#moiraine & original female character

[skyholly]

Would anyone be interested in a Wheel of Time fanfic in which Moiraine finds out she's pregnant before visiting Gitara and she and Siuan get excited about retiring and raising the baby together in Tear in the hut by the river, but then they hear the prophecy and so once the baby girl is born she leaves her for Anvaere to raise as her own, so she and Siuan could get on with their job of finding the dragon? And then eventually that baby girl would grow up to become an Aes Sedai and part of the Tower, not knowing Moiraine is her mother (and not seeing her at all because of her traveling), but then eventually gets caught up with the Two Rivers folk?

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read here:

[missnightshade]

❝ MASTERLIST ❞

Welcome to this blog's masterlist of original writing.

Beware that most of the works here are gxg based with female characters, actresses or singers. I do not intend to assume no real person's sexuality, nor do I intend to follow canon page by page.

Some works from wattpad are to be posted here.

Requests are open (in any way you may see fit), but I do only write for the following list:

[🛑] = Works ready and posted on wattpad that will be posted here soon.

🌸 = Fluffy

⛈️ = Angst

🌹 = +18

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ㅤ

WEDNESDAY

WEDNESDAY ADDAMS

ㅤ Wednesday Addams x Reader

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ Wednesday Addams x Original Character

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ㅤ

THE WHEEL OF TIME

MOIRAINE SEDAI/DAMODRED

ㅤ Moiraine Sedai x Reader

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ Moiraine Sedai x Original Character

➤ Found | Found² [⛈️🌸]

➤ Remeant [🛑]

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

ONCE UPON A TIME

REGINA MILLS

ㅤ Regina Mills x Reader

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ Regina Mills x Original Character

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

EVIL QUEEN

ㅤ Evil Queen x Reader

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ Evil Queen x Original Character

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

MARVEL

WANDA MAXIMOFF/THE SCARLETT WITCH

ㅤ Wanda Maximoff x Reader

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ Wanda Maximoff x Original Character

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

AGATHA HARKNESS

Agatha Harkness x Reader

Agatha Harkness x Original Character

➤ To Mend a Soul [⛈️🌸]

➤ I will remain, Love. [⛈️🌸]

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

RIO VIDAL/LADY DEATH

Rio Vidal x Reader

➤ nothing yet!

Rio Vidal x Original Character

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

AGATHARIO X READER/ORIGINAL CHARACTER

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

KATE BISHOP

ㅤ Kate Bishop x Original Character

➤ nothing yet!

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

ACTRESSES

ROSAMUND PIKE

➤ It was enchanting meeting you. [🛑]

➤ It was enchanting meeting you². [🛑]

➤ The best thing that's even been mine. [🛑]

➤ Afterglow. [🛑]

➤ Afterglow². [🛑]

➤ Afterglow ³. [🛑]

➤ Golden like daylight. [🛑]

➤ Your voice. [🛑]

➤ Falling in love in the cruelest way. [🛑]

➤ It takes a tribe. [🛑]

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

HAILEE STEINFELD

➤ Call it what you want. [🛑]

ㅤ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

[deeplyridiculouslyinlove]

Okay, my thoughts at the end of book 4! I’m mostly saving these for my own posterity and there isn’t much interesting here in terms of theory or meta or whatever, so sorry to anyone who finds it in the tags.

- I *really* liked parts of this book. Rand’s experience in Ruihdean was very well done, as were most of the parts of the book in the Waste more generally IMO. Exploring Tel’aran’rhiod was very cool. And I liked learning about the cultural norms surrounding women in the other cultures who can channel. I also liked getting POV chapters for some of the antagonists. Basically, anything that was focused more on world building and less on specific characters had me so engaged I couldn’t stop listening. Not an original thought, but the world building in these books is so good.

- It really took me some time to adjust to the versions of the characters in this book, because it feels like some of them take a sharp turn from who they were books 1-3. Rand especially. I think I had been expecting a little more buildup of character growth where he grows into someone new informed by who he used to be and retaining those values, but instead he’s sort of just a different person this book. It didn’t help that I switched audiobook narrators I’m sure, but there is definitely a different tone to this book - for example, suddenly in this book there are “bosoms” everywhere and it’s weird bc like, where did that come from? Anyway, I’m learning quickly that character development isn’t the strong part of these books even though they’re all POV chapters. By the end of the book I was used to the new versions of each character, but I’m a bit sad we didn’t see more of emotional toll the characters are going through so their changes would be less abrupt. Moiraine also had a different vibe to me this book - I’m biased obviously, but I feel like we need a Moiraine POV chapter soon to understand her current arc. Not that I should ask for these books to be *longer* lol.

- I knew the coup was coming and that Siuan would be stilled but I’m still so DISTRESSED by it. In fact I was so distressed that I had to ask my partner if she eventually gets her power back like Moiraine did in the show 😂 I’m so curious if they’re essentially going to do the same storyline twice, or switch up Siuan’s somehow to avoid the stilling plot altogether? And also, I think I get why they used 2x07 to set up Moiraine and Siuan not being on the best of terms if in the books Siuan doesn’t know what’s going on with Rand when the coup occurs.

- Sadly I feel like everything I heard about the poor writing of women that had been the reason I hesitated to read the books in the first place really crop up in this book. Why is every single POV female character (and even some who aren’t POV, like Faile) in love with a male character? And don’t get me started on the weird way that the girls have their clothes change on them to expose them without consent when they think about men in Tel’aran’rhiod - that would NEVER be written to happen to a male character to show his interest in a woman. And yet at the same time they’re supposed to be all in love and weirdly horny now, they’re also somehow all soo childish - what in the world is with Elayne pulling in Thom’s mustaches?? At one point they literally say Aviendha is having a “tantrum.” It’s not just that the book is so straight, it’s also like, weird straight…

- Maybe tied to the above, but it seems like we’re not supposed to like the Aes Sedai (or maybe more accurately, the White Tower and those trained formally there) but I continue to think they’re one of the most interesting parts of these books. Even with the coup! I want so much more from their perspectives. And it seems like Jordan may be trying to make the point that “even if you have only women in power it will also be corrupt and bad because the problem is power not gender” (like reverse patriarchy!), and to the extent he is it isn’t really hitting for me - it just sort of lands for me as “women can’t be trusted with power,” which is one of the oldest tropes out there. Maybe this will improve! I’m enjoying Siuan as a key POV character, although I guess now she’s no longer Aes Sedai?

[cannoli-reader]

My notes Watching the WoT show. Season 1, Episode 1 (spoilers)

So I got some interest after putting up the notes from the finale not long ago, and I figured I would post the rest from this project, originally appearing on the readandfindout.com message board. There were posted on 11/19/2021. The notes are under a cut because I get verbose.

00:15-00:30 - "The arrogance.. And the women of the Aes Sedai were left to pick up the pieces."

This is going to be a problem going forward. There's already a problem with the books, where readers accept at face value the characters' assertion that men don't want to marry a woman who can handle them like a child with the One Power. It's clear in the context where we see many female channelers having good relationships with mundane male partners, that the White Tower is just rationalizing their own isolation from the rest of the world. So is this just Moiraine and the White Tower using their bullshit to justify their own policies, or is it the through line of the series? It could, however, be a legit interpretation of Moiraine's lecture to Egwene in EotW about the men who broke the world, so IDK.

03:45 - "Four ta'veren" Screw this bullshit, if she does not turn out to be wrong. Not to mention in the books, Moiraine herself says she was only expecting one. How the hell would she even HEAR about "four" ta'veren? Anyone who learned something like that would be all over the issue, not just passing along the rumors! "All the right age" Egwene and Nynaeve are years apart from the three boys. Less than a month was enough to disqualify two other boys their age from the search. In New Spring, a few DAYS eliminated one baby.

And anticipating the ad hominem response from the dipshits out there, I don’t believe ta’veren is a power or elevated status. My distaste for Egwne’s personality has no bearing on this issue (not least because I’d feel the exact same about Nynaeve, whom I have defended emphatically and often on this and other fora). Egwene’s role and arc are nothing like the other three. She is all about her White Tower stuff, and has little to no effect on anyone else or the rest of the world. Tuon, for example, could also not be a ta’veren because she affects nothing much outside the Seanchan. Nynaeve, meanwhile, operates on a different scale. Even things like rallying the Malkier are not ta’veren-type things. She was just making them be Malkieri, the way Egwene works to bring out the best of the Tower and Tuon the Seanchan. The ta’veren CHANGE things. The ta’veren introduce new concepts, not just practical reforms. They break the paradigm. Egwene and Tuon and Nynaeve work within the system, figuratively speaking. Though each is a rebel or revolutionary in some ways (given his plans for a sequel set in Seanchan, I am pretty sure RJ intended Tuon to be a player in a da’covale & a’dam revolution/reformation down the road), they are people who rearrange the box in which they operate. The ta’veren break the boxes and make new ones. The multi-national coalitions Perrin & Mat are leading in KoD are a synecdoche for what Rand will assemble for Tarmon Gaidon. Whereas the girls might be doing something superficially similar, it’s through established institutions, like Malkier, the Tower, Seanchan conquests and the laws of succession in Andor & Cairhien.

04:00 - What little I've seen, I do like Moiraine & Lan's performances. Physically, they are horribly cast, but it's good enough to go with.

5:07 - I kind of like the idea of a ceremony and invocation to go with the braid-awarding. It's just too bad that they could not come up with anything better than a bunch of of mystic-sounding mumbo-jumbo bullshit. And while superficially it seems like they missed the point that the Women's Circle is the governing body, and not the adult female population, it also makes sense that it could be a women-only secret that ALL women are in the Circle, not just the "elders" who are publicly acknowledged as such. We know that the actual Two Rivers women have things they keep secret from the men, like their sexual mores.

And it gives some context to the cliff-pushing scene in the trailer, even if it would have been more satisfying as a surprise, by Egwene's apparently resting smug-face. But it's a really stupid & out-of-character ritual/test thing. Edit from the Future: Also a huge time waste!

07:10 - There is no progress in the Two Rivers! The road has not improved in their lifetimes! if anything, it should be fading. Although, not really, because I think the implication in the books is that the Two Rivers is a relatively healthy society, essentially being quarantined from the problems afflicting the rest of the world with stagnation. But the isolation and lack of development is a THING for a reason! Not to idealize it, but for Perrin to change with his leadership. Bad enough to make up an extra ta'veren who serves no purpose in the story, but let's also take away one of the canonical manifestations really proving that we have no damn idea what ta'veren means!

07:30 - The thing with the wolves almost makes sense. This in no way looks like the tag end of a bitterly cold winter that has not actually let up yet, and they're clinging to the calendar 's definition of springtime out of a desperate hope it's coming. So the wolves are instead a hint that there is something bad coming out of the mountains. Except of course for the fact that wolves HUNT Trollocs. They are animals, who don’t have concepts really of the future, except in the vaguest terms, so they don’t think about strategic retreats. If Twisted Ones and Neverborn are around, the wolves are going after them. If there are too many for their pack to take down, other wolves are going to come, until someone confirms the Twisted Ones are dead.

If wolves run from Shadowspawn, that’s another piece of significance you’re taking away from Perrin! Setting aside their lack of utility at Tarmon Gaidon, Perrin’s identity crisis is that he’s afraid of losing his rationality and human reasoning! He’s afraid that he will become like a wolf, and that manifests when he goes hell-for-leather at a Myrdraal like a wolf would, instead of fighting smart like a human!

07:45 – I am getting cognitive dissonance from Michael McElhatton’s Santa beard.

07:50 – Hey, where’s the wind?!?!?!?

09:10 – Perrin’s married. His wife is going to get killed. This should be really interesting! The question is, on Winternight, or is he going to come home later to find her dead?

09:20 – Okay “down to Taren Ferry” makes sense topographically. People don’t always use up or down to refer to north and south. But there are armies heading SOUTH from Taren Ferry? The only thing SOUTH of Taren Ferry is the rest of the Two Rivers.

09:35 – So they are going to address Mat’s distinctive superficial character traits by making him gross. And something close to a gambling addict. You don’t need to have him so desperate for another game just to convey the difference when his luck power kicks in.

10:05 – That the whole village blows smoke up Egwene’s ass explains a lot of her personality issues. In the book, she was making more of a big deal about her braid than anyone else was. A standing ovation, because, what? She managed not to die all these years while under the care of responsible adults?

For the record, Egwene in the books, got her braid late. Though not as late as some, it was later than the normal age and notably late for someone who was determined to get it younger than anyone else, ever. But according to Moiraine & Lan, the ta’veren candidates are 20. Not 17. So if Egwene is one of them, she’s four years behind the curve. That’s like graduating high school at 22. Like getting out of Hogwarts at 21. Maybe the applause is sarcastic.

Oo, oo, ooh! What if Perrin’s wife is the fourth ta'veren and it’s a big thing that she gets killed!

10:15 – Damn, stocky, fat bald sexagenarians, as Bran al'Vere is supposed to be, are sexy in TV Emond’s Field.

10:20 – I like the little sad smile from Nynaeve, because she doesn’t have a dad anymore.

10:25 – Since when are the Coplins and Congars friendly? Since when are they the sort to buy a round? Is this show’s idea of showing how unpleasant they are going to be restricted to shaming them for drinking?

10:30 – And Nynaeve is toasting and quaffing. What, the, actual, fxck.

10:50 – Not to get all real-worldy, but farming communities do not spend a whole festival day in the bar, when there is plenty of sunshine, and the weather is warm enough not to require outerwear.

11:10 – “How did the ceremony go today?” Perrin, the whole female population was cheering and celebrating. That should be a clue. Also, she came back alive, which, from what we see of the ceremony is probably not 100% guaranteed. That should tell you all you need to know without needing to ask her possibly estranged boyfriend.

11:43 – I don’t know if the Two Rivers folk are being uncharacteristically hostile to someone who just came into an inn out of the rain (two factors that alone make his behavior thus far completely normal and to-be-expected, and not the kind of thing inspiring you to put a hand to hilt in anticipation of trouble), or if it’s just a way to show how insular the village is, that strangers are not a normal thing. In the books, they found Thom’s arriving late at night to be suspicious or rude, as if he was a friendly visitor who should come at a considerate time, rather than a customer or hired professional. OTOH, they see strangers as fascinating and a cause for celebration. There mere presence of three people no one knows are enough to make this the potentially best Bel Tine ever.

11:46 – Lan “mun-DRAG-or-in”. WTF?

11:58 – Moiraine’s entrance (not to mention Egwene’s, earlier) makes more sense in context than how it looked in the trailers. OTOH it feels like they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. The promotional material suggests she is the focal character, but they also want her to be the mysterious stranger viewed from the perspective of the hobbits Two Rivers folk.

12:05 – Walking by Nynaeve without eye contact is a nice touch.

12:15 - Damnit Marin, the ring was supposed to keep things discreet! Also, the Aes Sedai bit was supposed to be a secret, because it makes people nervous and a place like the Two Rivers would clam up if she started asking prying questions about their neighbors.

13:17 – Yes, Nynaeve, tell the blacksmith how his job works. Actually, that kind of works with her early perception as a controlling pain in the ass.

13:40 – Yeah, baby, stoke those bellows. Show Faile how it’s done.

13:50 – Maybe it’s different if you’re married, but touching someone like that when they are working has a kind of creepy vibe. But I want to know all about the future late Mistress Aybara. Who looks like she escaped the set of Vikings.

14:30 – Is this degradation of the Cauthon family necessary? Some of us like Abell. It’s a thing that Mat looks up to him! You don’t need to shit on his parents to show Mat has a good side. This is just such lazy, short-hand characterization. "Oh, the guy we think is a jerk has a tragic family history."

16:00 – I am going to laugh my ass off if the scene people on social media have been assuming is post-coital is just them relaxing after finishing up the dishes.

16:10 – Egwene really does spend most of the series avoiding her Two Rivers compatriots.

16:15 – And as I suspected, the woman ceremonies are secret from the men, making Perrin asking Rand even dumber.

16:53 – Rand does not do surprise kisses. Rand needs a gold-engraved invitation for PDA. In a relationship that’s clearly going through an awkward phase, where they seem uncertain where they stand, that would especially be the case.

17:40 – Is she talking about the berry?

17:53 – Moiraine, WTF are you bathing in? It looks like when my mother would forget to put the wheelbarrow** away after pulling weeds, and it would fill up with rain and become this vegetable soup-like mess. Or the kiddie pool that would fill up with grass from jumping in and out of it with wet feet.

** given the subject matter, I reflexively capitalized Wheel at first

18:02 – A Malkieri man and a Cairhienin woman would not bathe together unless they were doing it! No, this is just wrong. Especially not in a tub that was just used by half a dozen Nym.

18:15 – Lan saying a bath in the Two Rivers could be warmer is like a guy from Alaska complaining about the temperature in Jersey. Also, Lan does not ever complain, even if he had to take a bath on the Ross Shelf.

18:45 – I’ve seen Rosamund Pike jam a wine bottle up her hoo-ha to fake rape trauma, and the bits of plant stuck to her somehow seem more off-putting.

18:55 – “What is it?” "I think I’m sitting on a thorn."

19:15 – Ah. So they were playing hide the Dragon Scepter, after all.

19:25 – Canonically confirmed, Egwene is boring in the sack. Not surprising, really.

20:08 – Rand’s problem with Egwene being the Wisdom was not about himself, it was that he found it ridiculous for Egwene, because it’s a job for life, currently being held by a 24-year-old, and he knows that’s not how she operates. Then he had a problem when she confirmed it and said she wanted to move away to find a post. Celibacy was not a thing! Daise Congar, Nynaeve’s replacement, has a husband. Why would it even be a job requirement?

It looks like they’re altering this for no reason other than to make Egwene “right” in this argument, while incidentally messing with her characterization. Egwene would have no hesitation. Onward and upward is her thing (which is why Rand laughed at the idea of her serving a 50-year apprenticeship). If you can’t keep up with her, she’ll move on. This is, like it or not about her, one of her most important aspects, that informs so much of her relationships and choices in the story! But they decided to just make her worried and Rand butt-hurt even after she specifically says she was asked, and hasn’t accepted.

And if the Two Rivers is cool with extramarital sex, why is the Wisdom celibate? This is the problem with changing things out of character favoritism or convenience – you disrupt everything connected to it.

21:23 – British accents aside, they have a rather odd mix of Anglo and American slang. “Mum” and “Guys” being two examples.

22:30 – This is not Mat. He might have stolen from a neighbor to buy his sisters food. But not freaking toys!

23:00 – Moiraine and Lan already know the Shadowspawn are there?!

24:27 – Okay, I was wrong. This might actually be an improvement on how Rand’s & Egwene’s relationship was done in the books. The understanding and acceptance is a better explanation for Rand’s reaction than being pissy about his feewings being hurted. Of course, by the books’ society, it makes Egwene a dirty rake and cad who besmirched Rand’s virtue when she had no intention of doing right by him, so it’s going be amusing if the results of their tampering is to make their world more patriarchal than the books. Edit from the Future: LOL. You have no idea!

24:45 – “This pool is sacred. It’s an honor to clean it.” It’s also outdoors and a natural feature, making cleaning it somewhat pointless.

27:05 – The Nynaeve-Moiraine conversation works when you bear in mind they are trying to keep the Dragon’s identity a mystery, but the whole White Tower thing is bullshit. It might work if the old Wisdom who raised Nynaeve, but whose name Nynaeve can’t be bothered to use, turns out to have been lying, but even then, it makes Listening to the Wind a known manifestation of the Power.

Identity and self-perception is an important theme in these books! That she can channel should come as an utter shock to Nynaeve, that upends everything she thinks she knows about herself! This was my objection to non-white Two Rivers people, that Rand should absolutely believe without a shadow of doubt that he is the biological son of Tam. If he is markedly different from the rest of his neighbors to the degree that it’s not plausible he is a half-breed (as a pale-skinned red-head would not be in Africa or India or East Asia or the pre-civilized New World), then news that Tam found him as a baby does not land with the same impact.

BTW, this doesn’t necessarily go for Nynaeve, given that ITB she did have issues of isolation and estrangement from her neighbors. But that’s because of her dedication to her duties and role and coming to it too young, with her authority being challenged, not because she’s known as an outsider who is desperately trying to fit in.

Speaking of those duties, after several scenes of Nynaeve in her role as Wisdom, we are not super clear what that job is, much less that it’s the equal of the mayor. Given real world preconceptions, it could easily be seen as a peripheral clerical role. Especially with the pointless celibacy.

27:10 - I also feel like Perrin would not be spending so much time away from his wife, drinking with his buddies. Not because of his ITB preoccupations with Faile, which are at least in part due to every other member of his family being dead, but because it’s undutiful.

28:10 – So Listening to the Wind is literal. I guess when the Sea Folk teach Elayne Cloud Dancing, it’s going to involve actual choreography?

28:57 – I was first thinking, ‘why is Lan looking for Shadowspawn tracks when he has already sensed them, instead of doing something constructive like warning the villagers?'”' And it turns out it’s even more stupid. They have killed sheep and left the corpses in the shape of a Dragon’s Fang! A. How did they get away with it? Sheep are super important to the Two Rivers people who would be guarding them. That’s what a shepherd is for. Shouldn’t a Two Rivers person have been the one to find them? B. Why would they leave anything edible? If they are in too much of a hurry to eat them all, why make artistic shapes, especially when, from the camera angle, only a Draghkar could see what they did? Edit from the Future: Re-watched this with my non-reader sister, whose comment was "Why is it an apostrophe?" Way to use the Dragon's Fang, without actually establishing what that is, show!

29:42 – I’m going to give all the benefit of the doubt and assuming Moiraine is both eavesdropping on the boys with the Power and also preparing village-wide wards against Shadowspawn.

30:45 – Necessary exposition regarding the life-rebirth cycle and Wheel. Especially since WoT Novices (we need a good name for those who have not read the books; for GoT, I understand they were often called Unsullied) probably have no idea why it’s even called “Wheel of Time”.

31:05 – And good context for Tam’s trailer line, where before it looked like a substitute for his commentary on the resilience of the Two Rivers folk.

Then again, if you have to explain to your twenty-year-old son during an annually-performed ritual for the dead how the afterlife works, you’ve probably failed as a parent somewhere along the line.

32:37 – If Emond’s Field has a four-piece band, why even is Thom?

33:08 – Also fuck everyone who complained about Jordan putting superfluous detail in the story. He didn’t make us sit through actual dancing and Bel Tine festivals before the shadowspawn showed up.

And, just for the record, the Bel Tine practices seem much better suited to Sa Ven or what the WoT-quivalent of Samhain is.

Though, come to think of it, in a culture that believes in practical reincarnation to the point that the return of an historical figure is a really big deal, maybe the springtime festival IS a better time for it.

33:25 – More dancing. You’d think this is what would have been on the page and cut for the screen.

33:59 – Why?!?! Trollocs like dramatic surprise? There is a reason Jordan did it the way he did! Because it works! You don’t see the Trollocs approaching Rand & Tam because there is a door there! Not because they sneaked up to throw a spiked mace through the torso of the miller’s son without making any noise until he fell over! And this slight wispy-built guy gets hit in the back by a mace or axe or whatever and is NOT thrown violently forward, he just collapses like he was run through by a rapier?

34:17 – Maybe they are trying to show Egwene protecting people, but it just looks silly, like she’s distracted during a game of duck-duck-goose. I mean, it is a character trait of hers to assume that kind of responsibility that she is in no way capable of carrying out, but come on. Make sure there is someone behind you before volunteering yourself as a human shield.

34:45 – The Trollocs appear to be having more difficulty killing the villagers than I would expect. Lots of swinging and missing and shoving.

34:58 – Fain just noping out, like “My job is done…”

35:20 – Get bent, Rafe. Natti & Abell can’t even be bothered to make sure their daughters are safe?

36:02 – I’m sorry, I can’t not see Madeleine Madden’s nose wart. Been driving me nuts all episode.

36:43 – The al’Thor experience would have been a lot scarier if that was the very first appearance of the Trollocs.

36:52 – Ah, Hollywood Archery! It’s something you use in the same room as your target! It’s like pistol shooting, which is why they often assign it as a specialty for slender women, too. And you can instantly pick up a bow and start shooting, and never mind that leaving it strung is a good way for the bow to lose its strength and power.

Which actually might explain why Rand failed to kill a Trolloc with a headshot from a "longbow".

37:15 – Trollocs always go for the easiest kill. That’s why Narg would turn from a supine victim to honorably fight an armed foe. First of all, Narg’s one trait is that Narg smart. Narg can’t kill man with stick and boy with stool, Narg sure as shit not going to fuck with blademaster.

37:48 – On the one hand, Narg came pretty damn close to winning blademaster status for himself, but on the other, he goes down like a bitch.

38:18 - The trolloc on all fours was neat.

40:24 – Dammit Mat, they’re better off in such a good hiding spot! Out in the open, being carried by an as-a-result slower person is not nearly as safe.

40:29 – “Remember when we played hide-n-seek?” Kids do it all the time, it’s not something you need to remind them of, but TV writers all seem to think it is. Screen characters are always saying "Remember how we would play hide and seek" to kids when mortal danger threatens.

Of course, a better response from Bode and Eldrin would be “No shit, Mat! We were doing pretty good until you dragged us out of our shelter.”

Where does he think the Shadowspawn came from? The well on the green? How does he know the oak he is sending the girls toward isn’t right in their path?

41:20 – I like Moiraine’s channeling better than I thought I would from the trailer. It’s not like Rand’s kill-em-all weave in the Stone. Those white lines are flows of saidar, not the effects of her weaves, and she’s only killing a few at a time, in sight.

41:23 – I feel like Nynaeve getting dragged off by her braid is supposed to be a joke.

42:06 - PERRIN KILLS LAILA! That’s awesome! Brilliant! He’s going to be SOOO messed up about this! This could be, if done right, a great bridge to a lot of his issues!

And for the record, I find a blonde Two Rivers person a much greater violation than the black people cast as such.

43:37 – Something about the way that last Trolloc snarls at them reminds me of Lurtz, the Uruk-hai who killed Trevalyn in Fellowship. If only Miranda Sedai had been there to save him.

Bad Cannoli! Use their epic fantasy names, not their Bond names.

I now want Daniel Craig to play Rhuarc.

45:36 – The al’Thors made it to the village! What happened to the baby reveal?!?!?

46:59 – I want to throw things whenever the Cauthons are on screen.

48:12 – We lose so much world-building and characterization by having Moiraine just wander past and Heal Tam unsolicited.

49:18 – And just about all of Moriaine’s characterization goes out the window when she tells them straight out that she’s here for the Dragon Reborn who is one of the kids in front of her. (hint, it’s the White Guy; nice job, casting people)

49:44 – Egwene being ordered to come is another mistake. Her thing, one of the things that makes many of her fans love her, is that she looks for, and seizes on, opportunities to get the Call to Adventure. She, more than any of them, wants to be a Main Character! It’s the very last bit of characterization of her in the books, FFS!

49:56 – “You’ve lived too long in these mountains, pretending that what happens in the rest of the world won’t affect you.” This feels more like some sort of political virtue signaling than anything relevant to the Two Rivers folk themselves.

50:07 – “the other sisters of the Aes Sedai” Sisters OR Aes Sedai. You don’t make the Old Tongue more accessible with this silly redundancy. It sounds like Aes Sedai is a specific entity, and Moiraine and Liandrin and the others are its sisters.

51:09 – Putting the wind bit here is just fan service and makes no sense. Get bent, show.

I will add more of these as I can get them up and adapt the format.

[guinevere01]

Wheel of Time and Cosmere fanworks auctions in Fandom Trumps Hate

Here’s an overview of the offerings in the Wheel of Time (both books an tv show) and Cosmere fandoms for @fandomtrumpshate this year. Not familiar with Fandom Trumps Hate? In short it’s a yearly fanworks auction of which the proceeds go to charities supporting progressive causes. For the long version click below

Link to Fandom Trumps Hate - FAQ

Bidding is open and runs till March 5th at 8PM EST!

Wheel of Time - Fanfic

WoT Fanfic #1

Name auctioneer: Emjen Enla (link to auction), tumblr: @emjenwrites

Highest rating: M (Mature)

Length/scope: Less than 5k words

Minimum bid: $10

Current high bid: $20

Books or show: Book canon only

Especially interested in:

Characters: Moiraine, Galad, Egwene, Cadsuane, Aes Sedai in general, Logain, Lan, Rand if you're asking to whump him

Ships: Moiraine & Lan, Galad/Bornhald, Siuan/Leane

Other: positive portrayals of the Aes Sedai, Rand's unhealing side wound, the taint on saidin

WoT Fanfic #2

Name auctioneer: Roccolinde/Fire_Sign (link to auction), tumblr: @firesign23

Highest rating: E (Explicit)

Length/scope: Less than 5k words

Minimum bid: $5

Current high bid: $100

Books or show: TV canon only

Especially interested in:

Characters/ships: Anything centred around Lan, Nynaeve, and/or Moiraine, platonic or romantic or pre-romantic.

Other: Power/Battle couple dynamics and competence kink, exes/second chances/second loves, prickly characters being vulnerable, female characters finding common ground, snark and banter, character-driven stories/smut, hurt/comfort, narrative gender fuckery of all types, shifting power dynamics where they are both aware. Tenderness, vulnerability, and the mortifying idea of being known. I adore complicated and nuanced takes on the character's relationship with gender and identity, and lines getting blurred there.

Wheel of Time - Fanart

WoT Fanart #1

Name auctioneer: milesofheart (link to auction), tumblr: @miles-of-heart

Subtype: Drawing/painting/etc.

Highest rating: M (Mature)

Length/scope: A digital oil painting recreating a famous painting, but with blorbos from my shows

Minimum bid: $20

Current high bid: $20

Books or show: Unspecified (presumably both)

Especially interested in:

Ships: I prefer to stick to canon pairings & relationships.

Other: Most interested in paintings that tell some kind of story, or there are strong vibes between the chosen characters and the themes in the original masterpiece. Color palette and postures also need to vibe for it to work. My experience is mostly with American and European painting styles, but I'm open to considering others.

WoT Fanart #2

Name auctioneer: MxCaptain (link to auction), tumblr: this is me, hello, you’re here!

Subtype: Pixel art

Highest rating: T (Teen)

Length/scope: Pixel art of up to three characters (dependent on complexity - ie I'll do one detailed/complex character or up to three simple ones) of your choice, with a simple background (think solid colour, repeating pattern, gradient, simplistic landscape) I will do one character sprite + a simple background for the minimum bid of $10, additional characters (up to two extra) for a minimum of $5 each. <- The strike through part is actually an old thing that I failed to delete before the auction went live! Feel free to reach out with what you have in mind, I am quite flexible.

Minimum bid: $10

Current high bid: $20

Books or show: Both!

Especially interested in:

Egwene! But again hit me up with other stuff as well :D

Cosmere - Fanfic

Cosmere Fanfic #1

Name auctioneer: Ternary (link to auction), tumblr: @ternaryflower53

Highest rating: M (Mature)

Length/scope: Less than 5k words

Minimum bid: $5

Current high bid: $20

Especially interested in:

I love exploring trans identity and aspec identity through fic (and I am okay with this including external sources of queerphobia). I'm a huge sucker for hurt/comfort and found family feels. I'd love an excuse to play with non-standard omegaverse, which has been on my list of things to write forever.

[bigskydreaming]

Spoilery thoughts on the Wheel of Time Season 2 premiere:

The casting remains the show's biggest strength. Nynaeve is still pitch perfect and my absolute fave. She is everything Book Nynaeve always had the potential to be if gently (forcibly) removed from Robert Jordan and his complete inability to write female characters. That scene where she drank the water just to get out of that lesson without technically losing ground......lmao this woman absolutely will cut off her nose to spite her face and say you're damn right I meant to do that, who needs a nose anyway?

Ishmael is also perfectly cast....I'm not familiar with his actor but he conveys the character's emblematic charismatic menace PERFECTLY. His scene gave me chills. Rosamund Pike continues to be great as Moiraine, what more is there to say about Lan other than Best Warder Is Best, I would kill people for Perrin as long as they were completely hypothetical people who don't count stop looking at me like that its a figure of speech you KNOW what I MEAN gosh, and Egwene's character isn't even close to getting to the real meat of her character arc but her actress has already displayed more than enough range to convince me she's going to nail it. Liandrin is perfectly awful, A+ depiction, and of the new characters, Verin is everything I hoped that character would be. Too early to say if I'm sold on this Sheriam though. Same with Elyas though he seems promising, and we only got a glimpse of Lanfear in the 'this season on Wheel of Time' preview, but what little we saw has me excited. (Lanfear is my ultimate fave baddy, I have such high hopes for her character though, you don't even know).

In terms of characters who don't have rave reviews from me, its mostly just a lack of content so far, leaving me undecided as of yet. I still don't know why they recast Mat before last season even ended up airing, and I liked the original actor for Mat quite a lot, but I THINK I'll be just as happy with this one. He didn't have much to do this episode so its hard to gauge, but he seems likable enough, and its not like Mat's currently in a position to be his usual devil-may-care self at this point in the story.

Honestly, Rand remains the weakest link in the show so far, to the point where even though he's nominally the most central character, the fact that he was barely in this episode didn't bother me even a little bit. I think it was a good choice, pacing wise - I'm just not sure what it suggests about the production's view of the character/actor that they were confident they could sideline THE 'main' character of the series for almost the entire first episode of a ten episode season and nobody would mind. And the fact that I didn't really miss him this episode has a lot to do with him easily being the least compelling of the cast in the first season.

That said.....over the course of the books, Rand's character undergoes the most dramatic evolution out of all the major characters, and we're still at a very early part of the narrative where he's just....at most mere hints of the character he ultimately becomes. His character hasn't yet been given a ton to do, relatively speaking.....like in terms of screentime, he's certainly been front and center, but as of right now he's SUPPOSED to be hesitant, mild-mannered, unsure of himself and all that....which is exactly what his actor is delivering. Its just.....not as interesting as what other characters are already undergoing, and especially when you have his book character arc to compare it to, knowing what kinds of things are coming for his character makes what we've seen so far feel a bit like treading water.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that I am pretty impressed with the show's pacing so far. In hindsight, the books start out pretty slow compared to how the story flows once it fully gets going, probably around the fifth book or so, IMO.....and those first books were still just as long as the later ones. So I do think the show's done a good job of condensing an enormously long narrative into something that can viably be told in ten seasons or so, & in such a way as to 'get to the good stuff plotwise' without actually cutting out too many of the early events necessary to build a foundation for the more complicated later storylines.

I do not envy the writers trying to figure out what to keep, what to streamline, what to alter and what to cut out entirely, so it is pretty impressive that as of this episode we very much FEEL like we're in familiar territory, like I recognize whereabouts in the narrative we're supposed to be, but most of the storylines' specific events have been so heavily altered as to make it feel unpredictable and I'm not sure what entirely to expect, in terms of how the show will get from where it is to certain major beats that I'm expecting to happen. Rand's storyline in particular has been pretty dramatically deviated from how the events after the Eye of the World stuff played out in the books....but he's still positioned to be right where he needs to be for all the Lanfear stuff. On the flip side of things, Mat's storyline technically doesn't have him too far removed in the show from where he was in the books at this point, but they've changed just enough that it FEELS completely different and has a much more ominous tone to it than the way that part of his storyline in the books felt like just kinda.....him sitting around until the Seanchan were in place and his storyline could really get going.

And speaking of Mat's storyline, ugh Liandrian is just the worst. I mean. She's supposed to be. So....good job, I guess.

Elayne and Aviendha should be showing up soon, and definitely impatient for that. Aviendha's a fave. I don't dislike Elayne by any means, but Elayne showing up soon also means that Elaida, Galad and Gawyn are all about to show up and I literally hate all three of them. Gawyn hasn't even appeared onscreen yet and I'm already ready for him to shut the fuck up. LMAO. He.....irritates me. Like Galad's full of himself and self-righteous as fuck but at least he KNOWS that and is like yeah, I get why other characters don't like me. Book Gawyn spends several volumes absolutely convinced he's in the right about certain key things he absolutely is NOT in the right about, and he never is actually made to own that or face it, once its made undeniably clear the narrative just kinda....moves on from anyone ever being in a position to point out hey dude, you just spent five books being an absolute dick about this thing that never even actually happened, maybe you should reflect on that. And like. Change. As a person.

Book Gawyn: Nah. Even though I wasn't right I didn't KNOW I wasn't right so I was basically right to do all the stuff that I now know was completely wrong.

Me: Ugh, shut the fuck up Gawyn.

Ohhhh just realized, Faile should be showing up soon too. I love Faile, so that is also something to look forward to. I'm STILL pissed about their totally unnecessary decision to introduce a whole extra helping of backstory trauma upon Perrin when like....nobody fucking asked, and Im very curious who's idea that was exactly and what their precise reasoning for it was, like what the fuck did they think it added to Perrin's arc that he needed, how does it benefit his storyline at all, you didn't need to fucking do that lmfaaaaao, but oh well. Course, its inevitable that its going to alter the shape of his storyline with Faile, particularly their earliest interactions, and I guess I'll wait and see if that's for the better or not, I just....don't see the point of those specific changes. Whatever. I'll die mad about it I guess. Its fine.

Other than all of the above, my biggest remaining thoughts are I want them to hurry up and clarify just which of the Forsaken made the cut and will be appearing in the show and which five got left on the editing floor. I hope they don't drag it out, they better at LEAST get named this season so we know who we're working with and don't have to wait a whole additional year to like, find out whether Sammael will be in the show or if he got scrapped for someone like Belial for some random reason.....mostly I just want to know if Demandred the Dull is going to be taking up one of the slots simply because the books like to pretend he's important even though he literally only appeared in one book and a chapter and there's nothing he does that can't be done just as well by far more developed characters like Aginor. Who unfortunately probably WON'T make the cut. Even though he's fantastically terrible. As a person. Not a character. He's the worst. But in that 'I can't wait to see him get murdered' kinda way. You get it.

Also I hope Asmodean's passive aggressive ass is in this season because the only thing better than Lanfear is Lanfear vs Asmodean: The Passive Aggressive Olympics.

[cannoli-reader]

Excellent analysis.  The only issue I would take is the minor one that the women in Tar Valon didn’t owe him anything. He’s not in charge in this situation, whatever his feelings on the matter (and I have Issues with Morgase’s child-rearing; she seems to have been the best parent to Galad, since she didn’t try to cram him into a mold of what she thought her country needed, based on her own lacks and perceived shortcomings) Much of Gawyn’s mindset is based on what he was raised to be, he simply has not picked up on the unwritten rule that the Tower trumps that sort of thing, which is why Lan being bonded to Moiraine cuts the Gordian knot of the conflicting duties of the last king of Malkier.  Elayne’s position wrt Gawyn was that their mission was classified, it’s none of his business and he’s not qualified to handle it, being even less qualified than the Wondergirls, and she found their assignment a bit much when briefed on it.   Siuan didn’t really have any obligation to pander to Gawyn’s issues, but it is typical of her political style that she does not account for people she sees as pieces on her gameboard having will and agency of their own.  Siuan was pretty high-handed, even if by her lights she didn’t owe him anything, and didn’t take enough precautions and it blew up in her face, like things usually do. 

That said, objectively, instead of learning patience and the lesson about some things being out of his control that all the major characters do learn (some taking longer than others), Gawyn chose to murder people he considers friends, for a cause he did not understand in the least. Then he runs around trying to fight the Children of the Light for no good reason, not unlike his crush.  With Tarmon Gaidon on the horizon, Gawyn is going around looking for fights with other members of Team Light.  And whatever his claims of being motivated by his duty to Elayne, there is no clear through-line between his duty and what he actually does citing his devotion to Elayne as an excuse, especially given his willingness to chuck the faction he aligned himself to out of that perceived duty, at Egwene’s word.  

See, Gawyn was almost certainly not trained to take matters into his own hands.  The office for which he has been raised to hold is, in the political context of both the Andoran governing principles, and the historical context of its origins, based entire on the principle of civilian control of the military.  The basis on which the first Queen of Andor gained the support of the White Tower was being able to rein in her general.  Military institutions went from their peak, in Artur Hawkwing’s lifetime, to almost an afterthought in the current period, almost certainly in reaction to a military genius gaining enough power to challenge Tar Valon.  The Tower and possibly the political class of the continent, did not want anything like that to happen again. There’s not much you can do about a ta’veren, but you can take other steps, like making a practice of forcing wars to be resolved through negotiations mediated by the Tower, which shuts the generals out of having the final say, or supporting a monarchy where the supreme military command is held by a separate office that is totally subordinated to the ruler.  The official history says that the sons of the early queens kept dying by violence, but why not the daughters?  In Hawkwing’s time there were female great generals and he himself sent a daughter in command of one of his two foreign military expeditions.  So why was Ishara not sending her daughter(s?) to fight alongside her sons?  What if the Tower leaned on her to keep them back, as part of a plan to further marginalize the military institution by making women think they were above it, and should claim the superior powers while ghettoizing military activity as the province of the lesser sex. 

Anyway, my pedantic theory digression aside, the point of a First Prince of the Sword is that he does what he is told and only what he is told. A military commander whose ruler cannot rely on him is almost as dangerous to his nation as being the second best in a given fight. Generals are not supposed to pick fights, they are supposed to fight the battles their monarch orders them to. Morgase might have over-stressed Gawyn’s duty at the expense of his own self-esteem, but included in those lessons would have been his duty to obey her and Elayne and not go around creatively reinterpreting his mission in order to excuse his lashing out in frustration at being perennially number two.  Gawyn might rationalize his actions as driven by his duty, or trying to fill in the vacuum of structure left by Elayne’s disappearance, but this is not the proper expression of duty by either the natural definition or his own country’s practices. 

I'm to the point where Gawyn actually makes a decision, and a lot of the criticism he receives seems misplaced to me. He makes shit choices because he has shit information because the women he trusts to provide him with information refuse to communicate. Elayne, then Siuan, and then Egwene all misused him.

He followed Elayne to Tar Valon and undertook his training there, doing his duty without complaint. Then his sister vanished. His mom freaked out. He worried, and also BLAMED HIMSELF.

When Elayne returned, I don't remember if she even bothered to say 'hi' in his direction before running off again. Now he's really worried. Siuan won't tell him anything. Min won't tell him anything. He's trying to keep Morgase from blowing a gasket. Galad's joining the Whitecloaks. And then... there's a coup. Siuan, having given him exactly zero reason to trust or back her, he knew Elaida as a respected advisor, and he thought that her ascent was legal. He also thought that he would be able to get the information he wanted out of Siuan. All of this makes sense.

Then he stumbles. The change in Amyrlin doesn't fix his problems. He still doesn't know where his sister is. He lets Min rescue Siuan (and Leane and Logain). I don't remember his reasoning, probably because it wasn't very good. This particular point was all him.

Now he has his Younglings, and Elaida wants him disappeared, and he's sent on the mission to scoop up the Dragon Reborn for Elaida. He's heard rumor that Rand murdered his mom, maybe his sister as well, and he has a bloodlust for revenge. All of this is really reasonable, frankly. Then he runs into Egwene.

Egwene has the power to divert Gawyn from his path of doom, but she instead chooses to ignore him (in the political sense) and withhold information from him, while also sort of using him as a spy but not very well. Instead of using her rather impressive people skills to push him onto a healthy path, she uses him for some snogging and makes him promise not to harm the person who is supposed to save the world. She doesn't tell him where Elayne is. She doesn't give him any evidence about Morgase beyond being a character witness for Rand. She doesn't explain about the fractured tower, nor emphasize her allegiance to the rebel faction. She makes no effort whatsoever to sway him to her side, to even try to convince him to abandon Elaida. She doesn't even respect him enough to read him in as a spy for her. She also seems to think that a low-level soldier will be able to protect Rand from Aes Sedai. You know the ones, the women who can channel? Yeah. Not fucking likely.

So off he goes, swimming with his misperceptions, making ever more desperate decisions, experiencing increasing trauma and stress, until he finally comes to his senses and seeks out Egwene's side.

What I'm really trying to emphasize here is that Egwene could have had him on her side beginning in Cairhien, but she couldn't be arsed.

So when he goes back to her, and people criticize her for being with his loser self, my heart deflates a little. He deserves so much better. Even if he is a loser.

I also find the claim that Gawyn exemplifies toxic masculinity to be backwards. If anything, Elayne and Egwene are the ones displaying the traits usually associated with toxic masculinity: arrogance, withholding information or training, refusing help and then being upset when the helper isn't around, seeing the opposite sex as deficient (this one is only Egwene), acting invincible/infallible, not listening to good advice because of the gender of the person giving it ... you see? Don't be fooled by his masculine-coded job of bodyguard; everything else about the gender roles in his world are reversed from ours. He has a prescribed support role, and when he can't fulfill it, he becomes lost. He doesn't get to determine his destiny, so he doesn't train in how to make life decisions, but rather in how to follow orders and to walk his prescribed path.

So much about Gawyn's journey matches with the experience of women in our world who were raised and trained to be homemakers, but then had to claw their way out of abusive relationships, or find meaning after infertility, or push forward as a single parent after being abandoned by a husband or family.

So yeah, I have a really difficult time accepting a lot of the scorn he gets, especially from supposedly feminist critique.

[skyholly]

The best kept secret

Summary: What if Moiraine had a baby daughter she and Siuan were forced to leave to Anvaere to raise as her own?

moiraine/siuan

Chapter 1 here!

Chapter 2 here!

****************

Chapter 3. Guinevere

Guinevere let the box slip from her hands with an indifferent motion, the sound of its contents clattering echoed through the room as it hit the floor. She wistfully glanced around the sombre chambers that belonged to her aunt, struggling to get a hold of her thoughts. She’s here. What is she doing in Cairhien after all these years? She’s mean and rude to my mother. She can’t bear to look at my face and ignores me. She’s left again. Why is she so cold and unapproachable? She’s leaving again and she’s carrying a sword. She can’t channel. 

She can’t touch the Source. 

It made so much sense. Why she couldn’t feel her, why she couldn’t reach to her with the One Power. 

She’s been stilled. 

Guinevere dropped into the mattress, closing her eyes in the process. What in the Creator’s name is going on here? The young girl pressed her hands over her forehead, frustrated, trying to put the pieces together, organising her thoughts, folding files of information in drawers within her mind.

Moiraine has been looking for the Dragon Reborn all these years. 

Moiraine entered the White Tower with five potential dragons. 

Moiraine was exiled from the Tower. 

Moiraine left for the Eye of the World, and everyone came back except for one, a male channeler. The Dragon Reborn, presumed dead, at least by Egwene. 

Moiraine went missing for months. 

Moiraine has been stilled. 

Now Moiraine is in Cairhien, searching for something, or someone, she believes to be in danger.

What will the Tower do about it? 

Guinevere shot back up at such thought, her heart pounding in her chest, and started to anxiously pace around the room, clicking her fingers in the process. The Amyrlin. She’d completely forgotten about the woman’s request. “If you hear from Moiraine, let me know”. Guinevere was intruded by a thought upon remembering her words: the older women ought to have known something. 

Could the Amyrlin suspect of Moiraine’s doings? No, that’s unlikely, her fate would have been worse than exile. Unless… they were in it together. Were Siuan aware of Moiraine’s endeavours, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d heard such rumours of the two women; everyone at the Tower knew they used to be friends as Novices. But why, why was Moiraine hiding from the Amyrlin then? What was she hiding? Maybe she’s gone rogue. 

And what was she doing in Cairhien? Why did she leave in the middle of the night with a sword on her back? It was too big a puzzle and Guinevere had nothing but vague pieces, she needed more information, but there was no one she could go to willing to provide her some answers. 

That night, she had an intriguing dream that bore an uncanny resemblance to a memory, stirring an unsettling sense of familiarity within her.

She couldn’t have been more than five years old, and she was crying, scared and confused about all the screaming around her, people pulling on her little body, demanding to take her away. Her father was there, staring with pleading eyes at the woman holding her, Anvaere by his side, extending her arms towards her, and Guinevere wanted to get to her more than anything in the world. To reach her mama. And then, suddenly, her screaming turned into soft whimpers, as she was being carried around her home in her mother’s arms. Only it wasn’t her mother, it was her Aunt Moiraine. “Shh, it’s alright, my dear Winnie. Everything’s alright,” she soothed her, stroking her hair and whispering comforting words as she walked into what must have been her nursery as a toddler. “Shh,” the woman kept on whispering, lovingly caressing her back, “it’s alright, I’m here, your mother is here.” 

Guinevere leaped up from her bed, gasping for air, her mind trying to make meaning of the dream, but she couldn’t possibly come up with an answer. Her chest heaved as she tried to steady her breathing, the dream lingering in her mind like a stubborn mist. It had felt so… unnatural. As if her mind had been constantly fighting an intruder who unrelentingly kept on pushing the images onto her brain. Almost as if… no, that was impossible. The Forsaken are gone. No one alive has been successful at Tel’aran’rhiod… that you know of. 

Guinevere slumped into bed once again, pressing the palms of her hands against her eyes, hard enough that it began to hurt. I’m losing my mind. For how long she remained in such a position, she didn’t know, but at some point a knock on her door drove her out of her slumber. She removed her hands from her face, and slowly opened her eyes. At first, she couldn’t see anything but dots and spots of brightness, her eyes adjusting to the light. 

“Winnie?” Her mother peeked through the door. “Oh good, you’re awake,” she said, entering the room, “you should get ready. The royal wedding tasting is in an hour, and Barthanes wants you to come.” 

“Alright,” Guinevere responded, stretching, “I’ll start getting ready then.”

“Perfect, darling.” Anvaere said, turning around. 

“Wait!” The young girl stopped her mother before she could leave the room. “Did… did Aunt Moiraine come home last night?”

Anvaere and hesitated for a second, holding onto the door frame. “She has not come back, dearest,” she said, sending a pitiful look towards her, “but you shouldn’t worry, your aunt is more than capable of taking care of herself.” 

Is she?

“Mmh,” Guinevere hummed, as she nibbled on a piece of pastry, “I think I liked the raspberries one better.” 

“So do I.” Barthanes agreed, as he winked an eye to her. 

Their mother sighed, delicately putting a napkin over Guinevere’s skirt. “Lemon will suit everyone’s palette better,” she explained, “and besides, raspberries are too messy. Look at your mouth, Gwen. You wouldn’t want your guests to look like that, Barthanes.” 

“What’s wrong with my mouth?” The girl asked, quickly reaching for a napkin to clean the edges of her mouth. 

“They won’t,” the man laughed, “because they actually know how to eat. Unlike my dear little sister who has the daintiness of a lumber man.” 

“Barthaness!” Anvaere scolded him, but she was too late, as he was already throwing a piece of cake towards the young girl, messing up her dress. 

“You wool-headed fool!” Guinevere grinned, as she grabbed on a piece of pudding to toss towards her brother, but her mother was faster. She seized her wrist and forced it back to the table. “That’ll be enough foolishness for today.” She declared, sternly, before turning towards the cook, who bore an uncomfortable smile on his face. “I believe you were about to present these delicious looking canapes, were you not?”

The man was preparing yet another platter for them to taste, when the doors to the kitchen opened abruptly, Moiraine rushing through the steps towards them, a tall man following her. A man she knew. Rand. It took Guinevere a few seconds to recognise him, her house being the last place she’d ever expected to run into him, and with Moiraine. She felt the air get caught up in her throat, and then left out a shaky exhale, the boy always had that effect on her for some reason. As if she were holding her breath every time he wasn’t around. 

She saw the redheaded studying the room, before his eyes set on her, opening them in surprise. I guess this is the last place he expected to see me as well. He raised his eyebrows, directing a suspicious look her way, one she eagerly returned. You are the one barging into my home, and with my aunt out of all people. 

“Oh good, you’re back.” Anvaere commented, rather uninterested, shoving Guinevere out of her stupor. “And you’ve brought back a friend.”

“Aunt Moiraine!” Barthanes chuckled, as he earnestly stood up, clearly over the moon about seeing the woman after so long. “I-I could hardly believe it when my sister said you were here. It’s… it’s been fifteen years.” 

Guinevere looked at her aunt, and realised she’d been staring at her. The older woman hurriedly drew her gaze away, focusing on her nephew, and awkwardly smiled. “I think you were as high as this table last time I saw you.” She replied. 

Barthanes tried reaching for her hands, but their aunt uncomfortably placed them over her stomach, avoiding his touch. “You… you… well, you look almost exactly the same.” The young man added, smiling, trying to soften the unpleasant mood that her aunt’s restraint had caused.

“If somewhat bedraggled.” Anvare intervened, with a grin. Her mother’s words brought Guinevere to her feet, as she finally settled her eyes on the pair’s clothing. They were both covered in dirt, and blood. What does Moiraine have to do with Rand?  “I’m imagining you didn’t come back for the royal wedding tasting?”

“Come on, Mother.” Barthanes laughed. “She’s got better things to do than pretend she can taste the difference between raspberries and thimbleberries. You must be my aunt’s Warder.” He added, pointing at Rand. 

The boy shifted uncomfortably in his place, looking at Moiraine for help. “I’m not a Warder.” 

“This is… Rand.” Moiraine hesitated for a second.

“A pleasure, Rand. I’m, uh, Barthanes Damodred,” her brother introduced himself, “and these are my—

“We’ve met.” Anvaere and Guinevere said, in unison. Her aunt lifted her eyebrows at that, staggered, but swiftly regained her expression under control, a blank mien taking over her face.

“We need horses, two. Coursers if you have them.”

“I’ll have them brought to the house. We have a whole stable of the very best. A gift from the Queen.” Anvaere flaunted.

“And you must come to the wedding.” Barthanes rushed to say, fearing their aunt was leaving again. “It’s just a few weeks away. Can you believe that I will be marrying Queen Galdrian?” He commented, in disbelief. And then added, in a silly tone: “now that makes me your King. So I shall expect full subservience.”

Moiraine chuckled. “It’s a happy match, I hope.” She said, with a genuine smile. Guinevere couldn’t help but to feel jealous. Why was she so kind to her brother? 

“The name Damodred is held in high esteem. That is happiness enough.” Her mother said, in a serious tone. 

“Well…”Moiraine looked around, “I shall go and wash upstairs. Perhaps a meal for Rand, in the meantime. And then some fresh clothes before we leave?”

“Yes, of course. We’ll find him something fitting from my wardrobe.” Barthanes assured. 

“Thank you.” Moiraine said, as she started making her way towards the stairs.

“Is that… blood?” Her brother commented, pointing towards Moiraine’s clothes, but she interrupted him. 

“It truly has been good to see you, nephew. Or… should I say, My Liege.” She smiled, awkwardly bowing to him, her smile an amusing grin. There it was again. That green monster creeping through her guts. Guinevere shoved it away. 

The young girl waited until her aunt had left. “I believe I should help Rand find some new clothes,” she said, as she stood up, intensely staring at the red headed boy, “come with me.” 

Rand hesitantly followed her into the hallways, after respectfully nodding his head towards the girl’s mother and brother. “Jhonas,” Guinevere said, upon running into the older man on their way, “could you ask one of the servants to bring some fresh clothes from my brother’s closet for our guest? We’ll be in the room in the east wing.” 

“Of course, little lady.” The old man bowed, and left. 

Guinevere and Rand remained quiet for the rest of the way, while sharing confused looks with each other. The girl opened the door to the guest room, hastily forced Rand in by pushing him on his back, and made sure there was no one in the hallway before delicately shutting it close. 

“You know my Aunt Moiraine?!”, “You are Moiraine’s niece?!” They both said, at the same time. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“How was I supposed to know you knew my aunt?” Guinevere frowned. 

“Well how was I supposed to know I knew you were her niece?” Rand replied, mirroring her expression. 

“I look remarkably similar to her, for starters? My last name being Damodred, just like her?” She put on a sceptical look, while crossing her arms over her chest. “What’s your excuse?” She asked, fixing her eyes on his. 

Rand huffed, annoyed. “That I arrived with her to Tár Valon? Where we first saw each other? Surely that’s the only thing Aes Sedai at the Tower were talking about, why else would they have exiled her?” He clasped his hands against his hips, an incredulous look on his face. 

“Well I didn’t know you’d arrived with my aunt—

Guinevere went suddenly quiet, voice gone dry. Her muscles went stiff, as realisation fell upon her like a stone dropped into still water. How have I been so oblivious? Rand. He was the missing piece of the puzzle. The files on her mind started organising itselves. 

Moiraine arrived at Tár Valon with him, one of the five potential dragons. 

Moiraine travelled with him and the others to the Eye of the World, where one of the boys had died (or at least Egwene seemed to believe as much ). And then, Rand didn’t return to the Two Rivers, instead, he escaped to Cairhien, telling no one (she presumed, due to his elusiveness) about it. 

Moiraine didn’t inform anyone at the White Tower about her mission, about her success at it (or failure? If everything turned out the way she expected, why didn’t she inform the Amyrlin?)

Moiraine returned home to look for Rand, who Guinevere guessed was the one Egwene presumed dead; had it been Perrin, the Novice surely would’ve told her as much. 

Rand is the boy who went to the Eye of the World and didn’t make it. 

Rand is the Dragon Reborn. 

“Aren’t you going to get that?” The redheaded boy said, taking her out of her stupor. 

“Huh?” She asked, raising her head, meeting his eyes. Those blue, kind, familiar eyes that had wrinkled at her jokes so many times, eyes that always softened whenever they set on her. How is it even possible? How didn’t I realise? 

“The door.” The boy urged her, as he brushed past her, and opened it to let a servant in. 

“My Lord, my Lady,” the young man bowed, “here are the clothes you requested. Shall I leave them in the bed for you?”

“Y-yes,” Guinevere stuttered, still in shock, “thank you.” 

She waited until the boy left, and turned around to look at Rand. To actually look at him. She couldn’t help but to see him through different lenses. The Dragon Reborn. Her kind, funny, sweet friend… potentially the most dangerous man in the world. He who would be their salvation, or he who could be their damnation. 

“What’s wrong?” He asked, eyebrows folding in confusion.

“N-nothing,” she rushed to say, unsure of how to act under such revelations, “you should probably go clean yourself up,” she added, pointing towards a door on the back of the room, “there’s a tub and some fresh cloths and a bowl with warm water, I’ll wait for you here.” 

“Alright,” he replied, grabbing her brother’s clothes, and walked towards the room, sending one last inquisitive look her way. 

Guinevere dropped into the mattress of the bed as soon as the door closed behind him. She didn’t know what to do. Should she confront him? Was she putting her family at risk by doing so? No, Rand wouldn’t hurt anyone. But wouldn’t he? Dragon or not, he was a man that could channel, and that was dangerous enough. The madness… but he seems so normal. Should she notify the Amyrlin about it? The ring on her finger, fitting impossibly tight at the moment, made her feel compelled to do so. But the Reds would gentle him. Did she ought to inform the Tower about him anyway? Wasn’t it her obligation? I’ve made a vow. Guinevere knew that was the sensible thing to do, the correct thing to do, but she couldn’t help but wonder. Something was shifting, she had been able to sense the Wheel pulling on its strings for some time, my dreams… and then she realised it was because of him. The Dragon had been born once again, the Pattern weaved around him. The Last Battle was coming, and Guinevere sensed there were more players at the game that she could even think of. And there was only one person that could give her the answers: Moiraine. 

Guinevere realised she didn’t have one reason to trust the Aes Sedai, but she felt unable not to do so. She was finally able to think about her aunt from another perspective. She’s sacrificed so much. She’s travelled for most of her life, turned away friends and family, walked into the Eye of the World ready to die in the hopes she was securing everyone’s future but hers, she was stilled… all because of the boy with a shy smile that was but feet away from her. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind, the same words she uttered everytime Guinevere had come to her for advice: “There are two things my sister understands better than anyone. The difference between right and wrong, and how much harder it is sometimes to do what is right.”

Guinevere didn’t know much, but she was certain of one thing: whatever it was Moiraine was doing, it was the right thing to do. She felt embarrassment taint her cheeks, she was an Aes Sedai of the Yellow Ajah, she was a servant to everyone, it was about time she put her childish resentment behind, and found a way to help Moiraine. She needed to talk to her. 

The door to the bathroom creaked open, and Rand emerged, looking slightly more refreshed but still carrying an air of tension. His eyes, piercing and yet familiar, locked onto Guinevere. “You look troubled,” he remarked, breaking the silence.

Guinevere faked a smile, masking the whirlwind of thoughts inside her. "Just... a lot on my mind," she replied, trying to steady her voice. "It’s not every day my aunt returns after fifteen years with such a mysterious guest in tow." She added, forcing a grin on her mien. 

Rand chuckled, as if he understood more than he let on. "I suppose not," he said, his voice careful. "I’m sorry if my presence has caused any trouble. I didn’t mean to disrupt anything."

She shook her head quickly. "No, it’s not that. It’s just... you know how families can be." She laughed nervously, as she stood up. “You should go to the kitchens, a meal will be served for you. Unless of course you’d rather get some sleep before leaving.” 

“I-I can’t sleep.”

“If you have trouble sleeping I can help with that.” 

“Gwen… I can’t explain much, only that it’d be dangerous for me to fall asleep right now.” Yet something else I can’t figure out. 

“I see.”

“Thank you, anyway, I appreciate your offer.”

Guinevere pursed her lips, as a thought came to her. “Would you like me to take your tiredness away? It’d take a second.” 

Rand observed her, and opened his mouth in approval, silently scolding himself for not thinking about it before. “I would like that, thank you.” 

Guinevere focused her mind, her hands hovering just inches from Rand's temples. She closed her eyes and felt the familiar warmth of the One Power flowing through her, a comforting rush of energy that steadied her nerves. She directed the Power towards Rand, gently easing his fatigue, and there it was. She sensed it, his power. It was so different from Saidar. It felt so unlike healing Egwene, whose power felt warm, and so easily embraced hers. Rand’s, on the other hand, felt rigid, reluctant to her own, but somehow so familiar. She pushed a bit more, and she felt as if she were colliding against a brick wall. She’d never felt such immense power. Guinevere slowly opened her eyes, and exhaled, trying to mask her apprehension. He really is the Dragon Reborn. 

She found Rand staring at her, exhaustion slowly draining from his eyes, filling hers instead, but she didn’t mind. She was used to it. Healing caused exhaustion to all sisters, but it tired her the most out of all, for some reason. Her sisters said it was because she was too young, that she wasn’t as powerful. Guinevere believed that was probably true. 

“Better?” She asked, clearing her throat. 

Rand’s expression softened, his eyes brightening. "Thank you, Gwen. I do feel better.” He paused, his gaze searching her face, as his hands reached for hers. “You didn't have to do that.”

Guinevere squeezed palms, already used to that electric buzz she felt every time she touched him. How didn’t I realise? 

“It's the least I can do,” she replied, her voice tinged with sincerity. “You should probably go join my brother now, and have something to eat.” 

“Okay.” Rand carefully caressed the back of her hand, and turned towards the door. 

Guinevere waited until Rand had left, and then rushed towards her aunt’s bedroom, just as her mother was leaving the place. She spotted the young girl, and her preoccupied frown turned into a soft smile. She slightly grabbed on her daughter’s shoulder, and left a kiss on her cheek. “Do help her, please.” Anvaere whispered in her ear, before turning away. 

The young girl’s forehead creased in confusion, but her mother’s request became evident the second she entered the room. Moiraine had dark circles under her eyes, her skin looked pale and dull, her body almost limping under fatigue, all of it concealed under an almost perfect vigorous facade. 

“Do help her, please.” Her mother had begged, but Guinevere couldn’t stand sensing the older woman with the One Power. She’d tried doing so the night before, and it had left her feeling nauseated. Being from the Yellow Ajah, she’d seen terrible things, but nothing like that. Reaching for her had felt as if she were grasping a maimed, bloody limb with its skin ripped, soulless and cold to the touch. Guinevere’s heart clenched when thinking about how the older woman must’ve been feeling, the thoughts that must’ve been racing through her head at all times. How hasn’t she killed herself yet? 

Guinevere swiftly intercepted Moiraine’s path, as she was making her way out of the room. The older woman glared at her, eyes meeting hers. They always evaded her, as if she were afraid her eyes would talk for her. 

“Guinevere, I don’t have time for whatever this is,” she sighed, “I’ve got to—

“I know, Aunt Moiraine.” She somehow managed to say, her voice almost breaking. Why? Why do you resent me so much? Why do you treat Barthanes so kindly? How is he any different? But she couldn’t dwell on such thoughts. She stood firm on his choice of helping her, and once Guinevere had set her mind on something, it became impossible for her to drift off course. “I know everything. About your mission, about Rand…”

Moiraine stopped abruptly in her tracks, and turned around in an almost lethargic manner. For the first time, she saw cracks in her aunt’s stoic masquerade, fear and uncertainty slipping through them. “H-How… could you…”

“Egwene. She’s a novice in the White Tower now, and we crossed paths.”

“Mmh, no,” Moiraine shook her head, placing a hand over her forehead, “Egwene wouldn’t have told you,” she said, finally looking in her direction, studying her, “she wouldn’t have told anyone. She knows, better than anyone, what’s at risk.” 

Guinevere remained quiet, perplexed at her aunt’s agitation, an almost imperceptible smug smile claiming her lips, as she couldn’t help but feel arrogance flow through her veins. Finally, she had the upper hand. “Let’s just say I’m used to getting people to do as I please.” 

Moiraine fixed her gaze on her, her eyes squinting in scepticism. She held  her breath for a second, and then slowly, but firmly let it out. She was looking at Guinevere as if it were the first time she’d ever seen her. “You have the Talent for Compulsion.” The girl didn’t respond, which was an answer itself. 

“There’s something else you should know, Aunt Moiraine,” Guinevere added, walking a few steps towards her, “before leaving for Cairhien, the Amyrlin asked to see me,” Moiraine eyes brightened at the mention of the Aes Sedai, but the young girl didn’t comment on it. So they are working together. Or were, at least. 

“And?” Moiraine asked, tilting her head. 

“She asked me to inform her, should I get news from you.”

“Did you make an oath? Did she make you swear it?” Moiraine inquired her, expectantly. 

Guinevere waited a handful of seconds before replying, amused by seeing apprehension creep under her aunt’s indifferent disguise. Arrogance is a dangerous thing. “No.”

Moiraine nodded. “She trusts you, then.”

“She does,” Guinevere agreed, “but she shouldn’t. I’m here to help you, aunt Moiraine. I don’t understand what’s going on, not fully, but I trust you’re doing what’s right. Tell me what to do and I’ll do as much.”

“You’d betray The Amyrlin?” Moiraine asked, putting on a guarded stance. She doesn’t believe me. 

“I would, Moiraine. I know Rand, and I’m on his side. I’m on your side.” Guinevere exhaled, as she mustered enough bravery to reach for the woman’s hands, squeezing them tightly. 

The woman went stiff at her touch at first, but then eased into it, gripping on Guinevere’s hands even harder. She looked at her, tears she would not let fall accumulating in her eyes. She nodded. “Let’s go find Rand, then.” 

Moiraine updated her as they walked towards the kitchen, briefing her about the events in the Eye of the World, Ishamael, and how now Lanfear was their biggest threat at the moment.

“Except she isn’t,” Guinevere puzzled out, as she came to a halt next to the kitchen’s door, “he’s told me about a woman that has been in his life lately, if she wanted him dead, she would’ve done so already.”

“Exactly.” Moiraine said, as she pushed on the door. 

The pair of them stood on the upper floor, glancing down at the two men playing cards at the table. 

“Time to go?” Rand asked, looking up towards the older woman, surprised to see Guinevere by her side. 

“No, actually,” Moiraine replied, leaning against the rail, “we’re staying.”

Moiraine gestured to the boy to follow her, which the redheaded man did quickly, staring with incertitude at Guinevere, who steadily followed their steps. “By Moiraine, why is she—

“Shh,” the older woman scolded him, “wait until we’re alone.” 

They continued their walk in silence towards the guest room that had been assigned to Rand, and as soon as they closed the door behind them Guinevere started moving her hands in intricate motions, pulling on weaves Rand could not see. 

“That’ll do it.” She said, turning around with her hands on her hips. “No one from the outside will be able to hear us. Or shouldn’t, theoretically, I’m not that good at anything else but Healing, I’m afraid.” 

“What is she doing here?” Rand asked, putting on a cautious stance, looking at her with evident worry in his eyes. 

“She knows, Rand,” Moiraine said, and added before he could intervene, “you can trust her.”

“Yes, I know I can trust her,” he replied, lips laced with anger, “that’s why I don’t want her to have anything to do with this.”

“How—

“You’ll get hurt, eventually!” He yelled at her. 

Guinevere took a deep breath, feeling sympathy for the boy, but also feeling quite frustrated. “I’m a fully capable and trained Aes Sedai, Rand.” She remarked, keeping her temper at bay. “I can take better care of myself than you, and I believe I get a saying on what I believe I ought to fight for. And that’s you.” 

He stared at her, just as firm on his choice as she was on hers, but realised fighting wouldn’t lead to anything. Guinevere was just as, if not more, stubborn as Egwene. 

“Alright…” he reluctantly conceded, “so what’s the plan now?” He asked, glancing around the room, following Moiraine’s gaze towards the bed. “You said I can’t sleep or she’ll find me.”

“Yes,” Moiraine agreed, “she will.”

“You want her too.” Rand affirmed, looking appalled. 

“She’s been with you what, two, three months now? If she wanted to hurt you, she’s had ample opportunity. But she hasn’t. What does she want?”

“I don’t know.” Rand sighed. “If you’d asked me a few days ago, I would’ve said she wanted me. To be with me.” Guinevere felt something in her stomach, something she couldn’t —and wouldn’t— put a name to, and did her best to keep a straight face.

“Stories from before the Breaking are vague, because so much has been lost.” Moiraine explained. “But every single one that mentions Lanfear agrees that she loved the Dragon Reborn. And that he loved her, before he met his wife.”

“But she was a Darkfriend.” Rand muttered, disbelief in his eyes. 

“Only after he broke his heart. She swore her oaths to the Dark to try and get him back.”

“And what, you want me to make her think she had?” He asked, anger seeping from his voice, as he swiftly glanced at Guinevere. “You want me to pretend to be in love with a Forsaken?”

“Lanfear is working with Ishamael.” Moiraine insisted. “This could be our only chance to find out what he wants.”

“She’ll see right through it—

“Maybe,” Moiraine interrupted him, exasperated by the boy’s refusal to cooperate, “maybe, she might.”

Rand stared at her, and lazily shook his head. “I don’t know,” he whispered, “whatever she is, I don’t think everything between us was a lie.” He admitted, avoiding meeting Guinevere’s eyes, there was so much guilt on his face it seemed it would swallow him whole. She herself felt her cheeks burn at his statement, but if any of them noticed, they didn’t comment on it. 

“It’s your choice Rand,” Moiraine said, truthfully, “I mean it this time.”

Rand hesitated for a second, shifting on his feet, before walking towards the bed, standing before it while putting on a brave expression, but Guinevere could tell the fear that hunched over his shoulders, could feel his heart racing. “I don’t think I can fall asleep now,” he cleared his voice, “Gwen helped me out moments ago.”

“I can get you back to sleep.” She replied, in a thin voice. 

“We’ll stay here,” the older woman interjected, “if it seems as if she’s hurting you… I’ll wake you.”

“And if you fall asleep?” 

“I won’t let her.” Guinevere assured. “And I won’t let anything happen to you, Rand. I can put you to sleep just as easily as I can wake you. Trust me.”

“I do.” He said, and then he dropped onto the bed. Guinevere sat beside him, and grabbed his arm. “I’m going to… manipulate your heart rate, make it low enough that you go into slumber. It won’t hurt, I promise.”

“I believe you.”

“Alright… just, try not to freak out. It can feel… uncomfortable, or at least that’s what I’ve been told.” She admitted, as she tightened her grip on his arm, slowly and precisely turning it around, immersing herself in him. It was risky, slowing someone’s heart, her own pounding for dear life against her chest, but years of experience had taught her well. She steadied her breath, focusing on his heart rhythm, and nothing else. For some reason, she always imagined a flame in a void to help her concentrate. She didn’t remember whether an older Aes Sedai had taught her that, or if she had dreamt of it, but it always worked like a charm. And soon enough, Rand had closed his eyes, his breath even, mouth slightly opened. He’d fallen asleep. “I guess we have to wait now.” She commented, gently dropping the boy’s hand, turning her head towards her aunt. 

“Now we wait.” She agreed, locking her eyes into hers. “Is that another one of your Talents? Cardiac Arrest?” Moiraine asked, as she walked towards the armchair next to the fireplace. 

“Not quite,” Guinevere responded, taking a seat in front of her. Her aunt, the comfort of the chair, the warm fire burning next to them… the scene felt eerily familiar. “I mean I can stop someone’s heart fully if I wanted, but mostly I can just change them, up and down. It’s very useful in the infirmary.” 

“Mmh.” The woman smiled, a rare sight on her. “Any other Talents I should know about?” 

“I don’t think so,” Guinevere chuckled, “Healing, Cardiac Arrest… Compulsion.” She added, in a whisper. She’d always felt ashamed of it. 

Moiraine opened her mouth, and then closed it again, as if she feared regretting what she was about to ask. “How many times have you used it?”

“Not the amount you’re thinking about.” The girl replied. Moiraine lifted her eyebrows. She could tell when someone was purposely avoiding a direct answer. “I’ve barely used it, it makes me feel so guilty…” Stained. She admitted. “The last time being with Egwene.” 

“Yes, how did you even know what to ask her?” Moiraine asked, sitting straighter, her elbows against the arms of the chair. “I’m curious, how did you know who she was?”

“I healed her,” Guinevere explained, “and the boy, Perrin, when they arrived at Tár Valon. She told me they were searching for you. At the time I didn’t care much about it, you were in the Tower… but after news came that you were exiled, that you’d travelled to Shayol Ghul and then went missing… when I saw Egwene at the Tower months later, I’m afraid I couldn’t help but to ambush her, and ask.”

“About the Dragon Reborn?”

“About you.” Guinevere drew a shaky exhale in, lowering her gaze. “I was worried…” That wasn’t exactly true. I was angry. I was resentful. I wanted answers. “...worried that I’d missed you at the Tower, and then would never have the chance of seeing you again. The whole… Dragon Reborn thing came as a total surprise to me. But it helped me understand… understand you. Your absence from the Tower.” From my life. 

Guinevere looked up towards her aunt, and was surprised to see she was holding back tears. The woman shakily reached for the girl’s arm, softly caressing her forearm with her thumb. “Guinevere, I’m sure you have questions—

But they were interrupted by a loud exhale, abruptly standing up from their places as Rand incorporated from the bed. Guinevere noticed Moiraine raising her hands, shyly searching for weaves, only to seconds later let them fall weary against her waist. How hollow must she feel. 

“Rand…?” Guinevere asked, cautiously, feeling the boy’s heart racing out of his chest, hers matching his in the process, while his expression drowned in rage. 

“What did she say?” Moiraine asked. 

“I have to go.” He said, shaking his head, heading for the door. 

“Where? Did she tell you where?” Moiraine pried. 

“No!” Rand exclaimed, turning around. “Away from you, that was her condition. If she sees us together again she’ll kill you. Both of you.” He added, his gaze whirling towards Guinevere, and then back to Moiraine again. “Logain,” he muttered, “you moved him to Cairhien, didn’t you? So that I’d come here?”

“Yes, of course.” Moiraine rushed to admit, as if she were trying to prove she hadn’t been caught in a lie. “Away from the White Tower, where you’d never be able to see him, where he’d never be able to teach you.” 

“And you,” he whimpered, looking at Guinevere, “what you did to Egwene…” He started shaking his head, as Guinevere closed the steps between them, reaching for his hands. “What did she say to you?” She questioned him. 

He raised his head, locking his eyes with hers, and Guinevere’s heart broke at the sight. He hates me. “You used the One Power on her.”

“I-I did,” the girl admitted, “but Rand, it’s not what you think—

“Can you truthfully tell me you didn’t use the One Power to force her into giving you information?”

Guinevere’s lips turned into a pout, tears threatening to fall from her eyes.“I-I can’t…” she confessed, “but it’s not like that, I didn’t hurt her!”

“Like hell you didn’t!” He replied, snatching his arm away from her grip, in a motion that hurted her more than she was willing to admit. 

“Do you really believe I would hurt her?” Guinevere asked, offended. “That I’d hurt anyone?”

“I don’t know what I can believe anymore.” He sighed, lifting his arms. “I’ve stayed too long already.” He muttered, and left in a hurry. 

“She’s a Forsaken, Rand. You cannot listen to her!” Moiraine insisted, yelling at his back, but Guinevere couldn’t do anything else but to watch him disappear behind a corner, heart shattered to pieces, tears falling onto her cheeks imbued with sadness, anger, and confusion, as she found herself unable to justify such intense emotions for a boy she’d met not long ago. Why does he matter so much to me? Why does it hurt me so much?

*********

Note:

Hello! I'm sorry this took so long, I'm in the middle of finals ahah. My mind has been all over the place lately, so I apologise if there are incoherences between the first chapters and this one, I'll focus this weekend on proofreading and editing, in the meantime, feel free to comment on what you think it's hard to follow, and where the inconsistencies are. Also, I know I said this would be a Siuan POV, but I'm trying to follow with the timeline of the TV series, and I can't fit a Siuan POV just yet. Next one will be a Moiraine's one, but the following one is Siuan's, I promise! Well, I hope you enjoy the story!

Chapter 4 here!

[missnightshade]

❝ FOUND ❞

Moiraine Sedai x Original Character

After losing the stupid kids from Two Rivers in Shadar Logoth, Moiraine finds something (or someone) much better.

English is not my first language.

The search was restless. Literally.

Moiraine herself had a very bad habit of using every inch of her and Lan's inner energy for days before they actually needed the time to breathe. The warder, as quiet and collected as he could be, would always look at her through disapproving eyes whenever he felt her energy - far more important than his - drifting away every time she would put her sleep second, and healing the horses first.

Although Lan was already used to the stubborn Aes Sedai and her way of making things work on their way, taking care of her was his noble duty. She was a divine form of personal will, and her causes weren't even personal to begin with. His Sedai was, more than any other he has the (dis)pleasure of meeting, selfless in her own way, sacrificing most of her life to find the Dragon Reborn. That was something the kingdomless king found - at first - infuriating about the woman, but grew found of as the years by her side went by, and it became one of the reasons why he admired her.

So feeling her clammy skin, hot yet pale face and lifeless form on the ground (after he especially had lost all of the children they vowed to find and keep alive) was nothing but heartbreaking. Not to mention the pain he felt. Her pain. She was dying, and too fast for his liking.

The woods were a little more humid than the last ones they traveled by the last few days. Lan was sure that the coldness of the wet floor was doing quite the opposite of helping the other heal. Light, he didn't even know if there was any chance of her heeling. Her last words sunk into him that moment he saw no movement of her own.

You killed us all.

But he was more worried, indefinitely worried, about how he had killed her. The girl from the group of kids might've been able to help then. She could channel. She could have done something if they were still together.

The mare thought of losing Moiraine drove Lan mad. He tried to put as many cloths under her heavy body, and there was just little noise of discomfort coming though her parted dry lips as he moved her shoulders. Just then, the bushes a few meters away moved, and the Warder felt helpless as his hands reached for the sword hidden under his dark cape, unsheathing it in place.

"Who's there?", he demanded in a stern voice, standing over Moiraine to keep her at a safe distance from whoever might be their unexpected company.

" Shouldn't I be asking this? Not many people come to this area of the woods. Mainly not so close to Shadar Logoth."

The voice was calm and firm. There was a characteristic female shadow hidden behind a tall three, just a few steps from them. Lan took a step further, but said person didn't move a finger, breathing slow as a face came to the clearing Moiraine's body was lying, moonlit. Before Lan could say anything, the woman was kneeling down and something told him that the person was bearing no sense of harm, yet he held his sword tightly at her direction, afraid of a single movement.

The woman looked at Moiraine's not at all peaceful face, slowly pushing away the bloodstained fabric over the wound she had. After what looked like a medical examination, she stended again, slim body and tight composure guiding herself back to Lan, facing the blade of his sword easily. He took a moment to analyze the stranger. Blonde hair, green eyes and clean clothes.

"Trollocs poison.", she said certainly, lost in her own head as the eyes swept the region. " Take her into your arms. Leave the horses here and come back for them later. Two minutes walk and we'll reach somewhere safer. "

The stranger said calmy, almost vanishing into the shadows of the dark wood again before her steps came to a halt, the man's voice following suit.

"Why should I trust you?"

"Do you have any other option?", she turned to them. Although sceptical he was already with Moiraine in his arms. "You can stay here and let your Sedai die of either cold or eaten by a wolf that will definitely smell her rotten skin by the second. Or come with me. It's honestly that hard to think over your pride?"

The warder didn't answer, and she also wasn't expecting him to. Instead, she continued her path though the woods, clearly used to the pattern of the small trek they were doing in the fallen night. Although Lan was strong enough to cary Moiraine in her sleep, he was sure that the walk was not two minutes long, but they eventually made it.

As strange as it was, there was a house there. Completely in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and darkness. There was only one light lit in the front door, but it was enough to show how the small cottage could be warmer than anything in miles. Lan first thought seeing the woman move against the doorframe and guide him inside was that maybe they could die, or maybe they could rest.

"There's a room in the second left door.", the voice echoed in the already warmer house, candles being lit as the woman walked to each of them, making sure they could see each other better. "Leave her on the bed. I'll be there as soon as I can. "

In no position to deny a solution for Moraine's life, he did as told. His body was slightly too big to fit between the walls of the small place, but he did well while scooting down do place the Blue Ajah 's body over what looked like a clean bedding. It was clearly more comfortable than anything they've slept in in months, but no sarcasm came from the Sedai. Her silence, although common, was like knife sliding though his skin.

"You're pretty far from the White Tower.", he felt the stranger's presence before hearing her voice, but didn't move from Moiraine's body at all, afraid that if he did so, he'd be agreeing with letting someone he didn't even know take care of his sick Aes Sedai. The woman moved past him, making a face when she saw how stubborn Lan could be. "Are you going to stand over her body or let me take care of her?"

The warrior took a moment to consider the shorter human in the room. Her face was much clearer in the light of new candles burning around them. She was young. Not as young as the kids, but younger than him, although it was visible some marks of the time starting to make it's presence under her green eyes. She was strangely beautiful, and seeing her better like that, it was also noticable how her lips were always caring a hint of smile in their corners. A strange characteristic for a woman who seemly lived alone in the middle of the woods, close to a place no one in their right mind would dare to walk though.

"Who are you? How do I know you won't kill her?"

She snorted, placing a tray with different containers onto a piece of furniture close to the bed. "There's no way to know that, is there?", she simply asked, taking of the dark green cape resting over her shoulders, folding it before placing on a chair. "But you should know that if I really wanted to kill her, or you, I'd have already tried to do so. In a scenario that doesn't involve getting blood all over my house, preferably.", she blinked, dropping her arms at her sides. "I'm Ahrim."

"Lan." was all he said, as Ahrim thanked him with a look before moving to assist Moiraine.

It took her a long hour to clean and treat the wound. Ahrim knew that as good as she was with heeling without magic, the advanced stage of the poison required more. She did what she could, nonetheless. The mix of herbs she had applied to her open skin would do the best possible. Lan did not leave her side, breathing down the poor woman's neck like a predator. Once she was standing from the chair, Ahrim looked at him while cleaning her hands in a wet cloth that was now close to be covered in blood. The warder was expectant.

"It's going to help. Give her a bit of strength while slowing the effect of the poison, but my herbs will only get her too far into the days. She need stronger assistance. The magical type."

He knew that, of course. That didn't mean he knew how to do that.

"There were rumors of other Sedais coming this way a few days ago after a man. They shouldn't be too far. Maybe two days of traveling. I'd advise doing it as soon as possible, but she can't --"

"Travel. Not right now."

"Yes."

Ahrim's eyes rested on Moiraine's body. She had somehow managed to move her a little bit more into a comfortable position and Lan was thankful for that. He really lacked the soft touch.

" Would you...would you look out for her?"

His words said less that any other human could possibly understand, but somehow living with only herself and having the occasional human interactions when needed, Ahrim was good at reading into the least. He was going after them alone.

"I thought you didn't trust me.", she teased, crossing the small room to gather the tray of meds and lead them out of there to give the woman space to rest for a bit without someone towering over her.

"You didn't kill her.", Was his answer. " And I'm pretty sure if Moiraine still has a hint of life within her, she'll beat you in doing so."

Ahrim laughed, not even scared by the thought of having a full Aes Sedai on her home. And the implications that Lan's words had.

"Stay for the night and rest. This part of the woods is cruel and you look terrible, respectfully." , the blonde replied, leaving the tray on the small kitchen sink as she turned on her heels to look at the uptight warder. "There's bread and fresh milk. Find yourself whatever you need. I trust you not to run away with all of my food. Then I'll definitely help the poison go though her faster."

The man's stayed quiet, only bidding his head. Ahrim saw this as a way of communicating, in a strange and impersonal way. Sometime birds could be better at small conversations than people. She took it as a cue to call it quits with the wild night that gave her two strangers to look after. The small body made its way to the door in front of Moiraine's room, and before the door was shut a quiet "Goodnight Lan." was heard.

•---------•---------•---------•---------•---------•

The next morning the sun was still a little shy. The simple cottage was located in the middle of dense trees, but most of the morning sunshine seeping through her bedroom window would wake her up daily. Other days, like that one, Ahrim would wake up to the sound of the wild life. Birds, mostly.

She checked on Moraine as soon as her day's clothes were on her body. Dressed and fresh, the room she had settled the Aes Sedai in was hot and in desperate need of the morning's light breeze. By the color of Moiraine's skin, she was much better and would probably wake up soon, even if it was just to show off how alive she still was. Ahrim left one side of the window open, and left to get some of the things ready for the day.

Lan was gone. The way half of her bread was also gone and how there was no sign of the Warder even being there besides Moiraine was an indication of the fact.

As the first part of the morning went by, the blonde woman took care of things around the house. The way things were neat even with two strangers showing up in the middle of the night was something that impressed Lan the first time he saw the interior of Ahrim's personal space. She watered a few plants she had growing in a little garden just on the left side of the house, and went a little further into the woods in a direction she knew a small river was located to fetch some water. Once back in the house, she managed to get the water boiling with a few leaves of her favorite tea before hearing a soft gasp coming from the left bedroom.

She paused, looked around the small kitchen and decided it was a great time for the tea to be ready.

A tiny bit nervous about what kind of person she would encounter inside of her room, the younger of the two beings inside of the house had a steaming cup of the tea in her hands and a slow pace, like she was walking on eggshells inside her own property. The bedroom was silent as she slowly moved her head through the door before her body. The previous almost-dead-body covered in blue clothes was sitting on the bed this time, clearly disoriented.

Moireine, as she'd learned to be the Sedai's name, easily found her eyes, catching the way she was careful enough to balance herself against the doorframe. She should be afraid, but the blank expression her features gave away were scaring Ahrim instead. But, of course, she pushed through, finally entering the room till her body was fully in front of the older one.

Moiraine's hands grasped a bit of the blanket her body was previously covered with, and even if Ahrim noticed, there was no comment to be made about it.

"Glad to see you awake. Your Warder almost lost you."

The Lady followed her movement inside the room with her tired blue eyes, that seemed a lot more gray than anything with the sickness still present. She was so damn exhausted.

"Where's he?", she asked, or demanded the first thing that was expected her to. "Who are you?".

The brunette's voice was almost as broken as her body was. Weak and tired, but she still somehow managed to hold a bit of superiority behind the words, looking far too royal to be in Ahrim's guest bed.

"I'm Ahrim.", green eyes shone down on her as the smaller hands of Ahrim offered the cup of tea. "Drink it, it'll give you strength till Lan gets back with some good news to save your precious life."

There was no intention of sounding sarcastic, but Ahrim decided that it was what she was best at when she didn't know what to say and how to address a sick Aes Sedai looking at her like she was the Dark One herself.

Moraine was taken aback by how soft and caring Ahrim's voice was even while flowing with irritation over her doubt about the woman. Not that Ahrim could blame her. Not only she was knocking on death's door, but she was an Aes Sedai, known for their secrets and thinking everyone also did as them. If living too many years I'm the white tower taught Moiraine something, it was not to trust beautiful women with the potential to destroy the state of mind you took years building.

And Ahrim was a beautiful woman. That type of beautiful woman.

She took a moment to consider her options and her state. Her shoulder was sore and there was a intermittent feeling of sanity, as if at any moment Moiraine would slip back into a coma and not wake up for another twenty years.

"You don't look like a healer," was her choice of words before her right hand reached to accept the cup of tea either way.

She could inquiry more, learn more about her intentions, but she could also feel Lan. He was well and healthy, and definitely determinate. It was a fact.

"You also didn't look like an Aes Sedai yesterday. What did that change?"

Ahrim languidly stared between the open window and the Blue Ajah, her green eyes a bit more lighter after being exposed to the sun seeping through. It was peaceful, and her posture against the nightstand, hands softly gripping it behind her back as her body faced Moiraine, brought a sense of calm. She was at ease, and the common reaction to a Sedai was far from the welcoming nature the woman that made her home a healing stand for her had, and it was making her feel safer than she'd felt in ages.

Moiraine let go of her own skepticism, knowing very well that if Lan was the one to leave her there, he'd already gone through all of the possibilities inside his head, still opting to keep her there.

"The poisoned blade that bored into you hit pretty deep, but is was thankfully slowed down from attacking your bloodstream for...two days?" the blonde girl asked, eyes fixed on Moiraine's pale face. She was also beautiful, ungodly beautiful. As the Blue Ajah finally sipped the tea, her head agreed lowly, thankful that she actually understood about what she was doing. "That's probably when your body shut down, energy going all in trying to fix whatever was wrong. If it was sooner, I would've been able to help more, but herbs can only get you to a point after something so harmful affects you. I suggested your warder to find help from your sisters. I've seen some of them passing by two days ago. You'll be able to travel better in a week."

•---------•---------•---------•---------•---------•

Thanks to the world building, plots and schemes inside of The Wheel of Time, this turned out to be too big, so I decided to cut into two parts so it won't be too much to read all at once. I'll post the second part (or not) depending of how you like this. This was taken from my wattpad account, just in case someone is familiar with it.

[cannoli-reader]

Good take.  Viscerally, it IS cool. The underdogs rise up.  The marginalized take power.  This is a superficially satisfying thing to happen.  It comes on the heels of, and is directly connected to, the Asha’man going to town on the Shaido, who, by this point have earned nothing but contempt from the reader and are as good an excuse for human-on-human violence as we get in the series (even counting the Seanchan & Children of the Light, two factions many readers wish got more comeuppance than they did).  

A lot of the problems that people have with the material immediately following this book is that they are still embracing the superficial “action" level of the series, and the story moves away from that, to get into character conflicts and internal struggles.  Right on the heels of Dumai’s Wells, we get the bargain with the Sea Folk and Cadsuane arriving on the scene, and they become among the most-hated non-antagonists in the series because they are not all about showering praise and glory on the main characters, and do not fall over backward in awe and admiration but rather force the characters to see how far they still have to go and to confront limitations.  A certain very basic way of reading the books as a pure action-gratification story runs into a wall when the story stops handing out treats. 

Even the sexism complaints are rooted in this.  Because WoT is so broad in its scope, there are a variety of characters and factions available, and a lot of different ways to embrace the story.  One thing many readers find admirable or enjoyable at first is the female power structure, and vicariously thrill to relatable female characters exercising power unapologetically without answering to men or a patriarchy.  That this state of affairs is just as wrong as the Asha’man dominating Aes Sedai, escapes their notice until the fun stops (from their perspective) and they feel like they have had the rug yanked out from under them and the girls-in-charge story they though they were getting collapses into another male power fantasy, where the women have to kneel to the man (the romance-novel appearance of the original cover of the book* depicting that very scene does not help).  

WoT is neither a girl power fantasy, nor a male underdogs fight back story.  It is about how either gender’s supremacy is toxic, and how people have to come together and appreciate and respect one another.  Dumai’s Wells is cool and awesome and it is the start of the downward spiral of Rand.  The whole book sets that up beautifully, with the constant atmosphere of inaction and frustration in Rand’s arc, to make the action-gratification of the battle more satisfying and his abuse at the hands of the various Aes Sedai seeming to justify his moment of triumph, all on the immediate level, and on a deeper level, throughout the book, we see Rand’s attitude has taken a turn for the worse, since the hammer-blows of his first large scale battle, Moiraine’s feigned death, Morgase’s apparent murder and witnessing the deaths of his friends at Rahvin’s hands, which ended the prior book.  He has started keeping his List of Dead Women, he has begun holding friends at arm’s length, and his approach to politics has become considerable more cynical and manipulative than his idealistic agenda in Tear.  Lews Therin’s voice has actively started talking to him, instead of just popping up as a random memory or reflexive skill he never learned in this life. All the seeds of a turn to the dark side are sown, and they bloom in his demand that the Aes Sedai kneel. 

And as is the case so often in WoT, you can honestly see why someone would WANT to do this, want to bring this about, without writing it off as an evil impulse motivated purely by unworthy motives.  That’s the beauty of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (and no one else), that everyone always has a plausible and legitimate reason for everything they do.  Even the more generally despised attitudes of the Children of the Light and the Seanchan are rooted in the inarguable fact that every way in which the world of WoT is worse than the real world is due to the actions of channelers. But this quality of the writing mean that it is also really easy to identify with certain characters and to embrace certain in-story perspectives, and as a result, many readers have blinders and miss when a character starts to go off the rails or fail to recognize how something unpleasant is actually to the character’s benefit, or a much needed correction.  At Dumai’s Wells, the readers who embraced Rand’s perspective saw their boy avenged, those who were excited about the formation of the Black Tower or annoyed by the Aes Sedai had their dreams come true, and those who reveled in the feminine power structure had their toys taken away.  Cadsuane and the Sea Folk and the Seanchan would shortly thereafter return to take other peoples’ toys away.  And then Brandon Sanderson would come along and wreck the toys of those of us who were into the character development and world-building. 

*I refer to the cover by Darrell K Sweet, showing Rand in a billowy shirt standing over a cringing woman with a shawl bearing the Flame of Tar Valon.

~ listen I can't seem to wrap my head around how people don't really understand that Dumai's Wells was indeed a win for the Dark? I thought it was obvious? People are either seemingly against it (saying that it was proof that the books are sexist or w/e) or that it was badass (which goes against the obvious theme of the chapters and the aftermath reactions from, especially, Perrin).

Canonically I'm pretty sure it was a win for the Dark. As well as I figured that it was to show that where the supposed "matriarchal" society was not working as will the supposed "patriarchal" system not work either. SINCE I AM FULLY ON BOARD for the "they have to come together at the end" theory that should have been fully fleshed out for A Memory of Light but, of course, we didn't get to see much of that. but fml people it had to play out.

Rand having Aes Sedai swearing fealty was not seen in a positive light in the books so I'm not sure why people are like YEAH SO COOL or UGH THIS SEXIST NARRATIVE.

anyways someone could articulate this better I'm sure. I'm rambling. I just keep seeing BOTH opinions and never one where it's taken at this point of view unless it's a quieter take. AM I MISREADING THIS, EHHH?

[livlepretre]

Hi! What is wheel of time, if you don't mind me asking? I've been seeing you post about it and heard some people talking, is it a tv show? Or are there books?

!!!!!! It’s an epic fantasy book series (my very favorite books of all time) that has been adapted into a very high quality tv series starring Rosamund Pike which will be available to stream on Amazon Prime this November.

It’s an incredibly epic and sprawling series, but I suppose in a nutshell: it takes place in a world where basically men and women used to both be able to do magic, but due to some ancient history, men basically have Original Sin instead of women, and part of that is that they cannot do magic without going mad and dying. So, it’s a world that is highly matriarchal, where only women can perform magic and most structures of power are run by women. Meanwhile, also, time is truly cyclical, with people being reincarnated over and over and prophecies always coming true one way or the other, because they are as much a history of what has already happened as a portent of the future. On a surface level, the primary conflict is one of Light vs Shadow, Good vs Evil, humankind against the Dark One.

The series itself follows a character named Moiraine, who is one of the female magic users (called Aes Sedai) who is searching for a prophesied chosen one (who is the reincarnation of a very controversial figure from the past). She ends up with a group of five young people, one of whom she suspects could be the one she’s searching for.

Those are all surface things though. In my opinion, it threads the rare needle of being an extremely close psychological portrait of the main characters, with friendships so beautifully developed and trauma and depression and hope and recovery and love all so tenderly explored that that is what the story really is, with the gorgeous world building and breathtaking adventure and frankly magnificent magic system all just the unforgettable set dressing for those characters.

I cannot recommend these highly enough, and if you’re not sure it’s your jam, please do give the show a try!

[cannoli-reader]

Moiraine has no legitimate advice to offer, she is just trying to persuade Rand ... Rand is aware Moiraine has legitimate advice to offer, he just cannot trust it, You wrote this, which is it? Does she have legitimate advice or not? And what's a hoyen from your post talking about Elayne's pregnancy? Finally, what's your problem with all the women but Elayne?

Simplest first. It was a typo. "Hoyden" is the word in the books. The definition is in the original post.

I meant two different things by "legitimate advice". With Moiraine, I meant that she is not actually trying to give Rand advice on what was best for him, she was trying to persuade him to a previously decided course of action. In Rand's case, I meant that he is open to the kind of advice she is not currently interested in giving, not her attempt to make him act so as to convince the world that Siuan has him under her complete control.

I don't have a problem with most of the women. I like Nynaeve as much as Elayne. I like lots of the other characters, even if that does not mean I think everyone is perfect. The thing is, much of my writing is reactive, and thus the topics I write about don't necessarily represent the scope of my thoughts on the series as a whole. Also, one of my biggest interests is in the politics of the series, which means I am often writing in reaction to topics relating to that subject. And that's where the female characters play around the most, and thus tend to come into criticism. The politics in the setting are broken and part of the problem with the world, so the political characters are going to come in for their share of criticism because of it. So, yeah. I lay the hammer down on Siuan and Moiraine a bunch and later on Egwene, who takes them as mentors. Outside of their political mindsets, I actually like Siuan and Moiraine a lot. It's just that I mostly happen to write about things that tend to show them in their worst light.

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

@ajcope12 you've triggered my Media Analysis button! Apologies for the long rant.

Season 1's production was incredibly cursed (in the original sense). You could tell me that the creators ticked off the Fair Folk and I'd go, "Yeah, checks out." I was spitting mad at all the cuts when I first started, but then I thought about all the insane restrictions the crew got slammed with and calmed down a lot. One really obvious example of this would be Rand and Moiraine going alone into the Blight rather than taking the whole party. It doesn't make sense much storywise, but the poor bastards were filming in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. Better a fictional story take a hit rather than a real life person get sick with the horrible new bug ruining everyone's lungs!

But for all the damage done by the pandemic and the short season and poor Barney Harris needing to leave, there are some terrible flaws that just can't be explained away. Let's do some role reversal here:

Say you're watching a fantasy TV show with an apocalypse plotline, complete with a prophecized Chosen One who beats up Fantasy Satan with kickass Chosen One powers. The cast is a group of young folks, and the driving mystery in the first season is which one of them is the Chosen One. At the climax of the season, one of the young women realizes that she's the Chosen One and confronts Fantasy Satan for the first time.

Take a moment and think about what this moment means in the rhythm of the story. This is the first time the Chosen One steps up as the Chosen One and it's the climax of the season. Or to put it another way, it's the creators' first chance to really wow the audience with how powerful and extraordinary the Chosen One is. So you'd expect the Chosen One to manifest her cool Chosen One powers, or make a thrilling speech about how she'll always resist Fantasy Satan, or outwit Fantasy Satan. It's her debut! It's her time to shine!

But the Chosen One doesn't do anything like that. Instead she...talks about her boyfriend's dreams and aspirations. Not even about their mutual dreams, or she's able to stand up to Satan because he's got her back, or how their love can overcome anything. No, she just talks about what a wonderful guy her boyfriend is, how he dreams of being so much more than just a farm boy, how she'll always support his dreams even to the detriment of her own. And y'know, the boyfriend is a pretty great guy, and you are invested in his plotline, and you do want to see more of their romance...but this is the Chosen One's debut! Why is her big moment about her boyfriend, and not about HER?!

If you saw this TV show, you'd probably walk away thinking that this was a super-misogynistic scene. And you'd be right! But this is what happens at the climax of Season 1, only with the genders reversed.

If that fucking scene had been a onetime incident, I'd...well, I'd probably screech my way through it, but afterwards I'd go, "Well, the writers had to rewrite the last two episodes at the last minute to be quarantine-friendly, of course they've got some real stinkers. Shit happens, at least no one got sick." But it wasn't an isolated incident. Throughout the show the plot is rewritten in bizarre ways that don't make much sense, and somehow the male characters always seem to get pushed to the side to make way for the women.

It reeks of shallow feminism to me. See, there's a lot of feminist retellings of older stories where the focus is put on the female characters. Since so many old stories reduce their women to accessories, it's a great technique for making space for women's stories and perspectives where there used to be none. Having watched the TV series, I'm pretty sure the writers were trying to do something similar.

But the Wheel of Time never had this specific problem. Don't get me wrong, the books have their Issues with gender. However, the series is packed with complicated women with their own agency, and they come in all kinds of roles. They have their own plotlines and character arcs independent of the men, or interacting with them on an equal ground. And those plotlines are great! As a teen thirsting for powerful heroines in the aughts, following the adventures of Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Birgitte, and Aviendha was like mana in the desert. It's definitely one of the reasons why I latched onto the series so hard.

So when the show alters the plot to give more spotlight to women, it's trying to fix a problem that isn't there. Instead, it does a disservice to the male characters, who also have compelling, complicated stories to tell, but get fewer and fewer chances to tell them. And these changes are applied so carelessly that they hurt the story rather than helping it. We don't start the series with a short, visceral scene depicting the madness of Lews Therin--we start with Moiraine giving a vague monologue that fucking victimblames the Hundred Companions for thinking they could seal the Dark One. But they did seal the Dark One! And Moiraine would know that! And why is she so hostile and dismissive?? This woman has spent her entire career searching for the Dragon Reborn, and will go on to become one of his first mentors and allies. Don't you think she'd have a better understanding of the attack on Shayol Ghul? Or even just some fucking empathy?

What makes this hurt so much is that the series did need some changes. Honestly, I was kinda glad when I heard that the TV adaptation was going to tweak the story a bit--like I said, the books have their Issues. The Red Ajah are so frequently reduced to queer-coded manhaters--wouldn't it be great if they got more complex characterization? Ebou Dari society is supposed to be matriarchal, but it's a pretty cringey version that was obviously written by a kinky dude--let's change that (and rewrite Tylin from scratch, yuck)! Why do we only see Aiel sworn sisters and not Aiel sworn brothers? And so on and so forth.

But we don't get any of that. Instead, we get one-size-fits-all feminism. Give more of the story to the women, and boom, your story is progressive! But that's not how feminism works and that's not how writing works. If you're going to rewrite a flawed-but-wonderful story, you need to think about how that story works, what makes it great, and what makes it flawed. Blindly copying what other people have done is just laziness.

I have heard season 2 was better. I was actually looking forward to it. But at this point I'm so depressed by what I've seen that I'm not sure that I can continue. Do the boys get the attention they deserve? Do the writers stop dumbing down the lore into nonsense? Do characters get to be flawed without having some dark, brooding past like a CW character? God don't get me started on all the dark and brooding pasts, that's a whole other rant. But yeah, if season 2 can meet those standards, I'll keep watching.

Those last two episodes in Season One were so bad they drove my boyfriend insane. And honestly, I'm halfway there myself. Not sure I have it in me to keep watching, and the boyfriend's definitely out.

On the brighter side of things, he's picked up The Eye of the World out of pure rage.

..........Is there a reason why this show is so bizarrely misandrist? That's not a term I use lightly, but uhhhhh I don't know how else to describe some of the shit I've seen.

[kunosoura]

My biggest critique of the wheel of time series so far is that they’re playing their hand a little too quickly with characterization. Not to be the “but in the books” person but the series is humanizing Moiraine too quickly and making her obviously trustworthy whereas in the books, her aloof demeanor and tendency to withhold information is a flaw that makes it very easy for the nascent mistrust the Taveren have of the White Tower to bloom into a series-long breakdown of communication. It was crucial to the theme of the early books being like “what if Gandalf wasn’t some superhuman angel of trust and good advice but a flawed, mortal ass human whose secretive questing nature alienates the farm boy hero who doesn’t really want to be there”. In addition, I think they maybe toned down Nynaeve’s anger and irrationality a bit too much - it’s another bit of actually clever writing that Jordan managed to pull off where even if her hatred of the Aes Sedai and Moiraine is irrational, it’s rooted in just how much she cares about the main characters and how scared she is by how rapidly their world grew and her power to protect them shrunk; like, even in his usual misogyny fueled urge to make his female characters irrational and hard to like, there’s undeniable pathos to it. In the series so far, Nynaeve just sort of feels like a #girlboss.

The trouble is, the original writing of this and indeed a lot of the themes of the books are deeply interwoven with Jordan’s misogyny. The series is very wisely choosing not to adapt the vibe the books gave of Jordan going to his grave thinking men were from Mars and women from Venus, but that means they’re kind of having to cut away a lot of good apple to get the rot out. And while we haven’t even come close to getting payoff for what the series is changing, I can already say it’s a better experience than reading the books.

Also, I think Liandrin’s line, about how women may be the ones who can use magic safely, but it’s still men who hold power over the world, is really funny because that’s exactly explicitly the opposite of what Jordan intended for the world. but because the matriarchal power he envisioned was slotted roughly into an otherwise pretty straightforward European fantasy setting, replete with sexual violence and objectification aimed primarily at women, it’s kind of the only conclusion you can come to about how to interpret the world.

[thatsdevilstears-a]

/// GUIDELINES

——GENERAL

1. Hello there and welcome to my blog. Thank you for reading my guidelines! My name is Wiktoria, you can call me vikn. I live in Poland. As you can see, English is not my first language, therefore mistakes can occur, please bear that in mind.

I also have an interest tracker so you can fill it here.

2. I consider this blog independent and semi-selective, meaning, I prefer to write write with mutuals only. Memes, open starters are open to everyone, though. That doesn’t mean, though, it will carry on. I’m open to exploring, but I do not click with everyone. Please, don’t take it personally if that happens with you as well. Also, feel free to send me pms, asks and just say hi! I’m a friendly person that also knows all too well what anxiety means.

3. I’m not that fond of writing with OC characters and I don’t, most of the time.

8. When it comes to formatting - I keep it simple – small text + eventually icons.

4. I’d love to explore crossover stories. Examples? Relationship between Regina Mills & Damon Salvatore, Emma Swan & Theo Crain, no matter how crazy that may seem. 

5. Speaking of... Even if I do not have characters from certain fandoms, doesn't mean I wouldn't like to write with character from them in crossovers. Movies and tv shows I can think of are: harry potter, lord of the rings, the vampire diaries, twilight, stranger things, why women kill, orange is the new black, sherlock, jessica jones, charmed, disney & pixar in general...

6. I am open to all kinds of nsfw; I often like to write all kinds of dramas, character deaths, horror, mental-illness issues, abusive relationships, heartbreak and heartache. +18 muns and muses only. I’ll tag such posts appropriately.

7. I do not possess icons for all my characters. Most of the icons I do use aren’t mine, but I’m trying to slowly make some myself.

——DOs AND DON’Ts

2. NoH8! If I see it, I’ll unfollow you asap.

1. No god-modding; I control my character, you control yours. There are examples where I give permission to do so, e.g. we discuss something in pms and plan things to turn out the specific way. In other cases… I may turn out not so nice.

4. Do not force a ship on me. I’m open to it, but I’d like you to discuss it with me first.

3. Personal blogs - do not follow me, nor like/reblog my posts! I’ll block you.

5. Of course, read all the rules! If I see you haven’t, there will be just one more chance to.

6. Please, try to match the length of the replies.

7. Also, please, cut your posts.

——SHIPPING

1. First and foremost, I ship chemistry! There are, though, ships I particularly don’t like - that’s why I always advance to message me about it first. If you’re shy, just send me an anon! 

2. If you’re curious about my favourite ones, though, my two otps are swan queen [emma & regina] and masriel [marisa & asriel]. & when it comes to otps, i rarely ship those characters with anyone else -- if so that's with characters from another fandom (as i mentioned -- i love crossovers)

As for other ships I do support: dani & jaimie, serena & june, villanelle & eve, anne & gilbert, moiraine & lan [platonically but may try also go beyond ;)], moiraine & siuan, alice & luther, alison & cole, norma & romero, lizbon & sergio, nairobi & helsinki (in obvious way ;)).

I'm fairlyyy ok with: dragon queen (regina & maleficent), emma & lily, serena & fred (agnsttt), theo & trish, vanessa & ethan, melanie & ben, beth & benny.

3. If I were to write about all my characters’ sexual orientation, I’d take me forever. Which is why I want you to look at them as bisexual or pansexual [perhaps apart from those who are originally gay]. But it honestly depends on the story; I may ship those characters with either females or males. So even if we have such characters as Serena Joy or Lord Asriel, they can be gay or bi [openly or not], or straight. I like to play with that form in various stories. 

4. When it comes to smut, rule number one: +20 muns and muses only. If you came here for this sort of entertainment, I’ll say look for it somewhere else. I’m ok with writing it - from time to time and when it feels right. It will be under a read more and tagged as ‘nsfw’. I feel like it may be fade to black most of the time, though.

/// MUSES

-------PRIMARY

>>>his dark materials (book & tv show based): marisa coulter // face: ruth wilson ; lyra belacqua // face: dafne keen ; lord asriel belacqua // face: james mcavoy. 

>>>once upon a time: regina mills // face: lana parrilla ; emma swan // face: jennifer morrison. 

>>>the wheel of time (for now tv show based):  moiraine damodred  // face: rosamund pike ;  lan mandragoran /// face: daniel henney.

>>>snowpiercer: melanie cavill // face: jennifer connelly ; alexandra cavill // face: rowan blanchard. 

>>>penny dreadful: vanessa ives // face: eva green. 

>>>the queen’s gambit: beth harmon /// face: anya taylor-joy. 

>>>the haunting series: theodora cran // face: kate siegel ; eleanor crain // face: victoria pedretti.

-------SECONDARY

>> the affair: alison bailey /// face: ruth wilson.

>>luther: alice morgan // face: ruth wilson.

>>anne with an e: anne shirley-cuthbert // face: amybeth mcnulty ; gilbert blythe // face: lucas jade zumann.

>>killing eve (tv show based): villanelle/oksana astankova // face: jodie comer. 

>>the handmaid’s tale (tv show based): serena joy waterford // face: yvonne strahovski. 

>>bates motel: norma bates /// face: vera farmiga.

>>the haunting series: jamie taylor // face: amelia eve /  carla gugino ; dani clayton /// face:  victoria pedretti ; olivia crain // face: carla gugino.

>>the oa: nina azarova/prairie johnson /// face: brit marling.

-------TEST

>his dark materials (book & tv show based): mary malone // face: simone kirby. 

>killing eve (tv show based):  eve polastri // face: sandra oh. 

>bates motel:  norman bates // face: freddie highmore.

>la casa de papel: nairobi // face: alma flores ; lizbon // face:  itziar ituño ; el professor // face: álvaro morte.

[aion-rsa]

How The Wheel of Time Adapts a Sprawling Epic Fantasy

https://ift.tt/3zfblkm

Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series would seem to defy adaptation with its massive cast of characters, centuries of history, and sprawling world map. The danger of alienating longtime fans of the books with inaccuracies or confusing newcomers with too many details is very real. However, showrunner Rafe Judkins was up to the challenge, deciding which aspects of the novels made the story original and bringing those key aspects to television. “I think it’s our job to both be true to the Wheel of Time books but also be mindful of… the things that could feel repetitive [and those] that are fresh and unique,” he says.

The Wheel of Time doesn’t rely on a single protagonist, for example, but instead introduces three unwitting young heroes in a familiar fantasy journey, escaping those who would prevent them from fulfilling important destinies they know nothing about. Josha Stradowski is the reluctant Rand al’Thor; Barney Harris is the skeptical Mat Cauthon; and Marcus Rutherford is the quiet Perrin Aybara. The three friends leave small town life behind when they are unwittingly swept up in the forces of fate during the Amazon series’ first season.

Read more

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“With Rand, we wanted to find an actor that really brought out not only the goodness of the character but also the complications, and really embodied this guy who was a shepherd in the mountains and never wanted this adventure that’s been thrust upon him,” says Judkins about the point-of-view character in Jordan’s debut The Wheel of Time novel.

As for the other two, Judkins says, “Mat and Perrin are so much more than sidekick characters… Sometimes people felt like they didn’t really fall in love with those characters until some of the later books when they really got to know them and got to see their POV on the world. Hopefully in the show, right from the beginning–Marcus and Barney give such strong performances–they are a part of the ensemble right up front.” However, the story’s scope quickly widens as a host of characters from across the map come to the aid of–or pursue–the boys.

For example, there’s The Wheel of Time cast headliner Rosamund Pike, who plays Moiraine Damodred, a magic channeler in an all-female order that anchors the worldbuilding of the series. “The Aes Sedai are a group of women who have access to the One Power and are able to channel,” Judkins explains. “They are not the presidents of countries or the queens of countries; they are the people who sit at the center of political power… and pull the strings of the world from the White Tower.”

The manner in which the Aes Sedai magic is depicted will need to honor its singular nature both in order to appeal to existing fans and to draw in new ones. “The channeling is so integral to the world of The Wheel of Time,” Judkins says. “The author made a system that makes sense. It works; it has rules, and you have to follow them. So we’ve been really careful on the show to make sure that we’re holding to all of those same rules.”

Using magic in The Wheel of Time, however, is not simply a matter of chanting, hand-waving, and adding pyrotechnics in post-production. “We didn’t just send it off to VFX and say, ‘Give us a simple light show.’ We started with Rosamund and a movement coach,” says Judkins. “Threads [of magic] are woven together; they call them weaves; they call it channeling. We went through everything in the books and passages discussing what it feels like to embrace the Source, what it feels like to weave things together.”

Other details, such as the disparate journeys of the characters in The Wheel of Time, must necessarily be compressed, with certain major characters absorbing roles of minor characters throughout the series. “We’ll never be able to achieve everything that’s in the books,” Judkins admits. “What are the iconic places that we need to do, and do we need to shift things around in physical space in order to hit them? … I don’t want to waste all my production money putting town after town on screen.”

That being said, the world of The Wheel of Time has a wealth of different cultures with their own unique customs that it would be a shame not to honor. “[Jordan] really built this huge geo-political world, and the cultures of the different nations were so distinct,” says Judkins. “In the first book, they don’t go to as many of those places, but the ones we do–the detail to which they are thought through in trying to deliver exactly the culture that was represented in the books in those places is extremely thorough.”

Judkins’ faith in the worldbuilding of the source material eliminates any worry about the inevitable comparisons to Game of Thrones. “The Wheel of Time came out before Game of Thrones, in terms of the books. There’s so much that is in Game of Thrones – and George [R.R. Martin] will say this – that was inspired by The Wheel of Time,” he says. “But we as creators have to be mindful of the fact that Game of Thrones has already come out and is a reference point for a lot of audiences.”

That accessibility is going to be a key factor in bringing in viewers unfamiliar with The Wheel of Time books, but with all of the careful attention to only the most important details, Judkins and his team appear to be up to the challenge. As characters often say in the Jordan novels, “The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,” and only a fickle audience can decide whether the Amazon adaptation succeeds when it arrives this fall.

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The Wheel of Time premieres on Amazon Prime in November.

The post How The Wheel of Time Adapts a Sprawling Epic Fantasy appeared first on Den of Geek.

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