I need to see it again to pinpoint the details but I really like how the opening scene of obsession (2026) is Bear practicing his confession with a diner waitress... like already you have a woman (who is not Nikki) fulfilling the role for her, saying the response she thinks Bear would like to hear, but the moment this woman gives her own opinion, offering genuine advice to Bear (something along the lines of buying Nikki something she likes, like her favorite candy, flowers, etc)... Bear disregards it... but then ends up using Ian's recommendation from this same conversation (calling Nikki "Freaky Nikki")... like god its all already right there
"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 Age that gave it birth comes again."
I get why people hate elaynes arc through this book but honestly I think its very interesting. Her personality is slowly being absorbed into her becoming the ruler of a country, and we mostly see elements of character in her interactions with others. It makes a lot of sense for the reality of ruling, shes so overworked and strained and it really casts an interesting light on earlier in the series
like she had such an opportunity to be a strong, independent, funny character through the earlier books. She has flawed arguments with aviendha and egwene, gets up to hijinks in tanchico, the circus pants arc, all her flirting with rand. But that was always just fun, a pause, a blip that she (maybe shouldnt have) taken.
and honestly I love watching her and egwene and rand slip into their roles of leadership even as it makes them lose their more fun, loose, relatable personalities theres just so much there in the ways they have to make decisions for everyone where they once got to make them just for themselves
I do get feral at times about how much Siuan helped shape Egwene, and how much Moiraine helped shape Rand, and how much Egwene and Rand shaped each other, and how much Siuan and Moiraine shaped each other, and how much the story hinges on Egwene and Rand parting, growing separately, fearing what the other became and finding each other again a changed people, and how much Siuan and Moiraine in the show specifically... You get the gist of it
Beautiful mentor quatuor, too good for this world, too pure
And by too pure I mean "Moiraine would slit Rand's throat if needed, Siuan would let Egwene be torn to shreds if it served the Light, Rand would have choked Moiraine if she pushed too hard at some point and Egwene would have let Siuan rot if she hadn't been of incredible value to her"
It's here! Popup shop opens this Saturday, May 16, 19:00 BST (i.e. 11:00 PDT, 14:00 EDT, 20:00 CEST) on my website:
A collection of my three Moiraine Damodred/Siuan Sanche fan comics, in chronological order.
Due to physical and time limitations on my part, there will be 12 copies available for purchase.
All proceeds after cost will be donated to the Khartoum Aid Kitchen in Sudan.
Even if you're not getting this zine please consider donating to them. Sudan is currently experiencing one of the worst man-made famines in modern history but there's barely any coverage about it. If you're able to, please consider donating.
(The cyanotype image on the cover varies slightly as each one was developed individually by hand.)
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I set up the files for my inkjet printer to print in halftone, so that the texture mimics screenprinting:
Book spine (the ribbon is sewn onto the belly band, which is also screwed to the zine so I'm not sure if it still qualifies as a belly band but a flap, but it's convolutely cute and I'm proud):
There's also a random pufferfish at the end, on a little piece of art paper (paper and pufferfish both vary). I sprayed fixative on them so the pencil shouldn’t smudge too much:
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Ship to anywhere in the world; you'll see an estimate for your country at checkout. Should be around £6-8.
The copy number on the last page starts at 6 and does not correspond to your order number.
Orders will be shipped after the sale is finished or within a week of purchase, whichever comes first. Follow-up on the donation will be posted here and on Instagram.
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*Please note the cyanotype lace & fishing net image on the cover is made by hand individually with direct sun exposure. The colour might look darker or lighter than the one in the product photo as sunlight is a variable I do not hold power to control.
The brand of the watercolour paper also varies, hence the tint of the cover itself may look warmer or cooler than the photo. I am still pretty new to cyanotype so you might see blue blotches or brushstrokes on the cover; please know I am very embarrassed about this and hope you’d find the imperfections somewhat acceptable.
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Making-of posts coming soonsss :) The zines were very fun to make, really fussy to design for an amateur like me and I cried twice because I kept breaking the threads while sewing on the ribbons.
At last, a very random but cheeky TMI: lace and lace ribbons are neutral, non-derogatory slang for lesbians in Mandarin. It’s only fair that this zine is covered in lace. And I’m glad I found one with a pattern that is, at least for me, very Siuanraine-coded.
maybe y'all didn't notice but fat people who don't hate ourselves sure did notice that people were obsessed with shitting on fat people in the late 90s and early 2000s (conservative political time) and now are again (fascist political time), coincidentally while the market for weight loss has become a 90 billion dollar industry due to glp1s.
you are not immune to propaganda. it makes some people a whole hell of a lot of money for you to hate fat people and fear becoming (or staying, I think like 70% or something of the US is fat) one of us.
a lot of the fearmongering over fatness comes from studies directly funded by the weight loss industry...i think people don't really realize or think about the fact that research can absolutely be influenced and skewed by its funding. there is also research that shows that an amount of the negative health outcomes for fat people come from anti-fat bias. if you go to the doctor with concerns and the doctor simply tells you to lose weight, your problem is neglected and you may not even bother going to the doctor with the next problem.
every fat person you know for the most part probably has a story like this, of medical neglect. many of the stories i've heard personally are when the complaint or the doctor wasn't related at all, like being told to lose weight at the ear nose and throat doctor or at the dentist. it's straight up just bias. it's such a thing that in the show Shrill it's portrayed, when Aidy Bryant goes to the gynecologist and her doctor suggests she get gastric bypass.
the studies on health and fatness are simply not that black and white and there is basically no research that shows that more than an incredibly tiny minority of people can lose weight and keep it off for more than like 2 years. bodies have set points that they gravitate towards, it's not a personal failure. this also is how the weight loss industry succeeds so well - repeat customers.
some of the harm associated with fatness is also due to weight cycling, which is very hard on your body and is even worse if you get off a GLP1, which according to a recent study causes weight to be regained at a rate that is 4x faster than without taking a GLP1.
you don't have to hate yourself. you don't have to hate other people for their body type either. it makes me so sad to see the thinspo tag going around again in 2026 a lot like it was back in the day.
A study spanning almost four decades and involving more than 100,000 adults in Denmark found that those with an 'overweight' body mass index
there's so much crazy shit once you go down the rabbit hole. for example, BMI was not invented by anyone with a medical background. it was never meant to measure individual health.
im reading through lotr right now and honestly i dont think i would be enjoying it very much except for the fact that i can identify all the sources of inspiration robert jordan took from it to create the wheel of time. like what do you mean frodo baggins, a cute little hobbit, is the core of rand’s character???
it's very funny to me how Eye of the World is basically a modernised homage/parody/rethinking/fresh approach to all the main things in Lord of the Rings, and at least a little of the Hobbit. it's all there, Gandalf and Aragorn (gee i wonder), Mordor (Blight), Nazgûl (the Forsaken, Fades), Smeagol (Fain), Wormtongue (Mordeth), the ents (Ogier), Merry and Pippin (Mat and Perrin to some extent), Beorn (Elyas), some of the countries, the Ajahs, possibly even Shelob (again Mordeth) and Moria (Shadar Logoth, sort of). he figures out his own thing more later as the worldbuilding stacks up and gives him more direction, but the other early books are still to some extent echoes, and none is as much as the first. it's one of my favourite things to bring up when i'm recommending the series to anyone, especially people for whom Tolkien's stuff is too stuffy.
There is no more treacherous question in the WoT fandom than 'who is your favorite character?' because your only choices are:
One of the central characters of the narrative in which case you must include a LENGTHY disclaimer on the various, possibly numerous in universe and out controversies that surround that character, to nip discourse in the bud.
One of the Problematic Good Guys, i.e the characters who are not explicitly heroes, or even protagonists, and who are definitely morally questionable at best, but whose problematicness makes them extremely memorable, and whose importance to the books makes them indispensable. For this one you better have a whole ass essay ready to defend your love of them, or be prepared to be roasted at the stake.
One of the villains, with the same result, but the added layer of having to insist it has nothing to do with being attracted to them, weather you are or are not, so you can maintain a scrap of respectability
One of the hundreds of secondary characters who may or may not have vanished half way through the series and who also may or may not have reappeared late in the series, the best case scenario here is a knowing nod of understanding, the worst case a devastating 'that person? why?', this one is the highest risk, highest reward
One of the thousands of extremely minor characters who none the less Jordan managed to imbue with just enough personality and depth that if you're paying attention it's crystal clear they've got their whole own thing going on. (This is the category into which I sort the likes of Emarin, Perival, Talaan, Lars, Sashelle and the like- characters who get no PoV but who by their sheer presence and implied backstories I would read whole ass novels about). This one is the safest, because the response is almost always going to be 'wait who?'
I think knowing that Robert Jordan was a Vietnam veteran and had the nickname Iceman really puts a lot of the Wheel of time in new context. He was reportedly cool under pressure and didn't show much emotion so I wonder if he was like Rand just trying to make himself hard to the horrors that he witnessed there. How much of the internal turmoil is from personal experience.
I had two nicknames in 'Nam. First up was Ganesha, after the Hindu god called the Remover of Obstacles. He's the one with the elephant head. That one stuck with me, but I gained another that I didn't like so much. The Iceman.
One day, we had what the Aussies called a bit of a brass-up. Just our ship alone, but we caught an NVA battalion crossing a river, and wonder of wonders, we got permission to fire before they finished. The gunner had a round explode in the chamber, jamming his 60, and the fool had left his barrel bag, with spares, back in the revetment.
So while he was frantically rummaging under my seat for my barrel bag, it was over to me, young and crazy, standing on the skid, singing something by the Stones at the of my lungs with the mike keyed so the others could listen in, and Lord, Lord, I rode that 60. 3000 rounds, an empty ammo box, and a smoking barrel that I had burned out because I didn't want to take the time to change. We got ordered out right after I went dry, so the artillery could open up, and of course, the arty took credit for every body recovered, but we could count how many bodies were floating in the river when we pulled out.
The next day in the orderly room an officer with a literary bent announced my entrance with "Behold, the Iceman cometh." For those of you unfamiliar with Eugene O'Neil, the Iceman was Death. I hated that name, but I couldn't shake it. And, to tell you the truth, by that time maybe it fit.
I have, or used to have, a photo of a young man sitting on a log eating C-rations with a pair of chopsticks. There are three dead NVA laid out in a line just beside him. He didn't kill them. He didn't choose to sit there because of the bodies. It was just the most convenient place to sit. The bodies don't bother him. He doesn't care. They're just part of the landscape.
The young man is glancing at the camera, and you know in one look that you aren't going to take this guy home to meet your parents. Back in the world, you wouldn't want him in your neighborhood, because he is cold, cold, cold. I strangled that SOB, drove a stake through his heart, and buried him face down under a crossroad outside Saigon before coming home, because I knew that guy wasn't made to survive in a civilian environment.
I think he's gone. All of him. I hope so. I much prefer being remembered as Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles.
I am of the somewhat controversial opinion that there is no such thing as a non-self insert character. All that you create is created from your language, your experiences, your point of view. Your soul is your palette, no matter what you imagine with it
or as I like to put it: I don't put myself into my writing, the writing claims it
I often think back to Harriet McDougal saying that Perrin is the character that most reminds her of Robert. But that's just one version of Robert, the Robert she knew, the one that lived in peace and wasn't burdened with having to survive through hellish circumstances
in war, the person he strived to be was someone that made problems go away, someone that through wit and resourcefulness made the impossible seem possible. That sounds like Ganesha the Remover of Obstacles, but it also kinda sounds like Mat
the person he hated, the person he had to become because he didn't have a choice, the person that was molded into callousness and almost stripped of humanity because that is the kind of person that wins a war, that is The Iceman, but it also kinda sounds like Rand
and then there is the person that didn't want to be either of those things, the person that would rather just have stayed at home, be at peace, and create and not destroy, that kinda sounds like Perrin, the person his wife came to know him as
I'm not trying to suggest this is like a conscious one-to-one mapping of traits onto characters, rather just one interpretation of how certain influences can stand out more in certain characters, in reality it's a lot more messy than this post kinda makes it seem.
