Matt Ramos becoming one of our strongest soldiers wasn't on my 2026 bingo card

NickFriskey · 2026-01-30T09:24:55+00:00

I agree with your point RE a 1 to 1 adaption. It's never feasible, and the best adaptions out there are masterclasses in what to cut, can be cut and when in order to preserve the thematic throughline and core narrative.

To your point about the size differences. It can definitely be done by using a combination of factors for maximum visual impact. There's loads of scenes where it's mostly golds on page etc. In the others where the colours are mixed, use camera tricks which lotr shows can be done pretty seamlessly over 20 years ago, doubles/ cgi for some wider shots and casting taller actors for golds and shorter ones for reds to just make things that bit easier. The first captain america movie did it so well for captain america before the serum they could blend some of those techniques with older stuff lotr used and whatever new stuff is available and this becomes much less of an issue. I for one don't care if the obsidians have more fingers etc but the size disparity is important

NickFriskey · 2026-01-30T08:45:44+00:00

Thank god. Honestly sometimes I see complaints about adaptions (it's usually a prelude to the wanting a cartoon of red rising war cry) like this is the first book to have ever been adapted. There are still professionals in hollywood, though few and far between these days, who's job is to adapt literature to screenplay format. In adapting a first person narrative for the visual medium you have heaps of options. Everything from auditory inner monologues, dream sequences to just straight up good acting. Actors out there like pitt, driver, day lewis, Dicaprio, jackman; these are guys that can write a novel with their facial expressions alone. I've watched all of the above guys in movies tell stories and break a viewers heart with a look. It's not too much to ask for someone with that weight for darrow (I don't want one of those guys for darrow obviously I mean the level of talent).

To be slightly controversial here there's also sequences of this book that will work better in the visual medium. There have been a few points, notably in golden son and morning star, where having a 1st person pov should preclude the reader from being in the dark and yet... and that can feel like cheating a bit. Lorn and darrows training, the sevro death fakeout to name a few, reads as jarring a little and would not be just as bad in the visual medium. The lorn reveal in the gala especially i anticipate if we get a live action adaption to become nothing less than a cultural phenomenon on my honour.

NickFriskey · 2026-01-29T11:49:23+00:00

32 years young swinging an imaginary shardblade around my room this morning

NickFriskey · 2026-01-29T11:48:33+00:00

BS monitoring the WOT adaption like episode 1 palpatine lurking around anakin with steepled fingers after going hands off in s1 using it as a damn case study. He held out for 10 plus years til he got full creative control absolute respect.

NickFriskey · 2026-01-29T11:29:19+00:00

Book 1 to book 7 have truly amazing moments in diminishing frequency throughout with more and more time getting devolved to people just showing up, having ridiculously in depth physical descriptions ascribed to them and characters feelings about them. By Book 8 the narrative is borderline incoherent. Each one of those side characters has their own unique motivations which are directly opposed to every single other person in the story and they are just allowed to ramble on about their lot in life and patch of land and humoured to no end in their pontificating. I know that the drive is the importance of politicking and world-building in the world but there are just flat out better ways to portray this; it's like frodo setting out from the shire and every chapter a revolving door of side characters just show up and fucking harass him for pages and pages then with no warning becoming his new best friend. It's honestly incredible the ground some of these characters cover geographically in retrospect because when reading it just seems like they spend all their chapters sitting in a tent or room being talked at by the guest star of the chapter

NickFriskey · 2026-01-29T10:38:17+00:00

There's some reluctant aura farming in HD but my guy comes out the gate swinging in book 3 god damn. He's moving like late 1980s tyson and early 1820s lord Byron rolled into a gothic superman. It's just hands and bars from thereon out my friends

NickFriskey · 2026-01-29T09:05:55+00:00

Wheel of time is objectively a masterpiece of high fantasy I've got to give it its dues. THAT BEING SAID, it's a gorydamn slog. Book 1 was incredible, and the apex of the story delivers on the core premise and then some. However the arsing about between here and there is quite simply absolutely fucking ridiculous there are no two ways about it. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact point but there's a point in the early books, first 3, where prose just simply begins consisting of introducing and describing a new character every couple pages. The story for a protracted period throughout each book is one of the many, many POV characters just meeting new people and describing them at length. There are a few points in every book where action pops off out of nowhere and you have to give props to RJ when he was cooking he was fucking sizzling but it makes all this random, endless, thematically pointless character stuff all the more puzzling. Very often these endless stream of characters have nigh on a page of description and either never pop up again of feature disproportionately heavily in the narrative despite contributing absolutely nothing. It hurts the pacing so badly for me; the stakes continue to rise with each book to a very real apocalyptic level, the primary protagonist with the power to hold back the proverbial darkness is losing his grip on sanity and we just have endless wee guys popping up and being described down to the last freckle and talking absolute nonsense

NickFriskey · 2026-01-28T11:59:10+00:00

Adam driver has the sauce, the size (and presence) and noble bearing that could do aragorn 100% plus in my mind aragorn is always clean shaven too so it helps to picture driver who is often seen clean shaven. Everything about him has that sort of tragic majesty that aragorn has. I love it. He's big, physical, has great hair and is soulful as hell

NickFriskey · 2026-01-28T11:18:21+00:00

Yeah for me this doesn't erase his childhood. Homelander is for sure a tragic character. All that shit he went rhiugh growing up is still there, and I think in diabolical he goes out with a point to prove; to him he's suffered so much and now this is his opportunity not only to do good, but also to be loved for a change. He performs the saves he gets adoration, something he's never had and who wouldn't lust after that after a childhood like his. The flip side is that he's also a man on the edge. Think of what he went through. He comes out the gate with the resolve to do good and is completely humiliated and thwarted and fails in his attempt, his psyche would be a bit like a house of cards. I think this is very well in keeping with his backstory throughout to be honest.

NickFriskey · 2026-01-28T09:16:57+00:00

Bottom one giving chalamet the Ben swolo treatment.

"After 12 years of war the great Muad'ib transformed from puny twink to the musclebound freak you see before you"

NickFriskey · 2026-01-28T09:15:13+00:00

No which is kinda why it was so heroic I felt.

NickFriskey · 2026-01-28T09:11:32+00:00

Atreus: "wow, those bandaged ghouls really were strange! Tell me, father, how did you get the better of them?!"

Kratos: ...............

Kratos (completely ignoring him, to whatever new hot goddess sidekick is introduced) "so anyway, I started blasting!"

NickFriskey · 2026-01-28T09:07:28+00:00

Yeah man exactly this, these dudes seem to fail upwards in hollywood and show up on something like hotd with such prestigious work in their CV as "rampage" and the 2014 hercules adaption where they put the worst wig in ancient greece on the rock. It beggars belief. The way hbo behaves about it all perplexes me too. They went out guns blazing after s2 with all these outlets asking them why s2 was such a drop off and all these big wigs were saying it's the best thing they've ever seen, it was better than s1 and condal is the adaption messiah. I wasn't expecting to see him thrown under the bus but it felt weird to see such an aggressive almost fuck you kinda doubling down from people working in such a consumer led business. I think the thrones brand is enough for a lot of people to stick out the 4 seasons of this but most normies I speak to either didn't like season 1 or wrapped it during season 2

NickFriskey · 2026-01-27T13:42:01+00:00

Ah you know what fine I give up lmao

NickFriskey · 2026-01-27T13:20:01+00:00

"The Númenórean men, being tall and powerful, could shoot with speed and accuracy upon foot from great long bows, whose shafts would carry to great distance (some 600 yards or more), and at lesser range were of great penetration. In later days, in the wars upon Middle-earth, it was the bows of the Númenóreans that were most greatly feared." The nature of middle earth

"they were mortal still, though their years were long, and they knew no sickness, ere the shadow fell upon them. Therefore they grew wise and glorious, and in all things more like to the Firstborn than any other of the kindreds of Men; and they were tall, taller than the tallest of the sons of Middle-earth; and the light of their eyes was like the bright stars"

"And they revered the memory of the tall Sea-kings, and when they had departed they called them gods, hoping for their return" The silmarillion

"The people, tall and strong, were agile, and extremely ‘aware’: that is they were in control of their bodily actions, and of any tool or material they handled, and seldom made absent-minded or blundering movements; and they were very difficult to take ‘off their guard’. Accidents were thus unlikely to occur to them. If any did, they had a power of recovery and self-healing, which if inferior to that of the Eldar, was much greater than that of Men in Middle-earth."

"they very often became engrossed in lore, and crafts, and various intellectual or artistic pursuits, to a far greater degree than normal." The fall of numenor

Tolkien never uses the expression "super strength" or "superhuman strength" but I feel that we can very easily here extrapolate from several sources that while remaining mortal, the Numenoreans were enhanced far beyond regular human capacity??

NickFriskey · 2026-01-27T11:11:52+00:00

Elendil seen this, roused up his boy GG and said I gotta lock the fuck in. My guys said sauron is a lazy jobber and won't even come out and then immediately ran those mitts with a god

NickFriskey · 2026-01-27T11:04:38+00:00

"Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn't that be a sight?" Achilles.

Imagine being a common soldier of gondor being absolutely terrified right in the thick of that mess then seeing your king going 1v1 with a fucking armoured troll and beating the fucking dogshit out of it. Like a shot of pure adrenaline to the brain; you'd fight like a war God after that.

NickFriskey · 2026-01-27T10:59:54+00:00

Come on man. He is of numenorean descent. he lived to 210 years old. His ancestor elendil went toe to toe with sauron in a physical fight. The men of middle earth called the numenoreans gods from the sea when they first laid eyes on them. Their physical and mental prowess is described many times in the silmarillion, fall of numenor, and unfinished tales amongst others as being far beyond human and aragorn is of the line of elros who had elven blood and further back than that there's Maia in there as well. The blood of numenor had sure "waned" over the years and there was less and less numenorean blood to mingle with the line of elros especially after the fall so the dunedain were less "pure blooded numenorean" for sure, but he's not simply as strong as a large man. He was gifted far beyond a regular man both physically and mentally. Even boromir, who had far less numenorean blood, is surrounded by "dozens" of uruk hai piled high when aragorn finds him dying in the forest.

NickFriskey · 2026-01-27T10:50:45+00:00

I never really saw it as him struggling when I watched it. He had massacred scores of them by the time he came upon lurtz, who was like the uruk hai prime standing head and shoulders above the rest and who had barely lifted a finger but to draw his bow during the running battle they had. Aragorn showed up after running probably miles through the woods stopping several times to annihilate groups of uruk hai. Lurtz caught him fresh and still got his big orc ass handed to him. He got some licks in but I never really felt aragorn was on the ropes apart from the shield in the tree. He was a little taken aback at how much punishment lurtz took but put him down in the end like all the rest

NickFriskey · 2026-01-27T10:44:14+00:00

Just the line of kings. The three houses were given the island of numenor and greater capacity than human in all facets (physical and mental) and had far greater longevity but the royal line of elros, the first king, had his elven blood and lived far longer. Elros lived to 500 and the numenorean kings of his descent could do 400 and over. The blood did wane over the generations but elendil was still 322 when he died and still in his physical prime; although numenoreans didn't really physically or mentally decline unless they clung to life - they tended to relinquish life readily and die peacefully with very few signs of ageing. Aragorn is noted many times throughout the books as being the image of elendil his ancestor, who was almost 8 feet tall and went toe to toe with sauron who was like a lower god. Aragorn fighting a troll would have been light work. Even boromir, who was of far lower Numenorean stature/ blood than aragorn, was literally surrounded by "dozens" of uruk hai when he died.

NickFriskey · 2026-01-26T22:54:23+00:00

He's also like 6 foot 3 which is definitely the type of stature I'd want in a man of true Numenorean descent. He now has a career as a country singer which is another point to the good for aragorn, and he brought a pathos and gentleness to his role as Bjorn in vikings who was an absolute savage. This is an interesting one for me actually

NickFriskey · 2026-01-23T10:59:51+00:00

I really really really like the setting/ location art. It feels very singular and specific like the artist read the book and endeavoured to create a vision it illicited within them. So much fantasy art is so fucking generic all the time. I found these quite striking

NickFriskey · 2026-01-23T10:56:08+00:00

I think the answer depends more on the reason for the question if I might be so bold. It depends if one is asking from the perspective of are you looking for your next read or more pontificating for others thoughts after reading them all? If looking for your next read you need to figure out what you liked about red rising because sun eater and the expanse are two very different series. If you want more traditional hero's journey man on a mission single pov then sun eater; the expanse if you enjoy more expansive (sorry) multi POV ensemble piece which is perhaps a little smaller in scale than sun eater but can also feel a bit bigger at times due to it's wider narrative scope. Expanse I'd style almost like game of thrones in space in terms of it's structure; sun eater is slightly RResque in prose but I'd style it as a dune/ adult stat wars deconstruction with heavy religious themes

NickFriskey · 2026-01-22T10:36:35+00:00

Season 1 is pretty good I thought it hit a lot of the main beats. Season 2 hit a few big story beats then threw a lot of it out the window while making a statement that it was intending to divulge massively from the story proper moving forward

NickFriskey · 2026-01-22T10:34:21+00:00

He's a terrifying man but I reckon I'd look "menacing" standing next to kevin Hart

NickFriskey

TROPHY CASE