On "Wokeness" and the Wheel of Time - Be Thoughtful in Responding

[SinisterDeath]

13 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

Nynaeve kills a massive 6+ foot man beast, not just a quick lucky shot she overpowers it and butchers it whilst it faces her with blood flying everywhere and soaking the pool. At that point the audience has to accept that she's apparently a capable warrior since we've already seen that Trollocs aren't so easy to take out.

Getting the drop on an enemy can invalidate the size disadvantage. She didn't butcher it, she got a lucky hit on a surprised & dumb enemy in territory she was familiar with. Lan fighting Trollocs in the middle of Emonds field = Butchering Trollocs.

Nynaeve killing a trolloc isn't unrealistic, and it doesn't make her a better fighter than Lan.

If Nynaeve had to fight a Mydraal with a blade, she would 100% die. Lan wouldn't.

 

As for Tam, we don't know if there's multiple Trollocs. It's speculation either way.

[Deadsy]

Only thing I've had a problem with so far is the interview Rosamund just did where she talked about how it was great there were more naked men than women. I'm guessing it sounded a little better in person but her quotes sound pretty terrible when you read them.

[AusLeviathan]

9 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

She didn't butcher it, she got a lucky hit on a surprised & dumb enemy in territory she was familiar with.

I mean she opens it up the front of the Trolloc enough that blood starts spurting everywhere and by the time she's finished with it she's standing in a pool that's covered in its blood, I'm not sure how else to describe that other than butchering it.

 

6 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

Only thing I've had a problem with so far is the interview Rosamund just did where she talked about how it was great there were more naked men than women. I'm guessing it sounded a little better in person but her quotes sound pretty terrible when you read them.

I remember that Henry Cavill dehydrated himself for three days a few years ago for a nude scene in The Witcher, so it was kind of weird to hear Rosamund suggest that men have had it easy in that regard.

[SinisterDeath]

8 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

I mean she opens it up the front of the Trolloc enough that blood starts spurting everywhere and by the time she's finished with it she's standing in a pool that's covered in its blood, I'm not sure how else to describe that other than butchering it.

Butchering in the context of combat, is often used to describe brutally killing foes with little effort.
E.g. Wolverine

 

 

What Nynaeve did, was get a surprise killing blow in on a single Trolloc, putting in the utmost effort to kill it. (we might see her going stabby stab on the thing to make sure it's dead)

[notpropaganda73]

46 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

This scene was shown in London Comic Con. Wheel of Time Theory posted a reaction clip on YouTube. It went somewhat like this:

 

  Hide contents

Trolloc breaks through the door, Tam gets his sword and defends himself, tells Rand to run away, Rand jumps on it's back and gets thrown into a wall, few seconds of metal on metal sounds, Rand wakes and gets up, shoots an arrow, no effect, shoots one through it's neck and kills it. Tam is wounded to shoulder.

 

The order of those things is probably different than I remember.

 

The evidence is overwhelming, Nynaeve is better warrior than Tam, throw the whole series in the bin

[TheDreadReader]

11 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

 

- Nynaeve sneaking up on Lan and getting the drop on him.

 

 

To be clear, this basically happens in the books.

 

Post-SL.  Lan and Moiraine are together getting organized.   Nyn tracks and successfully "sneaks" up on them.  She is called out because Moiraine can sense her ability to channel.  Lan appears surprised.

 

From the Listening to the Wind chapter of TEOTW.

 

"Mistress al'Meara, you may come out now, if you wish"

 

Nynaeve scrambled to her feet, hastily dusting dead leaves from her dress.  Lan had spun to face the tree as soon as Moiraine's eyes moved; his sword was in his hand before she finished speaking Nynaeve's name.  Now he sheathed it again with more force than was strictly necessary.  His face was almost as expressionless as ever, but Nynaeve thought there was a touch of chagrin about the set of his mouth.  She felt a stab of satisfaction; the Warder had not known she was there, at least.

 

 

Edited November 10, 2021 by TheDreadReader

[MasterAblar]

8 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

The evidence is overwhelming, Nynaeve is better warrior than Tam, throw the whole series in the bin

Hey man Tam was dealing with Narg, that ain’t no joke. All Nyneave had to deal with was some chump.

[notpropaganda73]

2 minutes ago, MasterAblar said:

Hey man Tam was dealing with Narg, that ain’t no joke. All Nyneave had to deal with was some chump.

 

Everyone complaining about LTT possibly being reborn as a woman, they never saw Narg as The Dragon Reborn coming. What a twist!

[AusLeviathan]

15 minutes ago, TheDreadReader said:

To be clear, this basically happens in the books.

No in the books she manages to keep hidden, close enough to hear but far enough to not be noticed which is realistic.

 

It's quite a jump to go from that to getting so close that she could touch him before he even notices that she's there. I mean if she can do that then she's basically on the same level as a Gray Man.

Edited November 10, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[JaimAybara]

It’s not an issue of women being better or elevated to be more capable. For me this should be done, not to mention all the Two River Folk are fighters. It’s the simultaneous and pathological behavior of doing it at the expense of capable men who are now no longer as capable as they were, or are arbitrarily injected with character traits they never had, or plot devices that are seriously questionable. This hasn’t happened to a single female lead even in rumour. 

Moving beyond “pillowfriends” to me is a great change which will highlight diversity through characters where it was genuinely present but needs altering to make better Moiraine for example. This is a great shift and worthy of praise. But if they start shoehorning something where it was never present. This will bother me. Because that will be going beyond what was present and or implied and then completely changing characters, not improving on writing for characters.
 

The Aiel should have veils in battle. I don’t care if they aren’t black in the snow and they make them camouflaged. They should be veiled. I know what they have shown is simply a promo though (and I will wait and see), but IF they don’t have them, tell me why? I’ve also already heard some women YouTubers lecturing men who are bothered by the lack of veils by saying, “it’s just a bunch of neck beards whining/ yeah… this isn’t the Middle East, women don’t have to wear veils.” 

 

Seriously…give me a break. ALL the Aiel wear veils into battle including the men. It’s a symbol from the original Aiel that followed the Way of the Leaf not wanting to see the faces of their kin becoming killers so they made them cover their face…or more on point to rebut their ridiculous comment, the first Maiden of the Spear takes the spear as her “husband” and rejects her actual husband for a coward. Then it eventually morphs into a symbol of combat like lowering your visor on your helmet. It isn’t about whatever the heck it is they were implying. It’s world building. Intriguing. It’s Attention to detail. The Mandalorian has his face covered almost the entire time and it is lore building and fascinating. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the Aiel do the same when they want to dance the spears. But based off comments like this, it leads me to believe that Amazon very well might have had the, “will veils offend someone” conversation. And if not, it just looks like yet another aspect of lacking attention to detail for no practical purpose. Like Tam’s sword not having herons on the hilt. 
 

And to bookend this, again, it appears they are doing a great job of elevating the lady leads in nuanced ways, but most if not all of the woolhead plot ideas are going to the men. Again, why? And no, I don’t care that they are elevating the female cast. This is a good thing and there are definitely things in the books that could be made better, but why do they feel the need to screw with the male characters in such large ways and why does Hollywood have such a knack for elevating women at the expense of men? And why do they lack attention to detail on things that are easy to have done right? Which also have significant meaning. The whole, “these are just minor changes”, makes me even more frustrated, because if it was something so bloody minor and so easy to keep, that means they potentially went out of their way to change it.

 

[Beidomon]

12 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

What I keep coming back to is this:

• If your concern is that they are making the show "woke" and;
• Your definition of "woke" is seeing lots of different cultures and people represented, the portrayal of strong aggressive women who don't fit traditional gender stereotypes, and the inclusion of gay and lesbian characters and sexual relationships;
• But you love RJ's worldbuilding.

How do you not understand that Wheel of Time was "woke" when it was written?

 

• There are tons and tons of cultural differences in RJ's Wheel of Time;
• There are strong, aggressive women who don't fit traditional gender stereotypes in RJ's Wheel of Time;
• There are portrayals of many different cultural ideas surrounding sex and sexuality - including canonically gay and lesbian characters and polyamorous relationships;
• There are nods to virtually every modern religious tradition and mythology adapted from incredibly diverse places = including Norse mythology, Arthurian legend and others too numerous to list.

 

If a fictional world exists where one can simultaneously accomplish a LotR/GoT level adaptation and meet "woke" ideals of diversity and inclusion without significantly altering the basic structures of the text, that world is the world of the Wheel of Time. 

 

If your concern is that they are going to preach at us through the writing, please stop complaining about it until the show is out and we can have an evidenced based discussion about the subject rather than the same tired speculating based on incomplete information.

 

There's actually some pretty good discussion going on in this thread, but I gotta say, Elder - you really kicked things off with a Holy Strawman, Batman! Let's break this down:

 

"Your definition of 'woke' is....."

• "seeing lots of different cultures and people represented" NO. I don't think anybody has complained about this, at all. Everybody knows that Randland is FULL of different races, ethnicities, and cultures. What people have complained about, rightly so, is turning EF into some racial/ethnic melting pot. It wasn't in the books, and it waters down the concept of Rand being a rather obvious outsider. I think it's a relatively minor gripe compared to other changes (see below), but it is valid.

• "the portrayal of strong aggressive women who don't fit traditional gender stereotypes" Again, I haven't seen anybody complain about that, per se. Randland is FULL of strong aggressive women. Spear Maidens?! Aes Sedai?! What people are rightly annoyed about is transforming characters into today's counter-stereotype of "the girl-power warrior." Lots of writers don't know how to portray "strong women" in a visual medium, so instead we are treated to dumb displays of women with absurdly uncharacteristic physical strength and aggression. Now look, we have plenty of those actual characters in WOT, and that's all well and good. Birgitte, the Aiel, bring it on! But it ain't Nynaeve!! She's brandishing a knife when Lan enters the Winespring while all the men sit around like doofuses? She's getting the jump on a warder? (no, that didn't happen in the books and it's stupid.) She's physically besting a trolloc? ("maybe she used Saidar" LOL). It's woke, it's dumb, and it's annoying.

• "and the inclusion of gay and lesbian characters and sexual relationships;" Again, if it's in the books, fine. The concept of "pillow friends" wink wink made perfect sense in the context of the cloistered WT. If WOTTV wants to show some of that, fine. If WOTTV is changing character sexuality just because, then yes, that's woke and it is annoying. A great many fans, myself included, find woke sermonizing to be "on the nose" and distracting. We see it, and once you see it, it is tough to un-see it.

On that point, let's take a brief interlude for a JOKE. Everybody calm down... JOKE ALERT.

 

/JOKE.

 

Alright, so now I've taken your three things, parsed the "woke" from the "not woke," and explained why the "woke" is going to be a big turnoff for some of us. 

 

But the funny thing is that you completely ignored the biggest "woke" problem: making major plot changes. And you know what I'm talking about. Changing the lore of WOT so that the Dragon can be reborn as a male or female is a MESS that plays havoc with a central premise of the story. I (and others) have explained this at length in other threads, so I'm not going to rehash it again.

 

But I will make one final point. A LOT of the promotional material, interviews, etc. are really playing up the gender dichotomy that makes WOT somewhat unique. And that is absolutely true, and it is one of the things that makes WOT's story really intriguing and excellent. But the reason it makes the story so intriguing and excellent is because of the backstory that gave rise to the dichotomy (the taint, madness, and breaking) and the resulting struggles (gentling men, one of whom must by necessity be the DR, the Aes Sedai myopia, Rand's madness, etc.). But we don't hear about any of that all that much at all in the promotional stuff, do we? Instead, what we get is a celebration of the dichotomy! Which is exactly what I would expect from a woke media with no knowledge of the series - but it is NOT what I expect from the folks involved in the production. That is troubling. How deeply will it worm its way into the show itself? I don't know. Maybe not much at all. Maybe they're deliberately misdirecting the audience. Maybe. But it is not unreasonable to be concerned. Especially when we're getting bullsh*t like "one of you five."

[Elder_Haman]

11 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

- Nynaeve taking on and killing a Trolloc after Tam struggles with and needs help taking out one Trolloc.

Even from the little we've seen, we know enough to demonstrate that this is a silly argument.

 

Tam is taken by surprise by an opponent who closes on him extremely quickly and is able to use sheer bulk to make Tam's sword skill irrelevant in the moment.

 

Nynaeve strikes from a position of advantage against an unwary opponent. She is able to visualize and prepare her strike for maximum advantage.

 

This neither makes Nynaeve into some sort of "super woman badass" nor does it make Tam into some sort of weakling. It's also silly because we know as the plot develops, it's obvious that men are not weaklings constantly being saved by women. 

 

12 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

- Nynaeve sneaking up on Lan and getting the drop on him.

This is literally canon. It happens in the book. It makes zero difference that Nynaeve happens to have a sword, knife, whatever. Nynaeve snuck up on Lan. That happened. End of discussion.

 

12 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

- Nynaeve suggesting that the ability to take a life is what makes a woman strong.

Do you think Nynaeve has never butchered a sheep or a pig? Do you think that she's never given herbal mixtures to patients to help them die without agony? [Note: I'm not even 100% sure it's Nyn who says that line.]

 

12 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

writers often struggle with female characters, not wanting to show them actually vulnerable in situations when they would be and defaulting to making them fighters regardless of how much sense it makes.

You say this without having actually seen what was written. You have zero evidence that the women in this series aren't depicted as vulnerable. You have zero evidence that they will "default into being fighters, regardless..." You similarly have no context for the "women attack a Trolloc with pitchforks" shot - this could be in the aftermath of the battle as they put down wounded, but still dangerous Trollocs. 

 

9 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

Is "men are arrogant and useless, women are strong and responsible" the best hook to intrigue people for a fantasy action series?

Is there something canonically wrong with what Moiraine said? Especially taken from the Aes Sedai perspective? Doesn't Moiraine believe LTT was arrogant? It's accurate worldbuilding. Again, you're jumping the gun - reading in things that you don't know are there because politics.

 

Why is it so hard to wait for the finished product before judging?

[Ryan al'Thor]

11 minutes ago, Beidomon said:

 

There's actually some pretty good discussion going on in this thread, but I gotta say, Elder - you really kicked things off with a Holy Strawman, Batman! Let's break this down:

 

"Your definition of 'woke' is....."

• "seeing lots of different cultures and people represented" NO. I don't think anybody has complained about this, at all. Everybody knows that Randland is FULL of different races, ethnicities, and cultures. What people have complained about, rightly so, is turning EF into some racial/ethnic melting pot. It wasn't in the books, and it waters down the concept of Rand being a rather obvious outsider. I think it's a relatively minor gripe compared to other changes (see below), but it is valid.

• "the portrayal of strong aggressive women who don't fit traditional gender stereotypes" Again, I haven't seen anybody complain about that, per se. Randland is FULL of strong aggressive women. Spear Maidens?! Aes Sedai?! What people are rightly annoyed about is transforming characters into today's counter-stereotype of "the girl-power warrior." Lots of writers don't know how to portray "strong women" in a visual medium, so instead we are treated to dumb displays of women with absurdly uncharacteristic physical strength and aggression. Now look, we have plenty of those actual characters in WOT, and that's all well and good. Birgitte, the Aiel, bring it on! But it ain't Nynaeve!! She's brandishing a knife when Lan enters the Winespring while all the men sit around like doofuses? She's getting the jump on a warder? (no, that didn't happen in the books and it's stupid.) She's physically besting a trolloc? ("maybe she used Saidar" LOL). It's woke, it's dumb, and it's annoying.

• "and the inclusion of gay and lesbian characters and sexual relationships;" Again, if it's in the books, fine. The concept of "pillow friends" wink wink made perfect sense in the context of the cloistered WT. If WOTTV wants to show some of that, fine. If WOTTV is changing character sexuality just because, then yes, that's woke and it is annoying. A great many fans, myself included, find woke sermonizing to be "on the nose" and distracting. We see it, and once you see it, it is tough to un-see it.

On that point, let's take a brief interlude for a JOKE. Everybody calm down... JOKE ALERT.

 

/JOKE.

 

Alright, so now I've taken your three things, parsed the "woke" from the "not woke," and explained why the "woke" is going to be a big turnoff for some of us. 

 

But the funny thing is that you completely ignored the biggest "woke" problem: making major plot changes. And you know what I'm talking about. Changing the lore of WOT so that the Dragon can be reborn as a male or female is a MESS that plays havoc with a central premise of the story. I (and others) have explained this at length in other threads, so I'm not going to rehash it again.

 

But I will make one final point. A LOT of the promotional material, interviews, etc. are really playing up the gender dichotomy that makes WOT somewhat unique. And that is absolutely true, and it is one of the things that makes WOT's story really intriguing and excellent. But the reason it makes the story so intriguing and excellent is because of the backstory that gave rise to the dichotomy (the taint, madness, and breaking) and the resulting struggles (gentling men, one of whom must by necessity be the DR, the Aes Sedai myopia, Rand's madness, etc.). But we don't hear about any of that all that much at all in the promotional stuff, do we? Instead, what we get is a celebration of the dichotomy! Which is exactly what I would expect from a woke media with no knowledge of the series - but it is NOT what I expect from the folks involved in the production. That is troubling. How deeply will it worm its way into the show itself? I don't know. Maybe not much at all. Maybe they're deliberately misdirecting the audience. Maybe. But it is not unreasonable to be concerned. Especially when we're getting bullsh*t like "one of you five."

? 

[TheDreadReader]

10 hours ago, Kudzu said:

 

I do agree they are leaning into the woman being the saviors and protectors of the world. Certainly from the Aes Sedai POV. What I think they are doing is setting up the imbalance, to demonstrate how women working alone is not and will not work.

 

Which is basically how you lay the groundwork for "subverting expectations" these days.  ?

 

So, 100% agreement on this point from me.

 

[Beidomon]

11 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

This is literally canon. It happens in the book. It makes zero difference that Nynaeve happens to have a sword, knife, whatever. Nynaeve snuck up on Lan. That happened. End of discussion.

Come on, Elder. You’re better than this. Smarter than this. There is a big darned difference between eavesdropping on a warder from a distance and getting the physical -knife to chest - jump on a warder. That isn’t “canon.” Jeez. 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Beidomon

[TheDreadReader]

1 hour ago, Deadsy said:

Only thing I've had a problem with so far is the interview Rosamund just did where she talked about how it was great there were more naked men than women. I'm guessing it sounded a little better in person but her quotes sound pretty terrible when you read them.

 

To be fair to her, I think that she was just making the point that we just generally assume that we'll see naked women while being a little shocked when we see naked men.   That is the kind of thing that can actually be measured using stop watches while watching tv or films.  

 

 

[Elder_Haman]

7 minutes ago, Beidomon said:

What people have complained about, rightly so, is turning EF into some racial/ethnic melting pot. It wasn't in the books, and it waters down the concept of Rand being a rather obvious outsider. I think it's a relatively minor gripe compared to other changes (see below), but it is valid.

This thing has been beaten like a dead horse. I'm just going to come down on the side of: even if they made this change for no reason other than being inclusionary in casting, it is meaningless to me. It alters nothing important about the story.

 

8 minutes ago, Beidomon said:

She's brandishing a knife when Lan enters the Winespring while all the men sit around like doofuses? She's getting the jump on a warder? (no, that didn't happen in the books and it's stupid.) She's physically besting a trolloc? ("maybe she used Saidar" LOL). It's woke, it's dumb, and it's annoying.

She's not "brandishing" a knife when Lan enters. She has her hand on it. The men aren't "sitting around like doofuses," they're sizing up the situation. Nynaeve being the first person to act is entirely within her character. She's the Alpha in Emond's Field as described in the books. People respect her, fear her, and defer to her (and then Cenn Buie talks about her behind her back). She "physically bests" the Trolloc by executing an ambush. Slightly unrealistic? Maybe. Out of character? Not really. Proof of a "woke change to make Nynaeve awesome and all the men terrible?" Not even close.

 

And yes, Nynaeve does sneak up on Lan in the books. It's what makes him fall for her.

 

15 minutes ago, Beidomon said:

If WOTTV wants to show some of that, fine. If WOTTV is changing character sexuality just because, then yes, that's woke and it is annoying.

There's no confirmation of this anywhere. 

 

16 minutes ago, Beidomon said:

Changing the lore of WOT so that the Dragon can be reborn as a male or female is a MESS that plays havoc with a central premise of the story. I (and others) have explained this at length in other threads, so I'm not going to rehash it again.

I'll rehash it one more time - we have no idea how this is going to play out. There are ways this can be written where it plays absolutely no havoc with any central premise in the story. Those ways aren't particularly difficult. I'm going to assume massive changes like the ones you suggest aren't being made until I see proof otherwise.

 

You don't have proof the show is woke. You're afraid the show might be woke. And so you're projecting those fears onto everything. (And no, I'm not saying afraid in the sense of experiencing actual fear, just as a synonym for concern only with a little more emotion involved.)

[notpropaganda73]

23 minutes ago, JaimAybara said:

The Aiel should have veils in battle. I don’t care if they aren’t black in the snow and they make them camouflaged. They should be veiled. I know what they have shown is simply a promo though (and I will wait and see), but IF they don’t have them, tell me why? I’ve also already heard some women YouTubers lecturing men who are bothered by the lack of veils by saying, “it’s just a bunch of neck beards whining/ yeah… this isn’t the Middle East, women don’t have to wear veils.” 

 

 

Quote

But based off comments like this, it leads me to believe that Amazon very well might have had the, “will veils offend someone” conversation.

 

I can understand a worry about the veils, and I appreciate you are saying you will wait and see, but I'm confused as to why you are taking comments from YouTubers as some sort of indication as to what the studio and showrunners will do? That is an unbelievable leap to be making. 

[AusLeviathan]

34 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Why is it so hard to wait for the finished product before judging?

I've been through this whole process enough times to know that if the marketing contains consistent themes then the finished product is usually going to contain those themes.

 

Now maybe the marketing department is a little off, maybe they've been told to play up the action girl trope and it's given the wrong impression of the series. It could indeed be that there are plenty of awesome action moments from the men and they're just not really showing them.

 

That said, many of the old leaks and rumors seem focused on sometimes controversial changes to the male main characters (in the sense of negatively changing their characters) which I think we're seeing somewhat in the promo materials. The female main characters mostly appear to have avoided this and in comparison are being portrayed as better in many ways that their book counterparts.

Edited November 10, 2021 by AusLeviathan

[TheDreadReader]

59 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

I mean she opens it up the front of the Trolloc enough that blood starts spurting everywhere and by the time she's finished with it she's standing in a pool that's covered in its blood, I'm not sure how else to describe that other than butchering it.

 

Hit the right spot and blood will spurt every time.  All it takes is an artery.

 

 

 

 

59 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

I remember that Henry Cavill dehydrated himself for three days a few years ago for a nude scene in The Witcher, so it was kind of weird to hear Rosamund suggest that men have had it easy in that regard.

 

The amount of efforts that men go through to appease thirst on screen is certainly an underappreciated factor but it is hardly objectively equal.

 

I have to deal with these expectations all the time in my side-job of being a strength and conditioning coach.   Some actors are geared to the gills, others are not, and cut cycles can be very dangerous.   I can't tell you how many times I have to explain who is probably on geared (Chris Hemsworth) versus who is probably not and how some people have to moderate their expectations.

 

Still, you can pretty clearly objectively measure the impact of popular media on body consciousness issues and the observable impacts based on sheer volume of content for women are significantly higher.

 

 

[JaimAybara]

1 minute ago, notpropaganda73 said:

 

 

 

I can understand a worry about the veils, and I appreciate you are saying you will wait and see, but I'm confused as to why you are taking comments from YouTubers as some sort of indication as to what the studio and showrunners will do? That is an unbelievable leap to be making. 

It was a WoT fandom channel. So, in my eyes if hardcore fans are actually making wild claims like that, I am yes, making the logical leap that comments like that may have been casually thrown around by executives or those involved in the show that aren’t ardent fans. Again, as I said I will wait and see, but I’m just going off what I did see in the promo, paired with fandom YouTube channel comments. Just like some of us will riff off of what each other say here. It wasn’t some ragtag channel that’s never heard of the series.

[Elder_Haman]

12 minutes ago, Beidomon said:

Come on, Elder. You’re better than this. Smarter than this. There is a big darned difference between eavesdropping on a warder from a distance and getting the physical -knife to chest - jump on a warder.

Lan is clearly unafraid that she's actually going to stab him. So she was only able to get the drop on him to a certain point. The point is that in the books, Nynaeve was able to sneak up on Lan. Since we don't know how this scene plays out, we can't possibly know whether this is an example of your argument.

[Elder_Haman]

2 minutes ago, JaimAybara said:

So, in my eyes if hardcore fans are actually making wild claims like that, I am yes, making the logical leap that comments like that may have been casually thrown around by executives or those involved in the show that aren’t ardent fans.

That's an Evel Knievel-sized leap there.

[Beidomon]

15 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

This thing has been beaten like a dead horse. I'm just going to come down on the side of: even if they made this change for no reason other than being inclusionary in casting, it is meaningless to me. It alters nothing important about the story.

 

She's not "brandishing" a knife when Lan enters. She has her hand on it. The men aren't "sitting around like doofuses," they're sizing up the situation. Nynaeve being the first person to act is entirely within her character. She's the Alpha in Emond's Field as described in the books. People respect her, fear her, and defer to her (and then Cenn Buie talks about her behind her back). She "physically bests" the Trolloc by executing an ambush. Slightly unrealistic? Maybe. Out of character? Not really. Proof of a "woke change to make Nynaeve awesome and all the men terrible?" Not even close.

 

And yes, Nynaeve does sneak up on Lan in the books. It's what makes him fall for her.

 

There's no confirmation of this anywhere. 

 

I'll rehash it one more time - we have no idea how this is going to play out. There are ways this can be written where it plays absolutely no havoc with any central premise in the story. Those ways aren't particularly difficult. I'm going to assume massive changes like the ones you suggest aren't being made until I see proof otherwise.

 

You don't have proof the show is woke. You're afraid the show might be woke. And so you're projecting those fears onto everything. (And no, I'm not saying afraid in the sense of experiencing actual fear, just as a synonym for concern only with a little more emotion involved.)

I respect your opinions. Some people are less sensitive (or less prone to seeing it or just don’t care) to woke sermonizing, and that’s fine. And I agree with you that we don’t know yet how the show will play out. The woke might not be nearly as bad as some of us worry. And I acknowledged that some issues are bigger than others. 

 

But you asked the question, posed as some rather flimsy strawmen, and I addressed those.

Edited November 10, 2021 by Beidomon

[JaimAybara]

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

That's an Evel Knievel-sized leap there.

That’s fair, but he often landed those jumps. Haha. :)