Adversarial Reading
I think my least favorite type of reader is the reader who thinks I'm trying to get something over on them. They're watching out for my tricks, and they want to call me on my bullshit.
I think it would be more tolerable if they weren't wrong so often. The comments they leave make assumptions about where the plot is going or what my writing process is, and because adversarial readers cannot read my mind, they often just totally blow it.
"The author only had X happen so that Y could happen"
No, I had X happen because that's my understanding of the character, or because it was thematically appropriate, or because there are things going on in the background that you're ignorant of. And you know what, Y isn't going to happen! It's just not that kind of story! So you're wrong on both counts.
"Character X is acting really ooc right now to move the plot along"
No, she's acting different from how she normally acts because a character is not a monolith with a single personality trait. She's acting like that because she had a chance to rest for the first time in the entire novel, because this is the first time someone has treated her like she's not a piece on a chess board, because she's hit her breaking point.
"Character X really should have done Y, is he stupid?"
First, Y is impossible per the rules the story has set up. It's explicitly called out in a line you missed three chapters back. Second, X does not have access to all the same information that you have, and he does not think like you. His priorities are different from the priorities that you have.
~~~
I try, as a general rule, to be empathic.
I think a lot of adversarial readers have read a lot of shitfic, and when you're reading something from an author who doesn't know what they're doing, it's often correct to come to the conclusion that things are Weird Like That because the author was inexpertly stitching together scenes they had in their head, or because they forgot a detail from earlier, or because something obvious just didn't occur to them. Maybe it's not nice, but I've spoken to a lot of starting authors, and asked questions that have gotten me answers that are ... basically that.
I think it goes beyond brainrot pattern-matching though. I think it's partly a desire to feel smugly superior and treat reading as a game that can be won. There are so few options these days for people to feel powerful and validated, and maybe (wrongly or rightly) explaining that you know all the author's tricks and have fallen for none of them helps with what the Unabomber called the "power process" (briefly, a desire of humans to formulate goals and attain them through non-trivial effort).
Reading isn't like that, or shouldn't be. I'm writing this story and you're reading it, and we're in collaboration with each other. I'm attempting to plant a garden in your mind, and it's not going to work if you're not watering it.
Sometimes, if a reader doesn't understand why a character did something, or complains about something that happened which was explained in the text, I do think this is my fault. As a writer it's my job to make sure that things are explained and foreshadowed and that the subtext is readable. This is very difficult to do when writing for an audience of very different assumptions and levels of reading skill. Sometimes as a writer I have to say "mea culpa, this was not written well enough for you to understand character motivations, the rules of the world, or the subtext that underpins this moment".
If you think that "adversarial reader" might describe you, there are a few things that I ask:
Don't make assumptions about the authorial process.
Don't make assumptions about the author.
It's always better to coach things as questions that are open for comment, rather than statements, e.g. "I don't understand why she would do that" instead of "acting real ooc rn".
It's always better to cite text, which will also help keep you from getting things wrong. ctrl+f is one of the best inventions of the last 100 years.
It's always better to assume the author knows what they're doing, at least at first. Sometimes this is a recipe for getting burned, but is it really so bad to get burned?
