[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Take the Shining, Blade Runner, Black Sabbath and Queen. What do they have in common? Early on, they were critically trashed and unsuccessful. Now? Classics, and examples of the peaks of their respective genres. Why? Did the objective truth about their quality change? Or, could it have been a matter of taste? And as taste evolved, so did their popularity and status?

There is actually a third option here, which has to do with groupthink and critical consensus sometimes just being wrong (in fact you'd expect that to happen in at least a percentage of cases), or some aspect of the thing under consideration was distracting the critics from its other qualities. There's even a fourth option, which is that they were right in the first place and the subsequent following a piece gets is undeserved.

The story had construction issues. This is objectively true. But that doesn't tell us whether the story was emotionally captivating, engaging, interesting, or compelling. It doesn't tell us whether the game was fun, or enjoyable, or exciting, or boring.

Not necessarily, I agree, but as soon as you admit that the former has something to do with the latter - that a story without construction issues is more likely to be interesting or compelling than one that has those issues - you've already admitted that there is an objective element to both things.

These are subjective qualities and the subjective qualities that are essential to how you view art. I don't think the characters were genuine, that's subjective, and that's ok. I think the flaws in the story construction were frustrating, others thought they were barely relevant, this is also subjective and also ok.

This is true, obviously. No one could reasonably suggest that different people don't enjoy different things.

You can write a perfectly constructed story, strictly from an objective point of view. That doesn't automatically mean it's a good story.

Well, sure, but only because there are other things that go into a good story beyond its construction. I am a bit surprised given the position that you're taking that you're simultaneously saying that there's even such a thing as a perfectly constructed story.

You seem very sure of your position about the roles of objective and subjective judgments in criticism of art, and it's hard to go much further here without doing exactly what I said I didn't want to do in my last post by diving into aesthetic philosophy. So, suffice it to say that there is a whole field of literature you can discover if you ever decide you're interested and want to challenge your preconceptions in this area.