The Wheel of Time (book wankery OK, see OP for rules)

Agree re: the book covers. First time I read it I went from them and assumed the same. Second time, more recently, I was just listening and had fewer assumptions so it stuck out that really only a couple of characters are definitely what we'd call white, and it seems like most Two Rivers people are probably kind of dark. Of course it's kind of immaterial, as one of the articles points out, because very little of the books is about race (the article said none, but that's not true but we're getting into book spoilers there).

Re: Tolkien I think it depends what you mean by racist, doesn't it?

If it's "hates people because of their race" and/or "thinks some races are genuinely inferior", then I totally agree. No sign I can find of that in Tolkien (the scholarly stuff I've read tends to concur, too, including by non-white scholars).

If it's "assigns people specific characteristics because of their race in a kind of creepy manner" or "reliably makes darker-skinned people baddies, and associates baddies with the appearances of non-white human races", then he definitely does do that, there's no getting around it.

So like, BNP/Nigel Farage racist? No. BoJo racist? Sure. There's a similar vibe to the whole "letterbox" comment and the "half-orcs look like ugly mongols" bit in LotR. Doesn't make me hate the books or anything, personally.

The funniest thing about Tolkien is that conservatives love him but the dude was a utopian anarchist who literally advocated for blowing up factories (terrorist-style). I'm not talking about the Scouring of the Shire, he was extremely clear about it in his letters. He had more in common with Ted Kaczinsky than Enoch Powell politically. (I can 100% back this up with specific links btw lol)

I thought it was the best episode yet - in fact, I thought it was excellent, and surprisingly hard-hitting.

Premature, maybe, but I'm starting to think this series could become something special. Definitely more entertaining than the books.

(Disclosure: I'm not really a book wanker, but I read most of them...the story was good, but the prose and pacing were so leaden I wonder now why I persisted for as long as I did)

The Dunlendings, Harad, and Easterlings are all described as darker-skinned or "sallow" (i.e. East Asian skin tones) - that's exactly the point - it's discussed in the link in one of the articles posted earlier. But if you seriously want to discuss it we can make another thread. It's not "people from various websites", I'm talking actual Tolkien scholars, note. Just as a general point, if some white/pale are bad, but all non-white/darker characters are bad, you probably have an issue (vice-versa too of course). There's some more nuance to it of course, but that'd be a thread derail.


On-topic, I liked the episode this week, I think it's necessary for them to have a bit of time to breath, and it's really impressed me how much they've covered in how little time, and also how efficient they are at conveying certain things. It definitely feels to me, based on my knowledge of the first book at least, that the writers/showrunner "get it", and indeed are able to convey stuff a bit better than I think Jordan himself managed (always a man desperately in need of an editor - not something I'd know anything about of course...).

Agree with Flexible that it does look like it could be something special, definitely can see why they already renewed it for a second season.

I'm not a mod or anything so can't enforce this, but...

• If it's a blatant plot spoiler, put it in spoiler tags, with a "book discussion" warning, or something similar
• Things that are just general "hey where the white people at" (ie. not related to plot) probably don't need tags (this is subject to change if enough people complain about it)
• Try not to get cute with hinting at future developments (ie. don't do it, if you're at all unsure just don't do it)
• Don't be a dick (this is the most important one)

And if this isn't sufficient, then go make your own thread ;p

I am a mod and we've had a complaint made about one of the posts in the thread so if you guys could take it easy it would be appreciated.

One thing I like is that they are addressing the game of thrones travel thing where it would take people 2 days to cross a continent. Here at least they have characters say "Golly that 20 days of walking was hard."

Not perfect but at least they note it.

His character was I AM THE DUAL WIELDING CLASS.

The cheapness is because the budget is smaller than some shows, relatively speaking. We don't know exactly how much, $10m per episode was claimed, which is the same as The Witcher, but has to be spread over a lot more characters and locations, and it might be lower than that, given the showrunner has grudgingly alluded to budget constraints a bit.

That's one of those things Amazon can fix if it wants though, thankfully.

Be interested to see how the Lord of the Rings show ends up looking, given the sheer amount being spent on that. Still kind of annoyed they replaced the lead (Will Poulter, who has been pretty great in everything I've seen him in, with Robert Aramayo, who has been close to unwatchable in some stuff and "meh" in the rest, no idea what happened there).

I fixed the weird-ass pink/green colour stuff by turning off HDR btw if anyone is still having that issue.

I guess when you pay $250m for the rights alone, you're going to damn well use that branding even if it's not quite right!

It's Sauron (aka the Bringer of Gifts). He was Morgoth's chief underling.

He made rings of power that he gave to Elves, Men and Dwarves and forged a ring in secret. "One Ring To Rule Them All, One Ring to Bind Them".  The 9 men he gives the rings to become the Nazgul. The ones he gives the dwarves are lost (but may have contributed to their greed). The remaining ones the Elves are given are held my Galadriel and Elrond. That's why Galadriel thinks much that they made may become undone as it was done with the power of her ring. Gandalf has a ring too. I think Celebrimbor taught Sauron initially. 

The most powerful creature on Earth was Tom Bombadil (within his lands). After that it was probably Galadriel....or anyone with the one ring. 

Incidentally, that's made me remember that there's new LotR audiobooks out narrated by Andy Serkis. Quite fancied giving them a listen. His reading of The Hobbit was pretty good. I did try to read the books a few months back. Read Fellowship and then just couldn't be fucked. I could do the audio books though.

Yeah he did. I think Sauron only forged his own and instructed Celebrimbor and other smiths to make the other rings. If he could make his own why didn't he just bother to make the rest as well? Lazy fucker or master delegator?

Possibly. Or maybe Pippin and Gloryfinger made them.

Yep you're right. There were three elven rings made lastly by Celbrimbor and Sauron never touched those. However, they were forged using some of the knowledge that Sauron gave the Elves so that's why Galadriel wasn't sure if the things made would last or not.  6 he gave to the Dwarves and most of these were thought to be consumed by dragons. The last known one was in Thrain's possession but lost when The Necromancer caught him. 

Apparently as soon as Suaron put on the one ring, the elves became aware of him and took off their rings which prevented him controlling them. Even though he hadn't touched them or forged them, the one ring was still powerful enough to control the 3 elven rings... apparently. 

Also, he actually made 10 for mortal men but Gary lost his down the side of the sofa.