Writing Pet Peeve: Throwing Away Useful Characters

Many apologies for not making a blog post for a while, but this rant just hit me. This last October, I wound up being attacked by a virus. And I'm not talking about Hexadecimal or Megabyte, but a cold bug. So I decided that I wanted to just watch Netflix and veg out. But I had a problem: there really wasn't anything I wanted to watch, but I had remembered that this last summer, I was giving Doctor Who a try and decided to watch some more. I wound up watching from the fourth or fifth episode of the first season of the reboot to the last episode on Netflix within a week. How does this tie into this topic? Because it was the show I was talking about when I started tearing into how writers should not throw away perfectly good characters until there's nothing else they could contribute to the show.

So of course, there will be spoilers up to The Angels Take Manhattan (season 7, episode 5) so if you don't want any spoilers, please stop reading here since I will be using that episode and those before it as an example. Okay, so with that out of the way, let me explain how such a pet peeve has been executed and how this has become a pet peeve of mine.

In the simplest of terms, the Main Character has decided that the other characters who has been hanging around him will die or have terrible things happen to them based on past experiences. So the Main Character leaves them behind with no way of following him and ensuring that their lives will be comfortable. So you would think that these folks are finally gone, having been put on a bus and living happily, safe and sound. But we need our Main Character to be completely snapped in half and there are no such thing as happy endings to an arc with any traveling group. Because somehow, we need to have the next person to befriend our Main Character to fix him. This is exactly what bugs me.

Why? Because if he knows that if he keeps dragging his friends who have become family to him around, why would we see him pulling them along on an adventure? It goes completely against his character development. Not to mention that they are still quite usable as characters at this point. Not as Main Characters, but guest characters.

How? Well, it would be nice for our Main Character to get a new friend while not in a completely broken state. Give the poor guy some hope that there could be happy endings for crying out loud! And they could be usable for when he does get broken, he's got someone to turn to. Besides that, we'd have someone capable of pointing it out to our Main Character when he starts going down the dark path. When you have a character continually fighting monsters, it becomes very easy for the character to become what they're fighting against. And sometimes, past characters who aren't dead who mean a lot to the Main Character are a necessity to snap our Main Character out of it.

In more specific terms, by having the Ponds traveling with The Doctor after he gives them a house AND a car, it goes against his reasoning for forcing them out of the TARDIS to begin with. And how long was he without them before he changed his mind? Two stinking episodes. It takes him two episodes to drag the Ponds with him. Well, two episodes plus several mini-episodes in which he drops by the Ponds or checks in with them. But if he really worried about them, he shouldn't have gone against his better judgment. And the writers shouldn't have had him go a bit out of his character for the sake of making the fandom upset.

The writers finally ended the Ponds' interference with their plotlines by forcing them to die off-screen. Not kidding. They died off-screen with a very flimsy reasoning against allowing the Doctor to see them. How flimsy is the reasoning? The Ponds were hurled into 1938's Manhattan and the Doctor is all upset because he couldn't see them because the Weeping Angels are messing with time too much in Manhattan. Yet, the Doctor himself did spend time in 1938 during last year's Christmas Special, “The Doctor, The Widow, and The Wardrobe”. So that means that it's obviously a localized effect that is continually in effect. What throws this whole thing out of the window was that the Tenth Doctor was able to go to 1930's Manhattan with no issue. So assuming that it's a localized effect that happened after the Tenth Doctor's visit, again, there's no issue for him to land the TARDIS on the edge of the instability and travel the rest of the way like any other human. Boy, what a plot hole!

So really, what did the death of the Ponds accomplish? We get a broken Doctor. That's it. The main character being emotionally shattered by permanently losing his family. Any interesting stories? Not unless you like to see a character whose life is literally just one long line of traumatic events. Which at this point, is actually getting old and tired. No wonder he had a psychotic break at the end of Waters of Mars.

But what kind of stories or events that would have happened if the Ponds never went on any adventures after they were dropped off? Well, for one thing, The Power of Three would have still happened. Not to mention that they could still be a good jumping point for adventures happening during their lifetimes. For example, an adventure hook could involve the Doctor visiting the Ponds and then notice something wrong going on. Or they could call the Doctor, telling him of something weird going on that they've noticed. Another use for characters like the Ponds would be someone for the Doctor to go to when he's breaking or broken or when he needs shoulders to cry on. Yet another use would also be when he would get another companion and the Ponds do call on the Doctor or the Doctor visits them, they could advise the new companion too, similar to passing the torch.

This kind of thing bugs me because it becomes quite clear that Moffat (current showrunner for Doctor Who and sadistic writer of the first degree) killed off the Ponds just for the emotional impact on the fandom (who really should be seeing this coming at this point) and just to traumatize our main character with no regard of whether or not they could be used as further tools in the background at least.

With shows who focus more on character deaths for no reason other than to get the fans to cry and to shatter the psyches of the Main Characters for no reason than to do so, I'm starting to not care about the  characters because I know that they will die and die horribly and for no reason than to cause the fans and the main characters to get all weepy. I give the new companion maybe a season before she kicks it. And yes, I'm saying that I have yet to see the newest Christmas Special.

See ya later!

An Objective View of Characterization in Science Fiction and Fantasy

I grew up watching science fiction, mostly thanks to my dad. It was because of him that I was introduced to Star Wars and Star Trek at an early age and from there, I grew into the genre itself. It's half because of how wide the genre is and half because there is almost no limit to the breadth of the types of stories that can happen in space with various kinds of ships and peoples. Some stories within science fiction focus on one or two real staples of science fiction, being the unknown or the technology itself being the main two. But that was back in the 90's and since then, another piece that can make or break a story or set-up is brought into focus: the characters themselves.

What I'm not saying is that science fiction itself is devoid of characters, but what I am saying is that characters haven't been a large part of the spotlight in science fiction, not before the late 90's at least. Well, that I know of (even though I say I grew up on science fiction, I will mention now that my choices were rather limited up until I was a teenager and I can definitely say that my tastes have changed since my childhood and thankfully so, but different types of shows interest me and I'm more open to experiences. And even though my dad did like Star Trek, he didn't watch things like Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or even Babylon Five and I find myself working on quite a backlog.).

I will also warn you, dear reader, that this is an attempt at being objective and this is only my opinion. Please don't take what I say as an ad hominem attack on your favorite show or me just being "close minded". I give everything a good solid try before deciding on whether or not I like anything. And yes, that does include Twilight.

The catalyst for this little piece was a facebook rant at how science fiction shows have become infested: "with crappy dialog about love affairs, power struggles over whos the boss, and children disappointed with their parental figures." And that the studios are doing this to "draw in the female market."

This looks less of a failure or mismanagement in trying to aim for a specific demographic and more like a failure in characterization. In this current atmosphere in television, if one makes content that is based on the characters themselves, the characters must fulfill many requirements:

1. The characters must be able to stand on their own. 
2. The characters must be able to be likable in their own ways. 
3. There must be more to the characters than their archetype/stereotype to seem "more well-rounded." 
4. The characters must never cause the story to fall apart for no reason. 

For this list, I merely fell back to my own general rules for when I'm writing. As a writer, I do what I can to follow these rules and above all, write characters that appeal to some sliver of myself. Whether these rules are incomplete or completely incorrect, well, I'm not perfect. But I feel that this list, for all intents and purposes, is just my general opinion as a writer.

So now, I think I should give you all an idea of when each of the four rules are upheld and broken and cite examples of it from their own shows.

1. The characters must be able to stand on their own.

For this example, I have several examples, but the one that really comes to mind is Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Star Trek: The Next Generation). This is a character who can stand on their own, even in times of loss (Nemesis, anyone?) and still finds a reason to keep going. He's made mistakes (as seen in Tapestry among others) and learns from these while sticking to his morals even as the Federation is exploring many ethical and moral dilemmas (see Measure of a Man). Heck, he even learns to overcome such things as his thirst for revenge (First Contact).

One of the biggest failures of this in my mind is Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell (Stargate SG-1). This poor character comes off as if he's written to be a clone of a pre-existing character who was promoted (in other words, put on a bus) away from the SGC. It goes about as well as you'd expect. The failure isn't with the actor, but the writers as they tried to keep a cannon character around but with a new coat of paint. In the end, he never truly fully became his own character, but just "Not-O'Neill". The problem was less of a focus on the differences between the characters on top of just trying too hard.

2. The characters must be able to be likable in their own ways.

So many real possibilities, but I think I'm going to just pick a character out of the pile forming in my mind. I'm going to go with Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Star Trek). This guy is your typical snarky, somewhat-jerkish medical doctor character. But darn it if the character isn't likable in his own way. Heck, I could just say "every character on Star Trek and TNG" but I randomly picked from my own random list. Even if he is typically sarcastic, snarky, and can come off as a bit of a jerk, but the character has a lot of heart to him and cares about others (sometimes even to his own annoyance as seen in the 2009 movie). That's really all I can say without repeating the same old stuff that everyone knows.

The one that really stinks at this is Dr. Nicholas Rush (Stargate Universe). He does a lot of selfish things throughout the show (the whole list would take up most of a page and that's only of what I remember from the first season alone). And what's worse is that he causes a lot of people to lose their life directly or indirectly because of his selfish actions and motivations and what makes him really lose at this is the fact that the writers seem to not be able to make up their minds with this guy. They write him as a completely heartless monster yet shows that he still is human and in the end, they make him a confused character. It wouldn't bother me if they either made him more of a main character or more of an out-and-out villain. What I mean by this is that antagonists don't get as much focus as main characters for a reason, especially if they're of the Snidely Whiplash variety- because there's nothing else to them than the evil acts of evil. But even in shows where the villains are part of the focus (Dr. Horrible, Death Note), there's at least something about them that keeps the viewer interested/entertained. Heck, even the Goa'uld were entertaining because of how over-the-top they were. But this guy... he's just a complete monster of a human being who shows nothing but glee at everything and to me, he's just not likable at all.

3. There must be more to the characters than their archetype/stereotype to seem "more well-rounded."

There's a lot of characters again that I can choose from, but this time, I think I'll go with Dr. Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1). He began in SG-1 as literally the sole civilian on the team who serves as one of two scientifically-minded characters and the interpreter. However, he does more on the show than just that. He's also the moral/ethical voice of the team and in later seasons, really comes into his character, even being able to shoot as well as any member of the team, showing a nice evolution of his character.

And then there's Eli (Stargate Universe). He's literally there to explain math and to literally act out parts of old science fiction movies (mostly just the classic Planet of the Apes which to me, does get old and fast!) while babbling on and on about World of Warcraft. The way this guy is written, he is just about the kind of nerd that even the geeks would hit up for lunch money. And worse is that he just keeps being annoying. And in a lot of ways, he reminds me of the bad parts of Wesley Crusher on top of the general annoying-ness, which I guess is almost likable, but he doesn't evolve past the whole "I'm just here to spout math, Planet of the Apes quotes, and babble about WoW" stereotype. He almost makes me feel bad for being a geek.

4. The characters must never cause the story to fall apart for no reason.

This is something I can't exactly cite a specific character on this because it's more of something where if the characters don't do this, no one notices, but if the characters fail in this, it's obvious. Kind of like sound editing- no one notices when it's done good, but heaven help you if you are off even a tad.

By "for no reason", I mean by "for no reason that the viewer can find which doesn't ruin the suspension of disbelief." If it shatters the viewer's suspension of disbelief, you royally screwed up and good luck stitching it back together. If the story falls apart or segues into another subplot in a way which doesn't shatter the fragile suspension of disbelief, you should be more careful. After all, each episode should be at most an "A story" and a "B story" that overlap in some way, typically not one after the other. When you finish the "A story" and go straight to the "B story", sometimes viewers get annoyed that you didn't just flesh out the two stories and have two separate but tenably linked episodes.

Outside of these rules, there's still a few things that can be found as annoying bits of characterization. One of which is when a character comes off overly emotional/depressed. This gets annoying because of such characters get old fast and when they get old, they become very cliched. What helps is if that's not one of the character's defining characteristic. It's completely fine for characters to be depressed or sad for a reason. But not for no reason other than to make the series seem "edgy and dark". When that happens, it's a sign of pandering to a specific demographic who doesn't understand what fine entertainment is. Kind of like Twilight. (I'm being serious. Twilight was specifically written AND advertised to pre-teen and teen girls. Why else would such a book which has many writers like Stephen King calling it not nice things while being hugely popular?)

Another thing to keep in mind, especially if writing for a novelization that can or is connected to Role Playing Games in general, what may be a very awesome character to readers and writers alike can become a bad thing. Case in point is Drizz't. For all accounts, I've heard that he's a good character who faces his own demons just by being a non-evil Drow. For us gamers, he's hellspawn because of his popularity spawning noobs and powergamers playing non-evil Drow en masse. Those of us who play DnD and similar games are still recovering from the ordeal. The message is "if a character is from a typically evil race of evil people, tread lightly. A whole community will thank you."

I honestly hope that I was objective in this (I really tried). If such pieces like this was entertaining/interesting, just let me know and I'll see about writing more on such topics that interest me. See ya later!

Airship Pirates Post-Game post

This session inspired me to put up another post-game post because it was a fun session and I feel like sharing.

At the previous session, the party heard through a Neobedouin shaman contact that there were two tribes ready to go to war with each other near Isla Aether. So the party decided to go to Isla Aether to grab some information before heading to deal with the tribes. They figured that the best place to get information was a random tavern near the docks where those going through would drop in.

So the new Captain (long story short, the previous captain, a misbegotten had to die because the player quit the group due to preparing to move) and the new first mate (also ship's medic) goes into the bar and notices a wizened man who is clearly far older than any human they've ever seen (about mid 60's to early 70's) wearing clothing that doesn't identify him as either Skyfolk, Neobedoin, or Neovictorian. Because he stands out pretty good in the tavern, they approached him. They introduce themselves to the elderly man who just smiles a bit and replies "I already have met you. More times than you know as of yet."

Seeing that there's only one group of people that the PCs know actually have a method of jumping through time, they came to the conclusion that the elderly man is a much older Captain Robert. They continue to talk and the elderly Captain Robert tells them that the Ophelia had a run-in with someone testing out a much newer version of the time-travel device and when he gave up his position of Captain of the Ophelia to one of his daughters, he took the original Chrononautilus with him. They wound up making a deal with the old man- that since he misses being an airship Captain, that they'd give him one last chance at being Captain in return for the Chrononautilus. He took up the offer and we ended there.

This week, we started where we left off and the old man Robert was given permission to be acting Captain unless it would endanger the ship or crew. He left with the First Mate to tour the ship to see the ship and get acquainted with the crew. Said First Mate/Medic wound up becoming friends with him as he made his rounds around the ship.

Long story short, they eventually arrived at the closest of the two tribes, the Sacramento (the pilot was still allowed to be the pilot) and learned that the other tribe, the Western Camelops had been raiding them and taking whatever wasn't nailed down or too big, including women and children. They were clearly set up in the Wiccan tradition and were peaceful and all that jazz. They celebrated that the fact that they had someone willing to help them with a grand ceremony followed by a feast (glazing over it because it could really be too much). After the feast, the religious leaders told the landing party of their plight and that their daughter was missing during the last raid.

They had a night to rest and the Medic caught old man Robert coughing a bit and played it down. He tried to convince him to go to the infirmary for a check up and Robert told him that he would go to the ship's infirmary when he gets the chance. That night, the PCs got together to plot a way how they could get the old man to get into the infirmary without killing him. (which caused a deviation with a song reference and some humming)

They then got to the Western Camelops who claimed that they were being attacked by the Sacramento who would steal everything that wasn't nailed down- the exact story that the Sacramento had told them. The official Captain (Automaton Doll) decided to have the pilot/engineer build what would amount to signal flares, and gave one to each tribe to fire off when the next raid is.

During that day while waiting for the flare to go off, the Medic stuck around old man Robert who was mostly doing paperwork and writing something in a leather-bound book. He told the medic his plans that he doesn't trust the official captain after the deal is done so he's going to ensure that they get to Isla Aether in the dead of night and jump ship after leaving a note of where their payment will be as well as a key to unlock the door. (funny that they'll be heading towards what was once the Seattle area) He coughs again and the medic is unsure if the ship even has the equipment he needs to make a diagnosis.

The flares go off at the same time, a while after nightfall. They head towards the Western Camelops since they control an oil refinery half the year and they see outriders on horses leaving the area. They finally get to three of the outriders, one of which was holding a little girl hostage. Old Man Robert managed to hobble to the Captain's quarters he was temporarily given and took out a pistol and was ready to shoot that guy himself when everyone fired at them. Once he was down before he could shoot the little girl, the two burly men who were accompanying him were fired on- one to the point of exhaustion and the remaining one was shot and killed by a man on a pre-apocalypse motorcycle before said man took off into the ruins and ducked into a garage there.

The ship's actual captain took up command and talked old man Robert into going with her and she interrogated the man to learn that the group the man belonged to were mercenaries and that this was tied into some job (the PCs were mercenaries and are trying to change schticks) and that they use the garage as a repair depot. The man was then slowly killed through being hung upside down from the main deck.

While on their way elsewhere, the captain and old man Robert had a discussion. Old man Robert admitted that he's going to die soon by something that the future has no real cure for- old age. Captain Annika claimed that old age is just a scapegoat. This was followed by a fun set of dialogue:

Annika: Call it...professional curiosity. I want to know what will finally do in the great Captain Robert.

Robert: I'm not that great.

Annika: Fine, the famous Captain Robert.

Robert: More like infamous.

Annika: They're one and the same.

He then told her that even if he did tell her his afflictions, there is no real cure for them, even with her insisting that she must know in order to try to prevent the younger Captain Robert from getting the afflictions.

This led to Robert telling Annika that his actions shaped the world through manipulating the past and how he failed completely, giving Annika ammo and the chance to tell him that she wants to ensure his long life so that he can help her "make things right again." He told her how everything's better due to the fact that there's no large amount of nuclear weapons, no wars constantly being started somewhere in the world at any given time, and that he feels that there's less of a danger to mankind by itself. Annika then started to try to wheedle some information about the future before (through getting a success at a conversation roll) actually asking about the Emperor to which he tells her that the Emperor will be killed in six months by a jealous wife after killing the other wife and before she kills herself. (I apologized for spoiling Wrath of Fate which Annika's player borrowed from me after I had finished it who is still in the second or third chapter)

We left off about at that point where the PCs are preparing to enter the garage and seeing what the future has in store.

My future plans:

-Since it took so long for the PCs to get to the part of entering the garage, the man escaped through a bolt hole (ancient sewers)

-The deal between old man Robert and Annika is completely a test of character to see if he could trust her with the Chrononautilus and to form who she will become since the younger him will see her personality transform and shape since she had been planning to kill the old man after getting payment and now she wants to help him.

-The Chrononautilus, when received is missing bulbs since they all broke or were taken (if the old man is with them, he'll mutter about someone obviously having a need for them.)

-There is always a chance that old man Robert, being of a highly advanced age may not live to see the end of the escapade. (wow, that will really be a downer)

- The missing son and daughter left in the chaos of the raids to be together.

- The man on the motorcycle is the brother of the leader of the Western Camelops who had planned for the son to abandon the tribe for the daughter of the Sacramento and paid the mercenaries to attack both tribes dressed as the other tribe in order to instigate a fight which he knows that the Sacramento can't fully defend themselves from (since they're mostly pacifistic in nature) with the idea that a stray bullet will kill his brother and he will become the leader of the tribe.

Yeah, I mixed a ton of references and call-backs and lampshades all over the place. I dunno if I played an old man Robert well but I still had fun doing so since I figured that he would become a bit craftier in old age and far more knowledgeable of things since he had been around the block more than a few times.