On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Brinne]

It's fine to enjoy it that way. Even when your literary analysis and or philosophical deep dive get used as a weapon by others to tell people to shut the heck up. Though I'm not sure how one is to have both happening at the same time.

Look, I'm going to put this as gently as possible, and want to emphasize I'm not personally annoyed and that I do understand why you're frustrated at all the toxicity and that can be hard to untangle: can you see how throwing in basically a potshot even when agreeing to a bridge, that associates and assigns implicit responsibility to the bad behavior of the perceived "side" of an opinion or interest to someone who has nothing to do with it, while also underscoring that you are being very generous to agree to that bridge despite the sin of opinion association, does not help in clearing out the toxicity or making things better? That it's really unnecessary to keep invoking this kind of thing when speaking to a single person who is only speaking for themselves?

Like how it is with everyone's "favorite" subject and how most of the worldbuilding people cam easily go yeah that was a crap thing to have happened but it had to happen cause otherwise the world the game takes place in can't exist. Or at least not in the way it currently is.

I mean, I try to let it go when someone takes an approach of "it sucks and it's weird, but because video game," however... frankly, if you're using the reasoning "because video game," that is stepping into exegetic discussion, not in-universe worldbuilding, and thus people are going to challenge "it HAD to happen" because the writers making the game could do literally whatever they want. It's not weird that they'd then be inclined to start discussing their view of options, and what they think would have made the fact of the weirdness and that 'it was a crap thing to have happened' go down better even with the understanding the format of the game means we couldn't fundamentally alter the setting itself. There's been lots of discussion that you could leave Hydaelyn's decisions completely unchanged, in both mindset and action, and it would have been fine if not for the narrative framework and the tone set around it, which DIDN'T have to happen and continues to be a deliberate choice made and enacted by the creative staff.