[HATED] Adaptations done intentionally without help from the source

[u/Chill0000]

Halo TV show: Before the show came out, the writers were praising their decision to not look to the games for inspiration when making the show

God Of War TV show: Chris Judge, the actor of Kratos in the games from 2018-Now, spoke up about his dislike on the show not hiring anyone who worked on any of the previous games. One of the original creators of Kratos also spoke up about them not having faith in the adaptation.

Supergirl 2026 film: the director for the film not only said he decided to not read Woman Of Tomorrow, the comic the film is adapting, because he wanted to do his own thing, he also didn’t look at comic art for inspiration to design Lobo and instead used an AI image generator to design Lobo’s look for the film

[u/FortifiedPuddle]

It’s not an isolated village in the books. There are periodic streams of visitors coming and going. Their products get exported all over. They depend on trade for lots of items, including manufactured goods. Many characters from there come and go in the world fairly easily.

Oh, and Rand and his mother both moved and settled there.

The kids just think it’s isolated because they are bored teenagers and maybe the whole fantasy trope of it. But really, yeah it’s at least connected enough that dudes from there can go off in to the world, have careers, bring back foreign wives and babies etc.

Or you know, there’s this new thing called colour blind casting. Since the 1950s. Could be that.

[u/MaXimillion_Zero → u/FortifiedPuddle]

"The old blood is strong in Emond’s Field, and the old blood sings."

Two rivers being relatively insular and isolated is an actual plot point in the series. The occasional gleeman or traveling merchant doesn't mean there's a bunch of people from all over the world moving in. Rand's appearance standing out compared to everyone else also doesn't make sense if everyone looks different.

Or you know, there’s this new thing called colour blind casting. Since the 1950s. Could be that.

It makes sense when a story is set in a region with a diverse population, and appearance isn't relevant to the story. Not a lot of it going on in Black Panther or Vikings.

[u/FortifiedPuddle → u/MaXimillion_Zero]

So you’ve not read the books then. Or my comment.

Yes, they have the opinion that it’s the arse end of nowhere. But if you read the books that’s really just the sort of opinion people have about all small towns. Just like the kids all think they’re poor, but they’re all comfortably middle class as it turns out. If not actual royalty.

We are in counter example shown an endless list of similar small towns and villages all over the world. And a whole bunch of them have less trade and fewer visitors. Two Rivers products are famous throughout the world. People have heard of it in other countries. You can find Two Rivers leaf all over the place. You cannot find products from random Black Hills village number four.

Within the area they get their pins and knickknacks from peddlers and traders. They have a significant export economy, and expect staple products to be provided by trade. Various characters are known as being good at trade. They have from the characters we know of several immigrants before the events of the story. And just a whole bunch of them afterwards, which suggests it was never actually that hard to get to the Two Rivers and people can emigrate there.

The idiot kids think they live in the arse end of nowhere. As all small town kids the world over think. People from other places think that too, because again this is a universal human attitude. Big city folk think it must be some tiny irrelevant place, and wouldn’t you know it that’s how real big city folk think about places too.

So just maybe it’s Jordan telling us about how human beings think about places? Rather than an objective fact, what with all the evidence provided that it’s not the case.

Rather like how The Shire is the beating economic heart of the north west, and not the irrelevant backwater the Hobbits think it is.

[u/grizzantula → u/FortifiedPuddle]

As someone who has read the series through more than once; your premise is wrong.

They are isolated and they are insular. Many of them wanted to secede from Andor, Perrin himself even kicked around the idea, citing that they don't even see tax collectors this far in the middle of nowhere. The Two Rivers being a small, tucked away region is a very large plot point in the books.

It was so isolated, in fact, it's almost like it was the perfect place for the pattern to hide it's champion from the forces of the enemy. Hmmmmmm.

You're over thinking it.

[u/FortifiedPuddle → u/grizzantula]

No, the point of the Two Rivers is that it’s a happy medium place for the heroes to grow up. It’s prosperous, but also industrious. Neither poor nor rich. The kids all get stable upbringings, get fed up big and strong, have to do work and learn things. All of them can read and write. It’s a deliberatly happy medium place.

It’s out of the way, but also connected. Tam and Abell can go out looking for the boys and get to Tar Valon etc. fairly easily. The party initially get to Caemlyn easily. The roads are the traditional fantasy “muddy tracks” that are actually extremely good for conveying even heavy wagons and enable swift movement. Hand waiving of course who maintains them.

News spreads easily in particular. Right at the start of the first book the villagers are concerned that foreign trouble is going to come knocking. They are plugged in to global events. They absolutly depend on selling their products to merchants etc. They even trade horses, which is pretty high market. They’re plugged into to a near Modern commercial economy and able to draw on manufactured goods. Including just a whole bunch of books, which achieve a crazy high level of circulation in only a few years. Things like The Travels of Jain Farstrider knit their world together into one culture.

It’s only our unreliable narrators who think it’s out the way. As all people in small towns do. But we also see them pass through endless, endless small towns and think that actually, they’re very familiar. That really their home and is replicated out everyone. That they’re not from some special little corner, because it’s a whole world of similar little villages. Some bigger some smaller.

It’s part of how Jordan plays with tropes. Ooh, the protagonists is from the special little hidden away village. But, actually the world is full of little villages. This one happens to be drawn in to the map at the front for plot significance. But really there are lots and lots of similar villages. They’re not special: they’re normal.

[u/grizzantula → u/FortifiedPuddle]

You're moving the goal posts. I didn't say anything about being poor, unfed, unprosperous, or anything like that. The point is that The Two Rivers is out of the way, it's in the back country, it's insular, and it's isolated due to the geography surrounding it.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make with Tam and Abell. They know the way to Tar Valon. That's it.

You mention the two rivers villagers being plugged into current events, but omit the part where they are, at the very least, an entire year behind current events because their only source of news and goings on is a singular traveling merchant.

The narrators are not unreliable on this topic. Queen Morgase, you know the ruler of the land that the two rivers resides in, herself remarks that she barely recognizes the two rivers as part of Andor. She mentions that Andor hasn't sent a tax collector there in GENERATIONS due to the difficult terrain surrounding the region (mountains of mist to the west, the river taren to the north, the white river to south, and massive swamps to east). Elaida goes on to dismiss the two rivers as a rustic fringe of the realm. Moiraine, multiple times throughout the series, remarks that the world has forgotten the two rivers AND the two rivers has forgotten, or isolated itself from, the world.

Jordan does like to play around with tropes, but this is not a good example of that. This is his take on a shire like setting. Again, you're over thinking it.

[u/FortifiedPuddle → u/grizzantula]

But that shows that the Andoran Queen and her adviser do actually know about the Two Rivers. They choose not to exercise control over them, because Andor is way too big with way too many territorial claims as is. Their arbitrary map lines are getting smaller all the time. That’s a Theme.

But then their “too hard to send a tax collector” is bullshit. The geography stuff you mention don’t actually prevent people getting in across Taren Ferry as we know. Plenty of people manage. It’s limited state capacity, but that would be admitting a weakness instead of providing a convenient excuse to dismiss it. State capacity that includes the ability to actually get them to pay, or thinking they have any money to do so. Pressing that claim without backup is bad policy, as you eat tax revolts and suddenly you aren’t even nominally in charge anymore.

The Two Rivers are also only a little behind. When they’re worried about Logain he has only just been captured at that point. So, not that far. Not a year. And they seem to think events might involve them. Or spill over to them. That’s not a splendid isolation mindset.

Jordan’s whole thing is that all his narrators are unreliable and no one knows what is really going on. Especially his idiot teenagers. Sure sometimes with Elaida or Niall it’s more obvious. But even our main characters don’t know what’s going on. If they didn’t figure out some really important things they’d have lost the Last Battle. The Forsaken cackling about how they’re all dumb pawns are right. And also dummies who don’t know stuff themselves. That’s the point of WoT. No one ever knows everything. People make dumb choices based on not knowing things right to the end.

And he doesn’t sign post it when something is wrong. For example Lan has the emotional intelligence and coping skills of a rabid squirrel on crystal meth. What with being an orphaned former child soldier obsessed with death and all. He’s mister shit coping mechanisms. But Jordan doesn’t actually sign post that. In fact he paints Lan as cool role model for Rand. And has Rand take his incredibly awful advice about mountains and duty seriously. He relies on the reader to determine how bad a take that is. And, slowly over the course of the books reveals that maybe living life is good.

[u/grizzantula → u/FortifiedPuddle]

Yes, the queen of the land and her advisor were aware of the two rivers. Go figure the queen would be in the know about her land's geography lol.

It wasn't worth it send a tax collector. It would incur a higher cost than the actual tax revenue collected because of the rough geography. She says as much, but you'd dismiss it as an unreliable narrator.

"They seem to think events might involve them. Or spill over to them. That's not a splendid isolationist mindset"

My friend, that's literally a keystone of an isolationist mindset. They don't want events effecting them.

You're stuck on the unreliable narrator aspect as if the entire series is meant to be unreliable, and that simply just isn't the case.

You're way over thinking this. But at this point agree to disagree.

[u/FortifiedPuddle → u/grizzantula]

You’re refusing to think at all. But hey, that’s free.

[u/grizzantula → u/FortifiedPuddle]

Ahhh, there's the prick I knew was hiding in those comments all along.

[u/EldritchFingertips → u/FortifiedPuddle]

Sorry man, you're just not correct. About several things, not even just your main point.

The party reaches Caemlyn easily? Huh??? Rand and Mat spend the whole trip between Shadar Logoth and Caemlyn as penniless beggars constantly hunted by darkfriends, while Mat goes slowly insane and Rand keeps causing problems by accidentally channeling. Perrin and Egwene spend the same trip running from murderous ravens and then making a slow way with the Tinkers' caravan. It takes them all weeks and weeks to get there. You're forgetting like a quarter of the book!

And yes, everyone else is correct when they tell you the Two Rivers is a small backwater that has literally been all but forgotten by Andor, and most people there don't know anything but vague stories about the rest of the world beyond their borders. Some of them don't even believe Aes Sedai exist before Moiraine shows up.

[u/FortifiedPuddle → u/EldritchFingertips]

Try reading the books buddy.

[u/EldritchFingertips → u/FortifiedPuddle]

Done that twice, thanks

[u/FortifiedPuddle → u/EldritchFingertips]

Rookie numbers

[u/EldritchFingertips → u/FortifiedPuddle]

Cool story bro