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It's sort of doing this... Cannoli Send a noteboard - 04/12/2021 07:39:08 AM

A good adaptation, more than being true to the source, should help you connect with it in new ways. Explore different facts of it, maybe.


I have had to exercise my WoT knowledge and perceptions in order to get to the bottom of, and articulate, how the show is going wrong.


The show so far has tried to do that, but in very amateur and hamhanded ways.

The amateurishness is the worst part. If they did something else but it came across as done with some skill, I could accept that. You can always call it the Third Age of a different turning of the Wheel of Time. But it's just nonsense. There are in-book ways to do things, but they try to invent their own, as if Jordan's success was entirely about a bunch of character names, professions and one or two superficial traits for each one, plus the idea of a reincarnated champion and a divided source of power. Keep that and mix and match everything and you should be fine, right? Like I noted in my review, this is the same episode where Nynaeve encounters Mat in bed in an inn, suffering the effects of the Shadar Logoth dagger. If it was so important to have someone describe her state of mind and place in her character arc in THIS episode, why not have Mat do it as in the book? Scarier than him momentarily snarling at people, before reverting to normal, is uttering insights and knowledge he should not have. Rather than just tell her what she's feeling, he, in this state, would use it to try to hurt her, so there is a REASON to say it. But instead we have Moiraine speechifying to Nynaeve which only serves to undercut her, when she is spouting off about she'll be ready to grab the kids when they show up and meanwhile Nynaeve ends up finding Rand and Mat on her own. In this situation the story has created, Nynaeve is right to be hostile and dismissive toward Moiraine, since Nynaeve herself has saved Moiraine and/or Lan in two crises now, has not been saved by them or seen the threats from which they have been protecting the kids, and now has caught her in a screw-up. Because of the random changes they didn't think through.

And as you said, there are plenty of ways provided by Jordan for the Children to be more of a threat to the Aes Sedai.

Also, they are in danger of "fixing" Egwene right into uninteresting. Egwene's childhood bout of breakbone fever suddenly being ramped up to 11, with the implication she overcame her illness by sheer willpower, her clear priority during the Tinker sojourn being her friendship with Perrin over her flirtation with Aram, her being more IDK, amenable? toward Rand as their relationship hits the crisis of her ambitions, their amicable ambiguous breakup while still at home, and now she channels with way more effectiveness than any first-time newbie ever should, weaving a distraction spark at Valda, while, without using her hands, freeing Perrin. I could see her just freeing Perrin, it could be a very thematically on-point case of an ignorant newbie bettering the commonly-used weave as with Nynaeve's ITB Healing. But that's not good enough, they have her doing the exponentially harder feat of consciously performing multiple weaves, and as if that's not enough, freeing Perrin does not even give him anything to do other than distract Valda to Egwene can stab him, because stabbing people is a thing Egwene or Nynaeve do in Jordan's books, even when the BTS segment with the production people are blathering about Jordan's theme of non-violence. This kind of reminds me of how Tyrion even in the good seasons of Game of Thrones, was given other characters' lines to look smarter and given more action at the expense of other characters, notably Catelyn when fighting the clansmen.

They are not seeing the story as something to honor or respect, but a source of inspiration for their own things to play with. So they give Moiraine Mat's line, they come up with bullshit for the Children to give them advantages over the Aes Sedai, not because they are interested in servicing the story, but to serve their own storytelling agenda. We're "fixing" Egwene by making her action-girl, which was one of Sanderson's most egregious blunders, too. We're "fixing" Moiraine by making her more empathetic and caring, rather than someone so fixed on a goal to save the world she won't turn aside for anything. She hears of the death of her closest friend, and she analyzes it in the context of the effect on Rand's political success. But here, she REALLY cares, and she lets the funeral of a sister and the suicide of a warder occupy her while two of her candidates for Dragon Reborn are wandering Tar Valon unsupervised and Nynaeve would be totally out of pocket if not for her interest in Lan.

Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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It's sort of doing this... - 04/12/2021 07:39:08 AM 300 Views
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Re: "Wheel of Time" Episode 5 - 31/01/2022 09:44:49 AM 271 Views

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