Bring Back Derek? Not Signing but Not Watching Either

“It’s a beautiful day to save lives." 😭 #GreysAnatomy pic.twitter.com/xK7QQQPKJ6

— Lana_Jen☁️ (@lanajenpie) May 1, 2015

It’s the second Thursday since That Episode.

The episode that ended the McDream.

That caused a general fan meltdown.

That resulted in a boycott, a Change.org petition, and a gazillion tweets calling Shonda Rhimes a monster.

.@shondarhimes YOU ARE A MONSTER

— Carrie (@silverstars) April 24, 2015

Raise your hand if you feel personally victimized by #GreysAnatomy 🙋🏼 pic.twitter.com/sENrzeKRna

— Martha Snosrap (@marthapar) April 24, 2015

Why a monster you ask?

Because Shonda Rhimes has a body count for the Seattle-Grace-Mercy-West-Grey-Sloan-Shepherd Hospital bigger than most crime dramas. There’s a general sense that her shows put her on par with Game of Thrones for killing off leading characters. Only a handful of previous cast members have survived Shondaland.

In Grey’s alone, there’s been 94 deaths.

Many been the sudden, unforeseen deaths of prominent characters. Denny Ducquet dies due to complications after a heart-transplant; Dr Mark Sloan survives a plane crash then dies because of internal injuries; Dr George O’Malley is hit by a bus; interns Charlie and Reed are killed off by a spree-shooter; and ‘Mousy’ Heather is electrocuted by a puddle in a storm whilst Chief Weber somehow survives.

Moreover, these deaths have included Meredith’s mother, half-sister, father, step-mother – and now her husband. The brutal (totally avoidable, unnecessary, unrealistic) death of Dr Derek ‘McDreamy’ Shepherd broke the camels back for many fans of the show.

Why should they subject themselves to a show that is now decidedly absent of any convincing possibilities for a Happily Ever After?

The first episode starts in the aftermath of the MerDer Meet-Cute in Joe’s Bar and revolves around their love story – so why shouldn’t they feel angry and betrayed and grief stricken when The Queen of Thursdays writes out the relationship the show is built around?

Rewatching greys Anatomy from the beginning and It’s so weird seeing all the original characters again … You know… …. not dead

— jessss (@BasicDempeo) May 13, 2015

I know I have zero interest in watching the reportedly underwhelming ten minute funeral (RIP Grey’s-As-We-Love-It) or speeding through a slap-dash-year-in-two-hours watching Meredith survive yet another loss in her life of losses.

But saying that, I’m not going to be adding my signature to the now over-a-hundred-thousand strong petition calling to Bring Back McDreamy.

Perhaps it’s because I started watching Grey's Anatomy a little later than the original die-hards. 

There were girls at school, all Bright Young Things applying to be medics, who loved the show. I wasn't really part of that crowd. I mean, as any Scribbler will know, I'm more bookish than I am scientific, and I rather naively thought Grey's would be just another Holby City / ER kind of gig and that held zero appeal.

So instead I started watching almost by serendipity. 

Waking up one morning at university, hungover as all hell, it just sort of happened.

By which I mean:  

1. There was little else to do (a glowing endorsement).
2. The idea of working hurt - in fact, the idea of holding a book hurt (I really was hungover).
3. I wanted to vegetate (just not have to move or do anything).
4. My flatmate had every boxset, including Season One (might as well pick the freebies).

And that was it. 

Suddenly I was one of those girls. I wanted to be Meredith Grey. I realised that my best friend was my Person. I discovered 'dancing it out' really does work.I think at one point I watched so many episodes in a row I picked up her manner of talking.  And of course I fell in love with McDreamy.

I’m fairly certain I became hooked because just like with my teenage favourite –Buffy – the badassery of the women was palpable.

Sure they talked boys (McDreamy, McSteamy, Burk, that vet who cropped up, Denny (oh Denny), and of course Owen) but they also talked work, futures, real life things. They were super-intelligent, determined-to-succeed ass-kickers. They had casual sex and they long-term complicated relationships. From the beginning they all developed as characters, as friends, as doctors. They felt real and human. Flawed but fundamentally awesome.

Although it seems there’s not one member of the Grey-Sloan faculty dating someone outside of the hospital, which makes for a highly incestuous game of who-fucked-who, every season would tug on your heartstrings only then to provide you with the warm gooey sensation of potential Happily Ever Afters.

No other show had ever given me quite the same ‘feelz’. In fact, the highs and lows of Grey’s were pretty much only recreated by the best books on my shelf. It could make me cackle with laughter and ugly cry the way I did when I finished The Book Thief. 

So honestly, this is why I will not be adding my signature to the petition. Not because I don’t love Meredith Grey as a character, or because my heart didn’t crack at the death of one of my favourite fictional doctors, or because I realise that television just doesn’t work this way (I do respect that Rhimes must have some sense of creative integrity even though she shows about as much loyalty to her characters as Snowden does to America).

It’s because from where I stand, all of my favourite things about the show were also butchered in That Episode.

The script, the realism, the covenant that said 'this show is about stars aligning in the hardest of times'. They died alongside Derek Shepherd. 

Probably some of the best-scripted dialogues out there come from Grey's. From snappy one-liners to brilliant monologues, there’s rarely an episode where I want to rip the script to pieces (and I do get that way).

Sure Bailey’s over-the-top-Mary-Sue-moments are skippable. And in recent years some clichés have slipped in that make your skin itch they’re so bad, but who can forget moments like  "Pick me, choose me, love me."? It’s a classic line of dialogue, and I mean among all television and film lines — right up there with "You had me at hello" and "I’m just a girl, in front of a boy, asking him to love her." 

Saying that, what on earth was That Episode doing? Not only is the script balls-deep in mediocrity, nothing quite adds up. Why does a phone start ringing in a signal free zone? Why doesn't Derek - a smart, smart man - forego the smoke signals and tell the little girl with absolutely no injuries to go to his car, find his phone and run up the road until she finds signal to call for help? Why wasn't the neurosurgeon on call already on site having received Speedy-McMuppet complete with head trauma before Derek? Why are there so many plot discrepancies between the episode and the one the week before? 

It's shoddy, rushed and tastes of poorly conceived soundbites designed solely for crappy twitter memes. 

People Wanted Hope

And once there was always the elusive promise of something like a happy ending. Rhimes even promised it way back when.

But that's gone now. So whilst I appreciate that Shonda Rhimes is not a monster just a would-be-GRRM, that there were undoubtedly a combination of factors influencing this terrible episode. 

Signing a petition is futile, but I will not be watching any new episodes of Grey's Anatomy. 

I love Tumblr lmfao #GreysAnatomy pic.twitter.com/jUqf5UpZXt

— Merari (@rawri5002) May 1, 2015

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

Readership: Talking Books and Online Communities with Founder Sam Rennie

When writerly types discuss the impact of the digital revolution, it’s often with a wry, half-hearted smile.

Becoming an author can seem like a pipe-dream – or at least, being an author that can earn a living through advances and sales seems like a distant dream. Because if there’s one thing they can all agree on, it’s that traditional publishing is in tatters. The combination of the financial crisis, the boom of Amazon’s online book retailing, and the refusal of the industry to adapt to the digital revolution, rang a death knell - and the literary life took a fatalistic turn.

Yet for the more digitally savvy, the online world has opened up networks, communities, opportunities, that could only exist in today’s interconnected, social world. Afterall, writers were part of the first wave of transients to find a home on the Internet.

Blogs sprung up sharing new stories. Communities started to develop. By the millennium, dedicated writing sites were plentiful, with some of the originals gaining loyal followings in the thousands then hundreds of thousands of users.  Now, we have gamechangers: Wattpad, springs to mind. Or the author-driven, Ed-tech company Unbound, which has a similar crowdfunding method and sees the author center stage.

And for Sam Rennie, founder of Readership, it is precisely this landscape that inspired his UK-based venture in crowdfunded publishing.

.@ReadershipBooks launches today, the reader-generated publishing company. See how it works at http://t.co/SSiIMBNjl7 pic.twitter.com/EscIWsZ3tE

— I'veReadThat (@IveReadThat) January 27, 2015

Led by Sam Rennie, Readership's platform puts readers at the helm. 

The reason for this? Well, he told the Observer’s Anna Baddeley that the publishing process has traditionally been somewhat backwards, putting content distributors ahead of audiences.

He commented, “Readership was created out of a desire to see more publishers embedding themselves in online culture. Considering what communities across the digital world have achieved, we’re incredibly excited about the possibilities available in the online world – particularly in this emerging sector of crowd-sourced, community-based publishers. With Readership we’ve given readers the ultimate say in what gets published.”

Since he’d already spoken with Digital Book World, I knew quite a lot of the background about the way Readership would work. Here it is in a nutshell:

Yes it is that simple. 

Despite its simplicity, I still had a few questions to ask about Readership. 

Online culture at its heart, crowdfunding as its method: what was its vision? what was the plan to make this platform a genuine space for a community like the one it aspires to?  

Sam kindly put fingers to keyboard to answer my questions. 

Readership aspires to create a space that's truly part of online culture. Does this mean you want to keep Readership entirely digital? If a book became a bestseller through your platform, would you be open to collaborations with traditional print publishers?

Although we're keeping it digital-only at the start, we're certainly looking to offer print editions of popular titles too. We're currently working out how we'll decide what titles will go into print. For example, should we have varying donation targets for each individual title, with the top target amount covering a print-run? We also want to do something special with any print copies we have, rather than it be an obligatory extension to a popular ebook.

Do you think you might be collaborating with writing groups such as UK-based writers involved in things like the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in the coming years or groups like the Society of Young Publishers?

We're definitely open to collaboration. We've built the site in a way that lets us change its theme to suit any campaigns we're doing, so having fun activities around things like NaNoWriMo is certainly a part of that.

I can see how this might work from the amazing #booksearch you did recently. But how do you feel about vlogger and blogger engagement when it comes to publishing? 

I love that publishers are engaging and collaborating with bloggers and vloggers now, but I'm a bit concerned that the publishing industry is just using the community for its numbers instead of taking the time to actually become a part the community themselves. The purpose behind Readership is to allow those types of beautiful, online communities the opportunity to support writers and readers alike.

Any investment in the digital world/internet culture seems very temporary and just a brief exploration of a trend before things go back to normal.

Following on from that, what quite interesting is that you have an element with Readership that is almost a social cause. Recognising the reader and empowering them, giving writers valuable feedback instead of silence, rejection or loss of control. However, will readers be the only editorial aspect of the platform or do you have an internal / community-led editorial team before submissions are made? 

Right now we are completely open, allowing any writer to upload a sample of their work. We're considering additional processes for the books that are successful (proofreading, for example), but we're unsure about adding any editorial service for successful titles, in case it detracts or alters any element of a story that readers liked. If readers like a title enough to donate to it, then the job is already done. Stories only exist for the two people: the one telling the story and the one hearing it. So all of our activities and promotion is geared towards helping both. In the future we'll be adding awards for the most active users, so I see in that the potential for certain users to become a trusted voice in the community. For example, we can build a system that pairs you up with a particular user on the site, should you have similar tastes, so when they post a comment on a new story, the people paired with them can see what they think of it and decide to check it out or not.

I love the idea of a trusted feedback system that could offer a great alternative to betas or editors. On the other hand, do you think such a system might create its own risks? Perhaps evoking ambiguity about whose ideas are involved in the book or blurring the line between writer and reader too much? 

I've thought the same as you regarding trusted users and the styles and tastes of the community. Obviously, there's the possibility that authors can gauge the tastes of what our users like (by seeing what books receive the most donations), and can alter their work accordingly. But they'll just be filtering down their own book so the loss is really with them and not being able to tell their story as they wanted to tell it. 

I do distinguish it as crowdfunded, rather than crowdsourced - where the content itself is written with a community or alongside a community's continuous feedback. 

I see Readership as more of a place for an author to share a sample of a finished manuscript that they've written in the traditional way. So yeah we certainly wouldn't want authors altering their work to appeal to a specific group, but hopefully any feedback given to the author (especially if a user is voting 'No' on it), will be given with the intention of improving the way in which the author's story is told - so the feedback should be more in line with helping the author tell their story rather than helping the author change it to suit others. It's a fine line, though, and something we're ready to keep an eye on when we launch for voting and donations.

Do you foresee any other specific challenges for Readership in the coming months and years? Also do you have any particular milestones that you’re aiming for currently?
I think people are naturally cautious of anything new, so the challenge is sort of proving ourselves as a 'proper' publishing company and also a viable option for authors to go to. As for milestones, we want to have a strong list of published works by the end of the year, and to be in a position where we can get some critical praise from press for the writing on our site.

You say that writers will receive royalties of 70%, which is significantly higher than most publishers. Is this a response to the criticisms of legacy publishers offering between 13.5% and 17.5%, (although I realise Amazon has 70% for self-publishers too)? 

We think 70% is only fair. Of course it's easier to offer higher royalties when you're dealing with digital files only, but even with print editions in the future we anticipate a similarly high royalty rate. They're the creators, not us, so they should be compensated as such.

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
 SCRIBBLER