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> you make as you play or experience it, traditional fiction can seem arbitrary, even dictatorial. "I wouldn't make that choice, so why should this viewpoint ch

> you make as you play or experience it, traditional fiction can seem arbitrary, even dictatorial. "I wouldn't make that choice, so why should this viewpoint character?" is the sensibility. > One obvious corollary is that this new generation of readers (not you: if you're reading this blog then, like me, you're probably pale, male, and stale) are inclined to reject the immutability of a described reality that contradicts their own preferences. "The people in this story are not like me: I find this implausible so I'm leaving it a one-star review" is to be expected. But that's already the case Is the author saying that that new readers lack empathy?

wrsh07 2y ago
From the excerpted section I totally see why that's the question, and yet that's not quite how I parsed it in the essay. The author makes the point that readers are more likely to reject the author's imposed world/structure/facts. The hypothesis is that we (readers) think reading is interactive, but I wonder if it's more postmodern ("inviting the reader to participate") than that. I love Bret's work, but I sort of imagine this is the kind of analysis that a modern author might find frustrating: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondo... In my opinion, there's crappy "gotcha" analysis like cinema sins which is mostly cheap entertainment. It doesn't really encourage one to engage deeply with the original work like Bret's posts do. Regardless, I thought the author was discussing this type of readership/fandom