leonard267 Posts

This is in line with my reading habits as a reader of essays and articles. I skim through the entire article, pick out keywords, transition sentences and topic sentences, have a general idea of what is being written then I would read the article properly.

When I tried to do that, I am completely lost. This being fiction is not written in the format that I am used to. There was no explanation as to who the characters are; like your entry, important points were explained through dialogue that can be so easily missed and it felt like watching a film. (I imagine that we would have flashes of the witch our hero wanted to catch in that film but that can't be done on paper) So, it is difficult to pick plot details. I would have preferred some exposition.

(It is hinted in the dialogue that he is searching for a witch but I misinterpreted that. I thought that the witch was caught and he was looking for some other woman!)

There weren't any transition sentences (which made me misunderstand turiondel's entry) instead Xenon goes for a literal break in the story marked by three dashes. (Is it the break that you were talking about in your remarks about my entry?) Transition sentences indicate that another point is being made. I would have preferred a sentence indicating that the witch hunt was off or exposition about the scene we are about to transit into. What was done instead was a scene of a ten year old boy training which made me think, "Is it another character that I missed out?"

I hope you know that I tried reading the first few paragraphs again word by word to figure out what was going on but to no avail. If I can't understand the first part of the story then it would be difficult to understand what follows next.

I did do what you told me to only to ignore parts that I could not understand only to find out that I am skipping large chunks of the story. Once again, I picked out the funeral, I picked out the training scene, I picked out the coronation, I picked out the confrontation but I could not string together a story in my head.

Adding on to what high_time said, I disagree that the use of description was a bad thing. Quite the opposite, it orientated me. I just wish that more third person writing can be devoted to exposition of the characters and the setting.


PS: Xenon, the first part of your story made more sense now. I am still puzzled about the prince who was training after the first break. Is he one of the sons of our hero? (not the baby)

What appears to be the problem here is my reading style. I don't really digest each word. I treat your entry like a written report and browse through them instead. Most readers of written reports would have to deal with plenty of reports so he can't read the report slowly.

Last minute submission. Concerning that War!

Concerning that War

Here is a little ruminating from me before I talk about a fictional civil war fought by alleged people. Robert Malthus infamously suggested that human populations will be checked by famine, disease, wars, pollution, suicidal tendencies and other thought-up disasters. I would like to summarise this view by saying that human populations will go the way I do not want if there is an excess of stupidity within the population that would lead to the famines, diseases, wars and what not. This supposed civil war described in this entry is a perfect embodiment of that.

Now, it would be too bothersome to go into the causes of the war because it would mean going through the history of the made-up and unnamed country, most of which can be described as a cycle of war, rebuilding, an inadvertent golden age (that might not happen), inevitable decay and disappointment and war again; it would mean having to chronicle events driven by the general stupidity of the inhabitants of the country which could be a mammoth and depressing task; it would mean having to put in effort into making things up because this war is fictional and did not happen anyway!

So, let me settle for making up a shorter account of a chain of stupid events that happened during that war. You might have heard of some hack writer called leonard267 write a load of gibberish and laughable nonsense over four thousand words long allegedly about that war through the lenses of someone who is so obviously suffering from autism. What follows will be based on that.

Now, if you could just ignore the quality music which was regrettably posted together with the indecipherable drivel notwithstanding the fact that your time would be better spent listening to that rather than reading it, our main characters are a man and a woman who are of course romantically involved. Before one can dismiss their relationship as being reminiscent of those of lousy romance novels where the characters behave outrageously, copulate at the drop of a hat and are generally under the delusion that their actions take place in a vacuum isolated from real life considerations, one must know that the two of them aren’t exactly physically appealing. I will not go in too much on how the male lead called David looks like because I am lazy but the female lead of that story called Elizabeth is simply ugly! Furthermore, I think they are rather old fashioned being willing to take up any demands imposed on them. They like proper human beings brought up in human societies are actually beholden to social pressures. Take that you harlequin romance buffs!

Now that I have driven away people who are into those sappy and delusional stories, I would point out that the only thing resembling a fairy tale is that our female lead is bizarrely from the lower rungs of society while our male lead pretty much runs society. The implausibility of it nonetheless is a source of amusement for me. As the following will show, it appears that our female lead is doing the heavy lifting while our male lead displayed masterly inactivity.

It is made clear the woman is able to lead armies while the man is rather good at keeping silent. That is not to say that he is entirely useless though. He somehow manages to move the plot by writing proposals of marriage to his father. More stupidity among the leadership in that fictional country meant that it is doomed to be plunged into civil war with everyone scrambling for control over the entire country.

There was a lot of fighting, a lot of bloodshed, a lot of collateral damage, a lot of property damage, a lot of psychological damage, business contracts being voided, credit ratings crashing to the lowest grade possible, government bonds becoming junk, tribal differences becoming more accentuated sowing the seeds for future unrest, richer and more peaceful countries leading pointless and spine chilling aid drives and “Stop the War protests” and many other things the story written by leonard267 did not bother to mention. All is well though since our male and female lead got closer whilst slaughtering many people.

That came to the end when they tried to take down a city which leonard267 did not bother to name really. We know this because no one is his or her right mind would name a city “The Ruined City”. There was then some melodrama about a soldier, in this case our female lead, obeying orders and suffering grievous and permanent injury in the process. Some accounts of the story said that she died but what is clear is the male lead did nothing. He might have cried but this does not change the fact that he is rather useless.

Long story short, the war ended and both the male lead worked till he died repairing the damage that he caused in the first place. I am not so sure about the female lead though. I am appalled by the temerity of leonard267 to imply that this war and our male and female leads are worthy of emulation to tell you the truth! If there is anything this war (that never really happened) demonstrated, it is pure stupidity that did quite a lot of harm. Same to how our male and female lead behaved mind you!

Written by leonard267 in critique of leonard267 in the spirit of Jawaharlal Nehru.

The following post is a critique of another entry submitted for this event. Some call the event entry "The Aristocrat, The Peasant and The City". The author of that entry prefers calling it "Out Xnining Xninebreaker". Shame on him on both counts for plagiarising the title of Lewis Carroll's (sic) classic "The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe" and insulting a rather well-liked user! Let me provide the link to that entry:

The Aristocrat, The Peasant and The City / Out Xnining Xninebreaker

If you could read it, it might make whatever that is written below make more sense.

Everyone else would like a time extension if you ask me. My entry will be something more to your tastes. The decision is really up to you. I see this as an event to have fun so an extension of the deadline shouldn't really be a problem for them.

You did say that you would allow for an extension of time. In this case it is half a day.

I didn't know that.

I would like to request for a time extension. I should be able to come up with another entry by 11pm, your time.

Correct me if I am wrong. You are writing three separate stories and combining these stories into one entry aren't you?

It wouldn't be too boring for me as a reader of newspapers (which some here can argue could be the most boring thing to read) if the plot was told conventionally. What grabs the attention of this reader is how the plot advances and more importantly what the characters would do in such a situation.

Since it is written in the way where the reader is left to figure out how the plot develops, it is hard for me to see how the plot advances and harder to sympathise with the characters in the story because I don't know what they have to do with the plot. Take the man, woman and the infant at the start of the story. What do they have to do with our main characters, the King and the Queen being killed by the witch? (I think it is told anachronologically; after the witch committed regicide, she is sent to burn at the stake. The man told both the woman and her infant that he is going to see the burning) Since I could get it wrong, I am much more comfortable if the plot is spelt out for me.

Also, I would not like to spend too much time rereading the entry so I don't really try to figure it out.

PS: When I said "understanding what was going on", I meant understanding how the plot progresses. I can read the words but I am left wondering what does it have to do with the main story? What do I need to pay attention to? I believe it is because it jumps into what seems to be another story like the winning Winter Contest entries and the entry by turiondel called Bird's Eye View (which I suspect are three separate stories cut up and scattered all over)

It may be clear from turiondel's entry that it is three separate stories. Not so for your entry it seems which appears to be a story set in the same universe.

PPS: Let me guess, your story is about the deaths of our main characters and how everyone is responding to it?

Why end it on 14th February though and start it so soon after the Winter Event?

That said, Happy Total Defence Day!

Read like the story posted in this section where a old man gets a few minions and shot the protagonist's parents in front of him. Disgusted me which means the story did what it intended to do. I can do a parody of this.

Loved the sentences (while it could be better constructed) that introduced the characters of the story and what had happened to them.

Is it meant to make me laugh?

I see. Did the old fart kill his own children or were his victims strangers?

I am rather lost after skimming through the entry. Take the first part where a man steps into a room occupied by a woman and an infant. I have little idea who they are and what do they have to do the story as a whole. What were the scouts chasing after? What was the prince doing? Why the scene where the royal guards honed their swordcraft? What funeral? All of these are scenes that I have difficulty stringing into a coherent plot.

I blame my pet peeve of the need to have an introduction that indicated who the characters were and why do they matter. I noticed that the format of this entry is really similar to the winning entry of the Winter Contest where I had difficulty stringing the scenes together. If there were some transitional sentences that connected one scene to another, it could help orientate me as what is going on.

The parts where I understood a little on what was going on were the parts that went into a narration of what the king and the queen did after the coronation and the confrontation with the witch. I believed there was some dialogue that indicated what was happening like the witch attempting to transplant a warlock's soul into our male lead the king.

I wonder how others like d manage to understand what is going on. It could help me appreciate formats like these. Even after reading the first part word for word, I still could not understand the entry.

I don't agree with the idea that the plot feels generic. The story is reminiscent of the urban legends that we hear every now and then. Definitely a break from reading inner monologues and love stories we so often read in this section.

What I am interested after skimming through this story is what lead to our hero discovering our female lead. Who was the person that sneaked past him at the start of the story?

[quote="d(^_^)(^_^)d"]

That is what is by definition. All anticlimaxes disappoint and so betray expectations. You needn't dislike an anticlimax though. I enjoy writing anticlimactically to humour myself and others.

I will repeat what I have said to you in private that I liked this poem for its references to the real world. Fact mystifies me more than fiction. Fiction is derived from it!

You are right. Going against expectation is the more proper phrase. The climax of the story is not what I think most would have expected. The climax of the story in my opinion was: Instead of rejecting an unacceptable demand, Elizabeth went along with it. I've always thought that an anticlimax betrays expectations and disappoints the reader. I believed the lack of a protest from both the characters could be an anticlimax.

While this would be one of my few articles that high was not happy with and it is very different from what I usually write, I feel that it is still consistent with my insistence in going against the norm.

Inspiration wise, I would say that one thought came after another. David and Elizabeth were inspired from xnine's entry. I wanted to show how the female lead was important and I want the male lead to have a stake in the city he visited. I also wanted the main characters to have virtues that I really admire.

Thank you for the entry. I skimmed through it and found it a pleasant read. Definitely addressed my pet peeves of proper introducing the characters.

Man relates his story to a stranger about killing his friend over a pixie. It does leave me a few questions though, chief of them is what the stranger was and why did he attack him and mock him. What was the stranger?

That said, you implied that the story is allegorical. May I know what it is?

You have to inform high_time that you want this entry to be a contest entry. I suggest posting in the stickied thread.

Wonderful summary of Norwegian Wood! Why didn't I think of that earlier and wasted time writing a review of it? This is one of the best work I have read in quite a while!

This piece elicits the feelings I get after reading an Edgar Allan Poe excerpt. I don't take to a written catharsis of one's feelings unless there are written by megalomaniacs and madmen. leonard267 thinks that it needs more negativity (even though it is negative already) This really reminds me of what I usually write but more serious.

Relevation, you ought to read McGonagall's poems and his diaries about his exploits cooking bacon and cleaning his house! You will then write like leonard267. leonard267 would have you know that he really wants to parody and satirise it. In fact he already did!

What comes into your mind when you look at your calendar only to find that today is the 14th of February? I can't read minds but if you are living in the West (sans Australasia), chances are it would be the 15th of February from where I come from. While others are celebrating this accursed festival of romance, a concept that is a vaguely defined, supposedly hormone driven, clouds what could otherwise be good judgement and potentially ruinous, I find it near impossible to celebrate that day.

The 15th of February marks a God-forsaken event that would be known to be one of the darkest events in history when a foreign invader decided to set up shop on my territory. What followed was an orgy of rape, pillage, economic devastation and endemic malnutrition. It was an occupation that can only be described as tyrannical rule if one were to be lenient. I am of course referring to the hypothetical scenario if I let these silly feelings of romance get the better of me and end up with a woman that would ruin the lives of me and many others.