I remember everything, every single detail, from the bitter smoke of the cigarettes to the sweet smell of drying leaves. That's all very vivid. And I can recall that incredible feeling of solitude. In fact, the certitude that this was over. That from now on, I would only ever be able to look back on this period of my life.
Honestly, this was a strange experience. I had the feeling to be extremely old, on a death bed and looking back to the life I had. When in fact, reality could not have been further removed from that setting. I was barely 18 years old, and about to start a whole new life in North-America.
You know there is something incredible about the carelessness of one's youth. Of course, to appreciate it fully you would need to be aware of it. That, in fact, would kind of weaken that very state of mind now that I think about it.
Plus France is such a wonderful country to grew-up in. I know it might sound ridiculous, but at 21 years old, I already feel a little bit like my best years are behind me. Or rather, that the warmth and happiness I have experienced will remain unmatched from now on. It's hard to think about the gardens of Paris or the Cathédrale de Reims' parvis in the summer without a heavy heart. They were my companions for nearly two decades, and years later I still don't want to say goodbye...
I guess that's the cost of happiness
That said, high school also had its social games. Most people recall having been bullied or excluded at one point or another during scolarity.
And yes, you're an excellent writer ;)
And even those who dislike the idea of having a trained conscript army in addition to regular troops have their own version of conscription. The overall tone is the same, only the military context is replaced with community work.
Either way, it is hard to imagine the shape and form of such organization because of the sheer scale at which it has to operate to be even remotely efficient. I agree with what you said about college. You meet people, lots of people, and in fact lots of similar people. There is relatively little space for the kind of variance you see in high-school when the members of the community are filtered by their performance on a standardized test anyway.-
Every emotive, immersive experience seems to produce some whiplash of the soul upon separation. As you noted, this is not unique to VR or even literary works. Even so, since one's first such is the most memorable, VR will likely slowly replace older works in this department.
The last book I did this with was "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. There's probably less than an hour's worth of reading left, but I just don't want it to end. This was maybe a year ago and I still haven't touched it since. Eventually I'll probably re-read it from the beginning and actually finish it.
I also do it for bands I really like that are slow to put out albums. I haven't heard the latest GSY!BE (from early 2015) yet, not because I don't want to, but because who knows if they're going to go through another 13 year gap between albums! Maybe in 2020 I'll be having a really bad night and 40 minutes of "new" music from one of my favorite bands is exactly what I'll need.
I think my favorite has to be Schild's Ladder, just for sheer conceptual interestingness. I ended up writing fanfiction for it.
The best one from a literary standpoint is probably the Clockwork Rocket trilogy, though.
I originally bought Permutation City because of a recommendation on HN. Schild's Ladder might have to be my next sci-fi read for the same reason. "Sheer conceptual interestingness" is pretty much exactly what I want, haha.
Anyway, I would recommend finishing it. It's a great book.
Here's hoping I don't want to finish his other novels either :)
On the other hand, I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to finish Diaspora. Although its opening chapter is fantastic.
As I exited my 20's and entered my 30's, I had to deal with several deaths in the family and having to finally deal with my own mortality, this has affected me in profound ways.
I've done the same thing you have, albeit with several movie trilogies. I skipped the last Matrix movie, I refused to go see the last LOTR movie (even though I read the books when I was in my teens and knew what was going to happen), and the same thing in the Divergent series.
It's practically become a common theme in my life - some sort of psychological avoidance to have to deal with the ending of a story, the emotions and the emptiness of something I pursued for so long, now at an end.
Dark tower was another guilty pleasure of mine.
Oddly I think it wouldn't, and wonder why. Is it because we want to know the one single ending the author intended?
In my case, having multiple endings to a book would definitely make my hesitation worse.
I was also disappointed with the ending. I roughly knew the general sketch of the ending based on remarks Jordan made at a DragonCon. I knew he had written that entire series just to get to that ending. But by the time I had reached Memory of Light, I saw a possibility for something even greater.
A year later, the unpublished chapter on Damonadred (don't remember how to spell his name) came out and therein lies that possibility. Except no one will write that epic :-D
That existential anguish that comes from having journeyed ablong way -- well, the Wheel keeps turning. That's the point. There is a koan that goes, "before enlightenment? Chop wood carry water. After enlightenment? Chop wood carry water."
Stories always come to an end, no matter how magnificent. It does not matter whether that story is a work of fiction, or something you tell about yourself. What doesn't end is awareness. The Wheel moves on.
That is how I felt about Planescape: Torment, widely regarded to have one of the best tales of all RPGs, and all other great stories in other mediums.
It makes me wish there was some way to get selective voluntary amnesia, where you wipe all memories of the specific content of something, just keep the feeling that it's something you have to experience [again].
I'm lucky (?) enough to have the involuntary form of this to some degree for media. I will often forget the plot points of a movie I've watched within days to weeks, and in many cases after a year I have completely forgotten ever even having watched it. I'll pick a movie, my wife will say "we've already seen that", I'll say "I don't think so", she lovingly puts up with me because she luckily likes re-watching movies, and even by the end of the show I'll have nothing but a vague sense of deja-vu the whole time.
I have on multiple occasions, rewatched movies with twist endings like The Usual Suspects and still been surprised on the second or third viewing.
I'd rather have my wife's photographic (videographic) movie recall though...
When I finished the last book, 12-year-old me cried. This epic whirlwind of a journey was over forever. And no one else in the world around me even acknowledged it had existed.
By putting it down I was freezing the moment I had left it in time. When I returned to finish the book I felt that familiar sense of sadness. A period of my life (fourteen months!) was over. I'll probably re-read the books someday, but I know it won't be the same. I often get that feeling when I finish a work of fiction I enjoyed greatly. But there was something about "The Wheel of Time' that made it much more profound.
Any medium that can tell a story that people find intense and immersive will produce that same feeling. Why would VR be any different?