I like the concept of ta'veren, it gives plot armour and nonsensical coincidence an actual meaning that fits with the lore and helps create a unique atmosphere. But yes, the Pattern in general cannot be looked into too far, imo. Because obviously people cannot have free will, they are woven in the Age Lace, not free to run amok. And while obviously there is some wriggle room, the Pattern is about balance. If one person chooses to be a Darkfriend and do many evil deeds, the Pattern must have balance, other must do good to even it out. I suppose you could see it as people pushing and pulling at the warp and weft of the Pattern, trying to be good or evil, and the Pattern either resists or gives way, depending on what everyone else is doing. Too many turning to the Shadow, the Pattern limits people's choices and successes in that. People finding the Light and having a love fest, much more room to commit evil acts. So maybe your will is your own, but your success in your choices limited. Like maybe you become a Darkfriend - or resist that choice - and then fall down the stairs the next day and break your neck, whereas someone who made the opposite choice lives into old age, spreading the Shadow or Light as you failed to do.

They also all had to do what they were told, and be careful not to step on anyone else's toes among the Chosen. The main seemed to be trying to do whatever they were doing undetected. Sammael and Rahvin seemed to have solid plans, but they were obvious targets for the other Chosen and the forces of the Light.

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.

This is the thread where you can sign up for the White Tower and Warder Yard Social Group. Or er, Community Organisation. Depending on who you ask 🙂 This will open the doors to advancement either to der'Manshima in the Tower Guard, or to Aes Sedai in the Tower itself.

The flaw though is to look at it through the eyes of someone that doesn't have faith. The the idea of if a God is real is a matter of evidence. And also we can make predictions based on what we would expect to see if a God was real (answered prayers, sick people getting better, etc). But by definition, none of that has to do with faith. Faith is something outside of the experience of someone without it. It is not belief without evidence, but belief despite no evidence. As I say I'm an empiricist, but faith is completely different than empirical investigation. It could be argued it is necessary to find meaning in our lives, empiricism does not care a lot for meaning at all.

The Welsh/English (not British, we Scots never used the longbow, and suffered from it often enough) bow was a fearsome weapon. It was not as powerful as crossbows, but much more accurate in skilled hands and with a much greater rate of fire. And as issue at several battles, it was much easier to keep a bowstring dry in an oiled pouch (and have back ups) than it was to keep the crossbow strings of Genoese mercenaries that the French employed in the Hundred Years War. The skeletal remains of archers found buried in France show that men shooting the bow were literally deformed by the development of the muscles used to draw the bow. Modern competitive bows do not have to be held at full draw to aim - they have some sort of pulley system of counter balances or some such (stop me if I'm being too technical, lol) but a simple bow has to be held on muscle power alone. The main draw back was the skill needed, archers had to train a lot. Not comparable to crossbows or muskets. And this is why there are still bylaws in England that demand every man practice archery for two hours on a Sunday. That and the need for arrows, which were bulky, fragile and labour intensive to produce.

Yes, I think around there it also explains how Perrin and Rand got their bows when only Mat had taken one from the Two Rivers (what wood it was made of) also possibly if I remember right around the Gathering Storm, Mat buys a wooden staff to turn into a bow that would also shed light on their construction (and uses it as quarterstaff to protect Tuon, iirc).

Is this not one of the several women (or two?) who had no flaw, except an overabundance of bosom? I think I might be rather worried about what SkyNet would come up with. Certainly, I cannot add to it. My last artistic endeavour was to draw Berelain. Was not happy with the results at all. I even used references and really really tried. Still was awful.

The bows are, to my knowledge, clearly long bows styled on the Welsh/English bows of the First Age. The length of them unstrung and their shape does not seem to leave any doubt about that, and I'm fairly sure even their construction is touched upon in the books (and possibly it has been confirmed elsewhere).

I think he doesn't want his role in the grand design, but he simply cannot help himself. Admittedly, it is possible he would have been a gambling drunkard without the effects of being a ta'veren correcting his path, but we will never know. And I think like Suian's uncle, Mat would always brave the flames to save the children. Though he might move to village where there are no children just to decrease the likelihood of that happening *shrugs"

Not all things are equal. Is it wrong to have faith in your friends when you don't have evidence they will be true or will succeed? Is it wrong to have faith in yourself? I'm an old-school empiricist, so I very much believe in relying on your own direct experiences. But you cannot base your entire life on that, you must at times induce to solutions, take other people's experiences on trust, accept personal beliefs that you cannot necessarily defend empirically. Tolerance is just as necessary as critical inquiry, and consensus as important as individualism. And BTW, welcome to the forums, Caelan 🙂

I think some of it is a little heavy handed, like Nynaeve's instance on stout Two Rivers woolens, giving way to a more luxurious and revealing style, but I think the themes in general make sense. Clothes aren't just extensions of the body, and given the vast diversity of the cast in the Wheel of Time, from foppish nobles to hard working stable hands to displaced people coming together say at the Black Tower, from prudish Andorans to sultry Domani to shameless Mayeners, clothes are important, and the cultural clashes and contrasts more so. Choices about packing reveal character development. And it would be something that would be genuinely important to the characters. Are they going to meet the Amyrlin Seat? Are they going to be trudging through the wastes? Their past experiences will shape them. So no I don't think it is excessive. I do think sometimes Jordan's dealing with characters being "feminine" can be a bit full-on, but not enough to pull me out of the narrative or feel the characters were not believable. All of course in my most humble opinion.

The Pattern shouldn't create Heroes. It should create protectors of Balance, not those that fight for the Light. It is, in my humble opinion, one of those parts of the lore that doesn't quite make sense.

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"...