#ryma

I am mostly loving the WOT adaptation as a book reader and the last episode was certainly one of the best of the series but this last episode also did something that I don't see anyone talking about so I will, as both a show enjoyer and a Black book reader.

I think the optics of having Ryma be a darkskin Black woman is not great given how her story ends and how prevalent the colorism in the show casting has been so far.

They should have cast the actress as a different character and picked someone else for this role.

**Book Spoilers**

We saw Moiraine spend months hurting Lan terribly to save his life. She pushes him away because she thinks it will keep him alive. Even though this hurts Lan greatly. Even though it hurts Moiraine just as much. Even though it arguably means losing a weapon in her fight against the Dark. She does it anyway because she will sacrifice anything for the cause except Lan’s life.

The ultimate example of this type of love, where loving someone so much leads to removing their agency and not allowing them to make a critical choice about their life, is Basan and Ryma. They walk out to face the Seanchan together. She has clearly decided to sacrifice her life to save Nynaeve and Elayne. It’s in her mind so clearly that Basan knows that is what’s happening. He walks out to join her, and she winks, and they share a knowing smile. They will go down fighting. They will go down to together.

Ryma makes a heartbreaking choice. But it is a choice. And choice is what defines human life, what gives it meaning. She decides she will die rather than become a damane. She trusts her Warder to be the one to kill her, to give her a death with dignity rather than being captured.

In the last critical moment Basan cannot bring himself to kill Ryma even though they have clearly agreed to this through the Bond in the moment before the fight. They fight together. They die together.

In that last moment though, Basan can’t kill this person he loves so much. And his choice dooms her to a fate that she felt was worse than death. His inability to kill her is why Ryma ends up enslaved. Why she faces centuries as a damane being forced to use the power she devoted her life to using as a force of healing, instead as a force of destruction and harm to others.

it is the fabled back on my bullshit.

i’m getting back into dragon ball pretty hard and as such things that means i’m gonna be redrawing old ocs and amalgamizing ocs into new ones