An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn

[Psyren]

I personally thought that

Spoiler: Major spoiler

Show

Lanfear ultimately failing due to not understanding TAR nearly as well as she thought she did, despite being convinced that it was "her realm," was pretty poetic. The fact that she continued to use saidar to do almost everything there was clear evidence of her lack of mastery.

The only downside for me is that the rather lackluster and borderline abusive relationship between Perrin and Faile set up in the books being positioned as this great and enduring romance that can conquer domination itself just fell flat imo.

[georgie_leech]

I think some of that might be approaching spoiler territory?

Fair point, spoilered.

[Thomas Cardew]

Spoiler

Show

I felt the dreamworld fights worked decently well. In a realm where anything is possible with just a thought, why shouldn't an epic showdown be wildly crazy and unreasonable? It did veer a bit into anime level shenanigans, but over all fit rather well for me.

At least Perrin wasn't Androl.

Spoiler

Show

It was probably because it's the closest thing we have to a repeat scene and the comparison is jarring. The aMoL Anime fight didn't match the Perrin and Luc fight in Book 4 at all. In the context of just Sanderson's trilogy, yeah the anime fight fit in perfectly, because that's how he writes. (Note I say that as someone who loves Mistborn, I just don't think it matched WoT.)

I personally thought that

Spoiler: Major spoiler

Show

Lanfear ultimately failing due to not understanding TAR nearly as well as she thought she did, despite being convinced that it was "her realm," was pretty poetic. The fact that she continued to use saidar to do almost everything there was clear evidence of her lack of mastery.

The only downside for me is that the rather lackluster and borderline abusive relationship between Perrin and Faile set up in the books being positioned as this great and enduring romance that can conquer domination itself just fell flat imo.

Spoiler

Show

We'd seen since book 3/4, whenever Mog shows up, that Lanfear wasn't nearly as good as good in TAR as she thought she was. It was a pretty long running thread. Egwene's scene with Mesaan, where she overcomes the situation that Mog failed, was far more compelling. The combination really undercuts any poetic drama with Lanfear for me.

I also find it absurd that of all the decent relationships in the series, it was the truly horrible relationship with Perrin and Fail [sic] that was the one held up as great and enduring love overcoming compulsion.

[Psyren]

Spoiler

Show

We'd seen since book 3/4, whenever Mog shows up, that Lanfear wasn't nearly as good as good in TAR as she thought she was. It was a pretty long running thread. Egwene's scene with Mesaan, where she overcomes the situation that Mog failed, was far more compelling. The combination really undercuts any poetic drama with Lanfear for me.

I also find it absurd that of all the decent relationships in the series, it was the truly horrible relationship with Perrin and Fail [sic] was the one held up as great and enduring love overcoming compulsion.

Honestly,

Spoiler: Mog

Show

We aren't really shown that Mog is any better. She got thoroughly owned in TAR, not even by a dreamwalker or someone using Corianin's ring, but by someone using one of the ghetto channel-to-use ones! And that was in a RJ book, not BS. People in the series loudly announce that she's better at it than Lanfear, but at best she's better at sneaking around, and that might even be purely because Lanfear rarely feels the need to.

I agree 100% with your second part.

[georgie_leech]

Honestly,

Spoiler: Mog

Show

We aren't really shown that Mog is any better. She got thoroughly owned in TAR, not even by a dreamwalker or someone using Corianin's ring, but by someone using one of the ghetto channel-to-use ones! And that was in a RJ book, not BS. People in the series loudly announce that she's better at it than Lanfear, but at best she's better at sneaking around, and that might even be purely because Lanfear rarely feels the need to.

I agree 100% with your second part.

Spoiler

Show

I think part of it is that the Forsaken are generally genuinely some of the strongest/best channellers out there, which tends to make them extremely arrogant. The whole point of TAR though is that raw power isn't enough. Sure, extreme willpower helps, but so does creativity and flexibility. The Forsaken, although able plotters, tend to not be the best at adjusting to unforeseen circumstances, at least in the moment. Kind of a critical skill in a confrontation where literally anything can happen.

Besides, they were the best compared to Aes Sedai, who it's made abundantly clear were generally pretty rubbish at the whole thing. Not exactly a high bar to clear

[Thomas Cardew]

Spoiler: Mog

Show

We aren't really shown that Mog is any better. She got thoroughly owned in TAR, not even by a dreamwalker or someone using Corianin's ring, but by someone using one of the ghetto channel-to-use ones! And that was in a RJ book, not BS. People in the series loudly announce that she's better at it than Lanfear, but at best she's better at sneaking around, and that might even be purely because Lanfear rarely feels the need to.

Spoiler

Show

If you're referring to Nyneave, she was using the twisted stone ring and explicitly not one of the channel-to-use one, Egwene gives it to Elayne and her when she leaves for the Wastes since she won't need it. We do see Mog rip out Birgitte, which seems to imply a higher level of knowledge, of course we can't assume Lanfear couldn't do that as well. I doubt any of that significantly changes your feelings, but Mog always felt like more of threat there than Lanfear did to me.

[TheStranger]

Hey, a WoT thread! This will always be *the* epic fantasy series for me, just because of how it’s overlapped with my life. I got EotW for my 11th birthday, bought the next two books as soon as I finished it, and then read every book as it came out for the next 20 years, with several full rereads along the way. Then AMoL came out, I read it in one day, put it down, said, “huh,” and haven’t picked the series up since. I should do a reread one of these days. Anyway, it’s cool to see the series discussed and I’ll be following with interest.

Spoiler

Show

On Perrin and Faile’s relationship, I was on a WoT forum in the early-mid 2000s and there was one memorable poster who really liked how their marriage was portrayed. His reason was that it resonated with his enjoyment of the femdom/malesub BDSM scene. So there’s that. I’m not sure that’s what RJ had in mind, though.

[Murk]

Spoiler

Show

On Perrin and Faile’s relationship, I was on a WoT forum in the early-mid 2000s and there was one memorable poster who really liked how their marriage was portrayed. His reason was that it resonated with his enjoyment of the femdom/malesub BDSM scene. So there’s that. I’m not sure that’s what RJ had in mind, though.

Spoiler

Show

I'm not sure it wasn't what he had in mind, either. The relationships in the series are very progressive and risky to start with, for the time. Polyamoury, non-consensual stuff, age differences, plenty of homosexuality - and of course the female societal dominance to begin with. I wouldn't be surprised if certain BDSM symbolism was intentional

[Anteros]

Spoiler

Show

I'm not sure it wasn't what he had in mind, either. The relationships in the series are very progressive and risky to start with, for the time. Polyamoury, non-consensual stuff, age differences, plenty of homosexuality - and of course the female societal dominance to begin with. I wouldn't be surprised if certain BDSM symbolism was intentional

I do recall a Jordan quote from back in the day that he modeled the women in his series after his own wife....

[TheStranger]

Spoiler

Show

I'm not sure it wasn't what he had in mind, either. The relationships in the series are very progressive and risky to start with, for the time. Polyamoury, non-consensual stuff, age differences, plenty of homosexuality - and of course the female societal dominance to begin with. I wouldn't be surprised if certain BDSM symbolism was intentional

Spoiler

Show

Could be. There are certainly some intentional hints in that direction (Faile’s nails leaving furrows in Perrin’s back comes to mind). Though IIRC there was a subtext of her “marking” Perrin for Berelain’s benefit, so it comes across more as Faile being jealous and abusive than as safe, sane, and consensual BDSM. So… typical for depictions of that sort of thing in fiction?

I do recall a Jordan quote from back in the day that he modeled the women in his series after his own wife....

Who was also his editor, so clearly he enjoyed being “corrected” by her.

[Tvtyrant]

Spoiler

Show

Could be. There are certainly some intentional hints in that direction (Faile’s nails leaving furrows in Perrin’s back comes to mind). Though IIRC there was a subtext of her “marking” Perrin for Berelain’s benefit, so it comes across more as Faile being jealous and abusive than as safe, sane, and consensual BDSM. So… typical for depictions of that sort of thing in fiction?

Spoiler

Show

I think you might be mixing up Perrin/Faile with Lan/Nyaveave? Lan mentions her raking his back when she drops him off at the borderlands, Faile rips Perrin's shirt in the scene I remember. Also Lanfear gives Rand a really vicious neck bite and brings up scaring him as a mark of ownership.

[TheStranger]

Spoiler

Show

I think you might be mixing up Perrin/Faile with Lan/Nyaveave? Lan mentions her raking his back when she drops him off at the borderlands, Faile rips Perrin's shirt in the scene I remember. Also Lanfear gives Rand a really vicious neck bite and brings up scaring him as a mark of ownership.

Spoiler

Show

I’m going entirely from memory, but I’m 90% sure Perrin got some marks on his back too. I had forgotten Lan and Nynaeve, though. Clearly there’s some author appeal in play here, so I retract the idea that it wasn’t intentional.

Edit: found it: “Afterwards, examining the bleeding gouges by lamplight, she nipped his ear between her teeth, not at all lightly, and laughed. “In Saldaea,” she murmured, “we notch a horse’s ears, but I think that will do to mark you.” And the whole while she fairly reeked of jealousy and rage.“

[Psyren]

As that quote shows, it really wasn't healthy by today's standards. I'm definitely hoping the show tones a lot of that down. (When freaking Lanfear isn't that far out as a relationship compass...)

[MammonAzrael]

Spoiler

Show

I’m going entirely from memory, but I’m 90% sure Perrin got some marks on his back too. I had forgotten Lan and Nynaeve, though. Clearly there’s some author appeal in play here, so I retract the idea that it wasn’t intentional.

Edit: found it: “Afterwards, examining the bleeding gouges by lamplight, she nipped his ear between her teeth, not at all lightly, and laughed. “In Saldaea,” she murmured, “we notch a horse’s ears, but I think that will do to mark you.” And the whole while she fairly reeked of jealousy and rage.“

Spoiler

Show

Perrin's emotional scent readings are never shown as inaccurate IIRC, so that would be both confirmation of her emotional tone and pretty thoroughly not an emotionally healthy point of their relationship. Even if it is supposed to be a veiled BDSM relationship, that puts it a lot more firmly on the 50 Shades end of the spectrum than anything healthy.

Didn't realize before how many of the sexual relationships have that kind of physical marking/injury as a throughline. Huh.

[Tvtyrant]

Spoiler

Show

I’m going entirely from memory, but I’m 90% sure Perrin got some marks on his back too. I had forgotten Lan and Nynaeve, though. Clearly there’s some author appeal in play here, so I retract the idea that it wasn’t intentional.

Edit: found it: “Afterwards, examining the bleeding gouges by lamplight, she nipped his ear between her teeth, not at all lightly, and laughed. “In Saldaea,” she murmured, “we notch a horse’s ears, but I think that will do to mark you.” And the whole while she fairly reeked of jealousy and rage.“

Spoiler

Show

I am fairly certain now this is an author fetish. I did not notice the pattern before, but the parade of dommey women is pretty obvious in hindsight.

Yeah that's not the best relationship to trot out to be sure. Like 50 Shades of High Fantasy levels.

I suppose by the introduction of suldam and damane it should have been obvious, with the suldam wearing leather and everything.

[Misery Esquire]

I do recall a Jordan quote from back in the day that he modeled the women in his series after his own wife....

Always amusingly awkward when someone says "Oh, I find <X> with wo/men good/bad" and you can easily deduce who they had that experience with.

[Ashen Lilies]

Spoiler

Show

Regarding Perrin and Faile, though, I did read an analysis/alternate character interpretation at one point that I found pretty transformative in my reading of the whole relationship, in that Perrin has a rather unfair glimpse into Faile's emotional state, due to his wolf powers. There are plenty of times in the series where Perrin can tell that Faile is feeling jealous, or angry, even when Faile is not consciously expressing such. In fact, sometimes Faile might even have been consciously choosing not to express her feelings, perhaps out of a realization that they're petty or unjustified, but Perrin is detecting them anyway, and altering his behavior based on perceived problems.

Or: If Faile gets jealous when she sees Berelain and Perrin together, but doesn't say anything because she knows it's stupid to think that way, but then Perrin starts acting guilty and making adjustments to his behavior anyway, that's hardly her fault. It's just a consequence of him having functional telepathy.

Really, the two of them needed to have a sit down good and talk at one point about the value of explicit communication and boundaries regarding Perrin's senses, and when he should and shouldn't act on or ignore them.


Also I can't believe we're having this whole discussion about BDSM elements and speculating on whether it was intentional or not without having mentioned how much spanking comes up. Yeah, my man RJ knew what he liked.

[Saph]

Honestly, if the showrunners are smart, they won't tone down the relationships in WoT at all. The complete freakout that it'll produce from the "everything must be sanitised" crowd will be better publicity than anything they could possibly do themselves.

[Psyren]

Honestly, if the showrunners are smart, they won't tone down the relationships in WoT at all. The complete freakout that it'll produce from the "everything must be sanitised" crowd will be better publicity than anything they could possibly do themselves.

Nah, it'll pale in comparison to the screams from the "woke PC SJWs ruining everything" crowd.

[TheStranger]

Spoiler

Show

Regarding Perrin and Faile, though, I did read an analysis/alternate character interpretation at one point that I found pretty transformative in my reading of the whole relationship, in that Perrin has a rather unfair glimpse into Faile's emotional state, due to his wolf powers. There are plenty of times in the series where Perrin can tell that Faile is feeling jealous, or angry, even when Faile is not consciously expressing such. In fact, sometimes Faile might even have been consciously choosing not to express her feelings, perhaps out of a realization that they're petty or unjustified, but Perrin is detecting them anyway, and altering his behavior based on perceived problems.

Or: If Faile gets jealous when she sees Berelain and Perrin together, but doesn't say anything because she knows it's stupid to think that way, but then Perrin starts acting guilty and making adjustments to his behavior anyway, that's hardly her fault. It's just a consequence of him having functional telepathy.

Really, the two of them needed to have a sit down good and talk at one point about the value of explicit communication and boundaries regarding Perrin's senses, and when he should and shouldn't act on or ignore them.


Also I can't believe we're having this whole discussion about BDSM elements and speculating on whether it was intentional or not without having mentioned how much spanking comes up. Yeah, my man RJ knew what he liked.

Spoiler

Show

Having been married for several years, I don’t need magic wolf senses to know when my wife is upset and not expressing it. I’d guess most people who pay attention to their partner don’t. I’ll grant that Perrin’s senses put Faile in a tough spot, but it’s no different from what we all deal with when our partner insists everything is fine when it’s clearly not. Yet most of us manage to resolve it without drawing blood, so I don’t think Faile gets a free pass there. IMO, the piece I quoted shows a relationship that’s unhealthy if not outright abusive, and trying to reframe it comes across as blaming the victim.

[Ashen Lilies]

Yeah, honestly.

I think the only thing that might need to be changed is the tone of Mat + Tylin just because how weird and kind of awful the tone of that whole situation is as written. Keep the events in to the letter, but the depiction needs a quick tonal pass.

Personally I would also appreciate some minor tweaks to

Spoiler

Show

Rand's polyamory, since I know some people in polyamorous relationships who felt it starts off a bit too cheaty, and honestly a good and well done polyamorous relationship featuring the main character of a big fantasy series would be really freaking bomb to see right now. But I also don't mind at all keeping most of the messiness, because relationships are messy and nobody has 100% perfect communication all the time, whether that be in monogamous or polyamorous relationships.

But in general, 100% agreed. If anything, the show could stand to go a lot further, particularly in terms of queering things up. Moiraine and Suian should be way more prominent and centered than it was in the books, in my opinion, and I wouldn't mind if the Aiel sisterwives/polyamory concept were much more explicitly bisexual in nature. Relatedly, I think they should make Elayne and Avhienda bisexual as well. And, idk, Matrim should be bi too. It'd be fun.

Edit:

Spoiler

Show

Woah there now. Of course I'm not giving Faile a pass for her crappy behavior. I just think there are times where she's genuinely crappy, and there are times where the reader is pushed to think that Faile is being more crappy than she is at the time because Perrin has a closer read on her emotional state than would be expected. And yes, regular people do also have skill at interpreting body language and reading emotions, especially of loved ones, but Perrin's abilities still go further into a degree of... well, if I were married to him, I'd want to have a talk about it.

[Saph]

Yeah, honestly.

I think the only thing that might need to be changed is the tone of SPOILER just because how weird and kind of awful the tone of that whole situation is as written. Keep the events in to the letter, but the depiction needs a quick tonal pass.

That's how I'd do it too. I think that was the only relationship in the series that really bothered me, and even then, it wasn't the content so much as the way it was presented. The events were fine – disturbing, but fine (and it's not like WoT is short on disturbing material).

[MammonAzrael]

Spoiler

Show

But in general, 100% agreed. If anything, the show could stand to go a lot further, particularly in terms of queering things up. Moiraine and Suian should be way more prominent and centered than it was in the books, in my opinion, and I wouldn't mind if the Aiel sisterwives/polyamory concept were much more explicitly bisexual in nature. Relatedly, I think they should make Elayne and Avhienda bisexual as well. And, idk, Matrim should be bi too. It'd be fun.

Spoiler

Show

Sticking your quote in spoilers cause whiteout text is akward

As a polyamorus, the Aiel have always bothered me in this respect. As far as all the textual evidence, they only practice polygamy, and **** that. If the TV show is making changes (and it should) lets get some brother-husbands in there. For Rand in particular, yeah, a cleaner, and more healthy poly relationship would be awesome. I could even be down with keeping the general base of he's an idiot (obvious) raised in a culture to only understand monogamy, and come to terms with his being able to love multiple people at once. Just...less self-flagellation. And personally, I'd like to keep Min, Elayne, and Avhienda straight just because it's always felt a little icky on the male fantasy already and I want to steer away from that. But I recognize that's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.

I'd also love some % of the cultures support non-binary people, but the fundamental cosmology of the One Power has always made that wish...complicated.

[Psyren]

Spoiler

Show

Sticking your quote in spoilers cause whiteout text is akward

As a polyamorus, the Aiel have always bothered me in this respect. As far as all the textual evidence, they only practice polygamy, and **** that. If the TV show is making changes (and it should) lets get some brother-husbands in there. For Rand in particular, yeah, a cleaner, and more healthy poly relationship would be awesome. I could even be down with keeping the general base of he's an idiot (obvious) raised in a culture to only understand monogamy, and come to terms with his being able to love multiple people at once. Just...less self-flagellation. And personally, I'd like to keep Min, Elayne, and Avhienda straight just because it's always felt a little icky on the male fantasy already and I want to steer away from that. But I recognize that's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.

I'd also love some % of the cultures support non-binary people, but the fundamental cosmology of the One Power has always made that wish...complicated.

BHs would be a nice addition to the Aiel in the series.

Enby representation isn't impossible in WoT:

Spoiler

Show

Just have the Aes Sedai ultimately be wrong about the hard dichotomy between saidin and saidar. There's a lot that they, and even the Forsaken, don't understand about the nature of the One Power - things like the Aiel figuring out how to Unweave reliably for instance.

It always annoyed me that the catalyst for the Dark One's return was Mierin simply wanting to find a gender-neutral power source, suggesting that any attempts to do so lead to evil. That's definitely something I'd tweak.

[Traab]

As far as relationships go,

Spoiler

Show

Im not a big fan of changing them too much, if only because to me its kind of insulting to take a published work and go, "Yeah I know there are all sorts of themes running through the narrative, but what if we just said to heck with it and changed those themes to accomplish some other goal such as including more permutations of relationships like a bingo card." I realize that everyone wants to be represented, but that doesnt mean everyone needs to be. Just because there are a lot of relationships in the story running al over the place doesnt mean they need to shoe horn in even more just to make sure every group and variant of said group gets to point to a main character and go "There, he has a relationship like mine!" And having a minor character just randomly changed to include that tends to cause backlash on all sides of the aisle because on the one hand you have people actually bothered by whatever relationship combo is being forced into the narrative, you have the people who are annoyed that any change is being forced into an existing work just for the bingo cards sake rather than the story, and you have the people who got all hyped over "their" group being represented only for it to be a 5 second cameo that never gets mentioned again.

Its honestly one of the biggest issues with adapting an existing work. Write up an original story and you can put whatever you want in it. By all means, include a war and peace sized cast and put them together in 150 different relationship types and nobody will bat an eye. But write a story where batman and robin share an intriguingly long hug and watch the flames engulf the earth. Because you are changing an established character in an established world. (And other reasons as well of course, but thats not the ones im talking about)

Bottom line for me is, an existing work being adapted for another medium like book to screen, needs to be left as unaltered as possible barring whatever changes need to happen to make the transition work. The series is happening because enough people read WoT to want this, so give them WoT instead of whatever "improved" version you might want. Otherwise you are writing fanfiction scripts. Dont get me wrong, I love fanfiction, I read it all the time. In fact, I have a fanfic going in another tab right now. But they dont pretend to BE the source material. This is supposed to be the WoT series. Not an alternate universe version of it where women dont yank their braids all the time and team magikarp is useful.

[Saph]

Bottom line for me is, an existing work being adapted for another medium like book to screen, needs to be left as unaltered as possible barring whatever changes need to happen to make the transition work. The series is happening because enough people read WoT to want this, so give them WoT instead of whatever "improved" version you might want.

Speaking from personal experience . . . you would think that this would be obvious to the majority of authors/screenwriters, but it really, really isn't.

[TheStranger]

Speaking from personal experience . . . you would think that this would be obvious to the majority of authors/screenwriters, but it really, really isn't.

I suspect it’s obvious to even fewer producers than writers. It’s very easy to imagine somebody in that role who knows little about the source material and cares even less, but sees a PR headache coming if the show isn’t socially aware enough.

Personally, I’m betting that we’ll see somewhat more diversity in sexual orientations in the show than the books, where it was mostly an informed attribute from what I remember, and mostly just in the context of otherwise-straight women in a no boys allowed setting. I recall very few, if any, characters who were just gay in their normal lives. I’m sure we’ll also see more racial diversity in Randland proper than what’s described in the books. And IMO, all that is fine as long as they’re not making major changes to established characters/relationships to do it. Of course, almost every significant character already has a romantic subplot, so I expect some meddling there.

Including trans/non-binary characters of any significance, though, would be a big challenge given the cosmology of the setting. You can argue that it should have been included in the books and the setting is better for it, but in an adaptation like this it’s a huge red flag for me that the showrunners are too comfortable “improving” the source material and/or more concerned with not upsetting Twitter than telling the story. So I fully expect it to happen.

Honestly, I don’t have much hope for or interest in the show. Best case scenario is that they’re relatively faithful to the books and I have the same problem I did with the first seasons of GoT, which was that I already knew the story and preferred the version in my imagination. Worst case is that they play fast and loose with the source material, alienate their core fans, and fail to tell a compelling enough story to make up for it.

[Ashen Lilies]

As far as relationships go,

Spoiler

Show

Im not a big fan of changing them too much, if only because to me its kind of insulting to take a published work and go, "Yeah I know there are all sorts of themes running through the narrative, but what if we just said to heck with it and changed those themes to accomplish some other goal such as including more permutations of relationships like a bingo card." I realize that everyone wants to be represented, but that doesnt mean everyone needs to be. Just because there are a lot of relationships in the story running al over the place doesnt mean they need to shoe horn in even more just to make sure every group and variant of said group gets to point to a main character and go "There, he has a relationship like mine!" And having a minor character just randomly changed to include that tends to cause backlash on all sides of the aisle because on the one hand you have people actually bothered by whatever relationship combo is being forced into the narrative, you have the people who are annoyed that any change is being forced into an existing work just for the bingo cards sake rather than the story, and you have the people who got all hyped over "their" group being represented only for it to be a 5 second cameo that never gets mentioned again.

Its honestly one of the biggest issues with adapting an existing work. Write up an original story and you can put whatever you want in it. By all means, include a war and peace sized cast and put them together in 150 different relationship types and nobody will bat an eye. But write a story where batman and robin share an intriguingly long hug and watch the flames engulf the earth. Because you are changing an established character in an established world. (And other reasons as well of course, but thats not the ones im talking about)

Bottom line for me is, an existing work being adapted for another medium like book to screen, needs to be left as unaltered as possible barring whatever changes need to happen to make the transition work. The series is happening because enough people read WoT to want this, so give them WoT instead of whatever "improved" version you might want. Otherwise you are writing fanfiction scripts. Dont get me wrong, I love fanfiction, I read it all the time. In fact, I have a fanfic going in another tab right now. But they dont pretend to BE the source material. This is supposed to be the WoT series. Not an alternate universe version of it where women dont yank their braids all the time and team magikarp is useful.

Yeah, pretty much going to just 100% disagree with this. The best adaptations, in my experience, are ones that stay faithful to the spirit and truth of a work, but aren't hampered by the details and take the liberty to adapt the work for modern and new audiences. The people who care most about the details are people who have already read the book... and they'll still have the book to go back to. Largely I find that adaptations that are the most tied to their source material are the ones that are the worst off; people who have already read the book will prefer the version in their heads, and people who haven't read the book just won't get into it.

I agree that creators shouldn't be looking to 'improve' a work, since arrogance and disdain for the source material rarely ends well, but if they love it, then they should be willing to retell it on their own terms.

I suspect that we're not going to be able to see eye to eye on this. I just wanted to put my point of view out there.


TheStranger: RJ wrote a lot of context-based female homosexuality, a little bit of non-contextual female homosexuality, and promptly forgot or ignored that male homosexuality exists, until Sanderson made a reference to a random side character being gay. I'd hope that the first two are pushed forward a little bit, and the latter one changed, at the very least.

This is a bit of a crank idea, but I think it'd be pretty straightforward to make

Spoiler: the rumor comes out, does WoT is gay?

Show

Mat bisexual, for example, without really altering his character or his major relationships. Just make some of the pretty lasses he's frequently pursuing into pretty lads, instead. Maybe he has a stand with one of the High Lords of Tear he's always playing cards with, and a bit of homoerotic banter with Nalesean. Maybe that one darkfriend Aiel he has a relationship with and tries to kill him can be a Stone Dog or something, rather than a Maiden.

[TheStranger]

This is a bit of a crank idea, but it'd be pretty straightforward to make

Spoiler: the rumor comes out, does WoT is gay?

Show

Mat bisexual, for example, without really altering his character or his major relationships. Just make some of the pretty lasses he's frequently pursuing into pretty lads, instead. Maybe he has a stand with one of the High Lords of Tear he's always playing cards with, and a bit of homoerotic banter with Nalesean. Maybe that one darkfriend Aiel he has a relationship with and tries to kill him can be a Stone Dog or something, rather than a Maiden.

You know, I actually had the same idea.

Spoiler

Show

If you think about it, Mat arguably *should* be bisexual. I mean, he almost has to have some memories from gay men tucked away in his head. And since he’s pretty much the only character with liaisons that aren’t plot-significant, making some of them with men would be low hanging fruit for acknowledging that homosexuality is a thing. You could even throw in a trans/non-binary encounter if you wanted. That becomes problematic in the setting when channeling gets involved, but what the serving girls have under their skirts is largely irrelevant to that. I think it would rub many fans of the books the wrong way and I don’t think it adds much of anything, but if you really wanted to put LGBT elements into the show it’s a feasible way to do it in a relatively seamless fashion.

Along similar lines, I could see somebody being tempted to make Min non-binary or trans, but I think that would be a mistake. She spends too much time being Rand’s visible romantic partner, so changing her like that would have far-reaching consequences for the story, Rand’s character, and the setting.

On adaptations, I can agree with you that a scene-for-scene adaptation isn’t necessarily the best thing. My opinion, though, is that you want any changes to be aimed at telling the best story, not pushing a social message or making the product more marketable. Which doesn’t mean there’s no place for things like the spoilered change that fit the character and story, but trying to shoehorn it in whether it makes sense or not is probably a mistake.

[Misery Esquire]

~snip~
... and team magikarp is useful.

That Nerd-o-Rama quote is accurate, heh.

Although the last bit is a bit of a bowlderization or flanderization - the girls just tend to fail personally in the first books, while Teams Dragon, Wolf, and Unheroic build up to their failures.

...Well, Mat goes from one (two book) loss (see; dagger) to a string of failures to fail.

While Magikarp tend to have big-picture successes, and some backbiting.

...
......

Spoiler

Show

And then Elayne grows an entire subplot via successfully not failing that, while an interesting narrative point, isn't super interesting reading. Except when it crosses someone else's narrative.