On 2/1/2022 at 8:35 PM, Graendals favourite said:

I don't believe balefire burns or erases a soul from the pattern, it simply burns it back in time. Andra, I like your thinking, but no one has said someone burnt a little way can't be resurrected. All we have is the Dark One's apparent frustration of not being able to bring Rahvin back.

The Dark One is the Lord of the Grave.

If he's not able to bring someone back, it's because they can't be brought back.

It's clear, from multiple references within the books, that a soul that is killed with Balefire can't be resurrected.

4 hours ago, Pembie said:

Is this the first book in which we find out Hanlon is a darkfriend?

Well, he was one of Gaebril's (Rahvin's) White Lions, so we've had an idea he was a bad guy for quite awhile.

And Min had a viewing about him in the pavilion with Toram Riatin just before "Mordeth" slashes Rand with the Dagger (Crown of Swords, ch.35).  Again, not specifically about being a darkfriend, but definitely a villain.

But the first definitive info we had about him being a darkfriend was in Path of Daggers when he reports to Mili Skane.  Which was before he "saved Elayne's life" and joined the Guard.

5 hours ago, Sir_Charrid said:

What he said was that in turning it into a TV show he Knew he would alienate some of the fanbase, had he given you your adaptation then he may well of alienated other members of the fanbase, or, even worse, non book readers. He has alienated SOME book audience, in no way can we say that is all, he has produced a version of the story that works on the screen. 

Actually, he said substantially more than that.

He didn't say simply that turning it into a TV show would alienate some readers.  He said that many of his specific changes (above and beyond those necessary for an adaptation) would alienate readers.  Including some of the favorite characters he intended to kill off early.

22 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

You're moving the goalposts.  And we're jumping to the trite "Have you even read the books" approach, quaint.

I'm not moving any goalposts, because "savvy manipulators" wasn't ever my point.

And someone who wrote "Clearly you've never been part of any business" is the LAST person who should be getting pissy at being given some snark.

But let's look at your questions:

22 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

Do you happen to have examples of Ajah heads turning on their own because their own overstepped in a small or just embarrassing ways?  Because I'm pretty sure half the reason Elaida kept the stole at all was because the Reds circled with the mentality of "Ours, right or wrong" because overthrowing her would be a bigger stain on the Red Ajah as a whole than just putting up with her bungling.

None of this is about "small or just embarrassing ways."  What happens in the Hall is neither.

But regarding Ajah heads punishing their own members?  Sure.

Alviarin was stripped of her position as Keeper.  Which caused enough shame that the First Reasoner punished her beyond even what Elaida had called for.  For "bringing disgrace" to the White Ajah.  That's just the most recent example.  We are told in the books that penances set by an Ajah are usually more severe than those set by the Amyrlin.

Prior to Elaida becoming Amyrlin, the Ajahs were fiercely independent.  Elaida (or more probably Alviarin) amplified that and practically turned them into armed camps.

As far as the snarky question:

You responded to the show being criticized for not agreeing with the books by bringing up irrelevant comparisons to "real world" entities that aren't really analogous to the topic at all.

The White Tower isn't a Fortune 500 company.

The Hall of the Tower isn't a corporate boardroom.

The Amyrlin isn't a CEO.

The Sitters aren't board members.

Nor would any similar parallels with real world government bodies apply.

Corporate boards can't vote to still and execute the CEO.

The CEO can't order board members to be flogged in front of the entire company.

Neither can arrange for CEOs of competing companies to be kidnapped and held in the Executive suites "for their own safety."

All of those things happened in the Tower.

The comparisons you brought up are so irrelevant to what's actually written in the books that it becomes a valid question - have you actually read them?

11 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

the extras say that the river delta cuts through some limestone cliffs.

I'm not sure how much geologically plausible it is. I know that they only put cliffs there because they look good.

River deltas don't "cut through" rock.

Pretty much by definition.

They included things in the show that make no sense, because they thought they look good.

10 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

is it clearly summer? I get no indication of weather anytime except during the burial, but everyone seem dressed heavily, which is more consistent with winter. mat even complains about cold. bel tine is also supposed to happen in winter.

4 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

Both quotes coming from the very first page of the first chapter of teotw.

So, it's not a plot hole that it would snow sometimes during the events in the show. though the unnatural winter is never mentioned once, there's also no indication of warm weather. I only remember alanna wearing a deep neckline, but she was inside the hall of the tower; i don't remember anyone with light clothing outdoors

I posted this info in another thread, but it was fairly long.  So I will try to make it (slightly) more brief:

1: We see no patches of snow anywhere around Two Rivers, so the "strangely late winter" has apparently been dropped from the show.  Aside from the fact that it is never mentioned, everything is already green.

2: You don't throw someone into a river in the mountains at the end of winter and expect them to do anything much more than die of hypothermia.

3: When Perrin tells Rand and Mat about soldiers massing in Taren Ferry to march south to Ghealdan, he says the news was brought back by people who had gone to Taren Ferry "with the wool last week."  This places Beltine about two weeks after the first shearing of the year, which means late spring or early summer at the earliest. For mountain villages in climate zones like Two Rivers is supposed to be, that usually means late May for the beginning of the first shearing, early June for that shearing to be completed and prepared for market, mid June for it to get to market and have word come back to the village.  And a week later to account for that having been "last week."

In other words, in the show, Bel Tine is closer to midsummer that early spring.  Or even May Day.

4: They had been gone from Two Rivers for "days" before they got to Shadar Logoth (Lan says he hasn't seen traces of trollocs "for days" before they reappear.  Which probably means between three days and a week.

5: So by the time they met up with the Reds and Greens with Logain, it must be late June at the earliest.  In the south.  Where it ain't gonna be snowing anywhere.

People are dressed fairly heavily in other places because they are in the mountains, where it can get cold at any time of the year.  Mat complains, but Rand says it's "a little chilly."

Pretty much none of the people among Logain's captors are dressed heavily.

Basically, what happened is that it snowed when they were filming, and Rafe thought it looked pretty.  So he kept it, even though it shouldn't have happened.

Pretty much the same reason there are mountains everywhere in the show - because Rafe thought they were pretty.

1 hour ago, Gothic Flame said:

From the posted link on the previous page regarding Rise of Skywalker;

 

That said, it did gross $515 million domestic and $1.074 billion worldwide on a $275 million budget, and that was with a laughable (but entirely expected) $20.5 million from China. Heck, on Deadline’s annual list of the previous year’s most profitable blockbusters, it ranked ninth with around $300 million in profits (factoring in marketing spends, post-theatrical afterlife, participation deals and the like).

 

While all true, the specific film mentioned was Last Jedi, not Rise of Skywalker.  But even RoS didn't "lose money."

The profits decreased with each of the main-sequence movies after Force Awakens, but none were losses.  The least-profitable of all the Star Wars films was Solo.  But it still made more than most other films could hope for.

And one more:

Kerene was killed with a belly wound.  That takes time to die.

By the time Nynaeve Healed the entire room a couple minutes later, she would most likely have still been alive.

Why wasn't she Healed along with everyone else?

8 hours ago, Deviations said:

On a different tack, they avoided each other for 20 years.  That's hardcore if they were so close.  

Which they did.

You get a hint of what it was all about at the beginning of Great Hunt, but New Spring makes it all very clear.  They had been extremely close previously, even going to the unheard-of step of taking their Oaths at literally the same moment.  But they learned that the search for the Dragon Reborn had become so critical, and so dangerous, that they walked away from each other when Siuan was raised to the Amyrlin Seat.

40 minutes ago, Pembie said:

Gosh this book is boring The stuff with Elaine just goes on forever 

I don't think you'll get much disagreement on that.

All I can say is "it gets better."  And some of what goes on with her in CoT is VERY important later.

But only some.

You're basically coming to the end of what is popularly called "the slog."  The pace picks up dramatically when it's over.

41 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

Clearly you've never been part of any business, or watched the police, circle the wagons, protect the image, very common.

Clearly, you have a vivid imagination about what other people know.

I am familiar with all of those.  Which is how I know how they differ from the politics of the White Tower as portrayed in the books.

41 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

Again, real life politics and business behavior shows that wrong.  It is very common for people to blame someone else even if that someone else shouldn't have had authority.  And get away with it sadly.

Again, no one is talking about "real life politics and business behavior" here except you.

The comparison was explicitly between the things in the show and the depictions in the books.

Have you even read them?

So if I understand the context of "blood boiling in a good way" here, I'd say one for me is actually my favorite scene with Elayne.

Her reaction in Ebou Dar to the attempt by the other Sisters to punish her and Nynaeve over the Kin.

Now that was bad-ass, and didn't involve the Power at all.  Just power.  And strength of will.

Similarly, the scene with Mat and that roomful of powerful women and his insulting the Sea Folk to get what he wanted.  I just wish it had played out more in the future.

4 hours ago, Spiritweaver1 said:

i so appreciate everybody who put energy into this thread.  Having come back to it after being away and pickling in my own disappointment about the season I mostly stand by my previous post.  However here is my mashup of the most likely scenarios from everybody else.  Ignoring all the specious, humorous. sarcastic, etc takes gets me to this summary of our progress (not consensus) to date:

 

The season will likely be a mashup of TGH and TDR.

 

The super girls will spend time in TV training and meet Elayne, and Gawayn. Egwene will fall for Gawayn and start her career as a dreamer.   Matt will get captured by the Aes Sedai.  Liandrin will winkle them out of the tower per the books and they will  rescue and take Matt with them.  They will go to Tear which is under siege by the Seanchan.  The Stone stands.  Egw is captured per the books.  

 

Perrin, resurrected Loial and Ingtar, and the Sniffer Elyas chase after Fain.  Perrin realizes that the only way to save himself is to embrace the way of the leaf.  Elyas recognizes a wolf brother and tries to convert him to the way of the wolf.  This continues the whole season. 

 

Moraine will struggle with the loss of the source and seek out Verin.  Lan will saddle the horses  and do all the camp chores as befits a male warrior.   Verin will give Moraine the clues she needs to untie the shield.   She will also heal Lan who badly wounds himself when cutting firewood with his sword.  

 

Rand will wander the blight learning the sword by killing shadow spawn. Eventually he meets Selene who Travels with him to Tear to take Callandor.  No portal stones or worlds of if.  

 

The last episode has the white cloaks charging the Seanchan, Matt blowing the horn and the hero's throwing back the Seanchan.  Meanwhile Rand,  Perrin et al, sneak into the Stone and grab the sword. There is a Shadow spawn attack which Rand defeats per the book.  Per the books we see the forsaken working at cross purposes.   It may be that E7 is the repelling of the Seanchan and E8 is the taking of the Stone if they want two action episodes back to back..  There is no Turak but Rand does stab Ishy. 

 

BTW there will be little of the punishments of novices in the tower.  We all know that corporal punishment is not an effective way to modify behavior.  Novices who misbehave are told to stand in the corner, are grounded in their room, or sent to their room without supper.  If they are really to be punished then it is all three.    This is where Rafes enlightened view of the world will really make the story realistic. 

 

 

 

 

And somewhere between the Blight and Falme, Rand will find Bela.  Then ride her the rest of the way there.  Or wherever.

12 minutes ago, KakitaOCU said:

My only disagreement there is the idea that her own ajah would jump on Liandrin no matter what.  If she had tried and failed and made them look worse, absolutely.  But I also absolutely believe it's a case of "It worked, so we're watching but moving on."

Not that they would have jumped on her for raising suspicions about another Ajah privately.  But for doing so in the Hall?

Absolutely.

The fact that "it worked, so we're watching but moving on" even happened in the show is the problem.  It wouldn't have worked at all, and even trying it in the Hall would have made her entire Ajah look bad.

So bad that her own Ajah Head would have set her a penance - and probably a public one.

Later in the series, after all the BS that Elaida does?  It might have worked.  But not at this point.

Ajahs guard their own prerogatives far too closely to let something like that fly.  At the very least, when Maighan said in the Hall that it was Blue Ajah business, it would have ended it.  No Ajah would have allowed the possibility that their own business could be dragged before the Hall like that.

And blaming someone else for a failure she had direct authority over would have meant she would not be assigned similar authority any time soon.  Liandrin was far too ambitious to have done anything that would risk her own position like that.

It's possible for them to be master manipulators, yet still have head-scratching blind spots.

Thousands of years thinking you're the smartest people on your continent will do that.

The issue I have with the way the show depicts Tower politics isn't with the occasional blind spot (which the Aes Sedai in the books absolutely had).  It's the way they didn't seem to see anything at all.

In the books, Liandrin would have been laughed out of the Hall and punished by her own Ajah for trying to stick her nose in another Ajah's business, or for trying to blame Moiraine before the entire Hall for her own failing.  No Aes Sedai in the books would have fallen for it, much less all of them.

That's not about human failings or misperceptions.  It's about the actual political structure and functioning of the Tower itself.

21 hours ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

When you literally say you're going to change the story in ways that alienates the book audience and make little use of one of the best sources you have what do you expect?

But he does seem to think mountains are pretty.

So maybe that's a plus?

2 hours ago, Jake Sykwalker said:

 

Only making 1 billion is about a billion shy of The Force Awakens.  TLJ should have equaled, or beaten it as TFA was a very generic soft reboot.  Coming in at about half the take was a giant loss.

 

They also lost their rear end in merchandizing and Solo lost a ton of money due to Last Jedi backlash.   Granted Solo was a snoozer, but it would normally have been a profitable film without TLJ angering a huge portion of the fan base.  Side note the Kessel Run was explained better in the Thrawn trilogy.  

 

Just to point out:

The $1 billion is profit.

The film cost a little over $300 million to make, and grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.  It's less profit than they expected given tFA's performance, but it isn't a loss. 

Only in a franchise like Star Wars could the most profitable movie of the year be considered a disappointment.

Hell, not even Solo actually lost money.  But it came close.  And it did the worst of all the Star Wars films.

Another few inconsistencies/continuity errors:

According to the map in Amazon's bonus materials, the layout of the major geographic elements of the continent is approximately the same as the book.  Ghealdan is south of the Two Rivers, Tar Valon is northeast of them on an island in the middle of a north/south river, and Dragonmount is to its west.  Tear is all the way south, with the Fingers of the Dragon on the coast.

And yet ...

Though it's clearly at least early summer in the Two Rivers and Shadar Logoth, it snows during the burial scene after Kerene's death.  Approximately "three hours southwest" of Shadar Logoth.  Now granted the attack was a couple days after they met up, but it looks like they hadn't moved from the spot where Logaine's cage was kept in a cave.

Rand and Mat approach Tar Valon from the west or southwest, and Dragonmount is on the opposite side of the river from them.

In the scene just before the "love shack", the camera looks out over Tar Valon and down the river.  Directly at the setting sun.

The Fingers of the Dragon is a river delta.  In Siuan's cold open, their riverside shack is next to several mountains.  Which river deltas don't have.

And another ...

Rand apparently figured out he was the Dragon Reborn because he finally remembered things that fit the description/prophecies.

Question: when did he hear about those things, or hear they mattered?

We know that Gitara Sedai told Moiraine and Siuan that the dragon had been reborn on the slopes of Dragonmount.  But when Moiraine told our young protagonists about it, she never told them what Gitara actually said.  So why would remembering the mountain mean anything?  Even Min telling him that's where he was born wouldn't have meant anything if he hadn't already heard it should.

He also remembered that he had channeled.  But if the dragon could be male or female, and they all knew of other men who channeled, why would being a man who could channel mean he was the DR?

Even hearing Machin Shin tell him wouldn't mean anything, since we know it told him all kinds of things that were false.

Given what we knew from the show (Rand hasn't read the books, or seen Amazon's bonus materials) how did any of what he remembered mean he was the DR?

On 12/2/2021 at 11:14 AM, TheDreadReader said:

The only real continuity error that has stuck out to me so far is Rand's bow.   He doesn't have it.  He has it.  He doesn't have it again.

 

One cool note, in the picture of Rand with the cloak, I think you can still see his jacket poking out from under it.

 

There is another.

When they come back out of Shadar Logoth, where are the trollocs?

Unlike the show, the fades didn't drive the trollocs into SL after them, but stayed outside.  But they were only inside for at most a few hours.  No one that escaped via the river seemed to care - which could be perfectly fine.

But Lan and Moiraine came back out the same way they went in (the only opening through the city wall), and Nynaeve would have had to go right through them to follow Moiraine's "tell" and put her knife against Lan's throat.  None of them even seemed to consider that they might still be there.

19 minutes ago, Sir_Charrid said:

Or in post film editing scenes got cut that clarified it. Everyone seems to think Rafe is on some sort of a power trip, I think he is trying to make the best wot show and was going to be attacked by a % of the audience regardless of what he did. 

I don't think anything was cut in editing that would have clarified it.

The name "Emond's Field" isn't mentioned a single time in the entire eight episodes.  "Two Rivers" is mentioned almost thirty times.

That's not a post-production slipup.

And again, Moiraine's telling of the Fall of Manetheren in the book explicitly makes the connection.  In the show it is completely omitted.  Editing can't possibly explain that one.

17 minutes ago, expat said:

Concession accepted.  This is a good example of what I was trying to get at.  This appears (to me) as if you feel entitled to a show based on your interpretation of RJ's world.  Anything else is a personal attack.  Rafe may owe the Jordon estate something, depending on the contract, but doesn't owe you or me anything except a best effort to put an interesting show on the air.  Opinions can vary on whether he succeeded or not, but ad nauseum repeating the same criticism without engaging with the counter argument doesn't come across to me as arguing in good faith. 

 

 

Amazon is hoping to spend about 800 million on WOT and you honestly believe they have their heads up their asses and are refusing to look at and consider feedback?  Have you ever been involved in a 800 million dollar, multi-year effort?  Customer feedback is a critical component.  I was the TD for a government organization which managed the development of a 800M-1B dollar (development cost only) widget for the military services/civil agencies.  Did we listen to our customers about what they liked and didn't like, absolutely.  Did we make changes based on those discussions, absolutely.  Did we accept all their proposed changes and requirements, absolutely not.  We often put our foot down and told them that the widget had to work in a certain way and we would not change to meet their requests. 

 

Why do you think Amazon is any different?  Do they want to lose money with WOT by alienating all their viewers?  Do you think that public soul searching about where they messed up the first season is going to attract new viewers for season 2 or cause potential viewers to not watch because the Amazon/show runners are saying how bad the first season was?  Will anything other than Rafe making a mea culpa announcing that he screwed the pooch on the first season and promises to change all future seasons to meet your interpretation make you believe that Amazon/Rafe is looking at feedback and trying to improve the show?  

Considering that Amazon approved season 2 before filming for season 1 even wrapped, much less aired, what "feedback" do you think they looked at and considered?

Customer feedback at that point was literally impossible for them to have seen.

1 hour ago, ashi said:

It annoyed me too, more so since the name change removes one of the links that connect the world in space and time, that is that Emond's Field = the field where fell King Aemon of Manetheren, whence the name.

 

Edit: The writers refer to Emond's Field in interviews though, so the change is probably less due to Rafe and more to Amazon producers dumbing things down. Or someone will use the name in later seasons. Who knows.

We can be at least somewhat certain that the change was intentional, since Moiraine's story of Manetheren could have included it, but doesn't.  Instead, it makes it sound as if the village is located on the site of the old capital city, where Eldrene died.  Rather than the battlefield, where Aemon did.

I wish I could avoid the easy criticism that it once again strips a link to an important man in order to replace it with a link to an important woman.  But I don't think it's avoidable.  It's not that it removes a link.  It's that it intentionally changes what it links to.

25 minutes ago, Juan Farstrider said:

Not to nit-pick, but to say you would argue he misspoke but you're unfamiliar with the specific quote seems off to me. By misspoke I guess you mean he could have worded what he meant another way, which would be charitable but there's no need to characterize his quote you're not familiar with because you're not familiar with it. OK, I'm nit-picking. Sorry. But I'm spring-boarding off the nit that I picked to either dive or belly-flop. 

I think an honest assessment of the quote as it is attributed to him here (and perhaps not as he said it) would be "wow, that would be a crazy thing to say. I hope he misspoke or the specific context might put it in better light." I mean without any context, it assumes he's up to the task. Decent humility would have one not think that, and both decent public decency and clever public relations savvy would would have one never say that aloud. My number one off-the-cuff assessment of Rafe is that he's too young for this task. This is a kind of error the young make all the time. I think I remember saying stupid things I couldn't back up, so maybe I see myself in our ambitious show-runner. 

But, if the context is that he's writting it from a feminism point of view today as RJ would today, based on how he did it then from that perspective: well, that's off-base too probably. What kind of feminism does RJ reflect in the books, and how does he relate to it? Before even trying to to answer, I suspect Harriet has a lot to do with his view on it and his relationship with it, so there is a possible mediating factor that might need to be included.

But, is RJ offering a sort of 60s-70s view of feminism (where I'll remind everyone how the women on the original Star Trek series thought their short uniform-dresses were very women's lib, and women where soldiering on through an openly sexist world even if not everyone in that world was sexist. The nurse and the various yeomen (yeo-women? that's what they were) worked in spite of the leering. The whole gist of the Mary Tyler Moore show was that she was in her thirties and not married in an actual a career, standing up to a tough boss, and living alone even!), and his view on that (perhaps with Harriet's input)? The whole tension between men and women in the series (which also has a lot to do with mistrust sewn by the DO) sounds 70s-ish to me, not 90s-ish. Moraine is more Grace Slick than Mikki from Lush, imHo.

I don't know if Rafe is thinking about that, nor about what that view would be today or what that today would be. I don't think he can. But, I don't he isn't thinking along those lines at all. I think in artist circles today he has to address everytime he hears "oh, you're adapting that book series? Isn't it problematic?" and the best answer to that, to get passed all the gate-keepers and peer-keepers-down-ers, might be "yeah, but at it's core it's a great story with great women characters. the dynamic is outdated but for it's time it was progressive and even forward thinking." I don't think I'm misquoting Rafe here.  ;^)  I do suspect this little fake-dialogue is closer to the reality-- both in that he might not like this aspect of what he sees in the books but also that he has to work with people aren't going to be so onboard with sex-based differences everyone used to take for granted. 

I've seen a couple different versions of the quote, including one that specifically mentions "how RJ would write it today."  I'm not sure what interview that appeared in, but here's another version as quoted in Den Of Geek that makes the context clear:

“One of the things about the books is that they were probably quite, quite feminist in the ‘90s when they came out, and so I want to stay true to that and make them feel feminist for today,” Judkins says. “I think if we took some of the things that happened in the books and put them on screen today, they would not feel as feminist. There’s a 30-year gap between when those [first books] came out and the [series] end.” 

He is explicitly saying that it was feminist for its day, but not enough for today.

So he's taking it on himself to make it that way.  Even though it remains one of the most feminist of fiction properties - regardless of genre, or era.

27 minutes ago, Cauthonfan4 said:

i mean to be fair - season 1 got results (at least in viewer minutes), but how much of those results will carry over after all the people season 1 alienated don't watch season 2? 

The answer to that question will depend on a couple of trends, and how they balance out.

We know (or at least suspect) that there aren't enough original book fans for the show to rely even largely on them.  So Rafe (and Amazon) expect the non-readers to like it so much that they compensate for any loss of readers.

So these are the trends that matter:

Non-readers who liked it enough to keep watching, but have no intent to ever start on the books.  And who don't care about the opinions of readers.

Non-readers who liked it enough to start on the books, and then decide whether to keep watching based on that experience.  These people are much more likely to care about the opinions of friends and family who are readers.

Please note that, unlike for Game of Thrones (for various reasons), even the people in that first group most likely only watched in the first place because readers encouraged them to.

And what I think will be the deciding factor regarding the ultimate success of the series into the second season and beyond will be that second group. 

The trend that has been seen in that group is this:

Non-readers liking the show enough to start on the books now that the season is over, and hating what the show did to the story once they read the source material.

If the people who read the book after watching the show are alienated at the same rate as original readers, I think the show is dead.  Because the loss of them from the viewership will be greater than the gain from people who won't ever read it.