When your literary characters run amok...

 INTRODUCTORY NOTE:

 Please allow me a point of clarification for some readers who
may need it.   Often when I make a post such as this one, I get a certain
amount of clueless and unnecessary flack from people are too thick or
too hidebound to grasp what I have been trying to do in Usenet.

Such carping wretches have a very narrow view of how fictional
characters might be used, and they refuse to allow for experimentation
of any sort.  To the people I am referring to, fictional characters belong
between the covers of a book, or at least in a screenplay, short story,
play, whatever.  Something very traditional, in other words.

For years, I have been developing fictional characters through
Usenet postings as part of my famous performance art.   In other
words, instead of a character showing up on Page 15, and then
perhaps resurfacing on Page 35,  readers might first encounter
him or her in a posting I made on January 18, in select groups,
and they might next meet him in a February 3 posting.
Experience has shown me that his is is a useful and
challenging way to develop fictional characters.

Exactly WHAT is so difficult to grasp about that concept?

(I don't mean to be confrontive, but when you have been flamed
for such experiments in fiction by closed-minded twits who refuse
to enlarge their consciousness even a little to allow for the possibilty
of fiction going beyond traditional literary forms, matters can
get irritating, and my boiling point eventually takes a nose dive.

So again, if you are inspired to comment on anything relating
to what I say below, fine.   Criticize all you want to.  Challenge as
much as you desire.   But please spare all readers the ignorant
flames that make it clear that you are only sniping because you
are so blinkered regarding the traditional forms of fiction that you
refuse to allow for any experimentation.   When you do that, you
might as well be wearing a big button that says "Stupid."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHEN YOUR LITERARY CHARACTERS RUN AMOK...


Did you ever have to confront a situation where one or more
of your literary characters got away from you, and you began
to suspect they were running amok?

That is the situation I am now dealing with regarding
Twinkles. the alt.genius dwarf.

Before I tell you more, I must point out that I am not referring
to the forged postings whereby someone else has kidnapped
little Twinkles because of his great popularity.   That is forgery
and theft of literary characters.   That is another case entirely,
but it MAY be one of the things that have gotten Twinkles so
disturbed and confused and generally wrought up these days.
It certainly has not helped the situation, and I would ask all
persons engaged in this to desist immediately.   (And I can't
claim to be totally blameless here, because I DID poke Twinkles
in the eye with a pencil a few months back when he badly got
on my nerves.   That's a matter of public record, so I have to
'fess up.)

At any rate,  I am talking about the behavior of the authentic
Twinkles the alt.genius.dwarf, and I am referring to postings
I have  recently made while trying to put myself in the mentality
of my literary character.

Net performance art is akin to acting in at least some respects.
The best way to do it well is to try and get yourself in a frame of
mind that is suitable for a realistic portrayal.

As you know, for quite a while I was able to do that very
effectively with Twinkles.   Recently though, there have been
ominous developments.    Twinkles has started acting in
troubling ways.In fact, he has been doing terrible things.

At first he was just annoying.   For instance, Twinkles made
a cavalier remark to a very senior citizen in misc.writing.

That was uncalled for, because if the dear old fellow wants
to write about taking his grandaughter out for a ride and uses
the word grandaughter over and over in a very short post,
it is not the place of Twinkles to make sarcastic remarks.

Maybe the poster wanted to stress his age, to gain reader
sympathy.   That is his right and his choice, after all.   Yes,
Twinkles' follow-up bothered me a bit at the time, but I let the
incident go by the boards.

Then Twinkles made some rather vicious postings about
Hank-the-angry-drunken-dwarf.    Frankly, I think Twinkles was
jealous because Hank has his own newsgroup and Twinkles
does not.

Also, if you have seen Hank on Howard Stern, you know that
he is a short person of great dignity, and I feel that Twinkles
was way out of line in trying to pick a fight with Hank by making
personal remarks about Hank's size.

Twinkles gave himself away, as far as I am concerned,
when he announced that he was going to take over Hank's
modest little newsgroup.

So THAT was what it was all about!   He's cunning, that
Twinkles, just like the time last year when he grabbed at a
lady's argyle cashmere sweater and then tried to justify his
actions by saying there was a bug on her sweater--a bug
which no one but Twinkles seemed to see..

But in this case with Hank, It was plainly not simply someone
trying to start a flame fight, but it was a scheme to highjack a
newsgroup.    Twinkles is making me ashamed..

YOU HEAR THAT, YOU SHRIMP?   YOU ARE MAKING ME
ASHAMED IN FRONT OF ALL THESE READERS AND FANS!

Now, some might try to defend Twinkles by pointing out that
he is at least one foot shorter than Hank, so he has a license to
call Hank a "runt" and a "shrimp" and so forth, as a friendly
flaming challenge.

I can't quite agree with that.    It strikes me as demeaning to
an entire group of people, sort of like when a person of one
minority group uses racially disparaging epithets in public
toward another member of the same group.    Some might
see that as funny, but it simply stikes me as the sort of thing
that is not needed in a public forum.   It detracts from
everyone's dignity, including the readers.

I don't know what Twinkles' problem is.   For one thing,
he blames me for making him a "flat character."   In a way,
that is true, though I intend to explore ways of making him
more well-rounded as a human being.  Perhaps that will
get him settled down a bit.   Even so, being a flat character
is no excuse for wrong-headed and insensitive behavior.

One of the silliest notions I have heard Twinkles express
occurred the other day when Twinkles informed me that he
wanted to be like Bulldog Drummond.

The idea was absurd.   For those who don't real generations-
old detective stories, Bulldog Drummond was a sort of proto-
typical hard-boiled  detective type, a literary ancestor of Marlow
and Mike Hammer.    The idea of Twinkles somehow becoming
"like Bulldog Drummond" is the most ridiculous thing I can
imagine.  Well, almost.

Twinkles is no more a Bulldog Drummond than a pug is a
mastiff.    Oops!  I hasten to point out--as the result of the
embarrassment Twinkles has caused me--that my amusement
over his wanting to be like Bulldog Drummond has nothing to
do  with physical size.

Actually, it might be great to have a short person as a sort of
hard-boiled detective type, and in no way do I mean as a spoof
or anything like that.   I mean an authentic portrayal, perhaps in
stories where the short person's effectiveness with computers--
and with an "electronic whip" (or some other high-tech device
to level the playing field in physical combat) compensates for
the detective-hero's lack of physical size customarily used
to toss bad guys around.

Don't EVER try to limit the goals or ambitions of short people.
In  our modern age, they can be anything, even a famous
net performance artist.

Anyway,  I simply mean that Twinkles has none of the personality
traits need to make him another Bulldog Drummond.   Furthermore,
it would a presciption for failure for the writer, because Bulldog
Drummond (along with many of his remarks which would be viewed
as racist in our own day)   went out of fashion decades ago.   I mean,
when was the last time someone went into a bookstore and asked
if they had any Bulldog Drummond thrillers by Sapper, for pity's sake?

A writer would have just as much luck trying to make Twinkles'
a new version of "The Sooper" by Edgar Wallace!   Twinkles is
just not being  sensible.  He's acting like a nut.   He finds a book
of mine about Bulldog Drummond, and then he gets mad at me
for writing him as Twinkles instead as someone "like Bulldog
Drummond."

So, you can see, I can't reason with Twinkles anymore.
He gets more stubborn and impulsive every day.

You might say, well, give the horse his head and see where he
goes.   Fine, but as far as I can see, the "horse" has a head full
of mischief and bad ideas.

Ever have to deal with this sort of thing with one of your own
literary characters?

Is it time to kill Twinkles off, or what?





the alt.genius.bill-palmer
--firing posts at random from the window of the office
upstairs from rec.arts.prose