I don't think that sort of criticism is necessarily grounded in racism.  Lan is described as being nearly as tall as Rand, and broader across the shoulders.  He is plucked right out of fantasy tropes, and is clearly intended to be cast in the mould of Aragon.  I mean, down to the actually being an uncrowned king.  Lan is supposed to be a mountain of a man: implacable and dominating.

Which is not to say that Daniel Henney couldn't pull off that kind of look.  And for all we know, he still might. But that little snippet is not giving that vibe.  In that snippet, Daniel Henney doesn't look like Lan and he's not behaving like we would expect Lan to behave.  And it's not his facial features or his race that's the cause of that.  It's the crouching, open-mouthed flailing hop that does that, with the loose, ragged outfit, when he should be standing tall, with feet firmly planted, mouth tightly closed or showing teeth in a grimace and moving his sword with a graceful economy rather than wasteful flourish, and wearing more well-fitting green scaled armor and his cloak being the only loose thing on him.

I think we need to be careful that we aren't dismissing valid aesthetic criticism simply because some of the earliest fan reactions to the casting were based in disgusting racism and bigotry.  

I don't know that Daniel Henney is a bad choice for Lan; I haven't actually seen enough of him as Lan to make any kind of judgement.  I do agree with Carebear Sedai that these little snippets are doing more harm than good, especially at this early stage when most of the marketing is still directed at the existing fans of the franchise, or at the relatively few fans of the actors themselves.  Rafe's little snippet about "girding our loins" for changes is not going well, and not all the "but it's just another Turning of the Wheel" is enough to make bad aesthetic choices that divide and alienate the fanbase not bad choices.  It's not about the races of the cast.  I have no reason to doubt that Daniel Henney could portray the kind of badass that Lan is.  But the aesthetic choices they're making in what they're showing us are simply bad.  Thom's guitar, Tam's sword, the Shadar Logoth dagger, the entirely too-short snips of Moiraine and Lan which reveal either nothing about their characterization in the series or give the wrong impressions.  None of this is really helping create a sense of excitement for the series or a desire to share it around.

Wheel of Time has had a curse with its appearances in other media.  Comics that are never finished.  A bizarre fps with a disavowed backstory that was overshadowed by better shooters released that year.  A ttrpg released under the worst version of D&D.  The Winter Dragon.  Red Eagle Entertainment.  The hope was that this production could break that curse.  But it's beginning to look more and more like it's still suffering under it.

To be fair, the clip did give an impression of a more lithe, shorter fighter than some might expect for Lan.  To be fair in the other direction, the two seconds of a clip we got is not enough to make any real judgements as to Lan's overall aesthetic in the show.

There's just not much to say about it.  It sort of looks like an awkward little hop and slash, but there's so little of it it's hard to tell if it really is an awkward, weird little move or if it's part of some larger sequence that would make it not look quite so much like Mr. Henney stepped on a lego piece while swinging his sword.  And because everybody here already knew Daniel Henney would be playing Lan, it's not revelatory, so there's not much to say about it.  That said, I wouldn't complain about a similar treatment for all the main cast.

But so much for an accelerated marketing push.  It was six weeks from the Moiraine snippet.  If they do do a similar treatment for the rest of the main cast and they keep this pace, one could go from conceiving a baby to officially naming it before they're done.  Although, on the bright side (depending on your point of view), the reporting I've seen that has the actors back in Prague to complete season one filming also says that they'll be moving right into season two filming, which pretty much confirms a season two.  Of course, that also still implies a fall season one release at the earliest.

Shadow and Bone on Netflix has been a pretty good watch so far, if you're looking for a fantasy book-to-tv adaptation fix.  You get kinda thrown into the deep end of a history and lore that the show makes you have to figure out (or look up) if you're not familiar with the book series.  Being unfamiliar with said series, I don't know how faithful it is.  But it seems like a good enough way to deal with a story where a complex lore and history are relevant, without bogging everything down with exposition.  The acting and writing aren't terrible and the special effects are pretty good too.  But I don't think it's gonna become some cult hit like The Umbrella Academy or the Witcher.  I do see it as sort of blazing a trail that the Wheel of Time will soon follow.

My hope is that she's simply Perrin's sister that they've renamed.  Make her his wife, and kill her in the opening acts, and Perrin's motivation is no longer about protecting his family and village, but seeking vengeance, and his arc of personal growth would no longer be about reconciling his desire for a normal life with his extraordinary, if initially untrusted abilities and the duties of friendship and decency, but instead would have to deal with his overcoming his grief and anger first.

It also significantly sets Perrin apart to already be married.  Perrin would no longer be a boy with Rand and Mat, but a married man.  That puts him in a completely different thematic, narrative and social position to Rand and Mat early on, and it's thematically and narratively important for them to all begin in the same thematic, narrative and social space.  This is a coming-of-age story for the boys and Egwene, and to a degree, Nynaeve as well.  It's a story about how they take that last step into adulthood, finally becoming their own persons and earning the self-respect and respect of others that goes with that.  That's a theme that's significantly undermined by having one of them already an adult with a family, even a new family, of his own.

Brandon may have named the practice, but all the elements of it are present well before he took the reins.  

Did you really bring a thread more than 8 months dead back to life just to say that it's a topic that should be dropped?

Necromancy is a sin.  And if you're gonna bring stuff back to life, at least bring it all the way back.  Don't leave us with some brain-dead, rotten, shuffling zombie corpse to deal with.

I think he did with Aram exactly what he set out to do, but unfortunately, Jordan didn't get to do the follow-up.  Aram felt like a dropped plotline because it was dropped, by Brandon.  Perrin was Brandon's favorite character of the boys, and it shows not just in how he managed to get the sense of Perrin's internal monologue and external behavior mostly right, (as opposed to his first take on Mat), but also in that under Brandon, Perrin was no longer a character that really needed to grow or who struggled with the growth he did get.  He simply became a badass who had to go through certain plot-hoops at the right time and place in order to "level up."

If you think about it, Perrin under Jordan had nearly become almost everybody's least favorite, certainly their least favorite of the three boys.  He broods and sulks.  He worries over the same problems like a dog worrying a dried out old bone.  He's obsessive and simultaneously worried about his obsessiveness.  The only thing worse than the Perrin chapters were the Elayne ones, and at least Elayne's had some interesting politicking going on.  It was Brandon who made him cool again, what with the forging of Mah'alleinir and rescue of the Whitecloaks.  But he also kinda downplayed Perrin's working past his traumas and overcoming his flaws.  Gods and legends don't really have to do that.

The Aram arc needed three things to make it hit harder, emotionally.  First, Aram needed a PoV, not a whole chapter or anything like that, just enough to let us inside his head, to see how he thinks and feels, maybe redeem his initial dickishness somewhat. 

Second, he needed a friend.  Someone from among the secondary cast in Perrin's orbit, who we as readers were already inclined to like and trust, in whom Aram could have confided, who could have understood him, and who could have communicated with Perrin about Aram's mental state and needs.  Gaul wouldn't be bad, but I think Tam would fit better here.

And finally, through that friend from above, it needed to be made more explicit to Perrin, and by extension us readers, what exactly Aram needed from his new liege-lord, why he needed it, and what the risks were if he didn't get it.  This would have improved Perrin's arc, too, whose story all the way up through ToM is about having to lead while not wanting to, learning to embrace leadership while embracing his inner wolf.  Aram is Perrin's greatest tragedy, his greatest failure, in the whole series, and it's a real shame that it doesn't hit harder, emotionally. 

The problem with Aram is that there's nothing to really care about, regarding him as a person, after he takes up the sword.  He has no POVs, he confides in no one, and he has no real character growth or development from that point on.  Perrin doesn't trust him, he's mostly wary of his mental (in)stability and despairing of the responsibility of having to lead this man.  Faile is sympathetic, but makes no attempt to connect with him.  Gaul mostly side-eyes him.  We don't learn that he's been deceived by Masema until he betrays Perrin, so there's no build-up or suspense there.  He was introduced to us as being kind of a dick for trying to seduce Egwene while thinking Perrin was with her, and he never really did anything to redeem himself afterwards.  He wasn't secretly a good guy who sends money to orphans or helps old ladies cross the street.  So losing him was no big loss, not emotionally for the readers or for the characters related to them like Perrin, nor strategically for Team Light.

I feel for the Amayar a bit more, and more now than I did on my earlier read-throughs, mostly because of the description of how they murdered their children before committing suicide.  Becoming a father will do that to a person.  I'm also somewhat saddened because they represent a branch of the ancient Aiel that are now extinct, by their own hands, and for ultimately stupid reasons.  That stupidity mutes the sadness, though.

I reckon that "dangerous resonance" between the twisted stone ring and the silver arches was meant to simply demonstrate that the function of the silver arches ter'angreal was related to function of the twisted rings ter'angreal.  Though we didn't come across the concept of "Dreamshards" until later (though they were in fact in use from the very beginning), it seems as though the function of the silver arches is to create Dreamshards that one can enter in the flesh.  And of course, we know that the twisted rings were training tools for Dreamwalkers meant to aid them in entering Tel'aran'Rhiod, until they became proficient enough with it that they didn't need them any longer.

I don't know how much she knew about what exactly would cause the destruction of the doorway, but she knew what she had to do, as it was revealed to her at Rhuidean.  It's an interesting hypothesis that it was a reaction with the angreal, or possibly with a ter'angreal that Lanfear might have had on her.  However, Jordan answered this question way back in 2000 in an interview. Basically, it really was just two powerful channellers actively weaving as they passed through the doorway that did it.  How this squares with the fact that Rand was channelling his fire sword as he backed out of the doorway at Tear is something of a mystery, however.

On 3/12/2021 at 12:46 PM, tknightbob said:

"Yes we have the stories Thom tells about Len, Moska, Merk and Anla but all that does is proves that the Humans of RW are descended from Humans that evolved on Earth."

 

It does not.

 

RJ wrote in allusions, homages, and Easter eggs to all kinds of things. None of which prove that the first age is our age, or that the people of RW came from Earth in any way. It's a fun theory, and maybe it's correct. Maybe yours is correct, but nothing has been proven. Unless the powers that be say otherwise, and I doubt they will, it's all just conjecture. I'm just curious why everyone thinks this is fact.

The Powers that Be have said otherwise.  Jordan had made it clear, in interviews if not the text, that a conceit of his fictional world of the Wheel of Time is that it takes place in the far distant future/long forgotten past of our world; that our Age is an Age in the Turning of the Wheel.  That's why those "Easter Eggs" and homages exist at all.  This isn't a topic that the author had no opinion on.  But it is a topic where the relevance of the author's opinion is somewhat up for debate. 

Jordan had also made it pretty clear that he understood himself to be writing fiction, and as such, he didn't see the need to go to too much trouble either keeping sensible or logical contradictions out of his story, or helping his readers out too much in suspending their disbelief when they encounter such contradictions.  For example, when asked what would happen should someone balefire themself, he famously (or infamously depending on your pov) advised the questioning fan to go have a love affair with "man, woman or german shepherd." Basically telling her to "get a life" and stop worrying so much about the ins-and-outs of a fictional story.

Dropping the series in June would be great, if they want it to underperform miserably.  Ain't nobody gonna be wanting to stream a CW-style drama when there's bars, baseball and bbqs to get back to.

Discovering the nature of magic in the Wheel of Time in reading the books is part of it's charm.  It's a part of the world-building for which Jordan is so highly regarded, and as such, any kind of detailed account of what the magic system is, for a person who hasn't read the books yet, would be pretty spoilery.

However, something like this might suffice: Magic is gendered into male and female types.  Magic involves the classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit, and working magic is thought of as "weaving threads" of those elements to various effect.  For the last three thousand years, the male half of magic has been cursed such that any wielder of it will go dangerously insane and die of a rotting disease.  Have fun!

Your suspicions would be incorrect.

Ishamael was only partially Sealed.  It took several years for him to become fully subsumed and unable to interact with the world, only for him to return a thousand years later to kick off the Trolloc Wars and form the Black Ajah, be subsumed again, then return again a thousand years after that to corrupt Hawkwing and kick off the Hundred Years War.  I suspect he tried to escape through Tel'aran'Rhiod or perhaps a Dreamshard, but was too close to the Dark One for that to work properly.

That doesn't make it better.  Indeed, it undermines the solace of those book fans who aren't going to like the TV adaptation, that at least they'll still have the books.  Book fans looking for official replicas for their own cosplays are going to be pretty darn disappointed when the only thing they can find anymore is that glorified letter-opener.  Indeed, the fact that that thing is going to become the "official" Shadar Logoth dagger is pushing me towards hoping this adaptation does turn out to be utter trash and ends up cancelled before the second season just so that dollar-store costume reject doesn't end up the "official" anything.  And I don't want to hope that.

Be honest.  If you came across this dagger in any other context, if you didn't know anything about the TV show at all and found this thing in, say, a pawn shop or a costume shop or something, would "that's a good Shadar Logoth dagger," really be the first thing that popped into your head?  If you were looking to do a Mat or Fain cosplay, say, last Halloween, and you found a dagger that looked like that, would that really be your first choice, or would you keep looking, and only take that thing if it were the only thing you could find?

I'm not arguing that it's not "pretty" or "seductive" or "dangerous" or whatever other subjective quality people want to claim it has.  But it's not the Shadar Logoth dagger.

I have been, up to this point, willing to give them the benefit of a doubt.  I haven't been displeased by very much up until this latest round of teasers.  I noticed Tam's sword hilt being different, but it was the first "significant" difference we've seen regarding aesthetic choices, I let it go.  Thom's lack of flute bothers me more.  And this dagger is simply not the Shadar Logoth dagger.  This camel's back isn't broken yet, but the straws are piling up.  Rafe Judkins isn't some powerhouse of TV production such that I'm willing to give him absolute trust.  And the Wheel of Time has a long history of having it's various adaptations, whether in rpgs, video games, comic books, or the TV pilot, just be absolute crap.

Believe me, I want this show to be good.  If it can't be a faithful adaptation then I would like for it to be good in its own right.  But none of these most recent releases are inspiring me to think that it will be either a faithful adaptation, or more than the CW-style teen-tv pablum Judkins has a history of making.

The last thing I saw out of Brandon is that he had only read up to the sixth episode's script.  Harriet has been completely silent.  And given the debacle that followed Winter Dragon, I expect her lawyers have advised her that when it comes to rights holders doing what they're technically allowed to do, it's better to say nothing if one can't say anything nice.  I have no reason to believe either is all that involved, nor that their feedback is listened to very much.  I'm not going to speculate about who has whatever motives or what's going on behind the scenes.  But these "teasers" they are giving us are not inspiring confidence in me.  I'm beginning to expect that this will end up the same way every other adaptation of the WoT into other media has.  Spurned by most fans for being a poor adaptation, and not good enough on its own to draw and keep its own audience.

If you'd care to read through my post history here, and elsewhere, you'd know how far off-base your suspicions are.

Though I suppose to be fair to you, you may not be able to.  Much of my comments on the topic have been on threads that have been removed.

Suffice to say that I think casting is one of those things that I think they're doing right.

I was never as much a fan of the Lord of the Rings to begin with, I find Tolkien to be among the master world-builders, but his prose is hard to read, his plotting is ponderous and often lacks any sense of urgency or crisis and his characters are too often unrelatable and lack any development in the story itself.  But I do sympathize with those who are, who take issue with unnecessary cosmetic changes made to the film.  However, I find very little changes unnecessary in the films.  Almost all of them are done to improve Tolkien's terrible storytelling and make things fit within the timeframe of a movie.

And I feel like there's a great deal of obstinate missing the point, in order to deny any credibility to those who do not possess unshakeable faith in those responsible for this adaptation.  Rafe Judkins is not some master auteur of TV storytelling.  His prior work is not inspiring, it's adequate at best.  There's a lot of self-proclaimed fans of WoT in the entertainment industry.  One of them gave us Winter Dragon.  And that guy had actually won awards for his work.

I would like for at least one of these prop, set or character teaser reveals to actually look like what fans of the #1 American fantasy series expect.  At this point, I'm half expecting them to give Loial a giant underbite and oversized lower canines that jut out over his upper lip like some kind of WoW orc.  Thus far, I've seen a lot of words written about how they're "staying true to the core" and "making sure they know when they're deviating from the books," but very little that demonstrates that they're actually doing so.  I'm not one to squee over any little tidbit that gets dropped, nor am I going to elevate the judgement of some no-name prop designer with an "artistic" hair up her butt over Jordan's when it comes to Jordan's story.  The little things matter, especially when they "don't matter." Staying true to the little things when they "don't matter" is how one shows respect.

I fully expect there to be big changes for the adaptation.  But the point is to remain true to the spirit of these works.  All these little changes which don't make one whit of difference to the plot indicate a desire to imprint a distinctive style, distinct not just from other entries in the fantasy tv drama genre, but distinct from the already distinctive style of the source material.  This speaks to either a lack of faith in the source, or great deal of hubris in the showrunner.

When Peter Jackson adapted the Lord of the Rings, he wasn't trying to give us Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, he was trying to, and succeeded in, giving us Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, adapted for the big screen.  The more of these little teasers that come out, with completely unnecessary differences from the source material, the more it looks like we're not getting Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, adapted for tv viewing.  Instead, we're getting Rafe Judkins' Wheel of Time.  Whether the show still ends up being good or not, as a fan of the books, that's not what I wanted in a TV adaptation.  They've claimed they were being very intentional in their deviations from the books.  So what's the intention behind these pointless, minor aesthetic changes, if not to make it different from the source merely for the sake of being different from the source?

Look, I'm not opposed to changes that have to be made to adapt the story into something watchable on TV.  I'm not opposed to changing Thom's harp into a guitar.  Nor adding elements of New Spring, putting more focus on Moiraine or ginning up Logain's story to bring Aes Sedai politicking into viewer's awareness earlier than it becomes a problem in the books.  I fully accept that subplots will have to be dropped, events and characters will have to be consolidated, their development accelerated, or even that brand new events and characters will have to be added in to be able to convey ideas that were conveyed via internal monologue in the books.  But it's the "pointless" little changes that bug me.  Because they don't have to happen.  And because it signals that they aren't being true to the core of the books.  They're taking their interpretation, and putting their own "artistic" stamp on it, rather than trying to be the careful curators of Jordan's legacy that they claim they are being.