Poll time!

[author_by_night]

This is in response to another poll a friend did regarding characters that were messed up because of bad writing. So here's my question - can writers (of shows, books or movies) mess up characters?[Poll #1673373]

Comments

[vifetoile.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I forgot to add 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'! That book screwed over this one character, Beautiful Moon. The author writes this book that's really focusing on the two principal characters, but Beautiful Moon is their nice, kind of personality-less friend. And then when they're all getting ready for their adult lives, I think it becomes pretty clear that the author can't think of what to do with Beautiful Moon.

So, in the one day in thirteen years that she gets to sit outside (no kidding, this is set in China, where upperclass women stayed inside ALL THE TIME), she gets randomly stung by a bee, has an allergic reaction, and dies. Horribly.

That's just plain carelessness, just "I have run out of ideas, here, death." Not even going into the hideous miscommunication and wangst conflict that she introduces in Act Three.

[vifetoile.livejournal.com]

And then 'Heroes.' Oh, 'Heroes.' But Heroes I think failed in part because they listened way too much to the fans, instead of doing what was right for the story. So they went with what they thought would be popular, and it backfired because it was horribly handled, and because popular stuff is usually dumb.

On the other hand, sometimes authors make character choices that make sense to the Author, and make sense in a certain way, but not to the Reader. Like Susan in Chronicles of Narnia. Or Shylock at the end of The Merchant of Venice. These things may be done with the best of intentions, and good reasons, but they don't make sense to the fans. That's a matter of interpretation.

But sometimes the authors are stupid. And they... I don't know, let the plot override characters, or refuse to change their beloved characters even for some badly needed character development.