Given the complete character reversals that real people in real life sometimes go through, I find it difficult to find firm ground from which to argue that a character would never have done something. People do some fairly unexpected things, and every once in a while will do something like walk away from their life and principles and adopt different ones. Characters therefore probably need the freedom to do that as well occasionally, at least insofar as fiction is a mirror of life.
I do see the sort of shift that you're talking about, but apart from the cases that are just bad writing (shoehorning a character into the plot, for example, or not maintaining consistent characterization), which I think are no more or less objectionable than any other type of bad writing, I think "the character would never have done that" is often an expression of objection to a change in genre. A lot of readers are fairly attached to their genre (or, more generally, pick books based on the match between genre and mood) and don't like to be surprised.
I suspect a genre shift is part of what's going on with LKH. The initial Anita Blake books started as a sort of noir urban fantasy, then turned into vampire romance (this was somewhat signaled), and then turned into paranormal erotica. Noir urban fantasy to paranormal erotica is quite a shift; it's not quite up there with having one's hard SF space exploration turn into portal epic fantasy, but it's a change of direction that's going to throw a few readers off the vehicle. I think a lot of the "Anita wouldn't have done that" reaction is really "Anita wouldn't have been the protagonist of paranormal erotica," which translates into "what is this paranormal erotica doing in the noir urban fantasy series I was enjoying?"
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-10-12 11:48 pm (UTC)I do see the sort of shift that you're talking about, but apart from the cases that are just bad writing (shoehorning a character into the plot, for example, or not maintaining consistent characterization), which I think are no more or less objectionable than any other type of bad writing, I think "the character would never have done that" is often an expression of objection to a change in genre. A lot of readers are fairly attached to their genre (or, more generally, pick books based on the match between genre and mood) and don't like to be surprised.
I suspect a genre shift is part of what's going on with LKH. The initial Anita Blake books started as a sort of noir urban fantasy, then turned into vampire romance (this was somewhat signaled), and then turned into paranormal erotica. Noir urban fantasy to paranormal erotica is quite a shift; it's not quite up there with having one's hard SF space exploration turn into portal epic fantasy, but it's a change of direction that's going to throw a few readers off the vehicle. I think a lot of the "Anita wouldn't have done that" reaction is really "Anita wouldn't have been the protagonist of paranormal erotica," which translates into "what is this paranormal erotica doing in the noir urban fantasy series I was enjoying?"