#pot of idea chili and stew for awhile and then write them down oof hard work godspeed to all writers except the ones who plagiarize

[untitled-by]

While chat was with one of the streamers I watch on the regular again and there was a minor disagreement about The Last of Us 2 where in the streamer thought it was just the best sequel ever and some members of chat just didnt care for it. Of course its fine that people have differing opinions about popular game series. What always rubs me the wrong way is that when a few people in chat has an issue with something they enjoyed said streamer generally writes it off with a comment like, "You know chat, I think you're just mad the sequel made you feel something."

And like maybe its true that some people in chat are just mad over a major character death? Which we cant talk about per the streams extreme no spoilers policy.

Quick disclaimer: mind that I dont disagree with this policy, as some people feel media is ruined for them if you so much as tell them if you thought the ending was happy/sad/funny/disappointing and nothing else. If thats the case thats fine. (Im the opposite. Nothing can be ruined for me ever.) I also imagine it must be easier to manage things by picking one side of an all or none policy.

But given that the policy is none making that kind of statement then feels really.... hm. backhanded, maybe, because its very difficult then to defend yourself if your problems with a piece of media-- in this example TLOU 2, but this isnt the first case of this happening --arent based on whatever they think a person might react emotionally to?

I am going to assume that they were making the assumption that chat was angry about SPOILER: Joel's death. And when I say "chat" in this instance I mean like maybe 4 out of 15-25 people moving in and out over a 2 hour span. Chat flows nicely, conversation doesn't linger too long in any one spot, and this whole exchange was less than 3 minutes.

I dont know what the other two didnt like about the game. I know that my partner didnt like the game because they felt that the ending was handled poorly. What I wrote was something along the lines of "Personally Im never upset when a story asks me to feel things. I thought the writers had a great story to tell and everything they need to tell it, but the execution of that story was poorly handled." I would have liked to have continued with something along the lines of, "In my opinion they could probably have avoided the backlash if they had divided the sequel story into two additional games." Because of course its really hard to explain that I feel like half the problem was that the audience was asked to feel for both sides of the story, but had only been allowed to build a deep relationship with one half. That would be too many spoilers for the room.

I mean, there are probably lots of ways to preserve the same story that the devs wanted to tell and reach the same ending that would have been more satisfying. There are also probably a million ways the story could be improved upon, but thats okay too. That is a whole other topic of discussion.

Before I got that far however, I was given a very from, "Oh thats okay we can agree to disagree." Yeah okay, I got the hint and that is fine.

I'm not upset about being asked to change the conversation. After laying all this out Im just really frustrated how it feels like the standard being set is "Im going to see a casual disagreement between myself and my small audience, 2 of whom are mods who are (probably?) friends and 2 of whom are viewers who are not" -> "Now I am going to say something inflammatory and passive aggressive knowing they cant say anything back to me because of rules I set myself" -> "Someone is trying to follow the rules AND engage, because respectful engagement is the environment ive build thus far?" -> "Hard nope out of the subject because that would mean potentially admitting that i actually just said something in bad faith."

When the easiest thing to do would be to instead just... maybe not make this remarks in this manner? Again, this is just the most recent example not the ONLY time this has happened.

I just feel like there are equally as challenging ways to rephrase that comment that isnt insulting, but but a still gets the point across. Because maybe people are just mad that joel died (super valid) and its a tired argument about a game you like that you dont wanna get into again, but you do feel like making a statement about always having to repeatedly rehash that? cool, i absolutely get that, but why ya gotta hurt people who weren't hurting you?

so im just vague blogging about it on tumblr i guess, why not.

Theyre an awesome streamer whom i enjoy watching when the subject of streams isnt horror games, which for october it is sadly.