#ask ehr

[everybodyhatesrand]

Hi! Do you know how you would put Elayne, Rand, and Galad in a family tree together post-marriage? It feels like there should be a way that doesn't look like a mess, but I can't find any convenient examples of their kind of relationship.

I don’t know if there’s a way to draw this family tree that isn’t brain-breaking, but this was my best effort! And dear god did it make me feel weird! 

[everybodyhatesrand]

I've been binging your podcast work. Anyway with WoT's gender based magic and The True power existing I must assume that Evil is the third gender in WoT.

Omg bestie you're SO right rise up my gnc baddies

[everybodyhatesrand]

Hi guys (Tybalt and Ed especially) - do you think the 10 year anniversary of Lancer being alive is a copout or not? Happy Lunar New Year :)

My brother in christ,

I regret to inform that we have no idea what this means. Lancer? Google searches keep returning Mitsubishis? Please send additional info and we'll be happy to comment (the cats especially)

Happy Lunar New Year to you, too :)

[everybodyhatesrand]

People are hella mad about the Two Rivers being brown and their tears are giving me life 🤣

H O N E S T L Y

Be mad about it L. M. A. O. Now we got a beautiful POC Lan toooooooo

[everybodyhatesrand]

Idk if you saw Dragonmount's post about characters whose roled they'll expand upon in the show, but one of them was Logain and they suggested that Logain's Gentling be on screen and for it to be violent. This will make me feel validated on my strong "Gentling is super gross" stance that half the fandom always argues with me about

Hi!!! I didn’t see the post, but I’m very interested that they suggested this! I think it’s ridiculous that people argue with you about whether or not Gentling is a BAD THING BECAUSE JFC WHAT BOOK ARE THEY READING WHERE IT ISN’T? 

So, yeah, I’m of two minds on this. The first is that, yes, maybe there will be something about seeing it on screen that will make people wake up to the fact that Gentling is a terrible practice and one of the most insidious aspects of Wheelworld!!!! 

The second mind is that it makes me worried that showing this scene on screen (and violently) will border on trauma porn...I’m sure I have talked about this quote on EHR before, but the French director Francois Truffaut once famously said that you can’t make a truly anti-war film because to show something is to ennoble it (paraphrasing Truffaut here). I worry about that a bit with Gentling in the way that I worry about rape scenes in other pieces of media - when the violent act is portrayed in graphic detail like that it becomes so aestheticized for the screen that often the horror is lost. But how and IF we can every accurately portray trauma is its own rich conversation (see discussions on Theodor Adorno’s famous quote “Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”) 

Anyway, before I go full Ramble - in summary, Wheel of Time has a lot going on with trauma and violence that I am interested to see how the showrunners handle it. I’m optimistic since so far it looks like the showrunners have good shoulders on their heads. WE SHALL SEE!!! 

XOXO

Sally 

[everybodyhatesrand]

I just wanted to say that I 100% agree with you that Wheel of Time doesn't get criticized enough. Before I started listening to y'all, I joined a Facebook group (insert cringe here) on WOT because I didn't have anyone else to discuss it with. There's so many people who think Robert Jordan did nothing wrong ever and how superior he is, I was initially shocked. I've started some fights and had a comment or two deleted 🤣And there's WAY too many Tylin apologists and Elayne lovers

HIIIII - this is in reference to THIS ASK. 

Also related to the last ask that’s just below this.... the general mood seems to be that everyone on WoT FB should be quarantined with some Feminist Literature jfc. 

Good for you for starting fights (and for getting comments deleted, you fabulous radical you!). As I said in the last ask - it is BRAVE and POWERFUL to be the challenger to someone’s shitty views. But also exhausting, so take care of yourself, too! 

If the one impact of EHR is people realizing it’s okay to love and criticize something then I will be so HAPPY. I thought our society was already at that point, but apparently not. IN FACT, look what I just made for you guys - use it wisely. 

[everybodyhatesrand]

You are highly critical on your podcast, and it's rare for you to say something positive about the series (except Mat), so I am very curious what (besides Mat) you like about Wheel of Time. I don't mean to say that you cannot be critical of the things you enjoy, but if you (seemingly) hate so much of it, what drove you two to make a podcast and dedicate so much time and effort to the series?

Hi! Thank you for the excellent question, and for giving us an opportunity to address something that EHR gets a lot. 

EHR is for sure very critical, and it’s fair to say our overall critical take is an accurate representation of our feelings on the series. 

However, I also think it’s fair to say that we’ve been hyper critical in our analysis of the first 3 books, because the first 3 books are, well, not exactly very good. They are heavy in trope and bad plotting - because RJ thought he was writing a trilogy. Book 3 gets a little better in terms of plot, but it’s still very Quest Focused, which is fine, but a little static. However, as we dive into the 4th book, and the universe of Wheelworld begins to expand in geography, character, plot, and cosmic happenings, we’ll be able to really dive into what it is that EHR loves about Wheel of Time. It’s a series that is rich for literary analysis. It draws very heavily on myth and history, reworking them in ways that are fun to piece together. The character arcs explode from basic Hero on a Quest to include a lot of other elements that are unusual in the fantasy genre, and really interesting to talk about and rich for discussion (circuses, diaspora, papal schism, colonialism, mental illness, etc etc.) Just yesterday I was working on a Patreon book and writing some Brief Literary Thoughts on monstrosity and ableism in the Wheel of Time, and more of that is to come as we dive deeper into the less “surface level fantasy” books in the series. Also, the books, if you’re willing to not be so gd serious when you read them, are really funny. 

EHR gets a lot of heat for being critical of Wheel of Time. It starts with the title, and goes into our analysis and quote unquote “Unpopular Opinions” about things like Lan and Perrin and general dislike of The Great Hunt, and usually ends with how we often talk about things that are (god forbid) not Wheel of Time. It is absolutely fine to be critical of things you like, and personally I don’t think Wheel of Time faces enough criticism. My interactions with the fandom often include people wanting Wheel of Time to be more progressive than it is, include better representation than it does. I get that there’s a lack of mainstream fantasy that hits these boxes of female representation, queer representation, trope bending, etc. BUT if you are willing to step outside the Dead White Men section of the library there is fantasy that is doing a lot of amazing things in these sections (check out J.Y. Yang’s Tensorate series, for example!). You don’t have to make Wheel of Time better than it is. It does some great things and some really not great things. So, all in all, I am more than happy to be known as the podcast that doesn’t like Wheel of Time as much as the rest of the fandom does. We love it in our own way and wouldn’t make a podcast about it if we truly hated reading and talking about it every week. Recording EHR is the highlight of my week, actually. 

And the great thing about podcasts, is that if you don’t like what we say....just don’t listen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[everybodyhatesrand]

I have a hot take I need to share with someone, and I don't know if it's terrible or galaxy brained: Joe Keery as Mat Cauthon

Me: Is that the Hair Guy from Stranger Things 

Google: it IS The Hair Guy from Stranger Things !!!!!

As I have not watched Stranger Things or anything Joe Keery is in, I can’t actually serve as your Hero’s Journey Mentor as to whether or not this is terrible or galaxy brained :( Instead, I’m yeeting it out to Wheel of Time tumblr to get their thoughts. 

So, kiddos: THOUGHTS???