18 hours ago, Humbugged2 said:

'* Consolidate the number of named/shown Borderlands down to Shienar
  and maybe Saldaea (to account for Zarine). The others are in the
  background and we don't need to show them except on a map.'

 

Apart from all he Arafelan sisters like Alanna

I hadn't put it in the list, but I had thought about whether Alanna still makes sense as a separate character or if she should be merged with someone else -- or if she is included change her background to Shienar. 

12 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

Mailman is generally correct in the simplistic analysis  as I recall but I am only starting Crossroads of Twilight in my re-read.  So RJ used most of the  main human vices such as envy, lust (Rahvin, Graendal) and gave them a Forsaken or two to be the principal demon/representative of.  With regards to the bore that is actually a plot flaw in the book lore in my opinion.  So the whole premise is that if all the seals are broken the DO will be able to directly touch the world and remake it as he see's fit.  As the plot rolls along we have him stopping the weather pattern so it is always summer and a hot dry one at that.  This is with some of the seals still intact.  If the last seal breaks it is game over.   However in the War of the Power the bore was open and none of that kind of effect was recorded in reported history.  The war was fought by the DO's proxies the Forsaken, their minions and Anginor's shadow spawn troops.  

 

Anyway that being said, when the bore was opened the DO's influence was clearly more pronounced so he would have been able to work on human weakness just like evil is known to do in a number of IRL belief systems.  Folk get tempted, cross a line and there is mostly no going back.   However no one can walk so long in the Shadow, that they cannot come to the Light.  

 

 

I don't think it was said that in the AoL the bore was fully open. Remember that for a while after the Bore was created in the first place, the AoL people had no idea what had really happened. The influence of the Dark One, through the opening that was there at the time, was enough to start corroding and corrupting global civilization. In fact the Forsaken are representatives of that corruption. Their character and mental flaws were magnified and corrupted by the Dark One's general corruption. Without the Dark One's influence, for example, would Semiraghe have been pushed over the edge from Healer to Healer+pain extractor? 

This went on for almost 100 years, because the Dark One's influence was limited due to the Bore not being fully open and allowing It to enter and reshape reality immediately. 

The War of Power lasted 10 years after that. If the Dark One had been truly free at any point during the 110 years between the drilling of the Bore and LTT's strike, reality would have been unmade and reshaped -- i.e. It would have won. It could bide it's time, however, because It's influence in the world was enough to corrode humanity until It eventually won. 

LTT's desperate plan recognized that without a decisive move to seal the Dark One now, It's influence had already been sufficient to bring humanity, and reality itself, to the cusp of destruction and there was nothing the Light could do about it. The will of humanity to resist was being drained away and was almost gone. 

I think Latrae Posae recognized this as well. Her main objection was the risk was too high of fully opening the Bore, and that while the will and ability to resist was almost gone there was still time to use the Choedan Kal to at least put a bubble around the Bore, block the Dark One's influence, and give humanity some breathing room to find a proper solution to sealing the Bore. With the loss of the access keys, LTT did not see a way for Latrae Posae's plan to succeed before the War was lost, and so launched his strike as a last desperate attempt to seal the Dark One. The "proper" solution, as it turned out, was to wait for the next Age to solve the problem. ?

I apologize in advance for the stream of conscience approach to this discussion but I thought I'd at least get this down while it's still fresh in head breaking down the structure of the story for the show. 

8 seasons, 8 episodes per season = 64 episodes

7 "segments" per episode
Teaser
Acts 1-5
Coda

So around 320 acts + 8 teasers and 8 codas, on the low end. 

I have some ideas about how I would approach the story structure as a
showrunner (never having been one, but it's a fun exercise isn't it?).
Before we start breaking down the scenes, I would want to identify the
major structural changes that I feel will need to be made to make that 320-odd
scenes reasonable.

For ME, these include, in no particular order:

* Consolidating Seanchan and Shaara in some fashion, by emphasizing
  the former and deemphasizing or eliminating the latter. The main
  reason that the Shaarans even show up is to give the Shadow an
  unknown force of channelers to throw in at the Last Battle and to
  give Demandred something [sic] awesome given what a Sir
  Not-Appearing-In-This-Book he is for most of the series. If
  eliminated, then fold them into a previously unknown force of
  channelers coming out the Blight under Demandred's banner
  (e.g. beyond the normal generic "Dreadlords" a specialized force
  that might include the red-veiled Aiel?) This folds into revamping
  the Black Tower which I discuss further below.

* Remove the Shaido plot as early as practicable in the
  storyline. After Mat kills Couladin they don't advance any obvious
  plot points except Perrin's endless hunt for Faile. Have a Shadio
  Wise One (Thereva?) bitch-slap Sevanna and take the Shaido clans
  back to the Three Fold Land to forget and be forgotten.

* Pare down the number of Forsaken to a more manageable number:

  Ishamael  -- keep
  Lanfear   -- keep    
  Demandred -- keep and merge in Sammael's plot points
  Asmodean  -- keep and merge in Rahvin and Be'lal's plot points
  Graendal  -- keep and merge in Semiraghe's plot points
  Moghedien -- keep and merge in Messana's plot points

  Semiraghe -- ditch
  Rahvin    -- ditch 
  Sammael   -- ditch
  Aginor    -- ditch
  Balthamel -- ditch
  Be'lal    -- ditch
  Mesaana   -- ditch

  This gives us an even number of male and female Forsaken to play
  with and gives us a relatively even distributon of powerful,
  middling, and low-power people. One could mybe reference the missing
  Forsaken but I don't know that we need to see them on screen.

* Merge Galad and Gawin into Galad. It would be quite powerful to have
  Galad's hate/disappointment of Rand run up against the relevation
  that Rand is his half-brother. Almost as powerful as falling in love
  with the Amyrllin Seat while LCC of the Whitecloaks. At the LB,
  Galad is killed by Demandred, who is then killed by Egwene (see
  below)? This also elimates Berelain as a character, which is kind of
  a shame because while she initially off-putting as the books wore on
  she kind of grew on me.

* Consolidate the number of named/shown Borderlands down to Shienar
  and maybe Saldaea (to account for Zarine). The others are in the
  background and we don't need to show them except on a map.

* Condense the Bowl of the Winds plot. One way might be to have Rand
  and company go to Ebou Dar instead of Falme and introduce the
  Seanchan there. The Girls get the Bowl of the Winds, the world gets
  Rand in the clouds. The Seanchan don't get thrown back but manage to
  hang onto Ebou Dar and and Egwene gets briefly captured before being
  rescued by the other Girls and coming out with the Bowl. This may
  also mean including Bayle and Egeanin as "different" characters in
  Ebou Dar or eliminating them altogether.

* The Gholem by-itself doesn't add much except to make the foxhead
  medallion more interesting, so I'd eliminate that as well.

* Tear and Callandor need to be included, but perhaps after the events
  at Ebou Dar, I mean Falme instead of before. Move the recovery of
  the Horn to Tear and have the Ishy battle there, and eliminate Rand
  messing about with Be'lal (who no longer exists).

* Keep as much of the Shadow Rising as possible, and then end the main
  Aiel plotlines at the Battle of Cairhien. The story getting bogged
  down in politics is not particularly interesting to watch. If
  geography didn't make things a muddle, it might be interesting to
  replace Cairhien with Caemlyn and Sammael's attacks against Rand
  replaced by a Rahvin (being played by Asmodean in this
  interpretation).

* Rand's major story beats are around overcoming his
  psychological trauma and accepting his role and the roles that
  others will play as equal requirements. Basically everyone gets to
  be their own hero, he can't make or take that choice away from them,
  and it will involve loss. Ending with the Veins of Gold.

* Dumai's Wells has to stay, but the Black Tower plotline needs to be
  pared down substantially. I would actually eliminate Taim and
  replace him with Logain. Have Logain's conflict between conscience
  and power be part of his arc in trying to build the Black Tower per
  Rand's instructions and being resentful of Rand. Logain is tempted
  by the Dark Side, and his crisis is resolved because he actively
  chooses to not succumb.

* Have Demandred take Taim's role in the Last
  Battle in addition to his own and end up being the one that gets
  p*wned by Egwene instead of being killed by Lan. Honestly if I could
  I'd like to see Bela kill Demandred by accident. He's such as an
  arrogant prick for no reason in my mind that I want him to be
  completely humbled and then crushed. ?

* Speaking of Bela. She lives. No ifs ands or buts. This one is
  non-negotiable.

* The Cleansing needs to stay, but it doesn't have to occur in Shadar
  Logoth if there are production reasons to re-use an existing
  location or consolidate it with something else.

* Eliminate Morgase's post-Rahvin plotline entirely. If Morgase must
  be included, then have her killed offscreen and have Elayne return
  to Andor to fight for her throne, but as a means to prepare the
  armies of the Light for the Last Battle. Gaining the throne
  shouldn't take as long or be as complex as it is in the books -- no

  one cares that much about Andoran politics. Since we are ditching
  Rahvin from the named Forsaken list, most of Morgase's story might
  actually happen off screen anyway -- she may only be referenced by
  Elayne or Galad and never actually seen?

* While we're at it, greatly condense Perrin and Faile's
  adventures. Remove the Prophet plotline entirely. If there must be
  conflict for Perrin to resolve the axe/hammer conflict, limit to
  events that happen in the Two Rivers instead of having Perrin wander

  all over the Westlands.

* Condense the Aelfin/Elfin plotline by having it be a simple oracle
  Mat and Rand find in Rhuidean. Remove Moiraine's sojourn in the
  Tower of Ghenji. Have her continue to try and advise Rand, replacing
  Cadsuane, and have both try and fail to maniuplate each other in
  getting their own way until they realize they need each other and
  just listen for once. Eliminates Cadsuane, gives Moiraine a lot more
  screen time, and leaves open the possibility that Moiraine herself
  becomes the Amyrlin after Egwene (as she so didn't want to
  be!). This means changing Lan and Nynaeve's story a little since the
  bond won't be broken/released in the same way.

* Have Mat help rescue Egwene from the Seanchan, help with the Bowl,
  and remain in Ebou Dar after the Bowl/Falme replacement thing
  happens, held "captive" by Tuon instead of Tylin. The relationship
  between the two then has more of a chance to develop more
  organically? The Band of the Red Hand shouldn't spend as much time
  apart from Mat as they do.

* The White Tower split probably needs to happen more or less as it
  does in the books, but I wouldn't drag it out quite as long. Cut out
  all the filler with the spies and counter-spies and young Sitters --
  it's likely to go over non-book people's heads anyway -- and have
  Egwene be "raised" and captured by Elaida more quickly so she can do
  her awesomeness of undermining Elaida and healing the Tower.

* And a few more things which I ran out of steam to cover. 

Of courses by the type I finished typing this I realized I hadn't even covered the actual question, which is how to break down the episodes as a show runner. Next post?

My impressions of Season 1 are kind of all over the place, so what follows are my first reactions after having seen episode 8 and where I think the show is trying to go. In a perhaps unhappy coincidence, while I was waiting in between episodes I did a detailed re-read of the last four books in the series. As a side note, I discovered that even now, many years later, there were entire scenes that I had skipped or blocked out, especially in aMoL, probably in my haste to get to the end in the original read.

Anyway, let me say up front that my overall impression of the Show was more positive than negative, but not by much. I think I understand most of the changes that were made for the sake of time and medium constraints. However, there were numerous aspects of the adaptation that don't make sense to me as a book reader, and perhaps that is part of the problem. 

Let me also add that I watched most of these episodes with non-book readers, who in some cases had similar reactions to mine and in some cases accepted certain changes that seemed wrong to me, simply because they hadn't read the books. Fair enough.

1. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I really, really, really do not understand this insistence of making the identify of the Dragon Reborn a mystery. My point was that the Dragon Reborn is one of many hugely important characters that all need to be present in story, and this was never more clear than when I was re-reading the series.

Nynaeve had all sorts of awesome moments. She is a hugely consequential character who doesn't need to be the DR. She healed stilling. She helped Rand cleanse Saidan. She is probably the single most powerful exemplar of Yellow Ajah awesomeness of this Age.

Mat is the Son of Battles, the Prince of the Ravens. He is the leader of the Band of the Red Hand, a masterful battle commander and strategic genius. He doesn't need to be the DR to be awesome.

Egwene journeys from village girl to the Amyrllin Seat, the most powerful ruler in the world. She is the counter-point to the DR, she doesn't need to be the DR herself and her heroic journey and death duel makes her legendary. She doesn't need to be the DR. 

Perrin is the renewer, wolf brother, killer of Slayer and Forsaken alike. He doesn't need to be the DR. 

The DR is the first among equals in great characters in this story. By trying to make it a mystery, I think it does a disservice to the other characters. It has the potential to cheapen their endings, which are actually significant and powerful, as consolation prizes because they didn't win the DR sweepstakes. I think the show wasted a lot of time and narrative contortion to maintain this mystery which should have been done and dusted by episode 3. 

2. Building on point 1, I think in an effort to keep the DR mystery alive, the show short-changed early character development that would help non-book readers  empathize with the characters. For example, instead of showing the battle of Emond's Field in the first episode, maybe focus on Tam's fever dream and the growing sense of Rand's confusion about his own origins would have made Loail's Aielman comment at their first meeting resonate more effectively. Granted we did get the fever dream, but it came too late and out of context in my opinion. 

3. The One Power was never explained properly and neither was the Breaking and how the male half was tainted. There was an excellent opportunity in episode 8 with the discussion between Lews Therin and Latra Posae. It was a missed opportunity for a couple of reasons because A) there was no sense of desperation or urgency. Looking out the window it looked like just another day in Paren Dissen with clean skyscrapers and a bright sky. There was no sense that we were in the last throes of an existential war between humans and the Source of All Evil -- a war that humanity was about to lose -- because it all looked way too clean and Lews and Latrae looked like they were having a business discussion over tea,  B) we didn't get to know what the two plans were ("hey, I want to jump to the Dark One's home and seal the hole he's trying to get out of now, before we're overrun!" vs. "no, we should use the huge One Power amplifiers to build a temporary shield around the hole he's trying to get out so that we get some breathing room because we're about to be overrun!") and C) no sense that when Latrae said "we don't support this" she meant all female Aes Sedai and that's why the male half of the One Power is tainted and conversely why the female half isn't, which could build on the two-halves of the One Power idea that I think wasn't as clear as it could have been,

4. Adding to point 4, in episode 8 we had a non-Aes Sedai (Amalissa) lead a circle of 5 untrained channelers that basically did to the 10K trollocs what Rand did at Maradon. How? Why? I think they were trying to build the idea of the Kin without being explicit, but we've been told up to this point that Aes Sedai are the ones who use the One Power and now we have a random bunch of women who can channel a trickle apparently and that's enough. I can maybe buy that these women aren't known to Amalissa beforehand and show up to answer her call for "all hands of deck" -- because the Borderlanders in this adaptation don't get along with the Tower because reasons -- even though for most of these people the Landscape of Evil is a daily reminder that is literally on their doorstep. 

Overall, I think the acting is fine but the story is a bit of a mess. I am chalking it up to Season 1 trying to orient the non-book readers, but I think there were a lot of unforced errors and missed opportunities, and I think some of those were due to time constraints -- and that those constraints could have been relaxed if the show did not waste so much screen time on the DR mystery-which-shouldn't-have-been.

Despite all of this, I really am rooting for this adaptation, even though at the moment it's no longer on my list of things I can't wait to see each week. It's clear to me that there is a lot of heart and dedication from all involved in the production. I hope they can add more to the positive column in Season 2 and beyond. 

7 hours ago, Ralph said:

 

1. Warder bond I believe has been well referenced. Feeling the pain of the AS is mentioned in ep3 already. And the releasing is obviously not meant to be considered now, just will be referenced later not come out of the blue. 

 

2. I don't believe it is in TAR. The Prime extras say clearly not. And we have had no info about ter'angreal at all. But why does that matter at this stage? 

 

3. Not understanding what you mean is different btw books and show. Both show that AS bicker is while the world burns. 

 

4. You think they've forgotten the Trollocs? 

 

5. Mat said in Ep1 that the DR has to be the greatest Channeler who ever lived. Though he could be mistaken. Has it been proven Mat can't channel? Or that wolf brotherhood is not connected to channeling? Besides which, iirc RJ said the DR can't channel in every cycle, so even if they have done this it is not a new possibility. 

 

6. The little dropped hints are the thing that is most like the books. Are you saying that in the show people won't go back to check half remembered nuggets like when reading and therefore they have to make everything more obvious???!!! 

 

7. I don't see how this is changed from this stage in the books when we knew nothing about any of their roles. 

#1 -- that is my point exactly. I watched with a number of people who clearly did not make the connection. It was curious to me because on rewatch I think if I hadn't already read the books I could see where I might not have made the connection. 

#2 -- Agreed, but it wasn't made clear from the show what it actually was. As a book reader I made the leap that it was T'AR because the books did not mention such a TR that could do that. Further, since we were never shown Siuan's quarters prior, we have no way of knowing where "there" is. Given that we also had some view into dreams in previous episodes, my mind went first to "oh that's T'AR", not some random place in Tear. As to why it matters, I think to me it matters because it's a missed opportunity to flesh out the world and T'AR specifically, which a lot of people are going to be using in the future. Unless they plan to cut out a lot of T'AR (or cut it out entirely).

#3 -- What I mean about the bickering is that the books provided a lot of buildup before we get to that level. The beginning of the story made the AS very much mysterious, powerful, and subtle -- basically unknowns with which we had limited interaction. The main characters more than passing interactions with the AS were limited to Moiraine and Elaida, and that got the broad range of AS behavior across (they can be helpful, but can also be a bit creepy, so be wary around them!). I guess it was a problem for me because it slowed down the pacing of the story too much and made the relatively abrupt jump to the Eye even more jarring. To each their own, I am just reporting what the show-only watchers in my group were experiencing. 

#4 -- Did they forget about the Trollocs? Sure seems like they did. The Trollocs were in short order replaced by Whitecloaks and Aes Sedai politics as the threat. Even Shadar Logoth was only mentioned passing with respect to Mat, and the Fade attack on the family was, again, only in reference to Mat. None of the other characters really seemed to be processing what happened with the Trollocs -- and they didn't mention them or really dwell on what happened beyond a line or two here and there, for multiple episodes. 

#5 -- Fair point, but then how much would Mat, a character from the back end of nowhere, know about channeling? It's really jarring to me when I hear some random character say things like that. Another example from the same episode was Rand saying something along the lines of "we heard X about way gates"? When? Who would they have heard about way gates from in the TR? The AS barely know about them. That is some exposition that I could see Loial or Moiraine providing, not Rand. 

#6 -- No, I'm not saying show-only watchers won't go back to check. I'm saying that they won't know what to check for. Many of them might check in on the inter webs and get the whole story eventually, but it won't be because the show dropped those hints in a way that would suggest they should. The hints about Rand are deliberately being dribbled in the way they are because they're trying to service the "who is the DR??" mystery, and I'm saying that if you don't provide context for who and what the Aiel are in the world, and the payoff isn't for two seasons down the road when you meet the Aiel, that will be a lot of episodes where show-only watchers will either have to read the details on the inter webs or they'll just miss out on a lot of nuance that we book readers already know. 

#7 -- Except that at this point in the books (which is closer to where they are Caemlyn than Tar Valon) we know a lot more about them as characters than we do in the show. Cutting out Tam's fever dream for example undercuts Rand's arc -- his self-about about who he really is and which ultimately points to him being the DR when combined with Moiraine and Siuan's experience with Gitara and the Blood Snow. Min's viewings nicely laid out there there were big things in store for the EF 5 even if we didn't have all the details, but we don't have Min here yet, so there needs to be a better way to get the info across. All I'm saying is that if the show is planning to go there in later episodes that is certainly an option (and it sounds like they are), but what they are doing now, especially in service of maintaining the (unnecessary in my opinion) mystery of who the DR is, makes character development and motivation more difficult than it should be, especially when you are trying to build an audience that has a large population that doesn't have all the background knowledge that book readers have. 

48 minutes ago, bringbackthomsmoustache said:

Widely known but officially "too old to be entered in the novice book".

I get that the show is an adaptation, but someone of these things just don't make sense in the context of the WoT world. 

This is one those things that is quite odd but fits with the earlier corner that the writers painted themselves into when they had Nynaeve talk about how the Aes Sedai rejected her mentor because of her peasant clothes. As if the Aes Sedai, who we've been told are dwindling in numbers for a long time, wouldn't have jumped at the chance to snatch up and put someone that could channel into Novice white when they literally showed up on their front door and begged to join? 

As for Nynaeve, regardless of anything else, the Aes Sedai were not going to let a powerful wilder who clearly can't control her channeling wander around untutored and untrained. It was clear at least from the books that the Aes Sedai tried their best to make sure such women at least had the ability to control their power so they didn't kill themselves or anyone else through ignorance, even if they were put out of the Tower later and never made Aes Sedai. 

My two cents. 

I think it would be a stretch for most people to recognize the Aes Sedai ring, especially in a backwater like the Two Rivers. In the book the Aes Sedai lament how few of them there actually are, and that most Sisters don't actually go out into the world, they stay in Tar Valon. So you have maybe what, a few hundred Sisters, at most, at any one time in a population of tens of thousands spread out across a continent that are likely to be "abroad", and then likely to spend their time in larger cities? 

I would think that the vast majority of people in smaller cities, towns, and villages could go their entire lives without seeing an Aes Sedai, let alone noticing what kind of jewelry they wear. I think it's an interesting concept to have Marin be someone who recognizes the ring, and by extension the wearer, to get across the point that Aes Sedai are extremely rare.

Sure, everyone has "heard" of Aes Sedai, but almost no one has seen or met one. So it's surprising that Moiraine causes the stir she does. It's as if a dragon (no pun intended) suddenly walked into your local village pub. And like that dragon, you want to tread carefully around them. ?