[TV] The Wheel of Time

[Kharadin]

See, the skin color thing is a detail where I *am* comfortable saying "you know what, it doesn't matter". Does it technically lose a bit of world-building? Sure. But nothing that's actually that relevant to the plot. The only thing that IS relevant is that Rand is markedly Aiel. As long as you can distinguish that properly - since that detail definitely matters for the plot - how the rest of the people look is largely irrelevant to the larger story.

We all know the real tragedy is that Moiraine isn't a 5'4" Cairhienin tiny lady. Why can't Rosamund Pike just be shorter >

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So did Transformers.

Yeah and they made tonnes of movies. I'm down with that, gimme one or two seasons per book daddy Bezos.

[Biomega]

we all know the real tragedy is that moiraine isn't a 5'4" cairhienin tiny lady. Why can't rosamund pike just be shorter >

5'9" != 5'4" it's not like the book cancel the show now WAAAAAAAAH

[Kharadin]

5'9" != 5'4" it's not like the book cancel the show now WAAAAAAAAH

I can't wait to see all the tiny Aiel, either.

[Katchii]

I mean I guess that's fair enough I just don't agree. I don't think it's intended to mean anything other than what it says. They're dark of hair and eye, and Rand is a tall white boy with blue/grey eyes and red hair, thus he stands out. Within those bounds, I think the casting of the main ensemble fits just fine. That being said, Tam's a bit lighter in pretty much every respect than I'd expect since sans his height he could believably be Rand's daddy in the show which is a bit scuffed.

So you're saying you honestly believe the Two Rivers, a geographically isolated location that is explicitly stated to be made up almost exclusively from the descendants of Manetheren, a single nation, is just a hodge podge of multiple races from all over the world that all just so happen share the "dark of eye and dark of hair" description?

Seems odd to me.

I'm not debating the description you're referencing, but based on everything else we know from the books about both the Two Rivers and the rest of the world, the idea that the Two Rivers is made up of many different races from around the world that all just so happen to share the "dark of hair and dark of eye" description seems willfully ignorant to me.

Edit: Sorry, this comes of as more condescending than I really meant it to be. I'm honestly just asking questions and trying to clarify your view. No disrespect intended.

[Biomega]

I can't wait to see all the tiny Aiel, either.

I can't wait for them to go "desert people? MUST BE AFRICAN/MIDDLE-EASTERN ACTORS" because you just know it.

[Kharadin]

So you're saying you honestly believe the Two Rivers, a geographically isolated location that is explicitly stated to be made up almost exclusively from the descendants of Manetheren, a single nation, is just a hodge podge of multiple races from all over the world that all just so happen share the "dark of eye and dark of hair" description?

Seems odd to me.

I'm not debating the description you're referencing, but based on everything else we know from the books about both the Two Rivers and the rest of the world, the idea that the Two Rivers is made up of many different races from around the world that all just so happen to share the "dark of hair and dark of eye" description seems willfully ignorant to me.

No, I don't think it's a hodge podge of multiple races from all over the world. I believe there will be some level of homogeneity but within that expectation I think what we see on the screen is a pretty believable representation.

I mean, unless "many different races" accurately describes what you think lies between Mat, Perrin and the main girls. Then I guess we're just arguing semantics and my answer is just "yes".

You could also argue it's wilfully ignorant to get up in arms about the race of the characters that, barring a few exceptions (Rand's heritage and a few cultural inserts from present-day Earth etc.), RJ was intentionally vague in his description of because race wasn't really a thing that was ever relevant to the story he was telling.

I believe I take the descriptions in the spirit they were offered, vague but sufficient for me to build my own mental images and keep my disbelief suspended.

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I can't wait for them to go "desert people? MUST BE AFRICAN/MIDDLE-EASTERN ACTORS" because you just know it.

If I don't get to see some sunburnt, giant-ass Irishmen I'm gonna riot.

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Edit: Sorry, this comes of as more condescending than I really meant it to be. I'm honestly just asking questions and trying to clarify your view. No disrespect intended.

Don't worry, no offense taken, tbh outside of battling on the internet with people who refuse to enjoy the show because of the casting diversity I don't even think about it too much, so I can see how I come off as a kinda half-assed thrown-together view because I'm kinda thinking about it and making it up as I go along.

I watched the show so far and I loved it, and the casting caused no immersion-breaking for me so I'm just trying to verbalise why I think that's the case for me and maybe not for others.

[Mace]

So you're saying you honestly believe the Two Rivers, a geographically isolated location that is explicitly stated to be made up almost exclusively from the descendants of Manetheren, a single nation, is just a hodge podge of multiple races from all over the world that all just so happen share the "dark of eye and dark of hair" description?

Seems odd to me.

I'm not debating the description you're referencing, but based on everything else we know from the books about both the Two Rivers and the rest of the world, the idea that the Two Rivers is made up of many different races from around the world that all just so happen to share the "dark of hair and dark of eye" description seems willfully ignorant to me.

Edit: Sorry, this comes of as more condescending than I really meant it to be. I'm honestly just asking questions and trying to clarify your view. No disrespect intended.

They fucked that one up , but then most people today don’t understand racial homogeny because tv lies for diversity sake.

Diversity is a great thing and definitely needed. But when you do a period drama or a fantasy world that has a national history that strongly indicates racial homogeny it trivialises it to change it for the sake of diversity.

Plenty of opportunity fir non white characters and diversity in the story. But if they failed to give diversity they would have come under the oh so feared criticism of twitteratti

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But let’s not pretend as if the all white shows of the past weren’t full of flaws.

Irritated as I maybe by the change in ethnicities of the main characters, there is still a lot of good things about the show.

It’s just not as good as the books. But it’s still entettaining as a well polished decent but standard fantasy.

[Katchii]

SNIP

Agree to disagree then.

Don't worry, no offense taken, tbh outside of battling on the internet with people who refuse to enjoy the show because of the casting diversity I don't even think about it too much, so I can see how I come off as a kinda half-assed thrown-together view because I'm kinda thinking about it and making it up as I go along.

I watched the show so far and I loved it, and the casting caused no immersion-breaking for me so I'm just trying to verbalise why I think that's the case for me and maybe not for others.

When I first heard about them I got a bit scuffed because it didn't match up with my own mental image, but I very quickly realized that's a pretty ridiculous take. So long as the actors play the character well, that's all that matters...for the most part.

So far, I've seen nothing that makes me disappointed in the acting. I'm still up in the air as far as the show as a whole, because of some of the changes they're making and hinting at, but up to this point they haven't been so egregious that it's ruining my enjoyment of the TV adaptation. I'm skeptical, but still more entertained than disappointed at this point.

[Biomega]

They fucked that one up , but then most people today don’t understand racial homogeny because tv lies for diversity sake.

Diversity is a great thing and definitely needed. But when you do a period drama or a fantasy world that has a national history that strongly indicates racial homogeny it trivialises it to change it for the sake of diversity.

This is a tricky thing. For one, you can quite legitimately ask where to draw the line - if you're fine with someone being brunette instead of blonde, why aren't you fine with dark skin instead of light skin, for example. Where are you drawing the line? Physiological differences between humans are fact - grouping them into "races" is largely a construct. So who gets to draw the circles and say who's in and who's out, and why? Isn't suspension of disbelief exactly for such circumstances, putting performance over accuracy?

Then again, there are absolutely cases where things like skin color MATTER. Some are fairly clear-cut - a white MLK would take so much away it wouldn't work. Others are more debatable - what about a black Hamlet? Not historically accurate of course, but is that important to the role? The edge cases are very difficult to decide, because - again - a lot of the distinctions are given fairly arbitrary weight. A white Jesus, when he's a Levantine Jew? Why does that work more than a black Hamlet - and should it? And so on.

Which also brings up a whole slew of historical biases. Because race as we understand it is a fairly recent concept, we tend to project our understanding back onto historical settings. Ancient Rome, for example, was very likely quite racially diverse. Why aren't black people mentioned a lot? Because people then probably didn't care as much about skin color as we tend to think they would have. We think of Cleopatra as "Egyptian" - she was a ruler of Egypt, but her lineage is straight from Greece, not from Africa. We tend to forget that nation states, too, are a very recent concept.

All this makes it really tricky to find the right angle for representations both fictional and historic. You want to balance modern-day sensibilities, aesthetics and iconography, historicity, and so on - often an impossible task to perfectly solve. So where do you skew things, how, and why? Is a skew towards more diversity in casting "more important" than historical accuracy? If so, why? If not, why not? Is historical accuracy "more important" than the aesthetics of the performance? How do you even determine that?

It's very complicated, and can't JUST be reduced to "we do this or Twitter will have our heads". Not that there isn't plenty of pandering and ham-fisted shoehorning going around, that should be rightly criticized. But it isn't always as simple as people make it out to be, on any side of the issue.

For me personally, the key is always rooted in the narrative above all else. What does the PLOT demand? Would this not work if a character is a different gender, race, whatever? If it changes, how does it change? What does this mean for the rest of the plot, all the contingencies, the world-building? There's no perfect answer, and no simple scale to go by.

The WoT situation in Two Rivers is kind of a good example. Canonically it's supposed to be the remnant of a previous empire - but how homogenous was that empire? Many centuries are a long time, and unless there's serious impediment (like an ocean) people WILL mix over time. Which might mean a new homogeneity, or might mean more diversity. But what does the PLOT say? These are "one people", with a certain pride and history - okay, but "people" doesn't equal "race", and you could have all sorts of people only vaguely similar with considerable leeway. What actually MATTERS for the plot? That Rand stands out, and that he belongs to a group that's not just geographically but also CULTURALLY isolated - that's often a stronger isolating factor than geography (see e.g. with hermetic religious communities like the Amish). So it makes sense to pay attention to race there, doesn't it? Yes and no. Because cultural isolation also means culture is more important than race - see e.g. the Dune series where culture as an identifier has practically supplanted race entirely. So how do you deal with that in a visual medium like film? Do you double down on visual markers and extend them to physiology? Or do you stick to cultural identifiers, and simply visualize them (e.g. distinct clothing, a special color, etc.)? In Rand's case I think race makes sense because he's isolated from the cultural aspects - marking him as an Aiel culturally doesn't work if he grows up in a different culture. It has to be something inherent, like appearance, if he's to be marked without actively participating in that marking. The plot has an actual tether to appearance here, and it makes sense to pay attention to it as a result. But that's not always the case, and each instance comes with its own expression, contingencies, and often complex considerations about how to represent it in both visuals and narrative.

[mickybrighteyes]

We all know the real tragedy is that Moiraine isn't a 5'4" Cairhienin tiny lady. Why can't Rosamund Pike just be shorter >

The real tragedy is what they did to Tam's Sword....

What it should be: here

What they did: here

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The WoT situation in Two Rivers is kind of a good example. Canonically it's supposed to be the remnant of a previous empire

Two rivers is ONE singular town that's relatively isolated from the rest of the realms across the continent and a backwater town at that.

As for how many cneturies? it's actually over 2000 years since Menetheren's Fall by the time the story's events begin. I want to say the story is in something regarded as the "New Era" and nearly 1000 years into that era while Menetheren fell 'early' on after the breaking with a good thousand years between it's fall and the start of the New Era.

[Shadowferal]

Yeah and they made tonnes of movies. I'm down with that, gimme one or two seasons per book daddy Bezos.

And they were just as good...

[bledgor]

"various sources/media"
85% amalgamated critic rating, 80% user rating

Like I said; people have tunnel vision and see what they want, but numbers don't. The numbers simply don't support what you are saying.

The reality is that the actual bubble is people like you on internet forums like this who think that social progression ruins things, when most people just don't give a shit.

Okay try reading my message again, I was saying the sources show a heavy initial engagment, the 85/80, but how long would that hold as they continue to bastardize the story? I guess you really don't care if the quality of things given to you is complete shit. I also said nothing about social progress, I just don't like when some idiotic producer thinks he knows better than a renowned author and butchers the content to get across HIS message (which is not he masses btw, even if every single member of one party agreed, it wouldn't be the majority).

[Katchii]

Two rivers is ONE singular town that's relatively isolated from the rest of the realms across the continent and a backwater town at that.

It's actually not one town.

It's a fairly large swath of land with 4 towns and quite a few independent farms.

No estimates in the book for population numbers, but with that much land, that many towns and farms and that much time since the destruction it's at least a few thousand.

https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Two_Rivers

[Kharadin]

snip

Fair enough, honestly I'm just hyped to see my favourite book series finally becoming a TV show so they'd really have to fuck it up to turn me off it. That being said, I don't think I'm even wilfully ignoring anything I might be critical of if the source material were something else, all the changes I've seen seem pretty reasonable given the move from book to TV and I've enjoyed every episode so far and ep 4 alone I enjoyed more than even some of the best GoT episodes.

That said, I'm sure there's some cognitive bias going on that's making me impervious to some of the valid criticisms of the show, I just don't think the casting and diversity therein is one of them.

Just get me to Dumai's Wells please daddy bezos.

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snip

Oh yeah, that's actually one that upset me a little, I coulda got down with most sword styles but I'm 100% sure Tam's sword wasn't described even close to a katana. I didn't imagine it quite like your image but that's very close to what I had in mind, just a pretty no-frills kinda falchion. I also imagined the heron mark on the crossguard but now that I think about it I reckon I just head canon-ed that because I think the books do say it tends to be on the hilt.

[Katchii]

Fair enough, honestly I'm just hyped to see my favourite book series finally becoming a TV show so they'd really have to fuck it up to turn me off it. That being said, I don't think I'm even wilfully ignoring anything I might be critical of if the source material were something else, all the changes I've seen seem pretty reasonable given the move from book to TV and I've enjoyed every episode so far and ep 4 alone I enjoyed more than even some of the best GoT episodes.

That said, I'm sure there's some cognitive bias going on that's making me impervious to some of the valid criticisms of the show, I just don't think the casting and diversity therein is one of them.

Just get me to Dumai's Wells please daddy bezos.

I'm still waiting to see. If they don't change the roles of the main characters fill (like who the actual Dragon Reborn is), I'll be able to roll with a lot of the changes they make. If they do, I doubt the show would last long enough to be able to film Dumai's Wells.

[mickybrighteyes]

It's actually not one town.

It's a fairly large swath of land with 4 towns and quite a few independent farms.

I think that's a VERY generous description for size given it's far smaller than Tarwin's Gap on any map. And despite the foot notes labeling multiple locations i wouldn't call them all 'towns' (your link doesn't even list 4 towns.... it lists a "Small Town" and 3 Villages which should imply certain population levels given English usage of the settlement words used.

[Kharadin]

I'm still waiting to see. If they don't change the roles of the main characters fill (like who the actual Dragon Reborn is), I'll be able to roll with a lot of the changes they make. If they do, I doubt the show would last long enough to be able to film Dumai's Wells.

I honestly cannot fathom that they would change who the Dragon is, I can imagine the next ep or two might include jebaiting the audience into thinking it's Nyneave, but even Moiraine has basically already explained she's too old for it to really be her.

Like, the story wouldn't work if it's not our boy so I'd be floored if they'd do something so silly.

[mickybrighteyes]

Oh yeah, that's actually one that upset me a little, I coulda got down with most sword styles but I'm 100% sure Tam's sword wasn't described even close to a katana. I didn't imagine it quite like your image but that's very close to what I had in mind, just a pretty no-frills kinda falchion. I also imagined the heron mark on the crossguard but now that I think about it I reckon I just head canon-ed that because I think the books do say it tends to be on the hilt.

There's a long ass Robert Jordan Style description for the sword to include a hilt of braided metal, heron marks on hilt and blade, and it's single edged blade. Something fair different from what guards and mercenaries would have

edit:

but really... the basic description should have been something like a Falchion or what I've come to understand as a Kriegmesser. Defintely NOT a katana

[Kharadin]

I think that's a VERY generous description for size given it's far smaller than Tarwin's Gap on any map. And despite the foot notes labeling multiple locations i wouldn't call them all 'towns' (your link doesn't even list 4 towns.... it lists a "Small Town" and 3 Villages which should imply certain population levels given English usage of the settlement words used.

I mean, it takes them a day and a night to ride at full pelt out of the Two Rivers, right? And then later on we find out it's about a three-day march from Taren Ferry to Emond's Field when they come to help out Perrin.

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There's a long ass Robert Jordan Style description for the sword to include a hilt of braided metal, heron marks on hilt and blade, and it's single edged blade. Something fair different from what guards and mercenaries would have

I must have skipped over the braided metal, that's entirely new to me and I've read the books four times. Maybe I'll catch it on the fifth. I guess I am almost done with the Licanius Trilogy, I could go again.

[mickybrighteyes]

I honestly cannot fathom that they would change who the Dragon is, I can imagine the next ep or two might include jebaiting the audience into thinking it's Nyneave, but even Moiraine has basically already explained she's too old for it to really be her.

Like, the story wouldn't work if it's not our boy so I'd be floored if they'd do something so silly.

wouldn't be the first time a showrunner has baited an audience so blatantly.