I keep saying this about all the various IPs that are being sucked dry and picked clean at the moment: THE ORIGINAL STILL EXISTS. The Lord of the Rings books are still available if Rings of Power makes you salty. 2D animated Disney films are still out there if you hate the remakes. Most of the HP movies were garbage but my teen Potterfag ass did not care because the books were better anyway. If you hate Disney Star Wars*... ignore them. Disney has no power over you.
*Star Wars is a fraught example because George Lucas wanted to "improve" the originals, but... my point stands
I can see your point, perhaps, but I am going to have to push back against it somewhat.
The original might well still exist, but that doesn't matter if the adaptation eclipses the original in the popular imagination.
Admittedly, this is a personal example, so I may be a bit too invested in this particular instance, and I
really hope that this doesn't just read like me being a sad fucking nerd angry that people are doing their autistic special interest wrong.
But I'm a fan of The Boys comic series by Garth Ennis, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone else who's actually read that comic online nowadays, because all people know is the TV show. The comic
still exists, but people don't read it.
In fact, back when the show started up, there seemed to be this weird push online (primarily from zoomers who weren't around at the time to have read the comic firsthand) to convince people that the comic wasn't very good, ackshually, and that the show was way better.
Now, the comic is certainly an acquired taste and isn't for everyone, but I got the distinct impression that a lot of the opinions people had of it weren't formed by people reading the comic and drawing their own conclusions, but just taking things that they'd heard online as gospel, and parroting those opinions. The old version was bad, but they fixed it. You can tell, because they say retarded shit like this, in YouTube comment sections. And get 12K fucking likes for it.
I mean, Jesus, tell me you've never read The Boys without telling me you've never read The Boys.
The Boys TV show is now in its fourth season, has basically completely departed from the source material entirely. Plot elements from the comic have been abandoned or retconned or ignored entirely, new characters of the showrunner's own invention have been added, and the show on the whole has become little more than the showrunner's personal anti-Trump soapbox.
The fact that this version so appeals to the likes of Jessie Gender, who can release videos with the title 'How People Misunderstand The Boys' while
himself misunderstanding The Boys because of the butchered, sanitised version he's been presented with in the TV show is just salt in the wound.
But that's the version your average person thinks of when they think of The Boys now, and it's really sad and disappointing, as someone who read and loved those original comic books when they came out.
The Boys (TV show) exists, AND The Boys (comic book) exists, but I am now incapable of talking about one without fans of the other thinking I'm talking about their thing, and when they realise I'm not, wanting to talk about, and in fact, a lot of the time,
insisting on talking about their thing instead.
