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

well, in book one moiraine fights aginor or balthamel, and holds one off for a bit. egwene is stronger than moiraine at this point, and possibly more trained in war channeling. i can easily accept the scene. in both scenes it is clear that the foresaken has the upper hand from the beginning. just in the same way that if I got in a boxing match with a trained boxer, there's no way I can win, but if I focus on defence I may be able to hold off for half a minute or so.

I understand that fantasy cities in movies are meant to look good, to provide striking visuals, not to be particularly realistic. still, would it really kill the production to show some farmland around? so far we had 3 cities shown: tar valon was placed in the middle of mountains, with no single sign of human presence outside of it. fal dara instead was in the desert. and now falme, also desert. what is it about a nice green grassland that makes it so unsuitable to settling a major city? are fields of wheat or corn so ugly that the production must eschew them at all cost? my poor suspension of disbelied is suffering.

netflix supposedly does earn a profit, though it doesn't have that much higher number. and people only pay the subscriptions. and that's how it was discovered that the whole tv shows industry was actually a face for a giant money laundering scheme 😁

sorry, i'm too busy spending half of a book as part of a circus to have time for that 😛

the problem with expectations here is that of different media. tv does some things better, books do other things better. and one of the things books do better is plot. in a book, you can spend some pages detailing exactly why a certain character is in a certain place to do something. in a movie, there's no time for that. in general, a book can explain deeply, a movie cannot. so my expectations there are lower, and I can accept - if grudgingly - on a tv show plot holes and ass pulls that would have me throw a book at the wall. on the other hand, tv shows do images. combats, scenery, costumes. I'm never going to complain that swordfights in the book are not as spectacular as they are in a tv show, because the book is more limited there, and i have lower expectations of what a good book fight is.

only 1 billion total minutes? well, I had no idea what are normal viewership numbers, but I find it very weird. how can they recoup their expences if they put 100 millions into a show and 2.5 million people watch it? they'd need to earn 40$ for each viewer to break even. you sure your math is right? in any case, my point had nothing to do with getting book readers to watch the show. my point was that there aren't enough book readers to pick screenwriters among them, and the books are too long to ask them to read the books after they are hired

yeah, those are actual issues. though with all the times nynaeve just exploded and solved the plot in the first season, putting her down is good to advance her arc. and rand+logain feels a waste, but maybe rand will come back and be trained in the next season. ingtar... was a bit of a wasted arc

interesting. it's the kind of details, unfortunately, that most viewers miss. including myself. by the way, by show lore rand and ishy should be evenly matched - though I doubt they ever fought with the power in the books. it seems show rand is a lot stronger than even his book counterpart.

it's highly coreographed because it's a tv show and must look good, no other reason. even valda himself states that hand gestures are not necessary, so there is no lore issue unless one already decided he hates the show and wants to see the negative in everything. well, if a damane resisted all the torture, and still won't channel in battle. if you cut her tongue, and still she resisted. what else could you do? last extreme, you can try to threaten an even bigger physical punishment, and chopping off hands is pretty much what's left. It will also make the damane less effective, because she can't ride unaided, but the alternative is losing the damane, so it's worth a try. finally, if the damane still resists, I suppose they'll kill her. But I don't think it's actually relevant, because I don't think therre's ever much need for that punishment. Seanchan culture approves of damane, so most girls just go along and obey orders without need for cohercition. The recalcitrant ones can be tortured very effectively. Even aes sedai and wise ones are known to eventually give up. How often do you think it will be actually necessary to chop pieces off a damane? not enough to be a real issue to society. and the possibility of it happening is there as bogeyman; it's one of those cases where the threat is more effective than its execution.

huh... my comment wasn't entirely serious. anyway, hand gestures are unnecessary, and people can be taught to go without them. 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. And here's the second misconception. While the show has a big budget of 100 millions per season, that doesn't mean it's got money to throw away. Sure, they look like a lot of money. Then you have to pay the actors, some of whom are expensive. Even the extras are not cheap; a trolloc may appear one minute in the show, but it took days of work to prepare the prostetics and train the actor. Then you have to pay the set. Emond field does not build itself, you know. how much did they spend to create a whole village, then burn it down? Then there is the cgi, a lot of it in a fantasy show with widespread magic. then there is marketing. consider it all, you don't have much money to spare. with that in mind, can you put in the contract with a screenwriter the need to read the books? if it was a single book, then yes. I'm sure when they filmed the martian everyone majorly involved had read the book, because it was a relatively short book you can read in a couple afternoons. Not so the wheel of time. it takes months to read. And even after you read it once, you still miss most details. So, do you think you can ask so many writers to stop all their work and spend months doing nothing but reading books, just to familiarize with the material? or to do it in their own time? Hopefully you see it's not realistic. what you can realistically do is hire a recognized book expert to sum up and explain to the writers what they need to know. which is exactly what they did, with sarah nakamura.

which is not even all that different from the books, because even in the books there are plenty of things I would have done differently, plenty of storylines that feel forced, stretched, overly contrieved, or just plain unnecessary. but the overall result is a net plus. It's quite easy in 8 hours of show to make a list with a dozen questionable things in the season. it's also easy to make a similar list with a dozen good things. if I may suggest, just mentally retcon - or skim - the things you didn't like and focus on those you like. this is how I appreciate the tv show. the books, too.

on the other hand, since they will be killed if they refuse, it can be argued that they are channeling in the last extreme to defend their life...

you know, in the books 2 powerful one power wielders had a fight sword against quartestaff instead, was that any better? so, you propose that the show goes out of its way to characterize every individual hero of the horn?

You are selling the books short if you think they are little enough dialogue to fit into a tv show and everything else filler descriptive text. very, very short. the books were also full of explanations of the finer points of the plot, long historical excursus, people in their heads thinking on their course of action and their internl struggles. even in conversations, there was plenty on how a character wiggled their finger in a suggestive way and how the other character read volumes in that wiggled finger. no, you really can't take the dialogue of the books and get it equal in the tv show, and get the descriptions ofn the books to set up the environment, and think that will work.

I get the feeling they do not want to give strict rules, because they want to still improvise if the plot needs it. I also get the feeling that this is just normal tv policy. watch the scene without thinking; does it have an emotional impact? if yes, mission accomplished. when you think 10 seconds you see a continuity error? well, people who care about those things - or about getting detailed explanations for stuff - usually read books, and don't watch much tv. it's called segmentation of the market. you give your customers what they want to see. it affects every adaptation.

why does it make no sense? we do have, indeed, seen perrin fight with the sword a lot more than rand. perrin also spent months with the shienarans, who will have taught him some. and he is big and strong, which is always an advantage. what did rand do? practice some forms, maybe? it makes complete sense for perrin to be competent with melee weapons at this point, and it makes absolute sense for him to be better than rand in the show

no, i wasn't referring to that of that. I'm talking of the "wait until they allow you to use the power in battle, and then cause some "accidental" friendly fire" before your suldam realizes it.

heh, but the oath specifies "last extreme". otherwise it would be all too easy for an aes sedai to kill like lanfear did, and then justify it as "those packed up peasants were fertile ground for the covid pandemics that threatens everyone, so I dispersed them"

did I miss something? lanfear already killed the people in cahirien. rand made a deal with her partially to get her to stop, and partially because she's too powerful. unless you are referring to rand killing turak? well, it was self defence. sort of. yeah, rand was still softer at this point of the books. but then, this also encompassed book 3, rand was like this at the end of book 3

you get the point. she used the power as a weapon, despite it not being the last extreme to defend her life - she could have used it against the soldiers, but not the boats that hadn't even noticed her.

on the other hand, it was a very emotional moment, and perhaps the whitecloaks now will come across as something more than closeminded morons. maybe the trial on perrin will have some actual weight behind it. I, for one, am looking forward to perrin pleading guilty and declaring himself ready to face whatever punishment borhnald decides, with bornhald then deciding to give him another chance.

yes, but it wouldn't kill to ask for both. i can forgive minor things, but really, the thing with moiraine. it would have been so easy to have her cut the flows of the damane to free rand, and keep the same plot. this is just a major oversight, and I'm extremely surprised that nobody, from rafe to the other writers to sarah nakamura to the actors themselves who knew about the three oaths, picked up on it and suggested the simple change that would not alter the plot in any other way. It is not a "we don't have the time to explain it fully". it is not a "we had to simplify it". It's not a "we need it to advance the plot". and it's not even "one guy had an oversight and didn't notice". I am dropping my rating of the whole season from 9 to 8 for that single accident.