[Macros]

He's saying Perrin is perfectly right in castling Faile, she can't channel an in a stand up war she would likely get choppity chopped.
Perrin cant administrate his ass to the toilet so the logical choice is Faile organise, Perrin choperise.
her insistence on running around questing and getting kidnapped it spoilt child bitchery of the highest degree.

I think we will have to agree to disagree, where you see strong reasoned characters I see self indulgent selfish arrogant bitchery. In the male characters too btw, before I get chauvanised. I have no problem with strong female characters, but these aren't strong in a good sense, theyre strong and fucking iritating.
on the shadow throne note, he's definitely a grey character, he's clearly shown to have motivations of his own, and be quite petty at times, but that's not for here.
my problem with WoT characters is simple lack of believability, there's no way in hell I would put up with a fraction of the shit Mat Rand and Perrin had to deal with, fuck all y'all the world can burn. You want us to help, stop being a big old tower of bitches.

[Grief]

I don't think it's just a question of the women being the only arrogant ones, but I wonder if it's more noticeable because it is a trait shared by so many of the women, and is also seen as more annoying because the male characters are more often seen as "justified" or "in the right" (i.e, the way Rand is treated is obviously counterproductive in many cases because he is the protagonist/dragon, whereas the reverse isn't true to the same extent). This also makes the women's arrogance etc seem more ridiculous (and stupid), than that of the men, because it's often rather obvious (at least to the reader), that they're on the wrong side of things plot wise/their plan is terrible. Since it is a trait that is shared by so many of the female characters, it is also not seen so much as there just being specific characters that are that way as it might be with the men (and Rand, for example, also gets a more compelling justification for his behaviour than anyone else really does).

Edit: I also think it's partly down to the fact that Rand's personal struggle is important to the books, and it's easy to have conflict created by people on his side interfering with him/his plans etc, and Jordan chose to make these people mostly women (as I remember). The women probably try and influence Rand personally more than either Matt or Perrin as I recall.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Macros, on 19 December 2013 - 08:20 PM, said:

He's saying Perrin is perfectly right in castling Faile, she can't channel an in a stand up war she would likely get choppity chopped.
Perrin cant administrate his ass to the toilet so the logical choice is Faile organise, Perrin choperise.
her insistence on running around questing and getting kidnapped it spoilt child bitchery of the highest degree.

Indeed, that's what s/he is saying, but that still doesn't make it relevant to the point at hand (since it ignores time). The incidents s/he is speaking about occur after Faile and Perrin come to an understanding.

Quote

I think we will have to agree to disagree, where you see strong reasoned characters I see self indulgent selfish arrogant bitchery.

See, that's the thing: I'm not convinced you've quite understood what I'm saying. Perhaps I wasn't sufficiently clear, and for that I apologise. I agree that many of the characters are self-indulgent, arrogant, and selfish (whether they're "bitches" is not really something I care to discuss). That was my original point: they have human faults. Some people argue that the female characters are bad/annoying because they've been written from a sexist point of view. Perhaps RJ was indeed sexist (unfortunately, we all are to some extent), but his characters' faults look to me like human foibles that affect both male and female characters, not artifacts of gendered stereotypes and sexist writing. You actually seem to agree.

Quote

In the male characters too btw, before I get chauvanised. I have no problem with strong female characters, but these aren't strong in a good sense, theyre strong and fucking iritating.

Again, I don't really disagree: many of the female characters may well (and legitimately) seem unsympathetic. But what I've been arguing is that the reasons for that have little to do with them being written from a sexist POV, and a whole lot to do with ordinary human failings (e.g. pride, arrogance, etc.). The reason I brought up the fact that so many women in Randland occupy positions of power and that many of the male characters are just as flawed was simply to back up my claim that it doesn't seem to me like they were written that way because RJ thought all women were like that, or something of the sort.

Quote

my problem with WoT characters is simple lack of believability, there's no way in hell I would put up with a fraction of the shit Mat Rand and Perrin had to deal with, fuck all y'all the world can burn.

I wouldn't put up with half their shit either!

[amphibian]

Goaswerfraiejen, on 19 December 2013 - 10:23 PM, said:

Indeed, that's what s/he is saying, but that still doesn't make it relevant to the point at hand (since it ignores time). The incidents s/he is speaking about occur after Faile and Perrin come to an understanding.

My point was more than that. Within the books, there sometimes is a reason why the male characters want the women characters to do this instead of that and vice versa. Jordan usually wrote the male viewpoints on things relating to personal danger as being either Rand-sexist-stupid or pretty reasonable (Perrin with Faile and a few other examples) and then going from there with the women objecting to both and usually pushing their own "you do this" on the men with varying amounts of sense attached. The whole dynamic was to basically have nobody listen to each other and the actual set-up was often clumsy, really repetitive and basically made a huge chunk of the readership actively dislike the women within the books. That's not exploration of human faults, attitudes and mistakes we all engage in like Felisin is in the Erikson books or other examples of such. It's bad writing.

Perrin's desired courses of action regarding Faile made full sense - even before the "understanding", which was basically Faile trusting Perrin's sense of things and him telling her that he understood why she wanted his attention/approval. Rand's protectiveness usually didn't make sense. The women he stubbornly tried most to protect were strong magic-users and/or members of the most militarily prepared society on the planet (Egwene/Aviendha and the channelers/Aiel women). They didn't need the protection and embraced the danger of their actions - although doing so was often not the wisest thing to do. I think the vision lady (Min?) was probably the least able to protect herself and she didn't argue too much with Rand's protectiveness.

The whole thing is compounded by basically all the women getting jealous as heck of other women and doing a bunch of stupid stuff as a result. Most of the men Jordan wrote didn't do that (a few did, but not nearly to the degree the women did). That's Jordan stacking the deck a certain way that's beyond just the characters being themselves.

That's more of my point than just "Jordan wrote Perrin and Faile to be blah blah blah".

[Goaswerfraiejen]

amphibian, on 19 December 2013 - 10:44 PM, said:

My point was more than that. Within the books, there sometimes is a reason why the male characters want the women characters to do this instead of that and vice versa. Jordan usually wrote the male viewpoints on things relating to personal danger as being either Rand-sexist-stupid or pretty reasonable (Perrin with Faile and a few other examples) and then going from there with the women objecting to both and usually pushing their own "you do this" on the men with varying amounts of sense attached. The whole dynamic was to basically have nobody listen to each other and the actual set-up was often clumsy, really repetitive and basically made a huge chunk of the readership actively dislike the women within the books. That's not exploration of human faults, attitudes and mistakes we all engage in like Felisin is in the Erikson books or other examples of such. It's bad writing.

Perrin's desired courses of action regarding Faile made full sense - even before the "understanding", which was basically Faile trusting Perrin's sense of things and him telling her that he understood why she wanted his attention/approval. Rand's protectiveness usually didn't make sense. The women he stubbornly tried most to protect were strong magic-users and/or members of the most militarily prepared society on the planet (Egwene/Aviendha and the channelers/Aiel women). They didn't need the protection and embraced the danger of their actions - although doing so was often not the wisest thing to do. I think the vision lady (Min?) was probably the least able to protect herself and she didn't argue too much with Rand's protectiveness.

The whole thing is compounded by basically all the women getting jealous as heck of other women and doing a bunch of stupid stuff as a result. Most of the men Jordan wrote didn't do that (a few did, but not nearly to the degree the women did). That's Jordan stacking the deck a certain way that's beyond just the characters being themselves.

That's more of my point than just "Jordan wrote Perrin and Faile to be blah blah blah".

That's well argued and perfectly reasonable, but I'm still unclear about which point you're speaking to. Initially, I thought you were speaking to my claim about Rand and Perrin's early (and middle) paternalism towards the women in their lives. Now, it sounds like you're explaining why you disliked the female characters, and possibly pointing to some structural sexism on Jordan's part. To be honest, I'm not yet convinced I see the structural problems you see--I'll likely need more explicit pointing around. I've just finished re-reading the series, and I can't say that I recall Elayne, Aviendha, and Min being particularly jealous of one another and getting in each other's way. Quite the opposite, actually. Or were you referring to other women? Again, I'm sorry, but I can't quite see what you're pointing to.



FWIW, my own stance isn't to give Jordan a blanket pass, but rather to point out that the character-building is far more reasonable and nuanced than I initially thought when I was a teen (with, it must be admitted, entirely sexist beliefs, if not avowedly so). My complaint at the time was the one I commonly see: "the women are naggy and annoying". Having re-read things now, I'm not of the same opinion. I was young and arrogant, and blind to my own biases, which in turn blinded me to the fact that our male protagonists behaved in much the same way. I'm happy enough to concede structural(ly sexist) problems with Jordan's writing, as I mentioned above, but I don't quite see what you're referring to.

[GrimLogan]

I began reading WoT in 1990 when I was fourteen years old. I cannot believe it has taken me thirty years to realize that series is one of the major reasons I've never even been tempted to get married!

[Tsundoku]

This is still funny, accurate and prescient AF, and I appreciate it in a new light after Season 1 of the TV show.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 13 November 2022 - 04:12 AM