5 ms·

Ok, in the case of a series of novels the promise to eventually finish the story is not explicit, as in someone promising to help you move, but other than that,

by rob74 5y ago

Ok, in the case of a series of novels the promise to eventually finish the story is not explicit, as in someone promising to help you move, but other than that, I agree with the point you are making. For Stephen King, it took 22 years and a wake up call in the form of an accident that nearly killed him to get him to finish his "magnum opus", the Dark Tower cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(series)). So I haven't completely given up hope about ASOIAF yet, but I'm not holding my breath either...

imgabe 5y ago
I mean, it's kind of implicit when someone starts telling a story that the story is going to come to some kind of conclusion at some point since that's how stories work. It's not something that usually needs to be stated. I take your point though, but I think they've also explicitly stated that they intend to finish it at some point.
- mcphage 5y ago
  > when someone starts telling a story that the story is going to come to some kind of conclusion at some point since that's how stories work Yes, but you bought the start of the stories. You didn't buy the conclusion. There's no cheating involved.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    The start is only valuable if there is an end, especially for a novel built on mystery and intrigue. When George RR Martin will, sadly, die without having finished A Song of Ice and Fire, all its parts will be forgotten by history (except, perhaps, A Game of Thrones), as they only work as scaffolding for a future ending (save a few extraordinary moments here and there, like the Red Wedding). But if by some miracle he finishes them (and it would be a miracle by this point, given he has spent more than a decade writing the next book, with no end in sight), and if the finale holds up to the quality of the mysteries he has built up, then it may be remembered right next to Lord of the Rings as one of fantasy writing's greatest masterpieces.
    - Beldin 5y ago
      > The start is only valuable if there is an end I don't think Game of Thrones lost money. I would guess HBO paid George Martin well. Moreover, I think that in the eyes of most, GoT would have been better without going beyond Martin's published works. In other words: finishing that story significantly reduced its value. In case you think this is an exception: Matrix, Terminator, Coupling, How I Met Your Mother, Battlestar Galactica reimagined: all stories whose value was diminished greatly by their ending.
      - mcphage 5y ago
        > Coupling Are you talking about the 4th season with Oliver? I mean, he was no Jeff, but it wasn't all bad—and Jane got a bit more depth, which I appreciated. Or do you mean the actual series finale with Susan having the baby?
  - imgabe 5y ago
    If you bought the beginning based on the implicit (and explicit) promise that the story would be finished, because A. stories usually have an ending, and B. they've both said many times that they are going to finish them, then yeah you did kind of get cheated, you bought them under false pretenses. If George R.R. Martin wrote 5 books and told everyone "Hey, here's half a story, I'm never going to finish it", most people probably would not have bought it and HBO probably wouldn't have spent millions of dollars producing a TV show about it.
    - mcphage 5y ago
      > and HBO probably wouldn't have spent millions of dollars producing a TV show about it But they did. I don't think HBO had any confusion about what they bought, and the series being unfinished was either not a problem for them, or possibly a plus.
- burnished 5y ago
  Sounds like you aren't acquainted with shaggy dog stories. For your reading pleasure, I present perhaps the finest example: http://folklore.usc.edu/longest-joke-in-the-world/ http://folklore.usc.edu/longest-joke-in-the-world/
  - gwd 5y ago
    This is the exception that proves the rule: The whole reason people sit and listen to shaggy dog stories for so long is that they're expecting some sort of satisfactory conclusion to the story; and the reason people are (in my experience) typically angry at the teller of the story afterwards is that the implicit promise of a satisfactory conclusion has been purposely broken.
    - burnished 5y ago
      I mean if you're going to try and be all 'on-topic'.. Its important to note that you're making details up in your analogy. It is implicit in your story that the storyteller intended a betrayal of expectations, otherwise the emotional response wouldn't make any sense. It is also a very limited scope of time which is hugely important in how people see abandoning a project. At this point your anecdote and the topic of discussion have nothing to do with each other. It is reasonable to experience disappointment that this story will likely never be concluded. Going past the place of having and owning one's emotions into angry blaming is not reasonable. This is the point of TFA, taking any understandable bad feelings around not getting what you wanted and transmuting them into specific directed grievances or demands is embarrassingly entitled behavior. I don't think this will be controversial to you, but I did want to mark the difference.
      - gwd 5y ago
        I think you're reading more into my comment than intended. Someone said, there is an implied promise of a conclusion when you start telling a story. Someone responded, well, that's not true with shaggy dog stories. My response to that person is, on the contrary -- shaggy dog stories are what they are because there is an implicit promise, which they break. That there is an implicit promise was my only point; I didn't mean to comment at all on the situation w/ Game of Thrones. Perhaps "promise" is too strong of a word; "intention"? I certainly don't think Martin, when he started writing Game of Thrones, was planning on leaving his work unfinished. If he had, then he'd certainly deserve some annoyance, just as the teller of shaggy dog stories does. Nor do I even think that Martin got to a certain point and then said, "Welp, I'm rich now, I can just sit back and relax; no need to do that pesky writing stuff any more." And if that was his attitude, then I think he deserves some annoyance. Presumably there's a part of him that would like to finish them off, but finds it difficult for whatever reason. I think that's unfortunate, naturally, but as long as he has, within himself, made a good-faith attempt to move things towards completion, then I think he's held up his end of the bargain. And I agree that the expectation of anything more is toxic entitlement.
tsimionescu 5y ago
I would argue that A Song of Ice and Fire is not a series of novels, it is a single novel in many parts. Perhaps A Game of Thrones can be considered a stand-alone novel in its own right, but the others have little in the way of a self-contained plot, especially the last two books. It's similar to The Lord of the Rings in this way - it would be pretty disingenuous to call, say, The Two Towers "a standalone novel", as it tells several disparate plots that start nowhere and mostly end nowhere, and have little interaction with each other. But that is not to say that it is not an excellent part of the Lord of The Rings.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Exactly. Some novel "series" are really just a single work. GRRM's and JRRT's are certainly examples. Rothfuss' is, too. The other example is something like Scalzi's Old Man's War books. They are all in the same universe, and expand on the story told in the first, but they stand alone as novels, too. You don't need to have read the first to enjoy a "later" one, though the later one probably contains spoilers about the earlier one. Then you get kinda neither one nor the other books, like The Revelation Space books from Alistair Reynolds. There IS an overarching plot, but you could also come in late, and each book has its own "local" plot.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Another good example of a disparate series that has connected narrative threads but is nevertheless perfectly readable from any point, and where each individual novel is a complete work in itself, is the fantastically funny Discworld series from Terry Pratchett. There are recurring point of view characters who change and grow across the 50 or so novels, yet each novel is a complete story in its own right (well, with the only exception of the very first two, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic).
    - the_af 5y ago
      Fully agreed. The wonderful thing is that many (if not most) Discworld novels can be read standalone in any order. Yes, you'll miss some references and subtleties, and recurring characters are better if you know their traits, but still they work standalone. Some are truly standalone (Monstruous Regiment, Small Gods, Going Postal, The Truth, etc), some aren't but can be mostly read in random order (wizards, witches, city watch).

by rob74 5y ago

imgabe 5y ago

I mean, it's kind of implicit when someone starts telling a story that the story is going to come to some kind of conclusion at some point since that's how stories work. It's not something that usually needs to be stated. I take your point though, but I think they've also explicitly stated that they intend to finish it at some point.

mcphage 5y ago
> when someone starts telling a story that the story is going to come to some kind of conclusion at some point since that's how stories work Yes, but you bought the start of the stories. You didn't buy the conclusion. There's no cheating involved.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  The start is only valuable if there is an end, especially for a novel built on mystery and intrigue. When George RR Martin will, sadly, die without having finished A Song of Ice and Fire, all its parts will be forgotten by history (except, perhaps, A Game of Thrones), as they only work as scaffolding for a future ending (save a few extraordinary moments here and there, like the Red Wedding). But if by some miracle he finishes them (and it would be a miracle by this point, given he has spent more than a decade writing the next book, with no end in sight), and if the finale holds up to the quality of the mysteries he has built up, then it may be remembered right next to Lord of the Rings as one of fantasy writing's greatest masterpieces.
  - Beldin 5y ago
    > The start is only valuable if there is an end I don't think Game of Thrones lost money. I would guess HBO paid George Martin well. Moreover, I think that in the eyes of most, GoT would have been better without going beyond Martin's published works. In other words: finishing that story significantly reduced its value. In case you think this is an exception: Matrix, Terminator, Coupling, How I Met Your Mother, Battlestar Galactica reimagined: all stories whose value was diminished greatly by their ending.
    - mcphage 5y ago
      > Coupling Are you talking about the 4th season with Oliver? I mean, he was no Jeff, but it wasn't all bad—and Jane got a bit more depth, which I appreciated. Or do you mean the actual series finale with Susan having the baby?
- imgabe 5y ago
  If you bought the beginning based on the implicit (and explicit) promise that the story would be finished, because A. stories usually have an ending, and B. they've both said many times that they are going to finish them, then yeah you did kind of get cheated, you bought them under false pretenses. If George R.R. Martin wrote 5 books and told everyone "Hey, here's half a story, I'm never going to finish it", most people probably would not have bought it and HBO probably wouldn't have spent millions of dollars producing a TV show about it.
  - mcphage 5y ago
    > and HBO probably wouldn't have spent millions of dollars producing a TV show about it But they did. I don't think HBO had any confusion about what they bought, and the series being unfinished was either not a problem for them, or possibly a plus.
burnished 5y ago
Sounds like you aren't acquainted with shaggy dog stories. For your reading pleasure, I present perhaps the finest example: http://folklore.usc.edu/longest-joke-in-the-world/ http://folklore.usc.edu/longest-joke-in-the-world/
- gwd 5y ago
  This is the exception that proves the rule: The whole reason people sit and listen to shaggy dog stories for so long is that they're expecting some sort of satisfactory conclusion to the story; and the reason people are (in my experience) typically angry at the teller of the story afterwards is that the implicit promise of a satisfactory conclusion has been purposely broken.
  - burnished 5y ago
    I mean if you're going to try and be all 'on-topic'.. Its important to note that you're making details up in your analogy. It is implicit in your story that the storyteller intended a betrayal of expectations, otherwise the emotional response wouldn't make any sense. It is also a very limited scope of time which is hugely important in how people see abandoning a project. At this point your anecdote and the topic of discussion have nothing to do with each other. It is reasonable to experience disappointment that this story will likely never be concluded. Going past the place of having and owning one's emotions into angry blaming is not reasonable. This is the point of TFA, taking any understandable bad feelings around not getting what you wanted and transmuting them into specific directed grievances or demands is embarrassingly entitled behavior. I don't think this will be controversial to you, but I did want to mark the difference.
    - gwd 5y ago
      I think you're reading more into my comment than intended. Someone said, there is an implied promise of a conclusion when you start telling a story. Someone responded, well, that's not true with shaggy dog stories. My response to that person is, on the contrary -- shaggy dog stories are what they are because there is an implicit promise, which they break. That there is an implicit promise was my only point; I didn't mean to comment at all on the situation w/ Game of Thrones. Perhaps "promise" is too strong of a word; "intention"? I certainly don't think Martin, when he started writing Game of Thrones, was planning on leaving his work unfinished. If he had, then he'd certainly deserve some annoyance, just as the teller of shaggy dog stories does. Nor do I even think that Martin got to a certain point and then said, "Welp, I'm rich now, I can just sit back and relax; no need to do that pesky writing stuff any more." And if that was his attitude, then I think he deserves some annoyance. Presumably there's a part of him that would like to finish them off, but finds it difficult for whatever reason. I think that's unfortunate, naturally, but as long as he has, within himself, made a good-faith attempt to move things towards completion, then I think he's held up his end of the bargain. And I agree that the expectation of anything more is toxic entitlement.

tsimionescu 5y ago

I would argue that A Song of Ice and Fire is not a series of novels, it is a single novel in many parts. Perhaps A Game of Thrones can be considered a stand-alone novel in its own right, but the others have little in the way of a self-contained plot, especially the last two books. It's similar to The Lord of the Rings in this way - it would be pretty disingenuous to call, say, The Two Towers "a standalone novel", as it tells several disparate plots that start nowhere and mostly end nowhere, and have little interaction with each other. But that is not to say that it is not an excellent part of the Lord of The Rings.

ubermonkey 5y ago
Exactly. Some novel "series" are really just a single work. GRRM's and JRRT's are certainly examples. Rothfuss' is, too. The other example is something like Scalzi's Old Man's War books. They are all in the same universe, and expand on the story told in the first, but they stand alone as novels, too. You don't need to have read the first to enjoy a "later" one, though the later one probably contains spoilers about the earlier one. Then you get kinda neither one nor the other books, like The Revelation Space books from Alistair Reynolds. There IS an overarching plot, but you could also come in late, and each book has its own "local" plot.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Another good example of a disparate series that has connected narrative threads but is nevertheless perfectly readable from any point, and where each individual novel is a complete work in itself, is the fantastically funny Discworld series from Terry Pratchett. There are recurring point of view characters who change and grow across the 50 or so novels, yet each novel is a complete story in its own right (well, with the only exception of the very first two, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic).
  - the_af 5y ago
    Fully agreed. The wonderful thing is that many (if not most) Discworld novels can be read standalone in any order. Yes, you'll miss some references and subtleties, and recurring characters are better if you know their traits, but still they work standalone. Some are truly standalone (Monstruous Regiment, Small Gods, Going Postal, The Truth, etc), some aren't but can be mostly read in random order (wizards, witches, city watch).