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 Prior WoT threads (now archived): https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3460087 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3508074
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Sep 5, 2019 18:41
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Torrannor posted:Technically, most people would call raken dragons as well, I think. more wyverns i think
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Sep 5, 2019 22:36
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https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Raken https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/To%27raken According to The Big Book of Bad Art, anyway
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Sep 5, 2019 23:27
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Mat Cauthon posted:it's easier to acknowledge that something that was my FAVORITE FANTASY SERIES OF ALL TIME!!1!1 up until like a decade ago was never really that great, despite my enjoyment of it. I'll defend WoT against these cruel aspersions! There's admittedly a hell of a lot of chaff in WoT but there's a lot of wheat too, especially if you look at it in the context of late-1980's American fantasy, which is what it was (if you go by when he conceived and started writing it). There are a lot of elements in WoT that were pretty revolutionary for the time period it first came out in. -- Major female characters who drove the plot for their own reasons other than "in love with sexy male protagonist" -- passes Bechdel test -- actually attempts a degree of psychological realism; characters get PTSD -- complex and sophisticated narrative structure using many many many POV's -- attempts a high degree of political and social "realism"; characters and nations all pursue their own short-term goals So on, etc. It's easy to mock the braid tugging etc. but most of those are just verbal tics that would've been fine in a shorter book but just got repetitive. I think the real tragedy of WoT is that it took too long to finish and it's influence was too massive; by the time it was finally wrapped up, it already felt outmoded by the work of other authors like GRRM who had built on its strengths. There are a couple of other ways you can argue for WoT's "merit," however defined. First is by analyzing it as a post-Vietnam fantasy novel in the same sense that LotR was a post-WW1 novel. The whole thing is very clearly informed by Jordan's experience in vietnam: "Wait, what if we aren't the good guys? What if fighting in that war broke my mind?" Second is if you look at it as a systematic attempt to "wrap up" all post-Tolkien genre fantasy fiction in one great big package with a bow on top. From like 1960 or so through to the late 80's - early 90's, there were lots and lots and lots of authors trying to write The Next Big Fantasy Epic -- Shannara-esque imitators with a young male protagonist and a magic sword and a magical mcguffin and a northern european setting and so forth, the kind of thing Dianna Wynne Jones satirized in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland. I kinda see WoT as the last and greatest of those, the point after which there was no point in anyone else trying to write any more. If you want a Big Doorstopper Epic, ok, there you go, 14 volumes, dig in. Every major fantasy series I've followed since WoT has been something that was not standard fantasy, something with a twist that set it apart -- a different setting (urban fantasy, fantasy China), a significantly different plot structure ( say a heist/fantasy gangster novel like Lies of Locke Lamora), a significantly different theme or tone ("grimdark") etc. The generic "young boy saves world" optimistic bildungsroman fantasy has been finished now, and I think for a lot of people, Jordan finished it. Which is a kind of accomplishment. point being, yeah, it's clearly not the GREATEST OF ALL TIME, but it's not horrible either. I don't think time spent reading it is wasted, even at 14 volumes. (Ok, skip book 10. But still). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 09:54
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Artonos posted:I always pictured loial as having fur all over. Is that incorrect? I may have just been way off. I missed a lot of the diversity of the races too if I'm being honest, until later in the books. Just because it wasn't focused on as much. There are two alternate canonically valid interpretations of loial  
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Sep 8, 2019 19:58
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I thought rand was gonna seal the D.O. but Padan Fain would survive. I still think that might have been the originally intended ending.
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Sep 8, 2019 21:49
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I've been listening to a WoT podcast where they're re-reading the series and going chapter by chapter, and there's was some brief discussion about the dark one and the creator potentially being the same entity when they were reading the later chapters of EotW. It was an idea that never really occurred to me, but I think it explains some of the stuff at the end of that books and when you think about the duality of light and dark, men and women, saidar and saidin, all throughout the book I think it works in a dumb head-canon way. It's unfortunate that there are bits of the series that will never feel like they got a proper payoff and there are some things that will just never be explained (that pipe!) but it's a fun ride and I am ultimately satisfied with where it ended up considering RJ died and everything. link to podcast? I'll edit stuff like that into the first post. Gambrinus posted:Is there a book thread anywhere? I chewed through these in university in 2004-2005 but found book 10 a struggle and never got any further than that. We've had threads in the past but they're archived now. I linked 'em in the 2nd post in the thread.
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Sep 9, 2019 00:09
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They're publishing some cast shots. I wonder if we aren't getting / they cut Thom.
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Sep 12, 2019 19:51
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I. . . started in on Eye of the World again. it's a good book!
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Sep 14, 2019 15:48
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I did as well. Yeah. I think Jordan acknowledged that and said he wanted the opening sequence to feel familiar to fantasy readers. I think the Prologue saves it. It lets you know this thing is going places Tolkien didn't.
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Sep 14, 2019 16:32
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DarkHorse posted:He explicitly wanted to copy it from what I remember. Like his goal was to do "Tolkien, but women are in power" and see what was different. "women are in power because men hosed up" though which is what saves it. If it were just "lol what if fantasy matriarchy" it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I think that's the root of why I still re-read WoT even though I long ago stopped bothering with most generic pulp fantasy. In its best moments, WoT shows characters dealing with real guilt and real stress. Most fantasy &SF , the heroes' "evil " personal history is excused or pardoned or turns out not to have actually happened -- the worst example being Honor Harrington, the Schrodinger's War Criminal, where no matter what she does it's always retroactively turned into the right thing to have done after all and excused. Wheel of Time: nope. Men fuuuucked uuuuup, and specifically Our Boy Protagonist hosed up. And now he has a chance to do it over and get it right this time. Just a chance. But isn't a do-over a powerful fantasy?
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Sep 14, 2019 17:16
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:
Yeah, I can't think of many if any that take the same angle. Mat Cauthon posted:The darkness of the prologue and the Portal Stone visions in The Great Hunt(?) were one of those things that blew my mind in early reads of the series and still a highlight when I do a re-read. The first three books, whatever their faults, are much tighter narratively and the epilogue of the Dragon Reborn is a genuinely "oh poo poo" ending without being a cheap cliffhanger. One thing that's really striking me is that I hope they have enough sense to just let Eye of the World go straight from page to screen, preferably with a director who knows how to shoot horror. It's just very, very well structured for an episodic show. The narrative arcs each take about five chapters. Shadar Logoth is your "mid season finale" for the first season. Seocnd half of the season is the different arcs, then you reunify in Caemlyn for the Ways and the Eye as your season ender. The later seasons they'll need to go more off script but the first books are tight and I hope they stick close close close to the page.
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Sep 15, 2019 02:10
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MORE TAXES WHEN posted:
Just off the top of my head: Galad is bishounen Avienda is tsundere Tar Valon is a school for magical girls Rand has three girlfriends, color-coded: one blonde, one redhead, and one brunette The series took twenty-three years to finish that's just off the top of my head
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Sep 19, 2019 22:09
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Stormangel posted:That has lesbian/Yuri subtext please we call them "pillow friends" edit: oh, every magic user has a literal numeric power level; the protagonist has the maximum power level Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Sep 19, 2019 |
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Sep 19, 2019 23:21
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Data Graham posted:You can skip a lot of Book 1 once you realize he keeps copy-pasting the wagon drivers who give them scarves saying "They belong to my boys. You don’t know me, understand? It’s hard times” I think he was trying some sort of complex narration style there that didn't work. It's always the same dude giving them the scarves, you're just flashing forward and backward in time before and up to the the Scarf Moment.
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Sep 24, 2019 13:51
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https://twitter.com/rafejudkins/status/1176981248259936256
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Sep 28, 2019 13:43
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https://twitter.com/WoTonPrime/status/1179425813327798273?s=19
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Oct 2, 2019 18:22
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cryptoclastic posted:I’ve been listening to the podcast that was posted earlier in the thread (thanks!) and they talk about this. I’m sort of amazed that Jordan had all of this stuff mapped out so early. Jordan had something like two pages of background notes written out for each page of text. As in, each individual Aes Sedai had her own separately documented bio.
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Oct 3, 2019 00:17
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EvilTaytoMan posted:Wasn't his wife his editor? I assume that's part of the reason the books feel a bit bloated. She was actually more involved with the earlier books I believe. I think she had some health issues going on during Bloat Season.
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Oct 3, 2019 16:09
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My reread has stalled a bit at the chapter in SR where the Tower falls because it's so sad Siuan was so good
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Oct 6, 2019 18:51
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aparmenideanmonad posted:I'm not saying they'll put them in robes and capirotes, and I never mentioned the KKK in my post. If anything, the last half page proves my point, which is that the Children are going to be even scarier in the show than they were in the books because comparisons to real world hate groups and attitudes towards immigrants and brown/black people are inescapable. I'm pretty sure Europeans are more familiar with the atrocities associated with the Crusades than Americans, and they all know about Nazis if nothing else. The casting of the Two Rivers kids (which I wholeheartedly support) and the visual impact of the format is going to make this more blatant than the books regardless of how the whitecloaks are dressed. The casting of the two rivers kids is gonna put a really interesting spin on things yeah. Not just the whitecloaks, but also things like Nynaeve being so angry all the time, or Perrin being so extra careful not to frighten people It's sortof strange but I feel that groups like the Children are an under-utilized trope in fantasy fiction. Of course if you have a black and white world with real magic and religion some folks are gonna go crazy with it. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Oct 8, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 05:54
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There is, of course, a new Robert Jordan novel coming out soon. https://www.tor.com/2019/10/08/robert-jordans-warrior-of-the-altaii-non-spoiler-review/
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Oct 9, 2019 03:16
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RC Cola posted:Rand madness is better every reread. It's especially interesting because there are multiple "tracks" to it -- Rand's both going normally crazy from PTSD at all the poo poo he's going through, and also going magic crazy from the Taint and Lews Therin and so forth. Just in terms of writing mechanics it's probably the most interesting thing about WoT and I'm not sure how well it will translate to the screen. anyway https://twitter.com/dleisegang/status/1179801913149272067
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Oct 9, 2019 12:57
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:Another character/arc they cannot gently caress up is Verin, because holy poo poo. Some of that will happen naturally because of the camera. The camera frames and highlights.
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Oct 9, 2019 23:00
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BattyKiara posted:I tried to read this series. But there was a stumbling block. I absolutely HATE one character. If ever there was a character I wanted to see eaten by a Trolloc it was Elayne. I got as far as her adoption ceremony with Aiel girl. And just couldn't go on. Any advice on how to get over the terribleness that is Elayne? You actually got pretty drat far in. I'd suggest just skipping the elayne chapters.
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Oct 13, 2019 16:43
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I bet they have lan and nynaeve bang in the first book.
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Oct 15, 2019 18:59
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Oh spoiler chat: Maybe spoiler everything from the end of book 9 on? If you get that far I mean you've read as much as most folks do
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Oct 16, 2019 00:46
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What I suspect will happen is, we'll get the first three books as live action, then at some point in the distant future they make an anime of the whole thing.
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Oct 18, 2019 11:55
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Prologue would be like two minutes of CGI and probably involve none of the main cast actors. I'd be Amazed if they skipped putting it right at the start. it's the perfect opener because it's so obviously the end of a huge story. Honestly though the whole first book is extremely film-ready and they'd be dumb as hell if they cut any significant parts of it. Maybe some of the Caemlyn Road bits could go. Maybe they could take the Ways straight to the Blight and skip Fal Dara.
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Oct 19, 2019 00:37
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"so angry you're pulling your hair out" is a phrase and over a few million words a tic can become extremely repetitive
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Oct 19, 2019 17:46
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His wife *was* an editor at Tor Books -- also the editor for Ender's Game -- but I think she did more actual editing on the earlier books than the later ones.
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Oct 19, 2019 21:02
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Wheel of Time is very gender retro for the written fantasy genre right now but it's disturbingly progressive for fantasy television shows that aren't Xena
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Oct 19, 2019 22:31
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Data Graham posted:Since the whole premise is MEN RAPED THE WORLD, SO HERE IS WHAT THE WORLD LOOKS LIKE IF FEMINISM AND ITS NARRATIVE GETS ITS WAY, I would think they would have to make some fairly fundamental changes in order to make it palatable in 2019. I think that's more what it looks like now given current political trends rather than how it was intended. I mean, sure, death of the author etc., but Randland is hardly a giant dystopic vagina.
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Oct 20, 2019 02:12
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Data Graham posted:It could well be my own shallow surface reading of the series, but I'm just saying that I can't be the only one, can I? On one level, Jordan admitted the initial idea of WoT was in part derived from reading a book where a woman wasn't allowed to become a wizard, and thinking "what if men were the ones who couldn't wizard?" On another level though that's too simplistic by far and what he actually ended up writing was remarkably gender-forward for the 1990s. On yet another level gender-forward for the 1990's is, y;know, 20+ years behind the present.
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Oct 20, 2019 03:24
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Data Graham posted:^^ It also just feels like right now is a particularly touchy time to bring out a show based on a property that is so intrinsically wrapped up in "men are like this, women are like this" 90s standup routine material. What will probably happen is that Amazon will put out a bunch of "Strong Female Characters!" marketing for the show, and all the men's rights types who would be biting down hard on the "only two genders!" aspect will get distracted.
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Oct 20, 2019 12:43
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:I . What a recorded memory of one random ancestor thought Mierin claimed she thought she was doing.
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Oct 20, 2019 19:50
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One interesting thing about the male /female duality is that RJ was smart enough to steal the Ying yanf symbol and break it up into the dragons fang and the flame of tar valon, but he deliberately left out the dots in the y/y which show that each side contains a grain of the other. Which would have gone a long way to resolving the gender binary problem I'd he'd left it in.
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Oct 20, 2019 19:55
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Data Graham posted:Amyrlin? The a-myrlin is clearly the only person who is not Merlin
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Oct 23, 2019 01:44
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Brolander posted:If you didn't pay attention you might think he was an orphan for how much he quotes the Luhanns. Yeah, I remember the first time I got to that part being real confused.I remember thinking wait, Perrin's family died, why are the Luhans showing up Data Graham posted:Was that the scarves thing? Yeah the scarves thing is just a bit of meta-narrative that Jordan flubbed the landing on.
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Oct 27, 2019 18:23
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 12:50 |
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It really is amazing on this reread how much of books like seven through ten is just outright skippable. If the series gets that far they could do all four books in half a season.
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Oct 29, 2019 16:11
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