The Characterisation of Annabelle le Roux

Chapter Nineteen: Some people have some thoughts

"James" called out Paul "I wanted to talk to talk to you about the script." Paul walked up to James in a way that seemed organic. Just two men having a chat, difficult to argue with, this was his way of being, always the voice of reason. Reason had a habit of conveniently lining up with what was beneficial to him, but that didn't matter, because he was enough and brave enough to accept the consequences of reason and didn't let emotion get in the way of his judgement, he knew exactly the tight time to use argument techniques developed from centuries of study in rhetoric, such as angry face, angry face made for the best rational argument.

'Ferne' I think that would have been the better person to have led the children's rebellion, he makes more sense for the position, after all he is one of them. He is young, he spent time in the Zilby education system, the students will naturally look to him as a leader."

"He is half a year younger than Annabelle, who has also just graduated the Zilby education system. I don't understand your point." replied James.

"People are getting tired of Annabelle. We get your point, but we're tired of having political correctness shoved down our throats. We want a break, you know something that we can relate to, something that we don't have to feel like we're being good boys for watching"

"I thought that Annabelle was pretty kick-ass. Did you see how she managed to kick that one burly guard in the head, Vanessa must having been doing stretches for weeks in order to get that right"

"She's so flat. Nobody can shed a tear for her. There is nothing human about her" said Paul.

"Do you think that Phoenix was a flat character" asked James quietly.

"No, Phoenix was great, every man I know wanted to be him. I mean that he had it all, the muscles, the bike, the girls. "said Paul, ticking things off in order of importance "Except now it turns out that Annabelle was a dud"

"I don't feel that I write Annabelle any differently from how I wrote Phoenix" answered James.

"You see, right there, there's the problem. Annabelle needs to grow in order to interesting. Annabelle can't grow at the moment because she is already as tall as the door's lintel, if she got any taller she would have to stoop over. That would be unattractive."

"But Annabelle has already grown. She had to draw inspiration from Phoenix's death rather than been defeated by it" said James. "She has had to understand his purposes and plans to further them. She managed to kill the Lesser Lord George when Phoenix was killed by his tricks"

"Ja, that's all true" said Paul, but then he paused to prove his point. "But nobody can relate her. Nobody can step into the fantasy and pretend to be her. That's why we all loved Phoenix. We'd all be there fighting bad guys, but now all we have is a chick fighting battles that she cannot lose. There's no drama. We know how it's going to end before it evens begins"

"Didn't you know how Phoenix's fights would end before they began too" asked James.

"Yes, but that was different. It was a comfort in Phoenix's case, because we had someone fighting on the side of good for us, besides Phoenix wasn't immortal. You killed him off like a wimp in the stupidest way ever."

James just shot a look at Paul. "Well, I couldn't exactly have him Andrew fight a final death scene."

Paul signed dramatically "I understand, things were difficult for you, James, but this show is getting tedious."

Paul tried to stare James down into conceding, but James stated talking. "I have bags loads of letters from adoring fans who love the show and who love Annabelle. Especially since Phoenix's death."