30 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

Of all the posters in these forums you are by far the most pedantic and have at times posted dictionary definitions of a word to argue over but then you act blind to the philosophical gulf between traditional feminism that embraced equality versus the modern feminist worldview that has been inserted into the show that demeans and limits the men as often as possible while elevating the capabilities of women as much as possible while simultaneously removing the idea of gender roles where possible.  I applaud Jordan’s feminist ideals and the show would have been stronger had it embraced them.  The show actively attacks men and traditional masculinity and that is 100% on Rafe, not Robert Jordan.  If anyone want to cheer that, fine, but that does not change that:

Sounds to me like you're the one pushing an agenda here, not Rafe.

11 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

A show should 100% be judged on the politics of the showrunner if the showrunner is intent on injecting said politics into an established story.  On top of that, many of the changes that have been made are directly tied to Rafe’s worldviews so and criticism of any changes is going to come back to that at some point.

Imagine someone wanting to adapt The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but make it more of a homosexual allegory because of their worldview; imagine someone adapting The Golden Compass but making it have a stronger Christian message because of their worldview.  Either of these would be beyond contempt.  Yet here we have a guy saying he wants to adapt Wheel of Time but inject his own worldview and people want to shield him and his politics from criticism.

It's a book series involving gender dynamics, where the women have "led the world" for a thousand years after "men" have destroyed it, and the guy (Rafe) wants to lean into that.

You're literally comparing apples to oranges.

A more apt comparison is making the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Christian Allegories by having it produced & directed by "Pure Flix Entertainment" with Aslan played by Kevin Sorbo, and Mr. Tumnus played by Donald James Parker.

59 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

Because we can’t have noble male characters

By that logic, Explain Perrin freeing Aviendha?

Quote

And if he suddenly starts fighting competently they better have a good explanation other than some mystical Matrix-style fight program installation.

Did they explain Perrin's fighting ability? Or are we thinking everyone's just hand waving his fighting ability as he's big and stronk, with wolf-skills?

9 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

Interesting.  I’ve never watched any of the extra stuff and think the show should stand on its own without outside explanations.  I didn’t know a scene like that existed.  I always thought that Rafe’s response to a question about this scene was a little vague and I’m being swayed to the idea that we won’t see the fight.

Y'all are missing out when you don't watch the Origins; and when ya go on to preach that the show should stand on it's own merits as if that's some kind of slam dunk on the show.... well content is content.

It's like gloating about not watching "The Animatrix" and have only seen the "Matrix Trilogy", all you've done is missed out on some great content!

2 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

Without Tear and the doorway, why would he go to the Wastes?

The Aiel are seeking the Car'a'carn, and they just saw a Dragon flying in the sky? 😛 

1 hour ago, Scarloc99 said:

None of that makes for a great TV experiance so I feel they are using TGH to do the heavy lifting and then TDR for some key character moments, after all it is in TDR that Moiraine goes and faces down a Forsaken (off screen) without Lan, we have had that moment here with Lanfer. 

Aye, which is why I think they can skip a lot of that and go right to the finale of TDR really early in S3 and make most of S3 TSR, leaving S4 the latter half of Book 4 and book 5+.

20 minutes ago, Scarloc99 said:

One piece also shows that it is far far easier to adapt managa or comic books to live action then any other written medium. By definition they are already storyboarded out, and the story has been cut down to it's simplest format and chunked up to bite size pieces so the reader can understand the world visually as well as through what is written down. The writers for one piece did do a fantastic job I loved it, but I also realise that it is far far easier to translate the product across

The thing I took away from One Piece, is it shows studios you can adapt an insanely weird IP relatively accurately (relatively), and audiences will still love it. 

Again, this topic is about Episode 5: Damane.

Not sex education or who has to get the the last word in on that topic. 

35 minutes ago, Scarloc99 said:

I did a post asking if it matters if tear happens after TSR, I don't think it does. 

Sure, but again Rafe's post was in the context of Season 2.

We have currently seen 5 episodes of Season 2. What content have we seen from book 3 so far?
So far almost everything is based on the Great Hunt.

About the only thing I've seen so far that might be from book 3, is Rand's story line is similar to how he went AWOL in book 3 when he traveled south.

Rafe said: "We are trying to get a fair amount of what's done in book 1-3 (large parts still being held for later), by the end of S2 so that S3 can be a much closer adaptation of TSR."

That "and later" comment IMO implies Season 3 and beyond...

Making S3 a closer adaptation to TSR IMO doesn't mean making the entire season TSR. 
If they play their cards right, we can have Rand/Mat/Perrin and Company take the Stone in the first couple of episodes of S3.

Honestly, we don't even need to spend an entire Season on that plot... (specially depending if Season 2 sets us up for a cliffhanger ending that involves them breaching the stone...)

5 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

But the Groves weren't Stedding (or am I missing something again?).

 

Anyway, given the Waygate is not on the island but close by in the show, there seems little need to have a Waygate in the Tower grounds, regardless of the book, which is good enough to scratch my itch. And I'll get to that point in the books again soon anyway.

Yep you're right.

I was conflating Groves as Steddings. Every stedding has a grove but not every stedding is a grove.

https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Stedding

5 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Spoiler

aiel unarmed combat

 

8 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

 

 

Lets look at what's in the ()

"Large parts still being held for later".
Followed by 
"So S3 can be a closer adaptation to TSR".

That doesn't mean  S3 = a 1:1 of TSR.

That can literally mean, S3E5thru8 = TSR.
  

8 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

I don't know that we have any real confirmation from Rafe that Season 3 is explicitly and wholly book 4.

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

I agree it's not much like aviendha, she's shyer than most, but it fits very well with aiel culture.

29 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Avi is supposed to be the fair, shy, virgin Maiden that saves herself to Rand /s

Having just got through that section of the book not to long ago (again), I never took Avi to be shy. 

I took her as someone who didn't want to be forced into a relationship with a man because a bunch of old crones decided it was her duty to.

5 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I must be remembering this wrong, but was the Tar Valon Waygate not in the grove that was in the Tower grounds? So even Novices could reach it without breaking the rules? I am misremembering this aren't I?

Waygates were always outside of Groves, because they were creations of the one power.

4 hours ago, Godoggo said:

My biggest fear is the Ishamael statement that Mat was basically born to the dark.  Mat, who was my favorite character, is more the reluctant rogue who supports Rand.  I worry that they are going to change that to just make Mat evil.  Will Rand make it to Falme this season, or will Nynaeve fight the blademaster.  She's had more training with the sword than Rand

Lmao

2 hours ago, TravellingIsAGatewayDrug said:

How many posts or how long does my account need to be active before the whole "Your content will need to be approved by a moderator" thing goes away?

This was a measure put in place to stop spam bots. It'll go away in time. 

It was also posted about here, which is a topic you should have read. 

9 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I doubt Mat is going back to the tower again, I don't think he will access the dagger again either, think he is healed from that already, or any healing will happen away from the WT. Season 3 is book 4 so we need to get Rand and Mat to the 3 fold land asap so he can go through the doorway. With only 6 more seasons they can't be wasting time with the constant back and forth to the white tower that you get in the books, I am not 100% sure the girls will go back to the white tower now at all, although they might just so they can become accepted. 

I think we are getting the sparring scene somewhere that is not the white tower at all. 

I don't know that we have any real confirmation from Rafe that Season 3 is explicitly and wholely book 4.

It could very well be a mix of books 3 and 4, like a S2 is a mix of Books 2 & 3.

We could get the last half of book 3, and the first half of book 4 in S3.

Just imagine a S3 season finale with Mat on the Tree, and Perrin in the Two Rivers facing off against Trollocs, and the Girls fighting Moghedien... 

1 hour ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I think this would be very difficult to explain, even just in terms of the books. The bond is created by the power, but does not as such draw power to exist.

  Reveal hidden contents

It is not broken by entering a stedding for example.

Therefore its nature is completely unknown, only that the one power is used to create it, but it is not of the one power itself. 

 

Also masking the bond is not done with the power, but is a mental trick of wrapping the sensation of the bond up in a mental cloth, so again not obviously using the power at all as the girls did not even need to embrace the source to do so.

  Hide contents

However, as a complication, Min who could not channel, was the only one who had no success whatsoever in masking the bond.

Which means? Meh. Maybe Bela knows.

 

Though for the show... I just don't think we know enough. The bond should be broken if she were stilled according to book lore

  Hide contents

(I think anyway, though how can Min be bound in that case?)

, but if the bond is still there, it should be a mental trick to mask/unmask it. But maybe only channelers can do it. Or maybe you need to have trained in channeling to be able to do it. The books as I remember them just are not that forth coming with specifics, don't know if the companion etc,. offer any more information about it.

 

I'd say the show want the bond not to be broken, but not functional, with suspicion of whether Moiraine cannot or will not unmask it. Seems a bit complicated and Lan's moping about it for so long is getting kind of grating. Probably will be explained to some degree later as they have made such a big deal about it so far.

The only thing I can say for certain, is that they have probably changed the mechanics of the bond in ways that we do not know yet. 

Once they resolve the "mystery" of whether Moiraine is "stilled or shielded" (like the who is the dragon mystery from season 1), that will help clarify what's going on with their bond.

There's a few possible ways they could have changed it, and we can speculate until we're blue in the face, so I'm just going to WAFO. 

1 hour ago, DreadLord31 said:

I was convinced we would not get Gaul because this is a “girl-power” adaptation; now, not so sure, simply because we didn’t get Bain or Chiad in this episode and we know they’ve been cast for this season. It would make sense, actually, if they’re not cutting Gaul to include him when those two are introduced.

I don't know that they'll introduce Gaul or Rhuarc this season, but It's entirely plausible that they'll be introduced next season when they become integral to the series plot next season and the foreseeable future.

59 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

My issue is that I don't know if Masema is awesome in this show or if I think he's awesome because he was awesome in The Last Kingdom 😁

 

My vote goes to Elayne so far.

He's awesome in this show, I haven't watched the Last Kingdom.

56 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

As we all know, One Piece is based on a very popular manga/anime so the fanbase must be massive. I've seen just some clips of it 

One Piece also shares a lot of the same international Market share as WoT.

The bad news about One Piece doing well, is it eats watch hours away from WoT.

The GOOD news about One Piece doing well?

It tells studios they don't have to be afraid to give fans a story that resembles what was written, no matter how strange... 

31 minutes ago, Storeebooq said:

Ultimately, I just think it wasn't a solo task by Liandrin. She had help from others, whether they be other Black Ajah, Darkfriends, Forsaken, etc. Which is why it seems so iffy to us, we weren't shown the assistance, just the outcome and certain milestones. 

100%. Which is why I hope we get some extra stuff from Verin trying to verify Liandrin's story. 😉 

5 minutes ago, Cipher said:

Honestly I would be half surprised if Thom comes back in any form.

https://winteriscoming.net/2022/12/14/thom-merrilin-will-not-be-in-the-wheel-of-time-season-2/
 

Quote

One character we now know for certain won’t be back for the show’s sophomore season is Thom Merrilin, the gleeman played Alexandre Willaume. Willaume recently appeared on an episode of The Mighty Dragon podcast where he broke the news. “I’m not in season 2 [of The Wheel of Time], ’cause my character, Thom Merrilin, is not in for season 2, but he should be in for season 3,” the actor said.

Like many of us have said... He is returning.

18 minutes ago, DreadLord31 said:

Ah yes, why flicker, flicker!

Because - when Lanfear rides by whipping the horse with power, the camera pauses on a STONE with Old Tongue writing on it. And I'm 80% certain, that's our Portal Stone! Though it'd be great if somebody could screenshot that and translate it. I believe the time-stamp is 11:43. @SinisterDeath who do we know who translates Old Tongue writing?

/sigh


Here's some more tweaking

8 minutes ago, Agitel said:

Liandrin in the ways? I might crack a joke about it but I don't think it's an egregious case at all, and that's time that would have had to have been taken from elsewhere.

And that's why I'm holding out hope that we'll get that as part of Verin's investigation.

We had part of it with Sheriam being under a "weave of compulsion".
That alone has me asking. Wait, how the bloody hell did she have time to get back up stairs, do that, then go down?! She had to have had help... Help... like a network of Friends. Dark Friends...

If we don't get something like that, then it feels like a cheap cop-out to the more astute viewer to have not at least got a mini scene where she at least pays off a guard as she leaves the tower with 3 covered horses... or using a secret Way Gate in Tar Valon...

*edit*
added last paragraph