3 hours ago, Agitel said:

The first oath doesn't mean an Aes Sedai will keep her oath. It just requires that the Aes Sedai truly mean the oath at the time she makes it. She can't intend at that time to be duplicitous. But she can later have a change of heart and renege.

I believe this is displayed in the Beonin storyline. She swears to Egwene, then once Egwene is captured decides the oath doesn't hold because Egwene is not Amyrlin anymore.

2 hours ago, AusLeviathan said:

strong men are toxic and must instead be portrayed as incompetent emotional cry babies.

45 minutes ago, AusLeviathan said:

can you believe that the men aren't portrayed as emotional cry babies

I find your repeated use of the phrase "emotional cry babies" to be troubling.

It may be unintentional, but you appear to be suggesting that strength and emotionality are incompatible qualities.

I find this implication particularly disturbing in light of the fact that it is when Rand attempts to entirely divorce himself from his emotions that he very nearly completely fails.

36 minutes ago, Tim said:

As to Logain appearing to steal Rand's veins of gold speech? He can't, because Tam already did in episode one. Tam said explicitly to Rand that he thinks we come back so that we can do better next time. It's so explicit that it immediately led me to think that if they ever get to veins of gold we'll get a flashback to Tam saying that.

Thank you. I came here to say this, and you said it better than I could. I was starting to think I imagined that scene.

I have never posted to this forum before, although I have lurked often, off and on over the years. I have enjoyed the analysis, discussion, and debate found here.

I am neither an expert on literary analysis, nor on adaptation of books to an audio/visual medium. I have, however, read and loved the books repeatedly. I definitely don't like all of the changes, even as I make a good faith attempt at understand the reasoning behind them. Having established that caveat, I am still quite enjoying the show. 

All of that said, I think it is reasonable to step back and look at a few numerical comparisons to the adaptations of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones:

LotR: movies run between approximately 9 and 12 hours, depending on which version you're watching. The books of the main trilogy are approximately half a million words.

GoT: 73 episodes, approximately 73 hours runtime. The currently published novels are approximately 1.7 million words. In this case I do have to acknowledge that the show had to account for the fact that the source material is unfinished (hence the season 8 trainwreck), since Martin seems in no hurry to finish. Nevertheless, still 6 times the runtime, and thus breathing space for adaptation compared to LotR.

WoT: If we get 8 seasons of 8 episodes, that would be 64 episodes, approximately 64 hours of runtime. The books are approximately 4.9 million words (including New Spring). That would be less screen time than GoT for over twice the words. (I recognize that much of WoT is highly descriptive writing, often repetitively so.) Granted the runtime here is purely speculative. 

As I said above, I don't like every change made, but I do think it's reasonable to step back and acknowledge the sheer magnitude of the task of adapting the source in the time and budgetary restraints imposed.