[TV Show] Prophecies of the Dragon

[WhiteVeils]

Yes. In the books, this is the case, without explanation why.   Since we have less access to people's thoughts for exposition, and the fact that exposition must be fed out very carefully so as not to overwhelm viewers with a large block of it at once, the show is being much more reserved with how much knowledge of the prophecies (if they still exist) there is and how that knowledge is shared and expressed to the viewer.

[Andra]

1 hour ago, WhiteVeils said:

Yes. In the books, this is the case, without explanation why.   Since we have less access to people's thoughts for exposition, and the fact that exposition must be fed out very carefully so as not to overwhelm viewers with a large block of it at once, the show is being much more reserved with how much knowledge of the prophecies (if they still exist) there is and how that knowledge is shared and expressed to the viewer.

We didn't really need explanation why, any more that we needed explanation of why everyone everywhere knew what and where Tar Valon was.  They were both famous.

 

When told something in a fictional world is famous, you don't really need to be told why it's famous.

 

Nor did we need access to people's thoughts, since the topics came up in normal conversation.  Or at least, as what would be "normal conversation" for the very abnormal circumstances they were facing.  Very little of this turns up in anyone's internal monologue.

 

"Exposition" in circumstances like that is normal.  People discussing why the odd things they have seen are happening is exactly what you would expect.

 

This bizarre aversion to exposition is one of the problems with the show.  In other properties in this genre, exposition is a normal part of telling the story.  Uneducated or naive characters are used as a proxy for the viewers, and things are explained to the audience by explaining them to the ignorant characters.

 

Think Hagrid explaining to Harry what Wizards and Muggles are.

[SinisterDeath]

12 hours ago, Andra said:

I didn't say everyone was familiar with its contents.  I said that if it was common enough to show up in the library of an inn (in the books, it isn't) it would be nonsensical to claim no one was familiar with its contents.

1) An Inn having a library of that size, isn't common in Randland. Why must you assume the book has to be "common" because "it shows up in an inn"? You're stretching to further the next idea that

2) "No one" is familiar with the contents despite it being "common" as proof that

3) Showing the book is a slap in the face of fans.

 

A book can be uncommon and rare, and still appear in a random Inn that happens to have a library. 

Have you forgotten the concept of Ta'varen? Rand finding that book... is a literal plot device we call "Ta'varen".

 

A book can be common, and people can still be unfamiliar with its contents, case and point, the Freaking bible. A significant number of people who own that book, aren't familiar with it's contents. People are still arguing about which lines prophesized what.

 

Finally as I've said before, if this "massive book" full of "collected prophecies", and we've only read a couple dozen of them in the books, then it stands to reason there are hundreds, if not thousands of prophecies we haven't seen.

A person (Moiraine) can be familiar with hundreds of prophecies contained within, and still be confused about which ones are relevant. Which ones are lies (Hmm, what name did they refer to a certain forsaken in the show again? Father of lies?) Unsure about anything as it's full of contradictory prophecies.

 

And.. just like the bible, people often think it says something that it never did because that's what happens when rumor becomes gospel.

 

[DojoToad]

Without going back through everything...  Wasn't the original argument that the Aes Sedai didn't know what was in the prophecies?  The book is common enough to show up in a random in - but the smartest people in the world don't know about it, or what is in it?  Doesn't make sense to me, but I didn't see the episode.

[SinisterDeath]

39 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Without going back through everything...  Wasn't the original argument that the Aes Sedai didn't know what was in the prophecies?  The book is common enough to show up in a random in - but the smartest people in the world don't know about it, or what is in it?  Doesn't make sense to me, but I didn't see the episode.

Go watch it. It won't kill ya.

[WhiteVeils]

The original argument was, in my understanding, that it is unrealistic that Moiraine be wrong about thinking Rand could defeat the Dark One early at the Eye of the World because she knows the Prophecies of the Dragon and the Stone of Tear and all that, and has never mentioned them.  And it they can't change the Callendor being in Tear without it being unrealistic because it's in the prophecies.  Same for 'Male+Female Dragons' in the prophecies, etc.

 

It was pointed out that, for the show, we do not yet know how much the Aes Sedai know about the prophecies or what the prophecies actually contain.   All we know is that the Karethon cycle exists as a book, and it has a picture of a Dragon in it.

 

This book could be common or it could be rare in the TV Version.  It could be well known, even to someone like Rand, or it could be very obscure. It could contain versions of the Prophecies of the Dragon that match what we know from the books, or the prophecies could be changed for the show.  The Karethon cycle could be a book of prophecies about the Dragon or a fairy tale for all we know.

 

It was also argued that if the prophecies were changed for the show, then the book should be called something else.  But fans (well some of us) appreciate the fan service.

 

Basically, it's the internet. People starting fights for the sake of starting fights.

 

These are the basic differences we know between the book at the show on this subject:

1) In the Show, much information about the Dark One, including about the Dark One's prison and the Eye of the World, was purged from the Tower Libraries by Darkfriends (Episode ?

2) In the Show, Moiraine is certain from Prophecies only /when/ the Dragon was reborn, not where or anything else about them, including whether or not they are male or female.  We do not know if this is because the prophecies (other than Gitara's foretelling) is vague on this, or Moiraine is acting with an abundance of caution in her interpretation of the prophecy, or if there are prophecies other than the ones Moiraine is familiar with.

3) In the Show, common villagers from The Two Rivers don't really know what the Dragon is. They know there's a Dark One, and Moiraine tells them that one of them is the Dragon, who can defeat the Dark One or destroy the world, but that's really all they know.  We do not know if they are familiar with the Stone of Tear, Callendor, the Kareathon Cycle, or anything like that.  And we don't need to know...it's better for us as the audience to learn as they learn more so the show will share that with us.

4) There is a copy of the Kareathon Cycle in the Light's Blessing in in Tar Valon with a picture of a dragon in it.  How common this book is, whether it is in other inns, how it got there, or what it contains, we don't know.

 

I don't think we can make any conclusions about what we don't know yet...the story had to cram a lot of information and not every piece of information needs to be provided all at once. Only pieces relevant to the story need to be provided at all, and by story, I mean the one they're telling in the show.  It will be simpler than in the books, and they'll change stuff.

 

[SinisterDeath]

29 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

I don't think we can make any conclusions about what we don't know yet...the story had to cram a lot of information and not every piece of information needs to be provided all at once.

My biggest complaint about the TV series, is that each season isn't 13 episodes long, so they could properly flesh out some of this stuff without it feeling crammed. ? 

[WhiteVeils]

19 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

My biggest complaint about the TV series, is that each season isn't 13 episodes long, so they could properly flesh out some of this stuff without it feeling crammed. ? 

Oh, I'm with you there.  I think wherever they can, they are trying to give information in ways that isn't just 'This person is telling you this'.  But more, 'How do we tell you this as part of a story?' and 'How do we introduce this 'fact' about the world enough times that the audience retains it?  Like from the moment Tam says 'Aes Sedai control the world from the White Tower' to the Oath Rod being used in Episode 6 to Lord Agelmar talking with Moiraine about the Tower and learning about Amelisa being accepted we are learning about the perception, status, organization, restrictions, etc, of the Aes Sedai. But most of those pieces of knowledge actually are important to that little bit of plot that we're learning about at that time too...it's not random information thrown at us in thoughts that isn't relevant until much later.

[DaddyFinn]

Not sure if this is even related to the discussion but remember what Moiraine said about the prophecies: they are thousands of years old, several people have translated and interpreted them and one can't be 100% certain if they are actually valid.

[expat]

One other aspect of prophecies is that until they are fulfilled, they are gibberish.  They don't say that on May 25, 2025, California is going to have the big quake and LA is going to be destroyed.  Both in our world, and the samples from WOT books, they are written in symbolism.  Since people are good at finding patterns in things, even when the pattern doesn't exist, there will be multiple interpretations of what the gibberish means.  There really isn't anything for people to know about the Kareathon Cycle except that is a book of prophecy about the Dragon which nobody understands.   

 

In the books, is there any other example than Callendor/Stone of Tier where the Aes Sedai actually understand the prophecies.   Even with Callendor, they don't understand the entire prophecy since they don't know the identity of the "People of the Dragon" who help Rand in his attempt.

 

Also, the main plot point of the non-black Aes Sedia is the disagreement between the Aes Sedia (e.g., Eladia) who want to control Rand and keep him shielded in the White Tower until the final battle and those (e.g, Suian, Moiraine) who understand that there are a lot of things that the Dragon needs to do before the final battle (as expressed in the prophecies).  Because they don't understand the Kareathon Cycle, they know that he must be free to accomplish those things. If you postulate that the Aes Sedai understand the prophecies, then they can help him meet them and the entire Suian/Moiraine plot thread is worse than useless.

 

So even in the book, the Aes Sedia have little insight into the prophecies and the difference between the books and the series is a matter of degree.

[AdamA]

The Aes Sedai don't even know about all of the prophesies in the book, i.e. the prophesies as recorded and interpreted by Sea Folk, Aiel, and Sharans (which seemingly no one except Demandred knew about). Show-wise, I was pretty sure I remember Moiraine at some point discounting the usefulness of prophesy as a guide because each culture had its own version and they conflicted with each other, in addition to being translations of translations of possibly unreliable remembrances centuries after the original foretellings. That seems to indicate they are at least aware of the contents of some of these, and presumably that especially includes the Karaethon Cycle, but knowing those prophesies doesn't mean they all trust and believe them. Plus, the Black Ajah and darkfriends in general have their own expanded versions that also conflict with the ones as known by those who walk in the light.

 

That said, I think it's silly that anyone in-universe would seriously have believed the entire last battle and apocalyptic confrontation between the dragon and the dark one was going to be one skirmish involving a few hundred Trollocs in one city and a 20 minute dream battle at the Eye of the World. I think that was more likely one of two things. Uncharitably, having characters act dumb so viewers might actually believe this is it and feel some heightened suspense compared to knowing this was just the start. More charitably, television shows often give themselves an escape hatch option where they write the first season in such a way that it can be edited or refilmed very minimally to wrap up in an unsatisfying but at least reasonably coherent way if they don't get renewed. It's unfortunate, but just one of those leaky abstractions of the way Hollywood operates and another reason why television, at least in terms of storytelling, is rarely if ever as good as a good book. This can actually work reasonably well for tongue-in-cheek shows. Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in the day almost made an art form out of it, where every season could have been the last and it would have worked, and the characters made jokes about how many apocalypses there were and how anticlimactic they were becoming. It works less well for these epic fantasy stories that don't really work in bits and pieces and need the whole to cohere.

[expat]

Agree with everything in your post.

 

Quote

That seems to indicate they are at least aware of the contents of some of these, and presumably that especially includes the Karaethon Cycle, but knowing those prophesies doesn't mean they all trust and believe them. 

I don't know what the series will do, but in the books, it is worse than not trusting the prophecies, it's not understanding the prophecies.  From the few examples we are shown, the prophecies use open ended, symbolic language which must be interpreted.  Which one of the 27 interpretations is the correct one, if any?  Before you can trust a prophecy, you have to think that you understand it. and the Karaethon Cycle wasn't written to be cleanly understood. It was really a McGuffin in that it wasn't useful itself, but required Rand to be free to accomplish all the obscure elements of the prophecy.  If it didn't exist, we wouldn't have had the Tower split and most of Egwene and Siuan's arcs.

 

Quote

That said, I think it's silly that anyone in-universe would seriously have believed the entire last battle and apocalyptic confrontation between the dragon and the dark one was going to be one skirmish involving a few hundred Trollocs in one city and a 20 minute dream battle at the Eye of the World. 

Agree, this was very clunky.  Given that the first book had an equally clunky ending, it might have taken a real stroke of genius to come up with something both interesting and plausible within the context of the first year.  Sadly, that didn't happen.

 

Quote

Uncharitably, having characters act dumb so viewers might actually believe this is it and feel some heightened suspense compared to knowing this was just the start. 

TBF, if you eliminated every time a character acted dumb in the books, it would have been a trilogy.

 

Quote

More charitably, television shows often give themselves an escape hatch option where they write the first season in such a way that it can be edited or refilmed very minimally to wrap up in an unsatisfying but at least reasonably coherent way if they don't get renewed.

The book had the same problem.  It was written to have an ending if the rest of the series hadn't been picked up.  This is responsible for the clunky ending in the book with howlers such as the voice of the creator at Tarwin Gap and super Rand single handily winning the battle.

[Andra]

19 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

1) An Inn having a library of that size, isn't common in Randland. Why must you assume the book has to be "common" because "it shows up in an inn"? You're stretching to further the next idea that

2) "No one" is familiar with the contents despite it being "common" as proof that

3) Showing the book is a slap in the face of fans.

 

A book can be uncommon and rare, and still appear in a random Inn that happens to have a library. 

Have you forgotten the concept of Ta'varen? Rand finding that book... is a literal plot device we call "Ta'varen".

 

A book can be common, and people can still be unfamiliar with its contents, case and point, the Freaking bible. A significant number of people who own that book, aren't familiar with it's contents. People are still arguing about which lines prophesized what.

 

Finally as I've said before, if this "massive book" full of "collected prophecies", and we've only read a couple dozen of them in the books, then it stands to reason there are hundreds, if not thousands of prophecies we haven't seen.

A person (Moiraine) can be familiar with hundreds of prophecies contained within, and still be confused about which ones are relevant. Which ones are lies (Hmm, what name did they refer to a certain forsaken in the show again? Father of lies?) Unsure about anything as it's full of contradictory prophecies.

 

And.. just like the bible, people often think it says something that it never did because that's what happens when rumor becomes gospel.

 

Jesus, go back and read the damn thread from the beginning.

You're arguing with your imagination.

[DojoToad]

18 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Go watch it. It won't kill ya.

True. But it would be a waste of time. 

[SinisterDeath]

3 hours ago, DojoToad said:

True. But it would be a waste of time. 

*Looks around*

What is all of this if not a waste of time? ? 

[DojoToad]

1 hour ago, SinisterDeath said:

*Looks around*

What is all of this if not a waste of time? ? 

We all choose how we waste our time.  This is much more entertaining than the show. ?

[nsmallw]

On 5/17/2022 at 10:11 AM, WhiteVeils said:

The original argument was, in my understanding, that it is unrealistic that Moiraine be wrong about thinking Rand could defeat the Dark One early at the Eye of the World because she knows the Prophecies of the Dragon and the Stone of Tear and all that, and has never mentioned them.  And it they can't change the Callendor being in Tear without it being unrealistic because it's in the prophecies.  Same for 'Male+Female Dragons' in the prophecies, etc.

 

It was pointed out that, for the show, we do not yet know how much the Aes Sedai know about the prophecies or what the prophecies actually contain.   All we know is that the Karethon cycle exists as a book, and it has a picture of a Dragon in it.

 

This book could be common or it could be rare in the TV Version.  It could be well known, even to someone like Rand, or it could be very obscure. It could contain versions of the Prophecies of the Dragon that match what we know from the books, or the prophecies could be changed for the show.  The Karethon cycle could be a book of prophecies about the Dragon or a fairy tale for all we know.

 

It was also argued that if the prophecies were changed for the show, then the book should be called something else.  But fans (well some of us) appreciate the fan service.

 

Basically, it's the internet. People starting fights for the sake of starting fights.

 

These are the basic differences we know between the book at the show on this subject:

1) In the Show, much information about the Dark One, including about the Dark One's prison and the Eye of the World, was purged from the Tower Libraries by Darkfriends (Episode ?

2) In the Show, Moiraine is certain from Prophecies only /when/ the Dragon was reborn, not where or anything else about them, including whether or not they are male or female.  We do not know if this is because the prophecies (other than Gitara's foretelling) is vague on this, or Moiraine is acting with an abundance of caution in her interpretation of the prophecy, or if there are prophecies other than the ones Moiraine is familiar with.

3) In the Show, common villagers from The Two Rivers don't really know what the Dragon is. They know there's a Dark One, and Moiraine tells them that one of them is the Dragon, who can defeat the Dark One or destroy the world, but that's really all they know.  We do not know if they are familiar with the Stone of Tear, Callendor, the Kareathon Cycle, or anything like that.  And we don't need to know...it's better for us as the audience to learn as they learn more so the show will share that with us.

4) There is a copy of the Kareathon Cycle in the Light's Blessing in in Tar Valon with a picture of a dragon in it.  How common this book is, whether it is in other inns, how it got there, or what it contains, we don't know.

 

I don't think we can make any conclusions about what we don't know yet...the story had to cram a lot of information and not every piece of information needs to be provided all at once. Only pieces relevant to the story need to be provided at all, and by story, I mean the one they're telling in the show.  It will be simpler than in the books, and they'll change stuff.

 

I hope at some point in the tv show they have a flashback to where Gitara spoke the prophecy in front of Moiraine/Siuan . That would be very cool. 

[Nik]

I'm reminded of the beginning of Shadow Rising when Moiraine is convinced that Rand must lead the Tairen spears to war against Illian, when in reality that prophecy is about the Aiel. 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Nik

[SinisterDeath]

19 hours ago, Andra said:

Jesus, go back and read the damn thread from the beginning.

You're arguing with your imagination.

Watch it.

 

[Andra]

17 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Watch it.

 

Sorry, no offense intended.

It just gets frustrating when people argue against things that were never said.  Or question points that have been part of a discussion since it started.

[SinisterDeath]

2 hours ago, Andra said:

Sorry, no offense intended.

It just gets frustrating when people argue against things that were never said.  Or question points that have been part of a discussion since it started.

I literally responded to your comment about it being common in an inn, and addressed it in several ways.

[Pukel-man]

On 5/8/2022 at 7:45 PM, Andra said:

Which, as I said above, is odd.

 

The People of the Dragon are part of the prophesied fall of the Stone of Tear.  Not Falme.

If this were a TV version of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, this would be a legit concern. But it's not. It's Rafe Judkins Wheel of Time, which is a different story. Pointing out all the inconsistencies between the show and book is going to be an unending chore.

 

The only thing to fuss about is whether the show makes sense within itself, and there's plenty enough to fuss about there.