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.

So sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. Ouch, unexpected cat attack. Who is "the rest of us"? Who exactly elected you as their spokesperson? I presume your answer means that you don't have any reply to my point about pervasiveness of people misunderstanding things and not knowing half of what they thought they did. A spurious claim to the rest of us, and claiming that you speak for Jordan are not ringing endorsements of a good argument. You claim the story argues for gender roles - while they are completely arbitrary, which the book makes entirely clear. You try to back this up with claims that individuals - all of whom don't adhere to arbitrary roles forced on them by society, but live their genuine personalities and meet other individuals that complement them - apparently completely unaware that this evidence all points to the utter stupidity of forcing people to follow gender roles that they don't want to. Your claims are ridiculous. Individuals complementing each other, say nothing about rigid inflexible gender roles that everyone must follow regardless with no autonomy. It is almost like you have approached this with your own views instead of anything from the books.

As I stated, even if you take this as not the literary device of Unreliable Narrator, people misunderstanding pretty much everything is a major theme, not just the prophecy. Facts becoming stories, stories becoming legends, legends becoming myths, the point is hammered home over and over again. Birgitte talking about her lives compared to the stories, Thom talking about the evolution of stories, and of Mosk and Merik fighting with spears of fire (iirc), for example. Even down to the prejudices that people like the Aiel and Sea Folk had for each other was all based people believing and spreading inaccurate information. I cannot think of a single part of the book that is not affected by this, hence why I call it a major theme. Genders working together were noticeably out of whack at the beginning of the story due to the Dark One's taint on saidin. People had to learn to work together - which meant women had to let go of their grip on power. I don't see how the show turned that on it's head, and we will never see how it would have resolved this now. Claiming it showed how gender roles made us whole is completely wrong, in my opinion. Jordan made up societies with completely different gender roles - showing that they are completely arbitrary and the opposite of necessary. You criticise "our overly sensitive society" while sounding rather sensitive yourself to see viewpoints that you are not comfortable with. It seems a common thing for people to claim that the show entered politics into the story, when they mean that their politics prevent them from enjoying the show. I did not see the show treating the main themes differently than the books.

Good luck with your journey 🙂

Welcome back, Starla 🙂 Pretty sure this is not a fever dream, but perhaps don't take my word for it, lol. It is always awesome to see returning members. Come join the Social Orgs, we still have a few dinosaurs that roam about since your first time around, like the ancient @Cairos for example. Always boring us youngsters with stories about the old days ^^

Have you factored in the Dark Prophecies? There is no reason to think they are any less Foretellings than those of the Light. It is never made clear if Rand dies if that just means that the Fourth Age will be a bad place to be, or if the Pattern will prevent that or correct it somehow. The Pattern must seal the Bore, otherwise there would be a paradox. The DO needs Rand to submit, so possibly the requirements for that are the same as sealing the Bore. That is why the Shadow isn't going all out to destroy Rand, that isn't their goal. They are possibly actually (when following the DO's orders at least) trying to set up exactly the same situation as Rand is trying to. The battle could be seen against the allies of both who are trying to derail their plans either through ignorance or selfishness. The main problem for Rand is everyone in the Light thinks they know more than him, the main problem for the DO is he wants to destroy the Wheel, his followers think they want to control the Earth. Only Ishamael is a true believer.

The bit that bugged me was Tam and Perrin being taken out of sync. Especially as it would be so easy to fix - where Tam is taken away by Nyn to have some quality time with Rand and stays with him, but then when we go back to Perrin for nearly the whole of the next book, Tam is still there while Perrin does his training montage in TAR for the showdown 2.0 with Slayer. It seems like it would have been trivially easy to have Tam come back to finish some stuff off, or just remove him from the Perrin arc and have Abel or someone in that role. But it was hardly that big a deal, it just caught my attention and then irritated.

Not through lack of trying, it must be said, lol.

I agree. It just felt to me a lot of the story was really for the long haul - the Black Tower for instance seemed to need years and years to be functional. The schools Rand was setting up - seem a little pointless if it is only five minutes before the apocalypse. A lot of things just seemed to be panning out over the long term, processes of evolution rather than quick stop gaps (this could be me entirely reading it wrong), and then suddenly someone looks up at the skies and says, "Ooh, look at those clouds, we'll be having a Tarmon Gai'don in about two weeks." Caught me entirely off-guard, though possibly was entirely meant to be the effect, or I was just getting too comfortable in my cosy little soap opera about the EF5 and did not want it to end. Obviously it did have to end eventually, regardless of the author or their health. Just such a shame though that will always be such a "what if"...

Yup, absolutely, lol. As I said, no one has any subjective opinions that they are unwilling to bend on. I see you caught the vibe immediately. Read the books? What a novel idea. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the show. I cannot say I really agree on much of it, especially not your unhappiness with casting. Especially especially your disappointment with the attractiveness of the female cast and your disappointment with the Chosen. But there is always going to be issues when our visual head canon meets a live action adaptation. But it is undoubtedly a shame that so many fans of the book did not like the show.

It is totally chill. No one holds any sort of strong opinions that they are unwilling to bend at all, lol. Just all a bunch of pussy cats 😹

Welcome, Lanfeared 😁 Always great to meet another fan 🙂

Also I would say it was clearly in the notes. The detailed story about what happened with the Finns to Lanfear and Moiraine. The subplot of Thom and Moiraine (though this Jordan never seemed to flesh out much, along with the letter and I'll tell you who killed your nephew lines, perhaps Jordan would have changed this, but Sanderson could hardly ignore such a big point in the notes). I agree it does seem a bit abrupt but also that it was rather inevitable. Maybe it should have happened earlier so she had more chance to critical in story? I dunno. For me, alot of the ending feels rushed and possibly this is just down to the story's exponential growth being brutally reined in so that it wouldn't go on for another 14 books.

I'm not sure. The publicity ones are probably contractually stipulated and very much in the actors best interests. Once it has been cancelled, it is questionable how much it is. There are probably NDAs and any anecdotes that an A list celebrity might get pumped for could be dangerous to the actors or their colleagues. I don't see outlets giving time to in depth analysis of cancelled shows, and the actors themselves putting stuff out on social media or whatever probably would be advised against anything except the most generic to be professional.

Discussing things is not the same as throwing out pronouncements of opinion. You are accusing of people of bending over backwards to defend Jordan rather than accepting they have different opinions. You appear to be behaving exactly like my ex where she would constantly assume that everyone actually agreed with her and if they pretended differently they were doing it for ulterior motives, because obviously she was always right, by definition. You do see how accusing of people of bending over backwards to stop themselves from seeing your truth is not discussing different opinions about something?

His blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul? Rand setting philosophers to work on them and reading untold translations and commentaries? Brigit talking about her past lives and how they were reported on stories? While I get you can argue whether this falls technically as unreliable narrator (as in the literary device) I'd say the things like the difficulty of interpreting prophecy and foretelling (Andor's Royal Line?), people using their own takes on the situation (Niall's beliefs about the Final Battle), Mat being Odin and Perrin Thor/Perun, Seanchan beliefs about Artur Hawkwing, etc., I would argue that the message being lost, corrupted or misunderstood, especially over time, is probably the most common theme in the books. It is the only real implication of cyclical time that is explored as far as I can see.