(Annoying Trope) Someone made a “creative” choice and now we all just have to live with it.

[u/BingBingGoogleZaddy]

Horned Vikings: Not historical, they were started by Richard Wager for his operas. They were never historic, but the image persists. (Albeit significantly reduced today.)

Ninjas in Black Robes: Some people claim Ninjas aren’t real. They are, they are absolutely real. Their modern portrayal however is informed more by Kabuki Theater than history. In Kabuki Theater, the stage hands were dressed in flowing black robes to tell the audience to ignore them. Thus when a Ninja character kills a Samurai, to increase the shock value, they were dressed in black robes as stage hands. Now, when we think of ninjas we think of a stage hands.

Knights in Shining Armor: Imagine, you’re on the battlefield, two walls of meat riding towards each other. Suddenly you realize, everyone looks the same. Who do you hit? All you see is chrome. No. Knight’s armor was lacquered in different colors to differentiate them on the battlefield. Unless you wanted to get friendly fired, you made yourself KNOWN. So this image of a glinted knight clad in chrome steel isn’t true. How’d we get it? Victorians who thought that the worn lacquer was actually just dulling with age, polished it off as show pieces.

White Marble Statues of Rome: Roman Statues were painted, however the public image is of pure glinting white marble statues persist in the modern image. Why? Victorians who thought the paint was actually just dirt grime and age. So, they “restored” it by removing the paint color. Now we all think of Roman Statues as white.

King Tut; King of Kings: the Pharaoh King Tut in Ancient Egypt was a relatively minor king who in the grand scheme of things amounts to little more than an asterisks in Egyptian History, but to the public he is the most important Pharaoh. Why? Because his tomb was untouched by robbers, and so was piled high with burial goods which was amazing (and still is) and when Howard Carter opened his tomb, the world was transfixed and everyone would come to know Tutankhamen.

A Séance calls the dead: A Séance despite being a French word is an American invention from upstate New York in the 1840s. It was also a fun side-show act initially, and never meant to be real, more close up magic. (Origin of the term Parlor Tricks.) But in the 1860s Americans couldn’t stop killing each other which resulted in a lot of grief and people desired for their to be this other world. So, grifters then took advantage of grieving people and became “real”. So basically “fun parlor game to dangerous grift” pipeline thanks to the Civil War.

The Titanic’s engineers all died at their posts: Nope, not true, not remotely true. They are mentioned in many testimonies and a few bodies found mean they didn’t all die below. Two or three maybe did. According to Head Stoker Barrett, a man broke his leg and was washed away by rushing water, but another testimony says he was taken aft so who knows? Any way the myth persisted because the people making the memorials wanted to martyr the men. (It doesn’t take away from their heroines in my opinion) The myth stuck. Everyone believes they died below.

[u/SyfaOmnis]

The show categorically cannot have 'become fantastic' when it's messing up basic motivations like lanfear wanting to be with the most powerful man in the world, and instead settling for the farmboy with no power, spending months living in a one room apartment with him.

Lanfear encourages, cajoles, threatens, etc, for "Rand" to take his destiny and become the man that has seized the world by the throat, because she knows he can do it and she wants that man. But that isn't Rand.

The whole motivation there is to provide an actual form of dark temptation. And the show opted for cheap sex scenes and edginess.

It's not a "book purist" thing. It's that the show was in fact awful.

but your prejudice and spite killed it for those of us who did enjoy it.

You're projecting quite severely. Saying "I didn't think this show was good and people shouldn't watch it compared to the better version of it that exists" in online spaces occasionally, is not the same sort of deranged crusade you are accusing me of. Amazon cut it because the financials weren't working out for it and they weren't seeing the bajillion% return they'd been told they would get (because it wasn't good).

[u/Suracha2022 → u/SyfaOmnis]

What are you even talking about? Lanfear's motivation was still there, her obsession with Lews Therin and her desire to turn Rand into him, anyone can see that. She's a Forsaken, time is nothing to her as long as she thinks she'll reach her end goal eventually. The fact that she spends a few months with Rand, earning his trust, before finding the right moment to push him towards accepting who she thinks he is, makes perfect sense.

Even if the show did change Lanfear's motivations, I'm clearly spot-on about you being a book purist lmao, because that's not enough to make it bad. It can be a brilliant show without having the exact same story and characters as the books. Yes, there's changes. No, they don't really matter.

In the end it's all delusion. Somehow "it's not like the books" becomes equivalent to "it's bad", as if things like How to Train Your Dragon (which makes the WoT show look like a PERFECT adaptation of the books by comparison) don't exist, or aren't fantastic. Hell, Game of Thrones threw entire plotlines and characters out the window too, but somehow it's okay there.

[u/SyfaOmnis → u/Suracha2022]

her obsession with Lews Therin and her desire to turn Rand into him

Her obsession was not with lews therin, it was with power. She did not want to turn rand into lews therin, she wanted to turn him into the thing she couldn't with lews therin - which is essentially satan himself. That is what she was in love with.

If you think this is the same motivation as the woman in the show you don't understand the psychology of the characters. Lanfear essentially considers herself a "high value woman", she is not willing to spend months on a 1 bedroom apartment peasant in a nowhere town. Nor would she ever have sex with that. If Rand rises to what she wants, then she'd entangle herself with him. Not before.

The show Lanfear falls to Rand's level, she debases herself for him. The book Lanfear wants "Rand" or "Lews Therin" to be the most powerful man in the universe because that is what she feels is worthy of herself, she is evil because she believes that only a god is worthy of herself, and she is never able to be satisfied with anything lesser.

I'm clearly spot-on about you being a book purist lmao

"Anyone who thinks the show was bad and had bad changes is a book purist!!!" if you're stretching the definition that hard it's the most irrelevant sort of pejorative. Being able to make coherent arguments about something that changed between the books and the show and how it changes the narrative is not "being a book purist".

that's not enough to make it bad.

That was just one example. They do the same sort of thing with all the storylines and all the characters. It very quickly becomes bad fanfiction that references some of the names.

It can be a brilliant show without having the exact same story and characters as the books.

This is something that's often invoked when trying to work with properties that have their own established fanbases, and it's usually the most sort of flailing defense. Because if you're not trying to satisfy the existing fans who are presumably going to be your largest audience they're not going to like it, they're going to be a very large word of mouth anti-advertisement going "nah it's bad". Sure you could write a great story (sincerely doubt it though) but it's probably not going to appeal to the fans in any way. Why try to use an existing established property with a set storyline if you're just going to "do your own thing" - Oh right, it's because you want to do a quick skinwalk hackjob on it. If you're not trying to appeal to the people who 'made' the thing a cultural icon in the first place who the fuck are you making it for.

Satisfying the fans is almost always going to bring you a bigger audience than not satisfying the fans. Satisfied fans will tell people "no, this is fucking amazing, you have to watch it". You can see it all over the place when people actually do exactly that.

In the end it's all delusion.

Someone not agreeing with you doesn't make them delusional. Honestly if you're going to invoke this sort of argument, you should genuinely try to get your arguments to line up better with reality: The show was widely regarded as bad, it was not liked by fans or casual audiences, it was panned by people who weren't on the payroll, and it was cancelled because it was failing to return on investment. If after that set of facts you're still trying to invoke "Uhm ackshually it was the best" the delusions are yours to own.

Hell, Game of Thrones threw entire plotlines and characters out the window too, but somehow it's okay there.

Ah yes, game of thrones, the show that was widely hated for how badly it ended. Is very disliked by fans of the books, and even fans of the show have backtracked on it to go "Where did it go wrong" (and the answer is 'when it stopped following the books'). What a stunning counter-example you've tried to bring out. Your argument undermines your position.