What series/book/story that you liked in the beginning disappointed you the most?

[Ibrinar]

Among those I don't remember right now there might be one that disappointed me more but I remember The Hollows Series by Kim Harrison atm and it did disappoint me. Urban fantasy and I quite liked the first few book. But for the last books the author made the unfortunate decision to let a villain do a karma Houdini and let them become a couple. He was the sort of series spanning villain that isn't in direct opposition to the MC so they sometimes worked together against other parties. And he worked fine in that position. But that guy did many cruel evil things (and not just to others to the MC too), he was a murderous bastard, but he was ruthless to save his species so everything is fine now and the MC treats him like he is oh so great and perfect and... Well the relationship was a terrible choice but even if I tended to forgot a characters past misdeeds that easily it that also did unfortunate things to the MCs character. And imo she finished the series a bit of an insecure mess.

Well for more detail a review from someone else of the last book https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1050010250?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

[Aotrs Commander]

Probably David Edding's Eldar Gods. Given that his prior work ranks among my favourites, the Elder Gods went from okay to "didn't even bother to read the last book."



There was a trio of D&D novels, I forget the titles now... *wiki search* Ah, the Tainted Sword, first of the Penhaligon Trilogy. I had the first book for years - got it for Christmas - and thought it was quite good. Sometime later, I eventually got the second and third. (Must also have been presents, since a dive into my amazon orders didn't find it!) I was... Decidedly unimpressed with the second two books. They were, frankly, A Bit Pants. I am fairly sure I got rid of the books when I had a purge (because of space reasons), since I am not going to ever read them again.

[Barmoz]

Anita Blake Vampire Hunter and Sword of Truth

[Rynjin]

Hard to beat Sword of Truth, but The Dark Tower comes close.

[Seppl]

Probably not the most creative answer but: A Song of Ice and Fire. Both books and TV series. Both had great starts and kept only getting better for two more books/seasons. Then the book series disappointed by getting slower and more meandering with each additional book, then literally grinding to a complete halt by not continuing the series, until all interest was lost. The TV show disappointed by getting stupider and farther away from the central themes of the books with each season, until I could no longer bear watching.

[Darth Credence]

Sword of Truth can't be the answer, because that was crap from page one. I didn't make it far in the series, so I don't know how bad it got, but it couldn't possibly be a disappointment after the first books.

I'm definitely going with ASoIaF. Book one, great, book two, better, book three, incredible. Book 4, all around bad. Book five, better than 4, but not that much better.

[druid91]

Divergent.

When I first heard of it, and first started reading, it was pitched to me as the story of a girl with the rare ability to choose her caste in a world in which fairly rigid caste systems control society.

It was an interesting concept. I was less pleased to see it turn into a generic teenage rebellion/romance fantasy.

[Traab]

Wheel of time. I started it when book 2 was a new release. I read it, and enjoyed it, right up till either book 8 or 9. Then I felt betrayed because it felt like there was this big reset. Like, events had started to accelerate, it felt like he was ramping up for the big finish, then he went, "Hmm, you know, I really want to write another 8 of these" It probably wasnt as bad as im putting it, but for a guy who had to spend a full freaking year waiting to see what happens next, and had done so for the better part of a decade, combined with needing to constantly reread the books so I could keep everything straight since a year between 800+ page novels makes it easy to forget important details, it was enough to kill my willingness to continue.

[BWR]

David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series. You know the drill, multi brick-sized volumes with dozens of characters and plot lines and big epic events. Started just before WoT and the author actually finished it in about a book a year (though I believe he's expanding it).
It started off as excellent social-focused SF and ended up as really crappy fantasy. I'd still recommend it, but advise people to just stop when they feel it's losing its touch, which is about book 5 or 6 IIRC.

[Mordar]

Anita Blake Vampire Hunter and Sword of Truth


Hard to beat Sword of Truth, but The Dark Tower comes close.


Wheel of time. I started it when book 2 was a new release. I read it, and enjoyed it, right up till either book 8 or 9. Then I felt betrayed because it felt like there was this big reset. Like, events had started to accelerate, it felt like he was ramping up for the big finish, then he went, "Hmm, you know, I really want to write another 8 of these" It probably wasnt as bad as im putting it, but for a guy who had to spend a full freaking year waiting to see what happens next, and had done so for the better part of a decade, combined with needing to constantly reread the books so I could keep everything straight since a year between 800+ page novels makes it easy to forget important details, it was enough to kill my willingness to continue.

Well, those would be my three picks...with a little bit of a tweak.

I thought the Merry Gentry series had so much potential...and failed to pay it off even more than Anita Blake.

Wheel of Time...not sure if I gave up because it took too long to get to a "next book" somewhere along the line, or if the story just lost me.

As for Dark Tower though...Rynjin's experience is nowhere near mine. I disliked Drawing of the Three...but really liked all the rest. It did take several years after Drawing for me to come back, so maybe that helped.

- M

[Rynjin]

The last book is a barely coherent, anti-climactic mess.

[tomandtish]

Anita Blake Vampire Hunter and Sword of Truth

I'll agree with both of these.

First book of Sword of Truth is actually pretty good IF you take it by itself. It only becomes worse in hindsight (much like Star Trek: First Contact).

[Tvtyrant]

I will echo others. Sword of Truth (I wish I had stopped after book 1) and Dark Tower (I wish I had stopped with book 4).

I also felt that way about Mistborn. I loved the first one, enjoyed the second and endured the last. High court politics, spies and assassins got replaced with the standard fantasy apocalypse. I will grant that the apocalypse actually happens but still.

[Razade]

Sorrow, Memory and Thorn. First book was grand, second...wasn't as good and the last two books (one split into two) were an incoherent bloated mess.

[Aotrs Commander]

Sorrow, Memory and Thorn. First book was grand, second...wasn't as good and the last two books (one split into two) were an incoherent bloated mess.

I wasn't that struck even on the first one, myself. I recall, though, that I started reading the second one holiday, came home, and didn't finish it until the holiday the next year.

I don't even remember much about it, other than at the last that Simon didn't really appear to have really changed much from the first book.




Oh, the Glass trilogy, sequel to the Poison Trilogy by Maria V. Snyder. Because I am REALLY not comfortable reading about a character essentially Stockhoming syndrome and marrying her stalker. After her character nose-dived from "pretty cool" in the first trilogy to narcissistic asshat over the course of the second.

[Velaryon]

I liked Sword of Truth when I was in high school, so I guess that counts. Faith of the Fallen is when I started to feel the preaching was getting out of control, but it was The Pillars of Creation and Naked Empire when I started having to force myself to finish.

I agree with whoever said that there was a noticeable dip in quality in A Song of Ice and Fire after book 3. I still enjoyed the later books, but there's no question they don't live up to the first three, and I've pretty much given up hope of seeing any more books in that series.

Naomi Novik's Temeraire series was all over the place for me. The only book I thought was really weak was Tongues of Serpents (the one where they go to Australia), but as a general rule I preferred the books that focused more closely on the war and less on finding an excuse to visit every corner of the world.

The third book in the His Dark Materials series was a bit of a letdown for me as well. The world-building wasn't up to par with the first two books for me, and it wasn't til near the climax that things really got interesting.

And this is a bit more than series, but... the Star Wars EU after Del Rey took over. The New Jedi Order series got better after a shaky start, but it's all downhill again after that for the most part. By the time Disney axed it from continuity I barely even cared anymore.

[Ibrinar]

"Anita Blake" - when I went and read the first one I was surprised that it was actually a pretty good Urban Fantasy book, since I had already heard how it changes.

[Lord Raziere]

RWBY. past the second season it just all went downhill. without Monty, it just isn't the same.

Heroes, past the first season it just all went downhill. the first seasons had 24 episodes and was great, but then you only got 12 episodes per season after that so every episode felt rushed and condensed, and every season only got worse than the one before it.

and yeah, a Song of Ice and Fire is pretty disappointing as well. ol' GRRM had a good start, but its looking more and more as if he didn't have any good end in mind for the series.

Mass Effect. First two games were good, but the third had an ending so bad it persuaded me to never even get the third game, and then Andromeda happened and it was clear that bioware really dropped the ball on that franchise and never picked it up.

[Rynjin]

If we're talking Bioware, all their franchises went downhill. Dragon Age gets consistently worse with every installment as well (yes, DA2 is a better game than DA:I. Fight me.).

People try to say Mass Effect 3 is a good game only ruined by the ending, but I think it's a very boring, very tedious game even before that. The stakes are bigger but investment lower, in large part because they wrote themselves into a corner with Mass Effect 2.

An excellent game that leaves it impossible to bring back any of the companions in a meaningful capacity, meaning you're stuck with a bunch of random schmoes you don't care about like Vega, Kaidan/Ashley (who were underdeveloped in 1 for obvious reasons and get nothing in 3 either), and Liara (who is basiclaly a different character with the same name as your squad mate from 1; she was way better as a supporting NPC).

3 is a less personal story and suffers for it, which is a way bigger issue than a meaningless ending.

[deuterio12]

Naomi Novik's Temeraire series was all over the place for me. The only book I thought was really weak was Tongues of Serpents (the one where they go to Australia), but as a general rule I preferred the books that focused more closely on the war and less on finding an excuse to visit every corner of the world.


I actually quite enjoyed seeing how the different civilizations used dragons in different ways for war.

But yeah Tongues of Serpents is the weak link, doubly so because it made me pretty hyped at start when the protagonist gets offered the chance of becoming a corsair/pirate dragonrider and then goes "nope, hanging in this wasteland sounds like it will be lots of fun."

[Mechalich]

Naruto

I initially liked it enough that I wrote ~500,000 words of fanfiction for the universe and served as a moderator on a universe-focused forum, only to come to hate it sufficiently that I still haven't finished reading it and probably never will.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Heroes. I didn't stick past the first episode of the second season, though, so beyond sweeping the events of the previous season's climax under the rug, I'm not sure what they did with the story beyond that point.

Xenoblade Chronicles X. There's some excellent character arcs and stories in there, but the writing style for some reason draws a lot of emphasis to questions that are never answered. I felt like I was led to believe that there were answers, so I just believed up until nearing 100% that they would eventually come just by going through all the story bits. It's a mixed bag, though, because I did enjoy myself with the game even when I figured out that there were going to be important questions without any answers.

Lost. Season 1 was great. Season 2 was good. Then, it became apparent that mysterious things were happening just because they would be mysterious.

If I start to find a series less enjoyable, I usually just abandon it and forget about it, so these are the only three that came to my mind.

[LibraryOgre]

David Eddings Mallorean and Tamuli, as continuations of the Belgariad and Elenium, respectively.

I like the Belgariad and the Elenium... I like the Elenium better, and it shows how he matured as an author in some ways, but the Belgariad is still fun. But their continuations? Even the characters in the books admit "We're just doing the exact same **** again", with the justification of "Well, we're caught in the cycle of history, which is why these same events keep happening. We have to break that cycle to move forward."

The Mallorean, particularly, was enraging because Garion in Guardians of the West remained an utter idiot, especially regarding sex. Like, according to the story, he and Ce'Nedra have been trying for years to have a baby... then she manages to get them a picnic alone together and he seems flabbergasted by her flirtations. Like "This has never happened before, what is going on"? I walked away from a reread of the Mallorean because of that. Just... bad, sloppy characterization from an author who usually does so well at advancing his characters while keeping their core.

[NRSASD]

Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. I adored it until Book 6, when they wandered off into the outback for an entire book. While the initial premise was solid (Napoleonic War, add dragons!) the world building fell apart as the scope expanded. Between the Japanese, Incan, Chinese, African, and American attitudes towards dragons, it became extremely baffling as to why the British Empire ever became a world power. Not to mention there's a weird lack of any anti-dragon tech, especially since dragons seem to have been used as weapons since the Roman Empire.

[JeenLeen]

Three series come to mind to me. For all of them, I enjoyed them up to the end, but I got disappointed in that they seemed to either 1) get kinda weird, 2) get away from the themes they followed earlier, or 3) both.

Sword of Truth (as mentioned earlier), Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series, and Frank Herbert's Dune series.

For Sword of Truth, might be more that some of the political themes got a bit too blatant for me, plus the metaphysics seemed to lose consistency to me (although I'll warrant there could be good in-universe reasons for that, but it seemed poorly executed at the least.) The other two just got kinda strange near the end.

[The Glyphstone]

I'll put up David Weber's Out of the Dark here. I normally love David's stuff, and the first 70-80% of this was no exception. A somewhat on-the-rails but enjoyable narrative of plucky humans battling invading aliens guerilla-style. The last few chapters suddenly become about vampires who have been here all along but choosing not to get involved until the aliens are about to deploy a lethal superweapon - then they effortlessly butcher all the invaders, totally invalidate all the human resistance efforts to this point, and singlehandedly hijack the orbiting battle fleet to boot. Even knowing the 'twist' before I started didn't make it any less brick-to-the-head baffling when it landed.

[Alabenson]

Probably David Edding's Eldar Gods. Given that his prior work ranks among my favourites, the Elder Gods went from okay to "didn't even bother to read the last book."

I'd have to agree with this, but if you didn't read the last book than you barely scratched the surface of how bad that series got. Bad writing is one thing, but the last book ended with a giant retcon that made the entirety of the series a complete waste of time.

[Gnoman]

This is a bit of an odd example (because my primary disappointment is that there isn't enough of it, rather than not liking the later part), but Harry Turtledove's The War That Came Early was pretty disappointing in how it ended.


Essentially, this series's version of WWII runs from 1938-1944, goes very differently, and ends with an extremely interesting scenario that is completely unexplored.

[GrayDeath]

Well, it is strange to share so many opinions with foreign people I ahv enever met^^


Heroes. I LOVED Season one. Still one of my top 3 favourite Series. it just did everything so well.

THen Season 2 happened and was...really strange, but watchable. And then came Season 3, where Ia borted and enver came back.


Lost: The Same. If much less rewatchable due to one realizeing the "Mysterious stuff is a MYSTERY" for what it actually is.


Eddings....well, while both the Tamuli (went far overboard with the Epic Power, and forgot to update the smarts) and Malloreon (repeat for repats sake with some nice and some stupid intermezzi) were worse than their first Trilogies, tehy were stil overall quite good.

His Elder Gods though? I read book one. FOund that it read like the End of Tamuli (which was in my view with the exception of one truly cool Troll God horrible) and went downhillf rom there. Ugh.


I actually think ME 1 was the best, sure it was the least polished, but it felt real", had an intense plot, nice companions and enough customizability to be worth replaying. 2 had MUCH better interactions and felt more "real", but had a in retrospect dumb plot, 3 was the exact opposite, great plot, boooring execution.

I have not pllyed Inquisition past the demo yet, loved DA 1 found 2 nice, but it stopped when the actual story began (and had boooring gameplay) but forgettable. Is I DAI worth giving a shot?



One of my Own: David Webers Safehold. It starts amzing (Setup, execution, etc) but soon suffers from a mixture of Weber loosing himself in Details and Books getting longer and longer. I held up, and the end of the recentmost is promising for the future....but I am wary.


Oh, and Master of Orion. 2 Masterpieces followed by a bookeeping SIm. Ugh.

[Sapphire Guard]

Arkham series games past the first one. I got so hyped climbing wonder tower, wondering what Strange had in store and it turns out

he had a Predator encounter. The man that's meant to know Bruce's brain inside out somehow thinks that eight people with guns are going to stop him, unlike the last 17 times that was tried.

And the 'real' final boss turns out to be secretly the Joker again.

Origins: Really interesting new plot. Final boss? Secretly the Joker again.

Arkham Knight: Interesting plot. Final boss? Secretly the Joker again!

[deuterio12]

Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. I adored it until Book 6, when they wandered off into the outback for an entire book. While the initial premise was solid (Napoleonic War, add dragons!) the world building fell apart as the scope expanded. Between the Japanese, Incan, Chinese, African, and American attitudes towards dragons, it became extremely baffling as to why the British Empire ever became a world power.

Great navy. Even dragons can't travel that far on their own, so dragon carriers with assorted support ships provide a superior way to project power. In particular the african dragons seemed to hang around mostly in the center of the continent so european countries could raid the coasts at leisure for quite a while. Only the americans seem to have ships to match, but they're still quite new in the world scene by that point. Either way the british empire probably on the decline.

Although something that really does not hold together are the african logistics. Elephants in particular would've long gone extinct if there's hundreds/thousands of african dragons snacking on them on a daily basis. At least the chinese had the excuse of having figured out how to feed their dragons mostly with grain and only a bit of meat to keep huge numbers of dragons around.



Not to mention there's a weird lack of any anti-dragon tech, especially since dragons seem to have been used as weapons since the Roman Empire.

Well, there's several examples of anti-air artillery (normal cannons would never be able to aim so high or with enough acuraccy, so such weapons would've been specifically designed for fighting dragons) and stuff like shooting lots of pepper powder in the air that also messes up dragons.

Probably the romans had anti-dragon ballistae and whatnot around which would've been used in the dark ages too, but once you get gunpowder those would've become kinda obsolete. The chinese just breed anti-dragon dragons, while the africans and incans in the story aren't exactly using cutting edge tech. The story japanese are mostly isolated and rely on their super water-dragons to enforce said isolation.

[Adderbane]

This scenario seems more prominent in serial fiction, such as TV, because the creator can easily drift away from what they began with that made it so good. Writing blindly ahead without thought to where the story should go is a good way to get lost.

Of particular note I would mention Uplift Protocol on reddit, which started off as a first contact story, and evolved into an adorable little romance. Then the author introduced a love triangle plotline that derailed the main characters' growth and destroyed their relationship.

Being dishonest with the reader about the kind of story you're telling is a good way to lose them.

Also Edding's Elder Gods was terrible enough to put me off the Belgariad for years.

[The Glyphstone]

I agree that Tongues of Serpents is the weakest point in the Temeraire series. Especially coming on the heels of Victory of Eagles, which I think is one of the best books.

[dps]

This is probably going to seem a strange choice, but I'd say the Mission: Earth series of books by L. Ron Hubbard. I thought they started off pretty interesting, but then Hubbard's weird obsessions became more and more obvious in the narrative, and I didn't even bother with the last 2 books.

I should point out that I didn't really know who L. Ron Hubbard was when I started reading the books. Or, more accurately, I didn't realize that L. Ron Hubbard the SF author and L. Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology were the same person--I think I thought that they were father and son.

[Yora]

Obviously Star Wars, though I am not sure that counts because the three good movies are a complete and well concluded series. Episode 1 and 2 are pretty bad and while 3 got a lot better and has quite a bit going for it, I don't think it's really a good addition to the swries. But I hated all the movies that came after that. Last Jedi at least gets the tone and visuals somewhat right again, but the plot and characters are just as nonsensical.
I got three great classic movies that I can watch every year and I am happy with that.

Mass Effect is also a good case. The first two games are among my very favorite works of fiction ever, but at the end of the second I was literally asking myself during the credits "but where will they go from here?" And they did go exactly the same cliched standard pattern as in any giant alien/demon invasion story ends, as I predicted. The third game has some really great moments (that still make me replay it), but those are surrounded by a lot of bland and obviously half-finished stuff, an uninteresting main story and forgetable characters. I give the credit for the attempt to try a different way to end it then just a huge explosion destroying all the monsters and saving the galaxy, but the execution just failed. It feels even more rushed and not thought through than th rest of the game. Andromeda seems to have made all the same mistakes but actually much worse. Though that was apparent so early that I never played it.

[Frozen_Feet]

Bleach.

Especially the anime. Oh God the fillers were awfull. It doesn't help some of the fillers had interesting concept but didn't take them anywhere worthwhile. Most annoyingly: two whole arcs where characters have their powers stolen or copied by the bad guys. Instead of creating interesting match-ups where we get to see how different powers compare to one another, we get boring mirror matches. Failing to animate the real last arc of the manga didn't help.

As for the manga, the mid part was already getting kinda stale. Then things picked up in the final arc, it looked like we'd finally get answers to some of the big questions... but then, the execution got badly botched and the ending was rushed due to the author falling ill or something.

The biggest failure of the series, though, is that it has a hugely interesting setting... which mostly isn't explored and we just get one fight after another.

[deuterio12]

Bleach.

Especially the anime. Oh God the fillers were awfull. It doesn't help some of the fillers had interesting concept but didn't take them anywhere worthwhile. Most annoyingly: two whole arcs where characters have their powers stolen or copied by the bad guys. Instead of creating interesting match-ups where we get to see how different powers compare to one another, we get boring mirror matches. Failing to animate the real last arc of the manga didn't help.

As for the manga, the mid part was already getting kinda stale. Then things picked up in the final arc, it looked like we'd finally get answers to some of the big questions... but then, the execution got badly botched and the ending was rushed due to the author falling ill or something.

The biggest failure of the series, though, is that it has a hugely interesting setting... which mostly isn't explored and we just get one fight after another.

To add to that, Bleach had several interesting characters that are just left in the dust never to matter again while main protagonist Ichigo just keeps racking in new powers one after the other.

Contrast to One Piece that not so long ago had the party's cook be revealed as a runaway prince of a mighty nation that gets recalled to be used for a political marriage leading to an huge arc that even brings back several tertiary characters and past events to tie in what looked like minor plot points.

[Yora]

I quite liked reading the first part of Bleach in which they battle their way through the undead city to rescue Rukia. That was fun. And then it got really boring really quickly, when instead of guys in black they are switching to fighting guys in white in incredibly dull looking and repetitive environments and nothing ever happens.

From what I have heard, this point is still long before most more commited readers say it goes really bad.

[Ceaon]

For books, I'll add my vote to the Dark Tower series. The last two books were all build up and disappointing payoffs.
That being said, I actually loved the ending quite a lot and would still recommend the series.
Most other book series I've read were good or bad from start to finish.

For tv, Heroes. Man, did that get boring, after such a great first season. Allthough the first season finale was also meh.

For films, looking back to my youth: the Land of Time series (edit: Land Before Time). Awesome first movie. Terrible, TERRIBLE sequels.

[tomandtish]

This scenario seems more prominent in serial fiction, such as TV, because the creator can easily drift away from what they began with that made it so good. Writing blindly ahead without thought to where the story should go is a good way to get lost.


Good point. X-Files is this for me. Especially once it became obvious Carter was making it up (poorly) as he went along.


For tv, Heroes. Man, did that get boring, after such a great first season. Allthough the first season finale was also meh.

For films, looking back to my youth: the Land of Time series. Awesome first movie. Terrible, TERRIBLE sequels.

I always wonder what Heroes would have been like if they'd stuck to the anthology concept as they'd originally planned.

And I agree. Land Before Time (I assume that's what you mean) is awesome. The others.... bleh.

[JNAProductions]

Surprised no one has mentioned Star Wars.

But for me, the Ender's Game series.

[Ceaon]

And I agree. Land Before Time (I assume that's what you mean) is awesome. The others.... bleh.

Thanks. In Dutch, the series is simply named "Platvoet en zijn vriendjes", which translates to "Littlefoot and his friends". Meaning I always have trouble remembering the English name.

[Lurkmoar]

Surprised no one has mentioned Star Wars.

But for me, the Ender's Game series.

Yora mentioned Star Wars.

Seconded with the Ender's Game series. Speaker for the Dead was alright, but I thought Jane was an absolute pest. Xenocide and Children of the Mind killed any further interest for me in the setting and characters.

[JNAProductions]

Yora mentioned Star Wars.

Seconded with the Ender's Game series. Speaker for the Dead was alright, but I thought Jane was an absolute pest. Xenocide and Children of the Mind killed any further interest for me in the setting and characters.

They did? Ah, missed that.

[Bastian Weaver]

Sword of Truth had a good start. Seriously, "It was an odd-looking vine" is one of my favorite first lines in fantasy.
Then it got all "let's make some more money".
Gotham was awesome, but closer to the last season I could hear Bruno Heller say "Oh, come on, guys, we've already done all the cool stuff. Let's just stop here. No? Okay... Let's, I dunno, give Gordon a moustache or something..."
And then there was Lie to Me. Great first season. Much weaker as it continued.

[Velaryon]

Another one for me that started off well but ended in a train wreck has got to be Dollhouse. I thought the premise was interesting, I thought the cast was pretty strong, and I was excited at the possibility of a lead role where Eliza Dushku might finally get to show some acting range.

The first season was pretty interesting - not as good as Whedon's previous shows at their best, but still pretty decent and with the promise of things getting better as the mystery unfolded. And then I think midway through writing the second season they must have gotten word that the series was not going to get picked up for a third season (seriously Joss, that's what you get for working with Fox again. What were you thinking?!). Starting about midway through, it seemed like they tried to cram four seasons' worth of plot development into about an eighth of the time those plotlines should have had. Everything became a confused, nonsensical mess, with surprise reveals that didn't make any sense and everything just feeling horribly rushed.




I actually quite enjoyed seeing how the different civilizations used dragons in different ways for war.

I did think it was interesting in some ways, but the way it was done just felt forced to me. The whole series feels in many ways like it follows a formula: One book about the war, then one acting as a travelogue examining another culture's way of living with dragons, then back to the war, etc. The first two times (going to China and going to Africa) it worked pretty well, but after that it started to feel more and more contrived, to the point of needing to have an off-screen "Laurence takes a head injury and wakes up with amnesia" cliche in order to come up with an excuse to tour South America. It just got a little too far from the "Napoleon plus dragons" appeal of the setting for me. It's not that I didn't enjoy the different cultures' handling of dragons, but the ways we got shown those cultures felt increasingly ham-fisted to me as the series went on.



To add to that, Bleach had several interesting characters that are just left in the dust never to matter again while main protagonist Ichigo just keeps racking in new powers one after the other.

It's like if the Sword of Truth was an anime, but presumably without the objectivist propaganda. I only watched maybe half a dozen episodes before I wandered off to watch something else.

[Traab]

David Eddings Mallorean and Tamuli, as continuations of the Belgariad and Elenium, respectively.

I like the Belgariad and the Elenium... I like the Elenium better, and it shows how he matured as an author in some ways, but the Belgariad is still fun. But their continuations? Even the characters in the books admit "We're just doing the exact same **** again", with the justification of "Well, we're caught in the cycle of history, which is why these same events keep happening. We have to break that cycle to move forward."

The Mallorean, particularly, was enraging because Garion in Guardians of the West remained an utter idiot, especially regarding sex. Like, according to the story, he and Ce'Nedra have been trying for years to have a baby... then she manages to get them a picnic alone together and he seems flabbergasted by her flirtations. Like "This has never happened before, what is going on"? I walked away from a reread of the Mallorean because of that. Just... bad, sloppy characterization from an author who usually does so well at advancing his characters while keeping their core.

I actually enjoyed the tamuli even though in hindsight it was a little odd just how much was taken care of by gods saying "to heck with reality, things happen now and everyone is where they need to be because we say so." But I fully agree with the mallorean. I mean, in universe it had its justification and it did make sense, but yeah, still pretty dull reading the same general storyline all over again. The Belgariad was an excellent example of the bare bones heroic journey fantasy series setup. So despite being generic it still was enjoyable to read because it had the things that people who enjoy that sort of story expect to see. It just didnt have much more. I still enjoyed reading it and even still have it on my shelves though. As for the cenedra thing, it was the seduction aspect he wasnt expecting. Deep down he is still the clueless provincial farm boy who married the second girl he ever kissed. He doesnt exactly have much practical experience and before her his best move was, "Sneak girl treats from kitchen, she lets me kiss her a bit"

So more books. The Drizzt billion book set. I really enjoyed the first 2 trilogies, but everything after that became less and elss enjoyable until I eventually just stopped. It got to the point where it felt like I was reading harlequinn romances, it was such a repetitious formula that you could set your watch to it. Another long running series was raymond feist and his magician universe. THAT one I stuck with a lot longer. In fact I read it till, timeline wise, we were dealing with great grand children of the original set of characters (for the most part) It just didnt grab me any longer after the talon of the silver hawk series. Redwall Abbey was just as bad as drizzt. Again, super formulaic feeling. I really LIKED the formula, but you can only read it so many times, you know?

[Metahuman1]

Put me down for Anita Blake.



Also, The Starlight And Shadows D&D trilogy.

[LordEntrails]

Wheel of Time was bad. As said, started great. My problem in the end was that he couldn't stay focused on just one set of characters. He felt he had to detail what was happening with every character on each and every day. Became not only difficult to keep things straight, but such a slow paced story it was painful.

But, that's not the worst for me. Mission Earth by L Ron Hubbard. Again, a great start, but quickly devolved into a study of the degeneration into mental illness of the author. It was more revealing about how an authors mind was degenerating into... well serious mental illness than it was about the story. The story just got bad, the character motivations became a ramble of illogical and emotional dysfunction and the story became a series of tangled rants.

[Jothki]

Wheel of Time was bad. As said, started great. My problem in the end was that he couldn't stay focused on just one set of characters. He felt he had to detail what was happening with every character on each and every day. Became not only difficult to keep things straight, but such a slow paced story it was painful.

The pacing of the last book before the author died was kind of amusing, though (if you ignore the whole author dying thing). It was obviously a desperate attempt to wrap up as many plot lines as possible, but there were just so many plot lines to wrap up that it didn't manage to make nearly enough headway.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I guess I've been fortunate to have missed many of the works mentioned here. I definitely agree with the people saying A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. The books lost a lot of focus and momentum as they went on (though I'll still read them), and I couldn't bare to watch the TV series beyond season 4.

Post-Oum RWBY was dire, as Lord Raziere says. Dropped that pretty quickly.

Not so sure I'd have the Wheel of Time books on this list. It had a bit of a dip in the middle, yes, but I didn't much like the beginning either so it's not like I was disappointed. Really, the ending was one of the best parts (though it still left a lot to be desired).

The only time I've really been upset by a weak ending though, was the manga Sweet Blue Flowers. I loved the first 40-odd chapters, but the ending is a rushed, nonsensical mess that doesn't even try to provide any resolution or closure. I was appalled.

[Leewei]

I'll jump on the Wheel of Time bandwagon. The series started out as a fairly ambitious and fun exercise in world-building. I quit reading halfway through the book following the restoration of male magic when the climax of the previous book occurred from the perspectives of other characters.

At that point, I quit reading and all but one book in the series went to Half Price Books. The one I kept had a few chapters in it with characters exploring the Road of Dreams. My wife reads it when having trouble sleeping.

[avalkauskas]

Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time"

Loved books 1-3, then it got exponentially worse and by book 8 I was done.

[Eldan]

Huh. I only read the first two wheel of time books and I couldn't get into it at all. Plot rip off, mostly uninteresting characters, worldbuilding that seemed to consist of sprinkling random mythological names (from a dozen different mythologies) over a Lord of the Rings copy.

[Rynjin]

Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time"

Loved books 1-3, then it got exponentially worse and by book 8 I was done.

Book 9 is actually where all the plot threads finally start trimming down and weaving back together, but unfortunately Jordan died after 11 was written, and Brandon Sanderson (much as I love him) didn't quite manage to stick the landing just from the notes.

[Telonius]

Wheel of Time, as several others have mentioned.

A couple of others:

Ender's Game. First book was great, the others less so.

A Wrinkle in Time. First book was great, second was odd, third got better, and then it descended into some very strange places (against forum rules to discuss).

[Traab]

Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time"

Loved books 1-3, then it got exponentially worse and by book 8 I was done.

Strange, for me its books 4,5, and 6 that I loved the most. Probably because it felt like real progress was being made towards the end game.

[dps]

My feelings about the Wheel of Time series are quite mixed. I never did much like any of the main characters (in fact I actively disliked most of them), but I did like the setting and the world building. But it just dragged on and on, and then when Sanderson took over, I got the feeling he didn't really know what was supposed to be the fate of many of the characters, so he just killed those characters off without much resolution of their character arcs, and then rushed the finale so much that it seemed almost anti-climatic.

[Alabenson]

I'm shocked no one's mentioned The Walking Dead yet. That show started off as one of the few pieces of modern zombie fiction that I actually enjoyed, but the story just kept dragging and getting increasingly depressing until I just lost all remote interest.

[Mechalich]

My feelings about the Wheel of Time series are quite mixed. I never did much like any of the main characters (in fact I actively disliked most of them), but I did like the setting and the world building. But it just dragged on and on, and then when Sanderson took over, I got the feeling he didn't really know what was supposed to be the fate of many of the characters, so he just killed those characters off without much resolution of their character arcs, and then rushed the finale so much that it seemed almost anti-climatic.

I don't recall Sanderson killing any particularly large number of characters - except for obvious villains, who the plot demanded must die in the end anyway - after taking over. Somewhat remarkably, actually, the overwhelming majority of the major characters from book one manage to survive all the way to end of the series.

As for the finale seeming anti-climatic, this was a consequence of a hole Jordan created earlier - by the endgame you have massive armies on both sides, but one side has access to full-fledged teleportation and the other largely does not - because Shadowspawn cannot pass through a gateway. Therefore staging a protracted military campaign is impossible, because team evil has no chance whatsoever in that scenario, so he had to stage a single gigantic showdown instead.

Teleportation magic/technology generally makes a hash of military fiction. Military campaigns are broadly dependent upon what strength is where and how it moves, when you eliminate distance and territory as factors, things break down in a hurry.

[Kyrell1978]

I'd have to go with the Dark Tower Series. I loved the first five books and didn't really mind the sixth, but I couldn't even finish the seventh book. He got back to his old 400 pages of nothing going on self there at the end.

[Rodin]

Strange, for me its books 4,5, and 6 that I loved the most. Probably because it felt like real progress was being made towards the end game.

I like books 1,2, and 3 and books 4,5, and 6 for different reasons.

The first 3 books are very much your standard "hero's adventure", and it manages to keep the focus squarely on the various quests the main characters are on. The next 3 have turn into more Epic Fantasy, where our heroes are becoming leaders rather than just kids trying to stay alive. There's a bigger focus on politics and things seem to be moving towards a conclusion in the next book.

And then the plot just...stops. For some reason, we have to deal with bringing every country into the fold in excruciating detail. The Seanchan come back. Jordan realizes he's running out of stuff for Nynaeve and crowd to do while Rand is taking over the world, so he gives them a glorified filler quest to find the "Bowl of the Winds". About the only good thing to come out of that plotline was Mat's fight with the gholam. And then there's nothing for Mat to do for a while, so Jordan drops a wall on him for an entire book. What.

What needed to happen was that some of the superfluous stuff needed to be cut out of book 6 in order to lead things up to a proper book 7 ramp up - either to finishing the plot there, or setting up a whizz-bang finisher in book 8 or so. Path of Daggers and Winters Heart in particular have SO MUCH FILLER in them that it's physically painful to read.

In writing this post, I learned that the WoT Wiki has assigned power ratings (in numbers) to all the channelers in the series. I despair for humanity.

[Kato]

Ender's Game. First book was great, the others less so.


Oh boy... Could I go on a rant about this... But not because of the latter books (I only read the second but I enjoyed it enough). But the original story... Started with such an interesting premise but basically did everything wrong, except maybe the overarching plot and arguably the climax / ending. But the basic deceit of this ridiculous academy and Card's idea of a genius? I barely pulled through.

I feel like many stories don't quite live up to their expectations, but I might just have too high expectations going into decent stories.
Naruto is a typical example of a story losing a lot of its charme but it was still fine at the end. Still disappointing.
Lost was this kind of for me but to be fair, I wanted the show to be a realistic tale of being stranded on an island, not loads and loads of mysticism stacked on top of each other.

[Tvtyrant]

Oh boy... Could I go on a rant about this... But not because of the latter books (I only read the second but I enjoyed it enough). But the original story... Started with such an interesting premise but basically did everything wrong, except maybe the overarching plot and arguably the climax / ending. But the basic deceit of this ridiculous academy and Card's idea of a genius? I barely pulled through.


Thank you. I always found the "children have more creativity then adults" to completely fall apart when combined with "the big innovation is genocide."

That is humanities default, it hardly requires a child to accomplish...

[Kato]

Thank you. I always found the "children have more creativity then adults" to completely fall apart when combined with "the big innovation is genocide."

That is humanities default, it hardly requires a child to accomplish...

If that was the biggest issue... But this isn't the place for that.

Here is another one... Most Final Fantasy endings. Not all of them, but about 3/4 I feel the ending was less than I hoped for. Be it sudden time loops, people returning from hell, sudden clouds from dark dimensions, mind controlling incarnations of evil... Of course, evil trees controlling nothingness are cool. (also, to some degree, game play wise, but again, not the place for it).

[Rodin]

Naruto is a typical example of a story losing a lot of its charme but it was still fine at the end. Still disappointing.

I still want to see what Naruto would have been like if Sasuke had died in that opening arc. Naruto makes this big vow not to let anyone die, and then his big rival (that he still pretty much hates at this point in the story) sacrifices his life for him. It would have been a fair bit darker of a story, I think, but it would have been more interesting than what we got.

Biggest problem I had with Naruto though is that nothing makes sense with the plot when you look even one level below the surface. Madara is this legendary ninja shrouded in myth and nobody is really sure what he's capable of. Which is cool and all, but how long ago did this "shrouded in myth" guy live? Well, Tsunade is about 50, and is the grand-daughter of Hashirama, one of his contemporaries and who is about the same age as Madara. Which places Madara as having been active anywhere from about 70-150 years or so ago. That's...not a long time. Especially with the short lives ninja tend to have making it likely to be earlier on the scale as opposed to longer. Heck, we actually DO see that Madara is alive (if old and sickly) a mere 20 or so years before the start of the plot!

And yeah, that's nitpicky, but it bugs the hell out of me. There's a lot worse, like Itachi supposedly being a "good guy in disguise" who does needlessly horrific things to his own brother, yet we're somehow supposed to root for him. Or Madara's entire end-the-world plan relying on an Uchiha coincidentally getting injured near his lair. Or Orochimaru randomly deciding he doesn't want to destroy Konoha or eat Sasuke for lunch whenever he returns.

The list goes on and on, and any in-depth plot analysis just sort of...falls apart. That was one benefit to Bleach's total lack of a plot after the Soul Society arc - you could just sort of switch your brain off and enjoy watching people stab each other with raspberries pointy sticks.

[Ibrinar]

Post-Oum RWBY was dire, as Lord Raziere says. Dropped that pretty quickly.


Too bad I only know season 1 and it was still on my list to catch up to.

[Lord Raziere]

Too bad I only know season 1 and it was still on my list to catch up to.

don't bother man. RWBY as we knew it kind of died when Oum did. what came after simply can't ever measure up in terms of animation, and the story isn't anything special or interesting. it would take a second digital animation god to even attempt to recapture the feel.

[Rynjin]

Biggest problem I had with Naruto though is that nothing makes sense with the plot when you look even one level below the surface. Madara is this legendary ninja shrouded in myth and nobody is really sure what he's capable of. Which is cool and all, but how long ago did this "shrouded in myth" guy live? Well, Tsunade is about 50, and is the grand-daughter of Hashirama, one of his contemporaries and who is about the same age as Madara. Which places Madara as having been active anywhere from about 70-150 years or so ago. That's...not a long time. Especially with the short lives ninja tend to have making it likely to be earlier on the scale as opposed to longer. Heck, we actually DO see that Madara is alive (if old and sickly) a mere 20 or so years before the start of the plot!

Well, nobody alive had ever seen Madara fight by series start, and it's not like people talked about him. Tobirama had a pathological hatred of the Uchiha, and so wouldn't talk about Madara in any terms other than "he was an Uchiha who was more evil than most of them" (you can trace EVERY BAD THING THAT EVER HAPPENS back to Tobirama, so why not this one?) and the Uchiha themselves are ultra-secretive; Itachi seemed to have some idea of what Madara was capable of in specifics, so higher ups in the Uchiha food chain probably knew his deal.

Everybody that really should logically know what Madara could do did (Tsunade at least had the generalities of "Hashirama was super badass, and Madara fought on equal terms with him").

...The real issue with Madara is his plan makes no sense even given the reveal of "it was based on an epic prank by Black Zetsu" and his impact on the story is actually very little when you look at it. In the backstory he has this vague plan and it propels Obito, and then he shows up to steal the bull**** powerup and then get hijacked by the real villain. That's it for a supposedly important character.

[Lord Raziere]

...The real issue with Madara is his plan makes no sense even given the reveal of "it was based on an epic prank by Black Zetsu" and his impact on the story is actually very little when you look at it. In the backstory he has this vague plan and it propels Obito, and then he shows up to steal the bull**** powerup and then get hijacked by the real villain. That's it for a supposedly important character.

I dunno, Madara seemed like the real villain, Kaguya just seemed like the giant space flea from nowhere you get as a bonus boss, with Black Zetus being even less important- Kaguya's impact is so distant that there is no emotional or personal connection between her and the actual events that transpire, because she is responsible for both the good and bad of the shinobi world by starting all this, long before the current generations we see in play much like prometheus. her returning is bad, but Madara was the guy who actually did all this in my mind, since Kaguya is so far before the relevant generation that she is almost meaningless to modern ninja than a doomsday being.

[rooster707]

Thank you. I always found the "children have more creativity then adults" to completely fall apart when combined with "the big innovation is genocide."

That is humanities default, it hardly requires a child to accomplish...

It’s been a couple of years since I read it, but I don’t think that’s what it was?

IIRC, Ender won because of empathy, not creativity. It wasn’t “hey guys, maybe we could win the war if we killed all the aliens,” it was “I understand them, so I know how to beat them.”

[Rynjin]

I dunno, Madara seemed like the real villain, Kaguya just seemed like the giant space flea from nowhere you get as a bonus boss, with Black Zetus being even less important- Kaguya's impact is so distant that there is no emotional or personal connection between her and the actual events that transpire, because she is responsible for both the good and bad of the shinobi world by starting all this, long before the current generations we see in play much like prometheus. her returning is bad, but Madara was the guy who actually did all this in my mind, since Kaguya is so far before the relevant generation that she is almost meaningless to modern ninja than a doomsday being.

Kaguya not being any better is part of the point; Madara was so superfluous he could be easily replaced by the moon bunny with little build up and it still doesn't feel all that jarring.

[Lurkmoar]

Kaguya not being any better is part of the point; Madara was so superfluous he could be easily replaced by the moon bunny with little build up and it still doesn't feel all that jarring.

Madara was at least referenced and alluded to WAAAY earlier in the series, way back to when Sasuke defected from the Leaf. Kaguya got an ominous picture and back story, what a few chapters before she was pulled out a hat?

[Traab]

I still want to see what Naruto would have been like if Sasuke had died in that opening arc. Naruto makes this big vow not to let anyone die, and then his big rival (that he still pretty much hates at this point in the story) sacrifices his life for him. It would have been a fair bit darker of a story, I think, but it would have been more interesting than what we got.

Biggest problem I had with Naruto though is that nothing makes sense with the plot when you look even one level below the surface. Madara is this legendary ninja shrouded in myth and nobody is really sure what he's capable of. Which is cool and all, but how long ago did this "shrouded in myth" guy live? Well, Tsunade is about 50, and is the grand-daughter of Hashirama, one of his contemporaries and who is about the same age as Madara. Which places Madara as having been active anywhere from about 70-150 years or so ago. That's...not a long time. Especially with the short lives ninja tend to have making it likely to be earlier on the scale as opposed to longer. Heck, we actually DO see that Madara is alive (if old and sickly) a mere 20 or so years before the start of the plot!

And yeah, that's nitpicky, but it bugs the hell out of me. There's a lot worse, like Itachi supposedly being a "good guy in disguise" who does needlessly horrific things to his own brother, yet we're somehow supposed to root for him. Or Madara's entire end-the-world plan relying on an Uchiha coincidentally getting injured near his lair. Or Orochimaru randomly deciding he doesn't want to destroy Konoha or eat Sasuke for lunch whenever he returns.

The list goes on and on, and any in-depth plot analysis just sort of...falls apart. That was one benefit to Bleach's total lack of a plot after the Soul Society arc - you could just sort of switch your brain off and enjoy watching people stab each other with raspberries pointy sticks.

I do actually agree there. I mean, we DO canonically have at least one living person who faced madera, the iwakage back when he was a newbie nin. But even so, you would think SOMEONE would write up a history of the biggest bad guy to ever be evil. The one dude so powerful he could fight a guy who can create thousand year old forests in the blink of an eye and was known as the god of shinobi for a freaking reason. Even if only to keep track of the high bar for the uchiha clan. "This is what they could theoretically be capable of, they can use these skills if they are good enough" And when you consider that pretty much every other legendary shinobi was well known enough to give us a breakdown on their abilities, specialties, and possible weaknesses, that we didnt have that for madera is odd. Maybe it was a way to punish him post mortem. "This traitor doesnt deserve to be remembered, destroy any records of anything badass he did." After all, its not like they were going to ever see him again after hashi slaughtered his butt in the VotE.

Was sasuke ever really important to the bad guy plot? I thought he was basically a seat filler for the bijuu hunting squad. As for orochimaru and konoha, as long as they could get the bijuu did madera even care that much?

[Thanqol]

Sense8. It's strange to say because I like almost everything about it, but the way the show does antagonists is just so hamhanded. It genuinely feels like putting the protagonists through even the slightest amount of suffering caused the director physical pain, which made it extremely hard to have any sort of tension.

[Tvtyrant]

It’s been a couple of years since I read it, but I don’t think that’s what it was?

IIRC, Ender won because of empathy, not creativity. It wasn’t “hey guys, maybe we could win the war if we killed all the aliens,” it was “I understand them, so I know how to beat them.”

He literally just shoots a planet destroying weapon at their home planet in a suicide run. The empathy part was him sneaking an egg away so they wouldn't go completely extinct after mankind wiped them out.

The other officers act like blowing up the opponents home planet was a remarkable trick no one could have imagined, instead of basic human tactics 101.

[Lord Raziere]

Kaguya not being any better is part of the point; Madara was so superfluous he could be easily replaced by the moon bunny with little build up and it still doesn't feel all that jarring.

It was jarring.

Madara at least looks and feel as if he comes from this era of the crazy cycle they've been going through, he is still apart of everything tied to this whole three-generational clusterfuffle resolving around the Hidden Leaf. it makes sense in a "mythical japanese family feud" kind of way.

Kaguya and her story is from a completely different age closer to something out of the Hindu epics than ninjas. at that point it barely has anything to do with any other plot, its like watching a show about the machinations of knights and for the final villain you randomly bring back Odysseus from the dead when it was previously Evil Sir Arthur.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I actually enjoyed the tamuli

Same - I enjoy Tamuli for the same reason I enjoy the Avengers film: it feels more like a victory lap than a standalone story. The heroes are all assembled, they know what they are up against (mostly) and the enemies are little more than road bumps. They are a smoothly run machine of snark that got a reason to go on holidays to kick some ass, and they deliver.

I also second Edding's last series - except I never got past the first book.

Otherwise, I'd say practically every anime I've watched anywhere near to the end. Escaflowne, Full Metal Alchemist, Evangelion and a few others I could mention all start with great set-ups, but their endings systematically disappoint me. I suspect the problem lies with me, though, rather than with the stories themselves, so I don't blame them; I'm just slightly sad I can't get into Japanese storytelling.

Grey Wolf

[The Fury]

There's already been a few mentions of RWBY, and I'm tempted to mention it as well. Anyone who's interacted with me on the various RWBY threads knows that I've got my share of snark for that series. Though if I'm honest, I wasn't really part of the discussion when the first three volumes came out and I feel like my expectations for the series as a whole were never that high.

Besides, A Certain Magical Index/Scientific Railgun disappointed me waaay more. The series started out interesting enough, with quirky characters that applied super powers in creative ways, and Academy City was an interesting idea for a setting. Then the interesting, unique parts of the series started to take a back seat to the samey light-novel inspired elements until it was just another paint-by-numbers moe high school anime. Or the TLDR version, started out interesting but eventually got bland.

At least when RWBY was bad, it was at least bad in a unique way.

[Celestia]

Death Note. It started out as one of the best animes I had ever seen, and I loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, the series died when L did. Everything after that moment was complete garbage filled with dumb characters, plot holes, and way too many contrivances. It almost felt like the rest of it was written by an entirely different person who didn't even understand the show. Such a disappointing ending to an otherwise amazing show.

[Kato]

Death Note. It started out as one of the best animes I had ever seen, and I loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, the series died when L did. Everything after that moment was complete garbage filled with dumb characters, plot holes, and way too many contrivances. It almost felt like the rest of it was written by an entirely different person who didn't even understand the show. Such a disappointing ending to an otherwise amazing show.

Eh... While I agree that DN deserves a mention in this thread I had less of a problem with the events after L's death. I mean, I won't claim it got better after that point but my complaints are about the fact that through most of it the story wants us to root for a villain protagonist worse than many other villains. I'm not sure if the author intended to have half its fanbase wish for a sociopath to rule the world, but he definitely did accomplish that. (which is kind of impressive but either an accident or quite troubling)

[Mechalich]

Eh... While I agree that DN deserves a mention in this thread I had less of a problem with the events after L's death. I mean, I won't claim it got better after that point but my complaints are about the fact that through most of it the story wants us to root for a villain protagonist worse than many other villains. I'm not sure if the author intended to have half its fanbase wish for a sociopath to rule the world, but he definitely did accomplish that. (which is kind of impressive but either an accident or quite troubling)

The thing about Death Note is that it is principally a cat and mouse game between Light and his various opponents. It is not actually about the consequences of his use of the Death Note, the social changes that would probably result, or how society would actually react to any of this save in the most cursory fashion directly in service of producing a better puzzle match scenario. It is perhaps the greatest popular example in recent times of subordinating high concept to an extremely specific situational purpose. Beyond the minutiae of Light's struggle, it just doesn't have anything to say.

Due to said complete lack of examination of broader issues, Death Note basically comes down to Team White Hat versus Team Black Hat, so of course a huge chunk of the fanbase ended up rooting for the megalomaniac - there was remarkably little reason not too.

[Frozen_Feet]

Kaguya and her story is from a completely different age closer to something out of the Hindu epics than ninjas. at that point it barely has anything to do with any other plot, its like watching a show about the machinations of knights and for the final villain you randomly bring back Odysseus from the dead when it was previously Evil Sir Arthur.

The way I've put it, the Western equivalent to Naruto's ending would be ghosts of Catholic Saints appearing to congratulate reincarnations of Cain and Abel for defeating the evil Sleeping Beauty, before Cain and Abel have a grudge rematch.

[Misereor]

Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles:
Started off spectacularly, but around book 4 or 5 it started getting tedious when yet another invincible Norse horde would appear from nowhere, try to bribe Uthred into joining them, and then getting beat by him after an obligatory moral conundrum. And then of course he would get betrayed by his own people again. Then when the plot finally seems to be moving forward, he'll do the wrong thing or kill the wrong person and be back to square one again.

[Eldan]

The way I've put it, the Western equivalent to Naruto's ending would be ghosts of Catholic Saints appearing to congratulate reincarnations of Cain and Abel for defeating the evil Sleeping Beauty, before Cain and Abel have a grudge rematch.

Could you please make that? I want to see it.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Death Note. It started out as one of the best animes I had ever seen, and I loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, the series died when L did. Everything after that moment was complete garbage filled with dumb characters, plot holes, and way too many contrivances. It almost felt like the rest of it was written by an entirely different person who didn't even understand the show. Such a disappointing ending to an otherwise amazing show.

I sort of understand this, and I sort of don't. There's a sudden change there, for sure, and from what I hear not a lot of people stick through the shift in the story's focus.

When I first watched the show I had the same kind of reaction to Light and L and the early story. But after a while, I started to understand what the writer was going for. So when that same sort of thing started happening again later on, I went with it.
I actually really like the second half. It's depicting that although Light had won the battle, he was still nailed down by the compromises he had to make in order to get that victory. He was going to have to continue being careful in a post-L world. Both against people seeking to take up L's mantle and those seeking to take Light's position.

It's really all about how Light's ideal world is ultimately arbitrary and doomed to failure. Although Light beat L, Light will inevitably lose and whoever comes after won't continue what he's done.

[Kato]

The thing about Death Note is that it is principally a cat and mouse game between Light and his various opponents. It is not actually about the consequences of his use of the Death Note, the social changes that would probably result, or how society would actually react to any of this save in the most cursory fashion directly in service of producing a better puzzle match scenario. It is perhaps the greatest popular example in recent times of subordinating high concept to an extremely specific situational purpose. Beyond the minutiae of Light's struggle, it just doesn't have anything to say.

Due to said complete lack of examination of broader issues, Death Note basically comes down to Team White Hat versus Team Black Hat, so of course a huge chunk of the fanbase ended up rooting for the megalomaniac - there was remarkably little reason not too.

Hm, point taken. I guess it's similar to Lost, I wanted something the Setup could have delivered (an Investigation of the morality behind Kira's plan) but which was never meant to be the focus of the story. I mean, I'm still disappointed but I'll agree critizing the author for not doing what I want is poor judgement. (And going on about the Moral quandaries of villain protagonists is not the point here)

Something else (wow, I only now realize how many examples I can think of) were many Stephen King stories... Though, I guess those are cases where I did enjoy them mostly just the reveal / resolution was disappointing. But I feel like that is something People are generally Aware is a Problem with his writing, as good as it is otherwise.

[Outrider]

The Daniel Faust books by Craig Schaefer

Just got sick of how dumb the main character was sometimes. Walking into obvious traps and not taking obvious precautions in most situations

[Tvtyrant]

Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles:
Started off spectacularly, but around book 4 or 5 it started getting tedious when yet another invincible Norse horde would appear from nowhere, try to bribe Uthred into joining them, and then getting beat by him after an obligatory moral conundrum. And then of course he would get betrayed by his own people again. Then when the plot finally seems to be moving forward, he'll do the wrong thing or kill the wrong person and be back to square one again.
I have this issue as well. The development of Uthred is often reversed between books, and he never gets any better at politics or personal relationships.

[GrayDeath]

Another one to add.

The Red Rising Sage from Pierce Brown.

Loved the First Book.

But it continues in the second with the same scheme in book 2, just with higher stakes (It start with "All goes more or less well, tribulation, hard batltes, Victory, bitter betrayal, horrible end?, repeat.).

Stopped after the completely stupid End of Book 2.

Too bad, really liked the concept....

[Rodin]

Was sasuke ever really important to the bad guy plot? I thought he was basically a seat filler for the bijuu hunting squad. As for orochimaru and konoha, as long as they could get the bijuu did madera even care that much?

Not Sasuke - remember, he and the real Madara don't even meet until the final battle.

No, I'm talking about Obito. If Obito had not, very specifically:

1) Gone on that particular mission.
2) Had a teammate get captured and held in that particular cave.
3) Get almost killed by the cave in, such that his friends leave him for dead.

Then NONE of the plot for Naruto happens. Madara bums around that cave for a few more years, then keels over. The End.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in your second comment, Orochimaru was never interested in the Bijuu that I can recall. I was talking about after his resurrection (another BS ass-pull since his soul SHOULD have gotten devoured by that sword Itachi had) when he's suddenly on the side of the good guys. His obsession with destroying Konoha? Gone for no given reason. His interest in Sasuke? Other than a lingering teacher-pupil thing, he now seems uninterested where he was creepily obsessed before. This is borne out by the sequel series, where Orochimaru just goes off and lives in the woods somewhere. It's weird, and there isn't a Piccolo-style slow shift in his character to justify it.



Could you please make that? I want to see it.

[Scruffy the Janitor] Second. [/Scruffy the Janitor]

[The Fury]

Death Note. It started out as one of the best animes I had ever seen, and I loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, the series died when L did. Everything after that moment was complete garbage filled with dumb characters, plot holes, and way too many contrivances. It almost felt like the rest of it was written by an entirely different person who didn't even understand the show. Such a disappointing ending to an otherwise amazing show.

I had a similar issue with Baccano. I gave it a watch after some friends told me how good it was, and for the most part... yeah, it was a really cool show. Stylish, snappy dialogue... decent plot. Then there were the last few episodes that didn't take place on the train. They felt weird and out of place. Especially the parts with Wrench Guy. While Baccano had plenty of fights throughout its run, the theme of the fights seemed to be quick and dirty. Wrench Guy seemed to be pulled from a Shounen battle series what with him using dramatic attacks that left craters in the ground. Plus he seemed to communicate in slam poetry. All that aside, he was a character that came from nowhere and went nowhere.

All that said, I'd still call Baccano a good series with a disappointing ending rather than a disappointing series.

[Celestia]

I sort of understand this, and I sort of don't. There's a sudden change there, for sure, and from what I hear not a lot of people stick through the shift in the story's focus.

When I first watched the show I had the same kind of reaction to Light and L and the early story. But after a while, I started to understand what the writer was going for. So when that same sort of thing started happening again later on, I went with it.
I actually really like the second half. It's depicting that although Light had won the battle, he was still nailed down by the compromises he had to make in order to get that victory. He was going to have to continue being careful in a post-L world. Both against people seeking to take up L's mantle and those seeking to take Light's position.

It's really all about how Light's ideal world is ultimately arbitrary and doomed to failure. Although Light beat L, Light will inevitably lose and whoever comes after won't continue what he's done.

Symbolism is fine, but it doesn't excuse poor writing. Near and Mellow are both terrible, useless characters. Near's "investigation" involves him making straight up guesses and happening be right because the plot needs him to play catchup in an impossible situation. And even then, he still only wins because Light makes dumb mistake after dumb mistake like he lost 50 IQ points after L died.

I know that Light is supposed to lose in the end, but with how many contrivances are used to get there, it undermines the entire symbolism thing, anyways. With the situations Light and his opponents were in, he should not have lost there, but he did because the plot demanded it. It's supposed to feel like Light was hoisted by his own petard, but, instead, it just feels like he got cheated.

[Xyril]

Sword of Truth can't be the answer, because that was crap from page one. I didn't make it far in the series, so I don't know how bad it got, but it couldn't possibly be a disappointment after the first books.


Sword of Truth was never great literature, but the first book or two were the literary equivalent of something like a B-movie, or one of those many post-Hercules/Xena fantasy action series: Perfectly fun and readable for when you want something that's fairly entertaining but doesn't require much deep thinking (or more accurately, something that benefits from turning off the critical thinking/nitpicking part of your brain.)

Later on, it transitioned from trashy literary junk food to eating actual trash. As someone whose political views probably aligns with the author much more than the average person on this forum, I got tired of the abrupt transitions where plot basically stopped so that some author-avatar could preach at you for a few pages. I imagine that somebody who disagrees with the author's position substantially would find it not so much tedious as rage-inducing

[napoleon_in_rag]

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time

[Traab]

Not Sasuke - remember, he and the real Madara don't even meet until the final battle.

No, I'm talking about Obito. If Obito had not, very specifically:

1) Gone on that particular mission.
2) Had a teammate get captured and held in that particular cave.
3) Get almost killed by the cave in, such that his friends leave him for dead.

Then NONE of the plot for Naruto happens. Madara bums around that cave for a few more years, then keels over. The End.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in your second comment, Orochimaru was never interested in the Bijuu that I can recall. I was talking about after his resurrection (another BS ass-pull since his soul SHOULD have gotten devoured by that sword Itachi had) when he's suddenly on the side of the good guys. His obsession with destroying Konoha? Gone for no given reason. His interest in Sasuke? Other than a lingering teacher-pupil thing, he now seems uninterested where he was creepily obsessed before. This is borne out by the sequel series, where Orochimaru just goes off and lives in the woods somewhere. It's weird, and there isn't a Piccolo-style slow shift in his character to justify it.




[Scruffy the Janitor] Second. [/Scruffy the Janitor]


First part yeah, I missed the switch to obito, oops. As for orochimaru, I thought you meant his plans for konoha somehow impacted maderas end goals. I didnt realize it was more a complaint about how orochimaru just stopped wanting to bother. Though I suppose it makes some sense. A big part of it was his anger at his sensei. Well his sensei is dead, killed due to his invasion, so he got his revenge there, and he tried to destroy konoha and failed miserably, so its doubtful he wants to go through all that effort to spite someone he has already seen dead. As for his soul, there are two things to consider here. One, itachis sword is a trap, not a soul devouring thing. Secondly, he has chunks of his soul absolutely EVERYWHERE. His arms were eaten by the shinigami, his seals have little chunks everywhere in who knows how many test subjects, itachis susanoo has a large bit of it sealed in that sake blade thing of his. Trying to guess what the result of him being resurrected should be is pretty complicated all things considered. As for his obsession it was less sasuke and more sharingan. He wanted those eyes and sasuke had the only pair he stood a chance of nabbing. Im not sure why he couldnt take some from danzo considering he showed us we totally dont need to replace actual eyes to get a functioning sharingan. Im sure orochimaru could have slapped one on his forehead and copied jutsu to his hearts content, putting an eyepatch on like kakashi when he didnt want to burn the chakra.

Now the grand plan relying on obito. There would be absolutely nothing stopping madera or zetsu from setting up a trap for obito. That brings into question why he waited so long then jumped on the first opening sure, but its not like madera couldnt have pulled that off.

[2D8HP]

:confused: I'm trying to think of a series where I don't find the later installments less entertaining than the first, um....

Aliens was as good as Alien.

The Road Warrior was better than Mad Max.

The Empire Strikes Back was as good as Star Wars.

Goldfinger was better than both Doctor No and From Russia With Love.

Stormbringer was better than The Dreaming City.

The Tower of the Elephant was better than The Phoenix in the Sword.

The subsequent seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation were better than the first.

The last season of Enterprise was the best.

The Terry Pratchett novels without Rincewind (and especially Two Flower) were better.

And Rocket to Russia was a better album than Ramones, and Leave Home,

otherwise I can't think of any works that don't lose something compared to the earlier installments.

Change is usually bad for me, other people find things improving?

A thread saying what series get better interests me!

[tensai_oni]

Re;creators.

This isn't a case of late entries, seasons or episodes not being as good as the early ones, or a slow decline in quality. This is a series where knowing what happens in the endgame stretch actively ruins the first 17 episodes. This is because the first two thirds of the show are either buildup (to a really disappointing payoff later on) or character drama (which is meaningless as almost all characters then get poor treatment and become aggressively irrelevant at best).

Tl;dr version: it's a series that's really convincing at promising you a great finale and then delivers an incredibly crappy one.

[Kitten Champion]

A thread saying what series get better interests me!

Okay, sure, why not?

[tomandtish]

The subsequent seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation were better than the first.

The last season of Enterprise was the best.

With TV shows, this isn't that surprising. For your typical broadcast shows there's usually one of two scenarios....

1) The first season is of a set quality. That quality is either too poor to generate a second season, or it does, and the second season is poorer and the show usually dies during/at the end of that second season.

2) The first season is of a set quality. That show is of sufficient quality to generate a second season which is of better quality, and the show continues. Repeat until it declines.

There are exceptions, but I have a hard time picturing any show that went 5 or more seasons where the general consensus is that the first season was the best. Likewise I wouldn;t expect the last season of any show going that long to be the best. Enterprise seems to be an exception in some people's opinion.


Aliens was as good as Alien.

The Road Warrior was better than Mad Max.

The Empire Strikes Back was as good as [I]Star Wars.

Change is usually bad for me, other people find things improving?

A thread saying what series get better interests me!

I think most people feel Thor: Ragnarok was better than the first two. One of the few example I feel that way about in movies, esp. trilogies.

[Summer Lamb]

MOST AT ALL disappointed me "Fahrenheit 451" be Ray Bradbury!
People talked about her so much and said that it was very important. The story is interesting and the idea, but GOD main character, terribly annoys me. I only reached the middle of the book, tolerated his behavior, but at some point I just closed the book and put it away.
It would have been much better and more interesting if the protagonist had not been so weak and did not betray anyone.
Also "Submarine" by Joe Dunthorne. So messy and uncomfortable to reed:smalleek:

[2D8HP]

While upthread I've mentioned that I've long expected to enjoy sequels less than originals and exceptions to that rule are what suprise me, when I love a work I'm still a little bit disappointed that I'm not enjoying the sequel as much, but I can think of a few times when, either because I hadn't yet learned better or the sequel suprised me by being even worse than my lower expectations:

Return of the Jedi.

I loved Star Wars, and I really liked The Empire Strikes Back, but the selfish and smug Skywalker plus the teddy-bear-vietcong of Jedi really were disappointments.


After buying everything Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons that my meager allowance could get me for years, the 1985 Unearthed Arcana supplement unbalanced the game and disappointed me so much that I quit buying new D&D & AD&D books for decades.


And I was surprised and disappointed when after I dipped my toe bsck into D&D again and started buying 3e D&D books, only for them to be quickly made obsolete when WotC within a decade of 3e published both 3.5 and 4e, not that the quality was bad, it was that those editions existed at all so soon after 3e was published.

[dps]

With TV shows, this isn't that surprising. For your typical broadcast shows there's usually one of two scenarios....

1) The first season is of a set quality. That quality is either too poor to generate a second season, or it does, and the second season is poorer and the show usually dies during/at the end of that second season.

2) The first season is of a set quality. That show is of sufficient quality to generate a second season which is of better quality, and the show continues. Repeat until it declines.


Whether or not a show gets renewed for an additional season has nothing to do with quality--it's about the ratings. You are confusing popularity with quality.

[Celestia]

Whether or not a show gets renewed for an additional season has nothing to do with quality--it's about the ratings. You are confusing popularity with quality.
Well, there does tend to be a correlation between quality and ratings...

And ratings aren't always the only concern. Sometimes, there is something more being considered. Many kids' shows, for example, often get cancelled due to poor merchandise sales, even if the show, itself, has great ratings.

[deuterio12]

Whether or not a show gets renewed for an additional season has nothing to do with quality--it's about the ratings. You are confusing popularity with quality.

A show's main purpose is to entertain people. If a show entertains people, then it has quality.

[Rynjin]

A show's main purpose is to entertain people. If a show entertains people, then it has quality.

Leaving aside that debatable statement, there isn't necessarily a correlation between ratings and entertainment value. A lot of shows get bad ratings due to their timeslot or other factors. Farscape is one of the best sci-fi series ever made, but it constantly struggled in the ratings because of network shenanigans.

[LordEntrails]

Dark Matters. First season was exceptional, after that they were just "regular".

[Velaryon]

Leaving aside that debatable statement, there isn't necessarily a correlation between ratings and entertainment value. A lot of shows get bad ratings due to their timeslot or other factors. Farscape is one of the best sci-fi series ever made, but it constantly struggled in the ratings because of network shenanigans.

Farscape is but one of many series that have been recognized for their quality over the years, but which did not survive long for various reasons. Sometimes a show isn't adequately promoted, so the viewership numbers aren't strong and the network cancels it before it can find its fan base. Sometimes a show gets moved to a bad time slot because executives want to make room for a new show, or because some higher-up doesn't like that show for some reason, and viewership declines because of the time slot. And so on.

Linking the quality of a TV series to its ratings numbers comes perilously close to equating quality with popularity. If you claim popularity as the measuring stick for quality, then Jersey Shore is better than Firefly, and Justin Bieber and Lil' Wayne are better musicians than Santana, Prince, Cher, or David Bowie, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a better movie than Casablanca, The Godfather, or Gladiator.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Linking the quality of a TV series to its ratings numbers comes perilously close to equating quality with popularity. If you claim popularity as the measuring stick for quality, then Jersey Shore is better than Firefly, and Justin Bieber and Lil' Wayne are better musicians than Santana, Prince, Cher, or David Bowie, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a better movie than Casablanca, The Godfather, or Gladiator.
Critics of various mediums see a lot of the media in question, so they're a significantly different audience than the casual public. Not that I necessarily disagree that critics are a better judge of 'quality' but ultimately the distinction is a subjective one and there are more people on the 'other side' of such discussions.

Trying to produce a quality movie for the mass-market to consume, for example, requires a happy ending. Possibly because people mostly want to see movies which offer a happy diversion for their day. But in some stories, that kind of thing just doesn't fit from a critical perspective. So sometimes the artists make something which is nudged in a slightly different direction by people who have a stake in increasing its popularity.

The most obvious example I can think of is A.I. The movie is great. But from a(my) critical viewpoint that ending doesn't really fit with any of the rest of the movie and was probably made to improve its 'quality' for a general audience. It's impossible to know for sure, but I would guess that extra last bit was why the movie wasn't a bomb of some sort or another. Audiences generally do not like ambiguous or sad endings.

Hmm, actually, A.I. would be better example if the ending wasn't apparently part of the original artistic vision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence#Critical_response). But it's still the best example I can think of at the moment. The things you find out when fact-checking are inconvenient sometimes.

[deuterio12]

Leaving aside that debatable statement, there isn't necessarily a correlation between ratings and entertainment value. A lot of shows get bad ratings due to their timeslot or other factors. Farscape is one of the best sci-fi series ever made, but it constantly struggled in the ratings because of network shenanigans.

A good series may be stuck in bad timeslots, but a bad series will never get to remain in good timeslots because people will not care for it.



Linking the quality of a TV series to its ratings numbers comes perilously close to equating quality with popularity. If you claim popularity as the measuring stick for quality, then Jersey Shore is better than Firefly, and Justin Bieber and Lil' Wayne are better musicians than Santana, Prince, Cher, or David Bowie, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a better movie than Casablanca, The Godfather, or Gladiator.

That's only momentary popularity. In 10+ years, Casablanca/Godfather/Gladiator will still be remembered, re-aired and referenced (like they keep being), while Transformers Dark Moon will get a mention in the transformers wiki if that.


Critics of various mediums see a lot of the media in question, so they're a significantly different audience than the casual public. Not that I necessarily disagree that critics are a better judge of 'quality' but ultimately the distinction is a subjective one and there are more people on the 'other side' of such discussions.

Trying to produce a quality movie for the mass-market to consume, for example, requires a happy ending. Possibly because people mostly want to see movies which offer a happy diversion for their day. But in some stories, that kind of thing just doesn't fit from a critical perspective. So sometimes the artists make something which is nudged in a slightly different direction by people who have a stake in increasing its popularity.

And what's wrong with that?

If all media aimed only to please the most extravagant tastes of the highest critics, then the world would be much poorer for that. Entertaining the general public is an art on itself.

As another example, the original Gundam was supposed be mono-white/grey and Zeon's only mechas would be zakus for maximum grittyness (and Amuro was supposed to die at the end too), but since it had to appeal to children to get them to buy toys, Tomino ended up caving in and adding some brighter colors plus more Zeon mobile giant robots and Amuro getting his happy end too. And that allowed Gundam to succeed beyond all expectations, revolutionizing the mecha genre and anime itself and becoming a running franchise that lasts to this day (yes, the original series ended up being cut short, but then the toy line sold like hot cakes which opened the gates for the compilation movie trilogy that was a huge success with the filler trimmed down).

If Gundam hadn't tried to appeal to the general public, it would've ended as just some obscure anime.

[BeerMug Paladin]

And what's wrong with that?

If all media aimed only to please the most extravagant tastes of the highest critics, then the world would be much poorer for that. Entertaining the general public is an art on itself.
It's hard to explain the idea that being good at 'entertaining the masses' is significantly different than 'entertaining critics' without it sounding like a value-judgement of some kind. I really didn't mean it that way and I do generally agree with what you've said here. Not that I have much experience nor interest in most of the movies/music/shows that have been listed as examples.

I will add that my subjective value of 'quality' for movies (if not other things) tends to align more closely with 'snooty critics' than 'general audience'. So I'm aware that in terms of many peoples' subjective value-judgement of quality, I'm somewhere outside looking in.


As another example, the original Gundam was supposed be mono-white/grey and Zeon's only mechas would be zakus for maximum grittyness (and Amuro was supposed to die at the end too), but since it had to appeal to children to get them to buy toys, Tomino ended up caving in and adding some brighter colors plus more Zeon mobile giant robots and Amuro getting his happy end too. And that allowed Gundam to succeed beyond all expectations, revolutionizing the mecha genre and anime itself and becoming a running franchise that lasts to this day (yes, the original series ended up being cut short, but then the toy line sold like hot cakes which opened the gates for the compilation movie trilogy that was a huge success with the filler trimmed down).

If Gundam hadn't tried to appeal to the general public, it would've ended as just some obscure anime.
This sounds like a much better example than the one I came up with. Nice.

[Adderbane]

It's hard to explain the idea that being good at 'entertaining the masses' is significantly different than 'entertaining critics' without it sounding like a value-judgement of some kind. I really didn't mean it that way and I do generally agree with what you've said here. Not that I have much experience nor interest in most of the movies/music/shows that have been listed as examples.

I will add that my subjective value of 'quality' for movies (if not other things) tends to align more closely with 'snooty critics' than 'general audience'. So I'm aware that in terms of many peoples' subjective value-judgement of quality, I'm somewhere outside looking in.


This sounds like a much better example than the one I came up with. Nice.

Something can be entertaining without being good. I can think of dozens of examples; though I expect not everyone would agree with me on which are which. Most of the metrics we have don't really grasp the difference between a lot of people merely liking a work and then forgetting about it, and a lot of people really loving a work so that it becomes a part of the culture. The test of time is the only one that really works here.

[Frozen_Feet]

Also, in every other field of life, people routinely buy and consume crap simply because they don't know better or can't afford better. That's the real reason why popularity doesn't equate wity quality, even if ideally they correlate well.

[Serpentine]

(skippin' right over whatever arguments are going on now)

Heckin The Ill-Made Mute, The Bitterbynde trilogy, by Cecilia Dart-Thornton.
It started out really interestingly. At the beginning, the main character had no voice, no gender, a horribly disfigured face, and no history, and was incredibly interesting, in this intriguing world that was a mix of fairy tales from our world and brand new concepts.
At the end of the first book
the main character could speak again - and did so in "thees and thous", was a woman, was incredibly beautiful, had all her memories restored, was in love with the incredibly handsome fairy prince, and was deeply, profoundly, boring.
It was so disappointing that all these components that I liked when I was reading it, like the references to IRL fairy tales, started feeling like lazy writing instead.

[Razade]

A show's main purpose is to entertain people. If a show entertains people, then it has quality.

Appeal to popularity says what?

[Traab]

Appeal to popularity says what?
What IS quality? No, seriously, how do you define it beyond "I like this."? Appeal to popularity is as good a way to decide if something is good as any other metric you might want to use. When talking about entertainment, there really isnt an objective way to decide if something is "good" or "has quality" If it could be that formulaic it already would be. You can list the standard things most good movies have such as three act structures and the like, but I could also list a thousand horrible movies that also have that. Quality is opinion, not fact.

[napoleon_in_rag]

What IS quality? No, seriously, how do you define it beyond "I like this."?

I suggest reading Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

[Jay R]

The Andy Griffith Show after Don Knotts left.
The Avengers after Diana Rigg left.
Alias Smith and Jones after Pete Duel died.

[deuterio12]

Also, in every other field of life, people routinely buy and consume crap simply because they don't know better or can't afford better. That's the real reason why popularity doesn't equate wity quality, even if ideally they correlate well.

Maybe a gold-plated ferrarri with true leather seats has better "quality" than your average commercial car, but for me and you the commercial car's will be a much better choice to consume than ruining ourselves trying to afford the really shiny thing.

Perfection is the enemy of the good. Something that's good enough and readily available is infinitely better than something perfect you simply cannot afford.

[Velaryon]

That's only momentary popularity. In 10+ years, Casablanca/Godfather/Gladiator will still be remembered, re-aired and referenced (like they keep being), while Transformers Dark Moon will get a mention in the transformers wiki if that.

So are you suggesting that there is something more to determining quality than popular appeal? Because if popularity is the only metric of quality, then "stands the test of time" only matters if those movies overtake Dark of the Moon again.

But let's go back to the musicians I listed in my previous post (and also Lil' Wayne and Justin Bieber). I pulled all my info from Wikipedia's list of best-selling musicians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists#120_million_to_199_million_r ecords). Again, if we say that popularity = quality, then Bieber's 140 million sales makes him objectively better than Santana, Prince, Cher, or David Bowie (all of whom have around 100 million sales).

You could perhaps argue that record sales are not indicative of the true popularity of an artist since not everyone who likes a song is necessarily going to buy it, but using the "popularity=quality" definition, those sales numbers at least prove that Bieber and Lil' Wayne belong in the same conversation when it comes to all-time musical greats, do they not?

(By the way, I'm picking on those two specifically because they're both artists that a lot of people complain about. I'd have used Nickelback, but they've only got ~50 million sales, so they're not at this level yet).

[Giggling Ghast]

On the “quality is a function of popularity,” I would point out that while we all have different tastes, truly horrid works of art tend to be universal. No one watches Plan 9 from Outer Space and thinks, “Man, what solid acting, great dialogue and excellent special effects!” No one plays Road to Hell: Redemption and comes away raving about the stellar driving mechanics, voice acting and combat.

And yet, some truly awful works have achieved popularity simply because they are so awful. Is anyone going to argue that The Room deserves to stand among the classics of cinema because it has been enjoyed ironically by millions of people?

[Keltest]

He literally just shoots a planet destroying weapon at their home planet in a suicide run. The empathy part was him sneaking an egg away so they wouldn't go completely extinct after mankind wiped them out.

The other officers act like blowing up the opponents home planet was a remarkable trick no one could have imagined, instead of basic human tactics 101.

IIRC, Ender was trying to make the point that he was a ruthless, heartless bastard who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an actual command role because he would turn the conflict into the bloodiest mess anybody had ever seen - which is what they were going for the whole time. The academy was designed to create a war criminal, basically, because that was the only kind of commander who could win the way with anything other than a pyrrhic victory.

[Wookieetank]

Under the Dome Tv series. Started off strong, then took a steep dive mid first season. Season 2 was mediocre but overall interesting if rather nonsensical. Season 3 was so terribly bad, I just quit watching and went and re-read the book. When your MC hero is changing sides multiple times in an episode, you've obviously got nothing. It was also ridiculous how far off base they got with the show, when your source material is a 1039 page doorstopper, why are you only making use of the first 300 or so pages? They could've done so much better without adding in extra characters and plot lines and just stuck more closely to the book with embellishments.

[VariSami]

The Ilium/Olympos duology by Dan Simmons. I just finished Olympos last weekend while it had problems throughout, the ending was definitely the worst of it. I am not going to go into too much detail but Ilium sets up a really intriguing scenario with a web of seemingly unrelated storylines which seem to keep drawing closer together. Olympos then pulls the curtain to show that none of the originally presented ideas or promises amounts to anything meaningful and thus likely never did outside your headcanon. You can almost taste how it could have been better but the end result is an absolutely wretched mess of a story. Anticlimaxes abound.

[Tvtyrant]

IIRC, Ender was trying to make the point that he was a ruthless, heartless bastard who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an actual command role because he would turn the conflict into the bloodiest mess anybody had ever seen - which is what they were going for the whole time. The academy was designed to create a war criminal, basically, because that was the only kind of commander who could win the way with anything other than a pyrrhic victory.

Sure, but making a war criminal doesn't take massive investment. Take almost anyone and tell them they are saving their friends and family by doing this and it will happen.

The fundamental concept of the series is the part I found annoying.

[tiornys]

Sure, but making a war criminal doesn't take massive investment. Take almost anyone and tell them they are saving their friends and family by doing this and it will happen.

The fundamental concept of the series is the part I found annoying.

At risk of jumping into an argument where I haven't read all of the leadup, they didn't need a high-empathy commander to trigger the act of blowing up the planet. They needed a high empathy commander so that they'd be able to out-maneuver the buggers and get the ships into range of the planet to blow it up.

Or, you know, any other path to victory would also have been acceptable to them. Blowing up the planet was just the only reasonable plan given the nature of the engagement, which is not something they could have anticipated when they initiated the search for a commander. What they needed was someone who had Rackham's level of tactical/strategic perception without Rackham's hangups about war and killing. The book posits that only someone with extremely high empathy could achieve the former.

[Tyndmyr]

Sword of Truth. Ysee, reading the first book, it seems like an interesting take on traditional fantasy tropes. And then you read the whole series, and...oh my. Some problems become extremely apparent.

Song of Ice and Fire, probably. First book was great. Lots of setup, interesting twists, and the series has a lot of cool bits. Enough to keep you going as the whole thing kinda bogs down for...forever. I'm not sure the series will ever finish at the rate it's being written, and each book explodes with more length, detail, and ever more subplots, while long running plots remain unresolved.

Maze Runner. Yes, yes, it's YA, but the first film actually set up some moderately interesting mysteries before going off the rails into stupid. The subsequent films are just wildly unrelated.

[Clertar]

Attack on Titan (sic) after season 1.

[Mordar]

A show's main purpose is to entertain people. If a show entertains people, then it has quality.

I mostly agree with this...working from the premise that the intent of any TV show is to sell advertising secondary to drawing viewers. All sustained popular shows are successful by that intent/metric. Yes, that opens the question of "How long is "sustained"?" (I guess long enough to continue to be profitable at a level that considers opportunity cost as well as actual costs). However...


Leaving aside that debatable statement, there isn't necessarily a correlation between ratings and entertainment value. A lot of shows get bad ratings due to their timeslot or other factors. Farscape is one of the best sci-fi series ever made, but it constantly struggled in the ratings because of network shenanigans.

Not all shows that fail to draw viewers are bad...just unsuccessful. Changes inside or outside the show may alter the success...like day/time slot, network support, lead-in audience, public perception of key actors, and so on. Of course some genres will be hampered by the fact that they have a niche audience (like us) or otherwise lack broad commercial appeal, and that can certainly encourage networks to give it short shrift on all of those variables.


Linking the quality of a TV series to its ratings numbers comes perilously close to equating quality with popularity. If you claim popularity as the measuring stick for quality, then Jersey Shore is better than Firefly, and Justin Bieber and Lil' Wayne are better musicians than Santana, Prince, Cher, or David Bowie, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a better movie than Casablanca, The Godfather, or Gladiator.

Again, we would need an objective measure of quality. The intent/purpose/goal of "mainstream" TV is to sell ad revenue. Popular shows achieve that goal, thus they must have been good at their job, and that seems a pretty solid definition for quality. Similarly, the intent/purpose/goal of record companies is to sell records/tickets/posters, so as much as anyone over 15 hates Bieber, he was successful at that goal, so again a solid example of pop-music quality.

Of course there are other measures that have validity, even within popularity. If you could control variables in your music example (accounting for the changes in distribution and points of sale, buying patterns, things like that) I suspect there would be some mitigation. However, one can also use industry awards, critical reviews, profit, and so on. Of course I'm sure there's a glib "logical fallacy" dismissal for each of those as well...but we have to have some measures.

- M

[Ibrinar]

Again, we would need an objective measure of quality. The intent/purpose/goal of "mainstream" TV is to sell ad revenue. Popular shows achieve that goal, thus they must have been good at their job, and that seems a pretty solid definition for quality. Similarly, the intent/purpose/goal of record companies is to sell records/tickets/posters, so as much as anyone over 15 hates Bieber, he was successful at that goal, so again a solid example of pop-music quality.


If I engineered a product to fail 1 month after warranty time in 90% of cases that would be top end quality engineering but it certainly wouldn't be quality from the perspective of a consumer. Which imo is the same usage as what you are suggesting. Being good at making its producers money is not what is meant by quality when consumers or critics talk about quality.

[Minty]

Song of Ice and Fire, probably. First book was great. Lots of setup, interesting twists, and the series has a lot of cool bits. Enough to keep you going as the whole thing kinda bogs down for...forever. I'm not sure the series will ever finish at the rate it's being written, and each book explodes with more length, detail, and ever more subplots, while long running plots remain unresolved.

This is exactly what I like about it. Complex characters, intricate detail, immense scope, and no particular rush. I don't really care if some plot threads are ever resolved or not, and I'm not sure if I really care if it's ever finished. The important thing is that it's fascinating to read, and I think it remains so from the first page to the last. I kind of feel like a lot of people who read it and think nothing is happening are missing the point a bit. Especially the ones who are waiting for some kind of zombies vs dragons battle as if that's the most important thing about the series.

The only real complaint I have about it at all is that the weird way the last two books were split.

[Liquor Box]

If I engineered a product to fail 1 month after warranty time in 90% of cases that would be top end quality engineering but it certainly wouldn't be quality from the perspective of a consumer. Which imo is the same usage as what you are suggesting. Being good at making its producers money is not what is meant by quality when consumers or critics talk about quality.

A product that consistently failed one month after its warranty ran out would probably not make its producers money. Very few consumers who bought the product the first time round would buy the same product the second time round (instead preferring a competitor's brand), so the producer would make no extra money. And over time, the producer would gain a reputation for unreliability, so sales of its products would fall overall.

In addition, I don;t think the analogy is a good one because when you are creating a product that might break down, there is at least one objective metric by which you can judge its quality (its durability). But movies/tv have no such objective metric from the perspective of the consumer, whether it is 'quality' or not is entirely subjective.

I am with the people who think that ratings/popularity is the best measure of quality of movies/tv, including being a better measure of quality than critical reception.

[Saintheart]

Looks like my disappointments are mainly shared, which is fitting given misery loves company. It seems there are perilously few Scheherezades around.

X-Files after roughly season four. The moment the aliens became weird black oil stuff and they had Mulder fake his own suicide or whatever was the moment Fonzie's motorcycle hit the ramp. And roughly seven seasons and two feature films later, it's clear Chris Carter still has no idea how to shoot the damn thing through the head and walk away.

Lost. As in, JJ Abrams' default approach to stories.

I'll disagree here and say I enjoyed the last books of The Dark Tower. Admittedly I rationalise my like for them by headcanoning that the reason the narrative went pear-shaped in the end was because fundamentals like causality and narrative were starting to break down as the Beams failed and the Tower swayed, and that this same decay of the universe affected the antagonists as much as anyone else. Plot threads went everywhere and vanished suddenly because the Tower was on the verge of falling.

Highlander was disappointing because it continued past the first film. Had nothing to do with the stupidity of the second film or indeed the mediocrity of the TV series. The first film's story was a closed plot loop, it should not have ever actually had a sequel; not all works should. Ender's Game, to my mind, is exactly the same: it works great as a single novel, it gave no real indications it was intended to have a sequel, and it should have stayed precisely as one book.

Stephen King talked about this stupid and insatiable demand for sequels in his books and even hinted at it in the raised-middle-finger epilogue to The Dark Tower - that sometimes people can't let Frodo go to the Grey Havens and rest, that they just can't leave well enough alone.

[Clertar]

The third volume of Sapkowski's Hussite trilogy. Brilliant work, the first two books had impressed me a lot and the last one is worthy of the preceding ones.

[deuterio12]

This is exactly what I like about it. Complex characters, intricate detail, immense scope, and no particular rush. I don't really care if some plot threads are ever resolved or not, and I'm not sure if I really care if it's ever finished. The important thing is that it's fascinating to read, and I think it remains so from the first page to the last. I kind of feel like a lot of people who read it and think nothing is happening are missing the point a bit. Especially the ones who are waiting for some kind of zombies vs dragons battle as if that's the most important thing about the series.

The only real complaint I have about it at all is that the weird way the last two books were split.

This, the main selling point of Game of Thrones is precisely the "explodes with more length, detail, and ever more subplots, while long running plots remain unresolved." It's not a bug, it's a feature.

That things aren't really black and white but there's a lot of greys in between. That is not enough to defeat the "evil" king/queen, you also need to deal with all the aftermath of squabling factions that may technically have been allied but are (and were) each vying to advance their agenda. That the noble family that would take a sword to to the face to shield you in battle may then execute prisioners in cold blood later on. That ruling a country is a lot more complicated than just waltzing in with your army. That putting horny teens at the top of the chain of command may not be the wisest of decisions.

[Pronounceable]

Anita Blake. Holy ****, what a goddamn trainwreck that was after the author went nuts. I have never and prolly also won't ever see anything fall that far from its starting level. Then there's TV Flash. It had a somewhat cool first season (except all the moronic drama bull****), then the second season took such a hard nosedive it deserves to be mentioned in the same paragraph as Anita Blake.

Then there's Fallout games. Or rather, there isn't Fallout games. Bethesda might've named its droppings that but they're vaguely similar yet unrelated games.
Also I suspect if I'd watched any of Disney's Star Wars, I'd think the same about them too. Luckily I didn't. Any time a name is bought by someone bigger to **** out more franchise crap for moar monnies, the real thing is dead and doesn't count anymore. See also: Bioware.

[Seppl]

That things aren't really black and white but there's a lot of greys in between. That is not enough to defeat the "evil" king/queen, you also need to deal with all the aftermath of squabling factions that may technically have been allied but are (and were) each vying to advance their agenda. That the noble family that would take a sword to to the face to shield you in battle may then execute prisioners in cold blood later on. That ruling a country is a lot more complicated than just waltzing in with your army. That putting horny teens at the top of the chain of command may not be the wisest of decisions. Still, did we have to read that much about Brianne's mostly uneventful (and ultimately pointless) search through the woods? Why not start her last chapter in AFFC with her shortly reminiscing how all that she found was some bandits and no sign of Sansa, instead of showing us every single small details? Having a complex world does not mean that you have to move the plot at a snail's pace, nor that you have to show everything everyone does all the time. Just show the important and exciting parts and let all the other stuff be details in the background for the reader to find.

[deuterio12]

Still, did we have to read that much about Brianne's mostly uneventful (and ultimately pointless) search through the woods? Why not start her last chapter in AFFC with her shortly reminiscing how all that she found was some bandits and no sign of Sansa, instead of showing us every single small details? Having a complex world does not mean that you have to move the plot at a snail's pace, nor that you have to show everything everyone does all the time. Just show the important and exciting parts and let all the other stuff be details in the background for the reader to find.

It was far from pointless from the reader's viewpoint:
-It was the first time Brianne kills enemies close and personal in the books rather than non-lethal duels or indirect kills, thus a pretty important moment for her.
-It allows Brianne to show off her new super non-magic sword.
-It sets Brianne up with another character for her party.
-It provides some world-building of a region we hadn't seen yet.
-It shows the hardship of Brianne's quest, finding the missing princess is no easy task in particular when there's a lot other people that are looking for Sansa too.
-It fills the author's kill quota of named characters since Brianne didn't just kill some nameless bandits.

[Wookieetank]

I'll disagree here and say I enjoyed the last books of The Dark Tower. Admittedly I rationalise my like for them by headcanoning that the reason the narrative went pear-shaped in the end was because fundamentals like causality and narrative were starting to break down as the Beams failed and the Tower swayed, and that this same decay of the universe affected the antagonists as much as anyone else. Plot threads went everywhere and vanished suddenly because the Tower was on the verge of falling.


I'll second this. I also really liked the cross over bits with other series works to show the breaking down of things (lightsaber wielding robots in Dr. Doom capes? sure why not :smallbiggrin:). And looking for all the tie-ins shout-outs that King has in some of his other works is fun. Not to mention outright connections in The Talisman, The Black House and Insomnia particularly. Hell I even liked the movie, and feel that it takes place After book 7.

[Haruki-kun]

Answers to original OP question:

Shakugan no Shana, season one was great, rest was Meh.

Zero no Tsukaima, seasons 1 and 2 were great. Rest was ugh.

Heroes, season 1 was great. Rest was Blargh.

Lost: Seasons 1 and 2 were great. 3 was okay. Rest was HUH?

I'm sure I can come up with more shows that this applies to, and onomatopeyas to go along with them.

[Ibrinar]

Samurai Flamenco I liked the beginning quite a bit and then it changed (though that was a great wtf moment if you were following the series while it came out) and I guess others liked what it became so it wasn't necessarily a bad change but for me a show I liked turned into a show I dropped after a while.

[Seppl]

It was far from pointless from the reader's viewpoint:
-It was the first time Brianne kills enemies close and personal in the books rather than non-lethal duels or indirect kills, thus a pretty important moment for her.
-It allows Brianne to show off her new super non-magic sword.
-It sets Brianne up with another character for her party.
-It provides some world-building of a region we hadn't seen yet.
-It shows the hardship of Brianne's quest, finding the missing princess is no easy task in particular when there's a lot other people that are looking for Sansa too.
-It fills the author's kill quota of named characters since Brianne didn't just kill some nameless bandits.1-3: Sure it does, but you could just as well show her doing something important while achieving all the same narrative goals.
4-6: Not good reasons for excessive filler.

PS: And Brienne is just one example of many. A lot of former main characters went on pointlessly long journeys ("journeys" in both, the literal and figurative sense) during the last two books.

[Saintheart]

I'll second this. I also really liked the cross over bits with other series works to show the breaking down of things (lightsaber wielding robots in Dr. Doom capes? sure why not :smallbiggrin:). And looking for all the tie-ins shout-outs that King has in some of his other works is fun. Not to mention outright connections in The Talisman, The Black House and Insomnia particularly. Hell I even liked the movie, and feel that it takes place After book 7.

If I understand it right, I think this doesn't even have to be headcanon. Idris Elba's Roland has the Horn of Eld.

[Minty]

1-3: Sure it does, but you could just as well show her doing something important while achieving all the same narrative goals.
4-6: Not good reasons for excessive filler.

PS: And Brienne is just one example of many. A lot of former main characters went on pointlessly long journeys ("journeys" in both, the literal and figurative sense) during the last two books.

It's been a while since I read it now, but my recollection of the Brienne chapters in AFFC is that, apart from providing character development, they vividly explore the aftermath of a war that has torn a society apart on every level, and show how nobles fighting over a throne has affected the common people. If you regard this stuff as "pointlessly long journeys" and "filler" and have no appetite for that kind of detail, then I think you're missing a lot of the point of the series.

[Rodin]

It's been a while since I read it now, but my recollection of the Brienne chapters in AFFC is that, apart from providing character development, they vividly explore the aftermath of a war that has torn a society apart on every level, and show how nobles fighting over a throne has affected the common people. If you regard this stuff as "pointlessly long journeys" and "filler" and have no appetite for that kind of detail, then I think you're missing a lot of the point of the series.

It's also illustrating a point that the TV show ignores - after all these years of war, the Seven Kingdoms are well and truly screwed when it comes to fighting a fresh war against the undead. Winter is setting in, and most of the armies have been decimated and the soldiers returned home. Upon returning home, they've found that their houses and fields have been burned to the ground and their families slaughtered either by Tywin's scorched earth tactics or just by common bandits. The granaries are empty, having either been destroyed in the war or simply eaten by one army or another. There is no infrastructure left to support a massive war to save mankind.

The show may be lining up for a troperiffic grand finale, but I'm willing to bet the books have something else in mind.

[Seppl]

It's been a while since I read it now, but my recollection of the Brienne chapters in AFFC is that, apart from providing character development, they vividly explore the aftermath of a war that has torn a society apart on every level, and show how nobles fighting over a throne has affected the common people. If you regard this stuff as "pointlessly long journeys" and "filler" and have no appetite for that kind of detail, then I think you're missing a lot of the point of the series.
The argument remains the same: All this could be done while also advancing the plot at the same time. At the end of all those chapters, the plot relevant result was: She went from A to B. It is not unreasonable to expect a bit more as a reader. After all, there was plenty of fluff in the first three books AND plenty of plot advancement at the same time. A rich, living world and an exciting plot are a reason why so many people love the series and are sad that the later installments could not live up to the high mark set by the first few books.

The meta reason for these problems are probably twofold: The first one is obviously that Martin got so successful that he could just disregard an editor's advice. The second reason is probably the famous five year gap he had planned for the series but could not get to work. Now he has the problem that he already has some of the characters in the position where they were supposed to stay for five years but he still has to show what is going on with these characters, despite having no plot planned for them that could not be summarized by "They stayed there for some time and did what they were doing".

[Cozzer]

Honestly, ADWD made me lose all interest in the whole franchise. I can take a "things slowly develop" book in a seven-book series, but two consecutive books of mostly uninteresting characters doing mostly uninteresting things, while interesting things might be slowly happening (or preparing to happen) in the background? That would be too much even before factoring the multiple-year gap between each book.

And it's a pity, because what Rodin says is true and I honestly liked these parts... but you can't have a great background without something in the foreground for that to be in the background of. And no, Tyrion moping on a boat, Brienne wasting time on false leads, and especially Quentyn doing anything don't count as something happening in the foreground.

[Minty]

The argument remains the same: All this could be done while also advancing the plot at the same time. At the end of all those chapters, the plot relevant result was: She went from A to B. It is not unreasonable to expect a bit more as a reader. After all, there was plenty of fluff in the first three books AND plenty of plot advancement at the same time. A rich, living world and an exciting plot are a reason why so many people love the series and are sad that the later installments could not live up to the high mark set by the first few books.

The reason those people are upset is not because there has been any decline in quality, but because their expectations were misguided to begin with. They were expecting plot advancement towards some goal they had apparently decided the series is about, and instead they got ruminations on the nature of power (seizing, holding, exercising), examinations of the actual consequences of war in a pseudo-medieval society, deconstructions and inversions of fantasy tropes and structures (among other things, Brienne's chapters are a deconstruction of the fantasy quest), and a bunch of other stuff they didn't understand even though it was the whole point of the series and what separates ASoIaF from juvenile drivel like Shannara or Sword of Truth.

If you really don't see the point or value of Brienne's arc in AFFC, then I don't know what else to say. Either you get it or you don't. But it's not an objective flaw in the work just because you don't appreciate it, or because you can find others that don't appreciate it either.

I'm somewhat in agreement that GRRM needs some editorial oversight, though, because he ended up in a mess where a book got split in two with POVs in each book occurring simultaneously, which obviously wasn't his intent. But to trim out the stuff that makes ASoIaF worth reading just to satisfy some oblivious readers' desire for faster plot progression? Hell no.

[Seppl]

Wow. Care to turn down the ad hominem a bit? Juvenile dribble...just dont' get it... oblivious reader...

Seems I have hit a nerve, daring to criticize your infallible god GRRM. What is the point talking to you if you are using that kind of tone with other people when they don't say what you want to hear? Surely, your convincing argument has now shown everyone else the error of their ways and have convinced them that you were the genius you are, for being the only one able to see what they could not perceive with their small, undeveloped brains.

[Minty]

Seems I have hit a nerve

Apparently one of us did. Not sure it was you.

[Seppl]

Apparently one of us did. Not sure it was you.What is this? A game of "No, you!"?

Your argument almost literally boiled down to an appeal to your own intellect (already a bad start), using language that a 14 year old would use who feels really smart after having read his first book without pictures in it. Does not work.

[Cozzer]

Don't want to get into this too much, but Minty: it's not not an objective flaw in Martin's work just because you appreciate it. Either you get it's a flaw, or you don't. If you don't get it, I don't know what else to say. This bad pacing, interrupting the plot to focus for the n-th time on how grimdark the world is, this is what separates ASoIaF's juvenile dribble from real, adult fantasy literature.

I don't really believe any of the above, of course, but isn't it annoying when I put it that way?

(I actually liked A Feast for Crows, and think a part that focused on how the world was like from the people's point of view was sorely needed, after three books of "I'll start a war that will kill tens of thousands because HONOR/MONEY/LINEAGE totally justifies it!". It was A Dance With Dragon that made me stop caring.)

[Ibrinar]

The argument remains the same: All this could be done while also advancing the plot at the same time.

Not every chapter of a story must advance the main plot, you might prefer it that way but something isn't automatically bad if it spends some time just on establishing stuff about the state of the setting or the characters or to build atmosphere. Honestly that is one thing I like about long stories, that they have time to do that. (Though to be honest I don't remember tho GoT books well enough to say whether I liked that scene, just have issues with your argument. It could have done both doesn't imply it would be better if it had done both.)

[Tvtyrant]

Can we not get the thread locked? Disappointment is personal, attacking posters for not liking the same things as you isn't productive.

[Seppl]

Not every chapter of a story must advance the main plot, you might prefer it that way but something isn't automatically bad if it spends some time just on establishing stuff about the state of the setting or the characters or to build atmosphere. Not contesting that every chapter must advance the plot. The problem with the later installments of aSoIaF was that there are at least three character arcs (see Cozzer's post above) that were just treading water or going nowhere. That is at least half a book's worth of characters doing the same things as they did before and showing mostly the same scenery that we already know. Apart from Brienne, Tyrion, and Quentyn mentioned above, I would also count Daenerys' arc (She already just had an arc about screwing up ruling one of her conquered cities. Now we do it again? And she did not learn a thing?) and to a lesser degree Aria's arc (Faceless Man training sounds all cool and interesting, and it sure is when it starts. But it repeats the same lessons over and over. Aria's character does not evolve at all during this time, except for getting better at hiding from her mentors that her character did not change). How can you screw up Aria, Daenerys, and Tyrion? They are/were the most interesting characters in the series!

[BeerMug Paladin]

Not every chapter of a story must advance the main plot, you might prefer it that way but something isn't automatically bad if it spends some time just on establishing stuff about the state of the setting or the characters or to build atmosphere.

I would like to comment that books that occur later in a series' run seem to get excused for this kind of writing, and introductory/single books tend to be lambasted for it. I'm not particularly a fan of this style of worldbuilding, but I do recognize that some people are more engaged by it than others.

[deuterio12]

I would also count Daenerys' arc (She already just had an arc about screwing up ruling one of her conquered cities. Now we do it again? And she did not learn a thing?)

That's the whole point, it's not enough to just liberate the slaves, you need to rebuild the whole social structure or some new tyrant takes over and restarts the cycle. Daenerys got herself a mighty fighting force and showed she can use it in battle, but now she must also learn how to actually rule the conquered.

And this time Daenerys doing a better job, since at least her new city hasn't descended into canibalism.

In the meanwhile there's also the issue of dealing with the growing dragons that are growing to love human meat.



and to a lesser degree Aria's arc (Faceless Man training sounds all cool and interesting, and it sure is when it starts. But it repeats the same lessons over and over. Aria's character does not evolve at all during this time, except for getting better at hiding from her mentors that her character did not change).

Aria's learning multiple tricks, poison, pickpocketing, how to be creative about killing people, minimize collateral damage, and probably more important, unlocking her ability to commune with animals which even her mentors haven't figured out yet. Also she allows us to see more of not-Venice.



How can you screw up Aria, Daenerys, and Tyrion? They are/were the most interesting characters in the series!

What did you expect exactly, for Daenerys to lead her army into a conquering spree and everybody just be nice and friendly? For Aria to master all the faceless assassin arts in a 5-minute montage? That's simply not how GoT ever rolled. Ruling is hard. Learning is hard. The story starts because the previous king was a great conqueror but not nearly as good at ruling.

As for Tyrion, he went from being reduced to a slave after a life of richness and power and losing almost everything after finally getting fed with his manipulative father to rallying the golden company itself to his cause. That sounds pretty interesting to me.

[Seppl]

Not saying that they are not important lessons. The problem is: We already had them! These are just repeats with minimal progress. This minimal progress could have easily been included the previous chapters in the same topic or it could all have been reduced to one or two exciting chapters instead of 6 dull ones. But Arya and Daenerys were already in the positions where they are supposed to start in The Winds of Winter and GRRM had to really, really stretch their remaining plot in order to fill space between the other viewpoint characters that were still moving to position.

Also, what's up with Quentyn? Why is he not a minor background detail? In the first three books he would have been handled as a side note "My Queen! A Dornish prince just tried to free your dragons. He's dead" and the reader could have had fun piecing his story together from insignia and throwaway notes. Instead, we get a rather boring character whose quest is obviously doomed from the start (if he were important, he would not have been introduced this late), repeating the same story about heroic knights in shining armor failing miserably because the world is not a fairy tale. We have already seen that story many times in the first few books. Why the repeat with a new character?

[Rodin]

As for Tyrion, he went from being reduced to a slave after a life of richness and power and losing almost everything after finally getting fed with his manipulative father to rallying the golden company itself to his cause. That sounds pretty interesting to me.

The problem with Tyrion's story is that it drags on and on for ages, and Tyrion being in drunken self-pity for a good chunk of it doesn't help.

I was about to comment on how the show managed to avoid this, but that in and of itself gave me a realization. The show avoided this by not splitting Feast and Dance into two books. They covered the same material (well, kinda) simultaneously, which means that the boring bits* are interspersed with actual action taking place elsewhere in the world.

For my part, I found the last two books to have succumbed to Robert Jordan syndrome. The story has reached a point where it could plausibly push for a grand finale, but the author cannot resist creating new antagonists and new side plots so that every part of the world they developed gets focus. The Ironborn should have been written out after they were driven from the North and their king killed - they have no more narrative purpose after that. Instead, we get chapter after chapter of Euron's nonsense. We get a long and rambling sub-plot set in Dorne which pretty much amounts to "Myrcella has a scar now". And then there's the whole business with the "new" Targaryen.

I found myself not really caring about most of what was going on, and the show streamlining that was greatly appreciated.




*which are still necessary for characterization and world-building

[DomaDoma]

...Generally I refrain from posting my own poetry anywhere, but desperate times call for desperate measures.



All life is contest. This I've known
As long as I've lived life--

And life's not to be diced away.
Each tool, a surgeon's knife,

And contest's not to be forfeit,
But fought in tooth and strife,


That I might win the crowning
In the ever-seeking sight
Of that half-lit window, gleaming

Like the North Star in the night.

Like the Sun's own warmth and might.


And if some night it happens
There's no North Star in the sky,
Which leaves one not quite sure
Of what direction one must ply,
Then one must look to other means.
The facts must be made known,
And if the North Star's no more use,
The way's still elsewhere shown.

And at first, when daylight falters
And the Sun's beneath the ground,
The vestige may deceive you.
You see not that night's been crowned.
But how can one sit impassive
In the dark where that light shone?
What will burn, must fuel the bonfire
Till the night be overthrown!


The fool who would say otherwise:
See how he fares alone.

And all my life was contest
For the crowning and the place,
But all we were, in all that strife,
Was children in a race.
I started on a longer track,
Beset by dread and doubt,
When the gas-lamp in the window
flared, in signal,

and went out.

The second arc of Death Note is absolutely fantastic, please and thank you, and I can say that on the strength of Near and Mello alone.

[Bohandas]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book series. The first three books were excellent, the last two were utter garbage.

Outside of the literary world, the Destroy All Humans videogames. That series contains exactly 1.6 good videogames and then in the fourth level of the second game it's like all of the writers and developers collectively suffered a stroke.

[Eldan]

For someone who only played the first, what happens?

[Morty]

Hm. Do individual seasons of shows count? If so, then one would be Legend of Korra Season One, which began with a very promising story premise that it dropped the ball on so hard if cracked the pavement then it hit. The show had another terrible season but then redeemed itself, so it's a bit of a wash, but the first season will forever be a betrayed promise.

The other would be the last season of Samurai Jack. It started out great, portraying Jack's trauma and desperation and generally feeling like it was building up to a proper resolution. But then... it hit the reset button repeatedly on all the development and change Jack had gone through, brought him back to his old self and saddled him with a stupid romance plot. The finale itself wasn't bad, but wasn't very satisfying either.

[Cazero]

Every game sequel made by Blizzard had worse plot than the previous instalment.
Except maybe Warcraft 2 but since I didn't play the first one I can't really judge that transition properly.

[RossN]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book series. The first three books were excellent, the last two were utter garbage.

I half agree. Mostly Harmless was unbelievably depressing but I actually like So Long and Thanks For All The Fish an awful lot (in fact part of why I'm so sour about Mostly Harmless is the way it dumps on the immediately prior book in the cruelest way possible.)

I'd also nominate the Earthsea books. I loved the first three to bits, but Tehanu was a huge shock. With time I recognise what Ursula K. Le Guin was trying to say in a way I didn't in my mid-teens, but even if I sympathise with the idea behind Tehanu (sort of), I couldn't get over the way the author seemed to have actively hated her earlier books, which I very much loved.

[Saintheart]

The problem with Tyrion's story is that it drags on and on for ages, and Tyrion being in drunken self-pity for a good chunk of it doesn't help.

I was about to comment on how the show managed to avoid this, but that in and of itself gave me a realization. The show avoided this by not splitting Feast and Dance into two books. They covered the same material (well, kinda) simultaneously, which means that the boring bits* are interspersed with actual action taking place elsewhere in the world.

For my part, I found the last two books to have succumbed to Robert Jordan syndrome. The story has reached a point where it could plausibly push for a grand finale, but the author cannot resist creating new antagonists and new side plots so that every part of the world they developed gets focus. The Ironborn should have been written out after they were driven from the North and their king killed - they have no more narrative purpose after that. Instead, we get chapter after chapter of Euron's nonsense. We get a long and rambling sub-plot set in Dorne which pretty much amounts to "Myrcella has a scar now". And then there's the whole business with the "new" Targaryen.

I found myself not really caring about most of what was going on, and the show streamlining that was greatly appreciated.

Pretty much this. I have a feeling that people complaining that the TV show has been cutting people and plots down are forgetting that the TV show is doing with a chainsaw what Martin is going to have to do with a machete if he plans on finishing the damn series in two books.

[Samba Mentality]

Now, don’t take this wrong. I love the Harry Potter series. It was SO good! All of it! It’s just that, towards the end... (DO NOT READ SPOILER IF YOU DON’T WANT THE HARRY POTTER SERIES SPOILED!)

Everybody started to die! Dobby, Dumbledore, Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Hedwig, even Harry! That really bugged me.]

[DomaDoma]

For an actual contribution: the Novels of the Change have to be the ultimate exercise in diminishing returns.

First book: quite possibly the best fantastic post-apocalypse out there.
First three books: original and well-crafted post-apocalyptic fantasy epic with a cool sequel hook baked into its fabric.
Next three books: the villains might be too purely evil to be interesting, but the scope is widening and the stakes are high.
The three books after that: I still want the heroes to succeed, but please will you get on with telling the story in between giving everyone two hobbies and five children and reprising your favorite post-apocalyptic catchphrases and Wiccan prayer verses?
Next book, concluding the arc: Wait, the fulfillment of the big ominous arc prophecy is a tacked-on sequel hook and you think a few scenes of the new protagonist's happy-but-not-really-meaningful childhood are enough to pull me in?

I can't speak to how the pattern progresses in the five books that have come out since, but needless to say, my expectations are not high.

[Bohandas]

For someone who only played the first, what happens?

3/5 of the way through the second game the humor, the mayhem, and the open-worldy-ness more of less just disappear and the last two levels consist of mostly empty maps with precious little humor and no real opportunity to do anything other than just complete increasingly tedious missions.

EDIT:
As for the plot, it quickly goes off on a tangeant about a war between the Furons and another alien race called the Blisk, which could have been cool if the Blisk didn't have the personalities of cinderblocks

[deuterio12]

The Erfworld webcomic.

The first book was damn good stuff, to the point it got hosted in this very site.

The second book was good stuff too, but didn't fully catch up the magic of the first book with at least one pretty big ex-machina where before we got some foreshadowing of big moves plus the stakes overall felt a bit lower as the protagonists had gone from underdog struggling to survive to topdog crushing all in their path.

By the third book things started getting so messy that the plot's speed slowed down to a crawl with basically nobody making any significant advance in anything and the author suddenly just declaring that the 3rd book had finished several strips ago just because. Also where we before had awesome battle tactics and fantastic magic now we had some pseudo-physics string theorythinghy that is somehow behind everything.

Now in the fourth book the main protagonist has failed to pull any plan that did anything useful while the setting's own rules get blatantly retconned directly at the author's whims so trying to predict anything is an exercise in futility. Battles (which were one of the main selling points of the first book) are extremely rare and when they do happen chances are that they happen off-screen. Also the plot keeps adding more characters than removing and insists in rotating through as many of them as possible then take more time showing all the different points of view of the same scene so we have multiple updates describing virtually the exact same things with minimal differences.

[Bohandas]

The song Riders On The Storm. It starts out strong, with an interesting story, but then it trails off and there's five minutes of elevator music and even when it eventually comes back we never find out what happened with the killer on the road

[Velaryon]

Does it count if a series starts off good, then gets bad for a long time, but eventually makes a recovery?

The show Angel was pretty good once it found its stride, but the back half of season 3 and all of season 4 (basically, from the moment teenage Connor shows up until he leaves the show) are tortuous to get through. He might be the only character in all of fiction who's more whiny and angsty than Anakin Skywalker. Once he disappeared, the show got good again during its last season.



The song Riders On The Storm. It starts out strong, with an interesting story, but then it trails off and there's five minutes of elevator music and even when it eventually comes back we never find out what happened with the killer on the road

If we're including music, then I'm gonna nominate pretty much every Soulfly song I've ever heard. The first time a song trails off into tribal drumming and rhythm for like 2 more minutes after the song is over, it's kinda neat. But over the 3 albums I have heard from them, they do it almost every song. If you trim all that off it would probably cut the run time of each album by at least 15 minutes.

[Darth Ultron]

X-Files-The first five seasons were great. Action, adventure, mystery, suspense, horror, and humor...all in a nice TV. Then...well, it gets old as they never solve anything, and just go around in circles. There is some nice character stuff, but the rest is horrible. Even the 'event series' felt like this after just the first episode.

Robotech(Macross) The whole ''lost in space'' and ''endless war'' plots of the first two thirds of the show were great....but then you get to 'new' Earth, and it's just a dull soap opera.

Transformers(G1) The first two seasons were set mostly on Earth, but season three goes all sorts of silly sc-fi and heads out into the universe. It makes sense for a 10 foot tall robot to hide as say a car, but on a world of 10 foot tall aliens turning into a Earth type car?

Battlestar Glaticia(Re-Imaged) The first three seasons are some nice ''war/survival" stories...and then it really falls apart into directionless non stories and tons of altered reality shenanigans. And the ending of, sigh, ''save the little girl" and the horrible, horrible , horrible flashbacks...

Star Wars movies Love the first three, and the prequels are not that bad.....but then the Disney stuff of the past couple years is just pure crap.

[Mith]

I half agree. Mostly Harmless was unbelievably depressing but I actually like So Long and Thanks For All The Fish an awful lot (in fact part of why I'm so sour about Mostly Harmless is the way it dumps on the immediately prior book in the cruelest way possible.)



I almost stopped reading Mostly Harmless after the twist in the first few pages. Other people I know say that "Douglas Adams never cared for any structure/coherency within his story, but I feel like he spent all the time in SLaTFATF making an interesting set up to just wipe the slate clean.

[Traab]

Every game sequel made by Blizzard had worse plot than the previous instalment.
Except maybe Warcraft 2 but since I didn't play the first one I can't really judge that transition properly.

I dunno, I really liked warcraft 2 and 3. It had a good overarching storyline, new content, new things to do and learn, and a substantial upgrade in graphics of course. Same for starcraft 2. I found it worth the wait. I especially liked how there were a solid half dozen side stories going on in each expansion to further flesh out characters and events if you wanted to talk to everyone in between missions. It was there if you wanted it, and skippable if you didnt. Now diablo is kinda meh. I liked the last 2 (the first kicked my butt so hard, I sucked at it) But there is really only so much interesting to do there.

[Cazero]

I dunno, I really liked warcraft 2 and 3. It had a good overarching storyline, new content, new things to do and learn, and a substantial upgrade in graphics of course. Same for starcraft 2. I found it worth the wait. I especially liked how there were a solid half dozen side stories going on in each expansion to further flesh out characters and events if you wanted to talk to everyone in between missions. It was there if you wanted it, and skippable if you didnt. Now diablo is kinda meh. I liked the last 2 (the first kicked my butt so hard, I sucked at it) But there is really only so much interesting to do there.
Yes, they improved on the gameplay and graphics consistently, but we're complaining about stories here. There is a bunch of fridge logic here and there, but every sequel they made introduced major plot holes and absurdities, many of wich that were trivial to avoid.

Randomly popping up in my head, we have :

Warcraft 3 fails to explain what the heck has been going on before the tutorial. My Warcraft 2 manual did bother providing the Horde politics required to understand how Doomhammer took over and why Gul'dan eventualy betrays you. No such explanation is provided for Thrall, read the books sold separately if you want to know. That's low.
The Burning Legion made an overcomplicated plot involving pushing the locals to prepare for war against a new major threat (the Scourge) then killing one of their own general (Mal'ganis) to replace it with a less reliable general (both Arthas and the Lich King fit here) when all they ever wanted was for someone to steal a powerful artefact in Dalaran to cast the dimensional travel spell Archimonde needed.
Frozen Throne massively amps up on dimensional travel, implying it's relatively easy to do. It ruins the plausibility of the Burning Legion having trouble doing it, aka the driving force behind the plot of all prior Warcraft games.
And let's not get started on World of Warcraft. It has enough retconning to produce it's own thread worth of plot holes.

The UED was a complete ass pull when introduced in Brood War. Nobody from Earth ever showing up again only makes that point worse.
Duran and his ominous agenda weren't adequately explained until Heart of the Swarm Legacy of the Void. The reason he bothered infiltrating and betraying three major factions when his own minor faction managed to reach his true objective just fine still remain unexplained.
Whatever happended between Raynor and Kerrigan off-screen during the original Terran campaign was made moot with Raynor very explicitly wishing Kerrigan dead for the atrocities she commited in Brood War. Starcraft 2 opened by ****ting on that character development.
I'm still salty about Starcraft Ghost.

The plot of the Lost Vikings is minimalistic and silly. The reveal at the end of the sequel manages an incoherent silliness overload.
The plot of Diablo 3 is basicaly one nostalgic stepping stone per act followed by an unecessary explanation reeking of the Guy at the Gym fallacy. No, your Barbarian isn't allowed to just be awesome, he has to be a magical half-breed growing in power in reaction to a magical event.

[Keltest]

Yes, they improved on the gameplay and graphics consistently, but we're complaining about stories here. There is a bunch of fridge logic here and there, but every sequel they made introduced major plot holes and absurdities, many of wich that were trivial to avoid.

Randomly popping up in my head, we have :

Warcraft 3 fails to explain what the heck has been going on before the tutorial. My Warcraft 2 manual did bother providing the Horde politics required to understand how Doomhammer took over and why Gul'dan eventualy betrays you. No such explanation is provided for Thrall, read the books sold separately if you want to know. That's low.
The Burning Legion made an overcomplicated plot involving pushing the locals to prepare for war against a new major threat (the Scourge) then killing one of their own general (Mal'ganis) to replace it with a less reliable general (both Arthas and the Lich King fit here) when all they ever wanted was for someone to steal a powerful artefact in Dalaran to cast the dimensional travel spell Archimonde needed.
Frozen Throne massively amps up on dimensional travel, implying it's relatively easy to do. It ruins the plausibility of the Burning Legion having trouble doing it, aka the driving force behind the plot of all prior Warcraft games.



I think you need to play Wc3 again, because you kind of missed some important plot points here.

1 is a fair cop, a lot happened to put Thrall in charge of the Horde.
2, however, is completely wrong. The Burning Legion's plot was simple. Raise an army, crush forces likely to resist the Legion, open a portal, bring in the Legion, win. What you missed, is that the Lich King is not on the side of the Legion any more than he has to be. He is actively working against them. Arthas is told to kill Mal'ganis and betray Tichondrius to Illidan specifically because the Lich King doesn't want the Legion to win.
3 also ignores that the dimensional portal used was the same one opened by Kel'Thuzad in the first undead campaign, which WAS difficult to open. Sending through individual demons is not overly difficult. Its creating a portal stable enough for the higher demon powers to get through that's difficult. Remember that the Legion was able to send through the Dreadlords without any mortal intervention that we are told of, and that we see several groups open up "demon gates" specifically for dimensional travel even in Reign of Chaos.

[Cazero]

I think you need to play Wc3 again, because you kind of missed some important plot points here.

1 is a fair cop, a lot happened to put Thrall in charge of the Horde.
2, however, is completely wrong. The Burning Legion's plot was simple. Raise an army, crush forces likely to resist the Legion, open a portal, bring in the Legion, win. What you missed, is that the Lich King is not on the side of the Legion any more than he has to be. He is actively working against them. Arthas is told to kill Mal'ganis and betray Tichondrius to Illidan specifically because the Lich King doesn't want the Legion to win.
3 also ignores that the dimensional portal used was the same one opened by Kel'Thuzad in the first undead campaign, which WAS difficult to open. Sending through individual demons is not overly difficult. Its creating a portal stable enough for the higher demon powers to get through that's difficult. Remember that the Legion was able to send through the Dreadlords without any mortal intervention that we are told of, and that we see several groups open up "demon gates" specifically for dimensional travel even in Reign of Chaos.

Assuming Mal'ganis pulling back in Northrend was a strategic move meant to split Lordearon's forces, my beef with 2 is that instead of commiting to defend the frozen wastes of Northrend to fight a pointless battle, the highly intelligent and deceitful Mal'ganis could have left Arthas stranded there fighting corpses and carried on to do the undead campaign himself.

As for 3, well...
At some point, Illidan led an army of naga in a dimensional portal.
Then Maiev led an army of wardens in a dimensional portal to chase after Illidan.
Then Kael'thas led an army of blood elves in a dimensional portal to seek Illidan's help with their mana addiction.
Then Illidan was threatened by Kil'jaeden who told him to get his army back in a dimensional portal to do his biding or else the Burning Legion would cross a dimensional portal and kill him.
Then Illidan and his army withdrawn to Draenor after they failed to destroy the Lich King. Using, you guessed it, a dimensional portal.
If all of those were done through the Dalaran interdimensional highway, then the Legion shouldn't have cared one bit about Archimonde's death and kept invading through there.

[Traab]

Assuming Mal'ganis pulling back in Northrend was a strategic move meant to split Lordearon's forces, my beef with 2 is that instead of commiting to defend the frozen wastes of Northrend to fight a pointless battle, the highly intelligent and deceitful Mal'ganis could have left Arthas stranded there fighting corpses and carried on to do the undead campaign himself.

As for 3, well...
At some point, Illidan led an army of naga in a dimensional portal.
Then Maiev led an army of wardens in a dimensional portal to chase after Illidan.
Then Kael'thas led an army of blood elves in a dimensional portal to seek Illidan's help with their mana addiction.
Then Illidan was threatened by Kil'jaeden who told him to get his army back in a dimensional portal to do his biding or else the Burning Legion would cross a dimensional portal and kill him.
Then Illidan and his army withdrawn to Draenor after they failed to destroy the Lich King. Using, you guessed it, a dimensional portal.
If all of those were done through the Dalaran interdimensional highway, then the Legion shouldn't have cared one bit about Archimonde's death and kept invading through there.

Wasnt illidan already on draenor when kiljaden threatened him? God its been so long since I played.

As for malganis, iirc, his entire purpose was to bait arthas into getting the runeblade, which was supposed to enslave him and make him their puppet king in lorderan. What he didnt know was the lich king was going to betray the legion and used arthas to kill malganis. The lich king intended to use arthas to wipe out humanity, then come back to northrend and be fully taken over by his soul, allowing the lich king to go free from its prison and rule the world. The legion just wanted humanity (and the elves trolls etc) crippled so they could open another portal to invade with and win this time.

With most of the portals, temporary, small portals, are a thing. The issue with the dark portal was, its supposed to be this huge army transporting, permanently open self sustaining portal to a place where there were no portals before. When kaelthas fled to draenor, iirc it was a thing where they had to constantly channel magic into it to hold it open while evacuating as many of his people as he could. It wasnt as powerful as the dark portal which is self sustaining and much MUCH larger. As for dalaran, remember the entire last mission was all about the intense ritual with rare materials in a specific location all just to open a portal powerful enough to let archimonde in. And ONLY archimonde (well, a few random spurts of demons that popped up as they could be crammed through the temporary and still small portal) Once the ritual was over, that was it. It was just archimonde, or else he wouldnt have needed to bother using the scourge as his forces. They still didnt have a permanent portal to work with yet. Opening a portal for the burning legion to use in any numbers is clearly established as very very hard.

[Kitten Champion]

1 is a fair cop, a lot happened to put Thrall in charge of the Horde.

It was in a never-released point-and-click adventure game, apparently.

I don't care, personally. The meat of an RTS story has to work into gameplay or you risk making your player sit through your pretty derivative fantasy novel rather than playing the video game that they rightfully assumed it is. The story of WCIII is simple and works under the premise that for most of the players it's their introduction into in the universe and they'll never touch the manual. The fall of the Arthurian prince from inflexible zealotry, the rise of the Scourge and fall of the generic Western European Fantasy world which is the story's low and shows a tectonic shift for the prototypical foundation of the universe has been overturn. Then we get the exodus and salvation of the Orcs which marks the gradual turn upwards and mirrors Arthas' descent, and finally the culmination of the forces of Good for the final apocalyptic battle for the climax. Each campaign hits its theme and builds its missions and cut-scenes around it - that's what it exists for - and not trying to convey a whole Robert Jordan-esque fantasy novel which we'd have to read through.

[Rodin]

It was in a never-released point-and-click adventure game, apparently.

I don't care, personally. The meat of an RTS story has to work into gameplay or you risk making your player sit through your pretty derivative fantasy novel rather than playing the video game that they rightfully assumed it is. The story of WCIII is simple and works under the premise that for most of the players it's their introduction into in the universe and they'll never touch the manual. The fall of the Arthurian prince from inflexible zealotry, the rise of the Scourge and fall of the generic Western European Fantasy world which is the story's low and shows a tectonic shift for the prototypical foundation of the universe has been overturn. Then we get the exodus and salvation of the Orcs which marks the gradual turn upwards and mirrors Arthas' descent, and finally the culmination of the forces of Good for the final apocalyptic battle for the climax. Each campaign hits its theme and builds its missions and cut-scenes around it - that's what it exists for - and not trying to convey a whole Robert Jordan-esque fantasy novel which we'd have to read through.

I'll second this. Warcraft III in and of itself had a pretty good plot, and it lead to an excellent "all your powers combined" climax where all the races join forces against their true foe.

Frozen Throne.....eeeeeeh. The threat level was a massive step down, and the writing was much the same. I don't even remember most of the plot for that expansion because not all that much really happened. Maiev chases Illidan and manages to stop him from killing the Lich King, because apparently talking to each other is too hard. The Blood Elves leave the humans and go off with the Naga to do...something. I can't even recall what they do. And then Arthas races over to become the Lich King. That's...about it, really.

And then WoW happens, and suddenly the grand alliance of races is at war again because Faction-based PvP. I don't think we ever got a good explanation for why that is, or for why the Orcs, Taurens, and Trolls are suddenly buddy-buddy with the Forsaken.

[Cazero]

Wasnt illidan already on draenor when kiljaden threatened him? God its been so long since I played.
Yeah. But if the Legion was on Draenor at that point, the whole portal issue gets much worse. Apparently they can declare worlds like Draenor conquered without even setting foot there if they establish a cabal of loyal and powerful servants like the Shadow Council.


As for malganis, iirc, his entire purpose was to bait arthas into getting the runeblade, which was supposed to enslave him and make him their puppet king in lorderan. What he didnt know was the lich king was going to betray the legion and used arthas to kill malganis. The lich king intended to use arthas to wipe out humanity, then come back to northrend and be fully taken over by his soul, allowing the lich king to go free from its prison and rule the world. The legion just wanted humanity (and the elves trolls etc) crippled so they could open another portal to invade with and win this time.
Yeah, that bit actualy makes sense as the Legion messing up big time. And funnily enough, I got the explanation for that in my Warcraft 2 manual where they say who the Lich King is. Ner'zul was an orc from the Shadow Council, he knows all about the Legion and his revenge plot makes no sense without a multidimensional scale. But good luck figuring that out from Warcraft 3.
And unless he intended to die in the process, it's pretty clear that his gambit to be absorbed by Arthas backfired horribly since his name is never even mentioned again. But that's a WoW issue.


With most of the portals, temporary, small portals, are a thing. The issue with the dark portal was, its supposed to be this huge army transporting, permanently open self sustaining portal to a place where there were no portals before. When kaelthas fled to draenor, iirc it was a thing where they had to constantly channel magic into it to hold it open while evacuating as many of his people as he could. It wasnt as powerful as the dark portal which is self sustaining and much MUCH larger.My point is, in Frozen Throne there are like five different occurence of large armies hopping from Azeroth to Draenor without the Dark Portal.
The Legion is supposed to be that huge, unstoppable army who will eventualy reach your world and crush it. It doesn't mater how Illidan, Kael and Maiev did it, the Legion is a multidimensional conquest army that ought to be better at massive dimensional travel than some shmucks from Azeroth trying it out for the first time. And they're outdone five times in a row.


As for dalaran, remember the entire last mission was all about the intense ritual with rare materials in a specific location all just to open a portal powerful enough to let archimonde in. And ONLY archimonde (well, a few random spurts of demons that popped up as they could be crammed through the temporary and still small portal) Once the ritual was over, that was it. It was just archimonde, or else he wouldnt have needed to bother using the scourge as his forces.
He bothered with Tichondrius' undeads like he would have bothered with Magtheridon's orcs. The Legion's MO is to assimilate corrupted locals in their ranks.
And Archimonde brought Tichondrius and Magtheridon like it was nothing. Probably way easier once he's in the place. But apparently, almost nobody else in the Legion is good at making those damn portals.


It was in a never-released point-and-click adventure game, apparently.
Right. That's the background reason that makes me see a bigger problem than the one I pointed out.
Did I mention I was salty about Starcraft Ghost being cancelled? Because I am salty about Starcraft Ghost being cancelled. And not for the plot (even though apparently it would have helped with Starcraft 2).

[BeerMug Paladin]

Yes, they improved on the gameplay and graphics consistently, but we're complaining about stories here. There is a bunch of fridge logic here and there, but every sequel they made introduced major plot holes and absurdities, many of wich that were trivial to avoid.

…

The plot of the Lost Vikings is minimalistic and silly. The reveal at the end of the sequel manages an incoherent silliness overload.
I'm surprised anyone would bring up The Lost Vikings. Or imply they expected anything un-silly about a sequel.

[JBPuffin]

Percy Jackson. I read he first book in 3rd grade and really liked it, but quickly realized I liked it specifically as a self-contained story.

Persona 5: the Animation is a SLOG, especially as a person who hasn’t played the game.

Worm. I read the entire thing over the span of three 18-hour reading days (literally drove my family up the wall with it, i’m sure), and by the end I hated everything about it. Still do, honestly. It irks me in so many different ways, I can’t put together a decent argument for why I don’t like it...*shivers is Swahili*

[Psyren]

Magicians, easily. The "adult Harry Potter meets Narnia" hook drew me in quickly, but the rampant misogyny, rape-as-plot-device, poorly explained magic rules, abundance of stereotypes and clichés, and edgelord grimdarkness for its own sake made me lose all interest before season 3 even aired.

[GrayDeath]

Wait, they made more than one season?

Shows what transalted countries (TM^^) get, here they said it was discontinued.
And I partly agree, it was intruiging but flawed (so far).

[BRC]

Persona 5: the Animation is a SLOG, especially as a person who hasn’t played the game.


Having played the game, I gave the animation a shot, but it was a slog from the beginning, and really shows why you can't generally do a straight video-game adaptation. Really more of a "Hey, remember these bits from the game" than anything else.



Worm. I read the entire thing over the span of three 18-hour reading days (literally drove my family up the wall with it, i’m sure), and by the end I hated everything about it. Still do, honestly. It irks me in so many different ways, I can’t put together a decent argument for why I don’t like it...*shivers is Swahili*

Interesting. I like Worm, even if I think it's got plenty of serious flaws, but those flaws start hitting hard pretty early in the story. I can easily see somebody stopping partway through, but I can't imagine finishing it on anything but pure stubborn willpower if you dislike it.

As for me, I have a whole list of comic book series that I love early on, but swiftly fall out of love with as they proceed.

Fables, for example, goes through a lot of different genres during it's time, and I will always adore the noir feel of the first volume, but it really should have ended after the War arc, rather than meandering around for another 10 volumes or so.


Chew follows a similar arc, and it's still an amazing book in my view, but as time goes on the original interesting worldbuilding drops away, and it's basically a superhero book.

Early on, the powers are stuff like "Gets psychic impressions of the things he eats", "Can write about food so vividly that it feels like you're eating it", ect. Even "Becomes hyperintelligent while eating" was acceptable because it kept to the investigation/mystery angle of the series.

And then you start getting into "Carves functional weapons out of chocolate", and by the end it's basically just food-themed x-men, with stuff like "Has sharp claws and teeth from eating a certain diet" "Animates Mashed Potato Golems", plus some straight up superspeed, superstrength, regeneration powers.

[Tyndmyr]

Worm. I read the entire thing over the span of three 18-hour reading days (literally drove my family up the wall with it, i’m sure), and by the end I hated everything about it. Still do, honestly. It irks me in so many different ways, I can’t put together a decent argument for why I don’t like it...*shivers is Swahili*

Holy crap, that's some fast reading. It took me a solid week, and I read fast.

I quite enjoyed it, but I can see how a few different aspects of it would irk someone. The timeskip was discombobulating, for instance.

[Rodin]

Another I just thought of: The Black Magician Trilogy. The premise of the first book is quite interesting, with a "wild" mage being found and being much more powerful than the cultivated magic from the nobles. Problem is, she's a street rat, and the culture clash is epic.

But then in the second book and beyond, they introduce Black magic and all of that set up is thrown out the window. The rest of the series focuses on that, and the original premise is forgotten.

[Rynjin]

Another I just thought of: The Black Magician Trilogy. The premise of the first book is quite interesting, with a "wild" mage being found and being much more powerful than the cultivated magic from the nobles. Problem is, she's a street rat, and the culture clash is epic.

But then in the second book and beyond, they introduce Black magic and all of that set up is thrown out the window. The rest of the series focuses on that, and the original premise is forgotten.

And the whole creepy relationship with her mentor that subsumes the plot.

[danzibr]

I’m sure you tell already been said, but Wheel of Time. It had its ups and downs, then came Brandon Sanderson.

[Malimar]

I'm in the minority that I still like A Song Of Ice And Fire (the books), even the last two that were allegedly "slow". But Game Of Thrones (the tv series)? Ever since the beginning of season 5, it's been a black hole of suckitude, only growing worse and worse as the seasons go on and all the initial quality evaporates away by Hawking radiation. Or something. Point is, it started out good and now it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

Doctor Who, too -- the Russel T. Davies seasons were great, then it fell off a cliff and the Moffat seasons sucked emu cloaca (the worst was the season where he got way up his own butt about the awful, awful, awful River Song, but his entire run has been bad). The difference here is that I have hope for Chibnall's takeover to save the franchise.

[GrayDeath]

Another I just thought of: The Black Magician Trilogy. The premise of the first book is quite interesting, with a "wild" mage being found and being much more powerful than the cultivated magic from the nobles. Problem is, she's a street rat, and the culture clash is epic.

But then in the second book and beyond, they introduce Black magic and all of that set up is thrown out the window. The rest of the series focuses on that, and the original premise is forgotten.


Interestingly, I felt the opposite.

The first book was so chockfull of the obvious, clicheed "Frightened but so much smarter street rat meets too stupid to live establishemtn" that I had trouble getting through (and the first half of the second felt like "Female harry Potter but worse") but the rest 1.5 books were quite good (and the ... shall we say less than healthy relationship made it better methinks, as it showed that Sonea is really really dumb).

What got it for me was the continuation/second Trilogy (or the first book, didnt bother to read the second or third).
She did absolutely NOTHING for 20 years! I eman relly now?

At least still better than the Gods Trilgoy by the same Author (sue me, miy girflreind back then made me read them)) where I knew how it would all end at the midway point of book one.

[The Jack]

I didn't think I'd be at the risk of record here but I thought a Dance with Dragons was the strongest book in the series. A feast for crows was the weakest, and it seemed to me that they put all the sucky characters in FfC so that all the awesome ones could be in DwD. FfC was mostly terrible; Brienne chapters were an absolute drag to read, dorne was confusing and Cersei was a descent; Arya chapters were too rare. DwD was all the star power it could muster.

(Brienne's one of the only characters I like the show version more of, but I dropped the show mid season because it was going ahead off book and was obviously inferior by that point)

Predator. First film is incredible. Second film was horrendous, Predators was passable, I don't think I'll pay to see the predator; Genetic nonsense shied me well away from that. My head cannon? An incredible social idea; The predators lived in a late capitalist or socialist society with heavy automation, much like what we'd have in a hundred years, and then part of them decided they were getting smothered by such a civilization, that it wasn't in their nature, and decided to descend into tribal states with a hunting emphasis, where each member would prove their worth and nobody would be an accountant.
Traveling the cosmos for gene therapies? What's the point in that?
(also, the AVP games were incredible back in the day. It's a shame the movies ruined any chance of something serious coming from that. )

Deus ex.
The original game was incredible and said a lot.
Human revolution, while a good game, is both too on the nose and lacking the self awareness of the first game. Picus news speaks with every intonation that it shouldn't be trusted, and what's the merit in that? The narative structure is horrendous; while the original game had build up, a twist, and then build up for a finale, HR overly builds up for a twist to at the end, where you know what's going on two thirds of the game before the character has his revelation.
Mankind divided has a story that really picks up and has you on the edge for more, but the premise is so outrageously contrived that the rest of it's soiled. Picus news is actively trying to be mistrusted, and it's hard to believe anyone could follow their narrative; The Aug incident should've been easily provable foul play and the writers are stroking themselves in their supposed cleverness. It's awful, Give me my Greys, Greasles and MiB back.

[Bohandas]

Either the second or third Ratchet and Clank game started with several levels where the camera and the congrols were all messed up. Every time I replay that series I wind up giv8ng up in frustration around there. (Though I generally wind up coming back and finishing the game like a month later after remembering that the latter half of the game is better made)

[Bohandas]

Oh and Half-Life

Half-Life 2 was NOT the great game everyone makes it out to be. It only seemed that way at the time because it did a bunch of things thst had never been done before. The problem is that while it did a lot of things first there weren't any things that it did well. The game was a tedious slog through random driving levels, physics puzzles, and a plot that didn;t make any sense and was only tangentially related to the first game. And there were only like 8 guns; Opposing Force had almost 20

[Rodin]

Predator. First film is incredible. Second film was horrendous, Predators was passable, I don't think I'll pay to see the predator; Genetic nonsense shied me well away from that. My head cannon? An incredible social idea; The predators lived in a late capitalist or socialist society with heavy automation, much like what we'd have in a hundred years, and then part of them decided they were getting smothered by such a civilization, that it wasn't in their nature, and decided to descend into tribal states with a hunting emphasis, where each member would prove their worth and nobody would be an accountant.
Traveling the cosmos for gene therapies? What's the point in that?
(also, the AVP games were incredible back in the day. It's a shame the movies ruined any chance of something serious coming from that. )


Thanks to the new movie coming out, I managed to catch both Predator and Predators back-to-back on TV the other night. Predator really holds up as a great movie. Yes, there is a bit of the 80s "super machismo" nonsense in there, but for an Arnie movie there's less than you might expect. Most of the movie where they're being hunted really stands out as great even by today's standards. The end looks a bit silly in hindsight.

Predators though? I had never seen it before, but dear GOD that movie is dated. It's so 80s it hurts, which is rather ironic since it was released in 1990. The plot is terrible, the acting is awful, and the portrayal of the gangs is racist as hell. The motivation of the Predator is also pretty much ignored - before, he was going into the jungle to hunt The Most Dangerous Game. In this movie, he's just killing gangsters left and right because...reasons? I'm amazed that the franchise survived this movie, although the quality of the subsequent movies is probably a direct result.

[hamishspence]

Predators is a 2010 movie. It appears that you are describing Predator II, which is indeed a 1990 movie.

I think the idea is that armed humans, any armed humans, are "The Most Dangerous Game" - but a Predator doesn't care much what environment they hunt in. The motive's the same, the prey's the same - "armed humans" - only the environment is different.

The city is even called the "Concrete Jungle" in other Predator-related works. Which, interestingly enough, did the exact same thing in comics in 1989, before the Predator II movie came out.

[Rodin]

Predators is a 2010 movie. It appears that you are describing Predator II, which is indeed a 1990 movie.

I think the idea is that armed humans, any armed humans, are "The Most Dangerous Game" - but a Predator doesn't care much what environment they hunt in. The motive's the same, the prey's the same - "armed humans" - only the environment is different.

The city is even called the "Concrete Jungle" in other Predator-related works. Which, interestingly enough, did the exact same thing in comics in 1989, before the Predator II movie came out.

Right, my bad on the title.

What bugs me is that the Predator didn't target the cop at all. As in, it never goes after him. It watches him kick ass, it sees him almost spot it through the cloak, and even follows him to the meeting with the Jamaican gang boss. And then it pisses off and ignores him, repeatedly. Heck, it even taunts him in the park for no apparent reason.

[Kitten Champion]

I only remember Predator II because it was one of those 80's to early 90's movies where they decided to make everything uncomfortably, eye-punishingly red. As in, the cinematography and the lighting just bathed everything in this deep reddish-to-orange hue. I assume it was to stylistically highlight the omnipresent heat and violence, but it's still the harshest colour you can force someone to watch for +90 minutes.

[Sapphire Guard]

Right, my bad on the title.

What bugs me is that the Predator didn't target the cop at all. As in, it never goes after him. It watches him kick ass, it sees him almost spot it through the cloak, and even follows him to the meeting with the Jamaican gang boss. And then it pisses off and ignores him, repeatedly. Heck, it even taunts him in the park for no apparent reason.

Different predator, different personality. Maybe it didn't see him as threatening enough?

[Corlindale]

While I like both Harry Potter and the Hunger Games, I think the final book of each series has a major flaw, in that it completely lacks the main thing that I liked about each series.

Harry Potter 7 is almost completely devoid of the day-to-day life at Hogwarts, which was always my favourite part of the series. I understand the whole world-threatening-scenario thing making going to school a bit unrealistic - but maybe they could have given us just a little bit more school life. I mean, it would be interesting to know what it was like to live in Hogwarts during Voldemort's dystopian reign, but we only get brief descriptions of what all the other kids were up to, and instead focus on the three protagonists chasing McGuffins.

Hunger Games 3 has no Hunger Games. The best thing about that series was the Games, in my opinion - the moral dilemmas, the crazy setups, the flimsy alliances, the traps, everything. The final book is just a pretty standard take-down-the-evil-empire style plot. Yes, they have that line about "It's just like the Hunger Games" when they navigate the Capital - but it's not really convincing.

It's not that the final books are bad, as such, but they just stopped giving me what I loved most about each series, and that was a disappointment.

If we can talk about games, I would say Plants vs Zombies 2. I absolutely loved the first Plants vs Zombies. A really fun take on the tower defense genre with a ridiculous premise that they somehow make work. A relaxing difficulty curve for the main game, but real challenge in the mini-games and survival modes. An absurd amount of content at an indie price point, with a 50-level campaign, a ton of mini-games, puzzle modes and survival modes, +plant collecting and the Zen Garden. Cute visual design for both plants and zombies, and new plants unlocking at a steady rate, continually giving you new toys to play with.

Plants vs Zombies 2 is a freemium mobile game, with all the dreadful economic incitement structures that entails. Progress is way slower, levels are generally harder (pushing you towards spending on updates), many of the classic plants are cash-locked, and new plants are unlocked at much too long intervals. Also, having to play on a smartphone makes it much harder to tell what's going on, and the addition of plant food that requires careful timing makes the gameplay way less relaxing than the first game.

I guess this story is similar for any sequel that goes freemium mobile, but this one irked me particularly because I loved the first game so much.

[Ibrinar]

The others by Anne Bishop. Well it is the first book with a new MC so maybe it should be counted as new series. Anyways it is not that the first books didn't have issues but I enjoyed something about them enough to not be too bothered by them. The new MC though... The first MC was of a subspecies that could see the future and for that fact alone she is pretty much automatically useful and plot relevant and while it was still weird how fast powerful beings become fond of her it was tolerable. The new MC could have replaced by any other human that doesn't hate the others. She doesn't bring much to the table for the Others but what was worse than their quick protectiveness is that she is a complete bystander to the plot, everything gets handled by the others she just gets dragged along with the plot.