The Wheel of Time: The Thread Reborn (Book Spoilers)

[Lord Varys]

5 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

No, even if Rand can do the same level of the stuff with the Eye as with Callandor, you couldn't cut Callandor, because it's role in the story is about more than it's ability to magnify the amount of the One Power it let you draw. Did your reading up not reveal this?

Whatever it does is irrelevant. If the writers of the show want Rand be able to do what he does with Callandor without Callandor or by some other means than this will happen because they can write it so. That's not that hard. These people are not bound by any rules you think apply to them.

5 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

This is a fairly incoherently sentence, but if you mean linking can be used in place of angreal and sa'angreal, no, no it cannot, because that requires you to constantly have a certain number of people around you to act as a battery. Since people don't fit into bags or pockets, I think the function and use of angreal and sa'angreal, both in book and as narrative devices, should be fairly clear. 

Of course it can, if they write it so. They would not even have to be consistent about it, actually, just like Jordan isn't ;-).

I'm aware that linking and the angreals aren't the same - but they could very well be similar or the same in the show.

5 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

So they grant wishes, but have no rules, and pose no risk?

Basically, just cut the transdimensional baggage, make them like djinns or something like that living in objects or special places. We don't need the characters spending entire chapters in other dimensions in the show.

In fact, if you ask me, even special abilities of folks should not be given by way of 'wish-granting' - because that's lazy writing again - but if they want to go with that then just keep the thing brief.

And while we are that: Also cut down the whole 'Rand has to prove to the Aiel he is who he says he is after he has already proven he is the Dragon Reborn' plot. The bad guys setting up a rival savior pretender to challenge Rand is a decent enough plot ... but the whole schism with the Shaido and what not should be wrapped up very quickly.

5 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

This isn't Dungeons and Dragons. You don't need to burn a hundred people at the pyre to charge your "spells" because there are no spells to charge. If this annoys you, go read some other series. I see no reason why the story needs to be changed to make it more generic to satisfy you.

Man, I meant from a metaphysical viewpoint it is nonsense that sorcerers have the ability to destroy or endanger reality itself while they cannot really reshape or recreate it. For one, in this setting with a good Creator there is no way he would give his creatures the ability to use something like balefire, especially not this easily. Basically these people have the ability to destroy not just the world but reality itself by ways of throwing fireballs or lighting - it is ridiculous, actually.

Second, evil nihilistic dude running things would have no problem with reality burning. He wants to no longer exist, ever, so why not burn the world in the process of reaching that goal? Not to mention that technically balefire should be *the way* to do away with the seals at the Dark One's prison, right? It destroys everything, so whatever weaves Lews Therin and his gang used could not possibly withstand balefire.

Ishamael can use balefire, so why did he waste time with the Trolloc Wars and Hawkwing and stuff rather than trying to free his master while he was out and about? Why didn't he have the Black Ajah do that, after he created them, etc.?

Have to agree with you about that cats/dogs thing. Sounds like a completely weirdo way to - yet, again, and quite childishly - mark men and women as completely different on a fundamental level. Which is just a stupid general premise of this series.

In the animal department the idea that there are 'evil animals' and 'good animals' is also something that is pretty stupid, actually. Arbitrarily rats and crows are 'evil' but wolves are good and decent anti-Shai'tan animals. Why is this the case? Why can't the Dark One corrupt and enslave all the life he touches like he does in the Blight? How is it that they can produce incredibly fertile Trolloc monsters (who go on and on and on despite the fact that their bosses are gone for millennia) but not force wolves to do their bidding?

[fionwe1987]

Ok, you've made a load of completely factually incorrect statements, based on your nonexistent reading, about aspects of the books and then also said that anything at all can be changed however you'd prefer it. Heck, they could make Lord Varys the super genius who saves the world by reading the Wheel of Time and commenting on it on this board. But why's that a useful contribution to a book spoiler discussion of this adaptation? 

If that's the level of your contribution, once again, why are you in this thread? If the story can be totally different from the books at the most fundamental level in terms of events, characters and themes, to the point of not being recognizably the books, what then is the point of a discussion with people who have a)read the books, b) like them and c) want some aspects of the books preserved on the screen? What exactly is your point here?

[Corvinus85]

Luckily Rafe Judkins seems to be a fan of the books and so far he's done the best he could to adapt the story.

[karaddin]

I feel like the Finn contribute to making the world feel larger and more real without feeling like they need to be explained, which is a useful thing to include. If nothing else I like balefire for being a tool that the shadow refuse to use yet we see the light using it only to eventually realise they probably shouldn't be. Removing the respawning Forsaken does remove some of the urgency around it, but I think you can still have that basic dynamic with another cause.

On the cats and dogs thing, come on - you're all intelligent and you know it has nothing to do with wolves or domestication, its leaning on the real world bullshit gendering of cats as feminine and dogs as masculine. An adaptation of the story which attempts to remove some of the less palatable gender essentialism is entirely right to jettison that.

On balefire and the dark ones prison - balefire travels within the physical realm, the dark ones prison is not located within the physical realm, even though its "closest" at SG. Likewise the seal is also not physically present and thus balefire can't hit those weaves. Also its established that cuendillar is not effected by balefire, and given thats what the physical representation of the seals is made out of, I'd say its pretty unlikely balefire would destroy the weaves even if it could reach them. Its unclear if they physically block it, or are simply insubstantial to it so it passes right through without doing anything.

I did think that goading Rand into unravelling the pattern with balefire was the Dark Ones plan, so I would like an exploration of why the shadow doesn't use it explicitly to do that - the rest of the Forsaken might simply want to keep living but Ishy would do that regardless so I think its safe to assume the DO doesn't want that. Perhaps unravelling the pattern in that way wouldn't give him the materials to "remake it in his image". The DO is essentially a primordial being of chaos/destruction, so being unable to create the materials of reality could certainly fit, just reshape what exists as he sees fit.

Also Callandor and angreal / sa'angreal are irreplaceable without gutting much of whats important in the story, whatever summaries you've read are simply failing to convey their importance to the story. Yes you could write around them, but it would drastically change the story and take way more screen time than simply including them - why on earth would a show only audience struggle with "this object amplifies the power a lot" and "this object basically makes you a god". If the issue is that you feel the Forsaken fail to adequately prioritise retrieving them for personal use, you can simply make them much more rare than in the book. But the base concept, Callandor and the Choden Kal are core to the story.

[Arakasi]

I think Varys has gone quite overboard on the cuts here but one thing is true. To make this fit in 8 seasons or whatever a lot of cuts need to be made. There is quite a lot of details for details sake that is in the book that doesn’t need to be here.

For example: Men being able to detect woman channeling by fealing pinpricks or what not. This is actually a somewhat important plot point but it is really hard to show on screen and I would guess it is completely cut. And while I do agree Callandor is likely too iconic to cut can we say the same about the Choden Kal? Or how about all the little odd Terangrael that give odd effects.
 

We have see an angrael already with the little carved woman Moiraine has so there is going to be some for sure but there are a lot of little quirks of the power and artifacts that are going to need to be cut. They need to choose a subset of the most important power uses, techniques and artifacts to focus on.

[Maithanet]

I guess you could write around callandor or the choeden kal, but why?  I mean, it's not hard to explain at all.  Plus callandor is kinda badass, which is something many people like in a fantasy series.

[karaddin]

Without the CK the whole method for cleansing saidin falls apart. I don't think you can hand wave that away as simply something that could be done by linking, but even if you could its going to take an absolutely enormous number of people involved (and Rand couldn't trust that many) AND they're going to be very vulnerable to being killed during the fight. So you're going to add probably multiple episodes just to remove something that barely requires screen time at all, just a handful of lines in other scenes.

And I still don't think it makes sense if its simply people being linked, as you're going to be exposing every man there to an enormous amount of taint that will send most of them mad on the spot. The setup of the CK still gave Rand some level of buffer that isn't present with linking, and he's a ta'veren which could be argued is protecting him from the madness somewhat. The rest don't have such luck.

[fionwe1987]

I agree a lot has to be cut. Additionally, parts of the world building will need to be merged, or modernized, or altered to fit the visual medium.

All that is fine, but one part of what sets WoT apart is the depth of it's magic system. While Sanderson definitely carries RJ's torch here, and well, a big part of WoTs success on page has to do with how it makes magic a technology, with some amount of rules and quite a bit of cohesion, despite RJ leaving himself quite a bit of room to not be cornered by One Power mechanics. 

WoT may be derivative in multiple ways, but one of it's innovations was the way it has big, reality altering "magic" happening on screen, but the people doing those things are believably people, and while the specifics of their actions wouldn't have been predicted 100%, the groundwork has been laid for a lot of it, so it coheres together remarkably well.

Even if the show cannot possibly keep every aspect of that system intact, nor should they, I do hope they try their best to convey the same depth to it, as well as as much breadth as they can manage. 

Will that mean a bunch of items that are, at heart, McGuffins? Sure. But that's true of a lot of science fiction and fantasy. WoTs at least hangs together well, better than some of the best science fiction out there, and it'd be a shame to lose all of that. 

[Arakasi]

I don’t agree that the CK needs to be kept just for that scene. Callandor during that fight is given to an Ashaman and really is made a sideshow. So we have this mega powerful artifact that is in the prophecies and all and gets made pointless by an even bigger magic artifact. It’s a level of minutiae that really doesn’t have to be there. The important thing is Rand and Nynaeve join together to channel a huge amount of power to cleanse saidin while their friends protect them from attack. Why can’t they just have Callandor be what Rand uses there?
 

Having or not having more artifacts is not central to the core story and you’re going to lose a lot of viewers if you keep a lot of this magic item searching that exists in the books. They have a rather limited amount of time and the story needs to be about the character and plots and not about finding magic loot. Choose a few artifacts of importance and focus on those. The rest can be cut because it was often character A got an item and then character B had to get an item to get stronger and fight them and now A needs to get a stronger item and so on.

in my opinion the really important magic items are the dagger, Callandor, Mats’ medallion, waygates, the oath rods, the Seanchan collars and the seals. Maybe they can have people running around with angrael but I don’t think it’s necessary.

[karaddin]

But there isn't a hunt for the CK access keys, that isn't a time sink which needs to be covered. Callandor has very unique properties which both make it impossible to use safely without knowing the key to it and which are required for resealing the DO's prison - Rand gaining this awareness is one of the key components of the climax of the story so if you bring that forward to him using it to cleanse saidin and you undercut that revelation from the climax. And if you removed the part that makes it impossible to use safely under normal circumstances, then you lose one of the most potently disturbing scenes in the entire series which is Rand attempting to use it to bring someone back to life.

It's also some of the best foreshadowing RJ does.

I just don't see what problem you're trying to fix by removing these things and still having it make sense without adding screen time instead of subtracting it. They aren't a big time sink, and "magic harder" is not a complex concept for an audience to grasp.

[Gertrude]

As much as I hate the Bowl of the Winds, a lot of things happen here and I do think this is an item worth keeping. This is where Mat meets Tuon, the girls meet the Kin, the Sea Folk are brought back into the story, they are faced with the Seachan and damanae again, they recover many items, some of which are useful (is this where Nyneave gets her jewelry?).

It's not like the Sea Folk do anything much, but it is a nice point that, along with the Kin and Wise Ones, the Aes Sedai don't have a monopoly on the One Power. This helps form Egwene's ideas about reforming the Tower, and I'd hate to lose that bit - looking forward to improve the world, even as they are facing End Times. I think these plot points could be shuffled around and lose the Bowl itself, but this is one hunt for items of power that actually has more purposes than to just get the item.

[IFR]

7 hours ago, karaddin said:

Also Callandor and angreal / sa'angreal are irreplaceable without gutting much of whats important in the story, whatever summaries you've read are simply failing to convey their importance to the story. Yes you could write around them, but it would drastically change the story and take way more screen time than simply including them

This has actually been my opinion on the major changes by the show. However, the show's response thus far is to just hand-wave aside the inconsistencies and move on. Conceivably that could be the case with items of Power and items that amplify Power.

wrt the rest of Lord Varys' post, I'm reminded of a movie I watched recently, Man on the Moon. That's the sense I'm getting from the posts. I haven't been keeping up with the lit thread, but presumably thousands of words are being devoted to tearing into the series while being inadequately informed, after thousands more pages are angrily consumed. I don't know why anyone would dedicate such a significant chunk of their time to something that they hate, but that's apparently LV's thing. Of course they would want the show to be completely different from the books, since they hate the books.

Honestly, I cannot for the life of me understand it, but hey, it's their life to burn.

[Ran]

13 hours ago, Werthead said:

The dogs and cats liking different kinds of channellers is probably the absolute tiniest level of detail Jordan dropped into the series, and is so far beyond being disposable that it's really not worth getting worked up about.

They literally went out of their way not just to drop it, but repudiate it with "Jenny the dog". What does it mean when they do that on such a tiny detail that just adds some color to the world, some mark that makes it distinct from ours? They've made the world more like ours, not less. It's a very odd choice.

I was recently told that GRRM has remarked to people adapting his work that he can generally understand big changes in adapted works, because they tend to be understood as cuts or compressions to fit the medium... but that changing little  details are where he can get annoyed, because it's literally just the adapter putting their personal aesthetic preferences over the text and the writer they're adapting. We've seen this in his commentaries on MCU films deliberately going out of their way to change even trivial details about characters for no rhyme or reason beyond someone thinking they knew better.

I think I feel the same way about this sort of thing, personally.

[Myrddin]

I'm in the middle or re-reading Fires of Heaven. For the love of the Light, I hope the show drops the traveling menagerie. Nothing in this storyline can't be ported to a more interesting storyline. Moggy. Birgritte. Galad. It can all be folded into Tanchico or something. 

[fionwe1987]

8 hours ago, Arakasi said:

I don’t agree that the CK needs to be kept just for that scene. Callandor during that fight is given to an Ashaman and really is made a sideshow. So we have this mega powerful artifact that is in the prophecies and all and gets made pointless by an even bigger magic artifact. It’s a level of minutiae that really doesn’t have to be there. The important thing is Rand and Nynaeve join together to channel a huge amount of power to cleanse saidin while their friends protect them from attack. Why can’t they just have Callandor be what Rand uses there?

And what is Nynaeve to use, here? Additionally, the CK are also important to Rand's epiphany, in a way Callandor cannot be. You can change Callandor to allow it to work there, but then it doesn't work in the Last Battle. Those specifics actually matter to the plot, and as others pointed out, the finding of the CK isn't a big plot arc. You have Lanfear introduce the concept, which does double work in showing how power hungry she is. It also allows them to discuss the original intended purpose of the CK, if they want, to add more depth to the debate between LTT and LPD over how to seal away the Dark One. 

Rand then finds the Access Keys in Rhuidean, and hides them away till the Cleansing. This isn't a lot of screen time. And retrofitting Callandor to work here means finding some other sa'angreal for Nynaeve, and that, as pointed out, means more screentime than the story as is. 

[Corvinus85]

6 hours ago, Gertrude said:

As much as I hate the Bowl of the Winds, a lot of things happen here and I do think this is an item worth keeping. This is where Mat meets Tuon, the girls meet the Kin, the Sea Folk are brought back into the story, they are faced with the Seachan and damanae again, they recover many items, some of which are useful (is this where Nyneave gets her jewelry?).

It's not like the Sea Folk do anything much, but it is a nice point that, along with the Kin and Wise Ones, the Aes Sedai don't have a monopoly on the One Power. This helps form Egwene's ideas about reforming the Tower, and I'd hate to lose that bit - looking forward to improve the world, even as they are facing End Times. I think these plot points could be shuffled around and lose the Bowl itself, but this is one hunt for items of power that actually has more purposes than to just get the item.

I would venture that maybe this can be significantly reduced and combined with another object, and still allow Mat's involvement and the presence of all those groups - the male a'dam. Combine the Tarabon plot with the Ebou Dar plot (probably put the story in Ebou Dar) and result in Semirhage getting in the end because as I think it's important to how it's used against Rand. But the whole weather aspect can maybe be safely dropped. The show already failed to show the DO's influence on the weather by not setting the start of the story in an unusually long winter. 

[fionwe1987]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

They literally went out of their way not just to drop it, but repudiate it with "Jenny the dog". What does it mean when they do that on such a tiny detail that just adds some color to the world, some mark that makes it distinct from ours? They've made the world more like ours, not less. It's a very odd choice.

I was recently told that GRRM has remarked to people adapting his work that he can generally understand big changes in adapted works, because they tend to be understood as cuts or compressions to fit the medium... but that changing little  details are where he can get annoyed, because it's literally just the adapter putting their personal aesthetic preferences over the text and the writer they're adapting. We've seen this in his commentaries on MCU films deliberately going out of their way to change even trivial details about characters for no rhyme or reason beyond someone thinking they knew better.

I think I feel the same way about this sort of thing, personally.

I think I agree that this is the writers/showrunners putting their stamp/preference on the story. But I also totally think that is ok. This is their adaptation. They're going to have to believe in it and commit to it. Any major changes to the author's vision needs thought and justification, but minor changes like this should be accepted as a way to allow the folks writing the show to commit to the story too. Adaptation is an art, and in that process, you're going to have some minor stamps of personal views and preferences from the writers.

 

For a comparison, I totally got that Sanderson wanted to write something/someone in WoT that was more his. It's a way to help engage his creativity in this world he's taken over. 

My issue with Androl was not with his existence, or even his powers, but in how much importance he was given. Jenny the Dog, on the other hand, we can safely assume is a throwaway character who isn't going to have much importance to the story of the show. As such, I'm fine with that, especially because my own view of the aspect of the story they're changing aligns with the writer who wrote it.

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

I would venture that maybe this can be significantly reduced and combined with another object, and still allow Mat's involvement and the presence of all those groups - the male a'dam. Combine the Tarabon plot with the Ebou Dar plot (probably put the story in Ebou Dar) and result in Semirhage getting in the end because as I think it's important to how it's used against Rand. But the whole weather aspect can maybe be safely dropped. The show already failed to show the DO's influence on the weather by not setting the start of the story in an unusually long winter. 

I'm not sure how the show will handle it, but I think books 7-10 suffer from Rand having to do too much, and the rest not having enough to do, so their stories drag on.

I'd proposed this once before, but I think they can solve this a bit by giving Sammael and the initial Seanchan attack at Illian to Egwene, Elayne, Aviendha and Nynaeve to deal with. The Rebel army is conveniently nearby, conveniently already ready to face Sammael in the books, and needs no particular convincing to fight the Seanchan.

And to simplify things further, the Bowl can be in Illian, as well as the Kin, though this will require some major changes to the story, no doubt. 

In the meantime, I'd have Rand focus on settling the issues in Cairhein, the Cleansing, etc.

I'd see this taking 2 seasons or so, but that compacts a lot of what happens in books 7-10. It allows for Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve's stories to not feel stalled out, as it is in these books, for the most part, it gives Mat and the Band more to do than just move around following people, and I think if they end this arc with a stalemate with the Seanchan that leaves them holding Illian, that gives Egwene excellent motivation to want to reunify the Tower, realizing that a split Tower is no match for the forces that would end it.

Egwene is also a believable substitute for Rand when it comes to the Seachan arc in Path of Daggers. While she isn't going mad, her hatred of the Seanchan is plenty good reason for her to go overboard. Seeing her show her fighting skills earlier would also help make the Rebels eventually following her fully more believable. 

The one big piece I'm not sure how to solve is how Rand and Moridin's balefire streams would cross. They'll either have to invent something, or involve Rand in the Sammael part of this, somehow. 

ETA: scratch that. It could happen when the rogue Asha'man attack Rand in Cairhein. 

[Gertrude]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

I would venture that maybe this can be significantly reduced

Oh Lord, yes. This is part of the stalling that needs to be streamlined. It's just that when I thought about all the things that happen because of this plotline (and I didn't even mention Nyneave's block being lifted), I wondered if it wouldn't just be easier to keep it rather than find places for all of it, but whatever. They know all this and I trust they have plans.

And Myrddin mentioned cutting the circus - again, I completely agree with him, but I could live with it if they cut the tons of filler crap and just used it as a backdrop to get where they are going.

[Maia]

As a dog-lover, I was miffed by Jordan assigning cats and dogs like he did. In addition to all the essentialist connotations it would preclude a family that included channelers of both sexes from having either of these animals as pets! Not to mention that Whitecloaks et al. should have had a much easier time of identifying  channelers if they could just employ sniffer animals. I dare say that Jordan didn't think this one through.

I found this interesting compilation of Jordan's notes:

https://wot-notes.tumblr.com/

Some really interesting tidbits there that give some idea of his writing process. I find my thoughts about the AS strength hierarchy being detrimental to the narrative confirmed , since it prompted RJ to write a ton of notes about where all the AS stood in this respect, which likely contributed to him getting bogged down during later books.

Also, I kinda never realised that Moiraine is a gender-flipped Merlin (rather than Gandalf who she is often compared with), but the notes make it clear. She was even supposed to become the Amyrlin at one point in the early conception of WoT! 

19 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

And Myrddin mentioned cutting the circus - again, I completely agree with him, but I could live with it if they cut the tons of filler crap and just used it as a backdrop to get where they are going.

Heh, I didn't hate the supergirls at the circus, though I'd have liked it to be shorter, but I almost cried when Mat et al. landed there as well! I really think that Nyn and Els reasons for leaving Tear need to be re-worked, though - generally the whole Black Ajah hunt needs to be, because it didn't make a whole lot of sense in the books.