Happy Hump Day Survey!

Wrong thread!

Most of Fear and Loathing for the drugs part.

I'll let Hopper and Brando duke it out for crazy in Apocalypse Now.

Gonna be some NSFW language in these.

I've got two kinds of crazy:

Because we all waited two seasons for something terrible to happen to her.

Worth the wait.

HAPPY HUMP DAYYYYYY!

What book/game/TV serious took you forever to finish, but was totally worth it in the end?

Malazan eventually. Probably. If/when I finish it.

The Wheel of Time.

Still feels like a major life accomplishment.

PaladinTom wrote:

The Wheel of Time.

Still feels like a major life accomplishment.

Stopped at book 10, no regrets, no interest in resuming.

Everything that first comes to mind are things that I have started but yet to finish.

I'm gonna go with Lord of the Rings, though, largely because I started Fellowship several times in Elementary school and didn't actually read it in its entirety until Middle School/Junior High.

If you count "Waiting forever to finish because the author hadn't finished the story yet" then I'd go with the Harry Potter books.

Ten years, but at least it came to a satisfying conclusion and was worth the wait.

Tanglebones wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

The Wheel of Time.

Still feels like a major life accomplishment.

Stopped at book 10, no regrets, no interest in resuming.

Now that's in the spirit of the question. It'll literally take you forever to finish.

Read LotR when I was about 10 or 11, and it took me over a year.

Babylon 5. Quintin Stone lent us his recorded-from-TV VHS tapes (a lot of tapes). It took a long time to watch it all, but it was worth it.

DiscoDriveby wrote:

HAPPY HUMP DAYYYYYY!

What book/game/TV serious took you forever to finish, but was totally worth it in the end?

Lord of the Rings. I probably gave it 3 or 4 starts. When I finally got to Moria, I was hooked and couldn't put it down. Now I re-read it every few years.

Runner-up: Cryptonomicon. Same thing, probably started it 3 or 4 times before I eventually got to a point where I was hooked and couldn't stop.

Totally not worth it: The Illuminatus! trilogy. Also started this one 3 or 4 times. Forced myself to finish it. It had some good plot ideas, but the parts written by dolphins tripping on acid I could do without.

Neon Genesis Evangelion. Saw my first couple episodes sometime in the 90's. Didn't watch the complete series until last year.

Alz wrote:

If you count "Waiting forever to finish because the author hadn't finished the story yet" then I'd go with the Harry Potter books.

Let's not... that list would never end!

deftly wrote:

Runner-up: Cryptonomicon. Same thing, probably started it 3 or 4 times before I eventually got to a point where I was hooked and couldn't stop.

Did you ever try reading The Baroque Cycle? I gave up at the beginning of book 3, and now years later I can't motivate myself to go back to the beginning, to build up the momentum to finish the entire series.

Finishing up all available Dragonlance books that were available at the time (I think I was like 15 at the time and had started when I was 10?). Most of the knowledge of Krynn I had accumulated has long since left my brain, but I was so engrossed by every book I just could not stop reading.

The original Bioshock for me. It wasn't until 7 or 8 years after release that I finished it. 3 or 4 false starts along the way and I finally buckled down to complete it because I really wanted to play Infinite.

Oh, I've got one - I'd purchased all of Telltale's Sam and Max games years ago, and only played the first two episodes of Season 3. A few months ago, I sat down and blew through all three seasons over a couple of weeks. Totally worth it - the in-jokes that accumulate over the run of the games, and the overall humor clicked really well for me, even as the gameplay was a bit rough from time to time.

It wasn't particularly challenging, but it did take me forever to hunt down all the Tintin books at the library when I was a kid. I'd always make a beeline for that section to see if there were ones I hadn't read on the shelf.

The Guardian Legend. I first played it on my friend's NES cart when it came out in 1988. I did not finally beat it, even with emulators in the interim years, until I bought a used copy for myself in 2010. If I ever beat Punch Out!! that will be the new king.

PaladinTom wrote:

The Wheel of Time.

Still feels like a major life accomplishment.

I'm with this guy.
I still love WoT despite its flaws. Even had an Aes Sedai ring custom made about ten years ago.

Actually, y'know what? I was wrong.

When I was an itty bitty the local library only had the first two tapes of Robotech. So I was very familiar with the first four episodes, but nothing afterward. Late elementary school I discovered the novelizations, but we never had all the books so I only completed the story with gaps in the middle. In middle school the Suncoast Video had the VHS tapes and allowed you to order specific volumes, but they closed down before we could get all the series. Finally when I was 16 or 17 working at GameStop they got the entire series in a DVD box set. Immediately bought it at employee discount and binged it the next couple days, finally seeing the series in full from start to finish.

...well, the Macross saga, at least. We started working on Southern Cross but weren't really big fans, and to me, when I think of Robotech, that first saga is what comes to mind.

Most of the long series I get myself into don't have sticking power as I am easily underwhelmed by dips in quality or just distracted. LotR is a solid candidate, but the bigger one for me would be David (& Leigh) Eddings's books. In high school I tore through the Belgariad and Mallorean and then moved on to Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. (I think that's all I read, so I technically didn't finish the other series set in that world.) Though I don't recall much about the series in particular, they were pretty formative to my own fantasy writing and I wouldn't be surprised if I was called out for using these as inspiration without realizing it.

Mine is the novel A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. Only took me forever to finish because it's really long, one of the longest novels ever written (it was published serially over the course of about 20 years). But holy crap, even as long as it is, it manages to keep you engaged, and the last few "books" in the series were so powerful, when I hit the end I knew I had a serious contender for "favorite book ever".

Eleima wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

The Wheel of Time.

Still feels like a major life accomplishment.

I'm with this guy.
I still love WoT despite its flaws. Even had an Aes Sedai ring custom made about ten years ago.

I've been slowly rereading WoT over the last few years with an eye toward finally finishing it. I recognize all that's wrong with it, but it still means a lot to me. I don't know that I'll ever want to read through it again, but I really want to see how it all ends.

Alz wrote:
deftly wrote:

Runner-up: Cryptonomicon. Same thing, probably started it 3 or 4 times before I eventually got to a point where I was hooked and couldn't stop.

Did you ever try reading The Baroque Cycle? I gave up at the beginning of book 3, and now years later I can't motivate myself to go back to the beginning, to build up the momentum to finish the entire series.

Heck no. I took one look at it and knew I'd never make it through. I'd probably enjoy it, but I'm not even going to try.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Eleima wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

The Wheel of Time.

Still feels like a major life accomplishment.

I'm with this guy.
I still love WoT despite its flaws. Even had an Aes Sedai ring custom made about ten years ago.

I've been slowly rereading WoT over the last few years with an eye toward finally finishing it. I recognize all that's wrong with it, but it still means a lot to me. I don't know that I'll ever want to read through it again, but I really want to see how it all ends.

Sanderson did a good job, in my opinion. I found his contributions to be a... ahem... breath of fresh air after slogging through RJ's last few books.

LouZiffer wrote:

Sanderson did a good job, in my opinion. I found his contributions to be a... ahem... breath of fresh air after slogging through RJ's RJ pooped out his last few books .

HAPPY HUMP DAYYYYYY!!!

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