I always felt drawn in by the world, and honestly the imagery in the first season had me excited. The remains of buildings and other links to the past were compelling.
::: spoiler spoiler
Now... We visit the Panarchs palace and it is a few dimly lit rooms and some corridors with what 5 - 6 guards. Instead of watching Nynaeve prove that when she is mad enough she is a force of nature. She gets thrown in the lake and the voice of her dream child makes her sad enough to channel.
Instead of Elayne being in control and showing how poised someone who is raised to rule can be we have her trying to best Jaskier in the fantasy series earworm stakes.
Instead of Moiraine being the ultimate enigma who always has an angle and is revealed to be a master manipulator who has been pulling everyone's strings she makes a deal with Lanfear and acts like the worlds oldest emo.
Siuan Sanche gets blindsided and deposed by Aes Sedai who scheme about as well as the current US administration and almost as subtly. I seriously don't know why they even mention Gareth Bryne when we seem to have effectively written out the other half of that plot thread.
All the shit they did to and with Loial.
I think they read Mat as someone who inspires everyone to punch him repeatedly in the face until he shuts up... That's not roguish charm to me.
:::
I'm sorry, I like the books and my main problems with the characters are Jordan's insistence on repeatedly recycling the same mannerisms over and over (tugging on braids) not the way they are written on a mental or emotional level.
I guess I just see it differently. I keep on saying that I have to view this as a separate turning of the wheel, where everyone has been sniffing paint.
I don't really feel that anyone encompasses the character they are portraying, maybe if we are really lucky they take the most obvious surface level characteristic and make that the entirety of the character. They are so busy cutting content out to make door stopper books fit in less than 8 hours of TV while cherry-picking the exciting scenes that there is an increasing amount of disconnection and disjointed story telling. Instead of deliberate action the characters are just stumbling around having things happen.
It feels to me like they are adapting from chapter summaries not the books. Which would maybe be acceptable back in the 1990s/2000s but these days we have stellar adaptations like the Expanse to show how it can be done correctly.
I really wish I had watched what you did. What I saw was not that. Glad you are enjoying it though.
Morbid curiousity in part. Also let's face it genre tv is dying, if it doesn't get at least some views then it will get worse. I just wish they would outright state, we are making a series inspired by the plot and setting of insert ip here. Instead of mangling the story of the books.
Without meaning to start another round of complaints, do you not feel that an element of innocence and wonder from the two rivers crowd is missing in this adaptation? I feel like Queen Tylin will look more the fool than the cougar if she ends up even in the story? The Aes Sedai are emotional messes, not the image of serenity and cunning I always viewed them as through the book. I know the budget likely wouldn't stretch to it but I feel that the Aes Sedai agelessness could be well depicted with current de-aging processes and would have allowed for a visceral demonstration of the effects of stilling... Although looks like that won't be a plot point anyway.
I could go on. But this whole thing reminds me of the Altered Carbon series, first season digressed from the books, but I could find a lot to appreciate in Kinnamans performance, by season 2 the digressions were becoming silly. If they got season 3 that would have been wacky. I feel like if you can't do the source, don't try to do the source and make that clear, that way your writers get to write their own thing in universe as opposed to constantly grabbing the interesting bits and trying to stick them together like a skin suit to wear over their own creativity.
Anyway there's a coinflip that Amazon will shut it down rather than greenlight another series and I doubt Sony would be able to sell it to anyone else at this stage, so I might not have anything more to complain about going forward. Guess we will see.
I reiterate my statement from last week, this is a distinct turning of the wheel where everyone has been sniffing paint. So many frustrating events as a book reader. I gritted my teeth through this whole season. I don't imagine this will run for too much longer, but if it does I wonder how they will manage the huge divergance from the source material to what this thing is.
::: spoiler spoiler
We just forgot about Asmodean, Sammael killed by Moghedien for some stupid reason about wanting to know how to kill Chosen, it's not like this would be a mystery for her, she has almost certainly killed or caused to be killed Dreadlords and Forsaken before. Moiraine and Lanfear not unwilling guests of the Eelfinn. Siuan killed off, a POV character who only gets a bit less page time than Aviendha across the whole series. Min has a story arc that is nothing like her book incarnation. Melindhra, effectively just reusing an existing name for a newly invented and insanely dumb character.
:::
I could almost forgive this in a world where the Lord of the Rings didn't exist, or the Expanse. But this just seems to me like the writers and showrunners were so excited about getting the rights that they didn't realise they just weren't up to delivering on an adaptation that was true to the narrative and spirit of the books. Put simply they are not capable of creating a series that makes sense, let alone one that could be considered a good faith adaptation of the source.
My favourite part of this show is explaining to my wife all the things they excised/changed/ stuffed up at the end of each episode / series, I think I almost have her convinced to give the books a go.
Oh yeah that's what I mean, the trail of wreckage they leave as they get promoted out of the positions they ruin is astounding.
Not sure huge is the adjective I would use here. Shapely and well proportioned sure, but huge... I'm sorry no. But then again this is just OnlyFans advertising scattershot so guess we shouldn't be surprised.
Yeah, just wait until the Australian electorate has a brain fart and let's Sky News convince them to vote in spud head. He will get right on to climate change by "nuclear-ifying"* our power grid.
^ * "nuclear-ifying" is a term of art that should not be interpreted to mean any actual progress will be made towards nuclear power generation. Expect to see increased demand placed on coal and gas power plant, all hail Gina. Spoken and authorised by the Liberuhal Party... Oh and /s so it's not elecgion interference ^
Oh it's tragic. The kid is headed for a life of middle management, like I said he may or may not have been being honest. But he goes to the expensive private school that I couldn't afford to send one of my kids to, let alone both. He will make the right connections and be part of the right social circles that details like not understanding his achievements won't really matter.
I've worked for that sort of guy across industries and business, they do fine.
That's fair. I never actually subscribed to Reddit, I was wary of social media after a brief time on Facebook where I realised it was harming my mental health. Plus I was friends with a bunch of strippers, a lingerie model who did a shoot with Playboy the year before I became friends with her, and a super exhibitionist gay guy I worked with... Result was I needed 2 Facebook profiles and swapping back and forth all the time was too stressful.
Which is a long way of saying that Lemmy is my first social media in more than 10 yearsnand I am not sure how I feel about downvotes as I don't remember ever having recieved one.
Or if he absolutely has to have a 1 hour response time sounds like a hiring someone to do admin might be the best way to stay competitive.
Had a chat with my kids friends while dropping them at home, they were talking about a kid who got busted using ChatGPT for some schoolwork. When I jokingly asked one of them how he avoids getting caught he admitted he uses it for "first drafts" then rewrites the whole thing in "his own words". A bit of drilling down and he admitted it takes him longer to write a short paper with ChatGPT but it's easier because he doesn't have to think of what to say, just how to change the words.
If he was being honest the irony of the dumb kid rewriting the idiot boxes responses so he doesn't get caught is just... Getting the article off Wikipedia and doing the same thing would have a similar result... Only with less faffing around and environmental impact.
I allowed NSFW posts because I used to get some truly random shit coming up back when I lurked Reddit that way, so when I got Boost for Lemmy I thought I would do the same. Reddit had a much better ratio of weird and wacky vs onlyfans ads. Lemmy unfortunately only seems to have OnlyFans ads.
I kinda miss some of the bizarre ARAD topics, or shower beers or borderline brain melting confessions.
Oh but if he read my comment he would no doubt say that he doesn't have a problem with trans people **BUT... ** they just shouldn't be allowed to use bathrooms, you know, to protect the women.
And you just know that if he is willing to engage with and parrot that stupid culture war talking point in public then his private views are worse.
I find increasingly that sci-fi and fantasy authors often have takes on the real world that are diametrically opposed to their writings and the writings of the people they credit as inspirations. I got the ick from Neal Asher a couple of years back and while I like his fiction I am appalled by his takes on the world we live in.
My go to example has been Richard K Morgans shitty takes on trans subjects despite writing a series of books that explicitly view bodies and mentalities as entirely distinct. How someone could write about a male conciousness in a female body and not get that there can be an intrinsic gender identity which doesn't match external presentation boggles my mind. It would be like finding out Iain Banks was a hardcore fascist (thankfully all I have ever heard about him says his personal ideals were pretty closely aligned with the tone and content of his writings.)
Do any of these rhetorical questions ever get replies?
I'm glad your list of likes is longer than the dislikes. Maybe I am just being a big curmudgeon about it but...
It feels like a lot of the streamlining that they are doing here is because they expect to have to wrap this thing up in 4-5 seasons. If that is the case they are likely to be tempted to grab things from much later books and skip them forward. In order to do that they are going to start amputating plotlines. Between the amputations and the cauterisation of what is kept so it doesn't rely on the missing tissue... I think it's going to get a whole lot more distressing for book fans.
If I had any sense I would stop hate watching this show. Had to convince myself that this is just a completely seperate turning of the wheel where everyone has been huffing paint.
So they:
::: spoiler spoiler
If this show hits Season 6 I predict things will have shifted so much that we may literally start to see entirely different franchises showing up, maybe we will see who they cast as Pug, or Belgarath.
My wife is thinking about getting me a bell for besides the couch.
Wheel of Time Season 3 - Episode 7 Discussion Thread
Episode 7 "GoldenEyes" is out.
I like it, however are you concerned about having something made out of hard plastic, glass and metal at roughly head height in the event of a crash?
Having seen a few improvised claymore mines in cars (rhinestones or diamontes on steering wheels or dashes) it's always something I consider.
They are already complaining about the hole in the budget illegal tobacco products are leaving, how on earth would our economy stand up to losing the addiction tax?
I get a really slimy vibe from this RFI group. Kinda reminds me of the NIMBY groups that go around blocking mobile phone sites.
I remember talking to a planner once about the mobile phone blocking efforts and he was pretty scathing about what he had seen, some of it genuinely people who had an axe to grind based upon Facebook radicalisation, but a lot of it seemed to have deeper financial motivations from some of the organisers.
He told a vague story about a guy who kicked up a big stink with a proposed tower for highway coverage in a rural area, that is until the site was relocated and he found out afterwards that the secondary site selected was owned by a relative of the guy kicking up the stink who made bag off the bush block that was suddenly worth more than 15 times its previous value.
I fully endorse research and feasibility studies with an eye towards minimising environmental impacts, but if the alternative to these projects is continued reliance on coal and gas I suspect that the long term impacts are far more likely to be worse by not going ahead with the OSW.
Of course I would prefer that the development were done by a domestic company rather than foreign investors, but it seems we don't really do massive infrastructure domestically any more.
Almost three quarters of households with a mortgage in the electorate of Lyons are in stress — and a handful of votes may decide the key seat next federal election.
This is it, this "balanced reporting" and uninformed electorate is going to lead to Potato Head getting in.
We had a single election cycle of Labor and they didn't manage to completely fix our economy and all the Liberal fuckery of the previous 2 cycles, so we better give the liberals another chance to fuck us harder.
Every time I run into a Liberal voter I ask the same question "What one thing is most illustrative of them being strong on the economy?"
I have never been given a good answer.
PS not a huge Labor fan either but I know which side of the Overton window I prefer to be pushing on.