Three Things To Note

'The most interesting frown in the world.'

It seems counter intuitive for me to start a blog on my views of films, television and games with an article that features none of these but in fact explores the mechanics of writing a review. I don't profess to be an expert nor have I garnered any critical acclaim for my writing style which at times can be garish, crude and frankly obtuse, however I'd like to explore a few caveats of bad writing and what you can expect from my blog. It would be utterly tasteless for me to break this down into bullet points. However, as this is my blog, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

• The Negative Effect ; I'm not sure what the actual term for this is, but if this hasn't already been coined consider it trademarked. Not officially trademarked of course, I'm writing an article on Blogger not the New York Times, but if you steal from me you can expect repercussions of me grumbling at you from my dank corner of the internet and drowning my tears in vodka. Could you live with the guilt?! It's already been stolen, hasn't it? In any case the negative effect is the bane of anyone attempting an honest critique, and it works much akin to being contrary to peer pressure. We've all had those moments where some fuckwit will bandy about and generally rally support for, hatred toward one thing or another. Now for the average person this doesn't present a problem, a bandwagon is a fine thing and most of us are more than willing to jump on and ride it like the last ass out of El-Paso. It feels nice to fit in, as Sancho Panza will tell you. A critic on the other hand is for lack of a better term, the embodiment of the emo movement, namely that we hate everything and have appalling hair. As such the idea of crowd pleasing unless publicly funded is abhorrent, and we'll do everything we can to make up our own minds, often in spite of the views of others.

•  Verbose Excrement ; It's the mark of poor writing to pad an article or review with faux grandeur, and unfortunately it stems from the need to pander to the academic. There is a time and a place for eloquence, and those with an expanded vocabulary can often use it in a tasteful and appropriate manner, however, being verbose for the sake of trying to impress often leads to clumsy sentences and conflated prose. I myself, while trying to write something pleasing, will often use the flowery and pompous language of yesteryear in this new era of lol's and hashtags, and while I take pride in my writing, I'm not doing it for the sake of convolution, it's force of habit. In this same stance, in those same elegant sentences I will casually throw a handful of choice swearwords, the traditional shits and giggles, in order to hold my point. Swearwords are valuable too, they are often the most direct way of expressing a specific opinion, and because of this inherent value I refuse abjectly to censoring language or opinion. If you don't like that, I'm sorry to say the internet at large holds little promise for you.

• Perpetual Tangents ;  This is unfortunately something I am terrifically guilty of, and something I feel little to no remorse over. Tangents are much like conversations with yourself exploring the avenues of a given topic with little given direction. A good critic or writer will be able to explore these, as frankly it's very enjoyable to venture into the unknown and extrapolate idea's and thoughts from it. The mark of a good critic however is the ability to reign themselves in and return to a concise point of origin, namely the subject matter. It's a rare ability, as often from my own readings, I've learned that the inviting tangent then leads to points more familiar to the straw man fallacy that allows them to justify their own opinions through process of auto-fellatio. It's a kind of smoke and mirrors distraction, where, when stretched to a certain extent things can become better or worse through a persuasive rambling. It's abhorrent, awful, and something I myself am entirely guilty of. I'll do my best to reign in tangents but frankly even keeping this on point is straining my last nerve.

So! I shall end this blog post there. What does all of this mean? Well... Not much if I'm entirely honest. It's an exploration of things I find both irritating and natural to me, and undoubtedly I will put these into practice in future reviews, critique or general ramblings. Consider this a critique of my own writing and an assessment of what is yet to come.