#OKAY NOW I'M GETTING INTO THE CAN OF WORMS OF ADAPTING STORIES SORRY

[badsalmonella]

The thing about the last “Camelot” revival is that they made so many changes, it begs the question why they just didn’t write a whole new show from scratch. You have to remember “Camelot” isn’t just based off Arthurian more it’s an adaptation of T.H. White’s “The Once & Future King” a doorstop per of a novel (it’s actually 4 different books published as one volume” that is billed as “the world’s greatest fantasy classic”. And it’s only 1 of 2 adaptations - the other being Disney’s “The Sword in the Stone”. So I can totally understand why critics and fans didn’t enjoy it at all.

I'll be honest I don't really think the changes are THAT major, like structurally it's hitting a lot of similar beats especially since they had to keep the same song story beats. Especially when you consider the show before Sorkin and Sher ever got involved at all was a constantly evolving beast (to me there's a world of difference between the movie Camelot and the 2008 Lincoln Center production that leaned more into the goofy camp aspects. Hello Morgan Le Fay who loves chocolate lol!) I've seen people argue that maybe they should have never tried to change the show with a new creative team, and while I've certainly turned the argument over in my head, I think I ultimately land on, Lerner and Lowe kept reworking it in their life time, I actually think it's kind of in the spirit of the show to keep working on it. It's actually one of my favourite things about this show, that no two versions are alike! Even when a change isn't my cup of tea I really like seeing where they take this material. I think that's what makes theater special, that you can have stuff like this where the work is never done. (Like Hadestown or Chess!) I don't think there is a "definitive version of Camelot the musical".

But with that being said, different versions means it'll cater to different tastes, I do understand that the new script has a distinctly modern, sarcastic, veryyy quippy, voice to it that is not like the original writer's style (and yeah you feel it when the original work IS included) (honestly I don't even like when they throw in jokes in the vein of "stop singing that stupid song" like it's a golden age musical. Plz.) Not to mention I think the new script mines slightly different themes out of the show and if someone doesn't like it I can't say I blame them 🤷🏻‍♀️ look I'm a Hadestown NYTW version truther so I can understand the plz don't touch my baby mindset haha

[cqlfeels]

do you have any knee-jerk thoughts about how elven metaphysical shit might interact with mdzs-typical necromancy because THAT is a whole 'nother can of worms with a possible tolkien-mdzs crossover

Knee-jerk thoughts you asked for and knee-jerk thoughts you'll get - I have no idea if I could come up with something better if I took the time and the energy to reason through this.

I don't know that they can coexist at all? Like, not in any serious way. Even if you say MDZS takes place in the east so maybe they could have magic hijinks going on that Tolkien never mentions, what's up with "Oh yeah for some reason Iluvatar is okay with these mortals extending their lifespans, having power over nature, reincarnating and also apparently there's a dude raising the dead and forcing them to kill people." This sounds straight up like something Sauron would've told the Numenoreans was totally true uh-huh trust me this is all going on somewhere and it's actually a skill you can learn it's not like elvish magic you have to be born with these are just extra awesome men ahahaha,,,,,,,,,,

I guess you COULD invent some sort of extracanonical race cultivators belong to, but the irl implications of "the Chinese characters aren't actually human" are Not Great, so I won't entertain it much.

Maaaaybe just like the Numenoreans were given long lives and a bunch of perks other men don't get, cultivators come from a particularly blessed people? But again, even that sounds weird because cultivation isn't an inborn talent, it's a skill.

If you go the other way and make the cultivators elves....... What do they need cultivation for, exactly......? And why on earth are bloodline-bound sects such a big deal when no sect leader is going to die of natural causes? Can you have MDZS without the generational conflicts, though?

If I HAD to find a way to forcefully merge the universes you know what I'd do? Cultivators are to elves what hobbits are to men. Very closely related but for reasons lost to history they do some things elves can't and don't do some other things elves can. They don't consider each other the same race and just like Tolkien is like "Hey fun fact hobbits are closer kin to men than dwarves!" you could go "Hey fun fact cultivators are closer kin to elves than men!" It's........ A rather lazy option ("Gee the crucial worldbuilding info was lost to history, what a shame!") but it's in line with JRR "I'll hot glue these tales together and force them to sound coherent but there's only so much I can change, so for now you'll get my best, flawed attempt" Tolkien's occasional handwaving of things.

If I put all that aside, though, I have to say some things do go well together, no changes required. Musical cultivation, of course. The dangers of going against the natural order of things (though what exactly that means doesn't quite match up between universes, but I feel like you could harmonize them if you tried.) Oaths Are A Bad Idea. Arrogance Is Even Worse. Loyalty as an important theme, even if Tolkien and MXTX have different takes on that - it'd be a fun cultural difference, not an irreconcilable paradox. I do know most of these sound more like philosophy than worldbuilding, but there's little difference between these two things where Tolkien is concerned, and xianxia draws heavily on Chinese philosophy so the lines are blurred here too.

Also I'm not saying BSSR could be Melian under a different name (though really, what's stopping us?), but I am absolutely saying even if not Doriath, XXC was absolutely raised in one of the hidden realms and broke the ban on returning in order to help SL when he was beyond all help. The whole story has like 3 different Tolkien tropes and I'm leaning on them. (Yi City as a whole is much easier to adapt into a Tolkienian world because it's rather self-contained, so you can adapt things without causing too many butterfly effects.)

....this post has managed to get way too long while saying almost nothing and I'm sorry for that. I'm sure you have better ideas than me - there's a reason I don't write fic, and the reason is I'm just not creative at all.