IGN Explainer - the Dark One

[MasterAblar]

2 hours ago, Rose said:

I may be completely misremembering this but wasn't it the case that nobody can touch Callandor without dying? Only the Dragon's hand can touch Callandor. They could just say no Aes Sedai has been able to approach it long enough to figure out if it's a saidin or saidar sa'angreal. It's not entirely satisfying because we know it was Aes Sedai who put it there in the first place during the Breaking but it's also not impossible to imagine that much knowledge about it was lost.

 

Nobody can touch Callandor period, there is a barrier made of saidin and saidar surrounding it. Once Rand sets it back in the heart of the stone in tSR however he sets up protective weaves around it, which nearly kill Narishma when he recovers it later on PoD. 

 

However it is mentioned that a small number of Aes Sedai and Nobles of Tear know what it really is: a saidin Sangreal. I don't remember if Moiraine knows what it really is, although she of course knows Rand must obtain it at some point.

[Tim]

The most straightforward adjustment would just be to make sa’angreal generally work with both saidin and saidar. Then all of these questions about Callandor fall away.

[MasterAblar]

Maybe so, but I don't care much for doing away with these divisions. A strong them of the story is that while men and women are very different when it comes to channelling, the greatest feats are always accomplished by them working together.

 

This alone doesn't prevent that of course, but it chips away a that general theme as you erase these seperations.

 

Also if the choedan kal can both be used by either men or women then Rand doesn't need Nyneave for the cleansing, although I suppose he would trust her the most anyway (and only Logain or Taim would be strong enough among men to use the choedan kal anyway I believe.

 

EDIT: disregard the above, Rand needed a saidar channeller anyway to filter saidin towards shadar logoth.

Edited November 7, 2021 by MasterAblar

[TheMountain]

I don't know how one could even call it The Wheel of Time without Saidar and Saidin.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, Tim said:

The most straightforward adjustment would just be to make sa’angreal generally work with both saidin and saidar. Then all of these questions about Callandor fall away.

it would be much simpler - and less lore breaking - to just have nobody knows what callandor actually is.

or maybe they know it's a sa'angreal that the dragon reborn can use, but they don't know if it's for saidin or saidar because they don't know the new dragon's gender - and they have no chance of studying it.

1 hour ago, TheMountain said:

I don't know how one could even call it The Wheel of Time without Saidar and Saidin.

I don't think we have to worry about that. Putting aside that i have enough trust in rafe to not do this, the 360° trailer had the stuff outside the screen that could be nothing but saidin and saidar

[TheMountain]

11 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

Putting aside that i have enough trust in rafe to not do this, the 360° trailer had the stuff outside the screen that could be nothing but saidin and saidar

 

There's a few things that make me uncertain about this:

 

1. The "corruption" is shown in scenes with Logain as merely sliding over the same white weaves as Moraine uses.

2. "One of the five of you."

3. Tweet from Sarah in response to a question about Callandor being Saidin exclusive: "...Callandor is meant to be pulled from the stone by the hand of The Dragon."

4. Tweet from Sarah asking her to go on the record about gender changes: "WAFO."

5. Tweet from Sarah in response to a reader saying that he/she is excited about trans representation in the books, "you may want to work on your cardio in the coming weeks if just this chat makes your heart flutter."

6. Tweet from Sarah: "more than the madness of the Dragon I feel that people fear *their* birth means an impending battle with the Shadow and the Dark One."

7. Saidar and Saidin have never been mentioned by the official promotional material or anybody involved in the production of the show, not even in the trailer breakdowns or explainers.

8. A rigid gender binary is not Kosher these days in our current climate.

[Ryan al'Thor]

2 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

 

There's a few things that make me uncertain about this:

 

1. The "corruption" is shown in scenes with Logain as merely sliding over the same white weaves as Moraine uses.

2. "One of the five of you."

3. Tweet from Sarah in response to a question about Callandor being Saidin exclusive: "...Callandor is meant to be pulled from the stone by the hand of The Dragon."

4. Tweet from Sarah asking her to go on the record about gender changes: "WAFO."

5. Tweet from Sarah in response to a reader saying that he/she is excited about trans representation in the books, "you may want to work on your cardio in the coming weeks if just this chat makes your heart flutter."

6. Tweet from Sarah: "more than the madness of the Dragon I feel that people fear *their* birth means an impending battle with the Shadow and the Dark One."

7. Saidar and Saidin have never been mentioned by the official promotional material or anybody involved in the production of the show, not even in the trailer breakdowns or explainers.

8. A rigid gender binary is not Kosher these days in our current climate.

I suspect the terms saidar and saidin are gone.

[JaimAybara]

Men and women being able to see each other’s weaves would be dumb in my opinion and take a lot of tensions away, but it might be hard to visually bring alive on the screen in a way that makes sense too. 

[king of nowhere]

58 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

 

There's a few things that make me uncertain about this:

 

1. The "corruption" is shown in scenes with Logain as merely sliding over the same white weaves as Moraine uses.

2. "One of the five of you."

3. Tweet from Sarah in response to a question about Callandor being Saidin exclusive: "...Callandor is meant to be pulled from the stone by the hand of The Dragon."

4. Tweet from Sarah asking her to go on the record about gender changes: "WAFO."

5. Tweet from Sarah in response to a reader saying that he/she is excited about trans representation in the books, "you may want to work on your cardio in the coming weeks if just this chat makes your heart flutter."

6. Tweet from Sarah: "more than the madness of the Dragon I feel that people fear *their* birth means an impending battle with the Shadow and the Dark One."

7. Saidar and Saidin have never been mentioned by the official promotional material or anybody involved in the production of the show, not even in the trailer breakdowns or explainers.

8. A rigid gender binary is not Kosher these days in our current climate.

- we see saidar and saiding outside of the screen in the trailer

- the whole business with channeling men going mad makes no sense without saidar and saidin

- the whole magic worldbuilding would be thrown out of the window.

 

in addition to those strong arguments, we have smaller hints

- logain and alanna stop weaves differently

- moiraine would be able to feel rand can channel if they were channeling the same thing. similarly, moiraine could teach rand easily

- there is no reason for the promo to delve deeply into the lore, it would be confusing.

- there is no reason for sarah to expand on that. none of the questions was about saidin and saidar directly

 

regarding the way waves are represented, non-channelers should not see anything, while channelers should see the individual flows. the representation we see is meant mostly for the audience, and i would not draw any kind of conclusion from it.

 

this is not something as comparatively small as making the dragon possibly a woman; that one only requires changing some wording in the prophecies, and perhaps swapping gender to a few past false dragons.

removing saidin and saidar would change the whole way channeling works, which would impact all the worldbuilding in that regard.

 

but indeed, if they actually had done something like that, i'd join the "RUINED FOREVER" chorus in a hearbeat.

Edited November 7, 2021 by king of nowhere

[Deadsy]

8 hours ago, Jackdaw_Fool said:

Well if true, that's crummy! I'd hope whatever changes there might be would be done to translate the books I enjoyed to the screen, or to at least enhance the story. If the motivation is otherwise, then there's not much point in discussing this further...

 

 

It’s extremely naive to assume that changes are not made in order for the show to be a commercial success, or due to the feasability of translating something (eg Aes Sedai faces), or due to budget.

 

If you as a book reader don’t have those things in mind, you probably aren’t going to enjoy yourself. It’s irrational to think they wouldn’t make changes with commercial success as a focus. It MUST be successful in order to tell the full story, and that may mean they make some changes they deam necessary in order to make that happen. 

Edited November 7, 2021 by Deadsy

[Jackdaw_Fool]

4 hours ago, Rose said:

Hooking more viewers is a valid and necessary motivation in my opinion, and it's not necessarily incompatible with enhancing the story or better translating it to the screen.

Yes. But in this case the change (the dragon reborn can be a female) is being said to have been made just to hook more viewers, with nothing changing in the story, and that it will all be forgotten about after the first season. I don't think this change has anything to do with translating the books to the screen. So that leaves enhancing the story... If the showrunners aren't going to even explore the effect of the change within the world of the show... If it's really just done for garnering more eyeballs that  the dragon reborn can be female too, you should watch! But we're not going to actually have a female dragon, and nothing is going to be different in the world anyway! Well then, while watching I'll have that filth of the taint (sorry, corruption) feeling permeating things. Maybe everything else will be so good that it won't bother me as much, but if they make unnecessary changes just for ratings and don't even bother to work them fully into a cohesive world, the whole thing becomes something different than what many of us wanted to watch in the first place, and on its own becomes kinda crummy.

 

(Insert here that South Park non-offensive, nondenominational xmas play example... Happy, happy, happy! Everybody's happy! "Hey this sucks!" "Well, you made it this way!")

[Deadsy]

2 hours ago, TheMountain said:

I don't know how one could even call it The Wheel of Time without Saidar and Saidin.

 

 

Is anyone saying this? They’ve already showed that the channeling looks different. 

[Rose]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

it would be much simpler - and less lore breaking - to just have nobody knows what callandor actually is.

or maybe they know it's a sa'angreal that the dragon reborn can use, but they don't know if it's for saidin or saidar because they don't know the new dragon's gender - and they have no chance of studying it.

 

That's what I was thinking too. It's easy enough to say nobody could get close enough to figure out what type of sa'angreal it is.

[Deadsy]

7 minutes ago, Jackdaw_Fool said:

Yes. But in this case the change (the dragon reborn can be a female) is being said to have been made just to hook more viewers, with nothing changing in the story, and that it will all be forgotten about after the first season. I don't think this change has anything to do with translating the books to the screen. So that leaves enhancing the story... If the showrunners aren't going to even explore the effect of the change within the world of the show... If it's really just done for garnering more eyeballs that  the dragon reborn can be female too, you should watch! But we're not going to actually have a female dragon, and nothing is going to be different in the world anyway! Well then, while watching I'll have that filth of the taint (sorry, corruption) feeling permeating things. Maybe everything else will be so good that it won't bother me as much, but if they make unnecessary changes just for ratings and don't even bother to work them fully into a cohesive world, the whole thing becomes something different than what many of us wanted to watch in the first place, and on its own becomes kinda crummy.

 

(Insert here that South Park non-offensive, nondenominational xmas play example... Happy, happy, happy! Everybody's happy! "Hey this sucks!" "Well, you made it this way!")

 

This is not what anyone is suggesting. They’re willing to make changes for commercial success that they think don’t largely alter the story. One reason this doesn’t largely alter the story is because we find out who the DR is in the first season, and they were likely never going to go into the minute details on the things people keep bringing up. 

 

 

I’m actuallt a bit shocked this would surprise anyone. Book readers will only make up 5% or less of the viewership of this show (unless it’s a failure). They will do whatever they deem necessary to hook non readers and keep them watching, or it will crash and burn and we won’t get close to the end of the story. They have to balance commercial success with how much of an impact the changed make.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Deadsy

[Deadsy]

1 hour ago, Ryan al'Thor said:

I suspect the terms saidar and saidin are gone.

 

 

I doubt it. There is no way in hell they were going to get into a detail like that in a trailer and confuse people even more with words they’ve never heard. 

[Ryan al'Thor]

5 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

 

 

Is anyone saying this? They’ve already showed that the channeling looks different. 

There have been 0 references to saidar or saidin.

[WhiteVeils]

Here's my current guess in terms of adding more representation.

 

They won't make Egwene the Dragon, of course. That's ridiculous.

However, Egwene might be gay.  Rand loves her still, she still expects to marry Rand. Two Rivers is remote and rural and you live the way you are expected to live, no matter what you personally feel.  Rand is a nice guy, a friend, of course she would end up with him.  However, over the course of the story, Egwene could realize (as she does in the books) that she doesn't love Rand in the same way he loves her.  This happens in the books, but the fact that Egwene is not attracted in that way to men could be an additional reason.

This gives us plenty of reason to remove Gawain completely, which people have wanted to do anyway.  Or they could keep him, but they come to a relationship similar to Lan and Moiraine, rather than a sexual relationship.  That'd be good too.  It gives LGBT representation in a major character with an actual coming out arc, but it doesn't change anything practical about the story at all.  

[Ryan al'Thor]

1 minute ago, WhiteVeils said:

Here's my current guess in terms of adding more representation.

 

They won't make Egwene the Dragon, of course. That's ridiculous.

However, Egwene might be gay.  Rand loves her still, she still expects to marry Rand. Two Rivers is remote and rural and you live the way you are expected to live, no matter what you personally feel.  Rand is a nice guy, a friend, of course she would end up with him.  However, over the course of the story, Egwene could realize (as she does in the books) that she doesn't love Rand in the same way he loves her.  This happens in the books, but the fact that Egwene is not attracted in that way to men could be an additional reason.

This gives us plenty of reason to remove Gawain completely, which people have wanted to do anyway.  Or they could keep him, but they come to a relationship similar to Lan and Moiraine, rather than a sexual relationship.  That'd be good too.  It gives LGBT representation in a major character with an actual coming out arc, but it doesn't change anything practical about the story at all.  

I would be 100% ok with that

[Jackdaw_Fool]

5 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

It’s extremely naive to assume that changes are not made in order for the show to be a commercial success, or do to the feasability of translating something (eg Aes Sedai faces), or due to budget.

Feasibility of translating and budgetary reasons aren't being discussed here so far by me... My reply is specifically concerning making changes only for commercial success and not having the integrity to follow through with the impact of those changes on the world.  I think it's uncommon for a good show to do that, and I'm at least hoping still for a good show.

[Deadsy]

2 minutes ago, Jackdaw_Fool said:

Feasibility of translating and budgetary reasons aren't being discussed here so far by me... My reply is specifically concerning making changes only for commercial success and not having the integrity to follow through with the impact of those changes on the world.  I think it's uncommon for a good show to do that, and I'm at least hoping still for a good show.

 

 

There is nothing to suggest they didn’t follow theough on that.

[Deadsy]

6 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Here's my current guess in terms of adding more representation.

 

They won't make Egwene the Dragon, of course. That's ridiculous.

However, Egwene might be gay.  Rand loves her still, she still expects to marry Rand. Two Rivers is remote and rural and you live the way you are expected to live, no matter what you personally feel.  Rand is a nice guy, a friend, of course she would end up with him.  However, over the course of the story, Egwene could realize (as she does in the books) that she doesn't love Rand in the same way he loves her.  This happens in the books, but the fact that Egwene is not attracted in that way to men could be an additional reason.

This gives us plenty of reason to remove Gawain completely, which people have wanted to do anyway.  Or they could keep him, but they come to a relationship similar to Lan and Moiraine, rather than a sexual relationship.  That'd be good too.  It gives LGBT representation in a major character with an actual coming out arc, but it doesn't change anything practical about the story at all.  

 

 

I don’t think Egwene will be gay. In fact I don’t want her to be gay or at least for that not to have anything to do with not being with Rand. I want her to choose the White Tower over Rand just because she wants to.

 

 

[Deadsy]

8 minutes ago, Ryan al'Thor said:

There have been 0 references to saidar or saidin.

 

 

It’s pretty surprising people think they’re going to nerd out on the details like words no non-reader knows and confuse the shit out of people. That said it’s possible they will leave it out. But it not being mentioned yet isn’t very solid evidence. 

[Jackdaw_Fool]

4 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

There is nothing to suggest they didn’t follow theough on that.

Because there are no changes to even follow through with, right? That's what I don't agree with.

[Deadsy]

Just now, Jackdaw_Fool said:

Because there are no changes to even follow through with, right? That's what I don't agree with.

 

 

You’re basically not agreeing that TV show and movie adaptations of fantasy books are light on delving into the minute details, which is incorrect. And in fact I would bet that the changed they were willing to make were ones where they never would have covered the details in the first place, and that’s why they decided it was ok to change them. 

[Ryan al'Thor]

2 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

 

 

It’s pretty surprising people think they’re going to nerd out on the details like words no non-reader knows and confuse the shit out of people. That said it’s possible they will leave it out. But it not being mentioned yet isn’t very solid evidence. 

Yeah I never said there was evidence. But until it is mentioned, it doesn’t exist.