2 hours ago, Jaglover said:

 

They would be effective just as they have been effective in many times in our history they just wouldn't be wiping out entire armies in minutes. Even the Mongols, with tens of thousands of horse archers, weren't as devastating as Mat's heavy crossbowmen, or the two rivers bowmen at times. There is a difference between being effective and being massively overpowered. 

The draw weight difference between a shortbow of mongol horseman and a war bow is from ~40lbs to 120+ lbs. Obviously the draw weights vary but english warbows were 120-200lbs and would pierce mail sometimes. 

Crossbows would have even higher but they lose momentum and bolt alignment after shorter distance and the bolts aren't as heavy as longbow arrows they used at war. 

Now, as you said, they wouldn't be as devastating as said if anyone used proper protection, but for some reason hardly anyone does. A longbowman can release some 10 aimed arrows a minute and especially from close range they would be deadly when protected by pikes. 

2 hours ago, Jaglover said:

 

Oh yes, the armour. I just think you have to bear in mind that many fantasy authors have little idea of medieval warfare. Armour is costume and never seems to have any bearing on the fighting. Unarmoured Aiel usually being untroubled by heavy cavalry is one of the glaring examples of this. 

 

The other flaw in the writing is the overpowering of projectile weapons.

 

The one thing that reads true in the battle descriptions is the importance of pikemen in good formation.   

Bows would be effective in Wheel of time with the lack of heavy armor and shields. 

But I don't think RJ based Randland on any particular time. He took what he wanted from times and cultures he liked and used them as he wished. 

As I said, I couldn't put a timeframe for it. I view it post apocalyptic fantasy. 

1 hour ago, Jaglover said:

I am curious as to where you arrive at the early years for that. It is a world with printed books, widespread adult literacy, formal balls, horse drawn coaches etc etc

 

The lack of gunpowder weapons should not conceal the fact that very little of this society, or its technologies, would have existed before 1500. 

 

A good early mediaeval fantasy series for contrast is Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series.  

The early years are mostly because of the armor. People even in battles are mostly seen wearing chainmail and hardly any use plate armors and even Shienarans don't use full plate armors, which in our world became more and more prominent in 1200's and up. Earliest gunpowder weapons (as we see in books) were invented in 1000's. 

From what little I understand from clothing is what the women wear there are examples of high collared dresses of renaissance 1500 and later. 

edit: Sort of off-topic, but I'm also a bit frustrated with the lack of shields on the nations. A lot of them are using light armour and two handed weapons while bows and even (TR)longbows exist. Shields only started to leave the picture when armor could withstand arrows. 

People used armour and shields because they were efficient protection and if you had the money (as at least the lords and professional soldiers would have), you'd have the best protection you can afford when going into battle. 

That sure made me cringe a bit. 

I've always thought WoT is more post apocalyptic than medieval.

Trying to timestamp clothes or weapons to real world would likely get you anything from 1000AD to 1600AD. 

28 minutes ago, KingRodel said:

Do the fades even need an actor? I always imagined them being CGI'd. I doubt they'd spend the big $ for an actor for characters with no eyes. Who knows, though - I've been known to be wrong. ?

I understood that they got this guy, Nick Dudman, who's some sort of a wizard when it comes to make ups, so I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of non-cgi monsters and all that. 

Here's the daily trolloc about him: 

http://www.thedailytrolloc.com/2019/06/the-daily-trolloc-92.html

Oh, and the myrdraal speculation guy was also there, he's called Joseph Gatt. 

There was a rumor of a guy that visited Prague and had tweeted something mysterious about it being affiliated with Amazon. A fan had tagged him and he had responded "He would be very happy to be part of the Wheel of Time family". 

The guy looked like Voldemort irl - or a myrdraal. 

I've been trying to find those tweets a couple of times, but my skill with twitter is still on the level of a novice so it'll stay as vague as this. We'll see. 

34 minutes ago, KingRodel said:

I think a lot of the arguments are occurring because of vague definitions. How dark are we talking about Two Rivers folks? Like, dark black, or just tan caucasian? Somewhere in between? People seem to not know which and they equivocate on the definition all the time. 

I think what ever we as fans decide in our minds, my opinion is that the casting team has been in the range of what the books describe the TR people. In my mind I think I always saw Egwene and Nynaeve as sort of Italian by their looks, but I'll accept the people they cast. Funnily, so far as I've been listening to Wheel of time even today, I still have the old images in my mind, not the newly cast. 

37 minutes ago, KingRodel said:

Also, that guy suggested for Fain was super creepy and pretty much perfect.

I agree 100%. 

13 minutes ago, Jaglover said:

From the physical descriptions two rivers folk are basically Welsh.  The girls are small and dark haired and eyed with fair skin.

 

Diversity is all very well until you end up with an actress who looks nothing like a physical description you've held in your head for the last twenty years and questionable whether it was required given the diversity that already exists in WOT world. 

For what it's worth, I've been reading a lot of comments on many platforms about the casting and it seems pretty clear to me, that a lot of us has had our own images in our minds about what people look. 

Since TR folk are described as darker skin tone, it leaves room for interpreting and this is what KV Hendry and Rafe and co came up with. For me it's close enough and it comes down to writing and acting now. 

At least, I think people raging about the show "going woke" are over reacting. 

So far I like what I'm seeing. Young actors/actresses that look the part. 

I'm especially happy for Madeleine Madden as Egwene and Barney Harris as Mat. 

Here's a short clip from Barney's IMDB: (WITH THE BLOODY HAT!)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6905444/videoplayer/vi1536015385?ref_=nm_ov_vi

So, this Josha Stradowski was just announced as Rand Al'Thor. 

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4413036/

Quick look into his pictures, I can imagine him as the Dragon Reborn. Can do cool eyes, can do warm and playful. 

At 189cm he's also tall enough imo, because that was what we all really wanted to know! 

I've been visualizing this in my mind during my current re-read (re-listen) and I imagine it something like this: 

Saidar: a warm sunlike glow that flows from upward direction behind the neck of the channeler. For filming purposes you could have a flow resembling blowing cigarette smoke or something like that for shielding and severing. I imagine it having calm waves that ripple slowly around the channeling woman. 

Saidin: a pure white and black glow that keeps flowing in a torrents around the channeler. 

Weaving I imagine as thin lines coming in an arc all around channeling persons head and either touching the target as such or forming a loose rope kind of weaving or forming other things like a fire ball in a chosen place. 

Anyways, I agree that this needs to look good in the show or it will be a lot of awkward. 

(apologies for any miss spelling, some things are hard to describe in English for a non-english speaker.)

If my wishes about the casting would come true, the show would be bankrupt pretty fast. 

Lan = Mads Mikkelsen

Lanfear = Eva Green

Thom = Peter Capaldi (Hugh Laurie would be brilliant and he can sing, too!)

Ishamael = Billy Zane (I KNOW!) 

I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with what ever they come up with, though. Those are just the ones I pretty much have in my head while going through the books. 

On 7/27/2019 at 8:23 PM, DragonFairy said:

 LMAO!!

The last time he just asked for people to submit questions about Rosamund Pike. If he makes it that narrow, it won't leave much room for other news. I know production companies like to keep as much under wraps as possible, but I think it's time for Amazon to throw us a couple more bones!

I suppose the sudden changes to #wotwednesday were because they realized it's too ambitious. They simply wouldn't have enough interesting things to announce every wednesday so they backed on it. Also, they might have reconsidered if it's good for the building of hype to have news every week. 

Just a speculation.

On 7/22/2019 at 8:59 PM, DragonFairy said:

 

Given they are set to start filming in Sept or Oct (forget), I'm expecting to start being bombarded with casting news VERY SOON NOW! Or at least I certainly hope so. It's like announcing Pike was a tease, and now they're keeping the others 

Likely in two weeks at #wotwednesday . There was already a rumour of some bald actor who actually looked like irl myrdraal, but can't remember his name. 

It's not likely they cast a huge name for any of the characters that stay in the series for all the seasons. It would be too big of a commitment for the actors and would probably limit the options by a great deal. For Moiraine a big name was a good catch, but for others, especially Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve and Lan I don't see it likely. 

As far as I know Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage took a big portion of each episodes budget in the last seasons and knowing that, I'd imagine following series would want to avoid same happening. 

Bain and Chiad for sure. There's something tingling about them. 

From one of the Rafe's tweets I got the understanding that "some parts of the EotW" will come in the later seasons. This might mean the prologue, when Rand and Lews Therin start to coexist more. 

Again, who knows? 

I think comparing GOT and WOT is more of a financial and popularity case. Obviously Wheel of time TV-series wouldn't be launching in this scale if Game of Thrones wasn't as popular as it was. Also I think the target audience is somewhat the same. 

But comparing the worlds and characters and calling the other bad compared to the other is in my mind pointless. I've read both book series and enjoyed them both very much. 

I'm very excited that there's going to be a mass of fantasy series coming up in the streaming services during the following years and I'll probably have a look at many of them. The Lord of the Rings -series, Game of Thrones prequels, even The Witcher, although I haven't read the books nor played the games. 

Oh, I'm slowly diving all through it. :) Atm I'm mostly at the tv-series section but I'll never be stopped! :) 

8 hours ago, Dagon Thyne said:

Do we know what next month's topic will be?  They will likely announce a few castings bfore then.  

We don't yet. My guess is most of the cast has been already chosen so it would be logical to have a big casting reveal for august #WotWednesday . Or they might just publish the cast irrelevant of the #wotwednesday , since by that time they probably have even more interesting stuff to announce. 

But who knows? 

Hello there! 

So, I'm a new member of this forum community. I've been reading stuff for a while now, but haven't actually posted anything before today. 

I'm a 37yo guy from Finland. I got back to Wheel of time through Nae'blis and Daniel Greene youtube videos which somehow got to my youtube feed. 

I first started reading Wheel of time back in my teenage years, it must have been around 1998 or somewhere around that time. I started reading in Finnish but I quickly caught up with the translated series and jumped straight to the english ones. They were the first books I ever read in english but I got used to it pretty quick. The first english novel I read was Path of Daggers and by that time also Winter's heart was available. After that it was the waiting between books that seemed to take ages. 

As a rather grim side notion, we did joke (it really was just joking at that time) that R.J. took such a long time to explain things and had that manner of slow storytelling that we laughed he'd die of old age before finishing the series. Soon after it wasn't that funny, obviously. 

I remember vividly reading the Memory of Light. I had waited for it so long, like literally 15-16 years. I just couldn't stop hogging it in. I read it in just about 30 hours with just some hours to sleep in between. I was so immersed, I laughed and cried, got angry, emotional, sad. All the colors of the rainbow. 

My favorite characters in the books are probably Elayne, Lan and Egwene. I can't say I'd dislike any of them, though. I always thought the aiel humor was sort of clumsy so I may not have enjoyed that aspect that much. 

My favourite moment (and quote) from the series was from the last book SO SPOILER AHEAD .... 

.... 

.. 

When Lan beats Demandred in sword fight and says something like: "You didn't listen to me. I did not come here to win. I came here to kill you. Death is lighter than a feather. " 

I remember the goose bumps that gave me. I had to stop reading for a while and take a break. What a hero. 

Anyways. I started a re-read, or rather a re-listen of the series and I just finished EotW. So much I've forgotten during the years. It's like meeting new friends who are just like you remembered them. Just didn't remember everything you went through back in the day. 

I'm also (too) hyped about the oncoming TV-Series. Everything I've read and heard about it have given me a positive feel about it. 

So, this is me. Hi all! 

http://www.thedailytrolloc.com/2019/07/rafes-rosamund-casting-q.html?m=1

Here's a link to the summarized q&a by Narg the Trolloc. May the light bless his soul.