|
I am going to thoroughly enjoy the inevitable screeching when all the marketing about "powerful women" runs into the books stating men are more powerful than women as magic users. This is not to say there are not issues that need to be addressed between men and women, but it always amuses me that people try to use books about wizards for that. This is also an adaptation that I hope is much less faithful to the books, because hoo boy if I hear "Bowl of the WInds" or "Faile" I am going to be the saddest panda.
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2019 00:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 03:02 |
|
|
RC Cola posted:Faile will 100% be in the show. Please God no. Do we know how much they plan to cover in a season?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2019 04:41
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted: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?" I will agree with you on the PTSD deal, and concede that Rand being a broken man is definitely one of the highlights of the series, but I don't agree that that the setting sells moral ambiguity at all. Part of it is the incoherent characterization of the Dark One, where he is basically Satan but with no real plan other than trying to corrupt people to be really evil to each other and having Evil Meetings with the Forsaken where Demandred contemplates that while Graendal is really hot we don't stick our dick in crazy, THEN having Rand come to the realization that the Dark One isn't the enemy and never had been because we need some selfishness to live. Or something, I wasn't quite clear on how that worked when the Dark One was perfectly willing to die for an ideal world where everyone gets hosed over. It's very hard not to be the good guys when all of the bad guys are characterized by narcissism and a shortsighted desire for power now.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2019 19:38
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:I. . . started in on Eye of the World again. I did as well. There's a lot of stuff blatantly ripped off from Tolkien (a black rider in our farming village and now 3 young men must leave at the request of a wizard) but I found the section where Rand is desperately trying to save his father actually fairly compelling.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2019 16:26
|
|
|
So about the gender relations thing... Is nobody going to mention that the Dark One is released to make men and women equal? Mierin's deal is at least partially about getting a powersource both men and women can use, whereas divine law is that men have a half of the power they have to fight and women have a half of the power they have to surrender to. Attempting to violate this law is an act of absolute evil that literally frees Satan.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2019 06:34
|
|
|
ONE YEAR LATER posted:The True Power also is not freely available for anyone to use, it has to be given by the DO directly. I don't see why that matters? If anything, it makes it worse as the only way to overcome bio truths is to consort with Satan.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2019 17:21
|
|
|
The best part about balefire is that it proves the Forsaken were never really in it to help the Dark One destroy the world (except my main man Moridin) but just kinda made up some poo poo to string him along. 12 year old me could never figure out why the Dark One didn't order the Forsaken and Dreadlords to just balefire everything, all the time, until the Pattern collapsed.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2021 01:14
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok, quote this post by midnight Christmas EST if you want this gangtag added to your profile: You know what, why not? God knows I've read enough WoT!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2021 00:22
|
|
|
Man, throughout the entire episode I was thinking "you cut the prologue at Dragonmount for this?" Age of Legends opener was pretty bad and pointless. Now, I will admit I got super hyped seeing our boy LTT because I thought we were getting the prologue, but we seem to have reduced the entire thing to Lews Therin Telamon randomly deciding to go put Satan in Satan jail for no reason instead of, you know, Lanfear digging a big hole and letting him out. I guess that would detract from Perrin whinging about his wife? Speaking of which, I'm not sure why Perrin is in this show at all or why we got flashbacks to him hanging out with wolves because he sure as hell doesn't do anything. It's been years since I last reread Eye of the World in full, but I don't remember Perrin ever hesitating to fight Trollocs and whatnot. People, sure, Trollocs, no. Nynaeve undying like Angry Bob and the whole scene where Agelmar's sister got too hot and bothered to cut the circle sure was a plot point we needed added to distract us from boring plotlines like Jesus in the desert. I came very close to bursting out in laughter. Bonus points for the seal prop looking like a random rock some dude found at a gift shop, or Moiraine getting stilled/perma-shielded? for extra drama. I did like Ishamael and him tempting Rand was definitely the highlight among the mediocre nonsense.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2021 08:17
|
|
|
Hexel posted:This bit about the Eye is interesting But...why? Rand has been one of the odd ducks of the ensemble all season. Nyneave and Egwene felt like they had things to do, Perrin existed and moped about his wife in the refrigerator and also some stuff with wolves that never really mattered, Matt went full D&D edgelord, sure, but now that he has something to do it's gotta be better than delivering a PSA about how consent is good and then blowing up the Dark One's seal while Ishamael wanders off grinning. Hieronymous Alloy posted:And in this they've really cranked things up to eleven all the time. The pacing is blistering, the action is dramatic and explosive, characters are constantly on the brink of death or over it, everything's happening all at once all the time. It feels less like things that are happening are interesting and more like they were inspired by GoT's attempts to deliver Dramatic Moments that when you think about them you go "why did they do that"? Why did Agelmar cavalry charge the stables? Why did we have an entire flashback to LTT for the sole purpose of having Latra tell him he was an idiot for fighting TDO? Look, I'm not gonna pretend EotW is some sacrosanct masterpiece that couldn't be cleaned up for television, but I'm not sure that turning all the characters into Jack from Lost was the way to do that.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2021 00:39
|
|
|
So thinking about the criticism "they didn't care about the books" and I think there's something to it that's just being really badly expressed. It's clear that Rafe and company have actually read the books, but they are evincing remarkably little faith in the printed material's ability to hook viewers without adding crap like "who is the Dragon" or idiocy like Perrin's wife. I'm sure the usual suspects are going to come out of the woodwork and once again explain that these revisions are totally needed for television and because people are apparently too stupid to understand that Perrin might not like violence because violence is bad - but clearly the printed works had something that hooked people that didn't rely on cheap seeming tricks like fakeout deaths*. The fakeout deaths and other stupid tension raising crap give the impression that the showrunners aren't confident that what's in the books is good enough to actually retain viewers and while I think a lot of the book fans aren't great at articulating this this sentiment seems to be resounding throughout the subreddits. I don't see people complaining that Padan Fain is different than the books - though he is - because that actor knocked it out of the park. I do see a lot of people trying to figure out why the hell Perrin is even in the show as they've basically butchered the character with pointless trauma. No one is complaining that the Ishamael confrontation is different than the books because Fares Fares fuckin nailed the temptation scene, but people hate Amalisa's red-hot magic circle because it felt milked for pointless drama with Nynaeve's miraculous fakeout death. Clearly there is something in the books that attracts people or we wouldn't have enough demand for Brandon Sanderson to finish the series after Robert Jordan's death, but whatever that spark is is not being successfully conveyed by the show. This isn't to say that the show doesn't necessarily have its own thing going for it, but at times it feels like it's using cheap tricks to elide the fact that it's not confident in what it wants to say. *Ok, aside from Thom Merrilin, but as I recall he didn't reappear for a very long time.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2021 08:48
|
|
|
Explains a lot, I despised Agents of Shield and gave up on it after the first two seasons.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2021 21:26
|
|
|
nine-gear crow posted:Yeah, that was the deeper level behind my little shitpost version of, I like that he genuinely thinks he's in the right and that his version of the way things are supposed to go down is seen by him as sort of a net benefit to the world. So he's like "Yeah, I will absolutely obliterate you if I need to, but I'd rather you just come over to my side without a fight so I'm just gonna be my normal self until you force me not to be." I honestly don't like this interpretation. I cannot name a single Darkfriend in the books who believes the Dark One is actually going to save everyone and bring about some cool, shiny utopia - they are all universally motivated by some vice that they think going over to the Dark One is going to fix. Lanfear wants power which is why Lews Therin originally dumped her. Demandred is jealous of Lews Therin. Moghedien is a piece of crap with no redeeming values. Graendal likes the D. Even lesser darkfriends like Liandrin joined because they get to do things like torture people or use primitive mind control. As Rand points out in A Memory of Light, the Dark One has no true believers! The stated goal of the Dark One is to destroy the world and remake it in his image, and even the Darkfriend armies don't want any of that because they refused to use balefire during the war. It's kind of a bigger problem I have with the show where they seem to get a lot of the wiki stuff right but miss a lot of what I consider to be the big themes of the series. The struggle against the Dark One is reflective of the struggle against humanity's capacity for evil, both externally and internally, but they cut the Dragonmount prologue that set that up in favor of Lews Therin Telamon being a moron who attacked the Dark One for no reason. The show is, per Judkins, about female power, but they took Moraine, the woman who went toe to toe with the Forsaken via balefire and literally dies taking out Lanfear and turned her into a woman who suffered "the most vicious assault". Maybe I'm just nuts, because every critic is raving about how WoT season 2 is finding its footing, but I don't think it's a very good adaptation.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2023 04:00
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 03:02 |
|
|
CainFortea posted:Moiraine didn't die killing lanfear. That was a big deal in the books, that she was actually alive the whole time. I'm aware, but she was willing to.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2023 04:18
|
|