I don't see Ryan having no place in the canvas, and don't advocate his departure at all. First, 'cause I'm not the arbiter of what characters are viable and what aren't! Second, 'cause I like having screwed up people on canvases.
I do appreciate your conflict, Michael, regarding the family dynamics you've set up. I guess I'm kind of... well, not disappointed or anything, but at least surprised, that a writer of your skill and sensibility would back away from intra-family conflict. Having someone to whom different family members react differently is an absolute boon to a dramatic writer, not a disadvantage! If FP were a sitcom or a Seventh Heaven type of sticky-sweet family drama I'd understand not wanting to make things awkward amongst the main characters, but we're talking about a soap / continuing drama here -- and in particular, one that is well-written enough to support this kind of ongoing, character-building tension.
Now this may not be the kind of story you want to tell; that's an option you're entitled to take and it's certainly not up to me to gainsay that decision. I might bitch, but ultimately it's your series and you've proven yourself more than able to make excellent decisions in its storytelling.
For me, though, you've almost forced the situation yourself by making Ryan a Fisher and keeping him on canvas, and even keeping him free to walk around despite the whole framing thing. (I swear I have perma-amnesia when it comes to this plot point: I know you've told me before, but I've again forgotten the reason why Ryan was never prosecuted for his crimes -- i.e. attempted murder of Nick and conspiracy against Tim.)
But since you have kept him on canvas, you're left with two choices: you can either a) have everyone forgive/forget, or b) keep him on as a continuing source of tension, like an old wound that just won't go away.
I guess I'm genuinely surprised that option B is one you're either not interested in -- or don't feel capable of --pursuing. If it's "interest" then that's fine; disappointing (for whatever my disappointment is worth, which probably ain't much) but fine. But if you don't feel capable of it? Well, I think you're vastly underestimating yourself and the strong foundation you've laid for the series.
Hell, to me, the juicy ongoing conflict is the main benefit of Ryan's being part of the family! It wasn't just there for the fireworks of Samantha's custody trial, or the Ryan/Claire/Tim triangle (that didn't really last long anyway), or the brief rift between Bill and Paula. You didn't really need another Fisher sibling, right? So what's his role in town? Having Ryan become a Fisher was a great choice primarily for the ongoing, yummy awkwardness of conflicting motivations and unsettled emotions his very existence creates in people like Bill, Paula, Tim, Travis and Samantha. (At one point I'd have held up Sarah, Molly and Jason as likely options, but that ship has unfortunately sailed, since they've all shown themselves to be on friendly terms with Ryan.)
I'm not talking about someone refusing to be in the same room with the guy, not at this point. Discomfort doesn't have to be that melodramatic. But certainly some level of distrust and lingering resentment could still be percolating among the various family members, most likely Tim and Bill, and might not come out until something else forces it out.
The Jack Deveraux story is an excellent one to bring up because it's a perfect example of how to create a fucked-up character, show various others on canvas having individual reactions to said character, and finally redeem him (to a degree).
It's that last part that's the toughest step. My problem with Ryan's development over the past few years is that his redemption and acceptance in town have felt unearned. He's never paid for his crimes; he's never even shown true remorse for them! Sure, he went through a self-pitying/alkie stage that lasted a brief period of time and served mainly to hook him up with Danielle, but that doesn't count as remorse. (If he's going through AA, where's his Step 9 atonement?) Nope, he's now got a sweet little life as boyfriend, author(!) and welcome family dinner guest, and hasn't suffered any real recriminations.
Redemption without payment is unfair. That's what Ryan's received. And sometimes that does seem to happen in life -- some people land in dung smelling of roses -- but inevitably someone is gonna resent people like that. The trouble I'm having is that none of the Ryan's victims or victims-by-proxy seem bothered! If someone had done all this to me or a family member (sleeping w/a spouse, framing a guy for murder, indirectly causing a sister's kid to die and a brother-in-law's leg to get lopped off, and writing a tell-all book on top of it) and the guy bounced right back without paying for any of it? Holy crap, someone should be seething with the unfairness of it all!
Compare this with Jack Deveraux...
Spoiler-hiding the rest just because it's so ridiculously long.
Spoiler
Jack justly loathed himself and began receiving his community punishment (if not legal punishment) pretty much from day #1 post-KaylaRape. I'm not sure if you've ever seen the episodes -- you'd've been awfully young at the time (but they're available online if ya know where to look and they are unbelievably instructive for any serial writer) -- but from 1989 - 1993, the writers never made things easy for Jack, and rightly so. Everyone in town, especially family members, had different levels of anger toward Jack: Steve and Kayla, Jo (Jack/Steve/Adrienne's mom), Adrienne, the Bradys (Kayla's relatives), Melissa (who became his fiancee but finally dumped him) and the Hortons, and later Jennifer all took their sweet time in learning to trust Jack. Even when most of the town was on relatively good terms with him after his wedding to Jennifer, the dynamics between Jack and Kayla (much to the kudos of Matthew Ashford, Mary Beth Evans, the writers and directors) were always fraught with ambivalence. They never showed complete ease in each other's presence... at least, in their original run pre-1993. As you mention, Evans and Ashford always played that slight hesitation between them, and it was a brilliant acting (and directing) choice. Finally, the last person to forgive Jack was... Jack himself. When Jack went on a downwards spiral of self-destruction, he meant it. Of course, I do mean the Ashford version of the character. All bets are off for the post-1994 and -2002 bullshit versions. Ashford's insistance on remaining true to Jack's insecure nature is largely what got him fired in '93 and probably 2003 too -- Reilly admitted himself that he didn't 'get' this kind of character.
On his winding, multi-forked road to redemption, Jack underwent physical trials (Steve beat the shit out of him and dropped him off a freakin' roof, where he nearly died), emotional agony (finding out his father was a serial killer, realizing he's not much different, discovering Steve was his brother, killing his own father to save Steve's life, having Steve die, Jennifer's rape -- which brought up tons of justifiable guilt and loathing on his part...) and yes, legal reprecussions (he was put on trial and lost his senatorial campaign, and during Jennifer's rape trial his own past came up yet again). The writers played up his misery for all it was worth, and the audience looooooved it. When Jennifer started falling for him, and Jack pushed her away, the audience began by being icked out and then rooted for them because we saw Jack's reformation through Jennifer's eyes. He wasn't trying to redeem himself just to be good enough for Jennifer, but also to earn his family's trust or at least make up for all his horrible behavior. And like all good characters, Jack's development wasn't a straight line: he backslid more than once and had to climb back up again.
BTW, to give credit where credit's due: the creators of these arcs included Anne Howard Bailey, Anne Schoettle, Richard J. Allen and Al Rabin (the latter was producer).
Anyway. God, sorry ... I could go on and on and on even longer about the amazing writing back in those days, and not just for Jack but several other characters. Anyone who hasn't seen the actual scenes and wants to, let me know!
My point in all this is not that I expect this level of intricate plotting / character development in every webseries, especially those created by a single writer who's not doing this full-time. I certainly can't live up to it in my own work, alas, though I try. But this is the kind of thing that's possible, and is the chief advantage in the soap opera / continuing drama format. We write this genre because it allows us to weave such lengthy, intricate tapestries. Don't we? I know I do, and I'm pretty sure you feel the same way. (Not everyone writes a websoap for this reason, of course -- some people just dig the larger-than-life melodrama, and that's cool too.)
I think you can pull off a bit of darker shading in this situation, where characters start to re-evaluate their various roles in town, without feeling like it's backtracking. Sometimes things that feel "settled" in one's mind may not be quite as completely forgotten as they seem. If the Loretta plot is about to churn up some old memories/new dynamics among the Fisher family, there's a chance other issues could be shaken out of people's psyches too. As far as what to do with Ryan? I don't see him as a big bad. But he can be a genuine trouble-maker if he feels he's not getting what he wants in life. He definitely has a sense of entitlement that can be exploited by his creator. Contrast this with Tim (or whoever) feeling understanding resentment over Ryan's various successes, and there's potential there for conflict aplenty. No one needs to be the Big Bad. People can screw up their own lives and those of others without being Teh Evil.
And this is officially more thinking about FP than I've even given to my own series this week, so I'ma shut up now.
I don't see Ryan having no place in the canvas, and don't advocate his departure at all. First, 'cause I'm not the arbiter of what characters are viable and what aren't!
I figured that for every reader who vocalizes a problem, there are probably others who feel similarly. Seemed worth exploring. If Ryan turned out to be a sticking point for enough people, I'd definitely take action.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kira
For me, though, you've almost forced the situation yourself by making Ryan a Fisher and keeping him on canvas, and even keeping him free to walk around despite the whole framing thing. (I swear I have perma-amnesia when it comes to this plot point: I know you've told me before, but I've again forgotten the reason why Ryan was never prosecuted for his crimes -- i.e. attempted murder of Nick and conspiracy against Tim.)
I loopholed my way out of that, because honestly, I knew I would have to loophole my way out of it if he were charged with the crimes, and it would have been months of go-nowhere stuff. Nick was already dead, and charges had been filed in his murder, and he wasn't back long enough for that to be rectified, so basically they'd have been filing charges based on the word of a man who was supposed to be dead and was dead by the time they'd need him to give an actual statement. Brent talked briefly about pursuing it anyway, but then he, er, lost his leg and all that, and it fell by the wayside. At the very outset of the whole Clayton/Loretta thing, when Danielle and Ryan were just getting to know each other, he thought of doubling back and finally pursuing charges against Ryan, but too much time had passed and it seemed impossible. And there was never a conspiracy against Tim on Ryan's part -- he simply never confessed that he had shot Nick himself. For all he knew, Tim also shot the guy that night, especially after Nick's maid turned up dead and the gun was found in Tim's trunk (planted by Nick/Clayton's guys). I've always seen that as a teensy escape clause for Ryan in the story, planted very intentionally: he knew that he shot Nick, but he didn't actually know what Tim did or did not do that night, especially after it appeared Tim had also killed the maid.
...and I'm not even going to bother quoting specific bits now, because I'll just respond in general. Otherwise this is going to get very long and wordy and unnecessarily detailed.
When I say I'm not interested in having Ryan as a permanent outcast from the Fishers, I mean, like, "forever unable to interact semi-normally with them." I agree that it's a terrific source of tension, and I don't plan to drop that. As we just saw, Travis doesn't like or trust him, Tim will never, ever be pals with him, Sarah hasn't done more than greet him at a holiday meal, etc. I don't want everyone to forget the things he did. But I do feel it's time to move on.
Thanks for your faith in my skills as a writer, but in my mind, I've already played out a 2-year-plus redemption arc for Ryan, and it doesn't seem to have "taken." I've been re-reading a lot of the episodes from the second half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 as I gear up for this Loretta finale, and those episodes -- which make up the year following Nick's last stand and the revelation of Ryan's misdeeds -- are full of Ryan paying for what he did. Jason fires him from his job, Paula sneaks off to see him only to tell him he can never come in her home again, he loses his loft, Sarah coldly shuts him down, Claire doesn't even want to hear him try to apologize, etc. Then everyone essentially cuts him off for a year. Sarah finds out about the book, and her family gets pissed when she doesn't warn them what is going on, especially Tim. When Danielle first brings Ryan home drunk, Brent and Molly won't even let him in the house at first, and then only until he wakes up. For months, Danielle refuses to speak to him any more than to tell him to get help because of what he did to Brent, and even their spending time together plays as a huge sticking point between Danielle and Brent/Molly. Claire goes to him to dig for info on Loretta and can barely look at him, and she rips into him for everything he's done. And throughout all this, Ryan acknowledges that he's the one who ruined his life and caused these people he was supposed to care about so much pain; a big turning point in his relationship with Danielle is when she makes him see that while he should learn from his mistakes, he needs to forgive himself or it's going to kill him. In my mind, the arc begins to conclude when the book gets published and the Fishers make a decision, as a family, to take Tim's lead and try to let go of their anger; it resolves when grief-stricken Jason leans on Ryan and brings him to Thanksgiving, leading Paula to finally read the book and at least entertain the idea that Ryan is not pure evil who must be excised fully from their lives.
As I always say, I don't want this to come across as me getting defensive or saying, "OMG ur wrong!!!11" But I do think I played this story heavily for a good year, and afterward, it was certainly acknowledged and played underneath the newer stories. That's why I say I don't know if I am capable of doing it effectively -- because I think I did the story, and I'm not sure if it read as I intended. Interestingly, I backed off heaping more shit on Ryan because people started to talk about him becoming "woobified." Now I wonder if I should've gone harder with all that. Tough balancing act, and a learning experience, I guess. If anything, the conclusion seems to have been too pat for you, which is perfectly valid, and I know I've missed or underplayed beats along the way. But I do see it as necessary to bring Ryan back to a point where he can go to events with the Fishers without that really heavy, "We cut you out of our lives" tension, because that impedes a lot of the stories I want to tell (such as him having a relationship with Danielle, because of the Brent connection). I'd rather have him come to Christmas dinner and have half the people going, "Is he seriously here?" and having to swallow their annoyance.
On the plus side, the upcoming blow-up of this Loretta storyline has a lot of reflection built into it, and now I know that I need to play up the Ryan-related beats to clarify and engineer the emotions accordingly. Also, he factors into Jason's next stuff quite a bit, and their relationship hasn't exactly been resolved; Ryan just lent support, and Jason accepted it, but they've yet to deal with the past.
Anyway! Thank you for sharing your honest opinions. I do value them, and I encourage everyone to share their thoughts in the same way. It's how I learn and make this series better.
