Zia @ZiaMacPine@awoo.space

@iBolt07 or... or... you could eat some of this garlic butter pasta with me....

@iBolt07 but I just ate so much garlic...

Also the honesty of saying how many people will go along to get along and thus become collaborators. What care an inn keeper for occupation if theyred still paid and keep their property

I appreciate the honesty about how hard it is to organize a resistence to occupation but it is tense and exhausting at the same time

@Wuskythehusky looks festive and fun. Love the lighting

@crocodile hey! Its great to see you!

Turkey Hash

Alright time to make thanksgiving hash

Honestly letting go of anger is very hard for me

@iBolt07 no thanks those things stress me out. Hope everyone has a ton of fun though!

Thats where it raises questions for me on intent because the seanchan might be enslaving any magic user they can find in handmaid's tale style camps and enforced labor camps, among other things... but theyre also delivering food, health care, and stability for destabilized regions. Which does raise questions for me on intent

The Seanchan restored order, ended famines and stabilized the local economies. Even before the forsaken showed up to cause chaos and before the aiel war none of these places were jn great shape.

And there is certainly a comment about how colonizers take advantage of local instability... but if thats the intention...

At the same time its also clear the Seanchan are fixing serious problems. The nations the seanchan occupy easily were destabilized weakened states that that were riven with centuries of internal civil wars and conflicts. Arad Doman had no government. Tarabon was in utter chaos with literal famines. Amadicia was essentially ruled by white cloaks. Altara was essentially city states with its osstensible capitol of Ebou Dar barely stable.

All this to say I am not sure if Robert Jordan and his wife meant the seanchan to reflect colonialism and colonizer mindsets or if they intended anglo readers of the books seeing the european stand in nations of the westlands getting occupied by the seanchan (who are presented as an antagonistic and alien culture) to connect those dots.

I think if it was written now the dynamic between tylin and mat would be seen as readers in a very different light then readers at the time for instance

Reading this series for the first time all completed naturally gives me a different experience from those readers who read the books as they came out

Still the politics of the book are very centered in the 1990s (or at least the gender and sexual politics)