What would you want to tell Rafe Judkins about making the show?

[Whittle]

I’d tell him I’m worried about pacing. From the episode titles we know so far, it can be safely assumed he means to cover the first 2 books in season 1. If these are hour long episodes that’s about 4 hours per book, which is paced like a feature film. I want a more deliberate pacing, similar to GOT, where we have less action and more

character development. This is why episodic storytelling (TV)  is better at portraying modern fantasy than a summer blockbuster style film.  Don’t rush this thing.

[johnnysd]

5 hours ago, Whittle said:

I’d tell him I’m worried about pacing. From the episode titles we know so far, it can be safely assumed he means to cover the first 2 books in season 1. If these are hour long episodes that’s about 4 hours per book, which is paced like a feature film. I want a more deliberate pacing, similar to GOT, where we have less action and more

character development. This is why episodic storytelling (TV)  is better at portraying modern fantasy than a summer blockbuster style film.  Don’t rush this thing.

They are only doing Book 1 and maybe the beginning of Book 2. 

[Whittle]

They have only announced episode titles for the first 6 episodes, not the last 2. I can almost guarantee the last 2 will be titles something like “Daes Dae’mar” and “The Forerunners.” How would you bring the Great Hunt portion of the story to a satisfying conclusion if you cut it off midseason?

Edited August 6, 2021 by Whittle

[johnnysd]

7 minutes ago, Whittle said:

They have only announced episode titles for the first 6 episodes, not the last 2. I can almost guarantee the last 2 will be titles something like “Daes Dae’mar” and “The Forerunners.” How would you bring the Great Hunt portion of the story to a satisfying conclusion if you cut it off midseason?

 

They will just do the very very beginning of the Great Hunt. Episode 7 is Tarwins Gap and Eye of the World. They look to be appropriating the GOT element where 7 is the big climatic episode. Some people think Season 2 could do both TGH and TDR but just speculation.

[Whittle]

Rand is revealed as The Dragon Reborn at the Eye of the World and episode 4 is called “The Dragon Reborn.”  Episode 5 is called “Blood Calls For Blood” and is a reference to what Fain writes on the wall in TGH. Episode 6 is “The Flame of Tar Valon” which is the Amerlyn who doesn’t show up till TGH.  How can you read anything into this that doesn’t imply both books will be covered in one season. I hope I’m wrong but I’m probably not.

[johnnysd]

3 hours ago, Whittle said:

Rand is revealed as The Dragon Reborn at the Eye of the World and episode 4 is called “The Dragon Reborn.”  Episode 5 is called “Blood Calls For Blood” and is a reference to what Fain writes on the wall in TGH. Episode 6 is “The Flame of Tar Valon” which is the Amerlyn who doesn’t show up till TGH.  How can you read anything into this that doesn’t imply both books will be covered in one season. I hope I’m wrong but I’m probably not.

You are totally wrong and has been discussed at length. Watch the Geeky Eri videos. It looks like Tar Valon is replacing Caemlyn. The Dragon Reborn episode refers to Logain as his role is significantly expanded and we will see his capture.

[mistborn82]

The chapter title episodes are nods to the fans, they mean nothing more than that.

[Whittle]

Well seeing how I’m new to this forum I didn’t know it had been “discussed in length.” And I don’t really have time to watch weird videos so I guess we will just see when the show comes out this winter. Meanwhile I’ll continue my reread and hope they don’t stray too far from the source material.

Edited August 7, 2021 by Whittle

[Elder_Haman]

On 8/6/2021 at 8:52 PM, Whittle said:

Well seeing how I’m new to this forum I didn’t know it had been “discussed in length.” And I don’t really have time to watch weird videos so I guess we will just see when the show comes out this winter. Meanwhile I’ll continue my reread and hope they don’t stray too far from the source material.

They will inevitably stray a long way from the source material. It’s just not possible to do it otherwise. 
 

I’ve been making this comparison regularly: examine the Netflix show “The Last Kingdom” and how it deviates from the source material. WoT will be similar.

 

That being said, just because the series deviates doesn’t mean that it will be bad. Last Kingdom is a terrific show that captures the essence of the books and tells the story in a different, but no less compelling way. 

[Whittle]

I agree some deviation is inevitable. Most but not all the changes Jackson made to LOTR made for a better story. But a faithful adaptation is possible. GOT season 1 was almost exactly like the book. There isn’t any reason WOT would have to stray too far from source material until at least book 4 or 5. As the story expands, it would probably be unfilmable without major changes. It’s got to keep in the spirit of the books and I’ll be happy.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Whittle

[Beidomon]

I’d tell Rafe….

 

1. Don’t go woke, bro. Tell The Story. The Story ain’t woke. So Don’t. Go. Woke.

 

2. Give the characters more depth.

 

3. Make the bad guys actually scary. And competent.

 

4. Us fans know The Story - now we want to SEE it. So try to make it look rich and real!

 

 

[imlad]

15 hours ago, Beidomon said:

I’d tell Rafe….

 

1. Don’t go woke, bro. Tell The Story. The Story ain’t woke. So Don’t. Go. Woke.

 

Not sure what books you were reading. We've got a world where a person's skin color, or the fact they are a woman, does not make them a second class citizen. We have two arguably bisexual characters in prominent roles (Moiraine and Siuan) for the plot, and there are undoubtedly other LGBT characters in the series. The power dynamics of the world are much more balanced between men and women than were seen in just about any other Fantasy literature at the time, or even now (as far as I can think of off hand), if not leaning a bit towards the women's side. You've got at least one culture that the woman controls who gets married, and when (the Aiel). There at least two Body Positive cultures in the series (Aiel and the Fal Darans), if not a third (the Domani). The Domani economy appears to be dominated by women instead of men. At a time when women were still not allowed in combat under US military regulations, Jordan had female warriors taking center stage numerous times in this series..

 

All this starting 30 years ago when none of this was taken lightly or considered common place.

 

So, exactly what the FRAK is "not woke" about this series? Or are you just being an antiWoke troll, with misogynistic, homophobic, racist and/or transphobic tendencies (as those are the only reasons to object to "wokeness")? I'm not accusing you of those, mind, I'm just asking if your motivation for saying "don't go woke" is because you're antiWoke, and thus have one of those mental disorders.

 

Finally, you live in the 21st Century. This Century is FRAKKING WOKE. GET USED TO IT, cuz that ain't going away. It's called progress, that's what happens as civilization grows and evolves, and becomes more mature, not the petty little boys club those who object to wokeness want it to remain. That's the realm of nematodes like Putin, Stephen Miller, the Proud Boys, and Trump.

Edited August 9, 2021 by imlad

[king of nowhere]

17 hours ago, Beidomon said:

3. Make the bad guys actually scary. And competent.

 

i'd argue that the bad guys were very competent, they just had no coordination between them. they fought separately, they fell separately. the good guys also fought separately for a long time, and they managed to get things done only when they cooperated. And it's a major theme of wot, so I'd rather it's kept.

 

also, the good guys had the patters on their side. how often were they saved by ta'veren luck?

and finally, the last problem of the bad guys was that they could not just kill everyone. though most of them didn't even knew, they needed to break rand will, without killing him. a teribly difficult win condition to achieve

[mistborn82]

My guess is taveren will be toned down alot because you'll lose you're viewers if deus ex machina comes to the rescue every time. As I've said many times, the whole 'because plot' element will most likely be removed and plausible reasons are given and motivations shown. I'm sure weird and inexplicable stuff will still happen but it'll be kept to a minimum.

I would use the differences between LOTR the book and the movies as a guide. Not the Hobbit

[lt;(^-^)gt;]

Yeah I think they'll likely shy away from too much overt ta'veren stuff, although I hope they keep the concept intact. RJ knew that a bit of "plot armor" is hard to avoid when the stakes are so high and everything has to fall into place in this huge epic, when you're dealing in a fantasy setting that has real prophesies and a real "chosen one". I appreciate how he made it part of his world's "physics" instead of ignoring it, because it led to some awesome character moments, especially with Mat.

 

WoT is full to the brim with subjects and themes that certain people will see as part of a political agenda, and I'm dreading the inevitable wave of reactionary nonsense from that crowd. I'm concerned that actual fans and critics of the show will be taken advantage of by the people who just want to wage their culture war ?

[Thrasymachus]

We already know there will be significant deviations from the source material.  And because of that, there will be endless fights and divisions about "wokeness" and the motivations behind Rafe's deviations.  So gird your loins.

[mistborn82]

Really though, the arguements will be among 'fans' because to viewers who pick up WOT after the show, their conception will be based on show.

 

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

18 hours ago, mistborn82 said:

Really though, the arguements will be among 'fans' because to viewers who pick up WOT after the show, their conception will be based on show.

 

True true. And even for us fans, with a little bit of time and popularity our perceptions will be shaped by the show ... What LOTR fan doesn't now picture Gandalf as Ian McKellen or Strider as Viggo?

 

When I agree with the "don't go Woke" statement, what I mean is: 

Don't majorly change the source material to push a certain modern agenda. The way RJ wrote it is good. It has plenty (as @imlad ungraciously pointed out) of progressive source material already in it that was tactfully written so both sides of a political spectrum could enjoy it. 

 

There has been concern in the past that some of the casting was not ...picking the person best for the job...but just trying to be diverse. But that horse has been beaten to death, resurrected, zombie-head cut off, resurrected, chopped into little pieces, resurrected. So the moderators are very sick of it and the unsuspecting newbies who make that observation get put through the grinder with the resurrected dead horse. And as is fitting for the Wheel of Time community - the Wheel keeps spitting that dead horse back out! ?

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Wolfbrother31

[king of nowhere]

there is a big difference between "having representation in a story" (something which the story already supports) and "using the story to push a political agenda". For example, discworld books always had underlying progressive themes, and they were great. But in later books, pterry used them more and more heavily, became more and more nuanced, and the quality of the storytelling suffered for it. on the other side of the political spectrum, i can point to the sword of truth as an example of a story that suffers greatly for being heavily laden with right wing propaganda.

generally a story gets too far when characters start making speeches about the social issue when it has no bearing to the story, or when all positive characters/cultures embrace a certain ideal, while everyone not embracing that ideal is bad. at this point it starts becoming a political manifesto, and it ruins the story, even when it's a political manifesto I happen to agree with.

 

rafe putting so much emphasis on the "diverse" and "inclusive" cast is definitely a yellow flag for a story that may be used too strongly to carry a political agenda. But it's just a yellow flag, because it is not proof that he actually did that. if he's a good storyteller, he won't put politics in front of the story.

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

@king of nowhere

I agree. 

We really don't know yet. But will soon. Hopefully, they just tried to tell the Wheel of Time story as best they could for TV. 

 

But I have also realized that, in this, as in life - "whoever pays, says ...what goes and what stays".

So I think there may be quite a bit that was out of Rafe's hands. He made a comment about the writing room being littered with his tears...

 

That makes me even more nervous and sad. But we will see. We will see. And Sooooon! 

 

Is anybody else annoyed by the fact that since the poster they've given us NOTHING! They said us hungry folks were gonna eat!

[Thrasymachus]

RJ's writing was not at all progressive or "woke," even for its time, with regards to sexuality.  He wrote exactly one "queer" character, in Min, who has the blatant hallmarks of queerness in that she prefers to dress like a boy, and is uniquely and acutely aware of the fact that she has no choice in who she will love (and despondent of that fact as well).  And her lack of choice involved a cis relationship anyway, in spite of some early hints at a homosexual or asexual affect. And then Jordan turns her into a sidekick, and eventually a very one-dimensional hanger-on to the other side of that cis relationship.

 

He wrote zero homosexual characters, and wrote zero long term homosexual relationships into his story.  It's not until Sanderson that any character was even acknowledged as homosexual.  Prior to that, homosexual acts were universally written as juvenile dalliances that some, perhaps, never really grew out of.  This was at roughly the same time, culturally speaking, that Ross's ex-wife Carol was raising his baby and living with her girlfriend Susan, eventually marrying her, on Friends.

 

His treatment of the trans-gendered Halima is arguably anti-woke.  Her transition is forced on her as a punishment, which can be likened to being born "the wrong gender," and having to deal with society's pressures to conform, but eventually she accepts, and even embraces "the wrong gender" she was forced into.  And while we're told a story whereby a trans individual can come to accept the gender they find themselves in, we're also told that there's an ineliminable element of gender that persists through the transition, represented in the story as the ability to channel saidin.  I mean, hell, the very notion of a universe that's fundamentally gendered via equal and opposite forces is a flat contradiction of the queer-theory of gender as a social construct.

 

Now, I don't think very much, if any of that, is purposefully directed against homosexuals,  trans people or the idea of transexuality or queer theories of gender more generally.  The exclusion of homosexuality I think mostly comes down to RJ not writing about sex or sexuality much anyway, both because he wanted to keep things in the YA book aisle where they'd sell more copies for fantasy in the 90's, and because he was bad at it and knew it, having tried to do it with some of the Conan stories he wrote when he was younger. 

 

The anti-trans stuff is probably less about being anti-trans, and more a consequence of the metaphysical reification of gender that's used as a tool for world-building and a story-telling device to explore a world where women are dominant over men.  Trans issues were not on many people's social radar at that time, except those directly suffering from them, of course. And gender as a social construct, while already largely accepted in academia, was only barely beginning to be part of the public zeitgeist and policy landscape at the time.  In fact, one could argue that the Wheel of Time is subversively queer in that it establishes gender as a fundamental and deep reality, and then puts that on the fantasy-fiction section of the library or bookstore.  It's almost too bad that subversion is itself subverted by the narrative hints and outright admissions by RJ that the Wheel of Time universe is meant to be our own, in a far distant future/far flung past, thereby giving up its tacit admission of being fictional.  Almost, except that those tidbits and that notion are saved by the Rule of Cool.  

 

Still, one could see why a young, gay person, who, like so many socially ostracized young people, finds solace in the pages of fantasy and sci-fi fiction, would find solace and inspiration in the Wheel of Time.  And it's because RJ meticulously avoids sex and issues of sexuality, and instead tells more universally applicable stories about being in relationships and worrying about hurting the other person, or when and how much to tell them of the truth, and all sorts of other things like that.  There's so much more to being human than how and whether one enjoys sex and who they enjoy it with, and RJ's stories are rich with those experiences. It tells of a world where sex and sexuality are such a non-issue that they're barely even thought of.  It's easy to see why that would seduce a young person struggling with living in a world where such issues are a daunting and daily personal pressure.

 

It also creates amorphous voids around those issues that the imaginations of the reader can fill up to suit their own personal desires and needs for the story, and attach to the larger narrative or characterizations or world-building via sometimes the most tenuous of inferences from the text.  It's one of the strengths of the the book series that it can accommodate that. 

 

Unfortunately, it's also why "wokeness" is a live concern, seeing how the showrunners is a gay man who claims a deep personal connection to the story, and who insists on diversity and inclusion as key parts of the story, when in reality they are only present in the story by being conspicuous in the absence of issues surrounding them.  When combined with the fact that we already know of immense changes to the structure of the story, as well as an almost complete abandonment of the aesthetic so vividly and meticulously described by RJ, demonstrating their attitude towards this project as less an opportunity to tell RJ's story than to display their own "creativity," and it's not so much a yellow flag as a bright red one.

[lt;(^-^)gt;]

I agree that in some cases RJ's treatment of sexual preference, gender identity, and some other related topics is poorly handled. I forgive it because I know what it's like to grow up insulated from these topics and not gain a meaningful understanding of them until much later in life. As you say, they weren't prevalent in the public discourse until much more recently.

 

I think that these issues will be taken on by the writers and will probably have modern thinking applied to them in the adaptation. I can only hope that it's done with a light touch, but it almost seems necessary in a few cases. Halima definitely comes to mind. I don't think doing that would necessarily be pushing an agenda though. It's just being careful to distinguish a plot element like "Halima was punished by the Dark One" from an insidious message like "Being a trans person is a form of divine punishment." I don't think RJ meant the latter in any way, but it's easy to read into that at a glance, so I hope the adaptation can do the topic justice.

[king of nowhere]

14 hours ago, Thrasymachus said:

RJ's writing was not at all progressive or "woke," even for its time, with regards to sexuality.  He wrote exactly one "queer" character, in Min, who has the blatant hallmarks of queerness in that she prefers to dress like a boy

 

Min is queer?

Preferring to dress like a boy could be the hallmark of queerness, but it's certainly not enough to jump to conclusion. Especially when boy's clothing is more practical, especially for physical activity, and min is an active girl.

unless i misremember, min expresses this sentiment in her pows. not every tomboy is queer, just like not every loner is on the autistic spectrum.

 

and yes, genderqueer is not represented on the wheel of time before sanderson. At the time, it wasn't an issue that was particularly discussed.

 

 

[nsmallw]

14 hours ago, lt;(^-^)gt; said:

I agree that in some cases RJ's treatment of sexual preference, gender identity, and some other related topics is poorly handled. I forgive it because I know what it's like to grow up insulated from these topics and not gain a meaningful understanding of them until much later in life. As you say, they weren't prevalent in the public discourse until much more recently.

 

I think that these issues will be taken on by the writers and will probably have modern thinking applied to them in the adaptation. I can only hope that it's done with a light touch, but it almost seems necessary in a few cases. Halima definitely comes to mind. I don't think doing that would necessarily be pushing an agenda though. It's just being careful to distinguish a plot element like "Halima was punished by the Dark One" from an insidious message like "Being a trans person is a form of divine punishment." I don't think RJ meant the latter in any way, but it's easy to read into that at a glance, so I hope the adaptation can do the topic justice.

Is Halima even necessary to the storyline ? I'd say not. 

[Thrasymachus]

Min meets the hallmarks for queerness from a literary perspective.  The most obvious is strangeness or abnormality when it comes to the typical hallmarks of gender expression in the literary world in question.  Dressing like a boy is sufficient in a world where every other girl wears dresses and skirts and long hair, and where it's repeatedly remarked upon about how strange it is.  Being a "tomboy" is queer in a world in which there are no other tomboys.  Quite apart from the fact that there is a rich academic literature treating treating tomboyhood as a level of more or less socially acceptable queerness in itself.  

 

The most important hallmark for Min's queerness, however, lies not in her preference for male dress, or male jobs, but in her acute, and unique awareness that who she loves is not something she can choose.  The Pattern chose for her, and she knows that directly.  That lack of choice, particularly when it comes to gender and especially sexuality, is central to queerness as a concept.  Gay men can't help but be attracted to and love men, and likewise for gay women.  A pre-transistion trans woman can't help but feel trapped in the "wrong" body.  The notion that fate, or biology, or society has imposed sexuality and gender from the outside, is sufficient all by itself to establish queerness as a live topic or characteristic of a work of literature.

 

This reluctance to acknowledge Min's queerness is itself, however, reason to believe that focusing on the queerness that can be easily uncovered in the story, if not easily injected, is going to be alienating and divisive.  People still have a normative reaction to queerness, and that reaction is nearly always instinctively negative.  Notice how the mere identification of some of those elements of Min's character that are clearly queer causes a defensive reaction to protest that she's not "really queer," she's just being "practical." In spite of the fact that no other woman or girl dresses that way in the series.  What would the reaction be if the analysis of Perrin's character as queer, or Mat's, or Rand's, was given, or explored within this TV series?  Because there are elements there that can be analyzed through that lens.

 

But that's not Jordan's series.  Jordan created an interesting, (unknowingly) anti-queer world with inversed gender dynamics that practically begs for deep conceptual and narrative exploration of those themes, and he completely avoids doing any of that in favor of a mainstream-suitable depiction of fairly shallow badassery, with just enough gaps in that shallow narrative to hint at those unexplored depths and invite the reader to plumb them themselves.  And it's natural enough for readers to fill those gaps with their own ideas and mistake that for what Jordan wrote or intended.  But didn't explore sexuality or gender; he assiduously avoided them after setting them up.  He wrote the gaps.