Has Rings of Power proven that Fantasy Adaptations are really hard?

[SinisterDeath]

1 minute ago, DojoToad said:

So as far as book lore goes, I still lean toward homogenous in the Two Rivers with most folks being some shade of a darker complexion - because Rand stands out.

And yet, not a single description in the book ever mentioned everyone was racially homogenous.

RJ always talked about homogenous cultures.
All the women in Ebou Dar wore daggers.
The women in Emonds field wore braids and wool.

[DojoToad]

1 minute ago, SinisterDeath said:

And yet, not a single description in the book ever mentioned everyone was racially homogenous.

No, it does not.  But didn't say they weren't either.

 

[SinisterDeath]

1 minute ago, DojoToad said:

No, it does not.  But didn't say they weren't either.

Not saying isn't proof of saying.

That's like saying "RJ never said Rand wipes his ass" as proof that Rand doesn't wipe his ass.

[DojoToad]

10 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Not saying isn't proof of saying.

That's like saying "RJ never said Rand wipes his ass" as proof that Rand doesn't wipe his ass.

Right.  Neither a diverse nor homogenous population can be proven.

 

I read the tea leaves to lean homogenous.  Doesn't have to agree with you or the show - and that is fine.  If someone else wants to believe in much greater diversity, I can see that is valid as well.  In the absence of a preponderance of evidence we can all have our own 'truth'.

[SinisterDeath]

11 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

Right.  Neither a diverse nor homogenous population can be proven.

 

I read the tea leaves to lean homogenous.  Doesn't have to agree with you or the show - and that is fine.  If someone else wants to believe in much greater diversity, I can see that is valid as well.  In the absence of a preponderance of evidence we can all have our own 'truth'.

That's generally valid, but it's worth remembering that the absence of evidence isn't the the evidence of absence. 

RJ was generally clever in leaving out a lot of details pertaining to skin color/race/ethnicity, while being detailed in other ways.

We have examples of random diversity that doesn't make sense in our world. Like one of Elayne's ancestors looked like they belonged on a Seafolk ship.

Perrin has curly dark hair.
Matrim as far as I know has straight hair. 
Egwene both has darker skin than Rand, and is described as pale.

The little evidence we have, doesn't disprove that Emond's field has people with varying skin tones and hair colors. (Mainly dark hairs and dark eyes)

But we don't have any evidence that proves that everyone in Emond's field has the same skin and hair.

But they certainly have the same fashion.

[Guire]

1 hour ago, SinisterDeath said:

Baerlon is where all the iron and silver ore comes pouring out of the misty mountains and gets smelted, before being sent straight to Caemlyn. Hence the presence of the queens guard along the main road, and why any type of bandit is most likely found along that road.

From Baerlon, it's only 50-60 miles from Emmonds Field.

 

You know what Taren Ferry is known for? Foreigners, and embracing "outsiders cultures".
Apparently so much so, that no girls from Taren Ferry were found to be channelers, compared to the sheer number found in Emond's Field, Deven Ride, or Watch Hill. 
 

Given the history of the region as a shining beacon of civilization before it's collapse 2,284 years ago, the survivors fled the region and may have taken upwards of a hundred years before returning to resettle it after the Trolloc Wars ended. The various wars that happened in the free years during Artur Hawkwings reign...

 

There's plenty of opportunity for the region to have started with a very diverse population, and with just enough migration of people in and out of the region over the years before quieting down over the last 200, that when mixed with a bit of classism and people clustering in areas, It's entirely plausible that there's pocket populations of ethnicity through out the two rivers, and that the actual towns look far more diverse than the loose scattered population covering the two rivers region, all while maintaining the strength of the "old blood" without getting diluted like the Taren Ferry's did.

Trollocs, Fades, Flying Cars, Ruined Skyscrapers, but damn, I guess having a village with people of mix ethnicity is just too crazy and far fetched for people to maintain their suspension of belief. 

Possible yes.  Probable no.  In show world I guess every culture is going to be quite racially diverse so an easy visual indicator of lots of cultural diversity will be gone.  World already feels small in show.  So sea folk, Aiel, borderlanders , Domani just all completly racially diverse.  So it will be just like modern China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, Guatamala, Ethiopia.  Hotbeds of racial diversity.

[SinisterDeath]

48 minutes ago, Guire said:

Possible yes.  Probable no.  In show world I guess every culture is going to be quite racially diverse so an easy visual indicator of lots of cultural diversity will be gone

Clothing and Jewelry as an indicator of culture doesn't work for you, only skin color? 

[Guire]

11 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Clothing and Jewelry as an indicator of culture doesn't work for you, only skin color? 

Clothing and jewelry can be a great indicator if it is consistent.  White cloaks and Tinkers were dinstinctive through costuming.  But both groups should be racially diverse because of recruitment.  Seanchan looked different in limited viewing.  Everyone else iN 2 rivers, tar valon, borderlands seemed similar.  

 

My main gripe is I found show very underwhelming. The creators seemed to place  higher importance on checking boxes of inclusivity and equality than creating deeply crafted, thoughtful world with characters I cared to follow.  I always pictured Randland as big and diverse and exciting.  Show version seems small and generic and perfectly balanced in the most Disney aweful way.

[WhiteVeils]

This is a very gross conversation at this point, and I'd request it stop, maybe?

[swollymammoth]

On 1/20/2023 at 7:51 AM, SinisterDeath said:

I've said it before, but it's entirely plausible that we could get Rand's "Climax in Falme" by episode 4 or as late as episode 6, leaving episodes 5-8 positioning everyone to converge upon Tear by the finale. 

This is definitely an interesting idea, and I could see it working. It does seem a little linear and Rafe & co. seem to be leaning more toward synthesizing the books rather than adapting the plot linearly, but it could definitely happen and it could work. 

 

However, I will be shocked if the presentation of either of these events proves satisfying, given Rafe's previous history handling climaxes and characters. I never could have imagined that he'd have the gall to give Rand's Tarwin Gap moment to Egwene and a bunch of randos. I'm almost looking forward to seeing what dumb BS ends up undercutting Rand in the sky and Rand seizing Callandor. At this point, literally nothing would surprise me. 

[Mailman]

8 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Key thing your missing here is inbreeding. It literally states those people married their first cousins, Aunts, and nephews.

As far as we know, Neither Mat, Perrin, Egwene, and Nynaeve are first cousins. They may not even be 2nd or 3rd.

So either
A) People don't keep track of their ancestry beyond first cousins
B) People try to marry outside their farmsted & village.

Did that study indicate how many families live in that region?
My guess is that there is a massive population difference between the two... and given inbreeding, the people of the two rivers don't exhibit half the symptoms you'd expect after a few generations of it.

 

As for "homogony" Look at Atlanta.

It's been 3 generations since mixed marriages were legal. By this logic, why are there still white people in Atlanta?

I'm not really missing it. Mat Perrin and Egwene who are from established families within the village are almost certainly related to each other. I do not know to what extent but they would be related.

 

I'm operating on book knowledge for some of this but it was rare for people to even leave the village and it was rare as when remarked on Tam that they had outland spouses.

 

It did not say how many people lived in the region but it could not have been massively smaller than Emond Field. 

 

There is a small example in the book with the Coplins and the Congars with them saying it was hard to tell where one family started and the other ended.

 

The Atlanta example makes no sense the current population is nearly 500,000 and was around 250,000 3 generations ago. The idea that homogony would occur in a population that size in 3 generations is silly. You also have a massive racial discrimination impact in this example as just removing the barrier to marriage is not going to mean massive numbers of inter-racial marriages occurring straight away.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Mailman

[Mailman]

8 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

And yet, not a single description in the book ever mentioned everyone was racially homogenous.

RJ always talked about homogenous cultures.
All the women in Ebou Dar wore daggers.
The women in Emonds field wore braids and wool.

I'm not sure thats correct.

 

Aiel are pale skinned and very tall.

Sea Folk have a dark complexion.

Saldeans have bold noses and upturned almond eyes (think they might have been described as short).

There is mention of different racial communities within the Seachan Empire at various points.

 

There may be more but saying no mention is incorrect.

 

 

[Mailman]

6 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

This is a very gross conversation at this point, and I'd request it stop, maybe?

I'm not sure what you think is gross. 

The conversation has been fairly amicable I think, and no one has said anything remotely disgusting.

[Samt]

55 minutes ago, Mailman said:

I'm not sure thats correct.

 

Aiel are pale skinned and very tall.

Sea Folk have a dark complexion.

Saldeans have bold noses and upturned almond eyes (think they might have been described as short).

There is mention of different racial communities within the Seachan Empire at various points.

 

There may be more but saying no mention is incorrect.

 

 

Cairhienen are short and pasty white.

[Samt]

I'm frankly not sure if it's really worth wading into this one, but against what is perhaps my better judgment, I will comment.  

 

As given in the examples above by @Mailmanand myself, there are actually lots of examples in the books of how the different nations of Randland had certain physical features that were particular to their specific group including skin color, hair and eye color, facial shapes, general build and stature, and perhaps other traits.  This is in addition to the fact that individual nations have their own dress, grooming, and hygiene styles.  

Obviously these are large nations that interact and intermingle, so it's not reasonable to use the word homogenous.  But it's also clear that people from different places generally look different and that there is a component of that which is genetic.  In regards to Emond's Field in particular, we do know that most of the people there have dark eyes and hair.  This is distinct enough that Rand is consistently recognized as not fitting into the Two Rivers, both by the people who live there and by outsiders who are familiar with the Two Rivers.  Maybe the red hair is enough to tell this story in the show, but it's not a stretch to say this was probably more than hair color in the book (at a minimum, it was also height and eye color).  

 

Personally, I mostly don't think it's a big deal that the casting doesn't really match the physical descriptions of the characters.  However, there are three points on the subject that I do think are important.  

 

First, one of the themes of the books is that the people in individual nations should overcome their prejudice to work together and defeat the DO.  Of course, this doesn't require that the prejudice between nations have a racial component.  People have proven that they are perfectly capable of being prejudiced against people without the people looking different.  However, this message might feel more specific to the real world if the prejudice and the problems it causes in Randland were shown to have a racial component.  

Second, diverse casting is not some type of brilliant artistic expression.  Cast the best people for the parts.  Daniel Henney, for instance, does a great job as Lan and it's frankly not a big deal that he doesn't have the striking blue eyes that Lan is noted for in the book.  But the show doesn't get some sort of bonus points for casting someone that doesn't match the book description.  

Third, people who read the book and pictured the characters as they were described are not some sort of closet racists.  It wasn't some sort of preconceived unconscious bias that caused people to not picture Sophie Okonedo when Siuan Sanche is described as having fair skin, blue eyes, and shoulder length brown hair.  Just acknowledge that they didn't cast someone that looks like the book description and frankly that isn't a big deal.  Don't try to gaslight people into believing that they are racists for picturing these characters as white.  

[swollymammoth]

27 minutes ago, Samt said:

As given in the examples above by @Mailmanand myself, there are actually lots of examples in the books of how the different nations of Randland had certain physical features that were particular to their specific group including skin color, hair and eye color, facial shapes, general build and stature, and perhaps other traits.  This is in addition to the fact that individual nations have their own dress, grooming, and hygiene styles.  

Samt, I admire your tenacity haha But unfortunately this is not a debate where reason prevails. Some people just buy the showrunners' excuse that the world must have been a perfectly diverse utopia during the Age of Legends where the populations of all areas of the world were perfectly divided along to-the-percentage accurate racially representative lines, so it totally makes sense that members of tiny communities which have been genetically isolated for thousands of years would share the same demographics as a bustling metropolis like Tar Valon (or Los Angeles). You can't help these people. 

 

Can't wait for this show's version of Numenor in RoP where the diversity went out the window as soon as a group of people got together to complain about outsiders taking their jobs, at which point everyone on screen magically became white. 

[Samt]

28 minutes ago, swollymammoth said:

Samt, I admire your tenacity haha But unfortunately this is not a debate where reason prevails. Some people just buy the showrunners' excuse that the world must have been a perfectly diverse utopia during the Age of Legends where the populations of all areas of the world were perfectly divided along to-the-percentage accurate racially representative lines, so it totally makes sense that members of tiny communities which have been genetically isolated for thousands of years would share the same demographics as a bustling metropolis like Tar Valon (or Los Angeles). You can't help these people. 

 

Can't wait for this show's version of Numenor in RoP where the diversity went out the window as soon as a group of people got together to complain about outsiders taking their jobs, at which point everyone on screen magically became white. 

As I said, I'm on the fence as to whether or not this whole conversation is worth it.  What is most toxic to me is that simultaneously people are praising the creators of the show for being so visionary by casting minorities in these key roles, but also claiming that this isn't a change from the book.  Both positions are absurd on their own, but the fact that we get both at the same time just breaks into Orwellian territory.  

[Elder_Haman]

32 minutes ago, swollymammoth said:

Some people just buy the showrunners' excuse that the world must have been a perfectly diverse utopia during the Age of Legends where the populations of all areas of the world were perfectly divided along to-the-percentage accurate racially representative lines, so it totally makes sense that members of tiny communities which have been genetically isolated for thousands of years would share the same demographics as a bustling metropolis like Tar Valon (or Los Angeles). You can't help these people.

And some people feel that this is just a tired argument that adds nothing to the discussion, but succeeds in polarizing the community every time it is brought up. It's been discussed ad nauseum since the first casting announcements. There's no more ground to cover. The dead horse remains dead. So can we please stop hacking at the corpse?

[SinisterDeath]

19 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

And some people feel that this is just a tired argument that adds nothing to the discussion, but succeeds in polarizing the community every time it is brought up. It's been discussed ad nauseum since the first casting announcements. There's no more ground to cover. The dead horse remains dead. So can we please stop hacking at the corpse?

[Samt]

25 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

And some people feel that this is just a tired argument that adds nothing to the discussion, but succeeds in polarizing the community every time it is brought up. It's been discussed ad nauseum since the first casting announcements. There's no more ground to cover. The dead horse remains dead. So can we please stop hacking at the corpse?

For sure.  It's not the weird creative decisions that are dividing the community.  It's only divisive when people recognize them as weird.  

[Elder_Haman]

58 minutes ago, Samt said:

For sure.  It's not the weird creative decisions that are dividing the community.  It's only divisive when people recognize them as weird.  

Again, you are over-generalizing my argument. I did not say that this discussion alone was dividing the community or make any value judgment about the particulars of the debate. 

 

I very specifically said that this argument (to wit, the ethnic and racial homogeneity or lack thereof in the show) has been had repeatedly on this forum. Each time it comes up, it devolves into shouting and name-calling and typically the mods end up having to get involved. So it's best if we just move on.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Elder_Haman

[swollymammoth]

59 minutes ago, Samt said:

For sure.  It's not the weird creative decisions that are dividing the community.  It's only divisive when people recognize them as weird.

It's a shame you're so new to the forum. Right now, there's really nothing to talk about. There were entire threads dedicated to the casting decisions in the early days of the show, so people who have been here longer are definitely tired of this argument. Even I grow weary, and I was as enthusiastic as you once upon a time. 

 

Just wait until season 2 starts. That's when things will get fun again. It'll be like season 1 where you had people trying to defend the fact that Nyneave had to tell Lan how to track his own Aes Sedai, or that Rand defeating the Trollocs at Tarwin's Gap was given to Egwene and some randos, or that Rand channeling lightning in the book was turned into him knocking down a door and outrunning a round woman, or that somehow Nynaeve suffers the exact visual symptoms of a "burnt out" Aes Sedai but then turns out to just... not be that. 

 

Knowing Rafe, season 2 will be another treasure trove of stupid decisions accompanied by his loyal Rafesworn tripping over themselves like characters in a vaudville comedy act to defend him. For now, ElderHaman is right. All this stuff has been said before. Let's leave the casting controversy behind..... 

 

At least until Viola Davis is cast as Olver. 

[DojoToad]

9 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

I very specifically said that this argument (to wit, the ethnic and racial homogeneity or lack thereof in the show) has been had repeatedly on this forum. Each time it comes up, it devolves into shouting and name-calling and typically the mods end up having to get involved. So it's best if we just move on.

We have many topics that are discussed repeatedly on this forum.

 

New people join and have thoughts, someone that was previously involved has a new perspective, whatever...  No harm in repeating the same conversations.  If you're not interested in having the same conversation again, move on and it will die organically.

 

But if someone feels the need to prove her/his/their point with another person on the 'wrong' side of the argument then they have no one to blame but themselves that we're beating a dead horse again.

[Elder_Haman]

14 minutes ago, DojoToad said:

New people join and have thoughts, someone that was previously involved has a new perspective, whatever...  No harm in repeating the same conversations.  If you're not interested in having the same conversation again, move on and it will die organically.

Fair enough. But then again, you didn't have to moderate the last iteration of these discussions. 

[Samt]

As I said at the very beginning of addressing casting diversity, I was lukewarm on getting involved.  But it's not as if I registered and started a conversation about this.  Longtime members had already started this conversation about racial diversity in Randland over 24 hours before I decided to weigh in.  I made a post that was genuine and I believe well thought out and reasoned.  Within a few hours the message is that this conversation is already over and I shouldn't be beating a dead horse.  

To which I'll repeat: I didn't bring it up.  If you don't want to have the conversation, don't have it. But if you only don't want to have it after I weigh in, that seems a little prejudiced.