What's that? You don't know what it means when someone says "that's my Scott and Jean"? Well, first of all there's the great blog crossover event going on right now, which you can read about here. As for the phrase itself, it refers to "...my geek sacred cow, the one topic I cannot discuss rationally..."
I am a little late to the party, so instead of getting this all down ahead of time, I'm rushing to get it out on the right day. I had a few ideas, but it came down to two and I decided to take this in a slightly different direction that everyone else. For most people it has been comics or television, but I'm going to go with books. You see, my Scott and Jean, my one thing for which I will brook no argument is The Wheel of Time1.
For those of you who don't know The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series written by Robert Jordan. It has been part of my life for a very long time. I first began reading the series when I was a sophomore in high school and there were already four books in the series published. (For the record, that means that since I first started reading this series I have graduated three times, moved six times-I think, gotten married, had a 10 year anniversary, started a career and worked for countless iterations of the same company as we bought and sold and were bought and sold.) The characters in these books, and the richly detailed world they inhabit were with me through my teenage years. As I grew up, so did these characters, and even now I am anxiously awaiting the final book(s)2 in the series.
As the wait between books grew longer and the amount of detail given to minor characters began to take word count away from the main characters, readers grew restless and began to fall away (in the way most fans fall away: They still read the book or watch the show, but complain about it). While I understand some of the frustration3, I refuse to simply turn my back on the amazing work and have no time to listen to anyone who thinks that I should.
1 The other finalist for this was Lost, but that apologia will have to wait for another time.
2 I say "book(s)" because the final book, written by Brandon Sanderson, who was chosen to complete the series after Robert Jordan's death in 2007, has now been broken up into three books, the first of which is being released in November. I guess the publisher decided that waiting until 2011 and releasing one 800-thousand word novel wasn't a good idea.
3 I really could go on for much longer and get into more detail, but if I intend to post this on the same day as all of the other My Scott and Jean posts, I need to shut up.
March 30, 2009
Geek Apologetics: "My Scott and Jean"
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4 comments:
Good post, man.
I'm really bad when it comes to reading fantasy, but I've heard both sides of this argument--"this series is really good read it!" and "this would be better if they came out quicker..."
There's always time to ferret out a new series, maybe I'll check it out.
How many books are in that series? I probably won't read it, but it makes me happy that you do. I am, however, going to eventually join the Terry Goodkind party. Any thoughts on that one?
P.S. The general idea of this post, that you shouldn't bail on your fandoms, is very appealing to me. Bravo.
Right now there are 11 books, not counting the prequel, which is practically novella length at one 121K words. The 12th was to be the last, but when it looked like it was going to be somewhere between 750K and a million words, they decided to split it up.
Goodkind's Sword of Truth is one of the few times I stopped reading a series after reading more than one book, but to be honest, I'm not sure if the issues were mine or the books'. I've thought recently about going back a starting again (the same with George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice)
I've read, I think, the first 9 Wheel of Time books. I'm sorry to admit that I'm one of those horrible fans who have fallen away. In my defence, I have a terrible memory and found the later books difficult to follow because I couldn't remember what had happened in the past books. I also started listening to the audio books (which I really enjoyed) but, again, it is soooooo long and some of the books, let's face it, are quite slow (ie. the one about the weather bowl).
I would like to re-read them but I can't see it happening until retirement!
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