I enjoy stories that raise a lot of questions.
Provided, most, if not all of these questions get answered.
There is little that irritates me more about a plot/storyline than people not tying up loose ends. I suppose there’s something to be said for leaving certain things open-ended, but as far as creative works go I’d really prefer they weren’t.
I realize that in life, in reality, things are rarely so clear-cut that you can see all angles of what’s happened, and why, and maybe the why doesn’t always need to be explained but the what definitely does. People can make up their own theories as to why someone would act the way they did, but it’s important to at least know WHAT they did, in the end.
I am currently following the (amazing!) sound novel うみねこのなく頃に which has, by this point, a large number of currently unsolved mysteries and unanswered questions. With only three episodes left, at best, fans are starting to worry about comments the author has made about the answers being revealed in a somewhat less-than-clear fashion. Much rage and panic has ensued on at least one forum I frequent, and I feel pretty much as they do – if Ryuukishi does not wrap things up in the end, and merely suggests that “well, if you had caught on to the clues and thought properly about it you should know the answer by now” I will be quite upset. Whether or not he knows the answer to all of those questions, I will feel that he does not, and that he has just taken us on ride with no specific itinerary in mind.
That won’t invalidate the journey we’ve taken up until that point – as one poster said, the ride itself is what is important – but he did challenge us to think, he asked for our trust, at the beginning, and to wander off without resolving things betrays that trust.
As far as things go right now, I believe Umineko will end in a manner that answers at least the big questions laid out before us. Beyond that… I don’t know. There always seem to be unanswered aspects to such stories, and I believe Higurashi left some things a little unclear, but nothing so serious as to disrupt the entire fanbase.
In my own works, I am borderline obsessed with explaining everything, to the point where it becomes somewhat unwieldy, and possibly not practical to include in the storyline itself. I’m of the mind that in order to write properly, you must understand everything about the universe you are creating, if not at the start, then certainly by about halfway through the story. The more you know, the more real it becomes, and the more likely readers are able to immerse themselves in it and thoroughly enjoy the experience. Leaving too much up to the imagination of the reader can be dangerous and often leads to plothole-like jumps of logic that are never explained. Stories that make a habit of poking fun at themselves might find these humorous, but that sort of thing can only be taken so far.
In other, unrelated news, I am pretty sure TVTropes exists only to eat my brain. So much Overused Capitalization and Naming of Things Which Probably Don’t Need To Be Named, And Certainly Not Like That…. (which, incidentally, are things I kind of love, and which is EXACTLY why I cannot spend any more time there.)