Here's the thing: ASoIaF focuses only on the bad stuff, there's very little that happens in any of the books that anyone would even consider decent, much less good. In GRRM's story, everybody is a psychotic killer looking for any excuse to kill. Honestly, look at the events of the first book, and find me one scene where someone does anything good that isn't overshadowed by some ulterior motive.

WoT has more diversity in that for every killer, you have many normal people just trying to live out their lives in peace. You see the brutality, but you also see the good to balance it.

Just a few examples:

In TGH, it is described in great detail what Padan Fain did to multiple people and even Myrddraal after escaping Fal Dara... including nailing a Myrddraal to a wall through its eyes and decapitating a guard and painting the walls with his blood.

The hunters finding the giant tree filled with the hanging bodies of people that were skinned alive. 

The Shaido's treatment of prisoners is described in deep detail when Faile is captured, then being forced to walk naked through the dead of winter for miles on end, with many dropping dead with the rest leaving bloodstained footprints behind them.

Asha'man kill. 

The Gholam ripping out the throat of Nalesean, and struggling with Mat over top of him as he choked on his own blood. 

I could go on and on, but the point is, we don't think about all the brutality that happens throughout the books, because there's more to WoT than just brutality. There's humor, romance, and hope thrown in there to balance out the brutality, and those are the things we remember. Nobody thinks about the battlefields strewn with so much dead that the amount of blood soaking the ground turned it to mud. Nobody remembers Mat's dagger causing a man to melt at the end of TGH. Nobody dwells on these things because in the end, there's so much more to the story than people killing each other. 

6 hours ago, Jaglover said:

 

I wouldn't really agree there it is more to do with the reality of the world than acts of killing. Compare and contrast Arya's journey to Harrenhal with Nynaeve being able to reach Bearlon unmolested. 

 

One is brutal world based on the reality of medieval times and the other is a PG 13 world.   

PG13? Huh? 

WoT gets just as brutal, if not more so. Padan Fain on his own gives everyone in ASoIaF a run for their money, and that's not even mentioning half the stuff that the forsaken and shadowspawn do. The difference is ASoIaF ONLY has brutality, whereas WoT balances the brutality with humor, and happy moments. WoT has darkness, sex, and extremely brutal violence, but it doesn't center the entire story around those things like ASoIaF does. 

Liked at first then hated:

- Egwene 

- Gawyn

Hated at first, then liked:

- Moiraine

- Nynaeve

- Ishamael/Moridin

- Galad

The only two characters I can really say I went from liking to disliking were Egwene and her puppy dog. She started out like the sweet innocent girl next door type, then as soon as she hit the tower that sweet girl next door became a self entitled cheerleader with an ego the size of the white tower itself. As for Gawyn, he seemed like a cool dude at first, then he ended up being an irrational little twit with zero self control, and an ego the size of Caemlyn.

As for why Moridin is on the dislike to like list... I couldn't stand him as an antagonist in the first three books. He was little more than the boogeyman that shows up and yells boo every now and then, and he had nothing unique about him. He was just dull... we get it, you like having fire eyes and yelling things at kids, can you do something interesting? But once he was reborn as Moridin, I loved him as an antagonist. He was clever, intimidating, and his scenes didn't feel like an obnoxious distraction from the storylines I was reading previously. 

On 2/1/2019 at 9:58 AM, Thrasymachus said:

Considering they're going for Moiraine as the lead for the first season at least, I think it's possible they may go with a known quantity for her.  A big name bound to drive up viewers for the first few seasons, who will be sidelined as the plot goes to Rhuidean and the Waste, go out in a blaze of glory only to be seen in flashbacks, then return for the last season.  Mila Kunis fits her description physically; short, dark hair and eyes, has a clipped, but faintly musical accent.  I don't know whether she can do the reserved mystery and hidden emotion Moiraine would need, but I also haven't seen everything she's done, and from what I've seen of the Black Swan and Jupiter Ascending trailers, she can probably pull it off with good direction.  I don't see any current projects on her imdb page (not that she couldn't be doing something nobody knows about yet), and she's probably about as big a name as the studio would want to afford.

 

And while I'm serious about Mila Kunis as Moiraine, a perverse part of me now wants to see Ashton Kutcher as Lan.  He's got the chiseled looks for it, and he can be aged up a bit with makeup and a little gray in his hair.  But nobody would buy Kelso as the most badass swordsman and Warder of the 3rd Age.  And his voice is too soft.  Sean Bean would be a good Lan, though.  And considering Lan's not really required to be on screen much, he might not be too expensive.  It would be a nice subversion of tropes too, what with Sean Bean's always getting killed off, while Lan survives the whole way through.  He's busy with an adaptation of Macbeth at the moment, though.

My pick would be Eva Green. She's got a bit of that ageless look, she has a wider range of acting, she can take command of almost any scene she's put in, and given that she's French, she fits the Carhienen look that Moiraine was described to personify. 

Mila is great from an appearance standpoint, but I honestly don't think she has the acting chops for such a strong character that's supposed to mentor the leads. As for the Kutch... he would be extremely hard to take seriously as Lan, especially since he's too much of a pretty boy. I always pictured Lan as one of the action heros from the 90's like Sylvester Stallone. Honestly I think Josh Brolin would be a great pick for Lan. He might be a bit on the older side, but his performance as Cable in DP2 is kinda how I've always pictured Lan, a broody, stone faced macho man with a gravelly voice and a death wish. 

My main wish right now though, is to see Ken Watanabe as Lord Agelmar. It was a huge toss up between having him as Agelmar or Ingtar, and I'd still be happy either way, but after my latest reading of MoL, I think Agelmar would be the better fit.