I keep betting notifications and emails from them about the show. I know it is something else I need to let go, but it still annoys me how someone can butcher source material like that. I guess since I bought all the books from Amazon they assumed I'd be interested in the show, and if this was early 2000s or prior then yes I would be interested in an adaptation of a book series I enjoyed. If there was ever a nerd court I would put that showrunner on trial. He actually said we want to bring out lgbt content where it is only hinted at as well as the fact that he is a feminist. I would've countered with if the author didn't have much gay stuff in the books maybe it wasn't a priority for him.
I remember I used to get on the WOT subreddit when I was reading the books and had good discussions, then the cast photos came out and I was hoping people would call it out for the obvious "modern day casting", but they didn't and the ones who did say they looked nothing like the book described got the usual attacks.
My parents started watching it and they stopped. My dad will say a show "went gay on him" and stops watching. I used to think he was going overboard but I have pretty much reached that point with anything after 2014 especially with black/female/lgbt stuff since they just keep going on and on about it. I need a trusted recommendation or the one person I'll give a pass to is Denzel since he is one of my all time favorite actors.
Anyway, I really hope Wheel of Time gets cancelled. I would also love to see people refuse to sell the rights of a book/book series to these mega corporations. I fear that what they did to WOT is only child's play compared to what Netflix will do to the Narnia series. Thank goodness they lost the rights to Conan.
You will probably be happy to know that while I’ve been loosely aware of Wheel of Time for years, your mentions of it here are what convinced me to finally buy the books. I’m about 1/4th of the way through the fourth book, and quite happy with the series so far.
It would be vaguely amusing to see a version of it go the other way. Imagine “yes, I’m committed to LGBT representation… you meant playing up the Red Ajah as radfem political lesbians, right?”
More seriously, the worst thing about the casting is that they can’t even use the excuse of “it’s not important! It never affects things! Don’t let it bother you!” As early as book one, the fact that places have consistent phenotypes is made clear, and many of even the minor interactions the Emond’s Fielders have with the wider world are explicitly influenced by the fact that people recognize them as being simple peasant fol. To say nothing of how critically important it is that Rand alone defies those phenotypes in the way he does. You simply can’t have Rand, Perrin, Mat, Nynaeve, and Egwene all look like they’re from different ethnicities.
The early books are the strongest, unfortunately. My memory is hazy, but I recall RJ really starts padding the pages around books 8-10. Famously, one of these books can be skipped entirely without meaningfully affecting the overarching plot. This putzing about was of course made 10x worse when Jordan fucking died before he could finish the series. Sanderson did a competent job rounding it out, but his style is much more shamelessly cinematic.
Yeah, I heard it was conceived as 6 books originally, and honestly, I'm curious to see how it could possibly stretch to 14 books based on where the plot seems to be going now. Still, I'm optimistic that it'll at least be decent overall.
There's something to be said for the value in the journey rather than the ending (though I thought the ending was good). Could certain elements and characters been dropped and the core still have been the same? Sure. Did the Seanchan nation and the foxes and snakes add depth to the world? Definitely.
Jordan also had plans for a post series trilogy following Mat, so it's not like they were pointless additions.
Yea that journey they go on was epic indeed.
Really?! I didn’t know that about Mat. So him and his wife? Did Jordan make an outline or anything?
IIRC not enough to put into a book, or hardly any. He was planning on working on it after finishing the original.
Great to hear you are reading them! Yea, the book really lets you know how isolated Edmond’s Field is so that really is lore breaking to have it be multiracial. I tried to explain this to a show fan and they basically said so what. They do meet all sorts of people when they leave Edmond’s Field as you will see