#now come on Lan

[lakeofsilverpike]

The real question at the end of episode two is whether Siuan will be the one to smack Lan upside the head and be like, “wtf did you think she meant when she said you weren’t equals you absolute fish brained fool???” Because honestly it’s what we all deserve. Siuan deserves it. But really we collectively deserve it.

[cloudpalettes]

all too familiar

[tls123]

— who can fully understand a person?

[pien-art]

happy pride to binder moiraine my most beloved <3 lan and moiraine exploring gender together <3 rj i am ignoring your extreme binaries xoxo

(click image for optimal quality!)

[lgbtlunaverse]

While I think the moment in cql where Meng Yao– still bleeding from a stab wound in his chest btw– realizes Lan Xichen is in danger and decides to save the man who was so kind to him in cloud recesses is cute and all, nothing will ever beat the book for me. Little bookkeeper civilian Meng Yao, who has not had a serious chance to make his dreams of being a cultivator come true in fucking years, out of nowhere gets the fucking sect leader of Gusu Lan dropped right in his lap?

It's such a great example of Meng Yao's multilayered motivations to me. Because is civilian Meng Yao thinking of all the ways he can use this? Of the fact that having a great sect leader in his debt is the best thing that could happen to him? Duh. Obviously.

Is he very purposeful about appearing to Lan Xichen as a kind young man full of untapped potential, brave and willing to put his life on the line even though he really doesn't know so much about about cultivators, no sir, except a little he picked up here and there, because you see his father– 👉👈 Of course he is!

But the way through which he does that is... by actually saving Lan Xichen's life, at no doubt significant personal risk. The way he makes Lan Xichen believe he's kind and selfless is by... being kind and selfless. Just because he's doing it on purpose doesn't mean he's not doing it.

Is it lying if you want people to think you're nice and so you're nice to them? Isn't that just called being nice? Yes, he is very purposeful about how he appears to people, and very carefully crafts an image based on what he wants them to think of him, but most of the time he does that simply by... actually being the kind of person he wants to appear as. He still did the kind things he did, regardless of his motivations for doing them.

[stachesainzcore]

Guys did y'all see Oscar liked Carlo's comment on his post😭💗 This is gonna be my brain rot istg🫠 I cannot believe this happened! Is this even real!!🥹

But this is sooo sooo sooo special you know why cause he didn't even like Maclaren's comment on the very same post and they comented way before Carlos😙

Do y'all also imagine Osco was kicking his feet in air when he saw Carlo's comment and fucking liking it😭 Common Carlito follow Osco back pleasee🥺

Also he didn't even like Lando's comment that was made on another post but Lando commented 1hr before Carlo's and from what I can remember Lando had liked Oscar's post within 6mins of posting idk when he commented though but must be around same time as the like no?

[lilianhuas]

“By hitting you she’s hitting me. You are me. I’ve been abused for so many years I don’t want to get at hurt again.” - Mi Lan.

[deoidesign]

Someone killed my boss last night and he sent me this I'm so fired

god I can't wait to make this comic.

[mewkwota]

"MegaMan.WAV consists of how many megabytes?"

I chose to take my ol' "WAV/wave" joke very literally today.

In those three's defense, having two complex bodies active in Lan's PET seems like a lot of space. So out of pure boredom (and a hint of morbid curiosity) they decided to do whatever this is.

Once again there are layers-on-layers of jokes I've already made smooshed into this.

Anywho yeah, those two are fine, it'll just take a while. I firmly believe their EM Wave Form can be very free-flowing if they allowed it.

[lozeyart]

So I've decided to rewatch "The Untamed" and also thought I'd like to read the books for the first time. Anyway, I'm completely obsessed and this series has turned into my personality for the time being. I forgot how much I love these characters and this world and everything about it (and omg the books are so much gayer, I'm in love)

Had to do a quick sketch Lan Zahn's back and chest scars. Can't hand me a scarred up traumatized character and expect me not to draw him.

The second sketch was done in like 5 minutes so its not the best, and the Wen Clan insignia is not 100% accurate, but sshhhh its fine

[wifiwuxians]

zodiac AU with my bestie sugarapplebaby as always... song lan as a tigertaur has me in a chokehold lol

they're a mix of chinese & western for funsies so we did sagittarius+tiger, aquarius+rabbit, leo+dragon and taurus+horse!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm not going back to Gusu with you.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[onaperduamedee]

As a character, Lan is defined by lack of agency.

He was born to be king, but his nation dies out and he becomes the living embodiment of a lost people. New Spring shows that people keep on projecting ambitions on him, expecting him to rebuild Malkier or at least to uphold its culture. To him, the only escape is a futile death in the name of his nation, not even for himself.

Over the course of the books, his character is shown to be rather passive: Moiraine deprives him of his agency by compelling him to live, he is bonded by force to Myrelle, Egwene orders him to go to Nynaeve and Nynaeve herself has to trick him to distract from again dying a futile death in the name of his nation. 

Even his mentoring of Rand is presented by himself as a consequence of Rand's ta'veren pull rather than assertion. Now, this might not be what is actually happening because we see that Lan does disagree with Moiraine's course of actions on other occasions, but that's how he argues in this instance: he's explaining away an attempt to seize agency by saying he in fact wasn't completely in control. According to Lan himself, he is not in control in his own life and he shouldn't be.

So his story is fraught with characters denying his agency. When Nynaeve tricks him, not once but twice, to get him to not die alone in the Blight, with the baggage he has with Moiraine, the fact that it's business as usual for Lan is frustrating for the reader who hoped that at least Nynaeve would be more respectful of his agency. Yet it is consistent for his character to accept that this is how people who care about him (or don't) will treat him because that's what he got with Edeyn, Moiraine, Myrelle, even Bukama to some degree. Obviously, all of these violations do not happen on the same level but these instances are still denial of his agency.

The question as to why he seems to be so accepting of this repeated transgression is not really explored in the books but the reason can be easily inferred: trauma from losing his family and people so young, from being burdened with carrying the memory of a dead nation since infancy (he's described like a memorial more than a person), from embarking on a lifelong rather hopeless journey with Moiraine, from war, naturally. It is what makes him a compelling character, albeit a frustratingly static one.

He changes very little from the beginning to the end of the story, if one considers the beginning to be New Spring. He started the story by wanting to ride into the Blight to die and ended up the story by riding into a fight against Demandred (I have to stop calling him Demi in my head) to die. The tension of his story, for me, is that no matter how much Nynaeve sparks hope in him and even desire for a future, trauma is incredibly strong a pull and will draw him toward seeking death nevertheless. 

There's a sort of nihilism to his character, a death drive, that's consistent with his baggage as a war veteran and trauma victim. It's not far-fetched to read his arc as an exploration of the fact that love (Nynaeve) and duty (toward Malkier and Moiraine) aren't enough to heal and survive on his own.

That's why the culmination of Lan's arc, for me, isn't when he rides to Tarwin Gap or fights Demandred (because it's the same old death drive disguised as abnegation), or even when he dons Malkier's crown (because it has been his responsibility from birth), but when Agelmar calls him selfish: 

« Lan stopped, eyeing the aged general. “Take care, Lord Agelmar. It almost sounds as if you are calling me selfish.”

“I am, Lan,” Agelmar said. “And you are.”

Lan did not flinch.

“You came to throw your life away for Malkier. That, in itself, is noble. However, with the Last Battle upon us, it’s also stupid. We need you. Men will die because of your stubbornness.” »

[...]

« Some men,” Agelmar said, “are destined to die, and they fear it. Others are destined to live, and to lead, and they find it a burden. If you wished to keep fighting here until the last man fell, you could do it, and they’d die singing the glory of the fight. Or, you could do what we both need to do. » - A Memory Of Light, Brandon Sanderson.

Agelmar calls Lan selfish because, like Tenobia, Lan is wriggling out of duty toward his people by seeking a heroic death, but Agelmar is mainly challenging the notion Lan has been touting as his mantra for decades: "Death is lighter than a feather, Duty heavier than a mountain".

What Agelmar is implying is that Lan has been misinterpreting this saying to justify evading his responsibilities. Agelmar refers to his responsibility toward Malkier and the world as his duty; Lan sees his long pursuit of death (for Malkier in the Blight, for the DR with Moiraine) as his duty. Dying for the cause was the goal - in his mind it is what he can offer and what Agelmar is pointing out. It's less about being selfish and more about Lan being self-destructive. His war against the shadow is a war against himself.

It isn't exactly a revelation for him because although Lan is shaken by Agelmar's words he later rides into battle to die at the hands of Demandred, with Agelmar and all the other generals out of commission. 

What is interesting narratiely is that at this point Lan gets exactly what he wants: at last no one is stopping him to ride and die into battle. He gets to be only a man, not the herald of a dead nation, a man who can die at that. Yet, death denies him and he survives, somehow.

We don't know exactly why and how he survives the death blows Demandred deals to him. It could be that the Wheel needed him alive so he survived when so many died (in New Spring, Lan is a target for the shadow because he is suspiciously lucky), it could be that Demandred was just a man himself after all and Rand's sealing the DO (with Moiraine and Nynaeve) happened just in the nick of time for Demandred to be stopped from re-ascending to more.

The narrative treats the why as of no importance: Lan is forced to live, yet again, except by the Wheel itself. The natural follow-up is that he will live, he will reclaim Malkier, he will grow old with Nynaeve. His crowning moment with Nynaeve at his side is presented at the end as a fait accompli, as the obvious next step in his survival.

But I cannot help finding this conclusion to his arc inordinately sad. He didn't choose life. He didn't choose Malkier. He chose Nynaeve but tragically it wasn't enough to get him to choose living: it isn't before the very end that he sees Nynaeve as more than a widow. And even then, there's a discrepancy between his thoughts and actions: he can envision a future with her, yet he doesn't make the decisions that could spare him.

One could argue that he chose future by giving the Aes Sedai a chance of success in going against Demandred, but fighting Demandred IS a senseless and desperate decision only leading to death because it's how Gawyn and Galad's fight against him is described as. Lan went in expecting to die, knowing he would deprive his people of a leader and Nynaeve of a husband and warder (just as Gawyn dying right in the middle of battle is a selfish act in regards to Egwene, Lan doing the same to Nynaeve is just as selfish). He chose death, again and again, and it was denied him. 

When I think of Lan, I cannot help going back to Verlaine's famous poem about Kaspar Hauser, here translated by Peter Low (https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=136604)

I came, a calm orphan,

with no wealth but my peaceful eyes,

among the men of the cities:

they did not find me clever.

At age twenty a new turmoil

- it is known as amorous flames -

made me find women beautiful:

they did not find me handsome.

Though lacking a homeland or king

and not being very brave,

I wanted to go to war and die:

death didn't want me.

Was I born too early or too late?

What am I doing in this world?

Listen, all of you, I am in deep sorrow:

say a prayer for poor Gaspard.

I see little triumph in him surviving the Last Battle as he remained passive to the very end, carried by the Wheel and what it had planned for him, relentlessly pushed to seeking death and clinging whatever reason he could muster to justify to himself dying nobly (Malkier, Moiraine, the Dragon, etc...). He's fundamentally adrift long before meeting Moiraine and the journey to Merrilor did nothing to ground him.

More than the technicalities of rebuilding a nation that's been buried for 40 years, I'm fascinated by what life, a simple, quiet life with his wife and friends, would do to a man like Lan: he spent his life replacing one reason to die with another and although Nynaeve and a nation to rebuild can be a reason to live it wasn't enough before the Last Battle, which left him probably more traumatised. 

What does life look like to Lan? Is he prepared to experience it and more importantly to be an actor in it rather than an object? I'm not sure the books could have provided an answer because veteran's mental health is a delicate matter and the therapy Ajah isn't really a thing in the books but the conclusion of his arc on his surviving as a punishment almost is worth interrogating.

[captain-aru]

A bunch of Lan Zhan colored sketches ✨

[sandu-zidian]

Me and @evakant cooked so hard I think we gave each other permanent scar damage 😭

Continuing from both our thoughts on Yunmeng Shuangjie as Obi-Wan and Anakin, we assigned other CQL characters as SW characters! I think we spoke to god when we decided that Jin Ling is Leia, Lan Sizhui is Luke, and Lan Wangji is Padme