Interviews and News Articles

[EmreY]

12 minutes ago, ArrylT said:

There was a video interview with Priyanka Bose today (or recently) and plenty of people are trying to speculate if her comments mean S2 will arrive sooner than expected (ie Summer or Early Fall) rather than  late Fall / early Winter.

 

I think that It would be a good idea, to put space between WOT and another show.  Link?

[DaddyFinn]

2 hours ago, EmreY said:

 

I think that It would be a good idea, to put space between WOT and another show.  Link?

 

 

[DaddyFinn]

 

This seems plausible

[JenniferL]

Please argue semantics someplace that is else. If there’s no show news worth discussion, we can pause the thread. 

[ArrylT]

https://rationalnerd62.tumblr.com/post/673681725181788160/the-wheel-of-time-screentime-s1-rand

 

I've posted tumblr articles from this account previously - now they have done a deeper dive into Rands screentime and how much screentime he has had with each character & so forth.  ?

[EmreY]

3 hours ago, ArrylT said:

https://rationalnerd62.tumblr.com/post/673681725181788160/the-wheel-of-time-screentime-s1-rand

 

I've posted tumblr articles from this account previously - now they have done a deeper dive into Rands screentime and how much screentime he has had with each character & so forth.  ?

 

Now we need a breakdown of how often he says I/me/mine versus she/her/hers/Egwene. ?

[notpropaganda73]

9 hours ago, ArrylT said:

https://rationalnerd62.tumblr.com/post/673681725181788160/the-wheel-of-time-screentime-s1-rand

 

I've posted tumblr articles from this account previously - now they have done a deeper dive into Rands screentime and how much screentime he has had with each character & so forth.  ?

 

I understand the motivation behind tracking the screen time but to be completely honest, there is more to centring a character in a story than simply having them on screen. Think about Silence of the Lambs - Anthony Hopkins was on screen for 16 minutes of that movie and won the Oscar for Best Actor! 

 

I think as people who are enjoying the show, we have to acknowledge that Rand simply being on screen for that amount of time has not worked for many. And so, why is that, and how can they improve on that going forward? For example of what I mean - Rand would have been on-screen for a significant portion of episode 3. The key scene in that episode is the climax with Dana - but what are many people thinking as they watch that scene? Is it about Rand the character, Rand's development - or is it the reveal of Darkfriends in this world and the danger that presents? Another example in episode 4 - Thom and Rand talking about Mat. While we all know the subtext here surrounding male channelers, the focus on the scene is actually talking about Mat,  and the episode as a whole while it has plenty of Rand in it, the feeling from that mini-story arc is Mat: what is happening to him? 

 

An example of good screen time for Rand (imo) is episode 7 and the much-hated love triangle scene. The whole argument about Mat and Rand's defence of him is excellent (imo). 

 

Maybe this would be better as its' own topic but I think it's good to think about the type of screen time the characters are getting. For example Siuan Sanche was present for a single episode in S1 but in terms of characterisation and all the rest, I would say she was one of the most memorable characters from the first season. 

[EmreY]

4 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Anthony Hopkins was on screen for 16 minutes of that movie and won the Oscar for Best Actor

 

Pfft.  Judy Dench was on for eight minutes in Ben Affleck Plays Mercutio or whatever that film was called and got an Oscar. ?

 

I think the length of screentime combined with the fact that the cinnamon roll doesn't do all that much / generate much obvious interest before Episode 8 does create a dissonance.  Whether intended or not, I have no idea.

[Skipp]

Not sure if this had been posted yet but I found it on reddit.

 

https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/top-ten/

 

Nielsen:  WoT's final week sees rise to 638 million minutes watched from 437 million a week before.

[Flamen]

The increase is valid for all tv shows/ binge-watching during holidays/. The Witcher has 2,734 billion minutes/4,3 times more minutes/. The real intersting numbers will start next week.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Flamen

[Ralph]

5 minutes ago, Flamen said:

The increase is valid for all tv shows/ binge-watching during holidays/. The Witcher has 2,734 billion minutes/4,3 times more minutes/. The real intersting numbers will start next week.

 

Not comparable, since the Witcher was only released that week, and the whole season was released together. This is despite WoT having only one new episode that week. 

Week after that Wot will have had no new episode, and Witcher will still have people who haven't watched it all in one week. So won't give much information. Unless Wot goes up, which is unlikely

 

 

But you are correct about holidays, and binge watchers. 

[ArrylT]

17 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

 

I understand the motivation behind tracking the screen time but to be completely honest, there is more to centring a character in a story than simply having them on screen. Think about Silence of the Lambs - Anthony Hopkins was on screen for 16 minutes of that movie and won the Oscar for Best Actor! 

 

I think as people who are enjoying the show, we have to acknowledge that Rand simply being on screen for that amount of time has not worked for many. And so, why is that, and how can they improve on that going forward? For example of what I mean - Rand would have been on-screen for a significant portion of episode 3. The key scene in that episode is the climax with Dana - but what are many people thinking as they watch that scene? Is it about Rand the character, Rand's development - or is it the reveal of Darkfriends in this world and the danger that presents? Another example in episode 4 - Thom and Rand talking about Mat. While we all know the subtext here surrounding male channelers, the focus on the scene is actually talking about Mat,  and the episode as a whole while it has plenty of Rand in it, the feeling from that mini-story arc is Mat: what is happening to him? 

 

An example of good screen time for Rand (imo) is episode 7 and the much-hated love triangle scene. The whole argument about Mat and Rand's defence of him is excellent (imo). 

 

Maybe this would be better as its' own topic but I think it's good to think about the type of screen time the characters are getting. For example Siuan Sanche was present for a single episode in S1 but in terms of characterisation and all the rest, I would say she was one of the most memorable characters from the first season. 

 

Absolutely there is more to a character than just the screen time they get.   I do find it interesting though that Rand gets a lot of scenes with only 1 or 2 other characters (and a few on his own).   In the end it all comes down to how each person feels about Rands development. For me, Rand in the books develops pretty slowly in EOTW, and while I do not feel he develops any faster in S1, I do feel his development is more obvious to me in the show than in the books (I find his development becomes more obvious in TGH).  In part perhaps because of all those duo/trio scenes where you can focus more on each character.    I think the screentime stats simply show that Rand got a lot of time in which he could have a chance to develop, and whether or not a person thinks he did or not, well that is dependant on their perspective.

 

As for Siuan, quite agreed.  I would say she is more memorable in S1 than her appearance in The Great Hunt (but both appearances are very good). 

[ArrylT]

https://bookriot.com/why-i-gave-up-reading-the-wheel-of-time/

 

Opinion article

[VooDooNut]

7 minutes ago, ArrylT said:

https://bookriot.com/why-i-gave-up-reading-the-wheel-of-time/

 

Opinion article

Refreshing read. Thanks for sharing it!

[ArrylT]

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61e06b2c55e52500217add01/your-bubble-is-not-the-culture-lin-manuel-miranda-harry-potter/

 

This is not a WoT article per say but I think the point being made by the article is the same for any entertainment be it movie, show or music ... 

 

Couple of interesting quotes (to me):

 

"But just because something makes waves on Twitter doesn’t mean it actually matters to most people. According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, and of those users, “the most active 25% … produced 97% of all tweets.” In other words, nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults. This is not a remotely good representation of public opinion, let alone newsworthiness, and treating it as such will inevitably result in wrong conclusions."

 

I think this ties into what other people have said about (a) this site and (b) IMDB/Rotten Tomatoes.   And that is while ideally one can want WoT to have a 100% grade or approval rating, that in the end, the rating/data provided is only relevant in that that is the view of those that were active on that site, not the entire population of people who have watched the show in the country/world.   If less than 6% of Americans adults are vocal on Twitter, exactly what % is it on Reddit, on IDMB, RT & so forth. Just keep that in mind the next time you feel overwhelmed by a different pov - no matter how alone you may feel, you are not - the majority of voices is simply a small small sample magnified by the size of the room you are currently in.

 

"The deep-seated need to justify one’s own relevance is how we end up with cultural criticism that evaluates art as politics, rather than as art which also has political elements. It’s how we get Playstation 5 reviews that scold people for owning one and being excited about it, because purportedly only privileged people do things like that. I suspect that if folks felt less guilty about what they were doing, we’d get less of this sort of writing."

 

In other words I can interpret this as that some of the people review bombing a show or movie likely do it perhaps to make themselves feel relevant, and likewise some of the people who rate something a 10 might do it to counter act that negativity and reassure that their voice is also relevant.  

 

"After all, if anything is “cringe,” it’s culture writers telling their audiences that they should hate the things that bring them joy, especially at such a difficult time."

 

Perhaps no different than people crashing other peoples posts of enjoyment and telling them that the show they like sucks.

[ilovezam]

7 hours ago, ArrylT said:

According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, and of those users, “the most active 25% … produced 97% of all tweets.” In other words, nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults.

And yet Twitter is just about the only place where you can find people who think that the book series needed to be given a feminist makeover like Rafe said he would. I think most of us just want a good coherent show.

[EmreY]

Do we know how secure the show is and how evil Rafe is?

 

If I were certain that I had another couple of seasons, as I have an evil bent, I might tweet things like:

 

"We might want to explore what would have happened if Numenor had been home to an Orcish high civilisation" or "I don't know if Rand really needs to live through to the end of the series". ?

[Raal Gurniss]

9 hours ago, ArrylT said:

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61e06b2c55e52500217add01/your-bubble-is-not-the-culture-lin-manuel-miranda-harry-potter/

 

This is not a WoT article per say but I think the point being made by the article is the same for any entertainment be it movie, show or music ... 

 

Couple of interesting quotes (to me):

 

"But just because something makes waves on Twitter doesn’t mean it actually matters to most people. According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, and of those users, “the most active 25% … produced 97% of all tweets.” In other words, nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults. This is not a remotely good representation of public opinion, let alone newsworthiness, and treating it as such will inevitably result in wrong conclusions."

 

I think this ties into what other people have said about (a) this site and (b) IMDB/Rotten Tomatoes.   And that is while ideally one can want WoT to have a 100% grade or approval rating, that in the end, the rating/data provided is only relevant in that that is the view of those that were active on that site, not the entire population of people who have watched the show in the country/world.   If less than 6% of Americans adults are vocal on Twitter, exactly what % is it on Reddit, on IDMB, RT & so forth. Just keep that in mind the next time you feel overwhelmed by a different pov - no matter how alone you may feel, you are not - the majority of voices is simply a small small sample magnified by the size of the room you are currently in.

 

"The deep-seated need to justify one’s own relevance is how we end up with cultural criticism that evaluates art as politics, rather than as art which also has political elements. It’s how we get Playstation 5 reviews that scold people for owning one and being excited about it, because purportedly only privileged people do things like that. I suspect that if folks felt less guilty about what they were doing, we’d get less of this sort of writing."

 

In other words I can interpret this as that some of the people review bombing a show or movie likely do it perhaps to make themselves feel relevant, and likewise some of the people who rate something a 10 might do it to counter act that negativity and reassure that their voice is also relevant.  

 

"After all, if anything is “cringe,” it’s culture writers telling their audiences that they should hate the things that bring them joy, especially at such a difficult time."

 

Perhaps no different than people crashing other peoples posts of enjoyment and telling them that the show they like sucks.

And the opposing view is that much different in their reasoning? I mean someone could see those 10/10 and then rate it 1/10 to counter those..

 

Or even the “crashing other people posts” part the reverse is also true.

 

 

Do you think most people critique a game/movie/series because they are less passionate about the subject? They are massively disappointed, almost angry about what they enjoy being twisted into something they find trash - near abominable.

 

Take a step back and try looking at as many different perspectives as you can manage.

 

A 1/10 is silly, there are some creations out there that are far worse than this show.

 

A 10/10 is silly, there are far better creations out there than this show.

 

This show isn’t awful, but it’s also not very good…It is mediocre and went out of it’s way to deliberately antagonise vast swathes of its pre-established fanbase.

 

I for one don’t want to celebrate mediocrity as being perfect nor do I wish to live in an echo chamber, that results in stagnation and a terminal decline…

 

 

[king of nowhere]

7 hours ago, ilovezam said:

And yet Twitter is just about the only place where you can find people who think that the book series needed to be given a feminist makeover like Rafe said he would. I think most of us just want a good coherent show.

no, gender dinamics is a top complaint about wot among critics. you may claim critics also don't represent the majority, and it's true, but then, nothing does represent that silent majority anyway, you've got to base your judgments on something.

anyway, the portrayal of gender was terrible; the "why I gave up reading wheel of time" review sums up perfectly the problems with it.

The show does genuinely improve on it; there are several things in the show that are genuinely better than their book counterparts. Unfortunately, the show also ended up turning every male character into a useless moron; here the books did better.

 

Ultimately, I believe there are a lot of changes that the show does that are improvements over the original books; expanding the scope of the world early, rather than having a classic fantasy quest, improves the story. Making moiraine the main character improves the story, she's a lot more interesting than three paesants. Showing Logain improves the story, he's got some very cool scenes. Not presenting all men as quiet and stoic, and all women as manipulative, improves the story.

Unfortunately, Rafe and his writing team are nowhere near as good narrators as RJ was. Furthermore, TV is not a good medium to show an expanded story in a large world with multiple characters and a lot of introspection. And Rafe&coworkers have fallen victims of the common pitfalls of movies, i.e. prioritize what looks good over what makes sense.

so, wottv ends up as a potentially better story than the books, but more poorly narrated.

[ilovezam]

3 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

The show does genuinely improve on it; there are several things in the show that are genuinely better than their book counterparts. Unfortunately, the show also ended up turning every male character into a useless moron; here the books did better.

That's fair.

 

7 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

Not presenting all men as quiet and stoic, and all women as manipulative, improves the story.

Not all men should be quiet and stoic, but some characters like Lan are, and he really benefited from that because you get to see him soften a little over time with the crew and especially Nynaeve. I wish he was more of that for the first season at least. 

 

I don't think the problems with the books' representation of gender had anything to do with "feminism" or a lack thereof like Rafe claims - I can agree that the books might benefit from having fewer stereotypes for both sexes though.

 

5 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

Making moiraine the main character improves the story, she's a lot more interesting than three paesants.

Can't really agree there. I think Rand is one of my favourite main characters ever and making him not the main character was a misstep, especially when the story is still going to revolve around the Dragon Reborn. Having to invent new stuff for Moiraine could be interesting, but all evidence so far points at the team's inability to write a compelling tale.

 

Rafe also incorrectly believes that Rand did not have the most chapters in the series.

[Cauthonfan4]

55 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

anyway, the portrayal of gender was terrible; the "why I gave up reading wheel of time" review sums up perfectly the problems with it.

 

meanwhile we got hardcore feminists on youtube sitting there saying that the tv show did an even worse job of gender portrayal then the books did. one of the chief complaints i see pretty much everywhere about the TV show is the lack of development of the characters in general, but how the men take the cake

 

There is one who even pointed out (since people like to point out Rands Screen time) that yeah, he gets a lot of screen time, but what do they actually do with it? Many people have actually been surprised that Rand has as much screen time as he does, because you don't see any real development of him over the course of that screen time. 

 

55 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

anyway, the portrayal of gender was terrible; the "why I gave up reading wheel of time" review sums up perfectly the problems with it.

 

I agree gender portrayal wasn't that great in the books, but I don't think the tv show did a good job here either. 

 

 

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[Cauthonfan4]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

Making moiraine the main character improves the story, she's a lot more interesting than three paesants.

that goes without saying - you have a worldly person who has spent the past 20 years on a mission, as opposed to a bunch of backwater peasants slowly coming into their own. So ofcourse she's going to start off as the more interesting character - and I definitely agree, making her the focal point early on was probably a better decision so you can build up the other characters around her and let them come into their own.

Unfortunately they have failed to execute on growing our characters as people.

Oh sure, they have had interesting scenes here and there, but by and large how much have they actually grown? Book 1 didn't do much for the development of our EF5, but it did lay a sound groundwork with them waking up to what the outside world was like, and the training they received which allowed them propel forward.

And Frankly i think they royally fragged Egwene altogether - TV show - you have her whisked away as one of the potential 5 dragons, and then she saves her and Perrin from Valda. Then the disaster with her being Fought over by rand and perrin like she was some prize and with her "miracle healing nynaeve".

meanwhile in the books she was the one who was READY to leave her life behind and find out more and be more. She wasn't SUPPOSED to leave the village with Moiraine, Lan and the boys. She Forced her way in. She wanted to get out there and see what was going on and take a chance and seize this power that Moiraine spoke of. Did she evolve much over book 1? not especially, but she was SELF MOTIVATED. She was ready to abandon her old life. She wanted More. Even so to the point that she unbraided her hair and was ready to argue with Nynaeve about it.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[king of nowhere]

33 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

I definitely agree, [change] was probably a better decision

Unfortunately they have failed to execute

 

isn't it the same thing I expressed? good ideas, passable execution.

[Cauthonfan4]

6 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

isn't it the same thing I expressed? good ideas, passable execution.

not exactly. I think changing how the gender dynamics was a good idea, If it was done with Balance in consideration and the execution was good. the show failed on both accounts.

 

ergo i support the idea of changing the gender dynamics and focusing less on rand and making the women more equal to the men. I do not support what the show did with making the women the focal point in season 1 the way they did.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[ArrylT]

On 1/19/2022 at 7:32 PM, ArrylT said:

https://rationalnerd62.tumblr.com/post/673681725181788160/the-wheel-of-time-screentime-s1-rand

 

I've posted tumblr articles from this account previously - now they have done a deeper dive into Rands screentime and how much screentime he has had with each character & so forth.  ?

 

And here is a deeper dive into the screentime for Moiraine. ?

 

https://rationalnerd62.tumblr.com/post/674140995438411776/the-wheel-of-time-screentime-s1-moiraine