#why don't they want to adapt it?

[charlesoberonn]

Why does Hollywood refuse to adapt Doctor Doom faithfully?

[dailyloopdeloop]

loop and mirabelle. That's it that's the ask

DAY 84: enrolled in the gossip wars

[daisy-mooon]

"I want Annabeth to be blonde :(" then pick up a PJO book and read it you dumb fuck

[thunderboltfire]

I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.

It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.

The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.

What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.

But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.

There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.

But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.

My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.

The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.

I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.

It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.

And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?

There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.

[focsle]

I hate and love that my comic scratches the ultimate itch of the sort of narrative I want to consume because on the one hand, I love working on it and it is fully my Essence. But on the other hand, when I want to unwind and am craving a particular Type Of Story only to remember that it doesn't exist I'm just like......do I gotta do everything myself?

[daisythornes]

speedrun of things that cause me agony in the wondla tv series trailer:

whyyy did they have to make the sanctuary so sterile and minimalistic? the book sanctuaries had this charming clunky 70s sci-fi design to them – they were blocky and durable and Eva's was tangibly lived-in, even worn in some places, because that was the point! they were an experiment that outlived their usefulness, but people kept living in them & they felt like it. this feels like Kim Kardashian's creepy white torture house.

"this... is me." has this line not become extremely passé in trailers, like almost to the point of parody?

that is NOT Muthr. idk who that is, but she is not mothering. it's like they took her book design and stripped away anything that may have been even slightly challenging to the cocomelon-smoothed zeitgeist of current animation. she's just so... nothing. she doesn't even look like a robot so much as like.. the lame soul design from pixar's soul. book Muthr looked WEIRD, but you can see the ways in which she's literally a synthetic + superhuman recreation of a Mother Figure: her head shape mirrors the beehive hairdo, her big eyes are saccharine sweet, she has four arms bc she always needs to do a million things at once, etc. i get that this version of Muthr was probably way easier to animate, and i don't even think they had to stick to the original design 100% as long as they still did something interesting for her, but. they didn't.

rip Eva's sick as hell hairstyle. :( seriously, her complicated braids were so important. bc 1) they were an homage to Dorothy's braids in the wizard of oz, the book to which the whole trilogy is a love letter. 2) they immediately gave her a unique visual identity as a character. 3) they contributed to the world of Wondla feeling genuinely strange and foreign to our current one. 4) they subtly spoke to things like Eva's boredom and loneliness and all the time she had to herself.

the paltry mini braids and single low bun they gave her instead are WEAK. again, they didn't have to follow the books to the letter, but. they did kinda need to give us something more memorable and distinctive than this.

i mean... there is ofc the obvious question of why'd they make her 16 instead of going on 13 like she was in the books? but also, perhaps even more crucially, why does she look like a whole ass adult woman? wondla is very much a coming of age story, and it's really good at capturing the messiness of that experience in every way down to its character design. this Eva doesn't look messy, she looks like an influencer. also i hate that current disneyesque cgi character design.

her outfit's like... fine. but it was so fucking cute in the books. cute and ultra utilitarian, and unlike anything i'd ever really seen before. can't a girl have a vest with a funky collar, cool billowy balloon sleeves, and scrunchy knee socks? do yknow how many kids would want to be Eva for halloween if they simply gave her an outfit that looked cuter? they're leaving money on the damn table.

she wasn't done with her training for life on the surface in the books, and that was important. :/ not that anything could've really prepared her, but the fact that she was so young made her terror and anger all the more palpable. i guess i don't think it's inherently terrible for her to be a bit older in adaptation, but idk, at least let her retain that trial by fire/still kind of a scared kid quality that's integral to her arc.

the placement of the 'wondla' letters on the page makes no sense. it's meant to be the wonderful wizard of oz (or the wonderful wizard of oz by l. frank baum. i forget which, but ONE of those for sure), so by all accounts the l and a shouldn't be right next to each other like that, there should be more space between those two letters.

now i don't fully remember, but i super don't think that 'Eva find me' note was in the books. Eva would've been way more obsessed with it if it was. in the books, she doesn't know the 'wondla' page was actually left for her, it's just this strange anomaly she finds that gives her hope, but she sort of creates that hope herself. its origin is an honest to god mystery until the second book, and therefore, the meaning that Eva gives it is what really comes to define it.

it's not just that no one had seen a human in a long time, most aliens on Orbona had never seen a human at all until Eva came along. that's a big difference! though, this audio does sound chopped up from multiple sentences, so maybe disregard this.

i don't like that they gave away the 'Orbona was once Earth' twist right off the bat. i know it's not a wholly original trope in sci-fi, but this is a middle-grade/family series, and it straight up blew my mind to see as a kid that hadn't ever really read true sci-fi before. and Orbona is SO bizarre, and Eva is SO desperate to find other humans, that the reveal is extra jarring and bleak, and it creates such powerful tension. why give the impact of that away in the trailer?? why not just let people think she's stuck on an alien planet until they get the full emotional gut punch when they actually watch it for themselves?

where's the lake in Lacus? :/ that was... kinda the basis of Lacus' culture and design and all. like ok i see some water, but Lacus should be almost more water than village.

Otto's design!! why god why.

why is Otto furry, why are his eyes Like That, etc.

nooo, don't show the ruins of New York in the trailer, that's for the audience to discover in horror along with Eva.

also why does Otto (i think that's him talking at least?) sound like that? thumbs down.

what are the. uh. shark tale-looking creatures running on water. they're very shark tale-looking (derogatory). they don't look like they belong in this series?? like did this footage just get misfiled?

egads it's coming out at the end of this month. i'm gonna watch it of course. but the whole time i'll be thinking about what could've been. and i'll reread the books, too. >:|

[necrotic-nephilim]

If you want to be bothered. Maybe this for dick and Bruce???

i ALWAYS want to be bothered these are always the highlight of my day tbh you're a delight for letting me just yap <3

Dick. For the canon isn't real square I am Specifically talking about the Tom Taylor Nightwing run. Usually I ignore bad runs but given this one is ongoing (though about to end THANK GOD and get replaced by Dan Watters who i have high hopes for since i adored his Sword of Azrael (2022) run but i digress) so I counted it. Especially since it's so debated if that run is bad or not, for some reason. I'm a 90s Nightwing truther. I love Dick so dearly and tbh recently I've been more enamored with him the more I read his Discowing era, I didn't used to be as big of a Dick stan as I am these days.

Bruce. Honestly where do you even start with Bruce. I want to fist fight him and also patch him up. He got me into comics and superheroes as a whole but I roll my eyes whenever he shows up in a story. He's a bastard and usually not a good father but also complex and should be dissected under a magnifying glass. I love him dearly. He's also just the worst. I think that's why I love him. I'm always a fan of unabashedly Complicated Asshole Bruce who's generally not always the best person, particularly not to the Batfamily and that being the driving force of his relationships with them, especially in shipping.

And for bonus points, Tim. Because know above all else, I'm a Tim Drake kinnie /deg. He's been my number one for a decade and I've yet to uproot him from my brain. He's literally the Worst half the time and I love him for it. And the canon isn't real refers to Tim Drake: Robin because... that sure was a comic. And that's about all I can say about it. Pre-Flashpoint Tim I miss you so dearly. I think it's fun that I want to put him in a blender and drink the juice but also want Nothing Ever to happen to him.

[honeygrahambitch]

Came across a poll regarding who the best therapist in Hannibal nbc is and I just want to ask if the people who voted for Alana Bloom are talking about the Alana Bloom in the series

[cl4ssyjazzy]

Shen Qingqiu of the Transmigration variety.

Got back to drawing lately because the Chinese gays got me (again) So I drew the big silly on my sketchbook and felt like sharing!

[tomthefanboy]

D&D Movie Follows the Rules

I want to make it very clear that this was not a criteria for me to enjoy D&D Honor Among Thieves. I would not have blamed the actors, crew, or writers if this had not been the case…

I was unable to find anything that would interfere with the Rules as Written.

There are things that go beyond the rules included in the Player's Handbook, yes. But everything is well within the realm of feats, magic items, and background abilities that needn't be specifically called out or even have visible evidence. Everything in the film is BALANCED. ESPECIALLY for high level characters.

In every fight scene I compulsively counted 6 second rounds and saw no damage dealt that would be beyond the normal number of attacks for the character. Weapons drawn fell within the range of bonus actions. No spells cast too quick. No simultaneous concentration spells. Spells stayed in keeping with saving throws, durations, ranges, and areas of effect. Creature abilities and attacks matched their statistic entries. Class abilities like rage or wild magic even stayed in their framework.

One possible issue would be wildshape going beyond the usual "twice per day"and shows 6 uses in one encounter. But a feat to trade spell slots for shapes fixes that! Even the owlbear of it all is easy enough to dismiss with Polymorph, a magic item, or simply replacing the Circle of the Moon's Elemental form with 4 Monstrosities (more than fair since it's a drop from CR5 to CR3). But even if you had to bend the capabilities, the uses of wildshape are still utilized as actions and bonus actions within their rounds and don't grant any abilities not in keeping with rules.

Bigger nerds than me can cry homebrew all they want but the DMG provides framework for changes in keeping with game balance and Tasha's Cauldron laid the groundwork for even more customization. And if you let player characters craft magic items then you might as well just log off mad about it.

It's all there on the page! (It's even more rules compliant if you don't restrict yourself to 5th edition. I can show you all SORTS of nonsense you can get away with if you turn back the clock!)

D&D Honor Among Thieves is more than a great movie! The diverse cast, the detailed production design, the writing that mixes high fantasy with the hi-jinks that INEVITABLY happen at the game table, and the unnecessarily accurate choreography make it a MASTERPIECE in adaptation!

[0rosenstern0]

Okay TIME TO GET IN

[brinelakes]

gotten into making 88x31 buttons recently

free to use, credit appreciated ^_^

[bonefall]

I see you've changed Shadowstar from being first to die. Sneaky, sneaky. You sly.. cat, you, Bones. Was that on purpose, out of spite for Shadowstar's Life?

B'aww, you got me <3 Yeah I hate that book.

Shadowstar: *breathes in public*

Erins:

[gwydionae]

SAY IT WITH ME:

FEMALE CHARACTERS CAN BE WARRIORS AND FEMININE

MALE CHARACTERS CAN BE SMART AND MASCULINE

BEING BOTH IS NOT A "FLAW" WHERE ONE NEEDS TO BE REMOVED

IT'S CALLED "COMPLEXITY"

[jackshiccup]

ok i'll admit gerard butler reprising his role as stoick for the httyd live-action is very cool that sounds like a fun time

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT! Any thoughts on GRRM's (now deleted 👀) blog post about HOTD? Both in terms of content and authorial conduct?

My first reaction was some combination of sympathy and cringe. I can see where his frustrations would arise — especially if he's correct that Ryan Condal intended Helaena to kill herself "for no reason," although I doubt that's the whole story (most of the coming seasons haven't been written yet). GRRM was burned badly by the ending of GOT, which is why he's harping so much on the (to be honest, pretty minor) removal of a child who really has no role in the source material except to be the sacrificial lamb prompting Helaena's suicide. He can repeat the words "butterfly effect" until he's blue in the face, but that still won't actually make Maelor into a major character, and it still won't explain why changing Helaena's arc is necessarily a bad thing for the story the show's telling. Helaena in the books is a very happy person whose death by suicide would be uncharacteristic unless prompted by a slew of gruesome personal tragedies. Helaena in the show is much more melancholy and withdrawn, and the audience doesn't need to see (another) one of her children brutally slaughtered in order to believe that she might pull a Tommen, especially since we don't know what the HOTD team are actually planning for her. Getting pissy about cutting Maelor is like finding out someone's replaced all the furniture in your living room — while you watched — and complaining that the upholstery's the wrong color. My brother in Christ, it's a different chair.

Apart from that, I recently saw one blogger argue persuasively that the choice to eliminate Maelor was not just efficient, but a defensible and deliberate creative decision: whether George realizes it or not, removing Maelor puts Aegon in the same situation his father Viserys was before his marriage to Alicent, where his only choices of heir are his daughter (Rhaenyra/Jahaera) or his brother (Daemon/Aemond), the latter of whom has recently proved himself an untrustworthy and outright dangerous candidate (the King of the Stepstones arc in Daemon's case, and the assassination attempt from Aemond). This traps Aegon, because the only laws supporting him as king require that he pass over Jahaera and place his regicidal brother — who has already tried to kill him once, probably having realized this fact — directly in the line of succession. And I'm pretty sure the show is intentionally going for this, because they make a point of telling us that Aegon can't have more children, so unlike Viserys, he can't get out of this by having more sons. Is this necessarily more compelling than the Maelor/Helaena guilt storyline? No, but we don't know if that storyline would have been compelling either. The success or failure of a narrative decision is almost totally in the execution, and HOTD is, crucially, not finished executing yet.

Siloing the question of the post's merits, it's also incredibly unprofessional for one of the most successful authors in history to start publicly beating up on a writer's room that he's supposedly collaborating with. Like, frankly, I don't care what Ryan Condal said. I don't care if he said he was going to kill off half the cast in S3E1 and turn the show into an isekai about his self-insert avatar falling in love with Rhaenyra. You work that shit out in the writer's room, or, if need be, the negotiating table, and not by dumping on the guy's creative decisions on a platform where the core of the show's fanbase hangs on your every word (most of them in the hope that you've announced the completion of the book you're supposed to be writing). It's catty, it's spiteful, and, judging by the content of the post itself, grossly disproportionate to the scale of the creative conflict at play. If I were an industry creative, I would have serious reservations about working with Martin after this, and the level of poor behavior on display should be evident by the fact that any author whose IP wasn't making HBO a bajillion zillion dollars would have been rightfully shitcanned for doing something like this.

If I sound angry at him, I'm not; I think he's just an old guy who's been told by lots of people that he's good enough to be above the rules, and he's consequently forgotten some of the industry etiquette. I'm also, frankly, a little contemptuous, mostly because most creatives I know would give all the fingers of their writing-hand to have the opportunities that George does, and would conduct themselves with significantly more grace and generosity for their collaborators even if they did disagree on adaptational differences.