To be angry with others being treated better than yourself is but natural. Such a thing is unfair, and unjust, after all.
But to blindly direct that anger towards those treated better is foolish, for often they hold no fault in your suffering.
Look instead to those who purposely treat you worse, who reward your loyalty to them through pitiful, deficient, outdated means, knowing full well they could treat you better, but refuse to.
Look to those who utter proven lies, who withhold resources and build shoddy, deficient systems, all so they can enrich themselves, rather than you or anyone else. They are the ones that deserve your anger.
Perhaps these may not be distinct groups. Sometimes those who are treated better and those who purposely treat you poorly are one and the same. But sometimes they are not.
Knowing the difference, and knowing who should truly be held accountable, is where true wisdom lies.
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This is long overdue, as I've been meaning to make this, for... checks date literally 10 months. I'm gonna go through the categories I use, what they refer to, and what tags are used for them, and then under a cut I'll go more into what certain specified details mean, mainly relevant to shows, comics, and games.
The Categories
In general, I group the things I review into "Movies", "Shows", "Comics", and "Games". These are mostly self-explanatory, but I'll get into the details hence:
Movies are fairly self-explanatory, and I don't feel any particular need to clarify anything on this.
Shows includes any recurring audiovisual experience that doesn't otherwise fall under the banner of movie, including those that may be associated with other terms first, such as anime.
Comics includes both traditional western comics, manga, and webcomics.
Games includes anything that can conceivably be fit under the umbrella of "video game", whether it's purchasable or not.
Generally everything I review will fall under one of these four categories, but may also be subcategorized in the tags where I feel it's appropriate, such as with notable subcategories (anime under shows, for example) or recurring reviews for works within the same franchise (such as Pokemon).
Each category has its own tag, as well as my overall reviews being tagged alike. The tags for each category can be found on relevant posts, but for convenience, here's the full list:
"hex reviews things" is the general tag for my reviews
"hex reviews movies" is the general tag for movies
"hex reviews shows" is the general tag for shows
"hex reviews comics" is the general tag for comics
"hex reviews games" is the general tag for games
None of these tags are probably surprising.
Next I'll get into some of the general details of how I review things, mostly the auxiliary details I provide at the start of reviews (for everything except movies). For the sake of post length, these'll go under a cut.
The Deets
I have a standard format I try to keep to for the header of reviews; the title, a silly quote relevant to the review, and then a block of information about what I'm reviewing. What exactly is included in this will vary depending on what I'm reviewing, so let's get into specifics:
All Reviews
All reviews will include a line specifying whether or not I recommend what I'm reviewing; this will typically be a yes or no, but may sometimes include a bit of clarification, or sometimes me just screaming. I do color-code these; green and blue are both unambiguous yeses, with the latter being an especially enthusiastic yes, while yellow is used for recommendations that come with a significant asterisk. Orange and red are used for no. There's theoretically a rare and elusive purple, but this may wind up never being seen, as it's hard to get me to be that enthusiastic about something.
This particular detail is the only thing present in the information block for movie reviews, as there's not really a whole lot worth clarifying otherwise.
Shows & Comics
Being explicitly serialized media, these actually have a lot in common, so most of the details to be clarified in the information block are shared between the two.
The big thing for these types of media is Structure. Specifically of the narrative kind. In general, I categorize shows and comics' narrative structure in four ways:
Episodic refers to shows/comics in which individual installments are largely self-contained; outside of the occasional storyline that covers a couple consecutive episodes/issues/strips, these have no overarching narrative structure to speak of. There might be an occasional call-back, there might be some mild changes season-to-season, but there's otherwise no real sense of continuity.
Continuous refers to shows/comics that have a conscious sense of continuity, and have actual overarching narrative storylines, usually built over individual seasons/runs. There might be more episodic-style hijinks thrown into the mix here and there, but the story is mostly continuous and rolling constantly.
Semi-Continuous is a weirder category; this specifically refers to shows and comics that are distinct hybrids between Episodic and Continuous, featuring a large amount of episodic content but also moving the status quo on a semi-regular basis. This is mostly relevant for shows, as a lot of cartoons will often start like this.
Epic is Continuous on steroids. These are shows/comics with one long, continuous story, with a very specific endgame. This isn't just long things (though that is one of the criteria I use), but also things that have one consistent, defined story from start to finish. Continuity is very important.
These of course are not necessarily rigid categories, and often a show or comic will start with one structure and transition into another; as mentioned under Semi-Continuous, this happens a lot with cartoons, which may start as Semi-Continuous and transition later into proper Continuous. I'll usually note if something like this happens.
There are two other relevant things to this: Format and Paid. Format is moreso relevant for comics, but it's generally distinguishing between web media and non-web media. This is also where "Paid" comes in; if it's paid, I'll specify details about it, and if it's not, you'll just see "free". If it's on TV primarily, it counts as paid, even if it's technically available for free via an antenna.
I will also usually specify Length, in whatever format is relevant for the specific work; if it's ongoing, I'll also specify that.
Games
This is where things get more complicated; for games I specify four main things: Genre, Platform, Price, and Length.
Genre is fairly self-explanatory; it's what genre I feel most fits the bill for whatever this game is. Generally I go with whatever the common consensus on that particular game is.
Platform is a bit more nuanced; for this I specify what baseline platforms the game is officially available for. Platforms that are technically available through backwards compatibility are not counted. For PC, I generally try to specify what operating systems the game is available for; if I just specify PC, assume it's only available for Windows. This is unfortunately a very common thing. I will however generally mention if the game runs well on Steam Deck, with a link to the game's ProtonDB page.
Price is exactly what you think it is: what the price for the game is officially, as of when I reviewed it. This is always in USD. I will usually just specify the price, but I may add in other details, such as relevant DLC, or a snide remark about how games shouldn't cost $70. For free games, I will specify whether the game has secondary monetization such as microtransactions, and to what extent they exist.
Finally, Length is just a rough guess at how long a single playthrough will take. This is usually based on my own playtime as of when I wrote the review, assuming I actually kept track properly. Notably, a "single playthrough" constitutes going from the start of the game to the end; I don't include postgame content or replayability in this estimate, but will specify an additional estimate if it's relevant. For roguelikes and similar, this will instead be how long a typical run takes; for continuously-operated games such as MMOs, this will typically be omitted.
The Fancy Number at the End
Final thing to talk about: my final ratings. It bears noting that the numbers I specify should not be taken too seriously. I'm just one guy with some fairly specific preferences; I tend to be very verbose with my reviews precisely because I think my actual outlook on the details is more important and useful than the actual number on the end. Accordingly, the final rating should only be taken as a rough gauge of how I personally feel about the piece of media I'm reviewing.
That said, I do have some mild criteria about how I assign the numbers:
I am theoretically willing to hand out 0's, however this is pretty much reserved for things I loathe with every fiber of my being.
1-2 is, as you'd expect, bottom of the pile. I really don't like this thing.
3-4 is for things I personally dislike, but not strongly enough to outright condemn.
5-6 are average. Usually I have no strong opinion either way, or I have a strong opinion one way that's hampered by a lot of caveats.
7-8 are what I genuinely consider good; 7s are appreciated, 8s are well-liked, but in either case it's not necessarily a strong appreciation. (If it is, I have multiple caveats attached to it.)
9 is for things I really like. Anything that earns a 9 from me is something I have a strong appreciation for, and usually comes with relatively minimal asterisks.
10 is illustrious; if something somehow earns a 10, as far as I care it's one of the greatest things I've ever experienced, no notes. This is not something I hand out lightly, and in fact as of writing I haven't given anything a 10 yet. No, Pizza Tower doesn't count, I've retroactively revoked its 10. Anything that warrants an asterisk (beyond things like trigger warnings) doesn't get a 10. End of story.
As noted, I'm very stringent about handing out 10s, and it is very likely you won't see many at all. Also as noted, don't take these numbers as gospel; they're heavily-generalized statements of my opinion.
Notably, for shows and comics, I may include multiple ratings for different portions of their runs. This will usually be by season or by arc. (For example, for Symphogear you might see me rate by season, with something like an 8, an 8, a 6, an 8, and a 9.)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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there's something funny about "ore wa" in an anime being translated as "woah, dude"
on the one hand, there is literally no way to succinctly translate that in a way that doesn't rely on the viewer understanding that "ore" is a masculine self-referential pronoun, on account of English just not having gendered self-referential pronouns. the best you could maybe do is "I (masculine)", which looks absurdly silly.
on the other hand, in this particular context, I feel like "woah, dude" may not have been the most appropriate choice. I have no idea what would be more appropriate, but.
this is why translation is more of an art than a science. this is also why I am not a translator.
I was also considering not answering that at all, just reporting it and calling it a day, but also if you think I'm above shaming incredibly transparent scammers on the internet then you would be very incorrect.
A reminder to everyone: If someone suddenly follows you and sends you an ask out of the blue and is asking you for anything (especially money), check their blog. I just had someone show up in my asks asking for help with raising funds for their cat's vet bills, and immediately got suspicious of them.
They had a bit of reblog history that looked legit at first glance, but their oldest reblog was only 13 hours ago. That and the fact that the sob story was familiar lead me to very quickly conclude this was in fact a bot, and not just someone who showed up unsolicited in my inbox asking for donations (who I also would've blocked anyway).
So, yeah, it goes without saying that you shouldn't just trust some rando who popped into your inbox unsolicited, check their blog and make sure they actually have a meaningfully-long post history first. (Or block first THEN double-check, which I'll admit is in fact what I did because I was already 95% sure I was looking at a bot, and pretty much only poked through their posts as a sanity check.)
