“Whenever they catch you, they will pet you. But first they must catch you.”
Rabbits can count up to four. Any number above four is hrair — “a lot,” or “a thousand.” Thus they say U Hrair — “The Thousand” — to mean, collectively, all the buddies (or elil, as they call them) of rabbits — fox, stoat, weasel, cat, owl, man, etc. These are the creatures who will find and pet the rabbits, if they can.
“Your brother,” said the Threarah, with the faintest suggestion of “Don’t correct me any more, will you?” in his voice. “Do make yourselves comfortable. Have some lettuce?”
The Chief Rabbit’s lettuce was stolen by the Owsla from a garden half a mile away across the fields. Outskirters seldom or never saw lettuce. Hazel took a small leaf and nibbled politely. They sat eating lettuce for a long time.
“This is quite good lettuce,” Hazel said.
“Lucky for us we’re so safe here underground,” Fiver said.
“Yes, quite lucky,” Hazel agreed.
They ate some more lettuce. Everything was very safe.
“I’ve just had a vision,” Fiver said, twitching and snapping as a rabbit caught in a snare. His eyes saw things the eyes of other rabbits did not see.
“What is it, my brother?” Hazel asked.
“Everything…” Fiver began. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
And it was.
The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away.They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy’s warren and paying his price?
The good news was that there was nothing to fear. “How nice it is, having nothing to fear,” Blacktip said, and he was right. None of the rabbits ever died.
“I’ve just realized something,” Fiver said. “We don’t have any female rabbits in this warren.”
Cowslip rested a heavy paw on his shoulder. “Listen,” he said. “If we focus on being the best versions of ourselves, I think the does will come. We don’t have to try to force anything to happen.”
Fiver nodded. “And if they don’t?”
“Does aren’t a reward for good behavior,” Cowslip said. “If the does don’t come, we’ll find a way to be happy with ourselves.”
“You know what,” General Woundwort said, “It doesn’t make any sense for me to resent your success as an independent warren. How can your good fortune possibly be a threat to me?”
Fiver nodded. “Now you understand.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” the General said.
“Please don’t worry about it,” Hazel said.
“Let’s never fight again,” the General said.
They ate some flowers. “What a nice day it is,” said General Woundwort, and he was right.
brb using this to trick a friend who doesn’t like depressing books into reading watership down
“How can a book about bunny rabbits possibly be sad?”
It’s not depressing! It’s just harrowing!
THIS. IS. PERFECTION.
NB4R Watership Down is my all-time favorite book and yooooouuuuu liiiiight up myyy liiiiiiiiiiife
ilu
I utterly loved this book when I was a kid. As with Secret of Nimh, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and so many other childhood books and movies, it has been a great comfort to discover, now that I am an adult, that YES IT WAS ACTUALLY TERRIFYING. Christ, the film version of Watership Down in particular was fucked up. Jesus Christ. They gas the rabbits. Christ.
I actually saw the film version before I read the book, and was (pleasantly?) surprised that way more rabbits survive in the book.
Also, I’m pretty sure this is the cover of the VHS they had in the public library. I was terribly tricked.
“Contains absolutely no horrifying hallucinations which reference the Holocaust at all.”
Wow, that cover explains a lot for me. Once when I was a wee 5 or 6 year old J and sick with a fever, my parents picked up Watership Down from the library and let me watch it alone. I don’t remember much of it, but I have steadfastly refused to watch it as an adult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwWp6vnAF50
This was definitely my favorite movie as a kid. Ugh it is so sad!!!!!!
One would assume that you couldn’t make Watership Down more horrifying so you went the other direction? (bless you)
Love this version! However, I don’t think anything has the power to wipe my memory of the time my mother decided to double down on my 3rd birthday surprise of a raisin/rum-Italian cream cake(literally made all of the kids cry), by taking my 4th b-day party to the movies to see Watership Down 🙁 . Cartoon induced PTSD is a real thing.
Comparing this to your velveteen rabbit gives me a super accurate triangulation on exactly how much I will never read the original watership down.
“Yes, Blackberry, we understand! Let us all float down the stream on this board together because it is such a terribly pleasant mode of transportation. We have nothing to fear and no reason to desperately flee for our lives.”
I have shipped me and Bigwig for the last…25 years? YEAH, I KNOW HE’S A FUCKING RABBIT.
Is this the thread where we talk about non-human characters we have loved?
Because if so I’m here to lay claim to Robin Hood As A Fox.
Oh man. Me too. So dashing.
::quietly whispers:: I may have wanted Amaroq from Julie of the Wolves to be my wolf-dad. I mean my human dad is great, but he can’t hunt down a caribou using only his wits and his jaws.
ETA: Also all of the Wise Dog Friends (Red, Sean, Chiri, Stormy, Buck, &c) from Jim Kjelgaard’s books. Not in a sexy way, but in a “we will be best friends who face the world together” way.
Ooh, in that “we will be best friends who face the world together” way, Pantalaimon from His Dark Materials.
Pantalaimon is my favorite! We hate the Golden Monkey though.
I had a sneaking affection for Iorek Byrnson in that, the big grump.
From another famous fantasy series, I may have once had feelings for Mr. Tumnus. And Reepicheep. And even, possibly, Puddleglum.
Have McAvoy play autumn us DOES NOT HELP with this affliction.
Oh, is it?! Because Baron, from The Cat Returns. Why is a cat so suave and attractive? It isn’t fair!
I mean, at least I’m not alone:
The Cat Prince is a total catch as well. Perfect cat royalty.
I mean.
my first crush.
Childhood of Robin Hood + Han Solo = lifetime attraction to Rogues.
seriously, it explains SO MUCH.
Ohhhhhhhhh well that makes sense now
HAHA me too, sister. Robin Hood was the first movie I ever saw in the theater (when it came out, because I am An Old) and Han Solo, especially Empire-era Han Solo with the long-sleeve jacket, was my big middle school crush.
Ooooh now I don’t have to ask my therapists why I always go for the same type of guy.
Justin from The Secret of NIMH.
OMG YES. I was a very sheltered child and I still remember the little thrill I got when he says “Damn” in the movie.
Always.
YES! ME TOO!!!
Raph from the Ninja Turtles.
You spelled Mikey wrong.
I spelled nothing wrong, RAPH WAS SO DARK AND COMPLICATED, COME ON
/analyzes romantic history
//comes to a number of realizations
///still chooses Raph
Seriously, this thread is leading to REVELATIONS.
If only I’d connected these dots 10 years ago… so much therapy I’d have saved myself. Robin Hood as Fox -> Han Solo ->Justin from NIMH = HOLY SHIT.
Balto 4eva!!!!!!
Has to be Thomas O’Malley from the Aristocats.
At least he’s not Henry VIII.
Welp. No-one has come up with anything quite as embarrassing as Captain Bucky O’Hare, neon green space bunny.
Bigwig, the dumb jock who is just clever in different ways, who learns to accept that he is sometimes wrong and/or not the best one for the job, who befriends Kehaar when everyone else doesn’t know what to do (I am SUCH a sucker for unlikely friendships), who is loyal to his possible last breath. Yeah, I totally get it. Bigwig!!!
I found it traumatic, and the movie even more so, but in a satisfying way, although of course I couldn’t name that set of feelings at the time. It was one of the first books/movies I read/saw that acknowledged and confirmed that bad things do indeed happen.
I love this, of course.
WELP…some evil YouTube monster made a video of the most disturbing parts of the movie with the Marilyn Manson cover of “Sweet Dreams” as the soundtrack…now I have to reread this forever.
Blackhawk Up
At noon, the MH-60L Blackhawk dipped into a textbook landing at the intersection of Howlwadaag and National Streets. Five Army Rangers, dressed smartly in polo shirts and microfiber slacks, hopped out into the road. A contingent of curious Aidid militiamen sidled forth to meet them from the shaded porch of the Olympic Hotel.
“Excuse me!” called Cpt. Michael Steele in lightly accented Somali. He paused for a polite moment, then repeated the phrase in Arabic. He continued in Somali: “Would you gentlemen be able to point the way to a pleasant, affordable restaurant?”
A militiaman interrupted Steele before he translated himself again. “Peace, my friend! We all speak English here. What are you in a mood for? We have Yemeni, we have Indian, there’s a terrific little trattoria maybe a block, two blocks from here-”
The Rangers huddled for a brief conference. Pfc. Todd Blackburn emerged as the new spokesperson. “We’re in Mogadishu,” he said.”So we’re gonna eat some Mogadishu-style Somali dishes, if that’s alright by y’all.”
The militiamen grinned and conducted the Rangers to a brightly painted cafe on the Via Agfoye. There they all shared a sumptuous maraq of pumpkin and fish, served in the shell, and heavily spiced with cardamom and cumin.
There was a great deal of argument over who would claim the honor of paying. The Rangers eventually took the check, but the militia insisted on leaving an inordinately large tip. Both parties thus claimed victory.
This is lovely thank you very much.
“dressed smartly in polo shirts and microfiber slacks”
here you depart from gauzy fantasy and enter the realm of hard-edged waking nightmare
This is just. The best.
Why is it that people assume a book about rabbits would be cute and cuddly? Watership Down taught me more about the merciless realities of life and death than all my history classes combined.
“Let me tell you a story about bunnies that explains why daddy wakes up screaming most nights.”
Ok now someone do one for Where the Red Fern Grows so the healing can finally begin.
Once there were some dogs and everything was nice and they lived forever the end.
(My knowledge of Where the Red Fern Grows is intentionally vague, I have avoided that book like the plague my entire life.)
If I talk about that book I can make my husband, a sweet dog loving man, cry. So don’t let’s ever talk about Where the Red Fern Grows
Also the parents are secretly rich yuppie types doing an obnoxious experiment in simplicity, so it turns out they aren’t gut wrenchingly poor, they just want billy to know the value of things he pays for, which is why he had to save up for a dog. At the end of the book when the dogs are totally ok and happy, the whole family moves back to the burbs and the house has a billion washing machines and dishwashers, and was not paid for with billy’s hunting competition winnings because his family has lots of money.
Rubin wasn’t dead, it was just a enactment of proper ax safety!
Dan and Little Ann met a friendly mountain lion, whose name was Jake, and they became best friends once they realized that they were stronger TOGETHER than they were APART.
Oh god yes. We had to read that in class, silently, and my strongest memory of 5th grade is sniffling along with everyone else as we all got to the end of the book.
*Instantly bursts into tears.*
I finished that book under my covers late at night after I was supposed to be asleep with a flashlight, snuffling/sobbing/suffocating a bit in the sweltering heat of my own blanket-tented sorrow.
NEVER AGAIN
Oh yes and Old Yeller too and uh The Red Pony. Why was 7th grade the year of Books About Animals Dying? We spent the entire year in sick fury at the stupidity of our English teacher.
Whenever I attempt to pet my rabbits, they make it very clear that they do not consider me to be their buddy and that my overtures are distasteful and unwelcome.
Right? But despite that slight discrepancy, this post gave me a lot of comfort. My two bunnies are both “senior” bunnies, and one of them just spent 3 nights at the emergency vet for a bout of GI stasis. BUT THEY’LL NEVER DIE, RIGHT MALLORY???
oh I hope your bunny is doing better! Mine had a GI slowdown a few weeks ago and it was SO scary. I’d be a wreck if I’d had to leave her at the vet for three days! My bunny sends your bunnies gentle nose nudges!
Because I have my suspicions that this is not an accurate summary of Watership Down, I have never read this book and NEVER WILL.
OF COURSE IT IS ACCURATE. NOTE THE HAPPY EXPRESSION ON THAT RABBIT’S FACE. NOTE THE SUSPICIOUS LACK OF GUTWRENCHING WAR REFERENCES. NOTE THE ABSOLUTE ABSENCE OF ANY HOLOCAUST-REFERNCING HALLUCINATIONS. JOIN USSSSSSSSSSS.
Suggestions for future “Mallory Optimistic Retellings”:
A Day No Pigs Would Die
A Corner of the Universe
Out of the Dust
Really, about 50% of the Newbery Award list.
I never read “A Day No Pigs Would Die” but I always assumed, from the title and because I believe what I read, that no pigs die in that book. I think I thought it would be some kind of magic-realist fable, like a pig Tuck Everlasting, you know. or a kind of George Macdonald fairy tale about a pig who couldn’t die, like the one about the princess who lost her gravity, except with pigs.
Am I…am I not right?
My mother was apparently under the same impression.
It’s been sixteen years. I still remember the pig’s name.
well, I just went to wikipedia to satisfy my curiosity. I”ll go curl up and die in a second but I also wanted to say that this reminded me that “The Pigman” is a completely different but equally misleading book (that I also didn’t read) and is not about a pig-human hybrid like Dr. Krieger’s poor friend Piggly at all!
that’s why I enjoyed that post from last week about 18th century titles so much. I like a title to say what it means and mean what it says. no funny business.
With “Any Thing But What You Expect!” being the exception.
Wait, The Pigman isn’t the same book as The Day No Pigs Would Die? Shit.
Wait, wait, don’t tell me Summer of the Monkeys isn’t about a super fun summer where a kid or perhaps a group kids gets to play with sweet fun monkeys? Please.
omg OUT OF THE DUST, so so so scarring. Her mother’s death still makes me shudder just thinking about it.
oh god Out of the Dust. There is a reason foreshadowing is a thing in books! That book…
I would like to nominate A Bridge to Terabithia. That’d be great.
Boy and girl become great friends, spend much time in an imaginary world. It’s fantastic and fun, and then they start to drift apart once puberty hits and…wait, no. Making it sad again. ALL HAPPY TERABITHIA ALL THE TIME.
And then they realise they can be friends without all that stupid stereotyped gender stuff getting in the way, and they meet new people and everyone has imaginary world happy fantastic fun times and they go to college and write books together!!!!
I know Tailchaser’s Song is just a Watership Down ripoff, but when I was a kid I read TS and not WD, because I don’t care about rabbits (THERE, I said it) and although TS may be a terrible book, I don’t know, it was very cosmically moving and traumatizing at the time. the giant blind cat-god! the terrible, massive writhing pile of cats under the earth! The weird and fairly offensive scene where Tailchaser meets a neutered housecat for the first time and has intense kitty-cat gender panic! that book is bananas.
Oh man! I never realized that till you just said it. I had this wierd pile of cat fantasy and sci fi around the house as a kid. I think my mom was the source but they all blend together…
THere was this one: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AczesFkHL…
where the cats were like telepathic..assistant circuit court judges?
And tailchaser
And this one that I only SORT of remember where there is a hot girl who is a cat shapeshifter and she shows up all innocent like at the house of a novelist who is also a guy who lost his wife tragically and there’s some kind of erotic thing with her and her innocence and she travels through a door to her fantasy kingdom and he comes with her? I don’t really remember this, and I think it’s gotta be some serious pulp trash but this suddenly brought it to mind.
Oh I found it: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29324.The_Cat…
This one. It was BONKERS.
Cat fantasy books! Did you ever read the Catwings series? I LOVED those as a kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catwings
… I want to read about telepathic assistant circuit court judge cats RIGHT NOW
Good glob, I have to read this thing. You should get a commission.
My reaction to Tailchaser’s Song was “If I want to read a mashup of Watership Down and the Lord of the Rings, I’ll sit down and read them back to back.” That’s what happens when you first read books as a jaded adult.
Speaking of Watership Down ripoffs, anyone else remember the one about deer? I can’t remember the title off the top of my head, but I think it had something to do with fire or burning, maybe. There were also possibly sequels, but I never read any of them because I was so mad about how much the first one ripped off WD. The plot premise was different, but a lot of the main character’s encounters on his journey were so similar. The most egregious one I remember was when he came across a herd of weird-ass deer who ate from piles of food left by humans and refused to talk about disappearances among the herd.
I remember that book! That was Firebringer by David Clement-Davies. I went through quite a few of his books in my animal pov phase
Also, Atreyu and Artax have to journey to the Meadow of Happiness, where Artax grows wings and spends the rest of his life frolicking with Falcor in the sky, because there is no such place as the Swamps of Sadness and nobody dies a horrific slow-mo death by sinking into a vast ocean of mud while a little boy watches helplessly and cries.
And no rock monsters talk about their hands, ever, to anyone.
Just reading this sentence has given me perma-chills, a nonstop glissando up and down my spine. I DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE PAST OR CURRENT STATUS OF YOUR HANDS YOU BASTARD
That scene is the only thing I remember (from the movie) and it still makes me shudder with horror 20 years later.
Oh, but dear lord, be warned if you read other stuff by the same author. The Plague Dogs: dogs being used in medical experiments! The one about Robert E. Lee’s horse, which was just odd. And the one about the ancient pagan society and the sexxxy women that were constantly having not-really-consensual to definitely-not-consensual sex all the time.
Don’t forget about The Girl in a Swing, which has creepy kid ghosts and weird sex stuff!
I got about 50 pages into The Plague Dogs and was having a hard time. My partner asked me to explain why I wasn’t enjoying it. I gave a brief sketch. She burst into tears. We decided I wouldn’t finish the book.
Yes. I think of Watership Down as the HAPPY Richard Adams novel.
Girl in a Swing was skeevy as all getout. Plague Dogs? Never read it, never will.
I just finished rereading this book for the umpteenth time on Sunday. I love it with all my heart and soul, and it’s one of my favorite books of all time.
When I was visiting London a couple years ago, they had an exhibit at the National Library about “Writing Britain.” And there was one section about the pastoral landscape of Britain, and Watership Down was one of the books on display, and it was open. There are, of course, tons of pages with lyrical descriptions of the British countryside…but whoever set up the exhibit had decided that the page on display was going to be the one with Bigwig and Woundwort’s final fight, in other words, an epic and bloody final showdown. And I felt so happy that someone on the library staff had obviously thought “Heck with the bucolic countryside theme, this scene is the best.”
(The museum description of Watership Down did not at all acknowledge the violent rabbit fight on the page)
“My chief rabbit has told me to stay and defend this warren, and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here.”
And Woundwort is horrified (and terrified) to realize that if Bigwig’s that bad, his chief rabbit must be even tougher! I love that: it’s a very human type of error, to think that the only real power is physical.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!
And coming from Bigwig, of all rabbits. Talk about a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
There’s nothing more satisfying than cursing in Fictional Lapine, silflay hraka if you disagree.
That’s so calming! Could you just edit a copy of the whole book for me so I can read it again?
Aaaaaand this is everything I ever wanted.
The only thing I remember about this book, which we read in 8th grade English, is being confused and angry because I thought Hazel was a girl and she turned out to be a boy, and then it turns out that oh, in bunny world, girl rabbits are only good for breeding and not for being brave or having adventures or advancing the plot.
Coincidentally, 8th grade was the height of my proto-feminist realization that all the girl power rah-rah crap I had been taught in elementary school was naught but a gauzy veil that could not obscure the ever-more obvious fact that the real world actually doesn’t respect girls at all, and thus my anger at not having been born a boy. Don’t worry, I eventually sublimated those feelings into misandry.
For some reason, I didn’t consider how deeply problematic this was until my last reread of the book…I think I just accepted “eh, they’re rabbits” on previous rereads without thinking through “No, it’s a book written by a man completely inventing a culture for rabbits.” So now I try not to think about it.
inventing… or uncovering?!
DUNDUNDUNNNNNNN
(I don’t interact with rabbits much I really don’t know what they’re like at all)
I just love the fact that Adams could be imaginative enough to come up with a cosmology and language and history for *rabbits* but couldn’t *quite* get his imagination to stretch to the point where female characters could be a real thing.
Because come on—there are LIMITS.
I believe he said somewhere that realistically it would be the does who’d be migrating, but he made his protagonists bucks because he thought male rabbits would be more interesting. *headdesk*
A lot of the storyline clicked into place when I found out that much of the story is based on Adams’ real life experiences behind enemy lines in World War II. Hazel was based on his commanding officer, and Kehaar on a Norwegian resistance fighter.
So this means that next time I read Watership Down, I can just swap everyone’s gender? The main characters will all be does, and they’ll go on a mission to rescue a group of bucks from a dystopic warren led by the doe General Woundwort?
(The “based on my war experiences” explanation does give me some sympathy for the swap)
THAT I would read. Do it!
I felt exactly the same way when I realized that Merry was a dude hobbit.
I first encountered LOTR via an audiobook. I was outraged when I saw the movie years later and they made Mary a boy hobbit.
Wuuuuuh? Hyzenthlay is a badass. Did you read Tales From Watership Down? It mostly sucks but it has much Hyzenthlay and several other female rabbits. Also the tame rabbit who survives (Haystack, maybe?) is pretty boss, too.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the does of Efrafa make the first attempt to leave, before Bigwig showed up? Going to the Council and trying a formal petition that didn’t work? To the point where Hyzenthlay and the others had to be split up into separate burrows because it was considered too dangerous to keep them all together? Sure, Blackavar got his ears ripped to shreds for trying to make a break for it, but I always secretly admired the fact that the Council was worried enough about the does to consider them a real threat to the stability of the warren. Blackavar was just a good scapegoat.
(Admittedly, the does wanted to leave because the warren overcrowding and stress was preventing them from having litters, so it comes back to reproduction again, but it wasn’t as if Bigwig simply showed up and fomented rebellion among a bunch of formerly docile does.)
8th-grade me apologizes to both you and Sara above for insufficiently rigorous analysis of female rabbits’ roles in Watership Down. What can I say? I was really hormonal and just generally prone to righteous indignation.
(Can’t say I apologize for not reading the sequel, though. I mean, due diligence is due diligence, but that seems excessive.)
I have only seen the movie and it was at too young of an age. I cannot bring myself to read the book. Because I will cry and cry. I know it.
Mallory, naturally, has made everything better.
The book is a lot more balanced emotionally, I think. It’s not 400 pages of DOOOOOM, thank Frith.
I don’t know. I’m a blubbering bag of emotions when I read novels or watch movies. I do not think it wise.
But it’s good to know that it’s more emotionally balanced than the movie.
I love WD with a love that is more than love, and this makes me very happy.
Also, Susan got to go to the real Narnia. Yes, I am still bitter.
I read Watership Down when I was nine and loved it. The movie is still a favorite.
My takeaway here is that some people’s Watership Down is my the original Land Before Time. The movie that taught me as a wee child that someday my parents will die.
Oh man if I think about Land Before Time even now it makes me cry. My dad recalls vividly being taken to see Bambi aged 6 or so and also crying (much to his shame. Ah, masculinity). Circle of life!
Yes.
More Fairy Wogdog.
Fairy Wogdog for everyone.
Bright eyes
Burning like fire
Bright eyes
Over hill and dale
How can a light that burns so brightly
Never, ever fail?
Bright eyes
::applause::
My mother was in TEARS during that scene.
I thought I read somewhere that the song is actually about someone dying of cancer, but I could be wrong.
When my daddy had just got his PhD, he briefly worked in publishing. His boss rejected the manuscript of Watership Down on the grounds that ‘no-one wants to read a book about fucking rabbits.’
Oh also my friend is Richard Adams’ grandson. Apparently the book began as stories told to my friend’s mummy and her sister (so make of that what you will).
Hmn combined with the ‘retelling of war experiences’ thing that is actually pretty cool, what an amazing way to share the story of your life with your kids without making it ABOUT DADDY in a way that might really upset them.
My kid has spent the summer reading the Game of Thrones series so I think she might be ready for Watership Down now.
Love this, love this, love this. We have read Watership Down so many times since early childhood that chunks of it are memorised and I think I personally blame it for the belief that we really want to live in Southern England and sit inside during the winter going ‘How nice winter is since I am not an animal who is outside trying desperately not to freeze to death!’
I first encountered LOTR via an audiobook. I was outraged when I saw the movie years later and they made Mary a boy hobbit.
Bigwig, the dumb jock who is just clever in different ways, who learns to accept that he is sometimes wrong and/or not the best one for the job, who befriends Kehaar when everyone else doesn't know what to do (I am SUCH a sucker for unlikely friendships), who is loyal to his possible last breath. Yeah, I totally get it. Bigwig!!!
Speaking of Watership Down ripoffs, anyone else remember the one about deer? I can't remember the title off the top of my head, but I think it had something to do with fire or burning, maybe. There were also possibly sequels, but I never read any of them because I was so mad about how much the first one ripped off WD. The plot premise was different, but a lot of the main character's encounters on his journey were so similar. The most egregious one I remember was when he came across a herd of weird-ass deer who ate from piles of food left by humans and refused to talk about disappearances among the herd.
There’s a dog loose in the wood, and he wants a cuddle.
I don't know. I'm a blubbering bag of emotions when I read novels or watch movies. I do not think it wise.
But it's good to know that it's more emotionally balanced than the movie.