#new thought: mat x galad

[markantonys]

Oh well now that you’ve told me we get more Elayne content as the series goes on I’m definitely still excited to read the later books!

Gawyn! I’ve seen so very little of him so far but from what I have he seems like a sweetheart. I love a good sibling relationship and how he and Elayne team up against Galad is great to see, keeping an eye on that one… Very frustrating for Egwene to be fawning over the wrong brother though smh

Haha poor Mat! I’m definitely warming to him more, I’m nearly finished TDR and he’s just put a flower in his hair while sneaking into the palace 😭 Which speaking of new locations and characters, that will be SO exciting to see. I know book fans have been complaining about the changes to the show but it makes sense for them to have saved Caemlyn for s3, there’s just so much going on!

Yeah, I’m looking forward to being on the other side! I think this is preferable bc honestly, based on my taste, I think the show is on the whole making changes for the better (the women getting more spotlight from the off, actually making queer coded relationships canon lol) so having the show to look forward to after reading the books is so much fun.

*the books are obviously the source material and fantastic please don’t shoot me book fans

first of all, congratulations on having the most correct and relatable takes on everything in the series so far djdkjf right down to anxiously adding "please don't shoot me book fans" after daring to express that you think the show is good and perhaps even better. keep us updated as you go along, i love hearing your thoughts! as always, to my reader followers, please do not mention any book spoilers past TDR in replies/reblogs on this post. we must keep this anon pure! anon, i will be tagging this post as book spoilers for the sake of show-onlys since we're discussing some s3 stuff, but rest assured i haven't included any spoilers past where you are (bar vague stuff like "X character has a big storyline in Y portion of the series").

gawyn is MY BOY. he's like a son to me, and you can't imagine the sheer serotonin boost i got when he was unexpectedly namedropped in s2 just when i was starting to worry he might be cut or merged with galad (neither of which would make sense to do, but other readers kept predicting that baselessly and i couldn't help worrying). he's definitely a slow-burner character with his biggest storylines occurring late in the series (another thing to look forward to in the later books!), but both brothers become more prominent in the book 4-6 era, so i will be interested to see what you think of that since they're definitely Just Kinda There giving us nothing in the first 3 books haha

and this is exactly why the show was wise to hold off on caemlyn, gawyn, galad, morgase, and elaida until s3! while i would've loved to see them earlier and while the EOTW caemlyn sequence is dear to my heart, in the medium of TV where the need to build sets and hire actors constrains what you can include when, it makes way more sense to hold off on introducing major locations & characters until such time as they are truly needed in the story, which for the Caemlyn Crew is season 3 since they don't get up to very much in the first few books. going to all that casting & set-building trouble for a single scene in season 1 or casting gawyn & galad just to bop around not doing much at the white tower in season 2 wouldn't have been practical. not to mention that there's been so much else going on, like you say! better to save this crew until we have enough space in a season to spend proper time with them.

and i love the show's approach of introducing elayne first and getting her into our hearts, then introducing the rest of her family in the next season when we're primed to be interested in meeting them, having already spent a whole season with her and having come to love her, and having heard intriguing little tidbits about her family and upbringing. caemlyn is my favorite location in the books and the trakands are my favorite family, so i can't wait to see them next season!!!! i'm so curious to see what kind of aesthetic they'll go for with caemlyn, and noble andoran fashion too. and given what a great damodred family backstory they crafted out of almost nothing in the books, i suspect we'll be in for a treat with some meatier family dynamics among the trakands (who do already have great dynamics in the books, but i bet there's more that can be done!)

mat putting a flower in his hair!! 😭😭 he's a baby! man that reminds me of the green man in EOTW and when he only gave flower crowns to the girls and not the boys, that made me so mad djkjfjg whenever i see anyone be sad that the green man didn't make the show, i'm like "nah FUCK that guy, he didn't give the boys flower crowns!"

and i am COMPLETELY on the same page as you with still preferring the show even after having read the books because the changes it makes are in line with my personal taste and improve aspects of the books i didn't like. the aes sedai are one of the most unique elements of the series, and i love how much focus the show has given to them early on! i love that egwene and nynaeve get to be ta'veren too! i love that moiraine and siuan are in a canonical present-day relationship instead of relegated to "being gay is just a phase in college"! i love alanna's polycule! i love that the male characters are allowed to be sensitive and vulnerable and to openly express emotions and affection! i love that the friendships and romances and enmities are all deeper and more emotional across the board! i love that the show focuses on the emotional impacts of the plot on the characters! and the show also really excels at picking out a smaller number of supporting characters and beefing them up (like liandrin and alanna) instead of including a fuckton of supporting characters, none of whom are very distinct or well-developed. the show always chooses to whole-ass one thing rather than half-ass two things, and that's another thing i love! the ability to distill these very long-winded books down into a more streamlined version of the story while keeping its core intact was crucial for an adaptation to work well, and rafe & co are so good at that.

anyway, i know that some readers like to tout the narrative that reading the books will make you like the show less because you'll see how much better and more detailed the books are, but that could not have been less true for me. it just made me love and appreciate the show even more, and look forward to seeing how my least favorite book stuff might be improved and how my favorite book stuff might be changed or given a fresh spin or made even better! and i'm glad to hear i'm not the only show-to-book person who feels that way <3

[butterflydm]

the dragon reborn (chap 19-chap 27)

1. Mat wakes up! Our first Mat PoV! I’m so sad that he lost so many memories over the course of the story so far, though, because I feel like that really did affect the way he reacted to all things re: Rand & the Dragon reborn stuff, not having those memories of Rand trying so hard to help him.

2. Because he does worry about whether or not Rand’s all right first, before he spirals into the tangent about worrying about that Rand is going to go mad and how terrifying it is that he’s the Dragon Reborn. He tells himself that he can’t think of Rand as a friend anymore and then is suddenly angry. Just. Complicated feelings even without most of his memories intact.

3. One of my best friends is a monster now! 😭 ... I sure wish he were here to give me advice about women. Oh, Mat.

4. Again, Lanfear pulls out “for the glory!”, on Mat this time. Girl has one single play in her playbook.

5. Hunger being used as a leash for Mat here is making me very uncomfortable, even if Siuan is doing this with good intentions to make sure he fully recovers from being healed. (honestly... big IF for me here. I do not remember if Siuan planned on actually letting him leave at any point)

6. I remembered Mat’s feelings about Rand being a lot more uniformly harsh than they actually are (at least so far). When he’s not actively thinking about Rand being the Dragon Reborn, he thinks about him in a relatively normal way.

7. “I’m no hero. I do what I have to do, but I’m no hero.” Oh, Mat.

8. Huh, Siuan still thinks that the Heroes would follow the Shadow, if called to fight on their side. I guess we only know better because of what Artur Hawkwing said, and Verin wasn’t there for that conversation, so Siuan doesn’t know either. Interesting!

9. And TAR is officially named! Verin is the one who tells us the name. Brown Sisters are very good for infodumps. And she gives Egwene the twisted stone ring, to help her with Dreaming.

10. Ah, time for Egwene and Elayne’s Accepted tests. I am wondering if this event will be in the next season as well. It probably depends on where exactly they are placing the timelines. If we do see it, I wonder if Egwene’s tests will all be the same as they were in the book (which is to say: Rand, Rand, and more Rand, lol. These tests would probably feel a lot less weighty without the backstory change to them being ‘all but promised’, I suppose, but it’s still, you know, a lot of Rand, though there is something symbolic in the fact that her embracing being Aes Sedai means her specifically leaving Rand behind over and over and over).

11. They do also use the scenarios as ways of giving us some solid lore knowledge as well as a handful of red herrings. It’s not JUST Rand. But I’m pretty sure we’ve now gotten more fake!Rand in this book than actual Rand, lol.

12. Which does fit the theme of the book so far -- it’s called The Dragon Reborn but it’s not about Rand; it’s about ‘the Dragon Reborn’ as a concept. So we get Perrin and Moiraine chasing him and hearing about the effects he’s having on the world. We get Mat and Egwene trying to deal with what it means for them personally that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. Every consequence that fake!Rand faces in the scenarios where Egwene leaves him behind are all due to WHAT he is, not WHO he is (dying by channeling sickness, being turned by Fades and Dreadlords; being gentled). And Rand, too, is chasing what it means to be ‘the Dragon Reborn’, to prove to himself for once and for all whether or not it’s him.

13. We don’t get any real hints here about what Elayne’s tests were about, except that leaving the way she had to made her feel like a terrible person, but it seems to do that for everyone.

14. Mat thinks Elayne is pretty, but entitled. Fair points, both, Mat. He thinks Galad is pretty, too, though he tries to make it an insult. Bi!Mat rights?

15. And there it is! ‘Time to toss the dice’ from Mat before he beats Gawyn and Galad -- one on two, staff against swords. I hope we get this scene next season. Mat also instinctively says that he’s from ‘Manetheren’.

16. Elayne showing off her clever brain, working out that the very ‘random’ness of how none of the Black Ajah women who left had anything in common means that the BA must have had TONS of choice, in order to be able to try to pick out a set of women who wouldn’t show any specific types or trends. The lack of clues is a clue itself. A scary one.

17. Lanfear is pleased by Egwene’s boldness, but does not try “for the glory!” on her. Kinda sad, I would have loved to have seen Egwene’s reaction if Lanfear had been as hilariously obvious with her as she was with the three guys.

18. The Wondergirls discover that Liandrin and her twelve have ALL left behind ���clues’ to lead whoever might want to chase them to Tear, and correctly guess this is either a trap or a distraction.

19. I’m trying to remember why Alanna is so interested in the girls. Is it because they’re connected to Rand, who she saw at Fal Dara? Like, we all know why Verin is checking in on them, but why was Alanna so interested that she tried to get herself sent to the kitchens for punishment?

20. Elayne thinking of having ‘three or four’ Warders and then only picking one of them to be her official Prince Consort - harsh. lol Elayne almost, but not quite saying she’d like Rand as a Warder, in front of Egwene -- it’s an interesting dynamic. Because even if Jordan did alter the backstory in TGH, he did very much keep in the idea that Egwene ‘left Rand behind to pick the White Tower instead’, he just... oh, I think maybe I just finally got why he did it. Now, instead of the ‘break-up’ being entirely Egwene going ‘nah I don’t think I wanna date you actually; I want this career path instead’; it’s now a situational thing on both sides -- they can’t because she’s planning to be Aes Sedai AND because he’s the Dragon. When of course that wasn’t a consideration at all in the first book because none of the kids even knew that ‘Dragon Reborn’ was a possible option for anyone.

21. Which is interesting because it’s clear that Elayne sees absolutely no conflict going on between any of those things (not at this point anyway; she might later) -- so what if she plans on being Aes Sedai? So what if Rand is the Dragon? Those don’t change the fact that he’s handsome and she thinks of him when he isn’t there and she’ll make it work. The only thing that actually gives her pause is this notion that he and Egwene were childhood sweethearts, before things changed and they became Star-Crossed Lovers. Ooooh, I wonder if she’s trying to test out the idea that EGWENE is one of the people that she’s supposed to ‘share’ her husband with (per Min’s viewing from the last book that she probably believes more in now that she’s known Min for longer). That actually makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. That she’s poking at the idea of Rand to try to feel out Egwene’s vibes on sharing (and her own as well, I would suspect).

22. For Elayne herself, I wonder if she sees no conflict because she’s always known she would have to balance conflicting needs and duties, due to growing up royal and yet also knowing she would train in the Tower. So this is an idea that she’s had her whole life to get used to and that she’s already seen an example of in watching her mother balance her personal life and her country’s political needs.

23. Both Perrin and Rand are hanging out in TAR in their dreams -- it looks like they’re just showing up there where they actually are in the real world, too. Not having a great time. Hopper is trying to guard Perrin’s sleep, at least. No one is guarding Rand’s and he lets us know that he’s being sent temptations in his sleep to try to trick him and kill him. :-(

24. “Egwene realized that Elayne looked pretty doing anything, even crying, or scrubbing pots.” Bi!Egwene rights?

25. Nynaeve is the one who thinks of using Mat as the messenger for Elayne’s letter to her mother.