RiouHotaru wrote...
As much as Drayfish's articles are interesting, his original thread was just a huge appeal to authority. A literary professor said the endings were awful, therefore it must be so. Nevermind the fact the entire argument was founded on a subjective points.
I'm sorry to say, I find a comment like this very tedious – on two counts. Firstly, at no point have I
ever splashed my qualifications about, decreeing that my
utterly subjective opinion in any way trumps anyone else's. When I speak on this forum, on my blog, or on the site referenced in this thread, I am speaking as an audience member responding to a text as a piece of communication that invites – indeed, requires – a reaction from its audience. The only reason that anyone even knows I lecture anything is because it was announced before I even knew of this forum, and I therefore signed up to correct some comments of mine that were paraphrased (leading to the 'All Were Thematically Revolting...' thread).
Moreover, in that thread it was
repeatedly stated (both by myself and the other users involved) that people's jobs, qualifications, personal histories, etc. were completely irrelevant to the value of their contribution to the discussion. Neither my, nor anyone else's voice automatically trumped anyone else's in the inane way you describe.
Indeed, literally the only people I have ever seen try to wave my qualifications around (or even
mention them, frankly) are those who want to bring them up just to say that they don't mean anything. And in this context, as I've said:
I completely agree.
Secondly, everything that
anyone says is going to be subjective. This is the humanities. We are talking about a piece of fiction. There are thematic conventions, there are narrative tropes, there are mythic archetypes and whole histories of theory about the application of metaphor and mimetic representation –
all of it, ultimately, is subjective. Writers can embrace, subvert, question, or explode established narrative convention in a myriad of engrossing and profound ways – if they do it convincingly. But if they do it in a way that breaks their own rules, that undermines the tale they were telling and the universe they had established without justifying the alteration, then their work has issues that should rightfully be critiqued. And I would
subjectively posit that
Mass Effect 3 is very much one such failed attempt.
What matters is if the final work says something – if it is cohesive, and meaningful, and if it moves its audience in some intended way (and I say 'intended' purposefully). Whether the text
has in fact succeeded in this endeavour will ultimately fall to the audience. One of the great misconceptions about 'Art' is that it is somehow funnelled from the muses through the artists, and we consuming plebs have to scurry to keep up. A work of art is always a conversation between artist and audience. Sometimes the audience gets it wrong (Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring was howled down in its first performances), sometimes the artist screws it up (Jack Snyder thought he was making a feminist statement with
Sucker Punch, and that film is vile), but in every case, the debate and discussion between text and audience does not simply end with some boring, arbitrary 'objective' truth.
They don't exist in the world of artistic expression. And if they did, there would be no such thing as Art anyway.
Again, your opinion is no more or less valid than mine; mine is no more or less valid than yours. And while I would not dismiss yours out of hand, I would hope you could show the same courtesy.
Ok, I don't mean to be a jerk, but my impression is that you take this whole thing a bit too serious.
Retour en haut
Go and read, if you will. 
