Re: wound not related to Taim or Masema - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 14/06/2010 10:58:40 PM
The Shadar Logoth wound is about "The Victory of the Light supercedes everything, and even becoming as evil as the Shadow to figh the Shadow is acceptable".
The wound is primarly reflected on the Land with the Black Tower and Rand's "all you are are weapons, I've created you only to die defeating the Shadow at TG". It's about the horror Rand has fostered there, chosing Taim and implementing this mentality. Rand has cleansed saidin and destroyed SL, but the two wounds are still there. he thought he saved the Asha'man from madness with the Cleansing, but the madness Rand has created at the BT wasn't cleansed. Taim is still there, his forces getting bigger.
It's also about Masema, and Rand thinking he could use such a fanatic.
But both these events - choosing Taim to lead the BT and sending Perrin to get Masema took place before Rand received the second wound.
I don't doubt the second wound had a similar impact on Rand as the dagger had on Mat in the first book (increase paranoia, evil, hatred of Aes Sedai, etc.) - but I doubt one could tie the wound to any specific event - other than allowing Rand to come up with the idea of cleansing Saidin based on the interaction between his wounds.
randfandom
Oh come on... I'm not trying to tie the SL wound to a specific event, and Flinn had it contained. It's doubtful it poisonned Rand as it did Mat. He would be dead by now.
I'm talking about themes, how the themes associated to SL are reflected in the land.
You want a connection between the wound that nearly killed Rand and the Black Tower: not very long after he nearly died from that wound is when the first Asha'man turned on him and nearly killed him.
I don't think Brandon is saying every little thing that happens to Rand is automatically reflected in the land. He's rather saying that in a general (and perhaps some specific) way(s), what happens in the pattern and what happens to Rand is linked. I can mean as much that what Rand decides for the land brings about consequences to himself. It may well be his growing paranoia in LOC, his increasingly dangerous views like this crazy idea of gathering male channelers and use them as weapon - when he had absolutely no notion yet of how he could possibly cleansed saidin (Rand never realised when he let Taim recruit and make the BT as big as possible that right there he was gambling on the fate of the world, that if he couldn't cleanse saidin he was dooming the world to a second Breaking when the Asha'man went mad. He didn't even cleanse saidin for this motive, he did it not to lose the Asha'man before the LB) that resulted in his wound from Fain. The wound may reflect what Rand had started doing in the Pattern, not the other way around. Being one with the land can work both ways.