They all suck. Let's get that part out of the way. I wouldn't publish any of these, though a couple show promise. This is supposed to be a a "Writing FUN Challenge," but I wonder if some of the authors were having "fun." Others clearly did and exercised their imaginations along the way.
I didn't have much to say about all of them. Sometimes I just focused on the style, formatting, or word choice. With others -- generally those that didn't have glaring errors a copyeditor should have caught -- I could only nitpick regarding plot, character, or things that rubbed me the wrong way. Don't take that to mean that I liked your effort.
I had grades (A-F as well as "Shows Promise," "Needs Revisions," "Hopeless," and "Not worth the space of 256's server it takes up") worked out as well, but for the sake of brevity cut them.
1. Enclosed I don't like "a sterile hollow feel." My first inclination with 'feel' as a noun is to treat it not as an emotion, but a grope. Bah, language of 'myth' and a 'god' as a way to pump up 'climate change.' How cliche. OOH, nature is so big and powerful! "Truthful total honesty"? In contrast to the non-truthful kind of honesty? "Since the invasion" and no comma. Why capitalize "Armies" in "Armies of the US"? I hate the use of the colon after "have goals like" -- no colon. There is no list coming. And so on.
Lots of non-sentences. Something approaching interesting description in the paragraph beginning "The room was being heavily pelted now," but it goes downhill again with a return to abstractions and important Capital Letter Terms. Would you say "a picture of I"? -- I didn't think so.
I don't care about Joe or the narrator. I don't care about this storm or the "setting" or "situation." And stop with the double-space between sentences. It's sort of okay for typewriters, but f*cking annoying anywhere else. Bored now.
2. 3:17 AM Take the comma out of the first sentence and I might like it. What a whiny narrator. So emo. So much I. Comma after "green glory." No comma after "Destroying the marriage." What you've written does not parse as such as requires reader intervention. And "an" not "and." "What was I thinking" is a question.
The narrator claims loneliness, but I see no evidence except these protestations. The narrator is a whiny pansy, and one who makes a three paragraph narrative look like seven paragraph one by repeating things over and over to no great effect.
Except my boredom.
3. Spike Dump the pop-culture references (see: Hogwarts). In any case, it's Harry Potter meets Jasper Fforde. Hyphens-as-m-dashes make me cry. "I should have been cheesy" should be "It should have been cheesy." Stories with spikes need vampires, and this one doesn't have them. At least it came in under the word count. Barely.
The "conclusion" just seems like a way to wrap it up (close on the word count) with passing attention given to making it "meaningful." The spike works as a Magical Plot Device. It makes the main character feel confident or with purpose until Bob/Robert is found, and then it doesn't. So then it is contemplated, and then Bob pontificates about "finding your own." How therapeutic. Otherwise the math-plus-'magic'-plus-whatever epistemology and ontology shows promise. There is some playfulness in/to the system, but the ending ruins it for me.
4. Sylvia Endicott Weld, from the Fall of 2004 to the Spring 2006Dump the first comma. And the one in the second segment after "Other times." The paragraph "Even Paul ..." has a failed é. Lots of 'tell' rather than 'show,' but lots of over-deterministic details that seem to serve as 'characterization.' I do like "a cross between the odor of fried chicken and the scent of rotting grass clippings."
I can accept "The chief draw of the obscene was the window it gave her on the affectless chasm of nothing within her." This, though, like the rest of the narrative, points to emptiness and not loneliness. Sylvia is a boring cipher; the prose is more interesting than the tale. Then with the post-wine-and-porn segment the piece awakens and moves forward. I can only take "strong but sympathetic personality" as either irony or mischaracterization, preferably the former. Yet since this comes from a first person narrator this makes said narrator too unreliable for my taste, since such a narrator would undermine the whole piece. The therapy-though-feeding-on-others'-discomfort makes Sylvia a potentially interesting emotional vampire, and the "near un-dead" state, etc., mentioned earlier support this interpretation, but I say only "potentially." Sylvia's emotional distance followed by bizarre porn needs mirrors the superior Piano Teacher, perhaps seasoned with a dash of Radley Metzger's The Image (aka The Punishment of Anne).
5. Hello, What's This? How quaint, that font.
Great, more student/school fiction. Just what we need: fiction about academics and IT professionals on a site full of both. Even if the fiction in question also has strong genre elements. The 2nd paragraph ends with a simile and the 3rd begins with one. I find it awkward. And then it's followed by a "you," and it's not clear whether this comes from our still-unnamed "she" or from the narrator. Ah, this guy snores in bed; the wife was snoring just a couple snories/stories ago. Lots of punctuated one-worders -- "Guy. Whatever," "ahem" and so on. Almost a variation of mutant Valley Speak.
Ah, David and Maria. "It's never a good idea to make jokes suggested by someone's name. They've heard all of them before." And I've read that before.
Another 'whatever.' It works less like a part of the narrative and more like a quirk of the author. The same with 'well.' Followed later by Maria's "OK, that was a bit breezy" it all comes across as a bit nervous and self-conscious, which I find fine for characters' psyches but less so in the fabric of the narrative itself.
The latter three segments of the story are, until toward the end of the final segment, three different stories: there's loneliness after a "failed" relationship, there's psychedelic sci-fi, and there's lovey-dovey witty banter. The sci-fi-ish stuff reappears late, but the sci-fi concept does nothing for me, for while as actual space-time-continuum bending or just mere what-if-dreaming it does provide glimpses of futures and potential futures with David, it doesn't really inform the characters, based on my reading, and the multiple versions do nothing but exchange banter. The sci-fi-ish concept is a plot device only, and one that doesn't stand on its own or develop in any way. A shared dream would have been as good, a feverish hallucination would have worked, as would have some other High Concept. And where did Maria's characterization go? Her background, so carefully established early on, plays no real role. The background in "Sylvia Endicott ..." at least allows the whole setting to work as social satire of sorts.
6. The Alley Ooh, a trenchcoat. Fluttering impotently. Hell-issued even. Who needs subtlety? And Urban or Contemporary Fantasy. As if there isn't enough of that on the market. It's the anti-"Spike" in a way.
As anti-contemporary-fantasy it also has potential, turning Bradley merely into a reject from the "World" of accounting. He's a man who has lost his marbles.
And gained some psychoses and a pop/soda can. Or you can call it a hellish companion and a Key.
However, the middle part of the "Ok, then" paragraph doesn't work for me (from the "Wait. I was on my own" part). Then it picks up again, especially as Bradley takes his key/can and ends up at the playground. He's such a pathetic figure here. Something about the whole Charlie & Loretta ending just does not work for me, though. No, it started not working somewhere around "This isn't even a real place. You didn't notice? Who's doing your training?" The expression 'copout' comes to mind for some reason. There's a nice thematic link with all the "small" words in the final paragraph, but they don't really contribute to the story in a way I care about. It does, however, relate, if only tangentially or perhaps unintentionally, to "trying to look larger" from the first paragraph. Still, it's a non-ending.
Broken Glass Shattered Glass was already a movie. As was Broken Flowers. The problem with the second sentence and its two clauses should be obvious. The third paragraph dangles in an unresolved sort of way. The fourth features a colon I don't like, but I can accept it. So the glass is not fracture-sharp, but still far from dull, and yet Keith's fingers plunged into the sand? Either the author went overboard with a love of useless imagery or Keith is a f*cking idiot. Or both.
Ah, "construction-paper-and-magic-marker sign." Precious.
Overall it has nice imagery and is relatively compact. The misdirection is rather obvious, though it helps to sort of hide the significance of the glass (well, plus there is the final metaphor, which is unnecessary but poetic in its own way). The "sodas" pulled from the fridge that first meeting aren't mentioned as being glass until later, so the reason why the glass on the shore reminds Keith of Melissa is hidden until later, even though it is made explicit early on that it has to do with the first time they met. Something about this strikes me as sloppy in an otherwise tidy piece.
It's formula, though, the same tale I've heard and read before, just packaged differently. College romance -- yawn. It has an object; the loneliness is less tangible, though the threesome provides yearning.
Mother's Bible Ooh, look -- MORE QUESTION MARKS IN PLACE OF APOSTROPHES/SINGLE-QUOTES.
It's 2007: get a clue.
The second sentences isn't a sentence. Many more long noun phrases and such clutter this piece.
This is not a pipe.
All the talk of Mother and Father makes me think of some cult. It's psychotic reverence. The whole "For the second time ..." line is a waste of good letters. Words. ASCII characters. Whatever. We gain no new, useful information here. Of course the narrator wonders what it is; it was just introduced as something unrecognized. Of course, this narrator just like to talk when nobody is around. Another sign of psychosis.
"I wonder what this is?" That's even worse than "Oh, nothing could happen now ..." or "Duck? Where?"
And then the letter that is not offset or quoted comes, at first appearing as part of the continuing narrative. I did a double-take at "written," expecting "read" (on the part of the narrator).
The "What the hell ..." belongs to an idiot of a narrator. I can understand it as a response after the narrator looks at the date of the letter but not before. The "My God" is likewise melodramatic -- sorry: mellow dramatic -- and immediately deep-sixed any lingering sympathy I had for this text.
The sad part is that there is a decent story here, in concept if not in execution. It's a three-part narrative: 1) the table and naive memories of childhood; 2) the uncovering of history, history that calls the known-past into question; and 3) a return to those memories now as an outsider. The title is wrong; this has little if anything to do with the Bible in question. The table is a better "object" of interest as well as object around which to develop a title. We have various objects but no real consideration of loneliness.
Connecting Train Such coincidences. I call such narratives over-determined.
Ah, the conceit of the talking-object. How quaint. The items in the wallet have voices, almost as if this were urban fantasy or magical realism. What's next, talking animals?
Speaking of which: a woman named Springer with "canine black eyes." Please tell me this is a joke. And "parlance of our times"? Watch Lebowski much?
As for Ros's boney shoulder -- I would expect so at 6'0" and 140lbs. What is this, Skeletons R Us? Ros establishes Willis as a voyeur, but I find this a needless detail, since it doesn't seem to follow from his actual behavior in the first segment. Sure, I guess "different voices" can view the world and characters differently, but this feels somehow disjointed.
I guess that's appropriate since Willis has no cigarettes.
Haunted House Perhaps it's a typo, perhaps it's inconsistency with tenses: paragraph 2, "She's grown."
It's a non-ending, with the sudden introduction of the man Jackie shares her bed with. It's unimportant. There's not much a story here, though what there is is revealed meticulously and by the numbers. Every detail fits in a well-crafted paragraph. There are no surprises. More prose is spent describing regions and neighborhoods than anything else. Phoenix this, California that, Brooklyn this, and oh, this accent, and here be stoops.
I've sort of gotten to know Jackie, but I don't care about her. There is no development in her I care about. Sure, she develops a certain peace of mind and desire to return home, but that's uninteresting, and we already knew she wanted to go home. The knowledge gained is that her mother, who never dated after the parents split, isn't lonely. But I don't think we ever feared that she did, or felt that Jackie feared she did. Or cared. There's no conflict or plot; it's just a lot of description.
Frame of Reference Lots of precious 90s cultural references throughout this one -- that's not necessarily a good thing. These details and the named "characters" are all just ciphers and inkblots. There's no there there. But this is Manhattan, KS, not Oakland.
In the second paragraph, you want mimeograph to be plural and followed by a comma, not a period. This is too short for "chapters." Pretentious. In "Chapter 2," the first paragraph, the sentence beginning "Through her glasses" makes no sense. In the "I nodded at the door" paragraph the segment "Dr. Carla P-, stopping for the day" makes no sense. Stopping what for the day? Stopping where? Something is missing. The same is true toward the end of "Chapter 4," in the sentence containing "The RA-ship I can office." You probably mean "offer." Unless this is some sort of joke dealing with the supposed precision of this recollection. One paragraph later "pocked" should be "pocketed."
I get the "point" of the final "chapter" and sentences -- the reverse of who/what is/was lonely and who/what was the 'found' object -- but it's awkwardly phrased to the point of being near-gibberish. The so-called editing on this one leaves a lot to be desired.
Covers:
_"The german quoting guy is a little bit out there." (fleece)
... that unlike the other 'reviewers' I also practiced -- very mild, very mild -- 'art criticism.'
_"The german quoting guy is a little bit out there." (fleece)[ Parent ]
... 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 ...).
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 ]
I didn't have any problem with your reviews. And, yes, I did get the business end of your insight.
I should add too that it might be an entirely different thing if it were clear that you hadn't read the stories and were just spouting crap. That would be a kinda BS thing to do. But real feedback, regardless of tone (and ana did say that snark was appreciated), is a valid response.[ Parent ]
I might add that the intent wasn't kind. The intent wasn't critique, as I read it. We (BO and I) are off on another thread touching on that, but I really think that this sort of critical answer to a very light hearted gathering is sort of like smoking crack at a tea party: offensive and stupid, but probably defensible by some sort of linguistic trick (I mean, the invite read "party" for fuck sake).--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
Almost Blue, as we call him 'round the way, took it too far. Sure. Have a respected member of the community PM him and hash it out.
But I think making a federal case out of it, as we're doing, will only make BO (what an unfortunate acronym) more defensive, which in turn will make the conversation more spiteful on all sides.
Blue's not usually a dick to people. This was clearly not part of an established pattern of behavior. And, in all honesty, though it is more than we now see regarding the WFC, it isn't even the among the harshest comments I've seen regular users leave one another on this site. And God forbid the subject of religion should come up . . .
He crossed a line. We should all tisk-tisk and move on.
As one of the allegedly wronged authors (he did talk smack about my story too - and, to add insult to non-injury, I'm getting my ass handed to me at the polls) I just wanted him to know that I still think he's a groovy cat and I don't take offense.
I understand that I don't speak for everybody.[ Parent ]
Much like our stories, when you are critical of someone, you shouldn't expect them to just sit back and say, hey, sure. I hate me too. You're right.
His critique is being answered in turn. Is it too far? Sure, maybe. Or just in kind and thus equally too far. Sure. I'll concede he's not normally a jerk.
Have someone PM me.--------------------------------- "You bring the weasel, I'll bring the whiskey." - kellnerin[ Parent ]
In this case, I guess I feel that if it were somebody besides Blue Moon of Kentucky doin' this, I might feel different. But it's a dude who is not normally a jerk and who is a regular and consistent part of the community. He was going with the flow of comments and went to far.
I guess I'm saying that you give a guy whose current comments look like aberrations the benefit of the doubt.
That said, it would be nice and politic if he'd just say, "Sorry if I pissed you off. I may have overstepped the bounds of ha-has and gone to far."[ Parent ]
That's not a tenable solution when he's using a lot of pixels to defend the comment in question.-- Do the math. [ Parent ]
I think turning the other cheek or making light of it would take the pressure off and make him less defensive.
Though it's a bit late for that now.[ Parent ]
nor am I interested in butting into y'all's conversation here, but, for the record, smoking crack always has been, and always will be, cooler than going to tea parties.
Just so nobody gets it twisted.
