Talk:Side Stories/@comment-24.0.10.193-20130424060252/@comment-24.0.10.193-20130427201817

You absolutely do not have to be able/willing to make something to criticize something.

You, reading this, how many feature-length movies have you made? Is it zero? Does that mean you're not allowed to form and express an opinion when you see a movie?

Roger Ebert only ever made a single film, and it was piece of crap that he didn't wanna do in the first place. Why, that almost seems to imply that, as skills, creating something and critiquing something have no bearing upon each other whatsoever.

Furthermore, the fact that making side stories (or any given thing) takes effort, is not LESS reason to criticize it, it's MORE. If you do something difficult, if you put lots of time and effort in, than it's a big deal that this thing was made, and that means you should happy that there are people who are willing to point out the flaws in it, because that means that your next one won't suck as bad. Hell, in the internet age, where you can go back and edit and redistribute without having to worry about manufacturing costs and such, criticism is even more valuable to the artist than ever.

FURTHERMORE, whether or not you respect the creative person behind a work of fiction has ZERO to do with whether or not the final product should be criticized. A man is not his work. Steven Spielberg is not a bunch of movies; he is a man. You can like/respect one of those things without feeling the same way about the other; you can absolutely despise one of those things without feeling that way about the other.

OneWayOut sucks. It sucks hard. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with Knights_Sect, and I don't have to have made/released a Side Story to have come to that conclusion. I sincerely hope that he either goes back to fix his work, or that he makes sure his next one is better. You should all want his work to be the best that it can be.