#will make more detailed timelines later!!!

[makishimu]

Just some observations I made about Megane's latest Rota Fortunae crumbs after going back to it over and over again (if you haven't read it yet, go check it out first). Maybe you'll already have noticed most of it, but hopefully not everything. Either way, I really just feel like rambling.

First of all, this is clearly set before their trip to Sunday's shelter. In fact, it's most likely the earliest part of the timeline we've had so far. It's noticeable through the fact Aven just got the glasses and doesn't appear to have the earring he has on his ref sheet and during the animation.

About the earring, if you look at this panel:

You'll notice that Human!Aven (let's call him that for now) has a peacock feathers earrings. It's not exactly the same Android!Aven has, but it's a similar style. Now, there's two conclusions you can make of that: either Android!Aven bought it himself because it fits his style and he most likely subconsciously remembers his past to an extent, or Ratio gave it to him because it reminded him of the one Human!Aven used to wear.

Now, onto this Human!Aven if you will, because how do I know he's human? It's somewhat easy to guess, but there are still some signs: first, his eyes. As an android, Aven's eyes become magenta and cyan when behind glasses, but here it's a reflection. It would seem his human appearance naturally had the Avgin eyes (if Avgins even exist in the Rota Fortunae lore). But there is a second sign that this Aven is human: his wrist.

If you look at this panel, you'll notice Aven's wrist has a joint (weirdly enough, there doesn't seem to be any joints on his elbow, but it's hard to see so maybe Megane just didn't feel like drawing it?) that isn't here on Human!Aven. Now, how did he go from being a human to being an android? We can only speculate on that, but the general guess seems to be that Aven died and Ratio transferred his consciousness in an android body. I love that theory, but only time (and Megane) can tell how right it is.

But I'm not done with my observations! Let's talk about Ratio! Though, I'll keep aside all the speculations about why he refuses to repair Aven himself. It's most likely out of guilt, but we can't know more than that for sure.

Just a silly little thing I noticed about him is that his hair curls when wet. It's such a small detail, but it's really adorable.

But what I mostly wanted to talk about is his tattoo (or whatever it is) because there's something really interesting about it. Let's take these two panels:

If you look closely at how far the tattoo reaches up his neck in the second image, you'll most likely notice that it doesn't appear to be there on the first image. Of course, maybe he just had it tattooed later, and it's a plausible explanation. But there's just something odd about the way Ratio uncovers that specific shoulder in that scene:

Maybe I'm just over interpreting. It's entirely possible. But the way he uncovers his tattooed shoulder like that kind of makes me think that it might be uncomfortable to keep covered. Kind of like when you have a healing scar and you don't like the sensation of the fabric rubbing against sensitive skin. In that case, maybe it's more than just a tattoo? Maybe it holds more meanings in relation to the Android rebellion? After all, there are some laurel symbols on the walls of wherever they are in that scene:

It's most likely linked to a faction such as the Intelligentsia Guild or the Genius Society (I'd lean more towards the former) as Megane suggested in the comments of that thread, but it's still interesting to note that tattoo wasn't there before the rebellion.

Now, a final observation about Aven and his eyes and it's that the brightness of his pupils seems to change depending on the situation:

Funnily enough, it appears to always brighten whenever he looks at Ratio (smitten much) at the exception of that one panel where he plays with Numby. This leads me to believe it might be some sort of emotional response (bright red eyes mean positive emotion and dark red eyes mean negative emotions. If I recall, the androids in the Rota Fortunae animation had dark red pupils) and it's just kind of cute to see how differently he looks at his Doctor.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now (if only I could come up with that many words when I write my essays). I was supposed to be writing my fanfic's next chapter but I guess that won't be for tonight lmao. Of course, credit for all the images used in that small analysis goes to Megane. Go check out their work if you haven't already, it's definitely worth it.

Thanks for reading!

[butterflydm]

Wheel of Time 3x08 Deep Dive (show spoilers)

Spoilers through all of s3, but only for the show.

A whole lot to think about with this one (and wow, do I hope we get that s4 renewal -- I mean, given the reviews and what we know about the viewership, it would be silly not to get it but streaming makes all of that stuff so much less predictable).

We get a whole lot of full-circle moments from the start of the season coming to fruition here, as well as a couple of things that don't get follow-through where it seemed like they would (and I wonder if they're planned for s4 or simply dropped because they served their purpose).

We begin in Tar Valon, ten years ago.

The timeline here is very interesting to me. Because Elaida connected herself to the throne of Andor roughly twenty years ago due to a Foretelling that the royal line of Andor would be key to the Last Battle (she says this to Min in 3x03).

How long did she stay with Morgase before leaving to go back to the White Tower to try to become Amyrlin?

In Elaida, I feel like we're seeing a dark mirror of Siuan & Moiraine -- acting to position themselves as the ones in control of what they believe to be the main powers that will be at play in the Last Battle -- the White Tower and, for Elaida, the royal line of Andor and, for Siuan and Moiraine, the Dragon Reborn. Elaida was working with a more flexible timeline than Siuan and Moiraine, since she didn't know until very recently that the Dragon had been reborn, and she hasn't been under the kind of intense pressure that Siuan and Moiraine were under.

Both sets of them willing to be ruthless in the name of the greater good... but Elaida is shown to be arrogant and bigoted as well (calling Siuan "river trash" and looking down on her for decorating her apartments simply).

In the end, Elaida's 'greater good' boils down to the advancement of herself and her own power. Elaida would never choose to break her own heart and deny her own desires because she believes that her goal is more important than she is -- there is no goal that Elaida holds more precious to her than herself.

And Siuan and Moiraine realize that they cannot control prophecy or the Dragon, that they have to release their grip (a painful lesson for them both, but they learn it) and they have to trust in people, including the Dragon Reborn. It's not until Moiraine begins to loosen her grip that Rand shows his cards to her.

Thom tells us later in this episode that he left Morgase's court when Elayne was five. Was Elaida still acting as Morgase's adviser at that time, or had she gone back to the White Tower? We know that Thom's nephew was gentled by the Red Ajah and then killed himself, and Thom fiercely warned Rand to keep Mat away from any Red Sisters in order to protect him (since he believed at the time that Mat could channel). He recognized Liandrin's name, and it seems likely that he would recognize Elaida's as well, given what we currently know of the history of each of the characters.

Show-only based theory -- is it possible that Thom asked Morgase to let Elaida go as an advisor, because of what happened to his nephew, and she refused, and that caused him to leave the court? It's clear that his relationship with the royal family was extremely close -- he knew that toddler-Elayne was taking apart clocks and he knew Morgase's feelings about that. He made a promise to protect Elayne and he kept an eye on the court even after he left, enough so that he could be certain that "Lord Gaebril" was a fabrication.

Then a few years after that, Elaida goes to the White Tower to try her hand at Amyrlin, maybe now feeling like her grip as Morgase's connection to the White Tower is rock-solid. Goes into the doorway and gets promised the Amyrlin Seat (I won't get into the details in this post, but Alviarin says that the people that Elaida spoke to were "Aelfinn" while the being that Mat talks to uses the word "Eelfinn", which introduces some uncertainty about how closely Elaida's experience aligned with Mat's).

And then she loses the vote and is forced to go back to Andor in defeat, and her resentment towards Siuan (and Moiraine) grows.

Ten years ago, in Tar Valon, when Siuan became Amyrlin, there was a storm. It was raining during the cold open of 3x01. And Rand creates a storm at the end of 3x08.

But before we get there, we get Elaida leaving the twisted redstone doorway, and Alviarin is waiting for her, to tell her how reckless it was that she went to speak to the "Aelfinn". The bracelet that we saw before (with the snake on it) definitely seems connected to the Aelfinn, as we see her react to having it after leaving the doorway, or react to the golden key hanging from it, and we know that Mat also gets a piece of jewelry after his trip into the doorway (a medallion shaped like a fox's head). So, the Aelfinn/Eelfinn like giving parting gifts.

"Too many of our sisters have entered that doorway and never returned." Given what the Eelfinn tells Mat later ("wise to ask leave-taking") and what we see (skulls and body parts), it seems like you have to make leaving part of the bargain you make with the Aelfinn/Eelfinn in order to survive the trip. Otherwise, you stay there forever.

Elaida believes that Alviarin plans to vote in her favor, but Alviarin doesn't actually say that she plans to.

If Alviarin was originally planning to vote in Elaida's favor, is it Elaida's trip through the doorway that changes her mind and makes her decide to cast a vote for someone that she views as less reckless?

"I had hoped you wouldn't be so foolish." This does imply that Alviarin did have some idea of Elaida's plans before she went into the doorway -- maybe she tried to talk her out of it.

"What did the Aelfinn promise you?" "The Amyrlin Seat itself." "You cannot trust them. Every gift the Finn give has a price."

We get a glimpse of the price and the trickery involved here (and can think forward to how Mat might end up dealing with similar issues), because Elaida's victory at the end of this episode is both devastating for the Light but also hollow for her. She convened in secret for the vote (the emptiness of her Hall compared to how full it is to watch Siuan being voted in!), made certain to only have those present that she knew would be on her side, condemned Siuan to stilling and then to death before letting her speak in her own defense.

How will Tsutama Rath react when she learns about what happened in the White Tower today (our Red Highest who left to hunt down Taim on Siuan's orders)?

How will Alanna react?

Neither of them favorably, I would assume.

Verin and Leane know how dangerous the situation is, how fraught, and someone like Elaida seizing control of the Tower will do nothing but make the situation worse. Especially now that she's shown how far she's willing to go in order to force her will on others.

In the Hall, as they wait for the vote, Siuan and Moiraine exchange glances, and Elaida notices. Given Elaida's deeply-rooted classism, it must really rankle her that someone of noble blood like Moiraine thinks so highly of 'river trash' like Siuan, and that may have been why she never fell for the deception between the two of them (also, since she presumably goes back to Andor after this she may have missed most of the staged drama that Moiraine & Siuan did for the rest of the Sisters).

We learn that the most recent Amyrlin (Marith Jaen) has died this last week, after only being Amyrlin for four years. We can see that Verin, Liandrin, and Leane were Sitters at this time (and we get a cameo from Karene!), so it was at some point after this that Verin went into retirement.

I also noticed that one of the Brown Sitters is wearing a very red shade of brown. That's interesting. Not sure it means anything, but it's interesting.

I did not pick up on it at the time, but Rebecca Root, who plays the Keeper in this scene, is a trans woman. I wasn't familiar with her as an actress, but it's really nice to see her in this scene and I do take it as an implicit understanding of how the show is approaching the issue of how the One Power is split up -- the half of the Power that you channel is based on your soul, not the body you were born with, and they usually match but not always. Which is... technically also true in the books but it's not handled in the best way and is difficult to explain. That does still leave us with the question of people who don't fit into the gender binary, but the show may give us their answer on that at some point as well.

When the vote is called, the three Blue Sitters (including Leane) stand up in a group to cast their votes. I do really love getting to see the formal shawls in this scene, with the tassels.

Next we see Verin stand up and cast her vote for Siuan, with neither of her fellow Brown Sitters joining her. I am so curious about that Brown who is wearing a more reddish shade.

And then no one else stands up, and eventually our Keeper calls for people to stand for Elaida, who looks very pleased with herself... until Alviarin stands up and casts her vote for Siuan and not Elaida.

Both Moiraine and Siuan look concerned when it looks like the votes might not go Siuan's way -- I'm wondering if this also happened four years ago, and Siuan lost to the now-deceased Amyrlin Marith.

Liandrin looks so annoyed after Alviarin casts her vote for Siuan, it kinda makes me giggle, despite everything.

After Alviarin, we get some more Sitters standing and casting their votes for Siuan -- both of the White Sitters, though one is more reluctant than the other (perhaps confirming that Alviarin is the head of the White Ajah?); Kerene (back again for a nice flashback cameo) and a second Green Ajah Sitter; the Brown Sitter who is wearing a red-shaded brown; and one of the Yellow Sitters.

Exactly eleven, no more and no less. Enough to carry the vote.

We don't really get a close look at any of the Gray Ajah Sitters but I like that their gray is more of a silvery not-quite-blue. It makes it stand out more and lets the White Ajah wear more cream-colored shawls which helps distinguish them from what the novices wear (too many groups of people wear white in the books!).

Siuan only had ten years to try to get the Tower ready for the Dragon. She failed but... how much of a chance did she have when she didn't dare be honest about what she was doing? Could anyone have succeeded at this task? Especially with what we learned this season, when it was revealed that four Sitters were Black Ajah and ready to turn on and murder their fellow Sisters, with more BA littered throughout the Tower.

After the title card, we cut to the current Siuan, and she's looking at a drawing of Moiraine (you can see it through the paper). Wearing golden-cream, the colors of the Amyrlin Seat (this really stands out when we get to Elaida at the end, and how much red she is still wearing underneath her gold). She looks up at the portrait on the wall, her half of the ter'angreal that she used to connect with Moiraine when they were both in the Tower, and quickly puts away the drawing when she hears a knock on the door.

It's Leane, with another warning. Leane has been concerned all season (probably ever since Siuan told her the truth about conspiring with Moiraine and their approach to the Dragon Reborn). She's loyal but she doesn't understand why Siuan is making the choices that she's making -- and, she tries to get Siuan to see the problem that if she doesn't understand, how can Siuan hope that the rest of the Hall and the Tower will understand?

Leane is advocating for transparency and honesty, because she believes that the secrets are creating a more dangerous situation. It's dangerous for Siuan to declare support for Dragon Reborn if she doesn't have a solid reason why the Tower should go against their own laws and support him as opposed to try to control him. If she doesn't get buy-in from the Sitters before she acts.

But the problem is that Siuan still doesn't know who she can trust. We know that she doubts even the two people here that she trusts the most -- Leane and Verin. The only people that she trusts beyond a doubt not to be Darkfriends (Nynaeve, Elayne, Moiraine, Lan) are far away from her. Twenty years of secrecy is a hard habit to break, as we've also seen from Moiraine. She is so scared that loosening her grip will lose them everything, just like Moiraine was. The fate of the entire world is on their shoulders and making the wrong choice -- trusting the wrong person -- could doom them all.

Elayne also talks about this in 3x01, when she's giving Rand the advice that leads to him making the decision to go to the Aiel Waste -- she mentions the importance of "knowing who to trust" as something that makes leadership difficult.

And the further trouble is that the only reason Siuan can offer the Sitters is "In my dreams, Moiraine Sedai told me that if the Tower doesn't bend the knee to the Dragon Reborn, he will lose the Last Battle. She learned this in the city of Rhuidean, in the Aiel Waste" and that brings up a whole host of questions that Siuan is not prepared to answer. Questions that she is probably certain would lead to her being deposed.

When you don't know how to explain something, it can be difficult to justify your actions (we also saw this with Rand and Egwene this season -- Rand doesn't know how to explain the Selene | Lanfear situation to Egwene, so he... doesn't, and it blows up in his face).

In the end, Siuan does figure out how to explain it. At least the most important parts. But she hasn't gotten there yet.

Instead of explaining herself to the Hall or putting it to a vote, Siuan writes letters of support for the Dragon Reborn and sends them to the various heads of state that the Amyrlin Seat has access to and authority to communicate with.

This act also gives Elaida (and Galina) the wedge that is needed to tell Alviarin that they are ready to vote on the matter, today -- and we learn later that this is the vote to depose Siuan.

At Cold Rocks Hold, Rand is trying to meet his toh to Alsera, still wracked with grief (and guilt). Egwene comes to fetch him for his break-up conversation with Lanfear and, you know, it is absolutely fascinating to me that Rand and Lanfear don't interact in person a single time this entire season. It happens entirely in Tel'aran'rhiod. Because of Moghedien's threats or because that was an environment that was under Lanfear's control (until Rand learns that he can control his own dreams)?

Rand is wearing a new coat, I think. Still mostly dusty Aiel colors but there's a reddish patch on the back and blue along the collar.

This scene shows us Rand's continuing grief over Alsera, as well as the fact that he and Egwene are still not communicating about anything (and, from what we see throughout the rest of this episode, I feel like they are destined to continue to fail to communicate for the foreseeable future).

We see that Egwene is still uncomfortable around Rand (due to the break-up itself or due to what happened afterwards with Alsera?) while Rand is lost in his grief.

In the scene with Moiraine and Sammael, Moiraine talks again about how Rand needs a teacher -- Rand is the first person who brought up this idea, back in 1x08, when he asked her if she could teach him and she said that she couldn't. She tried with Logain and now she's trying with Sammael -- both failures.

Are we going to follow the rule of three and have Moiraine try again to find Rand a teacher in s4, but this time it works?

We learn a bit of Sammael's backstory here -- grudge against Lews Therin, invented war*, etc. -- but he'll be dead soon, so I won't get into it, lol. We do also learn that now that she knows it's possible, Moiraine has figured out how to tie off weaves, so she can now presumably teach that to Egwene and Bair, if she chooses. I'm assuming that Moiraine used her sa'angreal to give herself enough of the One Power to shield Sammael and given that we see she can only barely hold her own against Lanfear later on, that does confirm that Sammael is weaker than Lanfear.

(*"In my time, there were no armies. Hadn't been for centuries. I discovered the art of war again." which also helps put the Aiel and the original Way of the Leaf into context -- they were formed in a time of no wars when living a life with no violence against others had less outside pressure against it; if the world hadn't placed Lewin or Aram into a situation where they needed to defend themselves/protect others, they would have continued living the Way of the Leaf)

One thing that does stand out is Sammael saying that he left his scar unhealed on purpose, because he wanted to have Lews Therin see it when he killed LTT. So we have a contrast between this scar of Sammael's that he refuses to have healed vs the wound in Rand's side that wasn't able to be healed, which has been touched on in two episodes (Rand wincing when Egwene is helping him rebandage it in 3x01, and it also appears to break open and bleed after his journey through the columns in 3x04).

"By the time songs are written about the Last Battle, no one will remember who you are." Unintentional prophecy by Moiraine, since she's not the one who kills Sammael, but true enough.

Shifting over to Liandrin's plotline, she bursts into the house she's sharing with the others (the old Lounalt estate) and we find Chesmal playing with a cat and Jeaine playing with what we learn is a balefire ter'angreal. The Sisters know that Liandrin killed Nyomi and suspect that she killed Ispan too. Liandrin ends up being the only survivor of the Black Ajah cabal that escaped from the White Tower (and I was shocked that she made it out alive tbh), and this episode helps out the kill count so that Team Light has now killed more of the Black Ajah than Team Shadow has, so that's good.

Team Light killed: the White Sitter (Leane); two unnamed BA sisters on the streets of Tar Valon (Ihvon & Maksim); Jeaine (Elayne); and I'll say Chesmal is probably dead or as good as dead (Min)

Team Shadow killed: Joiya (Gray Man); Nyomi (Liandrin); Ispan (Moghedien)

And Elaida killed Amico. I'm not willing to put her on 'Team Light'. Team Out For Herself, let's say.

The Black Ajah cabal took only a few weeks to completely disintegrate and it works as a microcosm of the Darkfriends as a whole and of the Forsaken -- if everyone is out for themselves, double-crossing is going to come naturally. Ishamael kept them all in line when he was in charge but now it's a bloodbath as everyone wants to be first, no matter who they need to step on (and we saw in s2 how Suroth and Liandrin's hatred/disdain for each other was only leashed because they were both following Ishamael's orders).

It's also an indictment on Liandrin's leadership skills, I'd say. If she had become Amyrlin, the way she dreamed of being, she would have ruined the White Tower in short order. She's a terrible leader.

(Though I don't imagine Elaida will do much better -- she's not a Darkfriend, judging by her actions in 3x06, but she's every bit as selfish, egotistical, and violent as the worst of the Darkfriends/Forsaken)

Liandrin has also taken to wearing the bracelet around, probably because she doesn't trust any of the others not to take it from her.

We get interrupted by Moghedien, delivering the second of the bracelets to Liandrin -- has Liandrin already figured out that her 'servant' is one of the Chosen or does that realization come later?

Moghedien is essentially getting Liandrin to do the work of finding the collar, rather than Moghedien doing it herself. She knows that two powerful, if untrained, channelers are looking for the collar, and doesn't want to put herself at risk, is my guess.

I do really like that we see Jeaine messing around with the balefire rod here, trying to figure it out, but she can't handle it when she actually tries to use it later, while Elayne shows herself able to figure it out extremely quickly -- we've been told that Elayne is inventive but we get to see it in action in this episode.

Nynaeve and Mat are keeping an eye on the Lounalt estate and see when Liandrin & co leave (I assume that the others are nearby, maybe watching other streets, because it doesn't seem to take long to fetch them).

Mat is wearing a gold ring that I hadn't noticed before. Where did he get that? I don't think it's important, since it isn't noted by the camera work or anything, but it looks nice. Nynaeve can handle the chopsticks but Mat is in despair and looking for a fork (I wonder if this is a reflection of the actor's IRL skills).

This is the only moment we get between Mat and Nynaeve in this episode, which does bring me to what felt like a bit of a dropped plot point, because Nynaeve ends up not at all involved in Mat's distress later in the episode, despite her promise to help Mat being the entire reason he stayed behind at the White Tower and then went to Tanchico with the group. Since I'm considerably more invested in Mat & Nynaeve's relationship than in Mat & Min's relationship, this was a bit of a disappointment for me. It kinda feels like Nynaeve has forgotten her promise to Mat because of how much she's focusing on Liandrin (she was going to straight-up leave him behind at the White Tower in 3x03 until he insisted on coming along). Maybe we'll see more with Nynaeve trying to help Mat in s4, or maybe the promise was just there to provide the initial reason to get Mat into the plotlines that the show wanted him to have this season and it won't come into play again at all in the future.

Or, and I just thought about this because I was rewatching the s2 Egwene & Elayne scenes looking for one of Elayne's lines -- there's a quote that Egwene says in 2x02 about Nynaeve - "She says that she came here for me. To protect me. But where is she when I actually need her?" So maybe this is an intentional thoroughline of Nynaeve not being able to help out "the kids" and them needing to figure out other ways of getting help/helping themselves. Interestingly, the reason that Nynaeve isn't "there for Egwene" in this scene is also because of spending time trying to figure out Liandrin's deal in that case as well. And then Nynaeve is unable to be there for Egwene at the end of the season too, when Egwene ends up needing to free herself from captivity. She isn't able to help Mat in s1 either, with Moiraine needing to be the one to come and heal him.

I never would have thought about that if I hadn't been scanning the scenes trying to find one of Elayne's lines for another part of this deep dive. I wonder how many other connections are lurking under the surface if I do a full series rewatch.

Time for Randfear to break up! Loved this scene so much (I adored Rand in all of his scenes this episode; Josha did such a good job).

So Rand actually is the one who set the scene here -- they're in the place where the Sharom (that big research station in the sky) crashed, back in the day, which is interesting, as Lanfear also says. It looks pretty nice, considering. So we've had two times when Lanfear picked the location -- when they met in the Cairhien inn room where they used to have sex; and two times when Rand picked the location -- when Lanfear barged in on his dream about the Two Rivers and now here, where Rand is fully aware and has made an active choice about where he wants to stage his break-up with Lanfear.

Lanfear kept them closed up in a small room, while Rand's settings involve the wide world. Very fitting for how Lanfear has sought to isolate Rand all this time.

Before we get into the scene itself, I want to take a look over their relationship as a whole, now that we've reached the end of it as a romance.

Let's rewind back to s2.

Lanfear is released from her seal and I'm guessing that Ishamael gives her the basic run-down on the situation with the new Dragon. Lanfear plops herself into the nearest big city to where Rand was last seen, probably using some Compulsion to make people believe she's been there for a while.

Once she has Rand in her sights, she gets to work -- sex first, and then use that to tip him into a relationship. Rand is isolated and in emotional turmoil, which is perfect for her purposes. We know that their relationship began as transactional, with 'Selene' asking for sex in exchange for giving Rand a room at her inn. And their relationship is at this basic level when we meet them in 3x02, though Rand's feelings are beginning to be more complex, because he is a heart-first sort of person.

Lanfear is also consistently pushing at Rand's boundaries in most of the scenes that they share together. Rand will say 'no' and she will continue to press him until he gives in. The one time in s2 that this doesn't work (at the party where he leaves her behind to go deliver that bottle of wine to Logain), we get our first true glimpse of who Lanfear actually is, when she threatens him in his dreams ("If you ever leave me again like that, I will kill you.") and then pushes and prods him into uncontrolled channeling in his sleep, which results in the fire at the inn, which is going to make Rand feel guilty over destroying her livelihood.

Then she sets up a situation where Rand will reveal his channeling to her, and she thinks that she's about to get everything that she ever wanted, and then Moiraine shows up and ruins her big night, which Lanfear carries a huge grudge about for the rest of s2 and into s3.

Now, imo, if Lanfear actually had revealed herself this early, she would have lost Rand (because he was beginning to be genuinely scared in that scene), but she believes that it's all Moiraine's fault.

She does want Rand to claim his power and titles, so she helps arrange for him to get to Falme. Plan B is in full swing... until she overplays her hand with Ishamael and tips things off to him. She can't resist gloating (a flaw that will return in s3) and Ishamael realizes that she's about to betray him, so scuppers her plans by releasing all the rest of the Forsaken so that she can't have it all her own way.

Meanwhile, Rand has been told by Moiraine that he needs to play into Lanfear's feelings for him, because of how incredibly dangerous she can be. He has also been carefully kept away from the majority of Lanfear's worst behavior and actions (mostly by Lanfear herself).

Rand is being starved of information. This was a common theme in the books but in the show, it is being tied specifically to this beat about Lanfear and her cruelty.

Once we open in s3, Lanfear can't see Rand in person because she doesn't want to draw the other Forsaken to him, so she visits him in dreams, pushing him towards Tear and Callandor, pushing him to take more power. She's also returned to the Selene persona, realizing that "openness and vulnerability" are much more appealing to Rand than "dominatrix sex goddess".

Rand is clearly still physically attracted to her, but resists her.

Also of note in their scenes this season is how little Rand actually shares his plans with her. She tells him things (some of them lies) but he tells her very little back.

From 3x02: She already knows that he's in the Waste (maybe through Moiraine?) and wants to know why he went to there instead of going to Tear. He does not tell her that it's to gain the allegiance of the Aiel, instead playing off of her own suggestion and saying that it gets him away from the other Forsaken.

Lanfear takes his hands and puts them on her waist. Lanfear touches his mouth. And that whole time, she's laying down poison about how if Egwene ever sees the truth about Rand, she will reject him. And once there's a hint of Rand softening towards her, she teasingly leaves.

From 3x03: She tells him about the Sakarnen and how she wants it in order to destroy the Dark One and escape her Dark Oaths. Rand asks her a lot of questions in this scene, prodding her to give him answers -- why do you want me to get Callandor so much? What would you do if you broke free of your Dark Oaths?

Note, that Rand approaches Lanfear here but she's once again the person who initiates physical touch -- she covers his hand while he keeps it closed into a fist on the bed.

Lanfear really really plays up the "I'm a helpless damsel who needs your protection" angle in this scene, probably thinking back to how effective it was in 2x04, before Rand knew the truth about her. Rand wants to be able to feel like he can protect people as opposed to hurting them, so she's trying to give that to him here. She also tries to get Rand to blame himself for them being here together in his dreams, though luckily Rand doesn't seem to buy it.

I don't think he buys her distressed damsel act either, not fully, but then 3x04 happens and he sees Mierin and it gives him hope that there's something real underneath Lanfear's lies.

He has hope that maybe 'Mierin' is still in there, that maybe Selene was Lanfear showing the Mierin side of herself.

From 3x05: Two significant things here: Rand does not tell her about seeing the Sakarnen in his Rhuidean visions, which he knows that she is looking for; and he does not say "I love you" back to her when she says it to him.

He does think that maybe there's a hope that there's something in Lanfear that can be saved -- that wants to be saved -- but he doesn't give away any key information to her, and he doesn't entrust her with his heart. He's still holding some big pieces back. Lanfear also is the one to initiate the physical contact (touching Rand's face and tipping him towards her for a kiss), though Rand is the one who initiates the kiss itself.

But even here, Lanfear is careful to seed in how Rand is dangerous and bad, just like her.

In these scenes, Rand also keeps poking at her ambition for more, as if confirming that's still her motive -- he does it in 3x02 ("Not big enough for you, not by a mile."), in 3x03 ("What would you do if the Oaths you swore were gone?"), and in 3x05 ("And more.").

And Lanfear's flaw from 2x08 comes back to bite her again -- she can't resist gloating, and she tips her hand to Egwene at the end of 3x05, thus leading to Egwene confronting Rand and revealing the extent of Lanfear's cruelty. His hope that Lanfear actually was telling the truth in 3x03 about wanting to break her Dark Oaths is snuffed out.

Now, in the wake of learning the truth, Rand waits in his dream, knowing that Lanfear will come for him, because she always does.

Hilariously, she does come in what reads as a modern white wedding dress. Amazing. No notes.

She reveals that Sammael was sent to Cold Rocks Hold as a 'surprise' for Rand, and she's thinking along the same lines as Moiraine, that he can act as a teacher for Rand.

We have... we have two sets of parallels set against Lanfear this season -- we have the Moiraine & Lanfear parallels; and we have the Egwene & Lanfear parallels. Interestingly, they don't overlap much -- Lanfear is covering two separate aspects of Rand here -- Rand as the Dragon and Rand as a romantic interest. This is kind of an echo to what Lanfear said back in s2, about how Rand needs to share all of himself with someone, rather than only parts of himself -- Lanfear claims to want all of Rand... but when Lanfear talks, she does a lot of projection. Most of what she claims is true of Rand is usually only true of herself, but she wants it to be true about Rand.

And we see Rand putting on a mask with Lanfear here -- he's closed in on himself, one hand clasping his other wrist. He gives her the smallest of (fake) smiles in order to get her to keep talking. And once he starts talking and settles into himself here, he begins slowly circling her.

Rand's facial expressions are so good. The little eyebrow twitch he does after he says, "It's also the last moment you were truly human." He's let go of his illusions/hopes about her. And what she did with Sammael would only help confirm that -- Sammael's attack is why Alsera is dead. Lanfear didn't even ask if anyone got hurt during the delivery of her 'surprise'.

And Lanfear is genuinely unbalanced by how Rand is behaving, not doing the false damsel act that she's used before.

I love how Lanfear goes, "So she told you." [beat] "I knew she would." You did not, you liar, lol. She is desperately trying to justify her actions here, trying to claim that her torture of Egwene was to make her stronger, because Rand learning this about Lanfear's actions is her worst nightmare. This is Lews Therin all over again, and I imagine that (whatever it was that made LTT realize that she had a rotten heart) she made frantic excuses to him back in the day too, hoping she could find the right words to make him still love her. Lanfear wanted to gloat over 'winning' Rand from Egwene and she ruined her own plans. Just like when she felt the need to gloat in front of Ishamael in 2x08, leading to Ishamael releasing the rest of the Chosen.

"Or do you want all that power for yourself?" And we see the same smile on Rand's face here that we saw at the beginning of this scene -- I will make a note to watch out for that no-teeth smile in the future. It's sexy but it seems to be a bad sign for whoever is on the receiving end. (contrast it to the full smiles that we saw Rand giving to a couple of people in 3x01 -- I think we see it with Mat & Perrin, and with Elayne)

"Why can't it be both?" Lanfear asks, which is essentially her stepping directly into the trap that Rand laid for her -- she just admitted that she wants that power for herself. This is also the first time we see Rand the one initiating the physical contact -- he puts his hands on her waist, in a reversal of the scene from 3x02.

Lanfear now tries to argue for the nuance in doing evil things, which is the point that she's been attempting to lead him to all this time.

And she makes a wild argument here: "Do you know what you did in your last life? You made the whole world bow. And the only one who wouldn't was me. That's why you left me. Because I wouldn't bow to you." I love how you can start to see the same look here that she had back in s2 during the "If you leave me like that again, I'll kill you" scene. She can tell that she's about to lose him (she's already lost him).

But though Lanfear accuses him of being a child here (in a few moments), Rand has learned a lot and he's grown, and he sees through her and doesn't fall for her attempts to blame the ending of their relationship on Lews Therin being arrogant.

He calls out what she said as a lie -- the reason that Lews Therin left her... the reason that Rand is leaving her, is because she's "jealous and petty and just cruel". She is not a good person. He has now seen all of her, and it's because he knows who she is that he doesn't love her.

With Egwene, Rand wasn't able to connect with her emotionally/romantically anymore and he also believes that she doesn't truly want him and a life with him. But he respects her and he cares for her, even if he was ready for a break-up the second she opened the door for one.

With Lanfear, once he sees her for who she truly is... he doesn't respect her choices. She has chosen to take her jealousy out on others. She has chosen cruelty when she could have chosen compassion. As we see with Melindhra later on in the episode, if the choice is between doing evil and dying... that is still a choice.

And Lanfear is not only cruel, she is cruel both in an indifferent way and in an actively and gleefully malicious way.

So, Rand can mark down two failed relationships.

One died because of the lack of communication in the relationship -- though it's entirely possible that communication also might have ended the relationship sooner, if more amicably.

The other died because it was based on a foundation of lies and manipulation, and as soon as Rand learned about the truth under the lies, it killed his feelings for Lanfear.

Much like Logain and Sammael as failed teachers, I will now ask... rule of three? Is Rand going to have a third relationship that does work out? If so, we have the rough shape of what it would need, from the reasons that his past two relationships failed -- he needs a relationship with good communication and a foundation of honesty.

Kinda like we saw with Perrin and Faile this season. They were a great example of a couple that followed Lanfear's (hilariously good) advice from 2x04 about letting someone see all of you and giving them a chance to love you (it works better when you aren't an awful person).

From what Rand himself has said, he also needs to believe that he's genuinely wanted for himself (not 'wanted' in a sexual way, but in an emotional/romantic way).

So I was hoping for an "Egwene teaches Rand how to protect his dreams from Lanfear" scene and this maybe counts, lol. If Rand has been told the secret about how he's the ultimate master of what happens in his own dreams, then we can potentially take it as read that he's able to shield his dreams in the future. We will (hopefully) find out in s4.

Rand calls Lanfear out for being a monster and pushes her away from him -- and the physicality of this scene is so delicious, with Rand's small secretive smiles and the way he moves in the scene and the way he touches Lanfear (after her doing all the touching in the earlier dream scenes). Even if you didn't have the dialogue, the dynamics are obvious just from the actions and the facial expressions. It's fantastic. What a great scene.

And Lanfear twitching as she begins to channel in her rage.

"You stupid, arrogant child," Lanfear says and this is also finally finally the truth about what Lanfear thinks about Rand (and potentially about LTT) when she isn't trying to seduce him. He frustrates her! We've seen moments of him frustrating her in other scenes, she's just always quick to paper over it. She never actually loved him. She loved an idea of him -- an idea of Lews Therin. She loved the idea of a younger Lews Therin that she could shape and mold into the man that she actually wanted -- all that power under her control (echoes of White Tower law when it comes to the Dragon Reborn! It's all about ownership). And, of course, this put paid to another lie that she made him believe about their relationship -- that she saw him and loved him as a man, not as a boy (which was the distinction that Rand himself made between 'Selene' and Egwene).

Sadly the trap for Lanfear doesn't pan out, even though everyone prepared for it really hard, because Lanfear's absolute pettiness has overruled her immediate rage -- she doesn't just want to kill Rand, she wants him to lose the thing that he's spent all this time working to get. She wants to see him fail before she kills him. She wants to kill Moiraine first. And probably Egwene too.

I notice that Aviendha is still going for her fire spears. Well, it's only the day after Rand and Egwene's break-up and everything that went down, so I suppose that's pretty reasonable. Aviendha has not been a Wise One apprentice for very long. Like... two and a half weeks, I think? Something like that.

We also see that Moiraine has gotten a lot more control over her sa'angreal and isn't struggling with it as much. Maybe Rand's advice helped!

Melindhra's little subplot isn't long, but I ended up enjoying it. Here, Lanfear calls in Melindhra's 'debt' and tells her to kill Lan. This is likely meant to cause Moiraine pain and throw her off-balance so that it's easier for Lanfear to kill her.

"If a Forsaken has that collar and uses it to control Rand..."

So... the uncomfortable question about what happened in Tanchico -- if Team Tanchico had not gone to Tanchico, would Liandrin and Moghedien have been able to find the second bracelet and the collar at all?

It's Mat being charming at the right man that lands them the second bracelet; Liandrin & co had no idea where to look for it. And Liandrin's drawing only shows what the collar looks like in the worn/activated state, not in its resting state, and she leaves it behind not recognizing it for what it is when she finds it in the Panarch's Palace.

And, of course, the reason that the Black Ajah have the first bracelet is because Verin and Adelas let Nyomi into the 13th Depository. Every single piece of the male a'dam came into Liandrin's hands because of the actions of someone on Team Light, though not on purpose.

That's not saying that Team Light failed completely in Tanchico -- they did take out two of the Black Ajah. Mat... accidentally accomplished something, though we don't know the details yet. Nynaeve broke her block. Min redeemed herself in her own eyes for her betrayal of Mat in s2. Elayne has a nifty new weapon and learned that Gaebril is one of the Forsaken.

But... they are the reason that the complete male a'dam is in Liandrin & Moghedien's possession.

Two ta'veren among them when this all happened. Is there a greater purpose in Liandrin and Moghedien having the collar that will play out to the Light's advantage?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Right now, we're outside the Panarch's Palace, everyone is terrified to be facing the Black Ajah but they are determined to be brave and try to find the collar in order to protect Rand. Mat reminds Thom that he didn't want to get involved but Thom says "I have this thing about watching kids die. Try to stop it if I can."

It was when the situation in Bree turned potentially deadly that Thom stepped in as a ride-or-die to help Mat and Rand as well. The more dangerous the situation is, the more likely Thom is to throw himself into it to protect these "kids" (aka people around his nephew's age? or people around Elayne's age, now that we know more about his backstory?).

"Whoever finds it, get out. Don't wait for the rest of us."

Nynaeve giving advice that she will not take herself. The first time watching it, it kinda felt like Nynaeve was specifically waiting around for Liandrin, which felt like a weird choice for her to make! But on rewatch, it's more likely that she felt like she couldn't leave without "the kids" (as Thom would say) and unfortunately Liandrin found her first.

They come into the palace and see the dead bodies of the guards, and they split up into three groups -- Nynaeve by herself, Min and Mat together, and Elayne and Thom together.

While the Tanchico players are all searching for the collar, Moghedien decides to start an art project!

Or, you know, tries to see how much she has to break Sammael's body before he finally dies and is unable to heal himself. This does let us know a couple of things -- Moghedien is aware at least vaguely about what's going on in Rand's plotline (but doesn't want to get involved until she can do it with minimal/no risk to herself) and her first priority is to knock off the other Chosen.

Rand approaches Alcair Dal with the Taardad Aiel following him, and we begin to get a chance to see the scope of the Aiel people here (though we're explicitly told that not all the clans have arrived yet, so this is still not all of them). Rhuarc warns Rand that going to Alcair Dal before the rest of the chiefs have arrived goes against tradition but says that he will stand for Rand regardless. And Rand does say flat-out that if the Aiel refuse to accept him at first, he will reveal the truth of Rhuidean to confirm to the clan chiefs and Wise Ones that he truly did go to the sacred city.

I really do wonder exactly how much Rand (or Egwene?) told everyone about Lanfear during the set-up of the trap. Enough that everyone who was in that room knows that Rand and Lanfear slept together, it seems, from what Aviendha says to Egwene here, but I'm kinda guessing he went as bare-bones as possible on the information.

One thing that I would really hope for in s4 is for Rand to actually debrief with someone about what happened with Lanfear (kinda like how Perrin was able to unpack what happened with Laila to Faile) because right now, Moiraine is really the only person who knows about Lanfear's long-term manipulation and deception of Rand and I don't know if I feel like she's a healthy and safe person to talk to about this sort of thing. I get why Rand didn't feel like he could tell Egwene, tbh -- because it would have required him to confess that while Egwene was mourning his death, he was sleeping with and developing feelings for someone else. But he was able to almost tell Mat and Perrin about it in 3x01 (but he was still trapped in the middle of the relationship at that point, and couldn't bring himself to tell them about the deception part of it), so I'm hoping now that the relationship is very much over, he can talk to someone about how it began.

I'm hoping that someone can ask him, "What happened with Lanfear, Rand?" in a more objective way (though I certainly understand why Egwene couldn't be that person!), and he can tell someone, "I didn't know she was one of the Forsaken. She was pretending to be someone else. She was lying to me for months. And after I learned the truth, Moiraine and I agreed that it would be safer for me to go along with her, for my own protection, because I didn't know how to protect myself from her intrusions into my dreams. I came to care for her, or the person that I wanted to believe that she could be, but I knew I couldn't trust her."

Or something to that effect, anyway.

This conversation with Aviendha is another example of people telling Egwene what her feelings about something should be, which feels like it happened a lot this season. I feel like we got a lot more of other people talking about how Egwene should feel about something than we got of Egwene telling us how she does feel about something. So I'm once again asking for more insight into Egwene's actual thoughts and feelings in s4. It does feel like the key is that she got separated from Nynaeve and Elayne so early on in the season and didn't have anyone to talk to who she fully trusted (just like Rand became more vulnerable to Lanfear's manipulations after he was separated from Perrin and Mat).

You know, it occurs to me that it was implied in behind-the-scenes stuff that we would get an explanation for Moiraine's fancy dress & armor in her fight with Lanfear but we didn't. It must have ended up on the cutting room floor, due to time constraints.

So... I'm assuming that the woman with Sevanna and Couladin here is a Shaido Wise One (and the xray confirms this, though she has no name), and she cautions them that there is "no honor in shedding blood in Alcair Dal." Lanfear arrives and the Wise One is asked to leave before Lanfear puts fake clan chief tats on Couladn's arms.

I'm going to try to see if I can spot this Wise One later in the episode and see if she leaves with Sevenna & Couladin, despite the fact that she would be able to guess that Couladin is lying about having gone to Rhuidean.

Sevenna and Couladin are both willing to pretend that he's the Car'a'carn in order to keep a wetlander from claiming the title.

Of course, the fact that someone was able to put fake dragons onto Couladin's arms opens the doorway of doubt into whether or not Rand's dragons are also fakes, at least to the Aiel, which is why Rand is going to need to tell them the truth.

Elaida primping herself up for her big moment of ascension to the Amyrlin Seat, done in a mostly empty Hall, in secrecy, and as quickly as possible. Elaida is ~technically~ legal here but essentially bending the law as far as she possibly can. What Siuan was doing in concern and desperation (barring the Red Ajah Sitters from the Hall because she was worried they were Black Ajah), Elaida does because it's the only way she can get what she's wanted all these years.

"Eight Red Sisters have just left the Tower, with no word as to why."

And that's how Elaida gets away with it. Because the implication is clear. Siuan is worrying desperately over the fate of the world and Rand is the person that she has to worry about the most. Her own experience of Rand showed her that he was young and brash and inexperienced. That a single Aes Sedai could shield him successfully. The idea of eight Red Sisters hunting him down is a terrifying prospect, and the thought of what might happen to Moiraine if she gets in the way.

So Verin leaves the Tower, with "a group of our most trusted Sisters" and are out of the way when Elaida's coup takes place.

Heartbreaking.

I do think that Siuan was given a losing hand. We've seen how corrupt the Tower is -- how many of the Sitters were Black Ajah, how many other Black Ajah are around. And their very laws feel written in a way that is harmful to the Last Battle (re: caging the Dragon), which makes me wonder if Ishamael got his hands on their bylaws early on in the formation of the White Tower.

How could Siuan have had a chance of righting that boat in only ten years?

We get a nice moment between Elayne and Thom here -- it was implied in 3x06 that Thom had known Elayne from before ("part of Morgase's court") but we get more of the details here, and a timeline. There's also a reminder that Elayne likes to tinker with things... Thom tells a story about toddler!Elayne taking apart all the clocks in the palace.

"The queen was too proud to punish you. She always was."

This actually goes back to something I noted back in 3x02, which is that the show did a really good job of transferring over "beloved and cosseted heir" vibes from how a crown prince might be treated in a patriarchial monarchy to how Morgase treats Elayne.

Something I find interesting about Elayne's outfit here is that I don't see a rose in her hair. During most of the season, Elayne has put her hair up with some part of it echoing the shape of a rose, to remind us of the rose crown. But here, her hair is fully down and she's wearing a black headband (that I think can double as a veil).

Talking about how old she was when Thom left leads to the revelation that Lord Gaebril is not who Elayne remembers him to be -- that he straight-up didn't used to exist. This was definitely the big thing that I was wondering if Thom would be used to bring back into Elayne's plotline -- finding out that her mother is under the thumb of one of the Forsaken. Very important and scary information for Elayne to receive!

Jeaine shows up and now we're going to build up to the Tanchico finale, as all three of the subgroups are brought into acute danger -- Mat through the doorway, Elayne and Thom because of the balefire rod, and Nynaeve in finding the collar and then confronting Liandrin. Easier to cover each group as a whole as opposed to cutting between them, so Mat gets to go first, and he gets sucked into a redstone twisted doorway very similiar to the one in the White Tower that Elaida exited from at the start of the episode!

The room of the Eelfinn (as he calls himself) is full of skulls and skeletons. So, you know. That's promising. Mat's doorway also disappears as soon as he looks away from it. Also very promising, I am sure!

Mat gets greeted by a roar from the Eelfinn, who is standing on a platform (we see similar small platforms around the room). The Eelfinn is furry, has red eyes, and is wearing human leather for clothes (the spine of his jacket is made of ears). All very promising signs that Mat will have a chill and no stress time in here!

There do not appear to be any exits to the room. There are narrow windows that let in shafts of light but all much too small for Mat.

"A very long time," the Eelfinn said and that, plus the fact that the names are slightly different (Aelfinn vs Eelfinn) is another clue that this may not be the same person that Elaida spoke to in her doorway. Though it depends on scale. Ten years can be a very long time, depending on how long Eelfinn live.

"By the ancient treaty, here is agreement made." (said in the Old Tongue, so Mat was probably able to understand just fine)

"What is your need?" This is the focus of what the Eelfinn presses onto Mat over the course of their scene together. Due to some ancient treaty, there's an agreement that the Eelfinn grant needs to a person who enters (three of them, from what the Eelfinn says) but there are some specific rules and guidelines about how these bargains work, none of which Mat knows.

Next we learn some of those rules - "Do you carry iron, instruments of music or devices for making light?" These do not appear to be allowed by the ancient treaty. Mat has nothing but the clothes on his back right now, as far as we're aware, so he's good to go.

The Eelfinn also knows Mat's name without being told. A totally normal thing that shouldn't stress anyone out at all!

When the Eelfinn laughs, it distorts the room (Mat winces in pain), and a similar thing happens each time he grants a need.

Mat's first need: "to stop getting bollocked about by every bloody magical force on this bloody planet. I'm sick of this One Power-"

Then, interesting, the Eelfinn makes an offer of a need -- "There are memories racing through your mind. They are not yours. We can take them."

When Mat responds - "You can fix me", this is also granted as "done" by the Eelfinn. So, yeah, that one is very interesting because it's actually something that the Eelfinn initiated and wanted, not Mat.

I think someone might be bending the ancient treaty to get something that he wants.

Mat compares the smell of the Eelfinn's room here to a "fox den" - "full of dead things". It's all pretty worrying.

So Mat makes his last need - "to get the fuck out of here. Now!"

We learn a couple of more important rules of visiting the Eelfinn (and perhaps the Aelfinn) -- you are not guaranteed the right to leave. If you forget to make leaving part of your bargain, then you will stay here and die. And probably get turned into clothing.

And that there are terms and there's a price for the needs that are granted and if that is not set by the person making the request, then the Eelfinn gets to set it himself. And his price is that Mat does leave his realm... by way of a noose.

On the other side of the doorway, Min panics a bit over Mat disappearing, and Chesmal shows up. Once Mat arrives hanged, Min waits until he's stopped breathing to bonk Chesmal over the head. I'm not entirely certain why she doesn't do it sooner, if I'm being perfectly honest. Chesmal seemed pretty transfixed by watching Mat die.

Anyway, Min saves Mat's life using not very good CPR, Mat reflectively flirts when he wakes up, which is his default state of being, and he's survived his journey through the doorway, only barely. Honestly, that Mat doesn't manage to flirt with the Eelfinn is a real statement about how much he was thrown by the events in the room (the list of people Mat has defensively flirted with includes both Liandrin and Ishamael, after all).

He's also left with three parting gifts -- a nasty scar on his neck that hopefully will get healed up; a silver or steel foxhead necklace; and the rope that he's hanging from is tied to a spear of some kind that is jammed into the doorway. We don't get confirmation on whether or not he takes that with him.

Mat also appears to have lost some of his own memories -- he doesn't remember coming to the Panarch's palace (but he does seem to remember Min fine). On the plus side, the screaming in his head is gone.

Did Elaida's doorway work the same? We can't know. She did appear to get a gift, but she came out with the promise that she would become Amrylin. We don't know much beyond that, except that she may have known enough about how the Finn work to negotiate her own price (perhaps it relates to why her hand shakes?).

Mat did acquire some new items, at a cost, but we don't yet know the value of them, and he's lost some of his memories as well.

But they are past the vision of him being hanged. So far, we've had one big Min vision per season that gets resolved in the finale, so I wonder if that trend will continue (s1: Nynaeve and Egwene nearly burning out; s2: Mat stabbing Rand; s3: Mat being hanged).

Elayne and Thom are hiding from Jeaine and Thom tries to talk Elayne into letting him make a noble last stand, the same as he did with the boys back in s1. While he's saying what he believes are his last goodbyes to her, he tells her that he promised her mother that he would keep her safe, and that she needs to find a way to stop the Forsaken in Caemlyn that is controlling Morgase.

While Elayne appears to agree, she actually sneaks around the other way and, while Thom has Jeaine distracted, Elayne wallops her with the One Power and snatches the ter'angreal from her. We've seen that when Jeaine tries to use the rod, there was a nasty recoil that made it very difficult for her to aim, but Elayne is able to control it with relative ease.

When she hits Jeaine with the balefire, Jeaine slowly (and painfully, it looks like) disappears... and then a balefire-colored ghosty image of Jeaine appears, doing the same actions she'd done earlier, and the damage that Jeaine did to the ceiling becomes undone and the ceiling is whole again.

"This makes balefire. I could be one of the Chosen with a weapon like this."

So that seems like a useful little toy that Elayne has acquired! Plus she saved Thom's life. Elayne's plan here goes off without a hitch.

I also like that we bring the whole ~gunslinger~ vibe that Alanna had in 3x01 back again here with Thom.

This little thread is probably our most successful of the groups in Tanchico -- Elayne kills Jeaine, saves Thom, and acquires a weapon that can potentially challenge the Forsaken. All gains no losses! Not a bad day's work!

Nynaeve is searching around and she's in the correct room but doesn't know it yet. Liandrin shows up, finds the collar, but then leaves it behind because it doesn't look like what she was expecting. After Liandrin leaves, Nynaeve picks the collar up and puts it into her bag, and then heads to the entrance, where she waits.

She told the others to leave if they found the collar, but she can't bring herself to do it. And so she's waiting right there when Liandrin shows up (I'm guessing Liandrin was following the whispers from the bracelets again -- which is likely why Moghedien gave her the bracelets in the first place, because she knows how these kinds of ter'angreal work and assumed that having two of the pieces would be able to draw Liandrin to the third piece).

I feel like Nynaeve could at least have tried to hide instead of standing right by the door! But she is standing by the door and is immediately spotted by Liandrin.

New rule: Nynaeve isn't allowed on any more stealth missions.

There's literally a shadowy corridor right behind her too.

So, the Nynaeve and Liandrin scene -- I feel like there's definitely a comparison to be made to Rand and Lanfear, in terms of someone wishing that they could change the mind of a person who is on the side of the Shadow and bring them back to the Light. In both cases, the relationship is first established via deception -- Lanfear pretends to be Selene to get into Rand's bed; Liandrin pretends not to be Black Ajah so that she can become Nynaeve's teacher. There's a moment of horrifying realization that this person that you trusted and liked is committed to a horrible cause (Moiraine revealing that Selene is Lanfear vs the Seanchan betrayal).

And then there's the hope that maybe you can save them.

Though I do feel like not all of Liandrin's backstory was necessary this season and that we could have cut some of it in favor of something else, there's also a comparison in that as well -- it's learning about Liandrin/Lanfear's past history that gives Nynaeve/Rand hope that they can turn away from the Shadow.

Rand realizes at the end of 3x06 that the woman that he wants to save doesn't exist. The woman that he cared about -- the woman that he could perhaps have loved... she wasn't real. Because that woman would not have been capable of tormenting someone for weeks in their dreams. Lanfear's own revealed actions shattered Rand's illusions about her.

Here, Liandrin declares that the woman that Nynaeve wants to believe in doesn't exist and, to prove it, she tosses Nynaeve into the ocean.

So, we definitely see Nynaeve's weakness for Liandrin on display here. Is Liandrin showing a weakness for Nynaeve, or she is embracing cruelty? Drowning is a slower and more painful death than the bullet-to-the-head weave.

It might be as simple as having enough affection for Nynaeve that Liandrin didn't personally want to watch her die.

I'm not sure I believe that Liandrin was trying to give Nynaeve a chance to break her block, though the argument can be made. That maybe the lie that Lanfear said about Egwene (hurting her to "make her stronger") is part of Liandrin's intentions here. Maybe. Liandrin does believe that "adversity breeds strength".

After what Liandrin says here ("I'm going to collar the Dragon Reborn"), it makes all the sense in the world that Nynaeve & co are going to try to book it to find Rand as quickly as possible, and their best guess for where he has to go eventually would be Tear (because of Callandor). Plus Elayne has a family friend in the city.

Nynaeve breaking through her block by using the thought of the daughter that she had in the Arches. It really is interesting to me how much focus there has been on Nynaeve's journey through the Arches, compared to how little it's been focused on for Egwene or (especially) Elayne. We caught one glimpse of a mad!Rand in Egwene's nightmares in 3x02 and then nothing until Egwene accuses Rand of being mad in 3x06, and then her concern in 3x08 when Rand doesn't let go of the One Power. And with Elayne, we have absolutely zero knowledge of what happened in the Arches.

But for Nynaeve, it has been a profoundly transformative experience that has deeply shaped her, to the point where that's what she reaches for when she needs to break her block, not any of the real and living people who are potentially in danger in the Panarch's Palace. She talks about her daughter in 3x01, dreams about her in 3x05, uses her to help break her block in 3x08.

Part of her grieving process, perhaps, turning Elnore's memory into something that gives her strength instead of hurting her? To contrast against Liandrin calling her son something that made her weak?

Nynaeve's scorecard for the episode: one big miss (Liandrin taking the collar); one big hit (breaking her block)

The Tanchico storyline is now all wrapped up and it's time to wrap up the Aiel Waste and the White Tower plotlines (which get interlinked, because the events in the White Tower plotline end up affecting the Waste Plotline).

Lan's subplot with Melindhra gets wrapped up, and we get to see the effects of the Dark Oath on a person. Now, we don't know exactly what triggers the backlash from breaking the Dark Oath -- is it something that happened internally in her heart? Was it refusing an order from one of the Forsaken? Was it telling Lan about Lanfear? Uncertain. It does not look like a pleasant ending but Melindhra realizes that her life is not worth living if she is forced to betray the one thing that mattered so much to her that she was willing to dedicate herself to the Shadow for the promise of it.

There's a quote from another series, the Vorkosigan series, that I feel suits this situation: "Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing that you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart." Lan is Malkier, and Malkier is Melindhra's heart.

"Death is lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain."

Duty has been a big theme this season. The weight of duty. Rand has been struggling with it. Aviendha was running from it. Elayne is trying to balance it. Moiraine and Siuan are both willing to sacrifice everything for it. We've seen how that mountain has been weighing Siuan down this season, this task that she has been trying to hold up, as impossible as holding up the sky itself. Perrin choosing first to defend his people and then to lay his weapons down and surrender himself to Dain and the Whitecloaks. We watched the many past Aiel torn between duty to the Aes Sedai and their way of life, with those who tried to keep to both dying out. The sa'angreal in Rhodric's hands, carried out of the Age of Legends and into Rhuidean so that it could be held by Moiraine today, used to defend his blood-descendent, the Dragon Reborn. The Aiel people shattered into pieces to create Rhuidean, and to prepare the way for the Car'a'carn. They will shatter again today.

Duty, and destiny.

Rand watches the horizon. A shape is there, in the distance. A dark shape of a person against the white clouds.

He blinks, and the horizon is clear again.

While he was looking out at the desert, Moiraine has come to join him in his shade, and she opens the conversation with "You were right."

I'm guessing that part of the reason that Moiraine is so vulnerable with Rand here (admitting that he was right and she was wrong is a very vulnerable thing for her to do) is because she thinks it might be her last chance -- from what she saw in the rings, it is very likely that she might die today, facing off against Lanfear.

This opening also functions as a nice compare/contrast against a conversation that Rand had with Lanfear in 3x03, which was her creating false vulnerability and false intimacy.

Lanfear (3x03): "I don't know if I can untangle this for us. You were right to stay away from Callandor. I should have seen that. It was selfish of me."

Moiraine (3x08): "You were right to come here. This is a nation of warriors. This is an army that can take the Stone of Tear. Even the Forsaken will fall against a hundred thousand spears."

I am also going to point out that Moiraine is secondhand complimenting Elayne here as well, though she doesn't know it, because Elayne is the one who suggested this idea to Rand -- and for exactly this reason.

In 3x03, Lanfear "admits" that she now believes that Rand was right because she's working on manipulating him (she uses that conversation to try to make him believe she wants to escape her Dark Oaths, and to try to get Rand to find the Sakarnan for her).

Moiraine admits that Rand's right because she actually believes it. She says it plain, so that Rand can know it's true. Unlike Lanfear, she can't lie (which was also the key thing that made Rand go with Moiraine back in 2x04, when she first revealed who Lanfear was to Rand), so if Moiraine is telling Rand that he made the right choice, she means it.

"I'm sorry that I didn't know sooner that this was the right thing to do." Another huge show of vulnerability for Moiraine that I didn't catch the significance of during my first viewing. I think I was probably still recovering from Nynaeve breaking her block, so there was a lot in this conversation that I didn't pick up on! I think I only really started being able to properly process again when we get to the point where Rand crouches down in front of her (which echoes what Moiraine did to Rand in their much more testy conversation in 3x01).

Rand reciprocates her honesty with his own, revealing his cards in a way that he never does with Lanfear in any of their scenes -- he tells her that he's guessed that she helped Lanfear with the attack on the inn. He's guessed her motives as well - "To separate me from the others so that you could control me."

He gets her to confirm that she suspected that she knew about Lanfear torturing Egwene as well (I'm assuming it was the bruises on Egwene's neck in 3x02 that made Moiraine suspect something, at least after Egwene confirmed that they weren't from Rand).

"I hoped it would drive you two apart." "Me and Egwene? Or me and Lanfear?" "Both." "It worked." "I know."

While the actual break-up scenes with Egwene and Lanfear happened earlier, this is the confirmation from Rand that, for his part, he is done with both relationships entirely.

This also may have been why Moiraine was mostly avoiding Rand after Rhuidean -- she was waiting and hoping for the Egwene-Lanfear situation to blow up so that Rand would no longer be tethered to either of them.

So. Cards on the table. Honesty. It took a long time for Moiraine to be willing to be this honest with him, but they've finally gotten there.

Rand saw a figure out on the horizon that disappeared when he blinked. Whether or not that figure was a sign of potential madness waiting for him, Rand likely believes that it was. So he's in a similar position to Moiraine here -- the thing that he was so scared of is already knocking at the door. He and Moiraine are both at the point that lies beyond fear, into sheer bloody determination to do whatever it takes to accomplish their goal, in the time that they have left to do it (and Siuan will be right on this same wavelength once we loop back into her storyline).

"I have been ready to kill you if you chose the Dark or if you lost your mind. I don't want you to get to the Last Battle unless I know you can win it for the Light." "Exactly. You want what I want. You're the only one who does. Thank you. I'm here because of you. I see that now." "I won't be here forever." "I know. And I won't either."

They're on the same page, and agree on the terms. The goal is what matters, not the cost to themselves. This is, and must be, bigger than themselves.

(that doesn't mean that all the rest doesn't matter, even if Rand might believe it doesn't right now; but I'll talk about that at the end)

Look how much trust and gratitude you can get out of Rand if you're honest with him, Moiraine! This could have been you in 3x01 if you'd opened up to him back then instead of making deals with Lanfear, just saying!

I'm teasing her a little but Rand has been trying to reach out to Moiraine this season and she has been a brick wall back to him for most of that time, so it's really nice to see her offer truth and vulnerability here and then get immediately rewarded for it.

The truth doesn't need to be pretty -- it can be messy and ruthless and difficult. But Rand appreciates it anyway, because it's the truth.

Rand wants them to fight this battle together, but Moiraine refuses -- "No Aes Sedai strings at your back." Instead, they will fight separate battles -- him to bring the Aiel under his control and her against Lanfear.

And Siuan, fighting her own battle, alone except for Leane.

Separate battles, but it's all the same battle.

Verin and the rest of the "most trusted" Sisters arrive to confront Galina and the other seven Red Sisters who left the White Tower, only to learn that it was all done to get the people that Siuan trusted most out of the Tower.

In addition to getting these Sisters out of the way for the planned coup, this also reveals to Galina (and thus Elaida), which Sisters it was that Siuan trusted on this sort of mission.

The climaxes between Siuan - Moiraine - Rand are more tied together than the Tanchico climaxes, so I'll take them together instead of separately.

What Siuan and Leane learn here is that they're too late. Leane isn't being allowed into the Hall, because the vote was already taken. Secretly, with only the minimum of needed Sitters, Siuan has been deposed and accused of being a Darkfriend (note Elaida's use of the passive voice -- who accused her of being a Darkfriend, exactly?), who was "working in concert with the Shadow to hide the Dragon's existence from this Tower". That is a very specific accusation, Elaida. Who exactly wrote down the words of that accusation?

The Sitters that we see: none of the Blues (not a shock); two Greens; one Gray; two Whites, I think; two Yellows; one Brown; three Reds.

No audience, not like there was when Siuan became Amyrlin.

Leane moves to defend Siuan (using her staff) and is shielded by Alviarin. And several of the Sitters stand up to help Elaida still Siuan.

So even as Rand moves to secure the Aiel, he has lost the White Tower ("If the White Tower does not bend the knee to Rand al'Thor, he will lose the Last Battle," from what Moiraine learned in the rings).

We know what an overwhelming and devasting experience that being stilled/gentled is -- we saw Logain still wishing for death months later. And we see it here with Siuan, how hollowed out it makes her feel.

After seeing the fall of the White Tower begin, we move to Liandrin's job interview with Moghedien, where the two of them decide to team up to collar the Dragon Reborn. Neither of them have been great at working with others so far (as they both admit) so... we will see where that goes next season.

I have to admit that I was pretty surprised that Liandrin survived the season, because we got so much backstory on her that I felt like it was building up to a death scene of some kind. All that backstory does feel slightly excessive to me now that I know that she doesn't die, lol. But maybe they wanted to make sure that Moghedien had a consistent scene partner in s4 to bounce off of, and Kate Fleetwood is an excellent actress.

I am very curious where Liandrin learned the term Nae'Blis. Was Ishamael making her wild promises back in s1/2? He was very good at making promises.

Rahvin and Lanfear (in her goth era -- actually she kinda reminds me of the look in the movie "Legend" from the 'dancing with the black dress' scene) examine the... art piece that Moghedien made out of Sammael's body and blood -- Moggy successfully learned how to kill one of the Chosen (both Moghedien and Liandrin have a history of killing their coworkers -- a shared interest!).

"You've always played on all sides, Rahvin. It's time for you to pick the winning one."

Flashbacking to Lanfear, trying to play all sides, literally earlier in this same season, lol. Anyway, Lanfear has moved on from trying to get her baby boo do-over Lews Therin to get Callandor and is now trying to get Rahvin to go for it.

(Rahvin accurately comments that this must mean that her "little Dragon" has rejected her)

Lanfear declares that she's ready to kill Rand (spoilers: she does not even get anywhere close to Rand in the remainder of the episode).

Shifting to those two scenes let some time pass in our other storylines, so now Rand and Rhuarc are approaching Alcair Dal, to give the presentation to the Aiel but, just like Siuan was too late to the Hall, Rand is too late and Couladin is already here, presenting himself to the Aiel and claiming that he's the Car'a'carn.

Rand knows he's lying. Rhuarc knows he's lying. Bair and Melaine know he's lying.

Couladin knows he's lying.

But the majority of the Aiel present don't know. Even the other clan chiefs and Wise Ones don't know until Rand reveals that he knows the truth of Rhuidean while Couladin's actions make it clear that he doesn't.

Sevenna is presenting Couladin to the assembled Aiel, standing in for the clan chief that the Shaido don't currently have (what with Muradin clawing his eyes out in the columns and never making it back out), lying to them that Couladin is the Car'a'carn.

At first glance, I do not see the Shaido Wise One from earlier among the other Wise Ones (and Egwene) who are assembled to one side, though there is one Wise One who is dressed in the darker colors that the Shaido wear.

I do feel like we all should stop and admire Sevenna's outfit. That is wild. I love it so much. What is she wearing on her chest? That can't be comfortable.

While Rand heads off to interrupt Couladin's presentation, Moiraine creates a protective bubble around the area -- though I suspect her actual purpose is distracting Lanfear to come find her.

Couladin: "According to prophecy, I will bring new days. We will cross the Dragonwall again and take back what was ours."

So that's the plan that Couladin sets out here, and what he's going to take his faction of Aiel to do after he leaves here today. Originally, he wanted to get all of the Aiel on his side before Rand arrived, but he was not quick enough.

It looks like there are three empty clan chief seats, so we're missing three clans here.

"Wetlander. I'll kill you for standing on our sacred ground."

And, of course, we had the Shaido Wise One noting earlier that shedding blood on sacred ground is not honorable.

"What does the prophecy (of Rhuidean) say?"

Rand uses Couladin desparagingly callilng him a 'wetlander' to lean into going over the prophecies with the assembled Aiel -- born of the blood but not raised by the blood, and tells them his birth father was Janduin (of the Iron Mountain sept, clan chief of the Taardad Aiel). He points out that it was to the wetlands that people were sent looking for the Car'a'carn.

And the clan chiefs look at Rand, knowing that he is speaking the truth, while some of the assembled Aiel call him a 'liar' because, like Couladin, they do not want a 'wetlander' as their Car'a'carn.

In the Tower, Siuan has been brought back to the Hall for her sentencing, after having been questioned off-screen.

We see the same Sitters as before, in an otherwise empty Hall. Alviarin, now the Keeper, and Elaida, who wears her Amyrlin gold over a large amount of red (much more red than gold). She has no interest in being 'of all Ajahs', and only cared about the power of the Seat, not the duties.

Siuan has had such a heavy weight for the past twenty years, ever since she and Moiraine heard Gitara's prophecy. Fighting a battle against impossible odds. Now, she's lost that battle -- lost the White Tower, which might mean that they are doomed to lose the Last Battle itself, if what Moiraine told her is true. Past the point of fear, having already lost everything, Siuan is able to say all the things that she couldn't say before, because she was afraid that telling those truths would lead to these consequences.

(from 1x06: "They must never suspect we're working together. If another Sister finds out what we're doing, we'll be stilled.")

That she loves Moiraine, yes. That she would die to protect Moiraine, yes. But then she also confirms that she has been conspiring with Moiraine for the past twenty years, which puts Moiraine in that same danger that Siuan is facing, because as much as she loves Moiraine and wants to protect her, there is something greater. Trying to fix the White Tower in secret didn't work.

But Siuan has to believe that not all of these women are Darkfriends (she's fairly certain that Elaida herself is not). So she uses the time that she has left to try to use the truth to reach at least one of them. To try to make them believe, the way that she believes.

We don't know if any of the other Sitters are willing to listen but Elaida hears her, and is shaken by what she hears. She is aware of the power of a Foretelling, and knowing that Siuan and Moiraine have been following a Foretelling is going to shake her resolve.

While Siuan tells the truth to the small audience that she faces, Rand is telling the truth to the enormous host of assembled Aiel. We get a quick glimpse of Aviendha feeling a moment of betrayal towards the Wise Ones when she hears Rand reveal that the Aiel once followed the Way of the Leaf ("You knew?").

The way Rhuarc talks here "our people cannot face this truth" does seem specifically geared to reinforce the idea that Rand is speaking the truth. He didn't want Rand to do this, but he won't pretend it's a lie.

"This is what I was born to do." (what does the prophecy say? that he will save and destroy the Aiel)

Couladin does realize at this point that the more his people listen to Rand talk, the more likely Rand is to get them to realize that he must be the one speaking the truth, so he bounces, along with the people willling to follow him (mostly Shaido but I see some lighter outfits in there too).

And the Aiel remaining are the ones willing to listen.

Egwene is already looking worried here, even before Rand starts channeling -- maybe the very idea of him embracing prophecy this strongly concerns her? I'm not certain (I am once again asking for more insight into Egwene's thoughts and feelings in s4, lol).

Siuan's speech is genuinely fantastic and sums up so much of what the show is saying about people living in dangerous and difficult times.

"The world is changing. We cannot stand behind these walls and pretend we still have control. The only thing we have control over is what we do.

So what will you do?

Will you stand behind this woman who stands for nothing? Who loves nothing but power.

It's not the Tower or the Seat that makes us who we are.

It is us.

Us.

We are the power.

The Light shines through us. That is the truth!

I am Aes Sedai.

I have sworn on the Oath that my Sisters have sworn on for three thousand years. So, you hear my words and know that they are true.

If you stay here, you will burn with this Tower that you claim to love.

But I will never burn because I am Siuan Sanche. Daughter of the river. Water itself. And I defy you!

I defy you, Elaida!"

Before she kills Siuan, Alviarin looks over to Elaida, who is pretty visibly shaken by Siuan's words.

And Moiraine feels Siuan's death, as the oath she made to Siuan is released.

In between Siuan's speech, Rand speaks to the Aiel, reminding them of the words of the prophecy -- reminding them what the Car'a'carn is meant to do to them as a people. He will break them, he will destroy them, but he will save "the remnant of a remnant". Salvation and destruction, both.

Lanfear told him that she had fallen in love with the part that wanted to save the world, and Rand wanted to believe her, but when he found out what she was doing to Egwene, he knew it wasn't true.

Egwene looks worried and concerned over Rand even before any channeling is involved. Rand becoming what he must become is what worries her.

Before the taint overtakes his channeling, I see red, blue, and white -- I think that's fire, water, and air? Makes sense for what he does.

This is Rand doing the same thing that Moiraine and Siuan are both doing right now -- he is embracing the truth that terrifies him, which is what he is asking the Aiel to do as well (and what Siuan is asking the Sitters to do).

In 2x07, Siuan calls Rand "the water that turns the Wheel". In this episode, she calls herself water -- she has been the Amyrlin Seat for the past ten years, the daughter of the river.

Water frequently comes up when the One Power is involved, or to invoke the rituals that were likely once associated with the One Power -- I imagine that the ceremony of the Women's Circle in the Two Rivers might have originated as a Manetheren rite of passage for potential Aes Sedai, teaching them to trust the "river" aka the One Power. In s2, our blocked Nynaeve is unable to use the Power to clean a glass of water and drinks it dirty. Water is used as the symbol of the battle of wills between Renna and Egwene, where Renna wants control over Egwene's power. Wine (water with a pleasing intoxicant in it) is used to symbolized tainted saidin in Rand's conversation with Logain in s2.

In this episode, Nynaeve finds herself in the water, in all senses of the word, and frees herself from her block.

And Rand makes it rain in the desert, creating a storm that reaches out as far as Tanchico on the west coast. He is the water turning the Wheel of Time itself, a level of power that outstrips anything we've seen before (and the first time when Rand has really needed to put his whole body into channeling the way that Aes Sedai need to do for much simpler and smaller weaves).

I don't have that much to say about Moiraine & Lan's fight against Lanfear because I never really have much to say about fighting scenes! We do see that Moiraine is able to be fueled by the grief that she feels when Siuan dies, just as Queen Eldrene was fueled by grief in the story of Manetheren, when she felt her husband die. Lanfear gets injured but manages to escape (running the second she feels like she's in genuine danger).

And Moiraine is left with her grief -- a deep personal grief, for the loss of the woman that she loves, and while it may not have hit her yet, there will likely also be grief over what this may mean in the larger picture. If Siuan is dead, nothing good can be happening at the White Tower.

As Moiraine speaks the words of one of the prophecies, we watch as the storm clouds begin to pass over Moiraine and Lan.

The storm clouds reach Tar Valon, as Elaida moves her things into Siuan's chambers and has Siuan's personal items removed.

Thunder rolls and Moghedien looks up. The storm has reached her location -- is she still in Tanchico, or have she and Liandrin left? I am not good at architectural analysis, so I'm not certain. It doesn't look like Tanchico architecture to me, so I think she might be somewhere else. Maybe further to the east.

We see clouds in the sky as Faile, Bain, and Chiad examine the massive Whitecloak camp where Perrin has (presumably) been taken.

And the storm has reached the seas, where Nynaeve, Elayne, Mat, and Min (and presumably Thom) are leaving via a Sea Folk ship. To try to find Rand and warn him about the collar being in the hands of Liandrin and an unknown member of the Forsaken.

Then we return to Rand. He is calm, not crazed (like he was in Egwene's Arches vision) or euphoric (like he was in 3x01). Egwene calls out to him to let go of the One Power, like she did in 3x01 but this time, he doesn't.

I do love this look at the end between Rand and Egwene, and how vastly different their experiences of that moment are (I do suspect that their experiences are going to continue to drift apart).

For Egwene, she's worried that Rand has lost himself. She asks him to let go and he acknowledges that he heard her (he looks over to her) and he doesn't listen to her.

But while Rand has let go of himself... it's not to the corruption but to what he believes that he must become, to the prophecy of the Dragon Reborn (and the Car'a'carn). This is essentially what he expressed in his conversation with Moiraine earlier. He and Moiraine both want the same thing -- for Rand win the Last Battle 'for the Light', while accepting that Rand may need to be willing to do whatever it takes in the pursuit of that goal.

Are Moiraine and Rand correct in what they believe Rand must become in order to succeed?

Is it a good thing that Moiraine has been doing her best to isolate Rand away from other people and break him away from his emotional attachments?

Is it a good thing if Rand decides to embrace Moiraine's philosophy?

The prophecy that Moiraine says in voiceover implies that they might be wrong with their approach.

For the land is one with the Dragon Reborn, and he is one with the land. Soul of fire, heart of stone, in pride he conquers, forcing the proud to yield. He calls upon the mountains to kneel, and the seas to give way, and the very skies to bow. Pray that the heart of stone remembers tears, and the soul of fire, love

There's an interesting alignment of Egwene & Lanfear going on this season, a sort of compare/contrast that I feel like was probably at the heart of why the season had Randgwene last as long as it did. We have the Dragon's two exes, with Lanfear saying that the reason that Lews Therin Telamon broke things off with her was because she didn't bow to him, and Egwene being the only person that doesn't bow to Rand at the end of the episode (which, you know, of course she doesn't -- he's not her Car'a'carn. I don't think any of the Aiel expected her to bow, and Rand certainly didn't. But the comparison is there for the audience, not the Aiel; the audience is meant to think back to Mad!Rand screaming at Egwene to bow to him in her Arches vision from 3x01).

This is what Lanfear claims now (3x08): "You made the whole world bow. And the only one who wouldn't was me. That's why you left me. Because I wouldn't bow to you."

But both 'Selene' and 'Lews Therin' (via Rand's words) tell a different story.

'Selene' (2x04): "You shouldn't hide it. I did that once. Turned my soul to him like a mirror, reflecting only what he wanted to see. Leaving the rest of me in darkness. But one day he looked too long. Too carefully. You need to give someone the chance to love all of you. They might not. But you have to give them the chance."

Rand (3x08): "Lews Therin... he left you for the same reasons that I am. Because you're jealous and petty and just cruel. You're a monster, Lanfear."

Some part of Lanfear knows why she and LTT didn't work out, but she doesn't want to admit to any character flaws so... it's because she didn't worship him. That's the reason. It's definitely not because of any fault in herself that he might have discovered that turned him off her. Definitely not!

Sammael didn't last long in the show, but he did drop in that banger of a line which undercuts the narrative that Lanfear is trying to peddle right now (3x03): "You'd have stretched out at [Lews Therin's] feet if he'd said 'Rug'."

And, of course, 'not bowing to him' is also not the reason that Egwene and Rand broke things off either. In fact, Rand respects that Egwene has no intention of bending herself to his desires. That's not what he wants out of a partner -- we had that confirmed already back in 1x08, when he rejects the temptation-world that Ishamael created for him because he knew it wasn't what Egwene would have wanted, but Rand also re-affirms it in the 3x06 break-up scene.

But one of the big themes of the books is the difficulties of communication, especially between men and women. I tend to call it "Women And Men Just Can't Communicate With Each Other" and it gets taken to ridiculous lengths in the books.

In the show, it kinda feels like they're taking something that was generalized in the books to Basically Everyone and making it instead a specific problem between Rand and Egwene, and a long-standing one that has marked their whole relationship but that didn't really matter until the stakes became so much bigger (I noted in either a 3x05 or 3x06 post that Rand and Egwene's communication issues were already present back in 1x01 -- Egwene avoids talking to Rand until their parents basically force them to be alone together; and then Rand distracts them with sex once he starts to get the vibe that Egwene is about to start a Serious Relationship Conversation).

Instead of Women And Men Just Can't Communicate With Each Other, it's Egwene And Rand Just Can't Communicate With Each Other -- in a similar way to how the show took the general theme in the books of "Two Rivers Men Are Wildly Overprotective Of Women Just Because" and made it a Perrin-specific thing and gave him a reason to feel that way. Because the show does agree that this is an issue that should be addressed, whether it be overprotectiveness or miscommunication, but wants to explore it using only one character (or one set of characters), rather than it being something that afflicts all the main characters.

I realized that I was shouting, "Holy shit, just TALK to each other" at Rand and Egwene the same way that I basically did most of the time when women and men interacted with each other in the books, because there were so many persistent and wilful misunderstandings going on. The frustration that Randgwene made me feel this season truly was straight out of the books.

And if they were going to have any two characters exploring this specific issue, Rand and Egwene are probably the ones to do it (we've seen in the show that most men and women do not have this level of communication disconnect with each other -- Nynaeve and Mat have a much warmer relationship in the show than in the books, for instance).

3x06 is the first time that Egwene accuses Rand of madness due to behavior that is unrelated to any kind of corruption or taint from the Dark One (the Lanfear mess was good old-fashioned manipulation from a master-manipulator) but I don't think it'll be the last. When Rand acts in ways that go outside how she believes he would act, I think we may see her going back to "it must be the madness taking him" as her belief for why he's acting that way.

If Egwene has a conviction that Rand is already heavily influenced by madness, we've seen that Rand also sees Egwene through Two Rivers eyes, but while Egwene thinks back to pre-1x01 and their relationship before the break-up and is comparing now-Rand to then-Rand, Rand sees her in the lens of their break-up in 1x01.

A large part of his side of their break-up talk in 3x06 goes back to that original break-up and her reasons for it. When she had a chance for something she saw as 'better' than a life with Rand (the apprenticeship with Nynaeve), that's what she wanted. And when that chance vanished, she wanted to go back to her old relationship with Rand as if nothing had changed between them when, for Rand, everything had changed because now he knew where he stood in Egwene's list of priorities. He accepts this and lets go of the dream of his life with Egwene in 1x08 when he's facing Ishamael, but then s3 digs up those wounds again.

To Rand, what happens this season feels like part of that same pattern from 1x01-1x02 -- she only wants him when she has nothing better on offer and when she needs someone 'safe' as a security blanket.

From my own perspective, I do wish we'd gotten a reminder of some kind in 3x03 that the worry about Rand going mad has been preying on Egwene's mind and that she's with him in the Aiel Waste partly because she's concerned that she's going to need to be the one to stop him if he starts to be overcome by the corruption, because the break-up did feel unbalanced to me and I felt like that part of it wasn't really implied outside of 3x01 itself, but hopefully s4 will let us have more insight into Egwene's thought processes again, maybe if she gets reunited with Nynaeve and Elayne, and has someone to confide in that she can trust.

Looking forward to s4, which I do dearly hope that we get, we have some things set up for us:

Tear and Callandor. This has gotten a ton of set-up this season -- it was mentioned both in 3x01 and in 3x08. Callandor is the male counterpart to the sa'angreal that Moiraine has, so it can presumably amplified Rand as much as the Sakarnan amplifies Moiraine in this episode. Given how incredibly powerful Rand has shown himself to be here without any kind of sa'angreal, that is... a lot of power. You can see why Lanfear tried to convince Rand that it could be used to kill the Dark One.

Perrin has surrendered himself to the Whitecloaks, but Faile, Bain, and Chiad aren't going to leave it at that.

We have two different sets of villains: we have the alliance of Moghedien and Liandrin, who have the collar and want to put it on Rand, and we potentially have an alliance of Lanfear and Rahvin -- she's trying to convince him to go for Callandor, but she also just got her ass kicked by Moiraine and nearly died, so he might not find her arguments persuasive.

The White Tower has essentially fallen, which is concerning on several different levels.

Rand and Moiraine have connected and fully aligned on their goals and methods. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen -- Egwene seems concerned.

A large portion of the Aiel present at Alcair Dal left with Couladin, who expressed a desire to go over the Dragonwall to "take back what is ours". That also seems like a pressing problem.

Rand definitely saw someone in the desert who disappeared when he blinked. That's concerning. He also no longer seems to be worrying about how much of the corruption he touches, as long as the One Power does what he needs it to do.

We are down two Chosen now, with three in the spotlight (Lanfear, Moghedien, and Rahvin), two mentioned but not seen yet (Semirhage and Graendal), and one who is completely unknown.

Fingers crossed for renewal news!

[odileeclipse]

hi its me again :)

i intended to send this much later but decided to now since i have to focus on studying for exams hhhh

idk how this fits in the timeline but as a nice alternative i made a blueberry milk cookie sprite (or whatever you call his past self i like to call him that) which i tell you healed my soul because staring at black and gold all the time was tiring me out (fount of knowledge...)

without the finer details

nobody talk about how i used the same pose i did NOT feel like doing a new one

also i just placed the soul jam right there in the center because i also did not want to draw another staff so i just got the star back and went "oh yeah lets pretend he's teaching dark moon magic to them"

slight idea when i was drawing the hat i was thinking maybe sometime we could give him like a silly pin to put on his hat as a tiny gift from us for everyone to see beside his blueberry one i thought that was lovely

pineapple supremacy...

it was either that or a pin of honey-drizzled waffles

my phone is so tired of me editing on ibis paint i swear

I love that you brought him into this version of himself during a time you needed something softer. It fits so well that he would be a kind of quiet companion through study stress. And honestly, the reused pose works perfectly fine!!! this is so wonderful even one image would have been more than enough

That little pin idea? That’s such a tender touch. You guys are brimming with such creative ideas!!!!

Thank you for taking the time to make this, especially when things are hectic. It really does feel like a warm breath of calm.

As always pineapple supremacy anyone who says otherwise the exit is that way.../j

[wxywardsun]

What if your red dead online character witnessed or heard about the blackwater massacre either through word of mouth or maybe even a newspaper article or (probably the scariest option) hearing everything go down depending on where they are. It’s not entirely impossible since red dead online takes place a year before the main story of rdr2. I don’t know,just something to think about

[dirtbra1n]

have a fuckton of dishes to do can I be vulnerable and honest. prevalence of homophobic hanzawa makes me saaaad. Okay that’s all

[meggydolaon]

something that bugs me about Frieren is that the adventure of the Hero Party to slay the Demon King famously took 10 years... what about the return trip....?

[sysig]

Reading moodboard #84430940 (Patreon)

[the-kk-crow]

A couple of sketches I did featuring an Error slightly closer to how I actually visualize him.

He bites the dark apple. But he’s fine. He walks back home, eyes sharp, bones white, not knowing he’s not supposed to exist.

One day, he will fall in love, and grow strong as a leader. Maybe one day he will understand this was not supposed to happen. Maybe one day he’ll understand how to appreciate his life.

[pocketramblr]

Who knows what Gerudo culture or fashion would have evolved into by 'Rule's time but it's nice to think about him getting to experience a bit more of it in another universe... Before BLYGanon sours it for him... Also been thinking about that Great Fairy of the desert...

[orcelito]

Went skimming thru late trimax For Reasons, got caught up reading the Legato fight, realized things about the fight that I never had before & went WOW, I kind of want to write an analysis post right now!

Felt the same kind of insanity grip me, however momentarily, that fueled all my analysis posts however many months ago. Too tired to actually word things coherently right now, but...

I May or may not have a full(ish?) analysis of the Legato & Vash fight a la style of This post analyzing the Trigun: Multiple Bullets fight that got unexpectedly kind of popular. People seemed to really appreciate that one, & I even had some ppl saying it could be cool if I did that for others?

So. Legato fight. Maybe. Feel free to remind me later if u see no mention of it again for over a week lol

[ekingston]

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

PLEASE check my later versions of this post via my main page to make sure you have the latest version of this post before you reblog. All the information I’ve been able to gather is in my reblogs below, and it's frustrating to see the old version getting passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much!

[moeitsu]

Explaining the James Logan Howlett (Wolverine) Lore for the new fans :)

I made this as a little cheat sheet for all the new Logan/Wolverine fans, in case you’ve never seen the movies or read the comics. Hopefully it’ll help with your fanfics and understanding his character better <3

Logan is my favorite of the Marvel superhero’s, and he and I go way back….so far back that my Dad dressed up as Wolverine and I as Rogue for Halloween in 2006. So he holds a very special place in my heart.

Lore - Part 2  Wolverine Comics

If you’ve seen X-men Origins: Wolverine, I hate to break it to you, but that backstory is not canon to the X-men universe. The later movies really screwed up the timeline. So the information here is strictly from the comics.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

Pre-Adamantium Binding:

His real name is James Howlett, ‘Logan’ is later used as an alias to distance himself from his past.

He was born sometime around 1880, in Alberta Canada.

He is the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Howlett and Thomas Logan. He grew up on the Howlett estate and believed John Howlett was his real father.

His mutant powers first appeared when he was a child. He has accelerated healing, heightened senses, and retractable bone claws.

The trigger was caused by Thomas Logan killing James Howlett. The overwhelming fear and anger made his power manifest, blinded with rage he kills Thomas.

As his biological father dies, he reveals to Logan that he is his true father. The event is deeply traumatizing, and Logan runs away from his family estate. His mother commits suicide shortly after.

Logan has a half brother known as Sabertooth (Victor Creed) who has similar powers to the Wolverine but is more ‘animalistic’

The details vary across the comics but the brothers are always seen as rivals. And often pitted against eachother.

Logan served in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

He also served in a Canadian military force known as ‘Department H’ that specialized in superhuman affairs. (This was after the experiment, I’ll go into more detail later)

Sometime before the Weapon X program: On Earth-616, Logan had a wife (Itsu) and son in Japan where he was training at the time. They were killed by the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes)

Weapon X Program - Adamantium Binding:

The Weapon X program was run by multiple people working in secret for the Canadian government. Originally beginning in 1845, their goal was to experiment on mutants and create their own super-soldiers.

Logan was deceived and manipulated into undergoing the Weapon X experiment. He did not consent to being a test subject.

For some reason the X-Men Origins movie makes it out to be that Logan willingly chose to undergo this process, only to later reveal that he was tricked into doing so.

Before being captured, he was still struggling with his identity, he was close to 100 years old at the time. His life was filled with violence and loss. Making him physically and mentally vulnerable.

He was a prime target for exploitation.

Part of the experiment was to completely erase his memories and replace them with false ones. This allowed them complete control over him.

This also made it difficult for him to recall how he ended up in the program to begin with.

I repeat: they completely wiped his memory. His whole identity was gone.

100 years of memories were gone.

The bonding process turned his entire skeleton and bone claws into indestructible metal.

Due to his regenerative nature, Logan was not given anesthetic or put under for the procedure. It was excruciatingly painful.

Logan worked as a mercenary for private military contractors. He took on these assignments without fully understanding their implications because of his fragmented memory.

Sometime later he became a member of X-Force, a private military unit (affiliated with the CIA) that dealt with incredibly violent operations.

The purpose of the project was to create an unstoppable killing machine. With their end goal being to erase his humanity all together. However Logan’s mental fortitude allowed him to resist the conditioning and make his escape before it was too late.

After escaping, Logan developed a mistrust with authority. And just people in general. He felt deeply betrayed by the Weapon X program. And he struggles with the fear of being used as a weapon.

The escape and aftermath of Weapon X:

After everything Logan went through, the intense trauma and confusion significantly impacted his actions and mindset.

He was left with extreme psychological damage, and behaved more as an animal than a man for the first few years of his freedom. Living in the wilderness of Canada.

Quite literally a feral man. He lost touch of his humanity. Embracing his animalistic abilities, turning him into an apex predator.

Logan has the ability to enter something called “Beserker Rage” which he becomes entirely driven by animalistic instinct. Turning him into an unstoppable force and exerting himself for very long periods of time.

Think of when you see him running on all fours…

Over time, Logan began to regain bits and pieces of his humanity. He was later discovered by Heather and James MacDonald Hudson who took him in and helped him recover physically and mentally.

(Logan actually fell in love with Heather, and James became his best friend. They were the closest thing he had to a family)

After he recovered, he was recruited by the Canadian governments ‘Department H’. They were responsible for a lot of his training and became a key member in Canada’s superhero team: Alpha Flight.

This is where he took on the code name “Wolverine”

His time with Alpha Flight was short lived. And soon he was approached by Charles Xavier, who was looking for mutants to join his X-Men. He recognized Logan’s potential and offered him a place on the team as well as the promise to help him regain his memory.

Logan accepted, and his time with the X-Men marked a critical and significant moment in his life. Under Xavier’s guidance he was able to rebuild his identity and gradually piece together his past. All while fighting for the rights of mutants.

Being part of the X-Men gave him a sense of purpose and direction. Although his main goal had always been to uncover what he had lost, which was himself. He still struggles with trust and relationships, but eventually forms strong bonds with the other X-men.

His past with Weapon X still haunts him. And he has vivid and terrible nightmares about what he had done and what was done to him.

I won’t go into detail about his time with the X-men because that varies a lot across the comics. Just know that he had a love-hate relationship with them, but he ultimately loved them in the end.

Some sad facts about Logan that actually haunt me:

Logan has outlived everyone he ever loved. Family, friends, even his own children. He is so so so lonely.

Immense amount of survivors guilt. He feels unworthy of the life he continues to live.

He suffers from chronic nightmares. Often waking up in a violent and panicked state.

Deep-seated fear of abandonment that goes all the way back to his early childhood. He isolates himself to protect himself from more pain.

Tons of self-loathing. He believes himself to be nothing more than a killer. He thinks he is unworthy of love and happiness.

In the “Old Man Logan” storyline, he is tricked into killing the entire X-Men team. This event haunts him for the rest of his life.

Logan had a long, unrequited love for Jean Gray. He has watched her die multiple times, and each time a piece of him dies with her. On one occasion, he even had to kill her himself.

When he succumbs to “beserker rage” he loses control of himself. And the aftermath horrifies him. He is even afraid of himself at times and one of the reasons why he distances himself from others.

Some happy/soft facts to make up for everything you just read:

Logan is incredibly fatherly at times, often taking younger mutants under his protection and guidance. He becomes a mentor to them and looks out for their well-being.

In one of the comics he takes a young girl (Jubilee) to the mall and followers her around carrying her bags. He loves doting on her and I find it so adorable.

He also teaches another mutant named Kitty how to dance.

In one mission he is tasked with taking care of an infant, Hope. And he is incredibly gentle and tender with her. Cradling her in his arms and being fiercely protective.

He has a deep love and connection with animals. Especially ones that have been mistreated or misunderstood.

Caring for an injured wolf, he nurses it back to health and releases it back into nature.

He also adopts a stray, abused dog at one point.

In one of the timelines, he funded and ran the ‘Jean Gray School for Higher Learning’ He was the headmaster, and was dedicated to protecting and teaching young mutants.

In one scene he literally makes pancakes for all the students. I love him so much.

His relationship with Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) is very brotherly. They share alot of respect and understanding for each other, and Nightcrawler often serves as Logan’s moral compass.

His happiest memories are when he was training in Japan. And he has a deep appreciation and admiration for the culture. Taking on the samurai code of honor, and respecting its discipline and humility.

His entire relationship with Laura Kinney (X-23). Essentially his daughter. Taking on a father-figure role for her.

In one of the comics he organizes a birthday party for her, knowing she never had one. He goes all out and it shows just how much he loves her.

Logan has a great sense of humor. Often dry and sardonic, he’s known for his quick wit and playful banter. Which adds a layer of warmth to his otherwise tough persona.

He is very fond of life’s simple pleasures. Which reflects his inner desire for peace and normalcy. He values the little things that make life enjoyable.

His numerous acts of kindness towards strangers. Logan is compassionate at heart.

He doesn’t comfort others with his words, but rather his presence. Logan has a very unique understanding of grief and tries to give others relief in knowing they aren’t alone.

WOW okay I wrote way too much. Tbh I actually cut a ton out of this but if anybody wants a part 2 I’d be happy to share more. Shoutout to my brother for helping me source all this with his comics lol.

If you read all this, you’re a real one. And I’m so glad we’re all witnessing the Logan Howlett Renaissance

[lazyneonrabbitt]

Muzzled

FatWS!Bucky x Reader | Smut🔞

Face riding as therapy? Bucky thinks it's a wonderful idea.

Part two of Barrier, set way later in the timeline.

You and Bucky probably had the weirdest relationship of anyone you knew. Over the decades you had been together you had been separated by war accidents, evil organizations and helful allies, only to find a different version of Bucky each time your paths crossed once more.

Now, the most recent time of seeing Bucky again almost gave you whiplash as a wave of nostalgia hit you.

His hair was cut and styled short and he sported a gorgeous new arm. He didn't look like the tortured soul that came and took you to Romania but resembled his old boyish self once more.

He was Sergeant Barnes again.

Bucky still hesitated to touch you, his mind telling him he needed to make sure you hadn't stopped feeling for him romantically before he'd make a fool of himself.

Once he stepped into your apartment, though, that fear left him entirely.

On the wall sat a vintage Captain America propaganda poster that Steve himself signed. Next to it a small toy shield signed by Sam. A huge bookcase ran along the remainder of the wall and wherever he looked he saw memories.

Far off in the corner of his eye he spotted a familiar teddybear, now worn and clearly loved.

But what really caught his eye was all the different items of his she had scattered throughout the cabinet.

Books about the Howling Commandos, a small portrait picture he knew she had kept on her person during the war and even a little action figure of him and Steve stood ready for battle beside and old group photo.

Even--

..even his Winter Soldier mask sat proudly in a square along with a HYDRA file labeled with his name, and that small red book.

"Why did you keep this?" His voice was soft, his eyes focused on the items that represented his worst side, displayed so proudly in the open.

"Well, it shows I love all versions of you, even the one everyone else disliked." The way you said it so casually caught him off guard.

"But if you don't like having it here I can always put it in my nightstand.." You liked how that made a blush creep up his face. "I know you liked it last time you wore it around me."

You let out a full blown laugh at Bucky clearly remembering the events you mentioned. He picked up the item and turned it in his hand, inspecting all the intricate details on it.

Part of him was excited you loved the assassin and didn't cast him away or tried to pretend he didn't exsist, but part of him also felt extremely uncomfortable being around items that reminded him of a part of him he had tried to forget.

"If you put it on I'll sit on your face." You passed the ex-assassin with a wink as you stepped towards the hall connecting the livingroom to your bedroom, keeping him in your view as he stood, frozen and almost dropping the mask in shock.

By the time you reached the bedroom door he still hadn't moved. "Oh, Sergeant?"

"Y.. yes, peach." He quickly slipped past you into the room and sat down on the edge, mask still in hand.

Standing in front of him you toed off your shoes, crossing your arms as your eyes glanced at the mask for a second, signaling you were waiting.

You watched trembling hands lift the item to his face, his eyes focused on it as fear glinted in the blues.

"Hey, look at me." Your voice was soft and got his attention immediately. His eyes quickly lost the fear and clouded with something more primal as he took in your form only clad in simple but tasteful underwear.

A simple "Okay" was all he muttered before the mask went back up to his face and he secured it in place. "Happy now?" His hands moved to take it off again but you moved swiftly to stop him.

"Oh no, baby. I think you misunderstood." You placed his hands on your hips and yours on his shoulders, pushing him back onto the bed.

"I said," Crawling over him you sat yourself down on his chest. "Put on the mask and I'll sit on your face. Don't you want me to sit on your face, Bucky?"

God, you loved how expressive his eyes were. They told you everything you needed to know when his mouth couldn't cooperate with his brain. But you needed him to talk before you moved on, making sure he was still here with you.

"Buck, talk to me please. I need to know that you're okay with this." Your hand came up to rest against his temple and he nodded. "I'm okay. Still breathing."

You took his words in happily, smiling down at him and moving his hands again, motioning for him to take off your remaining clothes.

With you completely bare, Bucky's hands found your ass and kneaded the soft flesh making him hum in pleasure. "So soft.."

With each squeeze you maneuvered yourself further up his body until your core was hovering above his head. Bucky's was breathing hard in anticipation, his fingers drawing lazy circles on your clit to distract himself from the eery feeling of the mask over his face.

"Relax, Buck. Tap out when it becomes too much. Do whatever you want with your hands in the meantime." Your fingers found his hair and gently combed through it as you lowered yourself onto the mask. Your slick already coating the hard material from Bucky's touches.

On your first roll of your hips you felt Bucky's hands twitch beside you, laying against the bed. As you continued to gently move you took his hands and put them on you. One on your chest and one on the plush of your thigh.

"Feels good, Buck.." You sighed as he rolled a nipple between his vibranium fingers and kept pawing at your thigh and ass. He hummed beneath you, inhaling deep to take in your scent through the mask. Your arousal was starting to seep through the slits down the front, the holes making perfect bumps and valleys to pleasure yourself on. Bucky moaned at your scent invading his senses, your slick dtipping down from the slits. Beneath the mask he had his tongue out, lapping at the inside to drink up everything he could get to.

The groan he let out at your taste went straight trough you and you felt the hand on your ass leave you. The sound of him fumbling with his pants caught your ears and it only spurred you on, rutting against the mask with renewed energy. Your tired legs finding new strength to continue riding Bucky's face.

You felt his arm move beside you, peeking back to see him taking his cock in hand and jerking himself off as he squirmed under you. "Taste so good.."

As he jerked himself off to the taste of you, your hips kept rolling. The slits in the mask being perfect ridges for your clit to catch on and help you closer to the edge.

"Hah.. Buck, feels good.." You moaned as he toyed with your nipple, your hand on his vibranium wrist squeezing the metal. Your other hand still rested in his hair, tugging on the short strands with each ridge that caught on your folds. "Getting close.."

While you used Bucky's mask as a saddle, he stroked his cock and played with your tits. Moans and sighs filled the room as you both neared your end. Bucky wordlessly placed his hand on your hip, holding you down as you tugged at his hair, gripping the strands hard as your orgasm washed over you. With a few slow rolls of your hips you came down just as Bucky groaned into the mask, panting as he finished all over his hand and shirt.

With a lazy smile you laid down next to him. "So, how are you feeling about it now?" Next to you Bucky unclipped the mask and turned it in his hands.

"Yeah," he huffed, his smile widening as his gaze turned to you. "I think I can start liking this thing."

Bucky was sure you were still eyeing him, pulling the outside of the mask back to his lips and licking a broad stripe right over the middle, his eyes still focused on you in the process. Only when he noticed you squirming and rubbing your thighs together he stopped and tossed the mask aside.

"Now, are you gonna let your soldier fuck you properly?"

[jaydove-writes]

Moving intro to pinned post so bio is less cluttered

~ he/him, cis, biromantic asexual, engaged to @starlightprincess98, (Planning to get married February 14th 2026) born July 12th 1997 (listed the year so I don't have to update my age every year) ****

Platonic soulmates: @aflairforthemelodramaticc and @translesbianfoxgirl

**** Formerly known as **** @princesssparkle42 **** @jaydovesworld **** Other blogs include **** @ask-skybluecmc, if you want to do some MLP OC RP **** @phoenix-of-grandeur, if you want to talk about your favorite games or mine (Though I also do that on main) **** @phiction-of-grandeur, if you want to talk about your stories or mine (Again I do that on main) **** @ask-the-felicity-crew, if you want to RP between your OCs and mine or ask me questions that I will answer as mine. The characters may or may not know they are fictional depending on when in the timeline you ask them.

****

@ask-simon-devlyn, same as the Felicity Crew, but centered around the captain, Simon Devlyn. On this blog Simon knows he's fictional.

**** I love talking to people and making new friends! I'm also creating my own story series called Starbourne. Wanna be friends in the gaming multiverse? Here are my Friend Codes:

****

Steam: 111892045

****

Nintendo Switch: SW-5163-5533-6136 ****

Musical Fandoms:

****

Chrono Trigger

****

Undertale

****

EPIC

**** Show Fandoms: **** MLP **** Steven Universe **** The Owl House **** Amphibia

**** The Ghost and Molly McGee **** Sailor Moon **** Cardcaptor Sakura

****

Infinity Train

****

Spongebob Squarepants ****

More later

**** Game Fandoms: **** Any RPG that features Mario (Such as Super Mario RPG, the Paper Mario series, or the Mario and Luigi RPG series) **** Any indie game inspired by Paper Mario (Such as Bug Fables or Born of Bread) ****

Undertale and Deltarune ****

In Stars and Time

****

Kirby

****

Hollow Knight and Silksong **** Zelda (mainly just watching other people play them) **** Pokemon (see Zelda) **** Might add more later **** Book Fandoms: **** Percy Jackson et al **** Amari **** Serafina **** Might add more later ****

Webcomic Fandoms

****

Homestuck

****

Down to Earth

***** Donation Links

****

Kofi

****

Patreon

****

PayPal

****

Book 1 of my series, Starbourne, is FREE!! For the other books please donate $6 per book to one of the aforementioned links. I'm planning on making this a series of 9, but currently working on book 2.

Doing one of those note things for motivation (or notivation because notes lol)

25 notes - I do the dishes and clean out the litter box (done, for now... But these are Sisyphean tasks)

50 notes - I clean up around the house (I did a little cleanup, might do more later)

100 notes - I do a little work on my book (it still needs editing before I can publish it and write the sequel, but I'll do some work on that when my PC stops crashing)

250 notes - I start working on book 2 (or work harder on editing book 1 if it still needs it)

500 notes - I participate in artfight (in the first July after it reaches this threshold. I doubt it'll get there by this month.)

1k notes - I start working on a video game in the Starbourne multiverse. A small one, like Undertale is to Deltarune. I'm calling it Saturn Robe which is an anagram for Starbourne, like Undertale is for Deltarune.

2.5k notes - I start working on my dream game, Starbourne. The one that's the reason I started writing in the first place. (If the small game isn't finished I work harder on that)

5k notes - I dedicate my time to taking care of myself/my partner/my family, and working on my dream game.

10k notes - I become a god in the Tumblrverse (this will not happen)

If you want to know more about Starbourne, check out my other blog @phiction-of-grandeur and my community for more details. My askbox is always open if you want to ask me something.

Here's the first book now:

And here's a newer version of the first book, with (hopefully) better writing. It's gonna be longer than the draft above.

Here's the book on AO3 as well ^^

[getaapologist]

Flow Backwards to Me.

A/N: Yeah, yeah, I know. Some people are gonna hate this. But there are some of us out there that can't handle this look. And Sam isn't the real name for the person the character is based on in the movie, so I'm using 'Sam' as just a made up person. I have seen the movie and this contains no spoilers. Timeline-wise, if I had to place it, it's before the movie.

Pairing: Sam [Warfare] x reader

Summary: Sam has orders. You two are a bit melancholy about it.

Warnings: 18+ only. Goodbye sex. That's all. A slight smattering of plot.

“Hey, eyes on me.” A strained whisper.

Rough fingers pressing at your cheek. 

A fever. Sweat, damp sheets below proof of the exertion. The effort spent to get here, right here.

Your eyes meet his and you’re plunged into their dark depths, his face, his torso lit by the muted tv, some show long abandoned. 

The harsh light flickers over his features, like he’s submerged beneath the surface, hints of light reaching these depths. Casting over the focused expression he wears, the cut of his musculature. The light similarly bathes you in blue, and he commits it to memory.

A technicolor sea.

You see a flicker of relief in him at the eye contact. His grip on your hip tightens. 

His discipline doesn’t leave him, even here. Lips parted. Steady, measured thrusts. Driving deep, almost too deep.

It’s normally quite subtle, but not now. Because things are bubbling just beneath the surface.

He leaves in the morning. Doesn’t know when he’ll be back. Doesn’t know where he’s going. 

Well, he probably does, but he’s not going to tell you. 

He knows you. He knows everything you’re thinking. He doesn’t want you to worry. Doesn’t want you to flinch if the city gets named on the nightly news.

You would spiral.

It’s what he signed up for. What he’s trained for. And by extension, it’s what you signed up for too.

It doesn’t make it any less terrifying to give him up.

“I need you here with me, please,” Sam begged, covering your body with his, his nose pressing against your cheek. “For now.”

He’s trying to survive the weight of the reality that awaited. Pretending things are normal. 

Pretend with me, he wants to ask. But how could he? It’s too much.

Your hands find the soft velvet of his freshly buzzed hair and hold him close. “Sorry.”

“Don’t,” he shakes his head, his lips finding yours in the process. 

There’s a level of detail in his every movement. Things that might normally get glossed over in the rush of chasing down that delicious morsel of pleasure are studied, taken apart.

It’s almost clinical.

He’s made it his job to map your features, to view you like this, to memorise the sounds his fingers elicit. Selfishly, he would draw on it later. But above all else, he needs to impart upon you just how much he cares. 

Just in case. 

So he takes his time. Well-versed in you, like it’s a vocation. His lips find your neck. His fingers dive low, drawing desperate, keening moans from your throat that he feels the vibrations of in his lips.

Your body chases his touch.

The tide pulls back. Threatens to wash you away. 

And right when things are too much, there he is.

“Breathe,” he urges, lips ghosting over your cheek as he lifts his face, watching you come undone.

Tense muscles, strangled cries, grip burning as the tide rushes back in all at once. 

Your legs clamp his hips in place against yours, keeping him trapped, your tremors bringing him close, too close, and he’s panicking. On the verge of relief, but he needs more friction.

Whines leave his throat, his fingers wrapping around one of your ankles, freeing his hips from your vice. And he moves.

Just a few seconds more, that’s all it takes. He’s buried deep, as deep as he can be, feet pushing off against the mattress, desperate to meld with you permanently.

The recovery is slow. It needs to be, this time.

For now.

The crush of him on top of you is welcome. Your eyes draw lines between the freckles on his shoulder as you both just breathe.

It’s easier now, after. Easier to forget about tomorrow.

“Sam,” you whisper. 

“Hmm?” he hums, his head turning so his lips brush over your cheekbone.

“It’s not forever.”

He allows himself a smile. “Right.”

The current changes. It reverses. Passing over the threshold. To acceptance.

He rolls off of you, staying on his side, his eyes still focused on you, but there’s a comfort in them now. A weariness, too.

“You’ll be fine without me,” he mutters, tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. 

You force yourself to smile. You can be sad later, after he’s gone. “I don’t know, who else will remind me to get up on time after I’ve snoozed all my alarms?”

He laughs. “Sounds like it’s time to sink or swim, baby.”

He grins at your show of frustration, his heart a fraction less heavy. He needs the levity, craves it. 

He reaches out, pulling you into his chest as you pretend to push him away. But once his lips find your skin, the jig is up, and you’re melting again.

“Hey,” he says, cutting through the noise, the thoughts. As you focus on him, he smiles, big and bright. It’s meaningful. Something worth searing into memory. “I’m gonna miss the fuck out of you, you know that?”

It could’ve been sad. Depressing, even, to acknowledge. But oddly it doesn’t feel that way right now. 

You’re just grateful. Grateful to have him so close, to get to watch him smile, to get to hear his laugh. 

“I’m gonna miss you too, Sam.” It was a guarantee.

Distracting him with little touches, talking through the next few months you’ll spend without him, it all gets a fraction of a percent easier. 

Waking up will be hell, but it’s all temporary. Eventually, he will be returned to you, and you’ll be waiting to help him get back to this.

A/N: Hope this was okay. I had something more lighthearted in mind when I first started trying to write anything for Sam, but tonight his just kind of fell out. Hope you find something to like about it, and if not, that's fine. If it's terrible, please tell me. Thank you!

[lotties-ashwagandha]

YELLOWJACKETS & MORNINGS (headcanons)

how they spend mornings with you! adult timeline in mind.

SHAUNA

shauna isn’t really a morning person. but when she’s lying in bed next to you, arm thrown around your waist and the sun creeping in through the curtains, she decides mornings are alright after all.

shauna would enjoy quiet mornings, where you get out of bed later than you should and spend too long deciding on what to have for breakfast. you reassure her that no matter what callie says, her pancakes do not suck, whether or not it’s true. regardless, you try to start every morning with breakfast together, planning out your schedules for the day and orchestrating little moments where your schedules can entwine and you can see more of each other.

shauna prefers nights — so if you’re a morning person and you don’t have as much energy at night, she will happily hold you in the later hours of the evening, when you’re barely awake as you watch your favorite tv shows. she’ll run a hand through your hair, let you rest your head in the crook of her neck. the next morning though, be prepared — she will be making fun of you a little for falling asleep ‘so early.’

LOTTIE

lottie has always been more energetic in the mornings. if you are, too, she’ll take advantage of it — starting the day watching the sunrise together, with tea or coffee as you sit outside and watch the rest of the world wake up. she might even give you a tarot reading before the day begins, extra mindfulness to carry you through.

if you’re not as alert in the morning, lottie will lay in bed with you until you wake up, because she doesn’t like the idea of either of you waking up to an empty bed. she will read beside you or meditate, play with your hair or sneak up behind you and pull you close and try to get some extra sleep herself.

(nsfw) if you take too long to wake up for her satisfaction, though, lottie does have a preferred way of waking you up. she sees how long it takes you to wake up when she slides between your legs, kissing up your thighs and licking through your folds, sucking your clit into her mouth. she enjoys the way your hand will automatically weave into her hair, and the moment your eyes flutter open she will come up and kiss you and act as if she wasn’t doing anything at all, it was just a strange dream you were having.

TAISSA

taissa is used to early mornings because of her past campaign duties. above all, she prefers quiet mornings. she wants to have coffee with you and savor a tranquil silence, or lay in bed and read the news on her phone with you beside her.

taissa likes to have a very structured routine in the mornings. it’s calming for her to do her makeup and pick out an outfit and all other steps of getting ready for the day. she craves closeness with you, too, persuading you to wear something of hers as you’re getting ready or something she bought you recently. she likes seeing you wear her jewelry especially, necklaces or bracelets, and she imagines what you would look like wearing a wedding ring she picked out for you.

taissa would go out early and come back with flowers for you and a sweet card just because. she would do anything to see you smile, and she takes advantage of the time you’re asleep to surprise you with tiny gifts to give you when you wake up.

VAN

van surprises you with breakfast in bed on occasion. she cooks the two of you anything and everything she can think of, pancakes and eggs and bacon and assortments of fruit. she makes your coffee (or tea) exactly the way you like it, though you’ve never told her your preferences. she notices every little detail.

van makes a morning music playlist with all of your and her favorite songs, and she plays it when you’re cooking together or getting ready together. she thinks the best way to start the day is with your favorite songs, and she’s always updating the playlist with new additions.

van imagines the two of you growing old together in the mornings and hopes it’s a luxury she will live to obtain. it strikes her out of the blue sometimes, that her time with you is limited. it’s what encourages her to make the most of every second of it.

(sorry pls don’t hunt me through the woods with knives for that!)

MISTY

misty starts the morning with a similar sense of structure as taissa. she probably has a planner that she notes down all of her tasks for the day in, and she gets one for you, too — regardless of if she thinks you’ll use it. misty plans everything, and she is still prepared for any unexpected turns the day may take.

misty’s favorite part of the morning is feeding caligula and spending some time with him before work. and if you are close enough to her to get to be a part of that, she considers you one of the people she loves the most. she teaches you all of caligula’s food preferences, she shows you how to clean his cage, and she makes you stand by his cage and take a picture with him so she can frame it.

misty makes sure you are always on time in the mornings. she makes sure you’re both at work five minutes early, she schedules everything to the point where failure to adhere to your routine is nearly impossible — it’s how she shows you she loves you.

NATALIE

natalie isn’t a morning person, and it’s a chore for her to even get out of bed — she enjoys it if you’ll lay with her for a while in the morning. she wants stillness, she wants something peaceful to start the day with, because peace is a hard thing for her to find.

natalie is used to mornings that are chaotic, where clothes are misplaced and she forgets to eat, so she appreciates it when you help bring some order into her life. she doesn’t know how to return the favor when you make her breakfast or make sure she gets up when her alarm goes off — because while she would have figured it all out haphazardly anyway, you make mornings far more bearable and much more smooth.

idk man this woman is a menace to society she probably has cocaine for breakfast if you’re not on her ass about everything. there that’s my headcanon enjoy!

sexy yellowjackets taglist: @webism @ahauandthesun @chaithetics @szczurkanalowy @marleymarleymarleymarley @aphrodyk3 @postmorteum @ludasgf