/crit/

[Anonymous No.11380310]

General criticism thread. Post your own original content, prose or poetry, and critique other people's work.

[Anonymous No.11380369]

Honestly, your style is good and the way you developed the tension of the scene is great. It just seems like you have no experience or nothing new/interesting to write about. Every young person writes this type of thing. On the other hand, if you go blue with this, it could get you into the lucrative erotica market

[Anonymous No.11380422]

[Anonymous No.11380602]

1/2

The lights sang high electric at Arborvale community centre that day. I walked into the job fair with feigned self-assurance, head held high and back forced straight. The walls were the colour of aged bone, yellow-white and patched in various stages of decay, contrasting with the buffed and lacquered hardwood flooring (which had clearly been done mere hours before opening) to give the whole building an eerie sense of false sterility. The booths were arranged in two concentric rectangles to give the attendees an easy lane to walk through and browse the various companies on display. Those behind the booths were smartly dressed and prepped for business, all prim blazers and perfect hair. Those on the opposite end were like shabby replicas of these gatekeepers, wearing their Sunday best with the barest hint of desperation in their eyes. We that were seeking jobs on this uncharacteristically hot March afternoon were anything but the cream that rose to the top. There were high school kids and senior citizens, simulated businessmen and (hopefully) soon-to-be-working moms, retirees caving in to the pressures of boredom and welfare beneficiaries paying their dues to prove that they had, in fact, been looking for employment.
Through this motley crowd I walked, clad in my one good suit with hair that had been gelled for the first time in my life. I was a student at the local university, and my funds had begun to run dangerously low. Living off of rice and instant coffee can take you far, especially at twenty-two when you feel nearly immortal, but I had stretched myself to the point where my summer was looking hungry, decaffeinated, and dangerously lacking in rent. I walked past the first booths: hardware store, library, volunteer fire department, picking up a few brochures and feigning exaggerated interest. Slowly I made the full circuit, my firm stride masking an indolence that was creeping through more and more sharply with every step. Finally I'd come back to the door of my initial entrance, and was about to leave with the comforting thought that I'd made an appearance and couldn't be blamed for lack of trying, when I saw their booth. It was as innocuous as any of the others: a simple fold out table with brochures and info on display and the company logo (a national chain of coffee stores) prominently fixed behind them. Make no mistake, it was them that drew me in.

[Anonymous No.11380605]

>>11380602
2/2

The three of them sat at attention, passively catching the gaze of any who passed by and happily giving out applications to any who asked. At the centre was the woman. I guessed she was in her early forties, sandy brown hair, eyes that dazzled sapphire blue in the buzzard light of the fluorescents, with a Prussian blue blazer adorned with a silver and black floral brooch. Flanking on either side of her were twins, one girl and one boy, no older than myself, each golden blonde with eyes to match the woman's, wearing collared white shirts so spotless it seemed merely being near them was to dirty them. They were paragons of the beautiful, high cheekbones, teeth like pearls, an easy way of just being that made them seem at home in any environment. Then I made my first mistake. I approached the male twin, extended my hand, and introduced myself. “Nicholas, I would very much like to be a part of your business”. He shook my hand and gave me a look that conveyed embarrassment, not on his part but second-hand for myself, and turned to the woman in the centre. I realized that I had just made a show of assuming the man was in charge, and if I knew career driven women then my potential new boss wouldn't like that one bit. She looked at me, gave the boy a knowing little grin, and reached out to shake my hand, this had happened before and she couldn't care less. “I'm Dawn. If you would just fill out this application, availability sheet, and give me a copy of your resume...”
I hurried away to the nearby area that had been designated for filling out applications. Sitting myself beside a heavy set Native American, I quickly penned in all the necessary information and shift times that would work around my schedule. I'll work at 6am, I'll work on Saturdays and Sundays, I'll work the overnight shift, in my mind all I thought was that here was a chance to make enough money to pay for food, rent, and my next semester. I was making a pretense to myself in order to reap the bounty of the future without any thought for the labour that would lie in between now and then. This was my second mistake. I walked back to the booth, gave Dawn my paperwork, and firmly shook her hand. “I hope to hear from you soon”. I thought I saw the female twin snicker a little at that, but just as quickly as I caught that air it was gone, replaced by the same mask of affability that had drawn me to them in the first place. Dawn looked at me cheerfully, “We'll be in contact soon, have a nice day.”

[Anonymous No.11380610]

>>11380310
cringe
>>11380422
based
>>11380602
>>11380605
cringe but it has potential

[Anonymous No.11380623]

>>11380369
This is the first thing I've actually sat down and tried to write since I was in middle school that wasn't an assignment. The reason it seems like I have no experience is because I don't lol, I need to make my life more interesting somehow

[Anonymous No.11380625]

>>11380610
thanks for the thorough response lol

[Anonymous No.11380663]

Well, well, well would you look what we have here. Another worthless, gag-inducing, eye-gouging display of ineptitude. Another filthy act done only to bring you closer to your deep cement grave, drowning in the fountain of youth, ambrosia poisoning. You cunning abuser, huffing potent adhesive to seal those succulent velvety pink lungs. Seratonin seeker take your long spindly nails and eat them. Much like a snake eating tail like or an obese man eating anything at all. Her kinetic doll speaks only for one man who hides rainwater in his rose pockets yum yum. Calling all customers the sale ends at 5 while the store leaps into the ever encompassing nothingness of stark oblivion at 4 so hurry quick, sell your last kidney before it's too late.

[Anonymous No.11380674]

Wrote this a year ago when I was depressed.
I'm not a writer but w/e

Even for a half-second,
I hated how we always fought.
I hated having to tiptoe around with my words.
I hated that they couldn’t listen.
I hated that they wouldn’t listen.
I hated that I shouldn’t have said anything.
I really hated when I forgot to hate these things.

I hated when they said I wasn’t good enough.
I hated when they said my friends would abandon me.
…Scratch that, I hated when they said I didn’t have anyone who could abandon me.
I hated that they said the things I liked were the problems.
I hated that they said they spoke the truth.
I hated that even for a half-second, I believed them.

I hated that sometimes I would try to save myself.
I hated that sometimes I wanted things to be better.
I hated that I wanted to share my life with them.
I hated that I knew what it felt like to sleep under a bench.
I hated that I knew what it felt like to not sleep at all.
I hated that I learned how to block a punch.
I hated that it took too many tries.
I hated that I knew the patterns on the sharps of the knives in my house.

But do you know what I hated most of all?
I hated when they said they still loved me.

What a terrifying, meaningless sentence it was.
For a half-second, I pretended to know what it meant.

I made sure to never tell them.
I was glad when I finally moved elsewhere.
I was glad when the next day came.
And the next, and the next…
I was even glad being alone.

I was glad when I soared to new heights.
I was glad when their truth was lies.
I was glad to find a truth for myself.
I was glad to forget the things I’d learned, even for a half-second.

I was glad to share my new truth with my friends.
I was especially glad to share my new life with her.
I think she was glad to share her life with the new me.

I was glad to know what it felt like when we would, together, sleep under a warm blanket.
I was glad to know what it felt like when we would, together, not sleep at all.
I was glad to learn how to hold someone in my arms.
I was glad that I had plenty of tries.
I was glad I learned the patterns of the quilt and wallpapers in her house.

But do you know what I looked forward to most of all?
I wanted to tell her that I loved her.

What a terrifying, meaningless sentence it was.
For a half-second, I pretended to know what it meant.

I made sure to never tell her.
Eventually, she moved elsewhere.
The next day came.
And the next, and the next.
I was alone.

I don’t hate or like things anymore.
Most truths are lies.
There is usually an answer for the way things are.
I will never forget my path here. Not even for a half-second.

…

…

I don’t think this feels right, though.
I just try to steer people away from this path.
There is no truth here.
No hate.
No love.

I think about what might’ve been.
What a profound, meaningful statement it would’ve been.
For a half-second, I’ll pretend to know what it means.

[Anonymous No.11380937]

Der letzte Tag, ein Samstag, brach um sieben Uhr fünfunddreißig an, als N.M. klingelte. Die Augen unseres Helden, D.F., bewegten sich rapide hinter seinen zugezogenen Lidern, Wasser mag doch jeder, das Klingeln dingdongdingdong dingdongdingdong dingdongdingdong vermochte ihn erst beim dritten - aber nicht letzten - Läuten zu wecken, dummer Hurensohn, dummer Bastard, und er verließ das Bett (lechzte, lechzte, lechzte), noch im Gestern verfangen, das erst um vier Uhr vier erloschen war, mit einer Bewegung, einer Rührung, die die allerletzte dieser Art bleiben sollte. Ein Mann wächst nur bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt, das Namensschild an seiner Tür, der Türrahmen. Kleiner Hurensohn, nichtsnutzig, albern. Ein Blick aus dem Fenster, schlagartig wach, als hätte er noch nie geschlafen: Ein grauer VW Polo auf dem Parkplatz - ach was - der Zahnarztpraxis. Dort stand er zuerst im Sommer zweitausendsechzehn, zuletzt vor einem Jahr. Also, dingdongdingdongdingdongdingdong, kein Vogel war zu hören, öffnete D.F. seinen Schrank, eine Flasche fiel um, derweil N.M. nicht umfiel, sondern aufrecht vor der Tür stand, warum - er wollte ihn ermorden - wusste nur er, allein, einsam, keiner sonst, auch wenn D.F. es hätte wissen müssen; vor 15 Jahren schon, gottloses Stück Scheiße, hätte er es wissen müssen, kétségtelenül. Er trat auf eine Plastikflasche, er war schon angezogen. Gestern Nacht hat er wunderschön gekotzt, ist auf seinen Magen gefallen, mehrmals, immer wieder. Heute Morgen: Nicht einmal Vögel hört man, dingdong dingdong dingdong. Er ging die Treppe runter, wie jeden Tag. Die Tür ging auf. Er hat wunderschön gekotzt, gestern noch, ist auf seinen Magen gefallen, ja, jetzt ist alles dumm, jetzt ist alles blöd, kein Vogelgezwitscher vernahm er. N.M. stand vor ihm, wie ein Baum, hinter ihm war der Rest, die Sonne fiel gleichbleibend auf seinen Nacken. Der Rest: Sein Auto, die Straße, die Zahnarztpraxis, weiter rechts das Tanzstudio. Er, N.M., versuchte sein Grinsen - er grinste wie ein Schwertfisch -, wie immer zu unterdrücken, meistens gelang es nicht. --Sag auch, warum du lachst, D.F. fragend, selber lachend, er musste nach oben gucken, seinen Kopf heben, um in sein Gesicht zu gucken, sein Rücken tat weh, seit Jahren schon tat er weh, trotzdem hob er seinen Kopf, um in sein Gesicht zu gucken, entwürdigend war das, sieben Uhr siebenunddreißig war es. Das wusste er nicht, konnte es nicht wissen.
--Hat seine Gründe, immer noch wie ein Schwertfisch.

[Anonymous No.11380987]

I packed my traps and packed my spear
Out hunting for a golden deer

In the forest and the plains
For a year - and a day

Was an outlaw - and a poacher
When I saw her - by the river

A nymph I saw - sleeping there
Almost stabbed - with my spear

I sought her hand
To set me free

She promised me to find the deer
If I would - marry her

The deer would be her dowry's worth
To take her from her house's hearth

She made a cake of hul-led wheat
To bind the one - who would eat

And trapped her with - an iron ring
In the woods - of the king

That night we killed it in the glade
But of the lethal wound I made

It burned in water and in flame
And seeing light the guard had came

I gave him coin to cross the Styx
I hit him with a sock of bricks

We set about - fleeing there
But a Cypress branch - caught her hair

Shearing her golden locks free
I had wasted time to flee

The king arrived with hunting dogs
I was caught - bloody handed

But very kind and generously
The king left a house to her and me

Was a nice place under Rome
Where the king - built our tomb and home

[Anonymous No.11381012]

>>11380674
I really liked this anon. Good work.

[Anonymous No.11381108]

Seng Nu’s first memory was of how dark the forest was. Her next was the ogre. It had dim lit eyes like candles in fog and smiled as if smiling was something it had only heard about and never actually seen. It’s mouth did not have teeth in number or sharpness to eat her whole, but those yellow nubs could probably give her a good chew. Her third memory was not an image but the rushing sense of calm on realising that it wasn’t an ogre at all, but an old lady who walked with a hunch and whose shawl wrapped round her head drew long deceptive shadows across her face. “Eat” said the woman, placing a bowl of pumpkin leaf soup on the table in front of her. And Seng Nu ate, her legs swinging off the chair, high above the floor.

Her arrival at Naw’s house had been when she was around 7, maybe 8 years old, a late age for first memories. She couldn’t remember anything from before. Later she would reason that given she knew how to speak, use a spoon and what an ogre was, she probably wasn’t raised by wolves or tigers, but by other people, in a place where the trees didn’t grow so closely together to block out the sun. Eventually she gave up asking Naw where she came from. The old lady, that she would sometimes call grandmother, had a voice that was low and clear with only the tiniest hints of creaking, like honey on crusted bread. “I found you in a peapod, sitting on a vine” she would always say, in a singsong voice that rang like a bell, melodic and final.

The thought that Naw had stolen her away from her real family had never crossed Seng Nu’s mind. Firstly because Naw was an old woman when she first met her and even though her voice was still young, her body was not and she moved slowly with a limp and a hunch that angled her face towards the ground when she walked, which was not exactly the ideal body condition to be a kid robber. Secondly, Seng Nu instinctively knew that Naw wasn’t the type. It was true that she was slightly unusual, after all, she lived in the forest by herself, but there was nothing in her that was rotten. She did not hug or kiss Seng Nu, but her affection towards the young girl was expressed in the responsibility she had taken on, to feed and clothe her daily and to tend to her cuts and grazes when she fell down.

[Anonymous No.11381118]

>>11380310
>He was fully aware of her in his periphery.
Stopped reading there. Your first line did two things:
1. it revealed that you're writing about some guy's fucking angst about some dumb slag
2. did not convince me that you could pull off the above in a way that was interesting, no matter the quality of your prose

Why the fuck do I care about this random fucking guy's relationship drama?

My first piece of advice is don't write about mundane bullshit, but my second piece of advice is that if you MUST write about mundane bullshit then don't lead with the mundane bullshit. Lead with something interesting.

[Anonymous No.11381119]

One nine before nine, shooting kids when they woke,
95, on the line, say fuck it just smoke green on the back of the bus,
Park that ass on my junk, snort the coke off the titties, I’m done impeaching your cunt.
*rah*
All these living niggas repetitive,
Hatin’ on uncle Sam for a little clout,
Always catching niggas popping sedatives,
Or crying on the phone to their momma’s house
Hoes always asking for a photograph
Begging for some fame, thankful nothing else,
Tryin’a glo up on their Insta G,
Can’t even blame the bitch, she’s a fucking melt
*ew*
Still 5 drive by, I’ll trade tit for tat
In N Out, bill came, imma dip on that
Bitch posts the double dip on the gram,
Leaves a nigga high and dry without the pussy, man,
Rollin’ in her ends, I track her down
Gun to her skull, who’s the daddy now?
I hear a gun shot, but she doesn’t die
My head rolls back, not even momma cries.

[Anonymous No.11381124]

>>11380937
Alter. Schreib ma endlich weiter. Postest seit Monaten den selben Text

[Anonymous No.11381128]

>>11381119
best itt

[Anonymous No.11381168]

"p-"

"just say it, kid"

"p...po...."

"come on, spit it out"

"poop"

[Anonymous No.11381191]

>>11381124
hab schon, ist aber zu lang für einen post:

Ein viel späterer Zeitpunkt am selben Tag, Stunden sind vergangen, in denen D.F. erst weitergeschlafen und dann wild und willkürlich masturbiert und überdies andere Sachen, von geringerer Bedeutung, getan hatte. Der Himmel, vormals bläulichweiß oder weißlichblau, nun nächtlichschwarz. Der graue VW Polo abermals auf dem Zahnarztpraxisparkplatz, diesmal bemannt und zwar nämlich mit seinem Besitzer. Doch was ist ein Mann, dachte man. Sie hatten sich, so viel sei über die oben beschriebene Unterhaltung doch noch verraten, verabredet, zu D. Diner zu fahren - begleitet, natürlich, von I.V. und S, quasi als Komplettierung des Quartetts. N.M bildete sich, wie er nichtstuend mutterseelenallein im Polo saß, ein, die D. zu hören. Eine absurde Vorstellung, grotesk geradezu, von offensichtlicher Falschheit. Doch das ist es, was Nichtstun und Alleinsein mit einem anstellen, dachte er sich, wenn man nicht aufpasst. So stieg er aus. Ließ das Auto im Schein einer Straßenlaterne zurück, ohne es abzuschließen, was sich nicht rächen sollte. D.F. wartete bereits, angezogen nebst seiner alltäglichen Kleidung auch mit Schuhen, in denen er seine Schmutzfüße lagerte. Seine Gedanken kreisten - nicht schnell, sondern langsam und mühselig, als wären sie mit Blei beschwert - um nothing in particular but everything in general. Etwa um A.O, aber immer nur von kurzer Dauer. Nach all den Jahren, Jahrzehnten mittlerweile. N.M. überquerte die Straße, D.Fs Silhouette hinter der Fensterscheibe bereits fest im Blick.

[Anonymous No.11381240]

Sitting with his hands in his lap, he began to silently tense the muscles in his face.
This extends down to his neck, but no further.
His head slowly moves forward as far as possible, while keeping his torso upright.
Veins and tendons begin to stand out in his neck, like ropes wrapped around a tree trunk.
First his cheeks become flushed, then it radiates outwards.
His mouth opens in a wide, clenched grimace.
Still silent.
A vein on his forehead strains outward, as though it were a giant scar.
His eyebrows
His face is completely red by now.
The cracking of enamel can be heard as his teeth shift.
A distant sound like rusted metal being scraped and shifted can be heard.
The vein ruptures and blood runs down his face and into his eyes.
His vision doesn't change.
More small ruptures being to appear along his jaw.
More along his forehead.
Soon there are a dozen small tears along his face weeping blood.
An almost linen tearing sound builds up and his face juts forward.
There are deep horizontal tears all along his face, as though he were turning himself into a mummy.
The flow is unimaginably heavy, details of his face are now hidden by the dark waterfall.
His nose compresses as cartilage battles skin. It breaks interally, creating what looks like a small lumpy bag.
His scalp has torn all along, silently scalping himself.
All at once it happens, the peak of his bloodthirsty war upon his face.
Red makes way for white as his skull bursts forth, his nosebag ripping down and to the side like a shocked monocle.
His remaining skin sags at the back like a hood, while that at the front flops down as a tattered tucked-in napkin.
The eyes stare out, still completely lucid and in place. Bloodshot.
His hands remain in the stew now formed on his lap.
From the ruined gaping hole of bone and sodden gore, a gurgling roar emerges.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Anonymous No.11381246]

Short absurdist story. I posted this a while ago but have now added some more.
Do not spare my feelings. Please be honest and let me know my strengths and weaknesses.

(1/2)

He threw the papers. They cascaded in flight, landed on the table, and shuffled again upon sliding off. Both monkeys and the Zebra noticed, but he didn't. His mind was somewhere else. It was TOO somewhere else. Focused on the events of last night he shouted its name.

>"Margar!"

This startled the giraffe, but it calmed down before the second more defeated utterance by the man.

>"Margar..."

One monkey farts. The man cries. The other monkey picks up a banana and shoves half of it up a nose. The nose snorts it in and blows it out. Eating the other half, the famished ape starts scouring through the giraffes coat for food. With the free hand it pulls out a flea from the inside pocket and chucks it at the equidae.

>"Ohhh"

the man moans.

>"Why..."

The Zebra looks at the monkey and hee haws a whispered:

>"Why'd you throw that?"

The monkey looks the equidae in the eyes and hee haws a:

>"You're."

The room was silent in between each of 6 farts that have passed and both apes are now starving eating anything in sight!
The man has been devoured. His intestinal scraps lay behind the turgid Zebra carcass and it's non existent hind arms. The giraffe had eaten itself in fear of its own life!
Margar enters.
Margar leaves.
Margar disintegrates.
Margar is trapped within an existential cyclical void not knowing which way is forward.
Her gaze was a prisoner.

>"Well it's good to be back"
Margar said.

Her Hershey kisses are in the kitchen. Margar' s kisses are from her birthday wishes, from her bird, but Bird did not know and in turn was concerned that a friend would infer there're served her Hershey Kisses in the kitchen. Margar went to the kitchen and then threw the Hershey Kisses in trash and said in an obnoxious high pitched squeaky voice:

>"I love Bird!"...

Bird then plucked 5 feathers before letting them dance in flight and land on a pile of others.
Margar then grabbed her shotgun and let loose the amphetamines which involved the notorious Jack Beef Jones who cascaded in flight, danced in the air, and then placed a "sausage on the grill".
Margar was still quite impressed with Jack Beef Jones' performance from last rounds session of barbecued pheasant. She was having trouble deciding if she yearned an entree she was previously pleased with, or to take the risk and discover new pallets and flavors not available to the Northern and Southern regions of Misswannadopooskis. It was, in essence, a classic case of missing Tetumboe.
then....HONEY poured over like the viscous sweet beautiful molasses vomit it was, letting them understand how it was like to be married. They delighted in the range of flavors from sweet to sweet. It was just about then that they decided they would stay together for ever between both sides of Misswannadopooskis.

[Anonymous No.11381251]

>>11381246

(2/2)

Bird kept on ripping feathers out and laying them on top of each other before crying out in parroted words from Margar, as if he was remembering:

>"I love Bird. I love Bird. I love Bird."

She loved Bird alright, pheasant. She never got Bird's name right anyway, it was Tweet twoot twoot tweet. A common name on the other side of the firmament inwards-bound with pesky roosters, where Margar and Tweet twoot twoot tweet met. It's been a while since the Two-twoot-two-tweet twoot a friend, but that's just because he knew he had Margar from the start-mark. So Bird is now the two tweet-two-twoot-twootster who never sang a song and can never go back inwards-bound away from Misswannadopooskis. Bird needed a friend. Bad. He would travel inwards - bound, but his music sucked and he could never quite get the dash without the spaces.

This was now the worst case of missing Tetumboe we have ever seen! IT was even within the confines, then escaped with each passing day like a traveling bluesman whose body was a sound. To generate the capacity necessary we must examine what it is like to put the face before the bow, or as the roosters say, "Count your gullets." So let's go ahead and count: The Ginger with the salesman, the Alpha from the pond, and a specious argument over the whose-whose distribution of Rock-Chili. Of course, the whose-whose distribution involves a larger piece of spaghetti with no marinara exploding within a larger pixelosome of Margar and The Beef riding on a shoreboard. So the fact that it skips right over the second coming 9ft 3 inches above an escape, means that it's possible that Bird is in for a running. So he stopped plucking his feathers, started tweeting friends, and helped with the overall communication of good ideas. Suddenly he was able to go inwards-bound and could dash anywhere he liked, for he was no longer a Bird, but a Man. And he made friends with all of the animals that ever lived. Margar was no longer gazing from the inside of her cell. But entering and disappearing into the superfluid ether. It must be time again.

[Anonymous No.11381255]

>>11381251

lmao wanting feedback for all of that but not offering any for others lmao

[Anonymous No.11381531]

>>11381251
pretty good

[Anonymous No.11381537]

>>11381118
I was waiting for the spaghetti

[Anonymous No.11381741]

>>11380310
It's pretty good, and it might be because I've been writing some poetry on my own, but large parts of your text have a very nice flow to them, and I think if you develop that it could be a really nice read, from a pure aesthetic standpoint.

>>11380987
It definitely has potential, sort starts out like an older folktale, and then crosses into some Greek mythology. I think if you simply focused on the folktale like aspect it'll turn out better, with the essence of the story preserved.

I'd love some critique of pic related, I'm relatively new to poetry, so take all my critique with half a hand of salt.

[Anonymous No.11381780]

Bin Night
10:15pm. My Sister is crying and yelling on the phone. Calling her own WW2 Vet grandmother, a 'stupid cunt'. I try to imagine why the neighbours have not complained about her obnoxious ramblings but have complained about me playing music. Probably because they are scared of how she might tarnish their souls. Right they are to be scared of that. My sister hates criticism of any kind, criticise her and she will turn away from her nihilism and be given reason with life. That reason is to make you feel pain. "Wazeggi! go get the bins!'' I hear from my room. So i put my world aside for a moment and do the chores that she is too lazy to do. I do it not for her but for my mother. My sweet darling mother. My sometimes resentful hate filled mother. My deep down loving mother. She doesnt deserve any more suffering. So up i get and do the chore. Outside i look around, all the other houses and their bins out the front. Aware of how I might look to others watching me, i make sure to only do a single 120 degree panaromic sweep across the street, to avoid causing suspicious thoughts in others. Im seeing rows of red and yellow bin tops, learning which ones i myself need to put outside. We leave taking out the bins till late at night for the reason that everyone else has already done it, so i can copy and not have to bother with memorizing which specific bin per week myself. Also ofcourse the paranoia of seeing my neighbour who once told me to fucking turn the pathetic music down. Not that im scared of him - owh no. Im scared of what i might do to him out of revenge - owh yes. If i do see his face i hope that it will be on green bin night. Atleast then i will have somewhere to put his limp body, we barely ever use that green bin. If it were red or yellow bin night like tonight, I would have to come up with a complete different plan. But for tonight, i returned into my room after putting out the right bins. Safe for one more week.

[Anonymous No.11381788]

>>11380310
This is a bit meta, but I could use some help in giving criticism. I'm currently halfway through a coming of age story where the author has specified that he wants me to keep my complaints in the general sphere (e.g. "this character is inconsistent" is more helpful than "fix this typo") and while it certainly isn't bland, I'm finding the work to be entirely unremarkable. Like, I'm 300 pages in and I can only think of three scenes that have had any noteworthy emotional impact on me, and the rest has done little more than keep me reading.

So what can I say to him? His work just has no impact. There's frequent tension, but its magnitude leaves a lot to be desired.

[Anonymous No.11381836]

>>11381788
A book doesn't have to do anything more than make you want to read it

[Anonymous No.11381841]

Orphans of the nonplussed night,
Defy their godwilled urge;
The winter child of humantide,
Whence the wicked emerge;
Hark! The merry marionettes —
Take their fatal plunge.

[Anonymous No.11381847]

>>11381836
In which case it's failed. So far, I could've happily stopped reading this book and never started again.

[Anonymous No.11381967]

I was feeling faggy and wrote this gay ass shit. Fuck my shit up /lit/

-----
I have been loved plenty
But I have not loved truly
I want no love for me
I want to fall in love
Irrevocably
Unforgivably
Tenderly
I want to love more than I love myself
I want love pool in my organs
I want love to drown me
Cruelly
Mortally
I want to love in Godly ways
True enough, sublime enough
Pure enough to cripple and maim me
I want a love unbecoming my humanity
I want a love that I cannot comprehend
A love that twist my soul
A love Supreme beyond my heart
A love imploding me from the inside
A black hole of love
A black hole of devotion
Where no trace of evil
Or malice
Or doubt
Or fear
Or boredom
Or pain
Or guilt
Can survive the event horizon of tenderness

[Anonymous No.11382099]

>>11380310
first paragraph: too many pronouns, the physicality of the sentences takes effort to picture. Use Caroline's name, tag her relationship to Brian, let us know something about her other than she is a "girl across the cafe table".
-a cafe table is a specific style of table--is this what you meant?
----because these tables are typically found outside, on sidewalks in front of cafes---is this what you meant?
-"bent over behind her" . bad for a number of reasons.
ask yourself how many differently ways this can be interpreted--way too many. Be more clear. Also, consider that being "bent over" is different from "bending over"

-Why can't he look at this other person? Whats with the eye dancing thing--is caroline supposed to be a panopticon? Or just an annoying girlfriend? Is any of this interesting?

That's a lot of dialogue that takes place while one character is tying his shoe---why is he tying his shoe? We find out 8 lines later. Too long. Scene is skeletal, beyond empty. This is like how the plot turns in an animorphs book--by a character narrating his decisions to us as he his doing them
More interiority


I don't know anything about any of these characters. I couldn't give any description beyond male or female if they went missing.

[Anonymous No.11382125]

>>11381967
-None of these sentences seem to mean anything.
-Way too much anaphora
-line breaks are uninteresting and uneven

[Anonymous No.11382146]

Beneath sand and stone, beneath sun beaten feet
Locket lies, memory so sweet
Iota of gold, paper and ink
Chain as weak as its holder's grip
Time erodes his will to seek
Wear and age, he cannot think
Why his lover's gift should rip
Tides of time, the future is bleak
Happen upon, beep, beep, beep

[Anonymous No.11382197]

>>11380310

>He was fully aware of her in his periphery
She sat in his periphery.

>His eyes were focused...
He focused... / His gaze focused...

>His thoughts were entirely fixated...
His thoughts fixated entirely...

You need to focus on removing 'is/are/was/were/the/this/that' kind of words with words that actually describe.

>Then his eyes moved left
He looked left.

Don't say that 'eyes looked / hands touched / ears heard / tongue tasted / nose smelled'. He's not going to look with anything other than his eyes, same for other senses.

>He'd been following her with his ears
He followed the sound of her footsteps and the clink of bottles as she restocked...

There are other things, but that bad habit needs cleaning up before anything else. Even above 'He followed her footsteps. The bottles clinked as...' might suffice.

I'm assuming the girl he's trying to get the attention of is a waitress, but it'd be easier if you said waitress outright or slipped it in somewhere, 'girl' is extremely vague other than gender and age.

Your 'The reaction was immediate' paragraph took a few readings to grasp your meaning.

[Anonymous No.11382210]

>>11380422

>Through a God given maze of corn
This means a god was given a maze of corn.
>Through a God-given maze of corn
Means the maze of corn was given by God. Muh hyphens. It does look better without the hyphen though.

I love the flow of sound.

[Anonymous No.11382296]

>>11380663

I like it. The venom is delicious.

>deep cement grave, drowning in the fountain of youth, ambrosia poisoning.

This didn't make sense to me until I read the sentence after it.

'cement' feels out of place in the phrase 'deep cement grave' though I'm not sure why. 'deep grave of cement' feels like it would be better, though I'm still not sure why.

The hardness of the cement grave constrasts strongly with the 'death-by-good-feelings' metaphors, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. What bothers me is the comma use and the lack of connection between the phrases.
'to your deep grave of cement while drowning in the fountain of youth with ambrosia poisoning.'
feels better, though I'd change ambrosia poisoning to 'while poisoned by ambrosia' or similar. Changing 'adjective abstract-noun' to 'verb noun' just feels better to me.
'Another filthy act done only to bring you closer to your deep grave of cement as you drown in the fountain of youth while you poison yourself with ambrosia.' Or something similar seems to have more flow to me.

>like a snake eating tail like or
What? You're missing some words there.

>Her kinetic doll speaks only for one man who hides rainwater in his rose pockets yum yum.
I didn't understand this until the third reading. I like the meaning but it needs to be made more obvious to understand on initial reading.

> ends at 5 while
> oblivion at 4 so
Don't use math symbols in prose. When we see number symbols it turns our brains into math mode and breaks us out of reading mode. Write the numbers as words.
'ends at five while'
'oblivion at four so'
Exception is long numbers that take ages to read. 11-99 is circumstantial on which to use, leaning towards words. 100+ you should almost always use numbers instead of words. 1,000+ always use numbers.

[Anonymous No.11382380]

>>11380987

The solid rhyming of the first two lines made me expect the rest to rhyme as well, then I got confused when it didn't.

>She promised me to find the deer
>If I would - marry her

Felt jerky to me because the number of syllables in the lines changes too much. The sentences before and after have a kind of rhythm and these lines break it. It's also caused by the two four-syllable lines before them. 4-4-8-6

>I hit him with a sock of bricks
This jarred for me slightly because it gave me the immediately mental impression of a modern day street-thug street thug for some reason. I also feel that he'd hit him with a sock of bricks first and then giving him the coin after would be a more natural flow of events to imagine.

I like the story, but like the anon said it starts of like a tale and then goes to greek myth (heavily infered by the use of Styx), though I'd say put something in to infer the 'greek myth' feeling early on, drop a god name or something.

I particularly like the ending about the 'king's generosity'.

I'm not strong on poetry but that's my impression.

[Anonymous No.11382406]

>>11381741
pls respond

[Anonymous No.11382487]

Short story I posted just before the last one got deleted. Can't seem to make it work, but I'd be interested to hear ideas.

https://pastebin.com/kt8WgfXb

[Anonymous No.11382567]

>>11382487
Stop writing forever

[Anonymous No.11382726]

>>11381741
You're breaking the sentences at the wrong part.

>Of all the sins to strike mankind great pride
came first, immense in size.

Should be:
Of all the sins to strike mankind
great pride came first, immense in size

Then envy stalked so close behind
with black and prying anxious eyes

I know this is because you're phone posting it, but it made me read it wrong. The mankind / behind rhyme makes me expect it in the next lines, where isn't present.

You should scan the poem. Uses stresses to make or break up the rhythm. 'great pride came first' has too many stressed vowels too close together, followed by the lack of stresses in 'immense in size'.

I like the message of the poem, implying that sloth will be the death of mankind gives it a nice forboding message, but the last sentence feel very odd grammar wise. The lack of 'be' and the capital L on lethargic confuse the meaning.

[Anonymous No.11382814]

>>11382726
Yeah, now that you mention it, it's super obvious. I was reading the way you wrote in my head, without thinking about it. It's a relic from when it was pentameter, but just shifting it to four feet per line makes way more sense.

>You should scan the poem. Uses stresses to make or break up the rhythm. 'great pride came first' has too many stressed vowels too close together, followed by the lack of stresses in 'immense in size'.
Here I don't fully agree, try reading it with iambic emphasis, meaning you catch a little after the first syllable of "immense".

This poem was mostly an attempt by me to create longer words in iambic poetry, which I find difficult. It can be a bit hit and miss though, and I agree that the rhythm of that particular isn't the best, the same pattern is employed in:
>with black and prying anxious eyes
and I feel the rhythm is way better here, but I'm not sure why. It might be that the word "anxious" has a more natural break than "immense", which forces the reader to overemphasize the emphasis to keep to the rhythm. I'd love your input on this thought.

>the last sentence feel very odd grammar wise. The lack of 'be' and the capital L on lethargic confuse the meaning.
I completely agree.

[Anonymous No.11382940]

High School

I.
In a parked car
behind a convenience store
I pass the bong back to Nico
and attempt to explain how
the carseat angles on
my back like the inner
corner of a Pyramid

where I am pleasantly buried forever
eternally crammed
by everythought and object
and entity I hold inside my heart

and he tells me I am too stoned
to go back to class
after this lunch period is over


II.
On a school trip
to the book fair I produce
a fistful of amphetamines and
give them out to my friends
as well as to one girl
named Sol
who seems desperate to
not miss anything
that everyone else
is sinking into


III.
Batsheva stole her mother's
painkillers and fell asleep
during French period

When I did the same
at home, the world
was a fresh coat of Van Gogh
colors on a floating canvas
smeared to sludge with
my shaking palms
and instead of a teacher
I awoke to my mother's black anger
staring at me and
my vomit-stained T-shirt
curled up in her
brand new bedsheets

IV.
Laura's nose is bleeding
and my jaw clenches so much
it should hurt but

I can't feel
the dredged
loud grinding
of my pulsing yellow teeth

V.
Mario and I are laying by a tree
and looking at a cloud bank
slowly shifting like dividing cells
And we giggle in amazement
when they all assemble
into one great machine
letting us see the clockwork of
the Universe

VI.
After gym we circle Christian
like believers

and stretch our t-shirts for him
to douse in Gebauer's Ethyl

disembodied sweaty facemarks ghostly printed on the fabric

we stumble back to school
laughing, dripping
our faces numb
our tongues alive
the atmosphere closing in
to embrace us in the blissful
newborn light

VII.
The day after graduation
I am floating on Camila's pool
with Albert singing
and Andrea laughing
with the stars breathing
with the air blading
its soft warm fingers all across me

[Anonymous No.11382994]

>>11382567
Ooof

[Anonymous No.11383146]

Short story I submitted as my final this semester. It's long af, like 25 Word pages, so I don't expect y'all to read the whole thing. Let me know your thoughts.

https://pastebin.com/EpCtUDud

[Anonymous No.11383168]

>>11382487

This is really bad. I'm sorry to say that but it is, like, really really bad - perhaps one of the most unreadable things i've ever read and i am including YA fiction in that.

[Anonymous No.11383243]

How do I pin down what's good about a book? I'll sometimes read 300 pages, put a book down, and have no idea why I've been enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.11383247]

>>11382146
I generally like this poem, but I do feel the rhyme scheme is a little forced due to the reliance on "-eet/eek" phonemes. It trips up the reader, specially between lines 6 and 7, because thus far every line has been independent of the previous, but these two form a single statement. I don't have many issues with this, but I would recommend playing with the rhyming scheme and enjambment, as it feels a bit predictable and clunky right now.

[Anonymous No.11383256]

>>11383243
Do you like it? Is it exciting? Are the sentences beautiful to read or make you consider beautiful, engaging, thought provoking images? Are you bored? Are you entertained? Do you hate or love any characters, based on your capacity or inability to relate to them?

Basically, engage with the work. Think about what you're reading, let it speak to you.

[Anonymous No.11383276]

>>11382487
it's not that bad. You have some talent there I think. The first sentances are good and I thought the imagery of the keys worked well. Keep writing.

[Anonymous No.11383289]

>>11381255
You're probably right, but I've given non-recipricol feedback in the past, so I don't think what you're saying is entirely valid.

[Anonymous No.11383293]

>>11381246
Also, bump.

I'll do crit for crit.

[Anonymous No.11383318]

>>11383293
Sure, I'm down. Post yours and I'll critique it.
Mine is >>11383146 just in case you wanna get to it.

[Anonymous No.11383344]

any of these three pieces could do for a crit. will crit in return

>https://larthurhunt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/3-seated-around-the-edge.pdf

>https://larthurhunt.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/the-silents-final-feb-20.pdf

>https://larthurhunt.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/waiting-for-the-waves-at-bohai-2st-draft2.pdf

[Anonymous No.11383351]

>>11382940
if you're in high school, this is good. if you aren't in high school, this is bad.

[Anonymous No.11383560]

>>11382296
Thanks for the fantastic response. This is one of my first attempts at writing in a while so the feedback is super helpful.

[Anonymous No.11383612]

>>11382099
I'm confused how this is hard to picture. It's pretty cut and dry. Guy sitting at a table in front of his laptop/phone/whatever has a screen, girl sitting across from him, woman bent over behind her. I'll change "woman" to "waitress."
>let us know something about her other than she is a "girl across the cafe table
She isn't anything more than that to Brian. The point is that he doesn't care about her, so I'm not going to introduce her as "his girlfriend."
The type of table should be specified, yeah.
Being bent over is the end result of bending over.
>why can't he look at the other person
I don't think you read the part where Caroline's jealousy gets communicated.
>narrating his decisions to us as he is doing them
the fuck do you mean lol, he's not narrating his actions

>>11382197
>you need to focus on removing 'is/are/was/were/the/this/that' kind of words with words that actually describe
this is good advice, thank you
>he looked left
he's misdirecting her by moving his eyes. I didn't say "his eyes looked left," I said they moved.
>followed the sound of her footsteps the clink of bottles
nah

[Anonymous No.11383779]

>>11383318

I read down to 54

First thing's first: Natural flow is there. The story builds on itself in the first paragraphs setting up a scene which is really good. I could imagine the room/setting fairly well. I find that the way it is written may lend itself to skimming, but that by no means makes it bad, I think it means there is opportunity to challenge the reader.

I don't really have much to critique as I didn't get to a portion where it resolves the mystery or grants a major clue, but so far it seems that there's not anything "bad".

I do wonder how the emphasis on the sun plays in to the story though.

Is there anything in the story you weren't sure about that I didn't address (that you would like me to address)?

Here's mine, it is in two posts:

>>11381246
>>11381251

[Anonymous No.11383793]

With bloody hands, I say goodbye.

[Anonymous No.11383822]

It came to me in ghoulish reverie
When I stuck stonelike in my cracking chair
Spirits clawed me down with hollow emnity,
Hallucinations erupted in the air.
These are the days of endless rot,
I cannot feel my feet up to my fingers.
Juice of the earth to coagulate, clot,
Pressure in my body no longer lingers.
Please, please come back my earth
Your skin is searing in crackling embers,
I have loved you long before my birth,
Before the demons needed members.
These people I see, through only a glass
Cannot hear the rapping of faded arms.
Air is not free, but for sound I must gasp
As I beckon the band for alarm.
Dead conductor, cant you give me an ear?
To the bellowing whispers of my soul;
Seaping with a musky and oily fear,
Leaving nothing in that awful hole.
Stab out my eyes and spit in my face, just to know they belong,
I will haunt you until the day it comes, when you too fear the song.

[Anonymous No.11383864]

>>11381741
>>11382380
Thanks for the crit. I'll polish it up. Also it's mostly Roman symbolism not Greek by the way.

>>11381741
>Firstborn of greed was gluttony
>But sloth shall our final
These are awkward.

Its mostly with metre (if you rearrange the lines) and rhyme but I don't really care for the basic concept.

As an aside, I don't really like most common interpretations of Cain and Abel. The story more echoes ancient manslaughter, exile and sanctuary codes than is about the first murder. Thinking of Cain as some kind of ultimate evil is silly. Understood as an exile or someone who leaves for a sanctuary city it makes sense why killing Cain is forbidden. Cain is more the first exile than the first murderer.

>>11382380
I would give criticism in reciprocity but I don't know if you've posted anything in this thread.

[Anonymous No.11383961]

>>11383822
I like it, it has good rhytm.

[Anonymous No.11384306]

You look at me,
like I'm a spectacle,
With your monocle,
Underneath your glasses,
Under a magnifying glass.

Now the fun will end.

[Anonymous No.11384362]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/191UTjCGhylkOqZu7RDVjkcRRSAOOdlIlz9smXK0ScX8/edit?usp=drivesdk

[Anonymous No.11384442]

>>11381788

Maybe it has too much needless information that is damaging the pacing. That some scenes give you any emotional impact at all is a good thing. Identify which parts provide no value or information to you as the reader and suggest he remove them or cut some general dross to speed them up.

[Anonymous No.11384610]

>>11381246
>>11381251

Bump. Plox crit.

[Anonymous No.11384822]

>>11383612
the pronouns lack antecedents, and the pronoun you use twice-- "her" -- can be read like 6 different ways. this is why it is unclear.

>She isn't anything more than that to Brian. The point is that he doesn't care about her, so I'm not going to introduce her as "his girlfriend."

>>why can't he look at the other person
>I don't think you read the part where Caroline's jealousy gets communicated.
If this character isn't important, then why are you including her? No one wants to read filler characters; thats lazy writing


No, I did. My question is why is she so jealous? What is causing it? She is behaving strangely, the reader is going to react to it and wonder why Brian isnt' reacting to it

[Anonymous No.11384824]

>>11383779
Thanks for reading as far as you did! I've worked on this draft for a couple months now and I think I got to a point where I'm satisfied with it. The mystery is never solved, but a clue does get granted as to how it starts. The sun and light in general play on the theme of blindness, or blurriness, not being able to see clearly, thus not being able to know with certainty. And also, given that light is everywhere, it mirrors how the narrator sees Sydney everywhere. My gripe with the story is that I was unsure of how readers would react because its not about the mystery so much as the narrator's feelings about the mystery. There is no resolution and I know that for some people that's kind of offputting.

As for your piece, I will admit that I am not the reader for it. I cannot dissect meaning (and since its absurdist I'm assuming you aren't trying to be meaningful at all), so instead I think I'll try and focus on technical aspects that may help the piece.

My main issues is that, although I understand it is absurdist, and though there is a loose connective thread, it all feels very loose and inconsequential. Nonsequitorial storytelling is a thing, and I think it's very difficult to get right. The intended effect of what you're writing seems comedic to me, but I may be wrong. I have trouble appreciating some of the more impactful sentences and extracts because what surrounds them is simply too distracting. I feel like I need to know more about the piece in order to judge it fairly. All I can really say constructively, truly constructively, is that there are some grammar mistakes that seem a product of rushing, and those should be fixed, lest they are intentional. otherwise, I dunno man. Its weird, and definitely absurd, has some funny images, but it lacks an engaging idea or theme or hook. I don't think absurdism means lack of structure, or lack of consistency. That's the thing, its inconsistent in its current form.

[Anonymous No.11384952]

>>11384824

I like your use of the sun as a theme and as symbolism. I think it goes well. My opinion (which resides in my asshole) might be that if you decide to give it closure, embrace the sun not so strictly as an object of blindess, but for what the sun is, something whose illumination is filtered through clouds or overcast. I believe that if you attribute the sun with degrees of illumination, then it would provide a balance and rid any chance of feeling monotonous. Of course monotony is a theme as well which can be useful. I would say that variety in some fashion is necessary when you limit a large symbol like the sun into a single yet pervasive theme. I might be wrong though because it's been a little bit since I read your work, this is purely just from my asshole.

Thanks a lot for your critique. I appreciate when I can get feedback, let alone one that is thorough. Ya, I understand what you mean. I've written it at two different times so it is definitely disjointed. It is about being in a relationship with someone, losing them, and then they fall in love with someone else.

I also toyed with the idea of recurrence, so the last paragraph is hinting at start of the first. I also tried to allude to how people can fall into patterns with dating, unintentionally send out a signal of a real emotion and even obsess about the past.

The first part is the Bird as a man, the man has friends who are not great and eventually fall apart. This is a cycle for the bird. He becomes new and improved, then falls back into beinh a bird. He plucks his feathers because he wishes he was a man. Then the story goes to the relationship before and plays out till the end. If I had to describe the format, it'd be that 25% into the story from the first word is the beginning of the story which starts again.

It's stupid I know, but hopefully that clears some of it up.

[Anonymous No.11384973]

>>11383822
Edgy/10

[Anonymous No.11384994]

Glenda and I, after some increasing escalation in the carnal games we would play, inevitably came together in ways that The Lord forbade for purposes other than procreation. It was human desire running its natural course, the liberated, free expression of two unbound spirits coming to life in their own magnificent way, removed from their corporeal shackles and taking that great vertical leap upward, far above the limits of their bodies, into some outer threshold of the earth’s atmosphere in which gravity held very little sway, where bodies were relieved of their terrestrial burden, where their physical forms were no longer tethered to the asphalt and soil beneath their feet and thus not promised that inevitable falling downward that completes the arc of every rising action. Glenda and I had each ventured out from the familiar gardens in which we had wandered for much of our lives, exiting our familiar trappings together; Glenda taking her leave from a garden in which the once vibrant and sprawling fields of flowers had long since wilted, where every petal had fallen at the feet of the stem of every blossom that hung depressingly downward as if it too were wondering where it had all gone wrong; and myself finally surrendering my lot of barren and naked soil from which I could not coax a single flower to bloom. Together, we journeyed through our endless garden of desire--the garden we had discovered far away from our dreary lots--our garden of infinity where roses and hydrangeas, dahlias and daffodils sprouted seemingly without end, their interweaving petals of light and quiet white, yellow, and lilac forming a vast silken river whose subtle waves and delicate incense carried us to further telluric shores, to further vibrant gardens looming on the infinite horizon, gardens multiplying before our very eyes and exceeding far beyond the limits of our vision despite the unfathomable ascent of our moon-bound spirits.
Other bodies were far from our concern, as were many of the other granular trifles and incidentals of human life. [Greg]; as far as I could be bothered about the matter, [Greg] existed only at the outermost peripheral of my consciousness, like a planetary body or some negligible rock at the edge of the lonely galaxy that I only knew was out there somewhere among the impossibly deep and boundless space in the unknowable beyond. Like a comet might be visible to human sight every now and again, flashing in the ether for a paltry moment or so and leaving but a negligible momentary streak painted across the sky as the only record of its existence, [Greg] entered the atmosphere of relevance on occasion. Either he pardoned himself to the bedroom shortly after arriving home, or I was sequestered away in my private quarters already, having already enjoyed the myriad of delights that his treacherous wife reserved exclusively for me.

[Anonymous No.11385407]

>>11384442
Good idea, thanks.

[Anonymous No.11385413]

Bamp.

[Anonymous No.11385664]

when i was a child
i had so many crushes
but i was child
so very ugly
and that i had crushes
mattered not

when i was teenaged
i thought maybe i was gay
if i was gay i thought
all those years as a child
being unloved
would be washed away
but it didn't matter
because when i was teenaged
i was still ugly
and if i was gay
it mattered not

now that i'm older
i forgot who i was
as a teenager
and in the meanwhile
i had figured out
that i wasn't gay
but i'm still ugly
and that i'm not gay
mattered not

[Anonymous No.11385673]

>>11380674
studded with rare moments of self-reflection

>>11380987
i won't pretend you're all the way there yet, but you have the makings of a poet. keep working on tons of different types of poetry. work very hard, and good luck.

>>11381967
Consider lexapro

[an early morning blank verse j(...) No.11385939]

Dawn, broken and risen, pierces through the pane,
Unlike the ancients' light sent from their lids.
Stirring up and sideways, I amble down,
And settle in the nook, to fill my mug,

Shot now, the engine sits empty and dry,
A daily driver worn down and rusting
Out on the shoulder as others rush past.
The jam in my toes is heavy and rank,

With a long, cracked nail I scrape in the gap,
Hold out my finger and stare for a while
At the tangible humor in my grasp.
The countertop toaster springs with a shock,

And grabbing a butter knife from the drawer
I lift up the paste of skin, sweat, and sock
Off the tip of my index and outward
Floating out to the brittle, flat bread slice.

Smearing myself, I watch my hand turning
The rank spread down, with this harmless, strange blade,
Forged in a far off place, by unknown smiths,
So foreign it may as well be Vulcan.

I've drawn out this dirge and outstayed my time,
And so I give thanks for our daily bread,
Here is my work, the fruit of my labor,
Garnished and offered to you, lit-tle board.

[Anonymous No.11385973]

>>11385664
Sorry to be that guy, but this is really unpoetic and dull to me. I think that's deliberate to an extent, but that doesn't mean I find it interesting. You seem to be going for some kind of meter averaging five syllables a line, but it's very loose and the stresses seem entirely unconsidered.

Content-wise, I think it's too distant and vague to be meaningful. The motifs are flimsy and predictable. Maybe draw from specific memories or details. A few here and there go a long way to reinforce the overall piece and give it life and weight.

I hope this isn't discouraging, I'm just trying to offer something constructive for you moving forward.

[Anonymous No.11386164]

CROOKSHANK'S SENSATIONAL DELINQUINCY CREAM

Hi! That’s right, I’m that black guy off that show with the one black guy. Who the hell is that, it almost won a Turtle Friends & Saniflo Cool TV Awards sitcom of the year runner-up commendation . It was a fool split-vote man, My Two Dads my ass, Charles in Charge, more like Charles in Charge of sucking mah diyuck. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that today. It’s water under the bridge. The idiot bridge, for shitheads, on their way to shithead town to visit some fuckin assholes. No, I’m here to tell you about how I turned my life around with the help of Crookshank’s Sensational Delinquency cream. Truth be told, I used to be a real butthead. I’d cuss and drink strong liquor. I’d wink at ladies in the street. I’d make up a poem on the spot and recite it to them. With my dick out.

You know, haters talk a lot of BS about Who the hell is that, but I say the positive way to look at it is 5 rich white guys accepting a homeless black dude into their book club because his street-wisdom, hidden sensitive side & hilarious hanky-panky shenanigans makes them rub their bellies not, I may add, with Crookshank’s Sensational Delinquency Cream, but with Dave Bassett’s Largely Pointless Busted Slug Substitute. They accept him, that’s cool, right? Anyway, that’s why I’m still a big deal getting TV commercials & whatnot. Yeah, they got paid five times as much as me, but let’s be fair, there was five of them. Calculate that shit. Anyway, I’m not here today to talk about that. I’m here to talk about how I turned my life around. With the help of my best friend for life, my one faithful bitch, my baby & my boy, Crookshank’s Sensational Delinquency Cream.

more:

https://pastebin.com/jEfsUjca

[Anonymous No.11386196]

>>11386164

Now you may be wondering, why is that black guy from that shitty sitcom on my TV talking about how his life got turned around by some over-priced butt cream? And that’s a great question, if you’re a dick. I used to shit on my hands and then hide in the closet and try not to laugh too loud. Then, one night I said “You freaking dingus, there ain’t no-one else here. You live on your own and you’re hiding in your own closet. From yourself.” And that’s when I reached out for help. I was naked, on the street, I can’t exactly recall why because I was in a shamanic trance at that moment and it is too damn complicated & traumatic to explain what I was enduring precisely then. Anyway, this handsome fat dude with the tiniest sneakers I ever saw outside of like, ant shoes, he reached out to me, took my fingers out of my mouth, and licked my face until i was awake, although I’m pretty sure I was sort of awake anyway at the time and he just said that was the reason afterwards.

Anyway, I say what the fuck, and this fat handsome dude in the tiny shoes says he was just trying to wake me up, and I say what the fuck, man, and he steps back and pulls this tube out of his pocket, and says ‘here, man’. I take it and I say what the fuck, man, why were you licking my face?

He walks away, real quick, because he can sense that I’m gonna kick his ass to the goddamned moon just once I remember how to stand up and run and shit. He turns around and shouts ‘for your onward journey into your something or something’, I didn’t really catch the last bit. And it might have been honourable, not onward. It’s all a bit hazy, if I’m honest. Anyway, I went indoors and went straight into the john because my ass really hurt. I was looking for the baby lotion and then I realised it was under my pillow and I said shit, man, and then I realised I had this tube of stuff for my onward journey or whatever, so I squeezed that bitch all over my left hand, then my right hand, andI rubbed that shit til the cows came home, all over my sweet black ass. That was the moment I was finally born, as a 47 year old man. I called my momma and told her the amazing news. She did not give one single shit. That was back then, but just look at her now! Come on out, momma!

[Anonymous No.11386256]

>>11386196

Hi there, I’m his momma, just like he said, ain’t no reason to doubt it. Before that day when my real son, guaranteed here, introduced me to Crookshank’s Sensational Delinquency Cream, well I don’t mind telling you, I was a mother-fucking cunt. I would have shit in your shoe & rubbed it in your baby’s face if I thought you recognise me from them R Kelly videos. Since that heaven-be praised day, almost two days ago, what have I not done, my real son?

You’ve not kicked a single kid in the balls, Momma. Not one.

Yeah, that’s true actually, but that’s not what I meant.

Is it the the pissing thing?

It is, my true boy. I have not taken a single goddamned piss for two days. Two, count ‘em. And that’s all thanks to Crookshank’s Sensational Delinquency Cream. Why, this morning I did an actual crossword.

And I watched. With my dick out.

Mmm-hmm.

But I voted Bernie. So y’know...anway, between me & my mom here, that’s her -

Hi, I’m his real momma, no question.

-between her & me -

Don’t worry about that. We’ve got a combined 5 or 6 or 4 or something days of non-stop non-delinquency.

And my ass feels as good as new!

So, there you have it. If you or someone you know is a goddamned idiot, get your stupid self some Crookshank’s Sensational Delinquency Cream and rub it on the motherfucker’s ass before shit gets too biblical.

Call 1500-Pottermore to get your free sample now. And I’ll be standing outside Illinois Comic-con on September 31st if you want to get a signed poster of Mel Gibson. There was a delivery mix-up, he got my posters & I got his, he kept forgetting to send them over so I thought fuck it, and I signed all 2,000 of those motherfuckers, and they’re a hundred bucks a pop. Three for a hundred & twenty.

Thats 1500-Pottermore.

Thanks mom.

I really am. His mom.


----thank you for watching this fully-compliant communication from one of our trusted commercial partners.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Anonymous No.11386421]

The original is in Portuguese, with 12-syllable line verses, but without rhyme (blank verses).

I will post the translation first, then the original in portuguese.

MALALAI: You want me to be your teacher?
Very well then, prepare yourself to carrry on your back
Mountains of books of poetry and novels.
I have always liked physics and mathematics,
For they seem to behold the body of truth
Without the perfume and makeup of opinion,
The false tattoos and jingle-bells of politics,
Without the wig and the clothes of ideology.
Mathematics is the eye-drop that it's dripped
In the human eye and allows it to see the skin
Of the organism of the cosmos transformed in glass:
The pelt of the universe becomes transparent
And it allows us to see the veins, tendons, nerves
And bones of its causes, to read its hidden laws
And the geometry of its blood cells.
The clock's gears and cogwheels and the very brain
Of the watchmaker are unclouded into crystals.
The man who fed his eye-pupils with numbers
Walks through the brain of God like in a diamond
Palace and is able to hear the melodies
That echoe inside this labyrinth, the harmonies
Of chants whose notes he can read.
But, alas, my mind is not that much of a friend
Of numbers, that's why I have gang up with the letters.

MALALAI: Quer que eu seja sua professora?
Pois então se prepare para carregar nas costas
Montanhas de livros de poesia e romances.
Sempre gostei de física e matemática,
Pois parecem que veem o corpo da verdade
Sem o perfume e maquiagem da opinião,
As falsas tatuagens e guizos da política,
Sem a peruca e as roupas da ideologia.
A matemática é o colírio que se pinga
No olho humano e permite que ele veja a pele
Do organismo do cosmo transformada em vidro:
O couro do universo fica transparente
E nos permite ver as veias, tendões, nervos
E ossos de suas causas, ler suas leis ocultas
E a geometria de suas células sanguíneas.
As engrenangens do relógio e o próprio cérebro
Do relojoeiro desnuviam-se em cristal.
O homem que alimentou suas pupilas com números
Caminha pelo cérebro de Deus qualnum palácio
De diamante e consegue ouvir as melodias
Que ecoam nesse labirinto, as harmonias
De cantos cujas notas ele sabe ler.
Mas, ai ai, minha mente não é muito amiga
Dos números, por isso me enturmei com as letras.

[Anonymous No.11386687]

In the fields of the flowers - the birdies fly and sing
Maudlin songs of joy and peace while good men rot within

And singing shanties on the stone ship - the other half of dead
They sail cross - these flower fields - where they lost their head

They sailed out some time ago - and have failed to come back
Misguided on the way - by a dove who fled the day

On the - good - ship - Folkvangr (Foke - vahn - gerr) they carry steady on
Sailing for a good grave - to lay their helmet on

The raven and the dove - and all their awful ilk
The crook who sold their souls - for their meat and milk

The men who fled the day - guiding other souls away
In the fields of the flowers - they sing

[Anonymous No.11386754]

>>11381119

based rapper

[Anonymous No.11386841]

honest question
i had to take a break from lit because i felt like everyone had this prevailing pessimism that tore everything apart
i realize this is how criticism is supposed to work but i mean you guys were ripping apart childrens literature. what the fuck it's for children
do you honestly want to enjoy poetry and prose? or is picking apart flaws the real thrill?
what happens when somebody comes in here with phenomenal jawdropping poetry? do you honestly see yourself letting go of cynicism and enjoying it?

don't take what i say too serious i would just like to spur some discussion

[Anonymous No.11386990]

>>11381246
Bump. Will do crit for crit.

[Anonymous No.11386994]

>>11386990
>>11381119
trade for trade? :D

[Anonymous No.11387247]

A diary entry from the year 2070:

"Score of the year: authentic Proxy Paige catheter bag, 2030 stamp. Only 86 Monero.

If only pawpaw could see my collection now."

[Anonymous No.11387252]

Front lawn.
Face up.
Feet together.

We are the final patriots.
We are united in our final stand.

This is God’s Will.
This is God’s Will.
This is God’s Will.

3.
2.
1.

There was no bang. There was no flash before the darkness engulfed. No memories rushing through his mind. He could hear the broadcast repeating itself over and over on the television, his nation’s anthem was proud and wistful; the words gratified but overall, the tone of defeat was too difficult to ignore. He opened his eyes, stared ahead at the clear blue sky, and whispered “Is this heaven?”
Would like feedback on this start. I think (with a bunch of editing) it could be really interesting to write/read; what do you think lit?

[Anonymous No.11387312]

>>11387252


>>11380422
really good stuff, post more of this poem?

>>11380602
its nb. It feels like you are trying to do too much. Try reigning it back a little with word choices etc.

>>11380674
relatable which is perhaps the 3rd most important thing for a writer. GJ!

>>11380987
one of the best itt. Great use of syntax and structure throughout.

>>11381119
Not even sure if genuine or meme

>>11381741
idk where you got greek mythology from xd but metre seems off. Look at your word choices and how they compliment each other. Not terrible but not great

>>11382940
don't listen to him anon, he is being nice. This is bad but with some good themes, try breaking down the poem all the way and then editing the shit out of it

>>11383822
idk it feels kinda ehhh to me in the beginning but gets better as it goes on

>>11386841
do you really want to enjoy life? or do you find a thrill in improving yourself and learning new things

at the end of the day, some people will troll, some people will be nice, some people will be horrible. For me, I've lost interest in the enjoyment of many things yet still find it in poetry and prose and criticising both; it makes me, personally, care about shit still

[Anonymous No.11387322]

>>11386841
i’ve been posting here on and off since the beginning of the board, and for me it’s always just been an okay place to find recommendations, but that’s really about it. critique threads are particularly bad because people mostly dump their shit expecting it to be fawned over and only a few posters try to offer constructive feedback.

4chan in general has always attracted isolated, depressed people who are already angry/frustrated, and board culture only facilitates that more. if you spend too much time here, it really wears on you. it’s a bummer because i think there are a lot of insightful, talented people here but are either outnumbered by trolls/shitposters or too caught up in the negativity.

[Anonymous No.11387336]

Prepare for Art

[Anonymous No.11387365]

I can write decent prose, I've got worldbuilding and characters, but I can't plot for shit.
I've tried writing without planning anything and always end up stuck somewhere and losing interest.
Any of you has a novel outlining technique that isn't just "just use the 3 story arcs method"?

[Anonymous No.11387400]

>>11387322
Someone post the old /b/ros comics.

[Anonymous No.11387417]

>>11387336

yikes piece, sorry kid

[Anonymous No.11387424]

I despise looking at myself. I am abused by images of the ugly child, unloved by his mother--by his birth mother--when I glimpse my abhorrent reflection on any surface providing the slightest mirroring of my physical reality. The image of my body bullies me into such revulsion. I tell myself, I am not this image. I am *other* than this body, and I suppose this strangeness, this alienation, laid the soil (in this demented garden; Eden in flames) from which my indomitable desire to create grew like a dandelion through what before its sprouting was a negligible crack in the asphalt, continuing to blossom, bloom and grow despite the toxic smog of the city and the mud-flecked soles of countless boots; every blind passer-by missing, some only by a fraction of an inch, the stem of the flower--the blossoming of my will to create will never be trampled underfoot, by man or colossus; nohow, never.
This child sees the mother within himself, emanant from the crooked bridge of the nose, the dull shit-brown irises of the eyes (and their higher risk of developing cataracts), a slight gesture of the hands offered in resigned deference to someone else’s plans or ideas so negligible it is not worth detailing, the muddy dishwater staining of the hair, the curving of the helix of the ear along with the drooping of the lobule, the thin lines of the skewed lips, and the diminutive and uneven growth of the eyebrows which, if left untreated, joined together into a single balding tract across the sloped forehead. If only by means of obliterating the grotesque image disturbing every reflective surface on which I met my own empty gaze I could thereby obliterate the self that was projected back unto itself; if only the apparition and I inhabited the same dimension, and the shattering of a glass or the ripples of any pond where I might find my mirrored Narcissus could shatter or dissolve my own being, I would do it; suicide by hammer or pebble, self-termination by the dissolution of the projected image of my self.

[Anonymous No.11387429]

>>11386841
>what happens when somebody comes in here with phenomenal jawdropping poetry?

Has it ever happen?

[Anonymous No.11387439]

>>11380310
You see me as I see you, a beacon in the darkness
Sword in hand in this distant land, searching for the truth
Lies and misery as far as the eye can see
What happened to the truth?
Come away with me, away from depravity

In the process of trying to write an epic tale, with each line being slowly presented at the start of a new chapter, as the chapter title. It offers a hint at upcoming events, and helps set the tone further.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.11387452]

>>11387429
you obvs havent read my diary desu

but honestly, i feel some stuff is under-appreciated here, some is really overrated and some would only be amazing if it was in another generation

[Anonymous No.11387640]

https://pastebin.com/RWjgZnh1 woop woop. shortest non-poem ive ever written


>>11387424
you understand punctuation better and you write more bravely than a lot of the people in these threads

whenever i read stuff like this i think im too ironically detached. it's hard to critique cos the sentences meander a lot. i think it comes across as overwritten.

in general you have weird mixed imagery and vocab types. Like, you have biblical stuff, quotidian stuff, "their higher risk of developing cataracts" sounds like something from a news article about pensioners, then you do greek mythology too?? it's like you're trying to write in a manner you're not comfortable with.


> on any surface providing the slightest mirroring of my physical reality

this is like a really long and dumb way of saying 'on any even slightly reflective surface'
honestly i'd omit info and just go with 'on any mirror', but that's not in keeping with your other writing.
in fact, my biggest miff about all of this is that kind of overwriting, but it seems like that's what you're going for so idk. there are a few places where you write several times what amounts to the same idea.

>>11384994
i dont like reading this stuff but it's well-done. i think you got what you aimed for. the clause starting 'their interweaving petals of light...' is really really good

it would probably read better with less adjectives; it seems like you put one in front of every noun. 'the impossibly deep and boundless space in the unknowable beyond' is i think the worst example

also, there are probably too many adverbs.

[Anonymous No.11387711]

>>11387640
Thanks for the critique. I'm trying a few different styles for this novel and seeing what sticks for the type of character I'm writing. He's a religious nut, technically a virgin all his life, but he was sexually abused by his mother when he was younger, and this deranged sort of revulsion from his mother coupled with her awakening of his sexual desire that he hasn't been able to fulfill with anyone else all his life leads him to a bizarre obsession with a woman who reminds him of his mother. So, yeah, the style is a bit of a departure from my usual style.

I figured I'd have to do a lot of cleaning-up when I'm done with the rough draft to iron out the meanderings and asides that get too extensive or too bizarre.

Your comment about it seeming overwritten was an insecurity of mine about writing this because obviously the guy is deranged and a wackjob with strange delusions, so I've struggled with how NOT to make his breakdowns seem overwritten.

[Anonymous No.11387740]

The next day I was put on the bar it was Wednesday afternoon so it was quiet, only about a handful of people came in and sat around the bar. Three guys came in and each ordered a pint, they all had ID so I had no choice but to serve them. They took their respective pints and sat down on the table near the window. These guys were all dressed in suits and ties, I got the impression they’d just finished the day at their office job. I wondered what it must be like to work in an office, in cities like Bristol I’d say half the people work in offices and the other half work in catering. Bristol tends to get a lot of the leftover service industries which wouldn’t fit in London, things like telephone fundraising.
I decided to watch these guys as it was quiet and I was bored, they were two taller brown-haired men and one smaller blonde guy. The taller men seemed to be talking to themselves, occasionally the blonde haired guy would try to join in the conversation but he would be interrupted, the brown hairs continued as if they hadn’t heard him.
‘’So Javier from HR was talking to me today’’
‘’Javier talked to me to, he said-’’
‘’Sorry to hear that Phil, what did he say?’’
This sort of conversation continued for a while, I felt sorry for the blonde haired man. This is why I keep to myself, to try and converse with people like these tall brown haired men who ignore people would drive me insane, what do I do in the event that I’m ignored like that? I couldn’t persist in trying to speak in case I annoyed them, but I also couldn’t let them completely ignore me when I had things to day. The scenario would drive me insane
The blonde man excused himself and came up to the bar, for some reason he ordered two pints. Again he had ID, and I wasn’t in the mood to risk my job, so I acquiesced. Realising he had failed to make conversation with the brown hairs he decided to try and make conversation with me.
‘’So how has your shift been so far?’’
‘’It’s been quiet, we don’t usually get people in on a Wednesday afternoon’’
‘’Yeah, we got let home early because our telephones wouldn’t work’’
‘’What do you do?’’
‘’We work for the telephone fundraising agency just around the corner, apparently they hadn’t paid their phone bill so we couldn’t make calls’’
‘’Sounds unlucky’’
‘’Not for me’’ he paused ‘’free day off!’’
I didn’t think to alert him but as he was talking to me, the brown hairs stood up and left the bar, leaving their half-drinken pints behind them. I handed the blonde his two drinks
‘’Thanks’’ he said, he turned around and noticed the empty table, he froze a bit and just stared at the table for a few seconds trying to process it. He then slowly moved back to his seat and sat there with his two pints, and the two half-pints left by the brown hairs.
He just sat there staring into space for a while,

[Anonymous No.11387743]

>>11387252

can someone critique mine pls

[Anonymous No.11387826]

>>11387252
Is this like a loudspeaker reciting mottos/mantras in a city square? Seems like you're going for a dystopian feel; either the "final patriots" are rising up against a government they don't agree with, or some invading force.

The whole repetition of the anthem makes me think of some ironic pop art piece where a 50's-looking family is sitting in front of a tv watching a nuclear strike or something and smiling while eating tv dinners with some ironic title like The American Dream or something.

Above all, I'm confused about everything above and including the whole
3.
2.
1.
part.

[Anonymous No.11387830]

>>11380310
>dat ego doe

kill urself

[Anonymous No.11387834]

>>11387826

Yeah, the first 3 bits are announcement

the countdown is internal

it was gonna be based off a fallout style setting just obviously more modern

[Anonymous No.11387885]

>>11387834
Yeah, the Fallout happy-family juxtaposed with nuclear devastation imagery came to mind, so I guess good job if that's what you were going for.

[Anonymous No.11387894]

>>11387885

would it be something you'd continue reading?

[Anonymous No.11387914]

>>11387894
I mean, there isn't a WHOLE lot to go off of, but probably not. No offense. Just doesn't sound like the typical literary onanism I usually read.

[Anonymous No.11387920]

>>11387914

no probs :D ty for criticism beforehand btw

[Anonymous No.11388200]

>>11380422
4/10 tryhard, too derivative of eliot, wtf is with the japanese name

>>11380602
holy purple prose 3/10

>>11380310
*snap*

>>11380663
it's good pasta but not if youre trying to be a published author

>>11380674
yawn, rupi kaur core 1/10

>>11380937
this is an english language board lole

>>11380987
aha gay, what the heck is this obsession ppl on /lit/ have with aping ancient forms, 0/10

>>11381108
6/10 actually not that bad but very dry

>>11381119
gay

>>11381246
5/10 left no real impression

>>11381741
see what i said about aping forms 2/10

>>11381780
3/10 a bit breakneck

>>11381967
you are gay

>>11382940
you are so gay

>>11383822
crawling in my skin tier... 0/10

>>11384994
yikes. reeks of incel 2/10

>>11385664
not even gonna bother with this gay lowercase crap

>>11385939
7/10

>>11386164
are you writing YA? 2/10

>>11386687
soo derivative and the obsession with volk shit strikes me as a bit cryptofash 1/10

>>11387252
u suck 0/10

>>11387336
8/10 probably the best piece posted so far

>>11387424
yikes, dont shoot up a school lol kek

>>11387740
meh 2/10

posting my piece in the reply :) show you ninjas how its done

[Anonymous No.11388306]

baby shoes and worn out blues
genes twisted into webs and knots
i thrive on negation, said the youth pastor
to the googly eyed puppet
that swallowed down his arm
quit pinching me, i’m trying to dream
replied the little floppy mouth
my middle name was foster once
and like a foster child i am homeless
yearning to breathe free
given to flights of fancy

and the author pauses
knowing reba is an allusion
too far off for this crowd
and turning and rejoicing
blooming with a howl wasted on
post mortem manboy seeking girl
or meaning or a vector field that
plays nice and’s thick in dimension

he serves up a meal fit for a googly eyed
farting piece of shit of man and all
or puppet if you like
we still love you
ash buried

untamed shrewd little boys read
in the dark and grin
playing hide and seek
like their father figures taught them
and the author bursting in mid-wank
as hasty covers shroud short shame
announces george strait is my father figure
renounce your solemn vows
pronounce your words with southern drawls
and worship randy travis
this was a twelve bar blues all along
not yet worn

[Anonymous No.11388318]

>>11388306
>>11388200
me btw, forgot to reply

[Anonymous No.11388352]

>>11388318
its bad dude like really bad stick to rating
and critiquing

[Anonymous No.11388776]

>>11387417
>>11388200

Thanks for recognizing art, lads.

[Anonymous No.11388972]

>>11388200
I rate this bait 3/10. It is highly derivative and obvious. Consider reading the classics.

[Anonymous No.11388980]

>>11388200
>it's another contrarian 17 year-old rates the noticeably poor writing better than the other pieces because he has no experience with literature episode

[Anonymous No.11389008]

>>11388980
>he dosen't recognize art
I'm shaking my head, senpai.

[Anonymous No.11389058]

Glass against lip, flame against green, he inhaled. Instantly his pipe turned opaque, but with a movement of the thumb it was clear again. His chest puffed up as he held the smoke in, and as he exhaled he could already see the carpet turning a different shade of red. It had been a while, James guessed.

[Anonymous No.11389075]

Robocop pulled out his gun and shot the bank robber in the ankles so that he fell down and then Robocop took his gun away and arrested him. He said 'You are coming with me' and put hand cuffs on him, then the bank robber said 'Oh my God my legs' then Robocop said 'Don't do the crime if you can't do the time', backup arrived just before so they heard this and laughed too. 'Good one Robocop'
'Call me Murphy' said Robocop

[Anonymous No.11389077]

>>11388306
not that bad, kinda fun.

[Anonymous No.11389443]

>>11388200
krautchan is dead.

[Anonymous No.11389451]

>>11389058
Do better, but good attempt. Not ready, fix this passage. But much healthier and more confident than most posters. I enjoy the imagery.

[Anonymous No.11389454]

>>11380987

woah! woah! too far!

[Anonymous No.11389463]

>>11388306
lol you fucking retard midwit

[Anonymous No.11389493]

>>11389075
this kind of ironic, detached prose is overdone in my imo. we don’t need more.

[Anonymous No.11389515]

>>11380663
I like the tone of this, but like that other anon said, I'm not sure how you'd work this into a publishable book. Maybe if you worked it into a character and had a switch of POV to this, it would be great. Or it might work as a short story. I can't imagine leading a book like this though.

[Anonymous No.11389531]

>>11387424
I was kind of digging it for a while, but the references really threw me off (even though I got them). I'd suggest creating an original metaphor that captures his self-revulsion so we have an image-idea that sticks in our mind. Throwing Narcissus into this takes away from my mental image of the character because I'm now thinking of this ancient Greek guy instead of your character.

[Anonymous No.11389974]

>>11387640
can someone hmu

i won't do crit for crit but my giving crit to receiving crit ratio is like 2:1, if that matters.

[Anonymous No.11390809]

>>11389974
>https://pastebin.com/RWjgZnh1
>Amri unfurls a parabola of similar circles between her hands

Circles arent parabolas. I dont know what this sentence should imply. You also come off as being pretentious. As if you are using words not because they fit in the context but as if you wrote and then went to a thesaurus and picked a more complex sounding or unique word.

[Anonymous No.11391220]

>>11390809
it's a daisy-chain. she has the ends in each hand. it droops because of gravity, forming a parabolic curve like a y = x^2 graph, which is also meant to look like a smile. the circles are how the daisies appear without glasses. i did not use a thesaurus when writing this.

[Anonymous No.11391307]

>>11391220
not that poster, but i agree about the prose sounding pretentious and excessive. you have an eye for detail and tend to use it sparsely to a good effect, but you word/metaphor choices seem stiff and forced. ultimately the character actions and dialogue came off as artificial and puppet-like.

[Anonymous No.11391395]

>>11391307
thanksss. i see what you mean with the metaphors.

i think physically descriptive prose is the thing i need to work on the most.

can you (or anyone else) read these out-of-context descriptions and tell me if you see the same issues in them?

https://pastebin.com/ZYyqh3iA

they're from a much longer story, which i'd be willing to post if anyone's really interested, but i seldom (read: never) get responses if i post anything longer than a page.

[Anonymous No.11391702]

Oh, how sad it all was that this woman with whom Eduard felt certain that lasting love and contentment was possible might come to discover once again the sins those who claim to love her are capable of committing against her. But, at least for tonight, she would sleep soundly next to the one she loved, and she would awake in the morning as assured as ever of the strength of her devotion to him and of his devotion to her. Eduard, however, would envy her for her undisturbed slumber, and for the bliss her ignorance of his deceit afforded her. Sophia’s night had come to a satisfactory end, but Eduard’s was still to drag on, and there were sure to be far more sleepless nights to follow this one.

If only he could take it all back. If only he could renounce his entire life or do it all over again. If only he would have had more patience with his father. If only he had loved his mother more in her later years before she unwittingly plunged into the void of memory, if not for her (would she have even remembered their time together?) then for himself. If only he would have followed Sophia home after *A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But he knew that all he was left with were these worthless fantasies as consolations; images and dreams of a better life for all that could have been, that almost once was but never would be. Such a life would have been, for him, a life he knew he did not deserve.

Eduard pulled the covers over his body, nestled into his love anew, then kissed the cold flesh of her cheek for the last time that night, whispering, “I love you, Sophia,” in a trembling, shaking and featherweight voice that feared disturbing her peaceful slumber and returning her into the world that Eduard had ruined for the both of them, after which he shuttered his heavy eyes and laid on his side, back turned to Sophia, where he would remain almost motionless, curling in on himself like a snake wishing to devour itself entirely or an exhausted and dying star nearing its total collapse and implosion for the final hours of the night before the moon would fall from the sky and the morning sky would burn in its dimmed and solemn way, lighting a world Eduard had never asked for, a world he would have to bear for reasons he might never be privileged enough to understand, a world he had ruined for himself and everyone he loved. No longer was this the miserable world he felt that he was given against his wishes. This miserable world was the world he knew he had earned.

[Anonymous No.11391764]

>>11391395
>https://pastebin.com/ZYyqh3iA

>A disco light unit cavorting in the corner renders the kitchen cool and an adjacent steel toaster funky.

You could cut 'unit'; 'disco light' would suffice without stuffing an extra word in reader's mouths. I can't think of a substitution but I definitely think you should get rid of 'funky'.

>There’s a second of spluttering before with both hands she leans half her body weight on my right shoulder and starts shrieking with laughter.

Leaning half of her body weight on your right shoulder sort of takes away from the immediacy of the action. 'A second of spluttering before she catches herself on my shoulder, shrieking with laughter', maybe.

>Trelliswork obscures my sky. Interlaced vines coursing through it, arranged linearly, run back and forth as though sewn. I can’t tell what colour they are in this light, but imagine they’re pink and crisscrossed by caterpillars.

This is the best one of the bunch.

Your style seems reminiscent of the pervading uncertainty in Beckett's Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable, but I get the feeling all of the uncertainty in your descriptions comes from intoxication, and I would imagine that would get exhausting after a while; a story told in large part through the stoned eyes of whomever.

[Anonymous No.11391815]

An invidualistic void
Filled to the brim by just one memory
Raindrops dodging my umbrella
Colliding with my surface
They no longer pass through me
Wet denim forms a map
Of my limbs
Of my borders

[Anonymous No.11391826]

>>11391815
I like it

[Anonymous No.11393180]

>>11389454
I dont get what you mean by this.

[Anonymous No.11393393]

The beginning of a project I started work on this morning (7:30 in UK time). Thought this would be a good place to ask. This is all i have so far, but i've got that bad habit of hating everything I write so i'd appreciate brutal honesty so I know if i'm just being paranoid.

[Anonymous No.11393406]

>>11391815
terrible delete

[Anonymous No.11393441]

Hey /lit/, I'm popping over from /co/ for a sec.
I've been posting in the How's Your Webcomic threads for a few weeks, but since I'm more focused on script writing right now, I think most of them are disinterested in giving my posts any critique due to the lack of visuals.
Is it cool if I post it in here and get some thoughts on what I have so far?
Since I've only a comic script, it's far from a literary marvel, but I would at least like some insight on the actions, dialogue, and setting for it, if I can.

[Glück !YhIXx/x6o. No.11393456]

>>11393393
wow. your handwriting is really mysterious. i can read it very well and it definitely makes your story come across as more mature... to be honest, im a bit intimidated of you as a person, now. like you seem pretty brooding, like you're a dark soul chock full of worldly truths. the only problem is... will you use those truths for good? or for evilty?

[Anonymous No.11393459]

I call her my farting queen.

We fuck to ABBA. Well I call it fucking, but really she just sits on my face and squat thrusts love fumes - bouncing into my mouth like a puppeteer she masterfully winks the hole with each downward movement; its heaven. The smell lingers and I resist all urges to grab my dick. I'm hard and sweating and pulsing and supine on the floor engaged in every passed gas like it's a drug. And it is a drug. I swim in the noxious air and hallucinate a world of my own; alone I am king of the slave women full of thick thighs legs of steel thunder clapping at each rushing movement. I see the stink in the air and cry as if onions had been cut. It's an Amazon of beauty and I am frail man meat hungering and hungering. My dream spirals a little i pulse and throb until ejaculation. We've come together and i feel both our flows mine on my chest hers in my face waterboarding me. Oh God oh pleasure oh my love my best friend my angel - my farting queen.

[Anonymous No.11393467]

>>11393456
From the sarcasm, I take it i should tone down the narrative voice? Or just skip the introduction entirely and go straight to the point?

[Anonymous No.11393592]

Bump

[Anonymous No.11393617]

It's for a game, and I'm as amateur as it gets. I'm not afraid of criticism, so tear me a new one so I can improve.

https://pastebin.com/1X2KE2YP

Crossposting on /agdg/
>>>/vg/219680081

[Anonymous No.11394282]

English is not my mother tongue, so it's probably filler with some odd mistakes, but whatever. Hope someone finds a bit enjoyment in it.

***
Woe is me

From all that I've ever knew ran I away
Along with the ceaseless current of time;
And same as clock hands I just could not stay,
Succumbing myself under shackling rime.

Woe is me, little thus far did I know
That to nought would come this futile stampede,
For was my pursuer a thorn-wreathed crow,
Who carried the sorrow's bittering seed.

Him I discern, even sated with snow.
Still holds in talons this odious wight
An omen of grief that I can't forgo,
And hides back in pitch-black profound of night.

Last remnants of warmth had vanished throughout.
Woe is me, the sphere of the world is split:
One half wrapped in winter's somnolent shroud,
Other peers at verge of celestial pit.

Creeping within, for uncounted eras
Were constellations enkindled and nixed.
Whereof whisper these stellar chimeras
Midst devoid of all life space inbetwyxt?

And now, as the clockwork went roundly still,
Whole frigid orb comes alike to a halt.
Woe is me, we both, pierced to marrow with chill,
Precipitate down empyrean vault.

I can not be saved, I'm as good as dead,
This foreign welkin shall make my tombstone.
Deep down beneath mine lids, in swollen dread
The iris of my eyes at last are drown.

Yet, as our souls we entwined in a kiss,
Has bound thine witchcraft together us two.
Sharing days with you is all that I miss.
Oh, woe is me, I am still loving you.

[Anonymous No.11394493]

>>11394282
I generally liked it, but it feels very derivative of the Ancient Mariner and poems of that era. I enjoyed it on a technical level but conceptually it’s flimsy and unoriginal. I don’t see much use writing imitatively of an era besides for exercise purposes.

You have better grasp of English than most native speakers but your word choice indulges in two dollar words and archaic definitions of common ones so often it just seems like you’re trying to show off. Still have no idea what you meant by “sated with snow” other than assuming sate was the wrong verb.

[Anonymous No.11394718]

>>11394493
Thanks, anon!
Never really thought of it this way, thanks for a fresh point of view. Thing is I only really write to kind of splash out some extremely personal feels I might be feeling towards likewise extremely personal topics. Sort of like psychotherapy if you will. Hence it's mostly secondary priority for me to be like "What ingenious things can I come up with today?", except for more straightforward stuff like choosing a fitting foot or the absence of it. So I would totally expect it to come as flimsy and unoriginal; don't have any specific influences or inspirations whatsoever, with the exception of maybe one poem, in which case the melody from Rolling Stones' Paint it Black stuck to unbelievably hard in my head I just couldn't help but to kinda use the melody whether wanted or not. Figured out I might just as well post it, since you found the other one okay.
>your word choice indulges in two dollar words and archaic definitions of common ones so often it just seems like you’re trying to show off
That's very true, and I 100% acknowledge this is super visible how clumsy it may come as. It's really showing limited vocabulary, since when it comes to actually consuming literature I only ever seriously read H.P.Lovecraft and J.R.R.Tolkien in English. And archaisms are a byproduct of writing in a foreign language and trying to write down expressions as close to the idea I got in my head as possible. Besides, I just have some sort of a thing for dictionaries, etymology and fancy words. Like I'm looking for maybe a more precise way of saying "in between" and yep, there it goes. Fortunately it doesn't happen way to often, at least I hope so.
>Still have no idea what you meant by “sated with snow” other than assuming sate was the wrong verb.
Snow is a semi-common name for above-average quality amphetamine from where I come from.
Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

[Anonymous No.11394721]

That's a neat trick of yours;
So slow, do you even know
That you spun your wire
And with your quick kiss,
And with your quick touch,
You wrapped me all up.
And then you walked away---
Behind me the cast stone
Already sinking deep
Still sinking in my sleep
Still unwinding the next day---
The fire of your lips not yet gone away---
Energy potential, coiled, kinetic:

Strangle my neck
Tighten
My chest
Gasp and breathe
Ripped---constricted---
Pain, infinite inflicted
Pull me all round
Lines cutting
Your touch before
The prophet sparagmos

I can't breath, I can't believe
You gave the push,
It's in the way you leave:
A chemical rush.

Waters in my lungs and
Among my memories;
You left me to drown
In my own seas.

[Anonymous No.11394723]

>>11394718

***
Loss of sanity

I see a million headed beast in every dream,
I'm tired of waking up at night with horrid scream.
And through the window all i witness is just clay
Furiously trying to achieve my mind's bay.

Each time i walk the streets i fear of every sound,
This nightmare never stops it goes on round and round.
This place of mine frozen in doubts shall i stand still
By the time poor kids of yours would bear your wretched will?

I see a million headed beast right by your back.
Still i am sane thanks only to a glass of Jack.
Right at me stare its hungry eyes driving me mad,
But awes me most is that those eyes belong your head.

I see the truth beyond the daily masks you hide
And all the lies've been spread to multiply your tide.
The wells of Sun and Moon with no return are lost
For our kind living the life of pitiful ghost.

Away of loathsome plague into myself i run.
Among its empty barks how would not tremble one?
Each day outside my home those corpses do i find,
Though won't my fears care i know their swarm is blind.

Million heads of those beast as its own took,
Blind it is not, thus can through all of them it look.
I know it seems as long ago i lost my mind
Though i did not, i know beast seeks my head to find.

Behind fake faces of just everyone i meet
It is awaiting every time i walk the street
To turn me one of you and take me in control
As its another dancing empty puppet doll.

But fear i can no more and neither i can flee,
The whole insane view is now revealed to me:
Too long ago for us it all was lost and done
And so in silence million headed beast had won.

[Anonymous No.11394726]

>>11394721
Better as edgy song lyrics than as a poem desu.

[Anonymous No.11394810]

>>11394493
In case you've never read this one, thought you might enjoy it. Personally I absolutely adore it.

[Anonymous No.11394826]

>>11394493
In case you've never read this one, thought you might enjoy it. Personally I absolutely adore it.

[Anonymous No.11395377]

>>11391702
Could someone here please be nice and gimme a critique even if it's mean? :)

[Anonymous No.11395472]

>>11395377
You are longwinded

[Anonymous No.11395750]

>>11395377
If it's mean, it's not a critique

[Anonymous No.11395786]

>>11395750
>If it makes me feel bad then it's not a critique

[Anonymous No.11395865]

>>11395786
No, if it's blatantly disrespectful, it is thereby not constructive.
If the only criticism someone provides is "neck yourself", that's not a critique.
If someone instead says "this and that are not well done because of this reason", that's constructive and thus a critique.

[Anonymous No.11395870]

He and Samson kept climbing the stairs of the old, decrepit building that led to the fifth and final floor. "Hurry up" Norman told Samson when he caught him slugging along the steps. "They are not going anywhere" he said with a deceptively confident smile.

The fifth floor was in an even worse condition than the ones below it. The wallpaper had been torn and the walls themselves were rotting, wearing a green tint. Norman took a second to explore the hallway. The few lamps that were working were flickering, creating dancing shadows alongside the walls. He heard Samson's footsteps behind him, while noises started emerging from the rooms to both his left and right.

A woman and a man moaning, thumps and bangs, loud coughing and the sounds of a dog whimpering and crying. All played at once that echoed throughout the room. He raised his head and spoke in Samson's ear. "The perfect place to mask their work. Let's get going". And so they did.

The velvet carpet stopped at the end of the hallway, where it made a sudden turn to the left. A black oaken door met them. "Can you hear it?" Samson whispered. Norman tried, but couldn't distinguish any sound. He smacked his lips shook his head. "Exactly" said Samson. "Unusual, don't you think?" he continued.

"The informant couldn't have been wrong. They should have already started by now" wondered Norman. He came upon a realization. "They'd been expecting us", he mumbled. Norman had already been sweating profusely and his hands started shaking. "It was the JS11 key, right?" asked Samson. "I think so" said Norman, reluctantly.

When Samson put the key into the Ringer's barrel, Norman stopped him from opening the door. "Let's not be haste." he said. With his pistol on his hand, Norman carefully inspected the keylock, and then tried to have a look.

An eye stared back at him at the other side.

[Anonymous No.11395873]

>>11395865
My bad, thought you wre referring to >>11395472

[Anonymous No.11395901]

>>11380422
It's a bit awkward to scan in some places.

[Anonymous No.11395915]

This was a poem I wrote about a month ago. Don't go easy on me.
By the boiling lake,
A new baptism is taking place
Readying for the rapture, sure to come
A holy portal ripping the face of Earth
God’s Seed of Sun in milisecond motion
Fanatics are taking shape
Coiling into twin snakes
At the base of the Uranium tree
By the boiling lake.

While the stoics are busy being stone
No Medusa to solidify their state
They stare at the Seed of Sun
Hoping that will get the job done.

Some still aim for every morsel of maternal material
Connected by invisible umbilical lines
Worshipping the youth eternal
Sitting fetal style, waiting for some guide
When wave after wave of skin-shedding light hits
Placentas will be the least favorable defense.

One will wonder who petitioned the gods
For such an effulgent fate,
Whether one will ponder the ethics
Of if it was right or wrong
The light’s coming anyway.

In absentia
Many have gone to be forgotten
But have they been forgiven?
The veins in the trees say so,
And the leaves will photosynthesize
Peace for those in the soil
So for those who seek
The lake that boils
You will be redeemed
In absentia.

[Anonymous No.11395940]

>>11380610
Thank you.
>>11382210
I thought that was worded incorrectly; thanks for catching my mistake. I may keep it, nonetheless.

I appreciate the compliment.

>>11387312
There's another two pages, though abruptly ending. It's a work in progress. I'm glad you like it.

>>11395901
Could you explain some more? Anything helps.

[Anonymous No.11396039]

>final chapter contains an exposition dumb relating to the solution given in the previous chapter to a mystery side-plot which has spanned the whole book
Is there any way to not make this shit? I'm current pre-reading such a work, and all I can tell the author is "dude, it's the last fucking chapter, I've got no reason to care about this. You didn't even mention a name that I knew until the fourth fucking page of the dump".

[Anonymous No.11396219]

>>11383146
I really liked this. I think the ending is good as it is, too. Having some kind of insight into her mind but not as a resolution is very fitting. My interest was grabbed both by the narrator's emotional investment and by the mystery of why she done it. I think a real critique of this is beyond me, so I'll just post my thoughts on it.

I feel like I could be being stupid and condescending by saying this, but we're anonymous here, so fuck it. The story's central theme seems to be about lenses and being watched and the impossibility of understanding each other, but another theme kind of crops up naturally, which is obsession. Both the narrator and Sydney are fixated on something, obsessed with it, and in fact the narrator's obsession leads him to an understanding and mirroring of Sydney's own obsession. Even the general public becomes obsessed with her story. But as far as I can tell (again, I may just be stupid) there's no associated imagery with that. There's also no conclusion (not necessarily resolution) to the concept of obsession that the story brings up. The characters are obsessed with lenses and with being watched, the whole world is obsessed with it too, but then what? Is it just commentary? Is there a conclusion to make there?

Again, I really liked this, enough to make a post about it. If there are improvements to be made, it's at the point where those can only come from you. What are your goals for the story? That's the real question here, is whether you have achieved those goals.

[Anonymous No.11396248]

>>11393617
I got great advice on /agdg/. The results are in: it's so bad it's not worth your time (I can't delete a post this old), so ignore it unless you want to beef up your cringe compilation.

[Anonymous No.11396706]

>>11394726
Your right.
Put some slow guitar riffs behind it and your good to go.

[Anonymous No.11397004]

The world is a gray haze of sadness pain and unending, unyielding misery streaked with highlights of despair. And in certain areas all of this is veiled in a thin layer of ignorance, false hope and even happiness. Some say that those enshrouded in that veil are lucky and even envy them and feel jealous that they can have such a “wonderful” feeling. Frank never felt that way about them, didn’t feel jealousy or envy for those wrapped in false arms. Frank pitied them for he knew that one day the veil will be lifted and they would suffer all the more and even go mad after such a sudden shift in their reality. Frank knew because once he was behind that veil and remembered his desent into near-madness once he stumbled – no, was yanked through to the other side. He often wondered whether he had really just teetered on the edge and came back or sank so far he forgot he was even mad in the first place.
For the brief instant that the cold steel exploded in Frank’s hands and mirrored across from him he wondered again, and additionally if it was all worth it. Then he smiled what might have been his final smile as he watched and felt the bullet wounds appear in their chests, causing the other to shudder gasp and die while pushing Frank backwards. The familiar searing pain of the bullet wound set in, but didn’t hurt Frank as he fell in surreal motion and his heartbeat shuddered. Making matters worse he collided heavily with concrete as his vision flickered and all feeling was lost as he was filled with emotions that his stunned and dying brain could scarcely comprehend. There were sirens droning from far off or inside his head, but even if they were real Frank was pretty sure they were too late. The streetlight above blazed on, blinding him and suddenly bringing his thoughts into sharp focus within the battered remains of his mind. In his mind he pictured for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime those that once gave him hope and a reason to wake up in the morning when he was in the veil. It was with and because of them that he had been thrust from under the veil, into the cold reality of the world.
Thinking of an old friend he realized had been right all along; he wasn’t going to see them again in the way he used to think he would. No, there were only the memories that fueled his dreams and if Frank was lucky enough those dreams would be what that goddamned veil- that sad, sad illusion, pretended to be. What it symbolized to those outside it that still clung to hope, in their twisted and insane minds. Frank sighed, a rasping shudder as all thought and feeling faded from his body as the siren screams and garbled shouts echoed out of his ears as silence and darkness descended on him as he faded into a black void. It had taken him eight years to exact his vengeance and now he was without purpose.

[Anonymous No.11397339]

>>11380987
>I hit him with a sock of bricks

You lost me here

[Anonymous No.11397340]

[Anonymous No.11397368]

Short 1 page story. Hope you like it.

[Anonymous No.11397418]

>>11387429
Brother can you spare some oats?

[Anonymous No.11397615]

>>11387429
We fawn over it, see ' the Tiger poem'

[Anonymous No.11398577]

Can I have a look at this? Maybe some math major or STEM student can tell me if this little ode to math has some value or is al trash (I was a terrible student myself and my math grades were some of the lowest inter class, something I deeply regret to this very day).

Here, a look at this:

>>11386421

[Anonymous No.11398859]

>>11398577
I generally liked it from a poetic perspective, though the sentiment is a bit sappy and naive, like a hopeful 19th century mathematician before the weirdness to come.

[Anonymous No.11398926]

Here's a short story I wrote that's sort of an exploration of fiction as it is encountered through the unknown aspects of a stranger's life. It's about a 3-5 min. read.

https://pastebin.com/jXn9u4pp

[Anonymous No.11399635]

If you asked what the most powerful organisation in the world was, you might get a few different answers, The United States Government, the United Nations or the Roman Catholic Church. The truth known only to a few was that all of these groups were nothing but ants compared to **The Organisation.**

that's my opening paragraph

[Anonymous No.11399743]

Graduated from college and bored. One of my first serious attempts to do some writing. I know it sucks: tell me how much it sucks.
https://pastebin.com/xxYXTy0A

[Anonymous No.11399767]

>>11399743

“see you later my loveable reactionary.”

cringe

> Not a thing interesting. Stradat thought.

weird puncuaction, otherwise pretty good

[Anonymous No.11399800]

>>11399767
Trying to make that character a cringey neckbeard communist. Now that I look at it though that was horrible.

Also that was supposed to be a comma--honestly I'm not sure how to deal with thoughts of characters in writing.

[Anonymous No.11399801]

>>11399635
Weak opening and clumsy writing. Second person is tough to do well in prose and your first sentence didn’t pull it off. I suspect by your tone this is setting up some kind of Illuminatus Trilogy satire but it doesn’t feel original or clever.

[Anonymous No.11399833]

>>11397004
Hopefully this comes out less clusterfucked
The world is a gray haze of sadness pain and unending, unyielding misery streaked with highlights of despair. And in certain areas all of this is veiled in a thin layer of ignorance, false hope and even happiness. Some say that those enshrouded in that veil are lucky and even envy them and feel jealous that they can have such a “wonderful” feeling. Frank never felt that way about them, didn’t feel jealousy or envy for those wrapped in false arms. Frank pitied them for he knew that one day the veil will be lifted and they would suffer all the more and even go mad after such a sudden shift in their reality. Frank knew because once he was behind that veil and remembered his desent into near-madness once he stumbled – no, was yanked through to the other side. He often wondered whether he had really just teetered on the edge and came back or sank so far he forgot he was even mad in the first place.

For the brief instant that the cold steel exploded in Frank’s hands and mirrored across from him he wondered again, and additionally if it was all worth it. Then he smiled what might have been his final smile as he watched and felt the bullet wounds appear in their chests, causing the other to shudder gasp and die while pushing Frank backwards. The familiar searing pain of the bullet wound set in, but didn’t hurt Frank as he fell in surreal motion and his heartbeat shuddered. Making matters worse he collided heavily with concrete as his vision flickered and all feeling was lost as he was filled with emotions that his stunned and dying brain could scarcely comprehend. There were sirens droning from far off or inside his head, but even if they were real Frank was pretty sure they were too late. The streetlight above blazed on, blinding him and suddenly bringing his thoughts into sharp focus within the battered remains of his mind. In his mind he pictured for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime those that once gave him hope and a reason to wake up in the morning when he was in the veil. It was with and because of them that he had been thrust from under the veil, into the cold reality of the world.

Thinking of an old friend he realized had been right all along; he wasn’t going to see them again in the way he used to think he would. No, there were only the memories that fueled his dreams and if Frank was lucky enough those dreams would be what that goddamned veil- that sad, sad illusion, pretended to be. What it symbolized to those outside it that still clung to hope, in their twisted and insane minds. Frank sighed, a rasping shudder as all thought and feeling faded from his body as the siren screams and garbled shouts echoed out of his ears as silence and darkness descended on him as he faded into a black void. It had taken him eight years to exact his vengeance and now he was without purpose.

[Anonymous No.11399923]

>>11399833
>enshrouded in that veil

don't like it, make it "within the veil", i guess you are going for enshrouded because they are decivied or something.

voids are like inhernetly black aren't they?

[Anonymous No.11399948]

>>11399923
I was trying to invoke imagery of a security blanket

>voids are like inherently black aren't they?

Can't some be white though?

[Anonymous No.11399949]

>>11399948
well usually its mentioned that's its a white void

[Anonymous No.11399965]

>>11399949
I'll have to find a better adjective

[Anonymous No.11400111]

>>11395870
5/8

[Anonymous No.11400181]

Worked on this from 0:00 to 1:31.

Not finished yet.
''The couch i sit in is made for two,
So i can't help myself but to think of me and you.

This house of mine ain't empty,
I think i can feel you too.

In the empty seats, in the only plate
on the table and it's mine,

In the silent alarm, in my cold palms
I mostly wake up around nine.

In empty frames, indoor weekdays,
You're the only thing that i find,

But i know i'm still alone,
For there's one thing that the distance hides.

The warmth of the skin, the warmth of the soul,
That below this roof has once been homed,

Left with fire and unsated desires,
But living with ghosts still seems cold.

Mirages in the hall, Ghosts on the walls
Keep me awake up at night,

Cause all i'm left with now
Is nothing but your comic outline.

All i'm left with is your comic outline,
All i'm left with is your comic outline.
All i'm left with is your comic outline,
All i'm left with is your comic outline.''

[Anonymous No.11400319]

The windswept leaves and the tremors of the trees whirl about you as a robe of air.
Your pale white arm holds a magical charm and you wear the fearsome pelt of a bear.
Can you perform a miracle?
Can you sing a song that's lyrical and save me from the depths of my despair?
Cast a spell on me, make me fly, and free, I'll search for one more fair.
Are your incantations so strong? Will my elation last so long when your gone and hiding somewhere?
Muse, sorcerer, witch of the woods: your godly goods brought to me on the back of a mare that arrives with no warning, when its shining or storming, and urges me out of my lair.
Potions and trinkets, glittering ingots of gold in a neatly wrapped pair.
These wonders of yours are exciting, and always inciting in me a new state of affairs.

I depend on your magic.

But I get ahead of myself, put the book on the shelf, and return to what's real.

>>11400181
I do like some of your imagery, makes me think of Hamershoi. That said, the language is a bit stunted throughout.

[Anonymous No.11400322]

>>11398859
>I generally liked it from a poetic perspective,

Thank you

>>11398859
>though the sentiment is a bit sappy and naive, like a hopeful 19th century mathematician before the weirdness to come.

Yes, the character herself dosen't know very much about math, but I also have only the enthusiasm and admiration of an amateur (not even that - I don't know anything about math) for the subject.

[Anonymous No.11400337]

>>11380369
>Lucrative erotica market
Please stop this meme. It's a difficult thing to break. There was a bubble back in 2010 - it burst. Back then you could live on shorts. KU is a blessing and a curse. Now you've got to balance writing and marketing at a rate of at least one romance novel per month to make any serious money.

>>11380422
desu I'd prefer to read fantasy like this. It's like Longfellow. You just need to buff out the meter to keep the flow going, but your use of sound and color makes it very vivid.

>>11395915
I think this would be a better prose poem. There's really no point in lineating it - there's not a lot of rhythm - and the one rhyme "sun/done" is clunky and undermines the tone. The best stanza is the last one, although "leaves will photosynthesize" is redundant. At the moment it sounds like Giger and Scott cooked up over a joint. There's good imagery, but maybe really focus on tone and nailing down the chaos of the scene.

>>11393459
This needs to be more sensual. It's alright as it stands, but you never describe the stink. "Stink" and "noxious" are not smells. Does it smell like shit? Like eggs? And a puppet bounces - not a puppeteer.

>>11400181
The first stanza is literally a lazy version of "Daisy".

"I mostly wake up around nine" could be said better. It's boring any way you slice it; same with "indoor weekdays" which is clunky, and "homed".

I ended up reading the whole thing in a voice like the goth kids from South Park. It just sounds emotionless, and where it isn't emotionless it sounds hackneyed. There's no meter - there's no rhythm at all. "Soul" doesn't rhyme with "Homed", and I don't understand why the only rhymes you really have are interior ones.

If you're writing about a comic outline, either make it comical, or use some imagery related to comics. Make the body of the thing relate to the title. I guess this is supposed to be a song? Then it probably needs to rhyme a little more. A free-verse poem? It still needs rhythm and some unique imagery. I don't know how you possibly worked on it so long. I don't want to sound mean. It's just that there's absolutely no vitality in it at all.

[Anonymous No.11400352]

>>11387365
Use the folk method. Literally just take a fairytale or two and hammer them out until they fit the world you've made.

[Anonymous No.11400400]

>>11400337
This is only one verse, though. I'll have more.

I actually have a cadence for this in my head. This may have a beat over it in the near future.

And, when you say EMOTIONLESS, i guess a tranquil feeling throughout the song can't really be considered an intense one.

But thanks for the constructive criticism though.

[Anonymous No.11400975]

blump

[Anonymous No.11401003]

>>11397339
i still cant stop laughing

[Anonymous No.11401131]

https://pastebin.com/jXn9u4pp

Pic related is the first 2/3 of the story.

[Anonymous No.11401138]

Kinda sucks. How can I work on meter

[Anonymous No.11401145]

[Anonymous No.11401171]

>>11401145
Please leave this imageboard and continue writing poetry.

You're too good for this place.

[Anonymous No.11401249]

>>11401145
I dont understand the first two lines am I dum

[Anonymous No.11401266]

How do you write a novel or screenplay and get it published?
I hope you /lit/ anons succeed in your goals!

[Anonymous No.11401288]

I become hurt when nobody responds to my posts. However, when I receive a critique it activates my penis which becomes the BIG PENIS.

[Anonymous No.11401292]

>>11401266
You don't. The market is over-saturated. You pretend you will until you realize you won't. Then you an hero or move on.

[Anonymous No.11401294]

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia

Mountain mama

Take me home, country roads

[Anonymous No.11401306]

>>11401266
How: Develop your skills over the years. It will take years.

Novel: Find an agent or self-publish.

Screenplay: (It's not going to get published.) Live in L.A. and network.

[Anonymous No.11401320]

>>11401266
Quite easy:
Take some acid and an Adderall and write a basic story premise
Take more acid and double Adderall (maybe some coke too) and just write for 12 hours straight, taking the edge off with some alcoholic beverage
Crash and then later come back and reread everything, make notes and do some editing
Do further editing three more times rewriting and making sure novel flows and makes sense
Done

[Anonymous No.11401330]

>>11401320
>Crash and then later come back and reread everything
then burn it all because it's garbage

[Anonymous No.11401335]

>>11401330
If you actually have talent and the ability to write something worthwhile you'll be able to find it in what you spewed out. That's what editing is for. I hope you're not one of these fags who thinks writing a page a day or taking years to develop the ability to write is a prerequisite. You either have it or you don't. May as well take the leap and find out

[Anonymous No.11401349]

>>11401335
Kind of this, the first part specifically. You can be your greatest limitation if you perpetually interfere with the creative process by revising what has been immediately written. It's sort of the inverse of the process I would imagine a sculptor undertakes: whereas the sculptor might do a preliminary elimination of large segments of the stone with sweeping and powerful strikes, the writer, in creating a draft, is constructing the general substantive form of the novel. Only once the general form has assumed a comprehensive shape (the rough draft), the novelist can then make refinements where it is necessary like the sculptor makes more delicate and subtle gestures upon the stone to etch out the details.

[Anonymous No.11401389]

Sometimes he would tell her things she didn't care about. My roommate, he would say. The stars, he would say. And she would withdraw into herself, occasionally mumbling, until she felt very far away—staring at his face from a face "behind" her face—and his voice would become a sort of white noise, until all she could hear was her small "second face" telling herself that when it was over—when their relationship, which was, for the most part, still blossoming, inevitably ended—she would focus solely on finishing her novel, which she had been telling people she'd been working on for years, but which she'd started only recently.

[Anonymous No.11401413]

>>11401349
You get it anon, good luck with your creative work

[Anonymous No.11401456]

>>11380937
>Die Augen unseres Helden
Immerhin habe ich es bis dahin geschaft. Setz dich eifnach nochmal dran.

[Anonymous No.11401488]

>>11401335
Talent is certainly a thing but so is skill. Read any big author's juvenalia and you'll see they didn't spring forth fully formed from Zeus' forehead. Same thing with musicians, painters, etc. If you're still writing at the same level when you first started, you should look for another line of work.

[Anonymous No.11401628]

The man sat in the cold foreboding rain waiting for her. Rain danced in the park and his sodden trousers fastened to his slithery legs. African shamans bellowed out lost ceremonial thrummings with fat raindrops upon the yellowed umbrella motionless above the mans head. His face is a cracked scabland mask, behind which he is shrouded. He knows what he must do.
Her steps are heard. She peers in the dark rain. On she sashays. Her eyes are the puddles she walks near, misty and luminous plates reflecting Manhattan. She nears his bench.
Cordially, he greets her with a smile. He sweeps his claw into a friendly handshake with her. Her smile gives way into a question.
“Do you kn-“
The sulfurous iron thunders into her abdomen.
He hauls the trigger once more keeping the blistering steel adhered firmly to flesh. Eyes once luminous fill with mist. He heaves again. Her screams were rasps through threadbare lungs. She shrieks for air without sound. The last shorn iron is thundered from the devil.
His suit is besmeared with crimson. He runs for a parked black dodge.

Just came up with it and I’m aware it’s kind of cringe.

[Anonymous No.11401654]

How do I tell an author that there's too much social justice shit in his work? It's trashing my immersion.

[Anonymous No.11401660]

>>11401654
AHEM:

>there's too much social justice shit in your work. It's trashing my immersion.

[Anonymous No.11401662]

>>11401654
Rick Riordan?

[Anonymous No.11401758]

Pic related is an excerpt from a WIP.

[Anonymous No.11401848]

>>11401662
Unpublished author.

[Anonymous No.11402023]

When they were drunk and they came home hot and horny. Can I come on your stomach? Yes, yes. Okay I'm about to. No here let me I want to. Oh. Oh. They smelled each other's breath. Oh. OH. And he came once, one bit of slobber that leaked a little after. Is that it? Well I. No it's okay I just. She ran her thumb along the channel under his penis. She mustered the last bits of clear, sticky fluid. She smiled at him. Smiled. What a bitch. What luxury cunts have, luxury! to sit back and fall open and judge the performance on length and girth and how rigid and how long; now she wants to know how much--Is that it? Bitch! He saw her browser history. He saw she searched Big Facials. Only her first taste and she already knew she was missing out. His balls dangled in the toilet bowl in the same air as his shit. He held the square of toilet paper and the small glob soaked into the thin ply.

[Anonymous No.11402030]

>>11401131
periods for christs sake. that first sentence is an abomination.

[Anonymous No.11402229]

>>11381246
>>11381251

Bump.

[Anonymous No.11402947]

Bump

[Anonymous No.11402995]

In the beginning, there were just two things separating me from the Biles Cup: my mother, and the Double Arabian. About one quarter of Level 10s can complete the Double Arabian, and before 2018 it wasn’t a popular element in floor exercises. Like all saltos, it relies on continuously shifting your center of mass while maintaining height above the floor. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But in this world of competitive gymnastics, even extraordinary feats are compulsory if you want to place on a professional team.

it's hunger games with a doomsday misogynist cult, lesbians, and gymnastics

[Anonymous No.11403042]

>>11402995
I personally like it. Waiting for maternal lesbian scenes. Get 500-1000ish words then let us check it out.

[illiterate No.11403044]

>>11401145
Pretty good but this is obviously an antiquated form of poetry that I doubt any literary outlet would be willing to accept. I can appreciate that you have a thing for Victorian / Elizabethan romanticism, you've got that down pat. But if you want to make your work more accessible for modern audiences I recommend revising your diction. Or perhaps ditch the anachronistic stuff like the "Ah!" opening. Removing the Ah! alone should breathe new life into this stanza.

>>11401138
Work on: removing antiquated language like thy and thee; use emjambment with purpose...you break lines willy nilly and it shows; the contrast between the modern diction and the early modern English terminology is stark and off-putting and comes across as juvenile. Meter should not be a primary concern at this point in your development.

>>11401131
That first sentence, oh man. Couldn't read much further than that. You need to deploy punctuation with precision, and write with clarity and purpose. I liked the part about the crow's feet on the woman. I did not like the phrase "memories of her own brood". Brood is not the term you want. Tone this piece down. The language is kind of bulky and tiring to read.

>>11400319
"Depths of my despair" is a cliché. These read like song lyrics, and, frankly, juvenilia.

>>11400181
These are serviceable as song lyrics and that's about it. They do not stand on their own.

>>11399833
Introduce Frank earlier in the paragraph. Don't make your reader sit through three sentences of autistic melodramatic rambling. Condense those three sentences into one, then get into Frank. It'll land better. Tone down the imagery/metaphor of the veil.

>>11399635
Kind of bad. The Organisation? That's the best you could do? Also I'll second the other guy and suggest ditching the 2nd person narration.

>>11397368
Comedically poor use of diction at times. "Milady" is a good case in point. I understand that this is an old-timely fantasy piece but you'll be hard-pressed to find a reader in 2018 that won't chuckle at that. I don't think this is well suited for a <500 word story format.

>>11394282
Not bad if you speak English as a second language. Keep working on your craft. Although I cannot offer much advice since poetry is far from my forte. However, remove the "we" in "as our souls we entwined in a kiss". I'd also spare your reader the "thines" and 'thee" stuff.


Anyone want to crit mine?

You can read the full length piece here:

https://larthurhunt.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/waiting-for-the-waves-at-bohai-2st-draft2.pdf

Or just browse anything on my site (larthurhunt dot com)

[Anonymous No.11403070]

>>11403044
>autistic melodramatic rambling

It was meant to be a tragedy

And originally I thought it would be cool to start the story with his death.

Eh

[illiterate No.11403098]

>>11403070
You can do that while also applying your suggestions. Open with his death. Make it tragic. But those first few sentences need revision. Or, more specifically, to be condensed. If you want to maintain a reader's interest you need to throw them a character to identify with, or with which to ground the narrative. Your writing suffers from the same snares that trap most others on /lit/, which is that you write in the form of an internal monologue that goes on at length, usually with despairing or pitiful overtones. I can't imagine why anyone who want to carry on reading that. If that is how the work is going to continue then I'd rather pick up a Dostoevsky novel. There needs to be more substance, imagery, setting, place, weather, sounds, smells, insecurities of person, music, romance, hope for something good to come, something, anything.

[Anonymous No.11403126]

>>11403098
Perhaps I'll add more focusing on the scene a little earlier. Start it with action and then move into the dreary stuff.

[Anonymous No.11403282]

>>11403044
The excerpt you posted here is a really nice read. I really don’t have much to criticize other than some minor nits about a few odd word choices and slight breaks in the tone I think you’re going for. Good stuff.

[Anonymous No.11403321]

>>11403044
>https://larthurhunt.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/waiting-for-the-waves-at-bohai-2st-draft2.pdf

I don't think I'm good at criticizing writing, but I can at least say that I would continue reading. I would hope there are some exciting events which follow the reflection of the main character though. Most of what you shared is this person's reflections, and though the setting is nicely described it generally lacked in action, though I anticipate something important to the story will happen when they board the boat?

[Anonymous No.11403334]

I don't really want critique or any suggestions with this, since it isn't going up anywhere. Just wanted to share some thoughts on going to grad school.

[Anonymous No.11403374]

>>11380937
Schrieben sie Nummern bitte, es besser lesen ist.

[Anonymous No.11403561]

>>11380310
"That ego, though."

[Anonymous No.11403568]

This is from a verse tragedy. The original is in Portuguese, but I will post the translation first.

Mullah Azzami: I feel like blind and dried grasshopper
That the turbulent winds of this world drag around,
Hungry for crops that he will never taste.
Inside me there is so much anguish that my bones
Are just like blades and with every movement,
With every breath, they cut me and pierce me
For the audacity of wanting to keep on living.
My soul is a desperate shout into the void.
Sometimes I wonder if God is not a friend
Of the poor souls of this world only in their dreams:
Divinity is like a nursing cat
That welcomes the kittens that bite her tits,
But drives away those who gently suck her milk.
The docile ones only have stones and mud to nourish them,
The tyrants, salads of lilies, milk of gold,
All the rainbow of pleasure upon their tables
In this great feast of injustices that is life.

Kala Khan: The justice of Allah will not sleep forever,
And the law shall be applied, be it under the sun,
Be it when the sun is no more than a dissolved dream.

Mulá Azzami: Sinto-me um gafanhoto cego e ressecado
Que os turbulentos ventos deste mundo arrastam,
Faminto por colheitas que jamais provará.
Dentro de mim há tanta angústia que meus ossos
Parecem lâminas e cada movimento,
Cada respiração, me cortam e perfuram
Pela ousadia de querer seguir vivendo.
Minha alma é um grito desesperado no vácuo.
Por vezes me pergunto se Deus não é amigo
Dos pobres deste mundo apenas nos seus sonhos:
A divindade é como uma gata lactante
Que acolhe os filhotinhos que lhe mordem as tetas,
Mas afasta aqueles que mamam gentilmente.
Os dóceis só têm pedras e lodo para nutri-los,
Os tiranos, saladas de lírios, leite de ouro,
Todo o arco-íris do prazer sobre suas mesas
Nesse grande banquete de injustiças da vida.

Kala Khan: A justiça de Alá não dormirá pra sempre,
E a lei será aplicada, seja sob o sol,
Seja quando o sol for só sonho dissolvido.

[Anonymous No.11403596]

To tell the truth, I’m upset ’bout the state of the game,
Pop nigga ‘lectrocute y’all, no mistaken his reign,
Good boy thinking it’s all on the work he displays,
When only 2 tapes people bumping these days,
And of them 2, not 9 songs come to the brain,
And top 20 niggas all with similar fame,
Ain’t rate the milk, man tryna hide chocolate face,
Shit was 9 before two nines hit a boy in the back,
Coke on her tits, I sucked wine from her crack,
I said she two faced, a baboon in the sack,
She beat me like batman beating the blacks


Can anyone give me some feedback on this? I know it’s probably not very lit or anything but nevertheless would appreciate

[Anonymous No.11403600]

This is from a verse tragedy. The original is in Portuguese, but I will post the translation first.

Mullah Azzami: I feel like a blind and dried grasshopper
That the turbulent winds of this world drag around,
Hungry for crops that I will never taste.
Inside me there is so much anguish that my bones
Look like blades and with every movement,
With every breath, they cut me and pierce me
For the audacity of wanting to keep on living.
My soul is a desperate shout into the void.
Sometimes I wonder if God is not a friend
Of the poor souls of this world only in their dreams:
Divinity is like a nursing cat
That welcomes the kittens that bite her tits,
But drives away those who gently suck her milk.
The docile ones only have stones and mud to nourish them,
The tyrants, salads of lilies, milk of gold,
All the rainbow of pleasure upon their tables
In this great feast of injustices that is life.

Kala Khan: The justice of Allah will not sleep forever,
And the law shall be applied, be it under the sun,
Be it when the sun is no more than a dissolved dream.

Mulá Azzami: Sinto-me um gafanhoto cego e ressecado
Que os turbulentos ventos deste mundo arrastam,
Faminto por colheitas que jamais provará.
Dentro de mim há tanta angústia que meus ossos
Parecem lâminas e cada movimento,
Cada respiração, me cortam e perfuram
Pela ousadia de querer seguir vivendo.
Minha alma é um grito desesperado no vácuo.
Por vezes me pergunto se Deus não é amigo
Dos pobres deste mundo apenas nos seus sonhos:
A divindade é como uma gata lactante
Que acolhe os filhotinhos que lhe mordem as tetas,
Mas afasta aqueles que mamam gentilmente.
Os dóceis só têm pedras e lodo para nutri-los,
Os tiranos, saladas de lírios, leite de ouro,
Todo o arco-íris do prazer sobre suas mesas
Nesse grande banquete de injustiças da vida.

Kala Khan: A justiça de Alá não dormirá pra sempre,
E a lei será aplicada, seja sob o sol,
Seja quando o sol for só sonho dissolvido.

[Anonymous No.11404310]

>>11401145
The fact that the person who wrote this is likely under 20 amazes me.

[Anonymous No.11404517]

whirlpool in the reservoir
my mind is a commotion
confused on how to interact with others
phantom insults never said
yet always on my mind
i think that others hate me
so i push them aside

[Anonymous No.11404521]

>>11403044
"Milady" here, thanks for the critique, mate.

[Anonymous No.11404556]

>>11404521
Also what format would you suggest, sorry?

[illiterate No.11404598]

>>11404521
>>11404556

Any time. I'd go with a New Yorker length story, maybe a few thousand words long. Enough to sink our teeth into who the characters are. Either that, or I'd expand into a novella.

This isn't my genre so I can't say for sure but if you're going to write fantasy that sort of resembles early Medieval period I would want to maximize emphasis on the setting. Describe the Kingdom, describe the raiders, do what you must to establish what is at stake here. There must be something at stake. Something to defend, to win, to conquer. Otherwise what's the point?

>>11404310

what makes you assume that?

>>11403126

Yes, that's the approach I'd take.

>>11403600

Cool. What makes you want to write tragic verse?

[Anonymous No.11404605]

Jeanne, Seigneur, est ton oeuvre splendide
Un cœur de feu, une âme de guerrier
Tu les donnas à la Vierge timide
Que tu voulais couronner de laurier.

[Anonymous No.11404613]

>>11404598
>what makes you assume that

Through several polls, the average age here is around 18 to 19

[illiterate No.11404622]

also, what y'all make of this short (micro?) story. wrote this draft today

>https://larthurhunt.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/fifty-bucks-an-hour.pdf

[illiterate No.11404628]

>>11404613

I don't know how true or representative those polls are. In many of the age/location/recent books threads the median age has been somewhere around 24

[Anonymous No.11404635]

>>11404598
>Cool. What makes you want to write tragic verse?

I started by writing poetry, but at the same time wanted to create stories and characters. I didn't know how to fuse both worlds. When I discovered the Greek theater and the plays of Shakespeare I realized that this was a great way to unite my passion for poetic language and the art of storytelling.

The problem is that the theater, and especially drama verse, are totally out of fashion. It seems that, no matter how hard you work, there is no place under the sun for writers of such works. Now i'm trying to work out a plot for a novel, but I'm facing a lot of difficulties. It will be very difficult for me to create a novel, and that's actually making me quite nervous.

[Help, not a writer. No.11404640]

I'm going to take a page from Butters to start this story. Remember his line about "beautiful sadness"? About the gift of being able to experience all facets of life? There is no other job in the world that can make you appreciate these facets, than being the Director.

I wasn't always the Director, not when I first met this person, Ellsworth. Never have I felt so small in someones presence, and at the same time, more human. Don't confuse that with feeling vulnerable, no, see, like every Director before me, meeting Ellsworth catalyzed my personal growth. Thanks to this growth, I've become someone capable of protecting others, especially my loved ones. And now its my turn to return the favor. Before we discuss the implications of our agenda, you have to know how I became who I am today.

And that story begins on August 3rd, 2018.

[Anonymous No.11404959]

Wrote this for Camp NaNo yesterday while on a car trip. Not exactly my best work, but eh.

Didn't do a lot of editing as I'm still in the process of writing, but let me know what you think.

[illiterate No.11405142]

posting in a vain attempt to resurrect this thread carry on

[Anonymous No.11405298]

>>11405142
It hasn't died yet, bro. There are occasional periods of more frequent posting followed by short lulls.

[Anonymous No.11405370]

I do wish this thread would be archived already so we could start a new one.

[Anonymous No.11405462]

[I/II] Barring extreme physical pain, do we not owe our tears almost exclusively to the past? Is it not our confrontation with some distant grievance or misfortune that compels us to cry? No man or woman is capable of crying for the present since the present moment is in eternal communion with the moments that preceded it, and much like tears cannot belong to the present, neither can they be owed to the future, to the misfortunes that are yet to come since the envisioned architecture of the future is always shaped by the blueprints we have drafted in the past. Simply put, we cry when we imagine the consequences we may one day suffer as a result of our past actions, or when we recollect past misfortunes. Even when one cries over their present misery, their tears fall in anguish and in tribute to the contentment and comfort they once felt, contentment and comfort that has since been obliterated by the world’s indifference.

Appended to this is the idea that tears can manifest in the present over a futural possibility fixed at some determinate point on their ontological horizon that has been ruined--for whatever reason--but only because all of the breadth of past time having gone by suggested the arrival of such a futural possibility. It is the past--all of the past experiences and circumstances which pointed to the almost certain arrival of the future we hoped for--that is the fundamental basis for our tears in this, the aforementioned, and in nearly all cases (“nearly” stated here in the interest of not speaking in absolutes; in the author’s granting that plausible exceptions could very likely be presented by another).

The mother and father crying tears of joy over their child’s graduation, the audience’s teary-eyed response to the protagonist’s long-awaited triumph, the teacher’s retirement and last goodbye to the last of the students she will ever teach; do they not cry tears of joy, of pride, of both sorrow and joy over a future which has at last manifested into the present? Not particularly. Need I say it? Their tears flow from the emanation of the present from the past.

There is only so much emotional and psychological detritus a soul can bear before the pressure of its burden must be relieved. Our limbic system--specifically the hypothalamus--in its communication with our autonomic nervous system compels us to cry when the world becomes too much to bear; a tremor quaking through the nervous system, breaking apart what has been set aside within us, hidden from recognition, forcing the cracked and shattered debris to sift through and finally, after long last, relieve the pain that has rested within us for however many months or years we have stumbled haphazardly through this life.

[Anonymous No.11405469]

>>11405462
[II/II] Our psychic tears, those that relieve our emotional pain, are the salve to every callus the world’s resistance has worn on our spirit. They are the balm to soothe the hardening of our heart, the pumice to slough off our dead skin. Our tears bring us closer to those with whom we share our tears. Our tears deliver us into a closer union with ourselves, having fallen so profusely and voluminously down our obscured faces that the mask we have donned to hide ourselves from others and to hide from beholding our own reflection falls from our face. Through the hazy blur of our reddened eyes, stinging and red with tears, we see ourselves as we really are: damaged, wounded, injured, and barely held together. Our most carefully cultivated illusions vanish in the mist of our tears. The persona we have crafted--one which we have designed to cover over all of our flaws and our weaknesses (most of all from ourselves)--disintegrates by the act of our crying. Thus, through our targeted and honest crying--*honest* here denoting that our tears do not fall from a selfish recognition of a misfortune we do not think ourselves deserving of, but in an honest recognition of our own flaws, shortcomings, weaknesses, etc.--our complexes that have formed and twisted and burrowed their roots in our psyche ever deeper throughout the years begins to become uprooted, their tightly wound pressure finally being relieved like knotted muscle fascia under the focused application of pressure from the masseuse’s hand. This restorative process sees to the unravelling of the past through the banishment of the illusions and the relaxing of our knotted psychic tissue that we have neglected all through our past, throughout much of our lives.

Our tears are the emanation of our relation to the past. The shining we see in ours and others’ eyes in the midst of crying is the shimmering of our painful memories as they are unraveled, as they are exorcised and resolved; or within that glimmering can be seen the manifestation of our months or years of emotional investment in a loved one culminating into a profound emotional experience after witnessing their moments of triumph; or, additionally, we can see the reflection of the archetypal in our tears shed over the narrative arc or the dramatic climax of an engrossing novel or film--it is the universal particulars of a struggle and the characters’ overcoming and self-realization that are understood by all, whose commonalities penetrate to our vulnerable emotional core with the painful yet peculiarly invigorating recognition of a pain that is shared by much if not all of mankind. Such tears, finding their origins in the archetypal, emanate from a rich mythological history that precedes our existence. Therefore, our tears belong to the past; they are the temporal emanation of a history--personal or mythological--whose development relies on instances and occurrences preceding the event of their formation.

[First Poem in a few Years No.11405480]

Shipwreked
Crashing into my chest a feeling begins to rise
not so suddenly, with no warning of any kind
My mind flees my body attempting to escape
But I hear its shouts of terror echo
Theres no where left for me to go
This ship wreck is entirely my own

As I float in a sea Thick and Black
As the waves hit me with a deafening Crack
As if to wonder and then to wander
How ill never be going back

A Captain driven Mad as He Sails
He sings a song of Moans and Wails

A ship wreck entirely my own

[Anonymous No.11405552]

>>11403596
very litty, I stole this for a freestyle with my buddies today

[Anonymous No.11405829]

>>11404959
I feel like it has promise if you cleaned it up a bit. Seemed boring at first until it seemed like he was reliving times past with either a deceased or a departed lover with a certain sense of exaltation implied by the capital - She, Her, etc.

One thing I noticed REAL quick, though, was the procession of
I moved
I return
I momentarily
I searched
I flipped
I took a moment
I sat a minute
going down the page. That's something you'll definitely wanna clean up when you revise it.

[Anonymous No.11405995]

bump and polite request for brief feedback

>>11385939

[Anonymous No.11406118]

>>11401456
Warum?

[Anonymous No.11406127]

First ch. revision
Eduard stood petrified, quivering before the stone balustrade of the Rexford Theater whose gothic architecture and construction of dark stone mimicked the hallowed, imposing severity of an ancient cathedral. He recalled a quotation whose authorship he was uncertain of that the goal of architecture should not be to blot out the heavens but to direct man’s gaze toward God, and, after his widened eyes had scaled the structure’s heights, ascending to the gloomy sky above, he thought it fortunate that the clouds had shrouded the heavens from his vision so that he could not confront The Lord Himself (or turn his gaze to the blazing eye that would watch the world until shuttering in deference to the moon’s evening vigil) with certain perhaps blasphemous questions in his heart; questions which faulted God’s vision for Eduard’s creation, cursing his own pitiful nerves and his fragile body in these anxious moments as he often did.

Once Eduard’s vision returned to the lowly cityscape below--the clouded, gloomy city temporarily removed from God’s view--he weaved a shaking hand into an unbuttoned gap in his overcoat and rested it over his narrow chest, keeping count of the beats of his throttled heart to calculate his resting heart rate; 120 beats per minute, a particularly unhealthy tempo.

Afterward, he clenched his fist and returned it to the front pocket of his overcoat to attempt to console the intensity of its shaking, after which the ashen knuckles of his hand grated across the smooth velvet of a small encasement hidden next to his cigarette case, and this tactile recognition of the miniature box returned him to the immediacy of the task he had set for himself. His stomach churned with nausea as he trembled before the stone-paved staircase which would lead him upward, through the solid wooden door, and deeper into the chambers of the theater where, behind the curtain, tucked away like a treasure awaiting discovery, he would find his girlfriend and, with any luck, his fiancée, Kinsley Adeline.

The ring hidden in the jetted pocket of his overcoat, for the unobservant reader, was purposed to adorn the significant digit of her left hand.

It was far too early for a proposal, he often told himself, and told himself in those preparatory moments before his ascent up the theater’s wide staircase. She’s sure to turn me down, Eduard thought, and in front of everyone watching, no less. He would have preferred to postpone the proposal until, first off, he was prepared to shackle himself to such a profound responsibility, but, truth be told, given the state of his and Kinsley’s relationship, Eduard viewed this task as the last act of a man desperate to salvage a sinking ship that, in certain moments of observation, seemed beyond saving.

[Anonymous No.11406554]

>>11405829
Thank you for the feedback!

[Anonymous No.11406584]

>>11404598
Milady again, thanks, mate.

[Anonymous No.11407034]

>>11405480
Structurally very weak. No consistency with whatever meter or rhyme you had in mind.
The nautical themes you’re using are trite and your use of them feels derivative and artificial, like secondhand scraps picked up from others’ works. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.11407383]

How do you deal with an author that thinks that he understands human emotion better than you do?

[Anonymous No.11407411]

Chapter 1

They call me LOAD BLOWER. I BLOW LOADS.

[Anonymous No.11408000]

>>11407383
What does this even mean? The way you framed the question makes you sound like a fedora, like you can't fathom anyone challenging your intelligence. Is the author writing about certain emotions with some measure of proficiency? Maybe they're a good writer and you hate to feel challenged through literature.

Or you could elaborate if that's not how you feel.

[Anonymous No.11408218]

>>11408000
Maybe he does know better. I don't and most likely can't know.

Anyway, his work has an annual secret mass rape for everyone of a particular age in a particular school and I'm claiming that the in story reactions to it don't make complete sense (e.g. nobody warns their younger siblings to flee before they become of age). He's responded by claiming that he understand human emotion better than I do and presumably has ignored my claims.

[Anonymous No.11408317]

>>11403600

Hats off gentleman, a genius

[Anonymous No.11408342]

>>11408218
Do you know this person IRL? I was assuming you were reading a book by an author you didn't know personally and maybe they seemed conceited in their prose or something.

[Anonymous No.11408364]

>>11408342
I do know them, yes.

[Anonymous No.11408716]

>>11408364
Well, in that case, if that's how he's dodging your critique, his pride and his feigning self-assuredness (or maybe he really is so self-assured which is a mistake) are going to interfere with him producing a believable story. There should be an impetus for the people nobody warning anybody to flee the mass rape, maybe some sort of dire consequence that's arguably worse if people WERE to flee which is why the people, against their morals, remain silent and complicit. Everything should have a reason and a basis BESIDES the author's conceit of absolute knowledge against all believability.

[Anonymous No.11408865]

>>11380937
Need new pasta dood

[Anonymous No.11408907]

Bumping, but changed some stuff.

First serious attempt at writing.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10D2EFMzExpny4jfsjJwc0FOQsnqN2AUlcgtiNjKoVcQ/edit?usp=sharing

[illiterate No.11409455]

>>11408907

Didn't have time to critique thoroughly or even read a substantial portion of but what I read was quite good and you should continue writing.

[Anonymous No.11409850]

Waiter At A Wedding Venue During Cocktail Hour

The white sun's beam,
Amorous for the prim lake,
Dazzles her surface
Like flickering jazz keys

An expanse of crisp,
Stately golf fields
Run about the lake's exterior.

The fields are handsome
Though seldom used for sport.

Mostly, they are only disturbed
By the dejected gaze
Of the stiff waiter
As he passes by
The clear elegant doors
Of the cocktail room.

[Anonymous No.11410000]

A glass of neat bourbon
Beside my reading chair.
The highest grade, I’m told,
By trusted, cryptic sources.
Some twelve tone row tune lurches,
Hanging in the air,
And I frown with concentration
Into the book before me.

You’ve seen the Wordsworth portrait,
His brooding distant stare pales
To my own studied, straining face.
Bent over with postmodern age,
Stricken with nausea and forlorn,
I suffer and bear the cross of knowledge,
The twelve rules I uphold,
The katana resting in my closet,
And fingers eager to salute.

I linger and replace the book,
And reach out for my glass.
With a strong, stiff gulp,
I drink deeply, like a man,
And through my bleary eyes
Looking down the shining tumbler,
I see the bottom caked with mold,
And swallow down the molten amber.

>>11409850
I like it for the most part, though maybe some adjectives seem off or too explicit, where something more descriptive might have a better effect. In particular, “jazz keys,” which is a style as opposed to an instrument, and “dejected gaze” which just feels vague and somewhat abstract.

[Anonymous No.11410084]

This one's not really serious at all, more of something I work on when I have writer's block going on. Just looking for opinions on it though.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sKLT85SLyGAwluSLCV4F3SOyVuNVyAcoR9DkwW64EmA/edit?usp=sharing

[Anonymous No.11410095]

[illiterate No.11410132]

is this promising/ enticing at all to anyone? considering expanding this into a story but not feeling sure of it

[Anonymous No.11410138]

>>11410132
Do people really put hyphens and parentheses in their phone numbers?

[Anonymous No.11410151]

A Haiku:

FISTING A POODLE
SMOOSH SMOOSH SMOOSH SMOOSH SMOOSH SMOOSH SMOOSH
GAPING POODLE ASS

[Anonymous No.11410184]

I plea to the sauced up lord
"Please Lord, make my skin good!"
And He answers not, not this thot.
My skin beggars microdermabrasion,
the quick wipe of a astringent soaked chamois,
and a subtle kiss from a stranger's compliment.
But the earth has different plans.
"Take the skin, bury it in the ground.
Fill each pore with grit and grime
and dial down dryness; maintain oleum levels."
And so it was, ye the time hath come.
Before the end, the final beginning,
I took one more look at my self in the mirror.
Fine complexion, a soft interplay of light,
it was all in my head.
The skin was literally inside my head.
I had been turned outside-in
which was neat.

[Anonymous No.11410251]

I know something you don't know
Trouble coming to your home
Wake up and you're all alone
I know something you don't know

I know why you're on the phone
Late night when you're feeling low
I know why you're in the mud
I know why it's in your blood
I know who your master is
I know when he calls it quits

You'll be in a Chinese restaurant
Over rice with the mud still dripping out

I know something you don't know
Trouble coming to your home
Wake up and you're all alone
I know something you don't know

[illiterate No.11410352]

>>11410138

I mean, the dude's a cop

[Anonymous No.11410395]

[Anonymous No.11410559]

>>11410000

Fair comment, I figured the "jazz keys" line would be understood regardless though, but I may change it. As for the "dejected gaze", I actually didn't think that was vague at all, it was meant to just be a guy staring out at the fields, bored and tired of work. Thanks for the feedback though. Anyway, I like the diction of your poem. It's got a comfy feel, but also a heaviness to it that I think works well generally. I think of a some sort of warrior-poet introspecting in their study when I read this. For whatever reason the line "By trusted, cryptic sources" isn't working for me, the phrase "cryptic sources" doesn't seem to match the rest of the diction imo. Particularly the word "cryptic". Also, while I don't think the chracter is a self-insert or anything, I do still think it may be a little too, hmm, melodramatic? I don't know if that's the word for it. But "I suffer and bear the cross of knowledge" and "Stricken with nausea and forlorn" are good lines, but for whatever reason they come off as possibly insincere and just written to convey an effect of a sort of dismal state rather than actually coming from one you've known. I could be wrong of course, I guess I can't really tell if the poem is completely genuine or not. The writing is great though. Sorry if that's a weird criticism.

[Anonymous No.11410765]

>>11410559
I see what you’re saying but “dejected” still feels off. I could list a couple reasons why but it’s pretty nitpicky to do so. I think “distant” or “far-off” work in a similar capacity with more precision, but that’s just like my opinion, man.

Thanks for the feedback. The piece is tongue-in-cheek, from the eyes of a someone very badly trying to live out a warrior-poet fantasy, but only engaging it on a superficial level and obsessing over things like perfecting his brooding demeanor. Your observations are pretty spot on for what I was going for, just shy of connecting to the sarcasm that underscores the whole thing. I thought the katana line was the dead giveaway.

[Anonymous No.11410930]

https://vorezine.wordpress.com/2018/07/04/leaving-mirrors-on-board-the-ship-of-fools

[Anonymous No.11410968]

"I do, however, remember a vivid dream, one unlike any other, and it was a strange one. I found myself sitting in the cockpit of a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. I was in control. I heard a voice in my headset, in that headset tone.
The voice was irrelevant. A map of the world had appeared before me translucently. I knew what my mission was. And then I knew what my true mission was.
My bomber split from the pack, to the sound of disgruntled radio shouts. I flew to Gaza and dropped a nuclear bomb. And then I flew to the oil mines by Cairo and dropped conventional bombs at a machinegun rate, like I was laying down a carpet on a hard, wooden floor of fire.
I had lost my hearing. Not physically. It was just a dream, after all. I was able to overcome and suppress through ignorance; the sounds of angry old white dudes screaming into my headset. I had no need to say anything in the dream, but in my lucidity, I heard a distant voice calling to me. Until now, I had forgotten what the voice had said.
Then, like a flash in a pan, A great big explosion happened around me, fire erupted like volcanoes on my left and on my right. The cockpit window that had protected me had shattered. I was put against the high-G winds of the desert sky as my smoky falling star nosedived into the Kaaba."

[Anonymous No.11410980]

>>11410968
another excerpt, this one is my best:

"And the sign came to me. What was the logical extent of utilitarianism? I channeled all of my mental energy into the question for weeks, and I had finally come to a grave conclusion.
The logical extent of utilitarianism would be to extract the most possible utility, or “happiness” out of the world, until the eventual heat death of the universe in 10100 years. With my current knowledge of the existing universe, humanity was the greatest possible domain that I could extract utility from. What did humans do? We slept, we ate, we bred, and we defecated, just like every other animal in the wild. Just like bacteria.
Bacteria slept, bacteria could eat, it could breathe, duplicate, defecate. There were advanced technological societies formed of bacterial beings, but they were destroyed time and time again, countless every nanosecond; and maybe, there’s a single cell of bacteria among every one of them that could think like I could think; that was afraid and alone like I was; and was left wondering about the gluons below them, if they could eat, sleep, defecate and breed like the bacteria could. Perhaps, the bacteria thought of the tissues above them and the organs above those; thinking of the humans that were in turn, thinking of them; and left wondering if, just like they could, we could sleep, eat, breathe, defecate, breed… and die. (1/2)

[Anonymous No.11410983]

>>11410980
Death was on our minds, no matter if we were the outcast titans whose molecular structures were the solar systems, or we were humans, or the bacteria, or the ant out of line; or perhaps the male spider with no silk, and three broken legs; crawling out of a dirt mound scared, lonely, cold and painful, and betrayed; limping from the female spider wicked on liquefying him and feeding his juices into the eggs; from which he had just fisted her. He was crying. His compound eyes cried compound tears, and he had faded away. He didn’t want to die.
And so, we, the disenfranchised of the universe, were all together. One body; not physically; but of the same idea. We had empathy, or more accurately, oneness. We were not alone. We just had to give the signal, and the rest of the universe would have concurred.
It was our intention to not die, and yet there is only meaning in life if one died. Our intentions were in direct conflict with what our souls had craved, there was no need to be afraid of our own souls, since we were morbid. It is said that the body is temporary, that dopamine doesn’t last forever, but great and deep thought would perplex intellect forever. In that sense, there was no need to be afraid of death, and therefore, existence in death was equally worth existence in life.
The logical conclusion was that there was no meaning to life, other than the fake, plastic bullshit we told ourselves. It was time to stop being afraid; time to stop cowering behind liberalism and conservatism and socialism, and nihilism, and Islamism.
It was time for set our minds free, by destroying the sacks of dopamine. It was time for us to die. But we didn’t want to die. Because we were addicted to the dopamine, dependent upon it, like how the Iowans were dependent upon meth. Wait, what?" (2/2)

[Anonymous No.11410993]

>>11410980
Do you watch richard and mortimer?

[Anonymous No.11410999]

>>11410993
I was way before Rick and Morty. I was forced to watch braindead shit like iCarly and Family Guy. The only good shit I watched was stuff like Superjail or Aqua Teen Hunger Force late at night.

[Anonymous No.11411095]

>>11410395
I like this because I had a turtle that died, and it's a nice little poem. Love the last line.
>The Fishe
Why this?

[Anonymous No.11411306]

?Have two novel in the works
>Don't know which I should Prioritize first.
help me

[Anonymous No.11411350]

>>11411306
Genre of each?

[Anonymous No.11411400]

>>11411350
Admittedly I don't know what the first book genre would be. Gothic comes into mind but I don't think that's right

The second book is an adventure genre

[Anonymous No.11411442]

>>11411400
Adventure, depending on the subject of each

It's more popular

[Anonymous No.11411775]

>>11405480
nice anaphora, otherwise quite boring

[Anonymous No.11412481]

Mr. C (1/2)

What brings you in to the office today?

Well doctor, I’ll be honest. It’s the pain.

Oh my, I express empathy for what you’re going through, but at the same time have to ask you to be more specific.

It’s everywhere!

Everywhere in your stomach? Everywhere in your head? Everywhere in your right lower quadrant migrating from the lower right to near the bellybutton and exhibiting rebound tenderness?

Everywhere!

Ok, when did the pain start?

It really flared up a few weeks ago, but I think I can pretty much trace it back to birth in some form.

All the way back to birth?

Maybe before, but I don’t remember that part.

How often do you feel the pain? Is there a time of day it gets better or worse?

Sometimes there are flare-ups, but it is pretty constant all the time.

What does it feel like?

Well, I would characterize it as kind of a dull gnawing, like an anxiety that spreads everywhere from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers and toes? Does that make sense?

Have you or a loved one ever been diagnosed with mesothelioma?

Do you think that’s what this is??

No, not at all, but I always ask it because the compensation you may be entitled to can be just astounding!

Compensation isn’t going to help me, doctor, I just want to be free of this agony!

Right, right, quite fair. Tell me more.

About what?

[Anonymous No.11412491]

>>11412481
Mr. C (2/2)

Can you think of anything that might have provoked this?

Something at or before my birth? I’m really not sure about that. I don’t think there was anything really unusual about my early childhood—plenty of unconditional love, Bohr-model-nucleus family, facing and overcoming fears, beating shit out of bullies, et cetera. I was even—when I graduated from high school—by no means top of the class--even awarded the Least Exposed to Existential Trauma trophy. Picture perfect!

Oh I meant more like eating some bad sushi or getting in a car wreck in the last two weeks or something

No, no nothing like that.

Well I’m stumped as hell. Let’s move on to the social history.

What’s that?

Do you smoke or drink?

I actually just took up smoking two or three weeks ago.

Do you think that could have caused this pain you feel all over your body? I hope so, ‘cause that would be a fire case study.

No, I actually started because I went back to school to do a philosophy major, and it just seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

Well we are at the University of Algiers in France in the time period between 1932-1936, so I have to say I can’t argue with you. What do you smoke?

Just tobacco, my pipe looks a lot like the one that you are currently smoking, doctor.

Oh isn’t it great for the circulation!

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of reading for my philosophy major, and it’s seemed to confirm a lot of what I’ve been feeling for a long, long, time.

What have you been reading?

Philosophy, mostly.

Understandable. Some of those books are very heavy, do you think you dropped one on your body?

It’s more like they dropped on my soul, doctor. I’ve realized that man’s struggle for meaning in an unfeeling cosmos resembles the plight of Sisyphus in the Greek myth, eternally pushing a rock uphill only to have it fall down again. When Sisyphus marches down the mountain to start anew, I see man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. But, you know what doctor? When he acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance. In fact, the struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. And I’m happy too now! The only remaining relevant existential question is that of suicide!

I’m glad I could help you Mr. Camus. Will you be paying with Medicare or private insurance?

[Anonymous No.11412532]

>>11408865
what do you mean

[Anonymous No.11412636]

Beginning of a ballad I'm writing. Pls no bully, german is not my first language.

Als das Schlachtschiff von den Werften
Rollte in das blaue Meer
Und mit salzig kalten wellen
Spritzte auf das Menschenheer

Die da kamen um zu staunen
An Deutschland’s neustem Kriegsschiff
Mit Champagner, mit Posaunen
Zur See! Es tönt ein letzter Pfiff

[Anonymous No.11412755]

I’ll be turning 30 this year and the problem that is more important to me now – more than unemployment, more than my strained relationship with my parents – is my virginity. How can a 30 year old man be a kissless virgin? Well, he can. Everybody on /fit/ knows it’s possible but how will she react – whoever that she will be – when she finds out? How do you find the strength to start doing anything in your romantic life with so little experience? How do you start?
America is a peculiar country for a European; it seems traditional but the most vehement progressives seem to be the most active in the US – those that would make you believe only verbal, enthusiastically expressed ‘yes, I want to have sex with you’ makes you stop being a rapist. Those that would call you a nazi if you weren’t happy about social changes. Those that make you lose any interest in having a social life because there is no way you’ll fit in, as if you didn’t have neough reason to be scared of opening yourself up to the world.

Is this why I’m on 4chan so much? Is dropping 4chan, dropping all my personal doubts and beliefs, all my interests the only way to become a functioning member of society? Will this make others accept me? Will this make me feel less of a failure?

When I was a kid my mom made a big deal of me going out with a girl for the first time. She giggled when I came home, joked about me starting to be mature. It scarred me - I like to think it scarred me for life - but the truth, I guess, is that it’s just a good reason not to try. Not to ask somebody out. Not to see what it’s like.

She literally just came into my room and hung freshly ironed clothes in my wardrobe. She is my mother and I don’t hate her. I hate what I’ve become over the years.

(written without breaks, without thinking and without deleting anything. Stream of consciousness if you like. after literally rolling on a "roll" thread on /fit/)

[Anonymous No.11412865]

Link if pic related comes out too small or hard to read for whatever reason: https://pastebin.com/bb9xisM9

[Anonymous No.11413003]

>>11412636
Impressive, even more so as you arent a native speaker. How long have you been studying German?

[Anonymous No.11413066]

>>11413003
I lived in Switzerland for 7 years and had some pretty good teachers who made me like /lit/ stuff in the first place.

[Anonymous No.11413147]

>>11412481
>>11412491
Not as clever as you think it (you) is (are)

[Anonymous No.11413275]

>>11413147
It you is are?

[Anonymous No.11413498]

>>11412636
*Wellen
>Als... (temporaler Attributivsatz), ... (Hauptsatz?)
The main part seems missing. What happens when the battle ship rolls in?
>An *Deutschlands neustem Kriegsschiff
strikes me as being off-metrum. The line should be one syllable longer maybe.

tl;dr: Germans will always find something to critisize, but I like where it's going. Keep posting.

[Anonymous No.11413711]

>>11413275
He’s saying the piece isn’t as clever as the poster thinks it is, nor is he by extension of his having written it.

[Anonymous No.11413713]

I made a poem about Actaeon and reworked his myth. I hope its interesting. Inspired by Byron's Don Juan I chose a form similar to Ottava Rima but with two alternate rhymes instead of three and didn't stick very strictly to it.

Hunting in the woods for thee
Zephyr drags me all around
Hunting in the woods for me
I come to rest - where I'm found
I searched for - I search
For a phantom one

A task I had - a maiden's hand
Promised me - to chase and find
For this huntress bathing
A deer of golden kind
A lock of hair she gave me
And warned me off my quest

This hair a string of bow
A box I put my heart and hand
Her hair to keep - my soul
A dragon thing - golden lamb
This hydra's me I guess
The box I hold - to my chest

To Psyche and Cupid I prayed
And Cupid gift this bow
From horn and hair he made
But she's never where I go
I've been lost - lost for ages
Growing gray - gray in stages

Hunting dogs my only friends
I've become a monstrous thing
In the woods I murder men
A horrid bandit king
Stag horns crown my beastly head
Perhaps I'll woo - rage instead

Huntress - one more cup of wine?
Lytta - dog capped one - Lytta
Mania - in a box I place my mind
I break my bow - on my knee!
This must end or must end me
The hunting dogs barked - Atë!

And so a nearby polis I attack
Many more in Beotia I burned
And let loose dogs of war
Until in time on me they turned
Mad dogs shall consume a city whole
Hungry still they eat the soul

With rage in heart I burn
Burned an aedes down
Heart's own sacred temple
In the center of the town
I, defiled, defile defiant
Naught left but ashes, cold and silent

And so rabid dogs - chase me mad
Lost in woods without my map
One last choice I had
A pit I fall - a hunter's trap
I broke my leg and
On heart's own bow string hang

Some say Hermes is the god of poems
But assuredly it is a god of love
From heaven's heights spring thunder
But the heart beats louder than sky above
By Cupid's grace none of me remains
Save lyre strings and these staves

[Anonymous No.11414456]

>>11410930
Can anyone critique my poem?

[illiterate No.11414594]

>>11414456
who did you critique? I've already done about 10 here, where's your contribution? Or are you leeching like everyone else?