#greatrunner watches the wheel of time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

greatrunner · 8 months

Text

"You've given them the semblance of a choice. That's enough".

Count on Lan to be honest about the lack of honesty, lmao

Alright so, I reached the end of the Wheel of Time last night, and it's honestly making me wonder why this series was eight episodes instead, I dunno, 13 or 22?

Looking back, if this was a mere miniseries, I could understand the truncated, "let's get to Point A to Point B" number of episodes. I mean, eight (as I remember) was the hardline definition of a miniseries if it wasn't six, five, four, three, or two.

The show spends a lot of time introducing new ideas, flashbacks, and whatnot. Some of it gets paid off alright, but the rest feels more like a "please renew us" ploy than anything beneficial to the story. I like the idea that this isn't just a basic generic fantasy world. That, at some point, the world reached a "Society If [Blank] Happened" type of reality, then I guess, did a whole walk backward into the Renaissance Fair. That's cool, I wanna see more of that idea explored in the story.

But, what was the point of that false dragon narrative outside of setting up the dynamics of the white tower (specifically, giving a lot of face time to the one Team Red character who's apparently supposed to represent Misandry (????), until Moraine threatens to snitch about her male side piece, which made me cackle)?

That's not a bad thing, but with the way the character got a whole intro, I would've assumed he would've got a lot more than "Mini-Boss demoted to Jobber".

They really dragged out the whole "Who is the Dragon Reborn" nonsense until the second to last episode, then revealed it with what feels like the intention to do a speedrun of a Souls Boss Battle, right down to the "Big Fight Separates the Group" bit.

I'm not really understanding the whole Nynaeve/Lan subplot. One character says, "She likes you", and there's almost zero interaction between these characters outside of homegirl's contempt and mistrust of him and Moraine. Maybe some fireside time with the other Warders. I viewed the latter as Nynaeave becoming a little less distrustful of people, but not a foundation for a romance.

I had half a suspicion they were gonna try to pair her off with Stephin (the white guy who lost his Channeler) before I even considered Lan was a potential love interest?

But now the last couple of episodes are like, "Welp, let's run with this" and on top of the doldrums that is Moraine's #1 Stan and Angry Ginger's drama (plus the guy who gutted his wife), I'm just not here for this nonsense. (Understandably, I know that moment was just friends slinging mud at each other, but they really went Felicity with the whole thing.)

Like, when the hell in the last six episodes before that comment was the audience supposed to pick on "Tsundre Nynaeve Has a Crush on Stoic Bodyguard and Edward Cullen Stalks Him Everywhere"?

(Makes no damn sense. It displeases me.)

On the other end of things, I kinda like how Moraine's story arc ended (as far as season one goes). Like, I didn't want her to lose her connection to the one power, but it also kinda felt like a consequence of every choice she's made in the show (so far). And, ironic (I guess????). Rosamund Pike really sold the loss, and Danie Henney made it worse with the "Can you unmute me, please?" And she's all ;_;

Throughout the show, she's had great chemistry with the five Ronin Warriors she picked up. The show certainly squandered the dynamic between Moraine and Angry Ginger (I wanna call him Josh, but that's the actor's name). That whole "Last Stand" against the Dark One would've been way more compelling if, again, the show's first season chose length over expediency.

(The Dark One could be an interesting character since Ginger didn't kill him but released him. But I get the feeling he's just gonna be a pretentious version of HEROES's Sylar, who was already up-his-own-ass to begin with if you get me.)

The show tries to incorporate that into the story. Moraine's general lack of interest in anyone except that one woman who trusts her immediately after learning about the One Power. How that sends her up Shit Creek when she realizes the Dragon is that one dude she ignored. To some degree, it works, but it also just feels like them covering their asses.

Ultimately, the end of the season felt, not like the end of a story chapter, but very television-y. Moraine saying, "This wasn't the last battle. This was just the beginning", threw me into a Dragon Ball Z flashback. Specifically, the one where Gohan hits SS2 and Dale Kelly (the OG DBZ narrator) is selling the "tune in next time!" moment.

I'll probably wait until the second season's done airing to watch all of it. Overall, Wheel of Time is a decent show. Not at all like Game of Thrones outside of how the writing seems to be taking visual cues from explicitly not white cultures and framing them in questionably malicious ways in contrast to the Eurocentric White Tower girlies.

#greatrunners meta #greatrunner watches the wheel of time #amazon prime #wheel of time #screenwriting

2 notes · View notes

greatrunner · 8 months

Text

"Demon Commander! Lanfear's Fierce Attack!"

Okay, I lied, and watched the first four episodes of season two instead of going to sleep for work... the week before last.

Things I wasn't expecting:

Mat being recast with some blockhead instead of keeping the guy who looks like a discount "That Actor from the Umbrella Academy"? What gives?

Team Red has a son, and not a side-piece. The show is trying really, really hard not to let her fall into the generic Foe Yay, and I can appreciate that.

There's a whole group of people with nasty fingernail hygrine, big into slavery. That's... unfortunate.

Moraine's arc at the moment is eating dirt from all the people she was less than kind or empathetic to. I kinda love it all while feeling bad for her.

Her sister felt abandoned and therefore disowned her. She gave Moraine the opportunity to just talk and reconnoiter with her, but when it was apparent that she was just gonna do as she pleased and potentially threatened the life she built, she pulled rank.

Despite giving her space, and dealing with the loss of connection, Lan tries to remain Moraine's partner, and gets a taste of the behavior the Ronin Warriors had to deal with when Moraine wasn't being forthright or outright lying to them. The clinch, though, was Moraine telling Lan he was just her jobber, not her equal.

And it's hard to feel bad for him in that moment, because, when it wasn't him on the receiving end of her shadiness, he never called her on it in way that wasn't half-hearted, or making excuses. And without Moraine to play jobber to, Lan as a character is probably less interesting than he was as the bodyguard.

Like, I can definitely see him becoming an stronger character (he's got a backstory with potential), but as it stands, it feels like the story is just keeping him on pause until it's time to throw the band back together. And then what? Awkward silence and some apologies that won't actually be apologies?

Lan, and the other Warders (and their girlfriend, Team Green) underline just how not interesting I find the whole "bond" storytelling. There's a lot telling you about the bond, how it transcends all normal romantic or platonic relationships. But the showing aspect of it all just makes it look like a normal relationship, or a less interesting version of The Bodyguard without one iota of that Costner/Huston chemistry.

Considering Moraine and Lan's dynamic, it's hard not see it as "Master and Servant" (esp. with the racial dynamics at play). To that end, the unfortunate and racist implications already at play in the series are at their worst within the Warder/Channeler dynamic.

The discussion between Lan and that non-malicious Black guy reinforces the idea that they weren't "equals" to their partners ("We're here to remind them they're not Gods!"). It's just... not great.

Again, all of this sounds exactly like something a white dude would come up with when creating his idea of a world where women have the 'most power' and guys who share that same position, are driven mad. Amazon Prime just made it worse with their spin on the Colorblind casting wheel. Like, sheesh.

Beyond Lan, one of my biggest problems with this series so far is maybe the lack of a dynamic between the five major leads. Allow me to regale you with examples from two Children's anime.

There's this thing anime used to, where in an ensemble series, the characters spent x-amount of episodes together before separating them. It was a proven formula that worked sometimes, and failed others.

Digimon: Digital Monsters made it as far as eight episodes before the Big Breakup. Before that each episode gave its characters a "focus episode". Ronin Warriors's break up was the following episode (one that's notorious for the sudden recasting of some of its English VA leads).

The show's story points lived and died by how much the writing could convince us that these characters cared abut enough about other to want find each other again.

In the case of Digimon, preaching the message of togetherness and teamwork makes their estrangement work to the advantage of the plot. The English dub manufacture's a tenuous familiarity with each character, but being trapped in the Digital World forces them to actually work together.

Both and after the separation, their circumstances demand that they get to know each other along the way. Not just for the benefit of the audience, but to the benefit of all seven (then eight) kids and their monster companions.

Ronin Warriors, on the other hand, has always been more about the individual journey and their relationship to the mystical armor (born from the corpse of their enemy, Talpa IIRC. It's been 10 years since I watched it last ;_;).

The show also didn't hide the fact that Ryō, Rowen, Cye, Kento, and Sage didn't know each other from Adam. Hell, it really doesn't even go into the origin story of how they got their armor like Sailor Moon did with the Sailor Scouts their and transformation wands.

From the jump, the boys know more than the audience. Talpa's the bad guy, the Netherrealm is something they have to protect the world (but mostly Japan) from. Their mentor is the Ancient One, a "Stupid Monk" (Talpa, derogatory) who fought Talpa eons ago.

What they're not expecting is four dudes (the Dark Warlords) with far more experience and power than themselves. They're a bunch of teenage boys who try to upstage each other and aren't interested in working together is their fatal flaw.

Ronin Warriors, however individual focused it tends to be, also features unity as a big theme of the show. Their separation and subsequent Side Questing to find each other is more about the practicalities of their job (if they don't work together than evil wins).

Their relationships were something they built along the way, right until the end of the series. It was formula that worked so well, they repeated it in some fairly subpar (and racist*) OVAs (Gaiden, Legend of the Inferno Armor*, and Message) with diminishing returns. But they're also the only time in the franchise (excluding Message) where the Ronin's feel like true friends, so go-figure.

To keep running with this comparison, Wheel of Time clearly aspires to be about a group of people. Right now, it's far more focused on the aesthetics of being an Epic Fantasy. From the start of S2 alone, there have been more new characters and more new locations thrown at the audience than a little bit. None of seems to be to the benefit of the story so much as it's to match the lore output of something like, again, Game of Thrones (which had years, film length runtimes, and more than 8 episodes) or, Grandaddy Tolkien's Legendarium.

Season one never really allowed any of the characters to actually be friends or casual acquaintances. Individual characters weren't so much given arcs as they were given archetypal roles to occupy in the "Kill the Dark Lord" Boss Rush.

In principle, Wheel of Time Ronin Warrior'ing Individual storylines isn't a bad thing, but it ain't working what little ensemble dynamics that show built. It just hopes you buy all these people are friends and miss each other. Because Mat, his abandonment of the group, and how little he impacts the plot, kinda says it doesn't work. Not for me.

Rand's character feels like he's in a holding pattern until the story finally reaches a point to where the madness-included powers are necessary. It's kinda like watching Anakin Skywalker if he wasn't a self-involved jerk who leapt at every chance to avoid accountability, blame other people, and committing to the principles of his job.

Rand is allowed to focus on someone other than his not-girlfriend, namely himself. I feel like the buzz cut drives that home. No more Fantasy Romance Guy, he's in his Vader era. Even his relationship with the tavern owner is way more engaging.

Nynaeve's story arc is definitely more about the individual than it is the group. Her whole thing is that she doesn't consider herself, and mammy's everybody. She doesn't trust anybody and figures she is the only qualified person for the job. (I feel called out.)

Combine that deep-seated trauma and abandonment issues, and you got a story comparable to Ryō trying to learn how to master Hariel's White Inferno Armor. Or Gohan reaching SS2. A lot of false starts, and just like Rand's deal with his powers, none of that stuff is really interesting.

The moment she snaps right better pop the fuck off just like the aforementioned or I'm gonna be salty. DDOS is not fun.

The show wants to build a relationship between her and Team Red, who, not the surprise no one, is evil. I'm not against it, but I also can't really buy that Red would be that distraught over potentially losing her to a Last Crusade test when so much of their dynamic was developed off-screen. Did she really spend that much time with Mat that she couldn't dedicate time to mentoring her on the low before she actually got permissions? Sounds like Chickadee making excuses.

I need someone in this group to be the non-magic Tank, and I was ready for Nynaeve to turn her back on the white tower nonsense and return home. I really liked that story turn. It was a choice she made for herself, and not for anyone else, and hey, it even gave Lan something to do (become her House Husband, lmao). So for it to turn out to be an illusion where she got more than one Get-out-of-Jail-Free card? Disappointing.

On the flip-side, the other gal (Moraine's No. 1 Fan), and Princess Not-Killing-Eve gets stuck with the Harry Potter plot. I hate how fantasy narratives reinforce and indulge this storyline. The "Bully the Main Character into Becoming a Proficient Learner" trope with lower-than-low treatment and work around a school that doesn't pay them much respect as human beings. I've never been interested in that storytelling because it requires that the lead become an emotional doormat in a lot of situations.

This gets abruptly interrupted, of course, with Red's Heel Turn, and their subsequent enslavement. This particular story turn isn't doing the character any favors, and just feels like way to put the characters back into the Globe Trotting subplot. Nynaeve's a blockhead, but the shit that last episode pulled was embarrassing.

Perrin's storyline doesn't feel all that engaging. The show rarely checks in on Perrin in the five episodes aired, he truly feels like an afterthought. The show finally gets around to focusing on his powers as a "Wolfbrother", a guy who communicates with wolves. There's a new minor Black character who saves him from certain slavery, the Ascended Wolfbrother.

AW isn't a particularly interesting character, but he's not terrible either. He's got some good moments with Perrin with regards to mentoring him, but he's your rote "Ugh, Humanity" type characters. He exists just to tell Perrin he's "running away" from his destiny because Perrin isn't:

Just blindly going along with AW's plans

Doesn't appreciate being lied to

Doesn't appreciate his relationships diminished on account of their humanity.

Out of all the characters, Perrin's Random Enemy/Ally Encounters seems to highlight what I really don't like about most Fantasy worlds. Every character, culture, or world, begins to sound like abstract names for Football Teams, with everyone's disdain stemming from being on opposing teams.

It's clear that Wheel of Time plans on stretching much of its story out with Talpa's Evil Warlords getting the Gang Back Together to free Talpa. Instead of hyper-focusing on "that one special person who might not be who you expected" like GOT did with Jon and Arya, the audience instead will be treated with what's shaping up to be an MMO quest log.

Daughter of the Night (Lady Kayura), Father of Lies (Anubis) are two quest lines completed. I know there's lie seven of these hoes, but I guess the next couple of seasons will be about Dias, Kale, and Sekhmet.

Unless the show surprises me, which it has done plenty of, in which case... we'll see.

Forever laughing at the fact that the guy who got drunk on the Game Awards (or was that his brother), and was in A Way Out, is "The Father of Lies". But was also in Westworld as some random jobber with a tablet.

Shade, no shade. But, like how does bro keep landing these gigs?

#greatrunners meta #greatrunner watches the wheel of time #amazon prime #screenwriting #wheel of time #long post

0 notes