You can try and find reasons for the plot holes, but the clear fact is that Robert Jordan was still very much writing book to book when he started writing the dragon reborn, he was still finding his voice and the voice of his characters and was unsure how many books he would have to finish the story in. 
 

If you look across the first 3 books there are some big inconsistencies, many of these come from the fact he didn’t know how big a series he was writing and so didn’t know how to pace his characters development to have them reach the peak of powers by the end. 

On 12/8/2023 at 3:45 PM, Aan-Alone said:

Last Battle is over. Bore is perfectly resealed, so as to appear never breached. Why does the Pattern need Rand to still be Ta'veren?

As I understand things [feel free to grab an industrial-sized salt lick] being Ta'veren is up to the needs of the Pattern and functions as a correction mechanism for the Pattern. What threat to the Pattern remains?

Or are you suggesting he over-wrote/over-rode the Pattern in this instance to give himself powers? As that seems completely out of character for the Rand we know.

 

I'm curious how you justify your position, not that you need to justify anything. To anyone. Ever.I've read some of your other posts and you don't strike me as the kind of person who would say something like this and leave the statement to stand all on its own. So I guess I'm asking you to share a little more with us. Pretty please. With some cherries and sprinkles on top. 😀

At the end of the day it is all conjecture but when I say controlling his powers of Taveran I mean something new and different, maybe the next step of evolution of the power. Although I will be honest this thought does change year to year and with no answer we can never really know so I am more then happy to read your reasons why this can’t be the case. 
 

The one thing I will say we don’t know that the pattern is fully done, RJ had follow up stories on planned who knows what part the 3 boys would play in them. What part Rand has on leading humanity into the next age, we know he will live a long long long life (assuming he isn’t killed). 

16 hours ago, Rhaze said:

 Yet they did it with Egwene and Nynaeve. Egwene literally healed a husk of a shell of a burned out Nynaeve and then went back to novice. Nynaeve pulled galaxies together and bubble healed an entire room and then back to struggling. But hey we cant let Rand show any power, he is only the Dragon Reborn.

Rafe has addressed the Egwene thing, he has apologised and stated it was a mistake, it is what it is. The Nyn thing how did she pull galaxies together lol, she healed an entire room because she was scared and angry and yes she can';t do it again nor because of the block and not understanding what she did. 

Rand has shown power, but if you have him massively OP like he is at the end of EOTW you have to have a whole exposition to explain that, His arc mirrors the girls, learning, developing and slowly gettig to be the man who ends up saving the world. 

19 hours ago, Samt said:

It's likely that some things would have been different in the first few books if RJ had the full scope of the series when writing them.  However, I never got the feeling that there was a big problem with needing to depower Rand after the first 3 books.  

  Hide contents

At the Eye of the World, Someshta and Moiraine help Rand hold off Balthamal and Aginor long enough for Rand to get the pool of Saidin.  It's then with the help of the pool (and presumably through that power triggering the LTT muscle memories) that Rand is able to defeat Aginor, the Trolloc army, and Ishamael.  I feel that this showdown doesn't necessarily match the tone of some of the books to come and the writing feels very mysterious and abstract.  But there isn't a power problem afterwards because Someshta is dead and the pool is gone.  

Similarly, at Falme, Rand is being toyed with by Ishamael until he sheaths the sword.  This is a good payoff for Rand's training and he has to bear the price of that victory for the rest of the series with the wound.  In this way, it doesn't feel cheap and we don't feel like there is a question as to why Rand can't just do that again.  

 

In Tear, Moiraine helps Rand double team Belal and is actually the one who takes him out. This allows Rand to claim Callandor and use it to finally conclusively best Ishamael.  Callandor does create some power issues going forward, but it also kicks off the rest of the story and moves Rand into his real struggle.  

 As you mentioned, Rand's struggle in the books is only rarely about obtaining enough personal ability to complete his mission.  (You seem to think that this is somewhat forced by the fact that Rand is superpowered very early on in the series and needs other types of struggles.  This may or may not be true, but it is the story that we get in the books and it isn't a bad one.)  He struggles with political maneuvering and overcoming or accepting his own impending madness.  His arc is about mastering himself as a person and learning to trust and rely on his friends. That arc works because he starts as someone who could believably expect that he is the independent savior of the world.  In the show, we don't see a compelling reason to believe that Rand is anything other than a puppet and figurehead or that he wouldn't believe that himself.  

Season 2 he becomes the one in charge, when he decides to enter the world of dreams it is his choice and everything from there is his decision. That is the entirety of season 2 Rand taking charge of his destiny, but also understanding the independence of others (egwene didn’t need saving which is a really neat way of setting there relationship in the books). 

On 11/17/2023 at 2:11 PM, nsmallw said:

They had already depowered Rand even before that confrontation with the 3(?) different times he was shielded easily.   The "battle" with Ishy at end of season two wasn't really a battle, Ishy LET Rand stab him. Ishy wanted to die once he knew that Rand wouldn't turn to the Dark.  Similarly, the "battle" with Ishy in season one was also not really a battle since no matter what Rand did, Ishy would win. 

 

Knowing all that, I think the show is going to have a more difficult time powering UP Rand. 

I am hopeful season 3 does exactly that.

Robert Jordan struggled to de power Rand once he realised he had more books to develop him in, it is one of the weak points of the first 3 books. He did it by having Rand lose control of the world around him politically and by constantly finding new power levels for the bad guys and things they could do. Oh and having Rand “forget” how he did things. 
 

The TV show is doing his build the right way, the way RJ would have done it if he knew in book 1 he had a 14 book arc to tell this story. People really need to remember that. 

10 hours ago, Samt said:

Yes. But making a good show is also important.  WoT is struggling because it isn't a well made show.  I know there are lots of reasons for that and maybe it's a difficult IP to adapt.  But that is the heart of the problem.  

I mean you are making an assumption and offering opinion here, first is that it is struggling we have no evidence of that anywhere. We don’t know what Amazon counts as a success here so we dint know if execs are popping Champaign at these numbers or feeling glum. 
 

then your opinion is that it is badly made, when I know many many people who love it and think it is well made. In my own sphere of people I know is about 30-40 people who have watched it and all love it, that’s among work, family and friends. Then they know people who have watched it and enjoy it. In fact the only place I see any negativity about it is online. 
 

So that is 40+ people who would disagree with you. 

2 hours ago, DojoToad said:

Time for spam watching?

My feel is Amazon won’t fall for that, they will know the same users are watching multiple times. 
 

we don’t know what Amazon’s aims are and what drives them to continue a series, might be wrong but wasn’t the expanse cancelled for to lack of viewers and Amazon took it up to finish it off. 

At the moment in terms of value for money Apple TV is producing by far the best original content, if Amazon and Netflix want to win the streaming war they need to be willing to commit to seeing through a long tv series like WOT or they might lose out on rights for future IP

2 hours ago, books of Robert Jordan said:

My last post was something like this

 

230 million minutes.

 

From:

 

Maybe I should have posted these numbers in my earlier posts, but I thought it's meaningless. Now, they are in the same category (= no new seasons), so maybe it will be interesting to see these figures from now on.

 

What do you mean no new seasons? 

40 minutes ago, Samt said:

I didn't anything.  No reply deserved.  

You think there are sexual undertones, or you think they will become sisters?  It's pretty clear that they are sisters, and I don't see anything in the books suggest there is an incest undertone in that.

 

In regards to non-consensual, it's not that the man can't say no.  It's that it's an all or nothing proposition.  He can decline the proposal.  He just can't chose one of the women and not the other.  There is some weirdness there, but it's neither non-consensual nor completely ridiculous.  

 

Not really.  It's just that now that homosexuality is prevalent today, lots of people read homosexuality into places it simply wasn't.  Case in point, sister wives are not homosexuals.  But now that people are reading homosexuality into things, they read it into sister wives.  

You can wonder about whatever you want, but I'm not sure how RJ could have made it clearer that sister wives aren't homosexuals other than simply stating that explicitly.  

I mean I read into it as being akin to Pillow Sisters in the tower, that and the fact that Aiel have a far more relaxed attitude to sex and physical activities then other cultures in the world it is just the next logical step. It all pretty much made sense to me. Now I will accept RJ does not explicitly state it one way or another so end of the day whatever any reader takes to be fact, is indeed fact here. 

On 11/12/2023 at 3:55 AM, Samt said:

Just my headcanon.  I wouldn't say that Rosamund looks particularly like the book description of Moiraine, but I find that less important to Moiraine anyways.  Cadsuane's hair is important to me because I feel like it's not just an incidental physical characteristic.  Gray hair represents age and usually wisdom and experience.  In a group where agelessness is a defining feature, the fact that Cadsuane looks old (though definitely not feeble or frail) is an important part of her description.  As I said, hair color is not so difficult to change anyways, so it isn't something that has to be a make or break criteria for the casting.  

I mean if we are fantasy casting sorry Dame Judi Dench can't be beaten for me, can project that power and authority but also has that age and experience oozing from her naturally and I can see her chewing scenes with rand up, saying nothing with just a gaze and then a raise of an eyebrow. 

 

On 11/11/2023 at 7:03 PM, Shawlee said:

 

I am sorry, Mother, but I have to say this: because he just doesn't care what the fans think. He has his own idea(interpretation) of the story, good for him, everyone does. And only his interpretation matters. Even something small like listening to the fan casting esp when even the actor is on board. It is because we reached out to her, we made so much noise about it that even Shohreh noticed, and reached out to Him. Not the other way around. That's all i will say.

 

Anyone can play Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan. I am of the belief that they should just merge Liandrin and Elaida together. Kate Fleetwood did such a good job with this character it would've been nice to see her raised to the Chair. They've already given her a story to fit it. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I think it is because Cadusane has a far smaller role then Elaida in the books, and I can see, if he carries on his trend of writing deep villains for the show, Elaida in the show having some really meaty scenes to get her teeth into which is probably something that as an actor she will prefer. Yes, headcanon a lot of fans put her in a role I think she is far better suited for this role and it is actually better casting. 

I imagine he might have sat down with her and given her a choice behind the scenes, casting like this usually involves a lot of conversation and Rafe will have had some input but no where near as much as you might expect. I also think she might well have seen what he sketched out for Elaida and said, yes, I will have that instead please. I get the feeling that unlike the books her steps into madness will not be influenced by Fain at all and, much like Liandrin, will come from her past meaning that as an actor she can really get into that character plus, bad guys are always more fun to play then good.  

As for anyone can play Elaida and combining her with Liandrin, peolpe complain about Rafe ignoring the books but then want to make monumental changes such as this, a darkfriend on the seat makes no sense when it comes to the showdown with Egwene, the whole point of Elaida is to show that bad choices does not always = Bad people, and being so convinced you are right can make you blinkered to what is right and true in front of you. Elaida is one of the Key characters of the story and needs to exist pretty much as is in the books, just with the removal of the Daggers influence on her hopefully. One of my issues with that was RJ seemed to want a world where everyone is inherently good, except when they are darkfriends or touched by Shadar Logath, and all bad people are either darfriends or have been corrupted by said dagger. Rafe is showing much more shades of grey which I love. 

Liandrins arc should now continue away from the tower, possibly ending with her in stedding at the last battle, although following her path in the books would also be really interesting. 

6 hours ago, Samt said:

Exactly how much should be changed is debatable.  While most readers believe that some things could be improved, there is actual not a lot of agreement as to exactly what should be improved and how it should be done. You even acknowledge this when you point out that most detractors of the Wheel of Rafe don't themselves agree with each other as to exactly what was done poorly. This is a very good argument for simply following the source material as closely as possible.  

 

However, we aren't even talking about that.  Writers who haven't read and understood the source material can't possibly "fix" the problems in the source material. They are just writing their own thing.  

But they are not, the essence of the wheel of time is there, the story threads are all there, we can debate what has been removed, added, changed around, but all the bits that make up WOT are present. But as I have said, following the source material as closely as some want, would make for an awful viewing experience for non book readers, and probably for most book readers as well. Especially the character shifts across books 1-3, and having key characters not realy make any appearance until later on in the books meaning TV audiences barely get any screen time to care or emote with those characters. 

But we are going round and round in circles. You don't like it, many of us accept and understand the flaws but still love it and see it as the WOT. 

6 hours ago, Samt said:

I would say the implication is much more compatibility than attraction.  The point is that the sister wives need to live together and collaborate and get along.  It's an unfortunate result of the prevalence of homosexuality in modern culture that close platonic relationships are always seen by some to be homoerotic.  

I mean homosexuality has been prevelant in every age of human culture, it’s just that people didn’t know how to see it, but I also think it is a side effect of WOT being a sexy fantasy novel, it has far more sexual references then any other fantasy I had read as a teenage boy, in fact that may explain why I keep coming back? And it makes sense RJ wrote steamy bodice tearing novels. I do wonder would a post 50 shades WOT have seen RJ double down on certain things a lot more lol? 

But yes up until that point the only fantasy book I can think of that I had read that had sex in it was Thomas covenant, and that is a very different type of scene 

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

Yes, obviously lan is too manly to pee. Do we ever see him peeing in the books? No, then it's canon, lan does not need to pee. Probably when he needs to relieve itself he slices out his bladder with his sword, empties it, and sew it back every time. 

He does the same with his intestines whenever he needs to take a dump, except he has a servant handling his guts because he's too badass to handle sh#t in any way

I mean is this what people mean when they say they love Lan because he “gets sh#t done” 🙂 

6 hours ago, Yamezt said:

I saw it as foreshadowing (if certain events come to pass) - showing that Alanna has no respect of personal space/boundary.

This as well, something I hadn’t thought about. 

On 11/9/2023 at 4:55 PM, EverLore said:

"I wish there were more words"

I mean I wish the final trilogy had been at least 4 books maybe even 5. It felt a bit like season 8 GOT 

Brandon, I don’t have enough pages to finish this, I am going to have to rush finish a ton of story threads in a really hurried way. 
 

Publisher “we can give you another 2 books no problem” 

Brandon, ignoring them “yes I think I need to smoosh some story threads together, oh, and I want to burn a ton of space on some silly side stories just so I can feel all creative, 

Publisher “But Brandon, you can have 2 more books and, the books are not written you are doing them from scratch, why make up new characters if you don’t have enough space”. 
 

On 11/10/2023 at 6:06 AM, Samt said:

That's kind of an odd take considering the whole sister wives thing is pretty explicitly a reference to them becoming sisters that share a mother. They have a whole ceremony where they are reborn from a common mother.

So your theory suggests that it's not only polygamous, but also incestuous.  

I always assumed that some sister wives are in a relationship themselves, it is never specifically stated but it very much feels inferred to me, especially how the wife is the one to pick the other wife, that felt like there had to be some level of attraction. 

On 11/11/2023 at 10:39 AM, EirikDaude said:

Those are all good points - maybe that last one about the warders is why there were more black sisters in the red ajah than in any other?

 

At any rate, according to the wiki, just over 20 % of the tower was black prior to the first book. That's not a small percentage, even if they were operating in separate cells. Yes they had to operate in secret, but holy crap that is a large slice of the tower! No wonder it didn't operate very well.

 

You are also correct that several attempts were used to turn Logain in the black tower, and that they all failed. So yeah, not as simple a process as one might think from initial descriptions of it.

Yeah that “failing to turn Logain” felt like BS artificially trying to create tension, which all fell a bit flat with me. I did like the idea that men turn women easily and vice versa but it that whole section of writing just feels very “hacky and cheap” to me anyway. 

On 11/10/2023 at 7:17 PM, Samt said:

Trying to create an adaptation of a book that your writers haven't read is insane.  Full stop.  If you can't find writers who have read the books or want to read the books, you can't do the adaptation.  For a proficient reader who is assigned to read the series as a full time job, I would expect it to take 3-4 weeks.  That's not absurd.  

 

I would agree that Lyet-Kynes death is better in the movie, but I don't think it's a huge departure.  It's just adding more action and defiance to the death which works a lot better on screen than the delirious internal monologue from the books that can't be shown on screen anyways.  He/she still dies at mostly the same point in the story and for the same reasons.  

 

I strongly disagree that Nynaeve's accepted test is better in the show.  I've mentioned it before that while it's a high drama sequence and is fun on screen, it makes it very unclear as to what the accepted tests actually are testing and seems to rely heavily on Nynaeve ex Machina.  

 

As far as the Logain and Forsaken scenes being great, I agree that they can be good scenes.  But that's missing the point.  If they wanted to make their own story with their own good scenes, they didn't need WoT to do that.  The goal was to adapt WoT, not to make good scenes.  

I mean it took BS months to reread and make notes before he started writing a page in anger and as far as I am concerned he mighty as well not have bothered. I mean, maybe I could get through all the books in 4 weeks, but if it was my first read through I would barely be able to tell you about the main story threads at the start by the time I finished it. 
 

So you would rather have the books as written with cartoon like forsaken, Logain a bit part character until he suddenly isn’t and some really dated themes? You really don’t seem to understand what an adaptation for a new medium requires. There are elements about seasons 1 and 2 that I feel are actually an improvement on the story RJ told, and that comes from the fact that RJ had no idea what story he was actually being paid ultimately to write until by book 4 he knew he would be allowed to go crazy. 
 

The writers have a chance to correct the flaws of the series, and there are flaws, read the forum and everyone has things they massively dislike about it and would change, In some ways it is amazing it gets the love it does from so many who read it repeatedly because many of us do that inspite of the fact that at points it isn’t a great piece of literature. Rafe is a fan, like all of us there are elements he likes and doesn’t like, like many of us he thinks sections of the book shouldn’t be in the tv show, now he may disagree with you on what those sections are, but that is a disagreement between you and him, not the fanbase in general. I mean I am pretty sure I could get 2 people who dislike Rafes changes in a room together, ask them to do there own version of the show and pretty quickly one would tell the other they didn’t believe they had read the book. 
 

On 11/10/2023 at 10:43 PM, SinisterDeath said:

Exactly what it means. There's no data for that week on the Wheel of Time because it did not hit the top 10.

We don't know if this means it was below the 289M minutes, or if Amazon just didn't report anything to Nielsen.

 

It would be nice if Nielsen gave us the top 50 shows, so we could see if Wheel of Time dropped below the Top Ten, or if Amazon just stopped reporting numbers.

We don’t know if these numbers are reported by Amazon or taken from the independent viewing figures that Nielsen does using a special box or even paper diaries still. 
 

This is my point of getting all hung up on the numbers, where do those numbers come from. Also, is this US only, because to be fair as someone in the UK I doubt Amazon cares about US numbers if international figures are sky high. There is this obsession for tv and cinema that the only market that matters is the US and yet it is clear with lots of IPs that they might not do great in America but land far far far better internationally and so are seen as a massive success 

3 hours ago, Yamezt said:

I don't believe I've come across Meera Syal much. The only show I can think of is the movie Beautiful Thing where she played a very caustic sarcastic teacher.

 

I like her as Verin though.

She is a staple on British TV, as both an amazing comedic actor and in some great serious roles. I suggest looking at her credits on Wikipedia and adding some of them to your watch list generally. 

4 hours ago, Shawlee said:

What do you guys think of Meera Syal as Verin Mathwin ?

 

I love the actor and she's been my headcanon for last few years now. I don't know how I connected her with Verin, but i think i saw some speculation online and as soon as I saw her I was sold. To me she is the perfect blend of motherly(remember the guy who told her eyes reminded him of his mother 😅?) and mysterious.

 

Also, as I have been picturing Shohreh as Cadsuane, and as they're both from Far Madding, picturing another brown woman as Verin made sense to me. It has been a delight to see her and Tomas on screen, however short a time 🙄 (thanks Rafe, not). 

 

What do you think of her as Verin? 

The Verin pacing has been about perfect, to much and the big reveal will become to obvious. What I am hoping the TV show gives us that the book didn’t is a chance to see the horrible choices she has to make to convince the shadow she was one of them. I think we are going to see her kill her own sister as part of that maybe, so far my wife, a non book reader, absolutely loves her so I think the roller coaster ride that can be made of her story will come across far far better then it did in the books. 
 

I also hope they handle the big final reveal to egwene much much much better then it is in the books where it is all very much a bit part to the big story of Egwenes trial and the tower being divided and then attacked. I always felt she was done dirty by BS. 

10 minutes ago, Shawlee said:

 

This bothers me so much. Every time I think about it, blind rage flares up in me. 

 

Al'Lan Mandragoran, Aan'allein pissing on a tree. Thanks for making my favorite hero  into a joke, thank you so much Rafe.

Why was this such a big deal, it showed how closely he was being watched, it showed that he couldn’t even get away to do that, but it also, for once, showed a bit of mundane humanity. The critic reviews I read about this very scene absolutely loved it because you never see anything like that in fantasy. 

And which lan are you talking about? The clear Aragorn ripoff that RJ made him in books 1-3, or the torn, flawed, reluctant leader he became once RJ realized he had enough books to write him properly? Lan in the TV show, for me at least, matches that later Lan very closely, which is what we should have at the start of an arc. He will become the lab you recognize from EOTW but good TV gives him an arc to get there. 

6 hours ago, Samt said:

I can't speak about Witcher specifically since I am not very much familiar with that fandom, but I think it's important to realize that not all IPs are equal in terms of the expectation of adherence to a certain storyline, characterization, and universe lore.  Comic books and computer games are generally very open in terms of adding new characters or stories and modifying the lore of the universe.   Batman and Superman are often rebooted and the stories changed.  There are effectively lots of different versions of these characters.

 

Of course, this distinction is quite subjective.  But I think the disagreement between fans around the WoT series is mostly about whether you see the WoT as a distinct specific story or as a set of characters in a universe where stories can be told.  Is Rand Luke Skywalker or is he Spiderman?  

Witcher is not like comic books it is like WOT in that they took an amazing story and characters and butcherd them, the show runners admitted they didn’t like the computer game or the books. That is far far away from Rafe who obviously loves the books and has read them many many times, and his main advisor who is a savant when it comes to the lore. I hav concerns that the other writers might not have read the books and I have no doubt the directors, who have as much input into the story as the writers and Rafe, probably have never read the books and go from the script/notes those also then making there own changes. 
 

but the basis is out of a love for the books. 

On 11/7/2023 at 7:01 PM, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

I think it is just to explain why the Prophet is suddenly not so pro-Dragon any more, so that Maesema does not have to be completely stark raving mad. 

And yet I would have preferred him to go full on lunatic, a cautionary tale of the prophet who then goes so far into his own rabbit hole that he starts to see his own messiah as a false idol and he himself is the true savior. It would have been well within the realms of our own era to see someone do that and get all his followers to drink the kool aid with him.