#it's not a narrative about convincing a man to fix what he did

[genericpuff]

I really don't like how Melinoe looks like a female Hades with Persephone's pink eyes. It's too generic. Maybe keep her hair and eye colors, but maybe make her skin color a blend of both of them, like a muted purple/gray to contrast her with Dionysus? Anything other than what she has in canon.

What's wild is that the narrative is trying to convince us now that all of the dreams he had of him and Persephone were just peeks into the future. But if that's the case-

1.) Melinoe learns to communicate verbally at some point

2.) There's ANOTHER BABY we haven't even established yet (though Rachel did confirm in a tweet from ages ago that it's some god named Brimos who she read about in a book when she was a kid ???):

(but Brimo was an epithet associated with Hecate/Persephone/other gods of the dead, not necessarily an actual direct offspring of H x P, so... yeah, weird choice of a 'nod' especially now that she's trying to implement Hades' dreams into the plot as 'future sight' or w/e)

3.) All of the visions of their future together feature children that predominantly resemble Hades, not Persephone. This is really telling as to how much the relationship - both on a narrative level and even a visual one - revolves around Hades. Persephone is just an accessory, to the point that none of their children can resemble her in any major way, only through very miniscule references, such as the vines coming out of Melinoe's back and her pink eyes (whereas "Brimos" doesn't resemble her at all).

4.) This goes hand-in-hand with #3, but Dionysus and Thanatos are not present in any of these visions. I'm willing to give Thanatos a pass because he's an adult man (although it does just go to show how little Hades views him as a child), but what about Dionysus? Does his absence from these scenes tell us that Persephone found other accommodations for him? Or, more likely, is it because Rachel never planned to include Dionysus in the first place? And of course, Dionysus' design is also inherently linked to Hades, because while he has purple skin (referencing wine/grapes/etc.) he's got white hair that's explained as a genetic trait that's been passed down through Hades.

All that said, the baby plotlines in LO are a mess in and of themselves, and you can tell just how much of it revolves around Persephone "fixing" Hades or being the solution to all of his infertility and relationship problems. Persephone is the most perfect woman of all who Hades is dependant on to solve all of his problems, everything is about what she can provide him and what he can stand to gain from her, even if it means dragging her down to his level.

Man. Minthe was right.

(seriously in ANY other story this would have been FORESHADOWING-)

#ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical

[medievill]

okay. okay. I think I've finally figured out the worst part of the "Ed's going to be an abuser just like his dad" headcanon some of y'all have.

let's go for a ride.

abuse is cyclical, and not just in a micro sense. it's not just "I love you, you're garbage, I'm sorry, I love you, I'm the only one who loves you because you're garbage, I'm sorry, I love you," etc. I mean macro. I mean generationally.

I mean that parents teach their children how to have relationships. we show our kids how adults interact with each other, how adults interact with kids, how kids should interact with kids. we model this behavior constantly. it's one of the most nerve-wracking things about being a parent, actually: you live in a fish bowl now, and the fish bowl is your home, and your children are constantly observing your behavior and interactions, even when you don't want them to, even when you think they're not.

growing up in a home with an abusive parent doesn't just expose you to the abuse—physical, emotional, psychological, religious, whatever it is—it teaches the child that this is how relationships work. and then this kid goes out into the world, interacting with other humans all willy-nilly, and bringing all the knowledge that their parents armed them with to bear. and when the kid (hopefully) realizes that wait, actually, shouting and throwing things and hitting people isn't good, that's not the way you interact, it is solely up to that kid to fix their shit. if they're lucky, they've got someone in their life to help them with that. but even once you've recognized that there's Bad Stuff happening in your interpersonal relationships, you have to retrain your brain. you have to change your go-to reaction. because you can recarve your neural pathways, but it is fucking hard work.

I didn't grow up with a physically abusive parent; I grew up with an emotionally abusive one. every time my partner does something that annoys me, or we disagree on something, and my reaction is "well, I don't really feel like talking"—if you don't think that I don't half- to full-on panic about wait is this the silent treatment, am I doing what my dad did, you are absolutely incorrect. it is a constant fear, that my reactions are inherently abusive. I am constantly gaslighting myself into believing that everything I do in a relationship is bad, hurtful, abusive. I am constantly having to convince myself that it's okay sometimes not to want to talk, and to sometimes be annoyed, and to sometimes disagree, and that none of this is inherently abusive.

now. Ed fucking Teach. do you not think the guy's spent some time introspecting? examining his inner most self? he's smart, and he's depressed, so, yeah. I bet he has. so do you not think, you absolute monsters, that he isn't doing the same fucking thing? Ed Teach, who convinced himself that defending him and his mom against constant violence (a white man, and as if this was a random choice)—ultimately saving their lives (and no, this is not an exaggeration)—made him an unloveable, unlikeable monster. Ed Teach, who is so desperate for love and friendship that his biggest fantasy is owning an inn, where people stay because they want to.

do you really think that one of the thousand internal battles Ed my beloved is fighting isn't don't be your dad don't be your dad don't be your dad? fighting, fucking tooth and nail, to be different. (same as Stede!) this reactionary headcanon literally misses so much of the point of the whole character; it buys into the British Navy's propaganda about him, and worse. it buys into the narrative that a man of color is inherently violent, inherently incapable of change.

#tw: abuse #tw: domestic abuse #tw: emotional abuse #ofmd #our flag means death #ed my beloved #ofmd meta #canyon critical

[invinciblerodent]

good morning continuing my train of thought on vampiric hunger, Libris Mortis also says that vampires (full and spawn alike) have an "inescapable craving" for consuming "life force" that they have to indulge at least once per day. yes that is on top of the previously discussed dependence on a diet of blood that requires feeding once every three days.

and narratively, I think we can assume this means that Cazador took to consuming "life force" from his victims (both in the sense of food and spawn) through things like... doling out torture and abuse (which is more in-line with the lore, and the mechanics of the action giving the victims negative levels), but.

what if it can just be not that. what if it doesn't need to be pain, and suffering, and torture, but also... just attention. any kind of feedback. what if it's Monsters Inc. rules, and positive attention and nice feelings are actually a much more powerful source of life force than the negative, it's just not typically noticed by creatures who live so far in the dark recesses of the world (and don't particularly trust or like each other so they don't give positive attention to each other).

.... anyway, now I am fully 100% convinced that on top of needing to physically feed on blood at least once every three days (regardless of the source), Astarion does in fact require attention in a way.

sure, being a bit of a cock to others did make him feel marginally better before, as did maybe getting compliments and attention from marks, but he was maybe too consumed by the other, diet-dependent kind of hunger for the soul-hunger slightly lessening to be a noticeable improvement.

NOW though, that he's ostensibly so much better fed than he ever was before, it's my sorta-supported headcanon that on top of it being a joke, THIS is at the core of why he says shit like how not enough people say that he's beautiful, and why he straight-up asks for compliments that one time with the mirror. Because his body may be fed, but his soul is still kinda hungry, even if he's unsure why that is, or what it is that fixes it.

he just. needs just a nice li'l cuddle per day. my man needs his morning kissy+grabass combo breakfast meal, and/or some morning complos (shitty way to say compliments), otherwise he gets just a lil bit more bitchy and fidgety, and he (not knowing much about his condition at all, and just, y'know, never having had his needs met) only discovered even that by accident.

every morning we wake up, cast Longstrider, bind Wyll's pact weapon, drink our elixirs, have one of the druids make a Heroes' Feast, and tag-team compliment the vampire.

i'll hc that Iona is going to gift him a copy of this book at one point istg

"look arael, this book explains all the shit Cazador never bothered to tell you. did you know you can cast gaseous form at will. yeah that would have been real fkin useful for us to know, huh"

#squirrel plays bg3 #astarion #bg3 astarion #astarion ancunin #i'm having so much fun with this vampire stuff #don't worry it'll pass soon #i think #oh iona would also MILK this so hard

[beesmygod]

JJBA PART 5, VENTO AUREO IS THE UNDERBAKED MESS I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT FIXING...PART 2

FIX 1: MORE KOICHI FOR THE MASSES

koichi! we love koichi, don't we folks? i know i do.

who's koichi? oh shit, that might be hard to explain.

pictured: koichi, in his dormant, yet most powerful, form.

if you DON'T recognize this little gremlin above, his appeal might be totally lost on you, and his appeal is necessary to understand if i'm going to convince you of what a fucking missed opportunity his narrative purpose could have been.

that's koichi hirose, the short king of morioh. i didnt think i would like him at all after realizing he was being set up as the deuteragonist and companion to the titular jojo of part 4, josuke. like, who the fuck was this little dork? get outta here! im here to see the joestars kidnap children and have homoerotic adventures. i am not here to be subjected to the trials and tribulations of a friendless, spineless, standless dipshit. i assumed he was going to be the designated joestar hypeman for the chapter, a role usually carved out for precocious children.

wrong! koichi gets hit with the stand arrow (the arrow the gives you stands, remember this) early on and gets dragged into a frightening battle of good versus evil right in his own backyard. the arrow and the responsibility that comes with it acts as the main catalyst for his transformation from nottie to hottie. in contrast to the bastardly joestars and their ilk, koichi is a genuinely kind, empathetic, and honest person; he's intended as a foil to the mischievous josuke. he brings to the table the platonic ideal of an every-man who rises gallantly to the challenges thrown at him because its the right thing to do. the series folds koichi as a main cast member to the point where he is one of the very few people on planet earth to draw a smile and praise out of jotaro kujo.

who's jotaro kujo? uhhh.

hmm. i'm getting to my point. but it might require a chart:

POINT: jotaro kujo, the man who probably has with the strongest stand in universe, who appears in 4 chapters out of a total of 9, and who is probably one of the most recognizable and beloved characters in manga history, trusts literally one person on the entire planet: koichi hirose.

SO:

when koichi shows up in part 5 right from the jump to act as the part 4 connective tissue, there is absolutely no reason why he can't stick around for longer than he does canonically so that he can satisfyingly fulfill his role as official vibe checker. let him be important!

---

oh my god, i can hear jojo fans groaning as they scroll through all that shit. so what?! did you make me read all that just to say "there should have been more koichi?!"

look, i need to make sure "we're" all on the same page and understand the perspective i'm coming from. "we", in this case, being the audience of both jojo fans this is primarily aimed at and fandom rubberneckers (greetings friends) who shouldn't have to comb a wiki exhaustively to decode my unhinged ramblings. it's essential background info that koichi is a fan favorite both in canon and in fandom. we gotta understand the role he wound up playing in the overarching struggle of good versus evil in his hometown to understand his narrative role in part 5.

YES. there SHOULD have been more koichi! but not just because we like to see him! he provides an established, trusted moral backbone for the audience. his reputation as a reliable guy is such that jotaro sends him on his own to investigate a young man who may be related to the dreaded bisexual nemesis of the joestar bloodline, dio brando. this is a big fucking deal. if dio has a kid that's really bad. how many backup plans did this guy have (answer: dude you have no idea).

---

ugh! part 5 koichi! if you really want to scream look up how he looks in the rohan spin off series.

in ep 1 of the "golden wind", koichi arrives in italy looking for our new jojo, giorno giovanna (who sucks, but that's a whole kettle of fish we can only barely touch on now). koichi, who has the street sense of one of those dogs that gets carried around in a luxury purse, instantly gets robbed by petty street criminal giorno in a rare burst of personality never seen again after this initial story-line.

okay whatever. after skipping a few eps, giorno and koichi team up to defeat the first stand together after drawing its ire during giorno's weird mafia test. the stand, black sabbath, stabs its victims with a stand arrow (the arrow that gives stands), causing them to either die or gain powers. this might be controversial, but its my personal opinion that its probably not good for a mafia to have a factory that creates jerks with super powers and its right to try to shut that down. after the fight, giorno reveals his dream to koichi of joining the mafia with the explicit purpose of reforming it from within. koichi promises not to report to jotaro about the fact that there's ANOTHER STAND ARROW until after giorno is initiated into the gang. god. jesus christ.

first of all, this GANG-STAR thing is the silliest shit anyone has ever heard. this is literally his for real goal throughout the entire story-line. which could have been great! but people within the fiction should react to this like hes telling them he's going to invent the first bicycle for fish instead of looking at him with the kind of wonder and glory you reserve for jesus christ himself. this train of thought leads to too many thoughts about giorno's lack of personality, so let's set it aside for now. i think giorno should maintain this insane goal, but he should actively have to convince people that he is capable of doing something that fucking nuts.

second, no way would koichi agrees to this absolutely braindead truce lol. koichi doesn't know giorno from adam; the sense we're supposed to get is that koichi innately senses that he's a good guy from his little speech and we, the audience, are supposed to take his word for it. but there is nothing convincing or authentic in how the situation plays out. there's a level of naivety/stupidity applied to the characters involved for this situation to work at all: i dont know why telling jotaro in florida that there's a stand arrow in italy would impact giorno's mafia standing at all. especially considering the arrow breaks and no longer functions shortly after giorno's initiation. koichi should find giorno's dreams and desires spurious and continue his investigation for jotaro, both to impress him and because its the right thing to do. he should also be like "heh, i took care of a stand arrow for you mister kujo". let him have another win. fuck it. why not.

third, koichi doesn't know that the stand arrow is destroyed and i have a hard time believing that he, a victim of said arrow, would do anything other than raise serious alarms over the proliferation of objectively evil stand users in italy where dio's son coincidentally happens to live. the following arc in which giorno and his new team mates go on a hunt for a hidden treasure should have been a series of demonstrations to koichi that italy was being cleaned up by a joestar (as opposed to the danger of being exploited by a brando) and was ultimately in good hands. this would require giorno to get some wins in during this time so he would actually have to do something for a change.

keeping koichi around long past where he does in canon could and should have given giorno a chance to demonstrate a different form of heroism to contrast the pure-hearted pursuit of justice championed by koichi. in eventually winning over a familiar and trustworthy character, giorno would have proved himself to be more than just "dio's son", a fact which should have hung over this part like a dark cloud.

but that's. that's next time.

#jjba #part 5 #vento aureo #golden wind #long post // #essay #s. sorry.

[remyfire]

I think the funniest thing about Hawk being Like That is that Alan Alda has writers credits on the show. This man voluntarily made his character the most touch starved needy desperate person on the planet and that's so fucking insane of him. But also Mr Alda I would like to give you a little hug and a kiss for giving him to us because I love him with my whole heart. And don't even get me started on the fact that Hawkeye yelled to a general "I want to have your baby!" In literally the first season. Like Hawkeye my love not everyone needs to know you want to be pregnant 😂 And truly he deserves to be absolutely smothered with cuddles, everyone loves him and he loves everyone and I think it could help fix him.

Listen my Trap brain is always on, he's my man, I am thinking about him quite literally daily. And now that you reminded me of the priest line I'm gonna think of that too! Like Trapper my love what happened in your past? Did your parents give you that many names in hopes you'd be a priest? Did you pick one yourself for confirmation? Why did you keep all of the names despite seemingly abandoning the religion? I am peering at him like a bug under a microscope and there's nothing he can do about it.

That little coffee through line with Margret is so cute! Even though I'm sure it was unintentional on the show's part I definitely couldn't help but think of it and flash back to The Nurses in both the scenes in Temporary Duty and CAVE. Margaret and cups of coffee representing her character growth is honestly so sweet and I love it. Also ooohhhh self proclaimed Military Brat Margaret Houlihan realizing that the Army Way isn't the only way or even the best way, and the things that would DO to her. The realization that what she's learned her whole life isn't necessarily good, and having to contend with what that means for her and her career and her personality. And also having to face her father after that, because we see in Are You Now, Margaret? that she cares very much about disappointing him and even affecting his career. Would such a realization maybe help her become more of her own person that isn't living only to make her father proud and keep up the Houlihan name? Or is her desire to be a point of pride for her family more important to her than her personal development? Truly she's so fascinating to me. And it's definitely an interesting parallel with Mulcahy, both of them having something so deeply ingrained in them that it h u r t s when it's finally inevitably broken out.

Everyone in this show suffered enough in the narrative for several lifetimes but damn if I don't wanna give them a little bit more hardship to really crack them open and wrap up their character development in the way they deserve. I'll definitely give them softness and love but first they need a little bit of pain I think 😂

(Also I am officially onto season 8! I finished Goodbye Radar last night and was a Wreck. Man I love this show)

Okay hi again anon, sorry for making this sit while thinking too hard about Hawk and Beje and Trap things.

I swear that Alan did more to break and attempt to breed Hawk than any of us fanfic authors have ever done. I am not entirely convinced that this man didn't start getting the bends once he couldn't whump Hawk anymore and instead pivoted to writing fanfics for the old distant zines that popped up in the '80s. He probably has multiple AO3 accounts right now just churning out agonizing pain. Alan we know what you are.

I do hate that we got so little development for Trap compared to Beej but it's also delightful because it means all of us get to sit here and rotate him on a merry-go-round that goes faster and faster and never stops. Anything is possible. He's so INTERESTING!!! He's like half a guy! No matter what anyone says, they could probably make it work! And that means I am in fact slam dunking the religious trauma into him at breakneck speeds. Sorry, bud (lie).

I'm so glad you mentioned Are You Now Margaret because that's one of those underrated episodes that always has its teeth so deep in me. We learn so much about her so fast. Her big friend group!! She had so many people who loved her and who she loves enough that she refuses to endanger them even though she hasn't spoken to make in years!! The fact that she will give her father that kind of deference even though we all know in our bones that he doesn't deserve it! God, Margaret.

I love people like you who run in with a wrecking ball just absolute decimating all these characters that we know and love so that I can come in after in my little clown car with hot chocolate and blankets. I am a simple author. I know what my duty is here. And it's getting everybody laid by everybody else but ALSO giving them extreme amounts of aftercare and pillow nests ;v; We all share such a vital role in this ecosystem.

#and my role is to be very simple and i know this #my ramblings #long post

[markantonys]

towers of midnight chapter 17-29

juilin is leaving for tar valon with the 3 aes sedai 😭 as are egeanin and domon. so every single character in mat’s plotline who ever showed opposition and/or a backbone towards tuon/the seanchan are leaving in one fell swoop huh? perfectly allowing mat to bury his head even deeper in the sand now that none of the people who’ve been directly harmed by tuon/the seanchan (thera, the aes sedai, egeanin) will be around anymore to make him remember that his beloved wife is evil. not that their presence ever did much of that anyway.

also, i can’t believe my beloved rarepair thom/juilin is splitting up! devastating! the other week i was thinking about the series’ longest-running duo and came to the grim conclusion that it’s rand and min (books 6-14, since i assume they’ll STILL be together in 14 since min has nowhere else to go) with elayne and nynaeve in second (books 2-9), but Actually it’s thom and juilin (books 4-13)!

“‘highness,’ seta said, ‘is it true? you’re going to allow these to roam free of you?’ ‘best to be rid of them,’ mat said, wincing at her choice of titles for him.” oh there i was thinking he was going to be wincing at her referring to human beings (the aes sedai) as “these” but no

and he goes on and on about how sorry he feels for the sul’dam for finding out they can channel. the fucking sul’dam, they’re who he feels sorry for, not any one of the people they’ve enslaved, two of whom are standing right there with him. he shows the sul’dam more empathy here than he showed the aes sedai when tuon put collars on them in KOD.

“maybe someday you two can convince tuon of the truth [that she and other sul’dam can channel]. help me find a way to fix this without causing the empire to collapse.” WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK MAT???? THIS IS THE EMPIRE WHO HAS INVADED YOUR HOMELAND AND YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT IT COLLAPSING???? the second half of the chapter is elayne fretting about the seanchan invading andor after tarmon gai’don, and mat going “i don’t want the truth about my evil wife to hurt her feelings or make her evil slave empire collapse uwu” is such a disgusting contrast. this is NOT my mat. my mat hates authority and imperialism and slavery and injustice and invaders and would jump at the chance to destabilize the seanchan empire (which was supposed to be the WHOLE POINT of the sul’dam secret and now you’re telling me that we hope they can handle that secret delicately in a way that won’t interfere with the empire going about its day?). and i can’t blame sanderson for it because rj already did this to mat and assassinated his character in COT and KOD. the great and good man who risked his own escape to free windfinders enslaved by the seanchan would be even more disgusted by the subsequent books’ mat than i am.

“learning that they could channel, worrying they might be a danger to everyone around them. that’s how rand felt, mat thought. poor fool.” normally i would be over the moon and crying my eyes out over mat showing so much empathy and understanding towards rand finding out he could channel (how far he’s come from his initial reaction in tgh!) but i’m too mad about the above bullet point, and the fact that mat is thinking about the sul’dam in this passage and how he feels sorry for them. you know what else rand has felt, mat? fear of being collared and enslaved by people like your beloved evil wife!

“[egeanin] did not like mat, for all he had done to save her skin. maybe it was because he had not let her take charge, or maybe because she had been forced to act like his lover.” or maybe because you’re constantly swooning over and simpering for the woman who stripped her of her name.

joline thanks mat for giving them horses and he’s all smug about it. it is so annoying how Those Ungrateful Women keep being forced by the narrative to be polite to mat, apologize to him, thank him for things etc. and he’s rarely made to do the same for them despite having always been just as bad if not worse in the rudeness and disrespect department (again, rj did this too - elayne and nynaeve have to apologize to mat for not thanking him for saving them in tear and elayne thanks him very sincerely after the gholam, but to my memory he never once has to apologize for being condescending and treating them like helpless children (i’m thinking more his attitude in LOC-ACOS bc in tear okay fair yeah they did actually need his help))

mat gives joline some nice pastries as a parting gift but it turns out that they’re pranked with something that’ll turn her mouth blue, so that’s very kind and mature of him

“he had a sinking feeling that the aes sedai had wrapped poor egwene up in their schemes so soundly that she would never escape. he had half a mind to ride up there himself and see if he could get her out. but he had other tasks. egwene would have to see to herself for now. she was a capable girl; she could probably handle it without him for a while.” 🙄🙄 mat’s hero complex was sooooomewhat amusing (and at times a little sweet) in the early books, but it has gone on FAR too long. especially when at this point in the series egwene has worked SO HARD and achieved SO MUCH yet still struggles to have others recognize her authority and competence because of how young she is - it’s incredibly frustrating to see people she cares about who SHOULD trust her also treat her like a child in over her head.

for this and the past couple of bullet points: mat has learned NOTHING. his attitudes towards women and towards aes sedai are WORSE than they were at the beginning of the series (once again, rj is responsible for this and sanderson just continued the trend he was given to work with). we have faile bending over backwards to think about how sorry she is for being so mean in the past, birgitte berating elayne for getting people killed because of her plan with the black ajah house (more on that in a bit), yet mat is allowed to continue all his shitty attitudes completely unchecked.

in conclusion, gofundme tuition money to enroll mat in a women’s studies course

“had that frightened wisp of a woman really been the panarch of tarabon? mat had seen mice that were less timid.” she was ENSLAVED and TRAUMATIZED by YOUR WIFE, MAT.

mat thinks oh so generously that maybe he can talk to tuon and get egeanin reinstated, because by now i guess he has fully bought into the seanchan hierarchy and believes that regaining/maintaining your proper place within it is desirable, rather than that the whole system is fucked and should be burned to the ground. “first you’ll need to convince tuon not to make you da’covale. he was half convinced she intended to see him as her servant, husband or not.” SLAVE, mat. da’covale are SLAVES. this just confirms our suspicions that the narrative has forgotten that channelers aren’t the only ones who get enslaved by the seanchan. didn’t you hear? da’covale are actually just servants!

now back to elayne thank GOD. that was definitely the worst mat section since KOD (at least his first chapter in TGS only had misogyny and not also pro-imperialism-and-slavery).

elayne is walking in the rooftop gardens which has a view of the lower gardens. “it was in those gardens that she had first met rand. she pressed a hand to her belly.” 🥺

now we have birgitte berating elayne for taking risks because apparently elayne can’t even take a fucking walk in her own garden? birgitte points out that elayne could lose a limb or get severe brain damage and still live to give birth to healthy children, which is fair enough, but then says, “and what about the people around you? give you no thought to the danger you could cause them?” “i feel bad for vandene and sareitha. and for those men who died to rescue me. don’t dare imply that i feel no responsibility for them! ...we discussed this, birgitte. we decided that there was no way i could have known that chesmal and the others would arrive as they did.” “we decided that there was no use arguing any further.” like ugh this exchange just feels like pandering to all the elayne haters who were so mad at her for having the audacity to get kidnapped after a genuinely well thought out plan - WHICH BIRGITTE WAS IN ON so why the fuck is she now acting like elayne just went haring off unsupervised - went unpredictably awry. to my memory birgitte didn’t at all blame elayne during KOD???? she was exasperated (yet also full of admiration) that elayne never once felt afraid during the whole ordeal, but i don’t believe she ever felt that it was elayne’s fault or anything like that. it just feels like an uncharacteristically low blow for birgitte to bring this up to guilt elayne into being more careful (yes, elayne’s the one who references the specific incident, but since they’ve clearly argued about it many times, birgitte likely knew what she was doing by saying “give you no thought to the danger you could cause the people around you”). can you imagine if a character used the deaths at dumai’s wells to guilt rand into being more careful? that would be an extremely shitty move, wouldn’t it? why the hell does elayne get victim blamed, both within the narrative and in the fandom, for her kidnapping but rand doesn’t? no, we all know why. like for real, if you asked WOT fans who was to blame for the deaths at dumai’s wells, everybody would say elaida or galina, yet if you asked who was to blame for the deaths after full moon street, a good chunk if not the majority would say elayne instead of chesmal and the other black sisters who, you know, were the ones actually kidnapping and killing people.

anyway. elayne wants the kin to be stationed in andor so that andor can offer/have access to traveling (which will be charged for) and healing (which will be free, elayne says very adamantly). clever clever! part of the reason is because she wants all the resources she can have at her disposal when the seanchan inevitably try to invade andor after the last battle. “she suspected that those who claimed to be artur hawkwing’s successors would never be satisfied until they held all that had once belonged to their ancestor.” glad to see that one (1) character is still considering the seanchan to be an enemy and serious threat. 2 because egwene does too.

but she also wants channelers who will fight in battles - she won’t force the kin to do that. “the only thing she could think of was the black tower. it was on andor’s soil...what would happen to them if rand died? dared she try to claim them? dared she wait for someone else to?” OOOOOOH this is an intriguing prospect!! and man, how much easier would it have been if rand had been in charge of the black tower all this time instead of going “i don’t trust taim at all. i think i will give him free rein over hundreds of dangerous male channelers and never check in on him.” then the black tower would be solidly behind him and he could just be like “everybody this is your new stepmom elayne, do whatever she wants” and all would be well.

“a careful trap using the asha’man and wise ones, and perrin could hit the Children so hard that they shattered. he could maybe even destroy them permanently as a group.” why do i feel like he’s going to decide not to do this for Moral Reasons and this is going to end up as another instance of “evil group is perfectly poised to be destroyed permanently but our protagonist intervenes to prevent it from happening”

“berelain pursed perfect lips. light, but the woman was beautiful! ...why had the creator made people as perfect as berelain?” faile? u good fam?

faile and berelain agree to pretend to be friends to put a stop to the rumors that berelain slept with perrin. WHAT was the goddamn POINT of this entire plotline? the fact that so many other characters have had min viewings/prophetic dreams/etc. foreshadowing all this epic shit and then perrin’s bird viewing was just that he was going to spend the majority of the series in a completely pointless love triangle that 2/3 of the involved parties did not want to be involved in and that ended up affecting absolutely no aspect of the story lmao i’m wondering if the show would even bother with this because a) removing it would affect nothing and b) with show!perrin’s extra trauma from killing laila the perrin/faile relationship will have plenty of obstacles already without needing to include the berelain love triangle.

MATLAYNE REUNION!!!!!!!!!!!! SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP!!!!!!!!!!! thankfully i read this a few days after the previous mat chapter so my annoyance at him had cooled and i could appreciate the reunion properly! we are diving into this chapter in extreme detail, let’s go.

mat shaves off his beard and is careful in his clothing selection before meeting with elayne 😌 although he picks out a respectable plain coat and then spends the rest of the chapter anxious and self-conscious and fretting that he should’ve picked a nicer coat to see elayne, baby boy! there is symbolism about the fact that mat was constantly wearing over-the-top lacy fancy clothes around tylin and tuon, but now he changes back into a normal coat to see elayne. because she sees and appreciates him for who he is and he doesn’t feel the need to add any false ornamentation or change himself around her! (altho she does kinda make fun of his coat later lmao)

“one of the holes had a bloodstain around it, but that had mostly been washed out. it was a nice coat.” literally “mat is even wearing his formal leather jacket” “it’s the one without any blood on it”

“just because a man marries someone doesn’t mean he suddenly becomes bloody nobility.” “mat, that’s actually exactly how it works.” kdjfg

mat wishes that his luck would for once see him, among other things, off somewhere with a pretty serving girl on his knee instead of, among other things, being married to a seanchan high lady. another one for the “mat is gonna cheat on tuon so fast” file folder

the band is getting attention in caemlyn because they’re the largest single group outside the walls, because they’re as organized and disciplined as a regular army, and also because they’re led by “a personal friend of the dragon reborn.” everyone in caemlyn knows mat is rand’s ~Personal Friend~ aka sugar baby (and mat’s men keep bragging about it and he wishes they wouldn’t jkfg)

guybon (random beautiful man who showed up out of nowhere with a huge army for elayne in the eleventh hour, aka the guy invented to fill the mat-and-the-band shaped hole in the story) meets mat to escort him. “too bad he had such a pretty face. a life in the military would probably end up wrecking that.” #BiMatRights

among the many rumors in caemlyn about mat, one is that he “won the dragon reborn the loyalty of the aiel” (by killing couladin), caemlyn is spinning out romantic tales about rand and mat’s devotion to each other!

talmanes is “crestfallen” that mat tells him to stay outside while he and thom go in to meet with elayne, and mat promises to introduce him to elayne later. talmanes really wants to meet his bff’s wife!

“mat stepped up to the door, taking a deep breath. he had fought in dozens of skirmishes and battles without growing nervous. now his hands were shaking.” he’s so nervous to finally see his crush again 🥺

“his eyes found elayne immediately...she looked radiant in a gown of deep red and gold. beautiful, full red lips that mat would not have minded kissing, if he had not been a married man. her red-gold hair seemed to shimmer in the hearthlight, and her cheeks were full of color.” THIS IS SO ROMANTIC AND FOR WHAT????? good GOD mat!!! he is straight up IN LOVE with her!! (also, another one for the “mat is gonna cheat on tuon so fast” file folder)

RADIANT!!! mat thinks elayne looks RADIANT!!! he’s never described TUON as radiant. also, conveniently placed light source to make a character’s hair shimmer my beloved

“‘thom, i’m so glad that you’re all right!’ elayne grabbed him in an embrace. ‘hello, dear one,’ thom said fondly. ‘i hear you’ve done well for yourself, and for andor.’” 🥺🥺

elayne is crying! she’s so happy to see them!! but we don’t get a matlayne hug even tho elayne hugs thom and birgitte hugs mat 😔

elayne thanks mat for all he’s done for her, and despite how sulky he was about not getting thanks and kisses from her sooner, now he just says “it really wasn’t anything, you know, elayne.” and when she apologizes for making him wait so long for a meeting he says “it’s nothing. you’re busy.” and when she offers to let the band move closer to the city and apologizes that there’s no room for them within the walls he says “that won’t be needed. letting us move closer is kind enough. thank you.” 1 page back with elayne and he’s already 10x better about being polite and respecting women! unlike when joline thanked him earlier, he doesn’t show or feel a hint of smugness about elayne thanking him now! she truly does bring out the best in him and i’ll always be bitter that he got punted off to a wife who turns him into the worst possible version of himself.

“‘burn me. you’re queen! how’s that feel?’ elayne laughed, finally releasing thom. ‘such a way with words you have, mat.’” they’re married!

mat says he’s not going to bow to elayne or bother with “your majesty” nonsense and elayne says she wouldn’t expect it, unless they’re in public because there she has to keep up appearances for the people. “‘i suppose that’s true,’ mat agreed. it did make sense.” he loves his wife so much and is now completely willing to bow to her in public and understands why it’s important that he do so! growth! trophy husband (complimentary) behavior! and, importantly, unlike with tuon, he does NOT intend to bow and scrape to elayne in private. literally a prime example of the “someone who will respect you in public but speak freely to you in private” ideal partner for a high-profile leader that egwene described to us previously!

MAT FINDS OUT ABOUT THE BABIES AAAAAAHHHH

“he looked accusingly at elayne. ‘does rand know about this?’” a bold attitude from someone who knows FULL WELL that rand has been fucking min for the past few months lmao i think sanderson’s mat forgot he had all those visions because he does not react in any way or think about rand and min at all or scratch his head wondering how rand has the time to fuck so many people. a common symptom of the series, whenever one of rand’s relationships is relevant to a scene, everybody present in that scene (including rand himself) forgets the other two exist.

“she laughed. ‘i should hope he isn’t too surprised.’ ‘burn me!’ mat said. ‘he’s the father!’” the fact that elayne’s been so secretive about the babydaddy’s identity but trusts mat enough to tell him straight off the bat 🥺 also, i will call bullshit if mat doesn’t say a word about this to rand when they see each other next book (tho at least “i should hope he isn’t too surprised” gives mat sooooome leeway in believing rand might already know)

okay let’s take inventory here

people who currently know elayne is pregnant with rand’s babies: elayne, mat, aviendha, min, nynaeve, egwene, thom, birgitte

people who currently do not know elayne is pregnant with rand’s babies: rand

like this POOR MAN lmao!! someone PLEASE tell him my god!

“how had becoming queen made elayne less high-and-mighty? had he missed something? she actually seemed agreeable now! well, that was unfair. there were times when she had been agreeable before. they had merely been mixed between times when she had been ordering mat around.” mat acknowledging that elayne was never that bad and he judged her too harshly! we love to see it!!

“he found himself smiling as thom related [the whole story since ebou dar]...mat almost thought himself a hero, listening to thom.” mat is smiling about getting to sit with elayne and catch up with her! elayne listening to the things he’s been through makes him feel like a hero!

“right before thom got to the part about tuon’s marriage words, however, mat coughed and cut in.” and he hastens thru the rest of the story and doesn’t mention the marriage LMAO he doesn’t want elayne to know he’s married. because he’s in love with her! “thom eyed mat with amusement.” and thom knows it!

“what trouble have you gotten yourself into, matrim cauthon?” “that’s not fair at all. i’m not the one who gets into trouble. if i-” “you’re not going to mention my getting captured in the stone of tear again, are you?” “of course not. that happened ages ago. i barely remember it.” THEY’RE MARRIED YOUR HONOR

“she laughed, the pretty sound ringing in the room. he felt himself blushing.” 🚨🚨🚨 ELAYNE MADE MAT BLUSH!!!!! 🚨🚨🚨 and he thinks her laugh is pretty!!!!!

like literally the way he thinks about elayne is SO MUCH MORE ROMANTIC than the way he thinks about tuon i can’t TAKE it!!!

“‘mat, i could kiss you,’ she declared. ‘this is exactly what i needed!’ mat blinked. what?” JSKDFHG AAAAAAAHHHHH and birgitte says “you’ll have to watch yourself, elayne. rand will be jealous.” BIRGITTE STRAIGHT UP CALLING OUT THE VIBES BETWEEN THEM LMAO but rest assured rand won’t be jealous if elayne kisses mat, birgitte! that would be his dream come true!

mat and elayne have some interesting negotiations about the use of the dragons! the final deal they settle on is: elayne will provide the money and resources to produce the dragons, 3/4 of them will go to andor and 1/4 to the band, elayne gets the band in a renewable 1-year contract but can’t force them to fight in any battle mat doesn’t want them to participate in, and elayne can have mat’s medallion for 3 days to study it.

“i don’t like having men who could leave me at any time.” “you know i won’t hold them back merely to spite you. i’ll do what’s right.” “what you see as being right.” “every man should have that option.” “few men use it wisely.” “we want it anyway. we demand it.” “you have it.” ❤️

but initially elayne wants the band to be part of andor and given a commission there permanently and to be officially backed by her, which i would’ve loved so much!!!! unfortunately, mat turns it down, in part because he doesn’t want the band beholden to anybody (which is fair), but not only for that reason. “it was actually tempting. just a little. but it did not matter. he did not think elayne would be happy to have him in her realm once she knew of his relationship with the seanchan. he meant to return to tuon eventually, somehow. if only to work out what she really felt about him.” SIGHHHHH. all tuon does is cut mat off from all his other loved ones. this passage implies that he’s pretty much turned fully traitor to the westlands and is aware that most of his friends will hate him for it, yet he still doesn’t manage to reach enough awareness to, you know, feel bad about it, or to have any guilt over the fact that tuon would collar elayne as soon as she met her (and swallow up her nation and people to boot).

but then mat does think that he has no intention of giving the seanchan access to the dragons, so that’s good! maybe not full traitor, then. like gawyn, he’s trying to straddle both sides at once lmao

“elayne raised an eyebrow at him. yes, she had become a queen. just like that.” ❤️❤️

“‘a serving man,’ mat said. ‘you know, to take care of my clothing. you’d do a better job of picking than i would.’ elayne looked at his coat, then up at his hair. ‘that,’ she said, ‘i’ll give you regardless of how the other negotiations go.’” “if you need to borrow money to buy a new coat, the crown can lend you some. considering your station, you really should dress more nicely.” and then elayne says she’ll see that mat gets a noble title. sugar mama elayne is out in full force!! god bless. all i want is for mat to be the sugar baby of both the queen of andor and the dragon reborn, it’s my greatest dream (and hey, there have been multiple instances where both rand and elayne have been mentioned as being able to cover mat’s expenses and give him noble titles so it’s all but canon anyway!)

mat tells elayne that the gholam is in caemlyn. we love to see characters sharing important information with each other about things that could be a danger to them!

elayne shares her plans to use the band to move on the sun throne, and mat is fine with it and even thinks it’s a good use for the band while he’s off rescuing moiraine! “i agree to that, but elayne, the band has to be free to fight in the last battle, however rand wants.” they said mat is a bad friend to rand and always runs away from him, i said bitch WHERE

elayne invites mat and thom to dinner later ❤️ and talmanes, at mat’s request. “taking dinner with you will have him dancing all the way back to the camp.” jkdfjgh

“thom spared a paternal kiss for her cheek before parting - good that it was paternal! mat had heard some things about those two that he did not want to believe. with thom old enough to be her grandfather, no less.” LMAO sanderson directly calling out whatever the fuck rj did with elayne and thom back in tfoh hjfkg i love it

“‘that went well,’ mat decided, hands on hips. ‘i worried she wouldn’t bite, but i think i reeled her in pretty well.’ thom laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘what?’ mat demanded. thom just chuckled.” mat is the “anything for you beyonce” vine for elayne and thom knows it!

“‘might i suggest you move the ring to the third finger of your left hand?’ ‘you may suggest it,’ nynaeve said, but did not move the ring.” djkfjg icon

we see nynaeve��s test with the 100 weaves and it’s a wonderful full circle moment from her accepted test! i see her point that it’s important that she care about the people she’s protecting more than her own status and whether or not she’s raised to the shawl, but i’m still fresh off my annoyance at rand’s “you’re better because you’re Not Like Other Aes Sedai” speech and so i also see the aes sedai’s point that it IS important to remain calm in a crisis and it IS important to know how to prioritize and focus on your main quest - sure going off on a sidequest to save people in need would be more important than the main quest of doing a silly little weave to complete a test, but those people aren’t actually real and thus the test IS more important (and in most of the scenes we saw, the weave she was supposed to perform did end up saving the situation anyway). i love that nynaeve wants to save everyone but i do think she needs to learn that she can’t (a lot of WOT characters need to learn that, notably mat). but it is an interesting contrast to the mentality of some other characters and really shows that she could never be a large-scale leader like rand, egwene, and elayne, who by now are practiced in placing the greater good above individuals. and aes sedai DO have to focus on the greater good as well, that’s kinda the whole point of their organization, so just because that’s not how nynaeve is, i don’t think it’s fair to say that she’s Better than the other aes sedai, only that it’s not the right career path for her lmao

but of course it was shitty of the testers to purposely make the visions so cruel and to test nynaeve more brutally than anybody else would be, and of course nynaeve is right to say “i wonder if we sometimes put the white tower - as an institution - before the people we serve. i wonder if we let it become a goal in itself, instead of a means to help us achieve greater goals.” but then the rest of the speech strays too close to “women who don’t get married and have families are inherently less empathetic than those who do” for my liking, so overall the jury’s out.

i will say, it’s interesting how nynaeve and gawyn both choose concern for individuals over concern for a greater cause, yet the narrative (or at the very least the fandom) seems to reward nynaeve for it and criticize gawyn. something something gender roles women are supposed to be caregivers in the private sphere and men leaders in the public sphere something

also, nynaeve used balefire! i’ve been wondering if she ever would again. every now and then i go, “hey, remember that time nynaeve used balefire in TDR and it was literally never mentioned again?” glad to finally see that loop closed haha also, it’s totally fair for her to get in trouble for using an extremely dangerous and illegal weave (again, i agree with her that she may have to use balefire in the last battle, but the dangers in the testing visions weren’t real) and honestly i’m surprised the other aes sedai let it go so easily, but not complaining because the last battle is coming and things have gotta move along.

nynaeve gets myrelle’s bond from lan!!!!! i genuinely wasn’t sure if that would happen since i was never spoiled about it, though i assumed it was a pretty safe bet that it would. “do not press me. in the morning, i swear the three oaths. i’m free of them for one more night.” JDKFJGHJ DAMN

oh also i forgot to say: a chunk of nynaeve’s braid got burned off and it’s now too short to tug! heartbreaking! rip to a legend! as far as rj’s overused turns of phrase go, i always loved the braid tugging bc it’s so specific to nynaeve and her personality (birgitte’s done it occasionally but the narrator will usually remark that it reminds them of nynaeve). but Smoothing Skirts as a universal thing that every woman in the world does as a sign of hidden anxiety or annoyance, on the other hand...........

“so elayne is queen. that must make rand happy.” thank you perrin for a randlayne crumb!

perrin at the prospect of fighting the whitecloaks: “he felt a strange reluctance. it seemed such a waste to kill so many who could fight against the shadow.” see? i knew he was gonna wuss out of destroying the whitecloaks once and for all. sigh. yeah yeah they need all the hands they can get in the last battle but still. sigh.

“several sources indicate that [rand] has sued [the seanchan’s] leader for peace.” “but what did he do to his hand?” perrin is so worried about rand and his hand 🥺

you know what? i think balwer has earned a place in my favorite tertiary character list. he’s so uptight yet sneaky i love him. seeing as my favorite tertiary character list consists of balwer, lini, essande, mistress harfor, and norry, i think my favorite genre of minor character is just “no-nonsense senior citizens” jdkfg (and verin! tho she’s a secondary character not tertiary)

morgase finally finds out gaebril was a forsaken and used compulsion on her!!!! 😭😭 she gives such a powerful speech about it, but it’s wasted on fucking tallanvor. literally morgase is like “so i just found out that i was mind controlled by a forsaken” and tallanvor’s only reaction is “so you didn’t actually love him? nice, that means i have a chance with you!” fuck OFF dude. what i wouldn’t give for this moment to have been between morgase and lini instead, would’ve been so much more powerful. (update: a few chapter later i realized that lini was among the group kidnapped by the whitecloaks, so she actually couldn’t have been present for this scene. but still.) the tallanvor/morgase romance is so unnecessary!! sure it’d be nice for morgase to finally have someone who loves her selflessly, but as we can see from his reaction here, tallanvor doesn’t, despite all his whining about how he’s so good at loving her from afar and not expecting anything from her. you’ve been hassling her to get her to admit she’s into you for multiple books!

“i think thom and gareth loved me, but as something to be held and cared for, then released. i didn’t think you’d ever let go.” “i won’t.” is that...........supposed to be romantic? i would way rather a partner who holds and cares for and then releases me lmao that sounds great!

speaking of partners who won’t ever let go: “other than things to do with egwene, what is it that you want?” “nothing. she’s everything.” jkjfg every WOT secondary character who’s the love interest of a more important character be like

and now bryne does elayne dirty and gives galad too much credit: “you always were the passionate one, gawyn. like your mother and your sister. impulsive, never calculating like your brother...perhaps i spoke wrong - galad may not be calculating, but he isn’t impulsive. to be impulsive is to act without careful thought; galad has given everything a great deal of thought.” it’s not like elayne has become a powerhouse politician and galad has gotten brainwashed by a cult or anything! throughout this book, there’s been such a narrative of elayne being impulsive and not thinking things through, but that’s completely not true - obviously she takes massive risks, but they’re ALWAYS calculated and planned out fairly carefully beforehand, even if things end up going unexpectedly awry once the plan is in motion (more on this in a bit)

“find out who you would be without egwene, and then figure out how to fit her into that.” i love this. now can somebody PLEASE give this advice to min?

mat lists some rumors from the current caemlyn rumor mill, one of which is that rand “visited women in their sleep, getting them with child” hjdkfhgj CRYING everybody wants rand carnally and assumes that everybody else has had rand carnally. also, feel like this implies people are totally suspecting he’s elayne’s babydaddy despite her efforts to the contrary. add “the entire population of caemlyn” to the list of people who suspect, at least, that elayne is pregnant with rand’s babies.

“mat had offered to come up with a backstory for his act, but thom had coughed and said that he already had one worked out.” and later, “mat? i don’t know what you mean, my good woman. my name is garard, a simple beggar who has a quite interesting past, if you care to listen to it” let mat share his dramatic backstories you bastards!!!

what’s the point of noal. i know that he’s jain farstrider, and i don’t dislike him (he does add a fun Weird Grandpa vibe to the group) but he’s just such a random addition to the party. especially to be given the important narrative place of one of moiraine’s 3 rescuers! she’s gonna see them and be like “thom! mat! and............some old guy i’ve never met before!”

“and what of rand? mat saw him sitting on a fine chair, staring down at the floor in front of himself in a dark room, a single lamp flickering. he looked worn and exhausted, his eyes wide, his expression grim. mat shook his head to dispel that image as well. poor rand.” 😭😭❤️❤️ mat loves and misses and worries about rand so much!! “mat is a bad friend to rand and abandons him and never shows him any empathy or understanding” WHOMST??? also, i will note that hilariously in the prior paragraph mat thought about perrin and only said that an image appeared and he banished it, he did not describe a single thing going on in that vision unlike the rand vision. mat is always so much more hung up on the rand visions than he is on the perrin visions or than perrin is on the rand visions.

“mat did not want to go back. there was no tuon back in the two rivers.” sweet, then i’m sprinting back to the two rivers. “light, well, he would have to figure out what to do with tuon. but he did not want to be rid of her. if she were still with him, he would let her call him toy without complaining.” 🙄🤮 like, every single thought mat ever has about tuon ALWAYS feels so jarringly out of character and nonsensical.

the phenomenon of plays (slash operas) has arrived in caemlyn! perfect for mat’s post-last-battle life as a playwright in caemlyn under sugar mama elayne’s patronage!

“the queen sat with a calm demeanor, watching the play. at times, birgitte felt more like a nursemaid than a bodyguard. how did you protect a woman who seemed, at times, so determined to see herself dead?” she’s literally just sitting in a chair watching a play birgitte fucking RELAX. the other characters’ overprotectiveness of elayne is FAR more annoying than her viewing-induced plot armor recklessness has ever been! birgitte complains about feeling like a nursemaid - well, maybe elayne would consult with you about her dangerous plans more if you treated her as an intelligent adult rather a foolhardy child! birgitte is not buttering my bread this book, i have to say.

she does redeem herself a bit a moment later tho: “and yet, elayne was also so very capable. like tonight; she’d somehow convinced her most bitter rival to attend this play...it whispered of a political maneuver by elayne that was thirteen steps more subtle than birgitte had a mind for. she shook her head. elayne was a queen. volatility and all. she’d be good for andor.” that’s my girl! ❤️❤️ (but also, elayne is not “volatile” lmao?? sure, she has her moments of letting out a single primal scream of frustration, but on the whole she’s very good at keeping an outwardly even temper when it’s important to do so.)

mat arrives to see birgitte, but birgitte’s first assumption is that he’s here to see elayne. she knows they’re married! “birgitte held up two fingers to order drinks - [the bartender] knew that she took milk these days” the mental image of the captain-general walking into bars and going “bartender, i want a glass of your best milk” is SENDING me jkfjgh

also, reason #783745 why mat should be elayne’s warder. can you imagine the act of love it would’ve been for mat to swear off drinking for 9 months because he worries it might have a negative effect on the babies thru the bond? 🥺

“one in a thousand is good odds. for me.” “bloody ashes. you’re as bad as elayne!” 1) mat and elayne are the same and they are married ❤️ 2) this is exactly what’s so infuriating about the narrative and the fandom punishing elayne for “recklessness” - because they reward mat for the very same thing. mat is just as bad if not worse when it comes to coming up with wild dangerous plans, yet his plot-mandated protagonist ta’veren luck plot armor means that they almost always work out, or that if they go wrong it’s in a way that still allows them to work out in the end (like the escape from ebou dar). elayne will have a very solid plan that goes awry due to unforeseen circumstances, while mat will just charge into something with half a plan cobbled together with duct tape and then it works out, with the result that everyone’s like “elayne is so stupid and reckless and gets people killed! i love when mat makes crazy plans that work out against all odds!”

“could she, perhaps, give one of the copies to mat? he’d never know, since he couldn’t channel himself...no, she thought, squashing that temptation before it could fly too high. she had promised to return mat’s medallion, and she would. not some copy that didn’t work as well.” ❤️

elayne disguises herself as a forsaken as a means of getting the black sisters to spill information to her. this is genuinely clever! and it works exactly as intended for quite some time until the impossible-to-foresee betrayal of the secretary! and even when things do go awry, elayne holds her own against 3 black ajah and 2 other darkfriends fantastically well! and she did 100% intend to tell birgitte about the plan, but birgitte was out drinking with mat, so why does the narrative later insist that elayne’s at fault for going behind birgitte’s back? she literally wasn’t there! granted, elayne does think “well on the plus side if birgitte’s not here then she can’t object to my plan!” rather than waiting to do the plan at a different time after birgitte comes back, but like maybe she wouldn’t feel the need to think that way if birgitte treated her like an intelligent adult rather than a foolhardy child.

elayne learns that darkfriends are hunting mat and is so worried!! ❤️ and also that the shadow is planning an invasion of andor, uh oh..........noooo andor is like the LAST place that hasn’t yet been invaded by either the shadow or the seanchan! caemlyn is my only Home Base in a series where all the characters are wandering around and making me feel adrift because i never did like travel-based fantasy series where there’s no Home Base! it’s gotta stay strong! it’s gotta!

mat comes charging in with birgitte after she sensed elayne was in danger! protective husband!!!

speaking of protective husbands, gawyn fends off an assassin from egwene’s room and goes to check on her and gets caught in the traps she’d laid to catch the assassin jdkfjg peak comedy. once again, i sympathize with both sides of the argument - gawyn’s interference let the assassins know that egwene’s onto them and cost her the element of surprise, but he wasn’t actively Trying to interfere, he just went to have a quick look in her corridor to reassure himself that all was well bc he was anxious and then unintentionally ended up fighting an assassin. i agree more with egwene, bc gawyn wasn’t even supposed to be in that corridor in the first place since he’d promised not to, but i do understand his being anxious and wanting to check on his beloved. (and i forget whether or not he was aware that egwene had set up traps in her room? if not, then his anxiety would be doubly understandable bc he’d think she was leaving her rooms completely unguarded and vulnerable with assassins walking the tower.)

“her cheeks were flushed with anger at him. that made her even more beautiful than usual.” gawyn’s just exposing his kinks to us huh jhdkfjg

gawyn goes to caemlyn!!! he’s gonna see elayne!!!! i’m gonna get my reunion!!!!!

“birgitte stood in the doorway, mat in the room beyond. he’d stepped out for melfane’s inspection, but otherwise he’d hovered near her almost as protectively as birgitte.” HUSBAND BEHAVIOR!!!! 😭😭😭 where is talmanes to tease mat for being husbandly when you need him?

“we don’t have time for much, these days. risks must be taken.” exactly! the last fucking battle is nigh, if you all hadn’t noticed! nigh, i tell you!! elayne can’t afford to just sit in a glass tower not taking any risks! fandom shits on elayne for unintentionally endangering others by risking her own life to accomplish necessary goals, yet they’d think just the same if she sent other people to take those risks in her stead. if elayne HADN’T gone into the black ajah house, it would be all “elayne’s such a coward sending other people to die in her place” like if you don’t want elayne to go up against the black ajah herself but would also criticize her for sending others to do it, what do you want her to do, just ignore the black ajah and let them get away with whatever?

“you made me your warder, but you won’t let me protect you! how can i be your bodyguard if you won’t tell me when you’re putting yourself in danger?” she TRIED to and you WEREN’T THERE, birgitte! and she DID tell you the whole plan for the black ajah house incident and you AGREED - reluctantly, but you did agree - to let her go in without you! i definitely feel like there’s an attempt to retroactively make the black ajah house incident be elayne’s fault in-narrative in a way that it wasn’t at all in KOD.

“at that moment, a scarf-wrapped head appeared in the doorway. mat had his eyes closed. ‘you covered up?’” see? mat is so much more respectful of women when he’s around elayne! doesn’t even consider trying to sneak a glance of her naked!

elayne warns mat that darkfriends are after him and tells him to be careful ❤️

“‘well,’ mat said, shrugging, ‘you’re alive, and three of them are dead. seems like a reasonably good outcome.’” fucking thank you mat for acknowledging that elayne accomplished something rather than getting on her case about taking risks! king!!

“‘mat,’ she said, taking off his medallion. ‘here, it’s time i gave this back. you should know that it probably saved my life tonight.’” ❤️❤️ this is now TWICE that mat’s medallion has saved elayne’s life (with the first being the gholam in ebou dar) this ship literally writes itself! [nynaeve voice] why aren’t they married!

of all my should-have-been ships, mat/elayne truly does feel like The One That Got Away. obviously rand/mat and elayne/avi would never ACTUALLY have happened canonically in the books (tho avilayne is a shoe-in for the show and i can’t wait!) but mat/elayne absolutely could have happened within the heteronormative confines of canon. and they spend more time together and have more relationship development than elayne has with her actual love interest, and elayne fills the same “everything he thought he hated” tropes as mat’s actual love interest but in a much better and more effective way and challenges his prejudices about channelers rather than enforces them.

i once put this whole canon matlayne scenario in the replies of a previous recap, but you’re gonna hear it again! SO they could’ve had their Big Damn Kiss and love confession post-gholam in acos and then fucked and then got tragically separated, and elayne having to leave mat behind in ebou dar for the sake of getting the kin away from the seanchan would’ve been a beautiful angsty heart vs. duty moment for her. then elayne finds out she’s pregnant, mat’s escape from ebou dar now has the concrete goal of wanting to get back to caemlyn and elayne, and then they finally reunite in this book and mat finds out he’s gonna be a dad and he realizes that the idea of commitment and kids doesn’t make him feel leashed anymore because he loves elayne and the twins and wants to have that family and knows that elayne would never deny him his freedom like tuon would and now mat has had actual positive and believable growth as a person and character! maybe he could even also become her warder for a “hates aes sedai -> warder to an aes sedai” arc, esp since he’s always been so obsessed with protecting elayne and there was so much foreshadowing of Warder Mat that went nowhere! and elayne gets her challenging-preconceptions-of-mat arc expanded and gets to actually have her babydaddy around for at least a few days of her pregnancy! i love randlayne with my whole heart, but if canon insisted on doing them so absolutely dirty, then i would’ve preferred a meaty matlayne storyline like this. (and again, rand/mat/elayne/avi is Actually the way, but i’m thinking specifically in terms of what would have been genuinely plausible for rj to write.)

anyway, back on topic. slayer wins the award for most pointless WOT villain. literally every single time he shows up i go “wow i completely forgot this guy existed” jfgk and he’s rand’s (and galad’s) presumed-dead uncle who is actually alive and has somehow become evil and somehow has TAR powers! that should’ve been interesting!

we see rand again, but again it’s from min’s pov. can i get some rand pov please? he feels like too MUCH of a jesus figure in this book, with us just seeing him perform miracles etc. from other people’s povs rather than actually getting to be in his head and see how HE’S feeling post-epiphany.

rand goes back to bandar eban intending to fix the starvation he shrugged at and ran away from in the previous book. min keeps simpering that it wasn’t his fault and that he isn’t responsible for the people he literally rules and, when a domani is rightfully angry with him, yells at the guy that rand is too busy and has had more important things to deal with, though rand cuts her off and accepts blame. she was always enabling him or avoiding him when he was at his worst, and now that the time has come to make amends for the bad things he did, she tries to coddle him and shield him from any blame or regret. whereas i just bet that elayne and aviendha would go “yes you did a bad thing but you’re a good person and you can fix it” because they understand leadership and responsibility and honor.

rand still refers to tam as “tam” instead of “my father”! even post-epiphany, even now that he’s reconnected with his humanity! smh!

rand to min: “you’re more vital than them all [the kings, aiel chiefs, aes sedai, asha’man, and ta’veren who follow him]. you remind me who i am.” FOOTAGE! NOT! FUCKING! FOUND!!!!! tam was the one who got him back in touch with himself! nynaeve, mat, perrin, egwene, and elayne were the ones rand was thinking about in the last book when missing his old life and hating how much he’s changed! min does not KNOW who he is because all she’s interested in is having sex with him and never wants to actually have meaningful conversations with him! she met the sheepherder fucking ONCE let’s not act like she’s the only one who can remind him of who he is!

“besides, you think more clearly than most of those who call themselves my counselors.” footage not found, she’s incapable of thinking about a single thing but rand and how hot she wants to look for him. “you could be a queen, if you wished it.” LMAO elayne has not been out here busting her ass for the past 6 books only for rand to claim that useless helpless skill-less min could be a queen! she would not last one HOUR in elayne’s shoes!

“all i wish for is you, stupid looby.” yeah, we know, min. we know.

and then rand’s like hey i wish you didn’t call me names so much and min’s like “well life’s tough isn’t it” what a supportive partner. not that mat/tuon hasn’t already clearly shown us that the narrative does not understand the difference between “cute nicknames to call your partner” and “continuing to call your partner nicknames they have told you they don’t like or want to be called”

min really does exist only to provide outsider pov of rand. the vast majority of her pov chapters since joining him could be summarized without having to even mention her hardly at all. because she never actually DOES anything, she just sits there watching other people do things and tells us about it. she’s a narrator, not a participant. in this scene, rand and the domani are hard at work getting the city back in order and min doesn’t even HELP she literally just sits on a crate and watches everyone else work! i hate her so much. elayne and aviendha would be rolling up their sleeves and going right into the thick of it!

“i have heard some of what these men in white have done in the wetlands. i think they wear white to hide what is dark inside of them.” go off edarra! “we shouldn’t be fighting them, not with the last battle coming. if we squabble among ourselves, we will lose to the dark one.” “i would like to have seen someone suggest that to you when [the shaido] still held your wife!” go OFF edarra!

and so perrin wusses out of killing the whitecloaks, as i predicted, however they’re gonna have a lil trial and that actually sounds fun, i’m excited! but that’s getting a little ahead, so back to earlier in the chapter.

GALAD AND BERELAIN ARE IMMEDIATELY SMITTEN WITH EACH OTHER JKFJG I’M HOLLERING hot people supremacy! the bisexual population of randland is shaking! literally the parks and rec “they would make the most beautiful super baby, but what if super baby became too powerful?” meme!

“‘elayne’s fine,’ perrin said gruffly. ‘last i heard - which was only a few days back - she’d secured her claim to the throne. i wouldn’t be surprised if she’s looking to marry rand by now. if she can pull him away from whatever realm he’s conquering.’” thank you perrin for another randlayne crumb but also i’m hollering again jdkfgj poor elayne has worked so hard to keep her relationship with rand under wraps and perrin is out here blabbing about it to two entire armies! perrin and min shaking hands meme on spilling every single detail of elayne’s personal life to half the continent

ok but like fuck man i would LOOOOVE to see randlayne go public now that elayne’s secured the throne and doesn’t have to worry as much about being seen as tdr’s puppet. they would be the power couple of randland!!! even moreso than berelain and galad!! crying over the wasted potential!! tho i guess making it known (or at least heavily suspected) that the babies are the dragon reborn’s kids is still definitely a concern since it would put targets on their backs. but if so many people already fucking know anyway then what is there to lose lmao

also, it makes me incredibly smug that pretty much every single one of rand’s friends would definitely be team randlayne over team rand/min if given a choice - elayne is mat, nynaeve, and egwene’s bestie, and perrin at least knows her from a few weeks in the stone as opposed to min whom he met for a day. egwene has no idea rand even has a relationship with min, and mat seems to have forgotten he saw them fucking and perrin doesn’t seem to have ever seen min and rand being romantic since he’s so confident rand’s going to marry elayne (which leads me to conclude that he thinks about rand way less than mat does and thus has way fewer visions of him)

“had aybara intended insult by indicating a relationship between elayne and the dragon reborn? unfortunately, galad knew his sister all too well. she was impulsive, and she had shown an unseemly fascination with young al’thor. ‘my sister may do as she wishes,’ galad said, surprised at how easily he contained his annoyance at both her and the dragon reborn.” oh i can’t wait for galad and gawyn to both show up at the palace and be like “elayne! what’s new?” and she goes “oh, this is my husband the dragon reborn and my husband the general of the dragon’s armies and my wife an aiel channeler, and also i’m pregnant with the dragon reborn’s twins!” and they just lose their shit

perrin’s like “the whitecloaks attacked me and killed my friend” “the woman who was with you?” “no, a wolf” kfgk cracking up over this (i should note that is an approximation of the conversation, not a transcription hjdkf)

“wolves hate shadowspawn” “and how do you know this” [silence] why is this entire conversation so funny!!

and then galad’s like “ok well i don’t think that killing a wolf is grounds for murder so........” he’s so tired, can’t help but sympathize with him a little in this convo jdkfjgh

“he glanced at [berelain] for a moment, and found her blushing as she regarded him. it was faint, but he was sure he saw it. he found himself blushing as well.” oh my god wholesome!!!! the 2 sexiest characters on the continent (objectively, anyway - in my heart i know it’s actually rand and elayne who hold those crowns) turning into shy blushing messes because of each other, i’m! 🥺

morgase-galad reunion!!!! “that was his stepmother. that red-gold hair he had tugged as a child. that face, so beautiful and strong. those eyes. those were her eyes.” “hesitantly, galad reached out and touched the apparition on the cheek. the skin was warm.” “she cut off as he seized her in an embrace.” 😭😭😭😭

galad HAS redeemed himself somewhat in this chapter, mostly because i am a sucker for his and morgase’s relationship (and also because his new thing with berelain is adorable). however, still thrilled to see morgase drag his ass a little bit: “i’m taking you back to my camp, mother. then we can discuss the way you were treated by [perrin].” “an order, galad? have i no say in the matter? ... i have more to fear from your...associates than from perrin aybara.” you tell him!

galad and perrin decide to have morgase be the judge in perrin’s trial. “both men turned to morgase. she stood in her simple yellow dress, looking more a queen by the moment.” ❤️❤️❤️ i do love morgase’s arc! i just wish it had been less trauma porn-y during the middle books, and also that tallanvor did not exist.

“[egwene] loathed [the seanchan] with a hatred that sometimes worried her.” you hold onto that hatred egwene! everybody else is going soft on them, you better hold onto that hatred!

scenes of egwene absolutely owning the hall my beloved! “‘i believe the hall acts in wisdom,’ egwene said, speaking very carefully. the sitters turned to her. some looked relieved. those who were more familiar with her, however, looked suspicious.” that’s my girl! ❤️❤️

the hall doesn’t want egwene having control over the war against the shadow, so they propose that they have sole control over the war and egwene have sole control over dealing with monarchs. but then SIKE the dragon reborn IS a monarch since he’s the king of illian, so egwene has sole control over dealing with him!! cackling and pumping my fist!

“he will need a firm, familiar hand” suddenly i am hoping that the show beefing up randgwene will result in some kinky Authority Issues and Asserting Dominance late-series fics for them jkfjg

egwene also gets a proposal passed that meetings of the hall can’t convene without every sitter and the amyrlin present (unless someone can’t be found or has sent word directly that they can’t attend), so no more secret meetings where some sitters can sneakily get things passed without their opponents there to prevent it (such as siuan’s deposition)

“the last battle is here. i will not withdraw my proposal. either you will stand now, or you will be known - through all time - as one of those who refused. at the dusk of an age, can you not stand for openness and light?” no one does inspirational and/or guilt-trip-y speeches like egwene! ❤️

i don’t caaaaare about ituralde. he was introduced way too late in the story for me to get invested. his plotlines should’ve gone to bashere instead, i care about bashere! bashere’s actually been super underused the past few books, now that i think about it. probably because a new great general was invented to get all these plotlines!

“[morgase] remembered her first impressions of [galad], long ago when she’d married his father. the young child had simply been part of the deal, and while morgase had adopted him, she had always worried that he felt less loved than his siblings.” 🥺

“[as a child, galad had been] quick to point out when someone did something wrong. but unlike other children - elayne especially - he had not used his knowledge as a weapon.” no need to do elayne like that wtf! she’s one of the most generous and empathetic characters in the series, not someone who weaponizes other people’s mistakes! the only person she does that to (besides her enemies ofc) is mat, but a) he usually starts it and b) egwene and nynaeve, who ARE judgmental in this way, influenced her attitude towards him, and even so she was always much fairer to him than nynaeve was.

“galad, listen to yourself. you name them witches? you went to train with them, perhaps to become a warder!” get his ass!

“what is the point of this, mother?” “to make you think, son. in ways that i should have encouraged before, rather than leaving you to your simple illusions. life is not so easy as the toss of a coin, one side or the other.” get his ass! “the Children like to speak of the light protecting them, of guiding their judgment and leading people to justice. that isn’t how it works, galad...sometimes a good man can do wrong. at times, it is appropriate to punish him. at other times, punishment serves nobody, and the best thing to do is to let him continue and learn.” get his ass! such a great convo, but i can’t believe that a 30-year-old adult needs this explained to him lmao galad’s Lawful Goodness really does stretch credibility at times.

tam tells perrin that aes sedai have summoned him to see rand, so we get a nice little timeline matchup milestone here

elayne is carried on a litter to the city walls to watch the dragon demonstration because she promised melfane that she’d stay off her feet but NOT that she’d stay in her bedroom jkjfg i love her!!! an icon!

“she spared a moment to feel guilty for making the poor men, in dress uniform, carry her through this early-summer heat. but these men would ride to battle in her name; they could stand a little warm weather. how often did guardsmen get the honor of carrying their queen, anyway?” this feels like the type of Spoiled Entitled Noble Caricature that mat thinks elayne is but that we have never seen elayne to be in her own pov (or in non-mat povs). i just keep getting the sense that sanderson doesn’t like elayne lmao or is exaggerating/criticizing her flaws in a way that doesn’t feel true to rj’s elayne.

the theme of this recap is: is sanderson actually being harder on elayne than rj was, or have i just by now seen so much elayne hate online that it makes me extra hypersensitive to even the tiniest perceived criticism of her?

“she had to find a way to seize the sun throne without mixing to much in the local House politics.” okay, so sounds like it would be a great time to have a randlayne reunion in cairhien so rand can publicly give her the sun throne and the cairhienin nobility won’t be able to say shit about it (since elayne has said earlier in this book that openly accepting THIS throne as a gift from rand is no problem at all, unlike the lion throne). i always love to see elayne shine on her own and am excited to find out how she snags the sun throne, don’t get me wrong, i’m just saying that throughout this series, so many things would get done so much faster and more easily if characters actually made use of Traveling/TAR to be in constant contact with each other so they can lend each other a hand sometimes! and if rand ever actually bothered to pop in and visit his own girlfriend from time to time!

“someone [on the next tower over] raised a hat into the air and waved at her. mat wanted to watch from the tower with the working dragon, it seemed. foolhardy man. what if the thing exploded like a nightflower?” mat waves at elayne! elayne is worried about mat being too close to the dragon!

“elayne focused on [the people in the other tower] with the glass. one carried a small torch. mat watched with a curious expression.” elayne i see you going “oh let me look through my little looking glass so i can see the dragon” and then just checking out mat instead

“mat was holding his ears and scowling, which gave elayne a smile. he really should have watched from her tower.” elayne wishes mat was in her tower with her 😌

and so cannons have been invented! i will end the recap with an ominous quote from birgitte on the nature of warfare: “the world just changed, elayne. it just changed in a very large way. i have a terrible feeling that it’s only the beginning.”

#wot #wot book spoilers

[causetheturtle]

Thoughts while rewatching season 3 of Riverdale:

1. K why did Alice’s farm style slay so hard? Like she looked so great

2. Love how Archie is literally in this prison FOR FUCKING MURDER and still nobody is scared of him - they saw this man in his nice little shoes his rich girlfriend gave him and were like “yeah this man is ducking useless”

3. VERONICA STOP BUYING YOUR BOYFRIEND NICE THINGS WHILE HE’S IN PRISON! He’s just gonna get this shit stolen your dad was in jail how do you not know how a prison works?

4. It’s so sad that the normies got hold of the “epic highs and lows of high school football” line because it really is such a perfect Archie line - this man is naive and kind hearted enough to believe a game of football is all that’s needed to fix the structurally broken prison system but if you haven’t watched the show and don’t know anything about Archie then it’s obviously gonna seem ridiculous

5. Riverdale relationship drama is so funny cause it’s like “Betty had a stress related seizure due her mother and sister joining a cult and didn’t tell Jughead” or “Veronica isn’t sure of the best way to help Archie through his time in prison”

6. Kevin asking Moose if he’s embarrassed by him of course he is Kevin have you met yourself? Your literally the worst

7. Organising a musical number and cheerleading routine for her boyfriend while he plays a game of football in prison is actually the most normal reaction Veronica Lodge has ever had to any situation ever

8. Realising I talk about Riverdale the same way all of the G&G players talk about G&G

9. Imagine being an adult in Riverdale and hearing that a new bar opened up under Pop’s and going for a night out to check it out but you get there and it’s just a load of teenagers doing musical numbers and drinking mocktails

10. Why is FP’s immediate reaction to any situation ever to just grab his son’s face and yell at him? Begging for this man to have a normal non-abusive reaction to something just one time

11. Will never stop thinking about the Midnight Club. It was the first episode of Riverdale I really watched and it’s still one of my favourites. Like the way all of the parents tried so hard and came so close to breaking their moulds and forging their own paths but they never did and just fell into exactly what the world and the people around them wanted to be AND how their kids are all in the same situation now? The narrative, the cycles, the generational trauma! This episode has everything

12. Knowing now that Sheriff Keller actually WAS into guys the whole time and it was just that he didn’t want to be with Moose’s dad makes the whole situation so much funnier

13. The idea that they were all booking out the bunker for certain nights a week is so funny - like did they have physical a schedule? Who kept the schedule? Did it just sit in like the offices of the Blue and Gold?

14. I fucking love Archie and Josie together and have fully convinced myself that Josie is somehow California Women

15. It needs to be studied what exactly the Heathers episode did to my brain because that one episode of TV completely rewired my brain chemistry and changed the trajectory of my life

16. It’s so sad that the happiest Polly ever got to be was when she was part of a cult. It’s also sad how much everyone’s farm fashion went off cause they all looked so good during that era

17. It’s actually a miracle it took so long for Fangs to actually die there were so many attempts on his life

18. God Veronica running multiple businesses at age 16 and none of the Riverdale adults batting an eye and just respecting her as a business women will never not be funny to me

19. The plot twist that Alice was actually working undercover to take down the farm actually makes her being so awful to Betty make less sense. Sure, she was doing it for the greater good I guess but like she didn’t have to give away her college money or sell their fucking house leaving Betty with the options of homelessness or moving to a cult to get it done

20. FP maybe if you need to get your teenage son to regularly come and help you with your job as sheriff then you shouldn’t be doing it? Although on the other hand Jughead would’ve gone to those crime scenes anyway so like maybe it’s a good thing FP was there as adult supervision

21. GOD the cult break out and scavenger quest are such amazing finales for this season. Everyone nearly dies about ten times, Kevin and Fangs no longer have kidneys, the core four staggering through the woods in formal wear close to death together, Cheryl and Toni coming to save them all with the power of gangs and bows and arrows, it had literally everything you could want!

22. Love how Hal Cooper is canonically one of the worst serial killers ever and every woman he’s been with tells him this to his face

#riverdale

[lyledebeast]

Fathers, Sons, and Imperialism in Turn and The Patriot

It’s interesting that between these two narratives about the American Revolution there are three British characters from three different social classes, with three different problems that all, somehow, have the same solution: military service. And in each case, the British Army provides for the character in a way his father could or would not. William Tavington joined the army because his father “squandered” the wealth he was meant to inherit.  Edmund Hewlett joined because the trade embargo the Continental Congress enacted in 1775 nearly bankrupted his father.  Ensign Baker never knew his sailor father, grew up in an orphanage, and joined up because the Army needed healthy young men even if no one else wanted them. That military service is treated as a catch-all solution goes to show how imbued with imperialism 18th C society was at every level.

Of course, it turns out to be a very poor solution for all three characters. Tavington and Baker are both dead by the ends of their stories, and Hewlett comes near death many times, often at British hands, and is forced into one morally untenable situation after another, which nearly breaks him.  Their similarities end here, though, because while Baker and Hewlett are presented as sympathetic men who are doing their best to do what they see as right, Tavington is presented as the ultimate evil.  For a movie that is just under three hours, it has an extremely brief resolution.  Benjamin Martin stabs Tavington to death, delivers a voice-over monologue that fast forwards to the end of the war when he and his new bride/old sister in law find the house Tavington burned being rebuilt.  Martin’s job is much easier than Turn protagonist Abe Woodhull’s.  While Martin only has to kill one man and fix what can be fixed of the problems he caused, Woodhull has to uproot the effects of imperialism, including in his own father’s beliefs and values.

Of course, Turn has more room for nuance in four seasons than The Patriot has in three hours, but there is a deeper difference at work here.  The reason Turn can afford sympathetic British characters is that it presents imperialism itself as the ultimate evil.  Part of the reason Richard Woodhull clings so stubbornly to the British empire is that he recalls a time when it did defend his community from the Dutch and the Iroquois.  Abraham has no success in convincing his father until the community, and Abraham himself specifically, come under British attack in the form of Captain Simcoe.  

The major antagonist of the series, Simcoe is also the character who most effectively represents the evils of imperialism: While Tavington and (presumably) Baker are from England and Hewlett is from Scotland, Simcoe has never been to Great Britain. He is the son of a British surgeon who suffocated in the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. By far the most enthusiastic soldier in the series, he sees it as his personal mission to “remind” colonials throughout the empire that their homes “belong to our king,” in Ghana and the Caribbean before he was stationed in Long Island.  As much as he is an advocate of imperialism, though, Simcoe is its victim as much as Hewlett and Baker.  In Simcoe’s final scene in the series, General Clinton offers him an appointment in upper Canada, citing the effects of the wound Simcoe received in his last encounter with Woodhull as preventing the wartime appointment he wants. Violence has been such a staple of his life that he is deeply bewildered by the thought of operating in a British colony where the only enemy to be subdued is the weather.

Regardless of narrative length, presenting Simcoe as an agent of imperialism, the true evil, makes more sense than presenting Tavington as the main enemy to be defeated, not least because no one man could possibly have all the power The Patriot attributes to him. The movie’s original tagline invites the audience to see Martin as having no choice but to take up arms against the British in response to Tavington’s actions, and the movie’s producer describes General Cornwallis as “a victim” of Tavington’s seduction.  The idea that only Tavington has any volition in this story is ridiculous.  Cornwallis has the ability to restrain him and does retrain him for the entire middle of the movie.  Martin has the ability to take his grievances against Tavington to Cornwallis before he massacres the British soldiers in the woods, and even after that he has a militia full of trackers and “excellent marksmen” who could eliminate Tavington.  They choose to not do these things. There are numerous Watsonian and Doylist explanation for this, but the one I’m most interested in here is that the story needs a villain, and that villain cannot be imperialism because the movie’s protagonists have spent too much time enforcing and benefitting from it themselves.

While Turn is a story about children pushing back against the patriarchy of imperialism--both figurative and, in Abe’s case, literal--The Patriot is a story about fathers.  A number of the fathers in The Patriot are also veterans of the French and Indian War, known as the Seven Years War in Europe, a global conflict between the British and French Empires.  While Abe’s freedoms are palpably restricted--he can’t even have an extramarital affair in his own home without the British walking in!--The Patriot’s fathers chafe against what they see as ingratitude for their service in preserving Britain’s empire.  “I lost a leg fighting for King George, and now he cuts off my other leg with his taxes!” Mr. Howard complains near the start of the movie.  Of course, he has more to complain about when Tavington arrives and visits the same brutal treatment on him and his family that colonial forces under Benjamin Martin had visited on the Cherokees during the last war.  Well, not quite the same.  Tavington does not use pieces of his victims as bargaining chips or incentivize murder with a scalp bounty. 

The narrative seeks to balance Martin’s past actions with his current feelings about what he has done, but those feelings do not diminish the concrete rewards he continues to enjoy owing to the exact same set of actions. Gabriel Martin tells us that all his life, men have bought his father drinks because of Fort Wilderness; he does not mention his father refusing to drink them. Men choose to fight for Benjamin Martin because of Fort Wilderness. His house is being rebuilt for him on land he took from the Cherokees by committing atrocities at Fort Wilderness.  The wages of imperialist violence have served him well.

It seems worth noting that while Martin’s arc ends with him killing a British soldier, in some respects, Abe Woodhull’s begins in the same way.  He makes several attempts to resist or give up spying in season one, but Baker’s death is the action from which there is no going back.  When his wife Mary asks him if Baker’s death meant nothing, he replies, “It meant everything!” He ends his explanation to her by declaring “I will not stop until every king’s man goes back to England.” His choice of words is interesting here.  He took no pleasure in killing Baker and he does not want to kill British soldiers in the future; he just wants them out of his home.  Obviously, his views evolve a great deal over the next three seasons, but ultimately he does not lose sight of what the real enemy is.  Whether it is Baker’s untimely sense of honor or the best chance he ever gets to kill Simcoe, Abe is not going to let one British soldier stop him from doing what he believes is right.

There is a degree of understanding for British soldiers as people in the young patriots of Turn that is completely foreign to the fathers of The Patriot.  One pervasive example is that the preferred moniker for such soldiers in Turn is “bloodyback.” Having lived in British-occupied Long Island, the young patriots are all too aware of how that term originated, and as the audience we see several floggings of British soldiers administered by British officers.  Imperialism harms its enforcers, not just those whom it subjugates.  Meanwhile, the moniker used in The Patriot is “redcoat:” ironic given how many characters have donned “red coats” themselves in the not so distant past.  

The fathers in both stories are afflicted not so much by poor memories as by short-sightedness.  Like Benjamin Martin, Richard Woodhull is a supporter of imperialism until it threatens the life of his son, but he catches a lot more criticism for his choices throughout the series than Martin ever does.  “You’re a businessman, and you think the British are a safe bet,” Mary chides him before encouraging him to prioritize his family over his politics, as she has done.  He only takes her advice when Abe has a rope around his neck, having clung so tightly to the benefits of imperialism that he very nearly loses his only son.  In this story, it is the children of independence who guide their imperialist fathers, showing them that change is possible.  Meanwhile, the valorization of Martin’s gains through imperialist violence in The Patriot assures the audience that no change was necessary to win the fight for independence.  Small wonder that movie came to enjoy such popularity during the second Bush administration.

#the patriot #turn: washington's spies #imperialism #fathers and sons #abraham woodhull #benjamin martin #edmund hewlett #ensign baker #william tavington #john graves simcoe #jesus so many characters in this meta! #richard woodhull

[dangermousie]

I think this is my fave scene in the ep

The very fact that he’s trying to deny there are any feelings speaks for itself...

There are so many things I find interesting about this: the way he only brings this up as the last defense (and I don’t think many know about his feelings being removed) which speaks both about his desperation to convince her (and thus himself) he feels nothing but also about the fact that he doesn’t like to talk about it. And the fact that narratively the fact that he had his feelings/emotions removed by his psycho father is genius. When you have a bad guy and you want to make him a romantic interest, there is always the question of “but why is he bad? If he enjoys inflicting suffering, then where is guarantee he won’t eventually enjoy inflicting it on you? If he’s everything for love of power, what’s the guarantee he won’t ditch you for power either?” And this story solves that. He does not enjoy inflicting suffering; he doesn’t even lust for power - he’d need to be able to feel to have either of those tendencies. He is amoral but he’s not reveling in hurt; he kills to keep power not for pleasure and he keeps power because that’s what he’s been bred to seek, he doesn’t get pleasure from it because he gets no pleasure from anything. He’s like a cursed prince under a spell, only his spell is not the usual “hi you are a frog now” type. And that is what makes the situation where he’d be an OK partner be possible, same as a de-frogged prince can make a good spouse and not just a French dish that used to say “ribbitt.”

Ooooooh! Either this turns out to be a lie OR this is a huge future plot point since he’s obviously catching feelings!

You know, he doesn’t tell her his father did it when he was a kid; it’s left so ambiguous that she could well think he did it himself to gain power. I wonder if it’s because he thinks this is irrelevant information or because that is not something he likes to think about, it’s clearly a hugely traumatic memory for him, even with his deadened emotions.

Man, old moon supreme had it coming! If you wanted it so much, remove your own feelings, stop torturing your kid, creeper.

Yeah, he thinks...

Except her reaction is so not what he expects!

!!!!!!!!!! How could he not fall for her - she finds out he cannot love (and once again, she has no idea he had no choice as a kid, for all she knows he happily did it to himself) and her reaction is not anger or disgust or anything but “well, that means you don’t hate me either and that means lack of feelings is not your choice and your fault.” How could he not want to dive into that?!

I love that to her having no feelings is not a bonus (like to his father) but a curse that needs to be fixed. Also, his feelings are a tree and she is a plant fairy specializing fixing flora aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

She’s gonna uncurse you!!! Hell, she’s already started and neither of you realize it!

Ummmm, I have news for you, honey...

He’s totally shaken. Awwww.

EEEEEEE!!!!! Plant doctor in the house!!! The demon gardener is gonna be gardened himself.

#cdrama #esther yu #dylan wang #cang lan jue #love between fairy and devil

[that-gay-jedi]

Me: listen if the scar above Anakin's right eye is indeed a lightsaber burn then he should definitely have lost the eye because the heat from a lightsaber injury continues to spread through the tissue after contact with the blade has terminated. There's simply no other way for this to go, it's fucking plasma, it's going to transfer a fucktonne of heat in that split second which the remaining tissues at the edge of the wound will in turn transfer into surrounding undamaged tissue until all the heat has dispersed. Unless there's some kind of super effective cooling system never mentioned in canon that attempts to contain the damage to just the actual wound but even for an elegant weapon for a more civilized age that seems like quite a stretch.

You're either not wounded at all or you're in serious trouble, even a graze is going to leave deep subcutaneous burns. Once you break that invisible force field that gives the blade its shape there's nothing holding back the heat.

Like have you never mildly burned yourself in the kitchen before? You know why cold water and/or ice feels so good? It's because it's stopping tissue damage that was continuing to happen. And that's way less heat than a lightsaber! Way less!

Come to think of it, that scar is close enough to his brain that he should have some neurological damage on that side, just from heat conduction, and it looks pretty fuckin close to his frontal lobe???? Ventress fuckin gave him a plasma lobotomy bro. I'm not convinced there's any amount of bacta that can fix that. Can bacta even canonically regenerate nerve tissue at all? Brain cells are harder to replicate than regular nerves even. That's why IRL once it's gone it's gone. Assuming it would help, how would you treat a brain injury with bacta when the skull isn't fractured anyway? Just saw his head open and pour it in? Sounds kinda fucked if you ask me.

Like we all accept without question that Grievous lost brain matter during his horrific shuttle crash and Sidious used the damage as an opportunity to alter the poor fucker's personality to better suit his own aims but man, Anakin's got to be missing a chunk of his brain from that lightsaber burn, I'm no thermophysicist or whatever but my guess is he may have lost as much as 1/16th of his brain tissue not to mention how much wasn't lost but might be firing poorly or something due to the heat exposure. We never hear mention of any neurocybernetics for him and the narrative treats it like just a surface wound. That's not how anything works. Palpatine would love to replace part of Anakin's brain I'm sure!!! Imagine the fuckin shit he could do considering what the much less personal inhibitor chips did to the clones.

Anyway back to the eye again I'm not a physicist but like I think realistically it would have exploded from the heat since it's full of liquid? The aqeuos humor would have flash evaporated within fractions of a second. He'd probably be lucky if that didn't also do damage of its own like steam destroying the optical nerve. Or unlucky to survive the whole thing. And what about the fluid around his brain, would it boil from the heat? Is the bone itself burned?

And I mean don't get me wrong, I adore Anakin's eye scar. Like not only does it look cool as fuck and symbolize all the invisible ways the war has changed him but I want Obi-Wan and/or Padme to kiss it when they tuck him into bed every night because I'm fuckin deranged. But you have to admit there's just no physical way in hell that a light saber only left a single line of badly burned tissue and he still has a head when googled estimates put plasma at between 11000°F and 14500°F and the surface of the sun at about 10000°F. I would say the easy solution is to have it come from an actual laceration which I'm sure we could easily come up for a story for in a war, especially with his propensity for spaceship crashes, but the Star Wars universe actively hates easy medical explanations that make scientific sense because George Lucas is trying to kill me. Or was Dooku evil enough to only give Ventress shitty training sabers for an actual fight? And she somehow didn't notice or couldn't do anything about it? Wild.

Meanwhile this also means Qui-Gon died because his internal organs were overwhelmed and/or destroyed by the heat. Either his heart got cooked beyond use as the heat dispersed or he died of rapid heatstroke from the inside. A puncture wound to the gut like that could take someone hours to die from or maybe not even be fatal depending on what it hit, especially if cauterized, but dipping something extremely hot inside your body even very briefly would kill within a few minutes. Which explains why he's only wincing a little because the likelihood he's too in shock to really feel much pain is way higher being plasma'd than being merely stabbed.

Note also how a slight graze drops Obi-Wan to the floor when fighting Dooku during AotC and all he can do is writhe. That's because he's continuing to get burned from inside! His thigh muscles are cooking! But does anyone ever think of that? No, he's just fine the next time we see him. The scarring alone a person would have from losing that much tissue should be enough to restrict movement and cause him to limp the rest of his life and I'm not sure how much bacta and Force healing it would take to prevent it. That's before we even get into whether there's enough left of his muscles to repair. Lightsaber fights should be absolutely terrifying and there should be a lot more Jedi with life altering injuries and the injuries themselves should be absolutely immense. Nobody who ever survived being struck by a lightsaber at full power should ever be the same again.

Cashier: Ummm sir? Ma'am? Mx Thembo? This is a Tim Horton's.

#lightsabers #anakin skywalker #asajj ventress #star wars #star wars medical weirdness #plasma #plasma weapons #anakin's scar #qui gon jinn #attack of the clones #sw aotc #clone wars #clone wars 2003 #sw medicine #force healing #medicine #overanalyzing #lightsaber duels #sw tpm #the phantom menace #GL said fuck physics #and we just followed along with him like ducklings #thermodynamics #yikes

[amphiptere-art]

You know what? It's official. I'm going to have sundown Eclipse borrow off of a very old eclipse. I think it was the first real fan oc thing I ever did.

A long time ago. I made up a AU world. It took place in standard security breach. Although the placement in the timeline is screwy. Thankfully sun and moon escape the burning Pizza Plex I think. They are still in one body. They run around basically borrowing car batteries, and surviving off of scraps. Running as far as they can from the pizza plex. Finally they end up in somebody's old repair shop. Finding safety and old rundown cars and other materials. Hoping to steal and figure out some repairs before they move on. Only to be caught by the person who owns the garage.

This person was eclipse. I think I made this character out of the blue other than the eclipse name. I don't have any memory what he was referenced off. Anyways, This eclipse finds them. At first he is irritated at their attempt of thievery. But he's softens up a bit when he notices there state. Which is very broken. He's still a very rough character though. Grabbing them by what's left of their arm and basically throwing them into a charging cylinder. Telling them to stay put. He'll get them some repairs but they need proper battery power first.

Sun and Moon basically buckle under this mysterious eclipses yelling and sternness. Although they are very confused, and given that most of the world doesn't have animatronics that own things. Usually they have to reach out to the company they are made from. They are also slightly confused why he looks so similar yet not. In the morning they attempt escape, But I sorted by a Freddy look-alike. Who is wanting to have some repairs on their car. Eclipse drag Sun and Moon back into his house, while he deals with the Freddy look-alike. He then returns and basically helps Repair them. They were in a lot of pain before but after Eclipse handles them they aren't in pain anymore. Still in shambles but okay. They get increasingly confused. Eclipse simply shoos them off to go with the Freddy look-alike. Saying that he will tell them plenty about the town and how it works.

They then go with this Freddy and learn this is a little community of robots that have separated themselves from humans. A sort of self-nation. They basically were able to convince the state and the area that they are sentient enough to have their own place. It's the safe area for animatronics if they make it there. Eclipse is their local repairman. Acting as a robot doctor and an auto repair service. He basically gets whatever money he can from fixing strangers cars, and their body to buy more parts. Like a donation based vet, but for robots.

Freddy sets them up in a house. Mentioning that They should probably start by doing little jobs so they can get money to pay eclipse for more repairs. Which do they do. And it kind of just continues from there. It was a bunch of happy little scenarios in this tiny little town with Sun and Moon desperately getting jobs and getting small repairs from eclipse. All the while they learned to basically be independent.

It was a fun little story. And I'm going to smash sundown Eclipse into this type of narrative and make him my happy man.

#sams #tsams #tsams au #sams au #sundown Eclipse #sundown au

[septembersghost]

I think Taylor really has an unfortunate tendency of wanting to convince people who don't like her that she's cool! M@y dissed her in print a long time ago, and I could see that being something she's gnawed on for a long time that would serve as a motivator to get closer to him and "fix" the bad feelings she gets when not everyone is supporting her. She did this with Kanye, Nicki, John, etc. This is a bit armchair psychology, but I think she resets to this baseline a lot even though she's sort of reflected on how it's unhealthy in her music. She needs to figure out that some people are just not great, and them not liking her is actually not something she can control, and their approval is not something she should want! Maybe that's not what's going on, maybe they've always been close, but it's the best way I can understand why she's hung up on such an ick man.

this is a point i've actually discussed with my mom (since we are all Going Through It) - taylor has some real insecurities and an intense need for love and approval/acceptance, she's written and spoken about this at length multiple times, and it's something understandable, especially intertwined with how hard she's tried to prove herself as an artist and her mentality wrapped up in being "good" (which i deeply identify with myself). when she's been slighted, she tries to prove that wrong somehow, either by lashing out or by attempting to appeal to someone's better nature. matty's public "apology" for saying dating her would be emasculating is still full of unsettling excuses (~men just think that way!~), and of course we are not privy to their previous friendship or how he may have apologized to her privately, but i can see that being a splinter that she's worried at for years and it culminating here, in both a misguided "i can fix him" perspective and in, "look, see! he didn't mean it! he adores me! i'm proving those statements wrong!" especially coming off of the "her fame was too much" breakup narrative. definitely not excusing it, and if that's the case, i wish someone would help her learn she doesn't need approval from those who never deserved it to begin with, but that's easier said than done. people are also very prone to poor decision making, regressive behavior, and impulsivity when they're grieving, but most never have to do that on a worldwide stage. i am not and will not dismiss fans for being upset, but i agree that there's a lot going on with her mentally/emotionally here that we've witnessed patterns of before and can hold with some sympathy.

#as abby said too none of us would be concerned if this was just some guy who was nice and neutral #and had never expressed anything virulent. but alas #joons #letterbox #chelsea i appreciate you and your thoughtful nature thank you for chiming in <3 #also tbh...some of this stems DIRECTLY from trauma related to kanye and john and possibly jake and calvin. we've seen it manifest previousl #again not an excuse. just. some reasoning.

[c0rpseductor]

honestly idc if it’s canon that emet-selch is tempered by zodiark or not, i completely ignore that and choose to believe it’s simply not true because it saps him of the agency to make monstrous choices purely of his own volition, which from a narrative perspective is the more interesting situation to grapple with. if he’s tempered you have no idea how much of his thinking and actions are influenced by the fact that tempering is essentially fucking mind control, which like, at that point it becomes a convenient way to excuse him and absolve him of what he’s done.

and like, maybe if in canon that had been explicitly addressed as like “his loyalty was manufactured but his choices were his own” i wouldn’t mind. as it stands, i never got the sense that he or the other ascians were even tempered to begin with, and the thing about the ‘fixed’ primal summoning ritual in endwalker did not convince me of that, so it really irritates me when i see people going to bat for emet-selch like BUT IT’S NOT HIS FAULT! HE WAS TEMPERED! HE’S A GOOD BOY!

like. i love emet-selch on both a narrative and personal level. i think his actions are unforgivable and inexcusable, but he himself is extremely comprehensible and sympathetic and his motivations are eminently human. i think there are few people who wouldn’t at least take steps down that path if they were in his position. but that doesn’t mean he needs fucking babied about it, either. he is a grown man who made his own goddamn bed and can lie in it just fine. also he’s not real, but like, the “well it wasn’t his fault!” annoys me so much bc it’s like, that makes the story worse and more boring because the principal antagonist is shielded entirely from culpability. You realize that, right?

and once again, like, WERE the ascians even tempered to begin with? like if it’s canon I’m refusing to acknowledge that kind of major writing fumble but I don’t remember it being explicitly said

#just admit that he’s a horrible person morally and that you still like him #I promise it’s fine I do it all the time #ffxiv spoilers

[kickingthehornetsnest]

KTHN - Common Mistakes

I should be able to settle down for the night, now that I've secured another temporary shelter. Let's talk about Common Mistakes. You're gonna make them, even if you are warned. Hell, I made them, still do and I know better. Just know that you are human and it's okay to make mistakes as long as you know how to fix 'em! Especially if your mistakes put you in the crosshairs of something a little too big for your paygrade. Let's get the obvious out of the way. You're paranoia is gonna try to convince you its a great idea to start filming everything to acquire proof. *Do. Not. Do. This.* Look at me. In my beady pixelated eyes. Don't do this. Not unless you think you can truly handle the repercussions of turning the world’s eyes on you. so, let's get this out of the way. do I truly believe that filming it is influencing others and making people infected? ... Yes and No. While I do believe you can unknowingly be 'infected', like one would be from a thought experiment, I do not believe a fleeting conversation accidentally overheard is enough to infect people. I do know that with enough time and exposure you can become infected, but gestation periods on a virus of the mind is damn near impossible to track and study. Because we truly know very little on the specifics, that fear is what truly makes people sick. Eyes on you alone aren’t enough, it’s the emotions, the psyche, you invoke in others that infects them. This is why filming is mostly entirely unsuccessful unless. If you are using these recordings as a last testament so someone can come find your body, or to try to combat an entity like a weapon, it for the most part will do more harm then good. The first, most common, and most easily made mistake is the most simple. Not everyone is a Tim. I know that will be hard to hear. No one wants to die. Most of us want to believe we are the hero of our stories and survive at the end, but you need to face facts now, that percentile is very slim. Most of us? are Jay. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you know how this ends, then you already know that, … by god, if there is the slimmest chance that man is somehow still alive, then Jay, if you read this? I’m fucking sorry. You didn’t deserve this, no one did. But Tim really needed someone and near the end there you were there for him. I hope you get some peace, you ballsy sunuvabitch. Okay, assuming he isn’t, that assumed ending of his… It’s our best possible ending, even if narratively it is the least satisfying. Real life is rarely as satisfying as that, and should you kick the hornet’s nest you need to be ready to get stung. Oh and if you wondered who I was in that analogy? I'm Jeff. I know too much. I'm a bit too clever for the situation I'm in and now, it's nearly gotten me killed. So let's focus on keeping you alive, eh? okay, let's go over the other basics now that the camera is out of the bag, lol. This is part 1 of 2 because Tumblr does NOT like long text posts nowadays.

1/2

#arg horror #marble hornets #everymanhybrid

[markantonys]

the gathering storm chapter 16-28

EGWENE!!!! EGWENE EGWENE EGWENE this chapter was a masterpiece from start to finish! if i wanted to quote my favorite parts i’d just be typing up the entire chapter. i will note some specific things but rest assured there were many more!

egwene has now been told (by sisters of each respective ajah) that she would be a good fit for yellow, brown, and white, and she herself would’ve wanted to be green. she truly is Of All Ajahs! i remember many books ago when i was thinking of which ajah would best fit her and elayne (regardless of their “i want to be green so i can fuck” motives lmao), i settled on either green or gray for elayne but had too many options for egwene. i do have a soft spot for blue!egwene tho, purely because before starting the books i was CONVINCED she would become blue since the show set her up as mini moiriaine.

egwene offers some wonderful descriptions of rand. first she says that were she in elaida’s shoes, she would’ve asked TDR’s friends and neighbors about him. “is he a man of temper, a man of passions? or is he a calm man, careful and cautious? was he the type to spend time alone in the fields, or did he make quick friends of the other youths? would you be more likely to find him in a tavern or a workshop?” and then she says that rand is all of these things. she adds that he is a rational person, “if somewhat bullheaded at times” and “a good man at heart.” ❤️❤️ this really is such a contrast to what a little shit rand was about egwene earlier in the book.

she says that her next step would be “to send sisters to him to offer guidance,” and if he rejected them, she would “send spies and watch to see if he has changed from the man i once knew.” it breaks my heart how bad the rand-aes sedai relationship is because it Could Have Been solid early on, if someone like egwene who knows and understands rand had been in charge of reaching out to him from the start and if elayne and nynaeve had been sent with the stupid caemlyn embassy as they should’ve been. but of course, from rand’s perspective the sisters egwene sent to offer guidance would come off as trying to control him and her spying on him to see if his character has changed would also feel invasive, so maybe it wouldn’t have ended up all that much better. elayne and nynaeve going with the stupid caemlyn embassy would definitely have fixed things though. but the narrative wanted fucking MIN to go instead of elayne (who was forbidden from going by the aes sedai by some ass backwards logic that tried and failed to convince me that the aes sedai would not want to send elayne to caemlyn asap so they could leverage both her claim to the throne and her favorable relationship with rand). and it DID have to be instead of and not in addition to because if rand had been reunited with elayne at that point in the story they would’ve resumed their stone of tear kisses and he would’ve been like “min who?” lmao

egwene argues that rand hasn’t wreaked havoc, but has “managed to restore order to cairhien, unite tear and illian beneath one ruler, and presumably has gained the favor of andor as well” and has “gained [the aiel’s] respect” (she gets offended when the sisters say the aiel have been subjugated, a sweet little reminder of egwene’s Aiel Heart). “rand al’thor is like a river. calm and placid when not agitated, but a furious and deadly current when squeezed too tightly. what elaida did to him was the equivalent of trying to force the manetherendrelle through a canyon only two feet wide.” again, egwene just Gets him and is willing to see the best in his actions! at least right now - when they were actually together back in tfoh/loc she WAS misjudging him a lot.

“since when has the white tower been in the business of kidnapping and forcing people to our will? ...when in the past have we locked kings in boxes and beaten them for disobedience? why now - of all times under the light - have we forsaken our fine practice and become simple footpads instead?” Egwene Monologues That Made Me Cheer: 1

“rand al’thor is a good man, in his heart, but he needs guidance. these days are when we should have been at our most subtle. he should have been led to trust aes sedai above all others, to rely on our counsel. he should have been shown the wisdom in listening. instead, he has been shown that we will treat him like an unruly child.” Egwene Monologues That Made Me Cheer: 2. also damn if only cadsuane was here listening to this monologue smh!

egwene says that greens “can be very like reds in many ways” (in this case, stubbornness) which is interesting and something i love to see since usually those are portrayed as the 2 polar opposite ajahs, because one Loves Men and the other Hates Men and as we know opinions on men are the most important characteristic for an all-women group to organize itself around.

“had egwene given away too much? aes sedai were remarkably like rand al’thor; they did not like to know when they were being maneuvered.” lmao

laras tries to help egwene escape. what an mvp! but egwene refuses because she still has a duty to fix the tower from the inside.

“someone has to fight her. each day is a battle. each day i refuse to bend means something. even if elaida and her reds are the only ones who know it, that’s something. a small something, but more than i could do from the outside.” Egwene Monologues That Made Me Cheer: 3

“she could see [the sisters’] questions. egwene had spoken boldly to them when alone. but would she hold to her assertions now, faced by the most powerful woman in the world? a woman who held egwene’s life in her hands? was egwene the amyrlin? or was she just a girl who liked to pretend?” SHE’S THE FUCKIN AMYRLIN!! YEAAAAAAHHHH!!!

“i’ve held no oath road, but it isn’t the rod that makes my words true. i have spoken the words of the oaths in my heart, and to me they are more dear, for i have nothing forcing me to hold to them.” Egwene Monologues That Made Me Cheer: 4

okay i have to stop copying out Egwene Monologues That Made Me Cheer because there are too many in this elaida dinner scene! this scene is INCREDIBLE gotta be one of my favorites in the series to date!! the way egwene calmly backs elaida into a corner, keeping her cool the whole time and being so austere and worthy of respect, while elaida is losing her temper and getting hysterical and violent. egwene the 20-year-old with the wisdom and maturity of a much older adult vs. elaida the much older adult acting like a child. god i NEED the show to make it this far because seeing this scene onscreen would be stunning, i just know madeleine madden would absolutely own it!

also i LOVE egwene citing (from memory!) quotes from a long-ago amyrlin’s writings and from the karaethon cycle jkjfg she came prepared!!

and of course, the most iconic roast in the entirety of wheel of time to date: “you are a coward and a tyrant. i’d name you darkfriend as well, but i suspect that the dark one would perhaps be embarrassed to associate with you.” WHEN I TELL YOU I SCREAMED!!!!! i had to pause the audiobook for a whole minute to recover! i don’t know how elaida didn’t just keel over dead on the spot! egwene did not come to fucking play!

“i am tower law!” palpatine has entered the chat

“i wish i weren’t needed here, elaida. i wish that the tower had a grand amyrlin in you. i wish i could step down and accept your rule. i wish you deserved it. i would willingly accept execution, if it would mean leaving a competent amyrlin. the white tower is more important than i am.” one last Egwene Monologue That Made Me Cheer for the road

and after that high, we are hurled into cadsuane pov. sigh. though i will say that, while i do not care for cadsuane and i do not care for all the spanking in this series, cadsuane spanking semirhage is pretty iconic lmao but that aside, whatever truthful info semirhage might be able to provide them (lost knowledge from the AOL, current info about the shadow’s plans) cannot POSSIBLY be worth the effort it would take to get her to spill it. i was about to be like “why don’t these idiots just kill her and have done with it?” but then i remembered that rand’s Don’t Hurt Women order covers killing her too, not just torturing her. RAND YOU ARE SO FUCKING STUPID (DEROGATORY NOT AFFECTIONATE!!!)

“rand pulled him northward. perrin had to march for the last battle. nothing else mattered. and yet, that very single-mindedness in him - ignoring everything but his objective - had been the source of much trouble during his hunt for faile.” like i see what you’re saying but “ignoring everything else for the sake of saving the world” is very much a different thing than “ignoring everything else for the sake of saving one person”

“he doubted the queen of andor would welcome him with open arms, after the rumors about him and that blasted red eagle banner.” ooh are we For Real setting up for a perrin-elayne conflict? that’ll be interesting since they’ve never once interacted before and may not have even met besides in passing (if they do meet up in the future, i’ll be interested to see if one or both of them mentions anything about having met at the stone back in TSR). if only mat had been given the raising manetheren plot (i mean he WAS the one initially given the connection with his red eagle battle cries in eotw), then he could’ve resolved it by pulling a political-marriage-to-real-love with elayne and combining their kingdoms 😌

tangent but this is related to something i was thinking just the day before i read this part: of all the main characters, perrin would be by far the easiest to remove from the story (well, bar min, whom i do not count as a main character because she contributes nothing). embarrassingly easy, in fact! push the two rivers plotline to LOC and send mat and the band off to there from caemlyn instead of to salidar, and that plotline’s covered. have the shaido fully dealt with at dumai’s wells, and that plotline’s covered. and perrin has not yet contributed anything else that major that i can think of lmao

and now perrin is finally deciding to figure out his wolf connection and The Wolf Dream once and for all. should this not have been your plotline and character arc all along jkdjfg what have you been DOING my guy? (also i’ve always adored how he calls it The Wolf Dream it’s so wholesome and i hope he never learns the word tel’aran’rhiod)

tuon’s horrible entitled worldview would be an interesting read if she were a) a villain, whom b) i knew would either be vanquished or would change her ways by the end. but since i know the narrative will continue to treat her as a relatively sympathetic character who will never be challenged or forced to change her outlook in any real way, it’s infuriating and frustrating. and like, the fact that she can have all these thoughts about channelers needing to be leashed and not ONCE even ALLUDE to any conscious or even repressed fear that she herself can channel. what even was the fucking point of making her able to channel if it changes NOTHING???

tuon wishes mat were here to meet with the dragon reborn with her. finally something we can agree on! can’t believe i still have to wait 2 books for my goddamn cauthor reunion!

me: TGS mat can’t possibly worse than COT-KOD mat me reading TGS mat’s very first scene, a 2 page misogynistic monologue: oh

lmao but in all seriousness, from this first mat chapter i agree with what some of you guys have said on my previous recaps - just a continuation and exaggeration of the downward trends that rj started with mat the past couple books. COT-KOD was the worst for softening his attitudes towards slavery, but i distinctly remember noticing a sudden big uptick in misogyny right off the bat in WH and a bit in ACOS as well. but after mat grew to have a Woman Friend in birgitte and to respect elayne in ACOS, it would’ve been the perfect launching point for him to grow out of his "women are so annoying and no fun” shit and his hatred of aes sedai, but no, instead, rj decided to make both things worse.

“did she love him?” seeing as you only spent like 3 weeks together and also she is evil and sees everybody as property you included, i’m guessing that’s a no

man, talmanes teasing newlywed mat for being husbandly with rand and/or elayne would spark so much joy! i need that au please

he’s like “nooo mat it’s okay, davram bashere is married but he’s still a boyboss!” as if bashere is not the biggest malewife (complimentary) in the whole series

“begin letting yourself think of aes sedai as pretty, and in two clicks of the tongue you’d find yourself wrapped around her finger and hopping at her command.” mat has openly and frequently thought of elayne as pretty, and elayne is aes sedai, ergo, mat is wrapped around elayne’s finger and hopping at her command 😌

they’re headed for caemlyn!! matlayne reunion next book pleeeeaaaaaase!!! i know it happens at some point!

polar opposite of egwene’s chapter in that if i wanted to quote all the moments that annoyed me i would just be typing up the whole chapter lmao so i’m gonna move on

“i didn’t sleep with berelain. no matter what rumors say.” “i know you didn’t.” “no, really. i didn’t, faile, please.” “i said i believed you.” “you sounded...i don’t know. burn it, woman, you sounded jealous.” this is exactly why i hate perrin’s emotion sniffing, faile genuinely does try SO HARD to control her jealousy most of the time, but he sniffs it out anyway and gets upset with her. except this scene is in faile’s pov and in her narration she really does seem to believe him and not be jealous at all, so idk what he’s going on about.

“she had been humiliated, beaten, and nearly killed. and that had given her a true understanding of what it was to be a liege lady. she actually felt a stab of guilt for the times she had lorded over perrin, trying to force him - or others - to bend to her will. being a noblewoman meant going first. it meant being beaten so others were not. it meant sacrificing, risking death, to protect those who depended upon you.” you know what that is? growth ❤️❤️

“blasted colors...i don’t want to watch you sleeping, rand. what happened to your hand? light-blinded fool, take better care of yourself...” 😭❤️ “min and nynaeve are the only ones who truly care about and support rand” FALSE his other loved ones are so concerned about him but are narratively forbidden from spending time with him!

semirhage is freed and given the male a’dam which HAS JUST BEEN SITTING AROUND THE HOUSE AND NOT BEEN DESTROYED YET FOR SOME GODFORSAKEN REASON!!!! IDIOTS ALL OF YOU IDIOTS!!!!!

i listened to eotw entirely on audiobook and assumed it was “mountains of doom” and when i opened tgh and saw on the map that it was actually “mountains of Dhoom” i laughed my fucking ass off. favorite wot place name for sure (aside from malden)

“min didn’t want him to be hard. he didn’t want to frighten her, of all people.” FRIGHTEN her, like she’s a delicate little baby deer, not “worry her” or “make her concerned for her partner” or something like that. min is SUUUUUUCH a damsel, that is her entire purpose in rand’s story, and we will see this VERY CLEARLY later in the chapter. prepare for my rage because it is coming.

lews therin says that they do indeed need to break the seals. he says that “something has to touch [the dark one], something to close the gap” but saidin alone didn’t work because he was able to taint it. rand wonders if saidin and saidar together might do the trick. HMMMM now that the last battle is finally imminent i’m very curious about HOW rand will defeat the dark one. how can you defeat some nebulous force that lives in a volcano??

“a home he would never see again, for a visit would only alert his enemies to his affection for it.” so why is min with you 24/7 then? “he had worked hard to make them think he was a man without affection.” so why is min with you 24/7 then? “mountains. mountains like duty. the duty of solitude in this case” so why is min with you 24/7 then? “at times, rand longed for tam’s voice, his wisdom. those were the times when rand knew he had to be the most hard, for a moment of weakness - a moment running to his father for succor - would destroy nearly everything he had worked for. and it would likely mean the end of tam’s life as well.” so why is min with you 24/7 then? “he was alone. he needed to be alone. relying on anyone would risk being weak when he reached shayol ghul.” so why is min with you 24/7 then?

like ugh. even my personal dislike of the ship aside, it is UTTER NONSENSE for rand to push everyone else away but let min stay! for him to think about how isolated and hard he is and then have loving sex and snuggles with his girlfriend every night! IT MAKES NO SENSE!!!!! and it completely undercuts his self-isolation arc!

anyway, rand thinks a bit about the bubble of evil-induced fire and has NO thoughts about aviendha the whole time, when she’s the one who put it out and he saw her doing it. in fact, in this hugely emotionally pivotal chapter for him, he doesn’t have a single thought about her or elayne whatsoever, it’s just min min min min min (i mean yeah obvs min is the focus during the upcoming trauma, but in this early part of the chapter during his brooding about how Alone he has to be it would’ve been so easy to slip elayne and avi in there). what the fuck is even the point of giving him 3 girlfriends if the narrative is going to completely forget he’s dating 2 of them most of the time???

twice in this chapter rand thinks of min as the only person who never plays games with him and i have to laugh. remember when she spent half of LOC sitting on your lap and kissing you and sitting in on your baths and messing with your head to try and make you be into her all the while insisting she was only doing all these things as a game? he also thinks of her as the only one he can look to for honesty, when she CONSTANTLY lies and withholds info from him, or tries to. here he gets upset about cadsuane using min to get to him and min talking about him to cadsuane behind his back, and i’m like, oh, am i supposed to think this is rand being overly paranoid? because from my perspective that’s EXACTLY what’s been going on! i forget if cadsuane knows about min’s viewing that she’ll help rand and is deliberately taking advantage, but even if she isn’t, min IS the SOLE REASON rand has let cadsuane be around him at all, and she DOES talk to cadsuane about him behind his back (and reveals to her sensitive personal info that rand wouldn’t want her to know - his box trauma and the 3-way warder bond) and then doesn’t tell rand about those conversations.

semirhage comes in and puts the male a’dam on rand and forces him to hurt min. WHY THE FUCK IS MIN WITH YOU 24/7??????? AAAAARRRRRGHHHH THIS IS NOW THE THIRD (3RD) OF RAND’S MAJOR TRAUMAS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED IF MIN HADN’T BEEN THERE!!!! to recap 1) rand only got kidnapped by the tower because min misconstruing her fear that the caemlyn aes sedai were the ones who would harm him as a Viewing Fact made rand flee to cairhien, 2) rand only lost his hand because he couldn’t jump out of the way of the fireball because min was behind him, even though he’d asked her not to come to the meeting because it might be dangerous but she’d insisted on coming anyway, and now 3) rand almost kills min because she is plastered to his side 24/7, right fucking there alone in the bedroom with him perfectly positioned for semirhage to make him hurt her because HE PUSHES EVERYONE AWAY TO PROTECT THEM BUT KEEPS MAKING INEXPLICABLE EXCEPTIONS FOR MIN!!!! AND NOW LOOK WHAT HAS HAPPENED!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH okay i feel a little better now. a little.

to be clear i’m not victim blaming min for this incident #3 (though i do blame her at least in part for incidents 1 and 2), i am blaming rand’s/the narrative’s absurd Push Everyone Away Except Min double standard

i’m so mad about this absurd double standard that i can’t even appreciate the angst of this scene! man, if this had been elayne or avi i would have been completely losing my shit, but because it’s min i’m just annoyed! and elayne or avi would’ve been more impactful because they are so powerful and capable and always get themselves out of trouble, so seeing them unable to escape from rand/semirhage would’ve been shocking and really painful, but min? i’m just like “oh classic min being a helpless damsel AGAIN” congratulations min, you actually have TWO purposes in the story, not just one! to be rand’s emotional support animal AND the helpless damsel causing him manpain! even the description of her being choked is just about how beautiful and loving and martyr-like she is! i am pretty sure people do not look beautiful while being strangled!

okay, also, “he imagined [semirhage] using him to tear through the ranks of his own men, he imagined them afraid to attack, lest they harm him.” all this is going on and rand does not spare ONE THOUGHT for the fact that his other girlfriend is somewhere in the vicinity and semirhage might make him hurt her as well!!! i fucking HATE IT HERE!!!!

and do you really expect me to believe that avi wouldn’t sense through the bond that rand is in extreme danger and emotional distress and come running to see what’s going on??? i call bullshit!!

i mean honestly it would’ve taken a TINY tweak to make avi AND min BOTH be here during this scene!! it would’ve been double the angst!! and then maybe we could’ve had some much needed min and avi bonding afterwards since they’d shared a traumatic experience!! what a waste!!!

speaking of wastes and of ways to improve the polycule, reason #34858 why mat should replace min: can you IMAGINE the agonizing poetic cinema of rand saving mat from strangulation in rhuidean and then almost strangling him himself here? of the fresh ring of bruises layered over the old scar on mat’s neck? oh MY god

anyway. rand uses the true power to escape which is v interesting!! i’ve been wanting to know more about the true power for a long time and maybe we will soon! i wonder if the Power Combining necessary to defeat the dark one will be not saidin + saidar (or not ONLY saidin + saidar) but one power + true power?

also, please enjoy this knife of dreams Comment That Aged Terribly/Wonderfully that you guys were probably cackling your asses off about at the time jkfjg look at past me’s naive confidence that these stupid stupid idiots would actually destroy a very dangerous object as soon as it came into their possession

after the attack, maidens “swarmed outside [rand’s door] like wasps who had just discovered their nest was gone.” 😭❤️

“‘[balefire] is forbidden,’ cadsuane said. ‘i have decided that it is not,’ al’thor said calmly.” okay king 😳🥵

“if you call me a child, cadsuane, then what are those of you who are thousands of years my juniors?” 😳🥵

rand exiles cadsuane from his sight, and i’m supposed to be horrified, but i’m cheering!

“‘cadsuane,’ he said softly, ‘do you believe that i could kill you? right here, right now, without using a sword or the power? do you believe that if i simply willed it, the pattern would bend around me and stop your heart? by...coincidence?” 😳🥵

and so rand has gone from being the one thirsting after sexy evil men to being the sexy evil man others (me) thirst after. how the turn tables! congrats king! sorry about the mental breakdown tho

all gawyn wants is to gather all his loved ones together in one place (in this case, bringing egwene and bryne to live in andor with elayne). as someone who has been cranky and adrift for 8.5 books after the gang split up in tear, mood!

“his mother would have been outraged to hear him speaking with such anger. well, his mother was dead now, by al’thor’s hand.” i think gawyn should get to do an elayne-style Single Primal Scream Of Rage. as a treat. it would make him feel better.

gawyn: i need to speak to gareth bryne. soldier: no gawyn: fine [challenges him to a duel]

i love him jkfjg is this not what we all want to do when forced to jump through bureaucratic hoops?

“go and tell your general that a lone blademaster just felled a squad of his guards in under ten heartbeats. i’m an old student of his. he’ll want to see me.” 😳🥵

“gawyn sighed, wiping his brow, wishing for something cool to drink. his anger melted away, and he felt exhausted. ‘it has been a difficult year,’ he said.” literally the office “i’ve been in a bit of a rough patch. whole year actually.” jkfjghj that’s gawyn, that’s his whole arc. that’s every WOT character’s arc actually.

“thank the light, he thought, closing his eyes. elayne lived. elayne held the throne. he opened his eyes, and the overcast sky seemed a little more bright.” mood!!

bryne tells gawyn that morgase bungled things in andor and rand saved andor, and gawyn refuses to believe it. but that’s understandable in my eyes because bryne says some really painful things about morgase that would be so hard for her son to hear after her death, not to mention hard for him to believe because they sound so uncharacteristic of her. “if i do [believe the rumors that rand killed morgase], then perhaps he did andor a favor.” “your mother turned against andor by embracing gaebril. she needed to be removed. if al’thor did that for us, then we have need to thank him.” “she gave the kingdom to that snake. she sent her allies to be beaten and imprisoned. she wasn’t right in her mind. sometimes, when a soldier’s arm festers, it needs to be cut free to save the man’s life...[rand] wasn’t the problem. your mother was.” like MAN that all hurts so much! and is the complete opposite of the woman gawyn knew all his life! no wonder he refuses to believe it! and of course bryne has no idea that she was under a forsaken’s compulsion the whole time. my heart hurts that this is the legacy morgase left behind and this is the way people think of her. she deserves better!! if i don’t get my full trakand family reunion i’ll scream!!

oh shit sheriam is actually a darkfriend?? i thought she was just under halima’s thumb but not actually a darkfriend. man! i was always complaining that rj revealed darkfriends too soon too often but it doesn’t even matter because i never remember who’s a darkfriend anyway jkfjgh

min is wearing a scarf around her neck to cover her strangulation bruises AS IF THE CASE FOR MIN BEING LITERALLY JUST A FEMALE AND THUS RAND-DATEABLE VERSION OF MAT WAS NOT ALREADY STRONG ENOUGH!! GODDAMMIT she has mat’s ENTIRE aesthetic!!!! also, why tf didn’t nynaeve just Heal her?? min doesn’t have mat’s level of issues with the power, surely she would’ve asked for Healing.

okay, we DO get an explanation for why avi didn’t arrive to see what was going on with rand and semirhage: “she’d felt [his pain] during semirhage’s attack too, though at first she’d mistakenly thought it to be a nightmare. she’d quickly realized that she was wrong. no nightmare could be that terrible. she could still feel echoes of that incredible pain, those waves of agony, the frenzy inside of him. aviendha had raised the alarm, but not quickly enough. she had toh to him for her mistake” hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yeah i still call bullshit. i have dabbled in fiction writing, i recognize an “i need to cobble together an excuse for this character not to be present in a scene they would by all logic be present for because i don’t want them to be there” when i see one jdkfg

why does avi call min by first name alone in her narration but not rand??? it makes no sense! min is a stranger to her and rand is her boyfriend and warder! not that you would know it from this book.

“his fight had left him scarred in ways she did not yet understand” UGH avi never gets let in on ANYTHING that happens in rand’s life! min does come to her seemingly with the intention of talking to her about what happened, but gets put off by avi saying that rand’s problems are his own to deal with..........which she only says because she has no idea what those problems are and how bad they are, because no one ever bothers to tell her anything about them! if min had just been like “okay i get that, but he went through MAJOR trauma last night and was forced via male a’dam to almost kill me” then avi would CERTAINLY have changed her tune and wanted to help! ugh!!! just when it seems like avi might finally be allowed to be part of her own relationship, the narrative goes “sike” and takes that opportunity away again to ensure that it’s only rand and min!

“‘rand al’thor will deal with his problems,’ she said. ‘how can you say that?’ min asked, glancing at her. ‘can’t you feel his pain?’ ‘i feel each and every moment of it,’ aviendha said through gritted teeth.” this feels like such a moment of min believing herself to be/implying that she is The One Real Partner Who Truly Knows And Loves Rand and i’m glad avi set her down

rather than talking to avi about the shit that went down, min just goes “i still worry sometimes that we’ll...come to a confrontation” “i have to admit, i don’t much like the idea of sharing” girl your shared boyfriend has had a complete mental breakdown and was forced to almost kill you, and all you care to discuss with your co-girlfriend is the fact that you still don’t want her in the relationship??? PRIORITIES. LEARN SOME.

“i suppose that we could fight with knives, but it would hardly be a fair fight. what honor would there to be gained in fighting one with no skill?” LMAOOOOO FINISH HER AVIENDHA she is my idol for this. second best burn after egwene’s to elaida.

“‘i don’t know about that,’ min said, flipping a knife from her sleeve and spinning it across her knuckles. ‘i’m hardly defenseless.’ she made the knife vanish up her other sleeve. why was it that the wetlanders always showed off such flourishes with their knives? thom merrilin had been prone to that as well. didn’t min understand that aviendha could have slit the woman’s throat thrice over during the time it took to flash that knife like a street performer?” FINISH HER AVIENDHA

min’s like so if i don’t want to share rand, and if you don’t want to share rand (avi notes in her narration that she only doesn’t want to share him with someone she doesn’t know, ofc) then what do we do? and avi says “we continue as we have. you have what you wish, and i am occupied by other matters. when it becomes a different time, i will inform you.” rubbing salt in the wound that min has what she wishes, unlimited unshared Rand Time, and avi is having her time wasted by other things! the harem vibes are sooo strong in this convo and it really contrasts the avi-elayne dynamic, when they would talk about rand together and how much they both loved and missed him and what sorts of kissing techniques were their favorite, and all the times when they said or thought that having the other woman there to miss and love rand with them was such a comfort and blessing, vs. avi and min basically going “you get custody of rand for now, drop him off at my house next weekend for when it’s my turn”

i’m not even speaking just from my own personal opinions when i say that removing min from the polycule would make everything better. narratively, so many things would make so much more sense! elayne/rand/avi is a perfect dynamic where all 3 sides of the triangle have their own unique and meaningful relationship, even if we keep avilayne platonic (but why would we), whereas min constantly feels like an awkward, shoehorned-in outlier because her relationships with avi and elayne are so underdeveloped (basically nonexistent). and since elayne and avi both have plotlines and duties separate from rand, he can effectively push them away To Protect Them and self-isolate, whereas min also being his girlfriend and not having anything else to do but stick by his side causes double standards and logic issues and lessens the effectiveness of his self-isolation arc.

awww avi says that “amys had been a second mother to her in many ways” ❤️❤️❤️ fueling my vague headcanon that, since we’ve never heard a peep about her parents, she was orphaned young and raised by amys, lian, and rhuarc (since lian is her aunt). i remember that around tsr i kept thinking rhuarc was aviendha’s dad and then being like “no wait i’m just making that up” lmao

we get two (2) almost interactions between avi and rand this chapter: first rand sees her at a distance and waves, but she turns away from him and continues on her way, and second avi smiles at him from a distance but he’s looking in a different direction and doesn’t see her. AND THEN SHE FUCKING LEAVES FOR RHUIDEAN!!! THEY WERE IN THE SAME PLACE FOR MAYBE A MONTH AND 400 PAGES AND THEY LITERALLY NEVER INTERACTED!!!!!! I AM ENRAGED honestly what was even the POINT of sending avi to arad doman if her relationships with rand and min weren’t going to get any real development? why not just have her “doing useless tasks until she snaps at the wise ones and they welcome her as one of them” plotline take place in caemlyn? elayne could have easily been the one to push her to snap at the wise ones instead of min, and amys & co could’ve Traveled to caemlyn for any number of reasons so that they (instead of monaelle) could’ve then been there to oversee this final step of avi’s training. maybe rj would’ve intended to do more with avi being in the same location as rand and min, but i don’t know.

shemerin (de-shawled aes sedai who escaped the tower and went to bryne’s camp) mentions that she escaped via “a small watergate.” i hope this is foreshadowing a lil heist where gawyn and siuan sneak into the tower to rescue egwene!!!! since it mentions that siuan is the one who asked for details on how she got out of the tower, and ofc gawyn would not let an Egwene Rescue Heist leave without him. i need more heists! have we had any good heists since mat breaking into the stone? oh i guess mat’s escape from ebou dar was also heist-y, except most of it was just mentioned in a flashback and not actually shown onscreen. yes i’m still mad about that.

“why, mat could remember when he’d thought baerlon a large city” and min still does lmao

“if moiraine was still alive...light, what would that mean? how would rand react?” mat thinking of rand’s reaction first and foremost 🥺

“mat had little love for moiraine” show your mother some respect!

mat is going to caemlyn! where elayne is! and planning to stop on the way at four kings! where he once went with rand! oh my heart!!

mat and thom reminiscing about the Great Cauthor Roadtrip 😭😭 take me back!! and mat says that rand was good at the flute 🥺

“[rand] sat splay-legged in a richly embroidered shirt, a coat of black and red tossed aside and crumpled next to the log wall beside him.” mat providing us a nice sexy description of rand

“that arm ended in a stump. the first time mat had seen that - a few weeks back - it had shocked him. how had rand lost the hand? the man barely seemed alive, propped up like that, unmoving. though his lips did seem to be moving, mumbling or muttering. light! mat thought. burn you, what are you doing to yourself?” 😭😭😭😭😭😭 see: my point with perrin above. rand’s non-min-and-nynaeve loved ones DO care about him and ARE worried about him, it’s only many books of narrative-induced physical separation that prevent them from being there for him!

however, mat immediately follows this up with “well, at least mat wasn’t near him. count your fortunes in that, mat told himself. life hadn’t been so easy lately, but he could have been stuck near rand. sure, rand was a friend. but mat didn’t mean to be there when rand went insane and killed everyone he knew. there was friendship, and then there was stupidity.” i’m calling this a true sanderson-only Doing Dirty Of Mat occurrence, rather than one that rj started in the past couple books. this feels straight from the pages of the dragon reborn, mat hasn’t had nearly such harsh thoughts about rand in a LONG time. in fact, he implied in WH that he was planning to go back to rand (something along the lines of “if rand was in trouble, mat couldn’t do anything about it from here. first he had to get out of ebou dar.”) and again in..........either COT or KOD i forget (he was planning to bring aludra to rand because her dragons would help him). and him now suddenly declaring that he plans to stay away from rand for the foreseeable future is a major change from what we last heard! but mat does acknowledge that they will have to fight together at the last battle, at least.

“mat shook his head, dispelling the vision. burn you, rand. leave me alone.” once again mat is so much more fussed about and struggling with the rand visions than perrin has ever been. he’s soooo desperate to stop thinking about rand because he does it constantly!

“we’ll go back and pretend things are like they once were!” “i don’t know if that’s possible, lad.” “sure it is.” “oh? you’re going to go back to thinking that old thom merrilin is the wisest, most well traveled man you’ve ever known? you’ll play the gawking peasant again, clinging to my coat every time we pass a village with more than one inn in it?” 😭😭😭😭😭😭 MY HEART!!!! i consider WOT a “read the whole thing once and then never again in my life” type of series but i just might have to go back and reread the Great Cauthor Roadtrip someday for the nostalgia 😭 i’m thinking about rand and mat clapping their hands over their ears when they got to caemlyn because the big city noise was so overwhelming and am receiving physical damage!

“i don’t remember much. but i do recall that rand and i did right well for ourselves after we split up with you. we made it to caemlyn, at least. brought your flaming harp back to you unharmed, didn’t we?” “i noticed a few nicks in the frame...” “burn you, none of that! rand practically slept with that harp. wouldn’t think of selling it, even when we were so hungry we’d have gnawed on our own boots if we hadn’t needed them to get to the next town.” mat remembers that he and rand did well alone together! he’s so protective of rand when thom casts aspersions on rand’s harp-care skills! 😭😭 and so jealous of the harp for getting to be cuddled by rand every night jdkjfg mat if you hadn’t been so busy cuddling your dagger rand would have LOVED to cuddle you!

“mat hadn’t felt the pull of the ruby dagger in a very long time. he was nearly beginning to forget what it had been like to be tied to it, if it was possible to forget such a thing. but sometimes he remembered that ruby, red like his own blood. and the old lust, the old desire, would seep into him again...” oooooh is the dagger gonna make a comeback??? i never would’ve guessed that plotline might not be wrapped up fully, especially now that shadar logoth is gone hmmmmm i guess fain is still around, but i assumed he would be rand’s to deal with. we shall see!

“i feel old these days, mat, like a faded rug, hung out to dry in the wind, hinting of the colors it once showed so vibrantly. sometimes, i wonder if i’m any use to you anymore. you hardly seem to need me.” “what? of course i need you, thom!” 😭😭😭

i loved this whole chat between mat and thom! late series mat is at his best when he’s not interacting with, in the presence of, or thinking about any women lmfao (with the problem always being mat, not the women. except when the woman is tuon, then the problem is 60% her 40% mat.)

i do feel a difference in writing style more strongly in mat’s povs, especially in dialogue - mat’s dialogue and narration was always the most informal in rj’s books too, but sanderson’s version of that feels even more informal still. and a lot of mat’s and talmanes’s banter in this book feels............more bro-y is the only adjective i can come up with to describe the sense i’m getting jkfghj

“‘burn me, but it would be nice to know where rand is, if only to know where not to go.’ the colors spun, showing him rand - but the man was standing in a room with no view of the outside, giving mat no clue as to where he might be.” please mat, you’re so desperate to find out where rand is so you can go running straight into his arms 😌

spooky groundhog day town where everyone goes crazy murdering each other at night and then wakes up fine the next morning with only nightmares of what happened. wondering what the purpose of this incident is. only as a one-off episode to illustrate the dark one’s growing touch on the world, or will mat and/or the rest of his party experience long-term consequences? the mayor says that all other travelers who’ve been there at night end up getting pulled into it too and stuck there, but mat and co SEEM to have escaped unscathed........i’m coming down on the side of “one-off episode to illustrate dark one’s growing touch” because it is FAR too late in the series to introduce a new plotline where mat and co are cursed to become groundhog day zombies lmao

“pips kicked out and knocked another [attacker] to the ground with a hoof to the head.” PIPS MY KING

when joline almost hits mat with a fireball: “bloody ashes! what do you think you’re doing?” “cauthon?” “who do you bloody think it is!” “i don’t know! you came around so quickly, weapons out. are you trying to get killed?” “we’re trying to rescue you!” “do we look like we need rescuing?” “well, you’re still here, aren’t you?” i’m mad because if you just took the misogyny and the spanking and the mat-almost-letting-tuon-keep-her-collared-because-he-thinks-she’s-annoying out of mat and joline’s dynamic, they would’ve had such fire enemies to lovers potential. honestly i would forgive so much if joline just got to spank mat in retaliation. i need that to happen. but, actually, continuing the trend of “rj booting main characters out of roles and creating new minor characters to fill them less effectively,” joline’s kinda just filling elayne’s role in mat’s life as the ~arrogant~ aes sedai he’s always bickering with and complaining about yet also can’t stop thinking about how pretty she is. and now i am also thinking about elayne spanking mat, which is another thing i need to happen.

talmanes WHISTLING at joline wearing only a bathrobe because she was attacked during her bath SMH TALMANES i thought you were better than this!

while a wounded band member is being Healed: “it made [mat] shiver as he imagined the one power leaking out of her and into the man. that was almost as bad as dying, bloody ashes but it was!” why under the light mat’s arc wasn’t him coming to terms with the power via his close connections with channeler loved ones, elayne and nynaeve and egwene and rand, i will never understand. just when that arc was getting off the ground in ACOS, it was cut off at the knees and sent veering back into the opposite direction! into a character regression of mat’s anti-channeler prejudices being enforced by his relationship with someone who enslaves channelers, rather than challenged by his relationships with channelers! deeply unsatisfying narratively speaking.

mat has a vision of rand asleep in bed with min curled up beside him. ARE YOU FUCKING TELLING ME THAT RAND IS STILL CARRYING OUT HIS “PUSH AWAY EVERYONE BUT MIN” DOUBLE STANDARD AFTER HE ALMOST KILLED HER BECAUSE SHE WAS NEAR HIM????? WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK WHY HAS THAT INCIDENT NOT CHANGED HIS MIN-RELATED BEHAVIOR IN ANY WAY???? WHY IS HE STILL LETTING HER SLEEP ALONE AND UNPROTECTED NEXT TO HIM??? WHY DID HE NOT TRY TO OPEN A GATEWAY TO CAEMLYN AND TOSS HER RIGHT THROUGH TO PROTECT HER FROM HIMSELF??? i don’t necessarily WANT rand to hate and blame himself to that extent, but given the way his entire character and personality is, you would think that this is how he would behave in the aftermath of almost killing a loved one!!

“burn me, i wish they’d all [the dark one and co] just go bother rand. he likes it.” “you really think that?” “i wish i did. it would make things easier.” is mat saying that it would be easier to believe that rand likes fighting the shadow, because knowing that he doesn’t makes mat worry about him??? 🥺

and next chapter begins with a map, so i’m thinking we’re about to switch gears and this is a good place to end this recap! truly so much harder a decision with all this plotline-hopping

#wot #wot book spoilers

[bugcatcherwill]

how old is kohoga and impa?! In AOC they young! Almost like 18 for impa?! How old are they in botw and totk!?

AOC: a what if and shows what happened 100 years before botw

BOTW: takes place 100 after the calamity

TOTK: takes place 1-5 years after BOTW (just assuming due to how old Hudson’s daughter is as in BOTW her parents got married)

Plus it wasn’t explained about what happened to the sheikah tech as in after botw Zelda says one of the beasts is having issues at the ending cutscene. but in totk they don’t really mention about the divine beasts at all but do the champions?

Impa's just an old grandma so definitely 120+, but for Kohga I'm convinced the AOC writers saw how popular he was in BoTW and went "we GOTTA make him playable" regardless of how he virtually doesn't age at all between ANY of the games. Same old Kohga, same quirky guy.

And I love them for that the banana man is so fun to play in AOC.

Also just the complete disappearance of the Divine Beasts irks me a little. I get that it's a new game and you don't wanna have people to play BoTW to understand ToTK, but at least a little "oh the blast they all did at the end was too strong and made them disintegrate". And it would've been good closure for the whole "stop clinging to the past" narrative BoTW had.

Really it was Nintendo going "ah, forget the Sheikah tech, look at the hot goat-dragon people!" and to be fair, I am looking, but that leaves ME with trying to find out how to fix that divine beast-shaped hole between BoTW and ToTK lmaoooo

#ratc ask