*Mat And Rand Sitting In Jail Together*

*Mat and Rand sitting in jail together*

Rand: So... Who should we call?

Mat: I'd call Nynaeve but I feel safer in jail

rand al’thor really is this repudiation of the idea of a Noble Sufferer, isn’t he

like, as early as book 2 he’s resigning himself to this trope. he decides that he’s going to Suffer In Silence, you know, he even tries to die for the girl he loves (and the first seanchan invasion but egwene’s a big part of it) at falme, he starts withdrawing from other people in book 3 and taking up the burden of the dragon reborn “because i must and there’s no one else who can,” and at every turn the narrative is showing that this isn’t possible. he tries to die heroically in falme and survives against all odds because the pattern isn’t done with the dragon reborn. he tries to kill ishamael three times before it takes, expecting the fight against darkness to be Over each time. by book 4 he’s becoming self-aware of his own trauma responses and they horrify him?? he can’t understand why he’s becoming angry and violent and struggling with lashing out. he still spouts off this whole speech to lanfear about how he was born to destroy the darkness in ostensible total acceptance of his destined role. he expects things to be simple in ways that they would be in another narrative. he tries to quash his entire identity to be the prophesied warrior of light, which includes ignoring his own trauma, because he can’t have trauma if he’s not a person, and we see how this does not work. he goes from dissociating sometimes to dissociating constantly, his Selfless Desire To Die mutates into a seesaw between fear of death and increasing suicidality. which is extremely, viscerally human. repressing his pain and never talking about it alienates most of the people in his life including people he’s trying to reach out to because they can’t understand what’s going through his head. he becomes cold and furious and difficult to be around despite his best intentions. he’s killed the boy who was rand al’thor but that doesn’t turn him into a fabled hero it just turns him into a miserable person he doesn’t recognize.

he WANTS to be the ideal stoic martyr, he WANTS to bravely face his destiny like people do in all the stories he read growing up, but he doesn’t understand that those are just stories and real people can’t live like that. 

“Make up a guy” tweets and Wheel of Time characters

luke: where do babies come from?

owen: brought by sorcerers. they come and drop ‘em at the house. that’s how we got you.

luke:

luke: you’re not lying

owen: nope