12-27-2021, 01:29 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-27-2021, 02:20 AM by Ascendancy.)
I have some thoughts too. This is mostly just my stream of consciousness for others to read should they want. It also gives me something to look back on in the future to see how right or wrong I was. haha. read if interested. No worries if you skip it. I am just grateful for the opportunity to discuss.
Part 1:
Some of you may know that I came to love WoT after finding EotW sitting on the kitchen table at my big brother's house. After I read the series, we talked about it so much, that my mom read the series next.
Fast-forward like 30 years and my 70-year-old mother has re-read the series probably more times than I have. So she is pretty well versed in the WoT story and characters. I'm probably more well-versed in the mythology but only because I've studied it so much for RP'ing purposes.
So of course my mom was really excited for the show. She watches it every week and the next day we get together and talk about all the details. Since my brother is gone, it's kind of like something that we do in his honor and share what we think he would have really liked.
So the point of my post here.
My mom ordered amazon prime simply to watch this show. She was not a Prime subscriber before this. Rafe said that he knew the hardcore fans of the books would probably dislike their changes, and they would lose the hardcore book fans. He also said the following:
My mom loves the show. She loves fantasy in general, including LotR and Star Wars, but is a casual fan of both. She just loses herself in the story and doesn't pick apart every detail like hardcore fans. For instance, she doesn't care if the Horn of Valere was in Far Dara or the eye. She is just trying to remember what the Horn of Valere even is. lol. So here are some of the things I asked her about. Keep in mind, she has read the books multiple times through.
I asked if she liked Isha'mael. She was confused by my question and thought that 'the man' really was the Dark One until I reminded her. Point being, the show's misdirection worked.
I asked if she liked the showdown with Rand at the end tempting him to turn to the Dark. She loved that scene and thought it was super sweet how Rand was offered everything that he wanted all along. That he considered Egwene's feelings made him be so self-sacrificial and very Dragon-like. She really thought the channeling at the end was so powerful and cool looking.
She didn't realize the cracked Aes Sedai symbol on the floor was a seal on the dark one's prison. She remembered the seals of course, but didn't know that's what that was. Of course, the show doesn't actually explain that. All the book-fans are just inferring it's the seal. Once I explained that's what we think it is, she said it made sense because the seals are all breaking. She doesn't care how it broke or why Rand's channeling broke it. She recognized that it breaks and is satisfied with that.
I asked what she thought about the girls channeling in the circle at the gap. She loved that scene. It made the women all look really powerful and she noticed that the untrained channelers burned out faster than the others. she didn't really understand how Nynaeve made it so that she pulled more power through herself than Egwene in order to spare Egwene burning out. But she said she noticed Egwene healed Nynaeve's burns and thought it was really sweet and sisterly. she said she figured Nynaeve wasn't dead because you can't heal death. My mom is a nurse and knows for sure the difference between almost dead or dying and all the way dead. It seemed completely plausible to her. The mechanics of how one woman pulls more power through themselves than another during a circle is irrelevant to her. It made for an exciting and moving scene. That's all she cares about.
After I read the Q&A last night with Jason Denzel, I had an epiphany. He talked about the highs and lows for him on the show and why he's stayed so positive as a fan in the face of the fandom. My epiphany was this.
I bought my son a Darth Vader lightsaber for Christmas. Does my son care about apparent Force mechanic contradictions in Episode VII-IX? Of course not. He's 6 and a huge fan of Star Wars. I will still watch Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan because I love the fun and escapism of Star Wars.
Rafe said above that their target audience was book fans who maybe read them years ago or general fans of fantasy. Their audience is my mom. Just like Manflesh, who appreciates fantasy but is not a fan of High-Fantasy (elves, goblins, orcs, dark elves, light elves, magic, wizards, mages, sorcerers, basically D&D). He liked GoT, but not the fantasy mythos of GoT, he liked the characters the best and the cool scenes. He has never watched LotR all the way through and can't keep the characters straight anyway. He doesn't watch Witcher or Masters of the Universe. They're too complicated.
That is my epiphany: WoT is too complicated for most people. They have to "dumb it down" to be blunt to appeal to the wide-audience Rafe describes is necessary to justify its existence.
I just finished watching S2 of The Witcher and I really enjoyed it. But to be honest, I fast-forwarded through most of the fighting about other nations whose names I can't pronounce even though they've said it a bunch of times. I skipped the parts with the mages fighting in their mage-city place. I only cared about The Witcher, the girl (Ciri) and the purple-eye lady Yennefer. I really got lost in all the bits about elves and elders and the rules of the mages. I don't understand why they can't use magic spells that involve fire. I didn't understand that "Chaos" is their word for their magic source until almost the end of season 2. They kept talking about controlling Chaos and I was lost. And this is me! I'm a huge nerd for fantasy. You all know that. I'll watch S3 for sure. But then I read The Witcher-book fandom hate online and all the things they hated, I liked! I don't care of Jaskier was too young looking for 42 years old. Nor do I care that the Baba Yaga monster was made up for the show. I'm doing my best to keep up with the fact that there is some sort of multi-verse of other planets Ciri can some how tap into that multiverse, and the Baba Yaga lady just wanted to go home to her planet.
The changes on the show were necessary to keep me engaged. Yet they're talking about the changes like it's this absolute POS product that should mean Netflix be burned to the ground. It makes me feel stupid for liking the show like I'm some sort of idiot. They (the witcher-fandom) has no right to say these things. They don't own the books. If I wanted to read the books, I'd go get them. But I don't want to. I want to watch the show. If they'd overcomplicated the series any more with all the details that the book fans want, I'd be totally lost.
The same thing has to happen to keep the generic fantasy-fan WoT watcher like my mom and manflesh. Most people suspend reality anyway. Perrin's character is sympathetic. Egwene and Nynaeve want to go to the White Tower. Mat has to face his demons. Rand is going to try to save those he loves. That's it. Simple with clean stories and goals. What I love about the books, the nuance and complexity and depth, is just too much for a show.
Case in point, the show has to explain the concept of a wheel with time ever-repeating and lives ever reborn. They did a great job demonstrating the concept of endless rebirth. They've also laid down this concept (which is a change from the books) that there is a Dragon Reborn in every age. So to call LTT the Dragon Reborn in the AoL is simple. Explaining that the 2nd age was the first inclination that there was a man called "Dragon" (which is also illogical given that dragons don't exist in WoT and the word 'dragon' has no meaning in the old tongue. Where did that word even come from and why attach it to LTT? No explanation. We just have to accept it) and that the man reborn in the next (3rd age) would be the reborn version of the dragon is way more complicated. There is a dragon reborn every age. Bam. simple. Different from book "rules", yes. Does it change anything? Not really.
We're watching Hawkeye as a family lately in the evenings. It took me pausing the show and explaining what the heck Ronin was to manflesh to even kind of connect the dots as to the plot of the whole show. He gets that Ronin was Hawkeye but not why Hawkeye wants to protect some girl from the mistakes he made as Ronin. Too complex! It's gotta be simple and straightforward. Hawkeye wants to be with his family. Hawkeye feels guilty. Boom simple easy.
Part 2:
I had another epiphany after watching the behind the scenes for episode 8. They talked about originally planning to film the Blight in the laurel forest of the Canary Islands but before they could get there, the pandemic hit. There was no travel allowed and they had to pivot and build the Blight on a set stage instead. OMG I wished they could have done the shoot in Canary Islands. 1) that would have saved a ton of money on the set Blight and surrounding CGI. Maybe they even had a spot that could have been the Eye much like the bridge to Fal Dara was a real bridge in Prague. Anyway I am certain that they had to pivot within a matter of a few months and redesign the Blight on a set stage and what they came up with was brilliant btw. The consequential CGI and set building funds probably meant there was no budget left to do blight monsters (draghkar? Wyrm? Others?) which I wished for. I wanted more element of 'danger' in the blight. But the bodies grown into the plants was a good compromise.
Then, they didn't know that Barney Harris wasn't coming back until well into the pandemic. They had to redo so much for that workaround. I am sure that there is so much more to that story and the impact than we even know. That is why they had to put that storyline on Perrin's shoulders. Which meant, how do we introduce Perrin to the horn? Well he has to be present when the horn is stolen. If he's present, he can't be out on the field fighting. We have to keep him in the castle. But how do we explain keeping him in the castle. His crisis of what to do during a fight (which I really identify with) is one way to keep him around. Like so much work just for one moment.
My epiphany was this. There was a much bigger consequence of the pandemic than we even know. The what-if's are endless. Like the Blight being completely different design has huge ramifications for episode 7-8. What we don't know about the ramifications could be mind-blowing. That they pulled it off at all is incredible.
Finally, they are quite clear in stating they have to give Moiraine a story in S2 to justify Rosamund Pike. The same thing with Daniel Henney. They are not unknowns. They have to have a plot and probably contractual minutes of screen time. To get actors of their quality (and pay scale), they have to have more minutes devoted to them than we'd like. An entire episode dedicated basically to Moiraine (E6) and Lan (E5) is just business. They were able to accomplish those commitments and keep some screen time for the others. What does their contracts say? Nobody knows. It's a trade off for great actors. And everyone is gushing over Rosamund and Daniel.
Part 3
Finally, this part is just to answer my thoughts to things from previous posts in this thread. Not trying to be argumentative or anything. Just how I interpreted the events.
Egwene healing Nyn:
It is stated early in the season that Egwene has the capacity to become the next wisdom (aka; healing). That's foreshadowing. There is also a thought out there that they will show Egwene has the potential to be drawn to or join all 7 of the Ajahs. Being healing represents Yellow. I bet in season 2 they will highlight characteristics of the other 6 Ajahs that suggest she could join any one of them. This is of course symbolic of her being all Ajahs and of none. The healing that occurs is no where near the intensity of healing that Nynaeve pulled off in the cave. Moiraine says that "when the moment comes and your life is on the line the power will be there." That logic is consistent with Egwene's healing. Is it a little contrived? Sure. But so was Ascendancy being healed by Jensen James after the attack from Armande's ijiraq. Did it make that thread any less awesome that it was contrived? Nope! IMO I still love that thread dearly! It just makes for fun tension.
Circle:
Amalisa was an accepted. She trained for many years. We don't know why she didn't become Aes Sedai, but I would bet serious money it's because she didn't want to be one. She wanted to be in her home and help her people. As Aes Sedai, she could have been sent anywhere/everywhere else. Her loyalty lies with this city, she says, not the Amyrlin Seat. She didn't want to be Aes Sedai. Accepted are taught to link. She knows how. Seems straight-forward. The kicker was being thrust into a circle with 2 of the most powerful women of 1000 years. She lost control, and I'd argue that even an Aes Sedai could lose control too. The 2 unnamed women do not need to know much about channeling to join a circle. All they need to know is to bring themselves to the brink of embracing and the circle leader does all the work. So untrained or not, they survived long enough to old age and knew how to touch the source.
Logain's army:
Alanna was the only Green. A gaggle of Reds are not battle Ajah. And I'd say that Alanna handled Logain's army pretty well. I don't see any struggle there. They did defeat his army. That's why they were able to all go to the cave. They also defeated Logain pretty easily (only after forming the circle).
The baby:
Was the baby in Min's vision Joiya? I think it was foreshadowing to make the audience think that Rand may choose "dark" and the life with Egwene and the baby.
Edit to add epiphanies:
1. The books are too complicated. The show has to be dumb-downed.
2. The scope of what went wrong due to the pandemic is bigger than I ever realized.
3. The show is not an adaptation of the books. The books are the source material for this show.
Once I thought of #3 in particular, it completely changes my enjoyment and entertainment.
Part 1:
Some of you may know that I came to love WoT after finding EotW sitting on the kitchen table at my big brother's house. After I read the series, we talked about it so much, that my mom read the series next.
Fast-forward like 30 years and my 70-year-old mother has re-read the series probably more times than I have. So she is pretty well versed in the WoT story and characters. I'm probably more well-versed in the mythology but only because I've studied it so much for RP'ing purposes.
So of course my mom was really excited for the show. She watches it every week and the next day we get together and talk about all the details. Since my brother is gone, it's kind of like something that we do in his honor and share what we think he would have really liked.
So the point of my post here.
My mom ordered amazon prime simply to watch this show. She was not a Prime subscriber before this. Rafe said that he knew the hardcore fans of the books would probably dislike their changes, and they would lose the hardcore book fans. He also said the following:
Rafe Judkins Wrote:Rafe Judkins: When we started out, we knew the show had to appeal to a huge audience in order to justify its existence. So we always imagined that we’d likely lose absolute hardcore book fans who’ve read the series multiple times because the show would be too different from the books. And conversely, that we’d lose people who’ve never watched a fantasy show before because it’s too much like the books (which are very high fantasy). The target was always more people who read some or all of Wheel years ago or are fantasy/genre fans but not familiar with Wheel. Which is a huge breadth of people.
My mom loves the show. She loves fantasy in general, including LotR and Star Wars, but is a casual fan of both. She just loses herself in the story and doesn't pick apart every detail like hardcore fans. For instance, she doesn't care if the Horn of Valere was in Far Dara or the eye. She is just trying to remember what the Horn of Valere even is. lol. So here are some of the things I asked her about. Keep in mind, she has read the books multiple times through.
I asked if she liked Isha'mael. She was confused by my question and thought that 'the man' really was the Dark One until I reminded her. Point being, the show's misdirection worked.
I asked if she liked the showdown with Rand at the end tempting him to turn to the Dark. She loved that scene and thought it was super sweet how Rand was offered everything that he wanted all along. That he considered Egwene's feelings made him be so self-sacrificial and very Dragon-like. She really thought the channeling at the end was so powerful and cool looking.
She didn't realize the cracked Aes Sedai symbol on the floor was a seal on the dark one's prison. She remembered the seals of course, but didn't know that's what that was. Of course, the show doesn't actually explain that. All the book-fans are just inferring it's the seal. Once I explained that's what we think it is, she said it made sense because the seals are all breaking. She doesn't care how it broke or why Rand's channeling broke it. She recognized that it breaks and is satisfied with that.
I asked what she thought about the girls channeling in the circle at the gap. She loved that scene. It made the women all look really powerful and she noticed that the untrained channelers burned out faster than the others. she didn't really understand how Nynaeve made it so that she pulled more power through herself than Egwene in order to spare Egwene burning out. But she said she noticed Egwene healed Nynaeve's burns and thought it was really sweet and sisterly. she said she figured Nynaeve wasn't dead because you can't heal death. My mom is a nurse and knows for sure the difference between almost dead or dying and all the way dead. It seemed completely plausible to her. The mechanics of how one woman pulls more power through themselves than another during a circle is irrelevant to her. It made for an exciting and moving scene. That's all she cares about.
After I read the Q&A last night with Jason Denzel, I had an epiphany. He talked about the highs and lows for him on the show and why he's stayed so positive as a fan in the face of the fandom. My epiphany was this.
I bought my son a Darth Vader lightsaber for Christmas. Does my son care about apparent Force mechanic contradictions in Episode VII-IX? Of course not. He's 6 and a huge fan of Star Wars. I will still watch Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan because I love the fun and escapism of Star Wars.
Rafe said above that their target audience was book fans who maybe read them years ago or general fans of fantasy. Their audience is my mom. Just like Manflesh, who appreciates fantasy but is not a fan of High-Fantasy (elves, goblins, orcs, dark elves, light elves, magic, wizards, mages, sorcerers, basically D&D). He liked GoT, but not the fantasy mythos of GoT, he liked the characters the best and the cool scenes. He has never watched LotR all the way through and can't keep the characters straight anyway. He doesn't watch Witcher or Masters of the Universe. They're too complicated.
That is my epiphany: WoT is too complicated for most people. They have to "dumb it down" to be blunt to appeal to the wide-audience Rafe describes is necessary to justify its existence.
I just finished watching S2 of The Witcher and I really enjoyed it. But to be honest, I fast-forwarded through most of the fighting about other nations whose names I can't pronounce even though they've said it a bunch of times. I skipped the parts with the mages fighting in their mage-city place. I only cared about The Witcher, the girl (Ciri) and the purple-eye lady Yennefer. I really got lost in all the bits about elves and elders and the rules of the mages. I don't understand why they can't use magic spells that involve fire. I didn't understand that "Chaos" is their word for their magic source until almost the end of season 2. They kept talking about controlling Chaos and I was lost. And this is me! I'm a huge nerd for fantasy. You all know that. I'll watch S3 for sure. But then I read The Witcher-book fandom hate online and all the things they hated, I liked! I don't care of Jaskier was too young looking for 42 years old. Nor do I care that the Baba Yaga monster was made up for the show. I'm doing my best to keep up with the fact that there is some sort of multi-verse of other planets Ciri can some how tap into that multiverse, and the Baba Yaga lady just wanted to go home to her planet.
The changes on the show were necessary to keep me engaged. Yet they're talking about the changes like it's this absolute POS product that should mean Netflix be burned to the ground. It makes me feel stupid for liking the show like I'm some sort of idiot. They (the witcher-fandom) has no right to say these things. They don't own the books. If I wanted to read the books, I'd go get them. But I don't want to. I want to watch the show. If they'd overcomplicated the series any more with all the details that the book fans want, I'd be totally lost.
The same thing has to happen to keep the generic fantasy-fan WoT watcher like my mom and manflesh. Most people suspend reality anyway. Perrin's character is sympathetic. Egwene and Nynaeve want to go to the White Tower. Mat has to face his demons. Rand is going to try to save those he loves. That's it. Simple with clean stories and goals. What I love about the books, the nuance and complexity and depth, is just too much for a show.
Case in point, the show has to explain the concept of a wheel with time ever-repeating and lives ever reborn. They did a great job demonstrating the concept of endless rebirth. They've also laid down this concept (which is a change from the books) that there is a Dragon Reborn in every age. So to call LTT the Dragon Reborn in the AoL is simple. Explaining that the 2nd age was the first inclination that there was a man called "Dragon" (which is also illogical given that dragons don't exist in WoT and the word 'dragon' has no meaning in the old tongue. Where did that word even come from and why attach it to LTT? No explanation. We just have to accept it) and that the man reborn in the next (3rd age) would be the reborn version of the dragon is way more complicated. There is a dragon reborn every age. Bam. simple. Different from book "rules", yes. Does it change anything? Not really.
We're watching Hawkeye as a family lately in the evenings. It took me pausing the show and explaining what the heck Ronin was to manflesh to even kind of connect the dots as to the plot of the whole show. He gets that Ronin was Hawkeye but not why Hawkeye wants to protect some girl from the mistakes he made as Ronin. Too complex! It's gotta be simple and straightforward. Hawkeye wants to be with his family. Hawkeye feels guilty. Boom simple easy.
Part 2:
I had another epiphany after watching the behind the scenes for episode 8. They talked about originally planning to film the Blight in the laurel forest of the Canary Islands but before they could get there, the pandemic hit. There was no travel allowed and they had to pivot and build the Blight on a set stage instead. OMG I wished they could have done the shoot in Canary Islands. 1) that would have saved a ton of money on the set Blight and surrounding CGI. Maybe they even had a spot that could have been the Eye much like the bridge to Fal Dara was a real bridge in Prague. Anyway I am certain that they had to pivot within a matter of a few months and redesign the Blight on a set stage and what they came up with was brilliant btw. The consequential CGI and set building funds probably meant there was no budget left to do blight monsters (draghkar? Wyrm? Others?) which I wished for. I wanted more element of 'danger' in the blight. But the bodies grown into the plants was a good compromise.
Then, they didn't know that Barney Harris wasn't coming back until well into the pandemic. They had to redo so much for that workaround. I am sure that there is so much more to that story and the impact than we even know. That is why they had to put that storyline on Perrin's shoulders. Which meant, how do we introduce Perrin to the horn? Well he has to be present when the horn is stolen. If he's present, he can't be out on the field fighting. We have to keep him in the castle. But how do we explain keeping him in the castle. His crisis of what to do during a fight (which I really identify with) is one way to keep him around. Like so much work just for one moment.
My epiphany was this. There was a much bigger consequence of the pandemic than we even know. The what-if's are endless. Like the Blight being completely different design has huge ramifications for episode 7-8. What we don't know about the ramifications could be mind-blowing. That they pulled it off at all is incredible.
Finally, they are quite clear in stating they have to give Moiraine a story in S2 to justify Rosamund Pike. The same thing with Daniel Henney. They are not unknowns. They have to have a plot and probably contractual minutes of screen time. To get actors of their quality (and pay scale), they have to have more minutes devoted to them than we'd like. An entire episode dedicated basically to Moiraine (E6) and Lan (E5) is just business. They were able to accomplish those commitments and keep some screen time for the others. What does their contracts say? Nobody knows. It's a trade off for great actors. And everyone is gushing over Rosamund and Daniel.
Part 3
Finally, this part is just to answer my thoughts to things from previous posts in this thread. Not trying to be argumentative or anything. Just how I interpreted the events.
Egwene healing Nyn:
It is stated early in the season that Egwene has the capacity to become the next wisdom (aka; healing). That's foreshadowing. There is also a thought out there that they will show Egwene has the potential to be drawn to or join all 7 of the Ajahs. Being healing represents Yellow. I bet in season 2 they will highlight characteristics of the other 6 Ajahs that suggest she could join any one of them. This is of course symbolic of her being all Ajahs and of none. The healing that occurs is no where near the intensity of healing that Nynaeve pulled off in the cave. Moiraine says that "when the moment comes and your life is on the line the power will be there." That logic is consistent with Egwene's healing. Is it a little contrived? Sure. But so was Ascendancy being healed by Jensen James after the attack from Armande's ijiraq. Did it make that thread any less awesome that it was contrived? Nope! IMO I still love that thread dearly! It just makes for fun tension.
Circle:
Amalisa was an accepted. She trained for many years. We don't know why she didn't become Aes Sedai, but I would bet serious money it's because she didn't want to be one. She wanted to be in her home and help her people. As Aes Sedai, she could have been sent anywhere/everywhere else. Her loyalty lies with this city, she says, not the Amyrlin Seat. She didn't want to be Aes Sedai. Accepted are taught to link. She knows how. Seems straight-forward. The kicker was being thrust into a circle with 2 of the most powerful women of 1000 years. She lost control, and I'd argue that even an Aes Sedai could lose control too. The 2 unnamed women do not need to know much about channeling to join a circle. All they need to know is to bring themselves to the brink of embracing and the circle leader does all the work. So untrained or not, they survived long enough to old age and knew how to touch the source.
Logain's army:
Alanna was the only Green. A gaggle of Reds are not battle Ajah. And I'd say that Alanna handled Logain's army pretty well. I don't see any struggle there. They did defeat his army. That's why they were able to all go to the cave. They also defeated Logain pretty easily (only after forming the circle).
The baby:
Was the baby in Min's vision Joiya? I think it was foreshadowing to make the audience think that Rand may choose "dark" and the life with Egwene and the baby.
Edit to add epiphanies:
1. The books are too complicated. The show has to be dumb-downed.
2. The scope of what went wrong due to the pandemic is bigger than I ever realized.
3. The show is not an adaptation of the books. The books are the source material for this show.
Once I thought of #3 in particular, it completely changes my enjoyment and entertainment.