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I wasn’t talking about pollution, I was talking about US TV being viewable by too much of SW ON. :wink:Then again, there sure are a damned lot of refineries just south of Sarnia on the St. Claire river.

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Unfortunately, this is not new in Canada. Companies have a long history of leveraging their power to kill media stories, this one just happens to have a war with fishermen (their own East Coast powerhouse) and the Streisand affect. Most times we never even know.

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Thats cuz we don’t actually have “free speech” up here. A thing people forget, a lot.

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I LITERALLY GASPED OUTLOUD AND GOT GOOSEBUMPS OMG OMG OMG

IF YOU DON’T READ GUY GAVRIEL KAY WHY NOT?

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For those of us without Facebook? What’s the summary?

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All right, this press release went out yesterday, bit of a holiday season present. We have Breaking News, as they say. Short version: I’ve entered a development agreement with the really impressive production company that did “Orphan Black” - to produce The Fionavar Tapestry as a television series.

There are many stages to any project as big as this one will be, but I’m genuinely happy - these are really good people, several of them with a personal passion for the trilogy (including Kris Holden-Ried, who was all-in some time ago, as it worked its way through the ‘process’).

Here’s the press release. You know I’ll keep you all posted as events unfold.


Boat Rocker Studio’s Temple Street secures television rights to international bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Fionavar Tapestry

Toronto, Canada – December 18, 2017 - Temple Street, a division of Boat Rocker Studios, has secured the television rights to international bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Fionavar Tapestry. Published as three volumes in the mid-1980s (The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire
and The Darkest Road), the trilogy has sold more than a million copies around the world, and has been dubbed by The Guardian one of the classics of modern fantasy. New York Times bestselling writer Brandon Sanderson has called Kay “the greatest living author of fantasy literature.”

The Tapestry tells the tale of five young men and women who are brought to Fionavar – the first of all worlds. Told they are simply to be guests for the 50th anniversary celebration of a
king’s ascension to the throne, each of the five discovers they have a greater, dangerous role to play as they’re thrust into a war between the forces of good and evil, whose outcome will affect all worlds, including our own.

Kay draws upon a variety of creatures and mythologies, predominantly Celtic and Norse, to create the world of Fionavar, and the saga also features the legendary story of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, heroes of medieval literature.

“Guy’s work is exhilarating and cathartic, and we can’t wait to share this epic story with audiences around the world,” say Boat Rocker’s co-executive chairmen David Fortier and Ivan
Schneeberg. “Given the current appetite for big budget, high-fantasy adaptations, the timing for Fionavar couldn’t be better. We’re excited to start assembling the creative team to help realize our vision.”

“I’m truly happy that David and Ivan and the impressive team at Temple Street are the ones bringing my trilogy to television. I know The Tapestry has had a powerful impact on readers – and on other writers – and that’s part of why I’ve been careful with the rights. I’m excited and anticipate this adaptation will bring new people to Fionavar, while rewarding longstanding fans,” says Guy Gavriel Kay.

Fortier and Schneeberg will executive produce for Temple Street (Orphan Black, Killjoys), along with Kris Holden-Ried (Vikings, Tudors, Lost Girl). “The magic of Fionavar transcends the page. It’s a clarion call to that which is best in all of us, and it’s an honour to be bringing the emotional poetry of Guy’s books to the screen,” says Kris Holden-Ried.

Temple Street’s Senior Vice President Kerry Appleyard and Senior Development Producer Lesley Grant will oversee series adaptation for the studio, and Boat Rocker Rights will control
worldwide rights

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I really like GGK, but Fionavar is one of his earliest works and, although it had gorgeous imagery and writing, I recall it as being fairly problematic. Also, I would rather they adapted the Sarantine Mosaic or The Lions of Al-Rassan.

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Fionavar?

Not Tigana?

Or The Last Light of the Sun?

Or Under Heaven?

or Sailing to Sarantium?

Or A Song for Arbonne?

Out of all of Kay’s works, they’re adapting Fionavar?!

Seriously, though. You ask “If you’re not a Guy Gavriel Kay fan, why not?” - I almost wasn’t, because I read Fionavar. It’s thoroughly derivative of The Silmarillion (which Kay helped edit), it’s sexed up to the point of overcompensating for Tolkien’s lack of such, and every possible loose end is tied up into a Love-Actually-Rowan-Atkinson-style package that leaves nothing to the imagination. I closed that cover with the firm intention of never reading anything by the same author again.

I then had the good fortune of taking a college course that set Tigana as one of the books being studied, and I realized that Kay can actually write, and I started seeking out other books he’d written, all of which are so much better than Fionavar (except for Ysabel, which is only somewhat better than Fionavar).

Colour me disappointed. Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy for Kay; he deserves to have one of his stories adapted for the screen. Any story other than Fionavar, though, would have been a better choice.

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Because its a Toronto production house, the thing is set in Toronto (in the non-Fionavar bits) and Guy is a Toronto boy?

I don’t care what you or @cheem1 say, Fionavar is my fave. Paul on the summer tree makes me weep like a baby every time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love them all, especially Tigana, but Fionavar is the first of all worlds, so its apt to me. :slight_smile:

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Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.

It’s wrong, but you are entitled to it. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Still gonna love the books.
I love all his books.
Even Ysabel.
Sorry not sorry.
Still super fucking excited this is being made, don’t watch it if you don’t want to. I’ll watch it twice just for you!

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Oh, I’ll watch it. I’ll even reread the books. They’re full of imagery that sticks with me even now, years after the fact and it’d be awesome to see some of those play out on the screen.

But the problems stick with me too. For example, all the protagonists are white, although they’re from Toronto (which may have played fine in the 80s, but not for me in the 90s, when I read the books, and certainly not now), playing out the role of saviours of all the worlds through their noble sacrifices[1]. I hope there’s some retooling of the characters that doesn’t just involve casting $BURLY_SAMOAN as Dave Martin, rugby fullback and honorary Dalrei plainsrunner.

[1] One of which involves carrying a child who is a product of rape to term and raising him. I found Jennifer’s arc disturbing, dissonant and ultimately unconvincing and I’m not alone, I’m sure. Im interested in seeing if they can make it work on TV, but have serious reservations.

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Re: your spoiler - I see you don’t watch Law & Order SUV. Cuz thats literally Olivia Bensens’ back story. And it is wholly believable. :wink:

I found Jennifer’s arc super disturbing, but not unconvincing at all. I found utterly too believable hence why so disturbing. Also messing around with Arthurian legend is all good in my books.

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Oh, don’t get me wrong here, it’s not that I didn’t find Jennifer’s raising of her rapist’s child and all that came with it unbelievable (it was believable and hence disturbing), it’s her “happy ending”, that I couldn’t accept (hence the dissonance).. It’s been almost 20 years(!) since I read the books, so maybe I’ll see things differently upon rereading.

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I’m going to be optimistic and let the Temple Street peeps update it for a modern telling. :slight_smile:

And I don’t mind “happy endings” in so much as someone that went through what Jennifer went through can have a happy ending… LOL

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If I remember, it wasn’t that Jennifer got a happy ending that bothered me. It was that the whole Arthurian trio did. And not just any happy ending; their ending was practically idyllic (see: Rowan Atkinson wrapped-in-a-bow comment above). They literally sail off into the sunset.1

I understand that they broke out of what amounts to a version of Hell, of having to live through the same story, the same betrayals, the same tragic ending, over and over again. And I like that as a concept.

But their ending’s not presented as the characters choosing to change their nature to escape their past mistakes: it’s more like an episode of Oprah: “And you get a happy ending! And you get a happy ending! Everybody gets happy endings!” It’s an effect disconnected from its cause.

That kind of redemptive, on-a-new-path moment should feel like the beginning of a story. Take the true ending of The Dark Tower, for instance. When Roland climbs the Dark Tower, he is sent back to the beginning of the story, but with the Horn of Eld, a token of some power that he had lost long before the point he was sent back to. And the reader is left thinking, “What kind of difference will this make? How will this small alteration change what will happen next?”

The ending of Fionavar, on the other hand, leaves the reader thinking, “Welp. That story’s over.” Particularly for those characters I’m talking about, but for most of the others, too.

Contrast with the ending of Kay’s Tigana. The book ends with three men seeing a riselka, and there are so many ways that the story could continue from there.

I have no problem reading stories where damaged people find happiness, and I certainly have no particular fondness for downer endings. But a happy ending for a damaged character should feel like said ending is the start of the damage being repaired. It should feel hopeful, not conclusive. And for Fionavar to cheat like that, and take some of the most damaged and tragic characters in the entirety of English literature, paper over their damage and flaws, and shove them into the sunset with an impossibly happy and conclusive ending…

It’s a disservice to the characters, it’s a disservice to the reader, and it’s (if you couldn’t tell) one of the biggest problems I have with Fionavar.

1"Then it seemed to those that watched from the plain that that ship began to rise into the night, not following the curving of the earth but tracking a different path" feels particularly like it was ripped directly from Tolkien.

Ripped from or an homage?

I never felt like they got a happy ending, so much as they got an ending.

Just like Frodo. :wink:

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So… I am very hot and cold on fantasy. When I like it, I like it lots, but I don’t read a lot of it.

This bit twigged with me though. How would it compare to, say, Neverwhere?

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Thank you.

World needs more CanCon.

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Conservative “media advisor to the Ontario PC Party” gets smacked down by Ottawa police, just for being a conservative.Twitter commenters show little sympathy.

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