I like letter grades, letter grades are easy and fun, but I think it’s time for a switch. See, I grew up reading the finest, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), meaning I’ve been reading reviews my whole life. EGM used to run a numeric system, three reviewers per article, on a .1-increment sliding scale from 0 to 10.0. Now, I’m not that ambitious (some are) – and frankly the difference between an 8.5 and an 8.6 feels negligible to me. Nevertheless, as one reader (I have readers! I love you all!) brought up, the connection between letter grades and academic life, of which I’m a recent escapee, feels a little too intimate. I get that. Nobody wants to feel like their essay was a Guilty Pleasure, or that their arts project was definitely a solid $0$, but no Paul’s Boutique. Keeping that in mind, Transylvanilla will be switching over to a numerical sliding scale of assessment, running in .5-increments from 0.0 to 10.0, respectively. Will this be a permanent shift? I doubt it – it’s an experiment and an homage. I won’t be retroactively editing previous reviews either – writers have to stand by what they’ve written in this swift and changeable literary landscape, so letter-grades they remain.
Feel free to contact me and throw in your two cents! Feel free to set up a Paypal account for me and literally throw in your two cents! For the next little while we’ll be doing things in style of the classic video-game magazines of my youth.
(Don’t worry, I’ll still be brutally abusing my right to italics.)
Ps. My pre-New-Year’s Resolution is to balance my genre allotment a wee bit. Nerfing Hip-Hop, upping everything else. Or maybe the other genres could, you know, try harder. Do you know a rock band that is, you know, trying harder? @Ryeburg does, hence the following review. #FF and all that.
~ T. out.
Transylvanilla 