/lit/ - Literature

I'd like to see a character from the past greatly enjoying and getting lost in the vices of our days

>>15537916
I am not so much of a "reject modernity" sort of guy, I have issues with the fat men who claim Bushido (Japanese samurai code) when they embody no such virtues

>>15537901
Japan needs to stop jerking off Japan. Try a fictional country that parodies Japan. Make its name a pun too, like "Bedpan".

>>15537945
Neinpan

>>15537945
It is not meant to be a glorification
I want to take on the problem my country face today

>>15537901
Just as a premise for writing and cultural critique, that is pure retard. Both the idealization of the past samurai and how fucking retarded it will all sound.
>"I was raised to honor m'ladies in the Bushido manner. I, the brave, honorable samurai warrior, am dishonored by this 'used panty vending machine'. I vow to kill the feminists and westerners who caused this"-- Anon's brave and prosaic cultural critique, probably

>>15538077
actually no I do not plan to write an anti-western or anti-feminist piece. The cultural critique is aimed toward the right-wing nationalist who abuse in the name of culture and bushido- something that is far from historical truth.

perhaps this isn't the best idea but I just want to make clear that I'm not writing as a right-wing traditionalist

>>15538077
I wrote a few words as an intro to this idea.
would you like to see?

>>15537901
Sounds a little like "Look Who's Back", but I'm sure the intricacies are specific to Japan. I imagine the hardest part will be doing the leg-work to get into & portray the mindset of such a character to the extent the reader is not aware of the illusion. Unless you're going a more post-modern and self-aware route.

I have three primary ideas I hope to complete in my lifetime. I'm bisexual and from a poor area of the UK so that informs some of my experiences that I use in my writing.

>1. A screenplay (5 drafts in so far) illustrating the changing nature of beliefs in western society, and how nihilism has become consolidated as the predominant worldview by younger millennial and Gen Z (for want of better terms). The plot takes the form of a transgender person who is kidnapped by their father and taken back to an under-construction house in the countryside to undergo an amateur form of conversion therapy; while gradually being broken down by the father and two other men from the village who are involved, and alternately submitting to the procedure and resisting, the protagonist reflects on the decisions and experiences that have brought them to this moment. This leads to a final decision.
>2. A neo-noir novel (currently in planning stages, written about 3-5 chapters out of about 60-75 expected) about a homeless gay man in his early 20s and his friend, who go searching for a former high school friend when they realise nobody they know has heard from him in several months, and are suspicious of going to the police. Both the main characters are addicted to ketamine and this makes their journey more complicated. I wanted to write a modern detective story that doesn't rely on phones, internet etc. to pull the conclusion together five minutes from the end like most detective serials these days. The primary themes are the consequences of differing expressions of nihilism becoming popular among younger generations (I consider this a spiritual sequel of sorts to the idea above), man's search for truth and meaning in the current secular era, and how faith has always been a necessity for humanity's ongoing survival- 'necessity' in a deterministic sense, not a moral sense.
>3. A sci-fi-flavoured drama of ethics (unsure whether to write it as a screenplay or a novel yet, this is just a plan for the future) about six condemned prisoners who are sent back in time from a climate change-ravaged future to Cornwall in 1710 on the promise of a pardon when they return after completing their mission: To stop or delay the Industrial Revolution and buy humanity more time to develop intellectually/emotionally before they create the means to wipe themselves out. Plays with the tropes of time travel in fiction and the different rule-sets uses in past works as part of the narrative. As soon as the characters arrive in the past things start to go wrong. 12 Monkeys meets Reservoir Dogs meets The Seventh Seal.

>>15538507
>>2. A neo-noir novel (currently in planning stages, written about 3-5 chapters out of about 60-75 expected) about a homeless gay man in his early 20s and his friend, who go searching for a former high school friend when they realise nobody they know has heard from him in several months, and are suspicious of going to the police. Both the main characters are addicted to ketamine and this makes their journey more complicated. I wanted to write a modern detective story that doesn't rely on phones, internet etc. to pull the conclusion together five minutes from the end like most detective serials these days. The primary themes are the consequences of differing expressions of nihilism becoming popular among younger generations (I consider this a spiritual sequel of sorts to the idea above), man's search for truth and meaning in the current secular era, and how faith has always been a necessity for humanity's ongoing survival- 'necessity' in a deterministic sense, not a moral sense.
Well as I started writing I began to enjoy the story of the man before he time travels.

I think your ideas are very interesting
I am still a new writer what are some tips?

>>15538585
>>15538585
To be fair, I'm not very experienced either. I wrote a lot of guff in my mid-teens but then put my hobbies on hold to focus on my degree. I only started writing properly again in 2016 when I began that screenplay I wrote about first, then finished the 5th draft in autumn 2017 and began the planning and research for that novel I'm currently working on in early 2018, which I'm still working on now. Progress is very slow (although it does take place); I need to re-train my concentration. The hardest part will always be putting one word in front of another again and again and again.

When it comes to coming up with and planning a story, usually the conception starts with a particular image or mood that interests me, often from dreams, that I feel is worth pursuing. After that comes thematics. This is the "meaning" or message of the story. Sort of like an essay, it's an argument you want to present to your audience with clear steps that link from one to the next, just like how an essay is made up of paragraphs that each refer on to the next (and refer back to previous ones where necessary).

Hold on, 'cause I'm searching for an old thread I posted in some months ago where I provided a concise wording of something I'm about to say.

>>15538585
>>15538655
Continued- Here are some posts I made in a thread about my process for planning my writing-

I use Excel tables and notepad documents of transcriptions of dictaphone notes made on the fly; sorted into sub-folders sequentially numbered for the hierarchy of composition I find comes naturally:

(1) Thematics
(2) Characterisation & Setting
(3) Specifics of plot, pacing, and structure
(4) Miscellaneous drafted excerpts of dialogue and prose not yet sorted into applicable chapters
(5) First and past drafts of each chapter
(6) Current working drafts of each chapter

So I'd have a folder labelled with the name of the work, and then within that folder I'd have 6 folders named as above.

>>15537901
Japanese Quixote about a fat loser going around with a katana in Akibahara looking for a master when?

>>15538738
that's quite a funny idea.
I want to challenge the idea of the "righteous right".

but they are fat
lazy
hateful
no taste for the artfulness of samurai culture.

They talk of war and glory when they will never make such dedications.

>>15538732
cont.

To me the foundation layer of a story is thematics- what the story stands for. This can be something simple like pure entertainment, or it can be some fervently-held belief, moral, ideology, etc., or a particular mood you want to express.

"Thematics" is what influences the nature of the characters you create, and how they are influenced by (and influence back) the world around them. "Characterisation" becomes the second layer, above the foundation of "Thematics". The physical interactions between the characters and the world around them become the second-highest layer, "Plot", with the final, topmost layer being "Narration", the dialogue and prose that expresses the plot... that is the expression of characters... that are the expression of thematics. The reader only ever interacts directly with the topmost layer, "Narration", and all the other stuff underneath is the subterfuge towards that ends, to build a universe that doesn't fall apart again a couple of days later after the reader has thought about the book they've just read for a while.

Inevitably, some amount of contrivance occurs ("At least grant me my premise")- this is the wavy line in pic related, and occurs when plot is influenced directly by the author's wishes rather than through the interactions between the characters and the world around them. This can't be eliminated entirely unless you write pure non-fiction but you can and MUST reduce it by constructing believable lines of influence, such that the things that happen to a character, and that character's actions in response to those events, appear to make sense or are at least consistent. Otherwise the plot's event feel will like asspull to support the author's desired outcome i.e. a dues ex machina.

>>15538781
They say that I was born under auspicious stars, a symbol foretelling a great ambitious boy. 16 years later I am sorry to say that this prophecy may have not been true. My sword remains bloodless, a mere ornament compared to my brothers who have shed blood and made others shed their blood for the glory of my house. My brush remains one virgin to any great poems or songs, my writings so mediocre and unparallel to the great writers of the courts. Periods of meditation bring to me a sort of conscious understanding of what I must undertake, and these thoughts and ambitions that I find in myself during these meditations are often irrational. I sometimes question during these meditations the reasons for why my brothers must die and the reasons why I must devote myself to an object designed to take from this world the most beautiful of things- the beauty of life. I do not understand the thought of a gardener who chooses to cut the braids of the fujizoku. I remember the song,

When the fuji flowers blossom
In such a quantity
I can’t help but think of Nara
Ootomo Yotsuna in the Manyoshu

I always liked this song for the sort of nostalgia that it suggested, something I do not know. Well, I know of remembrance of sorts but what good is such feelings when it is tied to the smell of death and blood? From the years not shortly after my birth my clan was embroiled in a struggle that ravaged my home and took from me, my brothers and friends. Those around me call these deaths the greatest of honours, they talk and sing of the beauty that grows from the blood enriched soil of the battlefields. What glory does the dead man know? What beauty will the eyes of those in eternal slumber see? So when I think of my home I think of the men that died for some unbegotten casus belli. I see a bifurcated realm, bleeding and dying, looking for an answer.
Instead of this suffering and despair, I long for the sort of remembrance that Yotsuna had encountered, nostalgia from the beauty in life. When others went to reap the seeds of life that had been planted by the God above I sought to sow the seeds of beauty back into this desolate and barren wasteland and cultivate the orchard of the charm found in the banality of life. That’s why I stole a horse from the stable, grabbed with me my sword and my brush to embark on a journey to seek what I desire.


something I wrote up today
How do you think?

>>15538781
cont.

Equally important is the degrees in which influence occurs. Pic related is just a scribbled note and not as accurate or fleshed out as my more polished notes, but gives some idea of the routes that I think "Influence" should take and inform the intricacies of the layers making up a story. In my opinion, this is how you construct a story in such away that the events that occur feel like the consequences of earlier decisions and events, rather than just a bunch of stuff happening one after another and characters randomly doing things for no clear reason, or that they should know better not to do, like the recent Star Wars trilogy is harangued for for doing a lot.

The arrows on the left side of the 'layers' show where influence is acting *upon* something directly, in the moment. The dotted arrows on the right side show how the consequences of that influence feed back into the layers below, where those consequences influence change again at a later point. Not every layer feeds to every other layer and back, or it would become too contrived. Think about how events work in real life.

An example: A peasant character getting taxed heavily by an off-screen emperor in the background of the setting who is not part of the main plot, doesn't mean that peasant has to kill the emperor at the end- But it changes what choices he can afford to make and what chances he can afford to take. That may mean that later in the story, he has to choose between keeping his house, or paying for the protection of his troublesome nephew's life. What does his nephew's presence or absence later in the story mean- for example when the peasant has to take on two burly men by himself instead of having a helping hand? And repeat the process for each step until you've hammered out a believable path through each step or 'paragraph' of the 'essay argument' that forms your thematics, that link together step by step towards your conclusion.

Similarly, regarding a higher layer, if the protagonist is victorious at the end of a story, it's going to affect the tone of his first-person narration just as it will if he's defeated, but if he's defeated you don't want to reveal it too soon either, so how will you strike an ambiguous tone that will make sense in retrospect rather than have the reader thinking "Hang on, his defeat came out of nowhere, surely if he's relating the story to me, the reader, at a time after he's been defeated, he wouldn't have had that jovial tone earlier on when talking about the traitor who would later turn against him; he would have known what eventually happens". So you have to take it into account when writing the whole story. Et cetera. Each part informs the whole, and the whole informs each part.

>>15538906
Here is an example of the Excel table I've been filling out in line with the method I've just described, to plan my current novel. You don't necessarily need to start thinking like this right off the bat if you have the bare bones of a synopsis, you can use it to check what you have make sense and to develop the intricacies after that... I had a beginning scene and an end scene I really liked and a few bits in the middle- And then I fitted them into this table and method to figure out how to link them together in a way that fits.

My story is set in the real world, and because it takes place over a specific period of time, I thought it would make it more believable if I fitted it around real events and timescales. Not directly, but just in the background. Bus times in the city it takes place in, for example, might influence a character's movements- Is it Sunday? Can they get across town to interact with a particular character or would they have to wait til the next day, and what do they do in the meantime; what narrative or poetic opportunities does that 'free' evening create?

Set to black & white for file size limit; I have the cells colour-coded to refer to different aspects/sub-plots (and gradient-highlighted when more than one colour applies) e.g. "X character's personal arc", "events pertaining to X sub-plot, - a subplot that later feeds back into the events of the main plot at cell XX", etc.

>>15538802
Somebody in the thread I originally posted this table in asked me "What does Ed Sheeran have to do with the plot of your story?" in reference to the column to the left where I put stories from major newspapers from each day.

My response, copy-pasted:

He doesn't at all as far as I can tell so far. It's set in East Anglia in the Autumn of 2019, it was going to be Autumn 2018 when I first came up with the idea but later I realised I hadn't taken consistent enough day-by-day notes on the weather of the area, local news, and broader world events. If I end up choosing my characters go out somewhere during a particular period that ends up in real life being infamous for being full of terrible storms and floods and nobody going outside, it'd be harder for the reader to suspend disbelief if they have knowledge of that.

Now, that might sound silly, but if I have a character who has a younger sister for reasons necessary to the plot who is of the age to likely be the sort of person IRL to attend one of these Ed Sheeran homecoming concerts, and the story is set in the immediate area with a chapter taking place on the specific day in question, it might seem odd if it goes by without being brought up. Say there's a time-sensitive situation like a drug deal, and I need to invent a reason why the main characters don't make it and get stiffed, I can write it so that the kid sister brings up the Ed Sheeran concert a couple of chapters prior and then on the day they're made hours late by heavy traffic jams due to the concert, and the world of the story suddenly appears more real and full of life. Particularly if that concert ends up becoming a noted event over time- and as I can't possibly know which events will end up sticking in public consciousness and which won't, it's better for me to have too much information than too little, so that *where it's germane to the dialogue, plot, characters, or events in the setting* I can include it. I'm not sprinkling in pop culture references all over every page, they're just ancillary bits and pieces that are there if/when I need them. Halfway down there's a block of page-long cells on the machinations of the Brexit negotiations because if the story's going to be set in autumn 2019 in the UK, now, what's the chances of middle-aged characters the protagonists interact with not bringing it up and it perhaps influencing the relationship or the level of trust between those characters depending on the views they represent & their characterisation as relevant to the thematics?

Now, gonna read your post

>>15538956
meant to continue from >>15538944

>>15538802
>may have not been true
the more natural wording would be "may not have been true"

Have you read Nagai Kafu? I've not read a lot of his work but I feel like what little I have read would be relevant to the themes and the sort of character you're portraying. I definitely feel this short extract picks up in quality from "I sometimes question..." onwards. There's a couple of wordings that feel clunky, for example the use of the word "unparallel" when the common "unparalleled" means the inverse of what you're describing, especially since your character uses Latin shortly afterwards.

Some things that would be useful to evaluate the narrative voice of your character:

- I haven't seen the previous threads you've posted in, are you Japanese yourself or just a westerner living in Japan? Some of these "clunky wordings" could be ESL traits but I'm unsure. e.g. the omission of a hyphen in "blood-enriched" which muddies the syntax somewhat.
-How educated is your protagonist meant to be, and exactly what period is he from? Using the Latin "casus belli" makes me assume some European interaction in his life, like the Catholics in Kurosawa's "Kagemusha".
-I get the impression of a character who has class in their upbringing, but is also a bit of a country bumpkin, is that intended? Because I suppose even an intelligent person from that time would be limited in their experience of some things

There's a few phrases that feel a bit cliche to popular perception of Japan's outlook to life in their wording- "suffering and despair", "desolate and barren wasteland" ... the things you're trying to express here are legitimate, but there might be less common words you can use to describe them. What words those are may depend on your intention with the text more broadly around this short section, as you can perhaps use it to set up metaphors or comparisons with what the character find in modern-day Japan.

It's an interesting topic, especially as we begin to move into a new zeitgeist a step beyond the simple disillusionment of post-boom Japan and post-9/11 America that has defined the years 2002-2016... a zeitgeist a touch more medieval and intense. If you haven't already I'd recommend carefully plotting out the conclusions you're hoping to draw through the story you're writing and interrogating them, seeing if they hold up to scrutiny, pushing them to their limits, seeing what sprouts off of them, so you are certain of your intention and direction towards filling out the intricacies of this story. Then you can write with a greater confidence than that of sheer personal conviction of one's present views on the subject.

>>15539114
...What relevance do your conclusions have to an audience 10 years from now, for example? The trends that you're extrapolating in Japan's modern attitudes- If you draw the line on that graph out further along the same trajectory that you already observe, where does it lead? Not predicting precisely, of course, because you can't predict the future, but within a broad estimate of values. Think not only of what you're writing about, but what it is you're writing about the thing that you're writing about.

>>15539119
Btw that's not to say you should set your 'modern-day Japan' in the future, at all, but rather to say, see where your beliefs take you with regards to 'projecting the ongoing trajectory further into the future', and then, what you reveal to yourself from doing that, massage it back into the thematics underpinning your story. What is it that is coming?

bump

I posted this yesterday when there was no /crit/
I want the would-be readers to laugh and it's supposed to be absurd, but I want quality at being absurd and comically grotesque.

"A gram uranium is roughly 20 billion calories." Said the teacher on the cyber-classroom screen on the public prison's cafeteria. The enforced learning session was in order,but one man dared to reply"what would YOU know?"
The guards , gorillas with human microchip-brains and football-style armor,quickly formed a circle against the insolent inmate.
"I eat 5 pound of uranium. a DAY" continued to rant the inmate. The gorilla-guards used their shields to try to squish him to a pulp, but he flexed his muscles so quickly, it caused a shockwave that sent them all flying.
"Can't stay here, chaps. the contest is 'bout to begin". Saying this, he made a pose; a bodybuilding contest staple pose, with his arms raised upwards, his stomach in a vacuum. He flexed his muscles. He executed such isometric pressure and contraction of the muscular mass,that he slipt trough the atoms and ,due to the earth rotating at a different speed than his atotmic vibrations, appeard a long,long way away from the prison.
"Now. To the contest!" shouted the man with joy.

The underground anti-WWIV nucelar shelter complex's stadium(formerly a swimming pool to park nuclear submarines) was full, full of the world's richest and most influental men(thats right:no women). Dictators, mafia bosses ,pitbull trainers and vaccine human lab rats. Anyone who was paid a lot was there. Dressed in tracksuits and sweapants with shirts,they waived the flags of their provinces of the United Earth Federation, drank soft drinks and alcohol-free beer, and bet provincial-budget-tier sums.
The announcet, a dwarf with a pot belly, yelled:" Art thou ready for the contests of champions? the showdown of gods?"
YES! yelled the audience
"then, LO! let it begin"

At once, a parade of mankind's Finest entered the stage.

>>15541081
(the names of the provinces are the names of the areas that were formerly independent countries)
from Japan came a bad, dragging rolls of belly fat, a long-haired behemoth whose notorious belly was so big, he had enough space to get a tattoo of all 340 Poke-'em-on
He had a group of helpers carrying a small swimming pool, the ones kids use,full of chanko soup.

from Russia, came a long-bearded farmer, carrying one hand, a giant kettlebell with an Icon of the current Patriarch carved in it, and on the other hand, a myostatin- inhibited polar bear whose head he had smashed.

from India came a princely-clothed man with a moustache so thick it could have endured being cut by a diamond-bladed razor. He was wearing baggy clothes, royal garments of old, so his physique couldnt be seen in all its glory, but he had a commanding presence, a big frame, and mighty muscles.
From Mongolia came a man riding on horseback. He was a chubby man with red hair, dressed in traditional leather wrestling jacket, who upon dismounting instantly tried to push the Japanese contestant to the ground, unleashing a small quarrel to the general amusement.
Many others such men entered the arena, until one man, a lonely, bearded, bald man wearing military boots, sweatpants, and a Union Jack all around his upper body, entered the stadium. The audience unleashed deafening cheering. “the hammer of Ulster” “the boogey man of the Scottish highlands!” “The ban of rural England” his nicknames and legends were as many was the veins that popped out of his head. The man whose training had defied all science, the man whose muscles ,it was said, held the answer to Dark Energy.
The first round of the contest consisted of carrying a barrel of beer 500 meters, then drinking the beer, juggling with kettle bells ,and then reciting one’s name, place and manner of birth, and favorite brand of fried butter shakes. The one who did the quickest would win, but each man would participate one at a time, to avoid unhealthy bitterness.
“I’ll go first. Said the Russian farmer.-“for me beer is like water, for I drink vodka while sitting on icy Siberian water . Juggling kettle bells is like swatting flies, for my trusted gerya has smashed many a bear”

>>15541088
The man undressed, revealing a Stalin tattoo, an orthodox cross tattoo, and some bullet wounds, all in his bare chest. He lifted the barrel and sprinted while balancing it in his palms, then he, in quick succesion, took gulps until he finished it.
He performed a fine regimen of gerya acrobatics, after that, he shouted at the top of his lungs: "Vladimir Vivilosvksychy. Siberian farm,natural birth. Red Army Ration bear-blood flavour butter shakes"

>>15539114
thanks for the crit
I'm a Japanese person and yeah I'm ESL

country bumpkin is intended though
I will try and fix out the clunky parts
I've written longer in Japanese before but I want to write something in English so it'll be challenge

I have been trying to workshop an idea where a person, supposed to be msyelf(based off an actual experience i had) is being prepped for an interview for an ivy League school by his abusive, domineering mother, so he purposely throws the interview to try to thwart his mothers attempts to fix the admissions process with personal connections. In the end he leaves the interview happy to think he fucked it up for himself but he ends up being admitted anyway

>>15542596
I think you should stick to Japanese. Your writing is functional but there are many parts that are awkward or clunky. One example is "unleashing a small quarrel to the general amusement"- the expression 'unleashing a small quarrel' sounds weird, and I think the full expression is "general amusement of others". If I were to fix it it would be something like:

"...creating a commotion much to the amusement of onlookers"

There's also this part:

"Many others such men entered the arena, until one man, a lonely, bearded, bald man wearing military boots, sweatpants, and a Union Jack all around his upper body, entered the stadium."

In English prose there's a tendency to cut down repetition if it serves no rhythmic or phonetic purpose, so your usage of "men, man, man" feels clunky. And "a Union Jack all around his upper body" is ambiguous and needs more concretion (e.g. is the union jack draped over his torso?). There's also the small grammatical error of pluralizing 'others'. I know some Japanese, and with those books I've read I have a feeling that Japanese literature is more accepting of repetition, but less so with English writing. Your writing is full of all these little lexical and phrasal deviations that don't really help the flow of text, which might be due to you attempting to transfer Japanese phrases and expressions into English.

>>15543131
oh the union jack thing isn't my post I only wrote .

"They say that I was born under auspicious stars, a symbol foretelling a great ambitious boy. 16 years later I am sorry to say that this prophecy may have not been true. My sword remains bloodless, a mere ornament compared to my brothers who have shed blood and made others shed their blood for the glory of my house. My brush remains one virgin to any great poems or songs, my writings so mediocre and unparallel to the great writers of the courts. Periods of meditation bring to me a sort of conscious understanding of what I must undertake, and these thoughts and ambitions that I find in myself during these meditations are often irrational. I sometimes question during these meditations the reasons for why my brothers must die and the reasons why I must devote myself to an object designed to take from this world the most beautiful of things- the beauty of life. I do not understand the thought of a gardener who chooses to cut the braids of the fujizoku. I remember the song,

When the fuji flowers blossom
In such a quantity
I can’t help but think of Nara
Ootomo Yotsuna in the Manyoshu

I always liked this song for the sort of nostalgia that it suggested, something I do not know. Well, I know of remembrance of sorts but what good is such feelings when it is tied to the smell of death and blood? From the years not shortly after my birth my clan was embroiled in a struggle that ravaged my home and took from me, my brothers and friends. Those around me call these deaths the greatest of honours, they talk and sing of the beauty that grows from the blood enriched soil of the battlefields. What glory does the dead man know? What beauty will the eyes of those in eternal slumber see? So when I think of my home I think of the men that died for some unbegotten casus belli. I see a bifurcated realm, bleeding and dying, looking for an answer.
Instead of this suffering and despair, I long for the sort of remembrance that Yotsuna had encountered, nostalgia from the beauty in life. When others went to reap the seeds of life that had been planted by the God above I sought to sow the seeds of beauty back into this desolate and barren wasteland and cultivate the orchard of the charm found in the banality of life. That’s why I stole a horse from the stable, grabbed with me my sword and my brush to embark on a journey to seek what I desire. "

The other writing is a completely different guy

>>15537901
Better if it be that the samurai realizes people have not changed at all.

The modern culture IS samurai, and samurai culture is harsh and selfserving.

Samurai:
>Gets X koku of rice for wearing a sword
>Fealty to local lord
>Dislikes peasant merchants getting richer than them
>Dislikes firearms
>Likes extra rights, such as swordtesting at crossroads (killing randoms)
>Japanese erotic paintings and floating world

Moderns:
>Wants a salary for having a paper
>Employment contract
>Hates Jeff Bezos
>Hates outsiders\newtech taking their jobs
>Bureaucratic power abuse
>Hentai and JMMO

The key to this take is, Samurai like to think of themselves as honorable heroes; most of them are not. Moderns like to think of themselves as civilized, educated, culture; they are not.

The proclivities have not changed, only the manner in which people are able to indulge.

>>15537935
I read a story where a sword wearing samurai challenged a tea-ceremony master to a duel.

Tea-master is shit with the sword, asks for advice from a swordmaster.

Sword master tells him to do a tea ceremony before the duel with the other guy.

Tea master does it, the challenger is so impressed he backs off and admits defeat.

Moral: bushido is than martial conduct, not actual prowess.

Although, granted, fa/tg/uys should not be intimating that they follow bushido.

>>15543217
Ah okay. Sorry for the confusion. For this excerpt I can't say much other than it sounds samurai-ish, and whether it works or not depends on context. Some small bits I might edit is:

"...the reasons for why..." - remove 'for'
"...mediocre and unparallel"- usually 'unparalleled' refers to exceptional things rather than mediocre things.
"...took from me, my brothers and friends" - you can remove the comma.
"...grabbed with me my sword" - would either just say "grabbed my sword" or "took with me my sword"

>>15537901
Read Welcome To The NHK. From an outsiders perspective, Japan seems to not give a shit about anyone who does not possess any marketable skill, so try to focus on characters who have mundane quirks or talents I guess.

>>15537901
The idea for a little side project I'm working on is a story about a Barbarian, hired by The King, to slay a Dragon. Upon reaching the Dragon's lair our Barbarian is not greeted by gnashing teeth and roaring flames but philosophical questions. The Barbarian decides to stay with the Dragon and learn of the world before returning to The King to tell him about the Dragon. Furious, The King orders the Barbarian to be killed but our hero dispatches of the soldiers. Before The King meets his grisly fate upon the edge of the Barbarian's axe our protagonist realises three thing at the same time. Firstly, the people know nothing but The King's tyranny and are convinced he is a just and fair monarch. Secondly, most of the people would be safer under The King's tyrannical order than they would under anarchist liberty and lastly, The King is unarmed and poses no threat to the Barbarian anymore. The story concludes with the Barbarian riding off into the sunset to study and live in peace under the Dragon, never to return to the kingdom.

>>15543663
sucks

>Man who gets everything in life
>Physical specimen, ivy league, beautiful gf etc
>Life ruined due to becoming the subject of a meme
>Years into adulthood, life sucks despite wealth, unable to realize his silicon valley pipe dream
>Recruits borderline autist who lies as a coping mechanism
>Autist lies
>GF blackmails rapist
>Chad becomes wealthy, as does his gf and the autist
>Fraud exposed
>Crisis diverted due to competition saying something tone deaf, news cycles turns
>things calm down, life gets back to normal
>Chad leaves his razor in water overnight
>Despite wealth never buys health insurance
>Dies the next month from untreated tetanus

>>15543760
Things seem pretty comprehensible, until
>GF blackmails rapist
and then utter confusion with this
>Chad becomes wealthy, as does his gf and the autist

Kind of related but have you read the manga Zipang? It essentially explores the idea of a soldier from around the time of Pearl Harbor learning what was to happen in the next 60 years.

It's not great (partially due to being a manga) but the premise is neat

>>15544159
ah but the premise of that story is (from what I gathered on Wikipedia) part of the modern JSDF going BACK in time where I want to do the opposite

>>15544130
The autist lies and gf blackmails her former rapist in order to extort money from VCs. Convoluted synopsis but all the holes are filled in the novel.

>>15544283
But who the fuck is the "Chad" and why does he become wealthy in the middle of the post if: he's also the guy talked about in the first four lines of greentext?

>>15544283
>Convoluted synopsis
Nevermind.

A very elderly man prepares for an oncoming hurricane in his houseboat off the coast of Clearwater Florida. He prepares and prepares, fighting his family tooth and nail. But when the weather begins to turn sour, he heads to a hotel a few miles south of Orange County. His family assumes he died in the storm, instead he ends up moving back, fixing the boat, and sailing through the gulf along with a teenage boy who used the hurricane to run away from his abusive parents.

They make stops along the Gulf coast, stopping in the Florida panhandle and Louisiana to get some supplies.

The old man has only gotten as far as he by way of sheer luck, he won the houseboat in a bet with his very successful brother. Now that his brother is dead, he retells stories that legitimately happened to the brother as things he has done. He's an absolute fraud but keeps falling into good fortune.
He knows he is a fraud, his daughters know it too, and his sons-in-law know it, and they all dislike him because of it. The kid slowly figures it out or at least suspects it when he makes a fool out of himself wherever they dock the ship, but at that point he's too grateful to the old man to confront him about it.

In the end, they reach the Texas coast, but the old man suffers a heart attack during a small thunderstorm. The boy inherits the boat and starts working as a fisherman.

>>15544130
Same thoughts.
Chad gets rich... in contrast to his life of...riches?

>>15542596
No probs, glad I could help
I'm often in the crit threads

Prehistoric man and woman are abducted by aliens to become a part of something much greater.

>>15537901
A Russian Imperial army officers returns home in 1917. Hailed as a hero he see his life being torn apart by the revolution and enemies within is own people and friends
Ultimately he achieves revenge on those who wronged him but his unable to save his country and return to a normal life
Plays like a greek tragedy and It's about our inability to change the course of events bigger than us but how that's not an excuse to surrender as men

Can I write a book where nobody has a name and pull it off? I've seen it done more than once successfully (I felt) but I'm struggling with it. Giving an authentic window into a dissociative mindset is one of my goals in what I'm working on, and I want to depersonalize the characters other than the narrator and treat them as more a mass of objects than human beings. Do you think there might be an upper limit to how many characters I can reasonably expect a reader to follow if they don't have names?

>>15537901
It's like a children's book, but for adults, and it's a short story

>>15537901
im writing a family saga
i guess it could be interesting

>>15546240
sounds pretty cool, do you have any parts written?