How different is too different?

[notpropaganda73]

4 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

 

What I should say here is I think in a lot of the examples presented, there is more going on. I don't come away from the season thinking "wow they really did men dirty" or anything. I can see that Perrin was sidelined in S1 for example, but I don't think Egwene does anything interesting or compelling in the season either, her big moment doesn't land or work or feel earned at all so it just ends up being meh.

 

So that's where I'm coming from, the argument about men being reduced in the show doesn't hit home with me because for example, I don't think "and not only was Perrin sidelined, the women are super competent and amazing and cool and compelling, therefore they've done men dirty!". Mostly, I see missed opportunities across the board. But there was enough good in S1 for me to think they can improve. 

[notpropaganda73]

1 minute ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

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.

 

Honestly, I'm trying to engage in good faith here but when you say things like this it's really hard not to think you're just determined to hate everything regardless of what anyone says  

[DaddyFinn]

2 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

 

Honestly, I'm trying to engage in good faith here but when you say things like this it's really hard not to think you're just determined to hate everything regardless of what anyone says  

That's why I prefer to just ignore those posts. No reason to waste my time reading or answering.

 

It's easy to defend when I don't think men have been reduced to trash.

[notpropaganda73]

14 minutes ago, Lethira the second said:

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

 

Well said, agree with pretty much everything apart from the last line, I enjoyed the aesthetics of the show ?

 

[Cauthonfan4]

9 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Honestly, I'm trying to engage in good faith here but when you say things like this it's really hard not to think you're just determined to hate everything regardless of what anyone says

Can you show me one man who held a candle to what the women did on screen?

 

Tam can't kill a trolloc but perrins wife could kill one with ease.

Lan can't track his own aes sedai but nynaeve can.

Agelmar shown to be distrustful of aes sedai and doesn't use channelers, only for his sister to turn around and use 5 women to wipe out thr biggest trolloc horde in memory. 

Nynaeve mass aoe heals, assassinates trollocs, tracks moiraine, and somehow controls the flows in a circle she's not in control of.

Egwene channels to free herself and perrin. Perin does nothing during that scene. She also heals near death. 

LTT being utterly schooled by latra.

Rafe literally admitting he had a feminist agenda.

 

 

All this evidence and you have people like the person I quoted who can't even admit that men got screwed when it comes to times to shine?

 

The fact that daddy can legit say men were given a fair shake makes me laugh.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[Cauthonfan4]

8 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

It's easy to defend when I don't think men have been reduced to trash

So what do you call it when all the best moments and times to shine went to women except one? What do you call it when every debate or discussion between men and women resulted in the women being right?

 

A series that is supposed to be all about balance has none at this time.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[ilovezam]

26 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Egwene not being afraid is pretty in keeping with her character from the books I'd have thought

I remember her being all terrified and sobbing when Lan finally showed up to rescue them. I think Egwene is still very much an innocent farmgirl at this point, and it would take a while before she evolves to someone who has the wherewithal to go about shanking others.

 

26 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

To me, Agelmar came off as a desperate leader with his back against the wall and he had tunnel-vision.

He wasn't desperate - he refused to believe that anything coming their way would pose any difficulty, and was dismissing Amalisa's concerns out-of-hand, and refused to get help because "they've always done it themselves". If he had followed Amalisa's advice from the get go to ask for help, they could have been saved. He was everything Liandrin was talking about when she talked to Nynaeve about undeserving men in power.

 

Contrast this with book Agelmar, who was eager to receive help, respectful and generally good-natured, and of course one of the finest military leaders of his time. Why change that - do the changes improve on anything?

 

26 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

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. 

 

They removed the position of leadership from LTT, gave it to Latra, and had her talk down to him. She was dismissive, yet at the same time she was 100% right in her assessment of the situation, and LTT almost deserves her disdain. Rosamund Pike says in an interview that the Breaking is to highlight arrogant men abusing their power, which is a huge departure from the books. Again, why change that?

 

And I know you say you're not so much thinking about men in general, and instead chalk these moments up to specific instances of poor writing, but just as a hypothetical, if these changes were made to equivalent female characters for an adaptation of a series of fantasy books - how would you expect people to respond?

Edited January 17, 2022 by ilovezam

[Truthteller]

Notpropaganda makes a lot of good points, most of which I agree with.

 

It is interesting that when you add up all these individual points I see a different whole emerging, and hence come to a different conclusion.  
 

At some point a picture comes into focus, but I don’t think this picture can be compelled through reason and argument.  You either see it or you don’t, and this will depend on the person. (Note, that this does not make it subjective.)

 

 

[ilovezam]

18 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

but I don't think Egwene does anything interesting or compelling in the season either, her big moment doesn't land or work or feel earned at all so it just ends up being meh.

Then we are, in fact, completely agreed on this!

 

I think none of us angry readers are implying that they managed to actually make the women more compelling in the final analysis. They sidelined at least a handful of male characters (which you've agreed to re Perrin), and they tried to make the female characters appear strong by throwing unearned "go girl!" strong-female moments to the women, which weren't compelling exactly because they are unearned.

 

So, intentionally or unintentionally, some of the male characters are written in a way that made them seem artificially less competent, while some of the female characters are written in a way that made them artificially more competent (often to an incredulous extent), and the result is that characters from both sexes are now worse than they were originally.

 

[notpropaganda73]

7 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

Contrast this with book Agelmar, who was eager to receive help, respectful and generally good-natured, and of course one of the finest military leaders of his time. Why change that - do the changes improve on anything?

 

I think it makes for a more interesting dynamic if the Borderlanders are not a monolith of wise leaders who are always respectful of Aes Sedai with no flaws in terms of leadership. Did it work in the show? No, probably not, because we met Agelmar for all of 2 episodes. But I can understand making a change to him to try and make him a more interesting character on screen. Flawed-leader-who-ignored-advice-but-has-moment-of-contrition-before-death is more interesting to me than wise-flawless-leader-asks-for-help-and-dies-heroically. His dismissal of the Aes Sedai I think is supposed to call back to Logain saying how the White Tower is seen as weak the further you get from Tar Valon, but that's just theorising and like Lethira said in their post, if it doesn't work for a huge swathe of the audience it doesn't matter what seeds they may or may not be planting.

 

But am I right in thinking that this argument seems to be that Agelmar (arrogant fool ignoring help) should be contrasted with Amalisa (wise woman exasperated that her fool brother won't listen)? Because I just don't see it that way, as I said - Amalisa and Moiraine talking about him just came off as two women being arrogant and dismissive about a man (something that is pretty true to the books in fairness). 

 

10 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

They removed the position of leadership from LTT, gave it to Latra, and had her talk down to him. She was dismissive, yet at the same time she was 100% right in her assessment of the situation, and LTT almost deserves her disdain. Rosamund Pike says in an interview that the Breaking is to highlight arrogant men abusing their power, which is a huge departure from the books. Again, why change that?

 

Again, I don't see LTT as being deserving of her disdain in the scene. When I see any character behave that way on screen, I'm instantly thinking "they need taken down a peg or two". It's hard here because we are coming at it from the books POV. So maybe that also colours how I read the scene. Because I know that LTT needs her to listen to him and if they worked together in this very moment, maybe they would succeed. But she dismisses him, so I'm thinking she has as much blame here as he. They are both suffering from the same flaw (to me). 

 

16 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

And I know you say you're not so much thinking about men in general, and instead chalk these moments up to specific instances of poor writing, but just as a hypothetical, if these changes were made to equivalent female characters for an adaptation of a series of fantasy books - how would you expect people to respond?

 

I expect we'd have plenty of negative reactions and cries of misogyny along with gleeful commentaries about snowflakes losing their minds and getting pwned or whatever else, but what's the relevance?

[Gothic Flame]

57 minutes ago, Lethira the second said:

 

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. 

Hmf...seems to me that Rafe and his crew seem to have picked out the parts of the storyline they like and gone with those, as well as amplifying stuff that resonates with them. They seem to have ignored what made Wheel of Time different from other stories, what gave it its' charm.

[notpropaganda73]

11 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

Then we are, in fact, completely agreed on this!

 

I think none of us angry readers are implying that they managed to actually make the women more compelling in the final analysis. They sidelined at least a handful of male characters (which you've agreed to re Perrin), and they tried to make the female characters appear strong by throwing unearned "go girl!" strong-female moments to the women, which weren't compelling exactly because they are unearned.

 

So, intentionally or unintentionally, some of the male characters are written in a way that made them seem artificially less competent, while some of the female characters are written in a way that made them artificially more competent (often to an incredulous extent), and the result is that characters from both sexes are now worse than they were originally.

 

 

Haha yes, I think we agree on more than we disagree - but the bit I bolded - I do think there are some posters here that believe the women are "winning" in terms of the depictions on the show. And where you say intentionally or unintentionally is, personally, something I think is an important distinction. Because it seems to me that some are seeing intentional changes which are purely agenda-driven rather than story-driven. 

 

Essentially, I feel that the vast majority of the issues of S1 are down to writing ability rather than any core issues with the concepts or ideas of these scenes or story/character arcs. I think that's where I differ with a lot of those "angry readers" as you put it. 

 

And I have to say, when the writing is good in the show, I think it is really really good. There are moments from the season that I still think about, and some great dialogue (imo). That's what gives me hope going forward.

[notpropaganda73]

20 minutes ago, Truthteller said:

Notpropaganda makes a lot of good points, most of which I agree with.

 

It is interesting that when you add up all these individual points I see a different whole emerging, and hence come to a different conclusion.  
 

At some point a picture comes into focus, but I don’t think this picture can be compelled through reason and argument.  You either see it or you don’t, and this will depend on the person. (Note, that this does not make it subjective.)

 

Yes, I do find it interesting that we can all watch the exact same scene, make most of the same points and come to a different conclusion (or whole, as you put it). It's what makes discussions around art so much fun (imo). 

[Cauthonfan4]

41 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Because it seems to me that some are seeing intentional changes which are purely agenda-driven rather than story-driven

Well when you got rafe saying he's going to make changes that appeal more to the feminist agenda, does this surprise you?

 

 

[ilovezam]

54 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Haha yes, I think we agree on more than we disagree - but the bit I bolded - I do think there are some posters here that believe the women are "winning" in terms of the depictions on the show. And where you say intentionally or unintentionally is, personally, something I think is an important distinction. Because it seems to me that some are seeing intentional changes which are purely agenda-driven rather than story-driven. 

I think what drives us nuts is that a lot of problematic changes seem to come from a clumsy and bungling attempt to make Robert Jordan's story more feminist, which was already plenty feminist, unless by feminist you mean the story cannot have a main character who is a man who has to at least occasionally save the day. And this effort to make Robert Jordan's story more feminist comes from Rafe's own mouth! So while we cannot know for sure his intentions behind making all these changes, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that at least some of it is, in fact, driven by his personal ideology. 

 

While it happens in a way that's cheap and detrimental to the female characters, women are "winning" in the sense that they did get written in a way to make them "stronger", while the men are pretty much nerfed across the board. They are not "winning" in the sense of being interesting characters to watch, for an audience. And don't forget, the male primary protagonist is demoted and no longer the main character - Rafe states that Rand was not the main character of the books, and claims that he doesn't even have the most chapters in the series (objectively wrong). Can you blame people for thinking what they do? When Rafe's Wheel of Time takes a stab at feminism the way he did, everybody loses.

 

I am of the opinion that if any adaptation did all this with the genders flipped, it would have been immediately cancelled over accusations of misogyny, which is why I asked you that hypothetical. And I would have agreed that that would have been a misogynistic adaptation. 

 

Contrast this with Arcane, where the main character is female, lesbian, and goes through an utterly enthralling and badass journey, while male characters (white, black, furry) also get a complete opportunity to show their ability and complexity in character, good and/or bad. All of this is done in a space of 9 hours. Now that's how you have strong women shine in a show, and everybody I know, ever, loves Arcane to bits. 

 

1 hour ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Flawed-leader-who-ignored-advice-but-has-moment-of-contrition-before-death

Flawed characters are interesting, but I think that requires that they are not presented as being wholly in the wrong. If the show was willing to explore why Agelmar came to hold those views, it could have made him more interesting, but as it is, he's just someone who's completely idiotic and ineffective at his job, right up to the final battle, where he charges 12 horses into a wall and achieves nothing. His moment of contrition was given all of 3 seconds, where he admits he was completely wrong, but the audience was already shown he's completely wrong to begin with, and that's not interesting.

 

At least have him good at fighting Trollocs if he has to be turned into a garbage ruler!

 

1 hour ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Because I know that LTT needs her to listen to him and if they worked together in this very moment, maybe they would succeed. But she dismisses him, so I'm thinking she has as much blame here as he. They are both suffering from the same flaw (to me). 

I would be very relieved if they explore that angle in Season 2. But unless Rosamund Pike was just speaking misleadingly in that interview, I'm not confident.

 

I think if they gave Lews Therin one more line: "If we do nothing now, we will lose everything!", it would go a long way to hint to the audience that he wasn't just being an arrogant douche acting "invincible" and trying to achieve something unprecedented with a stupidly risky plan during peacetime, out to "abuse his power". His plan, while maybe also arrogant, was desperate and necessary.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by ilovezam

[Cauthonfan4]

9 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

Contrast this with Arcane, where the main character is female, lesbian, and goes through an utterly enthralling and badass journey, while male characters (white, black, furry) also get a complete opportunity to show their ability and complexity in character, good and/or bad

Another good example of a strong female lead where we still have quality male characters is in horizon zero dawn.

 

Look at how erend or Aratatak change over the course of the game.

 

I can't think of any gamer I know who doesn't love the game, and I dont recall much if any backlash about a female protagonist. 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Cauthonfan4

[Deviations]

1 hour ago, ilovezam said:

So, intentionally or unintentionally, some of the male characters are written in a way that made them seem artificially less competent, while some of the female characters are written in a way that made them artificially more competent (often to an incredulous extent), and the result is that characters from both sexes are now worse than they were originally.

This is accurate.  Book Tam = two sword flashes, two dead trollocs.  TV Tam = Not so much.

 

This show is an example of Hollywood tweaking many parts of a story to improve it and end up with something much worse IMO.  

[ilovezam]

12 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Another good example of a strong female lead where we still have quality male characters is in horizon zero dawn.

 

Yep, and I am thinking if they made a film adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn and the showrunner claims that Aloy was, in fact, not the protagonist, and gives her like a tenth of her screen time and her feats - all hell would break loose, and it would have been deserved.

 

7 minutes ago, Deviations said:

This is accurate.  Book Tam = two sword flashes, two dead trollocs.  TV Tam = Not so much.

 

This show is an example of Hollywood tweaking many parts of a story to improve it and end up with something much worse IMO.  

I think most Hollywood shows would have jumped at the chance to show at least glimpses of badass action moments, and I cannot, for the life me, figure out why they wanted to make Tam lose to one. Is it to make Trollocs appear more scary? No, because right after we see a bunch of geriatric farmswomen kill one. Is it to make Tam be less competent because of old age? Maybe? But why?

 

Blademasters are formally recognized masters of using a blade. They are weapons. It's such a neat part of the worldbuilding, and adds to the mysticism with his heron-marked blade.

 

I remember the show subreddit was all up in arms defending this, saying that Tam could only square off against one Trolloc due to pandemic-induced social distancing or something. And then the original script leaks and you find that Rafe had written this like this from day one. Why?

Edited January 17, 2022 by ilovezam

[Cauthonfan4]

2 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

and the showrunner claims that Aloy was, in fact, not the protagonist, and gives her like a tenth of her screen time and her feats - all hell would break loose, and it would have been deserved

I'd boycott the shit out of that show.

[EduardoEnriqueGonzalez]

20 years ago if we had anyone in an RP write about Healing near-death with the Power Of Crying Really Hard, the RP simply would not have been approved. We'd have had people politely but firmly steer that person towards writing less cringy stuff. And we were all a bunch of amateur kids in our teens and 20s. 

 

Now the show finally arrives, done by "professionals" and gives us that scene twice in the first season. 

[notpropaganda73]

12 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

So while we cannot know for sure his intentions behind making all these changes, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that at least some of it is, in fact, driven by his personal ideology. 

 

But by the same token, at least some of these changes are driven by story and narrative reasons? That's where my issue comes with some of the criticism. Everything is an agenda, everything is this, everything is that. To give you an example of how I read a lot of the problems in the show: Perrin being sidelined in S1 is a result of not having the wolf story explored more -> a result of not wanting to delve too deep into the wolves as he needs to remain a potential Dragon Reborn candidate -> a result of the need to maintain this "mystery" -> not agenda driven? This problem with Perrin stems more, in my view, from writing decisions and maintaining a mystery, than it does around sidelining him to make the women more awesome or powerful or whatever. 

 

13 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

While it happens in a way that's cheap and detrimental to the female characters, women are "winning" in the sense that they did get written in a way to make them "stronger", while the men are pretty much nerfed across the board. They are not "winning" in the sense of being interesting characters to watch, for an audience. And don't forget, the male primary protagonist is demoted and no longer the main character - Rafe states that Rand was not the main character of the books, and claims that he doesn't even have the most chapters in the series (objectively wrong). Can you blame people for thinking what they do?

 

But making the show an ensemble from the get go is something I think is a good move and very little to do with his comments around making it "more feminist" (which I agree is a dumb thing to say). Rand is still the Dragon, he still is the main character, but they need to make us care about the rest in the ensemble too, in order to sustain it. To be clear, I'm not saying they succeeded in that and I'm not even defending the majority of things Rafe says. But I get it. I just think when people are het up about all this, they would do well to remember that Rafe also said Egwene is his favourite character and again, she is boring and bland in the show. Her big moment feels tacked on as "something needs to happen here" rather than anything else - I think I would be getting into "episode 8 was a mess production wise" territory here though, and the same with any response about Agelmar to be honest, and I know that reason doesn't really wash with many. On Agelmar I would just say I agree it wasn't done well and I think a moment of realisation like Denethor in Return of the King would probably have resonated better 

 

21 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

Contrast this with Arcane, where the main character is female, lesbian, and goes through an utterly enthralling and badass journey, while male characters (white, black, furry) also get a complete opportunity to show their ability and complexity in character, good and/or bad. All of this is done in a space of 9 hours. Now that's how you have strong women shine in a show, and everybody I know, ever, loves Arcane to bits. 

 

Arcane is an amazing, incredibly well written show, one of the best I've ever seen to be honest. But just to give you a hypothetical right back, how do you think fans would feel if it was adapted from source material in which Vander was an all-wise flawless unbeatable-in-combat leader of the Undercity and he gets beat by some kid hyped up on Shimmer in the show? Or how he never betrayed or let anyone down in the source material, yet in the show he tries to drown his own brother Silco?! Or if, in the source material, Mel was white? Or Vi and Ekko were in love originally, but that gets changed for the show? 

 

No arguments from me though, I wish WoT S1 had character work like Arcane, it simply does not. But again, I think the main driver of this issue is the writing, not the core concepts. 

 

[Yojimbo]

11 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

 

Yep, and I am thinking if they made a film adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn and the showrunner claims that Aloy was, in fact, not the protagonist, and gives her like a tenth of her screen time and her feats - all hell would break loose, and it would have been deserved.

 

I think most Hollywood shows would have jumped at the chance to show at least glimpses of badass action moments, and I cannot, for the life me, figure out why they wanted to make Tam lose to one. Is it to make Trollocs appear more scary? No, because right after we see a bunch of geriatric farmswomen kill one. Is it to make Tam be less competent because of old age? Maybe? But why?

 

Blademasters are formally recognized masters of using a blade. They are weapons. It's such a neat part of the worldbuilding, and adds to the mysticism with his heron-marked blade.

 

I remember the show subreddit was all up in arms defending this, saying that Tam could only square off against one Trolloc due to pandemic-induced social distancing or something. And then the original script leaks and you find that Rafe had written this like this from day one. Why?

And the idea that Tam would lose to one because he was fighting in close quarters is ridiculous.   I kinda think that blademasters would learn to fight in close quarters, especially I they were going to be involved in a melee, as often happens in wars.   

 

And yet Nynaeve manages to kill one with a knife with no problem whatsoever.   

[notpropaganda73]

I just wanna say I don't think the Tam thing was done well, I'm just trying to get across what I think they were trying to do. 

 

And I super appreciate having a civil discussion on this whole thing and differences in opinion, it's really refreshing after what has felt like an exhausting barrage of negativity about the show and how I feel about it rather than a dialogue. So this has been great and I have not done a tap of work today as a result, thank you @ilovezam?

[DojoToad]

31 minutes ago, Deviations said:

This is accurate.  Book Tam = two sword flashes, two dead trollocs.  TV Tam = Not so much.

 

This show is an example of Hollywood tweaking many parts of a story to improve it and end up with something much worse IMO.  

Exactly - and would have given non-book readers something to ponder.  Only a warder and Tam could handle trollocs.  What is that symbol on the sword...?

[ilovezam]

7 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

And I super appreciate having a civil discussion on this whole thing and differences in opinion, it's really refreshing after what has felt like an exhausting barrage of negativity about the show and how I feel about it rather than a dialogue. So this has been great and I have not done a tap of work today as a result, thank you @ilovezam?

Hahaha, I appreciated the opportunity to get a lot of my misgivings out of my chest too.