/lit/ - Literature

>>7279738
As >>7283757 said, the word 'boop boop' is far too comedic and playful for this tone (which I'm liking btw). I think a 'pat pat' would be better perhaps. At least that's how i imagine it to work.

>>7281295
Is this meant to be autistic? I'm not trying to bait you or anything, I'm actually curious. If it is, then: objective achieved :^)
_________________________________
Here's mine:

He is indistinguishable and featureless, like every man in the country have come to blend into one average stranger without a name. He has an indistiguishable morning shadow that isn’t really there when you look for it and his hair is not much more. He has no imperfections. His strange lack is the imperfection itself, all uncanny and wrong, unsettling the stillness that might have been inside them before his grey eyes met theirs mid-exchange with his hand going from his wallet to the cashier’s and the crumpled dollar notes annihilating their notion as they slip out from his fingers and onto the counter. He squints sideways at them while the cashier holds out his change for him to take, so he takes it without looking, just watching them that way instead as if he’s feeling some sort of amusement impressed on his mind by the force of their dusty red unwashedness. He pockets the change and pockets the wallet and gives them a look before turning and leaving out the dingling flyscreen door. Kane and Attica realize they don’t remember what he looks like, and they look at each other.

After a pause Attica clears his throat and starts to go towards the door because he’s starting to feel it again. He’ll go sit down somewhere outside to rest and hope it doesn’t happen. Kane knows and nods, and so he stays to pay for the items while Attica leaves out the door.

The sun sears the sand to red with sad little islands of melancholy grey and green shrubs cracked and dying already. Arms of wood stick around in the ground all littered like twisted bones, rare and isolated from each other. A quick shadow goes past by his feet and he looks up to see maybe a wedge tailed eagle doing lazy patrols of the sky. He’d be lethargic up there in that heat, too.

>>7254317
Ah, but pls, nay! wait, please--var snäll och vänta--or so the Swedes say in their lingo rollin' from tongues like bubbling brooks mayhaps like th one ye sit @ right the moment these keys be pressed. And so, with me sittin here aping yr debatable style, when yr last words went rolling in through my light-receptors all fumbled and all a mess, speaking in some other logic, laddered up to one up, I couldn't see it, but feel it I did, ya!-- and damn oh damn, but why, if I is to cognize that ye words r comin' to their cut-ribbon end, it makes me own dim lights inside me skull clunk shut with a warehouse echo that, oh no, there'll be no more.

>mfw pls don't leave

>>7253821
Nah, but to be seriously honest, this could be some decent pasta.

>>7253821
Woa there, woa there, wat! ar ye kiddin', or just middlin'??? Mysterious anon's tongue of babes is the spice of life, the yowza-powazo of this thread and all threads like it... oh damn oh damn, wait. Godfuck, I know. I see now; ye only been all squirmin beneath the envy of distinction all this time, all blamed on how ye couldn't distiguish yr voided style from all the other clumps of words blockin' yr own words on th screen -- cos by th sight of it, ye mayn't even own one! yowza, ye can't just go running off spoutin an' spunkin' ye own value statements all over anon's cosmic works, yo. Mysterious anon's on another plane o' logic, ye fool, ye glutton, ye seemingly spiralled-in poopposter.

>>7252614
Kirsten C. Malary?
Kirsten C. Kiavijk?
Kirsten C. McCenna?

Idk, Kirsten C. Unsplit just sounds weird to me.

>>7249243
That doesn't necessarily make it bad, just incompatible with your values.

>>7245276
>>7245279
I chuckled at times. Really inventive dialogue, especially with how the alphabet letters are spelt phonetically. There was a sort of Pynchonesque leer of mystery in there which got me interested.

All I can really say is to watch your descriptions. Sometimes they're a little generic in their wording. Be inventive and don't be afraid! How else do you think Joyce, Pynchon, Shakefag, Fuckner and the like acquired the authorial flare that they have? Be inventive. Make your own style, but keep it beautiful and readable. <-- But that's just a value statement, I guess.

Otherwise, this has potential for both narrative and prose excellency. Keep going m88.

>>7248780
I like the concept. I'm in the character's head, and see his torment. See it, but don't FEEL it.

I have a feeling that's got to do with some of the minor cliche's you've got going on in there. I think that, if you put some more work on being original with your analogies/metaphors/etc, you could really glean something worthwhile from this.

Keep it up.

But so in his four fragile words and all her yesses like the yesses of Joyce, the love was made and given that night, and so late at night a week later he’d gone on his walk to grin to himself, lose himself in dreams boiled to hallucinations and the skippings of his pulsing heart spreading lovely fire ‘cross his veins. And the thought of her now, like the first one again, all over again. The thought of her. And he grinned so.
In the suburbs it was quiet and still and eventless. But at twelve o’clock at night he came across two people in a car on the side of the road. Then it was twelve o’ one, and it happened.
It was quiet and still. His footfalls like thudding clock-hands scaring crickets into silence in their sleeping silver gardens.
It was quiet. He was coming up to a small white car facing him and looking filthy even in the moon’s dim grey. The lights were on inside and the doors were open. The driver’s side was empty but on the passenger side a thin young man sat slouched with his legs swivelled out into the open, and in his hand was a bottle.
Attica looked at the ground and slid his hands into his pockets and crossed the street to pass them.
When he stepped onto the path and looked up he saw someone standing in front of a bush in a garden with his fly down pissing. Attica cleared his throat and walked with his head down. When they heard him they looked up, still pissing.
Attica gave a distance. “How ya goin?” he muttered.
The man was young and he was swaying a little. He did his fly up and turned to watch Attica pass with head pivoting and gaze clinging. He could feel it on his neck. No words were said.
Attica walked past and walked on and didn’t look back. Looking back is a paranoid thing. He heard footsteps. He didn’t look back, looking back is a paranoid thing. He could feel the muscles on his neck twitching to turn. It was quiet and there were footsteps, and he didn’t look back.
Three words sounded across the street and the footsteps got fast. He didn’t look back, looking back is
He turned—
A silver fist came out of the black and something metal hit his neck and there was so much pain there was pain inside the pain, and the edges of the world blurred into a sweeping speed gone mad with light and the thing was hitting his neck again and the black sky spun to the side and the ground hit the back of his head—the t the black sky twiiiirled for him and grew and stained all the whole world in black ink,

>>7245271
What, for real? I literally wrote that at work not even half an hour ago for something I'm working on. I thought it was punching above it's weight at best.

Thanks heaps anyway. That's real encouraging, friendo, matey.

Well ya should’ve seen the blood and pain all spraying and splatting out on the dirt all black, sort of tar, but damn if his giving a shit wasn’t all there, ‘cause now he was in it,he was in it, no getting out of it— neither was the chinky on the ground all curling up, now. All there was to kick was his back, and so damn if Kane didn’t pry him open all like one of them juicy yams so Attica could boot and tear that messy inside into a half wrecked chinky clutt. Night, good-night, freaky chinky, Kane was saying, all rolling his limp yellow head side to side like a medicine ball and slappin’ it, clapping it— and wow, but pow, right in the sleeping gob going swelled now— damn if we shouldn‘t curbstomp the cunt right here, he says. But yea, but there was nothing in it for him, nothing for it, nothing but now the two of them rolling freaky deeky good chinky down the bushes and vacating, slapping their gloves ‘gainst their wrists and slipping them off to drop them in the shovel from the dank boot and lighting them— ah but fuck why not? chuck the whole fucken lighter in! and damn if it weren’t a nice puff of flame that did catch in that shovel, all lighting up their eyes to shine pale neon like savage red dingos flashed by the camera.
They watched the gloves burn late into the night, burn down to grey ashes, grey fallen dead stars of the coming dead dawn.

>>7244836
I like the special way you're playing with words. was that intentional? If so, keep it mint, mate. If not, maybe I'm just reading too far into things. But that's what I got from it. You have a nice expository flow BUT... probs too much of it tbh. As entertaining as you exposition is, I did get bored of it. There was just too much... :^(
I'd say either cut some of the exposition down, or condense it further if you don't necessarily want to bin any of it.

>>7216115
Alain Badiou

>>7216008
Oh wow, O here are, we go, here wev've gone, there's no going back. The shit-post flings shit from the monkey's hand, splats forth the walls of my mental ears; "he's counterreolutionary" he says... a-hah, a-hah, a-holy fuck ay! great pozt!!!!!!!!, you swallort nigger, you swelled of jest, you joker you fool, I bet you thought that shit-flung post was the post to hark all more (A-YAH! AH-YAH!!!!!!!) Wow and ow, how might I ever recover, how?? Tell me how? you swallort nigger, you joker you fool.

>>7211871
>>7204470
Big damn, my apologies, I meant are you >>7199157
??????????????????
If so, refer to >>7211871

>>7204470
Are you >>7199457 ?????
If not, ignore this.
But if so, please no,
Damn, but that's a lackluster downgrade of something half-way decent inof style if I ever saw it--leave the style, I think. You can't paint a tiger to look like a gazelle, you know what I mean? Please don't try to paint your original prose as something else. You'll just misfit it into a cramped up squished memory-foam of its old self without space to breathe. You'll crush her lungs, else.

>>7210892
Are you Australian?
I get an Aussie-whining-at-the-bar breed of impression of feeling from this, like they're angry and getting only more frustrated just remembering the story they tell with red cutting words disconnecte and half, like... there... to those sitting there at that bar with beers in hand listening with their orange tradie-shirties ll dirty and their hands getting all wet holding the condescation. I don't like listening to those sorts of people, to be honest, all complaining. I wouldn't read anything with this tone, like this. But if gripey was what you gave this, then gg, I guess. I hope someone else says something better than I could.

>>7205660
Hey, I've seen you around in critique threads around the place... Your style comes out so bold and distinct even in 4chan posts, wtf? Please write something and publish it one day--I'll know it's you as soon as I read the first three or four words. it would make me really happy.

Anyway, I really very much appreciate this 'critique', if you could call it that. I got an impression of your impression of my work from your post, which is a nice thing to have.

Keep stringing those fancy words, anon.

>>7200093
All good anon. That is a dank peep.

Also, >using a program
Shit nigger, that's sort of cool.

>>7200074
4 of 4
Jakannes slowed himself, stopped. He looked at his hands, dying, how they gripped her. He let go and sat back on his haunches. He looked to the side and at the ground and tried to say it, but he couldn’t. He was dying. He got up instead and walked back around the fire like stunned as a child and laid down to rest his head on his bag and let his eyelids droop to watch the blaze again. It would die eventually just like him. He was quiet for a long time, slowly dying through it all. It was quiet. The crickets weren’t.
He talked to the fire finally. “Please tell me,” he said to it.
“Did you say something?”
Jakannes closed his eyes. He sighed. “Just tell me, I have to know, need to, just…”
There was a long pause. “Fine then.”
Jakannes opened his eyes and waited.
“It’s supposed to be my secret,” she said. “Why do I have to tell you? But alright. Okay. Ready? Go find the Monolithian mountains. There’s stuff called blue-life in the mountains. In, like inside. I mean proper inside them. In their undergrounds, their caves.” She stopped like that was enough to say.
“What else?” he asked.
“You eat it.”
“What. It’s food?”
“No, it’s rock. Ore, like minerals.”
“...You eat it?”
“Yeah. Or rub it into a wound. Or drink it, if you can make it watery.”
“You did this?”
“I guess.”
“I need to know.”
“Go to Eslasta and find Aese Asheel. He can tell you everything. More at least.”
“Who?”
“Aese Asheel. He knows me. Tell him about me and he’ll know.”
“Why can’t you tell me.”
Varllee made a loud sigh. “Painful memories. Don’t want to talk about it.”
“But you did all that?”
“How about you judge for yourself? And go talk to Asheel.”
“But I need to know.”
“Well now you do.”
Jakannes was about to tell her how she was a cryptic lying bitch and howshe should stop it, but he stopped instead with the words meeting in his mind only to miss each other and scatter and fire apart into a mess, and now they were lost. Lost and gone because now at the dusty window of his mind there walked past again his beloved—the image of his beloved, going past, his beloved image, and he sank and he shut his eyes and there came again that ghostly pendulum weight settling on his shoulders to go tap tap tap against his swollen sore heart. Jakannes did not speak again. For the rest of the night he was silent.

>>7200072
3 of 4
“I have been. Ever seen me breathing?”
“What? I dunno, how would I know, why would I look for it, I don’t watch people breathin’, what?”
“I don’t even have to eat, either.”
“Yes ye do, I seen ye, don’t be stupid. You think I’m stupid? I ain’t stupid. Course ye have to eat.”
“That’s for fun. For the taste.”
“Prove it.”
“Okay. You watch me. I won’t need to eat a thing again. See. Watch. I don’t need to.”
Jakannes found there was nothing else to say. They were a day from the border to Sidiel, and past it Varllee and he would go opposite directions with money gone from her pocket into his.
Suddenly he stood up. He brushed the dirt from his hands and back and rubbed his forehead, and he said, “Getting some wood.” He walked away from the fire and into the dark away from that woman. For a short time he pretended to gather firewood they didn’t need in case she was watching him. It was not until he was far away enough so that not the sound of the fire did crackle in his ears and only the cricketed silence of night did rule over his head that he sat down against a tree and let the whispering cold sway around him, and in and under his clothes and over his hairs, and as it came close to him he slouched with the weight of her, her, where, how, where has she gone? He hung his head. Held it in his hands. And then a terrible weight gave inside of him. Over his shoulders it dropped, settled there. Settled and hung round his neck like a pendulum to beat beat beat against his cold raw heart. And he moaned. Into his hands, he moaned. Dead death dying, all of them dead death died. Died to death, dead and dead as dead, they were no more and where were they now? All dead. Death dead died, and he was dying - he was dying. He looked up. He was dying. He stood up. Dying, yes! he was dying.
Dying, he turned and ran back to the fire over logs and bark and ditch and dirt. “How?” he yelled when he burst from the foliage, slowly dying. “How? How, tell me how!” He ran around the fire and lunged, slowly dying, to squat in front of her, and he gripped her arms which were undying. “How?” He shook her. “Tell me, how?”
Varllee recoiled and tried to push herself away. “What do you want?”
“How?”
Her eyes were wide and intense and serious and undying as he kept shouting at her, “How? How? how?”
Varllee looked into his dying eyes for a moment longer trying to understand what sort of sudden fury of heat and anger had fallen from the sky. After a moment she relaxed and sighed her undying sigh. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “How am I immortal, do you mean?”
“Yes!” Jakannes shook her by her undying arms.
“Alright, alright. Let me fucken’ go.”

>>7200071
2 of 4
Jakannes shut his eyes against the image of his beloved, his beloved image, and but the blackness behind the eyelids singled her out in screaming portrait like a figure in the spotlight, and the blackness behind his lids found her edges, those crippled dying edges in all their life, running out in hurting degrees, water from a sponge, running out, gone. And he opened his eyes again to stare hard as he could into the heart of the fire until his eyes became dry stones grinding with grit in their red raw sockets and he started to feel the sweat pooling at the corners of his pulsing temples, his beloved, and he dropped the pebbles on the ground where they thudded and he rubbed his forehead and breathed, oh her, and the world tipped sideways and the ground bucked and the ground swayed and he put a hand on it to steady himself as his stomach coiled around itself in a shrinking spiral of catatonic hate, please, and in his head a storm roared, swirled and curled and twirled and lashed and thrashed and from the fire came a scream, a screech, a deep black cry from inside itself bending in and bending out and twirling round itself and twisting up and out and over and into the sky in umbrellas of clawed dark eruption and its sound climbing far up and up and out and more out and down and around and inside his ears and snaking through his veins and going cold and hard and stopping his heart—
And Jakannes breathed.
Breathing, he breathed. He looked.
Around himself, he looked.
The woman sat on the other side of the fire. Still she sat, had not moved. Still she seemed to be watching. He gathered up all the spilled little pieces of his self, tried to put them back in. Tried.
“What,” he said, pushing himself up and sitting straighter. “What you lookin’ at?” His chest was small and hard and tight. He took in air and breathed.
“Nothing,” she said.
“You aren’t immortal,” he told her. “Don’t be stupid. It ain’t no way you can be.” He felt the ground for the pebbles he’d dropped and picked them back up and kept twirling them round each other.
“Oh, I am,” she said. “How can you know I’m not?”
He listened.
“Twenty three years ago or somewhere there, I fought a bear. I lived. It died. Ten years ago a tree fell on me, crushed me. I lived. Tree crumbled. It’s still there. Seven years ago I was swept downstream by some rapids. Got wrecked up. That’s why my arm’s crooked. Lungs filled up with water. Should have drowned but I didn’t. That’s when I realized I didn’t even need to breathe anymore. So I stopped breathing. Still alive. Last year a fox bit my face. That’s the scar on my cheek. Lost a lot of blood. Lived. Killed the fox. Just a few months ago someone shot me with an arrow. Kept running. Pulled it out. Lived.”
Jakannes frowned at her and tried to make words.
“I’m not joking on you,” she added. “It’s all real. I don’t even need to breathe anymore.”
“Prove it.”

I'll give this a shot. Never really posted in a critique thread before. This is from a novella I'm currently revising:

1 of 4
A strange woman called Varllee had paid him to escort her across the border to Sidiel, telling him something vague about how she wanted to start anew. Jakannes never asked questions though. He made sure his clients got wherever they were going without danger.
And it was on this light-forgotten night that Varllee had told him something from the darkness past the campfire where its light died off to the oppressive weight of night’s black. Her lips did shape those words under whose eyes he could not see, and when those words did weave forth like snakes from their nest, they coiled around him, bit him into a silence paralyzed. He lay with his back against his bag twirling the pebbles in his fingers, going round and round and gliding over each other in smooth soft hisses like sand. Rolling clacks and ticks, a nervous sound. He stared at her face across the fire which did riot orange against the forest canopy and did send its tiny orange stars into the air above.
Finally he used his voice. “What do you mean you will never die?” What did she mean? I will never die she’d said. I will never die. “Everyone dies,” he told her. “You can’t not die.” He rolled the pebbles in his hand. “Everyone has to die.”
His father had died.
“Not me,” Varllee said.
And his mother. The fire digested the white-hot logs and laughed at what it had done to her. Her, his mother, her.
“Not me,” Varlle said again.
“How?” He asked. Then his aunt had died, lungs all black and tight with pneumonia. “Why?” he asked. Then the dog had mauled his sister to death. He’d been there, he’d watched.
“I just don’t die. I’m immortal.”
His wife. His beloved. With child, his beloved. Was not stood against the blue sky. Gone, nowhere. “How?”
Varllee was silent for a long time and Jakannes thought he could feel her gaze through the fire making all the images of his dead go like ice around him.
“You really want to know?” he heard her say.
To know how she could not die, how his beloved might not have.

>>7199476
If for style, then good style and well done.
If you expect the reader to get what's happening, then good luck.

I get the feeling you're also >>7199157
If so, then that says something about the distinctness of your style.