Y-you keep calling my takes "charitable"! What can I do to convince you I'm not so soft and naive?
Obviously I am kidding. I totally understand where you're coming from, because being mired in so much bad faith (there is often going to be kneejerk defensiveness and hostility if you express criticism, however legitimate, of a piece of media someone likes in a dedicated way, unfortunately, and whatever psychology is behind that is a whole other can of worms in and of itself) and, at times, people bafflingly just wholesale seeming to make things up, whether about the text itself or about what other people are claiming, is exhausting. I dunno, though, in my experience, it doesn't even occur to a lot of people to distinguish the two modes of thinking about a story, perhaps even particularly when it comes to "nerd media," where there are so many cases where storytelling is treated more like solving a puzzle where there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and whatever is discerned to be "intended" is the end of the discussion.
Something I do want to add while I'm thinking about it as an addendum to my other thoughts, though, is that a "writing analysis" lens does not have to be critical or negative by default. See: my appreciation of my beautiful wife, Athena. There's tons of aspects of Pandaemonium I could express deep appreciation for how they went about things, let alone Shadowbringers itself setting my brain alight way back when. I think part of the language that easily gets misunderstood is also... how to put it, the often unspoken understanding in those types of discussions that a story is going to inherently be a part of a broader "conversation," and what can be appreciated or not appreciated about it is going to take place in context of the "conversation" surrounding the tropes, devices, and themes it employs, which is where a lot of the gushing about Athena, for example, comes from so far as the integrity and unapologetic nature of her writing vis a vis an unusual portrayal of a maternal figure in this kind of media. The appreciation for the Ancients and Amaurot--well, speaking for myself--also has roots in how it orients itself in a certain type of "conversation" about how plot devices of their sort are typically portrayed, and beyond just tropes, to me, the sorts of figures in stories that usually don't get their perspectives and humanity privileged or valued.
Obviously, I am still extremely critical of lots of Endwalker’s storytelling and writing, but I guess I wanted to make clear my position was not “my form of enjoyable discussion is just hating on and criticizing the game’s writing”.