sunny may be one of the worst kinds of people, but goddamn those tiny glimpses of the person that still exists beneath the greed and pathological need to be at the top of the food chain were crushing.
he's awful, he's cruel and he's too willing to put others in danger. but he didn't want to kill that kid. he leads these vulnerable boys to predators because he's never going to be one of them again. but he also knows that he's always going to be one of them. he might have curated power for himself within dream, but he's so painfully aware that if he doesn't do as he's told, he's just as likely to be hurt or killed.
there's no escape from this cycle for him, and the only way he can go is forward. he's just been made brutally, unforgivably aware that he cannot backpedal. he's so vulnerable in the hands of his sponsor, so scared of what he knows that man is capable of, that he'd rather kill a man than risk his wrath.
all he can do, though he won't admit to sun or himself that he was wrong in any of it, is try to warn sun away. he's taken so much from sun, he doesn't want to be the one to take his life too. not anymore.
For those of you who've been following me for a while now, there's a good chance you got to experience my journey reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past series last year. I loved Three-Body Problem, but The Dark Forest and Death's End were like pulling teeth. Both books had their very very good moments, but getting through them was a tedious experience I considered giving up on on multiple occasions. I will give it to Cixin Liu tho, I needed to know how the series ended and that alone was the sole reason I pushed towards the finish line. Any author that can make me tough out bad writing for the sake of seeing the end deserves some kind of award (and he won a ton anyway, so).
I approached the Netflix series with zero expectations given their propensity for shitty adaptations (One Piece notwithstanding), but after watching the first episode I was left cautiously optimistic.
Having watched all 8 episode I'm still unsure how to feel about it. I spent most of the series hitting pause to rant at my roommate about it, both positively and negatively.
I had many issues with the books, but some of the more obvious ones came from a writing standpoint. I love hard sci-fi. I could not excuse the sheer length of those final two books. The atrocious treatment of women as objects to romance and use as bartering for the main character. The abysmal MCs (specifically Luo Ji) that made me want to yell to the high heavens due to annoying they were. The lack of human connection between characters.
For books so steeped in sociopolitical and ethical commentaries, the flagrant misogyny and homophobia was eye-rolling. And not even in a "This is Bad" sort of way, just in a "This is So Fucking Boring" kind of way. I cannot speak for the author's biases, because the contents of a book in no way reflects the views of an author or their character.
Where the books shone the brightest were during the battle scenes, the looming dread, genuinely horrific thought experiments.
And, surprisingly? It feels like the people at Netflix thought the same.
I've never watched Game of Thrones but I understood why people were against it from the get-go. That, along with the whole "whitewashing" thing which I consider to be interesting. For starters, you're using whitewashed wrong. Yes, they moved the central story from China to England which was... a fascinating choice, but of the core five (that quickly became the core four), only two of them are white. I'm not saying it was okay for a western adaptation to take a cast and further diversify it, I'm just saying that that's not whitewashing.
That aside, I did like some of the choices that were made from a narrative standpoint. Reshuffling and streamlining events, for one. Removing the whole plot line about Luo Ji hunting down a woman who he invented in his head in order to marry her? I'm not entirely sold on the idea of taking core events and divvying them up between four different people, but I do understand what they're trying to do.
The book series failed at crafting believable and impactful relationships between its human characters, which made the narrative feel hollow and one-dimensional. This adaptation aimed to change this by slapping a band-aid over the issue. Like I said, I'm still unsure of how I feel about this.
A lot of unnecessary stuffing was removed to make a suitable run time, and I say unnecessary because there's really no scenes that are making me go "oh, I wish this had been included". Was some stuff rushed? Yes. The passage of time could have been outlined a little better, but that's a small nitpick on my end.
The scale of things was toned down, and I don't think Netflix has the capability (or budget) to tackle space battles.
Honestly? I don't really see this getting a second season for a variety of reasons, and I'd be okay with that.
It was an "okay" watch, in the end.
Tho, I'm still flabbergasted by the random "gory scary jumpscare" scenes????? Where did those come from??? I don't remember anything like that being in the books but, you know. I've read a lot more books since finishing these, so.
Star Wars Rebels: Spark of the Rebellion using a blend of Luke and Leia’s themes to signify Ezra’s entrance into a larger world, specifically a larger world of the Rebellion and the Jedi, is something beautiful to me. Incredibly beautiful. What a show.
