Troubled Production/Real Life/Fan Works
Examples of Troubled Productions in Real Life Fan Works include:
- Unwilling Service, a Pokemon fanfic series currently spanning three simultaneous fics, barely managed to see four chapters in total between 2011-14 before author Economy (formerly McKnight, then Searover1986) declared it dead. He revived it in May 2016, to take his focus off of another project that wasn't going anywhere, but while he managed to write up a chapter for each of the three fics in quick succession, his beta-writer, Helder Luis Baruffi, encountered one problem after another, especially in light of a burglary in October that year, which required him to move back in with his family and endure a hectic lifestyle. Economy continued to hold out on him until he caved in and revealed how he really felt about the story. Things didn't fare much better when Economy took to Upwork, and the resulting frustration led to increasing animosity between him and Helder, whom he had also been friends with for over a decade; most people who proposed to take it up either failed to understand what he expected of them (even after getting Helder to summarize what he did before), went silent, had to back out, or lost interest by the time he got back to them after putting them on hold in favor of those before them. This spanned three attempts before he pulled the plug early in last said attempt and even wrote something on his blog that he retracted upon being called out, but which still led their friendship into a bitter multi-month decline. Even the two and only freelancers who actually did follow through with a chapter or so eventually stopped responding to his messages, leading him to Freelancer instead when he posted the project one last time on Upwork, contacted multiple other Freelancers recommended to him, and had the project taken down for content violations. At this point, Economy has already decided just to commission outright for an initial draft of the whole story instead, whenever he returns to the project at all. (And that wasn't a decision he made lightly; originally, he planned for the project to be some kind of personal game for himself, especially regarding his plans for the Pal Park and both of the Battle Frontiers, having once loved the actual games but since realizing one thing after another about them that rubbed him the wrong way.)
- One thing also worth noting in particular is their dispute about Jamie (now Jimmy) having muscles, towards the end of 2012. The author asked Helder at least three times not to buff him up, which he ignored as he proceeded just to do things his way and then tell him to redo the relevant scenes himself. He did redo some of them after being called out for his disobedience, but not before justifying himself first and arguing with him, and even then, there were still some things left that only muscles could explain (which he only managed to get rid of years later by having someone else do the whole chapter over). Eventually, this was one of the few things he cited when asked multiple times to cite what he came to hate about the story itself.
- There is also the issue of the PokéWalker, one of Economy's favorite aspects of a pair of games that Helder very outright hates to this day.
- As for the two authors' relationship, it's been dead in the water since February 2018. While Helder's bailout marked the beginning of the end between them, actual tensions began when Economy stated a refusal to help him with any of his fanfiction until he deliver a make-up assignment of some sort. It was not long after that Economy got some answers out of Helder regarding what he actually hated about the story, but even when he offered concessions on two such aspects, things went nowhere from there in terms of winning him back, which led Economy to believe that he just wanted to be catered to and to do whatever he'd damn well please and was now being a poor sport over not having had his way through and through to begin with. Soon thereafter, Economy offered Helder a break from it all, but then impulsively demanded more answers about the situation, going on to tell him on his blog to go fuck himself when he thought he was ignoring him, before he revealed he was actually on a family trip and decided right then and there that that was it. Starting with a botched apology in response, things went on and off for months, and seemed to take a better terms for their friendship itself when Economy offered at least not to talk about his fetishes or a certain show Helder also hates, before deciding to let more time go by before he'd express his actual issues outside of but related to Helder's departure. Only a month went by as Economy proceeded to elaborate in a WordPad file meant for much later on, before he broke down and expressed the toll such a thing was taking on his mental health, at which point Helder urged him, more out of guilt and despair than frustration, just to forget about him altogether.
- And to begin with, as Economy went on to post onto his blog:
- One thing also worth noting in particular is their dispute about Jamie (now Jimmy) having muscles, towards the end of 2012. The author asked Helder at least three times not to buff him up, which he ignored as he proceeded just to do things his way and then tell him to redo the relevant scenes himself. He did redo some of them after being called out for his disobedience, but not before justifying himself first and arguing with him, and even then, there were still some things left that only muscles could explain (which he only managed to get rid of years later by having someone else do the whole chapter over). Eventually, this was one of the few things he cited when asked multiple times to cite what he came to hate about the story itself.
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What I wanted to make sense of, was why he requested all kinds of stuff to make happen in Unwilling Service if he actually hated it so much. He wanted Mewtwo to Mega Evolve a certain way (can't remember between his X or Y forms), he wanted Dawn to try being a nudist like the protagonists and to participate in the Pal Park, he wanted Jamie to be naked upon meeting each of the Pokemon Idols, and even when he admitted his lack of interest in gym quests, he still went on to suggest ways to make it more interesting, asked to see my first entry about the story, requested a trial run of the Pal Park, and asked that each of the mains have a rival to compete against for that event. All of that, on top of requesting that I go through my blog to tag each entry where I talked about Pokemon, mentioning someone who found the premise amusing, sharing certain things with me like that tabletop game and something about parallel universes, and before I previously abandoned it, asking me to find it within me to care about it again. He even said yes when I asked if he'd ever be interested in a hypothetical visual adaptation of some sort. That's what I mean when I talk about any interest he displayed up until telling me he can't do it anymore, not just because of his lifestyle, but because he couldn't stand all the halfway measures we had to make. Can you say, "two-faced hypocrisy?" |
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