#Very happy Lanfear survived

[zombie-bait]

Lanfear's vibe just gets cuntier each episode and I'm supposed to be NORMAL ABOUT THIS???? Ridiculous

[neuxue]

You ever pick them songs for characters? The most on-the-nose song I can think of for Rand is "Wayward Son" by Kansas. But "Wars" by Hurt kind of works too, with lines like "How many weapons did I help create? \ And how many lives will they devastate?" Always makes me think of Rand immediately after Drmai's Wells.

Yes! Well, sort of. I think I tend to associate lyrics rather than full songs with characters, a lot of the time. But yes. 

Though my taste in music is…questionable. Mostly because I just don’t go looking for music often beyond the classical/orchestral stuff I listen to at work, so I… don’t have a lot to choose from that I actually know well, beyond a limited selection of artists who fall into either ‘singer-songwriter with intricate lyrics’ or ‘painfully generic music that ten years ago might have qualified as almost hipster’. Or musicals.

But sure, let’s WoT a go. A random list off the top of my head:

Rand is difficult, probably because I don’t have the right genre. I’ve done Hamilton lyrics I associate with him (and Lews Therin)… oh and there was that time I abandoned dignity entirely and wrote a song for Rand, which still might be my most embarrassing contribution to this fandom…

Weirdly, perhaps, After All by Dar Williams comes to mind for him. Only pieces of it really fit, but there’s a mood it captures that feels like pre-Dragonmount Rand

once upon a time I had control / and reined my soul in tight / well the whole truth is like the story of a wave unfurled / but I held the evil of the world / so I stopped the tide / froze it up from inside / […] / and when I chose to live / there was no joy, it’s just a line I crossed / it wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost

Lanfear - Never Look Away by Vienna Teng 

You are made of nebulas and novas and night skies / you’re made of memories you bury or live by / and if you’re out there in the cold, I’ll cover you in moonlight / if you’re a stranger to your soul, I’ll bring you to your birthright / I want the storm inside you awoken now

(Or, alternatively, Blank Space by Taylor Swift. I’m sorry but I’m also not)

Elayne - The Life of a Princess by Antje Duvekot, mostly for the title and the contrast of a wistful sound with determined lyrics

and she pictures the dance, she imagines the song / and the stairs to her chamber have never seemed longer / and I will fight my battles in person / but I will not be crippled by dreams that have withered and died / when nobody was watching / no I will not be crippled by dreams

Morgase/Tallanvor - The Queen and the Soldier by Suzanne Vega (except for the last verse)

Oh the young queen, she fixed him with an arrogant eye / she said you won’t understand and you may as well not try / […] / and the sun, it was gold though the sky it was gray / and she wanted more than she ever could say / but she knew how it frightened her and she turned away

Mat - The Lucky One by Alison Krauss. No I will not be accepting constructive criticism at this time.

you’re the lucky one, so I’ve been told / as free as the wind blowing down the road / loved by many, hated by none / I’d say you’re lucky ‘cause I know what you’ve done / […] / give you a song and a one night stand / and you’ll be looking at a happy man / 'cause you’re the lucky one / […] / well you’re blessed I guess by never knowing which road you’re choosing / to you the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing 

Moiraine + Lan - Laughter Lines by Bastille. It’s another one that isn’t an exact match but something about it feels very them to me

I’ll see you in the future when we’re older / and we are full of stories to be told / cross my heart and hope to die / I’ll see you with your laughter lines

Nynaeve - The Tower by Vienna Teng, perhaps. It also maybe works for Siuan, but I’m not sure how well it really works for either of them.

the one who survives by making the lives of others worthwhile / she’s coming apart right before my eyes / the one who depends on the services she renders to those who come knocking / […] / she says I need not to need / or else a love with intuition / someone who reaches out to my weakness and won’t let go / I need not to need / I’ve always been the tower / but now I feel like I’m the flower trying to bloom in snow

Egwene - I feel like I should have all kinds of songs for her but all that comes to mind at the moment is a single verse of Ballad of Fred Noonan by Antje Duvekot, though the rest of the song doesn’t fit at all (I just like it because of… reasons you may be able to guess if you’ve read this blog too closely)

your sustenance was fame / always starving for a thrill / not afraid of a thing / couldn’t you have wished upon a rainbow / just like everybody else / but you had to wish on lightning

Tam - Bring Him Home, from Les Miserables (not really but every fictional father with a doomed son gets this associated with him by default)

he is young, he’s afraid / let him rest, heaven blessed / bring him home, bring him home, bring him home / he’s like the son I might have known / if god had granted me a son / the summers die one by one / how soon they fly, on and on[…] / bring him peace, bring him joy / he is young, he is only a boy / you can take, you can give / let him be let him live

Like I said, no one ever accused me of good taste in music. 

I should have more (especially for the Forsaken) but, while I have a decent enemies-to-lovers playlist with a bit more variety of genres, none of the actual songs fit, annoyingly. And I don’t remember any of the songs from my symphonic metal phase well enough.

[highladyluck]

Third Age Relics: Lord of Chaos Plot Contest

Continuing the theme, here's a “Lord of Chaos Plot Contest“ winner (Best Balefire/T'A'R/Swordplay Category). If you've been reading everything in the Third Age Relics tag you should get the plot-essential rawsfrj community in-jokes, but I'll put in some direct links as well.

Submission 17 - Bill Garrett

The Lords of Chaos

Sammael sat back from his ter'mineal and blinked his weary eyes. Keeping up on the happenings and speculations in the world was certainly hard work, made no easier by his insistence on cataloging all the happenings and having to give people the same answers repeatedly to their dumb questions. Ah, he'd be happy to balefire any of them at a moment's notice, but destroying any of them would only make more work for himself.

"Staying up late?" a woman's voice behind him said as he stared vacantly at the device on his desk.

Reaching for Saidin, he spun in his swivel chair. Behind him, floating over a floor littered with messy notes, odiferous pizza boxes and a few dozen half-empty su'da cans, was a gateway opening to someplace else. Inside it he glimpsed a Very Small Animal.

"You! I thought that silly mortal woman had succeeded in destroying you, Lanfear!" he exclaimed roughly.

"She could only dream to be so lucky," Lanfear replied smoothly. "As it turned out, she was very useful. She fetched quite a handsome price -- my freedom. I've been through hell and half of Georgia. It was even worse than the lines at course registration." She decided to change the subject. "I see you're still hacking away. Why don't you ever get a life, Sammael? Certainly there's someplace you could go, even in a backside-of-forever place such as Blacksburg."

"You shouldn't be so cavalier with me, Lanfear. I have a hold over you. I know about Piglet."

"Yes. Well," said Lanfear uncomfortably. "I wish Asmodean were still with us. He always had such good ideas. It was he who suggested the idea for the first hoax, wasn't it? So many people fell for our concoction about the creator. Yes, it's very important that we continue our plans to deceive the rest of the land."

Both Forsaken turned as they sensed another gateway opening. The fabric of reality seemed to stretch apart, revealing a spartan room occupied by a tall man. Where his eyes and mouth and .sig should have been, there were only flames. He wore a goofy purple beret with the cryptic runes of the Old Tongue scrawled across it, reading "Terps".

"Ishemail!" Lanfear and Sammael exclaimed in unison.

"Reports of my death were widely exaggerated," he said wistfully. "Of course, you've got to take everything with a grain of salt. As I've always said, your mileage may vary."

"Well, Ish, I really though Rand had got you in that last fight. You danced 'Curmudgeon Flames the Group', he came back with 'Newbie Quotes the Sig' and 'Needless Hundred-Line Cascade'. I thought you were a real goner right then and there."

"I survived. Tastes vary, you know."

All three turned as yet another gateway opened into their assemblage. Behind this extradimensional portal, shrouded in mist, was a shadowy figure partially obscuring yet another shadowy figure behind it. "Ah, my children, how nice of you to come. I am your lord and master!"

"You cheap impostor!" shouted Sammael. "We've unmasked you but still you hound us. There's a cure for that..." Sammael shared a quick look with the other two Forsaken and suddenly three bolts of brilliant light hurled through the gateway, converging upon the shadowy figure there. A resounding ZOT! was heard and both the figure and the gateway suddenly winked out of existence.

"Bravo," taunted a new voice, "I'm sure the Oracle will be happy to see that you've learned that Balefire goes 'ZOT!'"

All three Forsaken whirled around to see the man who taunted them. It looked like Padan Fain, but he was wearing upon his head something that resembled a bucket. At his back was a darkened glass cabinet, rows of small lights blinking inside it. An odd tether connected the bucket to the cabinet. They weren't able to sense his weaving because, in fact, he hadn't opened gateways like they had. He just seemed to just be there, or rather, the image of him floated above the floor, but still gave the appearance of his presence.

"How did you get here?" demanded Ishemail. "I thought this was a moderated group."

"Mwahaha, I have ways that none of you know about. I am a far older power than you think, a far more powerful power than you think! Were you there when I stood on the wall in Aridhol and--"

"Please," interrupted Sammael, "you sing even worse than I do. Just drop that hackneyed prophetic bullshit and tell us if you've thought of anything new."

"Nope. Nothing. Look, I already fooled the entire world with my last hoax, so what do you expect of me now? Fool the Creator Himself?"

"As a matter of fact," mused Ishemail, "that might be an interesting idea. But what can we do?"

"What if we convince him that the next Age has started already?" suggested Sammael. "Then Rand won't defeat us, and we'll get to rule."

"How are we going to make him believe that?" asked Ish.

"We'll need to give him one of those bogus timelines we drew up.

"Yeah, like the one where Tam al'Thor turns out to be Jain Farstrider," Lanfear chimed in. "You know, the one where the Breaking of the World is off by a few centuries, Moiraine had an alibi for the Darkfriend Social, and Bela actually ends up in five places at the same time."

"That old mare sure seems to get around," joked Fain. He belched ceremoniously and smiled. Lanfear wrinkled her nose.

"Okay, so it's a Plan," said Ishemail. "This should be even more fun than the first one!"

[neuxue]

i'm curious, what fics for wot would you like to write?

Friend. (Roman. Countryman). That is A Question.

Um.

All of it? 

But okay, a rather vague and entirely incomplete list:

More Age of Legends, possibly (hard emphasis on possibly) continuing/expanding on the Orbital Dynamics/Paradise Entropic uh… ‘verse, outside of Ilyena’s story, especially with more of the eventual Forsaken

And I have a really horrible thing I want to do with the Hundred Companions but it would be An Undertaking, so we’ll see

AU in which Lews Therin ends up partially trapped in the same way Ishamael is, because he is closest to the weaving of the prison

False Dragons. All the false Dragons. Taim and Logain had to meet at some point, right? Why were we deprived of it?

And what drives someone to declare himself the Dragon Reborn (herself? Any of those in history? Damn it I have played myself because I hadn’t even had that as a fic I wanted to write but as soon as I typed it I decided I need it)

Guaire Amalasan is a problem and I want more

There’s a Rhuidean-esque fic I’ve had sort of outlined for a while with Lan seeing the history of the Malkieri and the origins of the sword he carries, which I will finish eventually

Lan and Isam, two childhoods destroyed by the Blight, but differently

Moiraine/Lanfear. Don’t look at me like that.

And (including?) continuing the Moiraine-is-Cyndane….thing, because I have…ideas.

Various characters actually serve the Shadow, because I am entirely predictable and what else would you expect of me

Probably some sort of…twists in the Pattern series of ficlets in which very very small things go very slightly differently and everything changes because, again, I’m predictable

Observations from the Dream, as Birgitte watches ages come and pass and memory become legend fade to myth as it plays out in front of her eyes, in between her lives

You know that ‘plan’ Joiya reveals about setting up Taim as a fake Rand in order to sow confusion and chaos? That, but instead of Taim it’s Moridin, who is given a body that looks very like Rand’s rather than the one we see him in

And a few specific ones I want to write but probably won’t until I finish the series, because they would need to be set post-series and I want to see how certain things play out. One involves Asmodean surviving (though he certainly won’t be happy about it because I’m not that kind of fic writer (I’m the sort who looks at ‘Everyone Lives’ and says ‘alright, challenge accepted’))