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Arkkataka

Arkkataka

Posts: 4,327 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
After reading through Xen's assessment of Chuk's piece I was surprised in some ways, not so much in others. The following will be purely opinion based: I thought the strongest part of Chuk's descriptions was that the place he describe was Aubrey's Rune shop, not someone else's. It is intensely unique, and because it's unique I really enjoy the heavy descriptions because you are trying to make me imagine something new. Plus I don't infer well, so more explicit descriptions help.

The main departing point from other people's comments is that the last paragraph, in my opinion, while good, wasn't incredible for my enjoyment of the piece. I loved everything else more than the end.

I'm also surprised that you described my piece as a departure from Chuk's because, ironically enough, I was thinking hard on trying to make my piece original as well as breathing. I'd read Chuk's piece and wanted to make mine as unique, which is why I heavily mentioned how the western sector interacts with the rest of Varrock.

23-Jun-2013 02:13:01

Xereva

Xereva

Posts: 7,589 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I meant to describe yours as unique and very different from Chuk's, I'm not sure that quite came across. And my critiques are all necessarily very opinion-based as well, as I think I note in my intro, so feel free to disregard and question as much as you like, since I have a lot of blind spots still.

For me, all locations, even things like franchise coffee shops and restaurants, are singular. So the idea that it being Aubury's rune shop specifically makes the piece strong is a strange one to me. It's a location like all others, and deserving of description that captures it well.

As for the last paragraph and its hold on me, I can't explain much about it except that it has punch . It's satisfyingly final, gives the reader a striking image to consider, and as I mentioned in the review, it also gives some detail about exactly who's telling the story, which is sparse up to that point. For me, the combination of all this right at the end is perfect. It might not work for everyone, but it worked for me.

23-Jun-2013 02:39:39

Arkkataka

Arkkataka

Posts: 4,327 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I didn't mean to debate, I only meant to share my opinions. But I'm a little surprised that you think little of your own advice, because your advice reflects many things I've thought about my story a while after writing it. Your opinion looks more like good criticism than it does an opinion (except in Chuk's review).

I can understand what you mean about the last part of Chuk's review. Even if my opinion disagrees. :P

I really enjoy uniqueness because everything feels the same to me. This is more likely life experience, and heavily opinion based. I see the same things over and over, and I get bored fast. I hate seeing a dozen wal-marts and mcdonalds all over the place because there's too many for it to be something special.

I suppose my style of writing and Chuk's are very separate after all, but I just thought it was funny that I kept thinking about Chuk's and then my own to try and make it more original.

Should I do some previous assignments? I've got time for them, and sad to say I've read all of them and just didn't make time to do it then.

23-Jun-2013 02:58:49

Xereva

Xereva

Posts: 7,589 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I'd rather you didn't do previous assignments just now, mostly because I'll have my hands full if any other assignments come in, and the full assignment descriptions are archived somewhere I don't remember. If two other assignments come in before Wednesday and I've got time, you'll be the first to know, and I'll track down the assignment description of your choice so that you can take a crack at it.

Part of the reason I'm so uncertain of my own advice is because so much of literary criticism and almost anything to do with creative writing is complete BS. I can tell you that of all the papers and response journals I wrote in college, the single thing that I learned was that you can twist any words to any purpose or meaning. I wouldn't even read all of the books that we were assigned, and still managed B+ to A grades when I put some real effort into polishing what I wrote. I'm wary, as a result, of making my words out to be anything but what they are: a single viewer's intensely subjective analysis. I've put years into figuring out how to perceive and how to describe what I'm perceiving, but that doesn't mean it's any more or any less valid than an observer with no focus in that area at all.

I've had a kind of fetish for originality in the past, but I've found that these days I focus more on just trying to tell a good story, tropes and originality be damned. The more one tries to get away from clichés, I'm convinced, the more one plays into them.

23-Jun-2013 03:13:32

Arkkataka

Arkkataka

Posts: 4,327 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Thanks for the update on assignments.

Very interesting thoughts, especially the part about being able to twist words to any meaning. It's true and false simultaneously. True because the world is only our subjective experience from the very get-go. False because no matter what crap you make up and spin them into meaning, there is always a truth behind the crap, otherwise it couldn't exist. That's not to say it can't be misleading, it can be devastating, but it seems as though anything can become true by adopting another point of view.

I don't know whether to agree or disagree about clichés. I've worked hard to avoid them, even this time. And yet I spent days thinking about my story before I finally said "***** it, I'm telling the whole thing, and then I can show" I had little regard for clichés at that point because I felt confident that one couldn't exist here. The world is so full of paradoxes.

*Not sure why it's blocked, the word was S.C.R.E.W. (funny to say it like that actually)

23-Jun-2013 03:33:04 - Last edited on 23-Jun-2013 03:34:48 by Arkkataka

Poller5
Dec Member 2023

Poller5

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

The main departing point from other people's comments is that the last paragraph, in my opinion, while good, wasn't incredible for my enjoyment of the piece. I loved everything else more than the end.

I had the exact same view on Chuk's piece, personally. Either way, it seems we all agree that it was quite a neat and original little piece.

When it comes to clichés, my opinion is generally that it's the treatment of an idea that decides whether it's good or bad, not the idea itself. After all, clichés exist for a reason: they have proven themselves to work. That a poor writer can use them as a crutch shouldn't dissuade a great writer from elevating the basic form into a work of art.

Now, time to go see if I can't get somewhere on my own assignment...

EDIT: Alright, finally finished it off. It grew in some strange ways after the germination of the concept, but I think I like where it ended up.

EDIT2: My god. Every time I try to edit out the censor issues in the second post, the formatting gets absolutely destroyed. At any rate, it's just an ellipsis and some quotations marks that it decided to eat.

23-Jun-2013 04:46:27 - Last edited on 25-Jun-2013 13:05:16 by Poller5

Poller5
Dec Member 2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
The city was alive, breathing, pulsing with vivacity: hustle, bustle, the frantic flow of bodies. Relaxing was moving, carried by the living current. To stop was an act of defiance, static opposition to the dynamism of the metropolis. And so on I flowed, up the main vein to the heart. The Square. An eddy caught me there, swirled me away, out of the flow. I found myself facing a purple tent, ostentatious amongst the grey stone. The flap was half open, daring me, tempting me, an unspoken invitation. Who was I to decline?

A thousand thousand men and beasts, Varrock could claim to rear.
A thousand thousand living things, and all did disappear.

The flap fell closed, and the silence rose. Not the funereal silence of mourning, awful in its emptiness, but a living, physical entity. Like a mist, it filled the room with its heavy presence, as every bit alive as the city outside. The city it eclipsed. I looked back, surprised, and gazed again at the flap – simple fabric, for all appearances. But not, something told me, all so simple at all.

I turned again, to acquaint myself with this strange place, this lacuna in reality. My eyes, though, could not more than briefly scan the walls – purple fabric, highlighted in gold – before they were drawn into the centre of the room. I jerked my head, to glance away, regain control – but their path was predetermined, ordained by whatever power called this home. And so guided, they found their target.

Their target. Roiling, coiling, twisting and flaring; a window, a hole, something, nothing. A crystal ball? No, that does not do it justice. A shapeless sphere, a formèd void, beyond words, beyond comprehension. What strange magic had I stumbled upon? What distant dimension did I now stand in, an intruder, powerless before powers that so mocked our natural laws?

*What do you seek of Aris?”

The voice filled the silence as liquid in a vessel, whirling and swirling as it was poured, first here...

25-Jun-2013 12:53:56 - Last edited on 25-Jun-2013 12:57:34 by Poller5

Poller5
Dec Member 2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
...then there – everywhere. It was a female voice, coming from without; it was my own voice, coming from within. I heard it as it washed over me, tasted it as it poured out of me. I opened my mouth to frame a response, but my jaw remained shut. I spoke, though my tongue sat idle.

“Who are you?”

My words flickered forth, ethereal, ephemeral; the first wisp of a cloud as it is born. Where the other voice had dominated, mine slunk, slipping around the room as if through invisible gaps in the air, circumventing but not defeating the silence. It died without an echo.

“I am the one who watches, the one who sees. I know this world, and all worlds. I know you, Lyrdan.”

I trembled as the room shook around me, her words reverberating, repeating undying, in this order then that.

“… who sees**

*Why did you…”

“… know you…”

“… Bring me here?”

Emptiness. My eyes, locked on the visions of Aris’ conjuring stared suddenly into infinity. The room, if it was ever there, was gone. My very physicality seemed an affront to the endless void of nonbeing that surrounded me. Outwards and onwards it stretched, the moonless night, the black gulf beyond the stars. Near, and distant. Flat as still water, yet running to the very depths of time.

I was not alone. Beside, above, around me, someone, some thing joined me in the void, and it was not void. “Now see all that I have to show, and learn all that you need to know.”

Images exploded into words. I saw a man in a stone circle – I was a man, wielding a starlit blade. Sorcerers chanted; the silken, spidery language of magic fell like water from their mouths. A portal gaped, a yawning of the dimensions. A form congealed from the ink of the blackness.

New words. A dissonance in the chant.

Camerinthum.

Purchai.

Aber.

Carlem.

Gabindo.

Sorcerers stumbled, the gate ground closed. The form fell forward, a half-formed abortion. The blade – my blade – rose and fell; and the demon was unmade.

25-Jun-2013 12:55:39 - Last edited on 25-Jun-2013 13:03:54 by Poller5

Poller5
Dec Member 2023

Poller5

Posts: 11,421 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
“Do you see?" The voice crashed over me as a wave upon the strand. And I was that beach, a thousand thousand particles, thrown together by fate, torn apart by the water. Again it hit, the eternal tidal cadence heeding the chime of the ocean’s bell, shaking my unbound soul. “Do you know?”

I was back in the tent, I realized, staring into the visions of Aris. Surrounded by the visions of Aris. Consumed by Aris. “I saw. I do not know.”

Unbidden then came to my mind a snippet of verse, remembered or invented, or heard now anew:

In yore days, years ago
The demon Delrith doom sought
To Varrock to bring and blood shed
In Arrav’s ancient ancestral home.
Humble then rose a hero bold
Warrior unwist, Wally the brave,
To valorous guard Varrock’s walls
The starlit blade Silverlight to wield,
Fell magic with fay words
To halt and cease, the hellfiend to slay.

The images danced in between the lines of the poem, and I knew.

“The words. I will remember the words.”

~*~*~*~

I was alone in a tent. How long I lay on its carpeted floor, impotent, I do not know. I took solace only in that the floor was solid, real, tangible proof of external existence. What primordial prophet I had encountered I knew not, but the terrible truth of its words filled my mind.

At length I stood, and took stock of my surroundings. Before me sat a table, a dull ball of polished glass upon it. The walls were purple canvas, with golden tassels, and though the sun shone through the roof candles burned around the room, strange perfumes rising in their smoke. Of Aris, or anyone else, there was no sign. A sudden compulsion grasped me, and I stared into the depths of the crystal ball…

From beyond, infinity winked back.

As I left the tent to rejoin the bustling vivacity of Varrock, words as whispering wind whirled around me.

“Find the sword… find the sword…”

Thus bound by fate, I went out into the world, wandering under stranger heavens than before.

25-Jun-2013 12:56:24 - Last edited on 27-Jun-2013 05:10:08 by Poller5

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