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Schwarzwald posted:I might be talking out of my rear end here, but as far as I can tell "big epic fantasy" novels as a label only became a thing around the 90's to promote up and coming authors who were pushing lengthy stories. Like, when I think of big epic fantasy I don't think LotR, I think the Wheel series, and Sword of Truth and the like. The business model with them is to purposely not conclude the stories, so it's not too surprising that they outlast their authors (not that Goodkind has died yet). Yeah I was mostly thinking of stuff like Wheel of Time when I said that, I just thought I should mention LotR since its become the template most modern fantasy series take after in one way or another. You bring up a very interesting point though; dragging things out for as long as possible to squeeze out a little more profit is a very  move, I just wonder where its more a personal decision on the part of the writer or publisher meddling and how much of it is actual intent. Kevin J. Anderson was sure as gently caress trying to fleece people over but GRRM just strikes me as more lazy than anything.feedmyleg posted:LotR was one book that the publisher made him break up. Feldegast42 posted:LotR was written all at once as a single book but the publisher forced him to break it into three due to paper shortages in postwar England I actually own a paperback copy of Fellowship and its thick enough that it could make for a decent mallet in a pinch so I don't really blame them for wanting to split it up. MechanicalTomPetty fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Aug 16, 2020 |
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Aug 16, 2020 20:54
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Clive Barker wrote a book that his publisher made him split in two because it was so long that they were worried the paperback version would be structurally unsound and fall apart instantly. I think nowadays most publishers are gunshy about big sprawling open ended series and so a lot of authors just write for a trilogy. (Although SOME people can't even do that.)
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Aug 16, 2020 21:09
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Punkin Spunkin posted:All the emphasis on the ending of GoT is always kinda missing the point to me, i guess people were waiting and waiting for it to redeem the rest of the series but the problem with GoT isn't the ending it's that the last 3 (or 4) seasons were almost entirely garbage. Attrition plays a role. The average prestige television show is 10-13 hours of content per season, an enormous time investment. People who were less enthusiastic about early seasons drop off, leaving behind an increasingly insular group of viewers and critics who tend to be more forgiving a show's faults (and are likely part of a fan community that discourages critical appraisals). Game of Thrones managed to sustain itself on this good will for a while. Compare this to movies, which tend to be two or three hours at most and are much more approachable as a result (huge franchises excluded). QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Aug 16, 2020 |
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Aug 16, 2020 21:10
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I enjoyed most of GoT and I think it's silly to call it bad. Compared to a lot on television it maintained pretty high quality throughout. Lots of great actors probably helped. I was also disappointed with the last season but mostly because I had really expected it to be more about the zombies and Winter Is Coming instead of Dragonlady vs Cersei of all things
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Aug 16, 2020 21:20
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It's not silly it was bad for half its seasons. This is comparing itself to itself. You know most of the great characters/actors were gone by season 5 right.
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Aug 16, 2020 21:21
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Fartbox posted:I enjoyed most of GoT and I think it's silly to call it bad. Compared to a lot on television it maintained pretty high quality throughout. Lots of great actors probably helped. Seasons 1 through 3 of Game of Thrones are excellent and, while rot sets in during subsequent seasons, there's still a lot that kept people watching. Almost all of the main and supporting cast are great in their roles. The production values are unparalleled. It's the writing that entered a nosedive, which ultimately dragged down everything else.
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Aug 16, 2020 21:30
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Some idiot book nerds spent seasons waiting for Lady Stoneheart to show up and it rules that she never did because the entire premise was stupid as hell.
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Aug 16, 2020 21:37
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my favorite part of the whole got disaster was Benioff and weiss' absolutely laissez-faire attitude about the whole thing. From the moment after they ran out of book to crib from, they absolutely did not care about the series, and it reflected both in their demeanor during interviews and in the constant announcements of "d&d are gonna direct this thing or that thing" prior to the last season. They were so sure they had a career after got that they felt comfortable enough to completely detach themselves from the production. and then they fell flat on their rear end when all their post got poo poo got cancelled. Like what were they thinking, production companies were just gonna forgive them poisoning the well of a multi-billion dollar franchise?
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Aug 16, 2020 21:47
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Also stuff like cutting down on the episode count was their idea because HBO was willing to let the show go as long as it needed to.
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Aug 16, 2020 21:56
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It's crazy that two random dudes had so much say over the show. Their contracts must have been amazing for them to have that much control
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Aug 16, 2020 22:04
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I believe their dads are both super rich, but I don't think either of them had worked on anything particularly good beforehand. Maybe someone at HBO is a huge fan of Troy.
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Aug 16, 2020 22:20
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muscles like this! posted:Clive Barker wrote a book that his publisher made him split in two because it was so long that they were worried the paperback version would be structurally unsound and fall apart instantly. I believe that. When I was young a friend of my parents heard I was into fantasy books and gave me a bunch of second hand Steven King paperback. They might as well have been unbound.
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Aug 16, 2020 22:58
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wizardofloneliness posted:I believe their dads are both super rich, but I don't think either of them had worked on anything particularly good beforehand. Maybe someone at HBO is a huge fan of Troy. Troy was a pretty wildly popular and decently acclaimed movie, and was considered good in ways that would have been a really good sign for GoT. 
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Aug 16, 2020 23:09
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Malazan Book of the Fallen is finished. It's also really loving good. And most books in the series are pretty self contained. Also, the 9th (second last) book, the only one that isn't, begins with an apology for not being self contained, but it was going to be longer than book binding was actually capable of. QuoProQuid posted:Attrition plays a role. The average prestige television show is 10-13 hours of content per season, an enormous time investment. People who were less enthusiastic about early seasons drop off, leaving behind an increasingly insular group of viewers and critics who tend to be more forgiving a show's faults (and are likely part of a fan community that discourages critical appraisals). Game of Thrones managed to sustain itself on this good will for a while. I dont think that was an issue for GoT. It's viewership numbers steadily went up over the course of the series. wizardofloneliness posted:I believe their dads are both super rich, but I don't think either of them had worked on anything particularly good beforehand. Maybe someone at HBO is a huge fan of Troy. It's really crazy that you can have essentially no track record and be given an insane amount of control over a massive franchise.
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Aug 17, 2020 00:10
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I mean, they did adapt some pretty sprawling storylines successfully early on. Their work in bringing the world of GOT to life isn’t a fake. That said, they massively hosed up by doing only the barest of minimums to close out the characters and story. It’s telling that they could set up and bring to life all these characters but lost sight of all of them as they ran out of source materials. Motivations, character development, and consistency all flew out the window in the last seasons. Whatever to serve to connect the bare dots given to them.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:02
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MechanicalTomPetty posted:Yeah I was mostly thinking of stuff like Wheel of Time when I said that, I just thought I should mention LotR since its become the template most modern fantasy series take after in one way or another. You bring up a very interesting point though; dragging things out for as long as possible to squeeze out a little more profit is a very GoT was originally going to be a trilogy too but with WoT blowing up like it did Martin got a little nudge toward long form from his publisher. His original outline for the first book was posted online a few years ago, it ended with a love triangle between Arya, Tyrion and Jon Snow.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:10
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muscles like this! posted:I think nowadays most publishers are gunshy about big sprawling open ended series and so a lot of authors just write for a trilogy. (Although SOME people can't even do that.) Patrick Rothfuss is never going to finish the Kingkiller Chronicles. Probably for the best.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:10
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:GoT was originally going to be a trilogy too but with WoT blowing up like it did Martin got a little nudge toward long form from his publisher. His original outline for the first book was posted online a few years ago, it ended with a love triangle between Arya, Tyrion and Jon Snow. Even Wheel of Time was supposed to be a trilogy which is why a whole lot of stuff gets resolved at the end of the third book but is quickly downplayed as actually the final battle.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:14
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Wheel of Time undergoes a drat metamorphosis from just book one to book two, and I wouldn't be surprised that it was triggered by some unexpected success.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:38
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MechanicalTomPetty posted:Has there ever been a big epic fantasy novel series that managed to get to the end before the author keeled over? Maybe LotR, but discounting The Hobbit that was just a trilogy. I guess there's Dark Tower but by all accounts that, uh, took one hell of a downturn towards the end. The Belgariad, The Malloreon, The Elenium, The Tamuli 
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Aug 17, 2020 02:48
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The Belgariad, The Malloreon, The Elenium, The Tamuli Feist finished a bunch too. They were all bad, but he finished them.
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Aug 17, 2020 03:17
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QuoProQuid posted:It's the writing that entered a nosedive, which ultimately dragged down everything else. Tyrion, Varys, Littlefinger and even bit people like Bran and Davos pretty much lose all direction and have to figure out new identities for the last half of the show.
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Aug 17, 2020 03:35
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I don’t think I’ve ever liked it when a show starts getting longer episodes. Game of Thrones, The Office & Sons of Anarchy all started getting longer episodes after they got popular and I don’t think it helped them at all.
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Aug 17, 2020 04:16
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muscles like this! posted:Clive Barker wrote a book that his publisher made him split in two because it was so long that they were worried the paperback version would be structurally unsound and fall apart instantly. In a similar vein one of my favourite stories is of noted psychopath/weirdo James Ellroy. So James Ellroy wrote the LA Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz) a series of four crime books in LA. The last one is the fun one - White Jazz's initial writing was huge, it was an epic in scope and meant to tie up and include a lot of ends set up in the previous books - they weren't an ongoing story but had continuous elements/characters. The editor told him White Jazz was too long at over 600 pages and to cut it down. James Ellroy, as noted, is insane and a curmudgeon. So instead of edit in a normal way he instead went through the entire book and removed every single instance of a word that could conceivably be viewed as superfluous, such as a description being too descriptive or a piece of dialogue being a bit too long. The result is the work is significantly shorter, it went from 600 to 350 and its now 100 pages shorter even than LA Confidential, but so insanely dense as every word actually matters.
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Aug 17, 2020 04:16
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Alexander Hamilton posted:I don’t think I’ve ever liked it when a show starts getting longer episodes. Game of Thrones, The Office & Sons of Anarchy all started getting longer episodes after they got popular and I don’t think it helped them at all. Those are rarely things the writers want to deal with especially deep into a show. Extra length means changing the pace and structure of the episodes. I read the Office book recently and they talked about how much it sucked writing those.
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Aug 17, 2020 04:26
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Alexander Hamilton posted:I don’t think I’ve ever liked it when a show starts getting longer episodes. Game of Thrones, The Office & Sons of Anarchy all started getting longer episodes after they got popular and I don’t think it helped them at all. Various british comedy panel shows have aired 'XL' episodes that are longer, and you understand exactly why they cut them to 30 minutes.
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Aug 17, 2020 04:32
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Snowman_McK posted:Feist finished a bunch too. They were all bad, but he finished them. Yeah David Eddings is a monster person and his books are bad but you can't say he let a series go unended
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Aug 17, 2020 04:38
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Alexander Hamilton posted:I don’t think I’ve ever liked it when a show starts getting longer episodes. Game of Thrones, The Office & Sons of Anarchy all started getting longer episodes after they got popular and I don’t think it helped them at all. While The Simpsons staff are absolutely right to poo poo on Fox for cutting time to make room for more commercials, every other classic episode has to find ways to fill out the episode around short scripts and modern episodes do everything they can to waste time.
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Aug 17, 2020 04:47
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Yeah David Eddings is a monster person and his books are bad but you can't say he let a series go unended is he? What did he do?
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Aug 17, 2020 05:19
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LIVE AMMO COSPLAY posted:While The Simpsons staff are absolutely right to poo poo on Fox for cutting time to make room for more commercials, every other classic episode has to find ways to fill out the episode around short scripts and modern episodes do everything they can to waste time. Yeah, a fun game is to watch out for episodes that have the full intro and the couch gag is the big circus one, those are episodes that went short and they needed the extra 20 seconds the couch gag bought them.
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Aug 17, 2020 05:24
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Snowman_McK posted:is he? What did he do? Non sexual child abuse I heard
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Aug 17, 2020 05:49
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Non sexual child abuse I heard Not just allegations either, he and his wife went to jail in the 70s for it. For "having physically imprisoned and mistreated their adopted son and mentally traumatised their adopted daughter."
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Aug 17, 2020 05:58
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muscles like this! posted:Clive Barker wrote a book that his publisher made him split in two because it was so long that they were worried the paperback version would be structurally unsound and fall apart instantly. "To Green Angel Tower is the third and final novel in Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. At over 520,000 words, it is one of the longest novels ever written. Due to the length of the novel, the paperback version had to be split into two separate volumes." Pages 1104 pp (Hardback)
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Aug 17, 2020 06:18
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Thwomp posted:I mean, they did adapt some pretty sprawling storylines successfully early on. Their work in bringing the world of GOT to life isn’t a fake. The first couple seasons are pretty solid adaptations, and Season 5, I think (whichever one it was that adapted A Dance With Dragons) did a pretty drat good job of condensing a lovely, meandering book. Despite some writing foibles that were there all along, I think the first six seasons, really, are all pretty strong, and a season and a half of that is without a book to use as a guide. There's a serious drop at season seven, and then in the final season the show falls off a cliff, but actually ends kind of strongly. The DBs are good at adapting GRRM's plotting, even when it's nothing more than a scaffolding, but they're awful at doing it on their own and their dialogue is dreadful. But honestly, GRRM's written himself into a corner and even if he lived for a hundred years I doubt he'd ever actually finish the series. At least they managed that low bar.
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Aug 17, 2020 06:57
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One of the most fascinating things about Game of Thrones is that, other than a message board like this, nobody talks about it anymore. It was bad enough that everyone seems to just want to forget it. You still see people complain about the last episode of Seinfeld, how Dexter or How I Met Your Mother ended, how shows like Weeds or Walking Dead go on for ever, etc. But nobody makes references in pop culture, nobody is dressing up as the characters for Halloween or cosplay, all of the prequels and sequels have been cancelled. poo poo, they aren't even making porn parodies anymore. It was somehow the perfect poo poo storm that caused it to almost disappear from public consciousness.
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Aug 17, 2020 12:40
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WeedlordGoku69 posted:Troy was a pretty wildly popular and decently acclaimed movie, and was considered good in ways that would have been a really good sign for GoT. Really? My impression at the time was that Troy was a huge wet fart and no one liked or cared about it
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Aug 17, 2020 12:43
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Pope Corky the IX posted:One of the most fascinating things about Game of Thrones is that, other than a message board like this, nobody talks about it anymore. It was bad enough that everyone seems to just want to forget it. You still see people complain about the last episode of Seinfeld, how Dexter or How I Met Your Mother ended, how shows like Weeds or Walking Dead go on for ever, etc. But nobody makes references in pop culture, nobody is dressing up as the characters for Halloween or cosplay, all of the prequels and sequels have been cancelled. poo poo, they aren't even making porn parodies anymore. It was somehow the perfect poo poo storm that caused it to almost disappear from public consciousness. See also how The Rise of Skywalker, the conclusion, supposedly, to an almost 50 year story, vanished after about 72 hours and people went back to gushing over an above-average spinoff TV show. How often does the expanded universe counter program the source material?
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Aug 17, 2020 13:58
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Fartbox posted:Really? My impression at the time was that Troy was a huge wet fart and no one liked or cared about it The majority of Troy's box office was overseas. They didn't even make their budget back in the States, but it was pretty popular everywhere else.
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Aug 17, 2020 14:12
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Imo, brad pitt and especially eric bana do great work on troy. The costume design is great. Also sean bean, who plays completelly against type and does not die. i think people were expecting it to be the next big thing and its kinda underwhelming when compared to LoTR. I still like it. GOT went downhill by the double whammy of both the executive producers not giving a poo poo AND the author also not giving a poo poo because the original material was also becoming poo poo. A poo poo confluence that basicaly sunk almost everyones careers. Antifa Poltergeist fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 17, 2020 |
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Aug 17, 2020 14:22
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Pope Corky the IX posted:One of the most fascinating things about Game of Thrones is that, other than a message board like this, nobody talks about it anymore. It was bad enough that everyone seems to just want to forget it. You still see people complain about the last episode of Seinfeld, how Dexter or How I Met Your Mother ended, how shows like Weeds or Walking Dead go on for ever, etc. But nobody makes references in pop culture, nobody is dressing up as the characters for Halloween or cosplay, all of the prequels and sequels have been cancelled. poo poo, they aren't even making porn parodies anymore. It was somehow the perfect poo poo storm that caused it to almost disappear from public consciousness. They are filming a prequel series now, baring it having been paused for the hiatus, with a full order of episodes.
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Aug 17, 2020 15:32
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