It'll be a normal work day and evening. But as soon as my daughter is laid down to sleep I'm heading to the den to watch the first episode. My wife says she's interested (she hasn't read the books) and I think will join me. I probably will watch one episode a day that weekend, in the hopes my wife will keep watching.

5 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

The process was never going to be - "look at the description in the book, now do that."

It really is up to Rafe what aesthetic details he is going to closely adhere to and where he's going to provide his team room. It's silly to expect his costume designer and all his staff to have read the books. He and his consultants are no doubt providing details to the designers. Sarah has tomes on culture and looks of cities and the different cultural fashions she's no doubt providing, and I'm sure the designers see that and refer to it, but are obviously be given leeway to bring their own aesthetic takes on the different nations. 

There are little things that niggle at my fanatical brain. Like, when discussing why Moiraine wears pants, it was mentioned it'd be absurd for her to spend all this time traveling sidesaddle like on the cover of EotW. And my brain replies "But the EotW picture is not book accurate. 'Skirts divided for riding' is probably mentioned dozens if not hundreds of time over the course of the books, including the first book. Book-Moiraine doesn't ride side-saddle!"

Now, there may still be good and practical and aesthetical reasons to have Rosamund Pike wear pants instead of skirts divided for riding. But I wish they acknowledged that instead of pointing to the cover as their source.

And I also realize I'm being a bit fanatical and nitpicky, and this isn't something that by itself isn't going to affect the show for me, and seems to be a common issue with adaptations. How many times have I rolled my eyes at the post-episode director commentary on Outlander? Things probably really do go deeper in decision making than surface level comments like this let on. But it's still there in my brain.

1 hour ago, AusLeviathan said:

I doubt they take that long to release it, LOTR will be released  by the end of October so I could see them releasing WOT season 2 a few weeks after that in November again.

 

Filming will likely finish in March 22 which would given them 8 months to finish the post production stuff in time for November, about what I'd expect really.

They may not want them airing at the same time. They want to keep people subscribed, which sometimes means spacing out content, especially if they have overlapping niches.

I really like early Nynaeve. She's determined to protect the children, and in many ways the other four Wmond Fielders still are all children. Nynaeve's suspicion of manipulation is pretty much all correct, and Egwene and Elayne are both pretty naive when they first enter the Tower. Nynaeve stands up for them, puts herself between them and people she feels will hurt or manipulate when need be, and stands up for them. Over the next few books both Egwene and Elayne mature, much to Nynaeve's surprise, and don't need her anymore. Indeed, even learn to stand above Nynaeve. But I think Nynaeve has a great arc, and she really acts very believably and even bravely, even when she calls herself a coward. 

15 minutes ago, Wassup said:

I am making my daughter watch the show with me.  Now I have to make her watch these too.

 

Do you think they will show the EotW prologue in the series, in one of these animated stories, or just not show it?

I personally think we'll see it in a flashback at some point in the first couple of seasons. Just not as the series opener.

"Dragon" was not originally a prophetic name. Lews Therin was made commander/warlord of the forces of the light, and this position they called "Dragon". It was only in the third age that it became prophetic with the Dragon Reborn.

I wonder if we'll keep that nuance.... eventually.

Fall of Manetheren is a short, so we'll probably at least see that briefly described or mentioned in the show at some point.

8 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

There's a lot more non-channelers in the world, even with the giant bumper-crop of channelers at the end of the age, than there are channelers.  And there are a lot more people who could channel but don't survive to actually begin to do so than there are wilders.  Transwomen and transmen can be frequent in society and still the question of what would happen if such a person is channeling could be utterly unknown and mysterious in the White Tower, or recorded as an obscure oddity from 100 years before.

If it was a male body that was seen to channel, most normal folks would be killing that person out of hand without questioning whether they channeled saidir or saidin.  If it was a female body with the potential to channel saidin, the Aes Sedai would never detect it...and then the female-bodied  person would go mad and have a goodly chance of killing themselves or being killed for doing something terrible, later to be reported, potentially, to the Aes Sedai who would completely cover up the incident, deciding it was "normal madness" that happened when a wilder went wrong, and tut tut about how awful wilders were.  IF a female-bodied channeler was found by aes sedai and scanned, or went to the tower for learning, the Aes Sedai would not detect any spark in them, and they'd be sent away again.  And what male bodied channeler who found they could channel without going mad would /tell/ the Aes Sedai? They'd hide their talent lest they be hunted down and killed (or would kill themselves, believing they would go mad someday). 

Transmen and transwomen could actually be, if rare, something known and accepted in many of the societies in the books with very few people ever considering the implications of such occurring if such people were channelers. Maybe Halima would have been found if that old Brown Ajah who investigated old reports about such things had been consulted, but it's not something that everyone knows or would consider instead of the normal likelihood of a regular man sneaking into  Salidar.

Saidar channelers can sense the potential of other saidar channelers, even if they've never channeled, and visually see a saidar channeler glow when embracing the True Source.

What you say could work, technically, but it seems harder to justify in all the history both AOL and in the 3,000+ years since the breaking.

We also know Jordan in interviews clearly said it does not work this way, but there's room for Rafe to play around in if he wanted.

52 minutes ago, MasterAblar said:

 

Ok now I'm the one who's rather confused haha.

 

With regards to channelling that will always be problematic. Saidin/saidar are binary. Whether you tie it to the physicaly body of birth or the soul, the problem remains that a transgender channeller would end up channeling something that doesn't match with their gender. That is inevitable as long the One Power is kept as it is. Would a transgender individual channelling the "wrong" half of the source be considered a denial of their existence?

 

Ultimately a transgender person is born into the wrong body. Whether the wheel gives out male/female souls, or just basic vanilla souls, the issue remains the same. Are you saying the wheel should have transgender souls which it intentionally puts into the wrong body solely so those individuals will end up transgender? Or does it just throw the souls into whatever (other than specific cases like Rand where he had to be a man, at least in this turning according to the show), and then life takes it course?

 

If so how is that any different in practical terms than just having the male/female souls? No one in life is wondering whether their soul matches up with their gender. No one think about their soul period in the books. That's why the change seems unecessary to me. In practical terms it changes abosolutely nothing. 

 

Which is why I think its more of a change on principle then anything to do with what will be shown in the story. Other than the identity of the Dragon Reborn, which, hey, might be the reason for the change in the first place for all I know.

 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't intersex just due to developments during the pregnancy? Or sometimes at conception, or post pregnancy? I don't see any reason why the wheel would prevent those things.

Rafe could make it fluid based on the individual's interior identification.

You really have to be in Mat's head to get the funny. The best part about him is the dissonance in how he sees himself versus how he acts.

5 minutes ago, MasterAblar said:

 

Yes exactly, gender was not even considered when RJ wrote series. It's not a concept that was put into the books. But for some reason people are going souls=gender.

I wouldn't say gender wasn't considered. What's meant by the word gender in a lot of usage has changed.

3 minutes ago, MasterAblar said:

 

Because souls have nothing to do with gender identity. Nowhere in the book does it that because someone is born male they must remain that way. Just because there was presentation of transgender individuals doesn't mean it wasn't possible. 

 

I don't understand why people are conflating souls with gender identity. The two concepts have nothing to do with each in my mind. And it certainly isn't stated that they are the same in the books. Mainly because the subject was never explored.

Jordan did tie which half of the power a channeler had access to was based on the soul, and the natural bodies of souls to the specific biological sex they would be born into. The way gender identity is currently talked about was very much less a thing when Jordan started writing the series, and even up to when he died.

I don't know what Jordan intended, but I never took Halima/Aran'gar as an actual allegory for a transgendered person. It's a very literal case of a "man in a woman's body", of course, but I didn't read it as commentary on transgenderism in general.

I'm not saying it should therefore be included, though.

8 minutes ago, Rose said:

Although there's always @NinjaPowers975's theory that Mat gets lost in the ways and only emerges in season 2 as Donal ?

Hi, I'm Mat from Randland 616.

46 minutes ago, Ralph said:

I am no man is in the books, just not that she says it herself.

She says it in the books, just in a more elevated way.

Quote

It seemed that Dernhelm laughed.... 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'

Jackson tended to make things more rule of cool than the books, but I feel that Eowyn in this scene was more amazing in the books than in the movie. The whole section is pretty great at length, but no reason to quote it all.

Sigh...

To be more specific, the books were certainly written with a philosophy of gender essentialism. There is a lot of the world-building and motifs of the book contingent on that. I know in interviews prior to his death he was a bit flabbergasted with all the questions about whether the Dragon could be born as a women in other turnings (I think this was more of a sexism concern than a queer concern). But we don't know what Jordan's position on gender essentialism would be if he lived until 2021.

You could represent characters who have gender dysphoria/identify as the opposite sex/gender in a world with Jordan's gender essentialism. However, it seems like the showrunners are tossing out the book's philosophy on gender essentialism and replacing it with a different view of gender identity, which is more than only adding representation. If so, that is a major change to the worldbuilding and Jordan's motifs (and we don't know if this is something Jordan would agree with, but keep in mind Rafe is trying to promote a product to all sides), but will probably have minimal impact on character and plot arcs.

This is all getting speculative, though.

13 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

This is a weird flex. Jordan wasn’t a screenwriter and I think he’d probably be the first to concede that changes from novel to screenplay are necessary and that Rafe [as a screenwriter] does in fact “know better” in some respects. 
 

 

There is a difference between adapting/condensing the plot for a different medium and presenting a completely different perspective on a social issue that is pretty essential to the dynamics of the book and which we can't really know how Jordan would feel about today.

Oh I totally understand fridging issues, I did mention execution can be bad if blind to certain cultural issues. You see an over representation of women being killed to kick off a man's story, or how the one POC in a movie seems to always seemed to be the first one to die. Those are real issues.

I just don't think a minor character death in itself at the beginning is always a bad choice. The devil is in the details.

58 minutes ago, swollymammoth said:

Because it's true? Idk what you want from me here. Nothing I said was targeted. Anyone who can only relate to characters who resemble them is immature and should not be catered to. That includes white people, rich people, straight people, men and any other group you can think of. The connection we're supposed to feel from fiction should transcend all of that stuff and reach to the core of the human experience. That's more inclusive than any sort of tokenistic pandering. 

It's easy enough to say when you are "the default" in a culture and are not part of a group that have been marginalized by the culture.

I do think the steps they're taking to add non-binary and trans characters may be different in this case. In many adaptations it's only a matter of representation where previously there was none. In the WOT-verse they're changing the cosmology and metaphysics that were pretty essential to Jordan's back drop and magic system. So it's a weird spot.

6 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

~Daniel Henney

 

From his interview with slash film

 https://www.slashfilm.com/597205/fantasy-films-that-never-got-sequels/

Looks like the wrong link. This one goes to the interview: 

https://www.slashfilm.com/654425/4-things-we-learned-about-the-wheel-of-time-from-rosamund-pike-and-daniel-henney/

1 hour ago, Ralph said:

We have an episode that starts with an insane scene that I... it's a fight sequence that no fan of the books is expecting to see in this season, but it works perfectly, I think, in this season and is a really exciting way to tell this story. I think that the fans of the books will also feel like, oh my God, I'm so glad that I got to see that scene brought to life. I just never expected that I would.

 

Mat V Gawyn and Galad? 

 

Or what? 

 

I bet it's a flashback to the Aiel War near Tar Valon.

20 minutes ago, hatsoff said:

I don't recall Jordan or Sanderson speaking of soul genders, but I guess it's not like I have a perfect memory.

 

I do seem to recall that Aginor was reincarnated as a female, and yet used Saidin.*  He (she?) wasn't trans, but it does go to show that anatomy has little to do in Jordan's world with which half of the One Power is being used.

 

*- I vaguely recall there was another male Forsaken reincarnated as female, but it's been too long.  Again, I was just a kid.

The Dark One forced a male soul he had captured into an already existing female body he stripped a soul out of. Which is why Aran'gar channeled Saidin.

40 minutes ago, hatsoff said:

"De-gender souls"?  Wtf are you talking about?

In The Wheel of Time books, souls are gendered. Men in one life are always reborn as men, and are the rebirth of a man. Women in one life are always reborn as women, and are the rebirth of a woman. Which half of the One Power a channeled can channel is tied to their soul.