WoT Sideblog

Wheel of Time Sideblog for @grimolshlom | Spoilers tagged: WoT Show Spoilers and WoT Book Spoilers

[sosei]

Robert Jordan very rarely actually depicts full on battles, usually skirting around describing it by either skipping it entirely, or focusing on characters not diectly involved in the battle itself. He however, does not shy away from depicting the aftermath. It is very clear that this was written by a man who experienced war.

Among the very few exceptions where he does show a battle directly, the brutality and sheer Awful of it sticks with you. So does the trauma the characters experience.

[ofthebrownajah]

Oh my god?

[vancouver-lord-goldeneyes]

[sixth-light]

Mike tells Sarah how a troll-ish experiment turned a South Carolina teenager into one of the most maligned women of the 1990s. Digressions include Sally Ride, Anne Hathaway and, as usual, "Newsies." Mike struggles with the word "infirmary" through...

Holy shit, you guys. I have said a few times that I think Robert Jordan’s weird attitudes about physical punishment as part of teaching, same-sex relationships in largely same-sex environments, and the inescapable and necessary nature of strict hierarchies are probably tied to his military background. I also knew that he was a graduate of a military university in South Carolina, The Citadel. There is a small asterisk on ‘military’ - all students are required to do an ROTC programme and referred to as ‘cadets’, but only about a third go on to join the military. 

This podcast episode is about the woman who took the lawsuit that forced The Citadel to accept female students (they were one of the last two military schools in the US to not do so, and the lawsuit began in 1993). It gets into the arguments the school used against accepting women, and…well…

(Pause here to caveat: I’m not asserting RJ would have agreed with all these views - if nothing else, he pretty clearly thought women COULD be effective soldiers, and he attended the school in the early 1970s, twenty years before this case. I also don’t think everything in fiction can be traced back to things in the author’s life. But that said…)

The Citadel asserted in their defence that:

Women were always physically weaker than men

Ritual nudity was a vital part of their students’ bonding experience, and women attending would ruin this 

They had, I cannot stress this enough, a really deep and profound belief in a stringent gender binary as not only real but absolutely necessary for the good of society as a whole

The school also had a reputation for an insane level of physical hazing and violence from older students to more junior students, which was also viewed as a necessary part of training them to be soldiers. And, to top it off…local gay bars reported that a lot of their clientele were Citadel cadets. 

I’m not saying this explains everything about the White Tower but WHOO BOY DOES IT EXPLAIN SOME THINGS ABOUT THE WHITE TOWER

[sapphoshands]

lollllll SO as well as robert jordan, the citadel produced at least one other chart-topping author (i mean, maybe more, idk, but one in particular): pat conroy.  you may know him from some of the films based on his work: the prince of tides, the great santini, but one that i don’t think got a huge amount of attention as a film is the lords of discipline, which is about hazing, abuse, and secret societies at the fictionalised ‘carolina military academy.’ 

it’s worth noting that this ‘fictional’ novel got pat banned from his own alma mater for about two decades because citadel alum were so offended.

i love conroy’s work, but i haven’t read this book for probably fifteen years, so my memories are a little hazy, but ever since learning that jordan also attended the citadel, i have absolutely read the white tower through the lens of what this depicts.  i mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but to graduate from the citadel means to be worthy of ‘wearing the ring,’ ie the class/institution ring!  cadets and grads wear the ring in different manners to denote their differing status!

actually, now that i’m thinking about it, there are some additional fascinating parallels: the lords of discipline is about one student who’s got a secret mission to care for a particular person in the school; he can’t tell anyone what he’s doing for fear they’d interfere and harm the person he’s trying to protect; there are secret societies in operation and anyone could be a member; not all cadets are capable of making it to graduation for one reason or another.  (it was published in 1980, and given the uproar it clearly caused at the citadel, i would absolutely expect jordan to have been aware of it not long after his own graduation.)

but yeah, the hazing and violence depicted - even fictionalised - and the way students abuse their power… all of that is incredibly intense.  conroy graduated a few years before jordan started, but i have no doubt both men went through something similar to varying extents, and i have no doubt it influenced the atmosphere of the white tower.

as i said, i love conroy’s work, so if you want to read the book i do recommend it.  but content warnings for alllll of the above, very thoroughly described, as well as racism, homophobia, and suicide.

[sixth-light]

Oh, I have a GREAT thing to add to this: Shannon Faulkner did not end up graduating from the Citadel because of, uh, the intense harassment, exclusion, and death threats she received over the two years she studied there, but she transferred to another university and her education was quietly paid for by….Pat Conroy, who is apparently a stand-up guy. (And the first woman who did graduate (became a Republican congresswoman, worked for Trump’s campaign, Unfortunately a Terrible Person) has tried to put Shannon Faulkner down by saying she “never earned the ring”, because solidarity is for other people apparently.) 

Finally, the other reason this came to me is that a current professor of military history at the Citadel is writing a book on the real-world references in the Wheel of Time, and in a letter describing how he came to do this, he talks about the Citadel’s iconic white tower. 

I will be, let’s say, fascinated to see how he talks about that connection in his book. 

[moghedien]

In Fires of Heaven when Moghedien took some of the Black Ajah to go hunt Nynaeve, the three sisters she chose were 1) a healer, 2) a woman known for wearing her hair in braids, and 3) someone who is just fucking mean. In this essay I will explain how they symbolize Moghedien’s kinks and foreshadow her getting dominanted by Nynaeve

[mushimallo]

Siuan Sanche waits for only one woman.

[vancouver-lord-goldeneyes]

[veliseraptor]

I feel like I always forget how much happens in A Crown of Swords. book 7 over here like:

Rand coming back to Cairhien and deposing Colavaere (and all…that)

official Rand/Min fuckening

Nynaeve’s block is gone and also she and Lan are married now

the fog that eats people. also Padan Fain again

oh hey that’s a gholam

a wild Moridin appears

the Bowl of Winds plot

Egwene starting to build her coalition

the Black Ajah hunting party forms in the Tower

a building falls on Mat

because the Seanchan are back in a big way

distribution of Aiel that’s going to kick off the most tiring kidnapping plot ever

oh yeah also Sammael’s dead

[bi-aviendha]

Also possibly the most understated yet important plot point in the entire series happens: the crossed balefire streams

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

Having the rigidly Lawful Good character accidentally join a religious Fascist organisation was a genius move... and surprisingly ruthless criticism of law, order, notions of 'goodness', and Christianity from the devout Southern American Veteran.

[wot-tidbits]

[asha-mage]

[incorrecttact]

Ah, yes, early days Gawyn. Gently teasing Elayne, treating red-headed shepherds who fall from the sky, and taking a thumping from malnourished farm boys with good grace, mooning over Egwene but not putting the emotional baggage of it on her when she clearly isn't into him. Back when I was rooting for you. Back when you appeared to be one of the characters with actual sense. You had such potential. Why must you become such a dick, Gawyn?

[far-dareis-me]

okay leaked spoiler for presumably WoT season2 below- don’t look if you don’t want leaks OR book spoilers

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So this still leaked,

and it’s definitely Natasha O’Keeffe-

Which means she’s probably not Elaida, as most had assumed. I think the general consensus from this shot is likely Lanfear and I think that’s right (though i’ve seen other theories). I certainly can’t imagine why Elaida would be decked out with black eyes and a bloody neck, and there’s no way they brought this actress in to play a small role.

The heavy blue filter implies a dream sequence or something- which makes sense for Lanfear. Maybe she’ll take over Ishy’s role of sending Rand visions this season? There’s also the possibility of a LTT flashback, which could help establish their relationship prior to her showing up in the current timeline..

But given the bloody neck and dark eyes, and the similarity of the posing to Dana’s death, I’m betting she’ll be playing on Rand’s trauma around watching people die around him- specifically women. I’ve been worried to see how they’ll deal with that on screen, but having Lanfear haunting his dreams to prey on that insecurity seems an excellent way to go!

[ofthebrownajah]

Leaked Lanfear scene!?!?

[adamreadsthewheeloftime]

My friends, I give you… a surprisingly important character, considering how easy she is to overlook. From freeing the deposed Amyrlin to handing off the Horn of Valere itself, this is no mere cook. Henceforth, you will address her as MISTRESS OF THE KITCHENS (which, IIRC, Siuan made into an official title in TGH).

[vancouver-lord-goldeneyes]

[nandadin]

I tried to do her justice but I….  What a woman, what an Amyrlin, what an actor, and also, wtf is this dress?? I mean, I love it, but I don’t understand it and I think it shows here jdnalksdna

Anyway, congrats to Sophie Okonedo for her face and her acting, she’s just so Siuan, they truly couldn’t have picked a better person for the role. Miss Pike chose her wife well  😌

[sixth-light]

We all want the Seanchan to have Texan accents because it’s amusingly incongruous per the conventions of fantasy visual media and we’ve been waiting years for that shoe to drop, but also…I am increasingly amazed at the magnitude of the time-bomb Jordan left for a visual adaptation by making the chattel slaver culture have Southern American accents. While it’s something that can largely be ignored on the page, in a TV show it’s going to be really, really obvious. Given the way people have already lost their minds about the show’s casting and the media rhetoric around this part of American history in the last five years…oh boy. 

[sixth-light]

I was talking to a friend about the way the Aiel are being cast as Irish alongside the Tuatha’an (going by the Aviendha casting) and it reminded me that actually there is ALREADY one Texan actress almost certainly cast in WoT….and she was spotted with half her head shaved, implying she’s playing a Seanchan.