Dear Negative Reader: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* One of the last episodes of [[Koji Kumeta]]'s ''Zan [[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'' has Chiri and Jun breaking the fourth wall and responding to viewers' complaints about the series. All of their answers are to this effect, and the last advises the reader to [[Don't Like, Don't Read|enjoy Rebuild of Evangelion and other fine series]].

* [[Tite Kubo]] released [[Don't Like, Don't Read|a couple]] [[Let's See You Do Better|of these]] on his [[Twitter]] sometime during early 2010 in response to fan complaints over the [[Seasonal Rot]] of ''[[Bleach]]''. He even went as far as comparing said fans to [[Man Child|children.]]

 

 

* The "Author's Note" for ''[[My Inner Life]]'' by "[[Pseudonym|Link’s Queen]]" is mostly this. ''[[Author Filibuster|It goes on for three pages]].''

* In the ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' [[Troll Fic]] ''[[Starkit's Prophecy]]'', the author frequently insults her readers for giving her bad reviews.

 

 

* [[Ray Bradbury]] allegedly provided a brief but memorable example:

{{quote|"A [[Fan Boy|horrible little boy]] came up to me and said, 'You know in your book ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]?'' ' I said, 'Yes?' He said, 'You know where you talk about [[The Red Planet|Deimos rising in the East?]]' I said, 'Yes?' He said '[[Did Not Do the Research|No.]]' -- [[Talk to the Fist|So I hit him.]]"}}

* Jacqueline Howett recently had a spectacular meltdown on Big Al's Books and Pals after he negatively reviewed her book, ''The Greek Seaman.'' Observe in all its glory: http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html.

* When he posted on alt.fan.pratchett, [[Terry Pratchett]] would sometimes get [[Deadpan Snarker|ironic]] about some criticism (especially the "You nicked this bit from..." variety), but would mostly ignore it. He also had the message "<annericemode = OFF>" to precede his comments. Everyone winced the day one poster managed to trigger an [[Beware the Nice Ones|"<annericemode = ON>" message]]... [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.pratchett/browse_thread/thread/368b573e26ea386/b971dae3a8442bac?hl=en&q=annericemode&lnk=ol& You can read it here.]

* [[Anne Rice]] had an infamous one of these on Amazon.com, claiming that anyone knocking her work was "[[Memetic Mutation|interrogating the text from the wrong perspective]]". All one paragraph, too. Very impressive. In a horrible way, mind.

* [[Fern Michaels]] has a website where one of the features involves contacting her and sending an email to her about your opinions. For example, if you send her an email pointing out flaws and questionable values in the ''Sisterhood'' series, then you will most likely get the following response, word for word:

{{quote|To answer your questions>>>>> I write what I do because I can. This is fiction. If you don't like my writing why did you continue to read the series? Oh, that's right, because they were entertaining. I rest my case. Characters are human just like the rest of us mortals. Again, this is fiction. I make it a point to never defend my writing because . . . I write fiction. Fiction is make believe, in other words, it's whatever the author wants to make it. Thank you for taking the time to write and offer your opinions and your insight. FM}}

{{quote|"Well, [[Sarcasm Mode|hate to break it to you]] but ''[[War Is Hell|that's how it works in real life]]'' an if you can't accept that then please, kindly ''[[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|grow the f**k up."]]'') }}

* Masterfully deployed by [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] in his introduction to the second edition of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'':

** This wasn't the first case of this happening either. He's made several pointed remarks (inside his 'episode fun facts') aimed at the Sam/Freddie fans in general, by pointing out an instance of Carly telling Freddie he was standing too close, with a note saying that some fans could "throw a parade" over it, and a couple of heavily sarcastic remarks about Sam/Freddie fans and how "he loved to hear about how he should write his show."

* In 2000, [[Aaron Sorkin]] spent some time on the Internet debating with the forum posters at [[Television Without Pity]]. It started with disagreements on how much of a given episode of ''[[The West Wing]]'' should be credited to Sorkin vs. other writers, but snowballed into Sorkin telling the posters that he basically counted their opinions as worthless. He then inserted strawmen into the "U.S. Poet Laureate" episode, casting TWoP and its posters as the "chain-smoking, mumu-wearing" denizens of "lemonlyman.com," where iron-fisted mods steer the conversations. For the entire history, including timeline, quotes and postmortem, [http://bitchkittie.blogspot.com/2006/02/long-back-story-of-aaron-sorkin-west.html go read this.]

* A rather classy subversion by ''[[Top Gear]]'' producer Andy Wilman on his recap of series 14 [http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2009/12/20/series-14-where-were-at/ here].

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

 

== Theatre ==

*** After the miscarriage bit, he included a joke about a "quiet black guy in a movie theater?" Fans complained about racism, so he put up a post about how the joke wasn't racist. He then edited the strip several times to make it less about race WITHOUT saying he was editing. Essentially censoring the strip to make his critics look like idiots. Whether he was wary of another dramatic comedy like the miscarriage backlash, or whether he simply didn't expect to get called out on a race joke, no one can say.

*** In one case, Buckley actually berated someone for DEFENDING him. A poster made a paragraph about how much he liked the comic and didn't understand why people who didn't like it didn't simply stop reading. It had a piece of fanart, credited with "I don't own this character, copyright of" yadayada. Buckley apparently either did not read or thought it was sarcastic, because he attacked the man for plagiarism, implying the threat of legal action.

** Short version for the lazy: Gabe and Tycho get accused of being rape apologists because they had a strip which had a character who mentioned having been raped as a set-up to a joke. Gabe gets mad at the accusation and reacts, with increasingly less ambiguous rape apology.<ref>Tycho ''also'' doesn't like the accusation, but keeps his mouth shut beyond the initial snarky "apology" because he thinks any attempt to actually defend himself will just make it worse, which might actually have been a viable strategy had his cohort not been making inflammatory remarks and attempting to cast detractors solely as humorless nancies looking for things to be offended about</ref> This only serves to enrage the offended parties further, which further provokes Gabe, all feeding into a vicious cycle stemming from the fact that neither party really gets where the other party is coming from, but thinks the other party understands them perfectly and just doesn't give a shit.

* Howard Tayler of ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' produced a fairly mild version a while ago [http://zoo.nightstar.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18525&start=0 here]. Short version: complaints about how long the story was "dragging on" elicited the response "If you're bored, leave. PLEASE. I'm telling the story I want to tell, and I'm telling it the way I want to tell it."

* Krazy Krow wrote one for ''[[Spinnerette]]'' which can be [http://krakowstudios.com/spinnerette/2011/10/05/10052011/ seen here], in response to negative feedback on chapter seven. However, he seemed to think it was about him using a recurring villain when most of the complaints were about how predictable and cliched the story ended up being.

* [[Noah Antwiler]] made a blog post entitled "An Appeal To Manners", which is a huge one of these. In this case though, it's not about people hating his videos but a genuine complaint directed at the [[Troll]]s who did things like calling his then-girlfriend a "fat cow" when she appeared in a thank-you video.

** His commentary for the "Mazes and Monsters" review starts with one about the negative reaction the fans had to that review's title sequence, which replaced his normal themesong by The Irresponsibles with a cover by the band Living Illusion. It's actually quite mature and even somewhat apologetic - he explains why he made the change and defends Living Illusion's cover, and speculates as to why people were so bothered. It helps that you're hearing his thoughts, rather than reading them, so the tone is much easier to interpret. (And, for the record, he went back to a more traditional version of the theme song not too long after.)

* After panning [[Super Smash Brothers Brawl]] and receiving an unusually large amount of hate mail, [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]] devoted a whole video to snarkily responding to some of the negative comments. Fan opinion seems split on whether this was a [[Zero Punctuation/Awesome|good]] or [[Dethroning Moment of Suck/Zero Punctuation|bad]] move.

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Insult Tropes]]

[[Category:Criticism Tropes]]