Wheel Of Time Books - Tumblr Posts

on one hand the design of Tar Valon is super cool with the island in the middle of the river and the bridges and everything. on the other hand I can't look at it without thinking Robert Jordan Absolutely Did That On Purpose

A guide to Rand al'Thor's love life, simplified:

Elayne Trakand: "I will have him for my throne." *giggles*

Aviendha: "I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! I need him inside my guts right now! I hate him!"

Rand al'Thor: "Oh Min, you're the only normal woman in my life."

Min Farshaw: "I am a woman and I will have you beg for it like a dog, drooling into the carpet."

Rand al'Thor: "Why are all my relationships so terrible?"

Lews Therin Telamon: (sounding haunted) "Ilyena used to grip it with her feet like the teeth of a darkhound and leave me seeing stars. Oh light how I miss her."

Moridin: "I will see you dead." (Princess Bride narrator: "But what he meant was "I love you."")

kinda fucked up how egwene destroyed the confidence and social standing (between themselves) of a woman whom she trusted and respected, to the point that nynaeve has a massive crisis of self-confidence that may have contributed to her being beaten by moghedien, the whole deal with birgitte, and her decision to take the group to salidar and hand over her responsibilities and the threat of the forsaken in tel'aran'rhiod (though smart) in the hands of strange aei sedai who might not even support rand.

all so egwene can avoid punishment by the aiel for dreamwalking when she shouldn't be, because they would cease teaching her as per their threat, and rightly so. iirc she only ever decides that she needs to apologize for misleading them on being a full aei sedai (which is a pretty fucked up thing when everyone assumes everything you say is the whole truth, though the fact that egwene helped rand blow shit up at cairhien should've clued the aiel in that she's not bound by the three oaths like all tower trained aei sedai, and I am certain moraine must've brought that up at least once.) and only ever gets punished for her specific toh in that moment.

it is never reconciled, never apologized for, never explained, and egwene belittles nynaeve twice for almost revealing to the wise ones that she's dreamwalking. i don't think they see eachother again until egwene is in salidar and she is then raised to amyrlin seat, and then egwene places special emphasis on nynaeve not undermining her while she leads the rebel aei sedai.

worse still is how egwene's brow beating worked in preventing nynaeve from figuring out that egwene is hiding something from the aiel wise ones, especially after the blowup from egwene in front of amys, who egwene should really trust with anything said in tel'aran'rhiod, and nynaeve and elayne, who already know she's dreamwalking into elaida's study. its really emphasized a little later when nynaeve gets to salidar and shows that she's an incredibly smart person when she's not being rode over and bullied, and figures out the entire scheme between siuan and leane, something they're keeping from the salidar aei sedai so they can continue to manipulate them, practically instantly.

fucked up. sorry if anyone likes egwene particularly and is defensive regarding her, i like her too and she has many redeeming qualities and as many amazing accomplishments, but this is one of the many things that she's never apologized for. it shows more and more that her story is about a complete abandonment of emond's field to become the most aei sedai she can be, and she's certainly adopted bullying and brow beating to get her way in a topic she knew she shouldn't have gotten her way, but valued knowledge acquired through any means necessary over her personal relationships. the aiel aren't spared here either. she ferrets out their secrets, pushes dangerously far beyond what they've taught her and almost damages her relationship with them too when it becomes impossible to continue the lie.

she doesn't even reveal that she's an accepted until she's no longer going to be in the wise one's camp to learn from them, summoned to salidar, at which point there's no real punishment she can suffer from them, short of death, since she'll have learnt everything she can out of them and won't be able to learn anymore anyway, and despite all her talk of acting like an aiel and fulfilling her toh, I seriously doubt she would've calmly accepted death as her punishment if that was what the wise ones decided, even though any other aiel apprentice would have.

anyway, I know I'm not doing a liveblog, I'm just re-reading the wheel of time books and I'm almost finished with the fires of heaven (book 5). wanted to get this thought out there.

Lews Therin anytime Rand meets with Mazrim Taim:

Rand is like Courage the Cowardly Dog in the way he laughs hopelessly anytime he gets hurt:

like "Oh I just lost a hand to a fireball. Hahaha. It doesn't matter." and Min is clinically in shock from the second hand pain, weeping that he's suffering and he doesn't care about himself. that it's just nothing to him.

Wormblr, he's so Taylor coded it's unreal. Protagonist going through some unbelievable pain for no reason. Wotblr, do I have a scrimblo I could introduce you to. She loses the same arm twice and gets cut in half once. She doesn't laugh when she gets hurt though so it evens out.

Drop an anvil on all three of them and they'll come back stronger.

we all have that friend that reminds us of a wretched and despotic boy-king

I'm at the Box.

Ominous enough for people without context but I'll go ahead anyway.

I made a joke that Rand laughs every time something horrible happens to him, and I was thinking that was hyperbole, that he was in so much pain and trying so hard to avoid crying out that he wasn't laughing this time.

But here he is, laughing in his box. How fucking ominous must that feel if you're one of the Aei Sedai watching him and his box? You've just bundled him in there for six days of travel, only taking him out to give him water at dawn and dusk, he's delirious from the heat and sweat, he's just killed two warders in a fit of rage over Min's capture and has been beaten for that so severely that he lost his vision temporarily and appears to have completely disassociated from his body, and you've just shown him off to the aiel who you're almost entirely certain will try to steal him from you. He must be utterly hopeless. Nobody's coming to save him. After this he will only be taken out of that box to be beaten by the other aei sedai.

And he's chuckling like a loon in his little box.

I honestly don't remember how he comes back from madness during Dumai's Wells on this re-read. If it were me, no Aei Sedai would be allowed into the same room as me except to pledge their total obedience and fidelity to me. The fact that Cadsuane, the most Aei Sedai of Aei Sedai to ever Aei Sedai, is introduced AFTER Dumai's Wells feels insane to me. AFTER he has been magically violated by Alanna, after the Salidar Aei Sedai did their silly little pageantry and subsequently grew to 13 members by accident (admittedly this was a manipulation by the Black Ajah). And obviously after Dumai's Wells and the Box, caused by the Tower Aei Sedai. There is no way that Rand has a drop of trust or friendliness for Aei Sedai left in him after all that. Cadsuane barging in and demanding to be treated with respect should've had her thrown out by a gang of Ashaman and Aiel.

How the hell did we get back a Rand who went back to trying to scare off women by channeling around them so he can intimidate Cadsuane, instead of what would be more realistic, a Rand who surrounds himself with Ashaman and obedient Aei Sedai and threatens to kill Cadsuane if she ever comes near him without bending the knee to him. I think I need to keep reading a little more to puzzle it out, but I think Robert Jordan wrote himself into a corner with the last chapter of Lord of Chaos here and just decided to walk back a bit of his character development because he realized he'd need an old Aei Sedai to advise Rand. Rand should be downright hostile to any Aei Sedai who come near him without his permission. Murderous even.

Also after Lord of Chaos we get into the swing with Mat and Ebu Dar. I fucking hate the Ebu Dar arc. Hate it so much for so many reasons.

God I fucking forgot how absolutely insane Dumai's Wells is.

Imagine being a Shaido Aiel. You've got barely any honour, but fuck the other Aiel. You're conquering shit with the rest of your clan. Sure you don't have a clan chief after some gambler cut off his head, and the most influential wise one of your clan can't channel and hasn't been to Rhuidean, but that's fine. Nobody has the right to tell you that you have no honour or pride. They don't understand. You are the only true Aiel. The only ones who haven't sold themselves to a wetlander king.

And now we get to take the so-called Car'a'carn for ourselves. We just need to take him from the Aei Sedai. The wise ones can handle them.

Then the fucking grass explodes into wolves, arrows punch into your backs from 300 paces, a huge cavalry charge slams into your flanks and fresh lightning and fire suddenly surround you, people's skulls just explode like ripe melons or burst into flames with zero impact at all. This was supposed to be easy. Some mad bearded fucker is hacking through you all with an axe, and a tinker of all things is swinging a sword at you. Then the chest at the center of the copse of trees explodes violently. A woman is screaming her soul out at the epicenter. The Dragon Reborn is free. Then the man to your left is split in half by a string of light that widens into a doorway, and out of that doorway steps a man who turns your whole body into shredded meat as soon as he looks at you.

You don't even have time to scream in pain.

my husband rides from world’s end towards tarwin’s gap towards tarmon gai’don. will he ride alone?