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Wheel of Time: Towers of Midnight
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If you want to have a discussion about what a uptight pushy bitch Elayne is, or how retarded it is that of the 3, only Aviendha knew him for more than 30 minutes before declaring her unending love, there's valid criticisms, but claiming that Jordan is poisoning his reader pool by having Rand with three ladies is ridiculous.
As I said in the recent fuck-awful gender thread, I can never quite tell what Jordan's opinion of women was. Did he hate men, and used women as his mouthpiece? Or did he hate women, and so created every single one from the same template of a sniffing, braid-tugging, skirt-wearing (and skirt-straightening) broken record with a superiority complex and hands perpetually on hips? Whatever the motivation, most of his female characters are terrible people.
Technically it's just a sword that looks like fire. It doesn't actually burn anything.
Also, Elayne is supposed to be prissy and uptight. She IS royalty after all. She's like one of them "Ladies of Proper Breeding" or whatever. She's got plenty of flaws beyond that too. But lots of good points as well.
Well, Jordan wrote an awful lot of words about Elayne being the worst character in anything ever. We're just trying to keep up.
I'd go with "conscious attempt to play around with our expectations regarding gender roles, with a side helping of game-store-variety awkward fatbeard sexual naïveté". But I'm a horrible person.
Just look at Mat and Tylin. Change their genders and people would be up in arms about it.
Neither. It just asks "What if men were considered the inferior gender?" and then runs with it.
Much (actually, I think all) of the world being a matriarchy doesn't excuse - or even explain - almost all women being drawn from the same template. It's not even a good template.
If only Jordan had given those characters sexually ambiguous names.
Yeah, Jordan comes off really creepy multiple times in the books. Like when describing in detail with much blushing about what happens if someone you're bonding to is having sex, using multiple roaring lion metaphors.
Out of Rand/Elayne/Min/Avienda, Perrin/Faile, Mat/Tylin, Nynaeve/Lan, Susan/General Guy, all of them have the women having power over the man is some way.
And then you have Logain and the other Ashaman bonding against Aes Sedai against their will, which was equalled to rape multiple times throughout the books.
Does the new co-author come off less creepy in the books he wrote?
This isn't really true. The female characters have plenty of unique characteristics.
It's just that in any interaction between them and men, their sexism is the elephant in the room.
I don't see any of that as creepy.
The sex-when-bonded thing is a pretty legitimate question.
The gender power dynamics are meant to be reversed in alot of ways.
And the Ashaman bondings Aes Sedai thing is supposed to be a bit ... unseemly. Although it's not really quite as much like rape since the whole point of the rape analogy with forcibly bonding a man is that against a channeler, there's nothing a normal man can do. In that case it's meant to be more like a form of imprisonment since they are both equals in power and prisoners of war.
What do you expect? They are supposed to be more or less about Renaissance level as a society. Is sexism really that surprising?
Do you people ever get tired of bitching about the women in the WoT? Ever?
All I can imagine is that your life experiences have yet to introduce you to tough, pushy, bitchy women. Guess what, they exist, and they act exactly like the ones he's created.
Just because someone is self centered, pushy, and generally bitchy doesn't mean she's a horrible person. It amuses me that you all love to harp on the women day in and day out but you ignore how equally annoying and pushy the men are.
Its called conflict people. It moves plots. God knows there's little enough of that as it is.
That's the point.
There are so many things wrong with this.
For one thing, we all hate Rand and Perrin too.
Mat is cool though.
Brandon Sanderson writes really good female characters in his own books, and it seems like he is bringing these characters back to something approaching sanity. Though who knows.
You have to be pushy when you're attempting to do great things.
See, in my case, Perrin's chapters are the only ones I just skim by. Rand may be nuts, but at least there're a few interesting characters hanging around over there. And there are some wonderful moments in The Gathering Storm, too.
Perrin, though. No. I cannot bear it.
Blasphemy. Mat channeling Nathan Ford is hilarious.
Full agreement.
My only hope is that he will realize his mistakes based on all of the criticism.
For the record, folks, I'm in the "loves everybody" camp.
I enjoy and often crack up reading every character, including Elayne and Perrin.
I do not consider Elayne a psychopath/rapist.
That and his idea of a strong woman seems to be kind of a harridan. Siuan, Nynaeave, Elayne, Aviendha, Cadsuane, all do a lot of carping.
Basically, I really wonder how he and his editor-wife interacted.
Thing is, as Rand started going nuts, he couldn't distinguish between good reasons and bad reasons. He started to become a tyrant. He needs people to disagree with him and act on their own accord. The worst possible thing would be to have people groveling over him any more than they already are.
I agree that Jordan made his female characters irritating but insisting they should be push-overs ignores Rand's need for dissent from his friends. Power made him blind to his weaknesses at several points (and to his own blindness) and, without friends who occasionally ignored his orders/wants, he would have failed.
Isn't it a reference to the medieval church checking to make sure the Pope was a man?
"Ordinary. The kind of dangerous, beautiful ordinary that you just can't leave alone. Like an angel from the underworld or maybe a devil from paradise."
"It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation."
The true test will be when he writes Elayne.
Hey, a man can dream.
Preorder of the next book is 40% off at amazon right now
The Gathering Storm was generally well done.
...yeah
i just finished a game of thrones. really good stuff!
Wheel of Time is decent. It seems to be ending up a mediocre center bookended by two solid segments.
Going to it immediately after Martin might prove to be disappointing, though.
Got botp'd after a month of inactivity, so this might go unnoticed.
This guy is pretty good.
Too bad the audiobook wasn't 40% off. Guess I'll have to wait a whole week before the library gets it again...
Awesome! I think I preordered it already, but lets see. I believe it is the biggest, or closest, WoT book yet.
And if you've only liked 1 fantasy book out of thousands, or even kinda liked one, two series I'd reccomend are Wheel of Time, and Feists Magician series (The first 8 or so are great, and the first two amazing IMO) once your hooked on WoT, I"d then warn you about bookes 8-10, which I don't think are bad anymore now that almost all the books are out. Amazing world and character.
*edit* yup, pre-ordered. I get the best deal that they announce at any time right?
Oh, and off topic, but saw the kindle book was.... $14 and fucking 99 cents! The hardback is $17.99 right now! I hate the ebook rapage. If you buy a hardback for one, you should get the ebook for free. Rapage. I use my ebook reader so I don't ruin my books, I have no problems with the methods I use to obtain them.
MWO: Adamski
It is really kind of scary just how well I remember the events of the series, despite reading Path of Daggers on release day and then never getting ramped up again. Seriously, there are even specific lines that I remember clear as day and I hadn't read Eye of the World or The Great Hunt in probably ten years.
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Egwene still hasn't done anything to really annoy me, so bonus points there.
Yep