HeavyHalfMoonBlade

The descriptions of how Gateways work seem to leave doubt that they are literal gateways between two points created by the Power, not some sort of portal that transports you using the Power. The point that Shadowspawn cannot travel through them is, as far as I can see, entirely arbitrary to explain why the Forsaken do not use Travelling to overrun the Westlands with Trollocs, and why only the Borderlands are plagued by trolloc raids. In the lore this is completely ad hoc compared to any other information about Shadowspawn or Travelling. Unless I missed something, of course.

Her point though about aging the characters is wrong. In the book, they act like children, especially Mat, but they are twenty. The show ages their behaviour, not their actual age appreciably. So criticizing the show for making them act too childish for their age is getting it completely the wrong way round. Also they fall into the trap of not appreciating the book as it was written. To anyone coming to the story when all the books are published, just from knowing the titles it is clear that story is about the Dragon Reborn. This was not clear when tEotW was released. That is teased out through the book. I'd say that is why they chose to go with who is the Dragon, as that replaces the tension of why are the trollocs after Rand? Seeing as it is written nearly entirely from Rand's perspective it is obvious he was the main character, we just did not know in what story yet. I often think that is why so many people think the book is boring at first as the whole tension spinning mechanic is completely lost if you have ever heard anything about the series. I think it is telling that so many people say here, I hated the first books and only continued because the rest of the books were sitting on the bookshelf. I might have mentioned that one or twice before, not sure.

Yup, it does does get a bit complicated. For fireballs, I have always thought why they used them was that they were channeled close, then thrown. This means that the application of power is not done at distance (like making shadowspawn burst into flame with weaves). But then what is burning? Oxygen in the air solidified with Air flows? With Lightning too, there seem to be two kinds at least. The girls at Cairhien manipulate the air to create local lightning storms that they move about the place, meaning they are not channeling the strikes directly and they are more "carpet bombing" their targets. We certainly see though that lightning is also used as a direct weapon without lag to generate it and deliberately aimed. I've always felt RJ was happy leaving this kind of thing as a soft magic system where he gives you the rough outline but let's you add your own detail. To an extent, more detail would actual make it less believable as there would always be some sort of question about how it worked. With the amulet the hard and fast rule is that weaves that touch Mat directly dissolve, so that could include Fireballs if they are some sort of tied off weave. But things created by the power like natural lightning (though Rahvin's trap sounds very direct and targetted) have no weaves to dissolve in the first place.

Yeah, I think the point is that if you create lightning or fire with the power, the amulet won't protect you. It's only the weaves directly that will be unravelled. Of course, that doesn't bear too close a scrutiny, if you weave a fireball, what is burning? But there is a difference between actual flames and weaves of Fire.

Here is some Zulu music from Solomon Linda. It might sound familiar. Mbube is lion in Zulu. https://youtu.be/mrrQT4WkbNE?si=QUeC6ROia3hIhUdi YouTube links hate me. Or I'm stupid, even chances, I suppose.

Meh I cannot read, I read this at first as a request for the images themselves and thought that you were probably as good at Googling as me (if not far better). But - The a'dam (worn or not) The Red Hand The Wolfshead The Andoran Lion - or indeed any country's flag (though some suck big time) The Trolloc band symbols (a mixture of skulls, lightening, etc) Dragon's fang, Flame of Tar Valon The White Tower The Charging Boar Rose of Andor The Dragon Scepter Tinker with a Sword Horn of Valere The Oath Rod Hadori Moiraine's stone Dragon and the Sword (Asha'man pins) Nynaeve tugging her braid while trying to cover her massive cleavage while Valan Luca leers at her Elayne's legs Julien's fez Pillowfriends Women sniffing Bela Thousands upon thousands of other horses (Mandarb, Aldieb, Stepper, etc) The heroes of the Horn Seanchan monsters, Grolm etc Seafolk out of sight of land Perrin's beard Mat's hat Faile's spanking fetish Whitecloaks Sharans Veiled Aiel Trollocs, Draghkar, other Shadowspawn Myrdraal Darkhounds The Green Man The Forsaken Ships, Rakers and Seanchan with square ribbed sails Accepted and Novices Tabac pipes Apple trees I'm going to stop now otherwise I might not ever, and I'm struggling to get past different applications of an overabundance of bosom.

Ah! The fifth word had me totally perplexed. He who controls the spice controls the universe. Just as well I read Dune thirty years ago. I knew it would come in handy one day, lol.

That ambivalent feeling when someone pays you an awesome compliment but she is your mother, and she has to say that, lol You really are making me blush now, and grin foolishly *grins*

I'm not sure which, but I kind of feel that you have broken a law by posting that in public. Probably several, lol.

Those "all too human" eyes.

It was kind of forced. They had to sell it on Amazon as the epic about the Dragon, teasing that in would be too difficult unless they were going to make the press releases etc really vague regarding what it is about. And as they had handed Moiraine a starring role, it would have been very difficult just to have her being all mysterious. The first book is very difficult to adapt for a lot of reasons, imho.

One can presume? His comments show he understands that putting the story on screen would change the story, and definitely that he would not be hugely keen on this. But presuming as to how different he would accept or what he thought about any of the specific changes is, well, presumptuous. Nowhere in that quote does it say "and because of this I really hate the Prime adaptation of my story." If you think it is implied, that is coming from you, not the author himself. I can imagine he would not like the changes being made but he would respect the efforts of those involved - but that says nothing about what he actually would have thought.

Unless you are paying him for the privilege, then I believe that he is on record as intimating that he would take the money and run.

Look, I'm sorry but could everyone stop being so talented? Or at least tone it down a little? Just have little bit of compassion for the rest of us... er, OK, me, or is that too much to ask? 😛 Wonderful stuff, guys.

Yes, but there was nothing stopping them coming together. Once Rand could Travel, he could have picked them up at any point. Jordan chose to keep them apart, and when they did see each other there was generally some complicating factor to keep them apart physically or emotionally. Which I think is a bit of a shame though I understand at least some of the reasons for it. Definitely your point about the building their own relations is important. If they had stayed together most of the time the story would have been very different in structure at least.

I suppose it could be seen as a function of the constant warfare that the Aiel are engaged in. It still doesn't quite ring true to me, but I guess Jordan was wanting to leaves details vague and hint at the culture in places instead of having to explain everything.

I agree that I don't remember anything explicitly romantic or sexual, but it is obviously a deep relationship. I mean, I have never liked another man so much that I want him to have a relationship with my wife. Regardless of culture or orientation, that simply does not seem logical. But of course, the whole thing is sort of turning polygamy on its head gender wise so maybe it is not really meant to be logical in that way.

I know, what a catchy title, took me a while to come up with it. Anyway, recipes, you have them, I want them. And anyone with recipes involving white chocolate will have amnesty from the Cocoacloaks that throng around these parts. All chocolate is worthy of devouring, we will not have discrimination here. As I am sure everyone is aware of, chocolate originated in South America. The cocoa tree was first domesticated 5,300 years ago in present-day Ecuador. The seeds of the fruit of the cocoa tree are very bitter and need to be fermented before being processed. The fruits of the three types of cocoa tree are shown above. After fermentation, the seeds are roasted and the husks of the seeds are harvested as cocoa nibs. The nibs can be ground into cocoa mass, and then liquefied by heat into chocolate liquor. The liquor can then be cooled and processed into cocoa solids and cocoa butter. The solids are then often further treated with an alkalizing agent such as potassium or sodium carbonate to remove the acidity of the solids, which gives it a much less bitter taste. This is often called Dutch cocoa, after the pioneering chocolate maker Coenraad Johannes van Houten, who developed the technique. You can see the relative degree of Dutching by the colour of the solids. The darker powder on the left are Dutched solids, on the right, natural cocoa solids. Dutching also has an effect on the level of caffeine (reducing it to a third) and the anti-oxidants (reducing them by 60%) in the cocoa solids. It is interesting to note that cocoa is so high in anti-oxidants that even Dutch cocoa is considered a high anti-oxidant food. Dutch cocoa forms the basis for most modern chocolate applications. I was not going to include how chocolate is made as I thought everyone would already know, but actually after reading briefly up on it I realised that there a lot of detail there that I was completely ignorant about, so I have included the basics anyway. Everyone loves chocolate, but of course, people being people, there has to be a dark side to it as well. While the plant was first domesticated in South America, currently most chocolate is grown in West Africa. It is estimated that more than two million children are involved in the farming of cocoa in Africa, with two major concerns being human trafficking and slavery. In a Dutch program about slavery involved in chocolate a spokesperson for Nestle appeared to downplay the importance of slavery as your normal chocolate farmer was so poor, it really did not make a lot difference. Here in the Netherlands, a reporter called Teun van de Keuken, made headlines when he reported himself to the police for being an accomplice to slavery. His argument was that he knew that chocolate was produced using slavery yet still financially contributed to the process by buying chocolate. Legal experts advised that there was definitely a case to be answered under Dutch law, and Teun collected tens of thousands of signatures urging for him to be jailed. In the end, the court decided the motion was inadmissible and without denying the horrors involved in cocoa production, prosecuting Teun and the more than two thousand other chocolate consumers that came forward, was not the correct way to deal with the issue. The publicity, and a cynic might point to research that people would pay many times more for chocolate that was guaranteed to be slave free, lead to Teun's own brand of chocolate - "Tony's Chocolonely", a name thought up for a new Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream that Teun tried to pitch to that company as part of his awareness raising about the issue - has become the market leader in the Netherlands, and costs at least three times as much as Verkade, the previous market leader. So that is a bit depressing. Even outside of the exploitation of the farmers, as part of Teun's programming, he traveled to Africa where the chocolate was farmed with a suitcase full of chocolate. In a village, with the Headman's permission, he distributed the various chocolate bars and sweeties out (after the Headsman had had first pick) to the villagers, none of whom had never tasted chocolate before in their lives, despite spending their entire lives farming the cocoa plant. Truly upsetting and humbling as an indication of the privilege that we have in the First World. Anyway on that point, I'll open the floor to anyone else that would like to discuss anything about chocolate or share a recipe, and go look up some good recipes to share. Where is Maw Broon's cookbook now?