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Re: One last OP theory

darius_sedai Send a noteboard - 15/09/2016 08:58:09 PM

My first instinct is to call bullshit, for Sandersonian issues, but this might actually be a way to work that bit of idiocy into actual functionality of the Power.

The only real instance shown in the ACTUAL books of someone's apparent "Talent" exceeding the theoretical limits of their strength was the Kinswoman who was good at shielding, although that wasn't really a Talent, she just said that her ability had become honed over time to something like a Talent. She was not exceeding known limitations, she was simply doing a possible thing, but got very good with extensive practice, that being one of the few skills she might need/get to practice over the years, with the Kins' avoidance of the Power. It doesn't explain Androl's apparent limit breaking, at all, particularly since he had nothing like her opportunities to practice honing his skill.

I'm still inclined to doubt this explanation, because needing to travel or wanting move quickly might explain a Talent for Traveling if Traveling had a temporal component, or range limitation. Androl makes very big gateways and might have a superior ability to aim them, such as when he makes the lava one. There isn't really any normal or naturally instinctive reason to be able to make a very big hole in the air that is larger than anyone else knows how to do it.

My non-story explanation for Androl's Talent lies in the knowledge that B-Sand claimed the character as his own, and in a kind of authorial humble-brag, made him super-powered, but with a layer of deniability. This lets the insecure & immature fan-fiction author insert his personal idealized character into the story while weakly dodging the Mary-Sue accusation. Androl isn't the strongest and best in ways that would obviously break the narrative and cause readers to say "Hey, where'd he come from and why didn't anyone mention this before?" Instead, the author gives him a fake weakness that is offset by his singular advantage, so as to not actually impede him at all, like Daredevil's blindness & superhuman other senses. Who cares if Androl(B-Sand) can't wield as much of the Power as Rand or Taim or Logain? He could drop a mega-gateway of lava on their asses! Especially for someone like Sanderson who seems proud of his creative utilization of the rules of magic systems. Michael Stackpole pulled a similar scam in his Star Wars pastiches, making a Jedi character who was handicapped by not being able to do some of the things with the Force we saw the Jedi doing in the films, but with other powers we never saw, that with some creativity, might have made him even more powerful. Like Androl, he had an extensive backstory with lots of implied adventures, and many other skills that make him seem more competent than most of the characters training to use the supernatural ability established by a superior author.

Well, Sanderson issues aside for a moment, I agree with you there, Androl is a poor example, but we've seen examples from RJs writing too.

I'm looking for rationale as to the question of personalities and cultural settings which seem to have an effect on individual's OP abilities. For the most part I've been on the same page as Maria's thought process that the ability, even when dormant, can drive individuals down a life path (i.e. women with stronger Healing talents becoming Wise Women etc). But that still leaves some holes when trying to explain things like the Wind Finders. Clearly not every single Wind Finder has the Talent to the same degree as the others, and there is just as clearly an element of skill that plays a role (as we saw from the BotW scene), but given that the primary function of all Wind Finders for at least part of their careers is about controlling weather conditions it seems beyond reason that cultural setting isn't playing a role. If Talents were truly random this would not be possible, especially since we've seen that strength and skill play a rather minimal role with the effects generated by other Talents. How would a woman with limited Talent for weather survive the Wind Finder life, yet we know they find and train every girl with the ability, we could assume there are legions of WFs that never move up the ranks I suppose but that doesn't seem likely given how long these women must live and we know it's incredibly rare for Sea Folk to leave their clans.

Perhaps the Pattern is more in control than I am giving it credit for here, but given some of the examples we've seen such as hand gestures becoming an intrinsic part of a weave and second weave limitations such as Aviendha's it makes me wonder if there isn't an element of personality/desire/culture involved with Talents too. I'm wondering if it's possible that at some instinctual level Talents are being determined by the Channeler themselves and once it's set it becomes rather immutable. Elayne, despite having the desire to Heal as we saw in her first appearance, was intimidated by her first real exposure to the weave Nynaeve used and didn't truly believe she could do something so complex, thus she subconsciously determined her own Talent level for Healing as quite low. But because she was a natural at reverse engineering she was quite able to work with ter'angreal when no one else since the Breaking had been able to do so without massive personal risk.

Do they? Maybe a lot of them do, but there seems to be a difference in the use of the word Talent, sometimes meaning a specific use of the Power, and other times referring to the ability to perform a particular feat. Traveling, for instance, is a Talent in the former sense, but not all that rare in the latter sense. It might be that Cloud Dancing is, like Traveling, a more widespread ability in the natural channeler population, but which the Tower lacks the knowledge or ability to use. The much more likely result, rather than a conveniently higher distribution of a pass/fail ability in a particular population, is that the Sea Folk specialize in that ability for obvious reasons of the necessity, while the Tower doesn't bother. Their fatalistic inclinations (the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills), shared by even the most determined and iconoclastic of their brainwashed graduates (notably Moriaine and Cadsuane), changing the weather is not all that likely to occur to them. And their policy in opposition to experimentation would preclude any but the most fortuitously gifted from figuring out the rules of weather working that would enable greater effects or more complex workings. I think weather would definitely be one of those areas RJ alluded to real-world science rules coming into play. And that particular sphere of activity would be the strongest counter-argument to this original notion, now that I think about it. The vast majority of people in WoT are from agrarian communities. Even the city people are more closely tied to nature than the modern world, and the most immediate impulse of ANYONE in extended contact and interaction with nature is to end said contact and interaction in any way possible. If Talents were the results of formative desires, doing SOMETHING about the weather would be a far more frequently occurring motivation than we apparently see.

You are probably correct in that Cloud Dancing might be a far more common ability or possibly something that nearly any channeler can achieve to some degree, but it's also noted in several places that there are those with better ability such as Elayne ... we don't have enough information from the books to see how wide spread the ability is in terms of effect though. Traveling seemed much more cut and dry prior to Sanderson IMO ... RJ called it a Talent but never really gave us a whole lot to show it as such, he mostly made it a matter of strength and only gave a few little hints to show us that some struggled a little with it despite the requisite strength. Sanderson clearly found interest with exploring the ability with Androl and to a lesser degree Yukiri who played with innovation with it as well.

I'm not sure I agree with your assumption that weather manipulation would be something the nature of WoT would draw out of channelers on the mainland. Healing is present in every society because there are always sick people to take care of or injuries that need mending and without Healing individuals become non-productive parts of a society that can't really support them ... weather issues may or may not occur and are far less of a constant to most individuals as a daily problem. Or are the type of issues a society bends itself around as a group not an individual, when there's a drought a village might ration food etc... but there's not much any one person can do about it. Sure a Wise Woman being able to make it rain would be a massively useful ability, but considering how distrustful mainlanders are of women with channeling abilities it seems like the kind of flamboyant display that would get someone shunned pretty quick too. Healing can covered up easily as we see from the Wise Women in Ebu Dar, but weather manipulation on even a relatively small scale would be hard for people to not notice. Drawing the eye of the White Tower would not be desirable for the majority of common folk in WoT and those that seek the Tower are likely not the types to be thinking about their individual communities.

He was actually referring to the place through which you move while Skimming. The implication I took from that line was that it is related to the way Tel'Aran'Rhiod exists between the threads of the Pattern. Rand recalled Asmodean saying that about the Skimming place, and not understanding the reference, which I took to be a signal to the readers, who had Verin's explanation of T'A'R just a couple of books prior. That would explain how the method of travel with Skimming is so malleable to the intentions and expectations of the channeler, including Rand using a staircase the first few times he tried it, and his issues with creating the platform.

True, the context of his comment was about Skimming, but I'm wondering if it couldn't be used in a broader sense here. This is one of the only ways RJ showed Traveling as a Talent rather than a strength exercise by showing us that each individual has their own specific limitations which are seemingly set by their own minds such as with the platforms. But Asmodean's comment might also be relevant in other places where Talents are concerned.

When? He first Skimmed impulsively to catch Ba'alzamon at Tarwin's Gap, and he didn't do it again consciously until Rhuidean to go after Asmodean. His first Traveling was into the palace in Caemlyn. He had been taught the weave, to a degree, but couldn't do it, in part, seemingly, because he had trouble grasping the "learning" of the starting ground. It wasn't until his traumatized hyper-awareness of the moment he lost his friend and his first lover that he was able to make the weave work. He was impatient and pressed for time often enough before that that he should have been able to learn Traveling at some point, if that was how it worked. Egwene's rediscovery of the same thing was entirely intellectual and no formative or personal inclinations led that way. Aviendha came the closest to learning how to Travel in that manner, and her ability was impeded. Nynaeve had a similar impediment to Healing, until she was forced to do it without her herbs in tDR, an experience she compared to flaying herself.

I was specifically referencing the fight with B'A'Z ... he was emotional and needed to do something in order to (in his mind) defeat the DO forever, without Traveling he would not have been able to follow B'A'Z ... at that moment his ability would have been locked in just as Aviendha's was ... he later "officially" learned the weave, but his mind already had set up the level at which his ability worked. He doesn't seem to have picked up the 2nd weave handicap that Aviendha did, but even she knew if she could rediscover the weave she used she would be able to make larger gateways, or use less of her strength to do it, which implies that her Talent was fixed in that first moment.

I think the circumstances in which you first use a weave or utilize a Talent might affect how you do that in the future, but it seems entirely distinct from whether or not your innate abilities incline to having those Talents at all.

I think the first part of this is pretty well proven out in the books from many accounts. The second part could go either way IMO ... I don't have issue with believing that innate Talent might drive personality traits rather than the other way around, but I think it's poorly defined in the books.

That would have been more on the order of Nynaeve's inability to Heal without herbs or Aviendha's shame-block for Traveling, or the various handicaps under which wilders labor, rather than something fundamental to the process of learning new weaves or Talents. It could also be an indication that the Aes Sedai have been testing for the wrong things, and that many Yellows were not actually Talented at the art as it was known in the AoL. Moghedian claimed that modern Healing was sort of like first aid or emergency treatment in the AoL, so maybe that weave was something that others who were not genuinely Talented at Healing could use when pressed by circumstances. Note that it uses fewer of the Powers, and the Asha'man are implied to have learned something similar from Taim, as Flinn relates, noting that it is painful compared to other forms of Healing, and that it was the same weave applied to any injury or ailment, of any degree, just like the modern standard White Tower Healing weave, which might not hurt, but seemed equally traumatic in different ways. Given that proper Healing doesn't seem to take much more time than the crappy kind, the only reason to prefer the latter in emergencies would be that it was more widely accessible. It's possible it had a lower strength cost and was thus better for larger numbers of patients in a short time, but that doesn't seem to be a good enough reason from a time when angreal and sa'angreal were replaceable, and linking was a common practice. It seems much more likely to me that it was more readily accessible to those who lacked the Talent for the proper form of Healing, and thus such Healers would only be pressed into service when there was not enough time or too much work for the real Healers to get to everyone.

Well blocks and 2nd weave restrictions are pretty well documented in the books, the Talent/Personal traits correlation is shown in the books in a variety of places, but is left pretty much up to the reader to figure out how it works. As for the Aes Sedai Healing method, it clearly also requires a certain Talent level as we've seen very skilled and strong women unable to make even the crude weaves do much beyond superficial healing. It's clearly a slightly messy form of the Talent, but there is a giant indication that it IS Talent when Siuan's ability remained exactly the same pre and post Stilling. IIRC the main difference in this form and other forms had to do with precision in the Healing such as being able to Heal only a specific injury rather than everything at once and that the power of the Healing came from the individual being Healed which made it harder on the body and thus could kill the person.

IIRC it was Shemerin who was open to Nynaeve joining, since she was the one who taught her Yellow Ajah secrets. None of the sisters in Salidar were all that welcoming to Nynaeve's experimentation, which I took as a commentary on their mindsets, being more politically active than Healing nerds. Rosil was a Sanderson character anyway, so she isn't really a trustworthy source, given his idiocy. I don't even recall her being that open, aside from on the issue of Nynaeve's Aes Sedai status. And for all we know, that kind of amenability might have been why Egwene picked her. Not even I would seriously contend Egwene was deliberately acting to hurt the Tower, and to paraphrase Wisconsin's greatest legislator, if (s)he were merely stupid, the law of averages would mean that some of her decisions would be in the interests of the Tower. Having a MoN who is uncharacteristically receptive to innovation might be one of those instances. In most cases, you don't want that in a MoN, since someone needs to keep the kids from blowing up the Tower, but the effectiveness of the brainwashing program means that is the best hope for the future of innovation in the Tower, and you don't want someone who is going to automatically quash such attitudes in the initiates.

Shemerim wasn't so much supportive of Nynaeve joining the Yellow as she simply assumed it was a foregone conclusion ... she also only gave her this information when she was in the Tower pre-split so it says little about her outside of her poor judgement in giving an Ajah's secrets out to an Accepted who is both a wilder and rather hot-headed.

My point with Rosil was that she was one of the more "liberal" Aes Sedai in terms of how she viewed new policies in the Tower and seemed to have picked up the use of the new weaves. Maybe the better way to approach this is that Romanda had little ability with the new weaves despite having the Talent for the old weaves, and is very "conservative" in her Aes Sedai beliefs.

Sadism is an act of power. Much more likely that her appetite for power manifested in misuse of Healing, because that was where her brain was at. Sadism is a pleasure of the jaded. Psychotic little kids who are sadistic at such a fundamental level would probably be screened out early in the AoL HotS procedures. The description of her personality makes it seem more probable that she had an entitlement complex that manifested as perceiving a right to do what she wanted with her patients. In other words, she didn't go into Healing because she was sadistic, Healing put her in circumstances where the most readily available outlet for her need for stimulation and attitude of entitlement was in the subversion of her ostensible function. Other Forsaken chose different vices, because of their life situations. Baalthamel, for instance, went into more conventional depravity, because there isn't much chance to indulge one's evil nature as a scholar. Developing a Healing Talent so you can get close enough to victims to indulge a fundamental sadism is too much of a long term strategy, rather than a formative instinct that might bend one's One Power abilities in a particular direction.

Yes and no ... what I'm getting at is a subconscious "recognition" of her desires which may have enabled her Talent to be so significant. Unlike Temaile who was also a sadist but due to the crude nature of the existing Healing weaves would not have had the same reaction because even with a massive Talent she would not have been able to realize her sadistic desires through Healing and thus had to find other outlets. Semirhage, because of the age she was from, had more open ended options and clearly used her Talent to help fulfill her "pleasures"

IIRC, Siuan stopped seeing ta'veren when she was severed.

You are correct, but it's unclear if this Talent could exist in a non-channeler as well as a channeler. Min's gift always seemed like a form of Foretelling to me and Bair and Seana were both Dreamers and then there are the Wolf-brothers to consider. It's obvious that there are some gifts out there that are not directly related to the OP. I was trying to differentiate those from the Talents that require the OP to activate.

Domani Drag Queen in the White Tower ... Aran'gar watch out!

This message last edited by darius_sedai on 15/09/2016 at 10:08:54 PM

Edit 1 by darius_sedai on 15/09/2016 at 10:08:54 PM

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One last OP theory

darius_sedai - 14/09/2016 04:17:51 PM 718 Views

Maybe Egwene's greed made her good at sensing minerals. Always secretly looking for gold *NM* kHz1000 - 14/09/2016 05:01:04 PM 277 Views

LOL ... or perhaps because the Sul'dam told her if she proved herself rare darius_sedai - 14/09/2016 05:13:50 PM 360 Views

Re: One last OP theory

Cannoli - 15/09/2016 02:12:12 PM 453 Views

Re: One last OP theory

darius_sedai - 15/09/2016 08:58:09 PM 389 Views

Re: One last OP theory

Cannoli - 16/09/2016 12:35:22 AM 396 Views

Re: One last OP theory

darius_sedai - 16/09/2016 09:44:34 PM 370 Views

Re: One last OP theory

Cannoli - 18/09/2016 05:09:16 AM 400 Views

Re: One last OP theory

darius_sedai - 19/09/2016 06:48:30 PM 397 Views

I'll concede the rest, but not Nynaeve. Cannoli - 20/09/2016 12:11:39 AM 446 Views

I actually agree with this (at least mostly) darius_sedai - 20/09/2016 12:41:55 AM 390 Views

Back at you Cannoli - 20/09/2016 11:31:04 PM 388 Views

Re: Back at you darius_sedai - 21/09/2016 03:39:20 AM 348 Views

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<quote id="291072">
<quote>My first instinct is to call bullshit, for Sandersonian issues, but this might actually be a way to work that bit of idiocy into actual functionality of the Power.

The only real instance shown in the ACTUAL books of someone's apparent "Talent" exceeding the theoretical limits of their strength was the Kinswoman who was good at shielding, although that wasn't really a Talent, she just said that her ability had become honed over time to something like a Talent.  She was not exceeding known limitations, she was simply doing a possible thing, but got very good with extensive practice, that being one of the few skills she might need/get to practice over the years, with the Kins' avoidance of the Power.  It doesn't explain Androl's apparent limit breaking, at all, particularly since he had nothing like her opportunities to practice honing his skill.

I'm still inclined to doubt this explanation, because needing to travel or wanting move quickly might explain a Talent for Traveling if Traveling had a temporal component, or range limitation.  Androl makes very big gateways and might have a superior ability to aim them, such as when he makes the lava one.  There isn't really any normal or naturally instinctive reason to be able to make a very big hole in the air that is larger than anyone else knows how to do it.

My non-story explanation for Androl's Talent lies in the knowledge that B-Sand claimed the character as his own, and in a kind of authorial humble-brag, made him super-powered, but with a layer of deniability.  This lets the insecure & immature fan-fiction author insert his personal idealized character into the story while weakly dodging the Mary-Sue accusation.  Androl isn't the strongest and best in ways that would obviously break the narrative and cause readers to say "Hey, where'd he come from and why didn't anyone mention this before?" Instead, the author gives him a fake weakness that is offset by his singular advantage, so as to not actually impede him at all, like Daredevil's blindness & superhuman other senses.  Who cares if Androl(B-Sand) can't wield as much of the Power as Rand or Taim or Logain?  He could drop a mega-gateway of lava on their asses!  Especially for someone like Sanderson who seems proud of his creative utilization of the rules of magic systems.  Michael Stackpole pulled a similar scam in his Star Wars pastiches, making a Jedi character who was handicapped by not being able to do some of the things with the Force we saw the Jedi doing in the films, but with other powers we never saw, that with some creativity, might have made him even more powerful.  Like Androl, he had an extensive backstory with lots of implied adventures, and many other skills that make him seem more competent than most of the characters training to use the supernatural ability established by a superior author. </quote>

Well, Sanderson issues aside for a moment, I agree with you there, Androl is a poor example, but we've seen examples from RJs writing too.

I'm looking for rationale as to the question of personalities and cultural settings which seem to have an effect on individual's OP abilities.  For the most part I've been on the same page as Maria's thought process that the ability, even when dormant, can drive individuals down a life path (i.e. women with stronger Healing talents becoming Wise Women etc).  But that still leaves some holes when trying to explain things like the Wind Finders.  Clearly not every single Wind Finder has the Talent to the same degree as the others, and there is just as clearly an element of skill that plays a role (as we saw from the BotW scene), but given that the primary function of all Wind Finders for at least part of their careers is about controlling weather conditions it seems beyond reason that cultural setting isn't playing a role.  If Talents were truly random this would not be possible, especially since we've seen that strength and skill play a rather minimal role with the effects generated by other Talents.  How would a woman with limited Talent for weather survive the Wind Finder life, yet we know they find and train every girl with the ability, we could assume there are legions of WFs that never move up the ranks I suppose but that doesn't seem likely given how long these women must live and we know it's incredibly rare for Sea Folk to leave their clans.

Perhaps the Pattern is more in control than I am giving it credit for here, but given some of the examples we've seen such as hand gestures becoming an intrinsic part of a weave and second weave limitations such as Aviendha's it makes me wonder if there isn't an element of personality/desire/culture involved with Talents too.  I'm wondering if it's possible that at some instinctual level Talents are being determined by the Channeler themselves and once it's set it becomes rather immutable.  Elayne, despite having the desire to Heal as we saw in her first appearance, was intimidated by her first real exposure to the weave Nynaeve used and didn't truly believe she could do something so complex, thus she subconsciously determined her own Talent level for Healing as quite low.  But because she was a natural at reverse engineering she was quite able to work with ter'angreal when no one else since the Breaking had been able to do so without massive personal risk.

<quote>Do they?  Maybe a lot of them do, but there seems to be a difference in the use of the word Talent, sometimes meaning a specific use of the Power, and other times referring to the ability to perform a particular feat. Traveling, for instance, is a Talent in the former sense, but not all that rare in the latter sense.  It might be that Cloud Dancing is, like Traveling, a more widespread ability in the natural channeler population, but which the Tower lacks the knowledge or ability to use. The much more likely result, rather than a conveniently higher distribution of a pass/fail ability in a particular population, is that the Sea Folk specialize in that ability for obvious reasons of the necessity, while the Tower doesn't bother.  Their fatalistic inclinations (the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills), shared by even the most determined and iconoclastic of their brainwashed graduates (notably Moriaine and Cadsuane), changing the weather is not all that likely to occur to them. And their policy in opposition to experimentation would preclude any but the most fortuitously gifted from figuring out the rules of weather working that would enable greater effects or more complex workings.  I think weather would definitely be one of those areas RJ alluded to real-world science rules coming into play.  And that particular sphere of activity would be the strongest counter-argument to this original notion, now that I think about it.  The vast majority of people in WoT are from agrarian communities.  Even the city people are more closely tied to nature than the modern world, and the most immediate impulse of ANYONE in extended contact and interaction with nature is to end said contact and interaction in any way possible.  If Talents were the results of formative desires, doing SOMETHING about the weather would be a far more frequently occurring motivation than we apparently see.</quote>

You are probably correct in that Cloud Dancing might be a far more common ability or possibly something that nearly any channeler can achieve to some degree, but it's also noted in several places that there are those with better ability such as Elayne ... we don't have enough information from the books to see how wide spread the ability is in terms of effect though.  Traveling seemed much more cut and dry prior to Sanderson IMO ... RJ called it a Talent but never really gave us a whole lot to show it as such, he mostly made it a matter of strength and only gave a few little hints to show us that some struggled a little with it despite the requisite strength.  Sanderson clearly found interest with exploring the ability with Androl and to a lesser degree Yukiri who played with innovation with it as well.

I'm not sure I agree with your assumption that weather manipulation would be something the nature of WoT would draw out of channelers on the mainland.  Healing is present in every society because there are always sick people to take care of or injuries that need mending and without Healing individuals become non-productive parts of a society that can't really support them ... weather issues may or may not occur and are far less of a constant to most individuals as a daily problem.  Or are the type of issues a society bends itself around as a group not an individual, when there's a drought a village might ration food etc... but there's not much any one person can do about it.  Sure a Wise Woman being able to make it rain would be a massively useful ability, but considering how distrustful mainlanders are of women with channeling abilities it seems like the kind of flamboyant display that would get someone shunned pretty quick too. Healing can covered up easily as we see from the Wise Women in Ebu Dar, but weather manipulation on even a relatively small scale would be hard for people to not notice.  Drawing the eye of the White Tower would not be desirable for the majority of common folk in WoT and those that seek the Tower are likely not the types to be thinking about their individual communities.

<quote>He was actually referring to the place through which you move while Skimming.  The implication I took from that line was that it is related to the way Tel'Aran'Rhiod exists between the threads of the Pattern.  Rand recalled Asmodean saying that about the Skimming place, and not understanding the reference, which I took to be a signal to the readers, who had Verin's explanation of T'A'R just a couple of books prior. That would explain how the method of travel with Skimming is so malleable to the intentions and expectations of the channeler, including Rand using a staircase the first few times he tried it, and his issues with creating the platform.</quote>

True, the context of his comment was about Skimming, but I'm wondering if it couldn't be used in a broader sense here.  This is one of the only ways RJ showed Traveling as a Talent rather than a strength exercise by showing us that each individual has their own specific limitations which are seemingly set by their own minds such as with the platforms. But Asmodean's comment might also be relevant in other places where Talents are concerned.</quote>

<quote>When?  He first Skimmed impulsively to catch Ba'alzamon at Tarwin's Gap, and he didn't do it again consciously until Rhuidean to go after Asmodean.  His first Traveling was into the palace in Caemlyn. He had been taught the weave, to a degree, but couldn't do it, in part, seemingly, because he had trouble grasping the "learning" of the starting ground.  It wasn't until his traumatized hyper-awareness of the moment he lost his friend and his first lover that he was able to make the weave work.  He was impatient and pressed for time often enough before that that he should have been able to learn Traveling at some point, if that was how it worked. Egwene's rediscovery of the same thing was entirely intellectual and no formative or personal inclinations led that way. Aviendha came the closest to learning how to Travel in that manner, and her ability was impeded.  Nynaeve had a similar impediment to Healing, until she was forced to do it without her herbs in tDR, an experience she compared to flaying herself.</quote>

I was specifically referencing the fight with B'A'Z ... he was emotional and needed to do something in order to (in his mind) defeat the DO forever, without Traveling he would not have been able to follow B'A'Z ... at that moment his ability would have been locked in just as Aviendha's was ... he later "officially" learned the weave, but his mind already had set up the level at which his ability worked.  He doesn't seem to have picked up the 2nd weave handicap that Aviendha did, but even she knew if she could rediscover the weave she used she would be able to make larger gateways, or use less of her strength to do it, which implies that her Talent was fixed in that first moment.

<quote>I think the circumstances in which you first use a weave or utilize a Talent might affect how you do that in the future, but it seems entirely distinct from whether or not your innate abilities incline to having those Talents at all.</quote>

I think the first part of this is pretty well proven out in the books from many accounts.  The second part could go either way IMO ... I don't have issue with believing that innate Talent might drive personality traits rather than the other way around, but I think it's poorly defined in the books.

<quote> 
That would have been more on the order of Nynaeve's inability to Heal without herbs or Aviendha's shame-block for Traveling, or the various handicaps under which wilders labor, rather than something fundamental to the process of learning new weaves or Talents. It could also be an indication that the Aes Sedai have been testing for the wrong things, and that many Yellows were not actually Talented at the art as it was known in the AoL.  Moghedian claimed that modern Healing was sort of like first aid or emergency treatment in the AoL, so maybe that weave was something that others who were not genuinely Talented at Healing could use when pressed by circumstances.  Note that it uses fewer of the Powers, and the Asha'man are implied to have learned something similar from Taim, as Flinn relates, noting that it is painful compared to other forms of Healing, and that it was the same weave applied to any injury or ailment, of any degree, just like the modern standard White Tower Healing weave, which might not hurt, but seemed equally traumatic in different ways.   Given that proper Healing doesn't seem to take much more time than the crappy kind, the only reason to prefer the latter in emergencies would be that it was more widely accessible. It's possible it had a lower strength cost and was thus better for larger numbers of patients in a short time, but that doesn't seem to be a good enough reason from a time when angreal and sa'angreal were replaceable, and linking was a common practice.  It seems much more likely to me that it was more readily accessible to those who lacked the Talent for the proper form of Healing, and thus such Healers would only be pressed into service when there was not enough time or too much work for the real Healers to get to everyone.</quote>

Well blocks and 2nd weave restrictions are pretty well documented in the books, the Talent/Personal traits correlation is shown in the books in a variety of places, but is left pretty much up to the reader to figure out how it works.  As for the Aes Sedai Healing method, it clearly also requires a certain Talent level as we've seen very skilled and strong women unable to make even the crude weaves do much beyond superficial healing.  It's clearly a slightly messy form of the Talent, but there is a giant indication that it IS Talent when Siuan's ability remained exactly the same pre and post Stilling. IIRC the main difference in this form and other forms had to do with precision in the Healing such as being able to Heal only a specific injury rather than everything at once and that the power of the Healing came from the individual being Healed which made it harder on the body and thus could kill the person.

<quote>IIRC it was Shemerin who was open to Nynaeve joining, since she was the one who taught her Yellow Ajah secrets.  None of the sisters in Salidar were all that welcoming to Nynaeve's experimentation, which I took as a commentary on their mindsets, being more politically active than Healing nerds.  Rosil was a Sanderson character anyway, so she isn't really a trustworthy source, given his idiocy.  I don't even recall her being that open, aside from on the issue of Nynaeve's Aes Sedai status.  And for all we know, that kind of amenability might have been why Egwene picked her.  Not even I would seriously contend Egwene was deliberately acting to hurt the Tower, and to paraphrase Wisconsin's greatest legislator, if (s)he were merely stupid, the law of averages would mean that some of her decisions would be in the interests of the Tower.  Having a MoN who is uncharacteristically receptive to innovation might be one of those instances.  In most cases, you don't want that in a MoN, since someone needs to keep the kids from blowing up the Tower, but the effectiveness of the brainwashing program means that is the best hope for the future of innovation in the Tower, and you don't want someone who is going to automatically quash such attitudes in the initiates.</quote>

<quote>Sadism is an act of power.  Much more likely that her appetite for power manifested in misuse of Healing, because that was where her brain was at.  Sadism is a pleasure of the jaded.  Psychotic little kids who are sadistic at such a fundamental level would probably be screened out early in the AoL HotS procedures. The description of her personality makes it seem more probable that she had an entitlement complex that manifested as perceiving a right to do what she wanted with her patients. In other words, she didn't go into Healing because she was sadistic, Healing put her in circumstances where the most readily available outlet for her need for stimulation and attitude of entitlement was in the subversion of her ostensible function.  Other Forsaken chose different vices, because of their life situations.  Baalthamel, for instance, went into more conventional depravity, because there isn't much chance to indulge one's evil nature as a scholar.   Developing a Healing Talent so you can get close enough to victims to indulge a fundamental sadism is too much of a long term strategy, rather than a formative instinct that might bend one's One Power abilities in a particular direction.</quote>

Yes and no ... what I'm getting at is a subconscious "recognition" of her desires which may have enabled her Talent to be so significant.  Unlike Temaile who was also a sadist but due to the crude nature of the existing Healing weaves would not have had the same reaction because even with a massive Talent she would not have been able to realize her sadistic desires through Healing and thus had to find other outlets.  Semirhage, because of the age she was from, had more open ended options and clearly used her Talent to help fulfill her "pleasures"

<quote>IIRC, Siuan stopped seeing ta'veren when she was severed. 
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You are correct, but it's unclear if this Talent could exist in a non-channeler as well as a channeler.  Min's gift always seemed like a form of Foretelling to me and Bair and Seana were both Dreamers and then there are the Wolf-brothers to consider.  It's obvious that there are some gifts out there that are not directly related to the OP.  I was trying to differentiate those from the Talents that require the OP to activate.

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