Discussion Characters / TheWheelOfTime

I'm pretty sure she says it somewhere in the series, at the same time as (effectively) calling Ishmael a coward, but I don't have the books on me so I can't check to be sure.

The scene in question is in Dragon Reborn. But what Ishamael says is, "Have you abandoned your oaths to the Great Lord of the Dark? They are not so easily broken as the oaths to the Light you forsook, proclaiming your new master in the very Hall of the Servants." Nothing about her being on trial or blasting her way free.

Definitely — it's at 442k characters, and pages are flagged for splitting at 400k. Is it okay to use the current folders as the subpage titles?

I think that works. And putting the titles of the people as folders themselves. Can somebody else do it?

I'm on it.

And done. Please check it's okay, in particular the last subpage — that one had weird formatting.

Also, should we make a new section for "the Five Great Captains"? Would include Pedron Niall (with a point to look at the Whitecloak section), Gareth Byrne, Rodel Ituralde, and Davram Bashere, with perhaps also a section for Agelmar Jagad, but that one would be relatively short (since he hasn't done anything in a while).

We already have a section for "Independent characters", though it is only for the good guys. The Black Tower should have a section when there are entries for more of the Ashaman.

Should we make one for the bad guys too? After all, the Whitecloaks section JUST has Pedron Niall as of now (I'll need to reread parts of the books to get more on Valda and others). So even if we don't split into "Independent Antagonists", it seems likely that Padan Fain could be on his own.

In any case, the Black Tower is up in a rudimentary state. If anyone thinks that they can expand on this, it would really help. Same goes for the Whitecloaks.

I'd be willing to compromise on this, if LMage is. The problem is, LMage has no need to compromise. He doesn't seem to like my contribution at all and wants the whole thing removed. He has now gotten percisely what he wanted. He has suggested I rewrite it, but aside from a bone of contention between us on spoilers that I feel needs to be fully discussed between us, I have no idea how I could rewrite it in a way that would satisfy him.

My main problems are A) The Heavy Spoilers B) The extensive length, especially for a bullet point, and C) The sense of a lack of objectivity. Really, if you could try for a more concise, less slanted, way of getting the information across I think that would be better.

As to spoilers, you've said that most of the information I would like spoiled can be found elsewhere on the page. I spoilered one or two that I found, but if can you be more specific as to what your referring that would be great.

Okay, I have a lot to say here.

LMage, with all due respect, I have absolutely no intention whatsoever in helping you spoiler everything you want spoilered, because I sincerely disagree with you entirely on your stance that every major development must be spoilered. This series is a Long Runner both in time and content. The first book was published back in 1990, twenty-two years ago. Within the official series there are 13 books, each of them a doorstopper, with a 14th and final book on the way. You say you know people who are only on Book 2 and are using these pages. They have my sympathy, but even if they know absolutely nothing else about the series, they should know how long it is, and if they really don't want to be spoiled at all, they should avoid pages like this until they're a bit more caught up, like halfway through maybe. My impression is that you'd put every single sentence I wrote under a big, fat spoiler bar, and then use official Spoiler Policy as your objective justification for deleting the entire thing. If that same rigid, inflexible standard was applied to the entire page, most of the tropes on here would be spoilered and possibly even deleted. I'd find that far more unfair to the millions of readers who've immersed themselves with the series then any spoilers new readers might encounter. Tropes happened in the final 12 books of the series, and naturally, a helluva lot more tropes happened/will happen in the last 12 books of the series than in the first two.

That said, I'd be willing to compromise with you on what could be spoilered. Essentially I want every statement I wrote back on here in some way. To do that, I'd be willing to have some of it spoilered, but not all. If you're willing to compromise (that is, where we BOTH have to give ground to each other) then we can talk.

For your second objection of the "excessive" length, I propose splitting it up by making each statement a bullet of it own. Which leads to my suggestion for your third objection:

To my mind, my statements are factual and objective. My goal is neither to excessively praise him nor condemn those who look down on him, but to point out how he's such a Butt-Monkey, and specifically to point out the irony of him being "lucky" compared to all the crap that happens to him. If you agree to my suggestion to your second objection, then I propose we start on your thrid objection of being slanted by going over each statement individually. I will state why I think these sentences are objective, and you can state why you think they're slanted and see if we can work something out.

As for spoilers: what I am trying to say is that, at the current point Mat's character page is fine as far as spoilers go, and none of the information I think should be spoilered can be found throughout the page. I agree that with a series as large as this hiding all the spoilers would be ridiculous, but here I am talking about major plot developments: stuff that happens at the climax of a book, character deaths, or otherwise game-changing events in the story (say, Mat's marriage).

Also, it is my understanding that the point of bullet point is meant to expand on the example above it without bogging down the over all flow of the page. The example explains how the trope applies and why, and the bullet adds supplementary information, which in this case is coupled with it's other is issues, is why I was in favor of just cutting it. Since you want to keep all the information (and no matter how I look theres no way to cut it down into a more concise shape without taking out some of the information) what do you think about changing it to a footnote instead of a bullet point?

As to objectivity I was actually detecting a slightly pro-Mat slant-which isn't a bad thing in and of itself since a lot of what you point out I agree with-, but I would start with removing the Ungrateful Bastard potholes, and also consider taking out or editing the last line since Mat's badass qualities are noticed, it just doesn't happen propitiatory often enough (Elayne in Ebu Dar, after fighting the gholam for instance).

Well, this is easier than I expected. :)

I have no problem with making this a footnote. I'll even add a warning about unmarked spoilers. As to your two remaining objections, I'll make my arguments for them here and let you decide on whether to remove them.

Ungrateful Bastard is an objective trope, and Egwene, Elayne, and Nyneave live "up" to that trope to a T. Mat rescues them, they're not grateful, they treat him pretty badly. I don't hate E,E, & N. They're good people normally, but like everyone else in the series they're heavily flawed, and being ungrateful batards to Mat is one of their biggest, most noticable flaws.

In my final point, I included the qualifying word "usually", as in, "Sometimes his badass qualities are noticed and appreciated by his fellow main characters, but they usually aren't." The sentence as written places more emphasis on how it usually isn't appreciated, in keeping with the Butt-Monkey trope.

I'll restore the whole thing as a footnote, unchanged. If my arguments to your last two objections don't persuade you, you can remove the potholes and edit the last line, and I won't object.