23 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

 

 

Moraine flat out says the Dark One is stirring, Trollocs and a Fade massacre two small towns.  A fade chases Rand and Mat, a Darkfiend tries to kill them...  The constant dreams from Ba'alzamon.  Seems to me there's plenty of presence.  Honestly, the only place we don't see Dark One presence are in Egwene/Perrin's story, and it wasn't there in the books either.

 

 

 

One of the things that(to me) they have done poorly are the dreams.  Not having Ba'alzamon speak especially.  His conversations with the boys were important in the books.   They couldn't have those same conversations in the show for various reasons, but a comment here or there from Balzy might have added to the general feeling of dread and danger.  

 If you are not a fan of the books I suspect you are saying "who the flaming hell is this guy and why are they dreaming about him?"     I suspect they are waiting for Ep8 for this big reveal moment.   The question is, will they do it well or will it be clumsily handled.  I guess for once I have to say WAFO, as much as I hate that phrase.   It is too often used (not just here, but in other shows) as a crutch, sometimes because, well, they (the writers) really haven't figured it out themselves. 

15 hours ago, Jasnah said:

I think Nynaeve is due for a smack down, trying to channel and finding she's blocked. Egwene is also exceptionally powerful and we really haven't seen any of it. I'm thinking Egwene may be the hero here.

Nah.  Nynaeve will always be able to channel.   Because her secret is that she's always angry.  ?

9 hours ago, orbops said:

So you think they could compress 14 books into maybe 4-6 seasons at 8 episodes per season and still stay 100% true to the novel???

No.  Not what I said. 

5 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Here you say: (1) there was an implication the Perrin was interested in Egwene; (2) it makes Perrin look awful, because (3) he recently killed his wife; and thus (4) he shouldn't be ready to move on to someone else. Therefore (5) he looked pretty bad.

 

I don't understand how I am misinterpreting that.

Can't help you.   And, once again, I am not going to keep arguing the point.

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

 

You were saying that. You were specifically saying that he was 'ready to move on'.

No, I wasn't.   You're free to interpret how you want, but you are wrong. That last sentence was explaining WHY it would be a horrible thing to imply.   

Just now, KakitaOCU said:

Which clearly implicates a long standing issue, not something that's cropped up in the past few days they've been together.

Which would fit great with the idea that Perrin had feelings for her, moved on from them when she chose Rand years ago, found Laila.

Then the show happens and he's thrust alone with Egwene, which would make sense for some of those feelings to bubble a little, not because he's suddenly going to pursue her but because the feelings would never have been 100% gone and it's a confusing issue. 

Either way, again, not a new thing where he's moving on from Laila which was your initial statement.

I wasn't saying that.  I was saying that Nynaeve's comment implied that there was interest, which would be horrible thing to imply given that his wife's corpse was barely cold.  

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

So Nyn was completely correct in her assessment? Even though later in the same episode she as much as admitted she jumped to the wrong conclusion?

No.  But her comments at that time (wrongly) IMPLIED an interest, and the reactions to it made everyone in the room look bad.

13 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

When did the show imply that he is currently interested in Egwene? There was no implication that he is ready to "move on" or that he has those types of feelings for Egwene. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching a different show from everyone else.

 

When Nynaeve said "you two need to stop thinking of her as something you can win."  

10 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

 After all, was Perrin's wife somebody you were supposed to care about? Perhaps the better question at this point, was she someone Perrin even remembered? 

which is why (for me) even the implication that he was interested in Egwene makes him look awful. How long ago did he fridge his wife?   It certainly doesn't seem like long enough that he would be ready to move on to someone else.   That whole scene made everyone look pretty bad.

3 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

I don't like the change to Abell but we can't say that for sure yet really, can we? We can hate the change as it currently stands, but we've no idea if it has been poorly done until we see more of Mat in the show and how his home life impacts his character.

If it were just that one thing I would be inclined to give them a pass.  That there have been a LOT of instances where I have felt this way leads me to conclude that (for my part) the writing and implementation of those changes is just bad.

8 minutes ago, DigificWriter said:

@Deviations The show chose to use the tools of visual-medium storytelling to depict Mat's character in a way that in turn led to them changing the characterization of the people closest to him.

 

Trying to draw a line in the sand and say that those changes were unnecessary is to essentially deny the producers of the show the freedom to tell Mat's story in a way that made sense to them in the context of a television series as opposed to on the written page.

Or maybe some of us are saying that they feel like unnecessary changes because they are so poorly done.   

2 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Explain the contradiction then. I anticipated that there would be changes that would make the EF5 older and more sexually experienced. I failed to anticipate a specific scene between Rand and Egwene. How is that at all contradictory?

 

I already feel like I have done so.  So, no. I've had my say.    

7 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

There is no contradiction here. Try as hard as you may to find one.

I beg to disagree.

41 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

Okay. So what's your point exactly?

I expected them to change the story to make the Emond's Field kids more 'worldly' and less sheltered than they were in the books. I expected that Rand and Egwene would probably have a more physical, less juvenile relationship than they did in EotW. I did not accurately predict how that relationship would be depicted.

 

No one is disputing that they've changed the sexual mores of Emond's Field. No one is claiming that there aren't other changes that alter the tone of the book. The fact that these things are true, however, does not mean that the show didn't get lots of other things right. 

My point is that you say you were "baffled" how we could not expect these types of wholesale changes, and yet when I pointed out the example of Rand and Egs having casual sex you said you weren't expecting that.  So how then could you be baffled?     But whatever, we've established that you are ok with it, so no sense arguing over it.   

3 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

"types of changes" vs. "precise scene"? What is the contradiction you think you've found?

 

Them having casual sex in the inn is a "type of change" in that there are many many other examples of changes made that change the tonality of the story.   

8 minutes ago, Deviations said:

Yes!  Who is she?

Morena Baccarin.   From Firefly, and from the Deadpool movies, and from Gotham, and Homeland.   

24 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

I'm baffled by the fact that you didn't see these type of changes coming from day one. 

4 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

That precise scene? Clearly not, since I am not a member of the cast or crew.

7 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

I wasn't shocked by it.

Yes, but were you EXPECTING IT FROM DAY ONE?  

1 minute ago, Elder_Haman said:

The following of the books is insignificant in terms of the numbers Amazon is trying to draw. I'm baffled by the fact that you didn't see these type of changes coming from day one. 

So you were expecting Rand to be banging Egs in the common room of the Winespring Inn from day one?   

4 minutes ago, Elder_Haman said:

To do something new with the story. The books still exist. The story you care so deeply about isn't worse because someone chooses to tell it in a different way.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.   

4 minutes ago, Borderlander said:

Following up on Nyneave and Lan sleeping together and Rand and Egwene shacking uopin Episode 1, are we to assume that the young ladies of TV-WoT just don't care if they get pregnant? Traditional attitudes toward sex and marriage aren't all about male 'ownership' of women—women had to be very careful about having children if they did not have a strong family situation for the kids to be born into. If Egwene and Rand have been sleeping together for a while, what was her plan if she got pregnant? Is there a thriving community of young, single mothers in (the) Two Rivers? Shotgun weddings? Or are Rand and Egwene just 'stupid teenagers,' acting irresponsibly? And if that's the case, what is Nyneave's and Lan's excuse? What's Lan going to tell Moirane if he accidentally makes a little baby Dai'Shan? I guess we just pretend that these otherwise responsible characters just threw caution out the window? The Wisdom and the World's Greatest Warder... acting like stupid teenagers? Except, in TV-WoT, it's not stupid, because sex doesn't lead to babies unless the writers say so. 

 

It's not like in Randland they can just pop over to the local peddler's wagon and get some morning-after pill. Having all these characters getting it on without any acknowledgement of the serious consequences of sex makes the world-building for the TV show that much weaker. It feels like another instance of the invisible thumbprint of modern ideology superimposed on a (fictional) culture where it makes no sense: basically modern-day hookup culture completely divorced from the reality that sex leads to babies (even in fictional worlds.) Just plain silly, in a TV show that wants us to take its treatment of the human condition seriously.

If I remember correctly from Ep1, Marin and Bran cleared out (with a wink and a nod) so that Rand and Egs could get busy in the common room of the Winespring Inn.   So apparently everyone seems ok with premarital sex in Emonds Field in this version.   

7 minutes ago, flinn said:

^ the real problem with "pov" who sees the channeling is they completely broke the rules in Ep 4 so everyone could see Logain channeling. That has confused a lot of the non-book readers I have talked to... why didnt we see him channeling when we saw the other guy channeling.. even Everyday Negros were really confused about that aspect.

 

 I have always said to the bafflement of my friends who aren't readers, especially not fantasy readers...

 

 I want my fantasy to be realistic.. yes I understand why that is confusing, but even fantasy has rules. You build a world and you create the rules, once you make a rule, you don't get to change it to fit a plot you cant figure out how to write properly.

That's why the reveal of Rand is a cheap trick (IMO).  I actually predicted that this is how they would do it.   It really was the only way because they decided to do the whole "who is the DR?" storyline.   Showing Logain channel, showing all the women channelling, but NOT showing Rand channel wasn't so much misdirection, but directly lying to the audience.  It felt insulting even though I knew it was coming.    

1 minute ago, GSH said:

Wish they had scripted even a whisper of Lews Therin Telamon Breaking the World and Kinslaying his Fam early in S1 so non readers could have a glimpse of what the taint had done to corrupt use of the OP and unleash enough magmatic force to move tectonic plates...Instead, we only see Nyn’s tapping into a small trickle of OP potential energy. How are they supposed to wake us all up now? 

Funny thing.  This morning, after hearing me talk about these books for 16+ years, my wife has finally decided to give them a try.  Not because of the show, but because I gave her a synopsis of  EoTW as it was written.   She said that my description sounds a lot more compelling than what they are giving us in the show.  After reading the prologue a few minutes ago she said "now this makes a lot of things make sense!  You get a feeling for who the bad guy is, what the nature of the world is, who the Dragon is and why he is important.  About the cyclical nature of things, and sets the stage for the main conflict."     She said after 3-4 pages she has a better sense of who Rand is than she has gotten from 7 episodes of the show.  

11 minutes ago, Mirefox said:

LotR is seen as very faithful to the source material because Peter Jackson was immensely concerned with both fidelity to the source and and internal visual and story consistency.  There were certainly changes made for the movie adaptation and there was plenty of negative reaction at the time but almost all of the changes can be chalked up to the adaptation process.  While this is something that the more fervent show defenders try to claim is the reason, it really doesn’t account for all the changes.  Sadly, Rafe decided to use WoT to tell his own story and as a way to experiment with his own social ideas.  Nobody asked for WoT as a platform for the director to experiment with, but it’s what we got.  This show is much more akin to adding, say, an Elf/Dwarf romance to The Hobbit…

I watched all three  LoTR the past couple of days.  It reminded me how good an adaptation can be even when there are lots of changes made to account for a different medium.   They all still hold up 20 years later.   The characters still felt like the people from the books.   I still cared about all of them.    I still got verklempt when Theodan  gave his speech before the battle of Minas Tirith and during his death scene.   Fantastic  acting. 

And the Hobit is  a good example of a bad (I mean, really bad) adaptation.   It shifted the focus so much that Bilbo often felt like a secondary character.  It added Legolas into a story he was not part of for no reason at all.   The elf/dwarf thing was infuriating.  I will never watch those movies again.  I feel awful for Martin Freeman.  He was the perfect casting for Bilbo and was totally wasted in that abomination.   

For all we know they will do away with the idea that a woman can't teach a man how to channel, and have her become Rand's teacher.    As crazy as that sounds, I wouldn't put it past them.