#wheel of time critical

[calling-cthulhu]

George Martin himself descending from on high to deliver his verdict on Condal made for some stiff competition, I won't lie, but alas, this last episode managed to push the competition just a smidge ahead.

[sukibenders]

Me, whenever I see poc, especially dark-skinned, characters in fantasy and/or historical period dramas depicted with dignity and respect and just simply given opportunities to have happy storylines that aren't solely fueled by trauma on the aspects of their race: Someone cooked here.

[wormspoor]

(greet your husband’s ex with a menacing aura)

[thatswhatsushesaid]

i think fandom spaces would become much more enjoyable across the board if people stopped flipping their pancakes over other fans enjoying characters that they don't like. or, god forbid, like them but in 'the wrong way.'

[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.

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Putting aside the fact that costumes really don't need to look worn or dirty unless it is in keeping with the aesthetic of the show (and fandoms really need to get over this obsession with gritty realism), this really sums up what current twitter is like and why it is such a waste of time ever responding to someone with a blue tick.

[jaqobis]

consider: nynaeve was the one who taught rand, mat, perrin, and egwene how to throw a proper punch

[toastandjamie]

I do wonder sometimes if people would be more sympathetic to Tuon if she had been a man, and more interested in Mat and Tuon as a couple of their genders had been reversed.

I say this because of the popularity of things like dark romance and dark male leads. Characters and relationships that do follow Mat and Tuon’s romance and characterization pretty closely. That and I wonder how things would of changed if she had been white, I’ve seen people who love Lanfer but hate Tuon like they aren’t the same character in a different font.

Just some things I’ve been thinking about. I have some pretty high hopes for the show fandoms response to her however given their reactions to Lanfer and Liandrin, especially Liandrin

[halcyon-autumn]

I read the wheel of time books in middle school and was deeply, deeply obsessed with them, so now I’m incapable of thinking critically about the show at all. Every time one of my faves (read: any character) is on the screen I’m just like “THATS MY BEST FRIEND FROM WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN”

[twicetolivetwicetodie]

I have so much Wheel of Time brainrot when I hear there's a character from a different medium with the same name as a Wheel of Time character I get whiplash. Like this week I found out there's a Critical Role character named Verin

[lavoixhumaine]

Angela Bassett | Rosamund Pike

[iliiuan]

(I'm assuming this person did not read the books.)

I've been trying to say that the show isn't self-consistent and this right here supports what I'm saying.

It's nice that fans can make up shit to fill in the gaping plot holes, but any rational watcher is going to be Confused. Because the show does NOT explain onscreen how Mat's contraption is battle-sturdy, expecting the audience to buy what they're selling without doing the work. The show does NOT show where Mat got his battle skills. They are relying on information from the books, which is bizarre when they're not even willing to tell the same story that the books told.

In summary, wot-show is shit.

[skitskatdacat63]

2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix - Qualifiying - Fernando Alonso

[amyrlinegwene]

I do understand some people don’t want to see any criticism of the show, but many of us like to analyze and critique the books and that obviously extends to the show as well, both on its own and as an adaptation. But most of us really enjoy the show as well even if we have criticisms of it. This is not reddit or twitter and the people on tumblr critiquing the decisions that show makes are not doing so in an effort to tear down the show but because that is how we like to interact with media and the text.

And I get that people are wary of complaints/critiques about the show after the racist and misogynistic campaigns against season 1, but that does not mean that all criticism of the show is coming from a place of hatred. And I think it’s natural with an adaptation that people will want to address what changes they didn’t (and did!) like and that’s okay!!

[butterflydm]

I was watching some older Star Trek meta videos on youtube by Steve Shives - very good, would recommend - and something he said in an Odo video ("how Odo actually became Deep Space Nine's complicated conscience") really struck a cord with the issue that I have with CoT-onwards Mat. Steve calls it "the fantasy of the neutral observer" and he's describing it in the context of explaining how Odo and DS9 subverted it.

Basically, the fantasy of the man who lives by his own moral code and can be respected by both oppressor and oppressed because he "doesn't pick a side". Odo stands by justice and the law, so both the Cardassians (the occupiers) and the Bajorans (being occupied) can respect him.

But as Steve talks about - and what the episode of DS9 is about - is how placing yourself in the middle ground between oppressor and oppressed is not the moral high ground. The moral place is siding with the oppressed. Especially in the case of Odo, since he was enforcing laws... that were made by the Cardassians. And the episode is about exploring that idea and showing how Odo failed to actually live up to being a moral man by being so rigidly legalistic and how the fact that the Cardassians were willing to trust him was not a good thing, because he 'earned' that by enforcing their unjust laws.

But, yeah, it really made me kinda go 'ping' and go... yeah, that's the thing that vibes so wrong about Mat after Winter's Heart. Previously, he was a man who picked a side - he would complain and grouse and say that he hadn't, but it was clear in his actions that he supported the downtrodden and those who were in most need of his help. Siuan makes the comparison in book 3 about him being like her uncle, who went back into a burning house to save children, and that's absolutely Mat... until Crossroads of Twilight.

In CoT, though, Mat just really begins indulging in his self-pity but instead of that being coupled with him continuing to make the right choices and help people who need it despite his words to the contrary, he's just... lost up his own ass and pretty useless to everyone around him.

And once he emerges out of his ass, he seems firmly mired in this kind of fantasy of the neutral observer, where he can pretend that fawning over Tuon doesn't mean he's endorsing her worldview (because he basically just tries to pretend that she isn't a slaver except during the scenes where she rubs his nose in it and forces him to acknowledge it by her direct actions), where he treats the sul'dam and the Aes Sedai as if they're two rival football teams who just need to cool off in the showers after a tense game instead of oppressors and oppressed.

The way I put it before was "Mat has become a 'both sides have their flaws' asshole" but "fantasy of the neutral observer" works pretty well too. Mat pretending to himself that he's being a neutral observer only hurts the oppressed while helping out the oppressors (as we see in Tuon's own PoV, she is very much "take a mile if they give an inch" in terms of how she deals with other people).

Trying to stand in the middle means that you've stopped protecting the people who need protection.

In WH, Mat sees that people need his help and he goes out of his way to help them, endangering his own escape plan in the process. In CoT, he acts like Tuon is the most vulnerable person here*, despite her great position of power in her society, the way she continues to treat the people around her**, and the fact that she is literally walking around with her own personal slave at all times. He treats slavery as if it were a neutral moral topic that we should all just avoid talking about for the sake of being polite, and it's Setalle Anan (off-screen) who has discussions with Tuon about slavery. Morally, Mat acts like a coward in CoT & KoD and it's especially jarring because while he sometimes thought/talked like a coward in the earlier books, he acted like a hero.

(*this is a situation where maybe Jordan originally planned for Tuon to genuinely be vulnerable during CoT/KoD but then changed his mind when he decided to write the Outriggers, so we ended up with a situation where Mat still behaves as if Tuon is going through a character arc that doesn't actually show up on the page at all; there was a really weird disconnect in CoT & KoD about how the Seanchan were treated as a great threat in the female characters' plotlines but as an acceptable partner in the male characters' plotlines that, wow, really left a bad taste in my mouth about all three of our ta'veren dudes. But, yeah, that weirdness of "Mat acts like Tuon is undergoing character growth" when that supposed character growth isn't at all apparent in her behavior or her own internal narration is so baffling to me, and maybe even more so because so many fans seem to take Mat's words as gospel on every subject, even as they say that they love him in part because he's an unreliable narrator)

(**Mat watches as she abuses people under her power more than once during their time with the circus, with the two biggest examples being Tuon's abuse of her power over Egeanin/Leilwin, and the horrifically gross collaring scene that was the Definitive Moment that killed any possible interest I could have ever have had in Mat & Tuon as a pairing)

Now, one possibility is that all this was meant as Mat's 'dark night of the soul' and Mat was always eventually supposed to regain the morality that he lost during his attempts to court Tuon* (I guess in the Outriggers). The problem for me, as it is with Mat in all the books past Winter's Heart, is that the writing doesn't hold up. Mat's characterization takes such an abrupt turn in CoT that it damages any possible story that Jordan was trying to tell. Because I love 'dark night of the soul' stories! I love corruption arcs! I love characters being driven to choices that they hate making! Find all those things deeply fascinating. In general. But in the specific case of Mat Cauthon, the way that it was written was mostly annoying and infuriating.

(*the main pieces of evidence for this idea lie in the Jordan-dictated epilogue, specifically at word choices like Mat having 'forced' a grin at hearing that Tuon is pregnant; and the one-sentence about Mat for the Outriggers that we're aware of being him drunk in a gutter having lost everything, which doesn't sound like a 'happily married' royal living up the high life with his 'beloved' wife the Empress)

And I think a lot of that comes down to Jordan's impatience, which is something that we see a few other times in the series. Sometimes, Jordan wants to move the story along but the characters aren't there yet, so he just skips to them Being There, emotionally, without writing in the part that takes us from Point A to Point B (another example being how Rand & Aviendha are a great slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance... until it feels like Jordan got tired of writing the storyline and had Aviendha abruptly give in so that he could move along to the next plot beat).

Jordan needed Mat to get in line with his prophesied marriage in order to move the plot along, so he adjusted Mat's character to force him to do that. But he didn't have any in-text reasons for Mat's character to change so abruptly and Mat does his face-heel turn in the course of a single week off the page, and when we catch up with him in CoT, he is already treating the sul'dam and the Aes Sedai as two rival groups who need to be goosed into getting along, rather than the sul'dam having been actively torturing (two of) the Aes Sedai only a week ago -- Bethamin in particular was Teslyn's head torturer, who had just ordered that Teslyn's mistreatment be redoubled into order to break her more quickly and thoroughly.

Mix Jordan's impatience to get to the plot beats that he wanted to do between Mat and Tuon with his decision to have the Seanchan societal collapse happen in the (destined to never happen) Outriggers, and we get the mess of Mat's characterization in CoT & KoD because Mat is no longer allowed to have any kind of narrative effect on Tuon, so their relationship is entirely one-directional. And one-dimensional.

Mat's attitude at the beginning of CoT would frankly make a lot more sense if placed at the end of Knife of Dreams (aka after Tuon has worn him down to a hollow shell of the man that he used to be, rather than Mat just voluntarily becoming said shell in-between books), though I would still find it a very depressing storyline for him. Ultimately, I would have always been unhappy about Mat going from "a hero who doesn't believe he's a hero" (EotW-WH) to "immoral jackass who ignores the harm his wife does instead of standing up to her" (CoT/KoD) but the journey could have been much better written simply by being written at all instead of jumping immediately from Point A to Point B in between books.

Anyway, this is all about Mat in the Jordan books, because I do feel like the Mat-Tuon situation in the Sanderson books ends up being mostly a different kettle of fish. With some of the same issues, but Sanderson's take on them is different and, for me, actually worked better on the emotional side of things but had distractingly impossible logistics in terms of timeline and geography, and was probably equally bad on the 'letting the Seanchan off the hook for being invading slavers' side. So, it's a mixed bag but a different bag than the Jordan books.

[wardensantoineandevka]

Chet really SHOULD Raven Queen it up tho. He does have a scythe. He's already all equipped.