Writer On Board - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Author On Board; ptitlet3vhcwfq

Obvious authorial intrusion. When the characters start behaving like idiots or against their previously established characterization because the writer damn well needs them to in order to tell his story.

May also occur when a character is accused of being used just to show a particular POV, and not because he actually has it. The high-falutin' literary term for a character designed to express the author's preferred opinions (often the Only Sane Man) is the raisonneur—here at TV Tropes the preferred term is Author Avatar.

At best, the only difference is a rather heavy-handed Aesop. At worst, narrative is put aside so that an Author Filibuster can be conducted. When you agree what the author has to say, but feel that their method of conveyance is detrimental to the work, it becomes a case of Dont Shoot The Message.

A play on "Baby on Board".

Author Appeal is a specific form of this. See also Wall Banger and Creator Breakdown, and Idiot Plot. Compare Out Of Character Moment. Contrast Bored On Board.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Comic Books

DC Comics writer Keith Giffen is unabashed about his hatred of Legion Of Super Heroes character Karate Kid and his "super karate", and has stated outright that any time he ends up writing the Legion comic, Karate Kid will die. Could be considered a subversion in that when Giffen did write Karate Kid's death in one run of the Legion comic, he gave the character a respectful send-off via Heroic Sacrifice, rather than simply dropping a bridge on him.
- A few reviewers have accused Giffen of trying to co-opt Midnighter, one of the only openly gay superheroes, after reading their run wherein Midnighter disbands the team, leaves his husband, Apollo, and moves to a tiny apple-pie town where he lives with a young woman named Mindy. The Reset Button was pounded so hard after that it nearly cracked.
Since early 90s, several Marvel Comics' Editors-in-Chief have been notorious for doing whatever he could to try and destroy the fact that Peter Parker got married in the '80s. He has always had to double-back on it because the attempts are so ham-fisted and obvious that the fans completely revolt and the title's sales plummet (see Clone Saga). The most recent attempt was One More Day.
Nearly everything Judd Winick wrote for DC Comics, particularly his Very Special Issues.
- Green Lantern #154, in which we learn the very important lesson that Beating People Up For Being Gay Is Wrong after Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's personal assistant Terry Berg is beaten up by a group of random thugs while leaving a club with his boyfriend. Despite having lost his first girlfriend to super-villain violence in the incident with defined the Women In Refrigerators trope and seeing numerous other violations of basic human decency on a daily basis, THIS particularly display of man's inhumanity to man is so bad that it inspires Kyle Rayner to abandon the Earth in favor of wandering outer space and helping random non-human species.
  - Could just be a case of... well, the same thing as taking an alien invasion (which used to be the sort of thing you dealt with in one issue and forgot about) and turning it into a crossover event.
  - Lampshaded by Joe Kelly in JLA, where he basically has Kyle say I died and came back from the dead and I'm fine, but my friend gets gay bashed and I can't take it anymore?
  - This was more than likely an excuse to get Kyle out of JLA to replace him with John Stewart, since Stewart was the GL in the Justice League cartoon.
  - Could also be just a simple case of the straw that broke the camel's back.
- Green Arrow #44, in which we learn that Oliver Queen's adopted daughter Mia is a recovering methhead AND HIV Positive. Despite having been portrayed by Winick as an unrepentant womanizer and having been so during a time when knowing such things would be vital, Oliver is completely ignorant as to what HIV is and how it is contracted, prompting a text-book recital on how HIV is contracted and treated.
- Outsiders #17-19 (a.k.a Most Wanted), in which the Outsiders approach real-life hero and Very Special Guest Star John Walsh for help in tracking down the leader of a child slavery ring. It doesn't speak well of the team that when their leader, a Batman-trained detective (i.e. Nightwing), is unable to find any leads that his next plan of attack is "Let's get that guy on TV to help us!" This arc had Executive Meddling written ALL OVER IT.
  - That said, the story isn't quite as bad as you might expect. Just pretend John Walsh isn't really John Walsh at all but instead a nameless source of underworld gossip that Nightwing hits up for tips and the story miraculously becomes just this side of tolerable.
- Green Arrow #61, in which newly elected Mayor Oliver Queen sums up his plan for rebuilding Star City with two words: gay marriage. In exchange for living in the city for two weeks, gay couples can have a free wedding on the steps of city hall - the hope being that all of these couples will stay and settle in the city, bringing money which will go into the local economy. Sadly, the plan is a bit of a non-starter seeing on how it is dependent on finding gay people who are so desperate to be legally married they will willingly move to a city that is currently divided by a massive wall built to separate the poor side of town from the rich side of town in the wake of a super-villain attack and the poor side is full of super-powered, drug-crazed zombies.
- Averted by his run on Batman, which prompted one reviewer to proclaim "What happened to the Judd Winick who's been phoning in his scripts month after month?"
Then there is the Marvel Civil War. Even if the main writer didn't "intend" for there to be any meaning, it was there, and worse, gives the impression that the higher ups Running The Asylum at Marvel just might not even like superheroes that much, since this series was basically bashing the idea of them
- And then the writers who didn't agree with that notion naturally write their stories against it, turning this into a huge clusterfuck of writers on board.
- The idea of the government trying to get some control over all the superheroes running around would have made some sense as more than mere superhero-bashing. The idea of having the government quickly decide to rely on unreliable costumed psychos for black operations intended to force the reluctant ones into compliance... not so much.
A somewhat humorous example: Animal Man. Grant Morrison used it to constantly pitch for animal rights, particularly stating that Humans Are Bastards and eating animals is wrong. Part of the plot was also the fact that the main character was slowly realizing he was in a comic book. In the last issue of Morrison's run, Animal Man and Morrison talk face to face, and Animal Man points out that animal rights are all well and good - but sometimes he verged on eco-terrorism. And that sharing minds with animals shouldn't automatically make you a vegetarian since half of the time you're going to be sharing minds with a carnivore. And all of this felt like Character Derailment. Morrison admits he has some good points but wonders if the next writer will take that too far and have Animal Man run down a zebra and eat it alive. As both a Continuity Nod and a Take That, the next writer had him do just that in the very next issue.
- Morrison also puts in a Take That Me by noting that the writing had become more and more "preachy" as the series went on.
The X Men have suffered this since the late 90's. Everytime new writers come on board, they kill or write off any new characters the previous writer introduced, and existing characters' development tends to be largely forgotten. Most egregious is how, for a long time, Emma Frost was treated like she left the Hellfire Club for the X-Men last week as if Generation X never happened (but considering how Jubilee is still a teenager while her former teammates are now young adults, who knows). Then they blow up the mansion and have the team go in a totally new direction. One must wonder when was the last time the X-Men had a direction that they stuck to for longer than two years. Chris Claremont is the best-known for this, leaving a title then coming back years later and picking up his old plotlines with no regard to what happened between stints. Like his tropes page says, if he didn't write it, he doesn't care.
- Considering how subsequent authors tried to revert characters like Magneto to one-dimensional cliches ignoring all of the Character Development that was fostered over the years (like disusing himself as a member of the X-Men, shooting a team-member, enslaving New York City, and inexplicably killing a cosmic entity), one might not blame him for such an attitude.
Jeph Loeb. Every time he takes over a book certain characters just get ... devolved. His rendition of the Ultimate / Supreme books, was. Well. Shit. Him taking over Ultimates turned Quicksilver and Wanda into fullblown incestuous lovers as opposed to Millar's more subtle approach. Hawkeye turned into a suicidal hardcore twat, and his Hulk speaks in third person despite Ultimate Hulk not talking in third person after his initial showing. Worst? Thor suddenly goes from I speak like a normal person to Thou art Shakespearian like his 616 counterpart. And that's one book.
- Let's not forget Pyro. Apparently nobody told Loeb that Ultimate Pyro is a heroic X-Man and horribly burned because he's not immune to his own powers. The version that turned up in Ultimates? Classic Brotherhood villain mook Pyro, with a slice of rapist on the side...
- This may be a result of a minor case of Creator Breakdown after his son died, considering his Ultimates V.3 and especially Ultimatum seemed to be getting Darker And Edgier, to the point where Ultimatum has such moments of sheer Squick and horribleness as The Blob eating the Wasp's corpse and Hank Pym biting the head off Blob in retaliation. Let's think on that. Two characters who have NEVER been portrayed as cannibals are EATING other characters.
- And keep in mind: This is the guy who wrote The Long Halloween. Some fans theorize that he's only a shitty writer when writing for Marvel, while other suspect that it was the collaboration with Tim Sale (the artist of Long Halloween, though credited as a "storyteller" alongside Loeb) that saved The Long Halloween.
IDW's Transformers comics have probably suffered this with the advent of the All Hail Megatron series. Before, their comic continity was a rather interesting variation of G1, with many characters getting redesigns to reflect technological advances (the Seekers, for example, became F-22s rather than F-15s). Of course, then Shane McCarthy and All Hail Megatron came along, reverting designs back to G1 which created some inconsistencies with Furman's body of work on the series. While the continuity is fairly good, there are just enough differences to give one the feeling that something's not quite right.
A fairly positive example: whenever Geoff Johns takes over a title, expect some combination of Ret Con and character-specific Wham Episode that justifies Johns writing the character however he wants. Keep in mind, almost all of these changes have been well-received; it is simply worth noting that characters tend to receive compressed, sped-up Character Development quickly after Johns comes on board. Examples:
- Atom Smasher's mother dying before being saved by time travel, leading to him going the Darker And Edgier route;
- Obsidian, from the same title, finding new aspects of his powers that lead to With Great Power Comes Great Insanity;
- Barry Allen's new motivation of proving that his father did not murder his mother;
- Impulse getting shot in the knee and mocked for his impulsiveness, precipitating a name and attitude change as Kid Flash;
- Superboy finding out that he is the combined clone of Superman and Luthor, providing him with a reason to indulge in Cloning Blues;
- Wonder Girl receiving a new lasso from Ares that works based on anger, causing her to become more wrathful;
- Lightning Lad going from calm, stalwart Legion veteran to impulsive, foul-mouthed Jerk With A Heart Of Gold; while a Continuity Reboot is technically in place, a lot of Legion fans were perturbed to see a character who is ostensibly the original Silver Age Lightning Lad acting like this.
With all of the above in mind, Johns' run on The Avengers was a classic, clear-cut case of Writer On Board with Character Derailment and Did Not Do The Research all over the place. The previous writer, Kurt Busiek, set the Vision down a path of exploring a human social life beyond his long-term love interest, the Scarlet Witch; Johns quickly, awkwardly had the two of them Strangled By The Red String. Similarly, the Wasp turns down a marriage proposal from Hank Pym despite the fact that she was pining for him to propose under Busiek. Jack of Hearts inexplicably went from needing 14 hours in an isolated chamber to revert to human form to needing to spend 14 hours a day in the chamber, period, to keep from exploding, and additionally went from nervous rookie to raging loose canon. Finally, Iron Man and Black Panter were given a gigantic Conflict Ball over events that had long since been smoothed over during Busiek's run. Johns admitted afterward that his knowledge of the Avengers was not up to par with his mastery of DC continuity, and most of his run seemed to ignore anything that was not written by Roger Sterns (the one Avengers writer Johns gushed about).
During the latter half of Ken Pender's writing stint on the Archie Comics version of Sonic The Hedgehog, many of the stories either revolved around Pender's own anti-gun views or would come to a screeching halt for a few panels for an Author Filibuster about the same. An example of the former was an entire story devoted to showing how the great Overlander vs. Mobian war began: two children - one Overlander, the other Mobian - meet between the two kingdoms to play, one of them brings a gun one day and accidentally shoots the other while they're horsing around, war engulfs both races, After School Special credits roll. An example of the latter has one of the less scrupulous members of the Freedom Fighters (Fiona, who goes on to betray the team and join the bad guys in a later issue) asks why they don't just use guns to solve their current dilemma and is given a verbal bitch-slap by Rotor Walrus about how they have never used guns and never will use guns. This sudden Mood Whiplash is made even more jarring by the fact that Bunnie Rabbot, a character that had for a while been wearing six-shooters holstered in a bullet belt up until the issue in question, can be seen in the background, without the pistols but still wearing the belt. Further, not but twenty or thirty issues previous, Rotor had developed a huge bazooka-like laser cannon that purportedly operated much like a hand-held Wave Motion Gun and which Rotor actually fired directly at Dr. Robotnik at one point.

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Film

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, wherein Christopher Reeve was given creative control of the story, is a thinly-veiled veneer for his anti-nuclear, anti-corporate media philosophies. In one particularly jarring scene from the movie, Superman saves the passengers aboard a runaway subway car, then gives a speech to a crowd of pedestrians about the benefits of mass transit. Richard Pryor doesn't seem so bad now, does he? In all fairness, Reeve admitted the movie was horrible (and it does have a certain entertainment value).
The biggest failing of the film Lady In The Water was that it was just two hours of M Night Shyalaman rubbing his self indulgence in our faces. The movie is pretty much centered around inspiring a writer (not surprisingly, played by Shyalaman himself) into writing a book that will change the world for the better at the cost of being martyred in a Heroic Sacrifice. He also includes a Take That against the film critics who gave his earlier movies negative reviews by putting in a film critic character who is an arrogant, unlikeable man who dies a horrible death.
- Unlikeable critic? He's the freakin' Ensemble Darkhorse!
In Star Trek IV The Voyage Home, Leonard Nimoy preaches his pro-environmental views and gives a nonsensical justification for it. Yet by not putting those views front and center, and keeping the movie strong on character and humor (also thanks to the screenplay by four skilled writers), the trope is barely noticeable when watching (and is largely considered the second best of the Trek films).
If you think Trek IV falls into that trope, you haven't seen Star Trek V (or you might have filed it away under Dis Continuity). Shatner wrote and directed the movie, and it shows. While humor in Trek usually involved laughing with the characters, in V all the costars are put in situations to be laughed at (brilliant navigator Sulu getting lost in the woods, Scotty banging his head on an overhead pipe after claiming that he knows the ship like the back of his hand, etc.). Basically, everyone except Kirk fucks up and / or get ridiculed. His original screenplay even had Spock siding with Sybok, for crying out loud (luckily both Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley flatly refused to take part in such blatant Character Derailment).
- Possibly less a case of "writer on board" and more "inexperienced writer/director doesn't know what the hell he's doing". Nimoy had directorial and screenplay experience that Shatner didn't, and when other writers or Nimoy brought up their issues, Shatner apparently had a tendency to go "Oh. Yeah. Duh." The other characters could have quite possibly avoided their slapstick fates if the actors had just argued it with him instead of quietly simmering and thinking he was just being a prick.
Any Quentin Tarantino film usually has a scene that is obviously a theory or pet peeve of Tarantino's shoved into the mouth of one of the characters.
- Sometimes even by playing the character himself.
The Invention Of Lying prominently features Ricky Gervais' character "lying" about the existence of God and finding himself forced to create religion out of wholecloth. Certain audience members no doubt found that pants-pissingly hilarious, but it's a little obvious that Gervais came up with that cliched, passive-aggressive plot point first, and then wrote a whole movie around it. Alright alright, the chance to nail Jennifer Garner was undoubtedly a close second in priority.
Naked Gun 2 1\2 arguably did this when the main villain goes on about his plot to suppress environmentally-friendly tech. In an action comedy.
- Given the movie's tone, this was more a parody of the use of "villains who hate nature" than a serious commentary on it.
Annie Hall parodies it, by having Alvy Singer write his failing relationship into a play he's working on. In real life, Singer and his girlfriend break up, but in the play he delivers a poorly-written speech about how their relationship was far too superb to end in a hell-hole like Los Angeles. Singer lampshades it by turning to the screen and saying, "What do you want, it was my first play."
JFK was made solely because of Oliver Stone's hero worship of Jim Garrison after reading his autobiography. Even today, anyone who points out any of the many historical inaccuracies in the film is part of the massive conspiracy out to discredit Garrison.

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Literature

Karen Traviss when she writes Star Wars. Her abuse of Jedi and conspiracy theories make the Living Force cry...
- Which is nothing compared to her obsession with Mandalorians.
  - Bardan Jusik/Gotab being the perfect example of both her abuse of Jedi and Stu-ification of the Mando'a.
- The Gears Of War novel Aspho Fields that she wrote pretty much beats the reader about the head with the idea that "weapons developers = war criminals."
  - Traviss' Mandalorian "super tribal warrior" fixation carries over into the novel as well, with its hyper-competent, misunderstood, absolutely perfect Pesanga warriors, who are pretty much Mandalorians with machetes.
The Da Vinci Code has been criticized for having a protagonist with no personality, who simply "serves as a mouthpiece for Dan Brown's theories." In other words, taking this trope to its extreme.
- Not just the protagonist, either; Dan Brown repeatedly pauses the plot for Author Filibusters that would give Ayn Rand a run for her money, if not in length or research, then certainly in obviousness.
- Woah woah woah, you can't go around claiming any newby can challenge Ms. Rand for her spot as absolute ruler of thinly veiled author filibustering. She can and always will hold that special spot in our hearts.
Orson Scott Card's Empire, where the characters will pause during the action to explain exactly why any disrespect for the military whatsoever is unpatriotic and therefore evil.
- We'll grant that this is an exaggerated description, but he does compare An Inconvenient Truth to the Unabomber Manifesto. Of course, this may be an oblique reference to the allegation that the Unabomber had copy of Earth In The Balance which he'd annotated.
- Orson Scott Card does seem to have a habit of doing this. It's happened in both of the Enders Game series, and also creeps in elsewhere.
- An exactly opposite case occurs in Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life. After an army officer gives a speech about how "We'll always need an army, and may God strike me down were it to be otherwise," God does just that.
- Card's Mormonism is made blatantly obvious in his Homecoming Saga, which is essentially just a re-telling of the Book of Mormon.
- And in his Alvin Maker series where the main character is basically a Marty Stu version of Joseph Smith. With magical powers yet.
  - In one very uncharacteristically blatant and unmistakable example, several characters near the beginning of his recent book Ender in Exile espouse the (anthropologically incorrect) view that monogamy is the only and best successful means of human society, using the exact same phrasing consistently enough to put conservative pundits' talking points to shame. Thankfully, he drops this act soon enough to make the book as a whole still enjoyable, but it's quite a Wall Banger when compared to his usual style.
The Sword Of Truth series by Terry Goodkind is often accused by detractors of being nothing more than Objectivist propaganda. Faith of the Fallen is two-fifths desperate battles and angst, and three-fifths Anvilicious Ayn Rand soap-boxing on how individuals working for themselves in a free market works far better than broken, inevitably corrupt socialism, and will also get you the chicks. Goodkind admittedly comes by it honestly: pretty much all fiction by Ayn Rand is a soapbox for Objectivism—most famously Atlas Shrugged.
- Another particular example of this is when Richard denounces religious beliefs on the basis that no one has ever come back with proof of the afterlife. In the first book, Richard sees and fights ghosts, while his enemy rides a Hellhound through the afterlife. In at least one of the books, the main threat is that the Keeper of the Dead will break from the underworld into the world of the living.
Victor Hugo does this all the time. He has a tendency for: "Okay, now let's stop the story and have a "short" explanation about something that has nothing to do with the plot!" While his characters are usually in big trouble.
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. After bubbling under the surface for the first two-thirds of the trilogy, the final volume explodes into a massive Take That against Christianity. Pullman's admitted intention with his series was to set up an atheist response to the fantasy novels of Christian writer/philosopher C.S. Lewis.
- How successful he was is debatable.
- Lewis, on the other hand, kept it under control until the The Last Battle, wherein Satan-worshipping Arabs take over the world and the subtext rather becomes the... text.
  - Obviously there are a lot of these in the Chronicles of Narnia (Aslan's "I have a different name in your world," anyone? Or appearing as a lamb?), but probably the most blatant of all does come in The Last Battle, when all the main characters, standing in the new Narnia that was inside the stable, are discussing the fact that the stable was "bigger on the inside." Lucy (with "eyes shining," IIRC) remarks, "In our world, too, a stable once contained something that was bigger than the whole world." Apart from being the closest anyone comes in the series to mentioning Jesus by name, this kind of pointed meta-speak is totally out of step with how the kids have talked throughout the books and in a less beloved series would be a complete Wall Banger.
Anthony Burgess' famous English novel, A Clockwork Orange, is so generally believed to suffer from Writer On Board in its last chapter that until 1986 its US editions left out the offending chapter- and even now, come with a preface explaining the cut. The classic movie version also changed the ending, as did a 1990 play written for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
- Note that the movie changed the ending because Stanley Kubrick was not aware of the extra chapter, thanks to the American edition.
Ursula K. LeGuin's so-called sequel to the Earthsea Trilogy Tehanu definitely qualifies, being a Straw Feminist screed that totally disregards continuity and characterization established in the earlier books.
- And the follow-up short-story collection Tales From Earthsea is, if anything, even worse. Women created all the magic, and these evil, rotten, worthless men stole it!
After his own conversion to Spiritualism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel titled The Land of Mist to explain and justify his beliefs, including having his ultra-rationalist hero Professor Challenger (from The Lost World) become convinced of the rightness of Spiritualism and convert.
- In fairness to Conan Doyle, the catalyst for Challenger's abrupt change in outlook was the death of his beloved wife. Character Derailment in the face of bereavement is kind of Truth In Television.
The early works of lesbian author Katherine V. Forrest fall victim to this. Curious Wine has a man raping a woman (who, by this point, has fallen head-over-heels in love with her future girlfriend). Daughters of a Coral Dawn is the most extreme, having men (who are suffering from one giant inferiority complex) outlawing some Applied Phlebotinum that renders them redundant in the act of procreation. It Runs On Nonsensoleum (and the precise nature of the phlebotinum is never explained). Fortunately, Forrest appeared to have toned it down by the time she started on the Kate Delafield books.
Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer. The entire book is about rescuing a lemur from being killed by the Extinctionists. Artemis' having sent this lemur to its death is continually treated as a horrendous act, even though he did it in an attempt to save his father. There is virtually no disagreement on this point. Holly is horrified (as are the other fantasy creatures present), Artemis is filled with remorse, and even Artemis' younger self feels a twinge of guilt that apparently never bothered him during any of his other countless criminal escapades. The sheer magnitude of the overreactions of the characters when they learn that Artemis sent the lemur to die makes this an Author on Board.
Since 2001 or so, if the particular Alternate History setting allows for it, Harry Turtledove will include some kind of analogy to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. No problem on the surface, as analogies are standard stock-in-trade for alternate history stories. The problem came when, in a timeline where the South won the American Civil War, he chose Mormons for this role. Many fans believe that he's crossed the line from "Broken Aesop regarding repression of religious expression leading to violence" into outright bigotry.
- In the same work, he also turns Canadians into Irish separatist terror bombers, blacks into Communists and Mexicans into Nazi satellite state collaborationists.
- The Man with The Iron Heart takes this to extremes about his feelings on the Iraq War. Reinhard Heydrich lives to run a partisan campaign. Body bags are showing up as everyday Germans become radicalized and engage in terrorist acts. It's subtle as a brick when you have mothers of dead soldiers acting just like a certain famous protester and it leads up to the Republicans winning control of Congress and getting us out from the Democrat's war. The Wallbanging hurts on this one, especially with how the Soviets meekly accept the acts. Let alone how lacking the cooperation of the Germans, the Marshall Plan would not of been enacted. Leading to either the plan that loots all machines and important tooling as well smashing the infrastructure, or the one that called for the castration of all German men. These were real plans...
The late Michael Crichton tended to do this a lot, albeit that he was somewhat more subtle about it as the characters whom he boarded were created more or less for the purpose of espousing a philosophy central to their characters. He also did it a lot because his modus operandi was to take a source of public fear/apprehension/paranoia and then base a novel around it. Fear of computers/robots: West World. Fear of genetic manipulation: Jurassic Park. Fear of the Japanese: Rising Sun. Fear of sex discrimination: Disclosure. Fear of the media and flying: Airframe. And so on.
- Except for Next, arguably, but as pointed out elsewhere on this site, it's arguably to lampoon the magic Lego Genetics therapy that the public is enamored with.
The Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell gives us the impression that Mr. Cornwell really, really dislikes Army officers and aristocrats, particularly when the two are combined in one person.
In several of his novels, Neal Stephenson has his characters voice an interest in the arts and complain about how most of their scientist/techie acquaintances think that the arts are useless. Stephenson is an MIT graduate (and obviously) a novelist. Also, it's possible that Stephenson doesn't agree with the sentiment, but in both Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, a character gives a lecture to the effect that some cultures are superior to others and that those who are wealthy deserve to be that way.
- Moral relativism also gets a bit of a kicking in several of his books, notably Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age (again).
This trope is Older Than Steam: Molière's plays often were whole essays against the hypocrisy and vulgarity that ran rampant throughout French society, as well as tirades against doctors (medicine was horrible back then, and many docs were VERY ignorant), pseudo-intellectuals, and self-appointed Moral Guardians. (Tartuffe, one of his most well-known plays, was censored for years because of this.) Characters like Philinte (Le Misanthrope) and Cléante (Tartuffe) serve as Author Avatars for the playwright.
H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History novels were essentially on the hard side of Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness. On the other hand, the Paratime story "Last Enemy" essentially gave reincarnation a free pass. To his credit, that story spent a fair amount of time discussing the social effects of universally-accepted reincarnation, such as a casual attitude towards death and suicide.
Common in Tom Clancy novels, which are naturally packed to the gills with Straw Liberals. Potentially his most Anvilicious work is Executive Orders: Jack Ryan, using his everyman common sense and American spirit, solves The Arab Israeli Conflict in about a week and takes time out from a major terrorist attack to completely reform the US Tax Code.
- In the prologue of one of Clancy's novels, an unnamed and unimportant terrorist who is about to blow himself up takes a solid 5 pages to silently debate himself on the merits of feminism and abortion (Ultimately coming to the conclusion that women wearing pants are A-OK, but they still shouldn't leave the kitchen). Had it been done with any kind of skill, you could call it characterization; given who the author is, it's a clear case of Writer on Board.
Various novels and short stories written by sci-fi author Jerry Pournelle are packed with good old Conservative Republican values. Gun control bad? Check. Corporations good? Check. Welfare bad? Check. Liberals who are whackadoos who can't survive and would destroy the world without some conservative to keep them in line? Check.
John Ringo's works are crammed with references to his favorite songs, poems, movies, etc.
Terry Pratchett via Sam Vimes in Night Watch. Vimes mentions a pre-Vetinari patrician passing a weapons ban, enacted to reduce crime. Vimes mentions that, "...criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job." This comment is basically a core argument against gun control (only the law-abiding would obey it, while criminals wouldn't care). It is however a minor example of this trope since it fits the character's world view and with the story itself.
- Except in another Vimes book, Jingo, he illustrates the opposite idea. "Have you ever been in a pub where everyone goes armed? Oh, things are a little polite at first, I'll grant you, and then some twerp drinks out of the wrong mug or picks up someone else's change by mistake, and five minutes later you're picking noses out of the beer nuts."
  - Curse those filthy Writers on Board, trying to force their moderation down our throats!
  - Chalk up yet another subverted trope for Terry.
Daniel Silva's books has a lot of this trope. His most famous series is about a Mossad assassin named Gabriel Allon. Silva would spend pages to justify right-of-center Israeli policies. For example, in "Prince of Fire", several chapters is to justify Israel's policy of expelling Arab residents during the country's early history. Another thing he like to go on about is how Europe is basically a giant antisemitic cesspool that harbors Islamic terrorism and how Europe is unjust to push for peace that would be "unfavorable" to Israel. Basically, he tend to portray any country/politicians that are not entirely pro-Israel as antisemitic, which is of course a giant fallacy.
- There's also his dislike for Pope Benedict. He created a fictional Pope who espouses more liberal/inclusive views, not to mention being rather better at apologizing for antisemitism than Benedict has been (this would probably go with the Europe = antisemitic cesspool mentioned above). In the afterword to the book in which that character is introduced, Silva talks about how disappointed he was in the real-life Pope and uses his fictional Pope from that point onward in the series.

Close Literature

Live Action TV

Most Star Trek episodes penned by the Berman/Braga team, as they have the opinion that the future is going to be a bad place, taking the Star Trek franchise away from Gene Roddenberry's vision of hope and optimism. While it has sometimes worked when taken as a whole (the latter seasons of Deep Space Nine, for instance, were quite good—and Braga had nothing to do with the series), taken individually many of the episodes are rather dark, depressing, and pessimistic. Not quite downer endings, but definitely not the "Let's explore space and have fun!" endings that Roddenberry's episodes typically possessed.
- And as hinted above, the writers of Deep Space Nine (who later went on to write The 4400 and the 2003 revival of Battlestar Galactica) really, really loved the Cynical side of the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism; though to their credit it was sometimes for the better.
- It wasn't so much that the future is a bad place, but that sometimes good people have to do bad things. The heroes are cast in a pretty good light, or at least, shown to have chosen the most successful course. Oddly enough, Deep Space Nine also included section 31, who committed worse crimes than anyone on DS 9, but also for the good of the Federation (at no point does it appear that Section 31 does not believe in the ideals of the Federation: they merely believe that sometimes you have to break them in the short term, to keep them in the long term), who were cast in a pretty bad light. Apparently, even moral ambiguity has its standards. That said, one can't deny that the number of traitors, personal agendas and maquis sympathizers within the Federation seemed to grow somewhat rapidly at that time. It didn't make the future a bad place, but it certainly didn't make it any better either.
- Gene Roddenberry himself may also be listed here. He was the one who made The Federation a Mary Sue Topia, although there is some doubt as to whether he did it to deliver a message or just because he preferred writing about that sort of thing.
- Pretty much anyone who every wrote a Q episode had their own entirely personal ideas about who he was and what motivated him, and just you try to actually piece together what the Prime Directive is from the ways it's been acted upon if not a contradictory mess.
The Doctor Who episode "The Two Doctors", written by vegetarian Robert Holmes, is a thinly-disguised parable about the evils of meat-eating. Also, the two-parter ending with 'The Poison Sky' is quite literally about gas from our cars leading to extinction (with an assist from the Sontarans).
- Or Poison Sky could be interpreted as a parody of eco-hysteria. The Sontarans latch on to humanity's obsession with going green by claiming the poison devices are zero-emissions, so everyone with a car gets one and helps the Sontarans achieve custom climate change. It could also be Author On Board.
Aaron Sorkin often used Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip as a soapbox to air his thinly-disguised personal grievances, particularly to vicariously lecture his ex-girlfriend. This also happened in The West Wing when internet critics hurt his feelings. The West Wing at least had the advantage of being pretty spot on, and quite funny, with political beliefs getting aired at least making sense in context. Studio 60... not so much. On the other hand, Studio 60 appeared aimed to a be a Red State/Blue State love story, so political rants and banter were to be expected.
Much of Series Two of Extras - in particular, the parts dealing with Andy's sitcom - seemed to be Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant explaining in great detail how their naturalistic style of comedy was infinitely superior to anyone else's.
- Gervais and Merchant elaborate that the show is not about saying that broad comedy is bad; if you have grand ambitions, you shouldn't settle for less and let people meddle with your ideas. Do what you want to do. They don't portray either camp in a sympathetic light, as many more successful actors and writers in the show are intensely arrogant, elitist and pretentious. The entire last half of episode 2.2 displays this in the club where Andy is humiliated by just about everyone there. Episode 2.4 also has Stephen Fry belittling and patronizing Andy after Fry wins the BAFTA over him. Even Andy himself act very pretentious and two-faced, hiding his celebrity status but later using it to try and get his way whenever it suits him.
- Gervais and Merchant even admit that Andy's sitcom When the Whistle Blows does indeed make them laugh, even if it is not very intellectual.
Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. was promoted to producer on the second season of the cult TV series War of the Worlds. He took a promising concept (the aliens left over from the 1953 invasion living among us), and destroyed it. How? He turned the present-day setting into a rundown, "Almost Tomorrow" setting that is never explained; half the main cast were killed off (the two visible minorities!); the villains of the first season were exterminated to make way for a new group of aliens from the same planet; and several plot threads from the first season (most notably, an alien who helped the main characters defeat the aliens in the first-season finale, and promised to bring reinforcements) never showed up again.
Pretty much the last three years of Law And Order. In particular, Jack McCoy's vendetta-like attacks on defendants who use religion as a defense. It is stopped just short of being completely anvilicious by being well within his character and having him regularly being called out on it.
- Since Jack accepts virtually no excuses for murder if there is mens rea, whether this is a case of Writer On Board is debatable.
  - Also, those who disagree with him are not portrayed as being wrong at all (unless they're the defense lawyers, sometimes).
- Curiously subverted in Law And Order Special Victims Unit where Elliot Stabler enjoys his rants about how violating his morals is evil and horrible (which often times it is) but he typically comes off to the audience and in-universe as borderline psychotic.
- In an instance that might be called "Actor On Board", Law And Order Special Victims Unit has Detective Sergeant John Munch, whose utter devotion to the civil liberties of every human being stops rather abruptly at the right to end one's own life... this character is played by an actor (Richard Belzer) whose own father committed suicide.
  - The character's father committed suicide as well, justifying Munch's views on the subject. Of course, it's highly likely that the sole reason for this was in order to justify the opinion, so this still counts as an example.
Babylon 5 had a minor version where any and all Cute Kids And Robots were killed off in a very blunt and mean-spirited way.
A very early episode of Stargate SG-1, "Emancipation", was centered on Samantha Carter becoming a Blithe Spirit on a planet where women were oppressed in every way possible. While Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped, the feminist message was conveyed with all the subtlety of a naquadah explosion, and it wasn't exactly the show's best episode. The events from it were never mentioned again.
- And by 'early', we mean the third episode of Season One. It may have been a deliberate and/or necessary way to define the series as different to other cookie-cutter Science Fiction series. IE No Prime Directive
Most episodes of Boston Legal involve at least one case where the Crane, Poole & Schmidt firm takes on The Government / Mega Corp over a Ripped From The Headlines controversial scandal or policy. Guess who always wins?
Numb3rs suffered from this with the eco-storyline and the minority-treatment arc at the end of last season. Nothing like a good Green Aesop to pull the handbrake on a perfectly decent whodunit.
Pretty much the entire sixth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer had the characters (particularly Buffy and Spike) changing opinions, morality and emotions depending on whether or not Marti Noxon was writing the episode that week. For example, one week Buffy is shown to be trapping lovelorn Spike in an abusive relationship. Then next, he's preying on an emotionally damaged Buffy...
- Joss Whedon has claimed that he and Marti worked together to plot out the season but few fans believe that and think that he's just covering up for her.
In the fifth season of HBO's The Wire, lead producer/writer David Simon (a former writer with the Baltimore Sun) used the final season as a backing ground for his views on the state of the newspaper industry. While the season still has great moments peppered throughout, it is increasingly bogged down with subplots about a rookie newspaper writer at the Baltimore Sun who can't believe her stories keep getting buried in the paper, another reporter who outright lies and distorts facts to string the public along about a serial killer's whereabouts, and a city editor who's only defining characteristic is that he always adheres to truth and honesty. In any other series, these characters would have had time to grow and change, but after only ten episodes, the show ends, and the audience barely knows more about them than they did at the beginning of the season. Some people accused Simon of using the show as a vehicle to air out his own personal grievances with the Sun.
Why would the producers of Dallas make an entire season All Just A Dream just to bring back one character? Answer: They didn't. Executive producer Leonard Katzman wanted that entire season retconned out of existence because the masochistic Katzman hated that the women on the show had been made into much stronger characters during his absence from production. Bringing back Bobby Ewing was just a bonus.
In Stargate Universe there's a hull breech which can only be sealed by pushing a button from the inside. The (literally) genius characters immediately argue about who will be sacrificed to push the button and be sealed in. We see them argue through the eye of a FLYING REMOTE CONTROLLED ROBOT of which they have an INEXHAUSTIBLE SUPPLY and is a continuing minor plot point. Do they tape a pencil to it and use it to push the button? No, one of the possibly mortally wounded characters takes care of it (I'm not giving that the dignity of spoiler protection, the writers took care of spoiling the episode) thus pushing forward the writer's sacrifice theme.

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Tabletop Games

When the setting information for a Tabletop Game includes slaves, the authors quite often feel the need to throw in an aside about how bad slavery is/was in the real world. This is presumably in case anyone is thick enough to read "here's a fictional country that practices slavery, like countless civilizations in Real Life history" as "let's all keep slaves". Dungeons And Dragons works dealing with it go out of their way to say that, according to the game's Character Alignment system, slavery is always and only an evil act. A supplement for Exalted on the economy of the setting took this to its logical extreme by opening with an Author Filibuster about how great it is that we don't practice slavery anymore. A notable aversion is Requiem for Rome, set during the Roman Empire, where slavery is presented as just part of the setting without any hand-wringing (even though it's noted vampires are brutal to their slaves). Given the flack some supplements, such as Charnel Houses of Europe, received, this may not be unreasonable behavior.
- GURPS provides detailed rules for owning slaves including possible slave personalities which range from "fanatically violent hatred of being a slave" to "unable to think for himself". Of course, laws about slaves are presented (realistically) as equally wide ranging and remains totally quiet on the morality of owning slaves.
- Except, oddly, that Time of the Twins expressly draws attention to a lawful good society that owned slaves.
  - The Dragonlance novels don't accurately reflect the rules of the game.
In the Living Greyhawk RPG, the "River of Blood" event featured bumbling villains who were kidnapping children in order to perform "Raxivort's Orgy" which was described as a wild party in celebration of their god. Individual judges across the country re-interpreted the party as a sexual orgy involving the rape of the kidnapped children. Even though it was not the author's original intention, the more offensive version was so prevalent that Wizards Of The Coast issued an apology and re-edited the event.
The Chronicles Of Fate. The entire theme of this setting is basically one big anarchist message about how society is bad. That's it. That's all it's about. You cannot play a good character who believes in law, order, and following the rules in this world. Everyone who does those things is, by definition, evil in this sitting. Only people who practice chaos and freedom are heroes. Perhaps the creator of this setting is trying to say something about their views on anarchy vs civilized society?
- The Warhammer RPG ran with this the other way; lawful entities were more good than good, and chaotic entities were the scum of existence.

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Western Animation

Hey Arnold! "Eugene, Eugene!" demonstrated this and Adaptation Decay with a Show Within A Show, by having a guy who's just been spurned by his girlfriend direct a production of a musical, and completely changing its ending to reflect his own life.
Since being condescending and outspoken about her beliefs was partly built into her characterization, Lisa Simpson has frequently been used as a mouthpiece, though she is frequently acknowledged as being annoying to those around her.
Transformers: Beast Machines. The author outright admitted that he deliberately ignored aspects of the prequel series Beast Wars because he wanted to "tell his own story", as opposed to, for instance, an actual Beast Wars story. The result wasn't pretty; near-universal Character Derailment is just the start of the problems. For the most part, he acted as if this were a completely new series, and not a sequel to another.
- Though it's undoubtedly a fact that Bob Skir derailed almost all of the Beast Wars characters, the matter cannot be entirely blamed on him alone. On his website, Skir admitted that Hasbro specifically hired him because he had no prior experience with Transformers and they even ordered him not to watch Beast Wars. Bob Skir receives the most flack for Beast Machines because out of all the writers and producers on the show, he was the one who made himself the most accessible to the fans (which resulted in him having to cancel a Botcon appearance due to death threats). Others such as Marty Isenberg and many other writers on the show received no such backlash from the fandom, even though they played an equal part in making Beast Machines what it is.
Family Guy, especially post-revival, has many cases of this. Brian is frequently a mouthpiece for Seth MacFarlane's liberal political views, and other characters occasionally fill the role as well. Characters with dissenting views — conservative Christians, pro-lifers, Republicans, people who practice abstinence, radical feminists, etc. — are frequently portrayed as being dumber than dirt.
- Though in the episode FOX-y Lady, Brian's flaws are pointed out perfectly. Lois was ordered by her new employers at Fox News to expose Michael Moore's (theorized) homosexuality. When it is discovered Rush Limbaugh is (possibly) his lover, the expose is cut. Brian is repulsed by Fox News avoiding the truth to protect a fellow conservative, but urges Lois to do the story anyways to nail Limbaugh. Lois asks why this is any different than Fox trying to discredit Moore. Brian stammeringly claims it is OK because he is admitting his hypocrisy.
  - Yeah but despite that one lampshade, Brian is rarely criticized or shows flaws since the 6/7 season depending on who you ask.
- The show parodied this trope in an early episode, when Lois is directing The King and I at the community theater. When she makes Peter producer, he proceeds to rewrite the script several times until finally the story is about a post-apocalyptic future world where the lead character is a robot ninja. It drives Lois crazy, but everyone else loves it.
- Then there was the episode dedicated to explaining why legalizing weed was the best thing in the world. And another episode where Meg becomes a bigot soon after finding religion.
  - Not just Meg. The whole town turns Nazi overnight and begins burning books especially ones containing physics and mathematics. Brian saves the day by explaining that an all loving god would have made Meg pretty (instead of say, letting the laws of genetics work properly and letting her look like Peter) and everyone returns to normal because this is clearly a reasonable explanation for why a god can't exist.
  - That's confusing on several levels. Meg was already pretty once and that worked out poorly for her. The conclusion of that episode was that Meg was better off being the way she originally was.
- "Road to the Multiverse" may have set a new record; Seth delivers a Take That at Christians less than four minutes into the season. It is the first multiverse they get to, a beautiful place with jetpacks and skyscrapers, and the only difference is that "Christianity doesn't exist".
  - And he didn't stop there. The next episode, "Family Goy", is even worse. In an episode ostensibly about making fun of Judaism, pretty much every joke is a jab at Catholics, culminating in Jesus himself saying that all religion is crap.
  - The sheer volume of his jabs at Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular would indicate he had a Catholic family, or is a lapsed one himself. Remember in the earlier seasons when God mentioned he loved gay people? The only people who would have a problem with that, after more than a second's consideration, would be some of the more extreme Christians. Nowadays even Atheists are getting irritated.
- Speaking of "Road" episodes, in "Road to Germany" Brian and Stewie beat up Nazi and stole their uniforms, only to find a McCain/Palin campaign pin on the Nazi uniform... classic. And very very funny.
  - If you're the sort of toxic cultural pollutant who finds calling people you don't like "Nazis" to be witty, then I guess so. The rest of us found it a cheap, nasty and stupid invocation of Godwins Law, i.e. an invocation of Godwins Law.
  - The joke, however tasteless it may have been, did inspire Trey and Matt to make their election day episode, So Yeah.
South Park has, in later seasons, become nothing but a vehicle for Trey and Matt to dispense whatever magical wisdom they feel obliged to share with us. But hey, a lot of the time it works really well...and then of course sometimes it doesn't.
After head writer Steve Marmel left Nickelodeon's Danny Phantom for Disney's Yin Yang Yo, creator Butch Hartman replaced him...leading to a third (and final) season so bad, some fans claim it never happened.
- Speaking of Hartman, some say that his portrayl of the popular kids in both Danny Phantom and The Fairly Oddparents is his way of showing how bad rich kids can be if they abuse their position. Then again, the protaginists of both shows have rich girls as love intrests...
King Of The Hill has fallen into this recently. With most episodes showing everybody who disagrees with Hank lacks common sense, or is a Jerk Ass. Also, roleplayers are all cultists according to this show.