More Words, Deeper Hole

What a looooong screed of fannish entitlement. "The longer a series runs, the more stacked the expectations and pressures become, and the more intimate it feels, a sort of long-distance love affair of avowed commitment and mutual assumption." Assumption would be the word that comes most to mind, yes. "Mutual"? "Commitment"?

"The only solution for readers is to appreciate what we get when we get it, but that’s just as impossible as Martin somehow satisfying all his fans without writing a book specifically tailored to each one of them. "

Huh. I seem to manage it. The entire epic saga essay never manages to acknowledge that writers are people, that people's lives are never as they plan them, and that, frankly, shit happens. Instead, it's all about HOW UNFAIR IT ALL IS TO THE READER.

If I think about the series that I follow avidly, Bujold's Barrayar stuff and tagmeth's Godstalk, the writers took breaks -- Bujold to write other books, Hodgell to pursue a successful academic career. (Obvs. Bujold isn't the committed WORLD-SPANNING EPIC, and you can't argue that the books are incomplete as they stand.) Although I want to find out what happens next, very badly, I don't think that I have a solemn compact with either writer. I just caught on to Martin, but if the next book doesn't come out for 13 years, he won't have broken a promise; he will just be another human being whose work didn't turn out quite as he expected it.

Neil said it best.