I Feel We Do Not Get Enough Out Of The Fact The Two Straight Up Mad Scientists Of The Forsaken Are Aginor

I feel we do not get enough out of the fact the two straight up mad scientists of the Forsaken are Aginor (biology) and Lanfear (physics).

(Graendal and Semirhage are not mad scientists, they're walking medical ethics violations)

@twicetolivetwicetodie @butterflydm continuing our seanchan discussion on this post over here because i had Many Thoughts and would have flooded the replies!

"And I know there's the argument that readers being appalled at their actions/our heroes doing horrific things is the point cause of war, etc." this is interesting bc yeah, it's something i see said a lot! but for me i think the biggest problem with the books' handling of it is that so many readers AREN'T appalled by the boys' behavior with the seanchan, because the narrative itself doesn't take their actions seriously. the "well it's meant to show how willing people are to turn a blind eye to fascism" interpretation doesn't work because the narrative itself also turns a blind eye starting in COT. butterflydm pointed out in her reread that the "the seanchan make the trains run on time" propaganda started early in the series and was believed by many people in-world, but rj always made sure to include stuff to show the reader that it isn't true (with the most obvious being egwene's suffering in captivity, but also smaller things like allusions to how violent and war-torn the seanchan continent is due to constant civil war and rebellion). but starting in COTish, he stopped doing the latter and so the pro-seanchan propaganda is left unchecked even by the narrative.

the other problem is, "deal with the devil out of desperation" arcs can totally work IF the character is sufficiently trapped out of any other options, but that didn't happen with the boys, so their capitulating to the seanchan felt like a spineless giving in rather than a desperate last resort. i don't LIKE rand sending damane back into seanchan territory or perrin selling 200 people into slavery, but i think both can definitely work as in-character story beats if treated with a bit more finesse than the books did (rand's actions fit his increasing desperation and "ends justify the means" attitude as the last battle gets closer; perrin's desperation to get faile back At Any Cost fits his character, and would fit especially well in show-verse with the laila guilt). in fact, it's an interesting contribution to the series theme of valuing individuals/small picture vs. valuing causes/big picture, where perrin & rand are on opposite ends of that spectrum yet both end up doing bad things, with perrin sacrificing many for the good of a few and rand sacrificing a few for the good of many.

perrin being besties with tylee and shrugging off his war crime & not getting any consequences (from his conscience, other characters, or the narrative) is what broke the arc for me. and i was with rand's arc even longer, all the way up until AMOL when he showed up to ebou dar with all the bargaining power yet completely folded to tuon's demands re: slavery for no reason. so for these two, i think their actions, while awful, could work in the show from both a character and a story perspective (aside from rand's sudden jello spine with tuon, which needs to be cut/changed altogether) as long as the show a) makes it believable that both boys are desperate enough to stoop to this level (perrin especially; making that agreement with tylee should feel to the viewer and to himself, and to his allies and later faile when she finds out, like he's sold his soul to the devil, not like he's having a grand old time with his new bestie Slaver Tylee), b) sticks the landing and doesn't shield either of them from the natural consequences of their actions (again, especially perrin who lacked this more in the books), and c) doesn't let the narrative (and by extent the viewer) buy into the idea that The Seanchan Aren't So Bad/The Seanchan Make Life Better For Everyone (Except Channelers) the way that some of the characters within the narrative do.

now, this is why i keep coming back to mat as the worst offender. i can see in-character reasons for rand and perrin to make some of the decisions they do re: the seanchan, even though i felt that the narrative didn't properly handle the weight of all of those decisions and that other decisions of theirs were jello-spine-induced nonsense. mat, though, ALL of his decisions re: the seanchan are jello-spine-induced nonsense. at the start of COT, mat has spent 9 books wanting to defy fate & make his own choices in life and also risking his life to free slaves, and tuon has been taken away from her power base and is surrounded by westlanders who should be hostile to her. there is NO reason why mat should suddenly be simpering over tuon and bending over backwards to appease her and trying to leash himself to the fate he wanted nothing to do with last week, not by any stretch of the imagination; it defies both his established characterization AND the entire setup of the situation. so mat's behavior re: the seanchan needs to be completely overhauled. torch the entirety of his COT-KOD arc and just start fresh with something completely different.

the problem does seem to be that between WH and COT, rj decided the seanchan stuff was simply too big to resolve in the main series with the last battle approaching (which is understandable, but like........you introduced the seanchan 7 books ago! you had time to deal with them and you squandered it!) and decided to punt it off to outriggers. so, very abruptly in COT, we get mat folding to tuon and the narrative now presenting "the seanchan have their merits actually" at face-value, which is continued in KOD with perrin's alliance with tylee. rj decided he wasn't going to deal with the seanchan in the main series after all, and so the narrative itself stopped taking them seriously as a force of evil and a threat to our heroes and their home.

at least in AMOL we do get egwene & elayne gritting their teeth about allying with the seanchan and hating every moment of it, even if they acknowledge objectively that it must be done for the sake of TLB, which is the attitude ALL our main characters should have (and rand does have it up until Jello Spine Day, which is why the majority of his seanchan arc doesn't bother me the same way perrin's and mat's do). and i think the show can do a MUCH better job on this front since they already know the full story, so they can introduce the seanchan in a way that's consistent with how they plan to ultimately deal with them by the end of the series. and given that what we have so far seems to indicate the show will be going pretty hard on how awful the seanchan are, i think it's safe to say that it does intend to conduct and wrap up their whole arc in a more satisfying way.

some readers often dismiss those of us who don't like the seanchan as The Moral Purity Police incapable of tolerating dark things in fiction, but for me, it's very little to do with morality and everything to do with narrative satisfaction. the story including an evil slaver empire is fine; the story promising in book TWO that this empire would face a huge reckoning and then failing to ever deliver on that promise is unsatisfying. i don't want the seanchan to be defeated by the end because i'm a naive simpleton who needs all my loose ends tied up with a bow and all my evils fully vanquished; i want it because rj literally promised us in book two that it would happen or at least be in motion (a handful of seanchan knowing sul'dam can channel doesn't count as "in motion"). i don't care that tuon is a bad person; i care that she's a flat, static character who undergoes 0 development despite being introduced with a lot of potential for it (what the FUCK is the point of making the heir to the seanchan throne capable of channeling if you're going to do absolutely nothing with it??). i can accept our heroes allying with the seanchan and doing bad things out of wartime desperation; i can't accept story logic and established characterization being violated to make that happen.

i'm making a gifset and am dying at this shot of rand clocking that mat's gonna try to fuck dana and being Absolutely Done about it

Sorry Rand, the rules are the rules.

And Logain looks… deeply unwell. He was more together in the cold open. But after the cave and the cage, yikes.