6 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

This is not true. Here again you are using circular arguments that the reason for changes are bad, and the changes are bad for the reasons. Book Mat was awful in book 1. He is a naughty school boy, pouring scorn on everyone at every chance. He want to leave EF because he does not want to milk his Dad's cows. (And if you notice, he has more sisters than appears to have later on, amateurish writing or a forgivable error?) He is obviously completely unprepared for outside the village, but is completely whipped into submission by Moiraine, not even so much as talking to a single person about leaving because she said so. Forgets to think about a quarterstaff, despite being one of the best warriors in the whole of the Westlands with one. Completely two dimensional, with all his later development completely lacking. Did not drink, smoke or gamble, yet overnight these became his favourite pastimes. 

 

And what about his mother, you highlight his father, which matches your prechosen narrative, but don't mention his mother, which doesn't. Why don't you mention the way he looks after his sisters, and protects them, and his mother to an extant while obviously being conflicted about her, and the way she so coldly accuses him of being like his Dad. You completely ignore where a female character has been torn down much more thoroughly than Abel, and you ignore the positive traits in Mat, and refuse to reflect on the much deeper character that Mat now has. 

 

All because you have a narrative in your head, fueled by your anti-feminism (which you protect with your "True Scotsman" logical fallacy, to pretend that you are pro-feminist). Everything bad about the show is because the showrunner is a feminist, all changes are bad due to their motivation and the motivation is bad due to the changes. It is tragic. And you are completely welcome to your views, but you don't need the lack of respect and the personal attacks.

Mat for me is a great example of a writer creating a character in book 1, having an arc and then thinking, what now. I very much feel that TGH was Robert Jordans attempt to give himself time to figure out what Mats story would be, and how he was going to get the character there. In some ways it is a great example of the pitfalls of starting a story without fully mapping out each of your main characters arcs, but at the same time shows that as a writer you can make up these things as you go and write out narrative that allows you to change a characters personality while not making it feel forced or contrived. I fully accept that Mat before the dagger is different to Mat after and that the Dagger was the reason for that. 

7 hours ago, Mirefox said:

Ok, going chronologically and still at the beginning of E1, Moiraine says there are rumors of 4 taveren in the Two Rivers.  Good writing?  Where did these rumors come from?  Who else knows these rumors?  Why isn’t thhis a bigger deal for anyone, Moiraine included?

 

Next scene, the Women’a Circle has a ritual for women in the Two Rivers that come of age.  That’s nice.  They braid their hair.  That’s nice.  Then they push them off a cliff into a raging river with no banks and hope they survive.  Come gain?  So this small rural town has a tradition that is likely to kill some girls when they come of age?  Is this good writing or is it so they can try to shoehorn in a metaphor?

 

 

As someone who has done river swimming pretty much like this, it is actually pretty safe if you know the stretch of river well (which I imagine all the women do) and you keep your hands and feet together and your body straight so you float. The water takes you the safest route because that is the way it flows. This is not the scene to "question" the realism of, because like I say people do that recreationally all over the world all the time (well the correct time of year which is usually spring, after full on flooding and before water levels drop). 

It is a TV show, you will not see every single lead up explained, and you should not, accept there was a whole period of time before the show where lots of stuff happened, some of that we may see, if it is important to the story, using Moiraine to give a little exposition dump at the start to explain why she is where she is, and mention some words that will be important later, is a standard writing technique. Now, personally I hate cheap exposition dumps, but, I also realise that sometimes for the sake of brevity, it is the best way to get information across to the audience. 

7 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

Unreliable narrators exist. Every word out of a character's mouth does not reflect truth. 

Moiraine believes that the breaking was caused by men's arrogance. But as the cold open for S1E8 showed, it was also caused by women's reluctance to believe that LTT's plan was worthwhile. So Moiraine's view is not entirely wrong, nor is it entirely right.

 

Liandrin probably believes that she is superior to everyone else. She certainly has acted that way in the show, hasn't she?

 

Despite your deep desire to make these into fundamental changes in the lore, they just aren't.

Liandrin, also black ajah, has shown you can't believe a word that comes out of her mouth. 

8 hours ago, Mirefox said:

Ah yes, the old "you can't critique unless you've done it better argument."  I presume that's how you work with everything, right?  You can't critique a restaurant unless you've made the food yourself?  You can't critique a politician unless you've written legislation yourself?

 

Most of us are able to critique because our life experiences have given us a spectrum of any given medium from good to bad and we are able to compare that which we are critiquing against examples of how something is done either good or bad within that medium.

 

I can pick out dozens of logical inconsistencies in any given episode of this show; I can quote lines that show that the writers do not understand their own story.  Yet if I haven't written a script I can't say that they aren't very good at what they are doing?  Does the corollary work as well?  If I find a show exceptional am I not allowed to praise it since I have not had the experience of writing a show myself?

You know what, I can do the same with the books if I want, in fact I have, there are gaping logical holes all over them, obvious plot points that RJ either forgot about, dropped, or wasn't sure how to bring to an end, you can see places where he forces the characters to shift and change because he obviously wants to change how he is writing them. He also wrote a book that, in it's time was massively subversive and forward thinking in how it presented a number of subjects in a fantasy setting. He specifically wrote a story that would push the boundaries of "what a good fantasy story was", but it is also a story that in some ways has not aged well. A friend of mine who recently read it for the first time commented on how full it was of lazy tropes about men and women, about how the women and men where all far to similar in the wrong ways, and how, in some places the writing was hard to read and repetitive. 

The WOT universe is fantastically interesting and the books have some fantastic moments. No other fantasy series gets the kind of emotion RJ does at the battle of Emonds field, or the sense of satisfaction at watching Egwene get one over the sitters, but, lets also be honest, the story as it was is in many ways dated and needed to be brought up to date for a modern audience who, despite what a minority of the internet try and have us believe, want to see stuff on TV that represents a modern, inclusive society. But, and this is the thing, the essence of that story is all already there and, had RJ been writing WOT today, with what fantasy can get away with now, I have no doubt he would be pushing the envelope even further and giving us very out characters, more overt same sex relationships and possibly making souls non gendered. 

By all means choose not to like it, but you are criticising a painting for missing a house when the painter hasn't even finished the background yet. Season 4 I saw people complaining that there was not enough explanation about this, or that, only just 1 episode later to see those arguments shut down as the writers picked a great moment to explain certain points of lore or background. Maybe lets wait until the show comes to a conclusion and view the whole picture from afar rather then state that Rafe has done this or that to a character who has only just started there emotional journey in the story. 

11 hours ago, Mirefox said:

Rafe Judkins is on record saying that this is his vision of WoT.  He is on record saying that he is using WoT as a vehicle for preaching his worldviews.  He is on record for threading to arbitrarily make characters gay out of spite.

 

The writing in this entire series is amateurish but to suggest that the showrunner is above reproach because it is a collaborative effort is flat out wrong.

Can you please supply the exact quotes with source where he has made these explicit comments, because I have seen this argument throughout the internet and yet no one can actually point to these "on the record" comments, what they do provide is either one line out of context, or something that is not saying that at all, or they can't fine it anymore. 

11 minutes ago, mogi68 said:

 

 

No, you remembered correctly!

 

 

I think that they will have Rand "cheat" with the power, either intentionally or unintentionally. It's the only way that he could conceivably defeat Turak at this point in the series. Even if Lan appears in Cairhien in E6 and trained him with the sword and they traveled on foot to Toman Head, I think it would a hard sell.

 

I wonder how the scene will be set up (if they do indeed have a duel). From the S2 trailer it looks like Rand just saunters up to the keep unimpeded

 

 

Even though he ignires the power I always saw it having an effect on him, that is how I have always read this scene the 20 or so times I have read the book, I can see however how someone could take it the other way. 

1 hour ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Here is me not remembering well, I thought he was being completely outclassed by Turak because he refused to enter the void, but when he did he put up a much better fight, "forcing Turak to frown in concentration". I wonder if I made that quote up 🙂 So yes, while he was not blademaster quality yet, he was signposting his way to become one.

 

In show, unless they are just going to ignore it, the only way I can think of him gaining skill with the sword is by channeling his inner LTT, but that would also seem to be a very problematic thing, unless they go whole hog which it seems far to early for. 

The flame and the void was how Rand managed to focus the one power initially so I always saw this as him tapping into the one power to become better, yes Turak had to concentrate suddenly but again I saw that like Rand going from a very low level, to suddenly getting faster and stronger, almost as if a mystical force was flowing through his body making Turak think a bit. 

10 minutes ago, Samt said:

The flame and the void is a concentration technique that Tam taught Rand.  It is not fundamentally something that only channelers do and Rand's use of it in this instance is not connected to the one power.  It is presumably something that Tam learned as part of his blademaster training and used throughout his career as a blademaster.    It's a fundamental skill that is used by many (and perhaps most) blademasters.  It is also an important part of the sword training that Lan gives Rand.  In other words, it's not "cheating."

 

Rand reaching the void is a narrative way of showing that Rand was able to remember his training and use it to come out on top.  That's exactly why this showdown doesn't work if Rand hasn't been trained.   

The flame and the Void is also how Rand controlled his access to the one power at the start of the books, so I always saw this as him using the power to become much better 

I have seen many bemoan the fact that Rand has not done any sword training yet because he needs to be a master swordsman to face off with Turak in season 2.
 

I agree I hoped for some fight training by now but ot seems people don’t get that fight scene at all, and as a result are going to be disappointed. Rand in book 2 is not a blade master by any stretch, in fact he wins that fight by luck not skill. 
 

If you actually re read the fight initially he is played with, toyed, partly because Turak wants to see how good a blade master in Randland really is, wants to measure him up, see his flows. Rand sees very quickly he is out classed, massively. He gets owned, and then, he “cheats” he reaches into the void and uses his superpowers, along with a big dose of luck (his other superpower), to kill Turak. 
 

Part of me really hopes that in the tv show we see this played out almost comically, Turak slips on spilt water, or trips on his cloak to land on Rand’s sword, because it is the first real moment in the book we get where we see the pattern is not going to let Rand die a stupid death, and yet people seem to have converted that into becoming convinced that Rand is actually a blade master by the time he fights that battle. He isn’t, and wining it doesn’t make him one either, not in terms of skill at least. 

1 hour ago, Robbin Poh said:

How is Mat's staff fighting ability a logical character progression? RJ just decided in book 3 that Mat was an expert staff fighter and had always been, yet that skill was never mentioned once in books 1 and 2. You'd think that Mat would at least have brought his staff when he left TR, but he only brought his bow.
How is Rand's sword fighting ability a logical character progression? By training on and off for a few months with Lan, then he's suddenly good enough to beat a real blademaster?
How is Perrin's axe fighting ability a logical character progression? By going berserker he is suddenly good with wielding an axe as well? If it's from his wolfbrother ability, then he should only be as good a fighter as a wolf and he should be biting people, not wielding an axe proficiently.
 

I do find it amusing that people retcon Rand’s fight against the blade master to make him a great fighter. He is so massively out of his depth in that fight, Turok played with him initially purposely going easy, and then when he really kicks in Rand gets schooled. It is only by embracing the one power that Rand wins, he uses the power to enhance his abilities, although he still also gets lucky, he basically wins that fight inspite of not being a very good swordsman. 

I will say the Bornhold intro was brilliant, for the longest tie I thought they where introducing Lord Luc early.

There is a great quote, Jackie Chan was asked "if someone came at you with a knife what would you do" his response is, run away. Martial Arts are great in choreographed sections, but in reality someone with a knife only needs ot get a lucky stab once and the martial arts expert is in a pretty bad way. 

17 hours ago, Meskell said:

Without having read the books I couldn’t see how you would understand that Rand is meant to be a big deal. 
 

His lack of characterisation in favour of wasting time on Steppin, Lan and whatever is going on with Moiraine is pretty frustrating. 
 

Tbf though, the book did also have this issue, spending huge detours on things like Morgase, that are completely unimportant in the wider scheme of things. 
 

I do think they would’ve been better off trimming everything away to just Rand, Mat, Nynaeve / The Last Battle / Forsaken. Deciding what is absolutely key to keep for the correct markers to be hit. Then fleshing out Egwene and Perrin in their overall plot, before settling on Moiraine, Elayne and Aviendha with whatever is left. 
 

They obviously drop the right names and characters in as they go along but entire episodes are not wasted on someone that has no impact or influence on the Last Battle. If they were going to do the Steppin type episode, I would’ve preferred an episode getting to know darkfiends in this world, as they’ve definitely done Darkfriends and potentially the Forsaken on the series compared to the books up to this point. 
 

The amount the series has been compressed with the 8 episode series means that anything that is not key can go, whereas the focus seems to be on inventing new scenes and beats that weren’t needed. 

 mean my wife has never read the books and she gets it, my neighbour the same, other friends. 
As for the fact he hasn't learnt to fight yet, in TGH Rand is just about ok with a sword, he is shown being out of his deth time after time and I always felt that his beating Turok in the book came with him "cheating" and using the one power without realising it anyway. Against Ishy it is the last ditch tactic of sheathing the sword that lets him win. 

14 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

There is not much that we can philosophize about, except exactly what Birgitte says (which I don't have to hand right now). Iirc, it would rule out conception, and would appear to be closer to, if not at the actual moment of delivery. 

 

The only point I could say that might add some extremely tenuous weight to the argument is that we know Elayne's children have recently become capable of surviving without their mother, and you could argue that this is the point that they acquire a soul (that they become individuals), and Birgitte is holding off the pull of rebirth... Really shaking stuff, but if Bela and Lanfear are alive, I would not refuse to bet on a long shot. 

 

Though that said, it would depend on the exact wording of all that Birgitte has said about her and Gaidal being reborn. 

 

Though this could be taken as the definition of looking too deeply into things 😄

The other thing I have wondered is if the heroes souls "replace" mundane individuals at the point of birth, to avoid things like heroes dying during term or at birth. 

The main uses of the one power that survived from the breaking where by necessity aggressive forms in order to protect and defend. When humanity is struggling to survive esoteric weaves that entertain or do mundane fun things become pretty pointless to teach. In fact the 100 weaves that women have to channel to become an aes sedai may well be based on some of these more, fun, uses of the power. 

You also have to remember that many of the clever uses of the power where items that used standing waves, in the age of legends the one power was effectively a replacement for electricity, so people had mobile phones, flying cars, weather controlling satellites, toothbrushes and singing ornaments all powered by the one power. but the knowledge to operate and use many of those was long gone. 

Then you have the post breaking and even though there is some semblance of stablity the one power is still mainly a source of power to protect or conquer, the aes sedai focus on winning the last battle, so learn to be weapons, or to heal, Seanchan create living weapons. The Sea Folk however do do intresting things with the power, the control of the weather is beyond what even the foresaken could do at the height of their power. 

With the ending of the last battle and the foundation of the academy's and universities humanity now has the chance to explore and develop new technologies including new ways of using the one power, until eventually technology overtakes the one power and it becomes forgotten about. 

2 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

You nailed it spot on.  Many of the changes from the book could have been ok if they told a compelling story.  IMHO they did not.  Unfortunately it is a common problem in too many Movies and TV shows lately.  Its like modern writers have never watched the Godfather, or even something as straight forward as The Village from M. Night Shyamalan.  

 

Not trying to take away from other people's enjoyment of the series, but I find its plan and direction very poorly thought out.  Like they just grab random quotes and try to fashion a story from it without understanding what actually made the story great.  If you enjoyed it that is great.  

 

Lets look at One Piece.  They did a fairly decent job of staying close to the source material, but did cut and change things to fit into a TV show.  However they kept the spirit of the show and characters alive.  Luffy and Zoro (Nami looked almost exactly like I'd think) may look a bit different than their book and cartoon counterparts, but acted fairly close.  Well, at least from my read the manga a while ago memory.  

 

The reason they had success?  1) The author was involved.  2) The show producers got destroyed on their previous effort of adapting Cowboy Bebop and decided to take the feedback and course correct for their next show.  

 

 

wait what, the village is an awful movie, I mean it is pretty much universally panned by people. 

And a TV show like WOT is never going to be like the godfather, for one thing the Godfather tells a fairly simple story. 

The biggest issue with transposing a fantasy IP as opposed to a sci fi IP is how much you have to explain to the viewer. Sci Fi is generally based in some level on things that a viewer can understand or does not need to be explained to them, in starwars we don't need to have lasers, or shields, or hyperspace or how a spaceship works or even how there is gravity explained. The only thing the viewer has to understand the rules of is the "magic" the force. 

In a fantasy IP the viewer needs to have the whole world broken down and described to them, there is so much more lore that needs to be parcelled up and told.

And then A film like the Godfather doesn't need to bother about any real lore, the viewer understands the world so they just have to be told about how the mafia world is different while not having to have the normal world spelled out to them. 

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. 

9 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

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

I disagree here, Avi was not shy, or fair for that matter, what Avi was was determined that she would always be a maiden, she refused to even consider the idea of putting her spears down for anything, including a man, and so had kept away from all men because she was so determined. We see that in how determined she is not to be a wise women at the start. A hard set decision to never put herself in a position of risk of losing the spears, for even a short period (remember Maidens spend there pregnancy effectively no longer being maidens), does not equate to shy and inexperianced, in fact we see when she finally caves and gives into her destiny she very much takes control of the situation and seems to know exactly what she is doing.  

7 minutes ago, Cipher said:

Rand is Ta’Veran, the Dragon Reborn, and he did it when the AS holding him got attacked.  No excuses for those bad writers…..take your contrived gruel and like it.

Rand spent days inspecting the weave and identified the how and the where and that it would need a moment of weakness, he didnt just magically break out when the attack happened, he spent every moment in that box working at the weave and asking LTT for help. 

18 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

it does change it. aviendha fought a dozen soldiers while unarmed and won, with minimal help from perrin. shaiel fought five soldiers and died in the process. It shows the difficulties of pregnancy, without it shaiel would have won without many troubles. 😁

besides, they are aiel. they can. they are basically the offspring of chuck norris with the duracell bunny. You can't apply the limitations of actual humans to aiel, because they are aiel.

I mean Shaiel was fighting while actually giving birth, I am not a women, and I have never been around child birth first hand but I am pretty sure that the middle of contractions and 10cm dialiated is not condusive to being able to keep the forms going 🙂 so it is pretty impressive that she killed 5 soldiers lol. 

2 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

Seemed like he did. Plenty of time to test it during captivity

In the books Rand does the same thing, probing the shield over an extended amount of time, trying to find the gaps between weaves. Plus we have no idea if Logain also had someones voice in his head, the soul of a different powerful Aes Sedai, just not LTT. 

3 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

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...)

All the stuff regarding Rands characters journey I would say is taken from 2 and 3, he is carving his own path, we have Avi being introduced as well, I think we need to look at the book stuff of 2 and 3 being not story beats from the book, but the overall character development to get the main characters to where they are ready for the journey to Emonds Field, the 3 fold land and hunting the black Ajah. There is so much repetition in book 3 to book 2 in terms of just travelling across the land, getting into traps etc that you really only need to show those specific story elements once otherwise it gets very repetitive. Oh the girls have walked into yet another trap set up by the black, oh Perrin is chasing across the land again, this time chasing Rand, oh Rand is chasing across the land after someone being in his dreams, again. 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. 

 

5 hours ago, wotfan4472 said:

The easy answer is no. Brigitte herself stated the last time we saw her in the books, she was being reborn.

 

Which means an infant girl was being born somewhere, and her soul was to inhabit that infant. There is no way she could be reborn as one of Elayne's children as a result.

This asks a difficult question, are children in WOT soulless until they are born? Does this mean that "life" does not begin until birth in WOT? As I type this maybe a bit heavy to get into here. 

Some issues I see with your theory. 

In the book it explicitly states that the horn could never work for the shadow at the end. We also know that the evil of Shadar Logoth is a very different almost opposite evil to the dark lord. 

Mat also ceases to be the holder of the horn halfway through the story. 

All those events I think are happening as per the books, nothing we have seen has suggested otherwise.

4 hours ago, SinisterDeath 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.
  

 

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

2 hours ago, Rhaze said:

 Not that I care and Rand didnt discover it until later in the books, but there is the cheat to open a gateway close enough to see and that allows you to instantly learn the area.

another thing the Foresaken don't know. 

So the assumption has always been that Tear will take place at the start of season 3 and then the story will shift into TSR, but I have been thinking about alternative ways of telling the story. 

Book's 2 and 3 have a lot of repetition about them, the fight with Ishy is one, but another is the fact that end of TGH Rand is proclaimed in the sky (not got the book to hand but i am sure the epilogue says that people in the land heard tale of the dragon fighting in the sky and knew he had returned) and then in book 3 he again does a thing to proclaim his return. Callandor then plays no part in the story until much later. 

Now if you moved Tear to after the events in the 3 fold land, the people of the dragon come with the dragon and help take tear and claim the word that is not a sword, you don't drastically impact the overall flow of the story, but you do now stop the repetition of books 2 and 3 while still having that key moment with what is a major story mcguffin. You also don't have him grab the sword and then leave it alone for a whole season to be forgotten by viewers. 

The only other key event that happens in tear that would need to happen is the first doorway, but you could move this anywhere. We know that Turok is a collector of all things one power like so it would not be a stretch to have the doorway in his possession. The boys go through and it helps tell Rand what he needs to do next.