https://www.reddit.com/r/whitecloaks/comments/rgewm2/this_means_that_wot_has_made_herstory_tvs_heir/

I really need to stop browsing WoT subs, I've been feeling liquified bits of my brain leaking out through my nose and ears for the past few days, it's like staring directly into highly-radioactive material and just feeling your body start falling apart on the molecular level.

    • Hotspur21 [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I thought the people on that sub hated the show? Also, why is it reactionary? I’ve only seen the first two eps

      Edit: sorry totally misread your comment as “like” instead of “dislike”

      • Tervell [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        3 years ago

        The people complaining are reactionaries, not the show itself. A lot of the whining is the typical "muh SJWs with their agendas" bullshit, like "they're sidelining male characters and making Egwene & Nynaeve into Mary Sues because feminism", or "they're going to have the dragon be Egwene because feminism", and "the male characters are weak & emotional because feminism", and various other bits of bullshit.

        Honestly, I don't even think the show is actually great or anything, but these people are insane. Someone "logical" ought to assume that the faults are the result of classic Hollywood hackery, not the secret Amazon SJW agenda (yeah, Bezos and the other Amazon execs are TOTALLY concerned with pushing a feminist agenda, just look at them, such progressives).

        • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          making Egwene & Nynaeve into Mary Sues

          Isn't that basically the source material already? Like there's this premise of "oh all the inbred hill folk from this one region are just crazy magic for some reason" and a bunch of stuff about how the main characters are all the first fReE-tHiNkiNg ViSiOnaRiEs in the past thousand years where they just intuitively discover a bunch of lost magic and revolutionize logistics and manufacturing a priori.

          the male characters are weak & emotional

          I remember at least two of the thousand plus page books had Randal Thor's entire arc as "he's depressed and has PTSD cause all this shit that's happening is actually really traumatizing and bad."

          It's been a long time since I read the books, I don't think I read any past book ten or eleven, and I vaguely remember them as having a bunch of problematic themes and commentary to them, but it did definitely make all the female main characters basically super powered compared to any male character other than Rand and have all the male main characters actually have emotions and respond to trauma, at least in their internal monologues.

          • barrbaric [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yes, the people from Emond's Field all benefited from magic eugenics, but it's also confirmed in the books that the Aes Sedai have been gradually getting weaker, and there are two main theories given for this:

            1. Killing all male channelers has fucked the magic genepool
            2. The Aes Sedai becoming more insular and elitist over time meant they skipped over many potentially talented recruits because they didn't think they'd find anything of use in tiny villages, and refused to train women over a certain age

            Having finished the series,

            spoiler

            Theory 2 is correct

            ShowRand so far seems quite a bit less emotional than in the books, but he's also been aged up like 5 years and we don't get any internal monologues. ShowPerrin is more emotional but that's because they changed it so he accidentally axes his wife, which, yeah.

            • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Even in that context weren't Egwene, Nynaeve, and the other girl whose name escapes me among the most powerful channelers in history, with Nynaeve in particular being on par with the likes of Lanfear and so probably being in the top single or low double digits of all channelers ever? Or am I misremembering the vague, unitless relative power rankings?

              ShowPerrin is more emotional but that’s because they changed it so he accidentally axes his wife, which, yeah.

              That sounds vaguely familiar, was that a recurring nightmare from the books/some prophetic vision that haunted him throughout them?

              • barrbaric [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 years ago

                Egwene, Nynaeve, etc

                Nynaeve was the most powerful of the protagonists, though IIRC weaker than Lanfear. I think Nynaeve doesn't rank in the top 10 channellers, just because there were so many more Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends that statistically there would be many more at her strength or higher. In the book time period, there are at least 2 other woman stronger than Nynaeve IIRC: some 70-year-old woman who got recruited in Salidar and a former damane. I think some of the sea people were supposed to be similarly strong as well. As you point out, the power rankings are mostly irrelevant; I think there's a number system on the wiki but it's never mentioned in-universe.

                The other girl you're thinking of might be Elayne, who was pretty strong and shown to be able to develop new weaves better than almost anyone.

                spoiler

                Note also a lot of the "new weaves" that Nynaeve and Egwene took credit for were actually extracted from Moghedian via torture.

                Perrin killing his wife

                Nah, it's a replacement of when he axes the Whitecloaks in the first book and then vows to never pick up the axe again.

                • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  As you point out, the power rankings are mostly irrelevant

                  It's kind of like power levels in Dragonball, except instead of just like standing there screaming for a hundred pages straight to power up they're just like "aha, this random cowbell I found is actually a ten thousand year old magical crazy straw that allows me to triple my raw power when I drink magic through it!" (ok so it's usually a ring or statuette or something, but the point stands).

                  The other girl you’re thinking of might be Elayne,

                  That sounds right. It's been like oh fuck 18 years or so since I read any of the books, so the names are all a bit foggy even though I remember a lot of the worldbuilding and the broad strokes of the plot.

          • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            I remember at least two of the thousand plus page books had Randal Thor’s entire arc as “he’s depressed and has PTSD cause all this shit that’s happening is actually really traumatizing and bad.”

            I mean, Rand goes through some shit. Chronic and sever mental illness for a few books. Then he's betrayed, several of his friends are killed, and he's viciously tortured for months on end.

            "Why is Rand such a pussy?" is such a nakedly reactionary take, you really are telling on yourself by making it.

            • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I mean, Rand goes through some shit.

              That's what I said. The point was that his entire story there, in all of the like three chapters he got out of 2000+ pages of book were dealing with the trauma and his internal emotions.

          • Tervell [he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            3 years ago

            I'm not a book reader myself, I'm just reporting what the chuds online are whining about. I wouldn't be surprised if they're completely off base, those kinds of reactionary complaints are rarely based in reality