RuneScape Forum Archive | Flash Fiction

Sep

2023

Enheduanna

Posts: 16,566 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Poller5 said :
Your entry is very well written, Sam, from a technical stand point ("we made to grant ourselves immortality" resonates especially well), but suffers largely from telling rather than showing. That death is a good thing is an old trope of literature (and the very core of the philosophy of Tolkien's legendarium, for example) but nothing in your piece serves to demonstrate why it's a good thing. It may be that that is too expansive a theme to try and work with with only 100 words. It's a flashy piece, and a flashy argument, but unfortunately rather hollow on both accounts.

I chose the whole "death is a good thing" (interestingly enough, despite fantasy books making up, at last count, 98 out of the 105 books on my bookshelf, and all the ones I've bought since then have also been fantasy, of Tolkien's works, I have only ever read the Hobbit, and watched the Lord of the Rings movies. I'm a disgrace, I know) simply because that's something I have mixed thoughts about.

I'd love to be immortal, but I would want that immortality to come with some sort of thing where I could choose to die, on the off chance I ever really wanted to.

Moving on, I think my story suffers from being too personal.

For me, it's very, very easy to imagine the sort of intergalactic (or perhaps inter-universal) empire that would seek to conquer death and suceed (mostly because of the country-creation games and so on I play on the forums where I actually control such an empire and have built it up over about three years), as well as to imagine the resulting problems that would occur once you finally realised that it was literally impossible to die (does life have meaning if it doesn't have an end?, for example).

But I wasn't writing the story for myself, so what seems obvious to extrapolate from a personal perspective, now that I look back on it, does appear to be telling to other people.

Thanks for the feedback!

01-Mar-2014 04:42:16

Dec

2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Original message details are unavailable.
I was hesitant to submit it at first as I firmly believe that literature that is made up of obscure references is wrong, as it limits who can read and be effected by your work. But I liked the insect-writing noises metaphor so much I chose to in the end.

You'd hate classical literature, then; at one point from the 300s-200s BC, the more obscure and referential your work, the better is was considered. Though later, Vergil's Aeneid does the same thing a fair bit. As a classicist, I actually quite like the allusiveness of some poetry (poetry is always worse for it), but I'm "in on the joke", so to speak, and I can understand why others would dislike it. Personally, my view has been that if a work was written to be enjoyed in that way, it's the burden of the audience to educate themselves, not of the author to make it universally accessible.

Original message details are unavailable.
I'd love to be immortal, but I would want that immortality to come with some sort of thing where I could choose to die, on the off chance I ever really wanted to.

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et <c>um illi pueri dicerent: "Sibylla ti theleis;" respondebat illa: "Apothanein thelo."

(Just to commit the very sin about which Cyun just complained!)

01-Mar-2014 05:59:21 - Last edited on 01-Mar-2014 06:00:58 by Poller5

Cyun

Posts: 2,389 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Poller5 said :
Original message details are unavailable.
I was hesitant to submit it at first as I firmly believe that literature that is made up of obscure references is wrong, as it limits who can read and be effected by your work. But I liked the insect-writing noises metaphor so much I chose to in the end.

You'd hate classical literature, then; at one point from the 300s-200s BC, the more obscure and referential your work, the better is was considered. Though later, Vergil's Aeneid does the same thing a fair bit. As a classicist, I actually quite like the allusiveness of some poetry (poetry is always worse for it), but I'm "in on the joke", so to speak, and I can understand why others would dislike it. Personally, my view has been that if a work was written to be enjoyed in that way, it's the burden of the audience to educate themselves, not of the author to make it universally accessible.

I have noticed a lot of elegies fall into the tradition of being saturated with references to Bion or Virgil and it renders the genre incapable of expressing authentic grief without a taste of artifice, as Samuel Johnson said of Milton's 'Lycidas'. Of course, there's a happy medium to anything though.

01-Mar-2014 12:58:34 - Last edited on 01-Mar-2014 13:02:15 by Cyun

Dec

2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

It seems weeks keep getting longer and longer here, but this one's finally over, it seems.

This week's prompt, going back to something you should include in your piece, is: ...beneath stranger stars...

05-Mar-2014 00:57:49

Cyun

Posts: 2,389 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The moon softly slept in the night, whispering silvery words across the surface of the water. The boat beneath stranger stars inhaled and exhaled with the ripples, while the oar solemnly rested in the black water. A man lay in the boat, two eyes reflecting the great white one above. The great white stared unblinkingly until it sunk into the sea, while the small two wetly blinked. The emerging sun found the man’s knife in his hand and glinted in acknowledgement. The man sliced a mouth into his throat and disappeared from the horizon with an insignificant splash.

05-Mar-2014 14:00:18 - Last edited on 05-Mar-2014 14:02:30 by Cyun

Chosen Worf

Posts: 929 Gold Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

It was the same death, the same carnage, the same destruction. The same fires had blazed beneath stranger stars than those that now choked in a mounting plume of sulfurous smoke. No one thought it would come to this: that the murder of cartel head half a galaxy away would have erupted into a multi-galaxial conflict. But after millions of years of spreading across the cosmos, braving monstrous supernovae and lurking gluttonous black holes, no flames seared the human race as harshly as the ones that now engulfed planet Earth. And as the flames rose, the stars sputtered, and disappeared.

05-Mar-2014 21:22:25 - Last edited on 06-Mar-2014 05:15:33 by Chosen Worf

Chosen Worf

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double post

05-Mar-2014 21:22:25 - Last edited on 05-Mar-2014 21:22:48 by Chosen Worf

Sep

2023

Enheduanna

Posts: 16,566 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“Who’s been your favourite actor to understudy?”

“Definitely Matt Smith. I mean, I’ve worked beneath stranger stars—a given, I think, since this is Broadway—but, well, I’ve always been a fan of Doctor Who, plus he’s a really nice and funny guy – and incredibly entertaining off-stage, too.

I mean, you know how the Eleventh Doctor loves fezzes, how they’re basically his thing? That’s actually Matt’s thing. First day of rehearsals, he rocked up in a fez. Wouldn’t take it off, not for anything; he never actually did until we started doing costume rehearsals. And sometimes not even then.”

06-Mar-2014 03:00:17 - Last edited on 06-Mar-2014 03:00:55 by Enheduanna

Dec

2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Just taking a second to look back at least week, Chuk very helpfully reminded me that I hadn't chosen a favourite yet. Two very much stood out - Chuk's, for the beauty of simple nostalgia and that dearest of friends, a good book; and Cyun's, for the absolutely sickening atmosphere he managed to create with so few words. By a small margin, the award* goes to Chuk.

* hahahahaha as if

06-Mar-2014 05:07:41

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Poller5 said :
Just taking a second to look back at least week, Chuk very helpfully reminded me that I hadn't chosen a favourite yet. Two very much stood out - Chuk's, for the beauty of simple nostalgia and that dearest of friends, a good book; and Cyun's, for the absolutely sickening atmosphere he managed to create with so few words. By a small margin, the award* goes to Chuk.

* hahahahaha as if

What about week 2, when I didn't participate? I MUST KNOW WHO WON THE CICADAS!

And thanks for the award*! Though I was more proud of the piece I wrote for week 1, I was fairly happy with this one as well, so I'm glad you approved.

* hahahahaha as if

06-Mar-2014 09:02:38 - Last edited on 06-Mar-2014 09:07:04 by Chuk

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