#it wasn’t like that in the beginning the plot began at a smaller scale within family for the most part

[eternal-reverie]

finishing love between fairy and devil reminded that I had another c-drama (Love like the Galway) that I had paused watching and now that I resumed it, uhh I think I lost track of the ongoing plot and character motivations/backstories 😬

[mittensmorgul]

Still in s2, in this case 2.15, Tall Tales. Is it hilarious or mortifying that this ep now feels like The Beginning of the meta nonsense with Chuck?

I need to start by saying that it was unlikely that the writers were actually planning to make the Trickster secretly the archangel Gabriel from the start. I assume that notion only came to them much later, after the concept of angels was introduced in s4 (meaning even Mystery Spot was still just written as an incredibly powerful but non-angelic trickster). But of course we would eventually learn the truth, and a blueprint for so much of the Chuck Nonsense can therefore be tied directly back to Gabriel’s MO from the start.

For those unfamiliar with my theory that the four archangels are little more than facets of Chuck’s own self, I explain a bit in this post right here but I unfortunately can’t find the original post I mentioned offhandedly in that post that went into more detail about the theory... it’s not rocket science though and hopefully the quick explanation will suffice for the purposes of this post. :’D

(I swear, someday tumblr will have an actually functional search and we will rejoice, but for today, I’ve already spent an hour going through all my angel tags looking for that post and coming up empty... *sigh*)

(I lied, I spent more time diving, and found this re: Changing Channels and it touches on at least Gabriel’s obvious parallel to Chuck-As-Author, as well as the insistence that the only way to defeat the author is to “play the game” the author has laid out for them, which is RIDICULOUS because as we learn in s15, the only way to win is to force the author to play a different game-- which is where free will is supposed to come into play, which falls apart if we consider the series finale to actually be canon as it stands, which I personally cannot...)

Suffice it to say that I have always viewed the four archangels-- with our knowledge that they are “the stuff of pure creation” and among Chuck’s original creations before he branched out and also before natural evolution began running rampant and creating things he could never even have dreamt of, such as humanity and music and love-- as four different faces of Chuck himself. They’re archetypes, basically, of different aspects of the cosmic force that drives creation, and we’ve seen Chuck display aspects of each of them as the narrative progressed. Though of the four, Gabriel is the most Chuck-like. And the parallel is SOLID between 2.15 and 4.18, knowing what we know about both of them from later canon.

Okay back to the point now...

Think of Gabriel’s role in this episode as it compares to Chuck’s entire place in the story going back to where we first met him in 4.18.

Chuck created a story to entertain himself and lure in Sam and Dean, just as Gabriel did in 2.15. It might not seem an obvious motive for The Trickster in that episode, but knowing that he will later be revealed to be Gabriel, who had been keeping an eye on Sam and Dean and knowing their “destiny” from the start, it’s WILD that he just wanted to sort of peek in on them and play with them a bit, test their mettle, much like Chuck in 4.18.

Gabriel pulled his stories right from the pages of the Weekly World News and wrote Sam and Dean into those wacky tales, while Chuck pulled his from the Winchesters’ lives. They both manipulated reality to their convenience, for the sake of the story, and to push Sam and Dean toward making choices. They haven’t overwritten their free will, but both laid out the “hamster wheel,” or the rat maze where their choices were narrowed down to the ones necessitated by the respective “storytellers” in each case.

Like Chuck pulling magical weapons and plot twists out of thin air in late canon, and taking the credit for pretty much every A-Plot in the entire series, Gabriel does the same on a much smaller scale, manipulating the scenarios the Winchesters find themselves in.

Like Chuck masquerading as a schlub in a bathrobe, Gabriel masqueraded as a maintenance man in schlubby coveralls. They could’ve chosen any role for themselves within their own stories, but they chose these guys. Innocuous, harmless, disarming. But within those disguises they both hinted at what they really were, halfway hoping for Sam and Dean to see through the act. Gabriel played up all the “trickster clues” like the candy wrappers, while Chuck literally said at one point “I’m a cruel, capricious god!” to which Sam and Dean informed him he was definitely not god. So...

Gabriel was outed as the trickster by the end of the episode, as Chuck was outed as nothing more than a Prophet, a “mouthpiece” for the divine word without any real control over the situation.

Sam and Dean-- in both 2.15 and 4.18-- walked away feeling as if they’d earned a win. The Trickster was defeated, killed and supposedly gone forever, no longer able to mess with their lives. Chuck’s “prophecies” were shown to have “loopholes” they could exploit to find a way to avoid the worst of the prophecies coming to pass, in hopes there was a way to avoid starting the apocalypse. But in both cases, we’re shown the win wasn’t actually real, and just a manipulation of the larger narrative. Both “wins” are really just tests of the theory that the Winchesters can be manipulated.

The Trickster wasn’t actually killed, it was merely another trick. Gabriel lived to trick them another day, and Sam and Dean were none the wiser.

Chuck’s prophecy wasn’t really anything more than a test, to see how Sam and Dean would react to knowing the full truth about their Destiny-- which they were  about to learn by the end of s4 when Sam unwittingly released Lucifer by doing the ONE THING he believed would prevent the apocalypse. All of s4 had been a long con, leading up to Chuck’s real story starting, and their true destiny coming to light.

No wonder Chuck was pissed with these guys. He couldn’t ever really get them to comply with the story he wanted to tell about them, until after his power to influence their lives was gone (if you believe the finale actually happened just as it appeared on the tin...). If that’s even what actually happened, and it wasn’t just another trick.

(eta: OMG i found a post that links to a bunch of those other posts... thanks popup auto tag that appeared when I typed gabriel in the tag box...

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185545238900/309-malleus-maleficarum-the-one-where-we

also click the gabriel as mirror of chuck tag for more... this has been going on forever apparently) :’D

[nai-has-jams]

Day 33; No Sleep

Structures. What are they for? Population control? Self-identification?

Most feel more comfortable with the latter explanation. It gives them a sense of control. 

The common man has no control when they see the very structures they’ve grown so accustomed and have abided by are not their own choice. Time allowed the lines of free will to be blurred. Am I drinking this tea because I’m thirsty or someone told me to? Who told me to? Was it me or someone else? How could I know I’m not being watched by someone I can’t see the very same way I do on a television. Watching a character, who’s been given lines of what to say from the minute they were born out of the creativity of someone else’s mind. The character itself was born into a structure. Everything for that character was decided for them; the setting, plot, their dreams, goals and desires. From start to finish, the character has already gotten a fate that’s been decided. In the creative medium, that character thinks all its choices are freewill… not knowing they’re actually a script. When you look at film and media from the lenses of blurred reality, it opens the door for comparisons to our own real life experiences.

From the day you are born, you are given a series of labels, followed by structures you will have to grow to mold yourself in. From day one, you are told your name, that you must live up to the actions of those bearing the same name, and fixated to a cult of family known as a bloodline and further fixated into a religion or lack thereof. You are decided to be poor, or rich. If you’re on the inside or outside of the socio-economic barriers called class. You’re given choices to make with consequences, whether they be dire or not. You grow to find people are easily manipulated, that you can commit acts of dishonesty and they’re none-the-wiser without proof other than your hearsay. It becomes easy to you. You’ve learned how certain people think. You are able to predict how they react in certain scenarios and then begin to craft scenarios for your benefit, hoping to get their reaction to go according to your plan. You’ve now eliminated them of freewill. They think their choices are their own. On a smaller scale, this type of manipulation is harmless. ‘A little white lie’. But on a gargantuan scale, this small like can grow from harmless to devastating. 

Unbeknownst to them that you have been feeding them the very information they believed to have come up with on their own. You allow them to feel that sense of power while simultaneously stripping them of it. You are in control of what they say or do because you have an understanding of structure. How it’s not real. It’s only information you’ve been feeding them and they’re expected to conform because that goes with your plan. You’ve used the very structures that were given to you to keep you in line to keep the ones who’ve structured you in line. Act accordingly while simultaneously observing their nature. If I am dishonest about this and i am not caught, I have outsmarted the system because now, only I know the truth. Have you ever noticed what happens when you hide the truth from someone? They’re blissful until that truth has been unveiled. If you can keep the veil on, there is no other truth to their knowledge. 

Maintaining that hidden truth proves difficult to do amongst a small group of people. They begin to talk and find inconsistencies with one another due to perspective. One’s own perspective influences their interpretation of the truth. Perspective allows for a system of belief. In other words. “I’ve seen this with my own two eyes, it must be true.” But if they’ve been seeing an illusion for most of their lives, they’ve attached themselves to their beliefs rather than their rationality. They become  synonymous with the truth they’ve been fed. Reminding the control of this only reinforces the strength of the veil. Any moment they began to question if the information they’ve been fed is the only truth has been erased because they’re now self-righteous and belief oriented. Humans are very stubborn beings. Once their belief is challenged, they will do anything to convince others of their correctness. Why? The short answer is fear.

Fear of what would happen if they were wrong. That means having to confront a truth they’ve spent so long in the dark about. Not knowing what's on the other side of that truth they’ve been fed. To question one believe opens another door to question everything you’ve been told and have taken as fact. It destroys all your structures. What’s real and what’s not real? You come into this world belonging to someone or something. A structure has been made for you when you are born. 

As I’ve grown older, the lines between fiction and reality become harder and harder to see. I notice the patterns in nearly everything. I try to ignore them and stay blissfully ignorant, but there’s no denying that some things are just… weird.

Some phrases repeated a few too many times, some shapes look a bit too familiar. Deja-vu over and over. I know I've been here before. Have i visited it in a dream? Have I been here in a different timeline and my consciousness is being shared with someone else? Is it narcissistic to think that said consciousness is an alternate version of me? What if it’s a completely different person born to a completely different structure and we synced because of our position under the stars or some bullshit like that. I could never be sure without allowing myself to give up this reality and explore endless possibilities and theories.

It started after I was addicted to playing games that allowed me to be fully in control.Prime example; Sims 4 I was the god in their world. I birthed these characters. Decided what I wanted them to look like, how I wanted them to act how I wanted them to be. Decided personality traits, where they would live, what kind of job they would have. How much money they’d make. Everything they ever did, I was in control of. I told them when to shit, when to eat, when to fuck. Everything. That kind of power allowed me to step outside of being myself and to be someone else. God. I didn’t understand why that felt so freeing. It wasn't until I began to question my own sanity outside the game. What if I don't actually want to play this game? What if I’m the actual Sim thinking i’ve got free will and someone else is controlling what I do or say? Then what? My power diminished. I was nothing more than a vessel. I’d never know unless I sought out the truth past the structures I've been given to live in.

Blurring those lines prove dangerous to me. I’m a black woman. A gay black woman.

These structures i’ve been confined within make it difficult to leave this vessel. They hold weight. I’m expected to live out past my structures. To make something great of myself despite the labels I've been given. These labels are “self empowered” we always hear about a struggle behind these labels. How hard it is to live within them because I live in a system designed not for my socio-economic benefit. An apologetic system that wants to allow a certain percentage of people from my sort of background to be the “token” of businesses. To demand they show a fair balance between me and that of my possibly Caucasian counterparts. Affirmative action-y type of thing. It’s not winning if it’s handed to you, right? But everything has been handed to me. And I don’t mean that in a “my life is super silver-spooned” type way. I mean that in, these cards were not my dealings. I didn’t sit at this table to talk about why I am what I am. Who I am.

I was told this was my name, this was my class, this was my gender, this was my struggle, do something about it. 

It’s almost as is my life is one big test and I'm being monitored by someone i can’t see. Someone who constantly is scripting my movie, making changes to parts of my life. And flashbacks and deja-vu are scenes I've filmed already as this character that are part of the deleted scenes.

The only escape is through dreams. And even then, those contain a whole new take on what reality actually is. I’ve had recurring dreams littered with signs or allusions to my life outside of that realm. I’ve felt the most free in my dreams. I struggle to remember them when i wake up but i always seem to remember the point of them. How they’re messages or sometimes, often times, escapes. 

Then it hit me. I felt free when I was God in that game, not because of that sense of power. But because I could spend time not being binded to these structures that I live in everyday. I could spend time being someone else.

And that’s why writing in first person these stories about Korean performers was so liberating. I was writing as If i was really a Nam Joon or Ji Min. Exploring and observing their personalities on camera and alluding to what it would be like to reduce their existence to characters in a story where I could make them do what I wanted. Feed my own emotions into the piece at the time and make them react to real life situations I dealt with as themselves and instead of me. It fucks with you when you stop writing and you have to go back to being confined in your structures. But it fucks with you more when you work a 9-5 like a zombie knowing this is nothing but another structure where your creative outlet is being muted so you can make time to be someone you are not. 

But is that really any different than sitting at a computer for 7 hours concocting a tale of lust, angst and drama. Pretending to be someone you are not. I am the god in my stories. I am the god in my video games. I am not the god in my present day life. 

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 32

In which ghosts have funerals and Nynaeve plays detective.

Chapter 32: Rivers of Shadow

That’s a lovely chapter title. And interesting, if a little ominous, combined with the snake-and-wheel icon that’s basically shorthand for ‘this chapter has implications for the entire story and world’.

And we’re with Nynaeve. Standing on top of a wall. Not you, too, Nynaeve!

I’m not going to quote the whole thing but the opening description is very atmospheric and lovely.

She can still feel a storm in the north, only it’s not really a storm, it’s a metaphor, and when the wind starts blowing it’s also a metaphor, and actually it’s another point of parallel between her and Mat. Her weather-sense is quite a lot like his dice. Both basically just say ‘PLOT COMETH AHEAD’.

There would never again be a place for her in the Two Rivers. She knew this, though it hurt her. She was Aes Sedai now; it had become who she was, more important to her now than being Wisdom had once been.

That’s quite an admission from Nynaeve, Queen of Denial, Self-Deception and Malkier.

It’s also a nice continuation of her thoughts from way back in TFoH, when she and Elayne were on the wagon away from Tanchico and Nynaeve had a moment to think about what she wanted and who she was becoming. How this started out as her wanting to protect the people from her village, but then shifted more into a desire to learn how to Heal, and set her on the path towards becoming Aes Sedai – something she once utterly denied ever wanting to be, but has been becoming ever since.

And it’s one thing for Egwene to leave the Two Rivers behind; she wanted a bigger world, and while she’s occasionally expressed some nostalgia, she came of age elsewhere. The Two Rivers was a childhood home, but she is no longer a child, and her life has taken her beyond that village.

Nynaeve, though, came into adulthood in the Two Rivers. She was Wisdom; it was her place in the world, her identity, not just her childhood. And when she left, so much of that was taken from her, and so much of her journey since then has been about re-establishing who she is, both to herself and to those around her. She is no longer the Wisdom, but along the way she has gained wisdom.

And now, she’s almost finished with that journey. They all are. The time for character development is past; it’s time to take their places, as who they have become, for an ending.

That simple life – once all she had been able to imagine – would now seem dull and unfulfilling.

How far she has come, to be able to acknowledge that and admit it to herself without fighting it. She knows herself, now. She’s faced so many of her fears and insecurities – has actually faced one of her worst fears twice: once in her Accepted test and then again at World’s End – broken her block, become and embraced being Aes Sedai, and in the process she’s learned to accept and be herself. She’s still Nynaeve, so she’d still probably want to box your ears if you said that to her, but she can be so much more honest with herself now. She can see and understand things like this, even if it runs counter to who she once thought she was meant to be.

Have I mentioned that I love Nynaeve’s character arc?

The nearby fields were barren. Ploughed, seeded, yet still barren. Light! Why didn’t crops grow anymore? Where would they find food this winter?

I don’t know, maybe ask some Aiel to come sing to them? They might not mind a break from kidnapping rulers. Loial would probably join in.

So they’re up here to look at…ghosts?

Like a wisp of the ocean fog, a tiny patch of glowing light was blowing across the ground. It grew, bulging like a tiny storm cloud, glowing with a pearly light not unlike that of the clouds above. It resolved into the shape of a man, walking. Then that luminescent fog sprouted more figures. Within moments, an entire glowing procession strode across the ground, moving at a mournful pace. […] They were composed of a strange, otherworldly light. Several figures in the group – which was now about two hundred strong – were carrying a large object. Some kind of palanquin? Or…no. It was a coffin. Was this a funeral procession from long ago, then? What had happened to these people, and why had they been drawn back to the world of the living?

This is lovely. I didn’t mean to quote so much of it, but it’s just a very cool image. Soft and light and a little bit eerie and a little bit mournful but also strangely beautiful. Then again, Sanderson has practice at writing ghosts among mist…

I suppose it’s fitting that a ghostly funeral procession turned up the day after Rand did. The Pattern’s fraying, and right now he carries a feeling of darkness and death…and yet, this doesn’t seem dark in the same way. Sad, perhaps. Wistful. But it puts me in mind of the whole no beginnings or endings notion. This has been, and perhaps soon will be again, and the Wheel turns.

A guy turning to charcoal, on the other hand, is just fucking creepy.

But also kind of cool.

Mostly creepy, though.

“You’ve heard that he is proclaiming that the Last Battle will begin soon.” Nynaeve felt a stab of worry for Lan, then anger towards Rand. He still thought that if he could stage his assault at the same time as Lan’s attack on Tarwin’s Gap, he could confuse his enemies. Lan’s attack could very well be the beginning of the Last Battle.

Which seems very fitting, to me. Maybe it’s because Malkier feels almost like a prelude to Tarmon Gai’don, if you zoom out a little. Or maybe because of the parallels between Lan and Rand, and the way Lan feels like a…version of Rand on a smaller scale and different timeline. Tied to Malkier as Rand is tied to the land as a whole, an embodiment almost of a nation or world. Fated, or believing himself fated, to give his life to that cause.

And it would be fitting, too, for Lan’s personal war in the Blight to finally come to fulfilment not as a waste, not as a distraction from his and Moiraine’s and the world’s greater cause, but as the true beginning of its culmination. As if Lan has been held back until now, held back by other duties and other bonds but always looking northwards, until it becomes time for those things to intersect and so he is released.

Also it would be a fitting nod to part of Aragorn’s role in Return of the King, so there’s that.

“Yes,” Cadsuane said, musingly, “he is probably right.” Why did she keep that hood up? Rand obviously wasn’t around.

Because it adds to her aura of wisdom and mystery, obviously. She’s almost three hundred years old; she can do it for the aesthetic if she wants to.

The other Aes Sedai resumed their conversation, Merise and Corele taking further opportunity to voice their displeasure with Rand in their separate ways – one dour, the other congenial.

It made Nynaeve want to defend him.

Ah, Nynaeve. That’s just like her – she can chew out her people until the cows (sheep?) come home, but if someone else so much as looks at them crosswise, she will be boxing ears before you can say ‘hypocrite’. I love her.

And honestly, that’s not even a particularly unusual trait, as much as it’s fun to laugh about in Nynaeve. Anyone here have siblings? Yeah.

Nynaeve started to leave, and as she did so she noticed that Cadsuane was watching her. Nynaeve hesitated, turning toward the cloaked woman. Cadsuane’s face was barely visible by torchlight, but Nynaeve caught a grimace in the shadows, as if Cadsuane were displeased with Merise’s and Corele’s complaints. Nynaeve and Cadsuane stared at each other for a moment; then Cadsuane nodded curtly. The aged Aes Sedai turned and began to walk away, right in the middle of one of Merise’s tirades about Rand.

One of the subtle things I’ve enjoyed is watching the relationship between these two change, especially Cadsuane’s growing respect for Nynaeve. In Winter’s Heart, she thinks she will not acknowledge Nynaeve as Aes Sedai until Nynaeve has been tested and has held the Oath Rod. Then, in Crossroads of Twilight, we get this: The child would need to flash her Great Serpent ring under people’s noses to be taken for Aes Sedai, which she was, if just technically. It’s a small shift, but definitely a shift. And now this – a nod of seeming respect, of agreement, even, as if between equals or allies. It’s just one of those on-the-sidelines relationship shifts that can be fun to see in subtle snippets like these.

That nod of Cadsuane’s couldn’t possibly have been given out of respect. Cadsuane was far too self-righteous and arrogant for that.

Well, she’d hardly be the first Aes Sedai you’ve judged that way, Nynaeve. Moiraine?

What to do about Rand, then? He didn’t want Nynaeve’s help – or anyone’s help – but that was nothing new.

It’s hard, when there’s so much else at stake. Because it’s not just about him – it’s about the entire world.

And ‘I don’t want anyone’s help’ is fine when it’s, say, your maths homework. Or a struggle between friends that people keep meddling with. Or when work sucks and you’re tired and your flat’s a mess and you just want to not have to deal with any of it for a bit. But there’s a point where it stops being a thing people actually need to listen to – where help becomes necessary whether you want it or not – and I’m pretty sure that point is somewhere slightly before ‘I carry a nuke in my pocket just in case’.

Now, it’s also true that a lot of the people ostensibly trying to help Rand are actually just trying to push him in one direction or another, and are not in fact helping at all.

And there are others who are trying to help, but are going about it in a way that is absolutely not going to work.

And there are some who are perhaps trying to help him, but are mostly trying to help keep the world from breaking apart around him. That’s where it gets a bit…tricky.

But as threatening and as intimidating as Lan could be, he’d sooner chop off his own hand than raise it to harm her.

Too soon, Nynaeve. Too soon.

Rand. Once, she’d thought him as gentle as Lan.

Once, he was gentle. But then…*waves at entirety of series up to this point* thathappened.

That Rand was gone. Nynaeve saw again the moment when he had exiled Cadsuane. She’d believed that he wouldkill Cadsuane if he saw her face again, and thinking of the moment still gave her shivers. Surely it had been her imagination, but the room had seemed to darkendistinctly at that moment, as if a cloud had passed over the sun.

Yeah um…not just your imagination, sorry.

And this is where Nynaeve sees more than perhaps most of the people around Rand, including some of the other Aes Sedai. Cadsuane sees it as well, but the others, I think, don’t realise quite how significantly he’s changed. Nynaeve, though…she knew him when he was gentle. And she knew him when he was becoming the Dragon Reborn, Healed him when he said he wasn’t sure how human the Dragon Reborn could afford to be, stood by his side and protected him when she could, however she could. She can see that something has changed, that the boy she knew is…hopefully not gone forever but certainly on a very extended, forced holiday.

Still, she won’t turn away from him. Nynaeve doesn’t give up on people like that. And anything can be healed.

But first, a coughing child. I suppose it’s the sort of thing Rand might once have paid attention to – refugees and starving children – as he did in Tear with the two steamwagon boys for whom Min foresaw tragedy. Now, though, he can’t take the time or the energy to care. And so it falls to Nynaeve.

I suppose it’s a way to show her in a role that’s not actually unlike Wisdom. Just for the world in general and with greater power and knowledge. But that doesn’t mean she’s left this behind: her care for those who need help or Healing, her sense of responsibility for those who find themselves in her care or purview. And also her low tolerance for bullshit, as evidenced by her dealings with this kid’s father.

“He should live, if you do as I say. […] If the fever starts again, bring him to me at the Dragon’s palace.”

“Yes, my Lady,” the woman said as the husband knelt, taking the boy and smiling. 

Nynaeve picked up her lantern and rose.

“Lady,” the woman said. “Thank you.”

Nynaeve turned back. “You should have brought him to me days ago. I don’t care what foolish superstitions people are spreading, the Aes Sedai are not your enemies. If you know any who are sick, encourage them to visit us.”

She’s still blunt and a bit abrasive, of course, but even so I think she’s just done more for the reputation of and sentiment towards Aes Sedai with one Healing than any of the others have in the city thus far.

Because, while she has become Aes Sedai, Nynaeve isn’t one to hold herself aloof and apart from the world, not when there are people who need her help or healing. She can’t help everyone – like Rand, she can’t solve everyone’s problems – but when she can, she’ll always try. She doesn’t ignore the refugees as not worth her time; she just tells them to bring their sick to her. Because they’re suffering, and she can help, so she will. She’s practical that way. Practical and caring – it was one of her early conflicts with Moiraine, that Moiraine could look away when people were suffering, in the name of a greater cause.

Both kinds of people are needed, and this helps highlight Nynaeve’s own strengths. She knows Tarmon Gai’don is coming, and is certainly focused on that, but she doesn’t let that stop her from taking the time to help a random child who needs it, because that’s who she is. She’s still Wisdom in many ways, just of more than Emond’s Field, and it doesn’t much matter to her if the people who need her help are refugees or royalty.

But I think it definitely surprises the family, to see an Aes Sedai so…human, I suppose. Human, and straightforward, and helping them while asking nothing in return except that they not keep anyone else who needs help away.

How did one handle a creature like the Dragon Reborn?

Ask Min. Or Elayne. Or Aviendha.

Look, it was just lying there…

Nynaeve knew that the old Rand was there, within him somewhere.

Oddly enough, she seems to be one of the every few to actually…see that. To remember that he’s human.

He had simply been beaten and kicked so many times that he’d gone into hiding, letting this harsher version rule.

He’s human, and he’s hurting, and he’s been hurting so much for so long. It’s amazing, in a way, that so few are able to understand that, seeing instead a monster or a legend or a weapon or an obstacle, but rarely seeing the broken, bleeding boy. Amazing, and yet at the same time not surprising at all. That’s how this works. And he’s done too good a job of pushing that humanity away – though it becomes a vicious cycle at some point; how long can you retain humanity when no one expects it of you?

It’s one of the most important things about Nynaeve, especially in terms of her role in Rand’s story: she doesn’t stop seeing that. She can see what he has become, can see what he’s done to himself, but she can also still see the boy from her village. And that’s no small thing. He needs that now as much as – perhaps more than – he ever has; he needs those anchor points, those people who know him and love him and see him, otherwise how could he find his way back even if he decided he wanted to? This at least gives him the choice. To know he is loved, to know he is seen, to know that he is still human in the eyes of those who know him.

As much as it galled her to admit it, bullying him was just not going to work. But how was she to get him to do what he should, since he was too bullheaded to respond to ordinary prodding?

Ah, Nynaeve. Bless her. *shakes head fondly*

It’s a good realisation, but I also like it because even her thinking here shows clearly that she’s seeing him like just another problem from her village, rather than as some cosmic gamepiece she needs to position and control. Yes, she’s trying to get him to ‘do what he should’, but it’s the sort of tone she might have used in thinking about how to get young Matrim Cauthon to milk his father’s cows when he’s supposed to.

So in that sense she’s not really…treating him any differently, just because he’s the Dragon Reborn and could incinerate her where she stands. And there’s great value in that – it’s honest, it’s straightforward, and it’s very much Nynaeve. This is just how she shows her love.

There was one person who hadmanaged to work with Rand while at the same time teaching and training him. It hadn’t been Cadsuane, nor had it been any of the Aes Sedai who tried to capture him, trick him or bully him. It had been Moiraine.

So much growth from Nynaeve, to be able to understand and acknowledge this.

Her grudge against or hatred for Moiraine is another thing I’ve enjoyed watching the progress of over time because it does what so many hate-at-first-sight reflexive yet largely irrational hatreds and grudges do in reality: it fades, gradually and often subtly, until it’s just not there anymore but you can’t put a finger on when exactly it vanished, or why. It just takes lesser and lesser importance in the face of other things, other points of focus.

Of course, her apparent death, and Nynaeve’s shame at her own response to it, certainly helped – I think that ‘death’ shifted the perception of her in the eyes of quite a lot of characters and even readers towards the more positive. Because memory turns to legend, and things are altered in that changing. It does set her up well for an eleventh-hour return.

But a lot of it is just that Nynaeve hated Moiraine because Moiraine represented the changes she resented – leaving Emond’s Field, the boys and Egwene changing and sometimes suffering, Nynaeve losing her sense of place and purpose and authority – more than because of Moiraine herself. And so as she’s grown – as she’s accepted some of those changes, and found a place in this larger world for herself, and learned to embrace her own power, and understood the necessity or inevitability of some of what has happened, and focused on her true passion for healing – that sharp hatred faded to wariness and then to something more like a stubborn and even petty attempt at holding on to that grudge, and eventually even that faded to…respect. Understanding, perhaps.

Well, Nynaeve wasn’t about to act the same way for Rand al’Thor, no matter how many fancy titles he had.

I’m not sure that method would work now, anyway. It worked for Moiraine because she understood what he needed and would accept and respond to at the time. When he was being pushed and chased and tormented into a power he feared, when he was fighting to prove his claim to a destiny he didn’t want, when he was unsure and afraid and trying desperately to mask it, fighting for control and authority and so, so afraid of being outplayed, taken, used by those who knew this game he was only beginning to understand but was thrown in the middle of.

That was a mindset in which he could accept some guidance and advice because on some level he could admit he very much needed it, so long as he could be sure it was free of manipulation – the thing he so greatly feared, because at the time he was far more susceptible to it, new as he was to the game and to power, and with barely even the Aiel at his back.

Now…subservience, obedience, obequieousness are commonplace to him. Aes Sedai have sworn fealty to him. He doesn’t fear manipulation as he once did, because the scales of power have shifted so drastically, and doesn’t acknowledge his need for advice the way he once might have. So it will have to be a different approach.

Perhaps Nynaeve is well-suited to that; perhaps meeting his eyes and letting the fact that he is the Dragon Reborn and could kill her on a whim just…pass her by, seeing him and treating him instead as human, is in itself a form of surrendering in order to control. Not fighting against what he is, yet also not being cowed by it; just letting it exist, and accepting it, and focusing on him instead of on that.

Maybe I’m forcing the metaphor too far. But it’s a nice metaphor, so…*shoves*

Or maybe the solution is just appearing to die in a way almost perfectly designed to fuck with the guy’s head, and then reappearing dramatically at an opportune moment.

She needed to show him that they were working for the same goals. She didn’t want to tell him what to do; she just wanted him to stop acting like a fool. And, beyond that, she just wanted him to be safe.

It’s that last part that makes her so different from the others she disdains as petty manipulators. The simple fact that she cares about him.

She’d also like him to be a leader that people respected, not one that people feared. He seemed incapable of seeing that the path he was on was that of a tyrant.

No, Nynaeve, he sees it. He just can’t bring himself to care. After all, what does a tyrant’s rule matter if it is destined to be short-lived?

(A somewhat related but largely tangential question: does anyone know if there’s any etymological link between ‘tyrant’ and Tyr, Norse god of justice/law/war who sacrificed his hand to bind a wolf? It feels like there shouldbe, though I can’t find anything that says so, but as I’m neither linguist nor Norse mythology/language/history expert, I’m really not qualified to answer.)

Anyway, Nynaeve, like Cadsuane, has a plan. Lots of mysterious plans showing up here recently. Knowing Sanderson, they’re likely to collide around the 85% mark somewhere.

Though I don’t know how much of the pacing he’s directly responsible for and how much of it would be contingent on whatever was already outlined, so who knows?

Nynaeve’s lantern cast strange shadows on the grass as its light shone through the trees trained and trimmed in the shapes of fanciful animals. The shadows moved in concert with her lantern, the phantom shapes lengthening and merging with the greater blackness of the night around her. Like rivers of shadow.

Subtle as a hammer. But it works, because it’s not meant to be subtle at this point. It’s meant to be a drumbeat that says Tarmon Gai’don, that doesn’t let you forget for a moment where we’re heading, because it’s close, now. It’s close, and it’s everywhere, and it’s inescapable.

There’s also a bit of a circling back to the opening of the chapter here, in the image of phantom shapes moving with her lantern – with the light – but merging with the darkness around as well…and a glowing funeral procession of the dead, a haunting yet beautiful reminder that the world is coming apart at the seams, as Light and Shadow take to the field.

The whitewashed walls were as immaculate here as they were in other sections of the mansion, but they were unornamented.

Not unlike— actually, no. I am not going to sit here and write a paragraph on the symbolism of undecorated walls. I am not. You can’t make me. I have dignity.

Turns out Nynaeve doesn’t need grey hair or an Aes Sedai face to get people to do as she tells them when she has her mind set on something. Especially when it relates in any way to helping or protecting her people. Which includes just about anyone she says it does.

Do they not know she’s Aes Sedai? Or is she ‘my Lady’ because she’s married to a king? Or is the hat she made fun of on that random worker actually a fedora?

Rand had determined that his hunt for the Domani king had hit a wall with the death of the messenger.

But you know how to deal with walls, Rand! Just climb on top of them and then fall off.

Nynaeve wasn’t so certain. There were others involved, and a few well-placed questions might be very illuminating.

Ah, so that’s the plan. Find out some information that will be useful to Rand – that he definitely wants – as a sort of…not peace offering exactly, but indication that she’s on his side and willing to help.

I’m not sure that’s really the secret to getting him to listen, but I suppose it can’t hurt.

…that’s probably a stupid thing to say, given, you know, everything about this book so far.

When in doubt, ask the housekeeper. And she’s seen the messenger, who definitely sounds beautiful enough to have come from Graendal. Probably the one we saw, briefly.

“Had one of the most beautiful faces I rightly think I’ve ever seen on a man.”

Unless of course he’s Galad.

“He was sent for questioning,” Nynaeve said shortly. “I have little time for foolishness, Loral. I am not here looking for evidence against your mistress, and I don’t really care what your loyalties are. There are much larger issues at stake. Answer my question.”

But what a different sort of not-caring it is than Rand’s. She’s direct and to the point, and not particularly delicate about it, and anything that isn’t relevant is not her concern because there are bigger issues…but it’s not an all-consuming attitude; it’s just pragmatism. It’s not nice, and she’s definitely using her power and position to intimidate and to get people to do what she wants, but she also has very clear, definite limits. And a clear, definite purpose. And also the capacity to feel emotion, which is probably a plus.

Excellent, looks like we’re in for some good old midnight skulduggery. Elayne would be so proud.

So would Cadsuane, probably, at how Nynaeve is handling this. But I’ll try not to let Nynaeve hear me say that.

True, Rand might grow angry at her for appropriating soldiers and stirring up trouble.

But Nynaeve is one of the very few people left who doesn’t fear his anger. She does a little, on something of an instinctive level where if he looks at her with the full force of his I-have-stared-into-the-True-Power-and-the-True-Power-stared-back act she’ll recoil, but it doesn’t…take. It doesn’t last. It’s not enough to make her turn away, or run. It’s unnerving, but there’s too much caring and concern and sheer stubbornness to her where he’s concerned for fear to truly take root.

Moiraine said something to this effect once, that he would need people around him who could face or quell his rages, who could, in essence, continue to look him in the eyes. She was talking to Egwene, but Nynaeve has taken on that role in many ways.

And I think it’s important that she’s there as someone who doesn’t love him the same way Min and Aviendha and Elayne do. It’s a different kind of love, a different kind of bond, and therefore a different kind of…anchor, or reminder.

Such a lovely evening stroll, through the rotting fish gut district to the prison.

She wished she had news from the White Tower.

Yeah, huh, it’s been a hot second since she’s actually heard anything from…anyone, really. It seems like Egwene could pay her a dream-visit, but I suppose Egwene has quite a lot of other things demanding her immediate focus, last we saw she was bleeding and about to be imprisoned, and I think she might not want to bring her problems to Nynaeve’s attention because she knows there’s nothing Nynaeve can do about it right now. There’s too much else that needs to be done, and all she can do is focus on her part of it, on doing what she can to heal the Tower.

Still, a brief message would be…far too much communication to expect, in this series.

Ha, a prison disguised as a chandlery. A place of walls and dark and cold, disguised as a place that sells candles for illumination. Cute.

Sanderson, we need to have a talk about your obsession with hawk-faced men. It’s gotten out of control. An intervention is required.

The writing here also feels much more Sanderson than some of the other parts have, but I don’t actually mind it as much because the shape of the characters and ideas feel mostly how they should. Maybe Nynaeve’s a little more direct in some of her thoughts, but it still feels like her, so it bothers me less that the phrasing is off. Sanderson said in his introduction that he wasn’t going to try to perfectly imitate Jordan’s style, and he hasn’t, and I can live with that because it’s certainly preferable to the alternative. It’s noticeable, but that’s okay. It’s only when the actual content – characterisation, particularly – feels wrong that it becomes frustrating.

But any good secret operation would have a working front.

Always another secret, right, Sanderson?

See, that’s the sort of line that definitely doesn’t feel like Jordan, but…oh well. It’s fine. It does the job. And this doesn’t feel like a scene where note-perfect prose is important, the way, say, The Last That Could Be Done was. And that, Sanderson got right. So I’ll take it.

(I may be less sanguine next time a Mat chapter rolls around, but again that’s because the changes start to actually interfere with the character and the story.)

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Pacing-wise, I suppose it’s about time this particular storyline was punctuated by a random fistfight. Not that I’m complaining about the fact that it’s been mostly talking and thinking since Chapter 22, because it’s deliciously painful talking and thinking, but sometimes you’ve just got to break some noses I guess.

“Which one do you think I should ungag,” she asked casually, “and which one should I kill?”

Okay she can be pretty terrifying when she wants to be. This almost reminds me of…Semirhage, actually, in that scene where she had Cabriana and her Warder held suspended in flows of Air much like Nynaeve has these two not-chandlers. I mean, that’s just about the only similarity, but it’s what came to mind.

Of course, she’s not going to kill either of them. They just don’t know that.

Which makes this interesting to compare to Rand; as a reader it’s incredibly obvious that there is a difference, because we can see their thoughts. But just as it seems many outside observers don’t fully realise just how far Rand has gone, it’s possible they also wouldn’t see as much of a difference between his threats and Nynaeve’s, here. So much is dependent on perception, and on what you know and don’t know.

But there is a difference, whether or not it’s clearly visible to an outside observer, and in this series that’s important. It’s important that Nynaeve does not intend to kill, here, and almost certainly would not even if it would make this task easier. It’s important that she’s doing this for a clear purpose, and for a cause she cares about. It’s important that she can feel.

Private jailers like these riled her anger.

Guess we know where she stands on the privatisation of prisons, then…

“I will do whatever you say! Please, don’t fill my stomach with insects! I haven’t done anything wrong, I promise you, I—”

She stuffed the gag of Air back in.

But you’re missing the best part, which is where you pause and then take the gag back out and he’s still talking, so it’s like pressing ‘mute’ off and on. Come on, if we’re doing a midnight prison raid there are tropes that must be observed!

[The other] looked sick, but he had probably already guessed that she’d want the dungeon. It was unlikely that an Aes Sedai would burst into the shop after midnight because she’d been sold a bad candle.

I mean, I wouldn’t put money on it. We’ve been taught well: Aes Sedai do the things they do for their own reasons.

A youth sat on the floor in front of him, and Nynaeve’s globe of light illuminated his face, a frightened Domani one with uncharacteristically light hair and hands spotted with burns.

“Now, that’s a chandler’s apprentice,” Triben said

Is he now? I feel like he wouldn’t be mentioned if he weren’t relevant – and I especially feel like he wouldn’t be mentioned in such a disarming, ‘nothing to see here’ way. I’ve read murder mysteries and whodunits. I know what I’m about.

She raised her globe of light and surveyed the cellar. The walls were stone, which made her feel much less nervous about the weight of the building above.

If you’d spent any time in the Tower recently, you might feel differently…

Or if you’ve spent any time with a mad Asha’man in the basement of a palace…

‘Hawk-faced’ count this chapter: 3. Sanderson. Please.

“Keys?” she asked.

Okay now I want a story about a wilder thief in one of the bigger cities whose main ‘trick’ is picking locks with weaves of Air.

And hello there, Lady Chadmar. Not enjoying your stay here, I see.

Nynaeve inhaled sharply at seeing how the woman was being treated. How could Rand allow this?

Because he dismissed her, and put her out of his mind completely. Because he can’t afford to care about her anymore, so she is none of his concern. Because nothing matters anymore, beside the Last Battle. If she lives, she lifes. If she dies, well, he’s already damned; what’s one more name?

Again, Semirhage was treated better. But that’s because Rand still cared, then.

“Now,” she said to the three, “I am going to ask some questions. You are going to answer. I’m not certain what I’m going to do with you yet, so realise it’s best to be veryhonest with me.”

Cadsuane really would be proud. She’s sticking to the truth here, but still conveying a…well, it’s more of a figs-and-mice kind of threat than anything else, really. And it’s certainly effective.

Nynaeve sighed. “Look,” she said to him. “I am Aes Sedai, and am bound by my word. If you tell me what I want to know, I will see that you are not suspected in the death. The Dragon doesn’t care about you three, otherwise you wouldn’t still be here”

But she also gives them this. She doesn’t sit there speculating on whether or not she could simply will their hearts to stop beating. She threatens them, yes. She’s harsh. But she also offers…fairness, amnesty, pardon. It’s a question of lines in the sand again, I suppose, in determining the relative morality of this compared to Rand, but it still seems to me there’s a very marked difference. One is bound, still, by her word and her station and her general sense of what is and is not acceptable. The other…isn’t. It’s a question of limits.

The interesting part, again, is in the difference or similarity of perception by those who don’t have the privileged access we do into Rand’s and Nynaeve’s heads. Do these jailers feel any less threatened by Nynaeve than they would by Rand? She seems to be more human, offering them a chance to leave with their names clear, and reassurances that she will hold to her word, but she’s also Aes Sedai, appearing at midnight. Would they see the darkness around Rand? Would they react differently? To what extent does it matter whether or not the person threatening you has limits, if you don’t know where those limits are?

It’s part of the whole thing that I find so interesting about outsider POV – a chance to see how these characters are perceived by someone who can’t see their thoughts, and therefore a glimpse at them from a different angle, which can sometimes reveal surprising things. And then its close cousin, the view of outsiders from within a known character’s mind, but in such a way as to make you wonder what exactly it is they’re seeing. To see that character in a different way even while you’re in their head, through the reactions of those around them.

It’s something Jordan was particularly good at, and it’s being done rather well in these recent chapters as well, with the change in Rand’s mindset, and the way it’s so clear in his POV but not necessarily to all of those around him. And here, to see complete outsiders react to Nynaeve in such a way that makes it clear they see her very differently than those of us who have been in her head since the first book.

Anyway, it’s something I always find intriguing. Perception is such a fun thing to play with, and you can do so much with it when you have these lovely long character arcs.

“If we talk, we go free?” the fat man said, eyeing her. “Your word?”

Nynaeve glanced about the tiny room with a dissatisfied eye. They had left Lady Chadmar in the dark, and the door was packed with cloth to muffle screams. The cell would be dark, stuffy and cramped. Men wo would work a place like this barely deserved life, let alone freedom.

But there was a much larger sickness to deal with. “Yes,” Nynaeve said, the word bitter in her mouth.

Because there are things she will not do. And things she needs more; things that matter more.

And I do think there’s a difference in how they see her to how they would see Rand, because they’re willing to ask for that promise, for her word, and to take her up on it.

So the jailer is holding firm to the story that the messenger just dropped dead one day. Some aspect of Compulsion, perhaps?

“The man remained for months in your possession, presumably healthy all that time. Then, the daybefore he is to be brought before the Dragon Reborn, he suddenly dies?”

Nynaeve, too, has read her murder mysteries.

“I don’t know how he did it, Lady. Burn me, but I don’t! It’s like some…force had ahold of his tongue. It was like he couldn’t talk. Even if he wanted to.”

Yeah there was definitely some element of Compulsion involved, at least in keeping the messenger from talking. I wonder what happens when you put a Forsaken’s Compulsion against a dark ta’veren’s pull?

I’m kind of surprised that, for all Nynaeve’s experience with Compulsion at Moghedien’s hands, she doesn’t seem to pick up on this.

But she can’t seem to get much else out of any of them, and like so many ideas that seem excellent around or just after midnight, this one is starting to lose its shine a little.

Aha!

As soon as Nynaeve began the Delving, Nynaeve froze. She had expected to find Milisair’s body taxed by exhaustion. She had expected to find disease, perhaps hunger.

She had not expected to find poison.

A slow poison administered in several doses through food. And who makes the food?

Any guesses?

Yes indeed, it’s the ‘chandler’s apprentice’. Well done, Nynaeve, you’ve solved the case!

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