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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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RC Cola posted:Go on... Maybe in spoilers It's basically a markov chain of every r/incel trope you can imagine, mixed with the barest level of criticism. Cheesy fight scenes mary sue diversity feminazi changed the plot. It's not even fun-angry to read, it's just depressing and hateful. Do you know what's not depressing and hateful? This episode! I was kinda lukewarm on the first three, but this one was great. Actually gave us a chance to settle into the world, Rand's thing with the farmer holding the string in his fist is a really nice encapsulation of the WoT worldview - people might be stressed and suspicious, but fundamentally good at heart. And I'm absolutely loving how much they're stretching out the mystery of the Dragon Reborn. It gives viewers an actual plot to follow and get involved in, instead of it being a bunch of yokels on three separate road trips. Edit: also holy poo poo the NO BOOK SPOILERS thread is entirely people saying "oh they're really hiding that it's Rand". Ffs people. Strom Cuzewon fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Nov 26, 2021 |
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Nov 26, 2021 12:04
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I never really got what Mat's tav'eren thing was supposed to be - the little statues in the first book make it clear that his magic comes from the evil dagger, but then he also starts to gain ancient memories, but also he's super lucky and then the Aelfinn also give him even more ancient memories. It felt like it was flip-flopping all the time.
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Nov 29, 2021 14:32
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CainFortea posted:
Don't he and the boys get some snippets of memories in WoT? I swear that was the first time we get a "Taishir Manetherin!". It really stuck with me the first time, and kinda threw me when he started getting other memories from a different source. Jedit posted:Being ta'veren isn't the source of any of Mat's abilities, they're just why he gets them. If he wasn't ta'veren then he wouldn't have found the dagger, he wouldn't have gained the luck, he wouldn't have survived Finnland. But then where does his luck come from?
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Nov 29, 2021 15:30
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I think y'all have just kind of demonstrated what I find irritating about Mat - he's got all these powers going on, and they kind of touch and overlap but all come from different places (He has ancient memories that are unconnected to his past lives, and also unconnected to a second set of memories. Also he's lucky.) It just feels kind of messy and disconnected compared to "dream-wolf" and "wizard-jesus". Especially as Ba'alzamon's little statues of foreshadowing seem to say that "has an evil dagger" is Mat's thing in the same way as Perrin being a Wolfbrother.Data Graham posted:Not so sure about the "good at women" part though. Best bit of the series is each of the lads thinking "gosh, I don't know how to talk to girls like the other two can"
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Nov 29, 2021 16:21
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rocketrobot posted:Yes, this is far more appropriate than having her wear that plus heavy gold links while running through the countryside on horseback. That is to say, I really appreciated the sequence in the first episode where she's putting her gear on and it's actual riding/adventuring gear and not a gown with a frock coat, gold jewelry everywhere, and a silly white staff. Riding coat, leather suspenders, and a bigass knife are an excellent upgrade. I love her leather pauldrons too, although it looks much more armour-like than either the Red or Greens, who really need something more worthy of the Battle-Ajah.
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Nov 30, 2021 16:14
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To say Arcane is the best videogame adaptation ever is to really undersell it. The plot/characters are solidly in "drat, this is pretty good" territory, but the animation and visuals are god-tier. You could compare this to Miyazaki or Spider-verse, it's that good.
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Nov 30, 2021 18:17
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Rarity posted:This is Detective Pikachu erasure Detective Pikachu is fun, but its kind of like a Marvel movie - I watched it, I enjoyed it, I will never think about it again.
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Nov 30, 2021 23:33
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:It's actually really loving horny, but in a subtle faux-Victorian kind of way. Not actively pornographic. This always felt more like playground flirting before people were old enough to know what it even was. The show looks much more horny, thank god
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Dec 1, 2021 00:21
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silvergoose posted:"Wait, the guy who I thought was the pivotal final boss of the book dies *offscreen*???" is one of the best takes I've heard on this one. Who's the dude who gets stabbed by someone conveniently off-screen like he's Orlando loving Bloom in Midsommer Murders?
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Dec 2, 2021 22:22
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This might just have been my favourite episode of the season. A few bits of action really kicked the plot along, but I like that it was happy to sit and chew over a lot of character moments. I loved the back and forth between Liandrin and Nynaeve, and the way it's made clear that Liandrin is deliberately dropping hints about Nynaeve can escape, Nynaeve knows she's being manipulated, and goes along with it anyway. Wolf attack owned, and now I want to see the behind-the-scenes footage of the dogs playfully yelping and wrasslin with all the actors. Loial managed to be cool and chill and also holy-poo poo-dude-stop-talking in just a few lines, which I really liked. "I can tolerate a lot" "I know" *camera shifts to focus on the heavily drugged cup of tea*. Rofl. Got genuinely misty-eyed at Stepin's funeral, which is not something I would expect to happen in this show. I know book-Lan is much more stoic, but I think paradoxically you need to see someone like that occasionally let their emotions out so that we know he actually has them. He's highly self-controlled and determined, he's not a robot. I'm feeling much more optimistic about how the show is going to handle the book's gender-politics after this episode. It spent a lot of time contrasting female-female relationships and male-male relationships without going into "women mourn like this, men mourn like this". It's also not as gender-essentialist as I was worried it would be, because the contrast feels more like its about the institutions they inhabit. Moirane and Allana's relationship is more quiet and intimate because they grew up in an all-girl's school together, Lan and Stepin are comrades from an all-male order of samurai, and temper their emotional honesty with jokes and deflections. It's very gender inflected, but it's not biotruthy.
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Dec 3, 2021 14:45
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Tar Valon sucks so much you can't even have a window, or even a painting of a window. Instead, have a painting of someone looking at a window.
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Dec 3, 2021 22:06
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Sab669 posted:Has she been cast yet? There's a bunch of actors who've been announced as in the show, but not who they're playing. Of the rumoured Verin actors the one I think most likely is Meera Syal, from beloved British-Asian sketch show Goodness Gracious Me. 
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Dec 4, 2021 15:26
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MajorBonnet posted:I'm probably in the minority in being satisfied with Fain's ending in the books. I always took it more as a sign that the pattern was accounting for the Dark One and with Rand planning to kill the current one, it had another on standby. This would actually own. I really didn't like Rand's confrontation TDO, because the whole "evil must exist for there to be good" felt like it came completely out of nowhere. Evil is mostly portrayed as some horrible corrupting influence (like Mashadar, or the Taint), something that's inherently bad. And the sudden thing about how people must be free to choose between good and evil felt really un-earned, given that I can't think of any moments where we saw someone properly choosing one over the other, or an evil person being redeemed. It especially doesn't work with 90% of the evil characters literally surrendering their free-will to Satan with magic oaths.
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Dec 4, 2021 22:16
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Gully Foyle posted:Ingtar? He's probably the best example of a Darkfriend making the choice to return to the Light shown. I can't remember anything about him (been about 8 years since I read these things) and a quick check on his wiki tells me he's the only example, if we don't count Verin and her Warder.
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Dec 4, 2021 22:31
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RC Cola posted:Thank you, and thank you eke out. I can't remember how slowly the Taint gets introduced in the first few books - maybe they just need to go hog-wild with the madness right from the start to really drive home what his story is about.
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Dec 6, 2021 22:56
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Gwaihir posted:That's not really a madness thing though. Part of it isnt maybe. Part of it very much is though. God that scene would own if they adapt it.
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Dec 6, 2021 23:20
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Sad warder owned, but I'm not sure it was worth missing the really important scenes of Mat and Rand learning to juggle.
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Dec 9, 2021 16:07
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Yeah, Light of the Seven is one of the big, iconic moments in all of GoT, even it's sandwiched between some of the worst crap in the series. I can't imagine this one being comparable in scope this early on, but I'm definitely stoked.
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Dec 9, 2021 17:55
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I like how there's just enough of a pause in Moirane vs Liandrin for you to think "wow, Moirane's a really poo poo spy" before you realise that she's actually a drat good spy.
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Dec 10, 2021 12:17
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Hexel posted:The ter'angreal explained. I really don't like this habit of "lets stuff world details into bonus features". If it's important enough to drive the plot (like, what the deal with the Dragon is) then it needs to be in the show. And if it's not, then I don't care.
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Dec 10, 2021 16:50
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His Divine Shadow posted:Huh what? The dagger stuff isn't resolved until book 3 for mats sake, definitely felt rushed to me. I don't think it's resolved, just paused.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:56
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RandomReader posted:That doesn't make it good. Contempt is a very strong word. But yeah, these guys signed on to adapt the books because they hate them. Rosamund Pike hates then so much she's doing the audio books.
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Dec 10, 2021 20:04
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RandomReader posted:Yes, people who make Thom a dour cowboy, neuter Rand's establishing... everything, and thoughtlessly slap end game revelations into the beginning of the story hate the actual books. Thom was dour? The thom who stole Rand's money back and continued to gently caress with him? Dashing silverfox Thom? He owned. Rand's stuff has been trimmed yeah. But we have the rest of the series to deal with him, and the extra material for the other ta'veren has owned. Siuane and Moirane working together is the only end game revelation they've moved up, right? Putting it in now gives us way more of an idea of what the Aes Sedai are doing, and creates more options for dramatic tension and drama as they try and avoid being uncovered.
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Dec 10, 2021 20:32
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So are we getting new mat this season? Or do we have to wait till next year?
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Dec 10, 2021 22:13
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latinotwink1997 posted:Did, did you just create unlimited energy via gateway? Just infinite loop some water dropping on a water wheel. Bam, Age of Legends. No need for that gateway nonsense, I've found this great subterranean power source beneath this island, we just need to Bore out way down there, it'll be easy.
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Dec 12, 2021 21:42
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regulargonzalez posted:Fwiw, The OA is rife with this. If I could have one more season of any cancelled show, The OA would be tied with Party Down for what show I'd pick. The dancing robotsis one of my favourite reveals in TV, for how it just completly upends how you think things work and what the show is gonna be about. It's brilliant. It's also so completly batshit and nonsensical that I almost don't need spoiler tags.
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Dec 14, 2021 22:29
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I'm weirdly okay with all the CW drama, because the gang are just such lovable doofuses. Especially Nynaeve releasing that her angry stance against Moirane directly caused all of her mates to start bickering and falling out with each other. That's great stuff.
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Dec 17, 2021 11:06
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How are u posted:Honestly the thing that I liked the least about the episode is that they gave Lan a 'family' of sorts. Lan-Nynaeve romance is a bit rushed but eh what ya gonna do, it's TV. It felt like very heavy handed family fun, but it gave us Lan's Batman Hello to invite Nynaeve in, so I'm satisfied.
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Dec 17, 2021 18:57
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I've poo-pooed a lot of the costumes in this show so far. I'm not poo-pooing that. drat it owns Edit:this could apply to any of those mysterious links. They all have me pumped
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Dec 22, 2021 22:54
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eke out posted:okay so re: above spoilers They look kind of like mouthguards built into the chest piece. So they're symbolically gagged, if not literally. And the sul'dam have the more decorative masks at the back that would still let them speak. I dig it. Looks much more like prisoners rather then kinksters
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Dec 22, 2021 22:58
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Pyromancer posted:It's the internet of 2020s: if you show or write about anything it means you as author are 100% in favor of it, no matter how clearly you say it's a bad thing. I see this argument a lot, and it's utter bullshit. I can dislike the presence of objectionable content without thinking that the author endorses it. If Darth Vader graphically flensed each and every one of Leia's toes, I'm going to find it unnecessarily gross and unpleasant to watch. Yes we all know Vader is the bad guy, and that Lucas probably doesn't endorse foot mutilation. That in itself doesn't make it artistically justified.
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Dec 23, 2021 09:08
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There were some really great bits this episode - Ishamael owned, I liked how Rand's puppydog nature saved the day, Padan Fain is a wonderful motherfucker etc. But it all felt very disjointed and a bit like things just happened, without a lot of time to get into how or why or what it means. Kind of like the season as a whole really. I think the various cliffhangers were a bit of a whiff. I don't like "will this actor return next year?" as a cliffhanger because it'll be obvious in any of the marketing campaigns. Book readers can probably deduce that Rand was lured there to accidentally destroy the seal, but show-only people get some line about an indestructible thing actually being destructible which means ?????. It feels like the episode ends with them reminding us there's more story to come, instead of giving us some big mystery or hook to bring us back next year.
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Dec 24, 2021 19:22
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I love how Show-naeve can't turn off the aggressive bullheadedness. Sometimes it makes her look badass, sometimes it makes her look like a maniac. "that woman's a snake" - hell yeah, you go girl "we're not moiriane's, nobody owns us" - jesus christ, give it a rest, there's an army of trollocs coming at you.
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Dec 27, 2021 18:29
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Hexel posted:As much of Aviendha as possible. Specifically her and Elyane punching each other across the room.
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Dec 28, 2021 12:29
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I do think the Circle scene needed way more dialogue to really set it. We've got these elderly women happily risking their lives - let's see that, let's have a little bit of characterisation of how insane the Shienar are. Lady What'sherface is expecting to maybe be able to blow up a few trollocs before they all die, but suddenly taps into the raw power of a burning sun, so give us some actual dialogue about what is going on. It almost felt like some of the Harry Potter movies where they just show you stuff in the most low-effort way possible, because if you've read the books you already get all the context and character motivations.
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Dec 28, 2021 15:42
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Shageletic posted:It's interesting to see that Rafe worked on the first 2 seasons. That show got hosed by the larger battles between Marvel TV and Marvel Cinema (or whatever Feige's group is called). At least I have a lens to compare the writing on WoT now. Yeah, early AoS the gang are pretty dumb and childish. I think they were aiming for inexperienced and naive and just overshot the mark. S2 is pretty solid and has some great moments, but it's not til S3 that I'd say the show itself becomes great.
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Dec 28, 2021 21:22
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Malazan features a race of dinosaurs who Jurassic Parked themselves by resurrecting an even more powerful race of dinosaurs who then killed them all. Yeah it's up its own rear end, but it's also wonderfully silly at times.
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Jan 3, 2022 12:30
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Mayor Dave posted:You forgot to mention that the dinosaurs are also eusocial Oh yeah, the gradual re-contextualisation of the K'Chain from "demonic undead monsters" to literal space-aliens with forcefields and nanobots to tragic fallen civilisation is really well done.
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Jan 3, 2022 15:39
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