Comic for Monday 1/9 (Early High Res) (Patreon)

It's always a little complicated when something you love is translated into a new medium. If it's pretty faithful, you feel like you're part of an exclusive club of people who knows things that people just discovering it don't, and if it's different, you're potentially judging the new medium against the old, usually with a bias towards the old. The new medium doesn't get a chance to stand on its own.

I'm not that bad about it, I don't talk through shows or movies or anything, but I've definitely caught myself drifting to one of side of the equation or the other. For example, I distinctly recall watching Game of Thrones with my wife, and when the Red Wedding finally arrived, I probably spent less time watching it than I did giving her intense sideways glances so I could see how she reacted to what I knew was coming.

I wasn't trying to be disruptive about "being in the know", but by the time Jon Snow was murdered, she was tuned into my interest in her interest as a sign that shit was about to go down.

Fortunately that show eventually went off-book, and then we could just watch from the same level each week: having no idea how they were going to fuck it up the ending even more.

On the flip side of this, as we've already established, I haven't played the Witcher yet. So when we watched that show, I was afforded the ability to gauge things without preconceived notions (I had some information gleaned from context about the games over the years), but I wasn't pre-attached to certain performances or stories or character appearances. I could just watch the show as the show. And when she turned to me to say "was that character in the game?" I could just shrug and reply "fuck if I know."

Whether it's a book, or a game or a show or a comic or whatever, we've probably all watched something we like adapted to a new medium. And all those attached feelings are certainly natural, but we should endeavor to not let them ruin other people's enjoyment of the new medium.

Just let them like the thing (even if we know Pedro Pascal's beard isn't beardy enough*).

*yes, that is apparently an actual complaint people are lodging.