Almost like the complaints aren’t just about the show ruining gender dynamics. It’s also the fact that the replacement story isn’t very good.

At this point, I don't expect the show to go much beyond season 3. But if it does, I also don't think we can reasonably expect the plot to even hit major points from the book in a recognizable way. At best, we'll get individual scenes that look like certain scenes from the book, but there is essentially no chance that the way these scenes are connected and fit together will resemble the book. That is already what happened in season 2 more often than not, and it will only continue to compound. Worrying about how Galad will make peace with Perrin is completely irrelevant.

I thought that was obvious. Siuan is gay and fabulous. She can't have a boyfriend.

That was lots of marketing and intrigue, like I said. The dragon wasn’t ever going to be anyone else. As far as competence, I’d say they are far more competent than you are giving them credit since they clearly understood that Rand needs to be the dragon. If you think they were ever seriously considering making anyone else the dragon, you are the one questioning their competence.

This is the fiction writing version of the alcoholic who can quit whenever he wants to. It was always going to be Rand and anyone who says differently is either creating intrigue or not really paying attention to the long term effects. With things like Jain Farstrider, I tend to just assume that nobody was paying attention to the details rather than ascribing meaning to throw away lines. Occam’s razor is that somebody assumed Jain is a girl’s name and didn’t check. Also, there is a Firefly tangent in here somewhere.

It's odd that fantasy often portrays battle magic as a toolbox when practically speaking it would probably mostly just be a gun equivalent. While some situations that require creative problem solving might arise occasionally, much of the time the magic wielder just needs to kill or incapacitate a number of roughly humanoid enemies. There should be a best way to do that and it should pretty much always be the best. Of course, that gets boring, but it's a bit weird to me that magic users are so often getting creative in battle. Is Moiraine good at throwing stones? Great. She should pretty much always default to that. Or is it lightning bolts or fireballs? Also fine. But there needs to be a justification for switching it up and most fantasy is weak on this front. Not really about the show in particular and I get why it happens. But just a sort of side-tangent.

Considering the attention to detail that we've seen so far, there's a good chance they just thought that was Galad's last name.

I'm wondering if it's actually just the original forsaken. It seems in this version of the story there are only 8 instead of 13. Last season, they played with the idea that the forsaken were a shadow version of the main characters in this age. This plays up the angle that it's all about the choices you make.

Have you met any 20 year olds? They act like children all the time. I agree that Mat's character is sort of weird early on since it's simultaneously implied that he has some experience carousing and also that he doesn't. And, as you say, how could he?

A one page summary would never include a list of things that didn't happen or shouldn't be included. By that logic, Rand killing his father in a fit of rage would also not be a huge departure from the book since Tam probably doesn't even make the 1 page summary. From a character development standpoint, Rand being innocent and Mat not being a scumbag are sort of important. And Perrin growing into his own sense of manhood is very important. None of the things mentioned sink the show on its own. They are just huge red flags that the creators don't get it. TV needs to use images and symbols to efficiently give us information about the characters and story. These symbols and images are contradicting what needs to be told about the characters early on to set them up for their book arcs.

I saw that too and was at first wondering if that is actually Avi, but Avi wouldn’t be caught dead in heeled boots.

I enjoy the prologues. To enjoy the WoT you have to be willing to go with the flow and not worry about getting back to any particular story line right away. If you only want to hear about the main characters and their plotlines, the prologues can feel like a drag.

Callandor the object is not important early. Callandor the plot device that changes Rand from passenger to driver is critical and its absence leaves Rand a passenger in his own story. In regards to Mat, I just intend to believe people when they tell me who they are. If I had faith that the creators understood Mat's arc and thought it was important, I could believe you that they might still do it justice.

I was thinking I might be curious about season 3 and then about halfway through I was reminded why the show is irredeemable. No Callandor. No Tairen doors for Matt. It's so far offtrack that any attempt to bring it back on track would just push it further off track.

I recently saw a joke about a DnD item that is a "truth serum." But instead of making someone tell the truth, it simply alters reality (retroactively and including memories as necessary) so that whatever is said is true. Along those lines, do Min's visions become locked because she sees them, or is she simply an observer of that which was already locked? Does she herself have enough free will to avoid seeing the visions that she was "supposed" to see? Would it matter? To what extent are some of here visions self fulfilling prophecies where those who know about them change their actions because of the visions and thus cause them to be fulfilled? (Alivia?)

I have assumed that the world maps onto parallel worlds (Tel and others). Although distance and time may be different in other worlds, they still scale consistently and thus map onto each other point to point. This seems to be a prerequisite for things like portal stones to work. As such, travelling requires that you know the area where you are as it relates to this metaphysical grid. Moving around a locket (or even an enclosed wagon) would thus not be helpful since that item moves around the grid and is not a useful landmark. Knowing I am inside my car doesn't really tell me something useful as to where I am. Knowing I am on top of the pyramid of Giza does. I don't think the books really give details about how this works, but I don't think a small mobile device helps you travel or make gateways. That said, I think gateways can be used to communicate over long distances. There are ways to use the one power to track others (like the bond or Moirraine's coins). If you can make a gateway from where you are and use such a device to know where someone else is, you can probably create a gateway to them and talk to them through it.

Fair enough if we're talking about book 1. But that definitely is not the 7 core characters of the series.

I think it depends on what you expect from your fiction and what genre you think you are reading. Is this a story about epic heroes with destiny and foreshadowing leading to a cathartic climax where everything has a place and a reason and Chekov's gun always goes off? Or is this supposed to be some realistic fiction where things raise questions about the meaning of life and sometimes things happen and we have to ask if there really is a higher power or is it all just pointless? I think WoT falls in the middle between those two and is a little of both. We do have some epic struggles between paragons. But also, some things happen just because. I think that Lan is characterized by a hopeless struggle with the shadow. If he were to die, it wouldn't be about the specific nature of his opponent. It could be Demandred or a horde of trollocs overrunning him. The point would be that he met his fate on his feet with a sword in his hands. Of course, I ultimately think it's good that he survived, but I don't think that his personal connection to his opponent or to Gawyn and Galad is important.

Bit of a tangent, but who do you see as the 7. I've mostly seen references to the 6 being the EFF+Elayne. Who is #7?

I'd agree the repetitive nature of the Gawyn, Galad, Lan attack is a bit weird. However, I don't think Lan's attack is really related to a desire to avenge Gawyn and Galad in particular. He barely knows them. And he doesn't have a particular grudge with Demandred either. His battle with the shadow is so personal that it isn't personal at all. It's his entire reason for existing, or at least was before he met Nynaeve. He attacks Demandred because he is the visible leader of the shadow's forces. The medallion is somewhat a plot device that makes it plausible for non-channelers to maybe present a threat to channelers.

I've always been torn on whether or not Lan should have actually died when he sheathed the sword. On the one hand, it seems cheap that sheathing the sword is supposed to be about willingness to pay the price for defeating evil and neither of the times we see it in the series does it result in death. At least Rand pays a price with the wound. Lan is just somehow not dead and doesn't really have to suffer. On the other hand, Lan's line is that duty is heavier than a mountain and death is lighter than a feather. Death was never the price that he should narratively be required to pay because he was too willing to pay it. And if Lan does, it leaves Nynaeve a widow, both narratively and literally. If Lan were to die, I think it would be poetic if we find out that Nynaeve is pregnant with their son. She goes to Malkier and becomes a dowager queen regent who raises the next king. Of course, being a powerful Aes Sedai, she would live long enough to be adviser to the line of the kings of Malkier for generations. But ultimately, I think it's good that Lan lives because he needs to fulfill his duty and death would only have been a release from the duty. Of course, if Lan lives, I think it makes complete sense that he goes and rebuilds Malkier after the last battle. He resisted becoming king because he didn't think there was a future and didn't want to lead others to their deaths. With the shadow defeated and the blight pushed back, Malkier has a future. And Lan is the king. It's his duty to rebuild his land and be a leader for his people. That part never bothered me. It would have been weird to me if Lan doesn't rebuild Malkier after defeating the shadow.

There are a lot of questions regarding past and future turnings of the wheel that aren't really answered conclusively. What does it really mean for ages to repeat? Certainly, it's not the exact same down to every random farmer choosing to get a drink of water at the exact same time. It's probably just a repetition of general movements of history, and even that seems to have a good deal of variability. The champion of the light coming back to fulfill his destiny in the 3rd age after failing before is a major theme of the story we get, but I'm not even sure that this always happens in every turning. How often do souls come back and what is the significance of this? The heroes of the horn and certain others seem to frequently occupy important roles, but even for them it seems to vary. They also sometimes come back in mundane roles. Some eastern religions that feature reincarnation also have concepts of progression and consequences that reverberate through incarnations. Similar concepts would give more meaning to the repetitions in WoT, but they aren't really explored much. What does it really mean for the same soul to come back if he or she has no memory of past lives and the present life doesn't seem to be connected to or dependent on past lives in any way? Why does it matter that it's the same soul? Rand is the only main character that has a defined past life. Maybe Egwene is Latra Posae Decume. Maybe Elayne is Ilyena. Maybe Mat is Aemon. But in spite of the similarities, there are good reasons to doubt that those are actually the same souls.

Well, according to the creators, they already adapted book 3. Couldn’t you tell? If your one of those who hate the show, why would you care that book three did or didn't get adapted much less if season 4 gets greenlit or not. If the show does die with three seasons then you can say, "See I was right and you were wrong" which is all the haters of the show really care about. I’m completely ambivalent about the show at this point. It’s the gaslighting I hate.

Well, according to the creators, they already adapted book 3. Couldn’t you tell?

As you elude to, I think this question is really part of a bigger set of questions. In particular, what is the actual purpose of the universe? Why did the creator create it and what did the creator hope to gain or achieve by doing so? If the wheel really just makes the same things happen over and over again, the universe seems kind of pointless. The books are somewhat vague as to what it actually means for ages to come and go forever and I think that RJ's understanding of that probably evolved as the series progressed. For instance, early on it seems to be implied that Rand's soul in particular is locked in a repetitive conflict with Ishamael. But later statements by RJ seem to imply that various things might change in each turning of the wheel and that there might be other dragons or no dragon at all in some turnings. In this context, the flicker flicker visions are probably possible alternate realities rather than actual things that happened in other turnings of the wheel. In this context, the wheel is some type of iterative training for souls to reach some higher state as is the case in some real world eastern religions that believe in reincarnation. In other words, this would imply that although the wheel is cyclical it doesn't preclude the possibility that progress can be made. In regards to the DO in particular, I think there is an important distinction between the creator's purpose in the existence of the DO and the Dark One's own agenda that he as a consciousness holds and tries to enact. The simplest explanation is that the DO exists as an oppositional force to give souls a way to struggle, overcome, and grow. Of course, this would not be what the DO himself believes. If, as you suggest, the DO's purpose is to break the wheel to allow for more evolution, does he himself see this as his purpose?