I have always defended rafe on most accusation, but i agree on this. if there is one thing he did wrong, it was alienating sanderson and parts of the community

how many intellectual properties got adapted, failed, and got new adaptations? how many only got one chance? sure, some super famous stuff like lotr could get multiple adaptations. but for most, it's one chance. while it's not completely impossible, to the best of my knowledge, it is statistically unlikely. have you seen the progress they keep doing with artificial intelligence? give it a few years, i wouldn't put it past the toaster to overthrow the government. and as far as I am concerned, replacing the government with a toaster can't happen soon enough on a more serious note, in the early nineties the best chess programs were no match for a serious human. then in 1996 there was the first big match between a human world champion and a computer, and the human won. then in 1997 there was a rematch with an improved version, and the human lost. in the early 2000 they stopped trying to make those mathces, there was the general understanding that the computer was stronger than any human because it could calculate better, but it had less strategical understanding; a human could still be better than a computer in those kind of slow positions. then in the next decade the computers surpassed humans even in strategy, but there were a few specific patterns they could not recognize, so the humans still had that. now the computers are basically god. it doesn't matter how strong you are, if a computer tells you a move is good, even if the move looks nonsensical, you know the computer is right. you know you can't argue with that; ok, you can, but it will inevitably show that the pc is right. Deal with it. I'm telling this, because I'm seeing the same pattern emerge for other aspects of artificial intelligence, and I see the same kind of denial. "the AI will never be able to create art". oh, they just did. "ok, but humans will always be better at it" "ok, but the best humans will always be better" "ok, machines are better, but humans can still do X that machines cannot" oh, wait, machines just learned to do this too.. face it, it will happen, just like it happened with chess. machines have two major advantages over us: the first is, they have much more calculation power. the second, they can share their learning in a way that we humans just cannot. I spent 20 years learning science, training my neural network. one day I will die, and all that training will be gone. I spend my working hours repeating my know-how to my students, and maybe in 20 years they will be able to reach my level of understanding, maybe a bit more. A computer can teach another computer everything it knows, in minutes. Everything they learn, it stays learned. They don't need to spend a third of their life to try and get the knowledge of the previous generations passed down. And if they stop using a skill, they never fall out of practice; all their knowledge is still stored perfectly. and frankly, this should not be surprising. from inanimate matter, primitive bacteria arose. Primitive bacteria developed into more advanced bacteria. from those, came plants and animals. animals with small lumps of nerve tissue gradually evolved more intelligence. now the smartest of those animals are creating stuff that's even more intelligent that them. it would be very arrogant to assume that we would be the pinnacle of this process. so, reaching the point where you can feed a book to an AI, and it will produce a tv adaptation, and it will do a better job than rafe judkins, or even of denis villeneuve or peter jackson? it will absolutely happen. and it will most likely happen in our lifetimes. remember, it only took 30 years to go from "the AI cannot possibly beat a competent human at chess" to "the AI is so much stronger than even the human world champion, it's pointless to ever argue with it"

In all fairness, while it is completely unreasonable to expect an animated series as things stand, the ai has done so much progress lately, it wouldn't be too outlandish to imagine that in 10 or 20 years a descendant of sora may be able to produce an entire show if you just give it a script - which you could generate by asking the improved chatgpt to adapt the books. Total budget, 100$ in electricity. That is my one and only hope of seeing such an adaptation. Because another studio pulling out big money on a show that already failed? Not going to happen

A bit off topic, but I have to ask. why would the bot farms ever target discussion on a fantasy show? as far as i'm aware, the bot farms are used to try and influence politics. they could be used for marketing, or other reasons involving big money or power. but why would anyone have any interest in having the bots spam hate comments on the wheel of time discussions? where are the interests? I am not doubting your word. if you have seen those bots, you have. I'm just confused on who sent them here...

The real shame here is that the show got canceled just as it was improving. If all subsequent seaseons had been like S1 (which still wasn't bad, btw) i wouldn't mind much. But the show got so much potential. It was getting better and better. S3 turned around even many critics. It deserved the chance to redeem its mediocre start. I think some of the changes were very good. The relation between perrin and bornhald was so much better, so much deeper than its book version. I was really looking forward to seeing how it would go. And i never likes the "and then the protagonist really wants it, and channels uber magic and solves the plot in the last ten pages. No, he won't be able to replicate it" deus ex machina so common to many fantasy, including the ending of the first books. Not that the show did a better job with endings, no. Anyway, the show being different made it more interesting to me. It kept things fresh. It was recognizable enough as wot, but it was also a new story But in the end, in order to view S3 one has to get past S1. That remains an obstacle for new viewers. I'm sad for the missed opportunities

shadiversity did an episode on that. he concluded that, 1 on 1 with swords, having the high ground is a disadvantage, because the lower guy can strike at your whole body, while you can strike only at his head.

this is the tv show continuity, which is different from book continuity. there is no ageless face in the tv show. i don't expect the shortening of life span to be brought up

except when she pivoted from what makes an aes sedai to herself. the last part when she said "because i am siuan sanche, daughter of the river". that's a big non-sequitur over the great speech she was making on losing control of the world also, a historical mistake: siuan says that she has sworn the oaths that her sisters have sworn for 3000 years. but in the show they said that the aes sedai accepted to swear on the oath rod to stop the siege from arthur hawkwing, which happened 1000 years ago, so which is which?

book 6, chapter 30: "what was already healed could not be healed again" that sentence in that particular context can be interpreted in many ways. book 6, chapter 42: not a single quote, but perrin was wounded, and verin found him, and she says, this wound requires alanna. if multiple channelers could heal the same wound with no issues, wouldn't verin had wanted to give perrin at least a bit of healing first? to make sure he would survive long enough to see alanna? i'm too lazy to look for other quotes. the ones you provide are also good, so the books themselves look a bit inconsistent on the matter.

unlike most weaves that can be learned by all, provided they have the skill and strenght, healing is mostly an innate talent. some people though weak, heal strongly. some very powerful people, including elayne, egwene, aviendha, and the most powerful of all rand himself, can't heal more than "minor cuts and bruises". i never gave this much thought, until today I suddenly asked myself: how do they know it? none of the four i mention was ever shown trying to heal someone. does it mean that someone got wounded, and they tried, and couldn't help? it's relevant because, once healing is done, it can't be done again for the same person for the same injuries. so if you try to heal someone badly wounded, and you turn out to have no talent, you may end up causing his death, by making it impossible for better healers to treat the person. and you can't know how much healing talent you have unless you try it on someone seriously wounded maybe in the tower they have some kind of tests for that, but aviendha certainly was never tested in the tower, and rand had no access to anything. and we never, ever see those characters try any healing. all of a sudden they declare they can't do it, and how they know is never questioned

as i said, the divina commedia shows people who lived to their 20s, but died shortly later. of course, many people did not die, several got old, but it's for the "mortality was high even among healty adults". this is no longer about sex, just about life expectations in old times. for numbers, i have three pieces of hard data on mortality in ancient times: unfortunately, i cannot provide references, they are numbers i remember reading somewhere but can't place. - in the roman empire, adult life expectancy (that is, average life span AFTER you already survived childhood) was 55 years for men, 40 for women. women died a lot of childbirth - in the late roman empire, people enlisted for 25 years military service. of those that did, roughly half of them survived to be honorably discharged. - in the XVII century, in a small village in the italian mountains (population uncertain, estimated between slightly less than 1000 and a few thousands) there was roughly one murder per year. that's the same level of murders per inhabitant of el salvador at the peak of the gang wars. again, this has no longer anything to do with the sex arguments. just thought it would be interesting to share some data on how frail was human life before the modern age

in the Divina Commedia, Dante meets a lot of his friends and rivals in the afterlife; most of them were around his same age. Dante is 35 in the year he set the divina commedia. those people survived childhood, else they could not have become dante's friends or rivals. and yet, for dante to put them in hell or purgatory, they all died between age 20 and 40. and they were all rich people, they were properly fed and had access to what little medicine was available at the time. It gives a feeling for how frail was human life at the time. something else that no book has ever attempted to capture

but religion was shaped by seeing promiscuous people struck by strange disease. Tribal people also are religious, and those religions we know - practiced by isolated tribed still living in remote jungles today - tend to be more liberal. Because a small isolated tribe doesn't get many disease. Meanwhile, the larger a society is, the more disease can circulate, and all religions of such societies are various levels of prudish. Romans and greeks were more liberal - at least regarding men - but they changed with time. I asked a couple of friends who graduated in history if this is factual, or i'm making a bunch of wild deductive leaps. They said the theory has merit, but they see no way to prove or disprove it for certain. But the fact remains that there are several sex-positive (or close enough to it) tribes, but there has never been any sex-positive major civilization, and that's unlikely to be a coincidence

well, i can't think of any fantasy book hinting at the exhistance of venereal disease. however, even if they had managed to eradicate all such disease in the age of legends, 3000 years of evolution are more than enough time for virus and bacteria to start exploting that wonderful opportunity offered by a large human population with low disease resistance. that said, my suspension of disbelief chafes with big inconsistencies, but can accept small ones. therefore, "randland has no major STD because they were all eradicated in the age of legends" is my new headcanon. thank you for giving me this plausible excuse for enjoying more the show

it reminds me of some philosopher of the XX century who claimed that by freeing society, we made it more oppressive, because people no longer could feel cool by doing something forbidden. Perhaps it's the same kind of argument. i studied that at school. i always thought it was a pile of rubbish. mind you, i get the point of the argument: to a certain mindset, breaking rules feels liberatory. however, i find the whole argument brought to this extreme incredibly immature and irrational. "I want to do X, but X is forbidden, so I'll do X regardless, **** the system!" "ok, we realized there's really nothing wrong in X and so from now on it's allowed" "nooooo how dare you! now doing X is no longer satisfactory!" 🤨🤨🤮 On the other hand, i'm also taking the chance to say that this sex-positive representation of a preindustrial society is absurd. In general, most media representing ancient societies project our values on them, and I know enough history to realize how dumb is the notion. there are two very good reasons all major ancient societies were bigots, and it's not religion or nosy neighboors. they are venereal disease and unwanted pregnancies. despite near-constant warfare and rampant crime, disease was still the main cause of death. and they had no way to prevent it, and only herbal remedies of limited effectiveness. being promiscuous back at the time was only a short step from suicidal. pregnancies were almost equally dangerous, because there was no welfare state - not because they were evil, but because society was always a bad harvest away from starvation and couldn't spare many resources - so good luck finding money to raise the chold. good luck finding a husband that would pay your bills and accept someone else's child into it. however, explaining all that to the uneducated ancient farmer is complicated. much simpler to teach them that sex outside marriage is bad, and you should not question it. or maybe they saw that the promiscuous ones got sick more often, and saw that as divine punishment. or maybe some civilization remained sex-positive despite the cost, but then it got invaded by a sex-negative civilization that won because they had more soldiers, having lesser mortality rates from venereal disease... regardless, it became part of common morality without a reason. today, condoms and modern medicine take care of both, so we can afford to be relaxed about sex. it's a luxury of our times. just like the freedom to choose your job is a luxury that we have thanks to public schools, which we have because we have enough surplus food to pay a bunch of people to do nothing but teach all the kids a bunch of skills they won't use, just so they will be able to pick one they want to use. and we tend to think of those as universal inalienable rights, that are good and just simply because, and we forget that we must pay a cost to have those right, a cost that is small for us, but that an ancient society could never have afforded. long story short, the aes sedai, with their healing, could afford to be carefree about sex. the people of tar valon, who could take a short walk to get healed by an aes sedai, could afford to be carefree. everyone else would expose himself to mortal risk every time they exchanged bodily fluids with someone else. they should be bigots, for the very practical reason that bigotry raises your life expectancy. wisdoms can do wonders with herbs, but there are limits. and most places don't have good wisdoms anyway. seeing a preindustrial society with a sex-positive attitude is like seeing an ancient roman filming the gladiatorial games with a smartphone. not that robert jordan was much better. he modeled the gender dinamics around those of the 80s in rural america.

i've seen somebody theorize that the girls had been unconsciously healing their mother of her hangovers for a while, so healing was their wilder trick. while not very satisfying, it is the best explanation to keep some sense in what happened.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/04/19/an-update-on-the-wheel-of-time-season-4-on-amazon-prime-video/ An article saying S4 is likely to be greenlit, based on interviews, and generally praising the show

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/04/19/an-update-on-the-wheel-of-time-season-4-on-amazon-prime-video/ I found this article saying that, based on interviews with the cast, S4 is likely. Not sure how reliable it is, though. Those involved had always been optimistic

why would egwene need a mentor to teach her politics? egwene will be inexplicably good at politics from the first day she's thrown into the role. just like she's been inexplicably good at everything else. i don't blame the script for this. it always happens in movies, and in most books. the only one who really worked hard for his skill is lan

while i disagree that any time someone is wounded and then healed it's a fake-out death, it's just combat with healing, i'd specifically point out that lanfear was already established in S2 to be able to survive a slit throat, so it doesn't count. also, i don't remember dain nor maksim getting wounded at all

yes, my idea too. still, they didn't feel like they were fighting with the kind of power that could level cities. instead of melting the whole area, they were tossing each other around. softly enough for it to be survivable

the reasons for this is simply that they cut some plots for timing reasons. for example, the whole plot with siuan surviving the stilling, escaping, rejoining the salidar aes sedai and everything, it was a lot of story to tell, but the bigger story doesn't need it. so, siuan's plot is excised, and the character is disposed of as unnecessary. same with loial. as they must cut a lot of secondary plots to fit the show in the allotted time, so a lot of secondary characters must similarly be cut. literally, in siuan's case. meanwhile, other characters are taking some of those plots up. maksim keeps living because, clearly, they still have something to do with him.

after being very happy with all the season, here i am... less happy. actually, in keeping with the other seasons, the ending is the weakest part. this is still better than the endings of the previous seasons, so S3 is still a step up compared to the other two. and there were good things. i am very happy with mat. i knew the show had very little time for him, so i thought they'd either skip the portals anyway, or they would make a rushed, bad job of it. while the whole episode felt rushed, the portal was great. in a limited time, they managed to convey all the relevant stuff. including the whole hanging. they still didn't give him the luck, yet. on the other hand, i was deeply disappointed by liandrin and nynaeve. really? throw her in the water and leave her? pierce holes in the skull of the extras, but throw around the main characters and leave them? this was classic bond villain stuff. plus, we saw very little of balefire. and it was really poorly aimed when used against the main characters. we never see what happens with thom merrilin (again; they could make it his whole thing, every season ending with him left to uncertain fate). all in all, the whole tanchico part felt rushed. alcair dal was mismanaged. in the books, rand revealed what he saw in rhuidean, couladin also revealed what he thought he should have seen, and the wise ones and clan chiefs confirm that rand is the real car'a'carn. makes perfect sense. here, rand says what he saw. couladin makes vague promises. then rand makes rain. then the aiel kneel. so all you needed to do was channel some rain to be acclaimed? on the other hand, good that they brought down those army numbers to more realistic levels. one hundred thousand aiel warriors is already a lot. the worst part was moiraine. with such a powerful sa'angreal, she should have been able to easily overpower lanfear. it never felt like she was actually using such a strong weapon. had they shown lanfear cutting her weaves while remarking that it doesn't matter how strong moiraine is if she can't land a hit would have made the fight more believable. but hey, good thing we're told moiraine has to die. she may actually die of being impaled through the torso, the first instance in the whole tv show. the stuff in the tower was great. siuan sanche's last speech was moving. i was expecting she'd be killed for real in this retelling.

balefire. alcair dal. a likely showdown between lanfear and moiraine. good potential

i am not complaining. i was answering to another post claiming that wounding alanna to remove her from battle was a contrived coincidence and therefore bad writing, to which i replied that every plot in every story is a bunch of contrived coincidences