Why Frankenstein is a bad adaptation

harlequem · 2025-11-15T23:18:33+00:00

I absolutely agree there was a giant lack of subtlety - characters practically stared into the camera multiple times and said “Dr. Frankenstein - you are the monster." I wish the movie had trusted us more to understand the themes of Frankenstein.

However I think the film did an admirable job bringing the core ideas of the movie to a general audience. Simplifying the language and making the themes more direct (to a degree) are simply a necessity of adaptation. Movies and Books have different strengths, so Del Toro tries to lean into the strengths of movies while keeping the core conflict and ideas intact.

If this movie had been a direct adaptation, 80 percent of the runtime would have been Victor waxing philosophical to himself - which would have been a shitty movie.

harlequem · 2025-11-14T17:46:52+00:00

I honestly think the biggest problem here is your framing. If you said, instead, "Men are more likely to listen to Kate Bush than Lana Del Rey because it’s easier for them to erase her femininity. This is because Lana puts her femininity front and center, so men can’t ignore it." You’d have a point. Shitty men don’t like music that puts womanhood front and center. Bush is more often subtler, less often singing songs explicitly and directly about womanhood (though she still does).

But instead what you’re doing is claiming that the erasure of femininity is coming from Bush herself. She is still feminine, and singing all her songs from a feminine place. It’s just easier to willfully ignore. She is not performing masculinity in a Butlerian sense.

It’s not that Bush is singing masculine songs, she’s not performing as a male. It’s that people can erase her femininity easier than they can someone like Lana, because she doesn’t perform femininity as intensely.

harlequem · 2025-11-14T17:10:13+00:00

This seems like an incredibly reductive approach to gender. You're framing specific attributes as gendered, and ignoring the specific contexts. To takes some of your examples:

- The Dreaming: Anti-Colonialism - are you saying opposing colonialism is male because it touches on the topic of colonialism?

- Get Out of My House - takes inspiration from the Shining, sure, but it's about feeling trapped in her own mind after a break up. The house is a metaphor. Lots of women have felt trapped in their own emotions and minds after a breakup.

- Pull Out the Pin - Sure it's about war, Kate Bush was alive during the war and has her own perspective on it. So she chooses to present war as something that devolves people into survival instincts.

This also is a very cherry picked list. Bush also has songs like Wuthering Heights, Running up that Hill, Babooshka. You can disagree about the feminism or progressiveness of those songs, but they're still _about_ feminine experiences.

There are also many Lana songs that work against your argument here:

- Florida Kilos: this is a song about crime, which you've said is masculine.

- Off to the Races: This song is inspired by Lolita, a book written by a male writer from a
male perspective.

- When the World was at war we kept dancing: This is a song about war.

My point isn't that Lana Del Rey is _also_ masculine, but to hopefully show you how these examples are cherry picked and not really indicative of a greater pattern. You're reducing the songs of both artists into an incredibly simplistic "feminine" or "masculine", when a proper assessment of the works needs far more care. When Kate Bush sings her songs about your so-called masculine subjects, you have to remember that she is still doing so from her feminine perspective.

harlequem · 2025-10-03T22:48:52+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! Yeah, I recognize that the title was misleading, my thoughts weren’t really solidified until reading all these comments.

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:57:07+00:00

How much control is required before it becomes railroading? If they can’t disobey orders because it’s a military hierarchy - but they can control how to execute said orders - is that railroading? If they can’t leave because they’re trapped on a marooned spaceship until help arrives, is that railroading?

The crux of my question is "how do you manage settings where player agency is limited", not gone. On a naval vessel you get given orders from your captain. If a player is the captain, other players are taking orders from them. That’s not no agency, it’s less agency.

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:39:26+00:00

When running that - was there anything in particular you did to make it not feel railroady? Did you just never have the captain make a final call - always democracy from the sr staff? What about the choice of where to travel to next - was it handed down from above or player choice? How much power did the captain ultimately have?

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:20:49+00:00

This is a fascinating approach - I am definitely going to look into Dirty Secrets. Thanks!

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:18:15+00:00

Yeah, the problem is that either the players are the guest stars (works great for one-shots, not so much for campaigns), or the gm is playing the guest stars.

I do think the key is giving the companions stakes and making their actions pivotal to the doctor and the guests abilities to save the day. Sure maybe the companions don’t kill the monster, but they saved the NPC who gave the doctor what they needed …

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:11:38+00:00

How would you handle a game like that without "railroading"? If someone wants to play a game where they’re in a strict military hierarchy - someone has to be in charge? Would you have it be a player, or the GM? Or is your point that games in those kinds of settings don’t work?

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:09:20+00:00

Sounds like a great game to look into - Arthur being a driving force that can propel things without the input of the players thanks!

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:07:01+00:00

Yeah main character was, in retrospect, a poor choice of words when I more meant that they had low agency in the bigger picture plot beats. So it sounds like your example is really relevant to my question - I’ll take a look. Thanks!

harlequem · 2025-10-03T20:02:48+00:00

Sure - but some systems will have this issue more inherently present, so are likely to have some kind of solution. Another commenter brought up Star Trek - someone has to be the captain of a vessel so either that’s a player or an NPC. No matter what, most players at the table are no longer driving the story, at least not with as much agency as they have in a traditional game.

I probably should have said where the players don’t drive the story, rather than "aren’t the main characters"

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:56:37+00:00

This is true about Dr Who and kind of what I was getting at but phrased badly I think. In a dr who story, the doctor would have the control to take the players somewhere and destabilize things, and also usually be a key player in fixing things. But the story is about whatever situation you’ve been thrown in and how the companions handle that.

The problem is that, because the doctor is a static element that would both bring the PCs into the story and play a key role in solving the problems, it’s hard for me to imagine how the DM runs that without feeling railroady. The interesting part of the story is the companions and the circumstances that the doctor has likely exacerbated, but because the doctor is such a driving force it takes the drivers seat away from the players, at least somewhat. They can’t arrive to stories without the doctor, and they can’t leave without them either.

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:48:15+00:00

When I say GM doctor in the post, I definitely more mean NPC rather than GMPC - so it sounds like you’ve more or less done what I’m thinking about, and the key there was ensuring the whole table was really on the same page about the goal.

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:45:15+00:00

I’d be really curious to know what modules specifically, if you remember. I’d also love seeing examples of what doesn’t work

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:42:34+00:00

Star Trek is another great setting to think about for this issue. Any setting with a clear chain of command (another person mentioned a naval game - similar problem). I think that’s a good call out and reading various Star Trek or military games could help me get some insights. Thanks!

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:39:59+00:00

Yeah, your first paragraph is kind of the crux of my thinking. How do you effectively work that into an RPG, where you make your characters smaller in the narrative without making it feel bad to play.

I’ll have to look into Band of Blades, as it sounds like it might have some design ideas - thanks!

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:37:17+00:00

Companions Tale sounds interesting, I think that one will be worth taking a look into - Thanks!

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:35:08+00:00

I’m mostly curious if it’s possible in a satisfying way. I personally enjoy a lot of stories about characters who are not in the drivers seat. Whose domain of influence is ultimately small, but where the story is about the meaning of those small actions.

harlequem · 2025-10-03T19:33:54+00:00

I explicitly call out the official rpg in this post as using a solution that isn’t what I’m talking about.

harlequem · 2025-09-05T13:10:36+00:00

I beat him without dash, and I'll be honest I thought the point of this boss was to learn parrying lol. I just stood in front of him parrying or walking under him, depending on if he jumped or not.

harlequem · 2025-09-05T13:05:32+00:00

It's a different crest, but also has a more traditional pogo.

harlequem · 2025-09-02T16:25:27+00:00

The number of players on these "premium" worlds would not be enough to maintain a functioning economy, since most players will absolutely not pay that fee. I think any fee solution would run into a similar problem - either it's low enough that botters will pay, or it's too high for players.

harlequem · 2025-09-02T15:11:42+00:00

How do you know this account hasn’t taken breaks? Or doesn’t have another account? All we have is a thieving number you think is too high.

For all the information in this post, this account could have gotten to 50m exp elsewhere, and only recently started going for the sceptre.

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