Linguist by education, artist at heart. On my channel you'll find everything from languages & linguistic topics, to video essays, reactions, cosplay and even movie costumes.
I love these videos! I haven’t watched any episodes of ROP S2, just great reviews like these. S2 appears to have the same inconsistencies and boring characterizations as season 1. It’s astounding when I hear people say they enjoy this show. I cannot fathom it.
first of all, I STRONGLY disagree that the pacing of her bond with Mysaria was rushed, or that their kiss "came out of nowhere." Rhaenyra is somewhat of a narcissist, and all her closest advisors have been second-guessing her actions and acting like she can't rule bc she's a woman. so when a woman shows up and tells her she's doing a good job, that she's destined to rule, and saves her from an assassin when she wasn't obligated to, it makes perfect sense why Rhaenyra would latch onto her. is it rational? not entirely, but it's not bad writing. and if you actually watch their scenes together there is definitely tension. plus, at a time where Rhaenyra wishes she'd be treated like a man, it makes perfect sense for that to boil over into kissing a woman. (also: was it "out of nowhere" when she wanted to kiss daemon during their night on the town together? explain to me why her wanting to get with her married uncle while she's a child makes more sense than her wanting to kiss Mysaria, without saying "it's because Mysaria is a woman") otherwise, most of these are valid criticisms of Rhaenyra but they all ignore the single most important factor: she is the best option. period. Aegon makes basically every mistake she does but worse and more. he ignores his advisors, and even replaces the loyal and smart ones with his idiot yes-man buddies. he also goes off on his own without telling anyone, but instead of doing so in a bid for peace he just wants to feel important and macho. plus he sexually assaulted his servant, left his bastard children to fight in slave pits, etc, so he's pretty obviously a terrible choice in basically every way. so who's supposed to take the throne then if not Rhaenyra? one of the younger brothers? Jace? Daemon?? none of them seem like particularly good options either, and you'd basically be completely ignoring the line of succession at that point. nobody could ever be a perfect Monarch because monarchy is a terrible system, which is literally one of the main themes of the show. so while Rhaenyra isn't perfect, she's not supposed to be. but on a fundamental level she wants peace, what's best for the realm, and for her father's wishes to be honored, while everyone else is in it for selfish and power hungry reasons.
I honestly am so suck of this so called Tolkien Professor Olsen. I do not take anything he says seriously at all. He's damaged his reputation beyond repair (if he even had one)
There is a lot of stuff i don't like or don't care for, but never has there ever been something that i despise with a now burning passion like EVERYTHING in and around this 💩show.
I'm offended that everyone is offended about offending the offenders. Aahhh to much offensive offending only joking I like your video. I'm religious sort of so NO WAY would I refer to anyone as demon
The thing that separates Daemon from Aemond is ultimately despite his actions sometimes, his love for both Viserys and Rhaenyra was enough to temper his desires, to stop him from being the absolute worst version of himself, from becoming someone like Aemond, who at the end of the day, will not hesitate to sacrifice everything that he loves to get what he desires, in the end, Daemon chose his love for his family while Aemond chose his desire for power.
I hope Amazon makes seasons 1 to 10 of the Rings of Wokeness and spends billions for sheer hubris! ....at this point this show is just a machine for laughs 😎🤦♂️🤣.... I just want to see how long they can go producing this 💩💩💩💩 for the modern audience...🤡🤡🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
O yes uber came for the money like always clock work girls knew the money was gone they were scared told Jack everything like money was gone he was selling out of corners club that's why they went there uber always came to pick up the money that's his job guy in food truck shady two you cant make a rent and survive off a food truck
The rings of power series is an excellent example of modern video entertainment productions, where horrible writers and directors become allied with greed-driven contract attorneys and corrupt 'talent' agents to concoct horrific travesties and 'sell' them to big content providers, and none of the parties involved have the slightest idea what 'creativity' , 'self-respect', 'continuity' or 'shame' actually mean, nor do they care, because the amount of money being spent is positively obscene/sickening. The end result is watered-down sewage, served up lukewarm for public consumption, and failing miserably, but none of that matters because the contractual arrangements have locked it in for umpty-dozen seasons, guaranteeing that even if no-one wants to watch it, everyone involved in its creation and presentation will profit handsomely. Welcome to modern content creation, where the likes of Amazon and Disney have spun completely out of control and yet really don't care.
It's always wild to see so many modern writers fail at basic story telling, character development, and world building but then try to add even more complexity. That's a level of delusion that might only be attainable in Hollywood
A smart person once told me: “Be wary of self proclaimed ‘experts’. Don’t believe anyone who claims they know more about any subject than anyone else.” An “expert” is an honorific and acknowledgement bestowed by others. The arrogance of these self proclaimed “professors”, show runners, and writers who ignore, pervert, and desecrate the original author’s work is astounding. I refuse to watch any more garbage produced by this lot. Your excellent videos are so much more entertaining and thoughtful, I’ll just support you instead. 😊
I really, really want to sit down with the writers - not the showrunners, they're hopeless - and just ask them some questions about their decision making. Why the subplot of Simpildur and Estrid? Why did you write Bronwyn out of the show rather than recast her? Why do you show major entities as one offs (Shelob/giant spiders, the Ents)? They never appear in season 2 again. Why did you have Elrond kiss his mother-in-law? And I just want to hear their reasoning as writers, because I suspect it all boils down to "subversion" and "a modern lens" or some such tripe.
If you listen to the S1 interviews, when doing the whole "back to the books" thing they legitimately thought it was a moment of genius giving the Harfoot wagons round wheels - because Hobbits have round doors, you see!
You can't say there is no canon just because he had multiple unpublished drafts around. Yes. the legendarium has many different versions of stories, BUT, the Lord of the RIngs appendices, which were published by JRR rather than his son, have to be accepted as canon. The SIlmarillion was John's attempt to tie all the varying legends together into a cohesive storyline, and we can accept that he did that in good faith to honour his father's writings, therefore I am willing to accept that as canon also, with the caveat that it is based on rather than IS JRR's story; the ridiculously self-aggrandizing 'Tolkien professor' shows his disrespect to both of them by uttering throwaway lines in order to justify this terrible production. I would point any real fan to Christopher Tolkien's Foreword in the SIlmarillion (which probably most people skipped when reading the book) to understand his thoughts on the subject.
This show is absolutely fascinating. I think thanks to Amazon's willingness to pour an ungodly sum of money into it, we're just seeing all the issues with modern storytelling manifest at once, because thanks to practically unlimited budget, there's no reality check whatsoever. It's a combination of narcissistic fan fiction, focus on showing isolated, strong emotional moments rather then character or plot development, storyboard film making (i.e., film makers have these specific 'powerful' images in mind and plot is just means how to get from one to another) - both of which plague modern film making and fundamental lack of skill. The narcissism is particularly visible in their constant desire to tell their stories set in Middle Earth, rather then tell a story of Middle Earth.
You brave soul. One of the early departures off the trail of narrative and plot coherence was not focusing on the rings. I know. Weird, right? The time dilation could be forgiven if they stuck to a story about rings, the ringbearers, and the deceiver. But no. They mess with the order, their invented characters are risible and pointless, they damage the known characters, and the whole thing feels like a cheap carnival ride when you were sold Aida at the Viennese Opera. So many questions... How did they fuck up Galadriel so badly, in different ways, in each season? Why are the Istar there at all? If Isildur is already a young man, then it's only about 20 years til the War, right? How, what, huh? Will the orcs finally cast off those awful elven colonizers? If there's no canon, then can we have laser guns and jetpacks? It just seems like a really expensive way for AMZN to get some clips and b-roll for marketing the tv channel.
Imagine studying literature and then arguing with a straight face that there is no canon … tolkien-related or not. Like wtf?! All writers have multiple scripts and changes to their work 🙈 That’s why writing is a craft.
I’ve enjoyed both seasons personally for the people so bothered by a new take on a fictional story filled with fictional characters, then don’t watch it and move on with your life it’s pretty easy, don’t ever think about it again and focus on things you do like, being addicted to constant outrage theater on the internet is bad for the soul
I’m perfectly comfortable not watching, and wishing you well in watching it. But just out of curiosity, if it was Bengali cultural heritage being “adapted” instead of British, would address the “outrage theatre” with the same flippantness? (Also, can’t wait till they ruin Magneto for you)
Gave up on them following canon last season. It the bad writing that gets me, the total lack of continuity from show to show, sometimes even in the same show. The diaolog is that of a bad latin soap opera. The total disregard for any sort of reality, even beyond the suspension of disbelief for a mythical fanasty world that has magic in it. People getting stabbed to death just get up, others falling 100s if feet to their death are not splatter marks on the ground, the list goes on. The money they spent on this series is not on screen, it so bad it seems the whole show is a money laudering scheme. Kids with a bix of crayons could come up with a more a believable storyline.
i can say two things with confidence about the 'behind the scenes' of this show 1) when the actress who plays Bronwyn left, they had absolutely no fucking idea what to do with anything happening in the 'southlands'. They suddenly had 3 supposedly major characters who now didn't have a plot line. I have no idea what they actually planned to do, but it's painfully obvious it all fell apart at the seams and they quickly had to slap together something for each of them 2) the showrunners are in completely over their heads on top of being, well, utterly terrible at running a show. There is absolutely nobody proof reading these scripts from the various writers to make sure there's any sort of coherency. This show isn't just inconsistent from episode to episode, it's inconsistent within episodes. And all the different subplots they're trying to juggle have pretty much no actual connection to one another. All of this is supposed to be the job of the showrunner, who for obvious reasons can't be expected to write every episode personally, but they do still have to make sure everyone's staying on topic. Special mention also has to go to episode 8, the grand finale of the season, the only episode of the season credited to the showrunners themselves.... in which fucking nothing happened. well, a lot kind of happened, but there was no resolutions to plot points, no moments of character growth for the characters involved, despite a lot of superficial stuff happening, nothing changes from where the plot was at at the end of episode 7. Nothing that would entice the audience back for season 3. What we did get was a couple of new mystery boxes, which would be great if this was the mid-2000s and everyone didn't already know a mystery box is a substitute for a plot, not actually a plot.... but yeah, that entire episode was just bottom of the barrel incompetence This show is not getting any better until Amazon admits to itself the problem is at the top. The people running this shitshow are in way over their heads and clearly have no idea how to unclog the toilet
"All of this is supposed to be the job of the showrunner, who for obvious reasons can't be expected to write every episode personally" - Just look up how many episodes of Babylon 5 J. Michael Straczynski wrote of the total 111 episodes (+several movies).
@@Syaniiti then look up the 'fun fact' that he's the only man in history to have written than many for a single series. I'm well aware of Babylon 5, but that's also a massive exception to the rule.
@@petriew2018 It's also my all time favourite show. Sure you don't need to have a single writer write ~80% (83,9% or thereabouts if my quick math was anywhere close) of the episodes to be overall a good show, but if someone wanted to match that in the modern times it's only 7 episodes that one has to write per season. And when adapting something the hard part has already been done. Also they recast Adar but didn't recast the single mom? At least the showrunners are consistent in making terrible decisions.
@@Syaniiti honestly i think she wasn't recast because they didn't have time to find an appropriate minority to replace her. Normally i don't like straying into this territory because screaming 'woke' is often the death of intellectual discourse regardless of which side you fall on, but at the same time i'm confident in saying these muppets don't have the spine to replace a minority actress with a different minority actress and tempt the twitter outrage Adar? i mean, that's just swapping one white dude for another and he's evil anyway.... but that's just how low my general opinion of this production staff is. It's so painfully obvious that the approval of twitter is very high on the list of why they do anything in this show, and why it's all so mind-numbingly stupid, because that's synonymous with twitter these days....
@@petriew2018 RoP gives me "the most incompetent showrunners ever" -vibes where WoT gave me "The showrunner hates and despises the source material" -vibes.
Olsen, the self-declared "Tolkien Professor", in the 'no canon' video: _"That same passage where he talks about his many names he says "To the East, I go not."_ _When we look at that quote in context, he's talking to a dude from Gondor, and the people of Gondor. the call Mordor "the East"._ _He meant: "Don't expect me to go throw down with, you know, the Dark Lord at the gates of Barad-dur.""_ In "That same passage" the "dude" is Faramir. And it is Faramir relating to Frodo and Sam what Gandalf has said to him: "‘Mithrandir we called him in elf-fashion,’ said Faramir, ‘and he was content. Many are my names in many countries, he said. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.’" LotR, Window on the West The self-declared "Tolkien Professor" claims that it means that Gandalf will not go to Mordor to personally fight Sauron. The self-declared "Tolkien Professor" is saying this in defense of A-RoP having *Gandalf in *Rhun. But lets see what another professor has to say about this. That professor being one Professor Tolkien: "The date of Gandalf’s arrival is uncertain. He came from beyond the Sea, apparently at about the same time as the first signs were noted of the re-arising of ‘the Shadow’: the reappearance and spread of evil things. But he is seldom mentioned in any annals or records during the second millennium of the Third Age. Probably he wandered long (in various guises), engaged not in deeds and events but in exploring the hearts of Elves and Men who had been and might still be expected to be opposed to Sauron. His own statement (or a version of it, and in any case not fully understood) is preserved that his name in youth was Olórin in the West, but he was called Mithrandir by the Elves (Grey Wanderer), Tharkûn by the Dwarves (said to mean ‘Staff-man’), Incánus in the South, and Gandalf in the North, but ‘to the East I go not’. ‘The West’ here plainly means the Far West beyond the Sea, not part of Middle-earth; the name Olórin is of High-Elven form. ‘The North’ must refer to the North-western regions of Middle-earth, in which most of the inhabitants or speaking-peoples were and remained uncorrupted by Morgoth or Sauron. In those regions resistance would be strongest to the evils left behind by the Enemy, or to Sauron his servant, if he should reappear. The bounds of this region were naturally vague; its eastern frontier was roughly the River Carnen to its junction with Celduin (the River Running), and so to Núrnen, and thence south to the ancient confines of South Gondor. (It did not originally exclude Mordor, which was occupied by Sauron, although outside his original realms ‘in the East’, as a deliberate threat to the West and the Númenóreans.) ‘The North’ thus includes all this great area: roughly West to East from the Gulf of Lune to Núrnen, and North and South from Carn Dûm to the southern bounds of ancient Gondor between it and Near Harad. Beyond Núrnen Gandalf had never gone." Unfinished Tales, The Istari, a pre- 2nd edition of Lord of the Rings note "It is very unclear what was meant by ‘in the South’. Gandalf disclaimed ever visiting ‘the East’, but actually he appears to have confined his journeys and guardianship to the western lands, inhabited by Elves and peoples in general hostile to Sauron. At any rate it seems unlikely that he ever journeyed or stayed long enough in the Harad (or Far Harad!) to have there acquired a special name in any of the alien languages of those little known regions. The South should thus mean Gondor (at its widest those lands under the suzerainty of Gondor at the height of its power). At the time of this Tale, however, we find Gandalf always called Mithrandir in Gondor (by men of rank or Númenórean origin, as Denethor, Faramir, etc.). This is Sindarin, and given as the name used by the Elves; but men of rank in Gondor knew and used this language. The ‘popular’ name in the Westron or Common Speech was evidently one meaning ‘Greymantle’, but having been devised long before was now in an archaic form. This is maybe represented by the Greyhame used by Éomer in Rohan." Unfinished Tales, The Istari, 1967 note Professor Tolkien, contra Corey Olsen, writes that the meaning of "to the East I go not" is literal. Gandalf did not go in to Rhun. Why does this self-declared "Tolkien Professor" continue, repeatedly, to make false claims about what Tolkien said, wrote, meant or intended... *'Do you want to be true to what you think Tolkien was imagining...OR, do you want to be true to what Tolkien said about the world'*
What's with the meteor and amnesia? Gandalf did not arrive by meteor and he did not have amnesia. It's true that adaptions must be different then the source material but how in the world can you justify just a blatant disregard to Canon for absolutely no reason at all? Does it take less time for Gandalf to arrive without amnesia? Is it too expensive? Is it too simply demanding of a writer to write that story? In fact it would take less resources less complications of story less time and be more efficient and clear and obvious and plain to write it exactly as the book does. There is absolutely no excuse for this insult.
@@AnnoyingCritic-is7rp well, it was said the Istari remembered Valinor as a distant vision and not all which they knew pre-incarnation was as immediately available for them in they incarnated forms as it had been before - but that does not mean they did not know what their purpose was upon arrival in M.-E.
I can't believe they had a chance, right there in the lore, for Strong-Woman to be stunnin' and brave, and instead they had her be utterly useless _whilst holding a ring of power!_ Without her ring, Sauron was terrified of her, in the books. Now she's literally holding a ring of power and can't take him in a fight?!!
astrid was basically randomly thrown into s2 as an after thoughts, cuz the writers were probably like "wait, isn't aragorn a descendant of isildur? oh shit right we should make him have an heir before he dies after taking the ring in the future season" lol.
"izzy kisses her and attempts to take her to numenor" sounds like the weirdest bit of figurative language. The various subplot might interact based on the 5 season planned arc. But you can still give them a compelling increment of narrative or theme. Currently, a new season is 2 years off (if amazon keeps going). The longer payout only applies if people are still watching and can remember. The Gandalf plot hasn't moved things forward much. If there was a clearer sense of how the events of him and the dark wizard feed back on the main story, then it wouldn't seem divorced. Or if they developed it enough that the themes interacted with the main story line. For instance, a shorter segment of moral collapse might establish the stakes in the main story. Or a detached story of doing things right might deepen the tragedy of a story thread in which people are messing up. I'm not a writer. But writers of film or books engage in symbolism. If you're writing description, then you'd do the minimal amount to provide a working world for the narrative. But if you wrote a paragraph or two, then you're either getting distracted or there's something in the detail. For instance, if an author described a harsh landscape and the alien non-melodious screeching of a parrot, they might be establishing something deeper (an image of nature as a symbol of chaos). Something that superficially seems extraneous ISN'T. So the problem to my thinking is that a season of rings of power reads to too underdeveloped and incoherent. If you give the seasons a title or a thesis, then maybe you develop a unit of narrative and symbolism that does something on its own. A chapter of a book will have a title. It knows what it's meant to be about. It can be good independently and as within the overall tapestry.
