Thanks - and huh. That's kinda what I thought it meant. Without spoiling you (though your suspicion is probably right) . . I think there are times when a show/book/movie series/whatever NEEDS to deviate from its original premise because it's where the storyline has lead and it can't remain true to the original spec script and also continue to make sense.
X-files is a classic example of a series that should have done this and didn't, or at least took it wildly in the wrong direction, IMO. I mean, it was no longer a secret conspiracy - everybody and their deaf, reclusive brother should have known what was going on by the end. Either we have an alien invasion now or we have no more plausible plotline. Either we prevent catastrophe and we have a series about Mulder and Scully raising a baby and adapting to civilian life, or we have a series about Mulder and Scully as undercover operatives in an alien-occupied America. Either of those would have made sense, following from the end of season .. 6, I think it was. What we actually got in the last three seasons? Made NO sense. Which isn't to say that there weren't good one-off episodes, because there were, but as a coherent series .. yeah, no. Because it tried to "go back to its beginnings", and that pretty much never works. That series basically ended up treading water until it drowned.
So, re: Anita Blake series . . again, being as spoiler-free as possible, but you make certain choices and those choices have potential consequences (see, now, I could be referring to any number of choices which the Anita of GP would NOT have made the way that the Anita of NiC on forward did, so, not a spoiler). Not just obvious practical consequences, though there are those in abundance, but internal consequences for the character. She's grown, she's changed, and it's about time for something to go snap in a big way. If that doesn't happen, sooner or later, the character stops being believable, the world loses its edge of paranormal pseudo-realism and becomes just fantasy. And personally, what made this series nifty-neato for me was the question of things like . . can a cop who gets turned into a vampire keep his job. All the jagged edges that would catch if you took the real world and cut into a new shape, y'know, all that little shit that really would happen if this were real.
So, like I said, um, I'm excited for this book now.
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X-files is a classic example of a series that should have done this and didn't, or at least took it wildly in the wrong direction, IMO. I mean, it was no longer a secret conspiracy - everybody and their deaf, reclusive brother should have known what was going on by the end. Either we have an alien invasion now or we have no more plausible plotline. Either we prevent catastrophe and we have a series about Mulder and Scully raising a baby and adapting to civilian life, or we have a series about Mulder and Scully as undercover operatives in an alien-occupied America. Either of those would have made sense, following from the end of season .. 6, I think it was. What we actually got in the last three seasons? Made NO sense. Which isn't to say that there weren't good one-off episodes, because there were, but as a coherent series .. yeah, no. Because it tried to "go back to its beginnings", and that pretty much never works. That series basically ended up treading water until it drowned.
So, re: Anita Blake series . . again, being as spoiler-free as possible, but you make certain choices and those choices have potential consequences (see, now, I could be referring to any number of choices which the Anita of GP would NOT have made the way that the Anita of NiC on forward did, so, not a spoiler). Not just obvious practical consequences, though there are those in abundance, but internal consequences for the character. She's grown, she's changed, and it's about time for something to go snap in a big way. If that doesn't happen, sooner or later, the character stops being believable, the world loses its edge of paranormal pseudo-realism and becomes just fantasy. And personally, what made this series nifty-neato for me was the question of things like . . can a cop who gets turned into a vampire keep his job. All the jagged edges that would catch if you took the real world and cut into a new shape, y'know, all that little shit that really would happen if this were real.
So, like I said, um, I'm excited for this book now.
.. I suck at being spoiler-free.