[Book Spoilers] Wheel of Time 3: Black Ajahpaloosa

[Ran]

From that longer video, who was the the guy at 6-something fighting quite skillfully with the sword against the Seanchan? A Shienaran from the haircut. A stuntman or one of the characters? Was Masema cast? I know he's not Uno.

Anyways, that guy's choreography was pretty slick. Or is it Ingtar, maybe, and they made him near-blademaster level?

That's the only thing so far that I'm sorry about, no seeing some of the fight choreography which was uneven in S1 but had some inspired moments (they still did Tam dirty, though).

[Myrddin]

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

Was Masema cast?

Arnas Fedaravicius is Masema. He was Sihtric (one of the Utred's friends) in Last Kingdom.

 

ETA: I'm not sure if he's been named on the show... I recognized the actor and looked him up.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Myrddin

[Corvinus85]

53 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

ep 5 clip:

 

hmm, Suroth looks great, but her accent is not what I had hoped for. And is everyone there a Darkfriend, that she and Liandrin talk so openly about their master?

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

From that longer video, who was the the guy at 6-something fighting quite skillfully with the sword against the Seanchan? A Shienaran from the haircut. A stuntman or one of the characters? Was Masema cast? I know he's not Uno.

Anyways, that guy's choreography was pretty slick. Or is it Ingtar, maybe, and they made him near-blademaster level?

That's the only thing so far that I'm sorry about, no seeing some of the fight choreography which was uneven in S1 but had some inspired moments (they still did Tam dirty, though).

I think you are referring to Masema. He's played by the same actor who played Sihtric on The Last Kingdom, if you watched that show. Ingtar is the darker skinned guy with the axe.

[Ran]

Ah, never watched The Last Kingdom after the first season, but I'm guessing the guy has got a load of fight choreography experience under his belt, then, and they're making use of that. It's kind of like how they talked about Kit Harington, he'd been working so much on stuff like GoT and Pompeii that he'd become really good at it.

Is it surprising that they dropped the Texan drawl of the Seanchan, among all the other trivial changes they choose to make?

[Gertrude]

4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

 

But they didn't fully sidestep it, right? Other than not quite labeling it. Men are still the ones who go mad when they channel. So is the show saying men go mad because of their bodies rather than their souls?

Does it really matter? The madness is from accessing saidin, not inherently because of their biology.

[Corvinus85]

10 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

Does it really matter? The madness is from accessing saidin, not inherently because of their biology.

The show hasn't mentioned saidin/saidar and hasn't explicitly defined the duality of the One Power. Granted, the Aes Sedai symbol has been shown plenty of times. All they have said is that men go mad as a result of Lews Therin's actions against the Dark One when he and his followers touched the Dark One with the OP. So I think it matters. Why are men exclusively cursed?

Edited September 13, 2023 by Corvinus85

[SpaceChampion]

Why are people so impatient?  They can't throw the entire lore from 15 books at the audience at once.  They'll get around to saidin / saidar in time when it becomes important for the audience to know the difference.  I expect when someone is able to start teaching Rand.

[Wouter]

11 hours ago, Maia said:

Indeed. But another problem post LoC was that he wanted to eat his cake and have it too.  He made channeling warfare, partcularly when employed by male channelers (because women don't have a head for military matters in his universe, unless they are Seanchan, for some reason), so overwhelmingly powerful that conventional forces felt obsolete, but he still wanted them and great generals leading them to be important. So more implausible WSoD-straining  contrivances followed.

 

Exactly. The showrunners should decide early on if they want to go the way of having large armies and important generals (besides the well known main character with the memories) or if the want to have lots of supremely powerful channelers. But not both at the same time, because the powerful channelers make the armies and conventional generals a sideshow at best and target practice at worst. I think it makes more sense for the show to focus on channelers, given that filming large battles is very expensive and extensive channeling CGI would be needed anyway.

The dragon should indeed be special as a channeler, and giving him and only a select few others travelling (Ishamel, Lanfear, maybe one of the wondergirls, one other forsaken, ...) would be a good option.

The band of the red hand could still have its moments in battles with the Shaido (before the advent of larger numbers of combat channelers) and with the Seanchan, as long as they can find a plausible excuse why nor Damane, nor Rand and co play a (large)  role in the latter battles (the book did have more or less valid excuses for that IIRC). That's also the place where cannons could be used to effect.

6 hours ago, Poobah said:

I don't really agree. Artillery, tanks, fighter jets and even the atomic bomb didn't make infantry obsolete. Warfare evolved but ultimately you do still need boots on the ground.

Having a few hundred channelers is all well and good but it isn't enough to cover an entire continent, they get tired and moody after a few days in a row of hard channeling, mostly need line of sight to use their powers effectively, and die just as easily as anyone else and are going to be viewed as extremely high priority targets so they need to be protected. Plus the other side has channelers of their own too.

But we're not talking about modern infantry, which is transported to battle in an armoured vehicle, has body armour, camouflage, firearms, anti-tank and anti-air shoulder launched missiles, rocket propelled grenades, mortars,...

Nor does modern infantry fight anything like how WOT-style conventional armies fight (at least the vast majority of the time): they take cover and attempt to take the enemy by surprise.

The army in WOT still consists of cavalry, spearmen and bowmen, with pitiful reach compared to channelers (and cannon). And they still tend to line up neatly to be shredded by channelers. And morale doesn't tend to hold when that happens, it shouldn't even with Trollocs (who do fear for their lives and who can overrun/overpower a Fade in group if pressed).

Also consider which arsenal channelers have at their disposal, including all kinds of nasty ways to employ waygates.

Realistically, the last battle - the physical fighting part of it - should have been decided by channelers, only. Swords and spears and even bows are relics in this world, they would need at least "shocklances" and preferably an air force and powerful guns.

[Corvinus85]

8 minutes ago, Wouter said:

The showrunners should decide early on if they want to go the way of having large armies and important generals (besides the well known main character with the memories) or if the want to have lots of supremely powerful channelers. But not both at the same time, because the powerful channelers make the armies and conventional generals a sideshow at best and target practice at worst. I think it makes more sense for the show to focus on channelers, given that filming large battles is very expensive and extensive channeling CGI would be needed anyway.

By virtue of season 1's limited budget, they may have already decided. Logain's followers which included the king of Ghealdan was a paltry rabble of 100-200 people. Agelmar Jagad was definitely not a Great Captain and it seems he died. But they can change that with more budget.

And I cannot agree with you. This is a world where those conventional armies have existed for millennia and Aes Sedai have deliberately limited their involvement in warfare. What are the nations to do, disband their armies and let just the channelers fight the Shadowspawn? That would be a world-breaking writing move. There is not enough time in the story to really evolve armies to have more modern weapons.

13 minutes ago, Wouter said:

But we're not talking about modern infantry, which is transported to battle in an armoured vehicle, has body armour, camouflage, firearms, anti-tank and anti-air shoulder launched missiles, rocket propelled grenades, mortars,...

Nor does modern infantry fight anything like how WOT-style conventional armies fight (at least the vast majority of the time): they take cover and attempt to take the enemy by surprise.

The army in WOT still consists of cavalry, spearmen and bowmen, with pitiful reach compared to channelers (and cannon). And they still tend to line up neatly to be shredded by channelers. And morale doesn't tend to hold when that happens, it shouldn't even with Trollocs (who do fear for their lives and who can overrun/overpower a Fade in group if pressed).

But we are, in a sense, talking about combined arms warfare. Travelling by waygate takes the place of soldiers being transported by planes. Aiel could easily surprise channelers. The Seanchan do use combined arms between the damane, the flying creatures and all their army divisions. Jordan did cover this very well. The Amadicians, Taraboners, and others get blasted to hell when they face the Seanchan in the traditional sense. Then we get Rand's bloody campaign in Path of Daggers which features hit and run tactics with both channelers and regular combatants in mountainous terrain. Completely different but a sign of warfare's needed evolution in the new world context. Mat has the Band do the same with much better effect in northern Altara. (Tactics that were I'm pretty sure inspired by what happened in Vietnam)

And sure, as the show moves along, just like the books, we can get channelers become more skilled and powerful, and thus always be in the frontline.

The problem with the Last Battle is that it was handled by a sub-par writer who couldn't depict warfare and battles the same way Jordan could.

[Wouter]

Mat's use of the Band was interesting, yes, but it was under circumstances where the potential of channelers wasn't being realised (with, most notably, Rand himself being absent being afraid of his own power and mental health). It was also relatively small scale, compared to some of the large battles in the books.

Same goes for Rand's campaign in POD, good use of tactics but in small numbers, and with channelers dominating the fight much like artillery dominates the modern battlefield (along with airpower). The way that fight ended is a case in point why Tarwin's Gap - style armies don't stand a chance on this kind of battlefield, though.

To be clear, I hope Mat's use of the Band makes it into the show.

 

[karaddin]

7 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

But they didn't fully sidestep it, right? Other than not quite labeling it. Men are still the ones who go mad when they channel. So is the show saying men go mad because of their bodies rather than their souls?

The part I want sidestepped isn't the basic split of saidin/saidar, it's what happens to trans people that can channel. The books never considered us and attempting to bring us into the story in a way that doesn't feel like the metaphysics of the world is misgendering us either breaks the Halima plotline (and potentially the way the Red Ajah hunt saidin channelers) or would take some clunky and possibly long exposition.

The books are a product of their time, I don't attribute any malice to having never considered trans people and just avoiding it completely feels the safest option. But if Halima is still there, that comes across as a statement it's not actually intending to make - they're not trans, and if they were it would be more analogous to a trans guy pre transition, but optics can be harmful without any intent.

[Mladen]

Just few thoughts after S02E04

The biggest problem for me is that we don't understand the foundations of this new world in the series. We are 12 episodes in, and I doubt anyone would be able to answer the simplest of all questions whether it is "What is the Dragon?" or "What is Aes Sedai?" I understand the dislike for exposition and throwing bunch of details at the audience, but we live in post-Game-of-Thrones world. If we are asked to remember 50 characters because it adds the depth to the story, we will do so. 

I understand it is easier for Thrones because much of the plot relied on the real-life medieval dynastic wars, so those dynamics were easy to catch. Here, I doubt anyone can actually answer what Aes Sedai are supposed to be doing. Even what is easy to explain - like Cairhien and its politics, it is glossed over and we never get a true glimpse into how things are supposed to work. 

As for damane, what a failure! In my mind, damane were like Handmaids from "The Handmaid's Tale" - not aesthetically, but in a way that you get uncomfortable by seeing them. It's been a while since I read the books, but I remember Egwene's disgust and pain and horror from "The Great Hunt" and IIRC, it haunted her until her end. The damane here, there is nothing I feel when i see them. I can't tell whether they are faithful representation from the books, but I thought that our first meeting with them would give off more sinister vibe. 

Everything special about Wheel of Time books is gone from this adaptation. They get this or that right, but I just feel like the series has no narrative depth. And we are still at the stage when WoT is rather dynamic, easy to follow. And they just ignored it. Not even for the sake of "doing their own thing", but creating some sort of generic fantasy without the modicum of originality. 

Despite my undying love for Rosamund Pike and the interest for the book series, I am profoundly disappointed by this. And I am hardly a book purist, as I haven't been a purist when it came to ASOIAF, let alone WoT. I just hope it gets better.

[Zorral]

The entire first episode of this second season was a -- trailer! 

There is no there there, much less a clue as to who what why.  Just a bunch of unspellable/unpronounceable words that have no grounding, thus we have no idea of what They are supposed to be.  Nor can we even care.  It's a jumble of trope-cliche that have become way too familiar from sf/f/gaming in the last decades.  So dark we can't see anything, and a mush of sound mixing so far too often the words are lost -- even when we have those interminable talk talk talk talking head scenes.  The topper is the obsessive divisions into color codes and whatever else. 

his show is a joke.  Maybe . . . if I were 8 years old . . . ????

Edited September 14, 2023 by Zorral

[Gertrude]

Am I a bad person for enjoying the absolute anger certain youtubers are expressing over the show? The ones who wanted a drastically more faithful adaptation and use words like 'woke' and 'agenda'. 

I am sympathetic if this version is not working for someone for whatever reason. We all have different reasons to be attached to art and we take away different things from it. It sucks when an adaptation falls short of what you think it should be. What I am not sympathetic to is taking that to the next level and attributing malice to the showrunner to purposefully ruin their beloved series and then spread that hate for clicks. This interpretation of the story isn't working for you - good! Go away. If not, then I will drink your tears with relish. I have zero problem with people having valid and reasoned criticism towards the show. I would actually like to see a video with that perspective. But it's either mostly positive with some gripes, or it's just flat out toxic hatred. 

That's why I appreciate this forum because I think we have a good mix of views and I think the criticisms are reasonable. We may not always agree on the choices they make, but we are still cool with each other and give each other room to speak their mind. Stay cool, guys.

[karaddin]

I don't think it's fair to criticise the show for not giving us a sense of the horror of damane yet, we get that from seeing them through Egwene's perspective - we hadn't got that yet at 40% through TGH and it looks pretty likely to be coming later in the season. Without knowing what's actually going on with them, there's no visible indication to people like the horn hunting party what's actually going on.

[Arakasi]

I thought episode three showed the horror quite well with taking girls who can channel from the crowd and then brutally killing Uno. Guess some people were watching something else.

[Argonath Diver]

I generally disliked but didn't loathe season 1. I've no interest in rewatching it ever and while watching the season 2 refresher, I'd honestly forgotten where most of the characters were after the season ender.

That said, I'm having much more fun in the second season. It's a good point that simple questions like "okay where is this scene, compared to the last?" are hard for me to answer and I've read the books (at least the first five-ish) a bunch of times. The GoT puzzle-box map intro was great to reinforce where the heck people were. 

They certainly got a lot of very good looking actors for everyone. Just about every new character introduced in season 2 has been dreamy, although I'm happy enough that no one had any dreadfully poorly acted scenes. 

[Maia]

21 hours ago, Poobah said:

I don't really agree. Artillery, tanks, fighter jets and even the atomic bomb didn't make infantry obsolete. Warfare evolved but ultimately you do still need boots on the ground.

Yes and no. If you want to take and hold territory and both sides generally care about it remaining at least somewhat livable, yes. This wouldn't have been the case for the forces of Dark in TG, though. And also, artillery, tanks and machine guns certainly made the kind of armies and tactics used by the WoT nations obsolete. Pitting them vs sufficiently large  groups of channelers   should have been like the Charge of the Light Brigade or the early days of WW1. Which is what we have been shown at Dumai's Wells and during that attack on the farm in KoD. Yet RJ still wanted to pretend that conventional armies and their commanders should be significant, without radically changing their MO.

That is not to say that adaptations couldn't have been made - for instance, re-discovery of cuendillar could have offered a way to somewhat mitigate the helplessness of troops against the wielders of OP. Large, but thin and relatively light shields made from it to protect infantry formations against direct channeling, for instance, etc. And yes, there were only a few people who could make it, but they could have built circles with powerful novices to scale up production. I actually fully expected this back in the day... but of course it didn't happen, because AS were involved and RJ wanted to keep them as foolish and useless as possible.

 

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Having a few hundred channelers is all well and good but it isn't enough to cover an entire continent, they get tired and moody after a few days in a row of hard channeling, mostly need line of sight to use their powers effectively, and die just as easily as anyone else and are going to be viewed as extremely high priority targets so they need to be protected. Plus the other side has channelers of their own too.

 

Except that while there were indeed only hundreds of channelers involved in AMoL, there really should have been many thousands. A lot of time in RJ's books was spent on recruiting these numbers of channelers to the side of Light, but I can't really fault Sanderson for vanishing them, because at the same time RJ was clearly positioning Mat, who hated the OP,  couldn't be bothered to learn anything about it's military uses and weirdly didn't even have any relevant memories from the Trolloc Wars(!) to be the ultimate general and conventional armies using their conventional tactics to be  very important.

Now, soldiers could have been useful in support roles as a screen for channelers in battle and guarding/watching them when they were tired, but that's clearly not what RJ had in mind. He also made Asha'man far too self-sufficient to even need any normals to watch their backs.

 

14 hours ago, Wouter said:

Also consider which arsenal channelers have at their disposal, including all kinds of nasty ways to employ waygates.

Realistically, the last battle - the physical fighting part of it - should have been decided by channelers, only. Swords and spears and even bows are relics in this world, they would need at least "shocklances" and preferably an air force and powerful guns.

100% this. Honestly, even cannon should have been very vulnerable to channelers, unless protected by other channelers. Sanderson's solution with the gateways was on point. But the cannon is another can of worms - nothing particularly useful should have come out of mere months of development anyway.

 

14 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

 There is not enough time in the story to really evolve armies to have more modern weapons.

First of all, Jordan had all manner of discoveries and inventions just pour on the protagonists  in WoT anyway. Some of which could have been used to improve the armies. But what mainly needed adjustment were strategy and tactics. Like, cavalry attacks straight up shouldn't work. Soldiers should have always worked in concert with and frankly in support of channelers, etc.

But he both chose to inflate the numbers and power levels of modern channelers, while trivialising the training required as well as the difficulty of new weaves discoveries and also wanted to use medieval(ish)/Renaissance(ish) armies employing vaguely historical MO. It didn't really work after LoC.

 

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Aiel could easily surprise channelers.

Only incompetent channelers, who don't hold OP when on watch, don't ward their camps, etc.

 

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The Seanchan do use combined arms between the damane, the flying creatures and all their army divisions. Jordan did cover this very well.

 

Yes, Seanchan came the closest - when operating against opponents without channeler support or with disorganised one. They shouldn't have had a prayer against groups of channelers working in concert/linked and employing minimal common sense. RJ became enamored with the Seanchan in later books and  chose to gloss over their many short-comings, including military ones.

Campaigns in PoD and later only worked to the extent that they did because Jordan artificially limited channeler involvement, and of course the former would have gone quite differently if Rand hadn't been sick and had been open to just obliterating the Seanchan. See what happened at that farm in KoD. Not to mention that yet another overpowered ability had to be bestowed on the Asha'man for PoD skirmishes to even work. Which made the notion that Travelling could have ever been forgotten even more absurd than it already was.

 

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The problem with the Last Battle is that it was handled by a sub-par writer who couldn't depict warfare and battles the same way Jordan could.

 

Not IMHO. The battles haven't been working for me since LoC, because Dumai's Wells should have been paradigm-changing. Jordan just chose to avoid doing the work to make them convincing in the new era of warfare by hobbling his channelers. Female channelers being denied even a modicum of common sense in military matters (or in general, if we are honest), input into command decisions or ironically the ability to usefully cooperate, Asha'man  being involved only in small numbers because of trust issues. While Sanderson's TG didn't quite work, the evidence suggests that Jordan's wouldn't  have been much of an improvement, sadly. The feelings/experiences of the combattants would have been conveyed better, sure.

 

13 hours ago, Wouter said:

Same goes for Rand's campaign in POD, good use of tactics but in small numbers, and with channelers dominating the fight much like artillery dominates the modern battlefield (along with airpower). The way that fight ended is a case in point why Tarwin's Gap - style armies don't stand a chance on this kind of battlefield, though.

Very much so.

Speaking of the show, yes, it would make sense for them to prioritise channeling battles from the logistics/financial point of view and also to make Mat less of an idiot about OP, so that he could actually usefully command mixed forces.

BTW, as regards the show, I really appreciated the fact that it had  Fades use their "travelling through shadows" in a fight, when they illogically never did so in the books, IIRC.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Maia

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Maia said:

Female channelers

What's the relevance of female channelers here? Those connected to the White Tower can't (or at least shouldn't, in the case of certain wayward Novices and Accepteds) use the One Power offensively against non-Shadowspawn/darkfriends, and defensive uses of the One Power  seemed fairly limited to slashing opposing weaves and batting away or setting alight incoming arrows from my recollection. Or personally wading into a fight and putting yourself at personal risk to defend yourself and/or your warder(s), which brings you down to close quarters, personal involvement rather than doing anything truly substantial.

 

[Gertrude]

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

What's the relevance of female channelers here? 

 

While a spotlight was focused on the incompetence of the Tower and the ajahs in the books, there should have been at least a green here or there who knew battle tactics.  They should have been practicing in the Blight and Borderlands. I don't mind if the show gives us the incompetence of the ajahs as a theme, but I would really love it if they also gave a few competent ones here and there.

And honestly, for as equal as he tried to portray the sexes in his world, the absence of woman in the military was noticeable. Yeah, I get it, women probably aren't going to fight on the front lines against men, but Birgitte showed how valuable she was in a fight. It was just a glaring hole in RJs portrayal of his world not to at least have one or two around IMO. The Seanchan had no problem having women in their army (Tylee comes to mind).

Edited September 14, 2023 by Gertrude