History Main / AuthorFilibuster

* Professor Michael Murphy in the BabylonRising series frequently lectures his students, friends, and acquaintances on the the correctness of his conservative Christian views. It just so happens that Murphy's creator, Tim LaHaye (of LeftBehind fame) is a conservative Christian.

* The ''LeftBehind'' series has this in spades. Each of the 16 books bring the narrative to a full stop on at least one occasion to provide sermons that are several pages in length. The final book, Kingdom Come, is especially bad as it spends a chapter retelling the stories of 3 old testament figures.

* Like so many other things of the literature scene, this gets heavily satirized by Creator/WalterMoers in many of his books through his [[BunnyEarsLawyer Bunny Ears]] AuthorAvatar Hildegunst von Mythenmetz (Optimus Yarnspinner in the english translation). The plot of the books are actually a story inside a story, that are told by Hildegunst who is constantly breaking the fourth wall (which is in fact, an in-story fourth wall) to comment on the story he is currently writing down. Moers hangs a giant lampshade on it by having Hildegunst invent the ''Mythenmetzian Tangent'', a literary device in which the author stops telling his story and instead talks about something entire else. Be it the interior decoration of his study, or a rant directed at his most hated critic, or just [[MindScrew entire pages of the word "Brumli"]]. Hildegunst does however fail to explain the purpose of this device, which is completely intentional.

* The 4th ''MaximumRide'' novel by JamesPatterson. While, in the first 3 books, the main characters were always on the move and in danger, fighting for their lives against evil scientists, and keeping a low profile, in this one Max and the flock are brought to Antarctica to combat '''global warming'''. The global warming commentary is there but not overwhelming until the last few pages of the book (before the epilogue) which has Max ''making a speech to the US Congress''(a ''literal'' Filibuster) concerning global warming and referencing the current big thing about compact fluorescent light bulbs (that if every house replaced one normal bulb with one of these, it would be "like taking a million cars off the road"). The protagonist of this series was the subject of kidnapping and human experimentation, but goes out of his way to state that global warming is worse than those things. The speech also contains a lot of America-bashing (pig-headed, short-sighted, arrogant, etc). To finish it up, the very last page has 5 facts/tips about "Saving the world. Wings not required" which is more global warming / recycling commentary (and is signed "--Max").

* In ''UniversalWarOne'' #5 and #6, various characters expose the author's political view on "american capitalism".

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* Book Three of ''NativeSon'', particularly toward the end, and at its absolute worst during each of the two speeches during Bigger's trial, especially by Bigger's attorney; each of these speeches went on for over 20 pages of the book. The longest one was exactly 24 pages.

* Creator/StephenKing takes a fair bit of page time at the end of the first act of ''Literature/ElevenTwentyTwoSixtyThree'' to have his protagonist internally monologue about [[NostalgiaFilter how great]] [[AuthorAppeal the year 1958]] is and [[TakeThatAudience how bad 2011 sucks in comparison.]] [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the character has just gotten [[spoiler: trapped in the year 1958 and may simply be trying to talk himself into being okay with it.]]

* Creator/StephenKing takes a fair bit of page time at the end of the first act of ''Literature/ElevenTwentyTwoSixtyThree'' to have his protagonist internally monologue about [[NostalgiaFilter how great the year 1958 is]] and [[TakeThatAudience how bad 2011 sucks in comparison.]] [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the character has just gotten [[spoiler: trapped in the year 1958 and may simply be trying to talk himself into being okay with it.]]

* Creator/StephenKing takes a fair bit of page time at the end of the third act of ''Literature/ElevenTwentyTwoSixtyThree'' to have his protagonist internally monologue about [[NostalgiaFilter how great the year 1958 is]] and [[TakeThatAudience how bad 2011 sucks in comparison.]] [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the character has just gotten [[spoiler: trapped in the year 1958 and may simply be trying to talk himself into being okay with it.]]

*** One particularly egregious example has an episode defending OJ Simpson and in the closing scenes there's an explanation about how it's wrong to judge others and it end with OJ stabbing three people. The BrokenAesop infuriated many viewers who felt that they had just had a half hour of time stolen from them.

* In the original 1816 version of ''{{Frankenstein}}'', during the scene in which Elizabeth and Victor are visiting the condemned Justine Moritz, Mary Shelley allows Elizabeth to go into a completely inappropriate rant against the inhumanity of the death penalty (Shelley and her husband Percy were strongly against it) - inappropriate for that dramatic moment, anyway, because Elizabeth is meant to be there comforting and consoling her friend who's just been condemned ''under'' the death penalty. This led one editor of the 1816 edition to remark that Elizabeth isn't the sort of friend you'd call up to cheer you up if you've had a bad day...

* Creator/NealStephenson does this a ''lot''. He keeps you on your toes, too - sometimes he's just rambling about RestorationComedy for no good reason, but sometimes the five-page demonstration of van Eck phreaking will turn out to be a key plot point. Stephenson's filibusters tend to less about telling us about his political views (though that does show up--science and free markets are good, and academic liberalism and postmodernism are bad, according to ''Literature/{{Cryptonomicon}}'', ''Literature/TheBaroqueCycle'', and ''Literature/{{Anathem}}'') and more about his almost obsessive desire to [[ShownTheirWork show his work]] (think the long discussion on Sumerian religion in ''Literature/SnowCrash'').

* ''Literature/DonQuixote'': Parodied and lampshaded by Cervantes. The critics said that the chivalry books were plagued by a lot of lengthy discourses from a lot of different abstract themes, immobilizing the action and discouraging the reader. Cervantes was a great writer, so maybe his intents at author filibuster could be nor boring, but the reactions of the people who listen to them is very realistic: Don Quixote talks for nearly two pages in the "Discourse on The Golden Age", Part I, Chapter XI, and for almost "Discourse on Arms and Letters", Part I, Chapter XXXVIII, Don Quixote talks about six pages. The first filibuster is lampshaded: ''"All this long harangue (which might very well have been spared) our knight delivered because the acorns they gave him reminded him of the golden age; and the whim seized him to address all this unnecessary argument to the goatherds, who listened to him gaping in amazement without saying a word in reply."'' and in the second the action really never stops, because all the other characters have their dinners while Don Quixote talked... for 6 pages and 2 chapters!: ''"All this lengthy discourse Don Quixote delivered while the others supped, forgetting to raise a morsel to his lips, though Sancho more than once told him to eat his supper, as he would have time enough afterwards to say all he wanted."''

* ''Sisterhood'' series by FernMichaels: Well, this series has gone into this trope a number of times. The book ''Payback'' portrays a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) as scum of the earth who suck up your money like leeches, use that money to pamper themselves, and will simply stand back and not lift a finger to help you as you die of a life-threatening illness. The book ''Vendetta'' portrays China as a CrapsackWorld that cheerfully brings YellowPeril wherever it goes! The book ''The Jury'' has one character Nikki Quinn tell the other characters about the vicious cycle of abuse between spouses. The book ''Fast Track'' portrays the World Bank (particularly it's president) as money-sucker that will leave poor countries to rot and die. The book ''Under The Radar'' portrays a polygamy sect as a cult made up of the CorruptHick, rapists, and pedophiles hiding behind religion and treating women as a BabyFactory.

* The Marquis De Sade was quite fond of this trope, intercalating his famously depraved sex scenes with just as many, if less famous, lengthy rhetorics about the pointlessness of morality in a Godless universe and the glories of hedonism. ''The Philosophy in the Bedroom'' is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin probably the most blatant example]].
** This is actually something of a subversion: in de Sade's day, the word "philosophy" in a book title used to be code for "porn". The title (and his then-already-infamous name) capitalize on this -- only to show readers a woman walking into a brothel, picking up a pamphlet lying on the piano... which is then given in full length, eclipsing anything else in the story.
** Even in ''120 Days of Sodom'', which was allegedly written to be a catalogue of different "passions", he can't help his philosophizing and the first part of the book (the 400 pages that were actually written, as opposed to just notes researchers have found) intertwines "tame" (for de Sade, that means watersports/scat, by the by) non-penetrative sexual scenes with why the four main characters are justified in their future torture and murder of their guests.

* A good deal of Petr Beckmann's ''A History of Pi'' is, by word count, rants against the Soviet Union. ''In a book about mathematics''. It isn't ''quite'' as misplaced as you'd think: Beckmann viewed the Soviet Union as the benchmark for anything and everything irrational, so whenever he would discuss cranks who try to "square a circle" or some such, he would inevitably compare them to official Soviet policy. (A bit hypocritically, [[YouAreWhatYouHate as Beckmann was a major crank himself]].)

* The storyline of the [[VanityPublishing print-on-demand]] historical novel [[http://www.cafepress.com/alsatian.383896598 TheAlsatian]] stops in the middle for a two-chapter synopsis of the causes and early campaigns of World War I. The author considered deleting it, but decided that a thorough knowledge of the conditions at the time was necessary for the audience to understand why the protagonist [[spoiler:shoots himself in the foot to escape from battle]].

-->-- '''John Galt''', ''Literature/AtlasShrugged''. [[http://www.lewisdt.com/lpmndc/galtsspeech.html That ellipsis covers 33,319 words.]]

It's worth noting that writing a work of fiction neither adds nor subtracts evidence from a point of view. It may display evidence, it may make an argument using that evidence, it may convince the reader using that evidence. Authors should remember though ''a work of fiction doesn't prove anything.'' The fact that the author expects us to take their fictional world as instantly applicable to real life is part of what makes the trope so grating.

* ''TheBoondocks'' comic usually falls into this (witness the series of strips, after the 2004 presidential election, where Huey calls out and insults every state where Bush won), but it's largely an AuthorTract to begin with. The animated version can't really do this do due to AnimationLeadTime, which is [[BrokenBase one of the many reasons why it's disliked by fans of the comic strip]].

* GarthEnnis can get into this. While it works in the context of the stories, {{Preacher}} having the protagonists discuss how any God who made the world must be evil, ComicBook/ThePunisher having characters talk about the horrors of war and TheBoys featuring long-winded TakeThat dialogue towards DC and Marvel style super heroes, there are also random, out of nowhere ones. In Preacher, Cassidy raves at Jesse about his distaste for the word 'insecure'. TheBoys also has a scene where Butcher claims that every straight man is homophobic and anyone pretending otherwise is just lying.

* Creator/CharlieChaplin's ''TheGreatDictator'', in which the entire closing monologue is a statement of Chaplin's anti-war beliefs; though it is very appropriate in context

* During a flashback scene in ''{{Saw}} VI'', Jigsaw is standing in the office of William, an executive at a health insurance company who had just denied him an experimental treatment for his cancer (and who is the subject of the film's main trap). This causes Jigsaw to go into a rant attacking the health insurance industry, saying that they do the very same thing that conservatives fear socialized medicine will do -- namely, take life-and-death decisions away from doctors and their patients by denying them coverage. He doesn't say "conservatives" or "socialized medicine," but the message is clear, and is repeated throughout the film, especially with the way that [[spoiler:William gets killed]].

* ''Franchise/JurassicPark'', Ian Malcolm spends better than half of his scenes in the book making pages-long speeches about the evils of modern science, despite the fact that he is supposedly dying at the time. There is occasionally a HandWave, like when Malcolm is cranked out of his mind on morphine, and is just babbling whatever thoughts come into his head. ''TheLostWorld1995'' contains long philosophical digressions.

** It seems to go both ways. Elves tend to be a lot wiser and more attune to nature than any other creature because of the nature of their magic that bound their whole race in their blood oath with the dragons. As a result, they can't eat meat any more than a person could eat their own hand because they can feel the emotions from all the life around them, and if a creature dies, it feels like they themselves are dying along with it. They sing[[note]]they speak in the ancient language combined with a flow of magic. The singing part is just their own artistic flair.[[/note]] to the trees to harvest fruits and vegetables that grow all the nutrition they need, so there's no need to butcher animals. With all their needs taken care of, the elves don't fight wars and most are content to keep to themselves and pursue whatever they fancy, be it writing, painting, or being a fish. However, when pressed, they will rise up together to fight off whatever force threatens them.

* The five issues long series ''Comicbook/{{Warrior}}'', a licensed comic about every ProfessionalWrestling fan's favorite crackpot, The UltimateWarrior, is one great big WallOfText after another meant to elucidate the reader on Warrior's bizarre mystical-reactionary philosophy, and paint Warrior as {{Jesus}}. Between the sheer density of the text and the preponderance of made up words (just what in the blue hell is "Destrucity", anyway?)[[hottip:*: The comic actually does provide a definition for the word, but somehow it causes the word to make ''even less'' sense than before.]], it confused its few readers so badly that both the third and the fourth issues had to open with an explanation of the previous issues (with the recap on the fourth issue being a footnote and unreadable due to being black text on black paper). The one issue this doesn't apply to? The Christmas special, a completely dialog-less issue in which Warrior goes to the North Pole, [[{{Squick}} puts Santa in bondage]], steals his clothes ''[[spoiler:and possibly rapes him]]''. There's a reason that every wrestling fan on the planet has agreed that the guy is nucking futs. It's bad enough to [[http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/bt/spoonyone/reviews/7238-warrior1 mess with the space-time continuum!]]

* Bill Watterson would sometimes do this with ''CalvinAndHobbes''. It was better-executed than most versions, in part because the themes were frequently apolitical, in part because Watterson went after multiple targets and because of Watterson's innate storytelling skills. It also didn't hurt that Watterson occasionally engaged in SelfDepreciation and made ''himself'' the target of the occasional filibuster.

* Very common in American TV cartoons and sitcoms during the 1980s and well into the '90s, with the characters (or, sometimes, the actors portraying them) BreakingTheFourthWall at the end of the episode to advocate on behalf of a cause with which the episode had fictionally dealt. For more on this phenomenon, see AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle.

** What makes this infuriating for some fans, is that the very next episode they filmed was a 'secret' episode which ended on a nuclear level shipping cliffhanger.

-->-- '''John Galt''', ''AtlasShrugged''. [[http://www.lewisdt.com/lpmndc/galtsspeech.html That ellipsis covers 33,319 words.]]

* ''AtlasShrugged'' has the definitive AuthorFilibuster in "This Is John Galt Speaking," where Creator/AynRand gives her protagonist an opportunity to lecture the reader for ''sixty'' pages on end (''eighty'' pages in the paperback edition); since he's [[DoNotAdjustYourSet taken over all channels]], the StrawmanPolitical villains are made to sit through it for three hours of plot time. There are several shorter examples in the same book, such as the sermon explaining that "If money is the root of all evil, then what is the root of all money? Virtue is the only thing that can give money any value. Is virtue the root of all evil?" In an example of artistic license, Ayn Rand, in ''AtlasShrugged'', claims John Galt's radio monologue is only three hours. No one has ever been able to read, clearly and distinctly, the entire monologue aloud in less than '''SIX HOURS'''.

* Howard Roark of ''TheFountainhead'' also gets a such an opportunity in his courtroom scene, and the last chapter of ''Anthem'' is essentially devoted to this purpose (Creator/AynRand seems to do this a lot). These examples aren't quite as extreme as ''AtlasShrugged'' -- in book form. In the movie adaptation of ''The Fountainhead'', Rand demanded that Roark's courtroom speech be performed ''exactly'' as she had written it (the version Rand wrote for the film's screenplay was significantly shorter than the book's version), resulting in a nearly six-minute long speech, one of the longest in film.

* Bill Watterson would sometimes do this with ''CalvinAndHobbes''. It was better-executed than most versions, in part because the themes were frequently apolitical, in part because Watterson went after multiple targets and because of Watterson's innate storytelling skills.

* The wild adventures of our heroes in John Ringo's CouncilWars novels at one point come to a screeching halt as they're sitting around a fire and Edmund explains how humans in the late 20th/early 21st centuries were just so damn silly for believing in a clearly absurd thing like human-caused climate change.

* ToddInTheShadows' review of Chris Brown's 'Turn Up The Music' was about 30 seconds of actual review, and the rest a long rant about why Kanye West and [[FanHater Team Breezy]] sucks.

* ToddInTheShadows' review of Chris Brown's 'Turn Up The Music' was about 30 seconds of actual review, and the rest a long rant about why Kanye West and [[FanHaters Team Breezy]] sucks.

* The five issues long series ''Comicbook/{{Warrior}}'', a licensed comic about every ProfessionalWrestling fan's favorite crackpot, The UltimateWarrior, is one great big WallOfText after another meant to elucidate the reader on Warrior's bizarre mystical-reactionary philosophy, and paint Warrior as {{Jesus}}. Between the sheer density of the text and the preponderance of made up words (just what in the blue hell is "Destrucity", anyway?), it confused its few readers so badly that both the third and the fourth issues had to open with an explanation of the previous issues (with the recap on the fourth issue being a footnote and unreadable due to being black text on black paper). The one issue this doesn't apply to? The Christmas special, a completely dialog-less issue in which Warrior goes to the North Pole, [[{{Squick}} puts Santa in bondage]], steals his clothes ''[[spoiler:and possibly rapes him]]''. There's a reason that every wrestling fan on the planet has agreed that the guy is nucking futs. It's bad enough to [[http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/bt/spoonyone/reviews/7238-warrior1 mess with the space-time continuum!]]

** Donatello's rant is really questionable when you consider the Turtles and Splinter's origins. Granted, it wasn't nuclear-related, but Donatello never railed against the Utroms for not taking better care of their potentially hazardous material.