who in this bitch reads robert jordan? -- The Wheel of Time thread

i'm not sure a non-book reader would 'already know' lan was ready/willing/available

my only caveat is that nynaeve should have totally freaked out upon learning lan was a king but whatevs

min was always the best

#WoTShowSpoilers

Book Nynaeve: Tugs braid at Rand and Min getting jiggy outside marriage.

Show Nynaeve: pic.twitter.com/wpkPUBp1fq

— Fatimah (@_Meraxes__) December 17, 2021

Final episode seen. All I'll say is: the opening title card.

Pacing continues to be weird AF. I should watch it again when I’m less distracted by holiday preparations. “The dark one” is not very scary

One tie away from a business suit

Is this suitable and/or non-embarrassing for watching with one's mum?

Not that I'm stuck isolating with my family over Christmas

Well lads

Id have Rafe Judkins, if that is his real name, kneecapped for the lack of quality control across effects, sound mix, plotting, scripting and performances across that first season

Other than that it was mediocre with decent moments.

I've no idea how a major studio sends it out in 2021 having spent big money on it, whose nephew is this cunt anyway.

*checks*

Rafe Lee Judkins (born January 8, 1983, in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American showrunner and television personality best known as the showrunner of the Amazon original show The Wheel of Time, based on Robert Jordan's book series of the same name and also for appearing as a contestant on the 11th season of Survivor, which took place in Guatemala. He is now a working TV and travel writer with credits on other shows such as My Own Worst Enemy, Chuck, and Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

Early life

Judkins was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to a large Mormon family that is said to include 60 first cousins. Rafe's childhood involved him spending time painting rocks and taking apart machines. This was probably because of his mother being an artist and father being an inventor. He moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the age of five. His time was spent towards teaching English and science to inner city middle school students. He graduated in 2001 and was selected as the member of the senior class most likely to be on Survivor.

hesitate to disrespect a child of the #burgh but fuck sewickley

ned pls start a thread for mormon sci-fi

we've got original battlestar galactica, orson scott hatecrime, this guy

also brandon sanderson who finished the book series

lews darragh tottenham?

no wonder the world got broken

WoTtenham

FWIW

https://gizmodo.com/the-wheel-of-time-tv-series-works-because-of-the-change-1848281234

Cant be clicking into that given the link claims that the show works

My friend Mikey, meantime, on the very last scene of the final episode:

14addendum: oh oh oh word of the creator has it that the Seanchan have Texan accents and I fucking DARE Rafe and co to have it be that way in the show too.

— Mikey says hey (@erlking) December 29, 2021

I read the first two and a half books way back in high school so watching this series, the story was vaguely familiar, but it was basically like going in blind. This first season was solid, enjoyable, at times very good. I understand a lot of the criticisms thrown at the show but feel most are minor. Pacing is probably the biggest thing I hope they improve next season

Acting is what I hope they improve the most but I have little hope because of the casting.

hope they work on improving the being a good show part

dunno about that article but I feel this sentence

Despite the infinite things I dislike about the show, I somehow still like the show.

xp Yes thats where id have them focus

Now id also make them start over because that would be easier ito getting to the good show part at this stage

man...I could just never imagine this ever working on screen...and boy did this confirm my worst suspicions. something about making high fantasy like this so literal just brings out the ridiculousness of it for me. game of thrones overcame this through sheer violence and nudity i think.

Visually its too clear and bright, everyone is too clean, which is imo an awful start

From the Gizmodo article: Tossing aside the novels’ obstinate adherence to the gender binary is a welcome and inclusive update.

Not to repeat myself from a million years ago but the better path to take here is to portray a world (one not unlike our own!) that is suffering from its obstinate adherence to a gender binary!

I'm trying to figure out why the first two LOTR movies worked for me (I think the third one starts to become what the Hobbit movies would be...) and maybe it's simply just that Jackson had the budget and skills to go for actual grandeur and menace.

Starts to wilt halfway through two towers for me as jackson began to exercise his editorial brilliance with ever more confidence

The guy in charge of this started out in that mode alas

lmao at the sexposition being one of GoT's strengths, though

haha ok fair enough

what's funny is i'll definitely keep watching this as long as it goes despite my frustrations--deju vu all over again.

I enjoyed this. Even if it did feel like Merlin With a Budget.

I think I kinda liked this because of the slightly trying too hard, good budget but not quite BIG budget, also ran vibe. Watching it felt like no specific other show, but put me in the mind of all of the cheesy, really not all that great sci-fi/fantasy shows that would get aired on the early non-premium cable channels that I would absolutely eat up for lack of better options in the genre.

I don't if that makes sense, it just felt comfortable in an odd sort of way, even as I knew it wasn't great.

I know what you’re saying. I rather enjoyed the shannara show in a similar way to what you’re describing

Shannara was better than this. It embraced its cheesiness where this tries to pretend it isn't there.

I mean, I'm also going to keep watching it, especially to see how the diversions from the series play out. What surprises me is that my wife, who has no familiarity with the source material, likes it more than I do (though she doesn't love it).

I think thats been the way across the board tbh

Its been labelled as a reaction from nerdy bookreaders but is in fairness more of a clamour of "wait you changed it to that instead wtf that makes no sense"

put me in the mind of all of the cheesy, really not all that great sci-fi/fantasy shows that would get aired on the early non-premium cable channels that I would absolutely eat up for lack of better options in the genre

yes this is totally the feel of a lot of it! but unlike those shows it just seems to lack any real life to it or sense that anyone is having any fun at all. the actors are uniformly bad (imo--though possibly not entirely their fault) which is unfortunate since we are probably stuck with them but there is a *chance* this could go from bad to passably mediocre in future seasons.

still have not watched this aiside from first ep - combination of work and maybe fears that will be ultra disappointed

question though re above
- From the Gizmodo article: Tossing aside the novels’ obstinate adherence to the gender binary is a welcome and inclusive update.

Not to repeat myself from a million years ago but the better path to take here is to portray a world (one not unlike our own!) that is suffering from its obstinate adherence to a gender binary! -

My understanding was that the only major change was on the reincarnation aspect of souls so that Egwene for example could be a reincarnation of Dragon - not hat they changed the saidin/saidar separation (aside from automatic overall stat that men would generally be stronger in power than women. Is that correct or was there a larger switch?

In other news, while catching up on my Expanse related news saw that Shohreh Aghdashloo in very loose talks re joining WOT https://screenrant.com/expanse-shohreh-aghdashloo-wheel-time-season-2-role/

Your understanding is correct

Id say theres probably several large switches of plot and character from series one vs the equivalent period/events in the book, and dozens of more minor changes in knock on effects tbh

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Long fantasy series are very difficult to manage. As strong as I think The Malazan Book of the Fallen was, the tenth and final book was a disappointment. Jordan completely lost control of his narrative before he died. I couldn't even finish the ones he wrote.

xp who the fuck nominated this

nevermind the trollocs

oh yes

worst thing about this show is that now i'm almost done with book 4

you can stop at #6

then just read a wikipedia summary

Was wondering whether it was worth reading the entire series

I've just finished 3

it is, I know I'm repeating myself but the availability of the books rather than waiting years between each means that even the relative trudge from 7-11 (disputed) is worth yr time and it's not like there's no payoff- it delivers

I never read past book 7 or 8 back in the day. No idea if I’ll finish them this time.

checking in on readers' progress