Should fans be able to tell media creators what to do?

Have you ever been so disappointed with the direction a book, movie, TV show or game took that you had to stop reading, watching, or playing? Have you ever been let down by a sequel that didn’t live up to the original?

Of course you have! (Especially if you’ve seen Mean Girls 2)

But has this ever happened to something you held near and dear to your heart? Something you would consider yourself a fan of?

What did you do? Did you go online and complain? Complain to friends? Or maybe you just sulked to yourself for a while.

Recently I was wondering if fan complaints ever actually resulted in the change of a plot point, (other than an alternate ending) something that I realize would be difficult for media creators to do considering the fact that time travel isn’t a thing. However, maybe something was released with a simple alternate scene or alternate episode to appease upset fans.

Unfortunately, in my googling I could not find an example of this happening , but in my search I came across this article asking if the creators of Game of Thrones should alter their plans for the upcoming season because of some fans negative reactions to changes in the relationship between two characters.

I have not read the books, but from what I gather in the article it seems that the character of Sansa Stark was merged with another character, Jeyne Poole, who as a result does not exist in the show . The issue with combining these characters is that they had very different relationships with Ramsay Bolton in the novels. Sansa being married to Ramsay and Jeyne being a prisoner that is tortured and raped by him.

The article linked above contains the views of five people on the changes in Sansa’s story line. ranging from complete agreement to complete disagreement, as if they were assigned to write a response based on the choices in a 5 point likert scale. (who knows, maybe they were)

Personally I don’t think I would change anything, If the creators of the show kept 100% true to the novel there still would have been a rape, as well torture on top of that, which didn't happen in the show. The only thing would be the different character. Would fans have been so upset at the scene if that’s how it had been written in the book?

Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were “responsive” to the intense fan reaction following Sansa Stark’s rape by Ramsay Bolton in Season 5 and changed “a couple of things” as a result.

The show certainly doesn’t shy away from sex and violence so it surprises me that they did decide to change things in the upcoming season, although If I understand correctly the show has gotten to a point in the story where the books have not yet reached so there isn’t any concrete source material that they need to adhere to. It will be interesting to see where Sansa’s story goes in season 6. Personally I hope she gets the chance to kill Ramsay herself, but I don't think it will happen within the first couple of episodes. We’ll have to watch and see. I know what I’m doing on Sunday night