I decided to have a look through my old files, as I knew I had put together some silly Wheel of Time-related things years and years ago. It was last updated in 2005 according to the old HTML file, but probably pre-dates that. So, to celebrate the release of the final book TODAY, let’s have a Randland giggle. Slightly updated to reflect Robert Jordan’s passing and that the series will actually finish with the release of A Memory of Light.
You know you’re a Wheel of Time addict when …
“How come you aren’t giving over all your creative energies to wotmania! I’m shocked!”
– Mike Mackert, founder of wotmania (which apparently closed down in 2009 – I’m great at keeping up …)
- You read another fantasy-series, someone is injured, and you wonder why the hell they don’t get an Aes Sedai to Heal
- You try to conjure up a fireball to play with when you’re bored
- You start to suspect that people in your surroundings are Black Ajah
- You’re previously so rich vocabulary of swearwords now only include “Light”, “Burn me/you” and “Blood and [bloody] ashes”
- You hide every time you see a raven
- You write your wish list for Santa, and it includes a Serpent ring and a shawl, or a sword and a colourshifting cloak
- You get Yin & Yang-symbols, and paint over the dots
- You make bracelets of yarn in the colours of the eight Ajahs
- You start to compare Wheel of Time to reality
- You get a braid you can pull / a beard your girlfriend can pull when annoyed
- You make all the clothes ever described, even the one Moghedien wore in the Tanchico Panarch’s Palace in Tel’aran’rhiod
- You ask the library if they’ve got a copy of “The Travels of Jain Farstrider”
- You can’t avoid drawing parallells between Tel’aran’rhiod and lucid dreams/astral body projection/OOBE
- You’re watching some TV-show starring Melissa Gilbert, and see a woman with black hair -and a stripe of white- and realize in fear that it must be Rianna Adomeran using a false name
- Someone asks you something and the only thing you reply is that no one knows how the Wheel turns
- You go to an educational adviser and ask how you can become Aes Sedai/Asha’man
- You think “A sword. Maybe I should get meself a sword”…
- You buy an old rusty sword, repair it, and get a heron engraved on the blade
- You start your own Black/White/Grey Tower
- You can say at least ten phrases in the Old Tongue
- Your local librarians know you personally
- You’ve got your own Wheel of Time-site with homemade pictures of the characters
- Your homepage has links to every Wheel of Time site there is
- Robert Jordan once asked you for inspiration
- You’ve Bonded at least one Warder to you
- You head off to look for Salidar
- You can also seem untouched by the heat/cold
- Tarmon Gai’don worries you more than anything else
- You expect your mother to correct a red-fringed shawl over her shoulders every time she’s mad at you
- Your teachers are Dreadlords, except the P.E. one — Nae’blis
- You can explain ji’e’toh like a native Aiel
- “I have toh” is more used than “How can I ever repay you?”
- You look with disgust at swords
- If it hadn’t been for the “Warder-thing” you would’ve chosen another Ajah
- You frighten your kids with stories about trollocks and myrddraals
- You start to feel stressed out because Tarmon Gai’don is close, after all
- The voice inside your head is starting to take over … more and more …
- The library *still* hasn’t got a copy of “The Travels of Jain Farstrider”
- You make up your own Ajahs when needed
- You try to channel saidin/saidar
- You actually succeed in channeling saidin/saidar
- You take sign language lessons hoping to be able to learn Maiden Handtalk
- You take gai’shain
- You start to compare Wheel of Time with Star Wars and/or the Belgariad
- You can dance the sa’sara
- You drink kaf instead of coffee, and ride s’redit instead of elephants
- Your mint tea is consumed within an unhealthily short period of time
- You’ve learned “The Colour of Trust” by heart
- You start waffling in the Old Tongue when you’re really ill
- Pawprints in conctete give you the creeps
- You start to develop theories about the characters and/or plot
- Your computer’s “Start Windows”-sound is “The Wheel of Time turns as Ages come and go” (etc.) from the beginning of the books
- You start to believe in the Creator, the Wheel, and the Pattern
- You’ve noticed the extra person on the EotW cover
- You know what you should do if you see a skinny innkeeper
- No one beats you when it comes to playing dice
- The only things you laugh at are Wheel of Time-related jokes
- You run whenever you’re going somewhere
- You blame the Whitecloaks for the Inquisition
- You don’t trust men in white
- You’ve ever danced the Sa’sara
- You read the one about asking the library if they’ve got “the Travels of Jain Farstrider” and decide to do the same sometime
- Your anxiety about Tarmon Gai’don requires an expert psychologist
- Every time it rains you think that the draught finally has let go, thanks to the Bowl of Winds … and then you realize what’s real and what isn’t
- You would sell your soul to the Dark One if you could only be at least an extra in a filming of the Books
- You refer to eating sticks as “sursa” and paranoia as “the dreads”
- Hotels are for dweebs – inns are what’s happening!
- You know more about the people in the Books than what you know about your relatives
- You say “the Books” (capital B) instead of “the Wheel of Time-books”
- The Sahara desert looks real nice and comfy …
- You were thrown out from the concert/opera house after you tried to grab hold of a horn from the orchestra during a concert, while you shouted something about Artur Hawkwing’s warriors coming back if someone blew the Horn …
- … And you tried to get the horn player to say whether or not he’s a darkfriend before you let the guards drag you away
- You get something religious in your eyes every time you see a wheel
- Balefire is more effective than a-bombs, which you try to convince the Pentagon about
- You mistrust every woman in a red-fringed shawl
- You wonder what reality’s equal to Oosquai is – so that you can try it
- You play “Stone, scissors, bag” (“Stone, Knife, Paper”) with your friends
- You wrote to Robert Jordan to ask him to get a move on, since you were waiting impatiently for the next book
- “No one knows how the Wheel turns” is your meditation mantra
- You rather avoid wearing white dresses/clothing …
- You would have liked to take a look inside the Creator’s (Robert Jordan, that is) brain just to see what will happen later on in the series
- You build models of Randland cities in SimCity
- You prefer to go to a Wisdom than a doctor nowadays
- You refer to sandboxes as “the Three-fold Land”
- You seriously believe you’re the extra person on the EotW cover
My copy of A Memory of Light is on pre-order and I will hopefully receive it some time today. To say I’m excited and nervous is an understatement.