Taylor Hughes
It is the middle of the night. Annie Wilkes has waited and waited for the latest installment of her favorite series. She goes to the bookstore to be sure she gets the first copy. She devours it as quickly as possible, curling up in the armchair we later glimpse in her bedroom, reading long into the night–only to discover that Misery, her favorite character, has tragically died. She rushes downstairs, where she conveniently holds the author captive, to lament: “Misery Chastain cannot be dead!” she wails. “You did it! You murdered my Misery!”
Many of us know too well the feeling of being excited for the latest installment of our latest fictional pleasure, only to be devastated when we find death waiting for our “faves.” Annie is not alone in her grief or anger over a fictional character’s demise. Most people remember the lasting trauma of their first fictional loss. Whether it was eagerly following the Harry Potter series as children, or being shocked by the infamous “Red Wedding” in Game of Thrones (or the many, many other character deaths on that show), everyone who enjoys fiction has been hurt when a character they loved met a too-early death.
Arguably the first example of an outpouring of fan grief was in 1893 when Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem. Like Paul Sheldon, Doyle felt trapped by his most beloved character’s fame and wanted to be a more “commanding” voice in literature.[1] So he killed Sherlock. Fans were not pleased. According to legend, the public canceled subscriptions to the magazine en masse, wore black armbands in mourning, and started “Let’s Keep Holmes Alive” clubs. Paul Sheldon is more remorseful than Doyle was; when Annie accuses him of murdering Misery, he deflects, insisting, “no one murdered her, she just died.” Doyle referred to the death of Holmes as “justifiable homicide.“[2]
But, as Annie would “convince” Paul to continue writing his Misery series, the fans won out over Doyle’s desire for Holmes’s death. He was brought back for 1901’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, a story set before The Final Problem, then resurrected in 1903’s The Empty House. The mourning could end. Of course, this was only the first example of fans coming together to grieve and band together to collectively rescue a character. With the internet at their disposal, modern-day fans create digital memorials for their favorite characters on forums or sites like Livejournal, Tumblr, and Twitter, but this phenomenon can even transcend the internet. After fan-favorite character Ianto Jones was killed off the Doctor Who-spinoff Torchwood, fans created an extensive shrine in Cardiff.
The Ianto Jones shrine in 2012.
It became something of a pilgrimage site for fans who continued to add photos and messages of support. Though these characters are not real, their deaths can create a real sense of mourning and disruption for fans. As a popular tweet states:
“Don’t let people make you feel bad for mourning a fictional character. I studied neuroscience in undergrad and your brain can’t tell the difference between feelings for fiction and feelings for reality. All it knows is that you’re feeling really strongly. So if you lose something that’s fictional, like a character, your brain perceives it as a real loss and something that needs to be mourned. So cry it out, scream it out, talk it out. Do whatever you need to do to deal with it and process it.”[3]
Whether or not the brain perceives the death of fictional characters in precisely the same way as a real death, fans clearly feel the need to have a mourning process for fictional characters and seek validation for those feelings. Many people dismiss these emotions as unreal because they involve a parasocial relationship, one that can never be reciprocated, but it is clear that many people seek validation in their feelings of loss when it comes to fictional characters, and that increasingly it is becoming recognized as a real form of loss.[4] It is interesting that, despite the circumstances, Paul doesn’t dismiss Annie’s grief in the scene in which she laments Misery’s death. He’s obviously trying to de-escalate the situation to prevent further violence, but it is important that he recognizes that the most effective way of doing that is to acknowledge Misery as a genuine loss for Annie. He does speak of her as if she were a real person in a real context. “In 1871, women died in childbirth all the time,” Paul tries to reason with Annie. “She died; she just slipped away.” Instead of telling Annie that Misery isn’t real, he tells her it’s her spirit that’s important, and that will carry on. He does not dismiss her but tries to argue that Misery’s death fits within his narrative. Paul acknowledges, in short, that Annie’s connection and her emotions are real. She is clearly beginning an authentic grief process, though she does linger in the denial-anger stages of the Kubler-Ross model, not quite making it to the critical “acceptance” stage.
Many fans also feel the anger that Annie displays when their favorite characters come to an undeserving end. In Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity, and Self-Narrative, Rebecca Williams studied fan responses to character death through surveys taken before and after the final episode featuring Cordelia Chase on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off Angel. She found that fans “displayed ‘frustration and antagonism’ with those responsible for writing Cordelia out of the series.”[5] Williams compares this desire for satisfying, deserved deaths with the ars moriendi. The “ars moriendi” – “the art of dying” – were 15th-century instructive pamphlets on the art of dying well.[6] Williams argues that fans demand a befitting end to beloved characters that fits in with the series’s emotional continuity, one that does the character justice. A poor narrative end leaves fans bitter and angry.
On the other hand, denial is a very productive phase of the mourning process for fans, particularly in ongoing works where character death can be rectified. As we saw with Sherlock Holmes, authors can be pressured to bring back fan faves. Sustained petitions have saved other characters that were given the ax. Marvel fans refused to accept the death of Phil Coulson in 2012’s Avengers, using the tag #CoulsonLives to express their denial. They created stickers and t-shirts with the slogan until the studio agreed to bring him back in the TV series Agents of SHIELD. Fans even showed up in person at the studio in Vancouver to protest the killing off of Stargate: Atlantic character Carson Beckett.[7] Resurrections work best in shows rooted in sci-fi and fantasy, where authors can come up with creative means to bring back dead characters through clones, alternative timelines, or other magical or otherworldly tropes. Coulson was brought back to life in an ultra-secret resurrection program called “Project Tahiti”: Beckett returned as a clone.
Unfortunately, authors working in more realistic fictional worlds, like Paul Sheldon, have a bigger challenge ahead of them. As Williams invoked the “ars moriendi,” the art of dying, I propose that for fans like Annie, there is also an “ars resurrectionem” – the art of resurrecting well. Annie rejects Paul’s initial attempt at continuing the Misery series because it doesn’t follow appropriately from the end of the latest “canonical” text. He left Misery in the grave at the end of the last book; he has to start there for the next one, although this isn’t always as much of a problem for fans as it is for Annie. And in fact, it can even turn into something of a fandom joke, depending on the frequency. It’s so common in some genres, soap operas and comic books in particular, that it would be more surprising if characters actually stayed dead, and probably less outlandish than other things that have happened. But there is a sense of frustration when deaths and resurrections don’t fit well within the represented world.[8] If the death or resurrection doesn’t conform to the narrative’s emotional reality, fans won’t hesitate to express frustration with resurrections that cheapen character arcs and challenge the logical underpinnings of the fictional world, just as Annie does.
An important aspect that Annie is missing out on is the collective nature of fandom experience. Isolation is a common theme in Stephen King’s writings–Paul’s isolation being the most obvious in Misery. But Annie is isolated as well. Fans mourning their favorite characters typically do so collectively, and grief counselors discussing fictional loss emphasize keeping up social networks as a vital part of the grieving process.[9] There were fan communities in the late 1980s (the film was released in 1990, and the book in 1987, so we can presume that they are taking place in the late 1980s), but they were not as widespread or accessible as they are now. Today, with the internet and massive platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, and Livejournal bringing fans together, fans have a community that can help them find acceptance for fictional loss. But Annie is isolated in her Misery experience. She doesn’t discuss accessing a wider fandom of others who can share in her grief. Of course, her isolation is mostly self-inflicted, given her propensity for cold-blooded murder and the likely social rejection suffered after she was accused of murdering infants while working as a nurse. But no matter the origin of the isolation, she is missing out on a vital social resource that may have helped her come to terms with Misery’s death.
Modern fandom has also presented us with another tool for dealing with character death. While fanfiction has, depending on the definition, been around as long as the written word (an oft-cited example is Dante’s self-insert Aeneid fanfiction The Inferno), in the past several decades, the modern form has gone from an illegal, shunned practice to one gaining in respectability with each passing year.[10] The Organization for Transformative Works was founded in 2007 to protect and archive fan works, and to argue that fanfiction and other transformative works are a legal practice under the Fair Use doctrine.[11] It’s recently been playfully lambasted in shows like Brooklyn-99, Parks and Recreation, and Supernatural. There have been several notable works recently that openly started as fanfiction, the most famous example being Fifty Shades of Grey, a multimillion-dollar book and film franchise in its own right, which was initially written as a Twilight fanfiction posted online called “Master of the Universe.” This process, of turning fanfiction into original fiction, is known as “filing off the serial numbers.”[12] Writer Mike Flanagan said he thought of his critically acclaimed adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House “as fanfic for a while.”[13] Clearly, the respectability and prestige of fanfiction has dramatically increased in the last several years, but how has that affected fans’ response to character death?
Fanfiction can offer fans a refuge from accepting the character’s death at all. With fanfiction, fans can craft “Alternative Universes” in which characters never die at all–for instance, the resurrection of the character Phil Coulson between 2012’s Avengers and the 2013 series Agents of SHIELD. There are 287 works tagged on Archive of Our Own with both the character tag “Phil Coulson” and “Fix-it” between Avengers‘ premiere date, when audiences learned of his fate, and the official announcement of his return at San Diego Comic-Con in October 2012.[14] There are 630 works using the dedicated tag #CoulsonLives. Fanfiction can give fans “a powerful sense of participatory equality” in the creation process.[15] Fans are increasingly empowered to “fix” narratives they find unsatisfactory and to share that work with a community to offer an alternative to the disappointing or heartbreaking source material.
This isn’t to
say that fanfiction has entirely replaced fan petitions; rather, it’s given fans a new tool for narrative satisfaction while they wait for the fruits of their labors. “Canon” is still the ideal. While fanfiction can offer an alternative for disappointed and grieving fans, it often exists alongside the desire to see characters brought back in the “reality” of the fictional universe, if the series is ongoing and such a resurrection would fit into the logic of the world. Marvel fans also continued to campaign for Coulson’s return. They used the “Coulson Lives” hashtag both as a genre of fanfiction and a call for the canon creators to bring him back, and they were ultimately rewarded when their campaigns worked. They don’t always. There can be many factors that preclude a resurrection, and fans turn to their communities to mourn and be empowered to fix things themselves. “There’s always fanfiction” has in recent years become something of a humorous refrain in the face of disappointing narratives. Perhaps under a different set of circumstances, Annie would not have been so isolated. Only a few years later, she could have had a community of people to reach out to collectively grieve for Misery’s untimely demise. They may have given her alternative narratives in which to take refuge. Alternatively, perhaps they would have encouraged her to pick up Paul’s narrative herself and write a better future for Misery.
But perhaps not. In fact, the thought that she could take Misery’s fate into her own hands did enter Annie’s head. When the sheriff grows suspicious of her and arrives at her home to question Annie about Paul’s disappearance, she concocts this very scenario to cover the presence of the typewriter and the manuscript. She tells the sheriff that God told her that she would be the missing and presumed dead Paul’s replacement, to write new Misery stories just as he did. It’s the very feeling many fanfic writers over the years have had, to seize a character’s fates from the hands of the author and work out a happier ending for themselves. (Though I don’t know many fic writers who would claim to be divinely ordained in their hobby.) Of course, instead, Annie holds the author hostage until he resurrects Misery for her. After all, Annie Wilkes is a serial killer with a long history of not being afraid to kill to get what she wants, and Paul falls right into her clutches.
The convenience of Paul’s proximity and vulnerability and Annie’s history of using violence to get her way may have won over accepting an “alternative universe” in which fans brought Misery back to life. It is what makes Annie Wilkes the great villainous fan, a symbol of toxic idealization and the worst of fan culture. While Annie’s grief and her desire for Misery’s resurrection are relatable emotions for many modern fans, her methods are not. Most fans prefer to turn to less violent actions like petitions or letter-writing campaigns to get their favorite characters back–and when that fails, they turn to sites like Archive of Our Own or fanfiction.net to take matters into their own hands. Or at least, one hopes so.
Notes:
[1] Valiunas, “The Man Who Hated Sherlock Holmes.”
[2] Armstrong, “How Sherlock Holmes Changed the World.”
[3] @byronicben.
[4] Cummings, “Mourning a Fictional Character.”
[5] Williams, 52.
[6] Ariès, 107.
[7] Hobbs, “What It Feels Like.”
[8] Williams, 50.
[9] Cummins, “Mourning a Fictional Character.”
[10] Burt, “Promise and Potential of Fan-Fiction.”
[11] Organization for Transformative Works.
[12] Cuccinello, “Fifty Shades of Green.”
[13] Stack, “The Haunting of Hill House.”
[14] Sunu, ”NYCC.”
[15] Burt, “Promise and Potential of Fan-fiction.”
Works Cited:
Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death: The Classic History of Western Attitudes Toward Death Over the Last One Thousand Years. Trans. Helen Weaver. Vintage Books, 1981.
Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin. “How Sherlock Holmes Changed the World.” BBC. 6 January 2016. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160106-how-sherlock-holmes-changed-the-world
Burt, Stephanie. “The Promise and Potential of Fan-Fiction.” The New Yorker. 23 August 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-promise-and-potential-of-fan-fiction
@byronicben. Twitter Post. 18 Dec. 2020, 12:22 AM. https://twitter.com/byronicben/status/1207169191301640192
Cuccinello, Hayley C. “Fifty Shades of Green: How Fanfiction Went From Dirty Little Secret to Money Machine.” Forbes. 10 Feb. 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2017/02/10/fifty-shades-of-green-how-fanfiction-went-from-dirty-little-secret-to-money-machine
Cummings, Eleanor. “Mourning a Fictional Character is Perfectly Valid.” Popular Science. 29 April 2019. https://www.popsci.com/mourning-fictional-characters/
Hobbs, Thomas. “What It Feels Like to Have an Army of Superfans.” Vice. 28 Oct. 2015. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/vdxqqy/the-night-i-met-an-intergalactic-space-doctor-at-a-bar-in-prague
Organization for Transformative Works. “What We Believe,” transformativeworks.org, Accessed 28 Aug. 2020. https://www.transformativeworks.org/what_we_believe/
Stack, Tim. “The Haunting of Hill House Creator Mike Flanagan on Hidden Clues, Major Scares, and a Season 2.” Entertainment Weekly. 23 Oct. 2018. https://ew.com/tv/2018/10/23/the-haunting-of-hill-house-mike-flanagan-post-mortem/
Sunu, Steve.”NYCC: Coulson Lives in Whedon’s ‘SHIELD’. Comic Book Resources. Archived 14 Oct. 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20121014153558/http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=41
Valiunas, Algis. “The Man Who Hated Sherlock Holmes.” The Washington Examiner. 29 Aug. 1999. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-man-who-hated-sherlock-holmes
Williams, Rebecca. Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identify, and Self-Narrative. Bloomsbury, 2015.
