History Headscratchers / TheWheelOfTime

** You pretty much answered your own question with that last sentence. People in the Age of Legends giraffe statues that be hurled into the sun just and remain undamaged for the sake of having giraffe statues that can be hurled into the sun and remained undamaged. They built all kinds of AwesomeYetImpractical works just because they could. They even had a giant spherical building floating in the air just for sake of doing so. As for why collectors don't have utility tools of cuendillar, it's probably because those items are too useful to be wasted in an expensive collection.

** Agreed, 100%. Though I would still contend Jordan didn't 'get it wrong' (the amount of research the man did and his attention to detail means there is no way he could have screwed it up, now when it's so easy to find out what the two halves of the taijitu mean in Chinese beliefs) but that he deliberately switched it, either to make his world different, to underscore the symbolism you mention, or to suggest the way meanings and beliefs change over time. Or all of the above.

** In addition to obsession over an ArtifactOfDoom (regardless of the importance of that artifact), another similarity between them is the particular style of obsessiveness. It would have been in character for Fain to literally caress the dagger while crooning, "My precious..." That's very similar. Also, he might not have led Rand on a physical journey, but he led plenty of other people into dark places metaphorically. Also, the fact of being {{Wild Card}}s in this story is worth emphasis. Both TheWheelOfTime and TheLordOfTheRings had such strong BlackAndWhiteMorality, and yet in both there's this one guy, a normal person until touched by the DarkSide and later rebelling against it, a WildCard that could have tipped the scales of the whole fight either way. Basically, no, they aren't exactly the same, but there are big similarities, especially before Fain actually appears in [=AMoL=].

*** That Mat was raped isn't really the funny part. The funny part has to do with it being Mat's comeuppance for his womanising and, more generally, his treatment of women. Note that Mat ends up with a lot more respect for Tylin afterwards, and mourns her death. Also note that Mat's treatment of women changes quite significantly after this event. What's more, the symmetry is important - Mat selects women who are "toys" to him, in that they're cute, etc... and Tylin does the same right back. Note that the scenes in TwoAndAHalfMen that come after Rose actually (technically) rapes Charlie are also presented as funny, for the same reason. Beyond that, I'll note that the series of scenes between Mat and Tylin aren't presented as "comedy", they're just presented. It is the reader who takes it as being funny.

** On the other hand we have Mat, a certified BadAss who is basically Rand's greatest general, a personal friend of the Dragon Reborn and ta'veren to boot.
** Mat clearly knows how to defend himself, yet allows Tylin to do whatever she wants to him. He pisses and moans about it yet never once considers reminding Tylin that he's a close friend of someone who could easily destroy Ebou Dar by himself if he felt the need. This is made even more shocking by the fact that Mat had been building up his BadAss credentials over the past few books and yet Tylin manages to reduce him to a snivelling wreck. One can only assume that Robert Jordan subscribed to the DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale philosophy.

** I always imagined it as tradition, but tradition that's so strong and been around so long it might as well be considered The Rules. The Reds in particular would probably ostracize any member of their Ajah who bonded a Warder, considering how uptight and humorless they are even when ''not'' being outright antagonistic. The Greens I imagine started bonding multiple warriors because as the Battle Ajah, the more people you have watching your back the better, and that gradually became "Greens have multiple Warders, no-one else does". As for Warders being men, I imagine something similar- in the Westlands, at least, physical Action Girls (as opposed to {{Badass}} female channelers) seem to be very much the exception rather than the rule (this, of course, doesn't go for the Aiel, Seanchan, or Sea Folk), so the Warders started out as being drawn from men, until it was just taken as a given that "a Warder is a man". At least, that's my take.

*** As if mutilation of the penis is ok? If 2/3 of the powerful western religions didn't obsess over it it'd be banned long ago (look up potential complications and laughable minimum qualifications for those preforming it). That's also the problem with the female one right? Big cultural base in Africa or something so hard to stop? 1 infant in 500,000 dying from hacking at their genitals (typically done without anesthesia) for no better reason than their parent's culture prefering that aesthetic look is too many. It's too many dead babies and painful mutilated genitals for any reason but that one is idiotic.

** To answer point 2: 1) It would do no good, 2) Rand is not strong enough to stand up to them. Much as it pains to say it, the Aiel could really benefit from the D'Haran ethos in the SwordOfTruth seroes about Richard being the magic against magic and they the steel against steel. The Aiel in general come off as more than a little intractable and unsympathetic to people who hold a divergent view of how to live, hence their usual dismissal of and lack of sympathy to the idea that anyone else might have a tie on Rand and just as much at stake, and so bitch when Rand does not regard them as his only concern. To be fair they want to protect their people and are Rand's core weapons, but still, they are dangerously close to Aes Sedai and Seanchan in how unbendingly they think others should always conform to their opinions, even when it makes no objective sense. In this case, that means any argument Rand could make would be fruitless as he has already explained they can do no good and still insisted on coming.

**** Only if the American insisted in speaking in nothing but slang and jargan. The basic language really hasn't changed much, which is why we have no real problems reading most 19th century works.