How many stand-alone works do you own written by a single author?

take "stand-alone work" to mean books not related as a series, the series can count as one work (ie me owning all of NK Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy and The City We Became would count as two stand-alone works, even though it's 4 books). Owning multiple copies also only counts as 1 stand-alone work, sorry edition-hoarders

Eeeeeeesh, I don't know how to answer this because I'm not sure whether LeGuin's various books set in various corners of the Ekumen count as a "series." I personally don't think so, but I may be weird.

I, uh, have pretty much all of them, though, even the less-than-amazing early ones. Plus Lavinia and all of Earthsea and the Powers series and a few more.

Pretending this is the America Ferrera monologue about womanhood that got her nominated for an oscar

The fact that Rand as our protagonist gets a heroes journey to the letter until we get to the last step and RJ pops in to be like “actually, no. After all the trauma and change you’ve undergone you’re so irrevocably different that you Can’t ever return home. There’s no home to return to, because while you have changed your home has changed too, and it’s so different you wouldn’t even recognize it. You. Can’t. Go. Home.”

Who hurt him?

Oh right the war.

One of those ‘pick two pills’ things but it’s things I actually want

Perrin' return to Emond's Field in TSR is. Fuck. He crushes the cup in his hand when he hears his family is dead. He cuts himself and doesn't realize it. I've never seen another author show that complete detachment from the body before. Never once does Jordan say Perrin feels like he's floating or anything; he just shows the way Perrin rolls right over the news. It's literally too much to react to, so he just doesn't react. Everyone in the room is staring at him. He starts asking questions about everything else because what do you do when you hear that?

And then Faile, who's decided she loves him by now, snaps first. She says "I have had enough" but she means "I can't let you tough this out".

The guy who's spent his whole life afraid of hurting other people has just been hurt as badly as a person can be and all he knows how to do is care. He can't do anything except what he's always done: try not to hurt people. He immediately dives off into plans of what he can do to keep his actions from getting more people killed. And Faile has to grab him and smother him and TELL him that he's been hurt! He doesn't know yet! He hasn't figured it out! She has to pull his head into her belly and tell him that his entire life has been burned to ash!

It's just that the real tragedy of this arc for Perrin is that he's never known selfishness because all he's ever worried about is hurting people. When I first read these books, I thought that having all the Aybaras die was a little overkill, but now I understand: anything less wouldn't have shaken Perrin like this. He's such a stolid personality that it takes one of the worst pains a person can experience to get him to break.

And god! fuck! The fact that Faile is the one to break him! She's his fusebox, his failure point! She knows now that he'll hold himself an inch from disaster for as long as he can and never let himself feel the pain, so she ATTACKS him with it so he can start to heal! She's the cold bucket of water on his face, the crack of a relocated shoulder, the axe cutting off a gangrenous finger. She can tell that he's going to die later if she doesn't break him in pieces right here. And because she loves him, she can do it. It hurts her to do it every single time, but she can, and she knows nobody else will. God I love these two

Was I right about this or was I right about it? Perrin lovers come sit by the fire with me. Perrin haters freeze in the cold winter night.

WoT Meta: Prophecies, Fated Lovers, and Robert Jordan's knack for finding the nuance underneath the myth

One complaint I've never understood about the way Jordan writes romances is the persistent claim that he over uses the 'prophesied love' trope.

In part for me, I think it's a little bit folks not seeing the forest for the trees. WoT is fundamentally about the relationship between myth and reality: the place where the fallen angel meets the disgruntled academic, the bitter accountant, and the man who never got over being too short. It's a story where the messiah is real and dealing with chronic pain and PTSD from his stigmata. Where a legendary High Queen has to deal with both marching armies to the apocalypse, and the irritating banal realities of being pregnant at the same time. Of course Jordan digs into the idea of prophesied love- it's a huge theme in folklore and mythologies the world over. Jordan wants to dig into what it really means for there to be a person out there that you are destined to be with: that is a match for you, decreed so by the universe itself....and that you get absolutely no agency and choice in choosing. If anything Tumblr, which adores the 'red string of fate'/'soulmark'/'soulmates share pain'/'world is black until you look into your soulmates eyes' (to name a few of the more prevalent ones- some of which Tumblr practically invented), should be super on board for the parade of fated lovers to be found in WoT. It's nothing short of baffling to me that their not more fondly viewed.

And I think that is tied to the follow up complaint: the criticism that Jordan 'uses prophecy love as a replacement for a romance arc'. But that is something that is just. Patently untrue.

Cause the thing is that is how soulmates are often used...in the majority of soulmate au fanfics you find here and on AO3- an excuse to get the really hard part (two characters realizing they are right for each other and love each other, then having the communication skills to articulate that so they can start a relationship) out of the way, so the author can focus on the fluff or angst or other part they and the audience want to get to. And that's fine! But that's not at all what Jordan does. Just like he does with the Prophecies of the Dragon, or Elaida's fortellings, or even just most of Min's viewings- Jordan takes the idea of the prophecy soulmate, this person decreed by some higher power to be Perfect For You and being right about it, and digs deeper, shining it in different lights and attacking it from different angles. Jordan gives the concept of the soulmate teeth, explores the spines and the sharp points of it: is it real love if it's fated and not your choice? Can you trust your own feelings, or are they fate's design working against you as surely as Aphrodite worked against Helene or Eros against Apollo? What is it like, to be bound to see someone one day, and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that you would love this stranger? This question mark? This wildcard?

Rand's relationships with Min and Aviendha, as well as Mat and Tuon's relationship are great examples of this conundrum. Min and Aviendha have completely opposite reactions to the same information that demonstrates their unique strengths and weaknesses as characters and people, while Tuon and Mat's courtship is all about two people who know they will marry trying to figure out what that means, without ever confronting the reality of those prophecies directly.

This is pretty excellent. I think I'd add, though, that the reason a lot of people can miss the forest for the trees on this topic is that Jordan did tend to speedrun the initial stages of a romance--or he seemed to, without actually doing so.

In a lot of stories, the first 10% of "falling in love" is a really big deal. The part where the characters are just friends or acquaintances or enemies, but things begin to change. The way a writer outlines the very first few changes in attitude can set the tone for the entire romance in a very important way. The word "love" usually gets introduced to the equation after those first few beats--e.g. meet-cute, first date, first disagreement/wedge between them--and is often a sign that the story is escalating to a new act. It can kinda work like this in real life, too.

Jordan threw the word "love" around really early in several of the relationships you mentioned, which is a core part of the subversion, but creates some dissonance for people (like me, on first read) who are used to the more traditional rom-com/general romance subplot story structure. By inwardly admitting that they're in love with someone long before the "requisite" setups and problems--which Jordan still included afterward in many places--the characters seem to jump past the first act of a "traditional" romance arc as seen in a lot of pop culture.

I agree that as the relationships progressed, Jordan established their nuance and showed how he was subverting certain concepts in each, but right at the beginning of many of them, he established a pretty non-traditional pace that I'd bet threw a LOT of people off their rhythm. It's part of why the show's romance arc setups have been so drastically different from the books'; a lot of the same nuance can be explored later down the line, but the initial pacing is much more palatable to an audience conditioned for mainstream romances.

As I am decidedly not heterosexual I've only ever been able to examine the Lanfear stuff through a detached lens of narrative and analytic interest (though the magic thing about Robert Jordan is that basically his entire world and plot can stand up to that scrutiny), but heterosexual men have assured me repeatedly over the years that Lanfear's 'Selene' act in TGH a) would have worked on them and b) did represent a level of appeal that's Rand's ensuing Stupid(TM) re: Lanfear makes a lot of sense.

With that in mind I find it hilarious how the show has updated Lanfear's manipulation attempt, not to appeal to Rand but the audience, and what that says about the way what is attractive in women has shifted in the twenty odd years since TGH came out.

Basically, mysterious intelligent beautiful maidens who are eternally grateful to their rescuer are OUT and worldly confidant financially superior older women who wield their power over you in only benevolent and/or fun ways are IN.

not including "no wiggle room" bc that is insane

everyone who says "on time is early" is getting their teeth knocked out with a brick

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

OMG

This one’s an always-reblog, because who knows who needs it and hasn’t seen it yet?

Today in niche genres of joke that I can never get enough of and will probably still be secretly thinking about four years later

@pigeonsparty I’m not leaving that in the tags, how dare you make me cackle like that

Lol I’m glad you like it. My sister and I came up with it when we were kids and it’s been a brainworm ever since

Ant heritage post,

For @errorbrainloading! An official poster for Valan Luca's Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvel's and Wonders! Happy Holidays!

I wonder what it’s like to choose your own fate said Elayne and five minutes later she chose to intrude on the worlds worst field trip

- Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

look idgaf about actual start dates on seasons those bitches are divided into Months for me not Dates. you're telling me that December, classically what people in the northern hemisphere think of as THE winter month, is actually 2/3 a Fall Month ? fuck off. june is 2/3 spring? eat my ass

winter is december through february. spring is march through may. summer is june through august. autumn is september through november. i Do make the rules here

Ishy and Lanfear blooper