With summer slowly moving its way into fall, some of my favorite shows are preparing their next season run and with them comes a bit of frustration, and a bit of concern, on how these stories I'm looking forward to will progress. Because it seems, more and more noticeably, that our '30 minutes or less give me what I want mine mine mine' mentality has begun to snowball into some of the most ridiculous notions I have ever witnessed as an artist and a writer. We've gone from sitting back and watching characters develop over an unmeasured time span with little to no input on what we were seeing, to being adamant that we can tell the stories we are voluntarily watching better than those that have created it. As if each show is really a 'choose your own adventure' book. Like somehow we are being cheated out of a custom designed experience because there isn't just the right amount of balance on the show for one to personally connect to it.
When the hell did we get like this? Shows may one day become something in which we can adjust on a whim when holodecks finally come into fruition but we're not there yet. No one, who willingly watches something, has the right to dictate how that story or its characters unfold unless they legally are entitled to. It isn't a catering business with a list of choices and it certainly isn't a made to order dollar menu. At best, stories are buffets. You stop in, you look around, you see what they have to offer and you take your chances on what you think you will like in what you have seen. If it upsets you, you have the option to not tip and leave, never to return.
I could not imagine, as a writer and certainly not as an actress or actor, someone being not only crude but down right disrespectful about a story I have presented to the public because I don't meet their individual needs. Just because our world is bright and colorful doesn't mean as a writer, or even in my art, I have the ability to capture that all the time in one continuous flow. I'm not dropping rainbows onto paper and hoping everyone is liking it. I'm creating a moment, a singular story weaving together with multiple, but still limited, characters in an expanding, and yet limited as well, series of events. Yes, there is a need for diversity, depending upon of course the structure or environment of the story. And yes, there should be a blended balance of characters, but not everyone is cast to be a leading character to drive the stories onward, and not everyone has control of casting in the first place.
This is where my concerns and frustrations merge. I struggle, when I see a slow building story of characters that are not archetypically defined, to listen to other fans when they begin ranting and raving because concepts or perceptions they see in a characters' life are not developing their way. I don't get how they can have the assumptions that they know exactly how this story is suppose to go down. Yes, you can voice your input, there is nothing people who create something want more than to have the publics opinion voiced, we strive to invite thought and stimulate imaginations. But you don't get to throw tantrums when we stick to our game plans, our story-lines, because we are the bards creating them.
I am also, then, concerned that their protests narrow down the perception of the characters and the stories being delivered. That they are Tunneling Characters to a Limited Growth by wanting them to have a pre-determined destination instead of simply sitting back and waiting to see where they may go. I know myself that I don't limit my characters by boxed traits. There is no fun in that for me. I want to see where my characters take me, I want to grown with them, to be as amazed and surprised as those following their progression as fans, but as the writer or artist. I may not know how a particular scenario I have created will lead my character onward. I may never understand a character's need to be faulty when I expect, like everyone else, that they should be better. But so long as I feel it is honest, that I feel it is true to the building blocks I have created that character on; that even if I don't like it I still recognize that it is the more realistic representation of the character, then I will continue them onward at the pace they have set.
Because that is all I really want in the end. To see what journey awaits me as a voyeur or a creator with them. To be as wide eyed and fascinated seasons later as I was when I saw the very first pilot. To absorb in their truths, their success, their failures, and their worlds; whether or not they are as diverse as myself. This is what storytelling is for me. It's an unlimited path of discovery, a leap from one place to the next with nothing more than tiny tendrils moving me ever forward. But perhaps I'm alone in this. Maybe this is simply how I view the world. That it isn't catered to one particular group or another but that it is an ebb and flow of waves of perception.
Or perhaps not? You tell me? What do you look for when you are watching a show and/or how do you tell a story?
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