35 minutes ago, Jaysen Gore said:

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it wasn't the Rand was allowing it, it was the fact that he had to accept that it was her - that it was all of their - choices and her right to do so. And I'm not saying the growth from it happened in the book; I'm saying it would have happened after the book, and him dying would kill that.  And it's not that it's one upmanship, it's that the women sacrificing their life to save a man (not a child) is still a radical concept.

 

It wasn't a KC prophecy, it was Min's vision of 3 women on a boat with Rand, dying, paralleling Arthur's funeral. Unless you argue that the fire was a metaphorical Viking funeral I guess.

 

5 minutes ago, ashi said:

 

 

Maybe some old Shienaran lord found the horn and tried to blow it during some trolloc attack, only to get told off by Hawkwing because the Dragon wasn't there, thought to himself "that sucks" and buried it under the throne. Show headcanon (and it explains why they didn't try to use it, too!)?

It must suck having the wrong lord try to blow your horn ?

20 hours ago, Jaysen Gore said:

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Egwene - it doesn't affect her actions, but it reduces the impact of her sacrifice as the only member of the EF5 to die. The whole point of Rand's List is for him to accept Women dying heroically . If he dies right after accepting that, all that growth is wasted. I was also being sarcastic because of all the feedback that the show is all about the Wimminz, and Rand doesn't matter. So of course Egwene needs to be the most sacrificial and the most glorious. all by herself.

 

And for Grimdark - Killing your main character after 8 seasons, not fulfilling all the prophecies about him, and thereby breaking the internal consistency of your universe would be grim. Think about how people reacted to Danerys, and you get some idea of how I think Rand's death would play. It would also of course, piss all over the book fans one final time at the very end of the series.  Which I'm sure would be a wonderful legacy. 

 

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Brandon: I think rafe has done a good job

All the rest of us: but Brandon could have done it better

 

This, I think, is where supporters of the show and bookcloaks can find common ground

come on man enough with the derogatory names for people. You'll call them something, they'll call you something back and it just goes on and on and on. If you want people to find common ground stop giving them the finger. Much as I disagree and was surprised at someone finding episode 8 their favourite I did actually agree with most of the other points they discuss.

Personally I'm not sure Brandon could have done it better. Brandon is a good writer but that doesn't necessarily mean he'd make a good showrunner because books and TV are very different mediums. I think the best option would be if Brandon was more involved with the show if he was an active part of the writing or at least someone who could be in the "room" (physical or virtual) with the writers. But I also understand that might be tough because he's got he's probably very busy with his own stories and can't afford to make WoT his fulltime job.  

When Dan said "The very final episode was actually my favourite single episode of the show". I mean I've heard from people who like the show and people who don't like the show but that's an interesting take lol.  

Edit: also RIP Perrin fans ?

4 minutes ago, Truthteller said:

That this isn’t evident to everyone makes me question their literacy.

 

Just like Rand, Mat’s entire character depends upon his upbringing.   Change that and you change everything.  It is the single most important theme in the entire series, and the show has not only missed it, they have overturned it.

 

At least with Rand they just ignored his relationship with his father rather than destroying it.  
 

The people who are making the show fundamentally misunderstand the books.  It is that simple.  

Mat essentially got a soft reboot during book 2. My hope is they use the recasting to do something similar with TV show Mat. If new TV show Mat is more like book Mat and completely ignores what came before in season one I am totally fine with that if it gives us a Mat that's closer to the books. 

20 minutes ago, Jaysen Gore said:

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Him dying would undercut Egwene's sacrifice, and it's all about the women ?. And no, I would not support this change. Too many people want this to be another grimdark series, and it's not

 

8 hours ago, EmreY said:

Perpetual optimist that I am, I've been thinking through to the very end of the series.  Three things in particular:

 

First

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The Rand<->Moridin switch.  Not my favourite moment in the books, will it appear as a cop-out in the TV series?  And how would you film it?

 

Second

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Rand-as-Moridin.  Jarring?  Though I think this could be easily overcome.

 

Third

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Do we want an epilogue, or is a short talk with, say, Min enough, plus pipe?

 

How would you do them?  Any thoughts?

First

Second

Third

38 minutes ago, Andra said:

He's mine too.

Interestingly enough, when I was a kid I played around with something I would describe today as being a toy Ashandarei.  About fifteen years before EotW.

 

I think the "old Mat" that those characters were talking about was the Mat before Shadar Logoth.  Like the one that played the prank on the Whitecloaks in Baerlon.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to see enough of that version of Mat to really judge.  I actually liked the glimpses we got of his deeper character when he started yelling the Old Tongue fighting trollocs.

 

It's interesting - initially I was the most disappointed in the treatment he got in the show.  Since finishing the season, I'm even more disappointed about Perrin.  At least Mat hasn't simply become useless. 

I think they both got short-changed. Having Mat stealing from his friends and the dead, having Perrin kill his fake wife and try to hook up with his best friend's GF smh. I feel TV Mat is further from his book character than TV Perrin though. IMO Mat is probably the most light-hearted main character in the first book (until he's under the dagger's spell) but in the TV show they made him the most troubled and darkest (apart from actual darkfriends). It was actually difficult to tell how much the dagger had changed him because he was so shady to begin with.     

23 minutes ago, Andra said:

I think it's the POV changes.

Because pretty much everyone who knew him before was quoted at one time or another saying that the Mat in GH and DR was practically his old self - except for physically.  With the girls even commenting on him joking and playing dice with Hurin even when he couldn't get up from his stretcher.

Mat is favourite character. So much so that I built my own Ashandarei during lockdown. But I couldn't stand him in the first book. I found him really annoying kinda like how Merry and Pippin were in LoTR. During the second book it kinda felt like RJ had given Mat a soft reboot and his character appealed far more to me after that. I think he became my favourite character when he got the Ashadarei. I'm hoping TV show Mat also gets a reboot to his character because boy oh boy he sure needs one.  

On 1/19/2022 at 4:32 PM, king of nowhere said:

Ok, rand is revealed as the dragon, moiraine brings him to the eye, rand asks what he's supposed to do, moiraine hands him a male sa'angreal. basically says, with this you'll be super strong, point it to the DO and shoot

 

but what if the dragon had turned out to be egwene? moiraine certainly does not have a female sa'angreal, or she would have used it in battle. so she would have told... take your puny untrained power, point it to the DO and shoot? what would moiraine have done with a female dragon?

Lol I don't think they thought that far ahead. I mean even worse what if Mat was the Dragon, they literally just left him behind, so they'd never even know for sure. In fact Moiraine never even came close to deducing who was the Dragon. If Rand hadn't told her she'd likely have never found out, which is the crux of the problem for the "who is the Dragon" mystery. They created a mystery that the audience couldn't follow along with and that the "detective" character never solves. If the writers wanted to follow through on this they needed to have Moiraine figure it out and convince Rand of the truth. Otherwise it's like if you have a Sherlock Holmes story where the antagonist spontaneously confesses their guilt because they've got bored of waiting for Sherlock to figure it out himself

9 hours ago, Ralph said:

 

Heron Mark in the show is only a way of identifying Tam. We will see if it is anything else later on. 

Tbh, I always found it strange that the mark that has to be earned can just be given as a gift father to son. 

 

I don't agree re the others. 

Oath Rod and Ajahs have been explained plenty. 

Wolf brotherhood is fairly obvious and still building. 

Seanchan is a few seconds at the end of the series, you wouldn't expect explanation 

My problem with the herron being used only as a means to identify Tam is that they show Tam's face immediately after so we would already know it was Tam without the sword. If they had decided to use a different younger actor for Tam in the flashback your point would have made sense but they didn't so showing the sword is a waste of time. 

On 1/21/2022 at 7:53 PM, Andra said:

 

One of the things that kills me about this is that while they acknowledge doing things that will alienate book fans, they include things in the show that only book fans will understand without explanation.  And then they don't explain them.

 

Just one example is something that most book fans really loved - the Blood Snow scene.  A lot of details were included that book fans will recognize on sight, or which were excluded but readers will know without them being shown, but non-readers won't have a clue about.

Her spears.

Her veil (though they might understand this from the Aielman Thom and Mat buried in Breen Spring).

Who her attackers are, and what the insignia on their uniforms mean.

More importantly - when and where the battle took place.  And why.

 

Even now, after the season is over, has the Aiel War ever been mentioned?  Or did I just miss it?

Also the herron mark on the sword which is shown mutiple times in the season and not explained  If you don't want to explain it why bother showing it? (seriously, it could have been explained in 10 seconds of dialogue) Same goes for Perrin's wolf stuff, the Seanchan, the oath rod, the took us to Tar Valon and didn't even explain the Ajahs. In many ways I actually think the non book readers are getting the worse end of the deal not because characters or plots are being cut but because some of the ones that are kept in are not being fully explained.

5 hours ago, Mrs. Yojimbo said:

So I had not read any of the books when the show started. Watching, I found myself seeing holes in the storytelling, and my husband the book fanatic (@Yojimbo ) filled in explanations. And it was those explanations that made me want to read "The Eye of the World," because what he was describing to me wasn't what I was seeing onscreen.

 

Now I have finished "The Eye of the World." I could talk at length about changes the film makers made and why I agree with those who feel their beloved story is not being represented onscreen. But in short, it is the sheer volume of changes--both large and small, deletions and inventions--that is simply staggering.  The best way I can describe is that it feels as though the makers read the book and liked it, but then thought "but it would have been SO much better if it was THIS way."  It feels like fanfic tbh.

 

After finishing the books, I forced poor yojimbo to rewatch the first two episodes to see how they compared to the book story and YIKES. All the critical plot point, most interesting character reveals, teases about Rand's mysterious background, etc. etc. gone, replaced by new content that doesn't seem to support or develop the original story. 

 

More than anything, it feels as though the showmakers bought a property that they liked, but didn't have enough faith in their source material, and so they decided to use it as a springboard for a story they liked better. 

 

I can understand that position. I think even for the people who feel more positive about the series than negative, it's very difficult to deny the show isn't living up to it's potential.  I will come back for season 2 because I like the books so much and hope the TV series will improve but if this were a TV series for something I had no prior knowledge or fandom of I would have probably checked out after the first few episodes. I had friends who watched the series with no knowledge of the books who did that.

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

no, the main problems were not due to lenght, but lenght contributed. do not forget that lotr adapted a single book into 9 hours, and there's still a special extended edition adding two hours to that. while wot adapted the first book and also other plot threads from later books.

Sure, the writing could have been better and that would not be fixed by more time, but a lot of other problems could be

It seems to be semantics whether you want to consider them 1 book or 3 (they were originally and in some cases still are published in separate parts). Seeing as WoT is essentially all one continuing story you could argue that's "one" book also. But even if you want to say LoTR is one book, it's one book that's twice as long as Eye of the World so they are still telling a longer story better in the same time

It's a nice idea but I think the biggest problems with the show are not due to length. A review I saw mentioned the Lord of the Rings movies and how the whole trilogy is about as long as this first season of WoT but those movies flowed so much better and felt so much more epic and grand with much better writing. It's not just how long something is that makes it good or not it's what you do with that time. LoTR movies cut a lot of stuff from the books but all the scenes they left had weight and purpose and built the story to an epic crescendo. The characters were fleshed and inspiring and the audience was invested in them and the special effects still hold up today 20 years later. I think there should have been more episodes to WoT but there were many things they need to improve on that have nothing to do with length.

On 1/5/2022 at 9:44 AM, RhienneAgain said:

I think if Egeanin makes the cut she will be useful in humanising the Seanchan, I think.

Think she needs Domon to help with that. I always felt he brought out the best in her.

11 minutes ago, Rhavin said:

The show had a good buzz before it aired, the first episode was OK but i already thought "what the hell did they loose the money on?" and then it went straight downhill. of course i'm gonna watch season 2 because I want to see how they will dig themselves out of the hole they buried their continuity and character-arcs in. Pretty shure its either getting chancelled right after season 2 or they'll do some face saving season 3. Apart from all the astroturfed ratings, google trends shows the real picture. Blue is GoT, red is WoT:


But this show simply isn't WoT for me, so… thats way to different. 

Ok I get what you are trying to say with the graph but this isn't really a workable comparison if these are from the same time period. I mean by 2021 GoT was a show that had completed and had 8 seasons and was about to have a prequel series (is that included in the blue also?) whereas WoT is a show just starting it's first season. If you want to do an apples to apples comparison you'd need to show data from GoT Season 1 even then I'm not sure how valuable that would be because social media 12 years ago is a lot different from social media today. 

No offience meant but I do wonder why this needs to be debated. I mean it's horrible that people are bullying her online and hopefully they get appropriate commupance for that. But why do people put so much stock in things like this anyway? This is just one person who advised on the show and if they are collecting paychecks from Amazon of course they are not going to throw it under the bus, and even if they had what would that prove? Would it make the show better? Would it make all the people who didn't like feel better? I just don't see the point. This all boils down to - 

A person who works on the show says the show is great and the people harassing her can f*** off

I thought the Aes Sedai and Emmonds Field costumes all looked good, as did Logain and his followers. The 2nd Age Costumes also looked appropriately futuristic. Not sure about the Whitecloaks. I could see the questioners maybe wearing robes like that but I'd expect the soldiers to be in armour. They also looked a little bit too white. I think it would be difficult to maintain a spotless white uniform when you are riding around on horseback and camping in the woods. I need to know what kind of soap they are using because it's obviously very effective. 

49 minutes ago, Ralph said:

Good point

 

Ogier are from a different world, though

12 hours ago, Andra said:

Giving Rafe the benefit of a level of cleverness I'm not sure he deserves, perhaps the result will be similar to Tolkien and the Tom Bombadil scene with the ring. 

Unlike the way everyone else wil be affected by it, will Ogier be in some way "immune?"  Obviously an Ogier can be killed with a sharp pointy object, but maybe the evil of Shadar Logoth doesn't do anything else to them?  Because it's an evil made by humans, it only affects humans?

but wasn't Uno also stabbed with the dagger as well? It's one thing to say Ogier aren't affected by things that kill humans (though we are talking about evil magic not some kind of poison so my head spins trying to think of how that would work) but it's quite another to give Uno a get out clause for this too unless they are going to do some kind of Avengers Engame scenario.

Are there any changes that would make you stop watching the show?

Just putting this out as a question because I think it's safe to say almost everyone is here because they are fans of the books but we know the show isn't necessarily geared towards book fans. I think its fair to say some books fans have been able to accept the changes made in the show so far, some have not and some are conflicted. I imagine this is will mean that some book fans might not wish to continue watching the show in future if they are unhappy with it.

With this in mind this question is to the book readers who will be coming back for season 2.

Would anything be a hard limit for book fans still watching, as in if the show passed that limit would it make you not wish to continue with it?

For myself it would be if Mat died or turned evil or both. Simply because Mat is my favourite character in the books and while there are many other things I like about WoT I feel like if Mat's story were changed in such a drastic fashion I would feel like the show and myself were just not compatible. I would however wish everyone else still enjoying it well and hope they continued to get enjoyment from it.

I agree they weren't what I expected. They seemed too close together. 

19 hours ago, Andra said:

The first character we see killed by the dagger is Turak's top so'jhin Huon.  By Mat.

Earlier he held it against a darkfriend's neck to keep her from killing Rand with her knife that boiled a bucket of water.  A darkfriend who we meet again later and learn her name (Shiane/Mili Skane).  But he leaves her alive.

The first person we see Fain kill with it is the Accepted in the basement of the Tower when he steals it back and talks to Alviarin.

Both those victims die fast and hard.

Think it's pretty obvious at this point that the rules of the dagger are going to be very different. What I don't understand is why they even needed to? With a few simple tweaks you can have the exact same scene but keep the dagger the same as it was in the books. 

For example instead of using a dagger Fain could have just used a regular sword to do his stabbings, and when Perrin comes in and sees him standing over Loial he could pull out the dagger from his belt and say something like "Your friend's lucky I didn't use this one. The last person I used it on didn't even look human by the end of it. A quick death" he grinned unpleasantly "But definitely not a painless one. Maybe I'll give you a demonstration one day"

There! Now we've established what the dagger can do and that Fain has it but hasn't used it on Loial. As for why Fain wouldn't have used it you could argue because they were fighting Shieneran warriors and an Ogier he would probably need a weapon with a longer reach. Otherwise he might be cut down before he got close enough to use it. Alternatively you could say he deliberately left Loial alive for the same blah blah reasons he left Perrin alive. I'm not saying this is perfect and would fix all the problems just saying by just adding a couple extra lines of dialogue would fix most of the problems with the dagger

52 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

I'm not discussing if the book plot was enough on it's own.  Just talking to why that change was made.  

As for the two rivers, him being a weird wolf creature would be enough, that and if he still gets accused of killing Geoff Bornhald.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say Perrin being vaguely in the same area as Bornhald when he died and Perrin physically killing Whitecloaks with his own two hands are in any way on a similar level of culpability. The fact is in the books was not clear cut because Perrin DID do the things he was accused of and it was more about was he justified in doing them. Perrin was also found guilty in the trial.

Now if the TV show wants to go another way and have Perrin actually kill Bornhald (justified or otherwise) that's another matter but it would completely destroy Bornhalds character arc. Bornhald died actually doing something good by fighting the Seanchan at Falme he was one of the few Whitecloak characters to actually seem halfway sympathetic even If he wanted to execute Perrin. If they change that to give Perrin a big bad Whitecloak to take out I can't see how it's an improvement to his character if anything it's just dumbing him down