2 hours ago, TheDreadReader said:

 

It may depend on where Ishy exists in relation to the seal.  The whole "I was never bound" thing always confused me.  Is he partially sealed in the bore but close enough that he can still reach out beyond the bore?  Or, is he not in the bore itself?

 

If you think of him as being in the bore itself (even partially) then it would make sense that he would need someone fully within the "pattern" to break the seal because it exists within the pattern much in the same way that Rand has to have the seals fully broken later.

 

 

 

I am thinking that she is shielded despite the comments of both Brandon and Rafe.   I think they responded in a way that created Aes Sedai level wiggle room. 

 

 

She must be shielded as her bond with Lan isn't broken - he tells her to unmask the bond when he reaches her at the Eye.

Can someone explain to me what has happened to Lan's bond as of the end of season 1?  I think from his final scene with Moiraine that they are still bonded to each other and the bond is just (semi-?) permanently masked..?  Won't that really diminish the impact of breaking the bond later in the series..?  I'm a bit lost on this.

1 hour ago, Mailman said:

Amalisa scene was terrible.

Contrast it with Moiraine at the start.

Moiraine a experienced powerful Aes Sedai has trouble dealing with 50 trollocs.

Amalisa a Tower wash out coupled with 1 powerful channeler (Nyn) 1 newbie who has been channeling for a month (Egw) and 2 randoms from the city who are not Aes Sedai. And they wipe out a force of at least 10,000 trollocs.

 

Simply unbelievable.

Stupid for them to be standing outside by themselves unless they knew the level of destruction that they could perform. All for the sake of what Judkins thought would look like a cool shot of the trollocs charging 5 women alone on the battlefield.

It also goes against the whole idea that the White Tower only lets people leave when they have learned enough to use the one power safely and not hurt themselves or others.  Why would they teach Amalisa to lead a circle if they weren't going to teach her to withstand the allure of drawing too much of the one power?

Finally caught up with this episode and most of the comments.

After reading a few pages of comments before watching I was expecting to hate thos episode but actually ended up really loving the Rand and "DO" parts. Best part of the series so far for me by miles. Acting was really good, writing somehow captured the characters really well and the I think the changes to plot here were an improvement; they incorporated lots of good elements from the books but recast in a simpler, more visually compelling way. This is the stuff of good adaptations in my book.

The rest of the episode was a lot less satisfying. There are plenty of good bits in there, but they're all jumbled in with rubbish sloppy writing and world building. For example, I loved the way the circle of women was shown visually and I think this scene did a great job of demonstrating the allure and danger of channeling. But at the same time this scene had the bizarre pseudo-resurection of Nynaeve by Egwene which changes so many aspects of lore so casually and for very little purpose that I can see.

The writers seem to be playing very fast and loose with the rules of RJ's magic system. I understand it may have needed modification to translate to TV but there is no sense of cohesion with the changes; it feels lazy.

Thoughts/Questions

Does Nynaeve have a block? Are blocks even a thing in the TV series? I'm guessing the burnout recovery impacts Nynaeve and I'm assuming the writers want to make her cautious of circled to make her linking with Rand to heal saidin a big deal (and possibly the Bowl of the Winds circle, too) but those things are already big deals. I don't get why they're adding new dimensions to her character when there is already too much to do justice to.

What's going on with Moiraine's and Lan's bond..? All that set up with Steppin and in left thinking what was the point. I'm hoping I'm misinterpreting and someone can explain it to me, but my take is Lan can't tell the difference between the bond being masked and broken...in which case there is no big emotional impact on him (or any Warder beyond losing a connection to a long standing friend). So Steppin's suicide was not related to the bond being broken and instead he was just really sad about Ketene dying...in which case how is an episode setting up the nature of the Warder bond justified..?

38 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbr.com/wheel-of-time-rafe-judkins-interview/amp/

 

Gawyn confirmed lmao

 

 

 

That quote on Nynaeve and Egwene really worries me. It feels like a bit misunderstanding of the relationship between Egwene and Nynaeve from the books 

I agree with comments that the writing is the weak spot. Some of the dialogue is awful and just totally uncharacteristic of the characters or RJ's world (Nynaeve's use of 'blow smoke up our asses' made me cringe into the depths of my sofa). 

7 hours ago, Deviations said:

I think Sanderson did a credible job.  Very tight spot for someone to come in and finish this series.

My first exposure to Sanderson was through the end of WoT. I remember thinking (completely unfairly looking back on it) what a mediocre writer he must be as he'd struggled to capture Mat, you could clearly feel the styles were different, etc..

When I actually read some of his own books over the last couple of years I was so impressed at the depth of his characters, and the fascination of his plots. Made me realise what a tough job it must have been to finish WoT.

1 hour ago, KakitaOCU said:

Why wife read the scene correctly with no book knowledge.  I wasn't using book knowledge to read the Perrin/Egwene/Rand thing.  So not sure the point you're making.

 

 

Yes, I'm LEAN and Sigma 6 certified and work with analytics on a daily basis.  ?  But if you want to look at it from that perspective then you accept the show is successful and a majority of people watching have no problem with it.  As RT shows.

If you are going to try and use Dragonmount as a sampling.. No.  This place is specifically home to book fans and more so dedicated book fans, which is not an even sampling of the show's audience or the population as a whole.  It's stacking the deck, which is dishonest from a statistics standpoint.

 

Two issues with that.

First: I'm talking about how big the audience is versus this vocal minority we're part of, which your point has no relevance to.

Second:  Season one was solid and well received and supported by the author.  It went downhill after season 2 when it completely walked away from the series and tries to shoehorn the Elfstone characters into other stories they didn't work for.  If we were looking at JUST season 1, it didn't do too bad and even now it's still over 70% fan positive.

It's pretty clear it was canceled due to Season 2's lack of budget and payoff combined with trying to be on multiple platforms which divided the viewing base and made it unsuccessful numbers wise for any one network to want to keep it.

 

 

 

 

I am being suuuuper nitpicky here, but just because the show is popular doesn't mean people liked the specific scene being discussed here. The general reaction to the show as a whole doesn't necessarily have any correlation to the reaction to one scene from it.

5 hours ago, Mrs. Yojimbo said:

 

Sure, the books still exist. But I don't think it's unreasonable for lovers of those books who have long looked forward to seeing their beloved story translated into film to be disappointed when that translation doesn't feel like their beloved story.  (For example, The Hobbit trilogy broke me heart.)

Agree completely.  I was a fan of the WoT, GoT, HP, and LotR books before any of them were turned into films, and WoT is definitely the adaptation that sits least well with me, the Hobbit movies excepted (I wouldn't say I dislike the show; more that for everything I like about it, there is something I dislike as well).  I'm trying to work out why that is through the episode discussions each week, but so far I'm struggling to put my finger on what it is that makes this adaptation less enjoyable for me than the others.

6 hours ago, Windigo said:

 

What I love about this is how closely it follows the early book discussions.  If like me you remember the early discussions as books came out, there were Perrin, Rand, Mat, Egwene or Nynaeve haters, I do not think there were too many that agreed on liking all characters, there was always at least some faction that thought someone was annoying, boring or a waste of pages (Except Bela).  Much of that was often related to the ages, or real life situation of the reader at the time they read it. 
Even early I was a fan of Nynaeve, I remember many discussions on how she was not  just a pain or was not important.  
I think too that many of our reactions to the show portrayals probably align to our favorite or not so favorite book characters.  While looking at Nynaeve from show perspective only they are doing a good job of setting up her role, as a fan of hers in the books I find more issue with how they have changed her character than I do others I did not reading  about as much.   

 

I think you're spot on there.  It's much harder handling the disappointment of seeing an 'imposter' in the place of your favourite character that you've been longing to see realised on TV for ages than it is to see a character you weren't particularly attached to get an upgrade.

7 hours ago, expat said:

On the question of the visual media and the changes required.  Shakespeare could get away with a "To be or not to be" soliloquy, but that isn't the WOT (either the book or the show).  Matt's defining character was revealed best during his many POVs where he debated being selfish or a hero.  Even Shakespeare only had one of these per play.  So the show had to generate this tension in another way so when he did something heroic, it was understood that there was this inherent inner challenge.  Was changing his parentage the best way to do it?  Maybe not, but it does provide a background allowing viewers to understand that his heroic deeds weren't natural, but a choice. 

My take is the same affect could have been achieved while keeping the character more similar to the book version. It's equally out if character for showMat with his dark past and 'inner darkness' and bookMat with his lack of sense of responsibility and flippancy to do something heroic. They could have shown either personality on screen through a series of small scenes or reactions.

7 hours ago, expat said:

I'm seeing a strong disconnect here about what constitutes a character's arc.  Some are arguing what they did while others are arguing about how their character's mental state (why they did those things) changed over the books.  Both Lan and Matt are examples of this.  One person remarks that Lan barely changed over the books while another says that he did great things so he had a strong arc.

 

Same statements with regard to Matt - little character arc over the first several books with the response of looks at all the important things he did/done to him.

 

If we can't agree on what constitutes the character arcs, we can't agree on how well the show represents them and how good were the decisions that drove the arc.  Currently the two sides are arguing past each other while thinking they are debating the same thing.  Not happening.

 

My opinion, things that the character did/had done to them are not important to their arc.  Why they did those things/why they put themselves in the position to have those things done to them constitute the arc.  I understand that others think that the character arcs include other things.  They might be right.

I agree with you on what constitutes a character's arc, but that hasn't always been what is being discussed. For example, when I was listed Mat's major plot points I was pointing that out to show he was a major character (not that they constituted his character arc).

Now, I actually tend to feel that as well as being a major character Mat does actually have an interesting arc in terms of development from early in the series, but clearly others disagree on that.

10 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Didn't even think about that second point and I should have, since it's clear Rafe is treating books 1-3 as a singular story to adapt.  This fits VERY much with how he acts to Mat and Perrin in TGH.

 

 

I don't know that having important things happen to you makes you not a background character.  Look at Lan.  I think it's more the complete lack of focus on him in the first 2 books.  (Does he even have any PoV chapters?)

Also, with bringing Moraine to the big screen they are drawing in New Spring which she is the main character of (Or the deuteragonist at least) Having the advantage of knowing New Spring makes it very easy to flesh her out (And Lan).  Where as all of Mat's development and cool stuff is coming, so you can't draw on that as easily.

No harm in disagreeing, I absolutely feel other takes are valid opinions.  Just debating the point.  ?  As someone else said (And I'm bad with names, so my apologies on being vague)  us all discussing the changes and pro's con's, aspects of them is awesome.

Totally agree. I find it really interesting finding out how different people react to different characters. It just goes to show that whatever RJ or Rafe writes, people will respond to it differently.

47 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

There's a slew of variables that aren't being taken into account.  Couple of obvious ones.

First the Simple and obvious:  In the books Mat is a person who plays a prank or two, then yells words in a funny language, then gets corrupted by a dagger, then is a jerk.  This is his entire arc until post healing in book 3.  It is boring, uninteresting, provides no actual development and tells us nothing about this character.

How invested will new viewers be in him?  You're asking him to be a Scrappy.

Second, the less obvious.  How do you get a quality caliber actor to sign on for a nothing spot in the background for 2-3 seasons?   You're not going to succeed unless you find an actor who's a book fan and wants that role specifically and that's not generally how actors work.  

Those are two really casual observations I can throw up.  If I spent time delving in I imagine I'd find more obscure and secondary points that I just don't think about because I'm not a TV producer.

Ok, I can see your points. I think it comes down to seeing book Mat very differently. I enjoyed Mat from the beginning and I think his arc was interesting - typical slightly foolish light-hearted village boy starts spouting battle cries in an ancient language is interesting to me! Then his whole personality does a 180 as he's corrupted by the dagger. I really don't see what is boring about that so I guess this is just personal preference. I think the sad backstory has been really overdone and makes Mat feel more generic.

With regards to your second point, I wouldn't say Mat is a background character. By the time we've reached the end of tSR (which I guess will be around season 2-3 of the show) he has:

• Spoken an ancient language that he's never heard spoken;
• Been cursed by a dagger;
• Been put in mortal peril by bring separated from the dagger;
• Blown the fricking Horn of Valere and become linked to it;
• Developed mystical memories of events from hundreds/thousands of years ago;
• Rescued the WonderGirls from the Black Ajah;
• Been trapped in a Bubble of Evil;
• Gone through the twisted ter'angreal;

And even if he really is a background character, it's clearly possible to elevate a character with less page time to one with more screen time successfully (see Moiraine) without changing their fundamental character.

I'm not disagreeing with you - just saying other takes on this are valid, too.

1 hour ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

Why does it have to happen so quickly.? Whatever happened to the slow burn,  forbidden love and all that.  To answer my own question I will speculate that the intent is to now play up the Nyn Mo conflict over Lan.  Mo has the close mentally  intimate relationship with Lan that Nyn can only dream of even though they did the deed (way to soon).  Anyway going so fast can take all the anticipation out of it.  Just think about Rand's sword lessons.  The first lesson started the first night out of EF for all of the boys in the books.  Anyway WAFO applies here,

I thought the same at first, but given Moiraine has pretty much given the relationship the greenight I'm not sure how much potential for conflict there will be?

1 hour ago, Ralph said:

 

For sure

 

But we then would find it difficult to relate to his romance with Nynaeve happening so quickly, and to feel invested in it

I think this comes down to individual reaction as I felt invested in their star crossed relationship from the end of tEotW (and it's not like the book uses the benefit of the written medium to show us Lan developing feelings for Nynaeve as we don't get a POV for him). I accept I'm maybe in a minority here though, as I know a lot of book only fans who felt that relationship wasn't developed well.

I like that the showrunners have a good chunk of on screen time to Lan and Nynaeve's relationship... I'd just have preferred to see their interactions be more subtle and in character for Lan.

Last of the Mohiccans!

2 minutes ago, dwn said:

In a book we get a detailed window into Mat (or any character) via his own thoughts and internal monologues. A visual medium simply can't do that--voiceovers in old-school detective shows notwithstanding. Therefore the show needs to use or create scenes and situations that clearly and succinctly reveal those character traits that could otherwise be missed, like Mat's selflessness and bravery.

Hmm. I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure I feel the changes for Mat were necessary for those reasons. I think it would have worked ok on TV to show Mat as a silly teenager, then show how the dagger changes his personality.

I definitely see that the showrunners might think the changes to Mat's personality might be more appealing to their target audience, but I don't think his book character would have been impossible to translate to TV in at least a somewhat more intact fashion.

40 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Okay. But that's hyperbole. The series has not changed "nearly everything about its source material". The most significant changes were alterations to two major characters' backstories that allowed the writers to quickly frontload character information and the reorienting of the plot to Tar Valon as opposed to Camelyn.

I wasn't saying that this adaptation has changed nearly everything about the source material (I agree that it hasn't). It was about adaptations in general, and I was just pointing out that in the case of an adaptation where only the title was the same (as in the scenario given by the person I was replying to) the new writers would be relying heavily on their own writing talent.

38 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

The show chose to use the tools of visual-medium storytelling to depict Mat as a troubled young man with a bit of a dark streak, and used the brokenness of his home life as an Impetus for him being troubled and embracing the darker aspects of his personality. 

 

Its not my place to determine whether or not these decisions and the changes generated by them were necessary because I'm not the one who made said decisions.

 

I would also add that it's possible to disagree with the narrative choices that were made without calling into question the viability of those choices or the integrity of the people who made them.

Im sorry, I'm not really getting the point on the use of visual medium. I understand what you're saying with regards to how the changes to Mat can support his motivation and potentially other changes to his character and plot that are to come. The bit I'm not getting is what about the switch to TV made this change necessary..? 

For Rafe's vision of the story these changes were necessary, but I don't think that equates to these specific changes being necessary because of the change in medium..? (Sorry, I may have misunderstood something here!)

1 hour ago, Ralph said:

 

 

 

It is more that they cannot fathom why some of these changes have occurred, because they see them as unnecessary, since they love the books so much. 

 

Some of them are therefore ascribing nefarious agenda-driven motives to the show runners, which obviously creates a self-consuming spiral.

 

I think you are spot-on here. I've been reading and re-reading the books for about twenty years and I had so been looking forward to seeing my favourite characters on screen. Of course I'm going to be disappointed when the Lan I see isn't recognisable as the one I know from the books (going with Lan here as he seems to be one of the most divisive character modifications).

Having said that, I don't consider myself a 'purist' (don't think that's a very nice or helpful term, but I've seen it used on here ?). I absolutely love some of the changes - Logain's new material is fantastic for example.

1 hour ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Yep.

 

The 'purists' don't seem to be willing to let the people making the show actually use any of the tools of visual-medium storytelling and instead want a 'purely as written' depiction of this world and story, which is something that can't exist.

I really disagree. I think in an ensemble cast you quite often get a 'strong, silent' type that viewers respond well, too. It wouldn't work if all the characters were like that, but I think one out of a big group is fine. 

I think it's actually a well-enjoyed trope when you have a stoic, 'emotionless' character who then steps in to help in some way/shows emotional walls breaking down, etc.. Seeing Lan's transformation from someone who was married to death and duty into a mentor figure for Rand and loving husband for Nynaeve would have been beautiful on TV, in my humble opinion.

2 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

For me personally, when they make huge changes that I hate. I hope they won't do that. ? 

 

Has Rafe said those things?

?

Not that I'm aware of. A review on the Dragonmount main page discussed the question of the kind of masculinity bookLan and TVLan represented (not sure if the writer had any direct info from Rafe). I wasn't trying to suggest Rafe had said those things - just that those are two of the possible motivations people seem to be assuming he may have had in changing Lan. I'm kind of interested as to whether the rationale for the changes makes them more or less acceptable to people.

2 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

@RhienneAgain There is no right or wrong way to adapt something.

 

An adaptation that changes everything about its source material other than the names of the characters and the basic overall beats of the story it's adapting is just as valid as an adaptation that doesn't change anything except the way it visualizes sets, costumes, and props relative to how these things were depicted in the source material.

Very true, but an adaptation that changes nearly everything about its source material has to involve the adapter is 'flexing' their own writing. Those changes are made because, presumably, because the new writer wants to improve on the source material in some way (whether to make it more current, to appeal to a new audience, to make a character more interesting).

2 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

Rafe is adapting WoT. Not fixing it or flexing with his writing skills.

I don't know...where do you draw the line between 'adapting' and 'altering'? I would say 'adapting' means making the changes necessary for the switch between mediums.

I think we're beginning to get into more subjective territory when we look at the treatment of Lan. Is it adapting is Rafe has completely changed Lan's personality because he felt like it? Is it adapting if Rafe completely changed Lan because he felt Lan's version of masculinity was 'wrong' or 'unpalatable to current social norms'?