12 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

The Expanse had the book authors as producers. That must have helped a ton.

My wife and I are huge fans of the expanse.  Both the books and the show.   They did an amazing job in translating the books.  Yes, they had to leave out tons and tons of stuff, but the essence of the story came through, and the characters were true to who they are in the books.  All in all, one of the best adaptations I have ever seen.   One of the best series of books ever and one of the best sci-fi series on tv ever, IMO.

15 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

Managed to watch 90% of it on my commute, he says a lot of things I agree with, here's a rambly summary:

• Lan needed to have something to do at the Blight, he suggested a moment where he defended Nynaeve trying to channel at Trollocs like a Warder and his AS.   He wouldn't even have gotten his Ep 1 fight scene without Sanderson pushing for it. 

Good lord.  As bad as they screwed Lan, imagine if he hadn't even had that one scene that at least shows he is a good swordsman.    

52 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

Nynaeve wasn't dead. I suspect the show will abide by the dead-is-dead rules of the books (timey-wimey weaves aside).

What about the wibbly wobbly weaves?

2 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Even as aged up as they are from the books I wouldn't place them as that old though, and she still seems awfully young to be on any advisory council. I'd say the same of the boys too.

I totally agree that she would seem to be too young to be on the women's circle, since even aged up she is supposedly only 20.  But because she is super-duper possible DR and T'Averen Egwene and not young and inexperienced Egwene having her become a member of the WC fits right in with things in Rafeland.   

4 hours ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Needs a scene with Egwene getting her initiation into being an adult (Hair braiding) but not joining the womans circle (because I just don't see how it would be advisable to have someone who has literally just hit adulthood be on any sort of advisory council/governing body), and a scene of Nynaeve healing or maybe gathering healing herbs.  Can't just have it be all about the boys.

My interpretation of that scene is that they no longer have the hair braiding as part of a girl being recognized as a woman, but only when they are initiated into the women's circle.  After all, it seems pretty evident that Egwene's parents know that she and Rand are shacking up, so she must already be considered an adult.  Of course, in Rafeland you never know.  Maybe sex between children is ok in this version of things.   

11 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Really? Show me where men got a chance to shine in season one?

Lan can't track his own AS. And gave zero advice and had ho plan going into SL.

Tam can't kill a trolloc but Laila can kill at least one.

The boys never got any training and perrin did almost nothing all season. Mat has been reduced to a thief even steals from thr dead.

LTT is shown to be completely wrong and Latra was evelevated to his place in the flashback  

And the list goes on.

 

Lan literally couldn't even track moiraine, he had zero plan in going into SL and failed utterly to take care of the EF5 or give them any advice while there.

 

So yeah, there wasn't one male character that wasn't bloody nerfed at best and incompetent at best in season 1.

Meanwhile women were shown again and again to be powerful, competent and right. 

I am re-reading TDR right now, and Lan's ability to track is highlighted extensively.  When they are in the camp early on Lan offers to go around the perimeter to check and see if the dozens of highly trained Shienarans missed anything, and it was stated not as boasting that he would find anything they missed, but just as a statement of fact.  Even Uno just nods his head acknowledging this.   When Rand runs it is Lan who tracks him, and leaves signs for others to follow because whatever Lan is finding to track is so small that nobody else can even find the sings Rand is leaving.  

And yet he needs Nynaeve to tell him how to track a woman he has been traveling with for almost 20 years.   Uh-huh.  Right.  

7 minutes ago, EmreY said:

 

I've written a lot of things over the years where my first draft doesn't look anything like the final version.  I'd go so far as to bet that everyone has.

 

I grant the evidence is in favour of your more nuanced approach, but it very circumstantial indeed. 

 

Also, how much does Judkins write for the series?

So have I. But I have also written things where I like an idea but had to rewrite it completely because it was so poorly written, but kept the general idea intact.

As far as I know Rafe is credited as having the main writing credits on the 1st and 8th episodes (IMO the absolute worse two episodes in he show).  I think he had secondary writing credits on a couple others.   And as show-runner he would probably have the authority to require re-writes for things he didn't like or want. 

8 minutes ago, EmreY said:

@WoTwasThatI really liked Episode 7.  I did, honestly.  Probably my second favourite of the series.

 

 

 

Except, I hate to repeat this, we were discussing a script that was discarded.  Didn't see the light of day.  Was not used. 

 

 

While this is true, it can also be argued that it speaks to state of mind.  As a writer, just because you discard something because it might be too ham-fisted or would be rejected but the audience (or your editors or publishers) as junk (called "killing your babies" by Stephen King) it doesn't mean your second, or third draft (or subsequent chapters) won't still be influenced by that original one.

11 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

 

Yep, and I am thinking if they made a film adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn and the showrunner claims that Aloy was, in fact, not the protagonist, and gives her like a tenth of her screen time and her feats - all hell would break loose, and it would have been deserved.

 

I think most Hollywood shows would have jumped at the chance to show at least glimpses of badass action moments, and I cannot, for the life me, figure out why they wanted to make Tam lose to one. Is it to make Trollocs appear more scary? No, because right after we see a bunch of geriatric farmswomen kill one. Is it to make Tam be less competent because of old age? Maybe? But why?

 

Blademasters are formally recognized masters of using a blade. They are weapons. It's such a neat part of the worldbuilding, and adds to the mysticism with his heron-marked blade.

 

I remember the show subreddit was all up in arms defending this, saying that Tam could only square off against one Trolloc due to pandemic-induced social distancing or something. And then the original script leaks and you find that Rafe had written this like this from day one. Why?

And the idea that Tam would lose to one because he was fighting in close quarters is ridiculous.   I kinda think that blademasters would learn to fight in close quarters, especially I they were going to be involved in a melee, as often happens in wars.   

And yet Nynaeve manages to kill one with a knife with no problem whatsoever.   

2 hours ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Why not?

Maybe because some of us would like a few details to remain true to the way they were written?

4 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Their problem is they see static as "accurate" and advancing character development as not matching the character.

Without going into super spoilers or anything since I know you're new to the series.  Books 1-5 Lan is a stoic superman who kills all he comes up against and never shows emotion save a few small moments with Nynaeve where he's still reserved and withdrawn.

Then New Spring hits as a prequel and essentially shows the character we see in the TV series, but that gets rationalized as being 20 years earlier and Lan "Got better" since then.

Then Lan from Books 7-11 Steadily develops into what we see in the series.  Then in the Sanderson books he back slides for no logical reason into "I must suicide charge the blight alone"  where he then goes through the same type of development again but with other people instead of just Nynaeve.

Is your "their" supposed to include me?   Because I find it a bit insulting to have someone tell me how I think or feel.   I bet I am not alone in that sentiment.

And I'm sorry, as much I respect a lot of what you write, but it is not wanting things to be STATIC to want characters to act as they were in the first few books or a 14 book saga during the first season of a TV show as opposed to having them act as they are in the last two or three books in said saga almost from the very beginning of the show.  It is wanting characters to be representative of who they are at the beginning of a story instead of skipping to how they are at the end of a story and leave them some room for growth.  Hence my contention that Lan has been butchered.  

5 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

 

Brandon Sanderson flat-out said that Daniel Henney's Lan is 100% the Lan that he (Sanderson) wrote in the final 3 WoT books, so you must not have liked the way the character was written in said books.

I personally did not much like any of the Sanderson books, but even if I did, the Lan of the show being the Lan of the last three books in a 14 book series means that they are robbing him of 11 books of growth.

27 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

Characters done right include....

Moraine, Rand, Nynaeve, Egwene, Loial, Liandrin, Alanna, Siuan, I could keep going.

Characters with changed details but still the same person they were in the books.

Mat, Perrin, Thom, Lan, Min....

Characters actually changed from their in book selves and made worse.

Abell.

You are a most forgiving man.

And BTW I mean this sincerely.  I'm not as flexible.   I think they have butchered some of those characters.   Lan is the worst by far for me, but Rand and Moraine and Mat and Perrin are not far behind.  

I have't really posted all my thoughts about this episode because it would be pretty pointless.  It was such a mess I wouldn't know where to start or stop.  But one thing.  The Horn.  The box was so small and light that I am now calling it The Kazoo of Valere, because there certainly couldn't be anything much larger inside of that box.   

1 hour ago, CaddySedai said:

Resume topic here.

 

Stay on target. 

It says something about me I think that I actually heard these words in my head as the voice of Gold Five (Star Wars: A New Hope)

1 hour ago, CaddySedai said:

 

 I'm terrified which Palm it is meant to fit lmao.

 

 

Maybe whoever that statue in Tremalking was based on?  ?

6 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

 The writers clearly don’t trust their own writing to establish an in-screen relationship that will be impacted when tested and they clearly don’t trust the viewers to understand without them pointing back and saying “see, we spent a whole pointless episode telling you how you’re supposed to feel.”

 

OMG, this is exactly what my wife, a non reader, has been saying.  "I know what they are telling me I should feel, but they aren't showing me why I should feel it"

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

We are veering off topic, so we should probably leave this here - but it's hit or miss. Some characters they really nailed, and some they really reimagined. But the MCU has done a fantastic job of making its characters stay true to themselves.

haha!  I was just about to edit my post to say "sorry for going off topic."

12 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Comic books are not known for their fidelity to a single narrative. The story the MCU is telling just picks and chooses from many different stories that have been told about its characters over the last 70 years. 

 

You simply can't compare the MCU to WoT. It's apples to oranges.

Excellent point.

The genius of theMCU to me is that the characters feel true to who they were in the comics (at least the ones I was reading in the 70's) no matter how much they played with timelines and storylines..    

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

I find this argument disingenuous. No one ever said Lan was a bad horseman. Someone told a story about one time Lan had trouble with a horse. Have you never had friends who won't let you forget that one moment you made an ass of yourself?

 

Of all the things to legitimately complain about, this one is not it. 

I was being facetious. 

16 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

It seems to me that a good majority of the criticisms that some of the people who are unsatisfied with the WoT TV series have been voicing since Christmas Eve stem primarily from a lack of understanding of  - or unwillingness to understand - the realities or nuances of how stories are told in a particular medium (in this case, television), which doesn't really expose flaws in the show so much as it does expose the limits of their own points-of-view.

 

There also seems to be a large amount of blowback stemming almost entirely from misplaced expectations about what the concept of 'fidelity to the source material' means, which, again, doesn't so much expose flaws in the show so much as it does communicate a dissonance between what some people were expecting to get versus what Rafe and his team are delivering.

I think for many of us our point of view is that the writing is so piss poor that much of the fun and beauty of the story has been lost. 

personally, I was expecting a competently written story that at least resembled what we read.  So, yeah, my expectations were wrong.

3 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

Wasn’t it also shown with the dead sheep in episode 1?  Of course, that made no sense at all and was never explained.

Yes, it was.   I have felt that at times they are putting things like this in as Easter eggs of the book readers, but since they never explain them the general audience has no idea what they are supposed to mean.   That they have gone an entire season without doing so could mean they never will.  

6 hours ago, Ralph said:

She said was made by men. Why would this have to be if they are the same? 

 

Why is the Aes Sedai symbol two parts, one white and black, reflected by LTT and LPD's clothing? 

 

What is the Flame? The Dragon's Fang? 

 

"your Power" clearly indicates it is different. 

 

They have chosen not to explain it to minimise the new concepts for non-readers, but the concepts are all there. 

 

Liandrin was obvious hyperbole, not what she believes the taint is. 

 

And tbh, I'm getting bored of people making everything into a huge Pattern of man-bashing. Even if they would have changed this, it would simply be to make sense if you believe gender is a continuum not binary. And that is not "pushing an agenda" because they haven't said it, it is just making it make sense. 

 

But as I have said, I think it is clearly untrue anyway

Have they even used the words The Dragon's Flame?   Did I just miss this?

Liandran said straight out "your touch corrupts the power".   How is that hyperbole?   If there is saidin/saidar that is a flat out lie, the others with her would be shocked to hear an outright lie.  

Why would they chose to minimize something that is at the heart of the entire story, the dichotomy between men and women.

5 minutes ago, chri5 said:

I think the answer is that Aes Sedai are wrong, and they believe that there is no distinction between male and female power. 
 

My logic is this…

 

All Aes Sedai learn from the same teachers. 
All* Aes Sedai are bound by the oaths. 
Other Aes Sedai heard her say that the man causes the taint. 
 

Either they heard her lie in violation of an oath, or they heard her say accepted Aes Sedai dogma. 
 

If they heard her lie, they would know about a certain issue she has in the books and they wouldn’t keep quiet. 
 

This makes me believe the Aes Sedai don’t know that there are two halves of the one power. 
 

This was my theory after episodes 1-3. 
 

And there will be a big reveal showing that Aes Sedai aren’t as smart as we thought they were. 

Yup.  The choice are either they are complete imbeciles or Rafe has decided that there will be no difference.   Not a good choice either way.

3 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

You know who/what Liandrin is, right?  She can absolutely say that and have it not actually be true.
Besides, we know that Saidin and Saidir are separate and Saidin is tainted, because we see it actively depicted on the screen.  The taint doesn't come out of men, it is tainted going into them after they get it going. THAT is the only thing that is independent of an unreliable person making comments.

Aes Sedai of this age don't have any reason whatsoever to know exactly how Saidin works. It's not that they're idiots. It's that they've found and gentled every man who showed a glimmer of channeling without caring less about the specifics of how they do what they do.  They don't let them stay channeling long enough to find out.  We won't have any 'reliable' discussion of how Saidin works until Asmodean shows up, or Rand discovers it for himself.  Or maybe, maybe some very old, academic sisters who care about ancient records.

Yes, I know what Liandrin is.  So are we to assume every single Aes Sedai with her in that opening sequence is too?   If they aren't, how could they not react to that statement with shock?  It would be an outright lie.   She said it straight out.  "your touch fouls the source"

The way it is depicted can easily be interpreted as the men creating the taint, not that the taint it a part of the OP, since it shows up After they start channelling, not at the exact moment they start.  

So you are saying then that Aes Sedai ARE blithering idiots who don't know anything at all about Saidin.    There is not a shred of information that came down to them over thousands of years?   All men are gentled without as much as a conversation with them?  Somehow I think the Browns would have issues with that.   And also, they seem to know (or think they do) what is a male Angreal though, right?  Or are they wrong about that too and all angreal can be used be either men or women?  

7 minutes ago, WhiteVeils said:

The show has made absolutely clear that Saidin is tainted, so that hasn't changed. 

Actually, they haven't.  In the cold opening for Ep 1 Liandrin tells that unnamed man that it was his touching of the one power that fouled it.   And you can't use the unreliable narrator for that.  If an Aes Sedai says something like that she must believe that Saidin and Saidar are the same.  If they are so stupid as to believe that then it means that Aes Sedai are all just blithering idiots.   So the choices are (a) Aes Sedai are all complete morons, (b) there is no difference between Saidin and Saidar, or (c) the writers are blithering idiots.  And guess who wrote that episode?