just curious if anyone in this thread yet has NOT read the books?
Don't click any of the spoilers if you haven't!
I think I stopped at book 8?
Ultimately the situation where people are
1) trying to save the world and everyone in it, while simultaneously
2) holding petty grudges with one another and not sharing info critical to achieving #1
lead to lots of bullshit and contrivances and difficulties that never needed to happen, and shouldn't have if #1 was a real problem. I just couldn't take it anymore - there were points for characters where it was SUPER OBVIOUS THAT JUST OPENING YOUR GODDAMNED MOUTH would have been not just the right call but the best and most awesome call possible for all your "friends" and yourself and every goal you have
but no
instead let's not because they were mean to you about breakfast.
I see your point, but "people in power unable to solve collective action problems because they can't get over their bullshit" might be the most realistic part of the entire series.
I see your point, but "people in power unable to solve collective action problems because they can't get over their bullshit" might be the most realistic part of the entire series.
Also "dithering in the face of the impending apocalypse" is practically the defining storyline of epic fantasy. It's in basically all of them. Series like ASOIAF run the exact same play.
Update: book reddit critters get mad when you point out nobody accused the show of being "woke" until they revealed that non-white actors were cast for the Emond's Field 5.
Also, someone on the show reddit pointed out that one of the last shots in the trailer features Emond's Field women stabbing a Trolloc to death. This show...this show gets Two Rivers folk.
Update: book reddit critters get mad when you point out nobody accused the show of being "woke" until they revealed that non-white actors were cast for the Emond's Field 5.
Also, someone on the show reddit pointed out that one of the last shots in the trailer features Emond's Field women stabbing a Trolloc to death. This show...this show gets Two Rivers folk.
Hahah, yeah. Like in the book
on Winternight, trollocs burn down the Luhhans' forge and house.
Day after, Alsbet Luhhan digs one of her husbands biggest forge hammers out of the rubble and goes off to see if any trollocs dared stay nearby after wrecking her home.
-They've already said they're changing Rand's whole deal. How I'd go about it: Elayne and Aviendha are in a relationship with each other as much they're in one with Rand. Min becomes Rand's confidante but remains platonic. This way, the show has a chance to show polyamory in a healthy manner and keeps Min from becoming such a satellite to Rand. Elayne and Aviendha have their own character arcs separate and apart from their love interest. In fact, I'd argue that Elayne's as central to the story as any of the Emond's Field 5.
By doing that you ...
... remove the Triune Goddess / trinity / Past-Present-Future mythic linkage of Rand's three brides.
Might not be worth keeping, but it's not a lossless change.
-They've already said they're changing Rand's whole deal. How I'd go about it: Elayne and Aviendha are in a relationship with each other as much they're in one with Rand. Min becomes Rand's confidante but remains platonic. This way, the show has a chance to show polyamory in a healthy manner and keeps Min from becoming such a satellite to Rand. Elayne and Aviendha have their own character arcs separate and apart from their love interest. In fact, I'd argue that Elayne's as central to the story as any of the Emond's Field 5.
By doing that you ...
... remove the Triune Goddess / trinity / Past-Present-Future mythic linkage of Rand's three brides.
Might not be worth keeping, but it's not a lossless change.
Min's character arc:
A huge chunk of what drives her to do what she does and makes her Min is that she sees that she's going to fall for Rand when she first meets him and spends basically up through book six trying to avoid it at all costs because she thinks it's fucked up.
I think they need to differentiate the three women more in terms of what they want and how they go about getting it and why they want it, but it could still be done reasonably well if they more phase things in and out over a long period of time rather than have everything happening simultaneously.
Meanwhile, they need to be VERY careful about how they do everything around
Compulsion. Holy shit that's a creepy gross mine field. Limiting it to basically what Moghedien does to Elayne and Nynaeve might be okay, but the moment the male Forsaken show up shit gets bad.
-They've already said they're changing Rand's whole deal. How I'd go about it: Elayne and Aviendha are in a relationship with each other as much they're in one with Rand. Min becomes Rand's confidante but remains platonic. This way, the show has a chance to show polyamory in a healthy manner and keeps Min from becoming such a satellite to Rand. Elayne and Aviendha have their own character arcs separate and apart from their love interest. In fact, I'd argue that Elayne's as central to the story as any of the Emond's Field 5.
By doing that you ...
... remove the Triune Goddess / trinity / Past-Present-Future mythic linkage of Rand's three brides.
Might not be worth keeping, but it's not a lossless change.
Meanwhile, they need to be VERY careful about how they do everything around
Compulsion. Holy shit that's a creepy gross mine field. Limiting it to basically what Moghedien does to Elayne and Nynaeve might be okay, but the moment the male Forsaken show up shit gets bad.
They do but
I think there's a way to portray the darker aspects of the Power without reveling in misery the way Thrones did.
Another thing they need to very careful with/excise:
All the female villains who are punished with enslavement. The first time it happened, with Liandrin, it passed muster as a kind of poetic justice. But then it became a rather disturbing pattern. Personally, I'd be fine with just killing off said characters—it's not like people like Liandrin show up again in any meaningful way after being defeated.
-Siuan/Moiraine should be in the forefront. Gives a dimension to both characters we either never see (Moiraine) or don't see until the last third of the series (Siuan). Also adds a layer of tragedy when Moiraine finds out about the coup and Siuan finds out about Moiraine's death.
Wait what? Either I was completely oblivious to this the first time I read it or I just don’t remember this as being a thing. Though admittedly the end romance for Moiraine and Thom came completely out of left field, so that would make way more sense.
-Siuan/Moiraine should be in the forefront. Gives a dimension to both characters we either never see (Moiraine) or don't see until the last third of the series (Siuan). Also adds a layer of tragedy when Moiraine finds out about the coup and Siuan finds out about Moiraine's death.
Wait what? Either I was completely oblivious to this the first time I read it or I just don’t remember this as being a thing. Though admittedly the end romance for Moiraine and Thom came completely out of left field, so that would make way more sense.
I don't recall it ever saying they were "pillow friends" but it's possible.
And how could you not see the Moiraine X Thom? He only called her a "fine figure of a woman" several dozen times.
And she, why she...
Honestly, I can't think of anything she ever did to indicate interest prior to disappearing for 8 books.
I think we might have to chalk that up to Jordan's tendency to pair up everyone with a hetero partner, and they were the odd ones out or something.
-They've already said they're changing Rand's whole deal. How I'd go about it: Elayne and Aviendha are in a relationship with each other as much they're in one with Rand. Min becomes Rand's confidante but remains platonic. This way, the show has a chance to show polyamory in a healthy manner and keeps Min from becoming such a satellite to Rand. Elayne and Aviendha have their own character arcs separate and apart from their love interest. In fact, I'd argue that Elayne's as central to the story as any of the Emond's Field 5.
By doing that you ...
... remove the Triune Goddess / trinity / Past-Present-Future mythic linkage of Rand's three brides.
Might not be worth keeping, but it's not a lossless change.
Min's character arc:
A huge chunk of what drives her to do what she does and makes her Min is that she sees that she's going to fall for Rand when she first meets him and spends basically up through book six trying to avoid it at all costs because she thinks it's fucked up.
I think they need to differentiate the three women more in terms of what they want and how they go about getting it and why they want it, but it could still be done reasonably well if they more phase things in and out over a long period of time rather than have everything happening simultaneously.
Meanwhile, they need to be VERY careful about how they do everything around
Compulsion. Holy shit that's a creepy gross mine field. Limiting it to basically what Moghedien does to Elayne and Nynaeve might be okay, but the moment the male Forsaken show up shit gets bad.
For the second spoiler, why?
The book was never like "this shit is kinda cool actually". It treated it as horrible. That seems fine. Doesn't seem to merit any changes.
-Siuan/Moiraine should be in the forefront. Gives a dimension to both characters we either never see (Moiraine) or don't see until the last third of the series (Siuan). Also adds a layer of tragedy when Moiraine finds out about the coup and Siuan finds out about Moiraine's death.
Wait what? Either I was completely oblivious to this the first time I read it or I just don’t remember this as being a thing. Though admittedly the end romance for Moiraine and Thom came completely out of left field, so that would make way more sense.
I don't recall it ever saying they were "pillow friends" but it's possible.
And how could you not see the Moiraine X Thom? He only called her a "fine figure of a woman" several dozen times.
And she, why she...
Honestly, I can't think of anything she ever did to indicate interest prior to disappearing for 8 books.
I think we might have to chalk that up to Jordan's tendency to pair up everyone with a hetero partner, and they were the odd ones out or something.
Both characters express an admiration for the other throughout the books and a certain amount of "that's a fine looking man/woman there".
-They've already said they're changing Rand's whole deal. How I'd go about it: Elayne and Aviendha are in a relationship with each other as much they're in one with Rand. Min becomes Rand's confidante but remains platonic. This way, the show has a chance to show polyamory in a healthy manner and keeps Min from becoming such a satellite to Rand. Elayne and Aviendha have their own character arcs separate and apart from their love interest. In fact, I'd argue that Elayne's as central to the story as any of the Emond's Field 5.
By doing that you ...
... remove the Triune Goddess / trinity / Past-Present-Future mythic linkage of Rand's three brides.
Might not be worth keeping, but it's not a lossless change.
Min's character arc:
A huge chunk of what drives her to do what she does and makes her Min is that she sees that she's going to fall for Rand when she first meets him and spends basically up through book six trying to avoid it at all costs because she thinks it's fucked up.
I think they need to differentiate the three women more in terms of what they want and how they go about getting it and why they want it, but it could still be done reasonably well if they more phase things in and out over a long period of time rather than have everything happening simultaneously.
Meanwhile, they need to be VERY careful about how they do everything around
Compulsion. Holy shit that's a creepy gross mine field. Limiting it to basically what Moghedien does to Elayne and Nynaeve might be okay, but the moment the male Forsaken show up shit gets bad.
Um isn't it
The male forsaken? Isn't it Graendal that has an entire castle full of nude beautiful people in like some Eyes Wide Shut/ Salo shit.
Honestly, if anything my bigger concern with compulsion is that it might end up being a lot more difficult as plot item to make work as a TV show. And will come out a little too "and another double cross out of no-where, aren't we just the cleverest story tellers". Same thing with the massive scope of the black Ajah.
The more they change stuff the worse the show will be. See: Game of Thrones and plenty of other examples. If they want new stuff create new stuff.
They have to change it simply by virtue of it being a different medium. Even the One Power, being visible or not depending on the POV character, is not something that easily transfers to the screen. Characters get a lot of tingling sensations and numbness and weird internal stuff that is going to need to be adapted (maybe musical cues or something?). All of Perrin’s Wolf stuff is going to be super awkward to adapt.
It’s not Dune or Wild Sheep Chase but it is no small task what they’re attempting here.
The more they change stuff the worse the show will be. See: Game of Thrones and plenty of other examples. If they want new stuff create new stuff.
With GoT they had the disadvantage of adapting an unfinished story. When they were working within the confines of adapting things that had already been written it was much better.
I don't mean stuff that has to be changed for the medium. I mean story details and character relationships/motivations/attitudes and stuff like that. There's plenty to cut out and condense, but don't mess with what made the story work.
The more they change stuff the worse the show will be. See: Game of Thrones and plenty of other examples. If they want new stuff create new stuff.
With GoT they had the disadvantage of adapting an unfinished story. When they were working within the confines of adapting things that had already been written it was much better.
I don't mean stuff that has to be changed for the medium. I mean story details and character relationships/motivations/attitudes and stuff like that. There's plenty to cut out and condense, but don't mess with what made the story work.
The more they change stuff the worse the show will be. See: Game of Thrones and plenty of other examples. If they want new stuff create new stuff.
With GoT they had the disadvantage of adapting an unfinished story. When they were working within the confines of adapting things that had already been written it was much better.
Exactly. This is done, don't re-write it.
Adapting a book is an impossible balancing act between retaining the essence of the book and what makes it work and what people love about it, the limitations you suffer from being a show with actual actors and budget and runtime limitations, and trying to bring forward parts of the book that haven’t necessarily aged well in the 30 years since it first came out.
A lot is going to change, some will be surface level, some will be entire characters or plot lines that don’t make it in or get combined. Some fans are going to be pissed off, some are pissed off already, but going in expecting to get mad is just going to make it harder to enjoy the stuff there that you like.
Theres a reason I have the thread title I do. Its a new third age. Best part about a cyclical existence, they're all cannon. The TV show isn't the story I grew up with, it is, as is the way of their existence, another iteration of the third age. There's gonna be differences, discrepancies between the iterations, but they usually end up somewhat similarly. The heroes of the horn rarely get spun into different lives just dozens of variations of the same thing over and over, a few different details but even those are usually in a certain domain.
I'm not losing the story from my childhood, I'm gaining another turn of the wheel. I just really hope this one makes it to tarmon gai'don, and that we get some fuckin dope props, and costumes, and sets out of the deal.
Theres a reason I have the thread title I do. Its a new third age. Best part about a cyclical existence, they're all cannon. The TV show isn't the story I grew up with, it is, as is the way of their existence, another iteration of the third age. There's gonna be differences, discrepancies between the iterations, but they usually end up somewhat similarly. The heroes of the horn rarely get spun into different lives just dozens of variations of the same thing over and over, a few different details but even those are usually in a certain domain.
I'm not losing the story from my childhood, I'm gaining another turn of the wheel. I just really hope this one makes it to tarmon gai'don, and that we get some fuckin dope props, and costumes, and sets out of the deal.
It would be super hilarious to me if the show gets canceled after a season or three and just:
Spoilers for a Book 2 joke:
“I have won again, Lews Therin…” and then they come out of the portal stone at Falme.
If they follow through on the current plan to do 8 seasons, they are going to need to cut so much stuff pretty much everyone is going to be unhappy about something.
Just taking the audio books as a comparison, they are almost 450 hours-ignoring new spring.
They have to cut that down to ~80 hours of show
The first 5 GoT seasons (the book stuff), roughly covered 200 hours of ASOIAF in 50 hours.
That's why I think a lot of the adds people want just aren't going to happen. There's already 10,000+ pages to trim down.
The visual medium will do a LOT to trim down RJ's writing. What takes RJ 4 pages to describe can be shown in about.. 0.1 seconds in terms of description of what things look like. It's not like we're talking about David Weber's history dumps or relativistic math numbers.
-They've already said they're changing Rand's whole deal. How I'd go about it: Elayne and Aviendha are in a relationship with each other as much they're in one with Rand. Min becomes Rand's confidante but remains platonic. This way, the show has a chance to show polyamory in a healthy manner and keeps Min from becoming such a satellite to Rand. Elayne and Aviendha have their own character arcs separate and apart from their love interest. In fact, I'd argue that Elayne's as central to the story as any of the Emond's Field 5.
By doing that you ...
... remove the Triune Goddess / trinity / Past-Present-Future mythic linkage of Rand's three brides.
Might not be worth keeping, but it's not a lossless change.
Min's character arc:
A huge chunk of what drives her to do what she does and makes her Min is that she sees that she's going to fall for Rand when she first meets him and spends basically up through book six trying to avoid it at all costs because she thinks it's fucked up.
I think they need to differentiate the three women more in terms of what they want and how they go about getting it and why they want it, but it could still be done reasonably well if they more phase things in and out over a long period of time rather than have everything happening simultaneously.
Min
With Min, I think that there wasn’t so much trying to avoid it as being like “Oh, FFS? Really?” It’s more that she was grumpy at reality for what it was going to do to her, that her own future was constrained, than any sort of real attempt to avoid it. When she actually got to Rand in Lord of Chaos, she immediately set about trying to seduce him. She knew she would fall head over heels for him, but didn’t know how he’d feel about her. There was humour in that seduction attempt, because she had never tried to seduce anyone and had no idea what she was doing, but then Rand had no clue what she was doing either so it worked out.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
whether or not they keep her romance with Rand, that they focus on the fact that she was instrumental in designing the Cleansing and figuring out how to safely seal the Bore.
The back half of the series emphasize her role as Rand's only healthy relationship, to her detriment as an independent character, I think.
If they follow through on the current plan to do 8 seasons, they are going to need to cut so much stuff pretty much everyone is going to be unhappy about something.
Just taking the audio books as a comparison, they are almost 450 hours-ignoring new spring.
They have to cut that down to ~80 hours of show
The first 5 GoT seasons (the book stuff), roughly covered 200 hours of ASOIAF in 50 hours.
That's why I think a lot of the adds people want just aren't going to happen. There's already 10,000+ pages to trim down.
This is not as much of a 1:1 comparison as you think. It takes Eye of the World about 100 pages to go from Rand and Tam entering Emond's Field to the inciting incident. Even the most literal adaptation wouldn't take an hour and a half to show everything in that section.
Also, they're already adding things:
The most major departure from the books is that the heroes meet Logain during their initial journey out of the Two Rivers. That's a massive shift in the timeline—characters like Nynaeve didn't encounter Logain until Book 6. Others, like Moiraine, never interact with him at all.
Nobody on the internet's complaining about it because there's no way to feed into narratives about the show being "woke," I guess.
Anyway, it's clear that they're confident enough in adapting Eye of the World to weave in portions of Great Hunt and Dragon Reborn, along with creating new sequences wholecloth.
That said, some things that are confirmed/likely to be condensed or cut from the first book:
-Doesn't look like any Baerlon scenes. Seems Min appears in Fal Dara towards the end of the season and Nynaeve catches up to the party in the wilderness.
-Doesn't look like we'll see Caemlyn, either. Elayne is cast for season 2 and they appear to meet Logain on the road. Basel Gill is cast for season 1, however, indicating that they'll move his inn somewhere else. My guess is either Breen's Spring (the apparent stand-in for the village Rand/Mat traveled through and the likely introduction for Thom) or Tar Valon.
-Rafe has been coy about the appearance of Forsaken in the first season. Some have speculated they have been cast, but will hide their identities for most of the season. Personally, I could see them cutting Aginor and Balthamel. They don't really add anything to the climax, they're appearance is at odds with the later pattern for Forsaken—take over a country through Darkfriends, scheme to become Nae'blis—and, frankly...they're chumps. Balthamel gets got by an Ent with Alzheimer's. Makes sense to save the reveal that Forsaken are loose for the truly dangerous ones, like Lanfear and Ishamael.
It’s a somewhat memey way to refer to a character. It stems from an Onion article: Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure. It’s usually used to refer to characters in a somewhat grim story who are actually good and kind people, and who stay true to themselves no matter how crappy things get.
Sam in Lord of the Rings? Total cinnamon roll. Tali in Mass Effect? Strong cinnamon roll tendencies. Anna in Frozen? Cinnamon roll.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I spent my late teens and early 20s deep into Wheel of Time, before dropping off around book 10. When WotC was working on a D20 RPG, I ran a site to collect any news about it (still have the domain name, even if I'm not using it). My username was first used on a Wheel of Time MUD.
But, I have a shit memory for plot and have forgotten a lot since then. One of the things that remains pretty clear, though, is that Min is the best.
How are they going to handle Perrin and Faile? I remember their relationship being extremely dysfunctional (and no one seemed to care?)
Cut and condense.
Cut the spanking scene. Nuke it from orbit—it's the only way to be sure.
Condense Faile's insecurity so they deal with it and move on rather than having it define the character.
Condense the kidnapping to one arc within a single season. It'll be a fan favorite.
Have her and Berelain come to an understanding earlier so they aren't defined by fighting over a man.
Oh man, I forgot about that scene. I think I erased that from my memory. Jordan could write a hell of a battle scene, but damn were his relationships cringy at best.
Given the trailer and the extrapolation thereof, I'm optimistic - at any rate, it has to be better than the Foundation adaptation.
whether or not they keep her romance with Rand, that they focus on the fact that she was instrumental in designing the Cleansing and figuring out how to safely seal the Bore.
The back half of the series emphasize her role as Rand's only healthy relationship, to her detriment as an independent character, I think.
If they follow through on the current plan to do 8 seasons, they are going to need to cut so much stuff pretty much everyone is going to be unhappy about something.
Just taking the audio books as a comparison, they are almost 450 hours-ignoring new spring.
They have to cut that down to ~80 hours of show
The first 5 GoT seasons (the book stuff), roughly covered 200 hours of ASOIAF in 50 hours.
That's why I think a lot of the adds people want just aren't going to happen. There's already 10,000+ pages to trim down.
This is not as much of a 1:1 comparison as you think. It takes Eye of the World about 100 pages to go from Rand and Tam entering Emond's Field to the inciting incident. Even the most literal adaptation wouldn't take an hour and a half to show everything in that section.
Also, they're already adding things:
The most major departure from the books is that the heroes meet Logain during their initial journey out of the Two Rivers. That's a massive shift in the timeline—characters like Nynaeve didn't encounter Logain until Book 6. Others, like Moiraine, never interact with him at all.
Nobody on the internet's complaining about it because there's no way to feed into narratives about the show being "woke," I guess.
Anyway, it's clear that they're confident enough in adapting Eye of the World to weave in portions of Great Hunt and Dragon Reborn, along with creating new sequences wholecloth.
That said, some things that are confirmed/likely to be condensed or cut from the first book:
-Doesn't look like any Baerlon scenes. Seems Min appears in Fal Dara towards the end of the season and Nynaeve catches up to the party in the wilderness.
-Doesn't look like we'll see Caemlyn, either. Elayne is cast for season 2 and they appear to meet Logain on the road. Basel Gill is cast for season 1, however, indicating that they'll move his inn somewhere else. My guess is either Breen's Spring (the apparent stand-in for the village Rand/Mat traveled through and the likely introduction for Thom) or Tar Valon.
-Rafe has been coy about the appearance of Forsaken in the first season. Some have speculated they have been cast, but will hide their identities for most of the season. Personally, I could see them cutting Aginor and Balthamel. They don't really add anything to the climax, they're appearance is at odds with the later pattern for Forsaken—take over a country through Darkfriends, scheme to become Nae'blis—and, frankly...they're chumps. Balthamel gets got by an Ent with Alzheimer's. Makes sense to save the reveal that Forsaken are loose for the truly dangerous ones, like Lanfear and Ishamael.
I actually liked The Green Man killing Balthamel. It was tragic, and kinda horrifying. I thought the whole Green Man thing was handled really well, especially when you see him and his people in the book 4 flashbacks.
What I do hope they change is Aginor. I've read Eye probably a dozen times by now and I still have trouble figuring out what happens when it makes the transition from people attacking him and then running away, and then Rand running away, and then at some point he's channeling. It's like there's whole paragraphs missing. It's a mess. Hopefully a lot of that will clean up on a visual medium, and the parts that are supposed to be surreal and dreamlike will be a little better delineated.
just curious if anyone in this thread yet has NOT read the books?
Don't click any of the spoilers if you haven't!
I read the first two or three books back when the sixth had just been released.
Imma clicking the spoilers, for two reasons.
First, shocks/twists don't interest me. If a story is compelling, I'll watch. If it relies on that kind of gimmick to drag you in, I'd rather pass.
I don't begrudge people that do enjoy it, and I don't actively seek it out, and I wanna punch people in the throat who gleefully spoil things, but I don't rely on it.
Second, if I didn't, this thread would be incomprehensible. At least half the posts are nothing but spoilers. I don't mind holding off a couple days, as I have with the Who thread, or wasn't able to watch Lower Decks same day, but this is what, four weeks from starting? I'll eat those spoilers, if it means not having to wade through 1000 posts when the show starts.
If it helps, shocks and twists aren't a huge part of the story, but some people are sensitive to everything story related, so better safe than sorry.
The real draw of the books is the world building and characters (at least as long as it's not related to romance) and Jordan's ability to plant seeds of lore and plot that pay off down the line.
I have a great deal of fun on rereads finding all the places where he'll put in a vision or dream, or mention a person and recent historical event that becomes relevant several books later.
whether or not they keep her romance with Rand, that they focus on the fact that she was instrumental in designing the Cleansing and figuring out how to safely seal the Bore.
The back half of the series emphasize her role as Rand's only healthy relationship, to her detriment as an independent character, I think.
If they follow through on the current plan to do 8 seasons, they are going to need to cut so much stuff pretty much everyone is going to be unhappy about something.
Just taking the audio books as a comparison, they are almost 450 hours-ignoring new spring.
They have to cut that down to ~80 hours of show
The first 5 GoT seasons (the book stuff), roughly covered 200 hours of ASOIAF in 50 hours.
That's why I think a lot of the adds people want just aren't going to happen. There's already 10,000+ pages to trim down.
This is not as much of a 1:1 comparison as you think. It takes Eye of the World about 100 pages to go from Rand and Tam entering Emond's Field to the inciting incident. Even the most literal adaptation wouldn't take an hour and a half to show everything in that section.
Also, they're already adding things:
The most major departure from the books is that the heroes meet Logain during their initial journey out of the Two Rivers. That's a massive shift in the timeline—characters like Nynaeve didn't encounter Logain until Book 6. Others, like Moiraine, never interact with him at all.
Nobody on the internet's complaining about it because there's no way to feed into narratives about the show being "woke," I guess.
Anyway, it's clear that they're confident enough in adapting Eye of the World to weave in portions of Great Hunt and Dragon Reborn, along with creating new sequences wholecloth.
That said, some things that are confirmed/likely to be condensed or cut from the first book:
-Doesn't look like any Baerlon scenes. Seems Min appears in Fal Dara towards the end of the season and Nynaeve catches up to the party in the wilderness.
-Doesn't look like we'll see Caemlyn, either. Elayne is cast for season 2 and they appear to meet Logain on the road. Basel Gill is cast for season 1, however, indicating that they'll move his inn somewhere else. My guess is either Breen's Spring (the apparent stand-in for the village Rand/Mat traveled through and the likely introduction for Thom) or Tar Valon.
-Rafe has been coy about the appearance of Forsaken in the first season. Some have speculated they have been cast, but will hide their identities for most of the season. Personally, I could see them cutting Aginor and Balthamel. They don't really add anything to the climax, they're appearance is at odds with the later pattern for Forsaken—take over a country through Darkfriends, scheme to become Nae'blis—and, frankly...they're chumps. Balthamel gets got by an Ent with Alzheimer's. Makes sense to save the reveal that Forsaken are loose for the truly dangerous ones, like Lanfear and Ishamael.
I actually liked The Green Man killing Balthamel. It was tragic, and kinda horrifying. I thought the whole Green Man thing was handled really well, especially when you see him and his people in the book 4 flashbacks.
What I do hope they change is Aginor. I've read Eye probably a dozen times by now and I still have trouble figuring out what happens when it makes the transition from people attacking him and then running away, and then Rand running away, and then at some point he's channeling. It's like there's whole paragraphs missing. It's a mess. Hopefully a lot of that will clean up on a visual medium, and the parts that are supposed to be surreal and dreamlike will be a little better delineated.
As to your first point:
Don't get me wrong, Someshta went out like a badass. But it's embarrassing for Balthamel. He's a general of the Shadow, one of the most powerful channelers to ever exist, and he loses to a fucking lawn ornament. Can you imagine what it was like when the DO resurrected him?
Balthamel: Oh! Hi...my lord, master...boss. How are things?
Dark One: SO...THAT HAPPENED.
Balthamel: It wasn't my fault! You saw how fucked up my body was, I couldn't even stand sunlight. Plus it was my first time out and, and—
Dark One: IT WAS A FUCKING TREE, BALTHAMEL. HAVE YOU HEARD OF THIS INVENTION CALLED FIRE?
Balthamel: He cheated! A surprise attack!
Dark One: WAS THAT ON YOUR RESUME? STRENGHTS: GAMBLING, HISTORY, SEDUCTION. WEAKNESSES: GARDEN GNOMES. THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR HIRING FUCKING FRAT BOYS. WATCH, RAHVIN'S GOING TO GET KILLED DOING SOME STUPID SHIT LIKE TRYING TO TURN THE ADVERSARY INTO A BEAR. YOU'RE HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD! HOW ARE YOU STILL SO BAD AT THIS?!
Balthamel: Give me another chance, my lord! I'll burn every tree I see!
Dark One: FANTASTIC. *SIGH* FINE. I NEED CANNON FODDER ANYWAY.
Balthamel: What?
Dark One: YOU HEARD ME.
As for the rest:
My guess is they'll have Lews Therin appear to Rand at the Eye, taking the place of the Creator in the book, and guiding Rand through his first conscious channeling. In hindsight, it's fairly clear what happened: Rand Travelled to Tarwin's Gap and wiped out the Shadowspawn, then entered TAR and temporarily severed Ishamael from the Dark One.
I mean, from a certain POV, everything is spoiled immediately after the prologue of the Eye of the World:
And it came to pass in those days, as it had come before and would come again, that the Dark lay heavy on the land and weighed down the hearts of men, and the green things failed, and hope died. And men cried out to the Creator, saying, O Light of the Heavens, Light of the World, let the Promised One be born of the mountain, according to the prophecies, as he was in ages past and will be in ages to come. Let the Prince of the Morning sing to the land that green things will grow and the valleys give forth lambs. Let the arm of the Lord of the Dawn shelter us from the Dark, and the great sword of justice defend us. Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.
(From Charal Drianaan te Calamon,
The Cycle of the Dragon.
Author unknown, the Fourth Age)
But yeah, if this blows up into the next GOT, we’re probably going to need an unspoiled thread and a spoiled thread.
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I think I stopped at book 8?
Ultimately the situation where people are
1) trying to save the world and everyone in it, while simultaneously
2) holding petty grudges with one another and not sharing info critical to achieving #1
lead to lots of bullshit and contrivances and difficulties that never needed to happen, and shouldn't have if #1 was a real problem. I just couldn't take it anymore - there were points for characters where it was SUPER OBVIOUS THAT JUST OPENING YOUR GODDAMNED MOUTH would have been not just the right call but the best and most awesome call possible for all your "friends" and yourself and every goal you have
but no
instead let's not because they were mean to you about breakfast.
Also "dithering in the face of the impending apocalypse" is practically the defining storyline of epic fantasy. It's in basically all of them. Series like ASOIAF run the exact same play.
Also, someone on the show reddit pointed out that one of the last shots in the trailer features Emond's Field women stabbing a Trolloc to death. This show...this show gets Two Rivers folk.
Hahah, yeah. Like in the book
Day after, Alsbet Luhhan digs one of her husbands biggest forge hammers out of the rubble and goes off to see if any trollocs dared stay nearby after wrecking her home.
By doing that you ...
Might not be worth keeping, but it's not a lossless change.
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Min's character arc:
I think they need to differentiate the three women more in terms of what they want and how they go about getting it and why they want it, but it could still be done reasonably well if they more phase things in and out over a long period of time rather than have everything happening simultaneously.
Meanwhile, they need to be VERY careful about how they do everything around
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They do but
Another thing they need to very careful with/excise:
And how could you not see the Moiraine X Thom? He only called her a "fine figure of a woman" several dozen times.
And she, why she...
Honestly, I can't think of anything she ever did to indicate interest prior to disappearing for 8 books.
I think we might have to chalk that up to Jordan's tendency to pair up everyone with a hetero partner, and they were the odd ones out or something.
For the second spoiler, why?
The book was never like "this shit is kinda cool actually". It treated it as horrible. That seems fine. Doesn't seem to merit any changes.
Both characters express an admiration for the other throughout the books and a certain amount of "that's a fine looking man/woman there".
Um isn't it
Honestly, if anything my bigger concern with compulsion is that it might end up being a lot more difficult as plot item to make work as a TV show. And will come out a little too "and another double cross out of no-where, aren't we just the cleverest story tellers". Same thing with the massive scope of the black Ajah.
They have to change it simply by virtue of it being a different medium. Even the One Power, being visible or not depending on the POV character, is not something that easily transfers to the screen. Characters get a lot of tingling sensations and numbness and weird internal stuff that is going to need to be adapted (maybe musical cues or something?). All of Perrin’s Wolf stuff is going to be super awkward to adapt.
It’s not Dune or Wild Sheep Chase but it is no small task what they’re attempting here.
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With GoT they had the disadvantage of adapting an unfinished story. When they were working within the confines of adapting things that had already been written it was much better.
Exactly. This is done, don't re-write it.
There are book adaptations that have improved on the source material. The Bourne Identity movie is better than the book and I will die on that hill.
Adapting a book is an impossible balancing act between retaining the essence of the book and what makes it work and what people love about it, the limitations you suffer from being a show with actual actors and budget and runtime limitations, and trying to bring forward parts of the book that haven’t necessarily aged well in the 30 years since it first came out.
A lot is going to change, some will be surface level, some will be entire characters or plot lines that don’t make it in or get combined. Some fans are going to be pissed off, some are pissed off already, but going in expecting to get mad is just going to make it harder to enjoy the stuff there that you like.
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I'm not losing the story from my childhood, I'm gaining another turn of the wheel. I just really hope this one makes it to tarmon gai'don, and that we get some fuckin dope props, and costumes, and sets out of the deal.
It would be super hilarious to me if the show gets canceled after a season or three and just:
Spoilers for a Book 2 joke:
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Just taking the audio books as a comparison, they are almost 450 hours-ignoring new spring.
They have to cut that down to ~80 hours of show
The first 5 GoT seasons (the book stuff), roughly covered 200 hours of ASOIAF in 50 hours.
That's why I think a lot of the adds people want just aren't going to happen. There's already 10,000+ pages to trim down.
Min
With Min, I think that there wasn’t so much trying to avoid it as being like “Oh, FFS? Really?” It’s more that she was grumpy at reality for what it was going to do to her, that her own future was constrained, than any sort of real attempt to avoid it. When she actually got to Rand in Lord of Chaos, she immediately set about trying to seduce him. She knew she would fall head over heels for him, but didn’t know how he’d feel about her. There was humour in that seduction attempt, because she had never tried to seduce anyone and had no idea what she was doing, but then Rand had no clue what she was doing either so it worked out.
Also, Min is a cinnamon roll. I really hope her character comes across well on the show.
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I just hope
The back half of the series emphasize her role as Rand's only healthy relationship, to her detriment as an independent character, I think.
This is not as much of a 1:1 comparison as you think. It takes Eye of the World about 100 pages to go from Rand and Tam entering Emond's Field to the inciting incident. Even the most literal adaptation wouldn't take an hour and a half to show everything in that section.
Also, they're already adding things:
Nobody on the internet's complaining about it because there's no way to feed into narratives about the show being "woke," I guess.
Anyway, it's clear that they're confident enough in adapting Eye of the World to weave in portions of Great Hunt and Dragon Reborn, along with creating new sequences wholecloth.
That said, some things that are confirmed/likely to be condensed or cut from the first book:
-Doesn't look like we'll see Caemlyn, either. Elayne is cast for season 2 and they appear to meet Logain on the road. Basel Gill is cast for season 1, however, indicating that they'll move his inn somewhere else. My guess is either Breen's Spring (the apparent stand-in for the village Rand/Mat traveled through and the likely introduction for Thom) or Tar Valon.
-Rafe has been coy about the appearance of Forsaken in the first season. Some have speculated they have been cast, but will hide their identities for most of the season. Personally, I could see them cutting Aginor and Balthamel. They don't really add anything to the climax, they're appearance is at odds with the later pattern for Forsaken—take over a country through Darkfriends, scheme to become Nae'blis—and, frankly...they're chumps. Balthamel gets got by an Ent with Alzheimer's. Makes sense to save the reveal that Forsaken are loose for the truly dangerous ones, like Lanfear and Ishamael.
It’s a somewhat memey way to refer to a character. It stems from an Onion article: Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure. It’s usually used to refer to characters in a somewhat grim story who are actually good and kind people, and who stay true to themselves no matter how crappy things get.
Sam in Lord of the Rings? Total cinnamon roll. Tali in Mass Effect? Strong cinnamon roll tendencies. Anna in Frozen? Cinnamon roll.
But, I have a shit memory for plot and have forgotten a lot since then. One of the things that remains pretty clear, though, is that Min is the best.
Well, I'm sure they could cut 150 hours of material by
Cut and condense.
Condense Faile's insecurity so they deal with it and move on rather than having it define the character.
Condense the kidnapping to one arc within a single season. It'll be a fan favorite.
Have her and Berelain come to an understanding earlier so they aren't defined by fighting over a man.
Oh man, I forgot about that scene. I think I erased that from my memory. Jordan could write a hell of a battle scene, but damn were his relationships cringy at best.
Given the trailer and the extrapolation thereof, I'm optimistic - at any rate, it has to be better than the Foundation adaptation.
it has to be
What I do hope they change is Aginor. I've read Eye probably a dozen times by now and I still have trouble figuring out what happens when it makes the transition from people attacking him and then running away, and then Rand running away, and then at some point he's channeling. It's like there's whole paragraphs missing. It's a mess. Hopefully a lot of that will clean up on a visual medium, and the parts that are supposed to be surreal and dreamlike will be a little better delineated.
I read the first two or three books back when the sixth had just been released.
Imma clicking the spoilers, for two reasons.
First, shocks/twists don't interest me. If a story is compelling, I'll watch. If it relies on that kind of gimmick to drag you in, I'd rather pass.
I don't begrudge people that do enjoy it, and I don't actively seek it out, and I wanna punch people in the throat who gleefully spoil things, but I don't rely on it.
Second, if I didn't, this thread would be incomprehensible. At least half the posts are nothing but spoilers. I don't mind holding off a couple days, as I have with the Who thread, or wasn't able to watch Lower Decks same day, but this is what, four weeks from starting? I'll eat those spoilers, if it means not having to wade through 1000 posts when the show starts.
The real draw of the books is the world building and characters (at least as long as it's not related to romance) and Jordan's ability to plant seeds of lore and plot that pay off down the line.
I have a great deal of fun on rereads finding all the places where he'll put in a vision or dream, or mention a person and recent historical event that becomes relevant several books later.
As to your first point:
Balthamel: *screams, agony* It's over. It's finally over. I'm...in a void?
Dark One: *COUGH*
Balthamel: Oh! Hi...my lord, master...boss. How are things?
Dark One: SO...THAT HAPPENED.
Balthamel: It wasn't my fault! You saw how fucked up my body was, I couldn't even stand sunlight. Plus it was my first time out and, and—
Dark One: IT WAS A FUCKING TREE, BALTHAMEL. HAVE YOU HEARD OF THIS INVENTION CALLED FIRE?
Balthamel: He cheated! A surprise attack!
Dark One: WAS THAT ON YOUR RESUME? STRENGHTS: GAMBLING, HISTORY, SEDUCTION. WEAKNESSES: GARDEN GNOMES. THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR HIRING FUCKING FRAT BOYS. WATCH, RAHVIN'S GOING TO GET KILLED DOING SOME STUPID SHIT LIKE TRYING TO TURN THE ADVERSARY INTO A BEAR. YOU'RE HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD! HOW ARE YOU STILL SO BAD AT THIS?!
Balthamel: Give me another chance, my lord! I'll burn every tree I see!
Dark One: FANTASTIC. *SIGH* FINE. I NEED CANNON FODDER ANYWAY.
Balthamel: What?
Dark One: YOU HEARD ME.
As for the rest:
It'll make for a kickass action scene.
I mean, from a certain POV, everything is spoiled immediately after the prologue of the Eye of the World:
(From Charal Drianaan te Calamon,
The Cycle of the Dragon.
Author unknown, the Fourth Age)
But yeah, if this blows up into the next GOT, we’re probably going to need an unspoiled thread and a spoiled thread.