Samt

I'm wondering if it's actually just the original forsaken. It seems in this version of the story there are only 8 instead of 13. Last season, they played with the idea that the forsaken were a shadow version of the main characters in this age. This plays up the angle that it's all about the choices you make.

Have you met any 20 year olds? They act like children all the time. I agree that Mat's character is sort of weird early on since it's simultaneously implied that he has some experience carousing and also that he doesn't. And, as you say, how could he?

A one page summary would never include a list of things that didn't happen or shouldn't be included. By that logic, Rand killing his father in a fit of rage would also not be a huge departure from the book since Tam probably doesn't even make the 1 page summary. From a character development standpoint, Rand being innocent and Mat not being a scumbag are sort of important. And Perrin growing into his own sense of manhood is very important. None of the things mentioned sink the show on its own. They are just huge red flags that the creators don't get it. TV needs to use images and symbols to efficiently give us information about the characters and story. These symbols and images are contradicting what needs to be told about the characters early on to set them up for their book arcs.

I saw that too and was at first wondering if that is actually Avi, but Avi wouldn’t be caught dead in heeled boots.

I enjoy the prologues. To enjoy the WoT you have to be willing to go with the flow and not worry about getting back to any particular story line right away. If you only want to hear about the main characters and their plotlines, the prologues can feel like a drag.

Callandor the object is not important early. Callandor the plot device that changes Rand from passenger to driver is critical and its absence leaves Rand a passenger in his own story. In regards to Mat, I just intend to believe people when they tell me who they are. If I had faith that the creators understood Mat's arc and thought it was important, I could believe you that they might still do it justice.

I was thinking I might be curious about season 3 and then about halfway through I was reminded why the show is irredeemable. No Callandor. No Tairen doors for Matt. It's so far offtrack that any attempt to bring it back on track would just push it further off track.

I recently saw a joke about a DnD item that is a "truth serum." But instead of making someone tell the truth, it simply alters reality (retroactively and including memories as necessary) so that whatever is said is true. Along those lines, do Min's visions become locked because she sees them, or is she simply an observer of that which was already locked? Does she herself have enough free will to avoid seeing the visions that she was "supposed" to see? Would it matter? To what extent are some of here visions self fulfilling prophecies where those who know about them change their actions because of the visions and thus cause them to be fulfilled? (Alivia?)

I have assumed that the world maps onto parallel worlds (Tel and others). Although distance and time may be different in other worlds, they still scale consistently and thus map onto each other point to point. This seems to be a prerequisite for things like portal stones to work. As such, travelling requires that you know the area where you are as it relates to this metaphysical grid. Moving around a locket (or even an enclosed wagon) would thus not be helpful since that item moves around the grid and is not a useful landmark. Knowing I am inside my car doesn't really tell me something useful as to where I am. Knowing I am on top of the pyramid of Giza does. I don't think the books really give details about how this works, but I don't think a small mobile device helps you travel or make gateways. That said, I think gateways can be used to communicate over long distances. There are ways to use the one power to track others (like the bond or Moirraine's coins). If you can make a gateway from where you are and use such a device to know where someone else is, you can probably create a gateway to them and talk to them through it.

Fair enough if we're talking about book 1. But that definitely is not the 7 core characters of the series.

I think it depends on what you expect from your fiction and what genre you think you are reading. Is this a story about epic heroes with destiny and foreshadowing leading to a cathartic climax where everything has a place and a reason and Chekov's gun always goes off? Or is this supposed to be some realistic fiction where things raise questions about the meaning of life and sometimes things happen and we have to ask if there really is a higher power or is it all just pointless? I think WoT falls in the middle between those two and is a little of both. We do have some epic struggles between paragons. But also, some things happen just because. I think that Lan is characterized by a hopeless struggle with the shadow. If he were to die, it wouldn't be about the specific nature of his opponent. It could be Demandred or a horde of trollocs overrunning him. The point would be that he met his fate on his feet with a sword in his hands. Of course, I ultimately think it's good that he survived, but I don't think that his personal connection to his opponent or to Gawyn and Galad is important.

Bit of a tangent, but who do you see as the 7. I've mostly seen references to the 6 being the EFF+Elayne. Who is #7?

I'd agree the repetitive nature of the Gawyn, Galad, Lan attack is a bit weird. However, I don't think Lan's attack is really related to a desire to avenge Gawyn and Galad in particular. He barely knows them. And he doesn't have a particular grudge with Demandred either. His battle with the shadow is so personal that it isn't personal at all. It's his entire reason for existing, or at least was before he met Nynaeve. He attacks Demandred because he is the visible leader of the shadow's forces. The medallion is somewhat a plot device that makes it plausible for non-channelers to maybe present a threat to channelers.

I've always been torn on whether or not Lan should have actually died when he sheathed the sword. On the one hand, it seems cheap that sheathing the sword is supposed to be about willingness to pay the price for defeating evil and neither of the times we see it in the series does it result in death. At least Rand pays a price with the wound. Lan is just somehow not dead and doesn't really have to suffer. On the other hand, Lan's line is that duty is heavier than a mountain and death is lighter than a feather. Death was never the price that he should narratively be required to pay because he was too willing to pay it. And if Lan does, it leaves Nynaeve a widow, both narratively and literally. If Lan were to die, I think it would be poetic if we find out that Nynaeve is pregnant with their son. She goes to Malkier and becomes a dowager queen regent who raises the next king. Of course, being a powerful Aes Sedai, she would live long enough to be adviser to the line of the kings of Malkier for generations. But ultimately, I think it's good that Lan lives because he needs to fulfill his duty and death would only have been a release from the duty. Of course, if Lan lives, I think it makes complete sense that he goes and rebuilds Malkier after the last battle. He resisted becoming king because he didn't think there was a future and didn't want to lead others to their deaths. With the shadow defeated and the blight pushed back, Malkier has a future. And Lan is the king. It's his duty to rebuild his land and be a leader for his people. That part never bothered me. It would have been weird to me if Lan doesn't rebuild Malkier after defeating the shadow.

There are a lot of questions regarding past and future turnings of the wheel that aren't really answered conclusively. What does it really mean for ages to repeat? Certainly, it's not the exact same down to every random farmer choosing to get a drink of water at the exact same time. It's probably just a repetition of general movements of history, and even that seems to have a good deal of variability. The champion of the light coming back to fulfill his destiny in the 3rd age after failing before is a major theme of the story we get, but I'm not even sure that this always happens in every turning. How often do souls come back and what is the significance of this? The heroes of the horn and certain others seem to frequently occupy important roles, but even for them it seems to vary. They also sometimes come back in mundane roles. Some eastern religions that feature reincarnation also have concepts of progression and consequences that reverberate through incarnations. Similar concepts would give more meaning to the repetitions in WoT, but they aren't really explored much. What does it really mean for the same soul to come back if he or she has no memory of past lives and the present life doesn't seem to be connected to or dependent on past lives in any way? Why does it matter that it's the same soul? Rand is the only main character that has a defined past life. Maybe Egwene is Latra Posae Decume. Maybe Elayne is Ilyena. Maybe Mat is Aemon. But in spite of the similarities, there are good reasons to doubt that those are actually the same souls.

Well, according to the creators, they already adapted book 3. Couldn’t you tell? If your one of those who hate the show, why would you care that book three did or didn't get adapted much less if season 4 gets greenlit or not. If the show does die with three seasons then you can say, "See I was right and you were wrong" which is all the haters of the show really care about. I’m completely ambivalent about the show at this point. It’s the gaslighting I hate.

Well, according to the creators, they already adapted book 3. Couldn’t you tell?

As you elude to, I think this question is really part of a bigger set of questions. In particular, what is the actual purpose of the universe? Why did the creator create it and what did the creator hope to gain or achieve by doing so? If the wheel really just makes the same things happen over and over again, the universe seems kind of pointless. The books are somewhat vague as to what it actually means for ages to come and go forever and I think that RJ's understanding of that probably evolved as the series progressed. For instance, early on it seems to be implied that Rand's soul in particular is locked in a repetitive conflict with Ishamael. But later statements by RJ seem to imply that various things might change in each turning of the wheel and that there might be other dragons or no dragon at all in some turnings. In this context, the flicker flicker visions are probably possible alternate realities rather than actual things that happened in other turnings of the wheel. In this context, the wheel is some type of iterative training for souls to reach some higher state as is the case in some real world eastern religions that believe in reincarnation. In other words, this would imply that although the wheel is cyclical it doesn't preclude the possibility that progress can be made. In regards to the DO in particular, I think there is an important distinction between the creator's purpose in the existence of the DO and the Dark One's own agenda that he as a consciousness holds and tries to enact. The simplest explanation is that the DO exists as an oppositional force to give souls a way to struggle, overcome, and grow. Of course, this would not be what the DO himself believes. If, as you suggest, the DO's purpose is to break the wheel to allow for more evolution, does he himself see this as his purpose?

Theoretically, Halima answers a lot of that, although it's a bit open as to whether or not Halima is a unique creation of the dark one. The concept of transgenderism implies a mismatch between biological sex of the body and the gender of some other essence, which we could call a soul. In other words, transgenderism requires that souls be gendered. Luckily for transgenderism in WoT, it appears that WoT souls are gendered. Whether or not the wheel would ever spin out a soul in a body that didn't match it is not answered in canon. It also seems to be the case that when the dark one gives new bodies to the souls of the forsaken, their ability to channel and strength in the one power is a result of the soul and does not depend on the body being able to channel at all. But then, severing appears to be damage to the body since it can be healed like other wounds. A possible explanation is that actually all bodies are naturally capable of channeling both halves of the one power, but only souls that have the ability to channel can make their bodies do this. The body can be damaged and lose the ability to channel and then the soul cannot channel in that body. The body can also be healed of this wound. This would imply that transgender and intersex people in WoT would have a soul of one gender or the other and could then channel that half of the one power (if they are able to channel at all) and that the sex of the body would not be important.

I, too, thought this thread was going in a different direction.

I thought this, too, initially. However, I went back and read the section. Although it is clear that buildings and walls are getting knocked down, we also read that Mat's body is smoking. I'd say the implication is that he was struck by lightning. I wonder if initially RJ intended for the medallion only to work against Saidar (he asks the Finns to get away from the Aes Sedai, and is presumably only referring to modern female Aes Sedai), but as the story went on, he changed his mind and made it resist all channeling.

Is there a theory whereby the electroweak/strong force is unified with gravity? I am aware that the other three are theoretically unified, but I'm not aware of a theory that unifies them with gravity, either theoretically or experimentally.

I have a general rule to not start reading a series until it is complete. I didn't start WoT until after AMOL was released. As such, I read the series pretty continuously on the first readthrough (not meaning that I read constantly, but rather that I never had to wait for the next book to come out and didn't really move to any other leisure reading during the process). I didn't really notice the slog except for book 10. It's true that there are lots of points in the series where we are left on a cliffhanger and then move to another subplot for a while (sometimes for entire books). I think this would be especially frustrating when you might have to wait multiple years for the next book. I went into the series with the understanding that many considered the middle a slog. I did evaluate at various points if I thought I was reading a slog. The only part where I thought that I might have just read a slog was book 10. That is, for the whole book, none of the main characters change locations or meet up and change groups or otherwise have much conflict. The exception is really just the last two pages where Egwene gets herself captured. The entire rest of the book is characters either waiting for something or travelling somewhere. But the travelling characters were travelling at the beginning of the book and still haven't gotten there by the end. Even so, it is very much a book about buildup, character development/relationship building, and planning. And in fairness, I think a lot of the slog feeling comes from the fact that a lot of the book 10 plotlines and relationships aren't well liked. The Shaido, the succession, the split tower politics, and the Tuon courtship are all slow storylines and they dominate most of the crossroads of twilight.

It's clear that during the AoL, the one power was studied in much the same way that we study electromagnetism or gravity. It's a characteristic of the universe that can be understood and harnessed for various uses. In that way, I would say that it is much like science more than magic. However, if the people of the AoL were aware that the one power was caused by some ancient/alien technology, then certainly LTT and the forsaken would have been in the know. And we don't get any indication that they know this. Of course, as was mentioned, the obvious question that the world being cyclic and our world being in one of the ages raises is, where is the one power in our world. However, I think the simplest explanation is that the gene for channeling (and I think it's clear from the books that it is a gene) goes extinct and mutates back in through different parts of the cycle. That does seem unlikely, but if the wheel wills it... On the other hand, it seems to be the case that the ability to channel is also partly associated with a soul. That would mean that 'channeling' souls wait out the non-channeling ages in Tel.

Oxygen doesn't burn on its own no matter how hot it is. Fire is a reaction that involves oxygen combining with something else, usually hydrocarbons. The air on its own does not contain sufficient levels of flammable gases to sustain a fire. If it did, any fire would create a chain reaction that would spread unchecked throughout the face of the whole earth. I think this discussion raises questions about what weaves of fire, air, earth, and water actually are. It doesn't seem like this works like benders from the avatar series where benders are actually controlling a piece of the element. The ability of a channeler to weave an element doesn't seem to depend much on access to the element. Channeling water weaves isn't easier in the ocean than it is in the desert and channeling earth doesn't become impossible (or even significantly more difficult) high in the air or in the middle of the ocean. Thus, it is clear that weaving elements is not about using actual physical pieces of the elements. Moreover, it seems that weaves of a specific element do not actually create or constitute that element. The residue that weaves leave behind is not a material component. It seems that the weaves of elements consist of some sort of metaphysical shadow or parallel version of the elements rather than the elements themselves.