The Wheel of Time season 2
Friday, November 10th, 2023 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luiniedI finally watched it this past weekend, and it was a pretty good time! Now I want to talk to people about it, and part of me is still imagining that I'm living in 2000-or-so where every other nerd I met read at least seven of these books before boredomquitting.
It continues the trend from season 1 of being better than the books (which isn't difficult), it follows the source material even less closely (plenty welcome), and nothing stood out to me in a bad way like Perrin's season 1 backstory additions did. It's still a lot gayer / more casually accepting of sexuality in general. But what I'm really happy with is how they're portraying the Forsaken.
Because ultimately the Forsaken are ridiculous. They're like the rich fucks on the board of directors if you're working at a non-profit, except here the non-profit is Darkfriends. Their motivations are deeply petty (in ways that jarringly contrast with the other antagonists of the show), they bicker like Lyctors, and they dress either like supervillains or like they're heading to a party on a fancy boat. They can invade your dreams, but more for tedious conversation than anything else.
They're still dangerous, of course. But, as with the rich fucks on the board of directors, that doesn't make them any less insufferable. It feels like the show understands this, and I love it.
Of course this is primarily about Lanfear, my original problematic fave. I don't think there's even one scene of hers this season that actually matches a scene from The Great Hunt, but the show is stronger for it: she comes off as actually understanding that Rand is a specific person rather than just a Generic Virile Young Man, yet at the same time she's worse (which is to say more fun) in every way that matters. (Fellow fans, if you want me to go on at length here, just ask, seriously.)
Anyway, it's not like I expect great things from this show, and given that it's streaming it'll probably be canceled before the story is done no matter how much they rush it, but I'm having fun. Would recommend, if you read those doorstoppers as a kid and want to revisit it with less gender essentialism and fewer descriptions of horses.
But yeah, on another topic, if you're wondering why you haven't seen me much around here, it turns out writing long-form isn't one of my strengths, especially when more than one person might read it? Seriously, it's a struggle not to give every post the overthinking I'd give to an academic paper.
I'm not gone, though! Just quiet.
It continues the trend from season 1 of being better than the books (which isn't difficult), it follows the source material even less closely (plenty welcome), and nothing stood out to me in a bad way like Perrin's season 1 backstory additions did. It's still a lot gayer / more casually accepting of sexuality in general. But what I'm really happy with is how they're portraying the Forsaken.
Because ultimately the Forsaken are ridiculous. They're like the rich fucks on the board of directors if you're working at a non-profit, except here the non-profit is Darkfriends. Their motivations are deeply petty (in ways that jarringly contrast with the other antagonists of the show), they bicker like Lyctors, and they dress either like supervillains or like they're heading to a party on a fancy boat. They can invade your dreams, but more for tedious conversation than anything else.
They're still dangerous, of course. But, as with the rich fucks on the board of directors, that doesn't make them any less insufferable. It feels like the show understands this, and I love it.
Of course this is primarily about Lanfear, my original problematic fave. I don't think there's even one scene of hers this season that actually matches a scene from The Great Hunt, but the show is stronger for it: she comes off as actually understanding that Rand is a specific person rather than just a Generic Virile Young Man, yet at the same time she's worse (which is to say more fun) in every way that matters. (Fellow fans, if you want me to go on at length here, just ask, seriously.)
Anyway, it's not like I expect great things from this show, and given that it's streaming it'll probably be canceled before the story is done no matter how much they rush it, but I'm having fun. Would recommend, if you read those doorstoppers as a kid and want to revisit it with less gender essentialism and fewer descriptions of horses.
But yeah, on another topic, if you're wondering why you haven't seen me much around here, it turns out writing long-form isn't one of my strengths, especially when more than one person might read it? Seriously, it's a struggle not to give every post the overthinking I'd give to an academic paper.
I'm not gone, though! Just quiet.
no subject
Date: Fri, Nov. 10th, 2023 11:35 pm (UTC)On the subject of long-form writing; I've been having this same struggle with my own journal. I want to use it more, but I'd stonewall myself by thinking I needed to have lengthy entries covering several topics at a time. So now I'm trying to grow out of that and use it more freely.
Wheel of Time
Date: Sun, Nov. 12th, 2023 03:42 am (UTC)It's really not taking the gritty-imagined-middle-ages approach that Game of Thrones did, for what it's worth. No threats of sexual violence so far, and if I recall the books weren't big on that either. (Plenty of regular violence, though. But not in a way that feels to me like it's glorying in pain?)
They've also super cranked up the sex-positive dial on the setting, which honestly just works so well. The more mature characters are tend to talk about various sorts of affairs really openly and good-natured-ly, and though there are only two queer relationships so far, it just makes the setting feel so different from the "everybody's having sex, but it's all scandals and cheating and objectification and deeply sexist / homophobic-when-it-acknowledges-queerness-at-all" vibe that a lot of people act like fantasy has to have.
It also just makes it feel different from fantasy as imagined medieval Europe with the names and geography rearranged? Which is appropriate, because it is technically the kind of fantasy setting that's a post-apocalyptic aftermath of, etc., etc., etc. (you know the drill; you've played video games).
Re: Wheel of Time
Date: Thu, Nov. 16th, 2023 01:14 am (UTC)I feel a lot more comfortable about giving the show a chance, and perhaps looking into the books down the road, too. Thank you!
Re: Wheel of Time
Date: Fri, Nov. 17th, 2023 03:54 am (UTC)(The first season, like the first book, is a bit more generic-fantasy feeling than the rest.)
Long-form writing
Date: Sun, Nov. 12th, 2023 04:02 am (UTC)For me, at least, I think what's going on is the interaction between a) the sort of anxiety-based high standards for the words I put out where other people can read them, b) not being a writer but being friends with lots of writers, and c) not being an external processor.
I can work on changing my relationship with writing from a place of anxiety and all that, but I'm never going to be an external processor. And it's been on my mind a lot lately (mostly because of the slow implosion of Twitter) that the way a lot of people I know have used social media all the way from LiveJournal to now has been about external processing. And as someone who has a lot lower need for that, trying to post the way my more post-happy friends do was never really going to be in the cards for me.
So I've been trying to figure out what to do instead. I don't have any answers yet.
(No idea if any of this is applicable to you.)
Re: Long-form writing
Date: Thu, Nov. 16th, 2023 06:23 pm (UTC)Might explain why I myself have a hard time keeping the ball rolling with posting regularly. I'll get a surge of motivation and post more frequently, then drop off for weeks or months at a time. Hell, one time it was a few years, I think.
Though looking at a description for external and internal processors, I somehow draw from both? Which is somehow more frustrating than simply fitting into one or the other.
Re: Long-form writing
Date: Fri, Nov. 17th, 2023 03:57 am (UTC)But anyway, wishing you luck in figuring out the balance of the websites that works for you.