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Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by slg on Monday May 15, 2023 @01:58PM (#35952048)
This is a big problem for serialized stories now that fan theorizing on the internet is so common. A good plot shouldn't be completely predictable to your audience, but events need to flow from one to the other because characters and their worlds should have consistency. This creates predictability and means some small percentage of your audience can now guess what is going to happen.

That was fine a decade or two ago when a person might guess the ending to a TV show and blurt it out to their partner on the couch. However, now that small group that guesses the plot correctly will share their predictions on the relevant subreddit which will be picked up by blogs and suddenly everyone knows where you were going.

When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled. Westworld is a memorable example of the creators changing the show because fans guessed what was happening next. The end result was that the show didn't make any sense because it prioritized unpredictability over all else and eventually the world and characters didn't make any sense anymore.

Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by bsder on Monday May 15, 2023 @02:48PM (#35952800)
> When that happens, the creatives are faced with the choice to change that ending or just deal with the twists and turns getting spoiled.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

The big problem with every single writer nowadays is a complete and total inability to stick the ending.

I'm really trying very hard to come up with a TV show, book or movie that I thought really stuck the ending in the last 10 years (I'm being generous--in reality I'd even say 30 years). A whole host of the fan theories are WAY better than what practically all current writers crap out.

If I'm being charitable, I'll describe the problem as writers lack varied life experience. If I'm being uncharitable, it's that most writers are just not very intelligent.

Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by slg on Monday May 15, 2023 @03:37PM (#35953396)
I could give you a list of endings that I thought were great, but if you can’t think of a single ending that you found satisfying, that sounds more like a you problem than all of humanity simply stopped writing good endings.
Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by yamtaddle on Monday May 15, 2023 @03:53PM (#35953599)
Seems akin to complaints that there aren't enough good movies or TV shows these days.

That's so very not the case that the person complaining either isn't looking very hard, or else have such narrow taste that they're excluding most works without even considering them.

Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by erehweb on Monday May 15, 2023 @03:25PM (#35953305)
I recommend The Good Place throughout, particularly the ending.
Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by SantalBlush on Monday May 15, 2023 @03:56PM (#35953636)
Breaking Bad had a very decent ending. It wasn't overblown, it didn't have contrived plot twists, and it was consistent with the the way the characters behaved in previous arcs.
Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by ManuelKiessling on Monday May 15, 2023 @04:15PM (#35953886)
„Bodyguard“, the BBC miniseries, and „My Name“ from South Korea, both on Netflix, as well as „Your Name“, from 2016 (now THAT was one final act and ending!).
Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by iainmerrick on Tuesday May 16, 2023 @06:29AM (#35959854)
I like slg's reply (most likely somewhere above mine!)

I just want to add: what's an example of something you think is a really good ending, from any book or show or movie from any time?

Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by yamtaddle on Monday May 15, 2023 @04:55PM (#35954363)
Show runners and writers giving a shit that someone on Reddit guessed their clever twist is the entire problem here. If zero people out of thousands or more actively speculating online thought of the thing you did, that's probably because it doesn't make sense. Adjusting to avoid anything that's been guessed almost necessarily means veering into bad writing.
Re:Stories We’ve Seen Too Often by bobsmooth on Monday May 15, 2023 @06:47PM (#35955549)
>Show runners and writers giving a shit that someone on Reddit guessed their clever twist

This is what ruined Westworld.