Thank you so much, Red Metal for tagging me! Man, I can’t remember the last time I got tagged. It has been a while.
On to the questions and answers!
Between music, film/television, and game critics, which do you find the least consistently reliable?
I don’t tend to listen to critics. Mainly since quite a few either are paid for positive reviews or are heavily biased. I used to love a couple but their recent behaviour has put me off not only them but critics in general.
Between music, film/television, and game critics, which do you find the most consistently reliable?
Again, I don’t tend to listen to critics but I do enjoy Yahtzee Croshaw’s game review videos and Todd in the Shadows for music, although I do disagree with him a fair bit.
Oh, and SAVY Writes Books for book reviews. She is the exception to the aforementioned rule I mentioned in the last question.
What was your single worst theatergoing experience?
Oh man, it’s kind of sad looking back.
I went to a panto one year as a child, as my family did for years up until a few years ago. At the start of the second act, right after we came back from the interval, the actress who played the fairy godmother fell. At first, everyone laughed thinking it was a part of the act. Then we heard her trying to hold back from crying out in pain.
We were all told to leave and an ambulance game. Turns out the understudy was already in this performance so no one could take her place, shows over folks.
What made it the worst was hindsight. When we got home, I couldn’t help but imagine what it must be like in her shoes. We found out later she full-on broke her wrist! I kept imagining what it must have been like, in so much pain, no one helping for a few moments as a crowd laughs at you.
What was your single best theatergoing experience?
I’m not sure if I have a single best one, I have two.
There was the time I went to see The Mikado and laughed so hard I fell off my seat. By the end of the play, my stomach was so sore and my cheeks hurt from laughing too much.
There was also this dinner and a show I went to when I was little, Pirates Adventure. It was incredible! They had it all, acrobatics, pyrotechnics and incredible actors. As a kid, it was straight-up magic. Probably where my obsession with pirates started, one obsession that has stuck with me even now.
Do you think a lousy ending can completely ruin an otherwise great work?
Honestly, it depends.
Sometimes I can forgive it if I enjoyed the rest of it. As long as the characters are still well, in character. Sometimes they do a really bad twist reveal that makes no sense and ruins the rest of the story in context. It heavily depends on a lot of factors.
Do you think an incredible payoff can redeem an otherwise middling (or even bad) work?
I don’t think so.
Frankly, if I am reading a book or playing a game and it starts to bore or annoy me, I tend to stop and never pick it up again. Life is too short, if it isn’t doing it for me, I won’t stick around long enough to find out if the pay off was worth it.
Do you feel the price increase of AAA games was justifiable or not?
No, I don’t.
Considering how many games are around £60 and on top of that for some you need to buy DLC to get the full gameplay experience, no. I tend to wait for AAA games to go on sale before buying them.
What work did you like as a kid only for you to realize it doesn’t hold up at all?
Oh, I am going to catch some heat for this.
It doesn’t even count since I was a teenager, but I was obsessed with Sherlock. I thought it was such a genius show in terms of writing, but looking back, it really isn’t.
What work did you not like as a kid only for you to later realize it’s amazingly good?
It wasn’t so much not liking as being too scared to watch the whole thing, Watership Down.
Is the animation a little dated? Yes. Do I care? No. As an adult, I have a new appreciation for the film and finally got around to reading the book. Both are beautiful works of art in their way.
Are there any podcasts you listen to regularly?
I listen to Reading Glasses and Your Dead To Me the most.
Reading Glasses is about books with reviews, reading advice and interviews. Your Dead To Me is a history show in which a historian and a comedian discuss history. It is hilarious.
Taking cues from AK’s last question, what is the most bizarre combination of ingredients you enjoy?
Not anymore, but when I was young I liked cheese and chocolate. As an adult, people think it’s weird that I like to have Irn-Bru with vodka or rum instead of Coke. Irn-Bru is the superior drink in my humble opinion, so of course, I use that as a mixer instead of Coke.
I’m going to tag
My questions to you
- What troupe do you love?
- What troupe do you despise?
- Which film or game terrified you as a child?
- Which film or game terrifies you now?
- What childhood favourite film would you like to see remade?
- What childhood favourite game would you like to see remade?
- Do you think your interests have changed a lot over the years, or are they still the same?
- Which scares you more, ghosts or aliens?
- keeping the food questions going, what is your go-to drink?
- What is your food-related unpopular opinion?
Nerd Rambles 
Yeah, I don’t really blame you for how you feel about critics in general. The social media age hasn’t done wonders for the art of criticism at all because you see them get in fights on Twitter constantly, and you just know that those beefs are influencing their opinions when they really shouldn’t. A lot of them come across as bitter because social media ensures an even playing field, and I think many of them want that hierarchal system where their opinions are inherently more valuable than those of your average Joe. Really, I think the only critical circle that didn’t suffer in some way would be the one for music because it’s the sole medium in which its fans consistently demand creativity and innovation whereas gaming and film critics got too complacent and tend to promote stuff that reflects their viewpoints back at them.
Yahtzee was actually a bit of an influence on my own work; he was actually really ahead of his time in how he criticized the AAA industry’s film-game approach to storytelling in favor of using game mechanics to do that. That said, I do find I disagree with him a lot because he doesn’t do a great job acknowledging his biases. Even so, I do give him credit for staying out of internet drama, unlike, say, fellow Escapist alumni Bob Chipman. And Todd in the Shadows is great too; I especially like his Trainwreckords series, though his One-Hit Wonderland videos are interesting as well. Like a lot of Channel Awesome contributors, I think he actually improved since leaving the site.
I’m very much in the “you have to stick the landing to get a passing grade” camp. Granted, there were a few times in which I did let a work with a weak ending off the hook because it wasn’t offensively bad, but when it is, it can make what was otherwise a straight recommendation nigh-impossible. You’d be surprised how much goodwill can be lost if the payoff is bad.
I think it depends on the situation, but yeah, I find I’m not really forgiving of the inverse scenario as well. Granted, a middling work with a great payoff is usually going to rank higher than a great work with a horrible payoff, but having to suffer through a lot of tedium to get there is going to be a difficult proposition any way you slice it.
I think it was inevitable that the price would increase, but the AAA industry as it is now has the worst possible justification for doing so – shelling out games that are oftentimes barely functional or incomplete only to justify giving DLC later. It would be alright if we were paying for a full, functional game, but that’s seldom the case. If the AAA industry wants to successfully make a profit, they’re going to have to find ways to cut costs as opposed raising the prices (and I’m sure it can be done). As it stands, the fancy, new graphics they’re touting, which are likely the biggest cause of the increased production costs, aren’t really opening up any new avenues for gaming (or at least not until VR takes off, at any rate).
LikeLiked by 1 person
That had to be terrible seeing the performer break her wrist. Having to cancel the rest of the performance probably hurt her professional pride even more.
Well, maybe not. Broken bone pain is terrible!
Thanks for the tag! I’ll see what I can do with it. You’ve asked interesting questions, too!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Looking forward to your answers!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh wow. Another tag. I’ll have to get busy on it.
LikeLiked by 1 person