The Show Has Been Cancelled

[Elder_Haman]

1 minute ago, Loose Theremin said:

For that amount of money they could have done all of the WoT and done it properly.

Doubtful. 
I don’t believe WoT can be “done properly” - if by that you mean a completely faithful adaptation. 

[Loose Theremin]

2 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Doubtful. 
I don’t believe WoT can be “done properly” - if by that you mean a completely faithful adaptation. 

 

Wow ! That was a very quick reply ! Were you looking over my shoulder as I was writing that one out ?

 

EDIT - Addition

 

And I have read before where you have used this line and people have responded to you by saying something like this:

 

No of course when I say "done properly" I don't mean adapting every single page to the screen. I mean condensing the books by cutting out or reducing side stories and focusing on the important elements of the story. Staying faithful to the books and casting appropriate actors as they were written by Robert Jordan.

 

Now it may take time to get everything planned and the scripts and screenplays written but it's not rocket science. It has been done before and it can be done again. 

Edited September 29 by Loose Theremin

[Andra]

8 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

But you think twisting words is helpful in discussions? I fully clarified what I meant in that post, with clear arguments about what was objective and subjective. 

 

Nothing you have said in anyway contradicts what I wrote. 

 

That there were deviations from the source material is fact, as I clearly agreed. However this says nothing about the quality, necessity or how they affected someone's enjoyment of the series. These are subjective concepts, and yet many try to wriggle out of that by claiming deviations are objectively bad. They aren't. 

 

I don't see that preempting any discussion about the show is helpful. If the show was "objectively" too far from the source for you to enjoy it, that is a shame. But don't pretend that isn't a subjective opinion or that anyone that disagrees with you is objectively wrong. 

I didn't twist your words, I quoted them.  And the words I quoted clearly stated that whether the show deviated from the source material or not was a matter of subjective opinion, rather than something objectively identifiable. 

 

Your clarification didn't address the part I quoted.  It simply conceded that people have different opinions on whether this was successful or not.

 

Too many times I have seen legitimate, honest criticism of the show fundamentally changing the source material being dismissed as simply opinion - not about whether the changes work, but about whether they even exist.  It's belittling and dishonest, and it poisons any reasonable discussion.

Edited September 29 by Andra

[Elder_Haman]

Just now, Loose Theremin said:

 

Wow ! That was a very quick reply ! Were you looking over my shoulder as I was writing that one out ?

Maybe 

[Elder_Haman]

Just now, Andra said:

fundamentally

This word is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. 

[Andra]

3 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

This word is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. 

True, but well deserved.

By any objective measure I can think of, the idea that ANY knowledgeable person within the world of the story would think the Dragon could be a woman fundamentally changes the source material.

The idea that Rand could knowingly have a romantic relationship with one of the Forsaken fundamentally changes the source material.

The idea that it required channeling to enter the Ways fundamentally changes the source material.

And so on.

[Loose Theremin]

38 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

This word is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. 

 

And you're doing a whole lot of deflection.

[Elder_Haman]

2 minutes ago, Loose Theremin said:

 

And you're doing a whole lot of deflection.

What have I deflected?

[Loose Theremin]

25 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

What have I deflected?

 

I was on the IMDb message boards for 10 years and that place was the Wild West. So I have a lot of experience on how people operate in these environments. And you have just deflected again. I mean I get it. It works and it's low effort.

Edited September 29 by Loose Theremin

[Elder_Haman]

Just now, Loose Theremin said:

 

I was on the IMDb message boards for 10 years and that place was the Wild West. So I have a lot of experience on how people operate in these environments. And you have just deflected again.

You haven’t been here very long. Maybe go back and read some of my posts and then come back and tell me what I am deflecting. 
 

I liked the show. Although it was very different from the books, I’m glad they made it. I wish they would have finished it.

[Loose Theremin]

7 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

You haven’t been here very long. Maybe go back and read some of my posts and then come back and tell me what I am deflecting. 
 

I liked the show. Although it was very different from the books, I’m glad they made it. I wish they would have finished it.

 

Fair point. I have read quite a few of your posts but I don't agree with you at a fundamental level so I stopped reading them. And I wasn't suggesting that deflection was the only trick you had in your bag  ; )

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

12 hours ago, Andra said:

I didn't twist your words, I quoted them.  And the words I quoted clearly stated that whether the show deviated from the source material or not was a matter of subjective opinion, rather than something objectively identifiable. 

 

Your clarification didn't address the part I quoted.  It simply conceded that people have different opinions on whether this was successful or not.

 

Too many times I have seen legitimate, honest criticism of the show fundamentally changing the source material being dismissed as simply opinion - not about whether the changes work, but about whether they even exist.  It's belittling and dishonest, and it poisons any reasonable discussion.

Again your post addresses nothing that I said. 

[Kaleb]

21 hours ago, Bodewhin said:

 

 

I understand where you're coming from. It's a valid opinion, the reverse is true too. It's not a one size fits all. 

 

It's like going to a concert of Beatles imitators, they don't really sound like the Beatles, but it's the closest you can get to seeing them live so the opportunity seems worth it. Totally fair if that works for you. For me, I'd rather just stay home and listen to the real records. 

 

The cancellation of the series is especially hard on people who came to it fresh and loved it. Because it's not like they can even pick up the books to see how things turned out, it's too different. As you said, we'll never know where the series was headed or how events would've unfolded had it been continued. I really dislike shows getting cancelled before their ending. I've been burnt plenty of times to think that's unfair.

I appreciate the sentiment here and the sympathy for having a beloved show cancelled. I'm a book reader and loved the show for all the ways it made me think critically about this world again. Why is X change so frustrating? What about change Y is so intriguing? Is that interaction true to character Z?

 

The Beatles comparison is a good start, but you don't see Beatles fans trolling the tribute bands' social media accounts with an endless stream of "you're not the REAL Beatles!" abuse. Everybody knows that, that's a given, and ultimately a very pointless thing to bother to communicate to anyone. This little forum in particular, as well as subreddits like WOTshow, were created to discuss the show, which could never be the books. So much of the criticism of the show on this and other forums amounts to nothing more than "that's not the REAL story!" and wishes that the show would stop existing, with an extra helping of slander towards the person who put forward all the effort to bring a version of this story to the screen. Beatles fans have the good sense overall to recognize that Beatles tribute bands are at worst a harmless diversion from their beloved records, and at best a way to celebrate that music with other fans and expand the audience to new people. I'm very disappointed that so many WoT fans did not take a similar approach, even if they're entirely valid in thinking the show was the equivalent of The Shitty Beatles.

[Bodewhin]

2 hours ago, Kaleb said:

 So much of the criticism of the show on this and other forums amounts to nothing more than "that's not the REAL story!" and wishes that the show would stop existing, with an extra helping of slander towards the person who put forward all the effort to bring a version of this story to the screen. 

 

This isn't just the show. A quick browse through topics will produce a lot of complaining and rage towards the books as well, even accusing the author of cashing in or saying he purposefully didn't finish the series, or wrote rubbish books, didn't world build enough or what have you. It's actually not that different to criticisms found in the TV section. The characters in the book are constantly hated on, theories of what could've, should've but ultimately didn't happen, complaining about pretty much every plot line and picking apart world building. It's a mirror effect.

 

At the end of the day, fans in a fandom are seldomly united in what they are fans of.  That's not exclusive to WOT. The things I personally loved in the books do not translate for me 9 out of 10 times into Rafe's adaption. That's my opinion. Honestly, we all have different opinions reflective of our different tastes. I don't think it's really for anyone to say "you are not a fan of this because" on either side. It should be accepted that fans like different things. There are clusters of fans that will agree, on one or several points, but probably never agree on every single aspect. 

 

Do I think it's a shame the WOT TV series was cancelled? Yes, I do. Because it's annoying when a show is cancelled when fans are invested in it. Do I wish WOT had been adapted differently than how the TV series chose to do it? Yes, I do. Because for me it didn't satisfy me on an book to series adaption level. So, there we are again. We can agree on the former but not the latter. I think accepting opinions other than our own as valid goes a long way in discussion. Fans might be fans of the same fandom, but they are also fans for different reasons and like and dislike different things. 

 

(Hopefully this makes sense. I'm down with a serious head cold atm).

Edited September 29 by Bodewhin
word error

[Kaleb]

30 minutes ago, Bodewhin said:

I think accepting opinions other than our own as valid goes a long way in discussion. Fans might be fans of the same fandom, but they are also fans for different reasons and like and dislike different things. 

Hope you feel better soon, I'm sluggish with covid right now.

 

So, the question of accepting opinions other than our own as valid is a fair one, but when we have such an overwhelming number of posters here and elsewhere who won't discuss the show as anything other than an abomination and an offense to Jordan's vision that would be better off not existing, I think it's pretty counter-productive in terms of discussion etiquette to put the responsibility of constantly validating that opinion on the people who want to discuss the show on its own terms, or as a lens to issues and topics within the books. The opinion that the show is an affront to the books and shouldn't exist is functionally just another way of stating that the people who do enjoy engaging with the show have an invalid opinion. This is what I would hope a "moderate" in these discussions, such as yourself Bodewhin, would agree with me on in order to make this and similar spaces enjoyable to discuss the show.

 

The point about the books having so many different reasons to be a fan of them is one I've made myself several times, I agree with that and it's part of what makes WOT so endlessly fascinating. I heartily agree that there are so many ways to love the series: the "hard" magic system, the military details, the deep lore, the philosophical motivations for various cultures and characters, the relationships between characters, the brisk and vivid storytelling for so many important scenes... There's so much, and I would never imagine that fans of this series in particular would agree on much of anything, except they're glad it exists. That's what I - as a book fan and a show fan - was hoping this site could provide for the show.

[Mailman]

16 hours ago, Kaleb said:

I appreciate the sentiment here and the sympathy for having a beloved show cancelled. I'm a book reader and loved the show for all the ways it made me think critically about this world again. Why is X change so frustrating? What about change Y is so intriguing? Is that interaction true to character Z?

 

The Beatles comparison is a good start, but you don't see Beatles fans trolling the tribute bands' social media accounts with an endless stream of "you're not the REAL Beatles!" abuse. Everybody knows that, that's a given, and ultimately a very pointless thing to bother to communicate to anyone. This little forum in particular, as well as subreddits like WOTshow, were created to discuss the show, which could never be the books. So much of the criticism of the show on this and other forums amounts to nothing more than "that's not the REAL story!" and wishes that the show would stop existing, with an extra helping of slander towards the person who put forward all the effort to bring a version of this story to the screen. Beatles fans have the good sense overall to recognize that Beatles tribute bands are at worst a harmless diversion from their beloved records, and at best a way to celebrate that music with other fans and expand the audience to new people. I'm very disappointed that so many WoT fans did not take a similar approach, even if they're entirely valid in thinking the show was the equivalent of The Shitty Beatles.

I feel this is a disingenuous argument.

 

The vast majority of beatles tribute bands would be an exact copy of the original works with inferior vocals and acoustics and the relative abilities of the bands could be debated.

 

If you were to then start changing the words to the songs then you get into a different set of arguments. If you changed the words in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to include unambiguous references to Heroin and Cocaine then you can start to have conversations like we have had on these boards in regards to changing the meanings behind the songs.

 

The difference between these is stark the first is simply an opinion on the ability of the artist to copy the original the second is a discussion on significant changes to the original work, you can approve or find fault with this per the evidence and your feelings. So saying people here are the equivalent of screaming you are not the real beatles is a poor framework for the argument simply because they are not as good.

[Loose Theremin]

17 hours ago, Kaleb said:

I appreciate the sentiment here and the sympathy for having a beloved show cancelled. I'm a book reader and loved the show for all the ways it made me think critically about this world again. Why is X change so frustrating? What about change Y is so intriguing? Is that interaction true to character Z?

 

The Beatles comparison is a good start, but you don't see Beatles fans trolling the tribute bands' social media accounts with an endless stream of "you're not the REAL Beatles!" abuse. Everybody knows that, that's a given, and ultimately a very pointless thing to bother to communicate to anyone. This little forum in particular, as well as subreddits like WOTshow, were created to discuss the show, which could never be the books. So much of the criticism of the show on this and other forums amounts to nothing more than "that's not the REAL story!" and wishes that the show would stop existing, with an extra helping of slander towards the person who put forward all the effort to bring a version of this story to the screen. Beatles fans have the good sense overall to recognize that Beatles tribute bands are at worst a harmless diversion from their beloved records, and at best a way to celebrate that music with other fans and expand the audience to new people. I'm very disappointed that so many WoT fans did not take a similar approach, even if they're entirely valid in thinking the show was the equivalent of The Shitty Beatles.

 

But Kaleb what Rafe made was not the REAL story was it. The REAL story is contained in the books that Robert Jordan wrote and that's not what Rafe served up. He changed fundamental things to align with his ideological views, like that the Dragon could be a woman. He also downplayed the male characters and gave many of their big moments to the female characters. Moiraine was the star of the show for example and Rand was very much a secondary character.

 

And your bald statement that the show " could never be the books " is flat out dishonest. There is absolutely no reason why the books can't be adapted faithfully to television. Yes the story would have to be trimmed down to size and things that are difficult to put on screen would have to be done differently. But that is part of the normal business of television adaptations.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

One of the main themes, if not the main theme, of the books is unreliable narrator. Moiraine thinking that the Dragon could be a woman changed nothing. The implications for Egwene and Nynaeve are something else, but as Rand was the still the Dragon nothing fundamental changed with respect to that.

 

Again people are desperate to claim that there was an objective reason to hate the show. Why is your confidence in your own opinion so low that you have to pretend that it is a fact?

[Kaleb]

4 hours ago, Bodewhin said:

 

Ugh. Terrible. I had it before the head cold. Get well soon. 

 

I understand what you're saying. I had similar hopes for the book section and was a little put off when I first joined. I wasn't here while the show was airing so I can't really comment on the atmosphere at that time. There seems to be two camps, love/hate, maybe a third camp of in-between. In any case, for the sake of civil discussion, I liked quite a bunch of the cast members on the show. Standouts to me were Josha Stradowski, Madeleine Madden, Daniel Henney, Rosamund Pike, Marcus Rutherford, Zoe Robins and Ceara Coveney. In those cases, my problem was how the characters were written and adapted from the books not with casting of said characters. 

I think the casting was great, agreed! Josha in particular was really growing into Rand and I was very excited to see the rest of the story with him in the lead. I think S1 Rand was hard to pull off since they aged up the characters and the show was less sympathetic to him in particular because it showed how woolheaded he looked to some of the other characters rather than stay in his head like in the books. But S3E4 Rand with the Rhuidean journey was a true joy to see on screen, and I'm so happy it was made.

[Bodewhin]

4 minutes ago, Kaleb said:

I think the casting was great, agreed! Josha in particular was really growing into Rand and I was very excited to see the rest of the story with him in the lead. I think S1 Rand was hard to pull off since they aged up the characters and the show was less sympathetic to him in particular because it showed how woolheaded he looked to some of the other characters rather than stay in his head like in the books. But S3E4 Rand with the Rhuidean journey was a true joy to see on screen, and I'm so happy it was made.

 

I couldn't find any fault with his acting. He seemed to do his best regardless of what the script asked of him. For being a young actor, he had a solid presence and handled himself well imo. 

 

Also, Josha actually fit my mental image of Rand when I read the books, which was cool. I was still reading the series for the first time when the show came out - someone asked me about characters book vs show, and I remember remarking about Josha being a good choice for Rand.  

 

[Kaleb]

15 hours ago, Mailman said:

I feel this is a disingenuous argument.

 

The vast majority of beatles tribute bands would be an exact copy of the original works with inferior vocals and acoustics and the relative abilities of the bands could be debated.

 

If you were to then start changing the words to the songs then you get into a different set of arguments. If you changed the words in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to include unambiguous references to Heroin and Cocaine then you can start to have conversations like we have had on these boards in regards to changing the meanings behind the songs.

 

The difference between these is stark the first is simply an opinion on the ability of the artist to copy the original the second is a discussion on significant changes to the original work, you can approve or find fault with this per the evidence and your feelings. So saying people here are the equivalent of screaming you are not the real beatles is a poor framework for the argument simply because they are not as good.

I think you miss the point of what a tribute band is. Not sure if you're a musician or a live music fan at all, but I've played in several tribute bands and the appeal of it is to bring people together to experience familiar music in a live context where there's an element of excitement that something new is happening. That could be rearrangements of the music in the performance itself, or just in the social energy of a mix of people who are enthusiastic about the original artist coming together in a venue where that artist would likely never appear. There are beloved and successful tribute bands that do in fact change the words and the entire point of the songs, look up the McDonalds-themed Black Sabbath tribute band Mac Sabbath for one.

 

 

Mailman, I've disagreed with your views on the show plenty over the past few years, and that's fine. You consistently brought a book-focused critique to every discussion, but you also kept watching, kept talking and also acknowledged points where the show was successful to some degree in your eyes. I'm not going to look it up, but I don't recall you consistently saying the show shouldn't exist, and I think you've stayed away from harping on perceptions of Rafe's personal agenda. Not for the first time, I think, I'm saying if this isn't about you then don't make it about you.

 

[Elder_Haman]

I’ve hidden the last few posts as this thread is becoming unduly personal. 

[Loose Theremin]

12 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

One of the main themes, if not the main theme, of the books is unreliable narrator. Moiraine thinking that the Dragon could be a woman changed nothing. The implications for Egwene and Nynaeve are something else, but as Rand was the still the Dragon nothing fundamental changed with respect to that.

 

Again people are desperate to claim that there was an objective reason to hate the show. Why is your confidence in your own opinion so low that you have to pretend that it is a fact?

 

" One of the main themes, if not the main theme, of the books is unreliable narrator. "

 

That is not true. It is not even a minor theme let alone a main, or the main theme.

 

Of course there was an objective reason to hate Rafe's show. He trampled all over Robert Jordan's story and changed it in fundamental ways to further his own ideological agenda. And in doing so he turned it into a vehicle for his own personal propaganda. And that was an absolutely hateful thing to do.

[Goathill]

On 9/28/2025 at 7:45 PM, Elder_Haman said:

You haven’t been here very long.

As far as this forum goes neither have you.

 

That does not make someone's opinion less.

[Raal Gurniss]

21 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

One of the main themes, if not the main theme, of the books is unreliable narrator. Moiraine thinking that the Dragon could be a woman changed nothing. The implications for Egwene and Nynaeve are something else, but as Rand was the still the Dragon nothing fundamental changed with respect to that.

 

Again people are desperate to claim that there was an objective reason to hate the show. Why is your confidence in your own opinion so low that you have to pretend that it is a fact?

Why would people hate the show?

 

I really didn't like it to the point I had resentment, but even then I wouldn't waste the energy to hate it, doing that is exhausting! 
 

I just voiced I didn't like it and then just didn't watch it...Clearly enough people felt similar to me and not enough felt fans of the show and it got cancelled, same as any other show that could not get the figures required to return a profit.

 

Shame it got cancelled, but no skin off my nose...Does give me vindication of some sort though.

 

What we should ALL HAVE AGREED on from the start is that the show should have been better....But we weren't and we were divided.