The door to Wotmania closes

by Linda

Well what can I say about the end of an era for me?

When I joined Wotmania in 2002 I was about to return to the workforce after an hiatus rearing two sons. My elder son also joined Wotmania at the same time. He was 12 and became the youngest theory poster ever there. Now he is 19 and studying IT at university. Wow.

I had already made a large collection of notes on the series and had a ranking of strength in saidar. Some months later, Moridin_2000 suggested we write a FAQ around this ranking. I enjoyed that so much I turned to writing solo articles on the research I had done on the board games, a largely over-looked area. Readers recognised go (stones) but not anything about the other games. Like all areas of RJ’s world, they had solid foundations of real world parallels. So did the characters. Lanfear was the one who caught my eye first. Not surprisingly, since she is a masterpiece. (So are Rand, Mat, Tuon, Graendal, Ishamael and Perrin, btw). And this is where Dom came in. He too was interested in the parallels, the world-building, the symbolism, the themes. Our correspondence, started over Lanfear and Lilith, ever since has been long. Very long! But very fruitful. :) Long may it continue!

Still, all things change if they are not to stagnate or go round in circles, and now Wotmania is almost done. At the beginning of this year, Dominic and I had already decided we wanted to do more than supervise the same arguments and argumentors. They had become torments and tormentors to us. We wanted maps, illustrations, better indexing, all the mod cons for the articles. Independence, I guess. Thanks to Larry suggesting to Dom that we should have our own blog like his excellent OF Blog, here we are.

Looking forward, we have many plans yet to enact. Some quite soon as you will see. ReadandFindOut.com has been born out of the ashes of Wotmania, and I wish Dr Saidin well in moderating the WOTboard there. And there is the imminent release of The Gathering Storm, bitter-sweet with the reminder of the greatest loss of all: RJ himself.

Looking back, I am proud of our work at Wotmania. Proud of our high viewing rate: over 100 for me, and 78 for Dom, some of the highest rates there. Glad that the best of our stuff will live on here, in augmented and updated form. Indexed and illustrated.

Update: And now it is gone. I invested a lot of myself there; I made many friends there, some happily still in touch, some sadly not. I have amazing memories: of RJ reading our board and commenting on his blog, of Brandon Sanderson visiting the WOTboard, of lunches with fellow wotmaniacs. Where wotmania was in cyberspace there are now links to Dragonmount and to ReadandFindOut. But in my memories it is as it was and aspects of its vintage years are stored here on the blog and on my computer.

Funny, an hour ago I thought I had nothing much to say, that Dom had said it all and more eloquently.

So sad the song, of what might have been, when that moment of truth suddenly arrives...

Fare you well, posters of wotmania. I salute you.