I understand what you're trying to say here, but you fail to understand that's not really what the showrunners have in mind. You keep hoping for the best, they keep shitting on you, but you still keep on hoping that sometime soon there's gonna be something good coming, but all that you ever get from assholes is shit.

Yes, men and women are stronger together than on their own - even though it's been said in the books that men are stronger in some aspects of the One Power, and women in others - but Tarwin's Gap was Rand's moment - his time to shine, so to speak. They keep taking scenes from him, and you somehow believe that eventually they'll make up for it, but the truth is that the showrunner has absolutely no intention of doing that, they just say that to keep gullible fools hooked on the show, and it's honestly amazing that people believe them. Because it won't stop here, at Tarwin's Gap.

If race doesn't matter, why not stick to the original vision then? Or are you implying there wouldn't be any good actors available if they did that?

 

Latest episode didn't get me where I need to go.

I had positives and negatives with the Tower politics. Didn't like the rush to the Eye of the World motivation, hoping Ishamael is fucking with Siuan's dreams. Didn't like the extra oath on the oath rod. That's sacrilege in the books and they did a poor job of 'whispering' the oath to Siuan instead of to the Amyrlin. In fact, I hated Siuan making Moiraine swear an oath. We didn’t HAVE to be introduced to the oath rod right now. And Moiraine already swore an oath to speak no lie… so just verbally saying the oath out loud, she would already be bound by it.

Thought it odd how Kid Siuan was sent down the river by her dad on that little boat, when in the books that's like a distance of 2000 miles to the White Tower. Ha. At least take your kid to the nearest port, damn it.

Rand got his standard 4 seconds of dialogue before we move on so if it's still a misdirect about him being the Dragon then I worry the reveal won't feel earnt. He's nothing but angst slapped on a bit of cardboard after six episodes.

A few inconsistencies bothered me. Loial told Rand the people threw stones at him when he arrived in Tar Valon, which is what happened in the books but Caemlyn. However also in the books Ogier were well known and welcome in Tar Valon, as the Aes Sedai were well travelled and Ogier built the city, but also in this episode he moves about just fine without that same risk.

Moiraine being backed into a corner and being censured by a complicit Amyrlin because she didn't send word of Trollocs in the Two Rivers is a bit of a stretch.

That is such a big event in the books that it rocks the entire world, so how was Moiraine to know/expect/anticipate she'd find that in the Two Rivers... ugh. The way Liandrin tricked them into that reveal too was high school politics, not what you'd expect from the seat of all power in the known world.

Mat was healed way too easy. Wasn’t clear to me if it was a “partial” heal or a full heal… but in the books it took a circle of Aes Sedai using Vora’s wand sa’angreal I believe to accomplish. Moiraine yeeting it solo in 2 minutes doesn’t make it seem like a particularly big threat.

Mat at the end was because the actor told them to get fucked during Covid. I think the theory that Mat goes through a doorway sooner and comes back physically changed works well enough. I could see them doing that… but I suppose it’ll have to happen off screen? I don’t imagine the current actor stuck around to film that bit, and it seems weird if the Aelfinn and Eelfinn are introduced offscreen.

Liked Moiraine putting Nynaeve in her place with the “wisdom” comment.

I like the actress playing Nynaeve, but I don’t like the way they are writing her… she isn’t just protective, she’s arrogant, borderline angry and kind of an ass. I didn’t think her line to Siuan about blowing smoke up their asses fit at all.

I'll leave it there. Too many threads to pick that are just lazy writing and shortcuts taken by a showrunner with an agenda other than to deliver a faithful adaption.

 

Because it's the 21st century where 50% of people under 18 are now minorities or mixed in the US. We don't need yet another fantasy show where white people make up 99% of the cast when *it doesn't even matter.*

No one cares about race in WoT as long as you aren't an Aiel, with your pale ass white desert skin and red hair.

If race actually mattered and had conflicts in WoT, it would be something. But it doesn't. Especially in a world as broken as WoT is, where people have been forced to move and flee over the thousands of years. They have much bigger issues to worry about than race.

So why should it matter to us?

 

I just don't know why y'all are getting hot and bothered about it when they previously had a heavily hinted at sexual relationship. It's not some random thing they pulled out of their ass, unlike half of the shit they are throwing into this show. It has firm canon and Word of Jordan context.

And I also don't know where the idea that Aes Sedai are supposed to "cut that shit out" upon taking the shawl is from. It's def been a while since I read the books, but I don't remember that at all.

Jordan on the Aes Sedai and pillow friends:

Specifics on Moiraine with Siuan:

There is a lot more.

Extrapolation of their established relationship is a good thing imo. It adds depth, and it was far far less cringe than anything 1990s Robert Jordan wrote / could have written in terms of romance.

 

So race does matter, contrary to what you said earlier.

It mattered in the sense of knowing where one came from, their point of origin. You see it brought up a number of times in the books, how they remark upon one another's looks and then guessing where they might be coming from. It's incredibly narrow of you to think that bringing up someone's race is only a prelude for conflict.

 

One thing to point out here, I feel, is that (as I understand it anyway) if the show had kept to the books in terms of ethnicities and appearance for the cast, maybe 40% of the cast would be white/white-adjacent

 

If they steal Tarwins Gap from Rand that is shit - especially if they go for some, 'they are all the Dragon together' stupidity.

Maybe it's Egwene and Nynaeve protecting everyone from unclaimed saidin? That's the best possible interpretation imo...please let it be that or something.

 

The biggest problem with this is that everyone's head canon is different. What one person might see for region is different than what someone else saw. Does copper toned mean tan, middle eastern, African?

Moreover you end up losing out on potential great actors when you have to cast by race because they are from so and so region. Even when their race really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of Wheel of Time.

A diverse cast also makes sense in a world like WoT that has been broken and rebuilt. Whole regions rise, fall and migrate in a very short amount of time (in comparison with genetics).

Yes, that is because it's a text format and skin color is one of the easiest ways to describe that these people are different. You don't have to do that in visual media. You can make them have different hairstyles, dress, makeup, accents, etc. All that can be much easier done on TV without needing to rely on race.

Especially when Jordan was always very vague on race. Like I said above, copper skin can mean many different races. Yet you couldn't just use anyone with 'copper skin' if you are going by race, as the characteristics of each race are so different. A North African has very different features than a tanned eastern European, yet both might have what you call copper skin.

As WoT doesn't have any positive or negative associations with certain races in its actual storyline, I have no idea why it's considered to be woke because they have a diverse cast.

And as most the actors have actually been good (though the writing might not have been sometimes), it really doesn't looked like they picked actors just because of their race. Is it woke if they picked the actor they thought was the best, even if they don't 100% look the part?

This is a fantasy world and we really can't compare it to any pre-industrial society. That was my whole point. It's not woke if it fits the world.

 

I'm not sure I agree with this from a mechanical point of view - I'd expect there to be much more homogenisation of appearances in isolated little communities like the Two Rivers. I'm not saying white, I'm saying that after centuries of a mixed race community of a few hundred to few thousand people existing, I'd expect everyone to be - for lack of a better word - mixed race. But better representation is worth just accepting at face value instead of tyring to pick apart endlessly.

Same with making things like Siuan/Moiraine more explicitly romantic. It may not be exactly what was in the books, but it adds value to the show to have this change.

Unlike some other things, like the power rangers dragon.

 

Is it pre-industrial? Are they human? Then it is a pre-industrial human civilization. Our world or not, nine out of ten assumptions one could make, based on that statement, will likely be true, but I'm not going to quibble over this point because...

I only brought this up as a factor to say that most people, outside big cities, are going to have lead sheltered lives, close to their family, and that this would lead to them being more lonely and in need of a close companion upon entering the tower. You, instead, seem to have assumed what I said was some statement on the culture's potentially repressive influence on homosexuals. It wasn't.

Is the average person used to frequent travel among strangers? Given travel is limited to on foot and by horse, with most people outside of major cities living on a farm somewhere, probably not.
Can they keep in touch with their family via the phone or internet? Nope.
Can they quickly travel back home, via car, bus, or steam train, to visit people they know? Not even if they were allowed to leave the tower.
Are there things like TV, video games, magazines, mass-printed fiction novels, or music players to fill their scant free time? Nah.
So one can assume lonely, homesick, with nothing to do but your roomie, is a fairly commonplace situation for Novices at the Tower to find themselves in.

A small portion of the population can channel, but since they can't use their power in a military fashion against regular humans, that doesn't mean much as far as how the average person lives their life, especially as you get further away from the cities. In places like the Two Rivers, a lot of people considered channeling a myth. Clearly Aes Sedai weren't having much impact on their culture.

There are also a few kingdoms that are ruled by women. Andor is one of them, and it's important to note that even though the Two Rivers is supposed to be part of that kingdom, they're so remote that they haven't even paid taxes in recent memory.

Give women all the power you want, though, it doesn't change anything I said. It came from Jordan's own mouth. I, too, had already read and referenced the documents KHAAAAAAAN!! linked.

1: The rate of homosexuality in WoT can be assumed to be roughly what it is in our world.

2: Most 'pillow friends' in the Tower are heterosexual, and abandon same sex relationships when they get out of the Tower, if not earlier.

And all of that stuff was ultimately just to point out that, regardless of their being 'pillow friends' in the Tower, Moiraine and Siuan weren't in a torrid love affair. They barely saw each other after Moiraine got out into the world and started searching for The Dragon. They both talked about what kind of men they would end up with in the future. The showrunner has chosen to distort the canon depiction of their characters.

While more than a few Green Ajah end up in sexual relationships with their warder, not ALL of them have multiple warders and, even among those, not all of them are screwing more than one of them. The fact that those ones are pointed out as noteworthy in some way is what tells you it isn't common.

Your first problem might be assuming it's a feminist world.

Well, trying to place our current beliefs onto a fantasy world is bullshit.

Right?

YMMV.
Wildly.

That's what happens when you shoehorn in crap that doesn't belong, and don't care how you do it as long as it gets done.

Well, I didn't mention race but, since you asked... If the only reason the race of the character was changed was for the showrunner's agenda or the platform's quotas, then it matters and it is wokism.

WoT had plenty of diversity. It just wasn't all crammed into the Two Rivers. It came later, and was part of what made the outside world seem so new and exotic to the Two Rivers kids. Wouldn't want a sense of wonder in a fantasy setting, though...

And whoever is handling the story in the show is garbage at everything. They've introduced all sorts of things that will either bite them in the ass later on, or they'll have to fudge more and more of the plot and magic system to support their ham-fisted additions and alterations. And it's not just the male characters getting screwed by this. They're robbing from the main women's later accomplishments in order to load uber-powerful Aes Sedai into the beginning of the show.

Why?

All kinds of stuff has to be cut in order to do the show, but we have time to spend an episode on an OC nobody knows, so we can sabotage Lan's characterization. We have time to insert a bunch of fabricated Moiraine/Siuan crap, but we cut a bunch of Thom, Mat, and Rand?

The roadmap for a good story was there in the books, but they're fucking it up. Well, good storytelling, the plot of the books, has to be sacrificed on the altar of Rafe's agendas and interests.

Also, writing the existing romances better is one thing, inserting romances where there weren't any in canon, at the expense of canon, is quite another.

I wouldn't really call Moiraine secondary. I'd hesitate to even use that term with regards to Siuan.

Fuck canon then, I guess.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

Having women in important positions doesn't make something woke. Female rulers, particularly in hereditary monarchies, have existed long before feminism or woke ideology.

Having powerful people in powerful positions doesn't make something woke, it's just the strong ruling over the weak. We had that long before feminism or woke ideology, and I think everyone could agree that having magic at your disposal, regardless of your gender, would make you stronger than most people who lack it.

The open comments and inner monologues of the characters about the opposite gender don't smack of wokeness or feminism, either. A lot of what they say would probably get them shamed by the mob, at the least, banned from a forum, or canceled, today.

Even Mat's occasional chauvinism is seen as amusing or even somewhat endearing by most people in WoT, instead of offensive.

Other than dealing with male channelers, I don't see any of this "putting down" of men in the WoT books, nor removal of gender norms, except for maaaybe the Maids of The Spear (but then it wouldn't be 20th century sci-fi or fantasy without the author lifting part of Dune, so whatever). We've also had plenty of queens over the centuries, in the real world.

The very essence of wokeness and modern feminism is an enforced artifice, while men and women in the WoT came to their stations, positions, and roles fairly naturally. Women are allowed to be women, men are allowed to be men, and while they are sometimes mystified or even frustrated by each other's differences, they also appreciate and accept them. No one's really out to change anyone into something they're not. No one is demanding that every woman should be the CEO- I mean queen of a kingdom, or that the Aes Sedai either find a way to give everyone 'magic,' or give up using theirs in order to make things 'fair. No one is trying to convince anyone that we are all exactly the same, denying our differences as though they are something to be ashamed of.

In the books, as written, I'm not seeing any woke garbage.

It also wouldn't do to mistake the lives of monarchs, magic users, and main characters for those of the common citizenry. Exceptional people lead exceptional lives which, by definition, are different from the norm.

Again, I didn't; this was your own mistake.

 

Yeah, I completely forgot that their relationship was canonical when I was watching the episode. It makes a lot more sense now.

 

What a neat show. I look forward to the next episode.

 

Best episode so far

 

Agreed.

7/10-ish.

-1 point for the stupid middle love triangle scene that didn't have to be there.

-1 point for the suddenness of Rand's reveal. You really needed more build up or Rand worrying in previous episodes to have it be more powerful.

-1 for the lackluster camera shooting/editing. Better than precious episodes but still not fantastic.

Outside of those two points, everything else is pretty darn good. Good focus on the main cast, decent romance but not completely overdone, great fucking opening (and Aiel fighting), and both Rand and Min are great. They actually did Min justice here.

Also, Lan is hot. He can take his clothes off for me at any time.

 

At this point, I'm only watching to see how the trainwreck ends.

Spoiler

Machin Shin now just shit-talks in your ear, no worries about getting your soul drained or becoming insane. Lan gets surprised by a fucking regular Trolloc and somehow Egwene is the first to sense the danger and wake up. Then there's Agelmar also having his character tarnished, acting the complete opposite as he was in the books. He spoke in the books of Tarwin's Gap as possibly the last battle for Fal Dara, yet here we have him very optimistic, as if to show the audience how foolish he is. Then there's the way he treats Moiraine's arrival - suspicious, unwelcoming even, when in the books he was anything but.

How Rand was revealed was fucking hilarious. They kept trying to prolong the mystery as long as they could for those who haven't read the books, and then decided to cram the reveal in an awkward 5 minutes or thereabouts.

Romance triangle between Perrin, Rand and Egwene was just plain unnecessary. Straight up making up things that never happened and they don't make sense to begin with. The whole thing was very high-school drama, which pretty much describes the quality of acting involved.

Moiraine being so suspicious and quick to dismiss Mat - and then even to fucking send the Red Ajah after him - was really the cherry on the top of this shitpile of an episode. I get that the showrunners had some sort of disagreement with the actor, but that's just going too far.

Anyway, the ending to the episode might have made some sense - her taking only Rand when she had confirmation that he was indeed LTT reborn - if they had at least somehow shown she was always willing to do it all on her own, without involving Lan. As it is, much like the rest of the show, it was poorly executed and left you wondering if Moiraine has some kind of basis for her behavior or if it changes with the wind.

One last thing to mention, that being the Ways. Since they changed it for the show that you can't open them unless you use the One Power, how will they explain Fain coming through it all on his own?

 

I'm sorry, I know this is off-topic but I did a double take when I saw that DR "fuck y'all who have complaints about movie/show" posted this. I've not read WoT but I am almost tempted to watch the show and say I like it lmao

 

I quite liked this episode, possibly more than I've liked any of the others aside from 5 maybe... I love how they distinguish cities from each other by how the people in them treat with the party, and I loved all of the Lan scenes here.

Also, although they've used him more sparingly than I might have liked in the past, Josha's Rand is perfect (as was Min), and this was his episode really. I'm not a fan of how they portrayed saidin though.

As for the whole 'love triangle' thing, I thought that was a realistic way if showing how people deal with shitty things by deflecting blame and getting angry at other people, rather than accepting what's actually happening. Him coming to his senses later, and the confusion that Perrin and Egwaine showed when Nynaeve said what she said shows us just how silly the whole idea was outside of Rand's head.

 

Al'Lan 'The Man' Mandragoran.

 

Thanks to the show, I've started re-reading the books. And the more I watch and the more I read, the angrier I get.