... it hasn't worked ...
That having been said, the bo is a harsh master (apologies to RAH), someone had to do persimmon's job for her, and Gedvondur set the tone. I just cut the "it's alright, you need to accept criticism" placation device. And let out my inner asshole for a few seconds of recess.
Were I merely and purely to rank the stories in the order in which I enjoyed them most, I get the feeling after reading toxicfur's, ana's, and Gedvondur's commentaries that we liked entirely different stories. For some of the "well written" or "very well written" comments I see no justification at all. I decided to 'accentuate,' if you will, different aspects than did the other readers.
In all the other WFCs -- for which I've written mini-reviews -- I attempted to highlight the positive; I decided it was time for a bit of a change, one based mainly on the nagging things that hit me while reading these (not skimming them).
I'm interested in how stories work. These WFC entries are different than many of the previous. There are no stories-as-letters. No poems. No recipes, email archives, tales told radically out of order. There's little formal experimentation, little stretching of the author's voice. Thinly veiled autobiographical sketches do little for me. The same stories told the same way do nothing for me. That having been said, there are quite a few I rather enjoyed.
"Spike" has an interesting concept and the author has the conviction to stick to it. There's no rationalization at the end ("this is how this math+magic+BLAH system works"), and the author sticks to his/her metaphorical guns. "Sylvia Endicott Weld ..." likewise embraces its world and is meticulous in its depiction, its voice. "Hello, What's That?" has a great number of character moments I adore as well as the "dreamcatcher" and the 52-cycle tone. "The Alley" has the potential to be the grittiest and most psychologically engaging of the entries. "Broken Glass" is perhaps the most well-crafted story here and features a lot of very nice language. Just because I do not mention the rest does not mean I found them worthless (I mean, it could mean that ...).
_"The german quoting guy is a little bit out there." (fleece)[ Parent ]
I admit, I feel that you have made a bit of a mockery of my own review of the WFC7 stories. You made a mockery of the time and effort I put into giving an honest review.
I'm irritated and a bit upset by the whole thing.
I don't think its funny, I don't even think it is that good as a critical review. A review just to be negative is worthless.
Gedvondur"It is virtually impossible to effectively aim a jellyfish, a creature created by God almost solely for the purpose of not flying."- CRwM [ Parent ]
But I didn't read his critiques as a riff on yours. I suspected he was either off his meds or entirely serious, and of the two was leaning toward the latter.
I am sure no offense was intended, though I have mis-read him at least once today.--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
... I was being sarcastic? Slightly sarcastic or snarky moments with regard to some works? Perhaps. But "unbridled sarcasm"? Hardly. I fail to see how I made a mockery of yours. And since when was I trying to be funny?
I put time and effort into reading the stories and commenting on them, and my views and reviews are honest.
And I was not entirely negative.
But not caring for my reviews is fine.
-- the only reference I made to your reviews was not in my 'reviews' but in my response to blixco, where I mentioned yours and what persimmon has done in the past. But there is no connection between your reviews and mine in other regards. The first part of that response to blixco was clealy tongue-in-cheek.
But I can't help but feel that your review diminished the value of any review in this WFC.
Don't give him that much credit. His review didn't stop me from posting mine, and it shouldn't inhibit anyone else.-- Do the math. [ Parent ]
If you didn't intend some of your text to be sarcastic, I can accept that. However, be aware that much of it came across to me as sarcastic.
As to your negativity, no, you were not entirely negative. You were just negative enough that it is difficult to read your reviews and not think they are mean-spirited.
... to a great extent.
I take my "introduction" to the 'reviews' quite seriously. This is supposed to be a writing Fun challenge. You know where I saw the most 'fun'? Spike and The Alley. But half the stories? None at all.
Spike and The Alley were followed by Sylvia Endicott, then Hello, What's This? and Broken Glass. Actually, I'm not entirely sure about Broken Glass, but it's what I think right now. There was almost certainly fun had with Connecting Train.
But the rest? They seem like "exercises." It's WFC-time, I need to submit something. There's far too much 'academic fanfiction' -- notice how the only positive things said about Frame of Reference come from toxicfur and ana, who fill-in-the-academic blanks in an otherwise paint-by-numbers exercise? they have an academic background -- as well as the same relationship problems, lost loves, lost loved ones, etc. we've seen in previous WFCs. Enclosed is a story we haven't seen before, which is a good thing.
I write shittastic fiction. The people around here know that. I expect the fiction I read by others to be better than what I can do, and of course most of what we have here is, but if I read something and think "I could have done this" rather than "I wish I had done this" it's already a sort of failure.
I think I reserved "mean spirited" only for Mother's Bible, and I don't feel bad about it. It has nothing to do with the writer as a person (or nickname that will be revealed to me less than a week from now) and everything to do with text encoding, formatting, and writing that simply does not work (in this text). For all the rest I think things are rather clearly separated into 1) what I think the 'text' needs in terms of editing, 2) how I think the story functions/works (or doesn't; mechanics), and 3) how or whether a section/sentence/whatever worked for me, regardless of author intent. The comments were written as I read and each story got two reads, one interrupted by commenting and one not. The comments are a reaction to the texts as they affected me as I read them. Minus the flowery bits.
As you say, "I am not going to get into a specific quoting pissing match." It's not about that, I hope. I figure if people bother reading my reviews (I expect more along the lines of skimming and/or 'oh, bo wrote this: pass'), they'll read your response, then my response to your response, etc., and so for those readers rather than for you or me I find the continued commentary worthwhile. I'm stupidly optimistic that way.
Regarding 'sarcastic' -- well, clearly certain expressions were meant sarcastically. I think just about any use of "precious" as a stand-alone expression (rather than 'precious gem,' etc.) has to be taken so.
"I'm looking for your most offensive film. Several, actually. Let us say that I need copies of your four most upsetting films." "Are you, like, a cop or something?" "Oh, no. I assure that I simply wish to purchase some of your pornography."
How can that be taken seriously?
The listing of schools behind the characters' names. The jaded voice of the framing narrator.
Phrases like "soft hurrumphing" and "A well-regulated and fashionable saintliness was her only rebellion."
Humor's not something anybody can explain into being funny, but I think that Weld was intended as a black absurd comedy.
That doesn't mean every body will find it funny, but it suggests to me that the writer had fun with it.[ Parent ]
... I agree.
Even without a close reading of style (not that close I guess) it seems to me that the authors of Spike and The Alley had fun -- it seems they were having fun with the concept, the fictional worlds they established. Running with ideas (scissors?), expanding and developing.
With "Sylvia Endicott ..." I feel pretty confident that the types of things (text passages) you mentioned were meant to be a type of (slightly dark) humor, and the type of thing that pointed to the author having fun with it. But in this case I didn't want to read too much into 'intent' -- it's one of those things I feel 90% sure about, not 95% (arbitrary higher %), and so I feel less sure saying, "Yeah, this author BLAH BLAH BLAH" rather than "Wow, this really came across as BLAHIGGITY BLAH when I read it." The other thing about Sylvia Endicott ... is that with all the detail and details, about names and places and school, etc., I felt the need not to look things up but to ponder, "Hey, are these significant?" And for me that's actually part of the fun -- reading a text as a puzzle.
You just lost me for a second.[ Parent ]
I should have written something more like:
"The other thing about 'Sylvia Endicott ...' is that with all the detail and details (about names and places and school, etc.) I didn't feet the need to look things up but rather to ponder, 'Hey, are these significant?' And for me that's actually part of the fun -- reading a text as a puzzle."
That is to say, the names & details weren't confusing, but rather chewy Halloween surprises that enhanced my enjoyment. Other details -- or rather (I like the word 'rather') detailing (meant here as the act of providing details) -- felt a bit tacked on: not over-the-top/extreme enough to qualify as a satirical/humorous stylistic quirk, but enough to be almost ponderous. But in stories with a sense of humor I love the "A B, of the $TOWN Bs, married X Y Z of the $CITY -- and not $SHIRE -- Zs" stuff.
Then I ask myself, "Hey, is $LASTNAME relevant or just picked out of a hat?" The answer can be fun; more often it's finding the answer that is fun.
Keep in mind, though, that this is a fun challenge, and not a literary contest worth any merit. We do this for the same reason we record music in the musical fun challenges: fun.
You know, that thing the you aren't having any of right now.--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
... where we have to make sure the readers are having fun ... that could be interesting. Probably a failure, though.
Seriously, though, fun is what mattered to me when reading these. I had a fun with a few -- and who didn't have fun with the "calls for midgets" line? -- but it's hard to escape the feeling that some writers were submitting pieces as part of some "oh, deadline approaching; need to submit something ... quick!" mentality. That doesn't scream fun to me, and to me it shows in the writing/texts. I think you'll agree that in the texts I picked out in my first reply to you there is fun happening. Writers who had ideas and who said, "Hey ... what if?"
I loved those vapid 80s HP "What if ..." commercials.
And I hope I didn't give the impression that I considered this a "literary contest" -- but don't think I think formatting, linguistic skills, and copyediting belong to "literary merit." ana gave us a month for this; things had better be, if not polished, at least 'cleaned up.'
As for 'fun,' I would have liked a bit more "creative rule breaking" this time around. And I would have really liked Kellnerin's -- perhaps tongue in cheek -- network and LDAP server story. A lot.
But hey, you're playing the part of the jerk, so I'll play the part of the victim-of-jerk and say: your critiques are not only wrong-headed, but hurt the very nature of "events" like this. Maybe you're reading too much into "challenge" or "fun" or maybe you're just a vile fuck. In which case, I specialize in vile fucks. I have a great repertoire of tools and accessories that are designed and tuned specifically to deal with vile fucks.
Aside from name calling and the occasional urge for violent hyperbole as a venting or coping mechanism, I've never really understood criticism that wasn't technical in nature. Mean spirited crap doesn't help anyone, including the critic. If you are, actually, as serious about our writing ability as you seem to be, maybe something more constructive would serve everyone better.
Not that coddling is entirely necessary, either, but you seem to be one of many intelligent people I've run into in life who consider cruelty and honesty to be one and the same.
So, guy, what'll it be? How can we help you alleviate your boredom, beyond response to the numerous impersonal jabs leveled at our untalented, wastes of disk space?--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
... some stories I wanted to print them out, read them again, and write notes in red in the margins. Edit them. Offer suggestions, and send them back. I used to do that for a living, but not for fiction (or intentional fiction, at least). Or just sit down with the author and figure out what was being said or intended (the author is dead! screams Michel).
You know what I look forward to now? The Postmortems. I want all the authors to relate their inspiration for these stories. I want to hear about how "a turn of phrase became an excuse for something else, but dangnabbit purple prose or not, it's my language and I loved it too much to cut it, I had too much fun it it, and I'm glad I took part in the WFC." I've have created more than my share of purple prose and mangled metaphors.
As for mistaking or conflating cruelty and honesty, not only do I not confuse those, I am baffled by the idea that anyone who has read the shit I write could ever conclude that. Perhaps too much is being read into one possibly over-harsh but hardly cruel review of one of the stories.
Take that, victim of the jerk.
You'll get no postmortem from me, jerk.
In re: cruelty, seriously? You don't get any tone off of your original post? That whole thing smacks of someone who wants the authors to be put down, harshly, for even trying to pretend they could write in public. That sort of tone (or stance or whatever the proper term is) does not help anyone except you. Which, I guess, is fine. It's a free country, sort of.--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
... Gedvondur said (von Dur, Ged, Citations: Policing net Traffic, 2003), this isn't a cite-the-quote-pissing contest, but it's easy to see lots of things that are, alone or in the larger context, meant not as put-downs but suggestions. Questions and observations. Such as my comment about being confused by the use of "you" in Hello, What's This? as well as a similar issue in Broken Glass (both in WFC the Seventh, Hulver Press, 2007) regarding the mentioning of when the soda bottles were mentioned as bottles. Even my comments on Mother's Bible, which were arguably my harshest, concluded with how I thought the story would work.
And comments about fixing spelling, punctuation -- I recommend you consider the MLA Handbook, 7th Edition, or the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition or later as your point of reference --, and the like were not tied to any sort of "hey idiot, what's wrong with you?" vibe (excepting the 'quotation marks' in Mother's Bible -- we had the same issue in WFC6 [as you're aware, Greenspun and Balmer covered this extensively in Eunuchs and Unicode: Microsoftization and Internationalization, Donutwheel Press, 2002]).
And the harshest and most obnoxious comments (of which there are many, and which any educated reader can see are primarily in a mix of iambs, trochees, and dactyls -- you are educmacated, aren't you?) tend to be meta-comments or asides that are for my own amusement and clearly have nothing to do with the story under consideration, and while this makes such comments extraneous in a 'review' (and I never claimed to write good reviews), there's little evidence that such comments are meant to belittle the crowd, belittle the authors, etc. I think my own self-belittlement is obvious. YMMV.
And "re: cruelty, seriously?" -- "That whole thing smacks of someone who wants the authors to be put down, harshly, for even trying to pretend they could write in public." Oh come on. It doesn't take much to figure out who at least half the authors of given stories are and guess if not the author-work match at least that a certain author entered something for many of the rest, and I know as well as you do who these folks are and that they can write. That information alone makes your suggestion strange; were that to be the tone taken from the post, it could only be understood as a 'pose' or 'affect.'
Jerk-Victim.
Most criticism of my work makes me want to improve my work.
Yours does not.
There! This has actually been a fascinating set of threads, regardless of the jerk-like intent or quality of my posts. Really, in my job I don't get to ponder the nature of criticism. I just get nailed for fucking up. Maybe that's the key here.--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
/me pats blixco on the head ...
"You didn't fuck up," says the asshole. "And since you didn't fuck up, you didn't get nailed for it." The asshole is a pedant that way.
"But what about all that criticism -- only from you -- that doesn't make me want to improve my work?"
"You have several ways to approach it," replies the asshole, settling down in his chair for a text box of didactic badness. "Nobody takes this asshole seriously anyway, so why should you? I'm not saying that you do; I'm just covering the bases." At this the asshole held up one finger. "Secondly," he continued, putting up a second, "assuming yours is the one I think it is -- and that will be revealed at the end of voting -- then the constructive criticism (which would have probably come across as condescending and been unwelcome ['I think this would work better,' 'Why does ...?' 'Did you think of ...?']) I had in mind would have been too much for an already bloated series of reviews."
"I object. That's not really a good excuse," points out the injured party.
"You are entirely correct," replies the asshole, putting down his fingers after realizing he won't get to points three and four. "But said 'reviews' were also prefaced with a reference to traditional hatred in similar reviews and the tradition of every $INSERTTHING sucking, such as operating systems or computers, with the addendum that some just suck less than others." The asshole took a breath and considered his considerable verbiage. He then stood, showed out the victim of the jerk, and once the door was closed contemplated the lonely New Diary Entry text box that demanded his attention.
We draw straws to determine the authors...max of three. Those three write out some sort of story..fiction, news, bio, journal, whatever we decide on. Then the stories show up on a web site, and you + any other editor-types can show us how it's supposed to be done!--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
... if, as in the regular *FCs -- or at least the WFCs -- cheating is encouraged. Basic proofreading and copyediting would be tedious, but truly twisting and even butchering something, editing as extreme text makeover, translation, that could be fun. And why would it be for "you + any other editor-types"? Unless "editor-types" includes just about anyone here who has an interest in the *FCs.
No. "The bo" has decided to act like a pretentious ass, but given that "the bo," in his third-person-ness, is in an academic field that (in my very humble opinion) exists entirely due to intellectual pretencion, it may be that pretentious ass is his default setting, nay, even his very nature. Certainly, a perusal of his diaries reinforces the impression, at least to this reader, and yet, shouldn't an academic be attuned to when he's behaving in the lowest-common-denominator form of testosterone-fuelled intellectual penis enhancement? The only potential saving graceto be found within the original screed, and a poor grace at best, is the notion that it is highly likely "the bo" subjected his own story to such "harsh mastery."-- Do the math. [ Parent ]
