schadenfreude

[nthdraft]

I love the smell of exploding fandoms in the morning.

I'm definitely bringing my camera to Comic con. Some asshat suggested holding up a TV show writer at plastic gunpoint to protest the death of some character on some TV show. Among other things. (full disclosure: I do not watch show, never heard of the characters, and do not care. Even if I did

Comments

[nthdraft]

Yes, but you see, the idea is that a writer cannot go to a convention, which is a professional trade show that happens also to let other people in, without fearing for his/her safety. Fewer are taking the risk of doing any interaction with their fans or readers because of the threat, whether it's been made or just implied.

I'm reminded of a story Harlan Ellison told many years ago of a writer who was at a party at a convention when someone who did not like what they had written threw a cup of vomit on him. Think about that. The guy had to a) plan to do this, b) vomit into a cup and c)wander around the room stalking the guy out, and d) do it.

THe only legitimate form of protest a consumer can lodge against a product is with the pocketbook. Don't like? Don't buy. Beyond that they owe the readers nothing.

The idea that readers can influence a writer to change his own story goes all the way back to Doyle's resurrection of Holmes, and while it did give us Hound of the Baskerville (which was in fact one novel length flashback), he regretted bringing him back from the dead to his own last day, and nothing written in the second half of the canon was nearly as good as the first. When they brought back Star Trek for a third season their reward was "Spock's Brain," and a final episode that declared that even 300 years from now, women cannot be starship captains.

THe protest over the coffee guy's death may result in something, but the protestor may like the resolution even less than the original issue. Signs point to no, if past indicators can be believed. But if the protest is successful the protesters better be prepared to own the result.

/soapbox

FMA Spoiler ahead

[nthdraft]

oh, and one more thing I thought of: nothing traumatized me more in a fictional series than when Maes Hughes gets senselessly killed halfway through the Fullmetal Alchemist anime by a shapeshifter who shapes himself into Hughes's wife just to make it even more horrifying. But I watched the rest of series 1 and when they brought back an alternate version of him in the movie it just wasn't the same. But I understand how that death was a component and catalyst not just for Edward's story, but for Roy's as well. It was horrible, but in plot terms it was necessary. I mourned him by naming a character in my last book after him. Then I killed him again. Hadn't planned on it when I created him, but the story took me there, so that's what happened.

When I ran my own zine I had these two characters, twins, one of whom was nice and the other a jerk, and I killed the nice one while he saved the jerk (thus redeeming the jerk) but my roommate still reminds me now and again how evil I am for killing Mirth. Yeah I hated it too, I hated the deaths of each of the characters that died in that story and there were lots, it was a slaughter, but their stories were done and that's what happens in stories.