Television

Honor Harrington series, but with the caveat that I would WANT the showrunners to muck about with things a bit. The world building is intensely deep (or at least broad) for a military-sci-fi space opera, especially once that's also transparently "Horatio Hornblower in space". I particularly like that with where I am in the series, for all of the huge stakes we are dealing with, there is also a powerful sense that we're still dealing with provincial powers playing on the edges of the playground. Then, in many ways Honor herself is an amazing and progressive lead character, and even as a dog person I would kill and die for Nimitz.

That said, there is a powerful and unnecessary strain of "silly liberals, the real adults are talking" 1998-ish Neocon politics running through the POV characters and an extremely -- almost distressingly -- gentle treatment of a

Then, Honor is an absolute and unapologetic Mary Sue; it's occasionally obnoxious, though the author puts her through the wringer to try to make up for it. I also can't quite shake the feeling that while I, as a cis-het man can't know for sure, she sure seems to suffer from a peculiar variation of "woman written by a man" syndrome where many of the traditional issues with that sort of thing are "overcome" by simply writing her the same as a pulp hero of a man, but one who occasionally gets crushes and worries about looking pretty. I'd actually love to know others' takes on that point.

The plot rhythms are repetitive in that way that long-running series of pulpy genre fiction can be, but I think with a little more care put into the PTSD and conflicted emotions the characters must be feeling, and with a bit more of a modern and even-handed exploration of what warfare must mean to a society, the books could make for really good bones to hang an excellent plot-driven "competence porn" show that could be elevated by good performances and carefully curated character beats.

It would be expensive AF to make it look good, though.