Four Lines, All Waiting: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ''[[Bleach]]'' episodes fell into this in the middle of [[Gratuitous Spanish|Hueco Mundo]] arc, and it got worse from there as the plot went into the Fake Karakura Town arc. Things got simplified once everyone started focusing on taking down [[Big Bad|Aizen]], though.

** g) Triplicate Girl and Karate Kid getting stranded in the past and running around looking for a cure to a lethal virus. All of this interspersed with scenes of Darkseid playing with his action figures, heroes who have nothing to do with the plot running into the main characters, Super-Manboy-Asshole-Prime destroying planets and fighting Monarch, and the Monitors endlessly spouting [[Atop the Fourth Wall|"We should do something!" "Should we do something?"]]

** The entirety of Countdown can be described as "Between Eight and Ten [[Kudzu Plot]]lines, All Waiting."

* Part of the problem of the first year of Amazing Spider-Man's Brand New Day arc. Storylines such as the identity of Menace, the mystery of Harry's return, the election of a New Mayor of New York, and the Spider-Tracer murders were all milked for all they were worth for an entire year, and mostly resolved within a single storyline. Creators have gone on record saying they intended to touch base on the plot threads a lot more in the year prior, but ran out of time. This despite having at least three times the length as any other series to make such plans. And that didn't stop plotlines in the next two years from being milked for all they were worth and not resolved until the "big finale" of Brand New Day- Origin of the Species.

* Averted, and very well, in [[Sin City]]. While you can see some characters talk on the background, some of them are recognizable, or even main characters, their story WILL be expanded on next storylines and issues, and most of these storylines occur in a single frame of time, characters with their own story crossing each other. A particular example is in 'The Hard Goodbye', as Marv enters Kadie's bar, we see how Dwight appears in a bar, as Shellie, a dancer, picks him up, and is in his story, 'A Dame To Kill For'.

** As of the End of Act 5, this trope has been more or less turned around. The cast has been divided into three groups: {{spoiler|The Green Sun Team, consisting of Rose, Dave and the surviving trolls, The Scratched Universe Team, with John, Jade, and the refugees of the four planets and Skaia, and the Troll Incipisphere Team, with Jack Noir, PM, and WV. And Serenity.}}

*** And then played straight again with Act 6.

* In [[El Goonish Shive]], the Hold On Hope storyline was like this.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' finished an arc which was itself part of a bigger arc during which the Toughs were split into four commands; each command got it's own arc, and arcs after the first would occasionally have a caption stating where, temporally, these events were taking place relative to the event that ended the larger meta-arc. It took well over a year, and this is a ''daily comic''.