Ophiucha
Auror
I love Jim Sterling; he has a lot of great videos about female characters in games.
And I agree with him on this. Everyone has the right to write whatever they'd like, but it doesn't mean you can't be criticised for what's in it. Further, I find people act like only certain topics are open to criticism and others aren't. You can critique a character for being useless to the plot, but you can't point out that they are 'yet another' female character useless to the plot. You can critique the worldbuilding for having the unexplained presence of tropical crops or fabrics, and writers will justify it with handwaves of trade or different climates to the real world, but with nary a mention of the fact that they pointedly don't have any of the people to come from those same regions. You can critique the story for being boring, dry, confusing, formulaic, meandering... but not for glorifying imperialism. See: Avatar. Everyone will jump up to point out how similar it's story is to Pocahontas or Dances With Wolves, but will shut down any criticisms of how all three films have problematic 'white saviour'/'going wild' exotification plots.
And I agree with him on this. Everyone has the right to write whatever they'd like, but it doesn't mean you can't be criticised for what's in it. Further, I find people act like only certain topics are open to criticism and others aren't. You can critique a character for being useless to the plot, but you can't point out that they are 'yet another' female character useless to the plot. You can critique the worldbuilding for having the unexplained presence of tropical crops or fabrics, and writers will justify it with handwaves of trade or different climates to the real world, but with nary a mention of the fact that they pointedly don't have any of the people to come from those same regions. You can critique the story for being boring, dry, confusing, formulaic, meandering... but not for glorifying imperialism. See: Avatar. Everyone will jump up to point out how similar it's story is to Pocahontas or Dances With Wolves, but will shut down any criticisms of how all three films have problematic 'white saviour'/'going wild' exotification plots.