As I remember it, she originally left the Two Rivers and then chose to pursue the One Power solely because of her desire to protect the Emond's Fielders who were her responsibility. Lan was a later and much more secondary reason for her rivalry with Moiraine. It may have provided her with additional motivation for learning to channel, but it wasn't why she ripped up her life, nor was it why she enrolled in the Tower. As I remember it anyway.

From what I have seen, absolutely everyone hates something about the books. And every time you think you have found one thing that everyone agrees was weak, you'll find someone popping claiming that is their favourite bit of the book bar none. It is one of the appeals of the books and the community, I think.

Actually, according to Jordan the publisher picked up his pitch for a story that would be five-six books and he was given six and told if it was five he could just write something else for the sixth. Because "he liked the way [Jordan] writes". Not that I disagree that editing could very well be a lower priority as books progress and the story gets more locked in and the power of the author increases. Didn't Rowling sack her editors? Maybe that is just a malicious rumour I heard.

I would shy away from calling myself a writer as I have never managed anything outside of Nanowrimo, but I came across a program called yWriter. It is just a word processor more or less but it has some nice touches like allowing you to put the point of view, characters, setting, outline and such per scene or chapter. So you can for example check that your main character's pov has more words than a secondary character, and you can generate an outline by only showing each chapter's, etc, and it is just useful to have all that info without having it in a separate document or in the main narrative either. Each chunk is separate so you can move them about while looking at the higher info, such as pov and word count. It is free to use and it is an author who just shares the tool that he uses. It is still being kept uptodate and may have more features now as I haven't used it in years and years. You can find it here if you think it sounds interesting yWriter8 by Spacejock Software

I am prone to towering rages myself, but for me I find that rage is a destructive and unhappy emotion. At least it is in me. It is the negation of all the things I hold dear and cherish - kindness, empathy, reason, logic, love, self-sacrifice, humour... perhaps you can control your emotions better than I can. Now mad fancies I can get more behind.

I'm sorry but... what exactly is the question?

Welcome to Dragonmount, Zev! It is a story that grabs you and doesn't let go, burn my bones to ash if it doesn't. Even my aged Grandmother says so 🙂 As for how to contribute - you could start a re-read thread so as to share your personal experience as you go along, browse through the years and years of book discussions, and we have Social Groups where you can hang out and have fun with other users and even a role play section for creative writing set in the Westlands and beyond that is going through something of a restart at the moment. Pretty much how ever you would like to engage. There is also a Discord channel if that is more your thing where people engage more in the wider WoT world of content creators, rewotch different series and films, and whatever those fine people actually get up to. Appears to feature heavily in memes, from where I am sitting. Hope you enjoy your time here and have fun with your reread 🙂

Welcome to Dragonmount, Coursouvra 🙂 Always great to meet a fellow fan 🙂 I hope you enjoy your time here. The role playing section is at the bottom of the forum list and is currently going through something of a restart. It would be great to see you there.

Actually I've just remembered the bit I was thinking about the Wisdom being elected was actually Nynaeve's arches where the Wisdom had convinced the women to convince their husbands to vote for Cenn for Mayor. Was it Cenn? Hmm. I was misremembering that that was how the evil Wisdom was elected, but actually it was her controlling who was Mayor. My bad. Anyway, maybe I'm misremembering that the Wisdom is elected. But as that may be, she still has rightful authority.

I see. I had not realised that they would have let them burn down the inn if they had insisted. Obviously I misunderstood. I'm pretty sure the Wisdom is elected by the Women's Circle. You aren't suggesting that isn't democratic, are you? Nor are you commenting on all the corporal punishment of children and women. Yes in real life physical violence is terrible. This is a story. A story where Nymaeve's character is displayed partly by her propensity to hit people with a stick for not obeying her authority which is entirely in keeping with their societal norms. Indeed one can say she is only noticeable because she is a woman hitting men. And if people in Emond's Field didn't want hit, they only had to not disrespect her, more or less. If you want to call that victim blaming, be my guest.

Of course not. What I am saying is that she had an important function and deserved respect that she wasn't given. Because that respect was necessary for her to perform her role. What I am saying is that they share some of the blame for it being necessary. Now obviously in real life, I would be looking at this differently, but in a world that among other things is choc-a-block full of corporal punishment, and has a literal personification of evil - I'm quite happy saying they should be respecting her democratically elected authority without the need of a stick. I seem to remember that the Mayor was not above threatening people with Master Luhan's muscles if they did not behave. I don't see this, in the context of the story, as anything different - especially as it is more about character building than justifying physical bullying - which is kind of a thing throughout the story, especially for young women.

And indeed, if you look at how many people were only respecting her in as much as they didn't want whacked with her stick rather than respecting her authority it is difficult to lay the blame entirely on her.

I think for me (though I admit I've not thought about this a lot so maybe I'm being a bit hasty) but the issue often is not that each story arc needs an obstacle, it is more that the story due to its scale (or Jordan's preference perhaps) resists overcoming the obstacles so the arcs seem to often hit dead ends when they come up against something that cannot be solved until the last battle or is an important story element like the machinations of a particular forsaken, for example. Like for example how Couladin is fairly quickly dealt with but the Shaido linger for quite some time as they are needed for the general plot of chaos being wrought across the Westlands. Or how some nations continue through rebellion/forsaken control/Rand-skepticism for so long, because if Rand too quickly gets their support the story runs out of obstacles for the main narrative.

Which video game is that?

Yes I think the strength of the story is its scale and width. And I think Jordan was a master at artful handwaving to suggest even more depth and detail, while leaving everything vague enough most of that detail comes from the reader. Given how expansive the books are that is quite an achievement. Like Elgee says, the magic system feels real. The place feels real, the characters feel real in a way that excessive attention to detail wouldn't manage. Jordan was a master story-teller in my opinion.

Yes, Mat's isn't too bad. That is interesting. But I didn't like that we didn't see what happened to Rand, when that was so important for the motivations for the "main" character, which I think pushed Rand into the background except the "soap opera" aspects of his life. And I think also as learn more about the Age of Legends that it gets a bit silly, that everything is being done due to Foretelling, the Eye, Rhuidean, everything is set up by prophecy, which is a self fulfilling one. There seems to be very few bits that happen organically, or at least, a lot less than it appears at first. But that is just one of my pet peeves.

Yes, but that is the foretelling/prophecy/TAR for you. She knows any future where Mat is shown it rather than asks to see it ends badly, so everything has to wait until he does. I'm not a big fan of story being driven by 100% ability to read the future. It feels a bit of a narrative cop out tbh.

They say you "lose a bit of your soul" if you enter TAR in the flesh. Though what that means, how they know, and if they are correct in that belief is never really expanded upon. And if it is right, nor does it ever discuss what that means for Rand, Egwene and Perrin who all do it, iirc. I guess you could hold up the Forsaken and Slayer and say "see?", but why would the Forsaken want to lose their souls? What is evil about losing your soul? Will you turn into a Grey Man? It is one of the hand-wavy moments that hints at a lot of things, has an effect on the story, but also doesn't actually stop anything happening. Good story telling, I guess.

You can find them if you look about online, such as on Etsy. Though the Sword is silver, the Dragon should be red and gold, but obviously you might not be talking about the Black Tower pins and the is of course up to you anyway. (I wear two steel Great Serpent rings, not one gold one, for example).

You can search in the Search Bar in the top right of the webpage, here, The Search Bar will on "This Topic" as default but you can change that via a drop down menu.

I have no idea why you are spending so much time discussing ordinary people and that they appear in the story in a way that touches on nothing that I said. Also, I'd recommend you look up what arbitrary means, it would help the discussion. My reading comprehension is just fine, thanks. Complementary gender roles are not somehow a gold standard, nor does it make them any more admirable, in the real world or in the Wheel of Time. People being true to themselves and complementing each other is admirable, not forcing people to act contrary to their own natures and their own benefit.

There are two different ways - there are the Social Orgs including the White Tower where you can be entered into the Novice and eventually be raised to Aes Sedai. The Social Orgs are RP-lite where we are ourselves, more or less. Or you can join the RP section with a totally invented character, like my Kaylee Tammuz, a rather violent leather worker from Illian. Once the character has been approved you can jump into RP sessions with them and develop their skills and personality. Though RP is rather quiet at the moment. Which totally isn't my fault, it is a coincidence that everyone I RP with disappears. A complete coincidence 😬

Back in the day, I didn't like the Great Hunt much or the pre-Tear Dragon Reborn. I'd often just read the Eye of the World (sometimes just stop there, I really enjoyed it) then jump forward. Now I find it is one of the most enjoyable reads, perhaps as it is "newer" to me, or perhaps because I wasn't being fair to it when I was younger.

I disagree, his argument was that "gender roles make us whole", and the evidence he supported this claim with was not, for example, how amazingly happy the men in Far Madding were, fulfilling their enforced gender role, but his evidence was how individuals complement each other. Individuals who were all very individualistic and did not follow set gender roles for their society but were free to live their lives as they chose. Jordan's gender roles were arbitrary and entirely invented and I don't see how the Sea Folk or Aiel argue anything about gender roles, except they are relative to culture which would seem very much to back up the conclusion that they are not in anyway innate - otherwise how could they be relative? I'd say Jordan himself was in favour of gender roles given the way he treats the Seanchan - there seems to be an uneasiness about their nearly perfectly gender blind society. I have read that this was a criticism of Soviet society on his part, but I could not comment. The rigidity of his gender roles is also notable, but I found little in the books that seemed to argue that this was a good thing, rather than just a feature of those roles. Also for all his "experimentation" with gender roles, I cannot think of a time when we see a nuclear family, be it in the Borderlands, Andor or the Seanchan settlers, where we don't see plump women with flour caked hands and aprons herding naughty children while skinny taciturn men mend fences or whatever. I don't remember a lot of variation in those settings, but maybe I am misremembering.