Sure. An evolution of the topic you removed from the Book Reviews section, yeah?
Right, the one that got all of zero replies. :P Guess not enough people read that sub ... though I wouldn't be surprised if the mods end up moving this thread over there, too. (This thread, meanwhile, has had a very, very odd life. Started as a response in the new releases thread, then got carved off into its own thread by the mods when people started talking about a 'gateway product', now mutated into a discussion of the role of spine fiction in the IP).
Anyway, before we go on, I should say thanks again to you skiltao, for engaging with the point of the discussion (lot of people still arguing no fiction vs. some fiction) and for making me think! I don't think anyone ever really goes into an online discussion with any intention of changing their minds, which is why they so often degenerate into flame wars, but I think it's good if they make you think about WHY you feel a certain way.
I disagree. Every Jurassic Park movie, for instance: the protagonists represent humanity, yet humanity at large is not endangered by conflict with the antagonist faction; the overarching narrative is about the self-destructiveness of hubris; and the tension comes from the uncontrollability of nature. Sure, these three things are all related, but none of them require dinosaurs to be more than a local threat, and only one of them even requires any dinosaurs to survive.
This was a really good point, and I had to think about that. Which is good! I think it comes down to the headspace or conceptual space you present in the book or movie (in my previous post, used the term "overarching narrative" -- not an English Lit major, so sorry if I'm using the wrong term for it). Jurassic Park, for example, takes place entirely on the island, so that becomes the 'world' of the movie. If you kept cutting to the outside world where there was no dinosaur threat, or to the rest of the island where the dinosaurs had all been recaptured, then I suspect there would be way, way less tension.
So let me qualify by saying it isn't satisfying to me to put one of the protagonists in putative danger while in the rest of the 'world' in your book/movie (however it is framed or however the reader/viewer can perceive it) that same danger is being easily dealt with. My example of Private Ryan would be another example: we don't see how the rest of the war is going, all we see is this one little band, so there needs to be a connection between the personal stakes and the overall situation *for that specific band*.
The way you've defined "faction" and "meaningful change/consequence" seems arbitrary. If "killing off characters or slightly altering the number of factions isn't meaningful progression," then in what way is the Warrior Trilogy meaningfully different from the Gray Death Trilogy? The weakest House remains the weakest House, its leader is replaced by a similar leader, everyone who shared a border before still shares one after, and the Lyran/Suns alliance continues.
What I mean is the impermanence of any conclusion/resolution in the spine fiction/metanarrative undermines the impact any of these changes might have. The events of the Gray Death Trilogy had a permanent, meaningful impact within the scope/headspace/conceptual space or whatever we're calling it of that trilogy (which I think they kind of undid by having a sequel...see our discussion below). Deaths or faction changes in the spine fiction cannot alter the basic fundamentals of the game (divided galaxy eternally at war with giant robots) so at the Inner Sphere level headspace (where spine fiction exists) we get the surface appearance of change (deaths, new factions) but none of it lasts because the story line is marching ever onwards.
I guess it's the difference between fiction or a narrative and history. History is very cruel to happy endings, I agree. My go-to example is Alexander the Great--emperor of the known world at 30, dead at 33, and then his empire fell apart and his wife and son were murdered. And then the descendants of the murderers were wiped out by the Romans and the Persians. Who were wiped out by the Germanic barbarians and the Islamic jihad... and so on. There's lots of plot in history, but not a very satisfying narrative, since nothing really lasts.
I guess the point is spine fiction can have lots and lots of plot, lots of things happening, but much like real-world history, it's never really had any point to it other than to have lots of plot and things happening. If you (in the generic sense of any reader, not you personally skiltao) just want action and things happening, then obviously that's not an issue for you.
(1) If you're defining a "satisfying" spinal/metanarrative consequence as one which puts familiar characters at risk and develops the timeline beyond what the customer already owns, well, obviously that is something which can happen and which may sometimes serve the goals of the product line as a whole. The Clan Invasion, for instance.
The Clan Invasion I'd call a near-miss. It had the potential to say something about the setting or recast it in a meaningful and interesting way, but a lot of it has been undone by subsequent developments. Twilight of the Clans, for example. However exciting you found the story, it did provide an excuse for the setting not to change: back to five Houses, now + X others, still bickering and fighting. FedCom alliance? Broken up. CC on the ropes? Not anymore. FWL breakup? Back together again. DC and FS friends? Nope, enemies again. And so on.
(2) I can't agree that the validity of a story is automatically suspect simply because it has a sequel. The original Star Wars trilogy is a macro-level spinal/metanarrative action/war fiction which (by your definitions) never changes any fundaments of the setting, and yet I don't think the market finds it unsatisfying, nor agrees that it had no stakes. Whether or not the achievements from one story survive and flow into the next is particular to the execution of that specific sequel, and not intrinsic to the story's status as spinal or not spinal.
That's okay my dude, we don't have to agree. Be a dull old world if everyone thought the same. At the same time, I think the Star Wars sequels beautifully illustrate what I'm talking about: The Force Awakens, in particular, just recycles the Empire vs. Rebellion and Jedi vs. Sith conflicts in slightly different color schemes and designs, and undoes any satisfaction you had in watching the Return of the Jedi, by rendering the heroes' achievements null and void: the Empire wasn't defeated, good didn't triumph, etc.--and that is what gets hammered by both critics and fans alike.
To take another example, J R R Tolkien started writing a sequel to Lord of the Rings, but quickly gave up for just this reason. He realized it was just going to be plot, with no heart or soul. So yes, absolutely yes, creating sequels
after you've finished the story you want to tell can undo the integrity of the story.
So if you must have an ever-advancing storyline (a whole other discussion), I'd say historicals or era reports or sourcebooks are the way to go, while fiction can focus on self-contained narratives that deliver satisfying conclusions.
