5 hours ago, Mailman said:

Look I don't know the book starts in a conservative rural town in a feudal/agrarian world. Does that really need to be updated for modern audiences. It fits with the World that exists in the books and it's not like we don't get more cosmopolitan settings continuing on in the series. Did we really need Rand and Eggy to have sex in the common room of her parents Inn.

 

Not everything needs to be updated or changed to fit modern values. If the content fits the story then allow it too.

I mean I know people who grew up in farming communities, they were at it from the age of 14, as one friend of mine said, you see all that sex happening on the farm all the time and as teenagers you meet up at get togethers and all partner up and just have lots of fun. So from the experience I have 2nd hand knowledge of it all Emonds Field always felt far to sacharine sweet. 

5 hours ago, Mailman said:

Not really Perrin was scouting the black tower because they suspected that a trap was being placed there. You could make the same exact argument for Nynaeve saving Rand from Rahvin.

The difference is that Nynaeves scene made sense, Perrin is artificially kept by BS from goig to the black tower, the writing of that whole scene is just so clunky that there is no real tension, no real feeling of excitement or relief that Androl gets free, it is all so telegraphed, but also, BS uses a Dream spike twice, very close to each other, in exactly the same way, Perrin, by sheer chance, saves Egwene with it in Tar Valon, and then, again by chance, he saves the black tower, he doesn't turn it off knowing people are trapped, or that it is stopping them escaping, he just turns it off and jumps away because he assumes Slayer will be there to attack him. If perrin had known Slayer would not be there he would not of gone. It all feels so, all I can say is bad, in terms of the writing. I don't know why, it just does. 

10 minutes ago, Mailman said:

I really liked Androl gave us an insight into the black tower.

 

You are aware that he opened the tiny gateway prior to Perrin removing the dreamspike. Then was hiding till he felt the spike barrier being removed.

 

I am aware of that yes, but the writing of the whole scene is still really artificially done, he relies on the dropping of the spike triggering that moment, Androl had no idea the spike was going to be removed. There are a few moments in the books where BS relies on artifically generating tension through a series of very unlikely events. 

Warning massive book spoilers ahead. 

So in the TV show it is clear that Liandrin has been found out, this means she can go the same route as the books, escaping Tar Valon with a bunch of toys and other black sisters to give the girls an enemy to chase.

But, how do we see her arc ending?

the way it does in the books

the way of Alviarin 

Or another way? With confirmation that Ingtars reveal is on the cutting room floor I don't see her having a redemption arc. 

17 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

The only part of that whole "Season 2 was totally rewritten" stuff l question is... I feel like Moiraine & Lan's plot was always planned like this.

 

Then we have S1E8 finale, I feel like that would have been much the same, only with Barney in the room.

So would we have completely skipped Rand in Cairhen?
Got 4 episodes of the boys travelling to Falme with Ingtar?

I have no bloody idea.
But it feels like a lot of excess changes to lay at the feet of Barney. 😉 

the boys could have all travelled together following the horn and ended up in Cairhen, Rand then gets split off by Lanfer, Moiraine still finds them both and stabs Lanfer while perrin and matt are chasing to Falme, then Rand catches them up after meeting the AS and freeing the shield. This then matches the books a little closer. 

8 hours ago, VooDooNut said:

Pretty sure Rand sees what’s left of SH’s corpse on his per-3000 year visit to the dark one. The idea being that the DO had no further use for SH. 

Yep another cool character that got dropped at the end. 

4 hours ago, Yamezt said:

Eh, it is a little different. He would describe the male character and then life goes on with the story. Like I'm aware the various male characters are muscular and all, but it isn't in my face. So it is more like - Dude who is axe handle wide and then back to the story

 

The bosoms are drawn to the reader when a female character doing just about anything. So it is always in your face. So scene with ladies are more like *long description about appearance, dress and swishes (which may drop a neckline is so low it expose bosoms too, but not relevant here)* - back to story and then casually drops

1. folds her arms under her breasts in response to something
2. clutch the ter-angreal against her breasts because reasons
3. wearing a pendant (yes - we must talk about her breasts - lets place the pendant in ... gasp...  between her breasts)

I certainly do not remember as similar treatment to guys but it has been 10 years so I'm happy to be proven wrong.

 

 

Looks are also the defining feature if a man would want to sleep with a women, or marry her, or even dance with her. 

9 hours ago, VooDooNut said:

@Samt as well, I’m just on phone so I can be bothered to try and double-quote.

 

I don’t have a problem with Androl being introduced and present in the BS books, but I don’t respond well to BS taking RJs “soft-magic” system and, as he is wont to do, trying to over-define it. I’m sure there’s other examples of this is the final trilogy, but Androl just comes to mind as the most grating. Androl feels like a BS character, not an RJ character. 
 

Relating it back to the thread topic, I find it kind of humorous that BS had so many critiques for S2 when he made so many Sanderson-ism mistakes in the last three books. But also, everyone’s human and I’m sure he was as emotional and spastic as any reader watching S2E8 for the first time. 

My big issue with Androl is how artificial his arc is, it just jars so much with the rest of the writing in the entire series. In particular, Brandon Sandersons need to create artificial tension around the dream spike, Perrin "suddenly closing it", it is just such bad writing that it sticks out a mile compared to the rest of the series. At no point did RJ need to create artificial tension in this way, the way he then also uses Androl as a get out of jail free card for other key moments.

As an aside, I also want to say please watch the words you use, the word Spastic is horrifically insulting to people, it is the reason why a charity changed its name in 1994, I have a friend who if they had read that would have been triggered because of childhood bullying. I get it is a word in the english language but it has conetations that go far beyond its actual meaning. 

6 hours ago, Mailman said:

Cannot agree with most of this.

 

Morgase came to the throne as a weak monarch, nothing to do with her being female, and had to work hard to set herself up to reign in complete control.

 

Lol really Ebou Dar being odd as the only place woman have real power.

Sea Folk are a female led society

Aiel have both Wise ones and Clan leaders but i'll doubt that you will find anyone who will say it is not the Wise ones who are the true leaders.

Far Madding militantly run female city.

Womans Circles in the two rivers in the books were considered by most to be the real power in the towns.

Andor before Rahvin.

Tar Valon.

Seachan dominated by the Empress. Suroth in control of the return.

 

Ebou Dar is such an odd choice for her to pick as the most interesting in terms of female empowerment, it is nowhere near the most female power in the books, it also where their ruler rapes one of the heroes of the book.

 

Aludra I cannot think of anything that would have changed had she been male. She appeared to be a senior member of the chapter house, and then through unfortunate events outside her control was ousted and was pursued because they believed her selling guild secrets. I can't believe they would have reacted any differently to a man selling their secrets.

 

Tuon is never a petulant child. Some who initially see her believe her a child purely based on her size and some have views on nobility however these views are always wrong and immediately dispelled.

 

As for nakedness the cultures that embraced it like the Aiel, Borderlanders and a lesser extent the Seachan seemed to do it for all rather than one sex or the other. Yes the use of the word bosom is excessive. However there are also lots of descriptions of how broad men are built in axehandles, how they have well turned calves and talk of backsides as well. Galad is constantly talked about in terms of how beautiful he is.

 

As for the woman stay at home trope that you complain of. There are constantly business's run by females in all the cities.

 

So as I said I didn't agree with all these, but I am also aware I am both male and have 20 years of book reading, I do find myself, when I re read now days, thinking that if 43 year old me picked this series up now then I would think I was reading something written for teenage boys. I also think that we need to take someones opinion (hers) and see that it might have some validity, maybe not all the points, but if she is reading something and at a minimum feeling that it feels very dated (which it does in moments) then maybe it should be accepted that an adaptation will need bringing into the 2020's. 

1 hour ago, swollymammoth said:

Not really responding to you specifically here, just weighing in on this aspect of Jordan's writing. Mainly, I find it extremely strange that people consider these things (the descriptions of women particularly, but also other related aspects like the stereotypical male/female dynamics) are "male" in nature when it seems pretty clear that these things are actually much, much more common in fiction written by women.

 

Romance is the biggest literary genre in the world, almost exclusively written and read by women, and if you read most anything in that genre, you're not going to find 21st century gender politics represented very heavily haha The "heaving bosoms" and "brooding male" dynamic is a female creation and a hallmark of the single largest and most successful literary genre in the world. 

 

My point is that RJ was a fan of bodice ripper romance, and one of the first books that he pitched to Harriet was a bodice ripper (this pitch later became the Fallon Blood series). So yeah, RJ was a man, but the style that he uses in WoT is pretty obviously inspired by WOMEN'S FICTION. 

 

So yeah, RJ focuses a lot on his female characters' appearances and bosoms, but I think laying that at his feet as "sexist" or just "man writing" is sort of disingenuous when it's really just a feature of a genre that he liked and was drawing on while writing WoT. 

We can all dissect her opinion and read into it because we now the author, have grown up with him in may cases and so see alot more nuance, but, having her point these things out to me the biggest thing I takeaway is that the books really do feel, especially early on, that they have a demographic in mind for who is consuming them, and they are pitched at that demo (nothing wrong with that and probably the publshers as much as RJ himself). 

I just think it interesting getting an opinion from someone about 10 years younger then me who consumes a lot of books, including fantasy and so has a lot of comparison and her take on the books as a first time reader. 

19 hours ago, fra85uk said:

Wow always making the right choice (sarcasm).

It possibly was the right choice for the episode, I don’t think enough build up had been put in to make that reveal an emotional moment for the audience and it very much would have been lost in the noise of everything else that was going on. 
 

Also it makes no logical sense, Ishy wanted the horn in Falme, he was in Falme, why send Ingtar to hunt the horn down? 

45 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

It is, in terms of social values.

But then, that, a common feature of almodt every work of fiction. We write people of the middle age thinking like modern ones. Renaissance writers who erote about people of the middle age wrote them with renaissance values. People writing of the future always project into the future fantastic technology, but the same culture.

I would praise the aiel as a nice exception, except they are also a charicature; that much cultural uniformity is not found even in dictatorships

I mean the Aiel as a people are almost a carbon copy of the freman from dune, Avi is very close to Chani as a character. But the history and how they became Aiel is what stands them out, and brilliantly shows how a culture can organically change over centuries. 

1 hour ago, Gothic Flame said:

Doesn't sound to me that the books were the issue, more so than someone wanting to make an issue of the books.

*shrugs*

The person that did most of the editing was Jordan's wife. So..

That’s your opinion, re reading. Multiple times I can see a lot of the issues she points out, it is a very male centric book in terms of the prose etc. 

11 minutes ago, Mailman said:

What exactly did she find sexist in his writing?

The constant insistance that "men and women don't know what each other is thinking" the emphasis on the attractiveness of a women, the need to always emphasise "bosoms" very stereotypical ideas on the way men and women operate (men bluster around, women manipulate them to get things done), she actually said that for a fantasy series that is supposed to show women as being a central power in general women in the world still are not able to project real power in the story and instead have to rely on men to do that work for them with just a couple of exceptions, but even then Morgase is shown to have not had any real power when she was younger, having to use who she married to acquire it, and Tuon is presented as a petulant child, who yes is in charge, but is also a bad guy in it, she even said that Aes Sedai show this, an entire group of powerful females forced to restrict what they can do by a man, spending there lives manipulating and controlling because "thats what women are good at". Oh and nakedness, she said alot of female nakedness, which is ok in itself, why should a women getting topless be different to a man, but in her words "the author never bothers describing his male characters in the same way he does his female ones, uou never get a sense of the broadness of chest, or how they present themselves in the same way as you know for every female character if they are large or small breasted, pretty or plain etc. 

She did like that Ebou Dar at least is a culture where women have real genuine power, but said the fact that it is presented as being "odd" to outsiders emphasis how the rest of Randland is very much stuck in the "women stay at home" trope. She even found examples on characters I hadn't even thought of, Aludra, she asks would she have had as much trouble if she was a male illuminator. 

I don't agree with all her points, but I can't really disagree when she says the book feels like it was aimed at teenage/early 20's boys in much of the writing. I also can see her points that for all we try and say RJ created a world where women had power, they actually still only have that power largely at the behest of men. 

10 minutes ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Yes I understand the analogy, and it does to an extent make sense that understanding how to affect the weather is related to a ter'angreal doing the same thing. But logically, the ter'angreal is not a sa'angreal that is only amplifying the channelers weaves but is in essence a machine that is being operated. And as such it does not really make sense that the ability to weave the weather directly would be exactly the same as using the ter'angreal, and so the Sea Folk's ability to superpower the Bowl of the Winds is not directly related to their ability to affect the weather but instead stems from completely different research into the Bowl in the 1,000 years they had it from the breaking to its loss.

ahh see I look at it slightly differently, yes it is a machine, and the weaves the wind finders use are like a new kind of code, tey don't "superpower it" but they use it in ways that make it behave differently, and that is only possible because of there skill with weather weaves, which are aligned to the kinds of weaves the bowl already creates. Now there ability with the weather may stem from investigating the bowl and the weaves it makes, I can see that in the age of legends something like weather control, once managed, does not really gather much interest i terms of research. If the weather can be turned on and off at will anyway then why look for better ways of doing that. once the breaking happens if the Sea Folk are reliant on the bowl to stay safe that means they can't leave the area of the bowl, so it makes sense they find ways to control the weather in a similar way to the bowl so allowing them to become less and less reliant on it. That then in turn allows them to push the envelope of what it is capable of further and further through the application of new weaves they themselves have learnt. 

On 10/17/2023 at 12:31 AM, Mirefox said:

A) This is multiple times now you’ve called me an anti-feminist, which is not bad hominem and a demonstration that you don’t understand the differences between traditional feminism and modern liberal feminism.

 

B) Rafe has literally said that he wants to update Jordan’s idea of feminism for the modern world.  That is literally an agenda.  It also suggests that Rage, at least, acknowledges a difference between feminist philosophy of 20 years ago and today and he reject the philosophy of the book as unfit for modern ideals.  De facto agenda.

Jordan’s book was forward thinking for the day it was written in, it is also very dated today. I think people took that Rafe statement and ran with it in the wrong way. Any work adapted is changed to make it more palatable for the viewing audience, lord of the rings added in a whole plot line for a female character at the expense of a male one, added in more about romance because it was based off a book that regardless of its pedigree in some ways has not aged well. 
 

A friend read wheel of time for then first time recently after watching the tv show, she commented on how sexist Robert Jordan was in his writing and how glad she is the tv show is not like that. Some things age well, some things don’t and when something hasn’t aged well you change it. I have no doubt had RJ written WOT now then there would be a lot less of men are from mars women are from Venus writing in the relationships and he would have been emboldened to have been more open with the existence of same sex relationships in the world. He took the risks he could in the 90’s and he stuck on lane and played it safe where he felt he needed to. But he did take risks, risks that now days feel like they are behind the times we live in. 

On 10/16/2023 at 11:26 PM, swollymammoth said:

Lol did you see in the most recent AMA he did where someone asked him if the power was going to have the the male/female, saidin/saidar split like in the books and he was like (paraphrased), "Well, we've gotta dripfeed that information to the audience." Can[t give them everything all at once!" as if the split was some crazy deep lore that needs multiple seasons of buildup to establish. 

 

RJ established the split right up front because, obviously, it's an absolutely fundamental aspect of the story and world, but Rafe obviously thinks that he knows better. Clearly, it's much more important to establish that Warders and Aes Sedai have polyamourous sexual relationships than to clarify a fundamental detail of the WoT universe. 

RJ established it with long exposition that was really outside of the story. Or POV thoughts, in the visual medium things need to be fed to the audience slower so they have time to land and grow, a viewer can’t go back and re read a paragraph to make sure they understand a thing. 

16 hours ago, Elder_Haman said:

IIRC, in an interview he did long ago, BS explained that creating Androl was what allowed him to finish the books because it was something he could always come back to when lost.

For me this just highlights he was maybe the wrong choice, I would really love to see what a different author would do given access to all the same material at BS. 

14 hours ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

This totally agrees with my own summation, but also backs up my thoughts on why would ability to control the weather actually entail the ability to wring more performance out of a ter'angreal as the two should not be the same. Like a goat that can crop the grass very close to the ground is not per se an individual that can operate a lawn mower really well.

I don’t look at it quite that way, if you think of a computer someone who understands hardware and software can push the limits of the computer almost to breaking point, getting increased performance, pushing more power through it, programming it to do things differently, 

The sea folk have developed skills and abilities beyond what even the designers of the bowl could do, they can look at it and use it in ways that where not thought of in order to achieved results that seem miraculous. 

15 hours ago, Yamezt said:

 

Here you go

https://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=3

 

 

Thank you @Jsbrads2 hopefully this clarifies things for you, I am hoping you take the very words of the author as canon. He clearly thought about the bowl of the winds in detail, he also confirms that men could also have channeled into it, which also cancels out many of the post breaking assumptions. If men could not have channeled into it then he would have made that point explicit. 

On 10/16/2023 at 3:07 PM, Jaysen Gore said:

The point to this was to give one of the most prolific fantasy authors in history the ability to exercise some creativity while writing 1600 pages or more of someone else's project. It was the "let me have something" point so he wasn't just transcribing notes, but actually writing.

 

I wasn't thrilled with the way the gateways were abused in the Last Battle, but they did help solve the problem of the Light being grossly outmanned by the Dark

I mean, he had 1600 pages to be creative, he could have focused on finishing Fain off properly, or writing a better Verin send off, or just writing better books, Robert Jordan did not leave him a half finished book, he left him a load of notes and ideas that he had to put together into a story. 
 

Now personally I actually like Androl, I like the arc he gets and I enjoyed the use of gateways, I really hope we see the volcano scene. But, we don’t get any real depth to Ansrol, he is a typical BS character, the issue is he looked better then the actually RJ characters that Brandon tried to change. 
 

13 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

Well having finished S2 and having started a rewrite I will proffer my comments as they bubble up through the haze that my mind is becoming.

 

First and foremost I am very much looking forward to S3.  I feel so much better than I did after S1 when I wasn't sure I was going to bother.  In my view this isn't exactly an adaptation or a based on but a reasonably successful middle ground.  I love the books and being a fast reader and retired in Seattle I can power through the series in a couple of months.  

 

As I have said, mostly during S1, the heavy rewrite and condensed story time makes it easy to leave apparent plot holes or unexplained things many of which have been pointed out before.  I do hate the magic resurrections such as Lanfear's.  Jordan handled this much better with the new body approach.  Another one that grates me is Min being wrong on the vision of Matt stabbing Rand with the Dagger.  Unlike her symbolic visions that was very specific.   How is she going to get her credibility back?   

 

Also Rafe seems to like the fake out to rile up us book lovers.  It isn't just deaths.  A possible one is that with Ishy's memory implant and his blowing the horn there is apparently no need for the Finnfolk.  Yet we don't know for sure that he has all his battle skills and perhaps we will see him make the bargains.  I sure hope so.

 

For those who think Logan is going to teach Rand forget it.  We will be seeing Asmodean or one of the other male Forsaken do that bit.  It is dramatically much more interesting to have to clasp the snake to your breast and deal with all that entails.   Speaking of teaching Rand the way he dispatched Turok made much more sense than pretending he can defeat someone with a blade.

 

Combining characters like Uno and Gaidal Cain and Hurin and Elyas  make sense we likely will see more of that.  It works for me so far.  

 

I felt the dragon was a bit over the top.  I much preferred the way Jordan played it in the book.  Eggs was a little too strong for a decent plot line.  It would have been better to have Moraine link with her and Elayne and hold defensive weaves or have Nynaeve  as part of the effort.  After having her be super girl on several occasions she is regressing into incompetence.  Really?

 

Finally the way things are going after this effort is complete we can hope for a more faithful AI generated effort.  It could be as long as it needs to be and as long as somebody is supervising to cut some sloggy bits it could be awesome.  I really would like to see Randland brought to life.  However until that day this show will fill the gap nicely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Min was not wrong, Matt stabbed Rand. In the books there are multiple cases of Min seeing a vision and have no idea what it actually means. In fact one key arc for her is finally, when with Tuon, realising she can use her ability to find the spy. So she warned Matt if you go you will stab Rand, well he did stab Rand. 

On 10/16/2023 at 2:19 PM, Mailman said:

Something I wanted to recheck people's opinion on now that we have had the last couple of episodes is Liandrin's capture and transport of the 3 to Falme.

 

Now we are aware that tying of shields is not a skill current channelers possess and Egwene's power level being enough to at least temporarily hold Ishy at bay it drastically damages the whole passage.

 

1) Liandrin now has to maintain 3 shields at all times from the tower to Falme.

2) Egwene not long after is able to keep at bay Ishmael for a considerable time, Considering Logain required 2 or 3 strong Aes Sedai (including Liandrin)  to keep him shielded and I would assume he is not as strong as Ishmael that sets the bar for Liandrin to solo shield her as highly unlikely.

3) Now that we know tying of shields is not possible why did the Seachan not take over the shields when Liandrin was entering the waygate as I cannot see how they would have thought the shields would have remained once she entered the waygate.

 

Just seems to make the entire scenario completely implausible.

Tying a shield is not something non black ajah channelers know, the Foresaken have been interacting with the white tower, so you can imagine they would remove some knowledge from “good aes sedai” and keep that knowledge to “bad” aes Sedai. 

11 hours ago, bringbackthomsmoustache said:

Alternatively the red's do know how to tie off weaves and keep it is an Ajah secret (in line with book lore about the Ajah's having their own secret weaves).

Or, Liandrin is Black Ajah and has been taught because, you know, they have skills. 

On 10/15/2023 at 1:47 PM, Mirefox said:

That’s what made Game of Thrones Season 8 so much better than Game of Thrones Season 1….

lol I really hope this is tongue in cheek lol. Because in no way was GOT season 7 and 8 better then anything on TV let alone it’s own series.