Saga vs. One

Grab your AIO albums, and find a table! What makes your favorite episode the best? Have an episode you really dislike? This is the place to review and discuss AIO episodes and albums.

what do you like

Saga
7
64%
One episode
1
9%
2,3,4 episodes
1
9%
doesn't matter!
2
18%
 
Total votes: 11

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TigerShadow
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ArnoldtheRubberDucky wrote:The same logic doesn't apply to Albums 51 and 52 and The Green Ring Conspiracy at all. They weren't homogeneous in their stories: you can easily have one without the other. I don't see any reason why AIO needed a couple "normal" albums to ease us in. Why is it better development of character when Emily is introduced trying to find her brother's missing video game as opposed to introducing her searching for clues about a backpack full of counterfeit money? She was still in character, it wasn't like she wouldn't have developed the same way or we wouldn't have gotten used to her. She was just in a more dramatic situation.

One of the rules of writing a good novel is to always start your book with a bang, something that turns your characters' lives upside down. I understand that Odyssey is not supposed to be a novel, but I don't see why you would think that rule couldn't have applied with the relaunch.
The thing about most novels (and other works of fiction) is that you actually don't get introduced to the big, action-y stuff right away. That's kind of the point of exposition; it's part of Freytag's pyramid, which is a structure that most works tend to follow. For example: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone didn't immediately start off with the Harry vs. Voldemort fight, or even the troll scene—we're introduced to Harry, Hagrid, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore, Malfoy, McGonagall, and the rest of the cast. Same with Lord of the Rings and Narnia, as well as any Shakespeare play or classic novel you will ever read. It's important that we get an idea of who these characters are and why their stories should mean something to us. Why should I care about what's happening to this character if I don't actually get to know this character first and understand why it's a big deal for them?

The thing about GRC was that it was so tightly compacted that to introduce it to us cold would have required explaining who Emily and Matthew were and why their stories should matter to us. As "The Ties That Bind" demonstrated, overly-bloated story arcs tend to hurt the impact of a story rather than help it. It's much easier, if you're going for a relatively quick and fast-paced story, to have introduced the characters before that arc so that we already connect with them and want them to succeed before they start getting into real trouble—to me, that gives a story much more impact.

And you'll notice that I'm not defending Album 51 and 52 as they were here; I didn't like those albums any more than you did. I thought that they were pretty weak compared to Albums 47-50. What I'm saying is that we should have gotten that background to the characters and eased into the adventure a little, not that we should accept what we got because it's exposition.

(Side note: Is anyone else getting really frustrated with the forum "timing out" a long post?)
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Blitz
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You just have to hit submit again with the timing out thing.

I agree and disagree with both of you. The climax of anything should be after a bit but the first part should always be much more interesting.
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TigerShadow
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Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think 51 and 52 should have been much more interesting than they were, but that doesn't mean that I think they should have been removed entirely.
it's not about 'deserve'. it's about what you believe. and i believe in love
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ArnoldtheRubberDucky
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If you look at the structure of the Green Ring Conspiracy itself, you'll see that it does indeed follow Freytag's pyramid. You have the exposition in the first couple parts, setting everything up and introducing all the new characters (which could conceivably include Emily, Matthew, and Jay), then the rising action with Monty and Buck and Dr. Trask, then a climax of sorts at Uncle Archie's carnival. Falling action occurs as Jason is revealed as the Stiletto, and then the dénouement, when everything settles down. The beginning of GRC works just fine as an exposition: you don't really need two albums before it.

And I would argue that the first scene in GRC introduced Emily and Matthew well enough. I mean, it wasn't any worse of an introduction than the one in "Game For A Mystery". And you don't really need a bunch of background on characters to make you "care" about them. This has been proven many times in literature with good characters who you care about right off the bat. In other words, all the previous Jones and Parker mysteries gave us no more reason to care than the first couple scenes in GRC did.
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