#bartonsedai

I'll never get over Aviendha/Egwene, but Aviendha/Elayne is the cutest!

my favorite thing about canon polyamory though is Why Not Both :D

seriously though, I did not remember this much Gay from my first reading of this series, and I’m delighted

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bartonsedai replied to your post: ...

I just…at what point do you admit that this is your opinion and not irrefutable fact? The multiple pov’s make it harder for you to connect with characters and therefore makes the story less good to you. But that does not make the same true for everyone. For me, it makes the world richer and deeper. Again, still my opinion and not fact, but enough to show that you cannot make the same claim for everyone.

Oh, my argument is less to do with “my experiences are ultimate proof“ and more “switching PoVs to this extent interrupts the narrative and removes screentime from the characters that we’re actually supposed to care about long-term“.

I honestly brought it up more as a thought-experiment of whether all of those endless PoV-switches were remotely necessary for the sake of telling the story, and came to the conclusion that they weren’t.

If you want to enjoy the particular way that the story played out, with all of its endless PoV-switches and the like, that’s up to you. But even with the vast and varied cast, and the ridiculously complex world and cultures that all come together in the Wheel of Time, you really wouldn’t need more than a handful of PoV-characters to get a pretty damn good grasp on the entirety of it.

And using less PoV-characters would make the story generally more accessible for those who want to read it (since they wouldn’t need to keep track of dozens upon dozens of switching PoVs, or try to figure out which of the endless PoVs will actually stick around for long enough to matter).

Would simplifying it make for an inherently better story? Perhaps not, but it would certainly help prevent readers from trudging through an entire book for the sake of a single chapter (the aforementioned Matrim-problem).

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bartonsedai replied to your post: ...

I think if you honestly think all of the people, everything they say, and where they are is entirely irrelevant, you are missing something. Many of those scenes include characters we have seen or will see again, establish the mood, worldbuild for a particular city, or foreshadow events. I can’t think of any of the one off pov’s that don’t do something interesting for the story.

I’m not saying that they’re irrelevant. I’m saying that they don’t matter.

I’m saying that engaging with a character is something that takes effort on behalf of the reader (as well as the writer), and that if you constantly include new PoVs that you then willfully discard? You’re actively discouraging the reader from trying to do so.

Why should the reader try to engage with this random person on the street when we know that there’s no point to do so long-term? It’s the Game of Thrones problem of “anyone can die at any time, don’t get too attached“, only with PoVs and without the death.

I mean, at least if they all had a tendency to get themselves killed, we’d have a ready and easily explainable excuse for why the author never bothered to make use of them again.

It takes effort to establish a character. It takes effort to engage with a character. And resorting to dozens upon dozens of PoVs when a handful of well-established PoVs could be more than enough to do the same amount of foreshadowing or world-building (as long as they had a sliver of empathy and understanding towards their fellows and how they might feel about how some interactions went)?

Like, one of the main rules of writing is that there’s no “true rule of writing“, but that’s because any author can go out of their to actively subvert an “established rule“ of writing.

However, I really don’t think that’s what Robert Jordan did with the Wheel of Time. See, if he was actively trying to subvert the whole “main PoV“-rule, he could’ve just told the story from thousands upon thousands of PoV, where we’re never allowed with Rand or the other main characters as the PoV at all, and are instead forced to unravel the mysteries involved from the endless “newspaper clippings“ of whatever these reoccurring names were all about.

Since the Wheel of Time isn’t written like that, it can be safely assumed that that kind of subversion of writing-rules isn’t something that it tried to do.

Instead, we’re just given so many PoVs that we have a hard time engaging with them, because most of them will be taken away from us after this one and only appearance. Which actively defeats the purpose of multiple PoVs (which is to give insight into the thoughts of the PoV-character and be used to further emotionally establish characters and relationships).

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taimproblem replied to your post: ...

It really just seems like WoT is too complex a story for your tastes. It’s supposed to be complicated and complex; that’s not a mistake. The Point is that everything and everyone is important, not just a few Main Characters, but the less “important” people too. The one off pov’s where people not directly involved in the main events seeing and reacting to main characters or experiencing the effects of things the characters caused are one of my favorite aspects of WoT.

That’s... not really what I’m trying to say.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s very hard to be emotionally invested in characters who are used as PoV, because there are so many of them.

It basically becomes the problem of “everyone is a main character now, so nobody is a main character“. Where you might initially be excited about new characters being introduced, and different PoVs being offered, only to learn over time that there’s no point to get attached to any of them, because you’ll probably never hear from them again.

Basically, the massive amounts of “extra PoVs” presents the reader with a kind of learned apathy towards engaging with the characters.

Why should we care about “random farmer (tm)“ when we’ll meet “random farmer 2 (tm)“ who is a completely different person, and we still won’t be prepared for “random farmer 3 (tm)“ or “random tailor (tm)“. Because at this point, even though they’re all different somehow, we’ve learned to not get attached to them. So we don’t get attached and so there’s no emotional impact or inherent interest associated with it anymore.

Oh, you might disagree with this. But there’s “using PoVs to tell a story“ and there’s “using PoVs because you can’t be bothered to flesh out character-interactions“. And I’m not saying that the Wheel of Time is the latter, but I’m saying that if it’s trying to be the former? It clearly missed the mark.

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perrinmywolf replied to your post: ...

I want the thoughts of the farmer, not just what Rand observes. I want to feel what he feels without him having to say to Rand, a total stranger to him, “wow, this is amazing; I don’t know how you managed this.” I want the context of that farmer in a way that shows, not tells. And you can’t do that from Rand’s, in this case an outsider’s, pov.

That just means you’re not trying.

It’s the brief flicker of awe in their faces, the worry, the hope for the future that seems to linger at the tip of their tongue, and the heartfelt way they manage to choke out a “thank you“.

And Rand might think about that farmer in the future, or he might not. Perhaps one of the many people around him might comment that he’d done something very special for that farmer, or perhaps Rand might be the one to defend his actions with that same statement (because he still understands what it’s like to be a farmer).

Again, if you just give him enough screentime, and are willing to actually follow through with what you wanted to use that “extra PoV” to say? You can say it. It might not have the same “staying power“ in the sense that Rand is probably going to be distracted back to his regular duties immediately afterwards, but at least it’d be consistent.

I’d rather follow the thoughts-and-views of a character who matters, rather than be clobbered over the head with the thoughts-and-views of a character who briefly interacts with that person, and then never matters again.

Sure, all people are important in their own way, but we can’t care about every person in the entirety of the world. It’s too many people. And trying to then replicate the PoV of “the rest of the world“ with a ludicrous amounts of random PoVs, is always going to ring hollow, because you don’t know these people.

Whether intentional or not, I think the concept was that the girls chose their fates while the boys are forced into theirs.

idk about "the cis are at it again" like... this particular cis was "at it" 30 years ago and if you're gonna judge RJ's representation of gender varieties as if the series was written in this decade you're in for a lot of unnecessary frustration

bartonsedai

Honestly, it's not perfect, vut for a white cis man from the South writing in the 90's, he's not half bad. Conpared with other fantasy authors, he's downright pregressive.

Okay, so about this kind of thing, which I’m reliably informed will keep happening - eye-roll worthy gender stuff in WoT.

I am 100% not reading this seriously. The most reaction this stuff is going to get from me is a :| face and maybe a couple of running gags. I’ve read/watched/played enough fantasy to not have particularly high hopes for gender stuff here, and to be able to have fun with this regardless. I’m not expecting or requiring super progressive views on everything in order to enjoy reading a thing.