https://www.reddit.com/r/whitecloaks/comments/rgewm2/this_means_that_wot_has_made_herstory_tvs_heir/
I really need to stop browsing WoT subs, I’ve been feeling liquified bits of my brain leaking out through my nose and ears for the past few days, it’s like staring directly into highly-radioactive material and just feeling your body start falling apart on the molecular level.
making Egwene & Nynaeve into Mary Sues
Isn’t that basically the source material already? Like there’s this premise of “oh all the inbred hill folk from this one region are just crazy magic for some reason” and a bunch of stuff about how the main characters are all the first fReE-tHiNkiNg ViSiOnaRiEs in the past thousand years where they just intuitively discover a bunch of lost magic and revolutionize logistics and manufacturing a priori.
the male characters are weak & emotional
I remember at least two of the thousand plus page books had Randal Thor’s entire arc as “he’s depressed and has PTSD cause all this shit that’s happening is actually really traumatizing and bad.”
It’s been a long time since I read the books, I don’t think I read any past book ten or eleven, and I vaguely remember them as having a bunch of problematic themes and commentary to them, but it did definitely make all the female main characters basically super powered compared to any male character other than Rand and have all the male main characters actually have emotions and respond to trauma, at least in their internal monologues.
Yes, the people from Emond’s Field all benefited from magic eugenics, but it’s also confirmed in the books that the Aes Sedai have been gradually getting weaker, and there are two main theories given for this:
- Killing all male channelers has fucked the magic genepool
- The Aes Sedai becoming more insular and elitist over time meant they skipped over many potentially talented recruits because they didn’t think they’d find anything of use in tiny villages, and refused to train women over a certain age
Having finished the series,
spoiler
Theory 2 is correct
ShowRand so far seems quite a bit less emotional than in the books, but he’s also been aged up like 5 years and we don’t get any internal monologues. ShowPerrin is more emotional but that’s because they changed it so he accidentally axes his wife, which, yeah.
Even in that context weren’t Egwene, Nynaeve, and the other girl whose name escapes me among the most powerful channelers in history, with Nynaeve in particular being on par with the likes of Lanfear and so probably being in the top single or low double digits of all channelers ever? Or am I misremembering the vague, unitless relative power rankings?
ShowPerrin is more emotional but that’s because they changed it so he accidentally axes his wife, which, yeah.
That sounds vaguely familiar, was that a recurring nightmare from the books/some prophetic vision that haunted him throughout them?
Egwene, Nynaeve, etc
Nynaeve was the most powerful of the protagonists, though IIRC weaker than Lanfear. I think Nynaeve doesn’t rank in the top 10 channellers, just because there were so many more Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends that statistically there would be many more at her strength or higher. In the book time period, there are at least 2 other woman stronger than Nynaeve IIRC: some 70-year-old woman who got recruited in Salidar and a former damane. I think some of the sea people were supposed to be similarly strong as well. As you point out, the power rankings are mostly irrelevant; I think there’s a number system on the wiki but it’s never mentioned in-universe.
The other girl you’re thinking of might be Elayne, who was pretty strong and shown to be able to develop new weaves better than almost anyone.
spoiler
Note also a lot of the “new weaves” that Nynaeve and Egwene took credit for were actually extracted from Moghedian via torture.
Perrin killing his wife
Nah, it’s a replacement of when he axes the Whitecloaks in the first book and then vows to never pick up the axe again.
I remember at least two of the thousand plus page books had Randal Thor’s entire arc as “he’s depressed and has PTSD cause all this shit that’s happening is actually really traumatizing and bad.”
I mean, Rand goes through some shit. Chronic and sever mental illness for a few books. Then he’s betrayed, several of his friends are killed, and he’s viciously tortured for months on end.
“Why is Rand such a pussy?” is such a nakedly reactionary take, you really are telling on yourself by making it.
