Where will S2 take the WoT

[DreadLord31]

17 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

I did want to point out three differences that exist in the show and that are introduced in Episode 1 but that you didn't mention, though:

 

Yes, much appreciated - I'm sure there are a number of things I'm missing, these are ones that just "pop-out" to me. 

 

And I appreciate the discussion/disagreement and refining of thinking about what counts as "difference" or "change" when you're changing mediums. 

[DigificWriter]

7 minutes ago, DreadLord31 said:

in the show it's implied that Perrin has romantic feelings for Egwene that she doesn't return, that neither of them act upon

 

I don't believe that the show does in fact imply this, but if you were inclined to view things differently, then yes, that would be a more accurate description of the situation.

 

I do have a correction to make on my own previous post, though, because Emond's Field is still apparently named as such in the TV show universe even though all dialogue about it in the first season uses the Two Rivers designator.

[Skipp]

45 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

 

3) The Aes Sedai rejecting a female Channeler (the Wisdom who raised and trained Nynaeve) instead of training her

 

I think this is shown to be a mistruth in the series.  It is shown that Siuan came from that same type of background as the old Wisdom and she was was allowed to join the tower.  I believe this will turn out to be a case where we will find out that the old Wisdom was rejected for a different reason and told this story to Nynaeve to possibly save herself from embarrassment.

[DigificWriter]

22 minutes ago, Skipp said:

 

I think this is shown to be a mistruth in the series.  It is shown that Siuan came from that same type of background as the old Wisdom and she was was allowed to join the tower.  I believe this will turn out to be a case where we will find out that the old Wisdom was rejected for a different reason and told this story to Nynaeve to possibly save herself from embarrassment.

 

The Aes Sedai accepting Nynaeve doesn't mean that they also didn't reject the Wisdom who raised and trained her.

 

The narrative point of the show having made this change, though, is the fact that the rejection happened moreso than whatever the motivation behind it may or may not have been.

[WhiteVeils]

2 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

@WhiteVeils There's a strong implication in Episode 1 that Laila had recently suffered a miscarriage and had intentionally isolated herself by refusing to participate in any village activities in general, not specifically or exclusively Egwene's Women's Circle initiation.

 

@DreadLord31

I think it's equally possible that she did not attend the ceremony due to a miscarriage that she was hiding.  That said, I don't want to take the shot of her belly as an indicator of miscarriage without anything else, let alone a strong one. The camera was focusing on the love-language gesture of Laila holding Perrin's pinkie, which it does a couple of other times in the episode, it's just that Perrin's pinkie was at her waist/belly. They could have staged it that way to show where Perrin will strike her later in the episode and the similarity to 'pregnancy' shots could just be coincidental.  I won't rule it out...just could go either way.

 

[WhiteVeils]

2 hours ago, DreadLord31 said:

Ok, so another - fair point - it would be much more accurate to say: in the show it's implied that Perrin has romantic feelings for Egwene that she doesn't return, that neither of them act upon. 

 

I mean ... Again, it's defining terms - in the books, there was A LOT of pages devoted to ... What I would have called a "love-triangle" between Perrin/Berelain/Faile. But by @WhiteVeils more accurate and precise definition - even in the books that's not technically a "love-triangle". 

It's not a love triangle in the books, you're right. It's a man happily with his girlfriend being harassed by another woman.  The fact that Perrin is less  assertive about his answer than he should maybe be and everything is happening now rather than in the past makes it closer to a love triangle,but it isn't one 

 

The love triangle language I think was adopted early by show-haters looking for any possible excuse to hate on the show, though I will admit that Nynaeve's (wrong) accusation is essentially her accusing them of a love triangle that doesn't exist.

[DreadLord31]

Episode 3 - ch, ch, ch, changes:

• Nynaeve trolloc escape - tracking Lan to knife-point
• No Bayle Domon
• No Elyas
• Thom is much, much different - darker, steals from Matt and doesn't give it back, somber 'performance', less colorful jacket, ok with stealing from dead Aielman
• Dead Aiel in a cage
• Darkfriend bartender that hits on Rand, tries to play herself off like Egwene, tries to keep him locked in a room until a Fade she called gets there (I don't know how much I can comment on this being a 'change' since there was a TON of traveling in the EotW and Matt/Thom/Rand do encounter Darkfriends/Fades in a bunch of towns that try to kill them, and there were pretty sweet scenes in the book that are semi-similar to what the show presents). The dialogue/speech she gives of "we want the Dragon to the break the wheel" (is not a dark-friend motivation I remember from EotW - that comes much, much later in the books). 
• Logain in a cage "seeing" him captured before the Camelyn scenes of the books
• Camelyn is cut - the destination is Tar Valon

There's certainly more I'm missing - if you're doing a re-watch please do comment. These are ones that just really stuck out to me! 

[DreadLord31]

Ok, so - I finished a whole S1 re-watch. And I'll go back through again and keep going with episode by episode changes, because they get more dramatic/drastic later on. 

But I want to put down some thoughts now that I've finished a rewatch and have tried to be a lot more neutral/think about why things were the way they were & be understanding about the complexity of "changes/differences" due to the medium change, Covid, and Barney Harris leaving.

 

Soooo ... upon finishing this rewatch ... I actually don't mind, because I kind of "see where they are going" with most of the changes. And I think it's a pretty decent show/adaptation, right up until the very end of episode 8.

 

Because ... I would put most of the changes in these categories (some of the changes would fit into multiple of these categories):

 

#1. Changes that are necessary to speed up the plot & character development because you have SOOO much less time to tell the story. Examples would be: fridging Perrin's wife. If you want to massively fast track Perrin's hundreds of pages about violence/peace and reticence to "fall for" Faile - this is a way to do it. Having the characters be a bit older and have more mature (even sexual) relationships (gives more sense/buy in right away with the Rand/Egwene, Lan/Nynaeve, Suian/Moiraine story lines).

 

#2. Changes that are necessary because of production cost//you can't have awesome actors/actresses that are introduced but don't do anything. You can't build all of your sets/cities in the first season. For example: Cutting (or saving for later) certain less important characters: Bayle Domon, Verin, Elayne, Morgase, ect... Cutting certain cities (or saving for later) like: Camelyn, Baerlon, ect... 

 

#3. Changes that are necessary because of the medium change. For example: EotW is pretty much all from Rand's perspective. Perrin's character is mostly internal thoughts. Certain "offline" scenes from the book are cool to see. For TV each episode and each season needs to have it's own hook, it's own theme, it's own resolutions - books don't need to do that. 

 

#4. Changes that are made to "capture" non-readers/new fans/more of the "market" (these are the ones that most annoy me and I think will have long-term ramifications because it doesn't really work to adapt fantasy series doing this). For example, playing up the "Who is the Dragon?" question and having it plausibly be any of the EF5. Having multiple scenes where the audience "thinks" a main character died (they did this A LOT - and I think it's a bad choice - because now the audience, both non-book and book readers don't trust you as writers) -- they literally make you think that Lan, Moiraine, Nynaeve, Rand, and Loial all were going to die in S1 (the Logain busting the ax shards scene, Moiraine knife to back of the head in a dream sequence, Rand stabbing himself in dream sequence, Nynaeve's skull being burned out, Loial being knifed). 

 

#5. Changes that were made due to Covid restrictions. For example, I don't think that many of the Ep8 scenes were suppose to go that way - I think they had to re-film and had to be separate, and they couldn't get all the people together they were suppose to at the same time (I think I heard this as an excuse in an interview but I could be wrong). 

 

#6. Changes that were made due to Barney Harris leaving the show part way through S1. I think this one is the biggest bummer for the writers (it's totally out of their hands and really screwed up where they were going and it has implications/screwed up some of their planned pay-offs; honestly, I think this is one of the reasons for a bunch of things falling flat and it totally wasn't their fault). Sooo - I don't think they originally wrote Ep6 ending with Matt just inexplicably staying behind and the others calling his name and him having no part in the last two episodes. I don't think they were going to have him stay behind because "their is darkness in him (that isn't in the others?)". I don't think they were going to have Perrin and Loial in the throne room with Padan Fain, it was gonna be Matt - and Matt was (probably) then going to be tied to the Horn. I think we lost lines about Matt from Min and from others. I honestly think (now I do anyway) that what the writers originally wrote was probably REALLY good and made a ton of sense. And Barney leaving made it so they had to scramble and re-write and make the best of a crappy situation. Even the dialogue about Matt leaving and Rand defending him - almost for sure wouldn't be there - IF Matt had stayed. And it's a bummer - because Matt was one of the best characters in the show. And show Matt was changed - was darker, was a thief, a gambler, had more character motivation, wasn't just a stupid kid doing stupid pranks like in the EotW - so Matt was better, sooner, than he was in the books. Book Matt was actually pretty annoying and stupid until like book 4. 

 

Anyways. I'm now more excited for S2 - because I think the writers were actually doing a good job in S1 and fans underestimate how much Barney leaving (in particular) screwed things up (and that's totally not their fault). 

 

So I agree at points, but also disagree with the analysis in the this video - but find it interesting.

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by DreadLord31

[Elder_Haman]

@DreadLord31 That's solid analysis, right there.

I absolutely agree with you about the "fake" deaths. You can establish healing by having grievous, but not fatal injury and create and relieve tension without resorting to the fake death tactic, which saps the tension out of battle scenes.

[king of nowhere]

Not sure if it was mentioned already, but apparently in the show channelers can't feel each other. Book moiraine immediately knew the relative strengths of egwene and nynaeve; in the show, it's unclear

[DreadLord31]

@Elder_Haman

 

I did a re-watch trying to put myself in the shoes of the writers, and I walked away with a lot of sympathy for them for their task. 

 

I mean, if you're told by your Amazon Overlords that: nope, we won't give you more episodes or more time; you get 8 episodes and 8 seasons to adapt WoT. That's a major challenge. 

 

Then throw in: oh, and you need to excite not just the fandom but we need a bunch of non-readers to be interested too. That's a major challenge. 

 

Then throw in: oh, and there's a global pandemic. That's a major challenge. 

 

Then throw in: ok, we've written a pretty good adaption, we know where we're going; we've made a lot of changes but they'll make sense later. But then... "Um. You need to rewrite the last two episodes because a main character just up and left. 

 

I mean...they already had an impossible task. And the changes they made, even the first time I saw it, I was tracking with them - didn't love it but I understood. But then, that ending... That broke me. 

But I think it was just making the best of a really bad situation. 

[DaddyFinn]

4 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Not sure if it was mentioned already, but apparently in the show channelers can't feel each other. Book moiraine immediately knew the relative strengths of egwene and nynaeve; in the show, it's unclear

Seems like they can only feel active channeling. IIRC Sarah Nakamura has said there's a reason for that and it's a WAFO

[DreadLord31]

So here are the changes that I think I really like (debate could be had if they qualify as 'changes' ... That's been established). 

 

• Aging up the EF5. We needed them to be more mature and have more character and more mature relationships sooner. There's not enough time to take them from stupid, naive kids to world-changers. 
• Dark Thom. I think it's unarguable that TvThom is way different. But I honestly like TvThom better (and I really liked book Thom) because it's more believable that he's dangerous and could take a Fade and would defend the boys. His line "there's nothing more dangerous than a man who knows the past." That right there is 🔥. Superb writing. 
• Changing the ending at the eye to just Ishy, Rand, and Moiraine & cutting the Green Man. EotW didn't make a ton of sense at the end. 
• Having S1 be largely Moiraine's perspective. Rosamund Pike was brilliant. And Moiraine is your Gandalf-like character that gets the journey started. 
• Cutting the Aes Sedai agelessness and masking their emotions // even having Lan be stoic but showing that he does have deep emotions that are buried beneath duty. We need those for the medium change. 
• Giving Logain more backstory and screen time earlier. We need good foils sooner. (I think...we'll get Elaida here in S2). 
• Boiling some Aes Sedai politicking down to some more centralized characters (like Moiraine, Liandrin, Alanna, Suian). There's too many characters and too much maneuvering in the books. Got to be condensed but introduced early. 
• Uping the threat level of Whitecloaks (though I also think, so far, this was a missed opportunity). Having a faction that opposes the WT and is a threat, are religious fanatics... Good. But also (and I'm hoping they do this in S2), humanize them sooner (before Galad) - help us to really understand and even identify with them. 
• Cutting Camelyn for S1; with the amount of episodes given and single season budget I think it's a good decision to save the Camelyn characters and location for later. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by DreadLord31

[DreadLord31]

Changes I don't like: 

• Though I think I can see the reasons why, I don't like having Perrin be married and kill his wife. Yes, it fast-tracks a lot of character development and internal conflict between violence/way-of-the-leaf & reticence to fall for Faile. Yes, it's dramatic and eye catching. But no. Didn't get the intended "pay-off" in THIS season... I think most fans and non-fans alike give it the thumbs down. 
• Making it so that any of the EF5 could be the dragon. Already made my thoughts on this plain. It's not a compelling question/mystery since there's well known and established source material. 
• Having the girls have their "moments" that then amounted to having none of the boys be interesting. Nynaeve mass heals characters we think are either dead or close to it (Lan's throat is cut and is bleeding out and his eyes glass over!). Nynaeve and Egwene on a mass scale blast the Trolloc horde; while the men, ride their horses out to the wall, shoot a few bolts, and are overwhelmed. For one of the best generals in the world, Algamar is a huge disappointment. Egwene heals Nynaeve who we think is dead. Moiraine in Ep1 kicks Trolloc butt. None of the boys have a "yes!" moment at any point. [I think this was in part due to Perrin being re-written in as Matt, but even without that, they weren't going to have the Dragon blast the Trollocs and save Fal Dara, they wanted another big moment for the women = bad change because now your three "main characters" arent as interesting.] 
• The fake out deaths. 
• The beefed up relational "drama" (whatever you want to call it or how you want to analysis it - the Perrin/Egwene/Rand thing in the show) - made it too CW feeling. Teen drama vibe. If you aged up the characters so it doesn't have that vibe, don't put that kind of thing in then.

Almost all of the other changes, I would say - they just have to do that because of the medium change and the amount of time they have and budget and Matt leaving - the things I mentioned above. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by DreadLord31

[DreadLord31]

My advice for S3 if there's any WoTTv writers that troll around to see what fandom thinks; and since S2 is already filmed (i.e already written and not gonna change). 

 

My advice would be: 

• Humanize the villains in a way that Jordan never really did. For example, when we get Galad use him right away to help humanize the Whitecloaks/make us love him and understand why he wants to be a Whitecloak ... I.E not all the Whitecloaks are Valda. I would talk to some devout Catholics and really get in their heads. You have to become one of the people who would burn a witch at the stake - and believe you're doing the right thing. The compelling questions are: how do two people/groups who see right and wrong so differently co-exist? And what do you do with someone you're convinced is going down the wrong path? And how do you interact with those you think are evil (if you could be wrong)? Ooor - get us to love Elaida or Lanfear or a Seanchan - in similar ways. By wrestling with compelling questions & becoming them. Game of Thrones was compelling, because, like TvThom, Martin knows history. Some times the "good guys" die and the "bad guys" win. People aren't all good or all bad, we are a mix - and some people are worse and some are better. The "red wedding" was ripped off from actual history. Compelling stories/art, mirror real life. So read history - understand the Inquisition for the sake of the Whitecloaks. Understand "manifest destiny" for the sake of the Seanchan. Ect...
• Cut the fake-deaths and relational drama that isn't (really) source material ... There's plenty of legit relational drama to explore that is compelling and source material. For example, Min/Avi/Elayne - Rand. A legit love-square. Try to make a Western audience understand and cheer for female initiated polygamy. That's a challenge! Egwene/Galad - you can explore the above questions and humanize Galad and the Whitecloaks exploring this. You've already set up Perrin/Faile & Nynaeve/Lan - got to make those "count" while not spending much time. 
• Some of the world building pieces from S1 were brilliant (the Manetheran song, the Aes-Sedai politicking/inability to lie but still able to deceive) but some of it was sloppy and didn't need to be - tighten it up, it's got to be consistently good: as the video talked about - have Tigraine kick serious butt veiled, but then she gets stabbed because she's trying to put her veil back on rather than fight. It's easy to do and is compelling. Then the audience has questions about Aiel & gets a huge feel for their culture immediately. They'd rather die than kill without their veil, why??? We NEED that kind of intentionality and subtly in quick scenes to really "get" all these different cultures. So if S3 gives us more of Tear or more Game of Houses Cairhien or more Aiel Waste and the different clans...we need that kind of commitment to source material AND brilliance in writing. None of this "well we wanted to see her face so we changed it, crap". The magic system didn't make sense to people. People don't really get (at this point) how dreaming works. The wolves don't make sense. The horn just showed up out of nowhere. Ogier don't make sense - why did Loial go with? Ect... And you don't have to do 15 min of Steppin to establish world-building elements either. Even the last scene - a Seanchan wave to kill one girl on a beach?? ok?? Why? That's sloppy writing. You could have easily had the same scene but with a whole row of "enemy" ships be destroyed by the wave. And an "enemy" Aes Sedai collared and screaming. End Season. We're terrified of the Seanchan invasion & their a huge threat to Aes Sedai. Like, seriously, the writing needs to step-it-up, challenges or no. 
• We got to get consistently good scenes. Despite my complaints above about the Ep7 cold open. In my opinion, it's the best scene in the show. Simply put, because it's good. It reminded me of "Troy" where they took "Hector and Achilles fought like the gods" from the source material and made it into a scene where the audience goes ... "That might be the best fight scene I've ever seen in a movie." We need to have like 8 (one an episode) scenes like that in S3. Because if this baby gets cancelled before Dumai's Wells - I'm gonna be ... Not surprised, but really really bummed! Because your other "big scenes" like the Fal Dara battle, like Logain's gentling, like Moiraine using the power in Ep1 - frankly, looked hokey. They weren't laughably bad, but they weren't good either. Ep7 cold open despite the veil, was the kind of quality we need from CGI from stunts/choreography, from acting, from everybody (I'm not actually sure that the writers have anything to do with this aspect of it). 

Edited June 9, 2023 by DreadLord31

[DigificWriter]

Even if people from WoT's writing or production staff were somehow lurking, there's absolutely no chance in **** that they'd take adaptational advice from anyone posting here .

 

Not only are they professional writers whereas the posters here are more than likely not, taking unsolicited advice or suggestions would open up a legal can of worms that no experienced writer or production professional would go anywhere near.

[Mailman]

2 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

Even if people from WoT's writing or production staff were somehow lurking, there's absolutely no chance in **** that they'd take adaptational advice from anyone posting here .

 

Not only are they professional writers whereas the posters here are more than likely not, taking unsolicited advice or suggestions would open up a legal can of worms that no experienced writer or production professional would go anywhere near.

The suggestions mentioned above would be basically impossible to prosecute.

[DreadLord31]

On 6/9/2023 at 5:28 PM, DigificWriter said:

Even if people from WoT's writing or production staff were somehow lurking, there's absolutely no chance in **** that they'd take adaptational advice from anyone posting here .

 

Not only are they professional writers whereas the posters here are more than likely not, taking unsolicited advice or suggestions would open up a legal can of worms that no experienced writer or production professional would go anywhere near.

 

It would be impossible to prosecute, because unless you took exact lines that someone suggested - or if someone on here wrote a script and said, "Hey, use this instead! It's better than what you're doing! (which it probably wouldn't be better, because it takes a unique skill set to write for TV - even professional fantasy writers like Sanderson wouldn't necessarily be good at writing for WoTTv)" ... it would be impossible to prove you were taking it from a forum like this. But also, I think that it would be prudent of the writers to be - trolling - different fan sites - and getting feedback to what fandom thinks about what you're doing. It's good advice for any profession, that you should have some sort of feedback loop, so that you can measure if what you are doing is effective and make adjustments. 

 

Now, I agree with you, it's not likely (since they get paid to write and probably have a degree in it and tons of experience) that they'll give much credence to my suggestions. But taking advice like: cut the fake-out deaths and CW-style relational drama. They could notice that... not only the WoT fandom, but new-viewers are not liking this - and take that advice (and they wouldn't get sued - they would get applause)!

 

Now - we've already been told by Sarah N. to "Gird our loins!" because in S2 there are even more massive changes. I'm just hoping that, they are changes that are more like the Dark Thom change than the "any of EF5 could be the Dragon?!" or "hey, this would be cool... let's introduce the Seanchan by having them send a massive wave at one little girl on the beach" (which is actually not like the Seanchan of the books at all - because they don't harm those who don't resist their rule). And my point above about the Ep7 cold open is: even a hard-core fan like me will forgive ALOT - if it's simply good Tv. So make it really good Tv and good writing, and I'll roll with the changes. I mean, the line, "There's nothing more dangerous than a man who knows the past!" that's fire. We need a lot more of that and less of "don't talk to her like that!" "I'm sick of you two fighting over Egwene like she's a prize to be won!" (barrrf). GOOD changes pllleease, please, please!

Edited June 12, 2023 by DreadLord31