#linkwithus

So, Wheel of Time show fans and #savewot allies (including our friends from the #savequeerstories, #savewarriornun, & #savedeadboydetecttives movements), it's May 1.

Time to begin the year's big campaign, fueled by hope.

Here's the plan -

We advocate to get as many of our people in the WSFS (or, the ability to vote on both the 2026 and 2027 Hugo Awards' final ballot) as possible, which costs $50 - so there's a cost prohibitive element for some to this - using this link: www.lacon.org/register/

And we also continue to encourage our coworkers/friends/family/strangers to watch The Wheel of Time and sign the petition (we need 223 signatures until the petition hits 238k total signatures right now):

Let Shohreh cook!

We are less than 4,000 signatures away from matching The Expanse's petition numbers!!!

Keep this energy up! Link with us!

Sony posted a poll asking what show we will be binge-watching during the holidays!

So first go vote for The Wheel of Time!

Katie here, to announce the Fall event!

So, we were thinking about Halloween and costume parties and WOT-ifying them, when finally, the ideas made themselves apparent:

🎃 We'll next be having our Darkfriend Social on Halloween! 🎃

Participants will be asked to dress up their work in their own alternative universe (known from here on out as an AU).

We have two wheels for you to spin:

The Wheel of AUs to let fate decides which AU you'll have to play with,

The Wheel of Names with characters from the show to add in your AU.

You can spin both, or just one, or none and pick an AU and/or characters of your choice, what matters it to have fun 👻

For the unartistic types, make proposals of what AU stories you'd make if you had time/were artistic/whatever. You never know. You might be treated to an artistic rendition of your proposed AU during the Darkfriend Social SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE. ARTISTS, TAKE NOTE.

All the finished art pieces/proposals will be due on Halloween/the Darkfriend Social. The13thdepository will make a masterlist after.

The tag for the event, the art, the proposals, the conversations, the sneak peaks of works all of that will be #darkfriendsocial

So, who's gonna make something(s) for it?

I kept getting distracted when trying to place favorite characters in Ajahs and I think the source of that distraction is what I'd like to talk about.

Because I feel like Robert Jordan did a fantastic job of making the Ajah system contextual to the world that he created. Especially for the two Ajahs that we're told are the biggest - the Red & the Green.

The Red Ajah exist because of the Breaking of the World and how these Aes Sedai were forced to turn on their former comrades because the Dark One's corruption drove them insane. They aren't generic 'magic police'. They have such a world-specific context, and that makes placing people who don't exist inside that world tricky. They're particularly vulnerable to Black Ajah infiltration because Ishamael could more easily take their original purpose and twist it than he could with some other Ajahs.

The Green Ajah is similarly very world-specific - they are the Battle Ajah but are particularly meant to hold themselves ready for the Last Battle. Which is taking its sweet time arriving. So long, in fact, that the purpose of the Ajah has degraded and it's now seen more for its side benefits (extra Warders) than its original purpose.

There's also another complicating element - the way 'Might makes right' is woven into everything in the White Tower. A strong channeler (aka all of our main characters) is courted by the Ajahs, while a weak channeler must be the one doing the courting in order to be accepted by her Ajah of choice. So I would need to ask myself - how strong is this character in the One Power?

Plus, choosing an Ajah is more like choosing a college major, in a certain way - it's about expressing your area of focus, and not always about any inherent characteristics. Or someone with a Talent for Healing might still prefer to choose the Green Ajah because there are two Warders they're interested in bonding (those killer side benefits of being Green!).