Book to Live-Action Ideas

 I’m listening to the Dune soundtrack as I write this, if you care.

It’s been a long butt week, and it’s the end of a long butt month, basically. In a bit more than a week I shall be turning 30, and I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s kind of weird. I’m planning to be reading my favorite book that weekend, though I also have a few books that I’m picking up from the library soonish. 

Also side note: we do realize that something being pulled from a curriculum isn’t the same as it being banned, right?

Anyway I’m doing what might be my last Saturday Note about the adaptation of books to different mediums. I might definitely come back to this again at some point! But right now I think I’ll call it quits after this.

THE STONES ARE HATCHING BY GERALDINE MCCAUGHREAN

Okay, this book is weird. It’s very weird. I learned about it in a discussion with friends built off of “What is the weirdest book you read as a kid?” And this book delivered, alright. Set during World War I, it’s about an eleven-year-old boy who finds himself on a quest to fight the Stoor Worm, and all the monsters hatching from the stone eggs it laid hundreds of years before. As the monsters become more and more common the people in the British countryside are more and more giving up the civilization they’ve built up to try to find a way to deal with it.

The book is aimed at children, and there’s nothing in it that I don’t think is all THAT inappropriate for children, but only because I don’t think any of the violence in the story is explicit. But it is WEIRD. Like, really, really weird. I could very easily see a movie of this being weirder than The Green Knight.

I’m tempted to say that this should be a miniseries, because there are several episodic bits–encounters with creatures and figures that would work fine on their own, rather than being part of a movie. Either way, I would absolutely adore seeing this made, just because it’d be so out there compared to anything else on television.

LIONBOY BY ZIZOU CORDER

I just reread this book and I think these would make great children’s movies? Honestly, I would not be surprised if someone made a movie out of the first book, and it never making it big enough to make a sequel. Fine. I don’t care. I think it would be really neat to see a movie about a boy who talks to cats going across Europe with his lion friends.

Our story goes like this: in the near future, Charlie talks to cats. His parents are scientists in London. And then one day, they’re kidnapped for a discovery they’ve made, and so Charlie goes on a quest to go find them, with only the cats he comes across to help him. He finds himself on a circus boat and meets a group of lions. Befriending them, they come up with a plan to escape! But also Charlie’s still on a quest to save his parents, and even in this future it’s hard to smuggle lions through Paris.

This is explicitly a future in which the world’s supplies of oil are low, and pollution has gotten very bad, so there are very few gas vehicles, and absolutely no air travel. I’m also curious to know how this story would be changed with the arrival of technology like smartphones and mass surveillance. There’s already so much that feels like relevant commentary even around two decades later, on pollution and greedy capitalists and corruption, but the little tweaks to make it even more modern would make the story shine, in my opinion.

But more importantly, I want to see a bunch of talking cat characters, including the lions.

THE LIONS OF AL-RASSAN BY GUY GAVRIEL KAY

Guy Gavriel Kay’s fantasy novels, other than the Fionavar Tapestry, run on a principle: take a historical event that’s not that well known in the Anglophone world, and then make a fantasy version of it. It’s not always a one-to-one comparison–Song for Arbonne is only inspired by the Albigensian Crusade, from what I can tell–but this one? It’s definitely about the Reconquista, with in-universe analogues to Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the setting.

I debated picking this or The Fionavar Tapestry but I decided that I would rather see something about the Reconquista. I want to watch our not-at-all-thinly-veiled version of El Cid on screen kicking butt and taking names. I want to see a story about medieval religious conflict, featuring a lead character who is not from either of the two clashing sides–Jehane, a Kindath doctor who finds herself sympathizing with people from both sides.

Kingdom of Heaven is nice and all, but it’s still almost entirely from the point of view of the Crusaders. This story would feature three different points of view of the conflict. And I would very much like it if the characters were accurately cast with Spanish, Middle Eastern, and Jewish performers.

AND PEOPLE WHACKING EACH OTHER WITH SWORDZ!

CASTAWAYS OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN BY BRIAN JACQUES

Brian Jacques’s non-Redwall series is about Ben and Ned, a boy and his dog who were the only souls worth saving on the ghost ship The Flying Dutchman. They were castaway, but made immortal (and the dog made intelligent), and wander the world helping people as commanded by the angel, never staying in one place long enough. After giving us the backstory, the book tells of a town they visit that’s close to being destroyed to make room for a factory in the Industrial Revolution, and how Ben and Ned help the people of the small town stand up for themselves and keep their place.

This would be a Hallmark movie (at least, in tone), but set in the 1800’s. And that’s fine! It’s perfectly fine. We need warm and fuzzy movies sometimes. I wouldn’t even worry that much about the backstory–it could easily be shortly summarized at the beginning, and then a lot of the details be done through flashbacks. Ben and Ned in the books very clearly have trauma flashbacks about their time on the Dutchman so I don’t think it’d be hard to work that in.

Yeah, it’d be simple, but that’s fine. I could do that every so often.

AGE OF UNREASON BY GREGORY KEYES

I like alchemy. I like Enlightenment Era drama. And now here’s a story that mixes both! The premise is that instead of pursuing science, Isaac Newton’s experiments in alchemy turn out to be more fruitful, and so there comes a technological revolution based on alchemy. But that attracts the attention of otherworldly beings who don’t like humanity very much, and they start using King Louis XIV (whose life has been extended by alchemy) to try to enact their plans.

Also one of our leads is young Ben Franklin.

Alchemy! Battle! Politics! Drama! Philosophy! So much cool stuff!

It would be cool to see live-action versions of some of the strange, alchemically-run devices that are featured in the books, from the strange firearms to the airships. And with the number of characters, the international intrigue, and the scale of the battles, these books could easily be turned into an epic television series.

I don’t have much to say I just think it’d be awesome.

1632 BY ERIC FLINT

Actually the series is called Ring of Fire, I think, but no one will know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know what I’m talking about anyway, it goes like this: the modern small West Virginia town of Grantville is somehow transported into Germany during the year 1632, which is smack dab in the middle of the Thirty Years War. Now not only have they got to survive, but the world is still figuring out how to deal with both newer technology and knowledge of the future that comes with this small town.

Make this a series. A long-running series. It would be hard to cover all of it, because as the series goes on, there are multiple books per year dealing with how different parts of Europe (and the rest of the world) are changing in this new timeline. Obviously with a long-running big-budget series you could make it so that you juggle multiple storylines.

It would be dark, I think, in that it has a lot of violence, as befitting the Thirty Years War, but not overwhelmingly so. Because a fantastic element the books have is a fearless optimism about how the world can be made better, and how a small town, even if it’s not perfect, could find its footing and help build a better future.

GOBLIN EMPEROR BY KATHARINE ADDISON

I considered putting this in ‘animated’ but I think it would work fine as a live-action miniseries. The story’s about Maia, the forgotten half-goblin son of the King of Elfland, last in line for inheritance and shunted off to an estate in the middle of nowhere, who suddenly finds himself the only heir after his father and brothers are killed in an airship “accident.” And he’s Emperor now! So we get Court Intrigue: Elfland Edition.

There isn’t actually that much that’s changed in the novel because it’s in a fantasy world, other than that there are weird names and titles all over the place, and the geography is fictional. That, and the difference between elves and goblins in the novel appears to be not a matter of species, but of race. They’re different cultures, but aside from skin color they’re still the same species. And I think it’d be really interesting to depict the story as essentially someone who is mixed race finding himself becoming ruler of a nation, and dealing with a court that’s all white, and how that plays out.

There is a lot to love about The Goblin Emperor and I think there would be a lot to love in a miniseries adaptation. There wouldn’t be that much action or violence. The book features no massive fantasy battles, even off-page. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a satisfying drama on its own merits.

KING RAVEN BY STEPHEN LAWHEAD

So there are Christian streaming services that have series like The Chosen and I wonder if one could pitch a three-season adaptation of King Raven to them? Obviously the budget’s an issue, but it’s a Christian-themed Robin Hood story, but featuring Welshmen in the reign of King William II. If not I’d be happy to see it elsewhere, just thought it’d be neat.

What makes King Raven stand out to me is not just that it’s a Celtic Christian-themed take on Robin Hood, but it’s also really good at having its lead character play up his own reputation. By the end of Hood, everyone things that the King Raven is a sort of forest demon, because he’s dressed as a giant bird and leaving animal guts all over the forest for the villain’s henchmen to find. Those parts of the story would almost play like a horror film, I think.

And in general, I want to see a Robin Hood story that’s overly critical of the English monarchy. Many Robin Hood stories seem to think the English king is good, as long as it’s the RIGHT English king. King Raven throws out that assumption because our characters aren’t English, they’re Welsh, and they know that the English king is a bully who doesn’t care for them. Their aid to William is because they think he can bully their enemies to get what they want. It’s weird that stories about a famous outlaw end up lionizing the establishment, but this one wouldn’t do that if it wanted to remain faithful to the story.

CREATION BY GORE VIDAL

Again, miniseries.

Want a crash course on religion in the ancient world? No? Suck it, because Creation is a book in which Cyrus, the grandson of Zoroaster and BFF with Xerxes the Great (okay the dates there don’t quite match up) travels around the Persian Empire and beyond trying to find the answer to the question that really grinds his gears: how did the world come to be? He ends up meeting several famous figures, such as Lao Tzi, Buddha, and Confucius, and tries to work out if he thinks they’re right.

I like depictions of the ancient world, but I often feel as if it’s generally limited to specific places like Greece and Rome. So I want to see places not often displayed in movies, especially not sympathetically. Ancient Persia, ancient China, and ancient India. And those latter two through the eyes of a foreigner, yes, but a Persian foreigner, not a white one, and he’s not some kind of White Savior hero, he’s just trying to learn more about different cultures and religious beliefs.

Again, this isn’t a war epic. It’s a travel story, in which our hero meets people throughout his travels and learns about their points of view, while trying to reconcile them with his own. Like in the book, one could make this have a framing narrative of how Cyrus is telling this to his nephew Democritus in Greece many years later.

THE BLACK COUNT BY TOM REISS

Another book I just read! I know this isn’t fiction, but if The Butler can be a movie, I think the life of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas can be one as well. This can be a single movie, and instead of covering his whole life it can just cover a certain campaign. Or you know what? Set it during his imprisonment, where he reminisces on his life and military career. Or have his son telling the story, or learning the stories, as a framing device, because Alexandre Dumas very clearly idolized his father.

When we see dramas about the French Revolution, it’s not generally about the military, and definitely not from the point of view of the French. And I think it would make a good movie to tell the story of a man who, despite facing discrimination because of the color of his skin, reached among the highest ranks in the French military and fought wholeheartedly for the ideals of the Revolution, and seeing the mixed results of how those ideals are implemented by his fellow revolutionaries.

And I want to see Dumas fight a bunch of people like a BEAST. And all around I want more people to know and appreciate Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.

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SoulCalibur VI Story Mode

 Every single workday of this week has been busy and I absolutely despise it, but it’s not actually a bad thing. It’s just ugh. But I got Friday off and now I’m home and looking out the window at a cold world.

That's not being emo, there's snow outside.

There’s a new book about the Middle Ages that’s been making rounds called ‘The Bright Ages’ and it sounds very good, but I can’t get the copy the library has because it’s new and it won’t allow that.

Also, Meat Loaf passed away? That’s a shame.

We’re going to take a short break from the ‘Adapting Books’ theme for this week so that instead we can talk about SoulCalibur VI.

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SoulCalibur VI and the New Story Mode

I recently started playing SoulCalibur VI, and am steadily working my way through the game’s story mode. And there are a couple of things that I’ve noticed while playing the game:

FIRST: the main story, at least in the story mode that I’ve started first (there are two story modes in the game) is a retelling of the events of SoulCalibur. 

SECOND: the individual character stories all try to more or less add up to a cohesive whole.

That second part might sound like a ‘duh’ but that’s not how the story mode works in previous games in the series I’ve played. And to be fair I haven’t played all of them–only III, IV, and V.  SoulCalibur V does have a main story, with two protagonists, and not many variations of it. It’s also fairly forgettable and pretty dumb, and one of those protagonists (Patroklos) is both dumb as a rock and incredibly trigger happy.

So let’s just not talk about it too much.

In III and IV, the story mode went something like this: You pick a character. You are given some text describing how this character is looking for the evil sword Soul Edge, the holy sword Soul Calibur, or some other goal that is related to the Soul Swords. In III you get a bit of text explaining what your character is doing and why, and occasionally you are given choices about where you want to go. After you arrive somewhere, you fight someone, on your journey you probably go to a clock tower in Germany and fight Zasalamel (the character trying to manipulate the entire Plot) until you get to the Cathedral of Water and Light and fight either Siegfried or Nightmare. And then Zasalamel pops out, absorbs some magic fluff or something, and turns into Abyss and wrecks the place with magic and you have to fight him again. After he’s defeated, you get a cutscene which may or may not involve you making a choice, and you see how your character ended up.

While it’s cool to see how different characters end up, it’s also very annoying because each character essentially takes the same path. You can switch up where the character goes, but for whatever reason you’re almost always going to end up fighting Zasalamel in the clock tower (even if you are playing as Zasalamel) and then having a final showdown in the Cathedral. You can make some choices if you’re given a guide on how to do it that lets you go to a weird set of stages in the Labyrinth and fight secret character Olcadan. And if you make the correct choices and never take any damage you can fight the secret character Night Terror at the end instead of Abyss. 

SoulCalibur IV doesn’t even really do text between fights. It gives a text introduction, has a series of seven or eight fights, with the last one being a fight against Algol at the top of the Tower of Souls. Finally there’s an ending cutscene in which you see what happens to the character you’ve selected. Why has your character gone to the Tower of Souls or what that even is? That’s never explained.

As you may have worked out, in both of these games, the story modes can conflict with each other. Mitsurugi’s story mode in SoulCalibur III ends with him finding Soul Edge and becoming its new master. Setsuka’s story mode ends with her killing Mitsurugi. Taki’s ends with destroying Soul Edge forever.

It’s also very frustrating because if you’re wondering which character has the “real” story, you’re out of luck. Basically, none of them do. Generally, when the next installment rolls around, you’re given a declaration of what happened last time, which isn’t what any of the game’s story modes showed off. 

This was getting a bit ridiculous, especially with the release of Mortal Kombat in 2011, which had a single definitive story mode, with fully rendered cutscenes and an engaging story (for a fighting game, at least). That the Soul series refused to do that was a bit baffling. SoulCalibur V did have a definitive story, but again it had a terrible lead, and it wasn’t fully rendered cutscenes, but art panels with narration and voiceover dialogue.

So people wondered if there was going to be a VI, and if there was if it would fix things. Turns out that it went for a reboot, retelling the stories of older games while making small adjustments to the timeline. Most of the cutscenes in the story modes are still art panels with dialogue over it, albeit character profiles will go in and out of frame and change expressions as conversations go. But the main story is a single, consistent thread, and all of the characters’ individual stories all fit into different points on the timeline, where they intersect but never outright contradict it. Heck, the story mode screen is a big timeline page, and it tells you in what year different parts of their story take place in.

[There is another story mode that I haven’t explored yet but apparently it explains the reboot business.]

I’m a little bit excited because it looks like, for once, the story of these games is actually moving forward? As in, you can play a game and actually feel like you have progressed in the story of the series, and that the next game will build on what was established rather than ignoring what you were shown and making up something new instead. I know that most people who play these games don’t do so for the story, fine, but I also don’t think that a game series should ever make it feel like the progress you made in the story, the moments you got attached to in your gameplay, never actually mattered. You should care about the story if you’re going to include it in the game. Yes, fun gameplay is important, but one shouldn’t neglect story between games to do so.

And so right now, even though I’m disappointed at the lack of rendered CGI cutscenes, I am much happier with this game’s approach to story mode and what it might tell for the future of the series. Fans seem to like this game, and it proved to be a success, so hopefully they’ll expand upon this model going forward.

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Book to Animation Ideas

 Okay I’m sorry if this doesn’t come out early Saturday morning like usual. I came home from work Friday in a surprisingly goodish mood, which was kind of ruined when I turned on my computer and it needed an update, meaning that the computer was sitting with its metaphorical thumbs up its metaphorical butthole for over two hours and I couldn’t do jack about it.

So that was… fun.

I’ve been watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier though and it’s pretty good.

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When I was coming up with ideas for Saturday Notes last week, I wrote out a bunch of books that I would like to see adapted, and from there I came up with last week’s topic. But video games are not the only ways to adapt books! I thought, what if we were to pick some books to adapt into animated projects: whether in shows or movies.

So here are some books (and comics) I read that I think would be good to adapt into animated projects of different kinds.

Bone by Jeff Smith was on the list, obviously, but that is already in the works (at Netflix, I think?) so that’s not going to be in this Note.

THE CRONUS CHRONICLES BY ANNE URSU - CGI animated movies

Have you read The Cronus Chronicles? I recommend you do it now. It’s pretty darn cool. The premise is that the Greek gods are real, only they went undercover and pushed themselves as ‘myths’ because it gets people to stop bothering them. They’ve survived up until modern day. And guess what? They’re massive douchebags (you knew this already). 

Welp, enter Charlotte Mielswetski, an eighth-grader who is just trying to get on with her life. And she stumbles upon the world of Greek gods when a demigod from the Underworld starts hounding her British cousin Zee, who moved over to her place after everyone around him got sick from a mysterious illness. 

It’s also really, REALLY funny, and full of weird jokes. Because our villain, Philonecron, is such a weirdo fashionista, and Charlotte would really rather have a normal life, and Zee would really rather play soccer, and the gods would really rather mortals butt out of their business.

So I think this would make a really good CGI cartoon film? A trilogy, like the book series, would be ideal, but at least one. It could use a unique art style to depict some of the really weird or disturbing imagery from the books in unique and silly ways. And I think CGI cartoons have a reputation for being more self-aware, and this kind of story can really do with that mindset going in.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE BY GENE LUEN YANG - 2D animated movie with art in the style of the comic

I really, really love American Born Chinese. And also Boxers & Saints but that’s heavy and I had to pick one of the two to put on this list, so I went with this one. It tells three stories: one about Sun Wukong, the Monkey King from Journey to the West; one about Jin, a child of Asian immigrants trying to fit in while growing up in America; and one about Danny, a white kid embarrassed by his Chinese cousin. The three stories somehow tie together by the end in a way that feels surprising, but also organic.

I like it alot. I love stories that are both mythological and modern, and this one’s about immigration and identity and it’s really cool. And I think a large part of the appeal to me was that the art style sticks out. So I’d hate to see it in live-action when it could be adapted in a way that preserves the art. I’ve seen plenty of CGI animation now that does a good job of imitating 2D art, and that’s fine, but I think this would definitely work better as a traditional cartoon.

I also must insist that the voice talent be mostly Asian cast. There’s this weird thing with voice acting in that while it’s become more and more taboo to whitewash cast, it’s still pretty common in voice acting for white performers to play nonwhite characters. I would really rather this cast be made up of Asian-Americans.

RICKETY STITCH & THE GELATINOUS GOO BY JAMES COSTA AND JAMES PARKS - CGI animated movie

These comics are funny but also touching and sometimes surprisingly melancholy? For a story about a skeleton that wants to be a musician, and his friend who is a blob of goo, one wouldn’t expect this much effort in the story.

The art is colorful, the story is epic, and the backstory is weirdly dark and chilling and a little heartbreaking? Our lead is the only talking skeleton, and for whatever reason he’s got dreams about a lost city that fell to the forces of evil a long time ago. Again, I’d like the animation to hue closely to the art style, and show a lot of really weird figures, but this time in CGI as I think it fits both the tone and the art style of the comic better.

Also this movie has to be a musical. Look, every comic volume has at least one song in it, and I think with the idea that the main character is a stitch–a minstrel–you have no excuse NOT to make it a musical. Rickety isn't bad, either–in-universe he’s considered a very good musician and singer, though not a great actor.

DELILAH DIRK BY TONY CLIFF - 2D animation

You know what’s fun? A lady running around with swords, completely unapologetic about the fact she’s out to find some treasure. She wants to always have wild adventures, and because he makes such great tea she befriends Selim, a former Janissary who would rather just not deal with people shooting at them all the time. They travel the world going on adventures, sometimes with a flying boat. It’s good fun. It’s the kind of thing that might look pretty ridiculous in live-action, but I think as an animated feature it’d be perfect.

Think about it! An adventure in the early 1800’s where there’s two leads globe-trotting, treasure-hunting, sword fighting, gun fighting, and escaping from prisons! I don’t think the comics ever really got that dark, though there are some bits of serious drama. Still, I think most of the time the story would prioritize the fun of the original comic rather than turn it into something gritty or realistic.

Okay I know I have a thing against celebrity voice actors, but: Keira Knightley as Delilah and Said Taghmaoui as Selim. I don’t know why this casting came into my head, but some time after reading the comic I had that thought and I can’t quite get rid of it.

MOUSE GUARD BY DAVID PETERSEN - stop-motion animated movie, or CGI meant to look like it

This was going to be a movie from 20th Century Fox until Disney bought Fox and dropped it like a hot potato. I don’t know exactly how they were planning to adapt it, but live-action is obviously not it. It’s a story about a bunch of anthropomorphic mice wielding swords; a bit difficult to pull off with animation.

And you know what we don’t see enough of? Stop-motion animation. So I propose that the film either be stop-motion, or be animated to look like it. This is a story about kingdoms of talking mice, sure, but there’s something about it that feels very real. Each volume has notes about how the kingdoms work, how the architecture was built. And I think that in order to honor the comic, you can’t have environments that look artificial. Having these places be actually built would be a good way to translate that into a screen format.

Also the mice are very fuzzy and having that be obvious would be really cool. I want to see the fuzz. Fuzzy mice.

PIRANESI BY SUSANNA CLARKE - something surreal

I don’t know exactly what kind of animation would be best for this. I lean towards 2D animation, but I wouldn’t mind as long as the style is… a little bit surreal. Strange. Haunting, maybe.

The story goes like this: Piranesi is a man who lives in a world that consists of a giant house filled with statues. It’s so big that some rooms have tides come in. Piranesi keeps track of the layout of the house and how often the tides come in, so he knows how to safely avoid them. Aside from occasional birds, he’s only got one friend in there, another person called the Other. But he soon discovers that there’s someone else who has been exploring the house, and he doesn’t know if it’s a friend or foe, and begins to question everything he ever knew.

I don’t think there’s that much that’s overtly scary, but I think that if you were adapting that to film, you wouldn’t want to make that clear. You’d want to have big open, dark spaces with statues and tides that audiences would look at suspiciously. A feeling of foreboding and grimness, like you really don’t know what’s going to happen in these rooms, if there is some sort of monster or murderer, or something unexpected, going to pop out at any moment to terrorize Piranesi.

It shouldn’t necessary be scary, but it should be unsettling.

SQUIRE’S TALES BY GERALD MORRIS - 2D animated movies with style imitating medieval art

See, these stories are silly, in a way that I don’t think live-action would quite do justice. Though I wouldn’t mind that, I think the stories would be better in animation.

Based on King Arthur stories, Gerald Morris uses characters often shunted to the side (squires, ladies, less-famous knights). He tells a lot of lesser-known stories, or well-known ones, satirizing the things that he absolutely hates, like the love triangles and suicidal bravery nonsense. The thing is that Morris clearly knows his stuff, because he makes references to fairly obscure Arthurian stories in his books.

So, thinking about stuff like Secret of the Kells, which has its design built so heavily on medieval Irish monastic art. And I think something like that would be the best approach to adapting medieval stories: using medieval art to tell about these characters, but do it in a way that emphasizes both how silly the characters are and how silly the art could be.

I don’t necessarily believe that if this ever got made they would need to do every book, or even do them in order. Many of them are only tangentially related to each other. So whether or not the first one is adapted, or something like The Ballad of Sir Dinadan, I suspect it would turn out fine no matter what, if the makers knew what they were doing.

THE GRAVEYARD BOOK BY NEIL GAIMAN - 2D or stop-motion movie

Maybe this one is already in development? I don’t know. I thought I heard that somewhere.

Considering the success of Coraline as an adaptation, I think another Neil Gaiman book is in order? And this could be live-action, but the gist of it is that it’s The Jungle Book but in an English graveyard. The main character interacts with an awful lot of ghosts, and sees things like ghouls and what appears to be the incarnation of Death herself. So why not make it animation? You’re already showing us something fantastical and unrealistic.

Stop-motion animation would be good, but I’m scared that it would just be compared to both Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas, regardless of whether or not it really looked like those movies. 2D animation would also be a good option, as long as it looks… spooky. Not scary, necessarily, but the perfect kind of movie to watch for Halloween. There would definitely be some scarier parts of the film, but overall I want it to be spooky fun.

There’s also a musical number in there. Right from the book. Make sure to put that in the movie.

And absolutely no one should ever be explicit about Silas’s true nature.

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And that’s what I got! I am sorry if this is a bit rushed because I didn’t have that much time on Friday night to finish it.

Book to Game Ideas

 It’s been a little bit of a rough week these past few days; I came home at least three out of the five workdays fuming from having to do something annoying at the office and so I am very happy to be on the weekend.

I saw Encanto! And my review of The King’s Man is up. And I did actually work on this one before Friday night! Not much, but I took some basic notes Wednesday and Thursday before I started when I had some free time.

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Sometimes I’ve thought about doing a Saturday Note of “What books would I adapt to screen if I was a bigwig in Hollywood?” And I was worried that it would just be me gushing about books I like, which I already do in the Book Diary. 

But what about adapting books into video games?

It’s been done before. Most notably, The Witcher was adapted into games, or rather CD Projekt Red made sequels to the novels with their games. And I thought about how some books have settings or stories that would make good games.

And this is what I came up with.

HERE ARE BOOKS I THINK COULD BE ADAPTED TO GREAT GAMES

-Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola - Bloodborne-esque RPG

Should probably admit that I have played like, five minutes of Bloodborne.

The basic premise of Baltimore and its continuing comic series is that it’s an alternate history in which World War I is put on hold because there’s an evil plague caused by vampires going to war with humanity. This means that aside from elder vampires walking around, more and more people are turning undead. And because the vampires have fully awakened, other evil things see this as their chance to rise up again, leading to all sorts of monsters roaming the world again.

And so Lord Baltimore, with all of his trusty weapons, is there to clean it all up.

I don’t necessarily think that Lord Baltimore should be the player character–although I don’t see why he shouldn’t be either–but I’d see this sort of game taking place during an unspecified point in his adventures. Baltimore is, for whatever reason, stuck in an old European city (which provides the game’s map) and has to help rid it of monsters. It doesn’t need that linear of a story, just a wide-sprawling urban landscape where you can find monsters all over. Maybe you find boss monsters in the graveyards or ruins outside of town? Maybe you explore the catacombs and sewers? And along the way you have to upgrade your weapons (guns, sword, harpoon, axes) to ensure you’re always in tip-top shape to take down the worst that the underworld has to throw at you.

-The Onyx Court by Marie Brenan - story-driven RPG

I’ve often stated that these books have kind of boring main characters and Plots, but really good settings. The idea is that there’s a secret court of faeries living under the city of London, and the books take place from the Elizabethan Age up to the Victorian Era. I’m not picky at which point of history the hypothetical game would take place, other than ‘not modern.’

The idea for the books came from the author’s roleplaying sessions so I think it’d be a really good fit for a game? The stories don’t have that much action; there’s a lot of plotting, character interactions, and trying to figure things out, all with emphasis on character development. So I imagine if these were ever made into games, they’d be something like the Telltale story games, in which other characters remember your choices. You’d be a newcomer to the court (a human or faerie? Or a choice between the two?) and so you’d have reason to ask who everyone is and what their role is.

Solve a mystery! Or undo an evil Plot! Or something. All the while learning more about the world and the characters of the Onyx Court. You’d get to explore the Court dwellings and some portions of the City of London, and find cool historical and mythological Easter eggs. There wouldn’t be that many fight sequences because that’s not the main focus of the story. There would be lots of conversations and major decisions though, and a large and memorable cast of characters.

-Fablehaven by Brandon Mull - open-world RPG

I love Fablehaven, but there are a ton of lengthy sequences where authority figures just explain how everything works and that slows things up quite a bit. And it’s good to know how things work, but it reminded me of myself picking every possible dialogue option in a videogame to try to get the most information.

The idea behind Fablehaven is that there are magical preserves around the world dedicated to providing a safe living space for magical creatures and beings. It keeps them safe from humans, but also keeps humans safe from them, because not all of them are nice. And this would be a great game idea? You don’t have to set it in one of the books’ plots, you can easily set it at a previously unshown sanctuary and introduce the player character as a new caretaker, and the plot is establishing yourself in this new world, by building alliances or throwing your weight around as the guy in charge. And you get to use magic objects/weapons of course!

And obviously, there will be dragons.

These sanctuaries are huge, so I think they’d be perfect maps for an open world game. The titular Fablehaven has mountains, abandoned houses and shacks, a fairy shrine on an island in a lake, swamps, and forests. Maybe have more than one sanctuary featured in a game? That way you can explore vastly different kinds of terrains, like forest, desert, and island.

-Obsidian & Blood by Aliette de Bodard - mystery/action adventure

The Obsidian & Blood books are historical fantasy novels set during the Aztec Triple Alliance in which the Mexica religion is totally real, as is the magic practiced by their priests. The main character Acatl is the high priest of Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec god of the dead, and most of the stories involve him being called in to investigate a mysterious death and solve a mystery. Sort of like Dresden Files but in pre-Columbian Mexico?

[Dresden Files would also make a great game, but I have too many ideas for that so let’s leave it alone for now.]

So my idea for an Obsidian & Blood game is a mystery game–you play as Acatl and investigate mysterious deaths and go around interrogating people so you can get the truth! There would be action scenes, too–we see Acatl fight people sometimes, using some of his magic and obsidian knives. But that’s not the main focus. We shouldn’t see something like massive boss fights, I think, or if we do they should be very sparing and rely more on with rather than straightforward combat prowess.

Very dialogue-heavy, interrogations, accusing people of crimes. And you get to explore Tenochtitlan. Great fun!

-Hatchet by Gary Paulsen - survival

Alright this is kind of a ‘duh’ because I don’t know how else you’d adapt this book into a game other than as a survival game. The whole point of the book is Brian trying to survive! I’ve noticed that survival games seem to be popular in certain crowds these days, so I thought one based off of the book that plenty of people read as a kid would be kind of cool.

Of course, you could sort of combine it with the story of Brian’s Winter to make it last longer, and have you try to work out how to survive in the Canadian wilderness during the coldest months. You have to hunt! And fish! And build tools and shelter and such in order to do those things! And also, avoid angry animals! And homicidal mooses! The book doesn’t have too many animal attacks, but Brian also doesn’t really provoke the animals. The player can make that choice and suffer the consequences.

-Obsidian Trilogy by James Mallory and Mercedes Lackey - RPG OR military strategy game

My first thought for this was that, because it’s kind of a standard fantasy, it be a straightforward fantasy RPG. And that would be fun, I think, because there are plenty of ways to customize a character in the setting–wild mage or high mage? Fighter? Elf or human? Plenty of cool locales to explore and monsters to fight.

But then I remembered how much of the original series is dedicated to the war with the demons/Endarkened, troop movements, strategic maneuvers, and divvying out resources in ways that they don’t get wasted. And I thought: this might actually be a really cool military strategy game? You don’t play as an individual fighter as much as a commander directing your units during battles. Infantry! Archers! Mages! Cavalry! Unicorn knights! Centaurs! All at your command on the field!

Because this is a fantasy setting, you would play with different kinds of units. I would advise not setting this in the same period as the original trilogy, because there’s only one dragon in those and I assume that having dragon rider units on the field would be one of the highlights of the game.

-Percy Jackson & the Olympians by Rick Riordan - MMO

And for the last one.

I have been talking about this for years and I think it’d be fantastic. Yes, we’re long after the time when everyone and their mother was making a massive multiplayer online game, but think about it! You create your own demigod hero, and then go to Camp Half-Blood to train/level-up with some basic monsters and camp activities. And then you’re sent on quests, out into parts of the world in which you go into dungeons in modern-day America to fight monsters and collect divine artifacts.

Obviously, as you level up, you can upgrade your powers and by the time the story progresses to the climax (probably involving some nasty giant monster from way back when coming to threaten the world), you have some truly awesome powers to command. You get to collect legendary gear from ancient Greek heroes and historical demigods (since nearly everyone important was a demigod in the backstory). And though some demigods would be more powerful than others, it would balance in other ways–children of Hermes would have more range in what powers they can get than children of Ares, for instance, and children of Athena would have intelligence-based abilities that others wouldn’t get.

There are so many cool things to do with this idea that I will happily pay money to someone to make this happen.

I’m on the fence whether the other mythological series, Kane Chronicles (Egyptian mythology) and Magnus Chase (Norse mythology), should be included in this game at all, as I’d like to focus on one thing at a time? Maybe have allusions to them, and perhaps they’ll be expansions somewhere down the line.

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And those are my ideas! I had a couple of others, and I think one of these days I’ll talk about adapting books to other mediums, like animation, miniseries, and film. We will see if I actually get to those Notes!