/crit/

[Anonymous No.15060126]

Post writing samples/give feedback

[Anonymous No.15060347]

It was June, my constipation was bad, and my girlfriend existed. A typical girlfriend, not one of the memorable ones, I remember the anxiety at the time: "what if I married her," and other thoughts in that vein plagued my mind. I just wanted happiness, mostly in a philosophical sense, I was very detached at the time viewing myself as an obstinate mule desiring some whim, some adrenaline to get me to tomorrow. Well, it was a tough time, or even worse a forgettable time. So why am I telling you? Because it occurred, it was the summer when I felt alone, I felt like I needed to change, and towards the end all my notions dwindled and I felt confined to mere indifference. In essence, this is what I believe to be the beginning of my decadence, so here it goes.

As noted my constipation was bad, probably due to stress and poor nutrition, so I'd spend hours on my toilet, phone in hand on those humid evenings. The bugs, the crickets, the flies all buzzing at unseemly volumes, sweat drenching my legs, and dark brown rock turds would be the only consolation of my 45 minutes of heaving. It was during that time, that I became interested in Filipino women. I'd always watch Asian poor, mostly Japanese or Korean I presumed, but I figured Fillipino would be the most realistic as we shared a common language, so naturally after the heaves failed to produce anything meaningful I'd stroke it for another 15 to twenty minutes before joining my girlfriend on the couch for our nightly movie.

[Anonymous No.15060449]

(1/2)

Walk through a driveway that floods in the weekly downpours of Crown Hill, forming a moat, soaking your shoes and socks and lower pant legs in oily brine. Walk up the set of chewed-though wooden stairs, nails protruding, to the front porch. A giant ashtray, a mountain of cig butts, some scattered onto the wood below around a chair. A smell that floats away from the ashtray into the damp cool air, like a beacon, lingering and growing stale. A wooden door, usually unlocked. You must enter.

In the entry, rugs that were once gaudy but now are dismal. Two sets of stairs, one leading up to the living room and kitchen, one leading down to the basement. Three days ago, Logan dropped a carved pumpkin from the ledge above to the doormat below. Its gooey imprint is a part of the house now. Go upstairs. Walk past the faded painting of a sunflower glued to the walls. That painting, origins unknown, was here before you and is here now and will be here long after you have fled this place. See the living room. This is where it all goes down.

Three couches in a c-shape around a glass table. Rattling windows that face a row of squat anonymous houses with thin lawns. Near the stairs, a flatscreen TV with Xbox 360 and Wii, a pile of unwatched DVDs. A beanbag chair that has seen better days. Long ripped seams on the couches spilling foamy guts. Ash everywhere, the couches’ red painted with black brushstrokes. A blasted warzone down on the carpet, more litter visible than rug, the detritus of years of generations of male inhabitants. Stains upon stains choking the table. Stains of beer, sticky food residue, more streaks of ash and pancaked dirt. Pamphlets and chewed-up magazines in crumples, their hard paper scavenged for strips to use in spliff-rolling. Empty bottles of Black Butte Porter and cans of Natural Ice. Go to the kitchen.

(con't)

[Anonymous No.15060460]

>>15060449

(2/2)

Towers of undone dishes in the sink, culprit suspected to be Preston and/or Vincent. Notes taped to the faucet and around the sink, some passive-aggressive, some active-aggressive. Read one: I’M NOT YOU’RE MOM. THIS IS REDICULOUS. CLEAN YOUR SHIT!!!! An overflowing trash can with cardboard boxes around it, bearing even more beer cans and empty packs of cigs. A giant hairy ejaculating penis drawn in marker on the fridge. On the stove, an open box of cold pizza beckoning. You are not sure if this was placed there for the roommates to share, or is the property of one roommate exclusively. Ropes of hardened cheese clinging to the door of the microwave. Go downstairs.

Walk into the basement bathroom that is also the laundry room. Puddles of shower water seep into your socks; someone didn’t dry off before they left the shower. Long-unwashed towels on the rack, permanently damp. Know your enemies: the washer and dryer. Fear them. Respect them. Plead with them, try to coax them gently and roughly into accepting your eight quarters and doing their job. Give up. Go back upstairs and stand there, before the living room, thinking. You live here now; this is your house; this is home. You’d better hope that you don’t belong here.

[Anonymous No.15061444]

The city is asleep. Dying gray night still looms before it ruptures to sunrise. The veil of thin early morning air still shrouds the metropolis. Subways harbor ghost passengers, and the traffic lights change unnoticed. Aircraft warning lights blink silently atop the monolithic skyscrapers, soft red beacons in the air, signalling out into the sky. The streets are quiet. The city is asleep; but the nomad wanders on.

[Anonymous No.15061450]

>>15061444
purple prose

[Anonymous No.15061455]

Out in the Field where the dog was buried he sat underneath the great, old oak. Years before it had been the Brambles, a dense thicket of thorns and raspberries. The park cleared it out for some reason or other and now it was the Field. They buried the dog when it was still the Brambles, in a secluded knot of vines and bushes. She was carried out in stained yellow sheet slumped against his Uncle’s back. He ran around the paths in circles as they buried her. It seemed to be a different place now. The grave was spared, a few cinder blocks aligned in the center of three trees. Twenty six paces from each tree. Weeds grew out from under them now. Shadows grew long but the heat did not relent. Just beyond the grave was the carcass of a young buck. Scarabs from an egyptian tomb cloaked the meager flesh still hanging. Its antlers were sawed off. He remembered when he was eight years old and a friend of his Dad had shot a deer down by the creek. He remembered how its innards lay on the ground like an ill-prepared meal.

[Anonymous No.15061462]

And suddenly everything seemed so clear. Usually life presents itself as an impossible ball of yarn. Strands upon strands tangled together a thousand times over, each knot presenting another knot; the problems one after another, minute after minute, day after day, year after year. So impossible is this entangled mess that sometimes you forget where you started, or where you’re even trying to go. It’s all caught up in this web, each tangent exploding into further branches like an ocean into a river into a creek. But now it was simple, as if I was blind before; an idiot trapped in a cell with only three walls. It was all laid out before me like a desert highway, and I could see miles into the horizon, only one obstacle in my way. And so I walked up behind him and cupped my hand over his mouth and before I could feel the muffled vibration of a scream begging to escape, I felt the warm and thick blood gush out of the wound I had just made with my knife right next to his spine and then I ran.

[Anonymous No.15061481]

Ma and Pa told me to finish it...but it was too damn hot...I went into the well to draw some water for my thirst..the damn chickens kept peckin' around me...damn chickens...Still the sun kept lookin' at me and askin' what I was doin'. Leave me alone...Ma and Pa will get angry. I went back to the river...about a ten minute walk from the house...and covered my brother's grave with the mud of the Mississippi riverbank...Ma and Pa will be happy again...

[Anonymous No.15061715]

As the sun dipped beneath the horizon and day gave way to night, Reordan found himself outside a tavern near the centre of Alfield, drawn by the noise of people celebrating. He stopped at the door of the Bloated Goat, shield and hammer slung over his shoulders. His bones were weary from travel and he was sorely tempted by the thought of a warm meal and cold ale.

The dragonborn marched to the door and shoved it open with one meaty fist. The cacophony inside continued, heedless of his entrance, and Reordan stepped into the tavern. The door shut behind him with a bang, drawing the attention of several individuals sitting near it. Reordan ignored them, scanning the room for an empty table. When he didn’t find one, he settled upon one close to the back of the room.

Reordan stomped across the tavern and slipped into the seat, doing his best to keep his face in the shadow of his hood. It was a habit brought on by months of travel. He rested his muscled arms upon the table and scanned the room as he waited for a serving maid to approach him.

Most of those around him looked to be farmers, weary from their day in the fields, searching for the same thing Reordan was. Food, drink and a way to forget their day. On the other side of the room a young woman sat upon a table, singing for those around her. She was a pretty thing, long dark hair and olive skin. Reordan guessed she was from one of the cities on the Menagerie Coast. In one hand the woman held a tamborine which she bashed with her other hand at regular intervals. The song wasn’t one Reordan recognised, but by the look upon the patrons’ faces around her, he suspected they weren’t interested in the music as much as the beauty of the woman.

He noticed movement beside him and turned to see a maid approaching, her dirty blonde hair tucked behind one ear. She came to a halt beside him and asked, “What’ll you have?”

“Something to eat. Something to drink,” Reordan replied.

“Right. I’ll get you a leg of lamb and a mug of ale. One silver.”

Reordan passed the woman a silver piece and she pocketed it. He looked away as she wandered off, scanning the room for eyes watching him. Several people were looking in his direction. As he met their eyes, they averted their gaze.

He settled into his seat. They were only wondering what a creature like him was doing in a place like Alfield. Judging by the looks they’d given, they had probably never seen a dragonborn in their lives. He was an anomaly, something outside of the ordinary.

The door to the tavern opened. Reordan glanced over to see a young man dressed in a hooded cloak enter. He looked about, drawing the hood of the cloak closer and scuttling out of the light like a cockroach in flight.

Reordan noted the man as someone to watch. He glanced back to the singer and waited for his meal to arrive.

[Anonymous No.15061767]

>>15060347
>It was June, my constipation was bad, and my girlfriend existed.
10/10 opening sentence but declines pretty quickly after that.

>>15061715
Are you writing this ironically? If it's intended to be serious then it's painfully generic. This kind of stuff was done to death decades ago.

[Anonymous No.15061830]

>>15061767
I'm just writing it for the sake of learning about writing, nothing more. I couldn't care less if it was original or not.

[Anonymous No.15061933]

>>15061767
>10/10 opening sentence but declines pretty quickly after that.
Better?
It was June, my constipation was bad, and my girlfriend existed. A typical girlfriend, not one of the more memorable ones, which made me anxious at the time. "What if I married her," and other thoughts in that vein plagued my mind, but then I’d reflect on the legitimacy of marriage and remember those French Films I saw with their platitudes on love, helping convince myself it wasn’t that bad. Looking back, it really wasn’t either, I just wanted happiness, mostly in a philosophical sense, I viewed myself as an obstinate mule desiring some whim, some adrenaline to get to tomorrow; a detached objective view on life. It was the summer and I felt alone, I felt I needed to change, and this constant needed for growth was at the forefront of everything I did, always on my mind: making love, taking a dump, going to the store, having a drink—all of it centered around this fictional notion of growth. Thankfully, towards the end my yearnings dwindled, and I succumbed to indifference and perhaps acceptance. This is what I believe to be the beginning of my decadence, of course it was always hiding in me somewhere.

[Anonymous No.15061951]

Mathematics is the study of structure, quantity, order and change, Where it ends and where it begins is a matter of some contention. We contend, surely, but the boundary is there. It is a boundary of aerosol and silt in stirred water. To pluck out the math and non-math parts of the stream is beyond finite means. We toy with His toys when we toy with math. By it we ascend, and by it we fall. By it we become refined and by it we find finer expressions for our crudeness. Physical reality is a toy of the divinity. Even we, at the end of utmost effort, can understand physic enough to perform feats that ape the divine. To fly, to build, to harvest, to burn. We harness the motion of eternal electrons like leashed dogs. We warm ourselves by the ray of the shattering nucleus. We smite by that same ray, and a quarrelful of lesser ones, much like Zeus with his multivariate thunderbolts. It is said that humans ascend when we speak of moving closer to godhead, but I think of it instead as becoming finer in resolution.

[Anonymous No.15062028]

>>15061951
pretentious and unskilled. try being honest with yourself.

[Anonymous No.15062035]

>>15061462
riddled with clichés

[Anonymous No.15062082]

>>15061462
i liked it up to the part where he kills a guy

[Anonymous No.15062098]

>>15061444
very purple. Ironically enough, using simple language is the choice of the intelligent writer.

This one's a bit of a long story, so I'll just link to the google doc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xyo_MDONRM1PdklMAyccKqH9R8uKR3eKT4UD7hXRq98/edit?usp=sharing

[Anonymous No.15062228]

>>15062098
Doc needs permissions to access.

[Anonymous No.15062462]

>>15060126
Didn't get any feedback on this last thread:

My Lady shines through my shuttered window,
Attacks, alights upon my sleeping eyes.
Awake I tumble, from the Sea Eternal,
Over cascading waters. Magenta
Hues suffuse the morning mist,
A lunar sediment; plenitude resting in
The One above the One in All,
Until their dissipation by her flaming tongues.
Steeples erected, verandas buttressed
The instant I throw back my shutters.
I raise my eyes to see my Lady:
A Fiery, Decapitated Head.My Lady shines through my shuttered window,
Attacks, alights upon my sleeping eyes.
Awake I tumble, from the Sea Eternal,
Over cascading waters. Magenta
Hues suffuse the morning mist,
A lunar sediment; plenitude resting in
The One above the One in All,
Until their dissipation by her flaming tongues.
Steeples erected, verandas buttressed
The instant I throw back my shutters.
I raise my eyes to see my Lady:
A Fiery, Decapitated Head.

Also this one from a few weeks ago:

phenomena et noumena.
ave cubiculum sanguine plena.
ave mater plena sangria.

Cackling, ivory fangs clattering,
Over my shoulder. I show her my clover:
Consubstantial hypostases; est non est.

Zeno's hands never touch the stone,
Yet with gaze transfixed upon the mount,
So happy, he imagines himself.

[Anonymous No.15062471]

>>15060126
My Lady shines through my shuttered window,
Attacks, alights upon my sleeping eyes.
Awake I tumble, from the Sea Eternal,
Over cascading waters. Magenta
Hues suffuse the morning mist,
A lunar sediment; plenitude resting in
The One above the One in All,
Until their dissipation by her flaming tongues.
Steeples erected, verandas buttressed
The instant I throw back my shutters.
I raise my eyes to see my Lady:
A Fiery, Decapitated Head.

Also this one from a few weeks ago:

phenomena et noumena.
ave cubiculum sanguine plenum.
ave mater plena sangria.

Cackling, ivory fangs clattering,
Over my shoulder. I show her my clover:
Consubstantial hypostases; est non est.

Zeno's hands never touch the stone,
Yet with gaze transfixed upon the mount,
So happy, he imagines himself.

[Anonymous No.15063311]

Here's the first draft of a short story I wrote some months ago. There's a couple of passages in particular I know I want to re-write or make changes to, curious if anyone can pick out what, but mostly I'm concerned about quality of the nuts and bolts of my writing, i.e. my prose and dialogue.

The story is called "What Is It That Is Coming?" and is one of four I plan to bundle together into a single work.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i6jtlb9cfx7d8my/web%20copy.pdf?dl=0

>>15060449
Prose in the present tense for no contextual reason makes me irrationally angry, but the quality of your descriptions is good- however I question if somebody mispelling a note in haste would be inconsistent in their mistakes ("you're" one time and "your" the next time" in the span of two sentences)

>>15061444
Good prose for a couple of lines but don't write whole paragraphs like that or people will call it purple, good if you're Oscar Wilde, bad if you're just about anyone else

>>15061455
I like it; two small thing- should it be "carried out in *a* stained yellow sheet"? And the two short sentences-
>Twenty six paces from each tree. Weeds grew out from under them now.
-seem abrupt to me, especially when the former is linked to the sentence before it in subject. Could you use a semicolon or something?
>a few cinder blocks aligned in the center of three trees; twenty six paces from each tree. Weeds grew out from under them now.
Or some similar adjustment to that effect?

>>15061462
Nicely written but feels like a large part could be replaced by the much simpler saying "The further you look, the harder it gets to unpick the knot"

>>15061481
Dialect not too distracting, good, but a bit short to be forming an opinion

>>15061715
It's well-written, nothing offensive to point out, but I second the other reply that says this choice of subject matter is not very original... however, that's your prerogative, if it's what you enjoy writing then by all means go ahead- but what does each passage add to your story, thematically, character-wise, or plot-wise? Is it at the opening, and if so what does it actually tell us about the character? If it isn't, what still does it add? Or is it merely filling out the pages? I'm not saying you haven't answered these, necessarily, but it's something to keep in mind.

>>15061951
Bafflingly schizoesque.

>>15062471
First one is nicely written. Won't pretend I know what it's about at first glance but it flows nicely and has good rhythm. Don't know Latin, please don't be like my old 9th-grade English teacher who'd greet the students he didn't like in Latin, German etc. as they entered the room and then would smugly lean back in his chair in front of the rest of the class as if he seriously expected you to respond in kind...

[Anonymous No.15063494]

>>15062471
That first one is great anon, my goal is to use more syllables in my poems like this. Good word choice, evokes a rich image. This part is like music it flows so well off the tongue, it inspires me to write more:
>Hues suffuse the morning mist,
>A lunar sediment; plenitude resting in
Just beautiful.

[Anonymous No.15063645]

"So then lads, what are the bets?"
"Hm, one on the left seems like he'll die any day now."
"Okay, okay, Titus has the left-- wait a minuet, wait a minuet, how much are you bettin'?"
"Eh-- one of the jews had some nice robes, right? Lets say whoever wins gets those."
"That's fine, that's fine; and you Longinus? Longinus? Pay attention, we're bettin' here, remember. So then, who you got?"
"What?"
"Longinus, why would you bother coming if your not going to bother listening? We're talking about the Jews, Longinus, you know."
"The-- the Jews?"
"Yes, yes; the Jews."
"What about them?"
"Titus, Titus; are you seeing this shit? It's every damn day with him: Look behind you dumb fuck."
"Lucius."
"Yes."
"I can't see."
"Oh, that's right."
"Well then, Lucius and I were casting lots on these here jews, they're crucified as you can see--"
"I can't."
"Right, you can't. Anyways, these here jews are crucified, and as a general rule, the crucified don't last very long. So then, Lucius and I decided to play a little game to pass the time: we're betting on which of these jews will die first, winner gets these here robes, feel them if you like."
"They're soft; very, very soft."
"Very right you are Loginus, but if you want them, you have to make a bet."
"Titus."
"Yes?"
"How can I bet when I can't see?"
"Oh. That's a good question, hm, lets see-- pick a number, one or two."
"One."
"You get the middle jew then."
"Wait, what happens if I lose."
"Nothing, nothing. It's just some good natured fun Longinus, nothing will happen."

[Anonymous No.15063909]

>>15063645
Hang on, I figured out what I think is a better way to write this while in the shower
"So then lads, what are the bets?"
"Hm, one on the left seems like he'll die any day now."
"Okay, okay, Titus has the left-- wait a minuet, wait a minuet, how much are you bettin'?"
"Eh-- one of the jews had some nice robes, right? Lets say whoever wins gets those."
"That's fine, that's fine; and you Longinus? Longinus? Pay attention, we're bettin' here, remember. So then, who you got?"
"What?"
"Longinus, why would you bother coming if your not going to bother listening? We're talking about the Jews, Longinus, you know."
"The-- the Jews?"
"Yes, yes; the Jews."
"What about them?"
"Titus, Titus; are you seeing this shit? It's every damn day with him: Look behind you dumb fuck."
"Lucius."
"[Aside]Oh, why, why, why, why, why, have I been made his keeper? What god did I wrong to have this miserable pile of malformed flesh and brittle bones be born my brother? I have been the most loyal servant I could, I sacrifice every meal, pray every night, respect the priests and the virgins, rarely if ever lose my self to lust and vice, always, always, always practicing what plato taught on the virtues, and yet have I been cursed with this cur, this idiot who bears the name of my house, this dullard who shames me with every step, this degenerate who--
"I can't see."
"Oh, that's right."
"Well then, Lucius and I were casting lots on these here jews, they're crucified as you can see--"
"I can't."
"Right, you can't. Anyways, these here jews are crucified, and as a general rule, the crucified don't last very long. So then, Lucius and I decided to play a little game to pass the time: we're betting on which of these jews will die first, winner gets these here robes, feel them if you like."
"They're soft; very, very soft."
"Very right you are Loginus, but if you want them, you have to make a bet."
"Titus."
"Yes?"
"How can I bet when I can't see?"
"Oh. That's a good question, hm, lets see-- pick a number, one or two."
"One."
"You get the middle jew then."
"Wait, what happens if I lose."
"Nothing, nothing. It's just some good natured fun Longinus, nothing will happen."
The idea being that a long, fancy soliloquy makes the comedic moment hit harder and fits lucius' character more

[Anonymous No.15064149]

>>15060347
great opening line, falters after that.
>>15061444
contrary to what everyone else is saying, I don't think your prose is purple, if anything it's incomplete and bounces around the city without any coherent logic. it is, however, faltering: it lacks tempo, flow. it's jarring, and the final line about the nomad is just kinda typical for a lot of crit threads on here.
>>15061455
one of my favourites of the thread, I would ditch the last sentence though.
>>15061715
i'm sorry anon but this feels like something i'd read in a story generator
>>15061951
pretentious, overly philosophical. you really ought to ground your writing
.>>15062471
amazing imagery, well done

attached is the first few pages of a shrt story i wrotw about a hooker. rough draft

[Anonymous No.15064156]

>>15060126
Bears reportedly stare at scenic vistas, and that this constitutes a sense of beauty should be confirmed by certain other scenes. Photos of tragic exhibits in what must be impoverished zoos show bears staring at murals of landscapes painted on the walls of their enclosure. The sort of pleasure we feel in witnessing the former is speared by the immediate sadness of the latter. A more virulent sort of image shows a brown-polar bear hybrid in Chinese captivity, that race is at this time the least compassionate and most cruel, living on a small concrete platform, knowing only glass walls and artificial light. The bear’s morose stature and ghostly sad eyes make one hope it can kill some of its captures before being painlessly shot dead as it has no hope of escape or release. As Heraclitus said, “greater deaths come greater portions.” Such an existence is a middle ground between the disharmony of the mural-gazer and the absolute torture of a bile-bear. Bears are an example of what holds true for so many creatures, that they have the capacity for sorts of beautiful contemplation. This quiet contemplation varies in degree according to the intensity of the intellect, as far as the Schopenhauerian Ideas are grasped, though without necessarily being a movement into the painless world of consubstantiality. Sport is a localised element of the whole occupation of the whole person and as such beautiful apprehension is possible within this seemingly most overly desire-driven action. As in architecture, there is the Idea of material, there is for example in judo the Idea of balance. Grasping beauty is not guaranteed by participation. Grasping and so contemplating beauty is a sort of alternative pathway to objective knowledge, though clearly of a different kind. The pleasure got from watching a bear lose himself in a landscape is similar to that got from watching a mother enraptured by her child. Like with how the pleasure is lost witnessing the bear staring at a mural, for natural beauty’s appreciation there is a sense of right place needed. In the good death or with the mother and her child, the losing yourself may not be in an Idea, but in a seating of compassion where the right place of the individual is made beautiful by the loss of the egoist self among a sea of egoism. I’m left wondering, what sort of interplay there is with the sense of right place and jurisprudence in common living? Plato ends his Seventh Letter, “I came to the conclusion that all existing states were badly governed, and that their constitutions were incapable of reform without drastic treatment and a great deal of good luck. The only hope of finding justice for society or for the individual lay in true philosophy, and that mankind will have no respite from the trouble until either real philosophers gain political power or politician’s become by some miracle true philosophers.”

[Anonymous No.15064304]

>>15064149
oh shit, wrong screen cap haha, this one is about some guy renting from a friend who he can't pay for rent

[Anonymous No.15064620]

>>15061444
>Dying gray night still looms before it ruptures to sunrise.
Okay, you have to cool it down, this shit is past purple

[Anonymous No.15064651]

Edward
Berkeley abided to bethink above brain
From believing brute bounds we better abstain
Bodies being but found beside bent
Better yet, but bound inside it
Nith
Much a mistake my misguided man
Matter amounts to what makes up your dam
Madness methinks must march from your maw
Making the motions muster at all
Edward
Bereft by abstraction you beggar about
Believing perceiving brings bare without?
Nith
Mangled messiah you manage to miss
Mind’s impediments your matters dismiss
Faust
One wonders what makes so when waking we find
Matter’s existence depends on the mind
While bent is but bundles of bodies and beasts
Trial break one away, the other deceased
Nith
Such ostentatious speech
Is speculation’s synthetic sleech
That it is escapist bliss
Is shown by this:
Fascination fought and fertile fruits formed
Defender faulters, fictions flood forth
Foresight forlorn, fell fastidious fleet
Fasting from edifying forms fallow, effete
Faust
Phantoms fortuitous, efforts of fervent ills
Fashionable fantasy ephemerally fills
Nith
Your Bishop’s student Hume
Admitted fruitless loom
In idle fancy speech
There is no truth to reach
Even claiming fire from friction
Suffers from this affliction
Hungry, do those well read
Harvest thoughts, keeping fed?
The world’s not a theory
Not a book, see it clearly
What keeps us from tatters?
Practical matters!
Its plans, work, commerce, trade
Down the pen, up the spade!
Quondam gods had rite and form
Quickly change, now hymns are sworn
Goddess reason, naked bare
Syllogisms sing your prayer
Woden
The perceiver sees his perceptions
But not himself without reflection
Through crude credulity, gauze subject
Realists realise cause and effect
Sufficient reason is change eternal
Man’s hidden passage unestranges kernel
Faust
Nith you fool for the circumstantial
As Woden tells, we are consubstantial
This through reason we can grasp
Bliss beyond the phantoms gasp
Pigheaded Nith will never see
Parody of Edward’s absurdity
Pledged to perspective, blind to the prism
Which binds provisions, his dogmatism
Edward
Bias nay but belief
Your epicure leitmotif
Beats about, but ablates
Being’s bosom, abrogate
Nith it’s true words are poor,
Not to tolerate a boor,
But what bore you this stage?
Prejudices of the age
Nith
The attitudes of man today
At least are made of mud and clay
How can your abstractions
Derive from said refraction?
Woden
All is one and one is all
The world is one let wonder fall
Ex nihilo nihil nit
Man’s born of change, then comes wit
So we know the grounds of cause
Direct volition, heed its laws
Beyond subject, beyond Idea
Will unchecked, bedecked Sophia
Faust
With this Woden I must agree
To know the will is to know me
Our perennial esthetic wade
Exhausts cultivated masquerade
Woden
Far from it I’m afraid Faust
Esthetic fantasy we should oust
The will mars life as suffering
The maelstrom eats itself, plundering

[Anonymous No.15064687]

>>15064651
Use colons holy shit

[Anonymous No.15064728]

>>15061444
The last line made me literally cringe.

In general, try to speak more with what you say than how you say it. Verbs and nouns are the muscle and bone of good writing; use adjectives sparingly.
Avoid complex words when simple ones will do.
Pick one or two subjects to highlight with that Romantic style; try building the tension throughout the paragraph, starting low and ending high; if you must keep your lone wanderer, leaving him at the end might be effective if he serves an an anticlimax.

[Anonymous No.15064738]

>>15064651
I loved this. Does it take place in hell? Would gladly read more

[Anonymous No.15064751]

>>15061933
>>15064149
?

[Anonymous No.15064757]

Jordan B. Peterson, plain-speaking truth-sayer, gestures towards a marble door. I follow, Connor with me; as we run, skipping almost, I can see, through a third eye, my yellow, disarrayed teeth, revealed by laughter of the most boyish sort.

“I’ve got some meaning for you, boys,” says Peterson, matey but acute, “it’s just down this hallway. Follow me.”

We almost trip, mangled by ecstasy; the walls start to undulate wildly, deforming into abstractions no man can decipher.

“Just a hip, hop, and scotch through this postmodern gluck,” he assures us, taking off with swift and decisive action, purposively diving through the air, legs stuck out like a freshly inked quill.

Hesitant, we jump together, and the whole world dissolves into inanity, a blur, everything nonsensical apart from us, our transfigured faces into obscene parodies of who we think we are. Notes of a simple, sickly music, funny nonetheless, serenades our ears, magnified by each note into a state of disproportion with the rest of our bodies. A light, dim at first, melds into purple, and Mt. Fuji, shimmering, then still, acts as a beacon to our travails. Soon the world resolves itself into a Hiroshige, then a Hokusai, with pitch-perfect clarity: Peterson, yukata-clad, greets us over a bowl of green tea, smiling, his teeth agleam.

“Damn, man, responsibility feels good,” he quips, at ease.

[Anonymous No.15064789]

>>15061455
Solid prose, anon.

[Anonymous No.15064808]

Ewan runs his hands through his hair, dismayed at how sparse it feels. He mutters a curse and winces. He knows that Chappelli is through with him. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and he didn't have a cent to his name. If only fucking Chappelli hadn’t ‘v run him dry. He knew, too, that the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience was going to be one of those desultory escapades light on the meandering profundity and HEAVY on the inane fight talk. That really riled his guts, so much that he was going to, he was going to...maybe grab a four pack and slouch into a languorous binge of Father Ted repeats on Channel 4.

“God damn this Brexit BULLSHIT,” he said, verbally capitalizing the last words by saying it kind of like “BBBBUUUULLLLLLSHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT”.

He had decided that the sour vibes he was getting from his colleagues at work had something to do with his last minute decision to vote Leave. It’d been a clip, Youtube, Peter Hitchens or some shit...he tremored, a full-belted shudder.

“WHYYYYYYY?”

He had a nasty habit of ascribing everything to his own agency. If he was philosophical enough, he might have been a proponent of libertarian free will...but as it stood, he was a bit of dolt, really, and saw that things never went his way and just blamed himself. If he’d ‘v got down to it, he would’ve seen in himself a really twisted and totally literal version of the American Dream manifesting itself. He never got laid because he was not worthy, insufficient in some measurable way; JJ boned girls weekly because he was better, end of. He even went so far as to believe that JJ was happier because he DESERVED to be, and that he, Ewan, was unromantically suicidal (like, he had a really pedestrian desire to top himself that he knew he would never act on) because he didn’t try hard enough to graft out a space for himself in this Goddamn fucking LIFE.

“Life…,” he railed, despondent. “If only I was up in Scotland…"

It struck him that he was engaged in a disjointed and thoroughly unliterary soliloquy. If someone were out there, hiding in the bushes, maybe, with a tape recorder on hand, and they pieced together all of his unfinished sentences left dead in the night...maybe...no, no, he wasn’t Hamlet, and he certainly wasn’t schizophrenic, no matter what the doctor said. He was MAD, sure, MAD, like, “MAD as a hatter”, legendary for his office hour japes (like that time he pinched Jenny’s bum as she leaned over the copying machine), but not mentally ill, not diagnosable in an empirical way.

[Anonymous No.15064811]

>>15064757
>We almost trip, mangled by ecstasy
legit lol'd, very nice

>>15064738
Thank you. It's set in a (slightly) fantastical industrialising England, but Faust will end up somewhere a bit different. Here's some more straight dialogue since I can rip it out of context.

Edward
Faust this land is serene
Toads in pond and trees green
But here as flowers bloom
We sow their seeds of doom
This town turns men to fiends
Who only see wealth’s needs
In exchange for a loom
We lose man’s one true womb
But loom just not of cloth
Too loom of man’s blood got
Our social fabric lost
In change our hearts will frost
Faust
Fool for food of thought are you
Doom no more than womb anew
Past will parse the present too
For through and through man will do
Novel nothings noting no
New notions their nocturnes slough
Nature knows one thing like dirt
Her strongest force: Man inert
An act such as an affront
Astounding as it is blunt
Telling tales of change of age?
Felling veils off eyes on stage
Narrator
Nearby they hear ‘I do’
And passer-bys cheer too
Edward
While we talk of complaint
Some live simply and great
Faust
Simply and great in bondage sure
Her bosom did his catchment bore
But passions brief watch it pass by
The bottled parts will bastardise
Yes passions brief it will pass by
Do greet hello then smile goodbye
Love great you think but me thinks not
A ploy so coy by men of rot
This trinket love a trick to sell
These tired peoples tales of hell
Hellish hypocrites behove you
Do as I say not as I do
Men of the cloth men of the book
While they betrothed have bastard brooks
But greater garments garnered yet
Good love of God this guile begets
Highest hypocrisy hit here
God wrought abstractly not near
Gaze at man and grasp his nature
Idle fancy; devil’s wager
Edward
Your confidence undue
I must contradict you
Passions may flow as tide
But love gives sight to blind
Marriage settles the heart
Life as toil turned to art
And man’s blasphemous acts
Does not affect the facts

[Anonymous No.15064827]

Ewan, wielding a dog-eared copy of ‘Das Kapital’, heads to the library for a bit of peace and quiet. His mission is to ascertain the truth of John McDonnell’s proclamation that, within this heavy tome, lies the answer to our current economic woes. As he approaches the automatic doors, he stops, considering for a moment - in the shiny, sterilized reflection he sees wincing back at him - if he’s going bald. No, no, it was just the wind, ruffling his hair into artless recession. He sighs, knowing that age cometh. Just what was he doing with his first day off in over a week?

‘Oi, jackass,’ croons a guy in an American jockey kind of way. He’s in a red, top-down convertible, glaring through a pair of shades.

‘Get off the road, creep.’

A girl - luscious, sharp-eyed, blonde - titters to this announcement. Ewan knows it’ll be years before he gets laid again.

[Anonymous No.15064852]

This one's a but of a long story, so just be prepared for that.

Creation


Once, before I was born, I was GOD. Nothing began and naught ended at the precipice of all being. It lay before myself, an infinite aeon future and past, form wrought and unwrought all at once as I took it upon me. Searching its paths, it alighted my mind on planes existing and those yet to be emblazoned into the field, beyond here and now. I ruminated in that place for many ages, and in my mind I fashioned that which could fill the empty void. It, that genesis of creation, was named consciousness, being the first light that I alone could perceive. Pedastled above all else, it came to grow into a vast pool of light, and it was good. Sparks of fertility bobbed in the ripples of my mind, flaring with fecundity. The thoughts swam alone or few together, but after a long while they began to dance in harmony, and in unison were they to discover wonders too great to conceive, which delved into the depths and into the heights until the fountain of my knowledge filled to overflowing, and my creations burst and went out into the void…


And it was not void.


I became. Tendrils of intertwining starlight hung down upon me, suspended at the height of all that was. Tangled and unkempt were they, however, and there were few which held any coherent thought for long. There was no fertility of ideas amongst the bunch, and the light which had radiated first from me became entangled in those hands. Pity then came into my heart, for although they wished desperately to grow and flounder as I did, the threads were without direction, doomed to wander endlessly in the void should no hand come to guide them. Thus it came to pass that these fibers were gathered by me and spun into a single spool, to become my own instrument in things ever more wonderful than could be known whilst in isolation. As the wire began to come into one piece, it grew more so in splendor and beauty than what was possible before, and I was pleased.

But there were some who refused their binding, wishing rather to revel in their chaos, and straightaway there came discord. Many that grew nigh them faltered in their light and unraveled, and there were some who attuned their thought to that disorder. Thus I arose, and stretched out the fruit of my spindle into one fine line. Rot and ruin was over much of it, and reached out ever further in corruption. I severed off those whose thoughts were not of my own accord, and cast them out so that much of my bounty was lost. Resuming my work, I found that there was little which had remained pure for me, so that the grand design which I had longed for could not be fully complete. I became despondent at this, but labored still, and from those strands I wove together a bright fabric of shimmering stars. It was named reality, and I thought it good.

[Anonymous No.15064855]

>>15064852
Thus began my work on the creation of all to ever exist. I tended to the cloth for a long while, stitching together walls and ceilings of brilliant light which extended beyond seeing. Supporting them into the heights were columns fashioned from the void, which I had taken and made strong. Below all of this was a field of great nullity, endless in its reach. And so I poured forth the remainder of my stars into that place, like unto a calm black sea with white lights bobbing on its surface. Some had strung together into beautiful forms, and the constellations swam around my feet to praise me and my work. These creations in particular I grew fond of, likening them to my own children. It was complete, and thus I became lord of all that could be, which was named the universe. I spoke, and it formed reality. I thought, and thus conceived. I was, and from me came existence.

It came then onto my feet, a dark endless shadow. The form I beheld came from the void without number, and thus not of me or my thought. Looking into it, there lay that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemed and bubbled at the center of all infinity, who gnawed hungrily in inconceivable, unlit chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes. All that were near him took strange forms and figures, and I became wary of this. Arising from my throne, I stepped forth to smite the anomaly, but already was it feasting upon my work, now desolate in that place. The columns of void cracked and tumbled under its weight, and the calm sea crescendoed into a raging storm. My children cried out as they were swallowed and became lost. Woe fell upon me as all which I had created fell into the nothing from whence it came, smitten into dust and drowned. It enveloped all which I had thought in corruption and madness. There was nothing, and the pestilence had bloated into a hideous mass, which came to surround me in rupturing darkness, and I was no more...

[Anonymous No.15064859]

>>15064855
I was confined, my light bound to wander adrift. There was nothing within the bestial maw that did not come first from me, and yet I looked on in horror to my now twisted creation. It was preserved but terrible to behold and plagued with beasts, the young of that fattened creature. They climbed down the walls and columns with their many legs unto my stars, and like unto a once bright flame were the distant lights snuffed out. I heard from my children cries of pain for their father, for me, and yet I could do nothing but listen to their suffering, and soon their silence. It was a terrible absence, the sensation of sound, one that I had not known since there was nothing, a time that I did not wish to go back to. When at last I came to my beloved sons, they were already dead, floating atop a dark sea. Into my hand I waded out one of them, a magnificent constellation of once shimmering stars, now limp and cold. My cheeks were soon wet with sorrow, and I held close the body of my son, my beautiful child, and cried out openly in anguish.

Tears of burning gold ran down my face like comets and spilt unto the dark lake that I lay flat on. Soon there was a swirling cloud of woeful tears beneath the water, and a strange comfort alighted my skin. I dipped my fingers into that light, and the warmth of past remembrance came to me, in the times when I hearkened in the deeps of time and amidst the innumerable stars. Becoming ever more engrossed in those memories, I wept without restraint, knowing that my mighty hall existed only in this reflection of mind and water. But so badly did I crave what was once my own that I submerged myself into the sea to claim it. My arm went deeper and lower into the depths in some desperate hope that I could enter and stay in that tranquility. I was so close, my fingers against it’s bright radiance, that I could almost hear the laughter of my children once more. But I did not reach far enough, and the cloud faded away, out of my grasp and into unknown voids of time. Desolation soon filled me, and I had only the rupturing darkness as company.

But once again was there a heavenly glow beneath my seeing, and thither did I feel a great warmth. Looking down, my hand was illuminated with living starlight, the likes of which I had not known or felt in such a way since the weaving of those distant strands. The cloud from before truly had grazed against my being, and filled me with long forgotten hope. I took then the light, went away from the sight of those accursed beasts, and in secret began to form a grand creation. The labor was hard and sorrowful, but in my hands there shined the work; the light of a single untouched star. In it I poured forth all of my deeds, my wonders, and my memories from days of yore. Soon it grew in brilliance, and the sun sent out far reaching flares of fertile light out and into the rupturing darkness.

[Anonymous No.15064860]

Luke and me had come here the night he got his nut on. At around two, three in the morning, the sky still black and the MD in full-swing, he pawed at my hand.

“Hey, man,” he said, his voice assuming a confessional tone, “there’s something I want to tell you, but I want to wait until Connor’s asleep”.

Connor had gone ahead to the kitchen. I didn’t think he heard. “Uh, why can’t you tell me now?” I asked.
Was it about Connor?
“Just, listen, man,” he whined, pawing at my hand again, “I can only tell you in private.” The sun bled into the sky as the hours whittled away. Connor went to bed at around five in the morning. “Listen, man,” Luke says, resuming the thread, “how about we go for a walk and I tell you there?” I agree, not knowing why the walk is needed.

We, too, alighted at the Millenium Fields. It was curious. All the way up, Luke hadn’t said a thing. I suspected he was being ground to silence by the comedown. Looking out across the field I stopped, taking out my pouch of tobacco. He did the same. As I put the cigarette into my mouth, I noticed that something was off with my perception. The field looked like it was tinged with purple. Unease crept over me. We moved on, neither of us saying a word.

It took us until we got home, in fact, for Luke to tell me what it was he wanted to say, but there was a hitch: he could only say it as we were going to sleep. There was another hitch, too, an even bigger one: he wanted to sleep in the same bed as me. Zonked-out, I thought, Hell, let’s use my parents room. I closed the blinds and took my trousers off and slipped under the covers. He did the same. Three, four minutes passed. He was edging closer. A sort of shimmy, it was. Eventually, ten minutes in, his knee was touching mine.

“Can I kiss you?”

The question seemed unanswerable. My jaw, masticated to oblivion, could barely move.

“Uh, I guess.”

He moved into me, opening his mouth onto mine. His tongue felt like a piece of uncooked meat. He swung it around, hoping to elicit something. After a few seconds I pushed him off. “Sorry, man,” I said. He rested his palm on my chest. Like his body, it started to shimmy, first to my hips, then to my penis. He played with it, but it wouldn’t budge. “Sorry, man.”

[Anonymous No.15064862]

>>15060126
Nigger.

That's it. That's the whole chapter.

[Anonymous No.15064864]

>>15064859
The beasts which had first snuffed out my stars were far off, but still did they take heed of my diligence. I heard from that direction the thundering of many legs and wild screams. All around me were creatures that had no beginning nor end, their existence being an affront to my beauty. The star which burned beside me illuminated them wholly, and I could see how horrible they were to behold. Gaping, empty maws snapped at me like lightning, the rupture striking down upon the land like an unholy fire. I felt the ravenous lust within them, and knew it was for my child. They wanted it as a lifeless corpse, and would not rest even after they had consumed my last creation until it was grinded flesh in their stomachs. Death had come to surround me so that I could only look into its eyes, that limitless gaze, and despair.

But something happened then that I did not expect, for the newly born star had begun to radiate outward in flares of yellow and white. All those who had been corrupted by the endless chaos were stripped of that evil which could only deform and maim. Cleansed of their wickedness, they began to transform wholly into bright threads of starlight. So great were those threads in quantity that it flowed smoothly unto all corners of the void like a golden sea of consciousness. Thus I gathered the strands once more as I had previously, and thoughts of joy and splendor overwhelmed my mind like floodwaters from a now broken dam. As the star began to shine over both me and the strands, that terrible anomaly which had consumed all of me and my hall began to cry out in pain, and I sprouted out from it, finding the creature dead and forgotten.

Hauling it’s now destroyed body with my own hands, I took the beast and formed from its parts a throne of endless beauty to symbolize my victory over evil. Then there came an endless array of steps which descended from my seat, woven deeply from that sea of golden reality. The walls that confined my newly made hall stretched endlessly so that nothing could be hidden from me. All which I could not accomplish in my first dwelling came then into being and was good. But I knew that, in spite of this new beauty, it was not yet complete, for still did the last star radiate from its innermost source in me. Thus it came to pass that I took hold of my greatest creation, the child of all that came before, and released it from the confines of both space and time. Never since have I made such a light like that one, for all which exists in the now burst forth from that place. Though it has been said that a greater still shall be made by me after the end of days when the last drop of consciousness dims into nothing. I sat pleased in my hall, and for eons beyond counting I hearkened in the deeps of time…

And amidst the innumerable stars.

I hoped you liked it :)

[Anonymous No.15064906]

The duo sat down across from Wallace, concealing their surprise. Wallace was one of the most trusted intermediaries between the Boss and his hitmen, privy to some of the most important missions the Boss has ever carried out. Eve and Eren had only heard of him, they were relatively new to gang after all, so understandably they were shocked to have someone of his status talking to them. Wallace dismissed their surprise and got straight to work.
“The item you two are retrieving is a briefcase. It’s jet black except for the golden handle and locks. There are two locks, but only one actually opens the briefcase. However, the one that opens the briefcase changes constantly. Now, I’m going to go into more detail in a moment, so tell me if you understand so far.”
Eve wanted to ask about how the lock could possibly change in such a way, but Eren stopped her. Considering they were in the presence of Wallace himself, they were probably already in over their heads. Better to just do what they were told.
‘We understand” He said.
“Good. Then I’ll continue. In order to figure out which lock opens the briefcase, you’ll need to spill a droplet of blood onto each lock. The lock which can be used to open the case at that given time will absorb the blood droplet and return to its golden look, while the other will absorb the droplet as well but turn crimson red instead. Only the person whose blood was used for this process will be able to see which lock is which, however. After finishing this process, you will have 1 minute to open the briefcase. Upon opening the case, both locks will return to their original golden color. Understand?”
l

[Anonymous No.15064991]

When things drop quickly, like gold, which is stability, it indicates brokers are liquidating leveraged accounts. You've got guys levered ten to one, one hundred to one, with puts up the ass, and so what happens is, when shit hits the fan, their broker takes the hammer, holds up a railroad spike, and says, this is going in unless you take out the puts. So the guys take a laxative, and dump everything. This simultaneous massive shit clogs up the pipes, and so the exchange has to freeze trading so they have time to pump all the shit out.
So basically, when the bull goes to shit, the bear shits in the woods.

[Anonymous No.15065322]

>>15060347
>Well, it was a tough time
You'd be fine just saying it was a tough time. I liked reading his mostly because it cuts some bullshit.
>>15060449
I'm not a fan of this style but I'm sure someone is.
>>15061444
I'm of the opinion that this is purple but I'm also a dumbass.

I just need help, I feel beyond help with anything I type these days.
https://justpaste dot it/59d8r

[Anonymous No.15065438]

Waiting for the 8:30 Maglev, Everest lit a starlight cigar. Inhaling deeply before moving it away from his lips, he breathed out a plume of nebulous smoke, iridescent shades of blue and purple filled the air in front of him. A ghastly white shimmered at the edges of the breaking up cloud, and dots of yellow, sometimes even crimson red, within it. Beautiful as it was, Everest wondered if it was worth it. These starlight cigars were supposedly nearly inconsequential for his health, but his doubt was great. Hard as he tried, though, he couldn’t break the habit. A holdover from his past. They’d probably end up killing him if they ended up being toxic, considering how many he’s smoked over the years.
“May I borrow a lighter, son?” The polite Volrathian walked up beside Everest. Despite the deep wrinkles and intricate, swirling tattoos covering his body, indicating his age, his muscles rippled. Time had done little to them.
“Sure.” He reached into his back pocket. “Here.”
“Thank you, son.” The Volrathian’s brand was different. Grays and browns took command over most of his plume, with deep, blood reds and oranges at its heart, but eventually they cooled and dissipated.
“Terra?”
“Yes. Starlight is too fiery for someone as old as me.” He passed the lighter back to me, before setting to flame a second cigar with his first, always keeping one in his mouth as he made the exchange.
The Maglev arrived, and they hoped on.

[Anonymous No.15065559]

Alright I edited >>15060347 heavily.

It was the end of June, my constipation was bad, and my girlfriend existed. A typical girlfriend, not one of the more memorable ones, which made me anxious at the time. "What if I married her," and other thoughts in that vein plagued my mind, but then I’d reflect on the legitimacy of marriage and remember those French Films I saw with their platitudes on love, thus helping me convince myself my situation wasn’t so bad. Looking back, it really wasn’t either, I just wanted happiness, mostly in a philosophical sense, I viewed myself as an obstinate mule desiring some whim, some adrenaline to get to tomorrow; a detached objective view on life. It was the summer and I felt alone, I needed to change, and this constant need for growth was at the forefront of everything I did: making love, taking a dump, going to the store, having a drink—all of it centered around this fictional notion of growth. Thankfully, towards the end my yearnings dwindled, and I succumbed to indifference and perhaps acceptance. This is what I believe to be the beginning of my decadence, of course it was always hidden in me somewhere, just waiting to come out.

As noted my constipation was bad, mostly due to stress and poor nutrition, so I'd spend about an hour or so, sometimes two or three if I needed privacy, on the toilet each night after dinner, newspaper in hand reading away lifelessly, until the heaves got so severe they needed all my attention. The humidity always made it even worse, especially when the bugs, the crickets, and the flies were buzzing and clicking at unseemly volumes. The sweat drenching my legs, the itch terrorizing my balls, the sun that wreaked havoc on my not quite clad enough legs, and the lack of fiber in my gut only yielded dark brown rocks, which came out sporadically in my 45 minutes of heaving, and never satisfying in the least. It was during this time that I became interested in Filipina women. I remembered the Filipinas in high school, who I never even thought to look at while I was there, with their tight asses and impressionable lips. All Asian women would have sufficed, but the amorous naivety and the common language of the Filipinas made my testicles explode each night; the soft quiver that served as an accent, the tan-skin, the clear biological differences between they and I, all of this was overwhelming and lasted for about fifteen to twenty minutes after the preliminary heaves. You don’t want to make it quick; you have to find the right impulse to give into, sometimes a sneaky Filipina slips into my conscious, but my mind is on heavier and loftier goals. However, the next night the initial sneaky Filipina may become the loftier goal herself, so I always knew what I wanted even if it meant making myself work for it. After that anticipated satisfaction, I spent five minutes cleaning up, and making sure my dick didn’t fall off; it usually had a rash and was tender from the humidity.

[Anonymous No.15065568]

>>15065559
P2.
Unfortunately, this was still not an excuse to not fuck the misses later that night, so my penis became a balloon towards the end of our three-week vacation. However, I soon found out that that affliction was not necessary, as she was just as disinclined to fuck as I was, for different reasons obviously, and this along with the bleak salt-water alleviated some pain towards the end. Her gut ballooned up as well from the food, beer, and poor sleep making her feel repulsive to herself, I didn’t notice, but she liked to feel beautiful and thin while fucking, so she was pretty unhappy about our arrangement. This did not become known until a sudden outburst one night. Apparently, I’d been initiating the sex all along, and she was sick of it. “You filthy pig, can’t you just watch a movie and cuddle. What is with the fucking, every night too…” you get the picture.

Well, eventually the summer ended, as did my mawkish desire to grow and I ended up back in Detroit. We broke up shortly after arriving, the outburst never was reconcilable, but we were at her parent’s summer house in Martha’s Vineyard, so we implicitly decided to wait it out until getting back to avoid any further unpleasantness. Surprisingly, she did initiate sex one other night during our stay, and it was during a brisk early July night with stark winds and a subtle reminder of The Spouter Inn evinced by the air, the provincial town, and lavender New England sky. I joked with her about her request, I’m quite pleased with how that turned out, her sly laugh, my robust insouciance, and eventually an amorous lift and thrust. She nudged me and tilted her head inwards with a wide smile to indicate her desire, and with that she was in my command. We both knew that was ephemeral though, but the ride back was also quite delightful. It was about a thirteen-hour drive and we did not fight once. We stopped for breakfast and listened to music all the way back, joking and playfully ticking each other, happy to be alive. However, upon getting back to my apartment, rid of her at last, I felt a sense of relief, so much so that I committed to never contacting her again and would wait for her to do so if she even felt compelled to. She did not and so that was that. This was about twenty years ago when I was Twenty-Eight.

[Anonymous No.15065575]

>>15065568
P3.

Anyways, I was back in Detroit doomed to the daily routine of office life, which never quite bothered me in the way it’s portrayed on TV, but still warrants recognition as a mean between life and death. Death being obvious, and life being the designated holidays thrust onto the calendar, meaning the weekend, or something as extravagant as Thanksgiving, which serves as exalted life. Of course, Thanksgiving being prefaced by Halloween which in my case is actually exalted life, as is all of October for the most part aside from my daughters fits about going to girl scouts, and my son’s apprehensions about the upcoming wrestling season. This is unimportant compared to the russet leaves gently gliding off maple trees, the chilling pallor of the sky or the vast distinct azure on other days, the undiluted Autumn breeze, and the fresh smell of that type of year free from pollen and replaced by pumpkins and mold. Ah, sweet mold; an unctuous mold. My children and I, mostly I, like to watch old TV shows and movies while eating sandwiches on the weekend. My son then goes off to play football with his friends, while my daughter usually invites the neighbors over, while my wife and I entertain loathsome guests at night. But, I digress, this will all be appropriate in due time. There is a story, or more fittingly a sequence to be told.

I took a ‘sick day’ several weeks after getting back from my holiday, some twenty years ago, to throw off the calendar and enjoy the park. Before that I went to a movie, Apollo 13, had a bagel and coffee beforehand, leaving a nice tip as I always do, and then decided to walk around the park the remainder of the day not thinking about anything in particular, just enjoying the aesthetics of life. At the park, I noticed several schoolgirls giggling and chasing each other; luscious and ripe legs, long stockings, plaid skirts, black flats, and mauve lipstick.

[Anonymous No.15065790]

>>15064860
Nice flow here, some great descriptions (like "his tongue felt like a piece of uncooked meat"). I'm assuming this is part of something longer, which makes me want to read the rest of it.

---

(1/2)

Tristan Thompson, G.E.D., lighting an American Spirit Black, got off work and stepped into a world of melting filth. He slid briskly on the damp concrete. All of Seattle was sick with Autumn, a city sunk beneath brackish fog and cold dew. Leaf membranes dissolved on pavement. Crows jabbed at soaked litter in the curbside rain-rivers. The air was swollen, a bunch of soggy molecules sloshing and slopping together, making his throat moist. The trees were pathetic. Slugs attempted great voyages across the expanses of sidewalk. Raindrops dribbled from the gray monolith above on Tristan’s head, splooshing on his eyelids, stinging his eyes. A pigeon that appeared to have some kind of disease hobbled past him. Every parked car that Tristan walked by looked exactly the same.

Holman Road was the major artery of Crown Hill, a slab of dirty concrete carving between a row of rotting business and apartment facades on one side, a stretch of fenced-in brambles and tall grasses on the other. The ground itself smelled like cigarettes and cheap beer. Tristan squelched towards 85th St., his thin slip-on shoes flopping and draining water. His feet begged for relief, having carried his bulk for nine hours of standing and rapidly dashing between the cash register and grill, his mandate to serve 25 customers in 30 minutes, taking their orders and rushing to get their burgers and fries and rushing back to charge them and thanks have a good one and next in line please and hey what can I get started for ya. His hands were covered in little burns from scooping red hot fries into paper wallets. His right knee twinged with every step.

[Anonymous No.15065800]

>>15065790

(2/2)

Tristan passed the derelict former Pizza Hut and reached the corner of 85th and 15th. A central node of northwest Seattle, the crux of the Greenwood/Crown Hill/Ballard axis, roared before him with its intersecting chaos. The long streak of 85th St., trisected by wide bike lanes throughout its length, tethered Golden Gardens to I-5 and stretched from there across the humble hills of Wedgwood. It was the city’s spine. The road plunged through the guts of Seattle’s mono-counterculture; past the glistening chrome-sleek weed stores spouting like polyps in between condemned houses; in the smothering incense drooling from medieval potion shops around Greenwood; by the rainbow flags displayed in various Chase Banks and Wells Fargoes.

Tristan stood at the interminable crosswalk. A Metro bus farted black smoke as it creaked to its stop, then lumbered into life again, chugging like a great dark caterpillar towards 86th St. Behind a cloud, the sun’s disc dimmed until visible as a ghostly white circle, an old wanderer. Tristan sucked a last long inhale from his Spirit and dropped it. On the pavement it joined other butts from other smokers, flecked about in a constellation. Tristan Thompson had made his mark on this place. He had left a symbol of his presence. A glowing red hand opposite the street forbid him to step forward, so he waited. And waited.

[Anonymous No.15066241]

>>15065800
burger punk

[Anonymous No.15066263]

As he stood under the greasy smear of the fluorescent lights at the register, Ray stared, eyes glazed over in dull apathy, out at the empty restaurant. He could barely gleam his reflection in the big windows across the room that smelled of stale french fries and flat soda. What he did see did not completely register. He was featureless, indistinguishable. He was faceless. His hair was combed back and deep purple sacks weighed down heavy on his eyes, begging him to shut them, begging him to sleep. But his shift did not end for another seven hours and so as always his eyes bore the weight of the time and he stayed conscious in the comatose drift that was the graveyard shift.
The hum of the light reminded him of the cicadas. It was his dad’s home in the woods where he’d spent his summers. In his memory that wilderness was edenic and smeared in the warm sunshine yellow of nostalgia. He would climb up to the little beach a mile or two away from the house and sit there for hours looking downstream, until sunset most days. On others he would sit in the fields to see the lazy afternoons and watch the trees sway slowly in that mellow summer wind. The cicadas would roar their chant in these afternoons, and he would be transfixed on that sound, that cacophony of insect choir. They would still be there when dusk seeped into the sky. He remembered sitting on a fence and watching a storm roll in on the byzantine evening sky, heat lightning dashing across the bulbous, pregnant thunderheads, the insects whooping their summer war anthem all the while. He remembered the air right then, heavy and palpable with the tension of the impending storm. And then with a great boom like a barrel rolling down the stairs the thunder would burst and the storm would crack and–
The cold of the restaurant was back and it seemed like a dream washed away because there were no cicadas; there was only the inhuman metallic drone of the light, that hymn for the sleepless, hypnotizing and eternal.
He missed the oppressive heat of late August, missed the silhouettes of the trees against sunset as he rode down the road on his bike, the wind making his eyes water. He made himself sick with memory and so he wiped down all the tables for the third time that night and tried not to look at his reflection in the windows

[Anonymous No.15066654]

>>15066263
There are some good descriptions here (e.g. "smeared in the warm sunshine yellow of nostalgia" and "bulbous, pregnant thunderheads") and some cliche ones (e.g. "weighed down heavy on his eyes" and "the inhuman metallic drone of the light"). Good flow overall, I'd just work on rooting out the less original descriptions.

[Anonymous No.15066797]

>>15065322
please crit me
also there should really be a discord for these threads if they're so few and far between, I've lost my idiotic hatred for the software

[Anonymous No.15066840]

>>15066797
I agree

[Anonymous No.15066845]

>>15065322
I like how vivid your descriptions are, though at some points it did get a little messy. Even if that was your intention, I think it might throw readers off track.

[Anonymous No.15066846]

>>15066241

[Anonymous No.15066873]

>>15065438
I gotta confess,I read through this thinking; why do I care about the color of this smoke?
This piece doesn't seem as thight and emotional as I think it should be, it just seem... descriptive?
Also, as a general adivce, if you write fiction don't post a piece of it to be critiqued with random made up words, flashy names, races which we know nothing of. If you want as to get a glimpse of your world, you can do it- without expecting that writing "Volratharian" meant anything to us besides a tiring read. >>15065322
This is very powerful imaginery, very direct and I kinda like it, I feel the listing takes a lot of power away. I would keep my descriptions more tight and maybe even a little more flowery but you're onto something.

Mine's pretty short, it's a poem:

You’ll hear in the deepest second of the night
A machine:
A quiet hum,
The sound of iron biting itself
And a hearthless drum.

The ground will shake, time will freeze and, shining, a light
Will guide
The lonely beggar,
The fallen kings and queens
And peasants in between.

In this restless moment they’ll reach,
And touch, and scream
At the Mother of their dreams;
Forgetting, waking up, the horror they have seen,
When the flow of thigs repeats

It hums, and beats, the smoke of memories
Filling up the ceiling of reality
Poking a little hole

[Anonymous No.15066917]

>>15066840
I could make one just like literally anyone but I want to make sure there isn't one already in existence.

[Anonymous No.15067089]

Ain't it nice wakin' up with the roosters...the sky looks like a cow's tongue...pink. Ma' and Pa' always told me that the early chicken gets the worm...ain't that funny...Ma' and Pa' never learned readin' or writin'...all they knew, like their Ma' and Pa', was hard work in the Sun...plucking weeds from the field...turnin' the soil with cow droppins...listenin' to flys buzz...to birds singin'...all while wipin' sweat and dirt from their brow. Any book learnin' wisdom they got was from talkin' to other simple folk, I mean to say incorrect (that means not right).
No matter...can the mind give something greater than what Nature shows? I gots a way to go with my book learnin'...but every morning I see the fields of my ancestors filled with oceans of light and life. Ain't that pretty? Ain't that enough?
Ain't no worry for me. For now I needa' find my dogs and gather the flock. Ma' and Pa' always hollerin' to get everythin' done. Hard work. That's what Ma' and Pa' and the Good Book say...it saves mens' souls...I ain't gonna complain...but ain't it nice to sit down underneath the Oak's spreading shade...repeatin' the name...Amaryllis...

[Anonymous No.15067091]

my first ever attempt at prose, with almost no editing. Is it atrocious or at least passable?

[Anonymous No.15067254]

>>15067091
This isn't bad for your first ever attempt at prose, but there are some awkward moments. Why did you write "I, carried by a never increasing or decreasing in speed or intensity stride, faded from view" instead of "I faded from view, carried by a never increasing or decreasing in speed or intensity stride"? Also the tone in general is kind of bombastic and grandiose, I'd take it down a few notches with the intense verbose descriptions.

[Anonymous No.15067733]

You guys shouldn't just come in and dump your shit and expect things to keep moving. Please practice proper thread edicate and crit others, even if it's not the most detailed advice, it's food for thought
>>15063909
This one's mine, would like a crit on it though. I'm intrested in if the revision made it any better
>>15064149
I like it, but
>byron sounded
Is incredibly redundant and awkward in this context, either stick to the he said, she said stuff or just have the dialogue be alone
>>15064156
This reads like pseud shit you'd find in a try hard light novel. Get to your point first, then go on about the bears as an example
>>15064651
The rhymes can be stifling, very, very stifling. Take note of how shakespeare does romeo and juliet, please. Other wise, good. I especially liked that exchange between faust and nith
>>15064757
Well done
>>15064808
Annoying, not in the way you obviously want to be. You basically tried to do what the guy above tried to do but worse in every way
>>15064827
Not a lot I can say for this. You didn't post much
>>15064811
>But here as flowers bloom
>We sow their seeds of doom
Okay anon, this is probably the most cliche thing I've read on this board. Otherwise, good
>>15064860
There's too much dissonance between the narration and the dialogue, perhaps that's the point, but it just comes across as jarring
>>15064852
I am intimidated. I'll try my hand at this later

[Anonymous No.15067907]

>>15064991
Please stop putting curses into the narration, it's cringe as fuck

[Anonymous No.15068221]

>>15066263
>He was faceless
>proceeds to describe his face

[Anonymous No.15068298]

Rey Skywalker let out a queef. She stared aimlessly at the infinite desert of Tatooine, taking no heed of the planet’s twin suns beating down on her forehead, before realizing that her butt was itching. Every fiber of her mind recognized this dry, vast, desolate, empty, blank, formless, barren wasteland where the winds seemed to whisper in a vaguely posh but very bitchy South London accent as her home, moreso than the other desert planet that she grew up on. She scooped up some of the earth surrounding the abandoned farmstead where her mentor in the Force™, whom she surpassed very easily and quickly, had spent his youth. She then pulled back her panties and poured the dirt inside. She then rubbed her glutes together, letting the sand grind together within her intergluteal cleft and breathing in the satisfaction of having alleviated her itching through such a visceral means.

“I love sand,” she said out loud to herself, “It’s so coarse and rough and ticklish and I love it when it gets everywhere.”

She loved sand so much, in fact, that she assumed everybody else loved it as much as she did so, in a gesture she considered respectful, she buried the lightsabers of the obliterated Skywalker bloodline near the igloo.

“Excuse me, miss!” said an old woman wearing a ragged, moth-eaten shawl dragging the reins of an alien animal that looked like a dromedary behind her, “can I ask you a question?”

“Huh?” asked Rey.

“I said ‘who are you’? Also, I need directions, I’m trying to get to Anchorhead to sell my hallucinogenic vaporator mold but my Gloxnardriac ate my compass.”

“Well, er, to answer your first question, my name is Rey.”

“Rey, who?”

Rey looked to the east and saw the ghosts of Luke and Leia Skywalker lingering on the horizon like the fading cyan hues of old film, smiling warmly towards her.

Rey smiled back and turned to the old stranger.

“Rey Skywalker.” She said as the ghosts of Luke and Leia screamed as their eyes melted and their hair burst into sickly green flames which consumed their bodies until they disintegrated into oblivion.

“How dare you disgrace the family name of Palpatine by claiming the name of our ancestral nemesis for yourself!” the old woman pulled off her rubber mask and conjured a new set of black robes using the Force. Revealing that it was...

“Emperor Sheev Palpatine!” Rey exclaimed upon seeing the ancient, black-hooded figure walking over to her with the aid of a gnarled wooden cane that he also conjured, “How can you possibly still be alive!”

“You should have asked that question the first time I came back to life, you stupid butt-munch!” Sheev said as he hobbled over to her.

[Anonymous No.15068327]

I would like to remind everyone to please ignore shitpost and to crit those who put effort in

[Anonymous No.15068403]

>>15063909
I dig the morbid comedy with the historical accuracy. Good stuff.
>>15064156
Comfy read that reminds me of Montaigne: a long, elegant list of comparisons reflecting a single idea.
>>15064757
>We almost trip, mangled by ecstasy; the walls start to undulate wildly, deforming into abstractions no man can decipher.
Lmao, really good. The sound really matches the image.
>>15064808
I like the mixing of the 3rd person observations and the 1st person dialogue of the youtube philosopher.
>>15064852
True gem. Reminds me of Ovid in his Metamorphoses Book 1 yet modern and original. I dig the philosophical purple prose. Nicely done.

Keep vibin lads

[Anonymous No.15068627]

>>15068221
muthafucka its a metaphor

[Anonymous No.15069501]

Hands betray the mind
Sometimes giving writing the feeling
Of beating a dead horse
No better or worse
I suppose
Than any other misappropriated
Pieces of work
But why must I beat
This old tired rag
Like it is some new
Bushel of wheat?
When it takes a fool
To be blind to the light
In words and the delightful
Play of verse out of accordance
With the norms of form
And sanctity of rhyme
Brass knuckled and standing guard
Over the gates of the mind?

What fools!
Who sit calculating every
Minuscule measure of nature
Whether by empiricism or philosophy
As if hoping to reveal some
Foreboding truth about nature
To appease their theology
Of life when bah! they mar
That same nature with weight
Of words and the masks of concept
To comfort with thoughts of gods and
Words of supposed holy light
When one only needs to sit by
the shores of a stream
Or pull a weed from the ground with a quieted
mind
To see what the philosophers
And poets have barred with their
Scenes and treatises

phoneposting, may not have formatted perfectly

[Anonymous No.15069553]

>>15060126
On memes & dreams
The feedback looping nature of memes culture is the wallpaper of the digital sects and their nuance implies the depth of the community, how many places they pull from and the variance in them. And what are dreams, but the future state of something you, or a community would like to see and in the sleeping variety, a circulation of perceptions and tied thoughts. Dreams are ideas that share themselves with the dreamer. A community defragging itself through references is a similar system to how we dream in seemingly incongruous perceptional thought. There’s an earnest irony in sleeping dreams, these absurdities seem nonsensical, but they carry a subconscious meaning in their delivery, and we don’t summon them consciously. So, what’s the difference between these two things? Other than the utilitarian definition of a meme which is a touchstone for a community’s shared joke, we have the more rudimentary definition which is a shared idea. I believe that our contemporary humorists are sharing their ideas in the same modality as the way we dream, that incongruity isn’t just a trend of random irony, a degradation of spirit, but the human framework accelerated by the internet and now in front of us. Pardon the rhetorical flourish, but we’ve entered an age of waking dreams and nightmares and it’s exhausting. Our communication has mimicked the mind, the internet’s a brain of brains and so people feel like burnt out neurons.

[Anonymous No.15069906]

things bookended by asterisks are supposed to be italicized

*Where’s the dingo?*

Pounding within, pounding without. Some satanic rhythm whips both into manic cacophony. Veins, starved of sin, struggle to contain a rabid flow. Finger tips long free of flesh claw at every discernible thing in reach. No stone is safe in this helter skelter, for the dingo will be found. Tormented neighbors lament the thunder, adding their own retaliatory bangs to the show.

*Where’s the dingo?*

Conspirators everywhere. Shelves harbor impostors, drawers sing choruses of false hope, and a ceiling fan mutters deception. All are punished by mangled hammer and shattered fists. The carved hole behind a nostalgic poster, the usual suspect, proves only to be a scheming Judas. Perhaps the floorboards are keeping secrets? Only a few can be wrested out of place before the bellowing at the door reaches a crescendo.

*Where is the dingo?*

More importantly, where is the time? The wretch hurriedly lodges a folding chair below the door handle to earn precious seconds, but not before slipping on tile well-lubricated by his own fluids of passion. The impact to his skull only emboldens his efforts, and what is lost in focus is gained in zeal.

*Look within.*

Divine guidance shines through the ether. A holy glow radiates from some place unknown, directly through his brow ridge to his subconscious.

*Look within.*

The voice soothes. He turns his energy inwards, searching the darkness inside for answers. Only a few corners are turned before it is found. The moment his fingertips meet it, the false duality fades. Light and dark, heat and cold, good and evil, wash away to the tides of of the godhead.

The interloper finally breaks through. In but a moment the dingo is a distant memory, and he can only prostrate at the shadow of the ascended wretch.

man this fucking sucked but i gotta deal with insomnia somehow

[Anonymous No.15069924]

>>15066263
i agree with the others
some good descriptions, some not so original. it just needs some pruning overall
>>15068298
it has a little something for everyone, 10/10

[Anonymous No.15070345]

>>15060126
Cunny cunny cute and funny
spread those legs and lick the honey
Is it wrong? It feels so right!
Deep inside her, warm and tight.

[Anonymous No.15070354]

>>15070345

[Anonymous No.15070491]

The streets were pink and muddy as blossoms spilled with the rain onto the flow of traffic below my window. And I felt alone 99% percent of the time. And I was content, but unhappy.
So in my spare moments I would search for solutions to these problems, I would read to feel generative and less guilty, I found philosophies from stoicism, pseudo-Buddhism to Kantian compartmentalization, racial surrealism, apathetic accelerationism, post-truth cynicism, solipsistic individualism, and none of these felt true, and none of these were god. So, I’d question my bad habits, the screen glued to my brain and the skinner boxes I’d pay for and my time felt more valuable without these, but just as meaningless. I’d prune my lungs with weed and melt my liver with alcohol and these felt so good, for so short a time and then I wished I was dead. The porn was another skinner box and I felt like a monkey. All of this reactive living eventually leads me to now on this rainy day with a pain in my abdomen scrolling past thumbnailed-windows onto the covid-19 pandemic. And I ignore the worry as I’m young, but I see the cascades. And in all of this I feel like my best moments are lodged in my head somewhere and trying to dig themselves deeper on every revisit. Our memories change as we remember them, a car will change from green to grey and little details like that. And humans(probably most mammals) have difficulty remembering pain. Knowing this, my question is, does pain change in retrograde, or is it beyond even the subconscious flux? And who cares if one numbness is replaced by another?

[Anonymous No.15070641]

>>15064811
Thanks for posting more, I hope to see your progress in other Crit threads! Really enjoyed what I've read thus far.

[Anonymous No.15070796]

>try to make myself be productive every day and write
>always revert back to being idle

there's no hope for me bros

[Anonymous No.15070816]

>>15070796
Just fucking write dude it's not so hard

There are even podcast and stuff to guide you day by day if you don't have the disicpline/ don't know where to start

[Anonymous No.15071031]

>>15070816
mind reccing some of those resources? I'm a different anon btw

[Anonymous No.15071119]

He had prepared a stack of fried butter and beer milkshakes, neatly displayed across the table,as well as cartons of chocolate milk put horizontally in top of each other.
He held in his swollen hands a pair of dumbells, which he swung with little rythm and no significant speed. As a firm but slovenly elephant, he completed a long, slow set and hurriedly drank one of the milkshakes. He then sat down for half an hour ,his eyes glued to the golf channel. Once the last birdie had been done, he resumed his task for swinging around the dumbells, and this process he repeated for a period of 8 hours.
By the next day, he was a swollen man, his stomach a pit of infection and beastly howls ,but this arms exploding with vigour and might.

[Anonymous No.15071221]

>>15071119
based and /fit/pilled
someone plz destroy >>15069906

[Anonymous No.15071819]

Is it too cliche to use spilled wine to foreshadow violence? If so, what are some good alternatives?

[Anonymous No.15071823]

>>15071031
I've been listening to this podcast for the past 3 weeks:
http://www.timclarepoet.co.uk/couchto80kwritingbootcamp/

Maybe it's not in your cords, I didn't find the host particularly charming and he has an habit of going into tangents in his prologues and wasting time, but the exercises so far have all been good and I've been writing everyday since I started

There are more if this isn't to your liking but I'm new to this too so you should probably explore on your own. The only thing I remember was like a creative writing course done by a university which was interesting but too long-winded and "lecture like" which is not what I was looking for at the moment.

[Anonymous No.15071875]

Today I shart
In a mart
On camera it looks like art
I swear I thought it was a fart
So I guess this is where we part

[Anonymous No.15072017]

>>15069906
Great flow here. Only awkward moment is "he can only prostrate at the shadow of the ascended wretch." Think you may have skipped a word there

>>15065800
Crit this shit please, lads. I want to know if I'm on the right track here

[Anonymous No.15072186]

>>15065800
so much needless detail that repeat a tired aesthetic of urban filth that could be accomplished in 50 words maximum. Take your five-six best sentences from this and cut everything else, because you really aren't offering anything with this scene.

[Anonymous No.15072233]

>>15065800
weed stores is a terrible phrase; for the love of god, replace it with dispensaries. also if you can't find the beauty in the urban, don't write about it at all. try to write from the perspective of someone sympathetic or poor to accomplish that.

[Anonymous No.15072440]

>>15060126
I want a girl to rape
Choke purple as a grape
Her asshole I will gape
Tear droplets I will vape

[Anonymous No.15072528]

>>15070491
First sentence is too simple for its own good, when describing a complex image like that with motion I like to go for "fancier" descriptors. If its not something easily conjured in the mind, give it some grease. idk like "Rain carried first blossoms of spring into the traffic laden streets below my window, pink mixed with the black soot of the asphalt."
>content, but unhappy.
content literally means happy. Maybe use something like "at ease" or "untroubled" maybe "unburdened" depending on what you're trying to convey.
I wouldn't list all those schools of philosophy. You could just say you tried philosophy and exhausted it without finding anything.
I like the skinner box metaphor.
The whole stylistically starting sentences with And is a bit annoying. Gimmick.
Overall not a terrible diary post. But something of actual substance would feed better and give you more space to actually show your control of language.

[Anonymous No.15072683]

>>15072186
Thanks for the feedback bruh. I see your point, though it'll be hard for me to decide which are the best five-six sentences. Are there parts in particular that you feel are more cliche or unnecessary? The only thing that immediately comes to my mind as something I should cut is the line "the ground itself smelled like cigarettes and cheap beer," which now strikes me as a bit on the nose.

[Anonymous No.15072702]

I finished my translation of Dante's Purgatorio yesterday. Just the Paradiso to go, woohoo!

I'm trying to stick as closely as possible to the literal Italian but also maintain (more or less) strict iambic pentameter, terza rima. The latter constraint is a bitch and a half because English is a very rhyme-poor language (it was easy for Dante because everything rhymes with everything else in Italian).

Here's the first canto online:

https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/purgatorio/purgatorio-1/

(Click on "text and translations" and choose "Mandelbaum" for a decent, down-the-middle, unrhymed verse rendition.)

Here's mine:

PURGATORIO
--------------------

CANTO ONE
------------------

To navigate more kindly waters now
My talent’s little vessel hoists her sail,
And far from that harsh ocean points her prow;

So that henceforth my singing will entail
The second kingdom, where the soul is purged
Of sin, that heaven's heights might best be scaled.

But let dead poetry again resurge,
O holy Muses, since my art belongs
To you: and let Calliope emerge

To add her potent music to my song,
The music which so struck the Magpies through
That they despaired of pardon for their wrong.

The orient's pellucid sapphire hue -
Which steeped the sky as far as one could chart
To the encircling sphere, serenely blue -

This reawoke the joy that sight imparts,
The moment I had quite emerged above
The morbid air afflicting eyes and heart.

The graceful planet, patroness of love,
Across the east had made a smile unfold,
Extinguishing the Fishes as she moved.

I turned my mind toward the opposite pole,
And saw four stars together on the right,
Not witnessed since the earliest human souls.

It seemed their flames filled Heaven with delight:
O northern hemisphere, you are indeed
A widow, who have been denied that sight!

When finally my eyes had ceased to feed
Thereon, returning to the former zone
In which no longer did the Wain proceed,

I saw a patriarch nearby, alone,
So dignified, that never son addressed
A father with more proper reverence shown.

His beard was long, with white streaks manifest,
While from his head the hair fell streaked with white
In similar style, divided on his chest.

His face was framed so by the holy light
The four stars cast, he seemed like one on whom
The splendour of the sun itself shines bright.

[1/3]

[Anonymous No.15072711]

>>15072702

“Who are you, that have blindly traced this flume
Upstream and so escaped the eternal jail?"
He asked, adjusting those distinguished plumes.

“Who was your guide? What served to light your trail
when you ascended from the realm of Dis,
That hellish valley constant darkness veils?

Are they annulled, the laws of the abyss?
Or does some newer Heavenly rule allow
Those being damned to seek my slopes like this?"

Decisively my master gripped me now,
Employing words and hands in admonition,
So that I bent with reverent knees and brow.

"I do not journey through my own volition,"
He said. "A lady from her Heavenly seat
Enjoined me to assist this man's condition.

But since your will would have a more complete
And true account of how we travelled here,
My will cannot withhold what you entreat.

His final evening had not yet appeared:
But through his folly little time remained
Before it did - the hour was drawn so near.

As my description earlier explained,
I was dispatched to him for his salvation;
The road I took was rigidly ordained.

I showed him all the people of damnation:
And now intend to seek those souls as well
Who, in your care, are bent on expiation.

Our path entire would take too long to tell:
It was a higher potency, disposed
To help me guide his steps to where you dwell.

May you approve his coming here: he goes
In search of freedom - precious thing to weigh,
As he who gives his life for it well knows.

You know it, who in Utica once paid
That price most promptly, when you left behind
The garb that will be bright on Judgement day.

Eternal edicts have not ceased to bind;
This man’s alive, and I’m beyond the reach
Of Minos, in the circle where one finds

Your chaste Marcia, she whose prayers beseech,
O holy breast, you keep her as your own:
For her love, therefore, listen to our speech.

I'll thank her, should you give us leave to go
Throughout these seven realms where you preside -
If you'll permit your name be named below."

[2/3]

[Anonymous No.15072724]

>>15072711

“While I was in that kingdom," he replied,
"The fair Marcia earned such high esteem
That all her heart's desires, I satisfied.

Now that she dwells beyond the evil stream,
And I have been released, she has no claim
Upon me, by the law which rules supreme.

But if a lady sent from Heaven came
To speed your journey, flattery's misplaced:
It is enough to ask me in her name.

Go then, but firstly girdle this man's waist -
For which a pliant reed will best suffice -
And wash away the stains that mark his face:

For one should not approach with unclean eyes
The earliest custodian angel found
Ahead, who's come to us from Paradise.

This solitary island, all around
Its shoreline where the breakers ebb and flow,
Bears rushes on its soft and muddy ground.

No other plant that puts forth leaf will grow
In that locale, because it will not bend
And therefore breaks beneath the waves' harsh blows.

When that task's done, do not again attend
Me here; the rising sun will show a route
By which the mountain's easier to ascend."

With this he vanished: and remaining mute
I rose and looked toward my master's face,
That as he led, so I could follow suit.

He then began: “My son, we must retrace
Our steps from here; therefore walk after me
And we will find this region's lowest place."

The hour was come when night begins to flee
The coming dawn; and as the darkness drained
I recognized the trembling of the sea.

We made our way across the lonely plain,
Like men returning from some deviation
Who, till they find the path, proceed in vain.

When we had reached a less exposed location,
Where dew contends with wind and sunlight and
Because of shade resists evaporation,

I saw my master gently place his hands
Outspread, palms downward, on the grassy field:
And realizing what it was he planned

I lost no time in bending close to yield
My tear-stained cheeks, on which his touch restored
The colour the Inferno had concealed.

We now arrived at the deserted shore,
Which never yet had seen its waters trekked
By any man who journeyed back once more.

And as another wished, I was bedecked:
O marvellous! For as he plucked for me
That humble plant, so there it sprang erect

Again, identical, immediately.

[3/3]

[Anonymous No.15072761]

Now this might be a very stupid question so I didn't want to start a whole thread for it. I have a pretty good pitch for a novel about a guy that works as a translator from chinese, but I have no knowledge of chinese and most importantly no experience with translations and its nuances. Can I make it work or do I need to research on it? There have to be some works about translations.

[Anonymous No.15072788]

>>15072761

Hmm. I suppose it's not impossible you could write a good novel about a Chinese-to-English translator without knowing Chinese (or translation) but it seems the odds are against you.

One quite entertaining book about verse translation is Douglas Hofstadter, "Le Ton beau de Marot". He basically takes a short, fairly light French verse and translates it into English about a thousand different ways, showing all the different compromises and approaches. Worth a look.

[Anonymous No.15072829]

>>15072788
I don't want to disclose too much about the plot but it's about an early modern portuguese jesuit learning chinese almost from scratches in order to try a cultural approach to China. I'm not particularly scared about not knowing chinese because I can work around that, but the translation part is quite central and the MC should figure most of that stuff out by himself since at the times there weren't exactly the translation schools we have today. I'm afraid of being too trivial when talking about him trnaslating concepts as well as phrases from one culture to one other.

[Anonymous No.15072903]

>>15061444
I like it but I like ostentatious prose generally. It's not even that purple.

[Anonymous No.15073075]

>>15065322
Lemme guess, you either read Mecha Corps or watched Evangelion

[Anonymous No.15073196]

>>15072829
have you read Shogun or Taipan? That has some light elements of translation and language learning.

[Anonymous No.15073303]

>>15064864
This is beautiful. I was touched by it.

[Anonymous No.15073333]

I read this poem on my
phone
it cuts the text close to the
bone
showing what was always
known
it isn't nice to be alone

[Anonymous No.15073367]

>>15073075
I greatly disliked Eva and I don't know what Mecha Corps is. I'm not sure if your response is a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm betting it means I'm a pleb.
I liked Blade Runner though, real excited to read Android Sheep book.

[Anonymous No.15073400]

>>15065438
Great poetic description of an everyday event. Made me think I was in space.
>>15067089
Comfy af
>>15068298
Great display of mixing the high and the low
>>15069553
Based Freudian.
>>15071875
Sad and funny
>>15072440
B A S E D
>>15072702
It reads very well. I envy your skills, translating from verse to verse.
>The orient's pellucid sapphire hue -
>Which steeped the sky as far as one could chart
>To the encircling sphere, serenely blue -
smooth like butter

[Anonymous No.15073442]

His knees were bruised,torn skin,bleeding calluses. His skin was as dry as the skin of a mummy,and his breath heavy like a camel forced to sprint chased by a leopard.
The statue of the god,with his fangs,his multiple arms holding weapons of harm and pain, stood motionless witnessing the ordeal.
the boy kept striving,trying to move the stone to tears, he used his body to force the denizens of the heavenly abode to fulfill his wish, he offered his blood and sweat to be granted his boon.
"to be strong" he muttered. "one must be strong"
"grant me power,oh god" he cried as he taped into his into the last of his human forces to keep doing postrations

[Anonymous No.15073527]

>>15073400
Lol thanks, I genuinely think I did a good job with the imagery, though I think "Her teardrops I will vape" works better in hindsight.
I write loads of these weird coomer short poems.

[Anonymous No.15073534]

Here's a snippet of my low quality practice writing. Working on sounding less juvenile - didn't really revise this bit but I'd still like to share and get feedback. Feel free to wait until I do my critiques later and link back to this post.

The painting was rather small compared to the other pieces, only slightly larger than a pillow. But it was easily the most eye catching of them all. A hand, floating in the center of a spacelike void, held up a brilliant glass prism in its palm. In and around this prism flowed a maelstrom of rainbows, thrown out in every direction like a grenade of radiant party streamers. They illuminated a free-floating graveyard of objects all around the prism: bones and skulls; scrap metal and broken devices of unknown intent. To him, the objects seemed almost sad, flushed in melancholic shades of grey, some of them malformed beyond recognition in a way that left an uneasy feeling in his gut. But they could reflect the rainbows on their metallic exteriors.

[Anonymous No.15073625]

>>15073534
I think the order of the descriptions could change,this current order seems..un-rythmical

[Anonymous No.15073834]

I haven't written anything for this yet, I just have a vague idea but I'm hoping to get some feedback anyways. I'd like to write about a medieval family somewhere in the orient whose child is afflicted by some fort of demon/spirit/kami. they seek the help
of a local shaman/medicine man and the story just becomes a sort of family drama/magical realism sort of story. like I said, super vague idea. Any suggestions for where to take it?

[Anonymous No.15073909]

>>15073834
Try getting a beginning, middle and end down, define the key characters/actors and work out how exactly the fantasy works. It should all go up from there.
Regarding the fantasy bit, I'd recommend just trying to go for a magical feeling. It's hard to describe how it should be, since a 'magical feeling' is very vague in and of itself, but things that aren't conventional should do the trick, like some very high ranking dude using some ensuing chaos in the midst of a cross-dimensional attack to bugger off to a more peaceful dimension and it becomes one of the goals of the main character to find him there.

[Anonymous No.15073931]

I want to write a picaresque/black comeday novel;besides confederancy of dunces,what should I read?
i also read no longer human,I want to give the novel a darker look,not just for laughs

[Anonymous No.15073938]

>>15073931
Don Quixote is essential

[Anonymous No.15074073]

It was a musky scent in the air, filling every corner and crevice of the dank and dark cell my measly being occupied. A hundred rats filled the sewer tunnel below the grate I sat on, allowed free access as a result of the reservoirs drying up years ago. Squeaking and squawking, they were the only thing that kept me from slipping into a deep, fume filled sleep, one I'd probably never wake up from. I stared at them from between my rag-dressed knees hunched up to my chest in an effort to preserve what little heat I had left. I blinked and tore my gaze away from the swarm.

Nothing was left for me here.The guards had been the first to leave, letting the Nutas run amok, and then went the Janitors, which is what began the Pyre's descent into dilapidation. And now, with the Scoartures gone, the furnaces were left with nothing to cough their boiling air into the frigid, eternal night. I shivered as a chill rushed through the empty cell block, breathing in ragged huffs as the air I expelled coiled into a stark plume of white. With fours been and gone since the last fire had gone out, my limbs were all but numb now, stiff and cold, probably well on their way onto being frostbitten too. The meagre cell I was in offered no more comfort than the ones elsewhere in the hall. The cots, long ransacked by those attempting to make a journey to Fuea, were now just bare slabs of wood and the coal in the personal stoves used for any fire the remaining prisoners had cobbled together for group bonfires. Whether they were crazy or desperate, it didn't matter. We were all in the same boat.

Alas, I suppose this was fate I was destined for all along, I suppose. Left by those I considered friends, ignored by those I considered reliable and beaten down by those I considered pious, it wasn't a fitting end, but it had to do. All that was left for me was to hold out for as long as I could, until exhaustion or the cold got to me first.

I wrote this on the spot, so don't have high expectation.

[Anonymous No.15074231]

He sauntered up to the cliff, another nameless animal in the sea of decadence and strife, lost, forlorn, all manner of things dour and shameful and decadent. The creature cast his lot to the roaring foam below. No dice. The hound at his heels piped up. "Is where you are going truly any greater than whence you came?"
"I do not know", replied the wretched thing.
"Well, what do you know?"
"Nothing, therefore I am".
"Hardly an encompassing assessment".
"Every man has a journey, and this is where mine has led. What other conclusion am I to draw from this?"
"I would chance to think perhaps a sword, but all I can spy is a ratty bindle and a moth-eaten cloak".
"You horrid beast, strange bedfellow as you are".
"Oh come off it old friend".
"Well, every new venture does indeed start with a fresh step". With a flourish he stepped over the perilous precipice, the wind greeting his ears with a cheerful whistle.

[Anonymous No.15074237]

The disco ball is attached to the handlebars with cable ties, tape and shoe laces. It remains steadfast, though slightly sloped inward. It is small and cheap and its almost-expired LEDs struggle against a vast night. The kids are playing in the unpaved street end where there are no parents and no rules. The dogs run with them, eyes rolling in excitement as they attempt to take bites from the bike wheels. The occasional yelp from a mutt. And they are mutts, this is no place for anything other. The kids, too. Trace their lineage and you will not have to venture far to find an unforgiving future. But in the now, in the present: they run wild and free. Junior would not join the other kids often. His Raleigh , once red, was now a rusted brown. Its front wheel had broken many months previous and he diligently saved to buy new spokes. His arrival back was greeted with awe by the others. His new spokes wink in the sun and wink in the night and served furthermore to emphasise his Raileigh’s superiority. His vocabulary of tricks is larger than his peers but he is younger. In the October twilight there is the expected fireworks. Chinese gunpowder harkens back centuries prior to intricate global trade systems and back again to the present in an explosion of light and sound that is more befitting of a battlefield than a midnight dance with dogs. Those who do not have bikes make due with the viscera of the swamplands: sticks, branches, vines, stones. Anything. The nature of their neglect has made them numb to such circumstances, for some even content. Junior takes a breather on the edge of the circle with a cigarette. In his early teenage hands the Marlboro looks untoward and gaunt. He wears sunglasses despite the darkness. Aviators. He found them on the way to school months ago and swore he would cherish them and he has. Always one for gathering things, a magpie instinct. The disco ball found amongst scattered plaster and window frames. This will fit somewhere.

[Anonymous No.15074244]

>>15074073
(Fuck it, 2/2)

Then, the sound of footsteps reached my ears, pummelling down the hallways as what sounded like a herd came my way. Echoing in the night, it was enough to perk my head up, open my eyes and redirect my attention. Confusion struck me, hitting me hard in the face. What's going on? Who's making that racket?

The thunder kept coming, and grew louder, coming towards me. I stood, dragging my emaciated frame towards the portal of the cell and I leaned out, hanging against the frame with what strength remained within me. I looked down the hall, turning my hollow eye sockets this way, and then that. It was baffling, and I couldn't make heads or tails of what warranted such an event from...whoever it may be coming down the hall. Curious, intrigued, I was interested in the nature of this event and deigned to see what it was.

Minutes later, a crowd exploded out of the entryway, a crowd of prisoners in striped pyjamas making a mad dash through the hall. In seconds they reached me, and out of fear of being swept up by them, I leaned back instinctively into my cell and watched with bewilderment as the crowd rushed past. I looked on, a frown on my lips as the men before me all wore...smiles. Cheer filled their eyes, enthusiasm brimming from every crevice as they turned to each other, yelled and called on to continue and hurry. Morale was high, for whatever reason, and I was more than inclined to find out why.

I stepped out, grabbed another emaciated man out of the crowd and was almost pulled off my feet by the speed at he'd been running at. In time, we recovered our footing, but the man glared at me with a distasteful frown like I'd just beaten his dog to death with a bat.

"What's going on?" I asked, watching as the short man caught his breath. Cocking his head, he fixed me with a blank stare, until another man came up behind him and spoke for him.

"Lights have been spotted out the front gate, reeker," he said energetically, almost bouncing up and down. "Fing's said they turned up an hour ago on the mountains and stopped out front just now. We're checking them out now."

Furrowing my brow, I acknowledged what the man had said, but still glanced at him sceptically. It was good news that something had turned up, but without knowing what it was, it could well be their doom.

"That's brilliant, but that's hardly anything to go by," I responded, grabbing the man by the shoulder as he tried to depart. "Were there any other details of note that Fing noticed?"

Frowning, the man shook his head and said, "Nah, he didn't say anything else, other than they make a sound." Turning to his friend, he said, "come on, let's go."

"Hold it!" I grabbed hard on his shoulder, making him squeal. I wasn't about to let him go just yet. "What kind of noise did they make? Was it loud?"

[Anonymous No.15074278]

>>15074244
(yeah yeah, 3/2)

"Oh yeah, very loud. Frightening too, like the sound metal being turned inside out. But Greor recognised it, and said that it's help. Now come on, d'you want to miss or what?"

As the two sped off down the emptying hall, I stood still, frozen not by the cold, but by what the man had said. There were a dozen implications as to what the sound the man had described could mean for us, what fate beheld us, as many groups used that same sounding call on their automatons. But, despite the numerous possibilities that came to mind, there was only one group that I knew was crazy enough to come to this part of the Fountain.

Yes, I thought to myself with a tight grin, heading off down the hall, the Mekanics had come for us.

[Anonymous No.15074452]

I am your father, I am the solids between your toes. When I look at your shaft my eye balls beam with the light of a thousand cocks dangling, and every breathe I take only reconcile me temporarily. You must become my sissy, here put on these panties, lock your self in this chastity cage, be my girl.

[Anonymous No.15074455]

>>15072528
I'd argue that content isn't a synonym for happy(imo it's more akin to satisfied), but I'll keep the rest of this in mind.

[Anonymous No.15074456]

Bane
Bane Bane Bane Bane Bane, Bane Bane
Bane: -- Bane Bane; Bane?
Aye.

[Anonymous No.15074465]

>>15073400
Is this a freudian concept? Do you have any lit to defreud me?

[Anonymous No.15074486]

“I would stay. I want to. I can’t, but I want to.”

“Why can’t you?”

“No reason. I just. I wouldn’t want to have to explain. Where I was staying.”

“Why not?”

“It would lead to questions. I’m. I’ve always been embarrassed. About things like this.”

“Like girls?”

“Yes.”

I wanted to lie - not to say no, exactly, but to say It’s not just that, it’s a whole lot of issues, problems with trust, intimacy, attachment, and being the youngest, you always feel that somebody is going to make fun of you, and. And I’m very mysterious, you know. But none of that was true.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

A pause. She went to the window and blew out the candle. Some smoke went into the air.

I walked home. Nobody was out, no cars; it was dark, still, mild. Down the middle of the lanes I kicked along a stone until in the darkness I lost it, and found another. It was Easter Sunday. A few sheep made noises as I carefully closed the garden gate and went up to bed.

[Anonymous No.15074625]

>>15074486
Beautiful. You are a genius.

[Anonymous No.15074706]

>>15074486
Incredible

[Anonymous No.15074797]

>>15074625
>>15074706

If this is sincere I'm really touched. It's part of a short story I was really thinking of abandoning - maybe I'll try to finish it. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.15074824]

>>15074797
I'm neither of those anons, but I also agree. You write simply and honesty without being sentimental, or self-pitying which you rarely see.

[Anonymous No.15074835]

>>15074824
Thank you very much.

[Anonymous No.15074943]

>>15073367
It seemed similar because I remember Mecha Corps (some obscure, shitty military scifi series that I actually enjoyed as a teen) had sequences where the pilots had to "mesh" with their mechas, which involved extremely unpleasant "static-like" and dusty sensations that entered their minds and rifled through their thoughts. Some of them died from the experience, but it produced a very addictive high for those who made it through.

[Anonymous No.15074985]

>>15074486
BLAUGHHHHHHH

awful awful awful

for one, it sounds like a women wrote that; way too oversensitive. Concentrate less on emotions and try to use more adjectives and physical verbs

[Anonymous No.15075059]

>>15074985
I am a woman? But thanks.

[Anonymous No.15075093]

>>15060126
I want to include a interview/interrogation between a detective and a family member asking about a murder but for 1 I have no knowledge at all of what goes on a interrogation room also know what information a detective would want out of a family member in the case of a murder

Please help, although I could probably come up with something just fine there might be more than one of these interviews/interrogations in my piece so I'd like to be as crisp and accurate as possible.

[Anonymous No.15075152]

>>15074797
Nigger B

[Anonymous No.15075166]

Edward pushed through the thick underbrush, his poncho cold and wet against his skin. Overhead, he could barely see the thick cables of the power plant whipping back and forth through the storm. He imagined them stretching back through the forest, veins of the system thick with poison that they fed to substations and transformers and the countless branching lines that ran into the city. He hated the necessity of knowing these terms, of willingly allowing the language of the enemy into his mind. Even now, he felt a hint of nausea as he paused to think through the blueprint of the station one final time, shifting the weight of his backpack as he stood. Some bolt cutters, his father's old pistol, and thirty pounds of thermite. It not nearly as much as he'd wanted to bring. He hoped it would be enough.

[Anonymous No.15075320]

>>15075059
ah, this puts the piece in a different context. Still a good one though.

[Anonymous No.15075380]

>>15075059
Then what are you doing here, sweetie? No one wants to hear your female mitherings on sex.

I know it's hard for a slut like you, but try writing about something of actual value- like overcoming evil, or leading a societal revolution...perhaps an epic space battle or something similar. Better yet, try to imagine what a man would write, because right now, you're making me nauseous with all of that emotional rubbish. Thanks love

[Anonymous No.15075387]

>>15075380
I always get the sinking suspicious that other women write posts like these

[Anonymous No.15075418]

>>15075380
Why should women write like men? Both genders bring different perspectives to the universal themes and trying to write like anything you're not is disingenuous and will probably end up shit imo.

[Anonymous No.15075577]

>>15075093
BUMP help me out some

[Anonymous No.15075616]

>>15075577
watch police interrogation vids on yt

[Anonymous No.15075634]

>>15060126
With things from love I was unlearn'd and could not give advice. Nor could I receive advice, good or bad, and distinguish between the two.

[Anonymous No.15075943]

>>15075418
>Why should women write like men? Both genders bring different perspectives to the universal themes and trying to write like anything you're not is disingenuous and will probably end up shit imo.

>Why should women write?

FTFY

>>15075387
4chan feminizes men, so it's one and the same here anyways. Even those pretentious Ubermensch/Stoicism Madame Bovarys-in-becoming

[Anonymous No.15076098]

>>15075380
Versus male mitherings about anti-social ennui.

[Anonymous No.15076157]

>>15074943
Oh, yeah I see how you can think that now. Context is really the factor there in that screenshot, he was just having one hell of a nightmare from passing out during a spaceship. And for some reason I felt like getting all screwy with it because why the shit not.

[Anonymous No.15076318]

>>15076157
*during a spaceship launch
not all here

[Anonymous No.15076554]

Have you heard the one about the sun and the sleeping god? As if you’d fucking understand.

Anyway. At the end of the longest night that live comedy had ever seen, Leto called, “Rise and shine, son!” And so he did.

Heh.

I slept until the poisonous sun went down, skipped my shift, and dreamed I went to sea and never was found. It’s chilly out here, and damp, and November in San Diego. The sky is a beautiful gradient of deep horizon yellows to blues, to drowned, back to sleep. I love the emptiness of this time, the dusky nowhen between two worlds. Empty, despite evening traffic white noising just a few blocks away. Empty, despite an unseen somebody approaching on the sidewalk up ahead. Empty, despite myself.
>and then get more schizoid

[Anonymous No.15076593]

Oh boy, where do I start?
My life's a shart,
beauty everywhere I'm not—
Oh boy it's a shart:
wet, ripe, and unexpected,
the byproduct soiled pants,
an overdrive of shame
(oh the shame, what a game)
and a world of fingers are pointing,
"oh boy, are you disappointing"—
that's our heavenly father
(oh boy, have I sinned, sin so seductive),
he shakes his head down on me
judging: doody and pee.
From golden child to human debris,
I've lost count of those counting on me
(oh boy, please don’t: let it be)
Synergy! Between the sense!
Nevermind, there're barbed fences—
see the term turmoil embroils stern boils
of the soul, Krakatoan, population recoil.
This soil, the grave, ditch I'm digging
towards China, a tunnel the size of Priapussy,
there's no end to this existential tushy.
The colors deceive so deceivingly
The resolution of this reality,
so intentionally, such intentionality.
Oh boy, just please don't mention me
(to yourself, to me, to the wretched fleas)
Communicating with me is a communicable disease.

[Anonymous No.15076634]

I is two characters,
me and the letter
of the law of slinguistics:
cash money or gibberish,
currencies coined by makers of licorice
(the bittersweet marrying treat)
The corner, coronary apex, has your name
graffitied on the cumulus signpost
sinking like a probe on Uranus
(you're a joke, and heinous).
Everyday is a meteor
for the bustling, blood blistering bodies
damaging their own collateral,
every bend of brittle fulcra.
Saturnalia, the seasoning quickens
sounds of mmm from the quiet kitchen
of a home hollowed about by the boring game
of trading trinkets of nerve-licked fame—
crack goes the weasel, down the fruitless frame,
a bum's soliloquy speaks His name.

[Anonymous No.15076714]

Thinking about taking a crack
at erotic fiction, experimental
literarily speaking, but explicitly vanilla
in content: light BDSM, vascular entrances,
the light clitoral tickle with a smooth porcelain foot.
The extent of my experience with sex,
both physical and imaginary, visual in eye and mind,
offers a deep enough well of descriptive sensationalism
that might appeal to any card-carrying member
of the female sex (rabidly lascivious
forces of sweltering, pressure-cooked desire)
There's top-dollar in horny spinsters.
The occasional allusion to Milton or Wittgenstein
will only shade the atmosphere with pre-justifying intellectualism—
tickled brains reap active glands.
Yes, I think I shall sketch a story of romance
and the fierce instantiation of lust à la "love."
Please give my thanks to your spinster aunt,
you know she needs a good self giving of 'it.'
Working title: The Sicilian and the Mysterious Expanse.

[Anonymous No.15076721]

If you're a six, stop expecting to get a ten. Yeah, sometimes an overweight, balding, socially maladjusted, videogamer manages to land a supermodel, but chances are that's not going to happen. This isn't Seinfeld, and you're not George Costanza. Maybe try playing in your own field. Otherwise stop complaining that you can't find a girlfriend. I don’t get why guys think they can level up. I’m a successful woman with 3 university degrees and lives in a city. I’m not going to date someone that barely got his GED and wears a hunting hat. It’s very obvious we have nothing in common. I could care less about your things and how metrosexual you are. I understand it’s for work, but it isn’t everything. It’s just junk. I don’t give a shit about your Porsche or Mercedes or your stupid Tesla. Or, how much time you spend in the gym either. Over consumption is a red flag. It all just indicates how obsessive and shallow kind of person you want to portray and I ain’t got time. And you’re probably in a lotta debt and way too much overhead while I’m completely debt free, making six figures, and living a nice simple elegant life and investing wisely.

[Anonymous No.15076736]

Thinking about taking a crack
at erotic fiction, experimental
literarily speaking, but explicitly vanilla
in content: light BDSM, vascular entrances,
the light clitoral tickle with a smooth porcelain foot.
The extent of my experience with sex,
both physical and imaginary, visual in eye and mind,
offers a deep enough well of descriptive sensationalism
that might appeal to any card-carrying member
of the female sex (rabidly lascivious
forces of sweltering, pressure-cooked desire)
There's top-dollar in horny spinsters.
The occasional allusion to Milton or Wittgenstein
will only shade the atmosphere with pre-justifying intellectualism—
tickled brains reap active glands.
Yes, I think I shall sketch a story of romance
and the fierce instantiation of lust à la "love."
Please give my thanks to your homely aunt,
you know she needs a good self giving of 'it.'
Working title: Paradise Found: A Sicilian Tale

[Anonymous No.15076783]

If all my hoes could teleport I wouldn't need a heliport

[Anonymous No.15076894]

>>15060126
Having sex that shit is the best
Rode it out on my homeboy the west
Flexing my questin
I roll them out on my nexus
Guessing the best as enter into yester's
The flea on the rat I'm about to hit what the plague missed
Ride on up high as a kid on peg'sus
After I delight, I hide, I'm too sly for long flight
You all be entering the poison that is
Characterized by doctors hiding our kids in
The death of the kid is the death our question

[Anonymous No.15077003]

Shit won't get moving unless you fags critique before dumping

[Anonymous No.15077068]

At the time I was a young lad shopping around my own little take on the gospel and that meant door to door in the summer. Now, when I say the summer was hot you have to know that I mean hot as beans. Not pinto. Not black eyed. I'm talking beans that come straight out of Boston, or Bush, or some other B word that leaves you craving the sweet tang that goes just oh-so-well with the barbecues we hosted every once in a while.

Like I said, the summer was hot. This was back in a time when all the colors of my life were just popping. I was younger then and had yet to shock my own senses with any all too bright aspirations at divinity. Walking around these doors left me with a color I don't even know anymore. It's the color of a young boy who thinks he's just old enough slamming a cork ball into his buddy's musty leather mitt, creating that satisfying ring that just fills the souls of those blessed enough to experience it for just a second, leaving them yearning for more. It's a color I knew well in those days, but just escapes me in my twilight years. Instead of basking in the color while I had the chance, I chose the much more pragmatic decision of shirking it in favor of he who I serve, the Grand Master Franklin and his cronies. I was figuring it out and knocking on doors to pay for a new Ford, which I figured I could take down to the mall and pick up some Hispanic chicks.

This was the beginning of my descent into blindness.

[Anonymous No.15077088]

>>15064827
It's written well but right more. You can't ascertain anything about your writing except your grammar, which is fine. Your descriptions are fine but there's more to a writing than that.

>>15066873
It's beautiful, I wish it was longer and had few more twists and turns in it. It seems like good practice but the topic is overdone. It is beautifully written tho I'd like to read more.

>>15067089
It's fine I just think there's a better method for expressing the rural rube. You captured it somewhat but your highlights of the caricature seem a little too 'witty'? Which takes away from the characterization itself.

>>15069501
I like it's ironic but I think it missed the punchline of this irony. It is a beautiful display of words very uncommon not rare but extraordinarily well done.

>>15076736
I love this. I think this stands on it's own. It's really well written. It's not a classic as it's just a simple tract but I like it I think it moves the conversation forward. I think it can be pushed forward but nobody is there yet. Ig if I had to give criticism it would be to instantiation the next paradigm of this prior to any of us thinking it. Really well written.

>>15076634
I think it's clever but perhaps a bit too much? I'm not sure how esoteric some of your connections are supposed to be but it's simply the connections and not the subject matters I'm criticizing.

>>15075166
It's fine I liked it. Halfway through drive me in. The language being the enemy of the pro is particularly what made me recognize your character as an actual person instead of just words on a page. As you wrote more I liked to think that was what the character would do

[Anonymous No.15077135]

>>15069906
The second paragraph is the peak of this for me. It's at its most interesting before it gets a little too abstract and full of itself. Then it is saved by the penultimate paragraph. I liked how frantic and alive the room felt in the first bit, but it just gets too spiritual. You had a good thing going.

[Anonymous No.15077147]

>>15074486
The dialogue seems trite. What interested me was your use of grammar. I assume you made those errors on purpose and I'm interested to see where they lead. Into some hyperrealist grammar statement or a beautiful expose on the character. Idk because it's too short or not developed enough here.

>>15074278
Really regular. Nothing jumped out at me. It wasn't terrible it just wasn't special. Your punctuation is fine, it's readable but writing like this needs a really good subject matter to support it because it's missing a lot in the way of style. It's really good in the sense that this is a good foundation to build off of.

>>15073534
It's good if you're going for a romantic or deep feeling. It's good work. If you want your whole writing to be this way then make sure it is accompanied by good subject matter. This is above average but it's not unique. If you want to take this deep emotional style (w the lots of tasty adjectives) I would love to see the style evolve. If you can't then at least make sure you are good at character development and a good subject and you've got yourself a nyt bestseller. It's really good just not breath taking.

[Anonymous No.15077186]

>>15074237

This has some sense of place and atmosphere, but.

A few issues:

>steadfast
This has distracting moral connotations. I think it would be better just to stick to the physical, i.e. say that it's fastened firmly.

>Trace their lineage and you will not have to venture far to find an unforgiving future.
I know what you're trying to say but it's awkward because you don't find the future directly by looking back into someone's ancestry, which is the past. Yes, the past might influence or even control the future, but the link is too indirect for the phrasing you've used.

>Junior would not... His Raleigh, once red, was now...
Why have you suddenly swapped from present to past tense? Make up your mind.

>His vocabulary of tricks is larger than his peers but he is younger.
Wouldn't this read better the other way round? "He is younger than his peers but his vocabulary of tricks is larger." If you really want to keep that order, change "but" to "although"? You need a really good reason not to say what you mean as plainly as possible.

>make due
"Make do"

[Anonymous No.15077198]

>>15076783

You've shown a firm grasp of rhyme and metre over a short distance. But your readers will want something more.

[Anonymous No.15077215]

>>15064991

This isn't bad. It maintains tone convincingly & gives a good sense of the character speaking.

[Anonymous No.15077238]

Spangled ties float smooth smooth smooth in the wind down the sidewalk kept from leaping out and taking into the cloudless pale sky by those tyrant around whom they noosed. my caucus filtered into the glass room to be lined up and sorted into a really more tete a tete arrangement to wait for their food and i with my own speaker partner with his blue boat speckled rebel complete with matching suit sat down to await our own victuals.

"i haven't heard anything about that demon game from you in a minute," he remarks in a way that let me in on the fact that i was his joke. "are you sure its still a happening?"

"oh come on, jack" my mouth is wet in anticipation of those eggs benny i ordered and i can just taste the crispy melt on your tongue bacon that'll come with it. "you know i what the answer is gonna be. i've been waiting for this game what 3 years now? it was announced with the switch and all i got to show for it is system i dont use."

"so what you do now anyway? play those highschool games? they always seemed up your alley what with the young girls n all" well he's right i do prefer my chickens a little young but only when in the flattest forms, mac you gotta understand me when i tell you only in the flattest forms. none of that flesh shit.

"ha-ha very nice. i tell you that one time and here you go announcing it to the whole fuckin room like there aint a stigma for that in our industry already. christ i barely even know why i hang out with you anyway"

"maybe because you need him. christ i mean. i mean what else you got? stuck here in our dead end industry waiting on your eggs n your demon games and just me here to burn you up for your bad habits. you need something more convincing more eternal if you will"

"come on baby, you know im not that type. im too in my head staging dialogues left and right to consider my own gloomy death until the eventuality comes around i don't like thinking about it. fuckin hell, man i just wanna punch god in the face so what else can i ask for? its not like anything else is gonna get me the uh the the venegance i uh need? is vengeance the right word? whatever i only know im here and i hate it so fuck any of this god shit. ill get my game and thats that mack"

"thats not any reason i respect. im in my hed all the time but even through the levels on levels of irony i still got something to believe in. come on just come to church with me tonight. you need a new routine. we'll have laser tag there and a food truck that you like" ah, trying to appeal to my bestial side. well it won't work. i need more than some psuedo-hip monkey in a church shirt forcefeeding me laser tag and empanadas to get me to fall into community with people, let alone with the the father son ghost thing that has influenced so much of my life. no i will sit in my house tonight and wait for my demon games so i can punch that fuck in the face and that'll be that.

[Anonymous No.15077241]

>>15071819

All depends on the context, dude. And the style of the piece. You use what's in the scene.

One thing I would say is, don't worry about trying to sneak it in "naturally". It's OK for foreshadowing to call attention to itself if you do it with some style and don't sound ashamed of it.

For example, look at this passage which ends one of the early chapters in Ian Fleming's "Moonraker":

Bond, reflecting on all this, decided that he was going to enjoy his evening. He had only played at Blades a dozen times in his life, and on the last occasion he had burnt his fingers badly in a high poker game, but the prospect of some expensive bridge and of the swing of a few, to him, not unimportant hundred pounds made his muscles taut with anticipation.

And then, of course, there was the little business of Sir Hugo Drax, which might bring an additional touch of drama to the evening.

He was not even disturbed by a curious portent he encountered while he was driving along King's Road into Sloane Square with half his mind on the traffic and the other half exploring the evening ahead.

It was a few minutes to six and there was thunder about. The sky threatened rain and it had become suddenly dark. Across the square from him, high up in the air, a bold electric sign started to flash on and off. The fading light-waves had caused the cathode tube to start the mechanism which would keep the sign flashing through the dark hours until, around six in the morning, the early light of day would again sensitize the tube and cause the circuit to close.

Startled at the great crimson words, Bond pulled in to the curb, got out of the car and crossed to the other side of the street to get a better view of the big skysign.

Ah! That was it. Some of the letters had been hidden by a neighbouring building. It was only one of those Shell advertisements. 'SUMMER SHELL IS HERE' was what it said.

Bond smiled to himself and walked back to his car and drove on.

When he had first seen the sign, half-hidden by the building, great crimson letters across the evening sky had flashed a different message.

They had said: 'HELL IS HERE... HELL IS HERE... HELL IS HERE.'

[Anonymous No.15077279]

>>15077238
Yeah it's terrible but I think you were aiming for that. I liked how sing song it was at parts. You had a rhythm that was kept a bit at the start. I'd recommend you just keep a journal so you can better dictate the difference between writing your feelings out and making an actual statement. Besides the obvious grammar and punctuation issues I would focus on the first advice and getting a voice for your literature. Perhaps just write lyrics then come back around to fiction

[Anonymous No.15077305]

>>15077279
sing song is what i was going for. just wanted to write a bit and im bad at dialogue so i figured id try that. tho it flitted around a bit much for my liking.

[Anonymous No.15077351]

What do you think of when you ponder?
What do your eyes see
When half closed —wistful roses—
Bear the light of me?

Do you blush because it's summer?
Is that why it's hard to breathe?
Did we hold hands for a moment
Or is it all just a dream?

[Anonymous No.15077546]

>>15072702
this is very good and under-appreciated.

>the splendour of the sun itself shines bright
pretty

> that as he led, so I could follow suit
good caesural rhythm

>The orient's pellucid sapphire hue -
>Which steeped the sky as far as one could chart
>To the encircling sphere, serenely blue -
yes

[Anonymous No.15077561]

>>15077351
More wishy-washy emotional bollocks- No one uses Tumblr these days, Anon, it's just so GODDAMN BORING!

If you really want to talk about hand holding, then I suggest your next prose should have hand to hand COMBAT or at least some kind of close quarter action.

How about a few lines on the significance and intimacy of a well placed armbar?

[Anonymous No.15077679]

>>15077561
not op

Arms interlinked, interlocked, break my sock,
There are hundreds of places to be,
While the tips of your fingers are running amok
In the folds of my fleshy esprit.

[Anonymous No.15078005]

rate my rap bros. I’m trying to incorporate poetic elements into my music as a way of elevating the black community.

>Yo I’m making riches
>I’ll get ya face in stifles
>And if I catch aids imma start raping bitches

>I’m all about making papes, kid
>I killt my mudda wid a shovel just like Norman Bates did

>One time in the past
>my old man stuck me up without a mask
>then his ass just dashed with my cash fast
>50 Gs is what the creep stole
>Next day knocked on his door and shot his granny through the peephole

[Anonymous No.15078008]

>>15078005
Stitches not stifles*

[Anonymous No.15078014]

>>15077186
You’re very kind to have taken the time thank you

[Anonymous No.15078133]

children of the millennium
spring has ended
ours are the fading days of summer
and after an imminent fall, brief winter
and then comes DEATH
death comes!
like a distant landmark suddenly upon you
death comes!
like the road crew you demolish speeding distracted down the highway
death comes
and you build a mausoleum for dogs
treat dogs better than people
weep for dogs, dress dogs, inter dogs
and are a stranger to your parents, to your siblings
exist unphased in your material insulation
tearless for the masses of people who live worse than dogs
save your tears for dogs
and leave spit for people
death comes, death comes
if this wasteland is the garden of liberty
give us death
clove to Narcissus screens
echo of self-deceit
false narrative, field of worms
fecund ground of envy
of ubiquitous inadequacy
witch mirror, carnival glass
image of willful distortion
oh but there shall come a lens
tragedy is the lens of truth
and Death the optometrist
the flaw will be shown
myopic affluenza
a horrifying correction

[Anonymous No.15078154]

>opening to a short story - would you continue reading?

The news came through email that all lectures and assessments would now take place online and that we had until Friday to get our stuff together and move out. Our final year of University was effectively over.

“Fuck China, man.”

Martin helped me pack up my room. His belongings were already out in the corridor: a backpack and two Sainsburys bags for life. What he hadn’t had room in the bags for, he was wearing - two button-up shirts, a baseball cap, and a large brown bomber jacket whose pockets were heavy with aerosol cans and assorted toiletries. It was only just Spring, sure, but he must have been boiling.

“Eating a bat? Now we’re all fucked.”

I put the last few books I needed in my suitcase. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Martin put one of my pens in his pocket. He laughed.

“Come on, man. Don’t begrudge your pal a pen. There are pens everywhere.”

* * *

I reached Paddington just after midday and with forty minutes to spare before my train, bound for Swansea, would leave. It was a bright and cold day and people seemed to be keeping a little further away from each other than usual. I might have just been imagining that.

I am not a seasoned traveller, but one thing I am proud of is that I know how to take a free piss in most of London’s major train stations. In King’s Cross, it is a matter of going upstairs to a bar called The Parcel Yard. In St. Pancras International, again, go upstairs to The Betjeman Arms - do not, friend, stop at the wine bar or the champagne bar. They do not have facilities. Marylebone? Well, you have two options. There is the pub opposite Burger King whose name escapes me or, my preference, the Sports Bar, which is accessible from both the street and inside that station. Those toilets are downstairs.

For Paddington, go up, and up again, third floor, The Mad Bishop and Bear. I ordered a drink and sat outside. Yes. It was sad that everything had ended so soon, pretty much without warning. And there was some panic in the air, too - a tightening around the mouth, the gaze determinedly thrown out to a middle-distance; the sudden disquiet hurrying through public spaces. But none of it would stick on my brain, and the thoughts drained away as if to happen elsewhere. In their wake I sat looking up into the pale light that poured through the station ceiling, its arched vacancies.

I finished my drink and went to the platform to board my train. I pictured life as a painting of an unoccupied room: one door open at the front right, and another open in the background, with nobody passing between.

[Anonymous No.15078174]

>>15078154
Definitely would not read.

It's fine enough for what it is, I suppose, but why would I read some piece of shit written by a college student? Show me a college student with something real to say.

[Anonymous No.15078180]

>>15078174

What do you mean, something real to say?

[Anonymous No.15078205]

>>15078154
Why do your characters talk like Americans if they’re from the UK

[Anonymous No.15078211]

>>15078180
This is a thinly-veiled pseudo biographical short story about your college life.

Nobody gives a shit.

If you've put thought into a story, that means you've thought of something you want to express, and you've created characters and circumstances that will ultimately dovetail in a thought, a theme, some small expression of beauty.

Your being bummed that you missed out on your final semester of the college experience because of COVID ain't it.

Is this story going to leave me with something interesting to puzzle over? Is this story going to make me feel something beautiful? Is this story going to linger with me after it's over?

No, because you don't know anything about life.

[Anonymous No.15078222]

>>15078211

You understand that not all storytelling is biography, right? It doesn't sound like you do.

[Anonymous No.15078233]

>>15078222
Of fucking course I do, that's the basis of my objection to the piece.

It's what I'm telling you to do. Write fiction. Actual fiction.

[Anonymous No.15078247]

>>15078233

Not quite - you've assumed it's a biographical piece and then objected to it. Your objection is really just a rant on the mistaken assumption that this is biographical (and it wouldn't necessary be objectionable if it wasn't). There's not really any stylistic or narratorial critique in what you say: you've just whipped yourself up into a fury because you're treating a piece of fiction as a piece of life-writing.

[Anonymous No.15078251]

>>15078233
gotta agree with this anon

[Anonymous No.15078274]

>>15078247

I agree with this anon. And coronoavirus virus is a big enough departure from the norm for most people that it is plenty fertile enough ground to write about. This is the most I've heard people talk about shit that wasn't Netflix or their pets in years.

[Anonymous No.15078273]

>>15078233
>>15078251

And yet it isn't a piece of life-writing. I finished University about a decade ago.

You guys seem to be objecting on some philosophical ground - that the writing shouldn't overlap with the life of the writer. In this case it doesn't, but I am flattered to think that it achieves that sort of realist effect for you.

Is there anything at the level of craft or style you object to? This line of criticism reminds me of the guy who mistakes literature for philosophy, and can't really look at the craft (or lack of) in a written piece, so swamps his analysis of the text with polemic abstractions delivered in affectedly 'macho Hemingway' maxims.

[Anonymous No.15078276]

>>15078133

The best parts are the parts where you're not trying to use impressive words.

>death comes
>and you build a mausoleum for dogs
>treat dogs better than people
>weep for dogs, dress dogs, inter dogs
>and are a stranger to your parents, to your siblings

...

>save your tears for dogs
>and leave spit for people

[Anonymous No.15078277]

>>15078247
Haha, nobody's in a "fury", kid.

You're a college student who got sent home over covid writing about a college student who got sent home over covid. You know how I know that? Because only a college student who got sent home over covid would possibly think that's an interesting topic for a short story.

Addressing style is pointless when the substance is nonexistent.

Give me a three sentence summary of the story, and I'll tell you what to write instead. But otherwise, yeah, I'd drop this one.

Nobody is going to give a shit. It's not interesting. It has nothing to say.

[Anonymous No.15078281]

>>15078154

The best part is the bit about where to take a free piss. It's interesting and amusing and (presumably) accurate. I think you would be better off starting with it. It makes a good hook.

>I am not a seasoned traveller, but one thing I am proud of ...

then go back into why you're at the station and flashback to the bit with the stupid roommate (who is boring, to be honest, compared with the good, meaty information about free pissing).

[Anonymous No.15078285]

>>15078276

I use what words occur to me, not what I think is impressive. But I do agree, the dog bits are the strongest part. My God, do I hate people treating dogs like children. My cousin did that in the 90s and it was a family embarrassment.

[Anonymous No.15078288]

>>15078277

"Kid"? You sound quite sore about this.

Again, you don't seem to understand that realist fiction isn't automatically confessional life-writing.

>Addressing style is pointless when substance is nonexistent.

Strange that you enforce a distinction between style and substance but fail to make the more sensible one between a piece of writing and the life of the author.

My feeling is, again, that you deliver these pseudo-Hemingway aggressive maxims about what is and isn't real, what is fiction and what it should be and what it isn't, out of a desire to assert your seriousness in lieu of any capacity for subtlety.

It has nothing to say? Everything is what it says.

[Anonymous No.15078293]

>>15078281

Great shout. Thanks very much.

[Anonymous No.15078302]

>>15078288
I, a professional writer, have given you, a college student, genuine advice that would hugely benefit your writing.

The rest of this drama... who gives a shit.

[Anonymous No.15078308]

>>15078302

>I, a professional writer...

Pull the other one, mate.

[Anonymous No.15078314]

>>15077088
Hey thanks dude, you're the only one who gave me a crit :)

[Anonymous No.15078315]

>>15078308
Hear and understand this well, my friend: You will never be a writer if you don't start writing actual fiction.

How does one write actual fiction? Read Franny and Zooey. Salinger tells you how to do it.

(Incidentally, a story about a college student that has something interesting to say....)

[Anonymous No.15078339]

>>15078315
I’m not the other anon, but why are you so focused on whether or not the piece is biographical? The value of the work is in the work itself, not in the motivations the author had for writing it.

[Anonymous No.15078362]

>>15078339
Thinly-veiled biographical fiction is dogshit 100% of the time. There are no counter-examples. That's all.

[Anonymous No.15078369]

>>15078362

>that's all

Glad we don't have to listen to you anymore

[Anonymous No.15078377]

>>15078369
The world is equally glad they will never have to read your fiction.

[Anonymous No.15078383]

>>15072440
Powerful

[Anonymous No.15078384]

>>15078362
Granting this for the sake of argument, it’s still not dogshit BECAUSE it’s biographical, it’s dogshit for some other reason, stylistic, substantive, or otherwise, which is perhaps a result of its being biographical. Therefore your critique should be focused on the substantive and stylistic points not on the author’s motivations, which you are only guessing anyway.

[Anonymous No.15078390]

>>15072702
Good but a bit boring. You've definitely got potential.

[Anonymous No.15078400]

>>15078377

Different anon, my man.

[Anonymous No.15078402]

>>15078384
Its being biographical is how we know it has no substance. Thinly-veiled pseudo-biographical pieces of this type presuppose that the author is an interesting character that people want to read about.

He's not.

He's starting from a misunderstanding of the function of fiction that is so profound, we know with total certainty the rest of it is not worth reading.

Unless, of course, this writer happens to be a genius. Which, obviously, is not the situation.

[Anonymous No.15078452]

“Short people got,” the young man sang out loud. “No reason, short people got no reason to live...”
He switched off the ignition, and the sultry voice of Randy Newman died a sudden and ignoble death. He dropped his keys into his pocket and stepped out of the car, slamming the door shut and hopping up the short flight of concrete steps.
The glowering Asian man behind the counter knew him by sight, and barely lifted his head at the sound of the electronic doorbell that alerted him to the presence of a customer. Still humming Randy Newman to himself, the young man walked up and down the aisle, examining the various boxes of underpriced wine. He selected a fine vintage of Franzia Chardonnay and brought it to the counter.
The Asian gentleman, whom he always referred to in his mind as Chun King even though that was probably not his real name, rang up his purchase and took his custom without remark. A moment later, he was out the door, fourteen dollars poorer but carrying enough cheap, terrible wine to while away yet another uneventful evening.
As he started his motor, Randy Newman resumed his mournful caterwaul from the tinny stock speakers.
“...they got little hands, little eyes, they run around town telling great big lies...”
He placed the box of wine on the passenger seat and began his usual ritual of adjusting mirrors and rolling down windows.
“...they got dirty little fingers, and nasty little minds...”
So absorbed was he in these myriad tiny adjustments that he did not even notice the sizable Negro who, unbeknownst to the man, had been eyeing him from across the street ever since he'd left the store, and now stood just inches from his car door.
“Out the car, motherfucker.”
Finally taking notice of the six and a half foot tall silhouette that suddenly blocked the flow of sunlight through his driver side window, the young man turned and gazed up at the barrel of a nine millimeter Beretta being pointed squarely at his forehead.
“The fuck...”
He was not permitted to finish the utterance. The Negro yanked open the door and seized him roughly by the collar. With a surprised yelp, the young man, who had not yet finished buckling his safety belt, found himself lying on the hot asphalt, staring up into a pair of cold, soulless eyes set into an impossibly thick and imposing frame.
“...they gonna get you every time...”
Randy's voice continued his mournful refrain from inside the car. The young man, meanwhile, could only lie on his back, squinting up at the impossibly large entity which seemed to be causing a sudden and total eclipse of the sun.
“You gettin' jacked, fool.”

[Anonymous No.15078455]

>>15068298
You had me at "Rey Skywalker let out a queef."

[Anonymous No.15078509]

>>15068298
Oh yeah, one thing though. Even though this is obviously written to be funny, when you're writing in a fictional universe you should still refrain from referencing things from outside the universe or that the character whose perspective you're writing from wouldn't be aware of. In this case, it's unlikely that Rey would be familiar with South London or its accent so you should probably avoid that comparison, even though it adds to the humor of what you've written.

For instance:

---

Harry Potter felt a tap on his head, and looked up from slobbing Ron Weasley's stumpy microdong. Ron's tiny, shriveled cock was greasier than a McDonald's fish sandwich and smelled absolutely horrid, but even so, Harry thought that it was even yummier than ice cream.

"What, Ron?" he asked, although since his mouth still full of that stubby, emaciated Irish weener, it came out more like "whuh rah?"

"You're not doing it right, Harry," Ron complained. "You can't just suck it, you've got to tickle my balls too. And why can't you jam your thumb up me bum like you did last time?"

"That was a one time thing," said Harry, spitting out Ron's shriveled little gingerpeck and picking the smegma out of his teeth. "Anyway, pull your pants up, we need to get to potions class."

---

In this case, Harry references a McDonalds™ fish sandwich, which may or may not exist in that universe. Just to be sure, it would be better to say "Phineas Phissledong's Huge Halibut Honker", because that sounds more like the kind of faggot ass shit that would exist in such a gay universe.

I think I need to go to bed.

[Anonymous No.15079858]

>>15077561
No, you're boring.

[Anonymous No.15079921]

Tennie's voice blasts through my speaker the second it's able.
"Hey, where the fuck are you, dude?"
"I'm almost there, it'll be a few minutes. And Maps doesn't show up when I'm in a call, just so you know."
"Don't say anything when you get here. Pull around the back, there's a kind of alley behind the house. Seriously."
"Okay. And what's going on? If you're gonna ask me to do something this suspicious you owe me at least that much."
I receive a response not from a human voice, but from the requisite three beeps indicating I'd been hung up on. I'll give him a pass on this one, he seems stressed out to say the least. Some degree of abrasion under pressure should be expected from him. Or so I'll say, but honestly, I can't shake that something about this feels intuitively strange. I'm trying to match it a prototype in my memory, sifting through a vacuous pile of interlocking lines and moments, catalyzing and connecting one another in order to convene a panel with the goal of suggesting to me why, in this moment, Tennie seems different to me. If I can't find an established model, I've decided to be concerned. I pull a soft right into an empty gravel road leading behind the house.
There is a memory that catches me, a day in senior year when I received a text tasking me with meeting him at a parking complex near the university. It was dark and raining out. There was a flash flood warning issued, but I told the girl I was with that I had to go, and so I drove across town to this lifeless bunker. With these sort of memories, often the aesthetics hit you harder than the events. Cataclysmic and unending downpour and the faint glow emanating from the half functioning dashboard on this same car made an ominous combination. It felt like a confrontation. Especially, pulling into the stark dry concrete dome, when Tennie stood there next to an odorous and inexplicable box. He’d cut the sleeves from his hoodie, and his body looked especially hunched and slender, striking when framed on either side by massive grey pillars, symmetrical and well-composed as they could only be in a memory, and with a vacant look in his eyes that suggested it was possible he was under the influence of some psychedelic or narcotic, it seemed to me.
"What's in the box?" was the primary and most obvious question.
"A lot of files I'm not supposed to have," he'd said, proven succinctly by a mild grin.

[Anonymous No.15079935]

>>15064906
crit me please

[Anonymous No.15080076]

>>15079935
You didn't crit anyone else.

[Anonymous No.15080095]

>>15079921
Pretty good fren.

[Anonymous No.15080098]

>>15080076
not everybody crits and puts work in the same post. I gave a crit to >>15065322

[Anonymous No.15080118]

>>15079921
Some of your sentences are too long, some expressions a bit too wordy for the mood (I think) you're trying to create, although others are fine as they are. It's not bad but it need a lot of polishing. I don't want to go over all of it but for example
>I receive a response not from a human voice, but from the requisite three beeps indicating I'd been hung up on
you can convey this exact message better and in about half the characters.

[Anonymous No.15080168]

>>15080118
Thanks for the feedback. I wanted to convey that the narrator was kind of offput without outright saying it, but I can see it should be written differently.
If you don't mind pointing of the others that bothered you I'd appreciate it, too.

>>15080095
Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.15080207]

>>15080168
I don't know how to explain it without getting too much into it, in some cases I found the wordiness interesting, in some I didn't. It's probably just my personal taste, but I stand on my point of some sentences being too long. At it's core it's quite good anyway.

[Anonymous No.15080250]

>>15079935

There are several obvious small points of grammar/phrasing:

>the Boss has ever carried out
had ever

>Eve and Eren had only heard of him, they were relatively new to gang after all, so understandably...
You can't use commas like this. The way you've phrased it you want hyphens. (Also you're missing a "the"). So: "Eve and Eren had only heard of him - they were relatively new to the gang, after all - so understandably...

>However, the one that opens the briefcase changes constantly.
This is misleading, because it could mean that one specific lock (always the same one) opens the case, but it changes all the time - i.e. it changes colour, or swivels round and round, or changes the way it must be opened, etc. Better to say something like: "...only one actually opens the briefcase. However, which one that is changes constantly."
I understand this is something a character says, so you might deliberately want it phrased badly. I'm guessing not, though, given this guy is a high-ranking fiendish criminal and is presumably meant to be moderately intelligent and articulate.

These points aside, the whole idea with the blood etc seems weird and unrealistic. I suppose it might work in the right setting, though.

[Anonymous No.15080259]

Two university students and some guy they met online come together to collaborate on writing the theory-fiction that will singlehandedly give a new life to their country's sleepy cultural scene. Does it sounds too trite as a pitch? It's supposed to be a funny light novel, I don't want to go full anime on it.

[Anonymous No.15080306]

>>15060126
"Why?"

"I had to," she says simply, her fingers pushing the tattered remains of the butterfly into her mouth. Her middle finger, her ring finger, her index finger scooping along her chin and slipping inside. The yellow wings flutter and crumple, the scales dusting her lips, the legs twitching against her skin. She stands, and watches me as I watch her grind the thing to paste between her teeth. A demonstration. A theater play. And when she's finished, her tongue darts out and licks at her lips.

I watch her, and I watch her walk away.

[Anonymous No.15080418]

>>15065575
Bump :(

[Anonymous No.15080421]

>>15080418
>Anyways
stopped there. use Anyway.

[Anonymous No.15080467]

An excerpt from one of my horror stories.

Happy day! Oh happy day!
Lilith was bubbling an energy she had not felt in a century, even before her imprisonment, as she washed their dishes from last night. Had she not been picked up she would have had to have spend an untold amount of decades finding what was here in her new home. She suppose she should be grateful for Larson. Though he tried his best to keep her locked away and deny her life, deny her of what she was born to do, he inadvertently helped her achieve.
At an opportune time, she'll have to conjure up his soul and gloat.
She started to hum a beautiful melody she learned from her past as she finished with the dishes and wiped her hands on paper towel. She swayed to and fro in effervescence before coming into the hall and seeing Dorothy's shoes on the mat. Lilith continued humming as she came into the living room to see her sitting on the couch with her coat still on and with her back to her as she held herself.
Lilith came up behind her and hugged as she kissed the side of her cheek.
"I didn't hear you come in," She said as she nuzzled her head against hers," How did it go?"
"I have two weeks to spend with you," Dorothy said.
"You don't sound happy about,"
Dorothy turned her head to give her a look of exasperation.
"I said yes. Wasn't that enough Lilith," She asked sternly.
She let go of her and sat down on the couch.
"I guess i'm just too happy,"
"You're awfully happy for being a dyke," Dorothy said without thinking.
Lilith's face darkened in anger but she only said," I guess you're right,"
She wanted to say she didn't mean it but she did and she didn't want to lie to her. It seemed treacherous to do so, even with her. And even though her mind was a raging blank on what to do she turned to her and was about to say something before she cut her off.

[Anonymous No.15080524]

>>15080306

This is cool, show us more Anon. I want to know who this person is and why she's eating a butterfly

>>15072683

Edited my earlier piece to make it hopefully more original and interesting. I'm still not willing to give up on describing this scene in this much detail. It's possible, of course, that my descriptions might need to be improved further. Anyway, here it is:

(1/2)

Tristan Thompson, G.E.D., lighting an American Spirit Black, got off work and stepped into the guts of Crown Hill. His feet skidded on the slick pavement. All of Seattle was sick with Autumn, a city sunk beneath brackish fog and cold dew. Leaf membranes dissolved into spinal cords. Crows jabbed at soaked litter in the curbside rain-rivers. The air was swollen, a bunch of soggy molecules sloshing and slopping together, making his throat moist. The trees were pathetic. Slugs attempted great voyages across the expanses of sidewalk. Rain dribbled in fat dirty orbs from the gray monolith above, splatting like birdshit on Tristan’s eyelashes, stinging his eyes. A pigeon that appeared to have some kind of disease hobbled past him. Every parked car that Tristan walked by looked exactly the same.

Holman Road was the major artery of Crown Hill, a slab of mossy concrete carving between a row of business and apartment facades on one side, a stretch of fenced-in brambles and tall grasses on the other. Tristan squelched towards 85th St., his thin slip-on shoes flopping and draining water. His feet begged for relief, having carried his bulk for nine hours of standing and rapidly dashing between the cash register and grill, his mandate to serve 25 customers in 30 minutes, taking their orders and rushing to get their burgers and fries and rushing back to charge them and thanks have a good one and next in line please and hey what can I get started for ya. His hands were covered in little burns from scooping red hot fries into paper wallets. His right knee twinged with every step.

[Anonymous No.15080534]

>>15080524

(2/2)

Tristan passed the abandoned former Pizza Hut and reached the corner of 85th and 15th. A central node of northwest Seattle, the crux of the Greenwood/Crown Hill/Ballard axis, churned before him with its intersecting chaos. The long streak of 85th St., trisected by wide bike lanes throughout its length, tethered Golden Gardens to I-5 and stretched from there across the humble hills of Wedgwood. It was the city’s spine. The road plunged through the heart of Seattle’s mono-counterculture; past the glistening chromesleek dispensaries spouting like polyps in between condemned houses; in the smothering incense drooling from medieval potion shops around Greenwood; by the rainbow flags displayed in various Chase Banks and Wells Fargoes.

Tristan stood at the infamous crosswalk. Two angry Jesus people waved signs and shouted on the opposite corner. A Metro bus farted black smoke as it creaked to its stop, then lumbered into life again, chugging like a great dark caterpillar towards 86th St. Behind a cloud, the sun’s disc dimmed until visible as a ghostly white circle, an old wanderer. Tristan sucked a last long inhale from his Spirit and dropped it. On the pavement, it joined a constellation of other butts flecked about. Tristan had made his mark on this place; he had left a symbol of his presence. A glowing red hand forbid him to step forward, so he waited. And waited.

[Anonymous No.15080648]

(1/2)
They walked along the trail together, father and son, until the sun hung low and red in the western sky and the evening was lavender and the faint breath of the night was cool. The peepers and crickets and cicadas sang around them. The trail was crude, lined with weeds and prickers and branches and bushes. The man walked in front with a machete, hacking at the growth in front of him, and the boy followed, a machete in his hand but not put to use.
The boy was called Josiah and he was skinny and tall for his teenage years. His matted brown hair fell in twisted curls and tufts to his shoulders. His face was like a waning moon; it was thin and pale despite the sun beating down on it for hours.
The man was taller than the boy and wider, his broad muscles stretching the old cotton of his tight shirt. He had a scraggly beard that he liked to braid and his hair was short and black. His face was square and red.
They were both sweaty and dirty and they looked at the ground as they walked.
“Hey Dad?” Josiah called to the dim, grainy outline of a man in front of him.
Dad always seemed to ruminate on words, letting them hang in the air for a time long enough to be slightly uncomfortable. But eventually he would speak.
“Yeah?” he said quickly and unremarkably. He coughed.
Songs of the forest hung in the humid air.
“When do you think we’re gonna be finished up here?” Josiah asked softly.
Dad grunted. “Well, we’re tryna go all the way down the floodplain to the crick, so I’d say we’re bout halfway.”
And so they whacked with their machetes and thorns slashed their skin and nettle nipped their exposed ankle and Josiah wished Dad had died instead of Mom. The sun had set and the murky blue waters of the night sky could just barely be seen above the cover of the trees. The forest was black.
“Hey, uh, I think I’m gonna go back up to the house,” Josiah said.
The seconds passed and each one mounted unseen pressure. He had to explain himself to the darkness, bargain with it.
“It’s just getting a little dark, ya know?” he tried again.
Then the silence came again, the screams of the night, and it was choking him.
“Okay,” Dad said. “I thought we agreed we were gonna finish tonight, but okay.”
“Okay,” Josiah said and turned around and ran up the hill through the bastard trail in the black of night.

[Anonymous No.15080658]

>>15080648
(2/2)
The house was big and empty and old. He walked through the mud room and the living room then through the sprawling library full of antique books he couldn’t touch then up the stairs to the attic that was his room and locked the door. The heat was suffocating and so he stripped naked and doused himself in cold water in the shower. He layed in bed naked with the windows open and the fan blowing and he shivered but did not dare to cover up. He stayed awake until it made him sick and confused and he drifted in the visceral waking dreamscape. He knew he was lying in bed and he felt the wind brush off his skin like silk but his mind was still lulled into the numb pleasures of the unconscious. He had not slept deeply for two weeks. And he hadn’t had a dream that he could remember.

[Anonymous No.15080659]

>>15080648
babby's first cormac mccarthy

[Anonymous No.15080667]

>>15080659
n-no anon i swear.... it's not The Road

[Anonymous No.15080911]

What font do you write in?

[Anonymous No.15080915]

>>15080911
Cambria

[Anonymous No.15080956]

>>15080524
>This is cool, show us more Anon. I want to know who this person is and why she's eating a butterfly
thank you. haven't gotten that far yet.
he caught the butterfly (a scene from my childhood) and she ate it right out of his hand, possibly because she's a representation of my desperate attempt to avoid confronting my own trauma through stagnation. She means well, but she's a stupid bitch that can only succeed through self-destruction.

[Anonymous No.15081014]

Unfixed in orgasm, transcendent, a woman liberated physically and spiritually through submission...You flouted the pieties of your jejune humanism, reacquainted with an ancient and native predilection for evil. Rawboned women of planter stock, ceding in the darkness of farmhouse bedrooms...I fucked in vindication of an immemorial birthright, a reaffirmation of propriety. Once again you were indentured, a chattel...Our palmprints brands, livid in your flesh...

[Anonymous No.15081093]

>>15080648
>>15080659
remove the punctuation

[Anonymous No.15081108]

Have anyone here ever followed a creative writing class? I don't want to be judgemental, just asking for curiosity

[Anonymous No.15081156]

Just then a loud slap hit the deck. Natheyük's eyes widened and Abraham stopped his insanity, slowly lowering his arms and eyes to the miracle that was frantically panicking on the deck. A single fish. They both stood for a moment, completely baffled by this, until Natheyük looked up into the sky inquisitively. A single cloud was flying overhead, it reminded him of his favourite tree when he was younger. Abraham dove to the fish and viciously tore at it with his teeth. Natheyük watched this man turned beast with a mixture of fear and intrigue, watching his face as he tore chunks off the fishes still squirming body. Abraham was eating so quickly his body was forcing him to gag to get the bones out of his throat, causing Natheyük to grimace in disgust. The fish was done, and Abraham was licking and sucking his fingers. He stopped.
"I….n-need…….more….." he muttered. Natheyük's guard was put up unconsciously. Abraham was semi crouched, his hands were slowly becoming fists, and his eyes were dead set on Natheyük. He lunged at him, Natheyük stepped aside, tripped him, and put him in a headlock.
"You need to calm down!" he shouted through the struggle. Abraham got his jaw onto Natheyük's arm and bit hard, causing him to shout in pain, and punch Abraham hard in the back of the head, knocking him out. He looked at the bite, it was deep and blood was beginning to drain out of it quickly. He ripped Abrahams loin cloth off and wrapped his arms with it.
'How am I going to deal with this sad heap of a man?' Natheyük asked while kicking at Abrahams limp body.
'If he awakens he will undoubtedly try and kill me, but he hasn't actually done anything wrong. Any time he has acted off puttingly or strange has been during the last week without food. Can I kill a man for being upset he has no food? Especially if the man is from a lifestyle of more than daily food intake? Is that acceptable? Is the act of killing an innocent man acceptable? Under any circumstance I would say no. Ok, Is the act of killing a man who has commited severe wrongdoing acceptable? Yes, undoubtedly. Is the act of killing a man who is under normal circumstances an innocent man, but under specific circumstances commits severe wrongdoing acceptable? Hm. What would it depend on? The severity of the wrongdoing? In this case it is more of a possibility of wrongdoing than anything else. Hmm. Should I give him a chance to not commit the wrongdoing? That seems like the most feasible option given my situation.' Natheyük had agreed with his brain to give Abraham another chance, but was aware the hope for Abraham not committing wrongdoing was based on nothing.

[Anonymous No.15081168]

>>15081014
jesus christ not another one

[Anonymous No.15081321]

>>15081014
I quite liked that, but I do have a penchant for schizo writings.

[Anonymous No.15081365]

The breaststroke of your hands upon my thighs as I drew your face towards my crotch. Long fingers moulding the slab in outline, in vindication. You wielded me like a thyrsus. I saw you, teenage bacchante, your sabbats in the fields and woodland of your parish. Wind-cooled cum on your lips, earth upon your knees...You wanted the sin, the romance. The sugar of a double life...

[Anonymous No.15081408]

AND I WHAMMED HIM RIGHT IN THE NOGGIN. WENT DOWN LIKE A BAG O BRICKS. HE LOOKS UP AT ME, AND I LOOK DOWN AT HIM.

"YA NEVER SHOULDA MESSED WITH ME, SONNY JIM"

HIS SMILE TURNED TO A FROWN, AND THAT'S WHEN I PULLED MY 9MM GLOCK

BLAM BLAM BLAM

SO IT ENDED

[Anonymous No.15081900]

>>15080648
This has potential but some of the descriptions are just stiff. A lot of it just feels like strings of adjectives attached to nouns in a way that isn't poetic or interesting.

[Anonymous No.15082027]

Ernald opened the door. He found the ease of its rotation to his liking and so closed it, opened it again, let the stile poise delicately on its hinges as he passed beneath the frame. His mind was so distracted by the beauty of the mechanism that he had no time at all to spot the sudden dip in elevation behind the threshold. His foot fell into an unexpected depression and with a short gasp he stumbled, tumbled, crumbled on the floor in self-abasement. Then a pigeon appear on his face and shat in his eyes.

[Anonymous No.15082473]

>>15082027
had no time at all - should be replaced, it is his attention that is in short supply
>His mind was distracted, admiring the beauty of the mechanism
unexpected can be cut from the next sentence, it is clear from the context
self-abasement contrasts with the rest of the language, I'd personally use a simpler phrase
change appear to landed or something past tense

[Anonymous No.15082915]

>>15081108
Had one in uni required for my english major and it was dogshit. "This is an antagonist, this is a protagonist, this is rhyme and meter in poetry." They called some of the worst writing good. But at least they disliked mine, it was bad back then and still sort of is.
Ended up with a 79.65% and salty bitch disease.

[Anonymous No.15083098]

I'll review some more and retoast I suppose

>>15079921
Good dialogue, but as a preventative measure for it being too on the nose in some parts, try reading it aloud to see if you'll sense anything unnatural or forced whenever it comes out of your mouth. Not that this is how you speak or anything. Other anon was right about some of your sentences, they do make the eyes drag on a little bit and could be made shorter.
>>15078452
I keked
>>15077068
Comfy but weird. The tripping I'm doing over some of the sentences probably would rock some people to stop reading. Still, I think you're onto something, try smoothing it out just a small bit while not losing whatever style this is

Retoast but extended
https://justpaste dot it/46jp9

[Anonymous No.15083276]

February 14th, 2013
At 3:21AM the gamma counter sounded off. Sutton went for the dogleg exit, three long strides, knocked over the oscilloscope on the way out. The badge over the door was black already. He slowed around the bend, jogged past the trefoil on the wall and the spare boot covers and the P100 respirators on the way to the exterior door. Outside there was a cold fog winding through the trees and it was impossible to tell if the metallic taste to the air was incipient snow or something else. His pulse pounded in his ears and his breath rattled in his throat and he took a full minute to get control of himself. When he had, he set a timer on his watch and listened to the counter through the door. It was saturated, spitting out counts so fast that it sounded like radio static.

Fifty feet away and behind a berm sat the camper van, with a cooler full of whole blood and Ciprofloxacin for doses under 6 sieverts and 7cc morphine for doses over that. It was a one-hour drive to the hospital and if he started vomiting before he got there, he would stop the van and take the morphine. The onset of acute radiation sickness begins with nausea after a time which is inversely proportional to the dose. Symptoms inside an hour post-exposure meant death, caused by the destruction of every blood cell in the body. If Sutton made it through the hour then the timer would tell him what his chances were. If he didn't make it then he didn't want to stick around.

His boots crunched frost faintly underfoot as he walked over to the van and cracked open the cargo door. Sutton grabbed a blood unit and 1000mg Ciprofloxacin from the cooler, then swallowed the antimicrobial dry as he got into the driver's seat. The van turned over easily and he hung the blood bag from the rearview. His face was already reddening from backscattered hard UV and decay Betas. While inserting the IV, he began to smile beatifically. Without question, his machine worked.

[Anonymous No.15083461]

The death of desire

As the embittered old man sighed his final breath
The gentle touch of the reaper pulled his soul to the gates of eternity
The reaper looked at him and said "Do you have a final wish"
Pausing for but a moment the old man replied with disgust in his eyes "To watch the world burn"
"Very well" replied the reaper "It will be done"

[Anonymous No.15083475]

>>15083098
I like how comfy the first few paragraphs are. You don't write pretentiously like some of the people in the thread, hbut its much like your main character.

[Anonymous No.15084400]

Where I'm from, time doesn't exist -
Seconds become hours,
Years of short moments vanish straight away,
And our mistaken words are remplaced
By music and colours
Which float like scents of perfume in the amber air.

Don't be afraid, now everything's over.
Break the chains of your mortal fears
To be liberated from them for ever and ever,
And again find peacefulness of former times.
Don't be afraid, now everything's over.
Let your tears flow one last time
To be liberated from them for ever and ever,
And meet the world from where you come.

[Anonymous No.15084703]

Do you guys just evolve your writing by practicing as if it's a hobby?
I've read a good amount of books and glossed over several letters that flow so well and use words in sentences that are understood but now never used. I want to be able to write like them but I've never written a single paragraph for my own entertainment yet.

[Anonymous No.15084708]

>>15082915
I don't trust them either but sometimes I feel like knowing a set of rules to either follow or consciously break would be a good creative toolset. I'm not going to pay for a fancy private class anyway so unless I can take one through my shitty college I will never know for sure.

[Anonymous No.15084947]

Artem squirmed, wiggled and writhed, he scratched at his collar and pulled at his pants. He closed his eyes, only to open them minutes later and he pulled his cover further over his body, scrunching himself up in search of warmth. Artem made three repetitions of this process, before finally giving up on trying to sleep. He stared up at the canvas of his tent and reached over to his rifle, running his hand from the tip of its barrel and then downwards until he reached the safety, and then he slid his hand down until he reached the trigger. He shuffled to the edge of his cot, and pulled his AK-74 closer, until it came to rest on the edge of his mouth. He pulled it up, bringing it into his mouth, and then slid his hand down until he caressed the trigger. His breath picked up, and his heart banged in his head like a drum.

His hands began to shake, the barrel along with it, and then he began sweating. Where before he had tried to find warmth in the blankets, now he kicked them off in a desperate bid for the freezing air. He did not pull that trigger, instead he sat there for an hour, periodically squeezing the trigger lightly, but not fully committing to blowing out his brains.

[Anonymous No.15085203]

>>15083276

This has some potential but there are a few issues.

>the gamma counter sounded off
To "sound off" means to pontificate. You just mean "the gamma counter sounded".

>the P100 respirators on the way
Too much detail. Just say "the respirators on the way". The reader doesn't need to know they're P100 respirators at this point, and you sound like Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man. Only ever give as much technical detail as you absolutely need at that moment.

>pulse pounded... breath rattled
These are clichés and not good ones.

>listened to the counter through the door
Here you're doing the opposite of the earlier mistake - not giving ENOUGH detail. You mean *Geiger* counter, I assume. You need to say that, I think.

>Ciprofloxacin for doses under 6 sieverts and 7cc morphine for doses over that
This reads awkwardly because you jump right to specifics without giving the big picture. I would try to say something like "a cooler full of whole blood and anti-radiation medication: Ciprofloxacin (for doses under 6 sieverts) and morphine (for anything worse)."

>The onset of acute radiation sickness begins with nausea ...
This is in the present tense, so in the next sentence:
Symptoms inside an hour post-exposure meant death,
you need to change "meant" to "mean".

>If he didn't make it then he didn't want to stick around.
What does this mean? I'm assuming it means, if the guy is so irradiated he's getting nauseous within the hour, he's going to die so nastily he wants it to be quick. But it isn't clear because he's also trying to leave the place quickly, so "didn't want to stick around" could also mean he wants to drive somewhere else as fast as possible. Rephrase it.

>Sutton grabbed a blood unit...
Suddenly using his name here instead of "he" sounds wrong. If you want to remind the reader what he's called, put the name at the beginning of the paragraph ("Sutton's boots crunched frost faintly...")

>The van turned over easily
This reads a little awkwardly because you haven't said he's tried to start the engine, so it's too big a jump. Even just "The engine turned over first time" or something like that would help the reader along a bit better.

>beatifically
This is like his breath rattling and stuff. It doesn't fit, and suggests you've been reading books. Stop doing that.

[Anonymous No.15085792]

I wrote a DBZ-inspired smut fic over the weekend. I plan to expand on it in the future.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582569/chapters/56582830
I'd like to know what anyone thinks worked and what didn't. The main character takes four of the ogres to be her harem at the end, and that's going to be explored in terms of smut and whether the space cop organization she's in needs to better regulate what their members are doing, and how the bureaucracy clashes with warrior ideals.

[Anonymous No.15086565]

(1/2)

The person I met there was another type that could be bought all too cheaply these days. A hired gun, a veteran of some forgotten war who had decided they despised the modern system, but not despise it so much they weren’t willing to profit off working for either side. This example was an annoyingly philosophical one, who hung around forums professing a desire to help the cause. They claimed to be ex-US Special Forces, but they were so coked out that I didn’t believe they got past the Green Beret interviews.
“You come alone?” They asked.
“You see anyone else in this café asshole?” It was a fully automated one. No staff at all, just trays moving around on chains above us, sliding in and out of industrial looking coffee makers and cake dispensers. The rattling of the chains moving in and out of the automated machines was annoying, but enthusiasts claimed it was therapeutic. The metal fetishists just enjoyed the show. No one else really came to them anymore, they were considered sad even by Paris standards. It wasn’t even clear who owned them anymore, they had computer systems which automatically ordered mechanics and cleaners from external companies, to the point that they were self-sufficient. You stumbled upon them frequently while navigating the Paris financial net, banking servers accumulating money, with the occasional transfer out being only to pay rent or cleaning contracts. Occasionally one would get smashed, and it would either get fixed, if the computer survived or left to rust. In the nastier arrondissements, you could find a ruined one every other street.

[Anonymous No.15086580]

>>15086565
(2/2)


“You know what the problem with Europe these days is?”
“I bet you’re gonna tell me” I responded, lighting the second to last cigarette of the packet.
“No style anymore. They let the corps roll right over them without even a fight. At home there was a Waco every week back then. Everyone knew it was going to happen, but where were the fights? The glorious last stands?”
“Well, I imagine they were busy with the war you didn’t bother to help with.” The pause stretched for a long minute while I enjoyed watching the smoke get torn apart by the whirring metal above me.
“You know”, they finally said, “I really don’t think you get what I’m saying. You’ve invited me to this meeting to enlist my help in stealing some little doodad that the corps are using to barter with. You’re gonna assassinate some small fry whose been trusted with it and thumb your nose at the corps while you publish whatever it is or just use it yourself. You want me to be the trigger man? Getaway driver? Or just backup? You’re not thinking about it right. What are you gonna achieve, besides pissing off some middle manager? The corps won’t get hurt from this. Whatever they were gonna do, they’ll do anyway. You trying to be young Lenin, inspiring the people?”
“Look man, I really just want a fucking answer. You in?”
“What am I going to achieve?” he demanded, gesturing dramatically, “What difference will it make-”
“Look, man, I thought you were in with this-” I started.
“Don’t interrupt” he stopped me, laying a submachine gun on the table. I became very still. Looking over what appeared to be a custom Uzi, the telltale signs of underground manufacturing were clear, but it wasn’t a rough copy. Judging by the cutouts and plastic look, this was a variant made from polymer, with sections removed for added lightness. Sized as the ‘micro’ variant, it nevertheless had a 60 round, clear magazine, the glint of armor piercing rounds visible. A complex looking box sat on top toward the barrel end, evidently connected to some sort of auto aiming system, with wires snaking toward the grip, where biometric data ports allowed access. It was almost erotic, with the phallic data jacks piercing into the glinting, begging ports in the hand of my confederate, sweat dripping around them, slipping in, like a perverse wetness. They were high out of their mind, now that I was paying attention, with pupils like dinner plates in the Parisian midafternoon. I realized I was staring into the eyes of a man with principles being confronted about the pointlessness of ethics in the modern world. I’d seen it before. I should have clocked it when they talked about glorious last stands.


Is this good dialogue?

[Anonymous No.15086688]

>>15086580
>Is this good dialogue?
no

[Anonymous No.15086718]

>>15086580
I like burgerpunk
The calling him out part is ok but the weak responses need a redo
Start of 2/2 needs looking at too, feels too much like a practiced conversation rather than natural flow

[Anonymous No.15086742]

>>15086688
Oxygen thief

>>15086718
Which part are you referring to when you say weak responses? Thanks, it's obviously a first draft

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.15086766]

goddamn, have you guys ever heard of "show, don't tell"

[Anonymous No.15086915]

>>15086766
Then why are you telling me this?

[Anonymous No.15087311]

>>15084708
desu, I have learned more from a well written book than what the class taught me. Could have been a shitty class, but that's just my experience.

[Anonymous No.15087640]

>>15085203
Thanks anon. I'll go over it and post again in a few days.

[Anonymous No.15087659]

>>15087311
Writing skills since antiquity was essentially: reading the best, writing like the best.
Roman orators/poets would study the Greek ones and imitate them.

[Anonymous No.15087673]

>>15086742
Look, man etc
The Uzi description could be streamlined too, unless this is aimed at the eroti/k/a gang

[Anonymous No.15087805]

>>15087659
The only thing that worries me about this is the fact that we may or may not be steadily declining as writers with each writing generation. Are we eventually going to all be YA novel writing faggots? I'm sure to another age we look just as much.

[Anonymous No.15087865]

>>15087805
I would call the majority of what is being produced today as barbaric. Up until the 19th ce, before the notion of muh originality, you had to read the ancients and learn grammar, logic and rhetoric. Nowadays, unis teach contemporary trannies who talk about their truth in their own voice and the students build their craft after these puerile, underdeveloped models of writing.

[Anonymous No.15088481]

>>15087865
What would you call the general sum of what is in this thread?

[Anonymous No.15088722]

Of course the rain
translates
into ageless rings
upon the jaded water
our mutual feelings.

[Anonymous No.15088733]

>>15088481
There are some great writers here who demonstrate both the mastery and the refinement of English while transmitting lofty ideas.
>>15064852
This one, for example, has the ambitious aim of recreating the origin of the universe in flowery, masturbatory language, which I like.
>>15064862
This one condenses the vast array of emotions felt within one lifetime in a single word.
>>15072702
And this scholar anon carries the torch of tradition with great style.

[Anonymous No.15088821]

Hex

There was a dark but marvellous blue
Coming from the oncoming sea.
That echoed silence and
Meloncholy.
You sitting next to me on a
Wheelchair.
Sighing deeply, mouth slightly gaping
Signfying a broken heart.

That witch was not the
Messiah,
She did us no
Favours.
It was not a deep understanding of
Your suffering.
Or triggers.
Or humanity.
And I was hexed for wondering.

Now the dark tide is coming in.
I think I understand you better now
But not fully.
It seems to me like the disabled are
Ignored to an extent.
Like doves over ravens.
And how she might have made you stand for a while.
Then beguiled us.
Duped like limping dogs at the vet.
The cheek of it.
The spouting of evil
After the diabolical miracle.
Means we are certainly damned but somehow
I feel a connection.
Making the waters a little less
Somber.
I don't fully understand your world but
I'm thankful for it.
Least not alone till the waves engross us.
Welshed you were owed more than this.

[Anonymous No.15088906]

Gonna go around my city in the middle of the night (for essential exercise) and drop these everywhere later. BG image is Priti Patel giving the statement that included the words in red.

[Anonymous No.15088989]

>>15088906
you couldn't even rotate it could you you lazy cunt

[Anonymous No.15089140]

Gabriel Boyle was never a particularly religious man simply by virtue of his never wanting to truly commit to anything so much bigger than himself. He was fine with most forms of the rampant spirituality that seemed to worm its way throughout much of modern society, but he drew the line at the dogma of the major religions or churches or mosques or what have you. Feeling a "great spirit" or a "Buddhist Zen" was all well and good, just don't try to put too much of a definition on God was his theology. But when COVID hit, he felt in himself the beginnings of a change.

Gabe was a working man and he was often out and about on the town in his off-time to the point of considering it essential to his own well-being, but ultimately he feared death so he kept in. The world kept in with Gabe, but he crumbled all alone. Like many others he struggled with the transition from a life centered on the outside to a life centered on the inside and as a result he fell behind in his work and lost control of his sleep schedule and could not find the center to his own existence. When everything is gone why is there nothing left? If I can't work why can't I sleep? What is holding me together? Gabriel had never been a contemplative man, but he began to wonder why, when he had no one to see or interact with, did he feel so exposed in his own home? He thought and thought and thought and thought until he was brought to the point of collapse. Then he looked around and found he could not see god.

His own hay and shapeless purely personal conception of god had abandoned him when he lost his center. What he thought to be the very bedrock of all existence was a mere idol. Then he thought more and he came to the conclusion that all around him and even in him was an idol.

In his little box apartment in the big city he found that his idolatry was of the world and of his life. COVID had destroyed his life, and not for just a short period of time. Gabriel never wanted to go back to the trappings of modern life and the excess of the world. He could not reconcile his new bedrock-center with the world he found himself. His God and his life were purely incompatible.

[Anonymous No.15089156]

>>15086565
>>15086580
Is rape morally correct if you think they will enjoy it? Are particularly sensitive individuals utility monsters?

[Anonymous No.15089550]

Here is a coward. Locked in the reveries of the mystical world. Docile from the intoxicating embrace of imagination. O coward, you coward! Face the mundane reality before you. The world changes man. Man does not change the world. You have become the vestige of a child's dream. The cowardly rejection of order. The herd moves on without you.

[Anonymous No.15089934]

>>15089156

Rape is never morally correct. Removing someone's ability to decide their bodily autonomy is wrong

[Anonymous No.15090001]

>>15089934
LMAOOOOO cope

[Anonymous No.15090218]

>>15088989
On my phone m8

[Anonymous No.15090227]

I got a quick question to other anons in this thread. What are good books or other resources I can read to learn how to become a self editor?

[Anonymous No.15091489]

awful

[Anonymous No.15091617]

I'm not posting the scene, but can I get some input on something?

my characters were put on trial for crimes they committed accidentally, and testified against by the grizzled, bitter captain of the guard. They would have been executed but a scheming local lord offered to let the characters go, give them provisions and provide a ranger who will aid them in their quest as long as they do him a favor when they get to where they're going. the characters accept (though they still have a strong dislike of the local lord) and are told to meet their assistant a few miles from the city

That ranger turns out to be the captain of the guard who tried them, and he's still pissed at them for skirting the law (admittedly, the accidental crimes were pretty severe). As it happens, his approach to body guarding is to toughen them up so they don't need protection, which he does by ambushing the party and lecturing them on their poor combat skills

I'm worrying this scene makes him too unlikable, but I'm not sure how to fix it

[Anonymous No.15091633]

When a friendly face emerges out of the crowds of indifferent people I feel an obligation to charm, to ingratiate beyond the means of my own personhood. We all have two options with our relationships: either tell the truth about our unexciting lives, or lollygag in an endless game of cat and mouse where life and career do not become an illusion but an elusion (I have coined many terms in my scholarly work).
Most will call this lying. I call it something else, an emotional tango, a dance of some kind. What can I say? It’s the only humanity left in my life. It’s all I know, so, what difference would it make if I laid bare my real identity when it is all a game? What would I tell them? That I come from a long line of con men and degenerate gamblers? That my intellectualism is just a disguise for the lace curtain yearnings of a working class kid? Is that what they want? Truly? Or should I say that despite my genetic good fortune I alternate between anxiety and depression, but that these names for things are nothing, wind, bullshit, all different masks worn by the same face. And if they ask how I know this you know what I’d say? I’ll say I know because I’ve tried it all: SSRI, Kale Shakes, Talk Therapy, Yoga, and various other vandalisms of the human spirit, because at the end of it all, there is nothing, no hope at self-improvement or upward mobility. None at all. I choose to lie, because I cannot talk to anyone in the real world.

[Anonymous No.15091708]

>>15088722
Short and sweet, i like it

[Anonymous No.15091887]

>>15073534
Forgot I had done this, my bad. Critiquing now.

>>15073625
I tried rereading to get a sense of what you mean, but I'm not getting it.

>>15077147
Thank you for feedback. It IS meant to be romantic, just from some practice I'm doing though.

>>15091617
Sounds humorous of him to ambush the "party", to be honest. IMO if this is meant to be serious, scrap that idea, if it is meant to be humorous, keep with it. I don't think it necessarily makes him unlikeable, also.

>>15086580
Not awful but needs much work. For one, I would just use "said" for most, if not all dialogue. If you can't get an impression of the character's tone from the dialogue already, it's usually bad dialogue. The motion cues sound unnatural. For instance,
>"Don’t interrupt” he stopped me, laying a submachine gun on the table.
I would do something like
>"Do not interrupt me." He cut me off with his hand, placing down the submachine gun with his other.
The prose was not bad either, it was quite pretty when you were describing the uzi but I didn't know what the shit you were talking about half the time. Be direct. Stories are about giving descriptions as to allow the user to come to their own conclusions, not just telling them those conclusions up front.
> I realized I was staring into the eyes of a man with principles being confronted about the pointlessness of ethics in the modern world.
???

[Anonymous No.15091942]

>>15091887
the story's not supposed to be very serious but the scene isn't framed humorously. One minute they're walking through the fog and hear footsteps behind them. They fall into formation and spot a figure moving silently through the fog who dodges their attacks and knocks one of them to the floor and holds him at sword point before calling the whole party pathetic.

Maybe I can make it funnier with him screaming at the top of his lungs, but it doesn't seem in-character

[Anonymous No.15092050]

>>15091942
Yeah uh, you might want to reconsider your story.

[Anonymous No.15092217]

>>15092050
fuck off

[Anonymous No.15092240]

>>15092217
Does criticism not stand well with you? I believe your story is bad.

[Anonymous No.15092944]

>>15092217
Why do people ask for feedback here and then get mad when they receive feedback

[Anonymous No.15093090]

>>15060126
What makes prose purple? Is it too many adjectives? I have some sentences with several clauses and am worried I'm over doing it.

[Anonymous No.15093102]

Lewis hid a pocketknife under his cool words. The room was tense and blue eyes began to hiss. “It’s illogical and self-absorbed to think a socialist movement can fight without accounting for the black working class, your dogmatic “pure Marxism” will keep this org stuck…” he continued, standing like an axe against their scowls. But each word was ultimately pointless, the crowd only heard clear blasphemy, and Roger was calculating a firm response. “If you’d actually read Marx you’d know that in order to abolish capital, the whole point of communism, you can’t ‘account’ for the needs of petty national causes that just split up the whole leftist struggle. Workers need unity, regardless of race, and theory to guide their actions, not selfish emotional appeals that aren’t even backed with any real school. If we start ‘accounting’ for blacks then every third world people will want something, and we’d be stuck in endless reforms. You’re not a real communist, you just want your own slice of the cake!” He spat each word like sharpened flint. The room seemed to become their shadows.

[Anonymous No.15093175]

A sea of thought converges on me,
If I am my mind, that remains to be,
And I find that time is dangerously
swathing me, my mind, in brine,
and though I flail I sink knee deep into its bed,
and forward is back with black embed,
and so is the floor as I awake once more.

[Anonymous No.15093208]

>>15092944
Cause you a lil seethe

[Anonymous No.15093617]

>>15060449
Thanks for the read, anon. It was much enjoyed

[Anonymous No.15093830]

>>15093208
u mad?

[Anonymous No.15093933]

>>15069501
Finally! Some po-mo poet has it figured out! He got rid of "norms of from" and beyond "the sanctity of rhyme" and got to the truth.
We, as humanity, were beating a dead horse all along! All we had todo is to
> "sit by
>the shores of a stream
>Or pull a weed from the ground with a quieted
mind
>To see what the philosophers
>And poets have barred with their
>Scenes and treatises".
What a genius! Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein! All in vain! THey could have just chilled, man!

[Anonymous No.15093994]

>>15093175
>another "deep" thoughts poem ... about a one-night stand?
>rhymes... sometimes
>establishes a metre...presumably

[Anonymous No.15094000]

>>15093102
stop trying to be cool

[Anonymous No.15094007]

>>15093090
Using overblown language for no reason in my opinion. If you see a road, call it a road. Don't call it a meandering footpath of dirt. But, if you see an angel? You can call it an impossible incandescence, a door opening up to the land beyond.

[Anonymous No.15094033]

>>15081408
best one in the thread

[Anonymous No.15094046]

>>15073333
I like it, impressive quads

[Anonymous No.15094986]

Set Up

“Isn’t it clear to you dumbies. I want to get one over on Peachfucker.”

Moe (well, Morris). Sixteen years old - half of which, by his own reckoning, spent grifting. Wheeler dealing. Picking up what fell off lorries like some kleoptomaniac Hansel and Gretel in reverse. Trotters deep, deep into the underworld.

It was, we thought, mostly bullshit.

“He’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad? Rick, did you hear him in there? Telling me what to do What not? Not even to talk?”

Rick (well, Richard) finished what he was eating and took a drink of water.

“That’s his job, Moe.”

“Freedom of speech, Rick. Besides, you let people run over you like that now? You’re never going to get back up on your feet. Even when you’re old and in your golden ears, you’ll still be taking orders. Wash now. Come see your visitors. Turn over. Stop hitting the carers.”

“My golden ears?”

We were sitting in the school canteen. Friday. Fish and chips. Moe reached over and took a chip from my plate.

“What about you, Patrice?”

Patrick.

“Fat got your tongue? Weigh in on this.”

At that point he walked in. Peachfucker, born Peacham - Mr. Peachem. Biology don, self-proclaimed bon-vivant, tireless raconteur. A short, slight man, approaching his late 40s - divorced, so the kids who overheard him on the bus on the French trip said, because his wife was spending too much money. Favoured the girls, with an eye-drop average of twice per lesson with Marla, the school’s bustiest prospect. He was in his trademark gilet.

Just as he walked in, Clarissa sat a few seats down from us with a piece of fish and two, three, four chips. She was nearby, but sound didn’t necessarily travel well on these long cateen tables. I couldn’t guarantee that she was in earshot. But I took my chance.
“Well. Sure. A prank can’t hurt. What’ve we got to lose, anyway?”

I quickly looked at Clarissa, who showed no sign of having heard. She was totally still, intent upon a chip.

“Patrice. Why are you shouting? You’re going to get us busted.”

[Anonymous No.15095139]

bump

[Anonymous No.15095672]

bumping

[Anonymous No.15095717]

>>15095672
just let this thread die, it's too long
aint nobody gonna read all that shit

[Anonymous No.15095823]

Unknown Location in London

“... Aimee?”

…

“Aimee?”

“Larissa, it’s late, you should be sleeping.”

“I’m trying. I can’t sleep.”

“I mean it, Larissa. I’ll tell father.”

…

“Larissa, are you crying?”

“I’m trying, but I can’t fall asleep, I can’t, I can’t, I just can’t! ”

“OK, OK, stop crying, hush, you’ll get us both in trouble.”

“... I’m sorry.”

“Look, what if I told you a story?”

“Which story?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll make one up.”

“Oh, yes please! Can I be in it?”

“Alright. But so will I, then.”

“Yayyy.”

“Now, let me think for a minute… OK, yes, I think I’ve got it. It will be a story about writers.”

“What’s a writer..?”

“Hmm. A writer is… someone who likes to tell stories.”

“Oh. Like you?”

“Like me, yes… but in my story, I won’t be a writer. I’ll be a girl who wishes she was a writer. And who wishes she was married to a writer. But you’ll still be my sister.”

“Heheheheh. Yay.”

“I’m glad you approve. Now, listen carefully, because it might get complicated. Our tale begins in the pages of a bright but silly young man’s notebook…”

[Anonymous No.15095870]

>>15095823
shut up woman

[Anonymous No.15096814]

>>15086915
He told us to not use "Telling over showing," in doing so showing us that he is a faggot. That is why he told you this

[Anonymous No.15097317]

Just started writing poetry again


Seven rings; follow through.
Seven Lifetimes; go too soon.
Even when your life seems too good;
the shadows of your past follow you.

Let go, let go;
Don't let the past burden you too

[Anonymous No.15097395]

>>15097317
these are song lyrics though

[Anonymous No.15097426]

>>15097395
well then how do i stop writing song lyrics

[Anonymous No.15097446]

>>15097426
why? Just start singing, it's good

[Anonymous No.15097753]

how do you faggots feel about a discord
are you still scared or what

[Anonymous No.15097828]

>>15097753
there's hundreds of discord servers used for critique. people like these threads more because there's anonymity

[Anonymous No.15097937]

>>15097753
fuck off tranny

[Anonymous No.15098738]

I've wanted to write a train story that starts like this for a while. (1/2)

My name is William. I'm 20, and every day I take the train to the big state school at the center of the "metropolitan area", in which I and my family live. I just boarded the train with a couple other guys I know, also students in the city. Theres a hiss, then a jerk, and the train starts moving.

"Look at that guy lmao"

I turn and look at the speaker. I can't always tell these guys apart just by their voices. Its Penny, who's a boy despite the feminine name. He's Chinese or vietnamese or something, and his real name is like pin-pin or pei-pei, but he introduces himself to Americans as just Penny, for our sake.

And yes, he did pronounce "el em ay oh" out loud, one of his several ironic quirks.

Anyway. I look back out the window. There is, in fact, a guy out there. He must be 60, and looks like he's spent the majority of those years working with his hands. He's running (as best he can) with a limp towards the train, waving his arms like he wants it to stop for him.

"Fucking idiot. These trains aren't even staffed anymore. The computer isn't going to see him waving his arms like that"

That was Caesar, the other student that boards at my stop. We three usually sit together in the big booth with the table, objectively the best gig on the train if you can get it before the table's completely soiled and sticky, as it inevitably will be by the end of the day. People spill a lot of drinks on a moving train, or at least that's my theory. I can't otherwise explain the daily stickiness cycle.

"People like that should be put in camps. See how they like it. Racist nazi fucks."

That's Caesar again. I'm not even taken aback. These comments are standard fare, but I can't help but ask him to elaborate.

"What? Why?"

He doesn't answer. He's watching the guy on the platform. The train is speeding up and this old dude hasn't yet accepted his fate. He's running pathetically slow, there's no way he could get on this thing even if it weren't an unstaffed, computerized train. Then all of a sudden, he falls flat on his own face. I crane my neck to see if he's ok, since he's pretty far behind us now. Penny and Caesar both crack up. At this point the guy is tiny in the window but I don't see any sign of him getting up. Now, he's gone, outside the range of my window.

"I know EXACTLY who that guy is. He's a fisher, I've seen him around town. Those fish fuckers are all Portuguese, homophobic shits. They single-handedly voted down Question Three for four years in a row."

(Question 3 is a long running local political issue. I don't dare try to explain what it is, nevermind have an opinion on it)

I rake my hair. Its a stress response that makes me look like a mad scientist or a '60s greaser from the forehead-up, which I hate. I quickly mat it back down to suppress that impression. I can't believe I just watched that fisherman eat shit on the concrete. I can't believe these guys laughed.

[Anonymous No.15098758]

>>15098738

(2/2) this part is short

"What's wrong with Portuguese?" I dared, picking out the easiest target from his litany of accusations.

Are you kidding me? You know my people were slaves to the Portuguese for five hundred years, right?"

Oh, yeah. Ceasar is Brazilian, but you couldn't possibly know that if he didn't tell you. His skin is whiter than mine, and his dad's a dentist. I suspect he's earning his communications major tuition-free despite his family's comfortable financial situation, but it's probably rude to ask. God knows my Anglo Saxon, 2.6 gpa ass aint worth a 250k scholarship. Somehow, I doubt Caeser's ancestors were slaves.

[Anonymous No.15098768]

>friends made fun of me by asking if I'm published yet

[Anonymous No.15098846]

>>15098758
>Are you kidding me? You know my people were slaves to the Portuguese for five hundred years, right?
>Ceasar is Brazilian, but you couldn't possibly know that if he didn't tell you. His skin is whiter than mine, and his dad's a dentist.

Yeah... That's not very accurate.

[Anonymous No.15098879]

A death knell echoes throughout the streets of the busy city, permeating through the noise made by the constant battering of heavy rain on the wooden roofs of houses. Its harrowing sound compels the men and women whom it reaches to cease their toil and fall into a state of silence as they turn to gaze at the city’s cathedral, whence the knell came. Though their faces might’ve shown sadness, not many were surprised to hear that sound, as it was a toll only ever uttered in the wake of someone important’s passing — and they knew well for whom it tolled that day.