Your assertion is absolutely absurd. What situation has Nynaeve ever leaped into impulsively where her superior strength was the only reason she survived? The only time her strength could be said to have saved her was in her duel with Moghedian, when she figured out the Forsaken's weakness might be in physical confrontation and mental toughness and took advantage of that. Her sheer strength on the other hand has got her into far more trouble than it has helped her out of. It inspired Moghedian's attacks, due to the Forsaken's fear of Nynaeve once she had taken her measure and induced Rand to invite her along on his little jaunt that got her wiped out helping him cleanse saidin, almost eaten by a horde of Trollocs and ambushed by Semirhage.

It might not have been the most prudent course of action, but she made her choices based on what she perceived to be the right thing to do. And that is never wrong. She would not have been serving any greater good by knuckling under, and absolutely no one with a modicum of intelligence (or even Egwene) thinks the Tower & its ways are perfect and not in need of serious reform. How many more women must face a flawed test until Nynaeve has accumulated sufficient political capital and status to recommend a change in the system? Either you are so deluded as to believe the system in place is perfect and in no need of change or else you are prescribing the classic means to get captured by the system. The best way to make changes is to make them. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and all that. And we have seen what good normal procedure is when it comes to affecting real change in the Tower. The Sitters dismiss out of hand such a radical notion. Shocking the Tower with a fait accompli is the best way. Egwene wants to reform the whole Three Oaths deal and gets away with raising four sisters who have not been sworn and makes an attempt to set the indoctrinated pair straight, but goes no further, and lets the machine catch up to her and soon she is swallowed up and brought around, eventually going so far as to make threats about the consequences of not swearing to two women who are only in the punishable position because of her unilateral action and who, together have not racked up nearly her tally of violations of the Three Oaths.

And Nynaeve said what she felt she had to say. Not only are you wrong, because she did NOT get put out, but she was making a principled choice. If they were going to put her out it was going to be because she was honest and they did not want HER, not because she failed to make herself into their unjustified expectations. What accomplishments have any of her judges that they dare demand Nynaeve be more like them? Which of them has captured the mistress of Tel'Aran'Rhiod on her own ground? Which of them has the trust and confidence of the most important man in the world & champion of the Light, as well as the respect and friendship of a hero of the horn? Which of them has Healed two things believed unHealable for two ages and three millennia, respectively?

Nynaeve is morally and realistically the superior of every living woman to have taken that test and only took it to prove that she could (and did) best them on the one grounds on which they claim superiority over her.

Really? You are bringing this up about Nynaeve, after all conversations of this nature that involved Egwene in tGS? Even if we stipulate the inanity of such verbal triumphs, it should be clear by now that this is a flaw of Sanderson's writing, and not Nynaeve's character.

Did it also occur to you that other people, even fictional people, might be more impressed by morality, even in the breech, than by political advancement? Perhaps it was one of those occasions where they knew they were wrong and their own consciences were shutting them up for once, rather than any eloquence of Nynaeve or effectiveness of her arguments.

Also, you are forgetting one thing. Nynaeve has just taken the test for sisterhood and proven her right beyond all doubt to the title she has been using for months. By the rules and customs of the Tower, those among them who are not sitters don't actually have the right to disagree with her out loud. When a sister as strong as Nynaeve speaks, other sisters shut up. How often does anyone protest Cadsuane's logic or reasoning? While Nynaeve's unorthodox acquisition of the shawl might have made dismissing her position in the hierarchy acceptable in the past, there is no further excuse. In my post recent post about this event, a majority of responders seem to hold the opinion that the tests were more important in everyone's eyes than the Oaths, so by popular interpretation, her not yet having sworn the Oaths is a mere technicality. After her performance against the worst that could be thrown at her in the testing ter'angreal, there is no longer any real doubt that she deserves the status, and thus is truly entitled to the privileges of her rank. We have seen many times in the world of WoT that people acting like they have a right to a rank or level of authority is often sufficient to get them that authority in truth, and furthermore, for almost all sisters the hierarchy and deference is unconscious & reflexive. Nynaeve acting like a sister, after passing the test, is very realistically enough to shut up all the other sisters present.


You actually BELIEVE that crap? There is no higher purpose! It's to ensure the test subject's priority is jumping through the White Tower's hoops, and that they value the approval of the Tower over any other consideration. That is what produce the sort of women who commit the sort of unnatural actions Faile ascribes to Aes Sedai historical figures and probably the reason, consciously or not, why sisters voluntarily break ties with their families and old lives even without the Tower's encouragement: by the time they are sisters, they have been conditioned and tested to the point where they know they will choose the Tower over everything, right or wrong, good or ill, and even blood and love. They cut ties with kith, kin & country and generally refrain from marriage to non-Tower personnel (i.e. warders) so as to avoid having things in their lives they might be called upon to sacrifice on the altar of Tower loyalty.


Bullshit. All the Shadow has to do is have a superior-strength Black Ajah order the typical sister, or pass her orders through the compromised Tower authorities. Nynaeve will do what she believes right no matter what that is, and only a hypocrite or selfish person can be lured to serving the Shadow's ends in that manner. On the other hand, we have seen what holding loyalty to a "higher good" over even right and wrong and morality does - how many of your incorruptible sisters made Ingtar's choice, but for the Tower, instead of Shienar? How many made Verin's choice and went with the flow and submitted to the Shadow just to stay alive to serve some greater purpose, but were corrupted as Ingtar describes from his portal stone memories until the exterior facade of a Black sister has seeped into her heart of hearts? All we know for certain is that Verin is the only known one to actually make it back out.

As if Rand would not be right at her side the whole way, or that Nynaeve would turn from a task she knew to be genuinely important to save Mat. Did she flee from Falion and Ispan to help Elayne against the gholam? Did she refuse to be dissuaded from returning to Ebou Dar to save Mat from the Seanchan? The only "higher good" Nynaeve has shown she will ignore is a bullshit theoretical abstraction propounded by a pack of tricentenarians who sit around the Tower telling themselves how important they are. In her test, she chose to serve an immediate, tangible and realistic good, rather than blindly obey pointless dictates with no concrete promises of what good she accomplishes by doing so.

If she's morally in the right, fuck the rules. There is literally no other valid consideration.

Unless she deliberately chooses to inflict that suffering, that is not her problem. You are only responsible and accountable for what is personally in your control.

This is an absolutely absurd argument to use in criticizing a woman who has proven herself in the field and repeatedly demonstrated her ability to think effectively under pressure. Nynaeve is intuitive and emotional and makes her decisions in this manner and is almost never wrong when it is important. Who are the Aes Sedai to declare that invalid when it clearly works for her? Anyway no one was talking about failing her based on her inability to resolve the situation in a favorable manner, they were talking about her having the temerity to make facial expressions while handling what no one denies is an extreme set of challenges.

And when has that ever happened to Nynaeve? What use is the woman too stupid to realize what a dangerous situation she just stumbled through by blind luck and never twitched a lip or cheek because she didn't even realize there was something to be worried about or afraid of? Nynaeve feels fear because she is smart enough to realize when she is in danger, and has NEVER been prevented from doing the right thing by her fear or cowardice, except on the most petty & personal issues, which she resolves as soon as she realizes what she is doing.

In the first place, that is a pretty huge "only gripe." How many evils are there in the world that are anathema to almost everyone, but about which the only real "gripe" is their lethality? Murder would be so acceptable, if only it was not fatal! Poison would be sold in every grocery store, if only it did not have such a low lethal dosage! No one would be opposed to abortion, war, guns, pollution or the death penalty, and all political arguments would be about taxes, if we could just get rid of those pesky, niggling, trivial, lethality issues.
What is more, Pollyanna, is that you are overlooking an important thing here - the lethality is a BENEFIT! It allows the Tower to permanently dispose of all potential sisters who have completed their training, and been sculpted as best as they can manage into the mold of a sister, but still proves to have pesky independent priorities or humanizing mannerisms that spoil the image the Tower tries to project of being superior to mortal concerns. They WANT such women dead, and what is even better, the ter'angreal allows them to maintain the illusion of keeping their hands clean. The sisters who murder their trainees for not proving sufficiently dedicated to Tower and its blind orders over all other concerns can tell themselves that THEY didn't kill anyone, it was this impartial ter'angreal that did it, thanks to the faults and deficiencies of the trainees themselves.

They've spent YEARS honing these women into sisters, and don't let them take the test until they think they are ready. There is no evidence of any standard or generally known criteria for a sister being raised. All that is known is that one day, an Accepted is judged worthy of learning the weaves for the test, and some time after that, at the discretion of the proper authorities, she is told she is to be tested. Clearly, they do this when a woman has, in their opinion, been properly shaped and molded into what a sister is supposed to be. It is NOT like a driver's test, which can be taken as soon as the testee achieves certain criteria, none of which have any bearing on his driving ability (proper age, etc). That is why the test - to see if he possesses sufficient ability to be allowed to drive. The test for the shawl, on the other hand, is the final test of a crafted item - if the making was flawed or inadequate, it has to be rejected. The only difference is a person, unlike a manufactured object, cannot be salvaged for its component parts to be used in further efforts. An Accepted who cannot pass the test for the shawl is like a recipe that won't bake properly in the oven - even if it is not totally consumed in the heat, you still have to throw the mess out. You can't go back and add more flour or eggs or mix it better.

You whine above about the theoretical ineptitude of a woman who lets her emotions interfere with her ability to function competently under pressure, but yet you go clamoring for her to get second chances to prove her ability under pressure. Is that balefire going to give her a second chance to make a gateway? Are those 100,000 Trollocs going to go back to their staging point and redo their assault on the manor house because she needs a second chance?

She rattled her saber because she caught them doing something wrong.
And such people are not likely to meekly swallow injustice simply because it is the way things are or because she is ordered to. Nynaeve will never need Egwene's closing tirade from tGS about failing to act and tolerating injustices by her superiors, nor is she ever likely to evade responsibility by choosing a leader to turn her conscience over to as the Salidar group did.

Who on earth gives a flying fuck? Only you and your like-minded ilk care about someone's reliability as a channeler, compared to whether or not she is a good person. Rand does not like her simply because she is an atypical Aes Sedai. Lord knows Cadsuane is more than atypical, though he has scant love for her. Rand likes her because she does what is right and THAT is what he can rely on. She is loyal to things that matter, above and beyond the hidebound corporation which employs her. Even in his last encounter with Nynaeve prior to his Dragonmount apotheosis, he expressed that very sentiment - that he appreciated Nynaeve's ability to care about things he was no longer capable of.

You, on the other hand, seem to lack even Dark Rand's capacity to know that the things you cannot appreciate are good and valuable things and that you have become a monster when you cannot care about them. Between this post and a recent one about the morality of Egwene's behavior regarding the Oaths, you betray your complete indifference to morality and anything that matters, next to political success and status. You belittled Nynaeve & Elayne's value as advisers to Egwene in that other post, based solely on their lack of comparable experience in White Tower internal politics. Setting aside the value of skill in such a wretched arena, that was the sole criterion in which she can claim superior skill or experience to them. Both have longer experience or formal training in practical authority and leadership and being responsible for others' lives. Both have more experience in the world beyond Aiel tents and Aes Sedai headquarters, more combat experience, more experience and success in confronting the Shadow and greater channeling accomplishments, and even most of the acquaintances they have in common like them better than Egwene. Yet you rejected them absolutely as advisers in any capacity to Egwene, and specifically on a particular moral issue, because they lack her experience at internal Aes Sedai politics, because they lack her practice at advancing themselves by underhanded tricks, instead of earned respect (they were both judged ready for sisterhood on the basis of their performance and accomplishments - all that held them back was the unfortunate timing of a lecture the sisters themselves admitted they deserved, and the inconvenience of the apparatus for raising them; whereas Egwene only got the shawl for political convenience), Egwene has no need to let them complete a sentence - according to you. Each time you demonstrate your belief in the supremacy of formal rank and status, I write it off as a one-time thing or a mere alternate perspective on a particular issue, but more and more it really looks like this is your genuine moral priority. I don't want to believe that about anyone, but I am forced to confront the apparent fact that you perceive gaining rank as more important than righting a wrong or doing what is morally correct. This is really appalling, and I urge to take a long hard look at this attitude before you let it carry over into any real world choices you have to make...for your own sake.