Adam Whitehead has some numbers on his blog, but they are a few years out of date. I’d love to see an update next year. 
 

https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-sff-all-time-sales-list-revised.html

25 minutes ago, Ralph said:

I might riot if they don't 

Oh, I understand. I just think it’s hilarious that so many of our main characters think to themselves “What’s the best way to hide this disparate group of weirdoes we have collected around us? Ah ha! I know! A traveling circus run by a flamboyant sex pest!” I love all the circus bits, but I’m also aware that it might be cut for time and budget. 

18 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

It took me a long time to figure Mat's leaving out in the show, but I finally put the pieces together. Granted....they don't make it easy within the episode.

Every bit of marketing on Mat during the runup to the show describes him as being afraid of 'going bad'...being a prick like his father, a drunk like his mother.  In the advertising for Ep 6, it is about Mat facing the 'darkness inside himself.

When we hear that phrase, we assume that it means the one facing the darkness will face it down and decide that they /will/ be the hero they are expected to be. But Mat, as he says in the books over and over, is "no bloody hero".  He has looked at the darkness inside himself and realized, at least for the moment, that he would cave to the evil inside him. He /was/ caving to the evil inside him from the dagger. He would fall.

He knows, or has learned two things about the Dragon.  He knows that the Dragon will either defeat the Dark One, OR join them.
AND he knows that Moiraine did not answer Egwene's question "What happens to those who aren't the Dragon?"  
Lacking that answer...Egwene goes anyway, because she is ridiculously brave, the bravest of all of them.  Rand goes because Egwene does.  Perrin goes because he doesn't care if he lives or dies anyway, really, after Layla.  And Nynaeve goes because she doesn't believe Moiraine and wants to protect the EF5 from her.  But Mat is savvy and untrusting enough to know those who aren't the Dragon will likely die.
So...if he IS the Dragon, Mat believes he would join the Dark One.  And if he is NOT the Dragon, he would die and there's nothing anyone could do about it.  

Mat didn't go to save the world from himself.

And he didn't say anything to anyone else, because he doesn't believe they would join with the Dark One, if they were the Dragon.

My working theory, anyway.

I really like this idea. Well done. 
 

Of course, now I’m going to be disappointed when it doesn’t happen this way. ??‍♀️

Nearly all of the Wheel of Time fans I know in person or through JordanCon enjoy the show. But that’s not a representative sample anymore than this forum is. I think the only real way we can know if enough people watched the first season is if Amazon okays a third season. ??‍♀️

Hopefully, that one comes next season. 
 

But if they leave out Valan Luca’s circus I will riot. 

I just removed about half the posts in this thread for off topic bickering. If y’all are still interested in this thread, please stick to the topic. Otherwise I’ll close it and you can go about your business. Thanks. 

Yeah Logain pre-gentling had a really great “cult leader” vibe. You get why people followed him. 

Jordan considered himself a feminist and was a pretty progressive guy, considering his background. So I do think some of the things that “didn’t age well” in the books would be different if he started the series today. On the other hand, duality is an important theme of the series and a non-binary gender spectrum doesn’t really fit into that. 

Yup, we have several threads for this idea already. Thanks for sharing. 

We already have a thread for this. Feel free to join the conversation there. 

Alright, let’s give this one a chance. 
 

I think you make a good argument here about whether you channel saidar or saidin is a matter of your true self, not what your body looks like. Jordan included Aran’gar as an example of “wrongness” and the Dark One upending the natural order of things. It’s not really something you can put in a TV show these days. The easiest way to handle it is to sidestep the issue altogether and not have the ‘gars at all. And if Rafe decides to put a trans channeler in the series, have it be a new character. 

It’s quality writhing. 

14 minutes ago, Kazhvar said:

So these are changes made by the people making the show? I don't recall seeing anything in the books suggesting it could be female simply based upon the fact Saidar was never tainted.

Yes, it’s a change made by the show. But they tried to ground it in the themes of the story and some of the established lore. I think they did it to help foreground the importance of Nyn and Eg early on. Rafe has said in interviews that WoT becomes more of an ensemble story about three or four books in and he wanted to start it off that way so the shift wasn’t abrupt. 
 

I think the logic of a lady dragon kinda falls apart when you think about what part of the Source was tainted, but I guess that’s why the Aes Sedai keep saying that they are worried about the Dragon joining the Dark One instead of defeating him. It doesn’t break the story for me though, because I’ve seen interviews with Josha talking about how excited he is to be playing the savior. 

This has been discussed in multiple places, so I’ll quickly answer for you. Rafe wanted to play up the idea that characters were frequently working from incomplete or even inaccurate information, causing many misunderstandings. So one of the changes is that there are several versions of the prophecies of the dragon and the Aes Sedai aren’t sure which to believe. One of them says the Dragon could potentially be a woman. 
 

There were multiple versions of the Karathon Cycle in the books as well. The Seanchan version said that the Dragon would kneel before the Crystal Throne, for example. 

The episode where I really noticed the lack of male gaze was the one where the Whitecloaks capture Egwene and Perrin. If this was GoT we would have seen almost all of Egwene’s body while they were “purifying” her and it would have been very sexualized. Instead, the focus was almost entirely on her face and her anguish. You saw close ups of arms and legs being scrubbed roughly and the most violent thing shown was cleaning her finger nails (if you’ve never had a manicure that part can really HURT if the person doing it isn’t careful). Hands and especially finger tips are are really sensitive and intimate part of your body. There is a reason we hold hands with people we love. So that part felt incredibly invasive to me and really emphasized the horror of what the Whitecloaks were doing to her. 

10 hours ago, fitzwell said:

Can you quote where the kiss is in the books?  The only reference I've seen to them being called pillow friends was by another Aes Sedai talking about Moraine and Suine in chapter 17.  Of course you can make of that however you prefer but I believe there were instances where the Egwene and Elayne were referred to as becoming pillow friends yet the reader knows they did not.  Again, it's fine to feel either way I just always took it as hearsay from the other Aes Sedai.  I actually thought the kiss was crazy in the show and started outright laughing at how silly it seemed.  If that is your thing though, you do you.

Chapter 12 “Entering Home”

Quote

"If you say so, Siuan." Moiraine did not sound as if she believed, either. "There is one thing I can remedy. May I offer you healing?" Siuan could have kissed her. In fact, she did.

I believe it’s after Dumais Wells when Elaida is panicking and Alviarhin says she’ll clean it up, but Elaida must obey her. Alviarhin tells her to issue a harsh penance to sisters holding *angreal and rewards to a bunch of random sisters so everyone would think they turned them in. It’s part of the Black Ajah plot to weaken the Tower. 

Oh, I agree. Overall, I enjoy the show and accept it as it’s own thing. I have a couple things I dislike so far, but none of them ruin my enjoyment. I just want a place where I can discuss things like this with reasonable people. And I’ll do it if I have to ban every single one of you. ?

2 minutes ago, WheelofJuke said:

I would love to see Mat eating tray after tray of food in recovering from the dagger separation. A true highlight from the books. 

 

I kinda hoped they'd do a real cheesy actor swap at the point of healing, like, Barney Harris is sick...they heal him...and that's the new actor's reveal. That would've won me over a little bit. 

 

Perhaps Mat becomes entangled with Liandrin's mystery man?

“I barely recognize Mat since he was Healed from the dagger!”

55 minutes ago, phoenixtrinity said:

I am realizing more and more that I don't understand if the LotR movies were a great adaption of the books or a terrible one. Note, I haven't read the books, so here's what I'm working off of from here and Reddit:

 

- When the LotR movies came out, everyone said they were nothing like the books

- The LotR movies changed or removed character and major plot lines

- Somehow, the LotR movies became popular anyway?

- LotR is so popular it is getting a show on Amazon that I'm guessing must be faithful to the books or no one would want to watch it, if I'm understanding the comments.

 

My question is... Why is Amazon banking on LotR if people are complaining about the WoT adaption the same as people complained about the LotR movies?

 

I'm not trying to be clever here, I am confused. I thought LotR was an extremely popular movie franchise, but now I'm hearing people hated it because it wasn't like the books. So now I'm wondering what this might mean for the WoT.

 

(Thanks if someone takes the time to clarify)

The Lord of the Rings movies were criticized by some fans for not being faithful enough to the novels. Characters and subplots were cut, including a male character in order to give a female character more to do onscreen. Things that were only a few pages in the books became giant set pieces and took up a bunch of screen time. But they got great reviews and had enormous crossover appeal outside of the usual sci fi and fantasy crowd and ended up winning a ton of awards. They are considered classics today with enduring appeal. But yeah, there was definitely some complaining that it wasn’t close enough to the books. Tolkien’s son Christopher absolutely hated the movies and completely disowned the production. 

This thread is about episode seven speculation. Let’s get back on topic. 
 

So I know some folks are saying that this was Barney Harris’s last episode. Do you think that’s true? If not, what might you see Mat doing while everyone else is off in the Borderlands? 

16 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

I think it is an unbelievably sad commentary on our society that there cannot be Platonic love without someone trying to sexualize it.  The scene was crude and forced and about as natural as if Sam and Frodo hooked up after Sam rescued Frodo in Cirith Ungol because, after all, they had bathed together and laid naked on the downs together and Sam had kissed Frodo when he recovered in Rivendell…

 

Sexualizing a platonic relationship cheapens greatly a relationship that so many would love and very few actually achieve.

But they are not platonic in the books. In New Spring, they kiss right before the lights go out (if you know what I mean, say no more) know each other’s ticklish spots and Moiraine gets jealous of Siuan being interested in men after leaving the Tower. It’s very much in the books that their relationship was sexual at one point. Pillow friends are romantic relationships. 

We are not talking about the ratings. Stop. 
 

Anyways, I like the detail of Alanna’s Warders waiting outside the Hall for her with snacks. This is the second time we’ve seen her chowing down on a piece of fruit and it’s just such a great detail that the Green Ajah is the Ajah of enjoying life and that includes sex and food. 

Yeah, I was coveting that tea set. Where’s that official merch, Amazon? 
 

Personally, I think I liked last week’s better. I do think some events seemed a bit rushed. But I adored seeing Moiraine and Siuan together like that and the way they worked together to manipulate the Hall. It’s a bit of foreshadowing for when Siuan and Leane do that to the Salidar Aes Sedai, if they decide to keep that storyline. 
 

I commented to my husband last night that the plot modifications don’t bother me as much as I thought they would, but tiny changes to the lore and the worldbuilding stick out like a sore thumb. I have to sit with that for a minute and figure out why that is. 

Yeah, I think you’re reaching there.