Series--form
Still thinking about series--TV and book. (Mentions of Buffy below, but no spoilers. Ditto LOTR and Patrick O'Brian.)
Began with my total inconsistency in attitude. I really love long complicated stories--the type called roman fleuve. But I loathe and hate cliffhangers with a smoking, fire and brimstone hate. I always have. I remember being around six or seven and being so angry when Lassie had a rare two-parter, feeling like I'd been robbed, and I'd have to wait a whole week. I almost stopped watching the show, and I did complain a couple times after, "Is this going to be a continued?" until my dad warned that any more whining would guarantee I spend the evening in bed while the sibs watched. So I shut up. I refused to watch the Disney afternoon serials, because they were all super long serials.
The reason I hate them doesn't take much figuring: I hate being sucked out of the story before it's resolved. When I sink in--if I sink in--I want to stay in until the end. Thus reading Lord of the Rings for two nights and three days straight, when I was fourteen. And the entire Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin roman fleuve in about three weeks, a few summers ago.
I didn't marathon Buffy, though I did have a few brief four and five hours mini marathons. Partly because I began watching it with a friend, so I knew going in that it would be broken up. But even when I went ahead, I took long breaks between because I had to be in the mood for a story that contained terrific character arcs, but the world building was so nonsensical that I had to get into the mindset to concentrate on the one and look past the other. I prefer unconditional surrender when I sink into a story, but Buffy had to be negotiated first, so to speak. (It wasn't just the worldbuilding. Some was the horror aspect, because I just don't respond to horror, or any of its tropes.) I waited a month after finishing season five, before I was ready to take on season six.
But books can't come in million page editions, and TV shows do have to come in hour sequences. There has to be form, and sometimes the artificial imposition of form can make a storyline stronger. I really loved the Buffy eps that continued the long arc, yet were tightly structured to fit the single episode, like "Halloween," "Tabula Rasa," and later ones like "Storyteller." I find I really respond strongly to both book and TV shows that have a long arc, but come to a small resolution by the end of the episode, or volume. The next ep or story in the series does not begin at square one with the big arc, but moves on, while establishing a smaller arc for this particular story segment.
Began with my total inconsistency in attitude. I really love long complicated stories--the type called roman fleuve. But I loathe and hate cliffhangers with a smoking, fire and brimstone hate. I always have. I remember being around six or seven and being so angry when Lassie had a rare two-parter, feeling like I'd been robbed, and I'd have to wait a whole week. I almost stopped watching the show, and I did complain a couple times after, "Is this going to be a continued?" until my dad warned that any more whining would guarantee I spend the evening in bed while the sibs watched. So I shut up. I refused to watch the Disney afternoon serials, because they were all super long serials.
The reason I hate them doesn't take much figuring: I hate being sucked out of the story before it's resolved. When I sink in--if I sink in--I want to stay in until the end. Thus reading Lord of the Rings for two nights and three days straight, when I was fourteen. And the entire Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin roman fleuve in about three weeks, a few summers ago.
I didn't marathon Buffy, though I did have a few brief four and five hours mini marathons. Partly because I began watching it with a friend, so I knew going in that it would be broken up. But even when I went ahead, I took long breaks between because I had to be in the mood for a story that contained terrific character arcs, but the world building was so nonsensical that I had to get into the mindset to concentrate on the one and look past the other. I prefer unconditional surrender when I sink into a story, but Buffy had to be negotiated first, so to speak. (It wasn't just the worldbuilding. Some was the horror aspect, because I just don't respond to horror, or any of its tropes.) I waited a month after finishing season five, before I was ready to take on season six.
But books can't come in million page editions, and TV shows do have to come in hour sequences. There has to be form, and sometimes the artificial imposition of form can make a storyline stronger. I really loved the Buffy eps that continued the long arc, yet were tightly structured to fit the single episode, like "Halloween," "Tabula Rasa," and later ones like "Storyteller." I find I really respond strongly to both book and TV shows that have a long arc, but come to a small resolution by the end of the episode, or volume. The next ep or story in the series does not begin at square one with the big arc, but moves on, while establishing a smaller arc for this particular story segment.