The Dresden Files

[justalurkr]

This has been on for weeks, and I have yet to comment. Hmmm.

Full disclosure: about a decade ago, I had a slim sliver of a pretension of "knowing" the author of the series, as in "being vaguely aquainted via an internet listserv in a way that is barely worth mentioning years later," and didn't like him. At present, I have no pretension whatsoever of knowing him, but from what I hear, one of us has outgrown the reason for me not liking him.

I mention it because that casual acquaintance did prejudice my opinion of the early books in the series, and I never got past the first few chapters of Grave Peril.

Given the usual atrocities committed in any book-to-TV adaptation, this may be a good thing. I remember, for example, doing a whole lot more "Who is this travesty they're calling Faramir?" than enjoying The Two Towers when that movie came out.

For example, I've read enough of the series to know that's not Bob. I know the story behind Bob from back when the series was, quite literally, a twinkle in its daddy's eye. There is a reason Bob is a skull on the desk and not a guy wandering around the room, looking all smoking hot and making smart remarks.


A creative writing teacher of some sort once told Jim Butcher that a writer should never have a character in his (or her) story that is no more than a "talking head." If you tell Jim Butcher he shouldn't have a talking head in his story, he's going to put a talking head in is story, and not even a proper head, but just a skull, the minimum head you can have and still talk, because he was that kind of jackass back then. If Jim Butcher puts a talking head in his story, it's going to be one of the most interesting and engaging characters, and really help the books sell like gang-busters, because Jim is that kind of jackass, too, and I don't see that changing.

Of course, there's a TV reason he is, and it's a really good one, the sort of reason that cuts short the lives of brilliant sci fi series everywhere: cost. For Bob-the-Skull to translate directly from the page to the screen as a flying, disembodied skull would sink the show before it got properly off the ground.

It also helps that Terrence Mann is smokin' hot, and pushes one of my favorite flavors of cracksnark. :)

Anyway, I'm grooving on this series as a highly entertaining hour of speculative fiction television, and am very sorry for anyone who's not on the off chance that the match-up between page and screen is just too distant.

I'd ramble on more, but really must be getting to work now.

Comments

[vamysteryfan.livejournal.com]

I watched a few episodes of the series and then decided to read the books. I really shouldn't have done that. I liked the characters on screen (love Terrance Mann). The disconnect between the book characters ad the TV characters is just too great (what have they done to Bianca). I have to get back to just watching it on its own merits

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Even not having read the whole series, I had concerns based on everything up to Grave Peril about how just a richly layered and densely textured bunch of stories was going to translate to 42 minutes of show with five commercial breaks for the good life.

I swear some of the print chapters have material for five or six eps in them.

[vamysteryfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, very easily. I just finished reading Death Masks and there's enough in there for half a season.

Liked your story about why Bob is a skull. The guy must be a serious smartass

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Heh. I don't know many of the early stories, but "I was there when" (as the geezers like to say,) Storm Front was still Semi-Automagic (his working title) and one of those manuscrips every self-respecting sci fi geek has rat-holed somewhere, usually as a way to convince family and friends that the author's obsession with all things weird and out there might have some real-world application.

Jim Butcher is one of the very few who not only published, but did very well at it.

By the way? Working title for Death Masks was alleged to have been Holy Sheet. A serious smartass, indeed. :D

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

I meant "later" stories, of course. I drifted away from that group about the same time I drifted out of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter fandom, where first we all met.