A Mission Statement

by: Jesse Baruffi

Welcome to the Geekademia blog. So far, you've been reading the stylings of our very talented David Lawrence, and he's done a great job of bringing life to the site as we find our feet in these early days when probably no one is reading except our moms. But now that we've recorded two shows, it seems worthwhile for me, the other guy, to stop in and talk about what exactly it is we're going to do with this blog besides just previews of the show, which of course we will do because it's just good business.

Still, why do we need a blog? What are we going to say that people elsewhere on the internet aren't already saying? Are we just doing it because everyone else does and it just seems to be the thing to do? Our goal here is to discuss topics that don't quite make it on the air. Reviews are probably going to be fodder for the blog, though I am not particularly interested in buying stuff I hate for the sole purpose of trashing it. While mean reviews of awful works are often really funny, there's plenty of art out there that needs elevating, and if my words ever gain the power to sway my esteemed readers, I'd rather point them in the direction something good than away from something everyone already knows is bad. We are in the business of helping artists get off the ground, and good publicity is part of that.

That said, criticism is also about keeping artists honest, and sometimes you just have to say something doesn't work. Note the phraseology there. As someone who has taken more than a few creative writing classes in his time, I've learned that to help artists grow, we don't talk about things in terms of what we like or don't like. Taste is fine, but it has no place in constructive criticism. We talk about what works and what doesn't. At the risk of being pedantic, what that means is asking if something serves the story it's trying to tell well, or does it work against the story? For example, I should be able to watch a romantic comedy or a teen drama, genres I am not particularly disposed towards enjoying, and still say if they work or not, regardless of whether I personally want to watch more of them. I also point out that my opinions are not facts and I don't treat them as such. You won't hear me saying that your favorite work is objectively awful, or that mine is objectively perfect, as neither of those is helpful to anyone. At the same time, I'm plenty opinionated, and I have a few open challenges out there to make me understand why anyone likes certain pieces of entertainment, e.g. the recent Transformers movies, or the works of Brian Michael Bendis.

I do plan on having some humor on here as well, but it's my hope that my humor will once again be in furtherance of our twin goals. I have a column planned called "Things That Need to Go Away," which will detail ideas, tropes, story elements, or goals that have been overdone and are quite wrongheaded, and as such, need to go away in favor of greener pastures. One of those will be coming soon. I also plan on defining certain ideas that we in the geek world throw around a bit carelessly, in the hopes of creating a language that at least I can use and be understood by. For example, what does it mean to be a geek? What does it mean for something to be awesome? I'll do my best to address these and others down the road.

Beyond that, I'll do what's best for the blog, best for the readers, and best for me. How that will evolve is anyone's guess, since I have no idea if more than a handful of people will ever read this. Still, it's my hope that even if only a few people ever do, they enjoy the hell out of it, and I do too.