Writer On Board - Television Tropes & Idioms

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.

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.

It does not count if the message was the primary point in making the work in the first place.

A play on "Baby on Board".

Author Appeal is a specific form of this. See also Wall Banger and Creator Breakdown, and Idiot Plot.

Examples:

Better Days . It's bad enough that the entire main cast is perched on the same moral and political wave length as the creator. But whenever a new character shows up who opposes those views they are swiftly cut down by the "good" characters. Worse yet the poor opposing party is never seen again making it seem like the main cast can do no wrong. Even if the other side has an argument the reader never gets to hear it because Naylor's characters out talk them or leave before they can say anything. It's always been like this but lately it has gotten worse. The main character, Fisk, who was at first endearing, somewhat funny and relatable is now dry, lacks personality, and is nothing more than a mouth piece for Naylor and his Randian Objectivists beliefs.
- Fisk was never a good character-- he's always been a Mary Sue stand-in for Jay Naylor. However, he was somewhat more 'round' when he was younger (and Naylor was a religious fruitcake rather than an Objectivist one). Young Fisk was an anti-social Mary Sue, yes, but there were hints that he had a lighter, more vulnerable side that was hidden by the fact that he was the 'man of the family' in a traditionalist Southern household. However, after Naylor's conversion to Randian Man-God, that side of Fisk was removed in favor of an increasingly sociopathic cardboard cut-out, whose grunting, monosyllabic comments were enough to have multiple women spontaneously change their personalities and seek nasty, unemotional sex with him. Fisk not only has all the features of a Mary Sue, but the traits of some kind of Roarke rip-off, which is a cultish requirement of Objectivism's asocial worship of the ego over everything else.
Director Hideaki Anno -- who had gone through a serious bout of depression pre-production -- was famously accused of this practice in regards to the later opaque parts of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
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.
The Doctor Who episode "The Two Doctors", written by vegetarian Robert Holmes, is a thinly-disguised parable about the evils of meat-eating.
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 annoying.
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...
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.
Hey Arnold! "Eugene, Eugene!" demonstrated this and Adaptation Decay with a Show Within A Show, by having a 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.
Literary example: 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 clangingly obvious Ayn Rand soapboxing on how individuals working for themselves in a free market works far better than your broken, inevitably corrupt socialism, and will also get you the chicks.
- Goodkind does, admittedly, come by it honestly: pretty much all fiction by Ayn Rand is a soapbox for Objectivism--most famously Atlas Shrugged.
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 example at least had the advantage of being pretty spot on, and quite funny. Studio 60... not so much.
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 was a completely new series, and not a sequel to another.
- This is entirely the fault of Dan Didio who insisted that the show not fit into any canon. Even that of the previous series.
In the Fullmetal Alchemist movie Conquerer of Shamballa Roy Mustang, the competent leader whose dream is supposed to be that he wants to run the nation has demoted himself. What caused him to go into this funk that only a Hes Back moment can revive? He saved the nation and lost an eye. The reason seems to be that the director and writers love Wangst. Since Ed (the go to guy for this situation) is too busy, then the task falls on Mustang to complain. Even the people who have never read the manga were complaining.
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.
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.)
- 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.
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.
- Lewis, on the other hand, kept it under control until the The Last Battle, wherein evil Arabs take over the world and the subtext rather becomes the... text.
South Park has pretty much degenerated into Stone and Parker using Kyle and Stan to espouse whatever views they agree with to strawmen opponents who appear as the Monster Of The Week. Perhaps the most egregious example was the pro-smoking episode, which portrayed tobacco corporations as magical factories of delight, the health risks of cigarettes being "only living to 80 instead of 90", and everyone who disagreed with them as bloated hypocrites. Stone and Parker lampshaded this in the "Cartoon Wars" episode: "your show has become so preachy and full of messages that you've forgotten how to be funny!"
- One of this troper's friends described Team America: World Police as "a movie by two celebrities with political opinions about how celebrities shouldn't speak about their political opinions."
From what this troper saw, 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.
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.
When the setting information for a Tabletop Games 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". 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 in 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.
The (seriously disturbing) novels of John Norman, author of Gor.
- Seconded. If it were not for that one aspect (the reduction of women to the willing puppets of men) then they would be moderately readable sword & sorcery novels. With it ... ew.
In the Living Greyhawk RPG, the event River of Blood 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.
This wiki, to a certain degree, although of course we (try to and fail sometimes at) draw the line at snarkasm rather than going into an Author Filibuster.
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.
Don't mention Reginald Hudlin's revival of the Black Panther comic. Just... don't.
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.
Schlock Mercenary is pretty heavy on the "government is useless and people with big guns are the only power you should listen to", but a cook calling the galactic body of diplomats "toothless neuters" may have been a bit out there.
- Taylor's also not big on lawyers. ("Yes, I know they are all lawyers. You're supposed to be cheering for the friendly, human one.")
  - Granted, morality lessons have not been a focus of the comic, and most factions are decidedly grey, with intentions, results, means, and ends all meshing together.
  - And the comic is funny with it. Funny counts.
Ursula Le Guin's so-called sequel to the Earthsea Trilogy Tehanu definitely qualifies being a gender-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 men stole it!
Pretty much every political scene Garth Ennis writes is a Wall Banger.
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.
Jimmy Mc Nulty and Lester Freamon on the 5th season of The Wire. Did anyone actually believe these two would start faking murders? Especially Lester. C'mon. That guy's nose was cleaner than Omar's shotgun barrel. It was all so David Simon could try to make a point or two about lies, institutions that encourage lies, and the effects they have on society.
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.
Joe Quesada, the current editor-in-chief at Marvel, has 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. His most recent attempt, the much-maligned One More Day which actually went as far as having Peter Parker make a deal with the devil to erase his marriage in exchange for his Aunt May's life, actually ticked off the person stuck writing it so much that he left the title entirely.
- To be fair, that was going to be Straszcinki's last story run anyway. And he didn't disagree inherently with the idea of undoing Peter and MJ's marriage. He did, however, vehemently disagree with the Editorial Fiat that said, effectively, "It's magic, so we don't have to explain any major plot holes or why amazingly powerful entities like Dr. Strange or the Watcher didn't notice. Also, we'll claim at once that nothing has changed except the disappearance of Peter's marriage, and also in the same month say to forget whatever's past." The Deus Ex Machina -- almost literally -- of Mephisto undoing everything was poorly concieved, and everyone seemed to know it.
The very first regular 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. The feminist message was conveyed with all the subtly of a naquadah explosion as though the episode's writer forgot that the entire civilized world turned away from treating women as property about two hundred years ago. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly the show's best episode and the events from it were never mentioned again.

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