Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer...

I'm someone who hated required reading in school, and I hate to admit that it did put me off reading for pleasure for a brief period of time, particularly as adolescent/preteen. With having said that, though, I didn't have any hate over any book in particular, it was just being forced to read for a grade that was the issue. That's all. However, despite this, there were some assigned reading that I actually did end up liking, even loving, throughout my time in school.

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
Matilda by Roald Dahl
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Proof by David Auburn (self-selected)

The first two, Island of the Blue Dolphins and Matilda, were read in elementary school, and I remember distinctly renting the 1964 film adaptation of Island of the Blue Dolphins either after or during reading the book, and I of course saw Matilda when that movie came out. The Giver and Walk Two Moons were middle school assigned reading, and I remember liking both, especially The Giver which made quite an impression on me, and was probably my first taste of the dystopian genre. And of course with To Kill A Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies in high school, those were the only two books that I was so enraptured by that I actually read ahead of the assigned chapters. I remember we watched the courtroom scene of To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) which furthered my adoration of the story itself, and why I consider it to be among my favorite books. Proof is a play that I picked out myself to read for theater class because I was going to be absent for a week of school and my homework was to write a paper on a play, and I actually liked it a whole lot.

Beyond that I don't remember a whole lot that I was assigned to read, if there was a compiled list I might be able to recognize them, but I probably wouldn't remember anything about them. Also, I wouldn't be opposed to reading them again now as an adult, because that would be more of a personal choice and curiosity than mandatory for a grade in class.

++ Christmas came early as I'm now in possession of the first volumes of all three of MXTX's novels! We preordered them and they arrived the other day. They are absolutely gorgeous, the artwork on the front and back covers and the artwork inside, the way it's designed is just so beautiful. The fact that I'm now holding official physical copies of these stories makes me so unbelievably happy! I can't wait to dive right into reading them!

++ And unfortunately because there is a teaser trailer for the upcoming third Fantastic Beasts film, JKR is right back at it with her transphobic bullshit once again, and thus the discourse surrounding her and the HP series has risen, and quite frankly I'm just so tired of it all. More specifically, I'm tired of the discussion that has devolved into just shaming and guilt-tripping people. That is not only counterproductive to the situation, it's just mean-spirited as a whole, and unsurprisingly it's done by people who have never cared for HP to begin with or have just outright hated the franchise, and since the creator has exposed themselves to being an awful person headlining a hate movement they use that as an excuse to hate on fans who still love the series despite its awful creator. I've seen some really horrible and insensitive takes circulating lately, and the way a lot of these arguments are framed are so obviously performative with the faux activism angle, and I feel like the conversation has been derailed at this point because of that. This is a very delicate situation that deserves to be handled with nuance and discussed in a serious manner, but we cannot do that if people are just going to be so flippantly dismissive and insensitive with black and white ways of thinking. That is not a helpful approach, at all.

++ Speaking of polarizing public figures, Anne Rice has passed away.

Admittedly, aside from knowing the mainstream popularity of Interview with the Vampire and unashamedly adoring the Queen of the Damned movie, I never really got into her work. The only things that I know Anne Rice from are, unfortunately, the damage that she caused the overall fandom community from her anti-fanfiction stance. Her work was obviously deeply influential especially when it comes to vampire fiction in pop culture, there is no denying her importance in that, at the same time though she does have a dark history with fandom that is hard to ignore especially since it has affected so many people in very negative ways. We can, and should, acknowledge both when talking about her legacy as an author.

++ I'm so excited since it's has been announced that there's going to be official English translations of all of MXTX's novels (The Scum Villain's Self-Saving Service, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, and Heaven Official's Blessing) which you can pre-order right now. There's release schedules of the volumes for each, and according to the sources the translations will be uncensored, will be featuring the extra chapters, and the proceedings will go to the author. I know there's been skepticism and concerns about the latter especially, and while I don't know much information myself and I want to directly support the author, I want to trust the people involved with this that they're being honest in those statements. Either way though, I am excited for this because MXTX's work has become more known thanks to the success of The Untamed, and I know it's been hard for a lot of international fans to get any kind of official anything of these IPs, and hopefully this will not only get more people to become aware and interested in these works but also help other Chinese novels to get officially translated into English, as well.

I am still going to purchase the Chinese editions of the novels though, simply because I want to, since I'm that kind of person who will buy, if possible, a book in its original language alongside the translated version.

(As a sidenote, I know that the MXTX fandom is quite wanky in itself, most of which I only know via osmosis through third parties because I don't delve that deep into that side of the fandom and keep to my own carefully curated space, and already there's been a lot of concerns and skepticism and pessimism over the EN translations, what this means for the fan translations already available online, what it means for expanding the fandom, etc. I get some of the concerns, as I'm also kind of wary of how the expansion of these fandoms will include Westerners bringing in their own biases and expectations and not understanding the cultural significances and differences and such, which is a learning curve but requires a lot of patience and listening to Chinese fandom instead of talking over them, as is always the case. But still, I'd like to take a more optimistic approach.)

++ Also, in a kind of related note, Neil Gaiman might have also spiked more international interest with Word Of Honor because one of the main leads of the drama endorsed one of his anthology books, Smoke and Mirrors (and also The Graveyard Book as well), which ended up topping the Chinese book charts, which he acknowledged and commented on both on his Twitter and Facebook being pleasantly surprised, which he then responded to wanting to watch Word Of Honor after a fan commented about it being available on Netflix.

It's just a surreal thing, two different fandoms from two different cultural backgrounds colliding with one another in an unexpected, but amazing way. I truly hope that not only does Neil Gaiman watch and enjoy the show, but that others that are discovering it enjoy it as well.

Taken from the Crunchy Questions Meme:

We all know that the source material is often regarded as better than adaptations, however what is an adaptation that you think is better than its source material?

A lot of the time whenever there is a book-to-movie adaptation, unless I've read the source material first beforehand, I tend to see an adaptation first before reading the book if it interests me. This just kind of happened naturally for me (due to having watched a lot of movies and television more than reading a lot of books when I was younger), but I like this method since it oftentimes allows me to squash those automatic nitpicking habits and consider them separate entities telling the same story in different mediums. There are certainly exceptions for sure, but in general I try to step back and be more objective when comparing the two. There are a lot of adaptations that miss the mark, and a lot that actually do it well, and then there are those that actually surpass the source material by making it better. It's all subjective, of course.

( If I were to name a few.... )

I'm sure there are some others that I cannot recall, but these are the ones that immediately jump to mind when I think of adaptations that are better than or improve upon their source material.

Animorphs is getting a movie!

I honestly didn't think this would happen, because as popular as the book series were when I was a preteen/teenager it did kind of fade into obscurity with the rise of other book series that gained way more traction and popularity. Add to injury that the books eventually became out-of-print, so most probably didn't know of their existence until recent years with the notice that all of the books are available to read for free online. However, it seems like things are turning around, from the books being made into comics to this movie announcement, this is precisely the resurgence that we've been needing! Although I do question whether or not a movie is a good medium for such an adaptation, considering all that it entails and I fear that it might be watered down too much and it'll be considered too similar to the YA material that's come out in recent years to be noticed and therefore flop, which is why I kinda wish it was more of a long miniseries instead, but this is still exciting news regardless.

Also, it's worth mentioning that unlike a certain other author, K.A. Applegate is actually an ally, she also has been incredibly supportive of the fans and their personal interpretations, theories, and headcanons of the characters and books, even acknowledging that she could've done better in terms of representation when she wrote them.

And yes, I do recommend anyone who hasn't read Animorphs to do so, it may have been a kids book series but it never shied away from the dark subject matters, and it did get very dark. Body horror, murder, death, cannibalism, war, psychological trauma, it's all there and it's great.

(It makes me wonder if Everworld will ever get noticed, not just for an adaptation but just in general because it is often overlooked, it truly is the underdog of KAA's work imho.)