Modernizing the Wheel of Time

[Mightymosy]

Did Tauriel really do no harm? The message that got sent here certainly was not "it does not matter who you are, you can still be a hero!". The message was "Girls only get to be the hero because we had to check that box on the list that marketing gave us". A lot of people understood that message. They even doubled down on that by also using that same character for the cheesy romance subplot, thus ticking off another box. Just in case that anyone missed the message that representation in movies serves only marketability. Remember, girls, you only get included for token representation!

That is not just a horrible message, it also sours the chances for other such characters to be well received, even when the intentions of the writers might be genuine.

The message of the original was
"Adventures are Boys only clubs, no girls allowed"

So, yes, I believe Tauriel was an upgrade to that.

I am not so opposed to love triangles as some of you seem to be. It is a fine story concept, also very close to RL, so worth telling over and over again.

It is eye rolling that the (male?) authors couldn't think of anything more original than that, because it IS such a cliche. Disappointing that they couldn't think of something a little more interesting in the style of of Lotr, but I give them SOME leeway, because they didn't want to change the story toooooo much, I think.

Just imagine Tauriel had killed the dragon.
What a fan outrage that would have caused!!!!!
All the fans of that bowma (damn, don't even remember the man) would have cried that these stupid authors stole the heroism from their favourite pet character! And all because of social justice warrior crap, OMG!

See, a love triangle at least people can swallow, because it doesn't harm the "real" story too much.

Yes, personally I might have been more bold and have Tauriel slay Smaug (she is an Elven Archer, right? Makes perfect sense, right?)
But I can understand why authors gave her the love arc, although it does feel it leaves a little more to desire.

Also, didn't she also actually do a bit more?
It is been a while, but wasn't there some other plot with her standing up to the elf king dude, going after Legolas or something?

At any rate, LotR's major flaw(*) has always been that it was pretty male-centric, and Tauriel was at least an attempt to rectify that.
And I believe a token representation is at least a step into the right direction, better than nothing.
A small step, not taken far enough, is not ALWAYS worse than no step at all.



(*) Unless you WANT your audience to be mostly boys anyway. There is room for gender-targeted media as well. Not everything has to be for everyone.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is one of the two main protagonists of the Prequel Trilogy and is not known to be a blood relative of the Skywalker family.

Spoiler: More Star Wars stuff

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Also, praise the Sequels for making Rey not a blood relative of the Skywalkers all you want, but if the Sequel Trilogy does anything for the eugenics implications I'd say it strengthened them - Kylo Ren's the third generation of powerful Force adepts out of the Skywalker family, and Rey just so happens to be a powerful Force adept who's the granddaughter of another powerful Force adept. This is reinforcing a pattern that says that Force sensitivity is a heritable trait, not weakening that particular implication. Additionally, whereas the Original and Prequel Trilogies indicate that great potential is not particularly meaningful without training and dedication, the Sequel Trilogy simply hands Rey powers with seemingly no justification other than who her grandfather is, which is significantly worse in terms of what it implies for a hypothetical eugenics program than just making people from the 'right' families have higher potential.

The Prequel Trilogy is much better than the Sequel Trilogy in terms of eugenics implications:
- Skill and experience trumps strength in the Prequel Trilogy: Anakin loses to Dooku and Obi-Wan despite The Phantom Menace indicating that he has the highest Force potential of any known Jedi. By contrast, in the Sequel Trilogy Rey's a better Force user than Kylo from at least the point where he tries to interrogate her despite Rey being entirely untrained, and she also beats him in every fight they get into.
- Anakin is the only "protagonist-level/antagonist-level" Force adept from a 'special' family in the Prequel Trilogy; Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, and Count Dooku are unrelated to the Skywalkers as far as we know from the films. By contrast, Rey is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, Kylo Ren is a Skywalker, and Snoke is apparently something Palpatine created in a test tube.
- The Prequel Trilogy has by far the highest incidence of Force adepts who are not related to the Skywalker family or any other known Force adepts. Sure, most of them are barely deserving of the 'character' in 'background character,' but they're still there. The Sequel Trilogy - fan theories about Finn aside - only has Temiri Blagg, who isn't any more of a character in The Last Jedi than, say, Eeth Koth or Plo Koon are in the Prequels.
- If the Jedi Order represents a reasonable fraction of the galaxy's Force sensitive population, then the Prequel Trilogy shows that there are far too few of them for Force sensitivity to be a simple matter of genetics - there's only ten thousand or so Jedi in the waning days of the Old Republic whereas Coruscant alone probably has a population in the trillions.

Now I remember....
See, I applaud Psyren's agenda. I am all for inclusion and diversity. But I also can't stand arguments that just won't make sense. We may all disagree on the quality of Star Wars movies, and we did for very long threads, but that whole "the new trilogy democratices the force" just really made no sense whatsoever, for the reasons you gave.

So I really feel a little bad. I want to root for the guy, cause he seems to be on the side of the angels. But I simply can't, when I read stuff that simply is untrue.....


But back to you, Psyren, and the Wheel of Time:
You mentioned that Star Wars made a mistake by putting the highly spiritual matter of the force into crude biological stuff, and that a modern WoT would do well by doing it the other way around: biological sex should not limit what magic powers one can use, because we can all decide ourselves what we want to be.

Now I want to discuss this from a "morales" point of view, kinda.
I don't know what the morals of WoT are supposed to be, so maybe you tell .

Because the reality is this: biology DOES limit us, in real life. At the very least, our chromosomes dictate whether we might get prostate cancer or cervic cancer, for example. And unless we undergo surgery, our "spiritual mind" cannot change a damn thing about that.
So a message of any story could also be : there are some things we are born with which we just cannot change, no matter how hard we try.
And this might be a good message.


Magic of course can be written either way: you can make it dependent on biological assets (in which case the story is around working with what you have and try to make the best of it) or you can make it around the mind (in which case the story is around everything is possible if you can imagine it - escapism).
I like both ways, you just need to be aware of what kind of story you are reading right now, and be adult enough to be it into the right context.

So, how do you think WoT was written? Does it even HAVE a morale message?