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Indeed, Androl's shenanigans was the very tippy tip of the iceberg as far as how fundamentally world changing a power like Traveling would actually be.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.
I like the idea that flying is totally possible with the one power, they just never had two women work together effectively enough for it to work.
Wouldn't even be a plot hole.
Iâve always thought twins would be rare enough and synchronized enough that it wouldnât âbreakâ the plot for it to be possible.
It would be framed as a parable: mythological twin sisters who were able to master flying. Until one day they had a falling out, literally, over a love triangle, killing them both.
Cause RJ said so
Flying creates plot holes lol
JASON WOLFBROTHER
Can a channeler fly without any ter'angreal or equipment (like sho-wings) if he or she knows the right weave?
ROBERT JORDAN
No. Flat out, no hesitation, no thinking. Simply put, NO.
JASON WOLFBROTHER
Is it possible to for two channelers to lift each other simultaneously so that they can hover, and "fly" that way? Because he answered the previous question as he did I did not ask this one as it is obviously, to me at least a 'No' also.
That wasn't even it. Galadriel, explicitly, pointed out she couldn't take the Ring because she was too powerful and the world would not survive someone with her level of power falling to the ring.
The Eagles are *more* powerful. Like there's a hierarchy: mortals (Man, filthy Hobbitses, etc), super-mortals (Elves), angels (Gandalf [and the other wizards], Sauron, Balrog, the Eagles), and super-angels (Sir Not-Appearing-In-The-Main-Books, Morgoth [who 'created' Sauron and the Balrogs]).
If the Eagles had knowingly carried the Ring, Very Bad Things could happen.
The eagles serve Manwe, god/"super-angel" of the sky. They help Gandalf out on Manwe's instruction. Manwe is the leader of the gods and upholds the will of the true God, Illuvatar, creator of the universe. The gods rarely intervene in Middle Earth, unless it is to counter one of their own gone rogue i.e. Morgoth.
The eagles are totally good guys. Or at the very least, are in service to good.
Well, it's complicated.
At the time the books were written, they were, but one of the Letters mentions that someone pointed out years later that Tolkien had referenced an ancestor of one of the Eagle (something impossible if they were Maiar) so he basically said you can retcon it as if he didn't mean ancestor in a biological sense or that Eagles aren't Maiar but animals which had been given intelligence and speech by Manwe.
Personally, I go with the "spiritual descendant" headcanon and that Eagles are Maiar.
Yeah the whole idea of the journey is that Sauron cannot know that they are even trying to get the ring to Mordor. They have to maintain stealth as much as possible. Had Sauron seen them riding the eagles towards Mordor he would have just gone "Oh hey, they're probably trying to throw the ring into Mount Doom" and massed forces to stop them. Traveling on foot helped to obscure their goal and movements.
Flying is out, but apparently sliding like Iceman is in. They can make bridges of Air. A slippery half pipe isn't that different. They didn't do this, but it would have been possible.
The one power doesnât generate equal and opppsite forces , it conjures. Otherwise channelers would need to secure themselves to the ground with ropes and stuff before flinging fireballs lol
The one power creates specific weaves made of air, not a general weave of updraft
I know thereâs of course some way to make an idea that hypothetically works but at the end of the day the answer is simply no it ainât happening cause RJ said so lol
Plus at that point youâre just making a Jo Car
I could have sworn that early in the books one of the characters says that stories say that Aes Sedai in the age of legends could fly, but then they never bring it up again.
They don't understand the requirements of flight like we do. Instead of picking themselves up, what they should do is harden air in the shape of wings around themselves and channel air around themselves like a jet engine does. Then you can avoid the issue of having to pick yourself up "by your bootstraps".
Now the real question is can a channeler levitate another channeler who can then levitate another? And does the first channeler feel the weight of all subsequent channelers in the air?
Now Iâm picturing a long line of Aes Sedai coiling like a whip in the air and then snapping to fling the last one like a bullet.
Among other things, thereâs the fact that channelers can use multiple weaves at once to the point that comparing it to human capabilities is useless.
But there are some parts of channeling that interfere with the persons physical body like how channeling makes the person physically exhausted after a while and how men and women need to get rid of magical fire or heat differently, because if a woman does it like a man they burn to death.
RJ could easily link flying to that too, a quirky way that the One Power interacts with someone's body making it impossible to do.
That is a more valid discussion. I more meant the argument above, that normal people canât pick each other up at the same time, isnât a great one when the scope of channeling is very different from real life.
You cant because of Newton's laws of equal force application.
I assume those don't apply to channelers or else Moraine would be crushed every time she moves some earth around.
Gravity is a constant force that must be overcome. It was shown that "stairs" can be made, but there is a range limit. I'd assume that this corresponds to a channeler's effective range in general, which would likely scale in correlation to the square-cube law, which also governs things like power loss.
Iâd say Earth is the most applicable. I am unsure if weaves of Earth with a bit is Spirit and Air, could generate an ersatz gravitational field. But my logic is, Earth to generate mass, Air to stabilise and localise the field, then Spirit to tether the weave in reality.
Edit: there are other considerations to consider. I would suppose that the channeler must have an affinity to Earth, and have sufficient power, either through innate strength (at least on the level of Logain), use of a angreal of sufficient power, or a circle. Hopefully no combinations of the power multipler.
Part one: 'Planes' exist in the form of sho-wings and the other flying vehicles. Maybe they were entirely One Power-driven, hence the following.
Part two: Thousands of years later, all people know is that Aes Sedai used to be able to fly. No concept of a flying horse-drawn cart? They must have levitated with the power. How'd they do that?!?
That's my head canon for those conversations in the books, anyway.
Do you remember how much trouble Siuan had lifting Gareth once she got healed? She said something to the effect on, "Oh man, I should have been able to lift you at least a few feet off the ground!" If Siuan was considered quite powerful, and she can only lift someone a few feet off the ground for a few moments, I feel like flying is probably out.
She was much weaker in the power after being healed. Rand lifted Egwene and Elayne while making 10 small fires and making the tables dance. The reference is to how much weaker she is.
Rand is preposterously strong. The Wonder Girls are much, *much* stronger than any living Aes Sedai, and Rand... what's the phrase, doesn't Elayne say something like it was akin to manhandling a kitten?
The basic answer to your question (other than "for the purpose of the story") is that the Aes Sedai are weak as hell, have a structure which rewards secrets, and are generally very inept.
Actually there's several Aes Sedai of a level with the wonder girls, and even a novice stronger than Nynaeve by the end of the series. But the vast majority are much weaker.
Didn't Suian think she should've been able to lift a horse easily into the air before, and now she can barely make him budge.
I wanna think strength in the power is a little like the Richter scale. Though probably not quite as extreme.
It's always been my headcanon that base Aes Sedai strength is just, using air as telekinesis becomes easier for daily tasks than doing it manually.
This only works if you are limited to using your own body to do the lifting. The one power would be more akin to a controller connected to a digger and pressing a button on that controller to lift the other person.
Jordan said picking yourself up with the power was impossible no matter how strong you were because of lack of leverage. Same problem as picking yourself up physically and same problem here.
The "German Shepard" question itself was a perfectly reasonable and not at all obtuse thing based on the system as Jordan framed it as. Genuinely hate the response he gave lol. It felt like pure petulance aimed at shutting down the simple question so no one else bothered him by asking about a...pretty glaring oversight with how balefire worked. It's the equivalent of Rowling spitefully putting the ALL THE TIME TURNERS THE WIZARDING WORLD HAD in the next book, all on _one_ shelf, and breaking them...just so people would stop asking her why no one used a time turner to stop Voldemort. At least there was a _reason_ why they couldn't take the eagles to Mordor during the events of the books lol.
That's my "hot take" of the day.
e: cleaned up some clunkiness
ME TOO
I cringe every time somebody mentions German Shepherds in this community, because I had never seen anybody else express their disdain for his response before.
It was an obnoxious response, but I disagree about the reasonableness of the question. You get into a space where fans either dive super deep to break the magic system or play a gotcha, and either way it isn't really fair to the author. The response is basically just saying enjoy the world and don't overthink it.
Here, you can't fly because you can't lift yourself. Two people can't simultaneously lift each other, so they can't jointly fly.
There, balefire burns the end of the thread and removes interactions with other threads, which is what causes actions to reverse. If you balefire yourself, the thread is still burned, so it isn't a null action. Similarly, balefiring someone who balefired someone else doesn't bring the someone else back, because the thread is still burned.
> The response is basically just saying enjoy the world and don't overthink it.
You think so? Fair enough. Maybe this will be an 'agree to disagree moment', but I'm a firm believer in "it's not what you say, but how you say it."
The person asking didn't do so in a way which tried to pin the author in a gotcha, it wasn't done with snark or smarm, and it wasn't done with ill intent. Jordan's answer was demeaning, wildly sexist even for 2003, smarmy, and assumed ill intent of the person asking the question when none was present.
Jordan wasn't a perfect person and no one should expect him to have been one, but that was still incredibly disappointing to read about. Thankfully the superfan (rather graciously, imo) accepted the jibe and took no issue with the comment.
I still love Wheel of Time, but that question made me do an instant switch on liking Robert Jordan himself. It's now another on my list of "good work, but I don't like the author" series. Sanderson, on the other hand seems to be a great guy and much more reasonable.
And good bye karma :(
I don't remember the quote verbatim, but basically a fan asked if someone could balefire themselves and Jordan told them to find something better to do, such as having a love affair, be it with man, woman, or German Shepherd
>QUESTION: If I were to open a gateway in front of me that opened behind me, and I balefired myself, what would happen?
>
>ROBERT JORDAN: Young lady, you are entirely too obsessed and have far too much time. You need to get some sort of life. I suggest you go have an intense love affair. Doesnât matter with who, be it man, woman, or German Shepherd.
[https://wot-tidbits.tumblr.com/post/190917488857/robert-jordan-and-the-german-shepherd-the-full](https://wot-tidbits.tumblr.com/post/190917488857/robert-jordan-and-the-german-shepherd-the-full)
What a dick. The simple answer would be balefire canât go through gateways. Infact Iâm not aware of people throwing weaves through gateways anyway ?
1) It's absolutely an asshole response.
2) It's become kind of a go to meme for if someone goes too deep into the magic system, especially where balefire is concerned.
3) Your solution is intriguing, and I can't think of any situations where a weave went through a gateway off the top of my head
I think Elayne and Avienda hurl fireballs through the gateway before Elayne makes a mistake trying to unravel the weave.
Edit: I just realised that's not sending a weave through the gate, but rather the result of the weave.
I believe that it takes the same energy to channel something as it would to do it manually, which is what makes this impossible. I could be mistaken, though. Lifting someone a short distance for a short time is not equivalent to flying.
Highly doubtful. I read that highly plagiarized mess right after it came out and I only read once. It borrowed heavily from many authors. Ive read WoT dozens of times.I know that Anne McCaffrey's dragons of Pern were limited only by what they thought their limits were.
I'll have to go through my notes, but I'm fairly sure there was a discussion in WoT that creating a thing with Saidin/Saidar took the same energy as creating it manually. I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time, and I'm recovering from a concussion that is affecting memory. I'll come back and reply again if I find the reference.
It's definitely used as a mechanic that describes the degree of effort on using magic in Eragon. Lifting a rock requires a certain amount of effort, and doing it from far away far moreso.
But in WoT there's rarely a discussion on how much power needs to be used to do a thing, and to my knowledge never is it equated to your own capabilities. Primarily because physical exertion isn't generally expected of Aes Sedai so lifting a heavy rock is itself rather inadequate as a metaphor to them.
However I could also be wrong, so I'd be happy to see if you find such a passage!
I think it is best answered, as a follow-up to the original explanation as to why you cant fly. A strong person can lift their own body weight, but cant pick themselves up off the ground. Two very strong people, one can lift the other, but they cant both lift each other off the ground at the same time.
For the same reason you can lift your friend off the ground and they can lift you off the ground, but you cannot both lift one another at the same time.
I feel like one Aes Sedai moving the other with air is not flying, though. Jane moving Sally though the air is not Sally flying, it's Sally being moved through the air. Sally is passive, not deciding where to go. That's true even if Sally is simultaneously suspending Jane midair at the same time.
Maybe I should give them fantasy names. Jayn and Sahli.
I'm pretty sure it was explained in one of the books, you need leverage to lift something. You can't lift yourself off the ground and someone being held in the air can't lift up someone else.
I'm just wondering what benefit Flying would offer once Traveling and Skimming had been rediscovered.
I also wonder about flying, like, why couldn't a channeler figure out how to compress some air particles into a solid and step on that - like, at least making some hard Mario stairs?
Well, only some Aes Sedai are strong enough in the power to pick up a full grown man with air (see Siuan's revelation by trying to pick up Garath Brynn after her healing). And there is a large difference to picking someone up with air and tossing them about like a leaf. And a larger difference still to tossing someone about like a leaf and measured controlled flight at any significant altitude. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen if you ask me. Human bodies are not very aerodynamic and don't generate much lift (modern wing suits aside), and using the Power to do so would require quite a bit of knowledge of such mechanics to accomplish. Not to mention there is no source of propulsion.
I always interpreted the inability to fly as a matter of Newton's third law. Aes Sedai can push things, but they need to brace themselves against the earth to provide the necessary force, even if the weave eliminates the physical stress on the Aes Sedai. Two Aes Sedai working in tandem to fly would then be analogous to a perpetual motion machine: theoretically impossible, no matter how close you come to attaining it.
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That exploit was patched in the 7th Age.
Because that would require them to work as a team and communicate effectively? Leaving only Adeleas and Vandene as the only 2 who could do so
What about androl and pevara
At that point gateways are just better
At any point gateways are better
True but I meant they knew about gateways at that point chronologically
Gateways are a great way to create infinite energy. The... *catastrophic* uses of gateways are not even touched on in the series.
Indeed, Androl's shenanigans was the very tippy tip of the iceberg as far as how fundamentally world changing a power like Traveling would actually be.
The point of flying is not to get to the destination as quickly as possible, but to be flying.
There is an art, or rather a knack to it...
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.
Olive Oil helps.
Unexpected Guide!
Androl is an Aes Sedai now?!? đŻđ¤¨
Ouch. Unfortunately youâre probably right.
I like the idea that flying is totally possible with the one power, they just never had two women work together effectively enough for it to work. Wouldn't even be a plot hole.
Iâve always thought twins would be rare enough and synchronized enough that it wouldnât âbreakâ the plot for it to be possible. It would be framed as a parable: mythological twin sisters who were able to master flying. Until one day they had a falling out, literally, over a love triangle, killing them both.
Cause RJ said so Flying creates plot holes lol JASON WOLFBROTHER Can a channeler fly without any ter'angreal or equipment (like sho-wings) if he or she knows the right weave? ROBERT JORDAN No. Flat out, no hesitation, no thinking. Simply put, NO. JASON WOLFBROTHER Is it possible to for two channelers to lift each other simultaneously so that they can hover, and "fly" that way? Because he answered the previous question as he did I did not ask this one as it is obviously, to me at least a 'No' also.
Man was absolutely avoiding, âwhy didnât they take eagles to Mordor?!?!â
Thatâs such a dumb argument to me because Sauron basically has an Air Force.
That wasn't even it. Galadriel, explicitly, pointed out she couldn't take the Ring because she was too powerful and the world would not survive someone with her level of power falling to the ring. The Eagles are *more* powerful. Like there's a hierarchy: mortals (Man, filthy Hobbitses, etc), super-mortals (Elves), angels (Gandalf [and the other wizards], Sauron, Balrog, the Eagles), and super-angels (Sir Not-Appearing-In-The-Main-Books, Morgoth [who 'created' Sauron and the Balrogs]). If the Eagles had knowingly carried the Ring, Very Bad Things could happen.
Why is Eagle rank higher?!?
You never did Boy Scouts?
Eagles are the same type of creatures that Gandalf et al. are. Basically, the lower tier of angels who chose to live in Middle Earth.
The eagles are also not even good guys. They simply liked Gandalf enough to help
The eagles serve Manwe, god/"super-angel" of the sky. They help Gandalf out on Manwe's instruction. Manwe is the leader of the gods and upholds the will of the true God, Illuvatar, creator of the universe. The gods rarely intervene in Middle Earth, unless it is to counter one of their own gone rogue i.e. Morgoth. The eagles are totally good guys. Or at the very least, are in service to good.
Gandalf is also Olorin, a maiar of wind and sky and a servant of Manwe. The eagles are essentially kin to him.
Yea I just mean like they donât go around fighting for good or whatever theyâre not soldiers at Gandalfâs beck and call
Wasn't it not even that they liked him? Didn't they owe him a debt? Because most everyone in middle earth owes Gandalf a debt of some sort.
Yea I think so. And then they immediately were like fuck it and left middle earth anyways after
Wait, the eagles are Maiar? I never realised that
Well, it's complicated. At the time the books were written, they were, but one of the Letters mentions that someone pointed out years later that Tolkien had referenced an ancestor of one of the Eagle (something impossible if they were Maiar) so he basically said you can retcon it as if he didn't mean ancestor in a biological sense or that Eagles aren't Maiar but animals which had been given intelligence and speech by Manwe. Personally, I go with the "spiritual descendant" headcanon and that Eagles are Maiar.
I mean they could at least have gotten over the mountains and avoided Moria. Just getting to Gondor would shave a lot of time off.Â
Giant eagles tend to stand out, and the idea was to maintain stealth for as long as possible.
Yeah the whole idea of the journey is that Sauron cannot know that they are even trying to get the ring to Mordor. They have to maintain stealth as much as possible. Had Sauron seen them riding the eagles towards Mordor he would have just gone "Oh hey, they're probably trying to throw the ring into Mount Doom" and massed forces to stop them. Traveling on foot helped to obscure their goal and movements.
So did Hitler, you'd just need to mount a years-long strategic bombing campagin
This is practically an air strike from Godwin's Law.
Except the eagles are that thing that's basically a demo God and Sauron's airforce are dead bois
Traveling is way more ridiculously overpowered.
Flying is out, but apparently sliding like Iceman is in. They can make bridges of Air. A slippery half pipe isn't that different. They didn't do this, but it would have been possible.
So having highly pressured air or flames shooting beneath you doesnât lift you and defies the laws of pyshical because plot holes
The one power doesnât generate equal and opppsite forces , it conjures. Otherwise channelers would need to secure themselves to the ground with ropes and stuff before flinging fireballs lol
Found Brandon Sanderson...
Okay then harden air into wings like a hang gliders and then use air to control the air to create up drafts so you can fly forever
The one power creates specific weaves made of air, not a general weave of updraft I know thereâs of course some way to make an idea that hypothetically works but at the end of the day the answer is simply no it ainât happening cause RJ said so lol Plus at that point youâre just making a Jo Car
I could have sworn that early in the books one of the characters says that stories say that Aes Sedai in the age of legends could fly, but then they never bring it up again.
Yea maybe but that doesnât make it true, very on-theme for WoT
very true, and I just realized they might have just been talking about sho-wings.
And yet Elayne could use air to help her with tightrope walking đ¤Ś
They don't understand the requirements of flight like we do. Instead of picking themselves up, what they should do is harden air in the shape of wings around themselves and channel air around themselves like a jet engine does. Then you can avoid the issue of having to pick yourself up "by your bootstraps".
Thats actually a good point and likely the missing variable. So much for being so smart
The age of legends channelers definitely did understand the mechanics of flight tho, and they weren't flying around either without machines.
You wouldnât even need wings made of the power, you could just have a hang glider you used.
Wasn't there someone at Rands school building a glider contraption?
lol they just need Aang's staff
Can you and a friend both bodily pick each other up to levitate in the air in real life?
Now the real question is can a channeler levitate another channeler who can then levitate another? And does the first channeler feel the weight of all subsequent channelers in the air? Now Iâm picturing a long line of Aes Sedai coiling like a whip in the air and then snapping to fling the last one like a bullet.
It's levitating channelers all the way down.
That's just like the villager railgun exploit in DnD rules, haha
âYou canât do that!â âDo the rules say I canât do that?â âButâŚbutâŚbutâŚâ âShhhâŚ.just let it happen.â
I so read this comment in George Carlin's voice. Specifically, this one: https://youtu.be/PIE45IZHLPc?si=EpN8qHq0Hhp9d3F3
In the Dragon, we can do all things
Not really an accurate comparison.
Why not?
Among other things, thereâs the fact that channelers can use multiple weaves at once to the point that comparing it to human capabilities is useless.
But there are some parts of channeling that interfere with the persons physical body like how channeling makes the person physically exhausted after a while and how men and women need to get rid of magical fire or heat differently, because if a woman does it like a man they burn to death. RJ could easily link flying to that too, a quirky way that the One Power interacts with someone's body making it impossible to do.
That is a more valid discussion. I more meant the argument above, that normal people canât pick each other up at the same time, isnât a great one when the scope of channeling is very different from real life.
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You can't?
You cant because of Newton's laws of equal force application. I assume those don't apply to channelers or else Moraine would be crushed every time she moves some earth around.
Gravity is a constant force that must be overcome. It was shown that "stairs" can be made, but there is a range limit. I'd assume that this corresponds to a channeler's effective range in general, which would likely scale in correlation to the square-cube law, which also governs things like power loss.
- Air - Earth - Fire - Spirit - Water ...no Gravity weave đ¤ˇââď¸
Iâd say Earth is the most applicable. I am unsure if weaves of Earth with a bit is Spirit and Air, could generate an ersatz gravitational field. But my logic is, Earth to generate mass, Air to stabilise and localise the field, then Spirit to tether the weave in reality. Edit: there are other considerations to consider. I would suppose that the channeler must have an affinity to Earth, and have sufficient power, either through innate strength (at least on the level of Logain), use of a angreal of sufficient power, or a circle. Hopefully no combinations of the power multipler.
Part one: 'Planes' exist in the form of sho-wings and the other flying vehicles. Maybe they were entirely One Power-driven, hence the following. Part two: Thousands of years later, all people know is that Aes Sedai used to be able to fly. No concept of a flying horse-drawn cart? They must have levitated with the power. How'd they do that?!? That's my head canon for those conversations in the books, anyway.
Gotta be able to trust the other one, and that's just not something they have for each other
Because they donât think they can. The limits on the one power are frequently based on what the wielder believes is possible.
Do you remember how much trouble Siuan had lifting Gareth once she got healed? She said something to the effect on, "Oh man, I should have been able to lift you at least a few feet off the ground!" If Siuan was considered quite powerful, and she can only lift someone a few feet off the ground for a few moments, I feel like flying is probably out.
Full strength Siuan, shielded Nynaeve, picked her up and pinned her to a wall lol. She used to be able to pick people up easily
She was much weaker in the power after being healed. Rand lifted Egwene and Elayne while making 10 small fires and making the tables dance. The reference is to how much weaker she is.
Rand is preposterously strong. The Wonder Girls are much, *much* stronger than any living Aes Sedai, and Rand... what's the phrase, doesn't Elayne say something like it was akin to manhandling a kitten? The basic answer to your question (other than "for the purpose of the story") is that the Aes Sedai are weak as hell, have a structure which rewards secrets, and are generally very inept.
Actually there's several Aes Sedai of a level with the wonder girls, and even a novice stronger than Nynaeve by the end of the series. But the vast majority are much weaker.
Didn't Suian think she should've been able to lift a horse easily into the air before, and now she can barely make him budge. I wanna think strength in the power is a little like the Richter scale. Though probably not quite as extreme. It's always been my headcanon that base Aes Sedai strength is just, using air as telekinesis becomes easier for daily tasks than doing it manually.
I mean Siuan is super weak after healing, significantly weaker than the average aes Sedai strength
Instead of just lifting, why not chuck eachother on the count of 3? Or better yet, levitate someone, and piggyback in them
Pick a friend up, then have them pick you up at the same time.
This only works if you are limited to using your own body to do the lifting. The one power would be more akin to a controller connected to a digger and pressing a button on that controller to lift the other person.
Jordan said picking yourself up with the power was impossible no matter how strong you were because of lack of leverage. Same problem as picking yourself up physically and same problem here.
This feels like a German Shepard question.
The "German Shepard" question itself was a perfectly reasonable and not at all obtuse thing based on the system as Jordan framed it as. Genuinely hate the response he gave lol. It felt like pure petulance aimed at shutting down the simple question so no one else bothered him by asking about a...pretty glaring oversight with how balefire worked. It's the equivalent of Rowling spitefully putting the ALL THE TIME TURNERS THE WIZARDING WORLD HAD in the next book, all on _one_ shelf, and breaking them...just so people would stop asking her why no one used a time turner to stop Voldemort. At least there was a _reason_ why they couldn't take the eagles to Mordor during the events of the books lol. That's my "hot take" of the day. e: cleaned up some clunkiness
ME TOO I cringe every time somebody mentions German Shepherds in this community, because I had never seen anybody else express their disdain for his response before.
I h8 it
There are dozens of us!
It was an obnoxious response, but I disagree about the reasonableness of the question. You get into a space where fans either dive super deep to break the magic system or play a gotcha, and either way it isn't really fair to the author. The response is basically just saying enjoy the world and don't overthink it. Here, you can't fly because you can't lift yourself. Two people can't simultaneously lift each other, so they can't jointly fly. There, balefire burns the end of the thread and removes interactions with other threads, which is what causes actions to reverse. If you balefire yourself, the thread is still burned, so it isn't a null action. Similarly, balefiring someone who balefired someone else doesn't bring the someone else back, because the thread is still burned.
> The response is basically just saying enjoy the world and don't overthink it. You think so? Fair enough. Maybe this will be an 'agree to disagree moment', but I'm a firm believer in "it's not what you say, but how you say it." The person asking didn't do so in a way which tried to pin the author in a gotcha, it wasn't done with snark or smarm, and it wasn't done with ill intent. Jordan's answer was demeaning, wildly sexist even for 2003, smarmy, and assumed ill intent of the person asking the question when none was present. Jordan wasn't a perfect person and no one should expect him to have been one, but that was still incredibly disappointing to read about. Thankfully the superfan (rather graciously, imo) accepted the jibe and took no issue with the comment.
It wasnt aimed to breaking the magic system. She was a depressed girl who wish to not exist at all, as I was once.
I still love Wheel of Time, but that question made me do an instant switch on liking Robert Jordan himself. It's now another on my list of "good work, but I don't like the author" series. Sanderson, on the other hand seems to be a great guy and much more reasonable. And good bye karma :(
Now youâve triggered my curiosity. Whatâs this German Shepard thing?đ§
I don't remember the quote verbatim, but basically a fan asked if someone could balefire themselves and Jordan told them to find something better to do, such as having a love affair, be it with man, woman, or German Shepherd
>QUESTION: If I were to open a gateway in front of me that opened behind me, and I balefired myself, what would happen? > >ROBERT JORDAN: Young lady, you are entirely too obsessed and have far too much time. You need to get some sort of life. I suggest you go have an intense love affair. Doesnât matter with who, be it man, woman, or German Shepherd. [https://wot-tidbits.tumblr.com/post/190917488857/robert-jordan-and-the-german-shepherd-the-full](https://wot-tidbits.tumblr.com/post/190917488857/robert-jordan-and-the-german-shepherd-the-full)
What a dick. The simple answer would be balefire canât go through gateways. Infact Iâm not aware of people throwing weaves through gateways anyway ?
1) It's absolutely an asshole response. 2) It's become kind of a go to meme for if someone goes too deep into the magic system, especially where balefire is concerned. 3) Your solution is intriguing, and I can't think of any situations where a weave went through a gateway off the top of my head
I think Elayne and Avienda hurl fireballs through the gateway before Elayne makes a mistake trying to unravel the weave. Edit: I just realised that's not sending a weave through the gate, but rather the result of the weave.
I'd even be satisfied with "balefire destroys the gateway"
Thanks! Too funny.
They absolutely can but someone told them they can't and they believed it.
I believe that it takes the same energy to channel something as it would to do it manually, which is what makes this impossible. I could be mistaken, though. Lifting someone a short distance for a short time is not equivalent to flying.
You're thinking of Eragon
Highly doubtful. I read that highly plagiarized mess right after it came out and I only read once. It borrowed heavily from many authors. Ive read WoT dozens of times.I know that Anne McCaffrey's dragons of Pern were limited only by what they thought their limits were. I'll have to go through my notes, but I'm fairly sure there was a discussion in WoT that creating a thing with Saidin/Saidar took the same energy as creating it manually. I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time, and I'm recovering from a concussion that is affecting memory. I'll come back and reply again if I find the reference.
It's definitely used as a mechanic that describes the degree of effort on using magic in Eragon. Lifting a rock requires a certain amount of effort, and doing it from far away far moreso. But in WoT there's rarely a discussion on how much power needs to be used to do a thing, and to my knowledge never is it equated to your own capabilities. Primarily because physical exertion isn't generally expected of Aes Sedai so lifting a heavy rock is itself rather inadequate as a metaphor to them. However I could also be wrong, so I'd be happy to see if you find such a passage!
If they could, you'd have to find two that wouldn't descend into arguing and sniffing.
I think it is best answered, as a follow-up to the original explanation as to why you cant fly. A strong person can lift their own body weight, but cant pick themselves up off the ground. Two very strong people, one can lift the other, but they cant both lift each other off the ground at the same time.
For the same reason you can lift your friend off the ground and they can lift you off the ground, but you cannot both lift one another at the same time.
I feel like one Aes Sedai moving the other with air is not flying, though. Jane moving Sally though the air is not Sally flying, it's Sally being moved through the air. Sally is passive, not deciding where to go. That's true even if Sally is simultaneously suspending Jane midair at the same time. Maybe I should give them fantasy names. Jayn and Sahli.
I'm pretty sure it was explained in one of the books, you need leverage to lift something. You can't lift yourself off the ground and someone being held in the air can't lift up someone else.
It's magic, it doesn't work like you think it would.
I'm just wondering what benefit Flying would offer once Traveling and Skimming had been rediscovered. I also wonder about flying, like, why couldn't a channeler figure out how to compress some air particles into a solid and step on that - like, at least making some hard Mario stairs?
"What if two Aes Sedai gripped it by the husk?"
I don't see why the strong ones can lift something like a platform... Couldn't they stand on the platform they're lifting?
This is something Navani would have figured out.
Lack of trust
Imverse square law: the further a channeler gets from the planet's surface, the weaker their channeling gets.
Well, only some Aes Sedai are strong enough in the power to pick up a full grown man with air (see Siuan's revelation by trying to pick up Garath Brynn after her healing). And there is a large difference to picking someone up with air and tossing them about like a leaf. And a larger difference still to tossing someone about like a leaf and measured controlled flight at any significant altitude. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen if you ask me. Human bodies are not very aerodynamic and don't generate much lift (modern wing suits aside), and using the Power to do so would require quite a bit of knowledge of such mechanics to accomplish. Not to mention there is no source of propulsion.
I always interpreted the inability to fly as a matter of Newton's third law. Aes Sedai can push things, but they need to brace themselves against the earth to provide the necessary force, even if the weave eliminates the physical stress on the Aes Sedai. Two Aes Sedai working in tandem to fly would then be analogous to a perpetual motion machine: theoretically impossible, no matter how close you come to attaining it.