4 ms·

It is somewhat surprising result in the world of short attention span. I stopped watching Game of Thrones after 3.5 seasons, stopped reading Terry Goodkind's Sw

It is somewhat surprising result in the world of short attention span. I stopped watching Game of Thrones after 3.5 seasons, stopped reading Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth after 4.5 books and Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber after 2.5 books (notice the pattern of dropping the things halfway through the installment). For me it sort of goes downhill from production value and/or captivating action to a pointless nonsense _with no end in sight_.

jerf 11y ago
I've noticed that my brain has developed an actual revulsion to fiction that never ends attains closure on anything. It is starting to feel very similar to the dream most of us have had of the quicksand we can't get out of because however high we go it's always higher. I don't mean that as a metaphor, I mean, I really do get a very similar feeling out of both. So many of these things seem to start out tight, then just drag out forever. I have more experience in the TV-series side. I am happy to not have all the answers, I'm happy to watch something overarching that goes on for a while, I'm even happy to watch something that ends ambiguously. But I've got little and ever less tolerance for those authors who think the way to make their universe last longer is to never resolve anything. No... you resolve things, and then there are more things. Preferably consequences, anticipated and otherwise. Just like, you know, real life. Don't simply stretch your story out... and out... and out... and out... Stargate SG-1 attained the nearly-perfectly-correct balance for me. And it made some of the developments in that series legitimately surprising to me, when they actually upended their universe a bit in several of the season finales, because I so casually expected "nothing to ever change" in a series like that. (Now it's more normal, but at the time especially I was surprised by their boldness. They never did quite take the step of making the program public knowledge, though...) (Special callout for Alias, by the way, who also scraped against my brain in such a way that I'm also extremely irritated by "but wait, there's a conspiracy behind that"... by the fourth or fifth time it's like the dream hallway that never ends. And my suspension of disbelief really breaks down too... how, exactly, does one become the guy in change of the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy? Is there a college track I should be focusing on for that? Does the n+1th conspiracy conduct secret interviews? Is a member of conspiracy-4 really supposed to be surprised to discover conspiracy-5?)
- gknoy 11y ago
  I feel similarly about book series -- I __devour__ them, and then at some point feel just drained and tired, and can't read book 9 or 12 or something. In contrast, there are webcomics that I read every week that have been going for ten years or more, and I still do not get tired of them. It might be the regular drip-feed of content that does that, though.
- prewett 11y ago
  After watching "Babylon 5", the first American TV series I knew that had a fixed length and didn't try to go as long as possible, I decided that if you don't have an end, you don't have a story. So unless I know there's an end, I don't bother. It's worked out pretty well; Robert Jordan's series kept getting longer (= doesn't know how to finish) until it got so long he died. GRRM seems be having similar problems--taking 5 and 6 years to write the latest two suggests to me he is getting bogged down (= doesn't know how to finish). I had similar problems with "Alias." You can't just upend who is good and who is bad every month. It isn't believable, and it feels like you're playing with your audience. It also indicates you have no idea what you are doing (= no end point). I watched season 3, and quit early on in season 4 after I realized...
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  I have a similar revulsion to what I call our "pre-order culture". Everything is "coming soon, preorder today!" It used to be just video games (and I guess some books) but it seems like EVERYTHING is available for pre-order. Kickstarter and its ilk certainly didn't help that. Once I type my credit card in it flips the "when is it going to get here" switch in my brain and the obsession sucks. I preordered an Apple Watch and spent so much time checking shipping status and hanging out on /r/applewatch that by the time it actually showed up the thrill was gone. There's a bunch of psychic overhead involved in preordering something -- or watching/reading a story that doesn't end -- and the anticipation completely outweighs the payoff.
chiph 11y ago
You didn't mention Wheel of Time - the poster-child of an author's inability to end a series. I'm proud of having lasted through just 3 books, and amazed by people who have slogged through all of them. I'm surprised that the Amber series hasn't been developed into a film (someone surely has the rights). Swords, sorcery, inter-world travel, dysfunctional royal family. It's got it all.
- claystu 11y ago
  It wasn't inability. If you look closely, the first Wheel of Time book stands alone and actually concludes the story by beating the main bad guy at the end of book 1. However, after the first book's success, Jordan obviously realized he could make it a trilogy, which he did and once again has Rand fight a triumphant battle that defeats all the forces of evil at the end of book 3. And then...Jordan finally just decided to pretend like he hadn't ended it twice already and settled in to write non-stop in that universe forever...which he did. I personally quit reading the series somewhere around book 6 or 7, but it wasn't inability that kept him going...it was sales. GRR Martin, on the other hand, I firmly believe lost track of his story. I don't think he would ever have made any more headway on it had it not been for the HBO miniseries and all the help and fan-made reference pages that cropped up as a result. I predicted for years that the story had stalled and would never see anymore progress during the mid 2000's.

jerf 11y ago

I've noticed that my brain has developed an actual revulsion to fiction that never ends attains closure on anything. It is starting to feel very similar to the dream most of us have had of the quicksand we can't get out of because however high we go it's always higher. I don't mean that as a metaphor, I mean, I really do get a very similar feeling out of both. So many of these things seem to start out tight, then just drag out forever. I have more experience in the TV-series side. I am happy to not have all the answers, I'm happy to watch something overarching that goes on for a while, I'm even happy to watch something that ends ambiguously. But I've got little and ever less tolerance for those authors who think the way to make their universe last longer is to never resolve anything. No... you resolve things, and then there are more things. Preferably consequences, anticipated and otherwise. Just like, you know, real life. Don't simply stretch your story out... and out... and out... and out... Stargate SG-1 attained the nearly-perfectly-correct balance for me. And it made some of the developments in that series legitimately surprising to me, when they actually upended their universe a bit in several of the season finales, because I so casually expected "nothing to ever change" in a series like that. (Now it's more normal, but at the time especially I was surprised by their boldness. They never did quite take the step of making the program public knowledge, though...) (Special callout for Alias, by the way, who also scraped against my brain in such a way that I'm also extremely irritated by "but wait, there's a conspiracy behind that"... by the fourth or fifth time it's like the dream hallway that never ends. And my suspension of disbelief really breaks down too... how, exactly, does one become the guy in change of the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy under the conspiracy? Is there a college track I should be focusing on for that? Does the n+1th conspiracy conduct secret interviews? Is a member of conspiracy-4 really supposed to be surprised to discover conspiracy-5?)

gknoy 11y ago
I feel similarly about book series -- I __devour__ them, and then at some point feel just drained and tired, and can't read book 9 or 12 or something. In contrast, there are webcomics that I read every week that have been going for ten years or more, and I still do not get tired of them. It might be the regular drip-feed of content that does that, though.
prewett 11y ago
After watching "Babylon 5", the first American TV series I knew that had a fixed length and didn't try to go as long as possible, I decided that if you don't have an end, you don't have a story. So unless I know there's an end, I don't bother. It's worked out pretty well; Robert Jordan's series kept getting longer (= doesn't know how to finish) until it got so long he died. GRRM seems be having similar problems--taking 5 and 6 years to write the latest two suggests to me he is getting bogged down (= doesn't know how to finish). I had similar problems with "Alias." You can't just upend who is good and who is bad every month. It isn't believable, and it feels like you're playing with your audience. It also indicates you have no idea what you are doing (= no end point). I watched season 3, and quit early on in season 4 after I realized...
Domenic_S 11y ago
I have a similar revulsion to what I call our "pre-order culture". Everything is "coming soon, preorder today!" It used to be just video games (and I guess some books) but it seems like EVERYTHING is available for pre-order. Kickstarter and its ilk certainly didn't help that. Once I type my credit card in it flips the "when is it going to get here" switch in my brain and the obsession sucks. I preordered an Apple Watch and spent so much time checking shipping status and hanging out on /r/applewatch that by the time it actually showed up the thrill was gone. There's a bunch of psychic overhead involved in preordering something -- or watching/reading a story that doesn't end -- and the anticipation completely outweighs the payoff.

chiph 11y ago

You didn't mention Wheel of Time - the poster-child of an author's inability to end a series. I'm proud of having lasted through just 3 books, and amazed by people who have slogged through all of them. I'm surprised that the Amber series hasn't been developed into a film (someone surely has the rights). Swords, sorcery, inter-world travel, dysfunctional royal family. It's got it all.

claystu 11y ago
It wasn't inability. If you look closely, the first Wheel of Time book stands alone and actually concludes the story by beating the main bad guy at the end of book 1. However, after the first book's success, Jordan obviously realized he could make it a trilogy, which he did and once again has Rand fight a triumphant battle that defeats all the forces of evil at the end of book 3. And then...Jordan finally just decided to pretend like he hadn't ended it twice already and settled in to write non-stop in that universe forever...which he did. I personally quit reading the series somewhere around book 6 or 7, but it wasn't inability that kept him going...it was sales. GRR Martin, on the other hand, I firmly believe lost track of his story. I don't think he would ever have made any more headway on it had it not been for the HBO miniseries and all the help and fan-made reference pages that cropped up as a result. I predicted for years that the story had stalled and would never see anymore progress during the mid 2000's.