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Sanderson certainly did that Tom Send a noteboard - 20/11/2015 05:08:03 PM

I think that the utterly horrific past of the Forsaken is what makes a redemption angle so interesting. Would they be able to let Demandred live out the remainder of his life in freedom for having helped to save the world? If the connection between the memories of LTT and Rand were broken, then no one would remember exactly what Demandred had done since it was before the Breaking.

The reason I brought it up is because part of what ultimately made Robert Jordan's books derivative, run-of-the-mill fantasy was the complete shallowness of the characters. The closest we ever got to a real person was Rand because he was slowly going crazy. However, if Jordan had given more characters really difficult decisions, if some heroes became anti-heroes, if some villains actually did something good, he could have breathed life into the tired cliches that he just reworked.

Imagine a Perrin who is having a torrid affair with Berelain, who has to personally execute a good friend from Two Rivers who turns out to have been a spy for the Dark One and wakes up in cold sweats hearing the friend plead for mercy before Perrin's axe comes down in a nightmare that repeats real life over and over. Imagine a Mat who turns paranoid and tortures suspected Darkfriends, even though he's the only person who has a chance of leading the armies of the Light to victory. Imagine a Rand who occasionally kills the people around him because he's just hallucinated. Imagine a Forsaken who wants to break free from the Dark One but is being manipulated because his family keeps getting pulled back into the Pattern by the Dark One and tortured every time he disobeys. A darker, flawed Wheel of Time would have been fascinating and filled with depth. Instead we just got a predictable derivative series that will likely recede into obscurity.

Political correctness is the pettiest form of casuistry.

ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius

Ummaka qinnassa nīk!

*MySmiley*
This message last edited by Tom on 20/11/2015 at 05:08:32 PM
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Demandred, Taim and Asmodean - 13/11/2015 05:22:36 PM 3332 Views
Holy...SHIT! - 13/11/2015 07:12:08 PM 1891 Views
Yup...shocked, but hardly surprised. - 13/11/2015 08:12:54 PM 1454 Views
Thank you so much for revealing it - 13/11/2015 08:57:32 PM 1586 Views
I agree... - 13/11/2015 09:03:21 PM 1410 Views
Re: Holy...SHIT! - 18/11/2015 05:21:26 PM 1225 Views
Re: Demandred, Taim and Asmodean - 13/11/2015 07:15:14 PM 1558 Views
There was bound to be changes of mind... - 13/11/2015 10:50:39 PM 2072 Views
Hmmm... - 13/11/2015 11:59:41 PM 1375 Views
I just can't believe he was that lazy/sloppy in editing LOC. - 14/11/2015 12:29:47 AM 1830 Views
I thought Shara was begging to be noticed as a last minute foe. - 14/11/2015 02:46:42 AM 1565 Views
So did a lot of people. But... - 14/11/2015 05:27:27 AM 1531 Views
I still tend to think Demandred in Shara was Sanderson's creation - 16/11/2015 09:07:28 PM 1687 Views
He has pretty much admitted as much publicly. - 17/11/2015 03:14:19 AM 1486 Views
Agreed. In fact.. - 17/11/2015 03:19:20 AM 1355 Views
Re: I still tend to think Demandred in Shara was Sanderson's creation - 17/11/2015 05:08:58 PM 1253 Views
One more comment on the timing - 21/11/2015 04:29:02 PM 1442 Views
I don't get the Nynaeve note - 14/11/2015 02:32:28 AM 1697 Views
There are a lot of inexplicable notes like this. - 14/11/2015 06:33:11 AM 1572 Views
Nynaeve was one of the few who met the original Balthamel and Aginor - 17/11/2015 08:46:43 PM 1296 Views
Re: Nynaeve was one of the few who met the original Balthamel and Aginor - 17/11/2015 09:33:34 PM 1128 Views
It's interesting that stopping Taimandred coincided with the drop in series quality. - 16/11/2015 05:02:38 AM 1933 Views
Some of this could have been interesting - 16/11/2015 04:37:00 PM 1507 Views
It would take away from Verin though - 16/11/2015 05:05:41 PM 1072 Views
That is a good point - 16/11/2015 08:52:37 PM 1152 Views
For the record my suggestion was not that he was a mole - 17/11/2015 01:56:41 AM 1285 Views
that was clear in your post - 19/11/2015 05:36:02 PM 1154 Views
Sanderson certainly did that - 20/11/2015 05:08:03 PM 1287 Views
I don't think I would have cared for that - 20/11/2015 06:05:19 PM 1260 Views
It didn't necessarily have to be "dark", just a bit less two-dimensional. - 20/11/2015 10:00:59 PM 1252 Views
I mostly agree - 21/11/2015 06:38:31 AM 1136 Views
This I can agree with - 23/11/2015 04:12:19 PM 1077 Views
I don't read a ton of fantasy anymore - 23/11/2015 04:29:47 PM 1442 Views

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