Editor's Note (Streetz): I just received this Tuesday night.  Dazboot is not a member of the Writers Guild of MDV and submitted this to me with regard to the recent news of the Writers Guild going on strike.  Aside from my own formatting and layout embellishments, this has been unedited.  I felt it was appropriate to post given everything that has recently conspired.  Thank you, Dazboot.  And note that the Writers Strike is not yet over. :(

So here it is, my opinions and comments on not only this specific event and all of the thoughts, opinions, and comments that have sprung from it, but on somewhat more of a personal side of it as well. So here is my first "article" (If it can be called that, I'm not sure exactly how this all stands with the writer's guild down).

The Personal History

The first thing I would like to do is to give a little history on myself. As you can see by my profile, I joined MDV just about a year ago, after a few repeat hits on the site after google searching for some casual deck ideas led me to this site. For me the transition from a reader to a poster was a huge one, all of a sudden people were able to judge my work and ideas, and although I was not able to get good ideas, praise, and positive criticism, I was opening myself up for all of the bad things that could now come my way.

My first post in this forum was a forestwalk deck in the T2 section. I was still not the strongest magic player (I've been playing for two years now, so I was a one year vet at the time, but not many people here play, so I had been moving into it slowly) and the deck was some poorly concocted green weenie deck that would just use pump spells for a fast win. I sat there for and nervously waited for a response, trying not to panic and delete the post and account and give up on the whole idea.

Sure enough, just over an hour later, I got a reply from Michael_Zeora (Or as I now call him, MZ) telling me that I was doing fine, and throwing out a few ideas for my deck in ways to take it in both T2 and non T2 settings. I think reading that post was one of the major turning points in my Magic career. For the first time I had an experience magic player tell me that a deck entirely created by me was at least decent. And that's how my entrance to the MDV forums happened.

Obviously, none of that is directly relevant; so let me see if I can take a few more steps to put it into perspective. Fast-forward about 5 months, to another significant time in my magic career, the development of my first decently competitive tournament deck. Looking at it now, the comparison is incredible. I am talking about different matchups for the deck, some of the cards that could be trouble for it, different interactions within that deck, and the list only goes on from here. However, more importantly, this is the deck that first made me want to be a writer for magic. I had seen write-ups on decks on both the Wizards site and MDV, and with this deck I had finally found something that was my very own that I could talk about with something that at least sounded intelligent.

So, while some of you read that post and talked about my deck, what I bet none of you noticed is that I went off and started my own magic blog with an "article" on that deck. This write-up was about 2-3 pages long and talked about the reasons I put in the cards I did, game coverage on several matches I playtested online, analyzing the results from those matches, a little bit of talk about how it interacted with my local metagame, and some thoughts about where I could take the deck next. As I expected, no one responded, and most likely, no one even saw that small scared attempt at a first stab of my magic writing career. However, lets see if I can tie this in and prove (at least to myself) that I might have a shot as a writer someday.

The Editorial

So now that you have the actual story behind my experience at MDV, let me see if I can explain it to you. From the beginning I have observed many of you guys go out and be incredible attributes to the site. I have watched people like MZ, Mal, Luther, Tynion, DBB, and Amadeus (who actually joined after I did) contribute amazing work over and over again. You guys were my role models, the people that I looked up to as those who worked hard and came up with this amazing content. I was intimidated.

I know after reading your responses to the Writer's Guild strike, you all claim that you didn't (and still don't) want to be these lofty people who look down upon the rest of us, and I believe you when you say that. The problem is, it doesn't matter if you don't want to be held up there as long as the rest of us do it anyway. One of the reasons that I personally have never felt brave enough to make any extremely radical comments about an article (until now I suppose) is simply because I felt that only a writer really had any right to do that. I believe that after this event many opinions about MDV's writers will be changed. Whether for the better or worse, who knows, but I know that after this I will see all of you as slightly more human, and that is something that I will defiantly be happy about as it allows me to tie in much more closely to your work and makes my aspirations to follow the path you have led all the easier.

After reading through all of the responses in the response thread to Streetz's recent article (yes… all 30+ pages) I have a few points that seemed to stick out to me and I want to address. (Please note: all of the following responses are just my opinions and observations, as I've stated above, I am far from perfect at this, but as I've also stated above, I would like to try and hopefully get better)

First of all, I just want to say this seems rather foolish to me. The first thing the writers have complained about is that the few responses they are getting are things like: "Good job" and "I liked the article" If they really just wanted positive feedback, those would qualify. It seems to me the most important thing they are looking for is constructed criticism on ways to improve their writing, followed closely by lists of what we want to see/not see in future articles. Both of these serve the single purpose of trying to improve/change as a writer to better serve their audience. As Luther said:

"We're writing to improve and entertain you. Want to know why we want to improve? So we can entertain you more! That's it, no ego boosts, pay-checks and writer groupies . . . [we] are here to entertain and that's what we want to do!"

This is the flip to the point above. Readers, let's face it, we haven't been giving very great comments, we can all see that. But Writers, you have to look past the fact that we haven't to the reasons why we haven't.

As I mentioned before, my personal reason is that I was slightly intimidated by everyone (despite your repeated attempts to prevent that) and didn't feel like I was on a level where I deserved to be making those comments. I now see that it was foolish reason and I promise to you that I will never let it withhold me from commenting again. After reading a few more of the replies, I can see that other people didn't respond because they were afraid to leave negative feedback, thought their comments were not appreciated and would be ignored, and other reasons like that. I think that your strike has accomplished in bringing many of these reasons to the front and is managing to clear them up.

This is probably the hardest one for me to respond to, because in my opinion it doesn't have a definite response. I believe in what Luther said (told you I respected these guys) when he stated:

"[I'm] disheartened that the readers feel we need to play them in such ways to get what we require – yes, require; from you. Is manipulation, commercialism writing really all you will respond to? If I might be so bold, that's tantamount to [admitting] you're shallow and without a thought process of your own"

Because it is not the writer's job to draw comments out of his audience, that much is for sure. However, I don't believe that an audience can pull comments from everything. While the writer shouldn't be responsible for "planting" comment material, he (or she) should be responsible for writing in a manor that in some way connects to his (or her) audience. This really isn't that big of a step, as I'm pretty sure that a vast majority of the articles I have read on this site have drawn me in some way or another.

However, one thing that the writers must realize is that not every topic is going to appeal to everyone. Its just part of the way the world works. I expect that there will be much more commenting on articles if they resume in the future, and even now we can see people going back to articles written before the strike and adding their comments.

This is easy for me, I agree full heartedly, and I think most of the other readers and writers do too, making it a relatively minor point. I thought I would point it out anyway. If the writers want response, they need to be prepared to react to it.

While many of the writers have pointed out that it doesn't take that long to come up with some constructive responses, I think that there is a valid point that it does require some level of thought to be put in them. Writers, if you really think about what your asking, it's that you want us to think about your work, not just post a response, and yet many of you are saying something like: "would it kill you to take 30 seconds and tell me how I did?" I agree that it's not hard to do so, but I think it does take a little bit more than you realize what you're asking. I really liked what FreezeDried said about this:

"I'm glad to hear that you don't expect in-depth analysis in responses. But the kind of responses that you show as examples are of a breed that I, personally, will never post. Not because there is anything inherently wrong or bad about them as responses, but because they're too technical (in a completely different direction). Those kinds of reactions are not ones that I have, myself when I read anything. I don't read Magic articles as though I were proof-reading a term paper for a friend; because I don't enjoy proof-reading. I read articles because I enjoy thinking about Magic (as I think all of you people here at MDV do). To get a comment out of me, you need to spark my interest regarding Magic, not by having a run-on sentence, or too short an article"

Little things that writers do wrong are easy to find and fast to point out. However, they are also trivial and probably not what you guys are really looking for.

So with those in mind, what is the solution? I think that people need to find a more stable relationship with what types of responses the writers are looking for, but I believe that is a process that this strike is bringing to the front and will resolve itself as this progresses. As for the some of the concerns of the writers about how to support when they don't have what the writer is looking for, I like the idea that has been tossed around a few times suggesting a poll ranking feature for each article. I like this because it could not only allow that level of support, but it could give the writers a sort of standardized scale off which to judge their works.

I would like to end this with a few personal notes.

First of all, I would like to thank everyone in the discussion thread of Streetz's article who attempted to use a level head and rational to understand and address other's concerns. It is people like you who make me believe that this has the possibility of a compromise, and that if people like you are out there reading; I might just make it as a writer after all.

I would also like to tell Chris Newton that his Shifting Lineaments: Lessons in Being Punched in the Face was the most amazing article I have ever read in magic. I thought it was great how you managed to take an old concept that many of us newer players were not around to experience and bring it into a modern perspective so we could understand it.

For all of the writers out there who have joined in death_by_aggro's promise to continue writing if he has the support he will return to writing, I applaud you. I hope that every one of the old writers can make this vow, and that the readers will take them up on it. While I cannot promise that I will respond to every article every writer produces, I can promise that I will look at them all with new meaning now, and hopefully find something in there that makes that connection so I can tell you about it. As my title suggests, I have always regarded you as the giants, and I hope that you can show me once again that you all are worthy of that respect.

Thank you for reading all the way through my first piece of serious writing on MDV. I just want everyone to know that not only would appreciate any comments or criticisms, I would be happy to simply discuss any point with anyone further. I have far more to say than I could ever possibly write down, so I'll leave it up to all of you to tell me what is important.

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.
Find other articles by this author here.
Find other articles from this series here.

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Articles Spotlights from 2008:
A Fresh Perspective: Stasis - Part One.
The Apprentice Magician - Part Six.
Design on a Dime: The Lunch Meat Edition!
Fit the Flavor 2008 - FINALE!
The Games People Play - Market & EDH.
Sarpadian Empires, Vol VII: Foreword.
More Evil Than Evil.
Pauper Chronicles: Top O' the Morningtide to You!
Words from the Streetz: Uncommon and Common Magical Treasures.
The Writers Guild: The Inside Scoop.