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Mat Cauthon posted:Who are the showrunners? How much involvement does Jordan's widow have? What are the production values going to be? Are we getting visuals inspired by Bad Book of Art or the bad fan art or the bad covers or...why does this series have so much bad art? Wasn't there a proposed MMO or card game or something where the halfway decent stuff like this (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/15/3e/35153e1268f2b5402cb381ab63faa05a.jpg) came from? You can browse this site (http://wotccg.mahasamatman.com/Lists.HTML) to see all the various WoT trading cards.
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Sep 8, 2019 09:14
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Sep 8, 2019 09:28
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Mat Cauthon posted:it's easier to acknowledge that something that was my FAVORITE FANTASY SERIES OF ALL TIME!!1!1 up until like a decade ago was never really that great, despite my enjoyment of it. I'll defend WoT against these cruel aspersions! There's admittedly a hell of a lot of chaff in WoT but there's a lot of wheat too, especially if you look at it in the context of late-1980's American fantasy, which is what it was (if you go by when he conceived and started writing it). There are a lot of elements in WoT that were pretty revolutionary for the time period it first came out in. -- Major female characters who drove the plot for their own reasons other than "in love with sexy male protagonist" -- passes Bechdel test -- actually attempts a degree of psychological realism; characters get PTSD -- complex and sophisticated narrative structure using many many many POV's -- attempts a high degree of political and social "realism"; characters and nations all pursue their own short-term goals So on, etc. It's easy to mock the braid tugging etc. but most of those are just verbal tics that would've been fine in a shorter book but just got repetitive. I think the real tragedy of WoT is that it took too long to finish and it's influence was too massive; by the time it was finally wrapped up, it already felt outmoded by the work of other authors like GRRM who had built on its strengths. There are a couple of other ways you can argue for WoT's "merit," however defined. First is by analyzing it as a post-Vietnam fantasy novel in the same sense that LotR was a post-WW1 novel. The whole thing is very clearly informed by Jordan's experience in vietnam: "Wait, what if we aren't the good guys? What if fighting in that war broke my mind?" Second is if you look at it as a systematic attempt to "wrap up" all post-Tolkien genre fantasy fiction in one great big package with a bow on top. From like 1960 or so through to the late 80's - early 90's, there were lots and lots and lots of authors trying to write The Next Big Fantasy Epic -- Shannara-esque imitators with a young male protagonist and a magic sword and a magical mcguffin and a northern european setting and so forth, the kind of thing Dianna Wynne Jones satirized in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland. I kinda see WoT as the last and greatest of those, the point after which there was no point in anyone else trying to write any more. If you want a Big Doorstopper Epic, ok, there you go, 14 volumes, dig in. Every major fantasy series I've followed since WoT has been something that was not standard fantasy, something with a twist that set it apart -- a different setting (urban fantasy, fantasy China), a significantly different plot structure ( say a heist/fantasy gangster novel like Lies of Locke Lamora), a significantly different theme or tone ("grimdark") etc. The generic "young boy saves world" optimistic bildungsroman fantasy has been finished now, and I think for a lot of people, Jordan finished it. Which is a kind of accomplishment. point being, yeah, it's clearly not the GREATEST OF ALL TIME, but it's not horrible either. I don't think time spent reading it is wasted, even at 14 volumes. (Ok, skip book 10. But still). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 09:54
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Wheel of Time has one over ASOIAF in that it had an actual conclusion. The unplanned nature of that series hit a wall after book 3, with books 4+5 forming a meandering story with no climax or payoff. Even after finishing Book 1 I was concerned with how they could reconcile the low-fantasy political-intrigue with the high-fantasy dragons and ice & zombies. Given the reception to the TV show's ending the answer is probably not very well. WOT at least doesn't suffer under the expectation of subverting convention. There WILL be a final battle at the end of the road so in the meantime we must complete all the sidequests and loyalty missions to chance a better outcome. The longest loving story ever finished in 23 years and yet ASOIAF is still fobbing readers off with side-material instead of progress in an even longer time.
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Sep 8, 2019 11:15
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WoT not having the Harry Potter/GRRM problem of actually knowing where it all goes is going to be one of its greatest strengths. The Harry Potter books and movies are ok but JKR was obviously a novice writer and she should have done a better job of laying the foundation for important things in earlier books than she did. As they started to adapt them into films, the studio didn't really know what they could cut or not and the movies are weirdly disjointed as a result. ASoIaF was slightly better in that they at least had an outline to work off of, but the show runners clearly had no idea how to turn the outline into a compelling story or ending. Wheel of Time has the big picture all looked in. They can safely alter any detail and they'll know exactly what kind of butterfly effect it will have on the rest of the story. That doesn't guarantee they'll put that level of thought into it, but I can hope.
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Sep 8, 2019 12:29
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Torrannor posted:You can browse this site (http://wotccg.mahasamatman.com/Lists.HTML) to see all the various WoT trading cards. Yeah I've seen these, terrible as they are. That's not where the picture I linked came from. It's from the same place as these: - Padan Fain (https://i.pinimg.com/474x/6c/54/d6/6c54d6d2cd76ac891df2d06afeadab4a--book-art-robert-jordan.jpg) - Loial (https://comicvine1.cbsistatic.com/uploads/scale_small/5/50734/2618940-loial.jpg) But for the life of me I can't remember if it was one of the artbooks or something else. I remember it being some of the better "official" art though. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'll defend WoT against these cruel aspersions! I don't disagree with any of this; there's a lot of good that is unfortunately diluted by the bad or superfluous (honestly books 8,9, and 10 should've cut down to their core parts and condensed into one thing). You're 100% right that Wheel of Time got leapfrogged as a series by a lot of other concurrent fantasy works that used the quality stuff as a blueprint and discarded with the outdated components or injected some unique framing to set themselves apart. By the time Jordan realized that he was already mostly locked in to his conclusion and world, and his strengths as a writer didn't seem to be suited to what audiences were lauding in other series (snappy dialogue, morally ambiguous characterization, actual consequences for the main protagonists that affected the story, etc). As a series it (mostly) deserves it's place in the canon but depending on what direction the adaptation takes could make a big difference in how it and Jordan's legacy are perceived. Like I said, I'm cautiously optimistic. mossyfisk posted:It's certainly easy to just end the black company before it gets to the bad ones. Honestly if they're smart they'll just pretend anything that comes after the Silver Spike chronologically doesn't exist and take things in a completely new direction. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Sep 8, 2019 |
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Sep 8, 2019 18:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:First is by analyzing it as a post-Vietnam fantasy novel in the same sense that LotR was a post-WW1 novel. The whole thing is very clearly informed by Jordan's experience in vietnam: "Wait, what if we aren't the good guys? What if fighting in that war broke my mind?" I will agree with you on the PTSD deal, and concede that Rand being a broken man is definitely one of the highlights of the series, but I don't agree that that the setting sells moral ambiguity at all. Part of it is the incoherent characterization of the Dark One, where he is basically Satan but with no real plan other than trying to corrupt people to be really evil to each other and having Evil Meetings with the Forsaken where Demandred contemplates that while Graendal is really hot we don't stick our dick in crazy, THEN having Rand come to the realization that the Dark One isn't the enemy and never had been because we need some selfishness to live. Or something, I wasn't quite clear on how that worked when the Dark One was perfectly willing to die for an ideal world where everyone gets hosed over. It's very hard not to be the good guys when all of the bad guys are characterized by narcissism and a shortsighted desire for power now.
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Sep 8, 2019 19:38
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I always pictured loial as having fur all over. Is that incorrect? I may have just been way off. I missed a lot of the diversity of the races too if I'm being honest, until later in the books. Just because it wasn't focused on as much.
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Sep 8, 2019 19:43
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Mat Cauthon posted:
These are from the tabletop RPG rulebook.
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Sep 8, 2019 19:45
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Artonos posted:I always pictured loial as having fur all over. Is that incorrect? I may have just been way off. I missed a lot of the diversity of the races too if I'm being honest, until later in the books. Just because it wasn't focused on as much. I've always pictured the Ogier as pretty scruffy, but more like hirsute men than full-on fur.
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Sep 8, 2019 19:47
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Artonos posted:I always pictured loial as having fur all over. Is that incorrect? I may have just been way off. I missed a lot of the diversity of the races too if I'm being honest, until later in the books. Just because it wasn't focused on as much. There are two alternate canonically valid interpretations of loial  
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Sep 8, 2019 19:58
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I will agree with you on the PTSD deal, and concede that Rand being a broken man is definitely one of the highlights of the series, but I don't agree that that the setting sells moral ambiguity at all. Part of it is the incoherent characterization of the Dark One, where he is basically Satan but with no real plan other than trying to corrupt people to be really evil to each other and having Evil Meetings with the Forsaken where Demandred contemplates that while Graendal is really hot we don't stick our dick in crazy, THEN having Rand come to the realization that the Dark One isn't the enemy and never had been because we need some selfishness to live. Or something, I wasn't quite clear on how that worked when the Dark One was perfectly willing to die for an ideal world where everyone gets hosed over. The ending was completely incoherent, yeah, both thematically and mechanically. Gonna put this in spoilers in case of new readers without the dark ones influence everyone is all passive and useless, and Rand concluded he can't kill the Dark One because people need to be free to choose good or evil. Even though evil is kinda like old school sin - once you make that choice, once you've fallen, you're hosed for good. Nobody is able to come back from evil, and apart from one minor darkfriend nobody even wants to. The dark one is a corrupting evil, but apparently that's still needed, and sealing him away (properly this time!) is somehow different from killing him. I was so convinced that Rand was gonna seal himself up in the prison with him to battle him for eternity. That way his influence would be tempered, and people actually would be able to freely choose. And it'd be a nicely heavy yin-yang thing.
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Sep 8, 2019 21:44
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I thought rand was gonna seal the D.O. but Padan Fain would survive. I still think that might have been the originally intended ending.
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Sep 8, 2019 21:49
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I thought rand was gonna seal the D.O. but Padan Fain would survive. I still think that might have been the originally intended ending. Yeah that's definitely what I was expecting, and fits with a lot of the Daoist symbology that was being used (I.e. the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai, the Dragon's Fang and the Flame of Tar Valon)
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Sep 8, 2019 21:57
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I've been listening to a WoT podcast where they're re-reading the series and going chapter by chapter, and there's was some brief discussion about the dark one and the creator potentially being the same entity when they were reading the later chapters of EotW. It was an idea that never really occurred to me, but I think it explains some of the stuff at the end of that books and when you think about the duality of light and dark, men and women, saidar and saidin, all throughout the book I think it works in a dumb head-canon way. It's unfortunate that there are bits of the series that will never feel like they got a proper payoff and there are some things that will just never be explained (that pipe!) but it's a fun ride and I am ultimately satisfied with where it ended up considering RJ died and everything.
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Sep 8, 2019 23:49
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Is there a book thread anywhere? I chewed through these in university in 2004-2005 but found book 10 a struggle and never got any further than that. It also would have benefitted from a decent index so you could keep track of who the characters were as well.
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Sep 8, 2019 23:50
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I've been listening to a WoT podcast where they're re-reading the series and going chapter by chapter, and there's was some brief discussion about the dark one and the creator potentially being the same entity when they were reading the later chapters of EotW. It was an idea that never really occurred to me, but I think it explains some of the stuff at the end of that books and when you think about the duality of light and dark, men and women, saidar and saidin, all throughout the book I think it works in a dumb head-canon way. It's unfortunate that there are bits of the series that will never feel like they got a proper payoff and there are some things that will just never be explained (that pipe!) but it's a fun ride and I am ultimately satisfied with where it ended up considering RJ died and everything. link to podcast? I'll edit stuff like that into the first post. Gambrinus posted:Is there a book thread anywhere? I chewed through these in university in 2004-2005 but found book 10 a struggle and never got any further than that. We've had threads in the past but they're archived now. I linked 'em in the 2nd post in the thread.
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Sep 9, 2019 00:09
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:link to podcast? http://wotspoilers.com/
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Sep 9, 2019 13:00
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"What do you call a group of warders playing video games? A Lan party" 
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Sep 10, 2019 19:22
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They're publishing some cast shots. I wonder if we aren't getting / they cut Thom.
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Sep 12, 2019 19:51
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:They're publishing some cast shots. I wonder if we aren't getting / they cut Thom. The only shot I see so far is the main Two Rivers kids plus Moiraine and Lan, so I dunno. I mean, yeah, Thom is a member of the party until Whitebridge.... but individual subgroups of these characters also spend tons of time with like, Elyas, etc., and we've not seen him either.
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Sep 12, 2019 22:34
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as much as i love thom he really doesn't do much in the books that isn't either off screen or old old old history
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Sep 14, 2019 07:25
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NecroMonster posted:as much as i love thom he really doesn't do much in the books that isn't either off screen or old old old history Mentors Rand and Mat, sacrifice to eyeless helps motivate Rand. Teaches Matt and Rand gleeman stuff that they use, kills king of Cairhein, goes with Matt to rescue the super girls, goes with super girls to Tanchico, saves girls from forkroot. Is Elyane's father figure and helps her character growth move on from spoiled brat. Goes to Ebou Dar and helps Mat escape after the Seanchan show up. He is the one everyone assumes is the great general which i always find hilarious. He saves Moiraine, he protects Moiraine/Nynaeve/Rand during the last battle. He is too good of a character to get rid of imo.
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Sep 14, 2019 14:48
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RC Cola posted:Major spoilers for the wheel of time. There's some fuckery with Elaida and while Morgase is getting mindfucked by one of the Forsaken too, right? I know Thom and Morgase having a history is a big part of the story at times
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Sep 14, 2019 14:52
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I. . . started in on Eye of the World again. it's a good book!
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Sep 14, 2019 15:48
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I. . . started in on Eye of the World again. I did as well. There's a lot of stuff blatantly ripped off from Tolkien (a black rider in our farming village and now 3 young men must leave at the request of a wizard) but I found the section where Rand is desperately trying to save his father actually fairly compelling.
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Sep 14, 2019 16:26
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I did as well. Yeah. I think Jordan acknowledged that and said he wanted the opening sequence to feel familiar to fantasy readers. I think the Prologue saves it. It lets you know this thing is going places Tolkien didn't.
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Sep 14, 2019 16:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah. I think Jordan acknowledged that and said he wanted the opening sequence to feel familiar to fantasy readers. He explicitly wanted to copy it from what I remember. Like his goal was to do "Tolkien, but women are in power" and see what was different. Turns out making Gandalf into a woman doesn't change the Fellowship much 
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Sep 14, 2019 16:40
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DarkHorse posted:He explicitly wanted to copy it from what I remember. Like his goal was to do "Tolkien, but women are in power" and see what was different. The hobbits are taller though.
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Sep 14, 2019 17:04
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DarkHorse posted:There's some fuckery with Elaida and while Morgase is getting mindfucked by one of the Forsaken too, right? I know Thom and Morgase having a history is a big part of the story at times Short background on Thom, I'll use spoilers on more plot important information to be consistent with the conversation. Thom was a court bard for Morgase when she was an Andorian noble. The current heir to the Andorian throne at that time is a woman named Tigraine Mantear. Tigraine is married to Taringail Damondred, who is the nephew of Lamen Damondred, the Kind of Cairhein, and they have a son together named Galadedrid. Tigraine disappears because her mother's Aes Sedai advisor has a foretelling and tells Tigraine that she must abandon her life and travel to the Aiel Wastes or the future of Andor and the world is doomed. This causes a succession crisis in Andor, Morgase ends up marrying Taringail for political reasons and with Thom's help and mastery of daes dae'mar becomes Queen of Andor. Taringail and Morgase eventually have two children, Gwayne and Elayne. Lamen causes the Aiel War after cutting down Avendoraldera, and after his death Taringail is denied the throne because of his marriage to Morgase. Thom learns that Taringail is planning to kill Morgase to seize her throne and proclaim himself King of Andor, but before this can happen he dies in a "hunting accident" and Morgase is out of danger. Thom and Morgase become lovers for a period of time, up until Thom learns of his nephew Owen running into trouble with some Aes Sedai. Thom asks Morgase to intervene since she's the loving queen and also has ties to the White Tower and an Aes Sedai advisor, but her advisor Elaida basically tells Thom to gently caress off since it's none of his business what the Tower does. Thom bounces and decides to go help Owen, but by the time he reaches him it's too late. Owen can channel and is stilled by Reds without a trial at the White Tower, basically an extrajudicial act that goes in violation of Tower Law. Owen eventually kills himself after being stilled, Thom goes back to Andor and publicly calls out Elaida and the Tower, pissing off Morgase who puts a bounty on his head. Thom again skips town and kinda bumbles around for years as a traveling Gleeman until he takes a job in a backwards part of Andor called the Two Rivers. I really hope they don't cut Thom, he's a major secondary character in addition to being a badass. They haven't mentioned anything about Fain either, and he's a major antagonist of the first four or five books. ONE YEAR LATER fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 14, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 17:14
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DarkHorse posted:He explicitly wanted to copy it from what I remember. Like his goal was to do "Tolkien, but women are in power" and see what was different. "women are in power because men hosed up" though which is what saves it. If it were just "lol what if fantasy matriarchy" it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I think that's the root of why I still re-read WoT even though I long ago stopped bothering with most generic pulp fantasy. In its best moments, WoT shows characters dealing with real guilt and real stress. Most fantasy &SF , the heroes' "evil " personal history is excused or pardoned or turns out not to have actually happened -- the worst example being Honor Harrington, the Schrodinger's War Criminal, where no matter what she does it's always retroactively turned into the right thing to have done after all and excused. Wheel of Time: nope. Men fuuuucked uuuuup, and specifically Our Boy Protagonist hosed up. And now he has a chance to do it over and get it right this time. Just a chance. But isn't a do-over a powerful fantasy?
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Sep 14, 2019 17:16
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I really hope they don't cut Thom, he's a major secondary character in addition to being a badass. They haven't mentioned anything about Fain either, and he's a major antagonist of the first four or five books. In terms of economy of storytelling they could parcel out his impact to the other characters, but I sincerely hope not because the infinitely layered onion that is the badassery of Thom Merrilin is one of the pure joys of the books. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Wheel of Time: nope. Men fuuuucked uuuuup, and specifically Our Boy Protagonist hosed up. And now he has a chance to do it over and get it right this time. Just a chance. But isn't a do-over a powerful fantasy? How popular are do-over fantasies in general? I guess there's a distinction in really bad wish-fulfillment where the character goes back in time to fix specific things, bone their sister, and get rich off the stock market, but the WoT one is a lot more philosophical than that. Also, Rand bones a distant/distaff cousin. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Sep 14, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 17:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Wheel of Time: nope. Men fuuuucked uuuuup, and specifically Our Boy Protagonist hosed up. And now he has a chance to do it over and get it right this time. Just a chance. But isn't a do-over a powerful fantasy? I have won again, Lews Therin.
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Sep 14, 2019 17:25
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I have won again, Lews Therin. Same
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Sep 14, 2019 23:29
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I have won again, Lews Therin. The darkness of the prologue and the Portal Stone visions in The Great Hunt(?) were one of those things that blew my mind in early reads of the series and still a highlight when I do a re-read. The first three books, whatever their faults, are much tighter narratively and the epilogue of the Dragon Reborn is a genuinely "oh poo poo" ending without being a cheap cliffhanger.
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Sep 15, 2019 01:43
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:
Yeah, I can't think of many if any that take the same angle. Mat Cauthon posted:The darkness of the prologue and the Portal Stone visions in The Great Hunt(?) were one of those things that blew my mind in early reads of the series and still a highlight when I do a re-read. The first three books, whatever their faults, are much tighter narratively and the epilogue of the Dragon Reborn is a genuinely "oh poo poo" ending without being a cheap cliffhanger. One thing that's really striking me is that I hope they have enough sense to just let Eye of the World go straight from page to screen, preferably with a director who knows how to shoot horror. It's just very, very well structured for an episodic show. The narrative arcs each take about five chapters. Shadar Logoth is your "mid season finale" for the first season. Seocnd half of the season is the different arcs, then you reunify in Caemlyn for the Ways and the Eye as your season ender. The later seasons they'll need to go more off script but the first books are tight and I hope they stick close close close to the page.
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Sep 15, 2019 02:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, I can't think of many if any that take the same angle. Speaking of horror, yeah, Ishamael does some hosed up poo poo to Rand in those dreams.
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Sep 15, 2019 02:45
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I have won again, Lews Therin. The reader slayed this scene in the audiobooks, it was excellent.
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Sep 15, 2019 07:05
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Oh my oh my. I am absolutely ashamed at how absolutely ready I am for this. One thing I don't think I mentioned in my prior posts about growing up near Jim, but that's probably worth sharing: Since he was a Big Shot Author and his wife was an editor for Tor Books, they got a LOT of promotional copies of things, and over summer breaks they'd invite me over and I'd crawl through the big piles of extra books and they'd let me take what I wanted (within limits of what they were allowed to keep / discard / give away). So I spent a lot of time in his library (basically a whole separate carriage house behind the main house). I read much of the Aubrey / Maturin series for the first time sitting in a corner of the floor on the second floor of his library. He had a very large library that was very obviously curated to hold reference books for being a fantasy writer -- not just large sections on mythology, but also things like a whole section on renaissance and medieval clothing styles and fashions, etc. There was a large section containing nothing but anime / manga, including reference works about manga. And this was back in the early 1990's when you couldn't just find that stuff in the local Waldenbooks. In other words, going by the content of his library, I'm pretty sure the heavily animesque structure of WoT was both conscious and deliberate on Jordan's part.
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Sep 17, 2019 23:36
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Calenth posted:Cool Stuff That sounds great, cool that you had the chance to interact with him! I guess I should trawl that thread. This last part though, the anime structure - I'm but an old retired weeb, so I'm not sure if I'm too young or too old for that similarity to become apparent, but I can't really see it. Like, what specific elements are you referring to with this? The way it kind of bounces around between the giant cast?
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Sep 18, 2019 01:44
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