Mat In Season 1

[Deviations]

7 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

Yes.  RJ writes in more indirect methods, but there are several comments on their intimacy and closeness including but not limited to shared kisses, references to them being pillowfriends and always together and Cadsuance grilling Moraine on details she ended up feeling embarrassed over because they should be private things.

I know my best friend doesn't remember everyone I dated when we were young....

 

On a different tack, they avoided each other for 20 years.  That's hardcore if they were so close.  

[KakitaOCU]

5 minutes ago, Deviations said:

I know my best friend doesn't remember everyone I dated when we were young....

 

On a different tack, they avoided each other for 20 years.  That's hardcore if they were so close.  

Depends on the person.  My spouse doesn't remember their own exes from 20 years ago.  I double give an exhaustive list of not only my own relationships but of all of my friends at the time including the ones I no longer have contact with.  Different brains work differently.

Also, as your point 3 shows, some did remember.  

I'm also not throwing it out that everyone should notice and remember, just that if we're trying to put "Master manipulator and politician" on some weird higher level than real life master manipulators and politicians, then you have to admit they miss some very obvious things.

Not every Aes Sedai is going to be Frank Abignale Jr.  But when all it takes is a average layman with a certain education to be a really good politician not ever Aes Sedai has to be.

[Humbugged2]

9 minutes ago, Deviations said:

I know my best friend doesn't remember everyone I dated when we were young....

 

On a different tack, they avoided each other for 20 years.  That's hardcore if they were so close.  

 

Well they did not talk because they knew the Black were bumping off Sisters who knew about the DR and had ben sent out on that mission  as was happening in New Spring

 

Somebody ( the former head of the Novices ) tried to kill them , they got rid of her body and went deep cover

 

They swore an oath to hide it

 

 

[Andra]

It's possible for them to be master manipulators, yet still have head-scratching blind spots.

Thousands of years thinking you're the smartest people on your continent will do that.

 

The issue I have with the way the show depicts Tower politics isn't with the occasional blind spot (which the Aes Sedai in the books absolutely had).  It's the way they didn't seem to see anything at all.

 

In the books, Liandrin would have been laughed out of the Hall and punished by her own Ajah for trying to stick her nose in another Ajah's business, or for trying to blame Moiraine before the entire Hall for her own failing.  No Aes Sedai in the books would have fallen for it, much less all of them.

 

That's not about human failings or misperceptions.  It's about the actual political structure and functioning of the Tower itself.

[KakitaOCU]

47 minutes ago, Andra said:

It's possible for them to be master manipulators, yet still have head-scratching blind spots.

Thousands of years thinking you're the smartest people on your continent will do that.

 

The issue I have with the way the show depicts Tower politics isn't with the occasional blind spot (which the Aes Sedai in the books absolutely had).  It's the way they didn't seem to see anything at all.

 

In the books, Liandrin would have been laughed out of the Hall and punished by her own Ajah for trying to stick her nose in another Ajah's business, or for trying to blame Moiraine before the entire Hall for her own failing.  No Aes Sedai in the books would have fallen for it, much less all of them.

 

That's not about human failings or misperceptions.  It's about the actual political structure and functioning of the Tower itself.

My only disagreement there is the idea that her own ajah would jump on Liandrin no matter what.  If she had tried and failed and made them look worse, absolutely.  But I also absolutely believe it's a case of "It worked, so we're watching but moving on."

[Andra]

12 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

My only disagreement there is the idea that her own ajah would jump on Liandrin no matter what.  If she had tried and failed and made them look worse, absolutely.  But I also absolutely believe it's a case of "It worked, so we're watching but moving on."

Not that they would have jumped on her for raising suspicions about another Ajah privately.  But for doing so in the Hall?

 

Absolutely.

 

The fact that "it worked, so we're watching but moving on" even happened in the show is the problem.  It wouldn't have worked at all, and even trying it in the Hall would have made her entire Ajah look bad.

 

So bad that her own Ajah Head would have set her a penance - and probably a public one.

 

Later in the series, after all the BS that Elaida does?  It might have worked.  But not at this point.

 

Ajahs guard their own prerogatives far too closely to let something like that fly.  At the very least, when Maighan said in the Hall that it was Blue Ajah business, it would have ended it.  No Ajah would have allowed the possibility that their own business could be dragged before the Hall like that.

 

And blaming someone else for a failure she had direct authority over would have meant she would not be assigned similar authority any time soon.  Liandrin was far too ambitious to have done anything that would risk her own position like that.

[KakitaOCU]

54 minutes ago, Andra said:

So bad that her own Ajah Head would have set her a penance - and probably a public one.

 

Clearly you've never been part of any business, or watched the police, circle the wagons, protect the image, very common.

 

56 minutes ago, Andra said:

And blaming someone else for a failure she had direct authority over would have meant she would not be assigned similar authority any time soon.  Liandrin was far too ambitious to have done anything that would risk her own position like that.

 

Again, real life politics and business behavior shows that wrong.  It is very common for people to blame someone else even if that someone else shouldn't have had authority.  And get away with it sadly.

 

[Andra]

41 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

Clearly you've never been part of any business, or watched the police, circle the wagons, protect the image, very common.

Clearly, you have a vivid imagination about what other people know.

I am familiar with all of those.  Which is how I know how they differ from the politics of the White Tower as portrayed in the books.

 

41 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

Again, real life politics and business behavior shows that wrong.  It is very common for people to blame someone else even if that someone else shouldn't have had authority.  And get away with it sadly.

Again, no one is talking about "real life politics and business behavior" here except you.

 

The comparison was explicitly between the things in the show and the depictions in the books.

Have you even read them?

Edited February 2, 2022 by Andra

[Andra]

8 hours ago, Deviations said:

On a different tack, they avoided each other for 20 years.  That's hardcore if they were so close.  

Which they did.

 

You get a hint of what it was all about at the beginning of Great Hunt, but New Spring makes it all very clear.  They had been extremely close previously, even going to the unheard-of step of taking their Oaths at literally the same moment.  But they learned that the search for the Dragon Reborn had become so critical, and so dangerous, that they walked away from each other when Siuan was raised to the Amyrlin Seat.

[KakitaOCU]

4 hours ago, Andra said:

Clearly, you have a vivid imagination.

I am familiar with all of those.  Which is how I know how they differ from the politics of the White Tower as portrayed in the books.

 

Do you happen to have examples of Ajah heads turning on their own because their own overstepped in a small or just embarrassing ways?  Because I'm pretty sure half the reason Elaida kept the stole at all was because the Reds circled with the mentality of "Ours, right or wrong" because overthrowing her would be a bigger stain on the Red Ajah as a whole than just putting up with her bungling.
 

4 hours ago, Andra said:

Again, no one is talking about "real life politics and business behavior" here except you.

 

The comparison was explicitly between the things in the show and the depictions in the books.

Have you even read them?

 

You're moving the goalposts.  And we're jumping to the trite "Have you even read the books" approach, quaint.

The original argument is that these people aren't savy or manipulative enough to be puppeteers of the world as the book describes them.  My argument is that people who very much don't look savy or manipulative constantly end up in positions with that type of power and authority.  Combine that with the fact that no, Aes Sedai in the books barring few exceptions don't ever come off as being suave or truly machiavellian in their behavior and yeah, it's believable.  (Though I acknowledged and agree that Moraine's oath in public was a bit much.)

 

[Andra]

22 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

You're moving the goalposts.  And we're jumping to the trite "Have you even read the books" approach, quaint.

I'm not moving any goalposts, because "savvy manipulators" wasn't ever my point.

And someone who wrote "Clearly you've never been part of any business" is the LAST person who should be getting pissy at being given some snark.

 

But let's look at your questions:

22 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Do you happen to have examples of Ajah heads turning on their own because their own overstepped in a small or just embarrassing ways?  Because I'm pretty sure half the reason Elaida kept the stole at all was because the Reds circled with the mentality of "Ours, right or wrong" because overthrowing her would be a bigger stain on the Red Ajah as a whole than just putting up with her bungling.

 

None of this is about "small or just embarrassing ways."  What happens in the Hall is neither.

But regarding Ajah heads punishing their own members?  Sure.

Alviarin was stripped of her position as Keeper.  Which caused enough shame that the First Reasoner punished her beyond even what Elaida had called for.  For "bringing disgrace" to the White Ajah.  That's just the most recent example.  We are told in the books that penances set by an Ajah are usually more severe than those set by the Amyrlin.

 

Prior to Elaida becoming Amyrlin, the Ajahs were fiercely independent.  Elaida (or more probably Alviarin) amplified that and practically turned them into armed camps.

 

As far as the snarky question:

You responded to the show being criticized for not agreeing with the books by bringing up irrelevant comparisons to "real world" entities that aren't really analogous to the topic at all.

 

The White Tower isn't a Fortune 500 company.

The Hall of the Tower isn't a corporate boardroom.

The Amyrlin isn't a CEO.

The Sitters aren't board members.

Nor would any similar parallels with real world government bodies apply.

 

Corporate boards can't vote to still and execute the CEO.

The CEO can't order board members to be flogged in front of the entire company.

Neither can arrange for CEOs of competing companies to be kidnapped and held in the Executive suites "for their own safety."

All of those things happened in the Tower.

 

The comparisons you brought up are so irrelevant to what's actually written in the books that it becomes a valid question - have you actually read them?

Edited February 3, 2022 by Andra

[KakitaOCU]

4 hours ago, Andra said:

I'm not moving any goalposts, because "savvy manipulators" wasn't ever my point.

And someone who wrote "Clearly you've never been part of any business" is the LAST person who should be getting pissy at being given some snark.

 

The argument I addressed was "The aes sedai don't seem like skilled politicians and manipulators"   I responded by pointing out that the real deal don't seem that skilled either.  Then you jump to "We're only talking about the books"  Which is a different argument, so yes, goalposts moved.  Maybe not internally for you, but from the actual discussion yes.

Also, my statement about being part of business politics is a perfectly plausible scenario as many people are blessed to NOT have to deal with that garbage.  Where as you suggesting I don't know the source material for the story we're actively on a fan forum to discuss is attempting to demean or dismiss my statement.   Mine was that you likely did not understand, yours was that I wasn't knowledgeable enough to be here.
 

4 hours ago, Andra said:

Alviarin was stripped of her position as Keeper.  Which caused enough shame that the First Reasoner punished her beyond even what Elaida had called for.  For "bringing disgrace" to the White Ajah.  That's just the most recent example.  We are told in the books that penances set by an Ajah are usually more severe than those set by the Amyrlin.

 

You mean that time where Alviarin actually got punished?   Not all those times she tried gutsy, stupid or unlikely things and succeeded?   Doesn't really disagree with my points at all.
 

4 hours ago, Andra said:

The White Tower isn't a Fortune 500 company.

The Hall of the Tower isn't a corporate boardroom.

The Amyrlin isn't a CEO.

The Sitters aren't board members.

Nor would any similar parallels with real world government bodies apply.

 

No, the white Tower is the Catholic Church/Vatican.
The Hall of the Tower is the College of Cardinals.
The Amyrlin is the Pope.
Sitters are Cardinals

 

Jordan deliberately made that parallel.  You think the politics of the Catholic church aren't in the same boat as other governing bodies or businesses?  Interesting.

 

4 hours ago, Andra said:

Corporate boards can't vote to still and execute the CEO.

The CEO can't order board members to be flogged in front of the entire company.

Neither can arrange for CEOs of competing companies to be kidnapped and held in the Executive suites "for their own safety."

All of those things happened in the Tower.

Congress can vote to remove and imprison a president.
The President can publicly disgrace most people.
The President can disappear people, the CIA does it, so do other agencies.

The specifics of the punishment are different (We don't spank people anymore)  But yeah, the parallels are there.

 

[wastingtime]

I have begun a re-watch this afternoon, & am actually finding it more enjoyable the second time round. I am trying to approach it with a philosophy of looking for what is there, rather than noticing what I know now is not there. Seems to be working so far (5 eps in), though I'm still not sure I'll be able to like some bits of Ep 8.

I'm actually finding more of Mat's lines amusing this time round. The actor did a great job with what he was given, that's for sure.

Mat post-dagger definitely gets darker, but for me it isn't as effective as it should be just because of the already inherent darkness of his background in the TV version. It's almost like showing him as poor, naughty and angry from growing up in a broken home made it harder for the story to successfully show him getting worse or something????

'Acquiring' the bracelet from his acquaintance in EF in Ep 1, & taking the jewels off the dead Aiel in the crow cage later on don't really bother me in that they help show he is unswervingly loyal to his sisters in the show version, but I 100% agree that if the TV team hadn't changed his backstory so dramatically, these would not have needed to be shown. 

All the stuff later on about Moiraine seeing the potential for badness in his soul, him being too risky to take to the Eye etc annoyed me  at the time because it is so different from the books, but I'll see how I feel once I've seen it again with my internal expectations/visualisations adjusted accordingly.

All up, I still really hope we get the happy go lucky prankster Mat back at some point though. This version is still kinda relatable in my opinion, but book version was able to be a perfectly successful rebellious anti-hero character without being so scungy & grim. I don't subscribe to the idea that the change was necessary in the first place.  

If the RJ2 team do end up going so far off tap that Mat ends up being the dark one/a forsaken as some people have feared, that could well be the end of the show for me (unless a whole host of other things improve immensely), but I'm still kinda hopeful we'll see wise cracking, quarterstaff wielding, fancy hat wearing, old tongue speaking, pretty girl charming, magic realm surviving, princess kidnapping, mystic military genius Mat rock up with ashanderei & foxhead medallion at some point.  

[Deviations]

6 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

No, the white Tower is the Catholic Church/Vatican.
The Hall of the Tower is the College of Cardinals.
The Amyrlin is the Pope.
Sitters are Cardinals

 

Jordan deliberately made that parallel.  You think the politics of the Catholic church aren't in the same boat as other governing bodies or businesses?  Interesting.

I've seen this written before.  I'm not disagreeing with it but did Jordan ever speak about it or write about it?  I never made the comparison when reading the books, probably because I was raised Catholic and those positions are so firmly male in my head that it didn't occur to me.

[WhiteVeils]

2 hours ago, wastingtime said:

All the stuff later on about Moiraine seeing the potential for badness in his soul, him being too risky to take to the Eye etc annoyed me  at the time because it is so different from the books, but I'll see how I feel once I've seen it again with my internal expectations/visualisations adjusted accordingly.

 

I'm sure we'll get that Mat.  We've already been told about Donal's comedic timing, just for a first hint...not something necessary for all dark Mat.

I think with Mat there's two things to remember:
1) Moiraine is /wrong/ about a ton of things. She was wrong about the Eye of the World. She was wrong about the Dark One. She was wrong about who she initially thought the Dragon would be.  She was wrong about the strength of her own power.  She was so, very wrong. I think a major part of her S2 arc will be her coming to the realization that she was wrong and learning what the truth is and still going on.  In regards to Mat, she is wrong about Mat. She thinks she fully healed him...she did not.  She thinks there's a darkness in him from the beginning, but that is her misunderstanding poverty and abuse. She never had to live in poverty and that kind of abuse...there is trauma there, which the dagger is amplifying and feeding off of. She is dismissing that as an inner darkness to Mat, but she's wrong. Trauma and abuse don't make you evil or bad...but they can make you think you are bad, and Moiraine is sensing that.  And she will see very much how wrong she is when he rescues her (if the series lasts that long).  That's the payoff for those words now.

2) Mat gets dissociative amnesia. This TOTALLY is a driving factor for him in the books, and I don't see how they escape it.  However, to do it in the show, they are going to have to make it stronger than it was in the books. I fully expect a heartbreaking moment where we the audience realize he's forgotten his sisters, for example.  He forgets all the abuse and trauma and stuff, because that's the only way that we can see that he has forgotten anything, to have memories worth pursuing.  If he forgets the trauma and abuse, it does give him the opportunity to make a fresh start with a fresh understanding of the world, and as he regains his memories, they'll have a different perspective.
2)

[KakitaOCU]

2 hours ago, Deviations said:

I've seen this written before.  I'm not disagreeing with it but did Jordan ever speak about it or write about it?  I never made the comparison when reading the books, probably because I was raised Catholic and those positions are so firmly male in my head that it didn't occur to me.

So, I went looking.  Found a few links.

https://13depository.blogspot.com/2002/03/aes-sedai-laws-and-customs.html

http://13depository.blogspot.com/2002/03/aes-sedai-laws-and-customs-society.html

They're long reads but they discuss at length the parallels, connections and similarities between the two.  

One specific quote from RJ:
The Amyrlin is elected by the Sitters of the Hall. Her closest real-world equivalent, the Pope, is elected by the Cardinals of the Catholic Church. This is confirmed in Robert Jordan’s notes, where he writes that:
 

People speak of the Amyrlin Seat as the Catholic Church might speak of donning the Shoes of the Fisherman or ascending to the Holy See of Rome.

- Robert Jordan, General Notes and Thoughts

Some fun story highlights that I hadn't really known due to my not being a historian in the area of the church.

"The Blue Ajah could be compared with the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church. Both are known for their dedication to causes, for their extensive use of—and rumoured involvement in—pragmatic politics, for their large spy network, for their great influence on the leadership (papacy or Amyrlin), and for their belief that the Order should use all their members' skills to the optimum. Like the Blues, the Jesuits were disbanded under one Pope (Clement XIV in 1773), hunted and forced into hiding, and then later reinstated by another Pope (Pius VII in 1814)."

 

And

The law on selecting an Amyrlin assumes, rather than states, that the candidate is an Aes Sedai (Lord of Chaos, In the Hall of the Sitters). Egwene was the first non-Aes Sedai initiate of the Tower to be raised (A Crown of Swords,An Oath) and the rebel Aes Sedai were originally embarrassed by this break in custom, but it does have a real life parallel in the Catholic Church. Any man baptised into the Catholic Church can be Pope, although the last Pope who was not already a Cardinal when elected was Pope Urban VI in 1378. Canon law requires that if a layman or non-bishop is elected, he receives episcopal consecration from the Dean of the College of Cardinals before assuming the Pontificate. This is an ironic parallel with the newly raised Egwene, who promptly raised four other Accepted Aes Sedai and by implication, herself, (in contradiction to the law on raising Aes Sedai) in her inaugural speech. Interestingly, she did swear the Three Oaths before she was raised by the Hall of the Tower, although the Tower Sitters did not know that.

Edited February 3, 2022 by KakitaOCU

[Andra]

9 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

The argument I addressed was "The aes sedai don't seem like skilled politicians and manipulators"   I responded by pointing out that the real deal don't seem that skilled either.  Then you jump to "We're only talking about the books"  Which is a different argument, so yes, goalposts moved.  Maybe not internally for you, but from the actual discussion yes.

This thread was originally about changes to Mat in the show.  Which means that any discussion about Tower politics was already a different argument.

 

In my comment that you responded to, I specifically said "The issue I have ..." and then explicitly drew a comparison between the show and the books.  No goalposts moved.  Just a new topic.

 

9 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Also, my statement about being part of business politics is a perfectly plausible scenario as many people are blessed to NOT have to deal with that garbage. 

 

And completely irrelevant to anything I had said, which was a comparison between the show and the books.  Not "real world business politics."

 

9 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

You mean that time where Alviarin actually got punished?   Not all those times she tried gutsy, stupid or unlikely things and succeeded?   Doesn't really disagree with my points at all.

 

Alviarin wasn't punished by her Ajah head because the Amyrlin had punished her.  She was punished by her Ajah head because her dereliction of her duties in being absent from the Tower with no explanation when Egwene's forces showed up brought disgrace to the Whites.

 

And she hadn't tried "gutsy, stupid or unlikely things and succeeded."  She had manipulated Elaida to do all those things, while remaining in the shadows herself.

 

Regarding your real world analogies: If you had mentioned the Vatican and the College of Cardinals you might have had a point, but you didn't bring it up until later.  And the Tower isn't really analogous to any of the things you had mentioned at the time.

 

The politics of the Tower isn't really in the same boat as that of a business, or the police, or a legislature, or ...

 

 

 

 

-----

But this is pointless.

How about we get back to the original point of this thread?

 

What about that Mat guy?  Is he a real piece of work, or what?

Edited February 3, 2022 by Andra

[Pukel-man]

What if the show skips over the whole memory loss issue? We really didn't get much of a sense of how tainted the dagger made Mat in the show, versus the slow, deep burn from their progress between White Bridge and Caemlyn (neither of which are in the show). After Moiraine healed Mat in Caemlyn, he apologizes to his friends and says he doesn't remember much past Shadar Logoth. There's no reason right now to believe that the holes in the memory will be a thing. Maybe they'll change that in S2E1, but they don't have to bring it up at all. They already seriously downgraded how dangerous the dagger is (just a scratch causes immediate corruption and death in seconds). I think it's too much to just assume any given detail would be included in the show.

[Deviations]

13 minutes ago, Pukel-man said:

What if the show skips over the whole memory loss issue? We really didn't get much of a sense of how tainted the dagger made Mat in the show, versus the slow, deep burn from their progress between White Bridge and Caemlyn (neither of which are in the show). After Moiraine healed Mat in Caemlyn, he apologizes to his friends and says he doesn't remember much past Shadar Logoth. There's no reason right now to believe that the holes in the memory will be a thing. Maybe they'll change that in S2E1, but they don't have to bring it up at all. They already seriously downgraded how dangerous the dagger is (just a scratch causes immediate corruption and death in seconds). I think it's too much to just assume any given detail would be included in the show.

That would be a massive change.  Without the holes, there is no reason for him to ask for the holes in his memory to be filled.  that leads to no battle knowledge.  No band of the red hand, no Tuan, no nothing.....

[Pukel-man]

16 minutes ago, Deviations said:

That would be a massive change.  Without the holes, there is no reason for him to ask for the holes in his memory to be filled.  that leads to no battle knowledge.  No band of the red hand, no Tuan, no nothing.....

Not saying it's likely...  just that we can't assume anything. ?

 

Actually, putting the memory loss into S2 would work well for inserting a new actor to the role.

[WhiteVeils]

The show didn't have time to do a slow burn and evolution.  They communicated volumes in some little ways that made the dagger corruption much more dramatic earlier on than we saw in the books. The black corruption Mat was throwing up, for example, the hints that he could have killed that family (and his fears he did). His nearly attacking the little boy who bumped into him. His reaction to Logain and the suicide pact he made with Rand...these are dramatic effects of the dagger...I dont' see how you missed them?
I think the show takes it even further with him staying behind (not that it was intentional). Of course, we have had hardly any time with post-healing Mat to see where it stands now.  But I think, especially with Moiraine sending the Red Ajah after him, he's got lots of reasons to show this memory loss.

[KakitaOCU]

1 minute ago, WhiteVeils said:

But I think, especially with Moiraine sending the Red Ajah after him, he's got lots of reasons to show this memory loss.

It'd be easy to show it as little things periodically.  Start with the reds questioning him and he's recounting Winter's Night and gets to the part where Moraine walks up to them and then... Can't remember anything she said, that whole converastion is gone, next thing he remembers is fleeing from Shadar Logoth.

Boom, Reds don't know about Dragon so that stays under wraps but now they know Moraine was up to something, something that involved taking these people into Shadar Logoth, enough for suspicion to help start the Tower Schism.

Follow that up with random deja vu notes where something triggers Mat thinking back to...  he can't remember.

[WhiteVeils]

I am pretty convinced the whole reason they did Mat's relationship with his sisters and his bad family (in addition to making him have a 'save the cat' moment where he looks very sympathetic and appealing) is to give us this traumatic moment where we realize he has forgotten them.  I know that will make me cry.

And then he spends a big chunk of time trying to get those memories back...it's a powerful way of 'showing' what he only thinks about in the books.

Edited February 3, 2022 by WhiteVeils

[Pukel-man]

8 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

I am pretty convinced the whole reason they did Mat's relationship with his sisters and his bad family (in addition to making him have a 'save the cat' moment where he looks very sympathetic and appealing) is to give us this traumatic moment where we realize he has forgotten them.  I know that will make me cry.

That was his only decent moment.

 

One of the reasons I don't want to watch anymore is that I find myself laughing at some of the things, changes that I find ridiculous. Some of it I just shake my head, but some of the things they do in the show make me laugh. Not because they're funny, intentionally or otherwise, but it's something so absurd, so far from what's even possible in the books. Like five linked wilders defeating the largest trolloc invasion in centuries. It's so bad, it's funny (in my opinion). You would find Mat forgetting his sisters poignant and touching. I might just laugh. In part, I laugh because I've given up on the show holding up some entertainment value. Lan beating his chest and screaming out his hurt over another warder he hardly knows and has absolutely nothing to do with the actual story? I'm laughing now just at the thought of it. Or where they got out the horn of Valere for the sole purpose of giving it to Padan Fain, that also made me laugh out loud for how awfully that was written.

 

I'm not meaning to belittle your reaction to a speculated possible scene, just sharing my own personal take. We have different views.

[WhiteVeils]

I've heard the phrase 'Priming the pump' used before.  Titanic was a huge box office blockbuster. It made many people cry, was widely acclaimed and adored when it came out. The special effects were considered amazing, the lovestory heartbreaking, the end tragic. 

 

I was not interested in seeing it. Love stories were not my thing.  I didn't care for the actors. I had objections to some of the themes, and I thought the whole thing was just ...bleh.

 

I did see it, eventually, when it came out on video.  I thought much of it was hilariously stupid. The love stories were as cheesy as I expected. I could find a million plot holes that didn't make any sense at all to me.  I thought the characters acted ridiculously.  Watching the movie verified all my preconceptions. I thought it was ridiculous.

Because of course it did. I was not putting on my suspension of disbelief..I was making a choice to mock it and laugh at it and not let myself enjoy the love story for what it was, because that was what I thought it would be. 

But my reaction to the movie was not because it was badly done. It was no reflection on the show, the special effects, the writing, the acting, none of that. It was a reflection of me...of who I was and how I came into the show and chose to look at the show.    I chose, subconsciously, to ignore the setups for the tender moments, the actual meaning of certain scenes, to 'shorthand' them in a way that, then, to my mind, depicted them as ridiculous. That was my choice.

Lan's expression of grief, as a designated mourner where his stated duty was to express communal grief for a group of men who were not allowed culturally to express strong emotion except through such specific channel, can certainly be ridiculous of you ignore that whole cultural context and want to see it that way.

Digging up the horn of Valere 'just to give it to Padan Fain' seems ridiculous if you ignore the fact that Fal Dara was being overrun with trollocs and they had to retrieve it or it would fall into the hands of the Shadowspawn. 

There's tons of these examples...places you can choose to think it's ridiculous just like I thought Titanic was ridiculous.  Many would be WOT readers feel the same way about the books...they encounter scenes that they feel are so ridiculous they quit the series.  Maybe they decided before they started that this is too much like LOTR, and are waiting for the hobbits to come out. Or maybe fantasy worlds at all are ridiculous.  Or maybe Mat and his badger is stupid and childish and what are these grown men doing fussing like pre-teens about who knows more about girls?  It's a choice that's been made, conscious or not, that then feeds into how you perceive the books.  Or the show. The pump is primed.

You're welcome to watch WOT with your pump primed for ridicule. You'll find reasons.  But it doesn't say much more than my attitude towards Titanic actually said about Titanic.

It is just different views.  Sorry if this is too long...Just thinking aloud here I guess.

Edited February 3, 2022 by WhiteVeils