's never seen or mentioned again. and i'd argue that none of what happened there was all that important or had long-term consequences on the plot. rand gets a surge of power to temporarily defeat ishy. rand is handed a couple of plot items that he could have gotten somewhere else.

i always felt the eye of the world was there only because rj needed some kind of resolution for book 1.

I felt the same way about Portal Stones.

They are used twice in book 2, once in book 4, then never again until a very brief appearance in book 13. 

And that last appearance didn't even need to be one.

At least Waygates continue to crop up throughout the series after Traveling makes them almost unnecessary.

It's one of the problems with such a large and complex story.  Some elements will always fade into irrelevance in something like this.

38 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

I have no doubt Mat will be redeemed in season 2. And then all his heroic traits and personality will emerge again. I'm really not worried about this at all.

 

 

 

 

...WAFO?

I don't have that same confidence.

But I hope you're right.

55 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

Great fanfic, @WhiteVeils! I think you captured Moiraine's personality really well in that write-up. I could definitely see this scene fitting into the show.

It's certainly not bad, as far as the show goes.

But if anything, it magnifies the problem most readers have with how treats Mat.

It explicitly calls him "weak and craven."  And he just isn't.  It says he isn't "brave, self-sacrificing, resilient, intelligent."  When he is in fact ALL of those things.

So I have kind of an odd follow-up question for this thread.

Because of when and where it aired, Game of Thrones attracted a huge number of fans who knew nothing about the book series it was based on.  They hadn't gotten any word-of-mouth ideas from friends and family who had read them.  Many didn't even know such a book series existed.

Most of the people responding here have been book fans who'd been talking about the books for years, and whose friends and family watched the show specifically because they told them about it.

I have family members who heard about the show, but hadn't heard me talking about the books.  So far as I know, they still haven't watched it, because they weren't interested.  Even though they enjoyed things like GOT, LOTR and the Mandalorian.

And the question:

Do you know of anyone who watched it without having been encouraged to by a book fan?

1 minute ago, Ralph said:

Of course in the books there was not. I was querying why changing that obviated the need for the pool. 

 

I had not realised you meant it would create a problem of accessing horn and banner, rather than that it was not needed. 

 

Interesting point. 

 

Thank you

Yeah, that was one of the examples in the books that showed the possibility that Moiraine's knowledge might be mistaken.

Moiraine was (according to the Green Man) the only person in 3000 years to have found the Eye twice.  She knew about the pool of saidin, and apparently believed that was what it was about.  But there wasn't enough of it to have really mattered, if that was all it was.

6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Or maybe they did know the dragon would be man in the AoL, but the knowledge got lost - or at least became uncertain. As the argument between moiraine and siuan went, they are translations of translations of translations, who knows what got mixed up?

But in the show, there's no longer a pool of untainted saidin.  Nor are the Horn and the Banner hidden there.  It's no longer a repository for things the Dragon needs, it's now the physical location of the patch on the Dark One's prison.

In effect, in the show the Eye has replaced the Pit of Doom.

Remember that in the show they also say that there have been female False Dragons - something else completely alien to the books.   So the idea of a female Dragon Reborn isn't the result of forgotten knowledge.  It's written in the show as if it really always was a possibility.

9 hours ago, Ralph said:

 

Sorry not following. Why is the possibility it would be a male Dragon not enough of a reason?

 

Besides the fact that they didn't know what it was for when they made it, as others have said. 

The people who made it knew what it was for.  It's just that people 3000 years later might have forgotten.  And the readers who were confused as a result.

If the Dragon could be reborn as a woman, then she could never have gotten the things she needed from it.  Because they were hidden by something she couldn't touch.

It took "need" to find the eye, and a male channeler to use up the Saidin in the well before the things in it could even be seen, much less retrieved.  A female Dragon might have had the "need," but she couldn't have emptied the well to get the Horn and the Banner from inside it.

It's clear that, in the books, there was never any possibility of a female Dragon Reborn.

2 hours ago, Skipp said:

Sometimes we may overthink things

*raises hand*

Guilty.

1 hour ago, Juan Farstrider said:

I don't know if this is a good solution to selling the body switch, but if there were something different about Rand's eyes that carry over with him in the end, considering how important eyes are for when we look at each other if we really are looking at each other, it might help sell it. If Rand has some character-defining gestures, something some actors often create as they try to define and inhabit a character, that could be carried over, that would help. I didn't pick up any in the show but if it were subtle it could be better anyway (but then also tougher for the audience to pick up on). I do think there should be an attempt to create something to visually sell the switch since the show is a visual medium. But that could undercut the fullness of the switch and raise the question of "how", so I could see attempts being made and dropped. 

Well, it was mentioned in another thread that LTT made some gestures that mirror how Rand moved.  And that they acheived this by having Karim study Stradowski's movements and copy them.  So if they give it time to build, we could certainly see that method.

Another technique would be similar to the visual effects of Min's viewings.  Show Rand's face as that kind of ghostly image moving out of his body and into Moridin's.  Something like that would make it obvious to the viewers, even if we never see it with any other characters.

30 minutes ago, Vartija said:

True enough, but his first reaction and subsequent unease of being around him in the later books still seemed kind of unfriendly to me. Not exactly a shoulder to lean on so to speak. I remember Mat spending a lot of time worrying about being away from Rand "when he goes crazy". Maybe I overestimated their initial level of friendship in the beginning of the series, but as Mat said something really seemed to change in their relationship when they found out Rand could channel. Perrin seemed to handle it much better. 

Perrin avoided him at least as much as Mat did.  Hell, he was even the one who left in Tear.

It's just that, given the differences in their personalities, Perrin was less vocal about it.

This wasn't a "Mat thing" - it was a "fear of male channelers thing."