#i think: there's a lot of extremely good adaptations of stories to screen these days->

[divinekangaroo]

...man I've really hit that stage of Old Womanhood where I seriously contemplate and long for novelisations of existing gaming / televised media? :/

[bleue-flora]

yeah I think even though c!Tommy had a lot of visitors in exile, its all undermined because he still felt lonely and c!Dream had told him that people were only visiting him to see the place and encouraged c!Tommy to see the gifts as pity gifts but its a nice comparison you made regardless I think comparing the physical torment both faced it would be interesting, c!tommys was more spaced out and emotional based + the hits he took from cdreams weapons, c!dreams was daily and more extreme

[context]

{wrote this answer awhile ago, and was going to add to it a comparison of Exile and prison emotional and physical abuse data but due to recent events I’m finding it hard to watch exile streams so that analysis has been put on hold, but figured I could still post this answer.}

Look I'm not saying Dream isn't a good manipulator, because he certainly is, but from Day 1 even before Dream shows up to visit, Tommy is already moping and calling people's gifts pity gifts and stuff (like in that post the clip of Bad happens before Dream shows up for the first time). In fact, the more I rewatch Exile the more I wonder what would have happened if it had been someone else in Tommy's shoes? Would the situation seem as screwed up if the person was more resistant to the abuse and not falling apart on their own. Is that why there are people who see Dream as deserving of prison, and Exile as more emotionally damaging? I don't know, it's just a thought, is it Dream’s nonchalance that cuts into people's pity and empathy?...

It's actually something I've thought about a lot in the last year, because there is almost always something going wrong in my life and so I've kinda adapted this "is what it is" "this is fine" "I tried what more can I do" attitude of letting things roll off and just dealing with it and turning it into a funny story (sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying). It was actually highlighted a few weeks ago when my coworker was trying to stress to me how awful and cold it would be if my heat were to go out this winter. And I was like - "I am beyond aware, I lost my heat, hot water, and internet during a snow storm last year so I know exactly how miserable it is." and her face was just like 'oh... right' as if my anxiety and the words I'd been saying all week finally dawned on her. As if the lighthearted nature and attitude in which I shared those facts before undid the gravity of them.

It’s actually something I really noticed this summer when my sister-in-law was in a car accident and got a concussion. My parents were reasonably worried and like offering to come up and if they need to bring my brother and her food and stuff, and it caught me by surprise in a weird way. Not because I don't think she (and my brother) didn't deserve or need the help and sympathy, but because less than a year and a half ago, after spending a week with covid in an apartment with broken air conditioning during heat advisory, I end up fainting while coming out of the shower as I was getting ready to finally go back to work... The crazy person I am, I was bleeding and still the thought in my mind was - 'I'll just stick a bandaid on it’ (I ended up with 7 stitches lol)... Anyways, long story short despite my concussion I pushed on through my second to last semester of engineering courses and hell even made Dean's List despite my struggling short memory, which might be one of my proudest achievements to be honest. And in hindsight as I observed people's care and concern for my sister-in-law and them asking if she needs to leave the room for the quiet and how long is she taking off work... etc, I realized just how kinda screwed up it was that I had to handle everything by myself. That no one was there to tell me to not use a screen right after getting a concussion and how I definitely should not have been tutoring or doing school the week after. I did it all by myself and pushed through, and I realized that I think because I didn't make it a big deal, it became not a big deal for them. Because I laughed about it and tell the story in a comical way, people don’t seem to understand just how hard it was. As if a concussion in itself isn’t terrible, period.

In the same way, Torture is terrible, period. Dream shouldn’t have to be pathetic for that fact to be true. He shouldn’t have to be broken, or say “yes sir,” we shouldn’t need any evidence but that fact alone. (Now obviously within the dsmp Minecraft medium it’s a little different but hopefully you get the point). The torture isn’t any less horrible if the character reacts by becoming submissive or fighting back. Torture isn’t any less horrible because of who it is on (something Dream tries to highlight to Sam in Daedalus). Torture is bad. It doesn’t matter if the reason was good or not, it doesn’t matter if the victim shows how hurt they are or not. And yet, those facts change our perception of it. It is different to know someone was tortured than it is to see them having a panic attack afterwards or their scars.

So then, would characters and we the audience still think Exile is as bad as it was if the person who was exiled didn’t react the same. If their clothes weren’t falling apart. If they weren’t moping around and complaining. If the facts were the exact same, but the attitude of the character was different, how would it change how we saw Exile? Would we still see Exile as even comparable on any scale to Prison? If we saw all 82 of Quackity’s visits how would it change our perception? If Dream was too scared to hold an axe during jailbreak or if he cried in Punz’s arms right after, if he didn’t show such apathy when telling Sapnap or Foolish or Tommy about the torture, would it change how those characters felt about it? If Dream’s skin had clothes that we saw slowly deteriorating everytime we saw him in prison how would that change how we saw it? Or if Tommy’s clothes hadn’t changed, how would that change how we saw Exile?… yes Exile was horrible, and yes it was abuse and screwed up. But also, is part of why we see it as this big horrible thing because of Tommy’s reaction to it. That’s not to say it wasn’t horrible or I’m trying to minimize the abuse, but also lots of horrible things happen on the dsmp. I mean Fundy committed suicide and I don’t see people getting as upset at Wilbur as they do Dream for Tommy’s almost suicide.

I don’t know, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. If Dream’s attitude to being tortured changed how characters and we saw it, and if in the same way, Tommy’s attitude changed how we saw Exile. If the roles were reversed or someone else was in Tommy’s place, (whether or not they are actually comparable), would anyone think they are even comparable in any aspect?

Sapnap: “What do you mean he was torturing you? Like literally torturing you?”

[dingodad]

On the Homestuck movie theme; opinions on it being a tv show vs a movie/movie series?

like i kind of intimated a couple of posts ago i think a lot of people believe that homestuck is "better suited" to television adaptation rather than film because 1) they think a homestuck adaptation must replicate homestuck's length and episodic structure and 2) they perceive the 2-3 hour ceiling of a feature film as a weakness rather than as a strength. not that this is somehow just a homestuck problem - "why are they making my favourite thing into a stupid MOVIE instead of making it into Avatar: the Last Airbender" is basically a fandom refrain at this point - but my point is that the television and cinema formats both have their own unique merits to consider beyond just how many hours of your favourite thing you think you want to sit through.

homestuck's story is absolutely strong enough to survive adaptation into either medium, but i just feel very strongly that "more episodes = more time to directly adapt more of the specific homestuck crap that i like" is a bad motivation to turn homestuck into a long-running serial over a 2 hour feature. almost all of homestuck is good, but it's good because of the specific way it was presented, and just because you might believe you could make it all good on the screen too doesn't mean that would actually make a good television experience. a homestuck tv series might well be more like the comic than a homestuck movie would be, but it's still going to be its own beast, and this is an aspect of the adaptation process that more people need to be willing to celebrate rather than mourn

all of that being said: the increasing stream- and binge-ification of both the television and film industries has in recent years begun to erode the traditional distinctions between the two formats. budget is a major example of this; in the past one might have taken for granted that homestuck's visually spectacular nature deserved - nay, REQUIRED - the hollywood treatment, but these days a lot of movies have become crap enough and a lot of tv has become good enough that this is no longer always the safest assumption. still, there are nuances to be found in the shades between these two extremes. could a miniseries of five hour-long parts perhaps be THE IDEAL way to put homestuck to screen? it certainly sounds promising! but crafting a really good five-hour serial requires its own suite of skills that are not entirely cinematic and not entirely televisual. it's never just a case of stretching out the source material to fit however many hours you happen to have been given, no matter how much the binge audience would like this to be the case

[agentoffangirling]

as a south asian why the hell did they make aladdin and jasmine south asian. I am so confused. Isn't jasmine's name literally persian

Okay okay so there's a bit of a story for this

And to quickly answer your last question, yup, Jasmine is one of the forms of Yas/Yasmine, our jasmine flowers

So back in the 90s, and still a little bit today, many production companies such as Disney didn't really see a difference with the Middle East and South Asia. When Disney decided they wanted to make an adaptation of "Aladdin" from "One Thousand and One Nights" (slight tidbit here, the story of Aladdin is not part of the original book. A French guy added it in and for some reason, set it in China? One Thousand is a Persian story, most of the stories in there are Persian, so this choice was. Interesting), it's not like they suddenly hired a bunch of Middle Eastern experts to consult on the film. No, they just created a desert-y landscape and lumped in Persian, Arab, and South Asian all in there

This is why the palace of Agrabah heavily resembles the Taj Mahal on a more Arabic-sounding name. Rajah, Jasmine's pet tiger, is an Indian word for king. Names such as Jafar and Jasmine are Persian in origin, while a lot of the clothing is Turkish-inspired. Villains such as the Captain and Jafar have a lot more stereotypically Middle Eastern features (hooked nose, bushy eyebrows, etc [and it's a convo for another day about how the "good" characters don't have these exaggerated features])

This melding of several cultures is what led up to the live-action "Aladdin" in 2019. The creators of that movie wanted to be more respectful of the region, and so this time, they did hire consultants and the like to help ensure it would be much less offensive ("where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face", nice going 1992)

And for the most part, they did that. Except for Jasmine

Jasmine is played by Naomi Scott, a half white half Indian woman, and look, it's pretty obvious she only got this part because she's well known. I would also like to point out that the casting calls for the characters in general once again lumped Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern people, however, almost all of the cast is Middle Eastern, and several of them are Persian (Sultan and Mara, notably)

So while everyone else is wearing clothes more indicative of the Middle East, you have miss Jasmine over here dressed in sarees and Indian-inspired clothing because costuming department went "oh! She's Indian now!" Agrabah is also a lot more similar to South Asia than the Middle East, further deepening this issue

To an outsider, "Aladdin" is Indian. To them, there's some Arab inspo, but they would mostly think it's set somewhere in India or South Asia. That's what the casting and costuming department in "Rise of Red" were working with, and so they just opted to go the whole South Asian angle. None of the actors who portray Jasmine, Aladdin, and their kid are Middle Eastern, they're all South Asian. The clothes they're wearing are very obviously from that region

And if I'm being completely honest, that's exactly what I expect from Disney. Why would they bother to do research for extremely minor characters with two lines? The problem here is what I've been talking about above, is that Hollywood is constantly thinking South Asians and Middle Easterners are interchangeable when we're not. If I see a MENA character on screen, more often than not the actor is South Asian. This is a continuous problem no one from these places wants to see happening, and yet it is because Hollywood doesn't actually care. The more it's done, the more they think it's okay and so they continue to blur the lines between several different cultures

So, on an ending note, Jasmine and Aladdin are Arab, if not Persian, and the idea that we are interchangable with South Asians harms both our cultures

[phannibal]

finished the fight the future novelization!! overall it was an extremely mid adaptation that did not take advantage of the change in medium to do anything interesting, but it was still a fun read and honestly some plot points were clearer than in the movie. liveblog and standout moments under the cut :3

immediately the narration feels like someone is describing something that’s happening on screen. this is not a good thing; a good adaptation is able to use the strengths of its medium to tell the story in a way that is compelling in and of itself (day of the doctor perfect example) (this is why screen -> book adaptations fall flat when using a different author, the book author has a lot of guesswork to do wrt POVs, motivations, and other internal character stuff) (but do I really want to read a book by chris carter)

wait this is awesome face blindness can’t affect me in the written word. wow turns out that one guy was two guys all along

y’know it’s almost not fair to criticize this book for being a clunky adaptation bc fight the future leans so hard into its own cinematography in a way that makes it irreplicable in text. god I want to write a dissertation comparing this to the dotd novelization with references to the other x files and target novelizations and comparing franchises and impact of same vs. different author of the same story. waves sadly at my nonexistent media studies degree

he comes into the initial hearing and her heart LIFTS. this is what i’m talking about use the medium to give us character insight!!!

oh no fucking way. author just used “who’s” when the correct word was “whose.” probably worst mistake I have ever seen in a published book

the dialogue in particular does not translate well to text. maybe there’s a way to make m&s’ opening back and forth just as iconic and characteristic in print, or mulder’s drunken exposition slash tagline just as comedic yet foreboding, but as is, they (and other standout lines) just fall so flat

they don’t even say that he’s peeing on the independence day poster 😑

did this author come from fanfiction or something bc the amount of “the younger man” I’m having to roll my eyes at is obscene

this is the biggest glimpse we get into any character’s thoughts so i’m holding it to my chest forever and ever

god so the 3am “what are you implying” “is that what you’d like me to do” feel WAY more loaded in text

also “she had been thinking exactly that” 🥺

TWICE. yeah i bet

I’m like 90% sure some lines of dialogue are slightly different like just meaningless word order choices but I’m not putting on the movie to confirm

no okay the above is definitely true. “the one thing in the world he can’t live without” is NOT the original line but goes just as hard

have to include this bc it is absolutely the most changed dialogue in the whole book. wish i could see into this author’s head

realizing for the first time that the guy that planted the bomb = the guy eavesdropping on mulder in the bar = the guy driving the ambulance because in a book you have to spell that type of thing out

i DID actually pull up the movie upon reading these lines bc i was like i knowww i would remember this. i wonder if the author was working off of the original script or something and this was part of that? or if she was really just allowed to freestyle

god so we know in the movie he just kind of jumps down a random ice hole after he initially falls through. here it’s specifically and clearly a vent because ig this author could not rationalize him choosing to jump down a random hole

long af image so click to read but INSANE insane emphasis on the cpr scene for no reason. like that lasts 2 seconds in the movie but is fully a page and a half here, thanks for that at least ms elizabeth hand

protectively :')

why is this exchange so neutered?? where is the passion? where is "some hollow personal cause of mine" and "i can't. i won't"?

that's all i got! i think these excerpts really demonstrate the shortcomings of a direct, no-frills screen-to-text translation. i can't help thinking that this book was meant to be just another thing to put on shelves and sell, as opposed to being born of a genuine desire to retell the story in a new way. like i said, still fun though, and enough new tidbits to make it worthwhile!

[centrally-unplanned]

2024 Stuff I Liked Post - Live Action Film/TV

Combining TV and film since I didn't watch that much TV this year:

House of the Dragon: Look, I like A Song of Ice and Fire. I like period dramas. I like pretty costumes and people looking at maps. Dragons are cool! Okay really, I think HotD is well made? It is not perfect, Season 2 had some really baffling pacing missteps and their modern-day political concerns are very obvious. But these were frustrating in that "I am already a fan" kind of way, you go "aw come on!" at the screen but you are still watching! The acting is excellent, the set designs are very strong, and a lot of things like the action/fight choreography really fixed issues with the first show.

And at its core it is adapting a really solid story. This year I also reread the Dance section of Fire & Blood, and I know it is a controversial tale in the fandom? And I do see their complaints (Rhaenyra & Aegon need to be 20% more sympathetic), but overall I think the story is just tonally and thematically really strong, and some of the prose is authentically top notch. George RR Martin is a good writer, hot take!

Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets: Yeah the above is too mainstream, let's get hipster baby. The first film of seminal new wave director Shūji Terayama, this 1971 is peak hippie countercultural revolution. It is avant garde sequences about modernity, materialism, and spiritual decay. Those are themes that, in a movie from today, are tiring. Like come on, I too have taken a sociology class, you can graduate from college and get a real job for a bit first. But watching a film from this era, it all hits differently. Japan in 1971 is actually, in many real ways, entering "the era of materialism & westernization" for the first time. It is new, not understood, contested. And from that, the idea that a movie could maybe change someone's view on all that actually isn't so crazy anymore. The revolutionary zeal to make a Message Film is actually kind of justified by the context of the time, you can tell they believe.

Additionally, as a Japanese 70's counterculture film it can serve as an interesting contrast because they are openly pulling from western radicalism, but applying it to a very different social context. Like in Japan, "traditional" culture can be very left-coded because westernization is stripping it away - something that can't work in many western contexts where "traditional" orgs are still running the show. Though it is amusing seeing the sheer quantity of people in Tokyo in bell-bottom jeans lol, the American Cultural Victory is absolute.

And on a more object-level, while the plot is mixed, the soundtrack absolutely wrecks shop as a rock album, the visual composition is exceptional, and the lead is very charismatic. This might actually be the best 70's New Wave film I have seen so far.

The Indie Tokusatsu Collection: Over this year Partner M has been fansubbing indie girl heroine tokusatsu films, after Hazel's video on the subject changed her life, and I have been helping out and ofc watching all the movies. I love weird niche Japanese stuff, obviously, and have a deep admiration for amateurs going all-in on their fetishes for an indie production. Still, individually none of these would be My Thing, even if they are very fun. But collectively, watching a dozen of these films has been extremely entertaining as a project of cultural immersion - it is great to get to know these crazy weirdos making these films and the baffling decisions they make! I now have a parasocial relationship with the tiny Eiyu Club crew from doing deep dives into their 90's website documenting how much they loved their gynoid girls, and I will remember that way more than any Oscar film plot point.

If I had to recommend one to watch, I am tied between Cyber Lady Suzuka, which is the pinnacle of "three guys and a hundred bucks making a movie", and Mighty Lady, which is simply inexplicable as a film.

Honorable Mentions: Repo! The Genetic Opera, IRL (In Real Life) aka The Bronze Documentary, Cutie Honey

[denimbex1986]

'Is Tom Ripley gay? For nearly 70 years, the answer has bedeviled readers of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley, the story of a diffident but ambitious young man who slides into and then brutally ends the life of a wealthy American expatriate, as well as the four sequels she produced fitfully over the following 36 years. It has challenged the directors — French, British, German, Italian, Canadian, American — who have tried to bring Ripley to the screen, including in the latest adaptation by Steven Zaillian, now on Netflix. And it appears even to have flummoxed Ripley’s creator, a lesbian with a complicated relationship to queer sexuality. In a 1988 interview, shortly before she undertook writing the final installment of the series, Ripley Under Water, Highsmith seemed determined to dismiss the possibility. “I don’t think Ripley is gay,” she said — “adamantly,” in the characterization of her interviewer. “He appreciates good looks in other men, that’s true. But he’s married in later books. I’m not saying he’s very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife.”

The question isn’t a minor one. Ripley’s killing of Dickie Greenleaf — the most complicated, and because it’s so murkily motivated, the most deeply rattling of the many murders the character eventually commits — has always felt intertwined with his sexuality. Does Tom kill Dickie because he wants to be Dickie, because he wants what Dickie has, because he loves Dickie, because he knows what Dickie thinks of him, or because he can’t bear the fact that Dickie doesn’t love him? Ordinarily, I’m not a big fan of completely ignoring authorial intent, and I’m inclined to let novelists have the last word on factual information about their own creations. But Highsmith, a cantankerous alcoholic misanthrope who was long past her best days when she made that statement, may have forgotten, or wanted to disown, her own initial portrait of Tom Ripley, which is — especially considering the time in which it was written — perfumed with unmistakable implication.

Consider the case that Highsmith puts forward in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Tom, a single man, lives a hand-to-mouth existence in New York with a male roommate who is, ahem, a window dresser. Before that, he lived with an older man with some money and a controlling streak, a sugar daddy he contemptuously describes as “an old maid”; Tom still has the key to his apartment. Most of his social circle — the names he tosses around when introducing himself to Dickie — are gay men. The aunt who raised him, he bitterly recalls, once said of him, “Sissy! He’s a sissy from the ground up. Just like his father!” Tom, who compulsively rehearses his public interactions and just as compulsively relives his public humiliations, recalls a particularly stinging moment when he was shamed by a friend for a practiced line he liked to use repeatedly at parties: “I can’t make up my mind whether I like men or women, so I’m thinking of giving them both up.” It has “always been good for a laugh, the way he delivered it,” he thinks, while admitting to himself that “there was a lot of truth in it.” Fortunately, Tom has another go-to party trick. Still nurturing vague fantasies of becoming an actor, he knows how to delight a small room with a set of monologues he’s contrived. All of his signature characters are, by the way, women.

This was an extremely specific set of ornamentations for a male character in 1955, a time when homosexuality was beginning to show up with some frequency in novels but almost always as a central problem, menace, or tragedy rather than an incidental characteristic. And it culminates in a gruesome scene that Zaillian’s Ripley replicates to the last detail in the second of its eight episodes: The moment when Dickie, the louche playboy whose luxe permanent-vacation life in the Italian coastal town of Atrani with his girlfriend, Marge, has been infiltrated by Tom, discovers Tom alone in his bedroom, imitating him while dressed in his clothes. It is, in both Highsmith’s and Zaillian’s tellings, as mortifying for Tom as being caught in drag, because essentially it is drag but drag without exaggeration or wit, drag that is simply suffused with a desire either to become or to possess the object of one’s envy and adoration. It repulses Dickie, who takes it as a sexual threat and warns Tom, “I’m not queer,” then adds, lashingly, “Marge thinks you are.” In the novel, Tom reacts by going pale. He hotly denies it but not before feeling faint. “Nobody had ever said it outright to him,” Highsmith writes, “not in this way.” Not a single gay reader in the mid-1950s would have failed to recognize this as the dread of being found out, quickly disguised as the indignity of being misunderstood.

And it seemed to frighten Highsmith herself. In the second novel, Ripley Under Ground, published 15 years later, she backed away from her conception of Tom, leaping several years forward and turning him into a soigné country gentleman living a placid, idyllic life in France with an oblivious wife. None of the sequels approach the cold, challenging terror of the first novel — a challenge that has been met in different ways, each appropriate to their era, by the three filmmakers who have taken on The Talented Mr. Ripley. Zaillian’s ice-cold, diamond-hard Ripley just happens to be the first to deliver a full and uncompromising depiction of one of the most unnerving characters in American crime fiction.

The first Ripley adaptation, René Clément’s French-language drama Purple Noon, is much beloved for its sun-saturated atmosphere of endless indolence and for the tone of alienated ennui that anticipated much of the decade to come; the movie was also a showcase for its Ripley, the preposterously sexy, maddeningly aloof Alain Delon. And therein lies the problem: A Ripley who is preposterously sexy is not a Ripley who has ever had to deal with soul-deep humiliation, and a Ripley who is maddeningly aloof is not going to be able to worm his way into anyone’s life. Purple Noon is not especially willing (or able — it was released in 1960) to explore Ripley’s possible homosexuality. Though the movie itself suggests that no man or woman could fail to find him alluring, what we get with Delon is, in a way, a less complex character type, a gorgeous and magnetic smooth criminal who, as if even France had to succumb to the hoariest dictates of the Hollywood Production Code, gets the punishment due to him by the closing credits. It’s delectable daylit noir, but nothing unsettling lingers.

Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, released in 1999, is far better; it couldn’t be more different from the current Ripley, but it’s a legitimate reading that proves that Highsmith’s novel is complex and elastic enough to accommodate wildly varying interpretations. A committed Matt Damon makes a startlingly fine Tom Ripley, ingratiating and appealing but always just slightly inept or needy or wrong; Jude Law — peak Jude Law — is such an effortless golden boy that he manages the necessary task of making Damon’s Tom seem a bit dim and dull; and acting-era Gwyneth Paltrow is a spirited and touchingly vulnerable Marge.

Minghella grapples with Tom’s sexual orientation in an intelligently progressive-circa-1999 way; he assumes that Highsmith would have made Tom overtly gay if the culture of 1955 had allowed it, and he runs all the way with the idea. He gives us a Tom Ripley who is clearly, if not in love with Dickie, wildly destabilized by his attraction to him. And in a giant departure from the novel, he elevates a character Highsmith had barely developed, Peter Smith-Kingsley (played by Jack Davenport) into a major one, a man with whom we’re given to understand that Ripley, with two murders behind him and now embarking on a comfortable and well-funded European life, has fallen in love. It doesn’t end well for either of them. A heartsick Tom eventually kills Peter, too, rather than risk discovery — it’s his third murder, one more than in the novel — and we’re meant to take this as the tragedy of his life: That, having come into the one identity that could have made him truly happy (gay man), he will always have to subsume it to the identity he chose in order to get there (murderer). This is nowhere that Highsmith ever would have gone — and that’s fine, since all of these movies are not transcriptions but interpretations. It’s as if Minghella, wandering around inside the palace of the novel, decided to open doors Highsmith had left closed to see what might be behind them. The result is the most touching and sympathetic of Ripleys — and, as a result, far from the most frightening.

Zaillian is not especially interested in courting our sympathy. Working with the magnificent cinematographer Robert Elswit, who makes every black-and-white shot a stunning, tense, precise duel between light and shadow, he turns coastal Italy not into an azure utopia but into a daunting vertical maze, alternately paradise, purgatory, and inferno, in which Tom Ripley is forever struggling; no matter where he turns, he always seems to be at the bottom of yet another flight of stairs.

It’s part of the genius of this Ripley — and a measure of how deeply Zaillian has absorbed the book — that the biggest departures he makes from Highsmith somehow manage to bring his work closer to her scariest implications. There are a number of minor changes, but I want to talk about the big ones, the most striking of which is the aging of both Tom and Dickie. In the novel, they’re both clearly in their 20s — Tom is a young striver patching together an existence as a minor scam artist who steals mail and impersonates a collection agent, bilking guileless suckers out of just enough odd sums for him to get by, and Dickie is a rich man’s son whose father worries that he has extended his post-college jaunt to Europe well past its sowing-wild-oats expiration date. Those plot points all remain in place in the miniseries, but Andrew Scott, who plays Ripley, is 47, and Johnny Flynn, who plays Dickie, is 41; onscreen, they register, respectively, as about 40 and 35.

This changes everything we think we know about the characters from the first moments of episode one. As we watch Ripley in New York, dourly plying his miserable, penny-ante con from a tiny, barren shoe-box apartment that barely has room for a bed as wide as a prison cot (this is not a place to which Ripley has ever brought guests), we learn a lot: This Ripley is not a struggler but a loser. He’s been at this a very long time, and this is as far as he’s gotten. We can see, in an early scene set in a bank, that he’s wearily familiar with almost getting caught. If he ever had dreams, he probably buried them years earlier. And Dickie, as a golden boy, is pretty tarnished himself — he isn’t a wild young man but an already-past-his-prime disappointment, a dilettante living off of Daddy’s money while dabbling in painting (he’s not good at it) and stringing along a girlfriend who’s stuck on him but probably, in her heart, knows he isn’t likely to amount to much.

Making Tom older also allows Zaillian to mount a persuasive argument about his sexuality that hews closely to Highsmith’s vision (if not to her subsequent denial). If the Ripley of 1999 was gay, the Ripley of 2024 is something else: queer, in both the newest and the oldest senses of the word. Scott’s impeccable performance finds a thousand shades of moon-faced blankness in Ripley’s sociopathy, and Elswit’s endlessly inventive lighting of his minimal expressions, his small, ambivalent mouth and high, smooth forehead, often makes him look slightly uncanny, like a Daniel Clowes or Charles Burns drawing. Scott’s Ripley is a man who has to practice every vocal intonation, every smile or quizzical look, every interaction. If he ever had any sexual desire, he seems to have doused it long ago. “Is he queer? I don’t know,” Marge writes in a letter to Dickie (actually to Tom, now impersonating his murder victim). “I don’t think he’s normal enough to have any kind of sex life.” This, too, is from the novel, almost word for word, and Zaillian uses it as a north star. The Ripley he and Scott give us is indeed queer — he’s off, amiss, not quite right, and Marge knows it. (In the novel, she adds, “All right, he may not be queer [meaning gay]. He’s just a nothing, which is worse.”) Ripley’s possible asexuality — or more accurately, his revulsion at any kind of expressed sexuality — makes his killing of Dickie even more horrific because it robs us of lust as a possible explanation. This is the first adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley I’ve seen in which even Ripley may not know why he murders Dickie.

When I heard that Zaillian (who both wrote and directed all of the episodes) was working on a Ripley adaptation, I wondered if he might replace sexual identity, the great unequalizer of 1999, with economic inequity, a more of-the-moment choice. Minghella’s version played with the idea; every person and object and room and vista Damon’s Ripley encountered was so lush and beautiful and gleaming that it became, in some scenes, the story of a man driven mad by having his nose pressed up against the glass that separated him from a world of privilege (and from the people in that world who were openly contemptuous of his gaucheries). Zaillian doesn’t do that — a lucky thing, since the heavily Ripley-influenced film Saltburn played with those very tropes recently and effectively. Whether intentional or not, one side effect of his decision to shoot Ripley in black and white is that it slightly tamps down any temptation to turn Italy into an occasion for wealth porn and in turn to make Tom an eat-the-rich surrogate. This Italy looks gorgeous in its own way, but it’s also a world in which even the most beautiful treasures appear threatened by encroaching dampness or decay or rot. Zaillian gives us a Ripley who wants Dickie’s life of money and nice things and art (though what he’s thinking when he stares at all those Caravaggios is anybody’s guess). But he resists the temptation to make Dickie and Marge disdainful about Tom’s poverty, or mean to the servants, or anything that might make his killing more palatable. This Tom is not a class warrior any more than he’s a victim of the closet or anything else that would make him more explicable in contemporary terms. He’s his own thing — a universe of one.

Anyway, sexuality gives any Ripley adapter more to toy with than money does, and the way Zaillian uses it also plays effectively into another of his intuitive leaps — his decision to present Dickie’s friend and Tom’s instant nemesis Freddie Miles not as an obnoxious loudmouth pest (in Minghella’s movie, he was played superbly by a loutish Philip Seymour Hoffman) but as a frosty, sexually ambiguous, gender-fluid-before-it-was-a-term threat to Tom’s stability, excellently portrayed by Eliot Sumner (Sting’s kid), a nonbinary actor who brings perceptive to-the-manor-born disdain to Freddie’s interactions with Tom. They loathe each other on sight: Freddie instantly clocks Tom as a pathetic poser and possible closet case, and Tom, seeing in Freddie a man who seems to wear androgyny with entitlement and no self-consciousness, registers him as a danger, someone who can see too much, too clearly. This leads, of course, to murder and to a grisly flourish in the scene in which Tom, attempting to get rid of Freddie’s body, walks his upright corpse, his bloodied head hidden under a hat, along a street at night, pretending he’s holding up a drunken friend. When someone approaches, Tom, needing to make his possible alibi work, turns away, slamming his own body into Freddie’s up against a wall and kissing him passionately on the lips. That’s not in Highsmith’s novel, but I imagine it would have gotten at least a dry smile out of her; in Ripley’s eight hours, this necrophiliac interlude is Tom’s sole sexual interaction.

No adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley would work without a couple of macabre jokes like that, and Zaillian serves up some zesty ones, including an appearance by John Malkovich, the reigning king/queen of sexual ambiguity (and himself a past Ripley, in 2002’s Ripley’s Game), nodding to Tom’s future by playing a character who doesn’t show up until book two. He also gives us a witty final twist that suggests that Ripley may not even make it to that sequel, one that reminds us how fragile and easily upended his whole scheme has been. Because Ripley, in this conception, is no mastermind; Zaillian’s most daring and thoughtful move may have been the excision of the word “talented” from the title. In the course of the show, we see him toy with being an editor, a writer (all those letters!), a painter, an art appreciator, and a wealthy man, often convincingly — but always as an impersonation. He gives us a Tom who is fiercely determined but so drained of human affect when he’s not being watched that we come to realize that his only real skill is a knack for concentrating on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. What we watch him get away with may be the first thing in his life he’s really good at (and the last moment of the show suggests that really good may not be good enough). This is not a Tom with a brilliant plan but a Tom who just barely gets away with it, a Tom who can never relax.

Tom’s sexuality is ultimately an enigma that Zaillian chooses to leave unsolved — as it remains at the end of the novel. Highsmith’s decision to turn Tom into a roguish heterosexual with a taste for art fraud before the start of the second novel has never felt entirely persuasive, and it’s clearly a resolution in which Zaillian couldn’t be less interested. Toward the end of Ripley, Tom is asked by a detective to describe the kind of man Dickie was. He transforms Dickie’s suspicion about his queerness into a new narrative, telling the private investigator that Dickie was in love with him: “I told him I found him pathetic and that I wanted nothing more to do with him.” But it’s the crushing verdict he delivers just before that line that will stay with me, a moment in which Tom, almost in a reverie, might well be describing himself: “Everything about him was an act. He knew he was supremely untalented.” In the end, Scott and Zaillian give us a Ripley for an era in which evil is so often meted out by human automatons with even tempers and bland self-justification: He is methodical, ordinary, mild, and terrifying.'

[harlequinoccult]

i am back w more rants this time abt one of my other characters (hopefully this one will be shorter, ik you say you dont mind but i feel bad every time i go to check in on your blog and i have to scroll past the multiple bibles i sent you... so im sending even more bibles to you-)

her name is Willow "Heartbreak" Bark. she wears a pink, white and gold venetian mask and her weapon of choice is brass knuckles. her specialty is bait and she thought that going out to the middle of the forest wearing a mini skirt and a crop top was a good idea. i am starting by listing her in-game characteristics because i truly don't know how to properly introduce Willow and all the shitshow that goes on with her-

unlike Ariel, Wills actually fits perfectly well in the slsq universe and i think that should say smth abt her character right away. honestly adapting her to fit into the story was the easiest thing ever because this is exactly the kind of shit she would get herself into.

she's a trans woman who grew up on the US somewhere south (i am not american and know just as much abt american geography as i do abt british geography), which is only important bc she has a subtle southern american accent, and despite Newcreed not having a set location i am going to say for plot purposes it is not located on the south in Willow's timeline. anyway

she's a country girl! born to a middle-to-high class family that owned a big estate with all the things a farm usually has (cattle, horses, fields, crops, etc). they had workers to help take care of everything, but the kids were encouraged to help with chores and learn some husbandry as a way to "build character". her parents were an extremely conservative bunch, and their parenting mainly consisted of being distant and pretending their kids didn't exist until they were useful for them, which for Willow specifically meant that she started developing people pleasing tendencies and a never ending quest for approval pretty early on in life.

Wills learns that she's beautiful at quite the young age. she also learns that using that beauty for her benefit is quite easy to do, that flattery and emotional bonds, no matter how fake, would get her far. and if she can play the victim well enough when she does something wrong, she'll be able to get away with it.

personality-wise, Willow has always been charismatic. a bit of a flatterer, a bit of a jokester, a lot of confidence and an extreme flirt. seriously, this woman will flirt w anything that has the ability to consent. if you have pants, she's trying to get in them. and sometimes it's even genuine! ...she mostly uses it as a manipulation tactic tho. i mean, there's no reason it can't be both! (im always so excited for playing as Willow bc she always ends up w the MESSIEST relationship stat screens. i can't wait to see how that translates into slsq)

in her teen years, she was picked on a lot for being "feminine" and having mostly girl friends (at the time, she still thought she was cis), despite being a jock and considered quite popular. she was also the one "guy" who had gone out w the most girls of the entire school. even back then, Wills was already considered a heartbreaker, someone who couldn't stay in a relationship for more than 2 months (spoilers: that doesn't change and probably only gets worse as she gets older).

it's not until her late teens that she starts really questioning her gender, and the reason it happens is because she gets drunk and finally sleeps w "another" man for the first time. from there, everything starts going downhill. she goes through a difficult period of self-discovery and coming to therms w her gender and her sexuality. when she finally begins to transition, her parents become suddenly extremely invested in her personal life in a way they hadn't ever been before. 

they threaten to disown her if she starts HRT. so she hangs her head, cries, and promises she would  never do smth like that.

one day her parents wake up to the fire alarm going off. Willow's bedroom had catched on fire, with her most important belongings missing, one of their best trucks gone from the garage and their bank account sucked dry.

they never saw Willow again.

running away like that was... maybe not the best idea Wills ever had. like every major decision she makes in her life, it was done on impulse, driven by pure rage, with no backup plan and a half baked, somehow extremely well executed idea, that sustained her on pure luck and adrenaline for the years that followed. 

her parents were pissed. maybe setting the house on fire was overkill, maybe they actually loved her after all and didn't want her gone, but it most likely was because of the thousands of dollars that suddenly went missing that made them so invested in trying to catch her and bring her back.

how did she get her hands on that much money so suddenly without anyone noticing until it was too late? great question! short answer: not important, what matters is she did. long non-answer: Willow's major skill has always been networking. she's very good at meeting people and charming people and getting them on her side, asking favors and having them do what she wants. would she have known how to transfer so much money without getting caught? hell no! but she definitely knows someone who would.

for a few years, life was a bit of a struggle. a lot of running away until she finally managed to change her name and appearance to something that would fit her best, and throw off the cops at the same time. honestly, her ending up in Newcreed is no coincidence. she knew she wouldn't be bothered there.

her meeting Carter is also not a surprise in the least. remember when i said one of her major skills is networking? someone like Carter could turn out to be very useful at some point. that makes him worthy of adding to her never ending contact list.

she worked as a stripper and sex worker for a while, when her parent's stolen money started to run dry. a very important thing to know abt Willow is that she's a party girl. she likes to have fun. she loves sex and drugs and alcohol, she's not squeamish and she knows "fun" can be made up of many different things, but it's always better when there's a little risk involved, isn't it? until one day she parties a little too close to the sun.

gambling is very fun, you see, and also happens to give her a chance to earn even more money if she gets lucky, and Willow has always been quite lucky. she's not afraid to take risks, she's not afraid to jump into things headfirst, she's definitely not afraid to commit to things with no backup plan and deal with the consequences later.

and that's how she ends up in crippling debt.

(1/2)

-🦊

(pt 1)

[booreadsbooks]

The Atlas Paradox, Olivie Blake, Review :) (Sequel to the Atlas Paradox)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Non-Spoiler Review as follows:

"The failure to believe in failure— or even to accept the nature of things and adapt— felt like an extreme form of narcissism."

This quote, in my opinion, perfectly encapsulates the characters in this book, all in their own unique ways.

Overall, I appreciated that most of the characters developed in unexpected yet mostly plausible ways, and while there was still a lot of long, overly technical passages about philosophy and physics etc., I felt that they were less frequent and much more digestible than in the first book. If you liked the academic speak, it's still there, but to a much lesser degree.

The book led me to enjoy some of the characters who I frankly didn't care for before (Callum and Parisa, and to an extent Libby) but didn't manage to make me a fan of characters I actively disliked (Tristan). A really interesting side character got to come forward and have some more screen time, which I loved.

If you're looking for a story where everyone is morally gray, that confronts corruption bred from capitalism, and is more character than plot driven, I'd say that the Atlas Paradox is for you! I felt that in some ways it was an improvement from the first book, and in others wasn't as good, and at the end of the day it will entirely depend on your preferences while reading. Actual progress in the A-plot felt low to nearly non-existent, so you can definitely tell that this book serves as a transition to get the characters to where they need to be for the finale, but I really didn't mind that. The B-Plot (I think at least lol, I may have them backward) was really interesting to read.

If you're at all interested in a literal ESSAY of character analysis, more below the cut (warning for spoilers, I include specific details and quotes):

So first, a completely non-character thought: I really loved that this book answered a lot of the questions I had about a fully integrated, magical society that still faced many of the environmental/political problems we face today, and how that was remotely possible. The answer, of course, was capitalist corruption. Belen, a new side character we meet, is there to really prove and drive this point home, and I honestly appreciated that. I loved that she had similar goals to the "antagonists"— She believed the world was a horrible, cruel, awful place in desperate need of change, but her way of going about it was far less apocalyptic. While her ending was painful, I felt it rang really true, and I couldn't be mad at it when looking back, I certainly saw it coming.

Speaking of side characters, we also see a lot more Gideon in the sequel! This was very fun for me, as he was a personal favorite from the Atlas Six, and seeing his power and personality in a greater spotlight was very fun. I still have so many questions that I'm eager to see answered.

As far as main characters go (as this review will be mostly focused on them, because once again, this book was really all about their personalities, relationships, and changes), I think I'll give them each a section, clearly marked. I know this is long, but I have a lot of thoughts, so feel free to skip to whoever you most want to read about lol.

🫀Callum🫀

Going in alphabetical order, we start with the caustic and cruel empath of the house. I personally enjoyed Callum's arc the most, which was a major surprise to me, as he faded a bit into the background for me in my reading of The Atlas Six. Callum is forced to confront his own self loathing in a very casually depressing scene where he's faced with his own image. Combined with the betrayal he felt from Tristan, and his own emotional overload due to the use of his powers (which I have more to say about), this sends him into a spiral where he becomes less suave, put-together evil villain man into a sardonic drunk who is desperately grasping at the shreds of his humanity and sanity. This culminates in a lot of low-key pathetic, but endlessly funny moments. I feel this was the absolute best punishment/direction for his character. He went from feeling so above everything, to hitting his absolute rock bottom. No longer inspiring caution and hatred/disdain from the others, he instead elicited pity and annoyance/disdain. He loses his edge, people hate him but no longer see him as an adversary worth worrying about. I kind of loved seeing him kicked off his high horse, and was almost excited to see him on the road to getting back-to-form near the end.

I also felt that his powers worked in a really cool and interesting way. I really love "give-and-take, what you give is what you get, your actions have very real and very painful consequences" magic. (This is also why I liked Serpent and Dove, shout out). A passage:

"To create the fluid membrane within the Society's wards alone had meant absorbing everything that had occupied it beforehand. Terror, anguish, longing, isolation, envy, pride. The cost of that kind of magic radiated through his ribs into the bars of his container, and whatever else Callum Nova was or wasn't, he could only regenerate at a moral rate. He could only repair himself slowly over time."

Ahhhh SO good. For someone who saw himself as so above it all, having to confront that he was just a mortal man was enough to completely destroy his foundations and force him to rebuild. The Archives stole a crucial piece of everyone, and for Callum it was his whole identity. Seeing him fall apart and only very slowly start to put himself back together was one of my favorite parts of the book. A lot of the passages/quotes I wrote down and saved were from Callum, simply because he was entertaining. One more before I move on:

"[Callum produced] a very neat and well-prepared document from the inside cover of his book— which was actually How to Win Friends and Influence People, chosen for its many wonderful techniques. For example, one way to make people like you was to smile, which Callum winningly employed now."

☢️Libby☢️

Libby took more of a background spot in this book, which I was initially not mad about because I didn't like her in the first one lol. She was too puritan, and while she served as a good moral contrast to the rest, her endless worrying and anxiety grated me (probably because it reminded me too much of myself haha). Her journey, while separate from the rest, was actually really really interesting. While she wasn't under the oppressive power of the Archives, she was absolutely broken down due to her experiences in the past. She learned how to struggle, she learned desperation and drive and showed that when pushed far enough, someone's perfect morals can absolutely break down in the interest of preserving your life, your purpose, your right to self-actualization. In this way, I think she and Belen are perfect mirrors of each other.

A lot of her journey is split, in extremely blurred and vague ways, between dream and reality, which created a writing style that I really enjoyed because I felt just how hurt and weakened she had become.

Her relationship with Belen was a turning point, showed that she didn't know how to be alone at the time, but was also an early sign just how selfish she was becoming. She didn't care how she was hurting this person who was so desperate to succeed, to make a name for herself, to make the world a better place. She basically used and manipulated a version of her previous self, in the name of achieving her goals.

Her true turning point, the confirmation of her corruption arc, was a breathtaking read:

"Later she would not remember the details, on the surge. The course it took inside her chest, to use herself as both the conduit and source of power that no other machine or man or myth could ever reach. She would not remember the hysteria, the absolute lunacy of carrying stellar energy inside the same heart that had been broken in periodic increments since she was twelve. She would not recall the details of what it took from her, would not catalogue the force exertion or sweat excretion, would not be able to chart the temperature changing in her blood or the cramping in her muscles, the trembling in her fingers or the dehydration, the excruciation, the agonizing drive of her staggering pulse. She would experience in retrospect the moments, the flashes, but not the blindness— the absolute carnage of the pain. For all the hazy aftermath, the only thing she would recall for certain was that morning. The way she had put on her badge, straightened it, polished it until it shone and then thought to herself: Destiny was a choice. Time to torch this outcome and let the fucker burn."

Surprising myself more than anyone, I am actually kinda interested in seeing where her story goes lol.

🔆Nico🔆

Nico is still my favorite character of the Six, despite admittedly not developing as much as the others, and in my opinion taking more of a back seat in this book. He's sunny and optimistic, he's naive and trusting, he's too "good" to be corrupted to the same extent of the others, though his morals are still flexible and we see his desperation erode his desire to "do minimal harm" more and more over time. He's desperate to get Libby back, feeling acutely the loss of his "balance" or his "other half", and his relationships with the others in the house erode or increase depending on their willingness to help him achieve this goal.

I'll be honest, the complete severing of his alliance with Reina shocked me, and in my opinion wasn't really done well and seemed to be mostly Blake's attempt to shake up the pairings, but his inability to see why she was pulling away, and her inability to clearly communicate any of her feelings, did feel very true to the characters.

Every time he and Gideon met, the devotion they felt for one another was absolutely palpable, and I really hope to see more in the future. I wish he'd had a greater role in actually finding Libby and getting her back, but his attempts to murder Tristan and help him hone his skill was entertaining. The Archives didn't attack his spirit and personality, instead draining his energy and his power, which I think was as crucial to Nico's identity as his trust.

💔Parisa💔

Parisa was another surprise standout for me, and it's not even because her role in the story changed. Originally, I was frustrated that she was seemingly the only character discovering things and moving the plot forward, while also doing absolutely nothing about what she learned. And while she still does a bit of that, I think her focus on Dalton and his mysterious mind did a lot for her. It helped expand her character beyond "sexy black widow who reads your mind and is mean to you about it" into "I don't know how to deal with my feelings or the situation I'm in, so I'm going to hyper-fixate on this project and decide what to do from there". While she was still true to the cold, calculated, independent woman from the first book, we got a lot more depth and vulnerability.

I actually liked her increasing fondness for Nico, that whatever she said she was noticing the strain he was under and therefore felt more open to share hers (only in a highly stressful moment, of course). I hope we see more of them together in the future. I can definitely see why his openness and optimism would be pleasing to her, as he is essentially the opposite of herself.

I think this new Dalton can only mean bad things, as they will wreak havoc together, but I trust that I will be interested in her story going forward. The Archives broke down the walls that she put in place to keep herself safe, but I think in the end these small cracks and openings will only make her stronger.

🌱Reina🌱

Reina was one of my favorites previously, I liked her self-assurance and capability, I liked that she felt a foil to the others' power-hungry nature. I liked that she was so closed off, but slowly opening herself up to an ally she felt would protect her and keep her safe.

A lot of these things either change completely or increase to concerning amounts.

She's still self-assured, but in the wake of her identity crisis, takes this confidence and increases it exponentially, to the point of a narcissistic God Complex. I liked that she felt she needed meaning for why she had her power, and hated that this information was kept from her, further assuring her that she was close to objectively correct and dangerous knowledge. The library not allowing Reina to research Gods only further proved (in her mind) that she was close to dangerous discovery. I think it was a really interesting representation of a positive-feedback loop, and from that moment forward she couldn't be swayed. Because she felt Nico saw her as less, and her past family and experiences made her feel insignificant, she needed to prove to herself that she was so much more. While unexpected, I found it really interesting and fitting to her character.

The Archives took something from everyone, and I felt that it stole her pragmatism and humility. Turning to Callum, someone she felt could be helpful to her while also allowing her to look down on someone, felt natural to me. He was useful, but pathetic in her eyes, and Callum was willing to work with her because he desperately needed direction and purpose.

I'm a little bitter about her and Nico not working together more, but I do think it was necessary for Reina to completely unravel.

🔮Tristan🔮

Tristan is stupid for plot reasons, he's aimless until someone tells him what to do, and he rarely makes any discoveries or seeks out information, instead requiring it to be handed to him. While I kind of get it, I also hated it. It's necessary, for the story to continue, that he overlook details and sorta-kinda trust Atlas, or at least be willing to work with him "for now". I get that. But also, I wanted to shake him and tell him that for someone who can literally see and manipulate the make-up of the world/space/time, he's incredibly and infuriatingly clueless. I'd like it better if he at least tried to understand the full scope of things, but he really doesn't.

While other characters I think would absolutely be on board with Atlas's crazy, world ending plan, I honestly don't know that he would be, and I'm annoyed that we never got to learn if he would willingly go along, because he didn't dig any deeper into his initial conversation about the multiverse before agreeing. I don't know. I can't really articulate why it annoyed me, but Tristan never knowing or caring exactly what was happening, when it felt like others (Callum and Parisa with Atlas, Nico when it came to Libby) did was irritating to me. Like, even if he tried to get more information and was lied to/failed/misled I think I'd care less.

Really I just want him to have more agency, to do more than brood and pine over Libby, to not just sit idly by until someone pushes him to act. That's all, and I hope it happens in the next book.

⭐️Side Characters⭐️

Gideon: I still really love him, and seeing him in his element in the dream world was lovely. His devotion to Nico, going through the absolute ringer to see him and putting himself at risk to find Libby, despite the danger it put him in, while never revealing it all because he didn't want him to worry- ahhh my heart. I love that he's like, disability rep because he does suffer in his real life due to his powers, and I love that while others think it makes him weak, he constantly proves that he is stronger than they give him credit for, is an integral part to Nico and Libby's success, and can take care of himself, god damn it. My favorite Gideon moment was early in the book:

"... and Gideon, summoning the volumes of his pain, let out a scream— the primal kind. The kind that mean the screamer was giving in, letting go. He screamed and screamed and tried from somewhere inside his agony to offer the proper capitulation, the secret password of sorts. The right message. Something like I will die before I give up but everything inside your wards is safe from me. I am just a man in pain. I am just a mortal with a message."

Belen: Again, a perfect foil for Libby because in my opinion, she is pre-society Libby. She has hope for the world, she is willing to do whatever it takes and fight tooth and nail to right some cosmic wrong she believes has taken place. She believes that her work has promise, that her sacrifice will mean something for the future. And her descent, her desperation after fighting within the system for years, and years, only to finally accept that things are too messed up, there's too much wrong to make slow, incremental change the "right" way, she decides to push aside her morals and do what needs to be done. The fact that this allows Libby to rise, while it ends in her downfall, is a really interesting commentary on power and even colonialism that I love. If you're useful to the corrupt, you can do what you need, you can rise yourself. But once you become a problem, you're taken down, destroyed piece by piece until you're destroyed entirely. She was one of my favorite parts of this book. The quote I started this post with was from her, and I wish her story ended differently.

Atlas and Ezra: Two sides of the same coin, except Atlas is willing to burn down anyone in his way, to hurt and kill and destroy as much as necessary to achieve his goals, and Ezra is not. Atlas is hardened with age, with experience, with guilt, while Ezra has never been forced to deal with consequences, or complications, or struggle for nearly his entire adult life. He doesn't realize how out of his depth he is, he doesn't realize the enormity of power and unapologetic ambition of his foe. It was inevitable that Ezra would fail, because he was not willing to go the same lengths as Atlas was, he was not willing to put down his morals and do harm in order to combat harm, and Atlas was. And after everything he did to her, Libby was his consequence. In the end, he basically handed her to Atlas on a silver platter, hardened and broken down just enough to sink his claws into.

Anyway, if you read all of this, thank you and you're as insane as I am. I love characters lol, and I was really, really excited that this book gave me a lot more to think about and talk about (and it helped that I had a friend who'd read the book previously to talk with while reading, to listen to my thoughts as I went, and either agree with or challenge my views. Thanks bestie)

I'm looking forward to book three, honestly, and I'm glad that I didn't give up on this series after my previous mixed feelings.

[twistedtummies2]

Top 5 WORST Dracula Portrayals

Anyone who knows me well by now should also know that one of my favorite stories of all time is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I love the book, and I love seeing how the story and its titular character are reimagined throughout the breadth of pop culture. And there are PLENTY of reimaginings and adaptations to go around: Count Dracula, alongside Sherlock Holmes, is one of the most frequently reinterpreted characters in the history of fiction. Of course, with so many interpretations, there are plenty of great Draculas out there: Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Max Schreck, Gary Oldman, and more. But with the good must also come the bad: there are a LOT of really terrible Dracula movies and portrayals out there, just as there are a lot of really fun ones… …And I actually haven’t seen many of them. Well…actually, I suppose I have, but it depends on what you’re really looking at. For example, I love John Carradine’s PORTRAYAL of Dracula, but the movies he was actually in were often sub-par. Grandpa from “The Munsters” and the version from “Hotel Transylvania” are comical, incompetent buffoons, but they’re meant to be parody characters and I like them for the humor and campy silliness they provide. There are even a couple of Draculas that a lot of people seem to dislike that I actually think are okay. I have no big problem with Rudolf Martin from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (admittedly, this may partially be because I have only watched all of two episodes of that show), nor with Richard Roxburgh from “Van Helsing,” yet in researching this list, I found out that a LOT of people REALLY dislike those interpretations, as an example. Finally, it’s worth pointing out that I have, in fact, DELIBERATELY AVOIDED watching several bad Draculas because…well…they’re bad. And I KNOW they’re bad. Why in the world would I want to watch something that is notoriously terrible, aside from just…ascertaining that it IS, in fact, terrible. So, for instance, I haven’t seen “Dracula in Istanbul,” “Blacula,” “Dracula’s Dog,” and/or many, many other horrendously dreadful renditions that have gained some notoriety.

With all that said, this doesn’t mean that I’ve liked every single version of Dracula - as a character or as a story - that I’ve seen. Even I know a few Draculas that I frankly just don’t like. And it’s worth knowing the mistakes that have been made when handling this character, as much as it is worth praising the achievements. So, today, in honor of World Dracula Day, we’re gonna take a look at some of the worst of the worst from Transylvania. These are, in my personal, humble, and EXTREMELY biased opinion, the Top 5 Worst Portrayals of Count Dracula.

5. Carlos Villarias, from “Spanish Dracula.”

What is “Spanish Dracula,” some of you may be wondering? Well, here’s the basics: in 1931, Universal wanted to release their screen adaptation of Dracula in both English AND in Spanish. This was still in the early days of sound, and as a result, dubbing was a concept that really hadn’t been fully figured out. Typically, the way American studios handled making foreign-language movies, as a result, was just doing a second version of the film with different actors, all speaking the language intended. Very, very few of these alternate language films exist, and I think many would agree that the Spanish version of Dracula is one of the most famous to survive. In English, of course, Dracula was played by the immortal Bela Lugosi…and for the Spanish cast? They got this guy: Carlos Villarias. Many critics feel the Spanish Dracula is actually better, on a technical level, than the Lugosi outing. Having seen both films, I can’t say I agree: SOME things ARE better in it, but other things…ehhhh, the English version has them beat by a mile. It’s biggest problem is the cast, and ESPECIALLY Villarias as Dracula. I know nothing about this actor beyond this movie; maybe he’s great in other things, maybe he was just miscast…I don’t know. All I DO know is that, even if you take Lugosi’s iconic interpretation out of the equation, this is an AWFUL Dracula. How bad is he? Imagine if “Dracula: Dead & Loving It” was actually trying to take itself seriously. THAT is the best way I can describe this performance. Villarias comes off as more comical than creepy, his exaggerated and often bizarre expressions seeming like a parody of something that hasn’t even gained the legacy it needs to BE parodied yet. We all love to mock Lugosi occasionally, but Villarias feels like self-mockery already in the works, and - through both his performance and some differences in the writing/direction - comes across as a clownish idiot rather than a superior monster or an elegant aristocrat. The Spanish Dracula has its ups and downs, but Villarias certainly proves that one bad element can bring down an otherwise decent product.

4. Peter Karrie, from Nosferatu the Vampire: The Musical.

I am aware of at least four musical theatre interpretations of Dracula. The most famous one is a stage show by Frank Wildhorn, which isn’t great, but does have some good songs and has been done quite a few times with great actors. Another was a concept album by the musical trio of Evans, Orton, and Lynn; that one featured Michael McCarthy as the Count, and was never actually staged. Like the Wildhorn show, it’s not really that great, but it has a few good songs and performers. There’s also a musical comedy version, which I haven’t actually looked at, but I’ve heard is pretty good…and then there’s this show. Ostensibly, “Nosferatu the Vampire: The Musical” is a musical adaptation of the classic silent film “Nosferatu,” which is widely considered the first true Dracula movie ever made, and is certainly the oldest surviving adaptation. HOWEVER, that’s not really the case: the show is really sort of a blend of Nosferatu, the Bram Stoker novel, and some original material, all rolled into one…and it is ABYSMAL. I was SHOCKED to learn that this show has been staged more than once, and that the original cast recording actually featured some pretty big names in musical theatre. The most notable is poor Peter Karrie, one of the greatest performers of another Gothic legend, the Phantom of the Opera. I’ll give Karrie credit, his voice is beautiful (he’s played the Angel of Music, it kind of has to be), but not even his golden pipes can save this train wreck. The plot is terrible, the characters are bland, the morals are confusing, and there’s WAY too much focus on the sexual angles of the story in this for my comfort. (The sensuality of the vampire IS a topic that is present in the book, mind you, and far from something new...but you have to be VERY careful how you touch it. Trust me.) Worst of all, the music - very frankly - just isn’t that good. The lyrics are vapid and rambling, the orchestration and rhythms feel very “samey” throughout…it’s just DULL. With the other musicals, I can at least give them credit for a few catchy numbers, but this one? I can’t really remember much of anything these characters say or sing, I just remember the boredom and nonsense of the whole clumsy heap. As a result, Karrie’s shot at playing the Count is essentially the opposite of our previous pick: sometimes not even having a great performer can save terrible material, and this is a good example of that.

3. The Version from “Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned.”

I’ll confess that I hesitated to include this Dracula on the list - as well as another one later on - because he’s actually based on Marvel’s Dracula, specifically. Marvel’s Dracula - in other things - has been good. However, after some minor debate, I felt that both of the aforementioned versions simply HAD to be addressed, since - ties to Marvel or not - they are abominable interpretations. Released in some countries under the title “The Tomb of Dracula” (taken from the comic series it is purportedly based on), “Sovereign of the Damned” was an anime movie made by Toei, released in the early 80s. In the original Japanese version, the Count is voiced by Kenji Utsumi; in English, he’s dubbed - VERY badly - by Tom Wyner. If you’re wondering if the dubbing is in any way a contributing factor to this film’s terribleness…don’t worry: this movie is ATROCIOUS no matter what language the characters speak. (Believe me, I know.) The film unwisely attempts to adapt an entire many-issue comic series into a single hour-and-a-half-long story, which works about as well as you’d expect. The plot is like the Grinch’s soul: “an appalling dump heap, overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled up knots.” Character development goes entirely out the window, and Dracula himself arguably suffers the worst for this. The Count comes across as a total klutz in the film: the movie attempts to make him a sympathetic anti-hero, but the story is such a shambles you never really get to know him well enough to root for him, and he spends most of the movie either running away from danger or being foiled at every turn, with little indication of how truly powerful he really is. He comes across as an idiot much of the time, and isn’t even present for a big chunk of the film to begin with! With a title like “Sovereign of the Damned,” I can safely say I expected more.

2. All of the Actors from Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

This is probably one of the weirdest Dracula movies I’ve ever seen, as well as one of the worst. “Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires” was an out-of-continuity entry in the popular Hammer Dracula series, which famously starred Christopher Lee as the Count. At the time “Seven Golden Vampires” came out, however, Lee had left the role, feeling deeply disappointed by the previous and “official” final film in the series, “The Satanic Rites of Dracula.” Hammer studios, meanwhile, was teetering on the brink of collapse, and was really struggling for creative ideas. The result of these combined problems led to this colossal, mad junkyard of a movie: a bizarre blend of Kung Fu action adventure and Gothic chiller. Now, this combination, on its own terms, I actually don’t think is a totally bad idea: if you look far enough, you’ll find good examples of how you can blend the styles of martial-arts-focused action and Gothic horror together. This, however, is not one of them, and part of the problem stems from how poorly Dracula, himself, is managed. Without Lee to handle the reins, Hammer called instead upon contract player John Forbes-Robertson to play the Count. However, Forbes-Robertson doesn’t even GET to play Dracula for most of the film: he only appears at the beginning and in the climactic final battle between himself and Van Helsing. For most of the movie, Dracula’s spirit has possessed the body of a Chinese criminal known as Kah, played by Chan Shen. Instead of getting Forbes-Robertson to do the voice, Kah’s “Dracula Voice” is provided instead by dubbing actor David de Keyser. All three of these actors…are terrible. Forbes-Robertson is a stiff and somewhat silly Dracula when he is onscreen, and is defeated in a highly anticlimactic way in the end. Chan Shen as Kah comes across as a caricature more than a true "character," and his bodily performance feels like a strange blend of kabuki and English pantomime. Meanwhile, Keyser’s very badly-dubbed performance is wooden and stilted. When it takes three men to replace just one, and NONE of them do the job even remotely well? It feels like a true disgrace not only to the character, but also to the one who played him before. I’ll give all three of them this, they at least help to show what made Lee’s Dracula so singlehandedly spectacular.

1. Dominic Purcell, from Blade: Trinity.

This is the other Marvel Dracula on the list I mentioned a while ago. All of my entries up till now have been very long-winded, I know…but my reasons for naming poor Dominic Purcell from the abominable shambles that is “Blade: Trinity” as my pick for the absolute worst Dracula I’ve ever seen is much easier to explain. That reason can be summed up in the following phrase: this is not Dracula. This simply isn’t. I get what the movie was attempting to do - trying to focus on Dracula as this ancient, demonic warrior figure rather than “the Count,” so to speak. However, as various other versions have shown, there are ways you can focus on the “aggressive” aspects of Dracula AND STILL MAKE HIM FEEL LIKE DRACULA. Purcell is simply miscast and misdirected: he doesn’t look like a duck, he doesn’t quack like a duck, he doesn’t waddle like a duck, and therefore it’s fair to say he ain’t Duckula. I’m sure he’s trying his best, but - and it's a shame to say these words - his best just isn’t good enough. For that reason, above all else, he takes the number one spot on this list. There is literally no worse sin I can think of than looking at someone playing such a character and having nothing else to say but, “you, sir, are no Dracula.” 

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS INCLUDE…

Leslie Nielsen, from Dracula: Dead and Loving It.

I know lots of people actually like this movie, but I personally do not. I just don’t think it’s very funny, for the most part, and even as far as spoofs go, I feel Leslie Nielsen is a weird choice for the character. It isn’t completely terrible, however - there’s a few jokes that make me laugh strewn throughout, and I like Peter MacNicol as Renfield - so it gets a pass from the top five.

Lon Chaney, Jr. from Son of Dracula.

It’s left somewhat ambiguous if the character in this film, “Count Alucard,” is indeed the Son of Dracula, or Dracula himself. This, for the record, is why things like “Hellsing” and “Castlevania” have used the name Alucard for both purposes: this is the movie that came up with that alias. While the invention of the name is noteworthy, the film itself is flawed. Chaney - God bless him - is woefully miscast. Whether he’s Dracula OR his Son, I think he did much better in his other Universal Monster roles.

Udo Kier, from Andy Warhol’s Dracula AND Langley Kirkwood, from Dracula 3000.

In both of these cases, I haven't even FINISHED these movies because they're just so freaking terrible. I've only seen parts of them, never the full thing through. I didn't feel it was fair to give them actual placement on the ranks as a result, but they're definitely worth noting for their own dreadfulness levels. In Udo Kier's case, I'd much rather watch him riding on the back of a T. Rex...bravo, if you got that reference.

[evilwickedme]

Your elementary posts are inspiring me to rewatch elementary! Which is good bc i love elementary and bad bc i have so much programming homework to be doing.

Anyway, so on the topic of sherlock holmes:

Which screen (movie and tv) adaptation of sherlock holmes have you seen, and which ones do you think are best (true to original holmes) and best (most personally enjoyable to you)?

(I love your meta on fandom stuff in general - no pressure to answer tho! I just feel like you’d give an interesting reply on this)

Elementary is so good, I'm glad I inspired you to rewatch (but also, good luck with your homework lmao)

Now, to answer your question

It's worth noting that I... Did not read the original stories. Or well, I tried, but I didn't vibe with them originally (I tried to read them in high school after receiving a complete copy for my birthday from my sister), didn't get around to giving them a second chance, and eventually just exchanged my copy for some of my friend's books. So I can't really speak to how accurate any of these are to the originals, but I'll guess anyway lmao

So! Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes I've seen, in no particular order

Sherlock (BBC, 2010-2017) - first two seasons and an episode and a half of season 3

My experience of Sherlock BBC was heavily colored by superwholock and the reichenbach pause, which were the reason I watched the show in the first place, as I had not heard of the show previously. 2012-2013 Tumblr was truly another time. I believe around the same time I also binge watched the first two seasons of Game of Thrones, and I had very similar experiences with both of them: investment because they were pop culture phenomenon, and uncritical and quick consumption that left no room for my own feelings to develop. And in both cases when the third season premiered I discovered, much to my surprise, that I didn't actually like the show. I in fact had extremely pointed criticisms of the show, didn't enjoy the characters, and found the viewing experience to be tedious hard work. So... I do not like Sherlock (BBC), and never really did, although I continued to participate in superwholock as a fandom until its decline. The release of Sherlock is Garbage and Here's Why (dir. Hbomberguy, 2017) was an incredibly satisfactory experience, as it experienced my criticisms extremely well, and put to words my feelings that I hadn't even managed to turn into criticisms, plus pointing out flaws I hadn't even noticed. SiGaHW is one of my favorite films, a twice-yearly watch. Highly recommended. That said, Sherlock itself sucks and is both a bad show and has uncompelling "mysteries". Bad as an adaptation of the original stories and bad as in just bad. Bad.

Elementary (CBS, 2012-2019) - all seven seasons

I enjoy Elementary a great deal. I think it's sort of a model modern procedural, with the cases of the week nearly always being compelling to watch and the emphasis on the developing character dynamics being one of my favorite aspects. There are seasons I enjoy more or less but that's nearly always because of the ongoing subplots (Morland and Moriarty were significantly more compelling than Shinwell, for example) than the actual cases of the week, which again, are pretty much always extremely solid. I've rewatched this show several times, and I think it's extremely enjoyable. It's not perfect, but it gets points for, for example, having Mrs. Hudson be a trans woman all the way back in the early 2010s, and having an autistic woman as a love interest who felt like a genuine well rounded woman. It's also occasionally a little critical of the police in a way that stands out for a crime procedural, which is cool, but only a little. All in all, I like the show a lot, although it's not my favorite on this list. That said, the crime procedural is pretty much the most natural way to adapt the spirit of the original Holmes stories into modern day media, and it uses pretty much every notable character from the stories eventually including some of the mysteries (I really like the hounds storyline adaptation in particular!), so I think this wins best adaptation.

Sherlock Holmes (dir. Guy Ritchie, 2009) - just the first one

I'll be real with you I don't remember anything about this movie except that I watched it and had a fine time.

House (Fox, 2004-2012) - all eight seasons

Y'all know I'm currently in House brainrot, so obviously this ends up on the list. Excellent television, especially for people like me who live for a good procedural and were looking for something that wasn't a cop show. House is Holmes, Wilson is Watson, and the occasional Sherlock Holmes canon reference shows up, such as the guy who shot House being named Moriarty in the credits, or Wilson bullshitting the second gen ducklings about a woman named Irene Adler who was The Woman for House. It's a very good show - although not currently my favorite on the list - and any mystery of the week format is going to be at least a little inspired by the o.g., but it doesn't win over Elementary, which has actual murder and crime mysteries.

The Irregulars (Netflix, 2021) - like two episodes

Based on the concept of Sherlock's canon irregulars but it's a fantasy show! I heard great things but did not end up clicking with it. Obviously by virtue of it being a supernatural show it's not very based on the original, but at least there's mysteries that must be solved?

Sanctuary (Syfy, 2008-2011)

This show is the kind of thing I'd watch when it was on, back in the days where I would watch my parents' satellite television instead of downloading whole seasons of shows on my laptop (as I didn't have a laptop yet lmao). I remember it having dense plots, and vaguely remembered that one of the characters was Sherlock Holmes, and I googled it - it's actually Watson. But hey, that counts, so I included it. I remember enjoying the show but I could not tell you if it was actually good because my taste in 2010 was a bit of a mixed bag on account of me being 12. Anyway I would say it's probably a terrible adaptation and they most likely didn't even try considering the kind of show it was, and I wouldn't call it my favorite.

Psych (USA, 2006-2014; movies 2017, 2020, 2021) - eight seasons, 3 movies

Finally we reach my favorite of these shows. Is it the best one? Idk that's probably a competition between Elementary and House, really, because Psych gets quite silly in the later seasons. But I really do love this show and these characters so much. Like House, it is only a little inspired, but even more loosely so, with really only the idea of a guy who's really smart and eccentric and his best friend who seems normal but really is a bit of a freak (in Gus' case, actually way weirder than Shawn) sticking around. Shawn has eidetic memory and is wicked smart, and actually makes for some really good ADHD rep in my opinion. The comedy usually lands and the romance plot is one of my favorite slow burns and the serial killer episodes are high quality as shit and I love that there's a pineapple hidden in every single episode and I just. I love this show I love it so much

Anyway these are all the adaptations I've seen that I could think of. It's possible I missed something but only the kind of thing that doesn't say Holmes on it; I haven't seen Enola Homes, for example.

Thank you so much for asking I really appreciated this thought exercise of trying to remember every single bullshit TV show I've ever seen because, um, I've seen a lot of TV if I'm going to be honest.

Sorry for taking two weeks this was surprisingly hard and I have. A job

[wutheringheightsfilm]

since this video essay (and it is an essay, i have cited sources! i have academic articles! get on my level youtubers!) is going to take a long time to make (i'm hoping to get it done in two weeks but we'll see...) and probably not enough of you will give a fuck about or have the time to fully watch what will most likely be upwards of an hour of content, here is a list of some things from the book wuthering heights i wish more adaptations would include:

since a lot of these adaptations ignore the Lockwood-Nelly storytelling framing device, we miss out on seeing a lot of Heathcliff's character as he is in the present, namely, what fascinates me is that while Lockwood is ill, Heathcliff not only sends him the last grouse of the season, but also visited Thrushcross Grange to sit at his bedside and talk to him

Catherine and Heathcliff actually trying to reckon with the abuse they face (it's a rare sight to see the abuse they face taken seriously on screen, see my prev meta post about their visit to Thrushcross Grange)

actual age appropriate castings. when you remember that a good third of this book, where a lot of the most famous stuff happens (the, he's more myself than i am, the i curse you to never rest while i still live, etc) is when these characters are all in their late teens and early 20s...yeah that makes a lot more sense now doesn't it?

on that note, stop casting Nelly as a woman in her late 50s/early 60s, she's literally the same age as Hindley and at her oldest is no older than like 42.

the fact that Nelly's storytelling is extremely biased--she does not like Catherine and thinks her a bad person, and she doesn't like Heathcliff either. how much of this is real? literally the things i would give to see a version of wuthering heights that explores what might be real and what isn't...

to compound on that, i want a version that actually shows the small little interludes where Nelly stops telling Lockwood the story and says something about the present day!!! GIVE ME THE NELLY FRAMING DEVICE!!! WHY WOULD THE 1992 MOVIE CREATE A FAKE EMILY BRONTE FRAMING DEVICE WHEN THERE'S ALR-

When Heathcliff is visiting the grange on the day that Catherine is mean to Isabella and making fun of her for having a crush on Heathcliff, after Catherine tells Heathcliff Isabella is the heir to the Grange, whenever Catherine leaves the room, according to Nelly Heathcliff is just sitting there plotting and smiling to himself

When Edgar hears Catherine and Heathcliff fighting in the kitchen (ugh god the kitchen fight), while Catherine is still ranting at Heathcliff, she doesn't notice Edgar come into the room but Heathcliff does, to which he does an immediate "shut the fuck up" sort of motion and she immediately does shut the fuck up

WITH THAT, something that gets lost in the sauce all the time (due to too many screenwriters and directors playing up the "romance" between these two) is Heathcliff and Catherine teaming up constantly, even in the later years of their relationship. The more "casual" elements of their relationship get lost. For example, while in that same fight in the kitchen, Catherine and Heathcliff both make fun of Edgar for being a pussy and that's hilarious! Because despite the strife that's going on between Heathcliff and Catherine, they are still on the same page and still feel united against that stupid rich pompous idiot they've been making fun of since they were teens.

The fact that these characters are products of their environment is something that no filmmaker (except maybe Andrea Arnold in the 2011 version) really grapples with to any extent

Most of the movies either miss or downplay or rush the scene where Hindley is planning to shoot Heathcliff one night, and Isabella goes to the window to warn him, literally saying "You better seek shelter somewhere else tonight! Mr. Earnshaw has a mind to shoot you!" (after saying that Heathcliff "ought to stretch [himself] over [Catherine's] grave and die like a dog") and Heathcliff is like "open the door you stupid bitch!" (not a direct quote but might as well be) and Isabella is like "oh! okay! come in and get shot then if you please, I've done my duty!" and leaves him out there to break the door down on his own. Wuthering Heights is a comedy and they don't tell you this. It's one of Isabella's best moments and we rarely see it, along with her second best moment, her throwing her wedding ring from Heathcliff in the fire

More adaptations need to have Heathcliff pulling out the actual physical almanac page he's kept with days marking when Catherine hangs out with the Lintons vs hanging out with him

[13eyond13]

For book ask game, no. 13, 14, 18, 25, 26. Thx :D

Ooh thanks for sending me more book asks!

13. Name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaptation:

Watchmen (2009) by Zack Snyder was a pretty mediocre adaptation of the graphic novel by Alan Moore, from what I remember of both of them (haven't revisited either of them in a long time, but distinctly remember having this opinion back when I first read it... like oh ok, so THIS is what it's actually supposed to be like).

I feel like as a director Zack Snyder is very good at creating epic movie trailer moments or music videos with stylish visuals (this trailer for it looked pretty exciting to me at the time it was new):

BUT then once you go to the theater and try to sit through one of his movies they usually just end up being just the most soulless drawn-out superficial and boring stuff, like watching a 3 hour long commercial. From what I remember a lot of the creative and innovative storytelling and the depth in the original Watchmen comic comes entirely from how it is presented to the reader on the page, too (with stuff like the layout of the panels and the stories-within-stories "Black Freighter" chapters that were cut out of the film entirely that cleverly parallel the present-day action, etc). Definitely recommend reading the graphic novel over watching this movie!

14. Name a book where the movie/tv adaptation is better than the original: Requiem for a Dream (2000) was a better experience as a crazy edgy depressing movie than it was as a novel by Hubert Selby Jr. to me:

I first saw this movie without having any idea what to expect when I was about 16, and even though it's pretty shocking in parts and upsetting to watch I remember really loving it back then and thinking of it as one of my favourite films at the time (I think I had a higher tolerance for certain kinds of edgelord stuff in my stories back in those days sometimes too, haha). This movie has always felt bit like a comic or a live action horror cartoon to me somehow? I think that it kinda goes too far a bit and nearly verges on comedy instead of tragedy at the end due to just how absurd and nightmarish it gets, but perhaps that almost unbelievable heightenedness of it all is kind of why it often feels a bit like a comic or a cartoon to me, too. And I still think there's quite a bit here to enjoy even despite the edginess as well. I think the acting is often very good, the soundtrack and the sound effects and the stylish visuals are great, and that the whole thing effectively creates a lot of very strong emotions like tension and dread and tenderness and wistfulness and loneliness and horror. It's maybe the only Darren Aronofsky film I actually like?

HOWEVER whenever I read the book that it was based on a few years ago I could barely get past the stylistic choices of the writer to enjoy what was being said (he wrote it in the 70s in sort of a dated stream-of-consciousness type writing style without many paragraph breaks or any quotation marks for separating the dialogue or the inner monologue from the prose, which I just found really annoying and off-putting to read). And the part about the book I liked the best, which was the colourful and extremely memorable dialogue and the slang that the characters use, was taken almost verbatim from the book and brought to life well on the screen too, so the whole time I was reading it I was just wanting to hear it said by the movie characters again instead. idk, I think it's a movie I'd definitely watch again sometime, but not a book I'd ever read again. Just more entertaining and less of a slog that way.

18. Which character from a book is the most like you?

Oh, very good question! Hmm... there are certain characters I relate to a lot for various reasons, but i don't know if anybody would say I'm extremely like them, probably? Of the books I've read more recently I feel like I'm sort of a bit of a Frodo character or something, maybe... his personality and his peaceful lifestyle before he gets sent on his adventure just feel very much like how I'd probably be living and socializing with everybody in the Shire myself, and the way he handles stuff like the burden of the ring on him and his reasons for doing things and how he worries about his friends who insist on sticking by his side and acts sort of secretive and more reserved feels relatable to me as well.

25. If you could be a character from a book for just one day who would you be and why? (Bonus: any specific day in the story?)

I want to be Wilbur the pig from Charlotte's Web getting a buttermilk bath and then eating the trough full of leftovers he gets (as a kid I remember thinking the lengthy descriptions of all the table scraps he was eating sounded really good for some reason, and the buttermilk bath sounded delicious to me as well lol).

26. If you could be a character from a book for their entire life who would you be and why?

I think it'd be pretty fun to be Lestat from the Vampire Chronicles because from what I remember he never feels guilty or angsty about much for too long, and he just knows how to have a good time no matter what. Even when he gets super bored or super depressed and then goes catatonic for a while he always eventually manages to bounce back and find something or someone new and interesting to get enthusiastic about and involved with again. He experiences things deeply and in an open-minded way while still never getting too burnt out by it or jaded about it either. If ever I were cursed to become immortal then I think his is the kind of personality that would make it the most enjoyable, anyway.

[bookish asks]

[neon-green-reagent]

Vampire Films That Suck My Blood

But don’t SUCK. You know? What I mean? They’re good. Anyway. 

Let’s start with the super obvious ones you’ve probably seen. And if you haven’t, go see them, they’re classics. Near Dark (my personal favorite), The Lost Boys, Interview With The Vampire, Horror of Dracula (Hammer), ‘Salem’s Lot, Blacula, From Dusk Till Dawn, Let The Right One In, and Fright Night, by which I mean the one from the 80s. Now we can get into some deeper cuts. 

Night Owl | Filmed in black and white and set against the backdrop of the New York nightclub scene of the early 90s, this one is OOPS ALL VIBES. It’s full of house music and brutal murders. One of those films that feels intensely gay despite its best efforts to be straight. Very moody and arthouse. Obviously I recommend the hell out of this for a very specific crowd of people.

Pale Blood | What a nutso concept. A human is running around killing people in the style of a vampire. So a real vampire shows up to stop him. With Wings Hauser being super unhinged, as he tends to do. Lots of neon lighting that makes it all extremely 80s. And a neat little turn at the end that gives it a satisfying twist. 

Bliss | Vampirism as addiction. It’s been said, but this isn’t just about having an insatiable need. It’s about getting so goddamn high that you destroy everything around you and awaken from being blackout destructive and realize you’re ruining your own life. Pretty intense stuff. Meaning it’s very bloody and wild. It goes the extra mile, for certain. The main character is a painter, so there is also a super gorgeous painting that she creates in her very high moments that I wish I could have on my wall. 

The Night Flier | An adaptation of a Stephen King short story starring Miguel Ferrer, which I personally feel should be recommendation enough. But I’ll gladly keep going. Ferrer plays a tabloid journalist who is chasing after a serial killer who thinks he’s a vampire. THINKS, right? He just THINKS he is? Well, the deeper he goes, the more it looks like he has a real one on his hands. And he’s so fucking cynical that he’s probably going to stare into the abyss and the abyss will stare right back. 

30 Days of Night | Hey, I just recently rewatched this one. It still slaps. In Alaska, there are periods during the year where the sun doesn’t rise at all. In this case, a bunch of vampires are like SWEET. And go there and absolutely body slam everyone in town. A handful of survivors are left trying to defend themselves against these superhuman creatures that are... just the scariest looking fucking things. It looks like if a human were crossbred with a shark. What a LOOK. There are so many memorable and standout moments in this movie. Truly just watch it. 

Fright Night Part 2 | We all know the first movie. But the sequel tho. DAT SEQUEL. The big draw being Jerry’s sister Regine and her entourage of absolute characters that follow her everywhere. They’re out for revenge for the death of her brother, and suddenly the tables are turned. Charley becomes the one that can’t resist the vampire’s charms, and Regine is laughing all the way to the blood bank. She’s a queen. 

Vamp | Another intensely memorable and awesome female vampire. Grace Jones dominates the screen here as Katrina. A vampire stripper who kills when she mates. She for sure steals every scene she’s in, but the movie is also bombastically neon 80s with the dumbest and most fun sense of humor. It’s a charming movie with an amazing villainess. 

The Hunger | AND ANOTHER! Sorry for being so gay, but here’s a lesbian vampire movie. Miriam Blaylock is a vampire looking for love. And she both cares and doesn’t if that means eventually keeping your desiccated, still alive body in a box somewhere down the line. She’s a complicated lady. This was beautifully shot, very dream-like, and also stars David Bowie for some extra gay. 

Dracula (1979) | Genuinely my favorite version of Dracula. It was based off of a stage play version. Which means all the names are reversed and nothing lines up with the book, but Dracula just seems fated to be adapted very loosely. Frank Langella swaggers rather moodily through the piece, melting every woman he passes with a look. I like this take, that Dracula is just a Chad that no one can possibly outdo because no one is good looking enough to stop him. It’s all rather romantic and swoony while also featuring one of the most terrifying ghouls in cinema history. 

The Forsaken | Vampirism as an STD. If you’re bitten, you’ll battle daily with the virus that’s trying to consume you. Which makes the movie coded extremely queer, which is very fun for everyone, because it thankfully doesn’t stop there. The bad guys are super flamboyant and fun. The good guys are getting a little too involved with each other and sort of ignoring the girl sitting between them. And it makes one wish they could’ve just made it as gay as they wanted to, but the subtext is still very fun. It’s also action packed and exciting. Think 2001 version of Near Dark. 

[kinocomix]

devlog 18: doo dads, inventories and recycling like responsible authors.

The script for TSTW is 17 scenes long so far, still in progress. I estimate it will be around 30 to 40, which is a welcome change given that my last comic was around 110. with that in mind…

would you believe me if i said i spent an entire day looking for an extremely specific book that i used to own- well two actually now that i think about it. I didn’t find them. One of them was a book with a bunch of electronic crafts for kids, the other was this book where you’re supposed to tear the pages to make everything from a chessboard to a cup. Not important, the point is Brandon Sanderson said something very insightful about writing characters that are smarter than you: being smart, often, is a matter of how much time you have to solve a problem. We consider someone as being smart when they very quickly have a good answer to a given question. The reason I was looking for two random ass books I owned as a kid is because I have the time to figure out how the kids are going to channel their inner bear grylls to improvise, adapt, overcome. they do not.

today, we’re going to be figuring out what we can realistically get away with as far as child inventions go, as well as talking about how as artists, reusing work is normal and shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of.

So first things first: what do the kids in our story have access to? this was the easiest to figure out because I know what living situations most of them experience, so here’s a list:

killouette: stationary and a camera. I’m still unsure which time period the story takes place in, so it’s unsure whether or not the camera is digital. It's objectively more fun if it’s a polaroid camera, because then all her pictures are physical. This is a plus because the only person with a computer in the group is talbas. On the other hand, setting the story in the mid 2000s means she probably has a small digital camera that she could connect to a bigger screen. alternatively, if i choose to set the story in the present, she could have both. unwanted old cameras left in a drawer somewhere.

bata tete: fun craft tools (paint, glue, string, ribbons, a big pile of magazines), a basket and a printer. you can’t go wrong with paint and pictures if you’re writing a story about kids, and this is also helpful because it introduces additional things to bata tete’s character: a more artsy side to complement the mission impossible stuff. instinctively i’m thinking the strings are definitely going to serve as trip wires at some point or another, and paper mache is definitely going to be involved in some way.

falefil: a po box, a piano and an electronic voice recorder. My current headcanon for falefil is that he doesn’t really like toys, so minus getting aluminum foil from his mom’s kitchen, he can probably lend his electronic voice recorder to accomplish something. maybe a makeshift MP3 player?

zmik: toys and objects intended to be used with other kids. all unused. I’ll admit this the saddest one by a longshot but it hits home a bit too hard to not include. I remember the piles of old board games, slingshots, marbles, even -the irony- a pair of walkie talkies I had that just… sat there. I like to imagine Zmik is finally in a place where he can share these things with people he likes.

motsik: broken knick knacks, pieces of mirror, detergents, bent spoons, a lot of wooden kabab skewers. It should come as no surprise that most of what Motsik has to offer is broken to some capacity, because of his violent household. the things he brings are broken because he effectively fishes them out of the trash, figuring his friends might have something they could do with them. note: motsik could also try to make stuff himself, but given his character this would be infrequent.

talbas: her uncle has an electronic equipment store, he teaches her stuff and low key is in on some of the shenanigans the kids do. despite the neglect from her parents, talbas loves spending time with her uncle whose store is nearby. he loves the fact that she’s interested in soldering and making fun doodads, so he has a budget set aside just for her. it’s pretty obvious that talbas’ uncle is the only person tethering her to a sense of purpose and a feeling of love. 

claude: a lot of organic things and the knowledge thereof. Claude has little in the way of possessions, but she has a lot of street smarts. Claude keeps track of inventory across the 6 kids’s houses and frequently is the first to suggest solutions to problems.

with that being figured out, all we need to do to try to combine what they have with what the problem is and we see what comes out the other end. for example:

let’s say they need all hands on deck for something but that means ignoring a hallway where someone could come see what they’re doing. we know they would have access to stuff like strings, empty spools, simple electrical components and tin foil, so they could for example make a small trip wire using one of several methods i thought up:

this one is a pressure pad you can hide under a carpet that sets off a small light or beeper.

this one is a single use tripwire that would not require miles of electrical wire lol.

two things to note: the actual schematics in the book are going to look much nicer but also i’m approaching writing this book with publishing in mind, so I’m steering clear of actually dangerous things like blades and anything stronger than a small battery. which is a shame- i have a very funny story about how i personally once nearly set my building on fire trying to make a lamp when i was like 11, but that’s not the kind of stuff that will get published for middle grade/early young adult readers. I hate having to squash my book into a category like this, but if i’m to have any hope of doing what i love for the rest of my life, this feels like a necessary sacrifice. 

now, as an aside, let’s talk about something I personally do that I think might be helpful to others and I’m going to illustrate my point by sharing spoilers for a project I won't get to for another couple of years. 

Around 2014 was my very first attempt at writing something. it was a story called “Last of the Predators”, a very angsty attempt at something serious written by a version of me with no connection to the subject matter whatsoever. it had no plot outline, end in mind or clearly defined characters. Everyone spoke in the same monotone calm way and every paragraph had way too much description of the person’s emotional state. I eventually lost interest and dropped it, even deleting the blog I had been using to document the updates on. 

shortly after I started making comics, i came up with the ice cream men: a story that follows two aliens kicked off their planet who arrive on earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably bringing up a million other topics along the way. This might sound fun, but when I came up with it at the time it didn’t feel enough to justify the commitment it would require. it initially focused too much on jokes and really didn’t have much to offer in the way of depth. so i shelved the idea for a while and this is the piece of advice i have:

don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them. 

around this time is where my studies got in the way. When you’re just starting out trying to make art, everything stops you dead in your tracks. It wasn't until I started working on illustrating almost home that the creative gears started turning again. I came up with a whole bunch of things, but some of what I did is revisit my folder of abandoned projects. Sometimes when a project feels dull, it can be helpful to merge it with another one. This doesn’t always work but when it does it can lead to very interesting results.  This is what I did with the ice cream men. I took the philosophical premise of the ice cream men which suffered from an underdeveloped plot and bad setting that didn’t suit the theme, and I combined it with the idea that survived after I cut all the slack out of Last of the predators which is the following:

The world LOTP is set in suffered a cataclysmic event that killed all the animals. Humans being how they are, they quickly built a religion around this and decided that some people have “predator souls” while others have “prey souls”, even going as far as to genetically engineer the way people look to introduce animalistic features to faces and bodies. The story is very political in nature and revolves around this role reversal that happens many many years after the cataclysm… and that’s where all the bullshit comes into play that I cut out. 

As a side note, what I just told you is the polished version of the lore I rewrote for this devlog- it’s not the one I decided to settle on for the ice cream men but I'm sharing it regardless for the sake of documentation. point is: the reason this felt relevant to me is because combining this with the ice cream men added a layer of intrigue to the story which i really liked:

two aliens are kicked off their planet and arrive on a deserted planet which the reader knows is earth. In their boredom, they decide to follow the recipe for something called ice cream, inevitably discovering more about this strange planet and its past… 

That past is the yet untold story of LOTP, with a less shitty name and more consideration given to the themes and mechanics of the things at play. so effectively we have several narrative layers at play:

the ice cream thing which could be a commentary on purpose or the creative process in addition to being a fun jumping off point for comedic relief

the past of the planet which could offer some mystery to the story, and maybe encourage some more serious topics to be brought up

and a third secret one, that i’m not willing to share just yet.

which i think is a story more worth telling. Here's another example more immediately relevant to our devlog. two years ago, I was thinking about how funny it would be to have unnecessarily complicated contraptions in the kitchen. the type of stuff you see unemployed engineers do for social media instead of benefiting mankind. I asked myself how would you go about making those contraptions useful: maybe someone could benefit from them if they were for example disabled, cool. too straightforward for my liking. What if they were small? like… as small as a bug? a very small chef. 

how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall. that sounds fun i like it. What if it was a cookbook where part of the instructions were these complicated instructions on how to build and solder electronics? fun! I need a chef and an engineer to do that. I am neither. 

don’t throw ideas away, just shelve them. 

I kept thinking about that for a while. I imagined our protagonist Claude, a small hercules beetle who loves to cook. I wrote three versions of the script of a comic and even discussed making it a short animation at some point, but it didn’t feel right. it’s not the vision. It needs to be a cookbook.

queue Killouette and the fact that I’m really annoyed at how the camera can see everything. I remembered the idea I had with the cookbook, so I thought why not borrow some of that and make it a diary?  Let’s add Claude in there as well for good measure. Maybe then how to cook when you’re 2 inches tall can be the one that comes after Killouette if I’m lucky enough to get funding. A grown Claude who made it big as a cook. By combining the two projects into two parts of the same series, I fixed the problem I had with the camera and added continuity to two otherwise one off projects. 

So maybe that’s something to keep in mind. don’t throw away ideas, shelve them instead. 

Next week we’ll be looking into the supplementary children’s book attached to killouette.

devlog updates on tuesdays. 

[cookie-waffle-art-and-stuff]

my honest opinions on all the Transformers films so far:

- 1986: This one is just fun. Objectively, it’s probably not a “good” movie. But the 2D animation is great, the art direction is gorgeous, and it’s just all around a fun romp. Ntm the music being the best out of any of the movies, imo. I absolutely adore how colorful and energetic this movie is.

- First Bay film: Good movie, very poor adaptation of the source material. If you want to watch a fun action flick with really good CGI that still holds up to this day, then you’ll probably like it. I just don’t think it adapted the cartoons or comics very well at all, and the character designs are objectively bad.

- Revenge of the Fallen: This movie is probably objectively the worst one, but not my least favorite. RotF was made during a writer’s strike, meaning Bay had to write it himself. And lemme tell ya, it SHOWS. At some points, this movie is so goddamn stupid that it loops back around to being funny. Character designs are still awful, and this movie also started the trend of writing Optimus Prime EXTREMELY out of character.

- Age of Extinction: I actually liked this movie as a kid, but as I grew older I started to see a LOT of issues. The character designs this time around were actually somewhat improved, and the autobots were actually really fun to watch. But those moments were way too few and far between. Also the age gap thing with the teenage human character was uh…. weird as shit

- The Last Knight: Good lord… was this a bad one. This is the first TF movie that I didn’t like since I first first I saw it in theaters. It was also the first TF film to ever bore me. There was clearly SOME genuine transformers fans working on this film and contributing ideas. But NONE of them actually felt relevant to the story. There are also several characters who are there for just no goddamn reason at all. Theres just… so much wrong with this one that I honestly can’t fit it all here without making this post too bad.

- Bumblebee: An actual, genuine, honest-to-god GOOD movie. There was so much passion and heart put into this film and it shows. I’m just sad that it’s not nearly as popular as the others, because most people think it’s another Bay movie, when it’s actually a reboot. It’s also the first live action TF movie with good character designs. It’s technically a period piece, since it’s set in 1986, which I absolutely love.

- Rise of the Beasts: This movie really got the shit end of the stick. People didn’t watch because, again, they thought it was another Bay film. It is nowhere near as bad as the box office sales would lead you to believe. It’s not as good as Bumblebee, but way better than the Bay sequels. And there’s some actual emotional weight with the bots in this film too. I do think that there was a bit too much human-only screen time, but the bots were still very likable and visually appealing. My only actual major complaint about the character designs is that they completely retconned Wheeljack’s G1-inspired design for no reason whatsoever.

- Transformers One: Straight up, this is the best one so far. It’s SO good. The animation and art direction is outstanding, the writing is good, and the characters are super fun. You really don’t even have to be a Transformers fan to enjoy this film, as it basically shows you everything you need to know at the beginning and throughout the film, anyway. It’s an amazing adaptation and probably the first (non-comedy) western PG13 animated movie I’ve ever seen in theaters. Western animation tends to really lack in making any animated movies that are a rating above PG13, unless it’s an adult comedy. So it’s actually incredibly refreshing to see a western-made PG13 animated movie that isn’t an adult comedy