Having the girl be nude and half-nude all the damn time felt especially ridiculous because in pretty much every scene without her in it, the book was taking such great pains to establish how absolutely freezing cold it was and the necessity of bundling up to avoid frostbite and hypothermia. And then she’d appear, topless. It was so blatantly obvious that it was just for fanservice reasons because it didn’t even make fucking sense.
And word on her incredibly gross romance with Crozier, and the show making a great decision on making her an adult and cutting said romance.
I was also irritated at the book’s depiction of Crozier’s ex - she felt like a gold-digging stereotype straight out of an incel forum. The show improved on things here too - it kept the character and her place in Crozier’s backstory, but had a lot more empathy for her.
The depiction of homosexuality was another area where the show fixed things - in the book, the chief human antagonist, Hickey, was a gay man with a history of preying on children, until he’d found it more convenient to instead target mentally disabled adults, such as his current boyfriend/bodyguard. There’s another gay dude, and the second he’s introduced, the book goes off on a rant to let us know that he’s the good kind of homosexual, because he “never bragged of it,” and because he didn’t “bring his activities to sea,” and therefore he could be trusted not to be a pedophile. Unlike those guys who didn’t go celibate while out at sea for months or years on end, who are all predators, apparently.
Meanwhile, in the show, Hickey was still gay and still a villain, but the two weren’t linked. He wasn’t a child molester, his boyfriend wasn’t mentally disabled, and the show definitely didn’t suggest that such behaviour was usual amongst gay men regardless of whether they were celibate at sea or not. The other gay dude is still there, and the show felt no need to introduce him with “Hey, this is Bridgens, he’s gay - but don’t worry, he’s actually not a child molester.”
In the show, Bridgens is a nice normal dude who happens to be gay, Hickey is an evil little fucker who happens to be gay, and that’s all there is to it.
Having the girl be nude and half-nude all the damn time felt especially ridiculous because in pretty much every scene without her in it, the book was taking such great pains to establish how absolutely freezing cold it was and the necessity of bundling up to avoid frostbite and hypothermia. And then she’d appear, topless. It was so blatantly obvious that it was just for fanservice reasons because it didn’t even make fucking sense.
And word on her incredibly gross romance with Crozier, and the show making a great decision on making her an adult and cutting said romance.
I was also irritated at the book’s depiction of Crozier’s ex - she felt like a gold-digging stereotype straight out of an incel forum. The show improved on things here too - it kept the character and her place in Crozier’s backstory, but had a lot more empathy for her.
The depiction of homosexuality was another area where the show fixed things - in the book, the chief human antagonist, Hickey, was a gay man with a history of preying on children, until he’d found it more convenient to instead target mentally disabled adults, such as his current boyfriend/bodyguard. There’s another gay dude, and the second he’s introduced, the book goes off on a rant to let us know that he’s the good kind of homosexual, because he “never bragged of it,” and because he didn’t “bring his activities to sea,” and therefore he could be trusted not to be a pedophile. Unlike those guys who didn’t go celibate while out at sea for months or years on end, who are all predators, apparently.
Meanwhile, in the show, Hickey was still gay and still a villain, but the two weren’t linked. He wasn’t a child molester, his boyfriend wasn’t mentally disabled, and the show definitely didn’t suggest that such behaviour was usual amongst gay men regardless of whether they were celibate at sea or not. The other gay dude is still there, and the show felt no need to introduce him with “Hey, this is Bridgens, he’s gay - but don’t worry, he’s actually not a child molester.”
In the show, Bridgens is a nice normal dude who happens to be gay, Hickey is an evil little fucker who happens to be gay, and that’s all there is to it.