#wheel of time community

[necarion]

I'm curious the extent to which Robert Jordan intended this (I think he probably did), but the in-universe narrative of "men and women cannot possibly understand each other" is deeply undermined by the fact that you, the reader, are extremely likely to identify as male or female, and are capable of understanding the motivations of both male and female characters.

The reason I think Jordan knew this was not only the effort made to have the characters motives be explicable when you're in their heads, but to have these communication difficulties go away the second the characters talked to each other and explained what was going on with them.

I think more than that, Jordan feels like he thought a lot of culture around masculine/feminine mystique was silly and harmful. Not only because it hinders good communication (Jordan does not agree that "not explaining stuff" is generally a good thing), but also because it leads to other harmful behaviors being swept up in the umbrella. Think of the number of times Elayne, Nynaeve, and the Aes Sedai are being awful to Mat, who treats it as "this is women being awful and inscrutible" when it's really them just being arrogant and awful. Or Mat being flippant and a jerk (in part as a defensive thing) being generalized to an "all men are like this" when it's really "Nynaeve and Mat get along like two cats in a sack that is on fire".

Does Jordan have some weird gender essentialism in his books? Definitely. But he also has far less than people credit to him, if you listen to the characters and not the subtext (or even text).

[smovs]

sketches & screenshot studies for my Barret gold saucer date rewrite

[halcyon-autumn]

Can’t stop thinking about Elayne trying to figure out what's going on at the end of season 2

Elayne: who is the slouchy looking one with the knife-stick? Egwene: that’s Mat and we don’t know where he’s been for six months Mat: Hello! I'm a hero of the horn! Elayne: so let's put a pin in that. and who's the dude with the shield? Nynaeve: Perrin Elayne: why are his eyes gold? Nynaeve: genuinely no clue Perrin: it's because of the wolves I think Elayne:okaaaaaaaay and the redhead who I healed from a stab wound infected by a darkness so intense that he'll bear the pain of it the rest of his life? Egwene: that’s Rand my boyfriend. Well, he faked his death because he was afraid he’d go insane and kill everyone he loved, so relationship status tbd Elayne: mkay. So uh - what was up with the big fire creature in the sky? Nynaeve: we don’t know what that was and we don’t know where it came from Rand, from the other side of the tower where he’s been pretending not to listen in: oh I think Moiraine made it and THATS why Lanfear had to punt her out of the waygate Nynaeve: what? Elayne: you mean Moiraine Damodred my aunt? Nynaeve: WHAT?

[markantonys]

THE WHEEL OF TIME | 2x06

[tiredmoonslut]

Obsessed. I am off my rocker obsessed with the DRAMA of Lan riding through the night to Siuan's caravan to tattle tale on Moiraine, Siuan's microexpressions as she realizes it's him and Moiraine isn't with him ("where is she what's happened so help me if she's hurt I will--"), and Siuan Sanche, the Flame of Tar Valon, immediately calling her entire security detail and fourteen Aes Sedai to pull up on her wife's front doorstep the second she learns Mo was stilled. OBSESSED.

Can you imagine her thought process? We know how abhorrent and unspeakable it is in the Tower for a woman to be cut off from the Source (well, if you've read the books you have). We know it's considered the worst pain an Aes Sedai can ever feel, worse than death or loss. And now Moiraine, her Moiraine, has been suffering through this for half a year without saying a word and Siuan simply has not been there. It's unacceptable. No, that simply will not do. I am marching on Cairhien this instant and I will blow the hinges off the door if need be. I'm obsessed

[ketchupstrain]

WoT-ers who are also LGBT:

Do you find it hard to get as into the Wheel of Time series because of such rigid gender boundaries, roles, and traditions? every page there’s a remark about how one gender feels about the other.

Maybe I’m just feeling weird about it now because of my weird complex feeling about gender, but I’ve found over the past few months that it’s been harder and harder for me to really enjoy Wheel of Time as a story.

[ofthebrownajah]

Ways to know the show is handling the corruption of the Tower well.

Exhibit A:

[mitchellhenderson]

[t4x208]

green apple and wheel doodles

[dicediceking]

Some screenshot redraws of its time for thes newest episode

Me and my brother have a theory, that as the sky gets darker the show will get darker

And so far it's been holding up

[sadhorsegirl]

aes sedai: do you swear to speak no word that is not true?

moiraine, who grew up in a culture that required all participants to constantly obfuscate their true intentions and carefully manipulate others to try and avoid being assassinated by a paranoid member of a rival house before they reached the age of eleven: sure lol why not

[deus-ex-mona]

lxl are the only ones who can get married twice and go on two honeymoons without being a canon couple (yet…?)

[purplesaline]

In our current society (in North America and much of the western world) we can't completely avoid capitalism, but with some work and dedication we can reduce how much we have to participate in it.

Building community is hard, and it often requires a lot of up front investment in time and energy before you start seeing returns on that investment. I know not everyone is in a place where they can make those expenditures without getting anything back right away which is why it's even more important for those of us who can to start building sooner rather than later.

When you have a healthy, thriving community of people you can start withdrawing yourself more and more from reliance on a broken capitalist system. Yes there's mutual aid within a community but what's even more exciting to me is the option of participating in a barter/trade economy because it's so often more empowering for disabled folks and other marginalized groups that struggle in a capitalist economy.

And even more importantly than that, it's how we can survive a political landscape that is openly hostile to us. It's as impossible to avoid the fallout of the current political situation as it is to avoid participating in a capitalist economy, but being part of a strong and healthy community can at least help mitigate some of the harmful effects.

Neighbours sharing produce from their gardens can lessen the chances of food-borne illness as a result of lax food safety regulations.

Creating, maintaining, and sharing resources that help marginalized groups can help protect vulnerable people in your area when the larger resources are being dismantled or when people acting in bad faith are pretending to be a helpful organization.

Communities have more leverage (and resources) when it comes time to put pressure on local government to make progressive changes

As communities grow, empathy and compassion for the people in the community also spreads and that can help create allies against the bigotry and prejudice some of the community members face. When you're in community together with someone it's harder to depersonalize them. They aren't [insert oppressed group] member, they're the person who walks your dog and brings you beets in exchange for piano lessons, or the person who loaned you a spare tire so you could go to work and when you got home that evening they'd fixed your flat tire for free because they had the time and some spare material laying around from a repair they did on their own tire.

It's going to be really easy to give in to despair in the coming months and I'm not going to lie and say you can survive it. Some folks won't. I'm not going to lie and promise if you can make it through that things will get easier, they might not!

But if you can hang on I can promise you there's a chance things will get better, and I can promise you there's a whole heck of a lot of us out there trying to make sure it does get better. I can promise you that building community will help you survive when things start getting harder, and I can promise you that community can be a beacon of light in dark times, a bastion of hope in a desert of despair.

I know you're tired and I'll understand if you can't keep fighting, but I really hope you've got enough resilience left to hang on long enough to find a community to be part of.

[wifegideonnav]

so many people have spent time painstakingly crafting polls on here that could literally just be boiled down to “do you believe in mind body dualism or do you believe in something else”

[moonlit-hexes]

Samhain, Ancestors and Strange Occurrences (storytime)

A personal story time ahead of something that happened just the day before Samhain/ Halloween with a friend.

For context, I do not work with ancestors due to the sheer lack of connection, being queer, trans and in general not having good ancestors who I think can add much to my life (where at a point I ended up throwing their candle in their trash - yeah, i know - but that is a story for another time. If you have absolutely hateful and horrible ancestors that you have had altercations with, you Know).

I was on a call with my friend, who is also a witch when I told her that I kept hearing sniffling at my back, even though there was nobody there, I could feel a strong presence.

She simply asked me to throw some salt over my shoulder (a typical witch remedy, of course), and I said, "Maybe, or it could just be the veil thinning since Samhain is arriving in less than a day."

And at the same time we both ended up saying,

"it feels like an old man"

"maybe an old man ancestor who is proud of you"

Both of us paused and looked at each other as - okay if we are both saying that something is going on. She immediately stopped everything, got in the zone to channel and started describing this old man to me, and lo and behold, she was literally describing my great-grandfather.

I had never spoken to her about him, nor did she know of my relation with my great-grandfather. Yet, she got the specifics of the type of glasses he wore the exact type of cane, his favourite food, his favourite flavours, objects he carried around with himself, and specific things he had said to me.

Safe to say, we both were shocked, and she kept saying I don't know how this is happening, and how it is never this specific.

There was a lot more shared that I will not be sharing here for very obvious reasons.

Turns out that even if you put your back on your ancestors, they are still very much there, something which, if I had read in the past, I would have scoffed and moved on, and that is the power of personal experience.

(Reminder -This is not me saying that you too will have this moment, nor is this me trying to say that yes working with your ancestors is something you need to or should do. Hell had not even dabbled into the idea of working with them for 5 years until I did, which did not go well. This is a personal experience, sharing about my interactions and experience. You do not have to ever work with an ancestor, regardless of whether them reaching out or not. It is your practice and you get to choose what remains a part of it and what does not)

In my head, he would have been the last person I would ever expect to reach out to, yet he is the one who has been there, looking after me, present, only wanting for me to talk to him and share things with him like old times.

Here is to the veil thinning, and the ancestral energy of Samhain which I had always hated. There is now something to look forward to.

Things can change even after 8 years of being in this practice. And this is why I love being a witch with all my heart.

Happy witching and Merry Samhain to you and your loved ones.

[tiredmoonslut]

Very much hoping they keep Mat's story arc with Tylin intact in the TV series if only because I've a vested interest in seeing Dónal Finn decked out in babygirl clothes