quarantine 'em

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

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

Have you ever noticed that I don't tend to put "(1/n)" on my long threads? That's because I'm just rambling

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

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

Oh hey, speaking of people who's opinions can be discarded (I mean the ending-guessers of course)https://twitter.com/JohnDiesattheEn/status/1125923286209257473 …

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

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