Authors owe me: honesty, continuity, and plenty of pr0n.

[kaigou]

I've been contemplating this most recent meltdown in the vampire corner of the fantasy-horror genre. (While, I admit, also asking what the hell is up with the sub-genre that it seems to have the largest, most public, authorial meltdowns: are the authors most likely to melt more attracted to that genre for some reason? or does the genre induce the melting? chicken, egg, someone?).

Anyway! anghara explained that authors -- who can't control cover, back copy, inner flap, etc -- really only owe readers The Story. (And this does not, therefore, mean authors then owe The Sequel, nor can readers sue for it. Ahem.) All true. But I think this is oversimplication. The author owes us the story promised, and by that I mean: the author owes us a certain loyalty to, and recognition of, the story's beginning, and the characters' beginnings. Ignoring any information gleaned elsewhere (from reader reviews to back copy), in the first opening paragraphs, it's now down to me, and the author. Show your stuff, author. Tell me what I'm gonna get.

The answers, I've found, that must get answered somewhere in the first chapter are really very simple. I look over the list of the books I read past the first chapter, in 2006, and I can see their first chapters all have two things in common. They contain information on:

what the protag wants

what's in the protag's way.

And that's pretty much all that's mandatory. Some stories only gave the barest information about where and when; fewer gave me how and who; fewer still mentioned any of why. When I deconstructed the successful stories in my pile, I realized that the non-whats (who, where, why, how, when) are the icing: the barest amount is just enough for the first taste. Too much expositional icing and the chapter-cake collapses under its weight. Mmm.. cake.

In that opening chapter, then, we learn the story's conflict-premise, and with that, the promise is made. From there, the author owes it to me to live up to the implications, to the backdrop, to the obstacles, to the expectations, created by that first introduction, inherent in that promise.

It shouldn't be rocket science! Do not give me a marvelous world full of fantastical things and promise, and then ignore all possibilities raised. Do not introduce me to an entire cast of lively characters and never mention them again. Do not tell me that the insurmountable obstacle is X -- and then tell me in the next chapter say Y would suffice. Do not drop me into a lengthy and detailed courtroom drama, only to up and relocate to a dude ranch for the story's remainder. In effect, do not pull a bait-and-switch, and do not show me a gun in the first act and bloody well not use it by the end.*

Yes, an author may argue, "but this is The Story, and that's all I owe you!" ...to which I say, no, what you owe me is the story you promised me. I know full well the protag's goals/obstacles change as the story progresses. I also have finally realized the one hard-and-fast rule in storytelling is that for every change, the author owes me a damn good reason. If the opening premise is not what you're writing for the bulk of the story, then ditch those opening parts and start where the story really begins. That's what I mean by owing me honesty, and IMO it's the first half of the author's promise: I won't jerk the tablecloth out from under you without some kind of warning (however subtle).

*I do not mean a twist-ending. That's different. And yes, there are examples of successful bait-and-switches. Best known is probably Thelma & Louise, but that was a seriously risky storytelling move, and it did have warning notes of impending disaster before the turning point (even if those went over the heads of unsuspecting audiences). It's certainly not a move for beginner writers, or most readers, for that matter.

The second half of the promise is continuity: these characters will remain internally consistent, beneath any developments.

Don't introduce me to a protag who refuses to get married, doesn't have a romantic bone in his/her body -- falls in love and suddenly is weeping every night because the phone hasn't rung**... you'd better believe the author owes me an explanation. Don't give me a protag raised in poverty who wants nothing more than to be out of the ghetto, then have the protag cheerfully deciding inner city slums are just the bestest evah. The author will definitely owe me an explanation.

The characters -- regardless of what some authors (or fans) protest -- are not real, and more importantly, the characters are not buying the books. I am. I do get to complain if the author breaks his/her promise: if the author introduces me to a protag, to goals, to conflicts, and then changes the game on me without warning. Even in a long arc-based series, heading into book ten, the author's promise of continuity says that we will look back on our first impression, contrast it to the character's current position, and see a logical and reasonable progression from then to now. If the author doesn't do that, the promise is broken.

**Again, yes, this can also be done: Much Ado About Nothing. It's a silly place, but a great example of moving two characters from one position to the radical opposite -- and, proving my point, Shakespeare does give us a reason.

There you go: "I owe you Teh Story in return for your hard-earned $15" also includes the sub-parts of "I'll introduce you to everyone at my party, but if I drag you out of there to go bowling with a completely different set of people, I'll give you a reason why, and if three of my friends suddenly go off their rockers and speaking in tongues, I'll explain that, too."

And now, we get to vampires, and more specifically, the most recent rant-spewing, online-connipping, logic-skewing, monkey-poking, meltdown.

difrancis mentioned on her journal of some of LKH's fans -- err, so-called fans? -- who were suggesting the fans band together to give LKH cancer, or AIDS. Ergh, that's harsh -- and these people consider themselves fans? What the hell are LKH's enemies like, then? No, don't answer that.

I've seen folks fuss about Anne Rice's writing going bland, stale, and needing an editor. But most of them just shrug that off, read the older books they like, and carry on. It's the LKH fans who describe themselves as bitterly disappointed, outright angry, and even completely betrayed. It's not just that LKH broke a promise, but that the promise she made was so big, and so phenomenal, and so promising, and in some ways so powerful -- even empowering. In realizing the author makes a promise at the onset of a story, I realized the logic had to be followed to the end: the bigger the promise you make, the farther you've got to fall if the fans think you've reneged. No safety net here, baby. They're going to hate you for it, because you didn't promise the foothills of the Appalachians, you promised Mount Frickin' Hood, and you delivered, and again -- and then you stopped.

But to really get why, in specific, LKH has been getting so much venom from her fans (as opposed to any other writer who certainly hears grumbling now and then, I'm told), you have to look at the specifics. When Joss Whedon was creating a counter-culture hero(ine) on television, LKH was busy doing the same in print. I mean, I don't read horror. I rarely read the vampire or werewolf genres; watching Buffy was, at times, a little odd, considering that. Yet even I knew about Anita; I cannot name another series' protag (other than Anne Rice's Louie, who reached the same proportions) who had recognition not only in-genre but ex-genre -- and I certainly can't name another female character in any horror series. In fact, the only long-running female-lead series I can think of is V.I. Warshowski, and she's influential for much the same reasons Anita Blake was: their original promises were to be kick-ass women.

I found the wiki entry on the Anita series, and it quotes LKH (from a very early interview) that she'd read tons of thrillers and dramas, and the men were always in teh spotlight. Women were always just on the edges of the stage. Male heroes got the chicks right there, but for female-heroes, everything happened off-page. LKH wanted a female character who could hold her own with the male protags, got the guys, got to ask the questions, got to pick the fights.

V.I. Warshowski's on her nineteeth book? Something like that. She still lives up to her promise. Somewhere along the way, Anita stopped.

If, at the end of Buffy's run, Joss had written Buffy as being a happy little wife, pregnant and barefoot, it would have gone against the grain of everything he'd shown me over seven years, and utterly betrayed the protag I had come to admire and adore, even to see as a kind of modern (and humanly falliable) role model. LKH's fans seem to say the same -- so when Anita stopped being strong-willed and conflicted, and became a mindless bedhopper with no real conflict, the fans knew the promise had been broken. That would prompt anger, yes, but there's an extra element here: I think it's far worse when you're the avant-garde, the sole example of that sort of protag.

People have told me -- and some of the less-than-stellar genre books I've read might bear this out -- that when you're the only one writing, you can get away with a great deal more slacking. I know when it comes to gay/lesbian characters, for a long time folks I knew (myself included) were willing to settle for anyone, even just a frickin' sidekick, just to see a non-het somewhere in print or on the screen. It's the same for any minority: the token black kid, the token asian, but at least it's something more than complete invisibility. That puts a lot of pressure on that token character, to live up to the expectations created by the specific audiences who've been craving this, waiting for a chance to see their kind of character as the protag, warts and all. For horror-fantasy fans, and vampire/Rice fans, Anita was that: the token female finally stepping into the protag's role.

And that means going a step further on the logic, to see why LKH is melting down now, rather than back when she'd first veered away from the original promise (apparently several books ago). I think it's because now, if I walk into a bookstore, or search on Amazon, there are at least four, five, maybe six different series with some kind of vampire-hunter female lead, or a part-demon female lead, or a female-ninja lead, or a whatever-female lead, invariably with non-human or part-human boyfriends in on-again, off-again tumultuous romances between damn good fights scenes and plenty of cussing and conflict and tight pacing. You don't even need to throw a rock in the average fantasy section these days, to hit at least three titles in which the lead protag is female, kick-ass, fights with the big boys, solves her own crimes thank you, can think on her feet, yet has a dark past or a dark future or a questionable amount of humanity.

Sorry, Anita, the field is getting rather crowded these days. As a protag, Anita may be the unspoken standard for the sub-genre, but she's no longer, apparently, the one with the real balls. All the come-latelys have come and are now passing LKH, from what it looks like, though LKH continues to reign supreme by coasting on her laurels (and her established name/reputation) as the precedent in the genre. I wonder how long that'll last, honestly.

And that, to wrap up, is where the pr0n comes in. If you can't come up with plot, if you can't tackle the conflict, if you've taken your character so far from the original promise that getting back again would require retconning five books or more, then you've got to do something else to stand out in an increasingly crowded field. So... you write pr0n. Soft-core, and not very well-done, but still, there don't seem to be as many other vampire-hunter-sub-genre authors reveling that much in the pr0n, so for those readers who want all the horror-fantasy that comes with vampires/demons, and all the softcore throbbing manhoods that come with romance, Anita can remain a superlative. The problem is that to do it, she has to continue breaking the promise that began the entire series.

So. Uhm, basically: it's a lesson to learn, I suppose. It's not just Teh Story that you owe me, but your honesty about where it'll go, and your commitment to the characters' continuity -- and integrity. And you owe it to me to remain true to both of those -- and if you break that promise a chapter in, I'll probably just toss the book on the "to be donated" pile and be done with it. Break that promise nine books into the series, after I've fallen in love and your character's moved into my heart and there's a spot by the sink in my head for his/her toothbrush and every new book is a chance to spend more time together... when you break that promise, don't be surprised if the reaction is more than a little bit passionate. Expect something more along the lines of viciously betrayed.

I wonder if LKH ever admits to herself that half her reason for melting down is because she knows the readers' anger is justified.

Comments

[wyvernfriend.livejournal.com]

I really do agree with you there and you're echoing quite well what I feel about Anita and what LKH did to her.

By the way, I friended you because of things like this, hope you don't mind, I don't expect to be friended back, you just looked like good antidote to some of the silly elsewhere on my flist.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

A good anitdote? I'm not quite sure 'divisive, snarky, and argumentative' is really a healthy antidote to silliness, but...okay! Nice to meet you!

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Sure, why not? And of course, entertaining too!

[http://users.livejournal.com/tesserae_/]

The author owes us the story promised,

The reason I stopped reading Anne Rice some 20 years ago was that there was lots of story, but she'd stopped writing endings - each book just led into the next one. 900 pages of angst need to come to a rip-roaring conclusion, imo.

And I wanted to like LKH, and god knows I read enough porn, but it was very odd reading her endless sex scenes - she was obviously writing it as character rather than porn, and it was endlessly repetitive. Kind if like spending hours trapped in someone else's id vortex while the story languished...incredibly tedious stuff, since the sex really read as gratuitous.

(And I've saved that bit about the first chapter - it's *exactly* what I needed to have put into words for the chapter I'm struggling with!)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

It's taken me four novels to realize that simple statement, and in some ways I feel like bashing my head against the books (or just bashing the books against the desk) that go on and on about conflict and whatnot, and rising tension and pacing, and ignore the most basic premises of what the readers require for the opening chapter to hook.

And part of the credit, I seem to recall, must go to moschus (erm, I could be wrong), who observed that what hooks a reader in the first chapter isn't falling in love with the characters -- six thousand words or so is too soon for that. What hooks the reader is curiosity, and you can only do that by giving them something to ask questions about.

[tiercel]

For some reason, the bit about accepting a certain amount of slacking when the author's the only one out there really struck a chord with me. I've noticed that I'll accept much worse plotlines if the book involves gay male leads, for example. Online, I'll read much worse fanfiction that involves my favorite pairings, or an obscure fandom. If it's Suikoden II Flik/Viktor fanfic, I'll forgive just about anything. (It's getting close to that point with Roy/Ed FMA fanfic; no one's writing it anymore.) If it's Harry Potter, it'd better be /really really good/.

Also, for some reason I find it hilarious that Anne Rice is also known for porn, although hers is at least marketed /as porn/, and under another name originally. (Actually, I felt a little sorry for Anne Rice, because people were publicly saying that her husband must have written all the books for her, which was just mean, not to mention kind of inappropriate speculation for an Amazon review.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

The issue about "accepting slacking if it's the forerunner" is really the problem I had with Tanya Huff. She does a major bait-and-switch in every story, going from mystery to suspense, and the two are radically different genres. (I think I've posted about this before.) That really creates a major cognative dissonance at the halfway juncture of the story, and threw me out on every single one of her stories -- I only kept reading out of sheer obstinancy, to be honest, that, and the hopes that the next one, the editor might have said, "look, you need to stop this."

Unfortunately, no editor did, nor, it appears, did anyone else: but she's one of the few in the SFF/horror genre who has a bi protag, a gay supporting character, and so on. For that alone I was willing to keep buying/reading, if only to support that branch of the genre. But eventually I had to realize that spending money on her stories -- with flaws that made me want to rip her story to shreds -- might not be interpreted as "I am doing this to support your bi/gay characters" but instead as "your writing/storytelling is just fine as it is."

That's part of the problem: when people read/buy your stories, what is it that's making them hold on? Is it really the same as what you think it is? Or is it only that there's this one positive element they can't get elsewhere, that they're willing to accept the trade-off of the rest of the crap in your story to get that one thing? I think this may be what's confusing LKH: people are reading for reasons that she may not entirely realize, and instead she assumes that purchasing her books mean you think the story is good as a whole.

There are plenty of books I read for which I hate 90% of it, but one single detail, or conflict, or character, is enough to make me keep going despite all else, despite pathetic copyediting, despite sparse description, despite stilted dialogue, whatever. Buying a book does not mean I am unabashedly supportive of every word in it.

Now, the key is: will I remember all this when I am published? Or shall I have to keep all of you around to remind me? *snerk*

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

yeah, some books have a little bit of something that makes you keep going despite all the flaws. Usually for me it's either a really great plot/mystery or a cool character. On the Tanya Huff stuff, I've only read her Sing the Four Quarters series. I liked it quite a bit--pretty consistent in its storytelling.

Di

[tiercel]

Well, since I always try books out from the library first, and fanfic is still free, I manage to avoid giving money to any authors who aren't at least competent storytellers. Well, unless the library is influenced by my reading habits.

I feel the same way about Tanya Huff, incidentally, though I gave up on her much sooner. As a matter of fact, I never got through any of the Quarters books, but I'm still fond of the first thing of hers I ever read, The Fire's Stone. (Actually, that was my first exposure to same-sex romance in fiction, and I was totally weirded out. Then I decided I really, really liked it. The rest is history.)

As soon as you're published, I plan on waiting in line to get a signature so I can tell you how much I hate your books and everything you've done with them. ;)

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes lets! We'll organize. Do a whole protest. Make signs. Chant.

Di

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

1. The libraries on my end of the city are poster children for lower-income-cum-mostly-retiree neighborhood libraries. Sigh.

2. The only Huff I've read has been her urban fantasy; I can name on both hands the high fantasy I've read in the past ten years, and I'm including Lord of the Rings.

3. Ha, ha, ha. *bashes head on desk* Hah.

[tiercel]

1. Well, that sucks. I'm even luckier in that respect than I thought.

2. Whereas I'm almost exactly the opposite. This explains why my recommendations don't work.

3. Mwahaha.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

I love this. Almost as much as I used to love Anita - because she was kickass, and human, and flawed, and didn't think the solution to all problems involving men was to take them to bed. And for that matter, if she had wanted to do it (which in the beginning was unlikely) not every man really wanted in her pants!

Anita went from a strong character to a slut!Sue IMHO, and I don't bother reading LKH any more. Porn is fun and fine, but it's not enough to carry a whole book by itself.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Almost as much as I used to love Anita - because she was kickass, and human, and flawed, and didn't think the solution to all problems involving men was to take them to bed.

This is why, as BtVS was sitting on the edge of cancellation (thank you, Fox network), before UPN picked it up, a number of people told me to read the Anita Blake series: an adult Buffy, in a lot of ways. Same archetype, of which there are so few in any genre, really.

However, the bookstore never had the first book in the series, I could never seem to be bothered to order it via Amazon, so I never read it. The only thing I have to go on is an outsider's observation of the compliments given in the first part of the series (with a huge, huge emphasis on "Anita is such a strong, conflicted, kickass, rounded character with dark and light"), and the complaints in the more recent books ("Anita's become a bed-hopping Mary Sue who's ultimately perfect, stronger than anyone, and everyone loves her and wants to have sex with her").

What I find most interesting about that, in some ways, is that female fans do not, it seems, want a superhero female character -- unlike James Bond. They don't want someone who's absolutely powerful, absolutely sexxxxy, absolutely whatever. They do want conflicted and thrashed and thrashing and questioning and imperfect.

It reminds me of the fact that it seemed the fandom -- specifically the female part of the BtVS fandom -- seemed to love Buffy the most when she'd been kicked down. Not because we want, as women, to see a strong woman taken down. But we want to see her question whether it's worth it, decide it is, pick herself up again, and kick ass anyway.

I think that's a big part of it, at least.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

[plug] Libraries have books, and if yours doesn't have that particular book they can almost always get it for you. ;) [/plug]

What I find most interesting about that, in some ways, is that female fans do not, it seems, want a superhero female character -- unlike James Bond. They don't want someone who's absolutely powerful, absolutely sexxxxy, absolutely whatever. They do want conflicted and thrashed and thrashing and questioning and imperfect.

That's the thing - James Bond I don't think even the guys who read that kind of stuff really identify with him so much as fantasize about being him, of having that kind of power, and of course all those toys. It's fantasizing about being able to do whatever you want to without consequences instead of really identifying with the character. When you're identifying you can say, "Yeah, I'd feel that way too in that situation," instead of just saying, "Hey, what kind of deus ex machina is going to get Bond out of this one?" A reader who can identify is more likely to get emotionally invested in a character than one who just likes the fantasy of having the Fates on their side for a change, hence the anger when the canon gets raped by its own author.

[sans-pertinence.livejournal.com]

Writers and unspoken literary promises... pffffft. If I don't like the direction a writer is going, I stop reading. In other words, I stop buying, which is the biggest wake-up call any reader can give a writer. If enough of LKH's readers acted accordingly, perhaps she'd straighten up and fly right. Maybe this meltdown is her wake-up call.

On the other hand, I've found that by the time most writers reach the ninth bloody book in a series (V.I. Warshowski notwithstanding) the bloom is waaaaaaaaayyyyyy off the rose and the writer ought to have made an end and tried something new two books back. Perhaps LKH's readers should encourage her to branch out, if they like her writing style so much.

I will never believe my favorite writers owe me a damn thing, and vice versa. I don't care enough to invest that kind of emotion into such a tenuous relationship. My interest is hard to hold, and a writer has to be pretty darn good to make me want to read more than one book, much less a series.

As for pr0n, unless there's a decent plot to back it up, it gets boring real quick. Why it sells so well is beyond me... though I'm not above writing it for my own (usually monetary) purposes.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but I think we might be debating from the opposite ends of the elephant (and not the one in the room, just the one with the thick tail versus the skinny one).

Ninth book, really, on that I agree: an extensive # of books really only works in an episodic sense. VI Warshowski can manage that (with a minimal arc in the background, mostly personal), because as a detective, she's going to go from case to case. Same with Hillerman's Chee; I've read that character from a bumbling junior police officer to a senior officer in his own right. I cannot think of any series in which the villian has remained the same guy-behind-the-curtain for more than six or seven books (and even those books are filled, by necessity, with front-stage conflicts that push the villian to the background for long stretches, a la Harry Potter).

I know Anghara didn't mean her words as an arrogant, "I wrote it, you bought it, we're done," kind of thing (I know her in person, so I know she'd be absolutely astounded and hurt if someone were to get that impression). But I do think some authors have that attitude, and writing the story the author wants, and saying, "that's it, I don't owe you anything," ignores that the author, in writing, has implicit agreements as part of the storytelling. That's basically what I'm outlining: what those implicit agreements are.

Which, really, boil down to: when I move the story along, I'll give you some kind of explanation/reason/justification so as to make it believeable, comprehensible, reasonable for you. Yes, I spent $15 on that book, and the author owes it to me -- within the story -- to make that money worth it.

Perhaps 'owe' isn't the entirely right word (although it has connotations of 'damn it, this is not a one-way street, you cannot say it's done just because you have my money now' that do fit what i mean). Perhaps it's more like...hrm. That I'm clarifying, here, the dangers of thinking that writing a story, publishing, having people purchase it, means that you've done something right.

In fact, it may be that the unhappy percentage are all unhappy for different reasons -- just as much as the happy percentage are all happy for different reasons. Do they keep reading because they're so deprived of solid gay/lesbian characters that they'll take any amount of bad grammar and pap just to get something? Or is your setting so divine, so spot-on, that they'll ignore the main protag just for the background folks? How do you know?

Anyway, incidentally, I've never seen a single review from anyone -- positive or negative -- that says they like LKH's writing style. What they seem to like, and consistently focus on, is that they liked having a female protag who kicked ass, and they're mad she's now just a mattress.

[underpope.livejournal.com]

Huh. Very well written and explained. I often find myself puzzled by why people who were loyal fans in the early days of a series so often take such glee in trashing the later days (witness how many people took so poorly to the last two seasons of Buffy). While I still think this is mostly due to a snotty sort of arrogance, you've definitely shown that there can be more legitimate reasons for it.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Nod nod, and thanks. LKH's reaction to her fans, and her fans' reaction to her, didn't really click in my head, either, until I recalled being unhappy during BtVS' season six -- mostly at its uneven and spotty storytelling, continuity, characterization -- yet despite that, I was there, everywhere, still watching. Cringing sometimes, other times quite unhappy, but in some ways, the creator(s) -- since it was hardly 'only' Whedon by that point -- had put so much into it, and brought the story so far along, that I had to believe they'd pull it out. Somehow.

Knowing that, and that I held on for how good it'd once been (in both quality, and in the general storylines' hope/optimism), I can't really blame folks who continue to buy/read LKH's work, hoping that this time, somehow, she'll pull Anita through.

[windsorblue.livejournal.com]

Hm. Did you mean Lestat up there instead of Louis in reference to Anne Rice? Because a big part of my problem with the turn the Vampire Chronicles took was that Anne Rice fell head over heels in fangirly love with Lestat, and all her other characters became accessories for him. Not that Lestat wasn't a great character at first - he was fascinating in the first few books. But so were a lot of the other characters, and most of them were allowed to wither in Lestat's shadow.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Nope, I meant Louis. Interview really did have Louis as its centerpiece, though Lestat was clearly the driving force throughout the story. (It was, really, a rather fascinating conceit for a story: an interviewer telling the story of an interviewee telling the story of the cathartic protag/antag.) But it was Louie, when that book first hit, that really swept past the borders of genre; later, yes, Lestat became the focus on Rice's attention, but it was Louie that, as a character, somehow transcended the usual horror/fantasy genre ghetto walls and pushed Rice's name into a broader playing field.

Anita did the same for LKH (as opposed to her earlier works); Buffy did the same for Joss. They were all, in some way, breakout characters.

I just like looking at what they have in common, what made each of them (at least in the early days) transcend what's normally an impenetrable wall o' genre.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have specified "a GOOD story" *grin*

One that includes those things you mention - honesty and continuity.

Of course there's always litfic where continuity is optional (I never COULD get into "cloud atlas", for instance, which is sort of genre but genre masquerading as high-falutin' litfic and it just LOST me completely), and there's always people pulling a Frey if they think they can get away with that. But yes, from where I stand, I owe that story - the story which has feet to stand on its own, has a beginning a muddle (not a typo) and an end, and which has internal consistency of a sufficient quantity to be able to support itself on it. And characters who behave in ways which mesh with the story's reality, in teh sense that I get extraodinarily annoyed at "Adaptations" of jane Austen peopled with twentieth century people with twentieth century attitudes mouting Autsenesque platitidues and coming off as a parody or a mocking rather than a serious story... but that's another can of worms entirely.

in other words, what I wanted to say was, well said.

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

I think so to. Comes back to Coleridge's Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It's the contract a reader makes with a book--that the reader will willingly suspend all disbelief and go into a book completely open. But the book's contract is that it will be internally consistent, offer a coherent/cohesive/rational plot (which means in fantasy that the magic and world have to make sense) and that there will be no anachronistic language, or nothing that breaks that spell of disbelief. The reader has to know that while s/he is in the book, s/he is really in that world and that those characters really exists. World-building is kind of a compact--the reader brings as much to the table as the writer and if one of them fails in some way, the spell is broken.

I think it's very interesting that LKH's have gone as rabid as they have. So incredibly furious. I mean, when I stopped liking her stuff, I stopped reading it. Didn't think much about it. But there is such a strong sense of betrayal and fury and resentment . . . Maybe you're right. The promise was so great that the breaking of it results in a much deeper reaction. And in some ways, it's a kind of role reversal--the woman tomcatting around instead of being deeply attached to a single man. That's a traditional role of say, James Bond. And so just as with her ass-kicking, she's reversing the roles. Except that for me, there's a certain ick factor--less because of the graphic sex (and I would agree that it seems fairly gratuitous)--but because there seems so little choice to what she's doing. She seems less powerful than more, less smart, less capable. I liked the old Anita. But this one . . . not really.

Di

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

The one time I saw a truly horrific backlash was when Joss killed off Tara on BtVS. A young, postive, healthy lesbian with boundaries, who stood up for herself and was strong and compassionate, gorgeously (and realistically) and intelligently feminine, and he killed her.

Afterwards he said, this was something he'd planned all along, this was the way the story needed to go, but he issued an apology afterwards in several interviews, after getting letters and emails from closeted high school and college girls. These young women had watched Tara through her growth and into strength and a relationship, and she was theirs, and he took her away.

I recall in one interview that he regretted the 'anguish', which really does capture the level of grief, and maybe it doesn't matter that we're discussing a fictional character. And that is what I mean by the fact that if an author taps into some kind of archetype, some massive cultural vacuum... if you break that promise, then, yeah. They're gonna hate you.

[aramuin.livejournal.com]

Personally, one of the things that outright repulsed me from book ten on was the change in focus from 'relationships' (which included warts and all) to 'physical compatibility'.

The biggest problem from book ten on, was Micah. The character (despite numerous references from other characters to his supposed compatibility with Anita) didn't fit and continues to serve no real plot or developmental purpose in the stories.

Honestly, I saw Micah's initial introduction as a rape scene. I was disgusted that Anita - supposedly rested and adapting after her stint with Edward and the white witch - stopped being the plausible, flawed protagonist and started to act like the heroine from a trashy bodice ripper.

The resulting explanations for why Anita, after nine books of 'sex comes only after emotional connections are formed', falls almost literally into bed with this man are hasty, ill-conceived and have no grounding that I can see in the previous books. It's rather like LKH fast-forwarded three or four years in the space of less than three pages and I spent the rest of the book wondering what I'd missed.

During a recent discussion on this, a friend of mine put her finger on what bothered me about Anita. She is no longer a heroine as such, she's become a 'man's hero' with the genders reversed. She's the only strong woman in her series and again, during the later books, the inferiority of women as a whole in the Anita-verse means that Anita stops being a role model and starts being a man in woman's clothing.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

She is no longer a heroine as such, she's become a 'man's hero' with the genders reversed. She's the only strong woman in her series and again, during the later books, the inferiority of women as a whole in the Anita-verse means that Anita stops being a role model and starts being a man in woman's clothing.

Reminds me of Joss Whedon's comment about setting out, purposefully, to make sure that the men around Buffy are as strong as she is (in many if different ways) and are not threatened by her, but find her strength a positive attribute -- and that the women around her, equally so. That she does not exist in a world of weakness where she's the only strong one, but that her strength reflects the world she comes from: one in which strength (of mind, of humor, of character, of body, of heart) is prized and cherished.

The resulting explanations for why Anita, after nine books of 'sex comes only after emotional connections are formed', falls almost literally into bed with this man are hasty, ill-conceived and have no grounding that I can see in the previous books.

Which is why I say that if an author is going to expect me to read (and pay for reading) on my end, then the author can't go changing boats mid-stream on a character. There must be continuity; lacking that, just start a new frickin' series with a whole new character, then!

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Thanks. ;-)

I think part of the problem sometimes with experienced authors on the web is that you -- or any other experienced, established, and skillful author with sales and reputation to back it up -- are easily accessed by newer authors who can/may take at face value what, to you, is a simple statement: that you owe us readers what's between the covers, no more, no less.

Which is true, but such may inadvertantly encourage those newer authors I read/hear who say, "this is the story I wrote, it's the best story in me, and that's the story you get," and are willfully blind to the fact that you can't just toss out the story and not recognize that within the story there are obligations. Follow your muse, certainly, but for pete's sake, don't throw away the road map.

Hrm, maybe I should put that on an icon. *fiddles*

another slight dovetail

[drich.livejournal.com]

Just peeked in at Jim Butcher's lj to see if he'd updated at the end of the year. Yep, scenes and sequels, and I can see how that plays out against LKH's downward slide and readers have either stopped caring and reading or gone rabid.

He's also posted up some of the negative reviews and opinions he's received, and why he'd rather have well reasoned concrit.

Thanks for these essays, by the way. They've actually helped me focus better as a reader as to why I liked or didn't like something.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I'll have to go check it out. (I've not listed Butcher's journal on my flist because he updates so irregularly that I didn't see reason to bother, to be honest.)

Most of what I say here is really working through what does, or does not, work for me, and trying to tackle each issue both as a long-time reader, and as a writer. I still say that you don't have to be a cook to know the pie is burnt -- but now I'm at the point that this is not enough. Now I want to know why the pie is burnt, and how I can avoid that myself.

[sevun.livejournal.com]

mmm...pie.

I think the above pretty much says you're doing a pretty damn good job with that pie.

When Fans Attack (a new FOX special)

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

sgreer, wonderful post, and you have a very interesting blog. I was directed her through a couple journals/communities... I wasn't sure where to put this reply (and I hope you don't mind me chiming in) since it addresses several statements in different threads, so I thought I'd just bundle it all together here.

difrancis said above:

Except that for me, there's a certain ick factor--less because of the graphic sex (and I would agree that it seems fairly gratuitous)--but because there seems so little choice to what she's doing.

Right there -- that's the crux of the problem, I think.

I don't feel the sex itself is a problem for the "ex-fans" so much as the matter in which it happens. It's a hard thing to see happen to any likable character, but when the strong, assertive, archetype-busting woman is the one who becomes subject to repeated metaphysical (and even physical, at the onset) rapes... that's a terribly bitter pill to swallow. Even without her subsequent acceptance of the magical inheritance which is literally forcing her to have sex "every couple of hours" (to quote the author in question) with not only friends and lovers, but strangers and even people she states outright as finding distasteful. And she doesn't just accept it, she changes her entire life -- right down to her priorities -- do accommodate it, and is willing to cut out friends and family out of her life (ergo the books) in order to defend it.

sgreer, you are absolutely spot on in your analysis of an author's promises, broken or kept, and how this has affected the Anita Blake fandom. I have to applaud a post which states so eloquently something I've been struggling to put into words myself. But it's not just that LKH turned Anita into a "mattress." Anita is now the equivalent of a battered wife (with the ardeur as the spouse in question) who takes the abuse with a smile, her anger reserved for those who'd question her well-being.

I think that's what's really making fans "rabid." (And I suppose I'm technically one myself, belonging to a snark community... though I don't wish death, dismemberment, or disease on the author in question, just a wake-up call.) And once that occurred the dam broke, and people felt free to voice problems with the series they'd otherwise overlooked because, as was discussed above, Anita had been an anomaly in the genre and people wanted to encourage a new trend.

Adding to all of this Hamilton's own behavior... this isn't the first time she, or her husband, or her assistant, have lashed out at "negative fans" in blog entries or interviews. This recent incident seems to have caught a lot more attention than previous rages, but in the past year she's been known for them among the readership. An author breaking promises inherent in his/her text can cause a lot of fury, but I bet a lot of her detractors felt free to wreck havoc once LKH started to insult them personally. (Not by name, but as a group.)

A few people have questioned by fans don't walk calmly away from the wreckage. I don't buy anymore of LKH's books myself, so I can't speak for those who do. And I don't always feel comfortable with the vitriol that can be spewed at the mention of her name. But I do watch her antics, I am interested in how they play out via her career and the reaction in the community, and I want to know how the rest of her books unravel.

What it boils down to, sadly, is that Hamilton created a world and characters I (and others) once cared about deeply -- she established a relationship between her books and her readers. It's over, but it ended very confusingly and abruptly, so I want closure. Us bitter fans are a bit like scorned lovers -- we were dumped, for reasons never satisfactorily explained to us and with a lot of hurtful words, and while we get together and convince ourselves we're much better off, we still secretly want the person who broke our hearts (only metaphorically, thank goodness) to realize how they hurt us and apologize.

Or at least end up dead in a ditch somewhere. (Again, metaphorically.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comments -- I'm not certain whether the previous post & this one led anyone to thinking I've read all the books*. I hope I've not given that impression; my observations are based solely on the complaints of the fans, and sort of a deconstruction or working backwards from there (and extrapolation on how my own fandom -- BtVS -- reacted at the risk of Joss doing anything remotely like that to us**).

Okay, here's explanations:

* I never found a copy of the 1st book in the bookstore, never bothered to remember to order it from Amazon, back when LKH was on her third book, I think. I did find the second book. Got about two paragraphs in, and said, "let's sure hope UPN picks up Buffy, because I'm not up for this." (Heh.) I think it was more a matter of the fact that vampires/hunters are among my less-favorite genres, so I really only had room in my head for one series.

** Joss veered dangerously close, I'll admit: he gave us the Fury-Noxon Spike vs. Anti-Spike debacle for all of season six, including a rape attempt on Buffy. To say the fans went batshit is pretty much an understatement. I can see the season's progress, in hindsight, but at the time, it was a shocker.

The key, I suppose, is in that second note: if you can see the progress in hindsight, even if a character acts 'out of character' for a scene or period of time. If you find out she was just pulling one over on the bad guy, if you find out she was drugged, she didn't have all the clues, whatever. But your point here:

it ended very confusingly and abruptly, so I want closure. Us bitter fans are a bit like scorned lovers -- we were dumped, for reasons never satisfactorily explained to us

pretty much sums it all up. We do all want closure with characters we admire/enjoy, and sudden abrupt change in personality sure ain't it. The vindictive and combative stance LKH takes with any fans who even remotely question her is only fuel on the fire. To me, that sort of attitude seems so counterproductive as to be pathological. I just don't get it.

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain whether the previous post & this one led anyone to thinking I've read all the books*. I hope I've not given that impression; my observations are based solely on the complaints of the fans, and sort of a deconstruction or working backwards from there

Oh no, I understood that you hadn't read the books. Which is why I thought it might be all right if I added my own commentary, as someone who has been involved in the fandom for a while and then the, er, anti-fandom. I knew you were interested in examining the fan reaction, rather than LKH's behavior (which is a phenomenon in itself), so I hoped I could provide a bit more information on that angle.

Joss veered dangerously close, I'll admit: he gave us the Fury-Noxon Spike vs. Anti-Spike debacle for all of season six, including a rape attempt on Buffy. To say the fans went batshit is pretty much an understatement.

Exactly. Now, can you imagine what it would have been like if Spike had not only completed the act, but afterward Buffy had continued to sleep with him and defended him against her friends?

The parallels with some of the changes in BtVS are definitely there. (I thought about writing a little more about that in my first comment, but it was so long already!) But that is what happened in the tenth Anita Blake book, though she didn't have a previous relationship or even a passing acquaintance with her assailant. (Does that make it better or worse, one has to wonder...) The scene was so disturbing, and created such an outcry, it had to be re-written for both the mass market and trade paperback editions.

I guess I'm trying to dispel the notion that LKH's detractors aren't genuinely outraged by not just her behavior, but her treatment of the series -- and with reason. I certainly don't support or excuse the more personal attacks on LKH, but I don't think the trouble is that her readers are masochists or completely blind to the fact that as the creator, LKH is ultimately in charge of her own writing. I know your post was presenting alternative reasons for the fan reaction, and I'm very happy to see this kind of discussion about a series' inherent promises in regards to any fandom, not just Anita Blake. I just want to provide a little context/comparison for those who, while they can grasp the idea of an author betraying the promise she made with her first books, don't really understand the sheer emotion involved in the backlash.

But yes, I've been involved in both fandoms, and I think you're on the right track in terms of examining a sense of "betrayal" among some fans. Though thank goodness, Joss Whedon never launched a very personal crusade against his critics. Because he's sane.

Which brings me to...

The vindictive and combative stance LKH takes with any fans who even remotely question her is only fuel on the fire. To me, that sort of attitude seems so counterproductive as to be pathological. I just don't get it.

It's definitely one of the reasons a lot of disappointed readers stay involved even when the books are no longer worth it -- trainwreck syndrome. Again, it's the whole "scorned lover" analogy. There was an established author-fandom relationship for quite a few years, especially considering that for so long it was a cult following, with publicity mostly word-of-mouth and reader support. To have that implode in such a spectacular way leaves a lot of people (including me, hello, might as well admit it) fascinated over the why and wherefore of it, so we stick around for the fallout.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

In some ways your comments just underline/prove my point (I think), because it is much like Joss' close-to-the-line issue with Buffy, too: that we have a strong female protag and attempted rape. Yes, I know, there's a huge part of the female world who harbors 'rape' fantasies, but we also all know there's a big difference between asking a trusted lover to play a little rougher than going out and tracking down a rapist. When it comes to rape -- something one in four women will experience in their lives, last I heard -- what we want, as female members of the audience, is to see the woman kick the living shit out of her rapist, and tell him exactly where he's getting off.

That, in some ways, was what had a lot of fans upset (as I recall) about Buffy -- we wanted her to slap Spike waaaay down. She was the one we wanted to be! She could toss people about like tissues, she had snappy comebacks, she could worry about being girly and having fashion sense and still throw a mean punch and it didn't make her a 'man' and it didn't make her less of a woman.

I can definitely see, given what you're saying here, how such a shift in the storyline would've created a strong repulsion amongst a lot of fans. Ergh, really, is my only reaction.

Either you write a character who's a wish-fulfillment (often a cardboard critter, it seems): perfect, pretty, everyone wants her, she lives out all our fantasies including being helplessly seduced by some rake blah blah blah that's romance wish-fulfillment. Or you write (and that, it seems, was LKH's original promise) a pot-boiler fulfillment, where the woman's tough, strong, smart-assed, whip-smart, and her flaw isn't falling helplessly in love but in being even unable to fall helplessly in like, or even non-helplessly in like.

Granted, the two are radical opposites (hence the issue of switching from one to the other being a difficult progression), but between the two, I'd rather the latter. There are way too many of the former already. We need more of the latter, to show that a woman can do all that as much as a man, and yet still be a woman. And, uhm, stuff. *jetlagged*

[joehundredaire.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I'm content to knock back some spiced rum and Dr. Pepper and then unleash bizarre lesbian crackfic on the world. Nobody ever has high expectations of me. They just tune in to see who's waking up gay today... and who's next to her when it happens.

Although there have been a few herms lately. Does herm + girl still count as waking up gay? Because you still get Tab A -> Slot B action, but between the two people there's still four breasts involved. And not nasty fat man boob breasts either.