#IM HAVING FUN WITH THE WORM DREAMS. I THINK FAVOUR MIGHT DIE BADLY. WHO KNOWS

[rennybu]

omg speaking of tieflings. i don't think i posted these sketches of my BG3 creature, Favour

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight prologue (part 3)

Levelling up and last stands

Graendal to Galad, and now Galad to Padan Fain. It’s like alignment whiplash.

The sky was black. A tempest. He liked that, though he hated the one who caused it.

This is great because there’s just a hint of ambiguity to who that actually may be. Rand? Or the Dark One? And when you have to ask, even for a second…well, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it.

Hatred. It was the proof that he still lived, the one emotion left.

Well, that’s one more than Rand at any rate.

(Pre-Dragonmount, I mean).

Padan Fain exists to chew scenery and you know what buddy? Chew away. Live your dreams.

Did his hatred cause that storm? It must be so. Yes.

Sorry Fain; pretty sure Rand has first claim on I am the storm. He just carries it better, you see. It’s a good look on him and we don’t mess with that.

I typo-ed that as ‘it’s a god look on him’ and really… either way.

When you accepted madness into yourself – embraced it and drank it in as if it were sunlight or water or the air itself – it became another part of you.

I’m mostly amused by how similar this sounds to the wording of Egwene thinking of how the Aiel handle pain. In this case I don’t think it’s particularly intentional or meaningful or anything, but it amuses me.

Another part of you. Like a hand or an eye.

Not sure those are the best examples, given Rand and also very likely at some point Mat, but sure.

He was finally free.

Has something changed? Oh, wait. Is this the first we’ve seen of him since saidin was cleansed? And Shadar Logoth destroyed? I think it is, in which case… interesting. Particularly interesting since it doesn’t seem to have affected the dagger’s power – Fain’s still obsessed with his precious, at any rate – and last we heard Rand’s wound(s) hadn’t healed. But Shadar Logoth was destroyed, and its power seemingly with it, more or less, and so now Fain or Mordeth or Smeagol or whoever he is these days is free, in a manner of speaking. That’ll end well for everyone involved, I’m sure.

Oh he killed a worm. And he’s in the Blight so that’s a Worm. Im…pressive?

Mist had begun to trail him, creeping up from the ground. Was that mist his madness, or was it his hatred? It was so familiar. It twisted around his ankles and liked at his heels.

Like a yellow fog, that rubs its back upon the window panes, a yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes, licks its tongue into the corners of the evening…

No? Or perhaps like, say, Mashadar? I mean, maybe it’s nothing, but if it’s not nothing, that’s… concerning. Were more things freed than Fain, in the ruination of Shadar Logoth? Open to give the world hope but did it also release some element of despair?

The mist struck.

And unless we’ve transported into one of Sanderson’s original works, that means I’m right and the cleansing of saidin did indeed have some… unintended consequences. Which is fitting, in a grander sense of balance, but still kind of… well, sad.

So Fain has levelled up again, it would seem, which is the outcome absolutely no one needed.

That said, he played enough of a part early on, and enough has been made of him from time to time afterwards, that it would be kind of weird to leave him out of the ending. Personally I wouldn’t particularly mind; watching him chew scenery is fun enough from time to time but the rest of the time I sort of tend to forget about him, and I’m not particularly invested in anything to do with him, and the slightly more critical side of me wonders if he was ever truly necessary as a character… but at this point in a series, once you have a character like that, dropping them now would feel untidy. It would feel like an oversight, or like lazy plotting.

Which is hard, when everything about him suggests that his entire purpose is to be a wildcard character. He doesn’t have a clear fated role to play in all of this, unless it’s something to do with his link to the dagger and, via that, to Mat somehow.

Instead, he’s a powerful entity on a third side in a two-sided war. Yes, there are far more factions than that within each of those sides, and so much of the point of the last several books has been that lack of unity, and the tragedy but perhaps inevitability of fighting against those who should be your allies, of losing sight of the larger conflict in favour of the smaller and more immediate ones, and of trying to forge some kind of alliance despite that, and the ways in which that can succeed or fail.

But Fain is less a part of that and more a completely outside element. Not, in a way, unlike Aridhol itself was, as it became Shadar Logoth. A darkness and an evil that came from a form of the Light and its hatred of the Shadow and, over time, twisted. And therefore was an evil that was not truly of the Shadow, but was no longer an ally of the Light. Instead it was its own poison.

That’s kind of what Fain is. Which certainly has potential, as a story element, but I am curious to see how that’s played, and how well it’s played, given the sheer volume of characters we’re dealing with, and the size of this conflict, and the many other themes already at play. Can his role, whatever it is, end up feeling satisfying? I guess we’ll read and find out on that one.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, but the point of it was: yes, he’s levelled up, because I think he has to in order to have a hope of having his part in the ending being interesting or satisfying.

Red below, black above. Red and black, red and black, so much red and black.

See, the thing is, I know for a fact that Brandon Sanderson is a fan of Les Miserables, so I am fully justified in humming ‘red, the blood of angry men; black, the dark of ages past….’

Also, Moridin would approve. Of the colour scheme, if nothing else.

And also of the chaos. Some say the world will end in (bale)fire, some say in ice, and Padan Fain says fuck it why not evil killer mist. Less poetic but sure.

(Let’s play a little game called: over the course of the liveblog, how much of an English Literature syllabus do we think I’ve referenced? …on second thought let’s not play that game)

Oh, the Trollocs didn’t die, they just got a Mashadar Makeover and now they’re competing for Malkier’s Blight’s Next Top Abomination.

He left the Myrddraal. It would not rise, as rumours said they did. His touch now brought instant death to one of its kind. Pity. He had a few nails he might have otherwise put to good use.

Perhaps he should get some gloves. But if he did, he couldn’t cut his hand. What a problem.

The thing is, while the style here is very Sanderson, for a character like Fain it actually works pretty well. Which is mainly, I think, because I have long suspected Sanderson has a soft spot for writing characters who are utterly batshit and having the time of their lives with it. Pass the scenery, and the salt. Yum.

Like an old friend. A dear, beloved old friend that you were going to stab through the eye, open up at the gut and consume by handfuls while drinking his blood. That was the proper way to treat friends.

Sure, it lacks the undertone of beautiful horror, and the poetry of Machin Shin whispering about braiding flayed skin, which is in a way a shame. But it conveys the essential message and character, and at least for me, this works well as an example of Sanderson’s approach of not trying to imitate style because that could go so badly, but instead emulating the feel of the story itself. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but here, at least for me, it does.

It's ironic in a way that it’s a similar thing to what he’s done with Mat, but it has the opposite effect. With Mat – I’ve written about this elsewhere, but tl;dr is that I think he read Mat as funny and so tried to write Mat as funny, using his own methods rather than Jordan’s because imitating style exactly is a lost cause, but something very essential was lost in the translation (like the fact that Mat himself isn’t really humorous; it more comes from the contrast of his thoughts with his actions, and his character against the world around him, but I digress again). So he went for ‘convey the same idea through my own methods rather than trying to imitate Jordan’s’ – consciously or subconsciously – and it backfired. But with Fain, he’s taken the same approach – ‘convey a scenery-chewing wildcard who has lost every mind he’s possessed, which is several’ – and this time the same-idea-different-style still gets that across in a way that feels true to character.

Obviously mileage can and will vary on whether or not this works, but for me it’s just an interesting study in how a certain approach or method can succeed or fail depending on exactly how and where it’s applied, and what the cause of that success or failure may be – why it works in one place but not another, and what went right or wrong.

It is, I think, something of a writing exercise if you want to turn it into one. A bit like reverse-engineering an outline from a book you’ve read (I do this often; I realised at some point that I was doing it and then I made a point of doing it deliberately, and it’s super interesting, and for me at least it’s helped me think more deliberately about the structure of a story, and how that can be leveraged for different effects). But thinking about the specifics of what does or doesn’t work for you about the authorship switch – a particular character, or a scene, or the pacing, or the handling of a certain theme, or anything else – and then digging into the specifics of why it works, or doesn’t.

That, for me, has been more interesting than just picking out the differences. Sure, I’ll nitpick, but I prefer not to focus on it, because ‘this is different’ feels… kind of pointless. Of course it’s different. Figuring out exactly what is different, or why it’s different is interesting sometimes. But also figuring out where and how that difference matters or doesn’t is more what I’m trying to get at here. Because some of the differences, I don’t mind. Some, I do. And trying to understand why I mind some and not others has been helpful at least for me in, again, understanding all of those elements of a story or piece of writing better, and thinking about how they could be used or changed or recombined.

But then, I’m the kind of person who likes to take things apart to figure out how they work. And also to overthink every goddamn text I consume.

Still, it’s a fun one if you’re in the market for writing exercises to try whilst in quarantine.

*

Malenarin Rai. Bold of you to introduce a new POV character in the penultimate book of a series that already has dozens if not hundreds, but that’s WoT for you.

Also it’s a prologue so the rules are different.

Heeth Tower is a weird name. Heeth. But then, I don’t think Sanderson has ever been quite as good with names as Jordan was. And that’s the sort of change I’m not going to get too worked up over. (Also, it was Jordan who gave us Mountains of Dhoom, so I rest my case).

The whistling wind rattled the wooden shutter.

It’s not time for the wind yet; we’re still in the prologue! Wait your turn, wind; chapter one should be here any day now.

Using a Trolloc horn as a paperweight is pretty badass, Malenarin, but Furyk Karede and his human skull wineglass might offer some competition.

I don’t think we’ve spent much – any, depending on where exactly the scene in TPoD’s prologue takes place – time in Kandor outside of New Spring. I guess we’ve got to finish filling in the map now; we’ve only got one book left!

Malenarin’s son is turning fourteen soon, so he might just be lucky enough to get Tarmon Gai’don as a birthday party.

He smiled, setting the Trolloc horn on the note, in case that shutter broke open again. He’d slain the Trolloc who had borne that horn himself. Then he walked over to the side of his office and opened his battered oak trunk. Among the other effects inside was a cloth-wrapped sword, the brown scabbard kept well oiled and maintained, but faded with time.

Typing it out, it’s not even that similar, but reading this my first thought was of Tam al’Thor, pulling out his old trunk and his old sword at the beginning of The Eye of the World, before giving it to Rand as he sets off on his coming-of-age story.

To have a duty was to have pride – just as to bear a burden was to gain strength.

In moderation, though. *Looks pointedly at Rand al’Thor*

I still don’t understand how turning their backs on the Blight to go find the Dragon Reborn to tell him to pay attention to the Blight is a good idea for the Borderland rulers. I must be missing something here and I hope it is eventually revealed to me, because otherwise that is terrible strategy on so many counts.

The only way to go to the fourth level was to climb a narrow, collapsible ramp on the outside of the tower

What could possibly go wrong? I mean, last time we were in Kandor a kid was thrown off a balcony, so…

[Jargen] wore a cord looped around the shoulder of his brown uniform; it bore a knot for each Trolloc he’d killed. There had to be approaching fifty knots in the thing by now.

That’s cute, Rand says, flicking dust off his shoulder Luke-Skywalker-in-The-Last-Jedi style, and flicking some Arrows of Fire off with it to torch another thousand or so Trollocs without breaking a sweat.

But okay, yes, for an ordinary non-protagonist non-Lan in a random guard tower in Kandor, I suppose that qualifies as pretty badass.

The beacons have been lit! Gondor Rena Tower calls for aid!

Pretty sure that’s your cue, Lan.

Or not; Malenarin seems to think it’s his cue to confirm the SOS and start preparing the tower for… bad things, probably.

Seriously, wind, wait your turn.

Of course his son is next on the list of messenger boys to be sent out. Well, it’s a better fate than being thrown off a balcony at least. Maybe.

‘No, we need to send several messengers. Double up. Just in case the towers fall.’

Do you have any uncrowned infant kings you want to send as well? Just checking.

Malenarin let himself feel a hint of relief that his son was one of those riding to safety. There was no dishonour in that; the messages needed to be delivered, and Keemlin was next on the roster.

There is a kind of parallel here – less a parallel, perhaps, than an echo – to Lan. A son sent to safety as a Borderland hold prepares to fall, the sense of a last stand. Because in the Borderlands perhaps that is not so unusual a story, in its way. The Wheel of Time turns.

It was time for Tarmon Gai’don. And looking out into the storm, Malenarin thought he could see to the very edge of time itself. An edge that was not so far distant.

Maybe you should have a dream-chat with Moridin, Malenarin. Maybe it’s just the air in the Blight: gives you nihilist thoughts.

Oh oops, his son wasn’t one of the messengers to go. Because he decided to be all noble and let another boy go in his place, whose mother had already lost four sons. That’s sweet, kid, and it’ll probably get you killed.

Tian, Sanderson? Named after another ill-fated messenger boy in your own works, perhaps?

‘Run down to my office,’ Malenarin said. ‘There is a sword in my oaken trunk. Fetch it for me.’

Aw. Because his son has proven himself a man, three whole days early. Because we’re approaching the end now, and it’s time for everyone to take their last steps into their roles, become who they must be to face that end – whether they’re a protagonist or just some poor doomed kid in a tower in the Blight.

It's something these kinds of snapshot one-off scenes are good for: to show the scope of the story, that it touches everyone, no matter that they’ve never even met Rand or any of the others. And to give this sense of those final steps happening in snapshots like this across the land. The sense of an entire world taking a last deep breath. And so we pause for brief close-ups on the faces of some of the extras stepping onto the battlefield, to illustrate that.

Keemlin’s swearing his version of the ‘kill the bad things until we die or they do’ that every Borderland (and Aiel) nation seems to have, each with its own slight semantic variations.

‘Rise as a man, my son!’

This is no place, or time, for children. Ergo, he can no longer be a child, by simple virtue of being here. Which makes this a rather bittersweet moment; Malenarin’s proud of his son but there’s also this sense that far too many children are having to grow up far too fast in these last moments (and others will never grow up at all – in today’s theme of referencing poetry I like, go check out The Lads in their Hundreds).

They yelled defiance of the Shadow. For a moment, their voices rang louder than the thunder.

I don’t have a lot to say about this except that it’s a lovely image.

Together they turned to face the oncoming Shadow.

Nice knowing you.

Draghkar overhead and Trollocs oncoming, and they’re just a lonely tower waiting to die. I do love a doomed last stand, even if it’s characters I’ve never met before and likely will never see again.

Malenarin was a man of the Borderlands, same as his father, same as his son beside him. They knew their task. You held until you were relieved.

THAT’S YOUR CUE, LAN.

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