Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" Visible Spoilers Thread

[Draegan]

I think it's implied quite a few time when the Legends are talking along with some of the Forsaken that the cycle of advanced civilizations, the Dark One being broken out, collapse of society has happened time and time again.

[Ashamanchill]

You are not wrong, in that it there has to be at least Two Dragons, LTT and Rand. Is there more in different ages? I'm starting to think not, just these two repeated over and over ad infinitum, because as I mentioned, there is numerous allusions to this happening countless times, with different results*.

If we visualize the Wheel and the Ages laid out in our format, based off what we know, it would go something like:

1 Our age; No one power, no dark one (aside from John Smedly hue hue hue), no dragon.
2 Age of Legends; Yes one power, yes dark one (no John Smedly though), yes dragon.
3 Broadly speaking, the age of the books, even though it's also divided into 3, those ages are more academic; Yes one power, yes dark one, yes dragon.
4 Some of the characters visualize this age in various ways, and all the flavor bits and quotes are written from this age. I am not spoiling anything by saying, somehow it has to loop back around to our world. Sooooo, cave people again? No dragon, anyways. There might be more "ages", but this is what we have for certain.

Then
1b
2b
3b
4b

1c
2c
3c
4c

And just for the fuck of it I dusted off my Wheel of Time Companion**, which was an official encyclopedia they published, kinda like a big version you see at the end of the books (did anyone read those?). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time_Companion Under the Dragon entry, it lists it as Lews Therin's title, and makes no mention of anyone or anything else.

There, dorky enough for ya?

*Incidentally, the Dark One's avowed goal to destroy the wheel and end time makes no sense, never did. It means time can not actually be a ever spinning wheel, as it has a end. But whatever.

**Not to be confused with the other companion book I linked early, because I guess Harriet McDougall needed another yacht.

[Rendakor]

Right, I think the title was first invented for LTT. But that does not by any means imply that LTT/Rand's shared soul was not around in previous ages, just that the title was new.

[Ashamanchill]

For sure. I'm just going off what there is actual evidence for. It's not like Frank from Scranton, savior of the great Twitter War, ever gets alluded to, or

[Khaldun]

This is what I mean about Jordan not really committing wholesale to reincarnation as the major driver of his world-building, because there's really only two ways to play that:

a) rigidly cyclical; everything that has happened before will happen again and the same souls will be doing it (which is a depressing and fatalistic thing, and were it completely rigorously true about the WoT universe, I'd sign on with the Dark One, because it means the Creator is a bastard; this is precisely what fuels the weariness and alienation of Moorcock's heroes)

b) souls can do better (or worse or just different) in the next cycle of the Wheel and that's the hope being held out there for everybody; which kind of *seems* like the basic takeaway of the tens of thousands of pages that Jordan dropped on us, only not always

If it's b) then LTT could well have been lots o' dudes with lots o' saidin under the hood before he was LTT, but he changed enough and became the Dragon, which marked that soul from that point on.

[Ashamanchill]

b) souls can do better (or worse or just different) in the next cycle of the Wheel and that's the hope being held out there for everybody; which kind of *seems* like the basic takeaway of the tens of thousands of pages that Jordan dropped on us, only not always

Short answer, it's b). At least when it matters most.

Even without spoiling, it is mentioned very early on by the baddest of the baddies that sometimes the Dragon turns to the Dark One. Boy did we have fun in those ages. Remember when we created Bobby Kotick from sludge and pure evil? So these souls aren't locked into thier choices at least. But yes, RJ fails to properly expound on that.

[Morat20]

b) souls can do better (or worse or just different) in the next cycle of the Wheel and that's the hope being held out there for everybody; which kind of *seems* like the basic takeaway of the tens of thousands of pages that Jordan dropped on us, only not always

That's kind of a King Dark Tower sort of vibe there, although King's got it progressing towards "better" results each cycle and not just different.

[lamaros]

This is what I mean about Jordan not really committing wholesale to reincarnation as the major driver of his world-building, because there's really only two ways to play that:

a) rigidly cyclical; everything that has happened before will happen again and the same souls will be doing it (which is a depressing and fatalistic thing, and were it completely rigorously true about the WoT universe, I'd sign on with the Dark One, because it means the Creator is a bastard; this is precisely what fuels the weariness and alienation of Moorcock's heroes)

b) souls can do better (or worse or just different) in the next cycle of the Wheel and that's the hope being held out there for everybody; which kind of *seems* like the basic takeaway of the tens of thousands of pages that Jordan dropped on us, only not always

If it's b) then LTT could well have been lots o' dudes with lots o' saidin under the hood before he was LTT, but he changed enough and became the Dragon, which marked that soul from that point on.

B is rationally delusional in its aspiration, which is a fitting commentary on how we humans muddle through a meaningless universe, but I'm not sure if either option is more depressing (or even more fatalistic). Infinity fucks it all up either way you look at it.

[Khaldun]

In the setup of WoT, B is the only way to make it anything less than completely pointless; if it were A, just give me the story of LTT doing good then evil the first time and don't fuck around with telling me about the next turn which is no different. But Jordan wasn't a good enough world-builder to really grasp consistently that he was telling the story of when the most important B ever happened by surrounding us with other B (and C and D and E) stories from the goat-herder who has finally learned to stop fucking his goats to the low-ranking Aes Sedai whose soul got it right back in the Age of Legend but who is getting to be more of a monster with every turn of the Wheel. The Wheel feels like a more ad hoc, half-baked, adolescent DM with a lot of cool ideas but not a lot of deep thinking, sort of "this is my campaign setting" thing.

[Ashamanchill]

Ya, but with pillow friends.

[lamaros]

In the setup of WoT, B is the only way to make it anything less than completely pointless; if it were A, just give me the story of LTT doing good then evil the first time and don't fuck around with telling me about the next turn which is no different. But Jordan wasn't a good enough world-builder to really grasp consistently that he was telling the story of when the most important B ever happened by surrounding us with other B (and C and D and E) stories from the goat-herder who has finally learned to stop fucking his goats to the low-ranking Aes Sedai whose soul got it right back in the Age of Legend but who is getting to be more of a monster with every turn of the Wheel. The Wheel feels like a more ad hoc, half-baked, adolescent DM with a lot of cool ideas but not a lot of deep thinking, sort of "this is my campaign setting" thing.

I would argue at the macro level both are equally pointless, and all that matters is if the telling of the story works enough to be fun or interesting.

B can be a long multi stage cycle, which goes ABCD and each stage can only remember the previous 3 stages, so the players dont realise it's actually repeating. Provided you don't let the reader on to that until you get to the end you can have the novelty and feeling of agency in place for most of the telling.

Then at the end you say "all this has happened before and will happen again" and pay BSG some royalties.


Back to the tv series. The latest episode is pretty weak.

[Ashamanchill]

Ya, although I liked that one warder, you know who I mean. In one episode, he had more character and backstory than all the Emonds Fielders. Also, I liked the little forsaken dolls. I am glad that even though they were heavily stylized, they were able to show Graendal's 2 most important featuresb

[lamaros]

Yeah. The show runner is going.. "hmm I only have 8 episodes, let's skip the background for all the main characters but devote a whole episodes worth of time to one random other guy instead. Yeah, this will really sell the series." I'm downgrading the series from mediocre to borderline shit at this point.

[SurfD]

B can be a long multi stage cycle, which goes ABCD and each stage can only remember the previous 3 stages, so the players dont realise it's actually repeating. Provided you don't let the reader on to that until you get to the end you can have the novelty and feeling of agency in place for most of the telling.

That's actually Ishmael in a nutshell in the series though.

Like, we know, through the discussions with Birgitte that souls "bound" the the Wheel are at least somewhat aware of the fact that they are while they are not currently in play.  When she is inbetween rebirths she knows about all her past lives and stuff like that.   It's just that when the Wheel spins them out in a new rebirth, they are reborn "pure" for that session, with no memory of their previous lives, and just sort of an "instinct" regarding what to do (why she always ends up as an Archer and always ends up in love with that other guy every time for example).

It's pretty heavily implied that due to being imprisoned super close to the Dark One when Lewis Therin sealed his prison at the end of the previous age that Ishmael's thread may have actually come slightly "unstuck" from the pattern, allowing him to actually be cognizant of the fact that he is basically just the Black King to Rands White King in a never ending, eternally resetting game of chess played by the forces of Light and Dark.   This realization drives him nuts, and is a prime element in his motivation in the series, where he literally wants to BREAK the Wheel and end everything so he can finally stop being forced to play the game.

[Hoax]

I have no clue how you guys are tolerating this trash. After the fallen city of black mold ep I'm pretty sure I'd have more fun watching old eps of Xena or Beastmaster or even newer stuff like Legend of the Seeker or w/e that one was called.

The enemies are boring and look like shit, the only combat scene (town) so far was trash. I can't tell how much the women vs men thing is supposed to matter, like the vibe in there that this is a female dominated world except for the white cloak religious fanatic guys? The only hook at this point is I never read these shitty sounding books but I like being able to mock things from a position of authority and curiosity at wtf anyone sees in this show.

Also what the fuck is the costume design or lack thereof? Everything looks so odd and not purely in a budget way but like here's this huge world the most world buildiest world and everyone is just wearing train hopper hobo gear or something? I liked the religious fanatics single armored arm look + the white, that was cool and the skull horse face mask thing big bad has on his horse. Everything else has been drek bordering on immersion breaking.

[Ashamanchill]

I mean, a lot of us in this thread are doing the equivalent of debating what frequency the Enterprise's phasers are set at, so......

[Rendakor]

I have no clue how you guys are tolerating this trash. After the fallen city of black mold ep I'm pretty sure I'd have more fun watching old eps of Xena or Beastmaster or even newer stuff like Legend of the Seeker or w/e that one was called.

The enemies are boring and look like shit, the only combat scene (town) so far was trash. I can't tell how much the women vs men thing is supposed to matter, like the vibe in there that this is a female dominated world except for the white cloak religious fanatic guys? The only hook at this point is I never read these shitty sounding books but I like being able to mock things from a position of authority and curiosity at wtf anyone sees in this show.

Also what the fuck is the costume design or lack thereof? Everything looks so odd and not purely in a budget way but like here's this huge world the most world buildiest world and everyone is just wearing train hopper hobo gear or something? I liked the religious fanatics single armored arm look + the white, that was cool and the skull horse face mask thing big bad has on his horse. Everything else has been drek bordering on immersion breaking.

There was another fight in Episode 4, I'm guessing you didn't get that far? But yea, I'm only enjoying it because I read the books. I have no idea how it would come off to new viewers and frankly I don't give a damn.

Ishmael

Glad I'm not the only one who mentally autocorrected his name into this for 14 books.

[Riggswolfe]

I have no clue how you guys are tolerating this trash. After the fallen city of black mold ep I'm pretty sure I'd have more fun watching old eps of Xena or Beastmaster or even newer stuff like Legend of the Seeker or w/e that one was called.

The enemies are boring and look like shit, the only combat scene (town) so far was trash. I can't tell how much the women vs men thing is supposed to matter, like the vibe in there that this is a female dominated world except for the white cloak religious fanatic guys? The only hook at this point is I never read these shitty sounding books but I like being able to mock things from a position of authority and curiosity at wtf anyone sees in this show.

Also what the fuck is the costume design or lack thereof? Everything looks so odd and not purely in a budget way but like here's this huge world the most world buildiest world and everyone is just wearing train hopper hobo gear or something? I liked the religious fanatics single armored arm look + the white, that was cool and the skull horse face mask thing big bad has on his horse. Everything else has been drek bordering on immersion breaking.

Here's the thing. The books are trash too. I started reading them pretty early on. And for the first 2-3 books I really liked them. But as they continued the quality took a nosedive. And it's not even a slow and subtle nosedive. It's like they went straight from Season 1 GOT to Season 8 GOT.

The author would introduce dozens of characters. Who meant nothing and would go nowhere. Entire new nations would sometimes show up. And end up not mattering at all. It was like...Dorn in GOT. To the eleventh power.
Entire 1200 page books would pass with no development of the plot. I wish I was joking. The entire book would be Aes Sedai plotting and The Dragon Reborn moping. He might go out and kill a Forsaken or something but that would be it.
The main character became a wish fulfillment with every woman who meets him wanting to be his and not minding sharing him with the rest of the harem. (A slight exaggeration but not by much.)
Only one female character in the entire series is well written in my opinion.
So, the TV series being trash should be a surprise to no one. The source material is the Gold Standard for an author who badly, badly needed and editor and publisher to tell him "Stop that shit. Now. Tell the god damned story." GRR Martin has nothing on Robert Jordan for wasting time and introducing pointless side stories. And that's saying a lot.

[Khaldun]

The thing is, with Martin I know exactly why he wrote himself into a writer's block (and it's not 'he's enjoying his beer and fries') and why he was enamored of introducing viewpoint characters whose entire purpose was to get killed at the end of hundreds of pages of development in a trivial way with no impact on the story. I know what he thought he was doing.

Jordan? I'm not even sure it was as cynical as "I need to stretch the payday out as long as I can". I think the dude just was sitting at his keyboard going "and then she tugged her braids and then Rand flexed his muscles and then the taint of saidin smelled up the room like a really bad fart and then someone said 'oh man there's a Black Ajah here somewhere right' and then Rand said no that was just me magic-beefing and then she tugged her braids again" and then starting a new chapter.

[Ashamanchill]

Ya, but with pillow friends.

[lamaros]

I have no clue how you guys are tolerating this trash.

Its fun to talk about stuff sometimes. Especially if it could have been good, but they just keep fucking it up.

[Teleku]

Yeah, pretty much.  I'm along for the nostalgia ride and seeing what elaborate ways they try to adapt this.  I can see this being pretty bad for anybody trying to watch this with no book background, as they've made some really dumb decisions about about pacing and character development.

[Phildo]

Ishmael

Glad I'm not the only one who mentally autocorrected his name into this for 14 books.

The amazing adventures of Lewis and Ishmael.

Meanwhile is it just that I read the books a long time ago, or was there a whole excursion to Andor that got cut out of the tv show so far?

[SurfD]

Meanwhile is it just that I read the books a long time ago, or was there a whole excursion to Andor that got cut out of the tv show so far?

Proper travel timeline for the books should be:
- Flee Two Rivers              
- End up in Shadar Logoth                
- Get Separated              
- Team Rand pass through Whitebridge (where they get separated from Thom during the Fade attack) and end up at Caemlyn.
- First encounter with Loial / First appearance of Logain / Rand meets Elaida / Elayne / Morgaise, whole bunch of politics shit happens
- Perrin, Egwene, and the rest of the gang catch back up with them in Caemlyn            
- Escape from Caemlyn through the Ways to Tar-valon the borderlands and make for the Eye.

So yea.  They basically skipped the ENTIRETY of the Caemlyn stuff to fast Track the arrival at Tar-Valon, which isn't even supposed to happen untill AFTER they have discovered the Eye and retrieved the Horn / First Seal.   Which is changing a metric ton of shit and how it should develop.

[Ashamanchill]

Hey! You skipped Baerlon, and Min. With Moraine using the One Power to turn big and step over the town walls lol. That power got cut real quick.

[SurfD]

Ahh right.  I had almost completely forgotten that their first meeting with Min was before the Shadar Logoth scene.  So yeah, there's another bit they have dropped entirely in the show.

[Teleku]

Yeah, Min is supposed to be in this season, so was sort of surprised they didn't have her working at the inn in Tar Valon in place of the inn in Baerlon.  Or maybe they'll get to that next episode since they had to spend half this episode character building random_warder3.

But yeah, main issue again is that this really isn't an adaptation.  It's almost a full new story that just sort of vaguely follows the overall plot.  Game of Thrones felt like they adapted the books to film, as a lot of the scenes in that show were straight from the book.  That's how an adaptation is supposed to work, and it worked well for as long as they had material.  As soon as it was up to the writers to come up with everything themselves, it all fell to shit.  And this show is basically starting at that from the get go.

[Miguel]

Instead, let's wildly speculate which actors matched our own personal mental images of the main characters.

For example, when I first saw Lost In Space, I realized that Mina Sundwall looked very close to how I always pictured Aviendha:



Second one is Karen Gillian from the new Jumanji movies, since she already has the necessary badass credentials.



Yes this is just an excuse to post pictures of redheads.

[Threash]

Liandrin should be more like January Jones.

[Khaldun]

Liandrin is kind of white trash-fake respectable, right? Stacked short blonde who acts fancy but isn't? That's not January Jones, I don't think.

[Ashamanchill]

Another filler episode.

And by the by, if they are going to differ from the books, they could at least up the sex.

[lamaros]

The show isn't even fun enough to write about any more. It's on par with the boring after school YA fantasy shows I remember from the 90s, or worse.

Don't think I'm going to be commenting much on it any more.

[HaemishM]

I've never seen a show that both feels like it is absolutely dragging ass and rushing through a plot more than this one. We were talking about it in Discord last night - I was fine with this episode, but it's pacing was just way off. It feels like we barely know any of the main characters and suddenly we are about to go into a 2-episode rush to the finale/climactic battle. They've waited way too much effort on trying to make the "Who's the Dragon" a mystery, and unless they change it from the books, I can't figure out why. The books actually did a decent job explaining why all 5 of them being ta'veren was so extraordinary, which gave them all some reason to be there. This "maybe they can all channel" thing isn't helping the story at all.

I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would, and I'm fine with them not following the books since past the first book, they weren't what I'd call great anyway. But the choices they've made to be different from the books haven't really been that great, either in concept or execution. The big battle will be a make or break moment for the rest of the series going forward.

[Khaldun]

That kind of happens in the book though too--I always felt like the "quick quick let's get to the Eye of the World" happened out of nowhere.

[Draegan]

I agree, from what I remember the whole time in the Blight is like super quick.

I just looked it up, Chapter 45 of 52 is where they exit the Ways.