I have finally made a public fandom related Discord server.  For the longest time I have only had one for friends and I to mostly goof off.  I have never made a public one before so if it’s crap, be gentle.  But all Sandman fans are welcome.

https://discord.gg/YFmyrWPmUS

We never found out what happened to poor John Hathaway. We know Hathaway kills himself in The Sandman audio drama and comics but in the Netflix show it's like they forgot we were initially following him and his visit to Roderick Burgess.

Happy Summer Solstice (Litha) the official start of summer and the longest day of the year. From this point on the nights will start to get longer.

The actress Cassie Care plays Philippa Eihart in The Witcher and she plays the demon Mazikeen in The Sandman.

I knew sooner or later there would be an actor crossover with The Sandman and The Witcher. I just didn't realize it had already happened.

This is not going to earn me any friends in The Witcher fandom but here we go... I admit I do NOT like that Yennefer was willing to sacrifice Ciri to get her powers back. I do NOT like that one of Geralt’s friends (a fellow Witcher) had his personality inverted and was then killed for plot convenience in season 2.

But that being said I feel that... in GENERAL there are parts of the Netflix series of The Witcher that are improvements on the books.   For example Jaskier’s “Sandpiper” persona to smuggle people to safety, I love that.

  Also Geralt accidentally invoking “Law of Surprise” in front of the pregnant royal.  I love how the show depicted his not wanting to take someone’s child and how upset it made him and how he tried to flee.  And then ultimately accepting becoming Ciri’s adoptive father.  I think that was all well-handled in the show.

@staff The post directly under this was “Too Long” as it kept giving me errors wen I tried to post it to my Tumblr.  I had to switch to Legacy posting just to post it.  I LIKE being able to make long posts!   Stop sneakily adding post length limits!  We are Tumblr users.  We ramble. We DO notice!  

The red flag book purists

This post can be in regard to many recent book to film (or TV) adaptations including Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Dead boy Detectives, and Good Omens. Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher. And Anne Rice's Interview with The vampire, and The Mayfair Witches. I am going to address a pattern I've seen and you may associate it with a different book to TV or film adaptation. I used to consider myself a book purist. Maybe I still am. I preferred book to TV or movie adaptations be as faithful as possible. In general I still do but there are occasions where I think the adaption improves the source material. I think the 1994 film Interview with The Vampire has a better ending than the novel. I think Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow is more interesting and has more relatable characters than the Washington Irving story. Though updated to take place in the 1990s the version of The Canterville Ghost starring Patrick Stewart is my favorite adaptation of the novel. The stop motion animated musical Nightmare before Christmas, which teeters on being a Danny Elfman Opertta, I like the Nightmare before Christmas film more than the original Tim Burton poem. And though only very, very, very loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem, The Raven (1963) is my favorite Vincent Price movie. And as kind of a guilty pleasure I have a soft spot for versions of Dracula that are both predatory but romantic like Bram Stoker's Dracula and the 1979 Dracula film starring Frank Langella. And, yes, Castlevania. Again, I considered myself a book purist but there are exceptions where I admit that the changes improve upon the original story. Lately I've seen people call themselves book purists and it's become something of a dog whistle for something else. It feels almost like this new breed of book purist discredits the original meaning which wants integrity to the story. I.e. no rape scene just for shock value. (I'm talking about you, Game of Thrones and Interview with the Vampire TV series). This new form of so-called book purist which I have to come up with a name for... Let's call it Book Puritan for now until I can come up with something better.   The book puritan seems like the typical book purist at first. They just really, really like the source material but the more you talk to them the more you realize they are actually upset about something other than respecting the original books. Here are the top ten things complained about by Book Puritans. 1. They get upset if a character's skin color is changed or other race based complaints even though it has no impact on the story at all. "This character shouldn't be black!" They will complain about agenda and sometimes the character in question didn't even have a race to begin with, like Death in The Sandman. She's literally The Grim Reaper. She can be any race she feels like.

2. They get upset about gender swaps. "This character was originally a man!" I understand if you have a particular visual in your head of a character but if you think the interactions will drastically change meaning and feeling because the male character is now a woman perhaps you should consider your own bias on the subject. Or perhaps the original story was something of a sausage fest and even the author wanted to add more women to the mix.

Sometimes this is not actually a good thing. Changing Lestat's lover Antoine into Antoinette in the Interview with The vampire TV series bordered on straightwashing just to make his bisexuality more blatant. Also Lestat making her mutilate herself (cut off a finger) to fake her own death contradicted how Lestat acts with his lovers in the novels and was ultimately pointless since they kill pretty regularly and Lestat could have taken the finger from any woman's corpse. In the most recent remake of Children of the Corn they had the child preacher be a little girl instead of a boy. This attempt at inclusion undermined the patriarchal symbolism of a fanatical Christian-like cult and felt like another crude dig against matriarchal religions like the remake of The Wicker Man. So you see from my own examples sometimes there are understandable exceptions. But *In general* character gender swaps don't usually do any harm to the story. 3. They get upset because characters that were not confirmed as queer in the original stories are now openly queer. "But he was straight in the novels!" Not necessarily. Sometimes characters are queer coded or "overly straight" (compensating) to hide that the character is not straight to the casual observer. You have to consider that some novels written thirty or forty years ago had to contend with homophobic publishers.

Though Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles seem pretty obvious to a lot of people and there are scenes of Armand actually calling Daniel his lover and Lestat asking Louis why he loves him, etc, there are still people out there convinced that Anne Rice's vampires are straight. I can still recall back in the 90s being an Anne Rice yahoo group and someone responding to a post with "My Prince Charming is STRAIGHT!!!" (this was in regard to Louis).

Now, today the flamboyant bard Jaskier (translated as Dandelion in the English language novels and directly translates to Buttercup) was confirmed as bisexual in The Witcher Netflix series. And there are "Purists" genuinely angry about this.

Their biggest shield of "We just want book accuracy" is the fact that there are scenes of him "womanizing" and being a promiscuous flirt with women but never men. So what? So what if The Witcher's sidekick is bisexual? If it supposedly shouldn't matter why are you upset? How does it harm the main story? One argument I was given is “It’s important that he look gay without being gay as to break the stereotype.”  And yet others will claim there was never any hint that he wasn’t straight.   Which is it?   Is it he was a stereotypical queer man who was actually straight or there was supposedly no sign that he was ever queer.  Make up your mind.  Sometimes the LGBTQ+ content was always there such as in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and the person who supposedly read it went into such a deep denial that they genuinely didn't see it when originally reading the story. 4. They get upset if an old bit of sexism in the original story is corrected. i.e. the occasional Witcher fan who insists (despite the video games) that Ciri can NEVER be a "real Witcher" because "only men can be Witchers." I once got into an argument with a Witcher fan who insisted that despite what the video games say, because she wasn't mutated and never went through the Trial of the Grasses, Ciri can never be a true Witcher. And it's "Important" that no woman ever be a Witcher. Really? Why is that so important to maintain?

Just because something always was a certain way doesn't necessarily mean it should remain that way. 5. They question if a character was changed when the character was actually always that way. This could be in regard to a character being gay or it could be in regard to a character being Jewish. I remember when the still from Coraline circulated with her celebrating Hannukah and people thought it was fan made because everyone was just so used to the default that all characters are presumed Christian until told otherwise. 

This sort of thing is common, taking for granted that a character is just like you or fits a “normalcy” unless explicitly told otherwise. This also accounts for a lot of characters being presumed straight until shown otherwise.

When I was watching Penny Dreadful there were people upset that Ethan was “made” gay (revealed as bisexual) in episode 4 of the first season “because there was no sign of it before.   It’s set in 1891.  How was he supposed to “act” bisexual? There were people in such denial that they convinced themselves that the man he slept with, Dorian Gray, had put him under some sort of spell. The irony is Ethan wasn’t even revealed as being a werewolf until the end of the season and his real name wasn’t given until season 2 but somehow him being bisexual and it being revealed in the fourth episode of the fifth season was “out of left field” and “made no sense.”

   Imagine if Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans reacted to the reveal (that I predicted at age fifteen) that Angel is a vampire. They didn’t confirm that until the fifth episode of Buffy. 6. They seem okay with added domestic violence or sexual abuse (i.e. rape scenes) which would also contradict previous depictions of some characters' personalities but will complain if and implied gay character gets to kiss on camera or a woman character gets to do something assertive that she didn't do in the source material and does not contradict any character personality trait. 7. They will argue that something "Is not canon" unless the author put in the original story even if the author confirms it after the fact and can prove where they hinted at (though didn't confirm) the thing in the original content. i.e. J. K. Rowling confirming that Dumbledore is gay.

I understand LGBTQ+ people being angry at this (and far worse things J. K. Rowling has done...) because she should have been brave enough to address it in the story itself but I'm speaking of those that refuse to accept that Dumbledore is gay and will even argue that if they accept he's gay it means Voldemort is gay too and they're all suddenly ped0s. I kid you not, I had to remove someone who went on this very rant from my Sandman Facebook group. This is also true with the elderly lesbian couple in Coraline. There are people angry that Neil Gaiman didn't out-right call them a couple in the story even though there were several pretty blatant hints. But at least with that one there are less people insisting it's not really canon. Probably because they DO behave like an old Hollywood / Vaudeville gay couple.

8. They seem okay with added content that wasn't in the novel until or if a woman or minority gets to shine in the extra portion of story. This can be in regard to a passing-of-the-torch or just a scene that was not in the original books but added to enhance the original story. Somehow this might upset them greatly even if the added content dos not contradict any of the original books. It's just an added bit of story. The only reason I could think of to be upset at an added scene is if that scene suddenly and drastically contradicts the character's established personality. i.e. a scene of Morpheus in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman opening a dance club and favoring Gangsta rap. Thankfully this particular scenario does not exist. 9. They kind of accidentally out themselves as having not read the books that they claim they want to keep pure by whining about "woke" content that was IN the original story. i.e. Sandman fans surprised at all the LGBTQ+ characters. 10. They out themselves as having not watched the thing that they are complaining about. "I refuse to watch The Sandman because I heard that the only character Death is a black woman." Buddy, you misunderstood. The Grim Reaper is played by a black woman. There are lots of white people who die. Or "I don't understand The Witcher: Blood Origin. It doesn't make sense. Geralt wasn't born a Witcher. They're sterile!" Yes... They are. Do I need to explain the plot of the show you decided not to watch even though there are Wikias? It does tell a story that doesn't exist in the books but you seem to have leapt to conclusions by the name alone. These sort of Book Purists (Book Puritans) make me embarrassed for appreciating and wanting the integrity of characterization and story from the original books (in adaptations) kept in tact. It's reached a point where if I complain that Lestat shouldn't be physically abusive to Louis in Interview with The vampire (TV series) and they should never have added a random scene of Claudia being raped by a teenage vampire - someone else will give the kneejerk reaction "You just don't like it because Louis is black now!" Actually I think the Louis and Lestat actors are excellent. It's the writers and showrunner I don't like. I want to be able to explain the parts of the story and character I care about and want preserved without people assuming I'm doing a bigoted dog whistle because of this newer version of book purist. These book puritans are giving us actual book lovers a bad name. End of rant.

I saw this in the behind scenes video for The Witcher Season 3. Are they going to give Ciri her own Witcher pendant? It doesn't really look silver but it does bear a resemblance to the version trademarked for The Witcher video games.

New behind the scenes video for The Witcher Season 3.

Okay, here are my thoughts…

I noticed that they are releasing Joey Batey's standard two Jaskier songs BOTH during the first half of this season instead of one at the end and one at the beginning like they usually do (like Season 2's Burn Butcher Burn and Golden One).

Joey Batey also talks about "major sacrifices" will be made and there is death.

I said it before and I'll say it again, Jaskier is my "Ride or Die" Witcher character. I stop watching if they kill him off. It's not an idle threat. I stop watching and then pretend the episode where he died doesn't exist.