#spoilers for a memory of light

[toastandjamie]

Okay giant spoilers for the ending of Wheel of Time

So like- what do you guys think the limit of Rand’s new ability is? He can’t channel anymore but in its place is like- some strange ability to warp the pattern. We see that he can will his pipe lit but what wise do you think he can do? Do you think he can manipulate minor things like his pipe, something that doesn’t have a large effect on the pattern as a whole or do you think he can do major things like will a person to die. Now this isn’t a discussion of whether or not he’d actually do something like that just a theoretical discussion on what exactly the ability he received was and what it can do.

[pawthko]

Come back to me! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

[graveflowerss]

You were blinding, and I thought: Who are you? Who am I? Inspiration (aside from chimera ant arc)

[ihatebrainstorm]

Some sad boy hour sketches

First one's called "Finally Sad Enough to Draw Senator Shockwave" (ok jk it's "Forever Unfulfilled, a Forgotten Memory"), and the second is "And Here we are Again"

[maskedchip]

simple stroll

[tiredmoonslut]

Forever, forever weeping for Egwene al'Vere, the girl who wanted only to learn. Forever weeping for Egwene al'Vere, the girl who snarled at every limitation and ground them beneath her heel. Forever weeping for Egwene al'Vere, the girl selected because they thought she'd be easy to control. Forever weeping for Egwene al'Vere, the woman none of them expected her to be. Weeping for Egwene al'Vere, Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat---who held the Pattern itself together with her bare, dying hands. Tai'shar Manetheren, tai'shar Aes Sedai.

[autumnwhistles]

(note: this is purely from a character perspective, not a comment on CCs.)

grian and scar have now both been in opposite positions to the original 'cactus ring', and it's so interesting to compare their attitudes to sacrifice on both ends. whether or not scar threw the fight in the cactus ring, he did offer for grian to kill him before it began. grian declined this, but was clearly fighting with the intention to win during the fight itself – he's giving scar a chance, but not sacrificing.

in secret life, scar's on the other end of things. he's fighting another winner – who herself has been sacrificed for previously – and, like grian, is going into what he assumes to be a fair fight... but which is in his favour due to the others' willingness to sacrifice themselves for him. this is a common pattern for winners: in whichever order, they take the win once, and are once willing to sacrifice themselves to let another take it.

cut to wild life.

this time, it's grian in the final two once more, yet again against an – albeit more distant – ally. he's got a win under his belt already, so you might expect him to do what pearl did, what scott did, right? sacrifice their chance at glory to let another taste it for the first time.

and yet:

"I'm going to have to kill Joel"

"Can I win this? I worked so hard on this series, I'd love to win it!"

because here's an important thing about life series!grian: though he's willing to even the playing field, he's not willing to sacrifice – not when it matters. pledge your loyalty to right a wrong, yes; give lives to gain allies hours, yes; refuse others' sacrifices to fight on fair terms, yes. but in the end, no matter how much he wants to stick with friends, no matter how bad he feels about it, no matter how may "i'm so sorry"s he gives – he will put his own life first, in the end.

there's a reason he's the reason for so many of his allies' deaths, after all. and in its contrast, the wild life finale showcases this beautifully.

(and for the record, i don't see anything wrong with this from an out-of-univere perspective – it's been 5 seasons and 3.5 years since Grian's last win, and even if it hadn't been, it's the CCs place to judge fairness, not ours.)

[princescar]

Yasuke finishing up some work before he has to go kiss his girlfriend goodnight

DAY9: Side Characters

[chaos-and-sparkles]

Okay but can we PLEASE talk about how no hextech au Powder has a lock of her hair dyed pink, Vi's pink, a tribute to her sister to keep her close?? Because it made me physically sick and I haven't been okay since -

[macaroonkitti]

Request: Link hanging out with the light dragon?

I'm ill about them

[gl00mytuesday]

this is a Moiraine Damodred and Nynaeve Al’Meara stan blog

[toastandjamie]

Hi. So okay, this is gonna be an absolutely batshit crazy rambling about a missed opportunity for the ending of Wheel of Time that I’m super freak about.

Listen, LISTEN, I’m the first person to say Rand deserved to be happy, that he deserved his little relaxing trip in his brand new skin and enjoy his life. But like also- I do kinda think he should’ve died in the last battle. And it’s not because of the angst factor, like I love the angst but that’s great for fanfiction and what ifs not necessarily actual storytelling.

I think that thematically Rand should’ve died because Egwene died. Now bear with me while I explain this okay.

So, Rand and Egwene are character foils. Two sides of the same coin. Mirrored character arcs. They ARE Saidine and Saidar incarnate. They ARE the Aes Sedai of the age of legends, powerful together and doom the world when they refuse to cooperate and listen to eachother. So I do think that if one dies the other should’ve died as well, but specifically in the context of them both becoming Concepts, of ascending beyond being People and becoming these esoteric figures of myth, representing the hopes and futures of the world, they Are the One Power. Figuratively.

Like Egwene dying by becoming a literal beam of light and the one power. Becoming one with the true source as I interpreted it. So good, no notes. Absolutely love that as an thematic ending for her; but it feels a bit empty without well, the other half of it. A major theme in the Wheel of Time is the concept of balance and duality. Light and dark, masculine and feminine, selfishness and selflessness, joy and sorrow. The idea that Both need to exist, that one cannot truly exist without the other, that these forces balance eachother. So if we take Egwene and Rand as representations of the two halves of the one power, then one should not exist without the other. I guess in some ways Rand losing his ability to channel and his original body is a form of death, but I don’t know, I would’ve liked the follow through I think lol

[localceilingdevil]

i haven't finished it yet!!! (barely got the master sword) but!!! had to make fanart of this stupid game (affectionate)

[utilitycaster]

The thing about both Ioun and Selena is like. I get it. I really do. So much of our scientific knowledge - medical especially - comes from knowledge we gained in blood, and a lot of it was the blood of people who did not volunteer nor consent (nor were given opportunity to consent). What protections we have now are all recent, in many cases insufficient, and themselves subject to debate. Knowledge we lack and the safety and wellbeing of many people in the future often rest on the safety of a few people in the present; knowledge we have and the safety and wellbeing of many people in the present often comes from sources we should have never had access to.

You do want to have that information. You do not ever want to have to get it, and there's no good way to decide who should have access to it, but someone has to. There is absolutely no good answer at any stage of the process, and a goddess of knowledge and an archmage desperately trying to save her life's work both have to make a decision knowing none will be a good one.

[butterflydm]

I was skimming the books for fic-research reasons and just had to be baffled all over again at how the Seanchan invasion gets treated CoT-onward. The Kin were the spine of the Wise Women of Ebou Dar, who are, like THE people who are respected by everyone in the city. They all had to try to flee the area because of the Seanchan and any who didn't successfully flee but were Kin (and thus could channel) would have been instantly enslaved by the Seanchan. And yet we have that fucking weirdness in Mat's (fucking weird overall) first chapter in A Memory of Light where the Ebou Dari people are all "lol, why would a brutal invasion bother us in the slightest; we're too super-casual for an invasion to bother us".

I mean, that's all tied into the logistics problems that plagued all things Seanchan-related in the later books (they have infinite soldiers and infinite food & supplies and generally don't have to abide by the economics & logistics that Rand's side is required to follow) but it just really stood out to me because I was reading about how respected the Wise Women are (even in places like the Rahad) -- but the Seanchan's coming would have completely gutted them as a society and that should have an impact on how the Ebou Dari feel about the Seanchan. And it just ties into my overall feeling that Jordan stopped treating the Seanchan realistically starting in CoT and then Sanderson continued the trend when he took over the writing of the books.

But, yeah, one of the big things that I hope for from the prime show is that the Seanchan get treated with narrative consistency and we don't get an abrupt 180 on how the narrative treats them at the two-thirds point. Because what the Ebou Dari should be feeling (and what they were feeling in Winter's Heart!) is a lot of fear and paranoia and the desire to rebel, because the Seanchan are Always Watching and will Randomly Steal and Enslave People for reasons that the non-Seanchan people are not going to understand!

I am really curious about how much Seanchan Presence we're going to have in s3, because s2 made some bold choices in where it went with the Seanchan storyline and I am intensely curious about what kind of follow-up we'll have in s3. I've said a lot in the past that Tuon needs to be introduced sooner than she was in the books (Jordan waited way too late to introduce her! He should also have introduced her while she was still in Seanchan, imo, so that we actually could have seen her interacting with the rest of the Imperial family so that we would have a baseline of Seanchan Imperial Behavior to potentially contrast her against later -- but Tuon feels like another case where Jordan valued the surprise of the wham! line over giving a lot of detail and background) and I would absolutely be a fan of her being introduced in s3.

[heart-locket-musicboxless]

It's what I do, I wait for you...