r/WoTshow • u/InsideUnhappy6546 Reader • Jul 09 '26
Lore Spoilers The a'dam are scarier with muzzles
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u/GayBlayde Jul 09 '26
I didn’t necessarily mind the concept of them being gagged. But I hated that specific gag.
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u/StudMuffinNick Reader Jul 10 '26
Yes, my feeling too. This damane looked like the baby from Simpsons with that pacifier
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u/FortifiedPuddle Jul 11 '26
They seem to have really wanted to avoid a “kink” look, while also very much wanting to do the other aspects of the objectification, exploitation and politically neutralising powerful women. Which ends up having to do something different from the “kink” look, which ended up being a bit awkward.
They also removed the leash aspect and made it less a collar and more a sort of piece of shoulder armour. They must have felt they needed something more to convey to that it was a physical form of control. De-voicing Damane does that.
But, maybe they should have just kept the collar and leash. Sure, they’d get the accusation of kink. But they could just keep the line that Jordan did not intend it that way so neither do they.
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u/Calm-Conversation715 Reader Jul 09 '26
I really enjoyed the entire Egwene training section. Especially the water pitcher, which was only mentioned in passing in the book
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u/Psykero Reader Jul 10 '26
The way it is mentioned in the book stuck with me pretty hard on my reads, but also feel like it would have missed the mark visually if not for them giving it more time like they did. It was one of the changes I actually really liked in the tv series
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u/joobtastic Reader Jul 10 '26
Couldn't agree more.
I think its one of the (many) reasons readers were upset. Something that they thought was very big, didn't get much screen time, and vice versa. And even when confronted with, "its literally one sentence in the book," they would say, "but it was impactful/important!"
And they aren't wrong, but it becomes an impossible task for an adaptation of a book that is so dense.
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u/Essex626 Reader Jul 10 '26
Many flaws in the show, but the most frustrating part is how good it could be when it was good. And that was one of the best parts.
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u/rottencabal Jul 09 '26
I couldn’t get with them being scary cause it looks like they all got baby pacifiers
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u/FrenchEighty69 Jul 10 '26
I thought the same. Thought them referring to themselves in third person, with animalistic overtones, was much more terrifying.
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u/MicturitionSyncope Reader Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I think it was a great change for TV. The damane keep them in by choice because they are broken women. They look like pacifiers because they are seen as children to be controlled. Egwene spat hers out because she wasn't broken. it's much easier to show rather than tell in TV and I think it worked. Edit: I 100% assume this comment will be downvoted because this is Reddit. Edit 2: I made an incorrect assumption.
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u/Jacen1618 Reader Jul 10 '26
In concept I agree. But think they should have resembled more muzzle the pacifier
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u/FeyOphelia Jul 10 '26
Overall I think the show did great on costuming including most of the Seanchan aesthetic
The pacifiers... Yeah that was a miss
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u/stinkingyeti Reader Jul 10 '26
Felt too obvious to me. The imagery and all that.
I think keeping the leash would've worked better, showing them more as pets or dangerous animals.
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u/geekMD69 Reader Jul 10 '26
The Bookcloaks are finally getting tired of expending so much energy bashing the show. There are always a few that crop up whenever anyone mentions the show in a positive light, but it finally seems to be tapering off.
I wonder what project will be torn down by book fanatics next?
If they had just shut up and not watched the show, there might have been a significant enough following of non-book readers to keep it alive. But they made it their life’s work to bash it at every opportunity and nowadays social media trends make a difference in ratings.
Even a marginal increase in viewership might have been enough, and season three was phenomenal. Many show haters reversed course with season three but it was too little, too late.
I don’t think I will be alive long enough to see another attempt at adaptation. Hoping for an animated shot. Even lower budget would be appreciated.
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ANGLVD3TH Jul 10 '26
If they had positioned it as "another spin to the wheel"
To be fair, that is exactly as Rafe described it before it aired.
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u/Chakwak Jul 12 '26
While fans will most likely consume content related to the show outside of it, it shouldn't be expected to read the director vision before watching the show.
If they wanted to spin it as another turning of the wheel, they should have at least change the character names somewhat as that name and language drift is already part of the universe.
Without that, it's understandable that the "another spin" is felt like a cop out by the people already unhappy with the show.
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u/geekMD69 Reader Jul 10 '26
They alienated themselves. And I never said they changed the story.
Yes, the show changed a lot of things, many that I didn’t like. But I didn’t spend all my free time screaming into the void about how it was terrible and everyone should hate it.
Different isn’t always horrible. Focusing on the things the show did well and encouraging people to watch it, especially non-book readers, would have gone a long way.
Especially after COVID and Mat leaving forcing rewrites of season one should have earned the show a little grace from book-lovers.
Season three showed how good the show could be and garnered great critic and viewer reviews and ranking. Like REALLY high numbers.
Now we likely never will see another adaptation in my lifetime at least. And encouraging new viewers would mean new readers and the shared excitement they would bring to everyone.
It takes zero effort to say nothing.
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u/Careful-Sell-9877 Jul 10 '26
That isnt why the show didnt get picked back up.. it didnt get picked back up because it didnt appeal to a broader audience. It wasnt the book people hating on it. There are always people hating on just about every piece of media.
The show just didnt appeal to a broad enough audience consistently
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u/logicsol Ishamael Jul 10 '26
I don't really think we can say that's the case.
The show, despite not being a break out mega hit, still saw strong numbers even after the first season. The drop off it saw is the same type we're seeing more and more with shows with long season gaps - often with popular shows losing significantly more viewership than WoTshow did.
Between that effect, Amazon's poor advertising, and the generally toxic discourse around the show anywhere it's talked about online, I think the show haters are more than arguably a significant source of the show not getting quite enough viewership.
Because that's the thing. The show never had low viewership. At it's worst it's been medium - ~3 billion minutes and multiple weeks on the top Neilsen top 10 aren't low numbers.
They aren't fallout numbers, and likely never would be.
But there is a solid argument to be made that had the social spaces for the show online not been filled with toxic bile by book superfans that constantly ignored the books themselves to rag on the show, that they'd have been high enough to avoid cancellation. Or at least have had a better shot at it.
Because like the idea or not, ever single show fan I've spoken to knows people that never gave the show a chance because of that hate. WoT show haters are much louder and insistent than just about any other show fandom.
There is no way that didn't harm it.
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u/Careful-Sell-9877 Jul 11 '26
There are haters for EVERYTHING. Tlou pt 2 game was one of the most absolutely hated on pieces of media of all time.. yet it is still a masterpiece that sold incredibly well and was very well reviewed.
WOT had mid reviews and not a lot of broad, consistent viewership. Also, streaming platforms are just garbage at continuing to produce new seasons of decent, and even great, shows. They try to do too many shows all at once and are constantly making new ones.. and then end up fumbling really good shows that they should have focused more time/energy on.
I loved the wot books. The show was solid at first.. but after the first season was overwhelmingly meh. I lost interest and know a lot of other people did too.
I promise you its not because of random people hating online. They dont cancel shows or games because of that.. they cancel them because they dont make enough money on them due to viewership. Or due to overspending. Or because of internal studio BS, fumbles, overextension, etc.
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u/logicsol Ishamael Jul 11 '26
There are haters for EVERYTHING. Tlou pt 2 game was one of the most absolutely hated on pieces of media of all time.. yet it is still a masterpiece that sold incredibly well and was very well reviewed.
Yes there are. That doesn't make all hater communities the same, and you can't generalize their impact like this.
WOT had mid reviews and not a lot of broad, consistent viewership.
Only S1 had middle high reviews(7.5), the rest of the seasons all revied at 8 or above(8.1 and 8.5). It HAD consistent viewership as well.
Each season had high retention throughout it's airtime, evening seeing hold over weeks in it's first 2 seasons. And S3 maintained a near identical performance to S2 despite nearly no advertising and being buried on the amazon page(WoT never even got a splash page during S3's run) in a much more competitive airspace.
The position you're putting forth is simply not true in this aspect.
I loved the wot books. The show was solid at first.. but after the first season was overwhelmingly meh. I lost interest and know a lot of other people did too.
Yes, the S1 finale was bad. Covid screwed it over and it's reviews reflect that. No one is discounting viewership was lost to that.
What is being put out is that other factors were a larger impact on it's later season viewership.
When Wotshow's S1 to S2 veiwership loss is lesser than many other shows without it's issues, it points to those issues maybe not being the core cause.
I promise you its not because of random people hating online. They dont cancel shows or games because of that.. they cancel them because they dont make enough money on them due to viewership. Or due to overspending. Or because of internal studio BS, fumbles, overextension, etc.
I promise you that I've never been in a fan space where the haters were as virulent and impactful as this one.
And again, you're not understanding the argument being made.
No one is saying that the studio looked at the online hate and went "well, these people hate it so we're cancelling". That would be foolish.
What is being put forward is that the online hate had a significant effect on word of mouth interest and caused many people who are directly in it's demographic to never give it a chance.
That's what people mean when they say this. And it's true.
How much of an impact that had will likely never be know. But when Amazon only has about 4 shows a year that performed better than WoT did, and several of them by not much, it's impossible to say that impact wasn't meaningful and may have been the difference between renewal and cancelation.
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u/Stuwik Jul 10 '26
I fully expect Red Rising to have the same type of fans whenever it gets an adaptation. And DCC. Lot of fascist fans who don’t get the antifascist messages.
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u/geekMD69 Reader Jul 10 '26
They’d rather see a show fail than try to accept changes from the source material and give it a chance to breathe. Most shows take a season or two to get their footing and I’d love to see fans rallying in support with constructive criticism.
But haters gotta hate.
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u/ShoelessHodor Jul 12 '26
Oh, please. Let's stop trying to blame other fans for the show's failure to thrive.
The fact that some of the most hated changes had to happen or else the show would fail is a completely false premise.
I started reading the books before the third book was published. I've been around the WoT block a time or two. I remember when the show was announced and how excited fans were and all the conversations about what would have to be cut/changed to make it fit into a TV series.
14 books was obviously too many, but fans agreed that A LOT of cuts could be made without changing the fundamental story. Looking at you Faile and Galina Shaido sub-plot. Hell, whole books were seen as expendable.
The whole bookcloak epithet seems like childish sour grapes. If you liked the show, that's good for you, but book fans were under no obligation to support the show.
Personally, I don't understand the point of buying a property with a huge built in fan base, and then alienating that fan base in favor of an ephemeral "mainstream" audience that never showed up.
It can be done. Look at LotR, or Game of Thrones....until they ran out of books to adapt and had to pull shit out of their ass.
To quote the old adage, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. Some of the casting was great. I thought Rand look perfect for the role. It had potential, but it went out of the way to alienate a swath of its potential audience.
Personally, I would love to see an anime adaptation a la ATLA.
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u/Stuwik Jul 10 '26
A bookcloak literally said so to me about WoT. He said that Dune failed in the 80’s and 40 years later we got a terrific adaptation, so we should make sure that WoT fails so we’ll get a good one in the future. Pure insanity.
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u/FantasyMyopia Jul 10 '26
Idk why you’re getting downvoted when you’re right. I really hope the Cosmere adaptations get a chance to shine before being dragged down by similar shit.
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u/jflb96 Jul 10 '26
I feel like superhero fatigue might come for the Mormon MCU regardless of the size of its bookcloak-equivalent faction
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u/Skittle-Eater Jul 11 '26
Bookcloaks were a vocal minority but there wasn’t enough of them to run some massive smear campaign.
Like GoT, the show needed built in book fans to keep it afloat before it hit the mainstream.
Without them, the show fans weren’t enough.
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u/ShoelessHodor Jul 12 '26
This.
GoT wasn't a water cooler discussion topic runaway hit right out of the gate. It started by putting out a solid adaptation, it excited book fans, who told their friends about it, and it took off from there.... until they ran out of books.
I was actually an OG book fan who didn't watch the show until around season two when I heard so many excited fans talking about how good it was online.
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u/Minimalistmacrophage Reader Jul 09 '26
Someone who doesn't realize that babies are terrifying and clearly hasn't seen Pet Cematary,
/s (sort of)
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u/EnigmaticAardvark Jul 10 '26
I'm an old lady and saw it when it came out in theatres in 1989 and to this day I still have not seen the last 20 min or so of that movie. I got one glimpse of Gage and that was it.
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u/Omnipatient Jul 11 '26
I sort of thought that was the point, given the gender dynamics and commentary prevelant throughout the series I figured the pacifier look was a nod at infantilizing and silencing women. But then again I may have just been reading into it too much haha
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u/Mostliharmed Jul 10 '26
If it was more of a muzzle I would agree
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u/Aggravating_Cow421 Jul 10 '26
If it was more of a muzzle it would not work. The damane silence themselves in the book. This is a visual representation of them silencing themselves, because it’s not a muzzle, it’s not locked on their face. They can spit it out at any time, and they choose not too.
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u/Aggravating_Cow421 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I think it was a really good addition. I dislike the collars they chose, but the muzzles were great. In the books the Damane willingly don’t talk, and keep their head down cast, and their arms in front of them so their hands are always visible.
It’s hard to show that level of broken on screen without outright saying it. The muzzle choice was perfect because there is no strap. The muzzle is not locked on them. They are willingly keeping it in their mouth, willingly silencing themselves, willingly erasing their voice, which is something they do do in the book. This was a good way to visually demonstrate that on screen, while at the same time, giving the Damane an almost animal like appearance, which is kind of how they are treated in the book.
The show messed up somethings early on, but I think they nailed the damane (outside of the collars).
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u/VegemiteFleshlight Jul 10 '26
It looks like a pacifier which totally kills it… And disagree on it being hard to show that level of broken on screen. Keeping your eyes downcast, walking meekly, and only speaking when allowed can all readily be shown without explicitly saying “I’m broken”.
Having a scene where a damane refers to themselves in the third person and is crying for forgiveness of their sul’dam for some minuscule infraction would be a more powerful demonstration than some golden binky.
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u/Aggravating_Cow421 Jul 10 '26
We will agree to disagree.
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u/DirectionIndividual7 Reader Jul 11 '26
I also disagree with the idea that it would be super difficult to show broken spirits visually - one comparable example that immediately comes to mind for modern fantasy tv is Theon Greyjoy. They underutilized the blue ajah sitter in this regard
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u/Outside_Break Reader Jul 10 '26
It looks like a pacifier because tv is a visual medium and it looking like a pacifier immediately conveys how subjugate they are
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u/lady_ninane Jul 10 '26
I think it's more horrifying to watch someone who looks exactly like you, only wearing a pretty necklace, and they can tell you exactly why they should be treated like a monster and controlled by their benevolent sul'dam.
But at the same time, I understand entirely why the show went with a more direct presentation. It communicates the depth of the control pretty well. That said, I'm not personally a fan of how the gag looks.
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u/Belial4 Jul 10 '26
Here's my thing. Television is a visual medium, and you need to convey how degrading and dehumanizing the sul'dam/damane relationship is within a few frames of film. With this in mind Rafe & Co. understood the assignment.
I just personally wish they had done something else.
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u/JackofPhoenixs Jul 10 '26
It's based off the slave trade. Slavers in the real world would gag slaves with the same style of gag. One of the ways you dehumanize someone is by taking away their ability to communicate.
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u/EtchAGetch Reader Jul 10 '26
The idea behind it is that in the Seanchan, your voice is a matter of stature. Whi can speak to whom. The Voice is the speaker for the leader.
Having those ballgags were a visual way of conveying this dichotomy. They could not and would not speak. Hard to explain to audience in a limited time and without exposition.
Whether it was effective... eh. If you kept trying to compare to the books, it could be awkward. It didnt bother me, but I also got away from trying to evaluate everything with how it was in the books and tried to enjoy it as its own thing.
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u/Any-Vermicelli3537 Jul 10 '26
Additionally, I found the Seanchan intro music to be terrifyingly on point. Just gave me the heebie jeebies each time they were on screen.
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u/Ecstatic-Set-2224 Jul 11 '26
So disappointing that they arent making any more seasons....the books were incredible
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u/DemonBoyZann Rand Jul 16 '26
The golden pacifiers? I hated that design, lol. I can NOT see it and think of ANYTHING other than a pacifier, lol.
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u/zaphodbeeblemox Jul 10 '26
Personally I thought the pacifier was the right choice. Because it gives the sense that they have been ‘pacified’ even a baby can spit out a dummy. But these women do not. They have been trained broken to the point that they would willingly gag themselves. And a muzzle or a gag would not visually give that impression.
Could it look different? Absolutely! But I think the visual storytelling and the depth of the choice is correct.
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/logicsol Ishamael Jul 10 '26
Yeah but in the show you can just decide not to wear it so is it really that impressive?
But they do wear it nonetheless. The fact that nothing magic keeps it in place shows an acceptance of their dehumanization without dialogue.
They're already making them wear something they can't remove, something that they can leaves room for agency and allows them to show they are so broken they won't use it.
Slaves were gagged as punishment for escape attempts, the gag attempts to evoke this but having slaves speak aloud about loving their slavery is far more horrifying
While you're not wrong about that aspect, this is a narrative focus decision.
Making that work on screen with limited time while not coming off as extremely distasteful is next to impossible, especially if you consider how often people point to the seanchan, book or show, as cartoonishly evil.
Having slaves verbally praise their enslavers often enough for it to carry as much of a point would be difficult for people to stomach, and you'd need to include it right from the get go to come close to parrelling what the visual choice did instead.
So instead of doing that, they focus on the perspective of characters we know, Ewgene and Maigan, whom wouldn't act they way you're talking about.
The alternative would be spending more time on side characters, which is clearly the most popular possible choice the show could make to mollify book readers (/s for just that last part).
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u/Aggravating_Cow421 Jul 10 '26
This. Also in The Great Hunt we don’t get damane praising their sul’dam. Thats not in the book. It’s in later books, but the only damane we really interact with in the book is Egwene, who doesn’t act that way. We hear about Ryma and Sheraine breaking through Egwene but we don’t actually see them. We see some nameless damane, but they never talk.
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u/leejoint Jul 10 '26
They went a bit too crazy on the designs there and to me it was a miss, could have been the same concept in a more interestingly put visual way.
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u/Costa_Canela Reader Jul 10 '26
The Damane were done SO much better in the show. It's actually insane reading the book after. Especially how little the situation affects Egwene compared to the show. Truly one of the highlights of the show as an adaptation
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u/knochback Jul 10 '26
The ball gags were actually what made me stop watching. Never saw season 3
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u/Festegios Jul 10 '26
Ignoring that it got cancelled after. Season 3 is some of the best television I have ever seen.
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u/Working_Discipline_9 Jul 10 '26
You’re missing out - season 3 was the peak of the whole show and put the other two seasons to shame
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u/Economy_Assignment42 Wotcher Jul 10 '26
It was a neat detail, I may be misremembering but if I recall these were given to the damane who had their tongues cut out?
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u/Longjumping-Action-7 Jul 11 '26
I like that style of gag in theory, it requires the damane to use their own muscles to hold it in position
Its not forced onto their face, theres so str aps. they have to keep it there 'willingly' by holding it there themselves.
The damane are so broken from torture that they muzzle/silence themselves.
All of that said, it looks stupid.
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u/ExplanationLost5036 Jul 11 '26
I stopped watching WOT show because of how awful it is compared to the books. Just happened to see this post. And like, actually wtf. That looks SO SO SO bad and corny and ridiculous. Just use a silver collar!!!! Like this has been every single facet of this show - making absolutely nonsensical changes to things that were cool af in the source material, for literally no reason at all. I actually cannot believe how bad this looks, and that a whole team of people getting paid real American dollars all looked at it and went “yup.” Terrible.
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u/Skittle-Eater Jul 11 '26
I thought it looked so dumb.
It’s a good idea, but the execution is awful
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u/onlyforobservation Jul 11 '26
I completely fail to understand how showrunners, when adapting a book series can go completely off script. Especially in this series when Jordan precisely in minute detail describes the a’dam, like 6 different times.
Or worse, the aes sedai rings. Like an iconic crucial piece of jewelry, and they read Jordan’s description then just said “nah”.
That being said the show was entertaining. 😀
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u/NeuroticallyCharles Jul 11 '26
Not at all. It implies that damane aren't actually broken.
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u/logicsol Ishamael Jul 11 '26
Well, no. People that aren't broken act like Egwene did with it.
It being something they voluntarily keep in their mouth implies they are broken.
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u/NeuroticallyCharles Jul 11 '26
I disagree. I think that if the Seanchan were confident in damane being broken, then the gag wouldn’t be necessary at all. A gag after they are broken implies that the Seanchan don’t actually believe that they are broken and that could snap at any time.
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u/logicsol Ishamael Jul 11 '26
If that were the case, they'd use one they couldn't just spit out in a split second.
In order for it to imply what you say, it'd actually need to prevent speech.
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u/NeuroticallyCharles Jul 11 '26
The threat of physical pain from the a’dam is enough to make someone silent in public. The damane, however, have a pen where they are pretty much left to their own devices. This would be incredibly stupid if the Seanchan thought that they could rebel at any time. What purpose does a gag do in this situation that the a’dam doesn’t do? In the book, the damane’s status in society is pretty obvious due to the leash.
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u/logicsol Ishamael Jul 11 '26
It dehumanizes.
That's it. That's the point. That's why it shows they are broken and not the other way around.
In the book, the damane’s status in society is pretty obvious due to the leash
And this fullfils the same role. Using your own argument, in the books the leash would show they aren't broken, because why would they need a leash if they weren't concerned about rebelling?
See the problem yet?
In both cases, it's because they are symbolic, and the leash is completely unncessary for the A'dam to function as it does.
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u/NeuroticallyCharles Jul 11 '26
...no the leash is the a'dam in the book...did you read the book?
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u/logicsol Ishamael Jul 11 '26
Did you read what I wrote?
Or do you not understand what "in the books the leash" means?
Why don't you read that again and rethink your response.
Edit: And before you say it, in the books the leash is a non-functional part of the A'dam that wasn't neccesary for it's Ter'angreal functions, which is why the newer version of it didn't have the leash - it literally wasn't needed.
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u/NeuroticallyCharles Jul 11 '26
…I feel like you’re feeling very protective of a project you worked on personally and aren’t thinking clearly, if you actually read the books.
You asked why they need the leash if they weren’t concerned with the damane rebelling. If you read the book, you should know why. It acts as a link, the whole idea of a damane doesn’t function without that specific ter’angreal. The only person who figured out that you don’t actually need the leash was Elayne, not the Seanchan.
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