...even if you do know what to change about your writing to make that reader happier, and you CAN, doesn't mean you should Because you can't please everybody
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Knowing you can't please everybody means consciously throwing out the reading preferences of most people who could potentially read your thing. Maybe the real problem is that this person was recommended your thing in error
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Obviously there's a spectrum of subjectivity here, I mean obvious spelling errors and glaring plot holes (and, on the gaming side, broken mechanics) are pretty hard to argue with, but sometimes you have to plant a flag and say, nah, this is intended, deal
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And if the thing they don't like is intended, maybe the solution is to make it clearer that it's intended, not a mistake
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I've had people get X chapters into Ra and report "I'm not feeling this, does it change later?" and my response has been "Somewhat, but you can probably stop reading" because I don't stand to gain anything from the alternative
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Have you ever noticed that I don't tend to put "(1/n)" on my long threads? That's because I'm just rambling
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All of which says nothing of the kind of critic who's impossible to please, or whose mode of criticism is to scan deeply for all varieties of "flaws" and then rank based on the number found, where the best theoretical critical result is a grudging neutral zero
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This person's opinions can be discarded. There's nothing to gain from trying to please them. Best you can do is try to ward them off, somehow communicate that you're not playing their game
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quarantine 'em Retweeted Jason "David Wong" Pargin
Oh hey, speaking of people who's opinions can be discarded (I mean the ending-guessers of course)https://twitter.com/JohnDiesattheEn/status/1125923286209257473 …
quarantine 'em added,
Jason "David Wong" ParginVerified account @JohnDiesattheEnReplying to @thelindsayellisDo you think writers pay attention to internet chatter and people trying to guess the ending, and then write to avoid the popular guesses? If so that's misguided, the redditors doing that stuff are a tiny sliver of the audience1 reply 0 retweets 1 likeShow this thread -
It's not so much that people who are actively trying to predict the ending are a tiny fraction of the audience, so much that paying attention to what they say (1) will actively damage your story and (2) is absolutely futile because they can never be pleased
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This kind of reader/viewer can and will make multiple orthogonal predictions, covering massive tracts of the storytelling phase space. If they've been paying attention, this will naturally include the logical, thematically appropriate conclusions you've been aiming for
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And if you still manage to outwit the whole Internet and do something which nobody saw coming? Probably one or the other of: 1. "came out of nowhere" 2. "predictable in retrospect"
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I will admit that this kind of thing does become a bigger problem if, like the MCU, your storytelling phase space is basically a bitfield and the only important information coming out of the story is who is alive and who is dead
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