Two <em>WoT</em> book readers dive back into Amazon's increasingly divergent adaptation.
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The Wheel of Time is back for season three, and so are our weekly recaps
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I go as far to say that the One Power is the cause of those stereotypes in-universe, or at least a major factor in them being so strongly pervasive in the setting. As something "educated" people could point to as a "natural" basis for them, that seeped out into the broader consciousness of the world. Despite the irony of men and women alike thinking the other sex is more stubborn. or foolish, or...
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I couldn't imagine being perpetually offended by almost everything. Gotta be either exhausting or you've nothing better to do.
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You are reading a lot into my posts that isn't there. If were perpetually offended by the series I wouldn't have read the whole thing multiple times.
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Based on this comment I am reasonably sure that we have similar politics. The show is good & will not disappoint you. There's a reason many, many chuds are mad at this show & always trying to review bomb it, and I'm willing to bet everything they're mad at will be something you love about the show.
Yeah I understand that point of view, even though I don't agree with it. My husband is transgender & very much loves the show. His interpretation of the magic in the books is that
he would be able to channel Saidin (so lucky! The world of the Wheel of Time is not a great one to be born a man in…), and based on the casting of Rebecca Root as Lelaine Akashi, it looks like the show is running with that interpretation too. I think that's the best way to adapt the source material given what we started with. I doubt they'll highlight it because of the current political climate, but it's there. I have a headcanon that some of the non-Power magic systems like the Omens, various Talents, Dream walking, even Wolfbrothers (Wolfsiblings?) are "for" non-binary people, but my headcanon has always been that Min was non-binary so that's definitely part of why I think about it that way.
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I really loved Andrew & Lee's coverage for seasons 1 & 2, and I still love it in season 3. Thank you both for sharing your thoughts with us & I'm glad you guys are enjoying the show.
Also holy shit, season 3 is incredible so far! I didn't realise how much emotional attachment I had to a particular quarterstaff scene, and I'm incredibly excited for next episode based on the trailers/reviews. It feels so weird to see this series that I've lived with for decades get made into television. It feels even weirder that, as of season 3, it's the best fantasy television currently airing. Weird, but also very gratifying; I knew this series wasn't unadaptable. We just needed a very special cast & crew.
Also holy shit, season 3 is incredible so far! I didn't realise how much emotional attachment I had to a particular quarterstaff scene, and I'm incredibly excited for next episode based on the trailers/reviews. It feels so weird to see this series that I've lived with for decades get made into television. It feels even weirder that, as of season 3, it's the best fantasy television currently airing. Weird, but also very gratifying; I knew this series wasn't unadaptable. We just needed a very special cast & crew.
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I guess they're shacking up Elayne and Aviendha? There was part of me wondering if Rand's three wives thing would be not very progressive and axed from the show as was most likely, or just progressive enough and sails through as a polycule lol. I guess it went for the former, which is unsurprising.
Or they're just casual "Pillow Friends", since as they note in the article Jordan was sometimes shy about writing things out and left it to your imagination, where on a TV show they just have to show it.
Or they're just casual "Pillow Friends", since as they note in the article Jordan was sometimes shy about writing things out and left it to your imagination, where on a TV show they just have to show it.
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There's almost assuredly show only folks reading this so you should probably put spoilers on this.
As for the results
I don't see how you came to the conclusion that they're eliminating Rand's 3 love interests just from the fact that 2 of them got together before they got with him. Arguably based on how hard Avi worked to promote Elayne to Rand by describing how perfect her breasts were and how great she looked in the bath Avi was already into Elayne before she was ever into Rand in the books.
And Min did say the "three beautiful women" line in Season 1.
And Min did say the "three beautiful women" line in Season 1.
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Fair enough, I assumed anyone down here was a reader/fan but I guess this is slightly ahead. And they did mention it in the show already as you reminded me. Tagged as spoiler though.
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I always had a bit of head-canon here that this was unnatural selective pressure, for at least a significant part of 3000 years men who could channel were hunted down by women who could because of the taint, and who would have slightly better odds of getting away long enough to perhaps procreate and pass on genes that allowed you to have some inkling that a woman who could channel was coming to get you, which grew stronger over continued pruning of most men who could channel
In the same way it's strongly hinted at and outright said by at least one character that their state of the world in which very few people can channel anymore and being much weaker than the age of legends is because of the taint and the hunting of men who could channel. Whoever that character was, I'm just going off memory here, was very close to inventing Punnett squares lol.
This head-canon maaaay fall apart if they could already sense this in the age of legends pre-breaking, but then again not really since this is the Wheel of time, as we're often reminded, the cycles may not be exactly the same but they rhyme and the world has been through many such cycles long forgotten over untold thousands of years.
This aside, more than half of these books were written in the 90s, and I don't particularly think Robert Jordan born October 17, 1948 and dead September 16, 2007 has anything to apologize for in not being pre-cognizant about 2010s and 2020s progressive issues, there were its own ways in which Wheel was actually quite progressive.
There is also a character that does change the physical gender to half of the one power link later too, their soul is something their body is not, maybe you have opinions on if that one counts or not
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This is probably just Aes Sedai arrogance.
Unable to conceive of women avoiding the Tower. They may cull the men with the spark that don't die (and potentially only after they'd had a child or two at that), and they themselves usually take themselves out of the gene pool, but they don't touch any of the men or most of the women that can learn to channel, or most of the wilders, and when the Salidar Aes Sedai actually start looking for recruits they're up to their elbows in them. More likely, it's because of the Tower's really, really awful reputation. Which probably feeds into why 20-40% of Aes Sedai are Darkfriends... Like the two Aes Sedai who had the public debate about whether Aes Sedai should have children with gentled men: Verin and Alviarin. Everything circles back to the White Tower being incredibly corrupted, and attracting primarily women with a thirst for power.
Thinking about it, this is another example of Jordan taking "show, don't tell" and turning it into "tell lies and show the truth"
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It was an Aes Sedai speculating that removing all the male channelers and Aes Sedai not having children typically was culling the ability from the world.
We do know that White Tower recruitment sucks given how many channelers they find when they start actually looking with a real effort, but we also see in places like the Two Rivers where channelers don't get removed and do have kids (though some die unexpectedly), there are more channelers in general.
So there is something to support the idea.
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Hehe, another reader who could buy into my
"the Aes Sedai are a corrupt institution who would be the villain of this story if not for the Dark One" theory. Seriously, one in five of them are serial killer/torturer aficionados & the rest let them get away with it because of the White Tower's Thin White Line. I don't think their incredibly high susceptibility to Darkfriend infiltration/recruitment is a coincidence. They go as far as punishing anyone who gives evidence against any of their serial killing sisters with a variant of defamation law if they don't have ironclad proof, and anyone with such proof gets killed by them. It's completely unsurprising to me that most people in the Westlands hate them, & it's not because they're women it's because they genuinely do a lot of bad things. Imagine being a mother of some 19 year old boy who gets signed up for life to be a 200 year old wizards bodyguard-servant, no take backsies & she can magically Compel him if she wants to, but it's okay because it's "customary" not to Compel him. I'd hate them too, they're pretty predatory! Also worth noting that some of the best & most morally upright Aes Sedai in the series (even if they do have some flaws) like Moiraine, Cadsuane, Verin, Siuan, Nynaeve, Elayne etc have a very dim view of the general Aes Sedai body politic, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
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As usual with this show, I grade it based on my wife's reaction who hasn't read the books more than on my reaction (who has). She saw new episodes were out and was excited for them. We watched two and she is looking forward to more. So by that score, so far the season is doing well.
My reaction, as before, varied between "this is great", "I get why they changed this", "I don't understand why they changed this but it's not a problem", and "WTF".
That Morgase opening (felt like wannabe GOT and my wife was mostly baffled at how casually terrible this woman is), Moraine working with Lanfear (too wildly out of character), and that pointless thing with Lan's sword all land in the WTF pile.
But overall it was pretty good. Elayne and Aviendha are almost certainly going to work better this way than trying to a direct book adaptation.
My reaction, as before, varied between "this is great", "I get why they changed this", "I don't understand why they changed this but it's not a problem", and "WTF".
That Morgase opening (felt like wannabe GOT and my wife was mostly baffled at how casually terrible this woman is), Moraine working with Lanfear (too wildly out of character), and that pointless thing with Lan's sword all land in the WTF pile.
But overall it was pretty good. Elayne and Aviendha are almost certainly going to work better this way than trying to a direct book adaptation.
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I really liked the Morgase scene because it shows us something we didn't get to see in the books, which is the Morgase from 20 years ago who fought and won the brutal Third Succession War, had her opponents assassinated,
had an assassin as her concubine,
I don't understand why they made the change they did with Lan's sword & I dislike the change. But they've earned enough trust that I will wait to see why they did it before passing judgement.
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It would also not be the first time characters in the show are just wrong about something. (see also: Season 1: Lets go to the Eye and reseal the Dark One)
After all, in season 2 Moiraine killed Lanfear with Rand's sword and it didn't stick.
So it could have been the channeling Rand did, the channeling combined with the weapon, or simply that Ishy hates being alive and so didn't even try to come back.
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Hard for me to say with a what if like that - if not for the Dark One much would be different.
Would the White Tower have been corrupted had there been no Ishamael to found the Black Ajah during the Trolloc Wars and direct them to corrupt it? No Ishamael to set Hawkwing against the Tower? Not just the corruption; how much of the "ivory tower" mentality was being encouraged by the Black Ajah, discouraging active recruitment, or sensible things like having Yellow Ajah hospitals instead of forcing those in need of Healing to come to the Tower? We don't know what things were like in the time of the Compact other than the implication the civilization in the Westlands had recovered, if not to the level of the Age of Legends, so who knows what it would have been like if Lews Therin had fully sealed the Dark One somehow while still causing Saidin to be tainted and thus the Breaking.
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This is weird, because I'm not in any way a fan of the books, and not much into pseudo-European fantasy, yet I adore this show, as does my fiancee. I gave it a shot because an author I like is big into this adaptation, and I have liked Pike's work since the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.
I also have friends who attend JordonCon, and my understanding is that there's a strong TV-centric contingent at that long-running Wheel of Time-specific convention.
These are just anecdotal notes, of course. But...one assumes Amazon isn't paying for all these episodes out of the goodness of their hearts, or just to hurt book fans.
(One assumes.)
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If I recall correctly, that was Pike's idea -- and Pike asked for Okenedo to play the role, at that.
Also, what does jägare mean in this context? All I get from English-speaking dictionaries online is "hunter", which...um...doesn't sound quite right in this context.
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While it's still a season by season renewal, the pitch that Rafe finally sold to the Amazon execs was 8 seasons.
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Yeah, they're even starting to get some show only folks at JordonCon, and new readers the show brought in.
Edit: Think I misread you, when you said TV-centric I read as book folks who like the show, but you probably meant just show folks.
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It means that autocorect does bizarre things when you have the Swedish keyboard installed, and have not turned autocorrect off yet.
That was supposed to be hire. If you hire Okenedo and Pike you better use them.
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This is where I landed, too. Moiraine—along with possibly the entire Blue Ajah, and even perhaps all the Ajahs—is an ends-justify-the-means kind of person. She's convinced herself that her cause must triumph, and so she'll do or say almost anything to see that happen. I believe the only things she wouldn't say or do are the things prohibited by the Three Oaths.
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I don't think it's Stradowski. Rand has always been the least interesting of the characters, books included. More or less a blank slate for the others to play against.
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I should also say I'm a white straight cis guy so my opinions on whether parts of the story are sexist/misogynist/transphobic should be filtered through the lens of someone with no firsthand experience as a member of a marginalized class.
Jordan I believe did confirm that which half you channel is linked to the gender of the soul. Though again, while that accounts for trans people, it's still set up with the binary. Nonbinary folk are just not accounted for in the text. The closest would be Min, who while she certainly didn't conform to the gender norms of Andor, would not have been out of place at all among the women of the Aiel, or likely even Saldea. In her own PoVs she never chafed against being a woman, just things like dresses and makeup.
re the spoiler
it metaphysically supports it, but I do feel a little uncomfortable that the only explicit example of a soul-body mismatch in the books is one of the most evil people in setting, put in a wrong gendered body as a punishment by the equivalent of Satan, and who was also a sex pest.
I think there's definitely ways for the show to handle it more gracefully with what has already been set up.
Jordan was certainly a man from a particular time and place, but by all accounts he was also thoughtful and whatever his personal blind spots he tried to consider views and experiences that were not his own, and he didn't seem to have any objections to same sex relationships, which were much more a visible and contentious issue than gender at the time. If he were still alive today with the conversation about gender being in a very different place than he started writing, he probably would have tried to move along with it.
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I think we're in complete agreement then. I guess I was just sensitive to how some people seem to forget about the passage of time, and maybe that person already had progressive-for-now views in the 90s but most of their heroes did not. Robert Jordan, with 8 of the 14 books written from 1990-2000, was actually surprisingly forward with a lot of it, as some of you already brought up.
A gendered magic system was merely an interesting plot device in 1990, not a political statement of any form, and it's still near to my heart that the overall concept of the series is that we do the greatest works when working together, not in strife, as the broken world of WoT was a result of.
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It is vitally important to health of the country that someone keeps promoting items funded by all the ogliarchs Bezos, Tim Apple, Musk) who paid Trump millions of dollars through grey area backdoor channels (inauguration fund).
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Maybe its the gummy I eat after dinner every night, and I do enjoy watching the show, but damn, I have NO IDEA what's going on.
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Neither do the characters. Moirraine is trying to cut a deal with the devil, the other sisters know there’s a Dragon Reborn out there doing Dragon things but have no idea where, his friends are split up, the Aiel have strong opinions on the car’a’carn but those are mostly wrong….
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Too many people also forget that you have to ADAPT a series to screen. If you just translated it straight to a screenplay it would be absolutely AWFUL, would have about 4 hardcore WoT fans globally, and bore the shit out of everyone else.
It's why Jackson and co. had to also heavily mess around with LotR - books do NOT translate well directly to screen, for the most part.
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"the books would be half as long as they are if men could openly talk to literally any other men about their states of mind."
"The books would be half as long as they are if" is a statement with a 1000 answers.
I read them all but damn it was frustrating when RJ would burn 6 pages on a character crossing some random street.
"The books would be half as long as they are if" is a statement with a 1000 answers.
I read them all but damn it was frustrating when RJ would burn 6 pages on a character crossing some random street.
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There is a surprisingly loud, but shrinking minority of people who love to hate on the WoT show.
IMO Season 3 has been absolutely fantastic, and most of those who didn’t like season 1 or 2 have admitted that season 3 is a lot better than those seasons.
They have really hit their stride and I’m loving it.
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Because most of us stopped watching it, not because of the deviance from the books (we are not children), but because the series is badly written and badly produced.
I watched the first half of the first episode before turning it off. The idiocy of the fight scene, with every character behaving in ways that made no sense from any logic ( nothing to do with the books, just BAD writing to let one side win ) was just too much and the final straw. It was badly written, just to let them show off some cool CGI. Yet with all the spending, the sets continue to look like cheap Styrofoam.
It's not that it's fan fiction that bothers me. It's that it is BAD fan fiction in which people are routinely idiots (from their own perspective) leading to the foregone conclusion through no growth or work on the characters, but just because...
It's just bad writing. Spend less on cgi and hire some good writers.
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But just think about all the cultural context we get for why the streets have the name they do and how the inn on the corner has been handed down in the same family for 200 years and why the architectural styles are what they are.
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The first season sucked and was not faithful to the books. After watching that and RIngs of Power’s first season A few years ago, I was so disgusted with both of them that I canceled Amazon Prime and never signed back up.
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I mean, that's almost all the POV characters from books 5 through 10. Characters routinely acting like idiots and causing problems they could have solved by using their words is one of Robert Jordan's biggest crutches in WoT. It's Faile's and Aviendha's entire raison d'être.
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That's kind of a core message of the whole series. The "lesson" from all of WoT in one sentence is "we do far better if we work together and are open with our feelings to each other." This is most obviously true with male & female channelers working together, but it's more broadly across the entire series.
People are not doing that for a lot of the time and the Shadow is constantly exploiting that fact. It feels weird in a book at times, but it's arguably the most realistic thing in the series given how often people in real life actively behave in really foolish ways because they think they know what other people are thinking and don't just, you know, talk to them.
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