which may mean that - when S1 aired, it was watched by many hardcore book fans. hence higher numbers - many of those hardcore fans didn't like it, hence lower number for S2 start - more people are watching the show as word of mouth spreads that it's improved significantly, hence higher numbers later

if that's the case, it's reciprocal.

i see you put high value on prose. I won't discuss that, as I generally don't even get those fine nuances. but in terms of plot and personalities, i'd say calling wot male centric is blatantly wrong. sure, women in groups tend to start sniffing and pulling hairs. meanwhile, men in groups stop blinking and try to look dangerous. power is split, with women getting probably the most - aes sedai making the difference. and no, aes sedai do not wield power through men. even if they did, if a woman manipulates a man in power to do his bidding, is the book misoginist because it shows a man in power? or is it misandrist because it shows the men as a gullible moron being manipulated? ultimately, I would say that the books are balanced by being sexist against both genders. they do show a level of toxicity and strawmanning for both. I do agree, though, on being happy that those parts were not included in the adaptation. how many human societies, historically, had power balance among genders? as far as I am aware, zero. men were generally in power, though the extent varied - in some societies a woman with no brothers could inherit a kingdom, in others women were little more than slaves. the books were written in a time when women had achieved parity in law, but they were struggling to have that parity recognized in practice. and indeed, in the books there's plenty of conflict between men who want women to stay safe in the kitchen and women who want to be independent. now we have a society where women can, at least ideally, do anything they want, in terms of career and life choices. and in the tv show, women can do anything they want. in many ancient societies they had this idea that you could kill another person, and the law had no issues with it. on the other hand, the relatives of the deceased could then kill one of your relatives in retribution - and on like that in a feud, until both families agreed to make peace. it was considered a private business. and it was considered perfectly moral and just to kill somebody because 50 years before his great-uncle killed the father of your second cousin. I am not aware of any work of fiction where ancient people had this attitude - except for the aiel, but as I said, they have other issues. meanwhile, works of science fiction written in the past assumed in the far future women would still stay at home to cook for their husbands, though perhaps with a robot assistant. except for works written in the soviet union, where every advanced alien culture was organized in soviets, because that's the most advanced form of government according to the writers. this is what i mean when I say that we project our cultural values in fiction.

It is, in terms of social values. But then, that, a common feature of almodt every work of fiction. We write people of the middle age thinking like modern ones. Renaissance writers who erote about people of the middle age wrote them with renaissance values. People writing of the future always project into the future fantastic technology, but the same culture. I would praise the aiel as a nice exception, except they are also a charicature; that much cultural uniformity is not found even in dictatorships

I like sanderson style better, and i like androl and his take on magic. Channelers tend to be very inefficient in their use of the power. It makes sense for aes sedai, since they never faced a challenge that would force them to innovate. But in front of total war, people adapt quickly. Even aes sedai. We see it on a few kinswomen, but yes, not much. By the way, i like how the show have most women fight with air. Women are supposed to be weak in fire, and while fire is easier to weaponize, it's better to take the stuff you are strong with and find ways to weaponize it than using a weak fire power

actors have the decision power to change the plot? i ask because i genuinely don't know how that works

yes. what's the point of making a distinction? none of the girls would really choose a "take you down with me" approach, not when they don't know what's in store for them

No, she would not. She would not be keeping any shield along the ways, since the girls can't channel while in there. She can also shield them again before leaving the ways. It takes a few minutes for machin shin to arrive, so she can put up the shield, open the gate and come out. And the girls can't fight back, because they don't know how to open the waygate. As i said, the problem is when going out. The moment she comes out of the way, the girls can channel again, and there's no way liandrin can keep all of them shielded together

and you know, he could be absolutely right. because he's a screenwriter, his job is writing stuff for television, which is not the same thing as writing a book. writing books and writing scripts are related, though different skills. so while I expect that sanderson can make a passable job at writing a script, and rafe could manage at least somewhat at writing a book, I would be very surprised if rafe didn't knew more about screenwriting than brandon. on the other hand, rafe apparently is not good at plot consistency and worldbuilding. most television is not. which is why I presume that rafe can ultimately write a script better than sanderson (or better than RJ could have), but sanderson can give him tips on worldbuilding and magic. and if the two could work together and leverage their respective strengths, they would produce a better script overall.

that was a good description of sanderson 15 years ago, when he was hired to finish the wheel of time. now sanderson has 20 years of experience as a top fantasy writer. which makes him even more qualified to give advice here. especially since his main streenghts - worldbuilding, characters - can be transposed to television, while his one weakness - prose - is made irrelevant by the change in medium

yes, i noticed that. one possibility is that the girls were unconscious until they entered the ways, and in the ways they could not channel to avoid drawing machin shin. but what prevented them from breaking free as soon as they got out? at least in the books, while everyone was screaming "she's obviously black!!!!" at the pages, she was still officially a regular aes sedai, with actual power to command novices, and she didn't outwardly drop her cover until the end. plot hole.

he is critical of some of the story arcs, characterization, etc. there is a huge difference between saying "some parts of thise 8-hours-long saga are bad" and "all of the 8 hours are bad".

was that the infamous interview where the interviewer was trying really hard to make sanderson look bad? putting aside that that interview already was taking quotes out of context to make them look the worst possible, it was already misquooted in the first place; there is a huge difference between "does not really self edit" and "does not like to self edit". i mean, i really do not like to wake up early in the morning, but you'd need better than that to build a case that i'm skipping work. all of that is an attack on prose. sure, nobody is disputing that prose is the weak spot of sanderson. is weak prose enough to conclude one is a "bad writer" when he excels at many other things?

yes, it is. but better a show of inconsistent quality than a consistently bad show. though i suppose if it was consistently bad we would all hate it and would not need to have discussions here...

accidentally. he didn't suggest it directly.

sanderson is very humble. which is how he became a good writer, by always striving for more. and I'm quite doubtful he actually said that. I think it must be a case of horribly misquoting out of context, just like people claiming he trashed the wot tv show when he did no such thing. that said, prose is generally acknowledged as one of his weak spots. I actually like its utilitarianism and much prefer it to the flowery descriptions of robert jordan, but that's a tangent. you can't get into his books because of the prose, I respect that. but all the stuff about his books being cheap and dumb and not really thought out, that's patently false. that is very wrong. every book he writes goes through half a dozen different reviews. a dozen, for the really big books. he still manages to keep a good pace. that is even more wrong. ok, i guess you can read it without thinking too much, but really. first of all, even his smaller books come with extensive worldbuilding. and part of the charm is immersing into the world itself. the stormlight archive is roughly as extensive as wot in terms of having detailed different cultures. smaller books are less detailed, but still, they each present unique cultures. And each of that comes with extensive research. he wrote a book with a paraplegic character, he interviewed people with that condition. he wrote a book with a depressed character suffering from ptsd as a result of war, he researched those conditions extensively. and he did such a good job that he got plenty of praise by actual war veterans. he wrote an atheist, he went browsing atheist forums, and once more he got plenty of praise from actual atheists. the science matches too. in one book a character gets ahold of a magic metal; he runs mundane chemical tests on it, as a chemist I can confirm he did an excellent job. he has all kinds of weird planets and the physics always checks, and where it does not check it is explicitly mentioned to be fueled by magic. His books are also littered with hints and easter eggs that most people never find out unless they go ask in the forums. and of course, the magic systems match. he starts with some principles, and he keeps to those. forget all that crap about character power levels being inconsistent. So no, the idea that sanderson churns out cheap, light, thoughtless escapism without any depth, meant to be read and forgotten can't be furthest from the truth. Your friend must have the wrong guy.

why some people can't understand a nuanced analysis and try to categorize everything in terms of hate or love? but how do you define a good writer? based solely on your own opinion, if you don't like him he's bad? brandon is praised by critics. he sells a lot. his plots are strong. any objective measure goes in his favor. you bring 50 shades as counterpoint, but that wasn't a fantasy book - different sales. it relied heavily on fanservice, and was mostly panned by critics. twilight was mostly aiming at one target demographics - I did specify sanderson is popular across all democraphycs specifically because I was anticipating a twilight comparison -, it also relied heavily on a different kind of fanservice, and it also had many poor reviews. it had plot holes and other things that are general hallmark of bad writing. it's clearly not the same thing. plus, those authors didn't write dozens of other books. they were authors who had one successful idea, while sanderson has a half dozen successful sagas. so, sanderson is objectively a good writer. that has got nothing to do with any individual reader liking or disliking him.

i see, you don't like sanderson so you don't like anything he does. and you ascribe the worst motivations to him. seriously, he's sold tens of millions of books. do you really think he would need to hijack a commentary on a tv show to try and win some popularity? the man has a lot of integrity anyway - or if he doesn't, he bluffs extremely, extremely well. finally, while you are free to dislike brandon sanderson, you certainly cannot say that you do not rate him as a writer. he is perhaps the most popular fantasy writer of the moment, and not just in some specific demographics. his general skill is beyond doubt

Please! Sanderson does not need to chase likes on social media like a wannabe influencer. He already has a job, a source of notoriety. More important, he's got more integrity than that. And in fact, his comments are balanced. He always points out both the good and the bad. Those that are trying to use him to justify extreme opinions clearly are wilfully ignoring half of what he says.

Is there a chance somebody pious put up a summary somewhere? Anyway, from a few reddit comments i get that there aren't major revelatiobs. What brandon praises as good moments and critics as bad moments are more or less the same that are mostly agreed even between supporters and detractors of the show

There is one scene where seanchan are attacked by trollocs and the horses go wild. Not much, at least a nod. Meanwhile, in the tv show, mashadar turns a horse to dust while the other horse nearby apparently doesn't give a f***

people keep throwing around that "unrealistic" word when they don't like something. if we use our own past as a comparison, that's perfectly realistic. perhaps he was the apprentice, then the blacksmith died of a sudden disease leaving him as the sole blacksmith. happened all the time. what's unrealistic is girls in their late teens being unmarried. egwene not having a half dozen brothers and sisters. except wot is not our past, so we can't use that as a comparison anyway. i disagree. the thing is, that plot never went anywhere. we never see any other darkfriend seeking redemption in the books. no, that one does not count, she was never a dedicated darkfriend who had a change of heart, she always wanted to undermine them. sure, jesus rand was a nice moment, but ultimately that subplot could be excised from the books without any issue. it's best discussed as sanderson's first law: the ability of an author to solve conflicts with magic is directly proportional to how much the public understands said magic. in a soft magic system, i.e. one where there are no rules, you can always use magic to complicate life for the characters, becase that creates tension. but if you use it to solve problems, it just comes out of nowhere. it's a deus ex machina. the public loses tension, because they know the problem will be handwaved with someone flicking their fingers and saying "hey, it's magic!". in the lord of the rings magic has no defined rules, and the protagonists are all regular people - frodo, aragorn - that have to find mundane ways to solve magical problems. in a hard magic system, magic has hard rules. the public understands them, and the author can use them to solve problems in clever ways, just like the gadgets in a james bond movie. magic is just another tool, that can be used entertainingly. in the mistborn saga, allomancers can put up complex magical fighting that are entertaining because their moves follow their basic principles. of course, if you have a hard magic system, you can't just make up stuff as the plot demands. I also disagree that it's easier to use soft magic as a plot device. sure, it's easier to use it to create problems. i suppose one could say it's also easy to use it to solve the plot, but it's extremely unsatisfying. one major criticism of the sword of truth saga is that the plot would pile bigger and bigger problems upon the protagonist, only for him to just suddenly magic it all away in the last ten pages. and then forgetting how he did it. why would a reader get invested in the plot, if it's just going to be magicked away with no discernible logic? unfortunately, hollywood does not seem to value internal consistency too much.

it's a pity that this thread got derailed. then again, there's not much else to be said, the first post was great and not much to add. I wonder if using the sword will be even part of rand in the show? I mean, what does change about rand if he never learns the sword? everything he accomplish with the sword, he could do with the power, or could be skipped. even bashere calls him on it, saying learning the sword for him is silly, at best it's a personal pasttime. the only time rand actually needs the sword is in far madding. which happens in the slog, and so can be cut entirely even according to show detractors 😛. or, even if it was not cut, he could get lan or aviendha or a team of aiel to do the fighting for him. or he could not learn the sword and still learn aiel martial arts. if rand stopped using the sword entirely in this version of the wheel, I don't think the story would suffer in any way.

this is a wonderful point. however, it does not impact the show much, because the bast majority of that "power" is used from book 4 onward. we already had subtle hints. rand already has the loialty of the emond fielders. masema looked at him in awe. avienda said car'a'carn. alayne is loial to him through egwene and nynaeve. as for the rest, rand journey is just starting. just like in the books, the first books are about rand accepting his fate as dragon reborn; then, from book 4, rand unites the world. and it's worth noting that for all his ta'veren, he had to fight hard to get the various nobles.

her toh scene with the aiel is one of my favourites in the books. it's a great scene overall, and it's significant in the plot. i think it's very likely it will be included