Suian thinking they’d be better off if the Dragon were a girl is so funny. Like Suian, babe, I love you wholeheartedly but you would not have an easier time with EGWENE AL’VERE as your prophesied savior I promise. Sure you don’t have to worry about her going insane, but Egwene is so stubborn she’s resisting an empire that’s spent a thousand years perfecting indoctrination. Egwene once threatened a full-fledged sister because she blamed her for Nynaeve’s death. Egwene would say “I am going to get a good grade in ‘being the prophesied savior who will either save or destroy the world,’ something that’s normal to want and possible to achieve” and then start fucking the shit up of everyone she doesn’t like - INCLUDING everyone she doesn’t like in the White Tower. And keep in mind, her best friends are 1.) Nynaeve al’Meare, human embodiment of the “I’m a healer but…” meme, and 2.) Elayne Trakand, the heir to the throne of the most powerful country on the continent who knows Egwene for two days and then is so ride or die for her that she tries to follow her out of the Tower and then starts attacking the “women who enslave channelers” crew with a stick. You would not have a chill time with a Dragon!Egwene au I promise you that.
the thing that fascinates me about the whole Brandon Sanderson episode 2x08 meltdown is that, look. he is EXTREMELY popular with a certain very specific subset of SFF fan who loves 'Magic A is Magic A' type magic systems where it's really sci-fi in fantasy dressing and part of the fun of the exercise for him and his readers is interrogating it to find all the logical loopholes and cool shit that you can do while still being within the rules of the system and so on. and that's perfectly legit.
but it's also...even though WoT does have aspects of this, in that channeling is a very rules-based magic system compared to e.g. magic in LoTR (which is the classic 'no rules only vibes' high fantasy magic) it also co-exists along magic which is MUCH more vibes-based (whatever Min does, Ogier Treesinging, Wolfbrothers). RJ was also never interested in writing the sort of edge-case rules-lawyering that BS obviously loves; it's pretty clear he wanted channeling to have rules to give himself rails to run on when incorporating it into the plot, not so he could logically deconstruct the thing. (like, how exactly did Mierin Eronaile and Beidomon use the One Power to drill into the Dark One's prison the first time when the Dark One is outside the Pattern? we have no idea because it doesn't matter, it just matters that they did it.) there's also plenty of inconsistencies and weird notes in the earlier books because he hadn't fully settled on how things worked yet - famously, Moiraine's staff.
and none of that matters really, because ultimately the internal logic and ability to be gamed out of your magic system is not a sign of writing quality, it's an artistic choice about how you want to depict magic in your SFF setting and also about what helps you as an author to write an internally coherent story. there's a lot of very good fantasy where the magic is EXTREMELY handwave-y and it's fine because that's not the point of the thing.
so to see that BS apparently seems to think that it IS a sign of writing quality and furthermore that the show is bad if it doesn't meet *his personal standard* of magic system logic, which he is somehow 'qualified' to have because...he likes to write magic systems with lots of rules a lot...is just. wild. sir, you have identified a very specific niche of nerd who will give you lots of money for your very specific books, that's great for you but the world of SFF is much bigger and weirder and cooler than that and that's okay.