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The Wheel of Time: Jane Farstrider Herself (Book Spoilers)


Ran

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

I kept telling myself that the warder grief ritual they did was one in which the selected person had to enact the grief of everyone there or something, so that Lan was to some degree acting out a ritualized role rather than conveying his personal feelings.

I doubt that's what they were thinking, but nothing contradicts it. Call it my personal head canon for the show, to try and keep TV-show Lan a bit closer to the stoic character from the novel.

Didn't the guy officiating literally say it was something like that?

13 minutes ago, Mexal said:

That's what happened in the books. I forgot if she told that story in the show.

Yes, she did.  She was clearly recognizing it at her first time channelling too.  I was waiting for Rand to put it together but he didn't, and she didn't confess that she can channel to him, but the audience should be able to read between the lines..  

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In the behind the episode feature, they confirmed that Lan was the designated mourner. Daniel spoke about how to make someone as emotionless as Lan show emotion. No tears, but primal scream.

Seeing Loial again, I think it's he wig that bothers me the most. His prosthetics are growing on me and his fingers certainly look like sausages.  Maybe he can hire a new hairstylist in Fal Dara for season two...

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2 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

And that last scene went way overboard. I'm fine with this being a quieter episode. I'm also fine with exploring the Warder bond more. But Lan screaming thrice and all that chest thumping... It just doesn't work.

It's a wailing ritual, but led by a man instead of a woman or women as it is done in some cultures. I had no problems with it, and it added something interesting to the Warder culture. My question is why just for Warders, and not Aes Sedai, too?

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14 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Didn't the guy officiating literally say it was something like that?

Not really. I mean, yes, it's a ritual, but there's nothing that says how Lan is expected to "relieve" them of their grief.  Lan could have just dropped a single noble tear and thumped his chest or whatever if they wanted to say, "And that's how Lan shows grief.". The step that this particularly histrionic display is a performative act as part of the ritual rather than a real reflection of Lan's natural emotionality is a step you have to head canon.

 

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I have to say that that I always thought Jason Momoa would have made the best Lan from the physicality perspective, but he wouldn't have been a good choice because of other aspects. I was wrong. :P

@Ran Did you write Jane instead of Jain on purpose in the title? 

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1 minute ago, Corvinus85 said:

 

@Ran Did you write Jane instead of Jain on purpose in the title? 

 Rand said the girl (Egwene, surely) "thought she was Jain herself reincarnated". Grammatically speaking, this should probably be understood to mean the pronoun "herself" is referring to the "Jain" rather than "she". 

Ergo, Jain Farstrider in this turning of the Wheel is female.

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7 hours ago, Ran said:

I think you should have left it there rather than suggesting people are smoking drugs. You're defending Judkins by saying he has a different take and then being rude about other people having the temerity to have a different take on the show than you do.s largely ruled by men in the Westlands is probably one of the biggest changes they've done to the setting, by the by.

I think you and I have a very different association with the phrase "smoking crack" if you take that as an insult and a sincere assertion that someone is actually taking drugs, not that I'd view it as an insult even if it was sincere. Please replace it with "it feels like you're watching a different show to me, or that we read different books" or any other way of saying that I can't understand your viewpoint which you don't take to be insulting. Because that part sure as hell wasn't meant to be so apologies for the crossed wires on that one. 

6 hours ago, IFR said:

Once again I'll say that I'm glad for those who are really enjoying the show.

I nitpick on these threads because while I've found a way to get some entertainment from the experience, I personally do not consider the show to be very good at all. It's often almost comically bad.

I don't know. It seems like people are celebrating that the show isn't a complete dumpster fire. On the reddit forums, people are proudly announcing that the series is finally certified fresh on rottentomatoes, or that it has improved to a 7.5 on imdb. By these metrics, this is the bare minimum of the show not being awful.

For me, it's not that there are changes that is the problem. I wish they would have changed some things. I wish they had given Ogiers a radically different design, for instance - anything that would make them stand out enough to be identifiable, but without looking goofy on the profound level.

That's all fair, and I was probably overly antagonistic last night so apologies to you on that score as well. I don't think you have to like it, or think you have to agree with my interpretation and it would be awfully hypocritical of me to do so. Just please save your venom with respect to the crews intent until we see shit like we got from D&D.

2 hours ago, Ran said:

I kept telling myself that the warder grief ritual they did was one in which the selected person had to enact the grief of everyone there or something, so that Lan was to some degree acting out a ritualized role rather than conveying his personal feelings.

This was absolutely my interpretation and thought it was meant to be the clear one, certainly more clear than it needing to be a headcanon. I'm not sure how else to parse the comment from the old warder along the lines of "put your hand on him...take our grief". In that situation the display of pain and emotion becomes his duty, and we all know how he feels about duty.

I see some others have also chimed in since I typed this lol, but I think the point on it being his duty is worth keeping.

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2 hours ago, Ran said:

I kept telling myself that the warder grief ritual they did was one in which the selected person had to enact the grief of everyone there or something, so that Lan was to some degree acting out a ritualized role rather than conveying his personal feelings.

I doubt that's what they were thinking, but nothing contradicts it. Call it my personal head canon for the show, to try and keep TV-show Lan a bit closer to the stoic character from the novel.

That could work. I think Lan being as stoic as in the books is hard to pull off on screen. He’d just look wooden. Stoicism is much easier to protray when you’re in the head of someone observing it. On screen, you need something more. What felt odd was the extent of the departure, but I like the idea of it being a ritual.

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

I'm just going with first time knowingly channeling. Easier to buy given her "listening to the wind" and healing skills and all.

I guess, but that’s not how they phrase it on the show. It would have been easy enough to do it that way, if they wanted to, so I have to think they didn’t on purpose.

 

1 minute ago, Ran said:

 Rand said the girl (Egwene, surely) "thought she was Jain herself reincarnated". Grammatically speaking, this should probably be understood to mean the pronoun "herself" is referring to the "Jain" rather than "she". 

Ergo, Jain Farstrider in this turning of the Wheel is female.

Not necessarily. Souls don’t have gender, so she could think she is the reincarnation of Jain Farstrider, the man. I think that is what they were trying to convey here, but it only works if you know he’s a man from the books.

24 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

It's a wailing ritual, but led by a man instead of a woman or women as it is done in some cultures. I had no problems with it, and it added something interesting to the Warder culture. My question is why just for Warders, and not Aes Sedai, too?

That does work better for me. And maybe it is for Warders because Warders believe they need to express bottled grief, whereas that is something the Aes Sedai do not do? Or maybe it happens when the funeral is in the Tower, but not when out in public.

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26 minutes ago, Ran said:

Not really. I mean, yes, it's a ritual, but there's nothing that says how Lan is expected to "relieve" them of their grief.

Other than the guy saying "take our grief"!

But you're never going to admit you're wrong, right?

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Jason Momoa would have made the best Lan from the physicality

i recall these debates from 25 years ago.  mel gibson somehow came out on top of the fan poll back then; i thought that adrian paul could've made a good lan.

 

 In the books it’s northwest of Tar Avalon, but in the establishing shot when Mat and Rand arrived it was the other side of the river which would be east

i interpreted them to be approaching in a way that placed it to the northwest.  are there any plain markers of direction, other than the relative positions of tower and mountain?

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@fionwe1987 I also still parsed the story about Egwene's fever to still be Nynaeve's first time channeling, so didn't think the heal bomb was meant to actually be the first.

On the wailing ritual, giving a group like that a moment they can express their grief in a heightened way is pretty central to them being able to bottle it up all the time. It's not like Lan is uncaring, he just puts the job first. And he had to work himself up into it, and I thought the locked eyes with Moiraine was meant to indicate she was helping through the bond - that their emotions were resonating together. He didn't break down on the spot when he found the body, it was only when it was appropriate for him to do so.

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13 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

she could think she is the reincarnation of Jain Farstrider, the man. 

"She herself thinks she's Jain reincarnated" would convey that, as a somewhat overly-verbose but emphatic belief of her own. "Herself" in the actual sentence is either referring to "Jain" as the object of the sentence or it is badly written ambiguity.

@SpaceChampion

We have rules about civility. Keep them in mind.

The guy saying "relieve us of our grief" is not the same as saying, "Scream-o time!" It can be permission for Lan to grieve for them, i.e. simply grieve at all. Everyone else is supposed to be stoic, so his grief represents that of all of them, but how he does that is entirely up to whether you believe that there is a specific ritual dictate regarding this and what that dictate is.

Assuming that the dictate is "Exaggerated wailing grief" is an assumption, i.e. "head canon".

 

 

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I actually think this is already exactly like the latter seasons of GoT. The difference is that with GoT you arrived there from the top of a wonderful cliff of adaptive triumph. WoT started out in a cave of nightmarish slapdash, so a pretty generic fantasy setup with mediocre writing and horrid creative decisions actually feels like the show leveling out rather than collapsing. 

IDK if that metaphor makes any sense. It does to me.

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2 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

I actually think this is already exactly like the latter seasons of GoT. The difference is that with GoT you arrived there from the top of a wonderful cliff of adaptive triumph. WoT started out in a cave of nightmarish slapdash, so a pretty generic fantasy setup with mediocre writing and horrid creative decisions actually feels like the show leveling out rather than collapsing. 

IDK if that metaphor makes any sense. It does to me.

I'm not talking about the perception of the quality of adaptation, I'm talking about outside show indicators of whether the showrunners care about the material or not. At the end of the run D&D were clearly done with the story and just wanted the show to be over, and gave me a distinct vibe they felt they were above it. If people are getting that same vibe with Judkins already I don't understand it, but it would explain the invective.

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Oh and apologies for the double post, @Ran I agree with your interpretation of the "Egwene thought she was Jain herself" but the subtitles still spell it Jain, not Jane. I'm not familiar with the spelling "Jain" outside of WoT anyway so had no idea it was a male gendered variant in some places, but the show doesn't seem to be following that.

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5 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I'm not talking about the perception of the quality of adaptation, I'm talking about outside show indicators of whether the showrunners care about the material or not. At the end of the run D&D were clearly done with the story and just wanted the show to be over, and gave me a distinct vibe they felt they were above it. If people are getting that same vibe with Judkins already I don't understand it, but it would explain the invective.

I don't know these people or their motivations, and I'm sure it's not easy working for God Emperor's video chapter. I'm just judging what they chose to film and present to audience. Which is... Not good. It's not terrible, outside that first episode. But not terrible isn't a standard I'm going to treat with a lot of respect. 

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Yeah I'd really like to know whether the version of this show where Rafe only had to follow notes from Brandon and Harriet rather than the Amazon executives would be more or less to people's likings. Unfortunately we're unlikely to find out any time soon, if ever.

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2 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Oh and apologies for the double post, @Ran I agree with your interpretation of the "Egwene thought she was Jain herself" but the subtitles still spell it Jain, not Jane. 

Yeah, my using "Jane" was just a joke about the seeming gender shift.

And I can see the sense of it. Jain's gender doesn't really matter, story-wise, and I guess if they're hoping to get that far that gives them an interesting and tragic character to gender-swap down the line. 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yeah, my using "Jane" was just a joke about the seeming gender shift.

And I can see the sense of it. Jain's gender doesn't really matter, story-wise, and I guess if they're hoping to get that far that gives them an interesting and tragic character to gender-swap down the line. 

I think the joke went over Corvinus' head as well lol, hence the question about if you spelled it that way on purpose. All good!

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Yeah I don't know that I necessarily blame just Rafe for the state of the show (yet). But I also feel the only issues aren't all things you can lay down on Amazon's feet.

Fot instance, the focus on the Warder Aes Sedai relationship was definitely a creative choice. And even a good one, because it's a fairly unique fantasy thing, isn't it? So good, expand it, make it something to make the show feel different.

I think that was their goal, but I don't think they executed it very well, this episode. They did better with it in the last one. 

And I'm definitely not enjoying how they're handling the Whitecloaks, now. Again, not because the idea of making the Whitecloaks more effective is bad, but because the way they did that doesn't really work if you think about it for a bit. 

On the Jain thing, I rewatched and I think I got it wrong. Interesting choice to make Jain female. I agree it's a reasonable change to make. 

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