That’s well and good, and I do generally try to write in ways that won’t trigger defensiveness (though I clearly failed today). That said, I also firmly believe that authors need to take responsibility for their reactions to feedback.
The language that regularly pops up every time we go round this topic–“Stop trying to force the author to do something,” “Stop talking as if the author is doing something wrong,” “Stop telling the author what to do”–is I suggest unjustifiably defensive. If we’re going to ask readers to be friendlier in how they phrase their opinions, we’ve also got to ask writers to toughen up, recognize that a forum poster or Google Play reviewer can’t force them to do a damn thing, and that worthwhile feedback is sometimes going to come in the form, “You should do things my way.”
The hostile reviews of Choice of Rebels on various platforms rarely hesitate to prescribe the way I should have written it, instructing me in the right way to immerse people in a fantasy world, use made-up words, write characters, etc. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Telling the author how they should have done things is the reviewers’ prerogative…as readers, as customers, as human beings with opinions about how things oughtta be.
That doesn’t force me to agree with them. It remains my prerogative to disagree and/or ignore them and follow my own tastes. And sure, it’s (even) easier to do so when they phrase their opinions in the form of an annoying demand rather than a suggestion. Does that mean they should only speak in suggestions, the better to persuade me? Not necessarily. @poison_mara was full of colorfully and forcefully expressed feedback on the Rebels WiP, much of which I took on board because I liked the substance of it, and the rest of which I pushed back.
When it comes to the urgency and forcefulness with which opinions are expressed…I expect more of both from people who are used to having their opinions discounted or dismissed in daily life (because they’re women, or trans, or PoC, etc). As long as the expressions aren’t ad hominem or repeated to the point of harassment, I’m going to be more inclined to suggest that authors thicken their skin and listen than to suggest that the commenters phrase everything in the form of a tentatively offered personal opinion.
Actually, we don’t disagree on the goodness of set characters; I’d also welcome an increased number of games written with them. I don’t self-insert when I read CoGs. I enjoy set characters like the cast of Divided We Fall. It would be great to have more historical CoGs that walk you through the choices of a specific figure, or a literary CoG that revealed an MC’s (pre-set) personality and history through the choices you make about their actions. It also doesn’t bother me when an otherwise customizable CoG MC has set personality traits (like the wild immaturity of the Heroes Rise MC) as long as those contribute to a fun story.
And I definitely enjoy less power fantasy; the powerless MC of Community College Hero and the bitter trade-offs of the Infinite Sea are much more appealing to me than standard chosen-one superhero and fantasy stories. (Though it may be worth noting that I don’t think the choice or lack of choice of MC sex has anything to do with whether the above stories are power fantasies.)
From other things you’ve written, David, I think where we actually disagree–and please correct me if I’m wrong!–is that you think that more gender-flipping and player-defined MCs would be not-good, that protagonist customizability is broadly inconsistent with good writing. You’d like to see not just a greater number but a greater proportion of CoGs have set MCs. If I’m not mistaken, you used to say that more forthrightly, a few debates ago. Just like you forthrightly say:
For my part, I can look at a library of well-written stories and be glad that they’re well-written…while lamenting that they’re written in a way that the overwhelming majority of protagonists are white cis straight men. Stories aren’t just entertainment, they’re how we learn and pass on values, and changing stories to allow someone other than the white guy to be a hero makes a difference.
On these things, if I’ve read you rightly, we disagree. And not just about what we enjoy as individuals, but about our perceptions of what it means to write a good story. On so substantial a matter, I’m not surprised that
That doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy what you write. I heartily agree with Eric that we need more games that experiment and break norms in interesting ways, and I don’t need to agree with an author’s rationale for norm-breaking (e.g. VS Naipaul, Frank Miller, Alan Moore) to appreciate the results.
In the HG case, of course, I’ll appreciate the experiment more if it’s distinctive, rather than just another male-locked protagonist–which as this thread testifies has been done plenty already.
I’m sorry, Lewis, but if you say you believe that “people can say whatever they want,” it’s inconsistent to insist that “what you can’t do is tell an author what they should or shouldn’t do”. Yes, you did say both things in your post, and they contradict each other.
Which was why I opened by asking how you would relate it to the creative freedom that you did mention.
If you now say you believe in as much freedom of expression as possible, it’s inconsistent to claim that people have “no right” to try to influence an author. They literally do have that right; it’s called freedom of expression. Influence is not coercion, and the attempt to influence an artist is not an encroachment on the artist’s creative freedom.
I’m not at all offended personally by your remarks–if anything, I was flattered by your kind words about the vastly imaginative talents who write CoG/HG games–and I’m sad that you seem to be offended by mine. I was specific in my comments, not with the intent of distorting what you said, but of showing its inconsistency as succinctly as possible. I know that you don’t think you wrote anything inconsistent…but I don’t believe I’m misrepresenting you here.