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Wheel of Time: Towers of Midnight
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http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=27678&highlight=Wheel+Time
Wasn't that one more of a joke one, being in SE and everything? I was going for a more serious one.
They are completely different in that reading chapters from their PoV no longer makes me cringe. Which is amazing.
Perrin is the most dramatic and obvious, and it pretty much straight up acknowledges that he has been on a shitty derail for like the last five books.
But Egwene has seriously toned down her stupid bitch qualities, though they still creep in there at times.
And Rand, while still emo, and still going on about being hard and shit, is at least less repetitive about it and actually does other things and goes crazy psycho and shit.
If that was your issue then yes, RJ planned that all along. It's the characters arcs.
I am not convinced.
Perrin has been drifting slowly back from being an obsessive pscyo for a few books now. COT is essentially his nadir and that's when he throws the axe away due to his recognition of this. KOD makes a big deal of him being fucking crazy over this whole thing and how that's bad. With Faile back, it's time for him to reassess his choices and decide what he actually wants to be and do. This will almost certainly happen in the next book and will essentially set his character up for the Last Battle and his position at the end of the series.
Egwene has been growing as a person for ages now and in TGS steps up to be a real leader. This has been coming for ages. And also, she's still a bitch.
Rand just finally went over the edge. It's been foreshadowed for ages now.
Egwene starts harmless and likable, becomes a total monster, stays a total monster, and then gets better after people start whipping her twice daily.
What's also interesting is that we've seen other Forsaken use the "doorway" method and not the materialization method... Anyway, stupid inconsequential detail, but I wonder if it was deliberate or a mistake.
(also I don't want this thread to die now that I'm rereading the books!)
Maybe he just was doing the Invisible trick, and faded into view for dramatic effect.
Then again, the first book shouldn't even be considered canon in terms of the OP. Sooooo many things changed from his first conception.
He might be using the True Power.
In fact, I'd guarantee you he is.
I don't know exactly how travelling with the True Power looks though.
So, from what I can imagine, similar to OP Travelling, with more ragged edges.
I like how in the new one, Sanderson acknowledged some of the silly stuff.
THANK YOU!
I never noticed it the first couple times I read the series, but as the later books came it out was like, man Jordan really seems to have a spanking fetish.
Also what exactly are all the differences between the True and One Power? Is the True Power purely from TDO? Can you access it any other way? I figured that's what Rand was using in this last book, due to the references about a "darkness" being around him.
TP is the Dark One, or at the very least granted by him
Essentially correct. I recall hints that all forms of the Power are addictive, the True Power just especially so. The gholam can pick up on it, and TDO ostensibly controls access.
Z0re: I get the feeling that the 'deep end' thing is more long term than that usage.
The True Power as a whole seems a bit of a Deus Ex Machina to me really. Why the Forsaken didn't all just use it/The DO allow them to use it for 5 minutes to kill Lews Therin and all the other Aes Sedai I'll never understand.
It is absolutely an example of that. The rules surrounding it are extremely unclear – in-universe, this is probably because TDO comes across as a strange blend of malevolent and insane, and, if Moridin is anything to go by (and I realise that this is questionable, given that he suggests he's playing both sides), actually looking forward to the final showdown.
In a way, it's a bit like Travelling, in that it's an incredibly powerful tool used 'correctly', but not actually applied. There are a few elements like that, actually, where protagonists and antagonists alike could cripple enemies with a little application of either strategy (hit and jump), or overwhelming force (from one parody):
Rand: I will take 5,000 soldiers and eight Asha’man.
Bashere: It should work. With your mediocre planning and surrounding yourself with those who hate you, once again, you should just barely avoid complete disaster.
What I meant
Nothing in the books shows that the True Power is actually better than the other sources except for a few limited tasks. It also happens to drive you insane if used and unlike saidin and saidar willpower alone doesn't seem to be enough to stop from channeling it.
We don't know the limits of the TP though.
We DO know it's insanely addictive, comes directly from the Dark One (I believe there's been implications it IS essentially the Dark One) and even the Forsaken are scared shitless of using it. It's got alot of nasty side-effects.
And we don't know it's power compared to the One Power.
Also, remember that the Dark One's plan doesn't involve killing Rand. Not yet anyway.
Ugh, please don't start this crap. I hear this from some people and it's a ridiculous meme with no real support in the text.
There's almost no spanking in the books. It shows up like .... 3 or so times.
Explicitly, yes.
It's implied all over the goddamn place, though.
We know it's AT LEAST equivalent to the the One Power. Otherwise Sammy just felt like letting herself die. It's done a number of things the OP can do and most important it's not detectable. That alone makes it far more powerful than the One Power. One guy could drop dozens before they even realized something was wrong. I mean, it's such a over powered device it almost has to some have other limitation we haven't seen yet. Spin a billion webs of the stuff all over and let your enemies just walk into it etc etc. Of course, inverted webs have the same problem, they're criminally underused.
If by "implied all over the goddamn place" you mean "used by the Aes Sedai as punishment for Novices" then yes.
I mean, seriously people, spanking as a mild form of corporal punishment is not uncommon.
You'd have to spin them in a place where you knew your enemy will be without them feeling you setting them.
Also, it's been established since TEOTW that wards and such can't be very powerful or discriminatory while still being unobtrusive.
It's just a problem with this being fantasy. There is 0 reason the anyone who can invert webs would fail to have killed anyone else by now if they really wanted to. Find out where they are and coat the place. Who cares if they're detected, it be like a nuke going off you can't sense. Rand even sets killing level inverted webs at certain places. He should be setting shadow killing webs up everywhere. But just doesn't.
Gotta admit, when it took him like 5 minutes to set up a web that kills every Shadowspawn that goes through it, while giving them time to get away from the web so the bodies don't pile up, and inverted it so nobody can ever find it... well, you'd think he'd have had Ashaman spinning webs all over the Borderlands.
I'm also rereading the books and I noticed that. However, there is no conflict. Ishamael was definitely using the True Power for starters, but that doesn't matter so much. Notice in that same scene, when Ishamael "cured" Lews Therin of his madness that Lews Therin Traveled (via gateway method) to what would become Dragonmount.
Ishamael's in a weird category. Firstly, consider that he was with Lews Therin. But Lews Therin was crazy at this point. And he was crazy because he had just sealed the Bore with TDO and all the Forsaken. So why wasn't Ishamael there? It's never been stated for fact, but it seems like Ishamael was never sealed within the prison with the rest of them. The only reason this doesn't make sense is because it wouldn't explain why Ishamael only shows up for gaps at a time (as opposed to being a constant presence since the Age of Legends). I personally think it's because he's physically dying and getting respun into the pattern, but most believe it's because he's only partially sealed at Shayol Ghul. Anyway.
Back on point, Ishamael's doing something that's not Traveling. Whether he's just throwing his consciousness (because he is partially sealed) or using a different weave that's possible with the True Power (he is not Traveling. Traveling with the True Power has been described as "ripping a hole in the Pattern") or just a different weave in general. Not everything from the Age of Legends has been regained.
Also, to the people wondering why the other Forsaken don't use the True Power: Well, they do. Ishamael just recklessly uses it, though. The others only do it when absolutely necessary because it not only drives people mad, but it has really negative effects on the body - as evidenced by Ishamael/Ba'alzamon having fire-filled sockets for eyes and being practically entirely molten. You can see the effect repeating in Ishamael/Morridin as the saa in his eyes are already innumerable.
I can't help but notice that book 10 actually has a backward facing arrow.
So slow the plot actually un-developed? That's impressive.
Book 10, Chapter 12 - Elayne takes a bath.
Ishmael was semi-trapped only and reappears here and there between the Sealing and the present. No one knows for sure exactly how that whole thing worked.
Though it happens every thousand years or so, he explicitly and implicitly talks about being behind Hawkwing and the Trolloc wars. And it lasts roughly forty years based on a quote from Verin a couple books back.
He was definitely behind both of those. Maybe that's when he's the most free.
I'm rereading the series right now (starting CoS now) but I think the hints at it are later in the series so I'll see if anything comes up.
Right... his writing really sounds like everything I hated about Tolkien and nothing I loved. Like an entire, long, series of books that is nothing but the fuckawful unreadable second half of The Two Towers.
And that's why I never picked up Jordan.
I'm pretty sure this is not remotely true. At least not on average. Book 10 is terrible though.
The books are full of shit happening.
The worst is book 10 and even that has "a bunch of decisions that will be carried out in the next book" as the action.