16 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

 

YES! that's EXACTLY MY POINT! people who are unfamiliar with the stuff will not recognize it, will see it as something generic!

Which is exactly what people are complaining about here. people see wot, they do not recognize it, they think it's generic. if people did not recognize star wars, and they saw a trailer, they'd think it generic too. they only praise the unique style because they are familiar with it. which can't be the case here yet, because the show hasn't aired.

it's a bit hard to miss a point when it's the only one point you've been making in the past several months. yes, you always go back to this: the props don't look like their "book canon" version. Yes, we got it. And everything bad you have to say about the show always goes there, as your only argument. Every other criticism always comes from that. "they have no respect for the story", how can we tell, because they changed the props. "they don't understand wot", how can we tell, because they changed the props. "they will make logain the real dragon, and rand will be demoted to extra!", how can we tell, because if they could change the props they are capable of doing anything!

 

well, too bad with that. my point is that i don't recognize this as a good argument for "i don't recognize this as wot". as if it was the only thing that mattered, whether they got the props right.

i mean, as people what makes star wars memorable, i doubt the main answer would be "the protagonists are dressed as clowns". Or what makes star trek recognizable? the fact that the aliens are regular actors with some plastic glued to their head?

because that's what props are. they are not the soul or spine of a story. and just because you can or cannot recognize them from the descriptions, it doesn't mean anything.

 

Thank you very much for that elaborate straw man.  Let's break it down exactly where and how far you're wrong.

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Which is exactly what people are complaining about here. people see wot, they do not recognize it, they think it's generic. if people did not recognize star wars, and they saw a trailer, they'd think it generic too. they only praise the unique style because they are familiar with it. which can't be the case here yet, because the show hasn't aired.

Millions of people, perhaps tens of millions, have read through the entire epic 14 book series, from beginning to end.  They recognize the Wheel of Time.  But not in this.  This looks generic because the only thing it has in common with the actual Wheel of Time, which many of them would already be at least somewhat familiar with, are the most generic features of that story.

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if people did not recognize star wars, and they saw a trailer, they'd think it generic too. they only praise the unique style because they are familiar with it.

That's blatantly and historically false.  No one was familiar with it before 1977.  And it was aesthetically and iconically distinct from the moment it first hit the theaters.  It certainly didn't look like Star Trek from a decade before, nor did Star Trek look like Battlestar Galactica from that era.  You're looney toons if you think familiarity breeds the recognition of uniqueness.  In fact it's the other way around, familiarity breeds the recognition of what is generic.  What is generic is familiar.  It's what is novel that is always unique.

You seem to be under the impression that the Wheel of Time is this completely unknown little thing, that nobody has any expectations for it that could color their reactions, but that's very far from true.  There's not a major con anywhere that doesn't have Wheel of Time representation in the cosplayers.  It is consistently on lists of the top ten American fantasy series, up there with Steven King's Dark Tower series and Ann Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and it's also pretty consistently the highest rated series that has yet to have a TV or movie adaptation.  There's not a person in any English speaking market who saw that trailer that's more than two or three degrees of separation from someone who is familiar with the Wheel of Time, and that person will only be able to recognize the Wheel of Time in this because they're told to.  Hence, generic.

Nor is my assessment merely based on the fact that almost nothing looks like it should.  It's also based on the things they've said to justify some of these changes, and others.  Like not having color-changing cloaks for the Warders because it would cost too much, for a show already spending this much money, as if they don't have access to tech available to any twitch streamer or filter user.  Not being able to visit as many places, as if sets and redressing them weren't a thing.  Like telling book fans to "gird their loins," at the changes they're making.

And for other, more plot relevant changes we know about, and others that are reasonably speculated and entertained.  Like expanding Logain's story to include the fact that he's already going insane.  Like cutting out Caemlyn and the Trakands, and including Tar Valon instead.  Like Rand and Egwene's relationship clearly being more intimate, and less of a social and childhood expectation.  Like fades that look like walking worms with arms and legs instead of near throwbacks to the human stock that made the Trollocs.  For costumes that look ripped out of A Wrinkle in Time.  For a showrunner with no clear successes under his belt who thinks that somehow diversity and tolerance are core features of the Wheel of Time literary exploration, who has a special, personal relationship with his experience of this series that's not shared by most fellow readers.  For a writer's room of no-name mercenaries who have limited, if any, prior knowledge of the series. 

I have a diversity of reasons, that they've given me, to withhold any further benefit of the doubt.  It's up to them to show us how this is the Wheel of Time, and they are failing on every available front.  Indeed, they've already failed so hard there's almost no path for this series' success, in my view  The only path there is through the utter decimation of the prior art and culture of the fandom and a genuine transcendence of the story they're going to tell us over the story RJ told us.  They're already making a good go of the former, but there's not a chance of the latter.

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

 

this is actually a valid point, but one that deserves some attention.

because yes, i agree that if i didn't knew it was wheel of time, i would not recognize much. and i agree that it mostly looks generic fantasy.

 

But then, what doesn't?

 

The teaser trailer is 100 seconds of fast images, we never see any scene for more than a few seconds, and there's very few dialogues. Show me one teaser trailer for anything fantasy that wouldn't look generic. Heck, show me a teaser trailer for anything that wouldn't look generic.

star wars? starships, people fighting with laser guns, exploring strange places, very generic.

star trek? starships, people figthing with slightly different laser guns, exploring exotic places, equally generic.

lotr? elves, dwarves, people fighting with swords, just another fantasy.

harry potter? kids doing magic. meh.

 

which, by the way, is why i never watch tv. trailers don't hook me. everything feels samey. Which is unavoidable, because you can't really get something's unique character in a couple of minutes. Have me talk for two minutes with a bloke, he'll look very generic too.

So yes, the trailer was kinda generic-fantasy looking, but i have no idea how it could have been anything else.

 

and the closely related argument about what would be recognizable as wot. Well, what would be recognizable?

I mean, i could see a specific scene from the books and recognize it. that would be recognizable wot. In the trailer we don't recognize scenes. The keenest viewer would realize, perhaps it's because we haven't seen any one scene in the trailer. Like, at all. just a few seconds of snippets. what is there to recognize? is there any pivotal scene from the books that would be recognizable in that format? I can't think of one.

Which leaves the props, the items, the scenery, which is where thrasymacus always ends up going.

but that's not wheel of time, under any definition.

I could make a perfect replica of tam's sword and mat dagger, copied with the greatest level of faithfulness, and then give them to luke skywalker to fight a sith lord, just because there is the item it does not mean anything. Heck, I could use those exact replicas as dildos to make a porn if i wanted. Just because i see a perfect rendition of the shadar logoth dagger, i do not recognize it as wheel of time, and it does not guarantee a quality adaptation.

 

so what's exactly recognizable as wot? what's the spirit and spine of the story? I'm sure everyone will answer differently. But I'm also sure you can't expect them in a couple minutes trailer.

It's like hearing a few randomized notes in a symphony, perhaps a few seconds of a few instrument's performances extrapolated out of its contest, and trying to judge the whole symphony from it.

Me, I'll have to watch a few episodes to decide if they did manage to get the spirit of the story.

whatever the hell that means.

At no point in this screed did you make anything like a coherent or sound point.  That you can't tell the difference between a character from Star Trek versus a character Star Wars based on merely a few seconds of visual aesthetic alone means you're either completely unfamiliar with either of them, you have a cognitive disorder that prevents you from recognizing familiar features like those poor souls who can't recognize faces, or you're a liar.  You're also completely missing the point.  The complaint is not that the trailer or anything else looks like "generic fantasy."  It's that it doesn't look like the Wheel of Time.  Robert Jordan carefully, deliberately and with vivid descriptiveness, mashed up a variety of specific prior elements of story, history and legend from a variety of cultures to create a distinct, unique and clearly recognizable aesthetic. 

That aesthetic has been more than completely abandoned here, it has been supplanted by somebody else's "unique and distinct" aesthetic.  I don't care that it looks bad, or that it looks like a mashup of a kung fu movie with Bollywood fantasy.  I care that it's not the Wheel of Time.

Nor is my take on this show limited to what was shown in the trailer.  This show's production team has been teasing fans, and journalists and fan-followers have been leaking and speculating (with varying levels of reliability) for years now.  And I've been here for all of it.  I've defended casting, I've talked about changes to the plot, which characters could be cut, how to handle the World of Dreams, etc., etc.  My genuine "disillusionment" with this attempt at an adaptation is new enough to not yet have a birthday.  And it's about how very far they are from anything any of us prior fans would recognize as the Wheel of Time without being told it was, based on what we know that has been shown to us by the show runners and reliable sources thus far.

"A different turning" is, and has always been, a cop-out.  Just like "keeping to the core" or the "spirit" or "main thrust," are vague and ultimately meaningless phrases.  Marketing typically abounds with such, but its deployment here is egregious, an attempt to mollify some of us by using a throwaway world-building device from the books, in order to justify the series' complete abandonment of anything distinctly Wheel of Time.  Strip out the voice-over and the identifying logos, and there's nothing that would identify anything that's been shown as a Wheel of Time adapation to even the most knowledgeable and discerning fan of the prior art.

Prior art, and the culture of fandom that's grown up around that prior art, matters.  Particularly of art that's already so broadly popular that it almost counts as mainstream all on its own, prior to any successful adaptation into TV or movies or a successful game.  It doesn't even matter if the writing and acting are Academy-award worthy, and I can guarantee they won't be with the writing team they have.  This blatant a deviation from the prior art (of a series that is so popular that if they even captured half the book readers it would rank among the most popular small-screen shows since the era of Cheers and MASH) can only possibly be met with anger, division and backlash, and deservedly so. 

And what is often as galling as it is frequently amusing is that so many of us have forgotten that we don't owe Rafe Judkins or Amazon Studios anything.  Not even a "chance," or a "benefit of the doubt."  He, and they, owe us and the IP they are adapting the proof that they are really "keeping to the core" of the story, that they understand its "heart and spine," and the explanations and justifications for their changes that respect the story, the prior art, and the prior fans, before they should expect the kind of support that so many here are willing to not just give away to them, but will contort themselves and their hopes and expectations into pretzels to provide.  They say those words, but words are cheap and often false, and should never be trusted without the actions and receipts to back them up.  They don't have any of that here.  There is nothing of the Wheel of Time in what's been shown thus far, except for some names.  And quite a bit that's distinctly not the Wheel of Time.  

Nope, you're not the only one.  I fully expect this show to be a dumpster fire.  For the "creative" choices they've made alone, let alone the ways they treated the existing fan base and established prior art, since the main cast release at least, they deserve worse than to join the ranks of adaptations that fans nearly universally agree to pretend don't exist.  It's rather a shame, too, because this cast, the main cast at least, could have been good in these roles.  But there's no reason to believe the writing will be good enough to overcome the massive changes to the plot and Jordan's iconic aesthetic.  And substantial reason to believe it won't.

The thing is that there are relatively few main or secondary characters that were born in any of the Great Cities.  Which makes sense.  Even being hugely populous, the vast majority of the population would still have been in the countryside, due to the lack of industrial farming.  

And I don't really buy the premise that people native to Tar Valon would generally not want to make that heritage known.  Particularly in Tar Valon and those nations most closely allied with them, the Borderlands nations, Andor and Cairhein.  Perhaps in Tear or Amadicia there would be such reluctance, but likely only to avoid the inconvenience of having to put off Whitecloaks or Defenders who may be overzealous.  And in particular, a man from Tar Valon who's older than about 25 ought to be considered safe as houses.

The difference is that Republic City is less than a few decades old, founded specifically to be a haven for all those displaced by the Hundred Year War.  Very new and intentionally cosmopolitan.  There would be nobody native to Republic City who was more than a few years older than Korra.  Tenzin's age at best.

Tar Valon is 3000 years old, and founded specifically to be a haven for Aes Sedai and their trainees.  The city grew up around the Aes Sedai's needs, to feed them, clothe them, and so forth.  I doubt that Tar Valon is the most populous city, though.  It's pretty geographically constrained, for one.  I would say that Tear, Illian, Caemlyn and Cairhein are all likely more populous, word of god not withstanding.

And in the three thousand years that the Tower has existed, there have been at least three successive generations of nations.  There's no natural distinction between people like with Avatar, where there's Fire Nation and Water Tribe and so forth.  I very much doubt a family that moved to Tar Valon from Manetheren just after the Trolloc Wars would, in the days of the Dragon Reborn, still consider themselves Manetheren, or more absurdly, Two Rivers folk.

Rafo

11 hours ago, Pembie said:

Ok I’m slightly confused why Lanfear attacked Rand in book five just before he goes off to avenge the queen dying I thought Lanfear was somehow cleverly using Rand to maybe gain something in the future or maybe for him to fall in love with her yeah that’s quite odd that every woman nearly is in love with Rand but Lanfear just attacks him which I thought didn’t really fit with her character

She had just found out about Aviendha and Rand, and got a bit jealous.  Lanfear "loved" Lews Therin from the Age of Legends.  Avi, Elayne and Min are fated to love him.  I don't think anybody else really does.

If it were my favorite fantasy series of all time, I might be excited too.  But there's nothing of the Wheel of Time in this, or anything they've shown us almost since the cast reveal.  I shouldn't be surprised, ElderHaman, that you forgot that I did support this show up through that point.  Convenient memory is a symptom of irrational attachment.  Indeed, I even liked the Winespring Inn reveal.  But you're right, not since they've started showing us how unique and different their takes on things were going to be, when it became clear that we were getting Rafe Judkins' very expensive re-imagining of the Wheel of Time, rather than a faithful TV adaptation of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

And this division is not inevitable.  Good, faithful adaptations largely unify their fans.  LotR's did.  It can even catapult that fandom, like Iron Man's did.  I'm sorry we're not getting that.  It seems the universal thread to successful, already semi-popular IP adaptations is to respect the already established fans, but that ship has long sailed. 

But travesties of an adaptation can unify fans of an original work too.  And the value of the original work will survive, and can even thrive.  Just ask Avatar: The Last Airbender.  And I don't think any other major studio could look at the interest generated in this show and, should it fail due to being too different to excite the existing fans and too [insert flaw here] for everybody else, think that there's not enough interest in a Wheel of Time adaptation.  And perhaps Amazon, still a young media producing company, may learn from these mistakes.

And believe me, it's no fun to be on this end of it either.  I would much rather be waiting with anticipation for an adaptation that was going to respect the story and the author of this story, including among his greatest traits as an author: his vivid and exacting descriptiveness and descriptions, enabling the reader to see his characters and settings as real people and real places.  To the point where many consider it to be almost a flaw.  And it doesn't really matter that that whole illusion of reality he painted crumbles beneath a few minutes of careful thought, requiring the bracing of speculation and head-canon to maintain itself, because that vividness, those descriptions, had already captured your imagination, making that speculation not just fun on it's own and necessary for the suspension of disbelief but more than worth it.

But given what I know, and what's been reasonably and unreasonably speculated, and which of those speculations have born out and which have not, it's not enough to just expect that this show will fail.

19 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Okay, I’ll bite. 
What is it doing to and/or revealing about the fans?

It's made them uncritical of the art, but ready to condemn any who is, or who simply doesn't care for it as a matter of taste.  It makes them defensive and insulting over matters of taste, and demanding and dismissive of those who differ.  It makes them take wild flights of speculative fancy to apologize for, excuse and even exalt blatant deviations and excisions and the excessive creative license this show has taken, that we know of, and be unable to see how patently absurd such speculation is, often especially if to turns out to be true.  It has made them personally invested in the possibility of this show's success, and thus intolerant of anybody who could justly see this as an unwarranted hijacking of a story and characters and costumes and accessories they grew up with and invested in.  And of course most humorously, it has made them hypocritically unaware of their own changing standards and hopes, as more and more has come out showing just how far different what they are going to be giving us really is from what those hopes and lines-in-the-sand were 5 years ago.

I saw that trailer and I was left wondering just what it would take for some of you to say, "Enough is enough, this isn't the Wheel of Time." I'm convinced that for at least some of you, there's no articulable limit, and I have been convinced of that for some time.  It's why, more than just thinking that this show will likely be an hilariously expensive failure, I actually hope it is.  Because otherwise, the book fandom will be forever divided into those who liked the tv show, and those who hate it for changing as much as they could just to sell out, and they will be forever sniping at one another, just like is beginning to happen these past few months to now.

1 hour ago, johnnysd said:

 

I realize you have been setting yourself up to hate the series no matter what but seriously that is the extent of your feedback?

I was rather looking forward to it, until I saw what they were doing with it.  And what it was doing to fellow fans, or perhaps what it reveals about them.

We have no evidence that he's 100% fluent in the Old Tongue prior to the Finns.  He only pulls out a few phrases, now and then, and only in times of pretty extreme stress or its immediate aftermath.  He shows no real proclivity to it prior to being Healed either, beyond what his friends had, and his dreams just after being Healed were full of as much prophetic/future stuff as anything from the deep past, so who knows what was going on in his head then?

Speculation is fun, and the Wheel of Time is seemingly built to encourage it, but one must be careful not to mistake speculation for established fact.  And it can be tough, because RJ fills his pages with unreliable, but confident and authoritative narrators.

Could be.  It could also be that the Old Blood runs strong in the Two Rivers, and Mat is a direct descendant from Aemon, and upon waking up of having been Healed from the dagger using a device from the Age of Legends, "remembers" leading the Heart Guard in what seems to be Manetheren's final battle in a similar way that Aiel clan chiefs remember their history of the Aiel through their anscestors' eyes upon going through the crystal columns ter'angreal.  Mat's not the only one to break out into the Old Tongue, however.  And it seems odd that a Warder and husband of one of, if not the most powerful Aes Sedai of that era, would be hurling invective at Aes Sedai trying to Heal him, or be proclaiming himself, "no Aes Sedai meat."

Hasn't changed my views at all.  Though I have gone from hoping it's such a flop we can throw it on the trash heap with the Last Airbender movie and all pretend it doesn't exist, to wishing it had never been made because apparently some people would be happy with absolutely anything no matter how bad it is, as long as it has the right names in roughly the right places.

I kinda half expected them to start singing and dancing.  Wheel of Time: Bollywood Edition.

People are often contradictory in how they feel, especially at different times in their lives.  In stories that's typically called character development. 

Rand feels some responsibility for the danger he puts others in or the harm he causes, but it's not a priority for him before he learns and really accepts that he's prophecied to Break the world again and make people "weep for their salvation." Once he does accept that, it dominates his concerns.  He was always prone to chivalrous notions due his upbringing, but once he's surrounded by Maidens who are constantly displaying their loyalty and affection for him, with the harms he will cause now dominating his thoughts, and the Taint making him obsessive and paranoid, and it makes some sense that he would adopt that kind of neurosis.  It would have been nicer to see a bit more lead-up to it, but it's not completely out of the blue.

Not claiming that.  Only that only that Dragon's reincarnation is certain and sure.  For everyone else, well, it's not known.  It's hoped for, and in a few cases it can be retroactively established.  But the belief that souls are generally reincarnated is just that, a belief.  Not knowledge.

It's not clear even that everybody really is reborn/reincarnated.  That's certainly the belief, but Jordan fills his pages with unreliable narrators, even, perhaps especially, regarding cosmological or metaphysical reality.  It likely is true, and we do know that Birgitte gets reborn, though it was a live question all the way to the end whether she really would.  But the point is that while everybody else merely hopes for rebirth, the Dragon's rebirth is certain.  And nobody, except the Dragon, can point to historical figures and say, "That was me, in a previous life," at any point during their actual lives.  At best, some can do that after they've died.  Birgitte is really the only exception to that, due to the circumstances of her being torn out of Tel'aran'Rhiod.

I wasn't going to mention that directly, since that happens in Fires of Heaven, and I wasn't sure if the OP had got there yet, but that was what I was referring to as the event that locks that particular neurosis in.  

It was in the Dragon Reborn. But that was also before he had gone very koo koo bananas.  Or rather, he was being driven koo koo bananas in a specific way, that was not really related to his own tendency towards insanity driven by the taint, but by Forsaken messing around in his dreams, and Darkfriends and Shadowspawn coming at him all the time, with a bit of his own denial of his identity and destiny mixed in.

I would argue that Rand's neurotic obsession with specifically women taking risks and dying for him is a direct result of his contact with Far Daries Mai, combined with encroaching taint madness and his acceptance of his role as the Dragon Reborn.  He didn't have this neurosis before he gave in to the reality that he really was the Dragon reborn.  Only when he "accepts" that he's the "savior" of the world does he start really obsessing over what and who he can save, and lament what he destroys or is destroyed because if him. 

And then you have this whole class of women in this society who love him, in some form or other, and Rand being Rand, how can he not be both baffled by that and return it?  And with them being badass warriors, how can he not then transfer that concern over their being hurt or killed for him, to more ordinary women who are killed because of him?

It's his acceptance of being the Dragon Reborn, and the effects of the taint, that make him neurotic about the things he can save and what gets destroyed because of him, and the Maidens which focus much of that neuroticism onto women more generally, combined with something else that happens in Fires of Heaven to sort of lock that particular neurosis in.  

I think part of the difference here, is that Mat's feelings about Tylin are conflicted, even prior to the sexual encounter.  He thinks she's hot and acknowledges that he might pursue something with her if circumstances were different, and the only reason he resists initially is because she's a queen, and then because she took that choice away from him. 

Taking that choice away from him makes it rape, but the fact that there was a prior possibility of consent, and the fact that the relationship itself was conducted in such a way as to hold out the possibility of a reconciliation of consent, makes it significantly morally different to the relationship between Valda and Morgase.  Morgase submitted because the alternative was her death and the death of those following her.  But there was no prior possibility that she would have chosen a sexual relationship with Valda.  And he forced that relationship without any kind of regard for her as a person.

Mat's physical strength over Tylin doesn't really come into it too much, though.  She pulled a knife on him.

Not only has he never confirmed that anyone other than Rand is someone else reborn, it would counter the mythos he set up, if he did.  The Dragon is the only person who's rebirth is certain and sure; even the other Heros of the Horn are not guaranteed to be reborn again, and crucially, when they are reborn, they don't know who they are or who their previous incarnations were.  

That said, it's entirely possible that Egwene is Eldrene reborn.  Or Latra Posea Decume, or Mabrium en Shereed, or even Bonwhin or Tetsuan.  There just won't ever be enough evidence one way or another to say anything with any confidence, and the authors won't betray their narrative set-up to give us a word-of-god either.

Two things to keep in mind with the Three.  First is that these relationships aren't just imposed (though Min likes to complain about the Pattern doing just that).  Each are developed in a more or less natural way, so that this weird, polyamorous thing makes some sense as to why it's happening.  Elayne's relationship with Rand is the biggest outlier in that, and it's not really that far-fetched.

Second is, and I hope you've noticed this already, but Jordan likes to "borrow" names and ideas from ancient myths and legends of our own, alter them, and weave them into his stories.  For example, drawing the sword (Callandor/Excalibur) from the stone (The Stone).  Or Thom Merrilin/Merlin.  The three loves of Rand is borrowed from another myth involving the Tri-partite goddess, the Maiden-Mother-Crone triad.  So whatever you were spoiled about specifically with regard to Rand's women, I would say the best thing to do is try to read it with a bit of charity, and don't let pre-conceived notions of polygamy, even the Aiel version, cloud your judgement too much.  After all, part of RJ's exploration of gender-flipped power and social dynamics has to include non-traditional takes on the institution of marriage 

@Tim al ThorPerrin gets his yellow eyes in book one, sometime during the encounter with Elyas.  Nynaeve comments on it after she meets back up with him and Egwene, after helping save them from the Whitecloaks.  

So, with regard to the Horn of Valere, getting rid of it for good now that the Last Battle is done, is really in the world's best interests.  For one, the temptation to use it in the future against humans would be too great, much like the bearded-man sa'angreal would be too powerful a weapon to be allowed in human hands.  For another, its use would give away the fact that the Dragon's not dead, as he's a Hero of the Horn.  Which would undermine the Dragon's Peace.

As for the Wise Ones, mostly, we just don't see them, I reckon.  Just the ones relevant to what's going on at the time.  Most are probably with their respective clans.  For the Last Battle, while the Aiel were largely deployed at Shayol Ghoul, they were also spread out to the other theaters.  And their strategy towards the end was largley based on not channelling in the camp, so it'd be hard to get an accurate feel for how many of them there were.

As for the debate about how Rand lit his pipe at the end, as Elayne says, "Welcome to the dinner party.  Try the soup." I think the truth here is pretty simple.  Jordan didn't want all the questions answered as to what was going on.  He loved all the fan-theorizing and made sure to set up some unsolved mysteries for fans to ponder and argue over long after the series had finished.