Wheel of Time S3
Added 2025-07-22 06:08:17 +0000 UTC*3x01: Vidyard, WeTransfer
3x02: Vidyard, WeTransfer
3x03: Vidyard, WeTransfer
3x04: Vidyard, WeTransfer
3x05: Vidyard, WeTransfer
3x06: Vidyard, WeTransfer
3x07: Vidyard, WeTransfer
3x08: Vidyard, WeTransfer
*My camera up and shut off for the last bit of the episode, but you can still hear comments. Zero idea why this happened, it's never happened before, but I've tweaked the way I check on my recording status during an episode to make sure I can catch it should something ever happen again. <3
Comments
Good faith opinion on the books, with the caveat that it's been a while since I've actually read the whole series (it's been like 15 years, I've only just started re-reading them so my most recent impressions are solely from book 1). I can't give an unqualified recommendation, because I think it's going to depend on the most important parts of the story for you. And even though I LOVE these books and they were a huge part of growing up for me, they definitely have their flaws. So if the part you're mostly looking for more of was the queerness, the books are going to disappoint. There's some, but very little of it is explicit, and a lot of the implied queerness like "pillow friends" in the tower is treated as basically just situational boarding school stuff that girls grow out of rather than with the respect and gravity of a 20 year relationship that Siuan and Moiraine have in the show. If what you want is more of the deep DEEP level of lore and worldbuilding (with the understanding that his attempts to be forward thinking in the 1990s are going to be dated 30 years later, which I know you know but it bears repeating) and for an extremely intricately woven plot, that's when I'd say the books would be worth it for you. It's very much of the Old School of Epic Fantasy, and most of the romantic relationships felt pretty rote to me. I'll also say that, coming to the show as a book reader, I had to treat it as a completely new entity because so much was changed, even more so than I do when approaching adaptations in general. And I think going the other way around is probably a similar experience. Some things are changed enough that it's detrimentally confusing trying to apply prior knowledge. Those caveats aside, if you're still on the fence then I think it's worth trying just the first book and making your decision from there. By the time you get through the trolloc attack and Shadar Logoth you'll have a pretty good feel of whether you vibe with his style or not which is, I think, less than half the book in terms of time investment. Plus, if you do audiobooks, you can listen to the new one read by Rosamund Pike, who does a (literally) award winning performance on it. If your library doesn't have a copy, I can hook you up. (I can't stand the male narrator of the original audiobook duo, so I'm so glad she's re-recorded either 4 or 5 of them so far.) If you remember her monologue about Manetheren in season 1, it's basically like listening to that for like 21 hours, with really great character voices. If you decide that the books aren't for you but still want to know what happened, the fansite dragonmount.com has both book and chapter level recaps (absolutely necessary when it was years between books), so you can at least get the rundown of major plot points to satisfy the need to know.
TheSporkIdentity
2025-07-30 19:24:03 +0000 UTCStill working my way through but OMG the Keeper in the 10 years ago flashback at the white tower is a TRANS WOMAN! That's one of my questions about how they were going to deal with trans issues in the show answered. There's still the issue of how nonbinary and genderfluid identities fit into the binary magic system, but it's so nice to at least have confirmed that transwomen connect with saidar and not saidin, that it's determined by who they are rather than the configuration of their body.
TheSporkIdentity
2025-07-30 16:06:13 +0000 UTC
