well, episode 8 proves me right.

I don't know other writers, but I follow brandon sanderson, and he goes through a half dozen revisions on every book - those revisions include rewriting significant portions. so, there's nothing shameful to "admit". writing a book is much akin to some project of engineering - in that the first prototype will never work properly, and it will need several iterations to get it right. an engineer may just come up with an idea for a new gadget and have a perfect idea on how to build it before even going to the drawing board, but that first idea will never work on the first try and will always need tweaking.

actually, he also has his subplot with the illuminators, I can't think they will cut out "dragons" from the story entirely (here being deliberately obscure to avoid having to use spoilers). and if they merged the ending of books 2 and 3, his first cue to go down that plot should be right now. So, I'd prefer he blows two different things next episode.

no, not really. yes, he had a storyline planned in advance. he had some events that he knew he wanted to show. the first book already has some of min viewings related to mat adventures among the finns. however, what he had was a vague outline. he didn't have a detailed plot before writing book 1. He didn't have a detailed plot even when he died. when brandon sanderson overtook writing - after RJ spent his last months writing scenes and notes - what was there was less a cohesive plot and more a line of stepping stones; character arcs would go in certain directions, some main events would happen. the skeleton of a story, we can say. and some bits of flesh in the form of some written scenes. but some bones were also missing. iirc, there wasn't a single line on padan fain. even what was there was an outline, and some of it was changed in revision. and before someone say "omg they changed his books", that's what always happens in the editing process. An author starts with an outline, but as he writes some things just don't work. some plot points are no longer consistent with who the characters have become. there are editors for this. so, while it's not correct to say that RJ expanded his writing gradually as he came up with new ideas, it's also incorrect to frame him as a genius mastermind who plotted a 4.4 million words saga from the beginning before even writing the first book - and then always stuck to the initial plan, because the initial plan was that good. no, the truth is somewhere in between. yes, he had a general outline. but he also wrote the first three books to be self-conclusive, because he didn't knew if he would get a contract for a new book afterwards - and those endings aged pretty poorly, because they tried to provide forced endings to a story that hasn't ended. yes, he had a general idea of the arcs of his major characters. but he also had many minor characters he didn't knew what to do with. he had a lot of blank spaces to fill, and sometimes the stuff he used to fill those blank spaces took on a life of its own.

in the last book we see what the confrontation with the dragon actually was, and in that retrospect all the forsaken were doing made sense. however, that's a very big spoiler, and can't be revealed prematurely. unfortunately, that means that people will be left confused as to why ishy does not just kill rand.

I hope not that. She's a good woman. Many in her position would have protected their son. Many cahirienin nobles would have sworn to the shadow themselves. She already suffered much, and in the end she sacrificed a lot to stand up for right. I'd be really sad to see her end like that

i refer to clashing for gender roles. like, rand wants to protect women by keeping them in the kitchen, while egwene wants to go out and do dangerous stuff. in our world, we got this fight when we transitioned from the first to the second value. in wot, the conflict is permanent and it never resolved into either "women must stay safe in the kitchen" or "women can go do stuff". it's a general attitude, more subtle than political power.

and after 3000 years, they are still stuck in that sort of halfway state where women are struggling for parity without getting it fully? anyway, aes sedai locked in a tower does not change the demographic equation. the world needs children. actually, what changes the equation is highly effective herbal medicine. it appears mortality rate is much lower than it is in real ancient societies, wisdoms and their other equivalents are a lot more effective than ancient doctors

Yes, I can forgive her for being inexperienced and suffering from culture clash. But I have a really hard time forgiving her for treating like trash somebody who's shown nothing but unconditioned devotion to her. yes, we really were barbarians in the past - probably people from the future will look at us and judge us barbaric too, and that's good. it's a sign of progress. that said, there were some pretty big differences. In the past, until a couple centuries ago, marriage had little to do with love. Marriage was an institution to make children to perpetuate a family. At the higher levels of society it was also used to forge political alliances. Women married very young, because the purpose of the whole business was making children. A good third of the newborn would die before reaching adulthood, and adults also could die at any time, so a constant influx of new children was required to perpetuate society. A woman then made children as full time job. Often they'd have a child every year, there's no way to handle that with maternity leaves. In additon, a woman also cared for the house, because it's physically light activities (at least compared to working the fields, or working in factories before steam engines) that can be performed while pregnant, or while carrying toddlers, or anyway while having toddlers in the next room and keeping an eye on them. the men would work outside and bring money to sustain the family, because society at the time was too poor for social welfare programs. So, while the woman was preferably young, the men was generally adult, with a job and economical means. Choosing a partner looked less like modern dating, and more like a job interview. And everyone was hoping that the new husband and wife would love each other, and sometimes it happened, and sometimes it didn't. Dante was pining all the time for Beatrice, but Beatrice was given to a wealthy merchant. Dante took in marriage Gemma Donati, doughter of one of his main political allies. We know that Dante and Gemma disliked each other. They still had 5 children that survived to adulthood, meaning they probably had 8 to 10 total. Because it was their social duty to make children. Because the marriage was about the political alliance, and seeking love was seen as something for immature kids. As for the "unalienable right to the pursue of happyness", at the time happyness was a luxury for the privileged; the necessities of survival came first. And a lot of the "traditional marriage values" sink their roots into that past, and that's why they clash so hard with modern values. From the big things (for example, men would obviously lead, because if you marry a 30 years old man trained in outside business with a 14 years old girl who was taught to raise children and perform household chores, of course the men would have more experience to deal with issues not related to childbearing) to the small things (the new couple should not see each other the morning before the marriage, because we'll be cleaning and dressing up both of them; those guys barely know each other, it will be easier for them to love each other if they have a good first impression). While WoT is inspired by the values of the 80s and 90s; a time of change, when women had achieved parity in the law, but were still struggling to have that parity actually recognized. When men were still used to rule, but women were contesting that. Which is why wot gender dinamics feel so ridiculous to me. I can recognize them as something completely out of place for that world. A product of a different society. Worse, they are presented as a great universal constant in the struggle between the genders, when in actuality they were a thing born some decades earlier, and already going out of fashion a few decades later. My suspension of disbelief takes a blow every time I see an "ancient society" where it's not commonplace to have a half dozen children for family, but seeing values that are clearly the product of a very specific historical situation elevated to universal constants hits particularly hard.

Maybe they'll give her a prostetic one by splattering concrete on her face, would that be good for you?

Really. It's not difficult for characters to use the privy or have breakfast. It's not difficult for liandrin, inside a secret passage and possibly with dozens of accomplices, to sneak unconscious people around. In the relevant thread, people have given a half dozen possible suggestions. You, instead, keep evading my questions. I think you are arguing in bad faith, and has been for a while

nicely spotted. i also never noticed the white tower in the distance. it still does feel wrong to have the snow here and green meadows in what can't possibly be much lower elevaton. but more important, i wonder how many of those details a casual viewer may actually catch

maybe moiraine will apologize later. just like how she first was rude to her sister, then apologized. i really hope that moiraine will apologize.

well, then either the algorithm is worse than we think - because many of us never saw any youtube ad for wot despite being fans - or it's a lot better than we think - because the algorithm recognized we are fans enough that we would follow wot and know the s2 release through other channels, and therefore it would be pointless to show us the ad - like the metaphorical preaching to the choir. i don't know which is scarier. in any case, there was an objective lack of advertising, caused by the workers strike. some dump in the ratings is to be expected. how big? no idea. I'm not qualified to say if keeping this show is lucrative for amazon or not

mat got his development starting in book 3. he was kinda useless before that yes, those are two legitimate issues that bothers me too. there are plenty of issues with the show, just like there are plenty of issues with the books; but both are good overall. she came out as petulant in the books too. especially the early books, before she learned to control it. thom was a great character, and he'll be back in S3. elayne introduction was great, i was very happy to see her. because all people wanting to flame go to non-moderated sites, while all the people wanting to have a civil discussion flee from those sites. you imply this site is subject to censorship, but if that was the case, this thread would not have been approved in the first place.

A point nobody else made, but after thinking a bit, i'm glad rand and moiraine went with lanfear. the reason is that i'm quite tired of media promoting stupid defiance for its own sake against insurmontable odds. in pretty much any kind of story, the hero never gives up, never surrender, even when it would make totally perfect sense to do it and come back later in the future. and the story generally shield them from the consequences of that. geralt is clearly outmatched by vilgefortz. he puts up a good fight, eventually he gets wounded and his sword shattered. that's it, if he was clearly outmatched when they were both fresh, now that he's got no weapon and wounds he certainly can't do anything. the villain could be willing to let him go, but no, he forces a confrontation to the end. just to show that the hero will not give up. zoro clearly has no hopes against mihawk, but he still forces a confrontation, and keeps on forcing the confrontation up to the point of asking to be killed. luke knows he's falling for a trap, yoda tells him he's not ready, yet luke still goes to fight darth vader. in all those cases, the heroes could have retreated and waited for a better opportunity. nope, we have to promote stupid determination over common sense. determination is good, but not when it pushes you to do something clearly dumb and likely to get you killed for no reason. this kind of behavior does get people killed in real life. so, in the face of all that, moiraine and rand being like "we have no hopes against lanfear, but she seems like she does not want to kill us right now, so let's play along and wait for a better opportunity" is a wonderful counterpoint.

maybe callandor will be in falme? or maybe they will get it later. after all, it was very underwhelming in the books that rand got a super powerful saangreal and never did anything with it for several books. as a warder, lan's job is to protect moiraine. he sees not realizing she was shielded to be a failure of his

so, they will uncollar egwene by chopping off her head and reattaching it. i suppose they will also chop off renna's head and reattach it. because they want to bring renna inside the kennels as part of their disguise, and a damane wearing a suldam robe would draw attention. oh, well, nynaeve is the expert at healing, so i guess she can chop off her hear, change renna's dress, then reattach the head

you still haven't told me how you think they put the grey dress on ryma, or how they are going to keep the cloth from fraying and decaying over decades, or how they can avoid the damane from getting pressure ulcers, or parasites, or other kind of wounds under the collar, that could infect and be deadly if not treated - which they cannot treat because there is a collar in the way and seanchan don't know healing

no, it can only be assumed to be unreliable when there are very good reasons to doubt it. like, for example, when it would create big plot holes and worldbuilding holes that could easily be solved if what we were told was not true. Otherwise, you still haven't told me how you think they put the grey dress on ryma, or how they are going to keep the cloth from fraying and decaying over decades, or how they can avoid the damane from getting pressure ulcers, or parasites, or other kind of wounds under the collar, that could infect and be deadly if not treated - which they cannot treat because there is a collar in the way and seanchan don't know healing

errr.... do you think they can live for centuries always keeping the same dress? do you think it would be physically possible? even if the dress could somehow remain whole, do you have an idea what kind of healt problem it could cause? damane may be animals, but they are expensive ones. historically, expensive animals were often treated better than people, at least as far as ensuring they'd survive how did they even put the grey damane dress on ryma since they put the collar on her while she was dressed differently?

i can't accept it because the collar makes it impossible for the damane to change clothes. even if they were to not wash, the cloth would still decay in a few years

you may not have noticed a few weeks ago when we discovered the trick; you have to download the episodes and watch them from downloaded. they are better quality, and with better light. i also couldn't make out much beofre i discovered that trick

ok, just started but i'm stopping here because, as much as i wanted to see the gitara foretelling, that scene really does not work. first, the blood snow. the batle was in winter. shaiel if fighting in the snow. but there's no snow in tar valon, not anywhere that we can see. in fact, the vibrant greens we see in the fields in the distance imply late spring. the season does not fit. the juxtaposition between the scenes of the fight and the foretelling, with gitara saying it is happening now, only highlights it. and second, gitara flinches from the stab on the side, as if she was connected to shaiel and was feeling the blow. then she delivers her short speech. then she dies as shaiel dies. a birth can take hours; tens of minutes even in the best case, and a mother stabbed is probably not a best case. so either shaiel managed to delive the child in 30 seconds, or gitara took half an hour to say her few sentences. I liked lan telling moiraine that she has to trust somebody because she can't do everything alone. i can totally picture somebody telling the same thing to rand eventually. it can be a powerful moment. oh, siuan is wonderful. i really hope they keep her part in the story - wait, she was wonderful until she decided to keep rand trapped. minus 100 coolness points for you, siuan huh, aviendha gets beaten by bain and chiad. I guess she made some mistake that caused the death of jolien, and she's paying toh. I don't like that they are cutting out of the sequence, though. the public will need to have it explained. they actually managed to explain what toh is in half a minute. kudos to the scriptwriters for that. the aiel reaction in front of the sea could have been funnier. i was hoping barthanes was not a darkfriend this time. he looked like such a nice guy. wait, wait, wait. barthanes will try to kill moiraine; does that mean lan will get to do something for once? is verin revealed as a black? she didn't say the amyrlin sent for her, she said that the amyrlin needed her, which is vague enough to respect the oath. but the part about the order? is that a direct lie, or a mistake in translation? so, in this version of the story tying waves was a talent lost since millennia? it certainly explains why moiraine didn't suspect it. however, tied shield was a perfect explanation for how liandrin carried the girls through the ways. i hope they considered the implications, and won't open plot holes. the end was... surprising. and confusing.

But she had no water except the brooch, which she could not drink. And she was clearly dehydrated as time progressed. So... what happened there?