Quadraspazzed

it’s called style, old man, get with the times

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I love that the show is flirting with the idea that actually the female and male aspects of the power do not need to be handled differently at all. It’s a hold over of some First Age misogyny that now everyone takes as gospel. I like the ways the show works in that misogyny still exists deeply in the world. It’s corrosive and exists as such deeply held truths that it isn’t even recognized as existing. Truly such a great commentary on the books and their claim to have flipped gendered power on its head while being so deeply misogynistic themselves.

For show-onlys (or those who read the books at face value):

That was Jordan's whole point. He used a setting that was as highly steeped in "the sexes are inherently different" world view as ours and absolutely hammered home the fact that if you stop listening to how much people say the sexes are different and actually observe how people behave, *they aren't actually different at all*

In my head I've got a squad of officious little book purist goblins who watch the show with me and hold up signs reading: "That's not how saidar works!" and "That's not how Aes Sedai fight!" and "That's a brute reduction of actually quite a complicated and interesting subject!" and "The Mistress of Novices would have a coronary!"

But the goblins are out of line, and at this point I'm just pelting them with popcorn till they sod off. Because I love this too. :)

Televising the One Power was always going to require simplifying its rulebook into something that can be shown rather than told; and I think what the show is doing is, as @semirhagesstudy observes, true to RJ's deeper intentions, while also tying in neatly with the disagreement between the White Tower's prophecy about the Dragon breaking the world vs the Aiel prophecy about the Dragon breaking and saving the world. There's no doctrine of amyrlinic infallibility at work here. The Aes Sedai don't know everything, and they are not always right. As a once and future book reader who has been inside some of their heads, I feel like this checks out 100%.

Isn't that why the Big Cleanse in Winter's Heart is such a huge deal? Because it has male AND female Channellers working together and it proves it can be done.

Ghibli x my own hands

(or: fuck AI 🖕)

So… I took part in the “Ghibli AI trend” - but not to join in. I did it to push back! And ofc I made the art myself!

‼️🗣️ AI-generated art isn’t harmless fun, it’s exploitation, it’s disrespectful, and it’s unethical in so many ways.

Watching AI try to mimic Studio Ghibli - to flatten it into an algorithm - hurts me on a personal level. These films shaped my childhood. I had Totoro mugs, drew anime-style art for years, even gave a school presentation on Hayao Miyazaki‘s art when I was 12.

My fishwives here aren’t AI, but they aren’t a perfect Ghibli match either. No one - not me, not you, and definitely not an AI model - can replicate the lived experience, love, and hand-drawn dedication that built the world of Studio Ghibli. And I didn’t make these drawings to chase clicks or copy an aesthetic. I made it as a real tribute for an artist I respect!

Please sheeple, stop using generative AI for creative endeavors! 🙏

WHO THE FUCK IS WRITING THESE DESCRIPTIONS FOR THE STEAM STORE PAGE

Those are certainly words.

I don't believe Sammael is dead. The show has repeatedly established that Forsaken can't be killed permanently under normal circumstances. Moiraine very clearly kills (not injures, kills) Lanfear in season 2 and she's up and bitching about it in the next episode.

The one exception so far (Ishamael) was visually established as being different by the way he turned into dust and crumbled away.

Sammy's body is clearly shown to be still present in the rubble of the building Rand crushed him under. He's fine. 🙂

Me neither.

Love that Exedra continues the tradition of Homura not having fancy attack names.

☕️: "Tiro Finale!"

🍎: "Rosso Fantasma!"

🐟: "Prestissimo Agitato!"

🎀: "Pluvia☆Magica!"

⌛️: "Concentrated Missile Fire."

Not only do Geordies punch horses, they punch managers who look like horses.

"Get him, lads."

'A first involvement for Jeremy Monga, who is actually wearing a sponsor-less shirt as he is too young to wear Leicester's online-gaming company sponsor.'

HE BABEY

I keep trying to follow new WoT people and just getting the most aggressive yelly motherfuckerd, what about this series invokes so much wrath

@anyboli honestly if I had to guess I'd say it's the weirdly ahead-of-its-time-but-behind-modern-times takes on feminism, racism, slavery, nationalism, etc. A lot of characters represent very, VERY hot-button ideas and that means readers often feel the need to justify our enjoyment of those characters, which becomes complicated because the characters tend to represent entire moral issues. It's hard to say "I like Rand" and then remember that he signed a truce with a fascist empire without feeling a little big conflicted.

My working theory is that this creates two types of loud people (with plenty of quiet ones in the background): people who decide to express love for characters and themes WITHOUT caveats, and people who are more invested in the caveats themselves than the characters. People can be one or both, but not really both in one post.

Each group often makes the mistake of assuming the other understands their level of knowledge on the series, but I feel I've seen that backfire a lot. If I make a post uncritically praising a character, a random other fan has no way of knowing whether I'm choosing to omit the caveats to my enjoyment or whether I'm just a very shallow reader who #MissedThePoint. If I make a post ripping into a character, a random other fan has no way of knowing whether I've recognized their value in the story or whether I'm just a very shallow reader who #MissedThePoint.

I've fallen victim to this before, especially the second one. I also know, and have posted about before, that internet discourse patterns aren't that well suited to complex literary analysis because of the tendency towards brevity. Of course I'm going to uncritically praise my favorites once in a while--this platform just doesn't require or ask me to constantly spell out my entire complex opinion and perspective on everything.

I think you’re definitely on to something tbh, with the way that expressing love for a character implies a certain stance on a set of ideas.

I’ll also add that I see this as a bit of culture clash when new people come to the site. Different Wheel of Time spaces have different broadly held ideas about certain characters (Reddit of Time - Egwene is an evil rapist, Tumblr of Time - the characters are deeply queer and that’s a good thing, Twitter of Time - idk because I don’t go on Twitter). So, with the Twitter migration, there’s a natural tendency for more of those people to be around to dig in their heels and “debate”. (The show has been quite divisive as well and created new spaces around the big ideas in that, but that’s another can of worms from this topic).

I guess what I also don’t really get is the desire to “rip into” someone who I feel is #MissingThePoint on a character, but that’s probably more reflective of how I approach online discussion generally.

Yeah I think I even forget about the culture clash, but that said, I remember going on the WoT subreddit and seeing wholehearted praise for Dumai's Wells as a badass event, which felt so aggressively opposite to how I read it. On the opposite end, coming here and seeing discussion on the queerness of the series was very weird because I didn't read THAT at all either. Obviously one of these is a safer and healthier tendency, but both are good examples of your point, if I'm understanding you correctly.

My first experience of The Wheel of Time was A Crown of Swords, which starts at the aftermath of Dumai’s Wells. Jordan did not mince his words when showing just how horrifying it was, and didn’t it break Rand even further? Admittedly I’ve not read Lord of Chaos yet but ‘badass’ is not a word I’d use.

Yeah, on this specific note, Jordan always wrote battle as horror, and it takes a strongly ingrained jingoistic “war is cool” attitude for a person to miss that, I think.

In my experience, thinking Dumai’s Wells is awesome is strongly tied to hating the Aes Sedai. It morphs into “the Asha’men putting those uppity bitches in their place” and is a common take on Reddit (and I agree, missing the point.)

Ooh yeah I’ll second the above there. I mean there is that part of it being “shock and awe” awesome but Taim was on a mission to sow chaos and undermine Rand’s cause which goes right over some people because he said the line about kneeling or be knelt (which was part of creating that rift!!) The series repeatedly tells us you can kill with the Power without leaving a mark yet Taim instructs the Asha’man to blenderize their targets like that is an IMPORTANT narrative choice

Also worth noting that I have been in this fandom to varying degrees for over twenty years and when you've put up with twenty+ years of misogynistic bullshit 'readings' (Aes Sedai Uppity Bitches, Egwene Is Evil Actually, War Cool) your tolerance for any level of it is, indeed, severely repressed. Personally I just block hard and early, but not everybody defaults to that as fast.

I know old post is old, but just chiming in to say that I avoid WOT Reddit AND certain bloggers precisely because of the Aes Sedai hate/misogyny. No, Mazrim Taim turning the Shaido Aiel into mince is not supposed to show what a cool dude he is. And tbh I'm at the point where men making a huge point of hating the Aes Sedai and/or Egwene is a bit of a red flag. I've not been in the fandom as long as you but I have seen the Bookcloaks and THAT Egwene series of posts. And the commenters on TV Tropes are certainly something.

reblog this and tell me where you'd sit

Bain and Chiad. We can join up with the banter table with Elayne, Aviendha and Faile.

Robert Jordan looking on from the afterlife on the show having an entire song about women singing about their boobs: "They get it, they get my books"