#wot 04 tsr

[birgittesilverbae]

re-read tsr ch47 and caught a note I'd meant to follow-up on the last time I went through it

'ornately carved' as a description of something belonging to a woman with modest tastes in a room repeatedly refferred to as 'simply furnished' (in addition to it being her box of secrets) twigged for me, so of course I went and had a look

there are four instances of 'blackwood box' in the series. three occur in TSR ch47.

the fourth?

Moiraine packing to go take names in NS ch4

#wot #wot book spoilers #mywot #wot 04 tsr #siuan sanche #moiraine damodred #moiraine x siuan

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… first favourite chapter of the books? 👀

this is probably unhinged of me, but TSR ch 47 The Truth of a Viewing

strong opening with parallels to Mat's tactics post-being-filled-with-men supporting Siuan's leadership qualities

the slow-rising horror for the reader as you realize how much information she has but both you and she know how little she can do with it. within the opening two paragraphs it's a dread that only ratchets up as the chapter carries on.

the hints to what's to come by the end of the chapter, "Three Sitters for three different Ajahs had proposed holding all plans close in the Hall" and thus ensuring that the general population of Aes Sedai would be unaware that Siuan had been (somewhat) transparent

how thoroughly her one safe space is torn away from her, and still she has the wherewithal to ensure she snaps her box of secrets shut.

layering on insult after insult, shielded and forced to watch the invasion of her chambers, the powers she'd always hoped might free her used to bind her instead

the internal monologue consistently downplaying the situation even as her physical reactions are amped up to the max, and still she's the schemer they make her out to be, running her mouth to give herself time to think and seed doubt in Elaida's party

the slip when Elaida reveals that this is personal. "Do you think I - we - would allow you to destroy the Tower?"

dragged out past her dying Warder and still turning immediately to planning. pushed and stumbling but refusing to lose her footing, still fighting not to show Elaida any emotion no matter what she does to her, even twenty years after that "training" bordering on torture. (the indignity she'll shortly feel in this streak having been broken)

the absolute asshole wording that is "Siuan opened her eyes, stirred, winced, and was still."

waking up stilled and immediately reframing her situation [the luxury of knowing she was still breathing]. another indignity in stripping her bare as they have stripped her of the source. unable to grasp saidar but at least she can grasp the physical pain. always always trying to focus herself, to regain control

trying to speedrun acceptance as she confronts becoming rudderless now, trying to face the bastards on her feet. getting knocked down and picking herself up over and over and over again, resilient, relentless

the response to the Tower breaking that Moiraine will mirror to Egwene in that TFOH chapter

plying Min for information and recalculating, recalculating, reframing, parsing all of it into something approaching meaning

kneeling for Elaida, knowing what must be done no matter if it kills her to do it

realising the oaths don't apply anymore and immediately using that as a tool, as a weapon, trying to internalize it as an advantage

it's just everything I adore about Siuan packed into a single chapter that finds her at her lowest point and tilts her head up towards the distant light of the surface.

Even now, after Elaida has stripped so much from her, Siuan is still buried in layer upon layer of ice and rage and purpose, flailing about beneath it all to try and keep her head above water. As long as she repeats it to herself often it will become truth. There are advantages to this, she just has to find them. It's horrendous, but she can't undo it, so she fights to move past it, fights to move forward, fights to hold herself together. She may have lost this battle, but the war has only just begun.

#ask #amemoryofwot #wot #wot book spoilers #wot 04 tsr #siuan sanche #can always open up my copy of that book directly to that chapter bc it's annotated so heavily that the pages are dark with it

[birgittesilverbae]

#wot #wot book spoilers #egeanin #we heading full speed towards procrastination station #wot 04 tsr #wot 14 amol

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tsr ch 48

tfoh ch 52

Aviendha: exists

Lanfear:

#'I have a feeling you know something of the dangers of scorning a woman' RJ you were so wrong for this #wot #wot book spoilers #rand al'thor #lanfear #wot 04 tsr #wot 05 tfoh

[birgittesilverbae]

I love every scene that has someone rock up to the Amyrlin's study (both pre- and post-schism), but especially the coup.

everywhere else in the Tower Siuan has to be so aloof and removed but her study is her last refuge, and so she feels like she can dot it with all these personal things, she can have a drawing to remind her of her father, she drowns herself in books and remembers the girl who walked into the Tower unable to read or write. (show Siuan can wear the barest hint of paisley)

she lets herself have this one refuge, this one safe harbour, and then in one fell swoop it's taken from her. the one place she thought sacrosanct is invaded. (the invasion begins before even that but she doesn't know it, doesn't realize that Moiraine's missives are being intercepted). and not only does she lose that safe harbour but with it go the stole and the staff and the ring. the man who's been by her side all these years lies dying and she can't do anything (and she'll have the chance to grieve him stolen from her, though she doesn't know it yet).

she never cried in front of Elaida when she was Accepted, she held herself together time and again until Elaida had left the room, but they take that from her too. they rip every little piece of information from her that they can

and then, when she's bare of everything, when the careful armour she's built up over more than twenty years has been stripped away piece by piece, they perform that final indignity. they still her

she's spent more of her life with the power than without. and she's in a cell, stripped and tortured and concentrating on what she can sense. avoiding even the thought of that one thing she can sense no longer, until she reaches out for it like a habit. reaches out and finds nothing.

but that fisherman's daughter never needed saidar. that fisherman's daughter never needed anything but herself - her feet planted on the deck, her hands gripping the nets. she's clung to those bits and pieces of the girl from the Maule and now when she needs them they're there. she's weathered far worse storms than this.

they stilled her but she's alive and while she's alive she can fight, and Siuan grew up punching above her weightclass, facing up against dockboys and tavern brawlers and never backing down. that fifteen year old girl backed into an alley with nothing but her bait knife and her wits never needed saidar

Elaida should have killed her when she had the chance

#wot #wot meta #wot book spoilers #siuan sanche #wot 04 tsr #the shadow rising #will I ever shut up about tsr? not likely #wheel of time #mywot

[birgittesilverbae]

I just got to The Road to the Spear/The Dedicated and these chapters really don't pull any punches do they

Rand with his outsider's perspective, having already had his worldview destroyed once already and being stronger for it, just detached enough that he can take the hit of betrayal after betrayal, every reveal of just how far the Aiel have strayed from what they were before

the way every new perspective drives it home again and again, how What Came Before is held up in comparison to What Is Now. two generations gone and they can't remember snow. the cultural shifts and schisms stemming from simple choices, how the meaning behind tradition has been lost but the tradition itself holds firm

"I had a son, once, with a face like that. I do not wish to see it on a killer" and so he veils his face so that the mother who can't even look at him anyways won't see, and so do his descendants and his descendants' descendants, a loss of innocence for an entire bloodline. but he also veils his face and proclaims himself Aiel

and Tzora, "trying to turn him with their bodies and a song", standing facing someone who was once an ally and doing no more than singing, singing despite their people being slaughtered around them, the last one standing singing because what other way is there to save him from his own actions, what else do they have but song

and the perversion of that across millenia, Aiel warriors still unafraid to face the lightnings, unafraid to die, but only singing when they wash their spears in blood

I just... this is all so brilliantly written and I don't know that I've ever appreciated it this much on a read-through and I just have a lot of feelings

#wot #wot book spoilers #this book really does not have a right going this hard #and I haven't even gotten to Perrin's homecoming yet which is a whole other thing #like I can go on for ages about the way the disconnect is written #TSR really is the best book huh #like I live for Egwene in LOC etc but holy shit does TSR slap #the shadow rising #wot 04 tsr #mywot

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so how about that time Moiraine made a veiled threat on Thom's life because he threatened to put Siuan in jeopardy

#is that how the scene is intended? maybe not #is that how I choose to read it? definitely so #wot #wot book spoilers #wot 04 tsr #mywot

[birgittesilverbae]

I adore how 85% of the Forsaken on first introduction are absolutely horrifying nightmare fuel and almost god tier, and then are systematically deconstructed and revealed to be just as flawed and human as the rest of the world

#the other 15% are Asmodean who never really pretends to be anything but who he is #and Ishamael who fucked himself over by getting half trapped and just going full nightmare fuel #wot #wot book spoilers #moggy's intro: holy shit this woman's not playing around #moggy in three books: a Clown #wot 04 tsr #wheel of time #mywot

[birgittesilverbae]

moiraine: egwene I'd really rather not talk about seeing my own death in rhuidean

egwene: you reject egwene? you reject her comfort like the ice queen? oh! oh! jail for moiraine! jail for moiraine for One Thousand Years!!!!

#wot #wot 04 tsr #wot book spoilers #moiraine damodred #egwene al'vere #idk what response eggy expected to a question like 'hey was rhuidean bad?' #bc 'it was kinda shit actually I'm probably gonna die soon lol' was likely the best she could have hoped for #but the internal dialogue of 'sorry i fuckin asked you miserable ice cube thanks for harshing my buzz' is unintentionally hilarious #mywot

[birgittesilverbae]

Aram and Ila mirroring Adan and Lewin is so rude

Aram has had his way of life attacked, his family attacked, slaughtered around him, and so he looks to a sword to protect those he has left

Ila has lost her children and grandchildren, all but one of them, to violence, and then comes downstairs after being Healed of the violence done to her to find that violence has stolen the last of them from her as well. and she cannot stop him without fighting, without trying to wrest the sword from him, and as she struggles to hold him to the Way of the Leaf, he DANCES with her, like a Tuatha'an, like an Aiel, dances for a split second caught between two worlds and he doesn't even know that this conflict, this choice, is echoing across generations

and she loses him. loses him to the violence, loses him to his choice. turns her back on Aram and casts him out. disowns him. calls him Lost.

and that too is echoing across the intervening millenia. the people the Aiel call the Lost Ones, the original betrayers, looking at a boy who's chosen to fight, a boy stepping on the road to the spear, the road to the Aiel, a boy who's betrayed the Way of the Leaf, and the Lost Ones call him lost in turn.

and Aram watched his family die around him and could do nothing, and his innocence died with them. Aram picks up a sword purely to protect his family and has that same family turn their backs on him

#me writing another incoherent faintly meta post about tsr? more likely than you think #wot #wot meta #wot book spoilers #wot 04 tsr #the shadow rising #god if the aiel/jenn/tuatha'an lore in this book isn't out to get me #mywot

[birgittesilverbae]

“You’re just afraid I’ll find a knife.” At the look in the Accepted’s eyes, [Logain] laughed again. “For myself, woman. For myself.”

The Great Hunt, chapter 24

[Leane] seemed more interested in the short-bladed knife hanging from her belt than in the clothes themselves.

The Shadow Rising, chapter 47

... Leane really dodged a bullet here plot-wise, huh

#one of the few times RJ didn't go with the foreshadowed choice and for that I am grateful #I will be even more grateful if R2J2 also avoids that choice #wot book spoilers #wot #wot 04 tsr #leane sharif #mywot