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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 8929858" data-attributes="member: 7028554">I think these two points do more to show just how lost we are, collectively, in trying to talk about this topic. The assumption is that criticism is, should be, or ever has been neutral. I couldn't disagree more. I think a lot of people have some imagined, platonic ideal of what critics and criticism used to be like, in the good old days, but just like most writing is packed with the writer's preferences and beliefs (or their employer's), criticism is absolutely about laying bare the critic's interests, and championing certain works and attacking others. The best critics are interesting to read (or watch, listen to, etc.) even when you personally disagree with them.To that end, presenting Scorsese's take on the MCU as some sort of gaffe or misfire on his part, because he expressed a preference that rubbed some people the wrong way...that's a feature, not a bug. The guy is among the most passionate fans of movies that have ever lived, and he was stating his deeply held opinion about a medium he's helped define. That he elicited the response he did is absolutely the point. He got the conversation going, including getting a whole lot of people to reveal themselves as dunces about movies. The idea that he or anyone else should engage in criticism from a neutral perspective, just telling it like it is without bias or personal preference, as though that's at all humanly possible, is, to me, an example of one of many poison pills for this whole discussion. Scorsese didn't use jargon or high-minded theory to talk down to anyone. He made his points as plainly as possible, and fandom did what fandom often does, and lashed out defensively. The narrative around him talking down to fans was entirely fabricated, and lead to the same reaction that fanbase has to anyone criticizing the MCU. When it comes to critiques of whatever's most popular in a given medium—whether that's the MCU or D&D—that defensive backlash is inevitable.Which is all to say that in the world of indie games, I've seen game criticism as healthy and interesting and often enlightening, and these notions of people being terribly appalled by someone using jargon (imagine the horror of having to Google an unfamiliar term once in your life) are really not a problem. It's only when people start doing any of that in relation to D&D that things go haywire.</blockquote>

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