Since I will soon be venturing out into the world of high profile LP'ers, I wanted to make a clear statement about the purposes of this blog, my intent, and the meaning of criticism.
You will notice that I don't use a rating system. Most commonly, these take the form of a series of numbers from 1 to 10 indicating by some (often unknown, always subjective) standard) how excited that particular person is about an object d'art. My purpose is not to review LPs. I am not here to say "well, this is good so you should watch it", or "this is horrible, you should avoid it". I am not a reviewer, I do not review LPs.
Criticism is (quoting La Wiki): "the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature, social movements, film, arts, and similar objects and events. The goal of this type of criticism is to understand the work or event more thoroughly." If I am criticizing an LP, it's an evaluation of it's qualities in a greater context of film and literature to understand it's place (and LPs in general) within the wider world of art and human culture. It's taking a look at a work's merits and faults overall, and not simply it's faults. My intent is not to upset people or make them feel bad; feel free to disagree with my attempts at writing, my opinions, my subjective viewpoints.
That being said, the majority of art is mediocre. Very little art is truly abysmal, and even less is extraordinary. You'll be able to tell if I enjoyed a work by my critique, but given I have limited time I probably will be criticizing little that I don't enjoy. Overall, I follow Eric Swain's guidelines on avoiding pretentiousness, a good post addressing not only video game criticism but also literary criticism as well as honesty in video game reviews.
Don't take it personally. I'm just taking art seriously. You take fun seriously, so you should understand.
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