My reaction to finally discovering what Moiraine sees in Thom

[Marie 73]

She has fallen in love with Thom Merrilin, in part for what she claims is a foolish reason: He makes her laugh.

 

[Ekho 52]

Quote

They have been rummaging through her experiences, making her relive them in the form of dreams that seem like real life, raping her mind in effect. They concentrated on things that engendered strong emotion, whether love or hate or fear of whatever, so long as it is strong. The point is to feed off the engendered emotion. When repetition dulls the emotion, they would alter the events to make the emotions strong again. They always made these changes in slow increments, just enough to strengthen the emotion again without wasting any. Example: Lan dumped in the pond, first just as it really happened, then he became rougher at it until [he] beat her first, and she was so shocked she could not channel; then he made love to her; then he raped her; then she killed him. Slow progressions through possibilities, however improbable they were in reality, just so long as they intensify the emotions. They could not introduce things outside of her memory – for example, somebody she has never seen – but anything in there already could be rearranged any way they wanted. Example: she could as a grown woman watch her mother (dead before she reached adulthood) plot and execute the murder of her father (who died in battle when she was a child) with a collection of people glimpsed during her travels.

This is the same thing that was done to Lanfear, until she was “rescued” by Moridin/Ishamael.

One set of memories never had to be heightened or changed. Memories of Thom always produced as strong an emotion every time, just as they were. She thinks they are what have kept her sane. She is surprised that years have not passed.

...She has fallen in love with Thom Merrilin, in part for what she claims is a foolish reason: He makes her laugh.

 

Why is it, that whenever a female character is in need of punishment, or degredation or just something to alter her character arc, she ends up being f*****g raped? Like I have sooo many issues with this, even if it is "mind rape." I hated it in GoT, and I hate it here, and I'm glad it wasn't expanded on in the books (even if it would have explained why she was so stand-offish with Lan).

It also seems incredulous that Moiraine is so in love with Thom , that his memories are protected, but those of her parents aren't? And Lan, like even if it wasn't romantic, I can't imagine she travelled with him for so long without loving him. I hate this trope that romantic love trumps all other kinds. Especially with the insta-love that RJ was so fond of, like we barely see any developing relationship between Moiraine and Thom, she gone for...7 books? and then they're madly in love. Come on. Neither of them are young enough, or naieve enough that that seems likely. He also never seemed that funny.

Also, the fact that the same thing was done to Lanfear and yet she still comes out obsessed with Rand/Lews Therin really raises some issues.

[Marie 73]

I'll comment on the rape thing later, but I'm still caught up on how she apparently has multiple memories of Thom. How?! When?! While Nynaeve was feeding Lan bad food, were her and Thom bumping uglies?? 

It would explain Thom's thought during their game of houses battle about how Moiraine had all the grace a man could want including laughing at his quips... Like how do you know this. When did she do that. 

[Kaitlin 22]

I don’t remember her laughing. At him. I remember her laughing at Perrin multiple times due to him being an innocent himbo when they were traveling together. Doing himbo things. 
 

Am I missing it? When did they travel together the most. It was EofW right? And then also in Tear. 

[Kaitlin 22]

Right, I’m not ignoring the r**e thing either. It’s difficult to talk about because I would like to hulk smash but it also induces headaches. I hate that they always default to this for us. 

[Marie 73]

So about this mind rape business. 

I wish the books had made clear the trauma she had been through, even if going into such gory details isn't really needed. But as is, her distance with Lan makes no sense. You can state that the Finn messed with her memories without saying the specifics. It might also explain the lack of a Siuan reunion: maybe those memories were also violated. 

But my big thing is, she has been tortured. She has suffered psychological abuse. The fact that she's portrayed as just jumping back into the fold as normal (Lan aside) is just unrealistic. Or at least, not sustainable. There is no way you have all your memories, except for the four Thom ones, altered and abused and you come out of that without ptsd. The Finns crafted a whole nightmare scenario for her using Mordin; these are not nice foxes. Which makes them leaving the Thom memories alone even more suspect. Her being so in love would have made some horror involving Thom that much greater. But I digress. There is no way she doesn't have nightmares. There's no way she doesn't wake up in the night in a cold sweat or screaming. And Randland lacks mental health services. There's that one Aes Sedai who's interested in healing Warders minds, but that seems more like a curiosity. And is specific to Warders. And Moiraine is probably too paranoid to trust another Aes Sedai. 

Knowing what she's been through and how she's still able to get the job done is truly heroic. But the reader would never know. It also would explain why she might want nothing to do with politics (specifically stupid Elayne being the stupid queen of her country), because she's just drained. Why she jumped on marrying, since she needs some happiness after all that. 

So while the rape troupe is trash, the lack of further character development is disappointing. 

 

[Kaitlin 22]

We don’t know anything about any of what she’s going through. Why didn’t Sanderson deal with it. 

[Marie 73]

On 3/7/2021 at 7:08 PM, Kaitlin said:

We don’t know anything about any of what she’s going through. Why didn’t Sanderson deal with it. 

Because he needed all the pages for Perrin.

[Ekho 52]

18 hours ago, Marie said:

Because he needed all the pages for Perrin.

I still get angry thinking about it😡

[Kaitlin 22]

She could have been hiding out from them. 

Or waiting in limbo without the r*** because she’s clever and could easily have figured out a way to avoid the worst of it. 

[Ekho 52]

There's a part of me that really wishes her and Lanfear would have been forced into some sort of situation where they had to work together to escape. Can you imagine how much Lanfear would have driven Moiraine insane.