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Vavrek posted:I'm not disputing any of that. I was making a narrow point about the number of trans characters in the series. I think there's three reasonable answers: 1) I don't remember other examples of trans people so that's probably true. Notable by their absence though. 2) Aran'gar reads like an boomer understanding of being transgender and is played for horror. That makes the only character, in the series built around gender essentialism, a male in disguise who is designed to infiltrate's into women's private spaces. Which is, you can imagine, a very problematic trope. No matter how you view fictional works, the author existed in this world, and built his fantasy world around his personal thoughts, beliefs, fantasies, and biases based in this world. He may not have been conscious of what he was doing but that's largely irrelevant to me. I also don't excuse any of this stuff. You can understand why something wasn't fixed and still not excuse that. Excusing that is on you. 3) There clearly is a trans character, Aran'gar. They aren't a well done transgender character, and probably not even an intentional bit of representation by the author, but they are literally the only character who's internal gender and body do not match. In a series that is more or less entirely about gender.
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Mar 18, 2021 10:26
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That hadn't occurred to me before. I usually assumed that, if interpreted as a trans person, Aran'gar would be read as a transwoman per 2.
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Jaxyon posted:1) I don't remember other examples of trans people so that's probably true. Notable by their absence though. Fair! I think you've got a reasonable take on this all. By my use of the word 'excuse', I don't mean something like "after deep contemplation and reflection on the issues, I render the author blameless." It's just that my kneejerk reaction is usually to accept the premise of a constructed world rather than to question it, and so I tend to start my reasoning from a different place. I didn't intend to assert the rightness of doing so, but instead to explain the weakness of my instinct.
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Mar 18, 2021 11:15
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Aran'gar iirc was a sex pest and Jordan was going for irony more then a statement on trans imho.
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Mar 18, 2021 13:30
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Libluini posted:If you read what Jordan writes a bit closer, you realize all those cultures are wrong about this, however. That's the joke. It is true, none of the cultures really acknowledge this except under certain conditions (clan chief /maidens, or nobility by rank) or by those the series consider "wise". Another consideration is that the pattern wouldn't bestow the ability to channel for those who didn't display a strong singular gender identity. We've seen this with ta'varen, where, no matter how reluctant at first, the pattern keeps throwing curve balls at them until they eventually accept their destiny... which they always do accept. 100% of the time. The pattern seems to have foreknowledge about who they are, what they will be, and how their choices will play out in life. Submarine Sandpaper posted:Aran'gar iirc was a sex pest and Jordan was going for irony more then a statement on trans imho. Pretty much this. It was a kind of back handed joke on the character... who eventually just kinda rolls with it.
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Mar 18, 2021 14:07
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ninjoatse.cx posted:Pretty much this. It was a kind of back handed joke on the character... who eventually just kinda rolls with it. Very much the same kind of thing as Graendal being reincarnated as an ugly crone. It's like, here's mud in your eye, I'm making you a WOMAN!!! lol
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Mar 18, 2021 14:11
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e: was totally reading aran'gar as aginor, whoops
Barreft fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Mar 18, 2021 |
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Mar 18, 2021 14:26
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Libluini posted:If you read what Jordan writes a bit closer, you realize all those cultures are wrong about this, however. That's the joke. ninjoatse.cx posted:Another consideration is that the pattern wouldn't bestow the ability to channel for those who didn't display a strong singular gender identity. We've seen this with ta'varen, where, no matter how reluctant at first, the pattern keeps throwing curve balls at them until they eventually accept their destiny... which they always do accept. 100% of the time. The pattern seems to have foreknowledge about who they are, what they will be, and how their choices will play out in life. Submarine Sandpaper posted:Aran'gar iirc was a sex pest and Jordan was going for irony more then a statement on trans imho.
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Mar 18, 2021 14:43
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bio347 posted:It's probably somehow notable that Balthamel is really the only Forsaken who was explicitly bad (or perhaps "evil" is a better term?) BEFORE the Bore was drilled. Semirhage. Semirhage's sadism was all her own. Balthamel's tendency toward violence was way more obvious, though. (Source: Big Book of Bad Art.) Data Graham posted:Very much the same kind of thing as Graendal being reincarnated as an ugly crone. It's like, here's mud in your eye, I'm making you a WOMAN!!! lol Y'know I never think of Graendal having died when she becomes ... whatever her name was. (Hessalam. The internet tells me it was Hessalam.) Like, I understand that's what happened, but my first impression was that her body had been warped and transformed, not replaced. As for Aran'gar, there was something I thought of saying in my earlier posts, about how the selection of Aran'gar's body might have been a joke, "to the extent you think the Dark One actually has a sense of humor." One of the other Forsaken says basically that exact thing when meeting Aran'gar and Osan'gar.
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Mar 18, 2021 15:10
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bio347 posted:The greatest wonders of the Age of Legends were, after all, performed by men and women working together as one. The real triumph of the taint was the shattering of that cooperation. Semirhage suggests you beg to differ.
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Mar 18, 2021 15:11
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bio347 posted:
It's not exactly a copout I think that in a world where reincarnation, destiny, and a Grand Plan are all shown to be explicitly real that that's a thing. I don't necessarily think that it's all that satisfying when viewed through a contemporary lens, or if the TV world ends up having the bits in it that explicitly point toward the first age being "modern life right now"- Because if that's the case then what was the pattern doing back then, vs what it's doing now in the third age? etc. But I don't think it's an insurmountable hurdle.
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Mar 18, 2021 16:17
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Vavrek posted:Semirhage. Semirhage's sadism was all her own. Balthamel's tendency toward violence was way more obvious, though. (Source: Big Book of Bad Art.) Cavelcade posted:Semirhage suggests you beg to differ. I hesitated over Semirhage because she was still a Healer and at least presenting some sort of utilitarian good.
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Mar 18, 2021 16:25
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Y'know, they could just not have Aran'gar. Osan'gar and Aran'gar are- not marginal exactly, they feature in both Rand and Egwene's arcs, but their plot impact isn't huge. And the series is overstuffed with minor characters as it is. Balthamel and Aginor could just stay dead. I know I wouldn't care. e: Name your favourite Aran'gar/Osan'gar moment, WoT fans!
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Mar 18, 2021 16:45
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I think a lot of you have Aran'gar backwards, he isn't the equivalent of a post-op M to F. He's literally a man trapped in a woman's body. If anything he's a pre-op F to M. I see the issue that Aran'gar channeling Saidin presents. It implies the gender of the soul decides which half of the source a person can channel. Which would imply that transgender people would channel the power of the gender of their soul, rather than the gender of their body. But the books never present us with any transgender people or evidence of their existence in the WOT world. So the question is never explored beyond the one pseudo example of Aran'gar. I kinda forgot about pillow friends. The show would probably do well to cut that. On the other hand, it could possibly be re-imagined in a 2020's appropriate way to normalize how most people actually fall somewhere between 100% straight or 100% gay, but also not perfectly 50/50 on the Kinsey scale in their sexuality and sexual history. You know, normalize how lots of people can be predominantly straight but also be in loving same-sex relationships at times in their lives. And they should definitely change The Tower to be accepting of Women who want to be in same-sex relationships, rather than force them to break up and repress themselves. I still maintain my position that WOT isn't the kind of series that should "go there" as far as exploring these complicated issues. If the show wants to be successful like the other IPs I listed it should follow their recipe of not asking the deep questions. Just stick to the schlocky, pulpy, violent, action, magic, adventure stuff with high production value that general audiences want.
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Mar 18, 2021 16:47
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I don't think the discussion is about whether X character will be handled well or not. It's about whether the gender essentialism baked into the entire story's core can even be made palatable in today's cultural environment, even if they don't attempt to address "what if trans people".
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Mar 18, 2021 16:47
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:
When Dashiva gets iced by the black sister at Shadar Logath, top ten moment if you ask me.
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Mar 18, 2021 16:56
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Y'know, they could just not have Aran'gar. Osan'gar and Aran'gar are- not marginal exactly, they feature in both Rand and Egwene's arcs, but their plot impact isn't huge. And the series is overstuffed with minor characters as it is. The only really good moment for Osan'gar is right before he gets blasted off the face of the earth in the cleansing of Saidin, where the pov character doing the blasting is another darkfriend who thinks "Oh, well, the Great Lord wouldn't like it if I raised a hand to one of the chosen, but that's just that useless Asha'man Dashiva, BLAP." e: Jinx, lol.
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Mar 18, 2021 16:56
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Data Graham posted:I don't think the discussion is about whether X character will be handled well or not. It's about whether the gender essentialism baked into the entire story's core can even be made palatable in today's cultural environment, even if they don't attempt to address "what if trans people".
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Mar 18, 2021 17:06
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gently caress Aran'gar is problematic. Scheming new lady using her sexy wiles to trick people. It's hosed up! I'm gonna go read The Left Hand of Darkness again.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:08
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My favorite Osan'gar moment is from right before the others':quote:He was not good at judging time by the sun, but it was obviously still short of noon. Hauling himself from the ground, he dabbed at the dirt on his clothes, then gave up in disgust and began to skulk from tree to tree in what he imagined was a stealthy manner. It was toward the key that he skulked. Perhaps one of the others would finish the man before he got close to it, but if not, perhaps he would find the chance to be a hero. Carefully, of course. So much gets made of Two Rivers woodscraft that having this research biologist wandering through, trying to keep his head down, makes me laugh. th3t00t posted:I think a lot of you have Aran'gar backwards, he isn't the equivalent of a post-op M to F. He's literally a man trapped in a woman's body. If anything he's a pre-op F to M.  th3t00t posted:I still maintain my position that WOT isn't the kind of series that should "go there" as far as exploring these complicated issues. If the show wants to be successful like the other IPs I listed it should follow their recipe of not asking the deep questions. Just stick to the schlocky, pulpy, violent, action, magic, adventure stuff with high production value that general audiences want.  edit: Honestly just cutting Osan'gar and Aran'gar is probably a good solution. When do they first show up? Book five, six? Right now I don't think I expect the series to run that long, so they'll be cut by default.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:14
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Like, he wrote the books in the late 80s and 90s. Apart from being (as far as we know) a cis white straight guy, the existence of trans people as more than the butt of a gross joke wasn't much of a thing. It seems like in the last 10 years, poo poo maybe the last 5 years, trans issues have really actually started to be taken seriously as human rights at all.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:25
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You could cut half the characters in the books and still have trouble giving them all screen time. Which if it happens to go that long most certainly will happen.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:25
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I thought they were very likely cutting swathes of characters, merging forsaken, etc, so yeah no need to follow the books on this.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:30
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Mentioned this before but they’re going to have to cut shitloads of characters. Unless they’re planning on casting and paying scale for hundreds of one-offs
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Mar 18, 2021 17:32
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Vavrek posted:My favorite Osan'gar moment is from right before the others':
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Mar 18, 2021 17:41
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th3t00t posted:
OK, the true answer is probably "Jordan never thought of it", but I would postulate that the heavily ordered and constructed world of WoT makes it impossible for the wrong soul to end up in the wrong body without the influence of the personification of decay and entropy loving things up. In this context, the One Power in our own, broken world would probably really result in the occasional channeler showing up who channels the other gender's part of the One Power, because their soul got stuffed into the wrong body at birth and now they're suffering gender disphoria. On the other hand, channeling is rare and hard to detect for users of the other half, so maybe those few poor souls in WoTworld got overlooked. For example, let's remember that most channelers are people who can learn to channel, but who won't on their own if not trained. So no-one will ever notice cases where e.g. a woman can learn Saidin, because at best she will get tested by other women and then obviously fail and go back to her old life. And undetected channelers with the spark have a 75% chance of suddenly dropping dead, which cuts then the already ludicrously low numbers of potential gender disphoria channelers even more. All that is left is maybe 1-2 women across 3000+ years who suddenly go mad and die, and 1-2 men who hide their channeling as much as possible and never ask themselves why the Red Sisters are so bad at catching them. Because why the hell would you in a world where our knowledge about how sex and gender works is mostly unknown? They'd just quietly live their unhappy lifes and then die. All this is just speculation on my part of course, seeing as I am not the Jordan Reborn. 
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Mar 18, 2021 17:47
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Those characters are both ones that are very easily cut without the story itself suffering any loss imo. Osan'gar does nothing really relevant vs any other random darkfriend Asha'man, and Aran'gar stokes some of the Salidar intrigues/messes with Egwene's head a little but, but her only real actual meaningful function to the plot is freeing Moghedein. And that's whatever, Shaidar Haran could just as easily pop in and fill that role.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:48
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Invalid Validation posted:You could cut half the characters in the books and still have trouble giving them all screen time. Which if it happens to go that long most certainly will happen. A friend linked this to me the other day, laughing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wheel_of_Time_characters Wikipedia posted:The Wheel of Time has 2782 distinct named characters. (Source here: http://sites.ugcs.caltech.edu/~karlh/cgi-bin/wot.cgi)
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Mar 18, 2021 17:52
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Libluini posted:OK, the true answer is probably "Jordan never thought of it" I think this is probably 99% of it, yeah, Jordan just wasn't thinking at all about trans or even gay people when he wrote at least the first few books; even later stuff like "pillow friends' reads like "oh poo poo, yes, gay people do exist, I should shoehorn some of them in somewhere" additions. The big problem is going to be that early speech between where Moiraine tells Egwene that a bird cannot teach a fish to swim etc. The secondary related problem is the way that the One Power symbol is the yin/yang -- except the traditional yin/yang has a black dot in the white and a white dot in the black and the One Power symbol does not and that's why it's copyrightable and trademarkable (arguably). To the extent Jordan was thinking about gender at all he was thinking about a *strict* binary, and he chose that deliberately for narrative purposes.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:57
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th3t00t posted:I think you're way overestimating the "wokeness" of the average media consumer and their potential aversion to gender essentialism in their magic and prophecy and swords show. I mean, maybe? But I'm also looking around at the ("prestige") TV landscape and seeing a lot of movement in this area, a lot of shows running with themes that would have been outlandish just a few years ago but now they're comfortable just taking for granted that The Time Is Now. For All Mankind for example, its whole gimmick is "alt-history Space Race where the Russians got to the Moon first, but while we're at it we're going to make the bulk of the cast women and explore the timeline where we had tons of female astronauts". And Bridgerton is a Netflix ratings monster, and its thing is "Regency romance, but it's also in a multiracial as gently caress alternate universe where the rumors about Queen Charlotte were true". And they just both just play it with huge swaggering confidence, not like with halting, weird tokenism like in decades past. My question isn't whether WoT's audience won't be expecting something of WoT's premise to deal with modern views on its issues head-on and maturely; it's whether the WoT show is up to the challenge and decides to take it on.
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Mar 18, 2021 17:57
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Data Graham posted:I mean, maybe? But I'm also looking around at the ("prestige") TV landscape and seeing a lot of movement in this area, a lot of shows running with themes that would have been outlandish just a few years ago but now they're comfortable just taking for granted that The Time Is Now. Bridgerton also features a female on male rape. And the narrative and reaction from the general public is to laugh it off as "he deserved it", or "she was well within her rights".
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Mar 18, 2021 18:12
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th3t00t posted:Bridgerton? Really? I thought it was race blind except for a bizarre 5 minutes where the black characters explained that race and racism do exist, but the king married a black women so black people are now in society and in the nobility, and we need to stick together. And we're presented no other evidence that race or racism exists. Tylin was just ahead of her time, I guess,
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Mar 18, 2021 18:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think this is probably 99% of it, yeah, Jordan just wasn't thinking at all about trans or even gay people when he wrote at least the first few books; even later stuff like "pillow friends' reads like "oh poo poo, yes, gay people do exist, I should shoehorn some of them in somewhere" additions. Wasn't there a point in Sanderson's books in the black tower where Pevara and Androl are talking about another dude and they're like "oh he likes guys" "yeah? interesting" and they move on.
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Mar 18, 2021 18:17
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th3t00t posted:Bridgerton? Really? I thought it was race blind except for a bizarre 5 minutes where the black characters explained that race and racism do exist, but the king married a black women so black people are now in society and in the nobility, and we need to stick together. And we're presented no other evidence that race or racism exists. Bridgerton certainly has it's problems but it also certainly gets an audience from it's casting. Though it's not race blind at all. It's quite aware of who is dark skinned and who isn't. The larger issue is not whether fantasy diehards care about representation....they probably don't. Fantasy is white as the driven snow. It's whether you can make a series now that doesn't deal with actual real world issues like the existence of people who aren't white cis het. Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Mar 18, 2021 |
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Mar 18, 2021 18:47
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What if Arangar wasnt a reincarnated chosen. What if they were just a new, trans channeler that the aes sedai didn't catch because they use saidin instead of saidar? Dunno if ftm or mtf would be better. Either way, cast a trans actor
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Mar 18, 2021 19:06
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We already know they've cast various non-white actors for main character roles so it will at least be more progressive in that respect.
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Mar 18, 2021 19:07
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mik posted:Wasn't there a point in Sanderson's books in the black tower where Pevara and Androl are talking about another dude and they're like "oh he likes guys" "yeah? interesting" and they move on. yep, the old noble from tear
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Mar 18, 2021 19:13
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Jaxyon posted:The larger issue is not whether fantasy diehards care about representation....they probably don't. Fantasy is white as the driven snow. It's whether you can make a series now that doesn't deal with actual real world issues like the existence of people who aren't white cis het. Thank you, this was why I brought it up. Data Graham fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Mar 18, 2021 |
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Mar 18, 2021 19:54
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Jaxyon posted:
You obviously can, I mean, Geralt is not just white but literally stark white. The question is whether you can make a series that 1) brings up such issues directly and then 2) also doesn't address them. WoT's gender binary is going to make the commentary inevitable unless it's dealt with, and bigger properties have been crashed by such issues before.
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Mar 18, 2021 20:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You obviously can, I mean, Geralt is not just white but literally stark white. How's the rest of the show for representation? I haven't watched it.
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Mar 18, 2021 20:20
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Jaxyon posted:How's the rest of the show for representation? I haven't watched it. A number of major characters were cast with non-white actors. I don't recall even the faintest mention of gay or trans orientations existing but I don't think they're present in the books either? It's been a long year since I tossed a coin for my witcher though.
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Mar 18, 2021 20:23
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