I don't honestly know if there is someone at Pocket whose job it is to follow the desires of a particular fanbase. I'm certain there is someone whose job it is to determine how well particular products are selling. Whether they backtrack from there to try and figure out why or how all that might work....I have no idea.
Here's what I can tell you about the process by the time it gets to the writer. An editor says, "We need a new story." They might or might not also add things like, "By the end of the story x, y and z need to have happened to set up this other story or to tie in with something previously established." We are then asked to provide the editor with an outline of the best possible story we can that honors the specific requirements they made of us.
That's it. Really, honest to God, there has been no discussion, at least for me in the few times I've done this, about doing or not doing something because of fan reaction. I may have worried or wondered about it in my secret heart of hearts because even though I am a writer, before I was that, I was a fan and that fan still lives in me and from time to time offers suggestions. And maybe this is something the editors talk about amongst themselves before they even approach an author.
Point is, by the time it gets to me, the author, my only job is to look at the given circumstances and tell the best possible story I can. How people are going to react to it doesn't get a vote when crafting the story because there is ultimately no way to know. We can make an educated guess...but that kind of thinking just takes too much time away from all the time we need to spend figuring out the damn story.
And for what it's worth, I come to these boards because it is fun to interact directly with people who love these stories and these people as much as I do. That's been hard to do over the last several months for a variety of reasons and lately I'm just trying to correct as many outright factual errors as I can in the interest of not allowing them to get blown evern more out of proportion. And granted, I don't read all the threads, but by my count Margaret has been here once since December to correct one factual error herself.
So a little more fact checking...
What's wrong here is the direct connection you make between the appearance that there weren't many fans of Janeway and the result being the choice to kill off the character. These two things have absolutely no relation to one another. Number of fans, decibel level of fans, not at all a consideration. Telling the most compelling story we thought we could was the only consideration. That applies to Peter and Margaret when they decided Janeway would die in Before Dishonor, and me and Marco when we decided to face the reality of that decision rather than rush to take it back. One felt meaningful and respectful. The other felt cheap and unworthy of the character. Your mileage will most certainly vary.
Blitz, have you read all of these threads going back to the very first Before Dishonor thread which was maybe eight months ago now? I get that if you haven't, a lot of the comments you are seeing might seem dismissive and rude. I think the sheer tonnage of hammering the authors, editors, and Pocket have taken, the repititous nature of many posts, and their determination to repeat actual factual errors which have already been pointed out to them makes the tone here on this subject a little more understandable, though as you rightly point out, probably not as productive as one might hope.
I don't want to speak for them, but yes, I'm sure the editorial staff knew that killing Janeway was going to upset some fans. That's not a huge leap of logic. But when you say things like "this anger is an intentional effect" to me it kind of feeds the absolutely false sense some have that the editors were sitting around asking themsleves...what's the best way to piss off this fan group? Intentional maybe in the sense that anyone with a brain could have seen it coming. But certainly not intentional in the sense that anyone wanted to anger people. The intention was to tell the best possible story we could. Fan anger in this case is an unavoidable consequence, given the creative direction chosen.
All I can tell you is that when we make creative choices, we know we have to live with all of the consequences. But as long as we feel that the story that resulted from the choice was worth the time and energy, honors the character and the spirit of Trek, and moves the characters along in an organic way, we rest content that we have done our job.
Yeah...wasn't Kes 2 when she joined the crew? Might that be where the confusion is? Her life span was 9 years. She was 2 when we met her so she had 7 years left to live...presumably the 7 years the show as supposed to run.
I would never in my wildest dreams presume to try and teach anyone anything through my writing. There's this scene from The West Wing that has always resonated with me. It's from "The U.S. Poet Laureate." The poet in question says that as a writer, her job is to hold the audience's attention for as long as they have asked for it. If they stumble into truth, they got lucky.
For me that's accurate. First and foremost, I write to entertain...or hold your attention. In order to do that, I think we have to present experiences as accurately as possible. If we don't, those who have lived through it smell a rat and get pulled out of the story. But don't confuse the subject matter, in this case, treating Janeway's death as a fact and presenting realistic effects, with a presumption on my part that I could teach anyone who has experienced death anything they don't already know about.
Dayton, you owe me another keyboard. That's two by my count now. Well played.
Best,
Kirsten Beyer
PS - Anyone who thinks we do this for the money has never seen a media tie in contract. Only a fraction of a percentage of all media-tie in writers don't have to have another full time job to support their writing habit and pay their rent. This is a labor of love and it is an honor to be asked. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the money.
