veryoddbooks

[veryoddbooks]

Do you like Lord of the Rings? Stream the Wheel of Time

Do you like Game of Thrones? Stream the Wheel of Time

Do you like Dune? Stream the Wheel of Time

Do you like Star Wars? Stream the Wheel of Time

Do you like Critical Role and/or the Legend of Vox Machina? Stream the Wheel of Time

Do you like Avatar the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra? Stream the Wheel of Time

[veryoddbooks]

Hello everyone, I am making another one of these posts in case anyone would like to buy a print from me, or subscribe to my patreon, or just send in a tip. My whole life has recently been thrown in a loop. The kind of situation where it's like. "it only takes one medical emergency."

I spent my birthday at the hospital. Some of the darkest days of my life. Ti-rads 4 giant goiter that needed to be removed, awake intubation. Blessedly, my biopsy was benign, and I don't remember anything from the surgery. anesthesiologists said my airways almost collapsed. In some medical debt. But I am so happy I am alive. On a battalion of meds. I only just now started being able to move around as normal. I need all the help I can get from community. I had no income the two months I was sick. My mother is unable to move independently. My father has kidney failure, and my sister is pretty much my kid. She is autistic with a very low frustration threshold. I am the only person in my family who works, and I have three jobs, but all of which are unstable. I need to take thyroid h*rm*ne replacement for the rest of my life as maintenance medicine; as all of the funds I received from my gofundme was poured into surgeon fees. I'm penniless with a calcium deficiency, legit nothing to eat with a family of four to take care of ): please help me recover, help me buy calcium supplements and my thyroid maintenance medicine as I am essentially someone with hypothyroidism, and meds to treat my diabetes (sitaglipin and metformin). I only have around 6 days left of medicine before I run out. I am so grateful to still be alive, and I owe it all to you guys, and I am hoping everyone can still be generous to help me rebuild what is my new life as someone disabled with no support system irl. Thank you so so much.

I have around *412*!! Exclusive drawings on patreon, it's only a dollar a month.

I have plenty of goodies on my inprnt as well, it's 10% off rn

Inprnt takes 15 days to process payment and 15 days to release money, and I get paid by patreon at the end of the month. If you'd like to directly send me tips, If you've ever liked my thoughts, book recs or art, everything you send here either goes to my teet repair which is now emptied because of my thyroid surgery, or my maintenance meds. Thank you so so much;

Direct tipping jar:

[veryoddbooks]

Another great piece of commentary on the potential of this show and why this was the dumbest possible time to cut its chances short.

Keep making noise.

[veryoddbooks]

Since Rafe's statement more cast members are boosting the campaign now

[veryoddbooks]

hey sorry not to be an asshole but I saw someone say that a sports team posting about pride month was "pandering" and I need you to log off and touch grass because now more than EVER it's important that large institutions (and especially those that could easily be right wing like sports teams) show the fuck up for queer and trans people. especially trans people. so no it is not "pandering" to take a stand for a marginalized group of people that are currently under attack for trying to play sports. be so fucking for real

[veryoddbooks]

Wait, this is trans women saying this?!? About trans men?!? I guess that makes sense, it’s all about how horrible misogyny is, and saying trans men are exempt is the same as cis women saying trans women aren’t “real” women because they didn’t grow up with misogyny.

Well, my opinion of humanity remains largely unchanged. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I guess I still have to go grocery shopping, slightly more informed and depressed.

When I say the transmisogyny affected/transmisogyny exempt thing is binaristic, I really do mean that literally: there are two options, so it's necessarily a binary. You could say that's a pointless observation, trivially obvious with no value beyond semantics, but there is a reason I bring it up.

Consider the following set of characters:

Cis woman with a beard

Drag queen

Butch transfem who doesn't shave her face

Genderfluid person whose gender presentation and conception of gender varies from day to day

NB who isn't really fem but isn't really masc either

Cis guy who always wears a skirt

Intersex NB

Transfem who goes by he/him

Someone who refuses to give pronouns entirely and exclusively identifies as a "faggot"

Which of these people are TMA, and which are TME? You could invent an arbitrary grouping that would sort them into one box or the other, but it would be just that-- arbitrary. Each of these characters will have such a different experience of gender and their gender will be percieved so differently that to try and sort them into a mere two categories is just plainly absurd. Even two people who are both in the same dot point here will have wildly divergent experiences with transmisogyny!! No matter how you arrange it, the terms TME and TMA will miss so many nuances of each person's experience that they fail to have any explanatory power at all. Zero utility in actually telling you anything about these people and their lives.

And this is why I use "binaristic" specifically as a criticism. The world is not binary! Nothing on this Earth is so simple as to have only two possible designations that can adequately describe them. Trying to cram human beings into neat categories always ends up flattening down people's lived experiences into easily digestible narratives instead of actually working to describe the world accurately. To quote that one post, "nice dichotomy idiot, what lies outside it?"

[veryoddbooks]

Talking myself thru my understanding here:

I guess I just don’t get the situation at all, why get so granular with it? Misogyny is cruelty based on your nearness to being a woman.

I guess the issue is probably terfs, that has to be it, why else would this be necessary? You for sure don’t have to “be a woman” to be treated that way, but a terfs founding thought is something similar to “a man can’t experience misogyny” and therefore blah blah blah. So we have to have the term transmisogyny, and then we have to call it affected or exempt, to try and wiggle thru the cracks of our distastefully unempathetic society.

A terf is someone who thinks her suffering is for her alone and only those that look and act like her, a petty cruel person who wants to take her suffering out on others. To put herself on a pedestal of martyrdom, selfishly making every narrative about herself.

Women: being a terf is the same as being an incel. And both start with slightly toxic internal thoughts that you don’t interrogate, and then a little while later you’re a piece of human garbage.

I’m certainly missing facets of this situation, I am a cis woman. But it really set off this rant, so I’m gonna post it anyway because I stand by every word about terfs.

When I say the transmisogyny affected/transmisogyny exempt thing is binaristic, I really do mean that literally: there are two options, so it's necessarily a binary. You could say that's a pointless observation, trivially obvious with no value beyond semantics, but there is a reason I bring it up.

Consider the following set of characters:

Cis woman with a beard

Drag queen

Butch transfem who doesn't shave her face

Genderfluid person whose gender presentation and conception of gender varies from day to day

NB who isn't really fem but isn't really masc either

Cis guy who always wears a skirt

Intersex NB

Transfem who goes by he/him

Someone who refuses to give pronouns entirely and exclusively identifies as a "faggot"

Which of these people are TMA, and which are TME? You could invent an arbitrary grouping that would sort them into one box or the other, but it would be just that-- arbitrary. Each of these characters will have such a different experience of gender and their gender will be percieved so differently that to try and sort them into a mere two categories is just plainly absurd. Even two people who are both in the same dot point here will have wildly divergent experiences with transmisogyny!! No matter how you arrange it, the terms TME and TMA will miss so many nuances of each person's experience that they fail to have any explanatory power at all. Zero utility in actually telling you anything about these people and their lives.

And this is why I use "binaristic" specifically as a criticism. The world is not binary! Nothing on this Earth is so simple as to have only two possible designations that can adequately describe them. Trying to cram human beings into neat categories always ends up flattening down people's lived experiences into easily digestible narratives instead of actually working to describe the world accurately. To quote that one post, "nice dichotomy idiot, what lies outside it?"

[veryoddbooks]

server towers at the internet archive, each blue light signifies an article being accessed or edited (in real time!)

[veryoddbooks]

[veryoddbooks]

The way they handled Siuan’s death was a shocking, thrilling, and engaging end to a great fucking season.

I love what they’re doing with the show, good and bad changes alike. They have been more than clear that this is a different turning of the wheel, so bullshit exclamations about “that’s not what happened in the books” are uninformed and unimaginative.

Siuan’s death was completely shocking, I stood up and shouted at the tv. But we’re watching a woman who fought, by herself, for the last 10 years to lead the tower in a direction while black ajah worked in the background to undermine her.

And her speech shook Elaida to her core, I absolutely loved the look on Elaida’s face during her speech, fear, maybe recognition that’s she’s wrong, that speech is going to eat Elaida inside out, and I can see the direct connection from that to her unraveling that we distantly saw in the books.

And Alviarin…? She’s positioned to be even more scary than Liandrin in the next season, all of the black Ajah evil with no emotional baggage, she’s got the potential to do even more scary shit.

Siuan wasn’t fridged, it wasn’t kill your gays, and this show has seen several characters literally pulled apart from the inside out, so the decapitation was up there for violence, but certainly not the worst we’ve seen out of this show.

I dearly hope we get a season 4 so we can see what the consequences are for all of this.

Oh! Let’s touch on what happened with Moiraine. Book spoilers: she was actually supposed to die in her fight with Lanfear, and so they changed it. Different turning of the wheel. In the books Moiraine isn’t the main character, but she is in the show, fully she’s the main character if you ask me. And that they gave her and Siuan a relationship is amazing, I love it. But don’t take away Siuan’s agency just because Moiraine reacted to her wife’s death, that’s insane.

[veryoddbooks]

It's actually incredibly frustrating to me that I see so many people insisting that Siuan's death only happened, and only happened like THAT, for shock value and for Moiraine's angst. I do get that coming from people who aren't familiar with the things that happen in the books, especially since Moiraine and her reactions to it were focused on (which, it would be weird if it wasn't?), but I see people who I feel should definitely be picking up on some specific things about that scene that they didn't.

And let me just get out of the way, that I'm not trying to argue with people's feelings and opinions. I have no desire to make you like something you didn't. I have no desire to change people's mind. If you want to never watch the show again because of this, that's for you to decide. I don't want to change anyone's mind unless they want me to change their mind, and honestly, this isn't even me trying to make people ok with this. I'm not ok with this, if I'm being honest, but I am pretty sure I see what's happening, and I want to see it fulfilled. Like I have no interest in convincing anyone this is ok from a racial standpoint, from a queer standpoint, from a character standpoint or anything. This post isn't about that. This post is about explaining what I see this all being about only, because I've seen no discussion on this at all.

This post will immediately contain major book spoilers under the cut, so if you don't want to know, stop where you are now.

But Siuan's death being like that wasn't about Moiraine or shock. It was about setting up what's to come.

Egwene al'Vere, the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat.

And to say that, I don't necessarily mean its about Egwene, no. It's about Siuan. It's about how Siuan is going to stay there, haunting everyone even after she's gone because they're going to see her ghost in every single thing Egwene does the second the rebel Aes Sedai declare her Amyrlin.

Look at the first thing Siuan does whenever she's faced with Elaida after being stilled and beaten. She gets to her feet and stares down Elaida. Siuan looks absolutely wrecked while Elaida is put together, clean, regal to the point of gaudiness in her Amyrlin dress, trying so hard to put her newfound authority on display only to be immediately defied by the person in a shift that she tried to beat into submission and break.

Siuan gets up, looks her in the eye, and gives her speech (which I will get into in a moment) which is not just for Elaida to listen to but for every other Aes Sedai in the room and all of the ones that will hear about what happened here after. She is openly defiant to Elaida and proclaiming herself for the Light to her last, no matter what they have obviously physically done to her to make her change her story or grovel or beg. She is trying to get them to stop the path they are going on before its too late, and it seems like they don't listen because nothing is done to change what would happen. Nothing is done to stop her execution.

But you know they were all listening. You can see that Elaida is visibly shaken by this, but you also know that Elaida won't do anything to change her ways. Every other Aes Sedai in the room though? At least the ones that aren't darkfriends? They will remember this, and they will have a long time to sit and see everything Siuan Sanche just warned of coming true because they did nothing to stop Elaida's coup. Because they let this woman who only loved power use the weakest interpretations of the law to get rid of her predecessor and see that it only led to more and more chaos within the tower and without. There is going to be more Aes Sedai deaths. More Aes Sedai infighting. More death and destruction outside of the tower because of the Aes Sedai not intervening or choosing to intervene in the ways Elaida dictates.

They are going to have years to see this (because tv shows extend the timeline) and they are going to have years to waste away in their regret and pity as the shadow takes further hold of the tower and they can see nothing but threats surrounding them.

And then what will happen?

A young woman who proclaims to be Amyrlin will be captured by Elaida and brought to task. A woman that Elaida will try to break and make submit.

But this young woman is the same person who upon being beaten and dragged into cells by the Seanchan immediately stood up against her captor and defied her the second she was able to do so. This is the woman who promised death upon said captor even when she appeared at her lowest and most broken. This is the woman who has fought the Shadow and the Forsaken personally, who we will see stand up to Elaida, look her in the eyes, and defy her in exactly the same way that Siuan Sanche did all of those years ago. And by now the Aes Sedai will see that Siuan Sanche was right and her ghost is here to remind them of that.

Now let's look at Siuan's speech. I'm not gonna go line for line in the entire thing, but let's look at the content. First thing she says is that she loves Moiraine, which I think is where a lot of the claims for the "this is about Moiraine angst" comes from. But what does she do immediately after saying that she loved Moiraine, that she would die for Moiraine? She rats Moiraine out. She tells them everything that she and Moiraine had been doing, implicating Moiraine in a crime that up until this point they only could speculate that she was involved in. And she does this, because its how she needs to get the Hall to listen. To understand that they have been working for the light, that they have been working to find the Dragon and make him ready and all that they have been doing is to fight for the light, and all that the Hall should be doing is fight for the light.

She would die for Moiraine, but she will and has also given up Moiraine the second it looks like that is what the Light needs.

And then we have Egwene who loves Rand. Sans Lanfear's interference, I don't think Egwene would have been ready to give up Rand on her own yet if that's what she needed to do. But do you know when she did? In the arches. We see a future where she will be able to do exactly that and its the same future where she is the Amyrlin Seat.

Siuan explains the visions. Siuan tells them that their power doesn't come from tower, from the Seat. It comes from them and their actions and that the light shines through them by these actions. She more or less tells the Aes Sedai sitting there to leave the Tower, to disobey Elaida, the Amyrlin Seat. She tells Elaida to her face that she defies her.

I wonder who else might have such feelings about where Aes Sedai loyalties should be and would be willing to say as much to the Amyrlin Seat herself in front of other Aes Sedai. Who else would recognize the state of the Tower and be able to verbally acknowledge it while Aes Sedai are scared to whisper it.

The parallels to what Siuan and Egwene are doing/will later do have been there the entire time. We can see them the entire time.

When Egwene becomes Amyrlin and is taken prisoner by Elaida, she will be there with all of the context Siuan has laid down in her final scene. She will be there defying Elaida exactly as Siuan did and said to do, and just like Siuan we know she cannot be broken. We have seen that she cannot be broken. She is the physical manifestation of Siuan's final prophecy that she cannot burn. She is water itself. The daughter of the river, and let us not forget the very first time we see Egwene al'Vere of the Two Rivers.

[veryoddbooks]

The book series (which I love and have read and read and read again) is disgustingly misogynistic. Her remaining storyline had some highlights, but she’s essentially given away as fucking property.

Not only is the current actress better than that, I purpose to all the people saying “recast her so someone else can do it” that sucks. This tv show is doing narrative backfilps to eradicate the truly abhorrent misogyny in the source material and doing it so fucking well.

An amazing, moving, devastating and worthy end to an amazing actress’s performance.

“Siuan was fridged for Moiraine!” Mm no. You don’t get an epic death scene voiceover speech that guides the whole narrative if you’re being fridged. You don’t get the conclusion of your own narrative arc that has been prophesizing your downfall from s1. Also here’s an alternative: what if Siuan’s last act on this earth, after she publicly declared her love for Moiraine, was to give the love of her life the strength she needed to live and defeat the Dark. Without even knowing it. By standing for the Light, for the Aes Sedai and her oaths, Siuan saved Moiraine. What if you gave her that agency back that she fought so hard to keep as she made the ultimate sacrifice? And you bet your ass if she had to do it again she would.

[veryoddbooks]

“Siuan was fridged for Moiraine!” Mm no. You don’t get an epic death scene voiceover speech that guides the whole narrative if you’re being fridged. You don’t get the conclusion of your own narrative arc that has been prophesizing your downfall from s1. Also here’s an alternative: what if Siuan’s last act on this earth, after she publicly declared her love for Moiraine, was to give the love of her life the strength she needed to live and defeat the Dark. Without even knowing it. By standing for the Light, for the Aes Sedai and her oaths, Siuan saved Moiraine. What if you gave her that agency back that she fought so hard to keep as she made the ultimate sacrifice? And you bet your ass if she had to do it again she would.

[veryoddbooks]

I feel like I did more for binderary today than at any one point of Feb 😅

I was in the zone yesterday and today tho, burned thru sewing, gluing, trimming, sanding, painting edges and making the cases! Tomorrow I’m going to get all the htv cut and weeded (which is sooo tedious). And then it’ll be time to case in, possibly mailing them out this week 🤞

[veryoddbooks]

Really happy with this D&D journal! It’s going in the press now, not pictured the black painted edges that really finish it off!

[veryoddbooks]

What a time to be alive and be a nerd. D20 is executing a cultural takeover one niche group at a time 💖💖💖

[veryoddbooks]

something harrowing and ironic about the fact that people are misinterpreting this post and yelling at her about how STEM is important.

please learn to read.