Howdy, I'm Andrew, a software engineer who specializes in writing security-related application code for networking and cryptographic products. I'm a massive WoT fan. As of 2026-3-11, I have: Discovered WoT by virtue of picking up Crossroads of Twilight in a bookstore circa 2005 or so. Read all of the main series and New Spring twice. Listened to the main series audio books about six or seven times. Converted The Complete Wheel of Time and TWOTC into markdown↗ and JSON↗ files for my own use. Started getting meaningfully involved in online WoT discussion during the 2020 pandemic. Founded The Band of the Red Hand↗ in 2021. Read the Big White Book twice. Skimmed much of The Wheel of Time Companion. Read Origins of the Wheel of Time and given a 2-hour review↗ of it. Made a "pilgrimage" to Charleston, including the library at The Citadel, Ogier Street, and the sidewalk in front of the property where Robert Jordan wrote The Wheel of Time. On the way back, I stopped by a suburban neighborhood with street names like "Farshaw" and "Cauthon". Incidentally, the Farshaw street sign was very askew↗, as though it had been hit by a dump truck or some such. A future such trip will involve perusing Jordan's notes. Recruited both of my sisters into reading WoT. The younger has finished the series and is fairly active in my Discord. The older has great difficulty liking any of the significant female characters except Moiraine and Nynaeve and bailed on the series after Birgitte was ripped from Tel'aran'rhiod in The Fires of Heaven. Assembled a Mat Cauthon costume. I'm still working on procuring the ring, the foxhead medallion, and the throwing knives. He's not my favorite character, but he's probably the most entertaining character. He's also the character whose physical description I most closely match. Also, as founder of a Discord called The Band of the Red Hand↗, I've gone by the alias Mat Cauthon frequently. An Ashandarei (or close enough) A wide-brimmed black hat. A green "coat," brown pants, roughly "period"-compatible boots A dice cup A black scarf. Obtained a license plate named after a WoT character. Acquired the following WoT items: Hardcovers of the whole series, The Wheel of Time Companion, TWORJTWOT, Origins of the Wheel of Time, Unfettered (A Fire Within the Ways), Unfettered III (River of Souls), Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy (New Spring short story) (both hardcover and paperback versions), and A Fire in the Cradle↗. Mass market paperbacks of From the Two Rivers, To the Blight, The Hunt Begins, and New Threads in the Pattern. Mass market paperbacks of books 1 through 9. I've since given most of these away. A first edition paperback of The Eye of the World via an auction of Robert Jordan's estate. An advance review copy of Crossroads of Twilight via an auction of Robert Jordan's estate. An uncorrected proof of TWORJTWOT via an auction of Robert Jordan's estate. All the graphic novels (New Spring, The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt) A large number of the The Wheel of Time Collectible Card Game cards. The books and a poster for The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game. The Patterns of the Wheel coloring book The demo for The Wheel of Time (video game); don't have it any more. The "remaster" for The Wheel of Time (video game) Username Androl isn't a favorite character of mine (and I absolutely believe it's a shame Logain's story suffered to give us Androl), but he's an interesting character and I happen to love the leatherworking excerpt despite having no knowledge of the subject myself. He also happens to match the regex↗ string ^Andr[e-w]{2}$ just as my first name does, so there's that. Personal life I'm married to an ESL↗ Guatemalan and together we're raising my son (born circa Covid-19) and my daughter (three years younger). Two cents Loial - Excellent character, excellent person. I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. Egwene al'Vere - Good character, pretty bad person. Not a Mary Sue. Perrin Aybara - Excellent character, superb person, held back by his storyline. Would never kill his wife or get married while pining after his friend's girl. Faile Bashere - Occasionally annoying, but I don't hate her. Mat Cauthon - Excellent character, good person, some terrible traits. Not a thief! Moiraine Damodred - One of the best female characters in fiction. Not a fool who couldn't selectively truth-tell out of a paper bag. Nynaeve al'Meara - Not a fan of early Nynaeve, but I don't hate her. Big fan of late Nynaeve. Would never try to kill someone on impulse, especially when she needs said someone. Lan Mandragoran - Excellent character, superb person. Absolutely had something "to die for" before meeting Moiraine. Androl Genhald - Don't love him, don't hate him. Very interesting, but I think it was a mistake to curtail Logain Ablar for his sake. Elayne Trakand - I like early Elayne. I dislike her more and more as the series progresses. Making her the overall commander of the Light was silly. The books give no solid reason to conclude she and Aviendha were ever romantically involved, and the baths are not remotely evidence to the contrary. Bela - Awesome, but not the Creator. Lanfear - Dead. Brandon Sanderson - Good author, excellent worldbuilder. Lots of shortcomings in TGS-AMOL, but did better than I ever expected or would reasonably have thought possible. WoT Romance - Conforms very well to my preferences. I don't care to read much romance, so the frequent "off-screen" development works well. Honestly, I could have done with a little less of the "on-screen" stuff. The Comics - I own a copy of the first volume of New Spring, but I'm not really a fan of the medium. The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time - Fun, interesting. Unreliable and often subtly wrong in its wording. Perfectly fine as an "in-universe" document. The Wheel of Time Companion - Good and useful, but with (understandably) so little novel information that I've had a hard time working through it and have yet to finish it as of 2026-03-28. Favorite Quotes WoT books ranked Rating is from 0 (no redeeming value at all) to 49 (barely dislike overall) to 50 (neutral overall) to 51 (barely like overall) to 100 (perfect). Title Enjoyment Quality Origins of the Wheel of Time 51 55 New Spring 59 65 Crossroads of Twilight 60 59 The Wheel of Time Companion 60 99 A Crown of Swords 68 70 The Path of Daggers 68 68 Winter's Heart 70 75 A Memory of Light 70 88 The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time 75 80 Towers of Midnight 78 80 The Dragon Reborn 80 75 Lord of Chaos 80 76 The Gathering Storm 80 90 River of Souls 80 85 Knife of Dreams 83 90 The Fires of Heaven 85 78 A Fire Within the Ways 85 85 The Eye of the World 89 85 The Great Hunt 90 90 The Shadow Rising 95 95 Original content The Cardplayers by Mat Cauthon↗, parody of The Cardplayers by Corb Lund The Land of the Rising Sun by Thom Merrilin, parody of House of the Rising Sun as popularized by The Animals A Limerick by Matrim Cauthon Concerning the Band of the Red Hand Much Too Hasty, parody of Ridin' by Chamillionaire and White & Nerdy by Weird Al Yankovic Shepherd's Paradise↗, parody of Amish Paradise by Weird Al Yankovic and Gangsta Paradise by Coolio. Void of Colours↗, parody of Hoist the Colours by Hans Zimmer et al as popularized by Bobby Bass et al Winternight↗, parody of Silent Night by Joseph Mohr

Also when channelers are Turned IIRC. Of course the unreliable narrator caviat still applies.

Several years ago, another fan mentioned to me on Reddit that Goodkind once mocked Jordan for his amyloidosis and I later saw Daniel Greene also make this claim. Like many who were told this, I pretty much accepted this (though IIRC I did do a little verification first) and began repeating it to others. I aspire to be a male counterpart to Morvrin Thakanos when it comes to verification of facts. So last year, I hesitated to make a meme based on this distasteful factoid and decided to properly vet the claim first. I found various important posts relevant to the subject. Most notably this included Rob "mystar" Wilson's 2006-6-3 post on sffworld, and of course Robert Jordan's 2007-8-22 blog post right here on Dragonmount. But I couldn't track down the original letter and of course had to wade through a sea of fans repeating the conclusion without the sources (or with only indirect sources). So I gave up. For completeness' sake, here is the content of Rob "mystar" Wilson's 2006-6-3 post, absent the now-unavailable picture he attached: Yesterday, on one of the ~40 WoT Discord servers I'm in, the subject of Goodkind and The Sword of Truth came up with someone who just finished their first read, which naturally led to someone else repeating this claim. This nerd-sniped me back into this particular rabbithole and I made a few discoveries. First, I found @Sirayn's 2009-11-29 post here on Dragonmount. It's an excellent post - my conclusions here don't differ massively from... hers? Between her small quotes from Goodkind's letter, some pointers in a discussion on the Dragonmount Discord from @ThomasShriver (Light, I hope that's the right Thomas) and @SinisterDeath, and the footnote on a 2011 Theoryland entry, I finally managed to track down the original content of Goodkind's letter (presuming that this letter posted to Goodkind's website on 2006-6-2 is the very same letter Wilson posted to sffworld on 2006-6-3, which seems a safe enough assumption even for Morvrin). Now, to the purpose of this post. First, to reproduce Goodkind's letter in a more public place than the Wayback Machine's 2006-7-10 archive, since posts like Sirayn's generally point to the sffworld post, which no longer contains the picture of the letter, and since web searches usually don't yield WM results: Second, to re-iterate Sirayn's conclusion that "It's difficult to positively confirm whether Goodkind was making a dig at Jordan, in that letter or via another medium." Third, to state my personal opinion that Jordan was likely (though not certainly) mistaken in his interpretation of the letter as a dig at himself, perhaps due to preconceptions towards the letter by whomever brought it to his attention (his response came over a year later) (unless Jordan was operating on other knowledge I do not have awareness of, which seems mildly unlikely but very plausible). The full context of the letter includes Goodkind's [relatively minor] health scare and whatever Locus magazine announcement Rob Wilson was citing as the impetus for his post (presumably in Locus #544 from the previous month, which I've been unable to track down, or maybe #545, though I think that was published later that month). Given that context, Goodkind's letter does not seem to come out of nowhere, and seems instead to be an earnest attempt to reassure his own fans as to the state of his health at the time. (However, it is obviously very understandable why Jordan may have misinterpreted things.) Fourth, to offer my humble advice that people refrain from repeating as fact the claim that Goodkind mocked Jordan for his amyloidosis. By all means, mock the man; he was certainly pretentious enough and by all accounts had many failings. I myself strongly agree with the zeitgeist that at least some elements in The Sword of Truth were lifted from The Wheel of Time. For example, the Stone of Tear[s], magic collars specifically for enslaving magic users, male magic users being "oppressed" by an order of female magic users, etc. (Even though various others may have been coincidences [such as the similarity between the red rod ter'angreal and the Mord-Sith Agiel, or Rand and Richard both having desert rulers for biological fathers, common tropes ["Creators"], etc.) But one should not assert as fact unprovable claims about people, no matter how objectionable those people may be. Apologies for the long wind, which definitely did not arise in the Mountains of Mist, Androlf aka Matdrolf aka ncsuandrew12 P.S. Please don't misread this as a defense of Goodkind (or The Sword of Truth) in general, nor as an attack on Robert Jordan. I know which of the two I'd prefer to have met, and it'd definitely have to be the one with the Dragon gates that I took my four-year-old son to see. P.P.S. My IRL name is Andrew F; feel free to say hi at JordanCon next month. I'll be the tall white guy with bifocals and a (non-knife) scar on my upper lip. P.P.P.S. Apologies that the title ended up being so very, very wrong, but fans of Robert Jordan are accustomed to actual product vastly exceeding the length that was initially promised. P.P.P.P.S. Another claim I've run across is that Goodkind made some comment with respect to Jordan's amyloidosis at a convention, but that has obviously been much harder to source, and isn't nearly as widespread.