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Emerson Cod posted:The arc kind of makes me wonder if this is (book spoiler) one of Jane's earlier failed attempts at killing Martin that we hear about in the book. I read the books after seeing the pilot and came into this thread feeling that a bunch of the changes made in the adaptation just don't make sense, but if they were to go with this it would do a lot to redeem everything IMO. Honestly, some of the book stuff would never fly on TV anyway (first thing that comes to mind is Brakesbill South and Quentin and Alice loving as foxes) , and the TV version of Alice won't get the same effect in the big fight with Martin where she turns into a niffin, and pretty much everything involving her afterwards. Not to mention how Julia's story basically got cut off at the knees (although showing the Reynard stuff is probably too far for TV as well, anyway).
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Jan 15, 2016 23:54
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After watching the second episode I think I'm down for giving this show some rope. You just have to decide to not consider it an adaptation of the books, but as its own thing. It really feels like an adaptation in name only, the very general broad strokes are the same, the characters are mostly the same, but all the plot points are mixed up/changed so it's basically an entire different story. I'm still kind of hoping for a reveal that this is an earlier iteration of Jane's timeline fuckery, that would redeem everything IMO
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Jan 28, 2016 19:27
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dangerdoom volvo posted:i hope they show foxes banging I feel like the next-day response on Fox would be worth it
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Feb 2, 2016 00:03
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Harrow posted:I think the fact that I loved the books is keeping me from watching this, and hearing about how quickly it's tearing through the first book's plot feels like it's validating my decision. Other people who liked the books: is it worth a shot regardless? The way I deal with it is by trying really hard not to compare it to the books. I feel like if it was its own thing, not connected to a pre-existing work, it would be a decent show. It's just the fact that it's mangling up the stuff it's based on that gets under my skin.
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Feb 4, 2016 19:39
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Oasx posted:Have we seen Quentin do actual magic? He has done slight card tricks and the such, but i mean actual finger twisting magic. There was the magical playing card tornado/house of cards thing in the first episode.
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Feb 4, 2016 20:30
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Noam Chomsky posted:Does anyone know why all SyFy shows are cheesy and poorly made and poorly acted? Even their better stuff just comes off as flat. Other networks and Netflix seem to do more with less or similar. So, what the gently caress is the issue is with SyFy? The Expanse is a pretty drat awesome show, and while I haven't read the books people have been saying in the thread for it that it's almost a direct scene-for-scene adaption. And the production values for that show are NUTS. Syfy can make good shows, they just don't seem to care about putting the effort into this one I guess?
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Feb 5, 2016 20:47
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IRQ posted:I liked the first one enough to read the second one and haven't gotten around to the third, so it's not as if I hated them. But the books (that I did read) were pretty trashy and I think SyFy is going in the right direction with all this. The niffin stuff seemed extremely bad since it basically mangled a pretty important plot point from the third book. Not only has the show jettisoned everything leading up to it, it was given to the absolute worst character (considering what happened in the book) and then it went and guttered out like a wet fart. Whoever is making these plot decisions is confusing the gently caress out of me.
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Feb 5, 2016 21:57
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Femur posted:I don't get Julia's deal. Like magic is her core? In the pilot, she told Quinten to grow up, and failed the magical test because she stopped believing her talent right? I get the obsession over something you can't have, but I find her rationalizing really hollow. I feel like it's another mangled bit from the books. In Magician's Land she makes a much better case. It basically boils down to "Imagine you lived your entire life thinking that magic was impossible. Then you find out it's real, and you can do it, but you're immediately told to just forget about it. How can anything else compare to literal magic? How can anything else be important when you can do magic?" The addict allegory was a lot stronger in the books (with mentions of turning tricks for spells and such) although I thought the twitchyness Julia displayed in the show was pretty effective on its own. Basically magic is a drug and every one of the main characters is a junky mainlining it, Quentin just happened to luck into a nice steady dealer.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:12
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Femur posted:If you want to paint magic as dangerous, the teachers need to show the effects of long exposure, but they are all calm and disciplined. The books at least imply that the professors at Brakebills have all gone through what the main cast is going through - they're the magicians who managed to figure their poo poo out before flaming out. And yeah, I didn't mean a literal drug, just that the power/draw of magic is treated in a lot of similar ways.
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Feb 7, 2016 17:57
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Yeah the book mating scene was hilarious. I think Eliot's reaction took it over the top. Am I misremembering that book-Eliot was described as having some sort of mouth/jaw deformity?
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Feb 7, 2016 18:52
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STAC Goat posted:I mean, I've never read the books but from what I'm reading here it seems clear that the show doesn't change things because they HAVE to for time or money, they change it because they want to. I mean I get this and there's nothing wrong inherently with how this show is being handled, but it still feels kind of awkward when The Expanse is on the same channel to compare it to.
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Feb 11, 2016 23:10
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Fleve posted:Haha I can't believe they tried to make welters look cool in ways other than magic. From the books I always got the impression that the games were played with something like less than 10 people watching, half of them faculty, half of them bored out of their mind, and nobody really understanding what the gently caress was going on. In the rain. Somewhere in a park. That is exactly how it's described in the book. Like the world's slowest, most boring magical chess match.
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Feb 16, 2016 22:41
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Vitamin P posted:Honest question: am I meant to like Quentin at this point in the story? Well the show has diverged from the books pretty hard already, but none of the book characters were really 'likable' (I guess Josh was okay, he's the closest to a non-disphit and not even in the show). One of the core things about the books was that all the characters were sad, broken people.
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Feb 16, 2016 23:18
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Oroborus posted:The wethers game was a bit confusing, was it better explained in the books? Why did Quintin win suddenly by casting a spell he needed the blond girl to stop? The big black hole spell wasn't in the books. Welters was basically the same ('capture' squares with spells), but the board was off in a clearing on the grounds and the few matches weren't really spectator things. They were also boring as gently caress (I think the books explicitly say even the players were out of their gourds and ready for the whole thing to be OVER since it was getting dark or something).
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Feb 17, 2016 17:09
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Oasx posted:Not quite, but close to it. There is an ongoing thing about Josh's power level varying wildly, and at one point the gang is practising Welters and he accidentally conjurers this dark globe that sucks in all light and it really freaks everyone out. Ah, right, I forgot about that. And then he does a big version later to suck up the fire giant, around the time that the group faced the Beast. THAT whole sequence would have been nice to see on TV. 
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Feb 19, 2016 00:13
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IRQ posted:Well looks like we get furry porn next week. Mortanis posted:I guess next week is Antarctica. That's certainly a thing. I do hope they keep the endurance race thing in. And didn't Quentin try and fail to go to the moon? I think the moon trip was afterwards (he based the spells for it on the ones that worked in antarctica, lol too bad space is a little colder). I can't wait to see how hosed up the fox 'hunt' is on television.
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Feb 23, 2016 19:44
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Was the scene in this last episode with Julia and Kady's mom casting the tandem spell the first time they've shown spellcasting include chanting as well as hand movements? Pretty sure prior to this (and IIRC it was the same in the books) that while there were sometimes material components to spells there's never been explicit mention of verbal components/chanting. And I forgot Josh found Teletubby Universe and got his freak on. Didn't he talk about several places he'd been, like the vaguely wushu-sounding reality where there was no ground and everyone lived on mountaintops and he hooked up with a warrior princess wife or something?
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Feb 25, 2016 18:40
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Hollismason posted:When you are a god fixing everything is small , IE Quentin is good at fixing things, he grows ginormous in the end of the book and fixes Fillory which is "small" to him , hence fix and repair small objects This is part of the reason why I don't agree with the people who say the third book is all about tearing Quentin down. Yes he starts out as a little self-entitled poo poo, but by the end of the series he has literally held the power of a god, brought his love back from 'death', and created from whole cloth an entire 'land' which he and Alice proceed to gallop off into the sunset through, in search of adventure I did like the mundanity of Quentin's calling, because besides sounding underwhelming, what can be more noble than fixing things? I mean, a good portion of his actions across the entire series can be summed up as that.
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Feb 26, 2016 20:15
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QuarkJets posted:IIRC, none of that amazing poo poo could be accomplished by Quentin on his own. He had to borrow power and/or spells from others in order to do anything meaningful. "The Power of a God" was literally handed to him. I thought that the book made it clear that literally anyone could have done the same thing, if they had been at that time and place Magician's Land spoilers: No, he has to kill Umber (Ember? Whichever one was still alive and hiding out) to get that power, because the ram couldn't bring itself to commit suicide. And since the god-killing macguffin blade was off being stuck into Reynard, Quentin had to reprise his big sword-summoning spell from his Brakebill test (which I thought was a nice use of symmetry) to do it. And afterwards, Dryad Julia comments that while anyone could have used the power to fix Fillory, most people would be tempted to try to hold onto it afterwards, while Quentin willingly gave it up. I'm not trying to say Quentin was Gandalf or anything, but I felt that he had really grown as a character by the end of the books.
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Feb 26, 2016 20:47
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Zaggitz posted:Hi, is this show good? All I know about it is my favorite tv director works on it. Depends on whether you've read the books or not, and how important the show being 'faithful' to them is to you (it's not). I don't think the show is amazing, but it's good enough to watch each week.
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Feb 26, 2016 21:33
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Mortanis posted:We're over halfway, right? There's going to be a bit of a crunch coming soon if they don't advance the latter half of the book plot soon, unless we're not getting book 1 as a season. Which would be kinda crappy as there isn't much else to end a season on save for Martin and Alice's magical blues I don't see how the show could get to that scene at this point, too much that leads up to it is different/has been changed or dropped. And even if they try to shoehorn it in, you know they will gently caress it up somehow. (Which is too bad, because the whole sequence leading up to it would be LotR-level badass if done properly)
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Mar 1, 2016 23:39
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So I finally got to watch this last episode. Oh my god that fox sex montage. 
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Mar 2, 2016 23:02
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Mouse Dresser posted:Yeah, I think that's the worst part of this tv series. I'm liking Julia's journey, and I appreciate that it's being run concurrently to Quentin's, but I am loving DREADING when The Beast shows up to gently caress with Julia. I think you meant to say Reynard there? And yeah if they do it they're gonna gently caress it up hardcore. I don't think you can do that on television without it being either really drat offensive or cheesy/crappy as gently caress.
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Mar 8, 2016 23:37
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Tiggum posted:Well, that episode was pretty much entirely a waste of time. It did confirm that the show wasn't one of the failed timelines that Jane had tried before the books.  Also I guess they are just skipping Reynard and going straight to the dryad priestess stuff.
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Mar 9, 2016 18:46
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Mouse Dresser posted:Edit: I'm really confused as to why Jane is like 17 and not 7. In the books at least, she became an established witch after running off to Fillory and presumably is older than she 'should' be because she's been loving with time, traveling back and forth while trying to find a sequence of events that results in Quentin and gang beating the Beast instead of dying.
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Mar 15, 2016 19:07
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Mouse Dresser posted:In a way it seems like they've shunted the whole "waaah I am morose and drunk" into the schooling year, rather than having it be a post-graduation thing. But they loving better have the cacodemons in their backs poo poo. I really loving loved how Quentin's demon had glasses and was a dork demon who needed direction. The best part about that was that it ended up being completely useless. Josh wasted his the next day, Alice uses hers in a scene we're probably not going to get in the show, and when Quentin finally pops his it immediately gets eaten. 
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Mar 17, 2016 19:24
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Snuffman posted:I'm glad the Neitherlands are part of the show, and the park with fountains is a nice compromise from what it was in the book. Not sure I like the packs of roving angry outcasts, though. One little nod in the last episode I liked was the librarian's response to Penny. "You always ask that" feels like (book spoiler)a nod to the mention in the books that Jane had been going back in time and trying multiple scenarios to find one in which the gang doesn't immediately die when facing the Beast. Actually, do we know for certain that Eliza and Jane are the same person? Other than her knowing about Fillory, and the Beast knowing her, have we had concrete evidence that they're one and the same?
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Mar 23, 2016 23:05
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I haven't seen the latest episode yet, but the show has definitely been growing on me. It's just that the first half-dozen episodes or so seemed hell-bent on making changes for the sake of having changes, and a lot of what they decided to do was just inexplicable. Cancer puppy? Completely reworking the niffin storyline? The last few episodes have been a lot stronger, though.
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Mar 30, 2016 01:05
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STAC Goat posted:I kinda liked Cancer Puppy. It was a cute/funny/sad idea and it very quickly addressed a limit that the show was going to have to deal with sooner or later, "does magic cure disease?" Cancer Puppy basically introduced the idea that its theoretically possible but no one has figured out how to do it with killing themselves or the patient. And of course that now leads directly into the Free Traders seeking a higher power to help them get there. This was kind of taken care of by, well, the entirety of the book series though. Like, the gangs graduates and then they're all 'ok so what now'? And just devolve in ennui. Although I suppose showing it explicitly isn't necessarily a bad thing. quote:Like, when I think of "inexplicable" my first thought was that weird game that came out of nowhere, accomplished nothing, and then went away. The game was actually in the books, although just as useless. But, for example, how early on the Beast showed up, along with the whole 'chosen one' Fillory plotline, Josh not existing, Jane being killed... They've been turning the show around but so much kind of has to be different now. (early Fillory spoiler)I really wanted to see that running battle between a bunch of dark elves, cthulhu monsters, and anthropomorphic rabbits/weasels where Josh casts that souped-up black whole spell that swallows a fire giant, but I don't see how the show can get there from where it's at anymore
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Mar 30, 2016 01:31
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Well the Fox Sex Interlude was one thing I wouldn't have minded being cut. And I'm dreading how the Reynard stuff is going to be handled (if they have the balls/bad taste to show it on television).
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Mar 30, 2016 01:51
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STAC Goat posted:Yeah. I've only seen a few episodes but basically what I've gathered is she's a succubus so she gets super powers from sex and can seduce anyone and is kind of rapey. And for some reason she's the chosen one of pixies or something. I'm really not sure. I just know the basic show drive is sex. poo poo, is that show still going? Only good thing about it was the sidekick, Kinsey or whatever
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Mar 30, 2016 02:23
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I mean if you want an example of a really oversexed show there's always Lexx
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Mar 30, 2016 02:29
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STAC Goat posted:And establishing it early with Cancer Puppy and Q's dad plays directly into the whole Free Trader/Julia storyline, since the whole premise is that they're trying to break the rules Brakesbill set. Which from the sounds of it is either radically different from the books or at least heavily sped up. You are going to have an interesting time if they take this to the same conclusion as in the book: (potential big book-based spoiler)the Free Traders finally manage to summon a god (Reynard the Fox, a trickster diety IIRC) who immediately begins killing the gently caress out of all of them and doesn't stop until Julia agrees to sacrifice herself so that the thing will stop tearing people apart. So Reynard bends her over a table and rapes her, ripping her 'soul' from her and filling her with god-power-spunk which is how she ends up being so magically powerful later on. Julia and Asmodeus are the only ones to not die horribly. The mother goddess stuff comes later; since Julia no longer has a soul she begins acting less and less human, and in the end when it becomes obvious to her that she's going to become 'something else' no matter what, she calls out to the goddess and is remade as a dryad instead of becoming another rapey fox spirit or whatever.
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Mar 30, 2016 02:42
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FRINGE posted:People that like this show look down on Lost Girl and Lexx? I think I was the only person to mention Lexx, and I unironically love how loving weird and gross and crazy it gets. It's just that you can't deny that it's oversexed as gently caress. e: To be clear, I'm not saying being oversexed is a bad thing (it's part of the show's  charm), I was just stating it as a fact. Lexx is probably the most oversexed show I've ever seen and it is amazing.
WarLocke fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Mar 30, 2016 23:17
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mastajake posted:This talk about the book has got me wanting to reread it. So much fun stuff. My working theory is that all the Reynard stuff happened, just off-camera. Julia either doesn't remember/is in shock/invented the goddess and her mission to deal with it. Which would be understandable because there's just no way to show basically demon rape on television and get away with it. The end of the episode made me hopeful that we'll still get That Other Scene with Alice where she goes Full Speed Force on Martin (or Plover now I guess?) 
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Apr 7, 2016 19:27
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Boris Galerkin posted:Wow seriously? I thought him not being given a magic school equivalent of a college major was something significant/because he's (going to be) good at everything. In the books, Quentin has the same thing where nobody can figure out what his 'discipline' is. Way later on, he gets retested and it turns out to be something ridiculously mundane ('mending small objects'). The show plays up the 'chosen one' angle (until it does a heel turn on it) but the books are pretty explicit in that Quentin isn't special at all, the reason he ended up in the middle of everything was simply because he was a sad sack who compulsively worked at magic until he was good at it (Alice and to some extent Eliot/Josh are the ones with talent) and he never gave up his childlike obsession with Fillory.
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Apr 14, 2016 20:13
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I just want to learn more about fake Narnia land's air being 1% cocaine or whatever 
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Dec 23, 2016 03:11
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Julia/Reynard stuff: What I remember from the books is that Reynard fucks her, but explicitly doesn't kill her, and instead sucks something out of her - implied to be her 'soul'. And since she no longer has a soul keeping her human, for the rest of the books she's on a path to become 'something else' - either something like Reynard or, at the end when she calls on the Goddess the last time, the Goddess fills that 'hole' in Julia and that's why she becomes a dryad or whatever. It's weird in that the show seems to have swapped Reynard and the Beast around in this - Martin is offering to do to her what Reynard forced on her in the books. e: I'm only up to s4e2 though so maybe this last episode will derail that!
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Feb 14, 2017 21:56
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AngryBooch posted:Yeah, that's Quentin! ... and then his specialty ends up being something stupid like 'mending small things'. The entire point of Quentin is that he's a manbaby loser, basically the diametric opposite of the prophesied Harry Potter One. He doesn't even start growing up until the third book, and even then it's more about him coming to terms with how he's basically hosed everything up and wasted half his life and where to go from there.
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Feb 17, 2017 21:20
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I'm still holding out hope that the end of the show reveals that it's been one of the earlier/pre-books loops the entire time, then rocks fall, everyone dies, hit that reset button. 
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Feb 17, 2017 21:49
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