Wheel of Time

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12449105

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Introduction

For those who don't know, r/AskScienceFiction uses "Watsonian" to refer to an in-universe, suspension-of-disbelief perspective (i.e. you're thinking like Sherlock or James Watson). They use "Doylist" to refer to an IRL perspective (i.e. you're thinking like Arthur Conan Doyle).

I propose that we take advantage of the brevity and clarity this affords with two, potentially 3-4 terms.

(feel free to suggest more)

"Watsonian" candidates

1. Randian
2. Loialist
3. Veriny
4. Brownian
5. ~~Gleemanian~~ (too ambiguous)

Book-specific equivalent

1. Felian

Show-specific equivalent

1. Danan
2. Maksimian
3. Steppinly/Steppinesque

"Doylist" candidates:

1. Jordanian
2. Robertian

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11138902

Discussion on the first episode of season 2

The first three episodes of Season 2 of the Wheel of Time have dropped on Prime. Have you watched them? What are your thoughts?

I have my complaints about season 1, but I'll always be greatful for this adaptation to pull me into this fandom.

I defined this with a few key rules:

First, I wanted the list to be mostly punk. That's what play, it's what I mostly listen to. But, not restricted to only that - there's some metal, some rock, even a hip hop song or two. But where I could find one I liked, I've thrown in punk styled covers instead of the original.

Second, the song couldn't be the cliche song choice for them. For instance, no House of the Rising Sun for Mat. Also, no song that's *actually* about the Wheel of Time.

Third, the song should capture the ethos of the character in that identity.

The list started as: The Light and Shadow. The Two Rivers folks and their most critical allies and most significant relations - Verin but not Domon, for instance. All of the Forsaken.

Anyway, feel free to discuss or throw out suggestions. I've been enjoying it.

The playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5EFTsaMm08xMjkt7wuJwKr

I also tried to order the songs in order of appearance and keep it relatively free of spoilers. Any suggestions for other characters to add?

The below analysis was posted as a comment, now deleted, on another forum. Contextually, we were discussing the series and I had mentioned Verin's hunting Fain in the Two Rivers. We were discussing notes and theories and connecting dots. This is copy/pasted over from the old forum so if it seems like I'm responding to something you didn't read, I am. Feel free to ask for clarification.

Thanks! So sorry this took me a bit to get back to. I want to give you a good breakdown so I needed to find an opportunity where I had time and the right headspace to ramble about WOT. Good news, that's now! The secret ingredient is ADHD. I'm gonna ramble a little but partly cause I feel like you might appreciate the personal story I want to share.

For me I didn't get into the series until just before The Gathering Storm was released. My roommate at the time convinced me to read it by mentioning that a new author was going to ghostwrite the ending - I didn't want to start an unfinished series. So my first read through started maybe a month before TGS. But I had so many opinions lol especially about Verin. I didn't have a folder, but my roommate used to mock some of my theories about the old classics like "who killed Asmodean" and my insistence that Verin is Black Ajah.

Ok so Verin. I love Verin. From my very first read, when Verin lied in The Great Hunt, I was on to her. I was like "she's Black." When I mentioned this theory to my roommate he was like "no way" and argued with me. My entire first read, I'm pointing at Verin going "she can fucking lie, and she's not even subtle about being dishonest!"

So many of my theories didn't go where I expected though. Like Taim being a good guy, Mesaana being Tarna Feir.

I finished The Gathering Storm about a week after Towers of Midnight released and it was fucking hilarious because my roommate - who reads insanely faster than I do - refused to say a word to me about it. He finished it the day after it came out. I took like 2 months, I'm a pretty slow reader - audiobooks are a life changer to me.

At any rate, I cackled. Shouted down the hall, "That dress you're wearing is green" and my roommate shouts back "fuck you"

Which is a lot of exposition for why on my very second read I hyperfixated on Verin. I just finished what I called my Turning Reread, Lucky 13, and every time I read the series I pick a few plot threads to focus on and follow through the series. I'll go back and reread sections, or rewind my audiobook to hear something again. Stop and pay extra attention and make a mental note when something lines up. For my first read the focus was Verin, Thom & Moiraine, and Ishamael. I build on that every go and I've started finding cross-sections.

Like Ishamael and Verin.

To bring this back on point, Verin worked for Ishamael. This is something that's extrapolated. Ishamael controlled the Black Ajah, up until his death - at which point Mesaana and Aran'gar split control between the rebel and tower factions.

Some other assets of Ishamael's were Padan Fain and Isam.

When Padan Fain went rogue, he sent Isam to hunt him down. That's the reason he's in the Two Rivers. Even though Ishamael had died by the time everything went down, they were still following orders he issued before dying, and before anyone "picked them up" so to speak. The Trolloc army in the Two Rivers belonged to Fain, and that's why Luc sided with Perrin, and why the Trollocs shouted "ISAM!" over and over as they attacked. They were calling for Isam, not rallying by his name.

And Verin recognized that. Which means Verin knows who Isam is.

Now, what we know about Verin and can look back and see: she's Black Ajah, and she implies she was in the Two Rivers on Black Ajah business (or at least that the reason she's there isn't what Perrin thinks). At one point she even all but says "sure we'll go with that" when Perrin says they're in the Two Rivers to tie themselves to ta'veren. I forget the exact quote off the top of my head but she's basically like "oh is that what you think we're doing ok"

What is the Black Ajah business? I think she was there to provide support for Isam. I think she knew who Isam was because she was working with him to track and hunt Fain. I think this was a task that was seen as "bitch work" and passed off on Verin because Verin was seen as unremarkable and too politically detached to be useful. I think it was also something specific and vague if that makes sense, like "meet my agent in the two rivers and support him"

I don't think this was like a direct order from Ishamael to Verin kind of situation, but rather he commanded a black sister should be sent to aid Isam and it wound up being Verin. Ishamael took Fain's rebellion seriously and devoted considerable energy and resources to having him hunted down while he dealt with Rand.

I need to pay attention to this section on my next read because I'm wondering if she warns Perrin about Luc. I feel like she may have reinforced Perrin's dislike of him. She also summoned a storm to provide cover for him when Perrin asked her to do the same and she was basically like "already did it for another reason but bonus!"

And in other happy news this prompted me to make that meme and now imma go post it on wetlanderhumor lol. Thanks for reading through all this. A lot of it is just lining up other things we discover and how they correlate, I've done a lot of "we know this" without citation so if you would like me to explain a point let me know.

I've been thinking heavily on this topic recently, and I thought I'd share my theory and see what others think. If you're interested in doing a thought experiment with this post, answer the following question before reading the rest of the post, and then see what you think of your answer after. I'd love to know, whether it influences your perspective or not.

Would Rand have been born on Dragonmount if Narg had killed him on Winternight?

Ok, on to the theorizing. I've seen a lot of lament recently regarding the assignment of ta'veren to Mat, Rand, and Perrin while the other critical characters like Egwene were not, despite being supremely important. This got me to thinking what the difference is between the two. I've also seen conjecture that Heroes of the Horn are always ta'veren or vice versa, and I don't think that's true.

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Wheel spins its threads back out into the Pattern. The Pattern is mutable, and it's commonly believed I think among fans that each turning of the Wheel is different than the last. That even though this has all happened before and this will all happen again, what's constant is the themes, not necessarily the people.

Tarmon Gai'don represents a constant in the pattern. It culminates in an event which transpires outside of the pattern, outside of space and time as we know it. There was ever only the one battle with the Dark One for all the ages, all the times it cycled back through the Third Age. Every time, the Pattern must deliver the Dragon to the Bore so that the Champion of the Light can step out to face the Dark One. But that Champion, that Dragon, needn't be Rand al'Thor.

My initial thought on this was that of course it did, things happened exactly right for it to be Rand, it couldn't have possibly been anyone else. But that's not how ta'veren works. Ta'veren are the threads that the Wheel uses to correct itself, to bring the Pattern inline to where it needs to be. The tens or hundreds of thousands of years between each turning of the Wheel is a significant time for the Pattern to drift between hitting this constant, and people still have free will, meaning they're not driven by destiny. Unless they're ta'veren, or get pulled into a ta'veren's ta'maral'ailen. A hundred thousand years of free will is going to lead to a vastly different world each turning, even if all of the same themes are presented.

The ta'veren's job during the Age of Prophecy is to take that world and weave the threads together to get the correct pattern for Tarmon Gai'don. No doubt there are others through other ages who had different purposes. And their strength varies - Rand is more potent ta'veren than Perrin or Mat, and both of them moreso than Hawkwing was. But ta'veren aren't the people, they're the roles. People are delivered into the roles, and that's when the Pattern starts to swirl around them.

Here are some key things to consider:

• in Baerlon, new images begin appearing to Min as people arrive. Nynaeve wasnt involved, but as soon as she arrived there were new omens - the pattern found a place for her.

• Loial describes ta'veren as creating ripples in the pattern. Ripples don't necessarily need to move in only one direction. That said, I wouldn't bank too heavily on what a character thinks - but the Ogier do seem to know a lot about ta'veren, and this fits.

• We already have a precedent for altering the past in-universe: balefire. We know, for a fact, that the True Source that turns the Wheel of Time is capable of altering the past to accommodate the present.

• We see in Arad Domon that the pattern does so by vulgar coincidence. The spoiled grain just happened to be only in every sack they checked - so if they had checked one more sack it would have been spoiled, but since they didn't it wasn't. I refer to this as vulgar because it's so obviously bullshit that it got called out as bullshit by a character in the book - and Rand's response was to smile and blame ta'veren.

The pattern doesn't bank on one thread to become ta'veren from its start. It wove an intricate pattern and then spun in several threads. The one that best fit the pattern became ta'veren, and the other threads were allowed to go their own way. So for the Dragon's thread, the possible alternatives were Logain, Mazim Taim, and a nameless False Dragon who basically the pattern was just like "fuck you" and killed the second Rand proclaimed himself over Falme. I theorize that by fulfilling enough of the prophecy, any of those 4 could have become the Dragon Reborn - it was actually possible, for only them, to have claimed that destiny. Ta'veren would have provided.

If it had been Taim, we'd have found out something like: he was on Dragonmount during the Aiel War where he suffered some grievous wound that should have killed him but he channeled and healed himself, and his 'first breath' that killed Gitara Moroso was his waking in a fever as the Dragon Reborn. Rand was never born on Dragonmount, the stories Tam told were all true.

One other distinct power that ta'veren have is the ability to consciously alter the pattern. It's rare, but think of Mat with the Sea Folk in Ebou Dar, or Rand facing the Hall of the Tower. They exert an overwhelming pressure on those around them to bend their wills. That pressure can be resisted - both Egwene and Tuon resist.

And these are the things that make the ta'veren different from the critical players in the game. Egwene became the Amyrlin she did not because she's an unrecognized ta'veren, but because Rand needed the relationship he had with her to be exactly what it was and her to be who she became in order to help him win the Battle against the Dark One when she died and told him to let them die for what they believe. Her path was determined by her relationship with Rand, her proximity to his thread in the pattern. She was caught tight in his web of destiny. The pattern didn't swirl around her, she was just one of the most integral pieces of the pattern swirling around Rand. (Which, by the way, I've come to love Egwene after my last read through and I'm not tryin to diminish her at all)

My conclusion is that ta'veren is not just being really important and having an effect on the pattern that will echo for ages. Characters like Egwene, Lan, Demandred, are all greatly influential on the pattern for all of the subsequent Age if not longer. Ta'veren is being Schrodinger's Thread - the Pattern literally retcons you into place, twisting the past as much as the present, in order to bring the pattern back to the intended design - and in the case of the Last Battle that design has to culminate the same at every pass by the constant, which is why 3 ta'veren are used to shape it.

The below was prompted by the question "When was Thom and Moiraine supposed to happen?" This was a comment I am migrating here and removing from the source forum.

It was there all along, but subtly. Ready for the full breakdown?

The start of their journey together was a meeting of mutual respect in which both prominently displayed their conspiratorial natures to the other. Her hinting that she recognized his name as the Court Bard of Caemlyn (addressing him as Master Bard), him acknowledging her omission of the Sedai honorific. With only a couple words each they told one another "I know your secret, but I'll play along for now."

And then along their journey to Baerlon - while Lan scouted ahead, the Emonds Fielders lagged behind. Which leaves Thom and Moiraine in the background together. I don't think there was anything romantic here, but rather this is where their friendship started to develop.

What changed was when they arrived in Baerlon and Min revealed to Moiraine a Viewing that she would marry Thom. That night she danced to his music, and it was the only time she let her hair down. On the journey that ended with them split at Shadar Logoth, the same held true again. While Lan was scouting ahead, the Emond's Fielders were lagging behind, leaving Thom and Moiraine exploring their friendship offscreen - with Moiraine having embraced a romantic interest in Thom.

Being as both are spymasters with extensive practice controlling their responses to emotion, this likely only amounted to an inclination to talk more and ask more questions. Again, nothing overtly romantic.

But when they split at Shadar Logoth, Thom follows her lead, despite his natural distrust of Aes Sedai and his want to protect the kids from her. When they arrive in Whitebridge, he sticks to her plan, and initially intends to wait for her to find them. This is where you can see that he's overcome his distrust of Aes Sedai regarding her - that he has some degree of faith in her.

Later, when rediscovered, one of the first things he asks Rand is if she's with him. I think most people read that question as suspicious or distrustful of her. But think of it again in the context of the above, and everything that comes after. He was hoping to see her again.

When he starts the civil war in Cairhien and walked away, where did he go? Tar Valon. Why? To find Moiraine. How do we know? When Mat finds him, he's drunk, playing in a tavern, and all he wants to talk about is what a fine woman Moiraine is. So he goes with Mat, and over the course of events reunites with her in Tear.

And Tear is where they really started flirting. The scene where she's "rifling through his room" is full of that. She's talking to him about the things that matter to him - Owyn and the Vileness, and she offers to betray the White Tower for him. Beyond that, what she doesn't reveal to him, is that she also implies elsewhere that she uses one of her 3 questions to get the answers.

And they spent 4 months weeks playing the Game of Houses together and bouncing the Tairen nobility off each other. They were having fun together, reveling in doing the thing they loved most - intrigue. They found someone they could share that with, someone they felt comfortable taking the mask off for.

In his room, one of my favorite exchanges, is when she reminisces about meeting him in Emond's Field. She does so by teasing him about how he used his real name and expected her not to notice. Of course, this is a low key, "remember how I knew who you were when we first met?" It's a stroke to his ego while simultaneously flexing about her awareness, and it calls to a fond moment in which they first started to respect each other.

She says to Egwene that she knows the face of the man she'll marry (Thom) better than they know theirs. When she leaves him in Tear she promises they'll see each other again.

You can also see from their inner monologue that each thinks of the other as their first reference in cases where the other has any ability at all. Moiraine observes someone juggling IIRC and thinks it pales in comparison it to Thom's dexterity, for instance.

They weren't hanging from the parapets and boning, they probably never even kissed. I'd wager there were a couple moments neither followed through on, because they're both reserved and mission driven. Their friendship started almost immediately, and it built up gradually.

It's a case study of "you don't know what you've got til it's gone." After Tear, he wouldn't see her again until the Tower of Ghenjei. After receiving her letter, he agonized over not being there for her, straight up until they got out of the Tower, and even some time after. He had developed feelings for her, and his time in Tear with her solidified that, but he had denied them up until then and not acted on them after accepting it.

And she wasn't going to force it - she knew it would come in time. Her primary mission was always seeing Rand to the Last Battle. When she left him, she knew she'd see him again, but didn't know how bad shit was going to go for her until Rhuidean.

Each of the Ta'veren have a counterpoint, a Ta'maral'indemela if you will. Meaning literally, "pattern destined enemy." A term I mostly made up for this concept.

Consider Rand, the Dragon Reborn. His counterpart is fairly obvious: Ishamael/Moridin. An equally devastating and powerful male channeler, one of the Forsaken, also wielding thousands of years of memories, who rises to the rank of Nae'blis, favored champion of the Dark One. He is tied intrinsically to Rand's fate.

Consider Perrin, the Wolf King. His counterpart is also fairly obvious: Slayer. Of two souls like Perrin, but both human, both princes who would never be king, where Perrin is the King that should have been a peasant. Like Rand and Ishamael, Perrin and Slayer share a domain: Tel'aran'rhiod. While Rand and Ishamael both take advantage of TAR, it isn't "theirs" the way Perrin and Slayer own it.

And then consider Mat, the Gambler. Who is his? Well, this is all conjecture, so maybe there isn't one. But it's fun to think about. Who stands as a corrupt mirror to Mat? Fain, imo. If Mat is the living embodiment of Fortune, then Fain is the living embodiment of Misfortune. The man himself is a case study in being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And because of it he gains power, through Mordeth, Mashadar, and Machin Shin. He is controlled and dominated by the memories that possess him - inverse to Mat, who is overwhelmed by the memories of Manetheren, but maintains his identity through it and gains power from them rather than giving himself to their power. They are antipodes.

You can even find some symmetry in Mat being "the Fox that makes the Ravens fly" and Thom's first comment about Fain being, "there's more Raven than Man in that one." Though it's arguable if that was intentional or just conveniently works out. Their souls were joined by the ruby-hilted dagger, too.

And Fain never stood a chance pitting Misfortune against Fortune. It was anticlimactic for sure, and perhaps there was way more than could have been done with it, but it still works - imo - because he failed his way right to death at Mat's hands, As has been noted elsewhere, the Pattern was done with him and just sent him to be dispatched. He still wreaked havoc on the battlefield to both sides, he just didn't get a big epic chapters long fight scene like Slayer and Moridin did. And if we look at it from this perspective, though perhaps not satisfying, one can see how it's at least fitting.