EmreY

1 hour ago, Asthereal said:

Why did they include an extensive storyline about a warder losing his Aes Sedai, getting depressed, killing himself and then the others mourning for it?

Read only if you've finished the books:

1 hour ago, Asthereal said:

The Seanchan sending a massive tsunami to kill one little girl?

To level the coastline, I suspect.  And the Seanchan don't have a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Pets.  Or Girls, for that matter.

I want Jim Carrey to play someone but who, I haven't decided yet.  Maybe Moridin.

21 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

At that point Rand had fully merged with his past self; Lews Therin Telamon.

Which is why I gave two examples, and there's a follow-on comment a little later which highlights some of the issues that raised at the time.

Ten years later, we have come to accept certain things, but they seemed problematic to some at the time.

4 hours ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Anthony Hopkins was on screen for 16 minutes of that movie and won the Oscar for Best Actor

Pfft.  Judy Dench was on for eight minutes in Ben Affleck Plays Mercutio or whatever that film was called and got an Oscar. ?

I think the length of screentime combined with the fact that the cinnamon roll doesn't do all that much / generate much obvious interest before Episode 8 does create a dissonance.  Whether intended or not, I have no idea.

20 minutes ago, Weird_Old_Lady said:

Also, he doesn't almost burn out and die in the process. They were linked and almost died. He will do it on his own and just be like "no problem".

And that may be a problem.  It may be difficult to accept / seen as too easy (for those that didn't read thousands of words to get to the Battle at Maradon) that Rand has become so powerful.  Not to mention that he apparently gives off a spiritual light that causes darkfriends to claw their eyes out.

And for those who are upset at the level of power/control demonstrated by the five at Tarwin's Gap, I have dredged up this old thread https://dragonmount.com/forums/topic/59591-why-did-rj-turn-the-channeling-system-on-its-head/ where the same criticisms are levelled at RJ, eg:

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What Rand did in Maradon was effectively 'wrong' according to everything RJ has stated that a channeler can do unaided

.

with some of the excuses being considerably more imaginative than any yet given in this thread:

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as they gain more proficiency their physical bodies change in some way to become more suitable or less resistant to the flow of the One Power

Not only had the argument regarding the end of the rigorous magic system been made before, it has been levelled at the author of that system.  Time to untwist our knickers, I think.

8 hours ago, KakitaOCU said:

But the person I'm debating with is comparing Ep 8 to what Rand does at the Manor or Maradon.  The argument being that it cheapens what Rand did, where as my argument is that Rand is showing ridiculous levels of control and power at those points.

Indeed.  

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TSR.7:

Egwene knew she herself could never have done what he just had, split her flows that many ways, worked that many things at once. Working two flows at once was far more than twice as hard as working one of the same magnitude, and working three much more than twice again working two. He had to have been weaving a dozen. He did not even look tired, yet exertion with the Power took energy.

without an angreal, and also, of course, the better-known:

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ToM.32:

 

Ituralde POV: "He was like an entire army of channelers."

Naeff: "I've never seen so many weaves at once,"

with one (I think, though how was he holding it?), non-stop for over an hour, though that does tire him out.

Lord Rand, dextrous is he, the Dragon Reborn!  Strong as ten regular channellers, definitely.

3 hours ago, ArrylT said:

https://rationalnerd62.tumblr.com/post/673681725181788160/the-wheel-of-time-screentime-s1-rand

 

I've posted tumblr articles from this account previously - now they have done a deeper dive into Rands screentime and how much screentime he has had with each character & so forth.  ?

Now we need a breakdown of how often he says I/me/mine versus she/her/hers/Egwene. ?

13 hours ago, AdamA said:

Didn't Amazon already commit to five seasons of the LOTR prequel?

?

2 hours ago, Mailman said:

I think they might double down and go again with the announcement in a attempt to retrieve the end of the first season.

 

I can however see if the quality does not improve massively a abrupt end at the end of season 3 or possibly a abbreviated season 4 conclusion.

I dunno.  Both 2 & 3 are likely to end with a bang.  I'm pretty sure if we get to 3, we'll get more.

From Reddit:

12 minutes ago, ArrylT said:

There was a video interview with Priyanka Bose today (or recently) and plenty of people are trying to speculate if her comments mean S2 will arrive sooner than expected (ie Summer or Early Fall) rather than  late Fall / early Winter.

I think that It would be a good idea, to put space between WOT and another show.  Link?

1 hour ago, RhienneAgain said:

I wouldn't say so. I'd say the comment with regards to sex scenes is being discussed with regards to a) whether the approach to sex scenes is good/bad/important/etc., and b) what it reveals about the showrunner's and writer's goals/beliefs/agenda with regards to gender portrayal in the show.

If I were to generalise the argument mades here (not just yours), it goes something along the lines of:

J writes XYZ

J throws XYZ away

Therefore a) XYZ is something J likes, or (more generally) b) shows how far he is to willing to consider deviating from source material

this is much the same as

(Apologies to any Swedes)

RhienneAgain prepares surstömming

RhienneAgain throws surströmming away

Therefore a) surströmming is something RhienneAgain likes, or (more generally) b) shows how she's prepared to experiment

I would argue that (a) is unsubstantiated in both cases.  While (b) has more merit, it just shows a daring nature; just like surströmming, XYZ might be an idea never to be revisited.  ( (a) is also illogical, because it removes the distinction that should arise if J decides to keep XYZ or RhienneAgain eats plate after plate of surströmming.)

If all that was being said was that Judkins was willing to take risks (like RhienneAgain) then fine, I'd be OK with that - there's no point in writing that stuff otherwise.  But to say that it defines his preferences is a bit of a stretch.

44 minutes ago, Truthteller said:

Your first draft won’t be as good as later drafts, but it will show what you care about, what you think is important.

 

 

I would suggest that what I care about when I'm writing, or what I think is most important can vary hugely over time, and therefore respectfully disagree.

6 minutes ago, Raal Gurniss said:

…Have been attacked quite a number of times for suggesting the show is merely average, so the majority will have been scared away….The ones that dislike the show are likely just flabbergasted by those that have claimed the show is of the highest quality and is even far superior to the books.

 

 

Other than a very few posters - I believe non-book-readers - who have stuck their head out from the trenches (and promptly run away), who has said the show is great?

1 hour ago, notpropaganda73 said:

Maybe theatre is just a better medium for that sort of thing though, I dunno. There aren't too many Shakespeare diehards angry that Ruth Negga has played Hamlet because "no way would a mixed race woman be Prince of Denmark!" hahaha

Ah, but Shakespeare is not popular culture.  If the first page of a ninth draft (later discarded) had surfaced of a show where she was rumoured to have signed on to play Superman, who knows what the reaction would have been.  The arbiters of the zeitgeist keep the gates closed.

If only the internet had been around when Sarah Bernhardt played the title role in Hamlet (not the first woman by any means, btw) when TV and film did not exist.   I'd love to have seen/heard their reaction to her (reported) words:

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I cannot see Hamlet as a man. The things he says, his impulses, his actions, entirely indicate to me that he was a woman.'

Even without that, many of the reviews were scathing.  Hilarious to (most of) us today, but are certain critics all that different today?

1 hour ago, Truthteller said:

The biggest challenge was always going to be how do you turn 14 books into 8 seasons, and yet somehow after one season we are only one book into the series, so with all the changes they haven’t even begun to cut.  

I can't remember much from Books 9, 10 and 11 except that I was growing progressively more exasperated - something that has not changed on re-reads - so I'll just proffer those on the altar of cuts to be made.

13 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

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!

 

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.

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

Just now, Deviations said:

The warder episode with Lan tearing his shirt open.  I was in 'WTF?' territory right at the beginning of the first episode when Moraine put pants on and angry by the end of the episode.  So many changes that didn't make sense to me.  I was told, don't worry.  It will make sense later, it was for budget, it was for time available, etc.

If we were living in some alternate universe and I were Judkins, I would reply that it is absolutely necessary to hammer this point home.  

6 minutes ago, Yojimbo said:

While this is true, it can also be argued that it speaks to state of mind.  As a writer, just because you discard something because it might be too ham-fisted or would be rejected but the audience (or your editors or publishers) as junk (called "killing your babies" by Stephen King) it doesn't mean your second, or third draft (or subsequent chapters) won't still be influenced by that original one.

I've written a lot of things over the years where my first draft doesn't look anything like the final version.  I'd go so far as to bet that everyone has.

I grant the evidence is in favour of your more nuanced approach, but it very circumstantial indeed. 

Also, how much does Judkins write for the series?

On 1/3/2022 at 5:39 AM, ForsakenPotato said:

I don't think WoT will be nearly as violent as GoT but I predict at least one non-book death in Season 2, and I think Siuan is the most likely.

Making the Forsaken just a smidgen more competent would be fun, I think.

Or, perhaps I'm mistaken.  What if RJ wanted the Dark One and his Minions to be incompetent, not just to avoid having someone with half a brain as a protagonist (and instead concentrate on the problems of the sewage system in Tear or whatever) but to suggest that they're not evil, just stupid?

@WoTwasThatI really liked Episode 7.  I did, honestly.  Probably my second favourite of the series.

3 hours ago, ilovezam said:

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.

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

This conversation, summarised:

A : Look, Rafe is holding his copy of WOT upside down in this clip.

B : I knew it.  Confirmation that he can't even read.

C : No, he can, but it's just to rub it into our faces that he means to turn everything upside down.

A+B+C : Yes, this is proof that he is the Anti-Jordan Incarnate!

D : Are you sure?  He probably had to hold it the right way up to begin to read it so that he could make any changes if he...

A : That he should even think about reading it upside down is heresy!

B : In fact, it was a trial balloon.  He wanted everyone to read it upside down.

D : But he must at some point have read it rightside up?

C : No, even holding the book upside down once is categorical truth, undeniable fact that he means to butcher my beloved series.

There's a saying where I come from, like pounding water in a pestle, which adequately describes this discussion.

1 hour ago, Raal Gurniss said:

And a 7 is mediocre…It is what it is and shouldn’t affect the personal enjoyment an individual gets from it..

 

Its just so weird that people have rated it so highly, it certainly doesn’t come anywhere near a 10 even a 9 would still  be way off….8 I could understand if people were being biased by their sheer enjoyment of the show…But it still would be too high….7 is about as high a score as it could be given what it is.

Grading systems vary.  I am however glad you believe this series is mediocre; we are apparently not too far off in our estimations.

...

On another subject, a question to the mods and admins:

I realise that this is a multicultural forum, forms of address and opinion vary, and it appears that some people believe strongly enough that those who like the series are cartoon characters, shills, laughable, ridiculous and all the rest.  Not directly, just along the lines of "it's laughable that anyone should like this show".  Would it irk you too much if I responded in kind?  Because being two strikes from a permanent ban, I have to tread carefully.  I assume "it's laughable that anyone not like this show, and anyone who doesn't is a dunderhead" is OK?

3 hours ago, Raal Gurniss said:

I mean you must believe WoT is an 8-10/10…I believe it’s a 4-7/10…

A 7/10 for me.  I like some parts very much - often things that seem to have pissed people off ? - and the others are generally just meh.  Very few WTF moments for me.

3 hours ago, ilovezam said:

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.

 

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.

14 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

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.

Tolkien's first drafts, not PJ's.

2 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

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.

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

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