a lot and i mean a lot of people suggested i review the spear fight at the beginning of episode
seven of wheel of time so Tigraine Mantear vs everybody except this guy let's do it this fight
is really interesting to me because it tells me a story and I'm not sure if the story is what they
intended but it's really clever and so I'm going to assume that it was so come with me and let me
explain I watched episode 1 of wheel of time and wasn't really compelled to watch the rest of the
series it didn't really appeal but I watched the start of episode 7 and you were not wrong
the spear fight is very cool we will need to talk about being in labor so this video could get a bit
specific but in the various clip videos that I watched of this scene there were a lot of comments
underneath like 'it's completely unrealistic that a woman in labor is even standing let alone
fighting dudes!' and I thought well it's not going to be common no but given the character and the
specifics of the worldbuilding it's possible. one of the things that really impressed me about this
fight was how they managed to convey two different things to me without a lot of context at all the
first one is that Tigraine is a total badass like she's really good at fighting she's very dangerous
but I also got the impression that things were happening to ensure that she wasn't dying having
done some reading I assumed that that is the pattern intervening as it were let me show you we
open with Tigraine aka Rand's mum on a relatively (relatively) quiet part of the battlefield clearly
having contractions albeit brief ones and here we must pause for a moment because when I first
watched this I did not understand why a nine months pregnant woman would be on a battlefield
in the first place but when I read the book Tam was also really confused about that so I'm in good
company she finds a rock to lean against but oop here comes dude number one she dodges he tries to
hit her again quite ineptly but it is hard to see at the bottom of some helmets like your peripheral
vision down there is extremely restricted so I'll give you that she goes for his feet then whacks
him with the spear and knocks him off the rock but here is a contraction oh deary me but she's still
watching him she's just temporarily unable to do anything about him but as soon as that contraction
ends she is going for him and we get some slo-mo. the fact that she comes straight for him without
pausing demonstrates her determination and her ferocity and it also puts momentum on her side
but here's the clever part as the fight went on I started to assume that the slow motion
was being used deliberately to show us that something weird was going on like every time
we have a pause or slow motion it says to me that Tigraine rolled really high because of her
plot armour if that isn't mixing your metaphors a little bit too much like could this move work
sure I've seen five-year-old girls knock over large men because they took them by surprise
and they were off balance this degree of success where you have enough momentum and you catch this
man just right that he flies through the air with the greatest of ease and now you can stab him in
the head um that's definite rolled a critical hit stuff and I love it because it looks really
cool and I also love it because I feel like the slow-mo serves a dual purpose first it lets us
slow right down and go wow look at her she's so amazing and athletic and second it clues us into
the fact that fate is quite literally on her side but regardless of that slow motion bit that might
have been an intervention from destiny itself right off the bat you can see that Tigraine is
terrifying she's fast and she's efficient and she keeps her head in combat even when her uterus is
prepping for imminent baby expulsion onward second guy this diagonal cut is a little bit awkward but
sure she ducks underneath that and just stabs him straight in the chest he's dead before he
even knows it and again we do this in slow motion I mean there seems to be a weak seam right in the
middle of the armour where it joins together but either way the fact that she is dispatched two men
very swiftly speaks to how skilled she is as a fighter I suppose one also has to bear in mind
that while these soldiers will be used to fighting women they might not be used to fighting women who
are so visibly pregnant as she is so that might give them cause for pause but then again it might
not carrying on oh shoot a guy about to throw a thing let's put this guy in the way of him
and then we'll take the spear and chuck it right into his face good aim and obviously the face is
a vulnerable bit so that works for me and this doesn't come with a slow motion section which
changes things up a bit speed wise but it's still clear enough that you can see what's going on
two other dudes appear that's a cool focus pull is that called a focus pull either way I like it
she grabs her two short spears and goes for them and it's gonna be two versus one oh no
wait three versus one that's never a fun time for the one and so even more so than before she knows
her only chance is to dispatch them as quickly as possible. While the fight is cut in a reasonably
modern style with quite a lot of switching shots it's pretty clear what's going on most of the time
which I really appreciate. the third guy joins in and her immediate response is to attack the two
men closest to her and then just run at the third guy because that's how you get them all on the
one side rather than having them flank you and if they're all on one side of you hopefully they're
gonna start getting in each other's way and there is another pause moment which I interpreted as a
you probably should be dead but the pattern is going to intervene just a little bit now this
next section I particularly like because she's trying to get them down rather than killing them
because as we have seen she can kill them quite efficiently but it generally takes
time and while she's taking that time one of her weapons is engaged so you don't really want
to be doing that. so she fights the third one and kills him and then she's just about to go back but
oop contraction hits at what is probably the best time that it could have given the circumstances
but never a convenient time really because there's just enough time for the contraction to finish
before the other two guys get their acts together and get back at her another pausing moment for the
pattern intervening or just to give the audience a moment to catch their breaths which is always
important more fighty fighty she gets this guy but oh that is not a good time for a contraction
nope uh she tries to bite this guy's hand fair but ouchy yeah. but this too is part
of the grand design and it's such a great moment because this wound is deadly or it's going to be
but she still has the wherewithal to headbutt him and kill him with his own knife even though
she's in so much pain and she's so gravely wounded and then she takes his cloak which...
I understood that reference. The fight is over by this point but the scene is not and she goes to
the rock and takes the cloak with her and I like that it's at this point that she takes off the
head wrap so that we can see the red hair because if you've been like who is this woman and what
what's kind of going on and you're like oh I...I get it I get it and then she's literally giving
birth and this dude Rand's adopted dad just sort of turns up and then helps her but like childbirth
plus major stab wound equals near instant death after the kid is born. also of course now the
kid is out and breathing the pattern is no longer intervening to try and keep her alive why would
it care about her now as long as the dragon has been reborn and there's someone there to look
after him but dang I love this scene in the book Tam finds the baby after Tigraine is already dead
but as changes go I really really like this one because Tam is a good dude we know this and his
instinctive compassion to someone in distress even though that someone is his mortal enemy really
endears us to him and it makes me warm to him even more than if he just found a baby on the hillside
and decided to take it in (though obviously that was also a really good thing to do) this
is genuinely a moment and the acting is excellent and the fight editing isn't too intrusive and I
just really enjoyed it so thank you to the dozens of people who decided that i really needed to see
it you were correct I thought it was great thank you you should feel good about yourself the big
thing that people seem to be side eyeing was how badass Tigraine was like between contractions
now I don't know if you've ever been in labor but while everyone's different i personally found that
when the contractions were happening at least up until shortly before the baby actually needed to
come out they weren't painless but they were manageable they were also pretty all-consuming
though like it wasn't really particularly possible to think very hard about anything else while a
contraction was happening and one of the details I like about this scene is that you can see
this happening with Tigraine particularly at the beginning it's not that they're so overwhelmingly
painful though they aren't fun it's just that they're absorbing basically all of her physical
capabilities and like 90% of her attention. However and this is something that I found
as well when the contractions weren't happening everything just almost immediately switched back
to normal so while I was merely doing laps of my dining room table rather than spear fighting a
bunch of dudes on a snowy mountain the fact that she's at reasonable fighting capacity in between
contractions is not so unrealistic she's young she's fit the adrenaline is going yes she's in a
ridiculous situation but the Force as it were is literally on her side at least until the dragon
is in fact reborn I don't know if the slo-mo is intended to suggest that Things are Happening but
that was what I took from it and I really liked it as a touch good job everyone! thanks for watching