Kevin's Watch

Was anyone else as moved by this scene as I was? I understand that many of you don't particularly care for Linden, but the way she wields her power to help the wounded with no consideration for the harm she does herself underscored for me why I like her so much.

I was more worried about the Arch. If she wasn't supposed to have been there, healing all those people that probably should've died would have serious reprecussion on Time. But, as time travel is always quite ambiguous, Linden and the Theomach were probably supposed to be there and heal those people. But I still thought she was being a little too carefree.

I admit, it was a little precarious the way she handled the healing part, but I wouldn't have cared were I in her position. If I had the chance to show off that kind of power in front of Berek, I so totally would have taken it!! lol.

Rishi Meme wrote:I understand that many of you don't particularly care for Linden

Please don't let some admittedly negative fun and games about Linden keep you from posting anything about her!
It's all in good humor because we all love SRD's stuff.
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Linden healing is a Fanaticism. She heals others because she cannot heal herself. Her past daunts her.

It's like leprosy of the mind. It's that condition that is driving her. "You nevered loved me" plays an important part of somebodies life when said to you at a young age. It become apart of the person.

TC was the only person that conveyed an acceptance of Linden, that she could understand.

well said Ur Dead. I totally agree. and as I posted, that whole chapter brought tears to my eyes for the first time in my reading history.

I figured she would not be endangering the Arch just because it felt so right and true. It doesn't make sense logically, but, like Linden, I knew it HAD to be done and no other course of action could have been possible for her.
She is my hero.

Lord Douchebag wrote:I was more worried about the Arch. If she wasn't supposed to have been there, healing all those people that probably should've died would have serious reprecussion on Time. But, as time travel is always quite ambiguous, Linden and the Theomach were probably supposed to be there and heal those people. But I still thought she was being a little too carefree.

I worried not about the AoT but about the people she was saving - what if someone was supposed to have died, was healed by Linden, then in an argument over who get's the last mugfull of springwine, kills Damelon?

Lord Douchebag wrote:I was more worried about the Arch. If she wasn't supposed to have been there, healing all those people that probably should've died would have serious reprecussion on Time. But, as time travel is always quite ambiguous, Linden and the Theomach were probably supposed to be there and heal those people. But I still thought she was being a little too carefree.

I'm sure the Theomach can patch up the timeline and take care of any people-who-were-fated-to-be-dead-but-saved-by-Linden by arranging for a few extra deaths in the next battle. What his motivations are just baffle me, though.

I think she was meant to save everyone she saved. It was a way of the Theomach testing her. It also helped Berek to eventually overcome his odds and win.

While this scene was indeed powerful, I, too, kept worrying about the dangers to the Arch. Ignoring the dozens of lives that have been saved, just the sheer presence of Linden and Covenant (and their names) are now part of the history of the Land. I don't see how that's not important, and how stories of their arrival don't ripple back into the future. How can that NOT have consequences to people who meet these two Strangers in later ages? If they remember Berek, why wouldn't they remember the strangest people he ever met--the people who gave him the Seven Words of power? Surely that would be something he'd pass down. I mean, Damelon was right there to witness it. He met them, too. So it seems like their names would have been remembered.

Okay, maybe this has been dealt with already in other threads. Or maybe Donaldson solves this problem in later pages. I don't want to know because this is as far as I have gotten. Suffice it to say, this was the first scene that really won me over. It felt right. It felt like the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Remember, the Arch can "heal" small violations.
It's not some unbendable ruler.

The lives that Linden saved may not have survived in the original time line but the Arch was able to heal and blend them into itself.

Now if Linden had flat out and killed Berek then the Arch would have had a much tougher fight to heal that!

And remember what Scotty said in Star Trek IV: "How do we know he isn't the one who "invented it?".

Everything Linden does in the past might have already happened in the present's past.


I love time travel stuff!

Remember, the Arch can "heal" small violations.

Good point.

Ur Dead wrote:Linden healing is a Fanaticism. She heals others because she cannot heal herself. Her past daunts her.

It's like leprosy of the mind. It's that condition that is driving her. "You nevered loved me" plays an important part of somebodies life when said to you at a young age. It become apart of the person.

TC was the only person that conveyed an acceptance of Linden, that she could understand.

Well said. I agree.

High Lord Tolkien wrote: And remember what Scotty said in Star Trek IV: "How do we know he isn't the one who "invented it?"

Yeah, that one always bothered me. Scotty, an engineer, isn't familiar enough with future technology to know who invented transparent aluminum? What kind of education do these future engineers get anyway? That would be like us traveling back in time and showing someone how to create a light bulb, and then asking, "How do we know he didn't invent it?"

Anyway, I find the whole idea of crucial actions in the past being dependent upon interference with people from the future very troubling. Presumably, that action didn't happen that way the "first time," because the future hadn't happened yet. There would have had to have been a timeline in which the interference hadn't happened yet, because those beings who do the interfering didn't exist yet. Thus, any interference with the past is just that: an alteration of the way it happened originally. Otherwise, every interference with the past would have "already happened" just like you're suggesting with this one. There would be no way to distinguish those alterations which "already happened" and those which "haven't happened yet." And thus, there could never be any threat to the Arch by altering the past, because every alteration would have already have happened.

Are we confused yet?

Let me try to say it simpler: if crucial events of the past depended on actions from time travelers in order for them to happen in the first place, then there could never be any threat to the Arch of Time because the Arch would depend upon interference across the ages. And that's ridiculous.

Let me try to say it simpler: if crucial events of the past depended on actions from time travelers in order for them to happen in the first place, then there could never be any threat to the Arch of Time because the Arch would depend upon interference across the ages. And that's ridiculous.

Malik.. lets put a twist on it.. If you go back in time and meet your grandfather, before he got married and he had children.

and you saved him from death..it that a paradox? Or is it what it was suppose to be?

and are you named for an uncle or aunt that he named for you saving him.

yes, i thought that was a very powerful scene. imho..Not just that the folks she saved were part of Bereks turning the tide,,but the overall Event was instrumental to the espre de core(spl) of the whole army. There is Hope in Lindens Fanaticism,,,with accumulated knowledge,,perhaps she will shed some of the burden and, whats left,, she will find Hope..Kinda like,, being True to yourself,,but you have to know yourself first....??

Malik23 wrote:

High Lord Tolkien wrote: And remember what Scotty said in Star Trek IV: "How do we know he isn't the one who "invented it?"

Yeah, that one always bothered me. Scotty, an engineer, isn't familiar enough with future technology to know who invented transparent aluminum? What kind of education do these future engineers get anyway? That would be like us traveling back in time and showing someone how to create a light bulb, and then asking, "How do we know he didn't invent it?"

You're apparently not familiar with Star Trek, then. Between the Eugenics Wars and World War III, the Earth pretty much went through another dark age, from what I recall, which was brought to a close only because Zefrim Cochran managed to get a warp-capable ship working for less than a minute, and got the notice of the Vulcans. If the entire earth had gone through a dark age shortly after Edison had invented the incandescent lightbulb, would an engineer 300 years later remember his name?

Emotional Leper wrote:If the entire earth had gone through a dark age shortly after Edison had invented the incandescent lightbulb, would an engineer 300 years later remember his name?

No, but he probably wouldn't remember how to make light bulbs, either.

Was the dark age before or after transparent aluminum?

I think sometimes we treat invented worlds too seriously.

Malik23 wrote: I think sometimes we treat invented worlds too seriously.

So says someone who has all these hard and fast "rules" about imaginary time travel.

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