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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You obviously can, I mean, Geralt is not just white but literally stark white. Which properties? The only bigger ones in the admittedly fairly narrow region of "big budget fantasy TV shows" that occur to me are GoT, which crashed when they ran out of books and then the show runners quit caring, and the new LotR one which does seem to be having a troubled production but can't really be said to have crashed yet.
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Mar 18, 2021 20:36
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Data Graham posted: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 I have no idea what you're talking about. There's only 2782 (holy poo poo dude) named characters! Edit: Whoops, that's what I get for leaving the tab open. Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Mar 18, 2021 |
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Mar 18, 2021 21:36
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Jaxyon posted:Bridgerton certainly has it's problems but it also certainly gets an audience from it's casting. I think this vox article does a good job summing up all the racial issues in bridgerton. https://www.vox.com/22215076/bridgerton-race-racism-historical-accuracy-alternate-history
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Mar 18, 2021 21:48
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jng2058 posted:Which properties? The only bigger ones in the admittedly fairly narrow region of "big budget fantasy TV shows" that occur to me are GoT, which crashed when they ran out of books and then the show runners quit caring, and the new LotR one which does seem to be having a troubled production but can't really be said to have crashed yet. Mostly I was thinking of Harry Potter.
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Mar 18, 2021 22:00
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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. I think there's already kind of a theme in the original books of "strict gender-based essentialism is bad," though. The Aes Sedai are presented as wrong and overzealous for how they treat male channellers, and over the course of the book that breaks down as various factions start to realize the benefit from working with Asha'man. Along the same lines, at the beginning of the series the Randland characters have strong taboos against women fighting or wearing pants or whatever, but Min/the Aiel/Birgitte break those down and it's presented as a good thing. And on an interpersonal level, all of the Two Rivers people start out with very strong essentialist ideas about men/women, which they all eventually realize are wrong. Mat goes from "men only pursue women" to being pursued; Perrin goes from "Faile is a fragile flower who must be protected" to respecting her autonomy; Rand goes from "women are up on a pedestal" to valuing his female troops in just the same way that he values his male ones; etc. Even that speech from Moiraine is eventually proven wrong - I remember in particular, the stuff with severing where male channelers learn from Nynaeve's healing and then other female channelers learn from the men. I think the show could lean into that element and foreground it more. That way, you could keep a lot of details about the existing world the same in order to placate super-fans. But then you also show that changing as the characters change and the plot progresses, in a way that satisfies people with modern gender attitudes. I have no idea whether they actually will do that, but I think the needle could be threaded.
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Mar 18, 2021 22:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Mostly I was thinking of Harry Potter. I can see that, I guess. There's room for debate about how much is in the text/on the screen vs Rowling saying stupid things after the fact, but HP doesn't have near the impact it once did, that's for sure.
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Mar 18, 2021 22:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You obviously can, I mean, Geralt is not just white but literally stark white. Which properties have been crashed?
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Mar 18, 2021 22:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Mostly I was thinking of Harry Potter. There are more movies than there were books. I'm not sure that fits the definition of crashed.
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Mar 18, 2021 22:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Mostly I was thinking of Harry Potter. Orson Scott Card has done far more than JK has ever said, and Ender's Game is still a must read.
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Mar 18, 2021 23:25
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:There are more movies than there were books. I'm not sure that fits the definition of crashed. The newer movies have not done nearly as well and I believe sales of the books are down also.
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Mar 18, 2021 23:32
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It is kind of a moot point with her though since she made more money than God before any of this dropped
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Mar 18, 2021 23:41
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th3t00t posted:So you're saying WoT will benefit from it's diverse casting, and will also simultaneously get away with hand waving away racial issues just like Bridgerton? Essentially having the racially diverse cast playing white cis het characters? And people will love it anyway, just like bridgerton? Representation is larger conversation. Black people are so incredibly horribly under-represented in period costume dramas that literally any representation at all is something that will make a lot of people happy, so they can see themselves in somethign they love. It doesn't make it good representation necessarily, but for some folks just getting a drink of water after being thirsty so long can be refreshing. And that's fine, I'm not going to yuck someone else's yum, especially if i'm not in that marginalized group. The Vox article goes into some of the race issues and that's not even going into the colorism in the casting(almost every "diverse" role is a light-skinned/mixed person) and the fact that diversity is really just "we hired a few black people but not so much any other marginalized group". For queer or trans casting, again, it's so rare that people will often be attracted to shows for even a bit of representation. Korra wasn't explicit until the last episode I know several lesbians who would kill you for saying ill of that series. I mean I would too even tho season 2 kinda sucks. As for "getting away with it" well it might, or it might not. Depends what you consider getting away with it. Right now we have a dude kill 8 asian sex workers and we barely have the media saying whether or not he's a racist misogynist. But will people talk about it? For sure. Is the property filling a need hard enough that it can overcome it's weirdo obsession with gender roles? I dunno. A lot of fantasy series based on popular books didn't get success that were a lot more basic, like that Shannara series, Legend of the Seeker, etc. And the latter definitely toned down it's authors wierdness, hard.
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Mar 19, 2021 00:53
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Gwaihir posted: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. It's been a few hours and I'm still thinking about this. Seriously what do Aran'gar and Osan'gar even do? It's all pages and pages of "Dashiva, who was also there," and "Halima, who gave Egwene headaches." Like you said, the only meaningful thing either of them does is free Moghedien. I never really noticed this before. Plot consequences of Dashiva also being there: Rand has someone who seriously gets in his face about the Power feeling weird near Ebou Dar during the campaign against the Seanchan. Plot consequences of Halima giving Egwene headaches: Are there any consequences of this? Do those headaches actually do anything? It's kind of staggering now that I step back and truly look at their pointlessness.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:00
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I mean you can apply that to most of the Forsaken. The attack on Emond's Field would have been ordered by Ishamael, right? Which seriously makes it the most proactive thing any of them did in the entire series.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:04
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:You obviously can, I mean, Geralt is not just white but literally stark white. That's the main thing for me. The series' entire mythos is built on the foundation of a canonically true gender binary. I have a huge soft spot for the series as a childhood favorite, and I do have sympathy for the point that Jordan was born in the 1940s, so of course he had a ton of outdated opinions. But the adaptation is being made now, and I genuinely feel like it's caught between a rock and a, uhh, lady rock in that you could entirely jettison the gender stuff, in which case you have the most generic fantasy series of all time, or you try to address it, (and, you know, adapt it), but that seems impossible given the starting point. A couple of people have pointed out something along the lines of "the average person isn't woke, so it doesn't matter", which seems completely beside the point to me. Nobody thinks popularity is related to quality, that's not the issue.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:09
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Vavrek posted:It's been a few hours and I'm still thinking about this. I think the only function they serve at all is just a different point of view setting to use in otherwise familiar scenes. That's something the series often does extremely well, and in a book told exclusively from the pov of various main characters, the infrequent total outsider views of the people we normally have as our povs make excellent contrasts. The chapter where Matt finally meets up with the Band, except shown from Tuon's PoV, is one of the most satisfying in that whole arc. ...That said, I can remember barely any if any at all times when Osan'gar or Aran'gar were used that way lol.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:14
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Vavrek posted:It's been a few hours and I'm still thinking about this. For Halima, that was kind of the point of the character though. They were worthless before, and now that they were somewhere no one could find them they were still pretty worthless, because all they did was give her headaches and the instant an Asha'man showed up they were found out. One of their conversations with their minder was about how they had to find something to show as results and all they had was the headaches. The Forsaken were pretty bad at their jobs.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:18
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:I mean you can apply that to most of the Forsaken. No, some Forsaken do poo poo, but it's all offscreen. Semmirhage was pretty influential in the Seanchan empire then basically caused a civil war when she got impatient. Demandred took over another entire empire and rolled up with it during the Last Battle and almost kicked everyone's rear end. Otherwise yeah form a character reduction standpoint you can have like 4 and get the same result. edit: You could probably just have Ishamael and maaaaaybe Lanfear and I doubt the series gets renewed long enough for anyone else to even be relevant. Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 01:18
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It is pretty heavily implied that "Halima" is behind a lot of the crap Egwene has to deal with between her raising and her capture. The headaches were part of it (there's several remarks on how the constant strain is clouding her thoughts), but she's pretty clearly manipulating the two wanna-be Amyrlins in the deadlock that's prolonging the split in the tower. Meanwhile I think Osan'gar probably had something to do with the rise of M'hael as a new Chosen.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:20
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Jaxyon posted:No, some Forsaken do poo poo, but it's all offscreen. Of the ones that take empires, Be'lal although you could easily fold him into Ishamael, Rahvin, Sammael. Graendal I guess was pretty pivotal too. And as mentioned, Semirhage. And Demandred for the final boss. The rest? Meh. Oh I guess you need Moggy as Nynaeve's foil.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:27
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the point of halima giving egwene headaches is because she's regarded as like the only person who make them 'go away', and it gives her an excuse to be around egwene at any given point and possibly eavesdrop on things or have a convenient excuse for if someone catches her snooping around with egwene's things
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Mar 19, 2021 01:36
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And from memory, at that time the orders were still 'spread chaos' and keeping Egwene bogged down and the Tower divided wasn't a terrible play. Not a great one, mind.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:41
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I don’t understand how you wouldn’t be suspicious of the only person that can get rid of your headaches. She even comments on it a couple times but brushes it off.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:42
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given that she grew up in a village where having a person who could mysteriously predict the weather and cure people with herbs was a normal thing i don't really think it was too much of a far-fetched thing to her also there's still the whole 'not even remotely being able to sense saidar from her' thing which meant she was probably underestimated in most regards
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Mar 19, 2021 01:46
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I thought that implied there was a gentle Compulsion being applied personally
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Mar 19, 2021 01:46
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I do love that Osan'gar couldn't help himself and reintroduced Actual Healing to the Asha'man. Might have been part of the "keep Rand alive" plan but it's still such an incredibly shortsighted move.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:48
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a very slight compulsion was probably in play, yeah. not enough to cause any damage or be suspicious, but just barely enough to slightly divert thinking about it too much in a way that seems natural. all it would take is the very tiniest amount from someone who knows what they're doing.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:49
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That was Flinn
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Mar 19, 2021 01:49
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:That was Flinn There was a scene where Flinn mentions that Dashiva was the one to sorta prompt him and point him in the right direction, I think maybe it's when he's babbling about trying to heal Rand's wound from the Shadar logoth dagger in ACoS? (Either way, lol)
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Mar 19, 2021 01:51
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Oh there was? I stand corrected.
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Mar 19, 2021 01:52
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fake edit: I wrote up this whole big thing while the rest of you kept talking so by god I'm going to post it.Comrade Blyatlov posted:I mean you can apply that to most of the Forsaken. Lanfear does things! Asmodean's an important tutor to Rand! Rahvin's critically important for the Andoran political situation. Sammael and Belal could probably be cut, which would cut most of their associated plot stuff. Like, I don't think Belal's important for anything, really. Let me make a list. Ishamael: GETS poo poo DONE. Rahvin: Major player in the Andoran plotline. Demandred: SHARA. Sammael: Takes Illian, hangs out there, provides motivation for Rand to Do Something About Illian, eventually leading to Rand accepting the crown. Aginor: Gets punked, is reincarnated, spends a while doing a terrible job pretending to be a farmer, gets punked again. Balthamel: Gets punked, is reincarnated, frees Moghedien, gets punked again. Asmodean: Tutors Rand, gets punked. Be'lal: Takes Tear, gets punked. Lanfear: ATTACK AND DETHRONE Semirhage: Vital to the destabilization of Seanchan and Rand's psyche. Could be cut and replaced with someone else, probably; Seanchan could fall apart on its own. But definitely not inactive. Mesaana: Just sorta ... hangs out at the White Tower. Presumably engineers a lot of the actions of the Black Ajah during this time but I'm honestly never sure how much that was Black Sisters acting on their own initiative (or Alviarin's). Graendal: Mostly plots. Lots of plots. I think they're important, but they're mostly important for shifting how other people do things. Moghedien: Nynaeve's punching bag and self-actualization catalyst. The key issue, of course, is the difference in motivation between most of the Forsaken, Ishamael, and the Dark One. Most Forsaken want to rule, so while they do things, those things aren't terrifically important. Ishamael, Lanfear, and Demandred have clear, actionable goals. (Destroy everything, kill the Dark One, and kill Rand specifically.) Rahvin, Sammael, and Be'lal take countries outright, Graendal does so subtly. Trying to think who I would cut if I were to cut some of them. Aginor, Balthamel, and Be'lal as mentioned. I mean, properly speaking you cut Aran'gar and Osan'gar. Aginor, Balthamel, and Be'lal barely have screentime. They just show up and die. It's like five minutes for each of them. Cut them or leave them in based on how overloaded on names viewers feel. Asmodean could probably be cut. Just say Rand doesn't need a tutor. Mesaana ... I had to pull up a wiki entry to figure out what to attribute to her, and the main thing is the awful fracturing within the Tower itself. (not a small thing! I just forget to attribute it to a person.) I think all that can be given to Alviarin. Graendal can go. Everything she does is behind the scenes. Demandred and Semirhage are my "if the series actually runs this long, gently caress it, keep 'em in" characters. Like, they have to be there are at the Forsaken Tea Parties, but that's it. At some point I lost the thread of defending the proactiveness of Forsaken and started thinking about who could and couldn't be cut from the show. My apologies. In summary: Most of the Forsaken do take actions towards their own interests, but those interests are often petty and irrelevant. They follow direct orders pretty well, but that can't really be called being proactive. Mostly that seems to come from Ishamael and Lanfear, but Demandred's in the group too. Mesaana, Semirhage, and probably Graendal are competent long-term destroyers of order. Aginor, Balthamel, and Be'lal all just die the moment they're introduced and so don't really count; Aran'gar and Osan'gar are given direct orders, which they do follow, but those orders amount to the Dark One saying STAND AROUND AND DO NOTHING. Rahvin and Sammael are focusing on the petty and irrelevant interests of ruling nations rather than the really important task of making one farmboy lose hope. Asmodean ... is there. Moghedien serves a vital plot role of getting punched in the face by Nynaeve.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:05
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Keep the forsaken in there, but just to show up in the early seasons to announce themselves before Moiraine dunks on them.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:10
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On another note, we're all basically resigned to this series not lasting longer than a season or two, just because it seems so implausible I guess. Like by all the signs the deck is super stacked against it. But if it's such a foregone conclusion, why would the showrunners/network still be bothering?
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Mar 19, 2021 02:13
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Ponsonby Britt posted:I think there's already kind of a theme in the original books of "strict gender-based essentialism is bad," though. The Aes Sedai are presented as wrong and overzealous for how they treat male channellers, and over the course of the book that breaks down as various factions start to realize the benefit from working with Asha'man. Along the same lines, at the beginning of the series the Randland characters have strong taboos against women fighting or wearing pants or whatever, but Min/the Aiel/Birgitte break those down and it's presented as a good thing. And on an interpersonal level, all of the Two Rivers people start out with very strong essentialist ideas about men/women, which they all eventually realize are wrong. Mat goes from "men only pursue women" to being pursued; Perrin goes from "Faile is a fragile flower who must be protected" to respecting her autonomy; Rand goes from "women are up on a pedestal" to valuing his female troops in just the same way that he values his male ones; etc. Even that speech from Moiraine is eventually proven wrong - I remember in particular, the stuff with severing where male channelers learn from Nynaeve's healing and then other female channelers learn from the men. I wanna quote this because I think it's the best way for the series to both be read and for the TV show to go with, and it's often something that just whizzes over the head of some people that read it.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:14
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Actually come to think of it Asmodean leads Rand to the Choedan Kal which is pretty important, though you could always just have him stumble over it in Rhuidean regardless. You can make an argument that the rest of the Forsaken were important because they get Rand used to killing and begin him on the path of losing his humanity.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:15
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given that rand fights Belal about a minute before fighting Ishamael, just putting everything he Belal does onto Ishi you'd lose literally nothing. I've always loved that the leader of the forsaken was a philosopher
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Mar 19, 2021 02:34
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completely and utterly nihilist, too
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Mar 19, 2021 02:37
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Data Graham posted:On another note, we're all basically resigned to this series not lasting longer than a season or two, just because it seems so implausible I guess. Like by all the signs the deck is super stacked against it. But if it's such a foregone conclusion, why would the showrunners/network still be bothering? I'm not. Netflix is the streaming channel that's decided that if you aren't doing amazing numbers RIGHT NOW your rear end is canceled. Amazon Prime keeps shows on for much longer, since they have the cash reserves to give shows more time to find an audience. I'd expect WoT to get at least two, maybe three seasons in before being in danger. After that, things could get dicey...
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Mar 19, 2021 02:39
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:given that rand fights Belal about a minute before fighting Ishamael, just putting everything he Belal does onto Ishi you'd lose literally nothing. We deny ourselves a Moiraine Moment.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:40
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Yeah there's no downside in having belal show up just to get blasted by Moiraine. Killing one of of Forsaken is part of her legend. Could be transposed to balthamel tho easily.
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Mar 19, 2021 02:42
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