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David Selig

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Everything posted by David Selig

  1. This is putting it very mildly, the sexism in these books is really blatant. And I haven't even read the third which is apparently the worst in this aspect. There is a significant subplot in the second book where One of the main characters in Book 1 was married but we never even learned the name of his wife even though he spent significant time at home while she was there. As for the scientific plausibility of this book, it's always been funny to me when people claimed it's hard science fiction when the whole plot is based on blatantly violating the laws of nature. But that didn't bother me much. What bothered me was the really absurd premise of the plot of the first book where many scientists started committed suicide due to thier physics experiments showing weird and inconsitent results which disproved many of the established theories in the field of physics.
  2. Because most of the time he wasn't and he was shown to be pretty generous with money on quite a few occassions throughout the series. But the show pretty often ignored established characterisation for the sake of making a joke so there was a handful of scenes where he was cheap to get a laugh from the audience.
  3. I had mostly given up on the show but gave Season 4 a chance, partly because I was curious to see how much of my country's capital would be recognisible there (I had heard that the scenes which are supposed to be in Moscow were shot in Sofia). And it's very obvious, in Margo's first scenes this season they showed some of the most recognizable location of Sofia which was pretty funny to me. They also used the infamous Ikarus 260 bus when she tried to get to the Star City, which was a staple of public transport in Bulgaria (and the rest of the Soviet bloc) for decades and you could still see some on the roads of Bulgarian cities until several years ago. I guess even with cheap energy the Soviets were still unwilling to modernise public transport too much. Margo walking around at a Sofia location known as the Largo in Episode 1 was also funny to me. I don't know if this was an intentional joke by the showrunners. Anyway, I agree that the show is a bit better than in the previous seasons, but not that great overall. Miles' plotline is especially irritating to me, there is no way in hell this reckless dumbass would have been so successful at such a business. And the fact that the 72 year old Ed was still one of the top pilots at the start of the season and was given the most important jobs was just destroying my suspension of disbelief, good thing this seems to be over for now.
  4. I found Tactician mode easier than I expected on my second playthrough when I knew what I was doing and which spells and skills are the best. IMO healing is pretty weak in this game, it's almost always better to focus on dealing maximum damage and crowd control the enemy than on healing. Once I started focusing on the most powerful disabling spells (like "Hold Person") and on dealing damage instead of trying to heal my team the combat became much easier. Parties without any healers in them are completely viable unlike many other RPGs.
  5. Spirit Guardians works great on Tactician too in that battle.
  6. Hold Person and Hold Monster are extremely strong. With a properly built caster and decent equipment they have almost 100% chance of paralyzing almost any enemy and most enemies can't get out of this condition until the end of the battle. And paralyzed enemeies take autocrits from melee attacks and attacks against them can't miss, so they die very quickly. Spirit Guardians is incredible against mobs, especially undead, and strong against almost everyone else. Counterspell is a must have, completely turns around so many fights, especially in Act 3.
  7. Pretty low, the showrunner stated when asked about this that he's "more interested in polyamory than polygamy". Though this was a long time ago, when season 1 was still in the planning stage, so maybe the plans have changed. Anyway, after rewatching the Avenger Assemble portion of the last episode where the EF5+Elayne gathered together, I realized there is not a single time in the books where this happen - the 6 of them being together "onscreen". Perrin and Elayne don't appear in a scene together until Book 13. Hopefully things will be different in the show and we'll see all of them together more often.
  8. Sanderson didn't write a single word of the books the show is currently adapted. He is not a screenwriter either. So his opinion doesn't carry any more weight than that of any other fan of the series to me. And it's not like he's some sort of expert on the lore, his WoT books are full of continuity errors despite him having two assistants whose main job was to prevent this, as well as Harriet for his editor. Someone on Reddit said yesterday that after Harriet Sanderson knows best what Jordan would have wanted in a TV adaptation which was a downright absurd claim to me. Sanderson never met or talked to Jordan.
  9. An obvious historical analogy is World War II, where Britain and USA allied with Stalin's USSR (only several years after the Great Purge in which Stalin had about 700,000 person executed and less than a decade after the Holodomor) to stop Hitler. Churchill in particular was a staunch opponent of the Bolshevik regime since its creation but he had to be practical.
  10. As bad as they are, the Seanchan are better than the Shadow and Rand and company were fighting for the fate of the world, so couldn't afford to refuse any possible allies.
  11. Some fans online wanted Sanderson to be a screenwriter in the show but I've always thought this was absurd. He would be a horrendous screenwriter, his dialogue is without exaggeration the worst I've read in a professionally published author. And he'd be especially bad for a show with only 8 episodes per season because he has used tow rite only doorstoppers full of bloat. It's hard to take your posts seriously when you say stuff like this one.
  12. I have a pretty low opinion of Judkins' abilities as a writer, but this is a really flawed comparison. Sanderson was specifically hired to write his WoT volumes as close to Jordan's vision and volumes as possible because he wasn't adapting the work in another medium, he was continuing it. Judkins is making an adaptation and his main objective is to make a successful TV show based on The Wheel of Time book series, not to stick as close as possible to the books. And I doubt Judkins is trying to depict Lan as the same character as he is in the books and falling badly, he (or his Amazon bosses) probably thought Book Lan is a a pretty boring character who needed major changes to be interesting to the tv audience.
  13. I very much agree. We get a million repetitive tedious fighting scenes which didn't matter in the grand picture yet we didn't get a Siuan and Moiraine reunion. Or a meeting between Egwene and Cadsuane. Or a Lini and Elayne reunion (so much comedy potential wasted). Or even a reunion between the ta'veren trio. Egwene and Gawyn got married offscreen and no other character reacted to it, not even Elayne. IIRC Elayne and Egwene didn't even talk to each other once after Merrilor and all we got from the potential of interesting friction between them after Elayne was made the Supreme commander of the forces of the Light was a decision by Silviana and Egwene to start calling "Elayne Sedai" instead by her "civil title". And there some really embarassing continuity errors by Sanderson and Team Jordan, like Mat and Min acting like old buddies even though they have never interacted before in the series.
  14. The Companion's entries for them state they were born shortly before the Last Battle, so they can't be Elayne's twins. Even so, Elayne has nothing to worry about the succession in Andor, her kids will be a boy and a girl, as per Min's viewing, just what Elayne wants and is most useful in the Andoran system. Aviendha got drunk enough to forget that part of Min's viewing about Elayne's children, but not the rest.
  15. The only time they are mentioned in the series is when Mat recalls the Falme events during his meeting with Birgiite in Ebou Dar. And their description is very spare, only that Shivan wears a black mask and her sister wears a red one.
  16. Yeah, the limited screentime for the season is a major problem. Especially when the writers were trying to develop not just the main Light side characters, but also the main bad guys this season. There are just too many important characters for a show with 8 episodes per season and a lot of plot to cover in every one. The show writers have clearly been clearly more interested in their female characters, especially Moiraine and Egwene, than in the ta'veren trio so far. I don't think this makes the show "woke", whatever that mean, but it's a pretty clear trend. I am fine with the show being less Rand-centric than the Books 1 and 2 are and I like the Supergirls plotlines more than most readers of the series, but I think things went too far in the other direction in the show. I wonder when Elayne learned that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. Did Nynaeve told her that when they were climbing the tower? Or was she completely confused what the hell was going on there?
  17. How deadly is the Shadar Logoth dagger supposed to be in the show, BTW? All I can recall about it from last season is that Loial was stabbed with it in the last episode and somehow survived without explanation. Here Rand survived for minutes after being stabbed and was Healed by Elayne really quickly. On the other hand, the dagger was like a mini lightsaber when it cut with extreme ease through Mat's door and the Horn's box.
  18. Pretty disappointing finale to me. Way too many contrived moments where it felt the characters have read the plot. "Mat, bring the Horn to Rand right now, even though we have no idea he is here", for example. The Seanchan were pathetic redshirts who got slaughtered en masse with ease by our guys time and time again. Moiraine destroying a dozen large ships who were miles away from her was just absurd. The Whitecloacks freaking catapult beating so many damane was silly. Even the spectacle was pretty average because the fighting choreography was subpar and the channelling effect were too repetitive. But the worst was the blatant favourisim towards Egwene who got most of the glory. Of course she didn't need saving, why did Nynaeve and Elayne even bothered with a plan, superbadass Egwene who is the showrunner's favourite obviously won't need anythign like this. Her standing up to Ishamael one on one for so long was ridiculous. Poor Nynaeve got nothing this episode, not only she didn't do anything to save Egwene, but it was Elayne who Healed Rand. And she couldn't do her job as a Wisdom properly with the arrow in Elayne's leg. Ingtar's sacrifice was pretty pointless, not only there was no dramatic weight without the Darkfriend reveal, but also he didn't buy the others any time anyway. The alley was too wide to hold the enemies there and he was died in thirty seconds. Mat had some good moments and Lanfear is always cool, and there was some spectacular shots. Moghedien was good too. I actually liked how Rand dealt with Thurak, the fight in the books has always seemed contrived and implausible to me. But overall I was disappointed.
  19. The Wheel Of Time Season 2 Was Completely Rewritten After One Actor’s Exit Pretty interesting info from Judkins on how Barney Harris's departure impacted the show.
  20. I'd have loved to have seen more of Elayne and Nynaeve, they have great chemistry together. Figuring out how to use the a'dam, for example. What we got was good, but too brief. Perrin's stuff was again boring. Also, Aviendha getting beat up for defending herself in a fight made no sense to me.
  21. This episode was really impressive visually, the show has made massive strides in this area since last season. Lanfear blowing everything up was a spectacular sequence. But the writing had so many issues. Moiraine and Lan defying the Amyrlin to join Lanfear had me facepalming. Siuan's plan for Rand was pretty flawed, but when the other option was literally doing exactly what ishamael and Lanfear wanted of him at this point, Moiraine and Lan going along with it made no sense to me. And Lan figuring out that moiraine has been shielded, not stilled, felt extremely contrived.
  22. Yeah, it's always been bizarre to me that the only Green Ajah member in the books that we know for sure has had training in tactics and strategy is Elayne and she got it as a Daughter-heir, not in the Tower. And even she had zero weapon training even though she clearly had to be the genes to be good at it - her brothers are both elite swordsmen and she learned to do backflips on a tight rope without the aid of the One Power in about two weeks.
  23. In basketball, unlike in soccer, the World Cup is not the biggest international tournament. It just doesn't have the prestige of the Olympics for historical reasons. FIFA restrict the participation of players over 23 in the Olympics soccer tournament but I don't see FIBA doing this any time soon, it would massively hurt the prestige of the international game.
  24. That's something that shouldn't be given to anyone IMO because the Shaido after Dumai's Wells are a complete waste of pages and the reason for the most boring plotline in the series.
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