The Watch is like a big family for many people (myself included
) with SRD being like the distant patriarch. With the end of the Chrons it is as if we are at a sort of a wake (not an Irish one obviously or we'd be having a hooley instead of a row 
) and what I feel is happening is that the cracks in some people's previous unconditional admiration for SRD (through the 1st & 2nd Chrons and the Gap series) are finally coming to the surface (after having been kept submerged for many years by the presence of the patriarch's unfinished work). In a way this is a very natural thing to happen (it occurs all the time in families in RL).*I think that this may also have larger implications for the Watch. It may mean the final end of the original nuclear family. Sad and all as this may be (and it has been ongoing for sometime now) it may also be part of the natural cycle of this type of community (I've looked for studies about the life-cycle of virtual communities but couldn't really find any (another possible sociology Masters thesis there
)). In the fracture and separation people may fall out and never speak again and also they may take what they have learned and head out into the virtual world and start new families *optimistic shoulder shrug*Again on a personal level (and not wanting to tell anyone how to behave) I would prefer it if the debating tone had never jumped the (shark) 'Tank (see what I did there
). I understand why this has happened but, while certain posts (e.g. implying that specific perspectives are necessary to fully understand the LCs) have rubbed me up the wrong way, I have not felt it necessary to do anything more than ignore them. I would not do this in the 'Tank, but in other forums (fora) on the Watch I know that the rebuttal/fisking sort of posting style will only serve to drive people away. In my experience when it is deployed a thread inevitably begins to feel political. If such discussions are felt to be necessary, my preference is for them to be held in the 'Tank. In a forum such as this I trust the mods to rein in anything that is truly out of order (objections to the moderation policy, IMO, tip us back into political (and family ) territory).I feel that I have a foot in both camps here (which fits with my role as peacemaker/smoother-over-of-troubles in the family
). My reaction to the LCs has been fairly consistently negative and yet I empathise strongly with the feeling that overly criticising them risks seeming disrespectful towards SRD and may seem hurtful/hateful to those who, on the whole, have enjoyed the Last Chronicles. As with all those who have been less than overjoyed by TLD this is not my intention, however, I recognise that in the first flush of finishing TLD I may have been intemperate in some of the things I said. The best defence that I feel I can put forward for this is my passion.And this is the note that I would like to end on. We would not be arguing like this if we all did not care passionately about SRD's work. That is what has drawn us all here and that is the common ground on which our disagreements are played out. If we didn't care we wouldn't be bothered to argue about our different responses to TLD (and the LCs). In one way this is blatantly obvious, yet in another (as with family-related issues) being so intimately involved in the drama may cause us to forget that it is what we agree on (our esteem for SRD's work) that enables the disagreement.**
u.
*Personally (as I've mused about in other posts) I think that SRD may have actually deliberately written the Chrons in a way that would drive some of his most ardent (pun noted) fans away. Odd as it may seem, he may have wanted to push his children to leave the nest in anger. (From a couple of his most recent interviews I certainly think that he wanted to get some distance from his own emotional entanglement with the success of the 1st & 2nd Chrons.)
**Unsuprisingly, our shared capacity to care passionately embodies one of the core values of SRD's work. It could hardly be otherwise!
). Little wonder then that people saw themselves dismissively belittled as inferiors, because the whiff of arrogance was all too redolent. And as Z says, this has been pretty much one-way traffic - from ardent supporters towards the less than satisfied.
Either she has become a devoted Brony and taken permanent residence at the headquarters of Equestria Daily, or has suffered brain damage of a cyclopean scale.
