tv show spoilers S1E3: A Place of Safety

[Elder_Haman]

7 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

A court bard better damn well have a smooth singing voice.

But Thom knows his audience! That was not the time or place for smooth courtly singing. It was a mining town and his performance fit his audience. It doesn't mean that we won't see Thom in a totally different character when the occasion warrants it.

 

It's one of those things where you can sort of "zoom out" and see different possibilities. Thom is a legitimate badass in the books. RJ led with Thom being a gleeman, then slowly pulled back the layers to show you someone far more complicated. Rafe seems to be leading with Thom's grittier, tougher side. That doesn't mean we aren't going to get to see the court bard side of him as the layers are pulled back.

[DojoToad]

3 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

But Thom knows his audience! That was not the time or place for smooth courtly singing. It was a mining town and his performance fit his audience. It doesn't mean that we won't see Thom in a totally different character when the occasion warrants it.

 

It's one of those things where you can sort of "zoom out" and see different possibilities. Thom is a legitimate badass in the books. RJ led with Thom being a gleeman, then slowly pulled back the layers to show you someone far more complicated. Rafe seems to be leading with Thom's grittier, tougher side. That doesn't mean we aren't going to get to see the court bard side of him as the layers are pulled back.

Oh, I get it.  High chant, low chant, common (?).

[Elder_Haman]

17 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Oh, I get it.  High chant, low chant, common (?).

Exactly.

[DojoToad]

His performance will be easier to take after he demonstrates high and/or low chant

[ArrylT]

On 11/19/2021 at 2:41 PM, flinn said:

 yeah and it was almost like they came out of nowhere. dont forget the big dogs barking and carrying on as they approached. It was easy to see both Egwene and Perrin were scared and the Tinkers did nothing to ease the tension. Also, the reply was "Your welcome warms the spirit" or whatever... I was thinking "what welcome" they didnt welcome them at all. They just asked if they knew the song.

 

At the very beginning of their encounter in EOTW they encountered large barking mastiffs - it was because they were with Elyas who knew the Tinkers and the dogs that they actually handled it properly - in fact Egwene initially wanted to avoid the Tinkers whereas Perrin was eager to meet them.

 

Spoiler

As they came close to the trees, three mastiffs burst from cover, broadmuzzled dogs as tall as the wolves and even heavier, teeth bared in loud, rumbling snarls. They stopped short as soon as they were in the open, but no more than thirty feet separated them from the three people, and their dark eyes kindled with a killing light.

 

Spoiler

Nothing here - accidentally hit spoiler 2x and not sure how to delete

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by ArrylT

[ArrylT]

On 11/21/2021 at 2:11 AM, DaddyFinn said:

The song is perfect with Rand standing there and listening. Makes me cry.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for sharing this video!

 

One thing I noticed that I feel aptly shows Thom as a gleeman was the lack of noise & activity by the patrons.   No one moved, no one talked, no one left.  All eyes were on Thom for the entirety of the song.   That is part of the skill of being a gleeman imo.   I concur with the others who said Thom was likely performing to the level of his audience.

[DaddyFinn]

22 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

His performance will be easier to take after he demonstrates high and/or low chant

From 1:55. Good enough?

 

[JenniferL]

Honestly, I’m fine with Thom’s singing voice. There’s many different kinds of “good” when it comes to vocal performances and not every professional singer has a “smooth” voice. Lin Manuel Miranda is probably one of the most famous Broadway performers right now and his voice is more similar to this than what you normally think of with Broadway. 

[Agitel]

3 hours ago, Vartija said:

When Dana has Rand & Mat cornered with the sword she says: "I see you. At night, in my dreams. All five of you. But only one of you matters."

 

Five? Does that mean Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene... and Nynaeve? I assumed only the boys & Egwene were the ones they were after, them being ta'veren. So is Nynaeve still a potential Dragon despite being 25?

 

Ishy don't know everything that's been revealed so far. He didn't have no private conversation with Nyn.

[mogi68]

On 11/20/2021 at 10:04 AM, Sir_Charrid said:

Now my really big gripe, Fain has still not had his story told, I really hope that in the next episode or at most 2 we get a long 20min flashback of what he has been doing, him with the Trollocs chasing the runaways and then entering Shadar Logath. It is getting to the point where he will have been out of the story too long, or will just appear and with a throwaway line explain what he was doing.

 

 

 

We "saw" him (or heard him, rather) in Shadar Logoth in Episode 2. A lot of people probably missed it, but he is definitely there.

 

In the book his real story isn't told until he shows up at Fal Dara

Edited November 22, 2021 by mogi68

[DojoToad]

40 minutes ago, JenniferL said:

Honestly, I’m fine with Thom’s singing voice. There’s many different kinds of “good” when it comes to vocal performances and not every professional singer has a “smooth” voice. Lin Manuel Miranda is probably one of the most famous Broadway performers right now and his voice is more similar to this than what you normally think of with Broadway. 

I'm far from a voice/music expert.  Maybe he was so rough/gravelly to contrast to when he is smoother later on.  His performance was unexpected, but not a show-stopper to me.  Just throwing out my observation.

[Vambram]

I found this video after reading through #twitteroftime

 

I know we can't have this style in the Amazon show, but I still really enjoyed it. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVmTTXgm8gI&t=2s

 

 

[Meskell]

When Perrin and Egwene found the tracks, why did Perrin put his hand on the ground and then announce that they were carrying lots of people?

 

It’s like he was able to read it through magic (which I know he can’t) or that he was using a secret power that he already had knowledge of, which he doesn’t. 

[DojoToad]

5 minutes ago, Meskell said:

When Perrin and Egwene found the tracks, why did Perrin put his hand on the ground and then announce that they were carrying lots of people?

 

It’s like he was able to read it through magic (which I know he can’t) or that he was using a secret power that he already had knowledge of, which he doesn’t. 

He might have been guesstimating based on the depth of the tracks and soil consistency??  You know - woodsman type stuff...

[Meskell]

1 minute ago, DojoToad said:

He might have been guesstimating based on the depth of the tracks and soil consistency??  You know - woodsman type stuff...

He put his hand down and closed his eyes. He put his hand between the tracks, which is a really odd thing to do as well. 

[DojoToad]

2 minutes ago, Meskell said:

He put his hand down and closed his eyes. He put his hand between the tracks, which is a really odd thing to do as well. 

Could just be poor execution for whatever they were going for.  Didn't stick out to me so I didn't watch closely.

[DaddyFinn]

3 minutes ago, Meskell said:

He put his hand down and closed his eyes. He put his hand between the tracks, which is a really odd thing to do as well. 

Funny, I saw him place his hand on top of a narrow track. I wish I could screenshot it

Edited November 22, 2021 by DaddyFinn

[Vambram]

I think that he put his hand inside one of the wheel tracks. Doing so would allow him to measure how deep those tracks our, and then he could make an assumption about how heavy the wagons would have been. If the tracks are deeper than one might have expected, then one could assume that there were a lot of people on those wagons.

[DaddyFinn]

4 minutes ago, GanoesParan said:

I think that he put his hand inside one of the wheel tracks. Doing so would allow him to measure how deep those tracks our, and then he could make an assumption about how heavy the wagons would have been. If the tracks are deeper than one might have expected, then one could assume that there were a lot of people on those wagons.

Yes. Enjoy my amazing drawing. There are two separate tracks. Perrin kneeled between the two overlapping ones and placed his hands to the bottom of the left one.

 

 

 

[SinisterDeath]

44 minutes ago, Meskell said:

He put his hand down and closed his eyes. He put his hand between the tracks, which is a really odd thing to do as well. 

I can confirm he didn't close his eyes. It's hard to tell because his eyes were obscured by the shadow cast by his own noggin, and Egwene hovering, but if you look at the eye furthest from the camera, you can see his eyelashes backlit, indicating his eyes were open.

He commented that they were deep before touching the ground. (Which could just be to confirm that the ground was compact, and not squishy. 
If there were a LOT of people there could have been heat but I doubt it. (same goes with vibration)

[Windigo]

9 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

I can confirm he didn't close his eyes. It's hard to tell because his eyes were obscured by the shadow cast by his own noggin, and Egwene hovering, but if you look at the eye furthest from the camera, you can see his eyelashes backlit, indicating his eyes were open.

He commented that they were deep before touching the ground. (Which could just be to confirm that the ground was compact, and not squishy. 
If there were a LOT of people there could have been heat but I doubt it. (same goes with vibration)

How damp or dry the dirt is in the track tells how long ago also,  the soil underneath would have less moisture than an older the track,  you can also tell if the track was from weight compacts and cuts into dirt  or soft soil squishes.

[DaddyFinn]

Me and several other have thought that Nynaeve started to swing an overhead strike and then cut to her thrusting the trollocs chest. I just noticed she started  an overhead thrust so there's no continuity error. I don't remember which thread had more discussion about this.

 

[Tim]

Having been unable to make time to post for a week, and hence since I saw the first three episodes, I'm not sure whether it's depressing or amusing to return here only to find people post about stuff like whether Marin had more lines than Bran in episode 1 or whether Dana would be strong enough to run with a sword in episode 3. Seriously, is this what people get worked up over?

 

The thing I was most interested about from Dana's appearance in episode 3 is that her speech to Rand very clearly foreshadows Rand's nadir on Dragonmount, the uselessness of the cycle of being reborn into a world of pain and misery and mistakes - much more directly and precisely and obviously than Ingtar in the books. Ingtar is, I'm pretty sure, the only darkfriend in the books apart from Ishamael and one other (who I won't name in case some readers haven't gotten through all the books, but let's just say that her soul is white) who became a darkfriend for a reason other than some version of either power or immortality or freedom to be bad or all three. And yet here we have, in episode 3, a pretty low-ranking darkfriend who essentially espouses Ishamael's metaphysics and treats him as a kind of Jesus figure. 

 

Contrast that with Tam's speech to Rand in the first episode about the purpose of reincarnation being to do better than last time. I was really surprised that the ultimate moral arc of Rand's journey in the books had been so obviously foregrounded within 3 episodes. I was really hoping there'd be an interesting discussion on here about whether this was good or bad, nuanced or hamfisted, thoughtful or thoughtless. 

 

I do think that if the show ever gets to veins of gold we'll see Rand echoing Dana's thoughts (albeit not depicted literally as such) and we'll get (literal) flashbacks to Tam's speech at Bel Tine.

 

Also, Dana thinks Ishamael was an incarnation of the dragon!?! Even as an incorrect belief amongst darkfriends this would be messing with the story way more than Egwene potentially being the DR, but I suspect it's actually supposed to be the case?

 

Doesn't really make sense if Ba'alzamon is Ishamael unless two (or, rather, at least three) instances of the same soul can exist simultaneously? Conversely, if they follow through with it (and deal with the metaphysical issues arising from two instances of the dragon coexisting) I can see the attraction of making Rand / Ishamael even more of mirror-images / counterparts than they are in the books. But I can't say I love the idea until I see how they execute it (and if they can pull it off) - the degree of difficulty seems high.

And yet none of this is commented on here? Tell me that's not because it's not an example of oh noes Rafe once said he is a feminist I'm feeling so emasculated right now and that's the only sort of thing that seems to excite 50% of the contributors?

Edited November 23, 2021 by Tim
added reference to immortality

[Ralph]

I understood she said ishamael brought the Dragon to the dark one, not that he was

[Tim]

Well if that is the case I will be much happier, given it was only the seeming impossibility of the latter option that bothered me. Does it mean, though, that Ishamael is meant to be much older than the other forsaken? 

Obviously I’ll have to watch again with frequent use of the pause button