[ SECRET POST #1959 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1959 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 085 secrets from Secret Submission Post #280.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not saying it's impossible to judge the quality of something based on a specific set of criteria. Obviously you could say Painting A is stronger than Painting B based on perspective/color choices/etc., but I don't think you could accurately say "Painting A is better than Painting B" because what makes something good or bad is subjective.

[xanykaos.livejournal.com]

Painting A (http://millionsofmouths.com/diogenes/thm_edwinlandseerwhitebullterreiralexanderanddiogenes.jpg)

Painting B (http://www.derekmccrea.50megs.com/images/chihuawa%20dog%20painting%202.jpg)


If you honestly can't say which is better, I will call you a liar or fifteen years old. I'm not sure which.

Or hell, to make it personal: Painting A (http://xanykaos.deviantart.com/gallery/26334998#/dazag3) and Painting B (http://xanykaos.deviantart.com/art/TF2-Pyro-171740092?q=gallery%3Axanykaos%2F311207&qo=13).

"Obviously you could say Painting A is stronger than Painting B based on perspective/color choices/etc.,"

So instead of using the word "better" you're using the word "stronger." That's being weaselly with the English language. If a painting is the stronger of the two, it's better. The reason that certain criteria like perspective and color choice exist is because they work. You seem to have this strange idea that the "rules" for what make something good or bad are these arbitrary things that people came up with and then tried to follow. It's the other way around--the rules are based on what works, and they provide a springboard. That's why you'll hear first-year art students whining about how their stupid professors make them draw everything "their way" instead of letting the students work in their "own style." And then a year, two, three, four, ten years down the line, something clicks, and the students realize that the "rules" were never limits, they were guidelines, and they understand why they had to learn to do it like that. And then they go off and make their own stronger style from it.

That's how a craft works.

[(Anonymous)]

If a painting is the stronger of the two, it's better.

I don't follow.

[(Anonymous)]

I used the word stronger because that's the word the person I was replying to used.

Yes, those things might "work" for certain people. That doesn't mean that everyone will agree with those color choices or perspective. Maybe even the majority of people who view the painting do but that doesn't mean they're "right".

Yes, I have a "strange idea" that the rules are arbitrary because they are, at least in art (obviously there are other contexts where rules are not arbitary and following them is important). Just because certain things work for a specific group of people and they've decided that's how they should be done does not make their opinions any more valid than anyone else's.

I was taught that art, in all its forms, is subjective. It exists to entertain people, to make people think, to introduce a new idea, it exists for several different reasons. You can say how well a particular work succeeded at its goal within a specific demographic, but you cannot say it's "good" or "bad" without taking into account the fact that different people with different viewpoints interpret things differently.

[(Anonymous)]

all of this.

[drunken-clowns.livejournal.com]

I think you're confusing taste with quality. If you have two paintings that are trying to accomplish the same thing, and one is more or less successful at it while the other isn't, that more successful one is going to have an edge when it comes to quality.

IRL, though, it's rarely "two almost identical things but one's technically better." Maybe you've got similar things that each make a different set of mistakes. More likely, the subject and style are just so different that you're not going to find another picture of a dog leaping off a pier or a pack of vampires playing baseball. It's not Twilight vs better Twilight/shittier Twilight, because you're not likely to find another thing that has all the subject and style bits that draw people to Twilight in the first place. That's why taste is subjective- because general quality really isn't the thing that's driving it, but that's okay. I mean, would you read a superbly-done manual for putting furniture together over a mediocre novel with your favorite subject and style in the world? Probably not. Sometimes a book with literary choices you like is super compelling, and a book with literary choices you don't enjoy practically is a furniture manual to you. It's silly to judge people for not preferring the furniture manual, so it's just as silly to judge them for not preferring the ~superior~ book when it's not what they're interested in.

Like, someone who really loves Trigun and Gargoyles but is meh about TF2 might prefer Painting A to Painting B in the example below. And that's okay! But even the person who made it can tell that Painting B is better.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I'm saying that taste is based on the subjective interpretation of what is and is not quality.

But those examples are based on the assumption that there is an objective standard for what is "good", and my argument is that such a thing doesn't exist. What makes the "superbly-done" furniture manual superbly-done? What makes the "mediocre" novel mediocre? You have to have criteria that you're basing these things on. Just saying one is "good" and the other is "bad" is not a valid argument.

If your criteria for "good" is "shows you in a clear, easy to follow manner how to put this piece of furniture together", then the furniture manual is obviously going to be "better" than the novel. But if your criteria for good is "a compelling story with interesting characters", a novel is most likely going to fit that standard better than a manual for putting furniture together. A manual for putting furniture together is completely different than a novel, and it's not really logical to judge them as if they were the same thing and proclaim which is "better". I'm not saying it's not possible to say which of two things is better when judged by specific criteria, I'm saying that deeming something objectively "good" or "bad" is not possible because what makes something good or bad is always going to depend on some set of criteria, and what that is will change from person to person.

[(Anonymous)]

da

this, but would also like to add: the concept of a "compelling story with interesting characters" is, in itself, also very subjective. I might be interested in different characters than you or find a different sort of plot interesting, or prefer the way author A constructs zir plot over author B.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, I probably don't, but wanted to clarify that point.

To break it down a little bit more: you can judge a book by objective things like: number of pages/words/chapters, number of characters, how dynamic a character is (if you have a measuring tool for how much that character changed), etc. or even "number of people who like this book". None of those things is, in and of themselves, an indicator of quality. They're just stats. "Quality" is born of the opinions of those who read the book.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree, and I should've clarified. You're right, "interesting characters" is subjective too, because what makes a character interesting is going to vary from person to person. Like you said, there are objective things that can be measured, but "quality" is not one of them (at least not in art) because what is considered quality is up to the individual person's opinion/interepretation.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I figured that's what you meant :) and I totally agree.

[drunken-clowns.livejournal.com]

I think there can be an objective standard in quality if you look at how successful a thing is at what it's trying to do? A furniture manual with clear, comprehensible instructions and nice diagrams is better than a furniture manual that's barely comprehensible. A novel is better or worse depending on what it's trying to do. Things like "is it compelling" or "are the characters interesting" are at least partly down to taste, not quality, but there's a lot that isn't. There's consistency, and general guidelines for plotting and effective prose that are there because they work.

[(Anonymous)]

da

I'd say those "guidelines" are just tools that the author can choose to use if s/he wishes. They aren't an automatic shoe-in for "quality". If they were what would become of talent and practice? Just because many authors use certain sets of guidelines (though probably not exactly the same ones across the board) doesn't mean that's what determines quality.

[drunken-clowns.livejournal.com]

If having rules in place means talent and practice don't matter, then anybody can be excellent at math without even trying. Oh, wait.

Things like "the characters are acting in a way that makes sense for who they are and what's going on", "the events in a given part of a story don't clash with the intended mood," "if a piece of text can't directly be attributed to a character that would have a bad grasp of spelling and grammar, it has correct spelling and generally appropriate grammar to the tone", "the setting itself doesn't give the impression that it revolves around the protagonist, unless there's a plot reason for why it actually does," "important plot threads aren't forgotten, even if they don't have closure by the end of the story," etc, those things actually do determine the quality of a story. If the mood's shitting off to a bunch of torture and murder in a supposedly light and fluffy story, or the author's sentence structure is nigh-incomprehensible, it's not going to be as good, sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not going to be as good because people don't like it when it's done that way. That's why.

Also, the arts and math are very different things - math doesn't have "works" which people consume for enjoyment. It's a science. Of course there are rules and rights/wrongs. Science is concerned with facts. Art is not.

[drunken-clowns.livejournal.com]

You don't think there's any real value in internal consistency and using the language in a way that the readers can make sense of? Really? People like these things because a story that's not intended to confuse is better enjoyed in a non-confusing format. I don't like the "consumer of media as creative collaborator" views, but I think a reader's experience IS a part of that work. It's not necessarily that (in an English-language work) proper English is better in itself, it's that if you don't want to confuse, it makes fucking sense to structure your prose within the bounds of how English speakers have been taught to understand words.

Of course it's different, but that's not the point- the point is that talent and practice still apply when strict rules exist, so they can still apply when looser rules that leave room for style and content exist. Also, certain math geeks I know would probably have something to say about the idea that math stuff is never an art.