Timewaster's Guide Archive

Actually, he is pretty far off. Robert Jordan soundly debunked the "speaking to each other across the gap of time" theory. Time is cyclical, but two different times cannot be occurring at the same time. Everything that is happening is happening in the present, and LTT did not speak to Rand in the AoL.

Now I think you are just arguing for the sake of the argument. You seem to insinuate that readers of Robert Jordan's work are too stupid to understand how the whole of a final novel can be split into two volumes, and I disagree. You seemingly believe that people who have followed The Wheel for long enough to have read the preceding novels will not buy the new ones unless they are explicitly labelled "Twelve" and "Thirteen", while I believe they will understand the situation and read the book, even if it is labelled "Volume One of the Twelfth Book of The Wheel of Time". I think you underestimate the intellect of the readership, and whether or not they post regularly on the internet is more or less irrelevant. The quality of Jordan's writing has guaranteed that millions will purchase anything that has his name and the snake-wheel emblem on it.

Bookstore Guy, was that aimed at me? Because I agree with everything you said.

Also, I doubt that the first half of the book will be called AMoL, so those countdown widgets are jumping the gun a bit.

This is interesting/disturbing. Why would it not be called AMoL?

That is as good a note as any on which to leave that particular discussion, I believe.

The lack of sex and bad language is part of what i really enjoy about Brandons books. I probably wouldn't be nearly as thrilled to read them if i had moral issues with them. In the past I have actually stopped  reading books because of the sex scenes in them, maybe its me but sex really should not be part of normal literature. Maybe it would even be a good idea to have a rating system on books so people don't go to try a new author and find out that the book is full of sex and bad language. That would really help me in the book picking process, I mean I choose not to watch rated R movies because there are things i would rather not see or hear it really helps in the weeding out process. Not to mention a rating would let me know what my kids are reading.

This, however, is exactly the sort of attitude that I feared Mr. Sanderson himself might be having. I am thrilled to hear that is not the case. "Sex should not be part of normal literature"? I gather that kevinpii has probably not read many of the real quality works of the Western literary canon. Hamsun's "Hunger"? Dostoyevski's works? Kafka's? Hell, even "Don Quixote" or "The Odyssey" would probably offend this reader' sensibilities. Not to mention Flaubert's "Madame Bovary". To then think of having such artificial restrictions placed on literature - It is nothing short of stifling and ignorant. Unfortunately, there are powers in this culture who do all they can to achieve this. Your children will not be damaged by reading this literature, they will be enlightened by it.

The Hindi people also have multiple gods and therefore "god" would also be lower case.

This is actually false. Although the Hindu pantheon is expansive, most people pay service to only one. In written works such as the Bhagavadgita, the gods are regularly referred to as "God", or even "Lord". The same is the case in academic works on the Indian religions. However, this distinction pertains only to written texts. For most Hindus the textual dimension is foreign and irrelevant to their religious practises, as the Indian religions have been almost entirely focussed on the oral aspects of their religion, and on the practise of rote memorisation.The distinction between higher and lower cases just do not come into the equation in a meaningful way.

EDIT: Other than that, I mostly agree.

I would like to respectfully say that there is nothing gray in the examples you have given us. Suicide bombing is wrong. Marital abuse is wrong. People who's consciences have been so seared as to think they are in the right is terrible.
I understand that you are an atheist. However, I believe there is a difference between "God" and "Jupiter". We all know that the deity referenced on the dollar bill is the one that nearly all of the Founders believed in, but it does not specifically state the God of the Bible or "Jesus." I think there is a difference.

In that context, it is important to point out that most believers, whether Hindu or Muslim tend to refer to their god as "God". In that sense, it seems largely to be irrelevant to the believer - or "practitioners" more accurately, given that most of the religious world does not follow the Abrahamic tradition of accentuating the importance of "faith" - whether their gods are named YHWH, Siva or Jupiter.  The ancient Greeks and Romans followed this practise, as well.

The thing that bothers me is a perceived tone to some of your responses. They can seem condescending and rude. this just seems like endless bickering using reworded arguments. I participated, so im just as guilty as the rest, but there's no point to it anymore.

It is probably due to my lack of contractions and abbreviation. I have a deeply ingrained fear that if I start writing in conversational styles in places such as this, I will start doing so in my written work, as well. Some people, I have found, tend to perceive it as condescension or pompousness when others write with some small measure of formality. Why, I do not know.

On the other hand, a bit of nerve or edge is always a way to make a discussion more interesting, as one of the moral chieftains of this board, Ookla, also knows very well. If I use this board as a pulpit, I am certainly not the only one. I seem to remember him rather provocatively saying something quite categorical about "buying into the lies of present-day society", or some such. There is a lot of essentialism and axiological load in those few words.

As to the literary work in question here, I certainly think Elend with some advantage could have noticed the shape of one of Vin's body parts in a chapter where he was not doing anything perilous. Again, it seems like an oversight not to have Elend - or Vin, for that matter - reflect on these things in a work that spans more than fifteen hundred pages. I guess Elend does at times think to himself that Vin looks "stunning" in one of her dresses, and that is something. We all know what is meant by it, but the way it is expressed in the books seems to innocent and "young adult" to me.

Still, it is good to see that themes such as these are more prevalent in other works by Mr. Sanderson. I feared for some time that this sanitation was somehow related to his personal beliefs, to some idea that it was sinful (what do I know?) to put such things on paper for others to read. I hope he knows that internal observations about various people's calves, bosoms and shoulders is an important part of Robert Jordan's narrative style.

I am a bit surprised that you are only twelve, Shaggy. Well done to have the dedication and interest to learn Latin at that tender age. Cheers!

Wilson, I am a bit confused now. When you said "I know them well enough that they DON'T have sexual thoughts about girls they're attracted to", what did you mean by "attracted to"? I have explained what I meant, and I will stand by the claim that sexuality is integral to attraction in the sense discussed here, viz. a weaker form of "in love with". That means that if your friends are attracted to someone in the sense discussed above, they will inevitably have sexual thoughts about them. It is also important to keep in mind that thoughts are not the same as silent speech. Our thought processes do not work that way. Given that, I would say that it is completely impossible for you to know their trains of thought, no matter how long you have known them. Additionally, I do not think there is much grounds to claim that the cognitive processes of married men are any different to their unmarried fellows.