Why Writers Shouldn't Listen to Fans

[@cbruce78]

2:20 To quote Michael from The Good Place, "There's something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it."

[@LindaB651]

OMG, that was such an unexpectedly great series!

[@jts8053]

Sir Terry Pratchett once said "If I listened to the fans, I would have written twenty books about walking luggage."

[@heavyecho1]

Therefore no Vimes or Granny Weatherwax, and that would have been a loss to the world. GNU Terry Pratchett.

[@TheFirstLaughingFool]

"We, the fans, should have final say on the creative process of the art we love." ~ People who can't even write a fanfic

[@midgetwthahacksaw]

As someone who DOES writes fanfiction, I laughed so hard I have tears streaming down my face.

[@m.h.6470]

Fans want the feeling, that they got, when first viewing the movie/show. Unfortunately, they associate that feeling with the "old" actor(s) and the "old" stories, when in actuality it is usually the excitement of the "new", that causes those feelings in the first place.

[@tukicat1399]

Very true, when Star Trek New Generation came out, and yes, I am old enough to remember.. It was met with.. that'll never get off the ground.. yep, 7 seasons later, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise..etc.. etc.. people should want the new.. the excitement of seeing new faces... following a journey.. we need fresh ideas, a clean slate. Unfortunately as you say, they often revert back to the familiar.

[@galahad6300]

I have a hypothesis that sometimes we get stuck in seeing media the way we remember experiencing it the first time we saw it. To provide an example, Star Wars. When we first watch the original trilogy, we think they're awesome movies about cool stuff, and then we grow up and realize theres more to it than we saw when we were kids, and appreciate the story more. Atleast some of the times. Then comes The Force Awakens, as an example. A movie made by someone who kept saying he wanted to "recapture" the magic of the Original Trilogy, and yet he didn't. I think perhaps that The Force Awakens recaptures how the fans remember the old movies, but it doesn't recapture what those old movies actually were. Theres no explanation of who the First Order are, because they never explained the Empire in the first movies anyway, et cetera. It does things that Star Wars has done before, and while i feel no one likes it anymore, it hit it off well when it began, it was "what the fans wanted". Sometimes we don't just want the old stuff back, we want the old stuff to be the way that we remembered it. We don't want the story to be the metaphor it was, the characters to grow like the people they were, and the universe to change the way things do change. And this usually comes from fans making new pieces of the story, of course. In conclusion, i've elected to think of it as "The Action Figure Effect". In which the story, universe, characters all get treated as toys that fan showrunners wanna play with the way they remembered playing with them. My thoughts most prominently go to Star Wars The Force Awakens, and Star Trek Picard Season 3.

[@Mallory-Malkovich]

Twitter is the Florida of the internet, and, like the real Florida, the further you get from it, the happier and healthier you'll be.

[@slavsquatsuperstar]

Hence the term “Show Biz”, I guess

[@Chelaxim]

So what states are Reddit and 4chan? r/scream took Scream V as a personal attack.

[@--Animal--]

@@Chelaxim Florida 2 and 3 :P

[@Raven-um2wf]

Alabama maybe

[@SamBryans128]

As someone who lives in Florida, I agree. I hate it here.

[@GSBarlev]

1:13 We *have* a continuation of _Voyager._ It's called _Prodigy,_ and it's *exactly* what a continuation should be: a _thematic_ continuation with an entirely new main cast and no more than a _light_ sprinkling of Easter eggs and legacy characters.

[@blondiewan3331]

It also helps that it’s just a really well-done show. Honestly, its story could have been told with either more legacy characters or fewer, and either way it could have been worse, but it’s hard to see how it could be much better, given how good it is already. There’s a great deal of care in Star Trek: Prodigy at every step from the plotting to the visuals, and it shows.

[@podemosurss8316]

And it's extreme good, I liked it a lot.

[@jonathantifone8001]

And yet it got an axe in the back. Here's hoping for season 3 anyways.

[@WhammeWhamme]

Not an *entirely* new main cast. But yeah, points to Prodigy for being what new shows in an existing franchise should aspire to be: a fresh take on the material. Major points for starting off the first episode feeling to me like "this isn't Star Trek, this feels more like Star Wars" and then suddenly BAM enter the Federation and I go "oh dang, the Star Trek universe would *be* the Star Wars universe if it wasn't for the Federation, that's kinda profound". (When the universal translator switches on, the entire *genre* shifts. Sorry, only recently binged it, hadn't really had a chance to be properly enthusiastic anywhere. :) )

[@DJParticle]

To be fair, Legacy would only have one classic character. The other characters would all be ones created in “NuTrek” over the last few years. Besides, Legacy isn’t only wanted by the fans, the actors and Matalas himself want to do it too.

[@st.anselmsfire3547]

You know, there's a reason that the word "nostalgia" includes "algia," meaning "pain."

[@claudiabcarvalho]

​​@@manjackson2772 nostalgia is when you miss something you can't have anymore

[@vaporsaver]

@@claudiabcarvalho homesickness was the original definition way back in the 1700s or so.

[@kumogekkou]

"It's been over for 25 years." I know that's true, but it hurts to hear that. I feel old.

[@DanielThomasHutton]

Tony Stark shouldn't come back, unless he is a villan from an alternate reality. That would be terrifying.

[@frankgelder8519]

honestly, i want them to introduce Dr. Doom, in all his campy glory with no punches pulled. THEN make a WHAT IF movie, for cinema, about Tony and Victor switching minds during a meeting at a Latverian Weapon Expo. a meeting set after the events of the first Iron Man movie. Then montage Victor taking advantage of the Iron Man technology and Tony learning magic in Latveria. Latveria becomes a world superpower, so the USA ask Iron Man to stop the clearly evil Dr. Doom. give RDJ the chance to go full on Shakespearian ham while wearing a green silver iron man armor. hell, make a full TALES OF THE Multiverse movie series. WHAT IF, but with a big budget.

[@Serbobiv123]

MCU Tony Stark has always and will always be a villain. He mostly does heroics to fix the problems he created.

[@Saiyanprince1114]

Whoever wants anything to do with him, his asking price just went up after last night

[@jayb8934]

I'm about to be one of "those" fans and say what I think they should do: Have RDJ come back in the Armor Wars movie as the villain. How? Have that a mysterious but villainous Ironman emerges. The person in the suit sounds and acts like Tony, but when the helmet finally opens it's empty. It's just an autonomous suit controlled by an AI based on Tony's mind (and voiced by RDJ, of course), but acting on his worse impulses, like the obsession and paranoia that caused him to make Ultron. Thus they bring back "Tony" without any multiverse shenanigans, but just for that one story. The Stark AI should be destroyed in the end. Of course, even as I typed that I recognize that this is exactly what Steve is talking about in this video. It's just a way to revisit the past.

[@vetreas366]

Tony Stark in the 90s was revealed to be a sleeper agent for Kang for his entire adult life in a plot twist that was retconned later. In that story the Avengers travelled through time and brought back a teenage Tony who replaced evil adult Tony on the team. Story sucked and is somewhat related to Heroes Reborn but if you want to bring Stark back you have a template that allows for that and recasting him right there.

[@costelinha1867]

"There are many reasons why hiring fans to write the show is a bad idea" Here's one of them: Most fans are not professional writters.

[@BleydTorvall]

Someone I respect calls it "dictator with counsel". Various viewpoints and lots of input from the counsel, but the decisions and direction ultimately come from that single dictator.

[@thing_under_the_stairs]

That's how the best theatre projects I've been involved in have worked, because the directors have been smart enough to know that they weren't experts in every aspect of the show. So they actually *listen* to people like choreographers, costume and prop people, techies, and the cast themselves. And the worst have been the ones where the directors were complete autocrats who thought they knew everything, right down to why we didn't need to change the stage surface for the dancers, it'll be fine really. (We ended up with two sprained ankles, a broken foot, and an embarrassed ballet dancer whose pointe shoes kept sliding out from under her and landing her on her ass in that one.)

[@dongeraci8599]

....and that, kids, is how the Star Wars prequels were born.

[@vtmarik]

This extends to spoilers too. If your fans figure out the twist ending that's coming that means you did a good job setting up your mystery. Conversely, if your ending is leaked, that's a shame but you shouldn't go changing your story because of that leak. Just look at the snarl at DC when Armageddon 2001's ending reveal was leaked and they pulled a hard pivot to not only change the ending but to change it in a way that contradicted previously established writing. The job of creative staff on a show is to tell a good and coherent story, not to cater to fans every whim or pull a new twist ending because you think that's why people are engaged in your work.

[@riluna3695]

Oh please for the love of god everyone read this comment and understand it and LIVE it. This shit is INFURIATING. A story is designed to build to a specific ending. If you change the ending, the entire story needs to change to match it, right down to season 1 episode 1. The things you focus on vs the things you ignore, the hints you give out ahead of time, the plot threads fans forgot were still left dangling...all of these things require you to know your final destination ahead of time to decide upon. A plot twist for the sake of a plot twist is going to be garbage. Injecting raw shock value into the meal that is your story is a great way to give your audience food poisoning. Cook your goddamn shock value to a minimum temperature of 180 degrees. That's the only way to get an actually _good_ twist.

[@Chelaxim]

​@riluna3695 Endings getting leaked has ruined every single sequel to scream. I'm not saying that screen 2 through 6 are all bad?What I am saying is they were made worse because the endings got leaked and they changed the ending. In the orginal ending to Scream 4 one of the Ghostfaces got away and Sydney's fate is left uncertain. In Scream 2 there was 4 ghostfaces. And in Scream 3 Ghostface had a partner that got killed in the final film... The biggest issue with that is, it is literally impossible for there to be one killer in screen 3 if you think about who was behind the mask and where they would have been at a certain part of the movie.

[@admanios]

A more recent example would be Game of Thrones. It felt like the showrunners were trawling reddit for fans' speculations and deciding to do something completely different because they wanted to "surprise" the viewers.

[@scottyp1722]

Similar things happened to Rise of Skywalker. When fan theories guessed what was going to happen the writers went back into the writers room and took a big dump on the film just to make it unpredictable.

[@nickbell8353]

There's a world of difference between a legitimate twist, and shock-bait.

[@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t]

There's a difference between "listening to fans" and "writing your project using the mentalists on twitter as a writers room".

[@thomasbourne2415]

I mean, yes and no. You're making the same point Steve did about the "loud minority" usually being much more unbalanced than the "silent majority". But you're also missing/ ignoring his point about creation being organic and novel, and best when unhindered by the weight of what has come before. Steve is a fan simply saying "I want more of [Thing X]" and not "[Thing X] should be how I want it". That's the subtle difference at the heart of his argument

[@bazzfromthebackground3696]

In the realm of comics, someone is always pissed with the medium.

[@matti.8465]

They represent the vast majority of fans. A lot of fans know nothing about the industry and can't give advice better than "just make good stuff"

[@thezenlu]

​@@matti.8465 OH I hate so called pissy comics fans! They will try to ruin anything that they perceive as not for them for the crime of being not for them, instead of just ignoring it and moving on with their lives, or doing the kid thing of looking at it shrugging their shoulders and then moving the fuck on...

[@neoluna1172]

Yeah, personally I think being a fan really helps, but it cant carry someone to writing good stuff on thier own, they also need to be a competent wrtier, and sadly thats less and less common these days with the IPs poeple grew up on as exeutives who are neither writers or fans meddle in things. I also feel its kinda unfair to paint all fans as just wanting more of the same, sure the loudest may want that, but most poeple just want good quality stuff that respects the lore, themes and soul of the universe its in, they arent adverse to new things they adverse to new things done badly, myself included.The issue is that fans who arent writers dont really know how to express this beyond just pointing to what worked in the past, and thus the deeper meaning is lost in the conversation. This isnt to say pandering to whatever the fans want works, it doesnt, fans can never agree on fucking anything so the point about giving the fans what they need rather than what they on a surface level beg for is still valid, there just a lot more neuance to it than steve goes over.

[@johntousseau9380]

There’s always fanfictions where you can create anything. You can even crossover fandoms.

[@Creepsandwicheater]

Ironically, I think most of the people demanding writers listen to fans don't read or create fan fiction. They are already served.

[@Caterfree10]

Exactly! If canon won’t (or in some cases can’t) provide, that’s when you hit up AO3! o7

[@scottyp1722]

I think a good example of "give them what they didn't know they wanted" is The Empire Strikes Back. If you asked Star Wars fans what they wanted from the sequel I don't think anyone would have described the events of that film. It worked though because the creators had respect for the fans and the first film and they had a vision of the story that they wanted to make.

[@IanZainea1990]

Hey, your mom called, she wants her Star Trek blu rays back.

[@kbrock9146]

There's a reason why "fan" is a shortening of the word "fanatic". And this video explains that pretty well.

[@lunatickoala]

The difference between fans and creators is that fans are focused on what is and what was and creators are focused on what could be. Fans were upset if not outraged when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman. They were upset if not outraged when Heath Ledger was cast as Joker. Many said "Picard is not MY captain". DS9 was a betrayal of the Star Trek ethos. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, anything that existed in canon when someone became a fan is part of the natural order of things, anything that was introduced in a fan's early years of being a fan is an interesting experiment, but anything that was introduced after someone has been a fan for long enough to be considered part of the old guard is an affront to the natural order and must be expunged.

[@michaelramon2411]

As a Star Wars fan who came in between the Prequel and Sequel trilogies, I can totally confirm that Adams paraphrase. Post-Prequel fans often have difficulty understanding some of the outrage to them because the story has "always" been like that to them.

[@darrenmacqueen9884]

@@michaelramon2411 I'm not a Star Wars fan, but I'm old enough to remember the outrage over the prequels. And I was surprised to suddenly hear people praising them alongside their outrage over the recent sequels. I remember thinking "I thought everyone hated those prequels." But it's just like with everything. It depends on when you became a fan. Haven't seen any of them myself. Never watched the movies, probably never will. I don't actually know what's good or bad. But I'm willing to bet the originals, prequels, and sequels are all of similar quality. The only thing impacting anyone's opinion of them is which ones they grew up with.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I totally agree. Fans don’t know what they want. Except me, because my ideas are brilliant. Mine don’t just reheat old ideas like these guys, I genuinely do want new things. My ideas are way better than everyone else’s. Also, I’m exceedingly skilled in the art of humility.

[@michaelpaul7040]

coming out of the movie SORRY TO BOTHER YOU a few years ago, and two men were talking near the concession stand. “That was a movie I didn’t know I wanted,” one of them said to the other, and that is the best compliment I've ever heard.

[@blondiewan3331]

Oh, man, that movie is fantastic.

[@Vilamus]

One thing I like about Star Trek as a franchise is that is tries new things. Is it always successful? Heck no. But it tries, it innovates, it challenges. I will defend Star Trek to make entries that we don't like, even if it is to give us joyless nerds something to argue about :P

[@Donnagata1409]

Great minds think alike 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@nicholasfarrell5981]

*Especially* if it gives us something to argue about, it gets lonely and kinda boring when we all agree.

[@olencone4005]

This hits on one of the main reasons why we see so much of the "same old same old" churned out again and again... studios are hesitant to invest in something new, because the fans may (and often will) reject it and the project will lose money. But if they stick to the same formula that worked once before, then they are more likely to hit that "nostalgia" note and draw in the original fans (and maybe some new ones) -- tho that only works just so long before even the hardcore fans are like "this is just like that" and get annoyed. In the end, it's all about the money and whatever generates it.

[@some_random_loser]

1. Part of the problem is that the ones on Twitter _are being listened to_. Can't believe that the site hasn't lost all relevance already. 2. I remember reading some writing advice (by William Zinsser) about who you should write for, and his advice has always stuck to me: write for yourself. That way, you'll have at least one member of the audience who'd be satisfied, and everyone else is just a bonus. Writing for other people will always end in tragedy, because not only will they not be satisfied, but even _you_ won't like it once you're done.

[@BigBandelero]

The rant that’s been incubating in my brain for the longest time. Thanks for letting that beast loose!

[@thelorax355]

And the Paramount Halo series be like: "What if we gave people something they didn't know they didn't want"

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

This made me laugh so hard I nearly peed, excellent comment 🤣

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

I understand that this is a different situation, but... I love role-playing games, and I love that so much of the medium comes from people who are genuinely passionate about it, from people who play rpgs and make the kinds of games they want to play. Not sticking relentlessly to existing brands, but always iterating on old ideas and pushing the envelope, making games with a similar ethos to how a lot of people play them, _because most of them do._

[@umjackd]

Media literacy is honestly so important. And it runs right up in the face of people who define themselves so closely by the things they love, where any criticism gets interpreted as a personal attack. You can love something and also critique it, and if you can do that, then you can understand the interpretative process behind looking at an adaptation, or even just not wanting more of the same from future projects.

[@ViktorKucharski]

The video itself is, of course, a perfect illustration of your main point. I didn't know I needed to hear your crass "yo mama" joke. But boy, did I need to.

[@SteveShives]

I needed it, too -- before I came up with that bit, I didn't have an ending for this one!

[@Drake5607]

@@SteveShives *As a fan of your work*, I now expect ALL your videos to conclude on a "yo mama" joke and WILL resent you if you they don't!

[@3182john]

When you mentioned “Garfield spidey” I thought about Garfield the cat as spider-cat. I demand this in a new movie lol

[@jillchristensen5093]

I think the key is for the creative team to understand the core of the characters and the ethos of their franchise.

[@alexrobinson8029]

As a Star Trek fan who wants to write for the franchise, I do want to bring new ideas to the table. Ronald D. Moore was a fan and his approach was, "what have fans not seen yet?"

[@francoislacombe9071]

So, basically, don't give the fans what they want, give them what they need.

[@MythicSuns]

This! Right here! I know some fans will fall back on the "but they're ruining their own creation" line but my response to that would be "good!" let the creators ruin their own creations their own way; let them make mistakes, give them a chance to recover from the mistakes, and if they don't recover from the mistakes then simply move on to another creation or _even_ another creator's properties. Honestly the one thing I want to see happen more in the world of film and television is originality; I'm getting kind of tired of studios clinging to past properties which they're doing because the fans are clinging onto past properties. I'm one of those people who will get more excited by a film or series that is fresh and new than something that is a reboot, sequel, prequel, remaster or spin-off. In the world of video games there were and in some cases still are a bunch of fresh new characters, settings, and stories that really fed the imagination and were released throughout the 21st century; Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Raccoon (known as Sly Clooper in the US), Infamous, Resistance, Horizon Zero Dawn, Halo, No Man's Sky, Assassin's Creed, Okami, Detroit Become Human, Uncharted, The Last Of Us, Red Dead Redemption (ok, it's a sequel but it's a standalone sequel), and so on. None of them are perfect games by any means but they all felt like something fresh and new rather than someone poking me with a stick and constantly going "HEY! HEY! DO YOU REMEMBER THIS? OR THIS? HOW ABOUT THIS?!! AND THESE?!! OH THOSE WERE GREAT WEREN'T THEY?! WEREN'T THEY?!!! WEREN'T THEY?!!!!!!"

[@yarc9]

Fans don’t know what they want

[@1monki]

@Big_Box "parent/author knows what's best for their kid/creation." I tend to agree. But in the corporate IP franchise age, most parents/authors are long gone. Now we have studio heads reading tea leaves and divining trends. Trying to guess the right combination of fads and fan service. And too often, that's how the final result comes off.

[@hmnhntr]

Exactly. I'm so tired of movies cramming in 'moments' like references to old properties, acknowledging fan jokes, brief character reveals to no consequences... Those things are fun when we talk about them online. But I want a movie to take itself seriously enough to not feel more like people on Twitter talking about the movie than a movie itself. Even a comedy.

[@cui8789]

I'd like to point out that the old DC movies got hate for "not listening to fans". Not disagreeing with you, just pointing that out.

[@IAmTheAce5]

I got into Babylon 5 recently, and marveled at the totality and completeness of its story- even with its shortcomings, it was still something to behold... ... ... Then I got recommended fan videos of a supposed 'Babylon 6' concept... ... ... ... _there's a damn good reason the premise was 'this is the story of the LAST of the Babylon stations', and it wasn't for the sake of going on forever!_

[@esean1]

"Never give the fans what they think they want." - Stan Lee.

[@plaidchuck]

Even writers who know the source material and are “fans” often write crap. The MCU creative committee put out duds like the first thor movies and iron man 2, and Geoff Johns supposedly has an encyclopedic knowledge of the DC universe but was involved with the worst DCEU movies they made. The other thing is that despite what very online culture warriors would have you believe, this is nothing new. Its plagued sf/fantasy from at least the 50s and beyond. You can see interviews with writers like Harlan Ellison complaining about fans and much of Kevin Smiths 90s movies were poking fun at comic book fandom. Bottom line, script writing is hard. Even great novelists can struggle with writing a good script.

[@TheFranchiseCA]

One of the things you tangentially touch on is really underrecognized by MCU fans: a bunch of the early entries aren't as impressive as we seem to remember. Newer entries therefore aren't just being compared with projects that already did the thing, but with our nostalgia-filtered memory on top of that.

[@brynpookc1127]

I like to be surprised and challenged. I like to see my favorite characters grow and learn. That takes a writer and a vision of what it can become😊

[@gingivitis9148]

This is why we have fan fics lol

[@JDODify]

The really annoying things about fans demanding what they want from a Star Trek series is that they always want more of the same... when, particularly, with Star Trek, there's so many cool directions they could choose from by just using what's gone before as a jumping off point. A DS-9 follow-up would be great... but you wouldn't need the DS-9 station or any of the characters: You're kicking off with one planet that's recovering from a decades long occupation by another planet that's just been decimated by a war which they partially caused - if you can't think of something interesting to do with that they you're clearly not a writer.

[@bazzfromthebackground3696]

I always liked DS-9, and Trek could probably play with another political intrigue.

[@stareyedwitch]

There's so much that could be done with a post-Dominion Cardassia that could allow for very topical story telling. Especially if the Federation, Klingons and Romulans are occupying the territory to both aid in rebuilding and keep the war from reoccuring. Just... the way you could explore how different Starfleet is after the war, more militaristic and perhaps authoritarian, and play that against a Cardassia which is caught up in the struggle between more imperialistic and authoritarian tendencies vs a more liberal anti-authoritarian backlash. There's so much character driven philosophical drama and tension... I'd love to see that done

[@MWB_FoolsParadisePictures]

The premise that was so interesting it was likely stolen.

[@TheAmazingAndo]

@@stareyedwitch I agree completely. I am a HUGE DS9 fan, and I always felt like I wanted to see more of Bajor. For it being the nearest planet, and the primary setting being owned by them, we really mostly saw the political and religious capitals of Bajor. We on occasion saw a hilly region or farmland, but it just felt like so much potential for intrigue and drama on the surface. How neat might it be to pick up shortly after DS9's finale but focus on Bajor, whole new characters, in the post-Winn, post-Dominion-War rebuilding times?

[@ceebee9195]

You make a lot of good points. I will just say that while writers don't need to be fans, they should respect that most fans have developed a love for a show's world, and that they'll want the heart of that world to still remain even after the writer has gone on to other projects.

[@evildave42a]

The greatest example of listening to fans going wrong I've ever seen was Rise of Skywalker

[@coyotehater]

Came here to say exactly that! Glad someone else agrees.

[@ZuluRomeo]

It's particularly galling given how brave and risky The Last Jedi was.

[@KariIzumi1]

I would think JJ Abrams would put that argument of “fans should be writers” to bed, honestly.

[@GSBarlev]

Hot take: he did better by the "Star [A-Za-z]{4}" IP that he was admittedly _not_ a fan of.

[@ShinGallon]

Considering how godawful Rise of Skywalker is, I agree 100%.

[@abigfavor]

Into Darkness is AS bad as Rise of Skywalker. Somehow Khan has returned

[@futurestoryteller]

This might depend on exactly what you mean. One could argue that Abrams made at least two films via twitter committee. Those being Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker. Though he was not a fan of Star Trek, and was a fan of Star Wars both of his first films in those franchises were considered successes and were especially warmly received at the time, though roundly rejected by the loudest "fans." IN both cases. His Mission Impossible movie was pretty successful too and I don't know where he stands on that franchise at all. So really the guy's a wash.

[@dustind3960]

Star trek Discovery made the mistake of not making the ship the main character and focusing way too much on micheal bermham at the expance of all other characer. Starfleet officer who muntiny like micheal bernham should be shunted from taking any ship to command for at least 10 years. Not take over in disco season 4

[@Deraphim]

I once read some writing advice somewhere: the audience can tell you 100% when something is going wrong with your story, but they can’t be trusted to tell you how to fix it

[@SoChilledOutGuy]

Steve woke up and chose violence today

[@milescorporosus4058]

Not only are people unwilling to let things die but they see a success that doesn't repeat as an unforgivable failure.

[@Trekpanther]

It's funny, on my morning commute before I saw this video I saw a reddit post that reminded me about how much the Picard S3 crew would invest so much time justifying their creative choices on Twitter & Reddit via established Trek lore....yet those fans that base their tastes on trivial shit like this were not satisfied anyway and from what I saw it just confused new people. I wanted to phase through the internet and tell these guys to stop, they're trying to please unpleasable people. It's a battle that is not going to be "won" and is not a battle worth having to begin with.

[@michelleholleywood]

I enjoy fanservice very much and I will always gravitate toward it, but if I'm being honest, it's rarely as memorable as something new and I also quickly gravitate away from it.

[@TheSuzberry]

Write fan fiction for the stories you want to see. Maybe you’ll get your own Fifty Shades movie deal.

[@TheMisterGuy]

I might have made this up, but I always thought "they should get fans to write this" implicitly meant "professional writers who are also fans" and not "any fans, even ones who aren't writers". But I can absolutely see myself being wrong about that.

[@PennyePinckney]

In principle, I agree with you in principle. Andor comes to mind. But, at the same time, if you don't give fans enough of what they like, they go elsewhere. That's one reason why studios churn out remakes, returns, re-do's, and copycats more often than not. Originals have the hardest time getting past gatekeepers.

[@KayleighBourquin]

" if you don't give fans enough of what they like, they go elsewhere" Nonsense, I've seen way too many self professed fans religiously hate watching something refreshing in a long running franchise, too many times.

[@futurestoryteller]

A good story is a good story. But people may even have been primed to like Andor more because of how try-hard Star Wars has been about its fanbase.

[@queenannsrevenge100]

I have a personal life philosophy: scarcity makes a good thing precious; this can be anything from art, to health, to time. If you have an unending supply of a specific thing, its worthless. So rather than be sour about only having a limited amount of an old TV show, or time with loved ones, glory in the amount of it that you did have, and what it brought you for the time you had it.

[@BlaineTog]

I want to see another time jump forward like what we had between TOS and Next Gen. The 2300s are too littered with known quantities. What are things like in the 2600s? I want to see the Federation persisting in its ideals through the ebbs and flows of history, though eras of war and cataclysm, though eras of peace and indolence. Scrap all the charcaters we know and treat them as historical figures, then give us an entirely new set of characters who remember the old ones only from the pages of school texts. Maybe we explore entirely new galaxies, or maybe we discover that the old subspace routes skipped over 97% of the Milky Way galaxy and we now get to explore those unseen systems.

[@podemosurss8316]

And show that big golden statue of Chief O'Brian, the most important person in Starfleet's History.

[@bS0up]

I would love to see how a group of writers imagine all the different societies changing and growing with time. Like, imagine a Ferengi society that's moved past capitalist greed, or Klingons that are no longer focused on war. Or the Vulcans and Romulans having reconciled their differences and are unified. And of course, all the new species and cultures yet to be explored in the franchise. Probably the best thing a Trek series can do is show that change, even when it comes to outdated traditions that are seemingly impossible to move past, is possible

[@travisboyle285]

​@@bS0up.... Discovery did the Vulcans and Romulans reunified.

[@ttintagel]

Toxic fandom is killing creativity and innovation.

[@Chelaxim]

Kathy Bates in Misery is a real thing now.

[@susanscott8653]

I think studios looking for a sure thing, a blockbuster (whatever the cool kids call it these days) are killing it too.

[@Rigel7WasAlreadyUsed]

I see your points, and I raise you "Nemesis".

[@matthewstarkie4254]

Writers don't have to be fans, but they should do that five minutes of research you mentioned. Actually make that a little longer than five minutes, because I'm pretty sure Zack Snyder came up with his version of Batman after looking at three panels of The Dark Knight Returns with the dialogue removed, and his version of Superman after seeing one image of him in a T-pose.

[@CitanulsPumpkin]

The best example of "fan input" ruining a franchise/movie is Rise of Skywalker. Last Jedi made the correct choice of discarding all the idiotic mystery boxes in Force Awakens only for Rise of Skywalker to retcon all the bold narrative choices in Last Jedi and answer a pointless mystery box every 5 minutes with a terrible fan theory dredged from reddit or KZbin comments.

[@blondiewan3331]

In fairness, The Rise of Skywalker was hamstrung by the IRL death of one of its intended major performers, which is not Abrams’s fault. I’d also blame Disney brass for denying Lucasfilm the additional time they wanted for making these movies. But still, yeah, The Rise of Skywalker is an absolute mess. Honestly, both of Abrams’ better-received entries in both of these franchises (Trek ‘09 and The Force Awakens) feel empty and soulless to me, too. As a fan of both series I wish it were otherwise, but there it is.

[@Chelaxim]

Then you have the Sonic The Hedgehog and Final Fantasy fans who are split into micro fandoms who like X part of the franchise but not Y part...then both Sonic and Final Fantasy have the issue of this thing we said sucked 10-20 years ago is actually awesome. Also Zelda is like this also. People are warming up to Skyward Sword and some people are turning on Breath of The Wild. GOLDILOCKS MOFOS

[@MalzraAirwynn]

@@Chelaxim For Zelda there were always people who liked SS when it came out and there were always people who didn't like BOTW when it came out.

[@MalzraAirwynn]

The whole trilogy was a tug of war to its own detriment. TFA was an OT nostalgia romp obsessed with bringing back iconography from the OT and assuring people 'don't worry we're back to REAL star wars' after the prequels and didn't dare to do that much new. We have Han back, we have the Falcon back, another droid with important information, and death star 3 but EVEN BIGGER THIS time, and the Empire is basically back with star destroyers and storm troopers just like you remember! And as you say it set up mystery boxes that JJ Abrahms never thought he'd have to actually be the one to pay off. TLJ is my favorite of the three but I still feel mixed on it. I like some of what's in the movie a lot, some of it not so much. But ultimately it decided to do away with a lot of what TFA set up rather than build on it. So from that perspective, it's almost karmic in a way that ROS did the same and threw out a lot of what TLJ did. The sequel trilogy wasn't just lacking a unifying vision behind it, it was actively at war with itself movie to movie. ROS is imo easily the worst of the three, but I can't fault it too much for not respecting TLJ when TLJ didn't respect TFA either.

[@matti.8465]

My favorite one is how Johnson killed off the knockoff Palpatine, so JJ had to bring back the actual Palpatine because he clearly always intended to end Kylo's story with a Vader sacrifice.

[@braedan51]

Steve, thank you for taking Mother on that lovely dinner date. That's the only reason I could imagine that her mouth would be full. Unless.. No. You couldn't mean.. ..oh no..

[@Caterfree10]

Listening to fans is what lead us to the shitshow that was TROS. We don’t want more of that.

[@kingofthegundam7974]

Spider-Man Lotus showed that fans don't always get the source material either.

[@smsamurai93]

There's a fantastic clip of Bill Hader talking about the writing process where he says you should listen to your fan's problems with the story but always ignore their solutions. If the husband wife relationship isn't working out you should tweak it or change it but not in the way that they (the fans) are asking you.

[@futurestoryteller]

I would respect this advice more if I had anything nice to say about Barry. The more I think about it the less I can comprehend why anyone even likes that show. There is a clip about the making of the movie Taxi Driver where Scorsese solves an issue an editor raised by applying the most ironic solution possible. It's a series of shots of mentally ill protagonist Travis Bickle staring into a glass of water he just added seltzer to. The editor said "Can't we cut this, it feels slow. I don't know why I'm looking at this." Scorsese reportedly just said "Make it longer." then left the room. The editor recounted the realization that he hadn't quite given himself as the audience enough time to think about the story. His fixation was on "why does Marty want this shot to linger for so long." you know "why am I watching this" he needed to graduate to "why is _he_ looking at this?" So the solution was actually in direct opposition to the perceived problem.

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

One of my pet peeves is "nobody asked for this" or "nobody wants this". Ok? Nobody should care what you ask for or what you want. This isn't an all-you-can-eat buffet.

[@IanZainea1990]

3:50 in the industry we call everything a show. Feature, TV, commercial, whatever. It's all a show.

[@Theroha]

This expands beyond what people traditionally think of as part of the entertainment industry. I work in corporate audio visual services. Everything from a two hour board meeting to a week-long medical conference is a "show".

[@montecristo1845]

I would prefer “show” anytime over “content.” 🤢

[@TevyaSmolka]

Pleasing a entire fanbase isn’t easy but super hard and very difficult in my opinion.

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

I'd go one further and add that it's not only difficult, it's impossible. There will _always_ be someone who doesn't like what you did. But that's ok. Fans should learn to take a piece of media they don't like, and the creator shouldn't be going into it with the goal of being liked.

[@CaptainAndy]

Yep. Fans don’t always want what they’re asking for.

[@nsv674]

I agree, but at the same time I’m glad the TOS letter-writing campaigns worked.

[@suddenlysarablog]

Great monologue, 10/10 I have no notes, and the ENDING WAS THE BEST 😚👌

[@QBG]

Andor is the best Star Wars product since The Empire Strikes back, and there's not a single lightsaber or mention of the Force in the entire show. The only Star Wars brand icons that make an appearance are a few TIE fighters/stormtroopers and a star destroyer, and they only appear very briefly. Were Andor written by The Fans™, it would be chock full of Jedi and Sith and chosen ones and destinies and the Skywalker family and big space battles and AT-ATs and backstories for every ancillary character in the background lore.

[@splodge71]

"YOU DIDN'T MAKE EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED!"is probably the biggest problem with fandom at the moment,well that and all the bigots grifting of it

[@nikoteardrop4904]

What happens when you give the most rabidly vocal fans what they want? You get The Rise of Skywalker. At least in Star Wars, those fans are also the most bigoted.

[@ShinGallon]

It makes me happy to see so many comments mentioning that damn movie. Nature is healing.

[@costelinha1867]

I liked that movie, but I wish it had the balls to stick to the foundation built by TLJ. Especially since it was already proven that it's impossible to please Star Wars fans.

[@CorwinFound]

One of the 14 signs of fascism is a harking back to "the good old days." Whether it's the Roman Empire, Making America Great Again, or the original Star Wars. I'm not saying all those types of fans are fascists, but it isn't a coincidence that those most vocal about going back to old art are also those most likely to be bigots.

[@phuctifyno1]

@@costelinha1867 100% with this. Lots of fans were unhappy with TLJ, and it left things in a really uncertain place… but it left the ball spinning midair for an alley-oop. If ROS had slam dunked, it would have shut everyone up and made them appreciate TLJ more in retrospect. Instead the studios decided to listen to all that loud whining, and as a result made a third movie that completely missed the ball, went headfirst through the hoop, then shit itself and got it on the whole team.

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

Or Season 3 of _Star Trek Picard._ It's also no surprise that the most bigoted _Trek_ fans liked that season, while the more progressive fanbase twisted themselves into knots to try and avoid critiquing the block hammer-happy creative staff on Twitter.

[@princess20-sideddie95]

YES! I can't tell you how hard I agree with this opinion! I've seen so many "shows" ruined by fan pandering.

[@nebulousvoid]

Great writing often gives rise to more questions than answers. Bad fans jst want answers.

[@steveschmaling8217]

Fans don't know what they really want until it's given to them. Pleasing the fanbase as a whole is a losing battle. Give them something new, they complain that it's not like what they're used to. Give them the same ole same ole, and they complain you have nothing new to say.

[@steveschmaling8217]

Also, how dare you! My mother is a saint! She'd have to be if she's willing to "file your Captain's log", short though it may be

[@Kyronea]

I'm reminded of how I used to write fanfiction when I was much younger. I attempted a Kingdom Hearts story back when the only game in the series was the first game (so about 2003ish, or over twenty years ago -- egads I feel old sometimes) and when I wrote the story, I followed a very specific story structure that matched specific things we saw in the first game. The story beats aren't important but what's important is, they were never repeated again in any future game, and even in the first game it didn't really work the way I was picturing at the time when I wrote my story. But it was the pattern I had, so I went off of that. And that's how most fanfiction tends to work: they emulate what has already been. When they do alternate universe stuff, it usually follows a number of other set tropes. There's the common high school AU or coffee shop AU, or certain specific concepts that pop up again and again like hurt/comfort. The *good* fanfiction is the fanfiction that *doesn't* do this, or if they follow a pattern, they at least innovate within that pattern and make it interesting. I could go on to list some of my more recent fanfiction examples for the latter but I'm not arrogant enough to presume anyone would be interested in that nor am I the most creative writer on the planet. My point is, you're completely right, Steve, and more people ought to listen to this.

[@davidpumpkinsjr.5108]

Writers can listen to their fans but they're under no obligation to capitulate. Especially when lately giving the fans exactly what they want usually results in hatred anyway.

[@lordsleepyhead]

Revisiting old places or characters doesn't have to be tired and predictable, you can do new things with that as well, like when they made Worf a geriatric pacifist. I was in stitches when he fell asleep on the bridge.

[@PrincessAmi9756]

You're 100% right. ...I still wanna see more DS9 stuff, though.

[@KayleighBourquin]

You're in luck. There's comics!

[@ospero7681]

@@KayleighBourquinNovels too, if you can deal with the fact that they kind of peter out at some point.

[@TBathory]

I agree to a point. I think a lot of the problem is that directors/writers is not that they are not fans, its that they do not understand the character. There comes a point when reinterpretation of a character is no longer they character. Turning batman into a homicidal maniac that wears a pink speedo is not a Batman anymore. I also have to take some issue where a director/writer thinks they can tell a story better than the original writer that sold millions of copies and who's work is beloved. If you turn out a Lord of the Rings where Gandalf is the villain and Sauron is the misunderstood hero and try to pass it off as LOTR then you have done the fans, and those that this is their first exposure to the material, a real disservice. There is a difference between adapting someone else's story and creating your own original work. Its a different kind of art. You want dictatorial creative license, then create your own original story and characters. You want to retell a beloved story, especially when its the first time it is retold in a new medium, then you should use your art to faithfully adapting it and respect the material and fans of the work.

[@turner3d1]

I love the idea of a writer delivering what the fan doesn't realize that he wants. That and the belly laugh I got at the very end. Well played, sir, well played.

[@oni7488]

Those 'your mother' jokes are *incredibly good*.

[@Vulcanerd]

"It's over!" That's kind of how I felt about TNG, even during s3 of Picard at times (even s2 of Picard is on the positive side of my ledger).

[@AndrewD8Red]

I was JUST about to draw the parallel between "nostalgic committee art" and AI "art" and lo and behold; it's the next thing you say. This must mean I'm very intaligant

[@MonteGruhlke]

Stan Lee was of similar mind to never give the fans what they think they want. I was also thinking of what I would want of a new Star Trek or Star Wars series or movie… and many ideas come to mind… the only absolute above it all is no prequels.

[@ShikiKiryu]

Fans want a creative 'utopia' for ideas, but as well as meaning 'the good place', Utopia means 'the thing that cannot be'. Nostalgia can hurt, and thats okay. But good art progresses, not continously looking back and admiring other people's work or your own. It can inspire, but shouldnt be copied or continously repeated. The definition of insanity is...

[@thecynicaloptimist1884]

"The idea of fandom is a dangerous thing, and I think one of the worst things about the business right now if I can sound like an old bitter codger is the idea that it's just trying to appeal to the fans, give the fans what they want, really play up to the fans. What I used to say on [Deep Space 9] all the time is - 'it's not up to us to give the fans what they want, I don't care what they want, what we do is we give the fans what we think they need for it to be a good show'" - Ira Stephen Behr

[@Ken-fh4jc]

There is some nuance here depending on how you define “listening to fans.” I don’t think they intended to do a Strange News Worlds spin-off but fan reaction and suggestion pushed them and look how that turned out.

[@formlessone8246]

I think that the subject of fan feedback is definitely one where Steve's taken an all or nothing approach when it really isn't called for. The real problem is that the film and television system lacks something that the publishing industry has had for a long time-- the editor. I mean, they kinda have editors, but not the same way. The film industry puts too much importance on the director and not enough on the screenwriters to begin with, so when I talk about the editor I mean the story editor and the importance they have in the world of novels. These are the people who know how to improve a story by being the writer's advisor, someone who has helped bring so many novels to print they know pretty well what story beats consistently don't work and what ideas do. Someone who can help the writer interpret the feedback of test readers. When the readers say this is what they want, that's usually true. But if it doesn't work in the story you are writing, the editor can help generalize the idea into something that does work. They know how to interpret the intent, challenge the writer, but also help figure out if they're just using the wrong test audience. I don't think the movie and TV studios have people like this, at least not ones who can reign in directors and producers who fail in either direction; that is, either paying too much attention to the literal feedback of the test audience like a marketer and thus play down to the lowest common denominator, or stick to their instincts to ignore feedback because they are getting payed either way.

[@allenporter6586]

To play Devil's Advocate..... What about the Rings of Power? If one is adapting the work of an author with a huge fan base, should a writer at least pay some attention to the source material? Because, maybe what they did in Rings of Power was the story they wanted to tell, but it wasn't Tolkien and it wasn't good.

[@woogywips]

When I was a kid, I was definitely one of THOSE fans to a degree. As I've gotten older (and perhaps due to more often being disappointed at what I got), I've learned to just let go and deal with what I get instead of bitching about what I didn't. I don't demand anything of creatives because being the "Old man yells at cloud" is pathetically pointless and if I ever did directly talk to those in charge of the franchises I like, I would never be so disrespectful and rude. That said, the main thing I DO expect from new creatives in familiar franchises is that they show respect for what has come before. To me, that means not pandering as much as not ignoring the core of what makes characters and franchises what they are. The caveat being, of course, that opinions vary about what those cores are. I'm just tired to death of artistic cynicism such as in the live action Disney remakes. All I ask is to being given something new that's worth remembering rather than having my existing memories used to simply make more money.

[@futurestoryteller]

I don't know, I've been weighing this video against how dumb that new Avatar: The Last Airbender show is. Or the way FF7 remake occassionally makes a mockery out of its source material. It feels like there really ARE ways to not understand the thing you're adapting, sometimes in ways that aren't at all trivial. My "favorite" is Gotham, a show that tells us inccessantly how morally upstanding Jim Gordan is while he murders suspects and tortures persons of interest. LIke it's especially weird to say you're doing the thing when you're not even close to the thing.

[@woogywips]

@@futurestoryteller I think Nichloas Meyer and The Wrath of Khan is kind of the gold standard of an outsider coming in and saying, "Screw they way it's been done, I'm doing things my way," and then revolutionizing and revitalizing the franchise way more than someone who may have been a Trek insider would have. There's definitely such a thing as being too close and too reverant. That said, I wouldn't say he ever disrespected what had come before as he definitely did his research and took the film seriously. To me, the main thing about not listening to what fans want is mainly that fans didn't create what they liked in the first place. There are exceptions of course as plenty of BTS people after TOS were huge Trekkies, but they also didn't jump right into to being the head writers either.

[@LaktostheIntolerant]

Hey, I like some fan service, but I tune in to see how an idea I love can grow and surprise me.

[@nickbell8353]

Marvel comics, in the last decade, has basically operated under the idea of "screw the fans; we're doing what we want," to varying degrees of success. On one level, I agree with them; the characters are their property and they, as creators can do whatever they want with them, even if it's killing them off brutally. But on another level, it's a double-edged sword. Creators may not owe fans anything, but by that logic, the fans don't owe the creators anything either.

[@breengreg]

Listening to the fans is how we got “Somehow Palpatine returned….” That should end the discussion immediately.

[@ShinGallon]

This. This forever.

[@Tiriban]

What fans wanted creatively bankrupt nonsense like that?

[@thing_under_the_stairs]

@@TiribanToo many.

[@Alexander_Stern1]

I would add to this, as advice for fans: Evaluate a show or movie based on what it DOES, right or wrong. Not for what you thought they should have done. You can’t ding them for failing to read your mind.

[@Mabooltube]

Food ordered in a restaurant can be considered art. Good food is not made in a democratic kitchen. My favourite thing to happen to the Star Wars universe in recent years is the acclaim given to Andor by fans while the outcries of "who asked for this" prior to release were some of the worst in the IP.

[@raqsasim]

Thanks for this, Steve. It very much aligns with my own vision, as a life-long fan of many of the same works you cite.

[@DeadDancers]

I think when people say fans should be hired, they (mostly) mean ‘someone who knows what came before so that what comes next is narratively satisfying - whether it builds upon or diverts away from.’ There is a degree of entitlement in this view. We do often feel possessive of creative works like they are literal possession on our shelves (especially back when buying hard copy was a thing) and KZbin and Twitch and TikTok etc have trained us to feel that our opinions are valuable and that our suggestions/requests/demands for content aren’t rude but are instead actively helpful. I know for myself, I have one of those brains that has a really hard time when something new contradicts whatever came before. It takes conscious, days or weeks long effort to just let it go. My brain will often overthink it, trying to find a way to make the contradiction work within the established world, or it will write the entire new show off as ‘AU’. So I admit, I have felt very strongly at times that companies need to hire writers who ‘know the damned material’. Not necessarily a fan - but someone who knows, and/or would consider it part of their job to at least binge-watch the previous show in between drafts of the new one.

[@rebeccawilson5465]

I am a fan of most of the stories you mentioned. I only want them to write well written movies and well edited stories. That’s it.

[@joebove4]

This was, and I know I’m about to poke a hornet’s nest here, where I feel like the Star Wars sequels went wrong. Force Awakens used a familiar story format to ease us into the new characters, The Last Jedi went into an exciting new direction that promised to explore new concepts for the franchise, but the psychotic fanboys got all pissy and Lucasfilm backpedaled to make them happy - and they weren’t.

[@paigecritchlow]

As someone who makes a comic, I couldn't agree more. Most people that leave comments on my work are nice, and thoughtful, but some readers will leave me angry comments about characters acting flawed, the concept of a character arc be damned. If I listened to every comment like this, every character would make the perfect, most moral decision every time, no one would have a character arc, and there would be no conflict. lol.

[@jscotthatcher380]

the same kinda holds true for video game development. if you give the fans exactly what they want it becomes bland, boring, and will feel 'outdated'.

[@TheRockinDonkey]

I think when people say “they should hire fans to write” they mean hire writers and directors that have a level of respect for the source material so they don’t create a train wreck of a movie. That said, the vast majority of people saying this are sad little men that get mad that IP that has been historically progressive continues to be progressive but they can’t recognize that because they haven’t progressed since they were in high school

[@barbaralemons4741]

If I'm eating it's less likely I'm talking, and not interrupting as much, and missing what the content i'm watching is conveying. Go Steve!

[@dianavespid937]

Interesting how me doing art commissions makes me experience this First hand. I want to create new things all the time and some of my fans want me to continue things from years ago I think I already did enough!