Heroes Rise Is A True CS IF Game Series

If anyone says the HR trilogy is not IF at all, they are wrong, yes.

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I think something to keep in mind that others have brought up is the time of this all. While I’m not particularly well-versed on specific dates and years of when each came out (2012 for the very first Heroes Rise, I think?) Either way, Heroes Rise was one of the earliest games on the Choice of Games website. And I really think that that’s an important distinction to remember if you’re arguing that it’s “not IF”.

Choice of Games has evolved a lot, their games have evolved a lot. If you were to go through and read the earliest games and then the latest you would find a very neat growth from then-to-now in terms of how choices are handled, writing, plot structure and branching, and all that lovely jazz. As others have also pointed out- the system itself has evolved too, with Heroes Rise being written in an older version of ChoiceScript than what’s used now.

I think that the reason this is important to keep in mind is because if you set such strict standards for what is and isn’t “interactive fiction” then you can lose track of the fact that ability, standards, and expectations have all drastically changed even since 2012.

Take a look at some of the earliest instances of interactive fiction- some of the earlier instances of hypertext fiction such as Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson were the interactive fictions of their time, but now, reading Patchwork Girl, you might not think of it as interactive fiction because nothing plot-wise or character-wise changes as we’ve come to expect from games such as those found in Choice of Games’ catalogue. Still, I can’t deny that for what they were at the time they were created, that was the standard (or at least one of many) for interactive fiction. That was non-linearity to the extent of their capabilities.

Again as others have said, I’m not going to argue whether it is a good interactive fiction game or a bad interactive fiction game, but I will argue that it is an interactive fiction game and that it’s especially important to acknowledge it as an interactive fiction game if for no other purpose than growth. We learn from the past, and this includes creative outlets/mediums such as interactive fiction. In much the same way you’d study painters of another time (whether you enjoyed their style of painting or not) you learn certain tricks and tips from them. The way light falls on an arm or- to bring the metaphor back to interactive fiction- conversations should differ depending on a character’s past actions. Saying that it’s not IF would be, at least partially, sweeping it under the rug- separating it from all other IF and therefore disregarding the need to learn from works like it.

In fact I’d even argue that such a thing would mean it’s especially important to acknowledge Heroes Rise as interactive fiction if you didn’t like it- for that very reason. Learn from it. Know what it was you didn’t enjoy and then, when/if you create a story of your own, you can use what you’ve gathered from reading it. If you thought it was too railroaded because of X, then now you know to do Y. But if you go about saying that it’s not interactive fiction at all you run the risk of ignoring everything it does and everything you could learn from it, and that’s where a big danger lies.

We learn from our pasts, but in order to learn from them you have to first acknowledge them. If that makes sense.

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Good points. There are plenty of people who’d argue that nothing made in Choicescript is true IF. I’m not one of them, because I think the term is sufficiently broad to have lots of texts under the umbrella, but there’s definitely a distinction in IF circles between parser works and non-parser works.

I have to disagree with this. You do not need the MeChip enhancement to “win.” You can easily do fine without and it’s really easy to unlock the Perfect Legend guide if that’s how you define “winning” in this game.

Second… there really isn’t a clearly defined way to say you “win” in a game like this.

Third, this isn’t a multiplayer game where buying more gives you a leg up on other people, this is a single player experience where that is just a little extra, totally option bit of content you don’t need.

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I personally love the hero raise series for its amazing plot and I am thankful to the Arthur for making an amazing game, if it wasn’t for hero raise I would probably never have found out about choice of games.

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Ok so I’m another person who isn’t going to defend the railroad to author’s belief system of what is correct mindset, that does pop up in areas of the Hero’s series, and I think you’ll find Eiwynn has expressed a few areas where she wished there were changes in the series as well. She’s just trying to keep the tone of this site positive as her role as a mod. So I think everyone can agree heroes is not perfect. But few things are on the site. I could pick up just about any game and find at least one thing I thought could be improved or should be changed. Not that what I think is the same as everyone else. There are favorites here that I don’t particularly love, and there are ones that seem to get no love (or are even generally disliked) that I actually like. There are things about the heroes series I don’t like, but there are also things I think he does well. (Like pacing. I think the pacing of those books in the original series is actually one of the best of the COG’s. It seems to go at a rate that allows enough explanation but stays fast enough to stay interesting.)

Anyway, I respect the views of everyone on the thread on both sides. There are a few people in particular that have had stuff to do with my own WIP’s that have given me some fantastic feedback both good and bad and their opinions carry weight with me at least. That’s one of the things I love about this site, there’s a community atmosphere where everyone can interact and express opinions in a constructive way. On the other had I also agree with Eiwynn, that I’ve started to become a bit uncomfortable about the number of times the heroes series is held up as an example of bad choice in various threads all the way to being classed as not choice fiction at all. Perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to it after my first book got really ripped into on the stores. The landslide of negativity almost made me give up writing if fiction altogether rather see what I could improve on. It was actually the kind people in this forum who gave me frank but constructive crit that got me to stay. It’s one of the things I love about this site, everyone is generally really supportive. Anyway, I guess that sort of makes me start to feel a little sorry for the author of the heroes books, particularly as that series was one of the first ones I read which got me interested in writing choicescript in the first place.

I’m not saying there’s stuff that couldn’t be done better, the backlash against the new series in paticular makes that pretty clear, but perhaps kept mainly to thread specifically about these books or toned down a little in threads outside it? Thing is, the author (to my knowledge) isn’t on these forums and probably wont be seeing the posts anyway. Even if he was, four books in I seriously doubt the writing style is going to change now, (if anything would change it, it would be the reaction to the newest book, so we’ll have to wait and see). I suspect this is particularly true since he has a fan base which seems to like the books as they are. If you look at steam, it’s on the best seller’s list under choose your own adventures and I think COG has said that it has been one of their best sellers overall. That doesn’t have to mean it is the best example of *if out there but it makes it a popular one.

And I think that has something to do with why everyone has such strong feelings about the content. High expectations= high disappointment if you read it and it doesn’t measure up to what you thought it would be. It also deals with sensitive content in ways that perhaps could be improved, but there are examples of that in other works as well that haven’t continued to get this much of the spotlight.

*if is always evolving, I think it’s great to see some of the up and coming works that will hopefully deal with the issues that have been brought up in heroes in a way that will gel better with the members of this forum. I’m all for contructivley supporting those and getting them out onto the store. Who knows, one of them may outsell HR in the future. (Choice of rebels had an opening bigger than HR I believe.) And let’s all just be happy that choice books have moved on from the original ones like this

Sword Daughter

This is a rather unfortunate true to text adaption of an '80 choose your own adventure (which really needed a facelift prior to release as it has dated noticeably) where the female “hero” is railroaded into a relationship with the “pretty elf guy” (who is abusive because he cares,) moments after waking up to find her father has been killed, (because of course she was an expert swordswoman but got knocked out at the begining of the fight) is constantly being rescued and at no point does she ever get to be a warrior like she always dreamed of at the start. Usually just a house wife because giving up your dreams is worth it to be beautiful elf guy who wants to drag you home to his mother instead of letting you fight beside him. Isn’t it? The only half good ending is actually technically a 'bad" one. Yeah, it’s that good. I’m just glad that progress has been made significantly since books like this that were the basis of interactive fiction, and that it continues to grow and improve with time.

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Yes, but nowhere is there an option to ever get legal redress. The judicial branch in this version of America has apparently become completely redundant or just another arm of the executive branch and abnegated all of its responsibilities, with majors and presidents not only imprisoning whomever they like for whatever reason they like, but also dictating the conditions of said imprisonment. I believe I raised it on one of the threads at the time too, but where are the judges, where are the prison wardens?

Since my mc genuinely believed his parents to be innocent he would have wanted a re-opening of their case and their innocence affirmed by a trial, not an executive pardon that conveniently voids all other legal claims and provides no further redress in any way, to the point where my mc would have been perfectly willing to threaten the vice-president should they even contemplate trying to pull that trick. Again Rebellion and the Meek ideally shouldn’t have been the only ones to be able to play that sort of game.
There were a lot of flaws both with the mc as a character, their choices and the world-building.

Also if Victon was so out of control politically I always wondered why were we forced to do everything ourselves in a rather clumsy teenage way? Would have been nice if we could have made an alliance with the opposing political party? Why do Rebellion and Victon get to play the political game, but not our mc. I mean since we are forced to go for fame anyway we might as well have used it.

In any case, like @Eiwynn has already said, the game is far from perfect but it was a decent read and worth its sticker price when it first came out.
I will say however that I concur with some other posters who have already mentioned that it has not aged particularly well, compared to some of the newer offerings, in contrast with say Vampire or Dragon.
Even back when it came out much more innovative projects, such as Vendetta were already on display, albeit in various stages of completion, on the forums. The attrition rates of those does tell the story of how difficult it is to get such a project finished essentially on your own and get it published.
So my final verdict, solid for its time, less so in comparison to what is on offer now, at least for me.
Its direct sequels though, hoo boy don’t get me started on the sheer world-building insanity of those. :sweat_smile:

This is very much still even at the time I was slightly disappointed in how Black Magic, even disregarding the forced attraction, compared to Villenueve of Broadsides (even though that really doesn’t end very happy) or how little your choices really impacted the world, compared to say Vampire, where I had so much more control over both my character and his actions.

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A fake choice is still a choice.

Cog’s definition of CS and CYOA are something along the lines of - as far as I can tell:

CS or Choice Script: a game system that is all about multiple choice interactions
CYOA of Choose Your Own Adventure: You have multiple choices you can choose and thus multiple paths (or adventures!) you can experience.

(forgot to add) And multiple choices basically boil down to whether or not your character can choose to do something over another thing, whether that be say option A over B or do option D over option C.

And regardless of my not-so-high opinion of its content, HR meets the criteria. (albeit barely, in my opinion) We have multiple choices to choose from in any given interaction and because we have multiple choices, we have multiple paths.

The differences between one choice from another - and thereby one path from another - is small, however. And honestly? That’s perfectly okay. You don’t always need big choices with big impact at every interaction to make a great game. Sometimes the littlest choices make all the difference.

Take Dragon Age Origins for example. In the City Elf prologue, your character is forced to kill Bann Vaughan Kendalls either because you were abducted (as the bride to be of an interrupted wedding) or because your bride to be was abducted and you go rescue her and the other women. Because of that small choice - you can even argue that it’s not a choice depending on whether or not your Grey Warden is of one sex or another! - the nobles of the Landsmeet may or may not be more prone to condone the enslavement of the Elves because they’re given the impression that all alienage elves must be ruthless savages that kill humans in cold blood.

Another small and maybe not as impactful choice is whether or not you encourage Dagna to attend the Circle of Magi for study. You learn about her fate in the epilogue of DA:O and she eventually makes a return in DA:I as your enchanter. (I miss Sandal)

Like I said before, a fake choice is still a choice. It has the word “choice” in it, thereby labeling it as a choice. Before someone says something, I do know that *fake_choice wasn’t available at the time of HRs - the first one.

I’ve read some of the comments arguing that it isn’t a CS game and here’s what I think. As I’m trying to find a middle ground.

HRs offers choices and it offers multiple paths. Are they meaningful choices/paths? It’s up to your interpretation. Are they choices/paths that have consequences? It’s up to your interpretation. Are they even good or bad choices/paths? Again. It’s up to your interpretation of what a ‘meaningful’/‘consequential’/‘good’/‘bad’ choice/path is.

Whether or not HR satisfies your personal expectation of what a CS or CYOA should be is completely subjective. It doesn’t erase the fact that HR presents you with choices and paths and thereby satisfies CoG’s standards of CS or CYOA.

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To be honest, I don’t even see the point of this argument. If someone managed to use Choicescript to program a Match-3 game, is there any reason that it wouldn’t be sold as an HG?

If someone wants to say that Heroes Rise is a terrible game, I’ll agree with them. If someone says that it shouldn’t be on the CoG label, I’ll also agree (I think that the forced sex scene with Black Magic should have been vetoed way back by the original editorial, ideally with a “what the hell were you thinking?”). But it’s made with Choicescript, it’s an IF, and other than said sex scene, it qualifies for company hosting.

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If anyone is up for it, I could write a whole run down of how to easily improve the story as such (which ties into the question is HR a ‘real’ IF/CYOA or not)
Drop me a DM.

EDIT:

There’s another consistency problem.
Yes, the MC’s parents were punished ‘more harshly’. But here’s the stinger. In that bit of text (and I quote we get the following info:

This certainly wasn’t the first time a hero had accidentally used fatal force against a villain. Traditionally, this mistake would require a fair amount of community service and a hefty fine, especially for heroes of your parents’ caliber.
However, this accident came on the heels of a recent string of excessive hero-on-villain brutality and their case fell into the hands of Judge Victon, an up-and-comer who was making a play to become MC’s mayor. Deciding that a harsh ruling would set the perfect example for his zero-tolerance campaign against heroic brutality, Judge Victon passed the harshest sentence ever given to any Powered Hero.

Sergi is telling us here that Victon used his position to put his foot down. The way he phrased this etc paints the situation thus:

You have a city full of people with superhuman abilities who (apparently) take joy in beating the ever-loving hell out of each other, especially ‘heroes’ beating up ‘villains’, and (very likely) don’t give a crap about collateral damaged, be it property damage or civilian’s getting killed.
Sergi literally gave Victon a fxcking good reason, by pretty much having him go
“You know what? F*ck who you are. You killed someone because you ignored the whole ‘with great power’ speech, putting yourself above the law and everything. F-ck You. Session closed”

I don’t remember it ever being stated that he was responsible for ALL of that violence. (which frankly would have been just bad writing)

Only later (and it feels like added in (y’know instead of rewriting the entire bit concerned) after someone pointed this out) does that verdict become’ infamous.
This is in general another problem with the writing in HR. Sergi gives the bad guys a f*cking good point over and over.
Don’t do that.

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While there’s been an uptick recently, the criticism has basically been there since beta testing, as @Shoelip could attest:

HR has always been the most bashed game on the forums, precisely because it’s also one of the all-time most popular ones. There’s little reason for people to keep bashing City in the Clouds or Treasure Seekers today, however much people grumbled about them on their release, because those games never found the passionate fanbase that HR has. Also, because it’s so popular, the mods have tended not to rein in the language of the bashing as much as we might have for other authors who can’t console themselves by rolling in their mountain of fanart and royalty cash. (Or as we would have if Zach Sergi hung out on the forums, which I don’t believe he does.)

I enjoyed HR when it came out, was rather more critical of the core concept of HR 2, and thought HR 3 was a perfectly good end to the series. I agree with the folks on this thread who have suggested that HR 1 has roughly as much variation as the other games of that early CoG era (besides Choice of the Vampire), but because it’s twice as long, there’s also a lot more consequence-free choice.

Sergi himself recognizes that HR 1 was linear, and describes it as “my first opportunity to (pretty quickly out of college) tell a story… in this original format (the learning curve was steep, though—coding that first book was a doozy, nor was there a deep CoG catalogue to study yet).” He also recognizes that his early attempts at trans representation weren’t great. Both are things he’s tried to amend in his later work.

@MeltingPenguins, I’ve often wondered after reading your critiques whether you knew that Zach is himself a gay man. I don’t know him personally, but it’s obvious that he cares passionately about writing good representation; within the circle of CoG authors, he worked harder and earlier than anyone else to push out the boundaries of LGBT representation in his games. That doesn’t mean he’ll succeed in writing good representation, of course; even he will be the first to admit he got some things badly wrong. I haven’t read his post-Herofall work, so I can’t speak to how he’s changed. But it may be worth considering that the reason he makes more mistakes than most CoG authors is because he’s trying more, taking way more risks than 99% of us. It would certainly be a mischaracterization to say he makes mistakes because he doesn’t care or because he was lazily repurposing a straight male MC.

@Voldy, it’s fine for you to disagree with Eiwynn’s call for consensus, but MeltingPenguins offers a better, less shrill example of how to do this.

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That he’s gay does not change anything though. The story still reads as if written for a straight male protag, the female characters are still reduced down to being ‘sexy’ or ‘stern mothers’, the male characters are still either ‘people that worship the mc’ or ‘people who are douches cause they don’t worship the MC’.

That it was his first outing as author, though, explains much much more. Because heaven knows HR reads like the, sadly, typical example of such first ever bigger story.
Read books like Eragon, or Daughter Of The Pirate King, Maradonia and the Seven Bridges or, to stay with superheroes, Perry Moore’s Hero (granted, that one isn’t a first outing, but still).

All these books do share the same problems:
Lackluster (if any) worldbuilding, flat characters, overpowered yet underdeveloped protags, drama happening for drama and plots sake, continuity issues and plot holes en masse.

My beef is that Sergi never really seemed to care to improve his craft (as mentioned) THP shares still the same issues, and in some points has gotten worse (YMMV though).

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@Havenstone I’d like to think that my negative comments on the game were mostly more constructive than simple “bashing.” I mean, I said exactly why I didn’t like it. I certainly wouldn’t say it’s “not a real Cs game.” That makes no sense. A CS game is a game made using CS. And there are lots of CYOAs I don’t like that have fewer positive qualities than HR. Most CYOAs have very few meaningful choices and do have plot holes as well.

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Sorry, @Shoelip, if I came across as disparaging your negative reviews. By including them under the heading of “bashing” I didn’t mean to imply they were either simple or unconstructive, just that you weren’t shy about expressing your distaste for HR. I’d naturally describe both you and @MeltingPenguins as bashers of HR who’ve got thought-through reasons for disliking the game. Apologies if “bashing” wasn’t the best word for that!

@MeltingPenguins, yes, way back at beta I’d suggested changing the male-gaziness of HR 1. On the other hand, the wish fulfillment of writing a world in which people either worship you or are douches because they don’t… that doesn’t strike me as a story that could only be written by or for the privileged. Part of the CoG vision has always been to open up genres that tend toward escapism and power fantasy to readers other than the standard SWM protag, and I think Sergi does that in HR.

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@Havenstone Oh, I didn’t mean to say over-the-top wish fulfillment can only be written by the privileged. I meant that this kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy is often found in the same ways, almost like paint-by-the-numbers in many, many first outings.
(Hell knows I’m no exception hides her old stuff under the couch )

Yeah, but where was the defense and prosecution, it was rather implied he was the first trial judge, if so where was the jury, cause Americans love those, also where was the appeals process?
That also doesn’t account for the role of the department of corrections and the prison wardens. Maybe the US is different but in the context of corrections what a judge says is merely a persuasive suggestion and corrections is not bound by it. Particularly if they have been model prisoners you would expect to see sentence reductions (unless it is an irrevocable life sentence) and more privileges being granted over time.

Victon’s proven (at least by the end of the third part) past judicial bias alone should have been strong grounds for re-opening his super-powered cases.

However the mc’s parents were innocent, yet we still never get the option of fighting for legal redress and review of their case. Since my mc is (forced to be) fame, fortune and reputation focused that is a huge deal to him because an executive pardon, rather than being an affirmation of innocence tends to be one of guilt.
Think of Ford pardoning Nixon, or more recently Trump pardoning Arpaio.
It also means Victon ('s family) and the state get to keep the fortune they unjustly impounded from the mc’s parents.
Really, I believe with that meaningless “pardon” at the end my mc would have wanted to kill Victon’s VP (who issues it once they succeed) more then Victon himself.

My opinion: Versus is quite good, but Hero Project really is terrible in pretty much all aspects. About as big a step back as Andromeda was compared to ME3.
For a more entertaining read, Mara had some choice things to say about Hero Project. :wink:

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It all boils down to
‘the trial and verdict is only there as a ‘reason’ for the MC to hate Victon and an excuse as to how Victon became mayor’.

As said, the worldbuilding is threadbare

(also, drop me the link to those choice things, pls)

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I am amaze that this has become a critics review about Hero Rise… I thought initially it was about whether Hero Rise Series is consider a Choice Base create your own adventure… In this sense i agree with @AChubbyBlackCat assessment on how we should define a choice based novel…
Courtesy of @AChubbyBlackCat:
" HRs offers choices and it offers multiple paths. Are they meaningful choices/paths? It’s up to your interpretation. Are they choices/paths that have consequences? It’s up to your interpretation. Are they even good or bad choices/paths? Again. It’s up to your interpretation of what a ‘meaningful’/‘consequential’/‘good’/‘bad’ choice/path is."

In this sense the Heroes Series as a whole do offer meaningful choices or paths (for my opinion), even started from the Prodigy…_ where your interaction with Black Magic will influence the final outcome of the Romance Storyline with Black Magic… and to the extend that it will influence the fate of Jenny…

and especially in The Hero Project the choices we made actually are emotion choices based on who we value most, and such choices were what made Hero Series a popular read (My opinion), for my experience it was a heart broken decision whether i chose to side with Black Magic or Lucky, the author develop a very good and unique background of Black Magic, and gave detail reasoning on why she did the life force harvesting, and i totally buy her reason… because i ask myself if i have the choice to steal the life force of anyone around me, will i be so merciful and compose the way Black Magic did? will i turn into a villain like prodigral instead? so the Author develop a good hate-to-love character where some of us will care about and carry forward to the second series, where we was introduce to our first crush in Lucky , who also came from a difficult background which the author allow us to develop her character ourselves (including her name and the site of camp)… so along the way these were difficult choices on who we value the most, and of course choice where we thought we can made everyone happy (which end up we being hated by everyone), don’t forget the choice of whether to stick by Jenny and it near consequence in Hero Fall…

these difficult choices were important choice where it will further determine the outcome in Hero Falls, not to mention Hero Falls introduce another difficult choice where Prodigral was made available as another Romance Option and the choice of dealing with her also influence the achievements … I am not sure whether it was by purpose or sub-conscious , the Romance paths strangely reflect some the of romance choice of real-life , in which we thought we met someone who we totally adore and committed for life, then we realise we re-unite with our first crush… and finally we meet an enemy who was actually our secret admirer … Hence, choices had to be made whether we chose to stay loyal to a relationship, and all these are difficult choices where, for my opinion out-weight the non-consequence choice… as i refer to the old forums dedicated to Hero Rise, the debates seem to concentrate on the choice of characters , hence indirectly it creates a choice of characters as well…

Hence for my opinion Hero Rise satisfy the requirement of a Choice-Base interactive novel …

But as a whole, whether Hero Rise is a good novel is very Bias and Subjective… Such critical Reviews are similar as of people debating whether Harry Porter Series and the Twilight saga are actually good fictions, to the extend that people are debating whether Lords of the Rings are good series as well… Not to mention people will debate whether “Titanic” is a good romance movie… too… These critical Reviews are mostly based on personal prejudice/preference/subjective , the world is big enough for everyone’s favorite… and there should be a Neutral ground , strangely and irony enough Hero Rise also offer a choice of Neutral ground as well, which unfortunately made the Neutral become the enemy of both extremes… which i sincerely hope will not be the case of CoG Forum .

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If you like it, alright, but all the examples you brought up are… objectively lackluster.

And in fact, it is the mentality
“But many people like it so it must be good” that causes a definite wave of bad fiction.

You can judge a game such as HR objectively and critically. Especially if it is a game that involves sociopolitical topics.
Because, look how often a book gets recommended because its theme is a certain topic, a certain group etc. While the book is everything except something you’d want to give someone the topic concerns.

Yes, there are people who celebrate HR for its inclusivity , but more who cringe away from it because they feel mocked.

So, if you try to say that it must not be critized, please do rethink your reasoning.

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I’m not sure which post you are replying to here–which part of which post says “Many people like it so it must be good” and “it must not be criticized?”