58 minutes ago, ArrylT said:

Typically there are 3 definitions of geriatric, none of which tend to apply to healthy women who could be full of adrenaline and inspired by others fighting the Trollocs.

 

Not according to Cambridge dictionary which defines it as

"for or relating to old people"

Many definitions, like Google's, specify that it is especially used in relation to healthcare, but doesn't preclude the broader definition. 

I'm sure there's no shortage of old people who do not like being referred to as old. Heck, I'm in my late twenties and don't enjoy the odd reminder. But I'm not talking about those people, who I would gladly not call old to avoid hurting their feelings - I'm referring to elderly fictional characters that objectively fit the word's dictionary definition. 

Either way what you're essentially doing is splitting at hairs to make a wild stab, akin to saying that if I were to assert that I did not expect my grandmother, a geriatric woman, to be competent in fighting off literal invading monsters (especially not more so than a legendary warrior), it is proof that I have no love or even respect for her, in a bid to defend a controversial scene from a controversial show. 

5 minutes ago, VooDooNut said:

Fortunately, all the mental gymnastics required for that is being patient. 

I could live with that!

20 minutes ago, Andra said:

The Tam in the show and the Tam in the book aren't the same guy in this respect.

Yeah... I get that some people don't mind the change that much, but for all the mental gymnastics used to justify the change, I have not seen anyone put forth a good explanation to why they did it. It's also not a stunt team or COVID thing either because Rafe had him lose to one Trolloc from his original script from 2018.

It's such a cool thing that this universe features a concept like blademasters, and I think it would have been really cool if we get to see Tam do something, especially since they made it a whole point to really highlight the heron. We see him "know how to use the sword", but not any more than a regular soldier might be expected to. I've seen show only audiences speculate that the heron is a sigil to show that he was once a soldier or something. 

I still like Tam because he's got good lines and the actor's great, but it's such a wasted opportunity. 

3 hours ago, Ralph said:

Just would like to see this quote from Rafe where he says he wants to "make the show more appealing to a feminist agenda" 

He doesn't quite say exactly that, but here's another quote on Rafe speaking of his intentions to make "fundamental", "rippling" changes to the lore to reflect modern values. 

Quote

It's a very fundamental change actually to make to the book series, and it has a lot of ripple effects, and we’ll continue to do things like that I think are more reflective of what hopefully Robert Jordan would be writing if he was writing today.

4 hours ago, Raal Gurniss said:

I enjoyed it….But if you compare to something actually phenomenal like Akira, you realise that Arcane is down the pecking order to something make decades previously.

I'll take your word on that! I'm sure they're both really really good pieces of entertainment, unlike Rafe's WoT

6 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

 

I find this interesting because you see it so often in theatre, where race-bending or gender-bending happens which brings a different lens through which to view a character/relationship/story arc. Having the founding fathers all be POC in Hamilton has a point. Flipping these things don't need to necessarily make a story "better", but can serve to bring a different energy to a character or to make a wider point to the audience, holding up a mirror and all that. 

 

Maybe theatre is just a better medium

Think you're spot on with that example, in that Hamilton's cast seems universally loved without managing to come across as forced to just about anybody. I think that first of all LMM stated that he cast the crew for their rapping ability, and that the musical's genre has a strong cultural affinity with black people, and they knocked it out of the park. I don't think he set out to exclusively cast black people for just diversity reasons for many of the main characters. 

But I think a bigger difference for me is that a musical on stage is this hyper stylised thing where people overact things while they do crazy choreographed song and dance in a way you would not expect anyone to see in "real life". I remember picking up the biography for a bit after fanboying Hamilton for a few months, and while reading the book, I could not and did not visualize the characters from the more historically account as the same people from the musical adaptation - it's like the musical I love so much takes up a different space in my head entirely. I suspect it would look pretty darn ridiculous if they were featured in film as they were in the musical, costumes and hairstyles and all. 

Film and shows, on the other hand, seem to present a window through which we could look and immerse into a world as it's events are occurring. The vague imagination of the reader comes to life and it seems a lot harder to separate the adaptation and the prose. I suspect most of us imagine the cast as the actors from the films when re-reading LOTR, and so it's extra important for it to feel authentic and real, whereas Hamilton never had to quite worry about that. 

4 hours ago, ArrylT said:

The fact that you call them geriatric farmswomen (which includes Daise Congar) suggests to me that perhaps you do not have a real love of the Two Rivers.  It also gives off an impression that you have a dislike of rural farmers & older women because of the definition of geriatric. Not that Daises age is listed anywhere or is it suggested she is "old".  Perhaps only in your head canon.  In any case the group is led by Daise, who is well described in the books as being quite capable of doing something like this

What? I'll admit I have no recollection of who Daise Congar was from the books before I Googled her more recently after the show, and I think that would have been true even if I did several rereads. 

The actress is 66. She is 100% shot to sound and look to old. That's what geriatric means. The fact that you manage to infer disrespect to actual rural people is telling and entirely on you. Try again. 

Also think it's neat that you care about her book feats in a discussion about the violation of the very same thing for a book blademaster. 

Just now, EmreY said:

I think I agree, though I have hardly any idea what you're referring to. ? 

Go watch Arcane, it's phenomenal! 

21 minutes ago, EmreY said:

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

Can't really agree there.

I'm thinking if:

1. Peter Jackson had an original screenplay of the movies that is entirely dreadful and discarded.

2. The movies that were released turned out to be generally poor.

3. The original screenplay parallels some of the weakest aspects of the movies that did get released.

then it would absolutely be discussed. 

In this case, I think the script informs us, at minimum, of several things:

• Tam was always meant to lose to one Trolloc, nothing to do with COVID like many used to believe.
• Love triangle was always present, and in fact was going to be amped up to 11, nothing to do with Barney Harris leaving.
• Overall heavy-handedness in injecting girl power stuff. Subjective, of course, but worth discussion. Why not?

Your summary is confusing, and I'm not sure what's the overall point you're attempting to make. No one is assuming that Rafe intended to ruin the books. I absolutely believe he thinks he's making it better with his "feminist updates", but they are done poorly despite his best intentions.

19 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

how do you think fans would feel if it was adapted from source material in which Vander was an all-wise flawless unbeatable-in-combat leader of the Undercity and he gets beat by some kid hyped up on Shimmer in the show? Or how he never betrayed or let anyone down in the source material, yet in the show he tries to drown his own brother Silco?!

That's an interesting hypothetical. I would say good writing goes a really long way. Changes have to be an improvement for the story you're trying to tell. The advantage Arcane has is that it grabs a bunch of lore and world-building from a game, not a novel. They had a lot of room to flesh out characters and add stuff that wouldn't be from the game, but present no contradiction to existing knowledge. I would think that if you're adapting a novel, and Vander was an entirely different person from that story than the character you end up writing, it might be best to write a new character for that role entirely, like they did with Silco.

I think with Vander and Viktor, the show added a lot of complexity for their arcs and characters. Even with extremely flawed and problematic characters like Silco, you get a clear picture of why they hold those views, and why they might think they are correct and justified in holding those beliefs.

For Lews Therin, a lot of complexity and nuance was removed from him, in service of... I don't know what. Same with Agelmar. He is not nuanced. He is an arrogant douche, and outside of maybe three seconds, he is literally 100% completely in the wrong with regards to how he treats Moiraine and his sister, and how he assessed the situation, and the actions he took. At best, Agelmar was turned from a boring good character to a boring bad character. Thematically, it hurt the themes of balance - he literally proves a Red/Black Ajah's take right! Robert Jordan's biggest theme, IMO, is that men and women often hold prejudiced views against one another and refuse to work together, to their own detriment.  We learn that those views are wrong and unfair, and they could achieve great things if they came together.

And of course if you're exclusively tweaking a bunch of male characters to be less virtuous, less skilled, less honorable, less competent, then there better be a damn good storytelling reason for it. Nerf the women too!

19 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Or if, in the source material, Mel was white? Or Vi and Ekko were in love originally, but that gets changed for the show? 

For this stuff, I'd generally say don't change it. I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but as a Chinese person, anecdotally many of my very yellow friends agree on this: if you make Shang-Chi white, it's terribly insulting; if you made Tony Stark Chinese, it would be terribly insulting to us too. We are perfectly capable of enjoying entertainment as they were conceived, thank you very much, whether it be Japanese protagonists from anime, Sung Jinwoo from manhwa, Gu Yue Fang Yuan from xianxia, Indians from Bollywood, African characters from the Rage of the Dragons, etc.

I think generally it seems a bad idea to make changes and decisions in service of real life ideals, and if you have to do it, it has to be not too obvious, and it has to make sense, and feel organic. Storytelling wise, there's no good justification to explain why making Vi lesbian would make her relationship "better" that doesn't alienate people who want heterosexual relationships. If they could write Vi and Cait well, they could do it with Vi and Ekko too.

Ian McKellen is like my favourite actor, ever, but I imagine if they restricted the casting call for Gandalf to only hire gay actors, it wouldn't have gone over so well, even if they still hired Ian McKellen. It wouldn't have felt authentic, and it must also mean that his competition for the audition effectively shrank by a good 90%. That's... not a good look, nor a good message to send.

7 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

And I super appreciate having a civil discussion on this whole thing and differences in opinion, it's really refreshing after what has felt like an exhausting barrage of negativity about the show and how I feel about it rather than a dialogue. So this has been great and I have not done a tap of work today as a result, thank you @ilovezam?

Hahaha, I appreciated the opportunity to get a lot of my misgivings out of my chest too.

12 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

Another good example of a strong female lead where we still have quality male characters is in horizon zero dawn.

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.

7 minutes ago, Deviations said:

This is accurate.  Book Tam = two sword flashes, two dead trollocs.  TV Tam = Not so much.

 

This show is an example of Hollywood tweaking many parts of a story to improve it and end up with something much worse IMO.  

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?

54 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Haha yes, I think we agree on more than we disagree - but the bit I bolded - I do think there are some posters here that believe the women are "winning" in terms of the depictions on the show. And where you say intentionally or unintentionally is, personally, something I think is an important distinction. Because it seems to me that some are seeing intentional changes which are purely agenda-driven rather than story-driven. 

I think what drives us nuts is that a lot of problematic changes seem to come from a clumsy and bungling attempt to make Robert Jordan's story more feminist, which was already plenty feminist, unless by feminist you mean the story cannot have a main character who is a man who has to at least occasionally save the day. And this effort to make Robert Jordan's story more feminist comes from Rafe's own mouth! So while we cannot know for sure his intentions behind making all these changes, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that at least some of it is, in fact, driven by his personal ideology. 

While it happens in a way that's cheap and detrimental to the female characters, women are "winning" in the sense that they did get written in a way to make them "stronger", while the men are pretty much nerfed across the board. They are not "winning" in the sense of being interesting characters to watch, for an audience. And don't forget, the male primary protagonist is demoted and no longer the main character - Rafe states that Rand was not the main character of the books, and claims that he doesn't even have the most chapters in the series (objectively wrong). Can you blame people for thinking what they do? When Rafe's Wheel of Time takes a stab at feminism the way he did, everybody loses.

I am of the opinion that if any adaptation did all this with the genders flipped, it would have been immediately cancelled over accusations of misogyny, which is why I asked you that hypothetical. And I would have agreed that that would have been a misogynistic adaptation. 

Contrast this with Arcane, where the main character is female, lesbian, and goes through an utterly enthralling and badass journey, while male characters (white, black, furry) also get a complete opportunity to show their ability and complexity in character, good and/or bad. All of this is done in a space of 9 hours. Now that's how you have strong women shine in a show, and everybody I know, ever, loves Arcane to bits. 

1 hour ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Flawed-leader-who-ignored-advice-but-has-moment-of-contrition-before-death

Flawed characters are interesting, but I think that requires that they are not presented as being wholly in the wrong. If the show was willing to explore why Agelmar came to hold those views, it could have made him more interesting, but as it is, he's just someone who's completely idiotic and ineffective at his job, right up to the final battle, where he charges 12 horses into a wall and achieves nothing. His moment of contrition was given all of 3 seconds, where he admits he was completely wrong, but the audience was already shown he's completely wrong to begin with, and that's not interesting.

At least have him good at fighting Trollocs if he has to be turned into a garbage ruler!

1 hour ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Because I know that LTT needs her to listen to him and if they worked together in this very moment, maybe they would succeed. But she dismisses him, so I'm thinking she has as much blame here as he. They are both suffering from the same flaw (to me). 

I would be very relieved if they explore that angle in Season 2. But unless Rosamund Pike was just speaking misleadingly in that interview, I'm not confident.

I think if they gave Lews Therin one more line: "If we do nothing now, we will lose everything!", it would go a long way to hint to the audience that he wasn't just being an arrogant douche acting "invincible" and trying to achieve something unprecedented with a stupidly risky plan during peacetime, out to "abuse his power". His plan, while maybe also arrogant, was desperate and necessary.

18 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

but I don't think Egwene does anything interesting or compelling in the season either, her big moment doesn't land or work or feel earned at all so it just ends up being meh.

Then we are, in fact, completely agreed on this!

I think none of us angry readers are implying that they managed to actually make the women more compelling in the final analysis. They sidelined at least a handful of male characters (which you've agreed to re Perrin), and they tried to make the female characters appear strong by throwing unearned "go girl!" strong-female moments to the women, which weren't compelling exactly because they are unearned.

So, intentionally or unintentionally, some of the male characters are written in a way that made them seem artificially less competent, while some of the female characters are written in a way that made them artificially more competent (often to an incredulous extent), and the result is that characters from both sexes are now worse than they were originally.

26 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Egwene not being afraid is pretty in keeping with her character from the books I'd have thought

I remember her being all terrified and sobbing when Lan finally showed up to rescue them. I think Egwene is still very much an innocent farmgirl at this point, and it would take a while before she evolves to someone who has the wherewithal to go about shanking others.

26 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

To me, Agelmar came off as a desperate leader with his back against the wall and he had tunnel-vision.

He wasn't desperate - he refused to believe that anything coming their way would pose any difficulty, and was dismissing Amalisa's concerns out-of-hand, and refused to get help because "they've always done it themselves". If he had followed Amalisa's advice from the get go to ask for help, they could have been saved. He was everything Liandrin was talking about when she talked to Nynaeve about undeserving men in power.

Contrast this with book Agelmar, who was eager to receive help, respectful and generally good-natured, and of course one of the finest military leaders of his time. Why change that - do the changes improve on anything?

26 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

LTT and Latra, it definitely wanted us to think Latra was in the right. But she also came off as dismissive to LTT. That doesn't say to me "this is a character that you should listen to". I think it highlights something in the show as a whole, where the women say something quite dismissive or confidently but their actions show their folly as much as the men they accuse. I didn't like the scene as I thought it was written poorly, but I don't think the concept was bad. 

They removed the position of leadership from LTT, gave it to Latra, and had her talk down to him. She was dismissive, yet at the same time she was 100% right in her assessment of the situation, and LTT almost deserves her disdain. Rosamund Pike says in an interview that the Breaking is to highlight arrogant men abusing their power, which is a huge departure from the books. Again, why change that?

And I know you say you're not so much thinking about men in general, and instead chalk these moments up to specific instances of poor writing, but just as a hypothetical, if these changes were made to equivalent female characters for an adaptation of a series of fantasy books - how would you expect people to respond?

1 minute ago, Gothic Flame said:

Considering that in the book it was Lan that sneaks into the tent that held Perrin and Egwene when Valda had just dropped a sharp rock to encourage an escape attempt. Lan in a couple of moves knocks Valda out.

And that would have been so, so much better. They did my boy Lan so dirty with regards to his abilities this season.

But if they were to have the kids escape on their own, at least let Perrin do something, c'mon!

34 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Ehh.. Laila was not heavily pregnant. Tigraine was.

22 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Others think differently, that's fine. I didn't even think of Laila as "heavily pregnant"? Where's that coming from? 

Think you guys are right about this - she was just lightly pregnant (...I think?), got that messed up. 

Edit: Apparently maybe miscarriaged? Either way I don't think it changes much. Blacksmiths are not trained fighters, blademasters are legendary fighters. Without even going into men vs women debacle, think of how cool it could have been if the first blademaster we see does something awesome.

22 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Egwene does one weak sauce channeling moment to free Perrin and then stabs the Whitecloak, hardly being buffed up.

Mate, maybe you purged the finale from your memory, but Egwene heals near-death, which I'm pretty sure not sure even endgame Egwene could. Instead of being scared shitless of Valda and letting Perrin at least be the brawn of that scene, she shanks him. I don't think the shanking is in itself particularly unbelievable, but the result is that Perrin's got absolutely nothing to do for that the whole Whitecloaks sequence.

How did you feel about Agelmar vs Amalisa and LTT vs Latra scenes? Because I feel like the show was pretty heavily slanted in showing us who's 100% in the right, which is not very compelling writing for me. And of course they gave LTT's position as Tamyrlin away, which adds an extra element of insubordination to his garbage plan.

22 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

But I guess my overall point was that me saying it's a mixed bag has me down as a show defender that can't see any flaws from some peoples' POV, and I don't think that's a fair characterisation of me or the majority of people posting on this forum, that's all. 

FWIW I don't think you come across as a rabid defender of the show. Those who insist the writing was great are the ones that particularly raise a red flag for me, but I guess that's still subjective at the end of the day.

2 minutes ago, EmreY said:

 

Yes, but the point is not that it would be amusing - it probably would! - but we wouldn't be dissecting it the way people are doing so here for things that no longer have any relevance, and saying that Tolkien had obviously gone of his rocker, how could he even imagine such a thing, I knew that he was a bad writer, this really breaks the Lord of the Rings for me, etc.

 

As people are for things that are long dead and forgotten about the TV series.

I think if you're adapting a beloved series of novels, your antics will be viewed with much more scrutiny. If Tolkien had wrote that rubbish it is his own invention he might have ruined, but if Tolkien had wrote that as an insert meant to improve on someone else's work, hell would break loose.

12 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Well.. Sometimes it's nice to fully focus on my partner or vice versa. That's a part of a healthy sexual relationship.

We're not talking about the participants focusing on their partners though. We're talking of a show featuring couples having sex and making a point for the crew to heavily emphasize female pleasure while being strong and in control.

13 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

The Trolloc then overwhelms him at close quarters. I think they wanted to show that Tam was great with the sword but the Trolloc is a monster. They failed at what they wanted to show.

And then heavily pregnant Laila takes care of at least one Trolloc with a double-handed weapon, in close quarters. Perrin kills one too but only after he loses himself to a complete berserker rage, before yeeting his own wife.

I do agree that people might be wrong about what Rafe's intentions were, but the result of what's shown on screen... It seems difficult to not conclude that male characters are shown in a worse light in the show than in the books. I doubt it's something quite as asinine as Rafe hating men, but it's hard to shake the feeling that Rafe wanted to be very clear about not having any man outshine the women in any given episode, and so we've got eight episodes of exactly that.

I agree with you that they got the female characters wrong too, but for those, that's because they're "buffing" the women to show us how powerful and fearless they are, and the result is Mary Sue blandness and a lack of character development, which I guess is the opposite problem the male characters suffer from. It's such a shame, because I think Nynaeve being insufferable in Book 1 is a huge part of why she becomes one of my favourite characters ever, but they're skipping that entirely, and now we've got a blockless Nynaeve that can channel the Machin Shin away. 

I'm also just imagining an alternate timeline where Ep 1 and the show's lead actor blames the Breaking on "female weakness", and the show then routinely goes out of its way to show female political leaders doing an awful job in their roles, while men who are much smarter and more insightful consistently try to fix their problems. I'm thinking of a female Chosen One prophecies character having her climatic moments given away to a group of untrained men, a kindly mother of a main character being turned into a promiscuous cheater - I'm thinking of Amazon doing a series like Mistborn and giving its awesome main female character a grand total of zero badass moments and letting her be largely irrelevant outside of being a lovesick puppy to a male character. Would that fly? That would have been awful, widely panned, and rightly so. 

14 minutes ago, notpropaganda73 said:

I can understand screenwriters feeling like they have to put a note like that in, because studios are used to a different kind of sex scene and particularly in fantasy, in episode 1, if you want to emphasise that this is not Game of Thrones, I can understand why they would feel the need to emphasise that. 

So... you're saying that you can see why they think it's necessary counterpoint to GoT's demeaning sex scenes to highlight that they aren't Game of Thrones? Apologies if your take was misrepresented, but thus far your clarification does sound pretty much like a word-for-word paraphrase from my summary ?

Think is this honestly an insanely huge reach. A big part of the yucky sex scenes like those with Dany and Drago were shot in a way to emphasize that it wasn't consensual for Dany, since she was literally sold to the Dothraki. Then there's a bunch that are fully consensual, like those with Jon Snow, Missendei, Arya/Gendry, whatever, that were not demeaning to women in the least bit.

If you wanted to be clear that Rand and Egwene were in a healthy and normal sexual relationship, the note would ask for emphasis that they're both enjoying themselves and fully willing participants, like normal couples behave - the second type of GoT sex scenes, not the first type, if you will.

Shooting two sex scenes back to back that both heavily emphasize the woman being strong and in control was pretty transparently an attempt to depict powerful women, which is in fact a perfectly reasonable thing to want to depict. It's just that the way Rafe wanted to go about showing it is really, really, really, really, really dumb (not to mention demeaning to those who enjoy kinky sex ?), and thankfully he took it out of the episode.

16 minutes ago, EmreY said:

Tolkien's first drafts, not PJ's.

Well, same thing. I'll be laughing my ass off if I read an original draft and it emphasized a raunchy sex scene with Tom Bombadil while he sings to emphasize his jolly nature or something.

1 hour ago, RhienneAgain said:

Yeah, I have to say reading that segment of the leaked script made me uncomfortable. Why no an emphasis on both partners' pleasure?

I read another user's take from here and he thought it was necessary as a counterpoint to how GoT's sex scenes were demeaning to women.

It is... kinda weird

Just now, EmreY said:

OK, but if first drafts were anything to go by, Lord of the Rings would be quite different and funny.

I mean if Peter Jackson originally planned to do something incredibly, hilariously stupid, I'll be roasting him for it too, even though I adore the final product.

39 minutes ago, EmreY said:

So now we are criticising decisions that we dislike but which were anyway not taken.

I'm just jumping off of another point being made.

Either way, it is some evidence that Rafe might be a weak writer with regards to subtlety, and an indicator of sorts of the vision behind show.

On 1/16/2022 at 8:46 AM, Ralph said:

That just shows wanting women to be more obviously in control in this world, so that it can be shown later how wrong that is.

It feels a little bit iffy that consensual sex between lovers were used to highlight the women being in control, as though preferences for domination/being dominated in bed is supposed to reflect anything about your personal or societal ideals.

Glad they took that out of the episode, it would have been pure cringe.