The Wheel of Time

Yeah, that's what they were getting at. If DO wins even once, all predictions, all prohpecies, all causality is out the window. He won forever, always.

https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Mirror_World

No, there's actual parallel realities where the Dark One is fighting the War on infinite fronts.

(It's why he can't actually win because new worlds keep coming)

Well, he's won on a lot of worlds.

The one where Lanfear takes Rand and company is dead and burned for example.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 20th 2023 at 8:37:57 AM

That wasn't a world where the Dark One won, it was a potential world. Loial says of the Portal Stones "From Stone to Stone run the lines of "if," between the worlds that might be." Lanfear says that the world she, Loial, Hurin, and Rand find themselves in in The Great Hunt is pale because it's a weak reflection of the actual world, a world that never had much chance of ever being.

Someone at some point brings up the idea of there being multiple Dark Ones for all these separate realities, and is told that there's only one Dark One.

Edited by Robbery on Mar 20th 2023 at 8:55:24 AM

Yeah, I took that as there being one Devil for all realities.

https://dragonmount.com/forums/topic/56068-mirror-vs-parallel-worlds/

But parallel worlds are also mentioned.

Internal time—the Pattern—may not pass for the Dark One, but that doesn't mean that there isn't an "external time" for him, allowing one thing to happen after another from his perspective.

Again, going to the simulation analogy, if we stop the simulation time still passes for the person operating the simulation, and they can in that flow of time replace the simulation.

Or, put another way, it's like a time-travel story, in which certain events unfold up to the point at which someone travels back into the past and changes those events. But the story can still follow the characters going through the pre-time-travel events, even if the story eventually has those events be undone via said time-travel. The path to the time-travel happens, even if it's unmade by that time-travel.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 21st 2023 at 10:30:24 AM

The Wheel represents time itself, introducing "external time" beyond it... i dont know. It kind of feels like it invalidates the whole premise of the setting. I find it much more appropiate to the setting that stuff outside the Wheel "simply" happens all at once, with no chronological order.

Also even with the simulation metaphor the change wouldnt be noticeable for the beings inside the simulation. Perhaps think of my statement more as a backwards checking mechanism than a guarantee for the future. "Have we fought or prepared to fight the Dark One in the past? If yes we win, if no we have lost." I agree that in theory the Dark One could rewrite the past and the way there would still have happened in some weird timey-wimey-wibly-wobly-way, but as long as people are fighting that has/is/will not happen. From an in-universe perspective the very act of resistance in the past means the Dark One has/is/will not win, cause if he did there would have been no past resistance to remember.

Regarding Mirror Worlds and Parallel worlds: so from what i have read it seems like Parrallel Worlds exist (like the realm of the Finns, the Olgier homeworld, maybe even TAR that one doesnt seem clear if its mirror or parallel), however the worlds in which the Dark One had won were Mirror Worlds which are "ifs" of the "main" world. It didn´t even seem clear if the Parallel Worlds are on the same Wheel of Time or if they had their own Wheel

I don't think so; internal time is what's important to the characters, and thus what's important to the story.

But that's each to their own; different people are put off by different plot-elements, after all!

No, but it still wouldn't hold that the simulation being in its original state would mean that the simulation would never be replaced.

Characters in the simulation would be happily observing their cyclic time, presuming that it would continue to cycle so—right up until the simulation was yanked, and replaced with something new.

The thing is, I don't think that the logic holds at all, as I've argued.

The Dark One hasn't won in the current iteration of the time-stream, but that doesn't mean that the time-stream won't be replaced, thus leaving the characters in a new time-stream that's causally disconnected from the old one. Thus the cyclic nature of time doesn't provide information on the outcome of the fight against the Dark One.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 22nd 2023 at 11:56:04 AM

Our different oppinions on "outside time" are a major hurdle for each others arguments, i think we will be unable to resolve. I can kind of understand your logic when working under the assumption of "outside time", but in my eyes it goes against the setting in a major way.

It´s really hard to write under the assumption of no time... Instead of a simulation imagine a movie (so that each frame can represent one point on the timestream). With outside time the movie could continue until the frame when it is replaced, as you said perfectly fine and possible from an inside-the-movie-perspective. Without outside time the movie wouldn´t continue until the frame when it is replaced, all the frames of the movie would be replaced at once. There couldn´t be any previous frames of the original movie on the roll of the new movie as they would have been replaced as well, so if there are it means it´s still the original movie.

Believe me, I absolutely see where you're coming from, I do believe.

However, what you describe doesn't seem to me to fit with what we're presented in the story, where they characters seem to feel that there's a very real possibility that "what was, what is, and what will be may yet fall under the Shadow". Not to mention that the Dark One seems to think that they have a chance, even from their external perspective.

As to "outside time", that is a bit handwavy, I will confess. It's perhaps my currently-limited-to-temporal-causality perspective coming to the fore, trying to describe my concept of "timeline iteration".

[edit] We may be going in circles at this point—which seems absolutely appropriate. ;P

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 22nd 2023 at 4:38:54 PM

Oh yeah, the fact that the characters in story believe it´s possible for the Dark One to win is the reason i started this whole discussion in the first place. It made absolutely zero sense to me that they do and it´s only at best glancingly adressed in the last book of the series (which makes it annoying as hell, as while Sanderson had Jordans notes, one can´t be sure which parts are him and which are Jordan).

And regarding the Dark One thinking they have a chance that´s easily explained without outside time. The Dark One would effectively still be in their first and only try to destroy the Wheel.

As a final note i´ll admit i´m still convinced the Dark One has no chance of ever winning (for why see paragraph above), but you guys have at least provided enough doubts that i can see people in-universe being unsure and honestly it makes little difference to them, except for a bit of morale boost. They have to fight either way as even a world with a defeated Dark One can be rather fucked up by the shadow.

The fact that the Dark One exists outside the Wheel doesn't mean that their plans exist outside the Wheel. Obviously, events on the Wheel are important to the Dark One — if they weren't, they wouldn't bother with the whole... everything that happens in the story. So the implication there is that the Dark One's plans rely on events within the Wheel, and are therefore subject to linear time (or cyclical time, anyway, given the whole Wheel thing) just like the rest of our characters.

If the Dark One was able to just break the Wheel by themselves, then the Wheel would break simultaneously everywhere all at once, because the force breaking it existed outside of time. But the Dark One can't do that — they're imprisoned outside the Wheel, but can only exert influence over the Wheel from within the Wheel, and thus are subject to time as we know it. That means that breaking the Wheel is an event that happens (or fails to happen) on the Wheel, ie at a specific point in time. Before that point, the Wheel is whole. After that point (if the Dark One succeeds), the Wheel is broken.

Now, arguably, after the Wheel is broken, time as we know it unravels and therefore it was retroactively always broken, but it doesn't have to be like that. There's no reason why it couldn't be that everything functions normally up to the breaking point, and then after that reality ceases to exist in a form that mere mortals can understand and interact with. That would also mean that all future turns of the Wheel would be broken (or rather, no future turns would happen, because the Wheel broke), but we already know that turns of the Wheel aren't actually completely identical, so saying something like "three turns of the Wheel ago" or "two turns of the Wheel from now" does make sense.

tldr, because the Dark One's attempts to break the Wheel are happening on the Wheel instead of outside it, normal concepts of time apply.

But if the continued existence of the Wheel means that the Dark One fails, then can the Dark One not themself see that and come to the same conclusion?

Of course, this could be fallibility on the part of the Dark One

Fair enough; I'm still convinced that it makes perfect sense that the Dark One has a chance at winning (at least excepting providence, if present in the setting; I forget).

(Even if there's no actual "outside time", there's still the potential for some sort of iteration, I feel.)

Actually, come to think of it, there's support for the concept of "outside time" in that the Wheel itself iterates—as mentioned above, Ages come anew may differ from their past iterations, afterall. Thus there's a concept of "this Age 'before', and this same Age 'later'".

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 22nd 2023 at 10:15:40 AM

My inclination is that the Dark One can't win overall but he can certainly and has certainly destroyed many worlds and iterations of the world.

Yup, that's pretty plausible, too.

Indeed, I seem to recall having such an impression back when read at least certain of the books. (Although that was long enough ago that I don't remember my thoughts or sources in detail.)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 23rd 2023 at 8:40:22 PM

So, I made a meme:

I'd argue that the majority of Wo T is just a laundry list of Robert Jordan's barely disguised fetishes. And I find it weirdly endearing for that.

I think it's because Jordan's fetishes are relatively normal, like David Weber's, as opposed to the Sword of Truth guy's.

I am now wondering what fetishes I missed of David Weber.

Tall dark haired woman who can kick your ass in a fight?

ah ha.

That is normal.

Also petite pregnant women.

I think the most intense fetish stuff in Wo T is like, the Mental Age Regression rebirthing stuff between Aviendha and Elayne that's in I think book 7?

And the whole thing where Elayne and Birgette are bonded so Birgette feels it when Elayne and Rand have sex in that one scene

Edited by GNinja on Sep 6th 2023 at 9:20:17 AM

I was just thinking "abrasive contrarianism is considered strong and sexy," and "female-led establishments are rigidly hierarchal and they use spanking to keep each other in line."

Robert Jordan loves anime-esque Tsundere for his female characters.

Which is hardly an uncommon fetish or appeal among men.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 8th 2023 at 7:03:20 AM

Was I the only one who thought the scene where Moggy talked about turning Nynaeve into a horse in Tel'Aron'Rhiad was kind of suspect?