On 4/1/2024 at 11:51 PM, Samt said:

I don't have to write them.  These scenes literally exist in the book.  Perhaps the dialogue would need to be altered somewhat because of things they did or didn't include in the show, but the same idea could be maintained.  If necessary, you could add a bit to the dialogue.  At the beginning of chapter 30, for instance, after Elyas says that Perrin should throw away the axe if he ever likes using it, Perrin tries to ask, but can't, "What if I wait and then can't throw it away?"  That could easily be added as a line for Perrin to actually say, maybe as Elyas is walking away and doesn't hear it.  

 

Perrin has a discussion with Raen and says that he would hit someone back if he or she hit him in chapter 25.  This scene actually sort of exists in the show except that Elyas isn't there and the detail is cut (and Perrin doesn't advocate for self defense in the show).  

yes, i do agree that those dialogues should have been included, as they were important.

i still think, though, that major changes would have been inevitable anyway. the things you mention would have helped, but they can only go so far. and when condensing the plot, you can't just cut out parts, you have to create something new to move the characters in the same way but less screen time.

finally, some parts of the books needed changes because they were genuinely bad. yes, i am looking specifically at the end of book 1. as poorly as it was performed in the first season, it's probably still an improvement over the book. making people in relationship not seem insane is another step up.

2 hours ago, Samt said:

I wasn’t responding to expat.  I clearly responded to king of nowhere.  He made a point about POVs being hard to adapt and then talked about Lan. I presumed that was an example and think it’s a bad example because Lan is developed as a character without having any POVs through the first half of the series.  If it wasn’t about POVs and just about Lan in general being hard to adapt, I feel that is pretty silly.  Strong, stoic man of action who shows little emotion is practically an archetype that has been shown on screen more times than I can list.  That’s almost literally the only character that John Wayne ever played.

lan is not a stoic man of action who shows little emotion.

lan is a stoic man of action who shows little emotion but has depth.

you can totally show lan being stoic, but you lose all his character. he just becomes another stereotype.

besides, Lan was an example for a general, very common theme: almost every single character in the books is good at keeping a very straight face while undergoing inner turmoil - which we know by pow or are informed in some other way. if you show them on show with a straiught face, you miss the inner turmoil.

it was a direct response to your comment that showing rand kneeling in front of siuan completely changes his character, because he allowed his insecurity to show. well, in tv, if a character does not show visible reactions, then he's not reacting. in the book, often the pow character muses on how the other guy is slightly flicking the finger, which indicates great surprise because it broke their perfect mask for a second. in tv, 99.9% of viewers would miss the clue, the remaining one will think it a nervous tic of the actor.

1 hour ago, Elendir said:

 

Book Rand was near to fill his pant with .... yet he stand tall still. It is about standing against stronger opponent. Being almighty when you challenge only weaker one, hardly test character.

so, in the book we were in his mind and we saw him maintain a strong face while he was crapping himself. great.

how exactly would you show that in the tv show?

if you show rand maintaining a strong front, the viewers will never know he's in trouble. in fact, they may think he's an idiot who don't know the danger.

this is another of those cases where a scene just doesn't work in a different media. hence it must be adapted with something else.

In the same way, I wonder how a book accurate Lan would work in tv. I guess they could just sculpt a human figure out of granite and put it in front of the camera; it would have the book accurate facial expressivity and they would save the money on hiring an actor.

18 hours ago, Bigote_grande said:

Except the changes that were made to the show were not needed to condense the show.

4 hours ago, Jaccsen said:

 

I completely disagree. The majority of changes have nothing to do with the internal monologues. They flat out change the plots and characters.

you think it's possible to condense the story just by removing some parts while leaving the rest identical?

you think it's possible to remove info dumps without adding other story elements to convey the same information?

a lot of those changes were ways to condense the show or to explain stuff by showing. making the ef5 older skips some early character development. expanding role for logain shows all the stuff with man wielding power and false dragons. the tar valon stuff happened anyway, they just moved it earlier. perrin killing his wife was made to exteriorize his internal conflict. stepin was there to show how the warder bond works, to provide tension for lan once his own bond is broken.
whether those changes were effective or not is another matter. but saying that they have no reasons behind them is just plain wrong.

5 hours ago, Jaccsen said:

For a serious fan, Rafe seems unable to understand the source material. His adaptation changes things radically and not just to fit it on the screen. His team makes up a lot of content that never appeared in the book.

so, you clearly are a serious fan; let's assume that you are given a big bunch of money to adapt wot.

oh, but you have to fit everything in no more than 8 seasons of 8 episodes of 50 minutes each - meaning you've got three hours for each book. 100 millions for the first season seems a lot, but once you start hiring all the actors and the troupe and work on the set, most of it has already vanished. and you've got to replace all the info dumps and internal monologues with something that works on screen.

rafe's job was far from perfect, but all the changes were caused by immense external constraints.

2 hours ago, Maximillion said:

 

I would love the book series to be brough to life properly in animation - ironically in the style Amazon actually used for the add on information to the series.

Would MUCH prefer that to the show we got.

have you seen that now a new AI can build a short video from a prompt?

have faith, in 20-30 years probably you can copy-paste the books as prompt and the AI will build the adaptation. without any issue on budget, meddling executives, covid pauses, or any of that stuff

On 2/17/2024 at 7:41 AM, books of Robert Jordan said:

What will happen when the AI (ok, LLM) gets a novel instead of a very short promt?

 

https://openai.com/sora#capabilities

 

 

probably, human artists will become obsolete.

no offence. i am a teacher, and i expect AI to become capable of doing my job better than me in my lifetime.

maybe we'll finally be able to relax?

You know, it would actually be the option tied to modern sensibilities. Dump the psycotic violent girl, get the saner one. Have faile being dragged away by the police for assaulting berelain with a knife, that's pretty serious business, our modern society frowns heavily on attempted murder of a love rival.

It would not even be a bigger change than some they made already.

But no, they are not going to do that. I doubt viewers will accept it. They will make faile less crazy and more relatable, like they did for the other girls

2 hours ago, Mirefox said:

There’s also the old adage that sex sells.  I fell like what we see far more often is a show luring an audience in with sex and nudity and then toning it down later in the series.  Sometimes this might be because of renewed contracts with renewed language but I also think that some studios (HBO more than others) really try to use sex and nudity as a hook.

is that still the case? sex has sold for a long time, but i would think that in a time where you have several million full lenght porn vids completely for free - just as an attempt to entice people into getting a premium subscription to see millions more - nobody should be reduced to watch a tv show because of nudity.

i do like that they made the characters a bit more mature, because really, in the first books they could get really annoying. i disagree with the general tone shift, there is a clear striving to make the show darker whenever possible.

however, it does not particularly bother me. there are several things i disliked about the show, but none of them is related to adaptational faithfulness. and I still liked the show overall.

This thread is for news and articles.

If you want a detailed discussion on rand's arc, you should make another thread for it

7 hours ago, Shawlee said:

 

This bothers me so much. Every time I think about it, blind rage flares up in me. 

 

Al'Lan Mandragoran, Aan'allein pissing on a tree. Thanks for making my favorite hero  into a joke, thank you so much Rafe.

Yes, obviously lan is too manly to pee. Do we ever see him peeing in the books? No, then it's canon, lan does not need to pee. Probably when he needs to relieve itself he slices out his bladder with his sword, empties it, and sew it back every time. 

He does the same with his intestines whenever he needs to take a dump, except he has a servant handling his guts because he's too badass to handle sh#t in any way

13 hours ago, Samt said:

I can't really say who is doing what for the show, but I think it's clear that someone with significant influence on the show either doesn't love the books or just doesn't care to actually bother to read them.  

I posted somewhere a mathematical analysis to conclude that not only nobody on the writing table but rafe has read the books, but that it is not reasonable to expect otherwise - as there's probably not enough screeenwriters familiar with the book in the whole world.

On 10/8/2023 at 2:31 PM, king of nowhere said:

see, here's a bit of a misconception. Yes, the wheel of time is a bestselling series of books. It sold over 100 million copies worldwide. that's huge, right? everyone must have heard of it.

Then you consider it's 14 books. So divide 100 by 14, you get 7 million copies for the whole saga. already a lot less. You can even double that numer because people may share those books - me and my brother have a single copy, but we both read it - and you get 15 million readers maybe.

In the whole world. Now, we can assume most of those readers are in the western world, which has roughly one billion people, and we get that little more than 1% of your population has read the wheel of time. A few more % have heard of it from someone else, but a good 95% of people never heard about it.

So, while wot is a major bestselling series of books, it's not something like star wars, or james bond, which are major bestselling movies. a major bestselling movies is something everyone heard about - and even non-fans are at least vaguely familiary with the topic. a major bestselling book is something most people never heard.

Then you also get sample selection. we determined that 1 to 2% of the population has read the wheel of time. but that number is skewed towards book readers and fantasy nerds. most movie writers and directors, I'd surmise, are not book readers, else they would have become writers. they are instead movie watchers, hence they went to work with movies. So the percentage of movie directors who actually read the wheel of time could be even lower than in the global population.

You want a writer/director who's familiar with the content? good job, you already excluded 99% of all available creators. I don't think there are enough screenwriters familiar with the wheel of time in all the united states for your needs. And most of them already have other contracts.

As for expecting them to "actually bother to read the books", you talk about that as if it was a small simple thing, like reading an information pamphlet. It's not, it's 4 million words. it takes months to read the thing. and once you read it once, congratulations, you're nowhere near an expert in those books. you need multiple readings to "familiarize" with a lore that big.

and I am pretty sure that even if you could put in a contractual obligation that the screenwriters read the books multiple time, then the final result would indeed be a writing room that positively hates those books.

On 11/8/2023 at 9:29 AM, fra85uk said:

My opinion:

Witcher S1 is not bad (better than WoT)

Witcher S2 and S3 very bad (below WoT)...and guess why? they derailed heeavily from source material, so much that even their star decided to quit.

Witcher Blood Origin is trash.

On 11/8/2023 at 11:30 PM, Scarloc99 said:

I thought even season 1 was worse then wot it deviated far more from the source material. 

I contest your argument that "it's bad becase they deviated from the source material". The witcher story is nothing special, if I didn't love the characters I would have put it down well before the end.

I must point out that some of the best parts in the wot tv show are not those that adhere to the books exactly, but those that deviate from them - or at least that expand on the lore by showing what was quickly described. the logain scenes were not in the books, yet were among the best. the forsaken scenes were mostly not in the books, but they were fantastic. the third part of nynaeve's accepted test was better than the book version specifically because it took the theme of the book and improved on it. 

I am not familiar with many adaptations, but even in Dune, which is overall pretty faithful to the book, they changed the final scene of lyet-kynes, and it was better than its book counterpart.

The idea that adaptations are good if they stick to the source material and bad if they depart from it is completely unfounded. Sure, a lot of adaptations that deviated heavily from the original turned out lackuster, but that's because they were poorly written, not because they deviated from the original. I understand love for the original materials, but books are not holy objects.

2 hours ago, DreadLord31 said:

And, for crying out loud, One Piece had legit sword fight/fighting sequences. 

 

i liked one piece a lot, but the action sequences had a fake/staged feeling to them. it works for the anime, because it's the kind of story you don't take 100% seriously. not so much for wheel of time. the aviendha sequence was a lot better than anything in one piece. the lan vs myrdraal would have been, except that the fades conveniently stopped attacking and took their time looming ominously whenever lan was down.

2 hours ago, DreadLord31 said:

#3: One Piece showed me that good writers maximize the time they’re given. WoT wastes scenes. Sometime they deliver (particularly with the Forsaken), but the writing is so inconsistent. 

one piece follows exactly 2 story lines: the main protagonists, and coby+garp. you can't really draw comparisons on that

7 hours ago, Shawlee said:

One thing though, why did you specifically mentioned the Rakens here? What am I missing? Again, I have not been in the community, all my 'knowledge' is my own interpretations of the story. Is there anything that you guys know that connects rakens to shadowspawns? I mean i thought rakens and to'rakens are just animals from the portal world, like the grolms. I always compared it with The Witchers merging of spares (😅😅), only thing i could compare it with my little knowledge. I thought people might mistake rakens as draghkar. But that was it.

 

Can you expand on that?

 

rakens and other seanchan special animals have nothing to do with shadowspawn, but a lot of randlanders who never saw them mistook them for shadowspawn. so it would be possible for an aes sedai to mistake them for some new shadowspawn, jump to the conclusion that the seanchan using them are darkfriends, and use the power over that misunderstanding. it would have been by far the most acceptable option.

but since they removed all those beasts from the show (so far, i really hope they include the rakens, they are an important part of seanchan military), this possible save isn't available

1 hour ago, Shawlee said:

 

You see I didn't have any problems with that, as suroth is a dark friend and the damanes under her control (probably some were her property too), were direct weapons wielded by Issy through her.

 

So I think I can see how "moiraine" (Rafe actually) justifying this: pulling on a loose interpretation of the 3rd oath. 

 

Considering the tv Seanchen are more of a weapon for Issy. Hear me out! Unlike the books where he was in the shadows maneuvering, and he is directly involved with them in the show. (Like how Semirhage is later on). And when turak died, suroth becomes the highest authority of Seanchen army on this side of the areth occan, and her master is a forsaken. So by extension the Seanchen army(including the damanes) are fighting for the dark.

 

Also her being exposed like that on the beach and being attacked on, albeit not by the people on the ships, but the foot soliders of the same military body, gives her the "I was trying to defend my life and my warders" excuse. I would further argue Lanfear intentionally dropped her off their, so Moiraine can have that excuse. And have a front row seat to see the dragron rise. 

 

That's  my two cents, what to you think? @king of nowhere i would love to hear your point on my speculation. 😊

 

 

 

 

The third oath says you can use the power to harm "in the last extreme in defence of your life", or "against darkfriends".

Moiraine could definitely defend herself against the soldiers on the beach (conveniently placed to give lan something to do). I can see a loophole there maybe, in that the oath does not specify you have to channel against those attacking you. Not a great argument, as the oath specifies "in defense of your life" and sinking distant ships was not in self-defence, those ships were not paying her any attention, she was even too far to be seen.

Second condition of the oath, shadowspawn and darkfriends. By the way, the wording we are given do not mention any of that, but many aes sedai in the books speak of those exceptions.

Well, seanchan are not shadowspawn, especially without rakens. Darkfriends? Suroth is, but the damane certainly are not. However, moiraine has no idea who those people on boats are. She does not know suroth. She only heard vague tales of invaders in the west. Can she strike if she does not know if one is darkfriend? If she could, she could reasonably strike anyone.

Can she strike on a reasonable suspicion? Can she strike a whole boat full of people because one is a darkfriends, and the others are collateral? 

Maybe. Not convincing, but maybe.

So, there are arguments there to be made, but they are very tenuous at best. In the books, any interpretation of the oaths was more solid than that.

I still consider the whole thing a plot hole

8 hours ago, Shawlee said:

 

 

At that distance? Also destroying multiple ships, and she made the Seanchen run? Not Rand Al'Thor ? Or the heroes of the horn? Really? 

Creating an explosion big enough to open a hole in a ship doesn't take much. Channelers regularly blow up things bigger than a plank of wood. 

My main objection to that scene is that moiraine was not in danger from the ship and should not have been able of using the power as a weapon, at all.

My second main objection is that the damane on board should have seen the flow of incoming fire and stopped it.

But as far as having the power to blow some holes in wooden ships? No issues there.

Also consider, in the book egwene - which was not stronger than moiraine at that point - was asked to blow up a tree at distance. Blowing up a whole tree is harder than punching through a single plank

27 minutes ago, Scarloc99 said:

I could accept this if not for the fact he willingly hangs an aiel who is friends with him

 

That was a good decision. Would you respect rand if he applied his own laws for the common people but made exceptions for those he likes? As a ruler, rand must not play favourites

1 hour ago, HeavyHalfMoonBlade said:

Rand's aversion to letting women make their own choices is something that for me made little sense, and his refusal to fight, for example, Lanfear meant that he was hurting other women through his inaction. His inner turmoil 100% did not help me understand. 

 

However it is very interesting to know that other people did understand. I would love to hear from someone who did understand, but I can also understand that this kind of issue can be very emotive and very close to someone's heart, so would not be the most pleasant thing to discuss. 

I have a hard time to understand either, but I can understand one important related fact: having good intentions does not make you right, it does not guarantee you will not make mistakes or take stupid decisions.

Rand never had to take morally difficult decisions in his life until he became the dragon. he's completely unprepared for the necessity to choose lesser evils all the time. I think in our western world most of us is at least somewhat aquainted with the notion, since we are all called to vote in politics and choose between many unsavory options; rand is even more unprepared than that. and so tries to draw some lines that he will not cross.

and it's quite the wrong thing to do, and the lines he draws are really dumb anyway. but it was a honest best attempt at a sheepherder turned politician to keep some integrity.

Why is moiraine supposedly overpowered? All she did was sinking a ship with fire. After channeling minutes to gather the power. Doesn't seem such powerful stuff.

Aldo, power levels are kinda inconsistent anyway

I don't even remember who most of those minor aes sedai were or what they did for the plot, so there's a good chance they will either cut them entirely, or give their roles to alanna

6 hours ago, ilovezam said:

Brando talks more about Wheel of Time S2 and his finale reaction on his podcast here (21:39 onwards):

 

 

I think the main reason one piece worked so well is that it's not too serious. It has serious parts, it has legitimate drama, but it also has a lot of sillyness. And that kind of tone does not need to be super consistent: it can get away with rule of cool and rule of funny in a way that a more serious work like wheel of time cannot. 

I assumed, like many, that she would fall through the portal and be rescued earlier. But it looks like they removed the finns from mat's story, so maybe moiraine will just not return

On 10/19/2023 at 11:00 AM, Scarloc99 said:

There are a few moments in the books where BS relies on artifically generating tension through a series of very unlikely events. 

you mean, like a queen running away from her palace, reaching the aiel waste, getting accepted in far dareis mai, just in time to participate in the aiel wars - the one time in 3000 years the aiel left the waste - so that she could die on the slopes of dragonmount while giving birth to the dragon reborn, who would then be found by a sheepherder-turned-blademaster-turned-sheepherder-again?

it's called ta'veren. the wheel weaves as the wheel wills. the world of wot has a perfectly built-in justification for unlikely events.