My favorite comedic scenes involve Mat. Him constantly trying to get away from the pull of the pattern, him clumsily presenting himself before the Wise Ones to ask permission to enter that special space of Ter'angerals and doing a poor imitation of Rand's request. But one of my favorites is when Zen Rand goes before the Seanchan court accompanied by Mat who is skittish and afraid shit is going to go down and Rand starts singing the Song to make plant life start growing around them and everyone is freaking out. But Mat is sitting there tapping his foot along to the beat and is like, "I know this song.. is that [insert random song title]" and Rand is whispers back, "you're not helping." 🤣

So, I had been celebrating (possibly unjustly) the cancellation of the TV series. Someone argued that the difference in the show can be chopped up to this being a new turning of the wheel, but I just think this is a cheap excuse for the creators to take creative liberties (possibly to the extent that they only read the cliff notes and never actually read the series). And the more I thought about this angle of approach I remembered a part in the book series when Rand is seeing alternate versions of himself and he ultimately dies or gets turned to the dark side and the Dark One wins. And as death takes Rand or as he falls into darkness he hears the Dark One saying, "I win again Lews Therin" and then that is repeated over and over and over and over again. Does this mean that every other alternative universe has fallen to the Dark One and our story (the books) is the last universe standing? I mean, it makes sense because it makes the stakes super high right? It wouldn't really make sense that our Rand fails, but there is still another chance in another universe cause then why care about Rand's challenge? If this is all true it just pisses me off even more. These people didn't bother to understand the source material the way the creators of The Expanse TV series did and they're trying to make excuse after excuse for screwing up. I'm convinced it was a cash grab from the start and there was no real earnest intention of making a good TV series. Just a cheap piece of crap they could crap out because they invested in the Ring's of Power and decided they could use those resources to ride on the coattails of another popular high-fantasy epic series.

Here is this sweet, innocent, small village girl promised to a tall, handsome, noble young man. Suddenly they're swooped away on some adventure leading to 3 gorgeous young women who immediately start sizing him up and portioning him out claiming, "oh the pattern, the pattern!" Mean while they pull the bait and switch on her. They flash Galad in front of her to make her head swim and bombard her psychologically considering the culture shock she must be through through. Plus... trollocs y'all... That's some scary stuff. And she ultimately ends up with Gawayn; who, it could be argued, was a significant handicap for her in the end. And then sacrificing herself to help save the world. Also she's enslaved, tortured, burdened with some of the most significant problems facing their world and who knows what else I'm forgetting. Egwene deserved so much better... ?