New clip about the Aes Sedai

[Maximillion]

Well the twitterati are out in force.

The show is being well and truly claimed by the 'woke' crowd. - one even said 'if you are a white male the show is not for you'.

Lots of chat too about Morraine's outfit - apparently it's an LBGT outfit??  Don't know anything about that, but it does seem to be totally misplaced for Morraine's character.

I guess it will get 'popular' traction from it and that is probably what Amazon was going for - hence the trashing of the lore.

Given up hope it's going to be anything but a woke Hollyweird type show.

 

Fair or not as we haven't seen the show yet, it has become the shining light for wokeness.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Maximillion

[WhiteVeils]

Maybe it's just because the retelling is so fresh from my latest readthrough, but I want to offer a reminder:

 

When Book 1 starts, 'common knowledge' is that Aes Sedai are scheming manipulators that destroyed the world. The reason the Whitecloaks are killing Aes Sedai is because a very broad swath of the community believes that Aes Sedai are witches in league with the Dark One, and dark friends.  The Dragon's Fang is scrawled on many doors regularly...men and women.  Moiraine summoned the trollocs upon Emond's Field...at least until the villagers were convinced otherwise.

'Common knowledge' only knows this.... The Dragon destroyed the world.  And someday the Dragon will fight the Dark One and die, or else destroy the world again.

We know more. We see through the eyes of Rand, Perrin, Mat, and many others through the course of the stories. We learn from Moiraine and Thom and reflect their thoughts as they learn about the prophecies of the Dragon.  We don't learn more until they tell us, and we don't know what all they know.

We /know/ common knowledge of the world is wrong.  Even Moiraine has no idea what all the prophecies mean...she's trying to figure it out a bit, and starts trying to take them all to the White Tower, not take them to Tear.  What is being a little bit more wrong one way or another?  Even in the world as written, it's perfectly possible that there have been women false Dragons.  Why wouldn't women in this world claim it for the grant of power.  You don't think those things wouldn't be hidden by the White Tower?  What do you think the 13th repository has in it?    It doesn't change anything at all.

Yes, if another person other than Rand was the Dragon Reborn, then it'd be a change way too big for me. But that's not coming.  There are going to be bigger changes than what Moiraine knows or doesn't know when she starts her adventure.  There have to be.  You have to show what's in people's heads. You have to cut out bits that are relevant later on, and find different ways to do them. You have to keep an audience that risks being turned off of it like a joke, because this is really, really hard to adapt.  Enjoy this is as it's own thing, or don't.  But this pre-panicking seems just....like the goal is to try to express to the world how fiercely you are determined to express as much hostility as possible to more liberal POVs.  Let it be itself, as if the books didn't exist at all, if you can't accept that it's going to be different.
 

 

[Arthellion]

1 minute ago, WhiteVeils said:

Yes, if another person other than Rand was the Dragon Reborn, then it'd be a change way too big for me. But that's not coming.  There are going to be bigger changes than what Moiraine knows or doesn't know when she starts her adventure.  There have to be.  You have to show what's in people's heads. You have to cut out bits that are relevant later on, and find different ways to do them. You have to keep an audience that risks being turned off of it like a joke, because this is really, really hard to adapt.  Enjoy this is as it's own thing, or don't.  But this pre-panicking seems just....like the goal is to try to express to the world how fiercely you are determined to express as much hostility as possible to more liberal POVs.  Let it be itself, as if the books didn't exist at all, if you can't accept that it's going to be different.
 

 

Very Fair take and one I'm striving to mentally emulate. 

 

It's hard when you care about a world like this so much and you're nervous. ?

 

I hope I'm blown away by the quality and story-telling. 

[TheDreadReader]

19 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

Sometimes I wonder: do we even watch the same clip? Moiraine described the Sealing of the Bore and the Breaking of the world pretty vaguely but also faithfully to how it's described in the books. Men messed up and women cleaned it up in the next few hundred years.

 

I tend to think that RJ tried to imply that both the male and female AoL Aes Sedai messed up.   It is just that the female Aes Sedai didn't open themselves up to the counterstroke from the DO because they didn't participate in it.  In the end, their plan would have failed also.

 

[Jackdaw_Fool]

52 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

This would just doubly make sure Aes Sedai are vigilant about testing girls in villages to make sure some rogue wilder doesn't try something...

This doesn't address at all what I was saying... I specifically was bringing attention to the female false dragons who cannot channel as well as the Aes Sedai that would use the possibility of the dragon reborn being female to their advantage.

 

That the dragon reborn can be female should have a profound effect on the world's history, regardless of the presumption that who the dragon turns out to be isn't being changed. For it not to have world changing effects would be poor plotting. For a just the tip of the iceberg example, female false dragons should generally be expected to be more successful if some portion of the populace is actively hoping for a female dragon (if the thought is that a female dragon wouldn't break the world.) They have a much larger built in audience from which to attract supporters. Queens, aspiring rulers, dissidents, Aes Sedai, etc. would have used this to their advantage throughout the world's history... I'd expect there would have been wars and changed nations because of this. Never mind the internal Aes Sedai politics and maneuvering and the effects that could have with the possibility being that one in their midst could be the dragon reborn.

 

Also, you still don't understand why the 1 of you 4 thing isn't a lie? 

[SinisterDeath]

21 minutes ago, Jackdaw_Fool said:

This doesn't address at all what I was saying... I specifically was bringing attention to the female false dragons who cannot channel as well as the Aes Sedai that would use the possibility of the dragon reborn being female to their advantage.

Aes Sedai can't just bring a male into the white tower, and train them to do their bidding. Nor could the Black Ajah attempt to convert them to the shadow with 13 myrdraal.

 

But they can certainly do so with a female channeler.

 

23 minutes ago, Jackdaw_Fool said:

Also, you still don't understand why the 1 of you 4 thing isn't a lie? 

It 100% isn't a lie now.

I was saying before that it could have been depending on her character knowledge. 

If her character knew a woman cannot be the dragon, I feel there were better ways of wording that to include Egwene.

The way I logically process that comment is;

1 of 4 IS the dragon. Thus any of the 4 could be the dragon. Mat could be. Rand could be, Perrin could be, or Egwene could be, all four are perfectly true, if she doesn't know which it could be.
If one of them 100% cannot be the dragon because they have a vagina, the statement would be false, and thus a lie.
Now that we know Moiraine doesn't know the dragon's gender, there is 100% no falsehood in that statement.... and there goes my theory that Moiraine is secretly merged with Verin.

[Skipp]

Something all of us book fans will have to realize at some point.  The show will not have 14 books worth of lore put into it.  There is stuff that we all know but the show may not include.  If they choose not to include that lore then the might also add stuff to the show that would "break" that lore.  But it isn't really broken because that lore was never added to the show in the first place.  We don't know how they will wield this but we have to be prepared for it.

 

Now this is not me saying that the Rafe and the writers are disrespecting the books or that they won't follow them as closely as they can.  But they will have to take short cuts at times that will likely rub book buffs the wrong way, but to most of the audience they won't notice or care as long as the show itself makes sense.

 

I don't know how you can expect anything else.

[swollymammoth]

1 hour ago, WhiteVeils said:

But this pre-panicking seems just....like the goal is to try to express to the world how fiercely you are determined to express as much hostility as possible to more liberal POVs.  Let it be itself, as if the books didn't exist at all, if you can't accept that it's going to be different.

It's not liberal views, it's any views. 

 

I've said this a million times, but I'll say it again. If Rafe was a die-hard Catholic and he was talking about changing the story to elevate the Children of the Light because he wanted them portrayed more positively, or he was going to remove the element of pagan gods having their roots in the WoT legends, I would be just as pissed. 

 

An adaptation can change the story and plenty of other things, so long as those changes are in service of adapting the original to the language of a new medium. Anything else, and the changes are no longer justified. 

[swollymammoth]

7 minutes ago, Skipp said:

Something all of us book fans will have to realize at some point.  The show will not have 14 books worth of lore put into it.

Alternate viewpoint incoming: 

 

I actually think that the lore should be the one thing that remains basically in-tact. This is because an adaptation will necessarily change elements of the story, characters, and presentation in order to translate the original work to the storytelling language of a new medium. This is to be expected. 

 

However, because lore largely doesn't appear on screen, it's doesn't really need to be adapted. It can be left alone and used as a resource to inform the show and increase the chances of the show capturing the feel and experience of the original even though the events being depicted are not happening just as they happened in the books. 

[MasterAblar]

I imagine all the false dragons bar Logain and hopefully Taim won’t be mentioned. That way you avoid the awkward part where none of them are women. And you also avoid most of the prophecies or make them gender neutral or make the to difficult to translate accurately. And of course gitara’s foretelling must either be reworded, removed, or Moiraine cannot be present for it. There’s probably a fair few other things that have to either be omitted or edited to make it believable that Moiraine would not be aware that the dragon reborn would by necessity be a man.

 

There’s also the Aiel prophecies which clearly reference a man, which sure it’s not about the DR but still will seem weird to me.

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

I agree with @Jackdaw_Fool ... The implications of the possiblity even of a female dragon change things massively in the world ... and even backfire for their own possible agenda: why in the WoT are women leaders preferred, female Aes Sedai at the top of the food chain? There's a gendered OP/magic system and the male side is tainted. But our "savior figure" is male? Uh oh. Do we even know for sure that they are keeping the OP gendered? I've heard no uses of Saidin or Saidar so far! Have you? That the male savior figure is also feared - will break the world even in trying to save it - is so key. That it's a terror to possibly be "the Dragon" is key. 

 

And again, what this means for prophecy? For the Dragon arc/development...Will it mostly be jettisoned? [I don't think they're going to change who the Dragon is by the way]. But then again, why make this massive change and then shove it in our face 2 weeks prior to debut? Don't you wonder what else will be massively changed? [I'm ok with changes, even massive ones, if there are really good reasons why!]

 

But again, nobody has addressed that this is a huge defeat as to "Why they would do this in the first place" ... Because

 

Best case scenario they're leaning into the wrong major question... hard. 

 

Worst case scenario they're catering to a super devisive community that (ironically is themselves racist and sexist and can't see that??) If you're white and male, you're automatically lesser/in the wrong? How is that not obviously doing the very thing the SJW types are supposedly fighting against? 

 

So what's the next major change? Will the one power be gendered at all? Will only men be villains? Will they explore at all the negative power dynamics of women in leadership? (Or will the Aes Sedai simply be the good guys & those who oppose them bad guys?) 

 

I mean, how many pages of WoT, are devoted to showing how flawed and messed up and divided the Aes Sedai are? [And, oh my gosh, some of them actually are Darkfriends - how earth shattering this is to the Aes Sedai themselves - people, yes even Whitecloaks - weren't entirely wrong about them!]

 

Seems to me that the Aes Sedai are gonna be cast as "the servants of all" who are all good guys? Admirable? Loved by the people?

 

White cloaks = simple, dumb insane bad guys (because they're religious and against women). Women in power haters. Hopefully they give us more nuance - hopefully some people can actually see whitecloak in themselves...understand how people could BELIEVE Aes Sedai are evil. 

 

I just - am holding out hope - people - and my fears- are wrong. 

 

But honestly, I haven't seen much nuanced TV writing that appeals to more than just a social agenda ... in awhile. Have you? 

 

Great writing can make you feel like - oh, crap - I'm like that. Or - yeah, I would be scared to be destined for madness. Or - are you kidding me lady - I like where I am at. I don't trust you - Aes Sedai - you're probably a dark friend - leave me alone. 

 

 

[Skipp]

5 minutes ago, swollymammoth said:

Alternate viewpoint incoming: 

 

I actually think that the lore should be the one thing that remains basically in-tact. This is because an adaptation will necessarily change elements of the story, characters, and presentation in order to translate the original work to the storytelling language of a new medium. This is to be expected. 

 

However, because lore largely doesn't appear on screen, it's doesn't really need to be adapted. It can be left alone and used as a resource to inform the show and increase the chances of the show capturing the feel and experience of the original even though the events being depicted are not happening just as they happened in the books. 

The problem with this is that it is satisfying for people who have read the books.  To the people who haven't things just happen with no explanation.

 

Most of this discussion is happening because the show is hinting that it is possible that the Dragon was reborn as female.  Lore buffs will say this is impossible because the Dragon is always Male, the female Hero is Amersu(sp?).  I don't believe this piece of lore is every actually said in the books and was just addressed by RJ himself.  Now for the showrunners they could add this information into the show to make it more nuanced to explain why the hero can't be female.  Or they can just say the Dragon can be born male or female and merge the two heroes together.

 

Now it isn't as simple as make it out to be.  There is ripples to each decision that have to be addressed and as Rafe has specifically mentioned these ripple effects we should assume he knows how they will address them in the show.

[WalterKohl]

Why does everyone keep saying things like this: (not gonna include Senchan in this discussion because they are an isolated country far away at the beginning of the books)

7 minutes ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

why in the WoT are women leaders preferred, female Aes Sedai at the top of the food chain?

In the books, particularly in the first few there are only two nations run by women (Andor and Myenne)  while the rest are run by men.  The AS may be at the top of the food chain bust most people don't know that, most people look at them as either mythical or things to be feared and distrusted, perhaps belonging to the DO as well... There are some cultures where Females have different rights and responsibilities as far as home and wealth go but only one where they fight as warriors (the Aiel).   Women are very much relegated to "traditional" roles in most of the world.

[Rose]

One thought I just had: not all languages have gendered pronouns. Many languages in our world don't have any gendered grammar at all.

 

The wheel of Time was written in English, but we're supposed to assume that's "translated" from whatever language the characters actually speak in-world (probably some bastardized version of the old tongue?). So maybe they can get away with the gendering of the prophecies by saying pronouns aren't gendered in this language.

 

Are there any old tongue experts around who can tell us whether the old tongue has gendered pronouns? I'm genuinely curious to know.

[Skipp]

2 minutes ago, WalterKohl said:

Why does everyone keep saying things like this: (not gonna include Senchan in this discussion because they are an isolated country far away at the beginning of the books)

In the books, particularly in the first few there are only two nations run by women (Andor and Myenne)  while the rest are run by men.  The AS may be at the top of the food chain bust most people don't know that, most people look at them as either mythical or things to be feared and distrusted, perhaps belonging to the DO as well... There are some cultures where Females have different rights and responsibilities as far as home and wealth go but only one where they fight as warriors (the Aiel).   Women are very much relegated to "traditional" roles in most of the world.

 

I would add Far Madding and Altara as places where women have more rights then men.  Still in the minority though.

[Skipp]

1 minute ago, Rose said:

One thought I just had: not all languages have gendered pronouns. Many languages in our world don't have any gendered grammar at all.

 

The wheel of Time was written in English, but we're supposed to assume that's "translated" from whatever language the characters actually speak in-world (probably some bastardized version of the old tongue?). So maybe they can get away with the gendering of the prophecies by saying pronouns aren't gendered in this language.

 

Are there any old tongue experts around who can tell us whether the old tongue has gendered pronouns? I'm genuinely curious to know.

 

Here you go, Sarah discussed this exact topic yesterday.  Read for full twitter thread for more.

 

 

[Elder_Haman]

I think it's time for everyone on both sides to take a great big deep breath. We need to wait and see the final product before we judge it. Everyone is busy hypothesizing and prognosticating and assigning motives. But we don't know how it's all going to come together yet.

 

Let's hit the pause button for a minute and recognize that this change might work:

• It is absolutely possible to craft an Eye of the World-based narrative that focuses on the question of why the Dark One is after one of the Emond's Field kids.
• It is also absolutely possible to write this narrative in a way that leans into the imperfect knowledge of the characters (and most of the viewers) without actually tampering with RJ's world building.
• Leaning into the arrogance of the Aes Sedai and their (entirely wrong) belief that they have all the answers would work very well in that narrative structure. (After all, the fallibility of the Aes Sedai becomes a fairly big issue in the overall story.

Keep in mind that a sizeable majority of the viewers will not be familiar with the books. By dangling the possibility that any one of the EF5 could be the "chosen one", it will give people a narrative reason to invest in each of the characters.

 

Also, keep in mind that while Rand is the Dragon Reborn (and therefore the most important single character), this is an ensemble effort. Each of the main characters is important and each is ultimately a "chosen one" in their own way. This is the ultimate point of Rand's final confrontation with the Dark One. So it also makes narrative sense to circle back to the fact that it wasn't only one of the EF5 that could stand against the Dark, but all of them. 

 

Of course, it also might not work. It could end up completely falling under the weight of the lore changes. The writers could indeed write this as some sort of political sermon. Or they could deviate so far from the text that it becomes completely unrecognizable.

 

But since we don't actually know, it makes sense to stop barking at each other about the "wokeness" of a product we haven't yet seen. There will be plenty of time for that once the show is out and we understand what the narrative actually is.

[TheMountain]

A convenient out, but still obviously not what RJ intended.

 

Another interesting comment by Sarah:

 

 

 

She gives a lot of very "Aes Sedai" answers...

Edited November 4, 2021 by TheMountain

[SinisterDeath]

20 minutes ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

Worst case scenario they're catering to a super devisive community that (ironically is themselves racist and sexist and can't see that??) If you're white and male, you're automatically lesser/in the wrong? How is that not obviously doing the very thing the SJW types are supposedly fighting against? 

Yay "I'm the bigger victim" card!
 

 

21 minutes ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

Seems to me that the Aes Sedai are gonna be cast as "the servants of all" who are all good guys? Admirable? Loved by the people?

Lol that's what you took from the trailer?

Ever thought he defined what it meant in the old tongue, because who he was talking to didn't know that?

 

22 minutes ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

White cloaks = simple, dumb insane bad guys (because they're religious and against women). Women in power haters. Hopefully they give us more nuance - hopefully some people can actually see whitecloak in themselves...understand how people could BELIEVE Aes Sedai are evil. 

I'm sure there's going to be a contingent of fans hate watching the show, cheering the white cloaks on. ?

 

23 minutes ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

But honestly, I haven't seen much nuanced TV writing that appeals to more than just a social agenda ... in awhile. Have you? 

Sure, I mean "God's not Dead" and "Unplanned" exist, they serve a religious propaganda agenda. But let's just act like those aren't serving an agenda at all. 

We plenty of films that are by and large politically neutral in intent. 

 

[Elder_Haman]

3 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

A convenient out, but still obviously not what RJ intended.

 

Another interesting comment by Sarah:

 

 

 

She gives a lot of very "Aes Sedai" answers...

Seems pretty direct to me. There is no way that Sarah would have stayed on board with making someone other than Rand the Dragon.

[Maximillion]

14 minutes ago, Skipp said:

 

Here you go, Sarah discussed this exact topic yesterday.  Read for full twitter thread for more.

 

 

 

Logic journey

 

Don't be silly no way is the DR going to be a woman >

Don't be fooled by Ads Sedai tricks >

Don't be silly it's not Egwene, it's 100% Rand >

well it's perfectly ok if the DR is a woman.

 

Literally anything could be changed with some tenuous link using mental gymnastics as above.  Just pretend the language meant something else. 

 

It's a complete change to the entire lore and backdrop to the story to make the DR a woman or have anyone in the story think it could be a woman. That's it.  

That they have done it and if anyone supports it - ok, fine.  But please don't pretend it's all aligned with the WoT story.

 

 

 

Edited November 4, 2021 by Maximillion

[Maximillion]

7 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Seems pretty direct to me. There is no way that Sarah would have stayed on board with making someone other than Rand the Dragon.

 

All she is saying here is that she thinks it is OK that a woman could be the DR.

She is wrong, of course.

If I were to bet based on the shambles of the last couple of weeks I would say it's more likely that the DR is a woman.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Maximillion

[Elder_Haman]

Just now, Maximillion said:

 

All she is saying here is that she thinks it is OK that a woman could be the DR.

She is wrong, of course.

So, you just ignore the actual things she says and go directly to the subtext that you're reading into it? Is she wrong about the Old Tongue? Which of her actual statements is wrong? 

 

[Jackdaw_Fool]

32 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

The way I logically process that comment is;

1 of 4 IS the dragon. Thus any of the 4 could be the dragon.

Not that I want to get so off topic... But this is what I was thinking was tripping you up as I mentioned in one of my previous posts. You are illogically  processing the comment. Saying "one of the four" is not  equivalent to saying "any one of the four." In English those are two entirely different sentences... Words matter! If one of the four is the dragon reborn, then the statement to that effect is irrefutably true. If one is female and females can't be the dragon reborn, it doesn't at all matter. So long as one of the four is the dragon reborn, it's not a lie. From the discipline of logic, your conclusion that because one of the four is the dragon, therefore any of the four can be the dragon is a formal fallacy, an example of a non sequitur (it does not follow.)

 

To get back on topic, I'm sorry but I don't understand what your reply to me is trying to say... I'm not understanding what the black ajah not being able to bring men into the tower to be converted has to do with anything from my post? Unless you are maybe agreeing with me and pointing out some more things that may have changed in the world historically with having the possibility of a female dragon?

[TheMountain]

 

11 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Seems pretty direct to me. There is no way that Sarah would have stayed on board with making someone other than Rand the Dragon.

Honestly, I'm not so sure anymore.

 

Also, the Aes Sedai answer I was referring to was her statement about Callandor.

Edited November 4, 2021 by TheMountain