Lan, Moraine and the bond in the tv show

[Elder_Haman]

I guess we agree on the issue and have a different degree of tolerance for the trimming. 
 

I think it’s fair to say would have been better if we’d seen it. I just don’t find it as off putting as others do. 

[SinisterDeath]

When it comes to "Mystery who done its", something I as a viewer absolutely detest, is when they reveal the guy who did it out of left field, and it's someone you've never seen before.

It's like doing a Detective Holmes novel where you're on this journey of "Is it this guy, or that guy" and then in the end he's like "Yeah, it's actually THIS GUY who I've never mentioned until NOW!".

[Elder_Haman]

I feel like we have enough pieces to see what the puzzle is, even if there are holes. 
 

Lan clearly didn’t think that Moiraine’s behavior made sense. He’d just gone through it with Stepin. He heard a long lecture on the subject with Adeleas and Verin. 
 

What was missing was some sort of conversation about how she could possibly be stilled when the bond was still present and maybe them speculating about whether it would be possible to tie off a shield. 

[Vartija]

I just couldn't get interested in this plot so I'm mainly just happy it's over now.

 

The conclusion of it was kind of funny though. Lan's breathless excitement explaining his great discovery and him advising barely-able-to-channel Rand how to cut the knot. Lan's humble apology for doing Moiraine's work for her and Moiraine just smiling there as if she couldn't have helped fix this great mystery. Just a weird little scene to conclude a convoluted side plot.

 

At least it gave us Research Assistant Lan, so that's good. 

Edited October 2, 2023 by Vartija

[VooDooNut]

1 hour ago, Vartija said:

I just couldn't get interested in this plot so I'm mainly just happy it's over now.

 

The conclusion of it was kind of funny though. Lan's breathless excitement explaining his great discovery and him advising barely-able-to-channel Rand how to cut the knot. Lan's humble apology for doing Moiraine's work for her and Moiraine just smiling there as if she couldn't have helped fix this great mystery. Just a weird little scene to conclude a convoluted side plot.

 

At least it gave us Research Assistant Lan, so that's good. 

Weird for all the reasons you stated. Things don't improve when Siuan enters, but the visuals of Rand cutting the knot are so coooooool. The madness in his weave looks nuts.

[Scarloc99]

13 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

He didn’t? Stuff wasn’t adding up so he talked to Verin about it. 

 

Why shouldn’t the problem have existed? (Don’t say it wasn’t in the books, that’s not a real answer). And how was it sloppy? 

I would have liked to have seen that a bit more succinctly, another sign that Verin has more knowledge of things then she should, and not just because she is a brown and the clever ways she can bypass her own oaths to get that out there. 

[Scarloc99]

11 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Yep. And we've covered the whole girl-tower-escape thing to death. lol

They cut corners, and implied a conspiracy for those looking to thinking about it. I'm fine with that.

 

This though is just a harder pill to swallow.

A woman can no more teach a man to channel than a fish can teach a dog to climb a tree.

 

Yet, we had Lan figured out some random obscure knowledge regarding the Forsaken, completely off screen, when we've mostly ever seen him brooding, mediating, or standing around shirtless.

Involving Verin is only conjecture. We don't know that she had anything to do with it. As written, it could 100% be Lan that figured it out with no help from anyone, and he got his eureka moment after talking to Logain. No Logain would have been horrible... And not just because less Logain is bad for the show! He rocks every scene he's in!

I dunno, I feel like if any scenes hit the cutting room floor, like Lan in a library, reading a book, or even any interaction with a brown Ajah, that the editors did a lazy job in terms of continuity due to Amazon's BS adherence to "run time restrictions".

We may well find that Verin telling Lan about an old forsaken trick long lost was filmed, and then found it's way to the edit room floor because it either broke flow, or there where concerns the way it was done it tipped Verin's hand to much. or it may just not have fitted into the run time of the episode. Sometimes things can't make it into a show, and not showing it does not mean that the writers can't flashback to it later, maybe during a reveal montage. 

[Scarloc99]

12 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

When it comes to "Mystery who done its", something I as a viewer absolutely detest, is when they reveal the guy who did it out of left field, and it's someone you've never seen before.

It's like doing a Detective Holmes novel where you're on this journey of "Is it this guy, or that guy" and then in the end he's like "Yeah, it's actually THIS GUY who I've never mentioned until NOW!".

I agree this made me stop a second, I made the mental assumption that Verin was somehow involved, but with no proof on screen that is supposition and no one can confirm or deny it. However it didn't seem to bother my wife who enjoyed it all regardless, interested to know if other non book readers also didn't really care. 

[zacz1987]

All they really had to do is have Lan shoving a book into his saddlebag with the title clearly visible saying something like 'Lost weaves from the past age' or something. It could have even been in a much earlier episode and would not have taken up much time.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

I thought the idea was that there were always rumours about what the Forsaken could do or what was lost from the Age of Legends. So when Lan decided that Moiraine was not acting like a stilled woman (though does this have implications for later story lines?), he thought of a way that he could see if something was off (Logain), tested it, and later rationalised what he had found out. So the discovery was not driven by knowledge of channeling, but by the extensive talks that everyone had with him about stilled women, which I think came up in the series. Once, maybe more often. 

[nsmallw]

On 10/2/2023 at 4:46 PM, Elder_Haman said:

No. But does everything have to be spelled out? Or do you think audiences are capable of making reasonable inferences?

 

I'm not going to make a judgement on what people are capable of, that's a landmine I ain't stepping on LOL

 

But didn't the show say they'd do more showing than telling ?  I think they had two eps of Lan with Alanna et warders & Verin etc and not once did we see any inkling that Lan had a plan beyond perhaps planting the lanfear verse for them to find but no clip of him speaking to Verin about it.  They had the time to do it, forgo the Lan peeing scene, and you've got time for a short clip of him and Verin. 

[Gypsum]

I didn't mind Lan's detective work. My quibble, however, is with Logain. How is he able to see weaves? I didn't think gentled/stilled people could see weaves anymore, but I might not be remembering that rightly from the books. Can they?

[SinisterDeath]

5 minutes ago, Gypsum said:

I didn't mind Lan's detective work. My quibble, however, is with Logain. How is he able to see weaves? I didn't think gentled/stilled people could see weaves anymore, but I might not be remembering that rightly from the books. Can they?

Book lore no.
Show lore yes... sorta?

Show lore they've made changes like. You can't sense someone channeling unless you're channeling.

Logain has a talent that he can see men channeling even when he's not channeling, and possibly a talent to see weaves when he's not channeling. (That's independent of him being stilled?)  This replaced his talent to sense plot armor.

Miri (Young Seanchan Damane) has a talent that allows her to sense women who can channel even when they aren't channeling.

[Gypsum]

12 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Book lore no.
Show lore yes... sorta?

Show lore they've made changes like. You can't sense someone channeling unless you're channeling.

Logain has a talent that he can see men channeling even when he's not channeling, and possibly a talent to see weaves when he's not channeling. (That's independent of him being stilled?)  This replaced his talent to sense plot armor.

Miri (Young Seanchan Damane) has a talent that allows her to sense women who can channel even when they aren't channeling.

 

That's fair. So long as there's kinda in-universe logic to it, I'm happy.

 

I also wondered if Logain was the best person to teach Rand, given he can't show Rand any weaves. But I guess beggars can't be choosers, and he's better than nothing. Who else is going to teach him? Ishamael? It would be awesome if Asmodean shows his face and gets an arc. I liked him -- his character was starting to get interesting -- and was bummed when RJ summarily offed him without a whole lot of, well, anything. Barely a sentence in subsequent books. Poor guy. Maybe the writers can do better by him. One can live in hope, right?

Edited October 4, 2023 by Gypsum

[SinisterDeath]

7 minutes ago, Gypsum said:

I also wondered if Logain was the best person to teach Rand, given he can't show Rand any weaves.

TBF, Asmodean was castrated in what he could teach Rand. Must really suck if Rand's a visual learner and not a book learner...

 

9 minutes ago, Gypsum said:

It would be awesome if Asmodean shows his face and gets an arc. I liked him -- his character was starting to get interesting --

Who knows? It might still happen? Maybe in a different way this time?

Perhaps we'll see him in the Black Tower as Taimasmodean? lol

[Mirefox]

1 hour ago, SinisterDeath said:

Book lore no.
Show lore yes... sorta?

Show lore they've made changes like. You can't sense someone channeling unless you're channeling.

Logain has a talent that he can see men channeling even when he's not channeling, and possibly a talent to see weaves when he's not channeling. (That's independent of him being stilled?)  This replaced his talent to sense plot armor.

Miri (Young Seanchan Damane) has a talent that allows her to sense women who can channel even when they aren't channeling.

I remember years ago I was watching some commentary for Battlestar Galactica and one of the things Ronald Moore said right off that bat was that before writing, before filming, they basically created the “BSG Bible” as a reference and guide for all future writing. Ignoring the fact that this show has a long-established and very thorough Bible available in the form of the actual books it purports to be adapting, it has been very clear through 15 episodes that:

 

a) The writers aren’t consistent with their world building.

 

b) Don’t explain their world building adequately enough.

 

c) Play fast and loose with their world building and are willing to change it to fit the plot.

 

Any combination of these three things explains a lot about this show and “explains” their Logain sub-plot.

[SinisterDeath]

10 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

I remember years ago I was watching some commentary for Battlestar Galactica and one of the things Ronald Moore said right off that bat was that before writing, before filming, they basically created the “BSG Bible” as a reference and guide for all future writing. Ignoring the fact that this show has a long-established and very thorough Bible available in the form of the actual books it purports to be adapting, it has been very clear through 15 episodes that:

 

a) The writers aren’t consistent with their world building.

 

b) Don’t explain their world building adequately enough.

 

c) Play fast and loose with their world building and are willing to change it to fit the plot.

 

Any combination of these three things explains a lot about this show and “explains” their Logain sub-plot.

Perhaps the concessions the WGA strike won from studios, will allow more writers to work on projects like this, like they did... back in the day?

[Elder_Haman]

36 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

a) The writers aren’t consistent with their world building.

 

b) Don’t explain their world building adequately enough.

 

c) Play fast and loose with their world building and are willing to change it to fit the plot.

 

Can you give some examples? And perhaps contrast those examples with what our knowledge of Randland's "rules" were at the end of, let's say, Book 3?

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Not wanting to be in the Bookcloak camp, but I do have the feeling that for some things, like who can see weaves, or who can sense who can channel, the lore has been adapted to the script, instead of the script written around the lore. Like book Logain, saw Rand without needing to re-write who can see weaves.

 

And there was some quote on Twitter which read as though the writers room in general did not know the books, and Rafe and Sarah had to rush about putting out fires. That is maybe a bit extreme, but it does appear that some story lines were formulated without the lore specifically in mind, and that these story lines have had a disproportionate affect on the show lore.

[Elder_Haman]

16 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I do have the feeling that for some things, like who can see weaves, or who can sense who can channel, the lore has been adapted to the script, instead of the script written around the lore.

No doubt. But that's not the same thing as the worldbuilding being inconsistent or sloppy with it. So far as I can tell, there aren't any internal inconsistencies in the worldbuilding. 

[Guire]

On 10/2/2023 at 6:18 PM, VooDooNut said:

Weird for all the reasons you stated. Things don't improve when Siuan enters, but the visuals of Rand cutting the knot are so coooooool. The madness in his weave looks nuts.

Anyone else thibk the weaves in this still look like a dragon? Very cool if intentional.

[grayavatar]

Everything they did regarding Moiraines loss of power and the bond with Lan was unnecessary and serves to pad a story that does not need padding in a limited 8 episodes. A complete waste of time.