Good Adaptation, Bad Adaptation

February 26, 2018 Jeremy Varner

Once upon a time, being dominant in a specific form of media was generally enough for anyone. If you were a novelist, you’d probably only be a novelist aside from a few passion projects you had on the side. If you were a screenwriter, you’d be known as a screenwriter first and any other projects you worked on would be exceptions rather than the rule. And if you did comic books, it tended to be a long shot for you to get big somewhere else. But today it’s much more likely that anyone who becomes a success will do so across multiple platforms.

Cross platform properties have become so common today that most successful works have their movie rights sold almost as fast as their book rights. Sure, some works are going to remain on a single format, but those are becoming increasingly rare in the most popular genres. Part of this is because cross promotion tends to help all parties involved. Selling the movie rights to a book is generally going to help sell more books as people become curious about the IP and having a book out to go with the movie tends to help with stirring interest in seeing the story fleshed out in full. And, while many would say it’s a sign of both industries being “out of ideas”, it’s really just about having audiences primed to spend money on something they may not have spent money on before.

But what exactly makes a good adaptation and why is it, despite all efforts, that some adaptations turn out terribly? Continue reading Good Adaptation, Bad Adaptation →

About me, Miscellaneous

Time Well Spent

February 19, 2018 Jeremy Varner

One of the great forces that separates humanity from other animals is the fact we’re aware of the passage of time. We’re aware of things that other animals just don’t notice or care to notice. We know how short life is, how long it may sometimes feel, and we base a lot of our opinions on how we’re doing against that clock. Dogs don’t understand time, everything feels forever to them, which is why they’re always so happy to see you at the door. Despite the fact you were only gone for half an hour to pick something up from the store, you were clearly gone forever – they counted.

But we don’t have the luxury of seeing everything as forever. Sometimes we can fool ourselves into believing it for a while, and even tell others that things are going to last forever. This feeling is going to last forever, these hardships are going to last forever, that relationship you had in high school is going to last forever. But we know that none of them actually do. Though we can fool ourselves for a time, the ability to fool ourselves also fails to last forever. And the beautiful, if somewhat bitter, thing about that is that means a person’s time is probably the most valuable thing they have in the long run. Sure, money is really nice, and don’t believe anyone who says it can’t buy you happiness – those people weren’t shopping in the right places – but time is our ultimate finite resource. No matter what you do, eventually you will run out of time.

So am I dying? No. Well, yes, but very slowly – I probably have a few decades to live. But the day I post this is my birthday and I like to navel gaze on my birthday. And, because I’m a narcis-… because I’m a writer, I’m going to tell you the contents of my navel gazing.

You have been warned… Continue reading Time Well Spent →

Agent of Argyre, Alterpedia, Alterpedia Historia, Fantasy, FICTION, Sci-Fi

Alterpedia Historia: The Manhunt

February 16, 2018 Jeremy Varner

(I hate that I have to say this, but this is a fictional account of the history of a fictional world. I do not believe these things, nor should you, as I am making them up. If I receive any comments that I did not do my research into these events, you will be mocked.)

In the Agent of Argyre series of books, there is an organization called the Alter Control Task Force. Though ostensibly an organization for policing activities of the Alter race, an attempt to prevent an eventual race war, they are actually representatives of a city-state on the ocean: The Republic of Argyre.

The Republic of Argyre, an artificial island anchored to an oceanic ridge in the pacific, is a city-state established by Alters for the sake of harboring their kind and establishing a relationship with the mainstream human population. Despite being an artificial island and attached to no primary landmass, the city’s structure is capable of potentially supporting all 12 to 15 million active Alters on the planet.

How did a race of people who’ve lived in hiding for centuries manage to construct such a city? Why would they build their city in the middle of the ocean? Where did they get the resources for such a task? In the Alterpedia Historia, we will answer these questions and discover the history of the Alters. Today we address… Continue reading Alterpedia Historia: The Manhunt →