In this thread: some people who are gonna lose their shit when non white actors get cast despite most characters not having an explicitly established skin colour and Randland being a far future setting where skin colour is entirely irrelevant.

I've only skimmed this thread but I've seen it mentioned a few times here and in the what to keep what to cut thread that there are people who think WoT is PG, especially when making disparaging comments / comparisons with Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire and I kinda have to wonder if we're reading the same books.

I would say that aSoIaF definitely revels in 'adult' content more and plays more for titillation and gore in terms of lurid descriptions and general writing style but in terms of what's actually there, like purely what events are there in the books to show on tv I'd argue that Wheel of Time is as 'adult' in its content if not more so than aSoIaF.

First violence - obviously there are battles, swordfights and the like and on immense scales and thousands (or tens or hundreds of thousands) of people hacking, stabbing, bludgeoning, and shooting eachother to death is bad but it's kinda considered background standard fare (what does that say about us as a society and as readers, lol) and a lot of shadowspawn get blown up but they are just monsters so there's a general feeling that that doesn't really count but once we get the watershed of Dumai's Wells where channelling is introduced into warfare not just against creatures of the shadow but against men Jordan absolutely hammers home the extreme horrors of mechanised, mass warfare - people being blown limb from limb, turned into a red mist, people dying by the hundreds in explosions and fireballs, people screaming as they die, Jordan really makes sure the sickening horror of it all is as clear as possible... and I say people because Wheel of Time features female warriors in the Maidens of The Spear (and later in Cha Faile) which is something people are often squeamish about - much easier / more normal to watch the menfolk die in war. Later we also get multiple vivid descriptions of what gunpowder based weaponry does to human beings. There are also a bunch of executions of nobles or others who take up arms or who otherwise oppose either Rand or the Seanchan, mentions of dead and/or raped civilians as a result of banditry or The Prophet's people, tons of people hanging from trees and the like, that one guy's ear collection, the entire ambiance of the Whitecloak's "Citadel of Light".

There's the many descriptions of what the trollocs do to their prisoners, and the scene in T'A'R where the foolish Aes Sedai get stuck in a nightmare of the same which probably belongs in the torture section but most of the other trolloc stuff is just background info or happens offscreen until the last battle where we see it more closely so I wanted it in a seperate little section. There's as every gnarly thing relating to the Ruby Dagger, which includes but isn't limited to Fain crucifying a Myrddraal with metal spikes, and anyone who gets cut by it dying in a multitude of gory and gruesome ways.

Then we come to the many, many torture scenes, both psychic/mental in the case of say Logain being tortured for days to break his will so he can be 13/13'd (the very concept of which is extremely horrfying, turning someone who wants and chooses to be and fight for good to evil), every instance of compulsion and of course the absolute nightmare fuel that is the a'dam (which goes far beyond anything in aSoIaF in terms of how disturbing it is) and its use as a tool of mind-breaking enslavement and conditioning, as well as so much physical torture. To name a few instances: when Rand is captured (also mental from being locked in the dark for days, forced to watch his girlfriend get beaten to punish him), the various times a bunch of different characters are 'put to the question', Perrin torturing the Aiel for information, any time anyone on the Shadow side thinks someone over whom they have some position of authority has messed up or they just feel like throwing in some humiliation and/or torture. There's also a bunch of casual mentions of stuff the Black Ajah has been involved in in the past, and various mentions of stuff Semirhage did way back, as well as her torturing Cabriana and her warder, and later using the Sad Bracelets on Rand (both mental and physical). At some point the real Danelle would have been tortured to death too which I suspect will get shown early on the show to introduce Mesaana as an ongoing character and 'face' of the black ajah politics / political machinations in the tower, probably completely replacing Alviarin and giving her much more creit as an ongoing threat and the "shadow's amyrlin". Every instance of someone being severed / gentled / stilled probably counts as both mental and physical torture, it's essentially an act of spiritual mutilation. Birgitte's entire forced life is sort of an extended torture by Moghedien which causes her no end of anguish throughout the books over Gaidal and her place is a hero.

Trigger warning because now we have sexual violence - Morgase is raped by both Rahvin and Valda, Mat faces prolonged sexual abuse at the hands of Tylin, I'm pretty sure there's mention of trollocs and Myrddraal enjoying raping humans, it's implied that Shadar Haran rapes both Moghedien and Mesaana during their torture torture scenes. Suroth is give to the Deathwatch Guard (yeah, all of them) to use for whatever they want and the scene closes as her clothes are cut off so it's pretty clear where that's going, the Shaido are mentioned to be raping their wetlander prisoners, Graendal has an entire palace full of mindcontroled sex slaves.

Sex - if we ignore that Perrin and Faile got a whole book offscreen to have fun and that Rand and Min technically spend a ton of time together and seem to be a normal sexually active couple again off screen there are likely more rapes shown or implied in the series than consensual sex scenes - Rand gets a fade to black once with each of his girlfriends, I think Perrin gets one with Faile, and Mat gets one with Tuon and that's all folks. A bunch of side characters are obviously happily together but it's never really shown/mentioned.

Nudity - so much nudity, and it's mostly female nudity (so I guess that's good for tv, everyone loves some tits but you aren't allowed to show a cock) and frankly most of it I classify along with half of the torture scenes and almost all of the corporal punishment as Jordan throwing in some of his kinks, if it was an anime rather than a book I'd have turned off and be decrying it as pointless time-wasting fanservice. This is just the non-sexual, non-violent stuff: Every Aes Sedai ceremony? Naked. Go to Rhuidean? Naked. Get captured by the Aiel? Naked. Sweat tents and bathhouses, sure but damn it seems the Aiel (and wise ones in particular) can't actually hold meetings or discuss anything of any merit without stripping down and heading in to the sauna.

Corporal punishment, oh my! Mostly centred around the White Tower and the Aiel, though the Seanchan are in to it too. We start off with some light spanking and move on up to almost the full BDSM experience. Elayne gets a few. Egwene gets beaten almost as much (though doesn't have nearly as much fun) as my favourite non-combat heroine and the divinely anointed masochist Phèdre of the Kushiel series (for which Jordan provided a glowing cover quote, at least it's on my copy of Kushiel's Dart, just as a by the by). Faile gets introduced to Aiel shibari, beaten, hogtied, beaten a bit more and this seems to be on the light end of Sevanna does to her prisoners from stuff that's mentioned to happen to other "gai'shain" in the Shaido camp. Tuon gets beaten (at her request!) by Semirhage offscreen and was crying for days as a result (though Semi was "almost tender about it" because she's actually a misunderstood loving sadist, and not an evil psychopath?). Half the Aes Sedai also get handed 'penances' which are mostly various flavours of beating - Elaida in particular hands them out like candy under Alviarin's influence. Rand gets a few from the Maidens. And there's plenty of general background beatings that go on with the Aiel in general.

First post back on these forums in forever, but that's tv show hype for ya.

One character I've not seen mentioned yet, obviously not a presence in the first season unless they want to get all the forsaken introduced early (which I'd be down with, way too many of them appear as one-off "end of book boss" then nearly immediately die, which doesn't exactly make the Shadow look good/threatening) but anyway I'm talking about Asmodean, of course. And who else to play him but Tom Ellis:

Not trying to offend anyone

 

You are. To be specific, about 50% of humanity.

I really don't think so. He was attacking Aes Sedai, not women. I don't see any blanket suggestions about women, just that Aes Sedai, as an institution appear to be "dense".

Edit : I'll add that it seems that one of the recurring themes explored by Jordan is that of miscommunication and ignorance, which I think he overdoes somewhat, to the point of stretching credibility. The male characters often present similar ignorance, however, they are also young and inexperienced.

Yeah they are all pretty much entirely blinded by their supposed allpowerfulness; they can't see past their oversized egos or think outside the White Tower's very own Box for the most part.

There are exceptions, but not many.

Balefiring something which has had such a profound effect on the last few thousand years would destroy the world.

Stars, Crowns, Cups, Roses, Rods -> makes sense, nice quotation :)

It would seem that Crowns are the highest roll, and I'd suspect then that roses are the second highest (so Crown = 6, Rose = 5) Mat's thoughts might suggest that Stars and then Cups are the next down, but idunno. There might be unknown rules going on here, combinations of rolls being better than oneanother rather than it being a straight translation of pip scores into a symbol and whoever rolls highest wins.

I seem to recall there being a section where Mat keeps rolling "The Dark One's Eyes" I know he rolls all ones, but I don't recall if he takes out his die with symbols on?

The cards that are being used when Mat gambles with some nobles at the start of TSR have the following suits : Flames, Cups, Rods, Coins and Winds. It would make sense within randland then to have the Cups and Rods (wands?) along with the Crowns, although I'm not sure if actual faces for the dice are listed anywhere.

And why would the fact that Jordan is a Christian influence his choice of symbols in a fictional universe? He has dragons and what amounts to a Yin-Yang as his primary symbols y'know...

Really? I know Verin is exiled from Far Madding, but I didn't know that she was a native.

I don't think Birgitte would refer to Ishamael as Ba'alzamon, nor would she call him a fool; she's scared of Moghedien, with good reason too, she'd be atleast just as scared of Ishamael.

And Lanfear is the one who covers her beauty up with extr-ugly disguises, probably knew that Egwene (or one of the girls) would be visiting T'A'R that night (she saw the twisted ring), and inclined enough towards casual cruelty to rip the ring off of her and send her flying outta T'A'R in a mass of pain.

I'll speculate, that lanfear, possibly is better at screwing with other people's dreams (I base this on stuff said about her activities in the BWB), and the whole "dark place with loads of glowing lights" thing. While Moghedien has more control in T'A'R.