Why do people care so much about...I don't know if there's a word for this...I wanna say serial integrity as in integrity of the series? If I like a general premise and cast I have zero issue with them doing dogshit if they're having fun and it simply produces more content on a quantitative basis that can add to the binge rewatching duration value? Maybe I'm just weird like that.
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I tried to vibe with this POV. What's wrong with more content? But it really does cheapen the art/media you used to adore. Even if you try to ignore it, i.e. you don't have to watch / read all the Star Trek content that has been produced in the last 20 years, and after picard season 1 I completely checked out of all of it, but it just kind of makes everything you loved seem so empty. It was all about generating positive cash flows...the whole time.
> I completely checked out of all of it, but it just kind of makes everything you loved seem so empty
As someone who really agrees with the previous poster, this may be the crucial point. I can "disbelieve" the stuff that I think is stupid cashgrab sequel crap, specially if it was not made by the original author.
Because think about it, if someone somewhere made a bad fanfic, would it ruin the previous media? Obviously not, right? So why is it different when it's a billion dollar media company that bought the right to slap the "official" name and logo on their fanfic*? If you don't like it, ignore it. If you like it, then great more media of the franchise you enjoy!
* Assuming the people writing it are fans and not 100% just there for the money.
I dont know if this comprehensively addresses my issues with the topic but its pretty damn close :) Like this is more an issue of revisionism than it is...I don't even know how to formally refer to the opposing argument and I would rather let everyone else chime in and speak for me here
I wanna emphasize the part about the actors having fun. That in some sense is a tricky thing since actors profession and main task is to conceal what they are and take on whatever role—or at the very least, to sublimate their personal qualities into their subject. Having said that, I feel like even a famous and highly-skilled actor is not going to be able to perform at their best if they are really just in contract-fullfillment mode for a money-grubbing production...
It would seem that no matter how well they were technically perceived, it would slip through somehow and thus violate my condition that the actors are mostly having fun and voluntarily performing, particularly if its with a group of their actor friends that appear in each others' films. I don't worry about the money-grubbing so much cuz chances are the actors are in on it and to some degree inclined to do well and make it enjoyable for themselves and their audience.
I feel a lot of this.
Parts of Discovery are good, more-so if you look at it from a 'home team' perspective where you'll take any win. OTOH It's only re-watchable to a certain point.
Lower Decks, I do like as far as escapism goes but frankly has a lot of 'Yeah this is licensed parody' moments.
Sometimes, things should end. Sometimes they end too soon (Farscape comes to mind [0], thankfully it did get a finale at least,) but when you keep adding on 'the additional adventures of' the risk of winding up in some form of everyplot, or just breaking canon, gets wayyyyy tooo damn high.
As a counterpoint to that, Picard Season 3 is incredibly watchable, (even RLM thought so,) I hope you try it if you haven't. It somehow does a pretty dang good job with things.
[0] - It really is a benchmark for a lot of sci-fi despite the fourth wall tapping.
I feel like you're so close to getting to the point of realization that this fixation on duration and quality is ultimately arbitrary and, in my view, harmful. How else do you explain reboots besides the money part? There's clearly demand for it since people like what they know and their millions+-strong population must in some sense agree with me
I don't mean offense but it seems almost as arbitrary as complaining that additional purchased game content or whatever the acronym is destroys whatever game it extends when you had all that fun along the way, maybe even to the extent that players/you wanna play a little longer.
Harmless doesn't even begin to cover that outside of complaints that its unfair socioeconomically to extend the cost of playing such that kids who were "lucky" to even be able to afford merely the game are being discriminated against economically or whatever either in isolation or with reference to their more fortunate peers. Im getting a bit sidetracked here so I won't be taking notes on this, unfortunately :( but I do think its pretty much analagous in my opinion.
I appreciate you succinctly boiling down what I am trying to address here. I obviously disagree with this position strenuously but in my own way and for the purpose of really "putting a name" to that which I am advocating against, you have done both sides a great service.
Amicus hackae
See my "all i care about" comment
I hate this opinion, but even accepting it at face value, it doesn't apply to comic strips. A TV show is a mishmash of dozens of visions from the start, so it's easy to let the Ship of Theseus continue on with new writers or sequels or spinoffs. An author-drawn comic is the work of one person. It doesn't have a cast, it's just them. Letting corporate greed machines get it removes the whole appeal by default.
How would it not apply even moreso to comic strips? Comic strips are even less accounted for in terms of the general body or oeuvre of that series. Like who can name every single comic strip "episode" relative to who can do so for its syndicated or movie counterpart(s) and also does it even have `seasons`?
I don't understand what you're getting at. I'm talking about the number of people involved, not the length. I know a few comic strips that were handed off to new creators after the original died or retired, and they're very, very obviously different pieces, appealing to different audiences. It usually takes a single strip to notice.
Calvin & Hobbes fans know the published strips very well.
ALL of them, seriously? Never missed one or went on vacation and the paper got thrown out (assuming that was the predominant medium)? Can all of you populate a spreadsheet by heart and argue in good faith with due accuracy as to each one out of the likely 1,000s?
Sorry but I doubt that. But even so, it still doesn't lend itself to your point. You're saying 1,000s are perfection but + one new strip would immediately or at least in some historically-tainting way destroy everything? Is everything really that fragile?
Edit: 2 0s
There are about 3150 Calvin and Hobbes strips.
For comparison, there are about 900 Star Trek episodes (including the animated ones).
I don't find it hard to believe someone can know all of them, because I am one of those people for Star Trek, and comic strips are so much shorter. I couldn't populate a spreadsheet from scratch, but name an episode and reference the plot somehow, I'm fairly sure I'll remember it and be able to fill in some details without looking it up.
> Never missed one or went on vacation and the paper got thrown out (assuming that was the predominant medium)?
Also they're all available at https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/ - I read through the whole thing a few years ago.
K thats my bad on the quantity, that was reckless but it doesn't change the nature of my conjecture and you avoided the primary question: does n + 1 = 0 with regard to an arbitrary number of "new" comics/works? What if there was a "vault" of undiscovered or arbitrarily retained C&H works? You're seriously gonna say "nah" to that?
Edit: I edited my response, thanks for correcting me on that point. There really was no excuse for me to not pull that up real fast
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Yes, all of them. They might’ve missed newspapers, but they read them in published collections and re-read them in the complete omnibus. I’m confident they’d recognize a fake strip. Your general point about comics might hold but C&H is something else.
As for being displeased with continued low quality publishing, yes, that would be dismaying. If it continued on and was really good, obviously that wouldn’t be but Watterson’s point was that the odds of that working out well were low, even if he tried to retain creative control. I understand from your other posts that quality isn’t important to you once you’ve started following the characters; fans of C&H are not like you.
Can you give your thoughts on the notion of how hypothetical "lost episodes" or "vault" would be rejected consistent with your suggestion that the corpus of readers all feel exactly as strong as you on the matter even if it literally meant that there was a risk of rejecting precious canon material simply because you all consider C&H "done" and have no room for additional content?
I realize this example is super contrived and I legitimately hope I'm not mischaracterizing your fundamental position but I don't know you've really given me a basis to understand how you or the typical fan would approach such a dilemma...and it seems relevant to the overall questions of at least authenticity, continuity, currency etc that are inherent to the broader discussion despite the fact its likely never gonna happen.
You are mischaracterizing the position. It's not "Calvin and Hobbes is done," it's "Calvin and Hobbes is Bill Waterson and he's done with it." If lost strips came out or he announced a continuation, fans would be excited. If some MBA pit got their claws on it and made their own continuation, fans would hate it.
This is why Watterson's new book is at the front of every bookstore in the country, despite having nothing to do with C&H and being impossible to market. Despite the ongoing poison of franchises, people do still care about stories from authors they trust.
I don't think I was explicit enough in saying I also want the author to be running the show or at least heavily involved and that is usually (in my mind) a useful heuristic or proxy for quality in some sense if they have self-respect and are interestef not only in capitalizing on the work but also to see their creation actually come to life in live action or whatever the format and be enjoyable for themselves, their families, and the rest of their audience (us).
I do care about quality and fortunately with the smaller typical season size nowadays (8-10 episodes) it seems like that flows pretty naturally. Having to write like 30 episodes per season is insane , I'm glad how its going now although it necessarily results in longer turnarounnd times. But its worth the wait :)
I doubt even the creator could reliably and reproducibly do so
You sound like the advertising industry’s ideal consumer.
Ackshually, I've further insulated myself from the advertising industry's influence or ROI far more than you could ever know and likely replicate personally. This is just so glib and lovechild-of-terse-and-misguided on so many levels I can't even get to the bottom of the pile. Lets just disagree to agree on this.
Edit: Also you stay away from my miniature son and never come back ;)
Also, I feel like people who in some sense watch the same materials on repeat to varying extents are—dunno, maybe less valuable to ads than someone who's constantly perusing new shows (diversifying their ad profile). Its intuitive but im not certain i can logically defend it sufficiently robustly. "You know wat I mean"
All I care about is hanging out with "my friends" more, I guess I develop enough of an emotionally-compelling connection with shows/works + the characters/actors I like that I kinda never want it to end and its moot to consider the welfare of the characters or overall quality because its all abstract or academic anyway and I derive such sustained benefit or enjoyment from it continuing in perpetuity. Nothings getting solved or done or any progression truly achieved anyway so who gives a fuck? Film critics be damned, if Im happier and my mental health is better and I enjoy mysef on account of this, I really could care less about critical acclaim. Its the actors' job(s) to worry about consequences like typecasting or regret or whatever
You seem to be saying that you are a "non-discerning customer" when it comes to this type of work, and that's fine if it works for you. Others find works produced only for money to be lower quality or heartless. Maybe you similarly care about stuff in some other aspect of life (food? clothing? music? personal relationships?), just not for movies/comics.
I mean, I am discerning in that I have expectations that if I don't like the characters or topics or "moral tenor" (like in that it cares too much about being a moral bullhorn as opposed to faithfully representing that which it handles or has an opportunity to push the envelope further) or various other intangibles, I don't like+watch it.
In my view, your position is a tad elitist and I don't particularly care for the way it places you on an implicitly superior level of comprehension but also fundamental worth in the context of this discussion.
Arguably, I both in real-time and through the aformentioned repetition get to know the show and its constituent parts far better than you single-viewing "discerners" ever could. But yeah, you notice more even though you technically notice less.
I'm inclined to suggest that you are literally the quantity over quality viewer (ie: non-discerning) and I am in fact the quality over quantity since I view less discrete works but notice and derive a more refined level of enjoyment and recognition of the subtleties present in any given artistic production (and the artistic part is not something I'm going to argue with you about; its intangible and as worthlesz or priceless as the viewer subjectively evaluates)
I would argue that your discernment angle is literally just that in a similar sense with how critical theory folks approach works from various sociological and literary angles to the extent you could say those are component to the same work rather than ever possibly definitive or representative, much less appraisable objectively as implicitly superior. Like dividing by zero. Its not answerable and also discernment seemingly is axiomatic to the point its basically no different from religion or palate/taste.
Random question, did you do policy debate in high school and/or college?
Nah, should I have? Also relevant username ;)
The last time I heard someone argue like you, was as the recipient of a negative case in a policy debate round 14 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_policy_debate_term...
I mean, it is fiction, so of course you can just pick and choose what you engage with. But, it is pretty common to leave hints of backstory and future stuff. It is nice because you can fill in the blanks. “Happily ever after” can be as nice as you imagine.
Or the author goes off the deep end and starts getting better known for political rants. Subsequently it may be hard to enjoy their older works as you are looking for signs of what will develop…