Dead Poets Society

Hi. I originally wrote this book review and movie comparison for Goodreads but I discovered that it has a character limit so here we are. I'm posting this 6k word not-proofread monstrosity here instead. And I'll probably post my detailed book reviews here from now on in general. You cannot supress my thoughts 😡😡

If anyone cares, this is my Goodreads account. Anyway, onto the review. 

★☆☆☆☆

This is mostly just going to be an angry rant, for which I have to apologize. I’m going to try to structure it and make it cohesive to the best of my ability.

After reading this book and subsequently realizing that it is an adaptation of the movie, I decided to rewatch the movie in order to freshen up my memory of what exactly this book got inaccurately so I can tear it to shreds. I am seething. I am going to nit-pick every single poor choice this author made.

I originally spent the first, like, 3 paragraphs of this section explaining why this review has 2 stars instead of 1 (notice how that's not the case anymore?), mostly by praising the final cave scene and explaining how it was surprisingly thematically meaningful for how symbolically deaf this book has been so far, and how implementing it was a great choice on the author’s part, as well as being amazing adaptation-wise and seemingly the only scene that the author has actually out work into adapting instead of just transcribing it, because it managed to build atmosphere and convey some of the elements of Neil’s death scene that couldn't be adapted through mere description (which this book doesn't adapt properly even when that would be possible, anyway) due to their visual nature, and masterfully doing this through the movie’s main medium of expression—poetry, in this case specifically lyrical poetry.

But then. I looked up Todd’s poem to see if it was original work or belonged to someone else, to know if I should also praise the author for composing it or not, and found out that entire fucking scene is one of the many deleted scenes that this book implements (which I was going to praise it for as well because some of them—like Todd and Neil rehearsing by the dock, or the eating left-handed thing, are very important scenes and I would've also preferred they were in the finished movie itself), so safe to say I lowered my rating to 1 star because not even that can be acredited to the author.

In the movie’s case, I believe it was the better choice to delete it because such a big contributor to the impact and atmosphere of Neil’s suicide is that you’re alone with him for such a long, slow-paced and visually meaningful scene. In the movie, breaking that scene apart to juxtapose it with this one would've taken away from it instead of enhancing it; in a book adaptation (not particularly this one, though. I genuinely don't think the author thought this far ahead, especially considering that most, if not all, of the deleted scenes are in this book) keeping that scene in does the setting a favor because the visual elements and the uneasiness of being alone with a character slowly traversing a dark house to eery music while constantly being cast in shadows and lacking a clear view of his face until he takes out the gun is not something that can simply be described in a book. The juxtaposition there serves the purpose of the cinematography a book doesn't have access to. Though, again, I have no reason to believe this author thought that far ahead.

Anyway. I’ll copy-paste my original final statement to said praise because I still believe it holds relevant after that context: This author doesn’t seem to have any concept of what slow-paced means. Scenes like this need to be slow-paced because they are so reliant on atmosphere, and building atmosphere through text is a very deliberate and intentional process. When the other DPS members actually get to singing “Are you washed in the blood?” that helps at building atmosphere, but it cannot do the entire job on its own. The descriptions of the steps to Neil’s suicide are still so cut and dry and devoid of emotion (like most of the book is) that not even that really works correctly.

And, lastly for the… positive aspects, let's say, this book does have some occasional clever dialogue that isn’t in the movie. Like Mr. McAllister’s quip about how if you want to raise an atheist, you should give him a very strict religious upbringing (not sure how fitting this is about that particular character, but the dialogue itself and the place where it was inserted was veryy nice). Another one at the top of my head is Neil and Todd’s “Penny for your thoughts?” “They’re not even worth that much,” but this one is even more meh because I don’t think they were at sufficiently close when this was inserted for Todd to feel free making this joke with Neil. Whatever, though. It’s not that big of a deal and, again, the interaction was nice.

Okay. Not to get into the bajillion criticisms I have. I’m going to try to categorize these into sections, in no particular order.

1✧ - The treatment of the (already few) female characters

a) Chris

— TW for sexual assault
I immediately sensed something was wrong when our first introduction to Chris is “a beautiful girl in a short tennis skirt”. This description rubbed me the wrong way for soo many reasons. This book lacks physical descriptions in general, which made it severly difficult to differentiate between the characters even when I did watch the movie before (albeit 1 year before reading this). But still. The one physical characteristic she gets is short tennis skirt.

This is made even worse by the fact that, while we don’t see Chris’ entire outfit in the movie, it is visible in the deleted scene that's also added in the book, and the skirt she’s wearing goes down to her fucking knees. Not to mention that it’s not even a tennis skirt 😒😒

So. This literally means. That this author shortened Chris’s skirt, and then proceeded to make that her defining introductory trait. It’s even mentioned that Knox “runs his eyes over her athletic figure” and “can’t stop thinking about her legs” or something like that.

This misogyny and oversexualization of Chris not only perseveres to her detriment, but also to Knox’s detriment. In an attempt at shitty humor at the expense of women’s personhood because that's the only thing the author thinks boys find funny and relatable, I would suppose, Knox’s love for Chris becomes very creepy, very over the top, falls into obsession, which also ruins his character. He is barely allowed any dialogue or even thought that doesn't center Chris. And it gets veryyy creepy (and annoying!) very quick. Yes, in the movie she's still the main facet of his conflict, but he’s not being some mindlessly horny caveman about it.

This brings me to the worst case of both Chris and Knox absolutely getting fucked over by this misogyny—the party scene. Chris is being sexualized in this scene even before Knox gets to her because the author decided to have her making out with Chet instead of just laying on the couch presumably because of tiredness, like she does in the movie. But it all gets worse when Knox fucking. Decides that he’s going to “seize the breast” and takes advantage of the fact that Chris is too drunk and engrossed in her make out session with Chet in order to start groping her while she thinks her boyfriend is doing it. He doesn't take his hand away even when it’s obvious that he’s going to
get caught because Chet doesn't understand what Chris is talking about when she tells him “not to stop”, and he doesn't even. He doesn't even get caught because of that, he gets caught because he drops his glass?????

And Chris still protects him when Chet tries to beat him up?? And then Chris and Knox’s relationship follows it’s course from the movie, perhaps being even more romantic because at some point (AFTER that scene) the narrator says that “Chris is starting to become infatuated with him too”. So, like, what the fuck. And what even was the purpose of escalating this except being gross.

It’s even more ironic because this author cut out the like, what, 3 cuss words from the movie. But then she goes and unnecessarily adds this sexual scene and another one which I’ll be detailing in a bit.

For even more comparison, in the movie, Chris is generally very bubbly, soft-spoken and quite likeable. Her relationship with Chet is quite simple and innocent, they literally only kiss on screen once. The movie-equivalent of the party SA scene is Chris laying down on the couch and Knox kissing her forehead.

In the book, she really gives the vibes of your average dumb cheerleader. Outside of the whole “short tennis skirt” fiasco, in her introduction scene both her and Knox seem dumber. Knox seems to have lost his ability to speak upon seeing her “athletic figure” and instead of them actually having a conversation, she asks Knox if he’s here to see Chet 3 times while giggling (to which Knox doesn't reply because, again, he’s lost his ability to speak upon seeing her. this scene is SO frustratingly written), and when Knox mistakes her for Mrs. Danburry she doesn't even get to be shocked and refute it, or have any human reaction at all, because she’s sidelined. In the adaptation of the deleted scene, Ginny is even given a dialogue line where she states that the only reason they want the old car is to “go parking” while blushing which 1) unsolicited, nobody asked 2) this also messes with Ginny’s character (as little established as there is about her) because in the movie scene she keeps rolling her eyes at Knox’s reactions to Chris and that’s about it, but here she feels inclined to?? Say this shit for some reason?? And she’s embarrassed about it???

Despite Chris and Knox’s relationship in the movie still not being very deep, and my opinion of it still being pretty bad because they have no chemistry and they barely know each other, at the very least it’s a pretty standard romance plot, and Chris is treated like an actual person (as much as she can be in her limited screen time) instead of a sex object, and Knox’s infatuation with her, while still being based on something superficial like beauty, doesn't feel like it sums up to him mindlessly drooling over her every second of every day. It’s very clicheic and bland and I don't like it but, God, at least it’s not whatever misogynistic character slaughter this book has going on.

b) Tina and Gloria

This book really can’t resist clinging onto and ruining every single female character, can it? Even if they're literally episodic characters without depth to begin with.

This book makes them a lot dumber and sexualizes them, of course. Firstly, the author feels the need to mention that they’re 20 when their age isn't confirmed in the movie. The DPS boys are 17, and while a 3 year age gap isn't weird in itself, the maturity difference between 20 and 17 is big enough to make it weird. Then, they’re made to be a lot clingier, being all over Charlie and constantly calling him cute and stuff. And when Charlie recites them their poems, the author made Charlie forget the goddamn line and look to a book behind his back 💀 Is that supposed to be funny? That these girls are made out to be so stupid that they don’t notice a guy literally reading a poem out of a book in front of them and then claiming he made it? 😐😐😐 You got the whole squad laughing, wow.

Even worse. It’s very much implied that the only thing Charlie wants out of these women is sex, but because of the poetry they believe he sees them as more than objects, and that’s also played off as a joke and it’s just so sad. He tries to kiss one of them and she dodges and goes on this sentimental tangent that he’s the only guy that ever saw her, and that what they have going on is better than sex because it’s romance and Charlie is all exasperated because he didn't get his kiss. Not to mention that the book makes her out to be oblivious to his intentions to kiss her AND that she says all this from some guy reading her someone else’s poetry and pretending he made it on the fly. It genuinely pisses me off how media like this constantly seems to ridicule and make fun of women for actually wanting someone to treat them like people and love them for who they are instead of just wanting them for sex. And also the way in which it ridicules them by implying that women are inherently shallow and there isn’t anything about them that's wort being known and loved because they’re so easily impressed by these kinds of superficial romantic gestures made with the same objectifying intent that said woman is trying to condemn, as if trying to say that they’re stupid and easy to trick.

c) Ginny

So, this book decides to make her a more important character. Not very important, but her name is mentioned more and she's stated to be playing Hermia in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and she has a bit more screen time, so to speak. It also mentions that she is 15, for the record, and, in general, her portrayal in that deleted scene from
both the book and movie, she appears to be very little girl-like.

The purpose of this newly acquired screentime? Well, pairing her with Charlie, of course! And, again, of course, she recognizes his infatuation with her at a glance and their eyes meet across the auditorium full of hundreds of people and it is as if she’s playing for him and when the show ends he approaches her and they stare deeply into each other eyes with so much meaning after having first seen each other hours ago at most!!! Isn't it wonderful when female characters only exist for the purpose of their male love interest?

Murder me.

d) Mr. Keating

Of course, I don’t mean that the work has become misogynistic towards Mr. Keating, but that the work has made him misogynistic.

In the actual movie, Keating has one throwaway line about how words were created to “woo women”, which is very clearly a joke. This book takes than and runs a MILE with it.

The worst and most prominent example of this—Keating’s pop quiz.

After holding an out of character and entirely thematically missplaced rant about how to lie to an university that you read a book, he decides that his students need some courses into keeping focused for once they get to college.

How does he do this? Well, naturally, he makes the students take a pop quiz and he puts a slideshow of hypersexualized women on the video projector. The first photo is described to be a photo of a girl wearing a skirt, bending down to retrieve a pencil with her panties being visible. The boys are described to be drooling over it.

Then he rolls on to various pictures, out of which some are said to be?? Nude greek statuess???? How fucking deprived do you have to be to be turned on by a goddamn greek statue. And on top of that, man, I just love it when people sexualize artistic nudity!! 😍

What the fuck.

Genuinely what was this author thinking. I’m genuinely perplexed that the author is even a woman, the internalized misogyny is deep with this one. Or maybe she was trying to appeal to the male gaze and thought this was the only way to do it? That your average boy laughs at jokes that bring down and ridicule and sexualize women at every step? That your average boy reverts to a horny ape at the sight of a girl? Did she think this made the work relatable? Did she not consider for a single second how harmful this shit is? She is one step away from writing “breasted boobily”.

(And Knox is said to have written “Chris” over and over on his quiz paper, for the record. Isn't that great?)

On top of this, in the scene where Neil goes to talk to Keating about his dad, in the book, his friends are the ones to put him up to it (which ruins some important character work because it was relevant that Neil goes of his own volition due to his idealization of and trust for Keating), and the only purpose for that seems to be getting there before Keating, having Charlie invite himself in and read a melodramatic love letter that Keating wrote for a woman (that one that he was writing for in the movie too but this is such a different scenario?? In the movie, not only did we not get told that what he was writing was more of the same pseudo-poetic slop that Charlie was doing to Gloria and Tina, but it also seemed so much more genuinely sentimental there). Then when Keating catches him, he doesn't get mad and says “A woman is a cathedral, boys, worship one at every chance you get,” which is not objectifying or anything, as per the theme of this book.

2✧ - Lack of emotional value and meaning

I’ve already talked about this basically everywhere in this review so I hope this section ends up short-ish, but I cannot stress enough how rigid this writing is.

The problem already begins with the narrator. Making this book’s narrator 3rd person omnipotent was an AWFUL choice. This story would work best as 1st person or 3rd person limited POV. Particularly Neil or Todd POV, or switching between the two (Neil POV is kind of mandatory before and during his suicide scene, but the movie itself does seem quite Todd-centric at times, so I believe switching would be best. And alternate POV works best with 3rd limited in my opinion, so there you have it. Was that so hard?) with some Knox POV during the party.

3rd person omnipotent is probably the MOST detached from the character’s emotions a narrator can be. This kind of narrator knows everything about all the characters at any given time, and therefore focusing on any particular character’s emotions while still being aware and communicating all the other’s, just in a more vague manner, feels very off and biased (this could work for very particular situations, but this isn't one of them). The only other option is going into depth about every character's emotions, which would be very overbearing and, frankly, quite useless. So the main thing this kind of narrator is used for is very surface-level character work. AKA not in something character-centric like DPS.

So, of course, this leads to the reader feeling very detached from the characters, and most importantly, from Neil and Todd, whom you’re supposed to sympathize with the most so the ending, you know, actually hits.

On top of this, the dialogue, even when it isn't transcribed word for word, is literally just slapped on there? The dialogue tags are bland and very basic and don’t communicate any of the necessary nuances of these dialogue lines. This makes the characters seem a lot angrier, meaner, and honestly brattier than they’re supposed to be. This is particularly true with Neil, who in the movie is such a joyful and whimsical little guy. He’s also very charismatic and polite, quite soft-spoken. The way this dialogue is transcribed makes it feel like he’s yelling most of the time. For example, there's a scene at the start where his friends are criticizing him for not standing up to his father and he turns that around by saying they don’t have the right to critique him when they do the same with their parents.

The thing is, in the movie he's a lot less angry about it, and a lot more frustrated, a lot more defensive. He's speaking pretty softly, his tone feels more exasperated than anything. In the book it just seems like he’s yelling at them. Zero nuance. Zero proper characterization.

Honestly, these kinds of scenes make him damn near unlikable. He just seems so bratty and annoying. His feelings don’t seem well founded because he doesn’t have the foundation built for them.

The actors in DPS are honestly so great at expressing little things through facial expressions and tones of voice. Robert Sean (Neil’s actor) and Ethan Hawke (Todd’s actor) are particularly great at this. This book does not adapt ANY of those nuances. It’s very frustrating.

Due to this so much of the sillyness of Neil’s character is gone. His excitement, his love, his joy. Fucking gone. The reader doesn't even get how earnestly he loves acting which is?? The main plot??? It feels like such a random, out of nowhere character trait because this book doesn't make Neil his enthusiastic little passionate self that always wears a big smile on his face and basically speaks in smiley faces. :D ← this is literally (supposed to be) him.

This so detrimental to. Everything. His suicide is supposed to be this big deal BECAUSE he’s normally such a joyful little guy. Because you see the light drain out of his eyes, you see how put on his smile is every time he talks to his father. In that last scene with his family before the suicide he looks at his dad and he has this stale, almost second-nature smile on his face as he does so and in that moment you feel that he has accepted something, and you also feel that said something is not going to military school like his father is forcing him to. There are not enough words to express how clearly that look communicates that the teenage boy in front of you has just decided he’s going to kill himself. It’s fucking great and this book does NOTHING to communicate that. PUNCHING MY WALLS!!!!

The same exact thing happens with Todd, which is insane because Todd’s whole thing is that he is NOT influential and he doesn't have this inexplicable whimsy to him and he’s mainly just a passive participant in his own life. This book just kind of levels Neil and Todd and makes them too… similar.

Todd has this kind of “fight” with Neil where he tells Neil that he’s “not like him” and when he says things people don’t listen like they do with Neil, but. In the book. You don’t even get the feeling that Todd is describing from Neil. You kind of ask yourself “Wait. When did Neil say something and people listened?” In the movie, you immediately feel like Todd’s statement is right. Because Neil has his charisma and he has his gentle persuasion. It kinda reminds me of haggling, ngl. The scene where he convinces the other boys to go to the DPS meeting immediately comes to mind, and that scene also exists in the book but it is so goddamn BLAND. You barely even get the sensation that he’s persuading anyone there.

After Neil’s death, Todd is a lot more outspoken than he needs to be. I’m guessing this is some shitty attempt at character development, but the level of outspoken he was in the movie was fine. He didn't need to throw a tantrum in the principal’s office and not sign the paper which the movie left ambiguous on purpose and then get away scott free, too. That was unnecessary shit and not at all cathartic.

On the other side of this spectrum, his grief for Neil is undermined horribly. You don’t even get the notion that Neil and Todd were close to begin with, which I actually think the author was aware of because instead of making Todd have a meltdown in the snow and run towards the dock where they rehearsed their lines it’s just. Emotionlessly described in a few sentences that he goes to the bathroom and throws up? But the book still tries to convince you that they were close and that Todd understood Neil and that he’s really suffering from his death??? This change just seems so nonsensical to me. Honestly, I hate that I say this but all of these elements combined really make the reader feel like Todd is overreacting. Which is just… unbelievably fucked up. I felt so bad for thinking this but then I rewatched the movie and realized that it’s just a book problem.

Okay, lighting round:

1. Charlie is overly caricaturized for comedic relief which, honestly, made him unlikable. Mostly because said comedic relief is at the expense of women
2. Every single insertion of poetry in this falls flat. I had to force myself to read most of them because it’s just text slapped onto the page instead of being properly integrated into the dialogue 
3. At the very beginning of the book when the classes the boys go to are described, everything feels so boring and unrealistic. The teacher’s are overly cruel and cartoon-villain-ish. Keating’s class ends way too quickly. That was NOT 50 minutes. In the movie it’s implied they do more stuff before the class ends but in the book the bell rings after they finish talking about Carpe diem and whatnot
4. On top of that scene with Todd being uselessly concise instead of purposely ambiguous, this also happens with the scene where Keating asks Neil if he talked to his dad. The author makes a point at establishing that Neil is lying in that scene, whereas in the movie it’s really anyone’s guess. In both cases, these things being left unestablished does the scenes a service. In Todd’s case, it really doesn't matter if he signs or not, so it’s better the audience doesn’t know if he did in order to not let their prejudices leak through. The harm has already been done, he was called last, he doesn't have any impact over the matter. He only hurts himself if he doesn't sign, he's not a bad person for doing it. Especially considering how intimidating his father is being in that scene. Suddenly defying every single form of authority when he knows that his decision doesn't even matter is a big leap and not exactly the brave act the book makes it out to be, plus, in order to justify this choice, the book makes his question about what happens to Keating actually have an answer, and that answer being that Keating is never going to teach again, which seems a bit extreme to me?? People are kept in the education system for bigger crimes. In Neil’s case, the ambiguity builds much needed suspense. You see how nervous he is but you can’t tell if that's because of the situation at hand or because he’s lying. And he’s not even HALF as awkward about it as the book makes him out to be, to be honest. This ambiguity is particularly relevant in the actual scene of the play because when his father shows up you don’t know how big the damange is—if he, at the very least, knew Neil was going to be there or not, or if he just came to check. Then, yes, it is implied that he didn’t know during his followup conversation with Neil because he says he “doesn’t understand why Neil is deadset on defying them”, but the suspense in the theater is still very important.

3✧ - Thematic slaughtering

As I mentioned, this author really doesn’t seem to understand what DPS is supposed to be about. This book only holds a semblance of its themes because they are deeply intergrated in the plot, but otherwise everything misses the mark.

I’ve already detailed quite a few of these things, like how the characters—the heart of the story—are awfully mischaracterized and their most important traits (like Neil’s enthusiastic personality, his love for acting) aren’t properly conveyed, which makes a lot of things fall flat. That thing about the poems just feeling like meaningless blocks of text and not being well-intergrated also fits here. Poetry is such a big element of this work and the fact that the reader’s first instinct is to skip over those passages makes everything very disconnected. Not to mention that the author fucking?? Changes some of the poems that are being read originally?? The first DPS meeting starts with Neil telling a horror story before he reads “Ulysses” by Alfred Tennyson. The author decides to make them read a lot more poems before that, which are, again, not integrated in the story and just useless chunks of text. Before she decides to insert some more misogynistic slop by making Pitts read a poem that’s… A joke about a guy’s wife dying and him finally being able to “rest” because she’s dead, the same way she’s resting in the afterlife. Great!!! I’m so glad the author missed the entire purpose of the poetry in the movie.

And on that note, she also felt the need to EXPLICITLY call out that Cameron reading the Dr. Pritchard essay on understanding poetry at the end while Keating is gathering his things was supposed to be ironic. Wow, I’m sure you felt sooo smart for calling out one of the most obvious things in the entire movie!! Your readers would surely not be intelligent enough to recognize that on their own… Everyone thank the genius and merciful brain of this author for gracing our stupid mortal minds with this complex explanation 🥺🥺 I wouldn’t have gotten it without her!!!!!

And, possibly most importantly, due to the lack of proper characterization, relationship construction and theme awareness—this book is BARELY a little gay. And that little portion of it is, funnily enough, Mr. Keating and Mr. McAllister. Not Neil and Todd like in the original movie.

And yes, this IS a valid criticism because the gay subtext was something the original DPS movie was built on. Gay people aren’t some invention of the 21st century and movies like these are STAPLES of gay culture because we weren’t allowed to exist in media beyond subtext back then. This is the only kind of representation that is not caricaturized that we could get. Neil’s interest in theater (culturally gay thing for a man to like) is one big metaphor for him being gay, which I COULD go into immense detail about but that’s not the point of this review, and it’s no coincidence that this is mostly explored through his relationship with Todd. The only allusion to this gay subtext in the book is that one deleted scene at the dock, but that’s because it’s pretty damn hard to make that one seem straight no matter how much emotion you strip from it.

Biggest example of this—the scene where Neil tells Todd he’s going to try acting for the first time, which I’ve talked a little about in the previous section. To summarize what happens, Neil tells Todd he’s going to tryouts for the A Midsummer Night’s Dream play, and he’s very excited and giddy and Neil about it, and Todd is very Todd about it by worrying how that’s supposed to work when his father doesn’t know, and he insists with that fear until Neil asks him whose side he’s even on and if any of Keating’s teachings even mean anything to him, to which Todd says his “I’m not like you” line. And he says that there’s nothing Neil can do about it, and that he can take care of himself, and that Neil should butt out.

Most relevantly for the erasure of gay subtext, though, is Neil’s reaction to that, which is drastically changed. The dialogue starts the same, Neil says “No,” to which Todd responds “What do you mean ‘no’?”

In the book, the response is: « Neil shrugged matter-of-factly and repeated, “No. I’m not going to butt out.”

Neil opened his play and began to read again. »

In the movie. Good God, in the movie. In the movie Neil looks at Todd for a few seconds then gets this absolutely gigantic grin on his face as he says “No.” again. Big difference that he only says “No”. He doesn’t say “No. I’m not going to butt out” so you don’t know what he’s referring to and it’s great and gay and the way he’s smiling is so earnest and beautiful and maddening. Then, he doesn’t just go back to minding his business, he starts fucking TEASING Todd by snatching the notebook from his grip and running with it in circles around the room while he reads over it and notices that it’s poetry Todd has written.

That scene is SO cute and so gay and just !!!!!!!! WHY did it have to be so awfully butchered. To prove a point, here’s a transcript of that scene that I’ve written specifically for this review because I’m insane:

“[…] I can take care of myself just fine, alright?”

Neil seems to think about that for a second. He blinks once before he says a clear-cut, indisputable, “No.”

Todd gaze lifts to meet Neil’s. “‘No?’” he questions, disbelieving, “What do you mean ‘No’?”

Neil looks right back at him, his expression blank for no more than a moment. His eyes crinkle, lips curling over his gums in an enthusiastic grin. “No,” he repeats, giddy, almost teasing.

Todd blinks at him. Once. Twice. The third time, Neil surges forward and snatches Todd’s notebook right out of his loose grip. […]

BOOM. There. Absolute writing. It's pretty shitty and also in my personal writing style ofc ofc but that's literally just a DRAFT while the book's version is, you know, a finished product. Anyway.

Same thing happens with the birthday desk set scene. It is butchered from the very start because Neil’s response to Todd saying “It’s my birthday,” being “Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! :D” is just SO crucial and SO Neil of him. “Is today your birthday?” is fucking adorable, thank you very much.

On top of this book just making his response be “Is it?” Todd doesn’t even. He doesn’t even throw the fucking desk set off the bridge??? What’s the purpose of that scene if he DOESN’T. If Neil doesn’t manage to get through to him. If Neil doesn’t feel comfortable enough making those jokes to lighten the mood. If Todd doesn’t get the catharsis of throwing the desk set and Neil saying “I wouldn’t worry too much, you’ll get another one next year” to which Todd snorts??

INSTEAD. Book Todd decides to be EDGY and shit and he starts trauma dumping then he goes inside crying. Wowww. Yes girl destroy the most important relationship on which the narrative is built!!

I could talk about this so much more but this is already basically the size of a short story so I’ll end here.

Watch the movie. Don't bother with the book. Have a good day <3