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

[Rose]

2 hours ago, TheDreadReader said:

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

 

And Nynaeve is a healer. She knows exactly where arteries are and how they work.

 

Also, I would like to remind everyone once again that in the books Alsbeth Luhhan took out a Trolloc with a frying pan.

 

But Nynaeve getting the jump on a Trolloc while hiding in water (which Trollocs are afraid of and therefore not in their element in) is a stretch?

 

Please.

 

As for the "you have to be strong with the ability to take life" comment, I don't understand it at all as "the ability to take life makes you strong." Rather, the opposite: If you have the ability to take life, you HAVE to be strong in order not to misuse it. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.

[DaddyFinn]

1 minute ago, Katherine said:

The rest of the Aiel.  They should be homogenous. Though TBF I always  had trouble picturing pale red-heads in the deserts. My brain always pictured them with dark skin even though that was completely backward. 

Yes. I talked about individual characters, not different cultures. Sea Folk are pitch black etc.

[swollymammoth]

9 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Besides which... You're aware that there are in fact.. Black-Latinos, right? And that Latino isn't a "race", so much as a descriptor of someone who's family originated from Latin America...which is a pretty diverse area.

You got me, Sinister. I'm no match for your pedantics. I surrender. 

 

*Dies* 

[Elder_Haman]

Just now, swollymammoth said:

pedantics

It's not pedantic. It's proof of how shallow the fixation on skin color is. It doesn't matter whether actors match the description in the books as long as they remain true to the other things that make the character tick.

 

Casting a dark skinned Egwene is fine. Casting a light skinned Tuon would be equally fine. 

[DaddyFinn]

5 minutes ago, mogi68 said:

2. Dialogue not reflecting conversations/themes that are in the books

3. Introducing plot points that are not in the books

Rafe has said that "dialogue will mostly not be from the books". They try to make it feel as natural as possible. I always thought that dialogue in first three books was clunky. Too much repeating of the same sentence/word in one dialogue for example. New plot points are necessary because the books can't be adapted completely as is. That would make bad TV.

[SinisterDeath]

4 minutes ago, Katherine said:

The rest of the Aiel.  They should be homogenous. Though TBF I always  had trouble picturing pale red-heads in the deserts. My brain always pictured them with dark skin even though that was completely backward. 

RJ once said he put gingers in the desert as a joke.

I also want to say, that they do tan, and the areas not exposed to the sun are quite white. (farmers tan)

[SinisterDeath]

1 minute ago, DaddyFinn said:

Rafe has said that "dialogue will mostly not be from the books". They try to make it feel as natural as possible. I always thought that dialogue in first three books was clunky. Too much repeating of the same sentence/word in one dialogue for example. New plot points are necessary because the books can't be adapted completely as is. That would make bad TV.

Like how every book repeats the exact same description for something every single time, and it starts to drive you a bit bonkers? Only you see every author doing this in multi-book series?

[swollymammoth]

7 minutes ago, mogi68 said:

You're beating a dead horse here bro - we have bigger fish to fry.

Sigh... I mean, you're objectively right. 

[DaddyFinn]

1 minute ago, SinisterDeath said:

I also want to say, that they do tan, and the areas not exposed to the sun are quite white. (farmers tan)

Cue Elaida in the throne room. "Two Rivers folk rarely have such hair and skin."

[king of nowhere]

this discussion is growing so fast, i wanted to reply to some things but they are now 2 pages old. just in the time it took me to read them. new replies are getting in faster than i can read them.

 

I'll just say that both sides are right. ultimately, it comes down to how much trust we put in the production. Trust -> we believe they won't dial up women power to turn this into a woke pastiche

no trust -> we believe they'll do exactly that

 

personally, i don't believe in feminism, i believe in equality. and i feel every time someone frames an argument as a matter of male vs female, we are taking a step away from the ideal.

and this thread counts. face it, a lot of people are already up for equality. the problem is a vocal minority on both extremes. everyone else, we should try to close the gap with the guy on the other side who mostly agrees with us, rather than polarize the fight

 

[Rose]

1 hour ago, swollymammoth said:

It's been 3000 years since the breaking and 1000 years since Manetheran. That is plenty of time for racial homogenization to occur in a tiny, isolated population like Emond's Field. It only took 6 generations for people to turn blue in the Appalachia mountains, and 1000 years is a lot more than that.  

 

That's actually not how population genetics work.

 

We don't have empirical evidence for this because it has never happened in our world that a massively diverse population becomes semi-isolated for 1000 years. But we have enough understanding of how genetics work to pretty safely assume they would not becoming phenotypically homogeneous.

 

That being said, a lot of RJ's population genetics plain don't make sense and he didn't really care, so why should we anyway. Two Rivers folk are supposed to have dark hair and eyes and darker skin than Rand, a ginger. They do. That's all all that matters.

[DaddyFinn]

Just now, SinisterDeath said:

Like how every book repeats the exact same description for something every single time, and it starts to drive you a bit bonkers? Only you see every author doing this in multi-book series?

No, like a certain character saying the same thing (word or short sentence) repeatedly during the same dialogue. That always came off as almost childish and it disappeared after the first books. The overall repeating of lore during each book is very annoying. Don't know if that happens with other series.

[SinisterDeath]

8 minutes ago, Rose said:

That being said, a lot of RJ's population genetics plain don't make sense and he didn't really care, so why should we anyway. Two Rivers folk are supposed to have dark hair and eyes and darker skin than Rand, a ginger. They do. That's all all that matters.

100%.

~3000 years in the desert should have transformed the Aiel from Gingers into something with more melanin. Blue eyes (sun blindness) might have been a disadvantage in the Desert. So would the constant state of being a lobster.

 

  

6 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

The overall repeating of lore during each book is very annoying. Don't know if that happens with other series.

100% happens in other series.

I know it happened in Dresden. 

Maybe Mistborn?
Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt does it.

We're seeing it finally disappear, but there's an old school editor/sales point of view of selling books in Airports, so people could pick those books up and read them without context of reading the older books. 

[DojoToad]

12 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Casting a light skinned Tuon would be equally fine. 

Care to place bets on the chances of that happening? ?

[Elder_Haman]

9 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

we should try to close the gap with the guy on the other side who mostly agrees with us, rather than polarize the fight

This is my intention.

[Beidomon]

1 hour ago, Elder_Haman said:

Because skin color is not meaningful whereas the other characteristics are. Period.

 

Amazon disagrees. But I digress.

[MasterAblar]

19 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Cue Elaida in the throne room. "Two Rivers folk rarely have such hair and skin."

 

That scene kinda encompasses the whole thing. On one hand he's too light skinned to be from the Two Rivers. On the other hand she had to check so they're probably not that dark skinned.

 

On the other hand later on Egwene tans and is nearly as dark as the Aiel.... who are naturally super light skinned? Well that just clears everything up.

[SinisterDeath]

Just now, MasterAblar said:

That scene kinda encompasses the whole thing. On one hand he's too light skinned to be from the Two Rivers. On the other hand she had to check so they're probably not that dark skinned.

From what I remember, she grabbed his wrist, and under his sleeve his skin was less tan. 
 

1 minute ago, MasterAblar said:

 

On the other hand later on Egwene tans and is nearly as dark as the Aiel.... who are naturally super light skinned? Well that just clears everything up.

I mentioned earlier, I believe the Aiel skin exposed to the sun is tanned, but the areas not exposed to sun are white. 

Plus, people of color do get darker/lighter based on environment & sun exposure.
 

[Flamen]

As expected WOT tv show will be radical "Woke"

 

Judkins: I think—well, I can’t tell you all of them, but in the books, there’s an idea that if you’re born as a man in one life, you’d be born as a man in the next life in the show. We’re not doing that. We’re approaching it as you are a soul and you move through different bodies through whatever life that you’re in. So that’s one. It’s a very fundamental change actually to make to the book series, and it has a lot of ripple effects, and we’ll continue to do things like that I think are more reflective of what hopefully Robert Jordan would be writing if he was writing today.

[swollymammoth]

9 minutes ago, Beidomon said:

1 hour ago, Elder_Haman said:

Because skin color is not meaningful whereas the other characteristics are. Period.

 

Amazon disagrees. But I digress.

Exactly. Amazon's diversity playbook literally says that hirers should be wary of hiring based on experience because it might lead to too many white people working on set. 

 

For Amazon: Skin color > Experience 

 

Sorry for explaining the joke there, Beidomon. 

[Beidomon]

24 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

this discussion is growing so fast, i wanted to reply to some things but they are now 2 pages old. just in the time it took me to read them. new replies are getting in faster than i can read them.

 

I'll just say that both sides are right. ultimately, it comes down to how much trust we put in the production. Trust -> we believe they won't dial up women power to turn this into a woke pastiche

no trust -> we believe they'll do exactly that

 

 

This is a very good summation. I'm somewhere in between. I've def seen enough to be worried. And I don't think the concerns can be dismissed out of hand. And some would openly embrace the "woke pastiche."

 

I'd rather people just acknowledge that there are different, but valid, viewpoints rather than trying to talk past them or argue that they are invalid.

[Beidomon]

5 minutes ago, Flamen said:

As expected WOT tv show will be radical "Woke"

 

Judkins: I think—well, I can’t tell you all of them, but in the books, there’s an idea that if you’re born as a man in one life, you’d be born as a man in the next life in the show. We’re not doing that. We’re approaching it as you are a soul and you move through different bodies through whatever life that you’re in. So that’s one. It’s a very fundamental change actually to make to the book series, and it has a lot of ripple effects, and we’ll continue to do things like that I think are more reflective of what hopefully Robert Jordan would be writing if he was writing today.

 

If this is real, then Rafe is doubling down. And eff this. This is a bridge too far for me.

[MasterAblar]

2 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

From what I remember, she grabbed his wrist, and under his sleeve his skin was less tan. 
 

I mentioned earlier, I believe the Aiel skin exposed to the sun is tanned, but the areas not exposed to sun are white. 

Plus, people of color do get darker/lighter based on environment & sun exposure.
 

 

Yes thats what I'm saying, the scenes resolve nothing.

 

She checks his natural skin but she wouldn't have too if Two River people were so dark that its unlikely someone who tans would get that dark. So they're darker than his natural skin, but also not super dark. How dark? Who knows (and who cares honestly).

 

The Aiel are obviously quite tan yes but they're still not gonna get super dark that way, there is presumably a limit. So where does that leave Two river people. Somwhere in the middle of this very broad spectrum.

[Flamen]

The whole interview by so called showrunner

 

 

https://gizmodo.com/adapting-the-wheel-of-time-for-tv-is-an-epic-all-its-ow-1848026456

[swollymammoth]

4 minutes ago, Flamen said:

It’s a very fundamental change actually to make to the book series, and it has a lot of ripple effects, and we’ll continue to do things like that I think are more reflective of what hopefully Robert Jordan would be writing if he was writing today.

This is so gross. So it's confirmed. Rafe knows what he's doing, and he doesn't give an F about the lore or the world or anything. He's going to do whatever he wants and justify it by the unprovable claim that its what RJ himself would have done if only he were still alive. 

 

So disrespectful to even think that you could make assumptions like that. Can you imagine actually thinking this? "Everyone I respect who's dead would have totally agreed with me. That's how right I am all the time."