Whether its too soon or not, whatever. It's here if you want to share.
Share, offer advice, critique
>>7696739
>a poem
Amethysts comes pretty handy whenever you have to channel Christic vibrations....
Billy Mays Infomercial Transcripts 2001-05
(incl. esoteric exegesis by renowned Sufi cleric)
14.95 USD at Barnes and Noble
Clear Quartz irradiates Buddhic energies.
Paris attacks were a staged media event. no doubt no doubt.
As a Capricorn, I feel an instinctive attraction to Peridot.
The Role of Linguistic Fascism in the Liberal Cult of Transgenderism.
Zircon is linked to Chthonic forces and the Goddess archetype. This was widely known among the early Christians.
Should I make my place names real or fictional? I was thinking about basing most of my story in the French overseas collectivity Saint Pierre & Miquelon. No real reason why but it would allow me to use some nice Basque names and have beach scenes. Will I get sued by the 6,000 people who live there?
>Opening paragraph of my experimental novel
Entrance Boris. Light-illuminated Boris down at the table sat him. Fie, thought Boris. This one's a snoozer (Boris). Boris the newspaper is flips it up now reads it sees the article about the mayor coming to town. Light through the window reaches the eggs and the eggs in the light now Boris can see the salt and pepper on the eggs and the punctured yolk with the orange spilling and flowing and headed for the toast!
>>7696805
Use whatever you want. You won't get sued, but you will look like an idiot if you describe places where you've never been and find out they're not like you think.
At least visit the place first.
>>7696811
Unreadable
>>7696822
Good point. I was actually just planning to use the names and demographics of the place, but not so much the place itself. St Pierre and Miquelon is very small but I will need a large forest and probably mountain ranges for the story. Should I change location due to it being inaccurate?
>>7696838
Hell, you could use the place and just disregard how it is for real and fictionalize the entire place
In effect, you'd make up a new island with the same names as Saint P&M
>>7696811
this is pretty stupid but the last bit about the eggs is cool to me. like kerouac's drunk prose with a dash of autism
Do you ever feel inadequate, /lit/?
http://pastebin.com/pEwrk9fs
>>7696805
Just make sure you're consistent. I despise books/universes in which the names switch between Persian, Greek and Roman as if they're the same.
>I have just written this, is it trash?
It was late before he decided to walk home. He reeked of cheap alcohol, his head swimming in the fading light. A faint orange glow had taken up the sky, and streaks of grey and tattered clouds hung limp like ribbons in the evening haze; but down here, in between the tightly lines houses, the shadows were stretching themselves out like men waking up. Growing darker, the alleyways between the terraces began to look menacing, faint spots of light leering out like eyes, furious and bright.
Staggering over to a lamppost, he felt around in his pockets for any change he may have left. In his trousers he found a small collection of coins, and peered down at them, his blurred vision making it hard to tell their value. Fingering the edges of the coins, he managed to discern the larger ones; two 20 pence and one 50 pence pieces. Leaning down, he squinted in the half-light at the metre on the post, mumbling aloud the prices.
"£3.50 an hour." Shit.
He straightened up, looking around himself. He didn't even know which street he was on.
>>7696883
>http://pastebin.com/pEwrk9fs
Starts out fine, but gets excessively and unnecessarily vulgar towards the end. It makes the protagonist less endearing. Tone it down.
Also Lindsay Papplepick is far too Tim Burton a name. Tone that down, too.
Something short.
http://pastebin.com/VJuAnSWJ
Still learning.
>>7696894
Pls critique senpai
>>7697143
Is English your second language? I ask because some sentences had confused grammar, and while I could work out the meaning of each sentence it brought me out of the narrative.
>>7696794
>As a Capricorn, I feel an instinctive attraction to Peridot.
I relate to this
>>7697212
It is my native language. That is a devastating critique. Thank you.
>>7697250
Bit shit/purple prose
> his blurred eyes meant he could not distinguish their value
this is really overworked
you need to just straighten your writing out imo, don't try and cram so many images in there, it just comes off as clumsy and pretentious.
overworked
sorry, not gonna translate cause i cant, if anyone know polish, please rate in any way
Noc była rozświetlona latarniami, ulice przedmieścia spowite ciepłym światłem, ruch był mały o tej godzinie. Jeanne lubiła czasem odwiedzać nocne kluby, których było w miasteczku kilka; kolorowe neony lśniły, zwodząc przypadkowych przechodniów pragnących drinka po dniu pracy, oraz zachęcając stałych bywalców do złożenia wizyty. Kolorowe neony zwiastowały przyjemność, rozbudzały krew każdego kto przystanął przed nimi. Ich jaskrawy blask, odgłosy ciężkich syntetycznych bębnów dochodzące zza ścian zdawały sie szeptać słodkie słowa siejące pewność w serca wszystkich niepewnych; którzy swoich jałowym żywotem jakoby odżegnywali sie od okazji świecących przyjemnośći, jakby wcale na nie nie zasługiwali. W porównaniu do tych neonów, światła miasta posiadały mało powiedzieć - stonowane konotacje. Jeanne odczuwała miks senności, spokoju, sterylności, odwiedzając ulice spowite właśnie takim monotonnym, jednokolorowym blaskiem. Jeanne do dziś pamiętała ten obrazek - miała kilka lat, wracała wraz z rodzicami samochodem z miasta, był późny wieczór. Samochód sunął po wierzchołku wzgórza mieszczącego sie już w pobliżu domu Jeanne, gdy ta siedząć na tylnim siedzieniu ujrzała przez okno miasto w dole wzgórza, świecące blaskiem niezliczonych ulicznych latarń i zapalonych w oknach świateł. Był to jeden z najpiękniejszych widoków jaki widziała. Nie była pewna czy ujrzała to wcześniej. Może po raz pierwszy była w mieście, może po raz pierwszy rodzice z nią wracali tak późno, może po prostu pamięć wcześniejszych wydarzeń a w nich bardziej pierwotne, czystsze wpomnienie miasta w nocy znikło w natłoku upływającego czasu, niczym kropla w oceanie. Oczka w łańcuchu zasklepiały z tym większą częstotliwością im bliżej ciemności były, aż w końcu jego widoczność została brutalnie widoczność przerwana, jak nić w nożycach Parki. Żałowała utraty tych komfortowych wspomnień, gdy była mała uwaząła nawet że to jej wina. Rzeczywiście niewiele pamiętała. Z odmętów pamięci z niejakim trudem wyświetlały sie obrazy piersi matki które ssała przy akompaniamencie filmów o policjantach, czy starą kreskówke o żeglarzach która oglądała siedząc w łóżeczku. Płacz wywołany oślepiającym fleszem aparatu, czy czas spędzony w chodziku w którym unikała upadków należały do wydarzeń co do których nie miała pewności, czy zostały zarejestrowane jako niezmącone czyste wspomnienie, czy raczej znalazły sie w jej głowie z uwagi na fotografie z albumu które widziała nie raz.
>>7697373
But that's not the actual quote? Either way I can edit it. What does purple prose mean?
Is this any better?
It was late before he decided to walk home. He reeked of cheap alcohol, and his head was swimming. Above, a faint orange glow had taken up the sky, and streaks of grey and tattered clouds hung limp like ribbon. Between the tight lines of houses, the shadows were stretching themselves out, like men waking up. Growing darker, the alleyways between the terraces looked menacing, faint spots of light leering out like furious eyes.
He staggered over to a lamppost, and felt around in his pockets for any change that may be left. In his trousers he found a small collection of coins, and peered down at them through blurred vision. Fingering the edges of the coins, he managed to work out the larger ones; one 50 pence and two 20 pence pieces. Leaning down, he squinted at the grimy old metre on the post, mumbling aloud the price.
"£3.50 an hour." Shit.
He straightened up, looking around himself. He didn't even know which street he was on.
>>7696805
>>7696838
If you use the name of a real place and then make your setting noting like it people will notice and call you shit. Imagine if someone wrote a novel set in London and the main character spent most of his time looking at the city from the mountains surrounding it. Since you more or less want a fictional place I'd suggest creating a fictional name based on Basque naming conventions or something.
>>7697547
Purple prose is anything overwritten, flowery, overindulgent, trying too hard to be poetic or sound intelligent.
Not the other guy but this is better. You still get your images in there but you don't seem to be trying so hard this time. A minor point, but I don't quite get why he needs to work out the 'larger' coins. A 20p is almost the exact same size as a 1p and you'd tell them apart from the shape, not the size. Unless by larger you mean higher denomination and I'm just being a retard.
___
Been working on this for about a week now. This is my third draft and any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
http://pastebin.com/KTuhkgff
>>7697919
Thank you, and I agree that the 20p thing is a bit stupid, maybe I'll change that to 10p since it is a little larger than 20p. I'm glad the second version was an improvement, I'm very new to prose writing and I'm trying to smooth out my writing at the moment. I usually write poetry, which is why I tend to be a bit over-descriptive.
As for yours, it's okay - a bit predictable. How attached are you to the names? Jason, Kristen and O'Leary are a bit, well, obvious. Plus, you seem to flit back and forth between English and American style writing, and not really in a good way; "I went to a local record store" and "had a date with a cute girl" sound too American next to "I had a half in the Rose", which is distinctly English.
Overall, not a bad piece, but the two major problems are that you seem to be an English writer who's watched too many American films which comes through in your almost schizophrenic writing style, and that the names are not typical English names at all.
Poem I wrote for class. It's a revision on an older one, written in high-school:
http://pastebin.com/UQQyr6Nm
1/3
The Train
His crusted laces snapped against the icy pavement as he stepped out onto the platform. It was past dusk, and the moon hung low in the deep black sky. The air was sharp and cold. The snow fell softly. The lone man next to him, wearing a square hat and a long dark coat of black, said the train would be here shortly. "You must be patient," he said, staring off into the night, "the train will be here soon. You will see it faint in the distance, and it will look at first like a candle burning. That's when you will know it is there." His old voice was gentle, and indicated a sincere understanding. He felt that he could trust the man, and so he listened with childlike ears. "It will soothe you when you see it, and assure you of its certain presence. It will doubtless be a tremendous relief. But the longer you wait, the colder you'll get, and you will begin to question if it will ever actually come. You will stand chilled and shaken by this incessantly bitter wind, and feel as if your time is wasted. I urge you now, you must endure—through all the cold bestows upon you. You must allow yourself to be warmed by the mere promise of its coming, and always keep Faith in its certain arrival. For as long as you do, it will grow brighter, and rival the moon in its sizeable glory. It will appear, you'll see, as two eyes seeking—and then you will know it is coming for sure." All the while he spoke, his eyes remained fixed, as if he could actually see the train without any tangible evidence of its reality. His careful, calculated diction suggested some kind of special insight into the matter, and kept his sole listener intrigued. "It may overwhelm you though, and it may confuse you, and it may even consume you in its screeching rapture. It will certainly shake the very ground that you stand on. But then you will hear as its bells come chiming, and know it's arrived then to take you away."
>>7698049
2/3
Dense moments passed. The hostile, biting wind grew harsher, and the ever-thickening squall of snow piled up on their motionless shoulders. He just stood there, silently, staring out into the distance, thinking intently about what the man had just told him. Only the constant moon above filled the black void of the starless sky. There was something in the tone of the man's voice that made his words so compelling. They instilled in him this sense of unyielding Hope. He felt that he could believe in what this stranger had professed. Perhaps it was that he reminded him so much of his father—a prudent old man—and he could cling to that like some kind of crutch. He could not think of any reason why he should doubt his sincerity, for was he not standing in waiting as well, subject the same to the cold tyranny of winter? And yet, as he stood there, the train would not come. His lips soon cracked, and his cheeks turned a ghostly white. With every breath he took, a phantom of vapour danced ominously before him. His vision became clouded, and his knees began to ache. The oppressive cold quickly became insufferable. I must endure, he thought to himself. I must find warmth in the promise of its coming. I must keep faith in its certain arrival. But still, it did not come. It had yet to even appear as a glint on the horizon.
>>7698052
3/3
Then suddenly, clutching at his chest, the old man took a feeble step forward. The sound of his boot crunching the ice beneath alarmed his lone acquaintance. He reached out so as to support the old man, but was met with a stubborn wave of the arm. "I'm okay," he said, after a brief but ill coughing fit. "I'm okay. Just a tickle in the throat. It's a chilly night out. I'm okay." He stepped back so as to give his compatriot some space. This was the first indication of any weakness in the man's solid demeanour. It came as a strangely unforeseen shock to him. He, almost against his own will, had placed so much credence in what this man had proclaimed, it was unfathomable to think that his sage-like words could perhaps be no more than conjecture. They suddenly began to lose their prophetic value. How long has this old man been standing out here? He thought at last. There was no way any fool could be driven to such insanity unless he knew for sure what the final reward was. But how could he? It was a question he had yet to ponder, for the entire time he was so completely entranced by the man's ardent resolve. How did he know that the train would be coming with such confidence? He must have seen it before, surely. But he was too afraid to ask him. There had to have been some kind of substantial reason why the man had been waiting here so long. There had to have been some merit in what the man had so zealously claimed. Otherwise, what? What was the reason for his being here? What is the reason for my being here? The thought that no train would come to provide them with shelter from this ever-worsening, ever-permeating cold was preposterous. It was absolutely Absurd. He could not accept the prospect. He just couldn't—the consequences were too profound. And so he stood there, conflicted—shaken but faithful, uncertain but hopeful—knowing then that that was his only choice. There was no other way. He had to find warmth in the promise of its coming. He had to keep faith in its certain arrival. Or else… Or else there was nothing.
The old man broke out into another brief but violent coughing fit. He cleared his throat, then rubbed his tired eyes. His long grey beard—varnished now with a grim layer of frost—swayed ever so gently with the permanent wind. "You must be patient," he said, staring dimly down upon the tracks, "the train will be here soon."
>>7696894
I'll bite; here's a revision I put together of your writing. I'm obviously quite bias by my perspective but this is a critique:
>It was later before he decided to go home.
Why: you're already walking if you're going. You can use 'walk' in the next sentence.
>Reeking of cheap alcohol, his head fell to the light that faded by with each passing step he made.
Why: Felt disorienting to me presenting so much in a way where either didn't feel connected. I don't want to explain this.
>The faint glow of orange that encompassed the passageway seemed only to blanket the passage against the abundance of grey within the sky.
Why: abundance of grey is like saying there's clouds, and yeah. I liked it better.
>Yet it's these streaks that flourished between this masquerade of colors that found residence within this conundrum that ribbons fell separated from this mass.
Why: May as well just start rewriting it since you present so many ideas, you find yourself unable to reside on them long enough for a reader to appreciate them.
> These ligaments that fell did not come limp: they came detached, and fell past the shadows they cast to the cobbled pavement.
Actually, I'm going to stop here. Right... so that said...
Focus on connecting your ideas together like I had, but maybe give it a week or two before you touch this. Spend this time writing, reading, watching anything else and then come back to it. Take it one sentence at a time and ask yourself "Why" each time
This is how you connect your ideas into a story. It's not to say you can't have disconnected ideas, but for the main part you should focus your stories on for now is making sure the pieces are connected to pander to your reader so that they actually feel like there is a reason, or just them gaining a good feeling from reading your writing. That's all.
Lets just say that what you provided allows an editor to be able to evaluate what you've presented, and contort it into a way that is visually appealing for storytelling. Just try to learn to evaluate this yourself so you don't spend 1000$ on some dumbasses opinion who will just point out "THAT'S SHIT xdd". Find the means to see the value in what you're presenting, as writing will always be about quality>quantity.
Can I post the first page and a half of a script here? I would prefer to get actual constructive feedback rather than have /tv/ goad me into posting all that I have for plagiaristic purposes.
Are scripts literature?
>>7697919
-The first paragraph conveys the same information without the word "hey"
-8th paragraph could just be "drown it out" instead of "drown out the noise from the basement"
- "Her smile grew and she turned herself towards me"
Better to use more precise body language here like "she pointed her feet towards me"
I also recommend revisiting the description of her smile as polite in this paragraph. Perhaps it went from polite to sincere instead of just vague growing.
Their interaction as a whole seems very short. Is knowing what synthwave is all your character needed to get her attention? Maybe explore their interaction more and see what else you can find out about them. Maybe she doesn't utilize such an overt gesture as waving as she leaves, maybe she makes eye contact a last time. Or says good bye?
-"I was pleased, not just because I had a date with a cute girl. I’d be out of the house for the night and wouldn’t have to worry about the noise at all. It’d be over by the time I got home and then I had a whole month before I had to think about it again."
You could organize this better. If you want him prioritizing the noise over her, address it first and then include that he was also excited to see her.
Keep on the look out for small ways in which you can reflect your themes with the structure of your story.
-"My phone buzzed. It was Kristen texting me directions to the club."
This is an awkward transition. I don't know if it's intentional, but it ruins the floe of the story. We know it will be Kristen if the phone buzzes. How about "my phone buzzed. The place was at so and so, etc, blah blah blah."
-"I arrived at the place and saw a small group of people smoking at the top of a flight of stairs"
"When I arrived, there was a small group of people smoking at the top a flight of stairs"
I don't suggest taking that line, just a reminder to clean up your word choice and syntax. You use a lot of unnecessary words and actions that can be implied with more efficient language (if that's your preference, of course), look out for this throughout your piece.
-"as the music filled the space between bodies"
More like this
-"Kristen’s body glistened in the violent light "
More like this
"She had two glowing stripes of pink on her cheeks and her teeth glowed blue in the black light. She was wearing a short, frilly skirt of pink and green lace and all she wore above that was a strip of black tape over each nipple"
Less like this.
Your sentence after this one, "I tried not to stare", could serve as a wonderful set up for tension as we slowly learn about what she looks like through her actions, the dancing for example. Don't force the descriptions, but work them into the natural flow of the action of the story.
But what's the point of Kristen as a character outside of getting him to the dance club? It seemed like you were rushing to the ending a little bit. I like feel good, crabby old man has a heart stories. Keep writin
>>7697919
Also why did you decide to write it in first person?
>>7696794
gimmicky but I like it, more clever than most of the post ironic free verse shit that gets pasted here
>>7698157
as someone whos writing a script rn, yes.
>>7698193
Ok, just didn't want to be directed elsewhere. I'm mainly concerned with the directional writing, that is to say, the non-dialogue writing (is there a term for that? this is only my third script I'm still not very familiar with the form). I'm trying to give it an atmosphere of pretense. Will a director get it, or will they feel like they are being condescended to? You'll understand what I mean when I post the first minute, I hope.
>>7698202
I'm this guy.
FADE IN:
An auditorium. It would be called large, but for the small number of people in it. That’s not to say it isn’t a packed house; the attendees are clearly of a profession that can afford the most comfortable surroundings, and finest furnishings, provided quality of surroundings correlates directly with quality of thought. A single microphone stands at the front of each aisle, unoccupied at the moment, as the speaker hasn’t quite finished.
He (while in some professions, such as the political and manual, males dominate the ranks, women appear to have representation at this conference more in keeping with their true proportion of the general population) is the typical “absent-minded professor” looking type: frizzled, unkempt, long hair (where he still has hair), a large, greying mustache, sporting a neck-tie, blazer, and sweater-vest that look as though they’ve seen more of these conferences than he has.
He shuffles some papers about on the podium, while clearing his throat, both of which are dreadfully audible through the speakers (hidden in the walls for acoustic effect). Finally, he resumes his speech:
DR. ABBATICCHIO:
So, ladies and gentlemen, I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated that our test subjects pose no more threat to the civilian population than any other war-time soldier. That is, provided all the criteria I have specified for their provisioning are followed to the letter, regardless of circumstances. I have been convinced by our 684 successful cases that we must move to a field testing phase before we see any further significant progress on the genetic, or epigenetic, level. I thank you for your time. I will now open the floor to questions.
The applause is cordial; gone are the days of riots over Newlands’ Law of Octaves, or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It lasts for 10-20 seconds, then there is a brief ten second pause while those in the front row eye each other, to see who is most eager to stand at the microphone. Eventually, a woman probably twenty years the speaker’s junior lifts herself from her seat, and stands at the microphone on his right side. Her black hair is beginning to acquire a few silver badges of dedication, and it’s clear from her lack of make-up and the begrudging (yet horribly curious, inwardly) manner in which she walks calmly to the microphone that she has as much time or inclination to wear make-up as the speaker himself.
postean a poem i wouldn't mind sum1 mope mea pogromblin' around w/ n oeuvre mappin auwt n stuff
>>7698206
idk, the first paragraph is overly descriptive.
>It would be called large, but for the small number of people in it. That’s not to say it isn’t a packed house; the attendees are clearly of a profession that can afford the most comfortable surroundings, and finest furnishings, provided quality of surroundings correlates directly with quality of thought.
its just too fancy. if you have that much ddetail in your head, IF any director were to pick up your script, and your entire script is as complicatedly detailed as that first paragraph youre going to be continually disappointed by the director
personally, i take a "tarantino" approach where the set descriptions are short and simple, and the dialogue is the focus.
ive never used pastebin, but the format looks like it could be good for script writing. ? (literally just me thinking aloud)
>>7698242
>He (while in some professions, such as the political and manual, males dominate the ranks, women appear to have representation at this conference more in keeping with their true proportion of the general population)
this too. t b h just say crowd is mostly male with very few females
Kneeling in the rotten gut of the city,
I plea: make me empty.
Committed to never raise a kid or bury a family,
Well I commited to never smoking cigarretes.
The dirty light of this cathedral - thank God - is unfamiliar.
Today dies into memory.
Watch line blur and falter, wavering,
Join the childhood prairie,
The white-picket fence falsehood,
My merry hysteria - man is fluid
I thought;
No man is a snapshot.
Nostalghia's sweet grief for those who passed,
Then;
Regret is strife for a man who hurt you
Then;
What tethers you to those men?
Familiar faces in mind's mirrors,
Recognition of fellow travelers,
Quality of being off-brand similar,
What gives, what tethers?
>>7698247
That's actually not what it says. The crowd is only very slightly more male than female.
But your general criticisms are well taken. I was afraid it might be too florid, based on my level of character description alone.
But that isn't really what I was going for, anyway. The first speaker doesn't necessarily have to look at all like I described him in the finished product, so long as he is in keeping with the overly self-important, pedantic tone I am attempting to draw for him. I suppose I have to make this clearer
O! Come to now from thy gold reserve
thy icy fires, warm your metal on tragedy
and let joy weep;
verse did ever seek to speak
of pomp and game, hear we call,
name and sound, of that prophecy
all holy shame.
Of Satan and King
and government
and that evil thing
and heaven above
and hell below;
we mint to our economy
so that with them
by words grown, the
tragedy of Trump
for you to us
from we to know,
bitter trades of breath having heaved
to show - for without which how could
we immigrants of love live - paradise,
laboured eyes stream and flow
corporate body of this here our
enterprise.
So on, until our bubbling hearts
burst cancered with distress,
to forget. All these
things to eye and mind
are but gross real in kind.
Onwards with we go.
Onwards with we crow.
Onwards, to the tale
of our hero!
>>7698270
i didnt mean to be overly criticizing. im ashamed to say that my script isnt in least sharable yet. but i will post something else
>>7698261
i think what i was saying was there was no need for fancy grammar/wordplay i guess. it was kind of odd. t b h it read like a story, which, i guess is a good thing.
>>7698058
Pretty good.
You're writing style is a bit wordy, but really that is just my bullshit preference. In general it has a decent theme, and if this was a short story I would be willing to turn the page to find out their fates.
>>7697510
I don't know any polish.
But I found the segment "raz pierwszy" to be comical, because it kinda sounds like razzberry.
So I'll give it a 7/10 for that.
>>7698302
I also like Bernie Sanders.
But in all seriousness it is an okay poem. The beginning seems forced, still the repetition style and word choice is above the average /lit/-tier poem post.
A vignette from a series I'm writing:
Phone call overheard in the men’s public restroom, mid-day:
-Hi, yes, I’m calling to schedule an appointment with Doctor Fonzen. I was just wondering if there was an open spot in the next few weeks that you could pencil me in for.
(A stray flush in the background, some shuffling)
-The reason for my appointment?
(More shuffling)
-No, no. It’s… not for a regular checkup.
(Distracted foot tapping)
-Nothing like that, nothing serious, no.
(An absentminded zip and unzip of his trousers)
-Well, you see, lately I have been suffering some rather nasty intestinal problems. I’ve tried milk of magnesia, and some other home remedies, but nothing is working. Can you give me any suggestions on how to fix my… my um, constipation?
(...)
-Yes I’ll hold.
>>7698835
Okay....?
(1)
gertrude didn't remember why she collected used USB keys, floppy discs, hard drives, solid state drives. No doubt everyone collects, more or less, but gertrude didn't know everyone, so she wasn't sure. When she was a teenager, the babysitter LaQuisha, who was eighteen at the time, would come with USB keys and floppy discs fallen into disuse. She found gertrude's hobby fascinating, she told her sincerely. Teenagers collect pictures of certain celebrities, perfumes or lip glosses, figurines (or, for the most sophisticated among them, nudes and pictures of cocks), rarely do they collect computer hardware.
Half an hour ago she was in the Bronx, in a matrix of self-storage units with vertical sliding doors, run by bitcoin mogul Suez Splice, whose picture on Wikipedia looked like any somber middle-aged man with a beer belly you see shopping for food at Walmart in the waning afternoon, wading gentle steps to look for frozen spleens and black angus under flourescent lightbulbs. She wondered the validity of the movie trope of storage units being the makeshift abodes for wayward criminals and the possibility of one such instance with Suez. gertrude saw nothing on the sidewalks except the starved corpses walking around drunken or belly up stoned on synthetic THC spices that can be bought in any corner shop. The thought of criminal justice crossed her mind as gertrude took a deep breath and stared at the disinterested bus driver, who was the crosstown type, disinterested enough to bear with downtown drivers' traffic light up-and-go stop wait timesteal conspiracy. Every well-adjusted subject drives. Hence the traffic. It's certain that she was recovering but the cynicism hasn't receded.
gertrude(née Gertrude) is a well-endowed woman with a big set of personalities. By naming her Gertrude, her parents did not intend little Gertie to live like a middle American in the 21st century America. No surprises during her formative years, Gertrude changed her name to lowercase so as to reflect her love of typographical aestheticism and to satisfy her own contrarian politics towards the discursive importance of capitalization by a symbolic decapitation. In her sophomore year at CMU, where she majored in Human-Computer Interaction, gertrude was expelled for leading a feminist splinter group whose method of hastening revolution was throwing mad degenerate parties in the supercomputing center during weekly system reboots. After inhaling a bar of beef jerky, gertrude promptly nibbled on string cheese which she thought was too bland,so she opened her handbag, took out a small inhaler-shaped container with “Mace” written on top, and sprayed on the food so as to give the cheese a pungy flavor.
(2)
gertrude is gifted with the ability to magnetically locate seedy corners of the earth: train tunnels, overbridges, underbridges, highway exits, highway interchanges, innawoods, immigrant hostels, beauty parlors, psychiatrists' offices and bus station toilets. Like her mother had always said before she died, gertrude was born with a shiny golden dial drilled into her navel. When she turns clockwise, she can be normal and vice versa. This grants her a wider spectrum of cognition and a higher perceptive throughput. Her sense of morality encompasses time and space. Any paranoia could be helplessly on her frequency. When she was in high school, she was forced to see a psychologist because of potential signs of schizophrenia. She ended scoring perfect on both morality and pathological mental illness. She is a saint temporarily blinded by madness, or a lunatic wearing three links of chains. One thing she is not is lobotimized.
gertrude sat on the bus and thought about the hours spent with LaQuisha, the babysitter in her youth and her now dearest friend, or rather cohort. In the evening, gertrude's father would come home. He was called Frank, or that’s what his friends called him. gertrude called him Dad. Unfortunately, Frank was a stereotypical WASP business drone in the corporate world. He returned home late every night and didn't even try to sleep with the babysitter, unlike most dads. LaQuisha may have seduced him once or twice when gertrude was asleep. It would only have made sense since LaQuisha was eighteen with hip length hair and breasts perhaps too large for her slender frame. When she giggled, they bounced in sinusoidal fashion. LaQuisha was, in a sense, in many senses, in every sense, gertrude's absent mother figure. Although this Madonna-whore divide is obviously false, gertrude still believes LaQuisha transcended this dichotomy in the same way as Michael Jackson transcended black-white, young-old and male-female dichotomies. LaQuisha ended up dropping out of community college and opened a blow dry shop which was quickly gentrified by every beggar, hooligan, vagrant, wayfarer, vagabond, exile-by-choice, nomad-at-large, non-believers of the Great Truth and detractors of the Grand Metaphor, errant individuals who don't belong to the rigid modus operandi of their origins and perennial lumpens. They come and go in waves, in a sinusoidal fashion that not even the Fastest Fourier Transform can sample losslessly.
(3)
She has absolutely no idea which direction she's heading to until gertrude got a text from LaQuisha. 9001 Park Ave and no house is out of bounds for a professional cat burglar who once got caught setting up an intricate electromagnetic Christmas-light arson mechanism that turns a house into a furnace in seconds which also happens to be a seemingly natural cause of damage. gertrude met LaQuisha back on the farm when she was among the ex-felons. With the goal of helping find a place when reentering the society, the idyllic farm didn't help since it set the bar too high: people would even airbnb to live there for weekend vacations. It's one of the many integration centers co-owned by bitcoin mogul Suez Splice and his cryptocurrency cohorts as part of their non-fluid assets in the disciplinary industry for the purpose of effectively leveraging the inherent risks of narcotics in which they are heavily vested and yet still becoming more and more entrenched as bitcoin and the dark market just started its suburbanization as it didn't see the decrease of clueless middle-American teen- and middle-agers alike buying dank weed on some seedy darknet websites seemingly owned by individual dealers when in fact by the one and only iceberg Suez Splice.
This luxury asylum gave numerous ex-felons unduly and unfounded expectations and visions of grandeur. It's the production of desire that is most lethal - not desire itself - especially when the desires produced are a grand narrative invented by certain leader-writers whose positions are usually very entrenched. Mariott was going into politics; Rubino would be an architect; John Bapitista III was slated to become the pope. The most ambitious among them all would be the numerous blacks who wanted to delve into the hip hop industry.
gertrude found 9001 at the end of uncanny alley stowed away from the busy NYC foot traffic. Next to a trashcan, a door with chipped paint was wide open, not even extending indifferent welcome to whichever poor replaceable pedestrian who happens to stumble upon this poor replaceable establishment.
gertrude spotted LaQuisha on the ground, talking to a pile of trash. LaQuisha saw gertrude and stopped murmuring. Her frenetic stare made her very uncomfortable.
gertrude greeted her in a professional manner, a smiling and predictable tone of conviviality. The trashcan reeked of moist putrefaction, of leftover gastronomical experiences and partially rotten cabbage leaves basking under the hot air vent. LaQuisha had been dumpster diving.
"You must be good." Blurry-eyed, LaQuisha's voice croaky.
"What happened?"
"You haven't heard about this?"
(4)
LaQuisha took out her phone. "Writer Anon Savagely Murdered" was the headline of nytimes.com which devoted half a column to the news, although completely void of information. It contained several declarations from different personalities, including the mayor of NYC: all were quoted saying "deeply saddened" and gave heartfelt salutes to "an invaluable creative genius who will forever live in our memory."
"I know Anon." gertrude told LaQuisha, in the same tone in which one would say "I know computers" or "I know restaurants."
"He's the ghostwriter of Suez Splice's biography: Suez in Ulaanbaatar."
"Anon is not dead. I talked to him this morning in my blow dry shoppe."
"wut wut? (⊙o⊙)?"
"Indeed."
LaQuisha bit the cyanide pill hidden under her tongue and kicked the bucket within seconds time. The conversation drew to a natural conclusion.
whose fucking retarded idea was it to start numbering these critique threads
>>7698975
It contains them.
Deal with it.
>>7698146
Not being rude, but is English your first language? Literally 80% of what you quoted I didn't write... I'm going to have to use pastebin. Seriously, barely any of those quotes were what I actually wrote.
http://pastebin.com/xpNtXdmx
Beginning of a short memoir for a 300 level English class.
>I believe that my soul begins in my hands, the thumbs of which supported one another, almost dancing of their own accord. My hands are important to me, always have been. I could imagine and even endure a life without a nose, feet, ears, legs, even eyes, but a life without hands was a life unlived.
>My nails were short, I remember that much. They were always short. I'd gnaw at them obsessively, mostly to manage stress and anxiety. I think for the longest time it felt like the only thing I had total control over. Despite my self destructive tendency my hands made me feel relatively normal. I wasn't an alien, those limbs proved it. I was real. I was here. I really wished that I wasn't.
The scene (a room on a day that i remember very well) unfolds like a one line drawing. I started with my hands.
>>7699208
It doesn't make any sense and comes out contrived
>>7699226
What about this:
"It is to be set in form that such: a subtraction of character
imputes the wildest of sums; where, the total tallied, middled
behaviour counts itself spanning infinite range.
Not two people could be so unalike than he and himself,
for difference and distance tied - say Jupiter to
Mars - Old Pythagoras would need to factor the stars
and heven around this small globe"
>>7699269
I want you to tell me honestly which poets you have read, which is your favourite poem of each of theirs, why you like them, and any particular line that sticks out at you.
If I post my story here won't someone just rip it off?
>>7699659
Pretty presumptuous of you to think your work is worth ripping off. Besides, you can't copyright an idea, only the execution.
>>7699659
I guarantee it's nowhere near original or good enough to rip off.
>>7699183
That's... the point. He was showing you how he would've written your piece; what he would've changed.
Found something I wrote when I was 17, I remember it was my first time trying to write something and I gave up after 30 minutes and never went back to it. I think I made myself a slave to the structure but I didn't want to write in meme free verse like a Tumblrista 'poet'.
I'm much better now, I believe.
>Reclinate is your body as you roll
>On fields, where tall grass masks your cocoa hue;
>Yonder, racemes are seen whereto you stroll,
>Gunning through weeds dampened with morning dew.
>Berried structures lure you as they would a leopard
>Involved in the hunt…ready to attack.
>Velitations with butterflies pepper
>Various stages of our journey back.
>>7699208
drop out of the class homie
>>7698835
cool stuff.
>>7698253
change "kid" to child, you raising baby goats or something? kid sounds really bad. other than that i really like the first stanza. falls off after that. cringe at "white-picket fence falsehood" desu
>>7697510
probably neo nazi bullshit, if youre gonna be racist on the internet at least learn fucking english you stupid pole /irony
>>7699877
me again
>>7699857
you like thesauruses homie. other than that, i like it. its about a dog right. one of the only writers you see trying to use a classic structure
>>7696794
you think you are experimental but it is obvious you don't know the basics on how to write first. sounds so contrived, did you even read this shit out?
>>7696811
learn to write before you try to 'experiment'. youre trying to run before you can walk, because this is quite unreadable and boring
The sun greets me. Calm, collected, it strikes the foliage, illuminating green. Silent leaves remind me how easy it is to live. Spindly trees probe the pale sky, promising reincarnation as pink, green, orange. I want to climb one, following it to the top and back. To recline on the thickest branch and remember what it was like to dart through a rainforest. To live as a plant: in this world, but free of it.
>>7699857
Pepper and leopard is a good slant rhyme.
I was making my way down 5th avenue when I first saw him. What lay before my eyes could only be described as a miracle. His hair was like a swan painted in the most glorious light of the sun. His eyes could only be rivaled in their glow by his pearl white teeth. For a moment, I suspected I was staring at God himself.
"Mr. Trump!" I shouted, praying that he would accept me into his eternal warmth. At this point, people were watching. Cars had halted to a stop. Men in suits stared down intently from skyscrapers.
[WIP]
Jacob took careful steps as he traversed the terrain; Jagged rocks and hidden crevices waited for an opportune moment. The season had begun to change, as was evident with the falling temperature. The nitromethane molecules high in the atmosphere began to condense and dipole together, forming green-blue clouds that descended towards the surface as they amassed. Some of these fallen clouds took rest on the slopes of the distant mountains, dangling over the precipices like gaseous drapery, while others clouds, ones that did not hibernate on mountain tops, spread themselves into a thin layer at an altitude that allowed them to remain lightly connected, consequently, large portions of the sky would chameleonize into a blue-green color, making the stars less recognizable through a mild haze, a blue-green gaseous aura. Jacob, having witnessed this stratospheric invasion four times previously, was too familiar with these colors. To him, an open panorama of the universe was always preferable.
>>7700048
all that you shouldn't do while writing is right here in this sentence
>>7700452
which sentence? and why?
The back of his left ankle was chafing with each step, as his black leather shoes were slightly too large. His calves ached slightly and yer he had barely begun to walk. His chest squeezed as he realised what he was doing to himself. He began to wobble slightly as he walked and felt a little nauseous. Although only carrying a light bag his shoulders felt as though they were being pulled down at their furthest points, the rising points starting to pierce his neck. His biceps were tight and made him feel as though lifting anything would be impossible. Clopping along the sidewalk, the front of his right ankle began to dig into itself with a sharp pain. The front of his head felt as though it were being detached, a giant pair of hands pressing down on the dimples of his skull and pulling forward. Now his eyes felt shrunken and burning, but only slightly. Breathe in breathe out breathe in breathe out. His ears felt fine but the sounds of the world had begun to stutter. His anus was itchy. His pants rubbed his right thigh. He was boring himself and boring you, whoever that was. As the squeezing and the chafing and the burning and the tightness and the pulling reached a synthesis he could hear organs playing. His shirt began to chafe his forearm so he walked in front of a semi-trailer and emraced the urgings of God.
>>7700846
>yer he had barely begun to walk
Proofread mayne
>>Although only carrying a light bag his shoulders felt as though they were being pulled down at their furthest points, the rising points starting to pierce his neck
>although, though, points, points
>>and made him feel as though
>another though
>>His ears felt fine but the sounds of the world had begun to stutter
I actually like this
>>His anus was itchy
Guess Jamal wasnt clean down there? Come one mayne.
>>emraced the urgings of God
Proof read, again
Also, youre pretty much only describing what parts of his body are doing, rather uninteresting if dragged on too long.
>>7699442
What's wrong with it? I like it.
>>7700926
Did I say there was anything wrong with it?
>>7700930
It was implied.
>>7700912
I wrote it on my phone while on the train and I acknowledged how boring it was within the text
Thanks for your point review though
http://pastebin.com/tjL0Stag
Ravage me /lit/.
>>7700969
Stop being a sensitive fucker if you're going to post in critique threads. Jesus.
>>7699824
No, he's not. He quoted and critiqued "abundance of grey". Literally nowhere in the prose.
> These ligaments that fell did not come limp: they came detached, and fell past the shadows they cast to the cobbled pavement.
Again, where is anything even like this in the prose? And he's not suggesting changes, he's putting "why", meaning he's questioning the phrasing.
>>7701110
I was trying to be helpful in asking you where your influence came from so I could better understand what if my was you were trying to achieve with your poem.
>>7701122
That's not my poem
>>7698879
Well memed but enjoyably readable.
![SoL[1].gif](https://i.imgur.com/JhNtH4m.gif "SoL[1].gif")
>>7696822
>you will look like an idiot if you describe places where you've never been and find out they're not like you think
>implying
>>7696811
Interesting. Reminded me of google instant search or something...
>>7696739
I grieve to think that closeness requires some measure of distance as its preserver, if only as a safety measure, because it certainly seems as if connection, in a deeper sense, introduces a specter of estrangement; for to come into contact with someone is to change her—there is that certainty; it reminds me of a game that Robin told me about told me about one day after school, as we were walking down Annatta Road certainly twenty years ago: find a word, a familiar word, on a page, and then stare at it for a while, just let your eyes linger upon it; and soon enough, sometimes after no more than a few seconds, the word comes to look misspelled, or badly transcribed, or as if there are other things wrong with it; so I tried it once, with the most familiar word there is: love, first verb in the Latin primer, the word known to all men; and after no more than five seconds I could swear that it wasn't the same word I had always known: it looked odd, misshapen, and as if it had all kinds of different pronunciations, except the one I had always believed was correct, and had always used; and so there was dissonance...
Happiness isn't derived from formed alliances
The only measurement comes from within
In time, understanding will enlighten us
You have to know you, before you have a friend
To feel that wave of emotion, not like a tsunami
In fact, a lasting, rolling wave that brightens up the day
And lasts until you pass away. It happens to everybody
You can see it on their face as a smile on a Monday
Oh how mundane life can be if you're a nobody
But you have to live it up like you want to be somebody
Because humanity will forget about you, I promise
Give it some time and your mistakes and lies
Will fade away in time. You probably think I'm just being obnoxious
But I speak from my heart that: Just because nobody cares
Doesn't mean you have to as well. Just because they stare
Doesn't mean you have to as well. Be happy with yourself and everyone else, before the end of the story, because nobody likes a villain, not even you.
>>7702408
Gave myself 20 minutes and just wrote freely. Started rhyming, but then I guess I got a little inspired or motivated and kept writing and stopped caring
Can I get a quick opinion
>not gonna post as is in mid edit
but what would you guys think if in a 5000 word short story, about 1000 words were just a dialogue explaining the ins and outs of one company trying to put another out of business. Basically just 1000 words of plot, on which all of the stories themes hinged. Would it bore you?
>>7702394
has the makings of something interesting but it's also a little bit corny, and for my taste a tad poe faced.
Ritual
as when
leaving your parents’ house
for my parents’
as if a virgin in a white tunic once consecrated
the water spilling the culverts,
as if,
a clean leap of the stream
and landing
cleanly would rid me
of the spirits
that you placed
in this mouth,
which failed me
when I denied what happened
in your backyard,
and in these legs that misled
me both now and then and each
finger which caught in
the gravel to scrabble me up
the side, both knees
which knelt, and sourly so in
the clay
I did not look back, but only
for knowing the ghosts
you issued forth were not
assembled on the far bank
excised from me
but stuck, a shape
of frost on each
phrase which could have answered
Fuck this is probably not the best place to post this, but I feel like this board is nice enough to help me out. The prompt is "In an essay of 300 words or less, describe how your academic interests relate to your intended major and how the Pathway program will help you achieve these goals."
Up until about three years ago, I really had nothing going for me in life. Granted, I was just a sophomore in High School, but I wasn’t happy with where I was. I felt like I was wasting my potential. Somewhere along the road, I decided to take up exercising and living a much healthier lifestyle than I was at the time. It changed my life completely. I was completely clueless when I first started, but with time, came knowledge and results. It felt great to finally be doing something good. However, I never had someone to help or guide me on the way. It was hard to keep going when I didn’t have anyone to tell me if I was doing it right, or if I was just wasting my time.
People started to look at me differently when they saw how much my life had improved. People actually started to ask me to help them with their diets or workout plans or even to just give words of encouragement. I thought it felt good to improve myself, but helping others live up to their potential and helping guide them felt a whole lot better. Now, it’s a huge goal in my life.
That’s why I know Kinesiology is for me. I love helping people, and this is my way of doing it. I know the University has one of the top Kinesiology programs in the nation, and if I want to help others for a living, I want to be as well-educated as possible. The Pathways program will allow me to become the best possible student I can be. The higher education I get through this program will put me in a much better spot to support others throughout my career.
>>7702585
wut da fuck is the pathway program
>>7702585
I don't know how i feel about this. I feel like i'm not fully answering the question, but at the same time I don't want to erase those first 2 paragraphs because it gives a background as to why I want to do this as a career...
>>7702595
It's just this program that allows me to go to a my local community college and a bigger university at the same time, at the price of the community college. Until I transfer after 2 years
“Hey, are you a teenage girl?”
The second time we met, that was how she greeted me.
This time wearing her trademark dirty, spray-painted sweater, same as the last. Making her even more recognizable, she chose to wear that devilish, troublemaker smile with the shiny white, razor sharp biters.
She gave her question; cue my reply.
“Why do you think that? While I do like to be thought of as older than my real age, I don’t like to think of myself as having feminine features.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry! Allow me to apologize.
I. Am. Sorry. AH! I actually managed to say it! Now THERE, is a rarity. It’s not every day you see me apologize to someone. For your information, though, it’s the other way around. There are too many girls around nowadays who look like ten year old boys. You can never be too careful. I think it’s in style right now really. Short girls end up cutting their hair and applying special body care lotion that makes them look deceivingly young! If you ask me, it’s absolutely diabolical!”
This is crazy. She actually looked pained and bothered. Everyone has their pet peeves and personal annoyances, but this is on another level entirely!
“In fact, lots of my schoolmates are doing this! It makes me feel like I’m in grade four all over again!”
“Please…” I motioned my hands out with all of my fingers outstretched, the universal body language sign for ‘stop’, “take your mind off of it before you have a heart attack. I can assure you, I am a ten year old boy, not an imitation.”
Without being prompted to, she sat down on the sidewalk curb and started taking deep breaths, in and out, in and out.
>>7696794
holy fucking shit boyo
you've mastered trying too hard
>>7702668
jesus christ
>>7702710
ah, i'm guessing it's not good? that's the first time i've gotten negative reception on here. i'll work on it.
Hey /crit/ I have a problem.
I don't know if the story I'm writing would work as a compilation of short stories or if it would need to be a visual medium.It's sort of a modern retelling of the labors of hercules split up among 5 heroes instead of one. The gods are not the classical ones but embodiments of fundamental forces of physics and all characters have, in some way or another, inherited their gifts.
>>7702767
make it more attention-grabbing and maybe someone will
>>7702783
seriously, i posted pretty recently, you can guess which post i am, but whenever i post, i ALWAYS get a reply, because it's attention grabbing, and fun to read
>>7698214
>logos: not even once
>>7698214
I'm maybe getting many of your meanings.. very cool sensation
Feels Joycan but monolingual & actually intelligible
>>7698253
communicates some tru sadness. you misspelled nostalgia, though.
real nice ending
>>7698253
esp the last 4 lines remind me of borges
>>7698302
ANON, YES!!!
bend over and face to bloodshed, sharia law, mass rape of children, child brides, FGM, murder, public defecation, knife in your throat breath smells like hummus broken german demanding sex-access to the ones you love
open the gates :)
>>7699208
hehe talk about self-absorbed
>>7696794
I like this one
>>7700048
calm collected is a cliche
strike is a bad verb for the preceding cliche, spindly is bad enough before you render it ungodly with "probes". Sentence after that is horrible. shouldn't it be "the" rainforest? also it's free "from" it.
the good news is that writing this earned you 10XP. You're gonna have to grind before you git gud however
"I like pizza"
my stomach growled
"but I'm afraid pizza does not like me" I admitted sheepishly
>>7700983
Gets bad beginning in sentence 2
scanned a little more, this isn't even grammatically correct
+5XP
>>7702668
open a new tab and return to the place you came from
+2 XP
>>7702891
just curious, what's wrong with it? i'm assuming i made the characters too annoying?
>>7702893
https://www.google.com/search?q=trippy+art
>>7702893
>>7700846
I like this one a lot
>>7702450
I'm in love with every line of this poem except the excised one and that's probably bc I don't know what that word means
>>7702904
For what possible reason?
>>7702918
it seems to be about something. I can feel pain from the words, and this idea that this pain comes too early makes me think abt walking, something that works fine for me, suddenly stop working. I don't actually think it's boring. it's stimulating and it makes me think there is some underlying concern that would cause the character to slowly break down every pattern and system that once worked and then turn to God.
>>7702937
Interesting
>>7702943
thx for reading
I want to do you like the things I do
the nice little things I do
for myself
shaving my face
leaving a ribbon on a grave
playing a game
on the PlayStation
that's how I'll do you
Walking through a wood one day,
she traced some barren mark;
already had she come this way,
so told the wise old bark.
"Impossible" said she astray,
"Then where was I to start";
"A beginning" cracked the wise old tree
splintering her heart.
Wild, like a horse she ran
searching for her glade;
breathless till no more she can
the wise old forest say:
"You've already been this way"
>>7702952
This doesn't even rhyme, you retarded fuck.
>>7702965
this is good
reminder that nothin will ever change, or go back to the way it was
I walk outside and feel the sweet sun on my skin. It imbues me with a certain happiness and I feel it all the while I am looking at my roses who, too, absorb the sun's energy. I smell the roses as I do every morning, after I wake up. A soothing ritual.
>>7702971
mhm
>>7702976
reminds me of Kanye
gonna lift weights
gonna wait for the endorphins and wish I had money
>>7702991
why not complete the gonna trilogy
>>7702993
good idea:
gonna lift weights
gonna wait for the endorphins
gonna refresh the spaces between skin
and wish
and wish I still had money
>>7702971
this isn't really ~better~
butt it's good.
I want to do you real nice
like the things I do
the nice little things I do
for myself, that I lose
to you
shaving my face
for you
leaving a ribbon on a grave
for you
playing a game
for me
on the PlayStation machine
that's how I'll do you
that's how I do it.
>>7703016
hmm this doesn't really rhyme either sorry
>>7696739
You of all people can understand the path of horror
I can see myself in you, it is so easy to understand all your pain
The anxiety and thirst that plagues your soul
I also loved, my worship was in vain
I never kissed that idealized face
Beyond love ... the pain,
At least she was yours
I also loved, Beatriz was only my muse
Outdated verses I wrote her,
sonnets in her honor
La Vita Nuova was elixir
that time entombed.
Pestilence, corrupt, black cloak
covering my wound
ruthless feelings running
through my calcined love
The abyss, without her body,
the terrible fear of this dream.
Gagging, punishing
chained to his nightmare
How to find
answers without her voice
Everything is shattered
Damn disease,
that snatched her from me
And I feel guilty...
That infernal pact for wanting to be a God,
be more than anyone.
>>7703031
good poem rly relates to me and my shitty little life thanks brother bless up
Fire Dance
We dance around the pit.
Our voices are animal in passion,
glory,
violence,
and freedom.
We wear paint that glistens and shines,
with,
each,
wave,
of wonderful, heavenly majestic flame.
The cloth we wear is loose and dances with us then on us.
Our band is smaller then before,
some of us slain,
some of us drifted,
and some simply passed with a sigh.
But we, we few, we stay!
The air is thick with ale, meat and screams
that act as prayer, prayer for the god of wonder that sits in his throne,
in our beating hearts.
The music carries through the air, and our legs to the rhythm.
We few! Who had cried in sorrow and pain now cry in joyous
whoops, yelps and yells.
We dance around the pit, that great pit which burns great
oak, maple and yew.
We will smell like ash in the ‘morn.
But now we reek of fire and life!
>>7703042
>tfw
I gave this its own thread (sorry); I guess I can post it here(?).
I wake up and feel warm and there is tea for me downstairs to see him smiling at me makes me feel good in the only way I know sit next to him he's warm he's soft he moves up-and-down as he breathes I can hear it slightly in his chest and he leans his head on my shoulder I turn to him and everything's happy and now he's on the phone and looking out of the window and it's the morning and neither are dressed yet yet he wears a loose shirt that hangs over the peak of his bum its tight roundness is hard and gentle and powerful and held up by soft warm legs that could helix with mine under the sheets as I feel his hot entirety against me devourable and protecting the spiking curve of his lip hooks onto mine and we both are one connected and inseparable! then I am fully taken by him and collapse beneath filled with the strong hard heat of the sun my hands pull his back and I am crushed and red boiling and damp mixing with him with each pulse of the body's full flowing beat strong and liquid poured like a slow bullet into a river his chest rises and falls rises and falls rises and falls as always but it is hard and louder melodic and singing now in chorus as we both die and are reborn.
>>7703175
you are definitely a girl
(on the precipice)
Somewhere in my mind exists
a space occupied by
ocean water and toy robots.
I visited it one lukewarm autumn afternoon
(the sleepless night still wringing the shadow of the day)
-- like 50’s land tract housing built on
the precipice of an ocean abyss
the waters still shallow
it remained clear and tropical, the
white sands, soft like sweet doughs
(floating above the light hardwood floor)
a speckled parrotfish, juxtaposed
upon a sunny Jacobson chair
walking through hallways
with aquatized retro robots
(red and blue and sunbleached yellow)
multitudes of colors pushed aside
unearthing a minnow-laced Mondrian
that covered the entirety of a wall.
a screendoor lie ajar in the kitchen with
views of the ravenous coastal shelf
a wide window in the living room revealed
the stretch and sprawl of unconquered reef
a certain muteness as a nelson lamp
drifted by in the company of striped jellies--
currents that carried your hair with the kelp--
a manta ray soaring in a watery sky--
the black and white image of John Wayne
shuttering on a vintage television and the faint
stare of a Moray eel beneath its base
you have to remind yourself in
moments like these-- that you
cannot stay in such a realm of
impossibilities.
And you wake to a lukewarm autumn afternoon
with the unmistakable taste of saltwater, still clinging to your tongue
>>7703175
Awful
(Sublime)-inal Prayer
Unable to feel clearly I sit heavy with sleep, like a camel. This business is brutal when one's feeling down.
And yet I enjoy knowing my hand is moving and thus justifying the nervous dance set in me by many fathers, and Father. Oh loving, brutal Father. He who will employ the deftest calculus to human lives which always has a healthy wont to err. How I love the artistry in doom. How I love Him. How I love to die each day, full of actions taken, and never returned.
Amen.
>>7703310
Fuck that comma.
Unable to feel clearly I sit heavy with sleep like a camel.
Is much better.
Something I’ve been translating, was wondering if it reads badly or not:
Katre fell by the feet of her new parents, kissed their hands, and then gave each a long strand of thinnest linen. The mother sat the youths down by the table, put up a feast and urged them to drink. Looking at them she rejoiced, and marveled: - “Who could have foreseen that Katre would become my daughter-in-law? When my little Jonas was being taken to be christened, she was the one to lift the gate, already a sturdy lamb. What can you do, it must be the will of God. You rewarded us richly: The cloth is so thin, weaved and wrought over, I know it.”
Katre swallowed the first gulp of the feast, as if caulking the words of her mother-in-law with scalding peppers. The father, sloshed and blue-nosed, dinned over the dirt floor, clenching his fists and shouting in a hoarse voice: "As I say, it will be!" Then, sliding behind the table from another side, sat next to his daughter-in-law. Lighting a smelly pipe, and leaning in close he whispered: - “My land is gold, my life is overflowing with everything; you’ll roll as a kidney in fat, you'll be fed, just listen to me alone. Small is your dowry, a tiny part. Jonas could have gotten more elsewhere, because after all he's a man built like an ox, made out of honey. How they put you down in front of him, didn't help a bit, it must have been a fortune promised to you. To that vexation let’s drink some vodka!”
Through the smell of the pipe, and stench of vodka Katre could not endure anymore. She turned to her husband who with a drooping lip, and dripping drool was indeed fast asleep! A chill went through Katre, saddened; she saw what friends she had gained to accompany her unto the grave. She grasped clearly that one real father and a sole beloved mother she had, who, even though were loving, handed her away without mercy into such grubby hands. Quick she was to contrive to call her new parents 'pappy' and 'mammy' in Polish rather than call them parents.
The specific difficulty was that she was a Native American, the homeless woman by the highway whose living habits had become a bit of a problem for the people of Austin, or rather that she at least gave a convincing enough impression of a Native American to make the act of our evicting her from her wigwam (or “shanty,” depending on her actual heritage) a socially delicate operation to say the least.
For poor Sheriff Mansfield, who had been elected this last cycle on a platform of community policing and individual tolerance and, most of all, an embrace of Austin’s heterodoxic (which is to say, Weird) elements, and who was himself a proud POC that had publicly decried (through his campaign twitter account with 458 followers) each and every fresh abuse of power by the nation’s police force against suffering minorities, who had bravely tweeted the familiar photos of Black/Hispanic/Occasionally White young men crumpled on the curb with the first pocks of red starting to show through their shirts, she was a nightmarish test of the principles he campaigned on.
>>7702421
No, because 1000 word is literally nothing.
>>7698049
His shoelaces completely snap yet the scene continues as if nothing happened
You can't put in someone's shoelaces snapping as if it's a daily occurrence
Overall this is bad. You put way too many words into your description of things.
This is me being sincere,
Telling you sincerely that
Fear is that baby in your veiny belly.
And you've got cockroaches
In your hair, honey.
If you'll permit me, I will
Remove them.
I am familiar with the road ahead.
I used to suck on my mother's tits
Which hurt her.
She'd look at me with disgust
And one day placed a bucket over my
Head, saying, ''There.''
I am afraid of buckets,
And these cock-
Roaches are screaming much too loudly.
>>7703378
Ah yeah you're right. What'd you think of the piece?
>>7704076
His bootlaces are undone, and they snap against the ground as he takes a step. How could that be so difficult for you to comprehend? Have you never walked around with laces undone?
1/2
Something I just scrapped together based on a dream I had. I'm gonna turn it into a short story.
The Cat
N had a sassy cat which he loved dearly. The little black creature, though, had been burdened from birth with an unfortunate affliction of the joints that left it completely locked-in and immobile. It always seemed to be in pain. The poor thing was entirely dependent upon N's unwavering care to live a comfortably tolerable existence. But N was to leave town on business for an indeterminate amount of time, and would need somebody to take care of the cat during his indefinite absence. It was no easy task, and required hours of tireless effort to look after the little demon. N asked R, his neighbour, only for convenience sake, if he would kindly take the job, and R, being his neighbour, wishing to avoid any future disgruntlement between them, dutifully obliged. R was not the hospitable type though—unemotional, rarely displaying concern for anything beyond his immediate interests—and could not have been prepared for what this commitment entailed. The cat was kept in a small crib built for an infant, of white ivory stilts, and when not wrapped up cozily in layers of warm white sheets with just its scruffy little head poking out, lay there nakedly exposed—a ratty black, crippled and decrepit bundle of bones. It was a sad sight, but R didn't care much, and expected that he would visit it twice a day to tend to its basic needs, and proceed with his life as he always had. It became apparent quickly that things would not be so simple.
"Obviously because it can't move, it can't eat proper cat food, so you'll have to feed it from a bottle. I've left twenty dollars on the hutch to pay for milk until I return. If I'm not back by the time it runs out, I'll make up for all the extra expenses when I am," said N, adjusting the collar of his long black overcoat as he prepared to depart. The low brim of his black trilby cast a dim shadow across his pale face. "Oh, and if you touch the turntable, be careful. It's old and expensive. And those records—they're difficult to replace… Anyway, thanks again. I'm sure in time you'll grow to really love the little monster." He opened the door and stepped out into the foggy new dawn before him, slamming it shut behind him with a startling violence.
>>7704436
2/2
Imagining that the sound must have disturbed the cat in the other room, R went in to check on it. The cat lay absolutely still in the centre of the crib, bundled up like an Eskimo in a cocoon of white bed sheets. He noticed immediately as he entered the room the piercing, judgemental gaze of the cat's sharp yellow eyes as it stared at him with contempt from within its stilted throne. They looked as if to tell him to fuck off now—you are not welcome in my divine presence. R approached with caution. "Hello…," he said hesitantly, peering down at the face from above. It just stared back at him with those scornful eyes. He decided not to say anything more after that, because talking to a cat, he determined, was stupid, and it probably wasn't going to say anything in return. He wasn't sure if the cat, in its feeble state, was even capable of uttering a meow. The thing proved otherwise, however, when R reached down in an affectionate attempt to give its tattered little head a scratch, and it responded by producing the most wretchedly shrill screech he had ever heard from such a creature. He almost leaped back in astonishment at just how utterly and unexpectedly disgusting the sound was. His hands clasped to his mouth, R could think of nothing to do but stare wide-eyed at the little beast within the cage; and it too, recognizing the look of disgust on his face, stared back with even more vigilant resentment. Well, aren't you just deathly… thought R. Slowly easing his hands from his face, he studied the cat's penetrating eyes. He concluded after careful inspection that there was intelligence behind those eyes, and that the cat must have him, his disposition, and the entire situation completely figured out by now, within the constraints of its brittle little skull.
>>7704440
Lot of weird word choices that don't match the voice. Sounds contrived.
Content is also off. I don't know why I should care for this cat since it's been described as a demon. Nor do I know why N cares so much for it other then "he loves it dearly".
Burn or hide this then rewrite it. Not sure if there was a single passage I agreed with.
>>7704957
It's the first three paragraphs of what will be a much longer story about a man babysitting a quadriplegic cat that talks and likes Jazz music. Do you think my intent in writing this is for you to care for or relate to the cat?
>Lot of weird word choices that don't match the voice
Like what? And what is the voice?
I'm worried this story is moving way too slowly. I'm 6 pages in and still haven't gotten to the first fight. This is supposed to be a compilation of myths but it's shaping up to be something a lot bigger than I can commit to
Maxwell opened his bedroom window and was not half surprised when a pigeon swooped in and landed on his desk. “My word,” the bird cooed, “what excellent manners. I didn’t even have to knock.”
Maxwell gaped at the pigeon on his desk. “Did you just talk?”
“No,” the rock dove replied, “I’m fairly certain birds don’t talk. You should probably see a therapist about that.”
“Get sassed by a pigeon, that’s something to cross off my bucket list.” Max sighed. “Would you please tell me what it is you’re doing here?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” the pigeon muttered, coughing into the crook of his wing. “I am Rasul al Hadiqa and I bear you a message from my master of masters. Toth Tetragrammaton — hallowed be his name — gives you his greetings and would like to offer you a proposal.”
“I’m sorry, Rasul — can I call you Rasul? — I’m a little too old to be cutting deals with talking pigeons.”
“Like mother like son.” Rasul responded.
“Excuse me,” Maxwell said incredulously, “Are you implying you know my mother?”
“I imply nothing,” the pigeon said proudly, “and I know much more than her. I, my good sir, know how you were born, and why you are as you are now. Tell me, have you ever wondered why your eyes are like that?”
“I suppose you’re not going to say its genetics.”
“You would be correct. However, if you want to know the truth you are going to have to accept my master’s deal.”
“And that deal is?”
“We need you to kill a rat.”
Max’s jaw went slack. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. A few blocks from here there is a wine store called Calydonia Wines. The old man who owns the place is a friend of the pigeons and feeds us bread every Sunday morning in the park. A rat has invaded his store and threatened his business, a slight we cannot allow. Bring me the body of the rat and I will tell you everything.”
“So that’s it?” Maxwell asked. “All I need to do is kill a rat? Sure, why the hell not? How hard can it be to kill one damn rodent?”
>>7705067
The exaggerated conversation sounds like you're imitating or making fun of someone; not that fun to read.
>>7705339
Which lines would you change?
This is the first time I've ever written anything, any criticism would be welcome.
The walls and gates of the city of Constantinople, or Miklagard as Thorkil called it were unlike anything I had ever seen on our travels so far. Even the cluster of wagons in front of the city gates carried more wealth than the entire market in Kaenugard. The walls were massive and sprawled from north to south walling of an entire peninsula. We took a route that took us to the front of a gate Thorkil called the Golden Gate. The gate itself was impressive and large enough to allow three wagons riding abreast through it. Above it I saw beautiful statues of four gilded horses dragging a chariot with a bronze rider. Thorkil said it depicted the great King of old that built this gate and the huge walls that surrounded it. However, only one of the great doors stood open and was heavily guarded by men with big axes, they seemed to let few pass. Thorkil warned us that the new King of this city was paranoid of spies getting inside and that his paranoia was justified since the Kings of this land often found a bloody end. Thorkil called me foolish when I said that Kings should be glad to die in battle and said, “The kings here don’t like leading their men into battle themselves, they mostly just stay in the city and even then rarely leave the palace.”
>>7705058
>Do you think my intent is for you to care or relate to the cat?
No but it tosses N out as a character. The entire premise has no effective build up and feels like a synopsis. What's worse is how forgettable it all seemed. I would have much rather preferred no explanation and just tossed me into the house with the cat.
>word choice
"...affliction of the joints..."
"But N was to leave town for an in indeterminate amount of time... Need someone to take care of him during his indefinite absence. "
"... Little demon"
"... Little head"
It feels contrived or poorly thought out, like you're trying to force the narrator to set the scene by reading off a crib sheet. Either draw us in or put us in the moment. Currently it feels stuck between the two.
>voice
Again, it's a synopsis or perhaps a trailer to the story. The foreshadowing is given to us as is almost every detail.
"it had become apparent quickly that things would not be so simple. "
"he had concluded after careful inspection that there was intelligence behind those eyes... "
Overall, it's a flop of a start. There's no real hook other then the sort of bizarre situation. There's no real flowery writing to keep any captivating imagery. There is no real substance to anything. It's all flat and trying to convey as much information as possible in 3 paragraphs.
Rewrite it with a more mystique to it. Show us the world and the conflict. Add anecdotes or anything to make these characters more than just literal letters.
To add something positive, I think the situation and the structure is pretty good. The dry narrator can be useful in a grand Budapest hotel sort of way.
>>7705448
Sounds like a yelp review
>>7705488
So tone it down on the descriptions?
>>7705448
I appreciate that it's a very short passage and your first time writing; it's not bad, but dry.
A few little things:
>The walls were massive
Redundant when you then describe how they sprawl.
>The gate itself was impressive
>I saw beautiful statues
Replace 'impressive' and 'beautiful' with some details on what the gate/statues look like, then the reader will fill in the gap on whether they're impressive/beautiful or not.
>Thorkil called me foolish when I said..
Unless this happened previous to when this passage is taking place, write this up as an exchange. Since you're writing first-person it'll help to give your writing a voice.
>>7705542
Thank you, this is good advice.
>>7705496
No add to them. There's no real story telling involved, just brief mentionings of what you saw and did. By yelp review, I mean you just gave information instead of telling a story.
For example the first few sentences could be rewritten as :
"I stood in awe of the towering walls that spanned as far as my eyesight would take me. It must've encapsulate the entire peninsula or perhaps even farther. The thought was numbing and difficult to imagine but certainly easy to believe. I asked how wealthy Constantinople is, gawking at the carts, adorned in market goods, dotting the face of the city walls.
"Miklagard," corrected Thorkil in a hard tone ", and very. Let's move." He led me through the thick brush before the wilderness spit us out at a monstrous gate. "
That was a pretty shitty adaptation and left out plenty of good opportunities to give even more detail. I probably didn't even preserve a lot of what you had in mind. Regardless, the point is if it's important, describe it. Show the reader how breathtaking something is. Nothing is just "big" nor did you just "take a path".
>>7705560
Great advice also, thank you.
Dujka miraba su reflejo en el agua esperando que algún pez pase y coma su desproporcionado ojo reflectivo. Encontrabase en el gran puente “Dilusiones“ a medio pasar de su humilde hogar, la noche ya se habia pintado en el hambiente hace rato y por los encandilados caminos no había rastros ni de una rata. Su sonrisa reflectiva se vio interrumpida por una gran piedra atinada a su entera cara haciéndole caer, sin posibilidades algunas de agarrarse, hacia las profundas aguas pardas que formaban el puente. Ya incorporándose en su hoyo acuático se tapo los ojos por la luz incandenscente mientras que vio formarse en el puente una silueta deformada por lo que reconoció como un gorro.
“Dame tu mano“ Dijo este “ Y poseeras delante tuyo una riqueza abrumadora, mujeres, tiempo, oros rozando a diamante. El mundo entero y a tus pies ajustados a una grande silla de plata.“
is this as painful to read as it is to write?
The boy’s path was not a long one. Two avenues west and five blocks north brought him to a small winery on a corner with a facade of stained oak. A gate of steel had been pulled down over the door and windows, and through the slats Maxwell saw that the interior was dark as asphalt. He would have to return tomorrow, he thought. In his pocket a nagging hum called his attention away from this empty pursuit.
positricPersona: hello Rook
positricPersona: are you locked out?
dipolarDisoder: Oh, it’s you again, the stalker.
positricPersona: it might be a bit hard to believe, but I assure you I am no stalker
positricPersona: everything I know about you I have learned through entirely socially acceptable means
dipolarDisorder: Did those “entirely socially acceptable means” involve a telescope by any chance? Because unless you were tracking the gravitational lensing of a black hole conveniently located behind my head and just happened to learn my whole life story, I would say that doesn’t really qualify.
dipolarDisorder: Though it would explain why I can never keep my hair from sticking up in the back.
positricPersona: nope! ‡)
dipolarDisorder: Then how, pray tell, did you know I was locked out?
>>7705448
>>7705542
>>7705560
Took your advice to heart and did some changes, what do you think?
The walls of the city of Constantinople, or Miklagard as Thorkil called it were unlike anything I had ever seen on our travels so far. I stood gawking at the huge walls laid before me, parallel to the walls ran a ditch, and then came a set of twin walls, with the front one smaller than the one behind it, the walls were peppered with large towers at regular intervals. I stared into the distance but could not see them ending. “Thorkil, how long are these walls? I asked. “The wall spread for miles, from coast to coast on both end of the peninsula the city is built on, it is said they are the greatest walls in the whole world.” “If you think these walls are high, wait until you see where they worship their god.” I did not doubt his word. When we got closer to the gates I felt like I was being swallowed by the mouth of a huge beast, as the gates was flanked with huge towers where archers could fill any attacker full of holes before he even reached the doors. The passage through the gates was large enough to allow two wagons riding abreast through it at the same time, and above it I saw statues of four gilded horses dragging a chariot with a bronze rider. “Who is that?” I asked. Thorkil sighed “that’s Theodosius” “Theo-what?” I said, but Thorkil interrupted me, “he built these walls and this gate, now shut up and keep moving.” In front of the gate was a cluster of merchants eager to get in. Each of their carts held more wealth than what probably passed through Visby in a single year. However, only one of the great doors stood open and it was heavily guarded by men with big axes, they seemed to let few pass. Thorkil warned us that the new King of this city was paranoid of spies getting inside and that his paranoia was justified since the Kings of this land often found a bloody end. “A king should not be scared of dying in battle, there is no greater honour.” “Idiot,” Thorkil said harshly, “the Greeks worship their one god and their priests speak only of forgiving your enemies not fighting them, the last king here was hacked to pieces in his own bedchamber and I doubt he’ll do any more forgiving.” I wanted to ask something about the god of the Greeks but we had run into the cluster of merchants by the entrance. Now I saw what the problem at the gate was, the guards refused to let the merchants’ bodyguards pass through the gates with their weapons, insisting instead that the city guards were more than adequate to guard their wares, but the merchants were unconvinced and refused to be disarmed.
“Can we talk about this later?” He shifted the weight of the urn from one arm to the other. “Jimmy is getting heavy.”
“Come on.” She waved him on as she walked towards the stingray parked nearby. “You don’t have to walk home.”
“Fine. But I’m driving.”
A little while later, behind Jimmy’s house, Fennius, Akiko, and the robot watched the wind create waves across the field of tall grass. Fennius decided it would be fitting for Jimmy’s ashes to be scattered on the land lived on for so many years. There were over two hundred acres of flat land that stretched as far as the eyes could see. For James Abernathy’s final send off, Akiko had taken some wrapped colorful ribbons she found in a box marked “Christmas” in his house and tied them around the frame of the robot and the urn. The JS94 stood with red and green garland around its arms, body and legs. When fennius squinted his eyes and looked upon it, the robot resembled what he imaged robots would dress like if they attended Mardi Gras. Akiko said it made things more “festive”. The best plan Fennius could manage was to give the robot orders to scatter the ashes evenly across the acreage and bury the urn when finished. It seemed like the decent thing to do for a friend.
But for the moment, the three stood together on the blustery plain, no one saying a word. What few clouds there were in the sky paid them no attention and sailed along towards destinations far away. A human, a machine, and an entity that was something in between stood fast on the spinning planet and let the October wind slip past them. His coat, her hair, and the bot’s ribbons swayed in a breeze that brought no consolation. Akiko broke the silence by saying some kind words about Mr. Abernathy as Fennius removed the lid and gave the urn to the robot. The mechanical hand reached into the urn and withdrew a pinch of white powder. The wind dissipated it in a small puff, the particles slipping away on the wind.
And then, with Fennius’ command, the bot started walking, spreading ashes like a flower girl at a wedding. As it got smaller in the distance, Akiko began to sing. And projecting from somewhere in her emitters, the sound of accompanying piano music helped her along. Fennius didn’t know the song or words, something about wanting to rule the world and that good nothing lasts forever. In this moment of weakness, it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard in his life. The two stood side by side watching the clouds. When she finished the last note, the robot was a thin, grey smudge on the horizon.
“That was perfect.” He said. “Did you write that?”
“No. It’s from a popular song of the later twentieth century. Do you know it?”
“I’ve never heard it before.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnOhYG0pMQ
added more to >>7705711
dipolarDisorder: And how, for that matter, do you know anything about me?
dipolarDisorder: My interests, my eating habits, my personal beliefs and private fantasies!
dipolarDisorder: You even knew that fucking bird was outside my window!
positricPersona: I only know what you yourself told me ‡[
dipolarDisorder: What fucking universe do you live in, because it sure as hell isn’t mine!
dipolarDisorder: Also that emoticon is really starting to piss me off.
positicPersona: Max…
positricPersona: for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
positricPersona: I know you’re confused, and frustrated, and maybe even a little bit scared of how quickly the weirdness is starting to pile up.
positricPersona: God knows I was when I was in your place, but I had my faith to hold on to, and a friend I knew was watching out for me.
positricPersona: I know you don’t have the same faith as me, but I want you to know I have your best interest at heart, even if I can’t tell you everything
positricPersona: I know these are just words to you, but please believe me, and let me guide you
dipolarDisorder: Dammit! Fine!, what do I do?
positricPersona: around the corner there’s a nondescript beige door. It leads to the back room, and it’s unlocked. that is your entrance
Maxwell followed her directions and found that the back door she had mentioned was not merely unlocked, but propped open with an empty soda bottle. It was dark inside, small paws could be heard scuttling. The phone in his hand buzzed one last time and went silent.
positricPersona: oh, and Max? be careful, the rat is a lot nastier than you’re expecting
—positricPersona disconnected—
Maxwell pushed open the door, cursing his own gullibility, and crept in wondering why he was doing this. By the light of his phone’s camera flash he wandered, listening for squeaks and skitters. The hall led to a break room which proved empty, and from there his path followed into the store proper.
Something creaked at his side, and before he could turn to address it he was struck to the to the floor and the phone was knocked from his hand.
It was a rat and it was not a rat. It had the stringy fur, buck incisors and long pink tail of every rat he had ever seen, but he had never seen a rat like this. It was the size of a wild boar and had tusks to match. They looked hewn of wrought steel and fairly sharp. It drooled and snarled as any beast with such teeth would and as he looked into its eyes Maxwell knew the first mortal dread of his life.
>>7705809
Two things: Never name anyone Jimmy (or anything ending with two of the same consonant and a y for that matter), and second, your descriptions are way too festive and nonchalant for what they're doing
>>7706312
Thank you, that's the most helpful advice I've ever had from a person who made a pic of my own character calling me a fag
>>7706346
Not anon but I too wouldn't even find the strength to be mad at someone who made a meymey picture just for me, good on you mate.
>>7706381
Ah. Well I wonder whether or not it's appropriate for him to talk that way. He's basically the messenger slave of a theocrat's court. I wonder it would make sense for him to be parroting his idea of good manners
>>7705737
Saying the words "wall" over and over again in the first few lines really hurts. Also the very first sentence sounds like a discovery channel documentary
sample
Tacit men are of course easy to read with their furtive glances and nervous hands. Each one wiping their brow simultaneously, sweat soaked handkerchiefs forming tiny dead seas, below their fishbowl hats. As we look down on their sweaty nervous faces and their sweaty nervous hands, we laugh, a cackling sound, and go about our day. They’re so easy to read, and no one is buying their book.
>>7707506
patrician
>>7696894
new to lit, but this reminds me of Don Aman by Slint
cool anon
1607. The streets were getting worse. The stench from the corpses was becoming unbearable at this point, and the men had stopped showing up to work. Dmitri made his way through the busy streets, people fleeing, crying, it was all the same to him, the only thing he could afford to have on his mind was his family, or what was left of it.
He stops, looks back, "Aunt Ivanna?" Who could tell at this point, all the corpses looked the same, and he couldn't waste time on the dead when the living was still in need. he continued walking home, trying not to get into the business of others. Everyday beggars, widows and even whores demanded refuge with the wealthy Dmitri, and every time he turned them down he knew God lost a bit of patience.
But now was the worst part. The church, with the old priest Boris, always chanting of the end times and revelation. "Do not fear, my brothers and sisters, for this is not the end, but only the beginning. The Poles are not our condemners, but our saviors. They have come to show us our decadent and evil ways, open your heart and embrace them!" Every time Dmitri had to make his way past the church, Boris would stare him down, and every time Dmitri's face filled with shame. He clutched his cross harder, as if this would redeem his piety.
>>7701112
He is suggesting what he would change, and telling you WHY he'd change it.
>Why: abundance of grey is like saying there's clouds, and yeah. I liked it better.
>>7708099
Should be "the living were still in need," rather than "was." Cut the date, it's pointless to open that way, drop it in later if you must include it at all. I assume this is a plague story, yeah? What happens next?
>>7705711
>>7705961
I assure you, it's much more painful to read than it was for you to write. The non-dialogue bits are fine, but you really nead to come up with a better way to write text messages or whatever these are supposed to be.
>>7705809
Love it. More? Context?
>>7708162
Actually not a plague story. Its about the Time of Troubles in Russia, the main character (Dmitri) is a leader of a Russian underground rebel force. The story is about him trying to protect his family from the various antagonistic forces
>ywn be good enough to write your own book, and even if you were, it would never get popular and read by many
He sat inside and stared at the walls, coloured an almost ‘stained’ yellow, crying for a new coat. As he ate his little soup with stale bread, his cigarette smoke performed the dance of a young child’s ribbon as it made its way to the painfully bare bulb that cast the darkness in the room astray. Apart from the table, chair and light, the room was otherwise empty. Jacques saw no need to fill a room with things he did not need nor like, as they just became unnecessary clutter. In a sense, emptiness made the room as full as it needed be. Maybe if he were ever to make anything of himself, they would return to this room in an effort to retrace the footsteps of greatness. For what purpose this would serve he was not sure, but he knew he should at least probably paint the walls.
Please critique as hard as whatever I don't mind, the fact you replied is good enough.
>>7708232
I find your second sentence to be drawn out and a bit boring to be honest. Overall it was enjoyable I guess. But I wouldn't want to read more.
>>7708285
Thanks anon, I didn't like the second sentence either but didn't know what else to do. Glad that someone else said it.
>>7696739
Galen swept the airstreams upon his Stallion. His white Majestic horse neighed and from his nostrils spout fire. Galen lifted his Rod of Magic into the air and cried "Euuuureeekaaaa!" and the heavens part, leaving an opening.
Meanwhile, in downtown Chicago in the 80's in a rundown condominium Galen Brunner was smoking a cig looking down at the traffic. But fuck that, let's get back to Galen 1.
CHAPTER II
Galen peered through the opening and saw a giant Dildo. The Dildo of the Skies or The Dildo of Significant Girth. The Sight alone made Galen meek and he wanted to submit to it's Girth like so many Great Men before him. If it was not for the Powerful Shaft he was holding our story would end here and Galen would not be reborn many years later eeking out a living as a small-time hustler and drug-courier in downtown Chicago in the 80's. Looking out a window. But fuck that. Let's get back to Galen and The Dildo in the Skies.
CHAPTER III
Luckily for Galen(1), his Rod of Significant Power in his Hands started illuminating blue and lightblue over and over and the Dildo lost it's girth and shriveled up. This was Galen's job since he was very little, ye he indeed had grown up for this purpose and the staff had been handed down to him as he was the only Warrior of the M'kembe tribe(in Andalucia) to be brave enough to go up to the Dildo and truly he was the warrior foretold.
CHAPTER IV - THE TIME-SPACE FRACTURE
The M'kembe tribe(in Andalucia) was a somewhat primitive peoples in eastern Africa in the 1600's but highly advanced when it came to sorcery. A time-space fracture had opened in the year 2100 when Humanity had been Conquered by mechanized Dildo's(Blessed be Thy Names) and everyone just competed about being the most gay. Because of the regression of the human spirit a time-space fracture was opened by friendly aliens(whom the M'kembe's had rapport with) whereupon they Signified humanity's obsession with mechanized dildo's(the latest models having an AI) into a Giant Dildo and sent it through the time-space fracture hoping the Ennobled M'kembe would be able to defeat it in this space-time continuum and thus End Humanity's Downfall.
THE END. I'VE SPENT YEARS(minutes) ON THIS.
>>7708345
Actually, let's just call that BOOK I. BOOK II should be coming up soon.
After he was finished he hurried back to the elevator that he'd grown so accustomed to over those twenty years, back to its assuring yellow light and gentle hum. After his purpose had been fulfilled he descended back to the streets and got to work getting home.
In two dozen paces he'd made his way to the usual alley, and the three figures emerged as they usually do. One with the regular tire iron, the other two appeared to have swapped items, typically the leader of the group held the pistol, and the man to his right held the knife, only this was out of the ordinary.
Thomas had grown as attached to these men as he had his elevator.
"Alright, cough it up."
Thomas reached into his pocket and retrieved his wallet, withdrawing one hundred dollars, one ninth of his weekly pay, and handed it to the man with a smile. They nodded at each other and Thomas went on his way, happy with the conclusion of his Friday.
>>7708345
BOOK II - THE DRAGON ON HIGH
Preface
As some reader's might remember Galen had defeated the Significant Dildo in the Skies and were now on his way back to A'Sharraf(in Andalucia) were his village-brethren were yearning for his return. As Galen had left the Battlefield the dildo had shrunk, the fissure in space-time had opened and closed(with the dildo returning to the 2100's and the People's of that age had realized that Day that there was more to life than Mechanized Dildo's(with AI's).
CHAPTER I
This day became known as Independence Day and a new law was drafted forbidding mechanized dildo's(with the possession of a mechanized dildo with AI granting the death penalty). However, Galen II, the very reincarnation of Galen I had other plans...
CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNING
Even though Galen were just a small-time hustler in Downtown Chicago he had discovered a glitch in the Matrix by accident. It seemed that if he held a cigarette, took a few blows while peering downwards into the streets at a certain angle he could see Directly into the Underworld and Strange Sights he could peer. On one day, he saw how to construct AI's and it was as if the schematics or blueprint of the machine imprinted itself upon his brainwaves. For some reason Galen was obsessed with Dildos and it was for this reason that Galen decided that he would make the first mechanized dildo with an AI. In his vision he peered how his invention would eventually lead to a world where Humans had been Enthralled by mechanized dildos but he also saw how it would first make him rich. At that time Galen was poor and struggling to make ends meet so while popping a dildo into his ass he rejected the whole of humanity for his own success.
THIS WAS THE END OF THIS BOOK. PERCHANCE A NEW ONE MIGHT COME OUT -- IF THE READER LACKETH.
>>7708476
it's bland, it's boring, it's a polished turd seeing your mother on the sidewalk, it's basically a puke in the waste basket. hehehehehehehehehehheheh
(i just downed a whoole jim beam, sorru, good to meat ye.
sleep tihgtm my ittle son,
see ya soon
, best regards,
the patrician bastard,
hold on, let me get my bourbun out of my closet, fuck you.
xcya
>>7708232
I like it. i agree wit hte other anon about your second sentence, itis definitely drawn out, i understadn this is intentionally bland, but that second sentence seems unintentionaly bland. i like the line about retracing hius steps to greatness, though, what is he involved in that can lead to such a greatness?
>>7696811
i actaully kind of liked it
Okay here's a poem about someone. See if you can work out who it is!
http://pastebin.com/QHmAhyaa
Also here's a reading if you don't want to feel lonely:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0OalNKWmjph
>>7708506
Thanks for seeing the polishing.
>>7708514
Nothing. He basically does nothing in/with his life until he shoots himself. But he wakes up as someone who is great and wealthy etc.
>>7696739
The red clay road was perforated with holes. Grimey, crimson puddles splattering beneath the rattling wheels of filled carts: corn, hay, flour, money, rock and lead. Forest’s bushes edging at the rim of the town; brays of animals from the brush heard when gas lamps scratched at the sunken moon— threatening with each inch of root, each animal sounding, to grow over the road. The town a scab over rusty nature.
>>7708162
Sorry anon. I tried. I guess that this is the push I needed to finally scrap this draft and start over from page 3.
Okay, this is attempt... 4?
The boy grew quickly, as every child is wont to, but though his boy and mind changed over the years his experiences never did. Though sharp of wit and quite charismatic he soon found himself confined to the outer ring of whatever society he entered into. His eyes were hidden easily enough through long bangs and black spectacles, but his hair and complexion forever marked him as something which was other.
With poor sight and skin which grew burnt even under the autumn sun, he spent little time outdoors, and while few friends gathered around him they would always eventually part ways. Sooner or later he would be seen without eyewear, and when that happened he would once again be alone.
The adults in his life were no less cruel, though through their worldly experiences they learned to hide it in false compliments and unspoken addendum. “We expect great things from you,” they told him, great, terrible things.
In time the boy retreated from the waking world and drew in to the layers underneath. Through the internet he found anonymity, and a world without eyes, hair and skin. The real world was no longer the one he lived in, it was nothing but a bad dream.
With time, Maxwell grew callous. On the internet venom was a dialect, in the real world sarcasm and condescension became his shield. It was inevitable that sooner or later, he would draw someone’s ire.
The boy left school a few seconds before anyone else, as was his custom, but he was unaware that a pursuant had joined him. A boy one year his senior and build of fat or thick muscle had crept to him bearing in hand a pilfered stapler. Maxwell heard the steps behind him but turned too slowly to avoid two blows to his crown and cheek.
The wounds throbbed and bled as his heart pounded in his chest. Unarmed and outmatched he fled, only to be grabbed by his bag and restrained as blows rained upon. Slipping his arms free of the straps and planting the sole of one foot in the older boy’s groin he stumbled forward with momentum but not footing.
He landed prone, his sun spectacles missing, and scrambled to regain his footing. As he took one last look behind him he saw the older boy fling the stapler at his face. In a moment of panic he threw his hands up, expecting to feel the bunt pain of steel and plastic, but none came. The stapler hung in the air in a way it was never meant to. The world was quiet there, and then the stapler dropped.
>>7708771
Not bad, though I would change the words "forest's bushes edging" They seem awkward
>>7696811
what the fuck, this is great.
Extract from an SS I'm writing loosely based around an Office I used to work in, only thing you need to know is that Tom Batton is an account manager, i.e someone who wines and dines the clients.
She left the Tesco’s.
Sitting pretty, just across the road, a BMW was chugging wan silver vapors into the still afternoon.
Doors opened.
One finely clad leg searched for the pavement.
Tom Batton stepped out.
Those cheekbones certainly could cut a deal, he was bred for this: possibly, hundreds of children were gestated from a large vat somewhere beneath the city, when they reached a fertile age they were given a chance to negotiate a contract, I sign you live.
Those who failed were thrown in the garbage; those who succeeded were thrown back into the vat, their eggs and spermatozoa rewarded with decadent orgies, a Mardi-Gras of negotiations, you sign we fuse; A millennium later: Tom Batton.
She stood still.
He looked awful: that kind of haggard look that she had only seen on herself in her pocket mirror at Secret Garden Party; living then crashing in the fast lane.
He wore it a little better though, as though he’d been slapped by a hand dipped in champagne rather than LSD.
Two elderly Asian men climbed out after him.
She watched them go into the building.
She popped a baby bell into her mouth and with her hands free rolled a cigarette.
She had a good hunk of time left now.
She decided to walk around the block.
Block was the word for it, American “firms”, food outlets and brand advertisements lined up around her in a perfect square, a pen for the vernacular.
Block.
She walked out of it.
With a fag, you were never truly playing their game; you were burning up your “healthcare package” and, incrementally, lowering yourself into the bonfire.
She coughed.
>>7709716
Bit overwritten for what it is, is he meant to be psychic?
part 2 of >>7709716
The bully ran, the boy stood up, and within him something new and powerful was born.
In the several years since this incident Maxwell tried again and again to explain what had transpired. With no word for what had happened, he called it magic and set upon all sorts of occult esoterica. This became his world, and he began to accept the role he had been placed upon him. He was the soulless, the demonic, the other, and this was what he was meant for.
After a while though his interest waned, and he grew embarrassed of his delusions. Though in these books he found many an hour of wonder and fascination, the spells he soon learned by name were nothing but words and rituals with no effect or application.
Disillusioned with fantasy he turned to science, reading from dinner to the early hours of the morning about B fields, fermions and spin waves. From that interest he learned to disassemble and reassemble most electronics, and write in the arcane languages of the machines, but never once was he able to reproduce what he had done.
Eventually, his frustration led him to question his memories, until one day he became convinced it had been nothing but a vivid dream. His dream had died, but his pride was still there, and he had a crown of wisdom atop him
One quiet night at 3 AM he sat awake by the light of his laptop when he received a message from an unknown source. A speaker with the username positricPersona sent to him unprovoked, and asked only one question. “Rook,” she called him, “do you know who I am?”
“Should I?” he responded.
“No…” they replied after many minutes of typing, “But I know you.” The mysterious contact then told him everything that there was to know about him, including many things he had never noticed about himself. She knew that he put salt on everything he ate, savory or sweet, and that he lived more in the night than he did in the day. She knew he hated evangelists and preachers like herself, and claimed that she had even seen his eyes. He suspected she was an admirer, a watcher, a stalker, but she never told him anything he could use to identify her. Finally she gave him one hint and one hint only: There was a bird outside his window, and if he wanted to know anything he should let it in.
>>7710182
Not psychic. He's can alter the magnetic field (aka the B field)
Yours on the other hand seems painfully like a riff on an 80s/90s action movies with a whiff of biopunk
>>7710303
you are dumb
"Oh Tyrone, I knew you'd say yes!"
And it was done. Finished. Dwayne and J-Dog wouldn't even know what was coming to them after fucking with a sista like that.
I contemplated on how I'd bust on 'em as Tanisha gently unbuttoned my pants, unzipped my fly, and pulled that gluttonous muthafucka out from it's lair.
>>7710327
wow, what helpful critique. Who wrote it for you?
>>7710373
you are dumb, I know that your dumb.
>>7710382
and gay
Does anyone have a link to that M(r)s ______'s character test thing to determine if ur character is a meme or not? Can't find it
1608. The streets were foul and they were only getting worse. Anton was able to collect some food for his family before the market ran out. Nothing fancy, mainly bread, but it would have to do, for now. He knew his family wouldn’t complain, nobody complains with what they get these days. In this time every noble is a peasant, and every thief is a noble. It was not long ago, at least it did not feel long, when Anton was considered one of the wealthiest men of Rostov. His riches, not much for the Muscovites, but plenty for his needs. The prime of his city had given him many good memories, but now he was a target for the scavengers and the low lives of the city. He had personally come toe to toe in the streets with robin hoods and wanderers of the shadows, too cowardly to step into the light Anton thought, but today he encountered no trouble on his trip from the outside. The market was crowded as it always was, with people trying to get the best foods before they ran out. “The famine was couldn’t possibly get any worse, could it?”
Anton turned and saw his fellow noblemen and one time friend, Boris of Yaroslavl. “Must be around a third to a half of Russia gone now, only the lord knows how much more will go.” Anton and Boris had a long and complicated history. Boris had not only taken Anton’s promotion in their cavalry division, but he had also taken his lover, Anna, away from him. “Oh friend, I know how you feel, how will our might nation continue on at this rate? I can barely walk through the streets without my hand covering my nose.” Anton had been feigning forgiveness, believing that he merely needed to wait for his time to strike back. Anton believed that an eye for an eye was not enough for him, and ten thousand would be the price.
“You think this is bad? I just got back from Moscow, your hands will be needed to shovel the bodies, not covering your nose. These bloody poles aren’t making things any easier either.” Boris was a plump man for these times, with a long, boyar-ish beard to keep him warm, as his blubber was not enough. Boris claimed to be a man of God but everyone who knows what’s what disagreed. In these times he worked his serfs twice as hard, and ate twice as much, which greatly displeased the poor classes. Anton on the other hand knew his cards and how to play them. He gave to the sick and weak when he could, and even gave them a place to stay. Boris viewed these acts as ridiculous, for such a man to lower himself to the level of the lower class, but a man of his intellect could never see what was right in front of him.
>>7710806
the mary sue test?
http://katfeete.net/writing/suestart.php
>>7710817
From the look on his face, Anton knew that Boris was begging for Anton to ask why he had been to Moscow. Socializing with a man like Boris for too long would be to lower the reputation Anton had with the lower class people. But for now, he thought himself safe enough to indulge in his rival’s desire. “Well friend, what fine wind had you taken to Moscow?” The grin on Boris’s face grew, which only emphasized his multi-layered chin. “Well I’m glad you asked. You see I was visiting my dear friends Princess Anatasiya and Prince Alexander. They’re wedding was being held, and being so close with the Prince and Princess I just could not miss out on such an event.” This was typical Boris, always flaunting the connections that Anton desired but could never reach. Anton was a social outcast, preferring to spend time reading his books and going on runs than wining and dining with the other aristocrats of the city. He also did not spoke, nor drink, two things to which he attributes his Greek sculptured body.
“Well now, that sounds like a marvellous event, I only wish that I had been invited to the event, but as much as I would like to speak of it, I best be going back to my family.” Anton was now growing tired of Boris’s presence, and was prepared to leave, but as he turned back to the market, Boris grabbed his arm. “Well, actually, I was holding a little party of my own, it will be five days from now, seeing as my place is the only safe area left in Yaroslavl. The Prince and Princess humbly accepted my invitation, so I suppose I could spare a seat for you, what do you say?” The grin on his face told Anton one thing, he was trapped. If he accepted the invitation, Boris would spend the entire night torturing him, forcing him to meet the aristocrats he had so tenaciously avoided thus far. However he did not want to deny him either, as that is exactly what Boris is expecting, for the introverted Anton to back down to the challenge, and to accept Boris as the victor. Anton realized that if he backed down now, he was admitting that Boris held the upper hand in this engagement, however if he took his challenge, he may just leave the night with more than he entered with. “Very well friend, I look forward to the night.”
>>7710821
Anton grabbed his food and left the market, hoping to quickly get away before Boris could engage him again. Now Anton had a predicament on his hands. He obviously could not skip the event now that he had said he was going, as this would show his weakness, and despite the fact that he knew he was not the best in social situations, he decided the he had best learn now, as it could come in handy later. On the other hand, he could still see how this was the butcher inviting the lamb to supper. He was going into uncharted territory with this event, these were Boris’s men, with Boris’s agenda, these things he was assured of. While deep in a trance of sorts, he failed to notice the trap he was walking himself into. Two large men whom were behind him in the line for the market had been following him. He made a wrong turn left into an alleyway, and when he turned around, the men made their move.
“Eh you, I thinks you got something that belongs to me and my friend here. We’ve been starving for days and you come along and take the last bit of food. We got the money for it right here, but you wasting your time and talking to your friend instead of buying your food cost us. So I’m thinking maybe you just give it here and nothing bad has to happen, hows about it?” Anton weighed the situation in his head. He was no coward, but at the same time the odds were against him, perhaps it would be better to ju-. These men didn’t give him a chance to finish that though, and the one of the left thrust his fist into Anton’s face. Anton dropped his food down on the ground, and tackled the one who had punched him to the ground, here’s where he grabbed out his pocket knife and drove it into the gut of the attacker. “You son of a bitch!” This was all he could get out, as Anton drove his knife several times more into the gut, and would have made his move onto the second man if he had not already fled the scene.
>>7710303
Not bad, if I were you I would just read it over and over aloud until you start hearing the parts that sound uncomfortable. Your character sounds like some sort of lovable but genius kid badass who should fuck right back off to a novel for preteens however (unless that's what your going for). Try giving him a bit more depth that quirky genius who is also a badass and also has a god-given gift and also is cool and handsome and also leads a mysterious life and also has a lot of crazy things happen to him and is also always right. Not trying to be mean but do you get me? Use this http://katfeete.net/writing/suestart.php that another anon just posted and run your character through it.
Also avoid using shit like, “But I know you.”, like fucking wow the myterious person contact this quirky lad who stays up LATE with his LAPTOP knows him but he doesn't knwo them. It's like you're in a cliche crevasse and instead of trying to climb out you just keep digging.
Tyr and give your stories and characters a bit more depth than a Wizards of Waverly Place episode because it's seriously heading that way.
Writing style is alright and vocabulary is alright, but you go from trying to sound all scholarly and pretentiously archaic to dumb and unimagintive shit like, "One quiet night at 3 AM he sat awake by the light of his laptop" which just could not be more banal and uninteresting.
Hope this helps. Sounded like a bit of a tirade against you but if you write a whole novel like this I will probably vomit.
Also pic related is what your main character sounds like right now.
>>7710819
Thanks comfy anon, that's the one.
>>7710839
actually that was me who posted both of those, an I totally get what you're saying. He is a bit of a sue now that I think about it. Really, every single of my characters are. I was so caught up in ideas I never really thought about character flaws. I really need to work on that.
god I'm cringing now just thinking about it
Pricked upon the smooth, semi-pale, and rather gooselike skin, resting calmly over the muscle, bone, and fat, a lowly yet seemingly underestimated bug lay to rest. It did not quiver or bounce, no sound came from its tiny, incongruous mandibles. The mosquito was a little under or over sixteen millimeters in length, its long, slender, and smoothly bent legs placed themselves carefully. Its unproportionally small furry thorax faced proudly upward, allowing its trunklike proboscis to firmly place itself onto the host's epidermal surface. The mosquito's tiny spotted wings, about twice the size of its thorax, soared halfway high above where its abdomen should have been. It had no worry of the world around it, the world inhabited by alien creatures the size of mountains. Observing the world from its large, round eyes, the mosquito could only see what wonders these beings had erected, as well as the ones they tore down. No fuss, it may have thought, my well-being is not even slightly affected by their existence. The mosquito was almost certain it was full, no need to have another meal of blood, hair and dead skin again. Maybe it was the thrill of avoiding detection, of sucking blood once more to feed an intense urge deep down inside, burning as to divide soul and spirit, and thus... physically crushing his tiny body. The mosquito was no theologian, and so it did not worry; Maybe I could use one... more... bite.
>>7710859
Oh haha, at least you're becoming more aware. If you want to do a few sharp improvements, remove a lot of unnecessary mystery from his life, remove some/most of his god-given talents and genetic luck, make him more normal and less of a badass and try and give him a bit more depth (last part hard to do I understand).
Don't become demotivated, just look at your writing as if you didn't actually write and then improve. Also remember, I could be wrong about all my points because enjoying writing is so subjective maybe it's just me (although it's not, so at least change some shit).
I would like to be free, as a man is free.
I would like to be free as a man
Like a newly born man that only has nature in front of him
and walks in the forest with the joy of pursuing adventure;
always free and exuberant, doing love as if he were an animal;
reckless, (or thoughtless?) like a man satisfied with his own freedom.
Freedom is not sitting on a tree.
It is not the flight of a fly.
Freedom is not free space.
Freedom is participation.
I would like to be free, as a man is free.
Like a man who needs to wander with his fantasies
and who finds this space only in his democracy,
that has the right to vote and spends his life delegating
and in receiving commands finds his new freedom.
Freedom is not sitting on a tree.
nor is it having an opinion.
Freedom is not free space.
Freedom is participation.
Freedom is not sitting on a tree.
It is not the flight of a fly.
Freedom is not free space.
Freedom is participation.
I would like to be free, as a man is free.
Like the most evolved man that elevates himself with his own intelligence,
and defies nature with the crushing power of science,
with the enthusiasm to expand without limits in the cosmos
and convinced that the power of thought is the only freedom.
Freedom is not being on a tree,
nor is it a gesture or an invention.
Freedom is not free space.
Freedom is participation.
Freedom is not being on a tree.
It is not the flight of a fly.
Freedom is not free space.
Freedom is participation.
(test adaptation)
What does Freedom means, in this sense?
The cutest girl I ever dated was a mute girl.
She couldn’t talk.
Want to know why I think she was so cute?
When she confessed to me, she quietly handed me a note.
It said: I can’t talk, but I can love and I love you.
The livelier her facial expression became in that moment, the more I wanted to see it devoid of any sign of life it had. Skin cold and pale, eyes staring off into the distance, Hair sprawled out all over the floor. Me. Kneeled down, crying at her side. How could the world have taken something I love so much, and crushed it like it meant nothing.
The thought ran shivers down my spine.
The sun shined down and blistered his slowly cooking skin. Unable to gather the will to move, he simply laid basking, taking in the feeling as his body felt warmer and warmer. He inhaled a deep breath into his lungs and stretched his hands onto the cool grass. They embraced him, a hundred blades gently running themselves across his sleeves, his hands, and his hair. The aroma rose, fell and sunk itself into him.
Gathering his strength, he shifted his legs to a more comfortable position and continued his glare towards the sun. It was difficult to understand the gravity of it, the magnificence that such a grand figure truly was. It was like a good song he supposed; far too easy to enjoy and far too easy to forget. It was even easier to forget that one day it too would be gone, but then that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. All things gold must fade, and so all days must give way to night. He had always thought that endings were a grand thing, an item of great inspiration and joy, though even now he had moments where he wondered how a shelf life could ever be a joyous thing; but then he had moments of clarity. How could one ever know motivation without the threat of nothingness looming over them? How could they understand joy without the threat of pain breathing down their neck? How could people understand life without the threat of death standing in the corner of their eye? He couldn’t help but feel thankful for an end of some kind. The way he saw it there were only two things in this world that ever mattered; how you begin something and how you end it. It was a simplistic ideology, but simplicity never hurt anyone. How much pain had been caused by someone who felt they needed more when in reality they had what others would kill for? He longed for simplicity.
He shook his head, realizing he had been staring at the sun for minutes. He blinked, watching small specks that riddled his vision, dancing in front of him as his eyes adjusted back to their normal state. They felt warm, too warm, but he appreciated the sun’s touch none the less. As he did, he slowly glanced to his side hoping to see the familiar figure that had been there with him, but she had left likely long ago to leave him in a half-asleep daze on the ground with a feeling of surprisingly strong loneliness. Maybe it wasn’t as much loneliness as it was of being left behind yet again. She was always trying to make her way ahead of him and it slowly killed him inside, to an extent of which he was growing apathetic to it; and maybe even to her. But she was such a bright spot in his life, such an example and a motivation that he couldn’t truly find anywhere else. He had tried, but whether his will simply wasn’t strong enough, or self-improvement not a big enough push, he fell short. It was always her figure he was chasing and her torch he kept lit.
>>7710923
He realized it then. He was in love with time. Not the concept of it like some philosopher fantasizes about or the human representation of it you’d find in childhood fiction. No, he loved time. He fell in love with memories and parts of his life that he would never truly relive, constantly personifying them into whatever he could rationalize in his head. He raised women to these pedestals to represent to him his childhood, happiness, and countless other emotions he never truly understood. To represent all the good times he had long since left behind. He remembered the first girl he could ever say he fell for. Her name was Diane, a sweet girl filled innocence and ignorance of the world around her. He remembered when he moved, how he would visit and how he would use her like a tool to go back to those wondrous days of childhood. No, he wanted her as one wants a memory. He felt for her as one would feel looking through a photo album. All the women of his life fell to the same fate, to represent a point in his life one which was never truly as great as it once was. Lonely times represented by sparks of hope, angry times represented by moments of sight, and apathetic moments mistaken for the gaining of maturity and knowledge. He was helplessly, head over heels, and blindly in love with the great delusion of time. Lost time, spare time, old times, and new times, but goddamn him if it wasn’t the good times that were slowly killing him.
And now she was no different, just a goal to him, a challenge that perhaps he never really expected to complete. A target he never truly thought he could hit and when he eventually did, he’d lose much of the passion he had felt. Memories constantly relived aren’t memories, and you simply end up living in the past wishing and hoping for something to force you forward; he couldn’t, and it ate at him. Every time he tried to move he felt as if he was banging against a brick wall, simply watching others walk through and wondering why he was so unable to do the same.
>>7710875
The problem is giving characters flaws that really are flaws (not ditzyness or clumsiness) but don't make the character unlikable.
>>7696739
As I gazed out into the room, over the desert yellow carpet crusted with sand invisible to all but the close inspectors, my eye moved up to find a mirror. Eye perfectly reflected in it, blue as an ocean. Me and myself stared till the sun turned a deep shade of red as it burned through the sky. I would and I would blink. A heliocentric universe began to form around our discourse. Moonlight through thin curtains creating a fractured mosaic across my reflection. Soon, I felt tensing at the back of my neck. In a crack, my vision went black.
A soft sound of scratching pencils and the screech of radio static ; voices arcing up and down the pipes speaking in tongues unknown, the narrative gone– frozen here. where am I. Falling into a vertiginous abyss, towers, gray and spalding endless babble. The chit chat of a million guests, 300,000,000 guests checking in at white linen wrapped beds, car seats, flapping canvas tends, shanty towns, ghettos, the stark barbed wire enclosures of graves yet to be1. A great deluge of information came upon me. I could feel yoke of a doomed jetliner, and the Quaggas of the African plain– extinct the both of them preserved by history and surveillance’s great amber stream. The advancement of history all at once, a brief unity. Then I saw it, the gleaming golden hotel, cells made of Rolex watches stacked one atop the other. Men in top hats.
The first nuclear president signing a document hung on a painting of bleached white skulls with their cooked brains leaking out of the cracked domes like beef out of a fractured burrito. Snaking black, no gold, no gray snakes leaked out of the contract, pushing the skulls, now slowly becoming three dimensional, even as the president's skin became oily, cracked like a canvas, into skin. It gave them eyes, lives. Spongy pink growths began to sprout out of the bottom of the skulls the tendrils, wrapped, no armored them, no both as they pushed through existence. I could feel them, born into the the hotel America “You can never (REDACTED).”
Suddenly all was calm. I was falling inside a raindrop. Falling from an immense, soggy, latticework above me. I could see the hotel lobby beneath me. Only it was destroyed. Snowden sat in a chair. Cops crawled on knees, covering the floor in their spit as they searched for evidence amongst the ruins of my one last failed attempt at sanity.
>>7710930
Characters don't need to be likable, their actions just need to make sense, and their flaws can't define them. An issue I see so often is that people think that the traits of a character need to t define them, rather than be a part of them.
Jesus, don't cry
You can rely on me, honey
You can combine anything you want
I'll be around
You were right about the stars
Each one is a setting sun
>>7710916
This is actually good. Insightful into its character without being overly explicit.
>>7710938
my bullshit
>>7710923
Over descriptive mate, pick what you want the audience to know and focus on it. Baudelaire said that any artist who focuses only on the details of a scene, rather than how it appears to them, is bound to leave both himself and the audience confused.
I demand greatness for the fact of merely existing, is that too much too ask?
Life hurts, figurative and literal meanings both included. Life hurts, yeah, but he hurts more, so I say to myself. No time for front talk and less time for back, shit, I don't even know where I would have put the damn thing. What's lost better damn well be found soon. Or else, or else, or else what? I know what. Shit.
My thoughts are spilled into my words as I swipe the newspaper pile down to check underneath. The mass falls onto the other side of the couch where it rested, but not in a solid line of junk. This was the day for the papers to fly and scatter the floor especially the spots I hadn't searched. Each second ticks louder and each decibel makes me want to quit and tell him to fuck himself but no, remember what he does? Not an option mi amigo, not even a fantasy.
But where would I put the damn thing?
>opening to a short story, I can post more if needed for context
>>7710992
I like the choice of language and prose, and the writing itself is quite descriptive, but I find myself getting lost in it at points. It seems to be a view of history in a broken and surreal sense, and being description a hotel and possibly the characters mind. I'd like some context, but the writing itself is well done, my only real complaint being the difficulty of it to read. I feel that it would be more well suited for a breakdown of the familiar rather than a full novel or short story.
That said, I'm not necessarily the most well versed as I had the same issue with Ulysses, enjoying the prose and writing style, but disliking the difficulty of not getting lost in the world play and actually finding what said words symbolize.
>>7711060
It's actually much longer, but the format of the story (editing notes) makes it hard to show to four chan.
Here's the opening.
Outside the doors of the North Side Alehouse and Inn, just past the sixty-two year old pine tree, two bodies were found– one human, the other a body of work. One was Ethan Truman's magnum opus, a thousand page omnibus of names; stories that tore from life, digesting the small facts gleamed from holes in walls into vast speculations on personal history. The other the author himself. His emaciated corpse the first anyone had seen of him in six months. Officially the cause of death had been heart attack, but now with the recent declassification of what had been contained within his portentous volume reveals a newer, darker truth. The following is composed of three central narrators: the notes of the case's detective; my own speculation; and the strange exegesis and apparent defense of Ethan's actions that the book contained.
>>7711073
Sounds pretty interesting actually. If you can get the perspective right it has a lot of potential. I'm supposing the chapters or sections focusing on Ethan would explore his slow descend into insanity while complementing that with relatively rational notes from the detectives, which would keep the readers somewhat railed to the near-ramblings.
>>7702326
i get it
>>7696739
How should I describe or design Satan?
I've been posting my progress in this story for like three threads now and I'm at an impasse.
I've re-written the beginning of this story several times and I just can't get it right. It's too longwinded for me to ever finish in a reasonable amount of time and I'm beginning to lose hope that I can accomplish it.
The main character is going to go through four herculean labors and I'm not sure how many words I should devote to each trial or what kind of tone to write it in. Can anyone offer some advice?
>>7705067
>>7705711
>>7705961
>>7709716
>>7710303
Fog Watch
The early night likes to trap us
in our approach so we zip up
our jackets and rainflies and pull down
our caps past our ears
so that, in doubt, we do not hear
the wind’s soft siren, or feel
the horizon’s hands
on our salted skin.
The water is thin and milky
under the fog
and the dock is still
smeared into the hillside.
A cruel log floats past and I lose myself:
my young feet scrape barnacles in the hardened Sound.
the salt stings my eyes but, still I could see.
Scylla by the shore and I swam the other way
maybe looking to drown
The ship’s horn cracks the fragile night
and the steel shakes beneath my feet-
we look for signs
but find only what’s missing.
>>7711404
That sounds like a fun task. Why can't you do it yourself?
>>7711404
>Here's Satan, the big cheese of Helltown, the president of Painsville; a big boss man's big boss man. His breath stinks, but he doesn't care. Give him a sinner to stomp on and he'll be happier than a pig in shit.
>>7711404
Don't. Have the character not see him. Describe how it's senses interpret his presence (smell, sound, taste etc. But not sight). People like to imagine.
>>7711404
He's a big guy.
Masturbation is critically misunderstood. The pleasure derived from it, being an act of self pleasure, is often only appreciated within a narrow spectrum. The act can seemingly only be enhanced by the use of fetishes or improving one's stroke. I'll be talking about male masturbation specifically, but basics will flow over. What I mean to say is that is that masturbation is art. A typical scene: boy sits on his chair and strokes himself wirhout pause unto completion. Uninspired. I do not mean to say that this should become a pretentious act, but rather quite the opposite. The boy in this scene is expressing his lack of inspiration in the most meaningful way. What follows are my suggestions as to how one might consciously express themselves.
An evening might begin in front of the computer. Headphones and the night emphasise the truly insular nature of what I am about to experience. Kneeling before the screen nears prostration as I beg for pleasure. This expresses a dependence on external sources for enjoyment and a deference towards that which fills the gap in self-actualisation. From there the man might stand and face away, turning off the screen. Here he expresses power and initiative. There is no greater position of active dominance than standing tall. Alternatively he may lie on his back. This is a particularly meditative position and better allows the man to close his eyes. It may express a feeling of general submissiveness or a need to turn inward. While the examples so far have been quite general and simple positions, there is far more potential for expression.
The place where ejaculation comes to rest is a particularly powerful indicator. Someone may choose to cum into a toilet, expressing a lack of self-worth. Alternatively he might wander into the darkness outside and throw himself into the unknown. This is a particularly depressive form of expression, perhaps hinting at feelings of meaningless or frustration.
There is so much more to write on this, non-erotic ways in which a person can express themselves through masturbation. I haven't even scratched the surface of thought processes or the finer non-erotic manipulation of self (both physical and mental).
Poetry I've been mulling about, divided into 4 bits with different approaches. (I) is an exaltation, (II) is a onesided conversation, (III) is a retrospective, and (IV) is almost a song
>>7712325
it would help if I actually linked the pastebin
http://pastebin.com/KYfYr27v
Bryce was a stout, portly boy with tiny shark teeth. He was known around school for his little chompers and baby bite, though sharp and cutting as it was. His class would take field trips to the local aquarium every other Friday. The older boys, sniffing about the fishy crevices for mischief, would give Bryce a hard time ; they knew how to make the little graders sad, especially Bryce. The boys would point to the sharks circling in their wide tanks, and repeat sonnets and chants such as: “Tooth club for sharky boys. No big boy teeth boys in the sharky boy club!” As their laughter rose, Bryce’s baby eyes started to tear, and down the side of his nose dripped salty boy droplets. He would find a sad bench and plop down on his little rump, wishing he had big teeth like the older boys. While Ms. Dempsey would talk about the puffy redfish puckering the glass, Bryce would grab his teeth with his fingers and tug on them with all his tiny might, hoping they would come out a bit further, just enough would be enough. When he went home to his mom and grandma, he would help them make nicely shaped cookies with his cookie cutter mouth. “My boy! You have such talent with making sharky cookies!” His mom would say with warm enthusiasm every time she returned to the kitchen, finding the perfectly rounded dough cakes with serrated edges. Bryce did not want to be a baker, neither did he want to become a shark, in fact, he didn’t want to be anything unless he had normal teeth like a normal boy.
>>7712660
I'll give you some credit, every time you used the word "boy" I laughed a little
>>7712660
Not to my personal tastes but I think you're achieving whatever it is you're trying to achieve.
>>7708162
That part with Fennius, Akiko, and the robot is from the first book of my space opera.
Context? Oklahoma 2142. Fennius wants to be a hovercraft racer but after a minor accident fractures his forearm, his father refuses to allow him. But when his fathers ship vanishes in a freak accident and the company declares the ship and crew unrecoverable, he's left enough money from a pair of life insurance policies to buy his way into a local amateur team. Jimmy was the hard drinking, foul mouthed old man next door who adopted him long enough to keep him from ending up in a state home so he can get emancipated. Akiko is a sentient hologram with her own agenda for him. I liked that scene because I felt it painted a vivid yet somber scene.
I just ate some Popeye's Chicken.
The breasts were juicy, and the buns were soft and warm.
Afterwards, the division manager of Popeye's came up to my table and asked me how the meal was. I said I was satisfied, but the meal lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. He apologized profusely, and said he had something to show me that would make up for it.
He lead me to the back of the Popeye's, to a room soaked from floor to ceiling in blood. In the center of it was a live horse, chained by all four legs to the structural supports of the warehouse like room. As I watched, employees of the Popeye's cut large sections from the horse, which was whinnying and screaming in horror. The Popeye's employees took the chunks of horseflesh and sliced them into pieces, then they rooted around through the bags of trash strewn around the room to find discarded chicken bones. They quickly tenderized the meat with sledgehammers and fed it into a machine which formed the horse meat around the bones, then they breaded and deep fried it.
I asked the division manager why he had led me back to this place, and he pointed at the steed's rump, the ******* puckering rhythmically with terror. "We're just about to use that section, would you like a crack at it first?"
I quickly unzipped my pants and wasted no time jamming my erect PENIS into the stallion's quivering anus. It was a fun time. I was delighted. Popeye's definitely went the extra mile to make me a satisfied customer.
>>7713902
yeah I like it, quite funny.
"Warehouse like room" doesn't come off and the sledgehammers bit is a bit much, I feel, even in the context of the piece.
Working on this, intro to a board room scene, what do you think I think it has some alright ideas in it but doesn't quite work...
Philip, the COO, sat on one of the nicer swivel chairs: it’s contours the Juliet to the spine’s Romeo.
But he could have been sitting anywhere.
It was only the fact that the demonstration of company hierarchy fell within his remit that prevented him sitting on the floor, he: the most advanced piece of office kit in the whole building.
She knew he had a family, friends; hobbies include an interior life, but he was not in it for the sausage and elderflower lunches, all of that stuff, the trimmings of executive life, seemed to hang of him like a Purple Heart awarded to a Sherman: he was simply doing what came naturally.
What came naturally to Clive she didn’t know, he might have been better suited to a life as the constant captain in a never ending game of laser quest, but at some point she supposed, by influences unknown, executive trimmings had become the next objective.
And Stephen, simple Stephen, 23 years old, Yorkshire born and raised but nurtured in private education, to him the whole thing was a variation on “ding Sir’s beamer, bring some bangers to Ascott, get so good at fucking around with Google a thirty five year old man will pay you twice his salary and let you talk to him like he’s got his blazer on backwards, go on I dare you.”
Here's a random passage from something I'm writing.
Here we are, on the precipice. Standing at the intersection of now, nevermore, and never-to-be. Can you feel it? Not see it. Not hear it. But just . . . feel it? Jammed between ineluctable modalities and unintelligible dispensations, we remain; freshly minted relics of the abandoned order. Is there any meaning to our continued existence? Was there ever one to begin with? Whatever the answer may be, we are now blind to its significance, awash in this remorseless light of visibility . . .
