The wheel of time being what it is, why would they be sure that it is a prequel and not a sequel? 🙂

What do you mean by tragic? In a general sense, bad people doing bad things is tragic since it would be happier if they did good things. But I don't think that is really very interesting in terms of analysis. If you mean tragic in the specific tragic hero sense, Lanfear fails to meet that archetype in lots of ways. Tragic heroes are generally good people who make tragic mistakes that lead to downfall and disaster. Lanfear is selfish and evil.

On the subject of minimum strength to use a sa'angreal, Lanfear also suggests that the reason the female Choedan Kal and associated access key are destroyed during the cleansing was that Nynaeve was not strong enough to use it under full control. She states that had Rand trusted Lanfear to use to Choedan Kal, it would not have been destroyed at the cleansing. Unreliable narrator in addition to Lanfear just being a master manipulator are what they are, but it seems that Lanfear is meant to have told the truth in this instance. That said, we don't really get any indication that any other angreals or sa'angreals have limits on how powerful a channeler needs to be to use them. Perhaps this is just because the limit scales with the power of the angreal and most angreal have limits so low that practically any channeler can use them. But even Vora's sa'angreal, Callandor, and Sakarnen don't ever seem to have a lower limit on the power of their users. That said, all of those are only ever used by fairly powerful channelers in the books. Also, my browser wants to autocomplete Choedan Kal to Choedan Kaleidoscope, and I think that should be part of the head cannon from now on.

For sure there’s no reason that Gaebril has to be Sammael. My logic was just that Sammael is in, but he’s not one that has enough of a story to make the top 8 in my opinion. Combining him with Rahvin, who has more interaction with confirmed characters, would be a reason to build his storylines.

One thing to consider is that Sammael may be Gaebril. Adding scenes and a battle in Illian in order to facilitate the showdown with Sammael has not really been hinted at. In the book, this encounter has tons of buildup and preparation that is somewhat of a dead-end, so I can see it being cut for time. Also, if they were following the storyline of the first three books, we would have already been to Illian and Moiraine would have already already learned about Lord Brand. That means that Rand's encounters with Rahvin and Sammael may be merged into a single encounter that covers much of the same ground. Possibly that will occur with Ishamael/Morridin present in order to create the link with Rand. And Nynaeve and Moghedian should be present as well with their Tel battle. Frankly, there are a lot of climaxes left to happen and I think we should expect that some of them will be merged. If that's true, I think your other 3 are Asmodean, Demandred, and either Semirhage or Mesaana. That leaves you with a 4/4 sex balance. I don't think any of those last 3 will be introduced soon since their parts all come a bit later in the books.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but I still like it. It’s not really intended to be just about combat skills. The AES Sedai are just generally complacent in their one power skills and not motivated to develop new weaves and generally improve their power.

Mostly Lost, but also really almost everything that JJ Abrams has ever made. Introduce mysteries because they make it interesting and people will keep watching to find out. Then never actually have an answer for the mysteries and hope that people forget before the end. The SW sequel trilogy is another example where he sets up a bunch of mysteries that in retrospect he never answers or explains. The general point I am making is that if you do something in the storytelling that is consciously mysterious (like a non-sequitur time jump), you have to eventually explain the mystery. That should be obvious, but it apparently isn’t.

For sure if you’re breaking the autopilot expectation to create intrigue and raise questions that you will later answer, it can work out well. But you have to commit to paying off that intrigue rather than going full JJ Abrams. Never go full JJ.

I imagine the tower as a team of 20 foot tall basketball players. They win every game without training because they are so tall. But once they meet another group of 20 foot tall basketball players, they realize that they are bad a dribbling, passing, guarding, or shooting. They just never bothered to practice before.

So Aran’gar but no Balthamel? Would that mean he was always a man in a woman’s body?

In my opinion time jumps are fine, but they need to follow the autopilot principle. It's okay if times passes and events happen between segments of a story so long as the events that happen off screen follow logically from the setup and characters that were already present. If the characters in a story decide to go on vacation to the Bahamas, we can skip to a scene of them on the beach without seeing the process of packing bags, buying tickets, eating meals in the airport, and finding the bathroom between flights. We can fill in the details with a little bit of common sense. But if the next scene is the same characters getting thrown in jail for skiing illegally in the Swiss Alps, I'm going to feel like I missed something. That violates autopilot. Why did they go to the Alps instead of the Bahamas? Why did they go skiing illegally? How did they get caught? Those are all interesting parts of the story that should have been explained. The story needs to be piloted through those events and cannot navigate them on autopilot.

An interesting take for sure. We know that Verin started her list before Rand was born, so he can’t have been the only factor. That doesn’t mean he didn’t affect her choices or that there isn’t gray in her character. But she wasn’t straight black that changed her mind when she met Rand.

I initially read the books myself before listening to the Kramer and Reading audiobooks with family members to introduce them to it. Frankly, I didn't like Kramer initially as I feel his tone is too dark and melodramatic, but I got used to it. Reading I like better in her chapters. I haven't listened to Pike.

Well, what do you mean by inclusion? Because it seems you just mean including things or people that you think are good. Which was my point. Inclusion is good when we include good and bad when we include bad. So instead of saying inclusion is always good, you should say that including something in particular is always good. Otherwise, you are over generalizing to avoid needing to defend the particular case you want to make.

So including cannibalism, pedophilia, beastiality, or child mutilation? Or do you agree that inclusion is only good when you are including good things?

Not sure if you’re being intentionally obtuse here. I said that some things are bad and should be excluded (meaning not included). The obvious conclusion is not that inclusion is bad but that inclusion can’t always be good or bad. Inclusion adopts the moral qualities of the thing being included. @HeavyHalfMoonBlade seemed to be suggesting that changing the show to be more inclusive was an inherent positive quality(among other potential qualities) and that is what I am objecting to. We have to base the judgment on the nature of the thing being included or excluded, not simply on the fact that it is inclusive. I suspect that I can bring examples of things that you would find objectionable and not want to be included on the simple basis that inclusion is better than exclusion. “Inclusion” or “inclusivity” are mostly code words in the context for something else, the substance of which is being obscured for rhetorical purposes.

Not being an inherent good and being bad are obviously not the same thing. Either you aren't serious or have a below room temperature IQ.

Inclusion isn't an inherent good. Some things are bad and should be excluded.

Lots of complaints are made about character appearance changes beyond their race. As an example, Thom Merrilin and Bayle Domon have specific and distinct facial hair in the book that was ignored in the show. This seems especially egregious simply because facial hair is something that you can control independent of casting. But when I criticize the changes in facial hair, you don't accuse me of being a bigot. And so, the criticism sort of fades away because it's just acknowledged as being valid but also not crucial to the show being good. Which is true of the racial casting as well. (This is not to say that race doesn't matter at all to the show, since it is made clear in the books that regional differences in appearance are easily recognizable. People from a certain place should be more homogenous than they are in the show. But that may create too much of a burden on the casting and it's ultimately something that can be sidelined without ruining the show.) The idea that the show creators didn't have an agenda is a rather obnoxious motte and bailey argument. They have clearly made changes around not only race but also gender and sexuality, for which they receive and solicit praise. But when criticized for it, they pretend that their critics are jousting at windmills that definitely don't exist. And yet, all of this would be mostly overlooked if they made a good show with an interesting story. But the show is awful for reasons of character development, production quality, and storytelling. The WOT books story is far from perfect and could definitely be streamlined. If the show creators could credibly demonstrate that they have a coherent vision, changes would be welcomed. But it's obvious that the people in charge don't have a vision. They are just getting us through the next episode, kicking the can down the road to solve the immediate need for something on the screen.

True. They presumably put the Sul’dam into retirement at a certain age and pass the damane to a young sul’dam. But still, we don’t get confirmation of a damane being killed by a sul’dam death and I think it would come up if it happened. In general, I’m not sure that I agree that magical pain can be fatal in the WoT lore. Most real world pain is accompanied by actual physical damage to the body. Some exceptions involving nerve disorders or past amputations exist, but I don’t believe those are potentially fatal. The idea that pain can cause your body to shut off and die without any actual damage is more of a fantasy/sci-fi trope in the first place as far as I know. RJ just didn’t make it part of his universe. I’m not a doctor and haven’t studied pain depth, so maybe I am incorrect on this. To be clear, pain can be completely incapacitating and cause unconsciousness. But would it actually kill?

We do know that damane, due to being channelers, live much longer than sul'dam. Alivia is over 400 years old, for instance. As such, a single damane will have many sul'dam throughout her life. Of course, they pass damane around anyways for various reasons, but sul'dam growing old would necessitate it regardless. I don't think that the question is answered explicitly, but if the death of a sul'dam killed the damane, I think we would hear more about it.

To be clear, insofar as you have mentioned being show only but not being unspoiled, are you aware of what happens to Moraine in the books? Are you expecting a major departure?

Elaida is horribly mislead, sadistically self-righteous, and exasperatingly hypocritical. She also thinks she is one of the good guys. And to be fair, she never swears to the dark one and thinks that she is helping the light according to the prophecy that she believes. At the time of New Spring, she sees Siuan and Moraine as two powerful, prospective Aes Sedai that will help the tower and serve the light (and, potentially, help her achieve her own tower political ends if they can be made allies). She believes the ends justify the means. Most of the Aes Sedai do. She just has badly misjudged what ends she should be striving towards.

This is true, but I think it's also an indication of the way they see Damage as literally animals. They are training them like they would train a dog or horse. The Seanchan military uses a wide variety of fantastic beasts like raken and grolm. Grolm, at least, are naturally aggressive and predatory, so, while we don't know the exact training methods, they are likely extreme. They see training damane as similar. Of course, while this position is perhaps reasonable for those that don't interact with damane directly, it seems that many of the suldam struggle and cope with the cruelty in different ways. The cognitive dissonance that this position creates when it is ultimately clear that damane are quite human affects different people differently, but leaves the suldam as somewhat broken mentally.