The Show Has Been Cancelled

[Sabio]

By then Skynet will have taken over.  

[fearbrog]

16 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

It was obviously in jest

How it's in jest if he literally turned straight characters gay?

[JyP]

On 5/24/2025 at 9:55 PM, Elder_Haman said:

I have half a mind to try to design a TTRPG…

We should compare notes. 

As another TTRPG fan - I am interested also 😀

[LTL]

@expat those questions don't give any sort of serious blocker to a good AI adaptation. Even now people can give an AI a fairly short prompt and it creates a long answer with a load of extra stuff that it thinks belongs there. There's no reason an AI couldn't come up with its best guess at everything you are asking, just like a human can. Of course, just like a human (i.e. Rafe), not everyone will agree with all the answers.

 

The creative process would be long and intertwined with human(s) though. One day, far in the future, you may be able to tell the AI to create the show that will appeal to the largest number of people with almost no human input, or create 10 versions of the show that between them will appeal to almost everyone, and people can be directed to the right one for them. Maybe your AI assistant will even know you so well you get a personalised version.

 

Before that though, people will be prompting the AI and then saying "make Rand a bit taller" "this scene needs to be more emotional, I want tears in his eyes but he's holding them back from coming out, and a subtle look of anguish on his face. He's trying to hold it together and just about managing" "let's focus more on Logain's journey, I'm thinking we could show his capture, even though it's not described in the books." There would be a ton of back and forth and it would still be a very large project to get something the creator is happy with, but it would be orders of magnitude less expensive than it currently is, and the end result should be better because the creator has such fine control over everything. The final version could have more soul than anything created by humans alone and the only way to describe it as soulless would be if you were stubbornly deciding to do so rather than making an objective judgement on the final content. There would also be no issues such as not being quite happy with how a scene fits into the final version but it being too expensive to go back and film it again etc.

 

Characters could either be based on real people/actors who have given their permission for their likeness to be used (and been compensated for that of course) or could be created entirely from the book description combined with the AI and creator's imagination. First, this whole process will be done by the same people who are currently making movies/shows but eventually it will be democratised and people will make their own versions on something like youtube. The people creating the most popular versions will have channels like the big youtube stars of today. The people who own the rights will take a cut of the ad revenue from people who make shows out of their IP. When it becomes possible, why wouldn't they take the opportunity to monetise the IP in this way rather than spend loads to make 1 version themselves which will appeal to fewer people than the combined efforts of everyone who wants to do it.

 

It always amazes me when people say that some new technology is never going to happen because of legal or moral issues. A few years ago many people insisted that driverless cars wouldn't happen in the next 50 years because of the legal complexities of liability in accidents and "what will the car do if it has a choice between hitting an old lady or a young child" etc. We already have driverless taxis in multiple cities around the world. Name one technology in history that people wanted to use for something that would create profit but which has been delayed 10 years or more because of legal or moral issues. Right now we are discussing all this on the internet, which allows the most horrendous things to happen. Child abuse, encouragement to commit suicide, terrorist material, disinformation, cyber attacks... the list goes on. Yet we have the internet. Social media has most of the worst of those issues with rich and famous CEOs, yet they continue to run their businesses and make a ton of money. The idea that it will be technically possible to create superior tv shows and movies for orders of magnitude less cost, yet it won't happen because people are worried they might get sued is incredibly naive. If one company is worried about that, someone else will do it instead.  

 

 

[SilentRoamer]

On 5/28/2025 at 4:04 PM, Kaleb said:

Both Moiraine's initial voiceover with "will he be reborn as a boy or a girl" and Liandrin's "when you touch it you make it filthy" mini-rant should have been a giant flag to bookreaders that the show was foregrounding the disqualifying ignorance of the Aes Sedai due to millennia of Black Ajah subversion, which is a major theme and plot point of the books. That so many fans of the books instead take Moiraine's ignorant belief and the words of a Darkfriend at face value and take offense at those lines is very disappointing to me.

Yeeeeaaaahhhh.... disregarding everything that Aes Sedai know - that the male half is tainted, that Saidin is touched by the Dark One as a result of the failure of the hundred companions

Did Moiraine just ignore and disregard Gitara Morosos foretelling? The Karetheon Cycle? Not to mention all of the other gendered foretelling. You may not be a fan of gendered features within story, it appears Rafe wasn't, unfortunately that's a core component of the Wheel of Time. 

We are annoyed at an attempt to insert modernity into the story, especially considering it runs entirely at odds with what every single book reader understands about Wheel of Time Canon...

Do you honestly, believe that the EF5 all being in the running for the title of the Dragon adds anything positive to the story? Or does it just piss people off that know it is only inserted for modern political reasons.

It's funny, people in the thread getting pissed off about people bringing politics into the discussion, whilst completely disregarding the fact that Rafe was the one who pushed modernity and his own politics into the show - if he didn't then the prophecies wouldn't have been completely disregarded and ignored. 

Moiraine is very clear in the books who she is looking for. I feel like you are clutching at straws to provide some reasoning to something pretty stupid. 

The most annoying thing is - I think Wheel of Time is a very progressive story, there are different cultures and views on sex and morals and values, matriarchies, polyamory and all sorts of unique peoples, the show could have explored all of this without self inserting. 

I am disappointed though, I think the show was getting better and was hoping for some sort of conclusion. 

[king of nowhere]

18 hours ago, Guire said:

My complaint with races of cast was always make it consistent to isolated populations in a shriking world.  Making all of EF light skinned black people with English accents would have 100 percent worked for me and kept almost all of same cast.  But the insistence on cosmopolitanism because anything else was goofy and made world building harder.  Appearance is a great short hand in visual medium to give cultural cues.  This adaptation made everything hard for ideological reasons.  Many people like me were labeled every ist possible.  which is fine because I am by many peoples definition.

I have also argued for this.

The thinly veiled racist comments were others

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, LTL said:

 

 

The creative process would be long and intertwined with human(s) though. One day, far in the future, you may be able to tell the AI to create the show that will appeal to the largest number of people with almost no human input, or create 10 versions of the show that between them will appeal to almost everyone, and people can be directed to the right one for them. Maybe your AI assistant will even know you so well you get a personalised version.

 

 

I'm now picturing

- the wot white suprematist version, where every protagonists is whiter than a bedsheet and every darkfriend is portrayed as black or asian.

- the woke version, where rand is a transsexual, min is a man and aviendha is nonbinary.

- the blacksploitation version, where rand is black and lanfear never betrays him because she's too taken with his enormous "sausage"

- the p*rn version, 8 season of rand with his mistresses

- the sad*mas* version, that focuses on all the spanking, whipping and caning in excruciating detail

- the extended version, adapting all the books in extreme faithfulness for the hardcore fans, with a run time of two or three months nonstop

- the darker and edgier version, with lots of extra blood and more children caught in the blast radius

 

Make your own version

 

[Elder_Haman]

3 hours ago, fearbrog said:

How it's in jest if he literally turned straight characters gay?

Which character?

[SinisterDeath]

4 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

the sad*mas* version, that focuses on all the spanking, whipping and caning in excruciating detail

That already exists, it's called "The Sword of Truth"

[Samt]

3 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Which character?

Aviendha and Elayne, for instance.  

[Ralph]

3 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Which character?

I think they mean Lan

[Elder_Haman]

3 minutes ago, Samt said:

Aviendha and Elayne, for instance.  

We don’t know that he turned them gay. I’m fairly certain he intended them to be bi. 
 

And, before screaming at me that they weren’t bi in the books either, I think there is a good faith interpretation of the books that sees their relationship as having romantic undertones. You can dislike it, but you can find textual support for all of the LGB relationships in the show. 

[Ralph]

17 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

We don’t know that he turned them gay. I’m fairly certain he intended them to be bi. 
 

And, before screaming at me that they weren’t bi in the books either, I think there is a good faith interpretation of the books that sees their relationship as having romantic undertones. You can dislike it, but you can find textual support for all of the LGB relationships in the show. 

 

I would add to this that many lesbian people I know were offended by RJ only ever (at least openly) featuring lesbian relationships as if school playdates. And no gays at all. 

 

How many people were as upset when BS introduced the first gay character? Was very clearly an adjustment to something he felt was lacking in the earlier books. 

 

It isn't politicising or propaganda just to adjust something to what is accepted as normal in our society. 

 

 

[Elder_Haman]

5 hours ago, SilentRoamer said:

You may not be a fan of gendered features within story, it appears Rafe wasn't, unfortunately that's a core component of the Wheel of Time. 

This is a leap in logic that many are making. The “de-gendering” of the source didn’t actually happen. The Dragon was never going to be female. The offending lines of script were included to serve the silly “Who is the Dragon” plot line. 
 

Rafe didn’t change anything. But in order to support that silly theme, he introduced controversy where none was necessary. It smacks of Story by Committee to me. 

[WoTwasThat]

5 hours ago, SilentRoamer said:

Yeeeeaaaahhhh.... disregarding everything that Aes Sedai know - that the male half is tainted, that Saidin is touched by the Dark One as a result of the failure of the hundred companions

Did Moiraine just ignore and disregard Gitara Morosos foretelling? The Karetheon Cycle? Not to mention all of the other gendered foretelling. You may not be a fan of gendered features within story, it appears Rafe wasn't, unfortunately that's a core component of the Wheel of Time. 

We are annoyed at an attempt to insert modernity into the story, especially considering it runs entirely at odds with what every single book reader understands about Wheel of Time Canon...

Do you honestly, believe that the EF5 all being in the running for the title of the Dragon adds anything positive to the story? Or does it just piss people off that know it is only inserted for modern political reasons.

It's funny, people in the thread getting pissed off about people bringing politics into the discussion, whilst completely disregarding the fact that Rafe was the one who pushed modernity and his own politics into the show - if he didn't then the prophecies wouldn't have been completely disregarded and ignored. 

Moiraine is very clear in the books who she is looking for. I feel like you are clutching at straws to provide some reasoning to something pretty stupid. 

The most annoying thing is - I think Wheel of Time is a very progressive story, there are different cultures and views on sex and morals and values, matriarchies, polyamory and all sorts of unique peoples, the show could have explored all of this without self inserting.

 

Your analysis is SPOT ON. There were so many problems with this show, but for me the biggest by far was the blatant departure from canon re gender of the Dragon. This undermined the entire mythology that made the books so great. The BACKBONE of WOT is reincarnation and a gendered magic system where one gender has been tainted. The Dragon will be reborn as a man doomed to madness because of a taint his actions contributed to, and he will be both destroyer and savior as a result. It's an AWESOME (and I think original?) concept that Rafe basically wiped his butt with to be more "inclusive."

 

Rafe's defenders on this point basically fall into two camps. There are the true believers who, like Rafe, loved the "inclusion and diversity" of this decision, story be damned. And then there are others who are trying valiantly to muster some canonically-consistent explanation because they're just happy a WOT show, even this one, was actually made. I'm never gonna agree with the first camp. But for the second, I wish they'd just be honest and admit "yeah, that was a really dumb decision."

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, WoTwasThat said:

I wish they'd just be honest and admit "yeah, that was a really dumb decision."

I guess I'd ask you to be specific about which "decision" you're talking about.

If you're talking about the decision to base the entirety of Season One around a contrived 'which one of these characters is the Dragon' plot, then yes. That was a really poor decision and ultimately is what doomed the show.

 

2 minutes ago, WoTwasThat said:

Rafe basically wiped his butt with to be more "inclusive."

If you're saying that Rafe - and Rafe alone - chose to structure the plot that way for political purposes, you're gonna have to bring me more evidence. As I said above, the structure of season one feels like it was written by committee.

[Ralph]

I don't get why allowing the possibility that the Dragon could be female would be considered more inclusive? 

 

However you describe saidar and saidin you create a difference between men and women, whether you call it the same power just somehow tainted when used by men, so that isn't of significance in regards to inclusivity as far as I can see

 

And regarding the Dragon, if it can be a woman (which I don't know if they ever meant to be a real possibility or just a distortion in the received prophecies - clear in later episodes that prophecies said the Dragon will break the world again, but that is a whole separate discussion) that does not make women more powerful or even equal, it just increases the impact of discovering it isn't. 

 

What does it have to do with inclusivity? 

Edited May 30 by Ralph

[Kaleb]

15 minutes ago, WoTwasThat said:

 

Your analysis is SPOT ON. There were so many problems with this show, but for me the biggest by far was the blatant departure from canon re gender of the Dragon.

As I and others have said before, they did NOT depart from canon on this. The Dragon is still a man, there is still a taint on saidin.  Believing they changed canon is the mistake, falling for an obvious misdirection that book readers should be chuckling at rather than tearing their hair out.

 

They changed the story in that the modern Aes Sedai are even MORE ignorant than they are in the books, and they appear to have done it in service of making the Dragon mystery include Egwene and Nynaeve. Whether that was Rafe's idea or whether it came from the 10,000 notes he reported from Amazon, nobody outside the production appears to know definitively at this point.

Edited May 30 by Kaleb

[Ralph]

6 minutes ago, Kaleb said:

As I and others have said before, they did NOT depart from canon on this. The Dragon is still a man, there is still a taint on saidin.  Believing they changed canon is the mistake, falling for an obvious misdirection that book readers should be chuckling at rather than tearing their hair out.

 

They changed the story in that the modern Aes Sedai are even MORE ignorant than they are in the books, and they appear to have done it in service of making the Dragon mystery include Egwene and Nynaeve. Whether that was Rafe's idea or whether it came from the 10,000 notes he reported from Amazon, nobody outside the production appears to know definitively at this point.

Can we start a campaign to have the notes released? And to see original scripts for s1e7&8?

[Kaleb]

7 minutes ago, Ralph said:

Can we start a campaign to have the notes released? And to see original scripts for s1e7&8?

It would settle a bunch of these debates that's for sure. We could all agree whose fault these changes were, and know what the end of S1 and most of S2 would have been like. If they don't get the show picked up elsewhere, then I would absolutely love to see those.

 

ETA: And even if all these controversial changes are solely Rafe's fault, I'm still a fan of him for actually doing all the work to make a WOT show happen. I've seen no indication that anybody else was ever going to do it, and it seems a big chunk of the fandom had already settled into daydreaming about an anime or AI production by the time he came along. Nobody's obligated to like the show he made, but I think he did all fans of WOT a great service by getting these three seasons completed and bringing the story to millions of new fans.

Edited May 30 by Kaleb

[Samt]

2 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

You can dislike it, but you can find textual support for all of the LGB relationships in the show. 

Not really.  The incest angle is just creepy people being creepy.  

Edited May 30 by Samt

[Ralph]

2 minutes ago, Kaleb said:

It would settle a bunch of these debates that's for sure. We could all agree whose fault these changes were, and know what the end of S1 and most of S2 would have been like. If they don't get the show picked up elsewhere, then I would absolutely love to see those.

Hope it comes quicker than rj's notes... 

[Elder_Haman]

3 minutes ago, Samt said:

Not really.  The incest angle is just creepy people being creepy.  

Incest angle? I legitimately have no idea what you're talking about.

[WoTwasThat]

I have read WOT start to finish twice (well, the second time I skimmed books 7-11). I consider books 1-6 to be some of the best fantasy ever written. I was PUMPED when this show was greenlit... 7 or 8 years ago?? In short, I am a FAN... and I'm glad the show is DEAD. I'm not going to say something I don't believe like "I'm sorry for the people who liked it." Because I'm really not. The people cheering Rafe's decisions to wildly depart from the source material (granted, that's not everyone who supported the show) are part of the problem, in my opinion.

 

I don't doubt that Rafe is also a fan of WOT. But he clearly loved the world of WOT a lot more than the central character and story of WOT. The beating heart of WOT is Rand's hero's journey through a world upended by the taint on Saidin resulting in a society largely run by women. Rafe appears to have loved this world and its many strong female characters a lot more than the central character.  

 

There were so many other problems...

 

A more faithful adaptation of EotW would have made for a barn burner of a first season. Instead, Rafe totally omitted, distorted, or best sped through FIVE of the book's SIX major set pieces. He gave EF and Winternight the spotlight it deserved, but he then totally skipped the Prologue and Caemlyn. He sped through Shadar Logoth and the Ways. He totally distorted the Eye. There is no excuse for these decisions. Not Covid. Not runtime. Rafe had EIGHT HOURS - nearly as long as the entire Lord of the Rings theatrical movies - to TELL ONE BOOK. And instead he wasted so much of it just making stuff up.

 

Then there was the look of the show. It looked CHEAP. Poorly produced. I cannot say why this is the case. Maybe the show was just badly lit, badly shot, I do not know, but it looked like one of those young adult shows found on the CW. GOT, by contrast, was movie quality.

 

The one silver lining of this show is that, now that it has been cancelled, maybe it will prompt more people to read the books to learn the REAL story.

[Ralph]

Separate but connected point - to me the extra weight given to women being in control (making EF more like Far Madding in that way) was obviously to show how women being superior is just as bad as a patriarchy, and needs to be balanced out when the world resets via the Dragon

 

Eg Red Ajah clearly being seen as bad overall

 

I didn't get how people saw this as ultra feminism - wanting women to rule the roost