A better take

[king of nowhere]

8 hours ago, Mailman said:

The original start with LTT and Ishmael should have been used. Sets up the world and the stakes beautifully.

i remember a thread years ago on that point, and it was highly controversial.

while some fans loved that, others - myself included - found themselves utterly confused by the name drop and lore drop, and had no idea what happened.

now, after reading the whole book saga three or four times, i can appreciate the original start and all its subtle calls to the wide lore. but as a new reader? not at all.

for every spectator that would have been hooked, there would have been another that would stop the view and review-bomb the show for being utterly uncomprehensible

Edited July 5 by king of nowhere

[Elder_Haman]

9 hours ago, Mailman said:

The original start with LTT and Ishmael should have been used. Sets up the world and the stakes beautifully.

I do love the prologue. But it would have been a terrible opener for the show. Gitara’s prophecy should have been an easy choice. 

[Mailman]

8 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

i remember a thread years ago on that point, and it was highly controversial.

while some fans loved that, others - myself included - found themselves utterly confused by the name drop and lore drop, and had no idea what happened.

now, after reading the whole book saga three or four times, i can appreciate the original start and all its subtle calls to the wide lore. but as a new reader? not at all.

for every spectator that would have been hooked, there would have been another that would stop the view and review-bomb the show for being utterly uncomprehensible

 

7 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

I do love the prologue. But it would have been a terrible opener for the show. Gitara’s prophecy should have been an easy choice. 

Regardless of tying it into future lore it is a great self-contained start and is not in any way confusing. Things are built upon later in the series but I cannot see any confusion inducing things. You are never going to understand the entire world in the opening half dozen pages of a book.

 

You introduce the champion of the light and the dark, and Shai'tan

You introduce the madness and the taint.

You show a broken AoL.

 

You then conclude that with a cutdown of the 2 prophecies that follow that reinforce that the dragon will come again.

 

Starting with the Gitara prophecy could work but I feel that it does not give you anywhere near the world building the other option does.

 

[king of nowhere]

10 hours ago, Mailman said:

Regardless of tying it into future lore it is a great self-contained start and is not in any way confusing.

Things are built upon later in the series but I cannot see any confusion inducing things.

 

 

how is that self-contained and not confusing? the prologue drops several dozen names out of context, and you have no way of knowing which will be relevant.

 

Quote

 

You are never going to understand the entire world in the opening half dozen pages of a book.

 

You introduce the champion of the light and the dark, and Shai'tan

You introduce the madness and the taint.

You show a broken AoL.

 

 

 

the first time i read the prologue, i didn't got anything about any of that. my reaction was something like...

so, there was this crazy guy... who clearly had been someone important, before going crazy... and there is this other guy... from the way he acts, he appears to be a villain... and here they are dropping a bunch of names that i have no idea what they are... tain? ilyena? shai'tan? betrayer of hope? dragon? ring of tamyrlin? nine rods of dominion? what is any of that?

and now it seems it was the crazy guy who killed his wife? so he commits suicide with some kind of magic?
who is this guy? who is the villain guy? and how is any of that relevant to a first chapter that starts thousands of years later?

 

perhaps the prologue introduced those concept you say, but they were mixed with so many other stuff, it didn't stick with me.

maybe now i'd be more experienced and i would be able to pick what's important in that prologue aside from what's fluff. but at the time i first read, i could not.

[Mailman]

57 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

 

how is that self-contained and not confusing? the prologue drops several dozen names out of context, and you have no way of knowing which will be relevant.

 

 

the first time i read the prologue, i didn't got anything about any of that. my reaction was something like...

so, there was this crazy guy... who clearly had been someone important, before going crazy... and there is this other guy... from the way he acts, he appears to be a villain... and here they are dropping a bunch of names that i have no idea what they are... tain? ilyena? shai'tan? betrayer of hope? dragon? ring of tamyrlin? nine rods of dominion? what is any of that?

and now it seems it was the crazy guy who killed his wife? so he commits suicide with some kind of magic?
who is this guy? who is the villain guy? and how is any of that relevant to a first chapter that starts thousands of years later?

 

perhaps the prologue introduced those concept you say, but they were mixed with so many other stuff, it didn't stick with me.

maybe now i'd be more experienced and i would be able to pick what's important in that prologue aside from what's fluff. but at the time i first read, i could not.

It may not have struck with you but to me it is all fairly obvious.

 

You dont need to know what the titles are to know that they are important

Ilyena is shown in the prologue to be the golden haired woman that he loves and is dead and we find out by his hand.

Betrayer of Hope we find out is Ishmael and that title is clearly a dark one.

It was clear to me that LTT killed his wife because of the madness and he realises this after Ishmael heals him.

Yes they use magical powers.

The prophecies immediately post provide a clue as to how this will impact the story moving forward and again the entire book is not going to be laid bare in the first 7 pages.

 

Nothing about any of that seems confusing to me. 

[expat]

I think the actual opening scene was a good choice.  It introduced the fundamental tension of the series, male channelers go mad and the world is deathly afraid of them.  Will Rand go mad before he saves the world?

[Elder_Haman]

26 minutes ago, expat said:

I think the actual opening scene was a good choice.  It introduced the fundamental tension of the series, male channelers go mad and the world is deathly afraid of them.  Will Rand go mad before he saves the world?

Yeah. But that wasn’t the opening scene. The opening scene was Moiraine getting dressed. It was … uninspiring. 

[Skipp]

28 minutes ago, expat said:

I think the actual opening scene was a good choice.  It introduced the fundamental tension of the series, male channelers go mad and the world is deathly afraid of them.  Will Rand go mad before he saves the world?

I really liked the concept of this scene.  I think the execution of it wasn't the greatest but all of my non book reading friends loved the twist of the "friend" disappearing.

[Samt]

I think a lot of long time fans don’t remember reading the prologue without context.  I recently started listening to the audio books with some family members who have very little context and they frankly had no idea what the prologue was about.  
 

Of course, it works as a sort of teaser that creates some mystery, but I think that is actually harder to pull off in a TV show.  It’s hard to remember the prologue the first time because there is no reference point to ground it in your memory.

[king of nowhere]

On 7/6/2024 at 7:50 PM, Samt said:

Of course, it works as a sort of teaser that creates some mystery, but I think that is actually harder to pull off in a TV show.

that's an important point.

by now, i know that if there is a prologue to a long piece of epic fantasy set thousands of years in the past, my reaction should be "heh, don't worry about any of that. it will make sense later".

on a tv show, with a public not accustomed to reading fantasy, it's less likely to work.

incidentally, all my memories of the first part of the first book are bad ones. it starts with a huge wall of name-drops that left me confused. then the action moves to a bunch of rural characters doing nothing interesting whatsoever for several chapters. i don't think i liked any of the main characters at first? and i remember spending the first few hundred pages feeling like it was a lord of the ring ripoff.

i'm not sure what made me want to continue reading until I got to the good parts.

i said it many times: the whole beginning of the wheel of time is rather weak. changing it is generally good, though not all the changes were well executed.

[Mailman]

59 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

that's an important point.

by now, i know that if there is a prologue to a long piece of epic fantasy set thousands of years in the past, my reaction should be "heh, don't worry about any of that. it will make sense later".

on a tv show, with a public not accustomed to reading fantasy, it's less likely to work.

incidentally, all my memories of the first part of the first book are bad ones. it starts with a huge wall of name-drops that left me confused. then the action moves to a bunch of rural characters doing nothing interesting whatsoever for several chapters. i don't think i liked any of the main characters at first? and i remember spending the first few hundred pages feeling like it was a lord of the ring ripoff.

i'm not sure what made me want to continue reading until I got to the good parts.

i said it many times: the whole beginning of the wheel of time is rather weak. changing it is generally good, though not all the changes were well executed.

Totally not my take on it at all.

 

The attack on the farm is like 60 pages into the main part of the book and from there you move into the incredibly tense trip carrying Taim to EF after the farm attack. Followed again by what I thought was a fairly intense sequence as they raced out of the two rivers.

 

I also think of the book as being without the Ravens chapter as I only ever had the original version for 30 odd years and never new it existed till well after I had read the final book.

 

Warmed to Matt and Rand quickly.

 

Moved into action far quicker that lord of the rings I felt, and from what I remember since it's a long time since I read LOTR, thought that LOTR was very heavy on name dropping and such early doors and very lacking in action.

Edited July 8 by Mailman

[Elder_Haman]

58 minutes ago, Mailman said:

Totally not my take on it at all.

 

The attack on the farm is like 60 pages into the main part of the book and from there you move into the incredibly tense trip carrying Taim to EF after the farm attack. Followed again by what I thought was a fairly intense sequence as they raced out of the two rivers.

 

I also think of the book as being without the Ravens chapter as I only ever had the original version for 30 odd years and never new it existed till well after I had read the final book.

 

Warmed to Matt and Rand quickly.

 

Moved into action far quicker that lord of the rings I felt, and from what I remember since it's a long time since I read LOTR, thought that LOTR was very heavy on name dropping and such early doors and very lacking in action.

I’m somewhere in between. The prologue was confusing to me. I had no idea what was going on. 
 

From there it took off. As a Tolkien fan, it was obviously derivative, but felt comfortable. The journey from Edmond’s Field to Fal Dara was tense and interesting and had me riveted. I liked the characters (especially Perrin). 
 

And then came the end. Which once again, made no sense. In fact, I was so baffled by the end that if I hadn’t already bought the Great Hunt, I probably wouldn’t have continued reading. Fortunately, I had books 2 and 3 already and kept reading. 

[king of nowhere]

10 hours ago, Mailman said:

Totally not my take on it at all.

 

The attack on the farm is like 60 pages into the main part of the book and from there you move into the incredibly tense trip carrying Taim to EF after the farm attack. Followed again by what I thought was a fairly intense sequence as they raced out of the two rivers.

 

I also think of the book as being without the Ravens chapter as I only ever had the original version for 30 odd years and never new it existed till well after I had read the final book.

 

Warmed to Matt and Rand quickly.

 

Moved into action far quicker that lord of the rings I felt, and from what I remember since it's a long time since I read LOTR, thought that LOTR was very heavy on name dropping and such early doors and very lacking in action.

you are right, those were good scenes. probably what kept me hooked until i got to the later books.

i liked perrin, once we got to know him better when he's separated. i liked tam and thom, and was sad to see them put on a bus.

i had a strong dislike of early mat. pranksters like him tend to hurt people. as a teacher, i had to deal with several such people, and they're all like "but it was a joke, i didn't think people could actually get hurt". back when i first read wot I wasn't a teacher yet, but i still had the same dislike.
i didn't feel strongly for rand either way, but he was always very antagonistic to moiraine, even when she wasn't doing anything wrong. i mean, there's this guy in your dreams, he could be the dark one, and you don't ask the aes sedai for help? i understand mistrust, but come on, it's like having an armed robber in the house and not calling the police because you heard they are all fascists. not to mention believing his lies and holding them against moiraine.

in short, i have little patience for fools, and that includes most of the main cast. i liked them better later.

[king of nowhere]

thinking some more about it, though, i came to the conclusion that the original prologue may have worked better.

a modified version of the original prologue.

see, if the problem is that the prologue was confusing because of all those obscure names and references and flowery speech, just remove all of that and have ishy be a bit more direct, give the viewers a bit of an easier time picking what's important from what's meant to create an ominous atmosphere.

 

of course, given that the show tried too hard to create a dark atmosphere, it may just have focused on the wrong stuff. I'm now picturing a black palace with walls painted black, with black burn marks, with dried blood (blood turns black after a while), which a black-clad ishy, because we must use lots of black to show we're serious. to show ltt is the champion of the light, they would put him in just a grey robe. dark grey, we don't want people to think this is a children show!

really, i've seen some trailers that actually made my laugh by how much they abused the dark palette.