ELSEWHERE

Sandman 2022 is a prime example of how it's okay to have evil, murdering, predatory gays so long as the rest of the story is chockablock full of other kinds of gays

Reading through the comics up to where the adaptation ended, thoughts:

• If you haven't read the comics in a while, I can almost guarantee you they aren't as good as you remember

• The adaptation changed a lot more than I thought they did, and largely for the better

• Reading the first comics feels like getting a summary of the story happening, it's just kind of written in a way that glosses over things. It's very much a 'here is the backstory to the story we actually want to tell' sort of exposition. The adaptation does it better

• Cain and Abel are much more bland in the adaptation. Watching it I wasn't very happy with Cain's actor, at all; I'm fine with Abel but wish he went more emotional and timid in his portrayal, especially when telling the story to Goldie/Irving

• I like the change with Gregory, it really helps avoid the 'this is just setting up the actual story' expositiony feel of how things were handled originally, and also the CGI on Gregory is really well done, loved to watch him be a dog

• I like what they did with Rachel but wish we got some of what the sand did to Rachel's house. I get why we didn't, it's not possible to include that and also do what they did with it, but I wish it had been

• Extremely okay with the show side-stepping all of the superhero &c broader DC franchise stuff, as a not-really-a-superheroes fan who was born too late to read Sandman at the time it was coming out and didn't even know about it until I was in high school, I appreciate condensing Sandman down into almost a standalone property, which it should probably have been to begin with. Some of the stuff lost in the name of that was fun, but still always felt like it was some other story encroaching on the one I was trying to read, and the cameos were never explained properly. They just happened, and then stopped, and then the story went on without them

• I thought including Matthew earlier to allow exposition to happen without having to resort to voiceover was a good choice, thankfully they didn't fall into the trap of overrelying on him for comedic relief. Oswalt's voice is one I have trouble hearing come out of an animated character -- it's so recognisable that I can't not hear him as Patton Oswalt -- but he did a good job even so.

• Mixed feelings on how they used Jessamy -- upping the stakes with her was good, but it also fell into the issue I had with them trying to turn Dream's escape into something that was intentionally orchestrated. Still, that one didn't work, so it doesn't bother me as much as with Paul.

• (The point is that he didn't need to try to escape. He is Endless, he has forever, humans are mortal and fallible, they would inevitably make a mistake that would allow Dream to escape.)

• Meanwhile the opposite of the expositiony-backstory-setting-up thing happens with the Hell arc -- we lose the feeling of things happening in the world outside of what's been happening to Dream, and end up with just, these things are happening. That said, it feels like the show is setting up the civil war to happen during the show instead of before it, or something similar, which will be interesting if it happens

• Back to Passengers and 24 Hours -- I think I understand why, but I don't like the change to Dee's character. I think they could have updated it for modern sensibilities without throwing the concept out entirely, which is more-or-less what they did. I think it would have been better without the 'honesty' throughline, which frankly just doesn't make sense to me, and to keep the motivations childlike and megalomaniacal. To hinge the concept on desire. Rather, they tried for both -- honesty and desire -- and it loses punch by being broadened like that

• I'm going to spoiler cut this one because it's talking more directly to an event

  I love the fakeout with Dee shooting Rosemary -- in the comics he does, and they very deliberately gestured at that right up to the last minute so that even if you haven't read the comics you think he's going to, and if you have read the comics you're braced for what's coming, and then instead he gives her the amulet. Fantastic, I love it.

• The updates to the character types in 24 Hours is great, love that they stayed true to the originals, updating some of them to fit a more modern expression of those types, and others keeping them the same while changing things around them to prevent them from being Problematic -- I mentioned this before but there is so much LGBT representation in this series that it doesn't matter that some of those characters would, if standing alone, be harmful stereotypes now (YMMV)

• Also removing the queerphobia is great, love it

• I watched this episode yesterday and already barely remember the details of it, definitely less memorable than the comic. Is that strictly a bad thing? I don't think so -- as mentioned, the comic is memorable largely for shock value. Is it less-strictly a bad thing? Yeah -- the comic is also memorable because of the sharp, quick rhythm to the story, which the adaptation fails to follow, and it is, in a technical sense, poorer for that

• Trying to make the events coherent, and Dee coherent, loses the dreamlike (nightmarelike) quality of the original, which is a problem in a series about dreams

• We lost basically all of Sound & Fury which is a downright tragedy, honestly. This one humanises the damage done in 24 Hours outside the diner, and it does it very well, and that's something that's missing in the show. Maybe they felt like if they included that, it would require more follow-up than the comics give it? I could see that -- the world goes to hell but there's not really any resolution to that, and rather than change things further to get that resolution they changed things enough so they wouldn't need to do that. It makes sense, but is still a bummer

• Before I watched the series I heard Talk about how 'of course they changed Despair, the original depiction would Never be allowed on TV', and also heard 'the change is fine, it works for a modern, updated audience' -- and, having not seen the change, was wondering what the issue with the original Despair was, if it was somehow racist or fatphobic or something in a way I didn't pick up on as a teenager--

• It's because she was always naked

• She wears clothes now

• Didn't even occur to me that would be an issue

• Anyway I'm alright with that change but feel like they could have made her grosser

• I liked the mild updates to the housemates -- Hal, Barbie, Ken, Zelda, Chantal -- made them more than caricatures and -- I keep saying this but it's true in a lot of places -- modernized them while sticking to their original archetypes. Also all of the scenes with them were very fun and I really enjoyed the whole found family thing they were doing

• I wouldn't expect them to find a way to adapt it, though I can come up with ways to do so, but it is a pity to miss out on the Little Nemo references. Even if they wanted to, though, I don't know how worth it it would be -- how much of the audience would recognise a Little Nemo reference?

• That said I also really enjoyed what they did with Jed's dreams instead

• Speaking of Jed, really appreciate how they handled his foster parents, they're very over-the-top in the comics and grounding them more in reality is appreciated

• Hmmmmmm, okay, so, I still don't like changes made to the Cereal Convention, but I can see why they changed how Corinthian gets an invitation to it. It does, in fact, not make a whole lot of sense for him to be able to just call up and invite himself

• Thought it was very interesting that the $800 the foster family gets a month didn't change in the thirty years since the comics were published

• I hear the stuff with Lyta and Hector got changed to avoid the DC superhero tie-in thing, but I also imagine they wanted to connect the story to the main plot better. The result isn't better or worse than the original comics, just very different

• Honestly, changes or no, the guy they got to play Corinthian is incredibly good at it. Largely the actors are all very good at their parts, but Corinthian in particular is very good

• I swear I won't keep going on about the Cereal Convention but I just really miss a lot of stuff in the comics that didn't make it, and am very annoyed at some of the changes made

• I did like the change to 'I just didn't want to be a nightmare anymore' and the resolution to that

• I am, I think, ultimately okay with the 'I wanted to make my own Dreaming, with blackjack and hookers' being given to Corinthian, and okay with him wanting to use the vortex to do that. I prefer the coincidental nature of things in the original emphasising the vortex pulling things together, as vortices do, but I get that a lot of viewers would find that unsatisfactory and that they wanted to tie things together more. In a lot of places I appreciate that, combining characters, giving them connections that didn't exist in the comics -- in this specific place I get it but would have rather otherwise. But I don't mind it

• Love the change to the ending of Hob's story (though Hob's story doesn't precisely end, now, does it?). Once again, turned a series-of-events into a nice narrative

• I disliked the entire scene it was a part of but I especially disliked tacking "Too old for you" in there. Like i said, way too blatant, let people figure this stuff out for themselves

• Changes I do like to the Cereal Convention and surrounding plot: I liked the bigger emphasis on the vortex stuff and just generally tying it better into the greater plot. I feel like the show isn't afraid to make things not be about Dream, and that's to its advantage.

• Just so much better for Corinthian to try to fight Dream and just, have his efforts be less than nothing

• Corinthian should be nothing, he should be paltry and petty and amount to nothing despite how big and important he thinks he is. That is the point of the serial killer stuff

• Wasn't a fan of CGI Martin Tenbones, and the different art styles in Into the Night are so good and I wish there'd been a way to incorporate that into the show

The adaptation just has this insistent aversion to letting antagonists be motivated by a desire for power. That's not enough for Burgess, have to give him a dead son. It's not enough for Dee, have to give him a preoccupation with honesty. Sometimes people just want to be big and strong and there's no deeper need behind that

Burgess died right in front of Dream when he had him imprisoned and Death didn't even bother to say hi

Predictably I am finding it Fucking Impossible to get new sunglasses -- frames that would work with my face shape just aren't in fashion right now, everyone wants big, chunky sunglasses

I'm even willing to shell out for a 'nicer' pair than my old, cheap ones, but no one actually wants my money

Bought a new pair of sunglasses which of course means I'm going to find the missing ones in the next few days

mek wrote: ↑Mon Aug 08, 2022 2:25 am

The adaptation just has this insistent aversion to letting antagonists be motivated by a desire for power. That's not enough for Burgess, have to give him a dead son. It's not enough for Dee, have to give him a preoccupation with honesty. Sometimes people just want to be big and strong and there's no deeper need behind that

Would have made much more sense to hinge Dee's motivation on "dreaming of a world without the Sandman"

(Not reading all the thread, but did read this)

I’m really super into the preoccupation with honesty. It’s something I’ve used in Changeling characters and it was /really cool/ to see it played out in a villain, in an honestly fairly uncompromising way. They didn’t try to make him /not/ a villain. His motivation wasn’t even really portrayed as /good/ in the “he just took it too far” way.

I think that’s why I found that episode so interesting. I am fascinated by characters you want the truth, at all costs, because a burning world without lies is still a better world to them.

I’m realizing I have a really interesting relationship with Truth both as a person and as a creator, and I wish this had more going into that storyline because of it

Vulgar is a conlang word generator, and yesterday while messing around with it I discovered that it has a youtube channel with videos about creating languages and how to use the program, and then I discovered that the order you enter the custom phonemes into it determines their frequency in the resulting language. I did not know that! I've just been entering them alphabetically. There has, at some point, been a setting added to make it not do that and treat all the phonemes equally, but I wanted to mess with it so I then spent the day getting data on Teket Lau

This is the current frequency of all the sounds in the language.

I also got all of the sound combinations for which there are, and aren't, precedent in the language, which looks something like this:

(I wont' share the whole thing because it's long and no one's actually going to care about the details)

At some point I'm going to add the combinations that only occur in one pair as their own thing (there are, three? Four? Diphthongs that should be treated as just one phoneme, and 'ʃ' (sh) occurs exclusively in 'tʃ' (tsh/ch)), and I'm going to go through all of the invalid combinations and find which ones are ungrammatical and which ones just haven't happened yet

In theory I can use all this data to streamline using Vulgar to generate new words! But solid chance I just keep using it the same way I have been. Still, neat to have all this data

At some point I'm going to add the combinations that only occur in one pair as their own thing (there are, three? Four? Diphthongs that should be treated as just one phoneme, and 'ʃ' (sh) occurs exclusively in 'tʃ' (tsh/ch))

this is so cool!!!!

i'm excited to get to the point in the grammar where i work on teaching the script. still need to finish the basics text, and make a workbook, but then i get to learn the script and try to teach it!

i can feel my brain wanting to go back to work on this, and it's allowed to after i finish at least one of my BSFF scripts.

we should do a play-with-the-conlang day again, one of these weekends. i still want to shove mahknovchik at you