I recently saw a joke about a DnD item that is a "truth serum." But instead of making someone tell the truth, it simply alters reality (retroactively and including memories as necessary) so that whatever is said is true. Along those lines, do Min's visions become locked because she sees them, or is she simply an observer of that which was already locked? Does she herself have enough free will to avoid seeing the visions that she was "supposed" to see? Would it matter? To what extent are some of here visions self fulfilling prophecies where those who know about them change their actions because of the visions and thus cause them to be fulfilled? (Alivia?)

I have assumed that the world maps onto parallel worlds (Tel and others). Although distance and time may be different in other worlds, they still scale consistently and thus map onto each other point to point. This seems to be a prerequisite for things like portal stones to work. As such, travelling requires that you know the area where you are as it relates to this metaphysical grid. Moving around a locket (or even an enclosed wagon) would thus not be helpful since that item moves around the grid and is not a useful landmark. Knowing I am inside my car doesn't really tell me something useful as to where I am. Knowing I am on top of the pyramid of Giza does. I don't think the books really give details about how this works, but I don't think a small mobile device helps you travel or make gateways. That said, I think gateways can be used to communicate over long distances. There are ways to use the one power to track others (like the bond or Moirraine's coins). If you can make a gateway from where you are and use such a device to know where someone else is, you can probably create a gateway to them and talk to them through it.

Fair enough if we're talking about book 1. But that definitely is not the 7 core characters of the series.

I think it depends on what you expect from your fiction and what genre you think you are reading. Is this a story about epic heroes with destiny and foreshadowing leading to a cathartic climax where everything has a place and a reason and Chekov's gun always goes off? Or is this supposed to be some realistic fiction where things raise questions about the meaning of life and sometimes things happen and we have to ask if there really is a higher power or is it all just pointless? I think WoT falls in the middle between those two and is a little of both. We do have some epic struggles between paragons. But also, some things happen just because. I think that Lan is characterized by a hopeless struggle with the shadow. If he were to die, it wouldn't be about the specific nature of his opponent. It could be Demandred or a horde of trollocs overrunning him. The point would be that he met his fate on his feet with a sword in his hands. Of course, I ultimately think it's good that he survived, but I don't think that his personal connection to his opponent or to Gawyn and Galad is important.

Bit of a tangent, but who do you see as the 7. I've mostly seen references to the 6 being the EFF+Elayne. Who is #7?

I'd agree the repetitive nature of the Gawyn, Galad, Lan attack is a bit weird. However, I don't think Lan's attack is really related to a desire to avenge Gawyn and Galad in particular. He barely knows them. And he doesn't have a particular grudge with Demandred either. His battle with the shadow is so personal that it isn't personal at all. It's his entire reason for existing, or at least was before he met Nynaeve. He attacks Demandred because he is the visible leader of the shadow's forces. The medallion is somewhat a plot device that makes it plausible for non-channelers to maybe present a threat to channelers.

I've always been torn on whether or not Lan should have actually died when he sheathed the sword. On the one hand, it seems cheap that sheathing the sword is supposed to be about willingness to pay the price for defeating evil and neither of the times we see it in the series does it result in death. At least Rand pays a price with the wound. Lan is just somehow not dead and doesn't really have to suffer. On the other hand, Lan's line is that duty is heavier than a mountain and death is lighter than a feather. Death was never the price that he should narratively be required to pay because he was too willing to pay it. And if Lan does, it leaves Nynaeve a widow, both narratively and literally. If Lan were to die, I think it would be poetic if we find out that Nynaeve is pregnant with their son. She goes to Malkier and becomes a dowager queen regent who raises the next king. Of course, being a powerful Aes Sedai, she would live long enough to be adviser to the line of the kings of Malkier for generations. But ultimately, I think it's good that Lan lives because he needs to fulfill his duty and death would only have been a release from the duty. Of course, if Lan lives, I think it makes complete sense that he goes and rebuilds Malkier after the last battle. He resisted becoming king because he didn't think there was a future and didn't want to lead others to their deaths. With the shadow defeated and the blight pushed back, Malkier has a future. And Lan is the king. It's his duty to rebuild his land and be a leader for his people. That part never bothered me. It would have been weird to me if Lan doesn't rebuild Malkier after defeating the shadow.

There are a lot of questions regarding past and future turnings of the wheel that aren't really answered conclusively. What does it really mean for ages to repeat? Certainly, it's not the exact same down to every random farmer choosing to get a drink of water at the exact same time. It's probably just a repetition of general movements of history, and even that seems to have a good deal of variability. The champion of the light coming back to fulfill his destiny in the 3rd age after failing before is a major theme of the story we get, but I'm not even sure that this always happens in every turning. How often do souls come back and what is the significance of this? The heroes of the horn and certain others seem to frequently occupy important roles, but even for them it seems to vary. They also sometimes come back in mundane roles. Some eastern religions that feature reincarnation also have concepts of progression and consequences that reverberate through incarnations. Similar concepts would give more meaning to the repetitions in WoT, but they aren't really explored much. What does it really mean for the same soul to come back if he or she has no memory of past lives and the present life doesn't seem to be connected to or dependent on past lives in any way? Why does it matter that it's the same soul? Rand is the only main character that has a defined past life. Maybe Egwene is Latra Posae Decume. Maybe Elayne is Ilyena. Maybe Mat is Aemon. But in spite of the similarities, there are good reasons to doubt that those are actually the same souls.

Well, according to the creators, they already adapted book 3. Couldn’t you tell? If your one of those who hate the show, why would you care that book three did or didn't get adapted much less if season 4 gets greenlit or not. If the show does die with three seasons then you can say, "See I was right and you were wrong" which is all the haters of the show really care about. I’m completely ambivalent about the show at this point. It’s the gaslighting I hate.

Well, according to the creators, they already adapted book 3. Couldn’t you tell?

As you elude to, I think this question is really part of a bigger set of questions. In particular, what is the actual purpose of the universe? Why did the creator create it and what did the creator hope to gain or achieve by doing so? If the wheel really just makes the same things happen over and over again, the universe seems kind of pointless. The books are somewhat vague as to what it actually means for ages to come and go forever and I think that RJ's understanding of that probably evolved as the series progressed. For instance, early on it seems to be implied that Rand's soul in particular is locked in a repetitive conflict with Ishamael. But later statements by RJ seem to imply that various things might change in each turning of the wheel and that there might be other dragons or no dragon at all in some turnings. In this context, the flicker flicker visions are probably possible alternate realities rather than actual things that happened in other turnings of the wheel. In this context, the wheel is some type of iterative training for souls to reach some higher state as is the case in some real world eastern religions that believe in reincarnation. In other words, this would imply that although the wheel is cyclical it doesn't preclude the possibility that progress can be made. In regards to the DO in particular, I think there is an important distinction between the creator's purpose in the existence of the DO and the Dark One's own agenda that he as a consciousness holds and tries to enact. The simplest explanation is that the DO exists as an oppositional force to give souls a way to struggle, overcome, and grow. Of course, this would not be what the DO himself believes. If, as you suggest, the DO's purpose is to break the wheel to allow for more evolution, does he himself see this as his purpose?

Theoretically, Halima answers a lot of that, although it's a bit open as to whether or not Halima is a unique creation of the dark one. The concept of transgenderism implies a mismatch between biological sex of the body and the gender of some other essence, which we could call a soul. In other words, transgenderism requires that souls be gendered. Luckily for transgenderism in WoT, it appears that WoT souls are gendered. Whether or not the wheel would ever spin out a soul in a body that didn't match it is not answered in canon. It also seems to be the case that when the dark one gives new bodies to the souls of the forsaken, their ability to channel and strength in the one power is a result of the soul and does not depend on the body being able to channel at all. But then, severing appears to be damage to the body since it can be healed like other wounds. A possible explanation is that actually all bodies are naturally capable of channeling both halves of the one power, but only souls that have the ability to channel can make their bodies do this. The body can be damaged and lose the ability to channel and then the soul cannot channel in that body. The body can also be healed of this wound. This would imply that transgender and intersex people in WoT would have a soul of one gender or the other and could then channel that half of the one power (if they are able to channel at all) and that the sex of the body would not be important.

I, too, thought this thread was going in a different direction.

I thought this, too, initially. However, I went back and read the section. Although it is clear that buildings and walls are getting knocked down, we also read that Mat's body is smoking. I'd say the implication is that he was struck by lightning. I wonder if initially RJ intended for the medallion only to work against Saidar (he asks the Finns to get away from the Aes Sedai, and is presumably only referring to modern female Aes Sedai), but as the story went on, he changed his mind and made it resist all channeling.

Is there a theory whereby the electroweak/strong force is unified with gravity? I am aware that the other three are theoretically unified, but I'm not aware of a theory that unifies them with gravity, either theoretically or experimentally.