When fandoms turn ugly.

Remember Game of Thrones? You probably watched it, right? You probably thought it was pretty good, too. You might not have liked the final season much (I have some things to say on this point in a minute which you might not like). You might even have read the books and liked them as well. But what you’ve probably not done is decided Game of Thrones is your hill to die on and that anything else in popular culture just doesn’t compare.

I’ve been unfortunate enough to be directly exposed to people that have, like a mad inbred Targaryen, simply gone off at the deep end. And no, it doesn’t just happen with Games of Thrones obviously. Star Wars is another high-profile fandom that is generally unpleasant. But the interactions I observed were with Game of Thrones ‘fans’. More particularly, mega fans of specifically the Mother of Dragons herself.

It was a bit of friendly competition in the shape of Twitter polls. Characters across popular culture with a focus on science fiction and fantasy pitted against each other to see who is the favourite. It was pointless and silly, but people I happen to follow were voting for their favourite characters, so it kept popping up in my timeline. And you wouldn’t believe the obsession some people have with a made up character winning a random Twitter poll. And the utter vitriol they would spit at the character they were up against, and that character’s fans.

The worst of all of these, for want of a better phrase, ridiculous fools, were the ones going to bat for Dany T. Not least because they were utterly misunderstanding her character as they declared her best because she be freeing slaves everywhere (remember though, no actual slaves were freed, because it's all made up). One competitor was Dana Scully, who is, quite frankly a million times better as a character, and a character that has in fact had a real-world impact – the popularity of The X-Files led to a significant increase in the number of women choosing career paths in STEM and medical sciences (called ‘The Scully Effect’). It’s one of the best things about art, this ability it has to change the course of a life for the better, and this little 5 minute video of women, including the incomparable Gillian Anderson, discussing it is a lovely thing.

Anyway, I’m not here to wax lyrical about Gillian Anderson and The X-Files (although, frankly I could for hours), I’m here to tell you about my exposure to an unpleasant fandom. Dany won that poll, beating out the OG himself, Gandalf the Grey in the final. There were calls of foul play, accusations of votes being bought (I really hope that wasn’t the case, because my already non-existent respect for these idiots would reach hitherto unknown levels of non-existence, if such a thing were possible, if they actually paid for votes. Anti-existence?). It’s one thing to be a nerd, or to geek out over some piece of media you’re obsessed over (for example, I’m currently in the throws of a fairly hardcore addiction to Babymetal), but it’s quite another to spit abuse at anyone that leans towards a different one. Especially when, in the case of the Daenerys-obsessives, the reasons you claim to love your character only shows everyone else you don’t actually understand her at all.

So. To the controversial hot take (and yes, while the following may not look like it, I am aware that it is not real, and I basically start to sound like those obsessives I was moaning about earlier, just without the hatred). Game of Thrones had a much-maligned final season. A good deal of the reason for this is Dany’s apparent switch from saviour of Westeros and slave-freeing badass and the one many viewers were rooting for, to mad innocent-murdering mega villain. But, the thing is, that didn’t come out of nowhere. There are clues throughout, not least of which is the fact that the Targaryens had been inbreeding for generations and pretty much every Targaryen’s default setting was either noble strength or deranged psychopathy, and no way to tell which it was going to be until your brother was being cooked alive in King’s Landing while the king looks on, laughing (unlucky Ned).

Starting from a position not of ruling, but of powerlessness, Dany’s Targaryen-ness took a while longer to manifest than usual, and let’s be honest, even without that kind of ancestry, the things she goes through would be enough to make a regular person want to burn down the whole world. Throughout her slave-freeing journey to queen, she demonstrates more than once that she doesn’t know the difference between justice and vengeance (I think a lot of people in the real world have this problem, which might be part of the reason why so many people loved the inbred psycho queen), and the development from inexperienced little sister to basically melting anyone she took a dislike to started back in season one – “The next time you lay a hand on me will be the last time you have hands.” A great line, and her brother was a prize twonk, but even then, more interested in vengeance than justice. Locking Xaro Xhoan Daxos in his own vault, along with her own handmaid. Punishing the slavers by doing to them what they did to others. None of this is justice. All of this is cruel and unusual punishment to enact vengeance. Feeling they deserved it (as most fans surely do) is irrelevant. There’s not much difference between what Dany was doing to her enemies all along and what Aerys the Mad King (Dany’s dad) did to poor Ned Stark’s brother. It’s just we considered Dany’s enemies proper villains until she got to King’s Landing. The end of Dany’s arc should not be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention.

Of course the die-hard fans of Dany argue the final season isn’t canon, that their queen is still the slave-freeing paragon of virtue they want her to be. Well, ok then, let’s consider the books. First off, Game of Thrones declined in quality from about season 5 (about the time it left the books behind), but the Dorne subplot is by far the worst part of any of it, including the final season. The problem is, the seeds for Dany’s final form have been sowed more definitively in the books so far published than they were in the show.

I really think GRRM has a problem on his hands with his final two books. He has stated on record that the show differs from the ending he has in mind for Dany (although it was apparently confirmed that Bran will end up on the throne). The cynic in me is picturing him seeing the reaction to the show and now desperately rewriting the next book to reframe Dany’s story, and not really knowing where to go, because the groundwork was more or less done for it. GRRM created this whole thing though, so I am taking his word on it and telling the cynic in me to shut up. But he's insistent.

When pushed, one of the Daenerys die-hards admitted that although they had been arguing that the books were not setting her up this way, they had only seen the show and read Dany’s chapters in the books and nothing else. So strong was the love for Dany T that they couldn’t even bring themselves to read the other chapters, which of course means they miss most of the story. Yet here they were, mouthing off like they are the expert and insulting anyone daring to question the assumptions they had made based on their incomplete picture. The mind truly boggles.

I could be wrong of course. A Song of Ice and Fire is infamous for taking the well-worn tropes of fantasy and gleefully ripping them to pieces. That’s kind of the whole point of it. Killing off your hero and main protagonist in book one (RIP Ned). Taking Dany’s baby, and the whole prophesised hero trope – ‘the stallion that mounts the world’ – except nope. He’s dead. No prophecy for you. So pretending I know what’s going to happen in the final two books is just silly. Anything could happen. Except, it looks like Bran will end up being king. Which, while also getting a fair bit of flack, is pretty much in keeping with the MO of the series. Who else could it really have been, when looking at how the show ended? Jon Snow? Based on his performance since he was brought back (being basically useless and losing pretty much every fight he’s been in and having to be rescued every single time), he’d be rubbish. Most useful thing he did was finish off Dany. Speaking of, don’t want her on the throne. She is, to put it mildly, an insane psychopath by the end. Tyrion? Yes he’s smart, but he’s made so many bad decisions, I actually think he’d be crap. Most useful thing he did was convince Jon to off queen T (shame his mate Varys and half of King’s Landing had to be cooked alive before he noticed what a literal hot mess she was). Convincing everyone to accept Bran was the last mistake we saw him make.

Because you see, Bran being king means the bad guys (or rather, the enemies of humankind - whether or not that makes them the bad guys largely depends on how you view the world) won. The children of the forest, the ones that first created the white walkers. They’ve installed their puppet, Bran, on the throne. Humankind’s oldest enemies, persecuted almost to extinction, now have the power to do untold damage to their adversaries. Which, I can’t help thinking, is yet another fantasy trope – that the people with inherent goodness and honour win the day in the end – that this series has spent its time demolishing again and again.

I doubt the book series will be finished at this point (although I really hope I'm wrong on that point, because even though much of this post reads like a criticism, A Song of Ice and Fire really is a phenomenal series of books), so I’ll probably never find out what the true canon is, but you never know.

A lasting impression I could do without.

Have you ever read a book or watched a film that you know is extremely good, but you still wish you’d never gone anywhere near it? I’ve done it twice now. The first was when we watched Grave of the Fireflies. Studio Ghibli has a body of work that pretty much nobody can touch for quality, save maybe Pixar. Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 animated film directed by Isao Takahata which forms part of the Ghibli collection. It brings home the devastating cost of war by focusing on two children in Japan near the end of the second world war, who lose their parents and have to try to survive together in the face of starvation and the antipathy of a population numb to tragedy. Studio Ghibli films are not afraid to focus on hardship, loss and grief, but they are generally optimistic. When I had finished watching, I felt something I’d never felt in reaction to a film before or since; a physical pain. My heart was broken and I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. The film is incredible; told with the same gift for character and astonishing artistry that is par for the course for Ghibli, but I don’t ever want to see it again and I can’t bring myself to recommend it to anyone. It was like having my heart stomped on by the one person I can usually expect to make it soar. I was in a funk for weeks afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of desperate hopelessness it left in me. Art that can do that is undeniably powerful, but all the same, I’d rather not feel like that.

I recently read Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Written by Jack Womack and published in 1993, it tells the story of Lola, a young teenage girl living in a in a well-to-do area of New York, while the world around her falls apart. When her parents can no longer find work and have to move to a more dangerous area, we follow Lola as she changes from private school girl to ruthless gangster, and it makes for such a depressing read. It’s very well done, but it is so infuriating to see this innocent girl have her life taken from her and her potential lost. Not just Lola, but a society that could’ve been so much more devolve into shadow of itself, beset by riots and greed. It felt the same way reading High Rise felt, this chilling feeling of a society making the decision to let itself topple from the cliff edge, and the sense of everything slowly going to hell, when with just a little more will, it might’ve pulled itself back from the brink. A bit like living in a UK forcing itself to leave the European Union even though it knows full well what the consequences are going to be, or like I would imagine living in the U.S. under President Cockwomble feels like.

This book has stuck with me not just because of that though, but because of something specific, and that’s the death of Lola’s father. No longer able to make ends meet as a screenwriter due to the volatile world the book is set in, he has no choice but to work extremely long hours in a job in which he is constantly under pressure and screamed at and berated for barely enough money to afford the rent on the crappy apartment the family have had to move to. There is a truly haunting scene in which poor Lola finds her father dead having had a heart attack in the middle of the night, and eventually, this is the thing that pushes Lola beyond the point of no return.

I’m not saying that the world in which I live and work is anywhere near as bad as the unfortunate Lola’s. But I am on that borderline between just managing financially and not managing. And I do work overtime. Since reading that book, the only thing on my mind when I get up at 6:15 on a Saturday morning to work overtime to supplement my wages while my family sleeps is that dreadful scene of Lola discovering her father’s body, after he worked and stressed himself to death trying play a rigged game just to keep his family safe and alive (he’d already given up on happy).

If this strikes you as overly melodramatic, well you’d be right. I actually quite enjoy my job. My family are, relatively speaking, safe and happy. While I do always feel like I don’t have enough money to get by, the truth is, we’ve managed it so far, so I expect we’ll be fine. But that’s the effect of well-made art on the psyche. We are going to have to deal with major crises over the coming decades because nobody has got the will to do a damn thing about climate change, but instead of the biggest emergency our species has ever had to deal with dominating the news and the political stage, we’re arguing about whether or not it’s a good idea to rip up the fragile Northern Ireland peace agreement so Lord Snooty (how can you not look at that snivelling weasel Rees-Mogg and think of anyone else?) can keep hold of his unearned, inherited, offshore tax-free millions and withdrawing from the agreement that ended the Cold War (good job America. Well done).

So it feels like, as in Random Acts of Senseless Violence, we are also a society deliberately deciding to step off into the abyss, and that’s why Lola and her father struck such a chord with me; forced to narrow their view and look out only for themselves, and as far as her father goes, eventually die trying.

Still. Chin up, eh?

Catching up.

There is so much out there that I want to hear, watch, play and read that I’d need multiple lifetimes to get through it all, but one of the greatest joys in life is spending time getting through some if it. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to go next. Recommendations don’t always work, because they’re often someone else’s idea of what they think you would or should like.

I remember when Rach and I were at college together just getting to know each other, and in between stealing glances at her over our time in the college library revising together, I was getting her caught up on my music tastes, which I thought were eclectic at the time. I was 18, so you can’t blame me too much for thinking listening to both Manic Street Preachers and Prodigy meant I was eclectic. Turns out most 18-year-olds are pretty silly like that, on account of, you know, only being 18. It generally went quite well – Oasis, Manics, Suede etc. all good. Radiohead took a little longer, but eventually became a favourite. Then there was Nirvana. She just didn’t get them, didn’t like them much. I’d built them up a fair bit to be honest, and she didn’t really get what the fuss was about. She was wrong – she still is, because she still isn’t a fan, but it illustrates that sometimes other people who think they know what you’re going to like don’t always get it right. It’s often so much better if you come to discover new stuff yourself.

Blip.fm was pretty good for that, but since they allowed video streaming as well as audio streaming it seemed to lose something. Going to the Green Man festival for the past couple of years has turned me on to some music I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise, like Michael Kiwanuka, Curtis Harding and Anna Calvi.

Reading is another one. When you have a type or collection of authors you like, you find yourself sometimes sticking quite closely to them or authors like them, inevitably missing out on others. And this is where being married to a librarian pays dividends. Rach isn’t making recommendations based on her knowledge of what/who I like to read, she just picks a few up now and again from a genre she knows I like, and that’s how she brought home Flowers for Algernon. Technically sci-fi, it does what all great sci-fi does and is actually about something else entirely. Ostensibly it is about a man with extremely low intelligence becoming a subject in an experiment to increase human intelligence which turns him into a genius but in reality it is actually about so many things; the human need for love, empathy and understanding, the nature of humanity, intelligence and science. The nature of time and its vexing insistence on waiting for no-one. The fear of losing the ability to think for yourself and to remember. As the main character begins to understand more about his past, his ‘friends’ and himself, it is at once illuminating and desperately sad. It hit such a nerve with me that although it brought tears to my eyes I am so glad I found it and was able to ponder the questions it raised. At the same time Rach brought home Day of the Triffids, which, along with The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine was one of those cheesy film adaptations that I adored as a kid. I wasn’t quite prepared for how chilling the novel was – it was genuinely uncomfortable to read at times.

Then there’s TV. So much TV. The thing about TV is, there’s so much of it nowadays, and so much of it is supposed to be first rate, I often find I start something but take ages to get through it. I’m not a binge watcher – sitting through 4 or more episodes a night isn’t something I can seem to manage. I’m watching a load of good shows, just slowly. One of the shows I’m slowly getting through with Rach is Black Mirror. It you know anything about Charlie Brooker, you’ll know he’s not often one for cheery dispositions. I’ve heard there is an episode, San Junipero, that supposedly has a happy ending. I haven’t got there yet, but I did actually get quite a positive feeling from the ending to an episode I watched recently, Nosedive. Set in a possible future where everything from social status to what type of house or medical care you’re entitled to depends on the approval of others to your social media habits. Everyone and everything exists in an environment of enforced jollity, where expressions of negativity are met with negative feedback, putting your whole social position at risk. By the end of the episode the main character has gone as low as it is possible to go and has her connection to that world severed. The episode ends with her cheerfully exchanging insults with another person in the same situation and oddly, it feels really positive. The visceral relief at finally being free of the fake happiness that binds everyone else and being able to say what you want without fear of peer disapproval comes across brilliantly.

So without further ado I’m off to read/play/watch/listen to something.

Newish occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Anna Calvi – Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy

Am I missing out?

It is well documented that I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to being scared. I don’t like horror generally, and sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on some great stuff. Well, let me rephrase. I know I’m missing out on some great stuff, but sometimes I wonder if I should care more about it.

There are some things I give not one shit about – the Saw franchise, for example. It can be as ingenious in its gory traps as it wants, but I’m someone it just isn’t going to be appealing to anytime soon. However, there are some things that perhaps I should make more of an effort to try, despite my fears.

I can get behind horror in a sci-fi setting a little more easily – I love Alien for example, and I might be one of only a few people that looks back on Event Horizon with fondness. I was scared watching those films, but still enjoyed them – in fact watching Alien for the first time all alone on ITV one Saturday night while my parents were out, eyes wide and heart hammering almost out of my chest as Ripley, Jones in hand, raced for the dubious safety of the Nostromo’s escape pod while lights flashed and smoke poured will always be one of my fondest film-related memories. But more standard horror is something I have tended to avoid, and continue to do so. Watching the Japanese language Ring trilogy left me feeling really quite traumatised (I swear I could see Sadako in every fucking shadow for months afterward) and while I can say they are decent films (the first one is genuinely excellent), I have no desire to watch them again anytime soon.

So I guess what it boils down to is that I need to find the good stuff and avoid the crap. Easier said than done when I’ve generally avoided the genre for so long. I think I’ve found two places I might be able to start, though. Being married to a librarian is a truly brilliant thing – I’ve found China Miéville and Anne Leckie, kept up with Brandon Sanderson’s latest releases and picked up classics from H. G. Wells, J. G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks to Rach, I recently read Weaveworld, a fairly old novel written by Clive Barker – he of Hellraiser fame. Hellraiser and its sequels is probably a prime example of the kind of thing I tend to avoid. Weaveworld is one of those books that just boggles the mind – not only the imagination and the story, but the prose. Barely a page went by in that book that I didn’t find a passage, or a line, or a few words that made me take a breath and just admire the craft of an absolute master of words. The only other two authors I’ve found to be comparable in terms of that gobsmacking use of language are the aforementioned China Miéville and Stephen King. What is striking is that there are many moments of horror in Weaveworld and in Miéville’s work, and I’ve heard tell that King might dabble in horror from time to time as well. I couldn’t tell you for sure because the only books of his I’ve read so far is the Dark Tower series.

There’s got to be something in that, right? The three most gifted authors I’ve read have strong horror threads in much of their writing, with Barker and King famous for specialising in it? I’m clearly more comfortable when my horror is mixed with other genres – the sci-fi of Alien, Weaveworld is fantasy, The Dark Tower is also fantasy, with a large dose of western and Miéville is, frankly, beyond categorisation. Maybe I can use Barker and King to cross over into more straight horror?

Games are the same. I have tried to get through Bioshock a number of times – the premise is wonderful and the game is clearly quality – generally thought of as pretty much the best of the last generation. But when I play it before long I find myself a little too creeped out and I move on to something else. I want to play it. I want to finish it. I want to move on to Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, but I want to get through Bioshock first.

So maybe that’s where I’ll start. Pick up another Clive Barker or Stephen King book. Finish Bioshock. Maybe then I’ll find the guts to keep going and see what I’ve been missing out on. Maybe.

It’s like they knew somehow.

A few of the books I’ve read fairly recently have a few unsettling things in common. First off, not too long ago, I read George Orwell’s 1984. Published in 1949, it tells of a rigidly controlled society where to even think outside the accepted lines is to invite horrifying conditioning until your mind thinks the proper way. The population are told what to think, and the structure of society ensures the population think it, even when it flies in the face of all observable facts. Recorded history changes overnight and yet to call attention to this, to question what those with authority tell you is truth is simply not conceivable. It’s hard not to find echoes of Orwell’s totalitarian vision in the way newspapers will publish blatant untruths again and again because it backs their ideology, driven to recent ludicrous highs in the lead up to the election.

(Loosely related tangent: Russell Brand is a cock; we all know this. There is, however, no denying that the cock has become a bit of a figurehead for the disillusioned non-voting masses. So, appearing on Brand’s web show The Trews as Ed Miliband did, in an effort, however half-arsed, to at least try to engage with these people is surely worthy is it not? It seems not. The official Government line is that Brand, and therefore by extension, the large percentage of the population he is speaking for, is a joke. Way to show contempt for the people whose lives you’re supposed to be working to improve. The papers declared it to be the desperate move of a lunatic. Why is it such a terrible idea to try to talk to the apathetic non voters? I agree that they should vote, but apathy doesn’t justify the contempt the press has shown them, lumping them together as some kind of bad smell it’s impolite to even acknowledge. Of course, judging by the recent election results, the silent majority might well consist of mostly UKIP voters, so now here I am, quite out of character for me, kind of hoping they go back to being silent.)

Anyway, back to the point; prescient novels. It seems Orwell’s future is one increasingly within the realm of possibility with every passing year. I’ve mentioned before how one of my favourite films growing up was the 1960 adaptation of The Time Machine, but I hadn’t, until recently, read H. G. Wells’ original novel. Rach picked it up for me from one of our local libraries (I get a delicious thrill every time I remember I’m lucky enough to live in a place where ‘local library’ is plural, and now that where I live has gone blue for the first time in over a decade, I’m concerned that may not be the case for much longer). Published in 1895 and set in Victorian times, it follows a scientist, known in the narrative only as ‘The Time Traveller’ to the year 802,701 to discover what has become of Earth and humanity in the far future. It turns out the divide between the rich and poor in our society continued to grow and grow and grow. It’s incredible that even pre-1900 there was concern in society about the widening gap between the classes, and that over 100 years later, we’re still having trouble with that issue. Did I say incredible? I meant incredibly depressing. But hey, I suppose I’d better get used to things being incredibly depressing for a while.

Having conquered the need to struggle for anything, the upper classes have evolved into the Eloi; mindless children, spending the days frolicking, eating, fucking and, well, not much else. Certainly not thinking. Their language is hugely simplified and their attention span is practically non-existent. The Time Traveller contends that this shows that struggling and fighting for a better world is what has driven us to achieve so much throughout the years, and when we finally got what we had struggled for for so long, our drive, our intelligence, our will to improve and our creativity withered and died, no longer needed. Meanwhile, the working classes have retreated underground and evolved into pasty, light-fearing Morlocks, living in dark holes full of machinery and manufacturing. The relationship between those above ground and those below is no longer economic, for there is no longer the need for an economy. Nor is it master and slave. The Morlocks continue to manufacture clothes and shoes for the Eloi, but it is not to serve them, nor is it because they are still some beaten down underclass. For the Morlocks have become cattle farmers, and the Eloi their unthinking food source. The gap between rich and poor, between upper and working class, has been widening for some time and is already pretty sickening. Inexplicably, we seem happy for it to get worse. The 19th Century concerns expressed in The Time Machine seem more timely now than ever.

And then, I came to High Rise. I’d read some J. G. Ballard before; The Drowned World, The Wind From Nowhere, The Terminal Beach & The Drought were my first experiences of the British writer, which I picked up after raiding my father-in-law’s book shelf. When news broke that Ben Wheatley was adapting it and that it is widely known as Ballard’s best novel, I reached out to my local libraries again and picked up a copy. High Rise was published in 1975 and is set almost entirely within the concrete walls of a recently opened self-contained living apartment. 1000 apartments on 40 storeys, the building includes shopping malls, swimming pools, schools and anything else the occupants might need. The only reason to leave is to work.

It doesn’t take long for things to start going awry; able to shut themselves off from society completely, those living in the high-rise begin to alter their self-contained society into something more primal – physical class distinctions evolve, literally lower, middle and upper class, reflected in the floors they occupy – and, freed from the restrictions placed upon them by a civilised society, a different rule takes precedence, that of hunter/gatherer, of predator and prey.

The really uncomfortable thing about High Rise is the fact that the inhabitants of the building actually welcome this degeneration, like a long-tamed beast finally throwing off its shackles. There is a sensation of the people actually pushing things further and further deliberately, out of a need just to see how far it can actually go; they embrace the darkness eagerly. The thing about High Rise is that it is so disturbingly plausible, that while the apartment building offered the ideal environment for the events described, sometime it feels there is every possibility of pockets of civilisation going this way as a prelude to the whole of our society plunging purposefully and giddily down this path of de-evolution. The intent of our new Government to re-legalise foxhunting and stop Britain being subject to the Human Rights Act, maybe even to withdraw from Europe altogether, make it feel like our entire country is becoming a self-contained high rise of its own, and the feeling of the balance tipping, gently at first, then quicker and quicker towards oblivion that many of us currently have is evoked so strongly in the early chapters of Ballard’s novel it is dizzying, and not a little disconcerting.

Of course, things on the whole aren’t quite as depressing as all that. While it is really quite depressing that in the decades since these novels were written and published, it seems we’ve failed to progress at all, there is hope in that we don’t yet appear to have slipped any closer to the hellish visions dreamed up in them. We might yet find our way to a future civilisation more positive than those described in 1984, The Time Machine and High Rise. More like The Commonwealth described by Peter F. Hamilton. More Star Trek, less Mad Max. Here’s hoping.

The value in repetition.

I’m a repeater. My favourite records are played again and again until they wear out and must be bought again (Definitely Maybe, Parklife, Grace, Is This It?, Different Class, Songs for the Deaf and Appetite for Destruction amongst dozens of others, if you care). Throughout my childhood I re-watched my favourite films to death (The Time Machine (1960), War of the Worlds (1953), Goonies, Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones) and that hasn’t changed much since I’ve got older apart from the addition of a few others – Pulp Fiction, Lord of the Rings, and Fight Club along with many more. The hours I sunk into playing through Sonic the Hedgehog, James Pond, Alex Kidd, Road Rash, Flashback and Street Fighter II and more over and over again in my teens I have no doubt would be terrifying were they ever to be added up, and more recently, I’ve been through the Gears of War campaign more than once and can see myself playing though GTA V again before too long.

There are, I don’t doubt, many people who have quite the opposite point of view; when you’ve seen a film once, you’ve seen it, so what’s the point of seeing it again? But if I love it, why would I not want to see it again? Those records, those films and those games became a support system for me while negotiating the difficulties of adolescence. They were friends, they were retreats – they were my happy place. They still are, in a way.

Books also had their place. I’d like to be able to tell you that I loved books above all those other things; that I used to spend hours, days even, lost in them. Alas, I wasn’t that bright. I did like books – I would read Roald Dahl, comics and adaptations of my favourite films. As with films, music and games, I would re-read my favourites – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, George’s Marvellous Medicine and a junior version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – that would all become dog-eared and well thumbed, and later To Kill a Mockingbird would become my favourite. This recent article about books written for children kicked off this whole train of thought. It makes a good point about the validity of children’s books, as they have to be written with repetition in mind. They have to be robust enough to stand up to kids reading and re-reading them over and over again. While as adults we certainly do re-read our favourites, they are never tested to the extremes kid’s books are – I particularly like the Neil Gaiman quote in the article about how while he can’t justify every word of American Gods, he can of Coraline. Does that mean he thinks Coraline is a better book? I doubt it, but it does sound as though he takes special care over his children’s books compared to his adult books, and it’s probably because of the retellings the children’s books are subjected to.

But I didn’t really get into reading until I got into my teens, when I found Robert Jordan, Professor Tolkien and Terry’s Brooks and Pratchett. I am in fact re-reading Pratchett’s Discworld series at the moment. I wrote this this ages ago about how you generally have differing points of view when coming back to something like a book series or TV show later in life, and a similar thing has happened with Discworld. My favourite hasn’t changed – previously it was Small Gods and so it proves to be the case still – the conceit that gods are only as real as they are believed to be and their power diminishes with their belief, leaving them to essentially die along with their last believer is such a stroke of inspired genius that I doubt Pratchett will ever top it (although he’s come close a few times). Taking the series in more general terms, however, my favoured stories were always the ones that involved the wizards of Unseen University, or Death. While they are certainly the funniest ones still, I’m much happier this time round in the company of Watch Commander Sam Vimes and witch Granny Weatherwax. I could be well off the mark here, but they feel somehow truer, as if their righteous fury at the injustices of the world is closer to Pratchett’s true view of the world and echo the points he’s really trying make under the funny. This piece written by Neil Gaiman about Pratchett and his anger being the ‘engine that powered Good Omens’ might suggest I’m not that far off the mark, after all.

As usual, I don’t really have much of a point, but I suppose what I’m getting at is you should spend time in the company of the things you love.

People: not all bad.

I’m not unaware that this blog will often contain rants about the stupid and ridiculous things people do for the most stupid and ridiculous reasons, which, frankly, can sometimes get a little depressing. Sometimes it’s worth making a conscious effort to remember that we are responsible for brilliance.

There is a lump of matter in our skulls that can think its way beyond primal survival instincts and contemplate its own mortality and place within the cosmos. It can ask and answer questions about not only its origins, but the origins of the universe within which it finds itself. We can place ourselves in the shoes of those who are less fortunate and help them.

Complex and sophisticated languages, music, architecture, storytelling and many other forms of creation and expression. Not only the ability some have to create, but the ability of others to appreciate it. To respond on a deep emotional level to another person’s creation and either understand what it was they wanted to say, or take an entirely new interpretation of it beyond the creator’s original intention.

People you wouldn’t look at twice on the street are transformed into desirable, sweaty sex gods/goddesses if they’re standing in front of you playing music that fills your head with noise and your bones with vibrations. Moving pictures or written words become real and important because we have an imagination within which they become tangible things.

I know there are a many people in the world who aren’t in any kind of position to appreciate these things the way I can, and I know there are many things that aren’t right in our world – hell I usually moan about most of them right here, but we still have potential. Maybe we’ll realise it before we go under.

Magic.

Considering most of the people I know, this is probably preaching to the converted, but hey, it’s been a slow month. You don’t need to look to faith, neither do you need to look to Penn, nor Teller for magic. Not real magic, anyway – that’s merely clever chicanery. Just pop to a book shop, or a library, and it’s everywhere. The way you can get hooked on the right words, the way Katie will explode with delighted laughter at the insults Willy Wonka and Grandma Georgina trade during Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the way an author can leave your head spinning by merely stringing words together.

Thanks to one of our local libraries, I’ve recently had the good fortune to read the following:

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, all three bona-fide classics of American fiction. Vonnegut’s writing style curiously echoes that of J. G. Ballard, in that it is largely descriptive and unemotional, but occasionally you get suckered by a passage of such breathtaking beauty or haunting pain, you feel like you’ve been punched in the gut; particularly in Slaughterhouse 5 which recounts much of Vonnegut’s experience in World War 2, during which he was present at the bombing of the German city of Dresden.

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which recently won book of the year, for obvious reasons. There are some books you read that just hit that sweetest of spots and transport you to that moment in childhood when you are finally able to read for your own pleasure and you discover such wonders that you never suspected your imagination could hold. It’s like that, and every page holds such joy that the spell it holds you in doesn’t break, even after the final page is finished. With the exception of Good Omens, which was written with Terry Pratchett, I’m quite late to Gaiman, but boy am I glad I caught up. American Gods, Stardust and Anansi Boys are all marvellous, if not quite as transformative as The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Jasper Fforde’s The Song of the Quarkbeast, which is set in one of Fforde’s wonderful alternate versions of the UK. Aimed at younger readers, it is not quite as engaging as his other work, particularly the Thursday Next series and Shades of Grey, but is still great. Fforde is one of those writers that have such an astonishing grasp of the English language that genius wordplay and clever puns abound in his novels. The Thursday Next books are, if you can believe this, as good as Pratchett’s Discworld series. They are out there, no doubt, but if you’re not put off by all the weirdness then Fforde’s writing is hugely enjoyable.

Do yourself a favour and read some of them for yourself.

“But they changed it.”

It’s all about the difference. The difference between a book and a movie. Sometimes when a book is adapted into a film I can get annoyed. Sometimes I get annoyed at other people who insist every last detail of the book they love should remain intact. Books can do great things. They can give you a character that is, in a way, uniquely yours, since how you interpret that character; the way they look, the way they sound, the way they walk and a load of other things is in your head. In someone else’s head it will be a little different. Sure, there are descriptions, but they often merely inform how a character is in your head, rather than acting as a complete immutable definition. The same goes for landscapes, architecture and many other things.

Films do something different. They show you, definitively, what that character looks like, how they sound, how they move, what that location looks like, or the internal layout of that building. Books allow you the freedom to create your own picture in your imagination. Films are more visual. They tell you what that picture looks like. There are other differences. Books often give you an insight into the innermost thoughts of a character. They can present an internal dialogue to tell you what the character thinks, and their motivation for their actions. Films give you a chance to apply your own take to the internal workings of character’s minds, using clues given by the actor’s performance.

What this boils down to is that they are very different ways to tell a story. When a book is adapted into a film, it is impossible not to account for this. There are, however, right and wrong ways to do this. If you understand the differences between the two, you could change a myriad of things, even the ending, and still adapt a book successfully. One example: Stardust. Neil Gaiman’s original story has quite a melancholic ending, which suits the story rather wonderfully. Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman’s film version retains much that made Gaiman’s original such a joy, but it is mostly lighter in tone, and a brighter happier ending suits it better.

For the screen, stories generally have to be simplified or changed in some way to make them more accessible to a wider audience. That’s not an insult to film, it is a simple and obvious (to most people) truth. Examples? Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Jurassic Park to name just three. Occasionally, the changes made vastly improve on the source material (The Godfather, The Shining.) Sometimes a valiant attempt is made that just doesn’t come together (The Lovely Bones, Dune.) Sometimes, the changes undermine everything about it and nothing can help it to recover (step forward, The Golden Compass.)  Some would argue Watchmen falls into this category, but I’ve neither seen nor read it, and have heard too many differences of opinion to be convinced either way.

By now, you’re probably wondering what the point of this entry is (none – have you not read this blog before?). Over the years, I’ve had many a conversation, debate and argument of the merits of films, books and the differences between them. Since this blog is a bit of a sounding board for me to make my thoughts and opinions known (or at the very least, to allow me to organise them), what better place for me to air this opinion? The two franchises that come up the most in these debates with both friends and colleagues are Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings (infer what that says about me and the people I converse with what you will). I would always find myself in defence of the film versions. Potter, under the guidance of author J. K. Rowling, trims the unnecessary sub plots to squeeze the plots into the running times. Seeing as the decisions are largely made or approved by the original architect of the series, the changes are fairly easy to justify.

Rings, on the other hand, is very different. The original author is dead. Only one person on the entire production ever met him (Christopher Lee). Some major changes have been made. Frodo is much younger. The Scouring of the Shire and Tom Bombadil are cut completely. Elves join the humans at Helm’s Deep. Faramir has a very different arc, taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath. This has annoyed a great many people. Every change, in my opinion, is justifiable and in fact, a film that stuck closer to the novel would have suffered. Scouring happens after Sauron is gone. To have the decoy still posing a threat after the destruction of the main villain wouldn’t work. In the book it has the effect of bringing into stark relief that even the rural paradise of The Shire doesn’t escape the War of the Ring untouched. The film accomplishes this in The Two Towers with a line of dialogue spoken by Merry: “The fires of Isengard will spread, and the woods of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. There won’t be a Shire.” The Tom Bombadil part is frankly the dullest part of the books so I was quite pleased it was cut. With Helm’s Deep, Jackson and co accomplish what is essentially a master-class in building up tension in the run up to a climactic battle set piece, and the arrival of the small Elvish army to join the small human army to take on the huge army of Uruk-Hai is a perfectly judged moment – the book loses nothing from not having it; the film gains a wonderful, perfectly cinematic moment. The Faramir change is a little thornier, because it involves a small amount of criticism of Tolkien’s work. Faramir in the books is a bit one-dimensional. A bit boring. Apparently, the only guy in Middle Earth who can resist the power of the ring without breaking a sweat. There’s barely an arc, no real character development – hell, he’s barely even a character at all. He is so perfect, I think, to illustrate firstly the big difference between him and his brother Boromir, and secondly to suggest there is strength left in men, giving a reason to hope. The films change this. He isn’t so perfect. He is still clearly not his brother, but here he must earn his strength; he can only let the ring go when he begins to understand what it does. Removing Faramir’s nonchalant disregard for the ring and Tom Bombadil altogether, the film-makers have made the ring that much more potent – there is not a single soul in the films who is immune to its effects. This works better for the films, where there are fewer opportunities for depth of subtlety afforded the book.

So, don’t automatically groan when the adaptation of your favourite novel makes some changes. Consider the audience and see if those changes are made for a good reason or not. Or, you know, tell me why I'm wrong.