[TV] The Wheel of Time

[Arikara]

The pattern does act because it is what creates and causes everything. It is like computer code that does things when it is programmed to do. It certainly does have an agenda. To do what it was programmed to by the Creator (who created the wheel that creates the pattern). It is why the Dark One is a threat. Because he wants control of the wheel and pattern to make everything in his image.

You're very good at repeatedly proving that you've completely misunderstood.

The Dark One is utterly incapable of winning the struggle. He believes that he can—and so do most characters in the story—but the possibility of that outcome is outside what is possible in the Pattern. He will never win, not in a million turnings of the Wheel. But he is still capable of bringing hardship to the world; that's the point.

The entire book shows us the pattern making people into something else entirely. It is how a shepherd from the Two Rivers is made into the Dragon Reborn by the events the pattern is fullfilling. Or a blacksmith into a king. Or a prankster into a tactical genius consort. The characters were not objectively those things at the start and it is only by following the events of the pattern that transformed them into those things.

Wrong again. The three ta'veren already are those things, because they were them before, in other turnings. This is not the first time for any of the three of them to be heroes; if anything, they're just finding themselves again by going through their many trials.

Does the Pattern push the ta'veren, or does the ta'veren change the Pattern? You're insisting it's the former, but it is both.

Jordan did describe WoT as a story about commoners becoming kings, and kings becoming commoners, but as it turn outs, it's more complicated than that.

[Corvus]

The more I hear if Rafe, the worse he sounds. They have a lore expert, hired because she claims to have read the series 57 times, who is meant to advise on what ripple effects would result in changing the plot.

Rafe publically said he enjoys sending her fake outs, such as killing off Thom, just to watch her collapse as a human being. His words, not mine. Guy is a sociopath.

[Surfd]

I had never heard of WoT prior to amazon prime and think the show is alright, not sure why ya'll are whining so much about a very derivative fantasy show

You ever see one of those adds for a Fast Food chain burger that makes the burger look like it was crafted by a Michelin Star Chef, where it looks absolutely amazing and you think to yourself: Damn, I could really go for one of those. Then you get to the store, collect your order, open the container and see a sad, pathetic looking smashed up burger on a half-assed bun that looks absolutely nothing like the awesome burger you saw in the advertisement?

The book is the Add. The show is the burger you got. And that's why most of us are annoyed: Because the source material has the potential to provide you with a top class experience, and instead we got a half assed nutjob completely butchering it and just slapping the "Wheel of Time" label on it and telling us to "just love my piece of shit for what it is, not for what it could have been" as if that is some kind of valid defense of the hackjob he is shoveling.

[Coniferous]

I had never heard of WoT prior to amazon prime and think the show is alright, not sure why ya'll are whining so much about a very derivative fantasy show

It's because the show is supposed to be based on a series of books that we like, and so much has been changed that it's basically got the same names and some of the same plot but mostly is different. In particular there's been an obvious effort to emphasize the role of the female characters more than in the books (which is fine, the books are 1990s and it's 2021), but what has angered me is there's also been an effort to make the female characters good and the male characters bad, when the books clearly attempted to have balance.

As another way to put it: think of parts of the show that you think are good - those are all from the books. Think of the bad things or things that are said without adequate explanation, like the random fight over Egwene or the "if you go to the Eye, you definitely die" thing, or 5 female channelers killing an entire army basically instantly, or the men ignoring female advice and dying at the gap - those are all made up by the showrunners (in fact, the character that died in the gap scene actually lives until the end of the series in the books, and he's generally considered a good man and capable commander - in the TV show they just made him contrarian and dumb because he's a man, and powered up his sister - who has a very minor, blink and you miss it role in the books - to emphasize that he's a dumb evil man and she's a smart capable women).

[rhorle]

You're very good at repeatedly proving that you've completely misunderstood.

So if the Dark One can never win why is he a threat? Just ignore him right. You would never need a dragon to stop him from breaking free of the prison the creator put him in at the dawn of creation. The story isn't about making life easy peasy for people and removing all hardships.

Does the Pattern push the ta'veren, or does the ta'veren change the Pattern? You're insisting it's the former, but it is both.

So if it is both then I also can't be wrong. Weird isn't that? You agree with what I am saying while at the same time calling it wrong. Make up your mind. Ta'Veren are not bound to the wheel. You can be a Ta'Veren without being bound to the wheel like the Heroes of the Horn are. If Ta'veren are reborn souls then that would defeat half of the importance of the Dragon being reborn. He isn't special he is just a Ta'veren. The books tell us that Ta'veren are understood but even the Forsaken don't know what the Dragon being reborn will mean.

[Corvus]

It's actually worse if you think about it. The show is saying that the only way a woman can succeed is if a man fails.

[Shadowferal]

People in the middle ages very often dressed quite flamboyantly. They cleaned, they washed and they absolutely obsessed with colour to a degree we would find absolutely gaudy. Bright colors, yellow, blue, red, green. Armors were painted, guided, decorated.

Clothing maybe.
Hygiene however wasn't high on the to do list however. Bathing and such was seen as a heathen thing. Heck I recall reading that (spoilered because gross af Queen Isabella of Spain boasted that she only bathed twice in her life. Once when born, the other when she got married. For the sake of preventing projectile vomiting, try not to extrapolate far on that.

[kendro1200]

If Ta'veren are reborn souls then that would defeat half of the importance of the Dragon being reborn. He isn't special he is just a Ta'veren. The books tell us that Ta'veren are understood but even the Forsaken don't know what the Dragon being reborn will mean.

Except all souls are reborn, that is part of the reason why Ishmael turned to the shadow, and the reason why the DR turned back to the light. Being bound to the Horn doesn't mean you are bound to The Wheel, all within the pattern are bound to The Wheel. Being bound to The Horn means that The Horn can call your soul to fight in the Realm of the Living if you are not currently alive (from what we read).
Ta'veren are shown within the book to be heavily "guided" by The Pattern of the Weave. Choices they want to make are taken/discouraged from them until it is possible for them to make those choices without upsetting The Pattern too much. Matt was RJ's explanation of what rules, The Pattern or Ta'veren. We saw cases of Rand trying to force The Pattern several times before book 13, and it ended up costing many lives at every one of those "mistakes". The Pattern was always stated to be balance, and one might infer that Ta'veren exist as a mobile fulcrum for The Pattern to assert that balance at certain periods of time. Of the three Ta'veren we read about, two pretty much resigned to their fates and just accepted where The Pattern took them. The other rejected that he was Ta'veren at almost every opportunity he had, and it created so much chaos in the process.

Edit: What the Forsaken don't know in RJ's WoT is what a prophesized rebirth means. Remember the prophecies happened after they were bound. The Forsaken had some edge cases in their knowledge of that those who remember their past lives were driven mad. Were they dealing with a madman? Were they just dealing with someone with LTT's memories, or just his strength. Was it a figurative rebirth, and just another champion of The Light coming forth to oppose The Shadow? We do know from Artur Hawkwing that soul of The Dragon is one that is reborn over and over again, even apart from his two pivotal lives in The Cycle of The Wheel. The Dragon in some other lives fights some other lives of Artur Hawkwing. What is special about The Dragon Reborn is that he is a soul that must remember a past life to finish the work of a past life. The Dragon nearly won The War of Power in his first life, and needed a second life to win and finish The War.

[Surfd]

Except all souls are reborn, that is part of the reason why Ishmael turned to the shadow.

We don't know for certain that "all" souls are reborn. While it has been fairly explicitly indicated that certain "important" ones get re-used over and over again by the wheel every age / cycle, it's never really been explained what happens to the run of the mill individual. The generic townsfolk and background characters. The wheel spins their threads out, but we have no idea what happens to those threads once their lives are done. Does the wheel re-use them like it does high end, important people, or do they just sort of fade into a cosmic energy pool out of which new threads are spun when needed. Nobody knows, and it's never really addressed as something distinct from the actual explicitly outlined cases of individual Threads being re-used (such as the Champion of Light, or the Archer and her Ugly Boyfriend.)

The important distinction in regards to the Dragon being "reborn" is that while they had some understanding of the Wheel reusing threads, they had no practical example of the Wheel re-incarnating a SPECIFIC Individual. Like, we know Birgitte gets spun out again and again to re-live a generally similar "life", but when she gets spun out, she is a different person each time, she doesn't come back as "Birgitte" each time. So having a prophecy pop up that is specifically hinting that the Wheel is going to bring "THIS SPECIFIC GUY" back was something they really had no reference for in terms of what to expect.

As for Ishamael, he made his final "turn to the shadow" because his current incarnation was basically Insane. He had been sealed inside the Dark One's prison, and being sealed too close to the Dark One had caused his Thread to become "unstable", effectively giving him glimpses beyond the Veil: He had seen things he was never meant to see, such as having knowledge about the fact that he was basically a pawn in an infinite, never ending game between Light and Darkness. These are things that his "mortal" incarnation was never supposed to know, and it basically broke him. That was why his entire motivation through the series basically revolved around him wanting the Wheel broken: Because his mortal incarnation was incapable of dealing with the idea that he basically exists purely to repeat a faceoff with the Champion of Light for eternity, and had come to the conclusion that the only way to escape that cycle was to literally destroy reality.

[Flurryfang]

Amazon approved season 2 before the first episode aired. That was little more than a pr stunt.

It makes no difference that they approved it before the first episode was aired. Im just saying, that the show itself does make a 2nd season plausible as a good season.

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The WoT showrunner doesn't seem to care much about adhering to the books at all, whereas the Witcher showrunners seem to at least make a stronger appeal towards presenting the tone and feel of the stories from the books.

Thats proberly the thing i have missed to notice in WoT, because the story spin-offs have taken so much focus. The tone is completly different. It makes a word of a change.

[Triceron]

Except all souls are reborn, that is part of the reason why Ishmael turned to the shadow, and the reason why the DR turned back to the light. Being bound to the Horn doesn't mean you are bound to The Wheel, all within the pattern are bound to The Wheel. Being bound to The Horn means that The Horn can call your soul to fight in the Realm of the Living if you are not currently alive (from what we read).
Ta'veren are shown within the book to be heavily "guided" by The Pattern of the Weave. Choices they want to make are taken/discouraged from them until it is possible for them to make those choices without upsetting The Pattern too much. Matt was RJ's explanation of what rules, The Pattern or Ta'veren. We saw cases of Rand trying to force The Pattern several times before book 13, and it ended up costing many lives at every one of those "mistakes". The Pattern was always stated to be balance, and one might infer that Ta'veren exist as a mobile fulcrum for The Pattern to assert that balance at certain periods of time. Of the three Ta'veren we read about, two pretty much resigned to their fates and just accepted where The Pattern took them. The other rejected that he was Ta'veren at almost every opportunity he had, and it created so much chaos in the process.

Edit: What the Forsaken don't know in RJ's WoT is what a prophesized rebirth means. Remember the prophecies happened after they were bound. The Forsaken had some edge cases in their knowledge of that those who remember their past lives were driven mad. Were they dealing with a madman? Were they just dealing with someone with LTT's memories, or just his strength. Was it a figurative rebirth, and just another champion of The Light coming forth to oppose The Shadow? We do know from Artur Hawkwing that soul of The Dragon is one that is reborn over and over again, even apart from his two pivotal lives in The Cycle of The Wheel. The Dragon in some other lives fights some other lives of Artur Hawkwing. What is special about The Dragon Reborn is that he is a soul that must remember a past life to finish the work of a past life. The Dragon nearly won The War of Power in his first life, and needed a second life to win and finish The War.

Don't want to be that guy, but just wanted to point out RJ are the initials for both Robert Jordan and Rafe Judkins (showrunner). Makes it a bit confusing to read, even though I know you're talking about Robert Jordan.

[rhorle]

Except all souls are reborn, that is part of the reason why Ishmael turned to the shadow, and the reason why the DR turned back to the light.

"How do you know?" – Graendal asked, smiling as if it were a joke. "It may well be that, as many believe, all are born and reborn as the Wheel turns, but nothing like this has ever happened that I have read. A specific man reborn according to prophecy. Who knows what he is? [3]" https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon#The_Forsaken

The Forsaken only think it is a theory that all souls are reborn and have not proven it. They don't know what it means to have a specific person, The Dragon, reborn. The Heroes bound to the horn are specific souls that hang out in the world of dreams until it is their time to be spun back out or someone blows the horn. The books even show a soul being bound to the horn and "brought back" when the horn blows. It doesn't call just any soul but only those bound to the Wheel that get spun out when the pattern wills. Another form of Ta'veren but not exactly the same.

If you haven't read the books who that soul is would be a spoiler https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Jain_Farstrider?so=search#Additional_info

The pattern doesn't care about equality. It doesn't strive to bring balance to anything. It does whatever the creator/wheel told it to do. It isn't set in stone so while things are fated to be a certain way changes can still exist. Those mirror worlds can be traveled to and any possible outcome can exist on those places. There is trouble forcing the pattern to change unless you change it the ways it wants. Which is why Ta'veren struggle to go against the pattern themselves. They have a compulsion to live the fate the pattern wants stronger then others.

[Xath]

The more I hear if Rafe, the worse he sounds. They have a lore expert, hired because she claims to have read the series 57 times, who is meant to advise on what ripple effects would result in changing the plot.

Rafe publically said he enjoys sending her fake outs, such as killing off Thom, just to watch her collapse as a human being. His words, not mine. Guy is a sociopath.

Yup he had so many red flags it's absurd

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This is a rather odd complaint.

It's pseudo medieval fantasy. And the whole "flithy unwashed grimy" middle ages is really just Victorian fiction perpetuated by Hollywood.

People in the middle ages very often dressed quite flamboyantly. They cleaned, they washed and they absolutely obsessed with colour to a degree we would find absolutely gaudy. Bright colors, yellow, blue, red, green. Armors were painted, guided, decorated.

Black wasn't a thing well into the late 16th century.

People from peasant to King washed and they took as much pride in their appearance and fashion sense as people do today. They were willing to pay insane amounts for cloth and textiles from Persia, India, China.

Characters like the Aes Sedai sit very high in the social hierarchy. It's normal they have fancy drrsses and their wardens would be give similar treatment.

In the book at least in eye they are basically running and hiding the entire book changing clothes really doesn't happen much. Jordan spends multiple pages on outfit changes trust me you know when they change clothes.

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Don't want to be that guy, but just wanted to point out RJ are the initials for both Robert Jordan and Rafe Judkins (showrunner). Makes it a bit confusing to read, even though I know you're talking about Robert Jordan.

Nah that fucking idiot or the moron can't really be confused with RJ context is also a good clue. Does the thing being talked about sound awesome chances are it came from RJ does it sound moronic and nonsensical changes are it came from the moron.

[Triceron]

Nah that fucking idiot or the moron can't really be confused with RJ context is also a good clue. Does the thing being talked about sound awesome chances are it came from RJ does it sound moronic and nonsensical changes are it came from the moron.

Why do you keep calling Robert Jordan a moron? He's a brilliant writer. Just because you think Rafe Judkins makes everything sound awesome doesn't mean Robert Jordan is a moron.

[Surfd]

Thats proberly the thing i have missed to notice in WoT, because the story spin-offs have taken so much focus. The tone is completly different. It makes a word of a change.

I basically have to agree with a statement made by someone on another forum, where he kind of summarized it as such:

The TV series has departed so far from the books (and we are only basically on book one, at that) that it is straight up insulting to call it an "adaptation" of Wheel of Time at this point because other than general setting, some names, and the odd story beat, it's basically nothing like the books in any form. Which means that you can't really judge it as a "Wheel of Time" product. So you have to judge it based on it' own merits: at which point you basically have a slightly above mediocre fantasy series with a metric fuckload of wasted potential.

It's like you handed one of the biggest properties in fantasy literature to someone and asked them to make the worst possible adaptation of that series.

[Nynax]

It's actually worse if you think about it. The show is saying that the only way a woman can succeed is if a man fails.

it's kinda just a thing modern media does these days. It's actually why I, as a mixed race guy, oppose every character gender or race swap of remakes and adaptations. After awhile I realized that every single time it's a statement that says "we don't think a unique minority, lgbt, or female character will be successful so we forced it on something people already like."

I don't want to be virtue signaled. I don't want to be told black characters with their own unique backgrounds aren't good enough so we just race swapped a white guy; and then be expected to be happy about it.

/rant

[Mihalik]

Clothing maybe.
Hygiene however wasn't high on the to do list however. Bathing and such was seen as a heathen thing. Heck I recall reading that (spoilered because gross af Queen Isabella of Spain boasted that she only bathed twice in her life. Once when born, the other when she got married. For the sake of preventing projectile vomiting, try not to extrapolate far on that.

Again. That's a myth.

Bathing =/= washing.

https://www.worldhistory.org/Medieval_Hygiene/
https://www.historyextra.com/period/...-plague-covid/

While bathing was often logistically complicated, especially when traveling or more commonly during the winter months. Still people, even poor peasants bathed, just less frequently. But they still washed their whole body with wash cloths and ewers and washed their hair daily with alkaline solutions and scented oils.

If you really dig into it, you'll quickly realize that the whole unwashed middles ages is bullshit.

The one big reason why medieval Europeans kinda looked primitive compared to the Muslims or Byzantines tho was because they kinda abandoned communal bathing and turned it into a necessarily private thing. Bath houses in Europe were often synonymous with brothels so the Church frowned own it, so Europe often didn't have the extensive bathing facilities with pools and massages and hot water etc that the Byzantines and Muslims had. But again, that just didn't mean that people didn't wash or clean themselves.

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In the book at least in eye they are basically running and hiding the entire book changing clothes really doesn't happen much. Jordan spends multiple pages on outfit changes trust me you know when they change clothes.

Yeah. But I don't recall any outfit changes between them leaving The Two Rivers and reaching Tar Valon in the series either?

[Pratt]

I've watched the first 3 episodes and so far the show hasn't ruined my childhood, unlike the shannara chronicles. Definitely a low bar but I'll take it.

[Corvus]

The first 3 episodes are probably where it stays true to the books the most. It goes really off the rails after that.

[Shadowferal]

Again. That's a myth.

If they had the option do you really think it was taken? Consider it took even a minimal effort...and a doctor's recommendation. Sound familiar? Up to even the late 19th century too many never bothered to wash hands. (Typhoid Mary is a famous example). Heck you can't even get people to wash their hands today after using the restroom. Which brings to current day examples...of being cleaner...sure we have examples of "cleanliness" but those aren't the rule when it's optional.