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Protection From Editors: Difference between revisions
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[[File:frazzlededitor2.jpg|link=Magic: The Gathering|frame|These guys exist for a good reason.]]
{{quote|''(This writer can't be blocked, targeted, dealt damage or enchanted by editorial criticism.)''}}
The [[Executive Meddling]] we're most familiar with is the sort that ruins stories, characters, and entire franchises. So why, some may ask, does the job even exist? Put simply, because quite often they're actually ''right'', it's just the negative effects of [[Executive Meddling]] that are always publicized. No creator is perfect, after all; sometimes they really ''do'' make unmarketable stories, [[Wall Banger|Wall Bangers]], and other mistakes on their own. Even the best need guidance.
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== Comic Books ==
* Reginald Hudlin's current{{when}} run on ''Black Panther'' has editors actively accommodating haphazard rewrites to make the character more "relevant" (Storm [[Strangled by the Red String|dropping out of the X-Men to marry him]] isn't even the worst of them).
* [[Rob Liefeld]] started off as a fairly average artist on ''Hawk & Dove''. Then he moved over to ''New Mutants'' and started getting popular; as his fame increased, his art became more and more stylized and less and less polished. Feet vanished, biceps bulged painfully as wrists and ankles shrank, and the entire work became more and more focused on guns, boobs, and muscles, to the detriment of everything else. Then other artists started ''[[Follow the Leader|copying]]'' him...
* [[Frank Miller]]'s ''[[All Star DC Comics|All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder]]''. A completely insane take on the character, which gave the world lines like "Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the goddamn Batman."
* [[Grant Morrison]] in general. Especially since Dan Didio publicly stated he didn't understand most of ''[[Final Crisis]]'', but trusted Morrison's word that it was fantastic.
** Speaking of a major DC writer, Geoff Johns is also protected in such a way.
** This is, again, [[Tropes Are Not Bad|not necessarily a bad thing]]. 52, regarded as one of the best comics in the last several years, was penned by both Morrison and Johns, plus two other well-known writers, Waid and Rucka. Between the four of them, they didn't need to bow to ''any'' editor. Although the end product was amazing, chief of DC, Dan Didio, was angry he got so little input on it, and made a new series that gave him total control. The result was [[So Bad It's Horrible|Countdown.]]
* A notable exception would by Gary Larson, of ''The Far Side'' fame. He's said more than once that the reason the comic kept going as long as it did was because of his editor rejecting especially tasteless cartoons.
** Similarly, Bill Watterson of ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' commented in the introduction he wrote to the complete collection he was grateful to his editors. In his view, even when he thought a strip was funny, he would always read their criticisms of rejected material and learn from it.
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* [[Sword of Truth|Terry Goodkind]], man. Terry Goodkind. From his own words: "When my first book was written there was more initial editing than there is today simply because it was the first book I'd ever written. Still, that editing consisted only of untangling sentences for clarity. The story itself was sound; it just needed housekeeping. My copy editor (the editor who edits for all the technical aspects) tells me that my manuscripts are now some of the cleanest she's ever seen."
** Then the [[Author Filibuster]]s started.
* [[L. Ron Hubbard]] was considered a reliable pulp author—you needed a story, he'd hack one out, and the editor could fix it. Then he founded a religion, had some success, and decided he'd go back to writing thirty years later. Robert Vaughn Young, former head of PR for the [[Church of Happyology|Church of Scientology]], tells [https://web.archive.org/web/20070320234940/http://www.holysmoke.org/rvy/rvy2.htm what it was like] editing ''[[Mission Earth]]'' for publication. When you have millions of dollars and many thousands of followers with a ''literally'' religious zeal, it's hard to accept the need for editors or proofreaders.
* This is the only way [[Miley Cyrus]] could have gotten away with publishing in her memoir the line "[[Narm|I clutched my grilled cheese sandwich like it was the hand of my best friend.]]" Any good editor would have done away with that sentence.
** Ditto for [[Kanye West]]: Despite declaring himself as a "proud non-reader" who doesn't see the value in books or schooling, has still managed to co-author a book full of personal witticisms, including gems such as "Get use [sic] to getting used!"
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* Barbara Cartland. While never anything less than fluff, her mid-career works described places very vividly even if the prose was a bit purple, and her heroines actually did things and could speak in complete sentences. Paragraphs were more than a single sentence. By the 90s... not so much.
* Rumor is that part of [[Gor|John Norman's]] contract when he switched publishers to DAW was a no-edit clause.
* [[Christopher Paolini]], author of [[The Inheritance Cycle]], is often accused of this by
** Mind you, self-editing may not be that much better than a lack thereof, at least in the eyes of the [[Hatedom]].
* [[Jules Verne]] is probably one of the most glaring examples. As it turned out, Verne didn't really think much of humanity, and that bright and cheerful atmosphere and the belief in science that made his ''Voyages Extraordinaires'' series so popular in the world, were, in fact, mainly a product of pressure from members of his social circle, such as Nadar and his life-long friend and editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Hetzel, being Verne's ''publisher'', was in position to pressure his friend the most, and outright rejected a couple of Verne's especially bleak early novels,<ref>These were later found in Verne's papers and published. One of them, ''Paris in the XX Century'', was so dark that it would've make any [[Cyberpunk]] author proud.</ref> and heavily edited others. Verne, who was doubly not in position to argue,<ref>He didn't want to fight with his newfound friend and, besides, he was nearly broke at the time so he couldn't afford losing royalties</ref> complied, and thus the writing tandem was born. After Hetzel's death his successors weren't that insistive, and Verne's latest novels became increasingly dark and gloomy.
** Then again, [[Macekre|it didn't stop his works from getting pretty bad translations at first]].
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]]. In so many ways. His early works, especially his 'juveniles', were constrained by the mores of the time and the rules of the publishers, and RAH ''benefited'' from this immensely, it forced him to restrain some of his personal [[Author Appeal]] elements and write better stories. In later years, freed from editorial and cultural restraint, his books became both longer and longer, and more and more repetitive, circular musings on a few favorite fixations.
* R.A. Salvatore is in an unusual state where he's both subject to this trope and strangled by [[Executive Meddling|the opposite]]. On the one hand, there's less and less oversight of the content and style of his ''Legend of Drizzt'' series, and quality has suffered grievously. On the other, his attempts to end the series were bluntly denied—he doesn't have the copyright, and his publishers [[Franchise Zombie|solicited another writer to continue the series]] before he backed down. One can't help but wonder if the recent{{when}} [[Wallbanger]]s are deliberate attempts to wreck the series so he can move on. Or, "[http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12023&whichpage=53#262993 Drizzt has become more of an albatross for him.]"
** This applies across the board, and both to novels and RPG sides of ex-TSR. The general level of editing (though there were ''really good'' exceptions) shifted from "[http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5812&whichpage=6#118705 apparently insane]" to "mostly nonexistent". Series zombification happens with other authors as well. Ed Greenwood, obviously, is in a similar position (but he started side projects away from Hasbro). [[Dragonlance|Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman]] also eventually fed up with [[Executive Meddling]] and bailed out. Weis now owns two RPG publishing houses.
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** Also worth mentioning: One of his handlers during his last years was Rick Berman. Yes, the same Rick Berman people curse for ruining the series.
*** Well he did, but to his credit it took him twice as long as Roddenberry to start his creative descent.
* [[Cop Rock]] was one of the worst series in the history of television, but was allowed to run for a single season as its creator Steven Bochco had built respected content (like [[Hill Street Blues]]) in the past.
== Music ==
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** Another evidence that Protection From Editors might be a bad thing: the album Let It Be. Phil Spector added much orchestral overdubs and embellishments to the album, much to the dissatisfaction of Paul McCartney who favored a more minimalist production. Years later McCartney remixed and remastered Let It Be... Naked, which has the Spector production stripped down and is supposedly closer to the original artistic vision. However, many Beatles fans strongly prefer the original release, some in fact considered Spector's overproduction to be the saving grace of the album.
* [[Guns N' Roses]] is the musical king of this trope. ''Appetite for Destruction'' and "Lies" sold so well and made Guns N' Roses so big, they were given a lot more control over the follow-up album. That transformed into '''two''' albums, the ''Use Your Illusion'' duo, which saw release four years after ''Appetite''. Sales of that were enough to apparently let Geffen (their recording company) take as long as they wanted for the follow-up album. '''Seventeen years''' afterwards, we get ''Chinese Democracy''. Those three albums are considered to be bloated and very dense, and the latter is essentially one long [[Author Tract]] railing against anyone and everyone that ever tried to stand in the way of the ginger-haired tyrant.
* [[Prince]]
== Periodicals ==
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== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* [[Hulk Hogan]] was the biggest name in the [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]], but when he signed with [[WCW]] in 1994, he was granted creative control over his matches, basically making him a [[God Mode Sue]].
* Long-time [[Professional Wrestling]] writer [[Vince Russo]] rose to prominence as the architect of the [[
** Don't forget there's a good reason [[TNA|they chant "Fire Russo"]] during the "Reverse Battle Royal Gauntlet Which Then Becomes a Scissors On a Pole Match - With Two People Left You Have to Then Put Up on a Rope From Atop A Ladder Then Fetch it Back Down and Shave the Head of the Loser" match. Or the [[Wall Banger|"Electrified Six Sides of Steel" match]].
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== Webcomics ==
* Really, almost any webcomic with issues could go here, as few of them have any sort of editing process in the first place. As the only requirements for a webcomic are 1) webspace and 2) the ability to create and upload image files, a creator essentially receives protection from editors by ''default'' rather than needing to meet some success requirement first. Out of those that do have some sort of pre-post review process, many are reviewed by friends and, ahem, [[Lickspittle|devoted]] fans whose real job is to tell the creator how awesome it is and how they shouldn't change a thing. This reasoning is ''also'' why [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|examples should not be placed here]].
** This is probably why some of the most beloved and consistent webcomics are made by at least a two-person team
== Western Animation ==
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