Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/george-r-r-martin-doubles-down-on-issues-with-screenwriters-making-adaptations-their-own-%E2%80%98999-times-out-of-1-000-they-make-it-worse%E2%80%99.883716/page-3?post=123649191#post-123649191

I'm a fan of comic books and I have studied folklore so I'll approach this topic from that perspective. For the majority of human history, art and stories were basically a collaborative process due to being oral traditions. People would tell and retell stories and they'd change every time they were told. It's why you can have regional versions of fairy tales (most of the big ones have different versions all across europe) and it's only really been with the advent of the industrial revolution that works have been seen as especially sacred, and even then the public domain only went for like 30 years so characters especially could be reinterprated and relitigated and become essential parts of culture. If you treat works as sacred, you never get the breadth and depth of Sherlock Holmes stories which have been core to the development of the mystery genre. Even Arsene Lupin went up against Sherlock Holmes (though for the English release due to trademark law the character had to be renamed Herlock Sholmes).
From a comic book perspective, many characters would be basically unrecognisable today without interpretation and reinterpretation of the characters, heck most of what we understand about Batman today comes from the Tim Burton Batman Movie and Frank Millers takes on the character such as Batman Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. Furthermore, as a plural trans woman, I find that a lot of as is versions of characters in the comics are unsatisfying and real meaningful representation is only seen in additions to character rosters and reimaginings of characters (although DC at least has meaningful trans superheroes now who aren't dead (RIP Kate Godwin) and has had supporting characters since New 52 Batgirl). Heck, the Hulk only has DID because Peter David read about Billy Milligan and thought it made sense to do that for Banner and Hulk, and Moon Knight having DID basically started as a joke in the comics from the 80s before it slowly got canonised over 20 years and even then it took another 5 years to get it written well, and even longer to get it written consistantly well.

As such my opinion of fiction is fuck it and let people change whatever the fuck they want. Every adaptation is in conversation with both the original and the culture that was written in, and the modern time, and the views and experiences of the writer. Let people make characters gay or black or give sad stories a happy ending or heck look at the People's Joker and how it retold the story of Harley Quinn as well as the movie Joker through the lens of an all too real transfem experience. I'm sick of the same old stories and I want people to make new interesting things, and if Hollywood only allows for adaptations of prexisting properties then at least let people try actually fucking say something about what they're writing.

She's back.