How far

[mrissa]

We were talking at lunch about Buffy fans, into which category none of us falls. And some of them quite reasonably recognize that Buffy is a matter of individual taste, that some people like it and some do not, but others insist on knowing which episodes one watched and then protesting (no matter what episodes are up for discussion) that that wasn't one of the really good ones.

So it makes me wonder: how far would you go to get at a good show or a good book or even a good fragment of stuff?

I think that most of us will read past a bad first sentence, paragraph, or even chapter if someone we trust has given us reason to believe that the book will be a good one and worth our time. I think, on the other hand, that anyone who wants me to read the ninth Robert Jordan book, on the theory that it will get "really good" very soon and I just read the first bad eight, is smoking crack.

But where's your personal middle ground? A mediocre episode of a television show your friends swear is great? A boring first book of a trilogy that's supposed to be really fascinating in books two and three? How far will you go to get to "the good stuff" before your internal critic decides that the payoff can't possibly be worthwhile? Say for a TV show or a book: when does the off switch get used or the book get sent back to the library? And is it different if you paid to rent a movie/buy a book/get into a movie in the theatre? Is it different for music? How much of your time is worth waiting for the big payoff without little payoffs in the middle?

Well?

Comments

[pameladean]

It depends on almost anything except the actual work under discussion. It depends, as others have said, on the recommender; it also depends on how much time I have, how open I feel to new things (my average on this is "not so much"), and how long people have been urging me to give this or that a try. There's a period where I resist more or less unconsciously, a period where I am bloody fed up with being persecuted (this has very little to do with the behavior of the recommender, as a rule), and a period where I think, other things being propitious, Oh, well, why not?

Pamela

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But where do you stop saying, oh, well, why not? Or would you just watch an entire TV series/read an entire book series because one or more of your good recommending buddies really liked it?

I mean, you haven't steered me very far wrong so far, but if I don't like Mary Renault, I'm not going to read more than maybe two of them to find it out. (Is that the one with PDDB next to it on my library list? I think it is. There's someone on the list with that notation anyway.)

I know what you mean about feeling persecuted -- sometimes I have the urge to hide under a pillow and shout, "Leave me aloooooone!" when the other person really hasn't urged unreasonably. This is one of the reasons I corner people and ask them what I should read: because if I bring it up myself, my brain doesn't kick into persecuted mode. Theirs might, but that's no longer really my problem.

The other reason is that I want to know what they think I should read, of course.

[pameladean]

You could certainly get the two wrong Mary Renaults. Ahem. Sorry.

Well, I don't know, I don't have a policy. I mean, I've read the first book of a series David rereads compulsively, and agreed that bits of it were quite neat, and never continued. I refused to watch "Buffy" after about three episodes, but when Raphael told me I must watch a particular first-season episode, I did, and then I was hooked, months after the first attempt. It really depends on the nature of my objection to whatever it is that I am first persuaded to try out. The thing most likely to get me to flatly refuse to do more is bad prose, and the next is particular kinds of violence.

Pamela

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Which are likely to be the good bets, then? Or which are the ones I should avoid?

Some people of my acquaintance do not or will not understand that there are kinds of violence I will not watch on TV or movies. They try to argue with me about how the rest of the series/movie is really good and worth it and if only you can get past that one moment that really is important for the plot it'll really be a good movie and they don't want me to miss out and etc. etc. etc.

But I don't have to, and I won't.