#wotshow

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Relationships: Rand al'Thor/Lanfear | Cyndane Characters: Lanfear | Cyndane, Rand al'Thor Additional Tags: Spoilers for Book 05: The Fires of Heaven (Wheel of Time), Mix of Show and Book Canon, Mind Break Summary:

It was a shame that it had come to this.

A shame, but Lanfear did not want to waste her time dwelling on what could have been.

Her Lews Therin — her new Lews Therin — knelt obediently at her feet, as the original never had. When he stood, he was as tall as he’d been in his past life, which must have eaten away at Sammael before the man had been killed by Moghedien.

Fandom: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Rand al'Thor/Aviendha/Elayne Trakand

Characters: Rand al'Thor, Aviendha (Wheel of Time), Elayne Trakand

Additional Tags: Book-Canon, Spoilers for Book 9: Winter's Heart, Exhibitionism, Fisting

Summary:

Elayne leaned back into Rand's arms, her legs draped along his, spread wide.

She had thought that all of her blushes had been gone after she and Rand had finally slept together, but it seemed that she still had a few left, because she was definitely feeling overheated at the thought of what was going to happen next.

Aviendha knelt down between Elayne's legs, placing a hand on either thigh.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Wheel of Time (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Rand al'Thor Additional Tags: Kinktober, Masturbation, Past Rand al'Thor/Egwene al'Vere, past Rand al'Thor/Lanfear | Selene, minor allusions to his future canonical relationships, Show-Canon, but Book-Canon is implied in the future, set post-s3 Summary:

The first time that Rand jerked off after everything had ended with Egwene was a bit of a mess.

Not physically. His cock worked fine, thank the Light.

I'm gonna cheat and do multiple!

I will try to stay focused on the show version of the characters, so I have a few categories:

Rand al'Thor is my personal win for overall favorite character. I think that Josha did SUCH a fantastic job with him overall and has been giving us so much and there are so many amazing scenes that I would have wanted to see in the future. I especially loved the way that Josha played it whenever Rand was touching saidin. He just... he nailed the mixture of feelings required.

Biggest upgrade from the books: Moiraine Damodred. In the books, I like Moiraine fine, but she's, you know. Lady Gandalf, basically, especially at the start. The show gets inside her head and makes her a genuine protagonist (including some very painful changes, to be sure! but also a lot of insight into her as a person)

Biggest ray of sunshine: Elayne Trakand. Burst into s2 bringing sunshine and never stopped. My baby, my angel, my sweetheart.

Character who was able to most fully complete their character arc in the 3 seasons that we got: Perrin Aybara. So much of his character comes full circle by 3x07. The show brings all of the threads of his character together, and also set him on a new path that would have been fascinating to see unfold in the future (post-TSR Perrin is easily the most, ah, boring character in the books, for me personally, so the show making me EXCITED about his post-s3 storyline was an impressive feat!)

That is far from all the characters that I loved (Mat is a fav, but complicated to talk about because his character was really the most jerked around by IRL problems like the Covid hiatus, but I'm extremely impressed with how the show zigged-and-zagged him for the most part) but if I tried to do all my favorite characters, the list would be extremely long.

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!).

Right away, there were two potential scenes that came to mind when I thought of this prompt, because there were two sets of pairs that I felt like didn't get properly 'closed out' at the end of s3 and that I wish had gotten one scene each during 3x08.

The first is Rand & Aviendha.

We get a light but solid thoroughline for a lot of the season with them... and then no one-on-one interaction in 3x08. Especially since we had the 'open wound' of Alsera's death. Given that the show has generally leapt forwards in time between seasons, even if we'd gotten s4, we probably wouldn't have gotten that follow-up scene about Alsera between Rand & Aviendha, because the right time for it would have passed. Which is a shame, because the development of Rand and Aviendha's relationship was really good during the rest of the season -- we had the antagonism in 3x01 that Elayne helps quell, we had more antagonism and then some connection in 3x04, and then we had Aviendha being (reluctantly) impressed with how Rand behaves with Alsera. But we never really got a final endcap on that relationship growth -- Aviendha is just one of many Aiel who bow to him in the finale.

The other pair of characters who I felt didn't get a proper closure were Mat & Nynaeve.

We start out s3 with her promising to help him, and she follows through in the immediate episodes, but then Mat's storyline shifts to pair him up with Min, and we lose the thread of Nynaeve helping Mat. I think if we'd gotten to have Nynaeve (now unblocked) healing Mat at the end of s3, we could have closed out that thread too (or, if Mat ~mysteriously~ cannot be healed with the One Power, have her helping him in a Wisdom-healer way). I'm guessing this kind of scene also didn't make it in because they wanted to end Nynaeve on the 'high' of freeing her powers and not bring her back down to earth again but, yeah, their particular friendship felt very under-served by the finale.

So, the song from the books that I most wish we'd gotten to see on-screen would have most likely come in s4 -- Jak O' the Shadows. Probably a popular wish for book fans!

I feel like the show really could have made it a character-defining thing for Mat, to showcase him (the way that Hills of Tanchico gave us a great snapshot into College Spring Break Elayne, lol), and, of course, to let us hear Dónal Finn sing!

I feel like they could have given it either more of a 'soldiers' chant' vibe or more of a mournful hymn (like Pippin's song in Return of the King) or a rousing "hey we just survived" vibe. Lots of options!

I would have really adored hearing what the show did with it and what kind of vibe they would have gone with. What tune goes with the words could have really made a difference in the impression that viewers had of what the song meant (and the different varieties that we might have gotten for different occasions!).

Chapters: 2/5 Fandom: The Wheel of Time (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Rand al'Thor/Mat Cauthon Characters: Rand al'Thor, Mat Cauthon, Aviendha (Wheel of Time), Moiraine Damodred, Egwene al'Vere Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, show canon, spoilers through 3x08: He Who Comes With The Dawn, past Bain/Chiad/Mat Cauthon, past Rand al’Thor/Egwene al’Vere, past Rand al’Thor/Lanfear | Selene, Partial amnesia, Reincarnation, implied future poly possibilities, Spoilers for Book 05: The Fires of Heaven (Wheel of Time) Summary: Mat makes a different final request of the Eelfinn, and ends up in the Aiel Waste.

It wasn’t any of his own problems that ate away at Rand that night when he tried to go to sleep, but instead Mat’s.

He was such a wonderful big brother. To think that he couldn’t remember any of it — not to remember his sisters at all. Rand didn’t even had words for how awful it was. Mat himself was the same man, still obviously marked by being a big brother, even if he couldn’t remember it, but to have his memories stripped away…

Maybe Rand’s mind was trying to avoid thinking about any of his own problems, knowing they would be there waiting for him in the morning.