tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post2433277514511010901..comments2024-03-28T10:14:58.693+00:00Comments on The Good the Bad and the Insulting: Fan Backlash & Accusations of Entitlement - A Brief Modern HistoryBellariushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652722543111095280noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post-81712495504780684142019-07-27T06:37:33.320+01:002019-07-27T06:37:33.320+01:00This might be a bit of a controversial opinion: do...This might be a bit of a controversial opinion: do not write or make any fiction with your future audience in mind. Do not factor your future audience into what's going to happen and what should happen. If you're doing a series and somebody figured out the twist, ignore them. <br /><br />I've never seen a case where factoring in future audiences and their responses to the fiction being made ended up more positive than negative. As far as I'm concerned, getting the audience to react is so much worse than just trying to make a good product. If somebody thinks "It would be such a good twist if X was to happen" then they need to go through their story to make sure that it can happen, and that they didn't wall off their chances of doing that earlier. They also need to think about what is coming so that they don't ruin the next part of their story with this twist. This means that even if they might've started adding the twist because they thought it would be a good twist, they're now writing it in the context of making a cohesive narrative and building a better story as a whole. <br /><br />If you didn't do this, and just decide to add in a huge twist for the sake of it to surprise your audience, then you get bits like in Dallas where a character wakes up to find another character in the shower and it turns out all of the recent part of the show was a dream. Likewise if you want to make a film where your audience was intentionally divided on it, you get the utter trash like the Last Jedi. If you want to have pointless fanservice and/or want to manipulate the fans for emotional reactions, you get the last two seasons of Game of Thrones. This is why I think that whatever you're making needs to be made without thought of how your audience will react to it. That doesn't mean you cannot have standards, based on similar works, and it doesn't mean that you can make whatever you want (that's a different discussion), but it does mean that trying to manipulate your audience should not be a part of your agenda. You should be bringing your audience along for a journey on something you made, think of it as being like a tour guide to something incredible you've developed. You should not be toying with them the whole way through and enjoying when they end up lost, confused and especially when it makes them angry.<br /><br />Now where do critics fit into this? Easy, consider them part of the writing process, not a part of your fanbase. Think of them as a test that your work needs to pass, should it be well received enough then you can think about releasing it. I've also mentioned future audiences above a lot because if you want to treat audiences as critics that's also fine, you can learn from what people criticized about your previous works and then remember that as a lesson for future works, but as soon as you go "People didn't like X in my previous story so now I'm going to give them the opposite" you again hamstring yourself, trying to focus on writing your story around your audience rather than writing your story around its plot, characters, setting, actions and so on.<br /><br />It's a bit hard to fully describe this stance, but I hope I've gotten the point of it across.grdaathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00722216755745063033noreply@blogger.com