It's hard to say how RJ would have written the series had he written them today, instead of in the 90s. He'd have been 75, and while Harriet is pretty inclusive for her age, I feel he was probably the more socially conservative one in that relationship. I dread an alternate timeline where RJ finished the books and took to Twitter, and made his politics known in 2016.

Honestly, I believe his list was just a bunch of actors he liked and women he thought were hot. 😄 I doubt they'd cast Halle for Tuon. She's WAY too old now. Part of me questions if she's even that good of an actor... but she did win an Oscar for Monster's Ball.. (Was that really for her acting, or just a good script? Maybe it's the catwoman bias. I dunno...)

Not necessarily. Depends on how the scene plays out, and how tied to the ending it is... Could have Gaul and Rhuarc introduce themselves to Rand, as a flood of Aiel climb over the Stone as the show fades to black. 😉

Or they're keeping a tight lid on a lot of casting because it's wrapped up in the season finale with a flood of Aiel showing up...

Rand was born in 978. Eye of the world takes place in 998. That makes Rand as old as 20, as young as 19. Egwene was born in 981, which puts her as old as 17, as young as 16. When it comes to the show, they just set the main 4 as born in 998, so it's not nearly as yucky for Rand to be diddling a 16 year old as a 20 year old. Why? If you don't like something, turn the channel. Touch some grass. I didn't care for the Shannara Chronicles TV show. The casting and acting was WAY to MTV even for an MTV show. I didn't spend my days on Shannara Chronicles forums/discord whining about how bad that show was when it was actively on TV. I changed the channel.

Where did I say I enjoyed the look of the mouth pieces? It is, we probably know a lot more about the books then you think we do. Note the forum you are in. Wheel of Time TV show. That is an Adaptation. Adaptations always change things. Even Lord of the Rings cut a lot of content and book LotR book purists were unhappy about the movies when they came out until everyone else enjoyed them. You are entirely free to talk about the books over at the Wheel of Time Books Discussion forum, you might find yourself happier discussing the books, over the TV show.

I updated the link to the correct Merlin. 1998's Merlin, not 2008's.

There is an old interview question with RJ where he's asked about this very question and he gets kinda wishy washy on it. The tldr is. Yes there could have been a female "dragon" but "no" it can't have been the same "soul" as the Dragons (Rands). There's mention of "Amersu" being on equal footing with Rand? It's possible there are other people in other ages given the title " dragon" that aren't Rand's soul, that are female. Perhaps Amersu is Egwene and that has to do with her ability to "heal" the pattern. I dunno. But again, it all boils down to a mountain out of a mole hill. Degendering IMO "souls" amounts to a nothing burger. Rand is still Male, and is Egwene still female. Internally and externally it "allowed" them to market the "mystery" of "who is the dragon?". Personally, I feel the writer and directors "cheated" the audience with how they revealed that "mystery". As a viewer watching episode 7, I felt the flashback scene from ep1 (Tam), that the viewer didn't actually see in ep 1, cheapened the reveal. Seeing Rand's channeling POV (like in the ways) was totally valid. But, we almost never talk about this kind of stuff here. It's always "but the gendered souls!".

We also learn later on, that the leash component isn't even necessary. (See Elayne recreating them)

We only got a snippit of the Tinkers culture in the show, and I don't recall if they went all in on the "gypsy/roma" side of it; E.g. where the Tinkers would be run out of towns for "stealing" anything not nailed down, including their youth... (There's been a lot of push back about showing that specific group of real-world people like that these days, and it can be a touchy subject.) But largely even in the books the "They are peaceful, except for the violent men" is largely book accurate. (see rhuidean chapters) Books vs Show, Books women (except Aiel) were less likely to use a blade to kill. They were more likely to use words, and Guile. Men were more likely to use Swords & sling Balefire. In the show, we're seeing women have more action sequences than what we saw in the books, but that's also because in the books we have sequences were a lot of the action was "off screen" and the combat was "inferred" to have happened. Like I said, I get it. I understand the worry that they'll push all the negative onto the male characters. All we can do is WAFO. Right now, a lot of this *waves hands around* is just speculating, and then getting worked up over that speculation.

It's not even my idea. It's something that's been talked about on these boards by others quite a bit.

IF HBO had got their hands on it, who knows what they would have done with it to be honest. Have you seen GoT's fanbase attack House of Dragons for not being book accurate enough? (Some are mad because it doesn't include literal child rape. Other's are mad because they cast people of color in the show) Anyways, I honestly believe the only medium you could have a near-book accurate TV show is something closer to Anime. Unfortunately that's not popular enough, even among the book fans. Here's something you gotta remember about RJ. 1) He loved the TV Series Merlin, and wished the WoT tv series could be just as good. 2) He allowed and approved the video games creation. The plot/story was completely not-wot. It's about as close to WoT as I-Robot is to the actual Asimov book called I-Robot is. Yet, RJ Approved it and was happy. Even RJ's own "casting" list, went against his own character descriptions. What I'm getting at is... The Man wasn't picky about adaptations of his works. I don't think he gave a flying frying pan about half the crap his fans did. I'm pretty sure he's told some of his fans to go inflate a donkey because they needed to touch grass.

There isn't one, because the powers that be would rather people like/love/etc a post then to "downvote" or "dislike" it. Yes, RJ showed "toxic femininity", and he shows toxic masculinity if you know where to look. (Book 5, Thom said something along the lines of he'd normally help fix a young lads guilt by getting them drunk and helping them burying their sorrow in a nice barmaid, but unfortunately that wasn't going to work for Nynaeve) Whether he did it intentionally or not is debatable, but I believe he used "toxic femininity" as a vehicle for his audience (Young Males) to better recognize how they treat others. I believe readers would do this by identifying with the characters (Rand/Mat/Perrin) in his books, and when they read what those characters go through at the hands of others, it would allow them to mentally "walk in the shoes" of the people they might be doing this to IRL, and potentially learn from it. Unfortunately, this can have the unintended consequence where those "young men" will do a 180, and take what they read, and use it to justify the thought that "this only happens to men, and women deserve what they get".... which is just a complicated way of saying you can't you can't fix narcissists with literature. This is something I'm wondering if they'll keep or not. Will they remove all the negative treatment the women put on the male characters throughout the series? Will they keep some of it? Tone it down? I can understand the fear that they'll remove it entirely, and have only the male characters treat female characters negatively... And that would be unfortunate. A central theme of the series is people are equally shitty towards each other, regardless of their gender. I guess we'll just have to WAFO?

Does a person who has been "mutilated" (lost a limb) not adapt to those changes? Hell, I knew a kid with one arm that could catch and throw a baseball better then most able bodied people could... But what do I know, the English language is complicated.

That is true.. But unlike GOT that's actually possible in the later seasons of WOT. 😉

I saw that floating around and... light, I hope they understand you can't just hype that up and have it not pay out. I swear hearing that, and we get a scene like the Shienar charge again.. Here I'm thinking if they actually do what they hype... Then when it comes to Dumai's Wells, and other scenes... They need to hire consultants from shows like "Band of Brothers", or something along those lines.

I mainly brought them back up as contrast to the changes to Abel's character. E.g. because you had to cut so much content due to time and $$, you can't "add" content due to "time". I think that's nonsense. I talked about how if you ctrl-f all references to those locations and events within the shows dialogue, and delete, you would have continuity issues. That you would need to fill in those blanks somewhere. I've mentioned Abel's changes now are most likely their for his character to have a redemption arc in Season 3 when Perrin returns. Giving the character some on-screen growth beyond "Oh look, there's mr. baddass Abel Cauthon shooting Trollocs in the eye from 600 yards again", what a scamp!

Can we try to think about it like this? They remove Caemlyn, Baerlon, and White Bridge because that's a lot of sets to build. Now they have to remove all the dialogue associated with those locations, correct? Okay. Now you have a bunch of continuity issues if you just ctrl-f and remove any and all dialogue that references those locations. Now you have to re-write those events so they make sense. But they're not just changing events in S1E1, they're changing events that happen in S2E1, and S3E1. They're not just changing things by the seat of their pants. These things are planned. They're making changes in Season 1 so things make sense in Season 8. (At least, that's the hope.) So IMO, the the idea that they can't add something just because they had to cut something out to save time, is just is just silly. If you want a LotR reference, they "changed & added" several things that never happened in the books, while removing entire chapters that never made it to the screen. (Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire come to mind as scenes that were cut, with Gimli attacking the ring, and Saruman being yeeted out of the tower as scenes that were added that never happened in the books)

Not really. They had lawyers go over it and everything. Totally legal. As a prime member, you're seeing the "prime free shipping price". As a non prime member, you're seeing the price without the "free shipping" price already included in the total. Now when you go to add to cart instead of seeing "$132", you see "$75" then you see "+60 in shipping". Sometimes you come out ahead... sometimes you get hosed. You're also going to miss out on those "prime member exclusives".... Wait till you learn about the wonderful world of shopping around for travel. (Airline tickets/hotels.) That can get really sketchy. Here's a tip. check out the prices using Incognito or using different browsers on different devices.. signed into different user accounts...

Again. When you have to subtract a ton of locations to save time & money, that allows you to add or change minor things. You're acting like changing Abel to a drunk is the same as moving Episode 6 from Caemlyn to Tar Valon. You're confusing the spec for the log in your eye.

Because the postage isn't actually free. The Price you see is "bundled" with shipping built in. I believe there's a google extension that'll even show you the price you'd see if you weren't a prime member... which is sometimes lower then listed. All those "Amazon Choice" products, may not even be the "cheapest". They're often the ones that generate Amazon the greatest profit margin while showing you a price that looks relatively cheap. Then you have the products amazon "makes" and "sells", which is similar to what Walmart did, where they evaluate a product, figure it's profit margins and see how they can improve it before buying the manufacturers and build it cheaper and sell it for the same price. All this to say... They're constantly "generating" income from subscriptions, and they can attribute a portion of that by how well a show is "performing" by how many "hours" of content people "consume" on prime video.

Yes, and the keyword you're missing is that they subtracted a LOT of content. They subtracted Caemlyn They subtracted Baerlon. They subtracted White Bridge They subtracted Bayle Domon's boat. When you Subtract a large portion of the middle of the book, you can add/change things that allows future content to be more impactful. Abel Cauthon plays virtually no role in the first book. Why include him at all? Why cast him? Why show him? Why change him at all? There must be a reason right? Expat talks about how those changes impact Mat's character development due to the lack of internal monologue in a TV series. Other's have talked about how this one change, allows for Abel's return in a future season gives his character a redemption arc, something that will be far more impactful for TV audiences then what we strictly got from the books. I want you to actually think about it. RJ wrote this series at the seat of his pants. When RJ wrote tEotW, he planned it to be a Trilogy, maybe 4 books. He thought aMoL would be book 3 or 4. The "magic system" in the series didn't start to get fleshed out until books 4 & 5, before then, the "magic" system was a lot softer. Some food for thought. Rand didn't learn about "Gateways" until Book 5. Moiraine briefly talked about "Travelling" in the first book and that it was "lost". By book 5, Rand acts surprised at seeing a Gateway, even though he basically created the exact same thing just before he went "nuclear" on that Trolloc army. Those same "gateways" were also what Ishamael was using against Rand in the Stone... even though he didn't call them that. Later, much later we learn about "Dreamshards", and whether this was a creation of RJ or Brandon I have no idea, but their existence explains "what" was going on during Rand's fight with Ishy in the Stone. There are certain concepts like "inverting" weaves, and the True Power that would completely change how the forsaken could operate so openly for as long as they did before being discovered. Then we weaves like "Compulsion" that didn't "exist" in the Eye of the World. Something like that would have completely changed how someone like Ishy could have operated from the shadows throughout the years. People arguing about Moiraine being "stilled" in Episode 8, didn't pay attention to Ishy's words and compared those to what Mohedien did to Liandrin... I'm still working on my re-read so it's been awhile, but I will say the idea isn't without merit. Among the EF5, Mat is the most anti-Channeler of them all. It's almost as if a certain forsaken played a hand in that. Timeline's off. Manetheren fell after Aridhol fell and became Shadar Logoth. It was Manetheren's soldiers that discovered the city was abandoned of all life, sensing only evil... I'd say the wheel didn't care. RJ did though.

Here's a thought experiment. What weaves would Ishamael know in the Eye of the World, that Robert Jordan didn't know existed when he wrote the Eye of the World?

Yet, Abel and Tam are important character(s) in the Shadow Rising arc when Perrin returns to the two rivers, Correct? You can "add" story for a character who becomes important later, if you're trying to show character growth. While at the same time cutting other content, or moving/merging said content to later seasons.

Correct. But that doesn't eliminate his thread, does it?