Mat In Season 1

[RextheDog]

On 12/27/2021 at 1:53 AM, Ralph said:

Just looking at the BtS clips. 

 

In the 8.2 one about the cast there is what appears to be a deleted scene where MRP are discussing a prank, and someone's (maybe Cenn??) reaction when he finds a badger in his bag. 

 

Shame it didn't make the cut

 

Still hoping for some deleted scenes to come out

 

dont be too upset, at least we got to see Steppins madey uppy arc

[Pukel-man]

  

_{I'm going to make this the first thread I post in. ?}

 

_{I HATE what Rafe & Co. did with TV Mat. Book Mat is one of my favorite characters. TV Mat started out middling, and became progressively more repugnant throughout the series until they flat-out named him one of the villains of the series in the final episode. Should have changed his name to Mat Coplin. He steals from or swindles one of his fellow townspeople, in a community so small that everybody knows everybody extremely well. He robs a corpse. He leaves his friends hanging as they go to face danger. Then Moiraine says the dagger was feeding on him as much as he fed on it, that he's evil. They changed Mat from a hero to a villain. No, the writers don't get a pass because the actor didn't come back from the Covid break. They could have easily re-written, recast, and re-shot as needed to keep the story.}

 

_{And that's the basic problem; Rafe & Co aren't interested in Robert Jordan's story. This series is not an adaptation, it's a new series based on Jordan's work. But that's another subject.}

 

_{I don't see how the show can fix the mess they've made. Moiraine healed Mat from his link to the dagger, so that plot point is broken for season two (if we make the leap of thinking the show writers care about consistency, which they've shown they don't). As a character who walks away from his friends in need (something book Mat would NEVER do), and as a bad guy instead of a hero, he can't really lead the forces of Light in the Last Battle. Now they have to concoct some crazy non-book way to rehabilitate his character, or else they're going to play up the "flawed hero" angle, which makes no sense at this point.}

_{I'm going to make this the first thread I post in. ?}

 

_{I HATE what Rafe & Co. did with TV Mat. Book Mat is one of my favorite characters. TV Mat started out middling, and became progressively more repugnant throughout the series until they flat-out named him one of the villains of the series in the final episode. Should have changed his name to Mat Coplin. He steals from or swindles one of his fellow townspeople, in a community so small that everybody knows everybody extremely well. He robs a corpse. He leaves his friends hanging as they go into face danger. Then Moiraine says the dagger was feeding on him as much as he fed on it, that he's evil. They changed Mat from a hero to a villain. No, the writers don't get a pass because the actor didn't come back from the Covid break. They could have easily re-written, recast, and re-shot as needed to keep the story.}

 

_{And that's the basic problem; Rafe & Co aren't interested in Robert Jordan's story. This series is not an adaptation, it's a new series based on Jordan's work. But that's another subject.}

 

_{I don't see how the show can fix the mess they've made. Moiraine healed Mat from his link to the dagger, so that plot point is broken for season two (if we make the leap of thinking the show writers care about consistency, which they've shown they don't). As a character who walks away from his friends in need (something book Mat would NEVER do), and as a bad guy instead of a hero, he can't really lead the forces of Light in the Last Battle. Now they have to concoct some crazy non-book way to rehabilitate his character, or else they're going to play up the "flawed hero" angle, which makes no sense at this point.}

[Humbugged2]

6 hours ago, Pukel-man said:

  

_{I'm going to make this the first thread I post in. ?}

 

_{I HATE what Rafe & Co. did with TV Mat. Book Mat is one of my favorite characters. TV Mat started out middling, and became progressively more repugnant throughout the series until they flat-out named him one of the villains of the series in the final episode. Should have changed his name to Mat Coplin. He steals from or swindles one of his fellow townspeople, in a community so small that everybody knows everybody extremely well. He robs a corpse. He leaves his friends hanging as they go to face danger. Then Moiraine says the dagger was feeding on him as much as he fed on it, that he's evil. They changed Mat from a hero to a villain. No, the writers don't get a pass because the actor didn't come back from the Covid break. They could have easily re-written, recast, and re-shot as needed to keep the story.}

 

_{And that's the basic problem; Rafe & Co aren't interested in Robert Jordan's story. This series is not an adaptation, it's a new series based on Jordan's work. But that's another subject.}

 

_{I don't see how the show can fix the mess they've made. Moiraine healed Mat from his link to the dagger, so that plot point is broken for season two (if we make the leap of thinking the show writers care about consistency, which they've shown they don't). As a character who walks away from his friends in need (something book Mat would NEVER do), and as a bad guy instead of a hero, he can't really lead the forces of Light in the Last Battle. Now they have to concoct some crazy non-book way to rehabilitate his character, or else they're going to play up the "flawed hero" angle, which makes no sense at this point.}

_{I'm going to make this the first thread I post in. ?}

 

_{I HATE what Rafe & Co. did with TV Mat. Book Mat is one of my favorite characters. TV Mat started out middling, and became progressively more repugnant throughout the series until they flat-out named him one of the villains of the series in the final episode. Should have changed his name to Mat Coplin. He steals from or swindles one of his fellow townspeople, in a community so small that everybody knows everybody extremely well. He robs a corpse. He leaves his friends hanging as they go into face danger. Then Moiraine says the dagger was feeding on him as much as he fed on it, that he's evil. They changed Mat from a hero to a villain. No, the writers don't get a pass because the actor didn't come back from the Covid break. They could have easily re-written, recast, and re-shot as needed to keep the story.}

 

_{And that's the basic problem; Rafe & Co aren't interested in Robert Jordan's story. This series is not an adaptation, it's a new series based on Jordan's work. But that's another subject.}

 

_{I don't see how the show can fix the mess they've made. Moiraine healed Mat from his link to the dagger, so that plot point is broken for season two (if we make the leap of thinking the show writers care about consistency, which they've shown they don't). As a character who walks away from his friends in need (something book Mat would NEVER do), and as a bad guy instead of a hero, he can't really lead the forces of Light in the Last Battle. Now they have to concoct some crazy non-book way to rehabilitate his character, or else they're going to play up the "flawed hero" angle, which makes no sense at this point.}

How could they recast and re-shoot on sets that were destroyed a year earlier ?

 

Mat in books 1-3 (up till Ch 18) was Gollum who trusted no one until they broke him out from the curse and then got a massive rush of the ta'veren kicked in

 

He was temp healed in book 1 ,the dagger was stolen and he slipped back into being fully cursed like Bilbo

[Deviations]

On 1/16/2022 at 1:55 AM, RextheDog said:

dont be too upset, at least we got to see Steppins madey uppy arc

Maybe we'll get a laugh reel of all the takes it took to get Lan ripping his shirt open and screaming correct.

[Andra]

14 hours ago, Humbugged2 said:

How could they recast and re-shoot on sets that were destroyed a year earlier ?

 

Mat in books 1-3 (up till Ch 18) was Gollum who trusted no one until they broke him out from the curse and then got a massive rush of the ta'veren kicked in

 

He was temp healed in book 1 ,the dagger was stolen and he slipped back into being fully cursed like Bilbo

Book 2 Mat is nowhere near as "cursed" as book 1 Mat.  He was repeatedly described as being mostly back to normal, except for looking more and more thin and worn out.  The universal distrust was never back.

 

And book 3 Mat is unconscious virtually the entire time until he's finally healed.

After that, he's the old Mat he was before Shadar Logoth, with the exception that his luck is much more pronounced.

[Skipp]

I don't know if RJ changed the way he wrote Mat or if it is because we only started getting Mat PoV chapters in tDR but Mat reads very differently to me after that point.

[Humbugged2]

1 minute ago, Skipp said:

I don't know if RJ changed the way he wrote Mat or if it is because we only started getting Mat PoV chapters in tDR but Mat reads very differently to me after that point.

That was when we first see his POV in Chptr 19

[Andra]

23 minutes ago, Skipp said:

I don't know if RJ changed the way he wrote Mat or if it is because we only started getting Mat PoV chapters in tDR but Mat reads very differently to me after that point.

I think it's the POV changes.

Because pretty much everyone who knew him before was quoted at one time or another saying that the Mat in GH and DR was practically his old self - except for physically.  With the girls even commenting on him joking and playing dice with Hurin even when he couldn't get up from his stretcher.

[SingleMort]

23 minutes ago, Andra said:

I think it's the POV changes.

Because pretty much everyone who knew him before was quoted at one time or another saying that the Mat in GH and DR was practically his old self - except for physically.  With the girls even commenting on him joking and playing dice with Hurin even when he couldn't get up from his stretcher.

Mat is favourite character. So much so that I built my own Ashandarei during lockdown. But I couldn't stand him in the first book. I found him really annoying kinda like how Merry and Pippin were in LoTR. During the second book it kinda felt like RJ had given Mat a soft reboot and his character appealed far more to me after that. I think he became my favourite character when he got the Ashadarei. I'm hoping TV show Mat also gets a reboot to his character because boy oh boy he sure needs one.  

Edited January 26, 2022 by SingleMort

[Andra]

1 minute ago, SingleMort said:

Mat is favourite character. So much so that I built my own Ashandarei during lockdown. But I couldn't stand him in the first book. I found him really annoying kinda like how Merry and Pippin were in LoTR. During the second book it kinda felt like RJ had given MAt a soft reboot and his character appealed far more to me after that. I think he became my favourite character his luck started to kick in. I'm hoping TV show Mat also gets a reboot to his character because boy oh boy he sure needs one.  

He's mine too.

Interestingly enough, when I was a kid I played around with something I would describe today as being a toy Ashandarei.  About fifteen years before EotW.

 

I think the "old Mat" that those characters were talking about was the Mat before Shadar Logoth.  Like the one that played the prank on the Whitecloaks in Baerlon.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to see enough of that version of Mat to really judge.  I actually liked the glimpses we got of his deeper character when he started yelling the Old Tongue fighting trollocs.

 

It's interesting - initially I was the most disappointed in the treatment he got in the show.  Since finishing the season, I'm even more disappointed about Perrin.  At least Mat hasn't simply become useless. 

[SingleMort]

38 minutes ago, Andra said:

He's mine too.

Interestingly enough, when I was a kid I played around with something I would describe today as being a toy Ashandarei.  About fifteen years before EotW.

 

I think the "old Mat" that those characters were talking about was the Mat before Shadar Logoth.  Like the one that played the prank on the Whitecloaks in Baerlon.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to see enough of that version of Mat to really judge.  I actually liked the glimpses we got of his deeper character when he started yelling the Old Tongue fighting trollocs.

 

It's interesting - initially I was the most disappointed in the treatment he got in the show.  Since finishing the season, I'm even more disappointed about Perrin.  At least Mat hasn't simply become useless. 

I think they both got short-changed. Having Mat stealing from his friends and the dead, having Perrin kill his fake wife and try to hook up with his best friend's GF smh. I feel TV Mat is further from his book character than TV Perrin though. IMO Mat is probably the most light-hearted main character in the first book (until he's under the dagger's spell) but in the TV show they made him the most troubled and darkest (apart from actual darkfriends). It was actually difficult to tell how much the dagger had changed him because he was so shady to begin with.     

Edited January 26, 2022 by SingleMort

[Andra]

14 minutes ago, SingleMort said:

I think they both got short-changed. Having Mat stealing from his friends and the dead, having Perrin kill his fake wife and try to hook up with his best friend's GF smh. I feel TV Mat is further from his book character than TV Perrin though. IMO Mat is probably the most light-hearted main character in the first book (until he's under the dagger's spell) but in the TV show they made him the most troubled and darkest (apart from actual darkfriends). It was actually difficult to tell how much the dagger had changed him because he was so shady to begin with.     

Definitely Mat is the most different.

I'm just more disappointed by the way Perrin's different than the way Mat is.

 

Mat at least still has some life to him that can be addressed.  Perrin doesn't even have that.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Andra

[BookLover]

As a newbie to the books, watching the series beforehand, I think the actor nailed it. I can see this actor being fun! It is unfortunate he dropped out. I am in the midst of book 4 and adore Mat!

[Elder_Haman]

On 1/25/2022 at 5:27 PM, SingleMort said:

Having Mat stealing from his friends and the dead, having Perrin kill his fake wife and try to hook up with his best friend's GF smh.

But neither of these things happened.

[KakitaOCU]

6 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

But neither of these things happened.

And before someone tries to jump all of this.

No, we have no clear sight of Mat stealing from his friends.  We see him go talk to a woman with a bracelet and later he pawns it.  We don't know if he stole it or was given it, Which was the point, to leave it looking bad.

Stealing from the dead?  Please, fantasy heroes do this constantly.  Mat does it throughout the books when he gets into fights and kills people, he loots their coin.  It's not a moral compass issue.

Perrin killing Laila is only an issue because it wasn't in the book.  Him being a rage fighter who needs to learn to control himself tracks, him being guilt-ridden and unsure if violence is acceptable tracks.  

Perring doesn't try to hook up with Egwene.  There might be some feelings there but he doesn't act on them or chase her and I fail to see how anyone thinks he does.  It's like you took what Nynaeve (who constantly misjudges things) said and went "yep, 100% fact."   

I genuinely don't get how fans of a series with so much nuance, unreliable narration and exact word trickery can just take everything in the worst possible interpretation and declare it completely accurate with no allowance that it could be anything else.

[SingleMort]

2 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

And before someone tries to jump all of this.

 

I honesty can't tell if you are trolling, being sarcastic or geuinely believe this stuff. I'm tempted to say the latter given how extraordinary this take is. 

 

2 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

No, we have no clear sight of Mat stealing from his friends.  We see him go talk to a woman with a bracelet and later he pawns it.  We don't know if he stole it or was given it, Which was the point, to leave it looking bad.

This is an argument even Saul Goodman would blush making. Yeah you're I'm sure she gave it to him as a present for taking care of her sick grandmother. ? So the take away here is that nothing is true unless it happens on screen. So maybe Lews Therin didn't imprison the Dark One at all, I mean we've never actually seen it happen. Maybe Thom is the Dark One, I mean we've never seen them in the same room together, right? (just for clarity this is sarcasm ?) 

 

The only way your argument works is if we completely ignore storytelling conventions eg: if you go to bed and there is no snow on the ground, then you wake up the next morning and there is snow on the ground you can say it snowed during the night even though you didn't see it happen. But you would have us believe that no it didn't snow, aliens came and sprayed the countryside with mysterious space dust that just happens to have the exact same properties as snow. Certainly you are entitled to your opinion but your conclusions seem more rooted in choosing not to believe the obvious and logical explanation and picking a far more illogical and unlikely one because you like the sound of that better. However, if it is revealed that there is a shocking twist where it is shown Mat didn't steal the braclet at all I will happily concede the point. 

 

2 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Stealing from the dead?  Please, fantasy heroes do this constantly.  Mat does it throughout the books when he gets into fights and kills people, he loots their coin.  It's not a moral compass issue.

 

Which corpses does Mat loot in the books? Also when does Mat do this for money and not to find out who this person is and why they are trying to kill him? Also there is a world of difference between searching the body of your potential murderer to find out information about them and looting a random body because you want to profit from their demise. You are trying to paint Mat like he is some grimdark character like out of the First Law series or Song of Ice and Fire character, he most definitely is not.  

 

2 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Perrin killing Laila is only an issue because it wasn't in the book.  Him being a rage fighter who needs to learn to control himself tracks, him being guilt-ridden and unsure if violence is acceptable tracks.  

No Perrin killing Laila is an issue because it doesn't serve the story in any way. By episode 3 the plot point is completely forgotten about. Perrin has almost no grief over the event and the fact that he is shown to be growing close to Egwene and even has an argument with Rand over the nature of his feelings for her (which shows this is more than just unacted on feelings) show that by the end of the season he has no feelings at all for this tragic act that should have consumed him with grief. He killed his wife a few months ago and now he clearly seems to be enamoured with his best friend's girlfriend.  Laila was just a throwaway character who existed purely to die tragically. It's the most blatant example of fridging I've ever seen in live action.

Edited January 27, 2022 by SingleMort

[KakitaOCU]

3 minutes ago, SingleMort said:

This is an argument even Saul Goodman would blush making. Yeah you're I'm sure she gave it to him as a present for taking care of her sick grandmother. ? So the take away here is that nothing is true unless it happens on screen.

The takeaway here is an ambiguous situation is ambiguous.  For the record, any lawyer would make that argument if presented with this scenario where there is no complaining witness/victim.  Need a comparison of it happening in show?  Episode 7, 13:30.  Trolloc jumps down.  Power wraps around Egwene's wrist as she flinches and Trolloc goes flying.  If you have that single scene to go off of it's clear Egwene defended herself.  But then at 50:06, oh look, it wasn't Egwene.  

I'm not saying he didn't steal it, I'm saying we don't see the theft and so multiple options are possible AND the show and the books both love doing unreliable narrator stuff.
 

10 minutes ago, SingleMort said:

Which corpses does Mat loot in the books? Also when does Mat do this for money and not to find out who this person is and why they are trying to kill him? Also there is a world of difference between searching the body of your potential murderer to find out information about them and looting a random body because you want to profit from their demise.

 

You're searching for justification.  The issue is, not every culture or person finds taking items from a dead piece of meat that no longer exists as a person to be a moral issue.  More-over, if your argument is you just search for info, you don't take the money.  As for Mat doing it exactly?  How about the assassin he flips with off a roof in Tar Valon in book 3?  

 

14 minutes ago, SingleMort said:

No Perrin killing Laila is an issue because it doesn't serve the story in any way. By episode 3 the plot point is completely forgotten about. Perrin has almost no grief over the event and the fact that he is shown to be growing close to Egwene and even has an argument with Rand over the nature of his feelings for her (which shows this is more than just unacted on feelings) show that by the end of the season he has no feelings at all for this tragic act that should have consumed him with grief.

So back to jumping to the worst conclusion and thinking it's infallible...  It doesn't serve the story?  So we don't have a reason for Perrin to have major hang ups over committing violence and if it would be better if he didn't?  Weird, it's like that was a driving issue in his talks with the Tinkers and then his actions in the last episode.

People show grief in different ways, I've known quite a few who stay stoic or quiet and people find it weird but it's just how they are.  

Also, he doesn't pursue Egwene, he may or may not have some feelings that cause him conflict, but he doesn't make a move on her, he doesn't try to win her over.  Nynaeve makes an accusation, Rand uses it as an excuse to push a fight and... that's it.

Now again, you could turn out to be 100% right.  That's the thing, I'm not out here saying my interpretation is infallible.  I could be wrong.  But much like when I was reading the books, I'm going to wait and find out instead of jumping to conclusions on incomplete evidence.

[Elder_Haman]

On 1/25/2022 at 5:27 PM, SingleMort said:

Having Mat stealing from his friends and the dead, having Perrin kill his fake wife and try to hook up with his best friend's GF smh.

(1) Danya was at no point portrayed as Mat's friend (much less Rand's or Perrin's). She was portrayed as someone involved in a dice game and someone with whom Mat flirted.

 

(2) We don't know what Mat did to get the bracelet, only that he is reluctant for the town to find out it's been sold to Fain. He might have stolen it. He might have talked it off her with a sob story or trick. 

 

(3) There is literally no evidence for the idea that Perrin killed Laila in order to "hook up with" Egwene. I get why you don't like the Perrin killing Laila thing (I don't love it) or the "love triangle" (I don't love that either), but it's still silly to claim that Perrin murdered his wife to get a new girlfriend.

[SingleMort]

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

I'm not saying he didn't steal it, I'm saying we don't see the theft and so multiple options are possible AND the show and the books both love doing unreliable narrator stuff.

Again what you are trying to say is basically that the simplest explanation is not normally the right one. If you see a shot in a TV show or movie where a character gets into a car at their work and the shot then cuts to the character getting out of a car at their home, it's pretty obvious that this character just drove home from work. You can try to offer other explanations to that where the character did something other than drove home but those explanations will never be the most logical or simplest. 

 

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

The takeaway here is an ambiguous situation is ambiguous.  For the record, any lawyer would make that argument if presented with this scenario where there is no complaining witness/victim.  Need a comparison of it happening in show?  Episode 7, 13:30.  Trolloc jumps down.  Power wraps around Egwene's wrist as she flinches and Trolloc goes flying.  If you have that single scene to go off of it's clear Egwene defended herself.  But then at 50:06, oh look, it wasn't Egwene.  

 

Now you are trying to use narrative twists to imply this is a storytelling norm. But it isn't the norm is the convention that A + B = C. The whole reason twists in a story work is that they go against the normal convention that the narrative usually follows. So again if it is revealed that Mat stealing the bracelet was bait for a twist I will concede the point but until then the narrative convention applies and any other explanation is a rejection of the facts that have been shown to the audience in favour of an explanation that subverts expectations. 

 

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

You're searching for justification.  The issue is, not every culture or person finds taking items from a dead piece of meat that no longer exists as a person to be a moral issue.  More-over, if your argument is you just search for info, you don't take the money.  As for Mat doing it exactly?  How about the assassin he flips with off a roof in Tar Valon in book 3?  

And you are trying to imply that a moral character is amoral. The second sentence here seems incomplete you say if my agument. As for the example you give is this what you are referring to? 

 

Spoiler

Mat grabbed at the hand as the knife darted toward his throat. He barely caught the fellow’s wrist with his fingers, and then the quarterstaff between them tangled itself in his legs, tripping him to fall back against the railing, to fall half over it pulling the other man on top of him. Balanced there on the small of his back, teetering with his assailant’s bared teeth in his face, he was as aware of the long drop under his head as he was of the blade catching faint moonlight as it edged toward his throat. His finger grip on the man’s wrist was slipping, and his other hand was caught with the quarterstaff between their bodies. Only seconds had passed since he first saw the man, and in seconds more, he was going die with a knife in his throat. ‘Time to toss the dice,’ he said. He thought the other man looked confused for an instant, but an instant was all he had. With a heave of his legs, Mat flipped them both off into the empty air. For a stretched-out moment he seemed to have no weight. Air whistled past his ears and ruffled his hair. He thought he heard the other man scream, or start to. The impact knocked all the air out of his lungs and made silver-black flecks dance across his blurring vision.

When he could breathe again – and see – he realized he was lying on top of the man who had attacked him, his fall cushioned by the other’s body. ‘Luck,’ he whispered. Slowly he climbed to his feet, cursing the bruise the quarterstaff had put across his ribs. He expected the other man to be dead – not many could survive a thirty-foot fall to cobblestones with another’s weight on top of him – but what he had not expected was to see the fellow’s dagger driven to the hilt into his own heart. Such an ordinary-looking man to have tried to kill him. Mat did not think he would even have noticed him in a crowded room. ‘You had bad luck, fellow,’ he told the corpse shakily. Suddenly, everything that had happened rushed back in on him. The footpads in the twisting street. The scramble over the rooftops. This fellow. The fall. His eyes rose to the bridge overhead, and a fit of trembling hit him. I must have been crazy. A little adventure is one thing, but Rogosh Eagle-eye wouldn’t ask for this. He realized he was standing over a dead man with a dagger in his chest, just waiting for someone to come along and run shouting for city guards with the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests. The Amyrlin’s paper might get him away from them, but maybe not before she found out. He could still end up back in the White Tower, without that paper, and possibly not even allowed outside the Tower grounds. He knew he should be on his way to the docks right then, and on the first vessel sailing if it was a rotten tub full of old fish, but his knees were shaking hard enough in reaction that he could hardly walk. What he wanted was to sit down for just a minute. Just a minute to steady his knees, and then he was headed for the docks. The taverns were closer, but he started toward the inn. The common room of an inn was a friendly place, where a man could rest a minute and not worry about who might be sneaking up behind him. Enough light came out through the windows for him to make out the sign. A woman with her hair in braids, holding what he thought was an olive branch, and the words ‘The Woman of Tanchico.’

Jordan, Robert. The Dragon Reborn: 2 (The Wheel of Time) (pp. 318-319).

 

Because I cannot see anything in this example that shows where Mat robbed the guy but even if there was you are talking about a guy who was trying to kill him vs a dead person he has not connection or justifable ill will towards. I addition you cite that some cultures where it's morally acceptable to loot the dead. Okay can't think of any (in fact I can think of many where the exact opposite is true half the ghost stories ever written are based on this concept) but sure for the sake of not drawing this out even more lets just assume there are. But what evidence do you have that Mat comes from such a culture. I have seen no evidence I can recall that in Emmonds Field it's acceptable practice to loot from the dead. 

2 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

So back to jumping to the worst conclusion and thinking it's infallible...  It doesn't serve the story?  So we don't have a reason for Perrin to have major hang ups over committing violence and if it would be better if he didn't?  Weird, it's like that was a driving issue in his talks with the Tinkers and then his actions in the last episode.

To be honest better writers and analysts than me are able articulate this point far better and I find it tiresome to keep going over this ground. I'd refer you to Brandon Sanderson's comments about this topic and many reasonable reviewers covered this subject in far greater detail.   

[SingleMort]

4 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

(1) Danya was at no point portrayed as Mat's friend (much less Rand's or Perrin's). She was portrayed as someone involved in a dice game and someone with whom Mat flirted.

I feel like you are latching onto the wrong part of the discussion. Your comment makes it sound like if Mat did steal from her it was perfectly justified because they are not friends.  

 

4 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

(2) We don't know what Mat did to get the bracelet, only that he is reluctant for the town to find out it's been sold to Fain. He might have stolen it. He might have talked it off her with a sob story or trick. 

So instead of a thief your theory is Mat is a con-artist? I mean okay but I don't see how that puts Mat in any better light and it's arguably still stealing whether you trick someone into giving it to you or lift it from their person. The fact is it is heaviliy implied that Mat obtained the item dishonestly and their is little to no implication to suggest he didn't. The only thing you can say in his defence is Well we didn't witness him take it so we cannot say with 100% certainly but in the absence of any alternative that is pretty filmsy. 

 

4 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

(3) There is literally no evidence for the idea that Perrin killed Laila in order to "hook up with" Egwene. I get why you don't like the Perrin killing Laila thing (I don't love it) or the "love triangle" (I don't love that either), but it's still silly to claim that Perrin murdered his wife to get a new girlfriend.

I never ever said Perrin killed his wife to hook up with Egwene. This is just putting words in my mouth. I said he kills his wife, expresses no substantial amount of grief for what he's done and then starts displaying feelings for Egwene a few months later (I'm not sure of the exact time period but I think we can agree it cannot be much more than a few months at most?). I cannot see how anyone can kill their wife then a few months later display the kind traits that Perrin shows to Egwene. It makes it seem like his wife meant as little to him as she does to the audience. I agree with what Brandon Sanderson said on this issue Perrin should be consumed with grief by what he's done there's no way he'd leave to go off on an adventure immediately after and I'd be surprised if he didn't try to kill himself. We saw a greater outpouring of grief from Lan over Stepin's death than we did from Perrin over his wife. I also think killing his wife is a poor subsitute for killing Whitecloaks because that was already a morally grey issue but there were arguements in Perrin's favour. However, by replacing the Whitecloak killings with his wife it puts the blame firmly against Perrin. There's no getting away from it this Perrin has committed manslaughter and by the laws of most parts of the world it's difficult not to argue he deserves to face some kind of justice for that.      

Edited January 28, 2022 by SingleMort

[KakitaOCU]

1 hour ago, SingleMort said:

Again what you are trying to say is basically that the simplest explanation is not normally the right one. If you see a shot in a TV show or movie where a character gets into a car at their work and the shot then cuts to the character getting out of a car at their home, it's pretty obvious that this character just drove home from work. You can try to offer other explanations to that where the character did something other than drove home but those explanations will never be the most logical or simplest.

And yet you ignore that they literally show that it's not always the simplest explanation in the show.

Egwene didn't throw the Trolloc off in the Ways, Rand did.

Rand didn't break down the door to run from the DF, he channeled it down.

Rand didn't have a simple and quick trip with his dad to get healed, the fever dream and backstory happened, we just saw it later.

Want another fun one from a different series?  Are you a Dr. Who fan?  Episode 1 of the revived season, the 9th Dr says goodbye to Rose at the end of the episode and the Tardis disappears.   A moment later it reappears and he invites her along.  The simplest explanation is he left, thought better and came back.  But the side stories, books, radio plays reveal that no, he left for god knows how long on his own adventures, then decided to go back.  

In fiction and fantasy the simplest answer is not automatically right.  Again, I don't care if it is, I'm not bothered if it's right.  I'm just saying that it's not been guaranteed or verified yet.

 

1 hour ago, SingleMort said:

And you are trying to imply that a moral character is amoral. The second sentence here seems incomplete you say if my agument. As for the example you give is this what you are referring to? 

I'm, flat out stating that taking possessions from corpses is not a universal moral but a cultural one and that taking possessions from a dead body is not automatically evil.  Your quote doesn't show what I remembered so will have to research and get back to that, for now I admit my error.
 

1 hour ago, SingleMort said:

Brandon Sanderson's comments about this topic and many reasonable reviewers covered this subject in far greater detail.   

 

Brandon Sanderson's comments about this were that Perrin should kill Master Luhhan instead because getting over a dead wife is too hard.  That's his take on it, but it's not universal, he also wasn't against the overall plot, just it being wife instead of "mentor or parent".

 

  

28 minutes ago, SingleMort said:

So instead of a thief your theory is Mat is a con-artist? I mean okay but I don't see how that puts Mat in any better light and it's arguably still stealing whether you trick someone into giving it to you or lift it from their person.

Just want to throw in here that from a legal stance, no, it's not stealing.  Fun fact, the reason all those Zelle scams and everything have bad press with "The bank won't help us!"  It's because those are cases of someone convincing someone else to take money out and hand it over.  You willingly giving up funds is not fraud or theft, it can be elder abuse, but outside of the angle of taking advantage of someone not in proper mental faculties it is a "Too bad, sorry, now pay what you owe." stance in the eyes of the law.

Edited January 28, 2022 by KakitaOCU

[SingleMort]

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

And yet you ignore that they literally show that it's not always the simplest explanation in the show.

And you ignore that I already covered this in my last message regarding narrative twists. You point out twists that subvert the expectations of narrative storytelling but those are the exception to the rules of the narrative not the norm. If they were the norm then they would not be twists. There's no twist with the bracelet surely even you would have to admit there is no way they are going to revisit that scene and subvert the original expectation with a twist. 

 

 

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

In fiction and fantasy the simplest answer is not automatically right.

Never said it was automatically right just said it was normally right, and that is regardless or whether you are talking about fantasy or not because in any kind of coherent story there needs to be rules of how the world works so that the reader can understand and follow the story. If halfway through WoT Rand turns into and hamster and goes to live in LA to be a Hollywood movie star that would be breaking the logic of the narrative that had been constructed. Any story or world needs to be based on a kind of logic and laws and conventions in order to function coherently and while it may be possible to bend or break some of them this is always regarded as an exceptional event. 

 

 

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

I'm, flat out stating that taking possessions from corpses is not a universal moral but a cultural one and that taking possessions from a dead body is not automatically evil. 

Didn't say it was evil either if we go back to the original comment I made about 500 years ago all I did was use the example of Mat looting the dead and stealing as a difference from book Mat vs TV Show Mat. Even if you can find an example of Mat looting a body in the book look at how this plays out in the show. Is it shown as a good thing? Does Mat look good doing it? Does it reflect positively on him? The way I saw it was it came across as shameful and desperate. Mat was embarassed that Thom caught him doing it. That and the way he's trying to apologise to the corpse for his actions suggests this is not looked on favourably in this world. Also if taking from the dead was acceptable here I'm pretty sure the corpse would have already been looted. It shows that even the executioners wouldn't stoop to doing that. 

 

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

You willingly giving up funds is not fraud or theft, it can be elder abuse, but outside of the angle of taking advantage of someone not in proper mental faculties it is a "Too bad, sorry, now pay what you owe." stance in the eyes of the law.

 

  Err but that IS essentially the definition of fraud.

 

Quote

In common law jurisdictions, as a criminal offence, fraud takes many different forms, some general (e.g., theft by false pretense) and some specific to particular categories of victims or misconduct (e.g., bank fraud, insurance fraud, forgery). The elements of fraud as a crime similarly vary. The requisite elements of perhaps the most general form of criminal fraud, theft by false pretense, are the intentional deception of a victim by false representation or pretense with the intent of persuading the victim to part with property and with the victim parting with property in reliance on the representation or pretense and with the perpetrator intending to keep the property from the victim.^[7]

As for the specific case you cite I cannot speak to it as I'm not a lawyer but I assume it does not change what the definition of fraud is and just because you can find an example where someone was able to find a loophole in the law to escape justice doesn't mean the entire law is thrown out of the window. Do you think The Sting was about an enitrely legal scam to get someone to hand over their money?

 

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by SingleMort

[WhiteVeils]

Interestingly, we have the script for episode 1, so we know how Mat got the bracelet.  Spoilered for script and...uh...adultness.

Spoiler

In the original script, him getting it is very...uh...gray.  He offers and gives a woman oral sex.  She offers to return it, but he doesn't want it returned...he is doing this solely to pleasure her, not for himself.  During him doing this, he knocks the bracelet off her wrist...intentionally or unintentionally, we can't tell.  She finishes and leaves.  He takes the bracelet off the floor.

Given the scenario, depending on how the actor performed it and how the directing went, it could have seemed an intentional knocking it off with the sex to detract, or him taking it to 'pay' for the sex. 

It was not as simple as 'stealing from a friend'  or 'not stealing at all definitely'.  The original script was aiming for a muddy gray inbetween zone.

[Juan Farstrider]

41 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Interestingly, we have the script for episode 1, so we know how Mat got the bracelet.  Spoilered for script and...uh...adultness.

  Hide contents

In the original script, him getting it is very...uh...gray.  He offers and gives a woman oral sex.  She offers to return it, but he doesn't want it returned...he is doing this solely to pleasure her, not for himself.  During him doing this, he knocks the bracelet off her wrist...intentionally or unintentionally, we can't tell.  She finishes and leaves.  He takes the bracelet off the floor.

Given the scenario, depending on how the actor performed it and how the directing went, it could have seemed an intentional knocking it off with the sex to detract, or him taking it to 'pay' for the sex. 

It was not as simple as 'stealing from a friend'  or 'not stealing at all definitely'.  The original script was aiming for a muddy gray inbetween zone.

Well with that cleared up, I'm sure the "Bookcloak" contingent here will be just as satisfied as I am with the hands that are guiding this project. 

[VooDooNut]

31 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

Interestingly, we have the script for episode 1, so we know how Mat got the bracelet.  Spoilered for script and...uh...adultness.

  Reveal hidden contents

In the original script, him getting it is very...uh...gray.  He offers and gives a woman oral sex.  She offers to return it, but he doesn't want it returned...he is doing this solely to pleasure her, not for himself.  During him doing this, he knocks the bracelet off her wrist...intentionally or unintentionally, we can't tell.  She finishes and leaves.  He takes the bracelet off the floor.

Given the scenario, depending on how the actor performed it and how the directing went, it could have seemed an intentional knocking it off with the sex to detract, or him taking it to 'pay' for the sex. 

It was not as simple as 'stealing from a friend'  or 'not stealing at all definitely'.  The original script was aiming for a muddy gray inbetween zone.

We have the draft scripts for episode 1. I think it's a bad idea to rely on previous drafts of a script to come to any conclusion. Ultimately, the decision was made to cut this content because, for whatever reason, it didn't fit the story they were trying to tell. Is it interesting and insightful? Absolutely. But I also think it distracts from and obfuscates studying the material we know the show actually wanted us to see. In other words, if we are going to hold the show creators responsible for the material they produce, we can't also be judging them on the material they chose to cut before it ever appeared in front of the viewership.

 

If the (final version) bracelet scene is a point of contention among fans, (and I'd agree that it is) I suspect that was a deliberate choice by the show runners and Mat's character growth will continue to be explored in season 2.