The TV and Streaming Thread: US Writers/Actors Strike Edition

[InsaneCommander]

19 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

men must take control of and master the One Power, while women must...submit to the One Power?

This, at least, serves a purpose in the story, with the Power being more dangerous to man and the prophesied hero having to learn to use it on his own with the risk of dying and dooming the world. Not that it makes that much difference since the prophecies also say he will destroy the world. I might have gotten the wrong impression or maybe it's because I read the books long ago, but there were probably a lot more female wilders that survived learning on their own than male ones, who would end up being noticed even without much skill.

[Zoraptor]

8 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

the worst problem would be fantasy catholic syndrome

pretty much 7 out of 10 fantasy book have their own version of catholic church just with a few lazy name change

that doesn't make sense especially in high fantasy setting with so much actual magic and vast pantheon

Eh, hard disagree. Historically 'our' Catholic Church 100% believed in 'magic' and still does- in the end God Did It/ miracle events are magic. It's a belief system, it doesn't have to be consistent because people's beliefs aren't consistent. The only difference with lots of obviously extant gods is that worship is the focus, not belief. And quite often the situation is the same as here even if there is magic- no direct Divine Intervention, you either believe because you believe, or you don't.

Mostly though, if someone wrote our existence as a fantasy novel there would be loads of people saying the same thing, but in reverse. "Why are there so many religions in this world when Science exists? I can go outside and curse Zherem, lord of the sky, and he'll hit me with a lightning bolt; ea sum, quod erat demonstrandum. There nothing happens but people still believe in God/ Allah/ Thor/ Apep/ Toutatis/ Vishnu etc? Makes no sense." Human nature isn't logical.

[uuuhhii]

19 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Eh, hard disagree. Historically 'our' Catholic Church 100% believed in 'magic' and still does- in the end God Did It/ miracle events are magic. It's a belief system, it doesn't have to be consistent because people's beliefs aren't consistent. The only difference with lots of obviously extant gods is that worship is the focus, not belief. And quite often the situation is the same as here even if there is magic- no direct Divine Intervention, you either believe because you believe, or you don't.

Mostly though, if someone wrote our existence as a fantasy novel there would be loads of people saying the same thing, but in reverse. "Why are there so many religions in this world when Science exists? I can go outside and curse Zherem, lord of the sky, and he'll hit me with a lightning bolt; ea sum, quod erat demonstrandum. There nothing happens but people still believe in God/ Allah/ Thor/ Apep/ Toutatis/ Vishnu etc? Makes no sense." Human nature isn't logical.

all the copy pasted circular logic paster script might work if there is not also a 2 kilometer high sword just outside of the city

walk on water creat food and water might be miracle if water walk create food create water are not level 2 spell

but the default assumption of most western author make all the laziness invisible

in the end it take more time to justify default in a different setting than extend the different setting itself

this also infested fantasy of other part of the world to a lesser degree

such as healer class in most korea mmo and jrpg

[Hurlshort]

Miracles and Magic would seem to be inherently different. Magic, according to fantasy rules, can be reproduced. There is typically a method or a system to it. Miracles are, by their very nature, unusual and unpredictable. Jesus didn't turn water into wine at every meal, I'd imagine. Herb Brooks wasn't a wizard, beating the USSR was a one-time deal.

As for WoT, the show sucks and the people are all unlikeable.

[Sarex]

2 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

Miracles and Magic would seem to be inherently different. Magic, according to fantasy rules, can be reproduced. There is typically a method or a system to it. Miracles are, by their very nature, unusual and unpredictable.

Depends on the books. LotR was a soft magic system, much closer to miracles and the like, while on the other end you have Sanderson's magic system with hard rules. Wot is somewhere in the middle pulling towards hard.

[uuuhhii]

that sound like fate rule

that was another set of nonsense

lucky for fantasy author everywhere type moon rule was so incomprehensible there are very few trying to copy it

Edited October 21, 2023 by uuuhhii

[Zoraptor]

I'd agree that Catholic Church analogues are 'lazy' (though I'd suspect the writers would call them 'familiar' instead). But they're not unrealistic because Belief is not founded upon Logic. They're parallel/ immiscible concepts.

Or to put it another way people here don't think "wow, it's a miracle that my molecules don't fly apart/ collapse", but it is. You have to have exactly the right level of Fundamental Interactions for us to exist and you need that combination to have occurred from an infinite variety. Obviously it has, or this post wouldn't exist, so reading this is a minor miracle. Hope you all appreciate it.

Similarly turning water to wine with a spell may not be thought of as a miracle in a magic world, but it is. I can't think of a single world where basic real world physics doesn't exist, and that says you cannot turn one set of atoms into another (well, you probably can, but if you're mucking around with subatomic physics then there's a relevant Clarke quote instead)

Kind of disagree with the Jesus miracles, while he had some one off unique spectaculars he performed other miracles too, like healing. Not much practical difference between healing lepers or the blind or cripples and a Heal/ Cure Disease spell, and that was definitely a repeatable skill rather than one off.

[Zoraptor]

WoT S2E4&5

TLDR: up and down, especially in terms of continuity consistency- far more obvious when you write the reviews after watching the next episode, probably should have done that from the start- but still OK.
 

Spoiler

Weak part: Moiraine family drama. Sigh. There's quite a lot of this, I do hope they haven't ended up ruining the pacing again with extraneous guff as with Stepin. We met Moiraine's sister in ep3, though we didn't get her family name so didn't know it was her. I do wonder if Barthanes will be a darkfriend in this version, he's kind of overly nice and gormless, and marrying Queen Galldrian (who presumably doesn't get murdered by Thom). His actor does a great job actually, since he seems to be overly nice but could just as easily be someone acting like they're overly nice. Indeed, most of the actors do well with what they're given.

Liandrin betrays the wondergirls and takes them to the Seanchan. The method is a change (she knocks them out with the power and shields them, then go through the ways though their exit isn't from the ways? Couldn't see a waygate anyway but then also couldn't be bothered going back to check) and she then releases them at their meeting to mess with Suroth. And yes, she'd dark because of her son. Ho hum. She's rather too conflicted about it all to be honest. Nynaeve doesn't nuke Suroth and her two damane because, apparently, Liandrin betraying her plus being attacked has not made her mad enough to channel... this is particularly bad because in ep6 (which as above I have already watched) she can channel despite not being mad. Still, if that were the only continuity/ logic error it'd be forgivable. Verin is investigating their disappearance and thinks that Sheriam may have been compelled. This looks like the later book Black Ajah Hunter plot moved forward, which is fine. Might make Verin non BA in this which would be the only major consequence. Sheriam is played by the decidedly non redheaded Rima Te Wiata, I wondered why I felt I should sing something about Ricki Baker while watching.

Selene is Lanfear, unsurprisingly. Moiraine shanks her while she and Rand are having the most tame 'sex scene' ever, basically Christian TV level. GoT this is not. Being the TV show getting stabbed through the heart and her throat cut is barely an inconvenience for Lanfear, though she is healed via True Power (ie Dark One intervention, we even see sa'a in her eyes to indicate it). The whole thing is capped off nicely by her yeeting the head off a random passer by to steal his horse, all it's missing is an Arniesque quip to go with it (she's just mildly snide). Well it would be, if she couldn't just Travel or Skim instead of riding, or use TAR- which she notes can be used that way, in the very next episode. They really need a continuity pass. Her and Ishamael are good fun actually, though very much in the panto Ian McDiarmid-as-Palpatine sense.

Perrin is Perrin. He rescues Aviendha (not Gaul) from a cage because he wanted to bury Uno and left Elyas, and ends up fighting whitecloaks including Dain Bornhald (played as a misguided good guy already on very bad terms with Valda). Aviendha looks nothing like Rand which is a bit of a problem when they've made a point of Rand being an obvious Aiel so much so he gave his dementia patient ward (he was working at a psych hospital where Moiraine/ Siuan had Logain transferred) flashbacks.

Mat's off with Min and heading to Cairhien. There's some drinking and dicing, but no obvious excess luck yet.

 

[Lexx]

Watched s3 of the mandalorian. It was... something, I guess. Not the worst, not the best. Kinda felt like the actual story was supposed to end with s2, but because the boba fett thing bombed, they decided to make a s3 after all. Was weird to me how they brought back the big bad and then instantly killed him off again. Like, what's this going to be now? Will he return over and over again? Will next season have someone else? Why was it necessary to bring him back for just a few episodes? I don't get it.

[Zoraptor]

WoT S2Ep6&7

TLDR: they're just about OK, in isolation. I have seen Ep8, and it as with S1's it makes the season retroactively worse though to nowhere near as great an extent. Indeed while I couldn't in good heart recommend the first 7 episodes I don't feel either affronted by them or that I wasted my time watching them. By this point there's no getting around the plotting again being distinctly and obviously wobbly in places though. The plot weaves as the plot wills, I guess, but it would be nice if the plot weaved because the characters and events were consistent instead.

Spoiler

Barthanes is, of course, a darkfriend. Not only is this plot a Stepinesque waste of time that exists to give Moiraine something to do but it's badly executed. The only good thing is the choice of actor for Barthanes since Odi from Humans has an excellent line in appearing enthusiastically gormless. Liandrin comes in to order Barthanes to kill Moiraine while her sister is eavesdropping having sat around menacingly. Utterly stupid. Just have Lanfear order him to do it in his dreams. As it is, completely needless exposure of Liandrin and Barty won't get to be king (to be fair, he isn't killed, so he still could be. You could, potentially, rescue the plot by having that be Part of the Plan to kickstart a civil war. I don't have much faith in the show for that to be the case, but I'll reverse the criticism if it is explained)

Nynaeve channels at an adam. She can't channel when she needs to, only when the plot needs her to. This gets them Noticed by some damane and the Aes Sedai they're with gets captured as a result. Nice one, Nynaeve, though it's hard to blame anyone but the writers for this. They do at least capture a suldam, who as with the books can channel. I'm sure this will be significant and not completely meaningless.

Alanna and warders think Lan may be a darkfriend. Sigh, yes Al'Lan Mandragoran, a darkfriend... Later, Lan the noted expert on male channeling works out that Moiraine is only shielded, not stilled. Rand gets shielded by Siuan, alone (Lan told her Rand is The Dragon previous). Ho hum. Amusingly, this happens twice the second so Siuan can have a full scale heel turn against Moiraine. They're both rescued by Lanfear. This is the second time Lanfear rescues Rand this episode too, since she decides to set the Foregate on fire as a distraction first time. Lord knows how the unboxing will work. It'll probably be... someone else rescuing him rather than Lanfear at least. OK, so the wondergirls get captured a lot in the early books (4 times in 3, for Egwene) but Rand gets captured 4 times in just over 2 episodes here.

Bain and Chiad look decently like Rand. The actor for Aviendha does a decent job (as do all the actors) but... you have to have all the Aiel look very similar or not bring up Rand's resemblance to them, pick one and stick to it.

Egwene gets tortured. It's probably the best part of these episodes and not because I don't like Egwene. Said it earlier but it bears repeating: they've done a pretty good job with the Seanchan, visual design excluded.

Mat was going to go to Falme with Rand, but Min told him not to due to her visions. He doesn't tell Rand this is the reason though, as that would involve communicating.

General observation: there's an infamous clip of a late Dr Who (original) episode where Sylvester McCoy as The Doctor decides to climb out a window and stand on a ledge for no discernible reason except to create a 'cliffhanger' ending. The equivalent happens all the time on this show.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Zoraptor

[Sarex]

7 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

General observation: there's an infamous clip of a late Dr Who (original) episode where Sylvester McCoy as The Doctor decides to climb out a window and stand on a ledge for no discernible reason except to create a 'cliffhanger' ending. The equivalent happens all the time on this show.

To be fair, the books had cliffhangers before POV shifts all the time.

[Zoraptor]

The books also had a cliffhanger ending that lasted 3+ (real life) years when a building fell on Mat and he then wasn't in the next book at all...

It isn't really the cliffhangers that are the problem, it's that such events too often don't spring organically from the plot. I've had this problem with a bunch of TV shows recently where they just want maximum drama and think it doesn't matter how little sense the set up makes to get it.

[Raithe]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

The books also had a cliffhanger ending that lasted 3+ (real life) years when a building fell on Mat and he then wasn't in the next book at all...

I can remember Jordan doing the reply to complaints over no Mat POV's for that book with a "... He had a building fall on him in the last book. I didn't think anyone wanted to read of him laid in bed, bandaged, and doing the long route of broken bones healing not being able to really do anything."

[Gfted1]

 

[Zoraptor]

WoT S2E8

On the positive side, it's far better than the previous season's finale, despite my multitude of complaints. On the negative side that's largely because of just how bad s1e8 was. Worst episode of the 8, though it's always hard to judge season finales fairly.
 

Spoiler

Things can probably best be summed up by Nynaeve's 'healing' of Elayne. She can't do it with the power because she can't channel so has to use her Wisdom Knowledge. Awesome, clearly a reference to forthcoming Book Events where she might have to literally save the world using nothing more than herbs and her native pluck. She pushes the arrow through Elayne's leg, fletching and all. Jesus asterisking Christ, how moronic do you have to be to write that? Worse, we actually got the 'Nynaeve needs to be angry/ emotional to channel' explanation earlier in the season, yet she repeatedly cannot when either of these things should be true, but can when we need an obligatory end episode fight scene in Ep6(?). The episode is replete with such things and does not even have the covid/ Mat actor leaving excuses of last time. Just pure shonkiness and lack of care. Plus, of course, them kidnapping a suldam and putting an adam on her is pointless, since Egwene frees herself and that suldam gets shot with a crossbow.

There are far too many of these issues. Ingtar dies randomly. It was clearly shot as being his redemption per the book and we got the set up for it, but all the denoument was cut. Also we have to have everyone fighting in the spot where he could hold 50 men alone. Even when there's attention to detail there isn't. There's a ridiculous heron mark photoshopped- upside down- onto Rand's sword so Turak can mention it. It's gone in prior scenes, and later ones, and when Rand gets branded the mark is back on the blade itself (Rand gripping the blade and not even getting cut is one of the more minor issues). And of course, while we get mentions of Rand learning the sword multiple times because we haven't see it Rand has to blat Turak and friends with the power. Some compare that to Indiana Jones vs Swordsman in RotLA, but that scene is iconic, this one is just moronic. As with Ingtar, wouldn't be at all surprised if it was scripted or even shot, but cut down so we could get the critically important scenes of Moiraine squabbling with her (OC) sister or Alanna's family/ sexy times and the other absolutely critical stuff we got instead.

I'm not going to run through every bad decision made since it'd require more words than one of the books, but I will mention a few choice others. The whitecloaks attack Falme. They have trebuchets, which we see precisely once, when the plot requires them. Presumably, quick assembly trebuchets too. Shame the seanchan don't have aerial troops to scout the countryside. Anyway, while we all know that trebuchets can throw a 90kg object over 300m these ones are super duper accurate too, indeed modern militaries should consider switching back to them judging by their effect. They wipe out the damane on top of a (tall) tower pretty much to a (wo)man. Not quite as bad as Euron Greyjoy's Gauss Rifle ballista, but not far off and given the derision that got... sheesh, just have Rand or Nynaeve or Lanfear or someone, anyone, nuke them with the power instead.

Moiraine obliterates the Seanchan fleet from fricking miles away with, well, torpedoes basically. The damane there do nothing to stop it. Ishamael seems bewildered that Lanfear betrayed him. She said she would, he thought she might... Classic high Int low Wis build I guess. Fain just gives Mat the dagger back. He builds his ashanderei by sticking the dagger on a broomstick. It's as stupid as it sounds. Uno is Gaidal Cain. If there's one weird thing about the Heroes of the Horn it's that we get him, Hawkwing and Amaresu (who's mentioned twice in the books) but only maybe two wide shots with Birgitte. The combat is... pretty Hercules/ Xena, really. Hopper dies and Perrin ganks Geofram Bornhold in front of his son. With a diddly and rather plastic looking axe.

Egwene can stand toe to toe power wise with Ishamael, at least when the plot demands it since she got absolutely trashed by him like 2 minutes earlier. She freed herself, of course, after the tomahawk missile trebuchet hit the tower she was on, by putting an adam on Renna at the same time she was wearing one. This, of course, renders everything Elayne and Nynaeve did over the previous 3 episodes irrelevant and makes their net contribution getting Ryma captured. Mat stabs Rand, through an illusory Ishy, having (apparently) got memories of his previous lives (not other peoples') when tootling the - utterly ridiculous looking- Horn. Perrin gets Captain America's shield from Uno/ Cain, this too is super effective vs the OP. While Moiraine can launch tactical nuclear weapons on a fleet miles away Ishy, the most powerful Chosen, is limited to firing $2, if that, fireworks directly at people. Oh yeah, Rand's got himself captured/ shielded, again, by this point. He does get to stab Ishamael but... well. The closest analogy is a substitute coming on with 30s left in a football match and scoring a goal to make the score... 5-0. It's not nothing, but you're also not going to be calling yourself The Pele Reborn without a certain irony. Maybe the Roger Milla Reborn which might be a big deal in Cameroon, but not the Pele.

Lanfear meets Moghedien. The Forsaken were all in seals, which Ishy broke prior to dying (or 'dying'). We even see Lews Therin sticking Ishamael into one in a flashback, why they didn't just execute/ sever them and what this means for the Sealing of the Bore who knows, one suspects the writers haven't thought that far ahead. So whether these are the same seals that hold the DO... who knows, in any case they're all broken now. Moghedien, the weakest Chosen seems to be as strong as Lanfear, the strongest women of them. She'd probably make a decent Moghedien (or Mesaana, I suspect their roles will be combined and that would explain the added strength) but they seem to want to play her as insane instead. Ah well, anyway.

Series negatives: number 1 by far is the persistent lack of care to detail and what changes actually mean going forward, plus the related issue of all the nonsensical drama. Nothing seems to have been learnt from GoT either, where that sort of thing ended up collapsing the series into a complete thematic and narrative mess. The OC additions are not compelling and time could have been far better spent elsewhere. They want to use iconic book moments but don't want to do the work to make them work. It's far too much the Egwene and Moiraine show.

Positives: far better overall than last season despite that and I'd go so far as to say I more or less enjoyed most of it despite the fristration. Lanfear and Ishamael are good, though Lanfear is always exactly as 'evil' as the plot requires. The acting is pretty much all good, most of the sets are a vast improvement and it certainly doesn't look like Xena despite the massive budget most of the time, unlike S1. The scripting in terms of words said is also generally fine, it's just the context of them which is too often bad.

They really, really, have to work on the plotting and planning, and maybe just maybe cut out some of the fanboying for pet characters. Just a tad, lest we get a million jokes about renaming the 3rd book The Egwene Reborn. Will I watch S3? Probably, at least if they give me another free trial period for it. Actually paying might be a stretch.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Zoraptor

[uuuhhii]

yusha yoshihiko are decade old show now

still funny to audience didn't know anything about dungeon quest

sadly some reference are too outdated

like the crying apology scene

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by uuuhhii

[Lexx]

Damn, Matthes Perry is dead.

[uuuhhii]

finally start watching j tv while they are airing again

budget are low acting are awkward dialogue are embarrassing plot are nonsense

still only work on people can embrace their own awkward side

[LadyCrimson]

MAX, previously known as HBO/Max, had a bunch of the more recent seasons of Chopped, a cooking competition show. I used to like that, even if I skipped half the bits to watch only the bits I enjoyed. So it's now become my "while I cook/eat" tablet-background show. I typically dislike or find game shows dull but there's something weirdly interesting re: the "here's some random weird mix of ingredients, make something in 30 minutes" format. I'd like a show where they did that but with less of the manufactured competition factor.

[Zoraptor]

Been going through some of the Prime catalogue since I've got a free month.

The Boys S3- liked it pretty well overall, quite a lot more than S2. Mostly because I think I've accepted that the main plot progress is going to be glacial and there are going to be... clichés: ie have to make Stormfront worse than Homelander, have to make [S3 antagonist] worse than Homelander as a way to put the Big Confrontation off. Also, lots of [currentyear] allusions. Did you know both Donald Trump and Homelander could shoot someone and their approval ratings would go up? Not exactly subtle social commentary, but then can't really expect that from a show that has octopus sexy times and a guy with a bigger dong than any Vietnamese financial institution wandering around. At least it's fairly even handed given that there's the homicidal AOC analogue as well.

Rings of Power- well, I didn't hate it. The problems are myriad though. Some I suspect are Exec Interference/ Focus Group based- the Mystery Plot doesn't work here and didn't work in WoT S1 either. Others... is Galadriel 4000, or 14? It's often shot like an adaptation of a stage play. There's some truly awful CGI (wtf was that Elven ship G jumped off of? I might be able to do better than that, and I have the artistic talent of asphalt), the scale is at times ridiculous, the dialogue is a bad combination of stagey and stilted and the overall plot is disjointed and tries to set up confliction that cannot actually occur.
 

Spoiler

WTF would Galadriel decide to antagonise the Numenorians? Out of universe: drama, in universe, because she's a blithering idiot? Way too many of those sorts of decisions. Lots of shots of people standing around speechifying to a few dozen extras. Gandalf/ 'Gandalf' looks like a spectacularly bad idea, and wtf were those lady magicians meant to be? There was never any question of who was Sauron out of the two candidates. Are Numenorean ships TARDISes, because that was a lot of cavalry to come out of 3* boats. As for the dialogue:

G: Elendil, what is the answer to the question of the sum of the addition of two, and another two? This is a question that has baffled the greatest elven sages for millenia.

E: ... ... There is an old story of a great philosopher who lived many years ago who after a great battle against horrendous odds said "When the bird follows the trawler it is because it thinks: sardines".

G: ...

E: ...

E: ...four.

Nobody ever immediately answers if given a question. You always get some ham fisted exposition first.

Mostly though, there's no actual drama around a bunch of stuff that they desperately want to spin drama around. We know Sauron will turn out to be evil, we know the dwarves will mine mithril, we know the elves aren't all going to die off in the 2nd age. You can write good stuff when the end point is known else anything based on history would be bad, but that is not the way to do it. Very big "we want to write our own story, just in Middle Earth" vibes.

On the positive side, it generally did feel like the Middle Earth of the movies and I thought that the acting itself was OK- when allowed to be by the direction. The plot etc certainly wasn't the complete catastrophe it could have been, it just wasn't as good as it should have been.

*to be fair, this a source material issue. Elendil ultimately left Numenor with 9 ships, which is massively below scale for founding nations and fighting a massive war a few years later, even with Numenorean colonies like Pelargir.

And 2 episodes into Picard S3. I've skipped S2 as everyone says it's crap. Now this, I like, so far. Not quite unreservedly, but fairly close. Did you know that this season's showrunner also ran 12 Monkeys (TV)? It's pretty subtle but I caught on after the actor for Shaw, the reference to James Cole and a drug called Splinter...

Edited November 1, 2023 by Zoraptor

[Raithe]

 

[Malcador]

Danger 5 is an interesting show, not sure how I came across it on Youtube.

[Zoraptor]

Finished Picard S3. Far from perfect, but I liked it a lot overall and not all just due to nostalgia. So much better than S1 was. Definitely more than a few nuTrekisms and general sloppiness- plus various plot points seeming to have been cobbled together from other shows; ironically despite all the references not 12 Monkeys- but it was enjoyable.
 

Spoiler

Main problem was the extremely sloppy pivot from changelings to Borg and the Borg plot relying on some fairly obvious guff like Gaius Baltar's fleet coordination system. Really though, could that BSG plot steal have been more blatant? Not the only show they stole from, what with getting Bester from B5 to do a voiceover as Fed President. The whole Borg plot felt badly rushed, as if they had the episode order chopped by 2 when well into production and it effected the pacing.  More minor, but emblematic: finish setting up plot for Titan being stuck in a nebula with no power and having to shut off systems etc then we'll... pop off to the completely and utterly  essential holodeck for a few scenes. That sort of thing belongs in a far worse season than this one. Fortunately it was also restricted to a few times over the season unlike Discovery's few times per episode.

Funny thing: the Titan bridge crew despite being far from the focus of the show got more development than the Discovery crew did in the 3 seasons I watched. Was it a set up for a new series? I'd probably watch to be honest, and despite not really being sold on Jack Crusher (or Raffi, though that may be holdover from S1).

Very good for the nostalgia. Nice to hear Walter Koenig and see John de Lancie, even if that made a series set up look even more obvious. And a nice farewell to the TNG characters all of whom seemed more or less in character (well, ~~ for Data) and got moments to shine (well, maybe not Troi, whose main contribution was forcing Jack's heel turn. Then again, that was more a plot issue than character issue).

 

[melkathi]

On 10/21/2023 at 11:57 PM, InsaneCommander said:

This, at least, serves a purpose in the story, with the Power being more dangerous to man and the prophesied hero having to learn to use it on his own with the risk of dying and dooming the world. Not that it makes that much difference since the prophecies also say he will destroy the world. I might have gotten the wrong impression or maybe it's because I read the books long ago, but there were probably a lot more female wilders that survived learning on their own than male ones, who would end up being noticed even without much skill.

I randomly read the first book this summer. The aes sedai lady (can't remember any names of any characters (goes to show how much I enjoyed it)) explains to the young women that basically the whole village healer / midwife role helped the old healer before them control her magic, and guide them to control theirs in turn.

I guess quite a few female wilders would fall into similar roles in other villages -  becoming the wise-woman without anyone, not even themselves, realizing that this role and all that comes with it, provides the structure they need.

[Raithe]

1 hour ago, melkathi said:

I randomly read the first book this summer. The aes sedai lady (can't remember any names of any characters (goes to show how much I enjoyed it)) explains to the young women that basically the whole village healer / midwife role helped the old healer before them control her magic, and guide them to control theirs in turn.

I guess quite a few female wilders would fall into similar roles in other villages -  becoming the wise-woman without anyone, not even themselves, realizing that this role and all that comes with it, provides the structure they need.

That and the women tend not to go stark raving bonkers as they learn. 

Men go nuts, get noticed, get killed.

You get a lot of "low level" women's groups that got kick-started by failed accepted (often under manipulations of Aes Sedai) that generally slid into that wise-woman / healer circle types. Done because it helped wilders survive, and kept providing an easy way for Aes Sedai to find the ones with power / talent without having to trawl through so much chaff.

There was a couple of commentaries in the books that wilders quite often got kickstarted by channeling for a specific need, which tended to turn up in a fairly shallow array of talents : a quick healing, a way to remain hidden, a way to talk to someone distant.  So again, developing healing abilities is one of the natural turns of wilders in the WoT setting.