Alter the Scoreboard

For the longest time, I used the conventional 1-10 score marks for media I'd watched/read (it's only recently I began consuming albums like I do books/film). It works pretty well, conceptually. Something was good but not great? Seven. Something was bad? Three. Average? Five. The best? Ten.

Anyone can understand it, and its use is certainly pervasive with professional critics and commentators on any given medium. I do think it has some gravity in upholding one's opinion, but I also think it has detractors as well. The inevitable comparison between things is one of them. Sure, some media is comparable to other media by virtue that art begets art, and therefore influence takes root as similarity -- but when you have a spectrum, or a scale, everything that falls on it is related in the sense that it can all be weighed on that one quality. This is hard for me to stomach, because that would mean non-fiction, animation, live action, and the like are all going onto the same spectrum (and thus, be compared) when they should be treated as separate things.

The number score system, the star score system (which is essentially the same thing), and the grade score system breed a lot of "This is the standard everything should be compared to." This is a bit of a paradox, no? Everything is inherently different. Despite both being films, Saving Private Ryan is not going to achieve the same presence as Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, for many -- many -- reasons. One is a war drama; a very fictionalized re-telling of an actual event in history, filmed in live action, with showcases of real casualties and tribulations in conflict. The other is a case for animation with spectacular visuals (that blend many styles) and a heartfelt story about a cultural icon. Is one really better than the other? Many may think so, but even in that respect we must remember that "better" is really just "I like this more," for whatever justified, personal reason that may be. (Remember, there is no objective quality to art. I will fight to the death to uphold this idea, and if you want my opinion on it further, visit my post Objective Criticism is Pointless (and Impossible!) for more details)

So why not embrace that? It's not "better." It's, "I like it more." 

Scoring things is a good way to easily categorize your feelings about a piece of art, so the spectrum of score is an inevitable pitfall -- but by tailoring the scores you give as actual representations of the idea that the art is only labeled with your personal opinion, you remove the trap of weighing it with numbers -- as if it were a product. Before you get on me -- I do believe products can still be art. High budget films, which are regulated by corporations and tailored to their audience, are just as much art as a painting managed by no one but the artist, or music made with bits of guidance from the record label.

That being said, I score things as such:

Love 

When I love something, it transcends everything else. It's presented an aspect or idea to me that is not only relevant to what I find important, but does so with near perfection. Examples of such would be Speed Racer in film, Fullmetal Alchemist in comics, and Fahrenheit 451 in novels.

Like 

Something I would definitely be willing to call myself a fan of. I'd buy it or its merchandise, continue to support it as it continues, and is only one step removed from "Love." This is mostly because its impact is less powerful than "Love" titles, not necessarily because it has flaws. Things I like would be The Martian by Andy Weir, The Office television series, and Daft Punk's Discovery album. 

Appreciate
This is a really open category, because you can effectively appreciate anything in some regard. This is part of why my system isn't really that linear. Things I dislike on some level I can even put here, because I saw an element or shade of the work that I appreciate above any other way I feel about it. Examples would include The Art of War by Sun Tzú, (because I appreciated the knowledge but disliked the message), the two volume apocalypse manga Abara by Tsutomu Nihei (because I thought the story was flat but the artwork conveyed what it was meant to well), or Orson Welle's Citizen Kane (because while it did a lot for film as a medium, I can't help but find it a bit of a bore).

Indifferent

Not many things make it into this category. It's not so much that I didn't have a reaction to it, but that my reaction either wasn't strong, didn't lean a certain way, or it had a decent amount of ups and downs but was overall underwhelming. Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games novels, Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba's (the creators of Death Note) new series, Platinum End, and other various spinoff games like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon or Sonic Unleashed would go here.

Forgettable

Here's where it starts to get negative. A title here didn't offend me in any large degree, but nothing about it stood out and it left a bad taste in my mouth because it presents so little. I wouldn't revisit it, nor do I think what it did it did particularly well. For video games, Quantum Break is a good example, George Orwell's Animal Farm another, and many mainstream, western animated films like Free Birds, Home, Trolls (etc.) as a third. 

Dislike

Nothing about this sparks any positive reaction from me. Either tedious, horribly boring, messy, or just plain bad get to have a score like this. I prefer not thinking about it if I can help it. A film like The Shaggy Dog, the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage-play, and the seventh season of Game of Thrones would fit under this label.

Hate

Things I fundamentally disagree with* or are just plain bad. I'd never go so far to suggest they shouldn't exist, as I think there is a huge benefit to a variety of points of view -- it's just that my point of view is that they're awful. Things like the movie Little Boy, Fall Out Boy's awful M A N I A album, and The Alchemist novella are among some of the things I just despise.

So Bad It's Good 

This, like "Appreciate," is another reason the scores aren't quite that linear. This is something that I have a hard time applying to anything but film, and even things I like ironically I may even put in other scores, but the sheer difference between content here and content elsewhere warrants its own score. Things like Tommy Wiseau's The Room, the anime film Panzer Dragoon, and Troll 2 are perfect examples of being so bad it becomes enjoyable.

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So there you have it. I like this system because it's easier to understand what each score means (as, in my opinion, the differences between 5, 4, and 3 as scores tend to get murky depending on the critic), it doesn't box things in a way where they would have to be compared, nor does it treat them like products. It's simply a word (or a few) to summarize what I think of it in a quick, subjective manner. 

Keep reading fellas.

*(Art is often supposed to challenge how we see things, but that's not what I mean here. Things I hate because I disagree with them are things that present what I believe to be a harmful or inaccurate worldview, not necessarily just something I disagree with or have not yet thought about.)