Modernizing the Wheel of Time

[Psyren]

Spoiler: Liquor Box

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Hold on - are these examples of a story from a book (I guess a comic book counts) being retold with adaptions to make way for trans or genderfluid characters? Or are these whole new stories that are set in an established world, drawing on some established characters, like She-Ra?

I neither know, nor care, the extent to which the stories were changed from their originals. What matters to me is that someone in our era with the rights to adapt the property decided these elements were worth including today.

I thought the intent of the question was obvious. But let's rephrase to clear up any ambiguity - do you disagree that the question of "How well does this story reflect the idea that gender is not binary?" would not be amongst the highest priorities for most of the population?

I neither know, nor care, what the "highest priorities for most of the population" would be.

Well I thought we were talking about whether it was probable that the showrunner would be motivated to put aside commercial concerns and insert trans characters for their own reasons. A showrunner who is neutral on gender issues would not be motivated to make those changes.

"Their own reasons" can include things like seeking critical acclaim or positive press. Those aren't wholly separate from commercial considerations of course, but you were never going to fully separate those anyway.

So what? There are lots of things aimed at niche markets on major networks. For example there are Korean langauge programmes on Netflix in English speaking countries - they are clearly aimed at a niche market despite being on a major network.

How do you define "niche?" Which of the example properties I listed do you think qualifies?

Do you think that a television adaption of WoT would be considered successful if it has the same profile and number of viewers as the likes of She-Ra or Dragon Prince? Or do you think it would be shooting for the sort of success of a GoT or a Harry Potter?

Even if we assume those two degrees of success are different enough to matter, do you have some way of knowing that doing this would cause them to go from one to the other?

One thread of our discussion seems to have got lost - where you suggested that there might be some risk in not adapting. Do you still maintain that there's a risk from simply retelling the same story (with necessary adaptions for TV)? If so, based on what?

Based on the fact that it's not 1990 anymore.