that's true, too. however, it's strange how it works. I can accept aiel culture, even though it's violent in the extreme and it leads to much pointless death. I can accept the seanchan, with all their slavery. perhaps because they are so alien. coniugal violence, especially when it's one-sided because one party won't react, is much more disturbing than that; probably because that's not so alien. it must have to do with the uncanny valley effect. in addition to that, faile is supposed to be a positive character. make her unlikable, make perrin unlikable by reflection, and it can alienate audiences. they don't need to do a complete flip of faile's personality, they just need to smooth a bit her worst parts, make her a bit more likeable. they can make her more likeable while still being essentially faile. I'm specifically thinking of jennefer from the witcher, in the tv show they made her substantially less of a jerk and a lot more symphatetic than she was in the book, but they did still keep true to her character

I haven't seen GoT (too grimdark for my tastes), but I somehow doubt all those actors had named roles and all were memorable. I also doubt the claim that WoT got much more money than GoT; where does it come from? But it's interesting to consider this from the money perspective; if GoT and WoT got similar amount of money, and GoT spent more on settings and actors.... where does WoT spend the remaining money? Assuming there's no embezzling done, they may spend more for visual effects (magic takes a more central role from earlier in the story). we may also get 100+ actors for WoT. most of them are going to be extras. You may be better at this than I am, but I wouldn't be able to keep track of 120 named characters if my life depended on it. There are whole internet sites dedicated to help people keep track of who's who for a reason. Finally, even the most dedicated fans agree that some storylines get bogged down. when they cut some of it from the show, they may even do the story a favor. regarding the "cut faile or keep her", I hope that they keep her, but they substantially change her to remove her obnoxious, abusive behavior. Actually, faile is one of those things that were ok for her time, but not for more modern sensibilities. In the past, coniugal violence was much more widely accepted, sometimes even considered normal. My father told me he had a coworker who regularly went into fistfights with his wife, she always had black marks on her face from blows received, he always had bloody gouges from her scratches 😲. But they've been together for 20 years, in a time were divorce was already commonplace. Faile would have fit perfectly there; she may actually have liked that "strong husband that stood up to her". 🤔 Just 30 years later, we find the whole business appalling. Just as we find appalling Faile's behavior.

do they? 20 years before, she heard gitara moroso's foretelling because she was an accepted serving the amyrlin. And she escaped the hunt from the black ajah specifically because she was an accepted, and the blacks torturing tamra ospenya only thought to ask "to which aes sedai you told the secret" or something like that. ok, all this can be rectified by some moderate alteration. maybe moiraine was a full aes sedai and she was in the amyrlin's office by chance, and maybe tamra didn't break under torture and the black got no names from her, they got names from other channels that conveniently didn't include moiraine and siuan. It can be made to work. also, perhaps i am seeing moiraine as older because i know the actress is older (i think? i did not check).

i never spoke about agelessness. i know that they dropped agelessness, i've read that interview. and i was expecting it even from before, because how the hellis "ageless" supposed to look? how do your eyes convey wisdom and age? i'm speaking about apparent age and channeler age. if they are not ageless, aes sedai will just age more slowly, like every other channeler. and then moiraine would not look 40 until she's well past her first century. now, they may drop the whole "channelers live longer" thread, but i feel it will be missing something. channelers living very long is a part of worldbuilding, and i'm not sure how much of an impact it could have

channelers age slower than normal people. kinswomen and damane live up to 600 years. they still look 30 when they are centenarian. aes sedai always look ageless because of the oath rod. they still live to 300. that's in the books. in the show, there is no ageless look. aes sedai look like their aging normally. so one would assume that they'd age slower, like kinswomen. but moiraine looks 40. she looks her actual age. how can it be? she's a channeler, and a strong one. she's slowed. she would not look 40 until she was at least 200. nor can they just change her to be older; they can do it with other aes sedai, but the story of the hunt for the dragon required her to be a novice 20 years ago. or, they could give up on aes sedai living longer than others, but i'm sure it would cause a lot of problems along the way. it's not something big, and most people won't even notice, but it's an inconsistency and it bugs me.5 perhaps it can be justified saying she started channeling later in life, and slowed down when she was already aged. maybe stress made her look older, just look at pictures of presidents before and after theuir mandate, most of them look aged by much more than four years. most likely they won't even address the issue. it's now a question one could make to rafe

i'm not a specific expert in the field, but i would bet that there are poliamorous relationships where a few members of the group do not have sex with each other. i'd bet on it for the simple reason that sexual identities are not straightjackets to constrain people. as for any potentially unfortunate implications, for start, i don't think there are any; poligamy generally implies that the men is more important, that he is the one doing stuff while the wives cater to him. that's definitely not the case here, elayne is a monarch and she even outranks rand during the final fight, and aviendha is a strong character in her own right; min is the only one taking a more traditional supportive role, and that's mostly because of her limited power. But second, I sense a perfect opportunity to balance matters with Myrelle. Myrelle is poliamorous with her three warders. Nobody could accuse the show of sexism for rand's three girls if there is an aes sedai doing the very same thing with her three warders. So, let's introduce Myrelle fast and let's expand her role!

they can give her less stripperiffic clothes and she'd still be graendal. just have streith be somewhat less transparent that what's described in the books could work. speaking of which, i wonder how they'll handle da'covale outfit. and whether it will become a new tag in porn sites though those are concerns for later seasons

they could keep 13 forsaken as thematic number, but only flesh out a few of them. most forsaken would never be encountered on screen until they face rand and are killed. more or less like be'lal and sammael in the book. they are the shady figures that are ultimately responsible for all the mooks the heroes have to face, then they provide a boss battle, then they die happily having fulfilled their narrative roles without cluttering the story.

"they ruined the story conform to a political agenda" or "they added useless and contrived plot to tell and aesop" is a perfectly legitimate criticism. or source of worry if you've only seen a trailer. I don't think that will be the case; it's something extremely rare. Though I can later books by terry pratchett (of whom, by the way, I am a fan) being ruined by trying too hard to tell an aesop. Even though it's an aesop I do actually agree with, I still don't like authors using a story for political propaganda, not even when it propagandizes some ideas I share. That said, there's no need to use "woke" as an insult. It can be used as legitimate criticism. And while I do not think wottv will have that problem, I'm not losing respect for someone quoting the various interviews with rafe getting excited about inclusion to claim he's afraid the show could be leaning into politics too much. Of course, I could still lose respect for statements like "eeewww, there's women in leading roles, that could give strange ideas to our daughters" or "there's a gay couple, that's perverse and degenerate". But those are not the kind of statements that were being made.

could work as black ajah introduction

how is that a plot change? EDIT: aww, ninjaed

why, you've never seen a black redhead? 🤪 me neither

no, aphantasia is a much more drastic condition. I can imagine a friend's face, or my house. I can visualize a book scene in my head if i've seen the movie and i could put faces to characters. And I keep running inner monologues. all stuff that people with genuine aphantasia can't do. But I can't imagine anything more than a vague sketch from a book description and a bit of fan art. not unless i put hard concentration effort on it, and then i'm not seeing the whole scene anymore

nah, the negativity is confined to a few people. which, incidentally, have every right to not be hyped if they were hoping for a more faithful adaptation. but the vast majority of us ranges from enthusiastic, to optimistic with reservations, to accepting that this is as good as we could ever reasonably hope to get.

nope. I'm not a fan and I'm not much aware of the inner workings of the fandom, but I know for a fact many were mad about tom bombadil left out. (incidentally, i never liked him). and I can safely bet that many fans also disliked the changes in characterization, how some storylines were expanded and other abandoned. You can't appease everyone. also, you praise lotr for being "faithful", but from what we've seen so far - and keep in mind, it's really not much - we have no indication that wottv will be any less faithful than lotr. from what we can see so far, they added a bunch of minor elements to introduce in a visual way stuff that in the book was explained, they shortened some plot elements, they moved a few things around. no more and no less than what lotr did. my impression is that you just got mad that the props are not faithful. From the way you describe, the way you go at lenght about jordan's description, it is clear you are very visually-oriented; those descriptions did something for you, and you were able to imagine things in detail. And when they were not faithful to that part of the story, you became the show's greatest detractor. To the point of denying its other merits. I am not visually oriented, those descriptions mostly got over my head, i've never been able to imagine stuff. no matter how accurate the description, i can see the characters in my head, but if i focus on the details, they are blank shapes. Blank faces, undefined clothes, the characters i see in my head are just shapes. and while i'm probably at the opposite end of the spectrum, it seems most people don't share your fascination with exacting descriptions. take that factor away, and there's really not much to judge. Sure, a bunch of mostly unconnected visuals. Some I like, some I don't, none of them could be seen clearly enough to judge anyway. A few plot points, with no details. There are changes, sure, but we all know changes are necessary when adapting to a different medium. Will those changes work? Having Moiraine stumble upon the fight against Logain will work as a way to show all the stuff with tainted saidin and the gentling of male channelers without info dumps? will it be an interesting storyline of its own? or it will be cheesy, ill-conceived, and nonsensical? Well, how should I know? I only know that the party will stumble on the fight against logain. But while I will give a final judgement only after seeing the first season, I am optimistic for twothree reasons: - first, the backbone of the story is the same. there is still moiraine looking for the dragon reborn, stumbling on the three ta'veren, leading them away chased by trollocs and myrdraal, escaping in shadar logoth, getting separated; aes sedai rule the world, they suppress male channeling, they show a big unified front to the outside but are actually very fractured inside. The changes may look huge when we focus on them, when we analyze and dissect what happens and what changes and what it means. But they are still small for the overall story. I mean, if you had a friend asking what's the wheel of time, and you had to sum up the story for him. Would the book summary and the tv show summary be different? Probably not much. - second, there's several people who are important to this franchise that have given strong endorsement to rafe judkins and his work. Not some polite empty statement, they had genuine enthusiasm. Sanderson is my favourite writer, if he says that the plot is good, I am inclined to trust him until proven otherwise - third, there are tens of millions invested in the first season. And before work on the first season was even finished, the producers already greenlit the second season - investing more tens of millions. That's big money, and the people making those decisions are not dumbasses. If they are willing to pull out cash for the second season before the first one aired, they are pretty confident it's going to be a success. And they must have good reasons for this confidence. Which means that, while it may end up not being too faithful to the books, wottv is pretty much guaranteed to at least be entertaining. I'm here to be entertained, without any particular expectation. I'm pretty sure wottv will at least clear that mark