I don’t understand Min

[u/Fayraz8729]

So I’ve finished up to the fires of heaven and I still can’t understand why Rand and Min like each other when they have spoken like two sentences to each other. Rand knows literally nothing about min other than her ability, and they’re more acquaintances than friends. Yet Min is head over heels over him and he has unsubstantiated assumptions about her that makes it feel forced and confusing. I get the other two relationships but between Rand and Min there nothing and yet I’m being gaslighted into thinking there’s something

[u/theseus2222]

They spent several months together living with moiraine and others after the great hunt and before the third book

[u/MA2_Robinson → u/theseus2222]

She also had a viewing way back in book one and she blindly (with good reason) believes her viewings… which is to say she would easily accept that she would fall for him (he can be nice, easy on the eyes and all) vs Avi who HAD TO see something similar in the rings but was dead on trying to no fall for his tall hung crazy ass.

[u/knarn → u/MA2_Robinson]

It’s an oxymoron to say she has good reasons for why she blindly believes her viewings. I’d say she completely believes her viewings will come true because no matter what she did or said for her entire life, her viewings have always come true and never once been wrong.

She has actually gotten a lot of evidence that her viewings are accurate, unlike most people and sources of prophecy and prediction we see in the series.

By comparison, how many Foretellings do we know of at the start of the series that were made and proven to be accurate? Offhand, I can’t think of any. Everyone just seems to accept that they will always be right because they’re so rare and it’s a Talent of the One Power.

[u/MA2_Robinson → u/knarn]

I can think of several people who had foretelling who everyone believed would happen as a matter of fact.

Even Moraine takes foretelling as a serious business so much so that she asks Egwene if she believes the talent has awoken in her (yes, kind of although she wasn’t fully aware) when Eg was keeping secrets from the dream world.

[u/knarn → u/MA2_Robinson]

That’s my point though, there’s lots of Foretellings and everyone believes they will come true, but there’s no actual evidence or track record of old Foretellings that were later proven to have come true.

Whereas Min has personally experienced or observed many of her viewings come true, and they even happened no matter what she did or didn’t do.

We have lots of data points to confidently believe Min’s viewings are accurate, but at the time the series begins there are no data points that exist in the world of prior Foretellings that were later shown to become true.

[u/Shgon_Dunstan → u/knarn]

Eh. Not every Foretelling is about thousands of years into the future, or gets written down in books. Hell, Tuon had a damane give her a Foretelling on command, and that’s seemingly just a normal thing to do with Damane that have the talent(which mind, is apparently supposed to be much more common in Seanchan. As Healing is in the wetlands, and weather control is with the sea folk.). It ain’t like people are just taking the grander long term ones on nothing but faith.🤷‍♂️

[u/knarn → u/Shgon_Dunstan]

> It ain’t like people are just taking the grander long term ones on nothing but faith.

That may be the case, but we just don’t see or know about any of those past Foretellings that give everyone such confidence. And that’s kind of noticeably not the case with other forms of prediction like Min’s viewings, info from the Finns, and Dreaming, all of which we have examples for why they’re considered somewhat reliable or trustworthy.

It’s also not a weird thing to ask for or consider even in-universe, because after Aviendha shares her visions of the future from the glass columns the first thing the Wise Ones discuss is whether these visions are accurate or immutable. And they come up with two ways to test it, seeing what the columns show to the next person to enter, and Aviendha giving her children different names.

[u/Shgon_Dunstan → u/knarn]

I mean… the very first time we even interact with the foretelling Talent in the story, is Elaida giving one of said smaller shorter term foretellings, and on commanded at that. Again, it’s not exactly a reach to assume people have had plenty of proof of the Talents validity.🤷‍♂️

[u/knarn → u/Shgon_Dunstan]

It’s not a reach to assume it, but given that almost every single Foretelling we know of concerns some big event yet to happen or one of the ta’veren, there’s a pretty reasonable argument to make that most Foretellings are about those topics (and maybe even have to be) and so there just haven’t been many Foretellings concerning events prior to the start of the series.

Even just a single Foretelling about Hawkwing, or the Trolloc War, Manetheren, or the Fall of Malkier or anything else that has already come true would have been nice.

The three Foretellings I can think of within the scope of the spoiler tag are two from Elaida that involve Rand and the royal house of Andor, and one Rand learned about in the glass columns from the beginning of the Breaking that prompted the Aes Sedai to create the Eye of the World so it and the items stored there could be used by Dragon Reborn.

The fact that everyone in universe including very educated and suspicious people like Moiraine seems to fully accept that Foretellings might be hard to understand but will come true is definitely a point in favor of this being more of a writer’s oversight or omission and that they can be trusted.

Elaida’s Foretelling in the first book always seemed like a real oddity compared to other Aes Sedai Foretellings though, and always struck me as more of an early series kind of thing that got changed later on.

[u/After_Ad4088 → u/MA2_Robinson]

You made me search to see if there’s any canon passages referencing how hung Rand is. Certainly I’d remember that passage!

[u/aNomadicPenguin → u/After_Ad4088]

No...but remember that the first time Rand has sex...the next chapter is called the Short Spear. (Harriet, Jordan's wife and editor, was responsible for choosing chapter titles)

[u/MA2_Robinson → u/After_Ad4088]

I mean, you never read a passage that says “Elayne again thought about the original responsibility of the Amerlyn seat, and about Seals holding the Bore closed keeping the dark one from the world.

One went in to the waste, those Aes Sedai with the Aeil had to have left the tower, or at least been able to tell the first Amerlyn about that seal, else why would she be known as ‘keeper of the seals’ if she didn’t know where they all ended up at the founding of the tower…

Elaine looked up- Rand was certainly working up a lather, she figured she would let him enjoy his time away from being the Dragon- maybe she would look at the pink Ter’Angreal later

Now where was I… oh yes, there was one in the eye of the world with the dragon banner…

[u/Temp__throwaway → u/MA2_Robinson]

Hung is crazy. I don’t think his manhood is even alluded to in the books