How did the show hold up for you?

[TwistedFramePortal]

On 12/15/2021 at 10:47 AM, Skipp said:

Mat was your favourite character in tEofW?  That is surprisingly rare but it can happen.  What attracted you to Mat in tEotW? 

For me it was the beginning. He was just a kid trying to be carefree and mischievous and I related to him more than the big but careful Perrin or weight of the world Rand. 

[Raal Gurniss]

5 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

To be fair to Rafe (it takes me tremendous effort to squeeze out this amount of charity for him), he does mention the importance of "balance" in the books, and says that that'll be in the show.

 

If he used Season 1 to generate evidence to support up this extremely infantile "men are bad and arrogant!" view, only to use Season 2 to collapse it all down by finally showing how extremely unfair and inaccurate that view actually was, he could redeem the show yet.

 

...I wouldn't bet on it happening though.

Given how unfavourable any criticism of the show has been I can’t see the following seasons will differ in the slightest, the shows fanbase is screaming for the show to massively increase the female aspect and decrease the male aspect….Although they would argue that they aren’t saying to decrease the male side, they argue the male side is more dominant than the females in the show just that they are focusing on the masculine parts they want to promote, such as extreme spousal violence/abuse  within the home such as with Abel and Perrin or mutilating/burning the Yellow sister.

[ilovezam]

7 minutes ago, Raal Gurniss said:

I can’t see the following seasons will differ in the slightest, the shows fanbase is screaming for the show to massively increase the female aspect and decrease the male aspect….

Yeah, I've seen comments advocating for Rand to be less important because it's "harmful" to perpetuate a white powerful person saving the day thing.

 

Also Rafe says in an interview that Rand is not the main character of the series, and that Rand doesn't even have the most POV chapters.

 

And as usual he's super off.

 

 

 

 

[Gothic Flame]

On 1/15/2022 at 12:27 PM, fra85uk said:

 

Season 1 of WoT  is a lecture in how to subvert the message of a source material towards an opposite ideology.  

It is the equivalent of taking Dante's  Divine Comedy and swap people in Hell with those in Paradise.

Acquaintance of mine said similar; wot is a masterclass in how to mess up a decent story and fire up swathes of book nerds.

[Juan Farstrider]

A couple of comments have me thinking. I think Jordan's portray of the younger women reflects not that he's presenting caricatures of them but presenting young women/late adolescents. Much like the boys, they grow up over the books. I was going to say Egwene espeically, but they all do. 

I think Jordan's portrayal men and of the dynamic between men and women both reflect a bit of reality (as he sees it or just as it is-- not something I'd want to debate) and the world he is portraying. Can Rafe improve on that or honor it while changing it? Let's compare: Jordan was a Vietnam vet who had a harrowing experience shooting a woman in war and it weighs heavily on his writing. Rafe, well ... he's male. and young. Jordan was not young when he wrote these. I referred to Rafe's age previously. I think it matters. It's not a matter of how many times he read the books, it's a matter of how much life he has lived to see life in our world in Jordan's books.

Rafe took on a massively hard task. Even if RJ himself were at the helm, the people in the arts today reflect what Rafe (or them, or both) gave us much more so than RJ did as he was writing them. I made the analogy previously about the interpretation of classical music, and how the training there is aimed at creating mature performers who can reflect the composer's intentions and not the fashion of the day (though, that ends up happening anyway to some extent). Rafe would have to get a full team of people who are on board with that very disciplined approach, to keep the Bookcloaks (may the Light ever illume our pages) happy.  

[Gothic Flame]

“You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyways.” -Lan Mandragoran, EotW

[Chivalry]

On 1/15/2022 at 9:48 AM, TwistedFramePortal said:

For me it was the beginning. He was just a kid trying to be carefree and mischievous and I related to him more than the big but careful Perrin or weight of the world Rand. 

 

I've been re-reading The Great Hunt...Mat, wasting away from the effects of the dagger, but still teasing Loial mercilessly while taking shots at Rand now and then.  ?

[DojoToad]

On 1/14/2022 at 9:35 PM, Pembie said:

Is it worth watching or is it too far from the novels I hope they miss out a lot of the political stuff that really bogs the story down for me 

They are very far from the books and didn't miss anything political - in fact, found more...

[Spiritweaver1]

On 1/15/2022 at 7:49 AM, king of nowhere said:

in several aspects, the tv show treats men a lot better than the books. for example, men are not dim-witted about women in the tv show. And they also don't have all the stupid bravado and toxic masculinity that the book tries to depict as innate for men. warders in the tv show are depicted as true companions; in the books, their interactions basically amounted to out-staring each other.

 

 

So, the show is treating men better than the books in some regards, worse in some others.

It is, however, treating women a lot better than the books. I haven't noticed a single sniffing or hair-pulling in the whole show

 

I have a simple mind so I don't understand the premise here.  In the books the main hero is a man.  There is a lot, especially in later books, of what I have always viewed as "humor" about the motivations of the opposite sex.  The interplay and internal dialogs between Rand and his ladies for example.  There is a reasonably complex and representative mix of motivations provided regarding how one sex views the other. I believe one influence was Gray's Men are from Mars Women are from Venus which came out in 1992. RJ riffed on that material IMHO. However in the main  some of RJ's cultures women rule and men walk lightly and in others the men are clearly running the show.  However, the main theme of the story is the need for balance and cooperation between the sexes in  my opinion.  It is why the initial attempt to seal the bore failed.  Half the one power was missing from the attempt.  

 

Does anybody think Min is actually going to call Rand a wool head?   Does anybody in Hollywood have any idea why that term is an insult?   

 

One of the actual strengths of the books are the diversity of cultures and attitudes portrayed even if it was sometimes a bit laborious.    The show, so far, seems to be trying to eliminate all of that.  This has already   been discussed ad nauseam already.  I will just repeat that this is a mortal sin against the story is why this bookcloak believes Rafe is failing miserably in capturing the essence of the tale.  Destroyer of Hope indeed.  

 

[king of nowhere]

12 minutes ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

 

One of the actual strengths of the books are the diversity of cultures and attitudes portrayed even if it was sometimes a bit laborious.    The show, so far, seems to be trying to eliminate all of that. 

 

actually, there is some of that. you can see that different regions are influenced by different real-world cultures. the woman in charge of making costumes even has a map of randland divided by cultural influences.

aside from that, we have seen the two rivers, the tinkers, the aes sedai, the borderlands. all those places are different and show different cultures.

 

if the show is losing some nuances - actually, it is losing a lot in worldbuilding -, I am more likely to pin it to tv being inadequate to represent such things for time and pace reasons.

[Spiritweaver1]

8 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

actually, there is some of that. you can see that different regions are influenced by different real-world cultures. the woman in charge of making costumes even has a map of randland divided by cultural influences.

aside from that, we have seen the two rivers, the tinkers, the aes sedai, the borderlands. all those places are different and show different cultures.

 

if the show is losing some nuances - actually, it is losing a lot in worldbuilding -, I am more likely to pin it to tv being inadequate to represent such things for time and pace reasons.

We all have our perspectives but I have to say that the amount of effort put into those various cultures areas was quite minuscule in my book.  The exception was perhaps the Aes Sedai which I found interesting in that it was vastly accelerated from TEoTW.    The Shienarians were  pretty generic as was the Two Rivers.   Part of the trouble for me is the lack of RJ's sayings and linguistic turns.  I did hear a last embrace of the mother so that was good.   Hopefully they will do better in coming seasons.     My impressions of the two rivers is that they have badass trolloc killing women who have a council and throw their initiates in a rushing river.  My impression of Shienar is that they have no idea how to guard the blight border or create defenses to do so.     For me fantasy is a three legged stool.  Consistent world building , compelling complex characters, and interesting story arcs.  If one leg fails the stool falls over or is like Egw's stool in her tent at the siege of TV.  So wobbly that sitting on it becomes a real chore test of balance.

[Weird_Old_Lady]

Back in my day we could watch 4 shows. Sesame street, Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, and Jonny Carson. That was it !! And we liked it!

 

No.... that's not really true. I think my mom was just into Michael Landon? Gross? Definitely gross.

 

Sesame Street, though? Top notch television my friends.

 

I remember when the first televised interracial kiss on Star Trek and how much everyone freaked out about it. ??????? Because of the Agenda ??

 

I was already a mom when Ellen DeGeneres first came out as gay irl and on her sitcom, and it was almost immediately cancelled. That was the Gay Agenda. ? 

 

Sorry. Love you all so much.... You have no idea how interesting this is for me.

[Gothic Flame]

38 minutes ago, Weird_Old_Lady said:

I think my mom was just into Michael Landon? Gross? Definitely gross.

No no... I recall watching that show myself and I thought he was damn good looking. (Me=straight guy) However, I was 9 when that show premiered and Melissa Sue Anderson was um...interesting looking. 

[Weird_Old_Lady]

15 hours ago, Gothic Flame said:

No no... I recall watching that show myself and I thought he was damn good looking. (Me=straight guy) However, I was 9 when that show premiered and Melissa Sue Anderson was um...interesting looking. 

Imagine if we had had internet forums and groups when that stuff was The Thing????

[Gothic Flame]

1 hour ago, Weird_Old_Lady said:

Imagine if we had had internet forums and groups when that stuff was The Thing????

After seeing her in "Midnight Offerings"...hmm. I was 15-16..not good..nope. The early 80s...omg no

[Elder_Haman]

On 1/15/2022 at 6:26 AM, Raal Gurniss said:

although many on here claim not only is it incredibly similar it improves upon the novel by a factor of ten.

No. No one actually claims this.

[Raal Gurniss]

53 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

No. No one actually claims this.

Dear oh dear….True, but it has been suggested that the show is superior to the books.

 

Exaggerative effect to hammer home a point is seemingly wasted upon this occasion.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Raal Gurniss

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, Raal Gurniss said:

but it has been suggested that the show is superior to the books.

By whom?

[Raal Gurniss]

2 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

By whom?

Hey, you are the one that said nobody has claimed anything of the sort, I assumed you had gone through each and every post. Now you have doubt?

[MasterAblar]

On Dragonmount at least I don't think I've seen any posts claiming the tv show is superior to the book. Not as a whole mind you, individual or isolated aspect probably some do believe so.

 

I can't say I've read every single post, but I've probably read the large majority.

 

Elsewhere like Reddit or Twitter? Yeah probably. 

[Skipp]

I certainly don't see the show as superior to the book as a whole, but I do feel there are parts that the show does better than the book.

[Cauthonfan4]

9 hours ago, Skipp said:

but I do feel there are parts that the show does better than the book

Can I get some examples because frankly I disagree 

World building, magic system, story progression and character progression all are solidly in book 1s favor if you ask me.

 

Unless there is something I'm missing.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[Katherine]

Something super interesting (to me) about how this show was received.... 

 

There was a couple of new subreddits on LOTR news yesterday and today... Amazon finally released the name of the series. Anyways, in each of these forums it took about no time at all for the comments to turn to... "I was excited about this but WoT was so bad I have lost hope." 

 

One or two comments would have been unoticeable.... but that theme kept popping up over and over again. Maybe only toxic fans are on the internet.... or maybe Amazon made a mistake in releasing WoT first...

 

 

 

[Cauthonfan4]

2 minutes ago, Katherine said:

or maybe Amazon made a mistake in releasing WoT first

Or maybe Amazon made a mistake trying to change so much from the source

[Skipp]

6 hours ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Can I get some examples because frankly I disagree 

World building, magic system, story progression and character progression all are solidly in book 1s favor if you ask me.

 

Unless there is something I'm missing.

 

Showing the relationship between Rand and Egwene.  It is going to be a lot more impactful when they realize that they are not for each other.

 

The relationship between Lan and Nynaeve is so much more fleshed out in the show.  Part of this is because we don't see everything only through Rand.

 

I adored the confrontation between Rand and the DO in the show more than the way it is shown in the book as it parallels the ending of the series nicely.

 

I prefer the Tinkers in the show compared to the books.  I think the show did a much better job of making the Way of the Leaf enticing.  Aram is a much more enjoyable character in the show.

 

I think making the Whitecloaks more of a threat for the show is going to work out well.  I loved every scene with Valda and am hoping to see more of Bornhald.

 

This is what I can think off of the top of my head this morning.