#lan and rand shirtless scenes

[nat111love]

Are you asking me to dance!

[markantonys]

pulling together some of the s2 images we have so far! there's a LOT of stuff in the two teaser reels, so i'm focusing mostly on the shots from those that i can connect to the new promo images (which are especially helpful since we know what episodes they came from). sorry for the long post, i tried to do a read more but then for everything under the read more the images just displayed one by one instead of 2 or 3 in a row the way i'd formatted them and it looked bad.

first, rand. predicting that some of the first things we'll see from him is dream torment by ishamael (likely the source of the wheel shot) and meeting lanfear while alone and vulnerable:

then he'll go to cairhien and meet up with moiraine and lan, and have his lord arc (and get a fancy outfit):

then duel turak at falme in 1x08 (likely after receiving sword lessons from lan, which could be the Lan Shirtless With Sword shots we have several of):

i think these scenes with moiraine (and lan) are from the early episodes where she still has her s1 outfit and hair:

then she gets a fancy new outfit for cairhien (potentially the crying-in-the-bath scene), which could be where the beach scenes take place - but cairhien is landlocked (though it IS on a river), so maybe she keeps this outfit for the rest of the season and these beach scenes are at falme? i will say that i'm pretty confident the daylight beach scene is the same outfit as the cairhien promo pic, but not confident that the evening beach scene is the same outfit.

on to perrin's plotline. we have several shots (i've just included one) from a scene of his party encountering the seanchan in daytime and being made to kneel. loial is still free here.

loial appears to be getting captured here at night, and there's also shots of perrin's party fighting seanchan at night. the same scene?

we know loial is in seanchan captivity by 2x05, so all the above scenes must happen during or before that episode.

aviendha fights a whitecloak at night, which we've been thinking is the adaptation of the book scene where perrin frees an aiel from a cage (there IS a cage just behind avi here), and thus perrin & co would also be involved in this scene. could be the same nighttime fight scene as above, a three-way fight between perrin & co, whitecloaks, and seanchan? or it could just as easily be a different scene - if so, i'd guess in the second half of the season after loial has been captured and as perrin gets closer to falme.

we do know that the seanchan and whitecloaks will clash in falme, and in a market-y location that looks somewhat similar to the promo pic of perrin and aviendha:

overall, it seems like whitecloaks, seanchan, and aiel will all be heavily involved in perrin's plotline, which is great setup since all those groups are significant parts of his storyline at various points in the future.

from what we know so far, the girls' portion of the white tower plotline seems pretty straightforward and similar to TGH. egwene has novice kitchen duty in 2x01, then later prepares for a journey (with liandrin i'd imagine) and is made damane.

nynaeve takes the accepted test in 2x03 (side note: i'm extremely skeptical that portal stones and the flicker scene will make it and imo they should be cut even though they're cool, so i think the "what might be" episode title is for this episode, referring to the alternate life/lives nynaeve sees in her test, and perhaps rand can still see some alternate lives in his ishamael-tormented dreams). at some point she trains in the sword with warders, probably because she wants to be able to protect herself while being blocked. do we think that brown belt indicates she's an accepted, or is that still a novice outfit and this scene is set before her test?

the picture of elayne could be investigating in a basement while black ajah hunting? i also thought maybe the ways en route to falme, but it doesn't really look like the s1 ways.

mat's storyline is trickier to figure out because we have very limited shots of him so far. we know that in 2x01, he is crying in a room. from descriptions of the scene shown at cons, we know he is imprisoned by liandrin at some point in s2. seems likely enough that the below image is him in captivity, although it's also possible he could be at an inn or something there (feeling guilty for abandoning his friends) and gets captured later in the episode.

the only other images we have of him are these two of him wearing his exact same outfit from season 1 and the crying-in-a-room scene and standing against a generic background:

falme seems the most likely option - the stonework on image 1 looks similar to the stonework in the perrin & aviendha picture, and the arch in image 2 could be a falme arch like what we see in the perrin & aviendha and seanchan vs. whitecloaks picture. alternately, picture 2 could be tar valon since i think there were some white stone arches in the streets of that city too. if it is tar valon, it could be either a) early in 2x01 and we see his capture onscreen, rather than the episode opening with him already in captivity, or b) after he gets out of liandrin's clutches.

how will he get out of liandrin's clutches? maybe he breaks out on his own, or maybe siuan gets wind of what's going on and intervenes to make liandrin let him go - this could also serve as an event to strengthen siuan's suspicions of black ajah in the tower, leading to her creation of the wondergirls task force.

i will end the post here since i hit the 30 image limit haha

[pillowfriends]

The Shadow Rising new reader thoughts: chapters 31-35

(Full disclosure: as I write these, I am on chapter 42. I got way behind in writing up my reactions)

Chapter 31: Assurances

Alanna is a bit scary. Her talk about forcing a bond on the ta'veren boys was... uh... concerning. Verin remains my favorite Aes Sedai after Moiraine, and probably my favorite side character overall. She's so quietly sassy. "An easy manner?" Verin said, blinking. "Moiraine? I never noticed." I love her so much. RIP Owein aka Maksim.

The conversations between Perrin, Tam and Abell were nice. Wholesome dad behavior.

Fucking Whitecloaks again. Also I JUST learned that Padan Fain merged his soul with the Shadar Logoth guy. IN BOOK ONE. Who was going to tell me this???? I had to get it explained and I still don't really understand, but oh well.

Chapter 32: Questions to Be Asked

I have approximately zero thoughts about this chapter. I just don't find the Two Rivers reunions all that compelling. It's funny that Perrin still isn't suspicious of Faile's backstory even though the narrative has a blinking neon sign going "SHE'S SECRETLY A NOBLE."

Chapter 33: A New Weave in the Pattern

Lord Luc is 1) tall and 2) has red hair. Who does that sound like? RAND. I really can't be bothered to figure out that family tree, though. The book will tell me when it tells me.

Intrigue! Verin says to watch out for Alanna... I think there's at least a 30% chance Alanna tries to force-bond Perrin by the end of this book. I hope that doesn't happen because I like Alanna but at this point the possibility has been mentioned too many times for it to be nothing.

Every time I read the name Lewin, my brain just goes to Lews Therin and it's extremely unhelpful.

Chapter 34: He Who Comes with the Dawn

"Mat was a great complainer at small discomforts..." This is the most I've ever related to Mat. "Great complainer at small discomforts" should be my tagline.

This chapter actually fucks hard. The description of Rand's dragon tattoos was badass, and we got a lot of exposition on Rand's biological parents. Shaiel is a cool name for a cool woman, and I'm pretty sure Janduin was ta'veren.

MOIRAINE LAN CONTENT - Lan being worried for Moiraine in the arches, and then running down to scoop her up as soon as she came back! We got three whole paragraphs, I'm living. [Also then I read this missing scene fanfiction by that's very good.]

Chapter 35: Sharp Lessons

This chapter title is so good. Also Egwene seeing Elayne shirtless in Tel'aran'rhiod is very sapphic.

I want to slap Egwene at the end of this chapter. She's like "Oh, Moiraine looks upset from what happened in Rhuidean, I should check on her." Then when she checks on her and Moiraine spouts some frankly concerning sentiments about the Pattern and her life, Egwene is like "Wow what a bitch."

“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and we are only the thread of the Pattern. I have given my life to finding the Dragon Reborn, finding Rand, and seeing him ready to face the Last Battle. I will see that done, whatever it requires. Nothing and no one can be more important than that.” Shivering despite her sweat, Egwene closed her eyes. The Aes Sedai did not want comforting. She was a lump of ice, not a woman.

This is fascinating because what Egwene hears is that Moiraine would sacrifice anything to help the Dragon's cause, but she completely skips over hearing that Moiraine has already sacrificed her entire life and everything she holds dear. This happens again and again with different characters and I feel feral every time I think about it. But I'm always feral about Moiraine so what else is new.

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[everybodylovesrand]

From Daniel Henney’s instagram story...

From Josha’s instragram story...

Daniel and Josha training in the gym for shirtless Lan and Rand training scenes in Fal Dara? 🤩