I've never had someone give me a coherent answer as to what the word queer means. From what I understand, it basically is a catch all for someone who doesn't want to commit to a label that actually has a well-defined meaning. It can be applied to anyone who isn't cis-gendered heterosexual, but even that seems to not be a hard limitation if someone who is outwardly conforming to conventional roles wants to claim to be different. What do you think it means? As far as New Spring and the beginning, the first bit of New Spring is actually where I started reading WoT. I had decided to read the series and didn't realize that it was not really the first book. I switched to TEoTW after the first chapter (and didn't finish NS until after AMoL), but it was still my introduction to WoT. The old, grizzled soldier is a character that RJ used several times, so I don't think we should assume that Lan from NS is related to the original Rand. Lan and Moiraine in NS do both feel very different than their characters in the main timeline, but I think that is intentional to show what the intervening 20 or so years has done to them. Frankly, I like the additional perspective and it makes me especially like Moiraine a lot more as a character. I am not really inclined to believe that RJ ever sat down and wrote out a beginning with the older Rand and then used it as the beginning to NS. I suspect that the older Rand was something that never really got to paper in full prose. He would also have to change so much that it would probably be easier to write it all fresh anyways. Whether or not the characters were embodying some of the same archetype in RJ's mind is more of a philosophical question about the nature of fiction.

Haven’t you stated you don’t like the books and haven’t finished them? How are you even able to make a statement like this?

You asked the question. If you didn't want to discuss it, why did you bring it up? Don't ask a question, spout off for three paragraphs when someone gives a concise answer, and then claim that I am derailing "your" thread. They are very clearly not homosexual. They are perhaps bisexual. Words have definitions. It's not about what it means to you or me.

You're projecting your real world ideas into a fantasy world. We don't know what RJ thought about the real world, but many of his characters clearly believed that lesbianism was usually a phase that Aes Sedai got over once they reached the shawl. Siuan and Moiraine specifically didn't think the sexual element of their relationship would last regardless of DR prophesies. Moreover, they are both all in on their heterosexual relationships by the end of series. It's not as if Thom and Gareth are beards.

Assuming that he did, he also wanted it to be clear that lesbianism is a phase that people get over when they are fully mature.

The oaths are definitely built around what the Aes Sedai believes. The prohibition on speaking words that aren't true would otherwise become an oracular gift where Aes Sedai can effectively ask the universe true/false questions at will. Including darkfriends in the oath opens up a lot since it could apply as long as the Aes Sedai has convinced herself that the target is a dark friend. Expanding the oath further to include anyone helping a dark friend (even unwittingly) makes the oath effectively meaningless. Allowing the one power to be used to attack objects (like sinking the ships) when we can be quite certain that the attack will injure or even kill people nearby (and arguably that injury is part of the point), also seems to completely negate the oath. The question that we need to ask is: if the oath allows Moiraine to sink the ships, what does it actually prohibit?

See that’s the question. Is the oath shadowspawn and darkfriends? Or just shadowspawn. The forsaken are dark friends all day. But if the oath only says shadowspawn, it doesn’t include forsaken or other dreadlords. In regards to the green, they can conceivably participate in the last battle by killing shadowspawn and using protective weaves. Killing dreadlords would not be the only conceivable way to participate.

That isn’t how default works. A critical characteristic of the oaths is that words matter. The forsaken aren’t shadowspawn. They don’t become shadowspawn by leading shadowspawn.

So I just read the Wikipedia article on Wombats and today I learned that Wombat poop is cube shaped. We don’t fully understand how or why, but it is suspected that wombats poop in cubes so that they can stack their poop to mark their territory.

Maybe during the age of legends, a zoological Aes Sedai realized that animals with very specific and restrictive diets, like Koalas and Pandas, should be modified to be more flexible. Maybe Aginor before he went off the deep end.

This is why I think the treaty is at play. I don't think the exact terms of the treaty are made clear, but I suspect that part of it makes it so the Finns can't visit whenever they want. But maybe the treaty allows visits under certain conditions.

An interesting question for sure. Probably no definitive answer, but we can speculate. Does it ever actually say the Finns can't enter our world? It's not a bad assumption considering that we never see them do it. But maybe they just don't like doing it and only do it when they have to/want something really bad. My theory would be that the treaty forbids them from entering our world, but they are also allowed to receive a price for the gifts that they give. They mention that Mat is foolish for not setting a price for his gifts. They decide that their price is that they will be allowed to hang him (or something similar, who knows how they would word it). They have to let him leave their world since this is one of the gifts that he has asked for. Thus, this creates a loophole where they are allowed to come to our world as part of their price for the gift that they gave. Probably a fair bit of lawyering in this process, but it seems plausible to me that they see this as justified.

The White Tower government system combines the oppression of an autocracy, the inaction of a democracy, the corruption of an oligarchy, and the inefficiencies of a bloated bureaucracy. The failure of the White Tower to fulfill expectations is mostly the result of systematic failures rather than the personal failures of individual Aes Sedai. I think the system feels very real and makes sense as something that was created to preserve what could be saved during an apocalypse. It's a very conservative system created to slow the gradual decay from a former greatness that is now all but unimaginable. It has little capacity to take decisive action and create something new or confront new problems.

For sure, part of the 20 foot basketball player analogy is that all they do is play basketball instead of figuring out how else being 20 feet tall would be useful. For all of the heat that the red ajah gets as the "bad guys," they are really the only ajah that: Have a clearly articulated goal that matters Have a goal that cannot be achieved with comparable cost and effort by non-channelers Actively work towards the goal in meaningful ways. As was said about the green and yellow, they don't appear to actually be doing much at all in relation to their goal. The white and gray don't seem to do something that non-channelers couldn't do just as well. Also, how is "logic, philosophy, or truth" an ajah? Those are tools and thought processes that we use to achieve other goals. They aren't goals by themselves. The brown might be okay if they were actively pushing the extent of knowledge of the one power, but many of them are literally drawing birds. And the blues, in spite of sort of being the "good guy" ajah, simply don't have an actual coherent purpose. They are the ajah of "causes." That's like saying that their goal is having goals. It's so amorphous that it's basically meaningless. The only way it makes sense to me is if we assume that it's the ajah for people that don't feel that they fit into any of the other ajahs. It's the "none of the above" ajah. The ajah system doesn't really make sense as a system whereby the white tower is balancing effort across a number of important areas. Instead, it's just a system where each sister is given leeway to do what she thinks is most important. It's not one person coming up with a list of the seven most important Aes Sedai goals. It's seven people listing their top goal. A sort of: "You do whatever you think is most important, because I'm going to do what I think is most important.

I kind of think of the Aes Sedai of the modern age to be a team of 20-foot-tall basketball players who play against regular sized opponents. They don't really need to practice or discuss strategy or anything else. They just win because no one else can reach the ball. Naturally, they haven't really learned to dribble or shoot and they also haven't really decided to see if their twenty foot statures allow them solve other problems that they haven't considered. They just really enjoy dunking on the little guys.

I agree that the efficiency of the Seanchan government and society feels unrealistic. Slavery is a part of that, but mostly it's an issue of the deceit and manipulation that seem to be standard operating procedure. It's quite unbelievable that their power structures remain intact and continue to be able to do much of anything. Everywhere else in Randland power structures seem to deteriorate and fracture while the Seanchan royalty are able to maintain absolute control over an entire continent while also backstabbing and killing each other every other Friday. On that subject, I also question that ability of the Aiel to be so prolific. They live in a desert and spend a huge portion of their resources and effort on continuously fighting (mostly each other). Regardless of how hardened and resilient the people are, I tend to doubt that there would be very many of them. They are to some extent patterned after the Fremen who had a similar ability to reproduce like rabbits in a desert, but at least there you could chalk it up to them having technology that arguably violates thermodynamics. The Aiel are just able to be very successful in the desert because they are super 'tough.'

On a related but tangential note, is the temporal density of reincarnation ever established? We know that it took LTT 3000 years to come back as Rand, but we are not ever definitively told that he didn't live other lives in between (perhaps unremarkable and perhaps in very significant roles that weren't linked to the dragon). We also don't know if more frequent reincarnatio is common even if the LTT spirit did wait 3000 years. I don't think that all of Mat's memories come from past lives of his soul. They are just people that went to the Finns and made a trade and so the Finns have their memories and can share them with Mat. Of course, Mat is disturbed by the implication that this means they also now have access to his real memories. And since Mat's memories include past deaths, he concludes that travelling to the Finns actually gives them access to your future memories as well. As @Bugglesley said, the tracking Mat's soul hypothesis doesn't really make sense in the larger story. It may be that the original intention was different (maybe early plans had a different role for Mat), but in the story as written, I think Mashadar is the only logical explanation for Aginor's statement. That does raise some problems with how Aginor is able to recognize if having been in the bore since before Mashadar was created. But I think it's likely that other evils of the same type have existed and that Aginor is able to recognize it even though he hasn't seen it before specifically.

I actually love the moral ambiguity around the Seanchan. It adds depth to the world and raises questions about the degree to which the ends justify the means. As to why Egwene doesn't attack, I would assume the 3 oaths come into play. They can't use the one power to attack. And considering the Seanchan are pivotal to helping the forces of light win the last battle, it's good that she didn't.

I was thinking this was the case, but couldn't remember for sure and haven't had a chance to find the section in the book. The old thing is definitely either Mat or associated with Mat.

I suppose it's possible. But it seems quite unlikely to me because it doesn't really come to mind when you ask the question in reverse. That is, if you ask why they decided to call LTT "Dragon Reborn" instead of "Dragon," you might come up with the idea that it helps convey and dumb down the more esoteric parts of the cyclic WoT universe. But if I said that I wanted to convey and dumb down the WoT universe for the casual show watcher, I would do a lot of other things before I would mess with LTT's title. In regards to Dragon vs. Dragon Reborn, the casual viewer just needs to know that: The Dragon was a champion of the light in ages past that failed to stop the apocalypse. Now he has been sent back by the universe in a new body so he can have the chance to fix his mistakes. That explanation is simple, technically true according to the books if admittedly lacking nuance and detail, and sufficient to take the casual viewer through the entire plot without needing to really understand anything else about it. Reincarnation and the cyclic ages and the deeper nature and meaning of who the dragon is and the complications of all of the parallel universes and possibilities and the metaphysics of the WoT universe in general are not only not necessary to tell the story, they also raise more questions than they answer. The books don't really explain these things entirely and are arguably contradictory on various points although a lot of the contradiction comes down to the fact that nobody in the WoT universe speaks with absolute authority on the subject. Many people have their own agendas and others are possibly just wrong. In other words, I think calling LTT the dragon reborn is far more complicated and confusing than calling him the dragon.

So you're guessing they did it on purpose? In truth, the nature of reincarnation in the books is not really fully explored. Most people (basically everyone but Rand) have no idea who they were in past lives. They believe and understand that they did had past lives and hope for their rebirth, but it doesn't have much affect at all on the story or characters. Who were Perrin, Mat, Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Aviendha, etc. in past lives? The books don't explore this and it kind of doesn't matter. Maybe Mat is Aemon or Egwene is Pacume or Elayne is Ilyena. There is evidence to support it, but it's way beyond what would help the show make sense to the casual show watcher. But to be clear, you're arguing that a room of writers that thought maybe killing Thom Merrilin permanently or making Perrin a bearbrother had deep thoughts about how making LTT the Dragon Reborn streamlines the lore. Frankly, I think it opens a can of worms. Most casual viewers probably didn't even think about it. You're right that it's a bit pedantic to care if it was just this one thing. As I said, it's just a clear example.

You keep trying to make this really complicated but refuse to answer direct questions about it. I'm inclined to believe that's because they don't have good answers, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. So use your knowledge and experience to explain to me: Why did the writers choose to call LTT the Dragon Reborn instead of the Dragon?

We get it. You don't like the books and don't care about them. Calling LTT the Dragon Reborn is not what is making the show bad and ultimately not a big deal on its own. It's just an obvious example of the problem that pervades the writing. It shows that the writers don't really understand or care about the source material. It's basically inconceivable that some higher-ups forced them to not simply call him the Dragon. The writers did it all on their own. There was no greater plan. No reason that it condenses the story or helps make it more understandable for TV. They did it because they couldn't be bothered to get it right. That's the point of this thread. For all of the constraints and setbacks and challenges, a lot of the failures are just an obvious lack of motivation to understand the books and faithfully adapt them. When I say that I'm not really interested as to why, it's because it all feels like an excuse. It's like somebody explaining to me why a joke is funny when I didn't laugh. The show is bad. Explanations don't make it better.

Which is a more faithful adaptation of the WoT book series: Amazon Wheel of Time or Star Wars Episode VII?

It's sort of like a racecar driver who crashes backing out of his driveway. Maybe he's driving a high performance car and it really is kind of complicated and it's harder than backing my minivan out. Maybe he tried to drift out of the garage instead of just driving normally. But I'm still inclined to question if he's really a good racecar driver. That's what this feels like. I'm willing to accept that writing a story of this complexity gets complicated and down the line things might get difficult. You might roll a car while taking a corner at 200 miles an hour. But the changes made early in season 1 feel like totaling the car backing out of the driveway. And I'm not really interested in the explanation. When an expert fails, excuses feel hollow. For instance, there just wasn't a strong need to make Abel a philanderer and Natti a drunk. I understand some like that this change brings more edge to Emond's field. But it lets us know right out of the gate that someone (the writers or someone above them) wants to make changes because he or she can. As I said above, maybe it's not fair to pin that on the writers. We don't really know what constraints they were working under. But someone is responsible for that change. It wasn't just the path of least resistance. And it certainly doesn't feel like someone was respecting the fact that the story is complicated and changes are going to have ripple effects. And that's really the contradiction that I think is really rubbing a lot of book fans the wrong way. Don't tell me it's difficult because of the complexity and lack of run time while also adding complexity that eats up runtime.