a little bit more maturity

[beccaelizabeth]

Due to reading I did yesterday, I have decided that I have totally had enough of teenage characters.

Because however much they go through in the story, they get to the happy ending, getting married, together forever OMGsocute, and I'm just kind of... *facepalm* and waiting for it to all fall apart. Not because the relationship was in any way implausible. Simply and solely because they're still *teenagers*, and what do they know about forever yet?

Also, I've had enough of stories where characters get it right first time. Or where one early error screws everything else up. Or, as in the one I read yesterday, where not leading people into battle with unerring brilliance on your first time out as a teenager is actually a sign of deep personal flaws and not being chosen of god and all that. (Because obviously, one is born to lead, and the whole starting as a newbie and working ones way up thing doesn't fit the mindset at all.)

Actually, I'm kind of fed up of this chosen of god part. So a god chose you. So what? Maybe he was having a bad day! Get on and do something worth following! And if such things are done, what does being Chosen matter?

I want stories that have the same underlying philosophy that leads to democracy - the one where people prove their worth through action, not right of birth or bloody mystical swords. And, yeah, the one I read yesterday had one of each, the mystic chosen and the worked his way up dude. But I'm fed up of the chosen.

I want stories about actual grown up people who have tried and failed and tried again and done some actual work and had everything change a couple of times and basically have some *mileage* on them. Ones that can believe in love because they've had it and lost it and aren't going to mope around thinking they only get one shot. Actually, if they start the story mopey I can live with that, as long as the actual point is that actually no they get a whole bunch of chances because hello, still alive.

I mean this whole heroic coming of age thing is all well and good, but what do you do *next*?


One of the things I liked about Druss the Legend (in the David Gemmell book Legend) - ancient, by local standards for a warrior, but still kick ass and more determined than ever. Gets the job done and does not quit.
Also mopey about his true love, but I didn't say it was perfect.


I want stories... about Giles, basically, and not Buffy any more.

Angel had a bunch of the same stuff, only more blood drenched, but he also had that mystical prophecy whatsit. I'm fed up of prophecy. Prophecy is recipe, there is no fate but what you make.

But Giles is, family business aside, an ordinary bloke who put in decades of study and training to make himself into the kind of person who could go do the things he did. Nobody handed it to him. And he knew enough about the world to be afraid of it. But he went and did things anyway.


There needs to be more Giles stories. Preferably on TV with a reasonable budget and at least a full season to play through.


I know, be the change you want to see. I'm writing, just, not so very fast.

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I'm going through much the same thing where the Doctor Who stories I want to write and read are about Sarah Jane (and the rest of the UNIT crew) in their 50s, doing the best they can against the alien hordes. There should be a spinoff! (Or at least some Sarah/Giles...)

[beccaelizabeth]

ooh, interesting
because of course even without the Doctor they'd still do their jobs
just presumably get blowed up a bit more

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

What can I say but YES?

[beccaelizabeth]

*nods*

[theothermorgan2.livejournal.com]

(You don't know me, but... reading the minutiae of BtVS you ponder [esp. as it regards Ethan Rayne, &c] makes me feel slightly less... odd.)

A significant problem with post-coming-of-age stories is that in order to ring true, they (usually) need to be more nuanced, and quieter on the whole, than stories about adolescents. I had several more pithy observations ready to hand, but they essentially boil down to this: it takes a better writer to make characters whose lives no longer revolve around "mememe" and "dramadramadrama" believable and interesting. Most people (whatever their pretensions to writing), quite frankly, can't even be bothered to try.

[beccaelizabeth]

(things the internets teach us: we're never the weirdest one ;-) )

I guess with adolescents they have that whole thing that was the underlying metaphor in Buffy, that feels like the end of the world bit. And her mum was thinking that not going to the Bronze to hang out was end of the world-y. But actually teenagers have a ton of stuff to deal with and not many resources and less experience, so its all more difficult.

but 'grown ups' have a different set of constraints, and still have feelings.

do less of their lives in public tho, I guess.


soap suggests older people can still have dramadramadrama, but yeah, believable and interesting takes a lot of skill.

[theothermorgan2.livejournal.com]

The average soap opera probably has a lot less reality in it than Buffy ever did.

(Would I be an adolescent again, offered the chance? Oh hell no!)

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Mostly I prefer writing adults, but sometimes it's interesting to write teens with an awareness in there that all this isn't going to last forever. Like my new project with Zack and Rob. I want to end it with a Happy Ever After -- For Now, because yeah they might be best friends forever (my Parents are still friends with some of the people they've known since their late teens/early twenties), but the dynamic might alter without them falling out totally.

Or Mickey/Jake, which is an odd one, especially the way I write it. I think they're both very much One Person People, but with their pasts there's always the awareness that *anything* could go wrong at any point.