Hello again, dear friends. I know I told you that we were going to spend this week on Egwene’s Accepted Trials, but as it turns out, I had so much to say that I had to break it down into two different posts! You all seem to enjoy my non chapter-specific ramblings, though, and seems like it was about time for one.
Before I get into that, however, I’d like to thank you all of your insightful comments over the course of this read. I’ve enjoyed interacting with you, and even if I didn’t comment myself, I was reading along and loving all of your thoughts and pointers. You’ve been working so hard to keep those comments spoiler-free while still giving me new angles to ponder. It’s been great fun for me, and I think it also contributed to making the subsequent posts richer.
That being said, as the books get more and more complicated, so does spoiler-free commenting! The Tor Dot Powers that Be and I have decided to change the policy, allowing all commenting to be as spoilery as you like. We do not seem to have any commenters who are reading along with me for the first time. And while I’ll miss your discussions and banter, freeing up the comments section allows you all to spend less time worrying about what counts as a spoiler and dealing with white-outs, and more time getting into the nitty-gritty of the story you love.
Since last week was my last week reading comments, I’ll indulge one last time in responding to a few things that came up after last week’s post.
Several of you have pointed out to me that, while I saw Lanfear’s disdain over the Aes Sedai healing methods as being a technique issue between the Dark methods and the Light, it is actually more about how much learning and knowledge has been lost in the Breaking. Lanfear is both more powerful, and more knowledgeable, than the greatest Aes Sedai of Rand’s time, and probably knows many ways to Heal a person that don’t tax the body so much. So, her comment is really more like when Doctor McCoy gets offended by kidney dialysis and asks if they’re in the Dark Ages in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
I am really looking forward to learning more about modern Aes Sedai, which I imagine will come partly from other Forsaken escaping the prison and running around causing trouble, but may also come from certain characters (Mat? Rand?) connecting with past memories or past selves. It’s also possible that more pieces of lost knowledge might be discovered—they found the Horn, after all, and one assumes Rand will get the Sword that isn’t a Sword eventually. Who’s to say that they won’t discover a trove of hidden Aes Sedai scrolls or something, full of spells that were thought lost forever. It’s also possible, likely, even, that powerful channelers like Rand, Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve might find themselves inventing, or reinventing, ways of doing things that are beyond the abilities of the current set of Aes Sedai.
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It’s interesting that so many characters keep reminding us of how much was lost in the Breaking, but I keep glossing over it. I suppose I’m waiting for more concrete information to compare and contrast with, but I’m going to try to keep it a little more in the front of my mind because it is clearly going to become more relevant as Rand discovers the clues and gifts secured for the Dragon’s return, and people like Lanfear keep bringing their own agendas into the plot.
It’s true that I was thinking Lanfear must have to stand out in the Tower due to her power, but of course she’s surrounded by other channelers. Just because she is a follower of the Dark One, and stronger than any of the Aes Sedai around her, doesn’t mean she would “feel” different, so to speak, to those who can sense Power. Not unless she did something really obvious, anyway.
The way Healing is done by the modern Aes Sedai is fascinating to me, however. The details have not yet been explained, except to say that the Healer is using the patient’s own body to heal itself. I understand this to mean that, through the use of saidar, the body’s natural healing process is sped up. The human body already has an incredible natural power in self-healing, and with saidar being used to push that process along, the greatest risks of death—such as blood-loss, infection, and the damage from prolonged exposure or oxygen-starvation—are greatly reduced. But if the body’s natural cell regrowth and turnover is accelerated, that means that the metabolism must be similarly accelerated, in order to accommodate the new cells’ needs. This is how Mat can eat so much more than is natural, and how his body seems to process it so rapidly. It reminds me of how fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe like to imagine that Captain America must always carry snacks in those little pouches on his belt. The guy’s got a metabolism that burns four times as fast as an ordinary person’s, so even with a more efficient use of the food he consumes, he’s gotta need a lot of calories!
(Side note: Technically a rumbling stomach doesn’t mean your stomach is empty. It’s just the sounds of your intestines moving things around. If Mat’s eating that much, that fast, his tummy’s going to be making quite a bit of noise!)
In regards to my reaction towards Mat in his first POV chapters: Yes, I did find him annoying and selfish. However, I fully expect to love him before the story is through. Characters that are initially self-absorbed often have the best character arcs and become fan favorites (I’m thinking of Han Solo here, or some of iterations of Marvel’s Loki, or John Silver in Starz’s Black Sails.) As I observed last week, the other characters have had over two books’ worth of character development, so Mat’s already behind the curve in that respect, through no (well, some, but even sticky-fingered gamblers don’t deserve Mordeth) fault of his own. To make matters more difficult, narratively speaking, giving us a few chapters from him has not yet shown us anything about why Mat is the way he is. I remember mentioning (back in The Eye of the World? I think?) that I was looking forward to finally getting Mat’s point-of-view, but that was specifically because I wanted to know more of why he was the way he was, why he made the choices he did, why he struggled with tendencies to be more self-absorbed and less open-minded than Rand, Perrin, or Egwene.
Nynaeve also tends to be too stubborn and rather self-absorbed, not to mention her intense ability to hold a grudge. She often comes off in the narration as kind of a jerk, the sort of jerk who acts like they’re the smartest, most talented person in the room. (She often is, but that’s not an excuse.) But from the very first chapter we had from Nynaeve’s perspective, her inner monologue told us a lot about why she is the way she is. The reason for her foibles, the fears that cause, or at least reinforce, her faults, began to come clear, which made it easier to be understanding when she acted less than perfectly. It made it easier to relate to her in her pride and stubbornness—especially for me, since I connected so personally with both her fears and some of her faults.
I would very much like to have the same from Mat; the why of his character, the fears and desires that shape him. That’s what I’m craving. But I am sure that will come in time! And I am very much looking forward to getting to know Mat better.
Finally, there is the concept that men who can channel are viewed as evil, and that the Dragon is viewed as evil, even though the ability to be a channeler is not something one can choose, and the Dragon is supposed to be a savior who protects the world from the Dark One. I understand the reasons the people of this world feel this way, of course. The “madness” from the taint on saidin results in terrible, destructive consequences regardless of how much the afflicted man might want to prevent it. The actions of the various false Dragons have led to war, and death, and destruction. And the Dragon may be prophesied to defeat the Dark One in the Last Battle, but he’s also prophesied to break the world again, so that’s not exactly going to inspire people to find confidence and trust in the Dragon, a man who is also super-powerful and just as susceptible to the taint as the next male channeler.
So, I get all that. And narratively, I get how the other characters feel. But as a reader who is following Rand, Egwene, and Nynaeve in their journeys of self-discovery, it’s emotionally difficult not to get angry at everyone for their prejudices, however understandable they are in-world. I don’t have the same fears and prejudices as the non-channeler characters do, and these channelers are presented to me as beloved heroes who I already desperately want to protect from all the pain they are heading into. But even more than that, I have, from the beginning, very much related the ability to channel to questions of identity and of queer experience.
And I see so much of the same prejudices unfolding here. Granted, there are in-world reasons for those prejudices that are somewhat more understandable than those in ours—QUILTBAG folks aren’t actually hurting other people, no matter how much parts of society claim that we are, while male channelers really can end up harming or killing those around them. But gay and trans people have a long history of being accused of being evil, corrupt, and dangerous, simply because our lives are different than accepted societal norms (at least in white western cultures, I can’t speak for those I am not a part of). And the question of whether or not our identity is a choice, and what kinds of choices we should be allowed to make for ourselves, has been and continues to be an incredibly important of our lives and continued existence.
It just so happens to be that the question of having a choice (or not) in who you are and what you want to be is also a central theme in The Wheel of Time. This is true for Perrin, for channelers in general, and, of course, especially for Rand.
I avoid reading anything about The Wheel of Time as much as I possibly can, which is difficult in the age of the internet, especially now that I write about it and Google has taken to suggesting WoT articles every time I open a new browser window. I do know, however, that Jordan has said that one of his driving forces in creating the series is wanting to tackle the idea of what it would be like to discover that you are the Chosen One, and how terrible that revelation would be. Having somehow missed The Wheel of Time as a kid but grown up with The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, I have found myself struck by the subtle and yet profound difference in Harry and Frodo’s Chosen One status as compared to Rand’s.
Of these three examples, Frodo is the person who has the most agency in his status as the one chosen to carry the One Ring to Mordor. He does technically have a choice, after all. No one would ever have forced him to take the thing past Rivendell if he hadn’t volunteered of his own free will, and while Gandalf may have given him pushes in a certain direction, Frodo ultimately still had a fair bit of agency in his choice, and if he hadn’t volunteered, someone else would have been chosen. Indeed, it is the reason for Frodo’s choice, his sacrifice to do something horrible he had no desire to do, that both makes him a hero and makes him capable of resisting the Ring long enough to complete the task. However, it is clear from the narrative—and recognized by knowledgeable characters like Elrond and Gandalf—that Frodo was the only choice that had any real hope of succeeding. That isn’t to say that there was no one else in all of Middle Earth that perhaps could have ended up in Frodo’s position and succeed, but luck or fate conspired to put the Ring in his hands specifically, which set him up to be the only person who could get the job done: He was unlucky enough to get the Ring at the right time to take it to Mordor, and he also was fortunate enough to have the strength of character to do it.
When Harry Potter learns of his status as the Boy Who Lived, he is almost as overwhelmed as Rand is when he first starts to believe that he might actually be the Dragon Reborn. Harry himself did nothing to become the only person with the power to defeat Voldermort: Like Frodo, the actions of his family led him to such a circumstance. And like Frodo, he does technically have a choice in what to do with that status; he could have chosen at any time not to meddle so much with the mysteries in Hogwarts, especially when he was younger, or been unable to bring himself to make the necessary sacrifices required to defeat Voldemort. In the later books, Harry can see even more definitively than Frodo can how he is the only one in a position to do what must be done—but technically he still could have chosen to let Dumbledore and the other adults do the fighting in his stead, and hoped that would be enough.
Rand’s choice is less of a choice. He is the Dragon Reborn, no matter what he does with his life or whether or not he ever actively chooses to engage with that destiny. Even more than that, the Wheel and the Pattern are clear and active agents of Fate in the world of the Wheel of Time, while fate and destiny are more nebulous concepts in Harry and Frodo’s lives. Right now Rand just wants to get being the Dragon over with, so to speak (and the poor lamb is not going to have much luck with that, I’ll bet) but even if he tried to run away to some deserted area, never channel again, and avoid all other people, I don’t think the Pattern would allow it.
I imagine that all iterations of the Dragon must be ta’veren. The Dragon is born into the Pattern during important points, when he is needed, and his fate is interwoven with that of the Dark One’s influence on the world. But Rand is not the only ta’veren person in The Wheel of Time, and it has been stated by more than one character that ta’veren have even less of a choice in where their own lives lead them.
Perrin’s big choice very much appears to be how he will handle being a wolfbrother. That he is one is not something he can choose, and it’s clear that at this point he has accepted the truth of that. He still resists any connection to the wolves, but that is because he is afraid of losing himself, losing his human side, not because he thinks he can pretend it isn’t a part of him. His understanding of, and empathy towards, Noam feels like a significant step in his journey; it may have made him even more frightened of connecting to the wolves, but it also prompted him to finally ask Moiraine what she knows about the condition and to consider a little more closely what this life means—what being a wolf means. At the moment he is most concerned with protecting himself in—and from—his dreams, but in the long run he will have to grapple with the question of how much he wants to lean into his identity, and in what capacity he wants to make it a part of himself.
Like Rand, Egwene and Nynaeve could not choose whether or not to be channelers. They are both wilders, girls who have/would have touched the One Power even without instruction. Egwene had to be trained, or would likely have died. Nynaeve was fortunate to survive on her own. But they do have a choice in their future. Nynaeve could have chosen to return to the Two Rivers instead of following Moiraine and accompanying Egwene to the White Tower. I believe that her ability to channel, her identity as an Aes Sedai, will become very important to Nynaeve in time, but her choice to take Moiraine’s invitation and stay with Egwene came much more from a desire to protect those considered under her charge (not to mention a need for control, and to get revenge on Moiraine) than it did from a desire to learn to wield saidar.
Egwene, on the other hand, has wanted to be Aes Sedai since the moment she learned it was possible. She has had doubts and struggles, of course, but ultimately this part of her has been relatively consistent. While it is true that she would have had to go to the Tower for a while, or risk death, she has always delighted in her ability to channel and the opportunity it provides.
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I assume that, while all wilders must spend at least some time in the Tower or risk a very likely and painful death, any other woman who has the potential to channel that is only discovered when she is examined by an Aes Sedai would have the option of never going to the Tower at all, never touching saidar, and continuing life exactly as she chooses.
Unless she’s around someone ta’veren, of course. Or ta’veren herself. I’m still waiting for some ta’veren ladies to show up.
My dream for all these characters, regardless of how much choice they have had in their identities and their fates, is that they will find some happiness in who they are and what they have become.
Queer people in our world are often fighting the idea that our sexualities, our identities, are a “choice,” and that idea is problematic on so many levels. But it is also true that there is a reverse insinuation, a different problem, even when one accepts that it isn’t a choice. The suggestion then becomes that we just “can’t help” who we are, and if we could, we obviously would never choose to be different. That being trans or gay or bi or intersex carries only suffering, only pain, and no one would want to be that way if they could help it.
And that’s not true. Being queer brings a lot of good things too, a lot of beauty, and adventure, and joy. And my hope is that the overarching story of The Wheel of Time will give our protagonists some of that beauty and joy as well.
I want Perrin to love some parts of his connection to wolves, and be fulfilled by them. I want Nynaeve to discover that her connection to saidar and the Aes Sedai gives her the ability to care for people the way she always wanted, but on a much grander scale, to be a healer and a protector and a voice of wisdom. I want the narrative to continue to explore the pleasure of channeling and touching the One Power, and not only in the context of the dangerous desire to draw too much. I want Lan to become Nynaeve’s Warder and for them to share a double-union of being married and of being bonded Warder and Aes Sedai, and to have that be better than either one would be on its own.
The fight ahead of Rand and his friends is a great one, and I know there is deep suffering, deep pain and loss, in their futures. But in between the cracks in Fate, in between the woof and weft of the Wheel’s Weave, I want to see pleasure, and happiness, and connection. Touching the driving force of the universe must be a remarkable experience. Shaping the driving force of the universe must bring wonders as well as danger. And I would like to revel in that.
Sylas K Barrett is a writer himself, and the question of fate vs choice in a story is one that has always fascinated him. And he thinks it would be good for some of our characters to remember that bravery is not the absence of fear, but persistence in the face of it.
Several disjointed thoughts to follow:
Sylas is going to be very very disappointed in Perrin from book 7 on.
Just like Butcher makes his living torturing Dresden, Jordan’s whole point was to make the chosen-one gig as burdensome as possible for Rand. The obvious exception is the women who love him, but other than that he really piles on Rand to make his life hell for a long long time.
I like the identity questions raised by channeling much more than the more common comparisons to drug addiction.
Looking forward to seeing Sylas’ reaction to Faile.
ARGH! A post with no new chapters covered! :-(
I am not sure Sylas will ever see these comments (does somebody summarize them for him?) but this is a very thoughtful essay. For me the most direct/intimate connection I have with these concepts is of thinking of people who are non-neurotypical. One of my sons is dealing with that, and sometimes its hard while raising him to figure out what he can control in terms of his own behavior and reactions and how he thinks of things (and truly, sometimes it is destructive), but I also don’t want him to deny his own uniqueness. It’s a tough row to hoe as a parent.
Anyway, regarding Frodo, what I think is the most arresting of his story, is that in a way, being the Chosen One wasn’t a great thing in Tolkien’s world either. Frodo in the end isn’t fully able to complete the task on his own, and remains permanently wounded by it. I also think it will be interesting to look at the choices Rand DOES have to make (I think he does get SOME agency), especially in the last books.
Wow, spoilers allowed now huh? It will be weird not to use the white-out, but here it goes…as far as Lanfear hiding among the Aes Sedai, she, of course, is so powerful that her power would stand out like a sore thumb. Thus the need for the “inverting” later developed by RJ.
That was weird not to white-out…
oh nuts, we’ve broken it. Its a shame that Sylas is no longer going to be checking out the comments btl but they were becoming a little spoilerific.
Of note though how would a book of weaves work?
Hmm, I think I might finally understand what happened in the Collan Dam…
As previous it was strange not to white any of this out.
edit: whited out section for others reading through the series for the first time; although I suggest that spoilers will become pretty endemic now
@@.-@:
How would a book of weaves work? We’d have to ask Moiraine. She would know. She discovered the weave for Balefire while studying in Adeleas’ and Vandene’s library. Or at least enough hints to reconstruct it.
Quick aside regarding the top of the page announcement, I am reading the series for the first time currently. I personally would appreciate whited out spoilers, at least regarding the last four books. This is of course just personal preference on my part, y’all do you.
@2:
With non-neurotypical people, I think its less a matter of “what is s/he unable to do” as much as “what is so difficult for this person to do that I need to extend extra grace.” And of course, the real difficulty as a parent is that its different for each kid. I feel for you. Trying to strike the balance between being loving and supportive, and providing needed and helpful correction, can be extremely difficult to do. Especially if your child is… crafty, for lack of a better word. I know with one of mine, she has difficulty with certain things, knows it, and most definitely leans into it in order to get away with inappropriate behavior that she could completely control. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Trying to figure out when to support and when to correct is an ongoing challenge for us.
@6 – With the change in the spoiler policy for these articles, you should probably avoid the comments section. Even before the change, spoilers were posted without white-out. Personally, when reading a series, I avoid all websites related to it until I finish.
The difficulty with men who channel is that, unlike some real life things it could be compared to, it always ends badly. Acceptance, training, social constraints, none of that is going to change the outcome. Think rabies. Or think something that is always the precursor to becoming a crazy ax murderer.
But, the cure (stilling) is often fatal. Worse, for the cure to have its best, long-term outcome, it needs to be given before any of the negative symptoms have begun to show–but it still has a high mortality rate in those situations. That increases the bad image of the people giving the “cure” (although reds do quite enough PR damage on their own) which gives a big incentive to anyone with the condition not to seek help.
A book of weaves? I imagine it would look very much like book of knitting or crocheting patterns, with different colours for air, spirit etc. And many notes like “be very careful not to do that” and “never ever ever try this”.
On one hand I will miss the whited-out-spoilers and the overall sense of conspiracy it gave – on the other hand I really didn´t feel like commenting in those discusions, afraid I might spoil something anyway.
I just feel bad for the first-time WOT readers following this.
@austin (#3)
Yeah…… I wondered if this was not secretly more for Sylas’ benefit than our own, regardless of how he framed it in the beginning of the post.
I guess people just can’t be trusted to be reasonable and think about what they say. Especially when something becomes more and more popular and the group of people involved thus becomes larger and larger, the probability of idiots who lack any consideration for people’s experiences other than their own, or (alternatively, perhaps) the ability to think rationally and thoroughly about things, approaches 100%. Reaction videos on YouTube are the exact same way: eventually, all Reactors stop reading their comments, because there will, as someone works their way through a show or series of movies or whatever, at some point always be people who Spoil.
Not to mention what seems to have been the main problem in the specific case of last week’s post (and throughout the read-along): the problem of wanting to point things out, but balancing that with not giving things away by means of clues. Many don’t even consider that “Reactors” [I’m going to consider Sylas a Reactor of Books for the sake of this post] have the ability to use context and disparate clues to piece together all sorts of things about what’s coming up, even if no information is given out directly. But even for those who do consider such things, it’s a fine and difficult line to walk. Especially because a major part of the ability for “Reactors” to figure stuff out comes from things pointed out by several different people and then combining those pieces of information and context and emphasis into a frighteningly accurate predictive picture. And no individual commenter has control over what all the other commenters do, nor knowledge of what they will do, and so to act based on things that are out of your control and beyond your knowledge is very hard indeed.
So I guess this might have been inevitable. I mean, look at how eager some commenters already are to post Spoilers in non-white now that it has officially been sanctioned. Also, there’s the first paragraph of this “section” to consider, which contains things we’ve mostly haven’t had to deal with yet on this blog-series / book-“reaction”-series, which implies that things would only have gotten worse in the future.
But regardless of all of that, to me, this is a gigantic loss. There are plenty of avenues for engaging with people who have already read the series, but very few for engaging with people who are reading it for the first time. That opportunity is about 90% of the reason I ‘tune in’ to this series of blogs every week. Of the remaining 10%, about 7% (is my internal estimate) is reading Sylas’ thoughts, and only about 3% is about reading what you schmucks think of all this [just because Poe’s Law is a thing: the “schmucks” part was a joke].
If I might be excused for being a bit crude and somewhat emotional for a moment: I honestly don’t know if I’ll be motivated to return to this blog after this change. That’s how much it’s affecting me at the moment. I don’t expect the decision to be reversed, but I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t write those words.
Maybe, in the end….. what might be fair to say….. is that I would have liked for us to have been polled? Yet on the other hand, I already explored above why this decision might have been inevitable, so a poll would not have mattered that much, perhaps. Or maybe it might have been better to delay the ceasing of the reading of the comments for a week, so that we could at least have given feedback on the idea? But then again, given the comments of last week, both whited-out and not, it makes sense for the Powers-that-Be to advise Sylas to get out of the comments’ section as fast as possible.
Or maybe I’m just being a teensy bit of a control-freak, trying desperately to maintain some measure of control over something that has brought me a gigantic amount of joy for about a year now being taken away from me. Yeah…. that’s probably it.
I think this new spoiler policy is a bad idea. I thought we were doing a pretty good job of keeping spoilers to a minimum, and being able to interact with Sylas is a _big_ perk of the format. It’s not that big of a burden to white things out (although people who use mobile devices may have problems; I’ve never tried that), so I’d vote for continuing as-is.
Of course, if the root of the problem is just that Sylas himself doesn’t want to read the comments anymore, that’s absolutely fine. But while I’ll still read the posts regardless, I think a lot of the charm of them will be lost if this change is implemented.
@12
It’s not physically hard to white things out. What is hard, and what @11 referenced is probably impossible, is getting all commenters to have the same standard of what needs to be whited out. What’s innocuous to one poster is a glaring neon sign pointing to the bad guy to another poster.
I agree that this is sad, but I think it was inevitable given how the comments were going. We only ever made it this far through aggressive moderating and self-policing, which means an escalating probability of disaster. I think we finally gave something big away (you all probably know what it was) and this was the result.
I will still read as I greatly enjoy Sylas’ unsullied reaction, and I’ll still post because I like discussing and arguing with all of you.
Half the fun is unveiling the white-out!
@11, 12, 13 – I think the real crux of the problem is that there are very few first time readers, I have to imagine. Everyone here is a seasoned vet of the series. And we’re basically using these articles as an excuse to discuss WoT, just like the old re-read days with Leigh Butler.
No more risk of Sylas getting a swelled head from seeing us exclaim over how amazingly perceptive and insightful he is!
Being the Chosen One stinks. Ask Moses, he spent a page or two trying to convince the Burning Bush that he wasn’t the man for the job. ‘Why should they believe me?’ ‘I don’t speak Hebrew’, etc.
I’m just glad the white-out is gone. I usually read this on mobile, and it’s a pain to be able to read those things. And even ignoring it was weird, since some posts were filled with seemingly empty comments.
I still think a separate place to discuss spoilers would’ve been a better idea, but this will do.
I found the white out difficult and sometimes painful to read (especially when reading on a mobile device) so I am totally in favor of getting rid of the white out. Thing is, even if we were perfect white-out users, just the amount of whited out text, or what we DON’T whiteout will itself provide context clues.
I think the spoiler threads in the GRRM reads were the best medium for this, personally.
@14
// Here you go! You know there are only 10 types of people in the world? Those who understand binary, and those who don’t. (and those who can comment responsibly and those who can’t)I agree, it always was fun to see what was shown underneath. Also, I think we were doing a good job overall. But, the cumulative effect adds up in some areas. Oh well.//
I will definitely still keep reading the series as I enjoy Sylas’ reactions.
Firstly, I noted how infrequent Sylas or even Leigh commented with the commentors. She had her own crew for that, and she has had all the discussions with them during her beginnings of her journey through the books. She also had the benefit of the series having not been finished, so we were all in the same boat so to speak. But given that it was her read through blog and we were all growing with the series, It still always surprised me how little she did comment with us. But she also had that bent to it and so I can imagine her being annoyed at the disagreement in that sense.
As for this one, the whole point is watching you react to it in the sense of watching your child eat ice cream for the first time…
“Did you like it? Really? Well you’re really going to love chocolate ice cream…What’s Chocolate taste like? What rock have you’ve been living under? Let’s go get some chocolate!!!”
But now, why comment at all. We’d just be commenting just to talk to ourselves, hoping someone might be listening. And the only ones who are, aren’t the one person you want it to be.
The commenting is for us to enjoy the reactions and reminisce, I suppose. I never really expected Sylas (or Leigh) to be taking a part in the comment threads and honestly, I think it kind of ruins it if they do, because they no longer have a pristine experience.
Why not make a separate thread for spoiler comments, the way we did when Leigh was reading GOT? Everyone who is bursting to react in a spoilery manner gets to vent, and can post Sylas-safe comments on the main thread.
Major WoT characters find happiness? That’s Coplin talk. :-p
It’s also possible, likely, even, that powerful channelers like Rand, Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve might find themselves inventing, or reinventing, ways of doing things that are beyond the abilities of the current set of Aes Sedai.
As soon as I saw that sentence I had to stop reading a bit and comment on that. // Its funny that he mentions some of those names in conjuction with the sentence. Granted yes a lot of the stuff that the Aes Sedai in the Age of legends did was forgotten, it just shows how much more powerful The Musketeers (Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve) are. Egwene or Elayne (I cant remember which) rediscovered the forgotten ability of creating ter’angreals. And of course leave it to Nynaeve to discover how to heal stilling (something that even the Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends knew how to do). Also lets not forget all the other things they did throughout the series. //
Sorry I kinda skimmed over the part Sylas talked about with spoilers anxious to get to the main article. I did my previous comment as whited out due to force of habit. But I do agree with the few people that are hoping to keep the spoiler free sections cause they are still new to the series and are following along with Sylas. I will still white out or mark sections as spoilers to be courteous to those that are still new to the series. I am sorry if that may cause problems to those that read this on their mobiles. Thank you.
Regarding Mat, I found a comment from Sanderson on writing his character that I think explains why it might take a bit longer to really “get” him compared to the other main characters.
It’s been three years since I last read the series and haven’t gotten past The Dragon Reborn in my current reread, but from what I reacall, Jordan never get explicit about the lines of thought behind Mat’s actions and attitudes like he does with the rest of the main cast. This is in part because there often isn’t much thought behind them–Mat is much more of a creature of instinct than any of the other characters–and also because he isn’t entirely honest with himself, as is demonstrated later on in this book when he casually hands a starving mother and child some gold coins mere seconds after he says that he doesn’t help anyone out for free, and then immediately reiterates that claim.
I was excited about free spoiler-reign at first because I don’t think we have very many first time readers. However, thinking ahead, that will probably change if the show takes off later this year, and we do have some first time readers already. I’ll second some others – we should have a poll for keeping spoiler-free or not, regardless of whether Sylas wants to keep reading comments. Or the Powers That Be can just rethink it based off commenters reactions.
This could be a cool resource for future readers even if they aren’t using it now.
Beyond all of that, I love when Sylas writes these pieces to stop and think about the story from a wider angle. Definitely love the comparisons to other series as well. Great stuff.
In WoT the Chosen are not the heroes. Did RJ deliberately use that term as a comment on Chosen One stories?
Idea: Maybe a separate non-spoiler thread?
I’ve already read the series, and usually just lurk, so it doesn’t matter much to me. However, it seems overly restrictive not to have some clear way for readers to communicate to back to Sylas, even if doing so is rare.
Perhaps it would make sense to invert what has been done in “first read” series the past, and have a separate page specifically for non-spoiler feedback (or virgin discussions?), instead of separate for spoiler comments. It would probably be linked from each post, but might include whatever disclaimers make sense (e.g., not even the barest hint of a spoiler, intended to be low volume, or whatever). For posterity it might be handy for someone to add a comment each time Sylas posts, just to be able to more easily tell which comments went with which post in the future (although this might be a tad tedious to maintain)?
@29
I like the idea of inverting the spoiler thread and having a separate link to a non-spoiler thread for those so inclined. Most likely far fewer would be in the non-spoiler thread.
The issue with having a separate full spoiler thread is the same one we had on the Read of Ice and Fire. There was a spoiler thread, but it still relies on commenters’ judgment about what is or isn’t a spoiler and what to post on the spoiler thread. It was violated many times.
I’m a first time reader. I’m ahead of Sylas, but only in book 7. I’ve already had some big moments spoiled, not by these comments specifically but by life in the internet age generally. Honestly, I knew about a couple pretty major events that have already happened: //Egwene becomes Amyrlin. Nynaeve heals stilling.// and they still managed to take me completely by surprise when they happened. I have actually kind of enjoyed the anticipation of knowing they were coming. I know a couple more things that will show up somehow, but I don’t know how or when.
Other people may not view it so philosophically, but I kind of think it’s a necessary state of mind when you’re reading a series 20 years late. You’re probably going to see a spoiler. I just think of it like a prophecy, everybody knew // Rand was going to Tarmon Gaidon/// just not how or when.
@28, that’s possible, but it is important to remember that the Chosen are the name given to them by Darkfriends and/or the Dark One, not by the forces of Light, so that colors the implications of the name somewhat.
I have an alternative idea to the Spoiler-thread / Non-Spoiler-thread, but it would require more work (and potentially substantially more work) from the Moderators, and I have no idea how busy said Moderators are, i.e. how much room they have to take on additional duties.
My idea is to use the addressing thing we’ve been using all along to respond to people, with the “@”, but when we want to say something to Sylas we use @Sylas at the top of the post (so you’d have to make a separate post every time you want to say something to Sylas). The Moderators would then find all posts beginning with “@Sylas”, assess whether they contain anything Spoilerific — this would eliminate the danger of people violating the Spoiler/Non-Spoiler separation — and either remove any Spoilerific parts or just maintain only the posts that are indeed Spoiler-free as they should be. Then, they’d send what’s left over to Sylas for him to read. The advantage, in my head but I might be wrong, would be that said comments would be easy to find for the Moderators, and that assuming comments directed to Sylas would be somewhat rare, the amount of comments that would have to be checked for Spoilers would be significantly reduced. However, the checks would probably have to be a lot more thorough, and they’d have to actually be sent to Sylas by some means, so I’m going to guess that overall it would be more work for the Moderators. Especially since they’d still have to enforce the non-Spoiler rules of the Moderation Policy in all the non-Sylas-addressed posts on top of this “send to Sylas” business.
I’d love to hear (read…) y’alls thougts on this idea. I’d especially love to hear/read what the Moderators think of this, as they’d be the ones having to do all the work……
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Speaking of Spoilers…. And just in case I’d actually have some way of getting the message to Sylas next week: there is a comment I’ve been planning of making when Sylas would get to Egwene’s Accepted Test, and I’ve been planning on making it pretty much from the moment I’ve read the post about Nynaeve’s Accepted Test, possibly even slightly before that. I believe you can even find a comment of mine on that post of Sylas all the way back then (in fact, I looked it up, and it was #8) announcing that I would make the post I want to make during Egwene’s Accepted Test.
I wanted to get you guys’ opinion on something, though. It might be a Spoiler (though I don’t think it is), so to be courteous to either current or future first-time readers I will white it out. So, here’s the deal: part of that comment would be that Egwene’s Accepted Test is //the last time we visit the Three Arches Room, let alone the Arches themselves, during this blog-series.// With the new stringent Spoiler-policy for communicating with Sylas, would that be considered a Spoiler, or at the very least Spoilerific, or would it be fine to leave that in? Again, I ask so I’ll know, when or if I ever get the chance to communicate these thoughts to Sylas.
I think teasing Sylas is half the fun! And I didn’t mind highlighting the comments on my mobile once I got the trick of it :p
@26 I think you are totally on track there with Mat – or at least Sanderson was! Although the best summary of Mat’s character comes from Suian Sanche a couple of chapters back, who pegs him correctly from the first moment. I think Jordan put that little nugget in there to warn us of exactly what Sanderson says in that quote.
in the spirit of maybe continuing to white out spoilers: //
Mat has the most warped view of himself as the series goes on. He thinks of himself as ‘just a … farmer, gambler, gamester, simple man’ and not a bloody hero/soldier/general, all the while going on to do some of the most stupidly heroic stuff in the whole series. Its almost like listening to a very clever person with very low self esteem – and no wonder. Everybody in Mat’s life who knew him from Emonds’ field treats him like a rapscallion child with no judgement and less sense (somewhat correctly I might add) . So his internal monolog hews to that narrative even as he goes out into the world and proves the opposite. It takes ages before we encounter anybody at all that a believes in him.
//
@33 I would definitely consider that spoilerific.
Personally, I don’t mind either way. For that matter, it makes no difference to me whether Sylas has secretly read ahead or not (I personally doubt it, it would be stupid to put that kind of effort for little to no reward, but if he is indeed doing so for some obscure reason, still no skin off my nose!)
I will keep coming back to read his thought and insights (and those of my fellow commenters too), enjoying the fact that after two decades I still have new ways to engage with and remember/refresh the books I love.
@34 That’s actually a great take on the character, and one I never really considered before, well done.
@26
// I think part of it is also that this is Mat’s way of dealing with all the changes going on that he doesn’t fully understand. Egwene and Nynaeve are becoming Aes Sedai, Rand is the bloody dragon reborn, and Perrin’s been acting strange ever since his eyes turned yellow. Mat’s world has been turned upside down and he needs a bit of normalcy to cling to, so he’s in denial about himself possibly being anything other than exactly what he always thought he way. //
That last comment was meant for @34
I’m surprised that Sanderson so neatly captured the essence of Mat’s character in that little paragraph posted by Oddysseus #26 considering that I still think his Mat chapters were the worst, and among the least Jordanlike, of his Wheel of Time work.
@40:
That was a reflection of Sanderson’s post-The Gathering Storm. It was hard earned insight after having screwed up the character and having reader feedback.
@41
Personally, I loved Mat in TGS and never understood what people complained about regarding him in that book.
First time poster, long (well, relatively short) time reader of this blog, and I’d just like to say, as a first-time reader of The Wheel of Time, and someone whose nearly caught up with Sylas, I’d definitely appreciate a hard spoiler policy on the comments. There’s enough to be discussed in the comments that isn’t spoilery and I think it’s important to note just because we may not comment, us silent first-time readers will stumble in here looking for a fellow virgin read through commentary. I just implore people to understand Sylas isn’t the only first-time reader perusing these comments.
First time reader here as well and clearly reading this like 2 years behind but really loving this Read Through. Comments were a fun way to interact and one of the only places out there that was relatively spoiler free. Pretty bummed now that I’ll have to either be super careful or just skip the comment section completely