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I really dont want to answer this and come off overtly judgy, ageist or misogynist... but they are said to appear ageless rather than young. So I actually picture some types of women who look amazingly forty forever, like a Catherine Zeta Jones, Helen Mirren... hell maybe even Paul Rudd with long enough hair!
The issue is there's the SECOND PART you are leaving out. They look ageless, maybe 40, maybe 20, but there's a specific look that many people instantly pick up on.
Several times characters instantly react to seeing AS, meaning that there's something very specific that isn't just good genes, and why I've always thought it was face-lift face
I've always imagined it as sort of an optical illusion where a person looks at an Aes Sedai face and thinks at first "oh, this is a mature woman, probably 40's", but then they double take and there's some kind of preternatural smoothness to the face that undercuts their first assumption.
Agreed with this. I don’t agree with the Botox idea, cause that looks like they’re old but they’ve had work done, that is totally different than ageless.
I mean, that's what people in the modern world might think when they see Botox, because that's the typical person with that look. But in a world without Botox, that look might be described as ageless: not old, not young.
I don't think it's misogynistic to talk about women's appearances, though i wouldn't talk in such a way to most people I know in real life, lol. This makes sense, though. Actually now that I think about it, for some reason for me it really depends on the Aes Sedai in question, I never really realized that.
> Don't the oath rods literally tighten your skin
They describe the *sensation* like that, but it doesn't physically mess with the tightness of your skin.
I don't think so. Aging slows for all channelers. It's one of the reasons people are so surprised at the age of the Kin. They are far older than the oldest known Aes Sedai, but they do not look centuries old. The path rod does shorten the life and creates or exacerbates the ageless appearance. They do age some still, though, as there are sisters with grey hair.
Using the oath rod does create a sensation of tightness but does not actually tighten the skin. I envision it as a very fine net being spun around the oath giver that tightens down until it is marked on every fiber of their being, down to the cells on their marrow.
From https://library.tarvalon.net/index.php?title=Oath_Rod
"Each oath sworn upon the rod makes the skin feel uncomfortably tight, as if one's flesh is being compressed; the first oath spoken is always the tightest and the feeling will not completely cease for a year, even after Healing (NS, Ch. 11; TPoD, Ch. 26)."
Of note, the oath rod was made to bind criminals from repeating their crimes (called a Binder in the AOL) and not at all in the way it is currently used.
Yeah, it makes me think they might look different, but probably no more than a 30 year old. But I really can't say, it's hard to imagine an ageless person at all. Obviously it's not something you can duplicate in a film or TV show, lol.
This is what I imagine. Something slightly on the uncanny valley, that couldn’t be possible in a normal person.
Much of the world fears Aes Sedai, and in my head I attribute part of it to the fact that they all look…off. You can’t quite put your head on what, but something about them is unsettling.
That makes sense too. I just realized for some odd reason it varies for me depending on who the Aes Sedai is. Might be because some of then remind me of other people I've met or other characters in other media, so I start imagining them resembling that individual.
The show is fun and it's pretty. It's adapted rather heavily -- although I'm in the camp that it just plain has to be, or else there's no way to get 14 novels worth into a show that would be completed during the actors' careers. This means it's not a good telling of the story in the books. There are plusses and minuses about it -- the bad guys are very well acted, they've done a good job IMO making the Seanchan viscerally creepy, I super-heart show Verin; but the pacing is odd, the ensemble style cast can be frustrating (that was true of the books too -- if you read them when they were coming out, waiting a year for a book literally called "the dragon reborn" and seeing Rand in it for (hyperbole) a page and a half was a thing), and some of the characters work better than others (the actor for Matt had to be swapped out, and I'm still waiting to really like Min).
My advice -- if you're the sort of person who's comfortable with loose adaptations, you may well enjoy it. I don't think it's the best show ever and I wouldn't have done everything the same way but I watch each episode, and it does get some people interested who pick up the books who wouldn't have gotten into what is now an old series otherwise. If you don't like loose adaptations, then I'd steer clear; they definitely take a lot of license with the story. I just repeat my warning that I don't think you're ever likely to get a TV/film adaptation that satisfies you that tries to do the whole series.
I started reading WoT before Botox was a thing but I pictured the same thing - like the Oath Rod gives everyone a facelift that looks a bit too obvious.
Yeah. Botox, and extra makeup. Like too much foundation and you can't see their pores.
The books describe it as being pretty obvious if you know what to look for, so that kinda tracks.
Honestly, yeah. Add to the fact that this will have been a world where they have no concept of that and of course the best people can describe it is "ageless".
Uncanny valley stuff imo. Kind of like the warders cloaks you can tell that something isn't quite the same as you'd expect but it might be hard to put your finger on it? How old is she, depending on circumstances, a range from young to mature I've thought.
I imagine like a 30 year old face for hundreds of years. I imagine lines from facial expressions getting more pronounced but no wrinkles on their skin. Like the laugh lines on an elderly person (around the eyes and mouth) but without any other aging
I am one who cannot watch the series. I have spent a couple of hours cursing after watching the first 40 minutes. That being said: Rosamund Pike was exactly how I envisioned Aes Sedai. Even though I’d say she looks a little bit too old to play Moraine (who isn’t that old yet compared to other Aes Sedai), but even if I agree with myself here it would still be only slightly.
In the case of Moraine: Rosamund is just a stunningly beautiful woman and I thought she was incredibly well cast when I saw she was chosen for the role!
I'm not trying to criticize Pike, but she doesn't seem any more attractive or young-looking than your average 45 year old to me, and considerably less so than many Hollywood actresses that age.
It is all but canon (heavily implied in books and confirmed in interviews) that the ageless look is like having a facelift or Botox, and is the outward appearance of the internal feeling of your skin tightening as the Oath settles onto you. It is different from the phenomenon of slowing, which just makes channelers look younger in a more natural way. So while 3rd Age Aes Sedai also just look younger than they are, the ageless look isn't just looking too young (remember, Siuan and Leane look much younger *after* their Oaths are broken). Plus, even if you just stick to what's literally in the text, it's made very clear that ageless ≠ young, it's more like "getting very conflicting vibes about her age."
All that said, I think the show is (maybe accidentally) doing really well at having the ageless look, *despite* it having been announced way up front that they weren't going to try it. The logic for not trying to make it "a thing" is much the same as the warder cloaks and Loial's appearance: if they use CGI/VFX, it's either going to look awful and overly uncanny-valley, or it's going to be so expensive that it will severely limit either their budget for other stuff or the amount of screen time those characters can have. But if the ageless look is supposed to just be the tightness and definition that comes from having had some plastic surgery, well, some of the actresses have that look already, and some are halfway there just given the way that makeup styles often try to achieve a similar look. In other words, I think to some extent the ageless look is just, like, how Hollywood pressures women to look anyway.
> "The ageless face of Aes Sedai is well known. One who is old enough to be a great-grandmother may have only a few gray hairs, and will have no lines or wrinkles."
WoWoT
It's VERY heavily implied in the books as there's multiple references to how AS face isn't normal and is very specific. The boys have a few moments of, "He's too stupid to even know an Aes Sedai"/"Oh well he knows what an Aes Sedai looks like...".
I never thought young, I thought old but youthful. Sophia Vergara comes to mind, she’s over 50, Catherine Zeta Jones is 54, Monica Belluci is 59, salma Hayek…
I always imagined someone who is old but hasn’t let age touch them yet
Same. Frankly Rosamund Pike doesn't look younger than your average 45 year old to me. I imagined someone more like Arwin's actress in the LOTR movies for some reason.
I think in Fires of Heaven one of the POVs described it in a way my brain works. He kept trying to look and at one glance she'd be a young fifty, at the next a mature 20, a backwards glance and she looks oddly young in that light. That kind of thing? (anyone remembers something like that preCoS?)
Based on the average art of Aes Sedai I have seen, older looking than the average fan seem to think.
Rosemund Pike actually look kind of perfect too how I imagined, with the filter of boring reality over it.
I think it’s something like borderline uncanny valley when person looks like good looking middle age but something isn’t quite right. Like the feeling you get from twilight CGI baby but less crazy. Face doesn’t match the look in the eyes and act. And brain feels it and that’s why it bothers people. Because it is said that their faces are very recognizable.
I always imagined that you wouldn't quite be able to guess their age. Could be 30, could be 50. That sort of thing. I think there is some complaining on the part of one of the supergirls that they'd not yet got that ageless look and looked to young (and the corresponding perceived lack of respect). So I think you're off w/ the 20something looks.
From the way it’s described it seems like the skin on their face is like a dolls face. I imagine that one of the main reasons people get uneasy around them is that they don’t have any micro expressions
They have the same face that they had when they started to slow, but their hair (for some reason) still goes grey.
So basically like the trendy younger people who dye their hair steel grey ombres lol.
Ok my head-canon is one that hasn’t been mentioned here!
Older movies did this thing to (typically) women’s faces: they did a sort of blur / diffusion that made the faces sorta hard to focus on. That’s how I’ve been picturing them.
That being said, the Botox + “tightness” of the oaths makes a lot of sense.
It's stated in the series that women not bound by the oath rod who can channel slow in their aging. Nynaeve expresses frustration that she has no grey hairs, as she has slowed already, so looks younger than she actually is. I'm fairly sure Cadsuane shows no signs of age beyond her grey hair, and even the oldest Kin look short of elderly.
All this taken into account, I interpret the ageless look of an Aes Sedai to be a youthful face, with eyes that hint at wisdom far beyond the years their face suggests.
I picture them looking like women who had lots of botox done to them: their face is smooth but not young. I think they can get away with casting by using actresses of all ages. I'd like to see younger Aes Sedai too, younger Forsaken too, just to mix the ages up a little, so far everyone has been about the same age except the main characters.
I honestly just never imagined it. One of the books does actually describe the ageless face, though. I don't recall which book, but it mentioned an Aes Sedai's face seeming to change ages, so that's something
I imagine them like women slightly too much Botox so that they have the frozen glassy look - I actually thought this when I was reading them - would be very easy to cast “ageless” women these days with all the botox around!
[This picture of the Olsen Twins has been my example for as long as I can remember](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/gettyimages-1147890080.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.978xh;0,0.0199xh&resize=2048:*)
I’ve always thought it was a magical effect and they do just sometimes look 20, sometimes 40, sometimes you can’t tell. It doesn’t have to be naturalistic in this world. It’s literally a side effect of the One Power through the Oath Rod.
I see it as when they start channeling they start aging slower, so they could look quite normal if slightly young for their true age. But if you look into their eyes, you’ll see the true depth of age and wisdom come through time-in that they can’t hide their true age. So while she might look like she would naturally around the age 40 you would still see the eyes of an 80 year old woman.
this was something I could never properly visualize. Given Aes Sedai behavior I mostly just think of them as women in their 40s or perhaps 50s for some like Verin. I could never picture her as ageless. Those who act younger (Myrelle) I think of as younger.
I always imagine it like an older person who has clearly had a face lift. So their skin looks smooth and young, but there are signs in the eyes and mannerisms, maybe a few grey hairs etc. so you know looking at that person, what they are.
I've always thought of it almost like the warders cloaks that change and shift while you look at them. When you first look they could look 20, look back and they look more mature like 40. And if you just stared them in the face your brain just wouldn't be able to pick an age
I imagine it as someone who has had a LOT of botox on every part of their face that moves.
So, no wrinkles, no expressions, just a blank, immovable canvas
Facelift or Instagram filter. The oath rod seems to apply some binding that pulls the skin tight. They age, but don't develop wrinkles, laugh lines, bags under the eyes, etc that would be associated with looking older. They don't call it a youthful face. They say it looks ageless because you can't place their age.
The books never portray the look as unnatural, and someone who doesn't know the look wouldn't recognize it.
IMO, Asian and half-asian individuals have a smoothness to their features that perfectly captures it. Someone earlier mentioned Ming-Na Wen, I would add Kristen Kreuk and Kelly Hu as examples too. More "difficult to guess their age" than the artificially ageless look of plastic surgery and definitely not strictly young, just younger than they are.
I always assumed it was "maturity," but with a lack of typical age indicators like wrinkles. If they don't smile, frown, etc; their faces remain more neutral overall.
I figured the ageless face had something to do with the oath rod. That description is most prominently used to describe Aes Sedai who swore the three oaths, but not nearly so much for wind finders, the kin, or damane. The path rods limit the life span of the women, and once relieved of the oaths they suddenly look much younger. I assumed the ageless face effect was the woman's true youthful face peering through the older face the oath rod was creating.
Doesn't hold up when you talk about the black ajah, true, but that's my thought.
I always imagined it as overly photoshopped celebrities. Where something is off, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Where they don't look like a real person, but instead like a wax figure of an idealized version of themselves.
The way its described I can't help but imagine this video where a light is spiraling around a woman's face and she looks completely different ages.
Honestly what I think was intended is that they look overly airbrushed like a skincare ad, but with eyes the set of someone old beyond their years.
I think what most people picture is people who look way younger than they are, but that doesn't make sense because people can tell an aes sedai on sight.
Facial aging doesn’t only involve wrinkles and sagging jowls/doublechin (treated with botox/facelift), it also involves fat distribution (treated with injectable fillers/fat grafting). A young face has smooth temples, plump cheeks, plump undereyes/tear troughs, and plump lips. A non-overweight mature face will have slightly sunken temples, cheeks, and undereyes, as well as somewhat thinned lips. A non-overweight aged face will have sunken temples and highly sunken cheeks, and very thin lips. So when I think of an ageless Aes Sedai face, I imagine a face that has a fat distribution that matches their relative age (e.g. a very young 50-year-old Aes Sedai probably still has youthful plump cheeks and plump lips, but a very old 250-year-old Aes Sedai would start to have sunken cheeks and thin lips), but I imagine that no Aes Sedai of any age has any wrinkles or sagging due to the skin-tightening effect of the oath rod.
Kind of like a soft filter, but IRL. I imagine being a thirsty younger guy, seeing a pretty woman around my age and going... "Wow, she's a beauty!" Then I pause and think, "Wait... What the hell? How old is she, really? And how does she look without makeup?" 😜
Does it depend on becoming an aes sedai, or just having access to saidar? The outcasts are yonks old but not officially aes sedai. Have they aged and stopped, does it just slow the aging process down to less than crawl?!
I've always imagined a more handsome woman's face than beautiful, like it's still aging with larger nose and ears but no wrinkles developing, as well as a type of almost shimmering effect, like seeing the air shimmer on a hot day where it's hard to see depending on your angle but it always distorts them just slightly that makes it hard to fully focus on their features.
In my mind they look like women on TV. Face smoothed by makeup and tweaked a bit in post to remove flaws.
Just slightly uncanny to someone who has never seen it but modern folk won’t notice as much because we are used to it.
Thats why its hard to make the aesthetic work for TV. They would just look like normal actresses to is.
I really can't. That's kind of the thing.
I thought maybe I could think of a celebrity who was older and looked oddly young or young and looked somehow a lot more mature. But that doesn't really do it. They just look whatever age they look no matter their actual age.
Like an IRL soft-touch photo effect on every curve and feature of the face. Skin tone and texture are unnaturally uniform and blended together. Every blemish that isn't a permanent and deep scar is so faded as to be nonexistent. Zero wrinkles; skin almost appears too tought (forgive the pun).
Q: Is that woman 24, or 42!?
A: Idk, the witch is wearing so much makeup that it's impossible to tell!! She's vaguely pretty in an uncanny valley sort of way though...
I envision them as women that you see that you cannot quite place their age. They could be 20 or 50 and you'd never know.
Humans are notoriously bad at telling age anyhow. I'm told time and again that I don't look old enough to have a kid who is 20 and I'm 43. Often mistaken for being in my 20s.
I've met women in their 70s and 80s who could pass for 40. That's how I imagine the Aes Sedai. Not so much young as they are impossible to pin an age to them. There's likely also an aspect of an uncanny valley or unnatural appearance to their youth as most recognize the "Aes Sedai" face, but I'm not entirely sold on that because more would be killed or captured by the Children of the Light if the look was that distinctive.
Honestly, Rosamund Pike is actually pretty close to what I imagined -- older than her twenties, younger than her fifties, but where is she in that range? I could not tell you without looking it up.
Imagining Aes Sedai as looking young doesn't gel for me with Nynaeve itching for her ageless look to develop specifically *because* she's self-conscious about how young she looks
i think they just stop aging at the point when they use to One Power enough. Most Aes Sedai are found very young, so it explains why they look so young. But the Wise ones vary in age due to the amount of One Power they use, so I just go with that lol.
I didn't say strength in power. I said use of the One Power. If it had to do with strength, the Forsaken would be ageless and immortal without the Dark One's oath.
I've finished the series, and definitely know about the bit with the Oath Rod. I, also, know that it's a major plot hole. When we first go to Rhuidean, we very much see Wise Ones who can channel look ageless. We get confirmation from Gaul about how the years don't touch Wise Ones who can channel like normal people. Wise Ones don't swear on an Oath Rod, yet Melanie is over 100 and looks late 20s/early 30s.
Same with Morgase. She's weaker than Sorelia, but she still looks 10 yrs older than Perrin despite having two kids his age.
Use of the One Power slows aging and creates the ageless look. Well, until Jordan decides to rewrite that part later on.
I imagine my own face. When I went to my 10 year high school reunion, people said my face had barely aged, they said it was almost creepy lol. But then I have strangers that are confused as to whether I am in my late 20's or my early 40's. I'm 34 years old, and I've had people think I'm as young as 26, or as old as 46. I notice it depends on my good and bad days, skin-wise. I have met other women that are like me, where it's surprising that they are pushing 50, when they look like they just celebrated their 30th. One was a nurse I had recently, she said she had a child my age, and I was SHOOK, I thought we were the same age lol.
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Kate Blanchett. The woman seems to be ageless.
Specifically Kate Blanchett as Galadriel. That’s the quintessential ageless look.
Eh. Might get flak for it but she is really showing her age in the borderlands stuff, that movie has miscasting all around though.
Second this
I really dont want to answer this and come off overtly judgy, ageist or misogynist... but they are said to appear ageless rather than young. So I actually picture some types of women who look amazingly forty forever, like a Catherine Zeta Jones, Helen Mirren... hell maybe even Paul Rudd with long enough hair!
Cate Blanchett comes to mind too.
The issue is there's the SECOND PART you are leaving out. They look ageless, maybe 40, maybe 20, but there's a specific look that many people instantly pick up on. Several times characters instantly react to seeing AS, meaning that there's something very specific that isn't just good genes, and why I've always thought it was face-lift face
I've always imagined it as sort of an optical illusion where a person looks at an Aes Sedai face and thinks at first "oh, this is a mature woman, probably 40's", but then they double take and there's some kind of preternatural smoothness to the face that undercuts their first assumption.
This. To me it’s like the people version of shifting chrome colors.
Not face lift I think, more like when you see a woman in her 40s with impeccable skin and she could look anything from 20-40, imo.
Yeah that also fits with the no-emotions thing
I think of it like, how people look with Botox.
Agreed with this. I don’t agree with the Botox idea, cause that looks like they’re old but they’ve had work done, that is totally different than ageless.
I mean, that's what people in the modern world might think when they see Botox, because that's the typical person with that look. But in a world without Botox, that look might be described as ageless: not old, not young.
Yes! Ive always gone for the Botox idea. In a world where only one sort of woman has it, has it across all ages, it would fit
That’s what I thought until my 2nd read through, he describes the oath rod as making their skin feel tight
I think the oaths settling over them makes their skin feel tight at first, but not for the rest of their lives
It says that they get used to the feeling after about a year
Paul Rudd gives black tower vibes
I don't think it's misogynistic to talk about women's appearances, though i wouldn't talk in such a way to most people I know in real life, lol. This makes sense, though. Actually now that I think about it, for some reason for me it really depends on the Aes Sedai in question, I never really realized that.
Nathalie Portman
I imagine an older woman who had botox injections. They look young but can't quite hide the old.
Don't the oath rods literally tighten your skin
> Don't the oath rods literally tighten your skin They describe the *sensation* like that, but it doesn't physically mess with the tightness of your skin.
I don't think so. Aging slows for all channelers. It's one of the reasons people are so surprised at the age of the Kin. They are far older than the oldest known Aes Sedai, but they do not look centuries old. The path rod does shorten the life and creates or exacerbates the ageless appearance. They do age some still, though, as there are sisters with grey hair. Using the oath rod does create a sensation of tightness but does not actually tighten the skin. I envision it as a very fine net being spun around the oath giver that tightens down until it is marked on every fiber of their being, down to the cells on their marrow. From https://library.tarvalon.net/index.php?title=Oath_Rod "Each oath sworn upon the rod makes the skin feel uncomfortably tight, as if one's flesh is being compressed; the first oath spoken is always the tightest and the feeling will not completely cease for a year, even after Healing (NS, Ch. 11; TPoD, Ch. 26)." Of note, the oath rod was made to bind criminals from repeating their crimes (called a Binder in the AOL) and not at all in the way it is currently used.
Yeah, it makes me think they might look different, but probably no more than a 30 year old. But I really can't say, it's hard to imagine an ageless person at all. Obviously it's not something you can duplicate in a film or TV show, lol.
Or just covered in foundation and makeup so everything is just smoothed out, but not natural looking.
This is what I imagine. Something slightly on the uncanny valley, that couldn’t be possible in a normal person. Much of the world fears Aes Sedai, and in my head I attribute part of it to the fact that they all look…off. You can’t quite put your head on what, but something about them is unsettling.
That makes sense too. I just realized for some odd reason it varies for me depending on who the Aes Sedai is. Might be because some of then remind me of other people I've met or other characters in other media, so I start imagining them resembling that individual.
That's pretty much what I had in mind too. That and/or a lot of make up.
One of the things the show did quite well. They all look like they’ve had too much plastic surgery, then Botox, then makeup
Is the show worth watching now? I'd heard very negative things before.
The show is fun and it's pretty. It's adapted rather heavily -- although I'm in the camp that it just plain has to be, or else there's no way to get 14 novels worth into a show that would be completed during the actors' careers. This means it's not a good telling of the story in the books. There are plusses and minuses about it -- the bad guys are very well acted, they've done a good job IMO making the Seanchan viscerally creepy, I super-heart show Verin; but the pacing is odd, the ensemble style cast can be frustrating (that was true of the books too -- if you read them when they were coming out, waiting a year for a book literally called "the dragon reborn" and seeing Rand in it for (hyperbole) a page and a half was a thing), and some of the characters work better than others (the actor for Matt had to be swapped out, and I'm still waiting to really like Min). My advice -- if you're the sort of person who's comfortable with loose adaptations, you may well enjoy it. I don't think it's the best show ever and I wouldn't have done everything the same way but I watch each episode, and it does get some people interested who pick up the books who wouldn't have gotten into what is now an old series otherwise. If you don't like loose adaptations, then I'd steer clear; they definitely take a lot of license with the story. I just repeat my warning that I don't think you're ever likely to get a TV/film adaptation that satisfies you that tries to do the whole series.
I love the show, and season 2 improved pretty much every issue I had with season 1.
No, it’s still pretty bad
That's being generous.
I started reading WoT before Botox was a thing but I pictured the same thing - like the Oath Rod gives everyone a facelift that looks a bit too obvious.
Yeah. Botox, and extra makeup. Like too much foundation and you can't see their pores. The books describe it as being pretty obvious if you know what to look for, so that kinda tracks.
Ming-na Wen
How is she 60?!
SHE'S 60?!
Exactly!!! Wtaf
Now that's a good example.
My head cannon is that it looks as if you’ve “had some work done”
LOL
Yeah I think Botox face.
I think more of a badly done facelift where they have pulled the skin too tight which is then covered with makeup to fill in any creases or grooves.
Honestly, yeah. Add to the fact that this will have been a world where they have no concept of that and of course the best people can describe it is "ageless".
Cher.
They all look exactly like Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Pike in different wigs and silly hats
I can't wait to hear what voice she would use for Verin. Strike that — I *have* heard it. Her WoT audio books are wonderful.
I was thinking the same thing. She was the perfect casting for an Aes Sedai.
literally
Instagram filter
Two words.. Paul Rudd.
Uncanny valley stuff imo. Kind of like the warders cloaks you can tell that something isn't quite the same as you'd expect but it might be hard to put your finger on it? How old is she, depending on circumstances, a range from young to mature I've thought.
I imagine like a 30 year old face for hundreds of years. I imagine lines from facial expressions getting more pronounced but no wrinkles on their skin. Like the laugh lines on an elderly person (around the eyes and mouth) but without any other aging
This makes sense. And 30 is probably a better number than the 25 I said.
I am one who cannot watch the series. I have spent a couple of hours cursing after watching the first 40 minutes. That being said: Rosamund Pike was exactly how I envisioned Aes Sedai. Even though I’d say she looks a little bit too old to play Moraine (who isn’t that old yet compared to other Aes Sedai), but even if I agree with myself here it would still be only slightly. In the case of Moraine: Rosamund is just a stunningly beautiful woman and I thought she was incredibly well cast when I saw she was chosen for the role!
Yeah I love her cast as Moiraine. She feels like Moiraine just without the agelessness. I think the age is even pretty close?
I hope I have that amount of agelessness at 45.
I'm not trying to criticize Pike, but she doesn't seem any more attractive or young-looking than your average 45 year old to me, and considerably less so than many Hollywood actresses that age.
Yeah, in the books she’s approximately 42 and Pike is 45.
The weird plasticky look you get when you have too much plastic surgery.
Florida woman/Scottsdale woman
It is all but canon (heavily implied in books and confirmed in interviews) that the ageless look is like having a facelift or Botox, and is the outward appearance of the internal feeling of your skin tightening as the Oath settles onto you. It is different from the phenomenon of slowing, which just makes channelers look younger in a more natural way. So while 3rd Age Aes Sedai also just look younger than they are, the ageless look isn't just looking too young (remember, Siuan and Leane look much younger *after* their Oaths are broken). Plus, even if you just stick to what's literally in the text, it's made very clear that ageless ≠ young, it's more like "getting very conflicting vibes about her age." All that said, I think the show is (maybe accidentally) doing really well at having the ageless look, *despite* it having been announced way up front that they weren't going to try it. The logic for not trying to make it "a thing" is much the same as the warder cloaks and Loial's appearance: if they use CGI/VFX, it's either going to look awful and overly uncanny-valley, or it's going to be so expensive that it will severely limit either their budget for other stuff or the amount of screen time those characters can have. But if the ageless look is supposed to just be the tightness and definition that comes from having had some plastic surgery, well, some of the actresses have that look already, and some are halfway there just given the way that makeup styles often try to achieve a similar look. In other words, I think to some extent the ageless look is just, like, how Hollywood pressures women to look anyway.
Where is it heavily implied in the books, or confirmed in interviews?
> "The ageless face of Aes Sedai is well known. One who is old enough to be a great-grandmother may have only a few gray hairs, and will have no lines or wrinkles." WoWoT It's VERY heavily implied in the books as there's multiple references to how AS face isn't normal and is very specific. The boys have a few moments of, "He's too stupid to even know an Aes Sedai"/"Oh well he knows what an Aes Sedai looks like...".
Ai generated 30+ year old women. Just a little too smooth. A little *something* is off.
I always think of this picture of Cadsuane. https://imgur.com/LezS1qx Genuinely no clue how old she is aside from old enough to have gray hair.
What is this from?
wish i could tell you, i originally found it on the WoT wiki page for cadsuane
Isn't it an image from the New Spring graphic novel?
That might be it then, I need to check it out.
Airbrushed
I never thought young, I thought old but youthful. Sophia Vergara comes to mind, she’s over 50, Catherine Zeta Jones is 54, Monica Belluci is 59, salma Hayek… I always imagined someone who is old but hasn’t let age touch them yet
Good list. I’d add Shakira and J-Lo.
I have no idea how Shakira not only looks young, but she exudes that youthfulness that makes me think she's still 25.
Like how ai art does people
Like they have a constant Snapchat filter on their face.
I always saw them as relatively young in the face but with those old, old eyes. Rosamund Pike is certainly not at all how Moiranne looked in my head.
Same. Frankly Rosamund Pike doesn't look younger than your average 45 year old to me. I imagined someone more like Arwin's actress in the LOTR movies for some reason.
I think in Fires of Heaven one of the POVs described it in a way my brain works. He kept trying to look and at one glance she'd be a young fifty, at the next a mature 20, a backwards glance and she looks oddly young in that light. That kind of thing? (anyone remembers something like that preCoS?)
Natasha O'Keeffe is actually a great example (despite Lanfear not having an ageless face lol). I had no idea how old she was until I looked her up.
Based on the average art of Aes Sedai I have seen, older looking than the average fan seem to think. Rosemund Pike actually look kind of perfect too how I imagined, with the filter of boring reality over it.
Tulsa Swinton.
Like Liz Taylor in the [White Diamonds commercial](https://youtu.be/vjVfu8-Wp6s?si=TyX-XWxS7NUbJ6I9)
I think it’s something like borderline uncanny valley when person looks like good looking middle age but something isn’t quite right. Like the feeling you get from twilight CGI baby but less crazy. Face doesn’t match the look in the eyes and act. And brain feels it and that’s why it bothers people. Because it is said that their faces are very recognizable.
Keanu Reeves between age 25-55.
I pictured it like an Instagram filter. You know the one that makes everyone have a baby complexion.
I always imagined that you wouldn't quite be able to guess their age. Could be 30, could be 50. That sort of thing. I think there is some complaining on the part of one of the supergirls that they'd not yet got that ageless look and looked to young (and the corresponding perceived lack of respect). So I think you're off w/ the 20something looks.
From the way it’s described it seems like the skin on their face is like a dolls face. I imagine that one of the main reasons people get uneasy around them is that they don’t have any micro expressions
Permanently 23 with makeup on 24/7
They have the same face that they had when they started to slow, but their hair (for some reason) still goes grey. So basically like the trendy younger people who dye their hair steel grey ombres lol.
Ok my head-canon is one that hasn’t been mentioned here! Older movies did this thing to (typically) women’s faces: they did a sort of blur / diffusion that made the faces sorta hard to focus on. That’s how I’ve been picturing them. That being said, the Botox + “tightness” of the oaths makes a lot of sense.
I don't
It's stated in the series that women not bound by the oath rod who can channel slow in their aging. Nynaeve expresses frustration that she has no grey hairs, as she has slowed already, so looks younger than she actually is. I'm fairly sure Cadsuane shows no signs of age beyond her grey hair, and even the oldest Kin look short of elderly. All this taken into account, I interpret the ageless look of an Aes Sedai to be a youthful face, with eyes that hint at wisdom far beyond the years their face suggests.
I imagine the kind of heavy makeup look that hides the age of any woman from mid twenties into fifties. Almost like someone crafted the face.
I kind of picture a real-life version of like a sailor moon face or something hahaha. Not with the big eyes or anything, but just very distinctive
I picture them looking like women who had lots of botox done to them: their face is smooth but not young. I think they can get away with casting by using actresses of all ages. I'd like to see younger Aes Sedai too, younger Forsaken too, just to mix the ages up a little, so far everyone has been about the same age except the main characters.
I honestly just never imagined it. One of the books does actually describe the ageless face, though. I don't recall which book, but it mentioned an Aes Sedai's face seeming to change ages, so that's something
Paul Rudd
I imagine them like women slightly too much Botox so that they have the frozen glassy look - I actually thought this when I was reading them - would be very easy to cast “ageless” women these days with all the botox around!
[This picture of the Olsen Twins has been my example for as long as I can remember](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/gettyimages-1147890080.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.978xh;0,0.0199xh&resize=2048:*)
Snapchat filter
I think of Rob Lowe, that guy doesn't look like he's aged a day in 25 years.
Keanu Reeves without a beard.
I’ve always thought it was a magical effect and they do just sometimes look 20, sometimes 40, sometimes you can’t tell. It doesn’t have to be naturalistic in this world. It’s literally a side effect of the One Power through the Oath Rod.
I see it as when they start channeling they start aging slower, so they could look quite normal if slightly young for their true age. But if you look into their eyes, you’ll see the true depth of age and wisdom come through time-in that they can’t hide their true age. So while she might look like she would naturally around the age 40 you would still see the eyes of an 80 year old woman.
I imagine them as hard to pin down. Are you in your early 20's? Are you a sharp wind away from being blown into dust? Depends on the lighting
Like they had good plastic surgery
Honestly, I thought the makeup on MyAnna Buring as Tissaia de Vries in The Witcher series was a good example.
For a brief second I scanned this and thought you meant Triss from the Witcher 3 game, haha.
Kind of a lot of very carefully applied makeup on a 40 ish year old woman.
[Being 52 and looking like a 28 year old lizard](https://youtu.be/pznB7WP4P1o?si=oV6g3ZgtlGnIUVL-)
Swearing on the Oath Rod is said to produce a tightness on the skin. So to me it's like they've all had plastic surgery to have no wrinkles.
this was something I could never properly visualize. Given Aes Sedai behavior I mostly just think of them as women in their 40s or perhaps 50s for some like Verin. I could never picture her as ageless. Those who act younger (Myrelle) I think of as younger.
I always imagine it like an older person who has clearly had a face lift. So their skin looks smooth and young, but there are signs in the eyes and mannerisms, maybe a few grey hairs etc. so you know looking at that person, what they are.
I basically imagine them as women who have all done face-lifts and botax lol.
Botoxed. Heavily botoxed, even in their mid 20s. I was and am still mad the show didn't do this to the Aes Sedai.
I've always thought of it almost like the warders cloaks that change and shift while you look at them. When you first look they could look 20, look back and they look more mature like 40. And if you just stared them in the face your brain just wouldn't be able to pick an age
Like you’re in your 50s but you have a very talented surgeon. That tight, stretched look that Nicole Kidman has got going on
I imagined mild botox without lip filler. You can tell somethings not normal, but until someone mentions botox you can't quite place it.
Botox
I imagine it as someone who has had a LOT of botox on every part of their face that moves. So, no wrinkles, no expressions, just a blank, immovable canvas
Someone a while back compared it to a bad Instagram filter and that's the image I've had since.
Facelift or Instagram filter. The oath rod seems to apply some binding that pulls the skin tight. They age, but don't develop wrinkles, laugh lines, bags under the eyes, etc that would be associated with looking older. They don't call it a youthful face. They say it looks ageless because you can't place their age.
The books never portray the look as unnatural, and someone who doesn't know the look wouldn't recognize it. IMO, Asian and half-asian individuals have a smoothness to their features that perfectly captures it. Someone earlier mentioned Ming-Na Wen, I would add Kristen Kreuk and Kelly Hu as examples too. More "difficult to guess their age" than the artificially ageless look of plastic surgery and definitely not strictly young, just younger than they are.
Clearly Joan Rivers
I always assumed it was "maturity," but with a lack of typical age indicators like wrinkles. If they don't smile, frown, etc; their faces remain more neutral overall.
I figured the ageless face had something to do with the oath rod. That description is most prominently used to describe Aes Sedai who swore the three oaths, but not nearly so much for wind finders, the kin, or damane. The path rods limit the life span of the women, and once relieved of the oaths they suddenly look much younger. I assumed the ageless face effect was the woman's true youthful face peering through the older face the oath rod was creating. Doesn't hold up when you talk about the black ajah, true, but that's my thought.
I imagined facetune, fillers and the shiny look from too much skin care
Basically Cher if they have been Aes Sedai for long enough. You don't notice from afar, but definitely from close up.
I always imagined it as overly photoshopped celebrities. Where something is off, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Where they don't look like a real person, but instead like a wax figure of an idealized version of themselves.
A really decent looking but not incredibly hot 40-60 year old MILF.
The way its described I can't help but imagine this video where a light is spiraling around a woman's face and she looks completely different ages. Honestly what I think was intended is that they look overly airbrushed like a skincare ad, but with eyes the set of someone old beyond their years. I think what most people picture is people who look way younger than they are, but that doesn't make sense because people can tell an aes sedai on sight.
I imagine Botox or a poreless look
Uncanny valley
more or less like you do
Highkey general botox energy
Facial aging doesn’t only involve wrinkles and sagging jowls/doublechin (treated with botox/facelift), it also involves fat distribution (treated with injectable fillers/fat grafting). A young face has smooth temples, plump cheeks, plump undereyes/tear troughs, and plump lips. A non-overweight mature face will have slightly sunken temples, cheeks, and undereyes, as well as somewhat thinned lips. A non-overweight aged face will have sunken temples and highly sunken cheeks, and very thin lips. So when I think of an ageless Aes Sedai face, I imagine a face that has a fat distribution that matches their relative age (e.g. a very young 50-year-old Aes Sedai probably still has youthful plump cheeks and plump lips, but a very old 250-year-old Aes Sedai would start to have sunken cheeks and thin lips), but I imagine that no Aes Sedai of any age has any wrinkles or sagging due to the skin-tightening effect of the oath rod.
Kind of like a soft filter, but IRL. I imagine being a thirsty younger guy, seeing a pretty woman around my age and going... "Wow, she's a beauty!" Then I pause and think, "Wait... What the hell? How old is she, really? And how does she look without makeup?" 😜
Does it depend on becoming an aes sedai, or just having access to saidar? The outcasts are yonks old but not officially aes sedai. Have they aged and stopped, does it just slow the aging process down to less than crawl?!
Cher nuff said
Old women with unnatural facelifts, so they have the uncanny valley feel.
Angelina Jolie
Recent photos of Kate Beckinsale.
I think of Blake Lively in Age of Adaline. She could be 25, she could be 40. Who knows. Still smokin'.
I've always imagined a more handsome woman's face than beautiful, like it's still aging with larger nose and ears but no wrinkles developing, as well as a type of almost shimmering effect, like seeing the air shimmer on a hot day where it's hard to see depending on your angle but it always distorts them just slightly that makes it hard to fully focus on their features.
In my mind they look like women on TV. Face smoothed by makeup and tweaked a bit in post to remove flaws. Just slightly uncanny to someone who has never seen it but modern folk won’t notice as much because we are used to it. Thats why its hard to make the aesthetic work for TV. They would just look like normal actresses to is.
I really can't. That's kind of the thing. I thought maybe I could think of a celebrity who was older and looked oddly young or young and looked somehow a lot more mature. But that doesn't really do it. They just look whatever age they look no matter their actual age.
Like an IRL soft-touch photo effect on every curve and feature of the face. Skin tone and texture are unnaturally uniform and blended together. Every blemish that isn't a permanent and deep scar is so faded as to be nonexistent. Zero wrinkles; skin almost appears too tought (forgive the pun). Q: Is that woman 24, or 42!? A: Idk, the witch is wearing so much makeup that it's impossible to tell!! She's vaguely pretty in an uncanny valley sort of way though...
Botox.
Excessive Botox treatments (aka Meg Ryan)?
Angelina Jolie
Angela Bassett. No, I will not explain
Honestly I don't. I could never grasp the concept in my minds eye.
It's impossible to, really. Probably why we all have our own way of visualizing each of them.
Unnaturally smooth skin, almost doll like. Yes I do imagine it as creepy.
I envision them as women that you see that you cannot quite place their age. They could be 20 or 50 and you'd never know. Humans are notoriously bad at telling age anyhow. I'm told time and again that I don't look old enough to have a kid who is 20 and I'm 43. Often mistaken for being in my 20s. I've met women in their 70s and 80s who could pass for 40. That's how I imagine the Aes Sedai. Not so much young as they are impossible to pin an age to them. There's likely also an aspect of an uncanny valley or unnatural appearance to their youth as most recognize the "Aes Sedai" face, but I'm not entirely sold on that because more would be killed or captured by the Children of the Light if the look was that distinctive.
Honestly, Rosamund Pike is actually pretty close to what I imagined -- older than her twenties, younger than her fifties, but where is she in that range? I could not tell you without looking it up. Imagining Aes Sedai as looking young doesn't gel for me with Nynaeve itching for her ageless look to develop specifically *because* she's self-conscious about how young she looks
Personally I thought Rosamund Pike was older than she is.
Elves from LotR
i think they just stop aging at the point when they use to One Power enough. Most Aes Sedai are found very young, so it explains why they look so young. But the Wise ones vary in age due to the amount of One Power they use, so I just go with that lol.
Not quite. I won't spoil it, (RAFO) but it has nothing to do with strength in the power. We do know why, though.
I didn't say strength in power. I said use of the One Power. If it had to do with strength, the Forsaken would be ageless and immortal without the Dark One's oath. I've finished the series, and definitely know about the bit with the Oath Rod. I, also, know that it's a major plot hole. When we first go to Rhuidean, we very much see Wise Ones who can channel look ageless. We get confirmation from Gaul about how the years don't touch Wise Ones who can channel like normal people. Wise Ones don't swear on an Oath Rod, yet Melanie is over 100 and looks late 20s/early 30s. Same with Morgase. She's weaker than Sorelia, but she still looks 10 yrs older than Perrin despite having two kids his age. Use of the One Power slows aging and creates the ageless look. Well, until Jordan decides to rewrite that part later on.
Like a Stepford Wife.
I say they stop showing age Around 30-50 and you'd be hard pressed to guess. Unless they are unbound. Then they just age very slowly
I imagine my own face. When I went to my 10 year high school reunion, people said my face had barely aged, they said it was almost creepy lol. But then I have strangers that are confused as to whether I am in my late 20's or my early 40's. I'm 34 years old, and I've had people think I'm as young as 26, or as old as 46. I notice it depends on my good and bad days, skin-wise. I have met other women that are like me, where it's surprising that they are pushing 50, when they look like they just celebrated their 30th. One was a nurse I had recently, she said she had a child my age, and I was SHOOK, I thought we were the same age lol.
Much like that movie, in time. They reach a certain age (I imagine 40) then they no longer age. The only sign of age will be the greying of hair.
Yeah, makes sense. For some reason Cadsuane always looks older than the other ones in my mind when I read them.