Mad Hamish posted:

Nonsense. Elaida is Trump, Alviarin is Mitch McConnell.

Invalid Validation posted:

She really didn’t become insufferable until she went back to Caemlyn and got preggo.

Khizan posted:

I liked the characters, but I hated Androl’s gimmick as the Amazing Portal Boy. It reeked of Sanderson being unable to end the series without doing stupid magic system exploits. I half figured he’d end up needing to use gateways to move a companion cube around with physics.

socialsecurity posted:

Imagine how much fat you could trim from the series if Elayne didn't exist.

Sab669 posted:

I think 7-11 are generally regarded as "the slog", but skimming the Plot Synopsis for 8, 9, and 10 on wikipedia and yea, I think I remember those 3 being especially egregious.

BigHead posted:

I started a reread recently and what struck me about EOTW is how goodamn repetitive it is.

A man in a cloak walked into the room. He had the look of danger.
"That man in the cloak has a look of danger!"
"That man in the cloak sure does look dangerous."
"The dangerous man in the cloak is also handsome!"
"Handsome!? But he's so dangerous looking! And his cloak is so unusual!"
The man swirled his cloak and left the room, walking dangerously.
"He was so dangerous and handsome! I wonder what that cloak was?"

The entire book is like that. I must have missed it my first time reading when I was 12. Luckily the repetition peters out somewhat after book two.

Edit: The repetition is super jarring with the audio book version. Some gave me a CD set of the audio books because it's apparently 2002 and I got through just a few chapters before just buying the book. You can skim over paragraphs but you have to listen to the narrator talk about Lan's drat cloak for the seven hundredth time.

Vavrek posted:

This is delightful and I can't stop reading.

(Up to Lord of Chaos!)

She's just so excited about The Wheel of Time.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:

I'm not at all concerned about Taim's apparent relative sanity and neither should you.

Why? Logain.

That being said, Neuxue very astutely pointed out the relevant angles. In any given year the Reds hunt down a good number of channelling men. Of those, some have gone insane, some have not yet. We don't know exactly how many--but we do know how many men declare themselves the Dragon Reborn and get anywhere with it, because those are important names. Everyone knows those names. Amalasan, Darksbane, Davian, Rogad, Stonebow. You don't get to be on this list unless you learn to channel, you don't get to be on this list unless you're capable and competent to rally men to your banner and lead them, you don't get to be on this list unless you've wrecked major havoc and made major conquests. And for all of that to happen you have to keep yourself together long enough to not fall apart.

Taim and Logain got themselves on this list.

How is Taim still sane? That question doesn't matter. He is one of those who managed it.

And to name yourself the Dragon Reborn? What choice do you have? Either acknowledge that despite all you've achieved that you are doomed, or look for any reason to grasp for hope.

Gnoman posted:

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".

Vavrek posted:

My favorite Osan'gar moment is from right before the others':


So much gets made of Two Rivers woodscraft that having this research biologist wandering through, trying to keep his head down, makes me laugh.
Yeah, that was what occurred to me when I was first writing out my point 3: Balthamel was never trans by any definition, but Aran'gar arguably is. And Aran'gar's way of dealing with this is ... to come to terms with and accept her physical identity as her new truth. So, you know, it was just a phase.


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.

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.

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.

Jaxyon posted:

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.

buffalo all day posted:

What you said but more so. I think you can guess a lot from them casting Rosamund Pike -- make this GOT except all the in-Westeros anti-woman stuff is directed at men in WoT. Deemphasize the rigid binary construct and emphasize the fact that women are in charge and how that impacts society and you still have something relatively fresh, especially for TV.

Invalid Validation posted:

I always pictured him as a brick shithouse.

Libluini posted:

Sure, but he grew up surrounded by crazy fanatic Malkieri-expats, so I would expect him to be even more Malkieri than a normal Malkieri would have been


Also true, but Northern Europeans?

Kind of hilarious how the internet brings different people together, I'd never in a trillion years would have assumed that someone could think that.

Libluini posted:

Brains can be weird, can't they? The first time I read through WoT, I imagined Lan as some sort of ranger, just a dude with a sword and a fancy cloak. But when I grew up, I learned more and more about India, and Malkier, with my brain "correcting" my image every time, until nowadays if I think "Lan", my brain supplies me with some super-strong Indian hero, straight out of the Ramayana.

Gnoman posted:

Only one, not two. That's a legitimate criticism, and it is an artifact of Jordan writing in an era where trans folk were a great big joke if they were acknowledged to exist at all.

Shageletic posted:

I've rread these books multiple times and you cant argue that Jordan doesnt rely on stock women with roller pin type stereotypes to pad some of his comedic scenes.

Vavrek posted:

Per earlier conversation (like maybe a year ago? year and a half?), on this point:


I strongly support equal sexualization of men and women. I don't think it's possible to tone down sexualization of women, so I support intense sexualization of all the male characters.

Especially Rand. There are several points in the series that I think are best explained by "Rand is very good looking." (It's my explanation for his relationship with Elayne: they're both incredibly hot idiots who met when 17-19.)

And by god, whoever they cast for Galad should make me question my own sexuality. Otherwise, it's poor casting.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:

One of the reasons superhero movies do so well in my circle is the frequent male beefcake. Thor, Cap, Batman, Supes, Aquaman.

I don't know that Amazon would send the WoT cast through the 300 muscle process, though.

I guess what I'm saying is, bring in Jason Momoa as Rhuarc and we're good.

e: Affleck as Bael.

Torrannor posted:

Doesn't seem like a great fit for the pale skinned, red haired, green eyed Gaul.

Vavrek posted:

That's kind of the thing exactly: Rand has to look Aiel. Aiel have to look like Rand. It's basically the only plot-required appearance-based casting decision. They cast somebody who pretty well matches the book description of Rand, so the Aiel also have to.

DarkHorse posted:

The consistent description of Two Rivers folk is they're relatively dark-complected, there's still people from other regions around, and that nobody suspected Rand wasn't Tam's son

silvergoose posted:

Andoran? I thought she was just called outlander.

You n'wah!!!