it's funny that a bunch of us are trying to get the point acrossed to a 16 year old. In my experience, most sixteen year olds think they know everything and don't want to listen anyway. I do think that the kid needs to actually watch the O-OT before forming opinions though. That and read a couple of good books. Adam, I am sure that many of the classical writers didn't actually write a back story before they wrote the books they did. I get the impression that they wanted to allow the characters and the story to take them to unexpected places as they wrote. Take Treasure Island for example, Stevenson seems to just write and allow things to flow freely in that story. Same with Count of Monte Cristo. I could be wrong though haven't looked into it to know for sure.