[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/MaXimillion_Zero]

"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/MoonIsAFake → u/FortifiedPuddle]

But they do live at the end of the world (metaphorically speaking). I've re-read the books last year and my impression is that locals were not a bunch of travellers. They see traders coming from time to time and they may take a "jorney" to a town nearby to sell and buy goods, but for the most part people just live there the way real medieval people lived, spending their lives in a 20-miles radius from the home (a day's walk, basically). So, they should be indeed quite homogenous society. It doesn't mean that they should be "white" (I hate that concept and don't even want to use it), but interracial marriage should have long ago turn them all into some olive-ish or brown-is generic looking people.

[u/FortifiedPuddle → u/MoonIsAFake]

Why would you compare them to Medieval people? They’re at least Early Modern. Really by the end of the series they’re getting in to Modern. Jordan specifically wrote it to be something like 1600-1700s. I think it reads more like Tom Sawyer meets Tolkien personally. Certainly not Medieval. Very little fantasy is Medieval.

And in that time, as in the books, mobility is way higher. You have your trade networks that are robust and moving goods globally. You have option of leaving your little village, becoming a sailor and travelling the world. You have these massive cities. Which in the books is enabled by some sort of narrative magic where you’ve got so much trade and manufacturing going on. The sheer scale of the cities is crazy. Caemlyn isn’t even by a river and it’s huge.

Then there’s the sheer homogeneity of the world. Even people from different continents are basically the same but wear different hats. People from neighbouring nations are just the same culture entirely, but wear different coats. Maybe have accents. For all the remarking on accents the character do the difference between nations is like the difference between counties in real life.

[u/MoonIsAFake → u/FortifiedPuddle]

Mobility is mainly determined by technology. If you have to walk or ride a horse, a 50 miles to the nearest town is a two-days journey (in a good weather) one way. And then you have to spend as much to return. If you only have an ox to plow your land, you may only plow less than half a hectare a day. If you have to hunt for meat you have to spend a whole day in the forest. And so on so forth. That lifestyle basically prohibits you from travelling. You have too much work to do and travelling takes too much time that you are already short of. So, you live your life in a one-day-walk area around your village outside of some very special events (like you are being conscripted for war).