How different is too different?

[notpropaganda73]

11 hours ago, ashi said:

Criticism can also be born out of whether the show succeeds in bringing out its ambitions, and thus becomes, if not wholly objective, less subjective.

 

I agreed with your whole post but especially this part. This is what is more interesting to me when discussing the show - what are they trying to do and did it work? Tam vs the Trolloc is a good example of this. It's constantly used as part of a list showing some wider trend within the show that men are useless and the show wants to take away cool moments from men and all that. But I think any objective analysis of the scene shows that they absolutely want to show that Tam is a badass - they just failed in what they wanted to do. 

 

I get very frustrated with the relentless "it's hot garbage" type posts but I enjoy talking about the criticisms as long as we're all coming at it with an open mind. There are too many definitive statements for my liking and it all feels very adversarial which is just exhausting

[Cauthonfan4]

1 minute ago, notpropaganda73 said:

But I think any objective analysis of the scene shows that they absolutely want to show that Tam is a badass - they just failed in what they wanted to do

That's a hell of a recurring trend at failing to show men as badass.

[notpropaganda73]

Oh you think there is a trend? Would you have examples perchance? Even, say, a list of all the things in your mind that prove your point? I haven't seen any lists of things that happen in the show without any context for why it was done and whether it works, so that'd be really helpful. 

 

 

[Cauthonfan4]

2 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Oh you think there is a trend? Would you have examples perchance? Even, say, a list of all the things in your mind that prove your point

Sure 

Tam fails against the trolloc.

LTTs discussion with latra.

Thom coming across as nothing more then a cheap conman. 

Mat being reduced to a thief. 

Lan failing to track his own aes sedai.

Lan being completely irrelevant in the final episode.

 

[notpropaganda73]

Sorry, I forgot to use my sarcasm font. 

 

 

[Cauthonfan4]

2 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Sorry, I forgot to use my sarcasm font

No I saw it. I'm just surprised that you can sit there wnd use an excuse like missed the mark when for some reason they seem to have no problem hitting the mark when it comes to the women. When you have a trend of hitting the mark with women and fail to hit the mark with men that is extremely suspect.

[notpropaganda73]

1 minute ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

No I saw it. I'm just surprised that you can sit there wnd use an excuse like missed the mark when for some reason they seem to have no problem hitting the mark when it comes to the women. When you have a trend of hitting the mark with women and fail to hit the mark with men that is extremely suspect.

Sorry for being snippy, I'm tired and it's Monday etc

 

My issue with these lists is that I think they do have problems with hitting the mark with the women. Egwene is by far the blandest and most boring character in the show for me, so that's not exactly hitting any marks. I loved what they were doing with Nynaeve and her relationship with Lan, but then they just don't give her anything to do in the finale and she doesn't suffer a block, so it's definitely not hitting any marks. Amalisa got Rand's big moment, but I don't think anyone is saying that that scene hit the mark. 

 

I've gone over the Tam thing a million times and it never seems to resonate so I'll just say what I think happened one more time, if you disagree that's fine. If you read the leaked script, they really emphasise 1) the sword and that Tam is an expert with it and 2) Rand is surprised by this. Even in the scene we got, they zoom in (cheesily) on the heron, which screams "THIS IS A SPECIAL SWORD", and then there are a few quick cuts showing Tam slashing at the Trolloc. It's supposed to show that he knows what he is doing and is good with the sword. The Trolloc then overwhelms him at close quarters. I think they wanted to show that Tam was great with the sword but the Trolloc is a monster. They failed at what they wanted to show. But I don't think it's an indicator of a desire to reduce men's role in the show, which is what the scene is constantly referred to as. 

 

I don't really want to go over the other things again but anyway, we can disagree and that's ok. I'm just tired at being told that I am "literally" seeing no flaws or refusing to acknowledge flaws when I am "literally" saying they failed at something.

[ilovezam]

13 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

The Trolloc then overwhelms him at close quarters. I think they wanted to show that Tam was great with the sword but the Trolloc is a monster. They failed at what they wanted to show.

And then heavily pregnant Laila takes care of at least one Trolloc with a double-handed weapon, in close quarters. Perrin kills one too but only after he loses himself to a complete berserker rage, before yeeting his own wife.

 

I do agree that people might be wrong about what Rafe's intentions were, but the result of what's shown on screen... It seems difficult to not conclude that male characters are shown in a worse light in the show than in the books. I doubt it's something quite as asinine as Rafe hating men, but it's hard to shake the feeling that Rafe wanted to be very clear about not having any man outshine the women in any given episode, and so we've got eight episodes of exactly that.

I agree with you that they got the female characters wrong too, but for those, that's because they're "buffing" the women to show us how powerful and fearless they are, and the result is Mary Sue blandness and a lack of character development, which I guess is the opposite problem the male characters suffer from. It's such a shame, because I think Nynaeve being insufferable in Book 1 is a huge part of why she becomes one of my favourite characters ever, but they're skipping that entirely, and now we've got a blockless Nynaeve that can channel the Machin Shin away. 

 

I'm also just imagining an alternate timeline where Ep 1 and the show's lead actor blames the Breaking on "female weakness", and the show then routinely goes out of its way to show female political leaders doing an awful job in their roles, while men who are much smarter and more insightful consistently try to fix their problems. I'm thinking of a female Chosen One prophecies character having her climatic moments given away to a group of untrained men, a kindly mother of a main character being turned into a promiscuous cheater - I'm thinking of Amazon doing a series like Mistborn and giving its awesome main female character a grand total of zero badass moments and letting her be largely irrelevant outside of being a lovesick puppy to a male character. Would that fly? That would have been awful, widely panned, and rightly so. 

Edited January 17, 2022 by ilovezam

[Cauthonfan4]

4 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

And then heavily pregnant Laila takes care of at least one Trolloc with a double-handed weapon, in close quarters

Exactly. 

4 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

I agree with you that they got the female characters wrong too, but for those, that's because they're "buffing" the women to show us how powerful and fearless they are, and the result is Mary Sue blandness and a lack of character development, which I guess is the opposite problem the male characters suffer from. It's such a shame, because I think Nynaeve being insufferable in Book 1 is a huge part of why she becomes one of my favourite characters ever, but they're skipping that entirely, and now we've got a blockless Nynaeve that can channel the Machin Shin away

They have accelerated nynaeves chatavter to the point I'm worried about what they will do with her in the future.

[DaddyFinn]

Ehh.. Laila was not heavily pregnant. Tigraine was.

[Cauthonfan4]

5 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Ehh.. Laila was not heavily pregnant.

She was pregnant and still beat a trolloc. Whereas the blademaster Tam could not.  And her husband had to go into a blind frenzy to kill a trolloc. 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[notpropaganda73]

45 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

And then heavily pregnant Laila takes care of at least one Trolloc with a double-handed weapon, in close quarters. Perrin kills one too but only after he loses himself to a complete berserker rage, before yeeting his own wife.

 

I do agree that people might be wrong about what Rafe's intentions were, but the result of what's shown on screen... It seems difficult to not conclude that male characters are shown in a worse light in the show than in the books. I doubt it's something quite as asinine as Rafe hating men, but it's hard to shake the feeling that Rafe wanted to be very clear about not having any man outshine the women in any given episode, and so we've got eight episodes of exactly that.

 

We just see things differently. When I watch episode 1, I'm not watching the Laila and Perrin scene and thinking "But Tam couldn't kill one Trolloc?" Others think differently, that's fine. I didn't even think of Laila as "heavily pregnant"? Where's that coming from? The only thing about that was the scene where they zoom in on Perrin's hand on her belly, I thought the implication was that she had had a miscarriage? 

 

46 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

I agree with you that they got the female characters wrong too, but for those, that's because they're "buffing" the women to show us how powerful and fearless they are, and the result is Mary Sue blandness and a lack of character development, which I guess is the opposite problem the male characters suffer from. It's such a shame, because I think Nynaeve being insufferable in Book 1 is a huge part of why she becomes one of my favourite characters ever, but they're skipping that entirely, and now we've got a blockless Nynaeve that can channel the Machin Shin away. 

 

Honestly, the only woman I see as being "buffed" was Nynaeve and as I said, I think not having her suffer a block at the key moment in episode 8 was a huge huge huge mistake on their part. It would've made her entire arc in S1 really well done and given her such a great motivation to go to the White Tower for training. I dunno how they'll course correct on that, but I think I'll be forever disappointed that that was how they decided to complete her S1 arc. Egwene does one weak sauce channeling moment to free Perrin and then stabs the Whitecloak, hardly being buffed up. And the healing of Nynaeve... again that whole scene was terrible and I didn't even think of it as a "woah Egwene is super powerful moment". And just to emphasise, this is all how I came away from watching them - so I didn't get the feeling of "Women are super competent/capable/powerful" from those moments. I understand we can objectively look what happened in different scenes but my feelings on it or how I saw it are still subjective, I just don't appreciate being told I have some other motivations for those reactions. 

 

50 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

I'm also just imagining an alternate timeline where Ep 1 and the show's lead actor blames the Breaking on "female weakness", and the show then routinely goes out of its way to show female political leaders doing an awful job in their roles, while men who are much smarter and more insightful consistently try to fix their problems. I'm thinking of a female Chosen One prophecies character having her climatic moments given away to a group of untrained men, a kindly mother of a main character being turned into a promiscuous cheater - I'm thinking of Amazon doing a series like Mistborn and giving its awesome main female character a grand total of zero badass moments and letting her be largely irrelevant outside of being a lovesick puppy to a male character. Would that fly? That would have been awful, widely panned, and rightly so. 

 

Again, we just have different perspectives on this. When I watch S1, I'm most frustrated at the EF5 not getting enough development through the season, and that's all 5 of them. The characters I think were done the best in S1 from those 5, were Nynaeve (until the finale), Mat, Rand and then Perrin/Egwene way behind the others. Mat is an interesting one because I think the change to his backstory makes his journey super interesting and I've said before, I think Rand's defence of him in episode 7 is where we'll end up with Mat, and I'm interested to see how they get there.

 

I don't see a season where men are awful in all of their roles and the women are great. It's a real mixed bag. But I guess my overall point was that me saying it's a mixed bag has me down as a show defender that can't see any flaws from some peoples' POV, and I don't think that's a fair characterisation of me or the majority of people posting on this forum, that's all. 

[Guest Cranglevoid]

14 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

I've looked at a bunch of ratings, and it seemed from what I have seen that WOT did much better than Amazon expected, but I couldn't 'call' that one way or another.  The authoritative accounts that I have seen do seem to indicate that it is doing well, but I don't think the final assessment on the overall ratings can be made yet.  If ratings are determined by Amazon (whose opinions I of course don't have access too) to be poor, they also will determine why they think the ratings are poor, and it is unlikely to be because the show strayed too far from the books.  Book fans don't count for much in terms of global ratings.

 

I would take criticism as something other than 'not opinion', if criticism was actually backed by more than just more opinions, and I value non-reader opinions more than reader opinions.  

Example: The costumes are too clean.  <- This is an opinion. What is it backed by? 
Are the costumes actually clean?  Or are they dirty but people are thinking that they are clean because they want something to criticize?  Are they judging clean because they are looking at a moment that is right before a festival when people's clothes should be clean, or are they looking at how clean they are over the whole course of the journey, and did the cleanliness change?  Are they too clean compared to another show?  How do we know that other show's costumes weren't too dirty instead?

These are opinions...and other people's opinions can differ. And if those other people's opinions differ from yours, /their/ opinion is equally valid, and they have just as much right to say your opinion on how clean costumes should be  as you have yours.

Now, if you were a costume designer, and you were in charge of dirtifying costumes, and  you said, "Well, they probably should have done more dirt there...seems like an oversight" I'd say your opinion was more valid that either the 'pro-clean' or 'pro-dirty' faction. And I'd wonder why the showrunner made that choice.  And that would be OK.

 

 

That's just your opinion.

[DaddyFinn]

15 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

She was pregnant

Was she?

[Cauthonfan4]

5 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Was she?

Okay let's assume she's not 

 

So in one scene we have clearly an elite swordsman and he fails to kill a trolloc

 

Meanwhile in another we have a woman who handles one with comparative ease.

 

And you're gonna tell me they did Tam justice and that they "just missed the mark". No thanks. They screwed him up bad. But then again. Why am I not surprised? After all rafe did say he was going to push his feminist agenda and based on yhe numbers of times we get moments from men that make you scratch your head and the moments we get of women doing super amazing shit it doesn't surprise me.

 

What does surprise me is how we can put evidence upon evidence in front of some of you and you can still deny that there was an Agenda to make men inferior. I mean literally rafe Said himself that he was going to do this and some of you guys still deny it.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[ilovezam]

34 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Ehh.. Laila was not heavily pregnant. Tigraine was.

22 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Others think differently, that's fine. I didn't even think of Laila as "heavily pregnant"? Where's that coming from? 

Think you guys are right about this - she was just lightly pregnant (...I think?), got that messed up. 

 

Edit: Apparently maybe miscarriaged? Either way I don't think it changes much. Blacksmiths are not trained fighters, blademasters are legendary fighters. Without even going into men vs women debacle, think of how cool it could have been if the first blademaster we see does something awesome.

 

22 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Egwene does one weak sauce channeling moment to free Perrin and then stabs the Whitecloak, hardly being buffed up.

Mate, maybe you purged the finale from your memory, but Egwene heals near-death, which I'm pretty sure not sure even endgame Egwene could. Instead of being scared shitless of Valda and letting Perrin at least be the brawn of that scene, she shanks him. I don't think the shanking is in itself particularly unbelievable, but the result is that Perrin's got absolutely nothing to do for that the whole Whitecloaks sequence.

 

How did you feel about Agelmar vs Amalisa and LTT vs Latra scenes? Because I feel like the show was pretty heavily slanted in showing us who's 100% in the right, which is not very compelling writing for me. And of course they gave LTT's position as Tamyrlin away, which adds an extra element of insubordination to his garbage plan.

 

22 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

But I guess my overall point was that me saying it's a mixed bag has me down as a show defender that can't see any flaws from some peoples' POV, and I don't think that's a fair characterisation of me or the majority of people posting on this forum, that's all. 

FWIW I don't think you come across as a rabid defender of the show. Those who insist the writing was great are the ones that particularly raise a red flag for me, but I guess that's still subjective at the end of the day.

Edited January 17, 2022 by ilovezam

[Gothic Flame]

2 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

Mate, maybe you purged the finale from your memory, but Egwene heals near-death, which I'm pretty sure not sure even endgame Egwene could. Instead of being scared shitless of Valda and letting Perrin at least be the brawn of that scene, she shanks him. I don't think the shanking is in itself particularly unbelievable, but the result is that Perrin's got absolutely nothing to do for that the whole Whitecloaks sequence.

 

Considering that in the book it was Lan that sneaks into the tent that held Perrin and Egwene when Valda had just dropped a sharp rock to encourage an escape attempt. Lan in a couple of moves knocks Valda out.

[ilovezam]

1 minute ago, Gothic Flame said:

Considering that in the book it was Lan that sneaks into the tent that held Perrin and Egwene when Valda had just dropped a sharp rock to encourage an escape attempt. Lan in a couple of moves knocks Valda out.

And that would have been so, so much better. They did my boy Lan so dirty with regards to his abilities this season.

 

But if they were to have the kids escape on their own, at least let Perrin do something, c'mon!

[DaddyFinn]

10 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

So in one scene we have clearly an elite swordsman and he fails to kill a trolloc

A long time ago retired one, but yes. Tough situation being pinned against a wall. Narg is a mean and big SOB.

 

10 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Meanwhile in another we have a woman who handles one with comparative ease.

I will say that the trollocs could have given her more trouble but it still doesn't bother me. She struggled. She was awesome and I would have loved to see more of her.

 

I have no interest in answering to the rest of your message.

[notpropaganda73]

1 minute ago, ilovezam said:

Mate, maybe you purged the finale from your memory, but Egwene heals near-death, which I'm pretty sure not sure even endgame Egwene could. Instead of being scared shitless of Valda and letting Perrin at least be the brawn of that scene, she shanks him. I don't think the shanking is in itself particularly unbelievable, but the result is that Perrin's got absolutely nothing to do for that the whole Whitecloaks sequence.

 

I guess it's a perspective thing, because I rolled my eyes at it happening because it was so bad, I didn't think of it as "wow they're making Egwene super powerful". I just think "god that's awful, let's hope they never address that again in any depth". I dunno if that makes sense, but just how my brain works. I have a hard time believing that what we saw at Tarwin's Gap is going to be called back on or have any huge ramifications down the road for either character other than Egwene not being in control of her own channeling. 

 

Perrin absolutely should've flung Valda across the room or something, but Egwene not being afraid is pretty in keeping with her character from the books I'd have thought? But yeah I'm on record being really frustrated with Perrin in S1, they didn't give him anything to do at all. 

 

4 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

How did you feel about Agelmar vs Amalisa and LTT vs Latra scenes? Because I feel like the show was pretty heavily slanted in showing us who's 100% in the right, which is not very compelling writing for me.

 

To me, Agelmar came off as a desperate leader with his back against the wall and he had tunnel-vision. Amalisa was honestly meh the whole time she was on screen. The scene with her and Moiraine in episode 7 screamed to me that we're supposed to think they have too high an opinion of themselves, for example. Him saying that she was right and he should've called for aid sooner (was that it? I can't quite remember) seemed to me to be a moment of contrition from him, but Amalisa doesn't really come off as a wise woman to me in the two episodes. 

 

LTT and Latra, it definitely wanted us to think Latra was in the right. But she also came off as dismissive to LTT. That doesn't say to me "this is a character that you should listen to". I think it highlights something in the show as a whole, where the women say something quite dismissive or confidently but their actions show their folly as much as the men they accuse. I didn't like the scene as I thought it was written poorly, but I don't think the concept was bad. 

 

I totally get the trend that keeps getting highlighted, I just think there's a bit more nuance to it all personally

[Lethira the second]

I'm glad to see people are still talking about the WoT show, regardless as to whether it's in a positive or negative manner -it means it's still in the front of (some) peoples minds.

 

I genuinely believe that Rafe went in with the intentions of making what he believes to be the best version of Wheel of Time he could.  He is an apprentice writer/showrunner trying to do a masters job and it shows.  He hasn't handled his budget well in terms of the time allotted or the money put up.  I'll back that up with his claim that they built Emmonds Field just to blow it up in one set piece.  

 

People are speculating as to whether or not perceived changes will effect the long term story, it's understandable an unsteady hand on the tiller and a lot don't have confidence given what they've seen.  Ultimately for me, I saw a very disjointed series that introduced things and did a poor job of explaining them before dropping them.  Maybe they plan to iterate on them in later seasons but that is irrelevant if the show gets cancelled before they get to it.

 

You can be as clever as you like writing something but if it doesn't come across to your audience, it doesn't matter. If you fail to keep their attention, they'll watch something else or put the book in the DNF pile.  That is my worry with WoT show.  Season One should have hooked people in, given them enough to want to see the next installment.  Unfortunately in trying to pack too much in, they never really gave a lot of things a chance to breath. 

 

I truly hope they can improve on Season One, and have season Two look like something that was made in the 2020s, not like it came out of the 1990s

[Cauthonfan4]

4 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

A long time ago retired one, but yes. Tough situation being pinned against a wall. Narg is a mean and big SOB

Since you brought it up earlier. How do you know it was narg? Did he talk?

5 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

I will say that the trollocs could have given her more trouble but it still doesn't bother me. She struggled. She was awesome and I would have loved to see more of her

See exactly my point. You're literally still defending this garbage.

 

Blademaster can't do it, her husband requires a bloody rage to do it,  but she can do it. And you somehow think they didn't do the men dirty?

[Cauthonfan4]

3 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

I totally get the trend that keeps getting highlighted, I just think there's a bit more nuance to it all personally

My problem is the trend just keeps continuing though. If they had say in yhe last two episodes shown the men becoming more competent I could have forgiven it but they didn't.

[DaddyFinn]

3 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

How do you know it was narg? Did he talk?

I remember reading it somewhere. I could be wrong.

 

4 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

See exactly my point. You're literally still defending this garbage.

So? I don't think the show is garbage. I loved the farm attack. I loved how in control Tam was. If you don't like my opinion, that's your problem.

[Cauthonfan4]

2 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

So? I don't think the show is garbage. I loved the farm attack. I loved how in control Tam was. If you don't like my opinion, that's your problem

Okay good to know you defend reducing the men to being useless trash. I prefer my story that is supposed to be about balance to have some balance.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Cauthonfan4