something i feel like hollywood (and to a certain extent some books) are losing with the advent of fanfic-ification is the mark of influence rather than adaptation. i know that part of the reason we're inundated with half-baked adaptations right now is because studios only want to finance existing IP, but there are so many obvious adaptations where it's clear the director/showrunner isn't actually interested in adapting the work, but doing something inspired by the work.
emerald fennell's wuthering heights comes to mind here in particular, and like, there were things about fennell's wuthering heights i did like! but they fell flat specifically because it was a wuthering heights adaptation and i just so happen to really enjoy the source material of wuthering heights. or mike flanagan's carrie, which seems so distant from stephen king's carrie it's laughable - not that there's not an interesting story there, just that it's not engaging with the themes of carrie at all.
there have really been so many movies/tv shows recently where i've been like "i can't figure out why this is an adaptation and not the writer/producer/director/auteur pursuing the themes they're obviously more interested in" and i think it's because people are really struggling to separate influence from direct rehashing. which probably has something to do with the overall state of literacy in the world rn but i can't think that hard rn i gotta finish this paper
snowghoul
blakekathryn
romaincrisis
andulkaphoto
titsay
gummygunk
stormborns
