kahlanaisling

[kahlanaisling]

[kahlanaisling]

Will you come back?

[kahlanaisling]

Florence + outfit appreciation in 13x08

[kahlanaisling]

the good thing about the slog is that because such little of true import happens over such a long chunk of the series, the show is quite well-positioned to be able to tell the whole story cohesively in any number of seasons after 4. only 4 seasons would be tricky, but 5 or 6 would be just as doable as 7 or 8. (disclaimer that there has not been any news or speculation about potentially getting less than 8 seasons so don't panic haha it's just a topic i was randomly thinking about today! that being said, i do think 8 seasons is pretty ambitious in today's television landscape, especially if it continues to take 2 years to make each season, so while we're all hoping for the full 8, it's worth imagining how they could do it in fewer.)

i expect s4 to roughly coincide with the end of LOC, so, dumai's wells for rand and being raised amyrlin for egwene. perrin, mat, nynaeve, and elayne have more wiggle room in what they might be getting up to during s4 (it seems possible the ebou dar trip might be absorbed into tanchico in s3, and perrin may have to get an invented plotline or have a later plotline brought forward for s4 since he has so little in TFOH-LOC), so i won't guess at the endpoint for them beyond that it will likely leave them ready to kick into a fresh new storyline for s5. and nynaeve frankly doesn't have a book storyline after ebou dar (she's just supporting rand's & lan's storylines), so i'll ignore her in this post and just focus on the other 5 mains. fingers crossed the show will come up with more for nynaeve to do during this part of the story, but that's a separate topic.

after LOC, as far as i can recall, each of them only has 1-2 main things they strictly Must do before the last battle (obviously i've left out a bunch of stuff, but i'm thinking of just the absolute bare minimum essentials here):

rand: cleanse saidin (only requires 1 episode); reach his lowest point, then pull himself back up again, all the while simultaneously working to get as many nations under his banner as possible

egwene: unite the tower as uncontested amyrlin

perrin: finish wolf training; fold the whitecloaks into his army

mat: rescue moiraine (only requires 1 episode); get himself in charge of the seanchan forces

elayne: become uncontested queen of andor

so if s4 ends where i speculate, they'd all be perfectly positioned to spend 4-6 episodes of s5 doing these things, then the last battle for the remaining 2-4 episodes, and boom, we've fit all the most crucial things into only 5 seasons.

i know the instinct is to gasp and insist that they all have so much else to do, but.........do they really? everybody agrees that egwene & elayne & perrin only have 1 plotline during books 7-11 which is dragged out for more books than is needed to tell it, so mat and rand are really the sticking points. but if you think about it, mat spends this time repeatedly starting one plotline but then getting yanked out of it partway through to start a new one, so he doesn't actually accomplish that much story-wise. rand, meanwhile, is on a bunch of little 1-book quests (taking illian, seanchan campaign, hunting traitor asha'man, trying to meet with DOTNM) that could be cut for time or merged into his Darth Rand emotional arc from TGS. honestly, he's so emotionally stagnant for most of books 7-11 (he's either not present, dicking around doing nothing, or repeating emotional beats he already did in TSR-LOC) that i don't think going from dumai's wells straight to Darth Rand would be a bad idea at all, if the show had to; in fact, dumai's wells is kind of a perfect launchpoint for that arc, emotions-wise, and plot-wise, if they wanted to replace some of the arad doman events with some slog events, but just put the Darth Rand emotional spin on those slog events, they could easily do so (for example, him being reckless/arrogant with callandor against the seanchan and getting his own people killed could sub in for natrin's barrow in showing how ruthlessly Ends Justify Means he's becoming).

but anyway, these are imo the absolute most crucial pre-TLB plot points of the second half of the series (at least for these main characters, i'm not taking ALL characters into account in this post) and they could be fit into only 5 seasons without much trouble. now if you've got 6, 7, or 8 seasons, that gives extra room to expand these plot points and also add in some additional, not-strictly-required-but-nice-to-have plot points like more Little Rand Quests, elayne taking the throne of cairhien, egwene & gawyn hunting assassins in the tower, and the faile kidnapping plotline. (while making this post i actually had a wild thought of the faile kidnapping being perrin's s4 plotline followed by wolves & whitecloak stuff in s5 then into TLB, or alternately the whitecloaks being part of the kidnapping plotline as perrin's unlikely allies rather than the seanchan; could be a great structure for a 5-6 season scenario, but for 7-8 it would cause perrin to run out of content too quickly haha)

[kahlanaisling]

it continues to baffle me how many readers advocate for the show entirely cutting the andoran succession arc, aka elayne's ONE big Main Character storyline that she leads herself (vs. being a sidekick in nynaeve's storylines). what would you do if i started advocating for cutting mat forming the band of the red hand? you wouldn't be so happy about that, would you? well, that's the equivalent of what you're suggesting for elayne, just gutting her entire arc and reducing her to a secondary character.

some readers really need to learn that "i don't like this storyline" doesn't automatically equal "this storyline is just unimportant filler that can and should be cut from the show" (and that "i like this storyline" doesn't automatically equal "this storyline is crucial to the series as a whole and the show will be unwatchable if it's cut")

[kahlanaisling]

Here we go again! Teddy's getting ready to get back to work with Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger on the next Cormoran Strike series.

[kahlanaisling]

yay!

me, quietly whispering to the ao3 page of an author who doesn’t even know I exist: I am obsessed with you

[kahlanaisling]

How can they be so cute? 😍

[kahlanaisling]

I think the reason so many LOTR ripoffs fail is because they make their Aragorn analogue the main character, when the entire point of Aragorn is that he’s “the person the villains think is the main character, but is Not.”

Aragorn seems like a traditional King Arthur style hero— he has huge Main Character Energy because he’s supported by destiny, by bloodline, by all these magic artifacts and prophecies, and etc etc. Frodo and Sam are Just Some Guys. Aragorn recognizes that Sauron understandably thinks he’s the main hero of this story ….and he pretends to believe it too, spending the entire series using himself as a diversion to prevent Sauron from seeing Frodo and Sam.

Aragorn’s whole thing is that knows he seems like the Main Hero of this legend to people who don’t know better —- but he also knows that he isn’t, and that his role is just to keep Sauron’s eye on him in order to protect the people around him.

And it works! Sauron is so fixated on defeating his Legendary Destined Archenemy with Extreme Main Character Energy that he completely overlooks the two ordinary little guys who were the real threat to him all along.

[kahlanaisling]

STRIKE: TROUBLED BLOOD (2022) | 1.04

[kahlanaisling]

Nynaeve: I’ve come to get you idiots, I can’t believe you left home without permission you all are in so much trouble you absolute morons. You foolish dummies.

Rand: Actually my dad knows where I am and he says it’s fine so you see I’m not a dummy in this-

Nynaeve: Oh I know, and I don’t care- you’re a fool, and your daddy is a fool too. Actually all your dads are fools. Look at me- I’m your daddy now.

[kahlanaisling]

hello lovely people! i would like to request a gifset :) the scene what i'm thinking about is from 2x3 and it's when Jane's reading Teresa's mind: "I'm listening to your thoughts. Don't shout. I can hear you." (5:02-5:13)

thank you so much❣️

Hi! Thank you for your request and sorry for the very late reply! Your gifset is here! 💜

[kahlanaisling]

The Wheel of Time character types:

The Dumb Puppy - aka - Serial Imprinter - aka - Won't Get A Single Break From Now Until the Final Heat Death of the Universe... Or After.

Tiny and Angry - aka - The Sleeping Berserk Button - aka - The One They're Not Gonna See Coming Until She Rips Out All Their Throats.

'If my middle name wasn't Spite it would be Fuck You' - aka - The Duck Mother to the Very Dumb Baby Ducks - aka - Will Spend at Least an Episode a Season Inside a Tragic Romance B-Plot - aka - Had The Braincell, Temper Made Her Lose It (she contains multitudes).

The Violent Sunshine Character - aka - Would Sucker Punch a God for a Homie She Met Two Hours Ago.

If Evil, Why Hot?

The word 'Nap' isn't in her vocabulary but it should be - aka - Can't Have 'One Nice Thing' for More Than Two and a Half Minutes - aka - Allergic to Feelings.

'There's a big sign that says Don't Touch The Red Button... I'm gonna touch the Red Button.' - aka - Who is This... Self Esteem You Speak Of? Never Heard of Them.

Voted Most Likely to be Adopted by a Hundred Random Strangers - aka - The Wolves Would Like Him to Get the Braincell but it Fell on the Ground and the Ground is Lava.

Doesn't Get Paid Enough for this Shit - aka - Clinging to the Last Braincell With the Tips of His Fingernails - aka - 'I can't believe I of all people am willing to have a single goddamn conversation here.'

'Fine I'll Do the Babysitting But You Owe Me So Much Booze' - aka - The Aunt That Once Forgot You In the Mall - aka - The Aunt That Gave You All the Safe Sex Tips and Traumatized You For Life - aka - The Aunt That Would Absolutely Bury a Body No Questions Asked.

[kahlanaisling]

pov: audrey hall is around (S4 edition)

first part; second part

[kahlanaisling]

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL (2020)

james + helen

[kahlanaisling]

something i hope season 2 really digs into portraying is how rand is a natural disaster. he isn't just a ta'veren, like the others, and he isn't just a boy, either — not even just a channeler of saidin. rand al'thor warps reality around him just by existing, for better or worse, and no person or place can stay the same once they've come into contact with him. one of my favorite things about tdr is how moiraine and co were able to track rand by the string of weird occurrences in his wake.

in fact i'd go so far as to say that's one of rand's most central struggles: that he's both a boy, with a(n eroding) personality and wants and desires, and that he is also a pitiless force of nature — whether he wills it or no.

[kahlanaisling]

Season 2 better deliver because I'm starving