#eboue

[allow-me-to-speak]

[markantonys]

book 1: mat goes on a homoerotic roadtrip with rand

book 2: mat goes on a second homoerotic roadtrip with rand

book 3: mat goes on a heteroerotic roadtrip to save elayne's life, whilst having occasional homoerotic thoughts about rand

book 4: mat goes on a third homoerotic roadtrip with rand

book 5: mat finishes up his third homoerotic roadtrip with rand

book 6: mat prepares for a polyerotic roadtrip with rand's girlfriends, at rand's request

book 7: mat goes on a polyerotic roadtrip with rand's girlfriends

conclusion: Put Mat In The Polycule, So Help Me God

[postcard-from-the-past]

Félix Eboué Square Paris

French vintage postcard

[tater-tots-last-of-the-romanovs]

Having some Thoughts about the WOT books.

[wot-tidbits]

Dragonmount

The Shining Walls of Tar Valon

Updated Tar Valon

The Tower Gardens

Tar Valon map

Chapter icon for the White Tower

Ebou Dar 1

Swovan Night

Ebou Dar 2

 The Tarasin Palace in Ebou Dar

Part 2

All art by aedart (wot.fanart)

[sporkkles-irl]

how to advertise fangan ?

[rogue-rook]

wheel takes podcast threw a little party this week when they found out what tylin's sole singular appearance in crossroads of twilight is, ya know, robby j's apology to us for subjecting mat to that storyline, so now I'm chewing my fingers off with anxiety over not knowing if the show is gonna do that whole mess or just cut it

[wheelwheelwheel]

Ebou Dari women would love those titty window sweaters

[toastandjamie]

Or Mat’s internal monologue throughout books 6-9

[allow-me-to-speak]

Reading Crown of Swords rn and I gotta say I fucking hate Elayne

[iliiuan]

...............are these

...............are these the hills? The ones with oddly rectilinear shapes? That surrounded The Farm in Ebou Dar? You know, where they used The Bowl of the Winds?

downside: going to have to include a picture of the Giza pyramids in the slides for the lecture upside: i get to give people a crash course in why perspective matters in two frames, because

followed by

is such a funny sequence

[butterflydm]

I was skimming the books for fic-research reasons and just had to be baffled all over again at how the Seanchan invasion gets treated CoT-onward. The Kin were the spine of the Wise Women of Ebou Dar, who are, like THE people who are respected by everyone in the city. They all had to try to flee the area because of the Seanchan and any who didn't successfully flee but were Kin (and thus could channel) would have been instantly enslaved by the Seanchan. And yet we have that fucking weirdness in Mat's (fucking weird overall) first chapter in A Memory of Light where the Ebou Dari people are all "lol, why would a brutal invasion bother us in the slightest; we're too super-casual for an invasion to bother us".

I mean, that's all tied into the logistics problems that plagued all things Seanchan-related in the later books (they have infinite soldiers and infinite food & supplies and generally don't have to abide by the economics & logistics that Rand's side is required to follow) but it just really stood out to me because I was reading about how respected the Wise Women are (even in places like the Rahad) -- but the Seanchan's coming would have completely gutted them as a society and that should have an impact on how the Ebou Dari feel about the Seanchan. And it just ties into my overall feeling that Jordan stopped treating the Seanchan realistically starting in CoT and then Sanderson continued the trend when he took over the writing of the books.

But, yeah, one of the big things that I hope for from the prime show is that the Seanchan get treated with narrative consistency and we don't get an abrupt 180 on how the narrative treats them at the two-thirds point. Because what the Ebou Dari should be feeling (and what they were feeling in Winter's Heart!) is a lot of fear and paranoia and the desire to rebel, because the Seanchan are Always Watching and will Randomly Steal and Enslave People for reasons that the non-Seanchan people are not going to understand!

I am really curious about how much Seanchan Presence we're going to have in s3, because s2 made some bold choices in where it went with the Seanchan storyline and I am intensely curious about what kind of follow-up we'll have in s3. I've said a lot in the past that Tuon needs to be introduced sooner than she was in the books (Jordan waited way too late to introduce her! He should also have introduced her while she was still in Seanchan, imo, so that we actually could have seen her interacting with the rest of the Imperial family so that we would have a baseline of Seanchan Imperial Behavior to potentially contrast her against later -- but Tuon feels like another case where Jordan valued the surprise of the wham! line over giving a lot of detail and background) and I would absolutely be a fan of her being introduced in s3.

[wafflelovingbatgirl]

Valan Luca will know no peace if he decides to stop in capitols on his touring circuit.

In Ebou Dar, he gets a look at the Empress, may she live forever, who is now his patron. Rescuing that strange woman with the boar-horse really had payed off. And it’s…that bald girl from the first time he left Ebou Dar, who used to torment Mat by calling him Toy. And her shadow. And Mat is there too, and the cheeky little scamp winks his remaining eye.

In Camelyn, he bows before the Queen- and seated on the throne is Morelin, his errant tightrope walker. She seems to find the look on his face funny. A few careful questions with servants reveals that the archer who had worked with the circus and left with her was Birgitte Silverbow herself, just as the woman had always claimed.

Eventually he ends up in Malkier, still rebuilding to a new height of glory. He stands at the center of the tent and in the booth reserved for the King and Queen he hears a familiar sniff. He turns to look and there she is, the beautiful, judgmental Nana. Woman of his dreams. Queen of the country, judging by her crown and holding hands with a solid looking man in the hadori, her familiar disapproving look in place.

He is never going to tour in a city again.

[wheelofmeta]

An interesting thing I'm kind of sad Robert Jordan didn't do is have Berelain, instead of going with Perrin and then having the nonsense that is the love triangle plotline with him and Faile, is have it be she goes with Mat to get Elayne/end up in the Ebou Dar plotline.

Berelain in particular involved in Ebou Dar would get interesting, both in the context of her interacting with Tyelin (both rulers of weak nations, but Berelain arguably in a much stronger position due to her connection to Rand versus Altara's isolation at large at that point). On top of that, if say, Berelain and Mat are involved does Tyelin still target Mat? Or does she leave be since Berelain is the ruler of another country? If she's kept there post-Seanchan attack (say she misses the Traveling ala Mat for some reason, such as having left to run an errand and mistimed things), her and Tuon interacting (both claiming ancestry from Hawkwing). To do this it would make most sense to make the love triangle plotline a matter of Berelain/Mat/Tuon rather than the canon situation, but that could get interesting.

Berelain is a city-state rule who is an ally of the Dragon Reborn and respected by him, who claims to be descended from Hawkwing, and makes use of an Aes Sedai advisor. Tuon is the heiress to a continent spanning empire (and eventual Empress) who is an enemy of Rand's, and owns a former Aes Sedai damane. If Mat's say, already in a relationship/getting somewhere with Berelain, but also has the prophesy with Tuon hanging over his head, how does that go? Or if RJ had decided on this sort of thing, would he have made the prophesy more ambiguous to make Mat be guessing which it's supposed to be about? Would it have still be the canon one and Mat's reluctant/unwilling to involve himself with Berelain as a result?

Also Mat has his own connection to Hawkwing due to being the initial Hornsounder and the way it feels at times like Hawkwing and a past incarnation of Mat's probably lead opposing armies at least some point. That connection is the one that Tuon picks up on rather than Mat's connection to Rand, which always amused me since Mat does arguably have a 'oh fuck' reaction to both questions but she misreads him on the Rand one.

(Honestly it's kind of impressive at no point during the traveling with the show arc did anyone slip up and allow Tuon to realize Mat and Rand do know each other)

It would have been super interesting to see how Tuon would have reacted to Berelain, and it's a genuine pity that in canon we don't get to see how she or the major Seanchan nobility react to her (yes she does interact with some Seanchan at one point but that's left sort of just with a comment and no further which I feel was a waste). Would they take offense and call her a liar? Or would they be more ambivalent/leery of doing that since it's not impossible? It's certainly unlikely, but not impossible (as is one can easily make the claim that there's no reason anyone in the Westlands should trust the Seanchan claims because it had been a thousand years and the reality is even if the Seanchan empire started out ruled by a member of Hawkwing's family, that specific family line could have died out). They may decide she's a liar since it's more politically valuable (if they agree she is, then it causes some issues for the Seanchan invasion justification) but there also is the possibility they wouldn't.

[iliiuan]

Ebou Dari marriage knife vibes

18th century daggers from India and Turkey