(no subject)

[shadowkat]

I wonder what would have happened on various tv shows if the writers weren't interacting with fans and did not know what the fans thought? I always wondered the same thing about Buffy. Would the tv series be better - if the writers never knew what the people seeing it thought? Sort of like novelists who write their books and only one who sees it first is their editors/publishers as opposed to a fanfic writer who is posting chapters and getting comments as they go forward?

Don't know.

Matt Wiener the show-runner and head-writer of Mad Men recently stated that his wife and fellow writers insisted he stay off the internet. That he'd discovered you can get hurt on the internet. And how foolish he felt - that he allowed some random bloggers opinion to hurt him as much as it had.

Aaron Sorkin used to rage at the fans on discussion boards during The West Wing, and even got into a fight with a few of them. So he wrote a hilarious and somewhat satirical bit about the same thing happening to one of his characters on the West Wing. (Never piss off a writer - they'll kill you in their story.)

Joss Whedon used to tell fans that he never gave them what they wanted he gave them what he thought they needed. Which I think came across as a tad more condescending and patronizing than he may have intended.

Marni Noxon pissed off her fans so badly, they called her names and never forgave her.

GRRM doesn't engage with angry fans. But he has admitted to changing things in his novels due to things his fans noted. Discrepancies. And that he is incredibly attentive to small details. Due to the fact that he knows his fans will notice the tiniest thing - like a horse haven't a different name or being a different color than it was in a previous book or chapter. The fact that someone can pick that up from A Song of ICE and Fire series and actually cares...is another discussion.

David Fury and Tim Minear both got into trouble on boards defending their writing to fans.

Anne Rice, a novelist, did as well. As has JK Rowling.

Making me wonder if fandom's interaction with the artist can be a detrimental thing? A lot of artists are like myself - not wishing to be the center of attention. Not wanting that level of devotion or attack. They just want to create and get some recognition for it.
Many theater artists do not read reviews. A lot of actors and writers never go on the internet. They ignore it. If they are on it - it's just for email. Noah Baumbach, a film director and writer, stated this recently in an interview. It's also true of most if not all professional and popular television actors. As James Marsters once noted - "I realized pretty quickly that I wanted to stay away from the internet. You either get too full of yourself and begin to act like an ass" or "feel like a horrible bug and want to fall into a hole".

IF they go to a fan convention - it's Comic Con or one of the big marketing events, and they do it in an entourage, with a group of fellow actors, and with lots of protection. They don't interact. They keep up that third wall.

Again I don't know. I think I'd be tempted to interact to go online, to see how people were reacting. And most likely, I'd react the same way Matt Weiner did and my relatives and friends would scream with me to get off of it. Ghod knows they already have. The internet can be fun, but it can also be painful. Like all human interactions are. I think.

At any rate...I wish sometimes we could create, finish our work, and throw it out there. Without worrying while creating it what someone will think, if it's in the correct format, right style, sends the correct message, has characters they will identify with etc...
I wish sometimes writing was more like playing the trumpet or running a race. My writing used to be like that - until I interacted on the net, and became hyper-aware of all the rest.

Comments

[ann1962]

Sometimes I wish that the Supernatural writers would service the fans less. Especially since it seems it won't lead to those things anyway. Makes it seem more like I'm watching fanon and less like canon (whatever that might have been).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think that's one of the reasons I gave up on SPN - I got tired of the fan-service. It was blatantly obvious at times. Almost as if the writers were winking at their fans. There is too much "meta" in that series - it's constantly commenting on itself and the fans, which is brilliant at first, but after awhile..I understand it - because the fans have kept the series alive. But...

It's admittedly a problem I began to have with Whedon after a bit as well and Aaron Sorkin for that matter - it felt at times as if Whedon was constantly commenting on his writing and his fans. There's too much meta in both series.

A little of that is fun. Example the episode of SPN where God turns out to be the writer of SPN, was fun. But then it felt as if they were changing things and building on subtext to service fans, but did not fit the story or characters.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yeah I think that SPN got a little carried away with catering to the internet fans to the detriment of the show. I loved the initial meta episode they did in season 2 with Sam and Dean visiting the film set of a horror movie and all of the-jokes about salt and the studio asking for better lighting etc. But once they started having characters like Becky in the show, once there were SPN conventions to attend and Sam and Dean finding fanfic of themselves online, it all became a bit too taking you out of the story. And I actually liked the episode in a way which had Jensen and Jared as characters in an alternative world because it was funny in itself, but it's also strange to me to take it as part of canon as it really disrupted the flow of the season IMO

And the thing is that the rabid Sam and Dean girls on line, even the wincest shippers and Destial shippers, are IMO still kind of a minority compared to the casual audience that might follow the show and would be incredibly confused by a lot of those in-jokes. I think the writers forget sometimes that not all of fandom consists of shippers and extra devoted fans

But then I'm still annoyed at how they mishandled the character of Bela in season 3 simply because some internet fans disliked her and they spend too much time reading TWoP message boards, all of the time these days I'm coming across fans who loved Bela and were disappointed that more time wasn't spend on her story, but the writers were so focused on reading opinions at TWoP (I've no idea if they still do, but they used to admit reading episode reactions there every week) that they forget that the board only represented one type of fan, not all of them

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Was Bela the con-artist/love interest for Dean? I remember liking her a lot.

The SPN fandom is...scary. And that's well putting it mildly. The blatant misogyny on those boards..**shudder**.

It's actually one of the reasons I stopped watching the series, well that and the lack of likable female characters that last more than ten episodes (I loved Bela, when she left, I thought why am I bothering with this dumb show?) - when I realized the writers were catering to a bunch of misogynistic sadists, I thought...eh...let's watch something else. ;-)

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Yep from season 3, in her first two appearances I got the feeling that the writers had planned to do more with her, as well as teasing the chemistry with Dean, but then instead they toned down the rest of her appearances that season to very quick cameo appearances and constantly talked in interviews about what a mistake it was to have a character who was outsmarting Sam and Dean. It annoyed me because I'm always seeing positive comments on her in more general community's discussing the show, so IMO they were basing all of the audience response on the absolute hate that Bela got at TWOP. If Bela had been a snarky male con-artist with a tragic backstory I'm sure those same posters would have been falling all over themselves to slash her with Dean...

The writers did that with other characters like Jo too who also got a hostile response after her initial appearance, and was then barely given a chance to develop after that. It was so frustrating how quickly the male writers gave up on doing anything with those characters, and then turned around and blamed the audience for it

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Felt much the same way.

Jo and Bela were fascinating characters. And what was wrong with a few female characters outwitting the Wincester boys? It's not like they were the brightest bulbs on the planet to begin with? Other people outwit them.

The writers lost me completely as a viewer when I realized that a female character couldn't be smart and live, or be smart and not be evil. Every time one was introduced - she was summarily killed.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that's true of every profession, not just writers. When I volunteered with the Obama campaign, they told us not to watch TV and especially not to look at polls. And as a teacher, I look at evaluations only quite a while after the term is over (though I have learned a few things that way, I really try to distance myself from both negative and positive reviews as much as possible). Probably GRRM has the best approach--learn, but don't engage.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I noticed that bad evaluations stung worse when I knew who wrote them, especially from decent students. Gradually, and for other reasons I got away from having my Russian students write anything in English for class at all. You'd be surprised how dissimilar their handwriting was between English and Russian. Then when the evaluations came at the end of the terms in English, I had no idea who wrote what and could convince myself the non-constructive ones were from very bad students, which earlier certainly was not always the case.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Most of the training evaluations we do at work - for work related training courses - are multiple choice, and you do not put your name or sign it. You can if you want, of course.

I prefer that. It's better if it anonymous for both teacher and student, I think. Because less personal that way.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

That's exactly why I don't read until they're long gone. Our evaluations are online, now, but if I read during the course I still might recognize a turn of phrase.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

There's the danger of second-guessing yourself - I'd expect. Also worrying over which student said it.

If I were to tell my teacher's anything critically? I'd say less reliance on multiple choice tests which discriminate against people like myself and more reliance on written essays, short answer, and essay questions which test students on ability to think critically and less on memorization. Never got the opportunity to state that unfortunately, wish I had.

[kathyh]

Making me wonder if fandom's interaction with the artist can be a detrimental thing?

I've often wondered that but artists have always had to deal with interaction with their audience. The white heat of the internet may mean that people react faster and are more invested but Shakespeare would have known pretty much instantly whether an audience liked his plays or not. I presume Elizabethan theatre goers expressed their disapproval even more raucously than the internet does, and he might have been on stage to hear it :) I don't know whether Victorian authors writing serial novels for magazines tweaked them because of reader response but I can see that they could have done.

I suspect the answer is that it depends on the temperament of the artist. Being aware of fan reaction to a point but not engaging in debate is probably the safest course. What I really require from an artist is that they tell the story that they want to tell, not what fans tell them they should or even if I disagree with the way it's gone. I think that's what Joss meant but I've always felt he could have phrased it better!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I remember reading somewhere that Shakespeare catered to his audience at times to his detriment.

Titus Adronicus is the result of catering - the audience wanted violence on stage and preferred action scenes - hence Titus.

OR at the time, female actresses weren't permitted - so you had a guy in the role, a lot of the ribald humor was aimed at the guy playing a gal. Hence the inside jokes in Twelth Night, As You Like It - where you have a gal playing a guy - in this case, it is a guy playing a girl, playing a guy.

He also couldn't do political jokes - so he hid them within his histories.
Often doing a commentary about Elizabethan politics through the guise of ancient Greek politics.

There are a lot of plays where you can see the detriment of the catering. Or the writers somewhat sardonic response to having to cater or getting fed up with his audience.

Titus is amusing - because he clearly threw up his hands and said - okay, you want violence and action, you got it - and went overboard. LOL!

Lousia May Alcott and Charles Dickens had similar issues - apparently their stories were released chapter by chapter in magazines first, and they had to deal with people wanting certain things. They both took the approach of ignoring their audience. Although I think Dickens reluctantly catered at times, and Louisa May Alcott resented the fact that her audience wanted one story when she wanted to write another.

So, yeah, I think it has to a degree always been an issue. Writers deal with differently. Several writers ignore their audience and fans, pretend they don't exist - such as Cormac McCarthy.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Louisa May Alcott was an early example of trolling the fans when she said that she was so sick of all the letters asking for Jo to get together with Laurie that she changed her initial plans for Jo to remain a spinster, and instead married her off to the Professor as a direct reaction against those demands

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

LOL! I can't help but sympathize with her on that score.

[elisi]

From The Writers Tale:

'Principally: it is not a democracy. Creating something is not a democracy. The people have no say. The artist does. It doesn't matter what the people witter on about; they and their response come after. They're not there for the creation.'

And re. internet criticism specifically:

'So it can mess up writers when they read that endlessly critical voice. It's completely, completely destructive. I cannot see one iota of it that's helpful, except maybe in the toughening up.'

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The trick is shutting off the critical voice. Harder to do if you are naturally critical yourself. Easier to do if your aren't. And don't think that way.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

How could a writer - or anyone - resist the internet though? It's hard to write something and then just cast it into the void. TV may be where the writer rules but even then the feedback is likely to be production notes and some praise or comments from co-workers. Matt Weiner is fortunate in that all of the episodes of Mad Men get reviewed by professional critics, but they all have other shows to cover and won't offer more than a fast analysis - no one is going to look at a writer's work more closely than a fan. To have someone produce long essays analyzing your themes and style, and work to catch in-jokes and foreshadowing must be like catnip. Unfortunately wading through everything else to find that destroys the soul. I imagine wise show runners get their assistants or friends to search out the good stuff but late at night right after an episode one was particularly proud of had aired it must be very hard not to open up the computer.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Wiener's lucky--he can just go to Slate.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yep. Professional and popular novelists and tv writers are very lucky. Unlike us. Who rely on live journal for feed-back on our writing.
He can go to various outlets. Forget Slate - he can go to EW, New York Times, and various newspaper critics who adore Mad Men.