Teasing Creator: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Q''': ''Do you particularly enjoy being deliberately vague?''<br />

Sometimes you get the feeling that a series creator is having a little ''too'' much fun messing with their audience's collective heads.

* The writers of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' are memetic for their [[Ship Tease]] with Nanoha and Fate. Despite their relationship sliding to the bleeding edge between subtext and text, there still hasn't been an official [[Word of God]] or onscreen kiss to seal the deal, and the fan question on their relationship is inevitably answered with the [[Shrug of God]].

** Technically there have been a few [[Word of Gay]]'s. but none by the ''writers''.

** This man is widely known for his Mastery of the [[Shrug of God]], much to the fans' dismay.

*** [[Memetic Mutation|"I have no bloody clue. Fanwank something."]]

** And he did it again, for April Fools' Day 2011. And he regularly takes requests on his website for things people want him to sketch, even if such things are completely nonsensical and could never be considered canon.

* [[Eiichiro Oda]] of ''[[One Piece]]'' fame certainly has some interesting answers when fans ask him questions, just to screw around with them. Given Oda's sense of humor and the generally odd nature of the ''[[One Piece]]'' world, it's sometimes hard to tell when his answers are serious and when they're just jokes.

* Kunihiko Ikuhara and ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'' - see especially the car girl incident and Miki's Goddamn stopwatch.

== [[Comic Books]] ==

== [[Fan Fiction]] ==

* Jim Butcher, author of ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', is this. It's like crack for wizar... ur, authors. After the ending of "Changes" where {{spoiler|Harry apparently died at the end}} he very promptly stated on his website that the next book will be called {{spoiler|Ghost Story. Yeah, while his many fans are consumed with debate over whether Harry is dead or not. Not to mention whether or not he'll be back in some form or another.}}

** Of course, he also said that {{spoiler|Harry is D-E-D Dead, so it isn't that much of a tease.}}

* Vicky Holmes of the ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' series.

* [[Bryan Davis]] absolutely loves to interact with his fans, and is almost the patron saint of [[Exact Words]]. This results in a LOT of teaasing of the fans. The thing is, [[Tropes Are Not Bad|most of the fans love it.]]

* [[Eoin Colfer|Eoin]] [[Trolling Creator|"Trollfer"]] [[Eoin Colfer|Colfer]]. Don't take anything he says in his interviews about a future book as final word. His hints are worth more than straight [[Lying Creator|answers]].

* Considering [[The Mortal Instruments|Cassandra Clare's]] posts on Tumblr, she is most certainly this. She deliberately gives out little snippets from her unreleased books that she ''knows'' will mess with her fans' heads.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* [[Joss Whedon]] is notorious for this.

** Most notably, "The Next Doctor". The title was revealed around the time David Tennant was confirmed to be leaving the show, and fandom began guessing who the next Doctor would be, with the production team treating it as if the episode would be introducing the new actor. As it turned out, {{spoiler|the eponymous character wasn't the Doctor's next incarnation at all, the ruse being explained away halfway through the episode}}.

** The cliffhangers at the end of "Last of the Time Lords" {{spoiler|the Titanic crashes through the wall of the TARDIS}} and "The Stolen Earth" {{spoiler|the Doctor begins regenerating}} were both easily and effortlessly resolved within the first minute of the following episode, seemingly designed specifically to whip the audience into a frenzy in the meantime.

** On the subject of the Sherlock series 2 cliffhanger: "We're going to be complete bastards about it."

* Shane Brennan, the current showrunner over at ''[[NCIS]]'' only seems to talk to the media if he wants to stir up shipping drama in the fandom.

** He did it so often and blatantly that the Carly/Freddie fans turned on him when they recognized it being done to them. A blog hyping the 5 episode Sam/Freddie arc included a list of various potential 'what if' scenarios. A day later entries were added to tease the Carly/Freddie pairing trying to tease Carly/Freddie who had systematically torn apart the viability and premise of the Sam/Freddie. It went down like a lead balloon, causing more of a backlash with those fans angered by the apparent destruction of the realistic and previously canon Carly/Freddie relationship and being pandered and teased by a creator who didn't even bother to give the pairing [[Ship Sinking|closure]] before launching into the over-hyped Seddie arc.

** With the launch of new show ''[[Victorious]]'' he remained pretty low key on the teasing. Then the [[Les Yay|Jade/Tori]] fandom exploded. Now he can't stop teasing them.

* ZUN, creator of ''[[Touhou]]'', is known by the fanbase as its biggest troll.

** He doesn't even bother to be subtle about it, either. When viewing a few people attempt to play ''Double Spoiler'' ([[Nintendo Hard]] even by ''Touhou'' standards) he [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCEh0yQIKzA openly mocks their pain]. Addictive laugh, though.

* Ryukishi07, author of the ''[[When They Cry]]'' mystery series, reportedly monitors online forums for popular fan theories so he can brutally smash them or set them up as gigantic red herrings in the next installment.

* [[Square Enix]] and the much anticipated ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' remake. SE loves to tease the idea of the remake only to debunk again and again.

{{quote| '''The [[Play Station]] Blog''': ''“When will we finally be able to play Final Fantasy Versus XIII? You know, [[Schedule Slip|the game has been in development for eons]]. Do you have anything to share at this time? Anything!”''<br />

'''Motomu Toriyama''': ''“First, please enjoy XIII-2 while you wait for additional information.”'' }}

* Suda51's old game ''[[The Silver Case]]'' has been in development for a remake for the DS for several years. Early 2010 he showed off the DS port on an internet livestream, proving that it works... but there's no release date.

* The devs of ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'' have said that at this point, they don't even know when they're teasing and when they're not. (For instance, their remark that the never-seen principal is a masked wrestler is both a joke, and canon, and it will continue to be canon until and unless he appears in the finished game and turns out not to be a masked wrestler.)

** He doesn't turn up in the finished game, and so can be assumed to be a masked wrestler.

** While F.H. was resolved in its [[Bittersweet Ending]], sequel ''Other People's Business'' looks set to remove the "{{spoiler|sweet}}" part of "bittersweet" entirely, as Fuhr strongly implies that {{spoiler|Collin}} ended up married to {{spoiler|the comic's ''resident hitman''}}. Is there any concrete statement confirming this? Watching the fans working themselves into a frenzy as everyone tries to suss it out, the answer remains "Hell, no."

** {{spoiler|Confirmed. Leon/Collin shippers rejoiced, Fox/Collin advocates wept and followed the author's advice to declare "[[Alternate Universe]]"}}.

* Fred Gallagher of ''[[Megatokyo]]'' does this from time to time. Miho in particular was a figure of mystery for a long time.

* Brian Clevinger, creator of ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]'' and ''[[Atomic Robo]]'' is one of those few Teasing Creators who actually ''are'' unfairly toying with their readership, but is still pretty beloved because he makes it funny. In this case, it's less [[Ship Tease|Ship Teasing]] and more 'changing the plot if you even try to guess what's going on, and hell why not have an [[Anticlimax]] instead of an awesome fight'. His most common quote is this:

{{quote| "My favourite joke is the one played on the reader."}}

** Once, he attempted what was perhaps his biggest joke on the readers at the time, when he appeared to end the ''entire comic'' on a [[All Just a Dream|horrible anticlimax]], expecting to get a ton of hate mail and rile up his fans. This backfired when he got a ton of mail sincerely ''thanking'' him for the years of great comics, and assuring him that the anticlamix was horrible, and thus, the perfect ending for the particular comic. He appreciated the irony; his favorite joke, a joke on the reader, [[Insult Backfire|whipped right back around]] [[Crowning Moment of Funny|and became a joke on HIM.]]

* When told of an [[Epileptic Tree]], the author of ''[[Keychain of Creation]]'' will state that it is true, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, even if it contradicts established fact.

** He probably delegates fitting these [[Epileptic Tree|Epileptic Trees]] in the weave of Creation to Pattern Spiders. He has been known to employ them at least on one account to retroactively vanish an Essence Cannon from the character, so...

{{quote| ''"I think I [[Ship Sinking|ruined a solid year's worth of perfectly good shipping]] with recent revelations. WHOOPSEE DAISEE"''}}

* ''[[Misfile]]'' has been having this bad, lately. There are numerous places where we get a big build up to the resolution of a major subplot or the potential for some character development, when either someone barges in and interrupts the moment (Book ten was full of this), Emily drops the conversation (Can't remember any other character doing this), or the conversation suddenly changes. When [http://www.misfile.com/index.php?page=1550 this scene] ended, a lot of fans were not happy.

* ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' writers Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick ''love'' to mess with the fans. They have claimed that third season [[The Scrappy|Scrappies]], The Murderous Moppets, will be getting [[Creator's Pet|more screentime]] in the next season just to spite the fans who don't like them ({{spoiler|which is the exact opposite of what happens in season 4, as so far one of their few roles is The Monarch telling them to quit bothering everyone}}). They also throw in [[Brick Joke]] references to episodes that nobody (including themselves) likes all that much and threaten ([[Rule of Funny|hilariously]]) to kill off popular characters. Oh, and the episode commentary for the first episode of season three spoils all of the twists in the season finale because, according to them, nobody should listen to the commentary before watching the episodes.

** Doc Hammer actually made it his personal mission to spoil the end of season 3 in '''every''' episode commentary for said season. In the first episode, he did it accidentally, then he decided that if you listen to the commentaries before finishing the season you deserve what you get.

** Then, just for extra [[Trolling Creator|Trolliness]], when the fandom exploded over that picture, they posted another picture. What can you see in the background of the second picture? The post of the first picture. Yeah.

** A [http://youtu.be/jMi1JRvW9E4 recent commercial] showing previews of the fall lineup includes literally 2 seconds worth of footage from the show, including a bit with Princess Celestia that has fans wildly speculating as to the circumstances of the particular scene.

{{reflist}}