Why Do they keep acting as if the dragon reborn can be female?

[notpropaganda73]

3 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Yeah, gonna hard disagree here.

 

Believing that there's a possibility of the identity of the Dragon Reborn being changed for the TV series doesn't mean that people are stupid.

 

Belief in said possibility exists because the show has cultivated it and made it real rather than just a narrative ploy to keep a mystery alive.

 

... they've cultivated it in order to keep the mystery alive 

 

 

[Ralph]

15 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

 

... they've cultivated it in order to keep the mystery alive 

 

 

For non readers ?

[DaddyFinn]

1 hour ago, Ralph said:

For non readers ?

And some bookfans

[DigificWriter]

2 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

 

... they've cultivated it in order to keep the mystery alive 

 

 

 

But they've also made it an actual possibility within the version of the WoT world they're building for the series, a decision that has actual ripple effects on how they tell the story of the Dragon Reborn regardless of who it ultimately ends up being.

[dwn]

14 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

 

But they've also made it an actual possibility within the version of the WoT world they're building for the series, a decision that has actual ripple effects on how they tell the story of the Dragon Reborn regardless of who it ultimately ends up being.

It's only a possibility if you ignore the fact that we've already seen Rand channel.

[notpropaganda73]

40 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

 

But they've also made it an actual possibility within the version of the WoT world they're building for the series, a decision that has actual ripple effects on how they tell the story of the Dragon Reborn regardless of who it ultimately ends up being.

 

There are ripple effects on the lore that I think I'd have a bigger problem if we were getting in to the nitty gritty of the books. But the reality is, Rand is the Dragon. This will still be that story. The change to the lore in this regard only impacts the mystery in this first season, and possibly opens up different types of channellers further down the road. 

 

I think I just find it strange that people are so adamant that they are going to make Egwene the DR, or that the many-headed dragon thing was a legit possibility, when Rafe has already said book fans know who the Dragon is. If that quote was a misdirect and they end up changing it for the show, then by all means get the pitchforks out, I will be right there with everyone else criticising that move and will stop watching. But I just don't understand getting so het up about those lines in the show at the moment. 

[DigificWriter]

34 minutes ago, dwn said:

It's only a possibility if you ignore the fact that we've already seen Rand channel.

 

Rand being able to Channel is only direct and absolute confirmation of his being the Dragon Reborn if you're operating under preconceived beliefs based solely on book lore knowledge.

 

13 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

There are ripple effects on the lore that I think I'd have a bigger problem if we were getting in to the nitty gritty of the books. But the reality is, Rand is the Dragon. This will still be that story. The change to the lore in this regard only impacts the mystery in this first season, and possibly opens up different types of channellers further down the road. 

 

I think I just find it strange that people are so adamant that they are going to make Egwene the DR, or that the many-headed dragon thing was a legit possibility, when Rafe has already said book fans know who the Dragon is. If that quote was a misdirect and they end up changing it for the show, then by all means get the pitchforks out, I will be right there with everyone else criticising that move and will stop watching. But I just don't understand getting so het up about those lines in the show at the moment.

 

This comment tells me two things:

1) You and the OP aren't that dissimilar in your opinions

 

2) You're not taking into account the notion that the possibility of the Dragon Reborn being female just doesn't impact the mystery of who the Dragon Reborn is, but the nature of how their story unfolds. 

 

By establishing that they've made a change to the metaphysics of the WoT world in order to degender souls, Rafe and his team have in turn made it possible for themselves to establish that in some of the Dragon's past lives, they were female, which is something that Rafe has already all but confirmed is going to happen.

 

I've learned through spoilers that, in the books beyond Eye of the World, Rand starts seeing the former Dragon, Lews Therin, whom we know has been cast, but if a change isn't made and Rand ends up being the Dragon Reborn in the TV series, the nature of whatever he ends up learning from or being told by said vision is likely to be impacted by the fact that Lews Therin, as the Dragon, would have been female at some point in one of his previous lives.

[notpropaganda73]

18 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

This comment tells me two things:

1) You and the OP aren't that dissimilar in your opinions

 

2) You're not taking into account the notion that the possibility of the Dragon Reborn being female just doesn't impact the mystery of who the Dragon Reborn is, but the nature of how their story unfolds. 

 

By establishing that they've made a change to the metaphysics of the WoT world in order to degender souls, Rafe and his team have in turn made it possible for themselves to establish that in some of the Dragon's past lives, they were female, which is something that Rafe has already all but confirmed is going to happen.

 

I've learned through spoilers that, in the books beyond Eye of the World, Rand starts seeing the former Dragon, Lews Therin, whom we know has been cast, but if a change isn't made and Rand ends up being the Dragon Reborn in the TV series, the nature of whatever he ends up learning from or being told by said vision is likely to be impacted by the fact that Lews Therin, as the Dragon, would have been female at some point in one of his previous lives.

 

1) Um... ok? 

 

2) Sorry if I spoiled anything for you, I thought you had read the books.

 

But, don't you think that's an interesting idea? Couldn't Rand learn something different from one of his past lives as a female Dragon vs. only learning from LTT (discounting the fact that the madness makes him distrust LTT/the voices a lot)? Even disregarding the past lives, doesn't the potential of a female Dragon make for some interesting dynamics down the road between Rand and Egwene, for example? 

 

Again though, I don't think the show will get into deep details on this change. If the books were being re-written with this as the lore, then there would be far-reaching effects as you say. But for the show, I just can't see how this does anything other than 1. add to the mystery in S1 and 2. possibly add some interesting wrinkles further down the line for Rand's story. 

 

 

[DigificWriter]

15 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Sorry if I spoiled anything for you, I thought you had read the books.

 

But, don't you think that's an interesting idea? Couldn't Rand learn something different from one of his past lives as a female Dragon vs. only learning from LTT (discounting the fact that the madness makes him distrust LTT/the voices a lot)? Even disregarding the past lives, doesn't the potential of a female Dragon make for some interesting dynamics down the road between Rand and Egwene, for example? 

 

No need to apologize, because I'm not adverse to spoilers.

 

To answer your question, yes, the changes that have been made to the metaphysics of the WoT world open up some incredibly exciting possibilities, which is entirely the point that I've been trying to make with regards to the potentiality of the Dragon Reborn being female going deeper than simple misdirection.

 

20 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

But for the show, I just can't see how this does anything other than 1. add to the mystery in S1 and 2. possibly add some interesting wrinkles further down the line for Rand's story. 

 

It doesn't really need to do anything else in and of itself, but it's but one part of a broader potential impact because it means that anyone in the WoT world can potentially be the reincarnation of an important figure from the past with a role to play, for good or ill, in the present story of the WoT novels as translated to the screen.

[Caesar804]

The quote you're looking for is like half of the books. When the two forsaken from eotw are reincarnated, one is reincarnated into a woman's body, yet he can still touch saidin. Magic is a function of gender which is a function of the soul.

[SinisterDeath]

6 hours ago, Ralph said:

In the books we have many occasions ofn prophecies being misunderstood, and prophecies that appear to be contradictory all being fulfilled in surprising ways.

People forget that there are prophecies in the karaethon cycle that aren't directly about Rand/LTT/The Dragon Reborn. Some specifically talk about Mat & Perrin. (In the context of the Last Battle)

RJ gave us little over a dozen prophecies in the karaethon cycle... Yet in his world, they had massive tomes on the karaethon cycle...

 

We know as readers that their version of Revelations, they talk about signs of the Last Battle approaching is nigh, the karaethon cycle states: "Fortune rides like the sun on high, with the fox that makes the ravens fly". In world, people might have attributed that to the Dragon. As a reader we know it's about Mat. Like we know the Wolf King = Perrin.

There well could be prophecies about the Dragon that were dismissed as not relevant. 

There could be prophecies about Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve, Moiraine, and Lan that never made it into the books. In world, people could have thought those were indicators of the Dragon. Others probably argued they were about other people helping or hindering the Dragon.

Thus in the Show, I think Rafe is doubling down on the nature of prophecies, and the misinformation a certain Forsaken has probably been distributing over the last ~6000 years.
 

[KakitaOCU]

11 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Yeah, gonna hard disagree here.

 

Believing that there's a possibility of the identity of the Dragon Reborn being changed for the TV series doesn't mean that people are stupid.

 

Belief in said possibility exists because the show has cultivated it and made it real rather than just a narrative ploy to keep a mystery alive.

I'm sure you googled the Wizard's First Rule, but to be clear, while the phrasing is "People are stupid" the meaning is not that cut and dry nor that insulting.

It's the idea that people will latch onto ideas that are false because they're afraid of it or really want it.  It's allowing confirmation bias and emotion to over-rule the actual facts.  And the suggested point is that there's no one immune.  So please, understand I am not calling you or anyone else "Stupid" in an insult or direct sense.

And yes, believing that the show is going to make that big a change, when Rafe flat out said the Dragon was the Dragon and there's no actual evidence of such a change...  There's a reason it's only people super critical of the show are pushing this as likely.

Edited December 15, 2021 by KakitaOCU

[DigificWriter]

32 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

There's a reason it's only people super critical of the show are pushing this as likely.

 

 

I'm very much in love with the show, so I'm afraid you've completely misread at least my end of this discussion.

[Gothic Flame]

5 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

I think I just find it strange that people are so adamant that they are going to make Egwene the DR, or that the many-headed dragon thing was a legit possibility, when Rafe has already said book fans know who the Dragon is.

Yes...in the book, by the book.

But Rafe has already said he's not going by the book.

So until the event happens the question remains.

At this point taking anything Rafe says at face value seems a bit too trusting to me.

[Elder_Haman]

11 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

So until the event happens the question remains.

You've got about ... 32 hours or so left.

[DigificWriter]

13 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

You've got about ... 32 hours or so left.

 

Where do you get that number from?

 

If the show conclusively reveals the identity of the Dragon Reborn in Season 1, it most likely won't happen until Episode 8.

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Where do you get that number from?

 

If the show conclusively reveals the identity of the Dragon Reborn in Season 1, it most likely won't happen until Episode 8.

I'll bet you a dollar it happens tomorrow.

[TheMountain]

5 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

Lews Therin, as the Dragon, would have been female at some point in one of his previous lives.

 

Imagine having ALL the memories of a past life with degendered souls? That would be one sexually confused Dragon.

Edited December 15, 2021 by TheMountain

[DaddyFinn]

3 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Where do you get that number from?

 

If the show conclusively reveals the identity of the Dragon Reborn in Season 1, it most likely won't happen until Episode 8.

It has been heavily hinted that we will know by the end of episode 7

[Frenata]

3 minutes ago, TheMountain said:

 

Imagine having ALL the memories of a past life with degendered souls? That would be one sexually confused Dragon.

 

See also: Paul, Alia, and Leto 2 Atreides. But I think the 'gendered/degendered' part of that is much less a contributor than merely having the awakened memories at all.

[KakitaOCU]

1 hour ago, TheMountain said:

 

Imagine having ALL the memories of a past life with degendered souls? That would be one sexually confused Dragon.

Very unlikely.

 

Spoiler

In AMoL Perrin asks Rand about his past lives and Rand describes it like an extremely precise and vivid dream, where he can remember being those people and making those choices and them making sense in context but not having the same outlook or stance in his present form.

You'd remember being different people the same way a deeply RP heavy D&D player can remember actions taken as their different characters.

 

[AdamA]

If we're going to subject cosmologies with reincarnation to logical scrutiny, seemingly souls have to be genderless. Since biological sex is a random coin flip with proportions that aren't totally constant from one generation to the next (close to 50/50, but never exactly), at least a few would need to flip.

 

Consider that population is not always growing, especially given the drastic dropoff from the population that earth would have been able to support from Age of Legends to post breaking. That's going from post-scarcity probably at least 20 billion population to a medieval world that supports maybe a few million. That means the overwhelming majority of souls don't reincarnate at all just because there aren't enough bodies available, at least not until thousands of years later when the world recovers. So how would they decide who is worthy? If you're forcing souls to only ever reincarnate into bodies with the same biological sex as their first body, you've effectively implemented a gender-based quota that can't possibly be fair. Maybe that's what the Randworld creator in fact did, but that is jacked up.

[dwn]

1 hour ago, AdamA said:

If we're going to subject cosmologies with reincarnation to logical scrutiny, seemingly souls have to be genderless. Since biological sex is a random coin flip with proportions that aren't totally constant from one generation to the next (close to 50/50, but never exactly), at least a few would need to flip.

Forget gender. If we want to be logical about it then population growth alone clubs reincarnation over the head with a spanner.

[JJLXL]

It's not going to happen, but if the DR is anyone but Rand...I'm out. 

[Sabio]

The world is doomed if Mat was the Dragon.