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A WHEEL OF TIME COMMUNITY

BenPatient

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  • Birthday 01/01/1

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  1. Sorry if this gets long. I have been an Amazon Prime subscriber since a year before my first child was born. It was I think $79? My first child is now 16 and has had a license for 6 months. So roughly 17 years of Prime membership. We were one of those "order everything from Amazon" families because things were cheaper AND it was nicer to just pick up a box from the porch. We occasionally lost a box to a porch pirate (something like 1 every 2 years), and on occasion we would have a package disappear. Every time, a call to Amazon customer service (and later, a chat session) would always fix it quickly. They added Prime Video and Prime Music. They added Prime pictures at some point. Subscribe and Save. All cool and useful. There was something for Kindle users, too. Prime Music was completely ad-free, with "only" a couple million albums. Sometimes albums would disappear and be replaced with others, but it was on par with Spotify for what felt like "free." You just had to pick things you liked from what was available. Certainly better than Pandora, and much better than Spotify with Ads. Prime Video started adding first-party shows. Some were great (Mozart in the Jungle, Catastrophe, Bosch, Goliath), some not so much. Prime Video had a ton of old HBO "marquee" shows on it in HD at a time when Netflix was charging more for HD and we were still paying an extra fee for an HD DVR from Dish Network. Certainly not enough to compete with Netflix really, but an actual perk to Prime membership that I appreciated. Then slowly, things shifted. The price of Prime itself started creeping up. They started announcing these high-dollar video projects (LOTR most notably). They started shutting down popular shows with no warning, Netflix-style. We're up to $139/year. They started mixing in the Prime and rent/buy titles in the app interface, intentionally confusing the two and making it harder to just see the Prime content. They added pre-roll promos. They added "add-on" subscriptions and started prioritizing them over anything else. The HBO content went away. A bunch of old Criterion content went away. They bought IMDBtv and rebranded it FreeVee. It's full of ads and the bitrate is noticeably poor. They started pushing "real" shows to it that would have just gone on Prime before (Bosch Legacy, Jury Duty, etc). They started adding 1 episode of popular shows so they would appear in search results for that show, with no intention of ever even offering the rest of the show. Prime Music added HD, but made it a higher price, then started moving more and more of the content from Prime to the paid version. Last year they "re-launched" a "new, improved" Prime Music with "100 million" songs, but it's a Pandora-style radio system, where you pick a song and it plays "similar" things. It almost never does a good job, and it regularly pulls from random crap tracks. Want to listen to "The Beatles - Yellow Submarine" and similar songs? I hope you like track 47 of the ultra-super-edition of Revolver where John Lennon makes fart noises into a bass drum mic and plays a 1-string banjo, because that's probably coming at you in the next 20 minutes. But don't skip it because you only get 4 skips an hour! I complained a bunch, and they gave me a couple free months of the paid version. Fine. Once that ran out, it went back to Ignorant Pandora mode. We went from using 10-15 hours of Amazon Music per day to literally zero within a month. I guess that's what they were hoping for... Actual Amazon (the store) has been raising prices (relative to the market) at a steady clip for a decade. Reviews are all either AI or scam posts. At this point you can buy a case of Kirkland Signature [whatever] AND a Costco annual membership for less than the "shipped and sold by Amazon" price on the same item with Prime, and there's a decent chance you will get a used/refurb/counterfeit version even then. Last month I ordered spark plugs from "shipped and sold by Amazon" seller to save about 10 dollars on the whole order. Instead of 2 days, it took 8, and instead of 6 new items, I got a plastic bag with another plastic bag inside it, held together by a rubber band, with 2 new-ish spark plugs, two very, very used ones that had obviously been returned, and a handful of used Amazon Basics AA batteries to get the weight up to spec. This supposedly straight from the mega-scale distribution center that employs half of the small town 10 minutes down the road. One of my wife's Christmas presents, ordered Dec 12, expected delivery Dec 15, still hasn't arrived. I got regular "it's still coming, but running late" messages from them until January, and then they told me I could ask for a refund. At this point I'm just waiting to see what they do if I don't click that button. And now they want me to pay an extra $2.99 to skip commercials on the handful of things I would still watch on Prime Video? Oh look, my membership is up a week before that goes into effect. Pretty silly when I see it all laid out like that, but straw, camel, etc. Unsubscribe.
  2. I am okay with that as a trope subversion, actually, although I wouldn't give Rafe & Co credit for doing it on purpose unless they give us a scene (maybe next season, before Rhuidian?) where Rand goes off on Moi (or Lanfear) because they keep taking away his agency and forcing him through the prophesy checklist. Then he completely bails on them (or maybe they both fall through a doorway?) and he does something on his own. Who are we kidding...Eggy will probably save Mat from darkhounds, re-learn Traveling, and break Rand out of the Red Aja box. I expect they will keep Siuan around for most/all of S3. Elaida will be introduced early, they will clash all season. Maybe they push the Tower coup back a bit, and skip the whole "Little Tower" plotline entirely, and Siuan accidentally allies with the Black Ajah via Liandrin when they try to capture/control Rand. We certainly got hints of "Tower wants the Dragon under lock and key" from S2. S3 has to be mostly the Waste for Rand, Mat and Eggy. Perrin will do some version of Emonds Field.
  3. I am actually mostly fine with what they did with Rand this season. The focus for him was Selene/Lanfear, which let's be honest, is exactly what his focus was for most of TGH, too. Yes, he should have done some actual training with a sword. Just like 20-30 seconds of montage with him and Lan or him and that random guy, saying 1-2 form names and showing him practicing. Then you still have him pull Indiana Jones on Turok. You know, to subvert expectations. Fine, cool, nice. I think there is plenty of evidence that Ishy was toying with them on the top of the tower, waiting for Rand to sword him for "reasons" (probably related to visions/prophecy/history). He's already said all that stuff about wanting it to end. It would have been more effective if he'd been completely lazy about it all, though. And why bother with the boat damane shielding Rand at all? But yeah, generally fine with the Rand story in S2, underwhelming as it was. He needs somewhere to grow towards, and Rhuidian is going to have to be the thing for him. I suspect they dropped Darkhounds entirely. HOWEVER...the way they did the end for Elayne/Nyn and the sul dam drove me nuts. It felt like the writers for one episode just didn't like what the writers for a previous episode had set up, so they pulled a Star Wars Sequel thing. Or were they trying to hint at the way that should go for book readers, and then 'subverting' it for us by having the sul'dam get arrowed? Nyn's block hasn't been explained, which is fine if you want her to stew in it for a while. But Eggy shouldn't have been able to get herself out of the collar, and having that happen so easily cheapened her arc this season. The a'dam should be completely, totally terrifying, with no way out. You need someone else to get you out of one. No help? No escape. Why would Moggy being trapped by one really even be a big deal if you can just get out with this One Simple Trick that All Sul'dam Hate? Instead we get Nyn making confused/sad face for the last 2+ episodes. No hint of her righteous anger=mega block-clearing power. Has she even channeled since she nuked Tarwin's Gap and brought Eggy back from the dead last season?
  4. If you missed the watch-through with Brandon and Daniel last night, it is worth it just for all of the info we got. Off the top of my head: 1. Brandon was consulted just as heavily this season as on S1. He just hasn't talked about it before now, really. He pushed back on a bunch of stuff in the scripts, and won a couple of battles, but most of his commentary during the episode was "sorry guys, I tried." 2. As far as BS knows, Ishy's death there is supposed to be final. 3. He is pretty sure they consider Mat's stick+dagger to be a replacement for the real one he gets from the Finn. 4. He hated what they did with Moiraine and Lan this season. 5. Uno as a hero is probably his fault, because he complained so much about Uno being killed. Consolation prize is Uno=Gaidal. 6. He really, really didn't like the battle at the top of the tower, or the way Nyn just sat there and watched Elayne heal Rand while Ishy did...nothing. 7. He has major concerns about the show prioritizing "cool scenes" over coherent storytelling or character arcs. 8. He thought the script for S2E8 was the weakest of the season, excepting S2E1. He has not watched most of the episodes, just read multiple script iterations. 9. Universal praise for the forsaken and how they are being portrayed. Not so much for Fain. BS says he never had any idea what to do with Fain in the books. He basically said he flubbed his ending, but isn't sure what he was supposed to do. Probably RJ didn't have a good idea either, which is why he just booped around for the last few books, then pulled a Gollum at the Cracks of Doom moment. Last night was allegedly the first time Daniel, Matt, or Brandon have seen the episode. I suspect Daniel at least has been reading online responses, because he went straight to the meta response for most of the controversial moments. Matt's visible confusion when Eggy put the collar on Renna was hilarious. I think Brandon may have been Picarding at that particular moment.
  5. I don't think Rand will be "twice and twice" marked, but just "twice." I don't think there will be 2 red twisted doors, only 1. The one in Tear is really just for Mat, and he's already gotten what he needed there, aside from some mysterious prophecy, from the horn power-up. The other people who go into the Tear doorway don't need to do so in order to advance the plot in any meaningful way. One stone doorway is fine. I am curious how they are going to get Logain to the Waste to train Rand in Asmo's place, and if Lanfear and Moiraine will have any more interesting relationship building time before she gets yeeted through the door. I also suspect the door-yeeting will happen in Rhuidean, not Cairhien.
  6. So, I thought the season wrap was pretty decent. I think we just got confirmation that, at the very least, we're not going to have a twisted door in the basement in Tear moment next season, because the only real reason to do it was just done with the Horn. Probably no Tear until Rand actually needs Callandor. Matt makes his own Ashandarei from the knife...I did not see coming, and I actually like that. I also like him getting his memories/fighting power from the Horn directly. No need to triple-dip from the Finn well, if they exist on the show at all. Moggy isn't what I was thinking (she was more girlish), but I liked what I saw so far. She was making the whole room artificially darker, I assume on purpose, just to be emo/goth? I actually like the whole 1 seal=1 forsaken change. Not sure how that squares with the seals being on the DO's prison, but I guess maybe that's not a thing here. The Bayle Domon/Lanfear scene was...odd. I am really glad they didn't try to weave more Cairhien crap into the finale. I was sure they were going to do some stupid thing with Barthanes, Siuan and Liandrin, and I just can't be bothered to care. Also very glad that they didn't have Elayne and Nyn fashion a Circle and save all the men from themselves a la S1E8. Can we get a re-write/re-shoot on that episode, please? If the show, as a whole ends up being good, and gets to go the distance, nothing will ever take away from the stupidity of S1E8. It's worse than Fat Lee Adama. At least that was funny. The most stupid/funny thing that happens in this season finale is Loial just walking around the corner with the horn box. You know they had a whole set of scenes showing how they got it, and then they had to get down under 70 minutes, and they just...whoop! cut it all out! honestly for some of this stuff "use your imagination" is probably the smartest editing choice. Didn't like: The Moiraine/Lan on the beach out of fire, throwing massive fireballs and destroying the entire damane fleet. The fire dragon was maybe 2 levels too distinctly dragon-shaped. Not sure anyone did the math on the whole double-collar thing. I think RJ probably already ruled that out at some point, didn't he? Like...it would kill them both if they tried it, type of thing. No chance Eggy without some hardware had any chance against Ishy, not even in the show-lore. Suroth needs to be re-written, or re-cast. Something is just off with her portrayal. Maybe she died on the boat and it won't matter? I am guessing not.
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