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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Ciaphas Cain is not the same as Flashman. He is not a total scumbag, but generally cares for his men. His cowardice sometimes outweighs it, but the series (especially Amberley’s notes) makes it clear that Cain self-deprecatingly exaggerates his flaws and understates his character out of some kind of guilt complex. The books may not be for everyone, but your description of them does not fit, either.

Agreed - I enjoyed this aspect - he thinks he is a coward but he is not. He does have quite few other flaws though and like Amberely is still a product of the Imperium - things they do and consider comonplace or even reasuringly normal are pretty damn dark.

Supernatural:
The Scooby Doo episode.
This is where they lost me, i have a high tolerance for gak but man.....they where not even trying anymore
Supernatural was great when it was about the Hunt. People going after cryptids and monsters and the Brothers.
But when the Leviathans came and EVERY SINGLE EPISODE was about them, the show lost its charm, still watched though
Then every season just involved deamons and angels, and then god dies and comes back and gak like that.....feth man.
There are SOOO many monsters and myths from around the world, so they didn't run out. But then they wanted to tell these epic grand lord of the rings style stories, ignoring the sheer terror of the show, that monsters exist and the only thing out there to stop them are these barely functioning neurotic hillbillies.
That and the Fujoshies that ended up ruining it

Scooby Doo,

where they added Scrappy Doo, curse his annoying little puppy heart.... this my have been my first childhood realisation that everything has a natural end and you have to know when to let go

I finally quit reading the honor harrington series because frankly dave weber is not a good writer.

He creates an endless series of black and white characters that are either ridiculously good or horribly bad. Many of his characters would strain to be 2 dimensional.

the title character, HH herself, is just too good to relate to, she's inhumanly perfect. I just couldn't stand her after a couple novels.

(I will not call her a mary sue as that term's been co-opted by too many creeps who think and competent female character that does not exist just to be rescued and claimed by a male lead is an affront to their delicate little manhoods.)

The villains are likewise laughably incompetent and frequently follow the exhausted, fossilized James Bond villain model.

Lastly I got tired of weber literally beating the reader over the head with his political views, Without going into politics I will say weber incessantly pounds the drum that his views are good, other views are bad.

After quitting the HH series I quit reading anything with weber's name on it after in a starfire novel of his he, yet again, slapped everyone with a different political view across the face with his.


I also quit watching the walking in circles dead as I got tired of ever more ridiculous villains the same exact plot season after season.

Other things I got sick of:

The Horus Heresy books: I never had a high opinion of WH books. Entertaining at best. The HH series started out pretty good, but then took a pretty hard nosedive. By the Alpha Legion book, whose climax is just. so. stupid. I couldn't take the insult to my intelligence anymore and called it quits.

I kind of agree with Vermis concering Dune. First book is an absolute masterpiece. Second and third are OK. Past those it gets silly.

Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game is fantastic. The Alvin Maker books start out entertaining but after a while and everything else he writes turns into childish beating-you-over-the-head with my ideal values/politics/religion. Steer clear.

Robin Hobb: I managed to read the whole trilogy, but the main character is such a complete moron and masochist (disguised as "loyalty") I never read anything else by the same author. I mean, basically every other page I kept going "no you idiot. Go the other way." Every time he has choice, he always picks the clearly inferior one.

Terry Goodkind: Worse than Wheel of Time. Never made it through the first book. Literally everyone just keeps repeating "good and evil are just two sides of the coin." I get it. Now show me why. Just repeating something until my brain turns to mush doesn't make it true. It just makes me stop listening to you.

Cixin Liu seems to be the new hotness in science fiction. At least, the books are everywhere. I read one book, was mildly entertained, couldn't finish the second because of how completely he (she?) just ignores human nature across both books.

Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star. Started reading it. Halfway through the book, there still was no sign of a premise or plot or even a story going anywhere, so I put it down and never looked at the author again. If someone can give me a good reason, I might give him another chance, but not with that book.

Matt Swain wrote:
I finally quit reading the honor harrington series because frankly dave weber is not a good writer.

He creates an endless series of black and white characters that are either ridiculously good or horribly bad. Many of his characters would strain to be 2 dimensional.

the title character, HH herself, is just too good to relate to, she's inhumanly perfect. I just couldn't stand her after a couple novels.

(I will not call her a mary sue as that term's been co-opted by too many creeps who think and competent female character that does not exist just to be rescued and claimed by a male lead is an affront to their delicate little manhoods.)

The villains are likewise laughably incompetent and frequently follow the exhausted, fossilized James Bond villain model.

Lastly I got tired of weber literally beating the reader over the head with his political views, Without going into politics I will say weber incessantly pounds the drum that his views are good, other views are bad.

After quitting the HH series I quit reading anything with weber's name on it after in a starfire novel of his he, yet again, slapped everyone with a different political view across the face with his.


I also quit watching the walking in circles dead as I got tired of ever more ridiculous villains the same exact plot season after season.

I disagree. While he has a bit of a swirling mustache fetish for some of his villains quite a few others are pretty deep. Also, Honor isn't perfect. But she is very talented in a narrow field that slowly expands as her area of control expands. Also you're leaving out the fact that she stays sharp and gains more experience because people live 300 years in the series. Hell, she has literal decades where she spends her time learning a new trade between books.

Also his Safehold series you can tell is his true passion and it's pretty solid if also loosely based on the some of the same things as the honorverse. Weber big issue is that he is extremely partial to the British form of government from the age of sail.

I had forgotten about trying to watch GoT. About halfway through the first episode I decided it was either too much porn for the plot, or too much plot for the porn. If you're going to show me even softcore porn, I don't want to find out immediately afterwards they're related. Ew.

For Peter Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star, it takes a while to get there, but the duology has a really interesting villain (or two). MorninLightMountain is somewhere between Skynet and the Tyranid Hivemine for inhuman ruthlessness. I enjoyed all the scenes with him.

You can skip any scene involving Ozzy and not miss anything, though.

For films, I would say.........

Star Wars - I checked out after Force Awakens. A lot of people really like this movie, which I find baffling, but Disney's very first effort with this franchise killed what little love I had left for Star Wars after the prequel trilogy.

For TV...

Big Bang Theory - I forget the name of the episode, I think it's in season 4, where basically the entire cast are doing a panel discussion that's supposed to be about something science related but instead they talk about penis envy and the whole thing devolves into toilet humour. It was at that point I checked out of the show. I still love the first 2 seasons, but the rest of the show is quite forgettable to me.

Shameless - Absolutely adored this show until the 8th season. I stuck through all of that in the hopes season 9 would be better, made it like 3 episodes in and just couldn't anymore. It's unlikely I'll finish. The first 7 seasons are brilliant though.

Walking Dead - Really enjoyed everything up to and including the Governor. Negan really tore the show apart. I really enjoyed watching Jeffrey Dean Morgan play the part, he clearly had a great time and it shows, but the writers bent over backwards making contrivances to accommodate his character. When Carl infiltrates the Savior base and kills one of them, and Negan responds by taking him under his wing, I checked out. Just couldn't do it.

Matt Swain wrote:the title character, HH herself, is just too good to relate to, she's inhumanly perfect. I just couldn't stand her after a couple novels.

(I will not call her a mary sue as that term's been co-opted by too many creeps who think and competent female character that does not exist just to be rescued and claimed by a male lead is an affront to their delicate little manhoods.)

That is hilarious. I hear/read that term used about male characters more than any female characters.

Just to throw another one in there, I started losing enthusiasm for the Discworld books with Making Money, and I think the main reason why was Vetinari. His role in the story seemed to be being always right, knowing everything and being a mouthpiece for the author's politics, not to mention sucking all the drama out of the climax. For an author who always seemed very left-leaning, it was very weird to have this benevolent dictator being held up as the paragon of common sense and good government--I've heard people say he was meant as a parody of the "Great Man", but after a certain point, there just didn't seem to be any parody left in there. Vetinari had become a straight-faced argument about how the common people are stupid sheep and elected leaders (the guild heads) are hopelessly corrupt, so we need to make the smartest guy in the room into a strongman dictator in times of crisis. And everything in the novels contrived to support that and make him always-right.

Add to that the Witches book where the moral seemed to be "dumb people need to be tricked and deceived by smart people to keep things running smoothly", and it was just getting uncomfortable for me.

I've quit watching Dr. Who and will likely not watch it when it returns next year.

No, it's not because of a woman doctor. Not it's not because the series got ultrawoke.

It's because I don't feel like waiting 10 months for new stuff.

The sopranos started these long long delays between seasons.I watched it because it was a fluke.

I quit watching 'better call saul' because I got tired of the long, long, long delays between new seasons. I quit watching dr who after a year between seasons, then having a t months season from new years to the beginning of march, then nothing till next new years.

If this is the new show model fr series I'm tired of it.

 Matt Swain wrote:
I've quit watching Dr. Who and will likely not watch it when it returns next year.

For me it was largely because episodes and arcs started feeling replayed. . . I stopped watching as Capaldi was getting the sonic, but even before him, many episodes felt like they were just picking up old scripts and just repeating the same thing over and over again to the point it felt somewhere between boring and tiresome. . . Nothing I've seen in previews since then has convinced me to pick it back up.

 Elemental wrote:
Just to throw another one in there, I started losing enthusiasm for the Discworld books with Making Money, and I think the main reason why was Vetinari. His role in the story seemed to be being always right, knowing everything and being a mouthpiece for the author's politics, not to mention sucking all the drama out of the climax.

That never bothered me much, but I started losing a lot of interest in Pratchett when it became a relentless repetition of 'Fantasy Racism is Super Bad'... but parallels of real world racism were often played for laughs. I really don't care about the rights of Golems, Goblins or the one Orc that apparently still exists and plays football. Jingo in particular hit a weird spot, because it came on the heels of caring a lot about the state of Trolls, Dwarves and whatever, but its OK for Colon and Nobby to have horrible opinions about Pratchett's not!Arabs because they're the idiot duo. It felt really tone deaf that the rights and feelings of creatures that don't exist were super serious, but pretty blatant real-world geopolitics were just a font for mockery.



-----
Recently I've been on Steven Universe binge. The character designs put me off a long while, but I'd heard good things about it, so started watching (since I've got more time on my hands). The show was actually pretty impressive. Honest subversion of tropes, actual conflict resolution and pretty tight (and fun!) writing all the way through... up until the end, where the antagonists basically capitulate out of sheer befuddlement. They're just confused so...they stop and just... go along with what the heroes want. But still, it wraps remaining loose ends up, after a slightly too-long fight scene, but the story stuff that mattered had already been resolved.

The movie is kind of a shallow repeat of the show's major themes, but not bad.

But the epilogue season of SU Future is just utter misery porn. A few moments try to shine through, but they get ruthlessly quashed. All the lessons of the origin series are forgotten, and all the important characters, bar the title character, are firmly shoved under a bus, only trotted out once each for a rehash of a lesson learned during the original series that Steven suddenly can't remember until everything explodes in the final few episodes. The creator claims its a PTSD story about all the trauma he dealt with during the original series, but most of that was so fun and light hearted that it rings a little off. It seems more a story about a completely unprepared teenager with too much responsibility for no real reason, and an inability sit down and talk about problems, which was his basic, go-to, fundamental skill during the original show.
Its an after-school 'very special episode' meets a Lifetime channel movie level of depressing, and I can't figure out why they went that way with an unnecessary and superfluous ending to what was a fun adventure cartoon.

 Elemental wrote:

I think Moffat's a genius when it comes to creating mood and mystery, and doing clever storytelling with time travel. Most of his individual episodes are brilliant. But that's not the same skill-set as telling a coherent and satisfying story arc, so you have characters who have little to them other than being a Big Mystery and big plots that just fizzle out when the questions actually need to be answered.

I don't think the Doctor really works as long form story arcs in general. So much of the appeal of the character is exploring the infinite possibilities of time and space so when you bring back the same characters and races for an overarching story you lose a lot of what makes the series compelling. I can't think of a single "culmination" style episode that's really any good. The show kind of peaks at 2 parters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vermis wrote:

I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone recently, because it was free on Prime Reading and I decided to finally see what the fuss was about. I'm still half-wondering what the fuss was about. I guess you had to be a kid.

The first two books are DEFINITELY more for kids. It's not really until the 3rd where the "wizarding world" gets fleshed out to a point where it becomes a setting for people to dig into akin to Star Wars and the like. Even then, the books suffer from JKR's "everything happens in the last 50 pages" writing style. For the most part, I think the films do a better job of telling the story, though the books are somewhat critical to appreciate the generational sins aspects of the larger plot by the end.

Bored at work, so I thought I'd jump in on this one!

Interesting that so many people have mentionned Buffy and Dr. Who - both shows that I started out really loving, and both I found myself really tired of and burned out on by the time I dropped them.
With Who, it was definitely when Matt Smith took the reins. He felt derivative of Tennant's frantic mania, and the whole "Fish fingers and custard" bit felt like a really shameless attempt to latch onto LOLRANDOMXD humor that was already pretty passe by then. Got tired of Buffy at about season 4, I remember Adam and the whole secret government bit feeling really off. Buffy seemed to start out very self-aware and silly, kind of playing with tropes and subverting them, but morphed after they got out of the highschool setting into taking itself a lot more seriously, and it felt like it started to fall victim to the very tropes it used to be so interesting by undermining. Also the 'every character has a love interest' thing started to feel like bad fanfic.
This is probably a contraversial one, but I think I got done with star wars at about Revenge of the Sith. Lucas certainly tied up his loose ends, but it felt like so much of the movie was just a vehicle for these technically impressive CG battlescapes set to music, with almost all of the plot developments being "oh goodness, the clone troopers become the storm troopers, and now they're baddies?". I gave AOTC a pass because I was about 7 at the time, but I remember being about 10 and watching RotS and kinda being "well, duh?" IDK, I've not enjoyed a Star Wars movie much since, though I will give a special shoutout to the two that I have (FA and that one Han Solo Movie) for being really really not worth watching at all, but I was kinda without choice in both cases.

Dune has come up here a fair bit, and I'm glad it's not on as much of a pedastle as I've seen previously. I probably gave up on Dune about halfway through the first book (kept reading) when Paul goes from fugitive in a hostile world, in a bizarre universe to The Best and Smartest Guy Ever when he drinks the magic water. I love the universe and background as they explored it, but...

...Paul becomes such a boring Mary Sue. Can't be bothered to see what happens next.

Shows that haven't had a show in yet:

The Chris Gethard Show (spoilered because long (did I mention I'm bored?))


Broad City


Attack on Titan


The Monogatari Series


I'll probably remember a really great one later lol, +500 McBogus points if you actually read through any of this nonsense!

Attack on Titan! I tried to watch it, I thought the idea was interesting, but gave up a couple of episodes into season 2. In a nutshell, I thought that 'medieval walled city fighting mindless maneating giants with gas-powered Spider-Man tech' was not only an interesting premise, but also the most believable aspect of it.

 Vermis wrote:
Attack on Titan! I tried to watch it, I thought the idea was interesting, but gave up a couple of episodes into season 2. In a nutshell, I thought that 'medieval walled city fighting mindless maneating giants with gas-powered Spider-Man tech' was not only an interesting premise, but also the most believable aspect of it.

This happened to me too. I lost interest in the anime quickly. I read through the manga quite a bit, but the plot is honestly just a constant string of nonsensical plot reveals with no foreshadowing and I rapdly lost my interest.

Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Vermis wrote:
Attack on Titan! I tried to watch it, I thought the idea was interesting, but gave up a couple of episodes into season 2. In a nutshell, I thought that 'medieval walled city fighting mindless maneating giants with gas-powered Spider-Man tech' was not only an interesting premise, but also the most believable aspect of it.

This happened to me too. I lost interest in the anime quickly. I read through the manga quite a bit, but the plot is honestly just a constant string of nonsensical plot reveals with no foreshadowing and I rapdly lost my interest.

The scene where the shifters hop out the necks and have a chat like mecha pilots is definitely where it lost me. I occasionally check on the series to see what's up, but I'm definitely not super into it.

There's actually a ton of foreshadowing throughout the series; most notably the nonsense that its building to at the end is heavily teased in the title of the very first chapter. It's just.... kind of ridiculous to its core, which clashes horribly in the very serious world its set in. It's like if the dog ending of Silent Hill 2 was the cannon ending of the series and all the symbolism of the monsters and the like were all just a puppy puppeteer.

 MDSW wrote:
Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

I heard back in the late nineties or early 2000’s that law enforcement kept track of who bought the Gor books the same way they tracked who bought The Turner Diaries.

Attack on Titan is a great choice. The first half of season 1 was riveting and amazing. Then it all goes down hill once they have the mid-season reveal.

 Elemental wrote:

I think Moffat's a genius when it comes to creating mood and mystery, and doing clever storytelling with time travel.

Interesting. With the nu-Who in general I've largely stopped thinking about it as a time travel show. (Which helped keep me watching it for as long as I did, to be honest, since I find time travel plots generally terrible and full of holes)

But most of it is so character driven that the time travel is just window dressing so they can do wacky sets in the background and leave each story with few lingering consequences at the end. Its basically an excuse for varied set and costume design, and an easy way out of hanging plots, consequences and secondary characters, but the actual time travel doesn't really matter in any significant way. Just a vehicle for the show to happen in.

 LunarSol wrote:
There's actually a ton of foreshadowing throughout the series; most notably the nonsense that its building to at the end is heavily teased in the title of the very first chapter.

I suppose it depends on how we define foreshadowing. I do get that sense that this is a story where the ending is already known and there is that ever constant march toward a conclusion. I never felt like the series was aimlessly meandering through its plot.

For me though I feel like most of the reveals just come right out of left field while you spend most of the time in the story looking right. You're focused on this one thing that looks like it's building to something and then BOOM plot twist what were you looking at that doesn't matter anymore we're on this now. And it's constant in the story, like clockwork. It's one thing to keep the story moving along, but I feel like Attack on Titan at no point ever lets you settle into the narrative. At any moment you start to feel like you're in the story, it throws another WTF twist at you with no warning. And some of them are really damn WTF.

 LordofHats wrote:

I suppose it depends on how we define foreshadowing.

The big one is the conversations characters randomly have with no one throughout the series which are:

MAJOR SPOILER:


In terms of how the plot reveals itself, you're absolutely right. It totally turns into the kind of story where the people of Victorian London are actually living in a zoo run by aliens, but when they escape the zoo they find out that the aliens are actually part of a huge computer simulation run by people who have put captured aliens in the Matrix to see how aliens would act in Victorian London. It's remarkably coherent, but still nonsense.

 MDSW wrote:
Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

Its a fairly notorious series - interestingly its not without its female fan base but then so had 50 shades of Grey etc.

The Lost Room.

Really took me by surprise with how good it was.

Gave up on it in the last 10 minutes of the last episode, where the central concept was sacrificed to keep the possibility open for an ongoing series....which never happened anyway.... So disappointing.

Kind of cheated with this one.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time was a big one, I had read up through book 9 (Winter's Heart) and they had consistently gone from amazing, to excellent, to great, to good, to pretty good to kinda good etc for the entire series, each book being not quite as good as the one before. By book 9 they were barely mediocre and I really struggled to finish it. Book 10 finally released and my friend read it, I asked him if anything particularly important even happened in the entire book, he thought for a little bit and said not really, and so I was done with the series. After Jordan died and the last few were ghost-written by another author, I had another friend give me the final run-down and have been perfectly satisfied with that 20 minute synopsis ever since.

For anime, I started watching Bleach on a recommendation when it was still fairly new (you had to download the episodes with fanmade subtitles, it wasn't in USA yet). I was really getting into it, had some great character arcs and really awesome fights, leading to enemies slowly becoming allies as they realized the true enemy, all leading up to the the final showdown with the main villain in episode 62, only for him to escape at the last second in the DUMBEST way possible. After an intense (and truly epic) fight, but JUST before the killing blow lands the Main Bad literally casts a shield of invulnerability, monologues for a minute and then flies away. It was literally an "oh crap, this is getting really popular, we need to extend it" decision by the creators. I got through about 6 worthless filler episodes and realized they were turning the battle anime into a slice of life anime until the manga had enough story to get back to the main line and was utterly done with the show.

My friends kept watching and confirmed there was another 50ish episodes of filler and side stories until the main story continued (in the end there were 366 episodes in the complete series), but ever since I have proudly proclaimed that I love the anime Bleach and am very glad that it definitely ended on episode 62 when the Main Character beheaded the Main Bad and brought the story to an immensely satisfying end on episode 62, and that maybe a sequel would be great someday but it isn't needed because they certainly came to an excellent and complete finish on episode 62 when the final fight brought the story to it's ultimate and wonderful conclusion.

I am about to spout Heresy.

I stopped watching Neon Genesis Evangelion at about Episode 6.

I couldn't get in the robot anymore.

 Kalamadea wrote:

For anime, I started watching Bleach on a recommendation when it was still fairly new (you had to download the episodes with fanmade subtitles, it wasn't in USA yet). I was really getting into it, had some great character arcs and really awesome fights, leading to enemies slowly becoming allies as they realized the true enemy, all leading up to the the final showdown with the main villain in episode 62, only for him to escape at the last second in the DUMBEST way possible. After an intense (and truly epic) fight, but JUST before the killing blow lands the Main Bad literally casts a shield of invulnerability, monologues for a minute and then flies away. It was literally an "oh crap, this is getting really popular, we need to extend it" decision by the creators. I got through about 6 worthless filler episodes and realized they were turning the battle anime into a slice of life anime until the manga had enough story to get back to the main line and was utterly done with the show.

My friends kept watching and confirmed there was another 50ish episodes of filler and side stories until the main story continued (in the end there were 366 episodes in the complete series), but ever since I have proudly proclaimed that I love the anime Bleach and am very glad that it definitely ended on episode 62 when the Main Character beheaded the Main Bad and brought the story to an immensely satisfying end on episode 62, and that maybe a sequel would be great someday but it isn't needed because they certainly came to an excellent and complete finish on episode 62 when the final fight brought the story to it's ultimate and wonderful conclusion.

Bleach is so bad I gave up on the manga because it wasn't going anywhere. The anime didn't even reach the end of the story (though apparently it might get to now?). You're definitely right. The series never goes anywhere after 62. Tite Kubo mostly just starts spamming neat character designs and super powers. The big bad's powers are so ludicrously OP he's never again interesting and the series just kind of flails about until you finally give up and walk away.