Subject: OTish: Bad story, good character
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Posted on: 2012-03-20 06:13:00 UTC

I was thinking about this while rereading some old sporkings. Some books and movies are really, really awful; we all have our particular bete noirs, though Twilight seems to be the popular favorite. However, very few works are actively rotten through and through, and sometimes there's a character or two you just sort of want to . . . save.

For me, it's the Anita Blake character Edward. A professional assassin with a lot of experience and another life he keeps pretty tight-lipped about, Edward is actually much more interesting to me than Anita, who's gotten kind of--well, useless in the past few books. He has a cover identity as a good ol' boy federal marshal, but wound up falling in love with a widow while in his undercover guise. Now Edward is torn about what he might wind up putting this woman (and her children) through, and actually has people to care about. A bit cheesy? Maybe. Hella more interesting than anything Anita gets up to? Definitely.

(I might have some unresolved Anita Blake issues.)

I can take or leave the entire rest of the series, but when it comes to Edward, I'm dying to rescue him from the books and put him into a series where he'll be appreciated. It's actually painful to me to know that he's still in the books, because I'm afraid he'll wind up joining Anita's harem.

So how about you guys? Anybody else have a character they'd love to rescue from an otherwise objectionable work of fiction? Maybe a character you keep reading/watching for, even if the others are driving you nuts?

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