Zoraptor

Honestly, if they were going to go there I kind of wish they'd just gone at it full Spartacus style and just made everything ludicrously over the top and stylised. Apparently a lot of it was actually filmed too, and got cut for testing badly. The Gitara prologue definitely was and later got replaced with the obviously cobbled together prologue we got. Looks like it simply was not a very well run project even before covid.

The full draft script for WoT Ep1 has leaked, though a decent amount of it had already leaked over the last few months.

Elayne is pretty funny if taken as a parody of 'enlightened' nobles and how they see themselves*. There's certainly far too much of her for the depth of the plot she's involved in, and she's an awful person who gets a lot of people pointlessly killed because she thinks she personally is invulnerable. *And that's how I tend to think she is intended to be taken, especially with some of the in jokes about her (eg her constantly getting a veil caught in her mouth when others don't- because while she may think she's down with the common man she's actually looking down her nose at everyone, she just doesn't realise it).

That I actually find more or less likeable because it's completely relatable. It's also very easy to forgive such things when the stakes are on the 'badger released on the common during Bel Tine, hilarious or not?' sort of level and from people who aren't really mature. It's a lot less easy to forgive- and a hence a lot less likeable- when things are done for obviously selfish reasons and the stakes are massive after 2 years away from home.

Her looking Aiel is fine, their racial characteristics are 'blonds and redheads' and Tigraine was blonde. Going from a pampered princess in her early twenties to a proper Aiel fighter who can solo multiple armoured guys while having contractions a few years later stretches credibility somewhat and is only really acceptable for the standard reason that implausible things happen all the time in WoT- Rota vult. And even that is a stretch, given all she actually has to do is make it to Dragonmount and die. OTOH, it's exactly the sort of thing that I'd be ignoring if the rest of the content was good- in the books a different daughter heir becomes an accomplished tight rope walker completely randomly after all, and without even the excuse that it had to be due to prophecy... Obviously I agree pretty much completely with everything. The only caveats I'd have are with how hard it is to translate pov to TV, and that all the female main characters (counting Egwene, Nynaeve and Moiriane) in WoT aren't really 'likeable' early on, largely because they're viewed from the pov of Rand and Perrin in the books (exc Egwene, to an extent, though as I've said before I find her most likeable early on). Probably the best example of how pov effects things is Mat, who a lot of people don't like in the early books because he's seen through Rand's pov and is complaining and always saying he'd leave if he could- but, when you do get his povs he complains incessantly and is always on the verge of running off; yet somehow always ends up doing the right thing anyway. So a lot of people dislike Nynaeve in the early books because she's an authority figure to the boys and was a young woman authority figure in her village trying to order people three times her age around, or Moiraine because her intentions are opaque and the boys don't trust her. Some modification to their apparent personalities to make them more likeable is not a problem when you have a switch to a more omniscient pov because they actually are more likeable than the povs have them as. I'm not actually sure the show tried that at all though. It's far easier to make them 'likeable' instead of likeable by having them do all the cool things. And yeah, with that approach you end up with Superman very rapidly because you have to have them doing cooler and cooler things and get into a spiral of plot inflation. Given the content of ep8, power wise there already is absolutely nowhere for them to go upwards except into the completely stupid.

He was meant to be running honeypots for Mossad, though there isn't any actual evidence, just a load of speculation. Ghislaine has a very proximal relationship with Mossad though, through her father who was definitely one of their assets.

Not sure there really is a formula for economic success any more. At least raw materials (inc food, and for Russia, energy) are things that will always be needed. Most of the Service economies are bubbles waiting to pop, underpinned by fantasy and money printing.

Is Bruce a Star Trek Discovery writer putting his favourite obsidz board member into the show as a tribute? I think this is conclusive proof for that theory.

The 'Ukraine tensions' have literally happened every year since 2015. The 'direct communication' change is pretty much pure theatre. Russia hasn't had a permanent rep to NATO since 2018 because (iirc) NATO refused accreditation; and Russia recently withdrew (or threatened to) the remains of its mission in Brussels. In a months time the Russian soldiers will go home and the NATO leaders will pat themselves on the back about preventing the 'inevitable' invasion and pontificate on how relevant they are, and in a few months time after that the whole thing will repeat again with the next intake of Russian draft. As pmp10, they'll wait for things to, er, cool off, then certify Nord Stream 2 in a months time. They could also pressure Ukraine about nicking gas the gas- Russia's whole point is that they're sending the contracted amounts, it just isn't actually arriving as the whole amount- but if they do that (and they almost certainly already are) they'll do it privately as otherwise the US/ Poland/ Baltics would throw a tizzy. In terms of stealing money, it would only stop if the west actually cared about it but as always it's just lip service, except the self interest of trying to stop locals demanding bungs from western companies. Yulia Timoshenko stole literally billions in a few years but she's never been anything other than a western darling. Everyone understands that the aid Ukraine gets from the EU and got from Russia was used for influence peddling and not to benefit ordinary Ukrainians even if they don't say it. In 30 years they've gone from the richest soviet republic to the poorest nation in Europe, and at this point they're even 20% behind Moldova who held that title for decades. It's one of the most consistently poorly run countries in the world precisely because it's been in Russia's and the west's best interests to have crap leaders and advocate crap and ineffective policies.

That is, at least, the best season of Discovery. Anyway, I've finally finished Witcher S2. It was... good. Far more along the expected lines of an adaptation than WoT, albeit I'd read Blood of Elves ages ago and can't really remember much (see below), and played the games. And absolutely night and day in terms of apparent quality, scripting, CGI, sets, choreography, consistency and indeed pretty much everything else. End of the day, while I'm not familiar enough with the source material to say that it's a good adaptation it's good or better on the more objective fronts, as well as the subjective one of actually being entertaining- and it hasn't introduced any glaring internal inconsistencies that look like they'll come back to bite them either.

They had a fight about whether to use the British or French spelling. One of the few times the French won vs the British. Yet somehow it's positively beautiful compared to the MiG-31. Post 70s Interceptors are just plain ugly. (OTOH, if I ever win a ludicrous amount on lotto I would pay pretty much anything for the Su-47 prototype. And if [museumname/ VKS/ whoever] doesn't want to give it up Sukhoi can build me another one)

I've seen a lot of people saying they needed more episodes, but in these circumstances I cannot really agree. They probably did in the absolute sense, but I wouldn't be confident that we'd get better out of an extra 2 hours rather than just more of what we got. It really did look like a badly managed project where the wheels fell off completely at the end, and they tend to expand their crappiness to fill all available time. OK, there was covid, but end of the day if a builder builds a house and it falls down in a week you don't care that he was going through a divorce or whatever; you care that the house fell down. And maybe that your neighbours builder, also going through a divorce, managed to build a decent house despite that. End of the day they decided that Stepin and the warder bond which becomes important in probably 2 seasons time was worth half an episode instead of more immediately relevant world building, or giving the main characters five minutes each of character development or whatever. There's nothing to say that we would not simply have got 2 more hours of such writing genius. And they did so little effective world building with the time they had... The main issue they have is how much better Witcher did in similar covid circumstances and, supposedly, with less budget. There have been some issues with it so far (I've not seen ep8 yet) but it's night and day on apparent quality, use of time and world building, and a significant step up still on script and storyline.

It's easy for me since I don't habitually get Prime, I just won't resub after The Expanse finishes. I have to admit though that I have a fair bit of morbid curiousity about just how bad it can get. If it were free I'd probably watch it casually for a laugh. And speaking of The Expanse, and since it's 30 degrees and 85% humidity and I don't want to finish mowing the lawns: Expanse S6e3

No Bruce, I was being sarcastic, it is excellent and you should most definitely watch it. It rates a 110/100 on the globally respected "Do I want to drive Bruce absolutely bonkers via eldritch horror, why yes I do" rating scale. It's entirely possible I have hit the christmas sherry a bit early in a desperate attempt to expunge some recent bad memories.

WoT Ep8 TLDR; hmm. You may substitute your username for Marion. Be warned, watch this episode unprepared and you may end up as the SS equivalent of that gif, I know I did. Rating: 0/0. Because it's impossible to define how bad it was.

I think you have to have at least a little sympathy with the WoT showrunners when it comes to Mat. Some of the stupid decisions were entirely of their own making, but losing the actor must have stuffed things up too, and up to that point he made the best impression of the boys. We don't know if what apparently happens was the original plan or an attempt to rescue the plot, though you'd hope it was forced on them. He was also the most... opaque of the main characters in the early books, with his first pov chapter being a third of the way through book 3?

The issue with the flaws is... hmm. TV and books are different. I'll spoiler it to be safe, though there are no spoilers for anything unaired. As for the leaks, I wouldn't dispute their accuracy, just the interpretation

I'm 99% sure that leak isn't completely true since the actor involved is filming in S2.

There at least they are potentially in good company- Game of Thrones also reshot much of its first episode (though by rumour at least, LotR was almost a total reshoot while a decent amount of the original GoT pilot got used), and replaced a cast member too at the same time as LotR also did.

WoT doesn't really have sex scenes, to be fair to it. Its treatment of sex would be perfectly at home on some typical CW show like the Vampire Diaries, minus Lan's bum and some random bath bristols. Which makes you wonder why they bothered. A lot of productions are hiring intimacy consultants nowadays- it would be the least of this shows problems though, if even a fraction of the local rumours are true. It has an awful, albeit anecdotal, reputation locally. So much so that the local media had a fair bit of difficulty finding people who were upset about production moving to the UK. The distinct impression was that a lot of people didn't want New Zealand associated with it. (the most generally applicable complaint was why Amazon would spend hundreds of millions of dollars piggybacking on successful books and movies, then hire showrunners who hated the source material...)

Only seen the first episode of Witcher S2. I mean honestly it's like the old complaint about public transport; nothing comes along for months then 4 series I'm actually interested in drop inside a few weeks, just when I don't have any spare time. Guess it must be due to the Northern Hemisphere with their silly reversed seasons or something. Got to say though, Witcher managed a better sense of scope literally inside its first two minutes with the Sodden aftermath scene than WoT has managed in 7 entire episodes- you'd think the Battle of Tar Valon was a minor skirmish from its depiction. Plus that Bruxa... in the immortal 'words' of Lews Therin Telamon: hums and tugs earlobe.

The Shannara series was better than it had any right to be. Which isn't saying all that much. You'd not mistake it for anything other than MTV (though iirc they quit scripted dramas between S1&2, orphaning the show), down to the lead actress in S1 being a model who unfortunately couldn't act her way out of a paper bag. She did really look like she was trying though, to be fair to her, as did pretty much everyone involved; and they looked like they were enjoying themselves. Dunno if I could recommend it- at the moment I'd probably have to say it's better than WoT, but then I never read Shannara and didn't expect much, so limited capacity to be disappointed. Fal Dara I thought was OK, the environs were certainly too desolate and I also never envisioned the Blight as shown, though that's not a big deal if it's now more of a fort specifically guarding Tarwin's Gap than a city. The star design of the fort is very renaissance/ musket and pike, but you can justify that as it potentially having to repel 'magic artillery' in the form of dreadlords. On the waygates etc:

Yep, if you've got channelers it's never going to be an out and out medieval equivalent. In some ways the books are also quasimodern- doesn't seem to be much if any illiteracy for example, when maybe 5% of a renaissance society would be literate. But, in most ways and for most people there was very little difference between medieval and renaissance anyway- more or less subsistence agriculture, horse power, horse or water transport, very low education etc. I guess, technically, it's most accurately described as a post apocalyptic society and if you want to get really technical, post apoc twice over. Yeah, it misses the feel except at very occasional points. It also doesn't feel consistent in what it does do- as simple as each person from the same small isolated village having a different accent. I'm sure half the complaints about it looking like cosplay is because of the lack of consistency in anything else, so far as I can tell the costuming is objectively fine. There's no sense of scale. Things are rushed, other things have too much time spent on them. And there's just enough good stuff there (put an example into the spoilers) to make me more disappointed with the stuff that doesn't work.

WoT Ep7 TLDR; it was alright. Main problem, like much of the show, is that it should be better than it is and it's very uneven. Expanse s6e02 TLDR; another perfectly decent episode. Only criticism is that it does feel rushed and a bit linear, but with only 6 episodes I can't see how that's avoidable. Guess the positive alternative take is that they're culling the fat.