#Elayne tho….

[amemoryofwot]

Pedantic arguing over a single frame we are SO back babyyy

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Based on these first few episodes, it does seems like Min is going to take the place of Thom and Juilin in Mat's story from The Dragon Reborn. Looking back on her role in The Great Hunt, this is probably a much better use of her then basically being the Ringo of the Wonder Girls.

I suspect the show will go even further and have Min replace Juilin altogether during Elayne and Nynaeve's misadventures in The Shadow Rising and The Fires of Heaven. If the intention is to go full polycule later on then it makes sense to have Elayne and Min spend more time together than they do in the books. It would also work as a good parallel to have them growing closer on one side of the world and Rand and Aviendha on the other before mixing things up by then reuniting Rand with Min and Elayne with Aviendha.

And it's not like it's really essential she be sent back to the White Tower for the coup. Her sole contribution to that plotline is to help Siuan and Leane escape and you could easily just give that role to someone else like Laras. That whole storyline can work without Min so better to put her somewhere that will have more impact for her character later on.

[markantonys]

readers were upset about the prime x-ray spoiling show-onlys by naming rand's mom tigraine in s1, but counterpoint: the show actually should explain rand's full heritage as quickly as possible because i cannot have show-onlys refusing to get invested in randlayne because they think a secret-sibling shoe is going to drop

[portuguesedisaster]

Oh uau. Payoff for the Selene plot??

[christophernolan]

Daughter heir crumbs 🥹

[reineyday]

man, watching nynaeve argue with elayne but still work together with her to get egwene back this season... and elayne is soooooo pretty ahh and she's strong-willed too and doesn't let nynaeve boss her around or anything even when nynaeve is (understandably) being pissy. there is Chemistry there.

[moirainussy]

Simply imagining Rand al’Thor doing this to all of the women in WoT.

[moghedien]

they really like double downed on the fact that Elayne is a weirdo nerd with no friends and I love it tho 😭

Like she literally just latches onto Egwene because she’s the first person she saw and was like “I make potions under my bed” and gave her unsanitary toilet wine and was like “I don’t have friends because I’m the daughter heir and for no other reason” and then was like “we’re gonna be a legendary duo 😏” and then was like “um actually I know all about white tower history and that’s not how that ter’angreal works but I have some statistics do you wanna know how many novices are gay on average?”

She’s my daughter heir so much 😭

[dubiousculturalartifact]

do you ever think about the wheel of time season two from elayne's perspective like: finally arrive at college!!! meet your neighbour in residence, accidentally microaggress against her, but you're totally gonna be buds! you brought too much dorm furniture so the RA says she's gonna beat you later, but you're like 'k, whatever, let's get drunk with my new bestie, college LYF!' turns out that same night your new BFF's BFF disappeared during a really intense exam, presumed dead. you decide to have a sleepover to console her, and get woken up by the totally-dead girl appearing out of nowhere, half naked, covered in blood, and crying. you're like 'okay so i'll just put these pillows away I guess?' then suddenly your friends are like 'brb we gotta go bail our friend out of jail' and you're like 'shit i'm coming too' and then your prof shows up and knocks you all out, and tries to sell you all into slavery? so you and your BFF's BFF escape, but your BFF gets captured, and you're trying to rescue her but BFFsBFF keeps giving major attitude, and then you run into a DIFFERENT prof from another department, who tries to help you out then immediately gets kidnapped as well. multiple people die. it's super intense. then you've got a great escape plan all figured out, except like three different groups of people invade the city, and you get SHOT, and then you eventually make it to help your BFF, only she's already freed herself??? and there's some kind of intense situation going on with your BFF's ex (presumed dead), your BFF's dirtbag highschool classmate, the guy who had a crush on your BFF, some random magic ghosts, and Satan's righthand man? so anyway you apply first aid and then your BFF's not-dead-i-guess ex nukes Satan's lieutenant, and there's this giant fireworks thing happening, and you think maybe your BFF's ex is the second coming of Jesus? he's cute tho so the fighting dies down, and you're trying very badly to process all that while still bleeding from your leg and then your aunt shows up?!?

[markantonys]

someone commented on my rand/gawyn-feat-rand/mat fic proposing 3 Fated Husbands AU and i am now in hysterics imagining rand/mat/gawyn/gaul polycule (if we are to stick to the civilian-noble-aiel parameters). reactions would be mixed.

rand: confused baby woolhead about the whole thing, as in canon

mat: his hot boyfriend is also going to have two other hot boyfriends? sign him the fuck up! he will get a proper orgy out of this or die trying.

gawyn: how dare these buffoons ask to share his boyfriend. no, it most certainly did not awaken anything in him when mat sexily defeated him in hand-to-hand combat! he will agree to mat's orgy only so that he can prove he is the best at fucking rand and not for any other reason.

gaul: thriving. living his best life. stupid wetlander boys are his exact type and now he's got three of them.

[luckhissoul]

"yeah, if you think so."

"I think they'll look pretty out there."

[cannoli-reader]

As a follow up, I hate that we never see her aknowledge that she was at fault for her relationship with Rand souring. Like, all the others EF5s managed to mantain a level of trust and cooperation with him, as well as Min, Aviendha and Elayne. And in book 11 she still acts as tho she's completely in the right. I mean, girl you were trying to invade his dreams everynight since you learned how to do it! On another note, the chekov's gun of her ruined relationship with Nynaeve after the dream assault is also not dealt with, thanks BranSan (ruined is a bit strong but you know what i mean). Sorry for the two long messages in a row, it's just that you're one of the only people I've seen actually discuss Egwene's more negative traits.

I don't think she is at fault for their relationship souring, I think they just grew apart. Romantically, they were never really each other's one true love, it was just a pairing of convenience within the confines of Emond's Field. For the rest of it, Rand's issues drew him away from all his friends and put distance between them. His love interests have their relationships with him, because they are compatible with those issues. Basically, he is who he is, and she is who she is, and never the twain shall meet. The thing is, Rand knows who she is, and accepts that about her. He doesn't really have expectations or standards of the people in his life and generally a good handle on who they are, and he accepts that about them. The problems generally come with his own underselling himself, and feeling unworthy to reach out to them.

With Egwene, he accepts her loyalties, and is still friendly to her, and does what he can to be supportive. He doesn't put unreasonable expectations on their relationship or get embittered by her failure to live up to them. So in that sense, their relationship never really sours. They're just working for different companies, members of different political parties, or playing on different teams. And I think in day-to-day stuff, that does not touch on the subject of the story (in other words, the interactions that never make it onto the page), Egwene is nice and can be fun to be around. It's the only explanation I can think why so many people become and stay friends with her, despite things like clearly tattling on Aviendha's deliberately annoying Rand when she is supposed to be getting him to open up to her.

Their relationship doesn't need her to make an effort to maintain or improve it, because they were never going to be anything more than friendly opponents, just by being who and what they were. With their lives limited to Two Rivers stuff, their differences would have been complimentary perspectives on their shared agenda of raising a family and running a farm. But once out in the world, with a lot more possibilities open to them, they are going in different directions. Or more precisely, Egwene is going as fast and far in a particular direction, and Rand is not going to be interested in following her down that road. Really, for Egwene & Rand to stay close and trusting each other, one or both would have to give up everything they are and what is important to them, and make their world all about the other one.

His girlfriends, by contrast, have interests or natures that are sufficiently open and general that going down Rand's path with him is as good a way as any to get what they want out of life. Basically, they are the sort of people who can be with Rand without compromising themselves, and Rand and Egwene can't.

And without excusing particular actions of hers, I think Egwene was drawn into the boys' ta'veren web as a kind of spur to get certain things done, and in the grand scheme of things, there was no place for her in a world that did not have Tarmon Gaidon on the horizon, to justify her relentless drive to self-aggrandizement. And let's not forget, Rand, from the first book to the last is always very good at reading Egwene. He laughs when she tells him she is apprenticing under Nynaeve, because he knows Egwene will never ever be content as the understudy or number two, much less waiting behind a 24 year old in a lifetime position. He keeps mum when Egwene asks about the black rider, and Mat & Perrin tell her, because he knows she won't believe him. And it goes on, all the way up to Merrilor, when he is counting on her opposition and need to flex to gather the leaders of the nations together for a common purpose, and saving him the work. So to a certain extent, they maintained a good relationship, because it was everything Rand needed it to be.

As for her arc and still thinking she's in the right as of the last book Jordan finished ... that's a plausible character arc, because nothing happened to make her think otherwise. It's the flip side & parallel of Rand's descent in the second half of the series. But where he is going dark and hardening himself, corrupting himself with negative attitudes and feelings to fight the Shadow, she is corrupting herself with institutional thinking, getting caught up in the White Tower and its issues as if that is all there is, and forgetting that it should be just a means to an end. Her equivalent of the Dragonmount revelations would have been a gradual realization, as she witnesses the division and strife within the Tower, that she is part of the problem and needs to change her approach. NOT a sudden epiphany, right when that understanding offers her an excuse to bend instead of breaking on the rock of Elaida's equal certainty in her own legitimacy. I also think that would have led to her keeping Siuan at arm's length, because she was the devil on Egwene's shoulder urging her down that path. This, combined with whatever Jordan had in mind with her confrontation of Rand at, or leading to, Merrilor, might have suddenly left her isolated and feeling kind of friendless, as she goes back to Nynaeve and Elayne, or the Wise Ones, and they are friendly, but only so far, and all too conscious of her Amyrlin status. That is where I think some reconsideration of how she has been working with her friends would come in, with her making some effort to be more accommodating to them, offering olive branches or concessions, not in spite of politics, but finding a way to merge the personal and political, like, doing things for them, as an indicator that she can and does trust and respect them, rather than the favoritism or utility her previous assistance (e.g. raising Nynaeve & Elayne to the shawl) was couched as. I think the arrangements worked out for the Last Battle, under Jordan, would have been the culmination of the relationships between the characters, with their personal connections overcoming the political problems, and Egwene would learn a lesson, and act on it, in the midst of this.

Regarding making amends for the dream assault on Nynaeve, again, I don't think that's coming without some sort of incident rubbing what she did in her face. And given Nynaeve's own growth since that moment, she's not really going to be sulking or put out over it. It would probably take something like a similar incident arising in the shared awareness of Nynaeve and Egwene, and Nynaeve making it clear that her response to this is rooted in her personal experience. I think it would have to be Egwene trying or doing something shady with her dream powers and Nynaeve to call her on it. Just empathizing with someone else's trauma isn't going to bring her to remind Egwene, because her experiences with Moghedian after that would have been a lot more prominent in her mind. I think Egwene's attack and Moghedian's rolled together in Nynaeve's mind, along with all the frustrations she had been experiencing in the real world at the time, so that when she breaks down to Elayne and Birgitte on the boat to Salidar, Egwene's actions are just a small part of the trauma she subsequently works through with their friendship. So that's really in Nynaeve's past, she got through it, and she's beyond letting it hurt her or drag her down. That's why I think it would probably only ever come up with Nynaeve needed to confront Egwene about doing that a second time.

In Wheel of Time, I think a useful approach is in the Rolling Stones song, that goes "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need." We might want justice for Egwene's (and many other's) transgressions, but we can't get that. Instead, what we need is for Nynaeve to heal from it, for it not to harm her in the long run. And she does.

At the end of it all, Rand and Nynaeve are alive, relatively happy and with most of the people they love, most notably the people they love who are good for them. And Egwene got what she got. And I can live with that.

[helenaheissner]

I go back and forth on my favorite Wheel of Time character.

Wheel of Time book 11 spoilers:

In general tho it’s either Nynaeve or Elayne.

Reading an Elayne chapter rn where she’s coordinating a dozen portal-crafting magic users to deliver soldiers to appropriate spots below her city’s wall to fend off attackers while under siege, not even flinching as she rides a horse across the wall as arrows and fireballs soar all around her all while pregnant with Rand’s babies, no less!

So right now it’s Elayne.

One her wives snarking about how cranky a pregnant lady Elayne is all the while just clinches it.

[ace-and-ranty]

Curious about one thing, tho. I gathered from random internet searching that, in the books, only Mat, Rand and Perrin are ta'varen?

So I gather also that the show expanded Egwene and Nynaeve to be part of a five core ta'varen group, which makes sense since they are all the original gang from the Two Rivers

But now it seems the series is also including Elayne in this, making it a round six central core. Which struck me as odd because... also from what I gather, Rand has three (3) whole girlfriends by the end of the series, so why does Elayne get Main Character Status, but not Aviendha or Min?

Are they.

Are they including Elayne to get an equal gender distribution.

Is that what's happening.

[xhideyourfires]

"Oh, they do. Just... separately."

"How do they not go together?"

[tvmilfs]

Tagged by @fouralarm-fire ty!!!

rules: share some unpopular opinions about 5 different fandoms of your choosing

Tagging: @cairhienin @harrietdyker @shesnake @hidekomoon

1. Yellowjackets - I don’t like Misty at all and her character is the least compelling to me out of the core 6. Not a fan of mistynat though there dynamic in s1 was kinda fun in a platonic way And the way some (not all of course) misty stans just ignore the woc of the show or say horrible things about them while defending misty is vile.. I am a jeff hater and travis defender. Lottienat is more narratively compelling to me than taivan(tho I do still love taivan ofc). Natalie should not have died so soon and her death was badly handled.

2. Abbott Elementary - the way some of the fandom just focuses on Melissa in a diverse show is 😵‍💫😵‍💫. Avanine and Janine deserve more love. I really wish the show would stop with the Ava hitting on Gregory bits because I hate male sexual harassment being made as a joke. Both Janine and Gregory need to start their own healing journeys (I sound like Lottie lmao) before dating.

3. The Wheel of Time - 🫣🫣 I love Moiraine and Siuan both as characters and the ship but I am most excited for Egg, Nyn, and Elayne in s2. I really fell in love with those three since starting the books and I am so excited to see their journeys on screen!

4. The Bear - the first half of s2 was really rough for me because the show works best for me when they are all together as a fucked up found family. I really don’t have strong feelings either way regarding Molly Gordon’s character.

5. Hacks - s2 was a disappointment compared to s1 the lesbian cruise ep was very 😬